The Age of Absolutism

Absolutism is a term used by historians to describe a form of monarchical power that is

unlimited by any other institution, such as the church, parliament, or social elites. The
absolute monarch exercises ultimate authority over the state and his subjects, as both head of
state and head of government. In an absolute monarchy there is no constitution or legal
restriction on the monarch's power. Absolute monarchy is normally hereditary or passed on
through marriage.
The term Absolutism is typically used in combination with some European monarchs during
the transition from Feudalism to early Capitalism, and monarchs described as absolute can
especially be found in the 17th century through the 18th century. The Age of Absolutism is
usually thought to begin with the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715) and ends with the French
Revolution (1789).
European Religious Conflicts of the 16th and 17th Centuries
Absolutism was primarily motivated by the crises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Protestant Reformation (1517–1648) had led to a series of violent and bloody wars of
religion, in the course of which thousands of innocents met their deaths. The population in
the German states, for instance, was reduced by about 15% to 30% in the Thirty Years’ War
(1618–48) whereas the population of France, at between 16 to 18 million people in 1600, fell
by 2 to 4 million during the French Wars of Religion (1562–98). Similar wars took place in
Switzerland, Austria, Bohemia, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland and Denmark.
Partly because of the religious wars, but also due to a growing secularization, religion was
losing its grip on Europe. Inspired by the Renaissance and in particular by the Scientific
Revolution, intellectuals took to thinking outside the boundaries of church ideology; and
since changes in the economy were noticeably increasing the prosperity of many Europeans,
European society became more and more secular.
In this context, absolute monarchies were regarded as the solution to these violent disorders,
and Europeans were more than willing to have local autonomy or political rights taken away
in exchange for peace and safety.
Decline of Feudalism and Origin of the Early Modern State
At the end of the Middle Ages, Feudalism declined. While the old feudal system had been
defined by a weak monarchy attempting to control the lands of the realm through mutual
agreements with regional leaders of the nobility, the modern age was characterized by a rise
of the king’s power in some parts of Europe. These kings were soon to become absolute

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monarchs with a much greater power over the nobles and the common people. Thus
historians generally regard the growth of the absolute monarchy as the origin of the modern
state. Most of the characteristic features of the modern state were more or less instituted in
the France of Louis XIV and other contemporary monarchies in Europe.
As for the economy, the decline of the feudal order also gave rise to the earliest forms of
Capitalism. In most European nations through the 1800s, the established guild system was
dissolved and replaced by the idea of free trade (i.e. an economic system in which goods and
capital are traded in markets and profits distributed to owners).
An intermediate step on the way to early Capitalism was, for many nations, an economic
system called Mercantilism that helped absolutist rulers to centralize the economy.
Mercantile theory claimed that the prosperity of a nation was dependent upon its supply of
capital, which was best increased through a positive balance of trade with other nations. The
ruling government should advance this goal by encouraging exports and discouraging
imports, notably through the use of tariffs and subsidies. In return, the taxes paid by the
merchants would help to fill the treasury and thus give the monarchs the financial power they
were looking for. Take, for example, projects like Versailles: the amount spent on Louis
XIV’s royal palace is estimated at ca. 1.3 billion (!) euros.
Features of Absolute Rule
In order to achieve eagerly awaited stability after long years of war absolutists made sure that
the key elements of national government would be solely placed into the hands of the
monarch: the armed forces, tax collection, and the judicial system. These were powers
normally enjoyed by the local nobility in their territories; the national administration of these
functions, however, required the formation of a nationwide bureaucracy whose officials were
answerable to the king alone.
Consequently, this new type of bureaucracy had to make a stand against the most powerful
institutional forces opposed to the king: the nobility, the church, legislative bodies
(parliaments), and regions which had been autonomous until then. In order to centralize the
administration of the state, the absolute ruler had to – some way or other – take political
authority out of the hands of the nobles who had no desire whatever to give that authority up!
On the whole, European kings were successful in crushing any kind of aristocratic resistance,
with the exception of the Stuarts in England who were defeated in their campaign for
absolute rule and the Polish kings who had to accept a nobles’ democracy.
Apart from the rise of professional bureaucracies, absolute states featured a national
legislation, a national jurisdiction, a large, standing military under the direct control of the

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king, and a national tax collection mechanism in which taxes went straight to the national
government (i. e. the king’s treasury) rather than passing through the hands of the local
nobility.
Absolute monarchs spent exorbitant sums on warfare and extravagant buildings, such as the
Palace of Versailles for themselves and the nobility. They often required the nobles to live at
court for some time, while state officials ruled their lands in their absence. Behind this was
the idea to reduce the effective power of the nobility by making them become reliant upon the
munificence of the monarch.
Foundations of Royal Absolutism
Absolute monarchies often gave birth to ideologies that eloquently justified the power
exercised by the absolutist monarch. Political and religious doctrines of royal absolutism
were either based on the Divine Right of Kings or a variation of the Social Contract
Theory.
Divine Right of Kings
The Divine Right of Kings states that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority since he
derives the right to rule directly from God. As a consequence, he is not subject to the will of
his people, the clergy or the nobility. The Divine Right of Kings implies that whoever might
attempt to remove the king from his office or restrict his powers runs contrary to the will of
God and thus commits heresy.
The first author to come forward with this theory was Jean Bodin (1530–1596), a French
professor of law and political philosopher, who based it on his interpretation of Roman law.
He defined sovereignty as “the absolute and perpetual power” and emphasized that “the
sovereign prince […] is only accountable to God” (Six Books of the Commonwealth, 1576).
In England the same theory surfaced under the reign of King James I of England (1603–25).
In the book The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), James categorically proclaimed his
own ideas of kingship, explaining that for biblical reasons kings are higher beings than other
men: "Kings are called gods […] because they sit upon God His throne in earth”. This special
status allows them to impose new laws by royal prerogative (that is without consulting
Parliament). However, this does not mean that kings use their powers arbitrarily; James’
reading of The True Law of Free Monarchies allowed that “a good king will frame all his
actions to be according to the law, yet is he not bound there to but of his good will.”
During the reign of King Louis XIV of France, the theory of divine right was strongly
promoted by the French bishop and theologian Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704). Court
preacher to Louis XIV, Bossuet was a strong advocate of political absolutism. When chosen

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to be the tutor of the Dauphin, oldest child of Louis XIV, he wrote several works intended as
schoolbooks, one of which was Politics Derived from the Words of Holy Scripture, published
posthumously in 1709.
Bossuet states that “God establishes kings as his ministers, and reigns through them over the
people”; at the same time he stresses that “the prince must be obeyed on principle, as a matter
of religion and of conscience”, which practically makes the king a sacred person. Although
he declares the absolute authority of rulers, Bossuet underlines the fact that the king is not
above the law, “for if he sins, he destroys the laws by his example.”
The theory of divine right disappeared in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The
American (1776) and French (1789) Revolutions further weakened its appeal, and by the
early twentieth century, it was given up completely.
Social Contract Theory
The idea of the social contract is based on a reciprocal agreement: the people transfer some of
their rights to a government or ruler in order to receive social order and peace through the
rule of law.
The first modern philosopher to articulate this kind of theory was Thomas Hobbes (1588-
1679). In his book Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argues for a social contract and rule by an
absolute monarch. According to Hobbes, life without a strong central government would lead
to chaos and civil war (bellum omnium contra omnes, “the war of all against all”) since, in
this “state of nature”, each person has the natural right to everything. Thus people’s lives
would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". To escape from the state of nature, people
agree on a social contract and thus establish a society. All individuals in that society transfer
their natural rights to the monarch for the sake of protection. But peace comes at a stiff price:
any abuse of power by bad rulers has to be accepted. There is no right to resist and the
process of transferring one’s rights to the king is irreversible!
Historical Examples of Absolutism
The most prominent monarch who fully embodied absolutist principles was Louis XIV,
called the Sun King, who ruled France from 1643 to 1715. His alleged statement, “L’état,
c’est moi” (The state, it is me), gets to the heart of absolute ruler ship, i. e. sovereignty resting
in the hand of one individual. Although often criticized for his extravagance, he reigned over
France for a long period, and many historians consider him a successful absolute monarch.
Many countries and monarchs turned to him as a role model for the modern government,
while some countries, such as England, opposed this role model.

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Most of the practices of the modern state were more or less instituted in the France of Louis
XIV: in particular a strong government with Paris and the Royal Palace at Versailles as centre
points, a centralized bureaucracy, a large standing military, and an efficient tax system that
helped to restock the king’s financial supplies.
Another country subject to absolute rule was Brandenburg Prussia. Frederick William of
Hohenzollern (1640–1699, known as the Great Elector) used the chaos resulting from the
Thirty Years’ War to consolidate his territories in northern Germany, while at the same time
increasing his power over his subjects. His state consisted of two semiautonomous territories,
Brandenburg in the north and Prussia in the southeast. In order to achieve political unity, he
built a large standing army (which would eventually become the largest army in the European
world), and he established a centralized tax system. On the whole, his actions helped to
mould the militaristic streak of the Hohenzollern, the ruling dynasty in Prussia up to 1918.
Beginning with Leopold I (1658–1705), the Hapsburg Archdukes tried to centralize the
government of Austria and break the power of the noble landlords. They managed this by
making deals with the landed nobility; in the Czech speaking territories, for instance, they
passed national legislation that required peasants to work three days every week for their
landlords. In exchange for this law, the landlords gave away the powers of their regional
assemblies to the central government in Vienna.
Until 1905, the Czars of Russia also governed as absolute monarchs. Peter I (the Great, 1682–
1725) was determined to introduce western absolutist practices in Russia. He effectively
reduced the influence of the nobility and strengthened the power of the Czar, establishing a
central bureaucracy and a police state. He moved his capital and had a city built which he
called Saint Petersburg. His royal palace there was meant to imitate and even rival Louis
XIV’s palace at Versailles.
While Europe steadily developed strong, absolutist monarchies, there was one exception to
the rule. In the course of the 17th century, the tiny kingdom of England would undergo some
radical changes: first to a republic (the so called Commonwealth, 1649-1660), then to a
limited monarchy (1689). Thus the English were taking a completely different turn towards a
modern state.
When James I (1603–1625) became King of England after the death of Elizabeth I, he tried to
introduce the ideas which he had already put forward in his book The True Law of
Monarchies. Public fears that his son Charles I (1625–1649) was actually attempting to
establish absolute rule in England was a major cause of the English Civil War (1641–1651),
the execution of Charles I and the temporary establishment of the Commonwealth. Finally, at

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the end of the 17th century, England experienced the irrevocable erosion of the monarch’s
powers as a result of the Glorious Revolution. By signing the Bill of Rights in 1689, the new
king, William III, had to accept his limited powers within the framework of a constitutional
monarchy.
Enlightened Absolutism
Enlightened absolutism is a form of absolute monarchy in which rulers were influenced by
the Age of Enlightenment. Enlightened monarchs tended to allow religious toleration,
freedom of speech and the press, and the right to hold private property. Most of them
patronized the arts, sciences, and education. Their ideas about royal power were often similar
to those of absolute monarchs; in as much as they believed that they were entitled to govern
by right of birth and generally refused to grant constitutions.
In particular, the Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II (1765–1790), can be said to have fully
embraced the ideas of Enlightenment. In the true spirit of the movement, he stressed his
ambitions to improve the lives of his subjects when he said: “Everything for the people,
nothing by the people.”
He quickly proceeded to realize his ideal of enlightened absolutism. Among his reforms were
the emancipation of the peasantry, the spread of education, the freedom of worship and the
compulsory use of the German language (replacing Latin or local languages). He also
abolished the death penalty. However, many of his reforms did not last and were taken back
by his successors.
In contrast, Empress Catherine II (the Great, 1762–96) of Russia entirely rejected the concept
of the Social Contract. However, she took up many ideas of the Enlightenment: she
introduced laws for the emancipation of peasants and was a great patron of the arts in
Imperial Russia. She also incorporated many ideas of enlightened philosophers, especially
Montesquieu, in her Nakaz, a blueprint for a modern law code.

Frederick II (the Great, 1740–1786) of Prussia was tutored in the ideas of the Enlightenment
in his youth. For years he was a correspondent of Voltaire, with whom the king had an
intimate, yet complicated, friendship. Frederick modernized Prussian bureaucracy and civil
service and promoted religious tolerance throughout his realm. He patronized the arts and
philosophers. Because of his influence, Prussia’s education system became one of the best in
Europe. Frederick also abolished torture and corporal punishment.
His ideas can be best summed up by his concept of the monarch as the “first servant of the
state” (Ich bin der erste Diener meines Staates).

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Absolutism Today
The popularity of the idea of absolute monarchy declined noticeably after the French
Revolution (1789), which promoted theories of government based on the sovereignty of the
people rather than of the monarch. As a result, many former absolute monarchies have
become constitutional monarchies (or even parliamentary republics).
Among the very few nations in which the monarch still claims full power (being both head of
state and government) are Brunei, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, and Vatican City.