More than Mere Spectacle

Coronations and Inaugurations in the Habsburg Monarchy during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Klaas Van Gelder, Klaas Van Gelder

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789208788
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Across the medieval and early modern eras, new rulers were celebrated with increasingly elaborate coronations and inaugurations that symbolically conferred legitimacy and political power upon them. Many historians have considered rituals like these as irrelevant to understanding modern governance—an idea that this volume challenges through illuminating case studies focused on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Habsburg lands. Taking the formal elasticity of these events as the key to their lasting relevance, the contributors explore important questions around their political, legal, social, and cultural significance and their curious persistence as a historical phenomenon over time.

Chapter 1

THE CARE OF THRONES

A Plethora of Investitures in the Habsburg Composite Monarchy and Beyond from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century

Petr Maťa

In recent decades, a rich strand of research has developed from the concept of the composite monarchy, enabling historians to analyze early modern polities on their own terms from a comparative perspective. One aspect has rarely been addressed in this context, however, despite seeming to suggest itself: the interplay between the composite structure of monarchies and the inaugural rites of their rulers. In some cases, analyzing this connection makes little sense. A good example is early modern France, though it was “a state that was still essentially composite in character.”¹ Here, the act of assuming the royal powers consisted of various rituals—most notably the coronation and the lit de justice—whose relevance changed over time but which were singular and binding for the entire kingdom.² But how did monarchs and dynasties that held sway over multiple kingdoms and much more fragmented conglomerates handle the ascension to rule in their diverse domains with distinct traditions and constitutions? Despite the vast literature on coronations and rites of power, their political relevance and symbolic meaning, we lack studies that effectively link these findings to the reality of composite polities and systematically examine the relationship between an individual reign and multiple inaugural rites.

What fails to make much sense in the French case is in fact crucial with regard to the Habsburg Monarchy. Here, a plethora of investitures and their continuing—albeit noticeably changing—political relevance remained a defining feature well into the nineteenth century. Historians have paid increasing attention to the inaugural rites in individual kingdoms and provinces, and a growing tendency toward comparisons can be observed.³ Nevertheless, we still lack a broader picture of Habsburg investitures that does justice to their manifoldness.

This chapter attempts to shed light on the variety of Habsburg inaugural rituals and outline the dynasty’s changing strategy toward them from the emergence of the Habsburg Monarchy in the 1520s until the end of the eighteenth century. Besides asking how individual Habsburgs dealt with multiple investitures and under which political and dynastic circumstances these were staged, it will also consider to what extent the Habsburg case was exceptional in a European context.⁴

Coronations and Homages: Constitutional Analogy and Ceremonial Variety

A remark on terminology seems necessary at the very beginning. I use the term “inaugural rite” as an umbrella for both coronations and acts of hereditary homage, with the latter usually called Huldigung or Erbhuldigung in German sources and literature. This helps to treat coronation rites and homage ceremonies in the Habsburg lands as functional analogies and thus to focus on the main feature they originally had in common: the authorization and legitimation of a new sovereign to exercise full princely jurisdiction over a particular political unit—be it a kingdom, a duchy, or an autonomous municipality.

There were no doubt significant ceremonial differences between coronations and Huldigungen of which we need to remain aware. The centerpieces of a coronation were the placing of a crown upon the king’s (or emperor’s) head, the investiture with insignias, and the enthronement, all framed by liturgy. But early modern coronation ceremonies contained elements of homage as well, namely the mutual commitment made by oath or pledge by both the sovereign and the political community, typically the Estates.⁵ Similarly, homage ceremonies more often than not comprised a sacral dimension in that they regularly began with a mass of the Holy Spirit and ended with a Te Deum laudamus. In Moravia—to name a less familiar case I will be referring to frequently—the homage itself took place in the church. A subsequent banquet held in profane space was another component that coronations and homages had in common.

The Lower Austrian inaugural ceremony even featured distinct insignias, including the archducal hat (Erzherzogshut) fabricated in 1616, which was nevertheless subject to a different ceremonial handling than the Hungarian, Bohemian, and imperial crowns (see figure 1.1). Since the Habsburg dominion over the archduchy was hereditary and all members of the house shared the title of archduke or archduchess, there was no need to place this fancy hat on the head of the new sovereign. Instead, it was simply carried and presented during the ceremony. But the way in which the hat was stored is reminiscent of the practice in Bohemia until the 1620s (where the crown was kept in the royal castle at Karlštejn, which was in the control of the Estates) and in Hungary since 1608 (where the crown was stored in a locked chest in Pressburg Castle). The Lower Austrian archducal hat was kept in Klosterneuburg Abbey and solemnly brought to Vienna by a committee of the Lower Austrian Estates on the occasion of the inauguration.⁶

Figure 1.1. The key moment of the Lower Austrian homage ceremony in Vienna in 1705: the Lower Austrian Estates—prelates, nobles, and townsmen—gathered in the Hofburg to pledge fealty to Emperor Joseph I surrounded by the holders of the hereditary offices presenting the archducal hat and other regalia and symbols. Engraving embellishing the printed volume published by the Estates to commemorate Joseph I’s inauguration (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, shelfmark Res/2 Austr. 69: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0007/bsb00077459/images/; CC license, Art. 25 para. 1 clause 2 ABOB).

Coronations and homage ceremonies in the Habsburg Monarchy shared many other elements: from acoustic signals such as bell ringing, drums, and gunshots to customary manifestations of generosity by way of distributing commemorative medals and coins or making bread, meat, and a wine fountain available to the crowd. The newly invented Huldigung of Galicia and Lodomeria, staged in Lemberg in 1773 (see Chapter 8 in this volume), also made use of this standard repertoire: gunshots were fired, coins were thrown to the populace, bread was handed out, oxen were roasted—like in Frankfurt on the occasion of an imperial coronation⁷—and alcoholic beverages were available, with the characteristic difference that the crowd received beer and spirits instead of wine.⁸

Each inaugural rite also had distinct elements, of course. The king dismounting a horse before the welcoming committee of the Estates, and subsequently the provincial captain leading the horse with the king by bridle through the streets of one of the provincial capital towns, be it Olomouc or Brno, were crucial components of the inaugural ceremony in Moravia.⁹ In the Austrian Netherlands, the oath taking occurred in the open on sophisticated, ephemeral constructions¹⁰ for which hardly any parallels can be found in Central European Habsburg provinces (see figure 6.1). Triumphal arches were designed for many investitures, but few were as magnificent as those erected by the Silesian “princes and Estates” in Breslau between 1563 and 1620.¹¹ In Carinthia, archaic medieval rituals initially performed in the open outside of Klagenfurt were significantly reduced and eventually abandoned entirely in 1660, but they remained associated with the inauguration, and Habsburg rulers continued to issue charters confirming the right of the Estates to require the performance from their successors.¹²

Similarly, coronations differed from each other in essential aspects. Bohemian coronations were performed exclusively at the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague; only the banquet took place at the nearby royal palace.¹³ By contrast, five different locations inside and outside the city walls were needed for a Hungarian coronation, regardless of whether it took place in Székesfehérvár, Pressburg, Sopron, or Buda: two churches (for the coronation proper and for the subsequent accolade), a wooden stage on which the king took his oath, and an artificial hill to the top of which he galloped on his horse, waving his sword in four directions; the banquet eventually took place at the royal castle.¹⁴ All these ceremonies thus combined common and individual components—but they were all inaugural rites, their function being to transform a new ruler into a rightful and legitimate sovereign.

Numbers

Statistics may help us to comprehend the scope of this subject.¹⁵ Between 1526 and 1800, twenty-one different rulers from the German branch of the House of Austria—both Habsburg and Habsburg-Lorraine—participated in person in no less than 108 investitures.¹⁶ This number encompasses imperial coronations as well as inaugural rites at the provincial level, including those that pertained to Habsburg cadet branches residing in Graz and Innsbruck. I am excluding inaugurations in autonomous municipalities in hereditary possession (Trieste and Fiume) and homages in Habsburg petty lordships in Upper Germany, which deserve a separate focus.¹⁷ Likewise excluded are unilateral oaths of loyalty provided by various subjects of the Holy Roman Empire, such as the Lokalhuldigungen by imperial cities systematically enforced since 1660¹⁸ and the Kaiserhuldigungen of the Jewry of Frankfurt introduced in 1711.¹⁹ These did not fully adopt the character of investitures despite being related to imperial elections and coronations. For the purpose of this statistic, election and coronation count as one act,²⁰ and the same applies to “composite” inaugural ceremonies where different corporations of a province took oaths of loyalty in different ways and at separate occasions. If these were counted separately, the numbers would be even higher.

These 108 early modern personal inaugural rites relate to fifteen political units of differing scope and relevance. Over a period of almost three hundred years, there were fourteen personal investitures in the Holy Roman Empire; thirteen in Hungary; twelve each in Bohemia and Lower Austria; ten in Tyrol; eight in Upper Austria; six in Moravia; five in Silesia (with this number being a simplification, as will be explained later); another five in certain Silesian duchies; four each in Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Upper Lusatia, and Lower Lusatia; two in Gorizia, and one for Brabant and Limburg combined. In addition to these 108 personal investitures, there were twenty-two coronations of Habsburg rulers’ consorts during the same period: eleven in Hungary, eight in Bohemia, and five in the Holy Roman Empire.²¹ Maria Theresa, crowned in Hungary and Bohemia as rex, not regina, is not included in this category. Furthermore, the personal investitures of two unsuccessful “usurpers”—Frederick of the Palatinate and Charles Albert of Bavaria—could likewise be examined in the context of Habsburg inaugural rites, since they were provided more or less deliberately by the Estates of various Habsburg provinces.²²

It should be stressed that all the above figures refer to personal enthronements. In addition, there were homage ceremonies during which a commissioner acted in place of the new ruler. Some of these events were inconspicuous and thus often neglected by historians, while others like those in Brussels and Ghent during the eighteenth century were quite splendid. If we take account of these as well, we have at least ninety or presumably even more additional ceremonies: around half of them in the eighteenth-century Austrian Netherlands, the rest in Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Gorizia, Silesia, Croatia, Transylvania, Milan, Mantua, Parma and Piacenza, Galicia, Bukovina—and probably in other provinces as well. Altogether, there were around two hundred inaugural rituals of some importance that could and should be examined together if we intend to grasp the entire landscape of early modern Habsburg investitures.

The Habsburg Inaugural Process

The number of ceremonies—surprisingly large compared to other European monarchies—reflects an essential feature of the Habsburg concept of kingship in a state that was utterly composite. Admittedly, early modern Europe was a continent of composite monarchies, each of them structured in its own distinct fashion. It is through the lens of inaugural rites, however, that we can uncover the essential peculiarity of the Habsburg case. Although the Habsburg agglomeration in Central Europe largely consisted of contiguous territorial blocks and quickly developed into a viable financial and military union of growing effe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Note on Place Names
• Introduction. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Coronations and Inaugurations in the Habsburg Monarchy: Why Do They Matter?
• Chapter 1. The Care of Thrones: A Plethora of Investitures in the Habsburg Composite Monarchy and Beyond from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century
• Chapter 2. Meaningless Spectacles? Eighteenth-Century Imperial Coronations in the Holy Roman Empire Reconsidered
• Chapter 3. The Hungarian Coronations of Charles VI and Leopold II and the Representation of Political Compromise
• Chapter 4. Maria Theresa, the Habsburgs, and the Hungarian Coronations in the Light of the Coronation Medals, 1687–1741
• Chapter 5. The Bohemian Coronation of Charles VI and Its Hidden Message
• Chapter 6. Inaugurations in the Austrian Netherlands: Flexible Formats at the Interface between Constitution, Political Negotiation, and Representation
• Chapter 7. Conditioning Sovereignty in the Austrian Netherlands: The Joyous Entry Charter and the Inauguration of Maria Theresa in Brabant
• Chapter 8. Shaping a New Habsburg Territory: The 1773 Lemberg Act of Homage and the Galician Polish Nobility
• Chapter 9. Pageantry in the Revolutionary Age: Inaugural Rites in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790–1848
• Chapter 10. After 1848: The Heightened Constitutional Importance of the Habsburg Coronation in Hungary
• Afterword. The Last Habsburg Coronation and What It Means to Be Anointed
• Index