Monarchomachs
As Monarchomachen ( altgr. μόναρχος monarchos, autocrat ' and μάχομαι machomai, fight ', in the sense of "Monarch fighter ", "King of Fighters " or " tyrant fighter " ) designated the living in France, Scottish writer and political pamphleteer William Barclay ( 1546-1608 ), a supporter of absolute monarchy, in 1600 the opponents of unrestricted sovereign power of the monarch under the Calvinist writers. These occurred in their political writings against the autocratic rule of monarchs and princes, called for a restriction of the sovereign territorial claims and defended in connection with the sectarian clashes in France their religious interests.
Among the most important Calvinist Monarchomachen the lawyer Francois Hotman (1524-1590), the theologian Theodore Beza ( Theodore Beza ), supporters and followers of John Calvin, meanwhile, are the Psyeudonym (John Calvin ) in Geneva, and " Stephanus Junius Brutus " counted, treatise Vindiciae contra tyrannos ( 1579) appeared that occurred more decisively than other monarchomachische fonts for a right of resistance against tyrannical rule. Who is the author of this work, remained unresolved: the writer and politician Philippe Duplessis- Mornay (1549-1623) or the political journalist and diplomat Hubert Languet (1518-1581), or both together. The group of primarily, but not exclusively Calvinist Monarchomachen be more authors like the French theologian Jean Boucher or the lawyer and Calvin students Lambertus Danaeus to continue the Scottish humanist George Buchanan, the Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana, or writing under the pseudonym Guilelmus Rossaeus, a militant Catholic counted.
Even the German Calvinist political theorist Johannes Althusius is mentioned in connection with the Monarchomachen and referred to in the literature several times as most systematic Monarchomache. His direct assignment to the Monarchomachen is, however, controversial and is represented in the recent Althusius research as misleading. Althusius has taken from the writings of Monarchomachen some, including thoughts on the resistance law, but in his systematic theory of the state, as it is formulated in the Politica Methodice digesta, " the claim as conceptually much beyond it " (D. Wyduckel, 2002 ). Is viewed as problematic, very different authors, as far as they were not based on the sovereignty of the ruler time to involve in the circle of Monarchomachen.
The Monarchomachen turned against unrestricted sovereignty of the ruler, as it is formulated in particular in the theory of absolute monarchical sovereignty of Jean Bodin, and expressed the view that the rule of power of the monarch by the rights of the estates, which they understood as a representation of the people, was limited to. As a state- theoretical basis for argumentation served them a contractual agreement, which provided for the election and deposition of the monarch by the representatives of the estates. One of the central theses of the Monarchomachen was that his power abusive, tyrannical ruler should be discontinued and the tyrannicide as a last means of resistance, which could be understood as a response to the St. Bartholomew's Day ( 1572) against the Huguenots, justified ( right of resistance ).