absolutism, European from the sovereign The political history of France and England after Bodin’s time demonstrated that although rulers of those countries could circumvent Parliament and the Estates for extended periods of time, this eventually led to resistance and revolution Hobbes also lived in a turbulent age Many of Hobbes’s most important political works, including De Cive, Leviathan (both published in 1651), and Behemoth (1681), were heavily influenced by the events surrounding the English Civil War, which ended with the execution of King Charles I In Leviathan, his best known work, Hobbes drew a lengthy analogy between a commonwealth and the human anatomy, in which the king is represented as the head and the rest of society as the body He proceeded to set out his view of human nature unconstrained by government or communal moral standards In such a situation, he argued, there could be no guarantee of life or possessions except by violence Human beings needed government to remove them from this state of nature, and the best government was the one that reduced violence and uncertainty the most This required people to surrender a portion of their individual liberty (either by making a covenant between themselves or by being conquered) to a single authority, which would be charged with the protection of their lives, property, and other retained rights This authority could take one of three forms: monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy He argued that of these, monarchy was theoretically preferred, since it was least likely to degenerate into factional struggles and civil war This monarchy, he continued, should not be elective (as in the Holy Roman Empire) or limited (as claimed in England), or else it was not a true monarchy, since the ultimate source of sovereignty lay with others enlightened self-interest Like Bodin, Hobbes argued that a true monarch would be restrained from acting in an arbitrary and wicked manner through reason and enlightened self-interest Because the monarch was the embodiment of sovereignty, his or her private interest would be aligned with the public good A wise ruler would seek counsel from those best equipped to provide it, but would always reserve the personal right to choose and implement the best policy Anticipating critics who would point to historical examples of rulers who did not concern themselves with the common good or the most reasonable policies, Hobbes repeatedly stated that whatever problems could be caused by the corruption of a single sovereign would simply be multiplied in an oligarchy or a democracy Bossuet’s Politics Derived from the Very Words of Holy Scripture (1709) was an exploration of the nature of kingly power as demonstrated in the Bible and in history For a number of years Bossuet had served as the tutor to the Dauphin, the son and heir of Louis XIV, and he was thus highly interested in and knowledgeable about the workings of the French monarchy He proposed that the power of the king is “paternal,” “absolute,” and “subject to reason,” but he also added a “sacred” quality The principle that temporal authority originates with God is found in many parts of the Bible, and most medieval European sovereigns were considered to be God’s anointed The doctrine of divine right kingship was invoked by 16th and 17th century rulers such as James VI and I of Scotland and England to justify their actions and to condemn resistance or questioning of their authority In France, the sacred quality of kingship had an added dimension: since the king was placed on the throne by God, resistance to his power was illegitimate and sinful; those who opposed the political or religious policies of the king, such as the Huguenots, should not be tolerated at all The Russian czar Ivan IV (reigned 1533–84) provides an early example of an attempt to centralize authority in the person of the ruler and circumvent existing institutions and controls Ivan began his reign as the grand duke of Muscovy, but by 1547 he assumed the title of czar (emperor) of Russia In 1565, frustrated with the problems still facing his fragmented domains, Ivan created a separate administration under his personal control, the Oprichnina Originally this was confined geographically to certain towns and parts of the countryside, but over time it grew in both size and scope Ivan IV’s reign illustrates two different concepts often associated with absolutism The first is reform of the state, which included the creation of a standing army and a centralized bureaucracy responsible directly to the ruler, as well as a systematic overhaul of laws and institutions dating from feudal times The second, despotic and arbitrary rule, was one of the primary reasons that many philosophers and statesmen feared and opposed anything resembling royal absolutism The one ruler who is most often associated with absolutism is Louis XIV of France (reigned 1643–1715) While it is true that the Sun King had a more powerful state apparatus at his disposal than his predecessors, and showed more vigor in running France than his immediate successors, he was not primarily responsible for creating the system he led France had been divided