Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War by Deborah A Fraioli (2005)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Clovis I (d.511) and the FranksWith Clovis, the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, begins the his-tory of Christian kingship in France.The warrior chieftain Clovisachieved the rank of king of the Franks, reigning from 481 to 511, bythe bloody elimination of other contenders in the fight for territorial su-premacy in ancient Gaul.Clovis ruthless route to power was facilitated,in his own view, by a pact he made with the Christian god whom hiswife Clotilda, a Burgundian princess, already worshiped.Coming face toface with the powerful Alemanni people, Clovis put his wife s faith tothe test by promising to be baptized in the new religion if the Christiangod brought him victory against his enemies.Winning the battle, Clo-vis agreed to adopt the new religion and underwent baptism by SaintRemi, bishop of Reims.So Christian kingship among the Franks origi-nated as a debt of gratitude for divine protection.At his baptism, KingClovis was anointed with a holy balm, or salve (see Figure 7), in a cer-Figure 7.Baptism of Clovis by Saint Remi.Courtesy Biblioth�que nationale de France,Paris.46 JOAN OF ARC AND THE HUNDRED YEARS WARemony blending kingship and religion.According to the contemporarychronicle of Gregory of Tours, the anointing of Clovis occurred by thegrace of God, prompting Gregory to draw an analogy between Clovis andthe sacred kingship of David in the Old Testament.Although Cloviscampaigns were mostly about personal ambition, the first Christian kingof the Franks became the protector of the orthodox faith, and theMerovingian dynasty, in that sense, acquired a special destiny.Pepin the Short (d.768)The second dynasty of French kings, the Carolingian dynasty, takesits name not from its first rulers, the Pippinids, but from the most fa-mous Charlemagne.Pepin the Short, however, receives credit for in-troducing the ritual of sacred anointing, or consecration, into theinstallation ceremony for French kings.Adding religious ritual to theprocess of inaugurating new kings appears to have been an instinctiveway of creating royal authority, but coronations and anointings as ritu-als of power, or even the use of religion itself to legitimize royal power,were not as obvious in western history as it may seem.In Beowulf (c.1000), the king merely handed over his weapons as an indication of thetransfer of power, and Irish chieftains were inaugurated simply by beingraised on a shield, receiving a rod, or standing on a stone.Pepin, how-ever, during a bold transfer of power, used consecration by two popes, in751 and 754, to validate his kingship.As mayor of the palace, Pepin ob-tained papal approval to depose the Merovingian ruler, Clovis descen-dant Childeric III, and place himself on the throne.Flaunting therequirement that all kings be descendants of Clovis, an ambitious royaladministrator had usurped the throne of a reigning monarch, and theChurch, through consecration, had lent support to the precarious newdynasty.As Patrick Simon has stated, Pepin s innovation consisted of le-gitimizing through a religious ceremony a power obtained by force. 1 Theunion of king and clergy provided mutual benefit, however.An aura ofprestige now surrounded the king, whom the pope called the newDavid, while the pope in turn anticipated protection for the Church atRome.The second coronation, celebrated at Saint-Denis in 754, clev-erly reconnected Pepin s reign to the Merovingians through his wife, big-foot Bertha, a descendant of Clovis, which provided fictional continuityto French kingship.The Creation of Royal Authority in France 47Charlemagne (d.814)When Charlemagne, Pepin s son, had accumulated all the vast terri-tory that was to be added to Frankish rule during his lifetime, his au-thority extended across a large part of western Europe.Such politicalsignificance was nothing the Church could ignore, especially since papalauthority was then threatened and in disarray.So on Christmas day 800,in commemoration of the birth of Christ, a surprise coronation tookplace, when Pope Leo III declared Charlemagne Christian emperor of theWest, as the gathering proclaimed him crowned of God. Charlemagne,whom his biographer Einhard described as persuaded of his own God-given mission to unite western Christendom,2 was looked upon as kingand priest (rex et sacerdos) [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Podstrony