Under the aegis of the Archangel : fascism and divine kingship in interwar Romania

Abstract

This report aims to take a decisive first step towards an analysis of fascism as a resuscitated form of that archaic political figuration known to religious studies scholars as divine kingship. I take this aspirational first step through a case study of The Legion of the Archangel Michael and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Romania’s interwar fascist movement and its founder. The report first situates itself within the ‘new consensus’ of fascist studies as represented by the theories of Roger Griffin and Emilio Gentile before delving into a history of the Legion of the Archangel Michael and C.Z. Codreanu. With this historical data in hand, I turn to an exegesis and application of some key theories on divine kingship from Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies (1957) and David Graeber & Marshall Sahlins’ On Kings (2017) to the Legion. What emerges is a distinct vision of the necessarily modern political phenomenon of fascism as in fact a kind of reboot of divine kingship for an era of mass, electoral politics.Religious Studie