On the intersection of the human and the divine in the figure of the sovereign:

In The King’s Two Bodies, historian Ernst Kantorowicz elaborates a lucid overview of the importance of the human body for sovereignty. The book, a study on medieval political theology, analyzes the juridical doctrine of the two bodies of the king: the physical body—perishable like the rest of mortals—and the mystical or political body—eternal as the king’s office—which ensured the stability and continuity of the state. The religious origin of this doctrine is clear: just as the body of Hobbes’ Leviathan (1.9) encompasses the whole of the people, the sovereign’s political body assimilates the idea of the church as the mystical body of Christ.¹ The coexistence of these two bodies in the figure of the sovereign allows us a particularly clear glimpse of its double nature: both human and divine.

What form did the sovereign’s political body take? During the funeral ceremonies of the French kings an effigy of the sovereign was made which had a very particular role: 

At the funeral of Francis I, the encoffined body in the flesh was exhibited for about ten days in the hall of the palace. Then the scenario changed: the coffin containing the corpse was placed in a small chamber while in the hall the lifelike effigy of the king… took its place and lay in state—the so-called “imperial” crown on its head, scepter and main de justice on pillows on either side of it.²

The effigy of the king was carried on top the coffin to Paris where it was exhibited with the rest of royal insignia. The message: “the power of ordinary jurisdiction lives even when in the meantime the emperor dies.” Kantorowicz leaves open the possibility of the influence of the ancient funeral rites of the Roman emperors on the ceremony of the French royalty, but does not argue a direct influence.

The Roman case is even more eloquent. After the death of the emperor a wax effigy was made in his image. “Treated like a sick man, [it] lies on a bed; senators and matrons are lined up on either side; physicians pretend to feel the pulse of the image and give their medical aid until, after seven days, the effigy ‘dies’.”³ In death the sovereign continues to be treated as if he were alive; in fact, the mask of sovereignty, represented in an imago made of wax, survives him and, even if it perishes, it has already fulfilled its function: perpetuating the royal dignity beyond natural life. The king is dead, long live the king.

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1. I Corinthians, 12: 12-14. ↩︎
2. Ernst Kantorowicz, The the King’s Two Bodies, 425. ↩︎
3. Ibid., 427. Giorgio Agamben has noted that the wax effigy of the king bears a great similarity to the signum of the signum, the image that represents him in the funerary ritual through which he is consecrated to the manes (0.12).  ↩︎