Absolutism

Absolutism is the denomination of a political regime, a part of a historical period, an ideology and a political system (the 'absolute state'), typical of the so-called Old Regime, and characterized by the theoretical claim (with different degrees of realization in the practice) that the political power of the ruler was not subject to any institutional limitation, outside of divine law.It is a unique power from the formal point of view, indivisible, inalienable and inconsequential.

The positive acts of the exercise of powers (legislation, administration and jurisdiction) were supported by the last instance of decision, the monarchy. From the monarch emanated all the powers of the state, not being above but below it; which implies the identification of the person of the absolute king with the State itself:

Status, id est, magistratus ('State, that is, magistrate').

L'Etat, c'est moi ('I am the State').

The Latin phrase, of medieval origin; the French, attributed to Louis XIV.

It should not be confused with totalitarianism, a concept typical of the Contemporary Age. In the regime of totalitarianism, power is concentrated in the State as an organization, and in turn said State is dominated and managed in all its aspects by a political party; this in turn imposes on the community a very defined ideology that permeates all social activities (art, science, economics, behavioral habits). In absolutism there is no «State» properly speaking (and even less a political party) but the State is identified with an individual who exercises authority without the need for any ideology;

The obscure etymological origin of the term "absolutism" includes (in addition to its relation to the verb to absolve) the Latin expression princeps legibus solutus est ('the prince is not bound by law'), originally from Ulpian, which appears in the Digest, and which was used by jurists in the service of Philip IV of France "the Handsome" to strengthen royal power in the context of the reception of Roman law during the Late Middle Ages. Somewhat later, the jurist Balde (Baldo degli Ubaldi, disciple of Bártolo), uses the expression supreme and absolute power of the prince as opposed to the ordinary power of the nobles.The use of the term was generalized in all monarchies, regardless of their effective power, as was the case in the weak Castilian monarchy of Enrique IV "el Impotent", whose chancellery issued documents written in such a pretentious way as this: E yo de mi propio motu and certain science and absolute real power ...

According to Bobbio, in Kantian terms, absolute power consists in that «the sovereign of the State has with respect to his subjects only rights and no (coercive) duties; the sovereign cannot be put on trial for the violation of a law that he himself has drawn up, since he is detached from respect for the popular law (populum legis)». This definition would be common to all natural law scholars, such as Rousseau or Hobbes.

Although the authority of the king is subject to reason, and ultimately justified by the common good, the existence of any external limit or any type of question to his decisions is explicitly denied; similarly to how parental authority is exercised by the pater familia (the king as "father" of his "subjects" —paternalism—). Such justifications in fact impose the unlimited nature of the exercise of power by the king: any abuse can be understood as a necessity imposed for reasons of State.

Absolutism is characterized by the concentration of powers; there is no division of powers like the one that will define the limited monarchy typical of liberal revolutions. Legislative power, judicial power and executive power are exercised by the same authority: the king as supreme magistrate in all areas. Rex, lex (or, in French le Roi, c'est la loi, sometimes expressed as 'the king's word is law'); his decisions are unappealable sentences, and the king's property and life must be given.

Power has a divine character, both in its origin and in its exercise by the king himself, who remains sacred. The divine right theory of royal power (divine right monarchy or theological absolutism) was born in the last quarter of the 16th century, in the context of the wars of religion in France. Although in Europe the deification of the monarch never went as far as in Eastern despotism (which identified the king with God himself), the king always had a certain power over the national churches; not only in those that emerged from the Protestant Reformation, but in the Catholic monarchies, which largely subordinate the Catholic Church itself through regalism, although the relationships between Church and State are highly complex.

Temporarily, the era of absolutism is that of the Old Regime, although those of the late Middle Ages and early Modern Ages cannot be fully identified as absolute monarchies, for which historiography uses the concept of authoritarian monarchy. The most complete model of royal absolutismit was the one defined around Louis XIV, king of France at the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century coexisted with an absolutism that was defined as enlightened despotism. Absolutism survived the bourgeois revolutions or liberal revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, until the 1848 revolution ended the Holy Alliance that since the Congress of Vienna (1814) had imposed the continuity of the "legitimate" kings. » restoring them to their thrones even against the will of their own peoples (“Restoration” of absolutism). The Russian Empire maintained the tsarist autocracy until the February Revolution of 1917.

Theorists of absolutism

Jean Bodin (1530-1596) argued that a king should rule without the need of any outside consent.

James Stuart, King of Scotland and England, regarded the monarch as God's lieutenant (True Law of Free Monarchies, 1598).

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) proposed in his work Leviathan that nations prosper under a Monarchy, not because they have a prince, but because they obey him (Leviathan).

Jacques Bossuet (1627-1704) considered that the monarchy was the most natural form of government, especially if it is hereditary. It was "sacred" and absolute. For him, the king represents the divine Majesty: In kings... you are seeing the image of God (Policy taken from the Holy Scriptures).

Evolution of absolutism

Absolutism had a long process of evolution linked to the emergence of modern states. From the beginning of the fifteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth century there was a first phase or period of absolutism in formation, characterized by the tendency towards the progressive concentration of power in the hands of the monarch, although there were still very clear limitations, especially religious power. The Church was the rector of intellectual and moral life; but the papacy had emerged from its confrontation with the Holy Roman Empire and the Western Schism in great disrepute, which (despite, or precisely because of the efforts of the Renaissance popes to prevent it) explains in good part the Protestant Reformation and the reaction of the so-called Catholic Counter-Reformation. Even the nascent commercial capitalism was subject to ethical limitations around the legitimacy of lending with interest (sin of usury) internalized in the moral concern of the merchants and financiers themselves.

Feudal monarchies, in a limited number of cases (the Kingdom of Portugal, the Catholic Monarchy —Spain—, the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of England) had become authoritarian monarchies, strengthening themselves against the decline of universal powers, and they had achieved a high degree of centralization of power in their hands, giving rise to a new political space, what has been called nation-states of Western Europe.

Faced with the full absolutism that characterizes, at least as a claim, the monarchies of the Modern Age, all kinds of resistance and contestation arose, even in the form of revolts or true revolutions (the War of the Communities of Castile, the Aragonese alterations and the crisis of 1640 in Spain -independence from Portugal, the Catalan revolt, the Masaniello revolt-, the French Fronde, the English Revolution, etc.).

Real or mature absolutism did not arrive until the second half of the 17th century, with the reign of Louis XIV in France.

Theocratic monarchy

The main consequence of the theocratic monarchy was that, since it was the will of God that chose the monarch, he was legitimated to assume all the powers of the State without any limitation other than God's own law. According to Richelieu, who theorized about absolutism during a time plagued by unrest, the subjects of the monarch, including the nobles, should limit themselves to obeying his designs, conceiving the relations between power and the people as vertical relations, of complete subordination. Richelieu argued that only in this way could the monarch guarantee the welfare of the people, and he assumed the Platonic theory that the justice of the State was based on each part dedicating itself solely to its mission and avoiding mixing in the affairs of the others.

In practice, however, this extreme opinion was unrealizable: in the European context, the absolute monarchy had evolved from feudalism, so in practice the will of the monarch was weighed by a multitude of feudal limitations, such as noble privileges and ecclesiastical, secular and territorial statutes, charters. Thus, in the European absolutist theory, as analyzed by Montesquieu, although the monarch dictated all the laws according to his interests, which were confused with those of the State, the privileged groups, that is, the nobles, erected in counselorsand direct assistants of the king in his decisions. The courts of justice (the "parliaments" in France), appeared as a relatively independent administration, and the absolutist state was conceived as a state of laws, which distinguished it from a tyranny.

The handling of religion

In principle, according to the absolutist theory , the King should pull the strings of the church and be its temporary head. In practice, again, the power of the church was too great to take its reins in such a radical way, and although some monarchs, such as Henry VIII of England, managed to gain absolute control over it, although the majority of the European monarchies maintained its influence over the Church in a much more venal and subtle way.

In the case of Catholic nations, tacitly recognizing the supremacy of the papacy in religious matters. However, Catholic monarchs such as Carlos V had obtained the Patronato Regio, which allowed them the management, supervision (and even appointments) in the Church of their imperial jurisdiction. Carlos V was the monarch

“ As you know, the right of ecclesiastical patronage belongs to us throughout the State of the Indies… The dignities, canonries, rations, half rations of all the cathedral churches of the Indies are provided by presentation made by our royal provision, delivered by our council Real de las Indias, and signed in our name... We order and command that this patronage right always be reserved to Us and our Royal Crown,...and that no secular or ecclesiastical person, order or convent, religion or community...for any occasion or cause, be daring to meddle in anything related to the said royal patronage , […]” [ Royal Certificate of Philip II regarding the Patron Rights over all the Churches of the Indies, of June 1, 1574]

Economy and societies

The economic structures, essentially pre-industrial, maintained the continuity of the feudal mode of production or manorial regime in the countryside, the true center of production. Capitalism, which had been born in medieval cities, continued in an initial phase (or transition from feudalism to capitalism) which, despite the age of discoveries that had allowed the creation of a world economy, was restricted to commercial and financial circuits..

Although the relationship of interests and mutual support that could have occurred between absolute monarchy, feudalism and capitalism (or between the different social actors: kings, bourgeois, lords and peasants) has been the subject of notable histo-graphical controversies; In what there is consensus is to call mercantilism the economic thought identifiable with the period of absolutism. The size of the economy on whose resources the monarchy depended was identified with that of a nascent national market, that is, a market whose dimensions coincided with the territory of the monarchy, limited by its political borders, subject to its taxes and commercial legislation, and in which its currency circulated and common weights and measures were accepted; all this through limited advances, claims that were not effectively achieved until the New Regime after the liberal revolutions. According to the bullonist interpretation (ofbullion, gold bullion), the state's wealth was backed by material reserves of precious metals (gold and silver); According to the Colbertist interpretation (of Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV), of a positive trade balance stimulated by an intelligent tariff policy that would force the substitution of imports for an internal production controlled by the king of all kinds of products, but especially of the luxury and strategic products (royal manufactures). All economic measures should aim to increase domestic wealth in order to guarantee the increase in State revenue. Interventionism multiplied regulations and controls, and ignored any concept of a free market. The privileges and monopolies of feudal origin or those newly created by the will of the king,

The stratified society even more closed than in the Middle Ages, gave few opportunities for mobility or social advancement, among which ecclesiastical, university and bureaucratic careers (toga nobility) and the venality of positions or the purchase of titles stood out. Noble. The attraction of the nobility towards the royal court, in addition to putting an end to the decentralization and ruralization typical of the Middle Ages, subjected it to patterns of emulation in luxury, lifestyle and service to the king, whose most complete model was the Palace of Versailles. Internal revolts, the result of particularist resistance and increased social discontent at critical junctures, were relatively frequent.

Historiographical interpretations

For the historian Roland Mousnier, the absolute monarchy is the result of the rivalry of two classes: the bourgeoisie and the nobility. The king arbitrated the conflict, supporting the bourgeoisie and taming the nobility, leading that conflict to a balance that ensured his personal power and unity, order, and hierarchy in government and in the state; which led to total submission and unlimited obedience.

On the contrary, according to Perry Anderson, the absolutist state was never the arbiter between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, much less an instrument of the nascent bourgeoisie against the aristocracy.. Absolutism was in its essence a reorganized and strengthened apparatus of feudal rule, the new instrument of a threatened nobility, which it allowed to continue to hold the domain of political power, keeping the peasant masses at the base of the social hierarchy and the bourgeoisie emerging outside the ruling classes. Paradoxically, according to this historian, although the absolutist state was an instrument for the protection of property and the privileges of the feudal aristocracy, the means it used simultaneously favored the basic interests of the nascent mercantile and manufacturing classes, making possible the development of the capitalist structures.

Some sections of Anderson taken from the text The Absolutist State in the West: Absolutism was essentially that: a reorganized and enhanced apparatus of feudal domination, designed to keep the peasant masses in their traditional social position.

Mr. Anderson also quotes Althusser in his text: The political regime of the absolute monarchy is only the new political form necessary for the maintenance of feudal domination and exploitation in a period of development of a market economy.

The monarchical states of the Renaissance were first and foremost modernized instruments for the maintenance of noble rule over the rural masses. P. Anderson.

Institutions

Treasury, bureaucracy, diplomacy and professional army, all of them served by civil servants or military men who owe to their training and professionalism, and to the will of the king (and not to their own wealth or nobility) the maintenance of their position; they were the most important instruments used by the absolute monarchy to strengthen and increase its power, both internally and externally. The enormous costs of a navy and a permanent armies of mercenaries equipped with ever more modern firearms implied the disappearance of feudal retinues, recruited by vassal fidelity. Military power went from being dispersed in the nobility to being centralized in the king. The taxation necessary to support all the expenses of the State and the monarch, among which those that stood out were military expenses, public salaries and court luxuries, included all kinds of taxes, direct and indirect, ordinary and extraordinary, in addition to recourse to public debt, whose growing interest ended up becoming an insoluble problem that led to periodic bankruptcies. A body of ambassadors dealt with the increasingly complex military, commercial and marriage treaties (all European royal houses were related to form or maintain alliances and territorial groups). From the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the new concept of international relations based on the balance of powers gave a new impetus to the ministries of foreign affairs, and the embassies ceased to be informal envoys to acquire authentic relevance within the regimes absolutists. direct and indirect, ordinary and extraordinary, in addition to resorting to public debt, whose growing interests ended up becoming an insoluble problem that led to periodic bankruptcies. A body of ambassadors dealt with the increasingly complex military, commercial and marriage treaties (all European royal houses were related to form or maintain alliances and territorial groups). From the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the new concept of international relations based on the balance of powers gave a new impetus to the ministries of foreign affairs, and the embassies ceased to be informal envoys to acquire authentic relevance within the regimes absolutists. direct and indirect, ordinary and extraordinary, in addition to resorting to public debt, whose growing interests ended up becoming an insoluble problem that led to periodic bankruptcies. A body of ambassadors dealt with the increasingly complex military, commercial and marriage treaties (all European royal houses were related to form or maintain alliances and territorial groups). From the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the new concept of international relations based on the balance of powers gave a new impetus to the ministries of foreign affairs, and the embassies ceased to be informal envoys to acquire authentic relevance within the regimes absolutists. whose growing interests ended up becoming an insoluble problem that led to periodic bankruptcies. A body of ambassadors dealt with the increasingly complex military, commercial and marriage treaties (all European royal houses were related to form or maintain alliances and territorial groups). From the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the new concept of international relations based on the balance of powers gave a new impetus to the ministries of foreign affairs, and the embassies ceased to be informal envoys to acquire authentic relevance within the regimes absolutists. whose growing interests ended up becoming an insoluble problem that led to periodic bankruptcies. A body of ambassadors dealt with the increasingly complex military, commercial and marriage treaties (all European royal houses were related to form or maintain alliances and territorial groups). From the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the new concept of international relations based on the balance of powers gave a new impetus to the ministries of foreign affairs, and the embassies ceased to be informal envoys to acquire authentic relevance within the regimes absolutists. commercial and matrimonial (all European royal houses were related to form or maintain alliances and territorial groups). From the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the new concept of international relations based on the balance of powers gave a new impetus to the ministries of foreign affairs, and the embassies ceased to be informal envoys to acquire authentic relevance within the regimes absolutists. commercial and matrimonial (all European royal houses were related to form or maintain alliances and territorial groups). From the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the new concept of international relations based on the balance of powers gave a new impetus to the ministries of foreign affairs, and the embassies ceased to be informal envoys to acquire authentic relevance within the regimes absolutists.

Limits of absolute power

The political model of the absolute monarchy has as its central feature the concentration of all power in the king without control or limits of any kind. There should be no powers or "intermediate bodies" that would hinder the direct relationship between the king and each of his subjects. Despite these principles, both the material conditions of the time (which make impossible the real existence of a power exercised continuously in a vast territory, without efficient communications -especially in colonial empires, where laws are obeyed but not comply-), such as the incontestable ideological, economic and social power of the Church and the persistence of the stately regime and particularist customs and institutions (internal customs, multiplicity of languages, currencies, weights and measures, foral privileges, Courts of the different peninsular kingdoms in Spain, Judicial Parliaments in France, Parliament in England), determined that, in fact, the power of absolute kings had limits; whether or not they are explicitly stated.

In legal terms, there are three limitations to absolutism:

• The divine law, to which the king, like all Christians, is subject.
• The parts of the law that cannot be subject to legislation by the king, but are considered to be natural law and are determined by theoretical speculation by jurists, such as the law of nations, which regulates both the rights of alien peoples, those the king has to abide when engaging in international relations (even in case of war); or certain questions of private law of internal validity, such as questions related to property, inheritance, entailment, etc. Those that are linked to the direct exercise of government were displaced by the monarchs in the process of consolidating absolutism, such as the recourse to courts or parliaments for the definition of certain measures (in France the Estates General ceased to be cited in 1614, and they only met again in 1789).
• The fundamental laws of the Kingdom: a set of rules related to the foundation of the State that do not depend on the will of the king, but are based on tradition, on a kind of "historical Constitution" (whose diffuse recognition will later justify the drafting of texts liberal constitutional provisions, such as the 1812 Constitution). Within these principles, not necessarily written, are:
  • The principle of legitimacy, a consequence of the need for a notion of continuity of the State, which, although identified with the person of the king, cannot cease to be independent of his physical person: when the king dies, the crown must pass to his successor (which implied complex ritualizations: the double body of the king, proclamations of the type The king is dead, long live the king). The king could not modify the law of succession that he had legitimized himself to accede to the throne. Despite this, some were changed, such as the Salic law that traditionally governed the French monarchy and, after the arrival of the Bourbons, in the Spanish.
  • The need to establish a regency in cases such as the king's minority or disability.
  • The principle of religion; which is not essentially a feature of absolutism. The confessional nature of the State implies that the head of the State has the confession of the State. This was especially true of Catholic monarchies, whether they were absolute or not. The conversion of Henry IV of France to be able to be king gave a clear example (Paris is worth a mass). By contrast, in Germany the Schmalkaldic War had made the formation of any kind of absolute monarchy (or any kind of centralized state) impossible; and the opposite principle was established cuius regio eius religio(The religion of the king is that of the kingdom). In the case of the kingdom of England, the possibility of a Catholic accessing the throne was seen as a threat of absolutism; with which the identification of the king with the head of the Anglican Church was one of the features of the parliamentary monarchy.

Exponents of absolutism

1. Louis XIV of France
2. Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII of France
3. Philip V of Spain
4. Charles XII of Sweden
5. James II of England
6. Charles II of England
7. Frederick William I of Prussia
8. Peter I of Russia
9. Ferdinand VII of Spain
10. Gustav III of Sweden
11. Charles VI of Austria
12. Mary I of Scotland

The French Example

The most characteristic example of an absolute monarchy is that of the French monarchy, which also demonstrates how bringing down the feudal regime was not so simple.The phrase L'état, c'est moi ('I am the State'), is the famous phrase of Louis XIV, one of the most famous absolute monarchs of France.

France in the fifteenth century was a mosaic of regions with different traditions, privileges and legal regimes. The tendency of the French monarchy to centralize power appears especially after the end of the Hundred Years' War. After the English invasion and the defeat of the old nobility at the Battle of Agincourt, their prestige is seriously damaged, something that is used by the French monarchs to increase their influence and power. Until then, the kings of France had been considered as a primus inter paresby the rest of the French nobility, and his royal influence was limited to the patrimonial territories of the Capetian house, that is, the Île de France. The first monarch to develop the centralist tendency was Louis XI, who used multiple intrigues to extend his authority throughout all those territories that made up 16th-century France. His successors continued this policy, which happened with reducing the power of the nobles in their jurisdictional lordships and the development of a centralized administration. However, this trend collided with important communication problems: usually, royal orders did not arrive in a timely manner to all corners of France, and therefore the power of local lords was favored.

As for the economy, as in any absolutist regime, it was mercantile and the monarch actively intervened in it. As far as society is concerned, it was divided into orders or estates, understood as the social and political condition of a collective nature that is defined by a set of freedoms. Throughout the 16th century successive monarchs increased their influence, but they were expected to act according to divine law and natural law, that is, to respect feudal customs.

Throughout the seventeenth century or the Ministries, as it is called in France since two prime ministers ruled instead of a king, Richelieu and Mazarin, royal authority tended towards centralism, and absolutism was underpinned: taxes were standardized, the autonomy of provincial Parliaments is restricted, hitherto independent territories such as Navarra, Lorraine and Béarn are integrated into France, the central administration is developed, the army is reformed and professionalized. Immersed in a deep economic crisis and in the midst of great revolts such as the peasant rebellion of the Croquantsor the aristocratic rebellion of La Fronde, which apparently weakened the King's authority, in the long run his triumph over the rebels underpinned absolutism, and by the time Louis XIV comes of age, the monarch's authority is undisputed.

After the death of Mazarin, Louis XIV establishes his personal government and goes above everything that exists and imposes himself by appointing the ministers of his choice to carry out vital functions, which, accompanied by a heavy bureaucratic system without few innovations, make of what life will be like in France at that time.

As for its economic plan, it has an economy based eminently on agriculture, with a predominance of the feudal origin system, with customs and high taxes that can be paid in spices or tithes according to what is harvested by the peasants. When there are bad harvests, the country goes hungry, but the many taxes are not reduced as they must pay for the continuous wars of the monarch as well as the luxurious lifestyle of the east and the court. To partially support the expenses of the court, the royal manufactures were created by Colbert, destined to satisfy the demand for high-luxury products by the new bourgeoisie and the other royal houses. However, the workers continue to be organized in unions according to their trade and with little capitalist consciousness.

Socially, France had a highly stratified society at the time and with privileges only for nobles and clerics, who distinguished them in terms of law and taxes. The underprivileged, including peasants and the Third Estate, were subject to all taxes and were under the rule of a much less benevolent law. They were expected to obey and respect the other two estates, which they actually supported financially.