SOVEREIGN, CULT OF THE. — In primitive groupings the head of the community holds the dual role of king and priest (magician, sorcerer) as one who, having greater contact with superior powers, interprets their will and acts as their spokesman before the community’s needs.
Given his function, he must always be in a position to represent his group effectively; thus, when age and infirmities have weakened his strength, he is removed or replaced. But as long as he remains effective, he is subject to interdictions (taboos) and to special care aimed at preventing the mediating power within him from dissipating, to the detriment of the community.
The progress of civilization and culture, which tends to separate the sacred and civil functions in the person of the sovereign, does not deprive kingship of its privileges. Thus, in the Chinese Empire, the monarch, though not considered a god, exercises the function of Heaven itself in regulating the relations between gods and men, performs the official sacrifice to Heaven, and averts Heaven’s wrath through expiatory rites when angered by human misdeeds.
In Japan, the sovereign is regarded as an incarnation of the solar goddess Amaterasu: once a year, the gods gather to serve her in her court, abandoning their temples for a month, which is therefore called “godless.”
In Babylon, the sovereign is chosen by the gods who “pronounce his name,” predestining him to the office from the womb; King Hammurabi, in his code, is described as “a royal scion formed by the god Sin,” “god of kings,” and his name is invoked in oaths as that of a deity. The pharaoh of Egypt was deified even in life; he is the son of the Sun (Ra, Rê'), the good god, begotten by the god himself through union with the queen in the form of her husband.
In Greece, the cult of the sovereign would not have been possible in the classical era, but it developed during the Hellenistic period. Alexander found the worship of the sovereign deeply rooted in Egypt, Asia Minor, Babylonia, and Persia, and when his successors in the various kingdoms of his dismembered empire (Ptolemies, Seleucids, Attalids) were succeeded by the Romans, divine honors were rendered to representatives of Rome: the Senate, proconsuls, the Goddess Roma, and the emperors.
In Rome itself, certain foundations for the possible exaltation of the human person existed in the ancient religion: the Tiber, a personification (ἐμψυχος) of Jupiter; the victorious general, in the triumph ceremony, assumes the attributes of a god; every private family venerates the genius of the paterfamilias as protector of the gens; the dead are honored with particular reverence and called gods (di Manes). With the triumph of Hellenism, this divine exaltation of illustrious persons developed further: Julius Caesar, after his death, was enrolled among the gods with the official title of Divus Iulius and worshipped in a dedicated temple. Augustus, restorer of the official religion, permitted the people to direct divine veneration toward his person, granting that a cult be paid to his genius, associated with the Lares Compitales, protectors of the city’s various subdivisions. This was the origin of the imperial cult, which in the East associated the figure of the sovereign with that of the great deities who had temples in the various metropolises, along with assemblies of a religious-political character (χουχίς); whereas in the West, where such assemblies did not exist, the institutions entrusted with the sovereign’s priestly duties (flamen), the regulation of provincial gatherings (Concilium, conventus), and the norms of sacrifice. The rite of apotheosis (consecratio), which consisted of burning the sovereign’s body on a pyre while simultaneously releasing an eagle that signified the emperor’s soul ascending to heaven, sealed the solemn ceremony.
Naturally, Christianity abolished the cult of the sovereign, but an echo of the supernatural power always attributed to the person of the king can be recognized in the privilege (by which the kings of France and England were invested) of healing scrofula (écrouelle) by the touch of their hands, a disease therefore called “the king’s evil” (mal le roi, King’s evil).