PALATINE. In the later Roman empire certain officials attending on the emperor, or discharging duties at his court, were called palatini; from the time of Constantine the Great the term was also applied to the soldiers stationed in or around the capital to distinguish them from those stationed on the frontier of the empire. In the East Roman empire the word was used to designate the administrators of the finances and the imperial lands.
This use of the word palatine was adopted by the Frankish kings of the Merovingian dynasty. They employed a high official, the comes palatinus, who at first assisted the king in his judicial duties and at a later date discharged many of these himself. Other counts palatine were employed on military and administrative work, and the system was maintained by the Carolingian sovereigns. The word paladin, used to describe the followers of Charlemagne, is a variant of palatine. Instead of remaining near the person of the king, some of the counts palatine were sent to various parts of his empire as judges and governors. Being in a special sense the representatives of the sovereign they were entrusted with more extended power than the ordinary counts. From this usage there naturally arose the employment of the word to denote the dis tricts over which these powers were exercised. By Henry the Fowler, and especially by Otto the Great, counts palatine were sent into all parts of the country to support the royal authority by checking the independent tendencies of the great tribal dukes. We hear of a count palatine in Saxony, and of others in Lorraine, in Bavaria and in Swabia, their duties being to administer the royal estates in these duchies. The count palatine in Bavaria became duke of this land, the lower title being then merged in the higher one ; and with one other exception the German counts palatine soon became insignificant, although, the office having become heredi tary, Pfalzgrafen were in existence until the dissolution of the Holy Roman empire in 1806. The exception was the count pala
tine of the Rhine, who became one of the four lay electors and the most important lay official of the empire. In the empire the word count palatine was also used to designate the officials who assisted the emperor to exercise the rights which were reserved for his per sonal consideration. They were called comites palatini caesarii, or comites sacri palatii; in German, Hofpfalzgrafen.
From Germany the term passed into England and Scotland, into Hungary and Poland. In England palatine was an artificial word, applied to counties which stood outside the ordinary course of administration. In Hungary the important office of palatine owes its inception to St. Stephen. At first the head of the judicial system, the palatine became after the king the most important person in the realm. Under the later Habsburg rulers of Hungary the office was several times held by a member of this family, one of the palatines being the archduke Joseph. The office was abol ished after the revolution of 1848. In Poland the governors of the provinces of the kingdom were called palatines, and the prov inces were sometimes called palatinates.
In America certain districts colonized by English settlers were treated as palatine provinces. In 1632 Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Lotd Baltimore, received a charter from Charles I. giving him palatine rights in Maryland. In 1639 Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the lord of Maine, obtained one granting him as large and ample prerogatives as were enjoyed by the bishop of Durham. Carolina was another instance of a palatine province.
See C. Pfaff, Geschichte des Pfalzgrafenamtes (Halle, 1847) ; G. T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham (1900) ; R. Schroder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1902).