Western Civilization II / Unit 1 WC2 0019 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading Bossuet on Divine Right: What the Passage Assumes
The idea
A political treatise tells you what a regime wanted believed. To read Bossuet, ask three questions of any passage: where does power come from, whom does the ruler answer to, and what limits him. The text read is the Hanover Historical Texts extract of the Political Treatise, from Robinson's Readings in European History, nineteen-oh-six.
In practice
Three passages, paraphrased. First, rulers act as ministers of God and his lieutenants on earth, and the throne is God's, not a man's. Where power comes from: God, through Scripture, not from the people. Second, the person of the king is sacred, and to attack him is sacrilege. Whom he answers to: God alone, since the prince need render account of his acts to no one. Third, kings must use their power with fear and restraint, as a thing of which God will demand an account, and absolute government is not arbitrary government. What limits him: God's judgment and reason, not any earthly institution. Read together, the passages make obedience a religious duty and royal restraint a matter of conscience.
Where people slip
Do not confuse Bossuet's theory with the anchor's. The anchor explains absolutism by reason of state and the protection of privileges; Bossuet explains it by God. The exam's passage questions ask whose viewpoint a text represents: a king answerable to God alone is Bossuet, and a state's interest above the church is Richelieu.
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