This chapter documents how Thailand’s practice of Sacred Buddhist Kingship builds on the Lèse-majesté Law, with the aim of providing a first analysis of how the dual process of secularization of blasphemy and sacralization of royalty via lèse-majesté throughout Thai modern history worked towards the King’s consolidation of power. In the first part, it will sketch a brief overview of the historical evolution of the Thai lèse-majesté law including its pre-modern antecedents, before turning to an analysis of the law of lèse-majesté as defined by judges and other members of the legal profession in Thailand. In the second part, the chapter turns to a thorough examination of key case-studies from the early 21st century, discussing the judicial procedures of exception implemented to punish and absolve lèse-majesté offenders.

Isidore was among the most representative and influential intellectuals of the early Middle Ages. He aimed to transform the Visigothic realm, which had converted from Arian to Nicene, or catholic, Christianity in 589, into a Christian respublica. To that end, the church needed to persuade the secular Gothic elites to join the project, and Isidore contributed to the construction of a common cultural setting. His most famous work, the Etymologies — an encyclopaedia in twenty books — is an attempt to present all human knowledge in an exposition that is both coherent and accessible, but it would become indispensable reading for students of law. Isidore moves within the tradition of Roman law, but he is not afraid to deviate from and to renew it. Although he was not a jurist by training or profession, he made original contributions to the theory of law — e.g., in relation to the ideal of the “two laws,” and by emphasizing the necessary ethical foundation of political power — and to the construction of a model of judicial procedure, which would be used by ecclesiastical as well as secular courts during the central Middle Ages.

Hailing from North Africa, Lactantius was an imperial professor of Latin rhetoric, a position that brought him to the courts of the emperors Diocletian and Constantine. This chapter explores themes in his Divine Institutes that bear on his legal thought. In addition to setting out Lactantius’s conception of religious tolerance and its influence on the emperor Constantine’s religious policy, the chapter considers the role of “divine law” in Lactantius’s work. He found the first two principles of divine law in Matt 22:36–40 and considered them equivalent to pietas and aequitas in Cicero’s thought. Just as Roman citizens were defined by their access to Roman law, so adherence to divine law, for Lactantius, constituted both Christian and Roman identity. After Augustine of Hippo rejected Lactantius’s suggestion that the law of the state could be a faithful image of the divine law, Western medieval scholars largely ignored the legal thrust of Lactantius’s arguments. Nevertheless, his advocacy of religious tolerance gained currency in recent times, when the Second Vatican Council embraced it.