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History of European Ideas
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A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its
Historiography
Cesare Cuttica
To cite this article: Cesare Cuttica (2013) A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its
Historiography, History of European Ideas, 39:2, 287-300, DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2012.679078
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2. A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its Historiography
CESARE CUTTICA*
Département d’études des pays anglophones, Université Paris 8-Vincennes,
Saint-Denis Cedex, France
Summary
This essay closely examines the highly contested but widely employed historio-
graphical category ‘absolutism’. Why are scholars so divided on whether it is even
legitimate to use the term and, if they agree to do so, why are they still much at
odds in explaining what it is? What are the main historiographical currents in the
study of absolutism? Is it the same thing to speak of absolutism in regard to the
practices of early modern European monarchies and with reference to the political
ideas of so-called absolutist theorists? By addressing these questions through the
methodology of intellectual history, this essay provides a comprehensive account
of debates on absolutism and, at the same time, suggests that further work needs
to be carried out on its theoretical aspects. In this respect, the author will propose
a series of key ideas and principles which are meant to encapsulate the core of an
early modern doctrine of absolutist monarchical sovereignty. It will also be argued
that, when studying political thought, the term ‘absolutism’ might be abandoned
in favour of the plural ‘absolutisms’ as a better way of understanding the past, its
languages, opinions, people. In so doing, a thorough analysis of what political
absolutism(s) is will be set forth, and a series of more general considerations on
history-writing will also be advanced.
Keywords: Absolutism; arbitrary power; contextualism; early modern; historical
methodology; intellectual history; isms; political languages.
Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
2. Absolutism: A Contested Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
3. Absolutism between Theory and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
4. Absolutism and the Notion of ‘Arbitrary Power’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
5. Absolutism: A Proposal for a New Methodological Approach . . . . . . . . 296
6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
1. Introduction
Arthur O. Lovejoy warned that isms are ‘trouble-breeding and usually thought-
obscuring terms, which one sometimes wishes to see expunged from the vocabulary of
the philosopher and the historian altogether’.1
Much more trenchantly, Nicholas
Henshall proclaimed that to study early modern political history means to remove
*E-mail: cesare.cuttica@eui.eu
1
Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, MA, 1936), 5.
History of European Ideas, 2013
Vol. 39, No. 2, 287300, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679078
# 2013 Taylor Francis

3. from the historian’s toolkit ‘a series of early nineteenth-century ‘‘isms’’, which still
obscure the differences between early modern consciousness and our own’.2
According to Henshall, terms like ‘‘‘liberalism’’, ‘‘socialism’’, ‘‘communism’’,
‘‘nationalism’’ and ‘‘absolutism’’ met the needs of political and social polemic in
the 1820s and 1830s’, but they do not help historical recovery of the past and its
meanings. Henshall disparagingly argued that ‘[t]he beauty of ‘‘isms’’ is that
everything can be made to fit them’: they are generalisations which are used as
historical tools.3
One of the most historiographically popular and, at the same time, most
contested isms is ‘absolutism’. To provide evidence of the type of vehement reactions
this category provokes within the scholarly mainstream and at different academic
latitudes, a small sample will prove telling. Thus, the French historian Georges
Durand answered the question ‘What is Absolutism?’ in reference to Louis XIV’s era
by contemptuously defining the ism-category as ‘that empty word into which
everyone reads the meaning he wants, that favorite cliché of historians in a hurry’.4
On this side of the Channel, Nicholas Henshall*having identified the first use of
absolutism in 1823 at the time of French debates concerning conflict between liberals
and the repressive monarchy in Spain*maintained that the concept of absolutism
originated with the French Revolution, whose goal was to condemn everything
associated with the ancien régime.5
Therefore, he was adamant that to subscribe to it
corresponds ‘to accept[ing] the propaganda of revolutionaries as historical reality’.6
On the same plane as ‘Renaissance’ and ‘Enlightenment’, absolutism is employed by
historians to mean ‘whatever’ they ‘want it to mean’. Moreover, absolutism*in this
differing from the other two categories mentioned*was not a contemporary term.7
In light of this, Henshall drastically concluded that absolutism ‘is an impressive
excuse for sloppy thinking*which is why it will probably continue to be popular’.8
In
a similar vein, the American scholar A. London Fell argued that ‘[t]he mystique of
the absolutist state’ allegedly conveyed by the label absolutism ‘must be dispelled by
more precise categories of analysis based on the original historical texts and terms,
especially those revealing the state’s foundation in public legislation’.9
Pace these interpretations, we nonetheless believe that many abhorred isms are
endowed with sound explanatory power. In particular, we think that the much-
debated ‘absolutism’ can be used to describe a decisive portion of political thinking
2
Nicholas Henshall, ‘Early Modern Absolutism 1550-1700: Political Reality or Propaganda?’, in
Der Absolutismus*ein Mythos? Strukturwandel monarchischer Herrschaft in West- und Mitteleuropa (ca.
15501700), edited by Ronald G. Asch and Heinz Duchhardt (Cologne, 1996), 2553 (49).
3
Henshall, ‘Early Modern Absolutism’, in Der Absolutismus, edited by Asch and Duchhardt, 51.
4
Georges Durand, ‘What is Absolutism?’, in Louis XIV and Absolutism, edited by Ragnhild Hatton
(London, 1976), 1836 (18). See also Yann Fauchois, ‘L’absolutisme: un colosse aux pieds d’argile’, in
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, L’histoire grande ouverte. Hommages à Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, edited by
André Burguière, Joseph Goy and Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide (Paris, 1997), 13946.
5
Henshall, ‘Early Modern Absolutism’, in Der Absolutismus, edited by Asch and Duchhardt, 49.
6
Henshall, ‘Early Modern Absolutism’, in Der Absolutismus, edited by Asch and Duchhardt, 48.
7
Henshall, ‘Early Modern Absolutism’, in Der Absolutismus, edited by Asch and Duchhardt, 52.
8
Henshall, ‘Early Modern Absolutism’, in Der Absolutismus, edited by Asch and Duchhardt, 53.
9
A. London Fell, Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State, Volume 5: Modern Origins,
Developments, and Perspectives against the Background of ‘Machiavellism’, Book II: Modern Major ‘Isms’
(17th18th Centuries) (Westport, CT and London, 1996), 5. London Fell also spoke of a plethora of other
isms as constituting subcategories to absolutism: ‘patriarchalism, royalism, monarchism, Machiavellism,
statism’; see Fell, Origins of Legislative Sovereignty, 5.
288 C. Cuttica

4. expressed in various mediums in the early modern period across Europe.10
If
Lovejoy’s initial remark sounds too harsh, his other consideration whereby isms ‘are
names of complexes, not of simples’ could not be more appropriate to describe what
this paper attempts to show.11
Absolutism is both troubling as a historiographical
category and complex as a compound of different elements. The following pages deal
with these two considerations and advance some suggestions.
In so doing, this essay will ask why scholars are so divided on whether it is even
legitimate to use the term and, if they agree to do so, why they are still much at odds
in explaining what it is; what are the main historiographical currents in the study of
absolutism; whether it is the same thing to speak of absolutism in regard to the
practices of early modern European monarchies and with reference to the political
ideas of so-called absolutist theorists. By addressing these issues through the
methodology of intellectual history, a comprehensive account of debates on
absolutism will be provided. At the same time, it will be suggested that further
work needs to be carried out on its theoretical aspects. A first proposal in this
direction will be here put forward.
2. Absolutism: A Contested Historiography
Prior to 1770 the term absolutism did not exist, but absolute monarchy, monarchia
absoluta, pouvoir absolu did.12
What did historians make of this fact? The study of
absolutism*whose literature is immense13
*has been informed by three major
perspectives: the ‘conservative’, for which it has always existed;14
the ‘Marxist’, for
which it was an epoch between feudalism and capitalism, and one contaminated by
10
Although the prevalent focus of this essay is on English, French and Spanish texts as they were con-
ceived under the three great and most powerful monarchies in early modern Europe, I am aware of
German historiographical reviews of (the use of) absolutism and of the historical rhetoric of monarchia
absoluta pursued in major contributions by scholars such as Horst Dreitzel and Andreas Gestrich, or,
more recently, by Dagmar Freist; see Horst Dreitzel, Absolutismus und ständische Verfassung in Deutsch-
land: ein Beitrag zu Kontinuität und Diskontinuität der politischen Theorie in der frühen Neuzeit (Mainz,
1992); Andreas Gestrich, Absolutismus und Öffentlichkeit: politische Kommunikation in Deutschland zu
Beginn des 18 Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1994); Dagmar Freist, Absolutismus (Darmstadt, 2008). Indeed, in
the 1830s to 1840s German historians established absolutism as a central term in the historiography of the
State in the German context. Another fundamental premise of our piece is that we have shaped our
considerations on the absolutist canon of political thought, especially in relation to the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries (c. 15701640). This means that, although many claims here set out retain their
validity for later periods and historical milieus, there occurred significant changes to both the practice and
the theory of absolute power during the age of Louis XIV (16431715). As for the former, one should
consider the ‘dialogue’ between the French and the Habsburg monarchies struggling for leadership in
Europe and the influence of this relationship on the political rhetoric of this later period. As for the latter,
be it sufficient to refer to the cameralist tradition whereby monarchist authors writing in eighteenth-
century Habsburg Austria concentrated on the good administration of the State, Polizey, economic rati-
onality, patriotic citizenry and enlightened-State apparatus; see for example László Kontler, ‘Polizey and
Patriotism: Joseph Von Sonnenfels and the Legitimacy of Enlightened Monarchy in the Gaze of Eighte-
enth-Century State Sciences’, in Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe, edited by Cesare
Cuttica and Glenn Burgess (London, 2012), 7590.
11
Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 6.
12
Wolfgang Schmale, ‘The Future of ‘‘Absolutism’’ in Historiography: Recent Tendencies’, Journal of
Early Modern History, 2 (1998), 192202 (195).
13
For an excellent summary see Fanny Cosandey and Robert Descimon, L’absolutisme en France. Histoire
et historiographie (Paris, 2002), especially 193240.
14
See for example Roland Mousnier, ‘The Exponents and Critics of Absolutism’, in The New Cambridge
Modern History, edited by J. P. Cooper, 13 vols (Cambridge, 1971, first published in 1970), IV, 10431;
François Olivier-Martin, L’absolutisme français (Paris, 1988).
289
A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its Historiography

5. and linked to both;15
the ‘revisionist’, for which there was no absolutism and,
therefore, we should not speak of it.16
Besides these three consolidated schools, more
recently historians have taken positions which can be divided into two broad camps:
those who reject the notion of absolutism per se and speak of the absolutist model in
terms of social collaboration (between a dependent king and an increasingly powerful
and decisively influential nobility) and those who have challenged the former
approach. Amongst the first can be cited William Beik, Sir George Clark, James B.
Collins, Sharon Kettering, Roger Mettam, Julian Swann, Peter Wilson, Hillay
Zmora. As for the second group, John Brewer, Michael J. Braddick, Daryl Dee, Brian
M. Downing, Philip Gorski, John J. Hurt, John A. Lynn can be mentioned.17
Whereas these interpretations are largely dominated by the analysis of culture,
politics, diplomacy and dynastic structures, much work still needs to be carried out
on absolutist political thought in its historical contexts.18
Whilst absolutism has been
studied in its practical (legislative, executive, administrative) dimensions, there are
grounds for further scholarly work on the relationship between the theories and the
diversity of contemporary arguments, as well as on the interplay between the
languages of absolutist theory and the realities of social experience and political
practice.19
Whilst the risk behind the study of political thought is always that of
pursuing a history of ideologies and fixed abstract types rather than a history of ideas
as they were formulated, contested and responded to in texts, pamphlets, treatises,
sermons, letters, it is nonetheless important to give more specific attention to the
theoretical aspects of what scholars label ‘absolutism’.
Thus, if for David Parker ‘absolutism was always in the making, but never made’,
and was ‘no more than a conservative philosophy’ aimed at affirming royal authority
in a world confronted by rapid change,20
Fanny Cosandey and Robet Descimon
acknowledged that absolute monarchy constituted ‘une immense formation dis-
cursive dotée d’efficacité historique’.21
Such a discursive mode did not simply convey
the idea of a display of authority, but it enunciated a proper system of government.22
Etienne Thuau distinguished between a philosophy of monarchy (theorists and
lawyers) and a religion of monarchy (parties, ceremonies, etc.).23
For Marc Bloch
absolutism was a sort of religion. The prince embodied a lay part and a religious one
too: the image of priest and that of king coexisted. Likewise, the monarch was
commonly represented as Roi-thaumaturge.24
According to Nannerl Keohane, in
France there was always a tension between the personalisation of kingship*whereby
the sovereign was depicted as the individual who was superior because of his qualities
15
See for example Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974), especially 4359.
16
See for example Nicholas Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern
European Monarchy (London, 1992).
17
For a list of these historians’ works see J. P. Sommerville, ‘Early Modern Absolutism in Practice and
Theory’, in Monarchism and Absolutism, edited by Cuttica and Burgess, 11730.
18
On these issues see especially Cesare Cuttica and Glenn Burgess, ‘Introduction’, in Monarchism and
Absolutism in Early Modern Europe, edited by Cuttica and Burgess, 117.
19
For an exception see for example J. H. Burns, Absolutism: The History of an Idea, Creighton Trust
Lecture (London, 1986).
20
David Parker, The Making of French Absolutism (London, 1983), xvi.
21
Cosandey and Descimon, L’absolutisme en France, 191.
22
See Marc Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges. Étude sur le caractère surnaturel attribué à la puissance royale,
particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (Paris, 1961; first published in 1924).
23
Etienne Thuau, Raison d’État et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu (Paris,1966), 14.
24
See Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges, passim.
290 C. Cuttica

6. and, therefore, one who had to be obeyed and adored*and a process of abstraction
of kingship where he was associated with the purity and public presence of the
State.25
Although ‘[t]here was a vast gap between such claims [to kingly absolute
power] and political reality’, for Henry Kamen the theory ‘helped to justify
subsequent efforts by princes to free themselves from the control not only of their
elites but also, most importantly, of the Church and papacy, which had also made far-
reaching claims to political authority’.26
De facto, absolutism was ‘an ideal
construction, in which thinkers attempted to create order out of the disorder they
saw around them’: this means that ‘the theories are a significant attempt to deal with
a real problem’.27
On his part, Helmut G. Koenigsberger thought that ‘[t]he growth of
absolutism [. . .] could be furthered either by the secularisation of church property
where the Reformation was introduced or by an effective alliance with the old church
where it was rejected’.28
Confronted by divergent interpretations, the intellectual historian delineates a
documented picture of problems, questions or issues engendered by debates on
monarchical authority and reflected in the literature through which various
narratives of power emerged in the republic of letters of countries like England,
France, Italy, Spain, Prussia, Denmark. Whilst several commentators have looked to
absolutism as ‘an essentially negative term’ which explains more about what it was
not than about what it was, our purpose is precisely to establish a little more clearly
what absolutism means and what it is; that is to say, what thinkers thought absolute
power was and what they meant by it.29
Departing from those interpretations that
consider absolutism ‘by definition an abstraction’,30
our approach recalls the research
on monarchism recently conducted by other scholars.31
This methodological
perspective*combined with Bloch’s old but still valid invitation to concentrate on
second-rate authors, writing eulogies on monarchy, treatises on royal authority,
dissertations on the origins and authority of kings so abundantly produced in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe*aims at teasing out the presence and
status of some relevant and recurrent features of the practice as well as the theory of
absolutism.32
25
Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Pri-
nceton, NJ, 1980), 17. But why a shift between the two occurred is not explored.
26
Henry Kamen, Early Modern European Society (London and New York, 2000), 238.
27
Kamen, Early Modern European Society, 23839.
28
H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘Monarchies and Parliaments in Early Modern Europe Dominium Regale or
Dominium Politicum et Regale’, Theory and Society, 5 (1978), 191217 (208).
29
Richard Bonney, ‘Absolutism: What’s in a Name?’, French History, 1 (1987), 93117 (95). Amongst the
exceptions see for example J. Russell Major, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French
Kings, Nobles Estates (Baltimore, MD and London, 1994), xxi; J. P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots:
Politics and Ideology in England 16031640, second edition (London and New York, 1999), 228.
30
E. H. Kossmann, ‘The Singularity of Absolutism’, in Louis XIVand Absolutism, edited by Hatton, 317
(5, 1112).
31
See Hans Blom, John Christian Laursen and Luisa Simonutti, ‘Introduction’, in Monarchisms in the Age
of Enlightenment: Liberty, Patriotism and the Common Good, edited by Hans Blom, John Christian La-
ursen and Luisa Simonutti (Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NYand London, 2007), 316. They have identified four
models of monarchism: ‘Enlightened’, ‘Christian’, ‘Millenarian’, and ‘Absolute’. We would suggest that
other possible categories include: ‘theocratic’ (Lutheran, German), ‘Baroque’ (made of men*ministers*
such as Oxenstierna, Laud, Richelieu, Mazarin, Colbert and Olivares) and ‘national’ (unlimited duty of
obedience to a national sovereign).
32
Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges, 346.
291
A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its Historiography

7. 3. Absolutism between Theory and Practice
Very often the study of absolutism is the victim of confusion between theory (the
arguing out) and practice (the acting out). This concerns the complex problem of
establishing the relationship between ideas and events and their mutual influence.
Although the analysis of absolutism here undertaken is one that focuses on the ideal
descriptions of how a government should function rather than on how it actually
worked, a few words on what factors can be considered as central to any absolutist
policy are in order.
Amongst the latter are the role of centralisation of authority; the creation of a
bureaucratic apparatus; the monocratic nature of power; the elaborate ceremonials
centred on the sacredness of power (e.g. the sacre, the lit de justice, funerals the royal
touch); the place of the army and that of the fiscal structure; the influence of the
court; the role of diplomacy and dynasty; the function of the theatre, the arts, ballet,
court festivals, masques and architecture in the consolidation of power (the
theatricality of power and the power of sight); the role of secularisation as much
as that of religion (especially Catholicism and Lutheranism) in the development and
expansion of absolute monarchies.
As for theory, absolutist thinkers subscribed to some of the following principles as
well as concepts:33
the absolute and indivisible power of monarchs; the unconditional
obedience of subjects; the conflict between the power of the king (his will) and the
ancient and immemorial liberties, rights of Parliament and privileges of assemblies; a
strong criticism of democracy (the people cannot govern because they represent an
irrational and headless multitude, so that popular government is the worst polity); the
rejection of natural rights theories and the idea of the natural freedom of mankind;
the derivation of power from God whereby the king is responsible for his decisions
and actions to Him only; the formulation of monarchy as the best of all governments,
the most perfect and natural (oneness to be found in Nature); notions of the
monarch’s sovereignty as inalienable, hereditary and not elective nor mixed or
limited.34
Moreover, it was traditionally stated that the absolute king held for himself
some important powers: to make laws without the aid of any intermediate body; to
condemn to death and regulate life; to wage war and stipulate peace; to coin money;
to appoint ministers and magistrates; to levy taxes and impositions. The king was
also reputed to be above the law.35
His grace granted the estates or the Parliament the
right to propose new legislation or present grievances. His will was infallible and he
could not be accountable for his deeds to the will of the community artificially
mediated through customary or fundamental laws. The ruler’s wisdom was universal
as well as his rationality. Therefore, his actions inevitably conformed to ideals of
divine and natural justice. In taking his decisions, he was protected by the medieval
doctrine of the mysteries of State, which pertained exclusively to him as his own
33
This is not at all to say that all absolutists, without distinction, thought and adhered to all the things
mentioned in the next paragraph. Rather, it is to claim that all of those things belong to an absolutist
theoretical framework: they were obviously not held by every absolutist, as some of them, for instance,
denied that there was any conflict between the monarch’s will and immemorial liberties, and some
(a minority, though) agreed with Thomas Hobbes in grounding their position on natural rights theories
and the original freedom of mankind.
34
It is, however, important to recognise that conquest and usurpation were often considered as the means
through which power had been obtained and that this did not infringe or diminish its absoluteness.
35
In another essay, we hope to give an account of how many of the features listed above as defining the
power of the absolute king apply to absolute sovereigns in general.
292 C. Cuttica

8. business in which subjects or counselling bodies could not meddle.36
Some of these
ideas were seized by a series of phrases to which authors frequently resorted to
describe the absoluteness of the king’s legislative power (legibus solutus, lex loquens,
quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem) and his authority (majestas absoluta, summa
potestas, potestas perpetua, potestas legibus soluta, nam regia maiestas non moritur).
The king was both the voice and the eye of the kingdom.
Other pivotal traits of the absolutist framework were that the form of government
could not be subject to discussion because it was a monarchy where power was
transmitted from the incumbent ruler to the male heir via primogeniture; power
stemmed from God: Bible, Nature and history confirmed the divine origin of power
(this often generated contrast between monarchies’ absolute power and the
Church’s); sovereignty was exclusively in the hands of the king; in contrast to
tyrants, kings*fathers and shepherds of their people*were in tune with God’s
commandments; monarchy was the best regime of all; tyranny was better than
anarchy.37
To these can be added the identification of the king with the monarchy, the
State, the patria (fatherland). Indeed, from the late sixteenth century onwards in
countries like England and France, the sovereign became to be portrayed as patria
ipsa. The king was not only superior, but he was immortal (not his body*persona
personalis, but his dignity*persona idealis).38
Despite the centrality occupied in absolutist discourse39
by arguments concerning
the origins of government (this could entail popular delegation, translation or
election),40
the focus of many authors was often on the method of government.41
So,
together with decrying the dangers of popular participation in the political process,
absolutists underscored the idea that power was exclusively the affair of very few
people. Accordingly, in many cases they couched their works in the language of the
theory of order (where the hierarchical element was predominant). Besides, political
absolutism*shaped by the notions of power42
and by the configuration of authority
delineated in the preceding pages*was trans-confessional in that both Catholics and
Protestants (of various denominations) embraced it. Religious identity and political
theory were not necessarily connected and/or juxtaposed.
36
See for example Ernst H. Kantorowicz, ‘Mysteries of State: An Absolutist Concept and its Late Me-
dieval Origins’, The Harvard Theological Review, 48 (1955), 6591; Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two
Bodies (Princeton, NJ, 1957). See also L’État Baroque 1610-1652, edited by Henry Méchoulan (Paris,
1985).
37
See Thuau, Raison d’État et pensée politique, pp. 15-16.
38
On some of these points see for example J. H. M. Salmon, The French Religious Wars in English Political
Thought (Oxford, 1959); Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 2: The
Age of Reformation, 2 vols (Cambridge, 2009, first published in 1978); J. A. Fernández Santamarı́a, Reason
of State and Statecraft in Spanish Political Thought, 1595-1640 (Lanham, MD, 1983); The Cambridge
History of Political Thought 1450-1700, edited by J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie (Cambridge, 1991); Pablo
Fernández Albaladejo, Fragmentos de monarquı́a: trabajos de historia politica (Madrid, 1992); Sommer-
ville, Royalists and Patriots; Antonio Feros, Kingship and Favoritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598-1621
(Cambridge, 2000); European Political Thought 1450-1700: Religion, Law and Philosophy, edited by Howell
A. Lloyd, Glenn Burgess and Simon Hodson (New Haven, CT and London, 2007).
39
As for its sources, biblical models, classical ideals, history, analogical reasoning, Roman law, the fathers
of the Church and modern authors were all employed.
40
This also implied references to coordination theory, descending and ascending theories of power. On the
latter see for example John Sanderson, ‘But the People’s Creatures’: The Philosophical Basis of the English
Civil War (Manchester, 1989).
41
See the next paragraph.
42
Puissance is the capacity/faculty to act, whilst pouvoir involves the authority to do so; see Cosandey and
Descimon, L’absolutisme en France, 131.
293
A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its Historiography

9. Despite its width, this picture is not complete. It, in fact, highlights the need to
investigate the relationship between absolutism and the following subjects: patri-
archalism; republicanism; patriotism; liberty (e.g. intellectual liberty and freedom of
opinion); property (protection of subjects’ property); toleration; scientific develop-
ments; the ethical sphere (both public and private). In what follows we take a step in
this direction by suggesting how to enhance the study of early modern absolutist
doctrines. To do so we will explore a neglected aspect of them.
4. Absolutism and the Notion of ‘Arbitrary Power’
Within the theoretically multifaceted absolutist paradigm, we now concentrate on the
little-studied notion of ‘arbitrary power’ so as to open a new window onto the
landscape of political absolutism. Although rejected by several absolutists who saw in
it the sign of a monarchy turning into a tyranny, the legitimacy of arbitrary power
was put forward by some of them. This occurred with the patriarchalist Sir Robert
Filmer (15881653), author of the notorious Patriarcha (composed in the 1610s to
1620s but unpublished until 1680).43
In this book, Filmer claimed the absolute
supremacy of monarchs since they held the same authority as Adam, to whom God
had assigned as first king on earth absolute power over all creatures. From the
progenitor of mankind, power had passed on to kings through the ancient patriarchs.
Filmer attacked all ideas of the natural equality of mankind and categorically denied
the right to resist the supreme authority of kings.
For Filmer, to govern was related not only to the two notions of ‘principality and
power (arxy)’, but also to that of ‘beginning (principium)’. Hence ‘prince’ and
‘principality’ embodied the idea of the first stages of government. As creation had
‘made man prince of his posterity’,44
so the lawmaker*not the law*was the ‘primum
mobile’ of the political universe.45
The ‘culmen or apex potestatis’ resided in the
monarch.46
Most importantly, through the Adamite paradigm, Sir Robert fused
absolute and arbitrary power.47
Should ‘a king’ be bound by ‘human laws’, it would
be ‘impossible for him to have supreme power amongst men’. Indeed, even ‘a popular
government [. . .] cannot be one minute without an arbitrary power freed from all
human laws’. Filmer explicitly proclaimed that it would be inconceivable ‘for any
government at all to be in the world without an arbitrary power’. As he succinctly
put it, ‘[i]t is not power except it be arbitrary’.48
The king conceived as lex loquens
and legibus solutus*that is, unrestrained by any external (papal) or internal
43
On Filmer see Gordon J. Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought: The Authoritarian Family and
Political Speculation and Attitudes Especially in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1975); James Daly,
Sir Robert Filmer and English Political Thought (Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY and London, 1979); J. P.
Sommerville, ‘Introduction’, in Robert Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Writings, edited by J. P. Sommerville
(Cambridge, 1991), viixxxvii; Cesare Cuttica, Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653) and the Patriotic Monarch:
Patriarchalism in Seventeenth-Century Political Thought (Manchester, forthcoming 2012).
44
Robert Filmer, ‘Patriarcha or the Naturall Power of Kinges Defended against the Unnatural Liberty of
the People’, in Patriarcha, 168 (6).
45
Filmer, ‘The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy’, in Patriarcha, 13171 (137).
46
Filmer, ‘Anarchy of a Limited Monarchy’, in Patriarcha, 136.
47
Filmer, ‘Anarchy of a Limited Monarchy’, in Patriarcha, 160. According to James Daly, seventeenth-
century English royalists separated ‘absolute’ and ‘arbitrary’, so that Filmer was an exception; see James
Daly, ‘The Idea of Absolute Monarchy in Seventeenth-Century England’, Historical Journal, 21 (1978),
22750 (232, 23940, 248).
48
Robert Filmer, ‘Observations Concerning The Originall of Goverment, Upon Mr Hobs Leviathan, Mr
Milton against Salmasius, H. Grotius De Jure Belli’, in Patriarcha, 184234 (201).
294 C. Cuttica

10. (parliamentary) authority*wielded his ab-solute and indivisible power to guide the
nation efficiently and safely. The will of the ruler ruled; his might protected the
subjects and, in turn, the latter had to recognise in him the sole source of power. In
this respect, for Filmer*as much as for Pierre de Belloy, Jean Bédé de la
Gourmandiere, François Le Jay and Claudius Salmasius for example,49
or John
Cowell, Griffith Williams, Thomas Hobbes*‘absolute’ meant both independence
from an allegedly superior authority (Pope or Emperor) and supremacy over
Parliament and subjects. ‘Absolute’ could, therefore, refer to a power that was
unrestricted.50
The affirmation of these principles signalled a transformation in absolutist
reflection. This is to say that theorists depicted the king as the protector of the nation.
For this reason, the parliamentary principle that the king was bound to respect the
law of the land was rejected since the ruler was the speaking law of the land. By
making the king the exclusive interpreter of the law, absolute monarchists also
dismissed the role of lawyers and jurisconsults. Privileging the political standpoint to
the detriment of the legalistic one, they claimed that the absolute king was the only
creator of the legislation in the kingdom.51
This explains how some of the political
conflicts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries centred on the question
of who was the ultimate holder of the interpretatio of the law. Those like Filmer who
opted for the interpretatio politica adhered to the concept that the king was totally
self-sufficient in ruling the country and that no further legal aid was necessary.
Often, thinkers argued that arbitrary power belonged to the first phases of
government and that, thanks to royal grace, this had ceased to be so and had become
more mitigated over time.52
In tune with this, they maintained that the king was
limited by laws and institutions to which he or his predecessors had consented and
submitted.53
However, not every absolutist was prepared to agree with this view. The
likes of Filmer and Hobbes did not: for them, arbitrary had to do with the will of the
sovereign. As a concept, it expressed the voluntaristic approach to the law-making
process. They insisted on the king’s singleness of will that gave order, unity and
control, and that shaped an unformed and heterogeneous mass. Thus, the monarch
had uncompromising power; was complete in his solitude; had a clear identity; could
not be mistaken, thanks to the hereditary principle (uncertainty being the faulty
outcome of the people’s ignorance); was perfect in his majesty and superiority.54
Likewise, his law had to be unconditional; clear and precise, established and certain;
flawless.55
Most importantly, whilst absolutism represented a type of government
49
See Cesare Cuttica, ‘Anti-Jesuit Patriotic Absolutism: Robert Filmer and French Ideas (ca.1580-1630)’,
Renaissance Studies, 25 (2011), 55979.
50
For a different stance on the meaning of ‘absolute’ see James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern
France (Cambridge, 2010, first published in 1995), 11 and passim.
51
Filmer declared that ‘kings were before laws’; see Filmer, ‘Patriarcha of the Naturall Power of Kinges’,
in Patriarcha, 34. Earlier still, Cowell had asserted that the king ‘is above the Law by his absolute power’;
see John Cowell, The Interpreter (Cambridge, 1607), sig. 2Qia.
52
See for example King James VI and I, ‘A Speach to the Lords and Commons [. . .] 1609’, in King James
VI and I, Political Writings, edited by J. P. Sommerville (Cambridge, 1994), 179203 (183).
53
Glenn Burgess, British Political Thought 1500-1660: The Politics of the Post-Reformation (Basingstoke,
2009), 140.
54
On the right of succession as ‘Artificiall Eternity’ see Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by Richard
Tuck (Cambridge, 1991), chapter 19, 135.
55
See Cesare Cuttica, ‘An Absolutist Trio in the Early 1630s: Sir Robert Filmer, Jean-Louis Guez de
Balzac, Cardin Le Bret and Their Models of Monarchical Power’, in Monarchism and Absolutism, edited
by Cuttica and Burgess, 13145.
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A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its Historiography

11. adopted across Europe, arbitrary government indicated a way of governing.56
Acting
arbitrarily entailed the necessity to bypass the law when this was too rigid and the
safety of the State was at stake. With regard to the monarch’s political conduct, the
notion of arbitrary power stressed the importance of values such as courage,
temperance, prudence, wisdom. In some cases, this led thinkers to advocate the need
to resort to violence to protect the State and the common good.57
Schematic as the last two paragraphs might be, they have provided a clearer
picture of the essential theoretical features informing early modern absolutist
political parlance. They have also devoted unprecedented attention to some less-
studied philosophical pillars of absolutism. It is now time to try to add a few
hopefully innovative reflections on this important doctrine.
5. Absolutism: A Proposal for a New Methodological Approach
James Daly singled out three groups of meanings attached to the term ‘absolute’:
‘uncompromising’, ‘unconditional’, ‘complete’; ‘positive’, ‘certain’, ‘decided’; ‘fault-
less’, ‘perfect’. Our considerations develop his pioneering perspective, whilst
departing from it too. Indeed, whereas for Daly it is the first category which best
conveys ‘the political importance’ of ‘absolute’, we suggest that all three have to be
considered.58
As a result, we deem it plausible to identify*at least*seven main
theoretical cornerstones with which a definition of political absolutism(s) is possible.
These concern the ruler’s: ab-soluteness (absolved and above); independence (internal
and external); solitude; perpetuity; exclusive inequality (of the sovereign compared to
the equality of the rest of the subjects); individuality; effectiveness.
This configuration of absolute power should enable historians of political ideas to
include a larger scale of criteria with which to define absolutism. It should make them
consider absolutism as more than a theory between ‘the arbitrary and the limited’.59
It should send them to revise received historiographical interpretations whereby
tyranny and arbitrary government were the same.60
In consequence, they would
realise that the former was based on the search for private interest, whilst the latter
aimed towards the pursuit of the public good. Tyranny acted in a vacuum (legal,
ethical, hereditary), whereas the notion of ‘arbitrary’ concerned the juridical sphere.
The arbitrary intervention of the sovereign was meant to be moderating in that it
mitigated the rigidity of the law (faced to the complexity of cases) and avoided
injustice. ‘Arbitrary’ also denoted the opportunity for the ruler to govern without the
aid of assemblies and parliaments. Although it is often claimed that the degree of
absoluteness of a king’s power depended on the extent to which the law of nature was
56
Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis: 1677-1683 (Cambridge, 1991), 32. For the
opposite opinion whereby absolutism ‘was not a form of state government, but merely one way in which
power could be exercised’ see Kamen, Early Modern European Society, 240. On absolutism as ‘a tendency, a
direction, which the exercise of power always seeks to take’ rather than as ‘a form of government’ in
practice, see Durand, ‘What is Absolutism?’, in Louis XIV and Absolutism, edited by Hatton, 19.
57
See for example Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, Le Prince (Paris, 1631); Cardin Le Bret, De la souveraineté
du roy (Paris, 1632).
58
Daly, ‘The Idea of Absolute Monarchy’, 22930.
59
Burgess, British Political Thought, 147.
60
Besides tyranny, other concepts to which absolutism is frequently erroneously linked include autocracy,
Caesarism, Caesaropapism, despotism, dictatorship, totalitarianism. On some of these issues see for ex-
ample Dispotismo: genesi e sviluppi di un concetto filosofico-politico, edited by Domenico Felice, 2 vols
(Naples, 2001).
296 C. Cuttica

12. thought to legislate, this does not mean that he was held to be limited. In fact,
absolutists of the kind we are describing regarded monarchs as capable of restricting
the sphere of political life which the law of nature could regulate. Consequently, not
only laws but also customs were the outcome of the supreme decision of the lex
loquens king, who was depicted as the creator of the nation’s ethos. In substance, to
study absolutist political theory in the early modern period entails paying new
attention to the concept of arbitrium in that it contains a re-evaluation of the
following units of meanings: arbitration, choice, judgement, decision; will; mastery;
authority.61
One underlying hallmark of our discourse is that we need to examine what
theorists wrote and described; what concepts they expressed in a prescriptive and
normative way according to their theoretical, ideological and doctrinal goals. Reality
might not have necessarily corresponded to their designs, but what we are interested
in is precisely such designs, projects, configurations of political society and
government, power and authority, sovereignty and liberty. Focus should be on the
conceptual sphere, especially in relation to the idea of sovereignty and within it to the
modality or modalities of power. In other words, we need to investigate how ideas
formed; how they served to think or reshape institutions, polities, systems of
government; how intellectual categories helped societies to reflect on their organisa-
tion and their life; how concepts legitimised actions. In short, we have to account for
how they gave meanings as well as significance to different narratives of the past.
Therefore, absolutism is to be approached as words in action. It has also to be read
more as part of Humanist philosophy in that it placed at the centre of its reflection
man with his rationality and will. Absolutism in this respect was also a re-evaluation
of politics and political life in specific contexts. This view denies that the sacralisation
of the figure of the monarch or the insistence on his supernatural character were
exclusive characteristics of monarchical power. Thinking that the king was taken as a
superhuman is thus to look at political parlance in too literary a sense. This dismisses
the perspective of intellectual history whereby political treatises were part of
dialogues constructed around traditions, tropes, metaphors and rules, from which
hyperbole and grand prescriptive images were not excluded.
Instead of adhering to the historiographical trend whereby the category should be
abandoned altogether, we propose to create new paradigms*interdependent and
mobile rather than fixed and a-contextual ones*within the framework of absolut-
ism.62
We should, therefore, speak of absolutisms in place of the simple and
problematic ‘absolutism’.63
By investigating the theoretically rich texture of this
61
As for monarchical ideas in English, French and Spanish debates between 1570 and 1640, the following
thinkers should be taken into consideration: the French Le Roy, Grimaudet, Le Jay, Drovin, d’Albon, Bédé
de la Gourmandiere, Loyseau, de l’Hommeau, Bignon, Savaron, Baricave, de Colomby, Guez de Balzac,
Le Bret; the English Merbury, Floyd, Vennard, Craig, Buckeridge, Mocket, Rawlinson, King, Forsett,
Kynaston, Filmer, Cusacke, Valentine; the Spanish de Barrientos, de Ribadeneira, de Castro, Clemente,
Gracián, Homem, Madariaga, Márquez, Mayorlago, Moncada, Navarrete, Quevado, de Prado, Saavadra-
Fajado, Zevallos.
62
In fact, contemporary sociologists and politologists speak of ‘neo-absolutism’, which*in contrast to
centralised absolutism*is ‘post-modern and polycentric, dissipative [dispersed, scattered], omnipresent
and yet dislocated. It has too many centres, almost all of which are invisible. It is in the net with innu-
merable ramifications. Therefore, it becomes ‘‘elusive’’ (and, maybe, even impregnable)’. Marco Revelli,
‘L’Eguaglianza uccisa dal Progresso’, La Stampa, 23 September 2010, 38. Our translation.
63
It is worth stressing that in casting doubt on the singular ‘absolutism’, we are not distancing ourselves
from the liberal or democratic view of ancien régime history whereby absolutism remains a key intellectual
297
A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its Historiography

13. political type and unveiling its different strands, historians would then be enabled to
(re)assess in more vigorous and penetrating ways the role of ideas and the
significance of thinkers in their transnational dimension.64
New light could thus be
thrown on the following non-mutually-exclusive but interchangeably connected
models:65
1. Machiavellian absolutism (Tacitean)
insistence on prudence and the
tradition of the mirror of princes (religion as an instrument in the hands of
those in power);
2. Bodinian absolutism
emphasis on the indivisibility and inalienability of
sovereignty, but also on the role of positive laws and property;
3. Patriarchalist absolutism
Filmer and the Adamite paradigm (family-model
and ruler as the founder and shaper of the commonweal’s ethos, of its customs
and laws);
4. Patriotic absolutism
French monarchists against Jesuit and Ultramonta-
nist ideas; monarchist discourse in, for example, eighteenth-century Denmark
and Prussia;
5. Constitutional absolutism (royalism)
specific case of seventeenth-century
England;
6. Reason of State absolutism
priority given to the arcana imperii;
7. Divine absolutism
focus on the divine right theory (references to witchcraft
and mystical authority) where divine rights of kings primarily concerned
obedience;
8. Hobbesian absolutism (Leviathan)
role of the state of nature and
totalisation of politics;
9. Miraculous absolutism
royal touch and insistence on the king’s physical
and moral characteristics (king seen not only as god, saint, giver of justice, but
also as wizard).
These models operate as analytical templates through which to explore and decipher
the nature of absolutist political parlance in early modern Europe. They present
historical concept. Instead, we are underlining the need for a critically deeper account of the political
languages spoken by early modern theorists of absolute monarchy: therefore, the plural ‘absolutisms’
intends to bring to attention and (possibly) better capture the kaleidoscopic ensemble informing their
works. After all, we are not alone in doing so; see for example Linda Levy Peck, ‘Beyond the Pale: John
Cusacke and the Language of Absolutism in Early Stuart Britain’, Historical Journal, 41 (1998), 12149;
Jason McElligott, Royalism, Print and Censorship in Revolutionary England (Woodbridge, 2007); Royalists
and Royalism during the English Civil Wars, edited by Jason McElligott and David L. Smith (Cambridge,
2007); Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum, edited by Jason McElligott and David L. Smith
(Manchester, 2010), especially 117; Sommerville, ‘Early Modern Absolutism’, in Monarchism and Abs-
olutism, edited by Cuttica and Burgess, passim.
64
De facto, mainstream scholarly research on absolutism is still dominated by a national agenda.
65
This is a sample of what we hold to be the most relevant models, which*it need be repeated*histo-
rically overlapped. To the possible objection that this classification seems to require separate consideration
for each kind of thinking here listed (which would thus render our position simply untenable as it would
entail many lengthy volumes to bring the subject to some kind of order), we reply that this artificial listing
is meant as a way of highlighting the plurality and richness of political, ethical and intellectual models at
work in the writings of those thinkers that we generally (but not always unanimously) group into the label
‘absolutist’. Put briefly, we are not pleading the case for some sort of impossible separation between these
absolutisms, but we are rather suggesting that we need to pay attention to the different accents and
vocabularies present within the language of absolutism. Amongst some common features were specificities
that had to do with the types of arguments put forward in debates and disputes: these relied and insisted on
different classical authors’ opinions, biblical passages, moral tenets, gendered paradigms and so forth.
298 C. Cuttica

14. absolutism as an intellectual intercourse made of different (at times contrasting)
languages, vocabularies, paradigms. They help to go beyond the interpretative
impasse whereby all absolutist discourse is inevitably the expression of static, archaic
and oppressive political societies.66
They also dismantle two other common
assumptions about absolutism: that it was a myth and that it was founded exclusively
on the idea of the sacred and the dimension of the divine. Nor do they look at
absolutism as ‘a historical phenomenon connected with the aggrandisement and the
centralisation of the state’.67
Instead of proposing an ahistorical image of it as ‘a
strange and dangerous beast’ aspiring ‘to rise above reality’, they bring back into play
the various languages theorists deployed in disputes.68
To these languages we give the
name of political absolutisms. This has nothing to do with traditionally antagonistic
readings of absolutism as either feudal or bourgeois or fiscal. On the contrary, our
effort is to listen to the voices of past authors, their rhetorical tones and
argumentative accents, so as to better grasp the polyphonic discourse in which real
people couched their narratives of power to argue for and/or attack specific ideas,
principles, policies.
Thus, if*following Harro Höpfl*we subscribe to the idea that for the historian
to make a legitimate use of an ism it is necessary to have people deriving ideas and
finding in a thinker ‘an authoritative expositor’ of views they agreed with and shared,
then absolutism (as we have used it in this paper) is plausibly employed.69
In fact, we
have described a core of political, juridical, doctrinal principles adopted by early
modern theorists as a common intellectual mainstay to depict sovereignty. Instead of
connecting absolutism (exclusively) to historical and social phenomena, this essay has
also depicted it as the embodiment of specific political paradigms, theoretical
languages, rhetorical tropes, commonplaces and traditions. This means that
absolutism has here been identified not with policies pertaining to a phase of
European history, but with a set of doctrines and concepts formulated to portray
specific images of kingship as well as in response to rival visions of the body politic in
debates across Europe. In this respect, absolutism is one of those isms which might be
more useful for the historian of political thought than for the political historian.
Most importantly, we have emphasised the plurality of traits and nuances
characterising this ism. In other terms, absolutism has been approached as a network
of meanings that should lead us to speak of absolutisms instead. By questioning the
use of the ism in and of itself, this outlook*shaped by the methodology of
intellectual history*might produce a much-invoked ‘reassessment of absolutism’.70
6. Conclusion
It is hoped that the foregoing pages have shown how a modified*and less
essentialist*use of ‘absolutism’ might foster new and meaningful readings of
political doctrines in the early modern period. This approach has entailed a series
of reflections on the historiography of absolutism and its limits, notably in regard to
the theory of this divisive category. Above all, the essay has advanced a proposal
66
See Durand, ‘What is Absolutism?’, in Louis XIV and Absolutism, edited by Hatton, especially 3032.
67
Kossmann, ‘The Singularity of Absolutism’, in Louis XIV and Absolutism, edited by Hatton, 3.
68
Kossmann, ‘The Singularity of Absolutism’, in Louis XIV and Absolutism, edited by Hatton, 5.
69
Harro Höpfl, ‘Isms’, British Journal of Political Science, 13 (1983), 117 (14).
70
Bonney, ‘Absolutism: What’s in a Name?’, 115.
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A Thing or Two About Absolutism and Its Historiography

15. whereby, instead of conceiving absolutist thought as a univocal set of ideas, it might
be more insightful to encourage a configuration of it as an ensemble of multiple
languages. This is to say that, despite sharing an arsenal of common theoretical
ammunitions about the nature of power and much more, absolutist theorists*caught
in the midst of stormy disputes and controversies at specific historical junctures*
expressed their views by insisting on some philosophical paradigms to the detriment
of others, hence our (provisional) coinage ‘political absolutisms’ as a more dynamic
category of interpretation of past opinions and texts.
More generally, we think that to reflect on how absolutism has been and is
employed in historical research serves to illuminate how history is written now. In this
sense, dealing with this important historical and scholarly category opens up some
critical reflections on the role of the historian (and, in particular, of the intellectual
historian) as investigator of the past. It also compels each practitioner to carefully
check his or her methodological toolkit as an object belonging to his or her own time.
The analysis of the meaning of terms such as ‘absolutism’ as well as their use in
historical studies is thus part and parcel of that challenging but necessary process of
self-examination which historians carry out on their practice of investigation and
creation of the past. This is also an attempt to rethink the conditions of knowledge
available to them.
This self-reflective undertaking has to do with asking whether history-writing is
an antiquarian enterprise or a rescuing operation or, rather, a performance shaping
mankind’s cultural codes scattered on the canvas of history. Is studying the past in its
multifarious manifestations a reproductive effort or does it imply a creative
endeavour to reconstruct fragments far away from us in time and space? Should
historical work be guided by the unachievable goal of telling what really happened?
Or*more humbly*should it consist in a search for understanding through the
fallible instruments at our disposal, the meanings of textual traces left behind on that
distant horizon?
Even though we might not try to provide straight answers to these questions, we
think it worth reminding that, after all, one of history-writing’s main ‘vocations’ is to
combine the performance of the fox with that of the hedgehog so as to capture with
inquisitiveness and inventiveness the human experience in its plural temporal
dimensions. Absolutism*that most historically complex and conceptually interesting
of categories*is no doubt amongst those ‘fallible instruments at our disposal’ that
contribute best to fulfil such a vocation.
Acknowledgements
This piece was first presented in a longer paper format at the ‘Sussex Centre for
Intellectual History Seminar’, University of Sussex; at the ‘Séminaire d’Histoire
Intellectuelle’, Université Paris 8; at the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College
Dublin; at the Center for Early Modern Studies, University of Wisconsin. I would
like to thank Knud Haakonssen, Richard Whatmore, Ann Thomson, Jason
McElligott and Johann Sommerville for their invitations, and the audiences for their
questions. Ken Goodwin, Matthew Growhoski, Gaby Mahlberg, Robert Lamb,
Johann Sommerville, Ann Thomson and Richard Whatmore have provided helpful
comments on this essay. The research for this paper was made possible by a Marie
Curie Intra-European Fellowship (2009-2011).
300 C. Cuttica