Christmas

 A merry Christmas to everyone! 

These splendid angels are from the Priory Church, Great Malvern, Worcestershire

Christmas Parties

No, this is a gathering, not a party, and all Covid regulations were followed, and in any case it never took place. 

The Divine Right of Kings

It is often said that the "Divine Right of Kings" is a medaeval doctrine, but I do not believe that this was in fact the case. In the mediaeval world there were different and conflicting traditions at work.

In the Byzantine Empire the Emperor had quasi-divine status, deriving from ancient Near Eastern traditions. He was surrounded by a court of bureaucrats, bishops and eunuchs, with very elaborate ritual, and kept the Greek church, headed by the Patriach at Constantinople, under tight control. When the early crusaders reached Constantinople at the end of the 11th century, they looked on all this with amazement. But there was never a long-lasting dynasty of Emperors, and many were forcibly deposed or even killed. In the Chinese Empire, this was called "the mandate of heaven being withdrawn".

In the Germanic and Viking traditions, a King was elected by the chiefs of the clans, and his main job was to lead in battle. If a King died, leaving an adult son to succeed him, there was seldom a problem; but what if he was childless, or left only a daughter, or a young boy? Or what if the new King proved to be grossly incompetent? Then the chiefs reserved the right to depose him and look elsewhere. In English history we can consider the deposition and murder of Edward II and Richard II, and the Wars of the Roses, which stemmed from the pious but otherwise useless Henry VI. 

   All monarchs in Western Europe were nominally elective, and in Poland and the Holy Roman Empire there were actual elections, right through till the 18^th century. Also, in the feudal system, the great lords were always deeply suspicious and resentful of any attempt by the King’s government to impinge on their local power. 

One added ingredient was that the Pope claimed sovereignty over earthly monarchs. A powerful Pope, like Gregory VII or Innocent III could, and did, excommunicate a hostile King or Emperor and call upon his subjects to rebel and depose him (though this wasn’t always successful!). The Popes claimed that the Holy Roman Emperor only held the title after he had been crowned in Rome.

The notion that monarchic authority descended by strict hereditary was not necessarily a mediaeval idea. Indeed,one school of thought was that authority really only began at the coronation of the new King. Interestingly, the vital part of the coronation,both in England and France, was not the crowning but the anointing with the holy oil. In the coronation of Elizabeth II, this part of the ritual was carefully screened from the television cameras.

The full notion of the “Divine Right of Kings” (especially when it is portrayed as hereditary) really only emerges in later times, in the 16^th & 17^th centuries, when the feudal system had effectively ended, monarchs had brought the Church under proper control and there a much stronger financial & bureaucratic base available to central government. In England it began with the Tudors, whose claim to the throne, in terms of hereditary descent, was shaky to say the least.