Long live the king! History of the Coronation of France from Charles V to Charles X
The coronation in France has the longest history in Europe, dating back to Charlemagne's coronation at least in the Carolingian period. As early as the 17th century, the Frenchman Godefroy published a work containing most of the important coronation records, Le Ceremonial de Français, and from this point of view, the French recorded the coronation ceremony before their neighbors the British. After the 18th century, the study of the relationship between ritual and kingship gradually increased, especially the coronation ceremony of Charlemagne in the early Carolingian period and the ritual of the absolute monarchy in the late Bourbon period, which was valued by many scholars, while the previous research was much less. By 1984, Professor Richard A. Jackson's book Long Live the King! A history of the French coronation from Charles V to Charles X (Vive Le Roi!) A History of the French Coronation from Charles V to Charles X) became a rare work covering the mid-to-late Middle Ages to the last coronation ceremony after the Revolution, which has made a unique contribution to the study of French coronations since then.
Gu ben's hand-painted coronation ceremony of the King
Upper left: escort of the anointing oil bottle, upper middle: oiling ceremony, upper right: putting on the royal robe, bottom left: representatives of the secular nobility together with the representatives of the Church place the crown above the king, bottom right: representatives of the Church swear allegiance to the king amid cheers.
French coronations from the 9th century onwards have combined both religious and secular elements: the anointing ceremony and the coronation ceremony with a crown. The French attached great importance to the ritualism of such national celebrations, just as the British valued their constitutionality, and the French regarded the oiled coronation as a "union of the throne and the altar" to unite the French royal and ecclesiastical powers, "even in the Age of enlightenment, the derogation of the coronation was not allowed" so that "the coronation in France continued until 1825", which was not done by other national ceremonies (funerals, entrance ceremonies, and the monarch's visit to the High Court). When reading this book, it is not difficult to find that Professor Jackson intends to guide the reader to understand in chronological order how France pursued the absoluteness of kingship step by step in the process of constructing from medieval monarchy to absolutist kingship, which is what Professor Jackson wants to explain at the end.
Louis XIII: The second king of the Bourbon dynasty, led France to become the new hegemon of Europe during the Thirty Years' War
The whole book is divided into five parts, starting from the title of Charles V but the very typical coronation of Louis XIII, and then from the changes in the coronation ceremony of Charles V, from the limitation of royal power to the pursuit and realization of the change of the coronation during the absolute monarchy, and then how the monarchs represented by Napoleon after the Revolution integrated the characteristics of carolingian and Bourbon coronations with the new political characteristics of the Revolution, and the last chapter is the concluding chapter. Professor Jackson pointed out that a history of French coronation can be seen as the history of the evolution of French royal power, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and then from the Renaissance to the absolute monarchy, from the absolute monarchy to the Revolution, the coronation continued in France for nearly a thousand years, witnessing the rise and fall of the French monarchy. Through the final point, Professor Jackson also gave the significance of the coronation study: reflecting the changes in royal power through rituals, and even understanding the changes in the concept of royal power from medieval kings to absolute monarchies, is a breakthrough.
Coronation of Charles V
In the first part of the book, Jackson begins with the coronation ceremony of Louis XIII and then turns on the transformation of the French coronation etiquette book writing. He pointed out that "some coronation ceremonies are simple imitations of previous coronations, but some will make major changes according to the needs of reality." These changes are also highlighted in the depictions and illustrations of coronation books, such as Charles V's coronation book. Another interesting example is the coronation of Henry IV, "when Henry IV discovered in 1594 that he could not be crowned in Reims because the city was in the hands of the Catholic Church, his coronation ceremony was held in Chartres instead". This shift is clearly adapted to the real political needs and shows that the coronation ceremony is by no means consistent.
Anna Brittany: The owner of the Principality of Brittany, because her marriage determines the future of the Principality of Brittany, she has become the object of contention among nations
In the second part of the book, Jackson discusses the coronation oath and its restrictions on royal power. In the early modern period, the restrictions on royal power can indeed be seen in oaths, such as "the non-transferable accession of royal power binds the king to his country, so that the wealth and territory of this country cannot be given away." "It is worth mentioning the ceremony of the king's wedding to the state, which is a very interesting metaphor. This metaphor of marriage first appeared at the coronation ceremony not at the king's, but at the queen's. At the coronation of Anna Brittany at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis in 1504, an account reads that "the coroner put the ring on the first finger of her right hand, a finger usually worn with a wedding ring that meant that she married and controlled the Kingdom of France". Whether this ceremony was related to the oath of the priesthood ceremony is unknown, but it is safe to say that it was Anna's coronation that brought the metaphor of the king's marriage to the state into the coronation ceremony.
Kontolovitz: His Two Bodies of Kings has been hailed as a myth in the academic history of the 20th century
It is also mentioned in Kontolovicz's Two Bodies of the King that this statement is used by jurists especially when discussing the non-reliability of the treasury property. Arguing that this might have been very common by 1300, Kang cites the Neapolitan jurist Lucas de Pena, writing in the last three volumes of the Code in the mid-fourteenth century, arguing that the monarch was the "husband of the state" (maritus reipublicae), and that he was primarily trying to prove a fundamental law: the non-transferability of the property of the state treasury. He therefore interpreted the treasury as the bride's dowry and explained that the husband had the right to use his wife's property and could not be ceded.
In the third part, Jackson talks about how rituals embody the tendency of kingship toward absolutization. Whether it is the sleeping royal ceremony or the jurisprudence argument that the royal bloodline is above all other nobles, it is a manifestation of the supremacy of royal authority. Unlike the English, who theoretically constructed the king's two bodies, the French preferred to embody this theory in ceremonies.
World famous painting: The coronation of Napoleon I, now in the Louvre and Versailles in Paris (one each)
The fourth part discusses the changes in coronation ceremonies after the Revolution. Unfortunately, we see little introduction to the coronation of Napoleon I, as it was supposed to be a coronation ceremony of epochal significance. Napoleon I's coronation combined the carolingian and Bourbon traditions, while adding many of the national characteristics of the Revolution, vigorously exaggerating its national and imperial nature, which is different from the coronation ceremony of the absolutist period. It can also be seen from the ritual changes after the Revolution that cultural changes can look into political changes.
As with most works, the last part of the article is the concluding chapter. Professor Jackson named it the "Metaphor of Kingship" or coronation. He reviewed the origins of the French coronation ceremony in the early Middle Ages, the creation of national myths, and then gradually led to the reflection of absolutism in the French coronation. Jackson was very creative in proposing that there was actually a transitional phase between medieval and absolutist monarchies, which was reflected in the ritual changes.
It is a pity that Jackson did not combine this with the concept of "Renaissance monarchy" by J. Russell, another well-known expert on institutional history, otherwise it would be a new way of understanding the monarchy in Renaissance France.
Charles X: Name Charles Philippe, the de facto last and penultimate king of the Bourbon dynasty of France, the second king after the Restoration of the Bourbon dynasty
Jackson's book explicitly describes many important coronations in French history between 1364 and 1825: for example, the coronation of Charles V (1364) was added to the invocation of insignificance of kingship (Inalienablity) to the coronation proclamation oath; and the coronation of Charles VIII was to saint Remy Remigius as an arbiter of the state and legendary leader of the Franks, Pharamond, as the founder of state law (i.e., the Salic Code) (1484); the exclusion of the paragraphs of the coronation oath rejecting infidels, the introduction of the metaphor of the king wearing a ring (i.e., the king's marriage to the state by wearing a ring emphasizes the concept of the non-transferability of royal power), King's alms and the addition of the concept of electoral kingship after coronation (Coronation of Henry II in 1547); the first "sleeping king" ceremony in 1563 (Charles IX); the idea that royal blood was higher than that of other nobles after 1576 (after the coronation of Henry III); the further development of the chinese king-state wedding metaphor at the coronation of Henry IV in 1594 (the king asked the state for "dowry" and territory) In 1654, the clause that the king was the guardian of the Holy Spirit was added to the coronation oath (the coronation of Louis XIV); the dissolution of louis XVII and the coronation of Louis XVIII and the coronation of Napoleon I as monarch of the empire; and the last coronation in the history of France, where Charles X held the constitution for coronation.
All of these coronation ceremonies emphasize their "change" nature, that is, each coronation ceremony has a unique era background, so monarchs who want to be different from their predecessors will reflect their pursuits through ritual changes. Take the coronation of Charles V in 1364 as an example, Charles V was crowned in the first stage of the Hundred Years' War between England and France, France had just been defeated, there were turmoil such as the Zachary Rebellion in the country, and the royal authority had fallen to the bottom, in such a context, Charles V held a grand coronation ceremony to save the image of the royal family. At this time, the coronation ceremony was no longer simply a ceremony for the king to gain power, but became a powerful public opinion tool for the propaganda of the king's power.
Illustration in the book of the coronation of Charles V
In his book, Professor Jackson affirmatively points out that the changes in the coronation ceremony in different monarchical periods have absorbed the traditions of the past, which leads to his interpretation of the pattern of the evolution of kingship. He divided the French monarchy into four major characteristics: limitation, dynasticism, grandiosity, and "mutations in the expression of royal grandeur."
However, Professor Jackson's work still has some shortcomings. Most notably, in one chapter on the ritual of the "sleeping king," Professor Jackson's connection of the sleeping king to the sleeping ritual of medieval knights is somewhat far-fetched. The ritual of "the Sleeping King" is often associated in other authors' books only with the concept of kingship as the king's two bodies. In Ralph E. Giesey's < The Rulership in France, 15-17 Centuries> also mentions the exact same example as Jackson's, where Louis XIII pretended to lie asleep on the "bed of state" in his bedchamber during his coronation ceremony, showing that Louis XIII's natural body was separate from the divine body.
Just in the gap between the stops of the carriage, a man with reddish brown hair suddenly rushed into the carriage and quickly stabbed Henry IV with a knife, which caught him off guard!
Due to the assassination of Henry IV and the fact that his youngest son, Louis XIII, had to ascend the throne at the age of thirteen or eighteen, the royal family came up with a ritual to embody the king's two bodies in order to construct the legitimacy of the reign of the young king Louis XIII.
This explanation is accepted by more historians, while Professor Jackson, who links the "sleeping king" to the "bed of the kingdom" used by the medieval knights on night prayers and even the coronation of Charles V, is arguably too arbitrary.
Of course, like other experts on ritual, Professor Jackson may indeed have the problem of overemphasizing the importance of ritual. His inference that Henry IV's success was due to his conversion or his coronation, as well as his conjecture that "if Louis XIV had been crowned earlier, there would have been a catapult rebellion" has been given too high a status by many historians.
Rituals can indeed allow us to see changes in royal power, but how to grasp its importance is what all students who study rituals should pay attention to. Still, Mr. Jackson's work is groundbreaking, and can even tell us a new way to revisit the evolution of kingship in conjunction with rituals, all of which will be further explored by future generations.