[424] Take, among many instances, those of the preface to Giesebrecht, Die Deutsche Kaiserzeit; and Rotteck and Welcker's Staats Lexikon. The German newspapers are indeed sufficient illustration.
[425] See especially Von Sybel, Die Deutsche Nation und das Kaiserreich; and the answers of Ficker and Von Wydenbrugk.
[426] Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the feudal law of land.
[427] Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, iii. sub. fin.
[428] Waitz (Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte) says that the phrase 'semper Augustus' may be found in the times of the Carolingians, but not in official documents.
[429] There is some reason to think that towards the end of the Empire people had begun to fancy that 'erwählter' did not mean 'elect,' but 'elective.' Cf. [note m, p. 362].
[430] These expressions seem to have been intended to distinguish the kingdom of the Eastern or Germanic Franks from that of the Western or Gallicized Franks (Francigenæ), which having been for some time 'regnum Francorum Occidentalium,' grew at last to be simply 'regnum Franciæ,' the East Frankish kingdom being swallowed up in the Empire.
[431] It is right to remark that what is stated here can be taken as only generally and probably true: so great are the discrepancies among even the most careful writers on the subject, and so numerous the forgeries of a later age, which are to be found among the genuine documents of the early Empire. Goldast's Collections, for instance, are full of forgeries and anachronisms. Detailed information may be found in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Pütter, and in the host of writers to whom they refer.
[432] We in England may be thought to have made some slight movement in the same direction by calling the united great council of the Three Kingdoms the Imperial Parliament.
[433] Although to be sure the Burgundian dominions had all passed from the Emperor to France, the kingdom of Sardinia, and the Swiss Confederation.