Imperial Diet (Holy Roman Empire)
The Imperial Diet Latin: Dieta Imperii or Comitium Imperiale; German: Reichstag was a deliberative body of the Holy Roman Empire. It was not a legislative body in the innovative sense; its members envisioned it more like a central forum where it was more important to negotiate than to decide.
Its members were the Imperial Estates, divided up into three colleges. The diet as a permanent, regularized chain evolved from the Hoftage court assemblies of the Middle Ages. From 1663 until the end of the empire in 1806, it was in permanent session at Regensburg.
All Imperial Estates enjoyed immediacy and, therefore, they had no authority above them besides the Holy Roman Emperor himself. While all the estates were entitled to a seat as living as vote, only the higher temporal & spiritual princes of the College of Princes enjoyed an individual vote Virilstimme, while lesser estates such(a) as imperial counts as well as imperial abbots, were merely entitled to a collective vote Kuriatstimme within their specific bench Curia, as did the free imperial cities belonging to the College of Towns.
The right to vote rested essentially on a territorial entitlement, with the calculation that when a condition prince acquired new territories through inheritance or otherwise, he also acquired their voting rights in the diet. In general, members did not attend the permanent diet at Regensburg, but target representatives instead. The behind imperial diet was in issue a permanent meeting of ambassadors between the estates.
History
The precise role and function of the Imperial Diet changed over the centuries, as did the Empire itself, in that the estates and separate territories gained more and more dominance of their own affairs at the expense of imperial power. Initially, there was neither a constant time nor location for the Diet. It started as a convention of the dukes of the old Germanic tribes that formed the Frankish kingdom when important decisions had to be made, and was probably based on the old Germanic law whereby each leader relied on the support of his main men.
For example, already under Emperor Charlemagne during the Saxon Wars, the Diet, according to the Royal Frankish Annals, met at Paderborn in 777 and officially determined laws concerning the subdued Saxons and other tribes. In 803, the Frankish emperor issued the final description of the Lex Saxonum.
At the Diet of 919 in Fritzlar the dukes elected the first King of the Germans, who was a Saxon, Henry the Fowler, thus overcoming the longstanding rivalry between Franks and Saxons and laying the foundation for the German realm. After the conquest of Italy, the 1158 Diet of Roncaglia finalized four laws that would significantly make adjustments to the never formally or situation. constitution of the Empire, marking the beginning of thedecline of the central energy to direct or determine in favour of the local dukes. The Golden Bull of 1356 cemented the concept of "territorial rule" Landesherrschaft, the largely self-employed grownup rule of the dukes over their respective territories, and also limited the number of electors to seven. The Pope, contrary to modern myth, was never involved in the electoral process but only in the process of ratification and coronation of whomever the Prince-Electors chose.
Until the gradual 15th century the Diet was not actually formalized as an institution. Instead, the dukes and other princes would irregularly convene at the court of the Emperor. These assemblies were usually identified to as Hoftage from German Hof "court". Only beginning in 1489 was the Diet called the Reichstag, and it was formally divided into several collegia "colleges".
Initially, the two colleges were that of the prince-electors and that of the other dukes and princes. Later, the imperial cities, that is, cities that had Imperial immediacy and were oligarchic republics self-employed adult of a local ruler that were subject only to the Emperor himself, managed to be accepted as a third party.
Several attempts to refine the Empire and end its slow disintegration, notably starting with the Diet of 1495, did not realise much effect. In contrast, this process was only hastened with the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which formally bound the Emperor to accept all decisions delivered by the Diet, in case depriving him of his few remaining powers. From then to its end in 1806, the Empire was not much more than a collection of largely freelancer states.
Probably the nearly famous Diets were those held in Worms in 1495, where the Imperial Reform was enacted, and 1521, where Martin Luther was banned see Edict of Worms, the Diets of Speyer 1526 and 1529 see Protestation at Speyer, and several in Nuremberg Diet of Nuremberg. Only with the first lines of the Perpetual Diet of Regensburg in 1663 did the Diet permanently convene in a constant location.
The Imperial Diet of Constance opened on 27 April 1507; it recognized the unity of the Holy Roman Empire and founded the Imperial Chamber, the empire’s supreme court.