Practice question · Multiple choice
The Golden Bull of 1356 fixed the imperial election in seven electors. How does an elective crown weaken a monarchy over time?
Hints
- Ask what a candidate has to offer the people whose votes he needs.
- Concessions made at one election are not recovered at the next.
Show the answer
A. Each vacancy forces the candidate to concede rights in exchange for votes, so authority drains steadily to the electors
Why
The concessions ratchet. Privileges granted to win an election become the baseline the next candidate must exceed, and nothing forces them back. The Habsburgs eventually monopolised the office in practice, but by then the substance of imperial authority in Germany had already been transferred to the princes.
Practise The Feudal Monarchies
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History II is free to start.
More questions on The Feudal Monarchies
- Arrange these developments in medieval state-building, earliest first.
- Litigants in twelfth-century England increasingly took their disputes to royal courts rather than to their…
- Why did extraordinary taxation tend to produce representative assemblies?
- Complete the account of Capetian consolidation.
- In which year was Domesday Book compiled, surveying landholding and value across most of England?
- Arrange the stages by which a king’s authority grew beyond that of an ordinary lord.
- From Hugh Capet’s accession in 987 until 1328 the French crown stayed in one family. Estimate how many years…
- A twelfth-century king was merely a 'lord of lords', whereas a fourteenth-century king functioned as a…