[1] The book has had significant influence on the field of medieval studies, even as its methods and style of argumentation are viewed with wariness by contemporary scholars.

[3] Stephen Greenblatt has said that the book is a "remarkably vital, generous, and generative work,"[2] while the historian Morimichi Watanabe called it a "monumental classic.

[6] The book is structured around an exploration of the numerous devices and technologies medieval theologians and lawyers developed to "defeat death" and "extend bodily existence far beyond carnal boundaries".

Among Edmund Plowden's Reports, for instance, was a dispute over whether or not King Edward VI held the duchy of Lancaster as private property, or whether it belonged to the crown.

[9]Whereas the medievalist F. W. Maitland saw "metaphysical nonsense" in remarks such as this, Kantorowicz perceived "a mystical fiction with theological roots, unconsciously transferred by Tudor jurists to the myth of the State".

These are a rough taxonomy of the multiple manifestations of mystical and corporeal kingship, which Kantorowicz tracks throughout history in a variety of cultures.