The New Monarchs

Monarchs were absolutists (mostly) and they had full control over their countries. King Henry VIII had 6 wives and had 2 of them beheaded. He wanted a son and when the wives didn’t give him an heir, he had no consequences for killing them. Being a monarch was materialistic and loveless, with there often being arranged marriages.

Learning Objective

European states and nations developed governmental and civil institutions from 1450 to present to organize society and consolidate political power, with a variety of social, cultural, and economic effects.

Key Concepts

• New monarchies laid the foundation for the centralized modern state by establishing monopolies on tax collection, employing military force, dispatching justice, and gaining the right to determine the religion of their subject

• Monarchs exerted control over religious life and morality

• Commercial and professional groups gained power and played a greater role in political affairs

• Continued political fragmentation in Renaissance Italy provided a background for the development of new concepts of the secular state

  • Monarchies will be part of the reason WWI started

Kings and Queens

• “If I had two heads, then one should be at the King of England’s disposal”

  • Christiana of Denmark, Dutchess of Milan (c.1521-1590), refusing to marry King Henry VIII of England who had two wives killed

I New Monarchs

A. Invested kingship with a strong sense of royal authority and national purpose

• “Stressing that the monarchy was the one institution that linked all the classics and people withing definite territorial boundaries”

B. Characteristics

1. Royal council: mainly people from the middle class- no power; liaison to the people

2. Machiavellian: true essence of politics

3. Greatest opposition from nobles: nobles owned the land; in case of a surplus of crops, they could sell or trade it; like having money

   • the more the nobles have, the more the king will expect

     • Social Order:

       1. King

       2. Queen

       3. Prince

       4. Princess

       5. Knights

       6. Nobles

       7. Peasants

II France

A. King Charles VII (c.1442-1461)

• Ended the 100 Years War

• Creation of a large royal army: took a long time after losing a lot of lives. Europe was a country of war and in between wars was the black plague

  • Jew were blamed

• Taxes (taille and gabelle)

• Pragmatic Sanction of 1438: established the king’s power over the church in France

  • the king exerts his power over the church and religion; can kill people for “religious” reasons; people were burned at the stake, children were forced to witness