Frederic II. who died in 1250; and others will have it that they did not exist before 1280; and have, therefore, ascribed their institution to Ru dolph of Habsburgh, the founder of the house of Austria. But Wiquefort differs from all other his torians in this point, and says they were instituted by virtue of the Golden Bull of Charles IV. in 1356. But that they existed long before this latter year, is evident from history; for Cardinal Ostja who lived in the time of Pope Innocent IV. between 1243 and 1254, speaks of them in his commentary on the decretal of Innocent III. where he affirms that the electors mentioned in that place, are the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Triers, the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the marquis of Brandenburgh, and the duke of Bohemia. These were exactly the same with those afterwards acknowledged by the Golden Bull. Martinus Polonus, who also lived about the same time with the Cardinal of Ostia, names the seven electors as follows: the archbishop of Mentz, the chancellor of Germany; the archbishop of Triers, chancellor of Gaul; the archbishop of Cologne, chancellor of Italy; the marquis of Brandenburgh, high chamberlain; the palatine of the Rhine, high steward; the duke of Saxony, gentleman of the horse; and the king of Bohemia, high cup-bearer. These are also the same with those mentioned by the Cardinal; consequently it follows that the institution could not have been later than the time of

Innocent IV.* But how long they existed before A. D. 1356 it is impossible to determine; therefore we must say with Selden that "there is no other kind of certainty of it than thus, that by a tacit consent of the states and of the empire (since it came into Germany) this septemviral election hath been received, and that so the dignity of electorship hath been settled by the same consent upon those three ecclesiastical and four secular princes. But when or at what time this was first so received is not delivered in any testimony that is certain enough to decide the controversy." But the uncertainty in this respect does not in the least weaken the evidence of the mountains being the seven electorates, but rather confirms it; for, as we have already ob

* See Du Pin's Ecclesiastical History of the Tenth Century, chap. vi. Rees' Cyclopædia, and Chambers' Dict. on the word Elector; and the different German historians. Koch says, that the first mention of the seven electors was in a letter of Urban IV. respecting the contested election of Richard, king of England, and Alphonsus, king of Castille, where his words are 66 Principes vocem in hujusmodi electione habentes, qui sunt septem numero." The princes having a voice in this election, who are seven in number. See his Tableau des Revolutions, Tom. I. p. 180. The whole of this letter is inserted in the first Tome of Dumont's Corps Diplomatique, pp. 216-219. and the electorates here mentioned are precisely the same with those afterwards acknowledged by the Golden Bull. The date of the letter is Aug. 31, without the year of our Lord; but, according to Dumont, it must have been in 1262, 1263, or 1264, as the pontificate of Urban IV. was only in these years.

+ See his Works, Vol. III. Tom. 1. Col. 487.

served, the representation of the Woman sitting upon the Beast is a figure of the Latin church in the period of her greatest authority spiritual and temporal; this we know did not take place till about the commencement of the fourteenth century, a period subsequent to the institution of the seven electorates. Therefore, the Woman sits upon the seven mountains, or the German empire in its elective state:* she is said to sit upon them, to denote

The

*The state of the German constitution in the reign of the emperor Charles IV. is thus described by Gibbon: "It is in the fourteenth century, that we may view in the strongest light the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany, which no longer held, except on the borders of the Rhine and Danube, a single province of Trajan or Constantine.The German emperor was no more than the elective and impotent magistrate of an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village that he might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was convened at his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power, and the richest source of his revenue. army with which he passed the Alps, consisted of three hundred horse-such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was detained in the public inn, as a pledge or hos tage for the payment of his expences. From this humiliating scene let us turn to the apparent majesty of the same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull, which fixes the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the style of a sovereign and a legislator. An hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted their own dignity by the voluntary honours which they yielded to their chief or minister. At the royal banquet, the he reditary great officers, the seven electors, who in rank and title.

that she has the whole German empire under her direction and authority, and also that it is her chief support and strength. Supported by Germany she is under no apprehension of being successfully opposed by any other power; she sits upon the seven mountains, therefore she is higher than the seven highest eminences of the Latin world; she must, therefore, have the Latin empire under her com

*

"

were equal to kings, performed their solemn and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and Treves, the perpetual archchancellors of Germany, Italy, and Arles. The great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function with a silver measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground, and immediátely dismounted to regulate the order of the guests. The great steward, the count palatine of the Rhine, placed the dishes on the table. The great chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburgh, presented, after the repast, the golden ewer, or bason, to wash. The king of Bohemia, as great cupbearer, was represented by the emperor's brother, the duke of Luxemburgh and Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great huntsmen, who introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns and hounds. Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined to Germany alone; the hereditary monarchs of Europe con fessed the pre-eminence of his rank and dignity: he was the first of the Christian princes, the temporal head of the great republic of the west." See his Decline and Fall of the Roman empire, chap. 49, near the end.

**It is worthy of note that those states which were finally advanced to the dignity of electorates were a long time before the issuing of the Golden Bull, great and powerful; and might in a peculiar sense be denominated mountains, in reference to the other minor states with which they were surrounded. But as several other states were also of great political importance, the

P

plete subjection. But this state of eminence was not of very long continuance; the removal of the Papal see from Rome to Avignon tended considerably to diminish the temporal sovereignty of the Latin church, and the great schism from 1377 to 1417 was also detrimental to it. But the greatest shock of all was the light of the glorious Reformation which first broke out in Germany in 1517; and in a very few years gained its way not only over several of the great principalities of Germany, but was also made the established religion of several Popish countries. Consequently, in the sixteenth century the Woman no longer sat upon the seven mountains, the electorates not only having refused to be ruled by her, but some of them having also despised and abandoned her doctrines. The

changes, therefore, which were made in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and present centuries, in the number of the electors, will not affect, in the least, the interpretation of the seven mountains already given. *

prophecy only denominates those mountains which finally obtained the exclusive right of electing the head of the empire.

* The changes alluded to are the following: In 1623, the emperor Ferdinand II. transferred the electoral dignity from Frederic V. count palatine to Maximilian duke of Bavaria. This translation of dignity, and many other acts of sovereignty, which the empire remarked in Ferdinand with a jealous eye-obliged the princes to join in a league, and to call strangers to their assistance. The war was long, and so bloody, that it is said to have swept away more than half the people of Germany. At last, both sides being weary, an assembly was held at Munster to