Dynastic Rule

In the 1600s, there was the concept of the Divine Right of Kings.

This didn't really exist in the 1200s, 1000s, and 800s. What was present was dynastic rule and precedent.

Well, what would people living in the 1200s call it?
 
I don't think one can claim there was a clear-cut difference between the XVIth century and the late Middle-Ages.

While it's not really representative of the whole of royal conception, the french sacre made the king someone apart the whole society, blessed in a way neither nobles or clerks could be.
The medieval coronations ceremonies were eventually following a more or less davidic rite (obvious in France or the Empire, less so in England, at least for half of its medieval history, or Cyprus, for instance) that if not consecrated the ruler as someone that recieved a spark of the divine inspiration, not unlike a sacrament (some scholars even tried to make the french sacre an eight sacrament, without success).
These consecrated, sacri (holy) kingships (rather than kings), invested the ruler with both a right (in the sense of legitimacy) to rule, and a duty or a mission to rule, making it special among his people and peers, like the pope was, in a way.

Not to say that Jean Bodin's theory on the res publica were a direct continuation of medieval conceptions (themselves growingly mixed with Roman Law and Augustinism since the XIIth century) : the legalism and humanism of his work is certainly a departure. But the divine right of kings isn't as much a radical change you make it : most of it was announced in the Late Middle-Ages.
 
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