Coronations: medieval and early modern monarchic ritual (review)

Abstract

152 Reviews REVIEWS Bak, Janos, Coronations: medieval and early modern monarchic ritual, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990; cloth; pp. viii, 256; 19 iU., 10 tables, 3figures;R. R. P. US$35.00. Professor Bak, of the University of British Columbia, has brought together a stimulating, though specialised, collection of papers relating to royal inaugurations and the wider questions of regality. Most of thefifteenpapers were read at the Bruckmann memorial conference at Toronto six years ago. Some were submitted after the conference. All went to the press only in 1989. So some have been overtaken by the periodical Uterature. The coverage is wide: Jinty Nelson on Hincmar of Reims; Elisabeth Vestergaard and Erich Hoffmann on aspects of early Scandinavian inauguration; five papers on later medieval France; Reinhard Elze on the 1130 ordo for Roger II of Sicily; Aleksander Gieysztor on the Polish coronation; Bernhard Schimmelpfennig on papal coronations at Avignon; and three papers on England (the 1308 recension of the ordo by Andrew Hughes, Elizabeth by Richard McCoy, and a study of continuity by David Sturdy). The editor contributes a useful historiographic overview, placing recent studies within the tripartite context of Schramm at Gottingen, Ullmann at Cambridge, and Kantorowicz at Berkeley. However, some major scholars did not contribute, including R. A. Jackson, author of Vive le Roi, and Sarah Hanley, author of The Lit de Justice. Moreover, some major topics are unrepresented. The real surprise is the absence of the medieval Empire, but the absence of Byzantium, Castile, Aragon and Portugal is no less unfortunate, as the editor recognises. There is no doubt that this particular approach to the study of medieval and early m o d e m kingship has been extremely rewarding and that new perceptions of the authentication of power have emerged and will continue to emerge from specialised studies such as these fifteen papers. But they remain specialised. Even Jinty Nelson, who adorns everything she touches with originality and flair, is very closely anchored to the Annals of St Bertin. Both Jacques le Goff and Jean-Claude Bonne of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes are no less textually based in Bibliotheque Nationale ms. lat. 1246. This is not the first book a scholar should read on early coronations, but aU serious students should read it next. R. Ian Jack Department of History University of Sydney ...