ELECTORS (Ger. Kurfursten), a body of German princes, with whom rested the election of the German king, from the 13th until the beginning of the 19th century. Before the middle of the 13th century German kings had succeeded to their position partly by heredity and partly by election. Primitive Germanic practice had emphasized the element of heredity. Reges ex nobili tate surnunt: the man whom a German tribe recognized as its king must be in the line of hereditary descent from Woden ; and there fore the genealogical trees of early Teutonic kings (as, for in stance, in England those of the Kentish and West Saxon sover eigns) are carefully constructed to prove that divine descent which alone will constitute a proper title. Even from the first, however, there had been some opening for election; for the principle of primogeniture was not observed, and there might be several com peting candidates, all of the true Woden stock. One of these competing candidates would have to be recognized ; and to this limited extent Teutonic kings may be termed elective from the very first. In the other nations of western Europe this element of election dwindled, and the principle of heredity alone received legal recognition ; in mediaeval Germany, on the contrary, the principle of heredity, while still exercising an inevitable natural force, sank formally into the background, and legal recognition was finally given to the elective principle.
This difference between the German monarchy and the other monarchies of western Europe may be explained by various con siderations. Not the least important of these is what seems a pure accident. Whereas (he Capetian monarchs, during the 30o years that followed on the election of Hugh Capet in 987, always left an heir male, and an heir male of full age, the German kings again and again, during the same period, either left a minor to succeed to the throne or left no issue at all. The principle of heredity began to fail because there were no heirs. Again the strength of tribal feeling in Germany made the monarchy into a prize, which must not be the apanage of any single tribe, but must circulate, as it were, from Franconian to Saxon, from Saxon to Bavarian, from Bavarian to Franconian, from Franconian to Swabian ; while the growing power of the baronage, and its habit of erecting anti-kings to emphasize its opposition to the Crown (as, for instance, in the reign of Henry IV.), coalesced with and gave new force to the action of tribal feeling. Lastly, the fact that the German kings were also Roman emperors finally and irretrievably consolidated the growing tendency towards the elective principle. The prin ciple of heredity had never held any great sway under the ancient Roman empire (see under EMPEROR) ; and the mediaeval empire, instituted as it was by the papacy, came definitely under the in fluence of ecclesiastical prepossessions in favour of election. Heredity might be tolerated in a mere matter of kingship; the precious trust of imperial power could not be allowed to descend according to the accidents of family succession. To Otto of Freis ing (Gesta Frid. ii. I) it is already a point of right vindicated for itself by the excellency of the Roman empire, as a matter of singular prerogative, that it should not descend per sanguinis pro paginem, sed per principum electionem.
The accessions of Conrad II., Lothair II., Conrad III., and Frederick I. had all been marked by an element, more or less pro nounced, of election. That element is perhaps most considerable in the case of Lothair, who had no rights of heredity to urge. Here we read of ten princes being selected from the princes of - the various duchies, to whose choice the rest promise to assent, and of these ten selecting three candidates, one of whom, Lothair, is fi nally chosen (apparently by the whole assembly) in a somewhat tumultuary fashion. In this case the electoral assembly would seem to be, in the last resort, the whole diet of all the princes. But a de facto pre-eminence in the act of election is already, during the 12th century, enjoyed by the three Rhenish archbishops, probably because of the part they afterwards played at the coronation, and also by the dukes of the great duchies—possibly because of the part they also played, as vested for the time with the great offices of the household, at the coronation feast. In fact the votes of the archbishops and dukes, which would first be taken, would of themselves, if unanimous, decide the election. To prevent tumul tuary elections, it was well that the election should be left exclu sively with these great dignitaries; and this is what, by the middle of the 13th century, had eventually been done.
The chaos of the interregnum from 1198 to 1212 showed the way for the new departure ; the chaos of the great interregnum (1250-73) led to its being finally taken. The decay of the great duchies, and the narrowing of the class of princes into a close corporation, some of whose members were the equals of the old dukes in power, introduced difficulties and doubts into the practice of election which had been used in the 12th century. The con tested election of the interregnum of 1198-1212 brought these difficulties and doubts into strong relief. The famous bull of In nocent III. (Venerabilem), in which he decided for Otto IV. against Philip of Swabia, on the ground that, though he had fewer votes than Philip, he had a majority of the votes of those ad quos principaliter spectat electio, made it almost imperative that there should be some definition of these principal electors. The most famous attempt at such a definition is that of the Saclhsen spiegel, which was followed, or combated, by many other writers in the first half of the 13th century. Eventually the contested election of 1257 brought light and definition. Here we find seven potentates acting—the same seven whom the Golden Bull recog nizes in 1356; and we find these seven described in an official letter to the pope as principes vocem in hujusmodi elections ha bentes, qui sent septem numero. The doctrine thus enunciated was at once received; and by the date of the election of Rudolph of Habsburg (12 73) the seven electors may be regarded as a definite body, with an acknowledged right: The pope having already acknowledged it in two bulls (1263).
The Golden Bull.—But the definition and the acknowledg ment were still imperfect. (I) The composition of the electoral body was uncertain in two respects. The duke of Bavaria claimed as his proper right the electoral vote which had been assumed by the king of Bohemia; and the practice of partitio in electoral fam ilies tended to raise further difficulties about the exercise of the vote. The Golden Bull of 1356 settled both these questions. Bohemia (of which Charles IV., the author of the Golden Bull, was himself the king) was assigned the electoral vote in preference to Bavaria; and a provision annexing the electoral vote to a defi nite territory, declaring that territory indivisible, and regulating its descent by the rule of primogeniture instead of partition, swept away the old difficulties which the custom of partition had raised. After 1356 the seven electors are regularly the three Rhenish archbishops, Mainz, Cologne and Trier, and four lay magnates, the palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Bran denburg and the king of Bohemia; the three former being vested with the three archchancellorships, and the four latter with the four offices of the royal household (see HOUSEHOLD) . (2) The rights of the seven electors, in their collective capacity as an electoral college, were a matter of dispute with the papacy. The result of the election was in itself simply the creation of a German king—an electio in regem. But since 962 the German king was also, after coronation by the pope, Roman emperor. Therefore the election had a double result : the man elected was not only electus in regem, but also promovendus ad imperium. The diffi culty was to define the meaning of the term promovendus. Must the elected king be promoted inevitably to the imperial crown, or did such promotion depend on the discretion and subsequent action of the papacy? Boniface VIII. pressed the latter view against Albert I. in 1298, even though his election was unanimous ; and John XXII. expressed it in its harshest form, when in 1324 he excommunicated Louis IV. for using the title even of king without previous papal confirmation. This action ultimately led to a protest from the electors, whose right of election would have become practically meaningless if such assumptions had been tol erated. A meeting of the electors (Kurverein) at Rense in 1338 declared (and the declaration was reaffirmed by a diet at Frank furt in the same year) that the act of election conveyed both kingship and empire without any need of papal assent. The doc trine thus positively affirmed at Rense is negatively reaffirmed in the Golden Bull, in which a significant silence is maintained in regard to papal rights. But the doctrine was not always in practice followed and Sigismund, for example, did not venture to dispense with papal approbation.
By the end of the 14th century the position of the electors, both individually and as a corporate body, had become definite and precise. Individually, they were distinguished from all other princes, as we have seen, by the indivisibility of their territories and by the custom of primogeniture which secured that indivisi bility ; and they were still further distinguished by the fact that their person, like that of the emperor himself, was protected by the law of treason, while their territories were only subject to the jurisdiction of their own courts. Powerful as they were, however, in their individual capacity, the electors showed themselves no less powerful as a corporate body. As such a corporate body, they may be considered from three different points of view, and as acting in three different capacities. They were an electoral body, choosing each successive emperor ; they were one of the three colleges of the imperial diet (see DIET) ; and they were also an electoral union (Kurfurstenverein), acting as a separate and independent political organ even after the election, and during the reign, of the emperor. It was in this last capacity that they had met at Rense in 1338 ; and in the same capacity they acted repeatedly during the 15th century. According to the Golden Bull, such meetings were to be annual, and their deliberations were to concern "the safety of the empire and the world." Annual they never were ; but occasionally they became of great importance. Again and again, from 1424 to I S3o, attempts were made by the electoral union to erect a new central Government, either composed of its members or acting under their influence and control, by the side of the emperor. There was one such attempt in 1424; another in ; and a third, the most ambitious of all, in which Bertold of Mainz was promi nent, in 1500. But the opposition of the emperors combined with the forces of German disunion to shipwreck every attempt.
In the course of the 16th century a new right came to be exer cised by the electors. As an electoral body (i.e., in the first of the three capacities distinguished above), they claimed, at the election of Charles V. in 1519 and at subsequent elections, to impose conditions on the elected monarch, and to prescribe the terms on which he should exercise his office in the course of his reign. This IFahlcapitulation, similar to the Pacta Conventa which limited the elected kings of Poland, was left by the diet to the discretion of the electors, though after the treaty of Westphalia an attempt was made, with some little success, to turn the capitu lation into a matter of legislative enactment by the diet. From this time onwards the only fact of importance in the history of the electors is the change which took place in the composition of their body during the 17th and i8th centuries. From the Golden Bull to the early years of the 17th century the composition of the elec toral body had remained unchanged. In 1623, however, in the course of the Thirty Years' War, the vote of the count palatine of the Rhine was transferred to the duke of Bavaria; and at the treaty of Westphalia the vote, with the office of imperial butler which it carried, was left to Bavaria, while an eighth vote, along with the new office of imperial treasurer, was created for the count palatine. In 1708 a ninth vote, along with the office of imperial standard-bearer, was created for Hanover; while finally, in 1778, the vote of Bavaria and the office of imperial butler returned to the counts palatine, as heirs of the duchy, on the extinction of the ducal line, and the new vote created for the Palatinate in 1648, with the office of imperial treasurer, was transferred to Bruns wick-Luneburg (Hanover) in lieu of the vote which this house already held. In 1806, on the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the electors ceased to exist.