From Kings to Monarchs

Kings in the Late Middle Ages were to recover much of the power they had lost in the early medieval period, both externally, by gaining independence from emperors and popes, and internally, where they gained ground against their great vassals, the feudal barons.

The political consolidation of the monarchs of the Late Middle Ages (in contrast to the kings of the Early Middle Ages) was possible, firstly, because royal status came to be hierarchically posited, at least in theory, above all feudal bonds. The first to advance this principle was Abbot Suger de Saint Denis (1081-1151), royal adviser to Louis VI and Louis VII, and a historian who described feudal society as a pyramid at whose apex stood the king of France, whose suzerainty prevailed over that of all other lords,^[286] as Suger distinguished for the first time, between the crown as a concept and the king as a person (Grant 1998, 178).

Somewhat later, also in France, there appeared the legal term “sovereignty”, coined by “legists” of Louis IX (1226-1270), better known as St. Louis. Inspired by the Roman concept of imperium, these jurists contended that the King of France prevailed over all lords because he was “sovereign”. As Hallam and Everard (2001, 317) affirm, during his reign the king’s feudal powers were extended to the fullest extent, as he exercised all the rights of suzerainty, to the point that the extension of traditional royal powers, both ecclesiastical and feudal, began to modify the very nature of royal authority, transforming the king from a suzerain into a sovereign.

8.2.1 The Consolidation of the Hereditary Principle

as the Basis of Royal Legitimacy

The late medieval monarchs were able to consolidate their power largely because their legitimacy was not based on an elective procedure of designation, as in the time of the Germanic kingdoms, but on the hereditary principle. This stood in stark contrast to the system employed under the Roman Empire, in which the Emperor appointed his successor by “adoption”—a procedure which frequently sparked struggles for power. By retaining the principle of “elective succession”, the

Germanic kings had generated great political instability, as this principle gave rise to warfare between noble clans.^[287]

The hereditary principle did not appear overnight because it was not easy to consolidate (Fedou 1977, 52-61). As Jackson (1984, 6-7) has indicated, the transition from elective to hereditary monarchy went through an initial stage in which early Capetians crowned their successors as heirs to the throne to bring about an instantaneous transmission of power upon the king’s death. Thus, Philip August­us was designated as heir to the throne on November 1,1179, and stood as heir until the death of his father, Louis VII, at which point he became the king, serving until his own death on July 14, 1223.^[288] Philip Augustus’s son, Louis VIII, immediately inherited the throne upon his father’s death without even having been formally designated heir. The monarch’s power came, then, to stem from his birth as the “legitimate heir” of the deceased king. “The king is dead, long live the king” was the refrain to formally announce the death of the sovereign in France; though the king had died, his successor automatically ensured the monarchy’s uninterrupted continuity. The royal institution, thus, came to guarantee the stability of power, averting the chaos and anarchy born of the perpetual state of war between lords which had characterized and marred the feudal era.

To ensure the peaceful nature of succession, this process became subject to a series of specific legal procedures. Thus, in every kingdom there arose rules of succession allowing for the uncontested succession of one ruler by the next which generally came to stand, initially in the medieval period, as the first of the “laws of the realm”. In the sixteenth century these precepts came be called “fundamental laws”, a set of customary rules to which even the king was bound to respect (Desrayaud 1996, 306), and that became the “constitutional” basis of a monarchy, which, according to medieval French jurists, was subject to rules (puissance reglee).

From the moment when royal legitimacy was based on the hereditary principle and was legally stipulated, the monarch became untouchable, as the crown came to transcend political faction. As the monarch did not depend on an election involving compromises between the most powerful figures in his kingdom, his authority being assured by the mere fact that he was in the line of succession, he became au dessus de la melee, or “above the fray”,^[289] an arbiter exercising mediating roles between parties in conflict.

When did the order of succession to the Crown begin to be respected? One of the first places was in Spain, specifically in the kingdom of Leon, where records from the second half of the tenth century evidence respect for hereditary rights in three cases involving minors destined to become kings. The first, dates from 966, during the regency of Ramiro III (966-982), and the second, from 999, when a young Alfonso V rose to the throne; and the third from 1027, after the latter’s death.^[290]

It is also important to point out that it was in this same period when the word princeps first appeared to designate the heir to the throne, denoting that he was the “first” in the order of succession.^{[291] [292] [293] [294] [295]}

The hereditary principle preserved monarchy. This is why, even today in the twenty-first century, there are still kings in Europe: in Spain, England, the Nether­lands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, demonstrating that monarchy is not incompatible with democracy, at least when monarchs reign but do not govern.^[296]

8.2.2 A Territorial Monarchy

The Late Medieval monarchs not only managed to become “sovereigns”, staking their legitimacy upon the hereditary principle, but also exerted their power over whole territories.

In the Late Middle Ages, monarchies came to be defined by the territories over which they ruled. The king’s power was exercised over entire regions, a new reality reflected in the royal titles themselves: as of 1190 Philip II Augustus (1179-1223), was referred to in some official documents as King of France (“Rex Franciae”) (Guenee 1981, 158), instead of “Rex Francorum” (King of the Franks), as his predecessors had been designated, and in 1205, there appeared the term regnum Franciae (Lombard-Jourdan 1989, 317),^[298] a crucial terminological transition which for some historians, marks the beginning of the history of the French nation.^[299]

The emergence of territory-based monarchies meant that kings had to possess the means to govern and manage all the land under their rule. Unlike what occurred with the kings during the feudal period, in the Late Middle Ages the monarch had at his disposal a group of “officials”^[300] he was able to pay because he consistently collected taxes. He also possessed a permanent and professional army, which had already appeared in France in the mid fifteenth century under Charles VII (1422- 1461)—a factor which proved crucial to ensuring the French House of Valois’ triumph in the Hundred Years’ War.^[301]

8.2.3 An Expanding Monarchy

The burgeoning power of the great medieval European kings led them to attempt to absorb the greatest amounts of territory possible into their domains. This explains, for example, the imperialist approach of England to Wales and Scotland; the Kings of France’s progressive assimilation of important feudal territories during the reign of Philip Augustus (1180-1223); and, in Spain, the progressive incorporation at the end of the Middle Ages of territories arising as a result of the Reconquest (Asturias, Leon, Castile, the County of Barcelona, the Kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia and Mallorca), forming two great political blocks: The Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon.

8.2.4 An Administrative Monarchy

The territorialization of the monarchy required adaptation to the new circumstances facing royal institutions. Thus, the curia regis, the old feudal council that advised and counseled the monarch, was gradually divided into specialized units headed by royally appointed, professional officials who proceeded in accordance with pre-established procedures.^[303] As Desrayaud (1996, 346) points out, the end of the Middle Ages was characterized by the emergence of a strongly structured royal administration, resulting from the consolidation of royal power.

The oldest of these bodies was the “Accounts Chamber” or “Comptos “(Exche­quer in England), which administrated the royal agents’ finances. The curia was also deprived of its judicial functions, prompting the emergence of royal tribunals such as the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster,^[304] the French parlements,^[305]'¹ and the Castilian audiencias (high courts) and chancillerias (chanceries).^[306] These institutions fast came to preside over the justice administrations because of the

quality of their work, which guaranteed a more dependable application of the law than that provided by local judges, essentially because these new courts were run by professional lawyers educated at European universities. Thus, emerged a new type of process with more guarantees in which fundamentally oral processes gave way to written, documented procedures. The old local courts from the early medieval period did not entirely disappear, but their powers were reduced and gradually became hierarchically subject to the royal courts via the instrument of appeals.^[307] To the extent that kings were considered God’s representatives, their essential role was to act as judges. Thus, the late medieval monarchs often turned to the judicial sphere to consolidate their power.

The medieval kings were essentially judges because their function as Christian monarchs was to maintain the order created by God. As custom initially prevailed over the law in the Middle Ages, monarchs such as Henry II of England in the twelfth century, or Alfonso X, the Wise, in Castile in the second half of the thirteenth century, succeeded in consolidating their power by expanding the king’s jurisdiction over local judges. As Anderson (2006, 152) has indicated, one of the “constitutional” consequences of feudalism was that secular government itself was characteristically narrowed into a new mold, as it became essentially the exercise of “justice”, which under feudalism occupied a functional position, as it became the central modality of political power.

8.3