https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0188-2757
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Jonathan McGovern, An Early English Example of the ‘Kings are Gods’ Argument, Notes and Queries, Volume 71, Issue 3, September 2024, Page 299, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjae072
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Extract
In the sixteenth century, reformist authors in England and on the Continent used Bible verses such as Exodus 22:28 and (most importantly) Psalm 82:6 to argue that kings were ‘gods’ and therefore worthy of unstinting obedience from their subjects.1 The political reading of Psalm 82 was first set forth by Ulrich Zwingli and Conrad Pellican in Zürich in 1526 and 1527, respectively. Thereafter, it became widely known in England through its inclusion in Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man (1528).2 When Philip Melanchthon wrote to King Henry VIII from Frankfurt in 1539, he used the very same argument.3 Ryan Reeves, in a comprehensive study of the political application of Psalm 82:6, suggests that there is no late-medieval tradition of referring to rulers as gods in England.4 This is probably true for the most part. However, a similar argument was used on at least one occasion in England prior to 1526. In a little-known sermon delivered at the opening of parliament at Blackfriars on 15 April 1523, Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, made the following comment:
[T]he prophite David callythe al kynges and princes the hye and myghtye goddes of the erthe, dii fortes terre vehementer elevati sunt, and as longe as they contynue yn the regale dignite God commeandyth all pepule to honore and reverence them.5
