ABSTRACT
In tune with the cultural climate surrounding the dispute between the parliament, courts and sovereign on the matter of the production and interpretation of the law, the purpose of James I's Bible was to reduce the subjects' hermeneutical possibilities to a minimum. The sovereign's inclusion in the Roman legal universe, according to McIlwain, meant that the reciprocity that characterized medieval power, made of mutual rights and duties between the lord and his subjects, had been left behind, to embrace the "Roman" dimension of a sovereign legibus solutus, above the law. Yet as early as the 1400s, the term "political" had gained a negative meaning, as the synonym of the art of sovereigns in exercising deceit and cunning. Power was seen as evil, tending towards tyranny and oppression, cruel, and the sovereign or prince an astute hoaxer.
