Kingship - The Politics Of Enchantment

What is the most common form of government in history? Whether one has the ancient past or current events in mind it is tempting to point to anarchy, but Oakley (history of ideas, Williams College) asserts that kingship holds that honor, tracing its progress and variations from the advent of the Neolithic to the modern industrial world. He begins with the concept of kingship as a divine identity, in which kings were set hovering in the space between the gods and humans, and continues with the concept of kings as saviors and shepherds in Hellenistic, Roman, biblical, and early Islamic cultures, and establishes links to Christian kingship in imperial Rome, Byzantium and Russia, the Germanic kingdoms and the sacral rulers of medieval and early modern Europe. Finally, he finds the roots of decline of kingship far before most in this cynical and post-industrial age had assumed. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Francis Oakley is the Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of Ideas and President Emeritus of Williams College, Massachusetts. He is also President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies, New York. In 1999 he was Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor of the History of Ideas at Oxford University. He is the author of The Medieval Experience (1988 [1974]), Omnipotence, Covenant,and Order (1984), The Conciliarist Tradition (2003), and Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights (2005).