John Neville Figgis was a political philosopher and Anglican priest who has now become fairly obscure. His claim to fame is that he edited a great deal of Lord Acton’s works (he of “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” fame).[i] This obscurity is very much undeserved, as Figgis is a historian of the first order.
Figgis’ The Theory of the Divine Right of Kings in particular is in desperate need of rescue from the confines of the internet archive. The title of the book is somewhat misleading, since far from being specifically an exploration of divine right theory, it also goes into depth surrounding the structural changes which occurred in the western world during early modernity. Figgis also spends a great deal of effort exploring the contractual theories of legitimacy which were set against the divine right theory, so as to ensure that the divine right theory can be viewed within its correct overall historical context.
His approach in this history of ideas is very much in direct contrast with the modern mainstream understanding (or rather complete ignorance) of where political ideas come from. In modernity, if it is even considered at all, it is all but assumed that political ideas are discovered in some process akin to a scientific discovery. Where did John Locke get his ideas? Or Thomas Hobbes? If you listen to the average liberal political theorist, the impression is that they reasoned to these ideas after engaging in rational and civilized debate, like so many Athenians debating in a philosophic school. Nowhere is this truer than with liberalism, where each new development in liberal theory is treated reflexively as if it has been discovered, vetted, and proved beyond all doubt. Where did multiculturalism come from? What about the concept of gay marriage? Obviously, they didn’t come from anywhere. They are timelessly true and just awaiting discovery, like gravity or tolerance.
In Figgis’ interpretation, the modern understanding that the divine right of kings was in some sense stupid or nonsensical is discarded and the pretenses of modern theory to have surpassed it are skewered. For Figgis, the development of political ideas is a result of the needs of specific actors within a European wide dynamic, which is all but identical to the theory devised by Bertrand de Jouvenel in his seminal work On Power. Figgis takes the overall unity of Christendom as the starting point of his history, and from there, he narrates the political machinations of expansive secular rulers in conflict with the equally expansive Papacy which culminates in the Reformation. The specific variants of theology supported by these actors depended on the relations of the actors at different times. It is from this historical framework that it becomes clear the divine right theory in its original form did not rise from the secular monarchs, to whom it is normally attached, but from the Papacy.
The conflict between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire plays a key role in the beginning of the process, and it is a conflict Figgis regularly returns to. The divine right theory of later writers, such as Sir Robert Filmer, are in Figgis’ opinion merely a repetition of the overall pattern of claims developed at this time. It is within this setting that we find the example of the Bull Si Fratrum of John XXII, which asserts the supremacy of the Papacy over imperial authority. Here the secular authorities are mere delegates of the Church who are the holders of divine right sovereignty.[ii] It was only in response to this challenge from the Papacy that the monarchs supported thinkers who would turn this model back on the Papacy and claimed that instead of the Pope being the sovereign by divine right, it was they.[iii]
At this point, it must be noted that Figgis’ interpretation of the papacy as holding sovereignty is something which would be disputed by modern historians and political theorists. Sovereignty as a concept only comes about theoretically with the work of Jean Bodin and his territorialization of the idea. To project this back on popes like Innocent III and Gregory VII is arguably anachronistic, but Figgis is clearly of the opinion that this is still a valid claim to make with regard to the Papacy. The issue of sovereignty is a thorny one, and it helps to appreciate that for Figgis, it appears to be the quality of being supreme above all others in all matters.
In Figgis’ history, the next conflict that occurs once the claims to divine right had been successfully wrested from the Papacy is between the advocates of monarchical divine right and the contractual theories of modernity.[iv] Figgis is under no illusions that contractual theory is in any sense new and throughout the book he repeatedly provides examples of this form of thought in the medieval period and even earlier. That the development of popular sovereignty in the works of Francisco Suarez is derived from Roman law is a perfect example of the repetitive nature of this model. This rather confusingly demonstrates that modernity is very un-modern, and this comes through strongly by the time we get to theorists like John Locke and Algernon Sydney[v], whose formulations of contractual schemes serve to merely confuse the issue of sovereignty.
In Figgis’ opinion, Locke’s work is “directed far more against the idea of sovereignty (that new development of the modern world) than against the claims of absolute monarchy.”[vi] With Sydney, this is even more pronounced, since he asserts that while the people are sovereign, “a small number of them assembled in Parliament have the ‘arbitrary,’ i.e. sovereign power of making laws.”
As previously mentioned, Figgis presents sovereignty as a new development, and in his scheme, it is the royalist divine right advocates who see this state of affairs and permutations clearly. Parliament and its supporters simply deny that this is true. They deny that sovereignty exists and posit what appear to be confused, feudally-inspired political theories which become the basis of liberalism. Liberal political theorists tried to retain the pattern of political authority of earlier ages, but put this through the prism of modern contractual and legalistic viewpoints. The language of political contracts used by these thinkers only makes sense in a setting in which relationships can be placed on such unified legalized setting, a setting made possible by sovereignty and the legal order brought about by it.
The popular reaction to the claims of sovereignty embodied by the king is a fact of the English Revolution, and it was the centralizing attempts of Charles I which pushed parliament into rebellion. However, having overthrown Charles I and taken over government, parliament was left with the fact of sovereignty regardless of the confused beliefs which drove the rebellious parliamentarians. As Figgis writes:
Now that the truth [of sovereignty] was soon to be recognised by the nation at large, Parliament was forced to make new claims and by degree to grasp at supremacy, lest if should lose old rights or even forfeit equality[vii]
In due course, the sovereignty of parliament is recognized officially, having been a fact since at least the government of Cromwell. But this dirty secret is not publicly celebrated, and so we are left with the bizarre contraption of liberal political theory which, having been born denying sovereignty, now has to be formatted to support sovereignty. Enter onto the stage popular sovereignty.
Another interesting aspect of Figgis’s work is his contention that Filmer proves to be a transitional figure between theological-based divine right theories and natural law-based divine right theories, the latter category in which he places Locke and Sidney.[viii] Figgis claims that Filmer is the first theorist to base a political theory primarily on natural law, and like Locke and Sidney, Filmer begins from a state of nature. In Filmer’s case, this state of nature is patriarchy. From this starting point, he derives his natural law-based system. This development opened the door for Locke to merely dispute the natural law in question and substitute his own version based on equality and an individualized anthropology. Like the monarchical alteration of papal divine right theory, these modern theorists took Filmer’s claims and subverted them, revealing a surprising continuity between Filmer and Locke.
Overall, the picture Figgis leaves from his work is far bleaker than his tone would suggest and this is to a large degree because Figgis’ idiosyncratic beliefs impede on the theoretical completeness of his work. Figgis, an Anglican priest and evident liberal, lets slip on a number of occasions that he considers the effects of the divine right theory to have been positive. Added to this is his belief in the unquestionable benefits attained by the separation of theology from political theory and the clear demarcation between the secular and the religious realms. Figgis genuinely believes that the development of toleration and the casting out of the “religious” from government has worked to defend the faith of the Church from interference from the State. Such a claim from the viewpoint of the present is demonstrably ridiculous, but this is a minor blot on the work as his qualitative judgments can be disregarded safely by the reader.
Notes:
[i] J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 published in Historical Essays and Studies (London: Macmillan, 1907)
[ii] J.N. Figgis, The Theory of the Divine Right of Kings 2nd Ed (Cambridge University Press, 1914) 52 https://archive.org/stream/theoryofdivineri00figgrich/theoryofdivineri00figgrich_djvu.txt
[iii] The main advocates in this regard would turn out to be Franciscans and doctrinaire Augustinians who would later go on to form the core of Protestantism.
[iv] Figgis even uses very Jouvenelian language, describing the reformation in terms of a central power which had “asserted its supremacy over aristocratic privilege and made good its independence against the Papacy.” Figgis, Divine Right, 230
[v] It is interesting to read a book as old as Figgis’ and to find the repeated connecting together of Algernon Sydney and John Locke. Sydney has been generally consigned to history, whilst Conservatives have continued to champion Locke. Why this occurred (obviously after Figgis wrote) would be interesting to find out as theoretically it is an anomaly.
[vi] Figgis, Divine Right, 242
[vii] Ibid,. 233
[viii] For Figgis this later theory is all still divine right theory, but it becomes hidden by deluded thinkers. That the people, and not God directly, is made the source of divine right in modern theory makes little difference. Here we can see how the thought of the likes of Bellarmine, Suarez, Locke, and Sidney form a transitional position themselves as they place the authority of God coming though the people. Modern thought cuts out God and keeps the people.