14 January 2023

Coronations

An absolutely fascinating bit of information on the earliest English Coronation Service. For the record, Legg was the son of John Wickham Legg, an MD who was the personal physician to HRH Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, and a writer on liturgics and ecclesiology.


 Because some people might consider coronations a topical topic, I am publishing occasional pieces on this subject, considered liturgically. Here is Leopold George Wickham Legg (son of ...).

 " ... was framed by no less a person than St Dunstan for the great coronation of King Edgar at Bath, when in 973 there was celebrated the final union under one sceptre of the Saxons, the Mercians, and the Northumbrians. ... long after it had been abandoned in its native land, it continued to be used for the coronation of the Kings of France, and it was last used at the coronation of the unhappy Charles X. Like his predecessors on the throne of the lilies, he was consecrated  with a prayer that he would not abandon the sceptre of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians, while it is clear that at one time the order spread to Italy, for a Milanese pontifical contains a Coronation Service of this selfsame recension, with the prayer that the King of Italy likewise may rule over the Saxons, Mercians and Northumbrians ..."

The second printing of this piece is dated 1936 ... how very ben trovato ..

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