Absolutism

The absolutism is a type of Political regime where “the holder of a power attached to his person, concentrating in his hands all the capacities, controls without any control” (Henri Morel, article “Absolutism”, Dictionnaire of political philosophy , 1996). But the word " absolutisme" was invented after the system of being able that it is supposed to define. It is indeed, in 1797, that Châteaubriand uses it, for the first time. It remains that if the word “absolutism” does not exist, other terms, close relations, give better an account of the nature of the political power in France known as of “Old Mode”, between Renaissance and Revolution: indeed, the “neologism” “absolutism” is a derivative of “absolute capacity”, “poder absoluto”, expressions, as for them, well used in XVIe, XVIIe and XVIIIe centuries in France of Valois and the Bourbons, as in Spain of Habsbourg.

History

To be able “absolute”, “absolute” power, “absolute” king: here are often declined phrases, in particular by the contemporaries of Louis XIII and Louis XIV to qualify the nature of the authority exerted since the Council of In Top, the principal authority of monarchy. Here is an example: after the death of Richelieu, the officers of Valence present a report to obtain the abolition “of the transaction which they were constrained to pass in 1642 in presence and by the absolute command of Mgr the cardinal of Richelieu, of which it is notorious that the respect and the authority pouvoit not to receive contradiction in the kingdom”. In its edition of 1732, the dictionary of Trévoux, to the “absolute” word indicates: “Sovereign, independent. Absolute prince. He means without reserve, without restriction”. In Latin absolutus, takes part last of absolvere, means “to detach”, “to untie”, before even meaning, by semantic drift, “to discharge”, “to exonerate”. As an adjective, absolutus means “completed”, “perfect”, “complete”, “which forms by oneself a whole”.

The absolute monarch is thus that which, by definition, “is untied”, detached from all bonds, that which does not know external limit with its capacity, that which enjoys the summa potestas, that one could translate by “full sovereignty”. By extension, one qualifies “absolutists” of the authoritative political regimes .

The absolute monarchy in France

In France, an absolute monarchy was sought by the royal capacity. This research implied the suppression or the limitation of the other forms of being able; that of the Roman Church, that of the Clergy and the Nobility like that of the Parliament. Louis XIV succeeded in setting up this form of absolutism, by developing the design of Absolute monarchy of divine right and by imposing it on its subjects, instead of the aforesaid capacities. The term is applied in its restrictive direction to the French Monarchie (since the 17th century until the fall of the Ancien Mode) and to the enlightened despotisms of the 18th century.

Theoretical genesis and bases

It is necessary to go back at the period following the end of the Moyen-âge and especially to the Renaissance to find the bases of the absolutism in France. The royal capacity indeed reinforced its legitimacy and its administration starting from the end of the Guerre One hundred Year old. The royal field extended. Jean Bodin is one of the theorists of the royal Souveraineté at the 16th century.

In first half of the 17th century, the periods of regency constitute difficult moments for the royal capacity. One needs the energetic action of a Richelieu to subdue the feudal capacities. One of the theorists of the absolutism is then Pierre de Bérulle. In the dedication of sound Speech of the State and sizes of Jesus , addressed to Louis XIII in 1623, it writes:

“a monarch is God according to the language of the writing: God not essentially but by power; God not by nature but by grace; God not for always but for a time. God not for the Sky but for the Earth. God not remaining, but dependant on that which is remaining it by oneself; who being God of the Gods, makes to kings Dieux in resemblance, power and quality, Gods visible, images of invisible God. ”

During the minority of Louis XIV, it is the cardinal of Mazarin which faces the rising of the Fronde (1648 - 1653). The overpowered people of tax raise themselves in several areas and the members of Parliament take advantage of their rights. The princes of blood such that Condé pokes the revolt and the Parisian people agitates. The young person Louis XIV must undergo the humiliation of the escape in the night (" the night of the rois"). He will keep all his life a deep resentment against the critical nobility. He was also educated by Mazarin in the ideology absolutist according to which the capacity is not divided. Omer Talon, which was prosecuting attorney at the Parliament of Paris during the Fronde (1648 - 1652) is regarded as the high priest of a royal religion of which he wanted to be the trusty servant. At the time of the bed of justice of May 18th 1643, which inaugurates the reign of Louis XIV, Omer Talon declares, knelt in front of the young king:

“Lord, the seat of your majesty represents us the throne of alive God. The orders of the kingdom return honor and respect to you as to a visible divinity. ”

Bossuet, which was undoubtedly the most famous flatterer of the Absolute monarchy, in its Politique drawn from the proper words of the Scriptures (III, 3rd proposal) explains why “there is something of monk in the respect which one returns to the prince. The service of God and the respect for the kings are plain things. Also God it put in the princes something of divine. ”

Limits and criticisms of the French absolutism

the king of France must comply with rules which limit its capacity: it must apply the Fundamental laws of the kingdom which are a not written Constitution.

For the succession, the king cannot choose his heir because the principles of heredity, male primogeniture and of male collaterality of the Fundamental laws are essential on all. It cannot abdicate either. The royalty becomes effective with the establishment of the candidate by the twelve Pairs of France (6 laymen and 6 ecclesiastics) at the time of the ceremony of the Sacre during which he pronounces the oath to protect works from the church and to maintain and defend the habits and the rights of its people . Thus, it must be catholic according to the principle of catholicity of the king, created truly in 1593. The royal Domaine is inalienable. The king can neither alienate it, nor to increase it while taking or beginning again what comes under the private field, except with a reason and a legal procedure, it is the principle of the unavailability of the kingdom. Representative of the State, the king has the capacity to treat with the foreign powers, to declare the war, to raise men-at-arms, to emit currency, to accommodate and naturalize foreigners. In the legislative field, it does not have the capacity to change the civil laws whose source is usual, canonical and jurisprudential. Its edicts, its ordinances and its letters patent carry only on the public Droit: they are almost always payments of public administration. In the administrative field, it names the military ministers, governors, the intendants, etc. In the legal field, justice is exerted on its behalf by a multitude of jurisdictions of which the higher degree is consisted the sovereign regional Parliaments or course, which are its wilder contrepouvoirs (they led to the Revolution). The king can exceptionally retain his justice, either by calling a cause to supremely judge it in front of his council, or by giving an order like that to stop, of gracier, to imprison or assign with residence a private individual with a letter Lettre de cachet. In the tax field, the taxes and the taxes are not a tribute paid by people overcome; they are authorized and cannot be increased without the meeting of the General states.

Louis XIV controlled without Prime Minister and only decided, while taking the councils of sound Chancelier, its ministers and its Secretaries of State.

Despite everything the efforts made by the sun king Soleil, the French monarchy of the 17th century was never absolute. The kingdom of France east one of the most populated Europe and the administration is not sufficient to impose an unbounded capacity. The royal decisions run up against the company of body: under the Old Mode, the provinces, the cities, the Corporation S and order S have Privilège S which the sovereign must respect. The Clergé has for example its own courts and its own legal procedures. Since the the Middle Ages, freedoms (let us hear the collective franknesses and exemptions) authorize a great number of French to be laid out of specific rights. The subjects do not speak all the same language, do not have same measurements… the general states and provincial is joined together in times of crisis and is a platform for the representatives of the three orders. These institutions go against the aimings absolutists of Louis XIV. This is why the general states were never joined together under its reign.

At the 18th century, the absolutism is especially criticized by the Philosophes of the Lumières such as Denis Diderot or Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Montesquieu declares that the executive powers, legislature and legal cannot be concentrated in the hands of the same social class. In the Encyclopedia, the bearing article on the political authority criticizes the absolutism. The questioning of the political system takes a radical turning in 1789 when the deputies declare National Assembly and that they write a Constitution thereafter, the first of the history of the country. One then passes to a mode of Constitutional monarchy. The word " absolutisme" was forged under the French revolution, just as the expression " Old Mode ". It was then in charge of a negative direction and systematically opposed to the work of the République. The days of October 1789 bring back the king to Paris; the court is destructurée and Versailles ceases being the place of the absolutism. A few years later, the objects of the sacring and the symbols royal are destroyed by the revolutionists. The absolute monarchy of divine right lived.

The absolute monarchy in the rest of Europe

The monarchs most representative of the absolute capacity are Charles III of Spain and Frederic II of Prussia, this last being the example most frequently evoked of enlightened despot. The Maison of Savoy also practiced this form to be able and the Résidences of Savoy around Turin are the architectural illustration. The absolutism raises more of the practice of the capacity that of a political Doctrine.

One sometimes introduced the philosopher Thomas Hobbes like the theorist of the absolute capacity. Actually, it primarily attempted to study the relationships of the man with the capacity, releasing from there the idea of imprescriptible rights which will be at the origin of the declaration of the human rights and the citizen.

In England, Stuarts tried to cut down the political rights of the Parliament. Jacques Ier on several occasions tries to control without convening the Parliament which has in theory a right to watch on the lifting of new taxes. In its speeches and its writings, he recalls that its capacity is of divine right. Its absolutism is also expressed in the field of the religion. It wishes to impose the Anglicanisme on all its subjects, persecuting the Puritain S and the catholics. His/her son Charles Ier continues the absolutist project. The civil war which marks the end of its reign ends in the First revolution English: Charles Ier loses the combat and is decapitated. After the republican bracket of Olivier Cromwell, monarchy is restored.

In philosophy

According to Bruno Latour, the opposite of the Relativisme is not the Universalisme, but the absolutism.

The absolute monarchy nowadays

List states having currently for mode an absolute monarchy:

Quotations

“For the majority of the men of the 19th century and today still absolutism is synonymous with despotism, of capricious and unlimited capacity. It is absolutely inaccurate: absolute capacity means independent capacity exactly; French monarchy was absolute since it depended on any other authority, neither imperial, neither parliamentary, nor popular: it was limited of it, not moderated by a crowd of hereditary or corporative institutions social and political, whose clean capacities prevented it from leaving its field and its function. Its right confined with a multitude of rights which supported it and balanced it. Old France “was roughcast of freedom. ” Charles Maurras

See too

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