<P> In the Principality of Catalonia, the Catalan constitutions were promulgated by the Court from 1283 (or even two centuries before, if we consider the Usatges of Barcelona as part of the compilation of Constitutions) until 1716, when Philip V of Spain gave the Nueva Planta decrees, finishing with the historical laws of Catalonia . These Constitutions were usually made formally as a royal initiative, but required for its approval or repeal the favorable vote of the Catalan Courts, the medieval antecedent of the modern Parliaments . These laws had, as the other modern constitutions, preeminence over other laws, and they could not be contradicted by mere decrees or edicts of the king . </P> <P> The Golden Bull of 1356 was a decree issued by a Reichstag in Nuremberg headed by Emperor Charles IV that fixed, for a period of more than four hundred years, an important aspect of the constitutional structure of the Holy Roman Empire . </P> <P> In China, the Hongwu Emperor created and refined a document he called Ancestral Injunctions (first published in 1375, revised twice more before his death in 1398). These rules served in a very real sense as a constitution for the Ming Dynasty for the next 250 years . </P> <P> The oldest written document still governing a sovereign nation today is that of San Marino . The Leges Statutae Republicae Sancti Marini was written in Latin and consists of six books . The first book, with 62 articles, establishes councils, courts, various executive officers and the powers assigned to them . The remaining books cover criminal and civil law, judicial procedures and remedies . Written in 1600, the document was based upon the Statuti Comunali (Town Statute) of 1300, itself influenced by the Codex Justinianus, and it remains in force today . </P>

Identify two terms in the constitution that you do not understand