The Image of Crisis in the Danish Sovereignty Act (1661) and The Royal Law (1665)

Abstract

Denmark experienced one of its most acute crises during the Danish–Swedish wars 1657–60 leaving the country plundered, impoverished and diminished. After the war, the Danish king, Frederick III, seized the opportunity offered by the political circumstances to change the constitution and take absolute power. Consequently, three documents were produced in the royal chancelleries, all initially referring to the recent crisis as a base for legitimising the introduction of absolutism in Denmark–Norway: The Sovereignty Act (Enevoldsarveregeringsakten), 1661, and two versions of the Danish–Norwegian constitution entitled The Royal Law (Kongeloven), 1665, a Latin draft and the official version in Danish. 

The Sovereignty Act focuses on the king as saviour of the kingdom basing the legitimacy of the king’s absolute power on the people’s gratitude to him. In the Latin draft, on the contrary, the Danes are saved by God’s hand that comes down from heaven, crushes the enemy and inspires the Estates to confer absolute power upon the king who is now completely passive. The highly dramatized passage with allusions to both stoicism and classical theatre reflects the humanist rhetorical tradition. In the Danish version of The Royal Law, the people are still divinely inspired to transfer the absolute power to the king, but the dramatized style is considerably reduced and the stoic terms replaced by Christian expressions and God as the fatherly saviour of the state. The texts thus offer three different interpretations of the crisis, all of them expressions of movements that were indicative for the early modern period: natural law, humanism and Christianity.