Kingship Oakley Summary

Francis Oakley’s Kingship is a scholarly book that addresses, the reader about the history of kingship and how it went from being the most common form of government to being almost nonexistent. Francis Oakley talks about the Mayans the Egyptians and the Japanese Emperors. Not only will the reader learn of the history of kingship in this book and, reader will also be able to learn the concepts of why kings were in control and were respected. At the very beginning of the book Francis Oakley states that all kings are sacred and later tries to explain how kingship had died out due to the influence of Christianity. Oakley also uses this belief to show how Kings ruled in the earlier centuries.
The reason why this kings were seen as sacred and not be questioned is because kings were said to have Devine right. Examples of this notion would be Louis XIV and the shah of Iran using this on their people which, lead to their rule not being questioned by anyone. .The book is relatively short being only six chapters long. Time is always moving forward so there are constant changes going on throughout the world and with that being said autocracies have decrease significantly over these years and Francis Oakley argues that kingship ended because Christian beliefs shows that no man can become equal to God. This claim can be one of the …show more content…
In this chapter Oakley speaks about the Islamic government system and how they don’t have a difference between religion and government which, is a problem that is being held today. This chapter talks a lot about theocracies and the book provides a little background information for a reader that doesn’t know too much about that kind of stuff. Oakley covers other forms of kingship, examples being ascendancy, papacy and papal. Another example of god like kings that Oakley names is the Japanese emperor Hirohito who was enthroned in the early