On the marriage of the Welf heiress Agnes in the early 13th century, the territory passed to the
Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria, who were also counts palatine of
Bavaria. During a later division of territory among the heirs of Duke
Louis II of Upper Bavaria in 1294, the elder branch of the Wittelsbachs came into possession of both the Rhenish Palatinate and the territories in Bavaria north of the Danube river (the
Nordgau) centred around the town of
Amberg. As this region was politically connected to the Rhenish Palatinate, the name
Upper Palatinate (
Oberpfalz) became common from the early 16th century, to contrast with the
Lower Palatinate along the Rhine. The
Golden Bull of 1356, in circumvention of
inner-Wittelsbach contracts and thus bypassing
Bavaria, recognized the Palatinate as one of the secular
electorates. The count was given the hereditary offices of Archsteward (
Erztruchseß) of the Empire and
Imperial Vicar (
Reichsverweser) of
Franconia,
Swabia, the
Rhine and southern Germany. From that time forth, the Count Palatine of the Rhine was usually known as the Elector Palatine (
Kurfürst von der Pfalz). The position of prince-elector had existed earlier (for example, when two rival
kings of Germany were elected in 1257:
Richard of Cornwall and
Alfonso X of Castile), though it is difficult to determine exactly the earliest date of the office. By the early 16th century, owing to the practice of dividing territories among different branches of the family, junior lines of the Palatine Wittelsbachs came to rule in
Simmern,
Kaiserslautern and
Zweibrücken in the Lower Palatinate, and in
Neuburg and
Sulzbach in the Upper Palatinate. The Elector Palatine, now based in
Heidelberg, adopted Lutheranism in the 1530s and
Calvinism in the 1550s. ===
House of Wittelsbach===
Partitions of Palatinate under Wittelsbach rule Table of rulers ==Electors of Bavaria and counts palatine of the Rhine, 1777–1803==