Imperial Diet (Holy Roman Empire) in the context of "Prince-Bishopric of Liège"

An Imperial Estate (Latin: Status Imperii; German: Reichsstand, plural: Reichsstände) was an entity or an individual of the Holy Roman Empire with representation and the right to vote in the Imperial Diet (Reichstag). Rulers of these Estates were able to exercise significant rights and privileges and were "immediate", meaning the only authority above them was that of the Holy Roman Emperor. They were thus able to rule their territories with a considerable degree of autonomy.

The system of imperial states replaced the more regular division of Germany into stem duchies in the early medieval period. The old Carolingian stem duchies were retained as the major divisions of Germany under the Salian dynasty, but they became increasingly obsolete during the early high medieval period under the Hohenstaufen, and they were finally abolished in 1180 by Frederick Barbarossa in favour of more numerous territorial divisions. From 1489, the Imperial Estates represented in the Diet were divided into three chambers, the college of prince-electors (Kurfürstenkollegium/den Kurfürstenrat), the college of imperial princes (Reichsfürstenrat) and the college of imperial cities. Counts and nobles were not directly represented in the Diet in spite of their immediate status, but were grouped into "benches" (Grafenbänke) with a single vote each.Imperial Knights and imperial villages had immediate status but were not represented in the Diet.

The Duchy of Savoy was a territorial entity of the Savoyard state that existed from 1416 until 1847 and was a possession of the House of Savoy.It was created when Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, raised the County of Savoy into a duchy for Amadeus VIII. The duchy was an Imperial fief, subject of the Holy Roman Empire, until 1792, with a vote in the Imperial Diet. From the 16th century, Savoy belonged to the Upper Rhenish Circle.

Its territory included the current French departments of Savoie, Haute-Savoie, and the Alpes-Maritimes, the current Italian region of Aosta Valley, a large part of Piedmont and the County of Geneva in Switzerland, which was then lost to the Old Swiss Confederacy. The main Vulgar languages that were spoken within the Duchy of Savoy were Arpitan and Piedmontese.

The Erblande ("Hereditary Lands") of the House of Habsburg formed the Alpine heartland of the Habsburg monarchy. They were the hereditary possessions of the Habsburgs within the Holy Roman Empire from before 1526. The Erblande were not all unified under the head of the dynasty prior to the 17th century. They were divided into several groupings: the Archduchy of Austria, Inner Austria, the County of Tyrol, and Further Austria.

The Erblande did not include either the Lands of the Bohemian Crown or the Lands of the Hungarian Crown, since both monarchies were elective when the Habsburg Ferdinand I was elected to their thrones in 1526. Ferdinand divided the Erblande between his three heirs in 1564 and they were not reunited until 1665. The Erblande were gathered into the Austrian Circle in 1512. This ensured a direct connection between the junior lines of the Austrian Habsburgs and the Empire after 1564, since throughout this period the Austrian Habsburgs exercised only one vote in the Council of Princes.

In politics, a diet (/ˈdaɪ.ət/ DY-ət) is a formal deliberative assembly or legislature. The term is used for some assemblies such as the German Imperial Diet (the general assembly of the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire), as well as a designation for modern-day legislative bodies of certain countries and states such as the National Diet of Japan, or the German Bundestag, the Federal Diet.

In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term free and imperial cities (German: Freie und Reichsstädte), briefly worded free imperial city (Freie Reichsstadt, Latin: urbs imperialis libera), was used from the 15th century to denote a self-ruling city that had a certain amount of autonomy and was represented in the Imperial Diet.

An imperial city held the status of imperial immediacy, and was subordinate only to the Holy Roman Emperor, as opposed to a territorial city or town (Landstadt), which was subordinate to a territorial prince – be it an ecclesiastical lord (prince-bishop, prince-abbot), or a secular prince (duke (Herzog), margrave, count (Graf), etc.).

Graf (German pronunciation: [ɡʁaːf] ; feminine: Gräfin [ˈɡʁɛːfɪn] ) is a historical title of the German nobility and later also of the Russian nobility, usually translated as "count". Considered to be intermediate among noble ranks, the title is often treated as equivalent to the British title of "earl" (whose female version is "countess").

The German nobility was gradually divided into high and low nobility. The high nobility included those counts who ruled immediate imperial territories of "princely size and importance" for which they had a seat and vote in the Imperial Diet.

The Duchy of Bavaria (German: Herzogtum Bayern) was a frontier region in the southeastern part of the Merovingian kingdom from the sixth through the eighth century. It was settled by Bavarian tribes and ruled by dukes (duces) under Frankish overlordship. A new duchy was created from this area during the decline of the Carolingian Empire in the late ninth century. It became one of the stem duchies of the East Frankish realm, which evolved as the Kingdom of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.

During internal struggles in the Ottonian dynasty, the Bavarian territory was considerably diminished by the separation of the newly established Duchy of Carinthia in 976. Between 1070 and 1180, the Holy Roman Emperors were again strongly opposed by Bavaria, especially by the ducal House of Welf. In the final conflict between the Welf and Hohenstaufen dynasties, Duke Henry the Lion was banned and deprived of his Bavarian and Saxon fiefs by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Frederick passed Bavaria over to the House of Wittelsbach, which held it until 1918. The Bavarian dukes were raised to prince-electors during the Thirty Years' War in 1623, and to kings by Napoleon in 1806. The duchy chaired the bench of the secular princes to the Reichstag of the Empire.

The Golden Bull of 1356 was a decree issued by the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg and Metz (Diet of Metz, 1356/57) headed by the Emperor Charles IV which fixed, for a period of more than four hundred years, important aspects of the constitutional structure of the Holy Roman Empire. It was named the Golden Bull for the golden seal it carried.

In June 2013, the Golden Bull was included in the UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

The imperial ban (German: Reichsacht, pronounced [ˈʁaɪçsˌʔaxt] ) was a form of outlawry in the Holy Roman Empire. At different times, it could be declared by the Holy Roman Emperor, by the Imperial Diet, or by courts like the League of the Holy Court (Vehmgericht) or the Reichskammergericht.

People under imperial ban, known as Geächtete (from about the 17th century, colloquially also as Vogelfreie, lit. "free as a bird"), lost all their rights and possessions. They were legally considered dead, and anyone was allowed to rob, injure, or kill them without legal consequences. The imperial ban automatically followed the excommunication of a person, as well as extending to anyone offering help to a person under the imperial ban.