The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology

633 Pages·2016·9.89 MB·English

by  Ernst H. Kantorowicz

The King’s Two Bodies

T H E K I N G ’S
T W O B O D IE S
A Study in
Mediaeval Political Theology
BY
ERNST H. KANTOROWICZ
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION
BY CONRAD LEYSER
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
Copyright © 1957, by Princeton University Press;
Copyright renewed 1985 by Princeton University Press
Preface by William Chester Jordan copyright © 1997 by Princeton
University Press
Introduction to the Princeton Classics Edition by Conrad Leyser
© 2016 by Princeton University Press
All Rights Reserved
First Princeton Classics Edition printing, with a new introduction by
Conrad Leyser, 2016
Seventh paperback printing, with a new preface by William Chester
Jordan, 1997
Paper ISBN: 978-0-691-16923-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016934635
press.princeton.edu
Printed on acid-free paper ^
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
D. M.
M A X IM I R A D IN
(MDCCCLXXX-MCML)
S A C R U M

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCETON CLASSICS EDITION ix
PREFACE (1997) xxv
by William Chester Jordan
PREFACE xxxiii
INTRODUCTION 3
II.. TTHHEE PpRroblem: plowden’s REPORTS 7
II. THE SHAKESPEARE: KING RICHARD II 24
III. CHRIST-CENTERED KINGSHIP 42
1. The Norman Anonymous 42
2. The Frontispiece of the Aachen Gospels 61
3. The Halo of Perpetuity 78
IV. LAW-CENTERED KINGSHIP 87
1. From Liturgy to Legal Science 87
2. Frederick the Second 97
Pater et Filius Iustitiae 97
Iustitia Mediatrix 107
3. Bracton 143
Rex infra et supra Legem 143
Christus-Fiscus 164
V. POLITY-CENTERED KINGSHIP: CORPUS MYSTICUM *19933
1. Corpus Ecclesiae mysticum 194
2. Corpus Reipublicae mysticum 207
3. Pro patria mori 232
Patria religious and legal 232
Patriotic Propaganda 249
Rex et Patria 259
VI. ON CONTINUITY AND CORPORATIONS 273
1. Continuity 273
Aevum 275
Perpetua Necessitas 284
vii
CONTENTS
2. Fictio Figura Veritatis 291
Imperium semper est 291
Universitas non moritur 302
VII. THE KING NEVER DIES 314
1. Dynastic Continuity 317
2. The Crown as Fiction 336
Corona visibilis et invisibilis 336
The Fiscal Crown 342
Inalienability 347
Crown and Universitas 358
The King and the Crown 364
The Crown a Minor 372
3. Dignitas non moritur 383
Phoenix 385
Corporational Symptoms in England 401
Le Roy est mort. . . 409
Effigies 419
Rex Instrumentum Dignitatis 437
VIII. MAN-CENTERED KINGSHIP: DANTE 451
IX. EPILOGUE 496
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 507
ILLUSTRATIONS following 512
BIBLIOGRAPHY and INDEX 513
ADDENDA 568
via
INTRODUCTION TO THE
PRINCETON CLASSICS EDITION
1 This book is not an easy read. Its theme is the
Reader beware!
idea that a ruler has two bodies: a natural body that lives and
dies, and a symbolic body that endures and is assumed by the
ruler’s successor. This much may be deduced from the title.
Thereafter, you will find both structure and argument to be any­
thing but straightforward; the exposition jumps about chrono­
logically and geographically, and from one type of source to
another, with scant regard for the context of production. Every
page comes freighted with footnotes even more dense and im­
penetrable than the main text. One early reviewer likened read­
ing the book to living on “a diet of jam without bread”: she
recommended dipping in occasionally.2 All of this is well known
and indeed freely admitted by the book’s admirers. But The King's
Two Bodies is still revered as a classic: translated into several lan­
guages, reprinted, commemorated on every conceivable anni-
versary.3 ^Why should this be? Or is what have here a text clad in
the emperor’s new clothes?
There are three contexts in which we can treat the question
of the book’s continuing appeal and defend its value. The first
is the magnetism of the author’s own story as a German-Jewish
emigre. The second, connected, context is the book’s relation­
1 Readers of this preface should be warned that what follows is not a com­
prehensive discussion of the literature on Kantorowicz or The King’s Two Bodies.
I have sought to give a series of starting points to the non-specialist. My own
inexpertise has been kindly tempered in different ways by Philippe Buc, Robert
Lerner, Sara McDougall, Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner, Elizabeth Sears, Philipp
von Rummel, and John Watts—none of whom are responsible for what follows.
That Berlin has been the apt setting for the completion of this preface is thanks
to the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, and to my host at the Freie Univer-
sitat, Almut-Barbara Renger.
2 B. Smalley, “Review Article: The King’s Two ,” Past and Present 20 (1961),
30-35, at 32 and 34.
3 See in particular R. L. Benson & J. Fried eds., Ernst Kantorowicz: Ertrage der
Doppeltagung, Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat,
Frankfurt (Stuttgart, 1997), which celebrated a number of anniversaries, and a
Special Issue of Representations 106 (2009), containing papers delivered in 2007.
the 50th anniversary of the publication of The King’s Two Bodies; see here in par­
ticular B. Jussen, “The King’s Two Bodies Today,” 102-17.
ix