In 1678, Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), bishop of the city of Meaux in France,
preacher and theologian at the court of Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715), and tutor to
the king’s eldest son and heir (the dauphin in French) wrote an instruction book for
his royal charge. Titled Politics Drawn from the Very Words of the Holy Scripture , it discussed
the nature of royal authority, along with providing practical advice. “Monarchical
authority comes from God,” wrote Bossuet. “Royal authority is sacred … religion
and conscience demand that we obey the prince. Royal authority is absolute … the
prince need render account to no one for what he orders … even if kings fail in their
duty, their charge and their ministry must be respected … Princes are gods.” 1 Bossuet
was explaining, in terms even a boy could understand, the political theory known as
the divine right of kings, which provided an intellectual justifi cation for Louis XIV’s
moves to concentrate power in his own hands. The young dauphin Louis did not have
to read very carefully, for he was surrounded by signs of royal power. The gigantic
palace his father built at Versailles was decorated with paintings showing the king in
heroic settings, and with mirrors, wall ornaments, and bas-reliefs decorated with Louis
XIV’s personal emblem, the sun, which the king himself described as “the most dazzling
and most beautiful image of the monarch.” 2 Versailles was also fi lled with nobles,
church leaders, authors, and artists all fi ghting for royal favors: living demonstrations
of the power of the Sun King.
Unfortunately for young Louis, he would never have the opportunity to test how
well he had learned his lessons, for his father’s authority was matched by his longevity.
Louis XIV ruled for seventy-two years, outliving not only his son, but also his grandson.
When he fi nally died in 1715, he was succeeded by his great-grandson, who, like the
Sun King himself, came to the throne at the age of fi ve.
The dauphin Louis was not the only one learning a lesson from Versailles, or from
Bossuet. Five years after Bossuet wrote his instructions to the dauphin, a boy did inherit
another European throne at the death of his father, though for a while he had to
share it with his half-brother and half-sister. Like Louis XIV, this young monarch built
a new capital and required nobles to follow certain rules of behavior, asserting that he
would not “grant any rank to anyone until he performs a useful service to Us or to the
state.” 3 We do not know if this monarch read Bossuet’s instructions, but he may very
well have read other works by Bossuet, especially his histories. We do know that, as a
young man, this monarch traveled to western Europe during the reign of Louis XIV,
gathering ideas and individuals that would help him bring techniques of engineering,
architecture, and military technology well known in Versailles, and in other western
European cities, to his country. There was bitter opposition to all of his measures and
many were imposed by force, but shortly after his relatively early death he was already
known by the title we still use, Peter the Great (1672–1725), tsar of Russia.
Bossuet did not invent the divine right of kings, but built on the ideas of earlier
thinkers. In 1609, James I of England proclaimed in a speech to Parliament, “the state
of Monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: For kings are not only God’s Lieutenants
upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called
Gods.” 4 As we will see later in this chapter, civil war and revolution in England prevented
James’s successors from making good his words. In most of the other nation-states
of Europe, however, monarchs attempted to make absolute royal authority a reality
by enhancing the processes of centralization, military expansion, fi nancial restructuring,
and religious reorganization that had begun in the sixteenth century. Even in the
smaller states of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, dukes, counts, and princes tried to
emulate the French model, issuing decrees and building palaces modeled on Versailles.
The Habsburg rulers of Austria-Hungary built Schönbrunn outside Vienna (begun in
1694), the Hohenzollern rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia, soon to elevate themselves to
the title of kings of Prussia, built the Royal Palace in Berlin (begun in 1698), the dukes
of Württemberg in southwestern Germany built Ludwigsburg (begun in 1704), and the
dukes of Savoy built the palace of Stupinigi near Turin in Italy (begun in 1729). Even
the prince-bishop of the German city of Würzburg, one of the twenty-six territories in
the Holy Roman Empire ruled by independent bishops, decided he needed a residence
and formal gardens that looked like Versailles. In all of these places, artists, architects,
sculptors, tapestry-makers, composers, and poets created works that celebrated the
rulers who paid for them as political power took spectacular visual form.
World History
