Monarchy

A historical and theological study of monarchy as a political system, with particular attention to:

1. The case that monarchy is the natural political order of humanity
2. The witness of the Old Testament (and broader Scripture) to monarchy
3. The nature and function of oaths given to a monarch — their theological, legal, and covenantal dimensions
4. Historical defenses of monarchy across the ancient, medieval, and early modern periods

Structure

Outline is the current working document — a nested inventory of every claim, source, open question, and gap, to be pruned into a paper later. Draft is the earlier prose attempt, superseded but kept for reference.

Research holds the source tables, grouped by period and topic: scripture, patristic and medieval, early modern, classical, oaths and coronation, and modern secondary scholarship.

Thesis Direction

The hypothesis under examination: monarchy is not an aberration or concession in human political history, but its natural form — evidenced by the near-universal emergence of kingship across civilizations, the OT's treatment of Israelite monarchy (Deut 17, 1 Sam 8–12, 2 Sam 5, etc.), the consent of the governed expressed through oaths rather than through elections, and the sustained theological defense of monarchy from Eusebius through Bossuet.

The oath question is central: in pre-modern political theory, the oath of fealty / coronation oath is not merely a legal formality but a covenantal act binding ruler and ruled before God — with theological weight that democratic consent mechanisms do not carry.