**INCORONATION** – A ceremony by which a sovereign is invested with his dignity through the placing of a crown, symbol of power. The term *incoronazione* generally includes the ceremonies of unction, consecration, and enthronement; it is also used for the statues and images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in recognition of her dignity.
**OUTLINE:** I. *Incoronation* of emperors and kings. – II. *Incoronation* of the pope. – III. *Incoronation* of images of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
---
### I. *INCORONATION* OF EMPERORS AND KINGS
The moral guidance of the Church, which points to every faithful soul and to all humanity the way of salvation and the realization of the Kingdom of God, extends to earthly governments, whose exercise of authority can harm no less than it can aid the spiritual well-being of their subjects. Therefore, the Church has sought to consecrate every public power to God, and, beginning with the Carolingian renewal of the Empire, has invested with solemn and ancient rites the emperor, head of all Christian peoples, and the kings, heads of the new national states.
#### 1. HISTORY AND LAW
It is precisely around this ceremony, by which Christianity exalts the universal character of the Empire and confirms the authority of sovereigns, that a dramatic contest arose between popes and emperors. The former claimed for the Church the right to confer power, while the latter more often accepted from the Church only the religious element of consecration, without acknowledging any limitation upon the sovereignty they claimed to receive directly from God, the Creator of all things and thus the sole source of every power.
Thus the focus is on the relationship between Church and State, which in turn shapes it, creating a complex problem encompassing purely spiritual motives and exclusively temporal ones.
In reality, this problem arose with the Church itself, which was born within a pre-existing state yet possessed universal characteristics that coincided with it and derived directly from God. Hence an apparent contradiction in Christian literature, which, after emphasizing the supreme authority of the emperor elected by God, then demands obedience from the emperor to the norms established by the Church, the sole depositary of divine precept.
The problem of these relations, whose vicissitudes we now examine, had in the Middle Ages two essential aspects: the existence and justification of the pope’s right to confer imperial dignity, and the pope’s position with regard to crowned emperors—emperors crowned by the pontiff, as kings were by bishops—who considered their temporal powers as instituted by ecclesiastical consecration. When, in the fullness of the conflict between Empire and Church, the jurists of the imperial party appealed to Roman law to claim absolute power, and thus the supremacy, of the emperor, their adversaries, the curialists, likewise invoked Roman law to claim this power for the pope, who was himself an emperor and the sole sovereign residing in the Rome of the Caesars. The pope thus appeared justified in choosing among candidates for the imperial throne whomever he deemed most worthy, and, by virtue of the power to bind and loose received from Christ, to depose an emperor who proved unworthy. The *Dictatus Papae* (VIII, XI, XII) grants him disposal over temporal dignities and goods as over the very attributes of imperial dignity: a power exercised by Gregory VII in the deposition of Henry IV.
According to the decretal *Per venerabilem* of 1202 (c. 34, X, *de elect.*, I, 6), by which Innocent III first conferred the Empire upon Otto IV and then upon Frederick II, the Empire must be considered as principally and ultimately dependent upon the Holy See: 1) because it transferred the Roman *Imperium* from the East to the German kings for better defense; 2) because it is the pope who blesses, crowns, and invests the king designated for imperial dignity, that is, “consecrates” him as emperor. With the right of examination and approval, the pope’s right to govern the Empire during periods of vacancy is asserted. The transmission of the Empire is contested both because of the inadequacy of the Donation of Constantine and the lack of confidence it inspired, and because of the existence of the Latin principalities in the East. Pope Innocent IV reaffirmed at Lyons the pontifical prerogatives based on the transmission of regal and sacerdotal monarchy from Christ the Priest and King to Peter: all *imperium* is thus lawfully transmitted by the pope to the emperor, and from the emperor must return to the pope. This thesis, supported by interpreters such as Henry of Susa and William Durant, prevailed, causing the decline of the opposing principle, already upheld by Henry IV and Frederick I, according to which imperial dignity was the source of all ecclesiastical and pontifical power. Thus in 1273, the election of Rudolph of Habsburg by the prince-electors was subjected to papal approval, which was granted, and the pope immediately warned the elector to prepare for consecration; in 1303, Albert of Habsburg admitted that the emperor must be the legitimate protector of the Church because the Church had transmitted the *imperium* from the Byzantines to the Germans, and that temporal power derives to past and future emperors from those princes to whom the Church itself confers the right to elect the King of the Romans.
But against Boniface VIII, who in his letters of preceding years and in the bull *Unam Sanctam* had proclaimed the absolute supremacy of the pope over all earthly powers, Philip IV of France reacted with the violence of Anagni. The political crisis that continued beyond the pope’s death led jurists to limit the scope of *incoronazione*: emperors and kings were to receive it as a special form of blessing, not as the conferral of authority. At this time, therefore, it began to be held (the writing of Marsilius of Padua in 1324 would only gain influence later) that confirmation by the pope was superfluous to an election made by the prince-electors. The adventure of Louis II of Bavaria, crowned emperor in 1329 in Rome by the urban prefect and two bishops against all tradition, precipitated the schism of the antipope Nicholas V against John XXII and led the prince-electors to declare that from that moment the elector should be defined as king and emperor without any papal confirmation. This decision was ratified at the Imperial Diet of Frankfurt.
The age-old contest had now undermined the very foundations of the Holy Roman Empire: diminished in its mystical and religious character, it could gain nothing in the political sphere, where national kingdoms, German princes, Italian states, and cities lived practically outside or against II.
The Holy Roman Empire, in which the highest ideal of the Middle Ages had been realized—the reunification of the ancient Roman orb for a humanity that would realize the Kingdom of Christ on earth—still shone with uncertain light until its end was officially recognized. Charles V was the last Roman emperor crowned by the pope (Bologna, 24 February 1530).
Even the brief Napoleonic episode led to a renewed empire: “Providence willed that I restore the throne of Charlemagne... To the pope I am Charlemagne,” were frequent words of Napoleon, and, as if the negative judgment of Einhard suggested it to him, after receiving unction from the Pontiff he snatched the crown from his hands and placed it on his own head with the threatening words: “God has given it to me; woe to him who touches it.” The contrast between pontifical unction and lay *incoronazione* had completed its millennium (Rome, Christmas 800 – Paris, 2 December 1804).
II. LITURGY.
I. The Anointing of Kings
The anointing of kings is inspired by the Bible (1 Sam. 16:13; 2 Chron. 23:11; Ezek. 16:8-14); however, the first example of royal anointing is found among the Visigoths in Spain. Their king Wamba, in 672, after professing his loyalty («ex more fidem populis reddidit»), received the sacred anointing on his head; the tradition of insignia is not yet mentioned. More than half a century later, in 751, in France, Pepin, son of Charles Martel, was consecrated in the cathedral of Soissons by Boniface, the Pope’s legate and Archbishop of Mainz. This ceremony was repeated by Stephen II (754) in the monastery of Saint-Denis, where he consecrated Pepin together with his sons Charlemagne and Carloman. Later, the anointing of the king was added, as was done for the emperor. In 844, Louis II was in Rome as a king, invested and crowned; in 848, Charles the Bald was crowned at Orléans by the Archbishop of Sens, and a second time at Metz in 869 (a third time, in 875, he was crowned emperor in Rome). From that time, the anointing and coronation of kings became a fixed custom in the kingdom of the West Franks, later followed in other territories, for example, in Castile Alfonso III in 866; Ordoño II in 914. For the East Frankish kingdom, Germany, Conrad I was the first king anointed in 911; however, he did not receive the crown from the Church. His successor Henry I refused the sacred anointing and coronation. But with the reign of Otto I and his coronation in 936, the rite of royal ordination was established. The rite of the so-called Romano-Germanic Pontifical, Ordo Romanus vulgatus, compiled in Mainz, records the ceremonies of the coronation of Otto II in 961.According to this order, kings of Germany were crowned in Aachen until 1531, with some modifications in 1307. This order was also followed in England and France, though certainly with modifications and variations. The rite of royal coronation in the Roman manner was composed at the behest of Clement V for the coronation of Robert, King of Sicily (Ordo Rom., XIV), modeled on the imperial coronation. The current rite of the Roman Pontifical derives from the Pontifical of G. Durandus (d. 1296).
The coronation of the king takes place on Sunday, by the competent metropolitan, with the assistance of the other bishops of the kingdom. It consists of two parts, one of which is performed before Mass, the other during Mass after the Epistle. Before Mass the following occurs: 1) the presentation with a brief examination, an admonition to the future king, and his profession or oath; 2) an oration of blessing by the archbishop together with the other bishops; 3) the litanies with two versicles for the king; 4) the anointing of the king with the oil of catechumens, made in the form of a cross on the right arm from the wrist to the elbow, and on the back, between the shoulders. In earlier rites, the head and hands were sometimes anointed with chrism as well. This anointing, considered in the Middle Ages as one of the twelve Sacraments, is in fact a sacramental according to the decision of Innocent III. Once this first part is completed, the king dons a garment resembling a surplice and the royal mantle.
The second part includes: 1) the delivery of the royal sword, accompanied by an allocution: the king receives the sword, which he hands to the squire, who sheathes II. The archbishop then girds the king with the belt. The king then draws the sword, strikes several blows («viriliter vibrat»), and sheathes it again; 2) the coronation: together with the other bishops, the archbishop places the crown on the king’s head with the words «accipie coronam»; this is followed by the delivery of the other insignia, the scepter, armills, and golden orb; 3) the enthronement with acclamations from the people.
In the coronation of a queen regnant, the girding with the sword belt is omitted, and in that of a queen consort, even the brief examination, admonition, and oath are omitted.
The crowned king and queen received Communion first under both kinds, and later only under one kind, with purification in the metropolitan’s chalice.