their exclusive
pretensions were much questioned. At length, their right of election was
settled; first, by the Electoral Union, in 1337; and finally, in the
reign of the emperor Charles IV. by the celebrated constitution, called,
from the seal of gold appended to it, _the Golden Bull_. By this, the
right of election was vested in three spiritual and four temporal
electors: two temporal electors have since been added to their numbers.

IV. 2.

_State of German literature during this period_.

[Sidenote: 1438-1519]

While the empire was possessed by the princes of the house of Saxony, a
copy of the Pandects of Justinian was discovered at Amalfi. "The
discovery of them," says Sir William Blackstone, in his Introductory
discourse to his Commentaries, "soon brought the civil law into vogue
all over the west of Europe, where before it was quite laid aside, and
in a manner wholly forgotten; though some traces of its authority
remained in Italy, and the eastern provinces of the empire.--The study
of it was introduced into many universities abroad, particularly that of
Bologna, where exercises were performed, lectures read, and degrees
conferred in this faculty, as in other branches of science; and many
nations of the continent, just then beginning to recover from the
convulsions consequent to the overthrow of the Roman empire, and
settling by degrees into peaceable forms of government, adopted the
civil law (being the best written system then extant,) as the basis of
their several constitutions; blending or interweaving in it their own
feudal customs, in some places, with a more extensive, in others, a more
confined authority."

[Sidenote: IV. 2. State of German Literature, from the Suabian Dynasty
to Charles V.]

This was a great step toward the civilization of Germany, and of the
other countries in which the institutions of the civil law were thus
introduced. They certainly tended to animate the nations, by whom they
were received, to the study of the history and literature of the people
from the works of whose writers they had been compiled. They produced
this effect in several countries of Europe; but their influence in
Germany was very limited: the disposition to subtilize, which was at
that time universal throughout the German empire, led those who
cultivated literature rather to refine upon what was before them, than
to new inquiries. The language of the Pandects is of the silver age; it
might the