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The Divine Right of Kings is a European political and religious doctrine of political absolutism. Such doctrines are largely, though not exclusively, associated with the mediæval and ancien régime eras, based on contemporary Christian belief that a monarch owed his rule to the will of God, not to the will of his subjects, parliament, the aristocracy or any other competing authority. This doctrine continued with the claim that any attempt to depose a monarch or to restrict his powers ran contrary to the will of God.

Its symbolism remains in the coronation of the British monarch, in which s/he is anointed with Holy oil s by the Archbishop of Canterbury, thereby ordaining them to monarchy. It is further evidenced by efforts to trace the genealogy of European monarchs to King David of the Old Testament, in the apparent belief that it legitimizes the rule of the present monarch (c.f. http://www.kingdavid.org/genealogy.html). The king or queen of the United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly is the last monarch still to undergo such a ceremony, which in other countries has been replaced by an inaugurationAn inauguration is the formal process of assuming an office or position. The term is usually used in reference to a politician's assumption of the duties of head of state or head of government, ie: "the President's inauguration. Tradtionally, the inaugura or other declarationA declaration is a form of statement, which expresses (or declares) some idea; declarations attempt to argue that something is true. Some types of written text are said to be declarations, such as the US Declaration of Independence or the proposed Unilate.

1 The concept

The concept of Divine Right of Kings is different from a much broader concept of "royal God-given rights", which simply says that "the right to rule is anointed by god(s)" which is found in other cultures. Unlike the Chinese concept of the Mandate of HeavenThe Mandate of Heaven ( Pinyin: Tinming) was a Chinese concept used to justify the rule of the kings of the Zhou Dynasty and later the Emperors of China. The concept of the Mandate of Heaven was that a king's rule was based on the blessing of Heaven and t which legitimized the overthrow of an oppressive or incompetent monarch, a European king could not lose the Divine Right by misrule. In addition, the concept of Mandate of HeavenThe Mandate of Heaven ( Pinyin: Tinming) was a Chinese concept used to justify the rule of the kings of the Zhou Dynasty and later the Emperors of China. The concept of the Mandate of Heaven was that a king's rule was based on the blessing of Heaven and t required that the emperor properly carry out the proper ritualA ritual is a formalised, predetermined set of symbolic actions generally performed in a particular environment at a regular, recurring interval. The set of actions that comprise a ritual often include, but are not limited to, such things as recitation, ss, consult his ministers, and made it extremely difficult to undo any acts carried out by an ancestor.

Japanese imperial theory based the legitimacy of the Emperor of JapanThe Emperor of Japan (, tenno is Japan's titular head of state and the head of the Japanese imperial family. From the dawn of history until the mid-twentieth century the role of the Emperor has alternated between that of a high-rank cleric with largely sy on his descent from AmaterasuTorii at the Ama-no-Iwato Shrine in Takachiho, Miyazaki Prefecture Amaterasu or Amateratsu is a Shinto Sun goddess; she is the mythical ancestress of the royal family of Japan. Her full name is Amaterasu-o-mi-kami which means "glorious goddess who shines, however unlike the European case, this divinity did not usually translate into political power.

In the western world it came to be associated with Roman CatholicismGeneral meaning Catholic means universal or whole''. With respect to the Christian Church, the early Christians used the term to refer to the whole undivided church. It is in that sense that all Christians today claim ownership of the term, including Prot and other Christian faiths in the Reformation period. The notion of divine right of kings was certainly in existence in the medieval period. However it was in the early modern era, under the ancien régime, that the notion became extensively used as a primarily political mechanism i.e. for increasing the power of kings within centralized monarchies relative to their nobles and subjects. It was given its most comprehensive formulations by the French bishop Bossuet and King James I of England, but it owes much to the earlier writings of St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Paul of Tarsus.

In the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 13, St. Paul wrote that earthly rulers, even though they may not be Christians, have been appointed by God to their places of power for the purpose of punishing evildoers. Some Biblical scholars believe that St. Paul was writing, in part, to reassure the Roman authorities who ruled his world that the Christian movement was not politically subversive. The difficulty posed for later Christians is that the New Testament contained no explicit plan for the government of a mostly Christian society. It assumed that Christians would always be a minority in a pagan world, and its political counsel was limited mostly to advising members to obey the law and stay out of the way of pagan government.

During the early reign of Louis XIV of France, Bossuet took this argument to its furthest conclusion. Reviewing Old Testament precedents concerning the selection of kings, Bossuet concluded that kings were God's anointed representatives on earth. Each of them has been given his throne by God Himself, and to rebel against their authority is to rebel against God. No parliament, nobleman, nor the common people had a right to participate in that God-given authority, since it was conferred by divine providence through the right of primogeniture.

In fact, Bossuet wrote, not to justify the authority of an already autocratic monarchy, but to shore it up against further incidents of turmoil that had shaken the French throne, such as the series of Frondes, in which French noblemen had fought petty civil wars against the authority of Louis XIII, and against Louis XIV himself. Bossuet's teaching ultimately proved to be the cause of much turmoil and bloodshed in France; the notion of divine right was finally overthrown in the French Revolution.