The King's Two Bodies
It refers to the idea that a monarch possesses two bodies: a body natural and a body politic (also called sacred body).
The body natural of a king or queen needs sleep, food, etc. and is subject to sickness and death. It is like the normal body of a human being. The body politic, on the other hand, is invisible and immortal. It is made for directing the people. The existence of the body politic is the reason why it is right to say that the king never dies. As the body politic never dies, the king cannot die either. The body natural of a king can of course die, but as soon as that has happened, the body politic changes position and it is transferred into the body natural of the next king. This is also the reason why one never speaks of the death of the king, but of the demise of the king.
This distinction between the body natural and the body politic is useful for legal purposes and to underpin monarchical hegemony. First of all, the theory ensures that all laws keep their validity and that the royal property rights remain intact during the transition from one king to the next. Furthermore, there is no power vacuum because the transfer of the body politic from one king to the next happens immediately after the death of the body natural of a king. By applaying this theory, all the power structures are maintained. Apart from these reasons, there is also the fact, that this theory gives the monarchy a sacred tinge, which distinguishes it from the rest of the people.
Queen Elizabeth I used the theory to ensure her reign and to get rid of the problem of being a woman and not a man. In her famous Tilbury Speech (1588), she underlined that she had two bodies. She said that her body natural was that of a weak woman, but that her body politic was the body of a strong and powerful man, who was able to rule England. She distinguished between her female body natural and her male body politic. The famous writer Edmund Spenser also described the two bodies of Queen Elizabeth I in The Faerie Queene. On the one hand, he described Elizabeth as a beautiful and adorable lady, and on the other hand as a ruling monarch.
Sources
- Axton, Marie. The Queen's Two Bodies. Drama and the Elizabethan Succession. London: Royal Historical Society, 1977.
- Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King's Two Bodies. A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957.
- Suerbaum, Ulrich. Das Elisabethanische Zeitalter. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1989.