What would a good medieval monarch do?

Answer 1

The power a monarch had varied enormously from absolute power to almost no power. Remember, we are talking about scores, possibly hundreds, of monarchies, over a period of 1000 years, each with its own laws and customs.

We can see the range in powers by looking at two men, both kings of the Franks, who ruled only a few years apart. One is Childeric III, who was king while Pepin the Short was Mayor of the Palace. Childeric III had no more power than any ordinarily wealthy man. He became king in 743 AD, because Pepin thought it might be nice to have a king. He lost his monarchy because Pepin decided to be king himself, in 751 AD.

Contrasting this is Charlemagne, who became king of the same kingdom seventeen years after Childeric was dethroned. His rule was nearly absolute. Because he protected the pope from mobs, even the pope gave him a great deal of deference. Perhaps things would have been different, and his powers would have been more restricted by an opposition party, if he had been excessive in its use, but he did not, and it was not.

Answer 2

There was a lot of variation in what the monarch could do.

In many countries of the Middle Ages, monarchs had absolute power. This meant that they could do whatever they wanted. In such a system, the law was strongly associated with the will of the monarch; to disobey the monarch was to break the law, and to obey the law meant doing what the monarch wished. Clearly, in such a system, the monarch was above the law, and could change it at will. This idea was reinforced by the notion that the monarch ruled by the will of God, which gave him some sort of divine authority.

The power of an absolute monarch was somewhat reduced by one thing, which was that he was expected to abide by his promises, oaths, and vows. The entire fabric of society of medieval Western Europe was maintained by reciprocal oaths, in which people promised to support each other. When a king broke an promise to someone, it meant that person no longer had to keep his promises to support the king, and this reduced the king's power. This was especially important in the case of a king who ran afoul of the Church or the pope, because the Church had the authority to nullify oaths of people who were excommunicated. This meant that the supporters of excommunicated kings were not required to continue to support them, and the treaties made with such kings were no longer valid. In such a case, the king often found he had rebellions he could not control, and had lost a very substantial part of his power. King John of England was such a monarch; another example was Emperor Henry IV of the Holy Roman Empire, who had been the most powerful monarch in Western Europe until he was excommunicated, from which point his most important work was dealing with a rebellious son. It is because of this that the pope was sometimes regarded as more powerful than the kings.

At the other end of the spectrum from absolute monarchy, was a monarch who really had no power at all and was just a figurehead in whose name other people exercised authority. Childeric III, the last Merovingian King of the Franks was such a person. At some point, Pepin the Short, who was Mayor of the Palace, decided it was useless to have Childeric as king, so he reached an agreement with the pope to the effect that he should take the throne for himself and exercise power in his own name. Childeric was made to spend the rest of his life in a monastery.

Answer 3

most of them declared war on each other