Images Of Kingship Research Articles

Images of Kingship: Charles I, Accession Sermons, and the Theory of Divine Right

AbstractAccession day was an important feast in the emerging political calendar of early modern Britain. Some of the sermons were published and contributed to shaping the royal image. Since a sermon was one of the few traditionally acceptable ways to criticize a monarch and to steer him or her onto the right path, a preacher could stress the ideal traits of the royal image while condemning the negative ones. I analyse this kind of sermon in the period of Charles I's Personal Rule and the Civil Wars. I examine the development of the royal image from the godlike intercessor between God and the people, to the ‘toiler’ doing his best to achieve peace, and the martyr (even before his captivity and execution), and to the democratized version of the previous ‘majestic’ image applied to ‘the magistrates’ in Westminster. This material helps us understand better the theological and political ideal of a ruler, in the years of one of the major crises of the British political system.

The death of Charles IX Valois: an assassin's or a martyr's blood?: The image of kingship during the French Wars of Religion

The purpose of this article is to analyse works connected to the death of Charles IX Valois. In particular, we will focus on the image of the blood of the dead king. Analysis of Charles’ autopsy, as well as the account of the court intrigue characterizing the last months of his life, provides the context in which this flow of propaganda took place. Catholic sources, especially funeral sermons by court preacher Arnaud Sorbin, cast light on the image of the blood of Charles IX as the blood of a ‘saint’ and a ‘martyr’ king. We will also show how Sorbin’s sermons related to Henri III’s succession to the throne given the tense situation at court. Finally, analysis of Reformed sources, both contemporary to Charles’ death and later, outline how Calvinists tried to dishonour the ‘tyrant’ through references to his blood and by characterizing his death as divine justice.

Chivalry in Medieval England (review)

Reviewed by: Chivalry in Medieval England Sam Zeno Conedera SJ Nigel Saul, Chivalry in Medieval England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2011) 416 pp., ill. The stated aim of Chivalry in Medieval England is “to present an account of English aristocratic society in the Middle Ages which puts chivalry centre-stage” (5). Nigel Saul, whose extensive work on the subject prepared the way for this synthetic work, has admirably achieved his aim. Although Chivalry will make an invaluable reference work, it is more of a tour of medieval military, political, social, and cultural developments in England and northern France from the vantage point of the elusive phenomenon we call “chivalry.” Saul’s [End Page 274] blend of chronological and thematic approaches and plurality of perspectives are keys to his accomplishment. The first six chapters are primarily chronological with thematic overtones, moving from the origins of English chivalry at the time of the Norman Conquest to the end of the fourteenth century. The next ten chapters are primarily thematic in orientation, dealing with topics like crusading, literature, and gender, but they proceed chronologically in their internal organization. The final two chapters deal with late chivalry under the Yorkists and its ultimate transformation and decline in the Tudor age. Acknowledging that chivalry is “tantalizingly hard to define precisely” and means different things to different people, Saul draws on a wide range of evidence to view the phenomenon from as many angles as possible (3). His descriptions and analysis of fortifications, churches, and funerary monuments show that his research includes a great deal of legwork outside of archives and libraries. Chivalry is decisively oriented towards solving historical problems. Saul does not rest with demonstrating that a particular development took place, but seeks to explain why it did, in clear and accessible language. Two examples should suffice to illustrate the point. At the same time that war was endemic throughout England and Normandy in the late eleventh and early twelfth century, the conduct of war was being softened by a new courtesy. Saul says that the paradox itself offers the explanation: in a situation of constant warfare, it was in everyone’s interest to agree to a set of conventions that limited the impact of hostilities on participants and their followers (11). In explaining the twelfth-century English aristocracy’s fascination with Arthurian literature and history, the author refers to numerous factors. Within a few generations of the Norman Conquest, the aristocracy began to see itself as more English than French, but it still knew rather little about the history of the conquered country (49). The English, alone among the peoples of the British Isles, had no real foundation myth of their own (43). Thus the Arthur legend was one of the key elements in the creation of English mythology and history, which was portrayed in the nascent chivalric terms of the twelfth century, rather than as the social reality of the past (51). Saul’s treatment of such problems is consistently articulate and well supported. Saul is closely attentive to the changing fortunes of chivalry over the course of time, avoiding the pitfall of sweeping generalizations or synchronic myopia. He notes, for example, the early date for the first decline of English chivalry: the loss of Normandy under John Lackland (61). By the end of the thirteenth century, the number of knights in the country dropped from almost 4,000 to about 1,250 (63). Financial pressures, aspiration to status, the incorporation of knights into the royal justice system, and the absence of large-scale warfare all contributed to the infrequency of dubbing. At the same time, knights of the thirteenth century moved more into the countryside and established the foundations for the gentry (68). Aside from broad social and political factors, the initiatives of particular monarchs played an important role in defining and redefining chivalry. Richard the Lionheart was the first English monarch to personally transform chivalry by incorporating it into the image of kingship. He made war a virtue rather than a necessity and actively encouraged tournaments throughout the realm (34–36). Edward I responded to the aforementioned thirteenth-century decline of knighthood by once again raising the military profile of...

An Obedient Servant? The Reign of King Saul (1 Samuel 13—15) Reassessed

This article reconsiders 1 Samuel 13—15 and the negative characterization of Saul that has been perpetuated by subsequent interpreters. It considers the story of Saul’s reign in light of the account of the call for a king in 1 Samuel 8, where a narrative contrast is established between obedience to the people and obedience to God and where the subordination of the people to their king is prophesied. This article shows that a key element of 1 Samuel 13—15 is Saul’s preference for the will of the people and concludes that the fact that this contradicts the prophesied image of kingship in 1 Samuel 8 enables a more positive interpretation of Saul and his reign. Rather than a king who makes servants of his people, we encounter a king anxious to serve them.

<i>Rex institutor scholarum</i>: la dimensión sapiencial de la realeza en la cronística de León-Castilla y los orígenes de la Universidad de Palencia

Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada and Lucas de Tuy discourse on kingship is the most relevant Latin source available for scholars who deal with political ideology in the Spanish Thirteenth Century. The two chroniclers’ narrative of Alfonso VIII’s role in the foundation of the universities of Palencia and Salamnca should be analyzed taking into account the topos of Sapiential Kingship. This political theology was influential in any way, even if it were just a rethorical piece in praise of the Castilian King. These sapiential images of Kingship, being part of the proto-national Neo-gothic myth, were an enrichment of the Castilian political discourse as a new source of legitimation of power. The same narrative was being deployed by chroniclers in Thirteenth Century France, like the Chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis. The Rex sapiens political archetype, linked to Roman and Imperial themes as important as the renovatio gothorum or the translatio studii , is a key factor not only for a better understanding of Thirteenth Century Spanish Political Thought but also for a better contextualization of the data provided by the two chroniclers on the foundation of the first Spanish Universities.

Samantha J. Rayner, Images of Kingship in Chaucer and His Ricardian Contemporaries. (Chaucer Studies, 39.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2008. Pp. ix, 177. $90.

Samantha J. Rayner, <i>Images of Kingship in Chaucer and His Ricardian Contemporaries</i>. (Chaucer Studies, 39.) Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, 2008. Pp. ix, 177. $90.

Images of Kingship in Chaucer and His Ricardian Contemporaries (review)

Reviewed by: Images of Kingship in Chaucer and His Ricardian Contemporaries Don Hoffman Samantha J. Rayner, Images of Kingship in Chaucer and His Ricardian Contemporaries. Chaucer Studies XXXIX. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008. Pp. 177. ISBN: 978–1–84384–174–6. $90.00. In 1971, J. A. Burrow’s Ricardian Poetry proposed thematic and stylistic links between the four seemingly disparate major poets (Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the Gawain-poet) writing during the reign of the troubled king Richard II. While Burrow’s study has been widely influential, few have directly taken up the challenge of identifying one of the Ricardian ‘themes’ and providing a detailed analysis of its treatment in the four poets. It is welcome, then, that Samantha Rayner has taken [End Page 148] Burrow seriously and, choosing the theme of kingship, provides a serious study of images of kingship in the four great poets of the Ricardian Age. Rayner is to be congratulated on the seriousness with which she approaches her subject, the steadiness of purpose that carries her through her discussions of virtually every mention of kings and kingship in the relevant corpus, and for her diligence in familiarizing herself with the secondary literature. Her research provides a useful summary of the theme of kingship in Ricardian poetry. Her analysis of the material, however, rarely advances very far beyond summary and fairly bland restatements of the sentiments of the poets. The reader might have hoped the study would have provided a deeper grounding of the idea of kingship in the political practice and theory of the age as well as, perhaps, some discussion of the poignant longing for a just society so clear in the poetry, thwarted by the age’s inability to provide practical instruction for the king. It is clear enough what the Ideal Prince should be, but painfully little direction on how a real prince can actually function within the limits of the real world. For that problem to be addressed, the Western world had to wait a few centuries for Machiavelli and his eternally scandalous precepts. To borrow the categories of John Peter, the Ricardian poets were unable to negotiate the distance between the separate worlds of Complaint and Satire, between the Ideal and the Real. While in Langland especially there are rich descriptions of the fallen world, there is little offered in the way of a remedy any more useful than Chaucer’s heartfelt plea that the king ‘wed thy folk agein to stedfastnesse.’ Rayner does not aggressively engage with the deep political issues underlying the idea of kingship, but she does provide a useful and thorough survey of the theme in Ricardian poetry that may provide a basis and an incentive for further research in this rich theme. Don Hoffman Chicago, Illinois Copyright © 2009 Arthuriana

SAMANTHA J. RAYNER. Images of Kingship in Chaucer and his Ricardian Contemporaries

SAMANTHA J. RAYNER. Images of Kingship in Chaucer and his Ricardian Contemporaries

Images of Kingship in Chaucer and his Ricardian Contemporaries (by Samantha Rayner)

<i>Images of Kingship in Chaucer and his Ricardian Contemporaries</i> (by Samantha Rayner)

‘Source of the Tigris’. Event, place and performance in the Assyrian landscapes of the Early Iron Age

Performative engagements with specific, culturally significant places were among the primary means of configuring landscapes in the ancient world. Ancient states often appropriated symbolic or ritual landscapes through commemorative ceremonies and building operations. These commemorative sites became event-places where state spectacles encountered and merged with local cult practices. The Early Iron Age inscriptions and reliefs carved on the cave walls of the Dibni Su sources at the site of Birkleyn in Eastern Turkey, known as the ‘Source of the Tigris’ monuments, present a compelling paradigm for such spatial practices. Assyrian kings Tiglath-pileser I (1114–1076 B.C.) and Shalmaneser III (858–824 B.C.) carved ‘images of kingship’ and accompanying royal inscriptions at this impressive site in a remote but politically contested region. This important commemorative event was represented in detail on Shalmaneser III's bronze repoussé bands from Imgul-Enlil (Tell Balawat) as well as in his annalistic texts, rearticulating the performance of the place on public monuments in Assyrian urban contexts. This paper approaches the making of the Source of the Tigris monuments as a complex performative place-event. The effect was to reconfigure a socially significant, mytho-poetic landscape into a landscape of commemoration and cult practice, illustrating Assyrian rhetorics of kingship. These rhetorics were maintained by articulate gestures of inscription that appropriated an already symbolically charged landscape in a liminal territory and made it durable through site-specific spatial practices and narrative representations.

Byron's Numerology Revisited: Don Juan

In The Byron Journal of 1994, Alan Rawes,1 picking up on James Fisher's article in 1993,2 suggests that the positioning of stanzas 49 and 50 in Cantos I and II of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage reveals a numerological pattern in Byron's poem. It seems to me that this is indeed the case but for reasons more interesting than Rawes recognised. The two stanzas come at structural midpoints in the cantos (stanza 49 of 93 and the exactly central stanza 49 of 98). Their references to 'yon long, level plain, at distance crown'd / With crags' and 'the grove that crowns yon tufted hill' relate to the tradition of central-line symbolism, which placed images of kingship and elevation, amongst other symbols that I will discuss shortly, at the centre of a literary work. Byron's intentions are made clear when, at the centre of the whole of Childe Harold (stanza 247 of 495), we read that 'by Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground, / There is a small and simple pyramid, / Crowning the summit of the verdant mound'. The desire to place this image at the centre of Childe Harold might help to explain why Canto IV is so long. Indeed, this seems to give an answer to what may be a criticism of my argument. It will be argued that Byron wrote accretively and that this precludes the planning that is demanded by the type of centralised structure I am going to advocate. However, in this case, it appears to me that accretion deliberately creates the central emphasis or, conversely, that the desire for the central emphasis deliberately creates accretion. At the centre of Canto IV itself (stanzas 92 and 93 of 186), Byron has the 'arch of triumph' (92), God's rainbow (92) and 'things weigh'd in custom's falsest scale' (93) - images frequently found at the centre of literary structures. Another counter-argument to my own would stress Byron's digressions as working against numerical patterning. Even Fisher argues of Beppo that 'Byron's own mid-point is just another circling back to his story after yet another digression, a central position seemingly without much importance'.3 However, Beppo has a self-consciously marked centre in stanza 51 (of 99). Here, Byron wishes he 'had the art of easy writing' so that he could 'scale / Parnassus where the Muses sit'. Furthermore, if the poem 'starts' at stanza 21 (when Byron says 'But to my story'), the midpoint between this and the end of the poem is stanza 61, which has an Emperor, a God and a falling: Crush'd was Napoleon by the Northern Thor Who knock'd his army down with icy hammer. Byron also seems to use structural quarter points in Beppo. In stanza 25, we are introduced to Beppo. There is also an image of ascension: His wife would mount, at times, her highest attic For thence she could discern the ship with ease: He was a merchant trading to Aleppo, His name Giuseppe, call'd more briefly, Beppo. The three-quarter point (stanza 75) introduces two types of crown (one of which we will meet again at a key point in Don Juan): the foolscap and the coxcomb. This, of course, is also the midpoint between 'But to my tale of Laura' (stanza 50) and the end of the poem. Beppo provides clues to the structure of Don Juan, where the digressive nature of the poem allows Byron to play with central images and numerical structures in novel ways. He can be accretive, digressive and numerological. He can develop multiple, highly complex centralised structures. The plural is important because, as I hope to show, the poem is a network of overlapping structures, or, as Fisher calls those in Beppo, 'circling' structures.4 One particular aspect of this is Byron's use of a series of new, or even false, starts. This enables him to create a number of central points, even in a single canto - a technique that achieves its supreme realisation in Canto IX. He also uses central points in individual episodes and within many of the discrete periods of time depicted in Don Juan. …

Rex scholaribus impendebant: The King's Image as Patron of Learning in Thirteenth Century French and Spanish Chronicles: A Comparative Approach

Philip Augustus and St Louis' role in transforming Paris as the civitas scholarum of Western Christendom was praised by some French royal chroniclers as a conscious act for the sake of wisdom. In reality, the Capetian act to develop the University was a result of a difficult com promise between opposite interests. Other chroniclers were saying the same thing at the same time in the Spanish kingdom of Leon-Castile. We find this topos of the king as rex institutor scholarum in two of the most significant Spanish chronicles of this age, even as the implaus ibility of the rex litteratus' image forAlfonso VIII in these chronicles is patent. This picture of idealised wise kings concerned about education provides a good point of comparison between the images of kingship in French and Spanish chronicles written during the thirteenth century.

Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in Political Thought, 1560-1789

Louis XI, known as The Spider King because he wove many intricate plots, lives on in popular imagination primarily as a villain and a cruel, cunning, rather unscrupulous character. Absolutists fled to his banner whilst constitutionalists reviled him as a rapacious totalitarian murderer. In Images of Kingship in Early Modern France, Adrianna Bakos uses the changing nature of Louis XI's historical reputation to explore the intellectual and political climate of early modern France. Using Louis XI's historical reputation as a prism for fresh investigation, Adrianna Bakos offers new, more complex interpretations of the ideological landscape of early modern France. Images of Kingship in Early Modern France is an important contribution to European historiography and to debates on historical versus political interpretations of Kingship.

Adrianna E. Bakos. &lt;italic&gt;Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in Political Thought, 1560–1789&lt;/italic&gt;. New York: Routledge. 1997. Pp. x, 249. $69.95

Journal Article Adrianna E. Bakos. Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in Political Thought, 1560–1789. New York: Routledge. 1997. Pp. x, 249. $69.95 Get access Bakos Adrianna E.. Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in Political Thought, 1560–1789. New York: Routledge. 1997. Pp. x, 249. $69.95. Larissa Juliet Taylor Larissa Juliet Taylor Colby College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 104, Issue 2, April 1999, Pages 652–653, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/104.2.652 Published: 01 April 1999

Dramatic Images of Kingship in Heywood and Bale

Dramatic Images of Kingship in Heywood and Bale

:Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in Political Thought, 1560-1789

:<i>Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in Political Thought, 1560-1789</i>

Tragedies of tyrants: political thought and theater in the English Renaissance (review)

142 Reviews materials might easily have been included as suitable for treatment The fact that such thoughts spring readily to mind, however, could be considered a real strength of this book. Like his seminal books explicating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1965), discovering a major literary grouping in the 'Ricardian' poets (1971), pinpointing the distinctive characteristics of Middle English literature at large (1982), this is in turn almost certain to generate a new series of studies. If 'formal doctrines' of the ages of M a n belong to the world of 'a lettered minority' such as Dante and Chaucer, for instance (p. 93 and passim), what informal understandings of the human life-span are to be found in the world of popular culture? Diane Speed Department of English University of Sydney Bushnell, Rebecca W., Tragedies of tyrants: political thought and theater in the English Renaissance, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1990; cloth; pp. xviii, 195; R.R.P. US$29.95 + 1 0 % overseas. Professor Bushnell's study begins by examining h o w politically focused writings from antiquity to the Renaissance variously constructed images of the tyrant. It then proceeds to explore how English Renaissance drama recreated and/or redefined those images. Vigorously, learnedly, and lucidly argued, her book further illuminates not merely individual texts but also the Tudor and Stuart debates over the nature and scope of monarchic power. Thefirsttwo chapters investigate an 'ideology of opposition' that Bushnell sees as 'constructing the tyrant's unstable figure in the tradition of western political thought that stems from Plato and Aristotle' (p. 9). Bushnell demonstrates that the tyrant in contrast to the king-as-true-ruler, is repeatedly represented as being passion dominated, effeminate, theatrical: one whose self, in its egocentric, frequently overreaching, desire and in its diverse transformations, moves toward dissolution. Bushnell's point is that '[t]he tyrant thus draws to himself everything that does notfitquite properly into the Western tradition of rationality' (ibid.). Of particular importance in the widely ranging discussion that substantiates her point is the focus on effeminacy as a supposed characteristic of tyrants. Ancient and Renaissance constructions of the female in terms of unreason, uncontrolled desire, instability and the impulse to illegitimate mie are shrewdly scrutinized. Important too is Bushnell's focus on political theory's recunent unwillingness, or failure, to keep the categories 'tyrant' and 'king' distinct. It might finally be mentioned here that an attractive feature of the initial chapters is Bushnell's moving beyond canonical texts of political theory. Her account of Senecan images of tyranny is valuable, the more so as she has previously examined Oedipus the King. Reviews 143 In the following chapters' accounts of Tudor and Stuart tyrant plays, many substantial as well as new readings are put forward, early and notable successes being the interpretations of Cambyses and of Baptistes in the third chapter. It might be argued, however, that the subsequent chapter's accounts of Shakespeare's and Jonson's tyrant plays are less successful. The readings of Richard 111 and of Macbeth are interesting: 'In Richard's and Macbeth's cases, we see how gender and sexuality can be used to construct and undermine the tyrant because w e watch those characters ambitiously seek to become kings and then mie unsuccessfully' (p. 131). Even more so is the study of Sejanus, in which Bushnell suggests that the play 'approaches the problem of representing the ambitious tyrant by splitting him into two figures: Sejanus the usurper and Tiberius the legitimate emperor, "excellent wolf (3.347) and "sphinx" (3.64)' (ibid.). Nonetheless, the plays are not adequately contextualized within the other writings of their respective authors. H o w Sejanus, for example, relates to Jonson's images of kingship in his masques and poems is left unexplored. Better contextualized, in that sense, is the account in chapter five of Beaumont and Fletcher's tyrant plays, a discussion in which Bushnell carefully examines apparent support of 'the absolutist ideology that privileges legitimacy over character as an index ofrightfulrule' and its seeming co-existence with apparent criticism of 'absolutism's exclusion of morality from political discourse' (p. 171). The ensuing study of Massinger's The Roman Actor...

The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and Images of Kingship in France: 1572-1574

Apres l'execution de Coligny et des autres chefs huguenots, avec le massacre de la Saint-Barthelemy, Charles IX rompt avec la moderation dont il avait, avec sa mere, fait preuve jusque-la. Les differentes factions politiques donnent plusieurs interpretations de cette rupture mais beaucoup se raccrochent aux concepts traditionnels et si la radicalite des idees s'affirme dans les ecrits pamphletaires de 1573 a 1574, elle ne domine pas le debat comme ce sera le cas apres 1588

Some Iranian Images of Kingship in the Armenian Artaxiad Epic

Some Iranian Images of Kingship in the Armenian Artaxiad Epic

Review: Images of Kingship in Paradise Lost: Milton's Politics and Christian Liberty

Review: Images of Kingship in <i>Paradise Lost</i>: Milton's Politics and Christian Liberty