Why did absolute monarch s believe that they were justified in exercising absolute power?

Answer 1

They believed that it was God himself who had granted them that power, and that they were therefore only responsible to God for their actions. And if you hold that the power to rule a country is strictly a matter between you and God, you can have advisers and such, but you as king (and not others) has the final say. Otherwise, how could you be responsible to God?

Even today, almost all remaining European kings still have it mentioned in formal documents that they are king "by the grace of God'. But the power has by now gone to their Governments and Parliaments.

Answer 2

The "divine right of kings" was an idea that attempted to justify unlimited royal power. The belief, not universally held, was: ( monarch can be substituted as queens were covered by this idea as well )

A. a king ruled by God's authority as His earthly authority;

B. obedience to the king was obedience to God; and

C. the king could do no wrong.

Hobbes and Spinoza were ignored by this "divine" concept, however in the 16th century it was a popular, uncritical belief. Based on its time, advocates of this idea found nothing absurd or eccentric in it. If the name of God is taken broadly as meaning a moral order of the universe, an idea which in the seventeenth century, was seldom expressed by any other word, then all positive and optimistic theories of the state are theories of divine right. "Vox populi, vox dei" for example is a divine right slogan.

The more elaborate theory that kings ruled by divine right had been "invented" in a manner of speaking, counter offensive to the papalist doctrine of the later Middle Ages, for it was to the kings that the divine right was attributed because they were leading the opposition to papal claims.

More to the point was an address to the University of Cambridge that King Charles II gave in 1681.

To paraphrase some of his remarks we find this:

We (meaning monarchy ) will continue to believe that our kings base their title from God himself, and not the people. Kings are only accountable to God. Therefore, the king's subjects have the duty to obey and honor their sovereign. It is not their place to create disorder or censure any activities of the king. Kings assume their thrones by the hereditary right of succession. No religion or law, or " you name it " can alter or diminish this right to authority.

As an aside, and stretching history a bit, who cannot recall Napoleon taking the crown held by the Pope and crowning himself.