The Significance of the Regal Consecration of Edgar in 973

In the history of medieval regal and imperial anointing the consecration of Edgar as king of the Angles and Saxons in 973 deserves very special attention. For the ceremony, performed seventeen years after Edgar's succession to the throne of Mercia and fourteen years after he had become king of Wessex, was apparently without precedent either in biblical or medieval times. How are we to make sense of a consecration which by its very nature should inaugurate the reign and constitute the king, and which now took place more than a decade and a half after Edgar had been firmly in power? If we consider the consecration against the background of contemporary continental customs then the magnitude of the problem emerges in all its clarity, for by the late tenth century inaugural anointing had assumed its place at the opening of the reigns of most of the kings of western Europe. Regal consecration had been customary among the Franks for well over a century and for nearly as long in Burgundy; there is evidence that anointing took place from an early date in the small Christian kingdoms of Spain, and finally, after the consecration of Otto 1 in 936, inaugural anointing also became established in the German kingdom. In each case the Old Testament provided the pattern for the anointings: it was the pouring on of the holy oil which worked the regeneration of the prince in virum alium (1 Kings x.6), giving him a new heart (1 Kings x.9) and thereby constituting him as ruler over God's people (1 Kings x.1). Henceforth the spirit of God was with the king (1 Kings x.8) and as the christus Domini he enjoyed divine sanction and protection (1 Kings xxiv.7)

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