The memorable visit, even if devoid of practical effect, honored and enhanced the crown of France.
“The memorable visit, even if devoid of practical effect, honored and enhanced the crown of France. Although royal powers were undefined, and the Council’s authority unformulated, and the institutions of royal government always in flux, Charles V’s sense of the crown’s role was firm: kingship depended on the King’s will. The sovereign was not above the law; rather, his duty was to maintain the law, for God denied Paradise to tyrants. Sanction derived in theory from the consent of the governed, for kings and princes, as a great theologian, Jean Gerson, was to remind Charles’s successor, “were created in the beginning by the common consent of all.” As Charles knew well, the cult of monarchy was the basis of the people’s consent. He deliberately fed the cult while at the same time he was the first to show that rulership could be exercised “from the chamber” independent of personal leadership in battle.”
