Exalter le souverain à travers le texte et l’image : l’exemple des Carolingiens, et sa longue postérité

Abstract

It is based on ancient Roman models that the exaltation of the Carolingian sovereign develops, first under Charlemagne (cf. his Vita by Eginhard, and his tomb in Aix) and then especially under Charles the Bald (cf. several religious manuscripts in which the image of the king, mediator between God and the Christian people, is now introduced). Under the latter, moreover, the iconography of the ivory throne probably offered to the pope in 875 suggests a supremacy of the Carolingian monarch over the pontiff himself. This claim, again accompanied by the reference to the Caesars of Antiquity, was later to be taken up by other prestigious sovereigns (in particular Frederick II Hohenstaufen then, in France, Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte).