Page 119 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

4 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Matthew 5:5–Blessed are the meek: for they
shall inherit the earth. • Bible

theological and institutional positions of the others. ing costs of bureaucratic spending and the social round
This, in turn, has served to justify and fuel ongoing in- at court. Absolutism was not unique to seventeenth-
tellectual, economic, political, and military competition century Europe; absolute kings ruled in China, India,
and conflict among the three monotheistic religious western Africa, the Ottoman empire, Safavid Persia, and
systems in history. Tokugawa Japan between 1500 and 1800. Indeed, in
Europe itself, the origins of absolutism appeared when
Reuven Firestone
kings in England and France tried to increase their power
See also Judaism; Islam against feudal lords and the Church between the eleventh
and fourteenth centuries. These foundations began to
strengthen when the “new monarchs” of Western Europe
Further Reading tried to stabilize and professionalize their governments in
Delaney, C. (1998). Abraham on trial:The social legacy of biblical myth. the spirit of the Renaissance.The Protestant Reformation
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Feiler, B. (2002). Abraham: A journey to the heart of three faiths. New both weakened and strengthened this tendency toward
York: HarperCollins Publishers. royal centralization. It unleashed popular discontent with
Firestone, R. (1990). Journeys in holy lands:The evolution of the Abraham-
Ishmael legends in Islamic exegesis. Albany, NY: State University of traditional authorities (including those kings who did not
New York Press. share the reformers’ zeal), but it also confirmed the Eras-
Firestone, R. (1991). Abraham’s association with the Meccan sanctuary tian notion of the monarch, not the Pope, deciding the
and the pilgrimage in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods. Le
Museon Revue d’Etudes Orientales, 104, 365–393. spiritual matters of countries, even in those places that
Firestone, R. (in press). Patriarchy, primogeniture, and polemic in the remained Catholic. Absolutism in seventeenth-century
exegetical traditions of Judaism and Islam. In D. Stern & N.
Dohrmann (Eds.). Jewish biblical interpretation in a comparative con- Europe was just the latest and most self-conscious effort
text. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. in a long push to make the king supreme in both spiritual
Siker, J. (1991). Disinheriting the Jews: Abraham in early Christian con- and, thus, temporal policy.
troversy. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox.
Van Seters, J. (1975). Abraham in history and tradition. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press. Divine Right and
Religious Intolerance
By claiming to rule only by the grace of God, rulers
gained credibility and confidence. For example, Louis
Absolutism, XIV of France (1638–1715) overcame the treacherous
Fronde of his childhood by invoking divine justification
European for leading without either the Estates-General or ecclesi-

astical surrogates.After his final accession as sole ruler in
uropean absolutism grew out of a need for order in 1661, he became known as the Sun King, from whom all
Ethe face of political and religious polarization. energy and power came. His rays extended to the
Absolute kings in Europe identified sectarian dissidents provinces, where his intendants carried out his wishes
and aristocratic landowners as the primary culprits without his physical presence. Even after a long reign
behind civil wars.They moved to confront these alleged ending with disastrous wars and famines in the early
villains by claiming to rule by divine right, insisting 1700s, Louis still demanded and largely commanded
upon religious uniformity, constructing large civilian and universal respect because of the conventional belief in
military bureaucracies accountable only to the Crown, God’s will behind his blunders and whims. It would take
turning the nobility into dependent window dressing the corrosive critical thinking of the Enlightenment,
with much social but far less political power, and by beginning with the next generation, to undermine slowly
exacting high excise taxes that failed to cover the escalat- the passive obedience necessary for unenlightened abso-