11 - Charles III of Navarra

Summary

This chapter analyses the five steps in the itinerary of the royal accession of the kings of Navarra from the eleventh century to the fourteenth: the effects of the restoration of the kingdom of Navarra in 1134 with the investiture of García Ramírez, against the will of the Pope; Theobald I of Champagne’s oath, which took place some years after his accession to the throne in 1234; the reintroduction of the anointment with Theobald II in 1257; Joanna II and Philip III of Navarra’s oath and anointment in 1329; and Charles III’s self-coronation in 1390. The evolution of the Navarrese royal accession ceremonies emphasises two specific characteristics of Navarrese politics: resistance to ecclesiastical mediation and consensualism. Charles III’s majestic self-coronation should not be regarded thus as an isolated or exceptional ritual since it responds to the tradition of the other Iberian kingdoms in which the ceremony of self-coronation had been enacted, reflects the particular idiosyncrasy of the kingdom of Navarra and reacts to a particular need generated in a given context, reinforcing once more the idea of the malleability of the rituals and the power of the king’s agency.