Sunspots and the Sun King by Ellen McClure

Author:Ellen McClure
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History / Europe / France
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2023-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

The king’s very humanity necessitates the use of ministers; they are supplements to the immense distance between the human monarch and the divinity that he in turn represents. If this is a place where the king’s role as representative of God on earth breaks down to a certain extent, this gap can be partially repaired by introducing new relations of representation, this time between the councillors and the king. Indeed, it is the very use of ministers– a prerogative of the king’s sovereignty–that seems to indicate by inference the limits of that sovereignty by pointing up the king’s status as man: “Les Princes bien éloignez d’estre des Dieux, ne sont pas mesme des Geans, & quoy que l’on dise que leur esprit soit plûtost formé que celuy des autres hommes, neanmoins sa grandeur ne répond pas à celle de leur Estat, & comme il est enfermé dans un corps qui n’a que deux yeux, deux oreilles, & deux mains, ils sont obligez d’en emprunter de leurs Ministres, afin qu’ils puissent en mesme temps voir toutes les actions, écouter toutes les plaintes, & subvenir à tous les besoins de leurs Sujets” (Princes, far from being gods, are not even giants, and although it is said that their mind is formed sooner than that of other men, nonetheless its grandeur does not correspond to that of their status, and since it is enclosed in a body that only has two eyes, two ears, and two hands, they are obliged to borrow from their ministers, in order to see at once all actions, to listen to all complaints, and to satisfy all of their subjects’ needs).10 The limits of the king’s physicality force him to use ministers. Each time a minister acts, the act serves as a reminder of the fact that the king’s representation of God is incomplete. But displacing representation onto the minister does not repair this relation; rather, it merely replicates the same problems, as the minister is also human: “Il seroit besoin que le Ministre fust un Ange, ou qu’il eust si peu de commerce avec son corps, que toutes les passions qui s’y forment ne troublassent jamais la tranquillité de son ame. Mais s’il ne peut pas arriver à ce haut degré de perfection, il faut pour le moins, qu’il se défende de ces mouvemens impetueux qu’une fausse generosité nous inspire, & que dans les avis qu’il donne au Prince il regarde toûjours plus le salut que la gloire de l’Estat” (The minister would need to be an angel, or he would need to have so little commerce with his body that all of the passions that are formed there would never trouble the tranquility of his soul. But if he cannot attain this high degree of perfection, he must at least defend himself against those impetuous movements that false generosity inspires in us, and in the advice he gives the prince he must always look more to salvation than to the glory of the state).11 On the

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