Laura Wangerin
Seton Hall University
The tenth- and early eleventh-century Ottonian kings and emperors developed a new way of conceptualizing the king’s place and role in both the divine and earthly hierarchies. In their efforts to consolidate their authority and establish their dynastic legitimacy, these rulers developed and promoted an ideology of sacral kingship. The rituals that were associated with their rule provided highly visual, public displays of power. Yet many of the rituals that the Ottonians incorporated as legitimizing strategies for their dynasty bridged the line between the secular and the sacred. Relic translations, adventus ceremonies, festival coronations, and acclamations provided opportunities to both proclaim the kings’ authority and reinforce their claims for a liturgical kingship.
This paper proposes to explore the rituals of kingship as a complex of symbolic interactions, arguing that the Ottonian program of legitimacy, bound up in the ideology of sacral kingship, can be better appreciated as a broad and multifaceted system. While their developing ideology of rulership is perhaps most vividly displayed in the evolution of ruler images over the course of their dynastic tenure, I suggest that it was the liturgical elements of political rituals that more broadly communicated their claim on sacral kingship to their subjects.