F. Oakley, Kingship (Yitzak Hen)

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Francia-Recensio 2009/3 Mittelalter – Moyen Âge (500–1500)

Francis Oakley, Kingship. The Politics of Enchantment, Oxford (Blackwell Publishing) 2006, 208 p., 6 ill., ISBN 0-631-22696-6, GBP 19,99.

rezensiert von/compte rendu rédigé par

Racheli Shalomi-Hen, Jerusalem/Yitzhak Hen, Beer-Sheva

The blurb at the back of the book states that in this book Francis Oakley traces the history of kingship »from the time of the Neolithic revolution and the spread of the agrarian modes of subsistence around the eastern Mediterranean (c. 8000–c. 5000 BCE) down to its widespread loss of legitimacy in the modern industrial world«. The book itself, however, delivers much less. In six chapters, which are arranged chronologically, the author surveys the various forms that sacral kingship took throughout history. He begins with the »archaic and global patterns of cosmic kingship« (chapter 1), before turning to survey the Hellenistic, Roman, Biblical and Islamic views (chapter 2), the Christianisation of kingship as reflected in the writings of Eusebius and Augustine of Hippo (chapter 3), the Carolingian ideology of kingship (chapter 4), the later medieval monarchies (chapter 5), and finally »the fading nimbus« of kingship in modern times (chapter 6). Any attempt to summaries ten millennia of history in 150 page is jejune and shallow at best, and Oakley’s book is no different. The book beings with a series of banal clichés and unfounded assumption that set the tone for the subsequent chapters. For example, paraphrasing Adalai Steveneson, Oakley argues that kingship is the normal pattern of human government. »In terms, that is to say, of its antiquity, its ubiquity, its wholly extraordinary staying power, the institution of kingship can lay strong claim to having been the most common form of government known, world-wide, to man« (p. 4). In a different place he writes that »in that formative narrative, it needs hardly be emphasized, the institution of kingship and the element of sacrality attaching so persistently to it get pretty short shrift« (p. 5). And our favourite quote, to give just one more example, »kingship«, according to Oakley, »emerged from an ›archaic‹ mentality that appears to have been thoroughly monistic, to have perceived no impermeable barrier between the human and divine, to have intuited the divine as immanent in the cyclic rhythms of the natural world and civil society as somehow enmeshed in those natural processes, and to have viewed its primary function, therefore, as a fundamentally religious one, involving the preservation of the cosmic order and the ›harmonious integration‹ of human beings with the natural world« (p. 7). This meaningless sentence is, perhaps, the most impressive example of Oakley’s research methodology and source critique.

When it comes to specific cases, Oakley’s treatment of the written evidence leaves much to be desired, whereas his bibliography is old, and largely out-of-date. These lead to some embarrassing confusions and emphatically wrong statements. For example, at the beginning of his discussion of Ancient Egyptian Kingship, the author states that »what is said here will apply most accurately, so far as Egypt is concerned, to the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom« yet his textual examples are from the reigns of Thutimes III (p. 39) and Amenhotep III (p. 41), both were prominent monarchs of the 18^th Dynasty, who ruled Egypt during the New-Kingdom, some ten centuries later to the Old Kingdom. On page 38 Oakley writes that »under the Old Kingdom (2815–2298 BCE) and with the rise to prominence of the sun-cult among the priests of Helliopolis […], the Egyptian king came to be identified in life also with the sun-god, Ré and entitled ›Son of Ré‹, just as, at death, he was identified with Osiris, the god-king who had died, been resurrected, and was linked with fertility and the restorative or ›resurrective‹ function of the Nile«. Alas, it was not the living king who was identified with Re, but the dead king. Hence his son, the living king, bore the title »the Son of Re«. Osiris came later to the Egyptian pantheon, as the sovereign of the realm of the dead. As such, the dead king was identified with Osiris as well. It is important to note, however, that Osiris in the time of the Old Kingdom was not directly linked with fertility, nor indeed was he directly associated with the Nile.

When Oakley discusses the situation in western Europe his statements are even more awkward. He is well aware of the fragmentary and biased state of his evidence, or lack thereof, and still finds it justified to write that »the sacral character of the kings in pre-Christian Ireland is not in dispute« (p. 33), or that »it would seem natural enough to assume the presence of sacral kingship among them [i. e. the early Germanic peoples] in the pre-Christian era« (p. 35). This idiosyncratic notion of Celtic and early Germanic kingship, one should stress, gain no convincing evidentiary support, and whenever our sources are carefully examined, the forms of Celtic and Germanic kingship that emerges from them is overwhelmingly Roman, and subsequently Christian. It may well be that such a view is dictated by our sources, all of which were written well after the first encounter with Rome. Nevertheless, there is a growing agreement in recent scholarship (all of which is ignored by Oakley) that the sacral notion of Celtic and Germanic kingship is untenable anymore.

These comments, we believe, will suffice to clarify that »Kingship. The Politics of Enchantment« in not a recommended reading, neither for students, nor for the general public.