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Royal saints and early medieval kingship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Janet Nelson
Janet Nelson*
Affiliation:
King’s College, university of London
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Extract

The problem I want briefly to focus on concerns the significance of the saint-king in early medieval cosmology: what is his relationship to the sacral king of so many pre-industrial societies? A commonly-accepted view has been that the sacral king was, quite simply, the immediate ancestor of the saint-king. To quote the recent but in some respects old-fashioned work of W. A. Chaney on Anglo-Saxon kingship: ‘The sacral nature of kingship.... would lead the folk to expect God to honour the stirps regia. The recognised form of this in the new religion was sainthood.’ Christianity, so Chaney implies, simply makes a saint out of the sacral king: in essentials, nothing is changed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 10: Sanctity and Secularity: The Church and the World , 1973 , pp. 39 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1973

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References

1 Amid a vast literature the following works are especially helpful, and provide further bibliographical references: Folz, R., ‘Zur Frage der heiligen Könige’, in Deutsches Archiv 14 (Weimar 1958) pp 317 ffGoogle Scholar; Nachtigall, O., ‘Das sakrale Königtum bei Naturvölkern’, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 83 (Berlin 1958) pp 34 ffGoogle Scholar; The Sacral King ship. Contributions to the VIIIth International Congress of the History of Religions (Leiden 1959); Wolfram, [H.], [‘Methodische Fragen zur Kritik am “Sakralen” Königtum’], in Festschrift O. Höfler (Vienna 1968) pp 473 ffGoogle Scholar; Makarius, L., ‘Du roi magique au roi divin’, in Annales 25 (1970) pp 668 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester 1970) p 81. Compare the review by Brentano, R. in Speculum 47 (1972) pp 754 fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 ‘La naissance des états et le “roi-saint”’, in L’Europe au IXe au XIe Siècles, edd Manteuffel, T. and Gieysztor, A. (Warsaw 1968) pp 425 ffGoogle Scholar. I have translated the passages quoted from the original French.

4 Graus, [F.]. [Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger] (Prague 1965) pp 390 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 For the Vita of queen Matilda, wife of Henry the Fowler and mother of Otto I, see Graus pp 410 ff. I am also indebted to suggestions made in conversation by Mr Karl Leyser.

6 For the Vita of Gerald of Aurillac, see Baker, D., ‘Vir Dei: secular sanctity in the early tenth century’, in SCH 8 (1972) pp 41 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 Rosenthal, J. T., ‘Edward the Confessor and Robert the Pious: 11th Century kingship and biography’, in Medieval Studies 33 (Toronto 1971) pp 7 Google Scholar ff, at p 11. See also Barlow, [F.], [Edward the Confessor] (London 1970) pp 256 ffGoogle Scholar.

8 For this debate, and the views of Höfler, Baetke and others, see Wolfram; also Hauck, K., Goldbrakteaten aus Sievern (Munich 1970)Google Scholar and now the perceptive comments of Wallace-Hadrill, [J. M.], [Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent] (Oxford 1971) cap I Google Scholar.

9 See the short notice of Gorski’s paper in BZ 61 (1968) p 184.

10 The German sakral is a very recent borrowing from English, where the term ‘sacral’ was coined by the pioneer anthropologists of the later nineteenth century.

11 Historia Regum ed Stubbs, W., RS 90 (1887) II, i, p 273 Google Scholar. See Bloch, M., Les Rois Thaumaturges (Strasbourg 1924)Google Scholar.

12 We must take into account that strain in Christian tradition which always regarded earthly power with misgivings. Compare Graus, p 432: ‘Der heilige König ist in der Hagiographie nicht Garant des Wohlergehens, sondern zu seiner Schilderung wird ... nur der Topos vom goldenen Zeitalter verwendet. Diese “gehemmte” Entwicklung hat ihren letzen Grund wohl in der Erkenntnis kirchlicher Kreise, dass selbst ein “guter König” nur bedingt den “christlichen Idealen” entsprechen konnte.’ Even in the eleventh century, Gregory VII repeated (Reg VIII, 21) the idea that royal dominion was the work of the devil - by that date, not such a common view. The origins of this specifically western line of Christian political thought were clearly traced by Frend, W. H. C., Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (London 1965)Google Scholar.

13 Wallace-Hadrill, cap IV. Compare Graus, pp 416 ff, where too little account is taken of the positive and ‘useful’ aspect of Bede’s image of kingship.

14 See Ullmann, W., The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship (London 1969)Google Scholar. The quotation is from the crowning-prayer of Hincmar’s Ordo for Louis the Stammerer, 877 (MGH Capit, II, 461) which reappeared in many subsequent Ordines.

15 Compare my paper, ‘National synods, kingship as office, and royal anointing’, in SCH 7 (1971) PP 41 ffGoogle Scholar.

16 See Peters, E., The Shadow King (New Haven 1970)Google Scholar.

17 See Ullmann, W., Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (London 1961) pp 143 ff, 186 ffGoogle Scholar.

18 On the origins of the Christian idea of the saint, see Graus, part III; Festugière, A.-J., La Sainteté (Paris 1949)Google Scholar; and the penetrating remarks of Brown, P., Religion and Society in the Age of St Augustine (London 1972) p 142 Google Scholar.

19 See Kemp, E. W., Canonisation and Authority in the Western Church (Oxford 1948)Google Scholar.

20 ‘The Peace and Truce of God in the Eleventh Century’, in PP 46 (1970) pp 42 ff.

21 Graus pp 390 ff; Wallace-Hadrill pp 81 ff.

22 Jolliffe, J. E. A., Angevin Kingship (London 1963)Google Scholar. On St Edward, see Holt, [J. C], [Magna Carla] (Cambridge 1965)Google Scholar. Russell, J. C., ‘The Canonization of opposition to the king in Angevin England’, in C. H. Haskins Anniversary Essays (Boston 1929) pp 279 ffGoogle Scholar, comments interestingly on the implications for English royalty of the popular ‘sanctification’ of anti-royal leaders, without, however, noting that a saintking could play a similar role.

23 Chronicie of the Crusade of St Louis, trans Shaw, M. R. B. (London 1963)Google Scholar.

24 Holt p 96. Compare Barlow pp 265 ff.