1. Our thanks go to François Avril for his generous and illuminating help.

2. The text of the ordo of Reims can be found in U. Chevalier, Sacramentaire et martyrologie de l'abbaye de Saint Remy. Martyrologie, calendriers, ordinaires et prosaire de la métropole de Reims (VIIIe-XIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1900), 22-26. The text of the ordo of 1250 has been published by Theodore et Denis Godefroy, Le ceremonial français (Paris, 1619) 1: 13-25 (Latin text) and 26-30 (French translation from the end of the thirteenth century).

3. We are greatly indebted to Richard A. Jackson for his general study of French royal ordines: Vive le Roi! A History of the French coronation ceremony from Charles V to Charles X (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984) which contains the indispensible bibliography.

4. V. Leroquais, Les pontificaux manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France (Paris, 1937) 2: 145 ff.; see Bonne, in this volume.

5. See above, n. 2.

6. The works of the great German historian Percy Ernst Schramm remain fundamental, although the manuscript datings are dubious and the orientation is somewhat outdated (he pays too much attention to insignia, to the detriment of the rituals, and fails to recognize the specific character of the liturgical texts): Der König von Frankreich. Das Wesen der Monarchie vom 9. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (Weimar, 1939); "Ordines-Studien II" in Archiv für Urkundenforschung 15 (1938): 3-55.

7. On rites of passage: Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage (Paris, 1909), 2d ed. (Paris, 1969); Robert Hertz, Sociologie religieuse et folklore (Paris, 1928), 2d ed. (Paris, 1970); Victor Turner, Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication: the logic by which Symbols are Connected. An Introduction to the Use of Structuralist Analysis in Social Anthropology , (Cambridge, 1976), esp. 77-79. The best thinking on the liturgical character of the ordines and on the possibilities of comparing them with inauguration rituals studied by anthropologists can be found in the work of Janet L. Nelson, especially her article "Inauguration Rituals," now in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986). The most useful work concerning comparable African rituals is M. Fortes, "Of Installation Ceremonies," in Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute for 1967 , 5-20.

8. F. Lot, "Quelques mots sur l'origine des pairs de France", Revue historique 104 (1894): 34-59.

9. Jackson, Vive le Roi , 134.

10. Ibid., 135.

11. Van Gennep, Les rites , 156.

12. Jean Beleth (Parisian master of the end of the twelveth century), Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis , CC Cont. Med. CLI/A, p. 297: "De sancto Remigio: Sanctus Remigius Gallorum dicitur pontifex, quoniam primus regem Gallorum inunxit, atque ideo in tanto honore et veneratione habetur in Francia, ut festum illud obfuscet festum beati Michaelis."

13. Cf. M. David, Le serment du sacre du IXe au XVe siècle. Contribution à l'étude des limites juridiques de la souveraineté , (Strasbourg, 1951), first published in Revue du Moyen Age latin 6 (1950): 5-272).

14. These come from the Anglo-Saxon ritual (consecration of Edgar in 973 where they were pronounced before the anointing) and were introduced into the French ritual through the ordo of Fulrad ( c. 980), which was used for the first time at the consecration of Louis VI (1108), but they were pronounced at the end of the ceremony. The people (populus) were added for the consecration of Philip I (1059).

15. Cf. Hervé Pinoteau, "La tenue de sacre de Saint Louis IX, roi de France. Son arrière-plan symbolique et la 'renovatio regni Juda,'" Itinéraires 162: 120-166; reprinted in his Vingt-cing ans d'études dynastiques (Paris, 1982), 447-504.

16. Of course, the parallel to rites of passage, where there is a place to "assemble" or "aggregate" (in Van Gennep's word) for the initiated, can be drawn only metaphorically, for the king is the only one of his kind in any society.