Shakespeare's Henry V Tries Many Times to Understand And

CHAPTER TWO

THE RENAISSANCE IDEA OF KINGSHIP

Shakespeare’s Henry V tries many times to understand and define kingship. One such moment occurs in the English camp at Agincourt, before the battle with the French. The king says that he is “twin-born with greatness” and at the same time “subject to the breath / of every fool”.1 Kantorowicz responds to Henry’s musings and claims that the king is not only born with “greatness”, but also with “human nature”, which makes him subject to the judgment and censure “of every fool”.2 This bipolar relation of manhood and divine greatness that is materialized in the person of the king stems from medieval Christol- ogy. According to the orthodox medieval dogma, Christ was “una persona, duae naturae”, which means that he was simultaneously man and God in one person. Related to this Christ-oriented kingship is the definition of “gemina persona” or a “twin person”, which implies that the king/Christ is a dual being, both human and divine.3 It is important to note that the king is not a two-natured being, but he becomes one on the way to church consecration. Kantorowicz emphasizes that the idea of the king as “persona gemina” is the outcome of the sacramen- tal and liturgical ceremonies performed at the altar.4 Actually, a peculiar way to define the hybrid nature of kingship was “persona mixta” (“mixed person”), again indicating the unity of the two in one. This concept was introduced by one Norman Anony- mous, a royalist cleric, whose religious and political treatises of 1100 AD were found by an Elizabethan Archbishop, Mathew Parker, in 1575. This term had both religious and political connotations and em- braced the temporal and the eternal, as well as secular and spiritual powers in one person. “Persona mixta” related both to bishops and

1 William Shakespeare, King Henry V, IV.i.216-17, ed. T.W. Craik, London: Arden Shakespeare, 2001. 2 Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 24. 3 Ibid., 49. 4 Ibid., 59. 34 The Pragmatics of Early Modern Politics kings; in particular, duality was characteristic of the medieval clergy, mainly bishops, who acted in the double role of kings’ vassals and “princes of the Church”. The perception of the king as “non omnio laicus” (“not only secular”) was supported by Norman Anonymous in his tractates, and through consecration, understood as God’s bequeath- ing his grace on a newly appointed king. It is important that a terres- trial king became “deified” if only temporarily, whereas God re- mained the Heavenly king in aeternum. In this way the earthly king is compared to Christ and his power is believed to stem from God. The difference between kingly and Heavenly power is that God’s power is natural, and the king’s power is given him by grace and “whatsoever he [the king] does, he does not simply as a man, but as one who has become God and Christ by grace”.5 The medieval concept of “gemina persona” or “human by nature and divine by grace” was replaced by the notion of “the king’s two bodies” in later periods. The liturgical origin of priestly and sacramen- tal kingship implied, first of all, that the terrestrial king represents the image of the living Christ; secondly, that the king is God’s deputy on Earth, and a mediator between God and the people.6 The liturgical kingship in the Middle Ages was strongly connected with “royal priesthood”,7 because both king and bishop were anointed with saint- hood through consecration, and both had sanctity inscribed in their office.8 It is vital to emphasize that early medieval liturgical kingship was based on the concept of the two-natured Christ, and medieval kings were believed to be coming from “the Son on the Altar”. This early definition gave rise to the late medieval idea of kingship by “di- vine right”, which assumed that kings on earth reflected the image of God the Father rather than the Son, Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the “divine right” of kings was also closer to the language of the law and not liturgy, and was used to define the political notion of the king as the highest representative of the state.9 To follow Kantorowicz the concept of “the king’s two bodies” defines the king’s relationship to the state law and not, as in the case of liturgical kingship, to the sac-

5 Ibid., 42-48. 6 Ibid., 87-88. 7 Ibid., 93. 8 Ibid., 89. 9 Ibid., 93.