Political Angelology: The Royal Hierarchy of William of Auvergne

William of Auvergne's application of Dionysian angelic hierarchy to the political realm has been recognized for the independence and prominence it gives to the secular authority over the ecclesiastical. In this article, it is argued that William's intervention is more fully understood as an ideological transfer of the spiritual prerogative of moral perfection, through the language of angelic and demonic hierarchy, from the church to the secular kingdom. This reading situates the idea in William's historical context, in which the papacy and lay rulers were imitating and competing with each other for temporal influence. Secular monarchs legitimated their formation of centralized, hierarchical polities through the Christian ideal of ministerial kingship: this process provides ground for an historically nuanced way to think about secularization in the modern age.