History: absloute monarcy

Jean Domat (1625-1696) was a renowned French jurist in the reign of Louis XIV, the king who perfected the practice of royal absolutism. Domat made it his life's task to explain the theory behind this absolutism by setting French law and social structure into the wider context of the law of nature and the law of God. Louis XIV regarded Domat's work so highly that he assigned him a pension, and in effect the royal government sponsored his publications. Public Law, the treatise that dealt most directly with the origin of social order and government, and with the rights and duties of kings, appeared in 1697, the year after Domat's death.