Royal touch

The royal touch (also known as the king's touch) was a form of laying on of hands, whereby French and English monarchs touched their subjects, regardless of social classes, with the intent to cure them of various diseases and conditions. The thaumaturgic touch was most commonly applied to people suffering from tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis (better known as scrofula or the King's Evil), and exclusively to them from the 16th century onwards. The disease rarely resulted in death and often went into remission on its own, giving the impression that the monarch's touch cured it. The claimed power was most notably exercised by monarchs who sought to demonstrate the legitimacy of their reign and of their newly founded dynasties. The kings and queens regnant of England and the kings of France were the only Christian rulers who claimed the divine gift (divinitus) to cure by touching or stroking the diseased. This special aptitude was thought to be evidence of God's high esteem of the two monarchies, though they never agreed upon whose predecessors the ability was first conferred. In England, Saint Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–1066) was said to be the first monarch to possess the healing power of the royal touch. The French, who normally traced the origins of their monarchs' divine gift back to Philip I (r. 1059–1108) or even Robert II (r. 987–1031), denied that Saint Edward used the royal touch. They insisted that the first English monarch to claim the ability was Henry I (r. 1100–1135), and that his touching was a politically influenced imitation of the gift granted exclusively to French monarchs. The physician André du Laurens (1558–1609) claimed that Clovis I (r. 481–511) was the first king who touched for scrofula, but the medievalist Marc Bloch (1886–1944) argued that it was probably Philip I. Modern scholars, most notably Frank Barlow (1911–2009), agree that the French practice most likely originated from Saint Louis IX (r. 1226–1270). The earliest direct evidence of the royal touch in England are the financial records dating from the reign of Edward I (r.