ABSTRACT

‘Medieval political rituals’ is a problematic topic. For one thing, the category of the ‘political’ is fundamentally a creation of modernity; for another, the wide concept of ‘ritual’ is not only even more recent than ‘politics’ but also extremely vague. What warrants, then, the inclusion, in a single ensemble, of such practices as coronations and crown-wearings, princely funerals, ordeals, entries, civic games, banquets, the hunt, relic-translations and elevations, oath-takings, acclamations or laudes, knightings, and acts of submission or commendation (though this chapter deals with only some of these) (Le Goff 1980: 237–87; Keller 1993: 51–86; articles in Byzantion 61 (1991); Nelson 1999; and especially McCormick 1986, with superb bibliography)? From the point of view of the medieval observer, they were all concerned with power, order, community and hierarchy. Many of them, ideally, involved a vertical dimension, a connectedness with heavenly matters through the liturgy or through solemnities recognizably related to liturgical forms. The hunt, performed more solemni, in solemn fashion (Annales regni Francorum ad. an. 819: 152; Nelson 1987: 166–9, and in general Gorevich 1987: 562–99), and – when references to Christ’s Last Supper are lacking – banquets (Hauck 1950: 611–21; Fichtenau 1984: 82–91; Althoff 1987), could belong to another group of practices. The culture which invented the dichotomy between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ later routinized by Durkheimian anthropology was able to conceive of ‘secular rituals’. But the distinction sacred–profane implied a superiority; as a result, in eras of tension between regnum and sacerdotium, or in moments of dispute between lay and clerical entities, ecclesiastical sources could demonize as ‘bad rituals’ both the hunt and the banquet (Alpert of Metz, De diversitate temporum 2.20: 719, on Thiel merchant-guildsmen feasting quasi solemniter ebrietati inserviunt, Buc 1994: 225–30; cf. Buc 1989: 697–9). Conversely, authors more interested in seeing their ruler as a minister in the ecclesia could write them up in the same breath as solemnities of religious origin – and bridge the sacred–profane dichotomy (Thegan, Gesta Hludowici c. 19: 202–4; Nelson 1999: 167–8; Barthélemy 1997: 201, 207 (on Ermold, Poème sur Louis le Pieux, ll. 2164–2529); cf. Aymar 1951: 503–13, 527–9; Grabar 1936 (1971): 57–62; 133–44). 2 Similarly, clerics in the service of rulers had a tendency to 224liturgify a key pursuit of the lay aristocracy, war, and, in writing at least, deny any liturgical character to their opponents’ own warfare (Koeniger 1918; Prinz 1971; McCormick 1986: 342ff.; McCormick 1992; Barthélemy 1997: 207–8; Buc 1995: 215; Buc 1996: 5).