century the seven electors began to disengage themselves from the prince as a separate element, and the Golden Bull (1356) made their separation complete; from the 14th century onwards the nobles (both counts and other lords) are regarded as regular members; while after 1250 the imperial and episcopal towns often appear through their representatives. By the 14th century, therefore, the originally homogeneous diet of princes is already, at any rate practically if not yet in legal form, divided into three colleges—the electors, the princes and nobles, and the representatives of the towns (though, as we shall see, the latter can hardly be reckoned as regular members until the century of the Reformation). Under the Hohenstaufen it is still the rule that every member of the diet must attend personally, or lose his vote; at a later date the principle of representation by proxy, which eventually made the diet into a mere congress of envoys, was introduced. By the end of the 13th century the vote of the majority had come to be regarded as decisive; but in accordance with the strong sense of social distinctions which marks German history, the quality as well as the quantity of votes was weighed, and if the most powerful of the princes were agreed, the opinion of the lesser magnates was not consulted. The powers of the medieval diet extended to matters like legislation, the decision upon expeditions (especially the expeditio Romana), taxation and changes in the constitution of the principalities or the Empire. The election of the king, which was originally regarded as one of the powers of the diet, had passed to the electors by the middle of the 13th century.
A new era in the history of the diet begins with the Reformation. The division of the diet into three colleges becomes definite and precise; the right of the electors, for instance, to constitute a separate college is explicitly recognized as a matter of established custom in 1544. The representatives of the towns now become regular members. In the 15th century they had only attended when special business, such as imperial reform or taxation, fell under discussion; in 1500, however, they were recognized as a separate and regular estate, though it was not until 1648 that they were recognized as equal to the other estates of the diet. The estate of the towns, or college of municipal representatives, was divided into two benches, the Rhenish and the Swabian. The estate of the princes and counts, which stood midway between the electors and the towns, also attained, in the years that followed the Reformation, its final organization. The vote of the great princes ceased to be personal, and began to be territorial. This had two results. The division of a single territory among the different sons of a family no longer, as of old, multiplied the voting power of the family; while in the opposite case, the union of various territories in the hands of a single person no longer meant the extinction of several votes, since the new owner was now allowed to give a vote for each of his territories. The position of the counts and other lords, who joined with the princes in forming the middle estate, was finally fixed by the middle of the 17th century. While each of the princes enjoyed an individual vote, the counts and other lords were arranged in groups, each of which voted as a whole, though the whole of its vote (Kuriatstimme) only counted as equal to the vote of a single prince (Virilstimme). There were six of these groups; but as the votes of the whole college of princes and counts (at any rate in the 18th century) numbered 100, they could exercise but little weight.
The last era in the history of the diet may be said to open with the treaty of Westphalia (1648). The treaty acknowledged that Germany was no longer a unitary state, but a loose confederation of sovereign princes; and the diet accordingly ceased to bear the character of a national assembly, and became a mere congress of envoys. The “last diet” which issued a regular recess (Reichsabschied—the term applied to the acta of the diet, as formally compiled and enunciated at its dissolution) was that of Regensburg in 1654. The next diet, which met at Regensburg in 1663, never issued a recess, and was never dissolved; it continued in permanent session, as it were, till the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. This result was achieved by the process of turning the diet from an assembly of principals into a congress of envoys. The emperor was represented by two commissarii; the electors, princes and towns were similarly represented by their accredited agents. Some legislation was occasionally done by this body; a conclusum imperii (so called in distinction from the old recessus imperii of the period before 1663) might slowly (very slowly—for the agents, imperfectly instructed, had constantly to refer matters back to their principals) be achieved; but it rested with the various princes to promulgate and enforce the conclusum in their territories, and they were sufficiently occupied in issuing and enforcing their own decrees. In practice the diet had nothing to do; and its members occupied themselves in “wrangling about chairs”—that is to say, in unending disputes about degrees and precedences.
In the Germanic Confederation, which occupies the interval between the death of the Holy Roman Empire and the formation of the North German Confederation (1815–1866), a diet (Bundestag) existed, which was modelled on the old diet of the 18th century. It was a standing congress of envoys at Frankfort-on-Main. Austria presided in the diet, which, in the earlier years of its history, served, under the influence of Metternich, as an organ for the suppression of Liberal opinion. In the North German Confederation (1867–1870) a new departure was made, which has been followed in the constitution of the present German empire. Two bodies were instituted—a Bundesrat, which resembles the old diet in being a congress of envoys sent by the sovereigns of the different states of the confederation, and a Reichstag, which bears the name of the old diet, but differs entirely in composition. The new Reichstag is a popular representative assembly, based on wide suffrage and elected by ballot; and, above all, it is an assembly representing, not the several states, but the whole Empire, which is divided for this purpose into electoral districts. Both as a popular assembly, and as an assembly which represents the whole of a united Germany, the new Reichstag goes back, one may almost say, beyond the diet even of the middle ages, to the days of the old Teutonic folk-moot.
See R. Schröder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (1902), pp. 149, 508, 820, 880. Schröder gives a bibliography of monographs bearing on the history of the medieval diet. (E. Br.)
DIETARY, in a general sense, a system or course of diet, in the
sense of food; more particularly, such an allowance and regulation
of food as that supplied to workhouses, the army and navy,
prisons, &c. Lowest in the scale of such dietaries comes what
is termed “bare existence” diet, administered to certain classes
of the community who have a claim on their fellow-countrymen
that their lives and health shall be preserved in statu quo, but
nothing further. This applies particularly to the members of
a temporarily famine-stricken community. Before the days of
prison reform, too, the dietary scale of many prisons was to
a certain extent penal, in that the food supplied to prisoners
was barely sufficient for existence. Nowadays more humane
principles apply; there is no longer the obvious injustice of
applying the same scale of quantity and quality to all prisoners
under varying circumstances of constitution and surroundings,
and whether serving long or short periods of imprisonment.
The system of dietary in force in the local and convict prisons of England and Wales is that recommended by the Home Office on the advice of a departmental committee. As to the local prison dietary, its application is based on (1) the principle of variation of diet with length of sentence; (2) the system of progressive dietary; (3) the distinction between hard labour diets and non-hard labour diets; (4) the differentiation of diet according to age and sex. There are three classes of diet, classes A, B and C. Class A diet is given to prisoners undergoing not more than seven days’ imprisonment. The food is good and wholesome, but sufficiently plain and unattractive, so as not to offer temptation to the loafer or mendicant. It is given in quantity sufficient to maintain health and strength during the single week. Prisoners sentenced to more than seven days and not more than fourteen days are given class A diet for the first seven days and class B for the remainder of the sentence. In most of the local prisons in England and Wales prisoners sentenced to hard labour received hard labour diet, although quite 60% were unable to perform the hardest forms of prison labour either through physical defect, age or infirmity. The departmental committee of 1899 in their report recommended that no distinction should be made between hard labour and non-hard labour diets. Class A diet is as follows:—Breakfast, Bread, 8 oz. daily (6 oz. for women and
juveniles) with 1 pint of gruel. Juveniles (males and females under
