ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an account of the secular monarchy and various dignities belonging to it by the Japanese travellers. The electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire was established in 1356 by the emperor and king of Bohemia, Charles IV, in the Golden Bull. By the 16th century the imperial crown was in the possession of the Habsburgs, not by right but by election. The Emperor Maximilian’s coronation in 1562 was the last at which all the electors were present. Most famously in 1076 when Gregory VII deposed the emperor Henry IV, setting the stage for the Investiture Controversy and the subsequent trials of strength and debates over respective power, authority and jurisdictions of the spiritual and the secular realms. De Missione reflects the consensus among Jesuit theologians who considered it self-evident that the papacy had the power to depose a secular ruler if the latter became a heretic in order to protect the souls of the faithful.
