Coronation of Napoleon

• 1. Introduction

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  The Coronation of Napoleon unfolded on the 2nd of December, 1804, inside Notre-Dame de Paris, and it left witnesses with a ceremony unlike anything France had seen before. An unmanned balloon, ablaze with three thousand lights arranged in the shape of an imperial crown, was launched from the front of the cathedral into the Paris sky. Below it, four to five thousand onlookers had held their places through intermittent overnight showers just to catch a glimpse. What drew them was not simply a change of ruler. It was the public birth of a new kind of authority in Europe. Who was this man who designed his own coronation from scratch, weaving together Carolingian tradition, the ancien regime, and the French Revolution into a single ceremony? Why did he insist on crowning himself? And what did it mean that the Pope of Rome had traveled all the way to Paris to watch it happen?

• 2. A Dynasty Built by Will

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  On the 18th of May, 1804, the Senat conservateur transformed the French First Republic's government by vesting it in an emperor. Napoleon's elevation was then approved by the French people in the constitutional referendum of 1804. The question of legitimacy, however, was more complicated than a vote. Napoleon needed to stand before international royalist and Roman Catholic circles as a ruler whose power had roots deeper than military conquest. He wanted to lay the foundation for a dynasty that could endure. "To be a king is to inherit old ideas and genealogy," he explained. "I don't want to descend from anyone." That statement shaped every choice made about the coronation's design. The traditional coronation crown had been destroyed during the French Revolution, so a new one was created to look medieval. It was called the "Crown of Charlemagne" for the occasion, linking Napoleon's line not to the Bourbon kings but to the ancient Carolingians. The sceptre was reputed to have belonged to Charles V, and the sword to Philip III. The golden bees embroidered on his crimson velvet coronation mantle were drawn from the Merovingian tomb of Childeric I, deliberately chosen to look past the Bourbon past and connect the new dynasty with an even older line.

• 3. Rewriting the Ritual

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  Pope Pius VII agreed to travel to Paris to officiate, and the initial plan was to follow the coronation liturgy in the Roman Pontifical. After the Pope arrived, Napoleon persuaded the papal delegation to allow several French elements into the rite. The singing of the Veni Creator Spiritus was introduced for the monarch's entrance procession. Chrism was used for the anointing instead of the oil of catechumens. The sacred oil was placed on the head and hands rather than the right arm and back of the neck. Prayers and formulas from French royal coronations were folded in to bless the regalia as it was delivered. The resulting rite was unique: neither purely Roman nor purely French but a new creation assembled for this single occasion. The ceremony also allowed Napoleon to remain mostly seated, rather than kneeling, during the delivery of the regalia and several other liturgical moments. His formal acceptance of the oath demanded by the Church at the start of the liturgy was reduced to one word. Every adjustment widened the distance between his coronation and the old consecration rites of the French kings, which had been conducted by the Archbishop of Reims at Reims Cathedral.

• 4. The Day Itself

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  Louis Constant Wairy, who recorded the day's details closely, noted that Napoleon awoke at 8:00 a.m. to the sound of a cannonade and left the Tuileries Palace at 11:00 a.m. dressed in a white velvet vest with gold embroidery and diamond buttons, a crimson velvet tunic, and a short crimson coat with satin lining, a wreath of laurel on his brow. The papal procession had begun earlier, at 9:00 a.m., led by a bishop on a mule carrying the papal crucifix aloft. The Pope entered Notre-Dame first, to the anthem Tu es Petrus, and took his seat on a throne near the high altar. Napoleon and Josephine arrived in a carriage drawn by eight bay horses, escorted by the Mounted Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard and the Elite Gendarmes of the Imperial Guard. Before entering the cathedral, Napoleon was vested in a long white satin tunic embroidered in gold thread; Josephine wore a matching white satin empire-style dress. Inside, the two parts of the ceremony were held at different ends of Notre-Dame to contrast its religious and secular aspects. Over three hundred musicians played, two orchestras supported four choruses and numerous military bands, and a 400-voice choir performed Giovanni Paisiello's Mass and Te Deum. Napoleon's heavy coronation mantle of crimson velvet, lined with ermine and covered in embroidered golden bees, weighed at least eighty pounds and required four dignitaries to support it.

• 5. The Crown Placed by His Own Hand

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  The crowning moment carried a precise piece of liturgical engineering behind it. While Pope Pius VII recited the formula Coronet vos Deus, Napoleon turned, removed his laurel wreath, and crowned himself. He then crowned the kneeling Josephine with a small crown surmounted by a cross, which he had first placed on his own head. The plural form of the Latin formula, "Coronet vos" rather than "Coronet te", had been chosen deliberately to cover the immediate coronation of Josephine that followed. The Roman formula Accipe coronam, which depicted the monarch as receiving his crown from the Church, was omitted entirely. Historian J. David Markham, who also served as head of the International Napoleonic Society, addressed the famous charge about this moment in his book Napoleon For Dummies, writing that Napoleon's detractors like to say he snatched the crown from the Pope, but that neither that charge nor the charge of unbelievable arrogance holds water. Markham's view was that Napoleon was symbolizing he was becoming emperor based on his own merits and the will of the people. British historian Vincent Cronin confirmed in his book Napoleon Bonaparte: An Intimate Biography that Napoleon had told Pius he would be placing the crown on his own head and that Pius raised no objection. The Pope's words at the enthronement were: "May God confirm you on this throne and may Christ give you to rule with him in his eternal kingdom." Pius then proclaimed the Latin formula Vivat imperator in aeternum, which the full choirs echoed back.

• 6. Josephine's Unprecedented Rite

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  Josephine's place in the ceremony broke every established precedent for joint coronations in Western tradition. In standard practice, the sovereign is anointed, invested with regalia, crowned, and enthroned before any similar rite begins for the consort. At Notre-Dame, each step was performed jointly. Josephine was anointed immediately after Napoleon, and each item of regalia was placed with her immediately after it had been delivered to him. Nothing in the Roman Pontifical or in the French Ceremonial provided a model for this procedure. Josephine wore a crimson velvet mantle embroidered with golden bees and lined with ermine, borne by Napoleon's three sisters. The anointing prayer used for her was "God the Father of eternal glory." The antiphon Unxerunt Salomonem Sadoc Sacerdos, recalling the anointing of Solomon by Zadok the priest, was sung during both anointings. After the Mass concluded, the Pope retired to the Sacristy, objecting to presiding over the civil oath that followed on account of its contents. Napoleon then placed his hands on the Bible and swore, among other things, to maintain the integrity of the territory of the Republic, to respect the Concordat and freedom of religion, and to govern in the sole interest, happiness, and glory of the French people. The oath was presented to him by the Presidents of the Senate, the Legislature, and the Council of State.

• 7. Memory and Legacy

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  According to government tallies, the entire cost of the coronation exceeded 8.5 million francs. Jacques-Louis David's paintings of the event, including the celebrated The Coronation of Napoleon, became the ceremony's primary visual record. A commemorative medal was also struck, with its reverse design by Antoine-Denis Chaudet. The ormolu fitting from Napoleon and Josephine's eight-horse carriage passed into private hands and was owned for several years by American preservationist Jim Williams; it appears several times in the film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In 1805, Napoleon traveled to Milan Cathedral to be crowned separately with the Iron Crown as King of Italy. In 2005, a digital depiction of the coronation was created by Vaughan Hart, Peter Hicks, and Joe Robson for the "Nelson and Napoleon" Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. The ceremony itself had been explicitly designed, as scholars described it, as a transparently masterminded piece of modern propaganda and as the instantiation of what they called the modern empire. The bee that replaced the fleur-de-lis on imperial tapestries and garments carried that argument forward long after December 2nd had passed.