Abstract
The Bible had been a fundamental source of legitimacy for the French monarchy, with biblical imagery wielded as a powerful propaganda weapon in the ideological warfare which the kings of France often had to wage. All Christian monarchies tried to build around themselves a sacral aura, but the French kings had soon set themselves apart: they were the “most Christian”, anointed with holy oil brought from heaven, endowed with the power of healing, and the eldest sons of the Church. Biblical text was called upon to support this image of the monarchy, as the kings of France were depicted as following in the footsteps of the virtuous kings of the Old Testament and possessing the necessary biblical virtues. However, the Bible could prove a double-edged sword which could be turned against the monarchy, as the ideological battles unleashed by the Reformation were to prove. In search for a justification for their resistance against the French Crown, in particular after 1572, the Huguenots polemicists looked to the Bible in order to find examples of limited monarchies and overthrown tyrants. In putting forward the template of a proto-constitutional monarchy, one of the notions advanced by the Huguenots was the Biblical covenant between God, kings and the people, which imposed limits and obligations on the kings. This paper aims to examine the occurrence of this image in Vindiciae, contra tyrannos (1579), one of the most important Huguenot political works advocating resistance against tyrannical kings, and the role it played in the construction of the Huguenot theory of resistance.
Highlights
The sixteenth century is one of the most of the most important periods in the development of European political thought
This paper aims to examine the occurrence of this image in Vindiciae, contra tyrannos (1579), one of the most important Huguenot political works advocating resistance against tyrannical kings, and the role it played in the construction of the Huguenot theory of resistance
This paper aims to provide such a study, of the use of Biblical arguments in favor of a concept of contractual monarchy and popular sovereignty, in the most important political treatise of the French Wars of Religion, namely, Vindiciae, contra tyrannos: or, concerning the legitimate power of a prince over the people, and of the people over a prince (1579)
Summary
The sixteenth century is one of the most of the most important periods in the development of European political thought. Under the impact of the Reformation, the medieval traditions of political order had been doubly challenged: in the context of confrontations with hostile central authorities, Protestant and Catholic political writers advanced for the first time theories of power which could be rightfully labeled as proto-constitutional, replacing the sovereignty of the monarch with the sovereignty of the people, while, on the other side of the spectrum, royalist writers abandoned the paternalistic model of medieval kingship for the absolutist version of a prince truly legibus solutus, the only one, in their opinion, capable of restraining the religious passions which were turned into bloody civil wars In this war of ideas and arguments, the Bible played a key role as source and reference point, because, expressing God’s will, it was thought to provide at the same time an ideal and unquestionable political model. The paper argues that Vindiciae used an argumentation based first and foremost on the Bible to place the ultimate political sovereignty in the people and turn the king into merely the first magistrate of his kingdom
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