The question sounds like a riddle or Christmas cracker joke but it is, in reality, a matter of life and death. The so-called Arab spring reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that it is hardly uncommon for people to find themselves living in a regime governed by someone who appears not to merit the right to do so. And in doing this, it also reminds us that we are not so very distant from political forebears whom we usually like to think of as a bit primitive.
The Bible has – or can be quoted to justify – a very high view of political power. Old Testament kings were anointed, thereby sanctifying them with the very authority of God. The New Testament is, superficially at least, highly deferential to the powers that be, Romans 13 being the proof-text of choice: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." Such views underpinned the view of emperor that persisted in the east, in which "the imperial rank" was exempted from legislation, because he himself was "a living law".
The collapse of the empire took history in a different direction in the west. There royal power was still validated on biblical grounds and coronation services marked with ritual anointing from at least the eighth century. But the closeness of the eastern link between empire and church was never quite replicated in the west, with churchmen claiming and sometimes exercising the right to stand apart from and judge monarchs.
This meant that the question about when was a king not a king lay with clerics and, behind them, the Bible. And the answer they proposed was, in effect, "when he wasn't kingly" or, less cryptically, when he failed to discharge his responsibility to do justice.
Kings were made kings not by force of arms or even inheritance, but by the grace of God. "[It was] not your own merit but the abundant goodness of God [that] appointed you king and ruler over many," St Boniface told King Aethelbert of Mercia. This legitimised monarchy but it also limited it, because if kings were only kings on account of the "goodness of God", it meant that they had to pay attention to his terms and conditions.
This placed upon them certain specified duties, such as judging justly, securing peace (a huge challenge in cultures formed by a warrior ethic), protecting the weak (especially the Old Testament triad of the poor, widows and orphans), and defending and advancing the Christian faith (a responsibility that would lead down some ethically murky paths). Only if a king did this could he rightfully claim the mantle of king; only then could his power be considered to be authority.
Of course, all this was fine in theory. Practice was a different matter. Some educated clerics, like John of Salisbury in the 12th century, mused at length on when it was right to challenge, depose or even kill a tyrannous ruler. Other, more powerful ones, like Popes Gregory VII and Innocent III, pronounced judgment on monarchs in such a way as has led historians, most recently Tom Holland, to claim that the Gregorian papal reforms constituted Europe's first political revolution.
In the fullness of time, this commitment to justice as the principle of political authority would point in the direction of democratic accountability. Indeed, the seeds of this idea can be seen very early. The Anglo-Saxon monk Aelfric remarked in a homily for Palm Sunday delivered in the late 10th century: "No man can make himself king but the people has the choice to choose a king whom they please; but after he is consecrated as king, he then has dominion over the people, and they cannot shake his yoke from their necks."
This was an extraordinary idea for the time, not so very far from the thought of Thomas Hobbes or John Locke over six centuries later. In reality, as we shall see next week, the transition to democracy was made in the teeth of much ecclesiastical opposition but the fact that that transition was made at all owes much to the biblical commitment to justice that underpinned and validated political authority in western Europe.
