ABSTRACT

The philosophy of imperial kingship (imperium) posited the unchallenged authority of rulers in temporal and spiritual matters within their realms. As a practical matter, imperial monarchs sought ‘dynastic security, territorial centralization, the subordination of the nobility, increased revenues, control of local “franchises” and feudal privileges and the augmentation of royal power’. Rulers found intellectual support in the Bible, histories and chronicles and law tracts; among them fourteenthcentury French jurists who asserted the maxim that ‘the king was emperor in his realm (rex in regno suo est imperator)’. It followed that rulers answered only to God in temporal and spiritual matters, while their territorial imperium might be augmented by conquest and colonization.1 As an analytical concept, then, imperium integrates such familiar topics as absolutism and divine right, state building and ‘imperialism’. Philosophical claims to temporal and spiritual power, practical instruments of authority and the subjugation of peoples become entwined threads of a distinctive political project with provocative qualities.