From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The theory of divine right was developed by
James VI of Scotland (1567–1625), and came to the fore in England under his reign as James I of England (1603–1625). Portrait attributed to
John de Critz, c. 1605
The
divine right of kings,
divine right, or
God's mandate is a political and religious doctrine of royal and
political legitimacy.
It stems from a specific metaphysical framework in which the king (or
queen) is pre-selected as an heir prior to their birth. By pre-selecting
the king's physical manifestation, the governed populace actively
(rather than merely passively) hands the metaphysical selection of the
king's soul – which will inhabit the body and thereby rule them – over
to God. In this way, the "divine right" originates as a metaphysical act
of humility or submission towards the
Godhead. Consequentially, it asserts that a
monarch (e.g. a king) is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from a divine authority, like the
monotheist will of God. The monarch is thus not subject to the will of his people, of the
aristocracy, or of any other
estate of the realm.
It implies that only divine authority can judge an unjust monarch and
that any attempt to depose, dethrone or restrict their powers runs
contrary to God's will and may constitute a sacrilegious act. It is
often expressed in the phrase "
by the Grace of God", attached to the titles of a reigning monarch; although this right does not make the monarch the same as a
sacred king. The divine right has been a key element for legitimizing many
absolute monarchies.
Pre-Christian conceptions
The
Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified
Roman emperors and some members of their families with the "divinely sanctioned" authority (
auctoritas) of the
Roman State. The official offer of
cultus
to a living emperor acknowledged his office and rule as divinely
approved and constitutional: his Principate should therefore demonstrate
pious respect for traditional Republican deities and
mores.
Many of the rites, practices and status distinctions that characterized
the cult to emperors were perpetuated in the theology and politics of
the Christianized Empire.
Christian origins
Outside of Christianity,
kings were often seen as either ruling with the backing of heavenly
powers or perhaps even being divine beings themselves. However, the
Christian notion of a divine right of kings is traced to a story found
in
1 Samuel, where the prophet
Samuel anoints
Saul and then
David as
mashiach
or king over Israel. The anointing is to such an effect that the
monarch became inviolable, so that even when Saul sought to kill David,
David would not raise his hand against him because "he was the Lord's
anointed".
Although the later Roman Empire had developed the European concept of a divine regent in Late Antiquity,
Adomnan of Iona
provides one of the earliest written examples of a Western medieval
concept of kings ruling with divine right. He wrote of the Irish King
Diarmait mac Cerbaill's
assassination and claimed that divine punishment fell on his assassin
for the act of violating the monarch. Adomnan also recorded a story
about Saint
Columba supposedly being visited by an angel carrying a glass book, who told him to ordain
Aedan mac Gabrain as King of
Dal Riata.
Columba initially refused, and the angel answered by whipping him and
demanding that he perform the ordination because God had commanded it.
The same angel visited Columba on three successive nights. Columba
finally agreed, and Aedan came to receive ordination. At the ordination
Columba told Aedan that so long as he obeyed God's laws, then none of
his enemies would prevail against him, but the moment he broke them,
this protection would end, and the same whip with which Columba had been
struck would be turned against the king. Adomnan's writings most likely
influenced other Irish writers, who in turn influenced continental
ideas as well.
Pepin the Short's coronation may have also come from the same influence. The
Byzantine Empire can be seen as the progenitor of this concept (which began with
Constantine I), which in turn inspired the
Carolingian dynasty and the
Holy Roman Emperors, whose lasting impact on Western and Central Europe further inspired all subsequent Western ideas of kingship.
Scots texts of James VI of Scotland
The
Scots
textbooks of the divine right of kings were written in 1597–1598 by
James VI of Scotland despite Scotland never having believed in the
theory and where the monarch was regarded as the "first among equals" on
a par with his people. His
Basilikon Doron, a manual on the powers of a king, was written to edify his four-year-old son
Henry Frederick
that a king "acknowledgeth himself ordained for his people, having
received from the god a burden of government, whereof he must be
countable". He based his theories in part on his understanding of the
Bible, as noted by the following quote from a speech to parliament
delivered in 1610 as James I of England:
The state of monarchy is the
supremest thing upon earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants
upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself, they are
called gods. There be three principal [comparisons] that illustrate the
state of monarchy: one taken out of the word of God, and the two other
out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. In the Scriptures, kings
are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to
the Divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families; for a
king is true parens patriae [parent of the country], the politic
father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of
this microcosm of the body of man.
James's reference to "God's lieutenants" is apparently a reference to
the text in Romans 13 where Paul refers to "God's ministers".
(1) Let every soul be subject unto
the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be
are ordained of God. (2) Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power,
resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to
themselves damnation. (3) For rulers are not a terror to good works, but
to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which
is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: (4) For he is the
minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be
afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of
God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. (5) Wherefore
ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience
sake. (6) For this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's
ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. (7) Render
therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to
whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
Western conceptions
The conception of
ordination brought with it largely unspoken parallels with the
Anglican and
Catholic priesthood,
but the overriding metaphor in James's handbook was that of a father's
relation to his children. "Just as no misconduct on the part of a father
can free his children from obedience to the
fifth commandment", James also had printed his
Defense of the Right of Kings
in the face of English theories of inalienable popular and clerical
rights. The divine right of kings, or divine-right theory of kingship,
is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy.
It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving
his right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not
subject to the will of his people, the aristocracy, or any other estate
of the realm, including (in the view of some, especially in Protestant
countries) the church. A weaker or more moderate form of this political
theory does hold, however, that the king is subject to the church and
the pope, although completely irreproachable in other ways; but
according to this doctrine in its strong form, only God can judge an
unjust king. The doctrine implies that any attempt to depose the king or
to restrict his powers runs contrary to the will of God and may
constitute a sacrilegious act.
It is related to the ancient Catholic philosophies regarding monarchy, in which the monarch is God's
vicegerent
upon the earth and therefore subject to no inferior power. However, in
Roman Catholic jurisprudence, the monarch is always subject to
natural and
divine law,
which are regarded as superior to the monarch. The possibility of
monarchy declining morally, overturning natural law, and degenerating
into a tyranny oppressive of the general welfare was answered
theologically with the Catholic concept of extra-legal
tyrannicide, ideally ratified by the pope. Until the
unification of Italy, the
Holy See did, from the time Christianity became the Roman
state religion, assert on that ground its primacy over secular princes; however this exercise of power never, even at its zenith, amounted to
theocracy, even in jurisdictions where the Bishop of Rome was the temporal authority.
Antichristus, a woodcut by
Lucas Cranach the Elder, of the pope using the temporal power to grant authority to a ruler contributing generously to the Catholic Church
Catholic justified permission
Catholic thought justified submission to the monarchy by reference to the following:
- The Old Testament, in which God chose kings to rule over Israel, beginning with Saul who was then rejected by God in favor of David, whose dynasty continued (at least in the southern kingdom) until the Babylonian captivity.
- The New Testament, in which the first pope, St. Peter, commands that all Christians shall honour the Roman Emperor (1 Peter 2:13–20),
even though, at that time, he was still a pagan emperor. St. Paul
agreed with St. Peter that subjects should be obedient to the powers
that be because they are appointed by God, as he wrote in his Epistle to
the Romans 13:1–7.
Likewise, Jesus Christ proclaims in the Gospel of Matthew that one
should "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's"; that is at
first, literally, the payment of taxes as binding those who use the
imperial currency (See Matthew 22:15–22). Jesus told Pontius Pilate that his authority as Roman governor of Judaea came from heaven according to John 19:10–11.
- The endorsement by the popes and the church of the line of emperors beginning with the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, later the Eastern Roman emperors, and finally the Western Roman emperor, Charlemagne and his successors, the Catholic Holy Roman Emperors.
The French Huguenot nobles and clergy, having rejected the pope and
the Catholic Church, were left only with the supreme power of the king
who, they taught, could not be gainsaid or judged by anyone. Since there
was no longer the countervailing power of the papacy and since the
Church of England was a creature of the state and had become subservient
to it, this meant that there was nothing to regulate the powers of the
king, and he became an absolute power. In theory,
divine,
natural, customary, and
constitutional law
still held sway over the king, but, absent a superior spiritual power,
it was difficult to see how they could be enforced, since the king could
not be tried by any of his own courts.
Some of the symbolism within the
coronation ceremony for British monarchs, in which they are
anointed with
holy oils by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, thereby
ordaining
them to monarchy, perpetuates the ancient Roman Catholic monarchical
ideas and ceremonial (although few Protestants realize this, the
ceremony is nearly entirely based upon that of the Coronation of the
Holy Roman Emperor).
However, in the UK, the symbolism ends there, since the real governing
authority of the monarch was all but extinguished by the Whig revolution
of 1688–89. The king or queen of the
United Kingdom
is one of the last monarchs still to be crowned in the traditional
Christian ceremonial, which in most other countries has been replaced by
an
inauguration or other declaration.
The concept of divine right incorporates, but exaggerates, the
ancient Christian concept of "royal God-given rights", which teach that
"the right to rule is anointed by God", although this idea is found in
many other cultures, including
Aryan and
Egyptian
traditions. In pagan religions, the king was often seen as a kind of
god and so was an unchallengeable despot. The ancient Roman Catholic
tradition overcame this idea with the doctrine of the "Two Swords" and
so achieved, for the very first time, a balanced constitution for
states. The advent of Protestantism saw something of a return to the
idea of a mere unchallengeable despot.
When there is no recourse to a
superior by whom judgment can be made about an invader, then he who
slays a tyrant to liberate his fatherland is [to be] praised and
receives a reward.
— Commentary on the Magister Sententiarum
On the other hand, Aquinas forbade the overthrow of any morally,
Christianly and spiritually legitimate king by his subjects. The only
human power capable of deposing the king was the pope. The reasoning was
that if a subject may overthrow his superior for some bad law, who was
to be the judge of whether the law was bad? If the subject could so
judge his own superior, then all lawful superior authority could
lawfully be overthrown by the arbitrary judgement of an inferior, and
thus all law was under constant threat. Towards the end of the Middle
Ages, many philosophers, such as
Nicholas of Cusa and
Francisco Suarez,
propounded similar theories. The Church was the final guarantor that
Christian kings would follow the laws and constitutional traditions of
their ancestors and the laws of God and of justice. Similarly, the
Chinese concept of
Mandate of Heaven required that the emperor properly carry out the proper
rituals and consult his ministers; however, this concept made it extremely difficult to undo any acts carried out by an ancestor.
The French prelate
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet made a classic statement of the doctrine of divine right in a sermon preached before King Louis XIV:
Les rois règnent par moi, dit la
Sagesse éternelle: 'Per me reges regnant'; et de là nous devons conclure
non seulement que les droits de la royauté sont établis par ses lois,
mais que le choix des personnes est un effet de sa providence.
Kings reign by Me, says Eternal
Wisdom: 'Per me reges regnant' [in Latin]; and from that we must
conclude not only that the rights of royalty are established by its
laws, but also that the choice of persons [to occupy the throne] is an
effect of its providence.
Divine right and Protestantism
Before the Reformation the anointed
king was, within his
realm, the accredited vicar of God for secular purposes; after the Reformation he (or she if
queen regnant) became this in Protestant states for religious purposes also.
In England it is not without significance that the sacerdotal
vestments, generally discarded by the clergy – dalmatic, alb and stole –
continued to be among the insignia of the sovereign (see
Coronation of the British monarch).
Moreover, this sacrosanct character he acquired not by virtue of his
"sacring", but by hereditary right; the coronation, anointing and
vesting were but the outward and visible symbol of a divine grace
adherent in the sovereign by virtue of his title. Even Roman Catholic
monarchs, like
Louis XIV,
would never have admitted that their coronation by the archbishop
constituted any part of their title to reign; it was no more than the
consecration of their title.
In England the doctrine of the divine right of kings was
developed to its most extreme logical conclusions during the political
controversies of the 17th century; its most famous exponent was Sir
Robert Filmer. It was the main issue to be decided by the
English Civil War, the
Royalists holding that "all Christian kings, princes and governors" derive their authority direct from God, the
Parliamentarians that this authority is the outcome of a contract, actual or implied, between sovereign and people.
In one case the king's power would be unlimited, according to Louis XIV's famous saying:
"L' état, c'est moi!",
or limited only by his own free act; in the other his actions would be
governed by the advice and consent of the people, to whom he would be
ultimately responsible. The victory of this latter principle was
proclaimed to all the world by the
execution of Charles I. The doctrine of divine right, indeed, for a while drew nourishment from the blood of the royal "martyr"; it was the guiding principle of the
Anglican Church of the
Restoration; but it suffered a rude blow when
James II of England made it impossible for the clergy to obey both their conscience and their king. The
Glorious Revolution of 1688 made an end of it as a great political force. This has led to the constitutional development of
the Crown in Britain, as held by descent modified and modifiable by parliamentary action.
Iranian world
Khvarenah (
Avestan: '
xᵛarənah;' Persian:
far) is an Iranian and
Zoroastrian concept, which literally means
glory,
about divine right of the kings. In Iranian view, kings would never
rule, unless Khvarenah is with them, and they will never fall unless
Khvarenah leaves them. For example, according to the
Kar-namag of Ardashir, when
Ardashir I of Persia and
Artabanus V of Parthia
fought for the throne of Iran, on the road Artabanus and his contingent
are overtaken by an enormous ram, which is also following Ardashir.
Artabanus's religious advisors explain to him that the ram is the
manifestation of the
khwarrah of the ancient Iranian kings, which is leaving Artabanus to join Ardashir.
Divine right in Asia
In early Mesopotamian culture, kings were often regarded as deities after their death.
Shulgi of
Ur
was among the first Mesopotamian rulers to declare himself to be
divine. This was the direct precursor to the concept of "Divine Right of
kings", as well as in the Egyptian and Roman religions.
Mandate of Heaven
In
China and
East Asia, rulers justified their rule with the philosophy of the
Mandate of Heaven,
which, although similar to the European concept, bore several key
differences. While the divine right of kings granted unconditional
legitimacy, the Mandate of Heaven was dependent on the behaviour of the
ruler, the
Son of Heaven.
Heaven
would bless the authority of a just ruler, but it could be displeased
with a despotic ruler and thus withdraw its mandate, transferring it to a
more suitable and righteous person. This withdrawal of mandate also
afforded the possibility of revolution as a means to remove the errant
ruler; revolt was never legitimate under the European framework of
divine right.
In China, the
right of rebellion against an unjust ruler had been a part of the political philosophy ever since the
Zhou dynasty, whose rulers had used this philosophy to justify their overthrow of the previous
Shang dynasty. Chinese historians interpreted a successful revolt as evidence that the Mandate of Heaven had passed on to the usurper.
In Japan, the Son of Heaven title was less conditional than its
Chinese equivalent. There was no divine mandate that punished the
emperor for failing to rule justly. The right to rule of the Japanese
emperor, descended from the sun goddess
Amaterasu, was absolute.
The Japanese emperors traditionally wielded little secular power;
generally, it was the duty of the sitting emperor to perform rituals and
make public appearances, while true power was held by regents,
high-ranking ministers, a commander-in-chief of the emperor's military
known as the
shōgun, or even retired emperors depending on the time period.
Sultans in Southeast Asia
In the
Malay Annals, the
rajas and
sultans of the Malay States (today
Malaysia,
Brunei and
Philippines) as well as their predecessors, such as the
Indonesian kingdom of
Majapahit,
also claimed divine right to rule. The sultan is mandated by God and
thus is expected to lead his country and people in religious matters,
ceremonies as well as prayers. This divine right is called
Daulat (which means 'state' in Arabic), and although the notion of divine right is somewhat obsolete, it is still found in the phrase
Daulat Tuanku that is used to publicly acclaim the reigning
Yang di-Pertuan Agong and the other sultans of Malaysia. The exclamation is similar to the European "
Long live the King", and often accompanies pictures of the reigning monarch and
his consort on banners during royal occasions. In
Indonesia, especially on the island of
Java, the sultan's divine right is more commonly known as the
way, or 'revelation', but it is not hereditary and can be passed on to distant relatives.
South Asian kings
In
Dravidian culture, before
Brahmanism and especially during the
Sangam period, emperors were known as இறையர் (
Iraiyer), or "those who spill", and kings were called கோ (
Ko) or கோன் (
Kon). During this time, the distinction between kingship and godhood had not yet occurred, as the
caste system had not yet been introduced. Even in Modern
Tamil, the word for temple is 'கோயில்', meaning "king's house". Kings were understood to be the "agents of God", as they protected the world like God did. This may well have been continued post-Brahminism in
Tamilakam, as the famous Thiruvalangadu inscription states:
"Having noticed by the marks (on his body) that Arulmozhi was the very Vishnu" in reference to the Emperor Raja Raja Chola I.
Rights
Historically, many notions of
rights were
authoritarian and
hierarchical,
with different people granted different rights, and some having more
rights than others. For instance, the right of a father to respect from
his son did not indicate a right for the son to receive a return from
that respect; and the divine right of kings, which permitted absolute
power over subjects, did not leave a lot of room for many rights for the
subjects themselves.
Opposition
In the sixteenth century, both Catholic and Protestant political
thinkers began to question the idea of a monarch's "divine right".
The Spanish Catholic historian
Juan de Mariana put forward the argument in his book
De rege et regis institutione
(1598) that since society was formed by a "pact" among all its members,
"there can be no doubt that they are able to call a king to account". Mariana thus challenged divine right theories by stating in certain circumstances,
tyrannicide could be justified.
Cardinal Robert Bellarmine
also "did not believe that the institute of monarchy had any divine
sanction" and shared Mariana's belief that there were times where
Catholics could lawfully remove a monarch.
Among groups of English
Protestant exiles fleeing from
Queen Mary I,
some of the earliest anti-monarchist publications emerged. "Weaned off
uncritical royalism by the actions of Queen Mary ... The political
thinking of men like
Ponet,
Knox,
Goodman and Hales."
In 1553, Mary I, a Roman Catholic, succeeded her Protestant half-brother,
Edward VI,
to the English throne. Mary set about trying to restore Roman
Catholicism by making sure that: Edward's religious laws were abolished
in the Statute of Repeal Act (1553); the Protestant religious laws
passed in the time of
Henry VIII were repealed; and the
Revival of the Heresy Acts were passed in 1554. The
Marian Persecutions began soon afterwards. In January 1555, the first of nearly 300 Protestants were burnt at the stake under "Bloody Mary". When
Thomas Wyatt the Younger instigated what became known as
Wyatt's rebellion,
John Ponet, the highest-ranking ecclesiastic among the exiles, allegedly participated in the uprising. He escaped to
Strasbourg after the Rebellion's defeat and, the following year, he published
A Shorte Treatise of Politike Power, in which he put forward a theory of justified opposition to secular rulers.
"Ponet's treatise comes first in a new wave of anti-monarchical
writings ... It has never been assessed at its true importance, for it
antedates by several years those more brilliantly expressed but less
radical
Huguenot writings which have usually been taken to represent the
Tyrannicide-theories of the
Reformation."
According to U.S. President
John Adams, Ponet's work contained "all the essential principles of liberty, which were afterward dilated on by
Sidney and
Locke", including the idea of a three-branched government.
