Sacred king

For the ancient roman position, see Rex Sacrorum.

"Christ King", a detail from Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (1432)

In many historical societies, the position of kingship carries a sacral meaning, that is, it is identical with that of a high priest and of judge. The concept of theocracy is related, although a sacred king need not necessarily rule through his religious authority; rather, the temporal position itself has a religious significance.

History

The notion has prehistoric roots and is found worldwide, on Java as in sub-Saharan Africa, with shaman-kings credited with rain-making and assuring fertility and good fortune. On the other hand, the king might also be designated to suffer and atone for his people, meaning that the sacral king could be the pre-ordained victim of a human sacrifice, either regularly killed at the end of his term in the position, or sacrificed in times of crisis (e.g. Domalde).

Among the Ashanti, a new king was flogged before being enthroned.

From the Bronze Age Near East, enthronement and anointment of a monarch is a central religious ritual, reflected in the titles Messiah or Christ which became separated from worldly kingship. Thus, Sargon of Akkad described himself as "deputy of Ishtar", just as the Pope is considered the "Vicar of Christ".

The king is styled as a shepherd from earliest times, e.g., the term was applied to Sumerian princes such as Lugalbanda in the 3rd millennium BC. The image of the shepherd combines the themes of leadership and the responsibility to supply food and protection as well as superiority.

As the mediator between the people and the divine, the sacral king was credited with special wisdom (e.g. Solomon) or vision (oneiromancy).

Examples

• Pharaoh
• Imperial cult
• Kingdom of Israel
• there is evidence for sacral kingship in Proto-Indo-European society
• High King of Ireland
• Germanic monarchy
• Shah
• King of Rome
  • Rex Sacrorum
  • Pontifex Maximus
  • Roman triumph, according to legend first enacted by Romulus
  • Augustus
  • Holy Roman Emperor
• The temporal power of the Papacy
• Khagan (Ashina)
• Mikado
• Luba Kingdom

Sacral kingship was carried into the Middle Ages by considering kings installed by the grace of god

• Capetian Miracle
• Royal touch, supernatural powers attributed to the Kings of England and France
• The Hungarian House of Árpád (known during the Medieval Times as the dynasty of the Holy Kings)

Study

Study of the concept was introduced by Sir James George Frazer in his influential book The Golden Bough (1890–1915); sacral kingship plays a role in Romanticism and Esotericism (e.g. Julius Evola) and some currents of Neopaganism (Theodism). The school of Pan-Babylonianism derived much of the religion described in the Hebrew Bible from cults of sacral kingship in ancient Babylonia.

The so-called British and Scandinavian cult-historical schools maintained that the king personified a god and stood at the center of the national or tribal religion. The English "myth and ritual school" concentrated on anthropology and folklore, while the Scandinavian "Uppsala school" emphasized Semitological study.

Frazer's interpretation

A sacred king, according to the systematic interpretation of mythology developed by Frazer in The Golden Bough (published 1890), was a king who represented a solar deity in a periodically re-enacted fertility rite. Frazer seized upon the notion of a substitute king and made him the keystone of his theory of a universal, pan-European, and indeed worldwide fertility myth, in which a consort for the Goddess was annually replaced. According to Frazer, the sacred king represented the spirit of vegetation, a divine John Barleycorn. He came into being in the spring, reigned during the summer, and ritually died at harvest time, only to be reborn at the winter solstice to wax and rule again. The spirit of vegetation was therefore a "dying and reviving god". Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus, Attis and many other familiar figures from Greek mythology and classical antiquity were re-interpreted in this mold. The sacred king, the human embodiment of the dying and reviving vegetation god, was supposed to have originally been an individual chosen to rule for a time, but whose fate was to suffer as a sacrifice, to be offered back to the earth so that a new king could rule for a time in his stead.

Especially in Europe during Frazer's early twentieth century heyday, it launched a cottage industry of amateurs looking for "pagan survivals" in such things as traditional fairs, maypoles, and folk arts like morris dancing. It was widely influential in literature, being alluded to by D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, among other works.

Robert Graves used Frazer's work in The Greek Myths and made it one of the foundations of his own personal mythology in The White Goddess. Most curiously of all, Margaret Murray, the principal theorist of witchcraft as a "pagan survival," used Frazer's work to propose the thesis that many Kings of England who died as kings, most notably William Rufus, were secret pagans and witches, and whose deaths were the re-enactment of the human sacrifice that stood at the centre of Frazer's myth, a speculation taken up by Katherine Kurtz' in her novel Lammas Night.

In fiction

Many of Rosemary Sutcliff's novels are recognized as being directly influenced by Frazer, depicting individuals accepting the burden of leadership and the ultimate responsibility of personal sacrifice, including Sword at Sunset, The Mark of the Horse Lord, and Sun Horse, Moon Horse ^[1].

See also

• Great Catholic Monarch
• Great King
• Katechon - Eschatological-Apocalyptic King
• Mythological king
• Apotheosis
• Coronation
• Christ
• Euhemerism
• Hero cult
• Human sacrifice
• Jesus Christ and comparative mythology
• Messiah
• Sceptre
• Winged sun
• Life-death-rebirth deity

Notes

1. ^ Article about Rosemary Sutcliff at the Historical Novels Info website; paragraph 15

References

General

• Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, (Blackwell, 1993): ISBN 0-631-18946-7
• William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D., A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, (London, 1875)
• J.F. del Giorgio, The Oldest Europeans, (A.J. Place, 2006)
• Claus Westermann, Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. sacred kingship.
• James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., 12 vol. (1911–15, reprinted 1990)
• A.M. Hocart, Kingship (1927, reprint 1969)
• G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1933, English 1938, 1986)
• Geo Widengren, Religionsphänomenologie (1969), pp. 360–393.
• Lily Ross Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (1931, reprint 1981).
• David Cannadine and Simon Price (eds.), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (1987).
• Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (1948, 1978).
• Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (1989),
• J.H. Burns, Lordship, Kingship, and Empire: The Idea of Monarchy, 1400–1525 (1992).

"English school"

• S.H. Hooke (ed.),The Labyrinth: Further Studies in the Relation Between Myth and Ritual in the Ancient World (1935).
• S.H. Hooke (ed.), Myth, Ritual, and Kingship: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Kingship in the Ancient Near East and in Israel (1958).

"Scandinavian school"

• Geo Widengren, Sakrales Königtum im Alten Testament und im Judentum (1955).
• Ivan Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East, 2nd ed. (1967)
• Aage Bentzen, King and Messiah, 2nd ed. (1948; English 1970).

External links

• article Rex Sacrificulus in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
• Sacred Kings, an ebook on sacred kingship in different cultures