Читать книгу Coronation: From the 8th to the 21st Century - Roy Strong - Страница 12

The Conqueror’s Coronation has provided material for a lively and unresolved academic debate as to when the Third Recension came into use. That debate equally hovers around any consideration of the seven Coronations between 1066 and 1200. The best approach to these is a collective one. The Coronations are:

William I	Christmas Day 1066
William II	Sunday, 26 September 1087
Henry I	Sunday, 5 August 1100
Stephen	Sunday, 22 December 1135
Henry II	Sunday,19 December 1154
Richard I	Sunday, 3 September 1189
John	Ascension Day, 27 May 1199

To these we can add the Coronation of Henry II’s son, Henry the Younger, on 14 June 1170. That is a salutary reminder that the monarchy was still in theory an elective one, albeit from members of the ruling dynasty. The Coronation of Henry the Younger, who was to die before his father, was an attempt to settle the succession in terms of primogeniture during his father’s lifetime.⁷

The century and a half during which these Coronations happened witnessed huge changes as the Norman Conquest created a new ruling class of those who came over with the Conqueror. That was structured in what we know as the feudal system, a mode of land tenure stretching downwards from the king via the great lay and ecclesiastical magnates who held their estates in return for knight service to the crown. This restructuring of society, in which the oath of fealty of one man was to another as his liege lord, was to have reprecussions on the Coronation, moving, as we shall see, the Coronation oath centre stage. In the case of the ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief it would have even greater repercussions, for the papacy was to assert the superiority of clerical over lay authority and forbid a ceremony in which a priest was seen to be subservient to royal authority. That, too, would affect the Coronation.

At some date, either before or after 1066 and almost certainly by the Coronation of Stephen in 1135, the Third Recension came into use.⁸ What this represented was a rejection of all but the most important Anglo-Saxon forms in favour of the parallel parts of the great continental Coronation ordo. This was the German one used for the consecration of the Holy Roman Emperor, the Pontificale romanogermanicutn, which was compiled at the Abbey of St Alban’s, Mainz, about the year 961. The introduction of the Third Recension brought insular Anglo-Saxon traditions in line with continental custom, a development typical of the years after 1066. It has been, as I have indicated, attributed to Ealdred, Archbishop of York (d. 1069). It has equally been seen as the work of William’s great reforming Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc (1070–93), and also of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster (1085–1117), the friend and ally of Lanfranc’s successor, Anselm. One certain fact is that this ordo was to remain in use until the Coronation of Edward II in 1308.

The Third Recension is found in seven manuscripts, one of which is French, all the others being English. Out of the six English manuscripts three derive from a pontifical compiled in the great monastery at Christ Church, Canterbury. Some of these manuscripts can be at least approximately dated. The earliest versions cut out the anointing of the king’s head with chrism, indicating a date after the initial clash of Church and State between Henry I and Archbishop Anselm in the years 1100 to 1107, one which included the withdrawal of the use of chrism. Another indicator is the preoccupation with crowns. That probably goes back to Henry I’s daughter, the Empress Matilda, wife of the Emperor Henry V, who was widowed in 1125 and who returned to England bearing the imperial crown of her husband. Henry II was crowned with it in 1154.

There are variations between these manuscripts but, as in the case of the previous two recensions, I present the reader with the overall contents in simple list form:

1 The king is led by two bishops ‘from the assembly of faithful elders’ to the church while the choir sings Firmetur manus tua.

2 The king prostrates himself with the bishops alongside him in front of the altar before which have been spread carpets and cloths.

3 The litany is then sung, after which the bishops arise and raise the king.

4 The king takes the triple oath, to preserve both Church and people in true peace, to forbid all rapacity and iniquity to men of every degree and to ordain the practice of justice and mercy in all matters of judgement.

5 The recognitio. A bishop asks the assembled people whether they are willing ‘to submit themselves to this man as their prince and ruler, and obey his command’. Both clergy and people reply affirming their willingness.

6 The consecration. This opens with prayers recalling exemplars from the Old Testament and calling down blessings. The Archbishop of Canterbury begins by anointing the king’s hands with holy oil ‘that thou mayest be blessed and set up as king in this kingdom over our people that the Lord thy God hath given thee to rule and govern’. Then he anoints his head, breast, shoulders and elbows, with further prayers while the choir sings: ‘Fear God.’

7 The delivery of the regalia. The king is invested by the bishops with the sword, bracelets (armils) and mantle, each with a prayer. The crown is then blessed and placed on the king’s head. Then follows investiture with the ring, sceptre and rod.

8 The king is blessed, after which he kisses the bishops, who lead him to his throne while the choir sings the Te Deum.

9 That finished, the archbishop says the prayer Sta et retine.

10 Then follows the consecration and Coronation of the queen. On entering the church she is greeted by a prayer asking that she ‘may obtain the crown that is next unto virginity’. The consecration opens with a blessing after which, with appropriate prayers, she is anointed with holy oil and then invested with a ring. Her crown is then blessed and she is crowned.

11 The Mass follows.

What does this new Recension mean and why was it necessary? The possible political circumstances that prompted it have already been touched upon, but they need to be placed within a far broader ideological perspective. In one respect there is no doubt that the Third Recension embodies a reaction to the eleventh-century reform movement which found its test case in the rejection of the lay investiture of ecclesiastical dignitaries. On their appointment they were presented by the king with a staff or crozier and a ring, symbols of their office. This act was followed by one of homage in which they received their lands as one of the king’s tenants-in-chief. Although this practice of the lay investiture of clerics had gone unchallenged under William I, it was not to do so under his immediate successors. From the last years of the eleventh century onwards there was a fierce struggle between Church and State, known as the Investiture Contest, during which archbishops of Canterbury were sent into exile and England was laid under interdict by the pope. It was only to be resolved when, on 29 December 1170, Henry II’s Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered in his own cathedral. The Church emerged as victor.

What the reformed papacy was attempting to achieve was a reversal of what the introduction of the rite of unction had led to, a race of priest-kings who were viewed as being somehow almost semi-divine. The Christianisation of the barbarian monarchies which had followed the conversion of the pagan tribes of Northern Europe had exalted rulers, through the bestowal of unction, into beings akin to priest-kings. The use of chrism to consecrate the ruler, which was also used in the ordination of a priest, meant that the two were increasingly viewed as variants of something very similar. The biblical precedent was Melchizedek, who was both priest and king, and rulers were cast as Christus Domini, representatives of God on earth, and mediators, because of their apparent dual nature, between clergy and people.

The papacy, realising the threat this embodied, in the eleventh century began to draw back from the endorsement of theocratic kingship. The sacraments were codified and reduced to being seven in number, with royal unction not among them. The whole pressure was to downgrade the very idea of the priest-king, and early versions of the Third Recension record the withdrawal of the use of chrism for the anointing of the king’s head, replacing it with the anointing of several parts of his body with ordinary holy oil. Chrism was in fact to creep back into use later, but its removal for a period was significant.⁹

The Third Recension is, therefore, a crucial document in which the Church redrew the boundaries that differentiated the laity from the clergy. The battle which ensued centred, as I have said, on the removal of the king’s right to invest his ecclesiastical dignitaries with office and was to dominate the twelfth century. Under Henry I, one of the most powerful of the Angevin kings, Archbishop Anselm was driven into exile and so, even more famously, was Thomas Becket under the first Plantagenet, Henry II. The struggle between him and the king was to produce the most extreme claims for theocratic kingship, ones which based the royal control of the Church on the anointment of the king with chrism. The significance of that was caught in the royal style. Before the Coronation the king was only Dominus. After, at least from the reign of William II, he was ‘King by the Grace of God’.

The author known as Anonymous of York but probably William Bonne-Ame, later Archbishop of Rouen, who wrote what is referred to as Tract 24a, succinctly sums up how the supporters of the king as Christus Domini saw the monarchy:

kings are consecrated in God’s church before the sacred altar and are anointed with holy oil [he means chrism here] and sacred benediction to exercise ruling power over Christians, the Lord’s people … the Holy Church of God … as one who has been made God and Christ through grace … wherefore he is not called a layman, since he is the anointed of the Lord [Christus Domini] and through grace he is God. He is the supreme-ruler, the chief shepherd, master, defender and instructor of the Holy Church, lord over his brethren and worthy to be ‘adored’ by all, since he is the chief and supreme prelate.¹⁰

Such were the breathtaking claims made on behalf of Henry II, stemming from what was enacted at his Coronation as performed according to the Second Recension. This was an appeal back to the mystique and magic of the old pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon monarchy. By the time that this tract was being written theocratic kingship was, in fact, in retreat and Becket’s murder had dealt the final blow.

The investiture controversy and the redefinition of the lay and clerical spheres provide the backcloth prompting the Third Recension. That incorporated several other changes. One was the enhanced status accorded the crown, which was blessed, a ritual derived from one used at the Coronation of the Byzantine emperors. There was also a multiplication of robes and regalia. Armils or bracelets, which had an Old Testament precedent, appear together with a royal mantle whose four corners signify the four corners of the world subject to God. The mantle does appear, in fact, in a late manuscript of the Second Recension but it is universal in the third. In the latter the investiture with the ring and crown is reversed and there are some notable enhancements to the ritual, with the king being blessed after crowning and then solemnly enthroned in state to the splendour of the Te Deum being sung.

There is also a notable enhancement of the status of the queen, delineating clearly the nature of medieval queenship.¹¹ This is the first ordo which works from the premise that her Coronation is an action directly parallel with that of her husband. The queen is twice blessed, first on entering the church and again at the altar. The prayer said over her was taken almost word for word from that said over a newly ordained abbess. Here she is cast as an exemplar of female chastity, as the mistress of the royal household and, as signified in her investiture with a ring as a symbol of faith, a support to the Church, a patron of missionaries and a leader of her household’s spirituality.

The only full account of a Coronation definitely using this ordo before 1200 is that of Richard I in 1189. Of the seven others, including that of Henry the Younger, we know little, although it is clear that the twelfth century saw enormous change and development. When, at last, we do get a full-length eyewitness account it is of a major spectacle of state, which leaves one wondering how far what is described happened earlier during that century. The twelfth century, after all, was one of the greatest eras in the history of the country, and the increasing power and grandeur which surrounded the monarchy is likely to have been reflected in the rite of Coronation. The brilliant if hot-headed Henry II ruled over a vast continental empire, the greatest in Western Europe since Charlemagne. And even though his two sons, Richard I, the crusading troubadour king who was only in England five months out of a ten-year reign, and the feckless John, who opened a chasm between himself and the magnates, threw this inheritance away, there is no doubt that the English monarchy was still regarded as one of the grandest in Western Europe.