Rites of Coronation

This week’s edition will pay tribute to the 60^th anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which was celebrated last Sunday June 2, even though the Diamond Jubilee was already celebrated last year, this year the royal family and indeed the Commonwealth celebrated the diamond anniversary of this great coronation service, which is quite fitting considering that the Queen’s coronation took place a year after her official ascension.

                   

It must be noted that unlike in other monarchies, the coronation is not used to mark the beginning of the reign of a new monarch, as the reign of the sovereign begins immediately following the demise of the last bearer of the Crown, the ceremony is regardless a very necessary one as it is this ceremony that the new Head of State takes the most sacred oath that he or she is expected to stay true to for life. The Coronation oath taken by the sovereign of the Commonwealth Realms is very different from the inauguration oath taken by the President of a republic e.g. President Obama of the United States or even that taken by some other modern day monarchs e.g. King Willem Alexander of the Netherlands, these other oaths are normally civil declarations taken before a judge or parliament or some other temporal authority promising to uphold the laws and constitutional arrangements of the land. The Coronation Oath is not a civil oath but rather a religious one taken before God himself and witnessed by the bishops, peers and other senior officials of the various realms, not only does the monarch promise to rule according to the law but it goes deeper than that, the Queen’s oath calls upon her to exercise law, justice and mercy and above all to maintain and profess the protestant religion.

                                  

Following the taking of the oath comes anointing and the crowning, the Anointing underscores the sanctity of the occassion as it is reminiscent of the ancient Jewish custom of anointing the old Kings of Israel to show that the sovereign was set apart to rule and that his right to rule was indeed divine,  It’s has being likened to  the consummation of a marriage as it shows that the sovereign by taking this oath and being anointed is like being “married to the realm” as it were. Following this comes the presentation of the Crown jewels which includes but is not limited to the royal scepter, the Sword of State, the Sovereign’s Orb and of course the glorious St Edward’s Crown. At the end of this part of the ceremony comes the homage, in which the peers of the realm all pledging  their allegiance and fealty to the newly crowned King or Queen as their liege lord, after which the ceremony comes to a close with a hymn (most likely Zadok the Priest).

                               

It must be noted that with the fall of so many monarchies in the last century or the so called modernization of others, the Commonwealth Realm is one of the few left that still adhere to the ancient rites of a traditional coronation, as other realms tend to go for simpler enthronement ceremonies rather than a full coronation, some of them do away with even that designation and opt to have an inauguration instead, (I was previously under the impression that inauguration was something  that presidents do not kings), even as recently as this year two new monarchs officially ascended the throne in the persons of the King of the Netherlands and the Pope of Rome, neither of them were crowned-a break with the traditions set forward by earlier predecessors, perhaps because their thinking was that  it looked more modern?, I’m not sure

Personally speaking I prefer the Commonwealth Realms way of doing things, anything that looks too presidential is certainly not something I’m about to support, the more regality and splendor involved is the more I tend to gravitate towards it, Kings and Queens should be crowned, that is the way it has been done for centuries, I see no reason to change tradition now even in the wake of this 21^st century egalitarian nonsense.

             

This 60th anniversary represents everything that is excellent and noble about the monarchy under which we live, it’s about a Queen who has promised to devote a lifetime of service to the Peoples of the Commonwealth and most especially the Realms, an pledge she has never broke, about 6 decades (plus an extra year if you counting from the ascension) of loyalty and devotion, a life of service to the people and that is truly a momentous occasion worth celebrating

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

A video featuring the Coronation service in 1953:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dui-0D_hpE