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DISCUSSION GROUP
Week 7: Monarchies, State and Nation |
The general objective of the lectures and
discussion group this week is to consider the nature and use of political power
in kingdoms in the later Middle Ages. In the discussion group we will
concentrate on the theme of kingship and consider what in this period was
deemed to characterise ‘good’ (and, by extension, ‘bad’) kingship. We will
focus on the Letter of Advice from St Louis (Louis IX of France) to his eldest
son, who succeeded him as Philip III in 1270. The text that we have is
supposedly based on the instructions that Louis dictated on his deathbed. The
original text is lost, but various later versions circulated. You will wish to
consider who might have compiled (and possibly modified) the text, and why it
was circulated.
Louis IX was, in many respects, the exemplar
of kingship in later medieval Europe. One important reason for this was that he
was made a saint, just one generation after his death, in 1297: he therefore
became part of the ideological apparatus not just of the French monarchy but of
all those kings and princes who claimed a ‘sacral’ quality to their rule. More
generally, Louis’ rule was seen as conforming to the precepts of good
governance: the king had ruled justly, for the good of all, had made sound laws
and not burdened is people with unjust impositions. The degree to which Louis
was a prototype of good monarchy is something to which we will return next week
when looking at Edward III’s manifesto to the people of France in 1340.
In reading and discussing the text of the
letter of Advice, please pay attention to the following questions and issues:
1.
What was the job of a
king?
2.
What
was the nature and significance of the relationship between the king and
religion?
3.
What
power, and what constraints, did the ideology of kingship place on rulers’
capacity to make laws and to tax their subjects?
4. Does the Letter of Advice yield any references to
ideologies other than religion that might have underpinned this particular
vision of rulership? Search for ideas about the ‘state’ and the ‘nation’.