With the rise of
firearms, the consolidation of centralized
nation-states, and the upheavals of the
Protestant Reformation in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the theory of divine right emerged as a powerful justification for monarchical authority. It asserted that the king’s power was granted directly by God, giving him absolute control over political governance and, in many cases, spiritual affairs, and placing him above accountability to parliaments, nobles, or other earthly institutions. This doctrine helped monarchs legitimize centralized rule during a period of religious conflict, technological change, and challenges to traditional feudal structures.
Henry VIII of England declared himself the
Supreme Head of the Church of England and exerted the power of the throne more than any of his predecessors. As a political theory, it was further developed by
James VI of Scotland (1567–1625) and came to the fore in England under his reign as James I of England (1603–1625).
Louis XIV of France (1643–1715) strongly promoted the theory as well. Historian J. P. Sommerville stresses the theory was polemic: "Absolutists magnified royal power. They did this to protect the state against anarchy and to refute the ideas of resistance theorists", those being in Britain Catholic and Presbyterian theorists. The concept of divine right incorporates, but exaggerates, the ancient Christian concept of "royal God-given rights", which teaches that "the right to rule is anointed by God", although this idea is found in many other cultures, including
Aryan and
Egyptian traditions.
Medieval Era invested with
kingship by
Christ (mosaic of the
Church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio, Palermo) Outside of Christianity, kings were often seen as ruling with the backing of heavenly powers.
Early Middle Ages Although the later Roman Empire had developed the European concept of a divine regent in
Late Antiquity,
Adomnan of Iona provides one of the earliest written examples of a Western medieval concept of kings ruling with divine right. He wrote of the Irish King
Diarmait mac Cerbaill's assassination and claimed that divine punishment fell on his assassin for the act of violating the monarch. Adomnan also recorded a story about Saint
Columba supposedly being visited by an angel carrying a glass book, who told him to ordain
Aedan mac Gabrain as King of
Dal Riata. Columba initially refused, and the angel answered by whipping him and demanding that he perform the ordination because God had commanded it. The same angel visited Columba on three successive nights. Columba finally agreed, and Aedan came to receive ordination. At the ordination, Columba told Aedan that so long as he obeyed God's laws, then none of his enemies would prevail against him, but the moment he broke them, this protection would end, and the same whip with which Columba had been struck would be turned against the king. Adomnan's writings most likely influenced other Irish writers, who in turn influenced continental ideas as well.
Pepin the Short's coronation may have also come from the same influence. The
Byzantine Empire can be seen as the progenitor of this concept (which began with
Constantine I). This in turn inspired the
Carolingian dynasty and the
Holy Roman Emperors, whose lasting impact on Western and Central Europe further inspired all subsequent Western ideas of kingship.
High Middle Ages receiving the
Imperial Crown and
Holy Lance from angels and receiving a crown from Christ (signifying his divine right to kingship), with men resembling the
people he ruled over, bowing down before him. In the
Middle Ages, the idea that God had granted certain earthly powers to the monarch, just as he had given spiritual authority and power to the church,
especially to the Pope, was already a well-known concept long before later writers coined the term "divine right of kings" and employed it as a theory in political science. However, the dividing line for the authority and power was a subject of frequent contention: notably in England with the murder of Archbishop
Thomas Beckett (1170). For example,
Richard I of England declared at his trial during the diet at Speyer in 1193: "
I am born in a rank which recognizes no superior but God, to whom alone I am responsible for my actions", and it was Richard who first used the motto "" ("God and my right") which is still the motto of the
Monarch of the United Kingdom.
Thomas Aquinas condoned extra-legal
tyrannicide in the worst of circumstances: On the other hand, Aquinas forbade the overthrow of any morally, Christianly and spiritually legitimate king by his subjects. The only human power capable of deposing the king was the pope. The reasoning was that if a subject may overthrow his superior for some bad law, who was to be the judge of whether the law was bad? If the subject could so judge his own superior, then all lawful superior authority could lawfully be overthrown by the arbitrary judgement of an inferior, and thus all law was under constant threat. According to
John of Paris, kings had their jurisdictions and bishops (and the pope) had theirs, but kings derived their supreme, non-absolute temporal jurisdiction from popular consent.
Late Middle Ages and Renaissance The Church was the final guarantor that Christian kings would follow the laws and constitutional traditions of their ancestors and the laws of God and of justice. Radical English theologian
John Wycliffe's theory of Dominium meant that injuries inflicted on someone personally by a king should be born by them submissively, a conventional idea, but that injuries by a king against God should be patiently resisted even to death; gravely sinful kings and popes forfeited their (divine) right to obedience and ownership, though the political order should be maintained. More aggressive versions of this were taken up by
Lollards and
Hussites. For
Erasmus of Rotterdam it was the consent of the people which gives and takes away "the purple", not an unchangeable divine mandate.
Catholic limits Catholic jurisprudence holds that the monarch is always subject to
natural and
divine law, which are regarded as superior to the monarch. The possibility of monarchy declining morally, overturning natural law, and degenerating into a tyranny oppressive of the general welfare was answered theologically with the Catholic concept of the spiritual superiority of the Pope (there is no "Catholic concept of extra-legal
tyrannicide", as some falsely suppose, the same being expressly condemned by St Thomas Aquinas in chapter 7 of his
De Regno). Catholic thought justified limited submission to the monarchy by reference to the following: • The Old Testament, in which God chose kings to rule over Israel, beginning with
Saul who was then rejected by God in favour of
David, whose dynasty continued (at least in the
southern kingdom) until the
Babylonian captivity. • The New Testament, in which the first pope,
Peter, commands that all Christians shall honour the Roman Emperor, even though, at that time, he was still a pagan emperor.
Paul agreed with Peter that subjects should be obedient to the powers that be because they are appointed by God, as he wrote in his Epistle to the Romans. Likewise, Jesus Christ proclaims in the Gospel of Matthew that one should "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's"; that is at first, literally, the payment of taxes as binding those who use the imperial
currency. Jesus told
Pontius Pilate that his authority as Roman governor of
Judaea came from heaven according to
John 19:10–11. • The endorsement by the popes and the church of the line of emperors beginning with the Emperors
Constantine and
Theodosius, later the Eastern Roman emperors, and finally the Western Roman emperor,
Charlemagne and his successors, the Catholic
Holy Roman Emperors. == Conceptions in the early modern period ==