The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe 1589-1715 (review)

The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe 1589-1715. By Paul Kléber Monod (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999) 417 pp. $35.00

This book is a wide-ranging account of European kingship in the early modern period. It discusses both theory and practice, and surveys a great many countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Austria, Poland, England, France, and Spain. Monod draws on source material and modern studies in an impressive array of languages. His book contains much fascinating detail about religion and politics in early modern times. He uses evidence derived from art, music, and literature, as well as from more conventional sources, to provide a broad, cultural history of monarchy. Thirty-five illustrations enliven the text.

Monod brings to his work insights drawn from many modern social theorists and intellectuals, including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan. At times, his prose style is reminiscent of poststructuralist writers. Those untutored in the appropriate discourses may find it opaque. It is easier to summarize his thesis in his own words than to say precisely what it means. Monod argues that in the late-sixteenth century, most European Christians believed that "monarchy was not just a system of worldly dominance; it was a reflection of God, and an ideal mirror of human identity" (3). Indeed, it was "a link between the sacred and the self," and "the mediation of the royal person had become essential to Christian conceptions of political authority." However, by 1715, there "had been a marked decline in the effectiveness of political explanations that rested on the assumption of sacredness or divine grace." Such explanations had given way not to "secularism" but to "a religiously based obedience to an abstract, unitary human authority, combined with a deepened sense of individual moral responsibility--in short, sovereignty plus self-discipline" (3). Thus were laid "the foundations of what will be called the rational state, whose visible sign was the king." It constituted "a momentous change," and we still live in its shadow (3). The "emergence of state ideologies," Monod proceeds, was connected to "the redefinition of a moral persona that will be called the self" (4). Christian movements "sought to reform or purify the self by espousing a simplified, internalized piety." From this reformed self emerged "the idea of a new kind of political subject, one who had enough self-regulated discipline to become a tacit participant in the state" (4).

It is unclear whether the evidence that Monod presents supports his thesis, since the thesis is not precisely formulated. For example, we could easily read him as saying that before 1600, people believed that God, in some mysterious way, infused kings with his grace, thereby empowering them to rule. But in 1415, the Council of Constance condemned the idea that dominion is founded in grace, and virtually all Protestants and Catholics accepted its judgment.

Furthermore, we might easily interpret Monod as claiming that only in the century after 1600 did people begin to think that they owed loyalty to an abstract political entity, or state, which the king represented. But a central idea in medieval political thinking was that the commonwealth (respublica, or perfect community) is the natural repository of political power, which the ruler exercises on its behalf. Monod appears to argue that the period saw a shift from a sacral or quasimagical approach to political life to one that viewed politics as natural, and rational. But Thomas Aquinas and many others in the Middle Ages held that politics was a matter of the law of nature or reason, and not of the law of grace.

Johann P. Sommerville
University of Wisconsin, Madison

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