Importance of Divine Right

In the history of the policy Various ways have been created and developed, each one very particular, to legitimize the power and hegemony of certain social actors over others. One of these forms has been linked from very early in human history (and up to the present) to politics with the religion, thus allowing an interesting concept to appear and at the same time central to understanding: divine right.

Explaining the idea that links religion to politics

From very early in the history of human societies, both politics and religion have gained a place of importance. exercise of power very clear. Those who held the command of politics or religion have always been responsible for exercising power, for commanding and giving orders, for establishing patterns of behavior and values. When politics has been directly linked to religion, that power became the hegemony of certain social sectors over others in an absolute way and without possible questioning.

Nowadays, western societies are used to separating both spheres, at least in the public sphere and governments that still maintain that union are often seen as backward, primitive and dangerous. However, it would be interesting to note that until recently in our history there was also the same phenomenon that, at a given moment, knew how to occupy and characterize all the countries of Europe.

Divine right in the European monarchies prior to the French Revolution

In that historical period that specialists have come to call the Old Regime and that had special strength in the 16th and 18th centuries in Europe, one of the main characteristics It was the presence and consolidation of a significant number of hereditary monarchies that legitimized their power and their hegemony over dissidents based on the concept of divine right.

What we here call divine right was understood as the legality that religion gave to power. These absolute and very powerful monarchies based their power on the legitimization of the link that the king in office supposedly maintained with the god. One of the most representative cases was Louis XIV in France, who called himself "Sun King".

The criticisms of the French Revolution to this type of legitimization of power

As we approach the close of the eighteenth century, one of the most direct and profound critiques that thinkers of the time they did to the reigning monarchies in Europe was precisely the use of this notion of inheritance and belonging divine of kings They understood that it was a backward and primitive way of justifying the concentration of power and they insisted on the predominance of reason and in the development of political forms that would allow those who find themselves in power to find methods of control eventually.

Images: Fotolia. satori – crisfotolux