Coronation Studies: Past, Present, and Future: Thirty Years Later

The volume of essays with the title Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual published in 1990 by the University of California Press, [henceforth: Corohations ] offered a selection of works in “coronation studies” in the later twentieth century, most of which had been presented at a conference in Toronto in 1985. At that meeting, we attempted to address the subject in the widest sense of the term, meaning inquiries into the different symbolic and ritual acts that served both to legitimate and to present monarchical rule in the Middle Ages and the ancien réme. 1 The selection reflected, without claim to be comprehensive, the variety of topics treated by students of rulership and the character of the pre-modern state, including their different methods of approach and the distinct types of sources used as evidence. Many of the articles addressed an agenda that has been with us for over a century, ever since historians began to scrutinize events surrounding the accession of rulers and the writings associated with it: establishing authentic readings for those liturgical scripts — ordines — which guided the actors of the rites; dating these texts; and interpreting their formulae in terms of continuity or change, of native roots and borrowings, of politics, theology, and ritual. Other studies treated the general context of the ceremonies, their constitutional, ideological, and propagandists place in medieval politics. Again, others looked at the changes in royal ritual during the early modern centuries, both in form and meaning. One paper explicitly (others more implicitly) explored the historiography of the field, placing it in the context of modern political and intellectual history. Several authors, moreover, departed from traditional procedures, which were characterized by textual scrutiny and iconoeraphical analysis.

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