What is "the golden bull"

Bull \Bull\, n. [OE. bulle, fr. L. bulla bubble, stud, knob, LL., a seal or stamp: cf. F. bulle. Cf. Bull a writing, Bowl a ball, Boil, v. i.]

1. A seal. See Bulla.

2. A letter, edict, or respect, of the pope, written in Gothic characters on rough parchment, sealed with a bulla, and dated ``a die Incarnationis,'' i. e., ``from the day of the Incarnation.'' See Apostolical brief, under Brief.

   A fresh bull of Leo's had declared how inflexible the court of Rome was in the point of abuses.
   --Atterbury.

3. A grotesque blunder in language; an apparent congruity, but real incongruity, of ideas, contained in a form of expression; so called, perhaps, from the apparent incongruity between the dictatorial nature of the pope's bulls and his professions of humility.

   And whereas the papist boasts himself to be a Roman Catholic, it is a mere contradiction, one of the pope's bulls, as if he should say universal particular; a Catholic schimatic.
   --Milton.

   The Golden Bull, an edict or imperial constitution made by the emperor Charles IV. (1356), containing what became the fundamental law of the German empire; -- so called from its golden seal.

   Syn: See Blunder. [1913 Webster] ||