Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/391

 REVIEWS.

Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship. By J. G. Frazer. London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1905. 8vo. xi. and 309 pp.

The Origin of Priesthood. By Gunnar Landtman. Skennes, Finland. 1905. 8vo. xi. and 207 pp.

If the following reflections appear desultory, there are two excuses for it. The present writer is only an amateur in these matters, and Dr. Frazer's learned and brilliant lectures are rather a series of notes for arguments than a continuous argument.

It has ever been a point of royal policy for the king to make sure, in one way or another, of combining spiritual with tem- poral power; as, on the other hand, spiritual potentates have been tempted, or even constrained in self-defence, to assume secular functions. Not to speak of the most conspicuous example, that of the Roman see, many bishops were reigning princes in Eurcfpe down to modern times ; and the Bishop of Durham was a prince, though not a sovereign prince, in England. We all know of Frederick II. 's unsuccessful reprisal on the Church, and the partly successful one of our own Henry VIII., which Elizabeth thought it imprudent to pursue. The French kings asserted clerical privilege, so we read, by communicating in both kinds as part of the coronation ritual. In ancient history there are the titular kings, Archon Basileus and the like, who perform under republican governments the priestly duties of the former dynasty. Melchizedek, whether historical or not, is quite in the classical line of tradition. All