ABSTRACT
In all its aspects, from ideas to personnel, Christianity made important contributions to the creation and expression of political identities and communities. To identify them, we must consider several interrelated questions. One concerns the degree of control that kings had, and aspired to, over territories and people, and the involvement in it of a Christian ideology of kingship and a shared Christian identity. This in turn raises issues of the use of Christian imagery and ritual, such as in royal coronations, to strengthen kings’ power, and of royal use of cults of saints and relics, and of pilgrimage. Patronage of particular cults could amount to annexation, of the subjects’ lobbyists in Heaven and of the foci of subjects’ loyalties, and so strengthen claims to over-lordship. In addition, their deliberate dissemination attempted some cultural unification. A fourth element is royal control of the Church itself.
