Funeral

Compelled as I am on this occasion to regard "state" ceremonials exclusively in light of their inaugural aspects, the shape of the French royal funeral in my mind changes somewhat from the way I described it twenty-five years ago. I have to say that right now I see the royal funeral serving an explicitly inaugural purpose only very briefly, in the fifteenth century, well before the full bloom of the Renaissance ceremonial. That occurred at the graveside scene, just before the coffin was finally interred. The household officers' batons, along with the sword and banner of France, were lowered and raised in accompaniment to the cries for the old and the new kings. In the early stage

of elaboration of this ritual, the cries contained the Christian names of the dead and the living kings, as for example: Le roi Charles est mort! Vive le Roi Louis! In effect, I would argue, the beginning of the reign of a specific king was fictively embedded in the ceremonial obsequies of his predecessor. This was enhanced considerably by the fact that up to the moment of those funerary cries the new king's name was never mentioned—indeed, his very existence was not recognized since he was required by custom to absent himself from the ceremony and be out of the public eye.^[5]

Early in the sixteenth century, however, the Christian names were dropped, giving us the classic expression Le roi est mort! Vive le roi!^[6] I do not regard this as inaugural, for the reference is not to Charles or Louis or Francis but to that one fictional King with a capital "K"—the body corporate, the Dignitas regiae —who never dies. No king is being inaugurated: kingship itself its being acclaimed perpetual. The royal officials who stood over the mortal remains of the king's body natural while they proclaimed the instantaneous renewal of the King's body corporate were dramatizing the concept of the "King's two bodies" as well as any jurisconsult of the time was able to express it in words. The best I can come up with, in truly inaugural terms, is to say that the classic, anonymous version of the funeral cries, by their announcing that kingship is ever alive, provide a fictional legitimacy for the fact that the new king had been exercising the full powers of royal office from the moment his predecessor had died—that is, the graveside cries reinforced the principle begun in 1270 that effective rulership should never cease.

The lifelike funeral effigy of the dead king, around which grew up the grandest display of the king's corporate self, was never displayed at the graveside ritual in St. Denis. It had been carried, triumphally displayed, separately from the encoffined body on a shrouded wagon during the funeral cortège within Paris and out to St. Denis, but then was retired.^[7] During the final interment the ritual was entirely liturgical, focused upon the dead king, until the spell was broken by the final half of the graveside cries by hailing the new king: Vive le roi!

Allowing fancy free reign, one could imagine some representation of the new king being introduced at that moment, or even the new king himself appearing. But the new king was prohibited by custom from appearing at his predecessor's funeral. Such was not the case at ducal funerals, however, and here we do find that the mise au tombeau could be structured as a truly inaugural event. The House of Lorraine, which copied the French royal funeral ceremony over the span of a century, shows this most clearly. At the beginning, in 1508, the deceased prince, René II, happened to claim the Kingdom of Sicily in addition to his fundamental dignity as Duke of Lorraine. His successor, his son Antoine, did not claim Sicily, however, and this led to the following oddity at the climax of René's funeral. The herald-at-arms began the ritual with the cry: Le tres hault, tres puissant et tres illustre roy, nostre souverain

seigneur et maitre, est mort, le roy est mort! le roy est mort! He then called for the various ducal and royal emblems, batons, and so forth to be deposited in the grave. Finally, the master of the horse, who had deposited the royal sword, descended into the grave and recovered it, raised it on high and cried out: Vive nostre souverain seigneur et maitre le duc de Lorraine! Vice le duc! vive le duc!^{[ 8]}

There are no Christian names attached to the old and new princes, but since the deceased was a king but his successor only a duke, the necessity to formulate the graveside cries as Le roy est mort! Vive le duc! makes it clear that no one undying office is being referred to. The new duke was probably there, and it is even possible that the sword emblemizing his power was carried before him as he left the church.

Such was surely done a century later, in 1608, when Charles III, Grand Duke of Lorraine, was buried at Nancy. He had an effigy ritual that copied the French royal practice in details and perhaps exceeded it in splendor. On the other hand, the graveside ritual, close as it appears to the French formulation in style, embodied elements of constitutional significance that the French royal model could not. Not only was the grand duke's son present but also the sword and other emblems of sovereign power were carried before him in a most pompous fashion as he left the funeral. It was a veritable ceremonial of inauguration, the likes of which were quite impossible in the French royal counterpart: the new king was barred from attending his predecessor's funeral in the first place, and, even if he had been allowed to be there, any form of inaugural ceremonial would have been forestalled by Reims' exclusive claim to inaugural prerogatives. Ironically, therefore, dukes could borrow royal ceremonial apparatus and do with it things the kings could not. In the case at hand, the dukes were freer because they had no proper coronation rite and, in general, did not have a two bodies theory to contend with.^[9]