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was perverse or stupid, but had reasons for militancy; and he
entered not only into these reasons but also into the feelings
attached. This is a rare talent, especially when it does not lead to
shilly-shallying in the double-viewer's own course of action. Bage–
hot could always state the reasons for
his
choices with the utmost
clarity.
This can be said of Barzun himself. For the historian, judgment is
action, and Barzun never shilly-shallies in his judgments.
Barzun has the rare capacity for seeing around an idea or institution
in order to provide its historical logic, which might be antithetic to mod–
ern sensibilities. Consider, for example, his treatment of the subject of
the doctrine of the divine right of kings. The monarchical revolution of
the seventeenth century affirmed "monarchy-and-nation" as the basis of
"stability and peace" at a time when "sects had challenged or broken
authority everywhere." An altogether secular ruler was not at the time
within the horizon of possibility.
In the 17C no monarch could do without the support of the
church, Protestant or Catholic. . ..At the Estates General of
1614,
the bourgeois order made it Article
1
of their petition; they wanted
the king's right to oppose papal interference and to put down the
lords made explicit....As for the people, they needed the comfort
of divine right
to
replace the former means of protection against
tyranny-local assemblies, customary privileges, and the like,
which under monarchy were neutralized or swept away.
Barzun goes on to elaborate the theory of monarchical responsibility to
God and the consequences of the king's betrayal of his trust, anticipat–
ing the atheist's contempt for such "empty imaginings" with the admo–
nition that the atheist "should not fall into his own imagining that 'no
sensible man' ever trusted this guarantee of right with perfect sincerity.
When thinkers and populace agree in an interpretation of the world, it
is foolish to suppose that they have lost their reason." One might add
that though divine right has its reasons, even in its own time those rea–
sons were challenged . (As is the case with most rules, there are of course
exceptions: Germany lost her reason during the Nazi period.)
Barzun makes a similar case for Metternich's counterrevolutionary
policy and practice in the wake of the French Revolution.
