Showing posts with label King Louis XIV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label King Louis XIV. Show all posts

Friday, January 27, 2023

"The Hands of the King...

...are the hands of a healer." This line from The Lord of the Rings sounds fantastical, but as a first-rate historian and medievalist, J.R.R.Tolkien knew well the idea that the laying on of hands by a king (or queen: that's Mary I of England in the illustration) could heal illness. This was supposedly possible because of their "divine right" as anointed kings.

The King's Touch, or Royal Touch, was the practice of laying on of hands by English and French monarchs that was believed to cure diseases, particularly the King's Evil, scrofula. Hippocrates thought scrofula was a disproportionate accumulation of phlegm.

Scrofula, a disease of the lymph nodes, is now called mycobacterial cervical lymphadenitis, and is associated with tuberculosis. It usually manifests as a painless swelling in the lymph nodes of the neck caused by infection. It almost disappeared in the second half of the 20th century, but the appearance of HIV/AIDS has caused a small resurgence.

Where did the Royal Touch start? A 16th-century physician thought it began with Clovis I (reigned 481 - 511) after he accepted Christianity. Many other origins are offered. King Philip I of France (1052 - 1108) was perhaps the first time a king's touch was requested to heal a stubborn disease, so the French say. King Henry I of England (1068 - 1135) was appealed to for the same reason, although some scholars believe Edward the Confessor (reigned until 1066) was the first. The French denied this, and claimed that it started with Henry in England only because he was imitating Philip. What we can say is that records under Edward I show the practice of a penny given to sufferers afterward was established by 1276, two years after Edward's arrival back in England as king. Some say this means it was probably introduced by Edward's father, the pious Henry III, who was also a huge fan of Edward the Confessor and might have patterned his behavior after that monarch and therefore—but let's just stop there because there's too much speculation to reconcile all the conflicting theories. The record of tokens handed out suggests that Edward "touched" about a thousand people a year.

Scrofula became known as the "King's Evil" because an appeal to the king was considered the best recourse. John Gaddesden (1280 - 1361) recommends it as treatment for scrofula and other skin diseases. Eventually, a special gold-plated coin would be given by the king to the sufferer to be worn around the neck to ward off the disease. The truth is, the disease rarely was associated with death, and often went into remission on its own, supporting the notion that the king's touch cured the patient.

The Royal Touch persisted into the Renaissance, even though there was plenty of evidence that it did not inevitably lead to a cure. The formula in France added the line Le roi te touche, Dieu te guérisse ("The King touches you, may God heal you"), taking the burden of healing off the king's shoulders (or hands) and placing the possible healing on God. Louis XIV of France touched 1600 people on Easter 1680. Voltaire wrote that a mistress of Louis XIV died of scrofula despite "being very well touched by the king." Louis XV stopped the practice by not calling sufferers to be touched at Easter 1739. Louis XVI touched 2400 at his coronation in 1775, and Charles X touched 121 at his coronation in 1825, but there are no records of the Royal Touch being used after that date.

But where does the word scrofula come from? That's a slightly trickier question that will lead us into sympathetic magic and the Doctrine of Signatures. That's for another day.

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Divine Right of Kings

The Protestant Reformation in the 1500s undermined the authority of and people's faith in the pope and the Catholic Church. This was a boon to temporal authorities, as people increasingly looked to kings for guidance. The king was considered to be answerable for his decisions and behavior to no one but God. (Eventually, of course, the lack of limits in a ruler came under question, since it removes any power from the people, and the revolutions of the late 1700s dealt with this.)

While it lasted, however, the notion of the divine right of kings was beneficial to the tiny percentage of the human population that could take advantage of it.

For Christians and Jews, a passage in Deuteronomy was crucial:

When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, 'I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,' 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother." (Deuteronomy, 17:14-15)

Debates took place over whether this meant the people choose a king, or whether their choice is an example of God's will being made manifest. In fact, Jewish law requires a blessing upon seeing a monarch: "Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who has given from His glory to flesh and blood." This suggests that the monarch has God's support.

Medieval Europe was willing to accept that God gave the ruler complete temporal authority, just as the Pope had complete spiritual authority. Richard I of England declared in 1193 "I am born in a rank which recognizes no superior but God, to whom alone I am responsible for my actions," and first used the phrase (still the motto of the monarch of the United Kingdom) Dieu et mon droit (French: "God and my right"). This is the origin of the pluralis majestatis, the "royal we" used by potentates, to indicate that they and God are speaking. Richard's Chancellor, William Longchamp, introduced the use of the plural into documents he produced during Richard's reign.

Henry VIII took this one step further (too far?) when he declared himself head of the Church in England. James VI /I of Scotland/England heavily promoted the divine right theory—although Scotland had always seen the king as simply "first among equals"—as did Louis XIV of France. James used a passage from Romans 13 about "God's ministers" to support his idea of divine right.

The earliest reference to divine rulership takes place long before James, or even Richard. Tomorrow we'll talk about Adomnán of Iona.

Monday, April 29, 2019

A Note on Notre Dame

Artist's conception on what buttresses
would have looked like early on.
On 15 April, 2019, a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. There was no question that re-building was necessary. The important question, however, was how it should be re-built? Should they use recent 3D scans of the structure to restore it to the same look as just before the fire? Or should it be altered to reflect current culture? After all, all buildings are a reflection of their times. Even without the benefit of a class in architecture, we can tell if a building is "old" as in outdated or "old" as in historic or antique.

So how should Notre Dame be rebuilt? Re-designed for a new age? Or restored to an earlier version; if so, which version? Because it hasn't always looked the way it did on 14 April, 2019.

Before it was Notre Dame, the site (rather, right next to it) in the 7th century held an Early Christian basilica dedicated to St. Stephen. There is evidence that a church had existed there since the 4th century, but we are not certain if St. Stephen's was that church, or if it replaced the earlier building. It was 230 feet long—large for that time. This building was renovated in 857 and became a cathedral; that is, the residence of a bishop. After that, a Romanesque-style renovation and enlargement took place; even that was soon deemed too small, given the speed with which Paris was growing.

In 1160, therefore, Bishop Maurice de Sully decided to demolish the Romanesque structure, recycling the stone for his plan of a cathedral in the Gothic style. This new style had already been put into service in St.-Denis, and de Sully was keen on it. The cornerstone was laid 25 April, 1163, but the cathedral was not completed until many decades later, after several phases.

Even so, the new cathedral's transepts were already being remodeled in the mid-1200s, and separately in 1240 the north transept received a gabled portal with a rose window. The flying buttresses were not part of the original plan, being added in the 1200s. They were replaced with larger ones a hundred years later.

1699 saw the decision by King Louis XIV to make extensive modifications. The French Revolution claimed Notre Dame for the public, and removed much of its artwork. In 1801 Napoleon returned it to the Catholic Church, which then began restoration. By 1831, it was in such need of repair that Victor Hugo wrote a novel, now called The Hunchback of Notre Dame, to raise interest and funds for the restoration.

The building has always been changing, and will again. What it looks like after the next round of restoration will be eagerly awaited (and no doubt criticized).

Even before the basilica to St. Stephen, however, there was a pagan temple on the site. There is no record of this; its existence has been extrapolated from a single sculptural find connected with Notre Dame. I'll tell you about it tomorrow.