Ryan V.J.G. Davis Explore the origins and evolution of the concept of sacred monarchy. Does it have any relevance at all in Britain today? �With the increasing secularization of all areas of life, sacred kingship will of necessity disappear everywhere. Where monarchies are still retained, the sacred features will most likely diminish or vanish altogether. Only in the great regal ceremonies--especially coronations--are traces of sacred kingship still retained in the 20th century.� The system of monarchy has been present from the earliest days of civilisation in some form or other. It is still present today. The idea of sacred monarchy was an early one and has been adopted by many of history�s monarchs. It was a notion that had a wide range of interpretation, from the monarch being taken literally as a deity, to the monarchy just being an institution blessed by God. The concept developed and diverged at many points throughout history. This was due to various peoples and different motives and agendas. It also helps illustrate the dichotomy of the relationship between Church and state, b from the priest kings of earliest civilisation through the Papal rule of Christendom to the absolutist monarchy of Louis XIV. Differences in culture and technological levels are part of the reason for the development of this concept along with many other features including political events and the need for public order. It is only in comparatively recent times that the monarchy in Britain has lost this sense of its existence. This essay shall study various examples of sacred monarchy throughout history, from the Egyptian Pharaohs through the Stuarts and up until the present day in Britain. The relevance of the concept as compared to the current situation in Britain shall also be studied. The ramifications are very different to our modern pluralistic society to previous era when states tended to the one religion. In this essay, due to a lack of space, it is important to comment on some case studies in some detail so as that a clear picture can be achieved. This will mean neglecting some of the other aspects of sacred monarchy. This is unfortunate, but necessary. Ancient Egypt was one of the first major civilisations to have a large impact on world history. They achieved much and their legacy remains today in such impressive structures as the Pyramids at Giza. The normal mode of rule for this civilisation was the Pharaohs, a monarchy. They had the absolute power in the civilisation over all of their subjects. The Pharaohs were regarded as gods and as such were venerated by the populace of the Egyptian Empire. In these early days of civilisation, the mystical was very powerful in people�s minds and so anybody in power was seen to have mystical powers. It was perhaps natural for the Pharaohs to claim deity status. There was a practical aspect to the Pharaoh being seen as a god, that of causing the ordinary populace to respect his status, that served the function of protecting their positions in power. For an ordinary person to challenge a god would have been very unlikely, so the Pharaoh was able to cause a sense of security by claiming deity status. Engnell (p.4) states that the king in Egypt is divine from birth, perhaps even before being born. The god (the current king) begets him. According to Engnell, there is another train of thought as to when the future king of Egypt achieves deification. This state that he is raised to the divine sphere in his crown-prince enthronization. In the cult, the king functions as the high priest. Engnell states that it is important to understand the character of the cult in the light of the king�s identity with the god. �The king is identical with Re, the sun god. This identity going back, no doubt, to the earliest times, is expressed in the king�s so-called Horus name, and through it the king is characterised in his �regulative function�.� By this, Engnell means that what is said of the god is also said of the king. Some thought implies that the king is identical with Horus, Osiris� son. This would also mean being identical with Osiris as Horus is the living king and Osiris the dead one � they are, in reality, two aspects of the same thing. Engnell sees this as the cause of the domination of the Osiris cult in Egypt during this period. Osiris had a role in fertility and agriculture. This was of central importance to the people of Egypt, so it was perhaps natural that his subjects should relate the king to this god. The king wanted to be seen as the benefactor and provider to the people. The festivals of cults have always been important in history, and this cult was no different. The most important and the oldest was the king�s jubilee festival. The king as a god had tasks in this ideology. These included being lord of all order and truth, a victorious warrior who subdues all enemies. He is also the perfect ruler, administrator of justice. If the king is gone, Chaos prevails. The Egyptians weren�t the only civilisation of some importance to this theme in the Ancient Near East. The Sumero-Accadian king ideology held that the king was of divine origin. The monarchy is pre-existent and from eternity. Sumero-Accadian kings had no father or mother, but calls himself �the creation of the fingers of the god�. There are similarities between the Sumero-Accadian system and that of the Egyptians. Again, the divinity is confirmed at the enthronization of the crown prince and the coronation of the king. The king in this civilisation also takes the role of high priest, officiating at such ceremonies as the New Year festival. The identity of the king with the god has two aspects that can be identified: with the high god and with the fertility god. This is really an artificial distinction as with the Egyptians. The gods in Sumero-Accadian mythology are often just manifestations of each other. They are separate only in the roles that they perform. The high god Marduk and the vegetation god Tammuz are so closely related in many respects that they are the same god, despite their different functions. They both exhibit the features of each other. The king was identified with both of these deities, but the one that the king is chiefly identified with is Tammuz, the vegetation god. An important link in this is the tree of life. It was of ritual importance for all peoples in the eastern Mediterranean region. The way that this identity functioned may be expressed thus: the king is the tree is the god. This also identifies the king with his role as the holder and giver of life. This is a clear role of a deity that makes the identification of the king with the god even clearer. The king wasn�t just the leader of the cult in performing the priestly function he was the cult. He was the object of worship. The situation in the ancient Near East as described above is especially important for Christianity and Christian monarchies. This region was the cradle of the Semitic religions from which Christianity emerged. The influence of the kingship cult in these situations over later models of monarchy is very notable. These are perhaps the first reasonable identifications of a living man as a god in established civilisations of size. This is why it is important to consider these examples in some detail when describing the origins of the sacred monarchy. The majesty of these kings as can be seen in such archaeology as that of the Egyptian Pharaohs was such that it is easy to see how poor uneducated people at this period of history would have comprehended the �divinity� of their leaders. This majesty of rulers has, of course, continued throughout history. This is due to various reasons, partly due to wealth but also to illustrate the superiority of their status and person. This can be seen both in the �secular� world and in the spiritual sphere. Examples of the secular include the royal processions of Henry VIII and the coronation ceremony of Elizabeth II. In the spiritual sphere, the splendour of the Vatican State from Christendom to today is evidence of how important it is for leaders to actively illustrate the significance of their role. Perhaps the most significant and long-lived civilisation in pre-modern history was the Roman civilisation. It dominated the entire Mediterranean basin and at one stage was the only Empire of significance in the local world (the Parthian Empire rising and falling in significance, but never achieving a status greater than that of the Romans). It formed the basis for European history and in the Roman Catholic Church; its influence still persists to this day. One of the most fundamental of the Roman�s changes to the way people lived their lives was in the divorcing of cultic practice from the nationality of the person. Previously, your religion was part of your �nationality� (an inadequate use of words, but adequate for purposes here). The Romans enabled people to choose which religion they followed. This was related to the Roman practice of adopting the gods of conquered peoples as a way of assimilating them into their culture. It was also the civilisation in which Christianity was formed and also the first major civilisation to adopt Christianity as its religion of choice. Christianity was able to develop precisely due to the Roman development of individual choice of cultic practice. Unusually for civilisations of antiquity, the leaders of the Roman republic did not enjoy the status of divinity. Even in the early Empire, the Emperor was not seen as a deity in his life. This was tempered by the imperial cult, where the Emperor had to be honoured by the majority of the populace. This caused problems for the early Christians as illustrated in the famous correspondence between Pliny the Younger and the Emperor Trajan. Emperors were deified after their death if they were regarded as �good� emperors as in the case of Augustus. Civil unrest in the third century BCE caused the emperors to adopt a new attitude to their status. In order to protect their position, they started to act as gods and project their image as such. The image of a god-like Diocletian riding into Nicomedia on a great, ornate chariot, painted white, immobile with a slight dip of the head as he passed under the great arch as if he was too tall to fit under. Diocletian was the innovator of the Roman emperors being seen as gods as described by the Encyclopaedia Britannica: �After 287, he called himself Jovius (Jove) and Maximian was named Herculius (Hercules), signifying that they had been chosen by the gods and predestined as participants in the divine nature. Thus, they were charged with distributing the benefits of Providence, Diocletian through divine wisdom, and Maximian through heroic energy. Later designated as dominus et deus on coins and inscriptions, Diocletian surrounded himself with pomp and ceremony and regularly manifested his autocratic will. Under Diocletian, the empire took on the aspects of a theocracy.� This was a new system of Empire in the Roman civilization and was a necessary function for the unsettled empire to survive. Later emperors continued in this way. From the earliest Empire, the emperors had taken the role of Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of the State religion. This had been initiated by Julius Caesar and continued by Augustus, his adopted son and first emperor of Rome. This ensured that the monarchy had to perform a priestly function in the running of the state. This is a striking similarity with that of the Egyptians and the Sumero-Accadians described above. The fact that the emperors were described as deities after their death until the time of Diocletian shows that the Roman Empire had a form of sacred monarchy. Diocletian�s example drives the point home more clearly. Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome also saw himself as a god, though this ended when he became Christian. The period of emperors as gods in their lifetime didn�t last long, but as already mentioned the sacred monarchy goes back to the start of the period of Empire in Roman life. The conversion of Constantine marked a seismic shift in the structure of religious beliefs in the Roman Empire. Though initially the pagan religions weren�t outlawed, they were eventually, and Christianity became the official and only allowed religion in the Roman Empire. This also helped usher in a new powerful force in the Roman Empire � the Church. This is first illustrated when Ambrose of Milan dictates to the emperor Theodosius for punishing a riot in Thessalonica by the massacre of its citizens. The fact that he was able to order the emperor to perform public penance was one of the first signs of the emergence of Christendom, where the Church was the most powerful institution, more powerful than the state. This was a new form of sacred monarchy, that of the papal monarchy. The papal monarchy which dominated Europe through the middle ages started in the Roman Empire, but flourished with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It established itself as the unifying force between the Christian Barbarian rulers of the former Roman lands and exerted significant control and influence over the new kingdoms that were established. Though the Pope in Rome wasn�t seen as a god, he was seen as God�s chief representative on Earth. As such, he was closer to God than the normal people. This is as close to saying that the Pope was God as was possible under the structure of Christianity. The Pope had considerable power over all the diverse monarchs of Europe and exercised this when he felt it necessary. An example of this is in the Crusades, where he could force the monarchs of countries like England and France to unite and spend large amounts of wealth in campaigns in a far away land for purportedly purely religious concerns. The Pope was even more of a monarchy in that he had control of the Vatican State, which held significant tracts of land in Italy. He ruled these lands directly as a monarch. The chief innovator of the reforms that enabled the Popes control over the states in this period was Gregory VII. The nadir of the papal monarchy was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Innocent III, Alexander III and Innocent IV had many clashes with the German emperors over their activities and emerged victorious. The chief method of offence employed by the Popes was excommunication from the church. This was very successful and to be excommunicated was a great dishonour to a monarch and was thus avoided with best efforts by them. The influence of the Roman Catholic Church declined over European politics until the time of Luther, which caused the powers of the Catholic Church over the whole of Europe to diminish at a rapid pace. Peter Lake describes the Protestant view thus: �For Protestants popery had allowed merely human authorities, traditions and practices to take over the Church. The most obvious of these was the pope�s usurpation of Christ�s role as head of the Church.� The Tudors were highly significant in the British development of the sacred monarchy. This dynasty was one of the most influential on British history. They were very much ones for public imagery and display. Here we see the archetypal concept of sacred monarchy in the Middle Ages. Vestiges of it still remain today. One example of public display of the monarchs in an almost reverential manner is the death of Henry VII. Guy describes it thus: �--He died on 21 April 1509 at Richmond Palace, where his body remained for over 2 weeks while masses and dirges were performed.� This public display is very reminiscent of viewing the king as being a supernatural being. Paying such extended and public religious homage to a departed monarch is perhaps part of recognition of his leadership and dynasty, but elements of religious reverence are clear. The notion of regal immortality � the cry �The king is dead, long live the king!� � Is perhaps reminiscent of the immortality of a god. This is certainly a feature of the Tudor monarchy. From the earliest times the monarchy had been a sacred institution. The English version of this was no different. The king was seen as a holy man and could perform miracles. John Guy describes the two chief miracles that the Tudors were reputed as performing: �Cured scrofula by the laying on of hands � touch rings made of gold or silver with a particular power against epilepsy and other muscular spasms. The king was possessed of an aura or �mana�� These miracles that the Tudor monarchs performed are evidence of a magical power that hearkens back to the Ancient civilisations of Egypt and the rest of the Near East. In the Tudor period, the monarchs were often involved in disputes with the Papacy. This is a characteristic of this period in English history. Henry VIII famously split from the Catholic Church and founded the Church of England under Thomas Cranmer. The �supernatural powers� of the monarchs were a crucial weapon in these battles. Revolutionary elements sought legitimacy by association with the divine and this was a sure method of achieving that was by performing miracles by the grace of God. Henry VII was a dubious usurper and one of the thing he did to legitimise his position on the throne was to elaborate the ceremony for touching for the king�s evil and that of touching the cramp rings. Elizabeth I dispensed with the touching of cramp rings, but this was reinstated by the Stuart James II. The stature of the royal administration had much to do with this. The bureaucracy was too small and centralized to effectively administer the workings of the state. These miracles were part of a Tudor campaign to ensure obedience. If the monarchy has invested by God, then it must be obeyed according to the logic. It was a successful idea that ensured some level of civil stability in this period. The sacred monarchy also extended to the family of the monarch. This is reminiscent of the Roman emperors whose families often had large roles to play in the administration of the empire. They were also regarded as having semi-divine status. The Church of England was set up by Henry VIII and he exerted much say over the direction of this institution. John Guy describes his role in this: �As to ecclesiastical affairs, the royal supremacy was essentially caesaro-papist. Henry VIII, meanwhile, affirmed his right to define its articles of faith. He even (briefly) claimed the �cure of souls� until rebuffed by an outraged episcopate.� This is a reversal of the Pope�s control over the state. The king was now the head of the church, not the Pope. He had control over ecclesiastical matters and so was the religious leader, another example of sacred monarchy and the divine role of the monarch. The Royal supremacy under the boy king Edward VI became a Trojan hose for Protestantism. He was now compared to the Biblical king Josiah whereas Henry VIII had been compared to King Solomon. The period of the Restoration of the monarchy after Oliver Cromwell�s Commonwealth saw further developments in the sacred monarchy in what was now the kingdom of England and Scotland combined. The birth of James II (to be a Catholic) was viewed by the head of an Irish religious order in France (a Catholic) made a very interesting statement about the possibly divine nature of the future king: ��This dear darling of Heaven� was indeed �the Messiah of Great Britain� whose cradle is the tomb of heresy and schism.� This was polemic with an agenda, but the language used calls up images of divine status and sacred monarchy. This was not uncommon in this period. The monarchy definitely enjoyed at least a semi-divine status. The language of supremacy used by Sir Robert Filmer is fascinating: �The absolute earthly dominance which God had bestowed on Adam in the Garden of Eden descended to all subsequent monarchs.� This gives the monarchy a Biblical meaning and relates the monarchs to the status of Adam before the Fall, a man without sin and who walked with God, almost as an equal. The modern era has seen the majority of the effects of the concept of sacred monarchy stripped away. The Queen does not perform miracles. The Queen now has almost no power to influence politics. The Queen isn�t revered as a better human being by the majority of the populace anymore. The Queen is still head of the Church of England. The Queen and the Royal Family do still have massive celebrations and feasts, such as at the coronations and weddings. The coronation in fact is perhaps where the strongest example of the sacred monarchy still remains today. The coronation is very much filled with the language of previous dynasties� coronations and relates the monarch to God-like status. The relevance of the sacred monarchy today has diminished to such a point that it is almost laughable to talk about the current monarch as having semi-divine status. The intense media coverage of all the ins and outs of the private lives of the Royal Family has seen to that. The fact that the Queen is the head of the Church of England is little more than an anomaly and is of little real effect to the running of that Church. In conclusion, the sacred monarchy started with the earliest kings. They were the greatest of their tribes and as such earned respect of their peers. The more civilisations grew in size and in prosperity, the more developed the notion of sacred monarchy became in these civilisations. Sacred monarchy has taken on many forms throughout history, including the monarch as the chief god, to being merely a resident in an institution with an investiture by God to today�s almost entirely redundant idea of sacred monarchy. It lacks in relevance in today�s popular society, but the notion is one worth study in history. Jesus after all was viewed as the King of the Kingdom of Heaven.
