Christmas at Court

Christmas and the Twelve Days of Christmas, culminating with the Epiphany, was a major period of feasting in the Christian Courts of Europe.

From The European Conservative

By Charles Coulombe, KC*SS, STM

In each imperial or royal court—as well as in that of the popes—Christmas and its Twelve Days were a major celebration.

He [Charlemagne] at first had such an aversion to being granted the imperial title that he declared that he would not have set foot in the Church the day that these imperial titles were conferred, although it was a great feast-day, if he could have foreseen the design of the Pope.

—Einhard, Vita Karoli.

Christmas is almost upon us. As we all know, it is the birth of the King of Kings—second person of the Holy Trinity according to His divine nature, rightful heir to the Davidic kingship of Israel according to His humanity. St. Gabriel the Archangel appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary; having announced the birth of her son, Jesus, the Heavenly visitor declared: “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end.” (Luke 1:32-33). This Davidic kingship He united at the Last Supper with the Communio of the church He was founding—an action symbolised by the washing of the feet (which in later centuries would become a major ceremony throughout the Christian courts for this reason). Of course, so long as the Church had no temporal home but was an illegal body in all the countries in which she grew, the participation in the kingship of Christ by earthly Sovereigns was purely in potentia, so to speak. 

But in A.D. 303 came the conversion of King Tiridates III of Armenia—followed ten years later by Constantine the Great legalising Christianity in the Roman Empire. In 319, King Mirian III brought Georgia into the Faith, followed in 341 by Ethiopia’s King Ezana. Catholicism had spread so quickly through the Empire that by 380, Theodosius the Great enacted the Edict of Thessalonica, which both established the Church as the religion of the Empire and made baptism the entry into citizenship as well as into the Church. This remained the case for both eventual heirs to the Empire—Holy Roman and Byzantine—and to the barbarian kingdoms that arose within their boundaries and expanded outside, from Portugal to Russia. In each Imperial or Royal Court—as well as in that of the Popes—Christmas and its Twelve Days were a major celebration.

Such sovereigns were considered at once “mixed” persons partaking of both clerical and lay status. The birth of Him whom they considered their prototype and master led to many of them deciding (or in the case of Charlemagne, having it decided for him) to have their coronations on Christmas Day. Dom Gueranger tells us,

In order to impress the nations of Europe, that is, of the favored portion of the Church, with the importance of this ever-blessed day, God, who is the Sovereign Ruler of all things, has willed that on it certain events should happen of intense interest. We will select three of these. To begin with the first in order of time: it was on a Christmas Day that the Kingdom of the Franks was founded; for it was on this glorious Solemnity that King Clovis was baptized at Rheims by St. Remigius. The haughty Sicambrian, thus admitted into the Fold of Christ, became a meek and humble Christian, and the founder of the first Catholic monarchy, which is now the nation of France … A century later, that is in the year 596, [England] was converted to the true faith by the labours of St Augustine, of whom St. Gregory the Great, who sent him, says: ‘he was a Monk of my Monastery.’ This holy Missionary had baptized King Ethelbert, and traveled through the land, preaching everywhere the name and Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ … Three hundred years after this, God gives us another glorious event in honor of the Birthday of his Son. It was on this divine Anniversary, in the year 800, and at Rome, in the Basilica of St. Peter, that the Holy Roman Empire was created, to which God assigned the grand mission of propagating the Kingdom of Christ among the barbarian nations of the North, and of upholding, under the direction of the Sovereign Pontiffs, the confederation and unity of Europe.

To these three may be added many more, including Stephen I of Hungary, Mieszko II Lambert of Poland, Holy Roman Emperor Henry III, William the Conqueror, Bolesław II of Poland, Baldwin I of Jerusalem, and Roger II of Sicily.

Coronations aside, Christmas was a great thing at every court, but perhaps at none so much as the Papal Court in Rome. But even as the Church suffused all of the Yuletide celebrations of earthly sovereigns, so too did the temporal side of things appear at the Vatican. As mentioned above, Christian monarchs were held to be “mixed persons.” The Holy Roman Emperor after his coronation was enrolled as a canon of St. Peter’s, and whenever present in Rome would act as deacon at the Papal Mass; the King of France received the same honour from St. John Lateran and acted as subdeacon. The Kings of England and Spain were made canons of St. Paul Outside the Walls and St. Mary Major respectively.

On Christmas Eve at St. Peter’s, until the 19th century, a ceremony occurred which Dom Gueranger describes thus:

The Sovereign Pontiff, the Vicar of our Emmanuel, blesses, in his name, a Sword and Helmet, which are to be sent to some Catholic warrior who has deserved well of the Christian world. In a letter addressed to Queen Mary of England and to Philip, her husband, Cardinal Pole gives an explanation of this solemn rite. “The sword is sent to some Prince, whom the Vicar of Christ wishes to honor in the name of Jesus, who is King: for the Angel said to Mary: The Lord will give him the Throne of David his father. It is from him alone that the power of the sword comes; for God said to Cyrus: I have girded thee (with the sword); and the Psalmist thus speaks to the Christ of God: Gird thy Sword upon thy thigh, O thou most Mighty! And because the Sword should not be drawn save in the cause of justice, it is for that reason that a Sword is blessed on this Night, in the midst of which rises, born unto us, the divine Sun of Justice. On the Helmet, which is both the ornament and protection of the head, there is worked, in pearls, the Dove, which is the emblem of the Holy Ghost; and this to teach him who wears it that it is not from passion or ambition that he must use his sword, but solely under the guidance of the divine Spirit, and from a motive of spreading the Kingdom of Christ.”

To our modern ears, that may sound a bit odd; but the good Benedictine explains it further:

How beautiful is this union of energy and meekness under the one symbol and ceremony! This power of blending and harmonizing the varied beauty of distinct kinds of truth is not to be found save in that Christian Rome, which is our Mother and where God has established the center of Light and Love. The ceremony we have been describing is still observed. What a grand list it would be, had we the names of all those glorious Christian Warriors, who were thus created Knights of the Church, at this solemn hour, when we celebrated the Birth of him who came to vanquish our enemy! We are going to adore this Babe in his Crib; let us think of our Mother’s teaching, and pay homage to him as our Prince and King, and kiss him to humble the enemies of his Church, and vanquish those who are linked against both our perfection and our salvation.

We do have one advantage over Dom Gueranger—the list he desired!

That ceremony concluded the Matins of Christmas Day, but Midnight Mass yet to come, and the recipient of the sword had a liturgical role to play:

At Rome, if there be in the Holy City the Knight, who has received the Helmet and Sword,—blessed, as we have described, by the Sovereign Pontiff—the fifth Lesson is given to him to sing, because it speaks of the great Battle, between Christ and Satan, in the glorious mystery of the Incarnation. Whilst the Choir is singing the Responsory O magnum mysterium, the Knight is taken, by the Master of Ceremonies, to the Pope. Standing before the Holy Father, he draws his Sword, thrice sets its point on the ground, thrice brandishes it in the air, and then wipes the blade upon his left arm. He is then taken to the Ambo, or reading-desk, takes off his Helmet, and, having vested the Cope over his armour, he sings the Lesson. These ceremonies of our holy Mother, the Church of Rome, were drawn up in days, when might was not right, and brute force was made subservient to moral power and principle. The Christian Warrior, cased in his steel armour, was resolved, as indeed he was bound, never to draw his Sword save in the cause of Christ, the conqueror of Satan—was there anything strange in his expressing this by a sacred ceremony?

Dom Gueranger reveals one other interesting note about the Christmas Eve Matins:

The first of the three [readings] is that of St. Luke, and the Homily given is that of St. Gregory the Great. It relates the publishing of the Emperor Augustus’ edict, commanding a census of the whole world. This seventh Lesson, according to the Ceremonial of the Roman Church, is to be sung by the Emperor, if he happen to be in Rome at the time; and this is done, in order to honour the Imperial power, whose decrees were the occasion of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, and so fulfilling the designs of God, which he had revealed to the ancient Prophets. The Emperor is led to the Pope, in the same manner as the Knight who had to sing the fifth Lesson; he puts on the Cope; two Cardinal-Deacons gird him with the sword, and go with him to the Ambo. The Lesson being concluded, the Emperor again goes before the Pope, and kisses his foot, as being the Vicar of the Christ whom he has just announced. This ceremony was observed in 1468, by the Emperor Frederic III, before the then Pope, Paul II.

In the rest of Christendom’s courts, Christmas was kept in a similar manner by Kings and Emperors as by their subjects. A penitential Advent was followed by Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve in palace chapels all across Europe. Some of the Monarchs—most notably the King of France—had various liturgical functions during the Masses of Christmas. Each Imperial and Royal Chapel had its own musical establishment, often presided over by some of the greatest composers of the day; their Christmas Masses remain an important part of the world’s musical heritage. Up until the 19th century, Christmas retained this austere religious quality—revelry and gift-giving being reserved for either or both New Year’s or the Epiphany, depending upon the national traditions.

But in the aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleon, both court and popular practise began to focus on Christmas as a time of home celebration. The spread of the Christmas tree symbolised this development and was often spurred on by its adoption by the local sovereign. In Austria, as “The World of the Habsburgs” website tells us:

Christmas 1816 saw the first Christmas tree, festively decked with candles, in the Habsburg family. Emperor Franz I attended this celebration and was so taken with the magical aura of the Christmas tree that he ordered a tree to be put up in the Hofburg at Christmas from then on. Subsequently it became the norm in Catholic families to celebrate Christmas round the tree.

On 24 December 1817, at the initiative of Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna, a home Christmas tree was arranged in the private chambers of the Imperial family in Moscow, and the following year at the Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg. In Greece this custom came for the first time with the Bavarian King Otto in 1833. Four years later, a Christmas Tree appeared for the first time at the Tuileries Palace in Paris, followed by Windsor Castle in 1841—both introduced by German royals who had married into the local royal family; at the same time it made its debut at the Dutch court with Crown Prince William and his German wife Sophie. The example of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, who had introduced the tree to his wife Queen Victoria’s court, was followed around 1844, by his uncle, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. As King Consort of Portugal, in that year he placed a tree in the Royal Palace of Necessidades, in Lisbon, and decorated it to celebrate with his seven children and the Queen, Maria II. In 1870, the first Christmas tree in Madrid was set up by a prominent supporter of the exiled Alfonso XII; upon his return to power five years later, the Spanish king made the tree an integral part of his Court’s Christmas. Around the same time Queen Margherita of Italy (whose mother was yet another Saxe-Coburg Gotha) introduced the custom at the Quirinale Palace in Rome. In country after country, subjects followed their monarchs, until the Christmas tree became the ubiquitous feature of the holiday that it is to-day. Alongside this, gift giving as increasingly practised at royal courts became the rule in less elevated homes. 

As throne after throne was toppled over the course of the 20th century, the remaining reigning royals’ Christmases were seen as indistinguishable from those of their subjects. But with the birth of radio and then television, a Christmas or New Year message from the monarch marking the holiday became an integral part of the observance for their subjects. In the past several decades—in keeping with the increasing secularisation of society, and because of the fact that in most countries the political establishment has a veto over said speech—they have had a tendency to become a colourless look back at the previous year, with little or no mention of the birth of Christ. The British monarchy has been an exception to the rule; moreover; although buried at Sandringham in the wilds of Norfolk for the actual day, the British royals very publicly attend Christmas services at Sandringham Church.

The former 12-day-long celebration is now a thing of the past. But New Year’s Day, even if no longer the gift-giving day of yore, retains some importance in the surviving courts. In days gone by, the sovereign would attend a High Mass in the morning, followed by a banquet, and then a reception for the great figures of the realm and the foreign ambassadors. Today, something of this remains in the annual reception for the Diplomatic Corps on this day. The Viceregal Courts in Canada maintain the tradition of the Levee to this day.

The Epiphany, with which the Twelve Days close, was formerly lavishly celebrated at royal courts—not least because of the homage of the three kings to Christ which is one of the things it commemorates. The eve, Twelfth Night, was an occasion of raucous celebration for the royals and their friends. But the feast itself was quite different, as Dom Gueranger tells us:

The race of Emperors like Julian and Valens was to be followed by Monarchs, who would bend their knee before this Babe of Bethlehem, and offer him the homage of orthodox faith and devoted hearts. Theodosius, Charlemagne, our own Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, Stephen of Hungary, the Emperor Henry 2nd, Ferdinand of Castile, Louis 9th of France, are examples of Kings who had a special devotion to the Feast of the Epiphany. Their ambition was to go, in company with the Magi, to the feet of the Divine Infant, and offer him their gifts. At the English Court, the custom is still retained, and the reigning Sovereign offers an ingot of Gold as a tribute of homage to Jesus the King of kings: the ingot is afterwards redeemed by a certain sum of money.

This remains the case to-day, and the Royal Epiphany Service remains one of the most impressive ceremonies of the Court of King Charles III.

For all that so much has changed regarding the celebration of Christmas over the 20 centuries since the first one, to say nothing of conditions in Church and state, the heart of the feast remains the same. May the birth of Christ remind us all of the redemption He has brought us and the loyalty we owe Him thereby; may it bring us rulers who see in Him an example to follow in dealing with us; and may we repay Him and such leaders if, as, and when they appear with service worthy of the chivalry of yesteryear. Above all, dear readers, may you all have as merry a Christmas and as happy a New Year and Epiphany as any of our forebears enjoyed in days gone by—and may better yet be in store for us all!

Pictured: The Crowning of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III, Christmas Day, AD 800, from Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis, volume 1, France, second quarter of the 14th century