Bishop Bossuets Ideas of Absolutism - Thesis Example

Historical Commentary of Historical Commentary The rise of the parliament as a form of governing in modern times is what is seen in the passage. Bishop Bossuet’s ideas of absolutism talk of the importance of the king within an earlier dispensation. Within this framework, the king was considered to rule with the sanction of divine authority. Authority would then enable the king to rule with the power of god and hence be the deputy of the divine authority. As a result of this, the king was considered to be invincible as far as any attack on his person and authority was concerned.

This was important as it was instrumental in preventing the rise of any dissenting voice within the kingdom. The king was then considered to be the guardian of the country and the rise of the parliament was obstructed for a very long time as a result of this theory of the Divine Right of the king. The powers of the king and the institution of monarchy in England and other parts of Europe have been extremely pronounced and have maintained a strong hold on the public imagination. The king often worked in conjunction with religious authorities of the day to maintain monarchical control over the kingdom and the minds of the people.

Through the ages, the institution of monarchy sought to perpetuate itself through discourses that brought in several ideas such as the divine and the social. There have been occasions on which this dissent has translated itself into great violence. One of the greatest instances of this is the execution of the king in England in the seventeenth century by the Puritan regime. The French revolution can be considered to be the culmination of the bourgeoisie society’s resistance against monarchy (New Tensions in the Western Political Tradition: Absolutism and Parliament 23-4).

The Divine Right theories that were talked of during the medieval ages were then looked upon as something that prevented the transfer of power into the hands of the common people. As explained earlier, the French Revolution led to the displacement of the ideals of the monarchy.

The importance of this lies in the fact that the overthrow of the monarchy was accompanied by a great many changes in the social structures of that period.