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Hebrew Bible scholars tend to dismiss Deuteronomy's "Law of the King" (17:14–20) as a utopian construct that was never realistic and/or historical. Underlying these views, however, are certain assumptions about what is culturally plausible in a world dominated by sacral kingship. Since this is the most common form of government in human history, generalizations about the historicity of Deuteronomic kingship requires an intercultural analysis of theopolitics, divine right of kings, and separation of powers. This article sets Deuteronomic kingship in the larger context of sacral kingship in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. What then emerges is the bridging of a notable false dichotomy in scholarship – Israel's form of sacral kingship is both distinctive as well as realistic in nature. This suggests that skepticism about the historicity of the "Law of the King" is beholden to a Eurocentric frame of reference which is also skeptical of Western-style absolute monarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In ancient Chinese novels, literati notes and official history notes, the narrative of the roomful red light when emperors were born can be traced back to the pregnancy with light of nomadic people, the worship of white light and the worship of the sun god. Therefore, people subconsciously believe that the emperor is actually the embodiment of the sun god in the human world, which becomes the political ethics of the legitimacy of the "divine right of kings". The narrative of the roomful red light in Chinese literature can be traced to the Zoroastrianism culture that worships fire and light by way of the political culture of pregnancy with light of the nomads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the ailing body of King Charles XI of Sweden (1655–97) to explore how the king's physicality was intimately connected not only with the nature of his kingship, its sacredness and legitimacy, but also with his personal faith. It shows that, while Charles's body was exceptional in that it was the body of the king, at the same time it was reacting to illness and sin like any other Lutheran body. It also projected the body's capabilities on a larger scale. In particular, the lethal putrefaction inside his belly came to play an important part in interpreting his kingship. These ideas had an impact that extended from his own stomach pains, via the anxiety of his suffering people, to the ending of absolute rule. By following the analogies that contemporaries drew from the king's autopsy and his physicians' notes, from sermons, official proclamations, diaries, weather reports, poetry, correspondence and prophecies, this article uncovers the powerful resemblances that connected Charles's body with nature, his people, the realm and the divine. In the end it was the gathering of the cosmos into Charles's body that paved the way for direct criticism of absolutism itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The celebrated United States Constitution does not derive its legitimacy from morality. Its legitimacy is rooted in an amoral code structured around the peculiar value of outcome-neutrality. By design, the Constitution does not evaluate whether a lawful choice is morally right or wrong; it evaluates only whether the choice satisfies the procedures the Constitution requires for it to have been made. What matters, then, is not the content of the choice. It is the very act of choosing. These fiercely democratic foundations serve as both the font of the Constitution's popular legitimacy and more ominously the greatest threat to the liberal democratic principles that define the Constitution in its common perception at home and abroad. In this Article, I show that the amorality of the Constitution permeates every part of the country's constitutional amendment apparatus. I draw from text, theory, and history to reveal an important if shocking truth about the Constitution: no principle is inviolable, no right is absolute, and no rule is unamendable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to highlight the context in which the work Defensio Fidei by Francisco Suárez was elaborated. After highlighting some key elements of the debates between supporters of the divine right of kings and defenders of the democratic origin of civil power, we will present the general lines of the argument advanced by Suarez to defend the democratic origin of civil power, and how he interprets this thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two millennia successful pre-modern states in Eurasia adopted and cultivated Big-God religions that emphasize (i) the ruler's legitimacy as divinely ordained and (ii) a morality adapted for large-scale societies that can have positive economic effects. We make sense of that development by building on previous research that has conceptualized pre-modern states as maximizing the ruler's profit. We model the interaction of rulers and subjects who have both material and psychological payoffs, the latter emanating from religious identity. Overall, religion reduces the cost of controlling subjects through the threat of violence, increases production, increases tax revenue, and reduces banditry. A Big-God ruler, who also is a believer, has stronger incentives to invest in expanding the number of believers and the intensity of belief, as well as investing in state capacity. Furthermore, such investments often are complementary, mutually reinforcing one another, thus leading to an evolutionary advantage for rulers that adopted Big-God religions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to sketch a little of the background history of the ideas behind the events that led to the martyrdom of John Ogilvie. In so doing, no pretense is made at reducing politics, religion, personal commitment and loyalty to one single ideological cause, nor, even worse, claim that ideologies drove people and events before them like skittles. The aim is more modest than that of tracing a series of causes and effects. If it fails to enmesh with the historical realities such as traced by eminent historians such as Durkan and Dilworth, 1 nevertheless it might still help in the interpretation of these lives and events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, delivered between 1607 and 1622 on the anniversaries of the Gowrie and Gunpowder Plots, deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. Although he has often been called a Jacobean absolutist, Andrewes is better described as a political Elizabethan. The key to his intellectual originality resides not in his fundamental theoretical positions but rather in his method of exegesis. Andrewes was the first theologian or theorist to have worked out a coherent exposition of the doctrines of divine right and non-resistance which was founded on the formalist analysis of the Bible, for which achievement he deserves a place in the history of political thought. In his emphasis on providentialism, moreover, he reinforced the idea that monarchy was divinely ordained. By analysing these sermon sequences, we can see how he dismantled and interpreted Biblical texts in order to confirm commonplace political propositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies in Law & Economics / Studia Prawno-Ekonomiczne is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This Article explores John Locke's theoryof religious liberty, which deeply influenced the adoptionof the First Amendment and the first state billsof rights. Locke sharply criticized the religious and political orderof Restoration England-a regime in which the king claimed to hold absolute power by divine right and in which individuals were required by law to conform to the established church. In opposition to this regime, Locke developed a powerful theoryof human beings as rational creatures who were entitled to think for themselves, to direct their own actions, and to pursue their own happiness within the boundsof the lawof nature. He then used this view to give a new accountof political and religious life. To promote their happiness in this world, rational individuals would agree to give up someof their natural freedom and to enter into a civil society for the protectionof their natural rights or "civil interests" of life, liberty, and property. By contrast, Locke argued that, when they made the social contract, rational individuals would not surrender anyof their religious freedom, for they could reasonably hope to attain eternal happiness or salvation only if they used their minds to seek the truth about God and the path he desired them to follow. For Locke, the most basic preceptsof religion could be known by the lightof nature and reason, while others were mattersof faith. Locke's conceptionof human beings as rational creatures provided the basis not only for individual rights but also for duties toward others. Reason required one to recognize that other individuals were entitled to the same rights one claimed for oneself. It followed that all membersof society were obligated to respect both the religious freedom and the civil rightsof those who differed with them in mattersof religion. In addition to defending religious freedom, Locke advocated a strict separationof church and state. Because libertyof conscience was an inalienable right, individuals would not grant the state any authority over spiritual matters. Instead, those matters were reserved for the individuals themselves as well as for the religious societies or churches that they voluntarily formed to promote their salvation. In these ways, Locke sought not only to protect the inherent rightsof individuals but also to dissolve the dangerous unity between church and state that characterized the Restoration. At the same time, he sought to transform the natureof those institutions in a profound way: insteadof being rooted in any notionof a hierarchy ordained by God or nature, both church and state should be founded on the consentof free and equal individuals and should respect their nature as rational beings. Understood in this way, religion would be an ally rather than a threat to human liberty. After exploring Locke's theory, this Article sketches someof the ways that it contributed to the eighteenthcentury American viewof religious liberty that was embodied in the First Amendment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

King James I's Basilikon Doron and The Trewe Law of Free Monarchies, originally published in Edinburgh, were reprinted in London in the year of his coronation there (1603). This essay explores the relationship between these two treatises on government and the ruler in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, the first of his 'Jacobean' plays. Maintaining the absolutist principle of divine right, James emphasised that "Monarchie is the trew paterne of Diuinitie". At his coronation, the Bishop of Winchester examined this view in his sermon: "Princes cannot be Gods by nature, being framed of the same metal, and in the same moulde, that others are; It folweth directly, they are gods by Office..." Comparing Nature to the striker of coins in the mint - a traditional image - the Bishop asserted that however god-like the secular power of a prince, by nature he is merely a fallible creature of flesh and blood. Basilikon Doron designates "False coine" an "unpardonable" crime. The processes involved in reproducing a coin appear repeatedly in the imagery of Measure for Measure. "Coining" - Nature's plenitude - is linked to the concept of "temperance" or "moderation", the "measure" of the play's title. James declares this his "cardinal rule" for kingship in Basilikon Doron. In Measure for Measure Shakespeare has constructed its exact opposite, pitting the extreme ascetic zeal of Isabella against that falsely professed by Angelo. Subverting the notion of absolute authority, Shakespeare's final synthesis suggests that the good ruler will understand human frailty and treat it with compassion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the crisis of royal authority of play "King Lear" by William Shakespeare which illustrates ways in which a king's subjects can respond to such a crisis and subjects must decide whether to preserve their loyalty to him in spite of his adversities or jettison. It mentions defeasible are prepared to accept radical revisions in terms of the status and prestige. It also mentions Shakespeare drew on political concepts of divine right.

Copyright of Studies in Law & Economics / Studia Prawno-Ekonomiczne is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studies in Law & Economics / Studia Prawno-Ekonomiczne is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article considers James VI and I's treatise on the divine right of kings,The Trew Law of Free Monarchies(1598), in relation to his earlier treatise on witchcraftDaemonologie(1597). James's articulation of divine right kingship not only served to refute the arguments of his former tutor, George Buchanan (1506–1582), and the Jesuit, Robert Persons (1546–1610), but also served as a bulwark against the perceived threat of the supernatural to his rule. James incorporated the ideal of a stoic subject previously put forward in hisDaemonologieinto theTrew Law, offering a doctrine of non-resistance that both Catholic and presbyterian subjects were expected to follow. The ideal stoic subject would remain firmly in command of their passions, enduring the ‘curses’ of tyranny or of witchcraft without actively seeking relief for their circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For some time now, scholars have mined the homiletic writings of Ælfric of Eynsham in order to gain insight into late Anglo-Saxon notions of royal authority. While Ælfric generally preferred to talk about kingship in moral terms, discussing what constitutes a good or bad king, some passages have been interpreted as reflecting the homilist's own views about royal legitimacy. The utility of these passages as providing honest glimpses into Ælfric's theory of kingship have since been called into question based on the nature of the homilist's sources and our understanding of Anglo-Saxon political practices. On occasion, the relevant passages have also been read against each other as expressing potentially conflicting notions regarding royal authority. While acknowledging the difficulty of consulting passages that were originally applied in moral or theological contexts, this paper reassesses the usefulness of Ælfric's comments on kingship in reconstructing the homilist's views on royal authority and demonstrates that he likely viewed elective kingship, theocratic authority and hereditary birthright as complementary notions consonant with late tenth-century and early eleventh-century political ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]