3 - Louis XIV and the creation of the modern state

Summary

“Vive le Roi!”

On 7 June 1654, Louis XIV, Anne of Austria, Cardinal Mazarin, and virtually all of the great nobles of France gathered in the Gothic cathedral of Notre Dame in Reims for the king's coronation. The grandees performed their official functions at the great ceremony: the count of Vivonne, first gentleman of the king's chamber, removed Louis's cloak; the duke of Joyeuse, grand chamberlain, put on the king's slippers; the king's brother, Philip, duke of Anjou, put on the king's spurs. The bishop of Soissons, standing in for the archbishop of Reims (the see was then vacant), blessed the king's sword, reputed to be that of Charlemagne himself. The bishop then vested Louis with his sceptre and the crown of Charlemagne. Preceded by the peers of France, Louis slowly mounted the special stairway to his throne, there to receive, one by one, the homage of each peer of the realm.

The grand ceremonial of the coronation did not stop there; the assembly had to sing a Te Deum, followed by a mass. At the mass, we see Louis's special status symbolically defined: like the clergy, alone among the lay people, he receives the communion in two kinds. Kingship remains profoundly sacerdotal; the king is not really a priest, yet he has the aura of ordination after his coronation and anointing with the miraculous oils. These oils, kept in a special ornate cruet in the sacristy of Reims, are miraculously replenished before each coronation; no human has added fluid to replenish the oil used in the previous coronation (or so contemporaries believed).