The new Constantine

Abstract

It is doubtful if any of the participants in the dramatic imperial coronation in St Peter’s on Christmas Day in the year 800 knew for certain what they were doing or precisely where it was intended to lead.1 This is true even in the literal sense, since there had been no imperial ordination in the West since the fifth century and the liturgical procedures followed were new and neither traditional nor borrowed from the Byzantine Empire. The use of a crown was unprecedented and was not to be a feature of imperial investitures in Constantinople before the tenth century. Thus the Roman Church invented its own rites for the occasion.2