page_title: Abdication
section_title: Terminology
hierarchical_section_title: Abdication / Terminology
caption_attribution_description: English: Tomb effigy of heart of King John II Casimir Vasa at Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris
context_page_description: Abdication is the act of formally relinquishing monarchical authority. Abdications have played various roles in the succession procedures of monarchies. While some cultures have viewed abdication as an extreme abandonment of duty, in other societies, abdication was a regular event, and helped maintain stability during political succession.
  Historically, abdications have occurred both by force and voluntarily. Some rulers are ruled to have abdicated in absentia, vacating the physical throne and thus their position of power, although these judgments were generally pronounced by successors with vested interest in seeing the throne abdicated, and often without or despite the direct input of the abdicating monarch.
  Recently, due to the largely ceremonial nature of the regnant in many constitutional monarchies, many monarchs have abdicated due to old age, such as the monarchs of Spain, Cambodia, Netherlands, Japan and the Papacy.
context_section_description: The word abdication is derived from the Latin abdicatio meaning to disown or renounce (from ab, away from, and dicare, to dedicate or relinquish). In its broadest sense abdication is the act of renouncing and resigning from any formal office, but it is applied especially to the supreme office of state. In Roman law the term was also applied to the disowning of a family member, such as the disinheriting of a son. Today the term commonly applies to monarchs, or to those who have been formally crowned. An elected or appointed official is said to resign rather than to abdicate. A notable exception is the voluntary relinquishing of the office of Bishop of Rome (and thus Sovereign of the Vatican City State) by the Pope, called Papal resignation or Papal renunciation.
caption: Tomb effigy of heart of King John II Casimir Vasa at Abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, showing removal of the crown
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