Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08640_Field_TCGG T405.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 920b | 16 lines

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.”