A Hoftag (pl. Hoftage) was the name given to an informal and irregular assembly convened by the King of the Romans, the Holy Roman Emperor or one of the Princes of the Empire, with selected chief princes within the empire. Early scholarship also refers to these meetings as imperial diets (Reichstage), even though these gatherings were not really about the empire in general, but with matters concerning their individual rulers. In fact, the legal institution of the imperial diet appeared much later.