This is a study of the ideology of monarchy in late medieval Europe. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, European monarchies faced a series of crises and conflicts, which gave rise to intense debate as to the nature and authority of monarchy in its various forms. From such debates and polemics emerged many of the ideas that were to sustain the later confrontation between `absolutism' and `constitutionalism'.

In this book J. H. Burns examines the ideas generated by various `crises of monarchy' in France, England, the Spanish kingdoms, and what still claimed to be the `universal' monarchies of Empire and Papacy. This is a lucid and stimulating new exploration of a major topic in the history of political thought by one of its leading historians.