Age of absolutism

1. THE AGE OF ABSOLUTISM -
1

3. Europe
 The problem of political disintegration (16th-17th
centuries)
 France - Wars of Religion
 England - the English Revolution
 Holy Roman Empire (Germany and Austria) - Thirty
Years’ War.
 B. Main factors behind disintegration
 Competition between the aristocracy and the monarchy
 Often mainspring behind the religious wars.
 C. Ways of Uniting Empires and States
 Two alternatives evolved
 Constitutionalism
 Absolutism

4. The Divine Right of Kings - Basics
Definition
 In every kingdom, the king's power comes directly from God, to whom
the ruler is accountable; power does not come to the king from the
people and he is not accountable to them.
 However tyrannically kings act, they are never to be actively resisted
(The doctrine of non-resistance). If the king orders an act directly against
God's commands, the subject should disobey but must submissively
accept any penalty of disobedience. (The doctrine of "passive
obedience" ).
The Vicar of Bray: "Kings are by God appointed, /And damned are they
that dare resist, / Or touch the Lord's anointed".
 Monarchy is the best form of government, but other forms are valid.
 Divine Right of Kings: the principle of indefeasible hereditary right: i.e.
the belief that while the legitimate heir to the crown is alive it is wrong to
swear allegiance to any other ruler, even one actually in possession of
power).

5. The Divine Right of Kings - Basics
 What is the source of political authority?
- Can the Popes depose sinful monarchs as vicars of Christ?
- St. Augustine: «the Church and secular government are God’s
bridles for fallen men.» Then, is resistance against a tyrant justified?
- King without justice is a brigand
- 4 cardinal values: do justice, maintain peace, collect treasure for security
of the people, use force with wisdom and goodness
- The Roman Law: revived in the 12th Century.
- Corpus Iuris Civilis (the code of Justinian): equity, based on Ulpian (3rd century)
- Ulpian: theory of absolutism, based on Aristotle
«The ruler is above law and his will has the force of law»
The people transfered its authority to the ruler (temporary? [revocation/resistanc
Politicus: Latin tranlations of Politics and
Nicomachean Ethics

6. History and
Development
 Throughout the Middle Ages, secular monarchs had
disputed with the Papacy the extent of their respective
powers. Marsilius of Padua (c.1277-1342) and William of
Ockham (ob. 1347) were two noted defenders of the rights
of secular states against clerical pretensions.
 At the Reformation, Protestants in general supported the
rights of secular authorities to reform and control the
church. However, they were less specific about who within
the state had the right to exercise such power.
 Both Luther and Calvin at some times suggested that the
monarch was God's representative with a monopoly of
political power, but at other times argued that lesser
magistrates (or ephors, named for Spartan elected officials
with the power to restrain kings) should call ungodly kings
to account.

7. The concept of sovereignty – the state – the politicus
 Machiavelli: «Monarchy is the best form of government
with a blend of constitutionalism. Christian morality has
no place in politics»
 The Prince entered the Index Librorum Prohibitorum
(idea of a popular government – Aristotle)
The development of the concept of a state
- A distinctive political entity
- Notion of sovereignty (territoriality)
- The sublime institution with the ultimate authority within its
own territories
 CONFLICT 1:
existence of a personal conception of the state
 CONFLICT 2:
dynastic conception of the state as the ruler’s property X
separation of the king and the crown

8. The concept of sovereignty – the state – the politicus
 Is royal authority fragile (Hobbes, Bodin)
OR
does it have excesses (Locke, French philosophes)?

9. The English Case
 The 17th-century political experiments in England
were dramatic in a chaotic and violent era:
absolutist tendencies at the beginning of the century
the overthrow of the monarch in the middle of the
century and the development of an English
Republic
the restoration of the monarch and the severe
limitation of monarchical powers at the end of the
century
 As a result, the powers of the monarch became
subsidiary to the power of the branches of
government

10.  Works in England arguing for the limitations of monarchical power.
(Buchanan's De Jure Regni Apud Scotos, 1579 & Rerum Scoticarum
Historia, 1582) The main sources for Shakespeare's Macbeth.
• Patriarchal monarchy of Filmer
 natural state of man/society:
subjection vs. freedom
• Is society Natural (Filmer) or artificial (Hobbes)?
 The theory of the Divine Right of Kings persuaded many intelligent and
educated theorists as Sir Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes.
 Both Civil War Royalists and Restoration Tories derived many of their
basic arguments from the theory of Divine Right.
 In a period when most people accepted that God had created the world
and human nature, The theory of the Divine Right was less mystical
than dialectical materialism

11.  In Scotland, James VI published
two works in defense of royal
power: - Basilikon Doron and The
Trew Law of Free Monarchies: -
kings are accountable to God
alone.
 it was royal authority alone that
made law.
 James began to act on his
theories of Divine Right after
succeeding to the English throne
in 1603, by introducing impositions
- extra-parliamentary levies on
exports and imports - and ignoring
the parliament’s wishes in religion
and foreign policy.

12.  James' son, Charles I, defended his right to levy taxes
whenever he thought necessary without gaining the
consent of the Parliament.
• At the Restoration (1660), theories of Divine
Right were revived and flourished in England
until 1688.
• James II was supported by English Tories, But
his pro-Catholic policies so threatening to the
Anglican establishment that many believers in
the Divine Right of Kings lost their enthusiasm.
Execution of Charles I and the abolition of
monarchy in 1649.

13. Oliver Cromwell and the execution of
Charles I
 His New Model Army turns the
tide of the war
 In 1646, Charles surrenders
 He was tried and executed in
1649
 An incredible revolutionary action
 If something or someone is
supreme over the king, then why
should a people need a king?

14. The trial of Charles
I

15. The execution of Charles I

16. The Puritan
Republic
 Before the execution of Charles I,
the Parliament under the leadership
of Cromwell dissolved the institution
of the English monarchy and the
Anglican church, and formed a new
republican government.
 England now called a
commonwealth
 The real power rested in the hands
of Cromwell and he soon dispersed
the Parliament by force (1653),
setting up a Protectorate.
 Cromwell turns into an absolute
monarch in 1655 after he
permanently dismisses the
Parliament. He dies in 1658.

17. The Glorious Revolution
(1688)
 In 1660, the monarchy, the
aristocracy and the church
reinstituted
 Charles II (1660-1685) completed
the process – the “Restoration”
era
 Issues the Test Act in order to
prevent his Catholic brother
James succeed to the throne
 James II (1685-1688)
 Revoked the Test Act
 In 1688, James had a son and thus a
Catholic heir to the English throne
 It appeared England would soon
revert to a Catholic state – the
majority that made up the

18. The Bill of Rights (1689)
 No English monarch could
assume the throne without the
express approval of Parliament
 The English monarch would be
subject to all the laws of the
realm
 No Catholic could assume the
English throne
 The origins of the American Bill
of Rights rest in the English one
 The Parliament passed the
Tolerance Act in 1689
 Freedom to Catholics and
minority Protestants in practicing
their religion

19. The French Case
In France, reaction against theories of
resistance that would justify opposition
against the succession of the
Protestant, Henry of Navarre to the
throne of France.
Bodinian concept of sovereignty. A
lawyer and economist Jean Bodin
(1529/30-1596) focused on Religious
Wars in France between Catholics and
Huguenots.
Six Books of the Commonweal (Six
livres de la république), was published
in French in 1576 (English translation
1606). Bodin, like other politiques,
argued that only undivided authority

20. LOUIS XIV (r. 1643-1715)
 The Divine Right of Kings
 Jacques-Benigne Bossuet,
Politics Drawn from the Very
Words of Scripture (1709)
 Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
(1627-1704)
 “The Sun King” – A Catholic
monarch of ceremony,
extravagance and power
 “L’etat, c’est moi” (“I am the
State”)
 «I depart, but the State shall
always remain», said in the
deathbed
 Other European rulers imitate
him

21. LOUIS XIV (r. 1643-1715)
 Background
 The reign of Henry IV (1589-1610)
 The reign of Louis XIII (1610-1643)
 Cardinal Richeliue (d. 1642)
 Increased the power of the central bureaucracy
 Persecuted the Huguenots and altered the Edict of Nantes
(1629)
 Humbled the great nobles
 Increased the power of France by weakening the Habsburg
power by supporting Protestants against Spain
 Cardinal Mazarin takes over France after him
 Cardinal Mazarin and the Fronde (1648-1652)
 Street riots against the royal court

22. Versaille
s

23. The Reign of Louis XIV (1643-
1715)
 He achieved the greatest monarchical power of
the modern age demonstrated by
 A) the palace at Versailles
 Luxury of the French court
 The brilliance of French culture during his reign

24.  Versailles Statistics
 • 2,000 acres of grounds
• 12 miles of roads
• 27 miles of trellises
• 200,000 trees
• 210,000 flowers planted every year
• 80 miles of rows of trees
• 55 acres surface area of the Grand Canal
• 12 miles of enclosing walls
• 50 fountains and 620 fountain nozzles
• 21 miles of water conduits
• 3,600 cubic meters per hour: water consumed
• 26 acres of roof
• 51,210 square meters of floors
• 2,153 windows
• 700 rooms
• 67 staircases
• 6,000 paintings
• 1,500 drawings and 15,000 engravings
• 2,100 sculptures
• 5,000 items of furniture and objects d'art
• 150 varieties of apple and peach trees in the Vegetable Garden

25. Louis XIV
 He detested chaos – impact of the
Fronde?
 Curbing the power of the nobility
and forming a new bureaucracy,
military, taxation system,
administrative structure
 Jean Baptiste Colbert – Louis’
Finance Minister between 1665 and
1683
 France divided into thirty-six
generalités, each of which was
administered by an intendant
 Parlements of France
 Estates General - The national
legislative assembly
 No religious toleration, suppression
of the Huguenots (revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in in 1685)

26.  "You should
hope that this
game will be
over soon.” -
1789
The Third Estate
carrying the
Clergy and the
Nobility on its
back

28. The dynamics of absolutism in Europe
–other cases
 Brandenburg-Prussia
under Frederick William
(1640-1688)
 Known as the Great Elector
 The Hohenzollerns
 Adopted the strategies that
Louis XIV innovated in
France
 Largest standing army in
Europe
 Destroyed the Swedish
army
 Ruthless taxation of the
peasants
 The Junkers (landlord
nobility) were exempt from

29. The dynamics of absolutism in
Europe –other cases
 Austria under the
Habsburgs
 An empire loosely-
unified in Central
Europe
 Hungarian Military
Frontier with the
Ottomans
 Beginning with
Frederick I (1637-1657)
and Leopold I (1658-
1705), the Habsburgs
tried to centralize the
government and break
the power of the

30. THE BIRTH OF PRUSSIA

31. POLAND-LITHUANIA
United Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania
1385 - Union of Krewo: personal union under Grand Duke of Lithuania
(Jagiello/Jogailo) who converted to Catholicism
1410 – Battle of Grunewald (Tannenberg): Defeated the Teutonic Order
Polish-Muscovite War (1605-18)
• Lithuania: Europe’s largest country by the 1350s under the house of Gediminas
• The Grand Duke remained pagan
• A new Orthodox Lithuanian nobility undermined the boyars
• Occupied half of the former lands of Kievan Rus
1499: personal union turned into dynastic
union
1569 - Union of Lublin: Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth (-1795)
 Rise of Kiev as a religious and cultural
center
 Religious division encouraged the
Belorussian and Ukrainian nationalities

32. The conquest of Podolia
(Kamianets-Podilskyi), 1672
• Russo-Ottoman War, 1676-81
- Question of supremacy over the Cossacks
- Right-bank Cossacks: pro-Ottoman
- Left-bank Cossacks: pro-Russian
- Recapture of Chyhyryn, 1678
- Dnieper became the new border
32

33. The Revolt of the Zaporozhe Cossacks
• New Catholic Uniate Church in Poland (1596)
- end of toleration of the Orthodox Cossacks
Bohdan Khmelnytskyi
- Elected without the approval of the Polish king (1648)
- Expelled Polish gentry, the Uniates, the Jews
- Peace with Poland: Cossack autonomy guaranteed but
serfdom continued
- Peasants fled to Russian border
- War with Poland resumed: Tatars abandoned
Khmelnytskyi
Jan Matejko, ‘Bohdan
Khmelnytsky with Tuhal Bey’,
1885
- Sought the assistance of Muscovy

34. The Treaty of Pereislav (1654)
• Aleksei granted overlordship of the Ukrainian Cossacks (left-bank Ukraine)
• Cossack autonomy within Russia
- Chose their own hetman
- Had separate army, treasury, and jurisdiction
• The Metropolitan of Kiev remained under the jurisdiction of the Greek patriarchate
of Constantinople until 1687
Cossacks: cherkasy
Ukrania: cherkasskie goroda

35. Russo-Polish War (1654-67)
• Hiring W. European regiments
• Acquisition of Smolensk and Kiev
• Truce of Andrusovo
- Protection of Left-Bank Ukraine
• Attempts at turning the peace with Poland-Lithuania
into an alliance against the Ottomans
• Copper riot (1662): devaluation of money
- minting of copper coins due to exigencies of war
- Foreign regiments suppressed the uprising
• Razin rebellion (1669-71)
- ravaged the countryside

36. Ottoman Empire and Petro Doroshenko
• Election of Doroshenko as the hetman (1665)
• Refused the Andrusovo deal
• Asked Ottoman protection
• Became the hetman of both banks (June 1668)
• Ottoman protection granted (May 1669)
• Russian and Polish invasion of Ukraine
Ottoman conquest of Kamianets-Podilskyi (Podolya-Kamaniçe, 1672)
• Ottoman rule (1672-1699)

37. Ottoman campaign on Chyryn, 1674
• Rescued Doroshenko besieged in Chyryn
Ottoman-Russian War, 1676-81
• Doroshenko resigned in 1676
• Ottomans razed the fortress of
Chyhyryn (1678)
• Dnieper: the new border
Ottomans, Russians, and the Don Cossacks
• Russian protectorate over the Don Cossacks
• Cossack raids in the Bosphorus in the 1620s
• Monk Filaret threatened with excommunication (1629) for
attacking the Tatars and the Ottomans
• Cossack occupation of the fortress of Azov in 1637-41

38. TRANSATLANTIC TRIANGLE TRA
MERCANTILISM

39. MAKING THE UNIVERSE VISIBLE
 Aristotelian reasoning – empiricism
 Preservation of Greek-Roman philosophy by Muslim
scholars and scientific culture
 Muslim scholarship on mathematics, astronomy, optics,
chemistry, experimental physics, mechanics, etc.
 E.g. Ibn Haytham (d. 1040) – Kitāb al-Manāzir
 Al-Burini (d. ca. 1050)
 Al-Urdi
 Nasiraddin Al-Tusi
 Unseen universe vs. Observable universe (alem-i garaib X
alem-i şühud)  dualiy btw. Creator vis-a-vis Creation
 duality bet. Spirit & Universe?
Single Universe (Aristotle, Avicenna) X Multiple universes (Razi)

40. MAKING THE UNIVERSE VISIBLE
 Rudiments of European empirical thought and inquiry in
the 12th and 13th centuries – combining Aristotelianism
with the Church doctrine, Scholasticism.
 Roger Bacon (1220-1292) – empirical observations –
optics
 The impact of European Humanism

41. ETHER in
CELESTIAL
realms
Physical in
SUBLUNAR/TER
RESTRIAL realm

42. MAKING THE UNIVERSE MOVE
 Universe moving
around a center
 From earth-centered
understanding to
sun-centered one
 The Ptolemaic
Universe (2nd century
CE)
 Ptolemy’s
Almagest
(Haytham’s
criticism)
 The problem of
planets moving
backwards
(recession)

43. MAKING THE UNIVERSE MECHANICALLY
MOVE
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres
 The sun as the center point of the
revolution of the heavens
 Epicycles and circular orbits
 Copying Muslim scholarship? (the Maraga
school: non-Ptolemaic planetory
movement. Ibn Haytham, Juzjani, Bitruji,
Tusi, el-Shatir) Tycho Brahe (1546-1601): a compromise?
A superhuman cataloging of astronomical calculations
– his tables prove Copernicus was right
the immutability of the heavens?
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
Elliptical orbits in his New Astronomy (1609)
The mathematical model of the universe and the
planetary motion

44. A Mathematical Universe
 Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
 Dialogues on the Two Chief
Systems of the World (1610)
 Observing the Keplerian
universe with Dutch-made
telescopes
 Discovering the mountains on
the Moon, the satellites
orbiting the Jupiter
 The idea of an independent
orbital system orbiting around a
larger system
 Now the universe is fully seen as
operating according to
mathematical principles

45. The Newtonian Universe
 Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
 Experience – experiment
 Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
 The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
(1687)
 The universe could be explained completely
through the use of mathematics; mathematical
models of the universe were accurate physical
descriptions of the universe.
 The universe operated in a completely rational and
predictable way following the mathematics used to
describe the universe; the universe, then, was
mechanistic.
 One need not appeal to revealed religion or
theology to explain any aspect of the physical
phenomena of the universe.
 All the planets and other objects in the universe

46. Newton: white light is a mixture of
beams of coloured light
Old Theory: Colors are the result of
the modification of white light

47. De humani corporis fabrica by Vesalius
(1543)
The first book in Western medicine that
showed the human body realistically

48.  Deism:
 All phenomena are fundamentally rational and
mechanistic and can be explained in non-religious terms
 Biology – microscopes – systematic cataloging of
scientific knowledge
 Chemistry – discovery of gases in the 18th century
 The Enlightenment
 Cultural transformations

49. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
 Essais - 1580
Central question: "What do I know?"
Of The Caniballes translated by John
Florio (1603):
On Topinamba tribes of Brazil: natural
law?
“It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath
no kinde of traffike, no knowledge of
Letters, no intelligence of numbers, no
name of magistrate, nor of politike
superioritie; no use of service, of riches or
of povertie; no contracts, no successions,
no partitions, no occupation but idle; no
respect of kindred, but common, no
apparell but naturall, no manuring of lands,
no use of wine, corne, or mettle. The very
words that import lying, falshood, treason,
dissimulations, covetousnes, envie,
detraction, and pardon, were never heard

50.  François Rabelais
(d. 1553), a French
monk and physician
influenced by
Protestantism, but
spurred on by his
own rebelliousness,
challenged the
Church's authority in
his Gargantua and
Pantagruel,
ridiculing many
religious doctrines
as absurd.
THE EUROPEAN ENLIGHTENMENT

51. The Long 17th Century
 General Crisis of the 17th
Century
 René Descartes (1596-
1650)
 “I think therefore I am” in
Latin?
Descartes with Queen Christina of Sweden

52. THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON
• 2 Sept 1666
• No fire brigade
• Navy blew up the houses
• The cost of fire : £10m
• Christopher Wren planned the new ci