For Hobbes, the solution to this awful situation was a social contract in
which individuals cede some of their autonomy and freedom to an absolute
monarch who can maintain order and stability. The constitutional monarchs
of the past, he argued, were limited by the privileges of the nobility, clergy,
and other corporate groups, and thus unable to overcome inherent conflicts
like wars of religion. Instead, Hobbes advocated that the state and its
absolute monarch be like a leviathan, a great beast that can prevent individu-
als from devouring one another.
The overriding concern of absolutism was the welfare of the state.
Absolutism thus aimed at governing all subjects directly. This did not mean
that all subjects had the same rights and obligations; only that all individuals
had a direct relationship with the state. In theory, absolutism meant the elim-
ination of the corporate privileges of the nobility and clergy. Early absolutist
monarchs put Calvin’s and Hobbes’s ideas into practice, challenging such
privileges and replacing corporate society with royal institutions: bureau-
cracy, army, the court system. In practice, though, some corporate rights were
assailed, but nobles still retained many privileges, including the right to trial
by jury, unrestricted residence and mobility, and, often, tax-exempt status.
In addition, absolutism aimed at maximizing the capability of every sub-
ject to serve the best interests of the state as effectively and efficiently as
possible. This meant something different for different elements of society. For
peasants, absolutism meant a way to farm the land more productively. For
nobles, it meant participating in the newly created state bureaucracy and
courts, and serving as officers in the newly formed standing army.
With regard to Jews, absolutism meant maximizing the revenue that the
state collected from Jews by allowing Jews to develop commerce and invest
their commercial profit to the benefit of the state. To this end, most German
princes chose to protect their Jewish subjects after 1649 rather than expel
them. This newfound protection came at a price, as absolutist sovereigns
taxed and regulated Jews and interfered in Jewish communal administration
to an unprecedented degree. Indicative in this regard was the edict issued by
Frederick William I, the king of Brandenburg-Prussia in 1671, Edict on the
Readmission of Fifty Jewish Families of Protected Jews; but They Are Not to Have
Synagogues. This charter, and the expanded version that Frederick II gave the
Jews of Prussia in 1750, combined aspects of medieval charters with novel
elements. Jews were still subjected to restrictions, seen as pariahs, and still
not trusted by the king. On the other hand, Jews were no longer defined as
subjects of the king, but of the state, meaning – at least theoretically – not
subject to the personal whims of a particular sovereign. In addition, the
Prussian charters eroded certain aspects of corporate Jewish autonomy,
instructing Jews involved in civil or criminal disputes with other Jews to seek
redress in royal rather than Jewish communal courts.
The turn to absolutism was more complex in the Habsburg Monarchy. The
reigning Habsburg monarch doubled as Holy Roman Emperor until the
116 World Jewry in flux, 1492–1750