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7/11/2025, 5:55:35 PM
>>17832618
I think it's a lot simpler than that. Pepin the Short doled out land to the Pope as a fief and effectively made him a vassal, placing him under Frankish protection. Charlemagne was recognized as emperor by the pope and this arrangement continued. Thus the ruler placed himself above the vicar of Christ, and so proved himself accountable only to God.
Because Charlemagne's empire was the precursor to almost all Western European medieval polities, this idea was passed down and fought for/against countless times. It took all the way until the 19th century to settle the question, when the Church finally backed down from the Kulturkampf in Germany.
If you want to zoom even further out, the "divine right of kings" is a Christian rationalization of the anarchic international system, which has always existed and still exists. A sovereign polity is accountable to no other by definition, so a Christian understanding of sovereignty would mean that rulers who have no overlord are only accountable to the laws of God.
Thus remains the question of what God's laws actually are, which caused countless bloody wars. Until the French Revolution and mass politics pulled the rug out from under this paradigm and forced monarchs to recognize their power had always rested on popular approval, and divine approval as a proxy for that had lost its effectiveness.
I think it's a lot simpler than that. Pepin the Short doled out land to the Pope as a fief and effectively made him a vassal, placing him under Frankish protection. Charlemagne was recognized as emperor by the pope and this arrangement continued. Thus the ruler placed himself above the vicar of Christ, and so proved himself accountable only to God.
Because Charlemagne's empire was the precursor to almost all Western European medieval polities, this idea was passed down and fought for/against countless times. It took all the way until the 19th century to settle the question, when the Church finally backed down from the Kulturkampf in Germany.
If you want to zoom even further out, the "divine right of kings" is a Christian rationalization of the anarchic international system, which has always existed and still exists. A sovereign polity is accountable to no other by definition, so a Christian understanding of sovereignty would mean that rulers who have no overlord are only accountable to the laws of God.
Thus remains the question of what God's laws actually are, which caused countless bloody wars. Until the French Revolution and mass politics pulled the rug out from under this paradigm and forced monarchs to recognize their power had always rested on popular approval, and divine approval as a proxy for that had lost its effectiveness.
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