Roman antecedents can explain the concept of the King’s two  
bodies.  It was the aggressive Pauline concept of the Church as 
corpus Christi , says Kantorowicz (pp. 505­6), that “eventually 
endowed the late antique ‘corporations’ with a philosophico-
theological impetus which apparently those bodies were lacking 
before Constantine the Great referred to the Church as a 
corpus  and thereby introduced that philosophical and 
theological notion into the language of law.”

     As with any medieval development at all, the later phases 
show a preference for an increasingly visual stress. And so it is 
with the King’s two bodies. In 1542 Henry VIII addressed his 
council: “We be informed by our judges that we at no time 
stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, 
wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit 
together in one body politic.”