Who still doesn’t know? Saturday, May 6, is to take place the coronation of Charles III in Westminster Abbey, in the heart of London, the church where all British sovereigns have been crowned since William the Conqueror, who was crowned on Christmas Day 1066.
The origin of this religious ceremony, intended to legitimize the person and function of the sovereign, is therefore millenary. And perhaps even more: historians like Tom Holland trace elements of the ritual back to the Roman Empire, or even the Bronze Age. “It’s like going on a safari and meeting a mammoth”, specifies the successful British author in one of his latest podcasts (“The Rest is History”, posted online Thursday, May 4), to underline the strangeness of the ceremony. The last of its kind took place seventy years ago, in June 1953, when Elizabeth II was crowned with the imposing crown of Saint Edward. The moment is therefore historic for the British, even if it arouses controversy.
For Charles III, an erudite king and very attached to tradition, there was no question of breaking with an event supposed to symbolize the permanence of the monarchy, which is now parliamentary. Much of the coronation liturgy (explained online on the site of Lambeth Palace, the residence of the Primate of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury) dates back to that of King Edgar, in 973. This monarch, unifier of the kingdom of England, was crowned on the day of Pentecost, in Bath (in the south of the country), during a ceremony of an essentially Christian nature, culminating with the anointing conferring on him an almost divine role.
Charles III will first take the oath “to uphold the law and dispense justice with mercy”. Then he will take his place on the coronation throne, commissioned by Edward Ier in the XIIIe century and made in such a way that it could contain (under the seat) the Stone of Destiny, a block of sandstone used for the coronations of Scottish kings, stolen by English kings. The stone will be present on May 6: it was returned to Edinburgh Castle at the end of the 1990s, but it will be loaned by the Scots for the occasion.
A modern ceremony
Then comes the crucial part of the ceremony: the divine anointing. Charles will be sprinkled with “holy” oil from Jerusalem. The son of Elizabeth II wanted to preserve its sacred character by having three splendidly embroidered panels made which will hide it from the gaze of the congregation and televisions around the world when it is time to receive the oil. “It’s a deliberately dramatized part, one wonders if there is still a place for it in a parliamentary democracy”, wondered the historian Alice Hunt, during a conference at Gresham College in London, on May 2.
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