Inauguration and political liturgy in the Hohenstaufen Empire , 1138 – 1215

The Gregorian reform movement in general, and events at Canossa in 1077 in particular, have been credited with tarnishing the lustre of sacral kingship within the Empire. In this paper narrative, liturgical and material sources are drawn upon, to demonstrate the extent to which the image of kingship within the Hohenstaufen Empire continued to be rooted in biblical and liturgical soil. The paper focuses on the ritual of inauguration and draws a distinction between royal and imperial ceremonies. This makes it apparent that, while scholars have been right to stress the extent to which papal alterations to the imperial rite undermined the liturgical associations of the imperial office, the imperial liturgy developed by the papal curia in Rome had negligible impact on the royal inauguration liturgy used in Aachen. On the contrary, German monarchs continued to make lively use of inauguration liturgy to emphasize, in the face of papal opprobrium, the divinely ordained nature of their rule.

imperial coronation at Rome will be considered here.These two rites were inextricably linked.William the Breton, chaplain to the French king Philip Augustus, explained how an Emperor must first be crowned king at Aachen, the resting place of Charlemagne, before he could receive the imperial crown at Rome, and that this practice was observed as if it were a sacrosanct law. 4 While this connection endured well beyond the time frame examined in this paper, the shifting relationship and affinities between the two rites under the Hohenstaufen rulers is indicative of a real difference in the presentation of political authority in a royal and an imperial context.
This focused study of royal and imperial inaugurations within the Empire has been informed by a number of broader debates in historical scholarship, which will be briefly sketched here.In addition to continuing discussion about the significance of events at Canossa, which are sometimes seen as denoting the 'demystification' of the world, any study of inauguration within the Empire is inevitably influenced by the intensive study of the role of rituals in medieval political culture by Gerd Althoff and his adherents. 5any of Althoff's most important essays have been brought together in a collection entitled Inszenierte Herrschaft, meaning 'staged', or even 'stage-managed', rulership. 6The idea that German kings sought to manage their image and construct their political authority at the commencement of their reign through the ritual of inauguration lies at the heart of this study.The importance of symbolic behaviour and communication, and debates concerning Canossa, were both mediated for an Anglophone audience by Timothy Reuter.Reuter sought to challenge the assumption that Germany, with its king-emperors, was somehow profoundly different from England and France, but also cautioned against seeing no difference at all between the three territories. 7By considering German royal inauguration in a European context, the present study seeks to highlight shared features that can enhance our understanding of the differences between royal and imperial rituals within the Empire.
Perhaps surprisingly, given the pervasiveness of anthropological approaches in modern German-language historical research, the ritual of royal coronation in the medieval period has not been intensively studied in its own right in recent decades. 8n exception is Andreas Büttner's extremely comprehensive study of German coronation rituals, which, however, focuses on the late medieval period.9 The reasons for this comparative neglect are two-fold.First, the ritual approach has invited wide cross-cultural anthropologically-inspired studies.10 High medieval royal inauguration finds only passing mention in such cultural comparisons.The second reason is the problem of sources. Athough historians agree that royal inauguration was of unparalleled significance as a ritual, the sources for it are surprisingly elusive.Narrative texts are rather reticent before the fourteenth century, as Annette Kehnel has recently stressed.11 The famous description of the inauguration of Otto I by Widukind of Corvey is exceptional in its detail, and is, according to modern scholarly consensus, in any case a construct.12 Rather than detailed reports of every aspect of a ceremony, chronicles and annals often provide only cursory accounts, informing the reader who was crowned, where, when and by whom.Sufficient information to build up a 'thick description' is seldom forthcoming. Whn it is, historians should heed Philippe Buc's warning that 'the written sources in which historians find rituals often can aim at the obfuscation of the ritual act's original meaning and serve polemics more than consensus'.13 The other main repository of evidence, liturgical texts, provides greater detail but can be highly problematic to use.In the context of a comparison of royal and imperial rites an additional difficulty is the real difference in the quantity and quality of the evidence.It is not by chance that the imperial texts are available in a neat modern edition, whereas the royal texts are not.14 To make matters worse, the narrative and liturgical testimonies are rarely complementary.Medieval evidence and modern scholarly fashions, not to mention the confusing array of crowning rituals recorded in medieval sources, have thus conspired to deflect scholars from attempting a general study of high medieval royal inauguration within the Empire.15 Such a study is beyond the scope of this paper, which instead juxtaposes royal and imperial evidence in an attempt to demonstrate that changes to imperial inauguration did not necessarily alter royal rites.The paper has three main parts.In the first section the royal and imperial inaugurations of Frederick Barbarossa are assessed, through the lens of narrative descriptions.In the second segment liturgical texts for royal and imperial inauguration are considered.Having discussed the broader problems of using liturgical texts to try and reconstruct an actual historical inauguration ceremony and the differences between royal and imperial liturgical evidence, the discussion takes two elements of the rite and subjects them to close scrutiny.In the final portion of the essay the investigation broadens out to touch on the inaugurations, both royal and imperial, of other German rulers in the period between the royal inauguration of Conrad III in 1138 and that of Frederick II in 1215, with a particular focus on the imperial inauguration of Henry VI in 1191.

II: The Royal and Imperial Inaugurations of Frederick Barbarossa
The most detailed description of Frederick Barbarossa's royal inauguration is found in the biographical work of his uncle, Otto of Freising. 16Otto recounts that Frederick was led to the church by bishops, that he was crowned as part of the ceremony and that afterwards he sat on the throne of Charlemagne.Otto does not give a blow-byblow account of proceedings and omits many of the additional rituals that together with unction and coronation would have constituted an inauguration.He concludes by declaring that it should not be passed over in silence that on the same day and in the same church the bishop-elect of Münster (also named Frederick), was consecrated by those same bishops who consecrated the king.So it was believed that the Highest King and Priest was actually participating in the present rejoicing: and this was the sign, that in one church one day beheld the anointing of the two persons who alone are sacramentally anointed according to the ordinance of the New and of the Old Testament, and are rightly called the anointed of Christ the Lord. 17 should not assume that Otto's description is pure hyperbole, but instead realize that the day itself, with its double consecration, was a carefully choreographed use of liturgy for political ends.The audience was meant to draw the conclusion that Otto spells out for us: that Christ himself approved of Frederick Barbarossa's kingship.The manner with which Barbarossa manipulated this liturgical occasion to stress the sacrality of his royal authority is an example of 'political liturgy', the phenomenon that is the focus of this study.
Otto provides one further detail about Frederick's royal inauguration, recounting that it took place 'on that Sunday on which Laetare Jerusalem is sung'. 18German scholars have long recognized that the resonances and references contained within liturgical feasts are a property of the liturgy that kings sought to exploit. 19Frederick Barbarossa was no exception, a fact that is apparent when we return to the relative chronology of the medieval period.Frederick's predecessor as king, Conrad III, had been consecrated on Sunday 13 March 1138, and had had his son Henry Berengar, who predeceased him, crowned as co-king on Sunday 30 March 1147.Like Sunday 9 March, the day on which Barbarossa was inaugurated at Aachen in 1152, 13 and 30 March were the Sundays on which Laetare Jerusalem was sung in 1138 and 1147 respectively.In an insightful article Werner Goez, recognizing that all three German monarchs were crowned on the same liturgical day, tried to use this fact to explain the speed with which Frederick Barbarossa was crowned following Conrad's death, arguing that 9 March 1152 must have been designated for a royal consecration even before the death of Conrad. 20He suggests that, in the same way Conrad had raised his son Henry to the kingship in preparation for his absence from Germany on the Second Crusade, Conrad sought to elevate a new co-king to rule Germany while he travelled to Rome to secure the imperial crown in late 1152. 21On the king's unexpected death, Frederick had to react quickly to gain support.Meanwhile, the date for royal election drew close to Laetare Sunday, the day Goez claims had already been earmarked for a consecration at Aachen, necessitating the rush from Frankfurt to Aachen, for it would be seen as a bad omen for the new king if this traditional date was not used. 22Rather than this negative interpretation it might be argued that by being crowned on the same liturgical days as Conrad III and Henry Berengar, Frederick sought to put a positive spin on his inauguration, and to stress his legitimacy and his close relationship with his uncle and cousin.He was, after all, chosen as king ahead of another cousin, Frederick of Rothenburg. 23hat Conrad III had been crowned on Laetare Sunday was perhaps as much by accident as design.Following the death of Conrad's former adversary, Lothar III, in December 1137, Archbishop Albero of Trier and his adherents elected the Staufen prince at an assembly at Koblenz the following March, eleven weeks before the previously appointed date for the royal election. 24Historians debate the extent of papal impetus behind this act, but all agree that Albero's aim was to prevent the succession of Lothar's heir, Henry the Proud.Albero pushed through the election, and Conrad was crowned the following week. 25Koblenz is nearer to Aachen than Frankfurt, and 20 W. Goez, 'Von Bamberg nach Frankfurt und Aachen: Barbarossas Weg zur Königskrone', Jahrbuch für fränkische Landesforschung, 52 (1992), pp.61-72. 21Ibid., p. 67. 22Ibid., p. 70. 23 there was a six-day gap between Conrad's election and inauguration rather than the five days between Barbarossa's selection and consecration, yet the impression of haste is as evident in Conrad's case as in Barbarossa's.The motivation for this seems clear.For Albero's plan to come to fruition Henry the Proud's supporters could not be given time to react.An election could potentially be disputed, but once a king had been inaugurated at Aachen by a papal legate, and the other princes presented with a fait accompli, dissent was likely to be limited.The establishment of an anti-king was no small step and, as Ulrich Schmidt has commented, the nobles seemed quite ready to legitimate Conrad's coup after the event. 26It is important to note that Laetare Sunday is the fourth Sunday in Lent and thus falls exactly in the middle of the period of fasting.It is the one Sunday in Lent on which these observances are relaxed and, in all likelihood, is the only Sunday in the period of fast on which it would have been considered possible to hold a lavish ceremony of inauguration. 27If this is the case, it follows that if Conrad III had not been consecrated on 13 March, his inauguration would not have been able to take place until Easter Sunday, three weeks later.By 3 April, the date on which Easter Sunday fell in 1138, opposition to the pre-emptive election might have had a chance to coalesce.This was a risk that Conrad and his supporters were not prepared to run.
Even if pragmatism was the leading consideration in the original choice of liturgical day for Conrad's inauguration, his subsequent use of this day for the coronation of his son demonstrates that German kings were alive to the potential of the liturgical calendar to envelop their inaugurations with a mystical aura.The participation of both Conrad III and Frederick Barbarossa in the Second Crusade helps to explain the enduring attraction of Laetare Sunday.It was in preparation for his crusade to the Holy Land that Conrad elevated his son to the throne and, having also chosen Laetare Sunday for his inauguration, Barbarossa returned to the same day for another important occurrence in his reign: the 1188 court at Mainz during which he took the Cross.This was a way of associating crusading with his inauguration, a connection made even more explicitly by Frederick II in 1215.The appropriateness of taking the Cross on the Sunday named after its introit 'Rejoice Jerusalem' could hardly be more apparent.In 1250, Henry III of England was to make exactly the same connection. 28oreover, the twelfth-century theologian Gerhoh of Reichersberg reported that the introit 'Laetare Jerusalem' was incorporated into the liturgy celebrated in Jerusalem on the feast commemorating the capture of the Holy City in 1099, making apparent the potency of the association between the contents of the liturgy and crusading. 29In 1188 it was Frederick's intention that Jerusalem rejoice once again, in anticipation of her liberation at his hands.However, rather than succeeding in washing Jerusalem with the 'river of peace' described in Isaiah 66:10, from which the introit for Laetare Sunday was drawn, Frederick was to find his own eternal peace in the river Saleph, before he could liberate the Holy City.
Given the liturgical appropriateness of the day for taking the Cross, it is instructive to see how the 1188 court at Mainz is described in two contemporary narrative sources.A continuation of the Annals of Zwettl describes a court held at Mainz on Laetare Sunday (dominica Letare Ierusalem) to which all the faithful flocked, and at which the emperor 'was in attendance, but not in charge; he was not in the place of one commanding, but one encouraging'. 30Werner Goez has interpreted the word 'place' (loco) literally and suggested that Barbarossa's throne was left vacant at this court. 31Whether or not we can go that far the question remains: who, then, was in charge at the court at Mainz in 1188?The Zwettl annals do not explicitly reveal the answer to this question and we need to turn to another source, this time annals from Cologne.A description of the court written at St Pantaleon's reveals that the meeting was called the court of Jesus Christ (curia Ihesu Christi). 32The implication is that it was Christ himself who stood in the position of command.His presence, just as at Frederick Barbarossa's inauguration, demonstrated His approval of Barbarossa's kingship. 33In their descriptions of Barbarossa's court at Mainz, in which his two sons also took part, these two narrative sources give us a glimpse into the manner in which liturgical resonances could be exploited by a German monarch.Whether or not the throne was left empty, as Goez suggested, the court at Mainz in 1188 was evidently a masterful piece of liturgical-political theatre.It is impossible to build up a full picture of the event from scant sources, but even the traces make this apparent.
Having seen how Barbarossa made use of liturgy in the context of royal inauguration, it is necessary to consider his imperial inauguration in 1155.Two relatively detailed descriptions of the events leading up to Barbarossa's inauguration survive and both include short descriptions of the ceremony, sandwiched between descriptions of the turbulent politics of Rome and Italy. 34One is the work of an imperial partisan, Otto of Freising, and one of a papal acolyte, Cardinal Boso, who included the events in his life of Pope Hadrian IV.Otto does not give much detail about the actual ceremony, focusing on the behaviour of the Romans.He recounts that the pope went with the cardinals and clergy to await Barbarossa's arrival and that the emperor elect came into the Leonine City from Monte Mario through the golden gate.He then praises the imperial army before providing a sketch of the inauguration.The pope met Frederick at the steps of the church and led him to the tomb of St Peter.After mass had been celebrated the king received the crown of empire with the appropriate blessing and he was later acclaimed with great joy. 35As is common in descriptions of inaugurations in this period, Otto's narrative presents only a condensed version of the ceremony and 30 'non loco imperantis, sed ad subveniendum Christianitati exhortantis, affuit, non prefuit'.W. Wattenbach (ed.), Continuatio Zwetlensis Altera a. 1170-1189 (MGH SS 9, Hanover, 1851), p. 543. 31Goez, 'Von Bamberg nach Frankfurt und Aachen', p. 65. 32 Karl Pertz (ed.), Annales Coloniensis Maximi (MGH SS 17, Hanover, 1861), p. 794. 33Schaller noted the way in which Christ's presence at both events is stressed.Schaller, 'Der heilige Tag', p. 23. 34Frederick's imperial inauguration and its circumstances are discussed in J. Petersohn, Kaisertum und Rom in spätsalischer und staufischer Zeit (MGH Schriften 62, Hanover, 2010), pp.148-61. 35Otto of Freising and Rahewin, Gesta Frederici I. Imperatoris, p. 140.
at University of Cambridge on June 24, 2016 http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from he does not mention many of the other rituals, the anointing and the handing over of insignia, for example, that surely also took place.
Cardinal Boso's account is more expansive. 36He too mentions that Frederick came to the steps of St Peter's, though according to Boso the pope was not waiting to welcome him at the steps but was already inside the church.Before he entered Frederick first had to take off his clothes and put on solemn dress.In the church of Santa Maria in Turri the emperor elect made the customary profession to the pope, who then left him there and went alone to the altar of St Peter.Barbarossa followed in procession, pausing before the silver doors and again on the rota inside the church to receive prayers from two bishops.He came to a halt before the tomb of the Apostle, before which a third bishop anointed him and said a further prayer.During the ensuing Mass Frederick was crowned and also received a sword and sceptre from the pope.Boso concludes his description by commenting that 'so loud and strong was the Germans' acclamation of praise and joy, that it was believed that a terrible thunderbolt had just fallen from the heavens'. 37With these words Boso betrays the anti-imperial bias evident throughout his biography of Hadrian, but this in itself is not enough to justify dismissing his description of the ceremony out of hand.
Certainly the two versions of events are not entirely in accordance, and given the differing political persuasions of their authors we would not expect them to be.They diverge in their details, but these discrepancies have more to do with Otto's omission of detail than disagreement over what happened.Both descriptions are also embedded in far longer narratives in which they have a function.It is telling that Boso's more detailed version follows close after his account of the controversy caused by Barbarossa's initial refusal to hold Hadrian's stirrup for him as he mounted his horse at Sutri, an event that finds no mention in the Gesta Friderici. 38Boso's choice of words in describing the profession Frederick made to the pope is important.He records that Frederick 'publicly made to him the customary profession and full security, as contained in the Ordo'. 39The reference is to a liturgical order for inauguration, but frustratingly for the historian, although Boso's description contains many details found in surviving liturgical texts, it does not match the contents of any surviving text exactly.The cardinal's reference to an ordo raises a further problem.As Richard Jackson has stressed, attempting to associate a particular ordo with a historical inauguration based on descriptions in other sources is always hazardous. 40Although Boso, a confidant of the pope, was likely to be better informed than most, his account is not that of a neutral observer.As we turn to the liturgical texts themselves, we shall see that the detail in Boso's account reflects a broader interest at the papal curia in the intricacies of the liturgy for imperial inauguration.

III: Inauguration Liturgy: Anointing and the Singing of the laudes
Liturgical texts for both royal and imperial inauguration were composed from a stockpile of prayers, which drew heavily on biblical imagery and for the large part dated from the Carolingian period, if not earlier.There is a clear affinity between the two rituals and a number of prayers appear in both royal and imperial rites.In one imperial ordo, known as Cencius II, which dates from the second half of the twelfth century, a rubric tells us that the celebrant should say the prayer 'deus inenarrabilis auctor mundi, etc. just as in the unction of the king', making explicit that imperial and royal anointing are concomitant rituals. 41Changes in royal and imperial inauguration liturgies are to be found in the rubrics, rather than in these shared prayer formulae. 42Looking at the rubrics reveals the difference between the development of liturgical texts for inauguration in a royal and an imperial context.As an example of changing rubrics we can start at the very beginning with initial rubrics.
The compilation of liturgical texts that has become known as the Romano-Germanic Pontifical (PRG) contains three versions of a royal inauguration rite: a short recension and two variants of a longer recension. 43As Henry Parkes has shown, these inauguration texts, and indeed the entire PRG, exemplify the problematic nature of liturgical texts and modern attempts to edit them. 44Although it would be unwise to make a positive argument for the exact shape of a royal inauguration ceremony based on the PRG texts, they are certainly representative of liturgical texts for royal inauguration circulating within the Empire.Moreover, the fact that the royal texts are less exactly defined could be suggestive.Two versions of the royal inauguration rite in the PRG share an initial rubric: 'here begins the order for the benediction of the king when he is newly elevated to the kingdom by the clergy and people'. 45The third informs the reader simply that it is the 'order in which manner the king should be ordained'. 46hese initial rubrics are very closely related to those found in inauguration rites in England and France, as are the contents of the liturgies themselves.It is not specified to which 'kingdom' the king, clergy and people belong.The general nature of these initial rubrics reflects the imprecise nature of the royal liturgies in their entirety.These texts are skeleton texts.They are not complete texts such as the 'Order of Service' of a modern wedding ceremony, in which the scaffolding of the liturgy has been augmented with 41  hymns and readings from other sources, rather they provide an outline that requires colouring in.
While the nebulous texts in the PRG are the only royal inauguration texts surviving from the period under consideration here, many more iterations of the imperial inauguration rite have endured. 47The ordo known as Cencius I, which has been dated to c.1100, opens in a general way that is comparable to the royal texts above: 'here begins the order for the benediction of the emperor, when he receives the crown'. 48As with the PRG texts, the general initial rubric reflects the rest of the text, which can also be characterized as being skeletal in nature.It provides a framework for the ceremony but does not specify everything that would have taken place.Comparing this initial rubric to that from the ordo known as Cencius II, dating from the second half of the twelfth century, is instructive.The liturgy opens with the words: 'here begins the Roman order for the benediction of the emperor, when he receives the crown from the lord pope in the cathedral of St Peter the Apostle before the altar of St Maurice'. 49Again, the initial rubric reflects the nature of the text in its entirety.In this text, flesh has been added to the bones.It is no longer a skeleton, but a text in which every facet of the liturgy has been determined.The three additions to the initial rubric are significant.The liturgy is described as 'Roman' and the fact that the pope crowns the emperor is highlighted.Even the reference to the altar of St Maurice is not without meaning.In earlier imperial liturgies the emperor had been crowned before the altar of St Peter, and the moving of this ceremony to a side chapel is a symptom of papal attempts to downgrade the status of imperial inauguration. 50here can be no doubt that the papal curia sought to diminish the position of emperor within the imperial inauguration liturgy, in which the bishop of Rome increasingly played a leading role.The many iterations of the imperial ordines make this apparent. 51Their increasing specificity effectively choreographed this demotion.However, the papal curia could exercise significantly less control over what happened in Aachen and it is not coincidence that royal liturgies remained vague and unspecific.A comparison of all elements included in these liturgical texts is beyond the scope of this article.Instead two aspects of the inauguration ceremony that have traditionally been seen as evidence for the desacralization of political authority in the Empire are examined: anointing, an integral part of both the royal and imperial inauguration, and the singing of the laudes.What we know of the imperial context should not, this examination shows, be assumed for the royal ritual.
In 1204 Innocent III (1198-1216) sent a letter to the archbishop of Trnovo, primate of Bulgaria, in which he discussed anointing within the Roman church.In it he delineated the differences between royal and episcopal anointing and used these divergences to argue for the superiority of bishops over kings: 52 It is fitting, moreover, to distinguish between the anointing of the bishop and the prince, because the head of the bishop is consecrated with chrism, but the arm of the prince is anointed with oil.This shows the degree of difference between the authority of the bishop and the power of the prince. 53 Carl Erdmann recognized, there are two issues at stake here, first the type of oil used and second the part of the body anointed. 54As we turn to the liturgical texts, we should keep both these points in mind.
In both the imperial ordines considered thus far, Cencius I and Cencius II, it is prescribed that the emperor be anointed with 'oil of exorcism'. 55The same description of the oil used by the bishop of Ostia to anoint the emperor is found in the so-called 'Staufen' Ordo, from the end of the twelfth century, and the Ordo of the Roman Curia, composed at the start of the thirteenth century. 56The ordines for royal inauguration contained within the PRG describe the king being anointed with 'sanctified oil'. 57In this way the liturgical texts appear to confirm Innocent III's assertion that monarchs were anointed with oil rather than chrism.Erdmann argued that the distinction between different types of oil and chrism was not as clear-cut as Innocent III's pronouncement suggests. 58His view, however, was refuted by Walter Ullmann, who stressed that there were three types of oil used in liturgical contexts, that such distinctions must be recognized and that a qualitative difference exists between 'oil of exorcism' (oleum exorcitatum), also known as 'oil of catechumens' (oleum catechumenorum) and chrism. 59hile Ullmann might be right that these distinctions existed, it is arguable whether the liturgical texts for royal inauguration reflect this precision.The oil to be used for royal anointing is described as 'sanctified oil' (oleum sanctificatum) in the PRG texts and in the accompanying rite for queenly inauguration the oil used is described simply as 'holy' (oleum sacrum).The lack of precision in the words used to describe the oil in these German royal texts is entirely in keeping with the fact that they provided only the outline of a ceremony.Moreover, the language used to describe the oil is similar to those found in royal ordines from England and France in the same period. 60This is an important point, because we know from other evidence that, despite the liturgical texts specifying oil be used, kings in England and France were, in fact, anointed with chrism.
It is quite probable the German kings were too.The 1246 inventory of the regalia held at Trifels Castle contains a tantalizing reference to balsam (den balsam). 61Balsam was mixed with oil to make chrism and was significantly more expensive than the oil with which it was mixed.It is hard to imagine that the German kings, who clearly had access to chrism, would not have sought to make use of it at their royal inaugurations.Although we cannot be definite on this point, this lack of certainty points to the fact that royal and imperial practice cannot simply be assumed to be the same.This is even more apparent in the second element of unction: the body part that was anointed.Here the imperial texts again reflect Innocent's assertion.The emperor is described as being anointed on the right arm and between the shoulders in all imperial liturgies from this period.In this case, the royal texts within the PRG exhibit a significant divergence from imperial practice.The king is not only anointed on the head, breast and elbows, in direct contradiction to Innocent's claim, but additionally, in some manuscripts, on the hands. 62Given the difficulties of working with liturgical texts and the problems with the PRG compilation especially, one can legitimately question whether the anointing ritual described in the royal liturgy actually reflected twelfth-and early-thirteenth-century practice.This seems likely.The first German royal inauguration liturgy that can be relatively confidently dated is the so-called Aachen Ordo of c.1325. 63This text for royal inauguration also includes anointing on the head, breast, elbows and hands, making clear that the anointing of German kings on the head continued to be assumed in liturgical texts into the fourteenth century. 64In England and France kings continued to receive unction on the head.While Innocent's pronouncement can be shown to be true in the context of imperial inauguration, and certainly does demonstrate a clear downgrading of the imperial liturgy, the same cannot be said of German royal inaugurations at Aachen.
Changes in the form of the laudes sung as part of the imperial inauguration have also been held up as exemplifying successful papal undermining of imperial sacrality.The singing of the laudes, a type of festal acclamation, was not confined to royal and imperial inauguration.They were often sung on other church feasts, as their manuscript rubrics make clear, and they did not even require the presence of the ruler.The frequency with which they were sung is important, because it explains why, by and large, the laudes were not transmitted as part of an inauguration ordo, a fact that is as true of French and English evidence as of that from the Empire. 65Instead, laudes texts were usually placed separately, either in a different manuscript, such as a troper, or within the same manuscript as a special song, often on the fly-leaves.Only rarely, from the eleventh century onwards, are they found as part of the ordinary Christmas or Easter liturgy.The first time they appear in an inauguration rite in the twelfth century, it is not in an ordo for royal or imperial coronation.Instead it is in a liturgy for the coronation of 61 B. Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Schatzverzeichnisse I: Von der Zeit Karls des Großen bis zur Mitte des 13.Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1967), p. 99. 62Vogel and Elze (eds), Le pontifical romano-germanique, vol. 1, pp. 252-4. 63In this case the name is derived from the fact that this is the first surviving ordo to situate the ceremony in Aachen.
For a discussion of previous attempts to date the text and the reasons for accepting a date c.1325 see Büttner immediately preceding the acclamation, the same phrase is used to describe saints.Saints merit this description for having received the crown of martyrdom, reminding us that coronation should not be considered simply as a secular counterpoint to unction.The chant then continues with the acclamation 'Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands'.This tricolon is, as Kantorowicz recognized, the 'most striking feature' of the laudes, 'which impregnates the whole song'. 69It is this tricolon that differentiates the laudes from a litany of saints.Instead of the penitential spirit of the litany, the Christus vincit chant imbues the laudes with a jubilant character. 70The chant then continues to glorify Christ, who is described, among other things, as 'our hope' and 'our glory'.Each acclamation is met with the response 'Christ conquers'.
The contrast between this text and the laudes contained within the Staufen Ordo, which dates from the late twelfth century, has long been recognized and is extremely striking: 71 The emperor is no longer described as crowned by God, but is styled instead 'semper augustus', like an ancient Roman emperor. 73The Christus vincit tricolon has been completely eradicated; Christ no longer rules through the emperor.The repetitive Christus vincit response has also fallen by the wayside, and instead the list of saints has more of the characteristics of a penitential litany.Perhaps most importantly the pope has ceased to be acclaimed in the laudes.His absence is not meant to imply imperial independence, but is a symptom of the development of a specific laudes papales for acclaiming the pope.H.E.J. Cowdrey commented 'by their exclusive concentration upon either pope or emperor, these high medieval laudes illustrate the post-Gregorian tension between the sacerdotium and the regnum as the constitutent elements of Christian society'. 74They certainly illustrate post-Gregorian tension between the pope and the emperor, but it is necessary to consider non-imperial laudes before drawing general conclusions.
The laudes contained in the ordo Cencius II, in which both the emperor and pope were acclaimed and the Christus vincit chant abounded, are very closely related to laudes texts found in England and France in the twelfth century (and earlier), not to 69 Kantorowicz, 'Ivories and Litanies', p. 58. 70Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae, p. 14. 71 Ibid., p. 144; See too, R. Elze, 'Die Herrscherlaudes im Mittlelalter', Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für mention elsewhere in Latin Europe.However, almost no manuscript copies of laudes of this type are known to have been copied within the Empire after c.1100. 75This fact has been interpreted as evidence for the desacralization of German kingship, with Cowdrey linking their disappearance to the Investiture Controversy. 76There is, however, one exception: a text from Aquileia, an episcopal seat on the Adriatic coast between Trieste and Venice.This text can be dated to between 1145 and 1153, as the pope acclaimed is Eugenius III (1145-1153).Although the emperor is not identified by name in these laudes, the patriarch of Aquileia is named as Pelegrinus, a younger son of Ulrich I, duke of Carinthia, who was patriarch from 1130.Due to Aquileia's geopolitical position, its patriarch was often embroiled in the tense imperial-papal relations of the period. 77With Pelegrinus's death in 1161, the previously close relationship between patriarch and emperor shattered.Barbarossa appointed Ulrich of Treffen as the new patriarch, but because he refused to accept consecration at the hands of an anti-pope, he transferred his allegiance to Alexander III (1159-1181). 78lthough the text from Aquileia is the sole witness for the copying of a form of the laudes in which emperor and pope are acclaimed together in the twelfth century, its survival does not deserve to be consigned to a footnote, as it is in Kantorowicz's study. 79Instead it should serve to remind us that the papal grip on the transmission of liturgy was not as tight as is sometimes imagined, especially in a period in which episcopal allegiances could, as in Aquileia, oscillate between pope and emperor.
With this in mind, it is worth considering how laudes texts were transmitted.Often written on fly-leaves, and probably also on rolls, the texts themselves were surely frequent victims of damage or rebinding.With the current proliferation of medieval library digitalization projects, it is possible that new texts will come to light.The laudes from Aquileia are only known through an eighteenth-century study of the rites of that church, indicating the importance of chance in the survival of these texts. 80In any case, if we compare the situation to England, where only one laudes text survives from the twelfth century, integrated into a copy of the royal ordo in a manuscript now in Trinity College, Cambridge, and only two from the thirteenth century, both in the same Worcester antiphonary, it is apparent that the survival of these laudes texts is extremely rare. 81The rarity of their survival tells us little of how frequently they were recited.In England, despite the scarcity of surviving laudes formulae, we know from payments to the king's chaplains recorded in the chancery and exchequer rolls that the laudes were very frequently recited, certainly several times a year on significant liturgical days.
For the Empire there also exists evidence outside of liturgical manuscripts that suggests the laudes were not unknown in a royal context at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.As part of royal inauguration, in addition to the coronation and anointing, a number of items of regalia were bestowed on the king.Preeminent among these items was a sword, making the engraving on the guard of the weapon known as the sword of St Maurice of great interest (Figure 1). 82The blade of this sword is almost a metre long and measures four and a half centimetres across at its base.The design of the blade, which has a hollow running down the middle, was in fashion in the second half of the twelfth century.The pommel is shaped like a mushroom, a style that was common from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries.The engraving on the pommel allows the sword to be dated more accurately, however.On one side is found the imperial eagle, and on the other a shield divided in two, displaying half an eagle on the left and three pacing lions on the right.These are the arms of the Welf ruler Otto IV, and date the sword to between 1198 and 1215.The pommel has an inscription running across both sides, which reads + BENEDICTVS.DO(MINV)S.DE(V)S.QVI .DOCET .MANV(S).This inscription is drawn from Psalm 144:1, alluding to David's triumph over Goliath: 'Blessed be the Lord my God, who teaches my hands to battle and my fingers to war'.
The decoration on the guard of the sword offers a tantalizing insight into the language of royal liturgical ceremonial at the beginning of the thirteenth century.The guard is engraved on both sides, with the side displaying the Welf arms bearing the legend + C(H)RISTVS.VINCIT .C(H)RISTVS.REIGNAT .CHRIST(VS) INPERAT.The side displaying the royal arms bears a shortened version of this tricolon: + C(H) RISTVS.VINCIT .C(H)RISTVS.REINAT.The significance of this triumphant tricolon and its subsequent removal from the laudes included in the Staufen Ordo has been emphasized above.The unusual spelling of the tricolon might hint at the place of the sword's origin, possibly in France. 83Of more relevance to us is the place of its probable ceremonial use: Aachen.The fact that the defining laudes tricolon, absent from the laudes in the Staufen Ordo, was engraved on the guard of a sword belonging to a German king well after the latest surviving manuscript copy of the text is significant. 84he inscription on the guard makes apparent that German kings could continue to use the laudes to associate their rule with the victorious Christ.It also suggests that in a royal context the laudes did not suffer the same fate that they had in the context of imperial inauguration ceremonies.
While imperial liturgies clearly sought to minimize the sacrality of the emperor, the liturgical evidence that we have for royal inauguration does not imply an extension of this downgrading to royal liturgy.It is certainly difficult to make a positive argument for the shape of a royal inauguration at Aachen from twelfth-and thirteenth-century liturgical evidence.However, the fact that royal liturgies remained nebulous and imprecise while the imperial liturgical rite became increasingly specific and fixed is telling.It reveals that royal liturgies were not subject to the same processes as those composed at the papal court for use in imperial inauguration.The assertion that the pope sought to desacralize the emperor's authority through the control of liturgical texts raises the question of the link between liturgy and sacrality.As Karl Leyser pointed out in explaining why he had misgivings about choosing to use the word 'sacral' to describe the kingship of the Ottonians, there are several layers to this word, which has both Christian and pre-Christian associations. 85Without arguing for Germanic continuity, Leyser rightly stressed the relevance of concepts borrowed from social anthropology, including the charisma of the royal kin and its ancestry. 86For Leyser, anointing alone could not explain the numinous aura of the Ottonian emperors. 87In the century and a half after Canossa, however, it was precisely anointing and the associated idea of kingship as an ecclesiastically sanctioned and exalted institution that was disputed.This was mass Frederick also took the Cross.The subsequent two days he spent in the coronation church listening to crusade preaching.On the second of these two days he also oversaw the translation of the body of Charlemagne, canonized during the reign of his grandfather, into a new shrine. 91Reiner describes how the shrine had been fabricated from gold and silver by the people of Aachen, and that Frederick first took off his cloak before grasping a hammer and driving in the final nails. 92The choice of the feast of St James for the inauguration and associated rituals was not accidental.The links between Charlemagne, crusading and Frederick II's inauguration served to exalt the position of a king whose triumph over his Welf adversary, Otto IV, had not been inevitable.Associating these three rituals, the inauguration, the taking of the cross and the translation of the saint-emperor's relics with St James, at whose request Charlemagne had fought the Muslims in Spain, by arranging them in relation to his feast day added another layer to the interpretation. 93hile the resonances of the liturgical calendar continued to be exploited in the organization of royal inaugurations, once again a clear difference between the royal and imperial experience can be seen.From the time of the elevation of Charlemagne (768-814) to the imperial office in 800 through to Henry III's (1039-1056) imperial consecration in 1046, both of which took place on Christmas Day, emperors had frequently been consecrated on the most significant church feasts, with a further Christmas consecration, three on Easter Sunday, and one on each of Pentecost, Candlemas, and Ascension Day. 94In being consecrated emperor on Easter Sunday 1084, Henry IV continued this tradition.Significantly, however, he was not consecrated by his adversary Gregory VII, for whose forgiveness he had begged seven years earlier at Canossa.Instead Henry received the imperial crown from the anti-pope Clement III (1080-1100), whom he had set up in opposition to Gregory.None of Henry's Salian or Hohenstaufen successors would be crowned emperor on similarly important liturgical days.This is because, in contrast to royal inauguration, imperial inauguration required the participation of the pope.The king was not at liberty to determine the date of his imperial coronation himself even if, in the case of Henry V (1105-1125), he had kidnapped the pope to ensure his compliance. 95Post-Gregorian popes no longer wished to facilitate the drawing of links between imperial authority and the liturgical calendar.In fact, Gregory VII and his successors were determined to manipulate such feasts to their own advantage.Christmas Day 1075, on which Gregory VII processed through Rome wearing a crown, provides the first evidence for papal crown-wearing, and the Liber 91 On the canonization of Charlemagne see, K. Görich, 'Karl der Große-Ein 'politischer' Heiliger im 12. Jahrhundert?', in Körntgen and Waßhoven (eds), Religion und Politik im Mittelalter, pp.117-55. 92G.H. Pertz (ed.), 'Reineri Annales a. 1215' (MGH SS 16, Hanover, 1859), p. 673. 93On these connections see J. Stuckey, 'Charlemagne as Crusader?Memory, Propaganda, and the Many Uses of Charlemagne's Legendary Expedition to Spain', in M. Gabriele and J. Stuckey (ed.),The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith and Crusade (New York, 2008), pp.137-52. 94The coronations were as follows: Christmas Day: Charlemagne (800), Otto II (967) and Henry III (1046); Easter Sunday: Lothair I (823), Louis II (850) and Conrad II (1027); Pentecost: Louis II (872); Candlemas: Otto I (967); Ascension: Otto III (996). 95Schaller interpreted Henry V's wearing of the imperial crown in Rome at Easter 1117 and Pentecost 1118 as an attempt to make up for the fact that he had been consecrated emperor in dubious circumstances on an ordinary weekday (13 April 1111).Schaller, 'Der heilige Tag', p. 7.
Politicus of the canon Benedict, dating to c.1140, lists eighteen feasts and holidays on which the pope was to wear his crown. 96Wearing a crown in Rome on a major church feast was now the preserve of popes alone.
In the period 1138-1215 there was one exception to this rule and it is this event, the imperial inauguration of Henry VI, that will conclude this investigation.Henry VI received the imperial crown on Easter Monday in 1191.Significantly this was the day after Pope Celestine III (1191-1198) had himself been consecrated.Henry had, for some time, been in negotiations with Clement III (1187-1191) regarding his imperial inauguration.When Clement III died in March 1191, Henry had already set out on his journey to Rome.To counter the threat of the emperor interfering in the papal election, the college of cardinals, though riven by faction, united behind the Cardinal deacon of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. 97These are the circumstances in which a papal consecration and an imperial inauguration took place on successive days.The precise details of the imperial ceremony are hard to untangle.Confusion seems to have arisen when the pope proffered an orb during the ceremony.I.S. Robinson's interpretation, that Henry withdrew to consult his advisors before accepting this ceremonial innovation, is credible and Henry's actions are demonstrative of the fact that Hohenstaufen kings were aware of the dangers of ritual well before Philippe Buc reminded modern historians of their potential pitfalls. 98During written negotiations with Clement III to secure Henry's imperial inauguration both he and his father, Frederick Barbarossa, had stressed the requirement for a traditional ceremony. 99 relatively full description of Henry VI's imperial inauguration is found in Peter of Eboli's Liber ad honorem Augusti, written in 1196 and surviving in a sole illustrated manuscript, which is closely associated with the Hohenstaufen emperor and his chancellor, Conrad.100 The account of the inauguration is part of a double page spread, with text on the left-hand page and a full-page image on the right (Figure 2).The image, composed as it is of several sequential scenes, makes explicit that inauguration is composed from a number of different rituals.Peter makes no mention of an orb, although Henry is pictured riding to Rome before the ceremony holding one, and his description does not accord with any surviving liturgical text for imperial inauguration.The Liber's recent editors rightly stress that it is not an eye-witness account, and one might think it is asking too much of a Latin poem written in elegiac couplets to provide historians with the hard facts they crave.101 Kölzer and Stähli suggest that the description is based on a royal rather than an imperial ceremony and it is possible that Peter, writing in Palermo, took inspiration from the inauguration of kings of Sicily, which took place in the cathedral there.102Henry had, himself, been crowned there on Christmas Day 1194, just a few years before the production of this lavish manuscript.However, it should be noted that, in any case, neither the written description nor the image accord exactly with royal liturgies.Rather than assuming Peter has simply projected royal ceremonial into an imperial context, we could instead consider him to have taken elements from both royal and imperial ceremonies.That the inauguration took place in Rome and with the participation of Celestine III is made manifest in word and image.The handing over of a sword and a rod or sceptre is a feature of both royal and imperial liturgies.The bestowal of a ring is found in royal liturgies and occasionally in imperial liturgies too.In the ordo Cencius II, for example, from the second half of the twelfth century, the emperor is given a ring after he has been anointed and before he receives the sword.103 Peter's treatment of unction epitomizes this mixing of royal and imperial elements: First the pope anoints both hands with holy chrism, so that he might, as victor, bear one or other testament.While sanctifying the arms and anointing the shoulders and breast he says: 'God anoints you as the Anointed of the Lord. 104 the image the emperor is depicted as being anointed first on the hands and subsequently on the arms.If we compare Peter's written and visual depiction with royal and imperial liturgical texts it becomes clear that his description does not accord exactly with either, nor does it conform to Innocent III's 1204 pronouncement.As was discussed above, in royal liturgies the king is first, in some rites, anointed on the hands, before being anointed on the head, breast, shoulders and elbows.Anointing of hands is not found in the imperial liturgy, which includes anointing of the right arm and between the shoulders.That Peter does not mention anointing of the head is perhaps evidence that he knew it had no place in the imperial ceremony, although his knowledge does not seem to stretch to the fact that the emperor was anointed by the bishop of Ostia rather than by the pope himself.
Both word and image stress the use of chrism.We cannot conclude from this that chrism was used at Henry's imperial inauguration.The newly consecrated pope and his cardinals would surely not have permitted the use of holy chrism in 1191.However, in a partisan account of the inauguration it is of little surprise that we find the claim that the emperor was anointed by God as Christus domini and that chrism was used.Peter's poem and its accompanying illustration are indicative of a simple point.Hohenstaufen rulers were not content with their liturgical demotion in the imperial rite.The choice of language is also important.The emperor is 'anointed by God', echoing the language of the traditional laudes, in which he is described as 'crowned by God', and making explicit that his power stems directly from God rather than from the pope.He becomes the ' Anointed of the Lord'.

V: Conclusion
Changes to the laudes and to the ritual of anointing in the imperial inauguration ceremony are certainly indicative of papal attempts to diminish the position of the emperor.They are but two examples.A close study of the texts for imperial inauguration, which has been beyond the scope of this paper, uncovers a plethora of other developments, which, when taken together, are demonstrably all driven by the same impulse: to exalt papal authority at the expense of that of the German emperors. 105As with the two examples considered in detail in this essay, chosen because of the prominence given to them in scholarship, these other alterations cannot be shown to have had any effect on the liturgy used outside of Rome.The popes certainly ensured the downgrading of the emperor's position in the imperial inauguration ceremony at which they presided.However, what liturgical evidence we do have for royal inauguration does not indicate an extension of this downgrading to the royal liturgy in the Hohenstaufen Empire.Indeed, the scraps of narrative, visual and material evidence speak actively against this.
It should be noted that there is an ecclesiastical dimension to royal liturgical ceremonial that it has not been possible to address in this essay in which, for convenience, sole agency has been assigned to the Hohenstaufen kings themselves.In reality, a supporting cast of high-ranking churchmen remained integral to Hohenstaufen kings' attempts to project their authority through liturgical ritual and their participation is indubitably specified in the narrative sources.In his study of political liturgy in France and England, Geoffrey Koziol suggested that prelates 'were more likely to dispute their own rights of precedence in a king's ceremonies than to dispute the sanctity the ceremonies conferred'. 106It seems likely that this observation holds as true for the Empire as for the other two kingdoms.By contrast, imperial inauguration was a theatrical production in which two main actors shared the stage and competed for the limelight.From the time of Gregory VII the script was rewritten.The pope secured the leading role and the emperor was forced to accept a supporting part.In Aachen, however, the spotlight continued to fall on the new king, who made the most of this opportunity to radiate his sacrality.This is made manifest in the words inscribed on the guard of the so-called sword of St Maurice: Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands.We need to recognize the play on words here.The Christ in question is the German king, handed the sword directly after he had been anointed as Christus domini, almost certainly on the head and with holy chrism.For Hohenstaufen and Welf kings did not pass up the opportunity to exploit the resonances of the liturgy in the construction of their authority.Like that of their Plantagenet and Capetian counterparts, theirs remained a liturgical kingship.

Abstract
The Gregorian reform movement in general, and events at Canossa in 1077 in particular, have been credited with tarnishing the lustre of sacral kingship within the Empire.In this paper narrative, liturgical and material sources are drawn upon, to demonstrate the extent to which the image of kingship within the Hohenstaufen Empire continued to be rooted in biblical and liturgical soil.The paper focuses on the ritual of inauguration and draws a distinction between royal and imperial ceremonies.This makes it apparent that, while scholars have been right to stress the extent to which papal alterations to the imperial rite undermined the liturgical associations of the imperial office, the imperial liturgy developed by the papal curia in Rome had negligible impact on the royal inauguration liturgy used in Aachen.On the contrary, German monarchs continued to make lively use of inauguration liturgy to emphasize, in the face of papal opprobrium, the divinely ordained nature of their rule.Keywords: inauguration, liturgy, imperial-papal relations, kingship, unction, coronation johannadale@cantab.net