empire, and urged the electors to choose another sovereign. ¹
The electors appointed Charles IV., who had previously given
the Holy See all necessary guarantees ² ( 1346). Louis was
making ready to oppose his rival when death came to relieve
him from the pain of defeat, and to save Germany from a
fresh intestinal conflict ( 1347). Thus the same electors
who in 1338 had shaken off the yoke of the papacy, eight
years later consented to be its instruments; and the emperor
who had removed the constitution from the influence of the
popes was deposed by one of them. Politics, with their
coalitions and intrigues, are not strangers to such incon-
sistencies; and it was not only during the life of Louis of
Bavaria that the decision of Frankfort was ineffective. In
1355, Charles IV. went to Rome to receive the imperial
crown. A half-century later ( 1400), when the electors
deposed Wenceslas and elected Robert, they acted only by
the authority of Boniface IX. In 1418, at the council of
Constance, Sigismund kneeling before Martin V. begged him
to confirm his election, and to recognize him as king of the
Romans. In 1433 this same monarch received the imperial
crown from Eugenius IV.; and in 1452, Frederick III. was
crowned by Pope Nicholas V. ³

All these facts prove that even after the diets of Rens
and Frankfort, electors and emperors were not always to
act without the Pope; but they acted without him as often as
they could. This same Charles IV., who in 1355 went to Rome
to be crowned, took care in his famous "golden bull" to isolate
the election of the emperor from pontifical intervention. ⁴ The
right was gradually and definitely established, and became actual.
After Sigismund no emperor was preoccupied with having his
election confirmed by the Pope, and after Frederick III. no one
went to Rome to seek the imperial crown; for Charles V. was
crowned at Bologna. The Holy Roman Germanic Empire had
ceased to be holy and Roman; it was only Germanic.

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