There is one omission in the Golden Bull which is as significant and important as any of its direct provisions. The [Sidenote: The Papacy and the Golden Bull.] papal claims to confirm or veto an election, and to administer the Empire during a vacancy, were passed over in complete silence. The great electoral resolutions of Rense were practically but silently erected into an imperial law, and the election of future Emperors was to be treated as a private affair of the German nation. Innocent VI. did not hesitate to show his displeasure at the promulgation of such a law by a prince who was regarded as the docile creature of the Holy See. But Charles IV. showed a firmness worthy of Edward I. or of Philip the Fair. When the papal nuncio tried to levy a tenth of clerical revenues, Charles replied by demanding a reform of ecclesiastical abuses and by threatening to confiscate Church property. The Pope was forced to give way, and to abandon his opposition to the Golden Bull. With regard to the practical results of the Golden Bull, historians are unanimous. It erected an aristocratic federation [Sidenote: Results of the Golden Bull.] in Germany in place of the older monarchy, and the German constitution never lost the impress which it received in the fourteenth century. The powers and privileges which the Bull conferred upon the electors were inconsistent with the exercise of efficient monarchical authority. And though the secular electors in 1356 were not, with the exception of Charles himself, very powerful princes, yet it was certain that the establishment of primogeniture and of indivisibility of territories would before long give them a territorial power proportionate to their elevated rank.