ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the history of the Anglo-Saxon coronation ordines has become clearer as part of a general lifting of fog in the Channel.1 Liturgy’s supra-regnal character, and the consequently frequent crossing of liturgical books from Francia to England and vice versa, no longer need to be insisted on as providing the context for ritual developments. So far, so good. Key points have remained debatable, though; and among these is the question of the occasion on which the Second Ordo was first used. I argued nearly 20 years ago that that occasion was the inauguration of Edward the Elder at Pentecost 900. There were two main reasons for that view: one was the presence in the consecration prayer of references to two peoples, to paternal glory and to unity, which seemed to me then to fit the political circumstances of 899-900 better than 924-925; the other was the presence of a queen’s ordo alongside the king’s and that accorded with Edward’s married situation rather than Æthelstan’s unmarried one.2 Patrick Wormald never was persuaded by what amount to no more than circumstantial arguments. He remained convinced that the inauguration of Æthelstan in 925 was the likeliest occasion for the Second Ordo’s first use.3 He thought the theme of a union of two peoples peculiarly apt for Æthelstan ‘in the aftermath of Edward’s vigorous suppression of Mercian (semi)-independence’. He pointed out, further, that the provision of a queen’s ordo to follow the king’s ‘could just as well be another addition to the base-text … in which case it could have been revised for the returning Louis IV in 936’. Nicholas Brooks has left the question open: ‘it was … either Archbishop Plegmund or Archbishop Athelm who introduced into English royal ritual the ring, the crown itself, and much liturgical ceremony

1 I use the term ‘coronation’ ordo/ordines simply because it is in general use, although Anglo-Saxon liturgical books usually named the rite a benediction (or benedictions), or consecration. Coronation in the modern sense, meaning the whole inauguration-rite, did not become common usage until the eleventh century and later, see J.L. Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), 295, 388 n. 58.