Medieval Self-Coronations
The History and Symbolism of a Ritual

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

Jaume Aurell (Author)

9781108794176, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 September 2024

356 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.9 cm, 0.53 kg

'Aurell offers us a deeply researched, comparative, and chronological survey of the ideas, rituals, imageries, and ideologies around the practices of royal accession through late antiquity and the long Middle Ages. … One of this book's great strengths is its mastery and synthesis of an extraordinarily large and complex scholarly literature of several centuries.' M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies

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.

Introduction
1. Self-coronation as ritual
I. Heritage
2. Consecration without mediation in antiquity
3. The hand of God
4. Symbolic self-coronations in Byzantium
5. The sacralisation of Carolingian accessions
6. Anglo-Saxon and Ottonian christocentrism
II. Infamy
7. Roger II of Sicily: Imagining self-coronation
8. Frederick II of Germany: desacralising rituals
III. Convention
9. Alfonso XI of Castile: From self-knighting to self-crowning
10. Peter IV of Aragon's self-coronation: A conventionalization program
11. Charles III of Navarra: juridical implications of self-coronations
12. Early modern dramatization: the road to Napoleon
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS], Genealogy, heraldry, names & honours [HBTG], Social & cultural history [HBTB]