‘there is much of interest in these essays’ - M. Smuts, University of Massachusetts‘This fascinating and important collection of essays [...] do[es] much to deepen and enrich our understanding of monarchism and absolutism in early modern Europe’; ‘The volume is genuinely European in its range and coverage’; ‘this is a ground-breaking volume, and the standard of the contributions is consistently high’ - D. L. Smith, Selwyn College, Cambridge University‘the essays are all of interest, and the volume as a whole a contribution to the study of what, until the triumph of modern democracy, was the most perdurable political institution in the Western world for two millennia’ - R. Zaller, Drexel University‘This collection makes it abundantly clear that previous scholars have often underestimated the complexity of this concept [absolutism] and represents a commendable step in rectifying this problem’ - G. E. Schwartz-Leeper, University of Sheffield

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe, Cesare Cuttica, Glenn Burgess; Chapter 1a A Culture of Political Counsel: The Case of Fourteenth-Century England's 'Virtuous' Monarchy vs Royal Absolutism and Seventeenth-Century Reinterpretations, Janet Coleman; Chapter 2 Royalist Absolutism in the 1650s: The Case of Robert Sheringham, Edward Vallance; Chapter 3 Patriarchalism and the Monarchical Republicans, Gaby Mahlberg; Chapter 4 Cynic Kingship in the German Enlightenment, John Christian Laursen; Chapter 5 Polizey and Patriotism: Joseph von Sonnenfels and the Legitimacy of Enlightened Monarchy in the Gaze of Eighteenth-Century State Sciences, László Kontler; Chapter 6 Absolutism, Patriotism and Publicity in Denmark-Norway in the Eighteenth Century: Jens Schielderup Sneedorff, Andreas Schytte and Frederik Sneedorff, Henrik Horstbøll; Chapter 7 Jansenist Jurisdictionalism and Enlightenment: Two ways of thinking Politics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Naples, Girolamo Imbruglia; Chapter 8 Early Modern Absolutism in Practice and Theory, Johann P. Sommerville; Chapter 9 An Absolutist Trio in the Early 1630s: Sir Robert Filmer, Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, Cardin Le Bret and Their Models of Monarchical Power., Cesare Cuttica; Chapter 10 Tyrants, Absolute Kings, Arbitrary Rulers and the Commonwealth of England: Some Reflections on Seventeenth-Century English Political Vocabulary, Glenn Burgess; Chapter 11 'Monstrous' Pufendorf: Sovereignty and System in the Dissertations, Michael Seidler; Chapter 12 Absolute Chaos, Absolute Order: The Rhetoric of the State of Nature in the Discourse of Sovereignty, Ioannis D. Evrigenis; Chapter 13 Bayle on Brutus : A Paradoxical Issue?, Luisa Simonutti; Chapter 14 'More Long-Lasting than Bronze?' Statues, Public Commemoration and Representations of Monarchy in Diderot's Political Thought, Tim Hochstrasser;