mber of the diet must attend personally,
or lose his vote; at a later date the principle of representation by
proxy, which eventually made the diet into a mere congress of envoys,
was introduced. By the end of the 13th century the vote of the majority
had come to be regarded as decisive; but in accordance with the strong
sense of social distinctions which marks German history, the quality as
well as the quantity of votes was weighed, and if the most powerful of
the princes were agreed, the opinion of the lesser magnates was not
consulted. The powers of the medieval diet extended to matters like
legislation, the decision upon expeditions (especially the _expeditio
Romana_), taxation and changes in the constitution of the principalities
or the Empire. The election of the king, which was originally regarded
as one of the powers of the diet, had passed to the electors by the
middle of the 13th century.

A new era in the history of the diet begins with the Reformation. The
division of the diet into three colleges becomes definite and precise;
the right of the electors, for instance, to constitute a separate
college is explicitly recognized as a matter of established custom in
1544. The representatives of the towns now become regular members. In
the 15th century they had only attended when special business, such as
imperial reform or taxation, fell under discussion; in 1500, however,
they were recognized as a separate and regular estate, though it was not
until 1648 that they were recognized as equal to the other estates of
the diet. The estate of the towns, or college of municipal
representatives, was divided into two benches, the Rhenish and the
Swabian. The estate of the princes and counts, which stood midway
between the electors and the towns, also attained, in the years that
followed the Reformation, its final organization. The vote of the great
princes ceased to be personal, and began to be territorial. This had two
results. The division of a single territory among the different sons of
a family no longer, as of old, multiplied the voting power of the
family; while in the opposite case, the union of various territories in
the hands of a single person no longer meant the extinction of several
votes, since the new owner was now allowed to give a vote for each of
his territories. The position of the counts and other lords, who joined
with the princes in forming the middle estate, was finally fixed by the
middle of the 17th