Spectators invade the pitch
Wim Blockmans · 2024
Established elites show a tendency to view their acquisitions as self-evident rights, derived from an immovable order. During the ancien régime, the social order was represented as expressing God’s will, which for rulers had the practical advantage that people were not allowed to contest it. Only massive and constant protest by the oppressed classes was able to exact concessions, and violence was commonly required because the elites had ensconced themselves in stone fortresses and could mobilize bands of armed subordinates. From the fifteenth century onwards, criticism of the Church and new conceptions of the place of the individual in society affected the traditional justification of princely power throughout Europe.