Not all pre-modern monarchies are absolute monarchies! Western European medieval monarchies, so far as I know, were not. Hellenistic monarchy arguably was. Traditional Argead Macedonian monarchy, I'd argue, probably wasn't. Most Bronze Age monarchy was. The Roman Emperor pre-235 mostly wasn't. - ThreadSky

bretdevereaux.bsky.social • 9 days ago

Not all pre-modern monarchies are absolute monarchies!

Western European medieval monarchies, so far as I know, were not. Hellenistic monarchy arguably was. Traditional Argead Macedonian monarchy, I'd argue, probably wasn't. Most Bronze Age monarchy was. The Roman Emperor pre-235 mostly wasn't.

Reposted from David M. Perry

Note: early modern theories and practice of kingship not medieval ones please drive through !

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seminalessay.bsky.social•9 days ago

The biggest turning point in the UK was magna carta I assume, but I wonder if it's fair to Anglo Saxon kings weren't absolute monarchies as well.

omnomtom.bsky.social•9 days ago

Magna Carta really isn't that much of a turning point... it was the nobility asserting their traditional privileges that the Angevins had been ignoring. Medieval European monarchs who tried to rule absolutely tended to have their nobles rebel and win. Traditional kingship wasn't absolute in Britain.

stealthisbook.bsky.social•9 days ago

When you have to rally support from powerful earls to get anything big done and there's constant static from Rome about whether and who you can appoint as bishops... doesn't seem very absolute

seminalessay.bsky.social•9 days ago

Good point, didn't even think about the Pope.

uscivilwar.bsky.social•9 days ago

When we assume this or that monarchy was "Absolute" are we perhaps over-reading political sources? Most societies didn't necessarily have a clear concept of abstract "rights," and kings (or just 'Big Men') might break the law on raw power. But I'd wager most faced real constraints of law or custom.

micaylah.bsky.social•9 days ago

To a point yes.

patricklinnen.bsky.social•8 days ago

Early Christian Church was willing to yank on the various king's leashes.

Penance journey of excommunicated Henry IV to Pope Gregory VII

vulgareconomics.bsky.social•8 days ago

I don't think you can make any sort of "era" claims about the Roman Empire given how widely and frequently the entire system of government shifted

christosilvia.bsky.social•9 days ago

I think absolutely monarchy requires a loyal bureaucracy

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•9 days ago

When trying to assess the difference, you want to ask if 1) there are groups with significant rights (property, person, etc) they can press against the monarchy and 2) are there alternative centers of power that can force their voice into the monarch's decisions.

ramsandhoosiers.bsky.social•9 days ago

Is your state a composite state? Then chances are the monarch’s power and authority aren’t absolute, especially over things like taxes.

cassepipe.bsky.social•5 days ago

One thing I'd love to read from you one day would be a review from Anderson's "Lineages of the Absolutist State"
I am sorry I am too poor (no, really) to bribe my way to become a member of your senate but if I ever make a decent living, I will invest in your clientele network for sure

blueishmage.bsky.social•9 days ago

Would this mean that the Catholic parts of Europe weren't absolute monarchies, because of the power of the church?

ramsandhoosiers.bsky.social•9 days ago

French monarchy having de facto control over the Gallican church goes here.

darkorchidpurple.bsky.social•9 days ago

That's how Magna Carta (13c.) came to be, I think.

devedy.bsky.social•9 days ago

Kaldellis' stuff on the Byzantine system is so fascinating on this front

Even these kind of ad hoc accountability mechanisms sure seem like they can be pretty durable in the world of limited pre-modern central authority

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•9 days ago

Note that these need not exist in a written constitution - they can be traditional. What makes kingship distinct from tyranny or dictatorship is kingship relies on tradition for its legitimacy and so the king is bound to behave in traditional ways - he may be substantially constrained by tradition.

timoconnorbl.bsky.social•9 days ago

Things like a king justly satirised losing his éiric and thus his title to rule in Irish kingship.

timoconnorbl.bsky.social•9 days ago

Or being able to dethrone a Merovingian by cutting his hair.

patrickwyman.bsky.social•9 days ago

Great rules, and in general, the more you know about how even "absolute" monarchies actually functioned, the less absolute they seem in any period. I think the impression of overbearing royal power in deeper ancient history is often because we lack the countervailing source material.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•9 days ago

I suspect private property ownership was a lot more common than older models of the 'redistribution economy' might suggest, for instance, though equally it still really does seem like the king/temple in bronze age Mesopotamia/Egypt commanded most of the economy.

But not all of it!

patrickwyman.bsky.social•9 days ago

Yeah, I'm not convinced by the anti-palace arguments for that period - at the very least they're the only key nodes in the long-distance trading networks, if not the most important economic hubs in the grandest overall sense.

lollardfish.bsky.social•9 days ago

For me the OP saying “in which the country is legally the private property of the king or queen” speaks to me of the early modern - but am I wrong? Does Bronze Age have that kind of theory of ownership for example?

davidrafferty.bsky.social•9 days ago

Hellenistic kingdoms are pretty much this. The king exists as a source of power and pretty much everything he rules over is thought of as conquered. There is no pre-existing connection between the king and his subjects.

patrickwyman.bsky.social•9 days ago

Yeah, in the Greek case it's an extension of the victor's absolute right over the conquered, and because the Hellenistic kingdoms are defined as "spear-won land," that's the logical chain - am I correct in that?

profgabriele.com•9 days ago

the "private property" thing is a standard, modernist claim among those talking about "neofeudalism"

i noted that a bit here https://buttondown.com/ModernMedieval/archive/medieval-as-a-moral-argument/

BUT also, I think it's a kind of bastardized version of something Gibbon claimed

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•9 days ago

There is continued nibbling around the edges, but generally it seems like in Bronze Age Egypt or Mesopotamia, the lion's share of land was owned by the state - either directly by the king or by temples (which the king controlled).

The Hellenistic theory of 'spear won' land is similar in force.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•9 days ago

There is, for instance, a pretty clear difference between the economic systems we see in Egypt/Syria/Mesopotamia, where the state controls most of the land and what we see in Archaic-and-later Greece and Italy, where most land is privately held.

patrickwyman.bsky.social•9 days ago

With all the necessary caveats about what constitutes property, source issues, etc.: kind of, or close enough that the comparison isn’t abjectly wrong.

pymundgenealogy.com•9 days ago

I am absolutely ignorant on the history side of things, but the Talmud's conception of civil law is theoretically rooted in the ruler's ownership of the land - and medieval commentators seem to have found this natural

pymundgenealogy.com•9 days ago

Sorry not civil law, I mean governmental power of taxation etc

asherelbein.bsky.social•9 days ago

Yeah, when all you have is "I, the Great King, treading lions and armies beneath my sandled feet" it's a lot easier to believe it then when you have sources going "yeah, he's like that, just stay a few miles away from the capital and you can ignore him"

patrickwyman.bsky.social•9 days ago

The James Scott argument!

aaronsofaer.bsky.social•9 days ago

Yeah, my understanding is that a fair number of kings in what is now the UK and Nordics wound up face down in the bog if they pushed things too far.

seidmadr.bsky.social•9 days ago

Only in the middle ages. The early modern period had a lot of absolutism in Sweden and Denmark.

aaronsofaer.bsky.social•8 days ago

Yeah I was very much thinking of premodern.

cwjones.bsky.social•9 days ago

Not a coincidence that these countries where kings never had absolute power still have kings.

seidmadr.bsky.social•9 days ago

Sweden had absolute kings from 1523 to 1721, and 1772 to 1809, when after a coup against the king, the new king had sharply limited powers, styled after the US constitution.
Then over the years we got more and more democratic, until 1974 when the monarchy was made purely ceremonial.

cwjones.bsky.social•9 days ago

While royal power waxed and waned, for most of the time period you mentioned the nobility still wielded extensive influence through the Riksdag, did they not? Perhaps not as much power as from 1809 onwards, but did kings still have to take the nobility into account and respect their status?

seidmadr.bsky.social•8 days ago

They had influence, yeah. But the rise of the Swedish state after the Kalmar Union broke out as an absolute monarchy. Power sharing with the Riksdag varied, as you said. But the power sharing was not just with the nobles, all four estates were highly relevant to balance interests of.

thefred.bsky.social•9 days ago

What they believe:
Trump I -- Principate
Trump II -- Dominate

Reality:
Trump I -- 5th century
Trump II -- Crisis of the 3rd Century

enragedfilia.bsky.social•9 days ago

How about imperial China? My sense of the matter is it went back and forth over the course of centuries, but everyone involved tried pretty hard to make it look absolute.

nooneofcons.bsky.social•9 days ago

After the Mandate of Heaven was developed, I’d say no, since it listed the duties of the Emperor and justified his overthrow if they were not fulfilled

enragedfilia.bsky.social•9 days ago

And here I thought it was less "developed" and more "trotted out to retroactively justify every time the dynasty got overthrown".

Even so, simply that abrogating such responsibilities could be seen as justification even retroactively does seem to bring things beneath the "absolute" threshold.

morkandminksy.bsky.social•8 days ago

The longest running democratic government assemblies are all Viking monarchies, where it was too cold to kill everyone all the time, so they got into the habit of voting, at the thing.

vicesignalling.bsky.social•9 days ago

Would you have any reading recommendations for the different theories of kingship in medieval and early modern Europe? Probably with a focus on England, France, and Germany?

topherbrennan.bsky.social•9 days ago

Why do you count the Principate as a monarchy at all, rather than a tyranny? Seems like a pretty clear case of illegally seized power, where the old institutions are kept in place but corrupted.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•9 days ago

Because it persists long enough to become customary, with binding expectations for emperors and severe legitimacy consequences if those expectations are not met.

cwjones.bsky.social•9 days ago

For the Bronze Age, it depends which period we're talking about. Late Bronze Age, probably (at least in Egypt and Assyria, less so in Hatti and Karduniaš, certainly not in Mitanni). Middle Bronze Age, definitely not.

cwjones.bsky.social•9 days ago

Are we equating "absolute monarchy" and "god-king"? Defensible if so, but just looking to clarify.

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