Monarch Profile: King David of Israel

In the history of western civilization probably no other monarch looms as large as King David. As a figure, David dominates the political history of the Jews and, with the rise and spread of Christianity, this ancient king from Jewish tradition also came to play a huge part in the political iconography, traditions and culture of the European Gentiles as well. For the Jews, at least since the death of Joshua, King David became the pivotal figure with everything that happened before his reign, after Joshua, leading up to it and everything that happened to the Jews since being a result of the remarkable life and legacy of King David. For the nation of Israel and later for Christians as well it was King David who set the standard by which all subsequent monarchs were judged. He was the ideal king; humble, faithful, brave, pious and wise. King David has his flaws as well but even in his flaws, he was an example. His mistakes made the point that even the greatest of men was flawed and only God is perfect and when King David made mistakes he atoned for them so that these errors themselves, and how he dealt with them, made him even more of an example to emulate. In short, it would be quite impossible to overstate the legacy of King David and how far reaching it has been.

Of course, for someone from ancient times, there are details about David which remain a mystery but, from Biblical accounts, we do know a surprisingly great deal about him and there have been archaeological discoveries which have supported these accounts, showing that such a man did, actually, exist. Estimates vary but it seems he was born around the year 1000 BC, perhaps in Bethlehem, in the land of Judah. There are hints that he may have had some relation to the Ammonite royal family. He is usually described as being a brave boy of humble origins, a shepherd who became adept at the use of a slingshot while guarding over the family livestock. David fought in the wars against the Philistines and first came to prominence when a giant (and there are numerous accounts of giants in the Bible) named Goliath of Gath challenged the Israelis to send out their champion to face him in single combat. While others lacked the courage to face this monster, young David had faith that if God was on your side, no enemy should be feared and, scorning the use of armor, went out alone armed only with his slingshot, killed Goliath with a stone between the eyes and then cut his head off. The Philistines fled in terror and David became an instant celebrity and was taken in by King Saul as part of his inner-circle.

David became best friends with King Saul’s son Jonathan and married King Saul’s daughter Michal but soon his great deeds and popularity made King Saul jealous of him. Saul arranged to have David killed but the young man thwarted or avoided every attempt on his life and fled from the court to lead his own private army, winning further fame and glory much to Saul’s dismay. It was also this period which demonstrates how David is an example in his loyalty to a monarch who not only harsh and unkind to him but actually tried repeatedly to have him killed. David twice had Saul at his mercy and could have easily killed him but refused to do so, despite the urgings of his followers, because to raise his hand against the King, God’s anointed one, would be a sacrilege. He did, however, point this out to Saul, that he could have killed him but chose not to, which caused even King Saul to confess that David was a better man than he, treating Saul with kindness where Saul had treated David with cruelty. Though finally forced to flee to enemy country, David nonetheless remains loyal to his people and King Saul and kills the messenger who tells him of Saul’s death, saying that “a great man has fallen” in the midst of battle. Of course, part of what had been troubling King Saul was the words of the Prophet Samuel telling him that he had lost favor with God and that his crown would pass to David.

That point is also stressed a great deal that, though David was popular as a handsome, young warrior, it was the will of God rather than man that made him King of Israel. David is given a higher compliment than any mortal man in the Bible in I Samuel 13:14 which says of David, “The Lord has sought out a man after His own heart”. Because of that, King David is still remembered to this day as ‘a man after God’s own heart’. In subsequent battles, David defeats the remaining followers of Saul and becomes the undisputed King of Israel, making the conquered Jebusite city of Jerusalem his capital. With his people united behind him, and being an experienced, talented military leader, King David defeats his enemies and establishes a powerful kingdom, bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem though it is left to his son to build the first magnificent temple in which to house it. At the start of his reign, Israel was a divided nation, probably a vassal of the Philistines, yet King David led them to unity, independence and even domination over a number of neighbors. The Kingdom of Israel did not reach its peak under King David but it was he who certainly laid the foundations.

Of course, for all of the praise King David receives, we are left in no doubt that he was still a mortal man with mortal weaknesses. As is, perhaps, not too surprising, this man who led armies into fierce, hand-to-hand combat, looked death in the face countless times and even triumphed over a giant that had cowed an entire army, was not strong enough to resist the temptations of a beautiful woman. That woman was Bathsheba, the wife of a soldier named Uriah. King David and Bathsheba have an affair and Bathsheba becomes pregnant by him. In an effort to cover up his misdeed, King David has Uriah recalled from the front immediately, thinking that he will sleep with his wife and later everyone will assume the baby is his. However, in keeping with the custom of the time, as a soldier on active duty, Uriah does not sleep with his wife and so, desperate to avoid being found out as an adulterer, David has him sent to the front to be exposed to the greatest danger and killed in battle. However, this does not go unnoticed, the Prophet Nathan admonishes King David and he ultimately confesses and repents of his misdeeds. His apology is sincere but there was still a price to be paid for his wrongdoing. When a number of horrors befell his children, a son rebelled against him and Saul loyalists in the north rebelled, it was all taken as divine retribution on King David for what he had done.

This all served as an important lesson, both to show that God would punish the wicked for their misdeeds, that King David was not a perfect man but also that he would admit to his mistakes and make amends as best he could. It was probably a necessary lesson as otherwise King David would likely seem to good to be true. He represented the epitome of Old Testament kingship. All the troubles of Israel since the death of Joshua kept being traced back to their lack of an orderly succession of recognized leaders. With King David, the monarchy was given lasting divine favor and a legacy that would continue for thousands of years. Not only would special favor be shown to the Davidic dynasty among the Israelis but it would cast a shadow across the world by way of the Christian monarchies that would rise up later. That is because it was in the person of King David that we have the origin of the “Divine Right of Kings”.

Because of how beloved King David was, known as the man after God’s own heart, God made a covenant with King David that was unprecedented. Numerous times throughout Biblical accounts, God made covenants with mankind, invariably with provisions that included the person or people doing something for God, such as keeping His commandments, in exchange for which God would grant some divine favor. However, the covenant with King David was the only such agreement God ever made that was unconditional. God promised to King David that he and all his descendants would have a “divine right” to rule over God’s people and that if any of them did wrong, while God would punish them for that, because of how beloved King David was, their divine right would never be taken away from them. Because of this, no other dynasty held such a sacred significance for the Jews as the House of David did. It is why prophecies of the future Messiah would be bound up with associations with the sacred royal line and why even long after the Kingdom of Israel was a distant memory, Christian monarchs in Europe still found it advantageous to trace their genealogy back to King David.

Although exact dates are not known, King David probably died sometime around the year 961 BC. Under other circumstances he would be too large and lofty a figure to truly grasp, someone more suited to myths and fables than actual history. Yet, while there are aspects of his story that certainly could be read that way, few serious historians doubt that King David was quite real. His impact on Israel and later “Judeo-Christian” culture cannot be exaggerated. It was he who made Israel a united, independent nation state. It was he who established a royal line that would hold power for the next 400 years, it was he who made Jerusalem a capital city and center of the Jewish religion. For Christians, it was his line that would produce the Messiah, born in the city of his birth, crucified in the city that he ruled from and who was put to death on the accusation of claiming to be “King of the Jews”. King David also set the standard for what an ideal ruler was supposed to be for many, many generations to come. Everyone is familiar with his story. The story of the young boy who fought off the wolves to protect his sheep, the boy playing his harp to sooth the troubled brow of King Saul, the wiry youth who killed a giant, the faithful friend, the loyal subject, the heroic warrior-king. He is a larger-than-life figure.

And yet, King David also appears all too real and all too human. We see a real person in him rather than some marble image of Olympian perfection. His bravery on the battlefield did not match his character at home, where he surrendered to the temptations of lust and then plotted and schemed to cover up his crime in fear of being discovered. As a warrior-king he was unmatched but as a statesman-king or administrator-king he seemed to have less ability. His reign was often troubled and based on the actions of his children, he was not as good a father as he was a general. He could be indecisive, often refused to see facts that were painful to him and could be self-indulgent at times. All of that makes him human and he was just as aware of that as anyone. He was not perfect but he was ‘a man after God’s own heart’ and someone who many believed to be so pious that his prayers could bring down any favor from Heaven. Christians would later see him as a precursor of Jesus, giving him a feast day in the Eastern and Western Churches and ranking him among the “Nine Worthies” who best embodied the ideals of chivalry. Monarchs from three continents found it helpful to claim descent from him. Today, politics is a world away from where it was when King David was important even as a symbol but there is no denying that for most of the history of western civilization he was a colossal figure, the standard against which all others were judged.

Monarch Profile: King Saul of Israel

Although there has been some debate over the correct translation of titles such as king, chief or prince, the man recognized as the first King of Israel was Saul who ruled, roughly, from 1020 to 1000 BC. Due to the immense space of time that has elapsed since the reign of King Saul, much about him remains a mystery. We do not know exactly when he was born or even where exactly he was from. All we know is that he was from an unnamed town in the lands of the tribe of Benjamin. The primary source for information on his life is the First Book of Samuel. Saul was considered a Judge of Israel and was most known for being a great and accomplished warrior. He is portrayed as being somewhat similar to past Judges of Israel who also had a bit of the Prophet about him in that he was moved by God to do certain things. When the Ammonites attacked Jabesh-gilead in the Trans-Jordan, Saul felt compelled by God to take action and gathered together an army of Israelite warriors to defeat the Ammonites, one of his many military accomplishments. When the people of Israel began to demand a king to lead them, someone like Saul would have been a natural choice.

That choice, however, remains a controversial one. Even today, many defenders of republicanism point to the warnings the Prophet Samuel made in response to the public outcry for a king as a divine condemnation of monarchy, ignoring the huge accumulation of Biblical texts glorifying the monarchy and calling for obedience to the kings. However, the things that Samuel warns will happen to Israel under a king are things that would apply to any central government of any kind. It is also impossible to overlook the fact that there was some politics involved in all of this as Samuel represented the class of religious rulers who were about to lose power in the shift from theocracy to monarchy. Samuel was admired and respected but he was getting old and his sons, who we assume by this were viewed as possible successors in his pontifical role, were not as well regarded as he was. So, the people wanted a king to rule them and it is only natural that this would be met with some resistance by a Prophet like Samuel who had effectively been their ruler as the one looked to as the vicar of God for the people of Israel. Nonetheless, Samuel anoints Saul King of Israel.

It should be remembered that, according to the Scriptures, it was God who directed Samuel to anoint Saul King of Israel and this must be seen alongside the Prophet’s warnings about having a king. As God directed Samuel to anoint Saul, one is left with one of two options; either God was persuaded to participate in something that was wrong (not very omnipotent) or this was all according to a divine plan from the start. Obviously, the second would seem to be the obvious choice and, at the outset, Saul seemed to be the very embodiment of an ideal monarch. He is described as being strong, handsome, very tall and dedicated. He was also successful in the initial task which was to deliver Israel from the domination of the Philistines. After some initial victories against them, King Saul also won victories over virtually all of the enemy nations that had been plaguing the Israelites while throughout his life the on-going war with the Philistines continued to rage. He was, in short, a very adept and successful warrior king who had delivered his people from their enemies and put them back on the offensive. However, he fell out of favor rather quickly in an odd way.

The Prophet Samuel scolding King Saul

According to the Biblical account, the “crimes” for which King Saul lest divine approval appear to be what most people would consider trivial offenses (offering a sacrifice at Gilgal when Samuel -who was late- was supposed to do it) or something which most today would consider laudable; he showed mercy to his enemies and refrained from killing the Amalekite King Agog. God, through Samuel, had ordered King Saul to show no mercy, to take no prisoners and massacre the Amalekites to the last man and the last animal. King Saul, however, spared the king’s life and the best of his livestock (rebuked, he later did put King Agog to death). This has caused some historians to speculate that his later downfall at the hands of the Philistines was taken as a sign that God had abandoned him and these other issues were pointed to after the fact as a way to justify finding another monarch to take his place. Again, however, that is speculation as there is only the Biblical account that we have for information relating to King Saul, an account which tradition says was written by Samuel who would seem to be less than well-disposed toward Saul from the start. He first had to yield power to him and later the relationship between Saul and Samuel deteriorated ever further.

Throughout the rest of the scriptures dealing with King Saul he is portrayed as a fallen hero rapidly becoming a paranoid tyrant. He was constantly fighting battles with the Philistines, was becoming ever more antagonistic toward Samuel and falling ever farther from God’s favor. The young David was chosen by Samuel as the “true” monarch that God preferred and sometime after Samuel passed away. King Saul was thus also worried about a young rival in the person of David and tried, unsuccessfully, to kill him. His fears increasing, King Saul turned in desperation to the witch of Endor to conjure up the ghost of the dead Samuel. This brought him no comfort and was also a violation of God’s wishes and his own law by which he had earlier expelled all sorcerers from the land. When King Saul made war on the Gibeonites, when God had not ordered such an attack, a famine fell on the land for three years as punishment and David, who had refrained from killing Saul when he had the chance (as he was God’s anointed), had seven sons of Saul’s family executed. All of this was done, we are told, as retribution for King Saul turning away from God but it also helped secure the future throne of King David for his own dynasty, eliminating potential rivals.

David plays his harp for King Saul

So much of King Saul remains a mystery and views about him widely differ. The given narrative seems rather confusing and even as a good man turned bad narrative, there are always pieces that do not quite fit. One could easily read the Biblical account and come away viewing King Saul as a good man who was being picked on by a capricious deity. He was chosen for a position he did not seek, then admonished for defending that position when another was picked to replace him. He was punished for showing mercy to one enemy and later punished for not showing mercy to another. At times, he seemed to repent and admit his own faults but was not granted forgiveness. We do not know how long his reign lasted, the traditional dates being obviously incorrect, and as such it is hard to know exactly how much he did accomplish. Was his reign a short two years of constant violence or a longer period in which Israel reaped some calm and quiet from his victories? We will never know for sure. We know his end was a violent one but it is also mysterious given how his successor, King David, reacted to it.

King Saul was defeated in his last battle with the Philistines and, after being badly wounded, asked his aides to take his life. When they refused, he killed himself. His body, along with his sons, were put on display on the walls of Beth-shean but were rescued for burial by a raiding party of men from Jabesh-gilead. For a man who was portrayed in the Biblical account in a mostly villainous or at least antagonistic role, the reaction of King David to hearing of the death of Saul seems, again, somewhat curious and hints that he might not have been such a bad monarch after all. This was the last account we have addressing King Saul when David said, “Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you daintily in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!” It is an oddly positive and remorseful note on which to end the story of a monarch given grudgingly and then demonized as one God had turned His back on. Yet, it set the scene for the start of the rule of King David, known as a man after God’s own heart. The monarchy that Samuel warned against, under David, would be raised to exalted status and his dynasty secured with a covenant giving it a divine right to rule God’s people. For King Saul, he remains a mysterious figure, a monarch wanted, raised and then abandoned, punished and harassed and finally praised in death. There will doubtless always remain more questions about King Saul than there are answers. Nonetheless, his reign marks the beginning of the history of Israel as a united kingdom under one sacred monarchy.

The Divine Right of Kings

Many people have heard about the Divine Right of Kings and some probably have a vague idea of what it means. If asked, they will reply that it refers to the idea that a king has absolute power and is accountable to no one but God in Heaven for his rule of his country, a country entrusted to him by God. Much fewer, however, are probably aware of the deeper meaning of the Divine Right of Kings, where the idea came from or how short-lived the idea was. For all of the talk about the Divine Right of Kings, it really was an idea that never held sway for very long in historic terms. One basic assumption that many make, that this was a relationship simply between God and the king, is actually somewhat mistaken. It is, as much, about the Royal Family as it is about the king himself. Many people are probably also not aware that the idea of the Divine Right of Kings, though most associated with the Christian monarchies of Europe, actually has Jewish rather than Christian origins. This was an idea that did not take hold in the original Christian Roman Empire but it began to have more influence after the fall of Rome but as the Dark Ages moved into the Middle Ages and beyond, the Divine Right of Kings came to be opposed by the Roman Catholic Church to varying degrees, reasserted itself somewhat in the early spread of Protestantism but, after that, was soon replaced with the “Divine Right of the People”. So, let us review where the roots of this idea can be found.

The Divine Right of Kings has been traced by some, like Filmer, all the way back to Adam in the Garden of Eden when God gave Adam dominion over all creation. Not too many, however, took things to that extreme and not because it was impossible to trace a family line back to the first man on earth as one might assume but more because, if one accepts that Adam was the father of all humanity, being descended from him is not that special. More often it came down to being a descendant of King David of Israel and, once upon a time, it was very important for royal families to be able to trace their ancestry back to that Old Testament monarch who was called a man after God’s own heart. The reasoning behind this can get a little bit confusing so it is best to start at the beginning. The Divine Right of Kings goes back to the Divine Right of King David and the Davidic line of kings who ruled the people of Israel. This came about because of the seventh covenant between man and God and, in many ways, it is perhaps one of the most fascinating interactions between the human and the divine to be found in the books of the Bible.

For one thing, one cannot help but take special notice that this was the seventh covenant between God and man, since the number seven has always had a special significance, the number of perfection. The seventh day was the day God rested and commanded to be kept holy, there were the seven eyes of God, the seven feast days of God, seven blessings, seven dispensations, in the Christian world there are seven sacraments, seven cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins, the seventh angel announcing the apocalypse and being the last to punish the world which ended with seven plagues. The Bible is literally riddled with the number seven and it seems only natural that the seventh covenant would stand out even if simply for being the seventh. However, it must also be said that, this was according to the list I learned in school. Some number the covenants differently, so you may take or leave that as you please. What is also interesting and unique about the seventh covenant was that it was the only covenant with man that God made unconditionally. Every other covenant or agreement between God and man followed the pattern of doing something in return for something else. So, God would tell man, if you do this and refrain from doing that, I will do this for you. The seventh covenant was different. There were no conditions, simply a promise from God to King David.

That promise, the seventh covenant, was the original Divine Right of Kings. It stated that King David and his descendants had a “divine right” to rule God’s people, referring here to the people of Israel, and that this right was absolute and could never be taken away. God said that because he loved King David so highly that even if his descendants should do wrong, while God would punish them for their wrongdoing, for the sake of King David their divine right to rule would never be taken away from them. Eventually, of course, things in Israel changed as did the interpretation some applied to this covenant. Eventually, of course, there ceased to be Davidic kings ruling Israel. The land was divided, eventually becoming a client state of the Roman Empire and, after a rebellion, being totally crushed and ruled by the Emperor of Rome. Some would say this has no bearing on the covenant since God only promised that the “right” to rule would never be lost but said nothing about their actual rule. That, however, would ultimately become a Jewish question and remains so to this day as there are still a small minority within the State of Israel who wish to see the traditional kingdom restored under a descendant of David. For the Christians who emerged during the time of Roman rule, this covenant came to have a meaning that was more spiritual than genealogical -though genealogy still mattered of course.

In time, early Christians adopted the position that it was the Church that was the “people of God” and that the Davidic covenant was fulfilled in a spiritual sense by Jesus Christ. He was of the Davidic bloodline and was the eternal King of all and everyone. So, by this reasoning, the covenant remains fulfilled with Christ the King reigning in Heaven, represented on earth by His Church. However, in time, religious thinkers and royal princes alike would start to try to pull the Divine Right of Kings down from the Heavens and apply it to life on earth again. It is understandable that there was some confusion. Christianity was building on the earlier Jewish traditions but clearly most were not Jews and never had been. Even in the New Testament there was already some argument over what Jewish traditions were to be kept and which were no longer relevant. This also came about during the reign of the Roman Empire under monarchs who had nothing to do with Judaism or Christianity. Nor was the imperial monarchy solidly based on bloodline (though it certainly mattered). It was a hereditary succession more often than some think and that was almost always the preferred route but the emperors never technically reigned only because of their bloodline. An emperor did not rule in the name of God (they were not Christians until the latter stages of the empire) but in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome (SPQR). However, the Roman Empire eventually fell, in the west anyway, and new kingdoms rose up to take its place. As these kingdoms rose in power so to did an interest in the Divine Right of Kings.

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, power devolved throughout western Europe to the barbarian or Romanized barbarian tribes who had their own chieftains who rose to kingly status as the status of their people rose. Tribes became nations that became established countries and so kingdoms. In Rome itself the power vacuum was filled by the Pope and ultimately it was the Pope who restored or created a new “Roman Empire” (depending on how one views it) with the coronation of Charlemagne. However, even there, the seeds for some division existed as work was done to show that Charlemagne was descended from King David and later on the genealogies which many royals used to show their descent from King David (and thus making them inheritors of the divine right) were based on their descent from Charlemagne. Ultimately though, there was less emphasis placed on the sacred bloodline amongst the German peoples because the German hereditary rulers based their legitimacy on titles gained from the (German) Holy Roman Emperor who owed his title to the Pope. Eventually, this would mean that the Catholic Church was less tolerant of the idea of the Divine Right of Kings as this attested that a king ruled because God willed it and he had only God to answer to whereas the Catholic position tended to be that the king ruled because the Pope granted him legitimacy and, if he ruled in such a way that displeased the Pope, that same Pontiff could revoke his legitimacy, excommunicate him, depose him or absolve his subjects of their allegiance to their king.

That being said, there were Catholics who believed in the Divine Right of Kings and Catholic bishops who defended and upheld it. These, however, tended to be outside of the Holy Roman Empire where, it would make less sense anyway as the imperial throne was electoral and not bound to a single family though it eventually became effectively so. Rather, the monarchy most associated with the Divine Right of Kings in the Catholic world was the Kingdom of France, most especially during the zenith of its power and prestige under King Louis XIV, often cited as the quintessential absolute monarch. It also came to be expounded in Great Britain under the Stuart monarchs, starting with King James I who was quite a champion of the Divine Right of Kings, at least in theory (he was a practical enough man to know not to carry things too far with Parliament). King James I championed the idea, as did King Charles I or at least many of his most ardent supporters did and so it was not surprising that his son King James II did as well. It is because of King James II and King Louis XIV in France that many Protestants, particularly in the English-speaking world, came to portray the Divine Right of Kings and even just plain and simple royal absolutism as being a Catholic thing when, of course, the matter was not as simple as that. The Pope, as most know, opposed the King of France and was so adamant about it that he sent extensive financial support to the Protestant Prince of Orange who, though fighting against France, also invaded Britain and overthrew the last Catholic British monarch.

Not everyone who supported King James in Britain or King Louis in France were ardent believers in the Divine Right of Kings but it should be noted that where the concept of the Divine Right of Kings is embraced, one will see a much greater emphasis placed on the royal bloodline which would be treated as something sacred. This was certainly the case in France and can also be seen as a strain running through the Jacobites of Great Britain. Some, of course, would not have admitted such a thing, but others certainly would have. Samuel Johnson summed it up by saying, “A Jacobite, sir, believes in the divine right of kings. He that believes in the divine right of kings believes in a Divinity. A Jacobite believes in the divine right of bishops. He that believes in the divine right of bishops believes in the divine authority of the Christian religion.” In fact, as the case of King James I would indicate (who was a Protestant), the Divine Right of Kings got something of a boost from Protestantism. The most obvious example of this in Britain is when King Henry VIII of England decided he was not answerable to the Pope and converted the Church IN England to the Church OF England, effectively saying that there was God and then the King with no Pope in the middle. Other Protestant monarchs would make similar cases and there were a number of Protestant absolute monarchs.

However, the Divine Right of Kings began to fall out of favor because of opposition from both sides of the religious divide. In Catholic countries there was always tension between the monarchs and the Pope. Monarchs resisted Papal foreign policy, Popes resisted interference in the Church from monarchs and so on. A strict reading of the Divine Right of Kings would not necessarily mean this would have to happen. If Popes and Kings both kept to their own sphere it might not have been a problem but neither seemed able to. Bourbon France and later Bourbon Spain were the last bastions of divine right monarchy in many ways and in those countries, Princes of the Blood had the highest status and being “of the blood” really meant something. However, they eventually were lost to the French Revolution in France and even in Spain the absolute monarchy eventually came to an end. Some legitimists in France still carry on some of the basic principles of the Divine Right of Kings but even then it is usually not outright as it would put them in an uncomfortable position with the Church and most are staunch Catholics. In Spain, the Carlists maintained it longer than most would have thought possible but, eventually, they fragmented and those claiming the title today have basically said bloodline no longer matters at all, only ideological adherence.

In the Protestant countries, the idea of the Divine Right of Kings started out quite strong but it tended to fade even faster than in Catholic countries where it had never been fully embraced to begin with. The problem with the Protestant countries was that things like monarchy and religion are based on tradition and in every Protestant country, the tradition had been Catholic. So, it proved very difficult to call into question the authority of the Pope without some quickly calling into question the authority of the King or the national church. Also, because the Catholic Church was entrenched in all these countries, suppressing it and all those who believed in it was no easy task. Monarchs had to have the support of powerful people to accomplish this and these powerful people wanted some say in how the King would do things. This meant that there was a rise in parliaments and elected assemblies which came to compete for power with the King and eventually would supplant God as the source of royal legitimacy. For example, although the British & Commonwealth monarch still reigns “by the grace of God” according to the motto on the coins, since 1688 it was made increasingly clear that the monarch reigns by the grace of Parliament. It is Parliament that decides policy, Parliament which regulates the succession to the throne and thus determines who shall and shall not be monarch. The matter was effectively taken out of the hands of God (in a manner of speaking) and left to elected assemblies.

That highlights one of the main misunderstandings about the Divine Right of Kings which is that it is simply another word for royal absolutism. This is not true as it was more about royal legitimacy than royal power. It meant that there was a sacred bloodline which God had chosen to rule and no one could usurp that rule. It also meant that the monarch answered to God alone and thus was absolute but, as the famous Bishop Jacques Bossuet (usually cited as a proponent of the Divine Right of Kings) wrote, absolute power is not the same as arbitrary power which is another mistake most people make. It is also true that, whether a good thing or not, the Divine Right of Kings never held sway over the whole of Christendom nor was the concept widely supported for very long. It was really never an issue at all in Eastern Europe and in the West it had intermittent support before finally being rejected by Catholics and Protestants alike. Still, it lingered for quite a long time and even in days when no one would have seriously upheld it, it is interesting to note that most royal houses liked to have a genealogical record on hand, showing their lineage back to King David. Even if their position and authority did not depend on it, this was reassuring to have. Unfortunately, the divine right also caused monarchists to become their own worst enemies in some cases as arguments over legitimate bloodlines were pursued so fiercely that some people began to believe, like the French, that a republic would be less divisive -a terrible perception all monarchists should strive to overcome.

Israel and a Jewish Monarchy

Recently, there was celebrated the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, an historic event in more ways than the obvious. Where else has there ever been a nation, without land, scattered across the globe that was able to survive for more than a thousand years only to reestablish itself as a sovereign nation-state once again? If there are other examples, I cannot recall them. Like almost every other nation on earth, Israel was once a monarchy and an extremely influential one at that. The tradition of "sacred monarchy" for Christians, for example, comes more from the ancient Jewish kings than almost any other source. What about today? There are still Jewish monarchists who want to see the Kingdom of Israel restored along with the rest of their ancient traditions. I cannot help but feel that part of the reason they are given so little attention in the western media is because of the implications for other religions. When it comes to the Holy Land, the slightest twitch is enough to upset the world. However, they do exist and have been hard at work for many years trying to revive the Davidic monarchy of the Old Testament. The most prominent Israeli monarchist is Rabbi Yosef Dayan, recognized by most as the closest living blood heir of King David and thus most likely candidate for the throne. He is the founder and leader of the monarchist organization Malchut-Yisra'el. In 2005 the Jerusalem Post commented on the efforts to recall the Sanhedrin to proclaim a king. Efforts to revive the Sanhedrin are not new, but they seem more lasting in recent years and focus on such projects as a full restoration of traditional Jewish government, law, the House of David and the Temple. Rabbi Yosef Dayan is a member of the restored Sanhedrin.