Monarchomachs
Encyclopedia
The Monarchomachs were originally French
Huguenot
theorists who opposed absolute monarchy
at the end of the 16th century, known in particular for having theoretically justified tyrannicide
. The term was originally a pejorative word coined in 1600 by the Scottish royalist and Catholic William Barclay
(1548–1608) from the Greek
μόναρχος (monarchos - "monarch, sole ruler") and μάχομαι ("makhomai" - the verb meaning "to fight"), meaning "those who fight against monarchs."
Born out of the context of the French Wars of Religion
, they were most active between 1573, a year after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre
, and 1584. The Monarchomachs pleaded in favour of a form of "popular sovereignty
." Arguing for a sort of contract between the sovereign and the people, they have been considered as the precursors of social contract
theories.
(1524–1590), Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605), Simon Goulart
(1543–1628), Nicolas Barnaud
(1538–1604), Hubert Languet
(1518–1581), Philippe de Mornay
(1549–1623) and George Buchanan
(1506–1582). Through the means of libels
and theoretical tracts, they revived the doctrine of the tyrannicide
. It had been opposed during the Middle Ages
by the "legists" (jurists who theorized the royal power) who attempted reserve the title of tyrant
to those who tried to overturn the ruling monarch. Legists thus ended up legitimizing, under the name of "tyrannicide," the assassinations of political opponents ordered by the monarch.
Monarchomachs considered that the end of the state
was prosperity of the whole social group, as the true sovereign, granting effective practice of power to the king, whose authority remained of divine right. Exercise of popular sovereignty was to be delegated to the magistrates and the officers of the crown. They considered that the people were a collective body, possessed of a specific wisdom, which allowed them to understand better than the king the common good, distinct from the interest of each of its parties. Assimilated to the medieval universitas
, the people was thus considered as a legal subject, whose interests were represented by the General Estates
. This conception of the magistrates and the association of wise people as best representants of the people separated them from modern conception of democracy
, as they restricted effective power to a minority. Max Weber
considered them in his lecture Politics as a Vocation
as participants of the movement of rationalization
of law in Europe.
The Monarchomachs also claimed that if the sovereign persecuted true religion, he would violate the contract concluded between God and the people, who were thus granted a right of rebellion. They were inspired by Aristotle
, Thomas Aquinas
, and the School of Salamanca
on the killing of "bad kings." This legimitization of tyrannicide may have inspired as much the friar Clément
, who assassinated Henry III
in 1589, as Ravaillac
, who assassinated Henry IV
in 1610. Rebellion against tyranny was considered not only as necessary, but as a divine right.
in his book De Regno et Regali Potestate (About the Powers of Authority and Royalty), published in 1600. Barclay's theory was that the Huguenots had lost their struggle with the Catholic Church and were turning their battle towards the government to undermine the king's support of the Catholics. Eventually, the term was used to classify anyone who was opposed to the king's rule.
At first a Protestant doctrine, the notion of tyrannicide was reappropriated by the Catholics when Protestants came to be kings. It was then used in revolutionary
discourses during the debates concerning the execution of Louis XVI
, while the right of rebellion was included in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
.
Influenced by the Huguenots, some British thinkers also embraced the Monarchomaque movement.
Early Modern France
Kingdom of France is the early modern period of French history from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 18th century...
Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
theorists who opposed absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government in which the monarch exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, his or her power not being limited by a constitution or by the law. An absolute monarch thus wields unrestricted political power over the...
at the end of the 16th century, known in particular for having theoretically justified tyrannicide
Tyrannicide
Tyrannicide literally means the killing of a tyrant, or one who has committed the act. Typically, the term is taken to mean the killing or assassination of tyrants for the common good. The term "tyrannicide" does not apply to tyrants killed in battle or killed by an enemy in an armed conflict...
. The term was originally a pejorative word coined in 1600 by the Scottish royalist and Catholic William Barclay
William Barclay (jurist)
William Barclay was a Scottish jurist.-Life:He was born in Aberdeenshire in 1546. Educated at the University of Aberdeen, he went to France in 1573, and studied law at the University of Bourges, where he took his doctor's degree...
(1548–1608) from the Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
μόναρχος (monarchos - "monarch, sole ruler") and μάχομαι ("makhomai" - the verb meaning "to fight"), meaning "those who fight against monarchs."
Born out of the context of the French Wars of Religion
French Wars of Religion
The French Wars of Religion is the name given to a period of civil infighting and military operations, primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants . The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and House of Guise...
, they were most active between 1573, a year after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre
The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots , during the French Wars of Religion...
, and 1584. The Monarchomachs pleaded in favour of a form of "popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the political principle that the legitimacy of the state is created and sustained by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated with Republicanism and the social contract...
." Arguing for a sort of contract between the sovereign and the people, they have been considered as the precursors of social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
theories.
The Monarchomachs and the theory of tyrannicide
The Monarchomachs included jurists such as the Calvinists François HotmanFrançois Hotman
François Hotman was a French Protestant lawyer and writer, associated with the legal humanists and with the monarchomaques, who struggled against absolute monarchy. His first name is often written 'Francis' in English. His surname is Latinized by himself as Hotomanus, by others as Hotomannus and...
(1524–1590), Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605), Simon Goulart
Simon Goulart
Simon Goulart was a French Reformed theologian, humanist and poet.-Life:He was born at Senlis in northern France. He first studied law, then adopted the Reformed...
(1543–1628), Nicolas Barnaud
Nicolas Barnaud
Nicolas Barnaud was a French Protestant writer, physician and alchemist, from Crest, in Dauphiné, from which he took the name Delphinas . He was a member of the Monarchomaques.He is associated with a number of mysteries...
(1538–1604), Hubert Languet
Hubert Languet
Hubert Languet was a French diplomat and reformer. The leading idea of his diplomacy was that of religious and civil liberty for the protection and expansion of Protestantism...
(1518–1581), Philippe de Mornay
Philippe de Mornay
Philippe de Mornay , seigneur du Plessis Marly, usually known as Du-Plessis-Mornay or Mornay Du Plessis, was a French Protestant writer and member of the Monarchomaques .- Biography :...
(1549–1623) and George Buchanan
George Buchanan
George Buchanan may refer to:*George Buchanan , Scottish humanist*Sir George Buchanan , Scottish soldier during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms*Sir George Buchanan , Chief Medical Officer...
(1506–1582). Through the means of libels
Libel (poetry)
Libel is a verse genre primarily of the Renaissance, descended from the tradition of invective in classical Greek and Roman poetry. Libel is usually expressly political, and balder and coarser than satire...
and theoretical tracts, they revived the doctrine of the tyrannicide
Tyrannicide
Tyrannicide literally means the killing of a tyrant, or one who has committed the act. Typically, the term is taken to mean the killing or assassination of tyrants for the common good. The term "tyrannicide" does not apply to tyrants killed in battle or killed by an enemy in an armed conflict...
. It had been opposed during the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
by the "legists" (jurists who theorized the royal power) who attempted reserve the title of tyrant
Tyrant
A tyrant was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.Plato and...
to those who tried to overturn the ruling monarch. Legists thus ended up legitimizing, under the name of "tyrannicide," the assassinations of political opponents ordered by the monarch.
Monarchomachs considered that the end of the state
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
was prosperity of the whole social group, as the true sovereign, granting effective practice of power to the king, whose authority remained of divine right. Exercise of popular sovereignty was to be delegated to the magistrates and the officers of the crown. They considered that the people were a collective body, possessed of a specific wisdom, which allowed them to understand better than the king the common good, distinct from the interest of each of its parties. Assimilated to the medieval universitas
Universitas
Universitas is a Latin word meaning "the whole, total; the universe, the world". It may refer to:*Universitas 21, an international network of research-intensive universities....
, the people was thus considered as a legal subject, whose interests were represented by the General Estates
French States-General
In France under the Old Regime, the States-General or Estates-General , was a legislative assembly of the different classes of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates, which were called and dismissed by the king...
. This conception of the magistrates and the association of wise people as best representants of the people separated them from modern conception of democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, as they restricted effective power to a minority. Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
considered them in his lecture Politics as a Vocation
Politics as a Vocation
Politics as a Vocation is an essay by German economist and sociologist Max Weber. It originated in a lecture he gave to the Free Students Union of Munich University, in January 1919, during the German Revolution....
as participants of the movement of rationalization
Rationalization (sociology)
Rationalization is a term used in sociology to refer to a process in which an increasing number of social actions become based on considerations of teleological efficiency or calculation rather than on motivations derived from morality, emotion, custom, or tradition...
of law in Europe.
The Monarchomachs also claimed that if the sovereign persecuted true religion, he would violate the contract concluded between God and the people, who were thus granted a right of rebellion. They were inspired by Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
, and the School of Salamanca
School of Salamanca
The School of Salamanca is the renaissance of thought in diverse intellectual areas by Spanish and Portuguese theologians, rooted in the intellectual and pedagogical work of Francisco de Vitoria...
on the killing of "bad kings." This legimitization of tyrannicide may have inspired as much the friar Clément
Jacques Clément
Jacques Clément was the assassin of the French king Henry III.He was born at Serbonnes, in today's Yonne département, in Burgundy, and became a Dominican lay brother....
, who assassinated Henry III
Henry III of France
Henry III was King of France from 1574 to 1589. As Henry of Valois, he was the first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the dual titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.-Childhood:Henry was born at the Royal Château de Fontainebleau,...
in 1589, as Ravaillac
François Ravaillac
François Ravaillac was a French factotum in the courts of Angoulême and a regicide. A sometime tutor and Catholic zealot, he murdered King Henry IV of France in 1610.-Early life and education:...
, who assassinated Henry IV
Henry IV of France
Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
in 1610. Rebellion against tyranny was considered not only as necessary, but as a divine right.
Monarchomach theory in the 16th century
The term Monarchomachs was coined by William BarclayWilliam Barclay (jurist)
William Barclay was a Scottish jurist.-Life:He was born in Aberdeenshire in 1546. Educated at the University of Aberdeen, he went to France in 1573, and studied law at the University of Bourges, where he took his doctor's degree...
in his book De Regno et Regali Potestate (About the Powers of Authority and Royalty), published in 1600. Barclay's theory was that the Huguenots had lost their struggle with the Catholic Church and were turning their battle towards the government to undermine the king's support of the Catholics. Eventually, the term was used to classify anyone who was opposed to the king's rule.
At first a Protestant doctrine, the notion of tyrannicide was reappropriated by the Catholics when Protestants came to be kings. It was then used in revolutionary
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
discourses during the debates concerning the execution of Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
, while the right of rebellion was included in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining the individual and collective rights of all the estates of the realm as universal. Influenced by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid...
.
Influenced by the Huguenots, some British thinkers also embraced the Monarchomaque movement.
See also
- Right of rebellion
- TyrannicideTyrannicideTyrannicide literally means the killing of a tyrant, or one who has committed the act. Typically, the term is taken to mean the killing or assassination of tyrants for the common good. The term "tyrannicide" does not apply to tyrants killed in battle or killed by an enemy in an armed conflict...
- Early Modern FranceEarly Modern FranceKingdom of France is the early modern period of French history from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 18th century...
- BeerwolfBeerwolfA Beerwolf is a German folk-tale monster.Beerwolf is a concept introduced by Martin Luther that Luther uses to describe the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V...
, a concept introduced by Martin LutherMartin LutherMartin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
Sources
- Original works:
- François HotmanFrançois HotmanFrançois Hotman was a French Protestant lawyer and writer, associated with the legal humanists and with the monarchomaques, who struggled against absolute monarchy. His first name is often written 'Francis' in English. His surname is Latinized by himself as Hotomanus, by others as Hotomannus and...
. Francogallia. - Francofurti, apud heredes A. Wecheli, 1856. - François HotmanFrançois HotmanFrançois Hotman was a French Protestant lawyer and writer, associated with the legal humanists and with the monarchomaques, who struggled against absolute monarchy. His first name is often written 'Francis' in English. His surname is Latinized by himself as Hotomanus, by others as Hotomannus and...
and Joseph de Paris, capucin. Dessein perpétuel des Espagnols à la monarchie universelle, avec les preuves d'iceluy. - S.l., s.n., 1624. - Théodore de Bèze. Du droit des magistrats sur leurs subjets, traité très nécessaire en ce temps, pour advertir de leur devoir, tant les magistrats que les subjetsRight of MagistratesThe Right of Magistrates was a 1574 work written by Theodore Beza in 1574, and published anonymously, as a polemical contribution to the pamphlet literature of the French Wars of Religion...
. - S. l., s. n., 1575.. - Stephanus Junius Brutus (pseudonym attributed to Hubert LanguetHubert LanguetHubert Languet was a French diplomat and reformer. The leading idea of his diplomacy was that of religious and civil liberty for the protection and expansion of Protestantism...
and Philippe de MornayPhilippe de MornayPhilippe de Mornay , seigneur du Plessis Marly, usually known as Du-Plessis-Mornay or Mornay Du Plessis, was a French Protestant writer and member of the Monarchomaques .- Biography :...
). De la puissance légitime du prince sur le peuple, et du peuple sur le Prince, traité très-utile et digne de lecture en ce temps escrit en Latin par Estienne Iunius Brutus, et nouvellement traduit en françois. - S.l., s.n., 1581. - Anonym. Le Réveille matin des François. Touchant les troubles & mouvements de ce temps. - S.l., s.n., 1622.
- Nicolas BarnaudNicolas BarnaudNicolas Barnaud was a French Protestant writer, physician and alchemist, from Crest, in Dauphiné, from which he took the name Delphinas . He was a member of the Monarchomaques.He is associated with a number of mysteries...
. Le Réveille-matin des françois et de leurs voisins, composé par Eusebe Philadelphe cosmopolite. - Edimbourg, Impr. de Jaques James, 1574. - Anonym. Le caractère de la royauté et de la tyrannie, faisant voir par un discours politique : 1. Les Qualitez nécessaires à un Prince pour bien gouverner ses sujects. 2. Les Maux qui arrivent aux peuples lorsque les souverains sont incapables de les gouverner. - Paris, 1652.
- William Allen. A treatise made in defence of the lauful power and authoritie of priesthod to remitte sinnes : of the peoples duetie for confession of their sinnes to Gods ministers : And of the churches meaning concerning indulgences, commonly called the Popes Pardos...- 1567, Ioannem Foulerum.
- Juan de MarianaJuan de MarianaJuan de Mariana, also known as Father Mariana , was a Spanish Jesuit priest, Scholastic, historian, and member of the Monarchomachs....
. Joannis Marianae, ... de Rege et regis Institutione libri III... - Tolède, Rodericus, 1599.
- François Hotman
- Articles and commentary:
- Paul-Alexis Mellet (dir.), Et de sa bouche sortait un glaive. Les Monarchomaques au XVIème siècle, Genève, DrozDrozDroz:* Darren Drozdov, WWE superstar* Joseph Droz* Numa Droz* Pierre Jaquet-Droz** Jaquet-Droz automata* Daniela Droz* Antoine Gustave Droz* Jules Humbert-Droz...
, 2006.
- Paul-Alexis Mellet (dir.), Et de sa bouche sortait un glaive. Les Monarchomaques au XVIème siècle, Genève, Droz