THE THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL?with Henri IV, the God-king with Louis XIV.’’ In one sense, they are obeying the same
inspiration as the great thinkers of the period, observes Michelet: Dante was similarly
inspired to seek the salvation of humanity in unity and to imagine a monarch who,
because he embodied the One, would possess unlimited authority and would be set free
from mortal passions. But ‘‘we must dig deeper than Dante, we must dig into the earth,
and uncover and contemplatethe profoundly popular basis on which the colossus was built’’
(emphasis added). Men did not simply believe that they could ‘‘save justice in a political
religion,’’ and they did not simply create ‘‘a God of Justice out of a man’’; they made
kings the object of their love. Theirs was a singular love: ‘‘an obstinate, blind love, which
saw all its God’s imperfections as virtues. Far from being shocked at seeing the human
element in him, they were grateful for it. They believed that it would bring him closer to
them, that it would make him less proud and less harsh. They were glad that Henri IV
loved Gabrielle.’’ The remarkable thing about the description of this love, about the evo-
cation of Louis XV, the ‘‘well-beloved,’’ a God-made-flesh, and about the pages devoted
to Louis XVI as he returns from Varenne to his execution is that they suggest that we
have to re-examine the representation of the king’s two bodies. This, as formulated in the
Middle Ages, was based upon the notion of the two bodies of Christ and, in sixteenth-
century England, generated the juridical fiction that the king was two persons in one, one
being the natural king, a mortal man who was subject to time and to common laws, who
was vulnerable to ignorance, error, and illness, and the other being the supernatural king,
who was immortal, infallible, and omnipotent within the time and space of the kingdom.
This representation gave rise to numerous commentaries by English historians, and Ernst
Kantorowicz analyzes them with unrivaled erudition and subtlety.^3 Michelet does not, of
course, bring this out, but he does deal with the issue indirectly, and in such a way as to
reveal the limited extent to which this representation can be formulated in juridical or
theologico-political terms, even though it was primarily such a formulation that caught
the attention of contemporaries. As we read Michelet, it becomes apparent that, over and
beyond this representation, it is the natural body that, because it is combined with the
supernatural body, exercises the charm that delights the people. It is insofar as it is a sexed
body, a body capable of procreation and of physical love, and a fallible body that it effects
an unconscious mediation between the human and the divine; the body of Christ, al-
though mortal, visible, and fallible as well as divine, cannot ensure that mediation be-
cause, while it indicates the presence of God in man, it cannot fully indicate the converse:
the presence of man and of the flesh in God. By breaking with the argument that derives
the human monarchy from the divine monarchy, Michelet uncovers an erotico-political
register. In his view, that register is, no doubt, established simply because religion has put
love in the place of Law. But he does outline a logic of love in the political, and it is
surprising that he does not see that it is older than Christianity. The modern king, who is
portrayed as God’s representative on earth, as a substitute for Christ, does not derive all
his power from that image. It is through the operation of sacrifice alone, in the element
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