The boundaries of Germany, during this period, were the Eider and the sea, on the north; the Scheld, the Meuse, the Saone and the Rhone, on the west; the Alps and the Rhine, on the south; and the Lech and Vistula, on the east. They contained,--1. The duchy of Burgundy; 2. The duchy of Lorraine; 3. The principalities into which Allemmania and Franconia were divided; 4. The Bavarian territories, which the Franks had acquired in Rhoetia, Noricum, and Pannonia; 5. Saxony; 6. The Sclavic territories between the Oder and the Vistula: these were possessed by the margraves of Brandenburgh, and the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, and the princes dependent upon them in Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia;--7. by the provinces of Pomerania and Prussia, on the east of Saxony; 8. and the Marchia Orientalis, Oostrich, or Austria, on the east of Bavaria. At first, the emperor was chosen by the people at large; the right of election was afterwards confined to the nobility and the principal officers of state: insensibly, it was engrossed by the five great officers,--the chancellor, the great marshal, the great chamberlain, the great butler, and the great master of the palace. But 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.]