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The King's Two Bodies

From British Culture
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The idea that a monarch possesses two bodies: a body natural that needs sleep, food etc. and is subject to sickness and death, and a body politic that is invisible and immortal. Useful for legal purposes and to underpin monarchical hegemony.

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.
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