Alpha Book

The king is a public person and in him the whole nation is
embodied. "As in God are united all perfection and every virtue, so all
the power of all the individuals in a community is united in the person
of the king."
[Sidenote: Louis XIV]
Such was the theory of what is called divine-right monarchy or
absolutism. It must be remembered that it had been gaining ground
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until it was accepted
practically by all the French people as well as by most of their
Continental neighbors. Even in England, as we shall presently
see,[Footnote: See below, pp. 263 ff.] the Stuart kings attempted, for
a time with success, to assert and maintain the doctrine. It was a
political idea as popular in the seventeenth century as that of
democracy is to-day. And Louis XIV was its foremost personification.
Suave, dignified, elegant in manners and speech, the French king played
his part well; he appeared to have been born and divinely appointed to
the kingly calling.
For a king, Louis worked hard.


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