Fascination with royal pomp and circumstance is as old as kingship itself. The authors of Coronations examine royal ceremonies from the ninth to the sixteenth century, and find the very essence of the monarchical state in its public presentation of itself. This book is an enlightened response to the revived interest in political history, written from a perspective that cultural historians will also enjoy. The symbolic and ritual acts that served to represent and legitimate monarchical power in medieval and early modern Europe include not only royal and papal coronations but also festive entries, inaugural feasts, and rulers' funerals. Fifteen leading scholars from North America, Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and Denmark explore the forms and the underlying meanings of such events, as well as problems of relevant scholarship on these subjects. All the contributions demonstrate the importance of in-depth study of rulership for the understanding of premodern power structures. Emphasis is placed on interdisciplinary approaches, drawing on the findings of ethnography and anthropology, combined with rigorous critical evaluation of the written and iconic evidence. The editor's historiographical introduction surveys the past and present of this field of study and proposes some new lines of inquiry. "For 'reality' is not a one-dimensional matter: even if we can establish what actually transpired, we still need to ask how it was perceived by those present." This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

The first systematic study of the practice of royal self-coronations from late antiquity to the present.

Based on narrative, iconographical, and liturgical sources, this is the first systematic study to trace the story of the ritual of royal self-coronations from Ancient Persia to the present. Exposing as myth the idea that Napoleon's act of self-coronation in 1804 was the first extraordinary event to break the secular tradition of kings being crowned by bishops, Jaume Aurell vividly demonstrates that self-coronations were not as transgressive or unconventional as has been imagined. Drawing on numerous examples of royal self-coronations, with a particular focus on European Kings of the Middle Ages, including Frederic II of Germany (1229), Alphonse XI of Castile (1328), Peter IV of Aragon (1332) and Charles III of Navarra (1390), Aurell draws on history, anthropology, ritual studies, liturgy and art history to explore royal self-coronations as privileged sites at which the frontiers and limits between the temporal and spiritual, politics and religion, tradition and innovation are encountered.

Range presents an in-depth study of the music within the ceremonial at British coronations from 1603 to the present.

Across the medieval and early modern eras, new rulers were celebrated with increasingly elaborate coronations and inaugurations that symbolically conferred legitimacy and political power upon them. Many historians have considered rituals like these as irrelevant to understanding modern governance—an idea that this volume challenges through illuminating case studies focused on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Habsburg lands. Taking the formal elasticity of these events as the key to their lasting relevance, the contributors explore important questions around their political, legal, social, and cultural significance and their curious persistence as a historical phenomenon over time.