Les Rois thaumaturges
Les Rois thaumaturges: Étude sur le caractère supernaturel attribué à la puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (The Royal touch : Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France[1]) is a work by historian Marc Bloch first published in 1924.
Five appendices follow: "The royal miracle in French and English accounting books", "An iconographic dossier", "The beginnings of royal anointing and coronations", "Analysis and excerpts from Traité du sacre by Jean Golein [fr]" and "The French kings' pilgrimage to Corbeny after the coronation and the transport of saint Marculf's shrine to Reims", plus six pages of additions and corrections.
Giving the king a sacred character was a means of consolidating monarchical power over the people, in a feudal system where God's grace was (in theory) the fundamental requirement for ascending the throne.
Unlike the Roman pontiff or the Byzantine emperor, heirs to the Church of Christ, directors of spirituality and spokesmen of the Creator's own will, temporal princes had to constantly "reinvent" the concept of their sacred, i.e. God-given, right to rule Christian kingdoms.
In the introduction to his essay, he recalls Edward III of England's message to Philip VI of France, in which he orders him to abdicate the throne as unworthy of the title, since he is not directly descended from the legitimate line and is therefore not worthy of being consecrated to reign; if he wished to avoid a war (the one that came to be known as the Hundred Years' War), he would have to show the qualities proper to a sovereign: fight the other suitor in a fair duel, where God would judge who deserved the throne, or expose himself to hungry lions inside a cage, because the lion, a proud and noble animal, would never attack a legitimate sovereign.
Indeed, it was customary for princes to attend the sick during a solemn mass, celebrated by France's highest ecclesiastical dignitaries (the bishops of Chartres, Reims or Le Puy) ; since under the eyes of God and his ministers, in the sacred mystery of communion under both kinds, the healing powers of princes acquired a real form and manifested themselves as true emanations of the divine will, assuming a totally sacred connotation, free from any suspicion of paganism or heresy.
Les Rois thaumaturges thus analyzes another aspect of the so-called Investiture Controversy, a profound crisis arising from the antagonism between the various institutions over the legitimacy of their power on Earth and the possibility of directing the life of the Christian people (which often translated into the right to choose bishops and other power-holders in the Church alone, something which, thanks to the administration of state property, guaranteed great opportunities for enrichment).
It was in this episode that the rulers of France (whose titles included that of "Most Christian King") saw the source of their miraculous powers, an illustration of the constant renewal of the covenant between Christ's Church and the Crown.
In this book, the jurist Jacques Bonaud de Sauzet [fr] is considered one of the earliest apologists for the Valois, as he refutes the canonist Felino Maria Sandeo, who refused to recognize the thaumaturgical privilege of the kings of France as miraculous.
[3] In book I Chapter I, the author sets out to establish when the royal power to cure appeared: with Robert II of France (c. 972 – 1031), according Helgaud, and Henry I of England (c. 1068 – 1135).
Bloch believes that Robert II, called the Pious needed to strengthen his legitimacy, which he was able to do by claiming thaumaturgical virtues and suggests that Henry I then imitated him.
Gregory VII "denies temporal sovereigns even the most pious, the gift of the miracle" (Letter to bishop Hermann de Metz [fr], March 15, 1081).
However, France and England were scarcely touched by these ideas, until "the apologists of the French monarchy appealed, for the first time, ... to the royal miracle" - starting with Guillaume de Nogaret and Guillaume de Plaisians [fr], followed by Fra Tolomeo in Italy and William of Ockham in England (Octo questiones V cap vii-ix).
This narrative implied that the anointing he received was purely of divine origin: a symbol that kingship transcends mere human convention, deriving its legitimacy solely from either hereditary succession or election (1270s).
This notion underscored the idea that one assumes kingship immediately upon the demise of their predecessor, even if the importance of the coronation ceremony remained deeply ingrained in popular perception.
Bloch proceeds to delve into various legends, notably focusing on the narrative surrounding the Holy Ampulla (which belonged to the archbishops of Reims, endowing them with the authority to make sovereigns).
Subsequently, he explores the miraculous tale of the fleurs-de-lis and the oriflamme, both also believed to have descended from the heavens, like the power of healing, and all augmenting the aura of prestige surrounding the monarchy.
As for England, Bloch shows how the oil utilized for anointing ceremonies was purportedly bestowed upon Thomas Becket by the Virgin Mary herself.
Scepticism grew, and the miraculous power of kings had to be defended : William Tooker, A Treatise on Charisma sive Donum Sanationis (1597).
The beginnings of the royal anointing and coronation (Bloch goes back to the Visigothic kingdom of Spain, to Celtic countries, to the Byzantine Empire, etc.
Gérard Noiriel notes while only 1000 copies of the work were initially printed and the book went virtually unnoticed, it is today considered the inaugural masterpiece of the history of mentalities and of the French current of historical anthropology of the medieval West.
From December 12 to 14, 2024, a major symposium will be held in Lyon, the city where Marc Bloch was shot by the Gestapo, to celebrate the work's centenary.
