The Theory Of Absolutism In France And France

Throughout the course of the seventeenth century, a new political regime spread across Europe known as absolutism. Before absolutism came into place, the sixteenth century had been full of chaos and wars as a result of various levels of governments sharing the power to make decisions, and the therefore constant splitting of countries over how to best act when faced with a crisis, resulting in countries such as Spain, England and France all undergoing their own civil wars. To try and combat this, several rulers decided to attempt to consolidate power back into their own hands, so that they made the ultimate decisions for the country and become an absolute monarch. Absolutism is where a monarch rules free of law or organised opposition and has
The theory of divine right of kings was similar to absolutism, as they were both giving the monarch complete authority over their subjects. By using the divine right, monarchs could claim their authority from God and this enabled them to challenge the power of the Church, who during this time could be their biggest threat depending on what religion the monarch identified themselves as. The divine right also gave absolute monarchs legitimacy, as the church would support the absolutist in order to get out of their way out of fear. French theologian Bishop Jacques Bossuet was one of the chief theorists of the divine-right monarchy in the seventeenth century, and he wrote about how the royal power is absolute, a ruler needing to account their actions to no one but God. Bossuet was a popular theorist, and many supported his beliefs on absolutism in that the Kings were Gods representatives and that royal power was absolute as it was free from interference by Parliament. However, Bossuet and many of his followers also agreed that the monarchs power was not arbitrary, as their actions must still reflect the will of God. Absolutism was therefore just a method of controlling the masses and getting social order restored, which is evident from the practical essence of
This can be attributed to the fact that absolutism was merely an aspiration held by many European states to try and solve the problem of previous governments arguing on how to best handle state affairs, but it was never fully put into action. How one defines absolutism must be taken into consideration when debating whether there was a gap between its theory and enactment. The term absolutism did not come into existence until the very end of the eighteenth century, which could suggest that at the time in question, absolutism was not successful as it was not widespread beyond Europe. This leads to the views held by revisionist historians, which is that absolutism did not exist, and it is something that was developed by historians after the enlightenment period to justify the changes of power held by