London on May 6, 2023 is not pretty, the whole city is rainy, and the streets are full of foggy dampness, even the cobbled paths of the Lidenhoo Market, the ivy on the colorful walls of the rainbow courtyard, or the colorful graffiti of the Shoreditch neighborhood are a little eclipsed. However, on this morning, on the short walk from Buckingham Palace to Westminster upon Thames, there was a richly dressed aristocrat whose clothing and accessories made London shine in the rain - this nobleman was King Charles III of England, who had only been on the throne for a few months; On this day, the British royal family held an auspicious day for the coronation of Charles III.
Charles III was 75 years old this year, the oldest monarch in British history to ascend the throne. Be confident, it should be right to extend the UK in the previous sentence to the world, knowing that the "record" of Wu Zetian, the oldest monarch in ancient Chinese history when he ascended the throne, was only 67 years old, 7 years younger than Charles III when he ascended the throne. Charles III was already a gray-haired old man when he became the King of England, but Charles III, who was walking on the road to the coronation, looked radiant, all of which was indispensable to the credit of the British king's "royal power". On this day, Charles III, wearing a crown on his head, dressed in royal robes, holding a scepter in his right hand, holding a cross ball in his left hand, and a royal ring on his finger... Although the pomp and circumstance of this coronation has been much simpler than that of Elizabeth II, this outfit can only be described as "pearlescent".
What are the profound cultural connotations of these magnificent artifacts? Why were they chosen to be representatives of power? What kind of mission do these artifacts carry in European history, and how can they continue to serve as symbols of the royal family in the new era in the 21st century? This series will take a closer look at these "artifacts of royal power" and explore the symbols of European royal power.
On May 8, 2023, local time, King Charles III of the United Kingdom took a photo in full royal costume in the Throne Room in London.
In the most classic version of playing cards, the four "K" cards correspond to King David, Charlemagne, Caesar and Alexander the Great. Even if you don't know that "K" is the English word for "King", it is not difficult to guess the identity of "K", because the characters on all four cards wear a unique ornament of the king: the crown.
But to go into detail, there were only two of them: King David was king of the kingdom of Israel, and Alexander the Great was king of the kingdom of Macedonia. And of the other two, Charlemagne, although once king of the Frankish kingdom, eventually became emperor under the coronation of Pope Leo III; Throughout his life, Caesar served as treasurer, chief priest, chancellor, consul, ombudsman, dictator, etc. of the Roman Republic, but never as king. So, if the crowns in the four "Ks" lived up to their name, they would include two crowns, one crown and one consul's crown.
K in playing cards
However, playing card players do not need to do such a detailed study of the identities of these four leaders, because the four "K" are de facto monarchs, if not kings in the legal sense, which is enough from the perspective of popular culture. Yet another question immediately surfaced: Why did the crown become synonymous with monarchical power in European culture? What exactly is the difference between a crown and a crown? Who else besides these monarchs is qualified to wear the crown of various names?
Just as the traditional name of playing cards, French playing cards, has a strong Western European flavor, the crown is often reminiscent of the kingdoms of Europe. However, the crown is a complete import for Europe: its flowers may bloom in Europe, but its roots are on the other side of the Mediterranean: Egypt.
The ancient crown of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean
On the southern shores of the Mediterranean, long before the name "Pharaoh" appeared, the ancient Egyptians began to use the crown to flaunt their royal power. At that time, Egypt was divided into Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, and its leaders used the "white crown" (Hedjet) and the "red crown" (Deshre) as symbols of their high status; When Upper and Lower Egypt were united, the two crowns also merged into one in the flow of history, becoming the "double crown" (Pschent).
Ancient Egyptian legend believes that as early as the reign of Scorpion King II at the end of the previous dynasty, the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt had been completed, but it was not until the fourth king of the first dynasty, Deng, succeeded to the throne that he officially adopted the "King of Two Lands" as his honorific title, and it was during the reign of Ascend that the "double crown" became the Egyptian crown. It can be seen that in the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, the crown has become a symbol of the highest power in a certain land, and when Deng, claiming to be the "king of two places", it is natural to use a "double crown" that combines the characteristics of "white crown" and "red crown" to correspond to its identity, thus highlighting the transcendent status of "Egyptian co-lord".
The ebony board unearthed from Deng's tomb is now in the British Museum, and it is Deng, who wears the crown on the left
The meaning of the crown is so obvious, it naturally leads to a grand coronation ceremony. The coronation of the ancient Egyptian king, a position that gradually became "pharaoh" after the eighteenth dynasty Thutmose III, was usually hosted by the high priest in Memphis, and the new king took the rule of the kingdom from the previous monarch and proclaimed his divinity through the ceremony. The coronation ceremony in ancient Egypt was lively and long, and the ceremonies, festivals, and feasts could last for a whole year, so Egyptian historians often called the first year of the accession of kings and pharaohs to the "year of coronation".
The territory of ancient Egypt reached its peak during the Eighteenth Dynasty, and its borders stretched east across the Sinai Peninsula to the Canaanite Plain; In the fifth century BC, this land belonged to another empire far larger and more powerful than the ancient Egyptian dynasties: the Persian Empire. Similar to ancient Egypt, the monarchs of the Persian Empire were crowned when they succeeded to the throne. In his book The Life of King Artaxerxes, Plutarch described the general process of the coronation: the new king had to go to a temple in the capital, Pasalgard, to pray to the god of war and change into a special robe and crown. This crown gave glory to the Persian ruler, the King of the Four Corners of the World, and terrified all the enemies of the Persian Empire.
No equally ancient crowns have been found in Western Europe, and judging from the transmission routes of civilizations around the Mediterranean, the crowning and coronation ceremonies that prevailed in the European Middle Ages are likely to originate from the ancient traditions of ancient Egypt and Persia. The New Testament Book of Revelation begins to contain a lot of images of crowns and associate them with authority; Since the 4th century, portraits of deities wearing crowns have frequently appeared on coins of the Roman Empire. Around the reign of Aurelians, halo-type crowns began to spread among emperors due to the cult cult of Sol Invictus, the sun god; Diocletian further strengthened royal etiquette on this basis and instituted a golden crown and purple robe exclusive to the emperor. The crown was also rooted in European civilization as Roman traditions solidified.
From the coronations of Egypt and Persia, it can be seen that the crown not only points to state power, but also represents the "divinity" of the monarch. This power in both the secular and religious sense was first manifested in the history of the Roman Empire during the time of Domitian when he was the first Roman emperor to claim the title of "Dominus et Deus" (Lord and God). During the reign of Aurelian , these titles appeared in official documents in writing, which seems to indicate that the Roman Empire maintained a close union of royal and divine power until at least the 3rd century.
By the time of Constantine the Great, the situation began to change from the beginning. In 313 AD, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, who converted to Christianity, issued the Edict of Milan, which recognized the legal status of Christianity for the first time in Roman history and was officially baptized before his death; 80 years later, the Roman Emperor Theodosius I declared Christianity the state religion. For Christianity, this was a pivotal event and a hard-won success, as Christianity was severely persecuted until the reign of Diocletian. The process of transforming Christianity from an illegal minority religion into the state religion of the world's most powerful empire in less than 100 years is truly miraculous, and this miracle inevitably leads to the problem of the inevitable division of royal and theocracy when the Roman emperor and Christian leader were not the same person.
The Nirvana of the Roman Empire and the Emperor
From the coronation ceremony of the Roman emperor, we can see the subtle changes in the division between royal and theocratic power. Although the crown of the Roman emperor originated earlier, its coronation ceremony gradually developed in the century after the baptism of Constantine the Great. The coronation ceremonies of Roman emperors after Julian gradually solidified until the succession of Leo II began the tradition of coronation by the Patriarch of Constantinople. The ecclesiastical element of the coronation of Roman emperors developed rapidly, and Roman emperors received the crown at the hands of the Patriarch of Constantinople in the following centuries to show that their dominion came directly from God. As the Christian imprint deepened, the cross symbol appeared on the crown of the Roman emperor, and the traditional cloak of the Roman royal family (Chlamys) became a cloak-like sacrificial cloak with a strong Christian color.
Kramis cloak
All this rheology does not seem to be special. The ancients' emphasis on the crown transcends the boundaries of civilization, not to mention the pharaohs and kings of Egypt and Persia, and in distant China there is also a tradition of "saints re-crowning" - the monarchs of Greece and Rome introduced and improved the crown under the influence of neighboring countries, forming a crown and coronation ceremony with European characteristics in the blending with Christian culture, which is a very natural story in itself. However, history often loses no time in giving extraordinary meaning to ordinary things, and the crown, as a typical symbol of power, is destined to evolve into the most epochal legal instrument in European natural law in the great changes of the times.
When the secular regime had enough control over the church, the process of crowning the emperor by the Patriarch of Constantinople directly confirmed the divine right of kings, and did not represent the superiority of religion over the secular. Therefore, when the Roman emperor Leo II received the crown from the patriarch, this act was not fundamentally different from the Egyptian pharaoh and the Persian emperor who took the crown from the priests: the crown and the coronation ceremony represented both royal and divine power, and the latter two were themselves inseparable.
However, the division of the Roman Empire and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 changed the relationship between the empire and the church. The homeland of the Western Roman Empire was full of hills, and no monarch could become the "co-lord" of the world, and while the royal power was broken, the divine right survived because of the continuation of the church. The "barbarians" who conquered the Western Roman Empire were still in a relatively primitive cultural hierarchy, and when the secular regime collapsed, the civilizational superiority of the Western Roman Church was immediately highlighted.
Monasteries throughout the Western Roman Empire were well organized and still maintained a complete network of production and trade, the clergy were generally highly educated, and the Church developed a mature legal system over the course of its long evolution, which was clearly needed by the many "barbarians" who had just entered the Western Roman homeland. With the passage of time, more and more "barbarian" leaders converted to Christianity, the status of the church became more and more detached, and the theocracy also faintly gained a status independent of the royal power in the process.
In medieval Western Europe, empires fell and emperors disappeared, but coronations – or traditions – presided over by church clergy remained. In 574, Áedán mac Gabráin of Dia Riata was crowned king; In 631, Sisenand of Visigothic was crowned king; In 751, after Pepin III founded the Carolingian dynasty, he not only received the coronation of the papal St. Zaga in Paris, but also later received the anointing of the pope with his two sons...
Pepin III receives the coronation of the Pope of Rome
The kings of medieval Western Europe wanted the support of the Church and religious legitimacy from the Pope; The Pope wanted to find secular power sufficient to defend the Church after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and from this point of view, the coronation was the product of the king's deal. This new tradition after the fall of the Western Roman Empire was finalized under Pepin III: after Pepin III, secular power needed papal approval to be recognized—for kings, coronations could be late, but not absent, and theocracy took precedence over royal power.
Considering that canon law was moving from fragmentation to uniformity in this era, it is not an exaggeration to consider the crown as a "certificate of king's rights" under the canon law system. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, there was no unified empire in Western Europe, and the Pope, as the spokesman of God, formed a new authority in the kingdoms and tribes through religion, and redefined the connection between theocracy and royal power through the crown. However, the glory of the crown did not stop there: in 800, Pope Leo III suddenly crowned King of the Franks, Charles I, son of Pepin III, at a Christmas Eve blessing mass, and this time Leo III gave Charles I the title not of king, but "Emperor of the Romans".
The right to be crowned from the king to the emperor
How did the "Certificate of King's Rights", which was painstakingly developed by the Western Roman Church for hundreds of years, be upgraded to the "Certificate of Emperor's Rights" in the hands of Leo III? There is no Huayi system in Europe, so what is the difference between emperor and king? The source of both problems lies in the Roman Empire—the pre-division Roman Empire, to be precise.
The word "Emperor" is derived from the "Generalissimo" (Imperator) during the Roman Empire; After this, there were no emperors in Europe. The famous Alexander the Great and Cyrus the Great were not emperors, the former was king of Macedonia for life, and the latter was called "The Great King, King of Persia, King of Medes, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, King of the Four" Anshan, King of Media, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, and King of the Four Corners of the World), translating "Great" as "Great Emperor," is just a customary honorific title in Chinese.
The emergence of the Roman Empire gave the empire a different glory. The Roman Empire was culturally prosperous, economically developed and legally sound; More importantly, it basically unified the "known world" at that time, and the administrative structure of the city of Rome, the provinces of the Senate, the provinces of the head of state, and the vassal states almost encompassed the limits of European understanding of the world. In this case, the monarch of the Roman Empire implicitly had a status of "co-lord" different from that of ordinary rulers, and it is not surprising that the titles of Roman monarchs, including "Caesar", "Augustus" and "Imperator", eventually evolved into the title "emperor" higher than the king in different contexts.
Therefore, it is not the title of "emperor" that gives glory to the monarch of the Roman Empire, but the cultural and martial arts of the monarch of the Roman Empire that makes the title of "emperor" contain the metaphor of "co-lord of the world". The Roman Empire included the kingdom on earth, and the Roman emperor was naturally the co-leader of the kingdom on earth. At the end of the 4th century, the Roman Empire was divided into two parts, the East and the West, and the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, those leaders who could only unify a tribe, region, and kingdom in the Middle Ages naturally could not be crowned emperors but only kings, even the popes with the power of coronation did not dare to challenge this tradition. Although the Western Roman Empire perished, the Eastern Roman Empire has always existed, and if the Eastern Roman Empire, as the orthodox successor of the Roman Empire, its monarch has reason to call himself an emperor, then the monarchs of Western Europe must not touch the title of "emperor" before unifying the homeland of the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The Pope can be crowned, but the crown in his hands is only a "crown" after all, not a "crown" with Roman overtones.
In 800, Leo III called Charles I "Emperor of the Romans", and the Western Roman Empire was "reborn". From a legal point of view, this coronation is completely a redefinition of the pope's own power: from now on, the pope can crown two levels of emperors of the earthly kingdom on behalf of God, he can carry out king-level coronation ceremonies for small monarchs, and when a kingdom is strong enough, he can also recognize it as "emperor of the Romans" - or emperor of the earthly kingdom by coronation.
After the death of Charles I, the Frankish Empire was quickly divided until 962, when Pope John XII crowned King Otto I of East Francia as "Emperor of the Romans", and the Kingdom of East Francia was "reborn" as the Holy Roman Empire. When Charles I and Otto I were crowned emperors, the European "crown-crown" system also took shape.
In the centuries that followed, the church grew in power in Western Europe and reached its peak under Inozen III. The power of the pope is so great that it can determine the survival of kings, and correspondingly, the coronation of European kings is becoming more and more important. In some countries with a strong Christian influence, the coronation of kings is even called the "eighth sacrament" along with the traditional seven sacraments, and is increasingly internalized as an integral part of the kingdom system, and even as a representative of succession. In the Middle Ages, many kings of France, England and Hungary chose to crown their heirs first, and it was not until 1830 that the future emperor of Austria, Ferdinand I, was crowned as heir to the throne.
A triple crown overlooking the kingdom on earth
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Pope turned the crown into a certificate of power for secular power through hundreds of years of operation, and this "certificate" was recognized by kings under the strong influence of medieval Christianity. Although the emperor confirmed by the pope was based on the "Romans", the Western Roman Empire had long since perished, and the Eastern Roman Empire was "favored" in the East, and the "right to interpret" the Roman Empire was ultimately held by the Pope. The inertia of this tradition was so great that when Napoleon I established the French Empire, independent of the Roman Empire, he still asked Pope Pius VII to sit at the coronation – although the hero who swept across Europe refused to kneel before the pope, instead taking the crown and putting it on himself.
Napoleon I used the title of emperor not "Emperor of the Romans" but "Emperor of the French", and without considering the weak position of Pius VII, the Pope seems to have obtained the right to crown emperors outside Rome through Napoleon I's proclamation as emperor. Although this is a joke, for most of the Middle Ages, the pope undoubtedly stood at the top of the pyramid of power in Western Europe. Then the question arises: if the "certificate of rights" of the king, emperor is a crown, then what about the pope?
Not only did the Pope wear a crown, but its crown was more noble than that of kings and even emperors: the triple crown. The triple crown is honeycomb in shape and consists of three crowns of different materials, decorated with gold and silver and jewelry, followed by two draped bands. Compared to the many crowns and crowns scattered throughout Europe, the triple crown is completely out of the crowd.
The papal triple crown
The papal crown was not so extravagant from the beginning, and the papal headdress was a relatively uniform bishop's crown, similar in shape to a candle extinguisher, in contrast to the circular crown, which symbolized secular royal power. The very different shapes of the bishop's crown and crown reflect the dichotomy between theocracy and royal power, but soon the pope, who lives deep in Rome, has a new identity: the secular monarch of the Papal States.
The emergence of the Papal States stems from an important historical event in European history: the sacrifice of Pepin. In the mid-to-early 8th century, the core of the former Western Roman Empire was seriously threatened by the Lombards, so the Roman Church pinned its hopes on Pepin III, the de facto ruler of the Frankish kingdom. Pope Stephen II agreed to Pepin's deposition of the king and made him a Roman nobleman in order to co-opt Pepin III, who was still a minister of the Frankish kingdom at the time. In return, Pepin III not only converted to Christianity, but also gave the Pope a large territory after pacifying northern Italy, which was the prototype of the Papal States.
The Papal States are a community of many former independent or semi-independent city-states, small states and aristocratic territories, and the "Papal States" is not its official name, and its real name should be "Civitas Ecclesiae", which means "states subordinate to the Church". However, after all, the existence of the Papal States gives the Pope a secular domain, and a simple episcopal crown cannot fully depict the authority of the Pope at this time. Around the 9th century, the pope's bishopric crown had an additional crown symbolizing the secular power he had received.
During the reign of Inozo III, a second crown appeared on the bishop's crown to signify the papal power in both religious and secular senses. The reign of Inozo III brought the papal power to its peak, with his famous saying, "The pope is the sun, and the secular king is the moon; If the king cannot sincerely serve Christ's agent, he cannot govern his country properly; The king has physical rights, the priests have spiritual rights, and since the spirit rules the body, the pope should also be above the king" to be the best example of theocracy over royal power.
At the beginning of the 14th century, the third crown appeared, and the shape of the triple crown was finalized. Popes since Clement V have worn various versions of the triple tiara, a style that has survived into the 21st century.
There are many versions of the meaning of the triple crown. For example, the triple crown represents the three levels of "body, mind, and spirit" of Christianity, symbolizing that the Pope is the teacher of all secular people in the world and the pastor of the Catholic Church handed down from St. Peter; Or it refers to the three regions of hell, earth, and heaven, and refers to the noble status of the pope as "the representative of Christ on earth"; There are also terms "pastor, prophet and king", "teacher, legislator and judge", and so on. In fact, the evolution of the triple crown is a long process, when the pope adds the first crown because of his secular domain, when Inozon III adds a second crown because of his authority, when Benedict XI or Clement V in the early 14th century adds a third crown, I am afraid that there will not be any association in their minds about the meaning of the triple crown, because the connection between authority and the crown is originally full of human nature.
The crown did not originate in Europe, but it became the totem of European kingship in the long evolution, involving allusions and legends of different countries and peoples in different eras, and walked steadily through the millennia. Looking back in the 21st century, behind every crown in Europe there are monarchs of an amazing era, and behind every monarch there are countless stories. From a realistic point of view, these historical fragments make the history of Europe more bloody; From a poetic point of view, these fragments of history enrich Europe's history.
However, compared with the numerous rumors and anecdotes drawn by the crowns of various countries, the connotation of the crown is obviously more "hardcore". The dazzling light of the Roman Empire and the supreme authority of the medieval pope have found their best place in this splendid and dazzling work of art. "If you want to wear a crown, you must bear its weight", this is true for kings, emperors, popes, and historians.