Divine right of kings

The divine right of kings is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of a monarchy in post-Reformation Western Christianity culminating in the Age of Absolutism (c. 1610 – c. 1789). It is also known as the divine-right theory of kingship.

The doctrine asserts that a monarch is not accountable to any earthly authority (such as a parliament or the Pope) because their right to rule is derived from divine authority. Thus, the monarch is not subject to the will of the people, of the aristocracy, or of any other estate of the realm. It follows that only divine authority can judge a monarch, and that any attempt to depose, dethrone, resist or restrict their powers runs contrary to God's will and may constitute a sacrilegious act. It does not imply that their power is absolute.

In its full-fledged form, the Divine Right of Kings is associated with Henry VIII of England (and the Acts of Supremacy), James VI and I of Scotland and England, Louis XIV of France, and their successors.

The medieval political system, often summarised by the concept of the Res publica Christiana, was decentralised and had no concept of absolute monarchical power, as later held by rulers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

In that older system, the legitimacy of a regime was ultimately derivative of Eternal Law (Lex Aeterna), i.e. the divine blueprint for the order of the world, in which humans, by virtue of being rational creatures, participate, giving them knowledge of Natural Law (Lex Naturalis). The Natural Law is universal, but is determined locally by custom, which generates Human Law (Lex Humana). This hierarchical order from eternal to natural to human law is most famously articulated by Thomas Aquinas, and meant that a medieval regime, such as a monarchy, was legitimate so long as it ruled in accordance with that order, obligating the ruler to govern in accordance with Natural Law and to protect local customs.

The Church leadership held ultimate authority in interpreting whether a king complied with Natural Law and thus maintained his Divine Mandation, which was the signature feature of the pan-European political order of the Res publica Christiana. This is why Excommunication was dreaded by medieval kings, as it formally invalidated the legitimacy of their rule and gave the Church leadeship Papal deposing power.

The power of a king was, consequently, far from absolute, and was furthermore shared with other political institutions of medieval society, such as parliaments (e.g. the Cortes Generales in Iberia) and a powerful nobility. This division was encouraged by the Church leadership and political theory of the time, with Thomas Aquinas promoting constitutional monarchy checked by a strong parliament as the preferred form of government.

All this was dramatically changed first by the Reformation, then by the Thirty Years' War, which demoted the Church leadership from ultimate political authority and developed the idea of kings as rulers under the authority of God alone, whence the Divine Right of Kings and the onset of Absolutism.