The Ceremonial of Royal Succession in Capetian France: The Funeral of Philip V

Abstract

Few accounts of funeral ceremonies performed for the rulers of France before the early fifteenth century are now extant.* The rare eyewitness reports of such rites are generally terse and abbreviated, and there survive only fragments of the fiscal accounts listing expenses for the services, which inevitably provide a wealth of detail overlooked or ignored by observers. The want of information cannot be attributed solely to the disappearance of once abundant documentary remains, for even in the early fifteenth century such sources were not easily accessible. The author of an elaborate description of the funeral of Charles VI in 1422 confessed that he had written the account as an aide-memoire for future royal funerals, to prevent the disagreement and confusion which, in the absence of written records and living witnesses of earlier ceremonies, had arisen in connection with Charles's service.' For the history of royal funeral ritual in early fourteenth-century