A tale of two coronations
Like his Habsburg counterpart, Charles III has also stepped into a frame dominated by the previous reign.
In November 1916, Budapest, after two years of war amidst growing poverty and unrest, news reached the city in the late autumn evening that Emperor Franz Joseph had died. For many who could not conceive a universe without the stately and pervasive image of the eighty-six-year-old ruler, time itself seemed to be unravelling.
There were of course pressing anxieties that even such a venerable presence could not still: military setbacks and an antediluvian command structure had stagnated operations and led to the ceding of overall command to Berlin. Elsewhere the industrial heartlands of the Czech regions were growing restive and bread was becoming ever scarcer.
At such a time the loss of the imperial linchpin was a grim and foreboding portend.
In reality the tranquillity now sorely missing was not an effortless fiat of monarchy but the result of compromise, fruitful inertia and an indomitable sense of pageantry. Franz Joseph had ascended the throne during the great crisis of 1848, when a series of revolutions threatened the continued existence of the Habsburg Empire; repression had been necessary and, particularly in Hungary, resentment had smouldered on for decades before discord was transformed gradually into the mediated settlement of 1867.
Now, after an initial service in Vienna, the Kingdom of Hungary would have to renew its commitment to Charles IV of the House of Habsburg in the most testing possible circumstances.
Fortunately the Magyars were blessed with a dazzling heritage: atop the hills of Buda, the gothic escarpment of Fisherman’s Bastion abutted the Matyas Church, site of the coronation, providing a breath-taking panorama for the ceremony. It was further sanctified by the thousand-year-old coronation mantle miraculously preserved through centuries of turbulence.
These elements however were simply preparatory for the spiritual and constitutional kernel of the occasion- the crown of Saint Stephen.
Uniquely, royal power was not vested in a person but in this sacred object which bound its wearer to the Hungarian people and the freedoms inherent in the Golden Bull of 1222, a close parallel of the Magna Carta of 1215, which asserted essential freedoms and restrained the power of the king. This presented an intriguing comparison to the British tradition.
Assuming the role of choreographer was the Transylvanian Count Miklos Banffy, artist, writer and occasional statesman, who had just twenty-six days to make the arrangements. Often wry and always candid, Banffy recorded in his memoir of the event ‘The Phoenix Land’ that:
‘It was a weird mixture of medieval sorcerer’s cavern and some disordered builder’s shed, and if anyone unfamiliar with our work had come in unawares he must have thought he had stumbled into an asylum where raving lunatics were incarcerated’
Such a remark charmingly downplays Banffy’s own dedication and skill but also overlooks the artistic talent at his disposal. One effect of Hungary’s resumption into the empire had been an economic resurgence giving opportunities to talented young architects and designers; Budapest in particular had been massively enriched by this confluence of imagination and capital.
Creative energies did have to comply with dourer realities as fears of demonstration restricted the available space and questions over Prime Minister Istvan Tisza’s suitability to officiate as a Protestant risked sectarian tension.
More urgent still was the need to shore up the faltering unity of the Central Powers and their allies in a moment of regal solidarity. Alert to the public mood and moral climate, Banffy subdued this pomp by having the guard of honour comprised of visibly wounded men - a salutary reminder of the ongoing sacrifice made by the Hungarian army.
Throughout, Charles IV remained an emollient figure, personally courteous and receptive, the twenty-nine-year old and his beautiful Empress Zita offered the hope of rejuvenation and political retrenchment. A sign of the times was the film reel of the occasion played in all cinemas across the empire, an innovation unthinkable under his predecessor.
A century apart in a different country another age old ritual has just been played out. Like his Habsburg counterpart, Charles III has also stepped into a frame dominated by the previous reign. At seventy-four his power to assert his identity and negotiate the fractures of his own era are the natural focal point.
One challenge is image, in a twenty-four hour news cycle, curating royal myth has become near impossible as family disagreements are distorted and amplified by celebrity culture. Related to this is a digital culture which now eternally preserves every utterance and action however regrettable.
These present some difficulties to a man who has been in the public eye for sixty years and endured well-publicised turmoil in his private life.
Against this background the coronation seems a powerful solvent, an ordinance at once flexible and impenetrable, a rubric durable enough to allow a Hindu Prime Minister to participate yet reverently preserving of hallowed mysteries.
Much of Britain’s character and settlement seem to rest on a harmonious confusion and this coronation has extended and expounded this tendency, where else would a chrism blessed by an Orthodox Patriarch be borne in a Catholic tradition to ratify a Protestant oath?
Such fertile ambivalence may yet ease the contradictions between the foundations of the monarchy and the pressures of the modern day.
We all know that in 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell and Charles IV was compelled to abdicate. This though is an incomplete reckoning. By reiterating the sovereignty of Saint Stephen’s crown, Hungary created a legitimacy that could not be suborned by demagogues or extremists. It’s nimbus of power staved off one Communist revolution and gave opportunities for an interwar revival. That tragedy still ensued is a witness to the fundamental struggle between grace and power forever dramatized in our coronations.