Divine right of kings

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.

[2] It is sometimes signified by the phrase "by the Grace of God" or its Latin equivalent, Dei Gratia, which has historically been attached to the titles of certain reigning monarchs.

It has been heard by us that a few amongst them then, assembling together, made certain compacts, saying, 'He who becomes harsh in speech, or violent in temper, he who seduces or abducts other people’s wives or robs the wealth that belongs to others, should be cast off by us.'

[3]The Mahabharata also mentions that in a land without king or royal authority, Vedic rituals are ineffectual and Agni does not convey sacrificial libations to the gods.

Khvarenah (also spelled khwarenah or xwarra(h): Avestan: 𐬓𐬀𐬭𐬆𐬥𐬀𐬵 xᵛarənah; Persian: فرّ, romanized: far) is an Iranian and Zoroastrian concept, which literally means glory, about divine right of the kings.

While the earliest references to kingship among Israel in the Hebrew Bible proclaim that 14.When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, 'I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me'.

Significant debate on the legitimacy of kingship has persisted in Rabbinical Judaism until Maimonides, though many mainstream currents continue to reject the notion.

[5] It is from 1 Samuel 8 that the people of Israel receive mishpat ha-melech, the ius regium, or the law of kingship, and from this passage that Maimonides finally concludes that Judaism supports the institution of monarchy, stating that the Israelites had been given three commandments upon entering the Promised Land - to designate a king for themselves, to wipe out the memory of Amalek, and to build the Temple.

With the rise of firearms, nation-states and the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century, the theory of divine right justified the king's absolute authority in both political and spiritual matters.

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.

However, the dividing line for the authority and power was a subject of frequent contention: notably in England with the murder of Archbishop Thomas Beckett (1170).

[10] Thomas Aquinas condoned extra-legal tyrannicide in the worst of circumstances: 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.On the other hand, Aquinas forbade the overthrow of any morally, Christianly and spiritually legitimate king by his subjects.

[16] 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 the spiritual superiority of the Pope (there is no "Catholic concept of extra-legal tyrannicide", as some falsely suppose, the same being expressly condemned by St Thomas Aquinas in chapter 7 of his De Regno).

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.

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.

The conception of ordination brought with it largely unspoken parallels with the Anglican and Catholic priesthood, but the overriding metaphor in James VI's 'Basilikon Doron' was that of a father's relation to his children.

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.

[citation needed] 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).

[24] The French prelate Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet made a classic statement of the doctrine of divine right in a sermon preached before King Louis XIV:[25] 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.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.

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.

[citation needed]In the sixteenth century, both Catholic and Protestant political thinkers alike challenged the idea of a monarch's "divine right".

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.

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 late 1554.

[32] 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.

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.Ponet's pamphlet was republished on the eve of King Charles I's execution.

[citation needed] 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.

[24] In one case the king's power would be unlimited, according to the famous saying misattributed to Louis XIV: "L' état, c'est moi",[24] 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 doctrine of divine right, indeed, for a while drew nourishment from the blood of the royal "martyr";[24] 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.