page_title: Coronations in antiquity
section_title: Transition to the Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Coronations in antiquity / Transition to the Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: English: Childebert_III_694_711 Français&#160;: Pièce à l'effigie de Childebert III (694-711). British Museum.
context_page_description: Historical ceremonies of introducing a new monarch by a ceremony of coronation can be traced to classical antiquity, and further to the Ancient Near East.
context_section_description: The Byzantine coronation ritual, from at least 795 on, incorporated a partial clothing of the new emperor in various items of special clothing prior to his entrance to the church, following which he entered the cathedral and received the prostrations of the Senators and other patricians.  The Patriarch then read a set of lengthy prayers, as the sovereign was invested first with the chlamys and then finally with the crown.  Following this, the emperor received Holy Communion followed by further acts of homage. 
  From the moment of his coronation, Byzantine emperor was regarded as holy; while the Patriarch was holding the crown over the emperor's head, the attending people repeatedly cried: Holy! 
  In later centuries, after receiving their crown from the Patriarch, Byzantine emperors placed it upon their own head, symbolizing that their dominion came directly from God.  Anointing was added to the ritual after the eleventh century, with the monarch receiving the Sign of the Cross on their forehead from the Patriarch.  The purple chlamys also disappeared from the rite during this time, being replaced with the mandyas, or cope.
  The Byzantine coronation ceremony begins to influence the Barbarian kingdoms in the West with their Christianization. The Iron Crown of Lombardy is traced in legend to Constantine himself (but more likely dates to the 8th or 9th century).
  In Spain, the Visigothic king Sisenand was crowned in 631, and in 672, Wamba was the first occidental king to be anointed as well, by the archbishop of Toledo.
  Two prayers for the coronation of Byzantine emperors are found in the Byzantine Archieratikon (Slavonic: Chinovnik).  The second of these prayers is proceeded by the diaconal command: "Bow your heads to the Lord" and the assembly's response: "To you, O Lord."  This pattern of two prayers corresponds to the ritual form found in the Byzantine liturgy for the ordinations of bishops, priests and deacons and also for major blessings, such as the Great Blessing of Waters on the Feast of the Theophany.  In some texts, the first prayer is associated with the act of clothing the emperor in the chlamys and the second with the act of crowning him.  Although the Byzantine coronation ritual underwent various changes throughout the centuries, these two prayers are found consistently in every version.  They also occur in the Russian ritual for the crowning of the Tsar, beginning with Ivan IV, and also in the ritual for the coronation of an emperor beginning with that of Catherine I.
caption: Childebert III (r.694-711).
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