Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual: III: State, Power and Violence

Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual General Editor Axel Michaels Editorial Board Michael Bergunder, Jörg Gengnage...

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Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual General Editor Axel Michaels Editorial Board Michael Bergunder, Jörg Gengnagel, Alexandra Heidle, Bernd Schneidmüller, and Udo Simon

III

2010

Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden

State, Power, and Violence Including an E-Book-Version in PDF-Format on CD-ROM Section I Ritual and Violence Edited by Margo Kitts Section II Rituals of Power and Consent Edited by Bernd Schneidmüller Section III Usurping Ritual Edited by Gerald Schwedler and Eleni Tounta Section IV State and Ritual in India Edited by Hermann Kulke and Uwe Skoda

2010

Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden

Publication of this volume has been made possible by the generous funding of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Cover: Honthorst, Gerard van: Friedrich V, Kurfürst von der Pfalz als König von Böhmen (Leihgabe des Ministeriums für Wissenschaft und Kunst Baden-Württemberg an Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg)

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

For further information about our publishing program consult our website http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de © Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden 2010 This work, including all of its parts, is protected by copyright. Any use beyond the limits of copyright law without the permission of the publisher is forbidden and subject to penalty. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. Printed on permanent/durable paper. Printing and binding: Memminger MedienCentrum AG Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-447-06203-9

Table of Contents Section I: Ritual and Violence Edited by Margo Kitts Margo Kitts Introductory Comments: Panel on Ritual and Violence

3

Margo Kitts Poinē as a Ritual Leitmotif in the Iliad

7

Scott Noegel The Ritual Use of Linguistic and Textual Violence in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East

33

Jarrod L. Whitaker Empowering Men Ritually in Ancient India

47

Peter Schalk Memorialisation of Martyrs in the Tamiḻ Resistance Movement of Īḻam/Laṃkā

55

Werner Binder Ritual Dynamics and Torture: The Performance of Violence and Humiliation at the Abu Ghraib Prison

75

Alexandra Argenti The Fear of the Sorcerer: Finding a Peaceful Moment for a Sacrifice in Southern Sri Lanka

105

Section II: Rituals of Power and Consent Edited by Bernd Schneidmüller Hans Vorländer Verfassungen und Rituale in Vormoderne und Moderne

135

Philippe Buc Religion, Coercion, and Violence in Medieval Rituals

149

VI

Table of Contents Wojciech Fałkowski The Humility and Humiliation of the King – Rituals and Emotions

163

Apostolos Spanos Imperial Sanctity and Politico-Ecclesiastical Propaganda in Byzantium (Ninth–Fifteenth Century)

197

Joachim Friedrich Quack Political Rituals: Sense and Nonsense of a Term and its Application to Ancient Egypt

215

Peter Van Nuffelen Beyond Bureaucracy: Ritual Mediation in Late Antiquity

231

Veit Rosenberger Strange Signs, Divine Wrath, and the Dynamics of Rituals: The Expiation of Prodigies in the Roman Republic

247

Paul Töbelmann The Limits of Ritual: Mistakes and Misconceptions, Lies and Betrayals at Peace Conferences in Fifteenth Century France

261

Peter Seele Is There an Economic Benefit in Participating in Rituals? An Institutional Economics Analysis of Transaction Costs and Institutional Stability

277

Daniel Schläppi Politische Riten, Ämterkauf und geschmierte Plebiszite: Ritualisierter Ressourcentransfer in der Alten Eidgenossenschaft (17. und 18. Jahrhundert)

293

Angelo Torre Ritual and Jurisdiction in Northern Italy (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)

317

State, Power, and Violence

VII

Section III: Usurping Ritual Edited by Gerald Schwedler and Eleni Tounta Gerald Schwedler and Eleni Tounta Usurping Rituals: The Correlation between Formalised Repetitive Behaviour and Legitimacy

349

Gerald Schwedler Usurpation: Term and Concept A Missing Entry in the “Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe”

361

Fabrice De Backer Fragmentation of the Enemy in the Ancient Near East during the Neo-Assyrian Period

393

Fabian Goldbeck and Patrizia Arena Salutationes in Republican and Imperial Rome: Development, Functions and Usurpations of the Ritual

413

Eleni Tounta Usurpation, Acceptance and Legitimacy in Medieval Europe: An Analysis of the Dynamic Relations between Ritual Structure and Political Power

447

Georg Gresser Usurping Space – Usurping Ritual: Early Medieval Synods in Comparison

475

Herrmann Kamp New Masters and Old Rituals: Edward I, Robert the Bruce, Philip the Fair and the Role of Rituals in Conquest

485

Christian Jaser Usurping the Spiritual Sword: Performative and Literary Alienations of Ritual Excommunication

505

Christoph Dartmann The Usurpator in the City: Rituals of Power in Northern Italian City-States

531

Marian Füssel Rituals in Crisis? The Dynamics of German Academic Ritual in the Age of Enlightenment

543

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Table of Contents

Susan Richter The Prussian Royal Coronation – An Usurpation of Ceremonial?

561

Cord Arendes Rituals in Twentieth-Century Dictatorships: Jean-Bédel Bokassa and “his” Central African Empire, 1976–1979

575

Section IV: State and Ritual in India Edited by Hermann Kulke and Uwe Skoda Hermann Kulke Ritual Sovereignty and Ritual Policy: Some Historiographic Reflections

603

B. D. Chattopadhyaya Festivals as Ritual: An Exploration into the Convergence of Rituals and the State in Early India

627

Tilman Frasch Buddha’s Tooth Relic: Contesting Rituals and the Early State in Sri Lanka

647

Bhairabi Prasad Sahu Rituals, Royalty and Rajya in Early Medieval Eastern India

665

Ulrike Teuscher Creating Ritual Structure for a Kingdom: The Case of Medieval Mewar

683

G.S.L. Devra Evolution of Antagonistic Rituals in Pre-modern Societies in Asia: A Case Study of Śaka and Jāuhar

707

Chandi Prasad Nanda Rethinking “Politico-Ritual States”: Sitting on the Lap of a Bhuiyan: Coronation Ceremonies in Keonjhar

725

Biswamoy Pati The Diverse Implications of Legitimacy: Rituals, State and the Common People in Colonial Orissa, 1800–1940s

745


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Margret Frenz Mahabali Returns to Kerala: Rituals of Sovereignty in Past and Present

763

Uwe Skoda State Rituals after the Abolition of the State: Dossehra Rituals in Bonai/Orissa before and after Merger

783

Abstracts

813

Section I: Ritual and Violence Edited by Margo Kitts

Margo Kitts

Introductory Comments Panel on Ritual and Violence Ritualized violence has long been of interest to anthropologists who study initiations, sacrifice, and war, but its significance has become inescapable since religious terrorism emerged into global awareness. The last instructions of 9/11, for instance, prescribe a fastidious sequence of ritualized acts leading actors to overcome personal inhibitions, emulate legendary personalities, and launch violent attacks with the apparent goal of destroying one social order and establishing another. Not actually new, these links among ritual, violence, and the fixing or disrupting of established orders are profusely evident in reports of ritual procedures from the ancient world, as the first three of the essays from this section illustrate. Spanning traditions, modes of performance, and periods of history, all of the essays in this section touch upon at least one common theme: that is the hallowing of violence through ritual performances, and in one case through the dramatic disruption of such performances. For instance, in “Poinē as a Ritual Leitmotif in the Iliad”, I describe the high communicational register and constrained emotionality of the most formalized rituals in the Iliad, in order to explore the poetic manipulation of ritual leitmotifs to give expression to the very emotions that formalized rituals are supposed to constrain. Thus, through the offering of apoina – ransom – the institution of poinē – retribution, revenge, or compensation – seems designed to stop the hemorrhage of a violent and visceral anger known as kholos, whereas ritual leitmotifs for poinē seem to unleash and express that very kholos. By exploring “The Ritual Use of Linguistic and Textual Violence in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East”, Scott Noegel surveys Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Biblical literature to expose instances wherein the ritualized manipulation of words, intoned or inscribed, harnesses cosmic authority. Punning and other forms of word-play enhance the power of divinatory texts, for instance, and illocutionary performances are understood to effect the transformation of one reality into another. Conversely, dramatic rituals such as violently breaking inscribed tablets can sever an illocution from its cosmic source, as in “Whoever has sinned against me I will efface from my text (sepher)” (Exod 32:32-33).

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In “Empowering Men Ritually in Ancient India”, Jarrod Whitaker investigates ancient Indian soma-drinking as a ritualized means of constructing menacing and hyper masculine character traits within the body and persona of the god Indra, as well as within the warriors who emulated him. Thus, bodies and personalities are not static and the soma-ritual is the means by which poet-priests encode and disseminate a dominant androcentric ideology. In “Memorialisation of Martyrs in the Tamil Resistance Movement of Ilam/Lamka”, Peter Schalk traces the transmission of ancient Indian notions such as renunciation of self-interest and self-annihilation into LTTE ideology, which espouses godly asceticism and vicarious dying without heavenly rewards. The inexorable sting of death is preserved in obligate war memorials at which special rituals and hagiographic narratives intensify collective mourning with the aim of inspiring new martyrs. The new ones are encouraged to internalize the personas of the old and to transform grief into wrath. Memorialisation also mobilizes a collective memory of injustices served and awakens Tamil longings for independence. To illuminate “The Ritual Dynamics of Torture: The performance of Violence and Humiliation at the Abu Ghraib Prison”, Werner Binder integrates Giesen’s three-part typology of cultural events with an Austinian analysis of performative acts and a Durkheimian understanding of social differentiation through ritual. Widely interpreted as exercises in raw brutality, perverted interrogation techniques, or theatrical power displays, the events of Abu Ghraib illustrate more than instrumental logic. For instance, the burlesque staging of the human pyramid would seem a liminoid (Turner’s term) expression of cruelty par excellence, resembling the torturous play of a cat with a mouse. Yet it also reproduces a social vision wherein standing guards triumph over the grotesque conglutination of bodily orifices amassed at their feet, as a kind of apotropaic ritual wherein the upright and powerful are severed from the misshapen and weak. Because of their lurid displays, photos of the degradation ceremonies resonated eerily with world audiences as aberrant art. Building on anthropological theories of ritualized communication and linguistic theories of communicative indirection, Alexandra Argenti tracks the disruption of ritual events in Sri Lanka, where inebriated teenagers move between gambling games and ritual arenas, deriding professional healers and abusing and “killing” their human effigies. In “Fear of the Sorcerer: Finding a Peaceful Moment for a Sacrifice in Southern Sri Lanka”, she explores the blurry boundaries between sacrificial practice and political violence among traumatized youths, who not only mock traditional ritual scripts but also innovate on them by imposing on the ritual substitutes, usually roosters or dolls, the various forms of violence which have been perpetrated on the youth. Despite the contemporary context of political trauma, an ancient and pervasive logic of sacrificial substitution still holds for the youths’ performances, detectible beneath a pervasive atmosphere of hilarity and derision.

Introductory Comments

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Thus, amidst contextual intricacies and an array of cultural formations, these essays all show that the performances we call rituals are not empty cultural forms but rather vehicles to articulating matters of social and even cosmic significance. If violence does not enhance the communicational register in each of these situations, it is at least a conspicuous element of what is communicated. Although elusive to simple analysis, the marriage of ritual and violence impels us to ponder the attraction of violence to religious expression across traditions and the span of human history.

Margo Kitts

Poinē as a Ritual Leitmotif in the Iliad As overwhelming themes in the Iliad, revenge and its driving emotions have consumed scholarly imagination since the Classical period itself. Anger and revenge are linked at least since Aristotle, who sees anger (orgē) as “a desire accompanied by pain, for a perceived revenge for a perceived slight upon oneself or one of one’s own, the slight being unwarranted.”1 Although the term orgē never appears in the Iliad, Homeric mēnis, kotos, and kholos – significant terms for anger – are linked intractably to revenge. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, conventional Homeric analyses discount the force of personal emotion in triggering revenge, instead emphasizing a pervasive network of public esteem. Below I explore some semantics of Homeric kholos, some conventional analyses of Homeric anger and revenge, as well as their shortcomings, then a variety of meanings for poinē in the Iliad, and finally the extension of kholos into poinē as a ritual leitmotif in Books 18, 21 and 23. But first, in order to grasp how anger and revenge might be ritualized in the Iliad, one must understand how rituals communicate, the poetic function of ritual leitmotifs, and how emotions may be extended into ritual performances, even in a poem.

1. Ritual Communication, Leitmotifs, and Emotions Even outside of the poem, definitions of ritual are slippery,2 and many argue that the term has lost precise meaning.3 The alternative rubric has become performance,4 as in Rappaport’s definition of ritual, “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers” (italics in text).5 In the Iliad ritual performances have other features

1 Cairns 2003: 17. 2 Hence Ronald Grimes: “It is not easy to say what ritual is, although most of us can cite examples of it from our own experience” (Grimes 1996: xiii). 3 For an overview, see Bell 1992: 13–17. 4 Rappaport 1999: 24. 5 Ibid.

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unique to typical scenes and to the hexameter,6 but for purposes of this discussion, rituals will be defined broadly, as formal performances which communicate recognized cultural themes. Typically, rituals are not thought to communicate emotion. For about half a century, anthropologists have analyzed ritual communication as distanced from emotion, especially from emotions on the scale of mēnis, kotos, and kholos. Ritual is thought to constrain emotion, to give play to stereotypical simulations of emotions. Hence, “[r]itual is not a free expression of emotions, but a disciplined rehearsal of right attitudes”7; the suppression of immediate, personal emotion “enables the cultural elaboration of the symbolic”8; and ritual contributes to “not a simple emotion, but a complex permanent attitude.”9 Ritual performances even permit a degree of hypocrisy in that they “separate[s] the private emotions of the actors from their commitment to a public morality.”10 The primary function of rituals is “to establish conventional understandings, rules, and norms, in accordance with which everyday behavior is supposed to proceed.”11 By this well-established theory, participants engage in ritual performances with varying reasons and degrees of emotional commitment. A Homeric illustration is the oath-sacrifice Agamemnon makes with Achilles in Book 19. Despite its somber ceremony and sanctification by gods, the sacrifice deals only superficially with its ostensible purpose, which is the public swearing that Agamemnon has not slept with the girl Briseis. Its larger purpose is to integrate Achilles to the war effort. Hence, although a burdensome formality for Achilles (19.145–53; 19.200–14) and a weak apology for Agamemnon (19.261–63; cf. 19.86–144; 9.116–20), it is a pledge of alliance for the other Achaians, who rejoice that Achilles has renounced his isolating wrath (19.74–75; 19.173–74). Odysseus grasps the ritual politics when he urges the public ceremony (19.175–78) and equates it with bolstering the army (19.173–74), restoring justice to Achilles (19.174–80), and securing a meal for warriors before battle (19.156–70). 1.1 How Ritual Communicates The traditional view of ritual performance sees immediate emotion as suppressed for the sake of cybernetic efficiency. Ritual’s primary purpose is not to express 6 Elsewhere, I have described the most highly formalized ritual type scenes as characterized by a fixed sequence of verses, precise actions denoted by a plenum of indicative verbs and abundant detail, and a paucity of figurative language, all conveyed within a series of hexameter lines (i.e., at 2005: 21–34; 2008: 227–28). 7 Tambiah 1979: 126. 8 Ibid.: 124. 9 Langer 1951, quoted in Tambiah 1979: 125. 10 Tambiah 1979: 124. 11 Rappaport 1999: 123.

Poinē as a Ritual Leitmotif in the Iliad

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emotion but to communicate patterns of behavior which are recognized by an audience as “iconic analogues” of primordial acts12 associated with Ur-conventions, such as world creation or the laying down of oaths, treaties or laws.13 At some level the audience recognizes the Ur-event as emerging through its new hypostasis, much the way that a viewer might recognize an underlying shape emerging through an abstract work of art. Ritual performances thus reflect Ur-conventions transhistorically, but through the prism of the immediate situation. Envisioning ritual communication as language, one may see that, in reflecting a primordial form, a ritual communicates along a paradigmatic, not syntagmatic, axis. As Valeri would see it, the audience thus responds to the ritual form in the way that one responds to poetry rather than to discursive speech.14 Arguably, the urge to perform rituals at all must be related in some way to a desire to articulate hallowed forms, or at least to communicate in a special register (see below). As poetry, the ritual form may allude to its theme pars pro toto. The same may be said for elements within the ritual. An example is the curse on oath-violators in the ritualized oath-sacrifice of Book 19, which shares many features with the oathsacrifice of Book 3.15 In Book 19, Agamemnon alludes to the punishment for oathviolation elliptically: “[I]f I have sworn any of these things falsely, may the gods give to me pains, exceedingly many, as many as they give to anyone who transgresses against them in swearing” (19.264–66). Contrast this to the fuller description of punishments due oath-violators according to Book 3 – “So may their brains fall to the ground as does this wine, and those of their children, and may their wives be subdued by others” (3.297–301) – and to Book 4 – “In no way barren is the oath and the blood of lambs, the unmixed libations and the right hands in which we trusted. For if the Olympian does not fulfill it at once, he will fulfill it later, and with might he will avenge it, with their heads and their wives and their children” (4.158–62). The theme is extended from Books 4 through 7 by repeated references to “those who were first to trample upon sworn oaths” (4.67, 4.72, 4:234–39, 4:269–71, and cf. 7.351–52), which presumably elicit a shudder of recognition in audiences familiar with the family destruction due oath-violators. Rituals communicate in special registers. Rituals performed with high stress and formalization evince a corresponding power and depth of tradition, and rivet the

12 Tambiah 1979. 13 The original author is likely to seem inchoate, belonging to a primordial past. Valeri 1985: 342. 14 See ibid.: 343 and discussion in Kitts 2005: 21–44. 15 Kitts 2007.

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attention of audiences.16 The elaborate oath-sacrifice of Book 3, with its precise sequence of ritual steps – summoning a priest and representatives from both sides, presenting the animal victim, cutting and distributing hairs to witnesses, invoking gods to witness what is sworn, swearing, cutting the victim’s throats, witnessing the blood sink into the earth, and pronouncing and repeating curses (3.264–301) – clearly would fall into this category. Less elaborate ritual performances, such as the clasping of hands to extend solidarity or good will (i.e., 6.232–3, 10.541–2, 11.646, 11.777–78), also educe primordial forms and a cluster of hallowed connotations in the imaginations of audiences,17 but these shorter rituals are more frequent, less sequentially fixed, and presumably lower in register. 1.2 Ritual Leitmotifs While not quite performances, ritual leitmotifs communicate in this less stressed manner. Ritual leitmotifs are easiest to grasp as ritual shapes impressed upon events or narratives which do not overtly represent rituals,18 but which mimic them in some way.19 The effect of impressing a ritual leitmotif onto a narrative is to disseminate the symbolic matrices associated with ritual institutions into the narrative by subtle means. Two such means are demonstrable. One is by facsimile to the ritual’s performance shape, wherein a narrative reflects a ritual’s structure and sequence, sometimes obliquely. Another is by metaphorical transference, wherein a coalescence of vocabulary and narrative situation conjures up the cultural theme associated with the ritual in the audience’s imagination. In the latter case, the leitmotif might communicate in the way of Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances.” In both cases, a ritual leitmotif in the Iliad is basically a form of poetic extension. Both cases shall be illustrated below. 1.3 Ritual and Emotion For all their merits, these classical theories of ritual emphasize communication at the expense of the immediacy of ritual experience for individual participants. There

16 Bloch 1975: 1–28, n.b. 6–13. Also n.b. Rappaport: “The ritual form ... adds something to the substance of the ritual, something that the symbolically encoded substance cannot by itself express” (italics in text). […] [T]he effectiveness of signals is enhanced if they are easy to distinguish from ordinary technical acts. The more extraordinary a ritual movement or posture, the more easily it may be recognized as a signal and not a physically efficacious act.” (Rappaport 1999: 31, 50). For a summary see Kitts 2005: 21–34. 17 See Kitts 2005: 79–84. 18 See Fernandez 1977: 126. 19 Kitts 2005: 156–87.


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are exceptions of course.20 Harvey Whitehouse acknowledges different modes of religious experience, one being imagistic, transformative, and emotionally bonding.21 More challenging from the point of view of social sciences is the theory put forth by Alcorta and Sosis, who observe parallels in the ways that music and ritual are embodied and trigger emotions. Both music and ritual stimulate neurophysiological responses, thereby heightening intensity of experience,22 kindling emotions,23 and promoting social bonding before, for example, battle,24 as in the aforementioned oath-sacrifice of Book 19. Music can be characterized as a kind of ritual in itself, by virtue of Bloch’s four defining features of ritual: formality, pattern, sequence and repetition.25 Since Radcliffe Brown, we have seen that both music and ritual are difficult for individuals to resist26; both are embodied, have the capacity to excite emotions and entrain autonomic motivational states, and their

20 Durkheim’s theory of effervescence springs to mind, or Otto’s sense of awe and the uncanny. 21 See, for instance, Whitehouse 2000: 21–53. For an overview of Whitehouse’s theory, see the Review Forum provided by The Journal of Ritual Studies (Stewart & Strathern 2002). 22 “Music has important neurophysiological effects. As a ‘rhythmic driver’, it impacts autonomic functions and synchronizes ‘internal biophysiological oscillators to external auditory rhythms’” (Scherer & Zentner 2001: 372). The coupling of respiration and other body rhythms to these drivers affects a wide array of physiological processes, including brain wave patterns, pulse rate, and diastolic blood pressure (Gellhorn & Kiely 1972; Lex 1979; Mandel 1980; Neher 1962; Walter & Walter 1949). This ‘coupling effect’ has been shown to be present in humans at a very early age (Scherer & Zentner 2001). Music amplifies and intensifies this effect through the use of instruments, or ‘tools,’ thereby providing a means of synchronizing individual body rhythms within a group. Recent work by Levenson (2003) has shown that synchronized autonomic functions, including such things as pulse rate, heart contractility, and skin conductance, are positively and significantly associated with measures of empathy.” Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336. 23 “The ability of religious ritual to elicit both positive and negative emotional responses in participants provides the substrate for the creation of motivational communal symbols. Through processes of incentive learning, as well as classical and contextual conditioning, the objects, places, and beliefs of religious ritual are invested with emotional significance. The rhythmic drivers of ritual contribute to such conditioning through their ‘kindling effects.’” (Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 337.) 24 Ibid.: 339. 25 Bloch 1989, cited by Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 323. 26 “Any marked rhythm exercises on those submitted to its influence a constraint, impelling them to yield to it and to permit it to direct and regulate the movements of body and even those of the mind.” Quoted by Tambiah 1979: 113, from Radcliffe-Brown 1964: 249.

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performances can generate lasting impressions and evoke meaningful symbolic networks.27 Most radically, long after the rituals have been performed, encounters with associated cultural symbols may trigger memories and, through them, the old ritually induced emotional states.28 The reverse is also true: once certain emotions are imaginatively coupled with ritual performances, certain emotional experiences may arouse an inclination for formalized expression, much the way that overwhelming joy may incline one to dance a jig. Consider: Why not a tango? Why not a waltz? Particular emotions may drive particular ritualized performances – perhaps due to habitus (i.e., as Bourdieu sees it), but more basically because we experience and express emotions in our bodies.29 Such performances may be seen as bodily extensions of the emotions. In some cases, the bodily extension communicates a hallowed form, which may be the only kind of form that does the emotion poetic justice. Wedding toasts come to mind, or the joyful anointing of Biblical kings. These observations find support not only in ritual experience, but in the poem. In the Iliad, anger or indignation may yield to acts of revenge or claims of the right to it (i.e., 3.288–91; 18:93, 18.337; 21:28, 23:22–23), whereas good will may yield to a gesture of solidarity, such as the clasping of hands (i.e., 6.232–3;10:541–2; 11:646; 11.777–78; 21.284–90). This picture of ritual communication, leitmotifs, and emotions should be kept in mind as we explore poinē as a ritual leitmotif for kholos.

27 “Two warriors can sound like twenty through the use of drums. Moreover, discrete sounds produced with musical instruments can be manipulated and juxtaposed to create emotionally evocative signals independent of the musician’s state. Like the phonemes, words, and sentences of language, the use of musical instruments to produce sounds permits the combining of such sounds to create emotionally meaningful signals. These, in turn, can be arranged and rearranged within encompassing musical structures. The formality, sequence, pattern, and repetition of such musical structures themselves elicit emotional response through their instantiation of ritual. Music thereby creates an emotive ‘proto-symbolic’ system capable of abstracting both the signals and structure of ritual” (Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336–37). “Human use of ritual to conditionally associate emotion and abstractions creates the sacred; it also lies at the heart of symbolic thought. The brain plasticity of human adolescence offers a unique developmental window for the creation of sacred symbols. Such symbols represent powerful tools for motivating behaviors and promoting in-group cooperation” (Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 348-49). 28 See Harvey Whitehouse on different kinds of memory as they are associated with different kinds of rituals (Whitehouse 2004: 105–118). 29 The jig may be deemed the ritual texture generated by joy. Cf. Ricoeur on the verbal texture generated by a string of words (a metaphor) and “co-extensive to the verbal structure itself” (Ricoeur 1981: 244).


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2. Homeric kholos in Relation to mēnis and kotos To appreciate how the emotion of kholos can be ritually extended into poinē, one first must understand kholos against a few other entries from the complex lexicon for Homeric anger.30 Considine in 1966 constructed a useful chart of nine words for anger in the Odyssey and Iliad, demonstrating the overwhelming themes of wrath and related concepts in the poems.31 In the Iliad one finds 250 occurrences of these nine terms. All anger in the Iliad is conceivably linked to vengeance, but kholos, which occurs 97 times in the Iliad, is inextricable from it. Understanding mēnis, which occurs 27 times, and kotos, which occurs 20 times, will help to distinguish kholos. Mēnis receives special treatment by Considine as the wrath which launches the Iliad: “Mēnis sing, goddess, the destroying mēnis of Achilles Peleiades, which imposed myriad pains on the Achaians, and sent many mighty souls of heroes to Hades, rendering their bodies carrion for dogs and all birds, to fulfill the plan of Zeus” (1.1–5). Mēnis is represented as an anger which endures, in just about all treatments of it.32 It is sparked by injustice and outrage and culminates in a desire for legitimate vengeance.33 It famously resonates with a number of English words – mania, maniac, menace – which suggest its intensity. For Frisk and Redfield, mēnis was associated primarily with the devastating, even apocalyptic, wrath of gods and godlike Achilles,34 in whom the “mēnis of the gods” is released in Book 21 (21.523). Considine disagrees. Since verbal forms of mēnis are ascribed to perfectly mortal Agamemnon and Diomedes,35 Considine sees mēnis as belonging to the sphere of epic, not religion. But Considine’s is a strained argument, or at least a false dichotomy: Are religious themes intrinsically incompatible with epic?36 Kotos, which Considine counts just 20 times in the Iliad, is an intense anger with eventual consequences. For Cairns it is akin to mēnis.37 Walsh sees it as lurking quietly, smoldering before it bursts into retribution. Hence, kotos does not 30 For a summary of the topic, see the review of Leonard Muellner’s book, The Anger of Achilles: Mēnis in Greek Epic by Michael Lynn-George in BMCR 97.2.10 (Muellner 1996; LynnGeorge 1997). 31 Considine 1966: 15–29. See also his overview of divine rage in Eastern Mediterranean literature (Considine 1969). 32 Starting at least with Aristarchus, who defined mēnis as long-lasting kotos, Muellner 1996: 2. 33 Lynn-George 1997. See also Muellner 1996, chapter 2: “Mēnis and the Social Order”: 32– 51. 34 Frisk 1946: 28–40, discussed by Cairns (2003: 32). Redfield associates it with a supernatural curse (Redfield 1979: 97–98). 35 Agamemnon (1.247 – emēnie), Diomedes (5.185 – mainetai). 36 A working alternative is provided by Cairns: it is probably the gravity and intensity of mēnis that make it suitable as a term for divine wrath and for supernormal human anger in epic (Cairns 2003: 32). 37 Walsh 2005; Cairns 2003: 30–32.

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spend itself easily. The prophet Kalchas fears a smoldering kόtos by king Agamemnon, for kholos may be swallowed down, but kotos stays in the heart until it reaches its telos (1.82). Kotos lingers too in the punishing minds of gods, particularly those who support legal institutions. In his kotos (kotessamenos) Zeus will punish mortals who make crooked judgments in the agora (16.396–88), and because of the Trojan oath-violation, there will come a day when all sacred Ilion will be destroyed, and also Priam and his hosts, “for Zeus, ... himself will brandish his black aegis over all, in anger (koteōn) for this deceit” (4.164–168). Kotos appears etymologically linked to Indo-European words for anger, most notably Hittite kattawatar, which denotes divine rage when the sun-goddess of Arinna is informed of the sacking of her cities.38 Similarly to mēnis, kotos is deep, enduring, potentially cosmic, and may culminate in revenge. But it is kholos, with its 97 instances in the Iliad, which is most tied to poinē as a ritual leitmotif, as I will show ahead. This is not only because it is more frequent. Mēnis, kholos and kotos are all associated with revenge. Mēnis and kholos are occasionally co-referential, conceivably even a hendiadys at 15:121–22, possibly extended into the Homeric Hymn to Demeter twice.39 Overall, however, kholos in the Iliad has a burning volatility which distinguishes it from mēnis and kotos. 40 Although both humans and gods may experience kholos, human kholos emerges commonly in grief for the death of a family member or comrade. The human warrior experiences kholos deeply, arousingly, and unleashes vengeance against opponents who may or may not be the exact killers. Odysseus is furious (kholōthē 4.494) when his friend is killed, and spears a by-standing son of Priam because Odysseus had become kholōsamenos (4.501). Zeus plans that Achilles will kill Hector out of kholos (kholōsamenos) (15.68), presumably for Patroklos, but Achilles vows to kill not only Hector (18.93) but also 12 Trojan youths on the pyre of Patrokos in rage (kholōtheis) for his death (18.337; 21.26–28; cf. 21.133–34)

38 LeBrun 1980: 162–63 [A 49–53], Cited by Walsh 2005: 90–91. For an overview of the Near Eastern theme, see also Considine 1969. 39 Watkins argues that the formula of kholos kai mēnis (15:121–22) is traceable into the Homeric Hymn to Demeter at 350 and 410 (1977: 700–701). He also argues that there exist three substitutions of kholos for mēnis in the formula kholon pauein, which acts as a substitute for mēnin pauein in the language of gods and Achilles (Watkins 1977: 702–04). This amounts to a vocabulary taboo (ibid.: 204). There are examples beyond what Watkins has adduced. I.e, Apollo’s kholos and resulting plague (1.9–10) are associated with his mēnis over the mistreatment of Khrysēs, by Kalkhas (1.75, 1.94–96); and Achilles’ equates “having mēnis apart” (apomēnisantos 19.62) with stopping his kholos (19.67), which the Achaian army then recognizes as renouncing his mēnin at 19.75. The terms clearly are associated, although not semantically identical. 40 Walsh describes the contrast between kotos and kholos: “Kholos ... may mean killing anyone – any Trojan will do, whereas for kotos, only all Trojans will do” (Walsh 2005: 164).


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The poet deems this excessive (21.19; 23.176).41 Kholos may be uncontainable. Achilles fears lest Priam see his son’s corpse, become unable to restrain his kholon, and Achilles be forced to kill him (24.583–84). Aeneas compares himself and Achilles before battle to women who come together in the street to kholosamenai each other in heart-gnawing eris: kholos drives them (kholos de te kai keleuei – 20.255). Kholos seized Proitos when his wife complained of Bellerophon’s advances, although his attempt to kill him was indirect (6.163–70). Among the gods, kholos is equally pressing. It is incurable, says Poseidon (15.217). Goddess Athene can barely restrain it (8.461); Hera cannot restrain it at all (8.460). Poseidon is enraged (ekholōthē) when his grandson is beheaded (13.206). Hera is enraged (kholōsamenē) when Apollo criticizes the ceaseless rage of Achilles (24.55). Divine kholos drove Apollo’s plague in the very beginning of the Iliad (1.9); the Achaian troops died (1.10). By implication kholos may stir up the wildest destruction, comparable to the wild moil and toil stirred up by Zeus around the corpse of Patroklos (17.397–401); that is why neither Ares nor Athene would have found fault with the slaughter, even should kholos have overcome one of them (17.398–99). These examples make kholos a bristling emotion which is difficult to control. Unlike mēnis and kotos, kholos is often rendered as immediate bodily experience, figuratively associated with taste and digestion. Kholos is sweeter than honey, says Achilles in a bitter declaration of regret (18.108–09). It drips down into one’s chest, and then swells like smoke (18:110).42 It is poisonous when Hector is depicted as a serpent who, awaiting Achilles, has swallowed evil drugs (kaka pharmaka); so a dire kholos enters him (22.94–97). Achilles’ heart-wrenching (thumalgea) kholos in Book 4 can ripen or cook (pessei) (4.513).43 Kholos is also bile-like, connected to gall, kholē,44 when Achilles anticipates the scorn of the Myrmidons: his mother raised him on bile (kholē) and he is infused now with an evil kholos (16.203–06). Lastly, Achilles’ kholos is bitter, pungent, peppery (drimus),45 when he is compared to a bearded lioness from whom a hunter has stolen her cubs: a drimus kholos seizes her (18:322). The combination of sweet, bitter, and bile-like is arguably essential to the visceral experience of kholos in the Iliad.

41 42 43 44

Twice declaiming that “evil were the deeds he devised in his mind”. On the swallowing of kholos, see also 1.81 and 23.95. Liddell & Scott 1968: “pessō”. For discussion of the Indo-European historical semantics of *'ģhel- and the associations with color, bile, and anger, see Walsh 2005: 220–25. 45 Liddell & Scott on drimus: “keen, pungent, acrid” (1968: 449); Autenrieth: “the peppery sensation in the nose caused by emotion” (1904: 80).

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3. Why kholos can Drive Revenge; or the Shortcomings of Traditional Accounts of Homeric Emotion Given this vivid vocabulary for anger in the Iliad, it is perhaps astonishing that for over half a century it has been fashionable to see Homeric heroes as lacking emotions, or at least lacking a true encounter between an outside world and an inner selfhood. That was the opinion of Hermann Fränkel originally in 1921.46 In the 1950s Dodds ventured that Homeric heroes, preoccupied with deed, shame, and public esteem, did not internally own strong emotions, but rather experienced them as powerful forces of psychic intervention, often of a cosmic sort.47 From this, he deduced the emotional exteriority of Homeric heroes living in a shame culture.48 Along the same lines, Adkins in the 1960s pondered threatening, abusing and feeling angry in what he called a “results” culture.49 He saw anger expressions in Homer as reflecting “the psychological pressures of living in a highly competitive world, which induces an actor to classify his experiences not in terms of interior states, but in terms of interfaces with a precarious and potentially hostile environment.”50 While recognizing the power of emotion, these analyses also strip Homeric heroes of emotional interiority51 and shape conventional understandings of Homeric revenge. Revenge, in this thinking, is a desperate reckoning for lost honor, or timē. Such theories explain revenge usually in terms of (1) performance or (2) economics and exchange. According to performance-oriented theories, winners and losers on the battlefield juggle finite amounts of timē by fighting to the death, after which survivors stand up to avenge losers and to restore the losers’ timē by killing their killers. J.E. 46 “If man is, as it were, a field of energy, whose lines extend into space and time without limit or restraint, then external forces, for their part, operate in him without hindrance, and it is meaningless to ask where his own force begins and that from outside ends. In what they receive and suffer also, there men are wholly open to the outside world, so wide that our own basic antithesis between self and not-self does not yet exist in Homeric consciousness. Even what seems to us a highly personal achievement, a thought, say, or an impulse, is thought of in the Iliad as a gift received” (Fränkel 1975: 80). 47 Dodds 1951: 1–29. 48 So Atē – ruinous folly, blind passion – is experienced as a kind of divine seizure by Agamemnon (says he, at 9.19 and 19.91ff) and Patroklos (says the poet, at 16.805). Phoenix represents it to Achilles as nothing less than losing his mind (9: 503–512). 49 νεικείειν, ἀπειλέω, ὀχθέω, χώεσθαι, μενεαίνω – usually “to rebuke or be angry”, “I threaten or vow”, “I am vexed, angry or distressed”, “to be angry or distressed”, or “I am angry or eager”, respectively. Adkins 1969: 7–21. 50 Long ago Fränkel too analyzed Homeric man as concerned with “elemental” vitality, constructed by social norms and incapable of conceiving of himself apart from them (Fränkel 1921). 51 For a short summary of the problem, see Pulleyn 2000: 35–43: “The Homeric View of Man”.


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Lendon, who sees revenge as a real motivation for Greek wars, regards acts of vengeance on the battlefield as opportunities to perform heroically before peers, although anger and pity may also, and ultimately, motivate revenge.52 Failure to take revenge for a lost comrade is shameful. Revenge killings in the Iliad are occasions for gory mutilations and exultant boasts, a matter of public pay-back.53 Such displays are glorious, beyond the killing required in war. Says Lendon, revenge is a gift of honor for the dead.54 The flip side of the conventional model is economic, based on reciprocity. Donna Wilson sees poinē and its themed relatives – apoina, timē, tinō, tinomai, didomai, etc. – as falling within the pathways of exchange. The capital exchanged may be concrete or symbolic,55 but in either case is imagined as substantial, exchangeable, and quantitative. The supply of honor is limited, says Harris.56 Walsh makes kholos largely a matter of rectitude for stolen honor or esteem.57 Cairns sees ancient definitions of anger as located firmly in reciprocal or hierarchical structures of honor.58 Clearly, the exchange model is deeply rooted in scholarly imagination. Both economic and performative aspects to Homeric revenge are to some extent indisputable. To restore honor to a corpse is to restore public esteem to the man who was the corpse, often a family member or guestfriend (i.e. 4.494; and cf.13.661, 17.576–77, 17.582–84, and 21.41–42). Nonetheless, honor and exchange are not enough to explain Homeric anger, grief or thirst for revenge. This is supported by the testimony of Achilles and by recent thinking on Homeric emotion. 3.1 Achilles and Emotion First, Achilles is remarkably confessional about his own anger in Book 19, when he refers to himself as having been wrathful apart (apomēnisantos 19.62)59 and says he is now ready to stop his kholos (19.67) and to stop being contentious (19.68). This is a moment of self-overcoming, despite its public context. Second, as Graham Zanker points out, the pursuit of timē cannot entirely explain Achilles’ wrenching remorse in Book 18.60 There, Achilles does decide to avenge his friend at the expense of his own life and his mother’s happiness; but he 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Lendon 2000: 6–7. Ibid.: 5. Ibid.: 6–7. Wilson 2002. Harris 2001: 139. Walsh 2005: 182. Cairns 2003: 17. Later, he relates his revenge (based on tinō) directly to his absence from the war when he vows to his Trojan victims that they all shall pay for the death of Patroklos and the ruin of the Achaians “whom you killed while I was away by the swift ships” (21.135). 60 Zanker 1994: 10–27.

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also grieves deeply and situationally for Patroklos. Achilles honored (tion) Patroklos not just publicly, but above all companions and equally to his own head (18.81– 82), and he will overtake Hector because he is the “destroyer of my dear head” (18.114).61 Achilles sees himself also to blame: “I destroyed/lost him (ton apōlesa)” (18.82), “he lacked me to be his defender in war” (18.100), “I was not a light to Patroklos nor to my other companions, the many who fell to godlike Hector” (18.102–03), “rather I sat by the ships, a useless burden on the cultivated ground” (18.104). He grieves also for his mother’s situation,62 which is as existentially miserable as any which might befall an immortal goddess – married to a mortal man and mother of a perishing child (18.87–91). Thetis herself laments that she bore a child blameless and strong, who sprang up like a shoot (18.55–56), whom she will not receive home again after the war (18.59–60), and whose despair she cannot mollify while he lives and grieves under the light of day (18.61–62). 63 The plights of his two most beloved people are intertwined when Achilles associates in the same verse the loss of Patroklos and the loss of Achilles’ armor, worn by Patroklos, to Hector (18.82). This is the wondrous armor given by the gods to his father at his wedding with Thetis, when they gave her in bed to a mortal man (18.82–85). Achilles surely recognizes the humiliation that the wedding brought to Thetis, and also the suffering which is to come out of it: “If only still you dwelt among the sea immortals, and Peleus had married a mortal wife” (18.87–88). Achilles’ ruminations on the armor, his mother’s suffering and the loss of Patroklos are personal and bittersweet.

61 Cf. Book 19, where he compares his suffering for Patroklos as on a par with that he would feel should his own father have died, or his son (19.320–77). 62 “... If only you still dwelt among the sea immortals, and Peleus had married a mortal wife. But now there will be huge pain for you with a perishing child, since my heart bids me not to live nor remain among men, except that Hektor falls first under my spear and loses his life. Let him pay a price (apoteisēi) for Patroklos Menoitiades” (18: 87–93). 63 “Hearken to me, sister Nereides, so that all of you listening shall know what pain is in my heart. Oh me! I am miserable, Oh me! The mother of the best and most unfortunate. Since I bore a son both blameless and strong, outstanding among heroes. He ran up like a shoot, and I raised him as a plant on the slope of an orchard. I sent him on curved ships to Ilion to fight the Trojans. And I shall not again receive him, returning to the house of Peleus, home. And while he lives before me and sees the light of day he grieves, and even though I go to him I am unable to make it better” (18.52–62).


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Third, Achilles is fully self-aware long before the death of Patroklos. After Agamemnon humiliates him at the start of the Iliad, Achilles by Book 9 already has come to contemplate his life as a singular one towards death, given his revelation of the famous options presented by his mother64 – he may avoid battle and enjoy a long and fulfilling life, or he may fight and die gloriously (9:410–16). It is with this singular awareness that he rejects Agamemnon’s offer to restore to him apoina, which includes many gifts (9.120–56), including marriage to Agamemnon’s daughter (9.144–47) and treating Achilles on a par with Agamemnon’s son (9.142). Achilles prefers the privileges of being his own father’s son (9.393ff) an existential statement, not just one of political savvy. After Patroklos dies, Achilles reflects remorsefully on his life in relation not only to Patroklos, but to his other lost companions (i.e., at 18.102–06, 21.133–35). Even as he embraces pay-back (apoteisei) for Patroklos’ death (i.e., 18.93; 19.145–53, 21.133–35), and urges vengeance for the outrage (teisaimetha lōbēn) (19.208), he continues to digest his singular plight. This is apparent right into his conversation with the horse Xanthus, who prophecies Achilles’ imminent death. It is fate for me to perish here, says Achilles, away from my dear mother and father (19.421–22).65 Achilles’ depth of emotion is undeniable into the last book, where, even though Achilles has honored and buried Patroklos with all pomp and circumstance, he still longs for him (24.6). Restored timē does not resolve grief. Finally, if the story isn’t evidence enough, studies of Homeric emotion now challenge the idea that heroic anger may be explained entirely in relation to timē. For Cairns the premise that Homeric man is configured toward social primacy is simply false, not just because of what it says about Homer, but because of what it ignores about anger and emotion per se.66 Kantian presumptions aside, there is no such thing as an empty emotional box which waits to be filled; rather we are always connected with a world, in or out of Homer. The very fact that we can grasp Homeric emotion speaks to our lack of distance from it. Our common ontology is born out by cross-cultural studies of anger by Lakoff and Kövecses. These show considerable commonality in the way that anger is conceptualized across cultures via metaphor and metonymy. Generally, it is conceived less as a performance event than as an embodied psychophysical event.67 For instance, in English, Hungarian, Chinese and Japanese folk idioms, anger is conceived as a force which exerts pressure on the body.68 Cairns points out that Ho-

64 Hammer 2002: 209–10. 65 On Achilles’ increasing individualization vis-à-vis the rest of humanity, see also Scully 1984: 11–27. 66 Cairns 2003: 17, 24. 67 ibid.: 18. 68 Kövecses 2000: 139–163.

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meric kholos too has physical symptoms, such as swelling of the chest69 and feeling full of menos, which itself is characterized by arousal and a desiderative, goal-oriented drive.70 Kholos evokes blazing eyes,71 as if emerging from them.72 In a recent discussion of Homeric ontology, Damian Stocking has noted that the force (biē) of a man is often a synonym for the man himself, or at least part of a periphrastic expression of it, as when the force of Priam is summoned for the oath-sacrifice (3.105) or when Hector strips the force of Patroklos of his fine armor (17.323).73 This and other expressions suggest that, rather than a passive receiver of emotional winds from the environment, Homeric man is a dynamic unity of forces measured by his effects upon the world.74 Death is a vile thought to Achilles precisely because of the fecklessness it brings (i.e., Od. 11:498–500).75 Homeric kholos too is experienced not as a visitation by an outside force, but rather as an organic drive to engage with the world. As such, kholos frequently is tied to poinē as its ritualized extension.

4. Poinē Conversely, poinē is not always linked with kholos nor with any other kind of anger. As suggested above, Donna Wilson sees it as intricately bound up with the exchange of timē and a cluster of related concepts which mark the theme: tisis – recompense, vengeance, tinō – I pay, apotinō, exapotinō – I pay back, tinumai – I punish, chastise, and apoina – ransom, reparation.76 Thus, rather than expressing anger in many of these cases, poinē might equally refer to dissuading anger, as when Zeus offers Tros immortal horses in poinē for his son Gannymede (5.265– 66), or when Agamemnon offers apoina to soften Achilles’ wrath (9.116–56; 19.138). The exchange is less material and more pitiful when Zeus grants Hector temporary battle strength in poinē for his failure to return to Andromache (17.205– 8), and the exchange is puzzling when Athene excoriates Ares, “So this is how you would repay (exapotinois) your mother’s Erinyes” (21.412). This last, as Heubeck

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Cairns 2003: 25. ibid.: 22. ibid. 2003: 42. Cf., on “looking darkly” (‘upodra idōn) under his brows, see Holoka 1983. Whereas the Myrmidons can’t bear to look upon the new armor of Achilles, when Achilles sees it, kholos enters him, and his eyes under his brows shine terribly, like beams of light (19.14–17). Stocking 2007 discusses Homeric biē, menos, sthenos, is, and the complex assemblage that makes for the Homeric self. Ibid.: 66–70. Pointed out by Stocking 2007. Wilson 2002.


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notes, seems to denote pacification,77 as it may in all of the last four examples. Some kind of exchange is discernible in these. Yet exchange, at least material exchange, is clearly inadequate to pacify injury in other instances, wherein the driving emotions for poinē are presumed to be violent. A supreme example is the argument over poinē inscribed on Achilles’ great shield. There a wedding is disrupted by a heated dispute regarding poinē on behalf of a killed kinsman (18.498–502), one man claiming to have paid, the other refusing material compensation apparently in favor of lethal violence.78 The smoldering violence is illustrative because of the paradigmatic nature of all the scenes on Hephaestus’ spectacular artwork. Material compensation fails to assuage Achilles’ kholos in Book 9, says he (9:645–47), despite the complaint of Ajax that a kinsman might accept poinē from his brother’s killer and still allow him to live in the deme (9.632–38). The enormous difficulty in surrendering to appeasement is anticipated by Thetis when she urges Achilles to accept from Priam the apoina that finally will end Achilles’ vengeful mutilation of Hector’s corpse (24.128–38). The exchange model for poinē is not quite enough to explain these. Given the range of vocabulary associated with the theme, poinē in some cases is equated exactly with deadly violence, as when lethal retaliation by cosmic agents is expected for infringement of divinely established institutions. We see this when Agamemnon promises Menelaus that someday Zeus utterly will destroy Ilion in pay-back (apoteisan 79 4.161) for deceit, and when cosmic sanction is expected of Erinyes and other gods who punish (tinusthon) men who violate oaths (3.276–79): “So may their brains fall to the ground as does this wine, and those of their children, and may their wives be subdued by others” (3.297–301). These examples make lethal punishment the price for violation of the institutions which most basically support society, institutions such as guestfriendship and oath-making. The gods may not inflict punishment immediately, but punishment is eventually forthcoming, as may be inferred from the repeated threats against “those who were first to trample upon sworn oaths” (4.67, 4.72, 4: 234–39, 4: 269–71, and cf. 7.351–52). Then there are other cases where poinē signifies nothing short of nonspecific revenge-killing. The brother of Akamas “was not long unavenged (atitos)” (14.484), but it wasn’t his brother’s killer whom Akamas stabbed to exact poinē (14.483); it was the man dragging away the corpse. It is expressly poinē that Achilles intends against a random dozen youths who will be sacrificed on the pyre of Patroklos (21.28), and the target is equally expansive when Patroklos mows down the first Trojan phalanxes, “paying back poinē for many” (16:398). These wilder killings might mimic the cosmic revenge imposed by gods for violation of 77 Heubeck, in a discussion of exapotinō (Heubeck 1986: 150–151). 78 For the possibilities, see the discussion in Edwards 1991: 214–16. 79 On the timelessness of this gnomic aorist, see Kirk 1985: 348.

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sacred bonds, but their targets are less precise and their broken bonds more existential. From this handful of examples one might deduce that poinē runs deeply enough in Homeric imagination that it may lend itself to a range of significations, from economic exchange to the wildest and most uncontainable forms of deadly anger. Reckoning in all of this vocabulary and its contexts, it seems that poinē names responses to at least three different harms in the Iliad: (1) insult to personal or family integrity (i.e., 3.288–91; 9.632–38; 17.205–8, possibly 5.265–66); (2) death of a family member or close friend (implicit at 9.632–38, 16:398, 18.498–502, 21.28, 21.134–35); and (3) violation of oaths or other divinely backed institutions (i.e., 3.276–80; 4.161–168; 19.264–66, possibly 4.164–168). But there is also a fourth and broader violation which contains the other three: (4) Poinē is a response to a rupture in social existence, particularly to its aspects which are felt to be precarious and difficult to control.80 As such, poinē is often a poetic extension of kholos. 4.1 Ritual Leitmotifs and Poetic Extension In section 1, we learned that a ritual leitmotif is one form of poetic extension. Ritual leitmotifs for poinē extend kholos into a narrative in one of the two ways described earlier: (1) by impressing a facsimile to ritual shape upon a narrative, wherein lethal exchange may be a discernible expression of poinē, or (2), more subtly, by metaphorical transference, wherein a coalescence of narrative context and related vocabulary (in this case apoina – ransom, reparation, timē – honor, tisis – recompense, vengeance, tinō – I pay, apotinō – I pay back, and tinumai – I punish, chastise, and of course poinē itself) conjure up poinē as a ritualized expression for the emotion of kholos. In the latter case, a ritual leitmotif may inform a narrative in the same way as catachresis, by mixing metaphors and personalizing objects and contexts, ultimately disseminating meanings by poetic connotation.81 80 Kitts 2005: 65–73. 81 Illustrations of catachresis in the poems might include the spears of the Myrmidons, which are pikra – bitter, aggrieved – in resentment at Patroklos’ death (22: 206) – example mentioned by Kerrigan 1996: 298–299; Achilles’ spear which “longs to sate itself on human flesh” (lilaiomenē khroos asai 21.168); and, a bit more intricately, the streams which brache – Autenrieth 1904 offers “brayed” – and the river banks which iachon, or screamed, in response to Achilles’ fury in Book 21(21.9–10). Catachresis is one of five poetic devices explored by Brooke Holmes in her analysis of pain in the Iliad (Holmes 2007). These five can also be applied to anger – first person declarations (i.e. 18.108–10), conversations whether real or imagined (i.e., 16.203–06 and 4.513), authorial reports (i.e. 24.55, 17.397–99), similes (i.e. 18.322, 22.94–97), but the most striking is poetic extension. A complex example of poetic extension is Achilles’ wordless grief upon discovering the death of Patroklos in Book 18. Although he is inarticulate for a powerful 59 lines (18.22–81), we see his impulse toward self-laceration, hair tearing, and facial disfigurement extended into the screaming, breast-pounding, and weakening knees of the captive women around him


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4.2 Poinē as a Ritual Leitmotif Modeled on Exchange We have already seen kholos invoked by the poet to explain acts of deadly retaliation, whether or not explicitly identified with poinē. Hence, kholos over the treatment of his priest drove Apollo’s punishing plague in the very beginning of the Iliad (1.9); the Achaian troops died (1.10). Odysseus was furious (kholōthē 4.494) when Leukos was killed and, becoming kholōsamenos (4.501), speared Dēmokōn, a bastard son of Priam. And so on. There is an implicit structure of pay-back in these examples. Kholos is ritualized as pay-back in a clearer way in the narratives leading up to and through Achilles’ sacrifice of 12 Trojan youths on the pyre of Patroklos, initiated by and reinforced with a vow of retaliation due to kholos. This begins in Book 18, when Achilles vows to cut the throats (apodeirotomeō ) of 12 Trojan youths on Patroklos’s pyre in rage (kholōtheis) for the death of Patroklos (18.336–37, cf. 23.22–23), which immediately follows his (forever unfulfilled) promise to behead Hector, slayer of Patroklos (18.335). The poet equates the collection of the twelve Trojan youths precisely with poinē in Book 21, where the twelve youths are bound and sent back to the ships to become “poinē for Patroklos Menoitiadēs who had died” (21.28). Sinister intent introduces the collection of those boys: “evil were the deeds [Achilles] devised in his mind” (21.19), and closes the circle when the poinē is actualized in Book 23 – the identical “evil were the deeds he devised in his mind”(23.176). When the boys finally are sacrificed, their throat-cuttings come at the peak of an elaborate ritual performed at a very high register – detectible because of its fastidious detail, precise sequence of ritual steps, and lack of figurative embellishment82 (23.165–183). The corpse is placed at the top of the pyre; fat sheep and cattle are flayed before the pyre; Achilles takes up the fat and covers the corpse with it from (18.22–30). We comprehend the panic when Antilochus seizes Achilles’ hands to prevent him from cutting his own throat (18.31–33). Then Achilles’ cries of grief (oimoi) elicit his mother’s proleptic wailing, as well as the breast-beating of her and 34 Nereids beneath the sea (18.34–51). It is she who articulates his existential predicament, as well as her own (18.52–64). Achilles cannot speak a word until she and the grieving Nereids have erupted in mass from the primeval deep, a full 59 lines after he figuratively plunged into it. It takes Achilles 59 lines before he can fit his grief into words, Priam and Hecuba 10 lines (22. 05–15) Andromache 16 lines (22.460–76). The categorical confusion which poetically extends grief may be explained as follows: “[L]a souffrance est à la coirsée de différentes catégories de pensée: des nécessités biologiques comme la nourriture, le repos ou le sommeil, des notions psychologiques comme le désir érotique ou le courage, des valeuers esthétiques comme celle de l’idéal de la belle mort héroique sont étroitement mêlées par le poète quand il présente ses héroes en proie à la douleur” (Monsacré 1984: 187). 82 For the characteristic features of ritual killings as opposed to battle killings, see Kitts 2007 and 2005.

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toe to head; the flayed bodies are piled up around the corpse; he throws onto the pyre horses, nine table dogs whose throats are explicitly cut (deirotomēsas), and “twelve sons of the greathearted Trojans, destroying them with the bronze” (23.175–76); then, in the same verse, “evil were the deeds he devised in his mind” (23.176). Next he threw in the “strength of iron” so that it might be consumed, and called upon Patroklos to witness that Achilles had accomplished all that he promised (23.180), including sacrificing the boys: “Twelve good sons of the greathearted Trojans the fire will eat along with you” (23.181–82), but Hector he will give not to the fire, but to dogs to devour (23.182–83). Just before the ceremony takes place, kholōtheis is offered again as an explanation for the plan to sacrifice the boys on the pyre of Patroklos in a vow identical to the one Achilles made in Book 18, “twelve splendid sons of Trojans I will cut their throats before the pyre, in kholos (kholōtheis) for your death” (23.22–23; cf.18.336–37). Clearly this is an elaborate ritual, performed at a very high register and anticipated by two vows explaining the killings/sacrifices as retribution for the death of Patroklos – in kholos (kholōtheis) for his death (23.22–23 and 18.336–37) – and a third pronouncement reminding Patroklos that Achilles has fulfilled his former vow and indeed has given the boys “for the fire to eat along with you” (23.181–82). The exchange of many deaths in kholos for one distinctively elicits poinē as a ritual leitmotif for exchange in these narratives. The punishing ritual tenor is unmistakable when the killings are equated with poinē in Book 21 (21.28) and when the narrator comments, “evil (kaka) were the deeds he contemplated in his mind” (21.18; 23.176). Not only is kholos made out to be a driving emotion for poinē in this example, but kholōtheis, its justification, is virtually synonymous for poinē. At the very least, poinē and kholos seem to be institutionally related, one being established as a performance tradition and the other being an established Homeric aetiology for the expression of the first. Although the scope of meanings for poinē is broad, its link with kholos in these examples suggests, minimally, that kholos and poinē fall within the same poetic theme. 4.3 Poinē as Extended kholos The unquenchable nature of kholos is evident when poinē takes shape at the other end of the spectrum, as a blind response to a deep sense of violation. We see this in Book 21, where we find a cluster of poinē-related vocabulary which communicates the kholos of Achilles by metaphorical transference. Mēnis is not absent from this narrative either, which supports the deep association of kholos and mēnis inferred by Watkins.83 Just as his spear longs to sate itself on human flesh (21.168), Achilles in Book 21 would take any target. Hence, after he selects the boys to sacrifice as poinē on the pyre of Patroklos (21.28), he still cries, “you all must pay [teisete] 83 Watkins 1977.


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for the death of Patroklos and the ruin of the Achaians” (21.134), which leads to such massive slaughter that it provokes the kholos of the River Xanthos (21:136), divinities get involved, a theomachy ensues (21.383ff) and Achilles destroys just like they do (21.520–21). The mēnis of the gods had entered him (21.523). Among his victims is Lykaon, a former suppliant and son of Priam whom Achilles essentially sacrifices,84 and Asteropaius, sired by a river-god. That last death impels Achilles to boast about the futility of wrangling with a grandson of Zeus (21.184– 93). This is poinē at the wild end of the spectrum, an anger so profound that it unleashes conflict not only between descendants of gods but among natural forces on earth. Hence, in his kholos (mentioned twice, at 21.136 and 21.146), the river Xanthos responds, eventually calling upon River Simoeis to rise up against this wild man (21.314), whose slaughter is causing a great dam of bodies to build up and who thinks himself equal to the gods (21.315). Xanthos hopes to annihilate all trace of Achilles, piling sand and rocks over him so that the Achaians will not be able to gather up his bones and bury him because he will be hidden in slime (21.318–323). It is Hera who protects Achilles (21.328), by calling on Hephaestus to issue his fire on the plain and among the corpses, essentially cremating them (21.342–345). This is followed by a clash of gods on earth: “They fell together with a great crash (megalō patagō), and the wide earth brayed (brakhe) (21.387),85 which is nearly identical to the language that announced Achilles’ rage at the beginning of the book: Trojans fell into the river with a megalō patagō, and the steep streams brayed (brakhe 21.9). An apparent apocalypse follows the clash of gods. Athene fights Ares, Hera Aphrodite, but Zeus laughs with joy (21.389). The poetic extension of Achilles’ rage into this supernatural battle is patent. The cataclysmic consequence of the river’s kholos and Achilles’ mēnis is notable because it is similar to the consequence barely contained when Athene stops Ares from exacting payment (teisasthai) for the death of his son on the battlefield (15.112–127). His vengeance would have been so dire as to arouse mēnis and kholos among the gods (15.122) – here is the hendiadys referred to in Section 2. Based on the situation with Ares, we can see that in Achilles’ case above, the vocabulary markers for poinē, i.e., kholos and the spectrum of tinō verbs, plus the unloosening of the natural and supernatural boundaries of everyday experience, metaphorically communicate poinē as a furious response to a deep sense of violation aroused by personal loss.

84 See Kitts 2005: chapter 3. 85 See Autenreith 1904 for this possible translation of brachō.

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5. Why Poinē? So what is the poetic point of impressing a cluster of poinē markers – kholos, apotinō, tinō, etc. – on behavior which is tantamount to wartime slaughter? The answer to this lies in the communication offered by ritual leitmotifs. Bloch, Rappaport, Tambiah and others have shown that ritualization can mark and distinguish behavior, infuse it with a special register, amplify its communicability and import to it a kind of traditional authority, all of which broadens its semiotic reach.86 Within this ritual leitmotif, ancient audiences would recognize the slaughter of Achilles as falling within the widest possible semantic spectrum attached to poinē. Precisely the paradox of poinē is that, as part of its range of expressions in the Iliad, it can invoke institutionalized exchange inclusive of apoina; it can invoke a religious institution, exactly as Zeus “avenges” (i.e. apeteisan at 4.158–62) the violation of oaths; yet it can also respond to the most urgent and unbearable of violations, such as result from the unexpected death of family and friends. In this last invocation, poinē offers a response to violations so profound that they cry out for a marked form of self-expression. Thus, whereas highly formalized rituals may be performed at a distance from raw human emotions, ritual leitmotifs in a orally composed poem may convey emotions, shape their expressions, and communicate them with a special intensity. By investing battlefield slaughter with poinē, the poet stamps ritual form on behavior, distinguishing and formalizing it, and casting it within a primordial paradigm, which legitimates and sanctifies it. If it is kholos which drives heart-gnawing eris (said Aeneas at 20.255), it is poinē which sanctifies it, by associating it with established institutions and the retribution inflicted by gods. Poinē as a ritual leitmotif communicates nothing short of sanctified slaughter. This sanctification of slaughter supports the telos of epic poems in the first place, which is to “sing the glorious human deeds, that song whose glory reaches the vast heavens” (Od.8.73– 74).

6. Conclusion: On Ritual and Emotion Ritual leitmotifs may communicate the very emotions that are constrained in ritual performances which take place in higher registers, at least in a poem such as the 86 As Rappaport sees it, “[t]he formalization of acts and utterances, themselves meaningful, and the organization of those formalized acts and utterances into more or less invariant sequences, imposes ritual form on the substance of those acts and utterances, that is, on their significata. At one and the same time such formalization constitutes the specific forms of particular rituals and, reciprocally, realizes the general ritual form in specific and substantial instances. ... In all ritual performances there is a substantiation of form and an informing of substance, ...” (Rappaport 1999: 29).


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Iliad. Ritualized oaths, for instance, occur at the highest end of the formal spectrum and effectively distance the expression of immediate emotion from the ritual performance. A ritual leitmotif, on the other hand, may unveil and express the very emotion that the ritual performance is expected to constrain. I have suggested this power of ritual leitmotifs elsewhere, when I showed that Achilles virtually oathsacrifices Lykaon in outrage over the violation he formerly could not imagine, the killing of beloved Patroklos.87 That loss is experienced by Achilles as a profound rupture in his reality, and oaths, appropriately, are one of the cultural bulwarks against such ruptures.88 The institution of poinē, as we have seen in the illustration on Achilles’ great shield and elsewhere, is expected to pacify compelling anger, to thwart violent expressions of rage. Yet poinē is also used by the poet as if identical with that rage, and identical commonly with kholos, a bristling anger which craves violent expression. Sometimes poinē gives vent to kholos, and sometimes poinē constrains it. But poinē and kholos are not just two elements within a poetic theme; the first is often a performance of the second. One might sense in these inversions a poetic understanding of ritual’s purpose: the higher the register in which a ritual communicates, the more likely the ritual is to constrain the very emotion that it is designed to address. The result is emotion articulated as a hallowed ritual form. Nonetheless, it is the inadequacy of ritual form to quench emotion that is conveyed by ritual leitmotifs in the Iliad. Thus, the ritual leitmotif of poinē expresses the anger (kholos) that the institution of poinē is expected to control. If there is an irony here, it is in the failure of high ritual forms to do personal emotions total justice. Achilles sacrifices those boys on the pyre of Patroklos and he continuously disfigures the corpse of Hector, but his anger remains unspent and his grief unsated. Just as joy may induce one to dance a jig, bitter fury may induce formalized expressions of revenge. Yet, no ritual performance is entirely adequate to dissolve grief.

87 Kitts 2005, chapter 3. 88 Rituals authenticating promises are seen by Rappaport to be virtually the basis for the stability of societies (Rappaport 1999: 132).

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References Adkins, Arthur W.H. 1969. “Threatening, Abusing and Feeling Angry in the Homeric Poems”. The Journal of Hellenic Studies 89: 7–21. Alcorta, Candace S. & Richard Sosis 2005. “Ritual, Emotion, and Sacred Symbols”. Human Nature 16/4, 323–359. Autenrieth, Georg 1904. Schulwörterbuch zu den homerischen Gedichten. Berlin, Leipzig: Teubner. Translated by Robert P. Keep, revised by Isaac Flagg (1958) as A Homeric Dictionary. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Bell, Catherine 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Cambridge: Oxford University Press. Bloch, Maurice 1975. Political Language and Oratory in Traditional Society. London: Academy Press. — 1989. Ritual, History, and Power. London: Athlone Press. Cairns, Douglas L. 2003. “Ethics, ethology, terminology: Iliadic anger and the crosscultural study of emotion”. In: Susanna Braund & Glenn W. Most (ed.), Ancient Anger, Perspectives from Homer to Galen. Cambridge University Press: 11–50. Considine, Patrick 1969. “The Theme of Divine Wrath in Ancient East Mediterranean Literature”. Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici 8, 85–159. — 1966. “Some Homeric Terms for Anger”. Acta classica 9: 15–29. Dodds, Eric R. 1951. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press. Edwards, Mark W. 1991. The Iliad: A Commentary, Vol. V. Cambridge et al: Cambridge University Press. Fernandez, James W. 1977. “The Performance of Ritual Metaphors”. In: J. David Sapir & J. Christopher Crocker (eds.), The Social Use of Metaphor. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 100–131. — 1972. “Persuasions and Performances: Of the Beast in Every Body ... And the Metaphors of Everyman”. Daedalus 101/1: 39–59. Fränkel Hermann 1921. Die homerischen Gleichnisse. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. — 1975. Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy. Transl. Moses Hadas and James Willis. Blackwell: Oxford. Frisk, Hjalmar 1946. “ΜΗΝΙΣ: Zur Geschichte eines Begriffes”. Eranos 44: 28–40. Gellhorn, E./Kiely, W.F. 1972. “Mystical states of consciousness: neurophysiological and clinical aspects”. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 154:399–405. Cited in Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336. Grimes, Ronald 1996. “Introduction”. In: Ronald Grimes. Readings in Ritual Studies. Upper Saddle River (New Jersey): Prentice Hall: xiii-xvi. Hammer, Dean 2002. “The Iliad as Ethical Thinking: Politics, Pity and the Operation of Esteem”. Arethusa 35/2: 203–235. Harris, William V. 2001. Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.


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Heubeck, Alfred 1986. “Erinus in der archaischen Epik”. Glotta 64: 145–65. Holmes, Brooke 2007. “The Iliad’s Economy of Pain”. TAPA 137: 45–84. Holoka, James P. 1983. “‘Looking Darkly’ (ΥΠΟΔΡΑ ΙΔΩΝ): Reflections on status and decorum in Homer”. TAPA 113: 1–16. Kerrigan, John 1996. Revenge Tragedy. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press. Kitts, Margo 1994. “Two Expressions for Human Mortality in the Epics of Homer”. History of Religions 34: 132–151. — 2005. Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press. — 2007. “Bulls Cut Down Bellowing”. Kernos 20: 1–25. — 2008. “Funeral sacrifice and ritual leitmotifs in Iliad 23”. In: Eftychia Stavrianopoulou, Claus Ambos & Axel Michaels (eds.), Transformations in Sacrificial Practices, Performanzen, Band 15. Berlin: LIT-Verlag: 217–40. Kirk, Geoffrey S. 1985. The Iliad: A Commentary, Vol. I. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press. Kövecses, Zoltán 2000. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture and the Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago, Ill. et al.: University of Chicago Press. Langer, Susanne 1951. Philosophy in a New Key. New York: New American Library: 123–124. Lebrun, R. 1980. Hymnes et prières hittites. Louvain-la-Neuves: Centre d’Histoire des Religions. Cited in Walsh 2005: 90-91. Lendon, Jon E. 2000. “Homeric vengeance and the outbreak of Greek wars”. In: Hans van Wees (ed.), War and Violence in Ancient Greece. London: Duckworth & The Classical Press of Wales: 1–30. Levenson, R. W. 2003. “Blood, Sweat and Fears: The Autonomic Architecture of Emotion”. In: Emotions Inside Out, P. Ekman, J. J. Campos, R. J. Davidson, and F. B. M. de Waal (eds.). Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1000: 348– 366. Cited in Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336. Lex, B.W. 1979. “The Neurobiology of Ritual Trance”. In: The Spectrum of Ritual, E.G. d’Aquili, C.D. Laughlin, Jr., and J. McManus (eds.). New York: Colulmbia University Press: 117–151. Cited in Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336. Liddell, Henry George & Robert Scott 1968. A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th edition, repr. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lynn-George, Michael 1997. “[Review on] Leonard Muellner, The Anger of Achilles: Mēnis in Greek Epic”. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 97.2.10. http://bmcr.brynmawr. edu/1997/97.02.10.html (09 Oct. 2009). Mandel, A. 1980. “Toward a Psychobiology of Transcendence: God in the Brain”. In: The Psychobiology of Consciousness, J. Davidson and R. Davidson (eds.). New York: Plenum Press: 379–464. Cited in Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336. Monsacré, Hélène 1984. Les larmes d’Achille. Paris: Albin Michael S.A.

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Muellner, Leonard 1996. The Anger of Achilles: Mēnis in Greek Epic. Ithaca, NY et al.: Cornell University Press. Neher, A. 1962. “A Physiological Explanation of Unusual Behavior in Ceremonies Involving Drums”. Human Biology 34:151–161. Cited in Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336. Pulleyn, Simon 2000. Iliad Book One. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press. Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press. Radcliffe-Brown 1964. The Andaman Islanders. New York: Free Press. Cited in Tambiah 1979: 113. Redfield, James M. 1975, 1994. Nature and Culture in the Iliad. Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press. — 1979. “The Proem of the Iliad: Homer’s Art”. Classical Philology, 74/2: 95–110. Ricoeur, Paul 1981. “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling”. In: Mark Johnson (ed.). Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 228–247. Reprinted from Critical Inquiry 5/1 (1978): 143–159. Scarry, Elaine 1985. The Body in Pain. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press. Scherer, Klaus R. & Marcel R. Zentner 2001. “Emotional Effects of music: Production rules”. In: P. Juslin & J. Sloboda (eds.). Music and Emotion: Theory and Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 361-392. Cited in Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336. Scully, Stephen 1984. “The Language of Achilles: The Oxqhsas Formulas”. TAPA 114: 11–27. Stewart, Pamela J. & Andrew Strathern 2002. “Book Review Forum [on Harvey Whitehouse 2000. Arguments and Icons. Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press]”. Journal of Ritual Studies 2: 4–59. http://www.pitt. edu/~strather/Review%20Forum%20Whitehouse.pdf (09 Oct 2009). Stocking, Damian 2007. “Res Agens: Towards an Ontology of the Homeric Self”. College Literature 34/2: 56–84. Tambiah, Stanley 1979. “A Performative Approach to Ritual”. In: anon. Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 65. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 113–169. Taplin, Oliver 1980. “The Shield of Achilles within the Iliad”. Greece and Rome 27: 1– 21. Reproduced in Vol. III of De Jong, Irene J.R. 1999 (ed.), Homer: Critical Assessments. New York: Routledge: 179–200. Valeri, Valerio 1985. Kingship and Sacrifice. Transl. Paula Wissing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Walsh, Thomas R. 2005. Fighting Words and Feuding Words. Studies in the Semantics of Anger in Homeric Poetry. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Walter, V. J., and W. G. Walter 1949. “The Central Effects of Rhythmic Sensory Stimulation”. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 1:57–86. Cited in Alcorta & Sosis 2005: 336. Watkins, Calvert 1977. “On Mēnis.” Indo-European Studies 3: 686–722. Whitehouse, Harvey 2000. Arguments and Icons. Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press.


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— 2004. Modes of Religiosity. Altamira Press. Wilson, Donna 2002. Revenge, Ransom, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press. Zanker, Graham 1994. The Heart of Achilles. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Scott Noegel

The Ritual Use of Linguistic and Textual Violence in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East1 This contribution focuses on two types of violent ritual dramas as found in the ancient Near East, with special attention to several texts in the Hebrew Bible. The first relates to violent judgments, by gods, prophets, and diviners that employ the use of punning or “word play”. The second concerns the physical destruction of tablets and scrolls. Scholars typically have treated these acts as demonstrations of literary or rhetorical flare. However, when placed in the larger context of the ancient Near Eastern understanding of what I shall refer to as an ontological understanding of words, I believe it makes more sense to see them as acts of “ritual drama”.2 1 This paper was delivered at the Conference on Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, University of Heidelberg, September 29, 2008. I would like to thank Margo Kitts for inviting me to participate in the conference session on Ritual and Violence. 2 Of course there are many different definitions of “ritual”. The comment of Snoek is apropos: “Defining the term ‘ritual’ is a notoriously problematic task (2008: 3). The number of definitions proposed is endless, and no one seems to like the definitions proposed by anyone else.” Snoek himself has sought to assist scholars in obtaining a useful definition of “ritual” by providing a taxonomy of twenty-four characteristics that one might find in most (but not all) rituals. For Snoek rituals are: 1) Culturally-constructed; traditionally sanctioned; 2) Behavior; praxis; performance; bodily actions and/or speech acts; 3) Having its performers as its own audience; 4) Marked off from the routine of everyday life; framed; liminal; anti-structure; 5) Taking place at specific places and/or times; 6) Collective; public; 7) Multi-medial; 8) Creating/organizing society/social groups; 9) Creating change/transition; 10) Purposeful (for the participants); 11) Repeated; 12) Standardized; rehearsed; 13) Religious; sacred; transcendent; 14) Rigid; stereo-typed; stable; 15) Redundant; repetitive; 16) Symbolic; meaningful (for the participants); 17) Communicative; 18) Not instrumental; 19) Prescribed; having a script; 20) Formal(ized); conventional; 21) Stylized; 22) Structured; patterned; ordered; sequenced; rule-governed; 23) Channeling emotion; and 24) Guiding cognition (2008: 11). Of these characteristics, only six (i.e., 12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 22) cannot be applied to the materials presented here. All six relate to notions of formality, repetitiveness, and struc-ture. With regard to the ritual acts examined here, it bears stressing that it is impossible to know what conventions and social expectations inform them. All we possess are the texts that reference and describe them. We cannot tell whether they represent formal, repetitive, and structured acts that simply receive rare mention in biblical texts. Moreover, a close study of the way these acts are portrayed shows that they are not spontaneous, but rather based on patterns that were discernable and interpretable to the authors of the texts who recorded them. Thus,

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Indeed, I find it useful to think of these two acts as two “sides of a coin”, as it were, with the use of punning, representing the ritual method that enables violence through the spoken word, and the physical destruction of texts representing the ritual method for manifesting power over the written word. Moreover, as I shall argue further, both the use of punning to violent ends and the destruction of texts constitute instrumental rituals of divine judgment, and insofar as they underscore a tie between a sign and its prediction or an act and its consequence, both demonstrate and embody the juridical and theological concept of lex talionis “the law of retribution”.

1. Context: The Ontology of Words Before providing specific examples, I should like to contextualize my arguments by discussing briefly what I have referred to as an ontological understanding of words. It is well known to scholars of the ancient Near East that a belief in the performative power of words in both their spoken and written forms underlies the production and use of ritually charged texts. With reference to this concept in Mesopotamia, G. Contenau remarks: “Since to know and pronounce the name of an object instantly endowed it with reality, and created power over it, and since the degree of knowledge and consequently of power was strengthened by the tone of voice in which the name was uttered, writing, which was a permanent record of the name, naturally contributed to this power, as did both drawing and sculpture, since both were a means of asserting knowledge of the object and consequently of exercising over it the power which knowledge gave.”3 As I. Rabinowitz explains, the Israelites shared this concept: “[…] while words indeed did constitute the medium of interpersonal com-

munication and expression, the words were not perceived and thought of as exchangeable symbols or representations of their sensible referents, but rather as those referents themselves – the palpable objects, the ‘real’ and per-

designating these acts as “rituals” seems wholly appropriate. It also is important to note that the term “drama”, as it applies to the study of ritual, has similarly proved difficult to define (see Grimes 2008). Most applicable to this study is Sørensen’s treatment of ritual dramas “[…] as akin to illocutionary acts in that they identify themselves as the efficacious act, happening and accomplishing its aim here and now” (Sørensen 2008: 527). With Houseman, the rituals discussed here “[…] enact particular realities. They do not so much say things […] as do them” (2008: 414). 3 Contenau 1955: 164.

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ceptible actions and events, the sensible relationships and interactions – in the concentrated form of words.”4 Since words were not representations, but the very things they embodied, manipulating their spoken forms constituted an act of power. Let me demonstrate by way of an Ugaritic ritual charm for relieving the pain of a snakebite (CAT5 1.100:65–67). May the double tamarisk (῾ar῾arumā) shake it off (yan῾uranahā). May the dual palm shoot (sasanumā) remove it (yasyunuhā). May the double adornment (῾adatumā) make it pass (ya῾uduyanahā). May the twin fruit (yabaltumā) carry it away (yablunuhā). Note how a similarity in sound binds each of the ritual objects to its purpose. In his study of this charm S. Greaves remarks: “[…] word play was thought to play an active role in magic by taking advantage of the linkage that was thought to exist between the word for an object and the object itself. In practical terms this means that if the magician can use a verb or an object in the incantation that puns with the object or condition he or she is trying to alter, the association creates a link to that object that will achieve the desired result.”6 It is in this context that we may see the manipulation of the spoken word serving a ritual function. Since the vocabulary required for such lingual manipulation naturally differed depending on the context and purpose of the utterance, there is some latitude in exactly how words were manipulated.7 However, as long as an utterance enabled a phonetic correspondence between the object and the intended result, the efficacy of the ritual was assured. J. Bottéro comments: “[…] nouns were not considered to be arbitrary epiphenomena and consequently subjective elements, but were thought to be the real objective expression of the proper essence of things, each phonetic similarity was to be

4 Rabinowitz 1993: 3. 5 Abbr. CAT = The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places. Dietrich & Loretz & Sanmartin 1995. 6 Greaves 2000: 113. 7 The linguistic flexibility inherent in the punning device clarifies why some of the characteristics of ritual offered by Snoek (see my comments in n. 2 above) are less useful to this topic. In particular, as the punning device demonstrates, the details and exact usage of a ritual may be flexible and non-standardized, while its underlying purpose and form remain “rigid”, “conventional”, “structured”, and the like.

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Scott Noegel considered serious and very significant: two realities whose names coincided were bound as closely together as their designations.”8

Unlike the spoken word, which was inherently malleable, words in their written forms were seen as inalterable unless thoroughly effaced or destroyed.9 This was particularly the case for the words of gods and kings whose authoritative decrees were understood to have a cosmic importance and were naturally put into writing.10 Acknowledging a widespread Near Eastern belief in the illocutionary power of words has deepened our understanding of a number of texts, especially juridical accounts, creation myths, divinatory compendia, and as we have seen, so-called “magic” texts. However, most enlightening for the purpose of this study are Mesopotamian divinatory texts that connect their signs to their predictions by way of puns. I offer a handful of examples from among hundreds.11 1. Sex omen: 2. Dream omen: 3. Birth omen:

If a man has anal (GU.DU [= qinnatu]) sex with his social peer, that man will be foremost among his brothers and colleagues (kinātū). If a man dreams he is eating a raven (arbu); he will have income (irbu). If an ewe gives birth to a lion, and it has matted hair (malî); a reign of mourning (malî); the land will be full of mourning (malâ); attack of the enemy.

8 Bottéro 1992: 121. 9 There are numerous references to the perceived inalterability of the written word in the ancient Near East. In the Hebrew Bible I refer the reader to Isa 30:8, Job 19:23–24, Esth 1:9, and Dan 6:8. In Mesopotamian I point to Hammurapi’s Code, epilogue 19: “If that man has not paid attention to the commandments that I have inscribed on this stone and if he has forgotten my threatened curses and has shown no fear for the curses threatened by god, and if he has destroyed the rules I ordained and changed my commandments and emended what I have written, and if he has removed my name from the inscription and inscribed his own […] almighty Anu, father of the gods, […] will smash his staff and curse his destiny […].” There are, of course many other examples. 10 This informs a memorial inscription of Esarhaddon known since 1860 in which the king claims: “Seventy years as the period of its (Babylon’s) desolation he had written but being merciful, (the god) Marduk quickly (surriš) calmed his heart, he flipped (the numbers he had written) and in (only) 11 years, ordered it (Babylon) restored.” As shown already by Lucken. bill (1925: 165–173), the text concerns here the following cuneiform signs: The same vertical sign can be read as “sixty” or “one,” so the signs total 60 + 10 and 10 + 1, respectively. Thus, by reversing the signs, the king changed 70 years to 11 years. While one might think such a reference contradicts the notion of the inalterability of the written word, I note that the text explicitly states that Marduk altered the text quickly (i.e., surriš), so that the reader will realize that the clay tablet was still moist, and thus still capable of being altered. 11 These omens and others like them are given full citation and are discussed in Noegel 2007: 15–17, 20.


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4. Extispicy omen: If […] there are two perforations (pilšu) at the right of the gall bladder and they are permanent (palšu); it is an omen of the Apišalian whom Naram-Sîn took prisoner when breaching (pilšim) (the wall of his city). To understand how these puns function, it is important to realize that acts of divination are acts of divine judgment. This is why legal and divinatory texts share the formula, if x, then y,12 and why the same Akkadian word (i.e., purussû) is used for a “legal decision” and an omen’s prediction.13 Thus, within this performative juridical context, a pun that connects a sign to its prediction justifies and embodies the divine judgment and the principle of lex talionis for it linguistically connects the cause to the consequence.14 The divinatory texts also underscore the importance of recognizing the difference between the malleable nature of the spoken word and the inalterability of the written word. The connection of the omens’ apodoses to their protases by way of audible puns reveals that the method of interpretation must have involved the spoken word. However, in the process of putting the omens and their predictions into written form, the diviner has ritually made permanent the divine judgment and has rendered the omen’s ambiguity into a decisive and permanent reality. The ontological understanding of words that I have described necessarily influences how we understand ritualized text in the ancient Near East. Scholarship on ancient Near Eastern ritual typically has tended to treat spoken or written words as a feature of ritual rhetoric that abets the performer whose ritual praxis bears symbolic value or cosmological import.15 However, in the cultures of the ancient Near East where words are not representations, but the very things they embody, we also must see the words themselves as objects capable of manipulation and the performer as the symbol bearing cosmological import through which the ritual is communicated. R. Grimes’s statement concerning the use of language in performance is apposite: “Language does not merely reflect, mirror, or inform; it also deflects, selects, and even creates reality. Language is an actor in its own right […].”16 With this in mind, I now move to the evidence by turning first to examples of punning to violent ends. Afterwards, I shall treat the physical destruction of texts. In both sections I shall restrict my evidence to the Hebrew Bible.

12 13 14 15 16

On the relationship between law codes and omens, see Rochberg 1999: 559–569. Roth 2005: 529–535 (s.v. purussû). On this subject, see Noegel 2007: 36–45. See the helpful survey and treatment by Bergen 2007. Grimes 2008: 384.

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2. Punning to Violent Ends 2.1 Jeremiah 51 A thorough demonstration of the violent power of punning appears in Jer 51:34–37, a prophecy of Yahweh’s judgment against Babylon. 34.

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured us, he has thrown us into confusion; he has made us an empty jar. Like the primordial dragon (tannîn) he has swallowed us and filled his stomach with our delicacies, and then he has spewed us out.

35.

“May the violence done to us and our children be upon Babylon,” say the dwellers of Zion. “May our blood be on those who live in Babylonia,” says Jerusalem.

36.

Therefore, this is what Yahweh says: “See, I will defend your cause and avenge you; I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain run dry.

37.

Babylon shall become rubble heap (gallîm), a den of jackals (tannîm), an object of horror and hissing, without inhabitant.”

The prophecy is labeled a “legal dispute” (51:36) in which God enacts retribution (51:56), thus making clear that it portends a lex talionis. However, underscoring the lex talionis is a series of powerful puns that serve as the ritual instruments by which the spoken word enacts Babylon’s violent reversal of fortunes. The first is the word gallîm in v. 37. The word gallîm is polysemous and can mean “rubble heap” or “water waves”. Since God has just stated that he will dry up Babylon’s waters, the word gallîm first suggests the meaning “waves”. It is only when we hear the remainder of the passage and its reference to wasteland that we realize it must mean “rubble heap”.17 In essence, the prophecy has transformed Babylon’s abundant “waters” into “rubble” simply by changing the linguistic context of the word – the transformation happens in the recitation. Bolstering these puns in v. 37 is the word tannîm “jackals”. In v. 34, Yahweh had described the king as a tannîn, i.e., “the primordial dragon” who was swallowing Jerusalem. By altering one consonant, the prophet transforms the dragon of chaos into a home for jackals, and in so doing, connects the king’s actions to the lex talionis. The prophecy reinforces the lex talionis with additional puns in v. 44 where Yahweh issues his sentence: “I shall punish Bel (bēl) in Babylon (bābel), and I will 17 Thus, it constitutes a Janus parallel. A Janus parallelism occurs when a verse contains a pun, which in one of its meanings faces back to the previous line, and it another meaning, anticipates the line that follows. See Noegel 1996b.


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make him disgorge what he has swallowed (bil῾ō).” The puns between “Babylon”, “swallow”, and the god “Bel”, remind us of the primordial dragon, while providing a linguistic tie between the nation’s crime and God’s verdict against its national god. The combined impact of these puns, like those in the divinatory texts, is more than literary or rhetorical style. It constitutes the ritual means by which the divine judgment is put into effect and by which the divine word is understood to transform one reality into another. In this case, the prophet’s words quite literally transform Babylon the dragon into a lair for jackals and its abundant water into wasteland rubble. To adopt the words of J. Sørensen: “What constitutes ritual is a distinct dramatic rhetoric that constructs itself as an illocutionary act.”18 The reversal of fortunes through the performative power of words reaches a climax in v. 41 by way of an Atbash cipher.19 An Atbash occurs when one exchanges the first letter of the alphabet with the last, the second with the penultimate, the third with the antepenultimate, and so on. The alphabetic reversal results in transforming the name “Babylon” (bābel, ‫ )בבל‬into “sheshak” (šēšak, ‫)ששך‬, a word devoid of meaning, and thus without essence or destiny. It remains a “rubble heap” of letters. The power of this reversal derives some of its impact from the opening line of Jeremiah’s prophecy, which also contains an Atbash reversal. Here Yahweh says that he “[…] will stir up the spirit of a destroyer against Babylon and the people of lēb qāmay (‫”)לב קמי‬. The words lēb qāmay are an Atbash for the name “Chaldeans” (‫)כשדים‬, a synonym for Babylonians. However, unlike the other Atbash on sheshak, the words lēb qāmay can be read as “a heart of those who rise against me”. However, this phrase is grammatically awkward and lacks contextual sense. Nevertheless, the awkwardness draws attention to itself, and in the process, provides a linguistic clue to the impending reversal of Babylon via the divine word. 2.2 Gen 11:1–9 A second example of the manipulation of words to violent ends appears in the story of the tower of Babylon (Gen 11:1–9). Here again we find puns connecting the actions of the Babylonians with the lex talionis. 1.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.

2.

As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3.

They said to each other, “Come, let us make (nilběnāh, ‫ )נלבנה‬bricks (lěbēnîm, ‫ )לבנים‬and bake them.” They used brick (lěbēnāh, ‫)לבנה‬

18 Sørensen 2008: 531. 19 On the use of Atbash in Jeremiah see Noegel 1996b: 82–89, 160–166, 247–250. The same Atbash appears in Jer 25:26.

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Scott Noegel instead of stone (᾽eben, ‫)אבן‬, and tar (ḥēmār, ‫ )חמר‬for mortar (ḥōmer, ‫)חמר‬. 4.

Then they said, “Come, let us build (nibneh lānū, ‫ )בנהנ לנו‬ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5.

But Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of humankind were building (bānū běnē hā᾽ādām, ‫)בני בנו האדם‬.

6.

Yahweh said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

7.

Come, let us go down and confuse (nāblāh, ‫ )נבלה‬their language so they will not understand each other.”

8.

So Yahweh scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building (libnōt, ‫ )לבנת‬the city.

9.

That is why it was called Babel (bābel, ‫)בבל‬, because there Yahweh confused (bālal, ‫ )בלל‬the language of the whole world. From there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

The puns in v. 3 between the words for “making”, “bricks”, “stone”, and “sons” (i.e., nilběnāh, lebēnîm, ᾽eben, and běnē) and between “tar” and “mortar” (i.e., ḥēmār and ḥōmer) set the scene for linguistic manipulation and reversal while simultaneously defining the crime for which the sons of humankind will receive the lex talionis. Indeed, it is their attempt to build a great city and speak a single language that caused God to confuse their language. The lex talionis is made clear in v. 7 in the words “let us confuse”, (i.e., nāblāh) which echo the act of building (i.e., nilběnāh), and in the tale’s conclusion in v. 9 where the narrator explains “That is why it was called Babel (bābel), because there Yahweh confused (bālal) the language of the whole world.” In effect, God confused the essence and destiny of Babylon simply by manipulating the letters in its name. Thus, as in the Mesopotamian divinatory manuals and in Jeremiah’s prophecy, the manipulation of letters serves as the ritual means that puts into effect the power of the divine word and the lex talionis. I could provide many more examples,20 but I trust this is sufficient to demonstrate my point. 20 E.g., “You also, O Madmen (Madmēn), shall be made silent (tiddōmmî)” (Jer 48:2); “I will cut off (hikrattî) the Cherethites (Kĕrētîm)” (Ezek 25:16); “Gilgal (Gilgāl) shall surely go into exile (gālōh yigleh)” (Amos 5:5); “The houses of Achzib (᾽Akzîb) shall be a deception


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3. Ritual Violence on Written Texts 3.1 Exodus 32 I turn now to references to physical acts of ritual violence performed on written texts. Arguably the most famous example of this is the account of Moses smashing the tablets of the covenant upon seeing the Israelites worshiping a golden calf (Exod 32:19). Many commentators see the breaking of the tablets merely as an expression of anger. However, three features of this story point to the ritual nature of this act. The first is the use of breaking as method of destruction. The intensified grammatical form of the Hebrew verb for breaking appears elsewhere in conjunction with the ritual destruction of idols, unsanctioned altars, and unclean vessels.21 The smashing of inscribed objects is also reminiscent of execration rituals practiced in Egypt and elsewhere.22 Second, the breaking of tablets appears to be just one in a chain of ritual acts. Immediately after destroying them, Moses takes the golden calf, burns it in a fire, grinds it to powder, scatters the powder into a stream from the sacred mountain (Deut 9:21), and makes the Israelites drink the water (Exod 32:20). Third, the event takes place at the foot of the mountain (Exod 32:19). Elsewhere we are told that this space was sacred (Exod 19:23) and that the people should not come near to it nor touch it until they were ritually prepared (Exod 19:12). In fact, Moses told the people to wash their clothes, abstain from sex, and let him sanctify them before presenting them before God at this location (Exod 19:14–17). Thus, the method and location of the destruction, coupled with the chain of other ritual acts that immediately follow, suggest that the breaking of the tablets also served a ritual function. Indeed, if breaking the tablets was merely an expression of anger, why does God not take vengeance on Moses? After all, he was never commanded to break them and they were not just any tablets – they were commandments inscribed literally by the “finger of God” (Exod 34:4). Thus, I assert that the smashing of the tablets ritually encoded, even as it embodied, the divine judgment of the lex talionis. Because the Israelites broke their word with God, Moses had to break the stone incarnations of God’s word, and thus sever the Israelites from Yahweh permanently. Reinforcing the intended permanence of this separation is a conversation immediately afterwards in which Moses pleads with Yahweh to take the Israelites back. The dialogue reinforces the principle of the lex talionis even as it reveals an under(᾽akzāb)” (Mic 1:14); “Gaza (῾Azzāh) will be deserted (῾ăzûbāh) […] and Ekron (῾Eqrôn) will be uprooted (tē῾āqēr)” (Zeph 2:4). 21 E.g., Exod 23:24, 34:13, Deut 7:5, 12:3, 2 Kgs 11:18, 18:4, 2 Chron 23:17. 22 See Pinch 1994: 92–95.

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lying ontology of text. Moses implores: “‘But now, please forgive their sin; but if not, then efface me from the text (sepher) you have written.’ Yahweh replied to Moses, ‘Whoever has sinned against me I will efface from my text (sepher)’.” (Exod 32:32–33). The effacing of any name from this heavenly register is equal to the permanent destruction and existence of that person, in the same way that the ritual destruction of the two tablets aimed to sever the Israelites from the divine word permanently. 3.2 Jeremiah 36 A second case of a written text’s destruction appears in Jeremiah 36. Here, however, it is a prophetic scroll that Jeremiah had dictated to his scribe Baruch. The scroll predicted Yahweh’s judgment against Judah and its destruction at the hands of the Babylonians. The text was read aloud on a ritually significant time and in a ritually powerful location – on a day of fasting at the temple gate. It then made its way to the royal palace where the king’s attendant Jehudi recited the scroll. “Whenever Jehudi had read three and four leaves of the scroll, the king cut them off (iqrā῾eāh) with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the firepot, until the entire scroll was burned in the firepot. The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear (qār῾ū) their clothing.”23 Several features of this story are suggestive of the ritual nature of this act. First is the method of destruction. The scroll is not torn randomly or in haste, or just thrown away, but rather cut methodically, and at regular intervals with a blade.24 Moreover, cutting the scroll was not enough. He then burned each strip by throwing it, not placing it, into a firepot. The throwing and burning of inscribed objects also appears in execration rituals elsewhere in the ancient Near East, especially Egypt.25 The elaborateness and thoroughness with which the king destroys the scroll illustrates the perceived permanence of a prophecy in written form. Moreover, this permanence is emphasized by the mention that Baruch had written the prophecy in ink (Jer 36:18). Another ritual feature in this pericope is the mention that the king applied a scribe’s razor to the scroll. This makes clear that any other type of blade would not have had the desired effect. I suggest that the mention of this special object is sig23 Jer 36:23–24. 24 The cutting of ritually empowered texts into strips in order to render them powerless is attested also in the Cairo Genizah. There we find several Judeo-Arabic “magic” texts similarly cut, though not burned. See Bohak 2008: 217–219. 25 In this light it is of interest to note that Lambdin 1953: 146, asserts the word for firepot is of Egyptian origin. However, the Egyptian word in question is (i.e., it contains an ῾ayin and not an ᾽aleph), and thus the phonetic correspondence makes the connection unlikely.


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nificant and that it served in a sympathetic way as a ritually empowered tool for destroying that which a scribe had written. A third ritual feature in this story is the mention that no one showed fear or tore their clothing, something the narrator clearly felt was out of place. Tearing one’s clothing is a well-known ritual gesture for grieving, often for someone’s death26 and for acknowledging the coming of God’s wrath. Elsewhere we find two different prophets tearing the clothing of a king as a ritual act that puts into motion the rending of his kingdom ([Samuel – Saul] 1 Sam 15:27, [Ahijah – Jeroboam] 1 Kgs 11:30). Thus, the narrator identifies the destruction of the scroll not just as a fearless act of hubris, but as a deliberate and ritually charged act that will result in divine wrath. Three linguistic ties bind the king’s actions to God’s punishment. The first is the use of the same verb for the cutting of the scroll and the rending of clothing (i.e., both use qāra῾). The second appears in Jeremiah’s prophecy that the king’s body will be “thrown” to the elements and left unburied (Jer 36:30), which connects it to the king “throwing” the scroll into the firepot in Jer 36:23 (i.e., both passages use the verb šālak). The third tie is the verb for “burning” (i.e., śārap), which is used for the king’s treatment of the scroll and in Jeremiah’s prophecy that the Babylonians will set fire to Jerusalem (Jer 37:8, 37:10, 38:23). Thus, in the same way that Moses destroyed the tablets in a ritual effort to sever the Israelites from Yahweh permanently, the king’s ritual destruction of the scroll aimed to render void Jeremiah’s prophecy, and thus stop the Babylonians from destroying his city. This explains why Jeremiah had to rewrite the scroll in its entirety. In essence, he had to re-activate the divine word and put it into permanent form.

4. Conclusion The destruction of tablets and scrolls like the manipulation of words to affect violence may best be understood as ritual dramas involving text. But what sorts of rituals are they? I believe we may derive insight into these acts from recent investigations into the nature and function of so-called “magic” rituals.27 Einar Thomassen in particular has proposed that we differentiate three types of “magic” rituals: those of maintenance (calendrically fixed rituals); those of transformation (rituals that affect a change in the status and identity of individuals or objects); and crisis rituals (those performed as an “improvised response to situations of perceived threat”).28 26 Gen 37:34, 44:13, Josh 7:6, Judg 11:35, 1 Sam 4:12, 2 Sam 1:2, passim. 27 Thomassen 1999: 55–66. The typology derives from the work of Honko 1979: 369–390. 28 Thomassen 1999: 59–60.

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Adopting his classification, we may see punning to violent ends and the ritual destruction of texts as existing somewhere between rituals of transformation and crisis rituals. They lean toward the former, because punning aimed to transform the essence and destiny of the speaker’s target and because the physical destruction of a text aimed to transform the status of the divine word from permanent and potentially eternal to nonexistent. Yet, both acts lean toward classification as crisis rituals since they represent reactions to perceived threats. Regardless of how we classify them, the examples I have provided for the performative use of punning and the destruction of written texts suggest that we see both acts as rituals; the former enabling violence through the spoken word, and latter affecting power over the written word. Underlying each method is an ontological context that understands spoken and written words as vehicles for mediating the divine principle of lex talionis.29

29 Compare the comment of Dalley 1998: 79: “Signs of influence can be found in many parts of the Bible. The training of scribes is key to many of the resemblances between Mesopotamian texts and biblical passages.”


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References Bergen, Wesley 2007. “Studying Ancient Israelite Ritual: Methodological Considerations”. Religion Compass 1: 579–586. Bottéro, Jean 1992. Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bohak, Gideon 2008. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Contenau, George 1955. Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria. London: Edward Arnold. Dalley, Stephanie 1998. “The Influence of Mesopotamia upon Israel and the Bible”. In: Dalley, Stephanie (ed.), The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 57–83. Dietrich, Manfried & Oswald Loretz & Joaquín Sanmartin 1995. The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, and Other Places. Münster: UgaritVerlag. Greaves, Sheldon W. 2000. “Ominous Homophony and Portentous Puns in Akkadian Omens”. In: Noegel, Scott B. (ed.), Puns and Pundits: Wordplay in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Literature. Bethesda, MD.: CDL Press: 103–113. Grimes, Ronald L. 2008. “Performance”. In: Kreinath, Jens & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.), Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 379–394. Honko, L. 1979. “Theories Concerning the Ritual Process: An Orientation”. In: Honko, L. (ed.), Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology: Proceedings of the Study Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions, Held in Turku, Finland, August 27–31, 1973. (Religion and Reason, 13). The Hague: Mouton: 369–390. Houseman, Michael 2008. “Relationality”. In: Kreinath, Jens & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.), Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 413–428. Lambdin, Thomas O. 1953. “Egyptian Loan Words in the Old Testament”. Journal of the American Oriental Society 73: 145–155. Luckenbill, D. D. 1925. “The Black Stone of Esarhaddon”. The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 41: 165–173. Noegel, Scott B. 1996a. “Atbash in Jeremiah and Its Literary Significance”. Jewish Bible Quarterly 24/2–4: 82–89, 160–166, 247–250. Noegel, Scott B. 1996b. Janus Parallelism in the Book of Job. JSOTS, 223. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. — 2007. Nocturnal Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East. (American Oriental Series, 89). New Haven, CT.: American Oriental Society. Pinch, Geraldine 1994. Magic in Ancient Egypt. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Rabinowitz, Isaac 1993. A Witness Forever: Ancient Israel’s Perception of Literature and the Resultant Hebrew Bible. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press.

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Rochberg, Francesca 1999. “Empiricism in Babylonian Omen Texts and the Classification of Mesopotamian Divination as Science”. Journal of the American Oriental Society 119: 559–569. Roth, Martha T. et al. 2005. The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Vol. 12, P. Chicago: Oriental Institute. Snoek, J. A. M. 2008. “Defining ‘Rituals’.” In: Kreinath, Jens & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.), Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 3–14. Sørensen, Jørgen Podemann 2008. “Efficacy.” In: Kreinath, Jens & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.), Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 523–531. Thomassen, Einar 1999. “Is Magic a Subclass of Ritual?” In: Jordan, David R. & Hugo Montgomery & Einar Thomassen (eds.), The World of Magic: Papers from the First International Samson Eitrem Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 4– 8 May 1997. Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens: 55–66.

Jarrod L. Whitaker

Empowering Men Ritually in Ancient India India’s oldest Sanskrit text, the Ṛgveda (c.1200 BCE), contains over a thousand liturgical hymns that were sung in daylong fire rituals and were directed to primarily three gods; the deified ritual fire, Agni; the war-god Indra; and the sacred beverage sóma, which is also personified.1 These three gods, among others, function as archetypes of human relationships and behaviour, and Ṛgvedic poet-priests align the identities of such gods with those of real men, especially warriors and chieftains. This is especially true in Indra’s case, as poet-priests deploy the war-god as the ideal male warrior and ruler whose character and activity should be a role model for all martially- and politically-inclined men in ancient India. Scholars have long recognized that one of the cardinal functions of Ṛgvedic ritual performances is to strengthen Indra for battle and cosmic supremacy. Sóma and ritual praise (stóma) are the primary means to make Indra powerful enough to take on enemies and conquer the cosmos. As we will see, the strengthening process clearly highlights the way in which Ṛgvedic poet-priests discursively and performatively constitute and empower their war-god. While we can certainly infer that human males conditioned themselves through physical acts, Ṛgvedic poet-priests repeatedly assert that the bodies of divine and human men are symbolically shaped through ritual performances. Since body theory asks us to see the ways in which the physical self and representations of such are closely linked to institutions of social and political power,2 this paper will argue that the power ritualists wield over Indra’s body also directly parallels their influence over the cosmos, political realities, and fellow ritual participants, especially warriors and chieftains. That is to say, the way in which Ṛgvedic poet-priests strengthen Indra’s body constitutes a significant ritual strategy – a process of ritualizing the body3 – wherein early Vedic ritualists define just how men should understand and use their bodies. In addition, this ritualized strategy represents one of the key ways in which Ṛgvedic poet-priests control political realities and reproduce the importance of their own ritual tradition. Hence, 1 This paper presents in brief one of the main chapter arguments from my forthcoming book On Strong-Arms and Drinking Strength: Masculinity, Violence, and the Body in Ancient India (currently under review at a university press). A version of this paper was also presented at the 14th World Sanskrit Conference, Kyoto, Japan, Sept.1–5, 2009. 2 See Strathern 1996; LaFleur 1998. 3 Bell 1992: 94ff.

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in order to illustrate this strategy this paper will examine the poetic construction of the male body, especially Indra’s, and more specifically the way in which ritual participants encode the concept of physical strength in divine and human men for social and political ends. The growth and empowerment of Indra’s body is a well-attested Ṛgvedic motif. Poets signal the ritual process of strengthening with the verbs √vṛdh and √ukṣ/vakṣ, both of which denote “to grow/increase; be/make great/strong; to strengthen/empower.” Consider the following three examples to Indra: ṚV.3.34.1cd: bráhmajūtas tanvā̀ vāvṛdhānó bhūridātra āpṛṇad ródasī ubhé. “Sped by formulations, grown strong/big in body, of abundant gifts, he filled both world halves.” ṚV.6.24.7cd: vṛddhásya cid vardhatām asya tanū stómebhir ukthaíś ca śasyámānā. “Let the body of this one, though already strengthened/grown, grow stronger/bigger as it is being lauded with praises and hymns.” ṚV.9.73.2cd: mádhor dhārābhir janáyanto arkám ít priyām índrasya tanvàm avīvṛdhan. “Birthing a chant with streams of honey, they have caused Indra’s beloved body to grow strong/in size.” It is thus in ritual performances that Ṛgvedic poet-priests constitute and empower their war-god’s body, especially with ritual praise (stóma). One poet even draws attention to his role in this process when he explicitly names himself: ṚV.8.6.1: mahām̐ índro yá ójasā parjányo vṛṣṭimām̐ iva, stómair vatsásya vāvṛdhe. “Indra, who is great due to (his) power, like rain-bringing Parjanya, has been strengthened with Vatsa’s praises.” Another poet also underscores the importance of his ritual praise: ṚV.8.12.4: imáṃ stómam abhíṣṭaye ghṛtáṃ ná pūtám adrivaḥ, yénā nú sadyá ójasā vavákṣitha. “This praise is for your superiority, purified like ghee, O stone-wielder, through which now you have been empowered with power on this day.” It is important to recognize that the strengthening process not only instills in the war-god all the power he needs to win battles, it also plays a key role in empowering Indra so that he can claim outright terrestrial and cosmic supremacy: ṚV.8.88.5: prá hí ririkṣá ójasā divó ántebhyas pári, ná tvā vivyāca rája indra pārthivam ánu svadhāṃ vavakṣitha.

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“For you project beyond the ends of heaven due to (your) power. The earthly realm did not encompass you, O Indra, you have been empowered in accordance with (your) independence.” As Kiehnle has already noted, the verb √ukṣ/vakṣ conveys martial and political connotations, especially in relation to Indra’s cosmic independence and sovereignty.4 The point here is that Indra’s ritualized empowerment is absolutely necessary – without it he could not fully become the war-god, nor defeat enemies or rule the universe. Thus, in strengthening Indra, ritualists not only infuse their war-god with physical power; they also furnish him with political authority and the legitimation to dominate others. It is a well-known fact that ritual praise is not the only process that strengthens Indra. The state of the war-god’s strength also depends on one of the most important and prestigious acts of ritual legitimization within early Vedic culture; that is, drinking sóma. Perhaps the most explicit and succinct example of this process appears in the following stanza: ṚV.10.116.1: píbā sómam mahatá indriyāya píbā vṛtrāya hántave śaviṣṭha, píba rāyé śávase hūyámānaḥ píba mádhvas tṛpád indrā vṛṣasva. “Drink sóma for great Indriyan power. Drink in order to smash Vṛtra, O mightiest one. Being invoked, drink for wealth, for might. Drink of the honey to satisfaction: O Indra, let (sóma) rain into yourself.” Ṛgvedic poets repeatedly assert that imbibing sóma figuratively, or in Indra’s case literally, causes the drinker to increase in size and strength. Indeed, one poet calls sóma the “best giver of power” (ṚV.8.92.17c: ojodātama). If sóma is made from an ephedrine-based plant (the juices of which are pressed out and ritually mixed with milk, honey, and ghee), then the metaphors and ideologies of empowerment could possibly be based in part on the stimulant effects of ephedra. In saying this, the hypothetical pharmacological effects of sóma are secondary – if not irrelevant – to the ritual and political symbolism and ideology underlying its use. The primary issue here is one of representation, not of some supposed, universal drug-induced experience. In this vein, Oberlies has convincingly demonstrated that the preparation and drinking of sóma involves notions of prosperity, fertility, and issues relating directly to warriors and chieftains, especially the succession of sovereignty.5 According to Oberlies, since Indra is the main recipient of sóma, then access to the divine draught signifies political power and legitimizes rule.6 Furthermore, human rulers assume their political positions in the same way Indra is invested with his physical and political power; that is, through the ritualized act of 4 Kiehnle 1979: 37–38. 5 Oberlies 1998. 6 Ibid.: 440.

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drinking of sóma. Several poets explicitly articulate the central role sóma plays in substantiating Indra’s position of cosmic and political supremacy, and we can safely assume that this ritualized process applies to human chieftains, who, according to Oberlies, become human representatives of Indra when they drink sóma:7 ṚV.1.9.1: índréhi mátsy ándhaso víśvebhiḥ somapárvabhiḥ, mahām̐ abhiṣṭír ójasā. “O Indra, come! Take exhilaration from the plant with all its knots of sóma: Your superiority is great due to (your) power.” ṚV.1.80.1: itthā hí sóma ín máde brahmā cakāra várdhanam, śáviṣṭha vajrinn ójasā pṛthivyā níḥ śaśā áhim árcann ánu svarājyam. “For in this way, in the exhilaration on sóma, the formulator-priest has surely performed the strengthening. O mightiest mace-wielder, you ordered away the Serpent from the earth due to (your) power. They exalt (your) sovereignty.” ṚV.8.92.6: asyá pītvā mádānāṃ devó devásyaújasā, víśvābhí bhúvanā bhuvat. “Having drunk of this one, of the exhilarating drinks, a god (Indra) (having drunk) of a god (Soma) with power will take supremacy throughout all the living worlds.” Since Indra is not born with all the power he needs to conquer enemies and to rule the cosmos, then Ṛgvedic poet-priests – by necessity and by design – strengthen their war-god through ritual practices, and such practices equally empower human warriors and warlords. Ritualists thus encode and naturalize martial and political ideals in Indra’s body, and in the bodies of men. What is more, in continually expressing political power by way of physical metaphors and reducing such power to the body, poet-priests make any direct claim for political authority contingent on physical invigoration from ritual substances and rhetoric. In the Ṛgveda the relationship between physical and political power is more than just metaphoric though as ritual practitioners actively fuse the two realities in order to ensure that political authority depends on a ritually-constructed understanding of the body. It is therefore in the act of drinking sóma that ritualists participate in, control, and even create political power. As a result, Ṛgvedic poet-priests benefit from strengthening their war-god because it legitimizes and reproduces their own privileged ritual roles in early Vedic society. The ritual act of drinking sóma also reveals another layer of micro-political relationships as it is closely linked with the concepts of “bravery” or “manliness” (vīryà) and “manhood” (nṛmṇá). That is to say, sóma not only instills physical 7 Ibid.: 396–398.


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strength and political power in Indra, it also confirms his masculinity. This is evident in the following examples, where poets are forthright about the role the ritual act of strengthening plays in constructing Indra’s manly nature: ṚV.2.32.5b: píbā sómaṃ śáśvate vīryā̀ya. “Drink sóma for endless bravery/manliness.” ṚV.6.30.1ab: bhūya íd vāvṛdhe vīryā̀yam̐ éko ajuryó dayate vásūni. “Still more greatly he has been strengthened for bravery/manliness. This unaging one alone gives treasures.” Another poet explicitly states that drinking sóma constructs Indra’s manly and powerful body: ṚV.2.36.5: eṣá syá te tanvò nṛmṇavárdhanaḥ sáha ójaḥ pradívi bāhvór hitáḥ, túbhyaṃ sutó maghavan túbhyam ābhṛtas tvám asya brāhmaṇād ā tṛpát piba. “This (sóma) strengthens your body’s manhood. As dominating strength, as power, it was established in your arms in distant days. For you it was pressed, O munificent one, and for you it was brought here: Drink of it from the Brahman’s cup until satiated.” The body (tanū) and especially the arms (bāhú-) are of course the most natural site of androcentric qualities such as strength and masculinity, yet it is through ritual discourse and the ingestion of sóma that poets are able to encode masculine and physical ideals in Indra’s body in particular, and this liquefied ideology of course extends to the masculine identities of all men who partake of sóma in the course of the rite. In ancient India, the male body may have been literally conditioned through physical acts; but it is also symbolically shaped through ritual performances. Indeed, another poet explicitly articulates this: ṚV.2.22.3: sākáṃ jātáḥ krátunā sākám ójasā vavakṣitha sākáṃ vṛddhó vīryaìḥ sāsahír mṛdho vícarṣaṇiḥ, dātā rādha stuvaté kāmyaṃ vásu saínaṃ saścad devó deváṃ satyám índraṃ satyá índuḥ. “As soon as born you were empowered at once with resolve, at once with power; at once strengthened with brave/manly qualities: Keeping the boundary people apart, you repeatedly dominated the negligent ones. (You are) the giver of benefit and desirable treasure to the praiser: one accompanies the other – god upon god, the real droplet (of sóma) upon the real Indra.” Since sóma and stóma increase the strength and masculinity of Indra and all male ritual participants, then it is no surprise that a poet explicitly states that sóma is “for the brave man/warrior, the champion” (ṚV.8.2.25c: sómaṃ vīrāya śūrāya). What is more, we can also see the prescriptive way in which ritual practitioners reinforce the necessity of the divine draught in the lives of Āryan men as a late poet

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states that without the support of Indra, his priestly alter-ego Bṛhaspati, and sóma then human warriors are in danger (we also note that the poet underscores the importance of the economics underlying this relationship when he mentions the dákṣiṇā or “sacrificial fee” in stanza 5): ṚV.1.18.4–5: sá ghā vīró ná riṣyati yám índro bráhmaṇas pátiḥ, sómo hinóti mártyam. tváṃ tám brahmaṇas pate sóma índraś ca mártyam, dákṣiṇā pātv áṃhasaḥ. “This brave man/warrior (vīrá) is not harmed, whom Indra, (whom) the lord of the sacred formulation, (whom) sóma urges on, (though) mortal. That mortal man do you protect, O lord of the sacred formulation, and sóma, Indra, and the sacrificial fee from narrow straits.” It is evident then that human warriors need Indra and sóma, yet in partnering with their war-god and partaking of the drink, they place their well-being and identities under the auspices of the very gods who exemplify the masculine and martial ideals expected of them. Consequently, the representation of Indra’s body not only reflects a deep-seated ideology pertaining to masculinity and violence; it also constructs it. This is especially evident when men receive ritual praise and partake of sóma. A man’s identity cannot be fully realized unless he has access to sóma and ultimately participates in the Ṛgvedic ritual tradition. The message human warriors receive upon drinking sóma is that they should exercise their ritually-induced strong, manly bodies in same way as Indra, and more importantly that they are naught without the gods’ help and of course poet-priests to summon them in rituals. The ritual construction of Indra’s body and the bodies of men in ancient India thus serves to encode a deep-seated martial ideology pertaining to how men understand their physical selves and their roles as men. As Connell aptly demonstrates, masculinity in any given social and historical context is at once an embodied construction and performance in response to social, economic, and political ideals.8 In other words, masculinity is not a natural, fixed, or inevitable state. Men are not born with it. We can certainly see this in the ancient Indian context, as Indra’s body, size, and strength represent an important metaphor for how men in ancient India may have embodied menacing and hyper-masculine identities; that is, to be Indra-like means being big, strong, intimidating, and violent. And Ṛgvedic ritual rhetoric and practices encourage and reproduce this hyper-masculine attitude and identity for various social, economic, and political ends. Moreover, when men drink sóma they are able to affirm and display their masculine identities and martial commitments, yet in drinking they also give tacit approval to, if not embrace, the dominant androcentric ideology.

8 Connell 2005.


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To conclude: Indra’s strength and manly qualities facilitate his domination of cosmic and political realities, and friend and foe alike. What is more, Ṛgvedic ritualists express political power by way of physical metaphors. Nevertheless, it is more than just the case that Indra’s physical power is embedded in a political ideology. In ancient India, strength is not only an aspect of political authority; physical power is political power, and vice versa. That is to say, Indra’s political power does not come from a state or legal institution or apparatus; it comes from his body, and the virility and strength of his body is produced by Ṛgvedic poet-priests. Since Indra’s body constitutes one aspect of the ancient Indian body politic, those individuals who control the means to empower Indra thus wield considerable power over their war-god and over those who move within the ritualized political arena in ancient India. In other words, the ritualized means to empower Indra’s body highlights a key way in which Ṛgvedic poet-priests strategically construct and control individual bodies and the social body. It is for this reason that ritualists map the symbolism of Indra’s body onto the embodied identity of warriors and chieftains. The ritualized control of Indra’s body thus provides poet-priests with the means to shape men’s identities, while also defining just how they should conduct themselves. The consistent appearance of androcentric martial and political ideals across the text also suggests that Ṛgvedic poet-priests are deeply concerned with maintaining their ritual tradition and its ideals. By making sóma and stóma intrinsic to the physical well-being, masculinity, and strength of all men, whether divine or human, poet-priests strategically reproduce the importance and centrality of their ritual tradition by naturalizing its ideals within the bodies of ritually-inclined men. The key way by which ritualists do this is by discursively stressing the importance of a strong Indra. This ensures that ritual performances are indispensable to Indra’s physical well-being and manhood because such practices provide the war-god with his much needed strength and machismo, and this is also the case for human males who seek recognition and support for their martial and political endeavours in early Vedic sóma rituals. Ṛgvedic poet-priests thus strategically justify their ritual performances based on the need for ritual empowerment. This is to say, ritual participants are invested in the process of empowering Indra because they are in effect empowering themselves. Consequently, while it is true that without ritual praise and sóma there would be no strong Indra and no strong men; it is equally true that poet-priests must continually reproduce the ideology that their war-god and Āryan men need empowerment, or else there would be no need for their ritual tradition.

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References Bell, Catherine 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Connell, Robert W. 2005. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kiehnle, Catharina 1979. Vedisch Ukṣ und Ukṣ/Vakṣ: Wortgeschichtliche und exegetische Untersuchungen. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. LaFleur, William R. 1998. “Body”. In: Mark C. Taylor (ed.). Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press: 36–54. Oberlies, Thomas 1998. Die Religion des Ṛgveda. Erster Teil: Das Religiöse System des Ṛgveda. Wien: Gerold (Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, vol. 26). Strathern, Andrew J. 1996. Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Peter Schalk

Memorialisation of Martyrs in the Tamiḻ Resistance Movement of Īḻam/Laṃkā 1. Introduction This paper focuses on martial martyrdom including the instrumentalisation of obligate grief and mourning in a martial context. I shall consider the resistance of Tamil speakers under the leadership of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) in the South Asian region in a territorial conflict with regional surges in South Asia from the early 1970s onwards. The conflict started with a war of words in the early 1920s. It transformed into rural and urban guerrilla wars with escalations into conventional wars numbered to four, from 1983 up to March 2009. During the whole period, and even after the military defeat of the LTTE in March 2009, defiance has been cultivated by the LTTE intensively, in the island and in the exile scene, not least through obligate grief and mourning, and also as a precursor to a following armed struggle for the independence of Tamilīlam. We face a type of grief that does not incapacitate individuals, but transforms them into resistant re-actors.1 The study of the LTTE concept of martyrdom/heroism takes us right into the centre of Tamil nationalism following in the aftermath of militant sections of the South Indian Dravidian movement whose aim in the 1960s was to create a separate state for the speakers of Tamil. This ideology has deeply influenced Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ (1954–2009) who chose martial methods to reach his ultimate aim, the separate state of Tamilīlam. The conflict between the Government and the LTTE has led to an economic embargo of LTTE-controlled areas. The LTTE has responded by setting up parallel institutions in areas under its control: The Tamil Ealam Administrative Service, The Tamil Ealam Economic Development Organisation, The Tamil Ealam Police, The Tamil Ealam Judicial Service, The Tamil Ealam Health Service and The Tamil Ealam Educational Service.2 In this process of institution building which of course was hampered by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces (SLAF), the ideology of Tamil

1 Schalk 2007a; Schalk 2009b. 2 Stokke 2006.

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nationalism including the LTTE concept of martyrdom has become the motivational force of resistance and resilience.3 The conflict has also involved India intervening militarily in 1987–1989 and is therefore a regional South Asian conflict that involves as well political groups in Tamilnāṭu. The lobbying for Tamilīlam by the Tamil exile community4 in Australia, Canada, the USA and Europe by arguing for internal or external self-determination and by explicitly equating Tamilīlam to Kosovo, Montenegro and East Timor as demanded by no less than Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ himself5 has put the LTTE on a world map of a series of separatist movements. The LTTE’s martial methods, especially its idealising of self-delivery of individuals through “suicide bombing” can be interpreted as a patriotic implementation of its martyr ideology. The LTTE has been classified as a terrorist movement by the USA, India, the EU and some other states and has been put on an international list of terrorist movements. The LTTE evaluates itself as a liberation movement. The LTTE’s ultimate aim, Tamilīlam as state formation, is still a vision whose content is mainly expressed negatively as liberation from internal and external colonisation. The content of the liberation to is still in the dark. There are some important fragments found in its concepts of martyrdom/heroism, but they are unclear with regard to a future economic system, democratic development and inter-state relations. The LTTE has been defeated many times on the battlefields, but it has always been defiant owing in part to its ideology of Tamil nationalism. The role of the Tamil exile community worldwide is to cultivate this ideology and to transfer it to a second and third generation. In this perspective the process of reconciliation is suspended for many Tamil speakers in the next coming generations. Researchers in development, in the process of state formation, in conflict research and in the study of the decline of democracy cannot neglect a study of LTTE martyrdom considered as a reaction to the economic, social and cultural policy of the Lankan state. “Social relevance” also comprises the formation of ideologies. LTTE nationalism is a profiled martial ideology which still has to be placed into a spectrum of nationalisms. As mentioned above, most important as a source of inspiration for the LTTE is a sacrificial ideology of the Dravidian movement from the 1930s onwards. The links from this movement to the LTTE were created through migration of ideas and through personal contacts. I have argued elsewhere that the LTTE as formed by Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ is a modern movement6 dependent mainly on the Dravidian movement. This was and still is also modern, but is at the same time traditionalistic. It had and still has an inclination towards the traditional, even archaic 3 4 5 6

Schalk 2002a. Schalk 2006a. Pirapākaraṉ 2007. Schalk 1997: 33–40.

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events, exemplified by the martial and heroic past of Tamil speakers. These events were, however, selectively retrieved within the context of a modern high technological society. This treats the past as pastiche. Tamilīlam is also depicted as a high technological state and not as a pre-modern agricultural city state. Both the Dravidian movement and the LTTE resistance movement are not traditional, but they are traditionalistic. There is no contradiction in being modern and traditionalistic at the same time. Modernity is legitimised by connecting it with the constructed past. The LTTE has also been inspired by martial feminism from many parts of the world; it constitutes the ideology of women fighters, who kill and are killed on the battlefield and who are also designated as martyrs/heroines in memorialising rituals. Martial feminism teaches males and females that equality of sexes in civil society can be achieved through participation of women in martial action. A new ideal female image was created by LTTE ideologues. As there is no female fighter in the founding memory, only the concept of kaṟpu (‘chastity’) for women is selected and retrieved from it, and is applied to the modern female fighter. The result of this traditionalistic retrieval from the past is the image of the idealised virgin in arms, a kind of Tamil Jeanne d’Arc, being an anomaly in Tamil culture, but legitimised through the reference to the concept of chastity from the founding memory.7 Martial feminism has been criticised from other normative feminist positions emphasising that these women are not agents, but victims.8 The LTTE concept of martyrdom/heroism is also formed as a reaction and in opposition to the Siṃhala ethno-nationalist concept of heroism. Therefore, any study of Tamil nationalism has to include a study of Siṃhala ethno-nationalism, which goes under the self-chosen designation Siṃhalatva (‘Sinhalaness’).9 The hero cult of the JVP is based on a blend of Siṃhala ethno-nationalism and SovietChinese public ritualism. The JVP is an anti-LTTE popular movement of Siṃhala speakers and a political party based in its polity on the concept of a Lankan unitary state. It has rejected all facilitation and mediation of the conflict by Norwegian diplomats. Siṃhalatva has also a specific Buddhist version of heroes represented by certain monks of the Mahāsaṃgha organised in 2002 by the JHU, Jātika Hela Urumaya (‘National Siṃhala Heritage’), but has precursors from the 1960s onwards. This heritage is a selection of martial traditions of military victories over Tamil speakers. They are applied to the LTTE today. The JVP and JHU together represent the voices of Siṃhala-speaking extremists, secular, Christian and Buddhist. Both parties were founder members of the present government coalition called UPFA (United People’s Freedom Alliance). 7 Schalk 1994. 8 De Mel 2001. 9 Schalk 2002a; 2002b; 2006b; 2007b.

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The object of this study is not only Tamil fighters in action, but also Tamil exfighters of whom many live in exile in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. There they memorialise their martyrs/heroes by following instructions from the former centres Yālppāṇam and Kiḷinocci. All these solemnities follow a common pattern.10 This was made up in administrative centres in the homeland. The solemnities in exile are intensive and gigantic because of the rich resources available. I have observed solemnities for the martyrs/heroes in Stockholm, Paris, London, Toronto, San Francisco, Melbourne, Auckland and Düsseldorf with up to 15,000 people present. They may start at 3 pm and stop at midnight mobilising the whole family clan including babies. These sums are small compared to those formerly seen in the land of Tamil speakers controlled by the LTTE during the annual Great Heroes’ Day on 27 November in the 17 tuylum illaṅkaḷ (‘abodes of rest’).11 This is the name of the war cemeteries of the LTTE which were made centres of ritual and collective mourning. A special study by me in the near future is dedicated to the 17 cemeteries of the martyrs/heroes called tuylum illam (‘abode of rest’), which are centres of protracted mourning and memorialisation. The LTTE prolongs the process of grieving and transforms it into wrath through ritual mediation. No wonder the first target to be destroyed by advancing Sri Lanka Armed Forces (SLAF) was the monuments of martyrs/heroes of the LTTE. They are a provocation to the state of Sri Lanka.

2. Terminology When I say “martyr” I refer to an emic concept in English used by the LTTE. My usage is of course not the same as consenting to the evaluation of the dead fighters as martyrs of the LTTE. I write here about the LTTE, not for or against it. I am aware that even this academic approach is questioned by the Bush-Rajapakse administrations’ explicit ultimatum: if you are not for me, you are against me. Scholars and journalists in Sri Lanka are particularly exposed to extreme pressures, but so too are scholars abroad who write under the constant threat of being refused a visa. Among the millions of entries about the LTTE on the internet, in books, papers and pamphlets, only very few even try to analyse the concept of martyrdom by focusing on emic concepts which of course is different from speaking as an insider. I refer to the process of objectifying emic concepts, not of internalising them. This omission of objectifying emic concepts is due in most cases to incompetence in the Tamil language. Its negative consequence is that particularities in the presentation of the LTTE disappear and this makes it possible to put the LTTE concept of mar10 Schalk 2003. 11 Schalk 2003.


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tyrdom into one pot together with concepts of “suicide killers” from the Middle East whose concepts are also impressionistically analysed. In Indian languages we find a complexity of terms for “martyr” and “martyrdom”. I especially consider here the English and Tamil uses of the terms for martyr/martyrdom used by the LTTE. Being encouraged by Jewish-Christian martial martyrs through the mediation of Catholic and Protestant priests, the LTTE has chosen the English terms “martyr/martyrdom” and “hero/heroism” when translating Tamil/Sanskrit terms into English. Most terms used by the LTTE are in Tamil or Tamilised Sanskrit. A person who practises tiyākam is called tiyāki (‘one who renounces/abandons [life]’), and vīram, [mā]viraṉ, (‘[great] hero’), but when these terms are translated into English we find often “martyr” for both and also “hero”. As the two are constantly alternating I write martyr/hero. For example the frequent phrase māvīrar maraṇam attainta, can be translated with “Great Hero/Martyr who has attained death”. Māvīrarnāḷ on 27 November is translated by the LTTE both as “Great Heroes’ Day” and “Martyrs’ Day”. The latter can be regarded as a “free” translation appealing to a Western understanding. Recently the LTTE has in some places paralleled these designations for the 27 November with “Remembrance Day”. The LTTE use of Tamil terms for “martyr” is a complex which is lost in translations into English that simplify the usage into the two alternating terms “martyr” or “great hero”. In the following I present a list of usages which are part of the discourse of Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ who is the talaivar, “head”, of the LTTE. His book Reflections of the Leader12 is an important source for these terms and for the research of Tamil patriotism in connection with the attempt among militant Tamil speakers of the armed resistance to achieve violently a state formation as protection and last refuge from the Lankan Government’s attacks. This Government holds on, also violently, to a centralised unitary state which cannot be reconciled with the aspirations of these Tamil speakers to obtain first of all co-determination in the affairs of the state and then self-determination. As all negotiations from the 1970s onwards have become stranded, both sides have decided to let short-lived cease fires be replaced by long-lived martial confrontations up to the level of total war that does not consider the lives of civilians. Both sides are concerned to push through ultimate values, the LTTE “two nations, two states” and the Government “one nation, one state”. Patriotic Tamil speakers living in Ilam, which is an old Tamil alternative name for Laṃkā,13 call themselves Īlattamils, not Lankans. The patriotism among Īlattamils under the leadership of Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ comprises a complex concept of voluntary self-delivery as central ideological theme. This theme is formulated by him among other sources in Reflections of the Leader that was issued in Tamil by 12 Schalk 2007. 13 Schalk 2004.

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his organisation in 1995 and 2005 and was edited and translated by me in 2007.14 The way to the aim which is an independent nation state known as Tamilīlam allegedly passes in the prevailing conditions, if the worst comes, through the voluntary death of so-called Great Heroes, especially of members of the elite group of Great Heroes known as Black Tigers. They are expected to eliminate the obstacles that prevent the coming of Tamilīlam. The following Tamil terms are emic core issues in the sacrificial ideology of the LTTE: māvīram (‘heroism’), tiyākam (‘renunciation [of life]’), īkai (‘gift’), pali (‘sacrifice’), arppaṇippu (‘sacrifice’), cāṭci (‘martyr/witness’), paṟṟu (‘bind oneself’), taṟkotai (‘gift of oneself’). All these and derivations from them are analysed by me elsewhere.15 The LTTE has contributed to a flattened presentation of its sacrificial terminology by its simplifying translations into English. Martial martyrdom/heroism is of course an emotional and intellectual expression of experiences in a martial situation. In a situation of peace these concepts appear as atavistic even in South Asia. Western readers of LTTE martial texts often feel disconcerted when confronted with the martial language of the LTTE. They should, however, study the martial language of political leaders in the West during war-time, and above all the martial language of the Lankan Governments.

3. Self-Annihilation as Godly Asceticism In media in journalistic presentations by scholars the LTTE martyrs are known as “suicide-killers”, although suicide-killing by the use of life itself as a weapon is only used in extreme situations. This kind of self-delivery is highly spectacular and effective and therefore attractive to the media, but the reader should be aware that the number of “suicide-killers” in relation to the total number of LTTE fighters killed is very small. From 27 November 1982 to 31 July 2008 not less than 21,459 young men and women have been killed on the battlefields of Yālppāṇam and Vaṉṉi. 4,651 were women. Some families have lost three youths on the battlefields. In 2008 (31 July), 360 “suicide killers” had been killed since 5 July 1986 when they were formally first organised. Of these 360, 103 were Land Tigers and 257 Sea Tigers. Of the former 21 were women and of the latter 77. All these 21,459 are classified as māvīrar,16 which in LTTE English texts appears as “Great Heroes” or “martyrs”. The heaviest losses occurred in 1997 when 2,112 fighters were killed. This may be surpassed by the end of the year 2009. The conclusion of this overview is that most fighters are killed in guerrilla or conventional attacks. It is therefore wrong to let “suicide killers” take the representational position of all fighters. 14 Schalk 2007. 15 Ibid.: 93–142. 16 anon. 2008.


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This self-delivery of the “suicide killers” is performed by an elite group known as karumpulikaḷ (Black Tigers). “Suicide-killing” refers to the killing of the enemy and of oneself in a suicidal attack. The LTTE speaks of “self-annihilation” by the use of uyirāyutam ([one’s own] life as weapon).17 It is characterised in 36:5 of Reflections of the Leader as a form of “godly asceticism” by Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ which refers to a cultivating of the mind before the final act of using one’s own life as a weapon. Part of this cultivating is the memorialisation of martyrs/heroes in the past to which I shall come below. After their death the Black Tigers are memorialised in the “abodes of rest” as Great Heroes like all other dead fighters. Up to March 2009 when the defeat of the LTTE was approaching, at least eleven self-immolators by fire in Tamilnāṭu and in exile protested against alleged war crimes of the Sri Lankan Government against civilian refugees who were caught in crossfire. One of the protesters in January 2009 was the journalist Muttukumaraṉ, 26, from Tamilnāṭu, who left behind a four-page letter in Tamil in which he declared: “I have used the weapon of life”.18 His saying gives a new interpretation to this concept that in an LTTE context refers to both one’s own and one’s enemy’s destruction. First, this concept of using life as weapon is now for the first time used by a civilian. The concept has been de-elitised. Second, it is used for the act of self-immolation through fire where only one party is destroyed. He may have thought that the deep impression that his self-delivery left behind would lead to an intensification of pressure on the Lankan Government by the world community to stop its alleged war crimes. This concept of “life as weapon” may spread to more civilians. There is a widespread misunderstanding about Black Tiger actions saying that his or her death is pre-determined. This is not the case. The person involved can sometimes escape destruction. There are living Black Tigers who can tell of successful actions. The use of belt-bombs, which is no doubt a fatal method, is only one of several methods used by the Black Tigers. They may participate in guerrilla and conventional battles. True, they take higher risks than others, but they survive in many cases. Their actions are evaluated as audacious. What does it mean to say that a LTTE martyr is a godly ascetic? We ignore here the disciplinary rules of behaviour of the LTTE which forbid drinking alcohol and pre-marital sex. These rules belong to the normalcy of military discipline of some resistance movements in the world and have nothing to do with the kind of asceticism that is “godly”. We also ignore the understanding that becoming godly through asceticism is a well-known career of holy men and women in India having Śiva/Civaṉ as an ideal. By the retention of mobilised sexuality he reached spiritual

17 anon. n.d. 18 “nāṉ uyirāyutam entiyirukkiṟēṉ” (Muttukumaraṉ 2009: 4).

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power. In the South, Kaṇṇaki in the cilappattikāram from the fifth century A.D. became a goddess through chastity. All this is irrelevant in our context. We have to start from the emic formulation of this concept which occurs in Reflections of the Leader as saying number 36:5 and to which we have to add 42:4 where these ascetics are classified as puṉitaṟkaḷ (‘holy ones’). In 36:5 he says: “To be courageous to annihilate oneself (taṉṉai illā tolikka) for the happy living of others is godly asceticism (teyīkat tuṟavaṟam). Godly births (beings) (teyīvikat piṟavikaḷ) are the Black Tigers indeed.” This kind of asceticism belongs to the context of the concept of tiyākam (renunciation), which is one of the key terms of LTTE martyrology. Here it refers not to the Gandhian renunciation of aggression and violence, but to the renunciation of self-interest as we find it in the Bhagavadgītā where Arjuna in section 18 is defined in Sanskrit as a tyāgi (‘renouncer’). His interest is not his own personal interest but the interest of the fulfilment of his caste-specific svadharma, which in his case is kṣatradharma, the duty of warfare. Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ deselects the caste-specific part of the argument. He is not interested in defending the norms of a holy social institution, but he sticks to the Gītā’s rejection of personalised self-interest. This is made explicit in 36:5, but also in several other passages like 39:3 and 51:3. These texts are also exemplary illustrations of what Durkheim called anomistic and altruistic suicides.19 The Bhagavadgītā was incorporated in the Quit-India jargon in the early twentieth century in a martial context and was then communicated to Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ in the 1950s and 1960s in Tamil translation, especially in the martial discourse of Subhas Chandra Bose who had a deeply formative influence on his mind.20 The Sanskrit term tyāga goes back even to the Vedic period when the sacrificer as tyāgi decided to renounce part of his property to be given to the god as a sacrifice.21 In the context of the LTTE the donator of the sacrifice and the sacrifice are identical: the LTTE martyr renounces his life for the benefit, not of a god, but of his people. The mental preparation for such a selfless action we could call with a Western concept “inner asceticism” contrasting to “outer asceticism” that is, renouncing company, food, clothes, etc. The LTTE does not promote outer asceticism and does not idealise Caiva, Christian or Muslim pillar saints. Inner asceticism is training in selflessness by studying and internalising the martyrs who are depicted as selfless beings. When Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ classifies these beings as godly we have to understand it as a conscious provocation: a true godly person is not a pillar saint, but one who gives his lives for others. Godliness is reinterpreted by him as human altruism. He humanises godliness which is contrary to the process 19 Durkheim 1930: 233–311. 20 Schalk 1996a; 1996b; 1997: 53–57. 21 See the good summary in Wilke 2005: 24.


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in Siṃhala heroism. In a famous raṇagī, “war song”, the heroes of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces are defined as marudevatāvu, “gods of protection”. The term is taken from parochialised Siṃhala Buddhism22 where the four protecting gods of Laṃkā, Viṣṇu, Śiva, Skanda and Pattiṉi, are defined by this term. When applied to the heroes on the battlefield these are not humanised, but deified. Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ elaborates on this selfless giving by the use of the term īkam or īkai, both meaning “gift”. It is a term that is used in a secular context meaning also “support” that is given to a needy somebody. By giving his life the martyr “supports” his people. In 12:2 he attributes “human” to “gift”. The gift is not only a human gift; it is a gift of a human of himself. Again, the giver is identical with the gift. He or she does not give something of him/her, but gives the totality. The importance of this thinking with the term īkam is that īkam is not the same as a sacrifice which would involve a reciprocal relation: do ut des. Īkam is a selfless giving that does not expect a counter-gift. Moreover, the concept of sacrifice implies the hope of expiation of guilt which is totally alienated from the concept of īkam. A LTTE martyr does not expiate his own or his people’s guilt. His gift is depicted as one of pure loving selflessness. This is emphasised by Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ in 37:4 and 38:4 when idealising the martyr Tilīpaṉ. In 1987 under the occupation of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), he chose to give his life through fasting to death, not as a form of outer asceticism, but as a strategy for political liberation by mobilisation of the masses like Mahātma Gandhi and Bobby Sands of the IRA did before him. The LTTE has another word for gift, taṟkoṭai (‘gift of oneself’). Koṭai also belongs to a worldly context. It is used when a well-to-do person gives presents to needy people or when like in 63:2 nature itself is said to give its treasures to man. Taṟkoṭai is also a pun. By a small change of the grapheme taṟkollai (‘murder of oneself’, ‘suicide’) into taṟkoṭai one arrives at the euphemism “gift of oneself”. Suicide comes close to “self-delivery” or German Freitod. The fighter when pondering over the word taṟkoṭai shall think: “This is not taṟkollai”. It may facilitate to suspend scruples of deeply Catholic/Protestant or Hindu fighters. Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ made use of taṟkoṭai in his speech on Great Heroes’ Day in 1992. There is one step in thinking that the LTTE has not yet made explicit. When I say “X is dying for the people to live” it certainly implies that X dies for the welfare of the people, but it may also imply that X is dying instead of the people. There a vicarious dying is implied. On the side of the Government, its own war propaganda has discovered the deep-running influence of the concept of vicarious dying. It presents vicarious dying to its soldiers as a way of dying meaningfully.23 22 Schalk 2002b; 2006b. 23 anon. 2007.

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In the case of the LTTE we find a number of reports from the battlefield where X died for [= instead of] comrade Y but these reports do not reflect these incidents as examples of vicarious dying which indeed is implied, but not made explicit. It is, however, clear that even if vicarious dying is implied there is on both sides no concept of expiation of the sins of the people attached to it. Therefore the concept of sacrifice does not fit into the Governmental propaganda and the LTTE system of thinking. The Government propaganda never gets tired of praising “the ultimate sacrifice” and Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ has introduced several Tamil concepts of sacrifice in connection with martyrdom, but I see his work as an attempt to present a new interpretation of sacrifice. It is devoid of Hindu and Christian attachments about vicarious dying pertaining to the expiation of sins in the context of a scapegoat sacrifice. The LTTE martyr is no scapegoat in the theological sense. In the mind of a LTTE fighter, common or elite, should be the ideal of paṟṟu (binding/tying oneself to). In Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ’s martial language it appears twice in the context of binding oneself to the ultimate aim (36:6), to the language Tamil 47:2) and to the process of liberation (51:3). A person who binds himself to the country is called by the LTTE tēca-paṟṟu-ālar (‘one who binds himself to the country’), which a conventional translation renders as ‘patriot’. LTTE patriots are mostly civilians, but outstanding ones who have tried to contribute in different ways to the establishment of Tamilīlam. They constitute a special group of Great Heroes. On 31 July 2008 they numbered 474.24 There is a problem about this concept of “binding”. It has been neglected by a horde of blog producers probably because they are unable to read LTTE texts in Tamil. Instead they have ascribed to the LTTE the ambition to idealise the concept of patti, Sanskrit bhakti, which they popularly translate as “devotion”. They turn LTTE patriotism into a religion of devotion and make Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ the object of this devotion. The word patti is never used by him as a self-designation of his ideology. The LTTE stands for paṟṟu ((self-)binding), in the context of a secular patriotism. It has shown no inclination to interpret paṟṟu as patti and to outbid existing forms of Caiva, Vaiṇava, and Christian patti.

4. On Memorialisation of Martyrs/Heroes The specific characteristics of LTTE martyrdom can be highlighted in a process of cross-cultural, diachronic and synchronic comparisons of concepts of martyrdom. It is easy to demonstrate the connection between memorialisation, mourning/grief, and martyrdom/heroism in martial contexts. Martial martyrdom is in our context the result of an obligate and controlled memorialising of martyrs after bereavement, based on private grief, but shaped in the process as public mourning. There is 24 anon. 2008.


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a widely spread common topos in martial cultures, including the Christian one, according to which the blood of martyrs is the seed for new martyrs. This metaphor and other similar ones, especially the ones depicting the martyr as a seed, are also used by the LTTE – as metaphors. The LTTE has, however, suspended transcendence and is therefore different from Jihadism and Christian crusader eschatology, albeit that all idealise martial martyrdom/heroism. A LTTE martyr is not said to be taken to heaven by angels and there is no reward compensating for his death on the battlefield as promised by Jihadists. It is possible to engage a fighter totally for a political worldly aim, for Tamilīlam, without promising compensation in the next life. In the LTTE oath of allegiance the fighter makes a resolution to dedicate his life, soul and body, his totality of existence, to the realisation of this aim.25 One LTTE word for oath is uṟutiyurai (resolution-utterance). This oath does not even indicate compensation. In memorialisation in the LTTE context, dead martyrs are made public property and representations of the bereavement of territory. The building of war memorials connected with rituals and a special powerful discourse of mourning all over LTTE-controlled areas are expressions of symbolic and protracted bereavement/grief. The main person of interest in this study is, however, not the dead martyr, but the living mourner, who will take up the martial martyr’s role and die on the battlefield again causing grief and mourning. He will generate a new martyr. A LTTE martyr, regularly a mourner, does of course not die “in” Christ or “in” Husayn, and only selectively “in” a preceding LTTE martyr through the process of memorialisation. The LTTE martyr is taught to marginalise the dying of the preceding martyr and Achilles-like focus instead upon his wrath and his dedication to the cause which is Tamilīlam. What should be imitated is the martyr’s dedication – even if it ends in death. One of the honorary designations of the LTTE fighters is maravaṉ (‘the wrathful’).26 True, death is real, but it should never be sought. In the LTTE conceptualisation of death, its sting is preserved. Death is victorious and final as there is no resurrection and no victory. Death is tragic. LTTE fighters are not trained as death lovers like Christian martyrs who want to be Christ-like in Christ’s vicarious dying for the expiation of sins and in his resurrection. Official memorialisation at an “abode of rest” also makes clear that it does not on the part of the LTTE imply concepts like expiation of the living and intercession of the martyr. Non-official memorialisation at the grave of a martyr by civil kinsfolk as mourners is performed in accordance with the religious tradition of this mourner. The LTTE does not intervene by correcting. Therefore we can find Caiva and Christian ways of mourning at these graves. 25 Schalk 2007: 70–71. 26 Schalk 1997: 35–42.

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The LTTE has no monopoly on memorialisation in its own territory of control. Christian priests, especially Catholics, have a parallel system of memorialisation for these martial martyrs/heroes including these elements. They turn the LTTE dead fighter into a Christian martyr. They are of course not attracted by the LTTE’s idealising of fighting, risking death for Tamilīlam, but are attracted by the dying instead of a person, for example dying instead of a civilian under threat of being killed by the SLAF. Priests attach the concept of expiation to this idealised vicarious dying by the LTTE and create an example of imitating Christ. The problem for blog writers is to keep these parallel traditions apart, the LTTE secular and the civil a religious one. There is ignorance among some blog writers, but also a political ambition to present the LTTE as a religion that wants to replace all other religions. Such a view is not shared by the Christian priesthood or by the LTTE leadership. They have found a way of dividing labour. Obligate memorialisation is part of the mourner’s grieving. It refers to the moral, not legal duty of each member concerned in the resistance movement to participate in grieving and mourning the dead martyr/hero, and to internalise the persona of this martyr. The LTTE sees the individual mourner as an actor who is transformed into an agent for Tamilīlam. Mourning becomes an agency that changes defeat into victory. The sentiments of grief in this martial culture are expected to shift towards wrath. This is achieved by shifting attention from grief to grievances which have been collected by Tamil speakers in long litanies to be taught even to children in schools and homes, put on web pages and used in discussions as explanation and legitimisation for armed resistance. These litanies of grievances form the backbone of the experience of injustice that Tamil speakers have felt in their relation to successive Governments. In many meetings all over the exile leading Tamil speakers go for peace, certainly, but always for peace with justice. What justice ultimately means is not only a vague concept of fairness. It is specifically the recognition of self-determination of the Tamil speakers according to Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ (46:5, 70:4). Memorialisation of martyrs is not just remembrance. The memory of the martyr does not just appear suddenly in consciousness as many memories do. It is an active retrieving of an ideal model for action from the past into the present and future. Moreover, memorialisation is not only retrospective, it is also prospective. It serves to create strong martial self-images inspired by martyrs who in the official epitaphs of the LTTE are not seen in their civil roles as son/daughters, brothers/sisters, uncles/aunts, male/female friends, students, cousins, professionals or Caivas/Vaiṇavas/Christians/Muslims, etc. but in their martial role as maṟavar. This role describes a person with uruti (resoluteness), but also with a strong feeling of comradeship. A LTTE epitaph is often recognised by the headline vīra vaṇakkam (salutation [to] the hero). A civil epitaph produced by the kin that memorialises the martyr in


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his/her former civil roles and present martial role may be recognised by the headline vīraccāvu aṟivittal, “announcement of a heroic death”. A civil person’s epitaph who was never a member of the LTTE can be recognised by the headline maraṇa aṟivittal, “announcement of death”. It is published by relatives of the deceased, who leave out all references to heroism. Civil mourners are made to participate in collective, calendrical, public, martial memorialising rituals organised by the LTTE. These calendrical rituals are many public solemnities which are not determined by seasonal changes, but by historical events, by the “martyrising” [=LTTE English] of fighters. During these solemnities memorialisation tends to suspend the distinction between a hagiographic narrative about a martyr’s/hero’s tragic career and being an eye-witness account of it. Memorialisation also suspends the distance of time and place between the civil mourner and the martyr/hero. Through the process of ritual, synchronisation is in reach. Let us briefly look at some of the most important solemnities in the annual calendars of the LTTE. 1. Date: 16 January. Official name of the solemnity: kēṇal kiṭṭu tiṉam (‘Colonel Kiṭṭu’s Day’). Colonel Kiṭṭu [=Catācivam Kiruṣṇakumār] killed himself on high sea on 16 January 1993 having been surrounded by the Indian Navy. Kiṭṭu was military leader in Yālppāṇam during the late 1980s. He came to London as representative of the LTTE, but tried to return in January 1993, when he was surrounded by the Indian navy. 2. Date: 8 March. Official name: aṉaittulaka peṇkaḷ nāḷ (‘International Women’s Day’). The viṭutalaipulikaḷ makalir amaippu, the “Women’s Front of the Liberation Tigers” uses this international day to commemorate their fallen heroines collectively but also to launch their socio-revolutionary demands for women’s rights. This solemnity actualises the participation of women in armed struggle, which implies a complete reversal of values regarding women and of their status in traditional Tamiḻ society. The first woman to be killed on the battlefield was Mālati on 10 October 1987. She has a solemnity of her own which I shall not elaborate upon here. 3. Date: 19 April. Official name: aṉṉai pūpati niṉaivu tiṉam (‘Mother Pūpati Memorialisation Day’). In the interpretation of the movement, Mother Pūpati fasted to death on 19 April 1988 as a protest against the Indian army’s presence. In Oslo, Norway, a school for Tamil children carries her name. As Mother Pūpati was not a member of the LTTE she cannot be classified as a māvīrar. 4. Date: 5 June. Official name: civakumāraṉ niṉaivu tiṉam (‘Civakumāraṉ’s Memorialisation Day’). Civakumāraṉ is said by the movement to have killed himself by taking cyanide on 5 June 1974, having been surrounded by the police. Recently, this commemoration day has been especially observed in connec-

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Peter Schalk tion with the demonstrations called poṅku tamil (Tamil upsurge), led by students from Yālppāṇam, originally after the conquest of Yālppāṇam by the Lankan armed forces in 1995. It is also a “solemnity”, protesting against the Government’s rule in “occupied” territory. It is a periodic ritual first repeated annually on 5 June, but later the upsurge was organised whenever needful in the cities of the diaspora where many Tamil speakers lived. This date refers to the student Civakumāraṉ from Yālppāṇam. As he chose to die by taking cyanide on 5 June 1974 instead of being captured by the Lankan armed forces, students declare they are even prepared to die for their cause. We can see this solemnity as a replica inspired by the intifada. The “Tamil upsurge” demands the right to nationhood, home-land and self-determination for the Tamils.

5. Date: 5 July. Official name: karumpulikaḷ tiṉam (‘Black Tigers’ Day’). The date refers to 1986 when the first Black Tiger, Captain Millar, was killed after the first arranged suicidal attack. 6. Date: 23 July. Official name: kaṟuppu jūlai (‘Black July’). The date refers to 1983, when on 23–25 July, anti-Tamil pogroms against Tamil civilians began, initiated by politicians in the governmental administration. Several thousand Tamil speakers lost their lives and the material destruction of private property was enormous. This pogrom was only one in a series dating from independence in 1948. 7. Date: 26 September. Official name: lep. kēṇal tilīpaṉ niṉaivu tiṉam (‘Lieutenant-Colonel Tilīpaṉ’s Memorialisation Day’). Colonel Tilīpaṉ fasted to death on 26 September 1987 as a protest against the presence of the Indian Army. 8. Date: 5 October. Official name: kumarappā uṭpaṭa paṉṉiru vēṅkaikkaḷ niṉaivu tiṉam (‘The Memorialisation Day of Kumarappā together with 12 Tigers’). Kumarappā belonged to the inner circle of the LTTE. He, together with 12 comrades, was taken prisoner by the Indian Army, but be-fore they were handed over to the Sri Lankan Army, they committed sui-cide by taking cyanide on 5 October 1987. 9. Date: 27 November. Official name: māvīrarnāḷ (‘Great Heroes Day’). This is the most elaborate ritual, which lasts in some places a whole week. It was originally dedicated to Caṅkar, the first martyr, who died on 27 November 1982, but it became a collective solemnity for all martyrs. The LTTE’s obligate memorialisation of martyrs conveys the message: Remember them in the future. Their virtues and courage are praised in narrative biographic presentations much like in other martial cultures. The LTTE also creates normative hagiographies of its martyrs/heroes and presents them in ritual performance. Memorialised in these hagiographies are not only episodic and idiosyncratic elements


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in the biography of a fighter belonging to the present communicative culture, but also permanent mental structures belonging to a collective memory. Memorialising is a way to mobilise a collective memory. “Collective” is of course limited here to members of the iyakkam (movement). These hagiographies can be classified as semiotisations of martyrs and incidents. They are representational. Martyrs become signs of an ultimate value, which is the ultimate sacrifice, to fight including the possibility of losing one’s life on the battlefield for the cause of a separate state called Tamilīlam. These hagiographies tell of a paradigmatic transformation of the martyr from prey into hunter, from victim into killer, from his grief into his wrath. Re-representations of a sequence of events in the past life of a martyr affect the memorialising mourner, events that resemble his own career. The memorialising mourner is expected to internalise these re-representations as imperatives and to transform the ultimate sacrifice of a martyr/hero into a victory in the same way as this martyr/hero earlier turned the ultimate sacrifice of a predecessor into a victory. The martyr-to-be takes up where the martyr ended his life. In short, the hagiographies, internalised by a martyr-to-be, are internalised in ritual participation following a dynamic transition life > death > life, etc. which we find especially in initiation rituals. My suggestion is therefore that we should understand the internalised biography of a martyr by the martyr-tobe as an initiation. This transition of stages life > death > life, correlated to the transition wrath > grief > wrath is of course not unique, because initiation is global, but in this case initiation is not one among several rites de passage in the life story of an individual, it is one and a final one. Life itself has become a rite de passage. I suggest that the LTTE model is representative for martial cultures around the world. These rituals facilitate the overcoming of moral obstacles; they push forward the (mental) transformation of prey into hunters. This is of course only possible because of the experience of social, psychological, and economical deprivation by the martyr-to-be. His/her consenting reaction is like an echo to a call in a martial context. These rituals are therefore political rituals in this specific context as they are related to the process of achieving an explicit political aim. They display “the people” as a coherent, ordered and closed community based on shared values and goals. The anticipatory or prospective character of these rituals brings the ultimate aim, Tamilīlam, closer and even near. It is already depicted on maps. Plans are made by the LTTE’s economic and technical experts at home and especially in exile for the restoration of the whole infrastructure of Tamilīlam, now devastated by the war. Memorialisation also creates desired boundaries against others. When it comes to dying for the people, “the people” are of course Tamil speakers of a well-defined territory and culture known as Tamilīlam. Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ has long exposés about what his iṉam, ([cultural and territorial, not racial] community) is. It is so defined as to delimit it from the non-Tamil cultural community of Siṃhala

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speakers.27 His distancing concept of inam is expected in this kind of martial discourse. The Government’s discourse is not distancing; on the contrary, it is hegemonic, extending and dominating. A LTTE martyr/hero symbolises this concept of Tamil people-territory-culture. His death is classified as a tragic loss of a part of this culture. Ethnicity is strongly emphasised by Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ which has brought him much criticism by Marxist intellectuals. From the LTTE side there is no doubt that the conflict is ethnic which has always been rejected by successive Governments. To admit that would be the same as to acknowledge its own hegemony to be a violation of minority rights. In the evaluation of these Governments the LTTE does not consist primarily of “Tamils” but of terrorists.

5. Summary and End The narratives about martyrs, inducing grief, ending in anger/wrath, and the memorials with which they are connected, verify to tothers the LTTE’s reputation of martyrdom/heroism, and remind people at the same time of the collective bereavement of territory. Hagiographic narratives are turned into legitimising agendas for confrontation. The martyrs-to-be relate their role to their own situation as imperatives. 27 November, “Great Heroes Day”, is the most elaborate ritual. Martyrdom memorialised brings the imagined state hither through symbolic acts like parades, national events, collective gatherings, through representations that “concretise” the invention. Great Heroes Day creates a potential and transitional space that mediates between wish and reality and thereby makes wishful thinking plausible. It is possible to eliminate the LTTE as an organisation with its outward appearance, but the personal experience of grief, based on personal grievances and on grievances in long litanies transmitted by four generations, and the ensuing burning anger or wrath cannot be eliminated. The mourners of the more than 21,000 young men and women who have died on the battlefields in Yālppāṇam and Vaṉṉi districts are also mourners of many more civilians. These mourners insist on “justice” being established. In 2008 and 2009, every week in exile, Tamil speakers, including families with babies, protested in massive and aggressive open demonstrations in the streets of Toronto, Auckland, Sydney, Stockholm, Paris, London upon being informed by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Navi Pillay, that safe zones promised by the Government had subsequently been subjected to bombardment leading to civilian casualties.28 After the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009 concepts like reconciliation and co-existence were experienced as anomalies by these mourners. The military 27 Schalk 2007: Chapter 8. 28 UN News Service 2009; Schalk 2009a.


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defeat of the LTTE has mobilised Tamil speakers globally and united them as never before in forming a provisional, transnational Government of Tamilīlam.29 Destroyed war monuments of former heroism, now symbols of the defeat of the LTTE in loyal Government circles, have become monuments of defiance for mourners in the Tamil resistance movement. The Government of Sri Lanka has won a battle, but no peace.

29 Schalk 2009a.

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References anon. n.d. Karumpulikaliṉ irutik kanaṅkaḷ. uyirāyutam 1–3. Pirans: Nitarcaṉam Tāyarippu. [video, no year of issue]. anon. 2007. “Two Decades of ‘Suicide Terror’: Untold Suffering for Lanka”. Daily News, July 6th. (http://www.daily news.lk/2007/07/06/fea03.asp). anon. 2008. 27.11.1982 toṭakkam 31.07.2008 varai vīraccāvait taluvikkoṇṭa māvīrarkaḷiṉ tokuppu. [2008]. tamilīlam tamilīla māvīrar paṉimaṉai araciyaltuṟai. [LTTE statistics, no pagination]. Durkheim, Émil 1930. Le suicide. Étude de sociologie. Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. De Mel, Neloufer 2001. “Agent or Victim? The Sri Lankan Woman Militant in the Interregnum.” In: Neloufer De Mel (ed.). Women & The Nation’s Narrative. Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Sri Lanka. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: 203–232. Muttukumaraṉ 2009. Vitiyē vitiyē eṉceya niṉaittiṭṭāy eṉ-tamil cātiyai. http://www. tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=28208. Pirapākaraṉ, Vēluppiḷḷai 2007. [Speech on Great Heroes Day 2007]. http://www. ltteps.org/mainpages/images//2007/11/heros_day_statement_english_2007.pdf. Schalk, Peter 1994. “Women Fighters of the Liberation Tigers in Ilam. The Martial Feminism of Atēl Palacinkam”. In: South Asia Research (SOAS) 14/2: 1–22. — 1996a. “Förrädarstämpeln är borta. Ännu lever ‘Netaji’ – den vördade ledaren”. In: Sydasien 2: 24–25. — 1996b. “Inte bara tigern gemensam. Total hängivenhet och martyrkult förbinder Tigrarna med Netajis ideal”. In: Sydasien 2: 26–28. — 1997. “Historisation of the Martial Ideology of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE)”. In: South Asia. Journal of South Asian Studies 20: 35–72. — 2002a. “Ilavar and Lankans: Emerging Identities in a Broken-up Island”. In: Journal of Asian Ethnicity, Vol. 3, No. 1: 47–62. — 2002b. “Political Buddhism among Lankans in the Context of Martial Conflict”. In: Religion, Staat, Gesellschaft: Zeitschrift für Glaubensformen und Weltanschauungen, Jahrgang 2: 223–42. — 2003. “Beyond Hindu Festivals: The Celebration of Great Heroes’ Day by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) in Europe”. In: Martin Baumann & Brigitte Luchesi & Annette Wilke (eds.). Tempel und Tamilen in zweiter Heimat. Hindus aus Sri Lanka im deutschsprachigen und skandinavischen Raum. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag: 391–421. — 2006a. Cāvilum vālvōm. ‘Auch im Angesicht des Todes werden wir leben’. Īlamtamile sein im Krieg und in der Fremde. Dortmund: Internationaler Verein Emigrierter Tamilischer Schriftsteller e.V. — 2006b “Semantic transformations of the dhammadipa”. In: Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka. Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism, ed. Mahinda Deegalle. London: Routledge: 86–92.


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— 2007a Die Lehre der Befreiungstiger Tamilīlams von der Selbstvernichtung durch göttliche Askese: Vorlage der Quelle ÜBERLEGUNGEN DES ANFÜHRERS. Herausgeber Peter Schalk. Uppsala: Uppsala University. [E-book, http://uu.divaportal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:173420]. — 2007b “Operationalizing Buddhism for Political Ends in a Martial Context in Ilam/Lanka: the case of Siṃhalatva”. In: King, Richard and John Hinnels (eds.) Religion and Violence in South Asia: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge: 139–53. — 2009a. “Der Kampf geht weiter”. In: Sydasien (29. Jahrgang 3, 2009): 41–46. — 2009b “Die Lehre des heutigen tamilischen Widerstandes in Īlam/Laṃkā vom Freitod als Martyrium”. In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 09/1: 71–99. — 2009b (forthcoming). “Sinhalasation as Homogenisation of Culture”. In: (ed. Anon.) Sri Lanka: 60 Years of Independence. Geneva: Centre for Just Peace and Democracy. — 2010 (forthcoming). “Vom Krieg geprägte Vergangenheitsaufarbeitungen in Ilam/Lanka”. In: Peter Schalk (ed.), Geschichten und Geschichte: Historiographie und Hagiographie in der asiatischen Religionsgeschichte. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia Religionum 30. Uppsala: ACTA. Stokke, Kristian 2006. “State Formation and Political Change in LTTE-Controlled Areas in Sri Lanka”. In: Envisioning New Trajectories for Peace in Sri Lanka. International Seminar 7-9 April 2006, Zurich, Switzerland. Zurich: Centre for Just Peace and Democracy: 139–146. UN News Service 2009. UN Rights Chief Deplores Conditions for Civilians Trapped in Sri Lanka fighting. January 29th. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?News ID=29706&Cr=Sri+Lanka&Cr1 (6 Oct 2009). Wilke, Annette. 2005. “Opfer, Gebet und Gebetsopfer im Hinduismus”. In: Ulrich Berner & Christopher Bochinger & Rainer Flasche (eds.). Opfer und Gebet in den Religionen. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus: 20–34. (Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie 26).

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Ritual Dynamics of Torture The Performance of Violence and Humiliation at the Abu Ghraib Prison The affinity of violence and the sacred is a widely-known, but still undertheorised fact.1 To conceptualise their relationship is of great interest for the ritual sciences, especially as sacredness and violence often join in the cultural form of the ritual. Violence is at the centre of various holy acts, for example in many sacrifices and initiation rituals all around the world. Despite this empirical relevance, the connection between violence and ritual remains theoretically unclear. Why is violence so attractive for certain types of rituals? Is it possible to describe acts of violence as rituals or is violence best considered as an element of rituals? Can we rightly speak of “rituals of violence” or should we leave it at “violent rituals”? The following study provides an incomplete answer to these questions. I will focus on torture as a particular interpenetration of ritual and violence. The first half is dedicated to the development of a theoretical framework, whereas the second contains an empirical case study. I claim that it is insufficient to treat violence merely as a profane instrument used by individuals and groups to achieve certain goals. Rather we have to keep an eye on the sacred qualities, symbolic meanings and social functions of ritualised violence. We also need to overcome the traditional conception of the ritual as formal, static and abstract. Recent performative approaches in ritual theory not only allow for a better understanding of ritual dynamics, but also provide a deeper insight into the dynamics of violence and humiliation. After elaborating a typology of violence, I will argue that we need to distinguish three perspectives on torture and similar degrading acts. Hence torture appears as interrogation technique, power ritual and social performance. After establishing the conceptual groundwork I will investigate the abuses at the Abu

1 Notable exceptions include Girard 2005 and Caillois 2001.

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Ghraib prison.2 I am using the reports of official investigations and other scientific sources for background information, but the material basis for my analysis is the photographs taken by the soldiers. In order to reconstruct the meaning of these photographs, we need an interpretative methodology for images as well as for symbolic action. I will employ an iconology of the performative inspired by art history and performance studies.3 The use of different media as part of the abuses and their further mediatisation is also of great importance for our case study. Therefore we have to discuss the camera and its function in the abuses, the circulation of the photographs and finally their broadcasting in the mass media. I claim that the symbolic message of these acts led to a public scandal which had an impact on the imagination of torture and the post-9/11 moral order. While we’re at it: the events in the wake of the new millennium have confirmed the scholarly insight into the intimate connection between violence and the sacred. This holds true not only for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as part of an Islamic Jihad, but also for the American retaliation. The so-called “War on Terror” was accompanied by many concepts of political theology like “sovereignty”, “state of exception” and “the enemy”.4 In the weeks after the attack, attorneys of the American government in internal papers strengthened the constitutional authority of the President and endowed him with large-scale vires in case of emergency.5 Three months later, the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was opened. Away from American territory, but under American control, suspected terrorists could be kept indefinitely and without a trial. The detainees were not only denied habeas corpus, the right to have a trial, but also the status of being prisoners of war.6 Also the definition of torture was narrowed down in order to allow the use of harsh interrogation techniques, whereas the remaining ban on torture was

2 One could argue that the Abu Ghraib incidents are not representative cases of violence and torture. The available images seldom show overt violence and the suffering of physical pain. Instead they depict acts of psychological humiliation and degradation. Still, behind every scene lurks hidden violence. The successful performance of degrading acts requires a certain compliance, either voluntary (as it is the case in most initiations) or by threat of violence (see Abu Ghraib). There are of course also images of wounded bodies, sometimes beaten to death. But recent studies have shown that “stealth torture” leaving no scars is typical for modernity, see Rejali 2007. 3 Panofsky 1955; Wulf & Zirfas 2005. 4 These categories were developed by a German political thinker in the Twenties of the twentieth century (Schmitt 1996, 2005). 5 Yoo 2005. 6 Bybee 2005a.

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regarded as unconstitutional in the case of a national emergency.7 In this climate created by 9/11 and the War on Terror, the Abu Ghraib abuses took place.

1. The Theoretical Framework: Towards Torture as Ritual and Performance Research on the interpenetration of ritual and violence is of great importance, especially as it helps us to overcome a purely instrumental understanding of violence. Ritual theory and ritual studies offer a broad range of theoretical insights and empirical cases that shed light on the non-instrumental dimensions of violence. But it is also important to overcome the static conception of ritual that prevailed for a long time in classical ritual theory. We have to highlight the interpenetration of cultural patterns and individual performances to account for ritual dynamics and social change. My theoretical framework is based on a typology of events offered by the sociologist Bernhard Giesen.8 The first-order event is a moment of sacred time that informs collective identity. This can be a heroic founding moment like the assault on the Bastille during the French revolution, but also a collective traumatic experience like 9/11 for the United States of America. Second-order events are basically repetitions of the pristine event. Rituals, for example, allow for a restaging of founding moments and the remembrance of traumatic events, thereby affirming the underlying collective identity.9 Third-order events are set apart from the pristine event as well as from the steady flow of repetitions. Theatrical performances and moral dramas, for example, consist both of ritualised and therefore repetitive elements, but are also singular events in their own right. At the level of third-order events the distinction between the actors “on stage” and the audience becomes crucial. Cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander argues that modernisation leads to a substitution of classic rituals for what he calls “social performances”.10We can redescribe his diagnosis as a shift from the second-order to the third-order of events. Because modern societies are comparatively disintegrated on a cultural level (or “defused” as Alexander would say), rituals no longer work the way they used to work for traditional communities. The relatively stable meaning of the tradition is replaced by a loose coupling of collective background representations, scripts and 7 Bybee 2005b. Some intellectuals regarded Guantanamo Bay as a mirror image of modern state sovereignty and its detainees as modern homo sacer, reduced to bare life that can’t be sacrificed, but killed without prosecution; see Agamben 2005 and Zizek 2004. 8 Giesen 2006. 9 Ritual performances not only allow for a comprehension of the incomprehensible as a foundation of collective identity, but also produce by repetition the very fabric of social reality. Take for example the interaction rituals of Goffman 2005. 10 Alexander 2006.

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symbolic actions. Performer and audience don’t necessarily belong to the same community any more; and as the meanings of symbolic action become inevitably contested, multiple audiences become the rule. Performances succeed by fusing the scripts with the cultural background and the performer with his audience. Social performances have to be staged each time in a new and convincing way, instead of being merely repeated. Whereas conformity is crucial for traditional rituals, social performances stand and fall with authenticity.11 Let me finish these introductory remarks with a rough overview of my elaboration of Giesen’s typology of events (table 1). I will now apply this typology to the phenomenon of violence. In the following sections I will discuss different phenomena of violence starting with “raw violence” as extraordinary and anti-structural event of the first order (1). After some general remarks on institutionalised and culturally framed violence as second-order event (2), I will focus on torture as interrogation technique (3) and power ritual (4). Finally we come to violence as third-order event and torture as theatrical staging and cruel play (5).

11 We can qualify the concept of social and theatrical performance further by taking Turner’s distinction between the liminal and the liminoid into account; Turner 2004. Liminality emphasises the obligation of the individual towards the collective; it is a matter of necessity. In contrast, liminoid practices are individual acts of freedom experimenting with possibilities not available yet. To a certain extent that every social or theatrical performance can be characterised as liminoid to the extent it emphasises freedom, originality and authenticity.


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1.1 Violence as First-order Event: “Raw Violence” When discussing the phenomenon of violence as a first-order event, we need to take a phenomenological approach towards violence rather than a constructivist stance.12 The first is typified by Giesen’s analysis. According to Giesen, first-order events are sacred moments that fall out of regular or profane time.13 These epiphanic or hierophanic times can later become collective representations of the sacred. Surprisingly, this temporal appearance of the sacred is often connected to violence: “In many religious narratives the extraordinariness of the epiphanic moment is marked by violence – God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Christ is tortured and crucified to redeem his people, Saint Paul is hit by a divine stroke, etc. The importance of violence for a moment of epiphany results not only from its unexpectedness in ordinary life, but also from its location in the boundary zone between common social life and the outlands – it represents the ultimate exception from rules of everyday life, it is the event as such. The exceptional nature of violence conveys a sense of utmost veracity and authenticity, it is grounded in a realm beyond volatile communication, fragile conventions, and faked pretensions: it has an absolute presence.”14 No wonder that the founding moment of collective identity is often associated with violence, whether it is the heroic experience of a revolution or the traumatic experience of suffering. If we describe violence as first-order event, we arrive at the conception of a “raw violence”: violence that is neither governed by norms nor yet utilised for goals.15 I will show that this type of violence can be conceptualised as an “anti-structural” or “liminal” phenomenon in the sense offered of Victor Turner.16 First of all, “raw violence” is a bodily phenomenon and as such located at the borderlands of social life. It is ruled by a corporeal logic of transgression. It can 12 That doesn’t mean that violence should not be approached in both ways. Constructivism allows us to investigate which acts are labelled as violence and by whom. On this, the performer of violence has often a very different opinion than does the victim; also the judgement of the audience might differ from the opinions of the actors involved. The phenomenological approach is more concerned with violence as social phenomenon. It defines violence with regard to its distinctive features. The distinction between both approaches is especially important in the case of violence, because its legitimacy is often contested. And this is even truer for torture. Because of moral impurity, violence and torture are rarely used to describe one’s own actions. 13 Giesen 2006: 335ff. 14 Giesen 2006: 336f. 15 The designation of a type of violence as “raw” is of course dependent on the classificatory system of a society. Nevertheless I claim that there are certain aspects of “raw violence” that render it distinguishable from other types of violence from a phenomenological perspective. 16 Turner 1969.


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be an ecstatic experience of one’s own body as well a violation of other bodies. Hence violence symbolises the capacity of the body to act, to exert power, and also to be vulnerable to pain. The normal exercise of violence, for example in sports, in punishment, but also in the exercise of war, is always regulated by norms, which means that “raw violence” often appears as a transgression of the social order. Like other intense bodily acts and experiences, such as sexuality, “raw violence” appears as a threat to the social order and thus needs to be regulated. Sigmund Freud pointed out that the “raw violence” of the individual has to be repressed by society, as are sexuality and other drives.17 Paradoxically, because violence transcends the social order, it can also be conceptualised as constitutive exception. That’s why literary scholar René Girard regards violence as the foundation of culture that needs to be excluded from and confined by society.18 Similarly, political thinkers such as Hobbes have treated violence not only as a characteristic feature of the natural state19 or the state of exception20, but also as a mark of sovereignty itself. Here we stand at the threshold between “raw violence” and institutionalised violence as a second-order event. The sovereign power belongs in a strict sense to the realm of the “raw” and unregulated violence; otherwise it wouldn’t be able to fulfil its constitutive function. Hobbes and Schmitt conceptualise “raw vio-lence” in two ways, animal-like in the war of everyone against everyone, but god-like in the case of the state. One might think of revolutions and civil wars as macro-sociological events and “liminal” phases characterised by the “antistructure” that allows the transition from one political order to another. This is also true for violence on a microsociological level. Violence has an exceptional and extraordinary status in everyday life in that it needs appropriate circumstances to be acted out.21 There is a threshold to overcome, but once violence is started, its own dynamic unfolds and violence becomes a “sovereign subject” in its own right.22 In my point of view we have to conceive “raw violence” as an autotelic process beyond individual control. It happens between actors, but is not intentionally caused by one side. Before inception, one cannot distinguish between performer and victim. “Raw violence” starts with equality among the actors and creates a difference between them. The fight usually ends when one side is no longer capable of doing violence. Thus the auto-telic process of violence brings

17 18 19 20 21 22

Freud 2005. Girard 2005. Hobbes 1996. Schmitt 1996; 2005. Collins 2008. Giesen 2006: 337.

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itself to its termination.23 If there is a clear intention for violence or an asymmetry in its use, we already are dealing with instrumental or ritualised violence. 1.2 Violence as Second-order Event We have now dealt with “raw violence” as something opposed to ordinary social structure and at the margin of society. It is characterised as an eruptive event, as meaningless and anarchic. According to David Riches we can distinguish an instrumental as well as a symbolic function of violence.24 But in order to fulfil these functions properly, “raw violence” has to be contained by and embedded in social processes. As already mentioned, we can conceive second-order events as repetitions that frame singular events. We can distinguish two basic types of repetitions according to their functions, the instrumental use of violence as technique and the use of its symbolic or expressive properties in ritual. Techniques standardise and systematise means for various ends, whereas rituals draw a distinction between the holy and the profane, insider and outsider. The technical use of violence turns it into a mundane tool. Only the valued ends provide a justification for the employment of violent means. Contrarily, transgressive violence is considered to be sacred. Ritualised violence symbolises sovereignty and is widely recognised as a manifestation of the divine (Girard 2005). Techniques and rituals are not exclusive types, but “aspects of almost any kind of action”(Leach 1970: 13). This means we can never say that certain acts of violence, as for example the practice of torture, are just technical or pure rituals. Nevertheless this distinction allows us to answer the question of whether torture fulfils primarily technical or ritual functions. The repetition and framing of violence via techniques and rituals allows for a higher degree of control and more complex social institutions. On the level of “raw violence” we had only a symmetrical relation between the involved actors. Also violence appeared as something beyond individual and social control. It is only on the level of techniques and rituals that intentionality as well as the distinction between performer and victim becomes relevant. The instrumental as well as the ritual use of violence implies a directedness of violence flowing from the performer to the victim. Finally, the more violence takes the character of a theatrical performance, the more the audience becomes important as a third figure beyond performer and victim.

23 The logic of “raw violence” is game-like and differs from the ritual process that starts with asymmetry and differences among the participants, but creates a unity; Lévi-Strauss 1966. Auto-telic or “raw violence” has also a specific temporality. The sudden outbreak and an often abrupt ending, but also a particular experience of the time in between, marks it distinctively as an event; Sofsky 1997. 24 Riches 1986.


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1.3 Torture as Technique The technical employment of violence is always problematic. Behind the “technical violence” lurks always a liminal core of “raw violence” that has to be confined. The efficiency and efficacy of violence depends not only on the technique, but also on the discipline of the performer. Soldiers are trained to stay calm and rational when surrounded by the violence of a chaotic battlefield. They have to be able to follow orders even in the heat of battle. Notably, regimes that train and employ torturers prefer self-controlled candidates over sadists: the latter get carried away by their violence, whereas the professional torturer keeps cool. I will start with the historically prevalent conception of torture as technique. Historically, torture was employed to achieve three ends. Torture was used as corporeal punishment, to solicit answers in interrogations, and to obtain confessions. Corporeal punishment has lost legitimacy in recent years, whether as a consequence of the rise of a new disciplinary regime25 or of the growing respect for the human body26. Correlative with the abandonment of corporeal punishment was a cultural change in the valuation of pain, which once had a positive spiritual meaning but is nowadays purely negative, and deemed unlikely to induce truthtelling.27 Coerced confessions from the very beginning were considered problematic, but they remained important as long as the legal system did not allow for conviction based on indirect evidence.28 In the liberal democracies of today, torture in interrogations, or “harsh interrogation techniques”, has remained a contentious issue, considered either a debatable or legitimate means to an end. Nevertheless, like most types of violence, torture is never a purely mundane means. Torture violates international agreements; it is considered to be impure and can only be justified as a lesser evil in comparison to extreme dangers, for example in the infamous ticking bomb scenario. 9/11 not only renewed interest in interrogation techniques, it also triggered a public debate on torture.29 At the same time, the notion of torture as interrogation technique has well-known flaws. The critique of Aristotle in his Rhetoric is well known,30 but also recent studies come to the conclusion that torture as technique does not really work.31 But why is torture still used, if it is so inefficient? I think this question can only be answered if one takes into account torture as a ritual.

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Foucualt 1979. Joas 2008. Silverman 2001. Langbein 2006. Greenberg 2006; Dershowitz 2002. Aristotle 2007. Rejali 2007.

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1.4 Torture as Ritual When we talk about torture as ritual, we shift our attention to the latent functions of violence that are often masked by the intention of the actors. Already the early Durkheim argued that the function of punishment is not deterrence, but the repair of the violated collective consciousness, not the prevention of further crimes, but the reconstitution of the moral order.32 For Durkheim punishment is in the first place not an instrumental use of violence, but a ritual that symbolically excludes the violator in order to reaffirm the group norms. The ideas of the late Durkheim in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life are a very important step beyond his sketchy model of mechanical solidarity in the Division of Labor. In Elementary Forms, Durkheim explicitly describes rituals and symbols as generators, markers and carriers of collective emotions and collective identity.33 Collins applied this Durkheimian view on punishment with respect to torture as a ritual of cognitive classification, moral evaluation and emotional articulation that draws and reaffirms group boundaries.34 As an extremely asymmetrical form of violence, torture is perfect for drawing a sharp distinction between performer and victims, the torturer and the tortured. Torture as a ritualised form of violence canalises the violent potential of a group against outsiders – a process not unlike Girard’s scapegoating.35 Thereby torture is able to create solidarity among its performers and anti-solidarity towards their victims. But if we only take the Durkheimian approach to the ritual into account, our picture of the ritual process remains too static. Like other rituals, punishment and torture are more than mere reflections of group boundaries, they actually draw the boundaries themselves and articulate meaning on their own. In order to get a more dynamic concept of the ritual we need a back-up from performative approaches to the ritual. First of all, torture is a “performative act” in the Austinian sense: it creates social facts and group boundaries instead of merely stating and reflecting them; it is not merely expressive, but constitutive for a certain type of social reality. At the same time, torture like any other successful performative act naturalises its outcome, the victims are not only treated as sub-humans but appear in fact as such.36 The second meaning of “performative” stresses the material and corporeal qualities of the ritual as “embodiment”37 or as “totalized sensory experience”38. In a third 32 33 34 35 36

Durkheim 1965. Durkheim 1995. Collins 1974. Girard 2005. Austin 1962. The performer of a degradation ceremony states the status of the degraded person as an intrinsic fact while at the same time producing it (Garfinkel 1956). The same holds true for “doing gender”, where convincing a performance of gender also naturalises its social construction (Butler 1985). 37 Fischer-Lichte 2006.


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sense, “performative” refers also to what Tambiah calls the “indexical feature” of rituals.39 Rituals embody, articulate and express the social and cosmological order thereby reproducing and transforming symbolic codes and cultural patterns. A good example is Geertz’s “cock fight”, a staging of Balinese cosmology and social structure.40 My case study will show that also torture also carries and articulates a specific world-view. 1.5 Torture as Performance Finally, we can conceive torture as a third-order event. Social and theatrical performances as third-order events combine the seriality of rituals with the uniqueness of events. Each performance materialises in an arena of possibilities and endless variations.41 Ritual features such as “formalism”, “invariance” and “traditionalism”42 do not apply to performances in this particular sense. Theatrical performances can only be understood in relation to and as deviation from previous performances and background scripts. They are constructed out of a repertoire of meaningful ingredients and performed for an audience. The difference between ritual and theatrical performances is also reflected in Turner’s distinction between “liminal” and “liminoid”.43 Violence as theatrical performance can only happen in a stable setting that eliminates the liminal danger on the side of the performer of violence and allows for a liminoid play. This can happen in symmetrical show fights, for example wrestling as described by Roland Barthes in Mythologies. Here style and performance are not instrumental and competitive, but symbolic means of expression.44 Torture, on the other hand, creates an asymmetrical situation where liminoid violence becomes possible. The victim is helpless and reduced to the status of a mere object, but the torturer is free to play with the victim – like a cat with a mouse. Torture as a liminoid and asymmetrical form of violence is cruelty par excellence. Another approach to torture as performance can be found in Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain. Her thesis is that torture transforms pain into insignia of power. Far from 38 39 40 41

Tambiah 1985. Ibid. Geertz 2006. The Western theatre itself emerged as such a creative deviation. The plot of a Greek drama was usually a popular myth which was freely adapted for the play. The message of the performance was precisely the difference between the widely known myth and the actual performance. Nowadays, the dramas themselves have become scripts and each staging of a drama is an interpretation. Here, the performance of a play is again conceived as a deviation from a model. The meaning of the performance is constituted in difference to previous performances. Today, even weddings need uniqueness and follow the model of performance. 42 Bell 1997; Rappaport 1999. 43 Turner 2004. See note 11. 44 Barthes 1972: 15–25.

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being only an interrogation technique or a classification ritual, torture is a staging of power. This is even reflected in the naming of torturing locations: “It is not accidental that in the torturers’ idiom the room in which the brutality occurs was called ‘production room’ in the Philippines, the ‘cinema room’ in South Vietnam, and the ‘blue lit stage’ in Chile: built on these repeated acts of display and having its purpose the production of a fantastic illusion of power, torture is a grotesque piece of a compensatory drama.”45 The torture room is a stage for the cruel performance of torture. The torturer inflicts pain and exercises power over the body of the victim. The victim is shaken by pain, losing the ability to speak and generally to perform; finally the victim’s world dissolves. Collins was right that torturous practices and other forms of cruel behaviour “are above all forms of communication usable as threats and claims for complete domination”.46 Torture as theatrical staging might also give us a clue how to deal with the phenomenon of shame that appears in the Abu Ghraib photos, but it is also of general importance. Scarry argues that in torture the infliction of pain is subordinated to the production of shame.47 Neither confession nor information is the final outcome of torture, which is rather the shame of forcing the victim to betray himself. We have seen that the typology of events can be applied fruitfully to the phenomenon of violence and in particular to torture. We can sum up the results in the following table (table 2). With this conceptual backbone we are finally able to turn our attention to the Abu Ghraib abuses. Here we can validate the usefulness of our typology empirically.

45 Scarry 1985: 28. 46 Collins 1974: 422. 47 Scarry 1985.


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2. The Empirical Case Study: Torture at Abu Ghraib On April 28, 2004, several photographs were published that showed American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. The pictures were taken in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the former torture centre of Saddam Hussein. These images clearly violated the normative expectations of national and global audiences and led to a collective emotional outburst, a public scandal. In addition, they posed a cognitive puzzle of public, political, legal and scientific interest: “How did it come to this?”48 The following case study provides an answer to that question within the theoretical framework outlined above. I will argue that we need to take the Abu Ghraib images in a deadly serious way, just as art historians would do with pieces of high art. I will describe and interpret the photographs in detail in order to reconstruct the abuses as rituals and performances endowed with a specific symbolic meaning. Before introducing my analysis, let me briefly discuss some other explanations provided by official statements, articles and books. Most influential was probably the vulgar psychological explanation of the Abu Ghraib abuses. From that perspective the incidents were a consequence of individual pathologies. The military reports cited psychopathologies as the main causal factor, while admitting that a failure in leadership allowed the abuses to happen in the first place.49 When the photographs were first broadcasted, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit was interviewed as spokesperson of the US Army. He regretted the abuses, but insisted that they were only isolated acts committed by a few, whereas the broad majority of the soldiers were morally correct and doing a great job in Iraq. It is quite obvious why the Army favoured an explanation which left the majority of the American forces unscathed. This vulgar psychological explanation also served the purposes of the US government, because evidence of systematic abuse and torture would have delegitimised the engagement in Iraq as well as the extreme measures undertaken in the War on Terror. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spoke of “a few bad apples” that cast a cloud over the flawless American soldiers fighting against terror and for the freedom of the Iraqi people. This interpretation of the abuses was also decisive in the trials against the perpetrators. Only the soldiers directly involved in those acts were punished, some of them with prison sentences of up to ten years. This perception of the Abu Ghraib incidents as “abuses” committed by single perpetrators and not as cases of “torture” with a more or less systematic character became dominant as well in the public sphere.50 This vulgar psychological explanation of the abuses can itself be explained as a process of scapegoating.51 This is because scandalised events like the Abu Ghraib abuses have a 48 49 50 51

Time Magazine, May 17, 2004, the headline on the cover at the height of the scandal. Taguba 2005: 449; Mikolashek 2005: 632. Bennet & Lawrence & Livingston 2006. See Girard 2005.


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polluting quality in the public sphere. This “toxic social spill from Abu Ghraib”52 needed to be confined by persons, institutions and the American public itself. The pollution had to be projected on to a few who were then excluded from society itself. The scandal as media event can be conceived as a macrosociological ritual that purifies societal community and collective identity. Not only political activists but also many scientists and scholars were dissatisfied with this type of explanation. More scientific appeal was found in the Final Report of the Independent Panel that drew upon the results from the famous Stanford Prison Experiment.53 The experiment showed how a simulated prison with students who are randomly assigned to be prisoners and guards developed an interpersonal dynamic that led to excesses of humiliation and violence.54 After the Abu Ghraib incidents, the director of this simulated prison, psychologist Philip Zimbardo, testified as an expert in the trials against the alleged soldiers and also provided a detailed social psychological explanation of the abuses.55 When Zimbardo saw the Abu Ghraib photographs by chance on television, he was struck by the fact that they seemed “different and yet familiar”.56 They reminded him of the worst scenes from the Stanford Prison Experiment. Later he argued that there is not only a visual resemblance, but also a structural similarity of those acts. He reversed the vulgar psychological explanation by claiming that “good apples” were corrupted by a “bad barrel”.57 This social psychological explanation recognises the social dynamics of violence and humiliation as well as the contribution of institutional and situational factors. With regard to my typology of violence, it seems that the Stanford Prison Experiment as well as the Abu Ghraib abuses support the assumption of a liminal core that has to be confined by institutional arrangements, but eventually breaks out. I will leave these and other approaches aside because they are either too narrow and abstract or too open and complex to be helpful for our endeavour.58 Further, a 52 53 54 55 56 57

Mestrovic 2006. Schlesinger 2005. Haney & Banks & Zimbardo 1973. Zimbardo 2007. Ibid.: 328. In the Stanford Prison Experiment not only randomly chosen students were corrupted by power, but also Zimbardo himself fell prey to his new role as sadistic prison director. He argues that the same situational factors as in Stanford fostered a dynamic of violence and degradation in Abu Ghraib. Only strong characters such as “whistle blower” Joe Darby can resist these situational influences and the group pressure, see Zimbardo 2007. 58 Beside the social psychological explanation there had been other approaches to Abu Ghraib in the field of social sciences. Neo-institutionalists argued that Abu Ghraib is about decoupling of formal structure and actual practice, a common case of organisational deviance; see Monahan & Quinn 2006. Others argued in favour of a multidimensional analysis, for example Mastroianni & Reed 2006.

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general problem of all the explanations discussed so far is the fact that no one, including Zimbardo, uses the photographs as material for analysis. For insights into the symbolic meaning of the abuses and interpretations of the photographs we have to move to the field of culture theory and cultural studies. It is no surprise that the broadest and richest account on the Abu Ghraib incidents was given by public intellectuals and scholars from the humanities. The photographs themselves were an intellectual package deal. There was something in it for everyone. Topics included: American popular culture, hazing rituals, performance art, the obscene, lynching, pornography, imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism and the end of feminist assumptions. I now discuss and criticise three cultural explanations of the Abu Ghraib abuses starting with Susan Sontag’s argument that the Abu Ghraib images and the corresponding abuses were pornographic.59 The photographs are manifestations of a sexual desire which is a major causal factor in the explanation of these abuses. Consequently, Abu Ghraib turns into a symptom for the moral decay of American society connected to the consumption of pornography and its availability on the internet. My analysis of the photographs will show that the images do indeed draw upon pornographic imagery, but they do not fulfil a particular pornographic function. Sontag’s moral crusade against pornography appears in this light as another kind of scapegoating. Then Slavoj Zizek used the notion of the “obscene” to explain the peculiarity of the American abuses at Abu Ghraib in contrast to Iraqi torture.60 Obscene is here the exhibition of violence and humiliation, their character as performance. The depicted acts imply an audience, “the positions and costumes of the prisoners suggest a theatrical staging” and the whole can be described as a “theatre of cruelty”. Furthermore, the photographs resonate in the sphere of American popular culture, ranging from David Lynch movies to initiation rituals in colleges. Zizek not only describes the Abu Ghraib abuses as America’s unconscious, but also as the initiation of the prisoners into the dark side of US culture. I would argue that these abuses are rather rituals of exclusion than initiations, where initiates undergo a liminal passage and are rewarded in the end with group membership. Last point of importance with regard to the Abu Ghraib abuses is the issue of gender. Above all other perpetrators the female soldier Lyndie England attained the status of an icon. In fact she became so infamous that the Rolling Stones even dedicated a song to her. In her most iconic picture she was holding a crawling prisoner on a leash, which was widely interpreted as the sexual humiliation of an Arab man by an American woman. Barbara Ehrenreich argued that images like this showed “imperial arrogance, sexual depravity, and gender equality” thus upending

59 Sontag 2004. 60 Zizek 2004.


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feminism’s assumption that women were the better part of humanity.61 Melanie Richter-Montpetit contested this conclusion and argued that the humiliation of a man by a woman reproduces the gender dichotomy and contributes to gender inequality.62 On the one hand I agree with Ehrenreich that patriarchic structures in army and society provide a poor explanation for the Abu Ghraib abuses, on the other hand Richter-Montpetit is right in pointing out that the gender dichotomy was employed and reproduced in many rituals of degradation at Abu Ghraib. I will now try to use the concepts of ritual and performance to bridge the gap between social psychological and cultural explanation. Only the combination of social dynamics and cultural thought provides a rich and accurate picture of the Abu Ghraib abuses. Social psychology taught us the importance of situational influences for dynamics of violence and humiliation. Therefore let me briefly sketch out the dangerous and hostile environment the soldiers as well as the prisoners of Abu Ghraib had to face. The Abu Ghraib prison was overcrowded and under-manned. Many prisoners had to live in tents outside of the building that was under regular mortar attack. Some prisoners and American soldiers, who were afraid to leave the building, died from these attacks. There were also riots and attacks on soldiers by inmates of the prison, so the danger was also lurking in the inside. The Military Intelligence and other government agencies used harsh interrogation techniques on the inmates of the prison. Not only had the Military Police to fulfil their regular jobs as prison guards, they were also asked by the MI to soften up the prisoners for interrogation and to employ torture techniques on their own. According to the official reports and interviews with the soldiers, there had been a steady increase in the nature and frequency of the abuses. It started at the beginning of October with forced nudity, handcuffing to cell doors and the wearing of women’s underwear. Later, the prisoners were handcuffed together naked and forced into sexual poses.63 Some of the abuses occurred in the presence of the Military Intelligence. The MI not only seemed to tolerate these acts, but endorsed them. 2.1 Iconic Interpretation of the Human Pyramid I will now analyse some photographs from the night between seventh and eighth November.64 Seven detainees were removed by the Military Police to the hard site after a riot. From a ritual point of view it doesn’t matter if the seven prisoners had really been the agitators of the riot. Considering the chaotic situation at Abu 61 62 63 64

Ehrenreich 2004. Richter-Montpetit 2007. Zimbardo 2007: 356; Mikolashek 2005: 654f. The images used in this article and many more from Abu Ghraib prison can be found on a webpage of the internet magazine salon.com. http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/ 03/14/introduction/index.html

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Ghraib, one might imagine the selection of these prisoners as a classificatory mechanism that allowed the soldiers to structure their experience, thus creating order from chaos. When a situation spins out of control, rituals of power become important for simulating a sense of control, which might have helped the soldiers to cope with the situation. As it happened, the seven prisoners were brought into a corridor, forced to remove their clothes and stacked on top of each other, an arrangement that was later called the “human pyramid”. There were two amongst the initially broadcast photographs which showed the naked bodies piled up on the floor. We know from the reports that soldiers threw themselves upon the pile, one of the prisoners was knocked unconscious and another was hit so hard on his chest that the medic had to be summoned. Behind the aestheticised surface of the performance and the photographs lurks the use of physical violence and pain. A total of seven soldiers participated in the abuse.65

Image 1 One photograph (image 1) was taken from the front; a female soldier kneels down behind the bodies, smiling and giving a “thumbs up”. Behind her stands a male soldier with folded arms and rubber gloves, also giving a “thumbs up”. First of all, the vertical composition of the image is of interest. The prisoners lie on the floor, the woman with her playful gesture is right behind and above them. She in turn is situated below the man in the background, who poses in the role of the protective male. The vertical composition seems to imply a sort of hierarchy. By also taking the perspective and the vanishing point just above the man’s head into account, we can describe the composition even more precisely. Not only does the pile of naked prisoners evoke the idea of a human pyramid, this description is also enforced by the pictorial composition of the photograph. It is quite obvious that this humiliating performance is structured by binary oppositions like gender, bottom and top, the nakedness of the prisoners in contrast to the individuality of the clothed soldiers. The faces of the prisoners are hidden inside bags and their bodies together form an amorphous mass. They are entangled in such a way that they can hardly move, let alone perform on their own. Instead they are the material for someone else. This arrangement corresponds with the heaps of clothes in the background lined up in an 65 For further details see Fay & Jones 2005: 1078.


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orderly way. The humiliating performance itself creates and materialises an asymmetry between the performers and their victims.

Image 2 There is also another image of the same pile of bodies, taken from the back and with a slightly different composition (image 2). In this picture the same male soldier, but a different female soldier is posing. The perspective is centred on both soldiers. In contrast to image 1, their pose stresses equality and partnership. The prisoners again appear as de-individualised as they have their backs turned towards the camera. Note also that the prisoner on the left has “rapeist” written on his leg. There is also a different relation between the male and the female soldiers in both photographs. As we are interested in the “human pyramid” primarily as a ritual of degradation and as torture performance, we can treat both photographs in this respect as carriers of the same symbolic message. 2.2 Iconological Interpretation of the Human Pyramid I will now try to decode the particular arrangement called “human pyramid”. We need to distinguish both sides of the dichotomy and analyse them separately, but in relation to each other. Let us start with the soldiers as the actual performers. I will begin with the rubber gloves of the male soldier as a remarkable element in his ritual performance. Sure, the gloves might fulfil a simply technical function in terms of hygiene, but they have a symbolic meaning too. They refer to his “dirty”, but necessary work. As a kind of ritual paraphernalia, the gloves divide the body of the performer from the unclean bodies of his victims. Additionally they signify the professionalised and medicalised ethos of modern torture. Then the gesture made by the soldiers deserves a closer look. The meaning of “thumbs up” can be traced back to the Romans, where it was called the “hostile thumb” and not only used as a threat directed against enemies, but also as an apotropaic sign to ward off evil.66 Nowadays “thumbs up” is not hostile any more, but is nevertheless a gesture of triumph, a visual demonstration of power and self-confidence. Drawing on Aby Warburg we can speak of a pathos formula, an antique gesture living an afterlife in 66 Corbeill 2004.

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modern times.67 In our photo “thumbs up” is not only a gesture of domination that divides performer from victims; it is also a display of power on the part of the torturers themselves. Here the “self-referential” or self-informing aspect of torture as a ritual of communication becomes clearly visible.68 This display of power is also directed towards a generalised audience embodied in the camera. We can further interpret this performance as the embodiment, articulation and staging of a certain Weltanschauung69 or as the expression of a collective habitus70. The indexical value of this performance refers to the shared and embodied worldview of a group that includes the posing soldiers as well as the photographer as their accomplice. The soldiers pose as heroes doing dirty and necessary work. This self-understanding as a “dirty” or law-defying hero is not only common among professional torturers, but also has a long American tradition. The tragic hero who must defy the law to bring justice is a prominent figure in American popular culture, most famous probably through Clint Eastwood as Callahan in Dirty Harry. 9/11 and the War on Terror have not only given rise to academic discussions about the legitimate use of torture, but also inspired movies and TV series. After 9/11 the “ticking bomb terrorist” became the counterpart of the law-defying hero. There is a cultural pattern for the “quiet heroism” of those who torture, where “the once scorned torturer” appears “as a potential savior”.71 This heroism of torture is exemplified best by the figure of Jack Bauer in the TV series 24.72 I would argue that a similar self-stylisation of the torturer is the message of the heroic pose in our photographs. As a cultural pattern to follow, the law-defying hero is a nonnegligible causal factor in a double sense. He helps us to explain the abuses by providing a motivation and justification for violence, but also accounts for the specific form of these performances. Let us now shift our attention to the victims. The pile of bodies has often been associated with an orgy, especially as other pictures showed sexual acts. Furthermore the gloves of the soldier, behind the backs of the naked men, have a rather sexual connotation in addition to their other meanings. Still, the resemblance to pornography is rather misleading. The soldiers don’t engage in sexual acts with the prisoners, they don’t take part in the orgy. The pile is best described as grotesque in the sense of Bakthin: “Actually, if we consider the grotesque image in its extreme 67 Warburg 2000. In his introduction to Mnemosyne he claims that the Dionysian delirium and the imperial processions are both expressions of the Roman will to existence in their shocking contrariness. He stresses also Rome’s ambivalence, torn between the images of victorious emperors and the martyrs dying in the spectacle of the Coliseum. The toppling of Hussein’s statue and the images of Abu Ghraib relate probably in the same way. 68 Rappaport 1999: 52ff. 69 Dilthey 1990. 70 Bourdieu 1984. 71 Holmes 2006: 128. 72 See Reklis 2008.


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aspect, it never presents an individual body; the image consists of orifices and convexities that present another, new conceived body”.73 Nakedness, violence, sexuality, the loss of individualising features, it all belongs in the realm of the grotesque. Whereas medieval folk culture had an ambivalent and often positive understanding of the grotesque, modernity is on difficult terms with this ambivalence: “Modern indecent abuse and cursing have retained dead and purely negative remnants of the grotesque concept of the body”.74 In the Middle Ages the lower body stratum was conceived as a connection between the opposite poles of life and death thereby symbolising rebirth and recreation. The delimitation of the grotesque body belonged to a certain Weltanschauung that occasionally blurred the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, that used liminality and anti-structure to reproduce the social structure.75 Whereas in the carnival everyone is part of the grotesque spectacle, our photo shows a sharp distinction between the grotesque body pile and the individualised soldiers. The grotesque is also a symbol of evil, an object of fear, but at the same time ridiculed by its representation. The grotesque staging in our photographs might have served a similar function to the medieval grotesque and the laughter accompanying it. The laughter of the soldiers triumphs over the unknown enemy, lurking outside and inside the prison, but also embodied in the pile at their feet. The individual soldiers are diametrically opposed to these naked bodies, a purely negative reference typical for the modern use of grotesque. From an iconological perspective we can say that these photographs express a Manichaean Weltanschauung drawing clear lines between good and evil, purity and pollution, heroes and villains, life and death. The ritual humiliation in the photographs has a classificatory as well as an apotropaic function. Torture seems to be indeed the production of the fiction of power as Elaine Scarry suggested,76 but it is also the demonstration of a fictive invincibility that is able to cope with the insecure situation on site. The photographs become trophies, to show around and to reassure one-self that one will survive. We have seen that this bizarre arrangement called a “human pyramid” not only defies the technical logic of torture, but also the ritualistic notion of a formal degradation ceremony. The degradation succeeds not by a fixed social convention, but as a spontaneous and creative combination of performative elements. The torture performance draws upon different cultural traditions and patterns that give us insights into its causes and functions.

73 74 75 76

Bakthin 1968: 318. Ibid: 28. Turner 1969. Scarry 1985.

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2.3 Sexual Humiliation and the Role of the Audience We can confirm this interpretation by taking a look at the photographs that document the more explicit scenes of sexual humiliation from that fateful night. As already mentioned, the Abu Ghraib images were often compared to pornography. Sure, some of them displayed simulated sexual acts and had in that respect a pornographic iconography. However, the staging of these scenes had a very different function from the consumption of pornography. Dora Apel argues that “the pornographic function of the torture scenarios serves a larger political function.”77 I would even doubt that there is a pornographic function at all. Whereas pornography is produced to arouse sexual desire, the sexual acts in the photographs from Abu Ghraib refer to the “lower bodily stratum”, the pure negativity of the modern grotesque. Take for example the staging of homosexual acts among the prisoners (image 3).

Image 3 It would be strange to infer that these scenes were performed for sexual stimulation, perhaps as a substitute for gay porn. Homophobia is widespread among American soldiers and Abu Ghraib was, as far as we know, no exception. It is safer and more plausible to assume that this scene was staged for the humiliation of the prisoners. One might be tempted to equate this pleasure derived from power rituals with sexual satisfaction provided by the consumption of pornography, but that would clearly inflate the concepts of pornography and sexual pleasure. It is not clear whether the use of homosexuality must be explained by its ritual function based on the homophobic culture of the US Army or by its instrumental value regarding the assumed Arab aversion against homosexuality. I would argue that the technical use of homosexuality for the exploitation of the weakness of one’s enemy and its symbolic use in a degradation ritual don’t exclude, but rather complement each other.

77 Apel 2005: 16.


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Image 4 The function of sexuality as a marker of impurity used in degradation rituals becomes even clearer if we consider the picture of a prisoner being forced to masturbate (image 4). A female soldier points with her finger at his genitals. She poses coolly with a cigarette in her mouth and holds her hands like a weapon – a symbolic threat of castration. Here, sexuality is reduced to a sign for the animal-like status of the victims. No wonder that these prisoners have also been “ridden like animals” in the course of the same night.78 This dehumanisation also becomes clear in the photograph with the female soldier holding a prisoner on a dog leash (image 5).

Image 5 There is hardly any sign of sexual desire or arousal on the part of the soldiers. They smile, but smiling is a very self-controlled type of emotional expression. And here it is definitely not a sign of sexual pleasure. It should have become clear by now that these sexualised performances primarily helped to construct an opposition between soldiers and prisoners. Now that we have examined the representation of performers and victims in the photographs, it is time to discuss the audience of these acts and photographs. The performances did not follow an established ritual choreography, so their success had to be dependent on the immediate recognition by an audience, probably the photographer and other comrades around. The seven soldiers involved in the abuse changed their roles as performers, bystanders and photographers; they encouraged each other to push the acts further and further. Thus they created a liminoid situation where they competed for the best ideas. The camera became an instrument for showing recognition that a particular scene was worth a shot, but it became as well a place-holder for an undetermined audience. The photographs enlarged and multiplied the possible audience of these acts beyond the immediate witnesses. The 78 Fay & Jones 2005: 1079.

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photographs first circulated among the soldiers; some of them regarded the acts as appropriate, nearly all accepted them, only one soldier found it necessary to inform his superior. The Army used the photographs as evidence against the soldiers. Finally, their broadcasting allowed them to reach a global audience that judged quite differently about them: the public eye saw no dirty heroes, no evil enemies, only sadists abusing their institutional power by humiliating helpless men. 2.4. The Icon of the Scandal

Image 6 Last but not least, I will discuss a photograph (image 6) that was taken three days before the “human pyramid”. This picture also bears witness to the performative character of the Abu Ghraib abuses. It is not only by chance that Zizek mistook the “prisoner wearing a black hood, electric wires attached to his limbs as he stood on a box in a ridiculous theatrical pose” for “a piece of performance art”.79 What we see in the picture is a standard operating procedure called the “stress position”, an interrogation technique out of the textbook. The prisoner was forced to stand on the box and was threatened with electrocution in the event that he fell off the box. According to the Army report, the threat of electrocution was only a bluff.80 Nevertheless, the particular staging, costuming and photographing of the prisoner on his pedestal calls for a cultural explanation. Again we see a grotesque figure, a ridiculed enemy image that reminds us very much of Halloween. This torture performance materialises the spectre of terrorism, the embodiment of a faceless enemy. As a scary and evil figure he is helpless and subject to the laughter of the spectator. Again, the fear of the unknown enemy is overcome by the liberating power of laughter and amusement. If we take a look at the global resonance of this image and try to explain why it became the dominant icon of the scandal, we have to look at its iconography. Mitchell argued that the hooded man is “a figure from the Passion plays, the staging of the humiliation and torture of Jesus.”81 At least in West79 Zizek 2004. 80 Fay & Jones 2005: 1079. 81 Mitchell 2004.


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ern media, the Christ or the Crucifixion were recurrent motifs in the reception of this image.82 The christomimesis enables the victim to show dignity despite his humiliation. It is not important if the staging of the torture victim as Christ was intended by the torturers or not. Relevant for the impact of the motif is only its reception within the wider public discourse. Another reason for the popularity of this image was its lack of closure and overdetermination. Besides the “Crucifixion”, the “Spanish Inquisition”,83 the “Ku-Klux-Klan”84 and the “electric chair”85 were other common motifs. 2.5 From Ritualised Violence to the Dynamics of a Global Media Ritual So far, my findings suggest that we need the concepts of ritual and performance in order to explain the incidents at Abu Ghraib. These abuses cannot be understood as “interrogation gone wild”. Too visible is their character as theatrical performance: they have been staged for an audience. Too obvious are their ritual functions: the binary oppositions provide solidarity among the soldiers and exclude the prisoners. Ritual theory does indeed provide the missing link between a general dynamic of violence and humiliation as suggested by social scientists and the specific forms of the abuses that were highlighted by public intellectuals. A cultural analysis might also help us to explain why certain images from Abu Ghraib became detached from their original performances and became symbols in a torture scandal, a media event that also has some ritual properties.86 In the context of a global audience the original meaning of these performances became subverted: enemies and terrorists became innocent victims and the brave soldiers suddenly turned out to be morally corrupt. The Abu Ghraib scandal can be conceived as a counter- and cleansing ritual, a production of worldwide solidarity and a reproduction of the violated moral order. An important part of the resolution of the scandal, especially for the US army and the government, was the scapegoating of the alleged soldiers. The success 82 This motif was also clearly adapted in the cover image of the Time Magazine dated May 17, 2004, which is a painting by the artist Matt Mahurin. 83 Sharlet compared the hooded figure with the drawings and paintings of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya (Sharlet 2004). Art historian Eisenman criticised this interpretation with the argument that the intention of the soldiers in Abu Ghraib was not as noble as the intentions of the painter Goya (Eisenman 2007). 84 See for example the photograph of a wall painting in Baghdad by an Iraqi caricaturist that was first published in the New York Times, June 13, 2004. 85 Sociologist Philip Smith argued the polluted message of the electric chair was “repeated in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal” by “the most notorious” photograph, “an eerily hooded, Inquisition-like figure standing on a box holding electric cables” (Smith 2008). This connection was also made in the popular American series Prison Break (2005). The retrospective episode 16 of the first season included a scene played in Iraq, where the hooded prisoner was tortured in a wooden chair with electro-shocks. 86 Dayan & Katz 1988; 1996.

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of this framing is partially the result of a series of successful performances starting with Mark Kimmit’s limitation of damage in the original 60 minutes news show. No senior officer was convicted; no politician had to take responsibility for the abuses in court or even to step down. Though the resolution of the Abu Ghraib scandal was for many people unsatisfying, the scandal itself had a huge impact. The Abu Ghraib scandal brought no “justice”, but it triggered a cultural change. Between 9/11 and Abu Ghraib the legitimacy of torture was openly debatable87 and even practised in the War on Terror under the disguise of harsh interrogation techniques. The Abu Ghraib abuses revealed a grotesque image of torture that was incompatible with the arguments and narratives supporting this legitimacy of torture. The evil “ticking bomb terrorist” as a paradigmatic case became implausible and unrealistic, as too did the assumption that Americans are always on the good side. Furthermore, the scandal turned some of those images into “secular icons” that are still part of a global collective memory. After five years of war in Iraq, they are among the few pictures that remain – and probably will stick around for some time.

87 For example Dershowitz 2002.


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Taguba, Antonio M. 2005. “The Taguba Report. Article 15–6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade”. In: Karen J. Greenberg & Joshua L. Dratel (eds.). The torture papers. The road to Abu Ghraib.Cambrigde: Cambridge University Press: 405–465. Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja 1985. Culture, thought and social action. An anthropological perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Turner, Victor 1969. The ritual process. Structure and antistructure. London: Routledge. — 2004. From ritual to theatre. The human seriousness of play. New York: PAJ. Warburg, Aby 2000. Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. Berlin: Akademie. Wulf, Christoph & Jörg Zirfas 2005. Ikonologie des Performativen. München: Fink. Yoo, John C. 2005. “The President’s constiturional authority to conduct military operations against terrorists and nations supporting them”. In: Karen J. Greenberg (ed.). The torture papers. The road to Abu Ghraib. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 3–24. Zimbardo, Philip G. 2007. The Lucifer Effect. How Good People Turn Evil. London et. al.: Rider. Zizek, Slavoj 2004. “Between two deaths. The culture of torture”. London Review of Books, 03.06

Alexandra Argenti

The Fear of the Sorcerer Finding a Peaceful Moment for a Sacrifice in Southern Sri Lanka1 It began about fifteen years ago. Before then, people never killed effigies in this way. Ritualist, Udahenagama, 1997. Robbins’ seminal article highlights the value of research on linguistic ideology for the study of ritual practice.2 After reviewing performative approaches to ritual,3 Robbins re-iterates the value of approaching ritual as a form of communication. Building on, between others, Rappaport (1999) and Wagner (1984) Robbins argues: “We need to embed any account of a given people’s ritual life within an account of their ideologies of communication more broadly”.4 I am keen to define the innovative sacrificial practices I observed in Southern Sri Lanka5, by doing justice to the wider language ideology of my informants. I 1 I am grateful for the valuable comments and discussions, during the panel on “Ritual and Violence” organized by Margo Kitts at the conference on “Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual”, as well as other inter-disciplinary panels. I would also like to thank Bruce Kapferer and Bob Simpson for providing comparative field data. Jan Heesterman provided many comments, for which I am extremely grateful. The fieldwork on which this paper draws was undertaken in 1996–1998 and was funded by a University College London Graduate School Research Scholarship and a Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellowship. The further analysis of this material was made possible by a Harry Frank Guggenheim Post-doctoral Research Fellowship in 2002. 2 Robbins 2001. 3 Ibid.: 593. 4 Ibid.: 597. 5 Many anthropologists have looked for remnants of sacrificial dynamics and the violence of exorcism in violent processes of contemporary mass societies. Devisch (1995: 607) draws a connection between popular uprisings in Kinshasa and what he calls “the traditional phantasmagory of sorcery” while Kapferer (1997: 287–290) likens anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka to a gigantic exorcism with a “similar dynamics as dynamics” (1997: 289). Das (1998:124), discussing Muslim-Hindu riots in Delhi, argues that “the language of exorcism and possession here becomes a political language through which the violence links the aggressors and

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thereby do not find an analytical resting point in the debate about whether young men’s innovative ritual practice “refers” to the history of Sinhala Buddhist sacrificial practice or contemporary forms of domestic and political violence6. The language of such a debate exists very much within the limits of a referential language ideology7 as contemporary acts of ritual violence are interpreted in “reference” to either sacrificial or everyday violence. I bear in mind that contextualization, coding and referentiality are typical EuroAmerican knowledge-making processes. For this description of a moment when a political reality becomes ritualized or violence becomes sacrifice, I mobilize anthropological work on indirection as a key entry-point. It is not my intention to provide an overview of the literature on indirect communication here, and for the purpose of this paper I will define indirection through the work of one key author within this field of enquiry. Brenneis’ question “When can a speaker not exactly say what he means?” is particularly pertinent for the sacrificial innovators of Southern Sri Lanka.8 Brenneis argues that indirect and allusive forms of communication are the predominant mode of conflict communication in forms of organization where direct leadership is dangerous to all involved.9 He furthermore defines indirection on the basis of Bakhtin’s work,10 as a style of communication in which both speaker and audience share the responsibility of interpretation.11 Indirect

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the victims on the model of the exorcist and the patient”. Kapferer’s (1997: 218) – at a moment when he refers to Girard’s work and takes this approach to its logical conclusion – similarly states that “the extension of ritual metaphors and processes into the contemporary contexts is likely to generate violence”. Following a Girardian perspective, there would not have been a successful transformation of archaic forms of social control into the modern form, and sacrificial outlets for the violence inherent in society are malfunctioning in modern violence-ridden societies (ibid: 218). Similarly, in Bloch’s (1992) theory of rebounding violence, sacrificial violence is the point of departure of the analysis. Here sacrifice in traditional societies is conceived as a centre from which expanding waves of vitality and violence emerge. In the above-mentioned studies, sacrificial violence and exorcism provide a metaphor, blueprint, mould, emotional force or legitimation for violence in a changing political context. These arguments clearly have a built-in directionality, in which the relationship between sacrifice and political violence is mainly orchestrated as a movement from sacrificial processes to political violence in its modern context. I reverse the general direction of such arguments and question how modern political violence and civil war are a point of departure for the generation of innovative ritual sacrifice in Southern Sri Lanka. Hereby I refer to the communist JVP insurgency (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuni) and brutal counter-insurgency war of the late eighties (1987–1989) in which approximately 20,000 people disappeared (see Alles 1990, Chandraprema 1991), as well as ongoing cycles of postwar low-intensity violence. See Kroskrity 2000, Woolard 1998, Robbins 2001. Brenneis 1984: 69. Ibid.: 70, 82, 83. Volosinov 1973. Brenneis 1986.

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communication thereby involves an active participation of the audience in the search for hidden meanings,12 as speaker and audience meet mid-way within a shared interpretative endeavour. The territory of meaning is thereby shared in this Bakhtinian definition of indirection. Inspired by the existing linguistic anthropology of indirection13, I propose a Bakhtinian definition of ritual innovation. A focus on the addressivity and inner sociality14 of ritual communication explores ritual within a wider communicative ideology of indirection, or interrogates ritual reality through the lens of a linguistic anthropology of indirection15. Such a Bakhtinian approach to ritual does not necessarily articulate itself at the level of a shared interpretation of ritual symbols, but can equally be a shared definition of what is ritual and non-ritual. On the basis of this continuum between indirect speech and indirect ritual communication, ritual emerges as un-definable through the referential linguistic ideology of Standard Average European Languages or ethnographic monologues.16 I focus on a category of unconsolidated ritual; its blurry boundaries and moving image which is difficult to capture with the slow ethnographic lens of referentiality. In this particular casestudy, it is ritual performance that is a form of indirect communication and creates a tension between interpretations of political violence and sacrificial practice, or ritual and meaningless violence. I attempt to offer a snapshot of such a conflict over the ritualization of a community’s past while honouring the rules of the community’s wider communicative ideology17. It is this spirit of indirect ritual reverberation I intend to re-create in this paper. First of all, I offer a range of referential meanings of the innovative ritual acts, to 12 Ibid.: 340. 13 I thereby explore the dynamic relation between pragmatic and referential meanings (Tambiah 1979: 166, 1985) of the youth’s ritual performance on the basis of an analysis of indirection and the non-referential aspects of the language ideology of this particular community. 14 Bakhtin 1986: 95, 99, 101. 15 The focus thereby becomes an anthropologically relevant linguistics. Rather than explore the link between ritual and language, and their grammars, I propose an inquiry into the relational or social functions of language and ritual, and their ideologies of communication which are not exhausted through a study of their grammars, but require ethnographic attention. 16 See Kroskrity 2000: 31–33. 17 I rely on my earlier work (Argenti-Pillen 2003, 2007) on indirect discourses on violence and non-referential language ideology in Southern Sri Lanka to go beyond a referential analysis of the genesis of new sacrificial symbols in Southern Sri Lanka. In my monograph (2003), I provided an analysis of the non-referential functions of language mobilized by women in Udahenagama to talk about domestic and political violence. I specifically focused on the role of euphemism and zero-anaphora (102–132) and their link with post-war social structure. I also explored the culture-specific use of reported speech (133–158) as a function of a nonbourgeois public sphere. In this paper, I interpret the youngsters’ “violence in ritual” as a form of indirection on a continuum with Sinhalese women’s everyday indirect representations of violence, and non-referential linguistic strategies.

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orient the reader within a field of possible interpretations. Yet, eventually I honour the primacy of the local linguistic ideology of indirection, as I merely reflect the multiple echoes of both ritual and violence I recorded. I thereby maintain the spirit of diffuse responsibility and acknowledge the fact that this paper deals with data which after all might be both non-ritual and meaningless.

Updated Ritual: Gamblers and the Sexual Harassment of Effigies During the long nights of ritual activity18, while ritualists recite mantra and a sick woman lies immobile and entranced, young men combat the boredom of traditional rituals by gambling through the night, at the outskirts of the ritual enclosure. While ritualists perform their duties on the ritual stage, young men create a parallel stage on which they engulf themselves in the thrill of financial gain (or loss). Some of the (often inebriated) youngsters are less absorbed by the gambling, and move between the two stages. They periodically invade the ritual space, imitate and ridicule the dances of the ritualists and pester them with noisy, aggressive joking. Women and children watch the ritual from inside the house. They lie on mats, chat and rock children to sleep, only to get up when the ritual reaches a crescendo outside. Then they peek through the window or stand in the doorway of the house. At certain times young men suddenly become interested in the ritual, abandon their gambling and surround the ritual space. Such audience shifts are sudden and occur when the entranced woman speaks or dances. The ritualists also attract everybody’s attention at the height of the sacrificial episode of the ritual around midnight, when the ritualist lies in a funeral pyre (därahäva pidenna), a morbid meal is prepared in a human skull and young helpers prepare a human effigy to be offered to the spirits. I now turn to the novel ritual acts introduced by such youngsters at moments of intense audience participation. The Effigy – “She has made a river in her underwear” During domestic cleansing or healing rituals (tovile) the spirits are distracted from their human victims by the use of substitutes (billi). In the ritual of the great cemetery demon (Mahasohona tovil), for example, the human victim is first substituted by a ritualist in a funeral pyre, who is then substituted by a human effigy (pambaya), which is then substituted by a rooster, which is finally substituted by food, cigarettes or alcohol. The possessed woman transfers her illness to the ritualist in the funeral pyre (muna ata piya gahanava). The mood during this transaction is tense and anxious. The ritualist recites mantra and blows on a whistle to avoid 18 For a detailed description of the healing rituals concerned (tovile) see for example Wirz 1954, and Kapferer 1983.


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death. Rice is cooked in a human skull, procured in the cemetery of a neighbouring village. The smell is pungent, the mood sombre. This moment is as it were diluted and fragmented by the laughter and hilarity of the mock mourners, carrying out the offering of the effigy on a parallel stage inside the house. In contemporary Udahenagama, young men who have never been apprenticed to a ritualist take charge of the preparation of the effigy for sacrificial offering. The wild spirits are tricked (rävattenavā) into thinking this is a real human sacrifice. The violence this effigy undergoes is one of the contested and shameful episodes of the ritual. I quote from my field notes: “The son of the sick person arrives with the effigy. It looks like a girl. She wears a skirt and has long black hair made of an old umbrella. Her face is made of young banana tree branches, her body of old leaves. She has small breasts and a slightly protruding stomach. She is held by an inebriated young man, who treats her like a toddler. He tells her: ‘You have such a difficult time. It is so tough for you’. Then he cradles her in his arms like a baby, and slaps her in the face. But he tells her: ‘Hit me in the face too!’ He takes her lifeless arm and makes her hit him, he screams ‘lets hit, lets hit’, and beats her up. She then becomes a baby that has to be put to sleep and he rocks her in his arms, murmuring, ‘oh, baby, baby’. Next to the funeral pyre an old bag is put on the floor, the man then places her on the bag as if putting a child to bed. She lies next to the funeral pyre, in the vicinity of a hearth. On the fire an egg and some rice are fried in a human skull. She is then prepared to be taken inside the house, to the sick person’s bedroom. Some other men put a small offering tray on top of her and a torch is stuck into this tray. She is brought inside and the mock crying starts, ‘ayoooooo!’, ‘mother!’, ‘ayooooo!’ The young male mourners make jokes and laugh. There is a call and response dialogue between the mourners preparing a meal in the skull, and the mourners inside preparing a mock corpse. They lift her skirt, insert the torch in her mouth and between her legs, slide their hands under her skirt and finally beat her up. She ends up crushed against the wall, the young banana tree leaves making up her face badly damaged. The audience’s laughter and gayness nevertheless dominates the atmosphere. She finally is put into the funeral pyre and carried away to the cemetery near the river to be burned.” After being treated in turns as a little girl and a sexual object by the young men, the effigy is killed, and the young men then turn to pretending to mourn her death. The wailing resembles the expression of sadness of the bereaved during real funerary rites, but it is laced with laughter and hilarity. The ritualist, who earlier had taken on the dangerous role of lying in the funeral pyre, is then replaced by this effigy. Like a corpse in a funeral pyre, the effigy is taken to the cemetery, where it is burned.

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In the beginning of this act, the youths conjoin the usually opposed poles of intimate care and abuse, simultaneously caring for and beating the effigy. Later on this travesty of the caring role of the parent turns into enactments of sexual abuse and murder. This event was relatively uncontested during the ritual event itself, but on other occasions I witnessed audience members interrupting some of the abuse. In order to further analyse such contested ritual episodes, I now present a transcript of the jokes the young men made while molesting the effigy during another innovative ritual act I observed: 1. Mourners outside, near the funeral pyre: Please don’t do anything (bad) to the girl that you took into the house! [They plead not to hurt the girl]. 2. Key mourners inside the house (throw themselves onto effigy, giggle and pretend to cry, then they lift her skirt): Oh dear, it [underwear, hymen?] is completely broken! [Audience laughs], Oh my goodness [more laughter]. What happened to younger sister? There is no point of staying [in this world] any longer. I will also accompany her to the bottom of the pit! Oh Buddha! Oh seven funerals! Oh my goodness! Take me with you and go! What has happened to you? 3. Audience: What has happened to younger sister? 4. Key mourner: She has made a river in her knickers! [Loud laughter, even the two key mourners laugh with their own joke]. 5. Key mourners [addressing each other]: Don’t laugh! [Adress the audience] Are you laughing at a time you should cry? 6. Key mourners (KM) [addressing each other]: KM1: Cross-cousin, there is nothing we can do, after what younger sister has brought upon herself. 7. KM2: It is not even worth crying about it, my cousin. 8. KM1: Dear friend/cousin, there is nothing we can do. Give your younger sister to me, for Buddha’s sake. 9. KM2: I did not think the younger cousin could do such a thing. 10. KM1: Oh, my god. 11. KM2: Please go and take me with you! Oh, my beloved younger sister! Please take me with you! [Laughter] 12. KM1: Would it be worth it to take you? [Laughter] 13. KM2 [Looks at effigy, while continuing his conversation with KM1, ambiguous addressee]: What have you got in your [un-respectful pronoun] brain? Don’t know. It might just be the leftovers in a scraped coconut!


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[Laughter] Oh, seven funerals, even her teeth are broken! May thunder strike upon the person who did this to younger sister! Oh Buddha, seven funerals. There is no point in living any longer. Oh Buddha, seven funerals. [Addresses the effigy and refers to the offering tray that rests on her chest] Are you dancing with a torch stuck into your chest? [Laughter], Oh Buddha, seven funerals… The two young men mourn and make jokes in the same, wailing tone of voice. They mourn about what has happened to the effigy/woman by partially re-enacting the crime. The sick person for whom the ritual is organized is lying on the porch of the house during this ritual episode, just meters away from the ritually abused or murdered effigy. At first, the youngsters take up the role of elder brothers and engage in wailing typical of traditional funeral ceremonies (lines 2, 11). At times they blame the victim (lines 7, 13) or they suggest a family member was involved in the crime (line 9). The mock mourners’ position gradually shifts from that of elder brothers to the role of potential suitors (line 8). They engage in a joking relationship typical of traditional cross-cousin relations and close male friendships. Finally, they curse the effigy’s aggressor and threaten him with thunder, a curse used in situations of murder, rape or illegitimate pregnancy. Many of the youngsters in the audience are drunk. At times this ritual episode is chaotic and resembles a drunken brawl. Certain elements nevertheless reveal its well-defined script. The key mourners inside the house instruct the audience to wail, the mourners outside encourage the mourners inside to continue their act, and the key mourners try not to laugh with their own jokes. Although I was able to discuss the issue of the violence perpetrated on the effigy during interviews with people involved in the rituals, my questions were mostly met with stereotypical dismissals. When I asked the young men involved about their participation in these ritual acts they systematically told me they did it for fun (vinoda)19. Ritualists in the Udahenagama area themselves argue the ritual abuse of the effigy has nothing to do with the tradition (sāstara). These abusive acts are just carried out by drunken youths, they say. Ritualists do not use the word fun (vinoda) to describe the youths’ involvement but rather invoke the non-sensical behaviour of drunks (anang manang, vikāra). When they were young, death, Maruva, a masked figure enacting death, would come and decapitate the effigy. Much as in most contemporary rites young men took the effigy inside the house and engaged in mock mourning. They then brought the effigy back unharmed into the centre of the ritual space, briefly placing it in the funeral pyre on top of the ritualist

19 Compare this to the position of devotees at Kodungallur Bhagavati Temple in central Kerala, (Gentes: 1992) who argue they use violent behaviour, obscene songs and sexual expression to please the goddess.

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and then leaving the further offering and killing of the effigy to the ritualists. I quote a ritualist from Udahenagama: “Before it was different − why? That is the way in which the country has changed. We still do our work. We [the ritualists] didn’t change our ways. It is the younger generation. They don’t have respect. Fools! It is they who do such things. It started about fifteen years ago. Before that the killing of the effigy wouldn’t be done in this way. This generation doesn’t even trust their parents. They ask ‘Where does my mother live? Who is my father? Was there a Buddha?’ So who will give them the answers? They don’t trust anybody.” The ritualists used to offer effigies to the spirits themselves, before youths began to engage in the killing of the effigy fifteen years ago. Kapferer’s work20 also provides data for historical comparison. During his fieldwork in the early 1970’s and late 1980’s in the Galle area, approx. seventy miles South of the Udahenagama area, the effigy would commonly be male and would be offered to the spirits at noon (Irimudun samayama) by the ritualists.21 Only occasionally would one of the ritualists dress up as Maruva (death). The effigy effectively died because it suffered from the deadly illness of the patient and was consumed by the spirits. Male kin of the afflicted engaged in comic and exaggerated mourning, but weren’t involved in comic dialogues, ritual abuse or murder of the effigy (personal communication). I have thus far highlighted the transformation the offerings of effigies have undergone in the Udahenagama area over the last fifteen years, but will now question in which ways such violence committed by intrusive youths echoes the ritual acts of apprenticed ritualists. Violent Scripts of a Previous Generation The violence that the effigy suffered at the hands of non-apprenticed youths during my research was very different from the drunken brawls, stabbings and shootings that sometimes occur in the darkness of the night surrounding the ritual space. At first sight the violence meted out to the effigy seems uncontrolled, chaotic and absurd. Frenzied or drunken spectators throw themselves upon the effigy and drunken outbursts of laughter dominate the atmosphere. However, tape and video recordings later revealed how the key mourners clearly stage the event and contain the violence within a particular genre. I now look for points of comparison between the ritual practices of ritualists who have been through a lengthy process of traditional apprenticeship and the innovative ritual acts of unruly un-apprenticed youths.

20 Kapferer 1983, 1997, and personal communication. 21 Kapferer 1983: 201–205, 343.


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The rooster is another sacrificial victim (billa) ritualists offer to the spirits as a substitute for the human being under threat. The ways in which the rooster is treated reveals similarities with the contemporary ordeal the effigies undergo. For example, a ritualist while dressed as Vädi Sanni Yaksha, a spirit representing the native hunters that populated the island before the arrival of the Sinhalese people,22 molested and cajoled the rooster. This episode is part of the daha ata pāliya, a ritual comedy performed just before sunrise when approximately eighteen spirits emerge on the stage and engage in comic dialogues with ritualists. The comic acts of the Vädi Sanni Yaksha spirit are focused on the sacrificial victim, the rooster. The Vädi Sanni Yaksha firmly cements the sacrificial relationship between sacrificer and rooster at the centre of the ritual comedy: „He grabs the [live] rooster and pretends to beat it heavily. Finally he installs it on his lap, opens its cloaca and pretends to insert his finger. Then he rocks it like a baby and sings it a lullaby while he lovingly caresses it on the head, sometimes addressing it as ‘son’, sometimes as ‘sick woman’ [for whom the ritual is held]. He rocks it like a baby and sings: ‘you don’t get love from father – you don’t get love from mother – sleep well, my son – do you feel alone just like I do? – Come on my chicken son – fall asleep in my arms – yes, my chicken son in father’s arms – when you were born your mother died – how will I ever be able to commemorate your birthday? – One day your mother was here my son – ah now we have to catch the thief – the fox took your mother to the forest – so, my chicken son – in father’s arms – sleep my chicken son, my sick woman.” The tone is tragic-comic, the tune not a real lullaby but a traditional Sinhalese song. The rooster is at once child and sexual object, and the ritual episode establishes a close relation between intimate care and abuse. Other dialogues I recorded between the Vädi Sanni Yaksha and a ritualist further document the merger of parental care, sexual attraction and abuse into an ambiguous conglomerate of references. In one instance, the spirit first sang lullabies for the rooster and then moved to a discussion about feeding a baby; a baby who would soon turn into a potential lover. These examples of the ritual care and seduction performed by ritualists reveal strong similarities with the references made during the innovative ritual abuse of the effigy described above, as parental care and abuse, seduction and sexual harassment become intermingled. Yet, the rooster and the effigy are not the only beings which are placed in the position of an abused child or a sexualised victim. The treatment of the patient herself is another point of comparison between the contemporary treatment of the effigy at the hands of troubled youths and the ritual prac22 See Obeyesekere 1969.

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tices of ritualists. At the beginning of a healing ritual, the ritualists accept to take responsibility for the sick person (bāra gannavā). In everyday life, the concept of taking responsibility (bāra gannavā) and giving responsibility (bāra denavā) is used to refer to childcare. The same concept is used within the context of ritual cleansing, when the sick person’s family “give” the afflicted to the ritualists (bāra denavā). Yet if a sick person would disobey them, and not relinquish her symptoms, she is punished through beatings, burnings with red-hot iron, or by having to dance on burning coal. Such punishments are ordered by Vesamuni, the great king of the Yaksha, and the family cannot intervene as long as the ritualists maintain ritual responsibility for the sick person. In the eyes of ritualists, ritual abuse is framed as the punishment of a child23 and they explain themselves by using two different discourses. On the one hand, they use the discourse about Vesamuni the king of the Yaksha, who has power over these spirits and who can give ritualists the authority to punish the spirits. On the other hand, they adhere to the everyday discourse of raising children, and punishing a human being. The boundary between the official cosmological discourse and everyday human discourses is permeable and unsteady, and the everyday reality of rearing, punishing or abusing children provides a powerful script for ritual acts of cleansing and re-socialization of the afflicted.24 I argue it is precisely this script (and not so much the cosmological parallel script of a struggle with the spirits) that is picked up by the youths when they rock the effigy like a baby, address her like a toddler and then abuse her. Yet I would also argue that their aim is not necessarily

23 Compare this with examples in the ethnographic literature where people’s discourse about the beating of sick people is not such much focussed on the experience of the sick person her/himself, but on the spirit possessing the person (Kakar 1982, Boddy 1989). Kakar’s description of the exorcism of evil spirits in the Balaji temple near Bharatpur (1982: 62–66) mentions severe self-punishments (hangings, beatings, standing on head for long time, chaining to iron bars, placing heavy rocks on body) all understood to be a “direct attack on the possessing spirit” (ibid.: 65). And Boddy quotes a report from the 1920’s about a possessed sixteen year old girl who was murdered by a curer attempting to exorcise the intrusive spirits via beatings. “The curer claimed in court to have beaten the spirits, not the girl” (1989: 144). Maltreatment of the sick person’s body is used to make a spirit uncomfortable in this body and force him to leave. Likewise Bloch’s cosmological argument of “rebounding violence” suggests that ritual violence is a necessary attack on human vitality; a step organised for people to be able to communicate with the spirits (Bloch 1992: 28). In such analyses (e.g. Kakar 1982, Bloch 1992) the maltreatment of initiates or the sick is understood within a cosmological framework in which the struggle between spirits and humans is the focal point in the interpretation of ritualized abuse. The question remains, however, how a human aggressor and their human victim experience such abuse despite knowing they are involved in a struggle with spiritual forces, or in a quest to establish contact with the spirits. 24 For a discussion of healing rites in Tamil culture as a form of forceful re-socialization and “trial” of the disobedient see Nabokov (1997: 312).


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to refer to this history of traditional sacrifice, yet to bring it in a field of tension with the idea of non-ritual nonsense or nonsensical vio-lent fun. The Flight of Spirits and Ritualists All of the rituals described above were completed and offerings were made to the spirits. In each case, the ritualists managed to incorporate the innovative improvisations of the young peripheral participants within the ritual. I now turn to some worst-case scenarios: examples of aborted rituals or interrupted sacrifices. Such instances – it must be said – occur only rarely, but nevertheless feature prominently in collective representations of beleaguered ritualists and sacrificial ritual. Stories circulate in Udahenagama about aborted rituals, where the tension and conflicts between ritualists and violent youths could not be contained, and the ritualists had to flee to safety in the course of a performance. One ritualist argued that on one such occasion, the rooster actually died during the ritual25 and that youngsters compounded this tragedy by eating it. Whether true or not, such a story reflects how horrified ritualists are when faced with interruptions by violent youths. Ritualists try to protect themselves and their rituals from the incursions of young men by means of sorcery. The ritualists make offerings to the godling Suniyam at the start of the ritual to ensure that he will protect them during the ritual, and, if necessary, take revenge upon any youngsters who might cause trouble.26 This punishment takes place during the later stages of the ritual, or immediately afterwards when people return home in the early hours of the morning. The offending youngsters might get wounded in a fight on the outskirts of the ritual space, they might be attacked in the forest while walking home, or Special Forces might arrest them, during a night-time raid on the house where the ritual takes place (all of these were common occurrences). Ritualists thus use sorcery spells to intimidate potentially disruptive youths during ritual performances. Yet, in the contemporary situation, the effectiveness of these spells is far from taken for granted, as some youngsters are considered both to resemble anti-social spirits as well as to be immune to spirit attack. The cycle of retribution and revenge by means of sorcery has thus become more uncertain, and ritualists are now forced to engage in lengthy rhetoric to convince people (and themselves?) that peripheral youths still fear their powers. Occasionally, they loose the battle, and are forced to abort the ritual and flee. 25 Traditionally, the rooster is never meant to die in the ritual, but is substituted by food, an effigy, or cigarettes and liquor offered to the spirits. Rumours circulated that the youngsters who ate this rooster became severely ill and suffered from an incurable disease. This could not be confirmed though since the ritualists never returned to the area. The outcome of the struggle between ritualists and lawless youths during cleansing rituals is thereby hidden from view and is characterized by uncertainty and doubt. 26 Cf. Argenti-Pillen 2003: 70–71.

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During one ritual, a burning cigarette was inserted into the mouth of the murdered effigy. I might have interpreted this as just another joke, had I not heard a story about a political murder in the neighbourhood. A death squad of the counterinsurgency forces had killed a young man during the civil war of the late eighties. The soldiers, knowing the villagers would soon discover the victim, inserted a burning cigarette in his mouth, which was still smoking when his family members discovered him. Subsequently, this scenario became a trope for sacrificial innovation and fun. Another event made me aware of war-time, violent formats within contemporary performances, this one almost resulting in the breakdown of the ritual. As the funeral pyre with the effigy was transported to a cemetery, a troublesome youth suggested they should put a tyre around the effigy and light it. This was a standard way in which people were killed and burned during the civil war of the 1980’s when tyres were used to burn cadavers, making them unrecognisable and effectively “disappearing” them. Peripheral youths thus draw on powerful experiences of war and chronic low-intensity violence as a symbolic and cultural resource for their innovative contributions to contemporary healing rituals.27

Analysis of a Contested Ritual? Debates in the community following large-scale healing rites (tovil) concern the possessed victim and the effect of the ritual upon the victim’s health. Nowadays however ritual deliberations become saturated with the narratives of unruly youths.28 Despite the ritualists’ and elderly’s dismissal and disgust of the youth’s 27 Conversely, I would like to compare the sacrifice of the effigy which is burnt near a crossroad, a cemetery or a river and the atrocities committed during the civil war. People, killed by either insurgents or counter-insurgency commandos in the villages, were often burnt and left near cross roads or near the river. My informants argued this was done to mask the identity of the victims and thereby contribute to the culture of “disappearances” that terrorized the civilian population. They also argued that the burning of corpses revealed that the immense anger of the assailants, which didn’t subside by merely killing their victims. However further questions can be posed. Taylor (1999) discussed the “culturally-favoured forms of torture” (128) during the genocide in Rwanda and makes an explicit link between representations of the body in popular medicine and techniques of physical cruelty during the civil war (101). Likewise there is a similarity between the ways in which the effigy is sacrificed during popular healing rites and the mutilation of corpses that occurred during the civil war of the late eighties in Southern Sri Lanka. Now the circle seems closed as youths currently use the imagery of such war crimes as a symbolic resource during the healing rites and sacrifices of the post-war era. 28 This is certainly not a new phenomenon. Heesterman (1993: 27, 236) documents instances of the disturbance of sacrifices by the excluded in ancient Hindu Myths. There are many tales in Vedic ritual mythology of how interrupted sacrifice has devastating effects on ordinary reality (ibid: 27). Likewise Minkowski’s work (2001) on the Mahabharata reveals that in the


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violence, I suggest that the violence perpetrated by the young men upon the effigy is not entirely chaotic, meaningless and absurd, but could be interpreted as an integral – albeit innovative – part of the rite. A Possessed Woman and her Effigy By abusing the effigy, young men have taken up the role of explicitly presencing the issue of abuse during the healing rite of afflicted women many of whom are also victims of domestic violence.29 In many situations, the young men are thus bringing a victim of abuse into close proximity with the violent abuse of the effigy. In one case, a young man accused of battering the afflicted woman, was a protagonist in the sacrifice of the effigy. While young men “prepare” the effigy inside the house, the afflicted woman is usually not in a deep trance. She is instructed by the ritualists and her family members to perform the act of at muna piya gahanavā, in which she transfers her moral faults to the ritualist lying in the funeral pyre. She therefore lacks the protection of a trance state, and is aware of the effigy being battered inside her own bedroom. Researchers working within the paradigm on trauma would argue that many young people in Southern Sri Lanka were traumatized during the civil war. Within this paradigm, sufferers could be expected to engage in the senseless re-enactment of the violence they experienced, possibly triggered by situations brought about in the context of the ritual. Regardless whether one takes such interpretations on board or not, the question remains, however, why young men specifically choose to abuse the effigy. Possible re-enactments of traumatic, violent experiences are more likely to manifest themselves on a regular basis in everyday life, as domestic violence or crime, than on relatively infrequent ritual occasions. A wider cultural analysis suggests that the specific way in which young men treat the effigy is not a contemporary aberration or senseless re-enactment of violence, but rather that it belongs to a well-established cultural logic of sacrificial efficiency. Youths create the effigy as an image of the possessed woman, suffering from similar experiences. A homology is created between these two beings. Ritualists conceive of the possessed woman as a child, the possessed women sometimes undress during trance states, or lie with clenched fists, unconscious or unable to speak. Kapferer describes this state as a primordial condition before consciousness and knowledge.30 Obeyesekere and Thachil interpret nakedness and clenched fists episode of the killing of Sisupala “the description of the mutual insults, threats, challenges, expressions of outrage, and eventually the killing of Sisupala by Krsna there in the ritual setting takes more space than the description of the ritual activity that it disrupts” (174, my emphasis). 29 See Argenti-Pillen 2003: 21–41. 30 Kapferer 1997:194.

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as symbols of infancy or foetal life.31 The youths create a homology between this child-like person and the effigy by treating the effigy as a child before placing it in the position of the abused woman. Here it is important to remark that the ideology of sacrificial substitution and progressive simplification that features as a central characteristic of healing rites (tovile) originated in ancient Vedic India.32 Then as now, the replacement of one sacrificial victim by another one required the sacrificial substitutes to resemble one another closely. The Sanskritist Jamous argues that “the ritual identification is not simple assimilation – the aim is not to make these categories of beings identical, but to make them similar through their ceremonial position”.33 Malamoud furthermore argues that mantras need to be recited to avoid the total identification of a sacrifier/victim and his/her sacrificial substitute.34 That the young men who torment effigies in contemporary healing rituals construct a homologous sacrificial substitute to be offered and consumed by the spirits, clearly resonates with Valeri’s sacrificial theory.35 Valeri argues that Western theories of sacrifice fail to recognize that the offering symbolized the sacrifier36 and that excessive emphasis on violence itself obfuscates the figurative and symbolic value of the victim’s death and destruction.37 In his theory, the offering is a “double of the sacrifier”38, a “metaphor of the victim”39, and during the performance of the sacrifice ritualists build an analogical relationship between the sacrificial victim and the sacrifier. The offering’s capacity to symbolize the sacrifier’s disorder, transgressions or his animality is thereby crucial. The death or the consumption of the sacrificial victim then stands for the destruction of transgression or disobedience of society’s rules.40 In Valeri’s understanding “imperfect realizations of humanity”41 are offered to the gods or spirits and devoured by them. Likewise the young men of Udahenagama inscribe such transgression into the body of the effigy before burning her42, thereby offering her to the spirits. 31 Obeysekere 1989: 85; Thachil 1985. 32 For a historical overview of the ideology of substitution in Vedic and Brahmanic periods see Tull 1996. 33 Jamous 1994: 328. 34 Malamoud 1996: 214–215. 35 Valeri 1985. 36 Ibid.: 63. 37 Ibid.: 69. 38 Ibid.: 71. 39 Ibid.: 46. 40 Ibid.: 48–49. 41 Ibid.: 73. 42 Note Heesterman’s comment: “The essence of sacrifice is not so much the gift offered to suprahuman powers but the element of (violent) destruction. This at least is the considered opinion of the (post-)vedic ritualistic theoreticians of the Pūrva-Mīmāmsā; whereas the gift only


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Zempleni’s and Mercier’s analyses can further clarify the symbolic relationship between the possessed woman and the effigy brought about by the youths.43 Their approach allows for a detailed analytical separation of two key movements in sacrifices carried out during possession rites: the transfer of the illness, understood to be caused by a possessing spirit, and the exorcism of the spirit itself. From this perspective, exorcism is seen as a transfer of illness to the sacrificial substitute, which can occur independently from the transfer of the spirit or the consumption of the sacrificial substitute by the spirit.44 Mercier argues that there is an “efficacy of transfer of illness before the sacrifice is consumed, even though the contractual formulation suggests the reverse order”.45 It is just such a method of transfer of illness to the effigy that the young men of Udahenagama have adapted in recent years. Kapferer (personal communication) confirmed that in the late eighties, the effigy was not ritually harmed or killed by the ritualists, but was understood to be suffering from the deadly illness of the possessed person. In other words, the transfer of the illness to the effigy was effectuated mainly by means of the recitations of the ritualists and (controlled) mock mourning by the audience46. In the contemporary ritual, young men have expanded this traditional transfer of illness by adding comic dialogues as well as ritualised reenactment of violent abuse. I argue that the method of transfer of illness to the effigy may have changed, but that the fundamental ways in which a homology is created between the possessed person and the effigy has not. Ritualists sing lullabies for the rooster, the principal sacrificial substitute. The rooster is thereby not only humanized – a necessary step to be able to create a homology between human sacrifier and animal offering47 –

43 44 45 46

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changes ownership and so remains in circulation, the offered substance is definitely withdrawn from use (in vedic ritual usually by abandoning it to destruction in the sacrificial fire). The single act of abandonment (tyāga, utsarga) is the one ritial act that is decisive in bringing about the wished-for-result. In the case of the exorcism ritual [discussed in this chapter] there also was desctruction. What scandalizes – to the extent of fearing a violent catastrophe – is the apparent break-up of the strictly ritualized and therefore safe order. We see the same concern in the vedic śrauta sacrifice, where the all-important tyāga is never-theless reduced to a hardly noticeable event” (personal communication). Zempleni 1987; Mercier 1993. In terms of Sinhala Buddhist healing rituals this double transfer, is on the one hand the transfer of the illness (conceived as dosha) and on the other hand the transfer of the gaze of the spirits (dishtiya) onto the sacrificial substitute. Mercier 1993: 71. Likewise the transfer of the possessed person’s illness or moral faults (dosha) to the body of the ritualist in the funeral pyre (därahäva pidenna) was (and still is) transferred by means of recitations as well as gestures the possessed person is instructed to make (muna at piya gahanavā). For a description of the humanization of sacrificial animals see for example Valeri (1994: 115) and Tull 1996.

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but is also put in the position of a child. This is analogous to the position of the possessed person, who is treated like a child by the ritualists. The rooster is further humanized through mockery and derision48. This cultural script is picked up by contemporary youths when they treat the effigy as a child, then mock and abuse it. Youths thereby not only humanize the effigy but transfer illness into the effigy. They make illness resulting from violent abuse part of the effigy’s body, not only discursively through comic dialogue but also by means of actual physical abuse. I therefore argue that in symbolic or cosmological terms young men have not altered the sacrificial script as fundamentally as might at first sight appear to be the case. It is however important, especially in an analysis of contested ritual, to strike a balance between a symbolic analysis and an analysis focusing on the very real effects of the violence involved.49 The ethnographer’s exclusive focus on the cosmological dimension and meaning of sacrifice might create a “veil of unity and consensus”50 where in fact many of the participants to the rite experience the violence as meaningless and not very different from everyday forms of domestic or political violence. The expressions people use in Udahenagama to talk about the offering of the effigy (vinoda, vikāra), reveal this ritual episode doesn’t make much sense for them. More often than not, people would be deeply ashamed and preferred not to talk about the violence the effigy undergoes, and would try to convince me that such things never happened, even though we witnessed such events together. So, even though an anthropological analysis reveals strong connections with ritualistic, Sinhala Buddhist sacrificial scripts, this innovative ritual episode is understood to be both unacceptable and meaningless by the majority of participants. Comic Sacrifice & Youthful Sacrificers What is new is to find extensive comic dialogues, right at the centre of the sacrificial moment. For a further analysis of such comic, innovative, ritual episodes I am inspired by Waterson’s work on playful sacrifices51 during Mapakorong ritual of

48 Compare this with the widespread taboo on mockery of animals in Southeast Asia (Valeri 1994: 120), which emphasizes the otherness of wild animals. Animals that one can mock cannot be eaten and laughter is only appropriate with humans. Within this cultural context mockery is a potential strategy of humanization. 49 For a critique of etherealised, theological views of sacrifice see for example Hoskins 1993 and Whitehouse 1996. 50 Hoskins 1993: 175. 51 Waterson 1995. Ritual forms of entertainment for the pleasure of the gods and forms of play as offering are of ancient origin in India, and wide-spread in South-East Asia (Waterson 1995: 89), while European societies, influenced by a Protestant ethic have made systematic efforts to purge playful elements out of ritual (ibid 95). Waterson furthermore reports that


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the Sadan Toraja in the highlands of South Sulawesi. Waterson argues that this playful act cannot be understood as an “anti-rite”, in Mary Douglas’ formulation,52 or a playful interlude as counterpoint to the solemnity of sacrifice.53 Similarly in Udahenagama, the comic denigration of the effigy can be interpreted as an integral part of the sacrifice, not a sideline script. It most clearly resembles the comic dialogues (of the daha ata pāliya) performed by the ritualists at the end of a healing rite, just before sunrise.54 In Kapferer’s analysis the comic drama completes the transformational process of the rite55 and corresponds to Van Gennep’s or Turners re-aggregational phase in a transition rite of healing in which the patient is re-oriented towards daily life.56 In the aftermath of the civil war, young men have “disassembled and re-assembled ritual elements”57, picking up the comic genre and technique of the daha ata pāliya and transplanting it to the key sacrificial moment; the offering of the effigy and the funeral pyre that usually occurs around midnight. In this way young men have laced brutality and abuse with comic dialogue, laughter and hilarity. Hoskins, in her work on Kodi sacrifice in eastern Indonesia, questions why sacrifice is comic amongst many indigenous populations in South East Asia.58 She argues that sacrificers laugh because they briefly see themselves in their victim’s eyes and recognize themselves in their animal victims.59 She relies on Valeri’s argument, which asserts that laughter requires identification.60 In order to laugh it is necessary to place oneself in the psychic state of the ridiculous person, and compare him with oneself in the same situation. According to Hoskins, the youthful sacrificers’ mockery and derision is based on such an identification with the subjugation of the sacrificial victim and betrays suppressed resentment against their own subjugation within their society’s authority structure.61 Hoskins then goes on to interpret the violent killing of the beast as a dramatic re-enactment of other subjugations.62 A comparable identification between youths and the sexually abused effigy is not unthinkable. Narratives of torture, including sexual abuse, during military trainsongs played by musicians during “cleaning the well” offering in highland South Sulawesi have titles such as “lullaby”, “playful tune”, “song of the orphans” (ibid 87). 52 Douglas 1968. 53 Werbner 1989:135, see Waterson 1995: 95. 54 See Wirz 1954: 59; Obeyesekere 1969; Kapferer 1983. 55 Kapferer 1983: 285. 56 Ibid.: 290. 57 Heesterman 1993: 66. 58 Hoskins 1993. 59 Ibid.: 160. 60 Valeri 1985: 21. 61 Hoskins 1993: 167. 62 Ibid.: 174.

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ing in the Sri Lankan national army flourish within the communities that provide soldiers to the army.63 Evidence of the endemic nature of male sexual abuse is provided by the statistics of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London. They reveal that 20% of the male Tamil refugees who managed to flee to the UK report to have been raped by Sinhalese soldiers.64 Even though this evidence only indirectly bears on the situation in Udahenagama, it might help to clarify why youngsters (including soldiers, ex-insurgents, deserters and their friends) easily identify with the plight of the abused effigy and laugh as she suffers.65 Elders told me many times that nowadays youngsters do not enter society (samādjaya pätte vätilā) in their late teens but swell the ranks of the rowdies or “good for nothings” (rastiyādu pätte vätilā).66 Elders accordingly try to exclude the next generation from their society. The older generation is too shocked by the events of the civil war and the atrocities committed by youngsters to be able to give this new generation a firm place within the history of their society. It is within this context of exclusion that the participation of young men in sacrificial offerings to the spirits becomes particularly important. In the terms of this analysis, youths could be seen to be taking upon themselves some of the burden of sacrificial death. Kapferer has documented how the structure of the rite directs the sick person for whose benefit the rite is organized away from the responsibility for sacrificial vio-

63 During the civil war of the late eighties initiation into the left-wing insurrectionist movement (the JVP) also sometimes involved sexual abuse (Dave Rampton, SOAS, personal communication). 64 Peel & Salinsky 2000. 65 Here I would like to refer to a globalized crisis of masculinity and frame rural Sinhalese men’s sexual abuse within this context. Peteet’s work (1994) on Palestinian male youths in the occupied territories seems a valuable point of comparison. As embattled Palestinian masculinities were reconstituted via violence (41) standard practices of subjugation of unruly youths or non-sexual forms of torture became as it were a rite of passage into manhood (45). Since the early 1990’s the occupying authorities have caught up with this cultural phenomenon and interrogation procedures “now contain a sexual practice designed to thwart the meaning and agency of physical violence as rites of passage into masculinity” (45). Photographs taken during such incidents are used to spread such images of emasculation into the wider community and to publicly deprive Palestinian young men of claims to manhood (45). In the wake of Abu Ghraib, this becomes an anthropological question with a more global scope. Apart from Peteet’s article I have not found any further ethnographic material on this topic. The only comment I can make is that stories of sexual abuse as a form of initiation both into the Sri Lankan National Army and JVP insurgency commandos circulate in rural communities in Southern Sri Lanka and are accompanied by troubled youths’ introduction of images of sexual harassment into sacrificial practice. 66 Here I follow Bucholtz’s (2002) direction of research and deconstruct my elderly informants’ “romantic belief in a lost generation” which in research terms could lead to a pathologizing framework or problem-based perspective on youth (533–535). Instead Bucholtz advocates the recognition of young people’s agency and role as cultural actors (ibid).


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lence and death.67 The exorcists of the drummer’s caste do the killing work, bear the risk of their actions and thereby take up a lowly position in the social hierarchy.68 They are also responsible for the obscenities of the traditional comic drama (of the daha ata pāliya). During this ritual episode they are nearly unrecognisable as they take up the characters of spirits (sanni yaksha) within the institutionalised Sinhala Buddhist pantheon. Youths who attempt to re-define themselves as sacrificers, in contrast, are easily recognizable, do not benefit from a disguise, and are unable to shed their everyday social personalities. These differences notwithstanding, they make use of a sacrificial moment to display their violence. Jamous documents how in ancient rituals, many sacrificial precautions and regulations ensured the sacrifice did not degenerate into a simple act of violence.69 These precautions helped to regularize and justify the killing.70 Likewise Malamoud defines sacrifice in ancient India as the basis of social order and civilisation, in other words the definition of humanity.71 I argue that by participating in the sacrifice of the effigy in Udahenagama, young men attempt to re-introduce certain aspects of their everyday world72 within the contours of Sinhala Buddhist civilisation73. In the aftermath of the ineffable violence of the civil war, innovative forms of sacrifice may represent a tentative move to belong to society. The very ritual that the young men use to participate in the sacrificial definition of humanity, however, 67 Kapferer 1997. 68 Ibid.: 209. 69 Jamous 1994: 333. He furthermore stated that “what is external to sacrifice, what cannot be reduced to sacrifice in the ultimate analysis, is thus beyond dharma as understood as the code of conduct of right living” (345). Sacrifice constantly strives to deny violence as it “defines the contours of civilisation” (344–5). 70 Valeri 1994: 112. 71 Malamoud 1996: 98–99. 72 Compare this to Argenti’s analysis (2005) of the masquerades performed by excluded social cadets in the kingdom of Oku, Northwest Province, Cameroon. Of the young dancers whose performances have been banned by the palatine hierarchy he says: “the young men who dance Mondial embody their experiences of the world as it appears to them: raw, messy, undomesticated, heterogenous and incommensurate with discourses of state …” (144, my emphasis), as the young dancers playfully refract images and “discourses of culture that replicate state forms of power” (145). Likewise focal points of this study are the new practices of extroversion within the context of existing ritual performances by those who experience cultural flux and meagre opportunities (146). Unlike the dismissive discourses I recorded in Udahenagama, which interpret such innovative ritual acts as mere nonsense or fun, one of Argenti’s informants in Cameroon provided an interpretation: “because it is still a new thing, and [new things] should be placed in the hands of elders” (131). 73 Likewise Babb, in her analysis of the role of sacrifice in the creation of caste identities (1998), argued that “the manner of one’s participation in the sacrifice is emblematic of the manner of one’s participation in the social order it represents”, and that “identity transition involves a change in the group’s relation to sacrifice” (402).

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is now threatened by those young men who have decided not to participate in sacrifices at all, or sabotage the work of ritualists and make them flee.74

Conclusion: The Uncertainty of Sacrifice in the Aftermath of War In order to comment on the historical significance of the innovative sacrifice of the effigy in Southern Sri Lanka, I turn to the analytical frameworks used by Sanskritists and Indologists. Heesterman analysed the history of the ritual complex of sacrifice in ancient India over a time span of centuries.75 His work sheds light on two extreme ends of a spectrum of sacrificial practice: catastrophic and peaceful sacrifice. In “catastrophic sacrifice” there is no guarantee the rules will hold, and frenzied passion may take over.76 After the intervention of ancient Indian ritualists and the establishment of a doctrine of sacrifice, sacrificial passion and fury were controlled; sacrifice was domesticated and became “peaceful”.77 The choreography designed by ritualists removed the threat of death and destruction from the ritual arena, and a de-socialized sacrifice was left, where there was an exclusive emphasis on the individual sacrificer.78 Heesterman’s spectrum of sacrificial ideology provides a valuable point of comparison to place the actions of young men in Udahenagama in a wider historical perspective. Young men challenge more peaceful forms of sacrifice that were practiced before the civil war and make a move towards a more uncertain order of sacrifice. Tensions emerge as to whether the offering of the effigy might disintegrate into a drunken brawl, and whether the youths will allow ritualists to carry out their ritual duties in the proper manner. Violent youths have re-connected to the world of ritual, even if only by disturbing it.

74 My discussion about the future of sacrificial rites does not so much take into account the general socio-economic circumstances that influence contemporary ritual practice (see Simpson 1997), but I look at change within the performance of sacrifice itself. 75 Heesterman 1985, 1993. He describes a particular historical moment, the emergence of ritualism in the Vedic era and Vedic liturgical tradition, when ritual doctrine, recitations, chants and mantra began to control the passion and fury of the original sacrificial contest. 76 Heesterman 1993: 3 77 Ibid.: 228. He calls catastrophic sacrifice the original sacrifice and gives the example of a dangerous chariot race and sacrificial contest that often resulted in death of the participants. Centuries later the chariot race isn’t carried out any more, instead a wheel of a chariot is rolled from one end of the ritual enclosure to the other, and the accompanying recitations and mantra describe the earlier chariot race (64). 78 Ibid.: 5. However, he also documents that the hostile tension was so fundamental that even the fully developed ritualists could not easily do away with it, and could only break it up in a welter of ritualistic detail and rules (40). At the local level the unruly ghost of catastrophic sacrifice continued to emerge, but lacked canonical legitimacy (82–83).


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Yet such observations do not constitute the end-point of my analysis and they invite a further exploration of the communicative strategies of the involved youths. I conclude that the post-war orchestration of a less peaceful form of sacrifice needs to be analysed from the point of view of the community’s ideology of communication. In other words, I rely on a literature on the linguistic ideology of indirection to further interpret contemporary disturbed sacrificial practice. I propose a conceptual move from Heesterman’s analytical framework79 to Brenneis’ typology of indirect communicative practices80. On the basis of this classification, I argue that the youths employ multiple methods of indirection. They use both text-centred indirection and voice-centred indirection for ritual communication about violence. In this case, text-centred indirection relies on the referential ambiguity of the innovative sacrificial acts, which refer to either a history of sacrifice or contemporary political violence. Voice-centred indirection refers to coperformance in which both performers and audience share the responsibility of interpretation. This parallels a linguistic ideology of co-narration and shared responsibility, as members of the audience are free to move between interpretations and above all experiences of the ritual performance.81 Rather than individual performers offering referential meanings or experiences to their community, performers and audience merge in a shared act of interpretation and act of “dividual”82 communication and exchange of possible meanings. Open-ended ritual acts rely on the “shared responsibility” of each dividual within the audience, allow them to experience the violence as ritual versus non-ritual, sacrificial versus simply violent or adhere to a structure of feeling where they are both at once.83 Inhabiting this tension of shared responsibility the audience as it were is given the option to dissolve the boundaries of sacrificial violence and is given the interpretative freedom to see such ritual episodes as one more instance of everyday violence by unruly youths. Much like the boundaries of indirect speech remain undefined and fuzzy, so does the boundaries of ritual if one considers it part and parcel of a wider indirect ideology of communication. The youth’s innovative ritual script collapses context into the text, as the ritual is a key element of the everyday violent context, and is often interpreted as one more incident amongst others. Yet, people are given the 79 Heesterman 1985, 1993. 80 Brenneis 1986. 81 My parallel analysis of Udahenagama women’s indirect discourses on violence, as diffuse responsibility shared by speaker and interlocutor (see Argenti-Pillen 2003: 116), is based on the work of Besnier (1994), Brenneis 1984, McKellin (1984) and White & Watson-Gegeo (1990). 82 Marriot 1976. 83 Here I am inspired by Kitts’ work on sacrificial violence in the Iliad (2002), as she argued that “the Iliad expects audience participation, was created for it, and offers even modern audiences not a closed scheme of codes onto the world… Trying on metaphors is an intrinsic part of this renewal” (26, my emphasis).

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possibility to briefly opt out of this experience and appreciate certain moments of the ritual offering of the effigy in all its sacrificial or ritual intensity. The youth’s unruly ritual acts are not just over-determined in the sense of the multiple (referential) meanings they might engender, but they operate on the boundary of the ritual and the non-ritual, as well as the meaningful and the meaningless. Here I would like to refer to Brenneis’ definition of an additional form of indirection; event-based indirection84 which I understand to characterize the ritual event under study: “The event’s occurrence is itself a significant message, in fact the most important message being conveyed… Its organizational features – who participates, how they participate and that they participate – are much more important than its contents. The text-context distinction becomes very fuzzy, as does the relationship between speaker and audience; all may join in creating the event. Moreover, the meaning of such events in a strict linguistic sense may be rather impoverished.”85 Neither the young performers nor the audience engaged with the referential questions I posed, and qualified such innovative sacrificial events with categories emptied of referential content, as mere “fun” (vinoda) or “nonsense” (anang manang, vikāra). The notion of event-based indirection thereby befits the reality of indirect ritual practice in Udahenagama. Yet descriptions of such rituals are a central feature of many gossip sessions amongst women and elders, who thereby act as coperformers of the indirect reverberations such embattled sacrificial events have in the community. Death squads emerged in Latin America in the mid-1970’s and spread steadily through the Third World in the 1980’s and 1990’s, together with torture and disappearances conducted by regular state forces.86 The end of the twentieth century was characterized by a global rise in state terror, and counter-insurgency warfare inspired by Western militarism radically different in both in scale and quality from what civilian populations had experienced before.87 Increasingly challenging questions are being posed to anthropologists of the current generation who are intent on describing “cultures” in the midst of massive social de-stabilization caused by famines, insurgencies, counter-insurgency operations and state terror. In this paper, I have used sacrificial practice as an entry point to describe all but detectable strategies of re-humanization through ritual in the aftermath of the dehumanisation of civil war. At present in Udahenagama, sacrificial rites are neither entirely peaceful nor catastrophic. A refraction of the effects of civil war and chronic low-intensity 84 85 86 87

Brenneis 1986: 344. Ibid.: 344–345. Sluka 2000: 4. Ibid.: 7–10.


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violence into sacrificial ritual practice has nevertheless occurred.88 The innovative sacrifice of the effigy constitutes such a refraction of terror; an element of youth’s experience of post-colonial state violence and everyday violence at the centre of a contemporary “healing” rite. The youth’s humanizing ritual refraction of terror I describe resonates with historical material on the disrupted sacrifice motif in the Sanskrit epics, which foreshadows violence to come.89 Now however, the broken sacrifices and embattled rites of disenfranchised youths on the fringes of a global economic and military order may well foreshadow the effects of a chronic socio-economic formation of violence and Sri Lanka’s ongoing situation of “no war/no peace”.90 The fear of the sorcerers relating to the contemporary permeability of the boundary and definition of ritual might however obscure the youths’ indirect performative strategies and cautious engagement with a history of extreme violence91.

88 For a comparable process of sedimentation of terror in the choreography of contemporary ritual practice in Cameroon see Argenti 1998. 89 Minkowski 2001. I quote his analysis of interrupted sacrifice in the Mahābhārata: “The Rāyasya… is a sacrifice interrupted in several important ways. Its deadly effects are fore-shadowed by the portentuous vision of Nārada, disrupted by the killing of Sisupāla, and rendered unresolved by the debacle of the dice game. The description of the ritual on the day of Yudhisthira’s anointing is so constructed as to foreshadow violence that will engulf the days activities, as indeed it foreshadows the violence that will engulf the lives of the whole Bhārata clan” (174, my emphasis). 90 Winslow & Woost 2004, 202–204; Nordstrom 2004. In this sense such performances incorporate events that prefigure an imminent future. Strathern’s (1990) deconstruction of artefacts and performances perceived through the lens of Euro-American referential knowledge practices is particularly apposite here: “Images that contain within them both past and future time do not have to be placed into a historical context, for they embody history themselves. It follows that people do not therefore have to ‘explain’ such images by reference to events outside them: the images ‘contain’ events” (25). 91 Note Heesterman’s comment: “Significantly it is the potentially destructive sacrificial aspect of the exorcism session that attracted the attention of the disoriented youth. After all, the function of sacrifice is to express and thereby hopefully contain the enigmatic nexus of life and death. It may then not be too far-fetched to expect a re-ritualization of the proceedings, especially of the sacrificial part of the exorcism (though not necessarily ‘in this way’) [the youths’ innovations], so as to control its risk and uncertainty” (personal communication).

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References Alles, A.C. 1990. The J.V.P. 1969–1989. Colombo: Lake House. Argenti, Nicolas 1998. “Air Youth: Performance, Violence and the State in Cameroon”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4/4: 753–782. — 2005. “Dancing in the Borderlands. The Forbidden Masquerades of Oku Youth & Women, Cameroon”. In: Alcinda Honwana & Filip De Boeck (eds.). Makers & Breakers. Children & Youth in Postcolonial Africa. Oxford: James Currey: 121– 149. Argenti-Pillen, Alex 2003. Masking Terror: How Women Contain Violence in Southern Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. — 2007. “Obvious Pretence: For Fun or for Real? Cross-Cousin and International Relations in Sri Lanka”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13/2: 313–329. Babb, Lawrence A. 1998. “Rejecting Violence: Sacrifice and Social Identity of Trading Communities”. Contributions to Indian Sociology 32/2: 387–407. Bakhtin, M. 1986. “The Problem of Speech Genres”. In: Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist (eds.). Speech Genres and other Late Essays. Austin: Texas University Press: 60–102. Besnier, Nico 1994. “The Truth and Other Irrelevant Aspects of Nukulaelae Gossip”. Pacific Studies 17/3: 1–39. Bloch, Maurice 1992. Prey into Hunter. The Politics of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boddy, Janice 1989. Wombs and Alien spirits. Women, Man and the Zar cult in Northern Sudan. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Brenneis, Don L. 1984. “Straight talk and sweet talk: Political discourse in an occasionally egalitarian community”. In: Don L. Brenneis & Fred R. Myers (eds.). Dangerous words. Language and politics in the Pacific. New York, London: New York University Press: 69–84. — 1986. “Shared Territory: Audience, Indirection and Meaning”. Text 6/3: 339–347. Bucholtz, Mary 2002. “Youth and Cultural Practice”. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 525–52. Chandraprema, C. A. 1989. The JVP Insurrection. 1987–1989. Colombo: Lake House. Das, Veena 1998. “Official Narratives, Rumour, and the Social Production of Hate”. Social Identities 4/1: 109–130. Devisch, Renaat 1995. “Frenzy, Violence, and Ethical Renewal in Kinshasa”. Public Culture 7/3: 593–629. Douglas, Mary 1968. “The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception”. Man 3: 361–376. Gentes, M.J. 1992. “Scandalizing the Goddess at Kodungallur”. Asian Folklore Studies 51: 295–322. Heesterman, Jan C. 1985. The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


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— 1993. The Broken World of Sacrifice: An Essay in Ancient Indian Ritual. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Hoskins, Janet 1993. “Violence, Sacrifice and Divination: Giving and Taking Life in Eastern Indonesia”. American Ethnologist 20/1: 159–178. Jamous, Raymond 1994. “Rites of Ancient India: Outlook for Comparative Anthropology”. Contributions to Indian Sociology 28/2: 323–352. Kakar, Sudhir 1982. Shamans, Mystics and Doctors. A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing Traditions. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Kapferer, Bruce 1983. A Celebration of Demons. Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Oxford, Washington: Berg, Smithsonian Institution Press. — 1997. The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power in SriLanka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kitts, Margo 2002. “Sacrificial Violence in the Iliad”. Journal of Ritual Studies 16/1: 19–39. Kroskrity, Paul V. 2000. “Regimenting languages. Language ideological perspectives”. In: Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.). Regimes of language. Ideologies, polities and identities. Oxford: James Currey: 1–34. Malamoud, Charles 1996. Cooking the World: Ritual & Thought in Ancient India. Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press. Marriot, McKim 1976. “Hindu Transactions: Diversity without Dualism”. In: Kapferer, Bruce (ed.). Transaction and Meaning. Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behaviour. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues: 109–142. McKellin, William H. 1990. “Allegory and Inference: Intentional Ambiguity in Managalase Negotiations”. In: Karen A. Watson-Gegeo & Geoffrey M. White (eds.). Disentangling. Conflict discourse in Pacific Societies. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press: 335–72. Mercier, Jacques A. 1993. “A Body for a Body, Body-to-body: From Regulating Possession through Sacrifice to ‘Embodying’ Sacrifice through Possession”. Homme 33/1: 67–87. Minkowski, Christopher Z. 2001. “The Interrupted Sacrifice and the Sanskrit Epics”. Journal of Indian Philosophy 29: 169–186. Nabokov, Isabelle 1997. “Expel the Lover, Recover the Wife: Symbolic Analysis of a South Indian Exorcism”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3: 297–316. Nordstrom, Carolyn 2004. Shadows of War. Violence, Power and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley:University of California Press. California. (Series in Public Anthropology). Obeyesekere, Gananath 1969. “The Ritual Drama of the Sanni Demons: Collective Representations of Disease in Ceylon”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 11/2: 174–216. — 1989. “The Myth of Human Sacrifice: History, Story and Debate in a Buddhist Chronicle”. Social Analysis 25: 78–93.

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Peel, Michael & Mary Salinsky 1998. Caught in the Middle: A Study of Tamil Torture Survivors Coming to the UK from Sri Lanka. London: Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. Peteet, Julie 1993. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: Cultural Politics of Violence”. American Ethnologist 21/1: 31–49. Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robbins, Joel 2001. “Ritual Communication and Linguistic Ideology: A Reading and Partial Reformulation of Rappaport’s Theory of Ritual”. Current Anthropology 42/5: 591–614. Simpson, Robert 1997. “Possession, Dispossession and the Social Distribution of Knowledge among Sri Lankan Ritualists”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3: 43–59. Sluka, Jeff A. 2000. “Introduction: State terror and Anthropology”. In: Jeff A. Sluka (ed.). Death Squad. The Anthropology of State Terror. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press: 1–45. Strathern, Marilyn, 1990. “Artefacts of history: Events and the interpretation of images”. In: Jukka Siikala (ed.). Culture and History in the Pacific. Helsinki: Transactions of the Finnish Anthropological Society: 25–44. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1979. “A Performative Approach to Ritual”. In: British Academy. Proceedings of the British Academy, 65. London: Oxford University Press: 113– 170. Taylor, Christopher C. 1999. Sacrifice as Terror. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Oxford, New York: Berg. Thachill, Jose 1985 The Vedic and the Christian Concept of Sacrifice. Alwaye (Kerala): Pontificial Institute of Theology and Philosophy. Tull, Herman W. 1996. “The Killing that is not a Killing: Men, Cattle and the Origins of Non-violence (ahimsa) in Vedic Sacrifice”. Indo-Iranian Journal 39/3: 223–244. Valeri, Valerio 1985. Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. — 1994. “Wild Victims: Hunting as Sacrifice and Sacrifice as Hunting in Huaulu”. History of Religions 34/2: 101–131. Volosinov V.N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press. Wagner, Roy 1984. “Ritual as Communication: Order, Meaning and Secrecy in Melanesian Initiation Rites”. Annual Review of Anthropology 13: 143–155. Waterson, Roxana 1995. “Entertaining a Dangerous Guest: Sacrifice and Play in the Ma’pakorong Ritual of the Sa’dan Toraja”. Oceania 66/2: 81–102. Werbner, Richard 1989. “Kalanga Sacrifice: Restorative Movement of Divinities and People”. In: Richard Werbner (ed.). Ritual Passage, Sacred Journey: The Process and Organization of Religious Movement. Manchester: Smithsonian Institution and Manchester University Press: 109–147.


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White, G. M. & Karen. A. Watson-Gegeo. 1990. “Disentangling Discourse”. In: Karen A. Watson-Gegeo & Geoffrey M. White (eds.). Disentangling. Conflict Discourse in Pacific Societies. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 3–49. Whitehouse, Harvey 1996. “Rites of Terror: Emotion, Metaphor and Memory in Melanesian Initiation Cults”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2: 703–715. Winslow, Deborah & Michael D. Woost 2004. Economy, Culture, and Civil War in Sri Lanka. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Wirz, Paul 1954. Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Woolard, Katherine A. 1998. “Introduction: Language Ideology as a Field of Enquiry”. In: Schieffelin, Bambi & Katherine Woolard & Paul Kroskrity (eds.). Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory. New York: Oxford University Press: 3–47. Zempleni, Andras. 1987. “Des Êtres Sacrificiels”. In: Michel Cartry (ed.). Sous le Masque de l’Animal. Essais sur le Sacrifice en Afrique. Paris: PUF: 267–317.

Section II: Rituals of Power and Consent Edited by Bernd Schneidmüller

Hans Vorländer

Verfassungen und Rituale in Vormoderne und Moderne 1. Der Vormärz, die deutsche konstitutionelle Frühmoderne, kannte noch Rituale. Vor allem im Südwesten Deutschlands kam es zu vielfältigen regionalen Verfassungsfesten, so in der Pfalz, in Baden und auch in Bayern. Verfassungsfeste fanden regelmäßig, zum Teil sogar alljährlich statt. In Gaibach (Franken) wurde 1821 eine Konstitutionssäule durch einen liberalen Grafen gestiftet und alljährlich bis 1832 im Schlosspark das Stiftungsfest der bayerischen Verfassung begangen.1 In Sachsen und Baden kam es zur Stiftung von Konstitutionssäulen, wie sie auch heute noch in Zittau oder Karlsruhe besichtigt werden können. Im Großherzogtum Baden fanden alljährlich in allen größeren und kleineren Städten und in vielen Landgemeinden Feste der badischen Verfassung statt, die 1818 von Großherzog Karl unterzeichnet worden war.2 Diese Verfassungsfeste kannten Verfassungsumzüge, bei der beispielsweise eine als Prachtexemplar besonders ausgestattete Verfassungsurkunde, auf einem samtenen oder bestickten Kissen liegend, durch die Straßen getragen wurde. In Kirchen wurden von Pfarrern politische Predigten über die Verfassung und ihre Bedeutung für das Volk gehalten, und bei einem Hochamt in der Villinger Pfarrmünsterkirche soll die Verfassungsurkunde in der Mitte des Chorbogens, auf einem eigens für sie errichteten Altar gelegen haben. Von daher nimmt es nicht Wunder, dass es in dem Entwurf eines „VerfassungsKatechismus für Volk und Jugend in den deutschen konstitutionellen Staaten“ von Johann Christoph von Aretin aus dem Jahre 1823 auf die Frage heißt, wodurch die Vaterlandsliebe „vorzüglich genährt“ werde: „Durch eine gute Verfassung, nämlich eine solche, welche gleich der unsrigen (der bayerischen Verfassung) eine gesetzmäßige Freiheit gewährt, die Rechte des Menschen und des Bürgers heilig hält und auf die Vorschriften der Gerechtigkeit gegründet ist.“3 Das Ritual des Verfassungsfestes hatte den Konstitutionalismus in Süddeutschland im Vormärz zu einem „Volksglauben“ werden lassen. Natürlich sollten mit den Volksverfassungsfesten auch die durch die oktroyierten oder paktierten Verfassungen gestifteten Bünde 1 Blänkner 1996. 2 Nolte 1993. 3 Aretin 1823: 364.

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zwischen Monarchie und Volk symbolisch erneuert und die Loyalität der Staatsbürger erzeugt werden, aber der neue Konstitutionalismus hatte sich gleichzeitig verselbständigt, die Bürger hatten begonnen, sich mit ihrer Verfassung zu identifizieren, und konnten sie dann auch als Instrument gegen die etablierte Herrschaftsordnung einsetzen, wie nicht zuletzt der Protest der Göttinger Sieben belegen sollte. Was für den Vormärz anscheinend zusammen gehörte, nämlich Verfassungen durch Formen ritualisierter Kommunikation zu popularisieren und ihnen durch die alljährliche Erinnerung einen festen Platz im Alltagsleben – und politischen Alltagsglauben – zu geben, ist in der politischen Erinnerungskultur und der Historiographie deutscher Verfassungen nahezu in Vergessenheit geraten. Aber nicht nur das. Man könnte noch weiter gehen und sagen, dass in Eigenbild und Selbstverständnis der verfassungspolitischen Gegenwartsmoderne Rituale nicht mehr vorkommen, oder, wo doch, ihnen keine wirkliche Bedeutung zugeschrieben wird. Rituale wären in dieser Perspektive Praktiken vormoderner Formen der Gemeinschaftsbildung, während der demokratische Verfassungsstaat, als Errungenschaft der politischen Moderne, Geltung und Stabilität allein seiner positiven Setzung und seiner demokratischen Legitimation verdankt. Wenn also Formen ritualisierter Kommunikation für mittelalterliche und vormoderne Ordnungen, über ihre jeweilige Performativität, gleichermaßen konstitutiv wie regulativ gewesen sind,4 so zeichnet sich der moderne Verfassungsstaat scheinbar dadurch aus, dass er diese ritualisierte Kommunikation in die Formen prozeduraler Regelhaftigkeit und die Strukturen transparenter und kontrollierbarer Willens- und Entscheidungsbildung überführt hat.

2. Dem modernen demokratischen Verfassungsstaat eignet – seiner Selbstbeschreibung nach – Rationalität in Form legaler Satzungen; er beruht auf Öffentlichkeit, nicht nur hinsichtlich der Verabschiedung von Verfassungen und der Verkündigung von Gesetzen, die im Übrigen der Schriftform bedürfen, sondern auch hinsichtlich der diskursiven Erzeugung von guten Gründen für die Geltung seiner tragenden Ideen. Auch seine Organisation, die Institutionen und Verfahren, die Ämterhierarchie, die Instanzenzüge sowie das staatliche Gewaltmonopol verweisen auf Prinzipien formaler Durchstrukturierung. Positive Rechtsetzungsakte müssen sich, in einem System ausgeprägter Legeshierarchie, am Vorrang einer Grundordnung, meistens der Verfassung, bewähren, und diese beansprucht darüber hinaus universelle Geltung und abschließende Regelung.5 Zudem sind auch die verfassten 4 Stollberg-Rilinger 2002: 238–239; 2004; 2005; 2008; Schneidmüller 2006; Althoff 2003 5 Grimm 1995: 10ff; Grimm 2009.

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politischen Gewalten immer auf den Akt der Setzung durch die verfassunggebende demokratische Gewalt zurückbezogen. Und schließlich lebt die konstitutionelle Demokratie vom Grundgedanken der gleichen Beteiligungsrechte aller Staatsbürger. Jene fein ziselierten Rituale von Krönungen, Belehrungen, Eröffnungsmessen und Reichstagssessionen, die in ihrer Performativität dem Alten Reich nicht nur sein Gesicht, sondern eben auch seine Ordnung gaben, und dabei eben immer auch die feinen Unterschiede in Stand und Rang, also die Hierarchien der politischen Ordnung markierten6, sind in der auf Gleichheit und Partizipation beruhenden Demokratie obsolet geworden. Für Rituale hat also eine moderne Verfassung und der von ihr konstituierte demokratische Verfassungsstaat vom Grundsatz her keinen Bedarf mehr. Die von den Formen ritualisierter Kommunikation generierten Funktionen und Leistungen werden von den Institutionen und Prozeduren des demokratischen Verfassungsstaates erbracht. In diesem Eigenbild moderner Verfassungsstaatlichkeit werden Rituale allenfalls als Folklore oder als weiter nicht zu berücksichtigende oder ernstzunehmende Überhangphänomene ehedem symbolisch hoch aufgeladener Zeremonien wahrgenommen. Sie lassen sich in der Diplomatie beim Protokoll, in Parlamenten bei der Sitzordnung, der Geschäftsordnung, auch bei der Ehrbezeugung gegenüber dem Einzug des Parlamentspräsidenten, etwa auch bei der Thronrede der englischen Queen beobachten, aber gleichwohl auch belächeln. Mit Walter Bagehot werden sie allenfalls als „dignified“, aber keineswegs als „efficient parts“ der Verfassungsordnung angesehen.7 Im Selbstverständnis der Gegenwartsmoderne ist nicht nur, wie Hans Gerd Soeffner vor einiger Zeit festgestellt hat, „das Wissen um die ordnende und formende Leistung der Rituale… in Vergessenheit geraten“8, das Selbstverständnis der Gegenwartsmoderne lebt, so ließe sich etwas zugespitzt formulieren, vom konstitutiven Gegensatz von Ritualität und Rationalität – oder, anders formuliert, von einem rituellen Antiritualismus.9 Kein geringerer als Jürgen Habermas hat in seinem Dresdner Vortrag vom Dezember 1998 mit dem Titel „Symbolischer Ausdruck und rituelles Verhalten“ ganz programmatisch formuliert, dass die „Formen und Ideen“, die symbolischer Darstellung und Ritualisierung zugrunde liegen, „im Säurebad eines erbarmungslosen öffentlichen Diskurses auch noch des letzten Scheins von Naturwüchsigkeit entkleidet“ werden.10 Da nun einmal Rituale von ihrem Anschein der Naturwüchsigkeit leben, die Moderne indes den öffentlichen Schein jeder Naturwüchsigkeit zerstört, sind Rituale also nach Habermas nicht nur instrumentell überflüssig, sondern auch symbolisch sinnlos, leer. Auch kann Habermas angesichts der Priorität 6 7 8 9 10

Stollberg-Rilinger 2002: 238–239; 2008; Schneidmüller 2006. Bagehot 1876. Soeffner 2000: 148. Vgl. auch ibid.: 262ff. Habermas 2001: 67.

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rational-diskursiver Überzeugungskraft einer Bindungs- und Integrationskraft rituell symbolischer Formen, sogenannten „Zeremonien der Selbstbestätigung“, wenig abgewinnen.

3. Es ist in den letzten Jahren in der Politischen Wissenschaft zu einer gewissen Renaissance der Beschäftigung mit Ritualen und Symbolen gekommen. Murray Edelmans Studie über Politik als Ritual11 hat den Auftakt gemacht, ist aber lange Zeit nur verkürzt und unter Wert wahrgenommen worden. Edelman wurde gelesen als Analytiker der Verfallsgeschichte des Politischen, in der Rituale nach und nach die eigentliche Rationalität eines politischen Entscheidungs- und Willensbildungsprozesses ersetzen und letztlich zu falscher, symbolischer und „Alibi“- oder „Als ob“Politik führen. Politik vor und hinter dem Vorhang, das erste als Schauspiel, das zweite als das „Eigentliche“ – das war lange Zeit das vorherrschende Wahrnehmungsraster. Das aber beginnt sich nun zu ändern. Vor allem der politisch-mediale Komplex hat das Inszenatorisch-Darstellerische der Politik in den Vordergrund gerückt. Talkshows, Parteitage und Wahlkämpfe werden mittlerweile als Formen ritualisierter Kommunikation in der Politikwissenschaft untersucht12, Wahlkämpfe sind „Hochzeiten ritueller Politikinszenierung“13, die Inthronisation von Gerhard Schröder als Kandidat für die Kanzlerschaft auf dem SPD-Parteitag 1998 in Leipzig wurde, nicht zuletzt im Rückgriff auf mittelalterlich-frühneuzeitliche Analogien, als „Krönungsmesse“14 wahrgenommen. Vor allem der Sinn für die dramaturgische Seite der Politik führt über den letztlich unergiebigen Gegensatz von „effektiver Entscheidungspolitik“ hier und „symbolischer Pseudopolitik“ dort hinaus. Dem Politischen, so die Wende in der Analyse der Politik, ist das Dramatologische von Grund auf eingeschrieben. Symbolisches, rituelles Handeln kann als ein dramaturgisches Element von Entscheidungshandeln verstanden werden.15 So hatte auch schon Edelman seine spezifische Perspektive verstanden wissen sollen, weshalb er seine Problemstellung gerade im Anschluss an phänomenologische und interaktionistische Ansätze, nicht zuletzt im Rückgriff auf Schütz und Goffman16, entfaltet hatte. Damit war auch der Weg geebnet für einen dann durch die kulturwissenschaftliche Wendung in den Sozialwissenschaften beförderten Neuansatz, nämlich Symbolizität als Konstitutivum des Politischen und seiner Ordnung überhaupt zu verstehen. 11 12 13 14 15 16

Edelman 1964. Dörner 2001; Dörner & Vogt 2002. Soeffner & Tänzler 2002b. Soeffner & Tänzler 2002b: 108, 112; Dörner 2001. Söffner & Tänzler 2002a: 21, 25–26; Hitzler 2002: 40–42. Goffman 1973; Schütz 1993.


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4. Aus kulturwissenschaftlicher und kulturgeschichtlicher Sicht, aber auch aus Sicht der Dresdner Institutionen- und Verfassungsforschung kommt es ja nunmehr keineswegs als überraschende oder neue Erkenntnis daher, dass die institutionelle Ordnung des Politischen der Repräsentation ihrer Leitideen bedarf, um Geltung zu erlangen und Stabilität gewinnen zu können. Stärker noch: Erst durch die symbolischen Formen der Repräsentation, ihrer Darstellung und Inszenierung, wird jener genuin politische Ordnungszusammenhang erzeugt, der Institutionen und Prozeduren ihre funktional-instrumentelle Bedeutung gibt.17 Politik ist Repräsentationshandeln: Das, was in der Repräsentation latent präsent gehalten wird, ist, so Siegfried Landshut schon früher, „jenes besondere Prinzip, das die Einheit und Gemeinsamkeit der politischen Lebensgemeinschaft ausmacht“18. Man kann es auch etwas anders, mit Ronald Hitzler formulieren: „Die alltagstranszendente Idee des Politischen vergegenwärtigt, bzw. metaphorisch gesprochen, verkörpert sich alltäglich im Repräsentanten, der in seiner schieren Erfahrbarkeit nicht auf sich (als was auch immer), sondern eben über sich hinaus auf die andere Wirklichkeit der idealen Ordnung sozialer Kollektiva verweist“.19 Dieser konstitutive Zusammenhang von Symbolizität und Ordnung des Politischen gilt nun, das darf wohl als das Ergebnis epochenübergreifender Forschung festgehalten werden, gleichermaßen für die Ordnung des Mittelalters, der Frühen Neuzeit und der Moderne. Geltungsansprüche und Stabilisierungsmechanismen institutioneller Ordnungen sind auf symbolische und damit auf rituelle Formen ihrer Vergegenwärtigung und Verkörperung konstitutiv angewiesen. Rituale, die als „Interaktionssymbole im Vollzug“20 zu verstehen sind, generieren soziale Bindungen und Verpflichtungen. Ihr Formalismus ist „syntaktischer Rahmen einer in Handlungen gekleideten symbolischen Aussage“21, sie machen den Sinn einer Ordnung erfahrbar, sie geben Gemeinschaftshandeln Bedeutung, sie reduzieren Komplexität und sorgen für Erwartbarkeit, vor allem sind sie symbolisch in dem Sinne, dass sie über sich selbst hinausweisen und den größeren Ordnungszusammenhang evozieren. Rituale erinnern an diesen Ordnungszusammenhang, sie aktualisieren ihn, machen ihn präsent, verklammern mithin Vergangenheit, Erinnerung und Gegenwärtigkeit einer größeren Ordnung und ihrer tragenden Leitideen. Sie versinnbildlichen diese Ordnung, geben ihr Sinn und ein Bild.

17 18 19 20 21

Rehberg 2001; Melville 2001; Melville & Vorländer 2002; Vorländer 2006a. Landshut 1964: 181–182. Hitzler 2002: 45. Rehberg 2001: 36. Soeffner 2000: 264.

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Was bedeutet das nun für das Thema „Verfassungen und Rituale“? Verfassungen erbringen für das Gemeinwesen eine grundlegende institutionelle Ordnungsleistung. Das Entscheidende an der Verfassung als institutionellem Ordnungsarrangement des Politischen besteht darin, dass sie die Prinzipien und Geltungsansprüche der politischen Handlungs- und Kommunikationsordnung symbolisch zur Darstellung bringt. Verfassungen sind deshalb nicht allein rechtliche Spielregelwerke, sondern auch Speicher von politischen Ordnungsvorstellungen und gesellschaftlichen Leitideen. Verfassungen sind symbolische, keine feststehenden Ordnungen; sie stellen Ordnungsbehauptungen und Geltungsansprüche auf, können sie aber von sich aus nicht einlösen. Deshalb ergibt sich der Sinn einer Verfassung als einer solchen symbolischen Ordnung nicht daraus, dass ihr eine normativ-regulierende Kraft eingeschrieben ist – ein positivistischer Kurz- und ein nominalistischer Fehlschluss – , sondern daraus, dass ihr herausgehobene, grundlegende Ordnungsvorstellungen und Leitideen zugeschrieben werden und von ihr eine instrumentell-steuernde Funktion erwartet wird. Geltung erwirbt die Verfassung in einem komplexen Prozess von Anerkennung und Akzeptanz in einem Raum potentiell konkurrierender – juristischer, politischer und gesellschaftlicher – Interpretationen und politisch-gesellschaftlicher Praktiken. Erst das Ineinander gesatzter, gedachter und gelebter Ordnung macht die Verfassung zu einer geltenden Ordnung. Erst wenn die Verfassung durch Erlebnis, Erfahrung, Praktiken und Interpretation erfolgreich repräsentiert und vergegenwärtigt werden kann, kann sie die strukturierende, handlungsleitende und gemeinschaftsstiftende Wirkung erzielen, die von ihr erwartet wird.22 Damit sollte deutlich gemacht worden sein, dass auch moderne Verfassungen und die durch sie konstituierten Ordnungen Formen der symbolischen, auch rituellen Kommunikation bedürfen, um Dauer und Geltung zu erhalten. Worin liegt nun aber der Unterschied zu Ordnungen des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit? Zum Ersten ist wohl festzuhalten, dass performative Akte wie Rituale in der verfassungsstaatlichen Moderne sicherlich eine schwächere herrschaftskonstituierende Funktion besitzen, als es in Mittelalter und der Frühen Neuzeit der Fall war. Wenn im Reichstag von Worms 1495 die Ordnung des Reiches allein über ihre präsentistische Symbolizität, in den solennen Akten von Krönungen, Lehensinvestituren, Reichstagseröffnungen und -abschieden erzeugt wird und sich die institutionelle Gliederung des Ganzen in Reich und Reichsstandschaft, in Kaiser, König und Kurfürst, in Reichsfürst, Reichsgraf, Reichsstadt und so fort vollzieht, und nur dort – etwa im Reichstag – sichtbar wird und damit tatsächlich performativ entsteht, was gezeigt wird23, so kennt die Moderne die chronologisch-genetische Abfolge von politischer Gründung und Alltag des Politischen, von konstitutierendem Grün22 Vorländer 2002b: 20; 2006a: 237. 23 Stollberg-Rilinger 2005; 2008.


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dungsakt der Ordnung, das heißt Verfassunggebung durch eine verfassunggebende Gewalt, und dem dann folgenden Alltag der gegründeten Ordnung. Die Ordnung des Verfassungsstaates ist damit auch nach seiner Gründung, im Text, also in ihrer Schriftlichkeit, wie auch in den konstituierten Institutionen, also den verfassten Gewalten, „ablesbar”. Die Ordnung bleibt damit auch über ihren konstituierenden Akt hinaus, im normalen Politikbetrieb, sichtbar. Die Ordnung löst sich aus ihrem Entstehungskontext und bleibt gleichwohl bestehen. Nicht immer muss gezeigt werden, was entstanden ist, um bestehen zu bleiben. Und doch wird die Ordnung in ihrer Gesamtheit wie in den sie tragenden Leitideen erst wieder in performativen Akten verstehbar, Rhythmus und Repetition der alltäglichen Verrichtungen erhalten dadurch Sinn und Bedeutung. So können Wahlen als Selbstaffirmation des Demos, als Reinigungs- und Erneuerungsrituale der Demokratie, als Mechanismen der Herstellung von legitimer Stellvertretung (durch die Repräsentanten), und damit als ein Machtübertragungs- und Machtrevozierungsritual verstanden werden.24 Es handelt sich mithin um Rituale der Selbstreinigung der Demokratie durch einen geregelten Machtwechsel und durch die Erneuerung des Personals. Gleichzeitig gehen damit Prozesse der Übertragung beziehungsweise der Verweigerung von Vertrauen einher. Der Wähler begründet mit seiner rituellen Teilhabe am Wahlakt zugleich auch einen Anspruch auf Erfüllung seiner Erwartungen, zumindest aber auf Responsivität durch die Repräsentanten. Wahlen sind also neben der Verweisung auf den legitimatorischen Grund der Volkssouveränität auch immer rites de passages: Einsetzung, Übertragung, Rückbindung von Macht. Man kann noch weiter gehen und im Akt des Wählens von Repräsentanten und des im Akt des Wählens sichtbar werdenden Wahlvolkes die zwei Körper des Demos sehen:25 Der repräsentierte Demos, das Parlament, stirbt mit dem Ende einer Legislaturperiode und wird durch die Wahl wieder neu belebt. Der Demos als Vorstellung eines kollektiven Subjektes der Handlungs- und Politiklegitimierung aber bleibt währenddessen bestehen. In Wah-len vollzieht sich also die übergeordnete Einheitsvorstellung der demokratischen Ordnung, die Wahl als Ritualbeziehung erzeugt diesen Zusammenhang immer wieder neu. Das Problem allerdings ist, dass diese Rituale bisweilen als – auch lästige – Routinen wahrgenommen und deshalb die den Ritualen eingeschriebene Aura der Sakralität nicht mehr wirkt. Das mag daran liegen, dass sich die rituelle Bedeutung in der Alltäglichkeit politisch gesellschaftlicher Organisationen „eingenistet“ hat26, ohne jeweils in ihrer symbolischen Bedeutung beim jeweiligen Vollzug im Wahlakt sichtbar zu werden. Dann hat sie sich gewissermaßen bis zur Unkenntlichkeit routinisiert.

24 Soeffner 2000: 294; Soeffner & Tänzler 2002b: 93. 25 Manow 2008. 26 Soeffner 2000: 295.

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Zum Zweiten waren die Formen rituell-symbolischer Herstellung von Ordnungen des Mittelalters und der Frühzeit auch immer mit einer „Logik der Präsenzkultur“27 verbunden. Rituale vollzogen sich als Formen der Kommunikation unter Anwesenden. Die Beteiligten mussten persönlich – bei den Reichstagen – anwesend sein, um die Ordnung als solche zu erzeugen, darzustellen und ihren Platz darin einzunehmen. Die unmittelbaren Formen der Verkörperung und damit der Sichtbarmachung der Ordnung – bei ihrer gleichzeitigen performativen Herstellung – ist aber unter den Bedingungen des großen Flächenstaates und der mediatisieren Formen der Kommunikation nicht mehr möglich. Umso stärker fallen die Bedingungen des politisch-medialen Komplexes ins Gewicht. Rituale bekommen einen Aufführungs- und medial-mediatisierten Erlebnischarakter. Der Dabeisein-Effekt ist virtuell. Und ob dann die Rituale medialer Talkshow-Kommunikation Bindungen und Verpflichtungen beim Zuschauer erzeugen, ist zumindest fraglich, bestimmt aber nicht kontrollierbar. Zudem ist es nicht mehr klar, wer eigentlich die Regeln der Aufführung bestimmt. Medien und Politik leisten sich einen Kampf um die Inszenierungshoheit, bei dem bisweilen mehr als unklar erscheint, wer Regisseur und wer Schauspieler ist. Drittens ist die Beziehung zwischen Text und Ritual in der verfassungsstaatlichen Moderne eine andere als in Mittelalter oder Früher Neuzeit. Hier erzeugten Rituale, nicht Texte, die Ordnung. Wo sie an Komplexität, auch Variationen der Interpretation gewannen, konnten, mussten sie gleichwohl verschriftlicht werden. Dabei bedurfte es „Techniken der Autorisierung und Inszenierung, die einer Schrift die gleiche Autorität verliehen wie Personen sie hatten“28. In der verfassungsstaatlichen Moderne ist es umgekehrt: Texte erzeugen die Ordnung, Rituale verstetigen sie. Gemeinsam ist beiden, der Vormoderne wie der Moderne, der Modus der Autorisierung des Textinterpreten. Das kann am komplexen Zusammenhang von Verfassung und Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit illustriert werden. Der Text, die Schriftlichkeit der politischen Ordnung, also Verfassung und Gesetz, haben zunächst die Anfangsgeltung für sich. Damit ist es aber nicht getan. Geltung qua Satzung steht nicht auf eigenen Füßen. Auch eine Verfassung verbürgt nicht ihre Geltung allein deshalb, weil sie gegeben ist. Verfassungen lösen sich aus ihrem Entstehungskontext und können sich auf ihren Charakter als Konstitutionsurkunde nicht „ausruhen“.29 Die ratio constitutionis besteht ja gerade darin, dass die durch die Verfassung begründete Ordnung auf Dauer gestellt werden soll, so dass die Geltung und die Anerkennung der durch die Verfassung repräsentierten Ordnung auch jenseits des begründenden Verfassungsaktes verbürgt wird. Die Verfassung tritt also aus dem Ursprungskontext heraus und verlangt nach einer ort27 Stollberg-Rilinger 2004: 525–526; 2008: 302. 28 Stollberg-Rilinger 2008: 303. 29 Vorländer 2002a: 243.


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und zeitunabhängigen Präsenz ihres Ordnungsanspruchs. Der Text bedarf mithin einer interpretatorischen Vergegenwärtigung. Dies wird zumeist von Seiten eines autoritativen Interpreten, oft einem Verfassungsgericht, geleistet.30 Dieser Interpret bedient sich nun seinerseits solcher Techniken institutioneller Eigeninszenierung, die notwendig sind, um seiner Autorisierung als autoritativer Interpret Geltung zu verschaffen. Zu diesen Techniken gehören die institutionellen Mechanismen von ritueller Visualisierung und Invisibilisierung.31 So ist es für Verfassungsgerichte entscheidend, sich selbst als Hüter und getreuer Anwender sowie Ausleger der Verfassung darzustellen, quasi als „bouche de la constitution“ zu wirken. „Im Namen der Verfassung“ Recht zu sprechen, macht aber die Verdeckung der eigenen Interpretentums, der Auslegung und des richterlichen Entscheidungsprozesses, notwendig. Invisibel gemacht wird in diesem Verhältnis der Stellvertretung von Verfassungstext durch den Verfassungsinterpreten die faktische Deutungsmacht des Interpreten. Zu dieser Invisibilisierung verfassungsgerichtlicher Interpretations- und Entscheidungsfindung gehört dann auch das Verbot beständiger direkter Berichterstattung der Medien aus dem Gebäude der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit selber, wie beim deutschen Bundesverfassungsgericht in Karlsruhe. Anders etwa als der Abgeordnete des Deutschen Bundestages tritt kein Richter vor das Mikrofon eines Fernsehteams, um Erläuterungen zu einem anstehenden Fall zu geben, auch nicht, um über den Stand der Beratungen Auskunft zu geben. Die Richter ziehen sich, in ihren jeweiligen Senaten, zur Beratung in die Senatsräume zurück. Zu dieser arkanen, hermetisch verschlossenen Form der Erörterung von Entscheidungsfällen steht die offensichtliche, ja demonstrativ transparente Architektur des Karlsruher Gerichtsgebäudes in einem bemerkenswerten Kontrast – der aber keineswegs „merkwürdig“ genannt werden kann, weil sich genau hierin, in der Intransparenz der Transparenz, der doppelte Charakter der Institution Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit symbolisch zum Ausdruck bringt.32 Einerseits verschwindet der Körper des Interpreten hinter der Verfassung, dem Text. Andererseits aber muss dem Demos, in dessen Namen Recht gesprochen und die Verfassung interpretiert wird, Einblick gewährt werden. Dieses Repräsentationsverhältnis wiederum wird durch eine bewusste, rituell inszenierte Verkündung des Entscheidungsergebnisses präsent gemacht. Das Publikum, die Beschwerdeführer, die Vertreter der beklagten Partei erheben sich, wenn das hohe Gericht den Saal betritt. Dabei ziehen die acht Richter des jeweiligen Senates in ihren roten Roben feierlich und gemessenen Schrittes ein und nehmen ihren Platz erhöht und in direkter Gegenüberstellung der Anwesenden ein, um dann, nachdem sich auch Parteien und Publikum „unten“ im Saal gesetzt haben, ihre Entscheidung zu verkünden. 30 Vorländer 2002a: 258; 2006a: 237; 2006b: 19. 31 Münkler 1995; Melville 2005. 32 Vorländer 2005.

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Einzug, Roben, Respektsbezeugung, erhöhte Sitzposition und Verkündungspose sind feste, rituelle Bestandteile verfassungsgerichtlicher Selbstinszenierung. Sie lassen die Autorität des Rechts sicht- und spürbar werden. An der Autorschaft der Verfassungsinterpretation im Medium der Streitentscheidung wird somit eigentlich kein Zweifel gelassen. Und doch ist die Inszenierung darauf angewiesen, dass es letztlich die Verfassung selbst ist, die sich durch die richterliche „bouche de la constitution“ zu Gehör bringt. Dabei korrespondiert dann die Unsichtbarmachung des individuellen Interpreten mit der demonstrativen Visibilisierung des kollektiven richterlichen Spruchkörpers. Verfassungen also leben nicht vom Text allein – ganz abgesehen davon, dass sie, wie der britische Fall zeigt, nicht unbedingt eines kodifizierten Textes bedürfen, um als Verfassung im kollektiven Bewusstsein vorhanden zu sein. Vielmehr lebt die Verfassung auch, und zwar hinsichtlich ihrer Geltung als handlungsleitende Institution ganz entscheidend, von den Formen vermittelter Repräsentanz und direkter Vergegenwärtigung, in denen ihre Ordnungsprinzipien zur Darstellung gebracht und von der Gemeinschaft der Verfassungsbürger immer wieder vorgestellt werden. Und dabei sind Rituale bedeutende Verweisungssysteme, die nicht nur die Ordnung der politischen und rechtlichen Funktionssysteme gewährleisten, wie es beispielsweise die Geschäfts- und Sitzordnung im Parlament, der Amtseid des Regierungschefs und der Verfahrensgang vor Gericht tun, sondern die zugleich auch immer die zugrunde liegenden Leitideen der politischen Ordnung, die parlamentarische Demokratie sowie den Rechts- und Verfassungsstaat, repräsentieren und in actu vollziehen. Auch wenn Ritualen im modernen Verfassungsstaat nicht mehr die exklusive konstitutierende Wirkung zukommt, wie das in den Herrschaftsordnungen des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit der Fall war, so sind sie keineswegs wirkungslos oder überflüssig geworden. Die Tatsache, dass die historische Herkunft von Ritualen im veralltäglichten Vollzug ihrer Formen kaum noch sichtbar ist, im Bewußtsein der konstitutionellen Gegenwartsmoderne auch keinen prominenten Stellenwert einnimmt, ändert nichts daran, dass sich auch moderne Verfassungsordnungen einer Symbolsprache bedienen, die sich zum einen dem Formenrepertoire vormoderner Rituale verdankt und die zum anderen auf die Herstellung jener Bindungs- und Verpflichtungszusammenhänge gerichtet ist, die dem modernen Verfassungsstaat seine dauerhafte Geltung verleiht.


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Bibliographie Althoff, Hans-Georg 2003. Die Macht der Rituale. Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter. Darmstadt: Primus Verlag. Aretin, Johann Christoph Freiherr von 1823: „Entwurf eines Verfassungs-Katechismus für Volk und Jugend in den deutschen konstitutionellen Staaten“. In: Johann Christoph Freiherr von Aretin (ed.). Konstitutionelle Zeitschrift. Bd. I. Stuttgart: Metzler: 321–364. Blänkner, Reinhard 1996. „Die Idee der Verfassung in der politischen Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland“. In: Herfried Münkler (ed.). Bürgerreligion und Bürgertugend. Baden-Baden: Nomos: 309–341. Bagehot, Walter 1867. The English Constitution. London: Chapman and Hall. Cassirer, Ernst 1929. Die Idee der republikanischen Verfassung: Rede zur Verfassungsfeier am 11. August 1928. Hamburg: Friederichsen. Dörner, Andreas 2001. Politainment. Politik in der medialen Erlebnisgesellschaft. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Dörner, Andreas 2002. „Wahlkämpfe – eine rituelle Inszenierung des ‚demokratischen Mythos‘“. In: Andreas Dörner & Ludgera Vogt (eds.). Wahl-Kämpfe. Betrachtungen über ein demokratisches Ritual. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp: 16–42. — & Ludgera Vogt (eds.) 2002. Wahl-Kämpfe. Betrachtungen über ein demokratisches Ritual. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Edelman, Murray J. 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press. Goffman, Erving 1973. Interaktionsrituale. Über Verhalten in direkter Kommunikation. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Grimm, Dieter 19953: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. — 2009: „Gesellschaftlicher Konstitutionalismus – Eine Kompensation für den Bedeutungsschwund der Staatsverfassung?“. In: Matthias Herdegen et al. (eds.). Staatsrecht und Politik. Festschrift für Roman Herzog. München: C.H. Beck. Habermas, Jürgen 2001. „Symbolischer Ausdruck und rituelles Verhalten. Ein Rückblick auf Cassirer und Gehlen“. In: Gert Melville (ed.). Institutionalität und Symbolisierung. Verstetigungen kultureller Ordnungsmuster in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Köln et al.: Böhlau: 53–67. Hitzler, Ronald 2002. „Inszenierung und Repräsentation. Bemerkungen zur Politikdarstellung der Gegenwart“. In: Hans-Georg Soeffner & Dirk Tänzler (eds.). Figurative Politik: Zur Performanz der Macht in der modernen Gesellschaft. Opladen: Leske & Budrich: 35–49. Landshut, Siegfried 1964. „Der politische Begriff der Repräsentation“. In: HansDietrich Ortlieb (ed.). Hamburger Jahrbuch für Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftspolitik. Tübingen: J.C.B.Mohr (Paul Siebeck): 175–186. Manow, Phillip 2008. Im Schatten des Königs. Die politische Anatomie demokratischer Repräsentation. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.

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Melville, Gert (ed.) 2001. Institutionalität und Symbolisierung. Verstetigungen kultureller Ordnungsmuster in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Köln et al.: Böhlau. — (ed.) 2005. Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare der Macht. Institutionelle Prozesse in Antike, Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Köln et al.: Böhlau. — & Hans Vorländer (eds.) 2002. Geltungsgeschichten. Über die Stabilisierung und Legitimierung institutioneller Ordnungen. Köln et al.: Böhlau. Münkler, Herfried 1995. „Die Visibilität der Macht und die Strategien der Machtvisualisierung“. In: Gerhard Göhler (ed.). Macht der Öffentlichkeit – Öffentlichkeit der Macht. Baden-Baden: Nomos: 213–230. Nolte, Paul 1993. „Die badischen Verfassungstexte im Vormärz“. In: Manfred Hettling & Paul Nolte (eds.). Bürgerliche Feste. Symbolische Formen politischen Handelns im 19.Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 63–94. Rehberg, Karl-Siegbert 2001. „Weltrepräsentanz und Verkörperung. Institutionelle Analyse und Symboltheorien. Eine Einführung in systematischer Absicht“. In: Gert Melville (ed.). Institutionalität und Symbolisierung. Verstetigungen kultureller Ordnungsmuster in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Köln et al.: Böhlau: 3–49. Schneidmüller, Bernd 2006. „Die Aufführung des Reichs. Zeremoniell, Ritual und Performanz in der Goldenen Bulle von 1356“. In: Evelyn Brockhoff & Michael Matthäus (eds.). Die Kaisermacher. Frankfurt am Main und die Goldene Bulle 1356-1806. Frankfurt/Main: Societäts-Verlag: 76–92. Soeffner, Hans-Georg 2000. Gesellschaft ohne Baldachin. Über die Labilität von Ordnungskonstruktionen. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft. — & Dirk Tänzler 2002a. „Figurative Politik. Prolegomena zu einer Kultursoziologie politischen Handelns“. In: Hans-Georg Soeffner & Dirk Tänzler (eds.). Figurative Politik: Zur Performanz der Macht in der modernen Gesellschaft. Opladen: Leske & Budrich: 17–34. — & Dirk Tänzler 2002b. „Medienwahlkämpfe – Hochzeiten ritueller Politikinszenierung“. In: Andreas Dörner & Ludgera Vogt (eds.). Wahl-Kämpfe. Betrachtungen über ein demokratisches Ritual. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp: 92–115. Schütz, Alfred 1993. Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Eine Einführung in die verstehende Soziologie. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara 2002. „Die zeremonielle Inszenierung des Reiches, oder: Was leistet der kulturalistische Ansatz für die Reichsverfassungsgeschichte?“. In: Matthias Schnettger (ed.). Imperium Romanum – irregulare corpus – Teutscher Reichs-Staat. Das Alte Reich im Verständnis der Zeitgenossen und der Historiographie. Mainz: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 233–246. — 2004. „Symbolische Kommunikation in der Vormoderne. Begriffe – Forschungsperspektiven – Thesen“. Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 31: 489–527. — 2005. „Zeremoniell als politisches Verfahren. Rangordnung und Rangstreit als Strukturmerkmale des frühneuzeitlichen Reichstags“. In: Johannes Kunisch (ed.). Neue Studien zur frühneuzeitlichen Reichsgeschichte. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot: 91–132 (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Beiheft 19).


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— 2008. Des Kaisers alte Kleider. Verfassungsgeschichte und Symbolsprache des Alten Reiches. München: Beck. Vorländer, Hans 2002a. „Gründung und Geltung. Die Konstitution der Ordnung und die Legitimation der Konstitution“. In: Gert Melville & Hans Vorländer (eds.). Geltungsgeschichten. Über die Stabilisierung und Legitimierung institutioneller Ordnungen. Köln et al.: Böhlau: 243–263. — 2002b. „Integration durch Verfassung? Die symbolische Bedeutung der Verfassung im politischen Integrationsprozess“. In: Hans Vorländer (ed.). Integration durch Verfassung. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag: 9–40. — 2004a. Die Verfassung. Idee und Geschichte. München: C.H. Beck. — 2004b. „Verfassungsgeschichten. Über die Kontinuierung des konstitutionellen Momentes“. In: Gert Melville & Karl-Siegbert Rehberg (eds.). Gründungsmythen – Genealogien – Memorialzeichen. Beiträge zur institutionellen Konstruktion von Kontinuität. Köln et al.: Böhlau: 177–185. — 2005. „Hinter dem Schleier des Nichtpolitischen. Das unsichtbare Verfassungsgericht“. In: Gert Melville (ed.). Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare der Macht. Institutionelle Prozesse in Antike, Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Köln et al.: Böhlau: 113– 127. — 2006a. „Die Verfassung als symbolische Ordnung. Perspektiven einer kulturwissenschaftlich-institutionalistischen Verfassungstheorie“. In: Michael Becker & Ruth Zimmerling (eds.). Recht und Politik. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag: 229–249 (PVS-Sonderheft 36). — 2006b. „Deutungsmacht. Die Macht der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit“. In: Hans Vorländer (ed.). Die Deutungsmacht der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag: 9–33.

Philippe Buc

Religion, Coercion, and Violence in Medieval Rituals What can symbolic practices located in the sphere of “religion” and of religious institutions tell the historian of medieval Europe about those “rituals” more concerned with what we Moderns would categorise as “political”? More precisely put, how does knowledge of religious rituals’ logic interrogate scholarly models of political rituals?1 The question is raised here specifically with regard to two aspects of religious ritual – violence created by rituals and the coercive dimension of ritual – and this, with a view to interrogating political rituals.2 Our focus will be on the so-called bilateral ordeal, trial by fire or water. First, violence caused by rituals. Our once quasi-automatic reflex – no longer so automatic since the resurgence in the 1990s of religious violence – is to associate Christianity with eirenism and pacifism, and from there, in a seemingly small but substantial leap from emic self-description to externally ascribed, etic function, with social stability.3 But paradoxically, theorists have also long attributed to Christian violence (and not simply to Christian peace-making or eirenism) socialstabilising functions.4 Two influential models developed in the 1970s will serve as guides to the issue. They reflect a bias that well transcends the structural-functionalist tradition within 1 The assumption here is that we are not dealing with two highly separate cultures, as in the models proposed by Jean-Claude Schmitt and Jacques Le Goff. While Geoffrey Koziol sees lay and ecclesiastical on a continuum for rituals of pardon, Gerd Althoff steers implicitly clear of learned, theological notions. On Althoff’s oeuvre cf. Koziol 1992. For the debate on culture, see, against Le Goff and Schmitt, and pleading for a continuum, van Engen 1986. A good review of the debate on culture, plural or singular, in the Middle Ages is Lauwers 1987. 2 For a time absent or dormant in Gerd Althoff’s pioneering studies, the agonistic dimension has returned to the fore, see Althoff 2003; with the review by Buc 2005. This dimension is markedly underlined in Miller 1990. 3 For the re-emergence of religious violence, see, e.g. Juergensmeyer 2003. For a statement on the continuity between “political” European terrorism in the 1970s and “religious” terrorism of the 1990s, see Crenshaw 2009. 4 In opposition to the strand of political theory developed in the context of the early modern European confessional wars by the likes of Thomas Hobbes, for whom public religion was a major source of violence. For Hobbes’ place in European history, see Koselleck 1973; and Schmitt 1982. But in congruence with the more recent models represented by Simmel, see Simmel 1908; English transl. Wolff 1955, for whom conflict is a form of exchange that can bind social groups together – a “form of sociation” (Vergesellschaftungsform).

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which their authors then operated. In both, the violence involved in a religious ritual has a stabilising function. This is implicit in the first, willful in the second. Peter Brown, to name the first author, penned in 1975 an article entitled “Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change”.5 It envisioned the transition from the Early Medieval to the High Medieval era through the prism of the ordeal. In the small, face-to-face societies characteristic of the more archaic period, trial by water or fire and trial by battle served to brake conflict and to re-establish communitarian consensus. With the onset of different conditions in the High Middle Ages, in particular the emergence of the new lordships and kingships, the ordeals faded away. The ordeal, this instrument of community consensus, involved violence. Trial by battle was evidently not a peaceful ritual; and almost as aggressive was making men or women float in a vat of water, or walk on or hold red-hot iron. Yet paradoxically for Brown the violent process worked for consensus, as the community laboured to come to an agreement on the interpretation of God’s will, shown through the elements.6 Equally grand, but grand in a different dimension, is the oeuvre of the essayist René Girard. The French scholar presents a fundamental revelation, the true (and 5 Brown 1975. His model, and the related one, proposed contemporaneously by Paul Hyams, was attacked ferociously by Robert Bartlett. See Hyams 1981; and Bartlett 1986. But see the pungent review of Bartlett by Stephen 1989. Bartlett 1986: 35, n.4 charts the positive reception of Brown’s model. 6 There are difficulties with the argument and the use of evidence. Brown interprets loci where the ordeal was still used in the thirteenth century as backward governmentally (as in Vadar, Hungary). Brown uses eleventh- and twelfth-century sources both to document the archaic face-to-face early medieval world and the newer modernity. Brown introduces community sentiment where none is mentioned in the source, Eadmer, Historia novorum, Patrologia Latina 159, 412, saying (316): “The tender-hearted local group insisted (...) that they [the accused Saxon landowners] had emerged from this in better condition than before”. Here is the full original citation: Exempli causa, quinquaginta circiter viri, quibus adhuc illis diebus, ex antiqua Anglorum ingenuitate, divitiarum quaedam vestigia arridere videbantur, capti sunt, et calumniati quod cervos regis ceperint, mactaverint, manducaverint. Negant illi; unde statim ad judicium rapti judicantur injectam calumniam examine igniti ferri a se propulsare debere. Statuto itaque die, praefixi poenae judicii pariter subacti sunt remota pietate et misericordia. Erat ergo miseriam videre. Verum omnipotens Deus, cui misericordiam et judicium canit Davidicus psalmus, innocentia eorum, servatis misericorditer ab exustione manibus omnium, cunctis ostendit, et malitia hominum eos impie destruere cupientium quam injusta fuerit, justo judicio declaravit. Igitur cum principi esset relatum condemnatos illos tertio judicii die simul omnes inustis manibus apparuisse, stomachatus taliter fertur respondisse: ‘Quid est hoc? Deus est justus judex? Pereat, qui deinceps hoc crediderit. Quare per hoc et hoc meo judicio amodo respondebitur. Non Dei quod pro voto cujusque hinc inde plicatur.’ Haec et hujusmodi plura his atrociora quae a diversis non ignobilis famae hominibus de Willhelmo illo tunc temporis nuntiabantur, magno, ut diximus, Anselmum accendebant pontificatui Angliae abrenuntiare, scientem videlicet mores suos moribus ipsius nulla posse ratione amplius concordare.

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before him invisible) relation between violence and religion. At the beginnings of any human society, and periodically to end a major crisis (the “sacrificial crisis”), its human members gang up against one of their own and sacrifice him, a violent act that puts an end to the random violence of all against all. This is the solution to otherwise endless vendettas. For Girard, all religions involve the forgetting of this original moment with the displacement of this initial lynching of a human being through the routinisation of sacrifice. All rituals are thus both commemoration of the ur-violence, and of its dissimulation. If rituals did not commemorate, and so representatively re-iterate, the initial murder would lose its potency. If rituals commemorated explicitly and fully, the horror of the founding moment would despoil them (and the initial murder) of their social-stabilising efficiency. So they also dissimulate.7 Objections can be raised, and have been raised, against these two models. They will not be surveyed here. But from the standpoint of the issue at hand, one should notice that Brown and Girard offer a secularised and scholarly version of Catholicism’s self-understanding: that religion inflicts coercive violence for the sake of a higher peace.8 The first author’s anthropology owes much to theology; the latter’s model is a theology. Even more amusingly, in the case of Girard the myth of origins is a religious inversion of the Hobbesian social contract.9 The choice of the (often divinised) monstrous scapegoat parallels that of Thomas Hobbes’ monstrous Leviathan sovereign. Problematically, Girard’s model is non-falsifiable. The ursacrifice or sacrificial crisis appears only fleetingly in some literary or religious sources; these have to be read between the lines to reveal it. Girard views those parts of a text that do not point to ur-sacrifice or sacrificial crisis as misunderstanding or dissimulation of it, those that do as partial revelation. One will note the debt to the traditional late Antique and medieval Christian (or Middle Platonist) allegorical hermeneutics.10 This method allows any evidence, for example the Greek myths Girard so loves to explore, to be fitted into a binary scheme, since all the evidence’s elements can be neatly allotted to either masking or revealing. No wonder, then, that the smallest hint can snowball into becoming “une preuve irréfutable”.11 While Girard in his later The Scapegoat and in his Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde forcefully maintained that his method was not different 7 Girard 1972, esp. 119–122. Cf. the German translation: Girard 1992. 8 Which Brown evidently knows, see Brown 1964; and Brown 1963. Representative are Augustine’s letters on the Donatists, excerpted in Gratian’s Decretum, for which see Russell 1975. 9 See the discussion in Juergensmeyer 1991, notably Rappaport 1991. 10 Augustine, in his De doctrina Christiana, On Christian Teaching III, xiv (Green tr., 1990) explains thus how Scripture oscillates between types of meaning: it is only the “rule of faith” (the Church's understanding of rightly-directed love) (so an a-priori norm) that enables the exegete to distinguish whether the text is to be read literally or allegorically. 11 Girard 1972: 117.

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from that of the historian,12 this historian at least will maintain that falsifiability is the mark of any truly social-scientific theory, unlike Freudian analysis. But for our purpose it need only be underlined that, according to both Girard and Brown, in ritual (Brown considers the ordeal a representative species; Girard considers ritual a fundamentally unitary genre) the violence is ancillary to societal peace, and does not generate further violence beyond itself.13 Such has been, for example, the position of David Nirenberg, in his intelligent, if dubious, application of the Girardian scheme to the Eastertime stoning of the Jewish quarters in some thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Aragonese cities.14 Against Brown and Girard, however, and against any view that ritual stabilises order, one can adduce the moments when the ordeal or another ritual engenders its own violence, beyond the violence that is inherent in the ritual.15 Of course, if one is sympathetic to, or indulgent towards the Girardian hypothesis, some of this violence can be folded back into a “sacrificial crisis”, but only if the violence is large-scale (there is a possible, if forced, Girardian reading of the Carnival of Romans, or of the mass violence analysed by Edward Muir for the Friuli in 1511).16 Ordeals, Peter Brown’s lynchpin ritual, problematise the place of violence in medieval European religious rituals. In considering their functioning, we do well to survey the “diversity of medieval ordeals” so cleverly underlined by Dominique Barthélemy and Stephen D. White.17 The ordeal could determine the truth of an allegation; it could also determine God’s favour (His decision to punish or to spare, sometimes regardless of the actual issue at hand); it could be proposed to intimidate the other party in a dispute; it could be used as a humiliating test meant to find out how much God wanted the clearly guilty punished. This last configuration is highly interesting: offenders against the southern French Peace of God were subjected to God’s judgement. This was, likely, both to mark their offence and to determine how much God wanted them punished.18 A similar punitive role is visible 12 A sophisticated but sophistical defence of his method, trying to collapse the distinction between historical documents and myths (which he labels a “cultural schizophrenia”). See Girard 1982: ch. 3; English transl. Girard & Freccero 1986. Citation: 30. Even more importantly, cf. Girard 1978. 13 If one excepts iterations in new rituals. There is as well the question of the “framing” of the ritual. Is, for instance, the violence that erupted around the coronation of Rudolf of Rheinfelden extraneous to the coronation, peaceful in itself? See Bruno. Saxonicum Bellum. Cap. 92. (Schmale 1963: 334–336). 14 See Buc 1998. 15 Girard would of course (and this is Nirenberg’s solution) view any violence generated in the course of a ritual as a sign of the erosion of the ritual’s efficiency, and as a way-station to the “sacrificial crisis” or the crisis itself. 16 LeRoy-Ladurie 1982; Muir 1993. 17 Barthélemy 1988. 18 See ibid.: 19.


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in a privilege the Salian king Henry V granted to the church of Liège: persons who wounded or struck a canon and denied the offence would have to “clear themselves not by oath (jejurando) but by ordeal (dei iudicio), for breach of clerical immunity requires this form of proof”.19 The test that the suspects underwent was meant to honour the injured, and thus dis-honoured, clergy. Furthermore, as Barthélemy has noted, even learned opponents of the ordeal made an exception: trial by fire made sense in matters of heresy.20 Like Roman torture and its High Medieval counterpart, this particular ordeal was both about truth and punishment.21 Splendid examples of rituals that involve violence and generate further violence are provided by the Milanese Pataria.22 There, as in late Antique Rome and Constantinople during the Arian or Monophysite controversies, church liturgy, while in its “emic” self-understanding an expression of consensus, often turned bloody. In Milan, as around the year 500, masses and processions became occasions for bloodshed, and even, given accusations of simony, the cause of blood-shed. The ordeal was equally problem-generating. The ordeal the Milanese priest Liprand underwent in 1103 to convict his archbishop, Grosulanus (1100–1116), of simony, provides an enlightening case-study on the place of violence in religious rituals. Jostling and rough handling were present at this iudicium Dei. It fits the pattern of the eleventh-century ordeals analysed by Colin Morris: its highly politicised nature – it was the child of violence – prevented it from being in any sense therapeutic or consensus-building. It was, rather, used as an offensive weapon.23 In public, Liprand seized Grosulanus by the cope to defy him before God. The handlers of the ordeal were accused of rigging the flames, pushing them to an unfair temperature (an accusation that one finds elsewhere). Quoth Grosulanus (according to Landulph, Liprand’s panegyrist): “I shall enlarge the fire to such a point that his eyes will pop out far from his head and that he shall be turned to ash and rot in the fire”. As he exited the fire, Liprand’s foot was stamped on by a horse. An initial attempt at holding the ordeal had been prevented on the archbishop’s side by mob violence. Then, “as if it had been the common verdict of the whole city, it was told to the priest [Liprand] that he should gather a lot of wood to undergo [God’s] ordeal” – so the ordeal was imposed on him. God’s verdict, however, was delayed by mob action, which “scattered the wood gathered in the field, and shamefully kept the priest apart from this set-up”. But slightly later, in another twist-and-turn, impelled by pro-Liprand rioting, the archbishop gave the priest the choice between exile or ordeal. Liprand walked through a 19 23 Dec. 1107, cited and translated by Bartlett 1986: 96. The reference is to Martens 1967: 309. 20 Barthélemy 1988: 21–23. 21 Asad 1993a. 22 A few milestones: Violante 1955; Keller 1973; Zumhagen 2002. 23 Morris 1975.

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flaming pyre. Finally, the same pro-Grosulanus mob, after the trial by fire, “raised mayhem (scandalizavit)24 against the priest and his ordeal, and raising mayhem committed many battles and homicides.” Some violence and coercion was thus tolerated in ordeals, at least by one side in the dispute that God’s judgement was supposed to illuminate. But violence within the event, or official coercion perceived as illegitimate violence, became the springboard for re-interpretations of the ordeal by the losing side. Furthermore, while suspects were often sent against their will to the ordeal, this form of coercion could also be the occasion for further disputes.25 In Liprand versus Grosulanus, a controversy erupted after the ordeal: had Grosulanus forced Liprand to undergo this ordeal? Ultimately, it was resolved by the pope in Grosulanus’ favour, leading to God’s anger over the realm. We should imagine, then, that while in principle it was acceptable to force someone to the ordeal, according to another principle this same coercion was damning. A contradictory cultural system – was it a system in any sense? What about more straightforwardly political rituals? Deditiones, the surrenders well explored by Gerd Altoff, could be coerced but should not be too much so, and could blend, in contradictory fashion, consensus and force.26 When the force factor was too vivid and visible, the deditio became humiliating. Liudprand of Cremona proposed the image of a submissive Lombard rebel prostrate before King Berengar to the point that this Gislebertus showed his private parts, triggering general laughter.27 When the force factor was too vivid and visible, as well, critics of the event might seek to de-legitimise it, or use it to tar the event’s impresario. What happened then to Tassilo of Bavaria,28 or Louis the Pious in 833, should not be taken as an, albeit instructive, perversion of the rules of the game. Rather, one sees there coming to the fore, but with more intensity than normal, a coercive element quite common in rituals.29 It is striking to see how often the notion of “free will” comes up in the sources depicting deditiones. Arson and destruction were perpetrated, yet coming to a deditio was “free-willed”. The limit to free will is sketched

24 Literally, made a scandalum, a term covering the modern notions of civil war and scandal. 25 One of the arguments concerning “political rituals” generically in Buc 2001: 8, 256–258. 26 In some moments, the drive to assert lordship and honour could be so sharp as to make deditiones almost necessarily inclined to conflict, cf. Görich 2008. 27 Liudprand of Cremona, Antapodosis 2.63 (Chiesa 1998: 59). 28 On which see recently Becher 1993; Airlie 1999; Diesenberger 2006. 29 This question was raised by Mayke B. de Jong’s fine studies on 830–833. See most recently de Jong 2009.


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in Francisco Suarez’s late scholastic position: the damned in Hell are forced to make physical obeisance to God.30 The discussion has thus led us to a second issue, coercion within rituals. Let us explore it further now, if only briefly. A late medieval controversy – not over rituals but over holy war – brings out sharply the fluctuating boundaries of what constituted violence. At the council of Constance, in 1417, Andreas Didaci de Escobar, bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo (Spain), defended the military enterprises of the Teutonic Knights against the Poles and their pagan allies. The bishop drew on the exemplar of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus to justify the Order’s harsh measures against heathens:31 [The knights] were not attacking them, rebuking them, whipping them in order to directly coerce them to the Christian faith, but in order that they might give up the blindness in their mind and voluntarily submit their necks to Christ. [...] This is not coercing to the faith, but to enlighten the obscurity of their mind [tenebrae also means blindness] by means of the scourge of tribulations, and to keep away from sin through the fear of Hell, as Augustine says commenting Psalm 127. Here we see at play the different understanding, in the Middle Ages, of what constitutes “violence”. The boundaries between coercion and redemption could be thin; Catholic theory and Catholic ritual practice did not disallow force; and force did not quite allow, pace Peter Brown, saving face. Coercion and the sacred were not antithetical.32 Such had already been the case in Late Antiquity, as Martialis’ poem for the dedication of the Roman Coliseum, “On the Spectacles”, gruesomely

30 Suarez 1859. The question being, “Does there inhere religion in the damned?” Suarez explains: “Even if they [the damned] are coerced (coguntur) to bend a knee to Him (as this passage of the letter to Philippians, 2.10: Omne genuflectatur, caelestium, terrestrium et infernorum, teaches) as many interpret it, yet they do not do this out of virtue, but out of necessity, because, whether they want it or not, they are coerced (coguntur) to recognise Christ as God and Lord. [They do this] even though they do not show him any signs of reverence unless out of a wicked intention or, by God through the ministry of His holy angels, coerced (coacti) by necessity”. 31 Didaci de Escobar 1970: (...) non eos impugnabant, non increpabant, non verberabant, ut ad fidem Christianam cogerent de directo, sed quod mentis cecitatem deponerent et voluntarie colla sua Christo subderent (...) hoc non est ad fidem cogere, sed flagellos tribulacionem mentis tenebras illuminare et timore Gehenne a peccato continere, secundum verba Augustini, [super] Psal. 127. Discussion in Kwiatkowski 2000: 16. 32 I do not mean here the coercive power of religious forms posited by Maurice Bloch, see Bloch 1974, that they have an “illocutionary force” that leads groups in one direction and limits free will, or the earlier Pflichtscharakter Durkheim attributes to categories, rituals and conceptions – cf. Durkheim 1912; German transl. Durkheim 1981: 38–39, 75 n.68. Rather, I mean the emic understanding of the relationship between religion and coercion.

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demonstrates.33 Men and women could be forced to play, to the death, roles in mythological re-enactments in the Coliseum; this did not make these shows less meaningful and less devoid of the numinous, on the contrary. The high scholastic position, represented by Thomas Aquinas, was that “coercion and violence are contrary to the will”, but coercion had its uses for human beings who were prone to vice and beyond persuasion, as opposed to those virtuous people whose will was in harmony with God’s and the law. The law would restrain the wicked-willed from evil “by force and fear”, and make men and women do good out of fear. It would work on them to the point that in the end they would become habituated and do good willingly. The “discipline of the law” was thus a form of training that modified the will.34 This is High Medieval theory, and a discourse on law, not on rituals, but it does not differ fundamentally from patristic positions and Early Medieval practice. On the side of theology, building on stray remarks I made in Dangers of Ritual, Professor Jehangir Yezdi Malegam has mapped out how the Augustinian tradition of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages considered that violence was preferable to a bad or false peace, in so far as such an umbrosa pax allowed the wicked to lord it over the good.35 Escobar cited Augustine, who considered that forced participation in the Catholic liturgy would lead the Donatists to shed their obdurate blindness. On the side of practice, Mayke de Jong has well explored how penance and its attendant rituals, while it could be exalting, could be a penalty, and was often a penalty. Opponents were sent to monastic prison. After the 830 Nimwegen assembly, Hilduin was forced to spend the winter with a reduced following in Louis the Pious’ war camp; Wala was sent to Corvey to live under the Rule (regulariter observari). A renewed confrontation resulted in the emperor’s clerical opponents being sent to monasteries and their lay counterparts being tonsured.36 Several theses propose themselves: firstly, coercion could be accepted in rituals. Secondly, however, it was also considered unacceptable when a party interpreted it as excessive violence. Thirdly, the threshold separating coercion from unacceptable violence differed between medieval cultures and our own.37 Fourthly, to allow the coexistence within medieval culture of acceptable and unacceptable coercion, the frontier between the two was fluid. Fifthly, agents operating in medieval political 33 Ker 1919. Cf. Buc 2001: 127 (with further references). The divinity (numen) of the emperor was demonstrated by his ability to coerce beasts and humans to reenact myths in the arena. Credere is a leitmotiv verb that links belief in the emperor’s divinity to his ability to make believe. Cp. cap. 30: Numen habet Caesar: sacra est haec, sacra potestas, credite with cap. 6: Iunctam Pasiphaen Dictaeo credite tauro: uidimus, accepit fabula prisca fidem. 34 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II, q.96 a.5 and q.95 a.1 (Busa 1980: 482 and 480-481). 35 See Malegam 2008. Professor Malegam’s Stanford Ph.D. dissertation is undergoing a major re-working with a view to publication. 36 Astronomus, Vita Hludowici imperatoris, cap. 45 (Tremp 1995: 462–464). 37 Cf. Elias 2009; Foucault 1987.


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culture were quite aware of the pluses and minuses of, respectively, consensus and coercion. Sixthly, these agents believed that coercion could lead to a transformation of the coerced self (as Talal Asad noted already fifteen years ago).38 But, seventh, they feared mere external subjection to coercion that was not accompanied by inner transformation, so hypocrisy was hugely problematic. There was (in the High Middle Ages certainly) an elaborate discourse about the relationship between internal and external conformity. The elements in this conceptual binary were reconfigured in the Early Modern era. One thus sees Francisco Suarez (1548–1617) distinguishing between religious worship and political cult. The latter – honouring the ruler – necessitated physical displays, and physical displays were enough – per sola corporis membra. Submission could not be conveyed without exterior display. As for religious “adoration”, it necessitated, on the other hand, interior, spiritual disposition (which could still be expressed by exterior disposition).39 Whether this Early Modern distinction – likely the product of Reformation and Counter-Reformation dynamics in which secular power, to be honoured, did not necessarily dovetail with religious orthodoxy – was anticipated at any point during the Middle Ages is a large question.40 But it is clear that medieval clerical elites cared about external compliance because they thought it would influence the inner man. Coercion of the outer man was necessary. The postulate has been throughout this exposé that violence and coercion in the religious sphere can tell us something about violence and coercion in political rituals, and this short essay will conclude on it in the interrogative mode. It is a genuine postulate, open to verification or falsification. One can object that the ideal-typical secular ritual and the ideal-typical religious ritual will differ in relation to violence (or at least that they cannot be too quickly collapsed). A factor characteristic of strife in or through monotheistic religious ritual is the Manichean nature of some of the issues that religion can embrace. Compromise is made much more difficult; salvation is at stake.41 This is visible within Milan and with the Pataria and its opponents. One witnesses the same intensity in the ordeal by fire undergone by Peter Bartholomew in 1098 near Antioch over the authenticity of the Holy Lance. Precisely because the Lance was the material touchstone for a programme of radical reform of the crusader army, revealed by Peter and other low social status prophets around him (and also because different leaders had taken 38 Asad 1993b: esp. 62, 66–69. 39 Suarez 1859. 2.1.1.1 (77–78); 2.2.1.7 (85). 40 Suarez’s references to Aquinas do point to at least to the presence of this line of thought in High medieval scholasticism. See Aquinas. Summa Theologiae II-I q.84 a.1-2 and II-I q.103 a. 1 (Busa 1980) 634-635 & 659. For the Reformation, see Stollberg-Rilinger 2004; also in English as Stollberg-Rilinger 2010; and Buc 2001: 161–171, 171–172. 41 To borrow Brad Gregory’s book title. See Gregory 1999.

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sides for and against it), the tensions around the ordeal were enormous.42 Raymond d’Aguilers describes a riotous welcome to a Peter who emerged untouched from the flames, a mob enthusiasm which inflicted upon him grievous wounds.43 All the same, the distinction between politics and religion is ideal-typical and resolutely modern: there were many medieval conflicts that straddled the vast and ill-defined borderlands between the religious and the political. The dynamic of the rituals which took place in a German civil war that was tightly linked to the struggle for the libertas ecclesiae was close to that of the ordeals performed during the crusade and in the context of the Pataria.44 Any time a political conflict could be read as religious, the desirability of transformative coercion might be asserted.

42 See Hagenmeyer’s discussion in the notes to Hagenmeyer 1913: 1.18.4–5 (240–242). 43 Hill & Hill 1969: 121–123. On this source, see Ferrier 1997; and Buc 2010a. 44 For this, see Buc 2010b.


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lalterliche Politik zwischen Gewohnheit und Konvention: Politische Spielregeln im Mittelalter. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Chiesa, Paolo (ed.) 1998. Liudprand of Cremona. Antapodosis. Brepols, Turnhour (CCCM 156). Crenshaw, Martha 2009. “The Debate over ‘New’ vs. ‘Old’ Terrorism”. In: Ibrahim A. Karawan et al. (eds.). Values and Violence: Intangible Aspects of Terrorism. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands: 117–136 (Studies in Social Justice 4). de Jong, Mayke B. 2009. The Penitential State. Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814–840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Didaci de Escobar, Andreas 1970. “Revoco, casso, annulo”. In: Erich Weise (ed.). Die Staatsschriften des Deutschen Ordens in Preußen im 15. Jahrhundert. Vol. 1: Die Traktate vor dem Konstanzer Konzil (1414–1418) über das Recht des Deutschen Ordens am Lande Preussen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 395–413. Diesenberger, Maximilian 2006. “Dissidente Stimmen zum Sturz Tassilos II.”. In: Richard Corradini et al. (eds.). Text and Identities in the Early Middle Ages. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: 105–120 (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 12). Durkheim, Émile 1912. Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Paris: Alcan. — 1981. Die elementaren Formen des religiösen Lebens. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Eadmer. Historia novorum. In: Patrologia Latina 158, ed. Jean-Paul Migne, Paris 1864. van Engen, John 1986. “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem”. American Historical Review 91: 519–552. Elias, Norbert 2009. Über den Prozess der Zivilisation. 2 vols. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Ferrier, Luc 1997. “La couronne refusée de Godefroy de Bouillon: Eschatologie et humiliation de la majesté aux premiers temps du royaume latin de Jérusalem”. In: École Française de Rome (ed.). Le concile de Clermont de 1095 et l’appel à la croisade. (Collection de l’École française de Rome 236) Rome: École française de Rome: 245–265. Foucault, Michel 1987. Überwachen und Strafen: Die Geburt des Gefängisses. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Girard, René 1972. La violence et le sacré. Paris: Grasset. — 1978. Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde. Paris: Grasset. — 1982. Le bouc émissaire. Paris: Grasset. — & Freccero, Yvonne (transl.) 1986. The Scapegoat. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press. — 1992. Das Heilige und die Gewalt. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer Taschenbuch. Görich, Knut 2008. „Unausweichliche Konflikte? Friedrich Barbarossa, Friedrich II. und der lombardische Städtebund”. In: Oliver Auge et al. (eds.). Bereit zum Konflikt. Strategien und Medien der Konflikterzeugung und Konfliktbewältigung im europäischen Mittelalter. Ostfildern: Thorbecke: 195–213. Gregory, Brad S. 1999. Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.


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Hagenmeyer, Heinrich 1913. Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana. Heidelberg: Carl Winters. Hill, John Hugh & Laurita L. Hill (eds.) 1969. Le “Liber” de Raymond d’Aguilers. Paris: P. Geuthner (Documents Relatifs à l’Histoire des Croisades 9). Hyams, Paul 1981. “Trial by Ordeal: The Key to Proof in the Early Common Law”. In: Morris S. Arnold et al. (eds.). On the Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honor of Samuel E. Thorne. Chapel Hill: University of Carolina Press: 90–126. Juergensmeyer, Mark (ed.) 1991. Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World. London: Cass. — 2003. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, 3rd rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keller, Hagen 1973. „Pataria und Stadtverfassung“. In: Josef Fleckenstein (ed.). Investiturstreit und Reichsverfassung. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke: 321–350 (Vorträge und Forschungen 17). Ker, Walter C.A. (transl & ed.) 1919. Martialis. De spectaculis. In: Walter C.A. Ker (ed.): Martialis. Epigrams. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press: 1–114. Koselleck, Reinhard 1973. Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathologie der bürgerlichen Welt. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Koziol, Geoffrey 1992. Begging Pardon and Favor. Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kwiatkowski, Stefan 2000. Der Deutsche Orden im Streit mit Polen-Litauen. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer (Beiträge zur Friedensethik 32). Lauwers, Michel 1987. “Religion populaire, culture folklorique, mentalités. Notes pour une anthropologie culturelle du Moyen Âge”. Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 82: 221–258. LeRoy-Ladurie, Emmanuel 1982. Karneval in Romans. Von Lichtmess bis Aschermittwoch, 1579–1580. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Malegam, Jehangir Yezdi 2008. “No Peace for the Wicked. Contested Visions of Peacemaking in an Eleventh-Century Monastic Narrative”. Viator 39/1: 23–49. Martens, Mina (ed.) 1967. “Recueil de textes d’histoire urbaine belge des origines au milieu du XIIIe siècle”. In: Co van de Kieft & Jan Frederik Niermeyer (eds.). Elenchus fontium historiae urbanae. Vol. 1, 2nd part. Leiden: Brill. Miller, William Ian 1990. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking. Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Morris, Colin 1975. “Judicium Dei: The Social and Political Significance of the Ordeal in the Twelfth Century”. Studies in Church History 12: 95–111. Muir, Edward 1993. Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta and Factions in Friuli During the Renaissance. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Rappaport, David 1991. “Some General Observationse on Religion and Violence”. In: Mark Juergensmeyer (ed.). Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World. London: Cass: 118–140. Russell, Frederick H. 1975. The Just War in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought 3/8).

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Schmale, Franz-Josef (ed.) 1963. Quellen zur Geschichte Kaiser Heinrichs IV. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Schmitt, Carl 1992. Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols. Cologne: Hohenheim. Simmel, Georg 1908. „Der Streit“. In: Georg Simmel. Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Leipzig: Duncker & Humbold: 247–336. Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara 2004. „Knien vor Gott – Knien vor dem Kaiser. Zum Tirualwandel im Konfessionskonflikt“. In: Gerd Althoff (ed.). Zeichen – Rituale – Werte. Münster: Rhema: 501–533 (Symbolische Kommunikation und gesellschaftliche Wertesysteme). — 2010 (forthcoming). “Kneeling Before God – Kneeling Before the Emperor”. In: Nils Holger Petersen et al. (eds.). Resonances: Historical Essays on Continuity and Change. Turnhout: Brepols. Suarez, Francisco 1859. “Opus de virtute et statu religionis”. In: D. Thomas (ed.). Opera Omnia. Vol. 13. Paris: Vivès: 3–76. Tremp, Ernst (ed.) 1995. Die Taten Kaiser Ludwigs und das Leben Kaiser Ludwigs. Hannover: Hahn (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 64). Violante, Cinzio 1955. La pataria milanese e la riforma ecclesiastica. Rome: Istituto storico per la storia d’Italia. White, Stephen D. 1989. “Review of ‘Bartlett, Robert 1986. Trial by Fire and Water. The Medieval Judicial Ordeal. Oxford: Clarendon Press’”. Speculum 64/2: 385– 388. Wolff, Kurt 1955. Conflict. Glencoe: Free Press. Zumhagen, Olaf 2002. Religiöser Konflikt und kommunale Entwicklung: Mailand, Cremona, Piacenza und Florenz in der Zeit der Pataria. Cologne: Böhlau (Städteforschung A-58).

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The Humility and Humiliation of the King – Rituals and Emotions In accounts of royal audiences and ceremonies of donation, the humility of the recipients and the self-effacing behaviour of petitioners is frequently stressed. The ruler magnanimously showed grace, rewarding faithful service and recompensing any efforts made with reference to the words and deeds of his vassal. Of course, the royal decision primarily resulted from an assessment of the services rendered and appreciation of faithful service. This was most frequently the result of a carefully considered calculation in which a monarch would engage before announcing his decision. Sometimes, however, it merely depended on the meeting with the individual and his behaviour during the audience. The monarch expected deferential behaviour and generously rewarded such conduct, willingly distributing privileges and publicly exhibiting his grace. A routine element of royal correspondence is a phrase expressing the noticing of loyalty and humility (fidem et humilitatem), which often sufficed as the sole justification for the decision of the ruler.1 The conscientious fulfilling of duties, the humble petition and cautiously formulated expressions of expectations became transformed with time into a canon of expected behaviour, creating an effective background for the king’s actions and the whole of his reign. Both the real actions of the fideles, in the court, on a journey, in the course of official audiences, or during private meetings, as well as the literary descriptions of events which emphasise the nobility of intentions and present an idealised version of events, made of humility and modesty necessary attributes of the service of the king. The ruler was actually obliged to take note of and generously reward persons distinguished by such behaviour, while punishing and condemning the insolent and proud.2 Expression of humility in the presence of the king was part of the courtly way of life and created the context within which the virtue and

1 See the formulations of the letter to the nobility contained in the Codex of Marculf (Zeumer 1886: 120: Ergo dum et fidem et humilitatem tuam videmur habere conpertam […]). 2 See Fichtenau 1957: 45, Emperor Lothar III (1135): Sicut imperialis est auctoritatis superbos deicere, contumacibus contraire, sic eius magnificentie et decoris est, humiles et devotos beneficiis attollere […]. Similarly ibid.: 177; Ruprecht Wittelsbach (1401): Nostrum Romanum decet imperium, cunctarum que nostre obediunt iussioni provinciarum paci providere, humiles et bene viventes exaltare, bonos premiare, iniquos punire […].

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majesty of a monarch was expressed.3 On the other hand, the justification of decisions taken under the influence of the behaviour of the petitioner gave the activities of the king an additional moral and political sense. The necessity to reward humility became one of the symbols of royal authority and entered the canon of the most desirable behaviours required of a monarch. This was a clear indication of the principles of good rule, and also a guideline for the whole reign that was begun at the moment of coronation.4 At the same time, the requirement to take note of and reward humility went together with the requirement to exercise mercy and demonstrate magnanimity. This allowed the presentation of the royal decision as a symptom of the approval of the correct, because submissive, attitudes of the subject who was seeking justice, and mercy directly from the ruler.5 The example of King David was often used as justification; this king had distinguished himself by his humble service to God, and because of this he achieved successes in his reign over the people who had been entrusted to him.6 The modesty of David, together with the wisdom of Solomon, the valour of Joshua, the piety of Moses, and the deep faith of Abraham were all examples to be followed.7 The requirement to value loyal and discreet service went along with the whole repertory of gestures which expressed the king’s magnanimity, greatness, and majesty. An instructive example is furnished by the chronicle of Orderic Vitalis, describing the history of the rule of the Norman dynasty. About 1063 Arnold of Échauffour, son of William Giroie, returned from Apulia to his homeland. In the past he had been deprived of the family fortune and was at this time attempting to gain the favour and regard of the duke of Normandy. Memory of the rebellion of his brother Robert was still alive. In revenge for the rebellion against him, Duke William II had severely punished the whole family, deprived it of its property and sentenced all its members to exile, both the leaders of the rebellion as well as their vassals. In his account of the whole affair, Orderic Vitalis emphasises both the anger of the ruler as well as his failure to carry out a

3 See the important remarks of Koziol 1992: 44–47 (The virtues of the Suppliant), 59–76 (The Act of Supplication). 4 See Jackson 1995: 60, 61 (Missa pro regibus), 107, 122. 5 Cf. Fichtenau 1957: 174 (1444), a typical justification for the granting of a privilege: Humilibus subditorum precibus, quo ab equitatis tramite non discordant, quotiens pro complemento iustitie consequendo nobil porriguntur […]. 6 On the subject of the use of the example of David in Carolingian ideology, see Mohr 1962: 51–69. 7 Jackson 1995: 258–259 (Ordo of 1200): quatinus predicti Abrahe fidelitate firmatus, Moysi mansuetudine fretus, Iosue fortitudine munitus, David humilitate exaltatus, Salomone sapientia decoratus. Cf. also: 181 (Ratold Ordo, end of the tenth century).

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full investigation to determine guilt before deciding on a sentence.8 For a long time, Arnold attempted to exact revenge for the damage done to his family, devastating the properties of his enemies and even managing, for a short time, to take back his castle of Échauffour from the hands of the duke. Later, however, he had to go to Apulia, where he obtained support from other rebels and had a chance to make a position for himself. At this point, however, at the time of the beginning of an invasion of Maine and Brittany, the duke of Normandy recalled him from his exile, in accordance with the advice of the council of elders (consilio seniorum).9 Arnold hurried to the duke immediately, bringing for the emperor a gift of costly robes and asked for the return of his confiscated heritage. In return he obtained a proposition of a truce, the return of his lost property and a guarantee of free movement in the whole territory of the principality without any restrictions. In a short account of the meeting, the chronicler described both the presentation of the valuable gift as well as the deep humility and great respect shown by the former rebel.10 In all certainty these were supposed to ease the path to reaching an agreement and obtaining the favours of the ruler. The duke, however, was not willing to achieve a full accord, and made use of the occasion to strengthen his political position and demonstrate the degree to which he exercised power. The chronicler did not hesitate to define the conditions of the understanding between them as empty and worth little, clearly surprised at the joy and naïvety of Arnold. The humble petition served to show the greatness and political skill of the ruler, and the attempt to obtain the favour of the duke became a public spectacle, demonstrating complete submission to the power of the monarch. In this case, the submission to the ruler led to the public humiliation of the vassal and the full triumph of the duke. The humble behaviour created a suitable situation, enabling the ruler to demonstrate his full majesty and victorious power, which was to be seen and accepted by all the elite observing it. The attitude of the tributary allowed the demonstration of superiority and domination, which emphasised the full power and the regaining of supremacy. The duke, recalling his vassal from exile, showed both his power as well as his understanding, but above all he was in control of the situation and a victor who thereby effectively strengthened his authority. Another pattern of behaviour was the exhibition of perfect humility and an avoidance of domination at any cost. We find a good example of such behaviour in 8 Chibnall 1983: 90: Animosus autem dux plus aequo irae frena relaxans praecipuos milites Rodulfum de Toenia et Hugonem de Grentemaisnilio atque Ernaldum de Excalfoio et barones eorum exhereditavit, et sine probabilibus culpis diu exulare coegit. 9 Ibid.: 104: Willelmus dux consilio seniorum statuit inter dissidentes proceres suos pacem firmare, et exules revocare. On the subject of the date of the beginning of the campaign, see Douglas 1964: 178; Fauroux 1961: 433. 10 Chibnall 1983: 122: Ernaldus de Excalfoio Willelmum ducem adiit, eique preciosissimam pallam praesentavit suamque ab ipso humiliter haereditatem requisivit.

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a ruler in a scene representing an idealised portrait of Duke Kazimierz the Just.11 The monarch was portrayed engaged in a game of dice with one of his nobles, when the bet was a huge amount of silver and victory depended on one last throw of the dice.12 The result was favourable for the duke and his opponent impulsively struck the ruler in the face, after which, taking advantage of the general commotion this caused, he immediately took flight. Soon, however, he was captured and brought before the ruler. The gathered councillors were unanimous in their categorical demand for the punishment of the offender by death, because in their judgement he had committed an offence against the ruler’s majesty. Then the duke stepped in and defended the accused, emphasising above all his own fault, since he had been careless to engage in a game where the result is reliant on luck alone. The ruler expressed his gratitude for the lesson he had learnt from fortune and granted a pardon to the accused, forgave him, and accepted him back into his favour, and at the end generously rewarded him with gifts.13 Kazimierz behaved magnanimously and mercifully, setting an example to be followed which was in accord with the best patterns of the ideal ruler who should display his own modesty. This was in accord with a canon of behaviour in which there was no place for pride and which enabled the attaining of the prize of salvation from the King of Kings.14 This same type of emphasis on the need to “look after the little man” was also expressed in the “Mirrors of Princes”, popular handbooks on the means of good governance.15 The advice they contain is based on a similar scenario, in which a fear of God and fulfilling the teachings of the Church were supplemented by the instruction to do justice and preserve humility, forbidding the raising of one subject above another.16 This allowed the achievement of moral perfection and the possibility of having a long and effective rule. Humility became a distinguishing factor of character and at the same time an essential component of the ideal state and the rule over it. It entered the canon of requirements for a wise and blessed reign, while

11 Plezia 1994: lib. IV, cap. 5. 12 A characterisation of the Duke and a discussion of the scene with the dice game can be found in: Kürbis 2001: 75. 13 Plezia 1994: lib. IV, cap. 5, (p. 141). In summary the duke clearly expresses his gratitude to Jan that he played dice with him: Grates ergo ingentes Johanni, cuius gratia nihil amodo levitati, nihil casibus ultro fortuitis de me ulterius permitto. Humility was called the “nourisher of virtue” (nutrix virtutum) in this work. Cf. Liman 1976: 96, 101–102. 14 We find a discussion of the virtue of humility as the opposite to pride in the work of Kwiatkowski (2006: 274–280). 15 On the topic of the speculum principis, see Berges 1938: 3–8. For the Carolingian period, the problem was discussed by Anton 1968 and recently by Fałkowski 2008a. 16 Dubreucq 1995: 186: Adtende quod timor Dei et custodia praeceptorum eius et humilitas quae non patitur eum extollere super fratres suos et iustitiae rectitudo non solum regem, sed et filios eius longo faciet regnare tempore.


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for the ruler’s subjects humilitas regis meant the possibility of obtaining merciful and just protection, as well as true forgiveness of the ruler. This is confirmed by the biographies of pious and God-fearing monarchs, whose biographies became the medium not only for the presentation of an idealised picture of a ruler, but also for creating a long list of examples of behaviour to be imitated. The history of Robert the Pious, the second Capetian on the French throne, for example, allows us to follow the manner in which the gesta regis turns into a hagiographic story written according to classical Biblical exemplars. Ending his account of the deeds of the king, Helgaud de Fleury recalled his love of giving alms. The ruler ordered his residences scattered throughout the kingdom to give out bread and wine to a thousand paupers.17 Also during Lent he commanded the distribution of fish, bread and wine, and on Easter Thursday personally distributed food to the poor, who fell on their knees before him. After the meal, and in preparation for the Mass, he removed his costly robes, replaced them with a hair-shirt and, after the gathering of 160 clerics, personally washed their feet and wiped them with his own hair.18 On another occasion, during a meeting with the bishops, Robert noticed that one of them was sitting on too high a chair and his legs were dangling in the air. Through his goodness of heart he got up and started looking round for a suitable footstool which he found and then himself placed under the feet of the bishop, The humility displayed by the king aroused the huge surprise and admiration of the whole gathering of clergy and noblemen.19 The meekness of the king became evidence of his exemplary piety, and at the same time became one of the characteristics qualifying him for rule.20 In the Medieval vision of an ideal state, the virtue of humility created the standards of behaviour which applied both to the ruler and those around him, as well as 17 Helgaud de Fleury: Vie de Robert le Pieux (Bautier 1965: 102). The author places this event in 1032, mistakenly stating that it was in this same year that the king died. In reality, Robert the Pious died in 1031, and the mistake arose perhaps from a desire to place the death of Robert closer to a the 1000th anniversary of the death of Christ which would have fallen in 1033. The intentions of the author have been reconstructed by Carozzi 1980. 18 Helgaud de Fleury: Vie de Robert le Pieux (Bautier 1965: 104): Post mensam vero, preparans se ad Dei servicium, rex humilis ponebat vestimenta sua, indutus ad carnem cilicio, adjunctoque clericorum collegio CLX et eo amplius numero, ad exemplum Domini eorum pedes lavans capillis capitis sui tergens. 19 Ibid.: 78: Colloquium cum episcopis sui regni habens rex humilis; vidit quendam eorum, mole carnis gravatum, pedes suos dependere ab alto. Pietate ductus, a longe querens subpedaneum, reperit unum; illud tanto pontifici offerre non recusavit et sub pedibus eius ponere dedignatus non est. In the article of Sarah Hamilton (1997), we find an analysis of the penance of the king described by the chronicler according to the pattern created by Bishop Ambrose, giving the example of King David doing penance after sending away his wife Bathsheba. 20 Cf. the wording of the document of Hugo, Count of Mans, regnante Roberto humili rege, after: Pfister 1885: 385. An inspiring analysis of the call to imitate the humility of Christ is given by Deshman 1980: 391–394.

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the whole of his subject people. Theoretical considerations, so often pushed to one side during the exercise of power in the real world, formed, however, a canon of principles which allowed the moral assessment of public life and defined practical guidelines for the exercise of power. To the degree that the ruler had the right to demand behaviour expressing humility from his subjects, he was, by the same token, obliged to express his humility only with regard to God.21 At the same time the monarch had to be efficient in achieving the planned political aims. His personal characteristics and cultivation of virtues were indeed to aid in the fulfilling of the royal mission and lead to the success of his rule. Let us examine a few cases where the king was not able to retain a distance to events and was unable to rule from the height of his majesty. It sometimes happened that events took a turn which meant that the ruler had to agree to his own humiliation to a degree that went far beyond the virtue of modesty and humility. We will first analyse two examples from ancient history, in which one – King David – was very well known in the whole of medieval Europe, while the other – King Priam – was better known in the Byzantine world. The behaviour of Priam, humbly begging for mercy after the loss of his son, is an example of the severe humbling of a ruler in the face of a crisis in his state. The Trojan king, without regard for the hostility of his enemies and the dangers that faced him, left the besieged town in order to buy back Hector’s body and give him a suitable funeral.22 Thanks to the aid of Hermes he reached the Greek camp undetected, and entered the tent of Achilles when the leader of the Achaeans was feasting with his companions.23 He went up to Achilles and knelt before him, grasping his legs, and in the gesture of a supplicant began kissing his hands. Then tearfully he offered rich gifts and requested the body of his son. Even the Greek warriors listening to his emotional speech were moved to tears. In his reply Achilles could not hide his admiration for the courage and determination of the old man, but also remarked on his painful humiliation and the heavy burden of a father who had lost his sons. The Achaeans accepted the riches offered to them and released the body of Hector to the Trojan. The visit of the king ended in a feast, before which Priam took advantage of the hospitality offered and had a sleep. He explained that he had spent many of the previous days without sleep in his deep mourning, and partaking of rituals such as smearing himself with filth. Priam was again led undetected from the 21 Koziol 1992: 166–173, correctly points out the continued maintenance of humility with regard to the monarch as a condition of the maintenance of the divine order in the kingdom. On the other hand, the chronicle of Helgaud of Fleury presents rather the desired “ideal state” of a monarch. 22 A good introduction to the analysis of this part of the work is Macleod (1982), esp. 16–35 and the commentary 120–146. See also Richardson & Kirk 1993: 314–348. 23 An inspiring analysis of this scene with the emphasis on the suffering of both heroes can be found in: Schein 1984: 158–163.


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Greek camp by Hermes, who also allowed the body of Hector to be taken unnoticed. The returning king was greeted from the walls and gates by crowds of defenders who mourned over the deceased and paid homage to the ruler. Despite the risk he had taken and the public humiliation, Priam did not lose his royal majesty and was treated with the deepest respect by both his enemies as well as his own subjects when he returned to the city. While it is true that Achilles accepted the proposition of a ransom and treated it as a chance to increase his own wealth, he acknowledged the authority of the king of the Trojans without reservation and in no way attempted to undermine it.24 Not only did he agree to render up the body of the conquered enemy, but he also offered his hospitality to Priam as a guest and proposed a long truce. These negotiations took place in the shadow of death and the approaching unavoidable disaster for all the heroes, when the feeling of obligation towards the dead and obedience towards the gods required the demonstration of respect towards petitioners.25 The public gesture of the deepest humility and relying on the generosity of the enemy did not disgrace the monarch, even though it was connected with the risk of ridicule, brutal refusal, and even some new humiliation.26 The monarch was driven by his obligations towards the dead and his intentions were clear and universally understood. At the same time, the ruler of Troy heeded the advice of Hermes concerning the way in which he should present his request. These indications concerned the utilisation of the old ritual of supplication (hiketeia) which required falling to the knees, and also clearly referring to the ancestors of the person to whom the request was addressed.27 Priam became a supplicant king who was fulfilling his obligations towards his son, in the same way as he did towards all his subjects who were defending his town. Emotions, however, were subject to the strict principles of ritual, which regulated not only the manner of behaviour in the course of the meeting and the first reactions, but also determined the decisions taken and further results.28 At the moment when Priam admitted that he was doing things which were completely incomprehensible and without precedent, for example kissing the hands that had killed his sons, emotions began to dominate. The only possibility of controlling them was

24 In a similar spirit, Zanker 1994: 116. 25 Kakrides 1949: 105. Cf. remarks on the topic of the acceptance of death by Achilles, Griffin 1980: 191. 26 Redfield (1975) drew attention to the fact that the behaviour of Priam was exceptionally shocking “on the boundary of the breaking of a taboo”. 27 See the commentary of Richardson & Kirk 1993: 320. 28 Cf. Adkins 1972: 10–21. See the interesting discussion on the topic of the system of values which applied in Homeric society and the differentiation of “the world of literature” from “the real world” which took place in the Journal of Hellenic Studies between A. A. Long, and A. W. H. Adkins (Long 1970; Adkins 1971).

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to strictly follow the rules of the ritual which defined the manner in which both sides would behave.29 The Trojan king took on responsibility for the post-mortem fate of all the warriors he led, which means he was obliged to maintain their good memory, which would accompany them after death. Priam was fulfilling his obligations to his warriors to the full and his behaviour was related to participation in the last honours that were the due of all Trojans. The rejection of the right of the dead to a proper funeral was equal to denying that their deaths were heroic, and that they were unworthy of being regarded as heroes.30 It was for this reason that Priam had to beg for the return of the body of his son, and could not retreat even in the face of being exposed to the risk of humiliation and disdain. Let us note that despite his behaviour, unsuited to the majesty of a monarch, he did not lose the respect of his subjects, and gained that of his enemies. His deferential behaviour and his placing himself at the mercy of his enemies resulted from his acceptance of the responsibility to rescue the fame of the dead. His behaviour suited the frames of reference of the heroic code, which required personal sacrifice and at the same time full submission to the will of the gods. Despite the protection of Hermes, the mission was exceptionally risky, since the angered Achilles could behave in an unpredictable manner to such a degree that Apollo began to worry about him. The Greek leader ceased to observe the customary norms and his behaviour began to resemble that of a wild beast.31 The risk that Priam was taking was therefore huge, and the king took it in order to fulfil the mission of a ruler who cared for his son as well as for all the fallen Trojan warriors. The dramatic act of self-humiliation, leading almost to selfdestruction, was part of the role of a leader, who in the name of the acceptance of responsibility placed his personal honour and dignity at risk. At the same time, disregarding his public image, he attempted at all costs to rescue the memory of Hector, and in his efforts attempted to be as effective as possible. On the other hand, however, Achilles, exercising mercy towards the old man and resigning from mere revenge, gained the human characteristics of a hero and the full favour of the gods.32

29 See Gould 1973: 94–96. Cf. the polemic with the definition of the act of supplication among the ancient Greeks as a formalised group of words and behaviours in Crotty (1994: 89–104). 30 The social aspect of the death of the warrior is emphasized by Vernant (1996: 478). On the topic of the death of Hector and the behaviour of Achilles, see Vernant 2004: 82–84. The necessity of maintaining the funerary rituals was convincingly presented by Vernant (1989: 81–89). 31 Cairns 1993: 118–119, 132. Cf. the remarks of von Erffa (1937: 36) which go even further. The threat to the future fate of Hector, who, without a funeral pyre, would not be able to pass through the gates of Hades, is emphasized by Vernant (1982: 67–71). 32 In the showing of mercy and respect Achilles heeded the warnings of Apollo and by this means cleansed himself, see Zanker 1994: 120.


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The description of the struggle for the throne of the king – prophet David in the Book of Samuel in the Bible gives us another thought-provoking example.33 The handsome and valiant Absolom had mutinied against his father, and, obtaining the support of the whole populace, had forced him to flee Jerusalem. David left the town at night and – together with the whole court – fled to the desert.34 Absolom began to rule in Jerusalem, and gathered all the warriors and started to prepare the final defeat of his father. In a battle fought in the forest of Ephraim, the servants and courtiers of David came face to face with the entire army of Israel. Against all earlier expectations, the victory was obtained by the exiled king, who had efficiently prepared his forces and had exact information on the plans of the enemy. After the defeat, Absolom attempted to escape through the forest on a mule, but during his flight through the thicket, his long hair became tangled in the branches of the trees and he hung in the air, completely defenceless. It was then that he was killed by Joab, one of the leaders of the victorious army. When David learnt of the death of his son, he went to the top of a high tower and cried out loudly: “And for the whole army the victory that day was turned into mourning […] The men stole into the city that day as men steal in who are ashamed when they flee from battle”.35 Seeing the mourning of the king and the reactions of the divisions returning from the battlefield, Joab accused David of disdain and hatred for his own defenders. In a long and highly emotional speech he demanded that the old ruler pay more respect to the returning army and publicly express joy at the victory gained. He also demanded an expression of approval and gratitude for the saving of his life and crown. Joab stated: “I see that you would be pleased if Absolom were alive today and all of us were dead. Now, however, you should get up and go out and speak warmly to your servants. I swear by the Lord that if you do not go out, not a man will be left with you by nightfall. This would be worse for you than any of the calamities that have befallen you from your youth until now.” So the king got up and took his seat in the gateway. When the men were told, “The king is sitting in the gateway,” they all came before him”.36 The king did not want to rejoice, since he did not treat the victory as his own success. His despair over the loss of his son did not allow him to rejoice over the regaining of power, and led to a situation in which the efforts of his supporters and faithful collaborators were completely ignored. The warriors and their leaders felt betrayed and deserted by the ruler in whose defence they had acted. Let us note that 33 The biography of King David is reconstructed by McKenzie (2000), the evaluation of the Biblical evidence esp. on 25–46. 34 2 Samuel 15, 16–30. 35 2 Samuel 19, 3–4. See McKenzie 2000: 161–169. The author noted that the public demonstration of grief would have removed responsibility from the king for the death of his son, since Joab was carrying out his orders (169). 36 2 Samuel 19, 7–9. The revolt of Absolom and the escape of David, ibid.: 15–18.

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the king was not disgraced by his dethroning, nor by the withdrawal of support of most of his subjects. Neither was his flight from Jerusalem and loss of his property (wealth) the cause of an erosion of authority. David escaped barefoot into the desert and climbed the Mount of Olives barefoot, which denoted public penance and the acceptance of his own guilt for the mistakes that had been imputed to him.37 Despite this, his faithful servants and supporters did not leave him, and all the time they had accepted his majesty. Only the public display of his despair over the loss of Absolom led to the strong disapproval of his subjects. The behaviour of the king was interpreted as undignified and a complete loss of majesty, which led to immediate disgrace, since it was disloyal to his warriors and all the courtiers who had remained with him. The supporters of the king expected joy over the victory and proof of the king’s approval. Instead of satisfaction with the achievement of triumph, however, the king was dismissive of the efforts and sacrifice of his supporters, and only demonstrated deep grief at the death of his son.38 This must have created the impression of the rejection of his subjects and would have led to unavoidable discredit. The king, on being accused of deserting his subjects, had little time to face up to the challenge and prove that he was able to rule in accordance with generally accepted norms. In order to achieve this, he sat in the chamber above the town gate and all his subjects could see that the monarch was still the leader of his people. The conflict with Joab did not last long, but the rebuilding of the authority of the monarch required a rapid and most suitable reaction, and above all a demonstration of the capability of ruling and the identification of higher aims.39 King David publicly accepted criticism and immediately revised his behaviour. Even though he had the authority that could disregard the highest laws of Israel, he could not escape the results of a loss of face.40 His position was saved by a ritual gesture of the confirmation of the power he held and the reacceptance of his responsibilities. We have many examples of the problems rulers had in transferring power from the situation of Louis the Pious, the last years of whose reign were full of conflict with his sons. None the less, the successive mutinies of Pepin and Lothar, the dangerous alliances between all three brothers against their father, and the subse37 See the interesting analysis of public appearances barefoot by Schreiner (2001), on the subject of David’s walking barefoot 100–101. 38 De Robert (1999) emphasises the suffering of David, unable to control his own children and experiencing a dramatic situation in his own family. 39 The behaviour of David after the betrayal of Queen Bathsheba gives us another example of the public apology and penance of the king, Cf. Becher 2001: 35. See Ambroise de Milan: Apologie de David (Hadot & Cordier 1977: 92), where the penance of David is mentioned and cited as an example of confession of guilt and the doing of penance that is worthy of imitation. 40 Gordon emphasizes that “the king was the highest court of appeals and could even reverse the basic laws of society” (1965: 173).


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quent military campaigns conducted on a large scale did not differ to any great degree from many earlier wars over the division of kingdoms and the degree of power that would be exercised. The changing coalitions, the alliances with the nobility, and the gaining of the broad support of the elites became part of the political game within which the whole imperial family was engaged.41 While it is true that the chronicler noted that, as a result of the fratricidal wars, the whole order of the state was threatened and the res publica fell increasingly into decline, it was still possible to overcome successive crises and the situation returned to normal.42 A watershed and shock for the whole Empire, however, was the public expiation of Louis the Pious in 833, done in the sight of the court, the gathered emissaries, and, in effect, the whole ruling elite. Nithard, attempting to maintain discretion, wrote – without entering into the details – that the Emperor was for the second time deprived of honour, while his subjects twice lost their ruler. Louis was then in the hands of Lothar, being held in the monastery of Compiègne, where he lost not only real power and freedom, but also his honour.43 Such a strong formulation on the part of external observers may seem surprising, since imprisonment, especially at the hands of the heir to the throne, should not be a threat to life nor diminish personal honour. But, as the chronicler’s account suggests, the emperor had lost his ability to rule. We are dealing here, however, with a situation without precedent, since in the light of the law it was impossible to deprive Louis the Pious of his Imperial honours, and yet despite that, he was rendered completely powerless and compromised.44 Let us attempt to analyse this clear case of the destruction of the public image of the emperor, which not only made possible the carrying out of this coup d’etat, but above all the depriving of the highest ruler of the orbis Europae of his authority and majesty.45

41 Cf. Nelson 1990: 150–159. 42 Nithard, Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux, lib. I, cap. 3 (henceforth: Nithard): Res autem publica, quoniam quisque cupiditate illectus sua querebat, cotidie deterius ibat. [...] eam (sc. rem publicam) pro viribus erigere ac fovere vellet maximeque cultum divinum, quo omnis ordo tuetur ac regitur (Lauer 1926: 12). For a description of the situation cf. McKitterick 1983: 134–136. 43 Nithard, lib. I, cap. 4: Occurebat insuper etiam filiis verecundia et penitudo quod patrem bis honorem privarent, universe plebi quod bis imperatorem dimiserant (Lauer 1926: 16). On the topic of the manner in which Nithard presented events, see Nelson 1985. 44 The public expiation of Louis the Pious has been the subject of many and detailed studies, among which we should mention the most significant: Halphen 1950; Noble 1980, with comments on the public penance which he had earlier carried out in Attigny in 822 (esp. 308– 314); and recently, de Jong 1992. 45 The course of events in the period from 833 to 834 has been carefully presented by Boshof 1996.

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The unsuccessful spring military expedition against the forces of all three sons ended in defeat in June 833 on the field of Rothfeld,46 later named the Field of Lies, since it was here that the emperor’s most faithful supporters deserted him.47 They were persuaded to do this by false promises and arguments to such a degree that they were overcome by anger and hastened to the enemy’s tents, where they united themselves to bring about the defeat of the monarch.48 The political agitation against Louis was conducted with exceptional intensity and was very effective.49 The chronicler describes in detail the shock of the emperor and his few remaining supporters, who, on awakening the next day, discovered how few of them had remained. The ruler was concerned for the safety of his fideles and decisively advised against going to the camps of his sons.50 The scene of the farewells exchanged between the old monarch and his supporters was written with pathos and in a manner depicting the drama of the moment. The old emperor sent away his remaining faithful supporters in order to avoid war and out of a feeling of responsibility for their fate. Emotions took precedence over bonds of loyalty and collaboration, and fear of repression and foreseeable revenge of the victors convinced the few who remained to seek safety among their friends and vassals.51 It was in such circumstan46 Annales de Saint-Bertin (henceforth: ASB ): Denique filii eius coeptum peragere cupientes, in pago Helisaciae, in loco qui dicitur Rotfelth, id est rubeus-campus se coniunxerunt (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 9); remarks on the manner of presenting events, in Ganshof 1949. 47 Thegani vita Hludowici imperatoris (henceforth: Thegan), cap. 42 (Rau 1968: 215–256), lines 10–12): magnum campum qui usque hodie nominatur Campus-mendacii, ubi plurimorum fidelitas extincta est (ibid.: 238, lines 10–12). The nocturnal defection of the supporters of the emperor to the camp of his sons must have made a great impression on the participants of the meeting and all those following events from a far, as the chronicler notes, quadam nocte pars maxima dimisit eum, et tentoria eorum relinquentes, pervenerunt ad filios (ibid.: 238, lines 21–22). 48 Nithard, lib. I, cap. 4: variis affectionibus populum, ut a patre deficeret, filii compellunt (Lauer 1926: 16). The Annals of Saint-Bertin describe these events in the same spirit, ASB: pravis persuasionibus et falsis promissionibus populum qui cum domno imperatore venerat decoeperunt, ita ut omnes illum dimitterent (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 9). 49 Vita Walae, MGH Scriptores, vol. II, ed. G.H. Pertz, Hanover 1829, (henceforth: Vita Walae): cap. 18: Caesarem solum relinquerent cum Iustina sua, et ad filium, contra quem venerant et firmarent, circumcirca, quasi pulli sub alas, tota in nocte convolarent, et mane castra metati, unus populus appareret (ibidem: 565, lines 41–43). There also exists a newer edition of this Life known as the Epitaphium Arsenii, prepared by Dümmler (1900). On the subject of this source see Wattenbach & Levison & Löwe 1957: 340–343 and Weinrich 1963: 7–10. Recently Ganz 1990. 50 Thegan, cap. 42: In crastinum aliqui qui remanserunt, venerunt ad imperatorem, quibus praecepit dicens: Ite, ait, ad filios meos. Nolo ut ullus propter me vitam aut membra dimittat. At illi infusi lacrimis recedebant ab eo (Rau 1968: 238, lines 22–25) 51 ASB, 9: Nam aliqui ex illis in quos eorum ira maxime seviebat abscesserunt et in locis amicorum ac fidelium se contulerunt (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 833).


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ces that, during the confrontation at Rothfeld, Lothar obtained all the royal power for himself and imprisoned his father. Empress Judyta was sent to Tortona in Italy, while the youngest son, Charles, was sent to a monastery in Prüm.52 The final decisions were taken by the older brother Lothar, who allowed Louis the German and Pepin to return to their kingdoms, sent the Pope to Rome, but took the Emperor with him to Soissons and placed him in the monastery of St Médard.53 Despite the effectiveness of the measures undertaken, the change in government was treated as an expression of disloyalty and even an act of treason committed against the legal monarch.54 The next gathering of the Franks took place in the autumn of 833 in Compiègne, and it was there, first in the general assembly of all the warriors, and then in the presence of the court and the highest nobles, that the next part of the drama took place.55 At the appointed location, in front of all those gathered there, ceremonies of gift-giving and making new pledges of loyalty were organised.56 Despite the presence of Louis the Pious, who had been brought out of the monastery,57 Lothar presided over both ceremonies and occupied the position of the supreme ruler and accepted the homage of all his subjects. This meant the creation of links of submission and personal loyalty between the Franks and the new ruler, and also his reaching for the attributes of power reserved exclusively for the head of the dynasty and the supreme ruler.58 In both real and symbolic terms, this was a clear and universally understood expression of the taking of the throne. There was, however, 52 Nithard, lib. I, cap. 4 (Lauer 1926: 16); ASB (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 9–10); Thegan, cap. 42 (Rau 1968: 238). 53 ASB: Hlotharius, arrepta potestate regia, apostolicum Romam, Pippinum in Aquitaniam et Hludovvicum in Baioariam redire permisit; ipse vero patrem secum [...] ad Suessionis civitatem perducens, illic eum in monasterio Sancti Medardi in eadem custodia reliquit (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 9); Anonymi vita Hludowici imperatoris (Rau 1968: 257–381) (henceforth: Astronomus), cap. 48: in monasterio sancti Medardi patrem sub arte custodia esse praecepit (ibid.: 346, lines 10–11). See McKitterick 1983: 133; where the instrumental use of the stay of the Pope (who came against the advice of the majority of the Frankish bishops) is emphasized. 54 See Astronomus, cap. 48: locum, qui ab eo, quod ibi gestum est, perpetua est ignominia nominis notatus, ut vocetur Campus-mentitus. Quia enim hi qui imperatori fidem promittebant, mentiti sunt, locus in quo id contigit, testis nequitiae in suo nomine remansit (Rau 1993: 344). 55 Lothar came to Compiègne 1 October 833, ASB, 10 (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 10), Astronomus, cap 48 (Rau 1968: 346). 56 The political and symbolic function of the assembly was emphasized by Ganshof & Sondheimer 1971: 265. 57 Astronomus, cap. 48: autumni tempore, sicut consitutum erat, patrem secum ducens Compendium venit (Rau 1968: 346). 58 ASB: Ibique episcopi, abbates, comites et universus populus convenientes, dona annualia ei [Lotarowi] praesentaverunt fidelitatemque promiserunt (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 10).

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a problem in that the emperor was still alive, and even though he was kept in isolation, he still held the highest office in the state. It should be emphasised that, with regard to the meeting between Louis the Pious and his sons, the chronicler only mentions the achievement by Lothar of the title of king (arrepta potestate regia). This was a clear suggestion that, while the real power had indeed passed into the hands of the son, there remained doubts about the matter of the imperial title, which assured the superior authority. At the summit at Compiégne, Lothar therefore had to accomplish the symbolic act of depriving Louis the Pious of the dignity of emperor, and to this end a special scheme of action was prepared, which was to throw doubt on the highest level of hierarchy of the state.59 It was presumably for this reason that Louis the Pious was brought to the autumn gathering of the Franks. Firstly, in the organisation of the meeting, the old emperor was deprived of the traditional function (coming from the tribal period) of chief and leader of the whole populace, who at the annual review of the armies received a gift from individual warriors, whole clans, and the officials whom he had appointed. The second function that the old ruler lost was the right to demand the loyalty of his fideles.60 Lothar had first come to an alliance with his brothers, then taken control of the army, and then the administration and royal council, bringing the nobles over to his side, and was now gradually but systematically reaching for the symbolic attributes of the highest position.61 During the meeting in Compiègne, an emissary of the Byzantine emperor arrived. He had originally been sent to Louis the Pious, but owing to the political changes that had taken place in the Frankish state during the time that he had been on his journey, he presented his letters and gifts to Lothar. Both of the extant accounts of this audience contain the clear suggestion that the son had taken on the role of the supreme ruler, even though it was not totally clear whether he was authorised to represent the monarchy.62 This was also emphasised by Nithard, who 59 G. Althoff correctly observed that many ceremonies were arranged in order to check whether the determined order of dignity was still being respected, see Althoff 1997b: 279. 60 It is not clear whether Louis the Pious was allowed onto the field where the gathering took place, but even if he did not appear there, it was certainly known that he was not far away, in a monastery or palace. Cf. Astronomus, cap. 48 (Rau 1968: 346) (see footnote 57), also Thegan, cap. 43: Hlutharius vero duxit secum patrem ad Compendium palatium, et ibi valde adflixit eum cum episcopis et ceteris nonnullis (Rau 1968: 238, lines 31–32). 61 Witnesses of these events did not hide their embarrassment at the manner in which the ruler was deprived of his power, Astronomus, cap. 49: Miseratio tamen huiusce rei et talis rerum permutatio, exceptis auctoribus, omnes habebat (Rau 1968: 346, lines 21–22). 62 ASB: legati ex Constantinopoli venientes qui ad patrem fuerant destinati ad Hlotharium pervenerunt eique epistolas et munera detulerunt (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 10). This event did not have any effect on the opinion of the author of the annals, who continued to name Louis the Pious as emperor. Also Astronomus, cap. 49: legatio Constantinopolitani imperatoris [...] ad patrem missa occurit, munera sibi deputata obtulit, patri missa subtraxit.


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drew attention to the first conflict between the brothers, who were unwilling to accept the political supremacy of Lothar, nor his position as the superior ruler.63 His rights to the throne were not questioned, but his brutal treatment of his father provoked protest, as did his open reaching for power over the whole empire.64 In a recapitulation of events written down a few years later, a clear differentiation is made between the power Lothar had received as a result of the recommendation of Louis the Pious, and his right to the power of the supreme ruler over the whole state, which was not so obvious to the Frankish elite.65 His role was defined as being a designated co-ruler (consors), who was to help his father and collaborate with his brothers. At the same time, hesitation and doubts concerning the legality of the process appeared throughout the whole meeting, from its very beginning, and provoked loud comments or refusals to swear an oath of allegiance.66 The new monarch required a symbolic act to legitimise his newly-gained position, and emphasising his right to exercise power across the whole empire. The rituals confirming his new powers were used only during the autumn gathering of the Franks and formed the next step in the strengthening of his power. The second part of the plan envisaged a separate sitting in the palace basilica in Compiègne, at which the whole Frankish elite was gathered.67 The atmosphere was one of a brutal attack on the powerless old emperor. The bishops, supporters of Lothar, presented the deposed ruler with a long series of serious accusations. An especially disgraceful role was played by Ebo, the Archbishop of Reims, who

63 64 65

66 67

Quam ille licet ad patrem missam, ad se tamen venientem suscepit, audivit, traguediamque reportantem pene inauditam remisit (Rau 1968: 346, 15–19). Nithard, lib. I, cap. 4: Nam Pippinus et Lodhuwicus, videntes quod Lodharius universum imperium sibi vindicare illosque deteriores efficere vellet, graviter ferebant (Lauer 1926: 16). The manner in which Louis the Pious treated Lothar and the political meaning of the regnum Italiae in the framework of the empire was presented by Jarnut 1990. Vita Walae, cap. 18: ab omnibus qui convenerant, adiudicatum est, quia imperium tam preclarum et gloriosum de manu patris ceciderat, ut augustus Honorius (sc. Lotar) qui heres erat, etiam consors factus et procreatus a patre et ab omnibus, eum relevaret et acciperet. [...] suscepit, nescio quo iudicio, patrem ducens secum, totius monarchiam imperii (Pertz 1829: 565). Let us note the reserve of the author who clearly indicates that he does not know who and in what manner entrusted the superior power to Lothar. The allusive and sometimes obscure style of the author should however be emphasized, following the remarks of Ganz 1990: 538. Astronomus, cap. 49: In eodem conventu cum multi insimularentur devotionis in patrem, defectionis in filium, quidam verbis simplicibus, quidam iuramentis obiecta diluerunt (Rau 1993: 346, lines 19–21). Agobardi cartula de poenitentia ab imperatore facta, in: MGH, Capitularia, eds. A. Boretius, W. Krause, vol. II, Hanover 1897, (henceforth: Cartula): 56, lines 14–15: conventus extitit ex reverentissimis episcopis et magnificentissimis viris illustribus, collegio quoque abbatum et comitum promiscuaeque aetatis et dignitatis populo praesidente serenissimo Hlothario imperatore et Christi domini amatore;

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presented a long list of false accusations.68 In this way a public show trial began, which assessed the rule of Louis the Pious and especially the monarch’s ability to rule. It was led by Lothar, who was treated as the emperor with full power, and who, as was scrupulously recorded, had fulfilled that function for four months, which means that the beginning of his rule in that role was counted from the battle of Rothfeld.69 The bishops produced a statement that they had observed many bad things that had recently been happening in the Empire and had caused scandal in the Church and the collapse of the state.70 The bishop of Lyon, Agobard, was even more severe in his judgement of the rule of Louis the Pious – he cast doubt on the very survival of the state in the near future, owing to the incompetence and indolence of the old emperor.71 The report and discussion of the state of the kingdom concentrated on the indication of mistakes and unhappy events which had affected the state in recent years. The main aim of the debate, however, was the public accusation of Louis the Pious and his complete ridiculing as emperor and leader. The statement of the bishops was devastating for the old emperor, since in their preamble they had already stated that while he had initially acted in accord with the divine teachings and imitated his father Charlemagne, order had been maintained in the state. Only his imprudence and carelessness in exercising his rule had led to such shame and disrepute in the whole Empire, that this not only saddened its friends, but exposed it to the ridicule of its enemies.72 The old emperor had completely neglected his responsibilities, and 68 Thegan, cap. 44: Elegerunt tunc unum inpudicum et crudelissimum, qui dicebatur Ebo, Remensis episcopus (Rau 1968: 240, lines 1–2); ASB: In quo conventu multa in dominum imperatorem crimina confinxerunt, inter quos Ebo, Remorum episcopus, falsarum obiectionum incentor extiterat (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 10). On the subject of Ebo, see McKeon 1974. 69 The judgement in the basilica in Compiègne took place at the end of October, so about four months after Rothfeld. In the context of opinions of the permanence of the rule of Lothar, we are led to wonder about the motives for bringing the old ruler to Compiègne, since the Franks had already accepted the deposition of Louis the Pious. This was a result of the need for a ritual confirmation of the exercise of power by Lothar. 70 Episcoporum de poenitentia quam Hludowicus imperator professus est, relatio compendiensis, in: MGH Capitularia, eds. A. Boretius, V. Krause, vol. II, Hanover 1897, (henceforth: Relatio): 52, lines 32–34: Examinata quippe sunt multa, quae per negligentiam in hoc imperio contigerunt, quae ad scandalum ecclesiae et ruinam populi vel regni interitum manifestis indiciis pertinebant. Cf. the remarks of de Jong 1992: 36–38, on the subject of the meaning in those times of the term “scandal” and the disregard of the moral and ecclesiastical order it involved. 71 Cartula: vera necessitas, ut sollicite tractarent de periculo regni in praesenti et statu in futuro, quod regnum, quia iam diu nutabat et impellebatur ad ruinam per neglegentiam et, ut verius dicam, per ignaviam domni Hludovici venerandi quondam imperatoris (Boretius, Krause 1897: 56, lines 17–21). 72 Relatio: quamdiu idem princeps Deo studuit et paternis exemplis uti ac bonorum hominum consiliis acquiescere curavit, conservatum manserit, et quomodo in processu temporis, [...]


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as a result had in recent years brought almost total annihilation on the people subject to him. The conclusion of these statements was completely unequivocal and led to the short statement that for such great faults, by a just decision of God, Louis the Pious was deprived of the title of emperor.73 The final judgement was in accordance with expectations and according to the prepared plan. The sentence was confirmed by emissaries, together with a recommendation that he confess his guilt and save his soul.74 The right of the bishops to assess the behaviour of the ruler and his whole reign was in this period already completely accepted and was confirmed by practice in the first years of his rule.75 Nevertheless, it should be stated that the synod was transformed into a specially staged spectacle and those gathered there must have been aware of this. After reaching consensus the synod sent its decision to the old emperor in order to remind him of his sins, reprimand him, and provoke his repentance.76 During the next session in the basilica at Soissons, Louis the Pious humbled himself before Lothar and the most eminent people in the Empire and also the whole gathered congregation in the basilica. The ruler prostrated himself on the floor in front of the altar with the relics of the saints and in tears confessed aloud

73

74

75 75 76

per eius improvidentiam vel negligentiam in tantam venerit ignominiam et vilitatem, ut non solum amicis in moestitiam, sed etiam inimicis venerit in derisionem (Boretius, Krause 1897: 52, lines 41–45). One of the accusations was of complete incompetence in the leadership of the army, which for the Franks (still recalling the efficiency and martial talent of Charlemagne in this field) was a crushing blow. In this context we should remember the favourable remarks on the topic of the reforms of the army conducted by Louis the Pious, Ganshof 1971: 267. This is a good illustration of the instrumental manner in which the examples used in these accusations were treated. Relatio: idem princeps ministerium sibi commissum negligenter tractaverit et multa, quae Deo et hominibus displecebant, [...] novissime omnem populum sibi subiectum ad generalem interitum contraxerit et ab eo divino iustoque iudicio subito imperialis sit subtracta potestas (Boretius, Krause 1897: 52, lines 45–46, 53, lines 1–3). Let us stress the clear difference between the description speaking of the loss of potestatis regiae in the context of the events at Rothfeld and next, in the analysis of the meeting in Compiègne, which tells of the loss of potestatis imperialis. Relatio: per licentiam principis Lotharii legationem ad illum ex auctoritate sacri conventus mitteremus [...] quia potestate privatus erat terrena iuxta divinum consilium et ecclesiasticam auctoritatem, ne suam animam perderet (Boretius, Krause 1897: 53, lines 5–8). Astronomus also informs us of the absence of Louis, cap. 49 (Rau 1968: 346). Schieffer 1972: 333–370, esp. p. 354 drew attention to the still remembered precedent of the penance of Emperor Theodosius which had been demanded by Ambrose, bishop of Milan. This was recalled for example during the penance of Louis the Pious in Attigny in 822. Cartula, Boretius, Krause 1897: 56, line 25. Astronomus, cap. 49 drew attention to this: Adiudicatum ergo eum absentem et inauditum, nec confidentem neque convictum (Rau 1968: 346, lines 31–32).

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his sins.77 In a crowded church, he admitted that he had badly fulfilled his entrusted mission to rule, had caused conflict among his subjects, and by this offended God. Nobody dared address the penitent, apart from those to whom had been assigned the role of accusers.78 The confession of his guilt was presented to him in a document containing a long list of crimes and mistakes which were all described in detail and to which he successively personally confessed his guilt and begged for forgiveness Among the accusations was that of breaking the peace and the breaking of oaths which threatened the unity of the empire. Another sin was the organisation of unnecessary and completely useless military expeditions, which led to the spreading of violence and brigandage. In particular, Louis the Pious was found guilty of having led military campaigns during Lent and calling a gathering of the Franks at Easter time, somewhere at the edge of the empire. The recent division of the empire also aroused disapproval, since it was done without the establishment of a peace beforehand and threatened the well-being of the state. The bishops unanimously stressed that the empire’s subjects needed a leader who would guide them on the path to Salvation and be able to create a permanent peace.79 The ceremony was documented by the participants and a copy of this document was then presented to the new emperor. For the gathered listeners, there was no doubt that the judgement of guilt, the reprimand, and the public accusation led to the strengthening and benefit of the kingdom (ad commoditatem et soliditatem regni).80 Nevertheless, neither the trial, nor the loud and repeated admissions of mistakes committed were enough to close the proceedings. The final part of the ceremony consisted of depriving Louis the Pious of the symbolic attributes of power and majesty. The monarch was also required to surrender his military belt (cingulum militiae) and change his ceremonial imperial robes for those of a penitent.81 Those gathered at the meeting regarded this 77 Relatio: Veniens dominus Lodewicus [...] praesente Lothario filio eius eiusque proceribus atque totius populi generalitate, quotquot videlicet intra sui septum eadem continere potuit ecclesia, et prostratus in terrram super cilicium ante sancrosanctum altare confessus est coram omnibus: ministerium sibi commissum satis indigne tractasse et in eo multis modis Deum offendisse (Boretius, Krause 1897: 53, lines 23–33). The shedding of tears by a ruler were one method to show humility and submission, Althoff 1996. 78 ASB: liminibus ecclesiae pepulerunt, ita ut nullus cum eo loqui auderet nisi illi qui ad hoc fuerant deputati. (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 10). 79 Relatio: 54–55, esp. cap. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, the conclusion is at the end of the discussion: pro quibus et regni periclitatio et regis dehonestatio evidenter provenerat [...] cum debuisset esse eidem populo dux salutis et pacis (Boretius, Krause 1897: 55, line 16). See Moore 1996: 322–323, where the conclusions of the Paris synod of 829 defining the tasks of the monarchy in the realisation of the plans of God are described. 80 Cartula (Boretius, Krause 1897: 56, line 25). 81 Relatio: deinde cingulum militiae deposuit et super altare collocavit, et habitu saeculi se exuens habitum poenitentis per impositionem manuum episcoporum suscepit (Boretius, Krause: 55, line 28). The author of the royal annals, considerably more objective, openly


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as a complete admission of guilt and full penance, which they celebrated with prayer and the singing of psalms.82 Gerd Althoff has emphasised that the relinquishing of the military belt meant departing from the world, and the imposition of such a heavy penance would prevent his return to secular service.83 Karl Leyser and Mayke de Jong indicated that the confiscation of his weapons was connected with the loss of honourable capabilities, and was a form of sentence which signified the deprivation of his honour.84 Resignation from the wearing of the sword and belt also meant a resignation from knightly service, as well as leadership of the Frankish warriors. As Régine Le Jan indicates, it was equally significant as a retirement from any kind of public service, and concerned all knights and members of the elite.85 The ritual of disgrace was applied, and was probably known to all the participants of the meeting. Let us note, however, that in actual fact two different ceremonies took place in the church. The first was the deposition of the weapons on the altar, and the second was the donning of the penitential robes.86 We should also remember that, in the end, the old emperor was soon to be restored to power, and he regained the honour which it might have been thought had been lost forever. In the case of Louis the Pious, we are not dealing with the surrender of his weapons and their being left without any holders. The emperor did not abandon them, nor did he pass them on to his successor, Lothar. Instead he gave them to the altar of the martyrs and patrons of the church, saints Médard and Sebastian. The significance of this gesture was completely different from the ritual of humiliation and censure to which the organisers of the whole event presumably wanted to refer; the old emperor, in humility, confessed his guilt towards God and the Church, and then turned to the holy patrons of the kingdom and offered them his personal arms and

82 83 84

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speaks of the brutal pressure to which Louis the Pious was subjected in the course of the ceremonial penitence, ASB: Et tam diu illum vexaverunt quousque arma deponere habitumque mutare cogentes; (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 10). Cartula: deposita arma manu propria et ad crepidinem altaris proiecta, suscepit mente compuncta penitentiam publicam per manuum episcopalium impositionem cum psalmis et orationibus (Boretius, Krause: 57, line 12). Althoff 2003: 58–59. Leyser 1994: 62–65 presented many examples of the deprivation of arms as a punishment meaning a confiscation of the rights to fulfil public functions or hold positions of honour. Cf. Flori 1979: 215–217, who drew attention to the regulations of canon law which forbade serious sinners from bearing arms. Also de Jong 1992: 42, gave the example of King Wamba, dethroned in 680 after a public admission of guilt. Le Jan 2000: 300–303, where there is a reference to the conclusions of synods in which the matter of the loss of the cingulum militiae by all knights was discussed, independently of their position in the social hierarchy. This was clearly emphasised in several accounts, see Astronomus, cap. 49: ante corpus sancti Medardi confessoris et sancti Sebastiani martiris arma deponere, et ante altare ponere cogunt; pullaque indutum veste, adhibita magna custodia, sub tectum quoddam reddunt. (Rau 1968: 346, lines 32–34).

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the symbol of belonging among the knights of the realm. The emperor gave his cingulum militiae to the saints, emphasising his readiness to devote himself to the service of God. This did not mean, however, a dishonourable escape from responsibility, the designation of his first-born son as his successor, or the resignation from the throne on his behalf. Some of the observers of the events interpreted what they saw as the deprivation of his sword by force, against the will of the penitent, which was clearly shown by the aggressive and brutal character of the show trial of the defeated ruler.87 The ritual of the surrender of the knightly attributes to God was not equal in significance to the disgrace caused by the ceremony of the confiscation of weapons. The deposition of the sword on the altar was an act of honour and a highly-valued gesture, which was witness to the great responsibility of the vassal who passed his obligations on to the saints sitting at the side of the Creator. By these means, the ritual intended to disgrace the ruler was in part replaced and made harmless by a ceremony emphasising Louis’s close contacts with the saints who were the protectors of the state.88 A useful analogy comes from the actions of Margrave Gero, a trusted collaborator of Otto I who decided to retire from public life and about 963 set off on a pilgrimage to Rome.89 Thietmar in his chronicle gives the following account of his journey: “Gero, the defender of the fatherland, was deeply saddened by the death of his only son, the noble Siegfried. Going to Rome, the aged veteran laid his victorious arms before the altar of the Prince of the Apostles, St Peter”.90 Gero therefore applied the same ritual that we know from the story of Louis the Pious. He placed his sword in the care of a saint, not abandoning it, not resigning from his status as a knight and leader and not ending his service by a refusal to serve or by desertion. He ended his work in the service of the king in a symbolic manner as a deserving emeritus senex, who had decided that he would return to service as a knight under the leadership of the Prince of Apostles and patron of knighthood, should the need arise. An identical ritual was applied by Tankmar, the rebellious son of King Henry I, who in 935, escaping from a hopeless situation, took refuge in a church dedicated to St Peter. The division that was chasing him did not stay outside the doors of the 87 Thegan, cap. 44: Abstulerunt ei gladium a femore suo, iudicio servorum suorum induentes eum cilicio (Rau 1968: 240, lines 4–5). Let us emphasise the lack of agreement with the statement of Halphen 1950: 61, concerning the full agreement and even joy of Louis the Pious on the realisation of this plan of action. 88 Althoff 2003: 59, considered that such a manner of penitence removed any chances of a return to service. We should, however, note that half a year later, Louis the Pious returned to the throne. 89 See Brademann 2000: 115–130. 90 Thietmari Chronicon, lib. II, 19(13): Gero quoque, defensor patriae, dum unici morte turbaretur filii suimet illustris Sigifridi, Romam pergens, emeritus iam senex coram altari principis apostolorum Petri arma deposuit victricia (Holtzmann 1955: 60).


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holy place, but entered it bearing arms, ready to avenge the insult to the king. They found Tankmar standing in front of the altar and placing on it his sword and a gold chain, which was a symbol of his status, and not offering any resistance and demonstrating readiness to submit to them.91 In the huge crush around him and among the cries and insults, one of the knights wounded Tankmar and a second attacker stabbed him from behind with a spear. It was in that manner that Tankmar died, even though he had sought refuge at the altar and was counting on the magnanimity of the victors.92 The gesture of the deposition of his weapons and symbols of his power on the altar was no disgrace to the vanquished, since it evidenced resignation from active service, and also in this case it indicated the treatment of the church as a refuge. In the behaviour of Tankmar, there was nothing that was in any conflict with the code of honour of a knight.93 In a situation of deadly danger, the warrior had recourse to an old ritual, allowing the suspension of responsibilities and throwing himself on the mercy of his enemies, while not losing his capability for honour and social position. This is also confirmed by the reaction of Henry I, who was extremely angered by the news of his death.94 The motif of the deposition of weapons on an altar as a gesture confirming withdrawal from public life was also used in the accounts of the reigns of the first Piast rulers in the Polish-Silesian Chronicle.95 Duke Kazimierz the Restorer, after his return to Poland from Germany in 1039, took power and began the work of rebuilding the destroyed state. The huge losses, continual failures, and the distrust of his subjects broke him and suggested the idea of leaving the country. Discouraged and disappointed, he went to the church on Ostrów Tumskie in Poznań (Posen), and there, with a view to entering a monastery, placed his sword on the altar, offering it to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saints Peter and Paul, the patrons of the

91 Widukindi res gestae saxonicae libri III, lib. II, cap. 11 (henceforth Widukind): Thancmarus autem fugit in ecclesiam, a Leone papa beato Petro apostolo dedicatam. Exercitus autem persecutus est eum usque in templum, et maxime satellites Heinrici, dolentes ac vindicare contendentes iniuriam domini sui. Nec veriti ianuas ferro incidere, cum armis ingressi sunt sacram aedem. Thancmarus autem stabat iuxta altare, depositis desuper armis cum torque aurea (Bauer & Rau 1971: 98). 92 Ibid.: Quidam item militum, Maincia vocabulo, per fenestram altari contiguam lancea a tergo perfossum ibi secus aram extinxit Thancmarum. 93 Le Jan 2000: 299 discussed the case of Tankmar as an example of the complete loss of the status of a knight. A little later the author agrees, however, that the ritual of placing arms on an altar meant the voluntary rejection of the world and surrendering oneself to the service of Christ. 94 Widukind, lib. II, cap. 11: Earum rerum rex ignarus et absens cum audisset, super temeritate militum dedignatus est, sed fervente adhuc bello civili, non potuit eos contristari (Bauer & Rau 1971: 98). 95 On the topic of the Polish-Silesian Chronicle see Kersken 1995: 506–509.

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church there.96 He buried himself in prayer and fell asleep. Then he heard a voice calling on him to take his sword and rise up against his enemies. When he awoke, however, he saw nobody. This phenomenon occurred three times ,and each time the mysterious voice urged him to take up his sword from the altar and return to active service. The duke understood that in this manner the will of God was being revealed to him, and this urged him to take up again the responsibilities of a leader and undertake the fight with the enemy.97 In the end, Kazimierz took his sword from the altar, roused his sleepy knights, and again began his struggle. The message of this anecdote was understandable and it fulfilled an important didactic role. While it is true that the ruler deposited his sword on the altar in a moment of weakness, God did not accept his offering and commanded him to continue his reign. The duke wanted to end his rule, but against his own wishes received an order to remain on the throne. This was expressed with the aid of a ritual, the meaning of which must have been well known also at the end of the early Middle Ages. Louis the Pious regarded himself as defeated and utilised the same ritual, which he employed as a ruse to allow him to retain his chances for a future return to power. While it is true that he did accept the resignation from power, he treated it as temporary and apparent, as well as using it as an opportunity to allow consideration of the possibility of a return to the lost position of leader. By the same means, he did not accept the decision to deprive him of the imperial title.98 The organisers of the ceremony at Soissons had made efforts to ensure that the old emperor permanently lost honour, and his public admission of guilt was to have led to his permanent disgrace. Louis’s expiation was not intended as a means by which he could cleanse himself of the accusations; on the contrary, it was a well-planned attempt to compromise him in the public eye. Only a skilful counteraction and the introduction of the second ritual changed the significance of the ceremony, transforming it into a public act of humility, demonstrating the virtue of the ruler.99 In such a context, his agreement to don penitential garb need not surprise us, since it 96 Kronika polsko-śląska (Polish-Silesian Chronicle), Monumenta Poloniae Historica, vol III, ed. A. Bielowski, Lwów 1878: 622: Cumque in maxima anxietate fuisset constitutus, ecclesiam, quam Dambrouca ad honorem genitricis dei beate in castro Ostrow fundaverat, intravit et a se gladium, quo percinctus fuerat, dissoluit ponens super altare; deo et beate Marie et beatis apostolis Petro et Paulo disponendo in animo suo iterum velle monachari, dyadema regalis imperii resignando. 97 Ibid.: melius est, me in manus inimicorum incidere, quam mandata dei mei delinquere, et sicut fuit voluntas eius e celo, sic fiat. Et statim arrepto ense ad altare barones suos, qui tunc propter lassitudinem dormierant, licet pauci fuissent, excitavit, statimque ascensis equis signo sancte crucis se signantes et in exercitum hostium irruentes (Bielowski 1878: 623) 98 We should, however, agree with the thesis that it was not possible to remain a warrior and belong to the knightly class when deprived of arms, see Leyser 1994: 67. 99 On the subject of a differentiation between understanding a ceremony and many interpretations of the same ritual, see Fałkowski 2008b.


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indicated a desire to make his peace with God and an acceptance of the judgement of the clerics. It was a partial admission of guilt in accordance with the accusations presented. The emperor, in humility, demonstrated his obedience to the Church and its bishops, indicating his submission to its will and his readiness to atone for his guilt.100 Accepting the pose of a monarch with humility, he did not express agreement to his being deprived of the status of ruler and knight. The ceremony at Soissons therefore was composed of two different rituals. The first was the relinquishing of the knight’s belt, which, in the intentions of the organisers of the event, was to lead to the total humiliation of the ruler, but was a skilfully controlled reference to the ritual of the suspension of the fulfilling of public service. Next there was a changing of the robes, which was intended to have formed an ostentatious supplement to the spectacle of the humiliation of the monarch, but instead was transformed into an act of the deepest humility which emphasised the royal virtue. The supporters of Lothar deliberately attempted to link both ceremonies and give them a joint sense, interpreting the behaviour of Louis in terms of the old ritual of the confiscation of arms. This was intended to have led to such a great humiliation as to destroy his majesty completely. It was only the drastic humiliation of the ruler in the presence of his subjects, seen by all those gathered there, and confirmed by eyewitnesses, which would have deprived him of the right to the royal title and dignity, effectively rendering the further exercise of rule impossible.101 It also would have led to the loss of the special protection of God and the patronage of his rule by Christ.102 The decision to send Louis to spend the rest of his days in a monastery, which would have meant in practice also cutting him off from worldly affairs in general, would have well suited such a plan of action.103 Through the well-planned scheme of events and a skilfully suggested interpretation of them, it would have been possible to suggest that the right of the old emperor to occupy the highest position in the hierarchy of power had completely expired, while his authority as a leader had ceased to exist.104 Only a little later, the process was begun of returning to Louis the Pious the imperial honours, and this was based on a completely different understanding of the rituals. For this, the application of a reversed procedure of returning the symbols of power was required. The first step was to return to the ruler his weapons and royal 100 In this case we share the opinion of Werner 1990: 57–59. 101 Cf. Wolfram 1973: 64, where we find the thesis of the undermining of the right to rule by these accusations. 102 See Simson 1874–1876: vol. 2, 73: Quis namque criminis reus, qui utique poenitentia publica debuit mulctari, cingulum militiae deponit et a liminibus ecclesiae coetuque fidelium arcetur et a Christi corpore separatur? 103 Thegan, cap. 43: Iusserunt eum (sc. Louis the Pious), ut in monasterium iret, et ibi fuisset omnibus diebus vitae suae. (Rau 1968: 238, lines 32–33). 104 De Jong 1997: 865, correctly observes that only the description created by the bishops („Relatio“ in our article) contains numerous elements of the ideal form of public penance.

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robes, which had to be, as it were, retrieved from the loan made to the holy patrons. This ceremony took place on 1 March 834 in the cathedral of Saint-Denis, and it, too, had a public character. The many bishops who attended made their peace with the ruler and returned to him his insignia of authority and his sword and knight’s belt.105 The memory of this ceremony was preserved for a long time, and many years later Hincmar recalled it in confirmation of the role of the clergy and people in royal coronations.106 Here we should emphasise the role of the bishops, since it was only they who could reverse the sentence decreed earlier and return the ruler to the bosom of the Church.107 The emperor himself understood this well, and in a later letter to Abbot Hilduin he recalled the many and important services of St Dionysus for the whole kingdom of the Franks, which he related to the return of his cingulum militia.108 At the same time, the imperial propaganda attempted to portray Louis the Pious as a Miles Christi who had a privileged position as a collaborator of Christ and was someone with complete capability of fulfilling his services as a knight.109 The ceremony in Saint-Denis allowed the the next steps to be taken, which had as their aim the return of Louis the Pious to full power. The conflict came to a decisive end six months later, in early autumn 834 in the course of a meeting with Lothar in Orléans. The two younger sons, Louis the German and Pepin, had united their forces with their father, and the imperial army gained a decisive superiority. In such a situation, Lothar decided to ask for mercy. He obtained that at the price of a public self-humiliation before his father in front of the whole army and the whole of the elite of the empire. Louis the Pious sat on his throne, well visible on the extensive plain, and then Lothar fell at his feet, begging for mercy.110 Following this, he and his whole retinue swore an oath of 105 ASB: venerunt episcopi qui praesentes aderant et in ecclesia Sancti Dionisii domnum imperatorem reconciliaverunt et regalibus vestibus armisque induerunt.(Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 12). 106 ASB: per Domini sacerdotes acclamatione fidelis populi, sicut vidimus qui adfuimus, corona regni est imperio restitutus; (Grat & Vielliard & Clémencet 1964: 163). 107 Astronomus, cap. 51: per manus episcoporum armis consensit accingi (Rau 1968: 350). Nithard: basilicam sancti Dyonisii una cum episcopis et omni clero confluunt, laudes Deo devote referunt, coronam et arma regi suo imponunt (Lauer 1926: 18). We agree here with the remarks of de Jong 1992: 42. 108 Letter of Louis the Pious in: MGH, Epistolae, vol. V (Karolini Aevi, vol. III), Berlin 1899, (the letter was edited by E. Dümmler): 327: reerecti et restituti sumus cingulumque militare iudicio atque auctoritate episcopali resumpsimus. 109 See Sears 1990: 619–624. The dating of these miniatures to the 830s is generally accepted. They show Louis in the costume of a Roman knight, in the active service of God. Following the work: Dümmler 1898: 37, we consider that the date of the creation of the mural was the period shortly after 834. 110 Thegan, cap. 55: venit Hlutharius ubi erat imperator, pater eius, sedens in papilione suo, quod erat extensum in altum valde in campo magno, ubi eum exercitus omnis contemplari potuit, et filii eius fideles steterunt iuxta eum. Tunc veniens Hlutharius cecidit ad pedes


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fidelity and servitude.111 Only then did the emperor forgive them and take them into his service, under the condition that they would maintain their fidelity. The public ceremony of homage done by the rebellious son ended a crisis which had lasted for more than a year within the dynasty and the whole elite of power in the Carolingian Empire.112 What is more important, however, was that it was a ceremony which was to erase the memory of the recent humiliation of the old emperor by the public humiliation of his rival. The spectacle held in Orléans was the “reversal” of the previous ceremony of the humiliation of Louis the Pious, who had first to regain the symbols of power, and then triumphantly oppress his rival. Memory of the gathering of the Franks the previous autumn in Compiègne, when homage was paid to Lothar, was “covered up” by a new ceremony which demonstrated the restoration of the dominant position of the old emperor and his superiority in the sphere of symbols and rituals. The second aspect of this ceremony was the achievement of total revenge over the opponent, since only in this manner could majesty be restored and full power and authority regained.113 The analysis of the examples presented above has led to a conclusion describing the interdependence of ritual behaviours, the experience of emotions, and the public behaviours of the ruler.114 In the Middle Ages, ritual helped to keep emotions and reactions under control, and restrict or even prevent spontaneous behaviour. On the other hand, however, the utilisation of ritual freed emotions, allowing the reference to feelings and transforming them into part of a public communication. The third function of ritual, important in this context, was the creation of interpretive frameworks which gave emotions a significance in accordance with the intentions of the participants in the ceremonies, and imposed the manner of interpretation of events and behaviours.

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patris (Rau 1968: 248, lines 22–25); Althoff (2003: 61–63) drew attention to the similarities between this scene and the Biblical return of the prodigal son, which might have been the model for the ceremony at Orléans. Thegan, cap. 55: Post haec iuravit Hlutharius patri suo fidelitatem, ut omnibus imperiis suis obedire debuisset, et ut iret in Italiam et ibi maneret, et inde non exiret nisi per iussionem patris. Tunc iuraverunt et ceteri (Rau 1968: 248, lines 28–30). The careful planning of the ceremony has been emphasised by Althoff 1997a: 238. Cf. the remarks of Gould (1973: 80) on the subject of the hesitation of Menelaos, who wanted to grant the defeated enemy his life and who changed his mind as a result of the advice of Agamemnon, who reminded him of the earlier humiliation and recommended showing no mercy, and then with his own hand killed the prisoner (Iliad, book VI, lines 37–65). The terminology connected with the feeling of humiliation, and the emotions appearing as a result is discussed by Miller 1993: 175–182.

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The humiliation of a ruler might lead to a restriction in, or even loss of his capability to act on the basis of his personal authority.115 This removed his right to impose his own will, since the monarch ceased to be sovereign in his own choices and decisions. Humiliation destroyed majesty, because it showed the ruler in a position of total helplessness, which in practice meant a complete liquidation of confidence in him. The king was exposed in a situation of surrender and obvious submission. The effect of such events was the total ridiculing of the ruler and the deep contempt of his subjects. In such cases it was impossible to recover his gravity and majesty, which were the conditions for further rule. It was then difficult to accept the sacrifices which the monarch imposed on the individual, and the personal authority of the ruler was effectively undermined. There was then no question of his fulfilling the role of a leader, or providing any effective care over his subjects. One way of avoiding complete loss of face and a loss of authority and dignity was a “retreat into humility”. This involved accepting humiliation as God’s will and the presentation of one’s own fall as a manner of seeking the ideal of Christian humility. Modesty and meek behaviour gave glory to and distinguished a monarch, who through his humble behaviour indicated the road to moral perfection. Paradoxically, humility formed a different manner of demonstrating power and created a new public image of the king. The experience of humiliation could therefore be represented as a style of ruling which is filled with humility and fear of God, something which was willingly accepted by the elite of the state under the condition that it did not detract from the effectiveness of rule. The reference to the pattern of the pious and modest ruler could not lead to behaviour which was in conflict with the ruler’s responsibilities towards his subjects. In no situation could the behaviour of the ruler be allowed to collide with the fulfilling of his royal mission and the responsibilities entrusted to him. The capability of the monarch to realise God’s plan had to be continually confirmed in the practice of his rule, both in his acts and his political decisions, because of the utilisation of a corpus of gestures, rituals, and the ceremonial adopted. Regardless of whether the “retreat into humility” was a calculated ruse which was planned by the ruler himself, it allowed the “reversal” of the significance of the act of humiliation.116 In such situations, loss of face, ridicule, and helplessness took on the appearance of deep humility, voluntary resignation, and magnanimity. The display of emotions then became a method of public communication which allowed the display of agreement to an existing situation and submission to the 115 See the discussion summarising recent remarks on negative emotions: Rosenwein 2006: 12. 116 Geary 1994: 95–115, showed how the ritual of humiliation could be treated very instrumentally.


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victors.117 On the other hand, it enabled the manipulation of one’s own public image and the creation of a communication in accordance with political aims.118 The public expression of emotions by a Christian ruler had to be under full control, and its role was the strengthening of the image of the ruler, fully aware of the laws governing the exercise of rule, and of its aims.119 The humiliation which had been imposed or strengthened by a ritual could only be reduced by another ritual, which had the ability to neutralise the loss of face experienced. It was only possible to rescue the majesty of the ruler and rebuild his authority when the actions that were directed against him were opposed with counteractions which were equally effective and well-planned. The monarch retained his ability to rule if the earlier loss of face could be reversed with the aid of an equally “strong” and generally-understood ritual. The use of ritual had also to be skilfully incorporated into the context of events. The revealing of emotions, the use of shouts, tears, impulsive gestures, and body movements were all part of the ceremony and aided in the realisation of their aims.120 Independently of the circumstances, humiliation was always a public act which immediately became public knowledge, and it had a decisive effect on the image of the king. Gestures, ceremonies, and the expression of emotions became part of public communication, interpreted and commented on both by those directly involved in the events, as well as the later recipients of information directed towards wider audiences.121 The opinions shaped would then have decisive significance not only for the effective exercise of power, but also the preservation of authority and dignity. When the attitudes of King David were interpreted as an abuse of trust, he began to be threatened by another loss of power, this time as the result of the disappointment of his supporters. The tears and despair which he displayed after the death of his rebellious son were a visible sign of the king distancing himself from the orders he had himself earlier given. The situation was reversed only after the public recognition of the authority of Joab. The carrying out of his orders did not detract from his power, since it led to a return to the exercise of rule. The emotions which indicated the weakness and helplessness of the ruler were quickly replaced by a well-known ritual which meant the acceptance of leadership and responsibil117 This was first demonstrated by Althoff 1997b: 270, 276. 118 The calculated character of emotional reactions is emphasised in contemporary psychological literature, Smith & Lazarus 1993: 233–269. 119 A good analysis of royal anger as a means of communication can be found in the excellent study of Althoff 1998. 120 Becher 2001: 50, drew attention to the fact that the tears of the king could awaken sympathy, since the penitent sinner has the right to complete forgiveness. 121 Rosenwein 2006: 179, correctly observes that a large part of expressed emotion constituted a well-understood public communication.

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ity. The appearance of the monarch at the top of the tower at the entrance gate was a sign that the ruler was ready to face up to threats and remain solidly behind his people. King David was very close to the army and its leaders, who had not deserted him at the time of the rebellion of Absolom, refusing to serve him as the result of a series of mistakes that he had committed. The behaviour of Priam, however, was the result of a desire to cultivate the good name of Hector and furnish him with an appropriate funeral, which was an indispensable condition for his post-mortem commemoration among posterity. In effect, the king was asking for mercy for his son, and did not hesitate to risk his own personal authority. The Trojans did not reject him because his decision was understandable, both in human terms and in terms of the interests of the town itself. Many other warriors had shared Hector’s fate, so intercession for him was also a service done on behalf of all the defenders of the town. In his pain, Priam was in the same situation as the inhabitants of Troy, who were able to appreciate his sacrifice. The humiliation which he decided to accept was perceived as an act which served the whole society. Louis the Pious, in turn, publicly accepted the judgement issued against him and in a very visible manner refrained from resisting the consequences. He expressed this in a voice full of repentance and tears, which showed not only his regret and recognition of his guilt, but above all an attitude of full submission and definitive resignation. Nevertheless, the emotions which were then made visible were to a great degree controlled, and formed some kind of an opinion-forming ruse. They allowed, at least in part, the transformation of the act of humiliation into behaviour full of humility, and the use of a ritual which gave a chance of revenge. The demonstration of emotions therefore served two purposes. It created a communication which was intended to convince observers of the total victory of Lothar, and that Louis fully accepted his fate. At the same time, however, it also prepared the ground for a totally different interpretation of events, and the skilful reversal of their effects in the weeks that were to follow. The examples from different epochs presented above allow us to analyse different customs, behaviours, and rituals connected with the demonstration of humility by the ruler. Similarly, the public experiencing of humiliation and readiness to agree to it was connected with openly expressed emotions. This required the submission to rituals allowing the saving of face and dignity. Regardless of individual motives which so strongly affected the actions of kings David and Priam, their behaviour was guided by the generally-known norms of public life. The control of emotions and the preservation of the majesty of a ruler required the skilful and deliberate use of rituals. At the same time, their skilful utilisation allowed the creation of the public image of a ruler and were conducive to an effective policy of preserving or strengthening his power and authority.


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Apostolos Spanos

Imperial Sanctity and Politico-Ecclesiastical Propaganda in Byzantium (Ninth–Fifteenth Century) This paper aims at presenting aspects of power and consensus in Byzantine politico-ecclesiastical history. Its first part presents cases of sanctification and celebration of emperors, members of the imperial family, and other “political” saints used by both the political and ecclesiastical propaganda for their own purposes. The second part studies the liturgical celebration of three Byzantine emperors, namely Nikephoros II Phocas (963–969), John III Vatatzes (1221–1254) and Manuel II Palaiologos (1391–1425), whose commemoration was incarnated in the composition of an akolouthia, i.e. a hymnographical unit that was sung on the days of their commemoration.1 The most striking element concerning these akolouthiai is their poor manuscript tradition: each one of them survives in a single manuscript. To be sure, it may be that these akolouthiai were included in manuscripts now lost or that they are hiding in uncatalogued collections or rare catalogues hard to find; however, the existence of one and only one manuscript for each text cannot but imply that the veneration of the aforementioned emperors as saints did not enjoy wide popularity. The paradox (?) of the limited commemoration of imperial saints in such a religious state and society as Byzantium was (styled by S. Runciman and other scholars as a theocracy) brings into question the character of these emperors’ celebrations and the background of the composition of their akolouthiai. The present paper aims (within the limits defined by the short time at my disposal and in view of the lack of annotated critical editions of the texts) at placing the texts and their composition into their historical and ecclesiastical background. Nikephoros II, John III, and Manuel II are not the only Byzantine rulers commemorated in a saintly way by Byzantine sources. Vitae, encomia, akolouthiai and homilies were composed to honour Constantine I (324–337)2, celebrated also in a number of liturgical texts,3 Irene the Athenian (797–802)4, Theodora the regent of 1 I would like to express my warmest thanks to Charalambos Dendrinos and Stephanos Efthymiadis for their valuable suggestions and corrections on various aspects of this paper. 2 BHG 361x–369k. 3 See Stratigopoulos 2007. 4 BHG 2205, edited by Treadgold 1982.

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the emperor Michael III (842–867) in the period from 842 to 855,5 and Theophano the wife of the emperor Leo VI (886–912)6, praised also in a fourteenth-century homily by Nikephoros Gregoras7 and celebrated in an akolouthia composed in the same period by the patriarch of Trnovo Evfimii in Slavonic.8 Emperors and members of the imperial family are also commemorated in Menologia and Synaxaria, i.e. books containing Vitae of saints or brief notices commemorating them; it is generally accepted, though, that such a commemoration was not understood in Byzantium as a recognition of their sanctity. Before proceeding with the consideration of the akolouthiai on the three emperors, we may present briefly the ritual background in the period of the composition of the texts. The Byzantine rite was a complex synthesis of various services performed every day.9 Simplifying, we may say that these services consisted of unvarying prayers and petitions, and varying psalms and hymns. Although the structure of the services remained more or less the same, their content passed through various stages of development, while the calendar of feasts underwent a continuous enrichment with the establishment of new feasts of saints and events. The development of the Byzantine rite followed two lines, known as “cathedral” and “monastic”, which coexisted for many centuries.10 The main difference between them is that the cathedral rite had biblical texts and prayers at its core, while the monastic one gives much more space to the veneration of saints. A historical landmark for the development of the Byzantine rite is the period of Iconoclasm (717–843). Before Iconoclasm, the content of hymns used in the performance of the liturgical services was mainly biblical. In the course of Iconoclasm, and particularly after its end, the hagiographical element prevailed, especially in the monastic rite.11 The number of biblical texts decreased, while the biggest part of the services was now dedicated to the commemoration of saints and feasts of various kinds, some of which were new (such as, for example, dedications of churches, commemorations of councils and events, etc.). New texts, mainly in the form of the kanon (a new kind of hymnography) were composed not only on new, but also on old saints and feasts. The establishment of the cult of new saints and the composition of new hymnographical texts continued until the fall of Byzantium. It should be noted at this point that, unlike the Western Church, the Byzantine Church knew no process of formal canonisation, at least not in the period prior to 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

BHG 1731. BHG 1794. BHG 1795. Edited by Kaluzniacki 1901: 255–277. See Taft 1992; Schmemann 1986: 150–220. See Taft 2005; Bradshaw 1990; Fountoulis 2002: 11–24. See Taft 1992: 58.

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the thirteenth century.12 In the middle and late Byzantine period, the canonisation of a person was a process based on the general recognition of his or her sainthood by the local community. This recognition was followed by the establishment of a local cultus of the saint, culminating with his or her commemoration on the day of his or her death. The saint had also to be praised by the composition of a Vita and the production of icons, and finally by the composition of a special hymnographical unit (akolouthia), usually sung on his or her commemoration day. The absolute evidence of sanctity would be the performance of miracles by the saint through his or her relics or grave, including the pouring of myrrh (myroblysia). In the period after Iconoclasm, this openness in establishing local saints met with the will of Constantinople to impose the Constantinopolitan calendar to replace the local ones. The consideration of questions relating Byzantine ritual life to imperial or ecclesiastical propaganda, or both, could be supported by the brief presentation of a historical phenomenon that runs through the whole of Byzantine political history, namely the phenomenon of “New Constantines”,13 which could be outlined in the effort of emperors, founders of imperial dynasties, and usurpers of the throne to legitimise their authority by referring, directly or not, to Constantine I. Constantine was not only the first Christian emperor, but also the first emperor to be recognised as a saint. In fact, he was the only Byzantine emperor whose canonisation was (and still is) undoubted. His celebration in hagiographical texts very soon after his death was preceded by a very symbolic act: Constantine was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, next to the cenotaphs of the twelve Apostles. From then on, and down to our days, he has been celebrated not only as a saint, but already from the fifth century as “equal to the Apostles”.14 Constantine, as the founder of Constantinople and the new imperium, and an imperial saint praised in a bulk of texts of various kinds, became the ultimate prototype of the Byzantine emperor. Furthermore, his canonisation became a model and precedent for certain emperors, who attempted to have members of their families canonised, in their effort to use, or abuse, the influence of the Church over a deeply religious society to legitimise or strengthen the power and authority of their dynasty. Probably the most widely known case is that of emperor Basil I (867–886).15 Of humble origin, Basil entered the court milieu as a groom in the stables of Michael III (842–867), was proclaimed co-emperor in 866 and sole ruler a year later, after murdering his patron and best friend. As his rise to power was anything but ideal, the legitimacy of his position could be very easily questioned by his enemies. The answer to any such questioning was given by a good number of panegyrics com12 13 14 15

Macrides 1981: 83–86. See Magdalino 1994. See Dagron 2003: 135–148. PMbZ: 832.

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posed during Basil’s lifetime, and for some time thereafter, which stressed the new emperor’s qualities and invented his “illustrious” genealogies.16 In his effort to legitimise his authority, as well as the authority of his dynasty, which came to be known as the Macedonian dynasty, Basil tried to establish a connection between his family and Constantine I in various ways, including his firstborn son being named Constantine.17 While Constantine had taken his name before his father’s elevation to the throne, Basil did the best he could to ensure that “his son was addressed as ‘the New Constantine’ until he died in 879”.18 Next, Basil buried his son in the mausoleum of Constantine I in the Church of the Holy Apostles and had him canonised by patriarch Photios, as Niketas Paphlagon records in his Vita S. Ignatii Constantinopolitani.19 Within the framework of Basil’s efforts to connect himself and his dynasty to Constantine the Great, we may understand other acts of his, such as the restoration of the “Constantinian” church of the Holy Apostles, and the church of St Mokios, that in the ninth century came to be associated with the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine, and Basil’s use of Constantine’s gold cross in his triumphs. To quote Leslie Brubaker again, “his efforts were rewarded and recognized in his own lifetime by at least the pope, who duly addressed Basil as ‘the New Constantine’, and, later, by his biographer”.20 The effort of Basil to get his son sanctified did not succeed in the end, but a little later the Macedonian dynasty reached sainthood when Theophano,21 Basil’s daughter-in-law, was canonised,22 under somewhat strange circumstances, as at first the Church reacted against her sanctification, while later the bishops capitulated.23 Another effort involving the use of sanctification as a political tool, this time with a military background, was undertaken by one of our imperial saints, Nikephoros II Phocas. Entering a war against the Arabs, Nikephoros tried in a synod to issue a decree that those who fell during wars would be celebrated with hymns and feast days as martyrs of the Church (let it be noted that a kanon celebrating martyrs who perished in battle was composed in the ninth–tenth century24). The idea was 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Brubaker 1994: 151. See Agapitos 1989; Markopoulos 1994. Brubaker 1994: 158. PG 105: 573. Brubaker 1994: 158. On Basil as New Constantine and the efforts of the first Macedonian emperors to associate their dynasty with Constantine I, see also Dagron 2003: 33–35, 192– 219. PMbZ: 8165. Dagron 2003: 202–204. See Majeska 1977; the promotion of the cult of Theophano has been presented as a result of imperial propaganda in Patlagean 1981: 104, and elsewhere; opposite arguments in Amoiridou 2006: 183–187, while Alexakis 1995 presents her cult as having popular origins. It is edited in Détorakis & Mossay 1988.


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strongly opposed by the patriarch and the bishops, whose opposition was based on St Basil’s canon 13, dictating that those who have slain an adversary in battle should be prohibited from the Holy Communion for three years.25 Let us also note that two of the most important Byzantine canonists, Zonaras and Balsamon, state that this canon by St Basil was never in force, Balsamon commenting that “the bishops at that time making use of this canon, silenced the imperial interference”.26 This reaction of the Church to the imperial will shows that the historical deduction that the emperor had absolute power over the Church in Byzantium is not of axiomatic truth. Moreover, there are cases of the Church opposing openly imperial policies of direct or indirect ecclesiastical interest. Let us use an example from a later period, namely the second half of the thirteenth century. At that time the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259–1282) focused his foreign policy on uniting the Byzantine Church with the Church of Rome. As this meant that the Byzantine Church would fall under the authority of the Pope of Rome, the Byzantine hierarchy fought against the imperial policy of union. Because of the influence of the Church in Byzantine society, this policy was never to be realised. A little later the Church projected two saints as symbols of the anti-Palaiologan resistance, the patriarch Joseph (1266–1275, 1282–1283) and the monk Meletios (1209–1286). Both these saints – as Ruth Macrides has pointed out – were not commemorated for their ascetical or spiritual life, but mainly for defending orthodoxy against the imperial plan of union with Rome.27 After considering these few examples, which show that sanctification was used in Byzantium by both the imperial and the ecclesiastical propaganda, let us now turn to our imperial saints and their restricted veneration by the Church. Before studying the celebration of our three rulers, we should note that the limited manuscript tradition of their akolouthiai is accompanied by the complete lack of visual sources, as no one of them is represented in such a source in a saintly way.28 The examination of Byzantine Typika, i.e liturgical books containing rubrics on the content and the performance of the offices of the Byzantine Church throughout the entire year, reveals no traces of the texts mentioned above. Equally silent are the post-Byzantine printed liturgical books examined. Furthermore, I am not aware of any translation of these akolouthiai into another language, either in Byzantine or post-Byzantine times. It is only John Vatatzes who was commemorated in the nineteenth century in another akolouthia and a Vita, both composed by St Nicodemos 25 Skylitzes (ed. Thurn) 1973: 274–275; Ralles & Potles 1854: 131–133. Cf. Viscuso 1995: 37– 39; Oikonomides 1995: 65–68. 26 Ralles & Potles 1854: 133. 27 Macrides 1981: 68. 28 On the representation of emperors as saints in Byzantine textual and visual sources see Spanos & Zarras 2010, with relevant bibliography.

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the Hagiorite (1749–1809) and published in 1872;29 it seems that neither the akolouthia nor the Vita enjoyed much attention. The book of Menaion in use by the Greek Orthodox Church today does not include an akolouthia on John, nor commemorates him in the relevant place (the synaxarian notices). On the other hand, he is included in the list of saints in the book of Horologion; this mention, however, seems to be modern, as the edition of the same book made by Bartholomaios Koutloumousianos in Venice in 1851 does not include John in the corresponding list. Nikephoros II Phocas was born c.912.30 After a successful career in the army, he became emperor in 963, thanks to the support of his army, the military aristocracy, the church hierarchy, and the people of Constantinople. While on the throne, he supported St Athanasios the Athonite in the establishment of the monastery of Lavra, which, during his reign, obtained the status of imperial monastery.31 Nikephoros was assassinated in Constantinople on 11 December 969, in a plot in which some of his previous supporters (among whom was John Tzimiskes, who succeeded him) played the leading role together with Nikephoros’ wife, Theophano. Nikephoros is referred to as a saint in the anonymous Vita of St Athanasios the Athonite32 and celebrated in an akolouthia that has survived in codex Athous Lavrae 124, a thirteenth-century Pandektes. The akolouthia,33 probably composed by the deacon Theodosios, a contemporary of Nikephoros, presents the emperor-saint primarily as a defender of faith, mainly because of his war against the Arabs, by which he also expanded the borders of the empire. Nikephoros is also praised for his ascetic life, his personal merits, his successful reign, and his victories against the enemies of the empire. Furthermore, he is celebrated as a martyr, as he was assassinated when he was defenceless. Finally, apart from the pouring of myrrh, the akolouthia makes mention of miraculous cures of the sick at his tomb. The local veneration of Nikephoros in the Lavra monastery was never accepted by the Church, not even by the whole brotherhood of Lavra, since the Vita of St Athanasios makes clear that even among the monks at Lavra there were doubts about his canonisation. G. Dagron has pointed out that “the cult of Nikephoros Phokas, which might have enthused hearts and minds, remained marginal and soon died out. It was never approved, but on the contrary discouraged by an ecclesiastical hierarchy which had reproached the dead emperor for his laws on the finances of bishoprics and the foundation of monasteries, which it persuaded his successors

29 30 31 32 33

Petit 1926: 121. On Nikephoros II Phocas see ODB: 1478–1479; Kollias 1993. ODB: 1190. Noret 1982: 127–213. Edited by Petit 1904.


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to abolish immediately”.34 Furthermore, we are not aware of any other source presenting him as a saint, while we may find evidence of the opposite in two anonymous lists of imperial graves in the mausoleums attached to the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Both the lists refer clearly to the empress Theophano, the first wife of the emperor Leo VI and daughter-in-law of Basil I (λείψανον τῆς ἁγίας Θεοφανοῦς), and the empress Theodora, the wife of Theophilos (τῆς ἁγίας Θεοδώρας τῆς γυναικὸς Θεοφίλου τοῦ βασιλέως), as saints, while Nikephoros is listed by his name alone (Νικηφόρος ὁ Φωκᾶς).35 The veneration of Nikephoros Phocas seems not to have a political background. The composition of his akolouthia may be understood as a case of local veneration by an institution that expressed its gratitude to its patron by celebrating him locally as a saint. His celebration may be placed in the framework of a more general monastic practice of commemorating patrons by the performance of an akolouthia on the date of their death. This practice is also evidenced in the Life of another Byzantine ruler, the empress Irene the Athenian (787–802). Irene was buried in the monastery of the Virgin, which she had founded at Pringiponisos (the island of Prince in the sea of Marmara), and was praised as a saint by the monastic community in a Vita that was probably composed by one of the nuns.36 Speaking about the respect shown by the nuns to their protector, the anonymous hagiographer writes that τὸ ἱερὸν ἐκεῖνο συναθροιζόμενον ποίμνιον κατ᾽ ἔτος τῆς θείας μνήμης αὐτῆς ὑμνολογικῶς ἐπιθειάζεται τὸ εὐφρόσυνον, καὶ ταύτην πρεσβευτὴν καὶ φύλακα καὶ στηριγμὸν ἀσφαλῆ καὶ κραταίωμα κέκτηται (= gathering there, that holy flock invokes the delight of her holy memory every year in hymns, and has acquired her as intercessor, guardian, sure support, and strength).37 John III Doukas Vatatzes was born in about 1192.38 At the age of twenty, in 1212, he married Irene, the daughter of Theodore I Laskaris (1204–1222), the first emperor of Nikaia, one of the successor states established following the conquest of Constantinople by the army of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and the partition of the Empire. John succeeded Theodore in 1221 or early 1222. Irene died in 1239, and five years later John married Constance, an illegitimate daughter of the German king Frederick II Hohenstaufen (1194–1250). He died in Nymphaion in 1254,

34 35 36 37 38

Dagron 2003: 152. Downey 1959: 37 and 40. BHG 2205; edited by Treadgold 1982. Treadgold 1982: 245, 247. On John III Doukas Vatatzes see ODB: 1047–1048; Constantellos 1972; Papayianni 2004– 2005; Macrides 1981: 69–71.

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and was buried in the monastery of Sosandra, which he had founded in the region of Magnesia. John was, according to the tradition, commemorated as a saint soon after his death, at least in the region of Magnesia where he was buried, on the basis of his philanthrōpia, which granted him the name of “the Almsgiver” already in his lifetime.39 John is celebrated in an anonymous akolouthia, the text of which survives in the fifteenth to sixteenth-century codex Lesbiacus Leimonos 124. Three of its hymns have been published40 while the critical edition of the whole text is in progress.41 Let it be noted at this point that there are five additional hagiographical Byzantine texts devoted to John Vatatzes. The consideration of their content, however, reveals that they do not present John as a saint, but as an outstanding emperor: his Vita, composed in the fourteenth century (probably) by George, Bishop of Pelagonia,42 is in fact an encomium to John as an emperor and not as a saint; the anonymous encomium, probably also by George of Pelagonia43, bears similar traits to the Vita; the funeral oration by the scholar, historian, and statesman George Acropolites, delivered in 1254,44 shares similarities with his Vita and his encomium; and the laudatio composed by John’s son and successor Theodore II Laskaris (1254–1258), praises the emperor’s achievements.45 The content of the akolouthia makes clear that the text was composed to serve the commemoration of the emperor in his grave, most probably in the monastery of Sosandra, where he was buried. The local veneration of John is also pointed to by the provenance of another manuscript, which includes three of its hymns, the British Library codex Burnley 54, a sixteenth-century Euchologion (a prayer-book for all services of the Byzantine rite); as D. Polemis noted, the manuscript was certainly copied in the area of Ephesus.46 Asia Minor seems also to be the provenance of Lesbiacus Leimonos 124, which includes nineteen akolouthiai on a feast and saints related to the area: Sts Kosmas and Damianos (1 November), the dedication of the temple of St George in Lydia (or Lydda) (3), St Ioannikios (4), St Nikandros of Myra and St Ermeias (4), St John Vatatzes (5), St Hieron of Melitine and his fellow martyrs (7), St Matrona (9), St Orestes (10), St Menas (11), the apostle Philip (14), Sts Gourias, Samonas, and Avivos (15), St Gregory, Bishop of Neokaisareia (17), St Platon (18), St Amphilochios, Bishop of Iconion (23), St Merkourios

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

See Constantellos 1972. Polemis 1983. Spanos & Dendrinos (in progress). BHG 933. BHG 934. BHG 934b. BHG 934d. Polemis 1983: 543.


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(24), St Alypios the stylite (27), St Stephen the Younger (28), St Irenarchos (28) and St Paramonos (29). The emperor John’s philanthrōpia was mentioned above as the basis for his canonisation. But, as R. Macrides has shown, “Batatzes’ compassion for his subjects would not seem to have been enough by itself to have created his reputation as a saint. It would seem rather that events after his death kept his memory alive and were formative in the creation of his cult”.47 A brief presentation of some of the most important politico-ecclesiastical events may shed more light on this point. John was succeeded by his son Theodore II, who died in 1258, leaving the throne in turn to his son, John IV Laskaris. As John IV was only eight years old at the time of his ascension to the throne, a representative of the military aristocracy, Michael VIII Palaiologos, was appointed as John’s regent, to be crowned as coemperor a little later. Michael was lucky enough to win back Constantinople from the crusaders in August 1261. On Christmas Day of the very same year, John was blinded by order of Michael; thus, the latter became the sole emperor of Byzantium, putting an end to the Laskarid dynasty and establishing a new one, the Palaiologan. Both the Church and society were then to be divided into two parts, one pro-Laskarid and the other pro-Palaiologan. One of the most prominent leaders of the pro-Laskarid section was the patriarch of Constantinople Arsenios, who, having been appointed as protector of John IV, reacted to John’s blinding by Michael by excommunicating the latter. Later he concentrated his criticism on the ecclesiastical policy of Michael, and particularly his effort to enforce the union of the churches to ward off a Latin recapture of Constantinople. To suppress the reaction of the Church to his ecclesiastical policy, Michael used an iron hand. As a first move, he deposed Arsenios and sent him into exile; next, he severely punished all opposition. But Arsenios was a man of influence, and his followers went into schism from 1265, denying the recognition of any other patriarch until 1310. This schism was only a part of a broader opposition to the Palaiologan dynasty. As Alice-Mary Talbot has pointed out: “The Arsenite Schism has generally been viewed not only as an ecclesiastical controversy, but as part of the political opposition to the upstart Palaiologan dynasty by Laskarid supporters”.48 In 1274, the emperor Michael finally enforced his policy of having the Byzantine Church subject to the Pope of Rome, by sending Byzantine bishops to the council of Lyon, where the Union of the Church was agreed and signed. This caused a strong reaction by the majority of the Byzantine Church, which, in the end, did not accept the Union.

47 Macrides 1981: 69. 48 ODB: 188; on the Arsenite Schism see Gounaridis 1999.

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Let us now try to consider this general picture from a liturgical viewpoint. As D. Angelov has pointed out: “Michael VIII took special care to revive as well as streamline imperial ceremonial. In 1264 he managed at last to depose his enemy, Patriarch Arsenios, who had banned him from the fold of the church on account of the sins accompanying his usurpation, and replaced him with a loyal supporter, Patriarch Germanos III. The latter duly showed his gratitude to Michael VIII by taking care to polish the emperor’s tarnished image. According to Pachymeres, the patriarch was the first to bestow on Michael VIII the title of ‘New Constantine’. He also arranged for an image of Michael VIII portrayed as the New Constantine to be placed […] in […] Hagia Sophia. A bronze statue of Michael VIII was erected next to the church of the Holy Apostles, the burial place of Constantine the Great. […] On 2 February 1267 […] the new Patriarch Joseph I (1266–75, 1282–83) finally absolved Michael VIII of his sins. The day of the emperor’s absolution became a holiday commemorated by the church during the rest of his reign”.49 As mentioned above, a small part of the akolouthia on John Vatatzes was published by D. Polemis. The three hymns were copied under the title: Of the holy glorious and equal of the Apostles emperor John Vatatzes, the new almsgiver in Magnesia (Τοῦ ἁγίου ἐνδόξου καὶ ἰσαποστόλου βασιλέως Ἰωάννου τοῦ νέου ἐλεήμονος τοῦ ἐν Μαγνησίᾳ καὶ Βατάτζη). If this was the original title of the text (and not a later addition by the copyist or the anthologist of the sixteenth-century manuscript), it betrays the tendency of the author of the akolouthia to connect the celebrated emperor to Constantine, who was celebrated from the fourth century onwards as “equal to the Apostles”. This may also be understood as a reaction to Michael’s Constantinian propaganda. So it is probably not by chance that the akolouthia on John Vatatzes relates the emperor to Constantine I, indirectly in a good number of passages, and directly in one hymn, in which John is presented as having emulated Constantine the Great, whose footsteps he followed. Another hymn presents Constantine himself as being made very happy by encountering John in heaven. In other words: Michael VIII, who was a usurper of the imperial authority, tried to use an old and well documented practice, that of relating his authority to the ultimate prototype of imperial authority, Constantine the Great. It is logical to assume that this misuse of liturgical practice for political purposes led to an analogical reaction by the anti-unionist – and, thus, anti-Palaiologan – part of the Church, which answered with (a) the sanctification of the most important representative of 49 Angelov 2007: 44–45. On Michael’s use of the title “New Constantine” and the role played by patriarch Germanos see also Macrides 1980: 22–24.


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the Laskarid dynasty, John Vatatzes, (b) the sanctification of one of the leaders of the anti-Palaiologan opposition, the patriarch Arsenios,50 (c) the effort of having the victim of Michael’s usurpation, John IV Laskaris, sanctified as well,51 and (d) the sanctification of two saints referred to above, the patriarch Joseph and the monk Meletios, who defended orthodoxy in opposition to Michael VIII’s policy of union with Rome.52 As is easily understood, all these saints have something in common: they are members or supporters of the Laskarid dynasty, in opposition to the Palaiologan one. Is this related to their sanctification and their ritual celebration? To give the answer in the wording of Ruth Macrides:53 “The story of their recognition, veneration, and later use by ecclesiastical writers cannot be separated from the ‘sins’ of Michael Palaiologos, his usurpation of imperial power from the Laskaris family and his union with Rome. Had the empire’s affairs prospered in his reign and in those of his descendants our five saints might never have received the attention which they did”. This reaction can be easily placed geographically in Asia Minor, not only because this was the place where John Vatatzes reigned and was buried, but also for reasons related to Michael’s political decision to pay more attention to the West, leaving Asia Minor and its people unprotected against the advance of the Turks. It is probably not by chance that – as Constantelos writes – “miracles were attributed to [John Vatatzes’] intercessions as early as the reign of Andronikos II (1282– 1328), when Vatatzes was invoked to intervene against the advancing Turks who around the year 1300 conquered Magnesia and other neighboring cities”.54 As far as the neglect of the celebration of (and thus the akolouthia on) John in late Byzantine times is concerned, we may name as reasons his efforts to unite the Byzantine with the Latin Church, the possible political background of his canonisation, and the – politically understandable – reluctance of the Palaiologan dynasty to permit the veneration of the most prominent representative of the previous dynasty, the last male of which had been blinded by a Palaiologos. Manuel II Palaiologos was born in Constantinople in 1350.55 In 1373 he was appointed co-emperor by his father, the emperor John V, whom he succeeded in 50 Macrides 1981: 73–79. 51 Ibid.: 71–73; various evidence on his recognition as a saint in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be questioned by the lack of any hagiographical or liturgical element on his veneration. 52 Ibid.: 79–82. 53 Ibid.: 82. 54 Constantelos 1972: 92. 55 On Manuel II Palaiologos see Dendrinos (forth.); PLP 21513.

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1391. Manuel‘s main concern during his reign was to obtain support from the West against the advancing Turks. As a result of a stroke he suffered in 1422, he handed over the sceptre to his son John VIII (1425–1448), who followed a unionist policy towards the Church of Rome, despite his father’s advice to proceed with caution over the negotiations with the papacy concerning Church union, because of the internal opposition by the Byzantine anti-unionist party. On 21 July 1425 Manuel died and was buried in the monastery of Pantokrator, where, under the name of Matthew, he was tonsured a monk just two days before his death. Manuel is celebrated in two anonymous akolouthiai that have survived in the fifteenth-century codex 220 (35) of the Patriarchal Library of Alexandria.56 According to their editor, the texts were composed soon after the death of Manuel, though this hypothesis should be verified on the basis of further evidence. The title preceding the texts in the manuscript indirectly relates the composition of the akolouthia to Manuel’s monastic tonsure: Ἀκολουθία εἰς τὸν εὐσεβέστατον καὶ θειότατον βασιλέα ἡμῶν κῦρ Μανουὴλ διὰ τοῦ θείου καὶ ἀγγελικοῦ σχήματος μετονομασθέντα Ματθαῖον μοναχόν (= Akolouthia on our most pious and holy emperor Manuel, due to the holy and angelic habit renamed monk Matthew). Manuel is praised in the akolouthiai for defending the Orthodox faith through his theological writings, and the empire through his fighting against the Turks. This might imply a criticism against the unionist policy adopted by his son John VIII, as the editor of the text has noted.57 It is against this background that we should understand hymns as the following: Ποταμὸν τὸν τοῦ Πνεύματος δαψιλῶς προχεόμενον ἑαυτὸν ἀπέ-δειξεν ἀνεξάντλητον, θεολογίας τὸ ἔρεισμα, ἡ βάσις τῆς πίστεως, τῶν δογμάτων ἀκριβὴς στάθμη θεία τῆς γνώσεως, τῶν αἱρέσεων ἀπελαύνων τὴν πλάνην 58 καὶ τοὺς ταύτην εὑρηκότας καταισχύνων τοῖς θεοφθόγγοις διδάγμασιν (= The supporter of theology, the foundation stone of faith, the divine precise basis of the knowledge of the doc-trines, he proved himself an abundant and inexhaustible river of the Spirit, expelling the lies of the heresies and disgracing the inventors by the God-inspired teachings), in which the “heresies expelled” may be identified as the Latin doctrines on the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (filioque). The specific addition to the Creed of the first two ecumenical councils is also indirectly mentioned in another passage, in which the emperor is praised for confirming the holy councils, the first and the second being particularly named (῾Ρητορευόντων ᾔσχυνας τὰ ἀπύλωτα στόματα τὰ κατὰ θεὸν εἰς οὐρανὸν λαλήσαντα 56 Published by Lampros 1917; see Petit 1926: 132. 57 Lampros 1917: 319–320, wrongly referring to Manuel’s son as John VII. 58 Ibid.: 321; cf. to vv. 331–332.


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δυνάμει τῶν λόγων σου καὶ ἱερὰς συνόδους κυρῶν, πρώτην καὶ δευτέραν, καθεξῆς τὴν ἑβδόμην […])59. The content of the akolouthia points to its composition within the anti-unionist environment of Byzantium, particularly of Constantinople. The use of a liturgical weapon to fight against the uniting policy of the emperor would not be a great surprise, as the period was not lacking in abuse of liturgical texts for political purposes; we find a very good example by recalling that Manuel himself changed the Epistle and Gospel readings in his own wedding ceremony to promote political messages.60 Let us also note that the intellectual entourage of Manuel included remarkable scholars, some of whom composed monodies and funeral orations on him after his death.61 We should also keep in mind the possibility that Manuel’s local veneration was connected to the Constantinopolitan monastery of Pantokrator, of which he was a monk, even if only for the last two days of his life. Concluding, we should underline that all our emperors were connected to a monastery, Nikephoros as a benefactor, John as a founder, and Manuel as a monk. Moreover, the last two were buried in the monasteries they were related to. This leads us to think that the celebration of our rulers was conceived and established in these monasteries (to which it was also limited?), something that cannot be supported at this stage of research without further evidence. Furthermore, we may hold that the composition of the examined akolouthiai seems to have been influenced by other purposes than the purely liturgical commemoration of their subjects. The composition of the akolouthia on Nikephoros Phocas ministered mainly to the needs of the monastery that stood behind it, as is – let us not forget – the case of the composition of the Vita on empress Irene.62 The sanctification of John Vatatzes is inseparable from the political turmoil that followed the violent end of the Laskarid dynasty and the establishment of the Palaiologan, which wanted to put in force an ecclesiastical policy not accepted by a considerable ecclesiastical group that probably played the leading role in the canonisation. There are also cases of the ecclesiastical propaganda using sanctification as a tool for preventing imperial policies, as in the case of the anti-unionist, and thus anti-Palaiologan, saints of the late Byzantine period. The akolouthia on Manuel is probably one more product of the anti-unionist party of the Byzantine Church, unless it incarnates another case of a monastery venerating such a distinguished member of its brotherhood. When it comes to the neglect, or disappearance, of veneration and, thus, the akolouthiai in later times, one is tempted to say that it is the expected fruit of the 59 60 61 62

Ibid.: 340. See Reinert 2001. See Dendrinos 2003: 424. See Treadgold 1982: 249.

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non-theological routes of their celebration in the first place. Furthermore, the limited manuscript tradition of almost all the Byzantine texts celebrating emperors and members of the imperial family shows that such celebration was negatively regarded in Byzantium, the main question being whether it was the Church or the later dynasties that were behind this. After the fall of Byzantium, that is to say in the period when printed liturgical books were compiled and produced, any kind of celebration of a Byzantine emperor would have been forbidden by the Ottoman authorities as promoting ideals of the glorious Byzantine past and inflaming ideas of revolution against the Ottoman empire. While waiting for new annotated editions of the studied texts, let us express the wish that the deeper study of all these cases, as well as the consideration of other celebrations or commemorations of events of political content and interest, will support the better understanding of the misuse, or abuse, of religion in Byzantium, by both the imperial and ecclesiastical propaganda.


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Lampros, Spyridon 1917. “Δύο κανόνες ἀνέκδοτοι εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Μανουὴλ Παλαιολόγον”. Neos Hellenomnemon 14: 318–341. Macrides, Ruth 1980. “The New Constantine and the New Constantinople – 1261?”. Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies 6: 13–41. — 1981. “Saints and Sainthood in the Early Palaiologan Period”. In: Sergei Hackel (ed.). The Byzantine Saint. University of Birmingham Fourteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. London: Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius: 67–87 (Studies Supplementary to Sobornost 5). Magdalino, Paul (ed.) 1994. New Constantines. The Rhythm of Imperial Renewal in Byzantium, 4th–13th Centuries. Variorum: Ashgate. Majeska, George P. 1977. “The Body of St. Theophano the Empress and the Convent of St. Constantine”. Byzantinoslavica 38: 14–21. Markopoulos, Athanasios 1994. “Constantine the Great in Macedonian Historiography: Models and Approaches”. In: Magdalino 1994: 159–170. Noret, Jacques 1982. “Sancti Athanasii athonitae vita secunda anonyma”. In: Jacques Noret (ed.). Vitae duae antiquae sancti Athanasii Athonitae. Turnhout: Brepols: 127–213 (Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca 9). ODB = Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.) 1991. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oikonomides, Nicholas 1995. “The Concept of ‘Holy War’ and Two Tenth-century Byzantine Ivories”. In: Timothy S. Miller & John Nesbitt (eds.). Peace and War in Byzantium. Essays in Honour of George T. Dennis S.J.. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press: 62–86. Papayianni, Aphrodite 2004–2005. “Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes: An Orthodox Saint”. Byzantinos Domos 14: 27–31. Patlagean, Evelyn 1981. “Sainteté et Pouvoir”. In: Sergei Hackel (ed.). The Byzantine Saint. University of Birmingham Fourteenth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. London: Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius: 88–105 (Studies Supplementary to Sobornost 5). Petit, Louis 1904. “Office inédit en l’honneur de Nicéphore Phocas”. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 13: 398–420. — 1926. Bibliographie des Acolouthies Grecques. Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes (Subsidia Hagiographica 16). PG = Migne, Jacques-Paul (ed.) 1857–1891. Patrologia cursus completus: series graeca. 161 vols. Paris: Migne. PLP = Trapp, Erich (ed.) 1976–1996. Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit. 12 vols. + addenda. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. PMbZ = Winkelmann, Friedhelm (et al.) 1999–2002. Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit. Erste Abteilung (641-867). vols. 1–6. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.


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Polemis, D.I. 1983. “Remains of an acoluthia for the Emperor John Ducas Batatzes”. In: Cyril Mango & Omeljan Pritsak (eds.). Okeanos. Essays presented to Ihor Ševčenko. Cambridge: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University: 542–547 (Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7). Ralles, G. & M. Potles 1854. Σύνταγμα τῶν θείων καὶ ἱερῶν κανόνων. vol. 4. Athens: G. Chartofylax. Reinert, Stephen W. 2001. “Political Dimensions of Manuel II Palaiologos’ 1392 Marriage and Coronation: Some New Evidence”. In: Claudia Sode & Sarolta Takács (eds.). Novum Millennium. Studies on Byzantine History and Culture Dedicated to Paul Speck. Aldershot: Ashgate: 291–303. Schmemann, Alexander 1986. Introduction to Liturgical Theology. New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Skylitzes, Iohannes 1973. Synopsis historiarum. Edited by Hans Thurn. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantine 5). Spanos, Apostolos & Charalambos Dendrinos (in progress). An Unpublished akolouthia on the Emperor John III Vatatzes. Spanos, Apostolos & Nektarios Zarras 2010. “Representations of Emperors and Royals as Saints in Byzantine Virtual and Textual Sources“. In: Michael Borgolte & Bernd Schneidmüller (eds.). Hybride Kulturen im mittelalterlichen Europa. Vorträge und Workshops einer internationalen Frühlingsschule. Berlin: Akademie Verlag: 63– 78. Stratigopoulos, Dimosthenis 2007. “Οἱ ἅγιοι Κωνσταντίνος καὶ Ἑλένη στὴν ὑμνογραφία”. In: Miša Rakocija (ed.). Niš and Byzantium V. Niš: 47–54 (free access at http://www.ni.rs/byzantium/doc/zbornik5/PDF-V/Dimostenis.pdf). Taft, Robert F. 2005. “Cathedral vs. Monastic Liturgy in the Christian East: Vindicating a Distinction”. Bolletino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata 2: 173–219. — 1992. The Byzantine Rite. A Short History. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press (American Essays in Liturgy Series). Treadgold, Warren T. 1982. “The Unpublished Saint’s Life of the Empress Irene (BHG 2205)”. Byzantinische Forschungen 8: 237–251. Viscuso, Patrick 1995. “Christian Participation in Warfare. A Byzantine View”. In: Timothy S. Miller & John Nesbitt (eds.). Peace and War in Byzantium. Essays in Honour of George T. Dennis S.J.. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press: 33–40.

Joachim Friedrich Quack

Political Rituals Sense and Nonsense of a Term and its Application to Ancient Egypt We are certainly accustomed to using an analytical category of “political rituals”, which are often seen as one basic class of rituals,1 even if it is admitted that they form “a particularly loose genre”.2 If we are to appreciate this idea, we have to enter the thorny field of the general classification of rituals. In this, however, I see a systematic problem. Most classifications and typologies of rituals are based on a fairly loose and ad-hoc appreciation and suffer from it. The basic point is that categories are formed on vastly disparate criteria, and thus are far from being really helpful, because they operate on too many different levels.3 Consequently, hardly any category applied to rituals is effective in excluding any other possible category which could be equally applied to the very same ritual. To take but a few examples: a coronation could obviously be regarded as a political ritual, but at the same time, is it not, for the beneficiary of the ritual, a rite of passage? And is it not a statusconferring ritual as well? And in practical relevance, is it not a celebration? In actual performance, it frequently entails acts which would allow classifying it as a ritual of purification. Some Egyptian texts even speak of mystical experiences during such an act;4 thus it could be considered a mystical ritual. And if we accept that the dramatic Ramesseum papyrus5 is about a change in rulership, we could even apply the category of dramatic rituals to it. The primary source of all these problems is obvious: most scholars tend to classify rituals according to a one-dimensional system, where any given ritual has to be either A, or B, or C, etc. But if A and B are not, by their very essence, terms in opposition to each other, then a ritual can very well be A as well as B, perhaps even C at the same time, and our classification does not work at all. On the other hand, if we work with clear oppositions, there are rarely more than two options, and a 1 E.g. Bell 1997: 128–137. 2 Ibid.: 128. 3 The following terms are based on papers circulating internally within the SFB 619 “ritual dynamics”. 4 Some sources are adduced in Quack 2002: 99–102. 5 For the text, see most recently Quack 2006; Gestermann 2008; Schneider 2008.

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classification system operating with an exclusive opposition “either A or B” (and nothing else) would only work on parameters so broad that they would not be sufficient to say much that is meaningful about a ritual, and the classes would be so few and with so many members that they could not provide many insights. The solution should be obvious. We have to abandon our efforts to classify all rituals by means of one single categorisation altogether. The only chance I see is to forgo altogether the simple and easy custom of labelling any given ritual as part of one single class. Instead, we would have to lay a delicate grid of many different categories over rituals, and each ritual would be characterised by a whole pattern of categorisations. Such a classification system would also allow more objective statistical analysis about which rituals are more and which less similar to each other. Such a system of analysis should be our ultimate goal, and in such a system, the question of being “political” or not would be only one of many traits of any specific ritual. This first step will allow resizing the relevance of being “political”, as far as a ritual is concerned. Its logical implication is that many rituals could, theoretically, have the quality of being “political”, but that this quality could be more or less dominant, or even rather marginal, and would only be one of many characterising traits of any ritual. However, two further highly important questions come up. The first point is what being “political” really means, and whether all rituals at all times can usefully be submitted to a classification of “political” or “not political”. Is being “political” a human universal, as is seemingly expressed in Aristotle’s definition of man as a zoon politikon, “a political animal”, or did it come into being only at a certain point of time and in a certain place? After all, there are serious voices speaking of the “discovery” of the political in Ancient Greece.6 Then, are we justified at all in applying the term “political” to pre-Greek or non-European cultures? We can of course say that there are options of defining “political” as the way decisions are made and the way they gain enough acceptance to actually work, but from the outset we should be clear that using the term “political” without hesitation can potentially create misunderstandings, as there are political models quite far away from what we are accustomed to. Any discussion of the political element in Ancient Egypt would have to operate within a model of “political theology”, as there is no clearly defined secular politics.7 According to a recent definition, political rituals “can be said to comprise those ceremonial practices that specifically construct, display, and promote the power of political institutions (such as king, state, the village elder) or the political interests

6 Meier 1983; see further Raaflaub 1993; Martin 2008. 7 Assmann 1992.

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of distinct constituencies and subgroups”.8 An important implication of such a definition is that it is based not on an emic definition of what the aim of any given ritual is, but on an etic point of view which derives from the observer’s analysis of what the real aims of the ritual are. We could thus also come to classify as “political” ritual events which are explicitly designed to foster good harvests, to give thanks for them if received, to celebrate the arrival of the annual inundation, or feasts determined by astronomical points (solstice, full moon, etc). This, of course, brings us to a fundamental question about religion and its meaning. There is a long tradition, going back at least to Durkheim, of seeing religion primarily in its social function, indeed, even considering society to be the source and generator of religion as such.9 If, then, religious attitudes are, so to say, mirror images of what happens in society, we tend to see any religiously motivated intentions in them as rather secondary and derivative, compared to their relevance for the society. All this entails a great risk of losing the religious relevance of the rituals. If we understand them primarily as a means of social interaction, the religious intentions often prominently invoked by the culture itself tend to appear as a smokescreen, where religion is just a powerful tool of social control. Such an approach distorts the intentions of the participants. A classical example of this approach is Clifford Geertz with his model of a “theatre state” applied to indigenous Balinese kingdoms, where all rituals were seen as parts of social rivalry.10 In contrast, HauserSchäublin could show how important it is to take the emic conceptions about the religious meaning seriously, and how rather better results could be obtained when incorporating them into the analysis.11 Of course, we have to be fundamentally aware of the fact that modern theories about ritual are largely based on contemporary material.12 Ancient cultures normally play a very minor role in them. If, in specific situations, some ancient material is incorporated into more general theory-building, like the Babylonian New Year feast, subsequent discussions by ritual theorists tend to stay frozen, as regards the factual basis, at the point of what was known at that time, and make hardly any serious effort to update their information, even though much progress is continually

8 Bell 1997: 128. 9 Durkheim 1912. I should stress that I deliberately deviate from the frequent bad habit of citing only the English translation. Some scepticism against Durkheim in Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994: 158f. and 178–181. 10 Geertz 1980. 11 Hauser-Schäublin 1997: 8–11. 12 See e.g. Grimes 1995 (which includes mainly phenomena which might be central for shaping the experience of the author, but are often marginal at best for the question of rituals); Bell 1992; Bell 1997; Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994.

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being made in the disciplines in question.13 This creates a serious imbalance which has to be overcome. In Egyptology it has not been all that common to regard rituals in themselves as political phenomena.14 In general, I would say that the state of research concerning political rituals is, surprising as it might seem, worse for Ancient Egypt than for Ancient Mesopotamia, a culture offering many interesting similarities.15 The reason might be that the study of religion as such has held considerably higher status for a long time in Egyptology than in Assyriology. For Egypt there have been quite a lot of studies on royal rituals, but many of them focus on the questions of religion to the exclusion of political meaning.16 Perhaps this is all the easier because there is so much to explore about religion, and questions like the one about the divinity of the Egyptian king seem never-ending.17 But even these discussions are normally more focused on other areas of religion, in trying to reconstruct mythology, or theological and ideological systems. The fact that most of the source material comes from ritual texts is taken less into consideration. They are used rather as a quarry for other questions more of interest to the researcher, but less in line with their primary function. Contrarily, royal inscriptions are also often studied only for their supposed royal ideology and propaganda context. This is postulated without taking their religious context sufficiently into consideration,18 which creates obvious problems. If, for example, a royal inscription is high up on a wall or an architrave, reading it from the ground is hardly possible. How, then, could it be a political message intended for the population? The only possibility would be that those texts functioned not by being read, but by being in some way known and transmitted by narration, but such a narrative would likely be more about the primary existence of the inscription than about any intricacies of its content. We have to reckon with the fact that this kind of communication is really and primarily addressed towards the gods.19 The fact of the existence of such messages to the gods is in itself, of course, something which has potential relevance, in so far as it is known to some persons, but that is only a 13 See e.g. Bell 1997: 17–20; at the time of her writing, works like Pongratz-Leisten 1994 would already have been available; see now e.g. Bidmead 2002; Gane 2004. 14 To some degree, this can be found in Roeder 1996, who has analysed ritual texts for what they say about the semantics of rule. Also Roeder 2008 has occasionally touched on the question of social relevance of ritual (although I do not always agree with his specific conclusions). 15 For Mesopotamia, see e.g. Porter 2005. 16 E.g. Frankfort 1948; Barta 1975. 17 For my own position on this, see Quack (forthcoming)a. 18 E.g. Gundlach 1998; Windus-Staginsky 2006. More specifically focused on phraseology are e.g. Blumenthal 1970; Grimal 1986; Schade-Busch 1992; Blöbaum 2006. 19 In this sense Baines 1996: 351f.; Quack 2005a: 250f.

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secondary matter. We, as modern scholars, do not have any need to believe in the Egyptian gods, but we should keep in mind that the ancient Egyptians themselves genuinely worshipped them,20 and that it was this which motivated their religious behaviour, more than any conscious intention of social control. So, we have to find some common ground where we can, at the same time, appreciate that what is taking place are rituals, and that these are religious happenings based on genuine conviction, as well as reckoning with their undeniable influence on social life. The area where this is most easily studied is that of public festivals,21 but we cannot limit ourselves to them. The whole gamut of rituals and formal behaviour has to be looked at. Obviously, there are a number of rituals focusing on the person of the king as main recipient. If we understand politics to involve actions of the state, some measure of political meaning should be inherent in them, and they should thus be classified as political rituals. One point, however, is of crucial importance, namely the question of the audience. We have a broad spectrum here, going from large public processions with enormous crowds to highly arcane rites where the king and a few ritual specialists seem to be on their own, and the question of audience has obvious implications for any effects of such a ritual on society. Still, we should not commit the error of supposing that there is a simple direct relation between the number of people present at a ritual and its political relevance. Rather, there are also cases where the politically important part is not relevant for being actually witnessed, but for being known to take place. A good case in point is the matter of certain crucial rituals during the coronation of the Japanese emperor which he performs in solitude.22 While nobody is a direct witness, and there is considerable doubt about what actually takes place, even this very aura of mystery contributes to the effect the ritual has on the general mentality (as opposed to that on the emperor himself, who knows what is going on; for him, things like a direct contact with the divine world would be important). For Egypt, the area where this can be most effectively shown is in rituals for the protection of the king and for making his position enduring, especially during the

20 I consciously avoid the term “believe” for labelling the attitude of the ancients, because belief as such is hardly at the core of Egyptian (and many another ancient) religion. The Egyptian term which came to mean “to believe” in Christian texts (naxte) goes back to a word nHt| which is, on the one hand, a late development within the language, and, on the other hand, has a more ancient meaning “to trust” (with juridical connotations). For the Egyptians, what mattered was knowing and doing, not believing in the sense of accepting as true things which are contrary to everyday experience and at the same time not capable of positive proof. For similar structures in other cultures, see e.g. Scheid 2005. 21 Roth 2006; Baines 2006. 22 Bell 1997: 130–132.

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night, but also more generally.23 The textual attestation is rather good, but whenever we have clear evidence there is no indication of any participants or spectators beyond the king himself and a few priests. Still, we can be sure that it was general knowledge that the king had magical protection. The ritual formulae in themselves do quite a bit to spell out the position and power of the king, but nobody actually hearing them would be seriously in need of being persuaded. Those who just knew the fact that there was protection for the king would not obtain information on how the ritual actually proclaimed the power of the king. Still, the very existence of this protection would have its share in forming their opinion on how to behave towards the king. Thus, such a protection ritual has political implications, but the way they are put into practice is intricate, and not inherent in the specific way of performance of the ritual as such. Also, when thinking about the efficacy of the ritual, we should not only think about the possible formation of loyalty among those present, but also about the effect on the beneficiary of the ritual himself. Knowing that he had been crowned or been protected in a ritually correct way would quite obviously affect the way the king then feels, thinks, and behaves. And in crucial situations of crisis, his knowledge of divine support might even give him the inner strength necessary to react calmly and appropriately. This is an aspect of “political” rituals which seems somewhat under-represented in most discussions. Another point of relevance for the question of audience is also which sort of audience was of real interest to the centre of power. In modern democracies, where the majority of the total number of votes is crucial, the conditions are quite different from ancient societies (and genuinely ritual elements tend to play a far lesser role, at least in Europe – the American “civil religion” is quite different). In ancient cultures, especially highly stratified kingdoms like Egypt, the important point was not really the numeric majority of the population whose active consent was needed, it was mainly the elite involved in running the country – but better to be backed by far more than 50.1 % of them. We should keep this in mind and understand that, for their political relevance, large-scale feasts and processions involving all inhabitants of a town were not essentially more important than closer-knit rituals involving the court and priesthood only. Now we have to go into the details of what happens in everyday Egyptian cult and ritual and how this relates to politics and constructing the power of some players. One important basic fact is the way religion was organised and financed. Egypt is among those cultures where temple cults were a major public affair, i.e. the state actively financed the building of temples and supplied resources for maintaining a 23 See e.g. Goyon 1972–1974 (I intend to provide a new edition of this text); Goyon 2006; Pries 2009.

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large staff of temple employees. According to papyrus Harris I, about 86,486 people were given by king Ramses III during his reign to the temple of Amun at Thebes,24 so temples were a highly important factor in economy and society. Most of the temple staff worked on a rotating basis, where priests were members of one of the four temple phylae, and thus worked in the temple for three months of the year.25 The official, state-directed nature of temple cult was also evident in the fact that, theoretically, the Pharaoh was the lord of sacrifices, and temple reliefs always show him officiating before the gods. Priests could be depicted in larger ceremonies, especially festival processions, but they would always remain in a subordinate role. In practice, of course, it would have been plainly impossible for the king to be personally present at every occasion, so he had to delegate his direct ritual agency to the local priests for most of the time and most of the places. Still, those officiating in the daily offering cult before the statue of the deity had explicitly to state, as part of the ritual, that it was the king who had officially sent them in his place.26 Another rule derives, quite logically, from the basic fact of organising and financing the cult officially and directly: the one who pays is the one who gets thanked. Thus, in logical consequence, there is practically no ritual preserved from Egyptian temple cult which does not entail the prayer for benefits for the king and the land, and, especially in the decoration of temple walls with offering tableaux, the reassurance of the deity who promises good things in return for the offerings is fundamental. Let us take the daily ritual of awakening the deity in the morning, purifying and clothing him or her, and providing him or her with breakfast. It is one of the more fundamental Egyptian temple rituals, and was, at least in theory, performed every day,27 and it is known as well within the discipline as the “daily temple ritual”. There also prayers for the benefit of the Pharaoh are an integral part of it, as “Pharaoh has come to you, oh (deity NN). May you let him be in front of the living ones, may you be gracious towards him, oh deity NN! May he speak before you and you do for him every good thing! May you save him from all bad and evil things; they should not happen against him in eternity”,28 or “Pharaoh has come to 24 25 26 27

Grandet 1994. Quack 2004. Quack 2005b: 100. The study by Moret 1902 is not up to modern standards but it has not yet been superseded by any complete new publication; partial re-edition and study by Guglielmi & Buroh 1997; study of contents in Lorton 1999: 131–145. A German translation by E. Kausen can be found in Kaiser 1988: 391–405. A new study by Braun (forthcoming) is announced. Specifically for the Graeco-Roman temples, see Hussy 2007. 28 pBerlin 3055, 15. 8–16, 1.

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you, his lord. He speaks what you like. May you be gracious towards him in a good way on this day”,29 or “may you ward off evil and cut off any evil pollution of Pharaoh, as you turn them against those who did them! May you save him from them! He is the one who has come close to the Abdju-fish and the cat.30 He knows this your good name which you made when you were alone in the abyss in that your name of ‘creator who is not weary’”,31 or “may you not hand over Pharaoh to that impurity which is at the beginning of this year! … May you protect him, for you are the protector! May you guard him, for you are the guardian. You are the one who made the gods; your form is upon him with life and dominion. He shall not die in all eternity!”32 Almost as the last words of the ritual we have “All life, stability, dominion, health and happiness are with you, king of upper and lower Egypt Pharaoh, in front of all living ones in eternity!”33 The examples could be amplified ad nauseam, also including liturgical hymns which normally have the fixed ending “may your good face be gracious towards king NN!”34 I will only provide a section of a single, somewhat more elaborate text: “May you let him endure as king of the two lands while your enemies are fallen to your massacre! May you let him rejuvenate in order to overthrow your enemy, kissing the ground (before him) as his chief. May Pharaoh be like the one who does everything which you wish as Re day by day. May he guide for me (?) the islands of the Hau-nebut as my offering-cattle towards your palace, with all things for your Ka, due to the awe of your person. Pharaoh, beloved of Sobek-Re, lord of Sumenu, he shall not perish in eternity. May your beautiful face be benevolent towards Pharaoh!”35 The logical conclusion should be clear. Egyptian temple cult, per se and from its most basic constituents, contains elements which are relevant for constructing and promoting the power of the king, and thus, by current definition, has to be considered a political ritual. However, simply classifying it thus with a major label 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

pBerlin 3055, 17, 10–18, 1. Both animals are helpers of the sun-god. pBerlin 3055, 18, 5–8. pBerlin 3055, 19, 10–19, 3. pBerlin 3055, 37, 5–6. Quack 2007: 100 and 109. pStrasbourg 2, 5, 14–18. Published in a not always reliable way by Bucher 1928–1930; German translation in Assmann 1999: 351–361. See Quack (forthcoming)a.

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would hardly do justice to the ritual as such, which contains many other elements as well. The numerous ways of dealing with the divine statues, cleaning and clothing, as well as feeding them, would be unduly diminished by such a judgement. According to the multi-grid analysis proposed above, we could say that being political in some way is part of their nature, but only a part and hardly the most directly relevant one. Here, of course, the question of audience again comes into play. Performing the rituals directly on the cultic statue of the god was something restricted exclusively to a high-ranking priest, and he would work in solitude. Thus, again the specific performance does not have a chance to directly affect the population. If there is an addressee for the political parts of the message, it can, in the Egyptian intention, only be the gods who alone were supposed to hear it. From the way pharaoh is presented in rituals, let us go over to the other side of the “political” question. How, then, does the Pharaoh act as a political player?36 This brings us straight to the question of how actual political decision-making took place. Among Egyptologists, there is the model of the so-called “king’s novel” which has dominated since its inauguration about 50 years ago, but has by now come increasingly into debate.37 Normally, the texts claimed for this genre depict court sessions where a decision is at stake. The ordinary process is that either the royal view of action is adopted straight away (optionally with special adulation by the court), or confirmed against eventual doubts by courtiers; in the end it always turns out to be correct. In my opinion, the main problem with this group of texts is that it is less a real literary genre category than a depiction of cultural conventions. Firstly, open debate with controversial sides is not often tolerated by the harmonyguided principles of Egyptian culture. Secondly, it is not so much simple actual propaganda which is at stake here, but more a fundamental conviction that the royal insight is infallible. There are even mythological texts about a process of decision-making among gods operating within almost identical parameters, e.g. the so-called “Book of the Heavenly Cow”.38 In any case, official decision-making in Ancient Egypt was, by itself, if not really a ritual, at least a sort of formalised affair. We might not know what went on behind the scenes, which intrigues and faction-building actually had influence on the king, but the final outcome had to be presented ceremoniously in order to be valid. Or, to say it more directly, there was no politics free of ritual.

36 See e.g. Assmann 1984 (= Assmann 2003: 238–258). 37 Original proposal in Hermann 1938; for recent discussions see e.g. Loprieno 1996: 277–295; Jansen-Winkeln 1998; Beylage 2002: 553–618; Hofmann 2004. See my short remarks in Quack 2003: 607. 38 Hornung 1982.

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What are the main areas of political decision-making? If we look at which decisions were deemed important enough to merit monumentalisation, we might at first be a bit disappointed. A good text genre to examine is the royal annals, wherever they are preserved. We have quite a bit of them, which indicate the most important events in a year.39 While questions of military campaigns and victory do play a role, more important overall are the fashioning of statues, and the building and furbishing of temples. Actually, military campaigns do not appear as a means in themselves, they are mainly listed because the booty collected provides the source for richly embellishing the temples. We might be slightly disappointed with this and think that we miss the more important parts of the business; but perhaps we are mistaken, and should trust a bit more that the people then did know what mattered. Given the social and economic relevance of temples in Egypt, decisions about which temple to found, and where, and how to furnish it, were decisions likely to have larger general relevance, comparable to decisions nowadays about fostering economic growth in certain areas by tax cuts or direct subsidies for newly established factories. How, then, were political events officially represented? Scholars have often complained that Egyptian official inscriptions tend to blend out large parts of reality and focus on selected, carefully chosen, and edited parts. Of course this hampers us if we try to write a history in the sense of what we would wish to know about Ancient Egypt. But we can understand it also as a big chance. To study what the Egyptians wished posterity to hear of them and the way they presented it should, inherently, tell us quite a bit about their culture. Perhaps what is most likely to be understood as reports on political events are official royal inscriptions. In telling us whom they fought and how the campaign went, we are given source material for the Haupt- und Staatsaktionen which still informs general histories of Ancient Egypt as written by modern scholars. But how are they set?40 The place of erecting royal stelae is almost invariably a religious space, i.e. temples. Exceptions occur only in “outside regions”, foreign countries or quarry areas which do not have any permanent Egyptian-style temple.41 Also the way they are integrated into overarching compositions is relevant. An Egyptian royal stela is a free-standing monument, even if normally set up with its back to a wall; thus it is rare to have stelae showing inscriptions on both sides. The upper front part, the socalled lunette, invariably shows a ritual scene, with the king in front of a deity – normally the main deity of the temple in question, and sometimes accompanied by other deities as well. 39 For an overview and study, see Baines 2008; Quack (forthcoming)b. 40 See here Beylage 2002; Klug 2002. 41 Where available, even then a temple would be used, e.g. at Beit Shean in Palestine.

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If we come to the text of a typical royal stela itself, normally it starts with a royal eulogy which practically always involves the king’s close contact with the divine word. The decision for the actual campaign is often either said to be by command of the main deity, or we are even given a detailed description of an oracular setting for receiving such an affirmative answer. After the war is successfully over, it is stressed that success was due to the love of the deity for the king, and in more detailed texts, we are given a list of the booty presented to the temple. The long annals-inscription of Thutmosis III., one of the most directly historically narrative texts we have,42 closes with admonitions to the priesthood for vigilance, plus declarations about how the king enlarged the supplies of offerings. Obviously, all presentations of political events are deeply steeped in religion. Still we have to reckon, too, with the fact that most of the royal stelae, and also depictions of military campaigns, were centred on the outside areas of the temple where access was more free than for the inner parts, and royal stelae especially tended to be erected in rather visible spaces near entrance areas, where those entering into the courts of the temple would be most likely to appreciate them. I would therefore by no means deny that they were intended to have an effect on the inner circle, which knew how to read hieroglyphs and had access to at least the more outward parts of a temple. However, all this means that there was no real “secular” public space thought worthy of appropriating. Whatever was deemed important enough for memorising was entrusted to the temple areas, and it was the religious space where it made its impact on visitors and readers, in the framework of ritual. So, we can note that acts which we would consider as political are, in Ancient Egypt, never performed on a purely secular level, and their commemoration is always in connection with ritual and religion. On the other hand, the official temple cult was never a completely apolitical affair; at its most basic level it contained elements of constructing and promoting royal power. This means that a term such as “political ritual” becomes a bit problematic. If we have neither genuinely ritual-free politics, nor a politics-free public ritual, it becomes very fuzzy on both sides. A multi-grid analysis which notes the fact of being “political” in some way, but without excluding all sorts of other attributes, seems better fitted for working on such rituals than a simple categorisation which would classify some rituals just as “political” and others as not “political”.

42 See Redford 2003.

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References Assmann, Jan 1984. “Politik zwischen Ritual und Dogma, Spielräume politischen Handelns im pharaonischen Ägypten”. Saeculum 35: 97–114. — 1992. Politische Theologie zwischen Ägypten und Israel. Munich: Carl-Friedrichvon-Siemens-Stiftung. — 1999. Ägyptische Hymnen und Gebete übersetzt, kommentiert und eingeleitet. Zweite, verbesserte und erweiterte Auflage. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis). — 2000. Herrschaft und Heil. Politische Theologie in Altägypten, Israel und Europa. Munich, Vienna: Hanser. — 20033. Stein und Zeit. Munich: Fink. Baines, John 1996. “Contextualizing Egyptian Representations of Society and Ethnicity”. In: Jerrold S. Cooper & Glenn M. Schwartz (eds.). The Study of the Ancient Near East in the 21st Century. Winona Lake (Indiana): Eisenbrauns: 339–384. — 2006. “Public Ceremonial Performance in Ancient Egypt: Exclusion and Integration”. In: Takeshi Inomata & Lawrence S. Coben (eds.). Archaeology of Performance. Theaters of Power, Community, and Politics. Lanham et al.: Altamira Press: 261–302. — 2008. “On the Evolution, Purpose, and Forms of Egyptian Annals”. In: Evamaria Engel & Vera Müller & Ulrich Hartung (eds.). Zeichen aus dem Sand. Streiflichter aus Ägyptens Geschichte zu Ehren von Günter Dreyer. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 19–40 (Menes 5). Barta, Winfried 1975. Untersuchungen zur Göttlichkeit des regierenden Königs. Ritus und Sakralkönigtum in Altägypten nach Zeugnissen der Frühzeit und des Alten Reiches. München, Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag (Münchener Ägyptologische Studien 32). Bell, Catherine 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 1997. Ritual. Perspectives and Dimensions. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beylage, Peter 2002. Aufbau der königlichen Stelentexte vom Beginn der 18. Dynastie bis zur Amarnazeit. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (Ägypten und Altes Testament 54). Bidmead, Julye 2002. The Akitu Festival. Religious Continuity and Royal Legitimation in Mesopotamia. Piscataway: Gorgias Press. Blöbaum, Anke Ilona 2006. “Denn ich bin ein König, der die Maat liebt”. Herrscherlegitimation im spätzeitlichen Ägypten. Eine vergleichende Studie der Phraseologie in den offiziellen Königsinschriften vom Beginn der 25. Dynastie bis zum Ende der makedonischen Herrschaft. Aachen: Shaker (Aegyptiaca Monasteriensia 4). Blumenthal, Elke 1970. Untersuchungen zum ägyptischen Königtum des Mittleren Reiches, I. Die Phraseologie. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

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Braun, Nadja Stefanie (forthcoming). Pharao und Priester – sakrale Affirmation durch Kultvollzug. Das tägliche Kultbildritual im Neuen Reich und in der Dritten Zwischenzeit. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Bucher, Pierre 1928–1930. “Les hymnes à Sobk-Ra, seigneur de Smenou des papyrus Nos 2 et 7 de la Βibliothèque Nationale de Strasbourg”. Kêmi 1: 41–52; 147–166; Kêmi 3: 1–19. Durkheim Émile 1912. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Paris: Alcan. Frankfort, Henri 1948. Kingship and the Gods. A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Interaction of Society & Nature. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Gane, Roy E. 2004. Ritual Dynamic Structure. Piscataway: Gorgias Press. Geertz, Clifford 1980. Negara. The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gestermann, Louise 2008. “Das Ritual des Dramatischen Ramesseumspapyrus”. In: Benedikt Rothöhler & Alexander Manisali (eds.). Mythos & Ritual. Festschrift für Jan Assmann zum 70. Geburtstag. Berlin: Lit-Verlag: 27–52. Goyon, Jean-Claude 1972–1974. Confirmation du pouvoir royal au nouvel an [Brooklyn Museum Papyrus 47.218.50]. Cairo: Institut Français d’archéologie orientale (Bibliothèque d’Études 52); Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum (Wilbour Monographs 7). — 2006. Le rituel du ‘sḥtp S mt’ au changement de cycle annuel d’après les architraves du temple d’Edfou et textes parallèles, du Nouvel Empire à l’époque ptolémaïque et romaine. Cairo: Institut Français d’archéologie orientale (Bibliothèque d’Études 141). Grandet, Pierre 1994. Le papyrus Harris I (BM 9999). Cairo: Institut Français d’archéologie orientale (Bibliothèque d’Études 109). Grimal, Nicolas-Christophe 1986. Les termes de la propagande royale égyptienne de la XIXe dynastie à la conquête d’Alexandre. Paris: Boccard. Grimes, Ronald 1995. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Revised Edition. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Guglielmi, Waltraut & Knuth Buroh (1997) “Die Eingangssprüche des Täglichen Tempelrituals nach Papyrus Berlin 3055 (I, 1 – VI, 3)”. In: Jacobus van Dijk (ed.). Essays on Ancient Egypt in Honour of Herman te Velde. Groningen: Styx: 101–166 (Egyptological Memoirs 1). Gundlach, Rolf 1998. Der Pharao und sein Staat. Die Grundlegung der ägyptischen Königsideologie im 4. und 3. Jahrtausend. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta 1997. Traces of Gods and Men. Temples and Rituals as Landmarks of Social Events and Processes in a South Bali Village. Berlin: Reimer. Hermann, Alfred 1938. Die ägyptische Königsnovelle. Glückstadt, Hamburg, New York: Augustin (Leipziger Ägyptologische Studien 10). Hofmann, Beate 2004. Die Königsnovelle. “Strukturanalyse am Einzelwerk”. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (Ägypten und Altes Testament 62).

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Hornung, Erik 1982. Der ägyptische Mythos von der Himmelskuh. Eine Ätiologie des Unvollkommenen. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag Freiburg/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 46). Humphrey, Caroline & James Laidlaw 1994. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 2004 [1994]. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Reprint. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hussy, Holger 2007. Die Epiphanie und Erneuerung der Macht Gottes. Szenen des täglichen Kultbildrituals in den ägyptischen Tempeln der griechisch-römischen Epoche. Dettelbach: Röll. Jansen-Winkeln, Karl 1998. “Die ägyptische ‘Königsnovelle’ als Texttyp”. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 83: 101–116. Kaiser, Otto (ed.) 1988. Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments, Band II. religiöse Texte. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag. Klug, Andrea 2002. Königliche Stelen in der Zeit von Ahmose bis Amenophis III. Turnhout: Brepols (Monumenta Aegyptiaca 8). Loprieno, Antonio 1996. “The ‘King’s Novel”. In: Antonio Loprieno (ed.). Ancient Egyptian Literature. History and Forms. Leiden, New York, Köln: Brill: 277–295 (Probleme der Ägyptologie 10). Lorton, David 1999. “The Theology of Cult Statues in Ancient Egypt”. In: Michael B. Dick (ed.). Born in Heaven, Made on Earth. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns: 123–210. Martin, Jochen 2008. “Zur Anthropologie des politischen Denkens”. In: Monika Bernett & Wilfried Nippel & Aloys Winterling (eds.). Christian Meier zur Diskussion. Autorenkolloquium am Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung der Universität Bielefeld. Stuttgart: Steiner: 61–69. Meier, Christian 1983. Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Moret, Alexandre 1902. Rituel du culte divin journalier en Égypte. Paris: Leroux. Pongratz-Leisten, Beate 1994. Ina šulmi īrub. Die kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akītu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Mainz: P. v. Zabern (Baghdader Forschungen 16). Porter, Barbara Nevling (ed.) 2005. Ritual and Politics in Ancient Mesopotamia. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Pries, Andreas 2009. Das nächtliche Stundenritual zum Schutz des Königs und verwandte Kompositionen. Der P. Kairo 58027 und die Textvarianten in den Geburtshäusern von Dendara und Edfu. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag (Studien zur Archäologie und Geschichte Altägyptens 27). Quack, Joachim Friedrich 2002. “Königsweihe, Priesterweihe, Isisweihe”. In: Jan Assmann & Martin Bommas (eds.). Ägyptische Mysterien? Munich: Fink: 95–108. — 2003. “Review of Françoise Labrique: Religions méditerranéennes et orientales de l’antiquité”. Bibliotheca Orientalis 60: 604–608.

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— 2004. “Religious Personnel. Egypt”. In: Sarah I. Jones (ed.). Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press: 289–292. — 2005a. “Medien der Alltagskultur in Ägypten und ihre Auswirkungen auf Palästina”. In: Christian Frevel (ed.). Medien im antiken Palästina. Materielle Kommunikation und Medialität als Thema der Palästinaarchäologie. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck: 237–268 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 10). — 2005b. “Ämtererblichkeit und Abstammungsvorschriften bei Priestern nach dem Buch vom Tempel”. In: Martin Fitzenreiter (ed.). Genealogie – Realität und Fiktion von Identität. London: Golden House: 97–102 (Internetbeiträge zur Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie 5). — 2006. “Zur Lesung und Deutung des Dramatischen Ramesseumpapyrus”. Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 133: 72–89. — 2007. “Kritische Bemerkungen zur Bearbeitung von ägyptischen Hymnen nach dem Neuen Reich”. Die Welt des Orients 37: 90–111. — (forthcoming)a. “How unapproachable is a Pharaoh?” In: Giovanni Lanfranchi & Robert Rollinger (eds.). Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity. Proceedings of the European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop, Padova, November 29th – December 1st, 2007. — (forthcoming)b. “Reiche, Dynastien … und auch Chroniken? Zum Bewußtsein der eigenen Vergangenheit im Alten Ägypten”. In: Josef Wiesehöfer (ed.). Periodisierung und Epochenbewußtsein in der antiken Geschichtsschreibung. Stuttgart: Steiner (Oriens et Occidens). Raaflaub, Kurt A. (ed.) 1993. Anfänge politischen Denkens in der Antike. Die nahöstlichen Kulturen und die Griechen. Munich: Oldenbourg. Redford, Donald B. 2003. The Wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmose III. Leiden et al.: Brill (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 6). Roeder, Hubert 1996. Mit den Augen sehen. Studien zur Semantik der Herrschaft in den Toten- und Kulttexten. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag (Studien zur Archäologie und Geschichte Altägyptens 16). — 2008. “Mundöffnung und rituelle Feindtötung. Die soziomorphe Definition eines altägyptischen Vernichtungsopfers”. In: Eftychia Stavrianopoulou & Axel Michaels & Claus Ambos (eds.). Transformations in Sacrifical Practices from Antiquity to Modern Times. Berlin: Lit-Verlag: 19–74. Roth, Silke 2006. “Der Herrscher im Fest. Zur rituellen Herrschaftslegitimation des ägyptischen Königs und ihrer Außendarstellung im Rahmen von Festen”. In: Dirk Bröckelmann & Andrea Klug (eds.). In Pharaos Staat. Festschrift für Rolf Gundlach zum 75.Geburtstag. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 205–249. Schade-Busch, Mechthild 1992. Zur Königsideologie Amenophis’ III. Analyse der Phraseologie historischer Inschriften der Voramarnazeit. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg (Hildesheimer Ägyptologische Beiträge 35). Scheid, John 2005. Quand faire, c’est croire. Les rites sacrificiels des Romains. Paris: Editions Aubier.

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Peter Van Nuffelen

Beyond Bureaucracy Ritual Mediation in Late Antiquity These reflections on ritual communication in Late Antiquity were triggered by reading Christopher Kelly’s study Ruling the Later Roman Empire (2004). Combining a biographical and sociological approach, he sketches a portrait of the sixthcentury bureaucrat John the Lydian, which broadens into an analysis of the way the bureaucracy of the Later Roman Empire worked. A key element in his analysis is the restricted scope of the state apparatus in this period. Modern bureaucracies are one of the most important ways in which the relation between the state and its citizens is mediated, with civil servants practically embodying the state in their dealings with its citizens. Especially in an age of ‘ombudsmen’ taking care of citizens’ complaints a contemporary bureaucracy can be seen as channelling communication up and down between a state and its citizens. Its late antique counterpart could not fulfil the same role: because of its limited numerical strength and the need for citizens to pay for having a case treated, access to state provision of justice was in practice often restricted to those with the necessary financial means and clout – effectively excluding large parts of the population. Kelly concludes that the late antique state had a much more limited aim than has been ascribed to it in the past, especially on the basis of what may seem the intrusive hyper-activism found in the legal codes of this period. Indeed, the main interest of the late antique state was to ensure a smooth collection of taxes, on which the army depended in particular. Kelly’s analysis of the Late Antique bureaucracy fits well with another characteristic of the state in that period: it progressively delegated part of its powers to other entities in society, as is evidenced especially in the progressive enlargement of the church’s competences in jurisdiction. This reduced pressure on the courts and allowed the state to focus on what it perceived to be its core business. Kelly’s book raises an important question: if bureaucracy provided only limited mediation between state and subjects, were there other ways in which this mediation happened? This question is not answered by him. Important as it is in emphasising the limited ambitions of the late antique state, Ruling the Later Roman Empire remains embedded in the scholarly tradition of taking law and administration as the key elements of how a state functioned in antiquity. In contrast with medievalists,

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who have absorbed anthropological concepts1 to the point of repudiating them,2 classicists have been slow in applying ritual approaches to the study of state structures. Indeed, the title of the most wide-ranging study of imperial ceremonies to date, Monarchische Repräsentation,3 still sums up the dominant approach to public ceremonies and rituals in Late Antiquity: it is characterised, on the one hand, by an emphasis on representation, and, on the other, by a strong focus on the emperor (or king) and his court. In this perspective, ceremonies are regarded as epiphenomena of the exercise of power: they are of high interest for understanding the changing language of power, for example under the impact of Christianisation,4 but are not really relevant for the exercise of power itself, which has to be understood through the analysis of law and administration. In arguing that ritual forms of mediation between state and subject are of crucial importance to understanding the state of Late Antiquity, I suggest that we should operate a double shift in comparison with the traditional approach. Firstly, we have to abandon the idea of representation, implying the absolute control of the ruling power over public ceremonies, and emphasise improvisation, risk, and the struggle for control of the ritual and its meaning. Secondly, we have to avoid too narrow a focus on the imperial court, as if it were the instigator of all public rituals. Rather, I shall argue that rituals can be seen to mediate hierarchical relations in society at large, and not just between emperor and subject. In this way, the study of public rituals may not only help us to understand how the state in Late Antiquity functioned, but also how society at large was structured. Ritual forms of communication are often interpreted as a form of power. In line with the title of his synthesis on public rituals in the early Middle Ages, Die Macht der Rituale, G. Althoff emphasises that rituals help to build consensus, stabilise social relationships, and create relations for the future. As such, they must be univocal, staged, and agreed in advance. In his view, the action normally focuses on, and is driven by, the hierarchically superior.5 A similar perspective was espoused by Flaig for republican Rome and Diefenbach for Later Antiquity.6 In arguing that rituals mediate hierarchical relationships and open up channels of communication between the superior and inferior, I do not see rituals essentially as the top-down exercise of power – although they can be used to that end. On the contrary, the case-studies that follow below will emphasise that rituals can be initiated by the inferior to start communication with the superior. The importance of who initiates the action has been emphasised in sociology and communication theory, and it has 1 2 3 4 5 6

E.g. Koziol 1992; Althoff 2003. Buc 2001. Alföldi 1970. Diefenbach 1996 and 2002. Althoff 2003: 9–24, 190, 202–203; see also 1997: 66–67, 248–250. Flaig 2003; Diefenbach 1996; 2002.

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the following three consequences for my understanding of public rituals in Late Antiquity.7 First, the success and meaning of the ritual are not, by definition, decided on beforehand, but have to be achieved in the act itself. This creates risk for both sides. In public petitions, the first example studied below, the ruler is asked to live up to the image of justice that the petitioner projects onto him, and has either to accept the petition or to think of creative ways of rejecting it, in order not to appear as a tyrant. The subject not only runs the risk of being rejected, but also of having the iron glove of power brought down on him. Hence the importance of acting and wit for both sides engaged in the ritual. As has been argued by Howe, rituals are thus not by definition risk-free, staged events, but actively performed contests in which sometimes more than one’s face can be lost.8 Staged ceremonies should not be the paradigm for ritual communication in Late Antiquity: as I have argued elsewhere, even staged ceremonies demanded a great deal of improvisation from the ruler.9 Staging is one way of limiting the risk inherent in public ritual, rather than a defining feature of public rituals in Late Antiquity. Second, because I see public rituals primarily as channels of communication and not as an exercise of power, their message is not always in support of the ruler or the existing power. My second case-study will show that acclamations should not be defined as expressions of loyalty: there is no meaningful way in which acclamations can be distinguished from insults that criticise the ruler. In such contexts it was particularly important for the ruler to be able to respond properly to the demands expressed in the insults. Acting poorly and not managing the sentiments of the crowd well could result in the breakdown of communication with his subjects, a situation that usually led to a riot. Therefore, ritual communication in Late Antiquity did not always build consensus, but did also allow the expression of discontent.10 Third, because public rituals are dynamic events which are not decided in advance, they have to be interpreted.11 The primary audience of a ritual are the people present on the occasion, and the participants aimed at persuading them in the first place. Yet our sources also engage in active interpretation of rituals: not only are historians often explicitly aware of the mechanisms that determine the outcome of, say, a petition, they also use responses to public rituals as tools to characterise rulers. Although this complicates our access to rituals “as they really were performed”, it also shows how important public rituals were for the image of a ruler.

7 8 9 10 11

E.g. Goffman 1959; Rothenbuhler 1998: 68; Sella 2007: 105. Howe 2000. See Bell 1997: 72–76 for earlier research on the performative aspect of rituals. Van Nuffelen (forthcoming). Cf. Buc 2001: 8. Cf. Buc 2000 and 2001.

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Ritual communication can thus be seen to supplement the limited mediation provided by the bureaucracy. Not only did it provide different channels of communication, it also targeted a wider audience. Whereas access to the bureaucracy was largely limited by the need to pay a fee to the civil servant, ritual communication was, at least theoretically, open to all, including the lower classes. This should not be taken to mean that Late Antiquity witnessed a process of “democratisation” that allowed an increased popular participation and generated a more “popular” culture.12 It is important to keep in mind that acclamations and petitions did not just mediate the relation between subject and ruler, but occurred in numerous other hierarchical contexts. The spread of ritual communication in Late Antiquity therefore suggests that society became increasingly hierarchical. In addition, it testifies to two other related phenomena. One is the fragmentation of Late Antique society: although the church became closely entwined with the state, it also set itself up as an independent body. The same can be argued for the army too, especially when one thinks of barbarian contingents under their own leaders. This expanded the number of hierarchical relationships in Late Antique society: ritual communication not only mediated the relation between emperor and subject, but also between the bishop and his flock, and the general and his soldiers. The second phenomenon is that power relations are personified. One rarely pledges one’s loyalty to the Roman state or the church: acclamations are directed to a specific emperor or bishop. Ritual communication happens between individuals, not abstract concepts. The personification of power has a converse effect; personal power, for example of owners of large estates, has a tendency to encroach on competences of the state. Indeed, numerous petitions in the sixth century are not directed to state officials but to local grandees, who seemed to wield power that previously would have been exercised by state officials – further fragmenting Late Antique society.13 These wider implications for our understanding of society in Late Antiquity can only be sketched here. In this paper, I shall focus on the analysis of three forms of ritual communication: public petitions, acclamations, and riots; and how they mediate the relationship between subject and state and other hierarchical relationships.

Public Petitions Petitions are requests and complaints presented by individuals or groups of citizens to Roman imperial officials, in particular governors and the emperor himself. Decisions were made through a subscriptio, a note on the petition itself, which then could be made public (propositio). In the introductory paper to a recent volume on 12 See the various positions taken by MacMullen 2003; Cameron 2004; Carrié 2001. 13 For various analyses of the economic dimension of this process, see Wickham 2005; Sarris 2006; Banaji 2007.

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petitions in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, T. Hauken emphasises that the Roman state disliked public expressions of discontent and only allowed petitions in written form.14 Indeed, the rest of the volume focuses on petitions brought in writing – the way the term is usually understood.15 Such a focus on the written dimension of petitions tends to downplay the important “performative” dimension of petitions: because petitioners had to ensure themselves that their demand ended up at the court of the governor or the emperor, many travelled there, or used intermediaries to deliver the petition. Personal delivery, if not to the emperor himself, then at least to an official, gave a chance to impress the importance of the request on the receiver and increase the chances of success.16 Yet the later Roman Empire also knew another form of petitioning, in which the emperor (or subordinate official) was approached in public, often forcefully halted, and asked to grant a favour.17 It was an action that involved risk, for both the emperor and the petitioner – loss of face for the former if he responded improperly and the possibility of violent rejection for the latter. Success for either side often depended on how they responded in the situation; acting skills and quick wit could be decisive, as the following examples make clear. Presidius, a Roman whose valuable ornate daggers had been stolen by one of the commanders of the Byzantine army in the wake of its invasion of Ostrogothic Italy in 536, had repeatedly approached the Byzantine commander Belisarius to get them back, but without success. “But on one occasion Presidius met Belisarius riding on horseback in the forum, and he laid hold of the horse’s bridle, and crying out with a loud voice asked whether the laws of the emperor said that, whenever anyone fleeing from the barbarians comes to them as a suppliant, they should rob him by violence of whatever he may chance to have in his hands. And though many men gathered about and commanded him with threats to let go his hold of the bridle, he did not let go until at last Belisarius promised to give him the daggers.”18 Belisarius requested the daggers back from the commander who had stolen them, which eventually led to the execution of the latter. Procopius interprets this as another sign of how badly the war in Italy was going. The form Presidius’ petition takes can be paralleled in numerous sources, indicating that Belisarius and the bystanders would recognise his behaviour as a petition. Belisarius is aware of 14 15 16 17

Hauken 2004: 11. Feissel & Gascou 2004. Corcoran 2000: 43–48. See, e.g. Athanasius, Second Apology 86; Macarius Magnes, Monogenes 4.25.12–14; Sozomenus, Ecclesiastical History 8.13.4. 18 Procopius, Wars 6.8.8–9 (translation Dewing 1919: 389).

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the attitude that is expected of him; although Presidius is threatened with violence, none is exercised. As we shall see, the use of violence against petitioners is the hallmark of a tyrant, and throughout the Wars Procopius is at pains to emphasise Belisarius’ justice. In initiating the ritual of petition in public, and persisting in his shouts, Presidius is counting on Belisarius’ desire to appear a just ruler. Presidius seems to have anticipated Belisarius’ response well in the light of the general’s self-presentation, effectively limiting the risk of rejection. In other circumstances the stakes were higher. In January 503 the Persians took the city of Amida after a long siege, and the king Cavades allowed his soldiers to massacre the inhabitants: “There followed a great massacre of the townspeople, until one of the citizens – an old man and a priest – approached Cavades as he was riding into the city, and said that it was not a kingly act to slaughter captives. Then, Cavades, still moved by passion, replied; ‘But why did you decide to fight against me?’ And the old man answered quickly: ‘Because God willed to give Amida into thy hand not so much because of our decision as of thy valour.’ Cavades was pleased by the speech, and permitted no further slaughter.”19 The old priest – a common figure in Late Antique petitions – obviously risked his life in reproaching the Persian King for the massacre. Yet his quick-witted reply, emphasising the king’s valour, saved not only him but also the city. Wit was key in public ritual communication. It was a weapon often used by subordinates in engagement with superiors; quite a number of early Christian martyr stories have the martyr make fun of his own condition or that of the executioner.20 Wit obviously does not result in a change of the power balance (the martyr is usually killed), but it could shift the moral advantage in the public eye or, as in the case of Cavades, influence the attitude of the superior. The possible impact of a wellplaced remark shows that a petition was an open-ended process of which the result was decided in the act itself. Whilst Presidius could have guessed Belisarius’ response from having observed his general behaviour, the old priest risked all or nothing when engaging a Persian King he had never seen before. The sources recognise that petitions involved the risk of failure. Catholic bishops persecuted by the Vandal king Huneric (477–484) threw themselves on the ground in front of the king and begged him to end the persecution. But the king ordered his followers to trample them with their horses, without listening to their petition.21 Victor is obviously highly partisan, having written his history to tell the plight of the Catholics in Africa. Yet even as a highly-coloured description, Vic19 Procopius, Wars 1.7.30–31 (translation Dewing 1914: 59). 20 E.g. Socrates of Constantinople, Ecclesiastical History 3.19.8–9. 21 Victor de Vita, History of the persecution 3.16.

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tor’s story presupposes certain expectations of how a ruler had to respond in order to be a good king. In depicting Huneric as ignorant of how to engage properly with a petition, Victor casts him as a real tyrant. A similar message underlies a story told by Procopius about the Persian king Chosroes, who wanted to execute a Persian soldier who had violated the daughter of a citizen of Apamea, the city he had just taken (540). The father of the girl petitioned the king in the hippodrome – one of the common places for interaction between citizen and emperor – and Chosroes immediately ordered the execution of the Persian. Procopius reports that the citizens of Apamea started to ask for mercy for the Persian. Their desire to save the rapist may seem strange, but can be explained by a fear for retaliation from the Persian soldiers. Chosroes granted their request but he then had the man secretly executed anyway.22 Procopius does not comment on the fact, and the message must have been quite obvious to the reader. In organising games in the hippodrome and hearing petitions, Chosroes tries to present himself as the Roman emperor. On the face of it, he deals with public requests as the emperor would, even exercising mercy. Yet there is one important difference: Chosroes does not keep to his word, and thus reveals his treacherous and tyrannical nature. Depictions of petitions by contemporary historians presuppose certain expectations about appropriate behaviour on the part of the ruler. It seems likely that these patterns of expectation were shared by the audiences witnessing the petitions. Up to now I have emphasised the importance of the direct relationship that is established in the ritual between petitioner and ruler. Yet all petitions take place in public and the gaze of the audience was a key factor; its expectations formed the benchmark against which the ruler was being held to account. The audience could have a determining impact on the outcome of a petition, as the final example will show. Marc the Deacon’s Life of Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza (died c. 420), preserves a fascinating anecdote. Porphyry had tried to obtain imperial support for the suppression of paganism in Gaza, but the emperor was reluctant to upset public order in a tax-paying city. Porphyry and his followers turned to the Empress Eudoxia, who advised them to petition her son Theodosius after his baptism (402). The baptism of the heir to the throne was a great ceremonial occasion, craftily exploited by Eudoxia and Porphyry. “We stood in the vestibule of the holy church, having also the paper of the petition, and when Theodosius came forth after the baptism, we cried out saying: ‘We make petition of thy Piety,’ stretching forth also the paper. And he that carried the babe, beholding it, and knowing our business (for he had been taught beforehand by his mistress), commanded that the paper be 22 Procopius, Wars 2.11.36–38 (translation Dewing 1914: 361).

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Peter Van Nuffelen shown unto him, and when he received it, he stood still. And he commanded that there should be silence, and opened the paper and read a portion, and having rolled it up he placed his hand under the head of the babe, and bowed it, and cried out before all the people: ‘Their Majesty hath commanded that the things which are in the petition be done.’ And all they that beheld marvelled and worshipped the Emperor, calling him blessed, because he was found worthy to see in his own days a son reigning; and he was lifted up with pride when he heard them.”23

Marc the Deacon is candid about the fact that the petition was staged and that Arcadius knew he was tricked: he describes subsequently how Eudoxia needed a lot of effort to persuade her husband to actually grant the request. Yet Arcadius probably realised he could not back down on what he had agreed to in public and what had appeared to be divinely ordained – a fact that Eudoxia must have been aware of when staging the petition. Contrary to what one might expect in a hagiographical work, Marc the Deacon does not attempt to style the event into a miracle. One can take this to imply that he assumed that his audience knew the importance of planning, acting, and playing on the audience’s feelings for a successful petition. The public petitions discussed above are all directed to emperors, kings, and generals. The surviving written petitions, especially those preserved on papyrus in Egypt, show that these could be addressed to a variety of individuals – with an increased tendency in the course of the fifth century of being addressed to individuals who did not exercise a formal position in the administration, but could wield power and influence, in particular bishops and landowners.24 It seems likely that public petitions underwent a similar extension of their scope, a hypothesis that further study of hagiographic sources in particular will be able to verify. At any rate, the next case-study on acclamations will provide evidence for the spread of ritual forms of communication on all levels of society, and not just between state and subject.

Acclamations Of all forms of ritual communication, acclamations have drawn the most attention so far. Although shouts by the audience, usually expressing approval, are known from the earlier Empire, their frequency seems to increase substantially in Late Antiquity. Not only are they very prominent in literary sources, they are also well attested in epigraphy. Acclamations occur in numerous contexts, at all levels of society: senators acclaim the emperor, city councils the leading citizen, church 23 Marc the Deacon, Life of Porphyry 47–49 (translation Hill 1913: 58-59). 24 Kramer 1987; Fournet & Gascou 2004; Gascou 2004.

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councils the leading bishop. Even during sessions of tribunals the public could make its opinion heard and influence the judge’s decision.25 In a paper summing up the available evidence for acclamations in Late Antiquity, Hans-Ulrich Wiemer concluded that “die hauptsächliche Triebkraft für die Zunahme und Ausbreitung der Akklamationen über alle Bereiche des öffentlichen Lebens war zweifellos das Bestreben des spätantiken Kaisertumes, möglichst weite Kreise der Reichsbevölkerung an möglichst zahlreichen Zeremonien zu beteiligen, die ihnen die nötige und gewünschte Akzeptanz stets auf neue sicherten”.26 This statement is problematic in that it reduces acclamations to a tool to achieve compliance. In my opinion Wiemer errs in two respects. Firstly, his assumption seems to be that all acclamations ultimately aim at the emperor, be it via his subordinates. Yet, as the brief sketch above indicates, acclamations were an extremely varied phenomenon, which occurred in numerous contacts and mediated various hierarchical relations. Wiemer’s interpretation cannot explain the frequent use of acclamations during church councils and sessions of local city councils. Such acclamations focus on local issues and individuals, and can hardly be taken to express loyalty to the emperor. Acclamations clearly mediate many more relations than just that between the emperor and his subjects. Their omnipresence may be better explained as reflecting an increasingly hierarchical society. Acclamations always function in contexts of social and political inequality: the person acclaimed is in the focus of attention, and either raised above the other people present or confirmed in his position higher on the social ladder. Bishops are acclaimed by their flock, but at a council they themselves acclaim another leading bishop. The local euergetes is acclaimed by the council; the provincial governor by his staff and the population of the city; in Constantinople, they will all join in public homage to the emperor. The increased hierarchical nature of society may explain why acclamations, which existed in the early empire as well, become omnipresent in Late Antiquity. Second, Wiemer assumes that acclamations have the function of shaping consensus,27 and are largely staged to achieve that purpose. This disregards the fact that one cannot make a meaningful distinction between acclamations and insults. Contexts that normally generate acclamations for the emperor often resulted in insults. Two of the most famous occasions are the insults shouted at Julian in the theatre of Antioch during the winter of 362/3, resulting in him writing a satirical reply (Misopogon), and the insults directed at Justinian in the circus of Constanti25 Kantorowicz 1946; Colin 1965; Blume 1989; Roueché 1989; Aldrete 1999; Hugoniot 2002; Wiemer 2004; Kruse 2006. 26 Wiemer 2004: 60. 27 See also Diefenbach 2002: 42; Kruse 2006, and for the Middle Ages Althoff 2003.

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nople during the Nika riot of 532. But acclamations do not have to be either positive or negative about the person to whom they were addressed: the emperor Tiberius is reported to have been so touched by anti-Arian shouts during a public appearance that he instigated a persecution.28 The fifth-century church historian Sozomenos reports that acclamations against Athanasius were written down to be used in the court proceedings against the bishop.29 In taking loyalty as the aim of acclamations, Wiemer mistakes one of the messages they could convey for their essence: first and foremost, acclamations open up a channel of communication in a hierarchical relationship and allow the inferior to express his views. Especially when they expressed criticism, it is doubtful if acclamations would have been rehearsed beforehand, although solemn occasions surely included such staged expressions of loyalty. Yet, as with petitions, staging is just one of the possibilities; often acclamations must have been initiated spontaneously by the audience, or at least without state control. At the same time, they are not random expressions of opinion; acclamations tend to occur in specific contexts and places, such as the theatre and hippodrome, or during public appearances of the emperor and other officials. As a form of communication which could be initiated by the hierarchically inferior, acclamations were not a harmless exercise in loyalty. By criticising the emperor, the people might risk his wrath – as happened to Antioch in 363. But the risk was not all on the people’s side; an emperor confronted with a discontented people had to find ways of dealing with their anger. The danger existed that they would shift their loyalty to a new emperor. Emperors therefore often resorted to dramatic symbolic acts to assuage the people. In 512 Anastasius put down his diadem in the hippodrome, and during the Nika riot of 532 Justianian appeared with the Gospels. Anastasius was successful, but Justinian was not. G. Greatrex has argued that Justinian’s error in 532 was to send out conflicting signals to the disaffected masses and to fail to keep contact with them.30 The action of Anastasius restored the channels of communication, whereas that of Justinian caused them to break down. That is the point where insults could develop into full-scale revolts.

Riots Late Antique riots are rarely analysed as rituals. Their violent and disordered character seems to contradict the very notion of ritual, with its implication of a fixed and regulated pattern. Yet certain riots can be seen to follow a certain pattern that

28 John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 102.5–16 and 113.25–114.3. 29 Sozomenos, Ecclesiastical History 2.25.7. 30 Greatrex 1997.

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seems to mimic that of well-known imperial ceremonies. If not rituals themselves, they are clearly part of a ritualised society. In book 4 of the Wars, Procopius recounts the story of two military rebellions that took place in North Africa in the wake of the Roman reconquest of that province (536).31 During the first, the Roman commander Solomon tries to calm the soldiers down, but to no avail: “And the soldiers at first seemed to receive his words with favour, but on the fifth day, when they had heard that those who had gone out were secure in their power, they gathered in the hippodrome and insulted the other commanders without restraint. And Theodorus, the Cappadocian, being sent there by Solomon, attempted to dissuade them and win them by kind words, but they listened to nothing of what was said. Now this Theodorus had a certain hostility against Solomon and was suspected of plotting against him. For this reason the mutineers straightway elected him general over them by acclamation, and with him they went with all speed to the palace carrying weapons and raising a great tumult.”32 The rest of the day is spent in murder and rampage. The episode raises the eyebrows of a reader with common sense. Why did the rebels not attack the palace immediately but instead gathered in the hippodrome, where their only business seems to have been to heap insult on their commanders? By doing so, they raised the alarm, and Solomon had time to take counter-measures and eventually to escape. The original plan to assassinate Solomon is a logical way of proceeding, but the consequent behaviour of the soldiers seems aberrant and highly detrimental to their purposes. Another attempted usurpation, told four chapters later by Procopius, follows a similar pattern. Germanus, the new Roman commander, knew that a certain Maximinus was conspiring against the state and kept a close eye on him. On the day of a festival, many of the conspirators gathered in front of the commander’s palace. “And as the drinking proceeded, someone entered and announced to Germanus that many soldiers were standing in great disorder before the door of the court, putting forward the charge that the government owed them their pay for a long period. And Germanus commanded the most trusty of the guards secretly to keep close watch over Maximinus, allowing him in no way to perceive what was being done. Then the conspirators with threats and tumult proceeded on the run to the hippodrome, and those who shared their plan with them gathered gradually from the houses and were assembling there.”33 31 For a more detailed discussion, see Van Nuffelen 2007. 32 Procopius, Wars 4.14.30–35 (translation Dewing 1916: 337). 33 Procopius, Wars 4.18.8–11 (translation Dewing 1916: 373–375).

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The astute Germanus foresaw that it would be difficult to quench the rebellion if all rebels managed to gather in the hippodrome. So he ordered soldiers loyal to him to attack the conspirators. Not seeing their leader Maximinus anywhere, they soon lost heart and fled in complete disorder. Their ringleader was impaled just outside the city walls. The pattern of both rebellions is almost identical. The course of action does not seem to have been determined by a rational calculation but by symbolic places and actions. Moreover, these revolts seem to be mimicking established rituals. Just as during a coronation ceremony the emperor was acclaimed by his subjects in the hippodrome, the soldiers insulted and abjured their commander in that very place, before choosing a new leader. The gathering in the hippodrome was a key moment in both revolts; for the first it provided the starting point, whereas during the second Germanus knew he had to prevent the soldiers from gathering there. Through insults the current leader was abjured, and subsequently loyalty was transferred to a new one. Only then did the rioters seem to be able to take decisive action. The strain of the situation – rebelling against their commander was not a decision lightly taken by soldiers – may explain the fact that the rioters organised their action around areas and actions they were familiar with. Whether this is a deliberate or unconscious process is impossible to decide and not of great importance; the riots are clearly influenced by ceremonial patterns found elsewhere in Late Antique society. These riots stay within the framework of ritual communication in another way. The soldiers first break off the channels of communication with their commander, and transfer them immediately to another leader, who becomes the focus of their attention. This is a pattern often observed in riots in Late Antiquity. Although they could be extremely violent and threaten the well-being of emperors and commanders, they were not revolutions; they did not aim at changing the form of the state, but they replaced an unreceptive ruler with one more open to their demands. On the sliding scale between staged ceremonies and improvised rituals, riots are clearly at the extreme bottom end; yet in their peculiar way, their mediation of the relation between commander and soldier is not without ritual characteristics.

Conclusion This paper has proposed to understand public rituals as forms of mediation in a hierarchical society and suggested that their expansion in Late Antiquity must be seen against wider tendencies of the Late Antique state, characterised by limited bureaucratic mediation, personalisation of power, and fragmentation of state authority. These complex mechanisms could only be sketched, and many issues have been left untouched in this paper. I have said, for example, little about change over

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time. A progressive Christianisation of public life has often been remarked upon,34 but, as suggested in this paper, an increase in the number of hierarchical relations that are mediated in a ritual way is another tendency to reckon with. Further research into the topography of ritual communication is also needed; the focus on hippodrome and theatre is evident, but other symbolically important places may have existed, in particular churches. Further work will have to explore these hypotheses; the main purpose of the present paper was to show that we have to go beyond bureaucracy and see ritual communication as a key phenomenon for understanding state and society in Late Antiquity.

34 Cameron 1979; McCormick 1986.

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References Aldrete, Gregory S. 1999. Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Alföldi, Andreas 1970. Die monarchische Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreiche. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Althoff, Gerd 1997. Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. — 2002. “The Variability of Rituals in the Middle Ages.” In: Gerd Althoff & Johannes Fried & Patrick J. Geary (eds.). Medieval Concepts of the Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 71–87. — 2003. Die Macht der Rituale. Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Banaji, Jairus 20072. Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity: Gold, Labour, and Aristocratic Dominance. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Classical Monographs). Bell, Catherine 1997. Ritual. Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blume, Marianne 1989. “À propos de P. Oxy. I, 41: des acclamations en l’honneur d’un prytane confrontées aux témoignages épigraphiques du reste de l’empire”. In: Lucia Criscuolo & Giovanni Geraci (eds.). Egitto e storia antica dall’ellenismo all’età araba. Bilancio di un confronto. Atti del colloquio internazionale (Bologna, 31 agosto–2 settembre 1987). Bologna: CLUEB: 271–290. Buc, Philippe2000. “Ritual and Interpretation: The Early Medieval Case”. Early Medieval Europe 9: 183–210. — 2001. The Dangers of Ritual. Princeton: Princeton University Press. — 2007. “The Monster and the Critics: A Ritual Reply”. Early Medieval Europe 15: 441–452. Cameron, Averil 1979. “Images of Authority. Elites and Icons in Late Sixth-Century Byzantium”. Past and Present 84: 3–35. — 2004. “Democratization Revisited: Culture and Late Antique and Early Byzantine Elites”. In: John Haldon & Lawrence Conrad (eds.). The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. Vol. 6: Elites Old and New in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. Princeton: The Darwin Press: 91–107. Carrié, Michel 2001. “Antiquité tardive et “démocratisation de la culture” : un paradigme à géométrie variable”. Antiquité tardive 9: 27-46. Colin, Jean 1965. Les villes libres de l’Orient gréco-romain et l’envoi au supplice par acclamations populaires. Brussels: Latomus. Corcoran, Simon 20002. The Empire of the Tetrarchs. Imperial Pronouncements and Government AD 284–324. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dewing, H.B. 1914. Procopius. History of the Wars. Books I and II. London: Heinemann. — 1916. Procopius. History of the Wars. Books III and IV. London: Heinemann.

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— 1919. Procopius. History of the Wars. Books V and VI. London: Heinemann. Diefenbach, Stefan 1996. “Frömmigkeit und Kaiserakzeptanz im frühen Byzanz”. Saeculum 47: 35–66. — 2002. “Zwischen Liturgie und Civilitas. Konstantinopel im 5. Jahrhundert und die Etablierung eines städtischen Kaisertums”. In: Rainer Warland (ed.). Bildlichkeit und Bildorte von Liturgie. Schauplätze in Spätantike, Byzanz und Mittelalter. Wiesbaden: Reichert: 21–49. Feissel, Denis & Jean Gascou 2004. La pétition à Byzance. Paris: Association des amis du Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance (Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance 14). Flaig, Egon 1992. Den Kaiser herausfordern: die Usurpation im Römischen Reich. Stuttgart: Campus. — 2003. Ritualisierte Politik: Zeichen, Gesten und Herrschaft im Alten Rom. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Fournet, Jean-Luc & Jean Gascou 2004. “Liste des pétitions sur papyrus des Ve—VIIe siècles”. In: Denis Feissel & Jean Gascou (eds). La pétition à Byzance. Paris: Association des amis du Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance: 141–196 (Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance. Monographies 14). Gascou, Jean 2004. “Les pétitions privées.” In: Denis Feissel & Jean Gascou (eds). La pétition à Byzance. Paris: Association des amis du Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance: 93–104 (Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance. Monographies 14). Goffman, Erving 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Greatrex, Geoffrey1997. “The Nika Riot: A Reappraisal”. Journal of Hellenic Studies 117: 60–86. Hauken, Tor 2004. “Structure and Themes in Petitions to Roman Emperors”. In: Denis Feissel & Jean Gascou (eds). La pétition à Byzance. Paris: Association des amis du Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance: 11–22 (Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance. Monographies 14). Hill, G.F. 1913. Marc the Deacon: Life of Porphyry, Bishop of Gaza. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Howe, Leo 2000. “Ritual and Performance”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society 6: 63–79. Hugoniot, Claude 2002. “Les acclamations dans la vie municipale tardive”. In: Hervé Inglebert (ed.). Idéologies et valeurs civiques dans le monde romain: hommage à Claude Lepelley. Paris: Picard: 179–188. Kantorowicz, Ernst H. 1946. Laudes regiae. A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Mediaeval Ruler Worship. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kelly, Christopher 2004. Ruling the Later Roman Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Koziol, Geoffrey 1992. Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Kramer, Bärbel 1987. “P. Strasb. inv. 1265 + P. Strasb. 296 recto; Eingabe gegen ANDRAPODISMOS (= plagium) und SYLESIS (= furtum)”. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 69: 155–161. Kruse, Thomas 2006. “The Magistrate and the Ocean: Acclamations and Ritualised Communication in Town Gatherings in Roman Egypt”. In: Eftychia Stavrianopoulou (ed.). Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World. Liège: Centre international d’Etude de la religion grecque: 297–315 (Kernos Supplements 16). MacMullen, Ramsay 2003. “Cultural and Political Changes in the 4th and 5th Centuries”. Historia 52: 465–495. McCormick, Michael 1986. Eternal Victory. Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rothenbuhler, Eric W. 1998. Ritual Communication: From Everyday Conversation to Mediated Ceremony. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Roueché, Charlotte 1989. Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity: the Late Roman and Byzantine Inscriptions Including Texts from the Excavations at Aphrodisias Conducted by Kenan T. Erim. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Sarris, Peter 2006. Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sella, Zohar K. 2007. “The Journey of Ritual Communication”. Studies in Communication Sciences 7: 103–124. Van Nuffelen, Peter 2007. “The Late Antique State and ‘Mirror Rituals’. Procopius of Caesarea on Riots”. In: Dariusz Brodka & Michael Stachyra (eds.). Continuity and Change: Late Antique Historiography between Order and Disorder. Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press: 61–72 (Electrum 13). — (forthcoming). “Playing the Ritual Game in Constantinople under the Theodosian Dynasty (379–457)”. In: Lucy Grig & Gavin Kelly (eds.). Two Romes: From Rome to Constantinople. New York: Oxford University Press. Wickham, Chris 2005. Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 A.D. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wiemer, Hans-Ulrich 2004. “Akklamationen im spätrömischen Reich. Zur Typologie und Funktion eines Kommunikationsritual”. Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 86: 27–73.

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Strange Signs, Divine Wrath, and the Dynamics of Rituals The Expiation of Prodigies in the Roman Republic In 207 B.C., a four-year-old hermaphrodite was discovered in Frusino, a small town about 70 kilometres south-east of Rome. The Roman priesthood of the haruspices decided to deal with the child by putting the hermaphrodite alive in a chest, they then boarded a ship, and threw the chest into the sea.1 The child had no chance of survival. Only in mythology are children exposed to water saved. The four-yearold had to die because it fitted into the Roman category of a prodigy too well. Prodigies may be defined as unusual events signifying the wrath of the gods and a disruption to the pax deorum, the “peace” with the gods. Thus, a prodigium – the Romans also used the terms portentum or ostentum – was always a bad sign. Prodigies did not occur on a special day in the year or point at an individual but at the res publica; they did not predict the future and were expiated by the Roman officials usually at the beginning of the new year. Such phenomena as earthquakes, lightning striking roads, temples, walls, gates and other significant buildings, mules giving birth, monstrous births such as of children with four feet or two heads, speaking animals, wild animals entering the city of Rome, blood flowing from the earth, eclipses of the sun or the moon, meteors, comets, rainfalls of blood, milk, chalk, meat or stones, and Vestals breaking the vow of chastity, were all classified as prodigies. The prodigies of 210 B.C. as described by the Roman historian Livy might serve as an example of the way prodigies are reported: “[…] that at Tusculum a lamb was born with an udder full of milk, and that the ridge of Jupiter’s temple was struck by lightning and stripped of almost all its roofing; that at Anagnia about the same time ground struck by lightning outside the gate burned for a day and a night without any fuel; and that at the crossroads near Anagnia, in the grove of Diana, birds deserted their nests in the trees; that at Tarracina, in the sea not far from the harbour, serpents of remarkable size leaped about after the manner of fish at play; that at Tarquinii a pig was born with a human face; and that in the territory of 1 Rosenberger 1998: 184.

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Veit Rosenberger Capena, at the grove of Feronia, four statues sweated blood profusely for a day and a night” (transl. Frank Gardner Moore).2

Omens differ from prodigies. Omens happened to a given person, in most cases prominent politicians at a turning-point in their careers, and were the only signs said to foretell the future. Many omens were favourable signs. Negative omens were constructed in order to display the unlawfulness of a political adversary and to demonstrate that the gods were his enemies. One of the first death omens concerns the politician Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus who had made many enemies in his attempt to enforce agrarian reforms in 133 B.C. On the day he was killed, he hurt his foot severely on leaving his house and ravens threw a stone in his way (Plutarch, Gracchus 17). The signs conveyed the unmistakable message that it would be better for Gracchus to stay at home. Our sources are too scant to tell whether the signs were constructed by the enemies of Gracchus in order to show that he was doomed or whether supporters adorned his last day with divine signs. While prodigies might actually have occurred in one way or another,3 omens were definitely constructed and only prodigies were expiated by the res publica. Although no ancient author gives a detailed description of the procedure that turned an unusual event into a prodigy, the following model can be reconstructed with some degree of accuracy. First, the unusual sign had to be announced to a magistrate, usually a consul or a praetor. The magistrate would then report the sign in the senate, in some cases taking a witness with him. The senate had the right to accept or to refuse the sign. Once a prodigy was accepted, the senate had the power to decide which ritual to perform to expiate the prodigium. Usually, the senate would hand this task over to specialised priests: the pontiffs, the decemvirs (since the 80s B.C., a college of fifteen priests), and the haruspices. The priests consulted their holy books which contained ritual texts, not prophetic utterances. The senate could accept, refuse, re-interpret or amplify the advice of the priests. Since the colleges of the pontiffs and the decemvirs consisted solely of senators, the senate held ultimate control over the prodigies.4 The priests functioned as sub-committees of the senate. Needless to say, this model may have been subject to modifications over time. 2 Livy 27, 4, 11–14: Tusculi agnum cum ubere lactenti natum, Iovis aedis culmen fulmine ictum ac prope omni tecto nudatum; (12) isdem ferme diebus Anagniae terram ante portam ictam diem ac noctem sine ullo ignis alimento arsisse, et aves ad compitum Anagninum in luco Dianae nidos in arboribus reliquisse; (13) Tarracinae in mari haud procul portu angues magnitudinis mirae lascivientium piscium modo exsultasse; (14) Tarquiniis porcum cum ore humano genitum, et in agro Capenate ad lucum Feroniae quattuor signa sanguine multo diem ac noctem sudasse. 3 Krauss 1930 attempts to explain the prodigies from the scientist’s point of view. 4 Wissowa 1912: 390–392; Rosenberger 1998: 23–25; Rasmussen 2003: 47–50; Rosenberger 2007: 292–303.

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Once a strange event was accepted as prodigium, a ritual had to follow. We have ample evidence for the expiation of prodigies, even though the sources do not say much about the minutiae of the rituals. In general, ancient Roman and Greek sources rarely describe the details of rituals.5 As the conference has showed, classicists are not the only ones facing this problem. Two reasons may explain the silence about rituals: i. rituals can be too sacred to be told to a wider public; ii. rituals might seem too well known to describe them. In the case of the rituals used to expiate the prodigies, the latter seems to be plausible.6 In the Roman prodigy system, ritual dynamics can be observed on two levels. Firstly, the dynamics or powers set free by rituals and secondly the dynamics in the process of changing rituals. This article is an attempt to take a fresh look at the Roman prodigy system: the expiatory rituals were part of a dynamic process which formed much of what is regarded as Roman religion. Roman religion is nowhere near as static as claimed by Roman authors and as believed by many modern researchers.7 In the first chapter, I will analyse the rise and fall of the Roman prodigy system. Chapter two will deal with the introduction of new cults as means used to expiate prodigies. Chapter 3 offers some case-studies of the social dynamics of the prodigy system.

1. The Rise and Fall of the Roman Prodigy System Although we know generally more about the prodigies than about their expiation, it is useful to take a close look at the beginning and the end of the prodigy system. Since prodigies were ritually expiated, the ups and downs of the reporting of prodigies relates to rituals. Between 250 and 50 B.C., prodigies are mentioned every second year on average. The beginnings of regular expiation of prodigies are difficult to determine. The year 249 B.C. is widely accepted as the inception of the prodigy system; in that year, the highest priest (pontifex maximus) seems to have been the first to have published his agenda which also contained the prodigies announced.8 What do we know about the time before 249? The evidence for early Rome is scant and dubious. Without being over-critical, we are in safe waters around 300 B.C. Earlier dates must be questioned.9 The first prodigy in Livy’s account is of a rainfall of stones in the Alban hills during the reign of King Tullus Hostilius, centuries before 300 B.C.10 Livy reports rainfalls of stones for several 5 ThesCRA offers a comprehensive account of rituals in the ancient world. 6 Beard 2007: esp. 7–41 demonstrates that even in the case of the seemingly well-documented Roman triumph, the sources are hardly reliable. 7 Ando 2008: XI. 8 Rüpke 1993: 155–179; Rosenberger 1998: 205–210. 9 Cf. Raaflaub 2005: 55–70. Engels 2006 takes all notes about divine signs beginning with the alleged foundation date of Rome (753 B.C.) at face value. 10 Livy 1,31,2–4.

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other years. Such rainfalls had a particular importance. They were not just the oldest prodigy, they were also the only prodigy which was always expiated by the same ritual. That is at least what the ancient authors say; however, it is more than likely that the ritual of the third century B.C. was projected on to the story about a rainfall of stones in early Rome. Nevertheless, the above-mentioned rainfalls of stones are likely to be regarded as prodigies. In 269, lightning struck the temple of Salus and the walls, wolves were seen in Rome eating a human corpse, lightning struck the walls of Formiae and a flame was seen south of Rome. Two years later, blood flowed out of the earth and there was a rainfall of milk and a bloody spring. In 266, Rome suffered a plague.11 We can conclude that prodigies were expiated before 249 B.C., but not on a regular basis. The prodigy system was not established at once but developed over about half a century. As to the fourth or even fifth century, we can only speculate. In the years around 300 B.C., the so-called “struggle of the orders” ended. According to the Roman tradition, this conflict had lasted for a century and a half. At the core of the conflict were the old division of the Roman people into patricians and plebeians and the attempt of the plebeians to gain access to power. Regardless of the alleged length of the conflict, of the details and of senatorial or plebeian myth-making, in 300 B.C. the lex Ogulnia allowed plebeians to become priests, in 287 the lex Hortensia gave plebiscites legislative power. Perhaps the additional rituals guaranteed by prodigies were a welcome means of demonstrating unity and cohesion amongst the population of Rome. Although every recorded event at such an early time in Roman history should be doubted, Livy’s notice may at least indicate that prodigies were expiated before 249 B.C. What changed in the middle of the third century B.C. was the frequency and the political quality of prodigies. The end of the Roman prodigy system is clearer. After the Social War (91-89) – a conflict between the Romans and their Italian allies which ended with full citizenship for all free-born Italians – the number of prodigies declines. Four factors are responsible for this highly complex phenomenon: i. during the civil wars, individual generals struggled for the highest power: while they attempted to control divine signs e.g. by having their own private prophets, they suppressed the constantly negative prodigies and preferred positive signs signifying divine favour. Successful generals would not need expiatory rituals. ii. The republican system, in which political power was more or less shared by several hundred senators, declined during the civil wars. In some cases, prodigies and their expiation – the rituals might occasionally require more than ten days – had the advantage of buying time for all players in the political process. As soon as decisions were no longer made in the senate and as soon as the search for consensus was replaced by brute 11 Orosius 4,5,7; Augustine, City of God 3,17.


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force, there was less reason to expiate strange events like prodigies. iii. The end of the Social War might be a further reason. About 80% of the Italian prodigies were announced from cities located in a stretch between the area of Caere in the north and Capua in the south, between the sea in the west and the Apennines in the east. This region corresponds to the extension of Roman territory in the middle of the fourth century B.C., and was densely populated with Roman citizens. Rome used prodigies mainly to communicate with its citizens outside the urbs. After the end of the Social War, when Roman citizenship had been granted for all Italians, prodigies were no longer needed to symbolically distinguish cities with Roman citizenship from cities with differing and minor citizenship.12 iv. Further, the dynamics initiated by the literarisation of the discourse about religion, which began in the second century B.C., might be an important factor: as soon as authors reflect about religion in their texts, they have the potential to influence their audience. Any communication about rituals implies that religious agency is potentially subject to change.13 During the reign of Augustus, prodigies appear only in 17 and 16 B.C. In 17 B.C., the day after Augustus had left Rome to travel to Gaul, the temple of Iuventus burned down, a wolf killed some people in the forum Romanum, the forum was swarming with ants and at night torches wandering from south to north illuminated the sky. As expiation the citizens offered prayers for the safety of the emperor.14 The decision to pray for the emperor contains the significant change from the republican system to the monarchy established by Augustus: the expiation rituals, once performed for an abstract res publica, were replaced by prayers for one person. The prodigies illustrate the close connection the emperor had with divine signs. After Augustus, only few prodigies were expiated. The process of personalisation and monopolisation of divine signs ended with Augustus – signs were reserved for the emperor. Later biographers would narrate omens at birth, death and other significant turning-points in the lives of the emperors.15 By applying the concept of ritual dynamics it becomes clearer that we should not speak of the decline of Roman religion in the first century B.C., but of changes in Roman religion.

2. Introducing New Rituals Our two main sources, Livy and Obsequens, say more about the prodigies than about their expiation. Only in about fifty per cent of the years in which prodiges are mentioned do we know of an expiation. This ratio simply reflects the interests of 12 13 14 15

Rosenberger 2005: 235–257. Bendlin 2009: 11. Cassius Dio 54,19,7. Rosenberger 1998: 226.

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our sources – it is by far more spectacular to write about a child with two heads than about a procession; however, it does not mean that only 50 per cent of the prodigies were expiated. Since the prodigies were a violation of a border, boundaries were reinforced by the expiations. Most expiatory rites can be classified in the following system. 1. The removal of the prodigious event. 1a. From Rome. In 135 B.C., an owl, which was heard first on the Capitol and then about the city, was caught and burned (Obsequens 26); in 101, a strange and rare scapegoat-ritual was performed: priests led a nanny-goat with its horns on fire through the city and expelled it through one of the gates (Obsequens 44a). 1b. The removal of the prodigy inside the city. This group includes the burial of lightning-bolts as well as the live burial of Vestals who had been convicted of unchastity. The two unchaste Vestals of 216 were buried within the walls at the porta Collina, the farthest possible spot from the forum (Livy 22,57,2). 1c. Prodigies occurring outside Rome were sometimes also removed. Androgynes, for example, were not killed, but drowned by the haruspices in the sea (Livy 27,11,1–6) or in a river (Obsequens 27a). 2. The restoration of borders through rituals. 2a. In a lustratio, priests led a procession around the city walls, thereby ritually restoring the boundaries and the safety of Rome.16 2b. The restoration and re-definition of the borders between gods and humans, namely boundaries between groups of Roman society. In a supplication, the entire population, wearing wreaths in their hair and carrying laurel twigs in their hands, went to the open temples and made sacrifices. At the lectisternium of 217 B.C., celebrated after the defeat at Lake Trasimene, the statues of the twelve Olympian gods were ritually served food for three days (Livy 22,10,9). Such a sacral dinner community symbolised both the close connection and the difference between the gods and the Romans. By transgressing the boundaries between senators and the rest of the Roman citizens, by celebrating rituals together, prodigies and their expiation were a means of defining Roman identity. Only a few rare rituals do not fit into this system, for example a ritual fast in honour of Ceres, recorded only for 191 B.C. (Livy 36,37,4). This is the functionalist approach I have used to understand the Roman prodigy system.17 Although this method is not to be completely dismissed, it risks describing the prodigy system as static. A systematic listing of all expiatory rituals reveals that prodigies were often expiated with a new ritual: there are numerous transfers of foreign cults.18 In all, a chronological listing of the expiations can be read as the history of the rituals performed by the Romans. We know of hardly any rituals outside the prodigy system. Certainly, the Romans always made sacrifices, and it might be quite plausible that they performed other rituals like processions but our 16 Cf. Baudy 1998. 17 Rosenberger 1998: 131–154. 18 Rasmussen 2003: 53–116 offers an exhaustive list of the prodigies and their expiation; MacBain 1982: 82–106 is less complete.


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sources do not mention such rituals.19 So prodigies were not necessarily expiated by rituals already known and used in other religious contexts – as stated elsewhere20 – but by rituals explicitly designed to react to a particular sort of prodigy. Priests were always consulted in this process. Some types of prodigies occurred only for relatively short periods. Seventeen prodigia concerning celestial lights occurred from 113–100 B.C., nine cases of miscarriage occurred in 98–90 B.C., weapons in the skies only occurred in the second half of the second century B.C., statues of gods sweating only occurred in the first century B.C. and bee prodigies only from 118–11 B.C. Once a strange event had been accepted by the senate as a prodigium, it was likely that another sign of the same kind would soon be related. At the same time, such signs seem to lose their divinatory quality after some years. Not every earthquake or flash of lightning automatically became a prodigium. As to the expiation of the prodigies, we can only speculate. It seems reasonable that the same prodigy was expiated by the same ritual. If that assumption is correct, there was not just a rise and fall in the frequency of certain prodigies, but also a change in the expiation. Why a sign was accepted as a prodigium, why others were not and how many signs were rejected during a year, is beyond explanation because of the scarcity of sources. What remains are a few cases of pragmatism. Two cases may demonstrate the pragmatic attitude of the senate. After the reporting of numerous earthquakes in 193 B.C., the consuls announced that on any day on which an earthquake had been reported, no one should report another earthquake (Livy 34,55,4). In 173 B.C., a plague of locusts was expiated together with further prodigies by sacrifices and a supplication. When immense swarms of locusts invaded Apulia the following year, a designated praetor was sent to Apulia to organise collecting the locusts (Livy 42,10,7–8). Thus, the locusts of 172 B.C. were not regarded as a prodigy. The same type of prodigy would not always be expiated with the same rituals. The only exception is a rainfall of stones, regularly expiated by a novendiale sacrum, feriae for nine days, during which work and lawsuits had to cease. Plagues were expiated by games (ludi) since 364. Even if the same type of prodigy recurs over centuries, the priests seem to have been consulted by the senate every time. Sometimes, it seems, one ritual could suffice to expiate several prodigies. In 93 B.C., if Iulius Obsequens is to be believed, thirteen prodigies were expiated by lustrations (Obsequens 52). But this may be simply due to the nature of our sources. For 194, for example, Livy only says that the prodigies are expiated according to the decree of the pontifices without mentioning a ritual.21

19 On sacrifices see Prescendi 2007: passim. 20 Rosenberger 2007: 296. 21 Livy 34,45,6–8; Rasmussen 2003: 75.

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The first lectisternium was introduced in 399 B.C. in order to avert an extremely dangerous drought. During eight days, the cult statues of Apollo, Latona, Hercules, Diana, Mercurius and Neptunus were publicly fed. This ritual developed, according to the Roman tradition, its own dynamics: the entire population of Rome imitated this feasting, everybody was hospitable, inviting friends and complete strangers into his house. As a result, lawsuits came to an end, even prisoners were freed of their chains and were chained only by religion.22 Although Livy does not qualify the drought as a prodigy, in his narrative the Romans dealt with it like a prodigy. It need hardly be emphasised that such an early event can barely claim historicity; it is much more the description of the good old days in Rome when religion was respected. In 216 B.C., the year of the catastrophic defeat at Cannae, the Romans sacrificed a man and a woman from Gaul and a man and a woman from Greece. This human sacrifice expiated the defeat which was regarded as a prodigy. The four victims were brought alive into a subterranean vault in the forum Boarium, a public space in the city of Rome. The same ritual was performed in 228 and 114/13 B.C. For Livy, this ritual was “un-Roman”.23 A decree of the senate in 97 B.C. prohibited such human sacrifices.24 Apart from the implications of the sacrifice of a couple of Greeks and Gauls – if they symbolised the enemies, it is not clear why there is no mention of captive Carthaginians who were also killed – in this case we can see that a ritual did not just fall into oblivion, but was even forbidden. The strategy employed in order to make sure it was not used any more was its strangeness: it was not Roman to kill Gauls and Greeks this way. This does of course not mean that the Romans stopped killing captives, especially after the end of a triumphal procession. In 213, the senate decreed that nobody should make sacrifices in public or in a sacred place or according to a foreign ritual.25 Such a decree is the best proof that many Romans used so-called foreign rituals at that time. The label “foreign” or “un-Roman” was always a rhetorical means of suppressing a ritual. But since the history of Roman religion shows that the Romans constantly introduced new and foreign cults, this rhetorical strategy seems to be a sort of double-speak. According to our sources, several gods and their cults were introduced after a prodigy. The new god and the new ritual served to expiate the bad sign. The oldest – and therefore most doubtful – example is the introduction of the three gods Ceres, Liber and Libera after a particularly bad harvest in 493 B.C. 26 In 291, Aesculapius received a

22 23 24 25 26

Livy 5,13,4–8. Livy 22,57,6. Pliny, Naturalis Historia 30,12; Rosenberger 1998: 137f. Livy 25,1,12: neu quis in publico sacrove loco aut externo ritu sacrificaret. Dionysius of Halicarnassus 6,17.


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temple in order to expiate a plague.27 In 215, Venus Erycina was honoured with a temple after Hannibal defeated the Romans at Lake Trasimene.28 Ten years later, numerous rainfalls of stones were expiated with the introduction of the idol of Mater Magna from Asia Minor.29 In 114, the Romans erected the temple of Venus Verticordia because one of the Vestal virgins had been found to have lost her virginity; furthermore, a flash of lightning had killed a virgin.30 It is likely that more gods were introduced in order to expiate a prodigy – even if the prodigies were constructed later.31 About 50 per cent of the prodigies were reported from places outside Rome: therefore, prodigies might have been a good instrument for explaining the introduction of a new god to a wider public. In most cases the consecration of a temple at Rome was not the first time a god was revered by the Romans: the temple indicated that the res publica, the state, had accepted the cult. Nevertheless, a prodigy had been the catalysing force for the new god and the new rituals.

3. Two Case-Studies Capua, the most important town in Campania and famous for its wealth and the fertility of its land, played a prominent role in the Second Punic War (218–201 B.C.). After the battle of Cannae (216 B.C.), Capua defected to the Carthaginian general Hannibal; in 211 the Romans re-conquered the city. During the Second Punic War and its aftermath, numerous prodigies were reported from Capua, thus highlighting the history of the relations between the two cities. We know of prodigies in 217, 209, 208, 207, 202, 198, 193, 179 and 177 B.C. Although only a few of the expiations are known, it is safe to say that after the conquest of Capua the Romans communicated with the newly established Rome-friendly administration by expiating prodigies said to have occurred in Capua. For the population of Capua this showed that the Romans cared for Capua. The citizens of Rome, watching the rituals, were witness to the fact that Capua once more belonged to Rome. In one case, we know more about a prodigy and its expiation: in 193 a large swarm of wasps settled on the temple of Mars at the forum of Capua. The insects were carefully collected and burned.32 The message of the sign was obvious: insects living in large groups symbolised an army or a state. If bees invaded Capua and settled in 27 28 29 30

Livy 10,47; 29,11. Livy 22,9–10. Livy 29,10. Obsequens 37; Plutarch, Moralia 284: when the knight Publius Elvius returned from ludi Romani in Rome with his virgin daughter, she was killed by a flash of lightning. Rosenberger 1998: 172f. 31 Cf. Beard & North & Price 1998: 73–87. 32 Livy 35,9,4: a Capua nuntiatum est examen vesparum ingens in forum advolasse et in Martis aede consedisse: eas conlectas cum cura et igni crematas esse.

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the forum, the centre of civic action, they symbolically took over Capua. To make matters worse, the bees inhabited the temple of the war-god, thus signifying the military conquest of the city. The only way to avert such a negative prodigium was to collect all the insects with great care, as Livy emphasises, and to destroy them by burning. Usually all expiatory rites were performed in Rome, with the exception of the hermaphrodites who were drowned in the sea or in a river.33 In this case it seems likely that the wasps were burned at Capua. Although there was no military threat to Rome in 193 – the Romans had just established themselves as the masters of the Mediterranean countries – Rome ensured with a ritual prescribed by Roman priests and ultimately by the Roman senate that Capua would never again defect to the enemies of Rome. Although the senate held ultimate power in the process of expiating a prodigy, it would be missing the point to interpret the Roman prodigy system as having been controlled by cynical and unscrupulous senators leading the dumb masses. Prodigies were not expiated because of the superstitious masses; prodigies and the highly performative expiation rituals were a means of communication. First, the senate, endowed with secular and religious competence, functioned as an interface between humans and the gods. Senators interpreted the signs and took care of their expiation. Second, expiating prodigies was a means of coping with disaster and of strengthening identity and cohesion within the Roman state. Prodigies did not foretell future disasters or the end of Rome. On the contrary, the Romans were always able – such is the overall image we get from reading the sources – to successfully expiate the signs. Therefore, the reporting of prodigies did not lead to fear or panic. Only the Romans had to deal with such terrible signs but the gods communicated them only to the Romans, thereby legitimising Rome’s domination. If we accept that the whitened board (tabula dealbata) of the pontiffs contained a constantly updated list of the prodigies of the current year and if we accept that the list was accessible to everybody – our sources are highly ambiguous about this – its result would not have been fear or panic, but it would communicate that everything would be handled by the consuls in due course. It is therefore plausible that the number of prodigies and the extent of expiation rituals increased in times of crisis. This can be demonstrated in Livy’s treatment of the Second Punic War, a conflict the Romans almost lost. Although we must always take into account Livy’s literary strategies, it is worth examining the prodigies and expiation rituals of 207 B.C., a year about which Livy’s notes are particularly detailed.34 At the beginning of the year, a rainfall of stones had been expiated by a novendiale sacrum. Other prodigies from Italian towns were reported: 33 According to Obsequens 27a, in 133 B.C. a hermaphrodite discovered at Ferentinum was drowned in a nearby river. 34 Davies 2004: 12–52.


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lightning struck the temple of Iuppiter at Minturnae, lightning struck the city wall and a gate at Atella, a river of blood was seen at Minturnae and at Capua a wolf entered the city and killed a guard. These prodigies were expiated by sacrifices and a one-day supplicium. Then again a rainfall of stones led to another novendiale sacrum. After that, a four-year-old hermaphrodite was discovered at Frusino and was expiated according to the advice of the haruspices: it was put into a chest, carried out to the sea and drowned. But this was not enough. The pontiffs declared that 27 maidens should sing a hymn during a procession through the city of Rome. While they were learning the hymn in the temple of Iuppiter Stator, the Temple of Juno Regina was struck by lightning. In order to expiate this prodigy, the matrons resident in the city of Rome or within ten miles thereof brought a contribution from their dowries. This was made into a golden basin as a gift and carried to the temple of Juno Regina by 25 matrons. Then the decemvirs appointed the day for another sacrifice to Juno Regina: a procession went from the temple of Apollo through the porta Carmentalis into the city to the temple of Juno Regina on the Aventine hill. Livy describes a route containing a number of landmarks, e.g. the forum and the forum boarium. The procession halted in the forum and, passing a rope from hand to hand, the maidens advanced and accompanied their singing of the hymn by stamping their feet.35 As a result, the procession did not take the shortest route from the temple of Apollo to the temple of Juno Regina. The advantage of this route was that the procession lasted longer and that a larger part of the city was covered: more people could watch the procession and thus take part in it. What were the dynamics of the rituals of 207 B.C.? The prodigies seem to have been caused by another. When the 27 girls rehearsed the hymn they were supposed to sing during the rituals to soften Juno’s wrath, but another prodigy occurred. Since it was the senate’s task to accept a prodigy, the explanation for the plethora of rites lies not in their nature. The expiation rituals of 207 lasted an extraordinarily long time: the two nine-day rituals, the supplication in between, and the one-day procession all added up to at least 20 days. If we bear in mind the fact that the priests needed some time to find the appropriate rituals, there must have been a substantial delay. According to Livy, the consuls waited with the rest of their agenda until the rituals had ended. And they had good reason to wait. In 209, when a hermaphrodite was reported for the first time, no rituals were performed. Two years later, in 207, the Romans came up with a religious innovation because of the potentially problematic domestic situation. The two new consuls, Gaius Claudius Nero and Marcus Livius Salinator, were enemies. Furthermore, Marcus Livius Salinator, consul for the first time in 219, had been exiled after quarrels over the distribution of booty from a successful war with the Illyrians: in 207, the outcast, consul again, had to be re-integrated into society. The rituals can be interpreted as a 35 Livy 27,37,7–15.

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representation of harmony between the consuls and between Salinator and the people. Besides, the military situation was giving some cause for alarm: in early 207 Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal was on his way to Italy in order to bring fresh troops. Performing the rituals might have provided the time to find the fitting strategy to deal with Hasdrubal. If this hypothesis is correct, the delay was worth it. The two consuls defeated Hasdrubal in the battle at the River Metaurus in the same year and weakened Hannibal’s position in Italy.36

Conclusion The religious history of republican Rome is closely linked with the prodigy system. Numerous cult innovations, new rituals and new gods were introduced as a means of softening the anger of the gods expressed by a prodigy. It is not unlikely that all cases before 300 B.C. were constructed much later – even though they reflect the later discourse about religion. Transfers of cults seem to have taken place without violence. Gods and their cults were brought to Rome with the approval of the original cult sites. Violent transfers of cults, as in the case of the famous evocatio, where the god of a besieged town was asked to give up his old temple and come to Rome, were rare if not later inventions. Cult transfers can be highly complex. The introduction of a god to Rome by priests instructed by the senate did not mean that the god was completely new to the Romans; that god might have received sacrifices in private households for a long time previously. In a nutshell, the history of the roman prodigy system highlights the processual nature of the religious field. The Roman prodigies had a long history of reception. Conrad Wolffhart, who had hellenised his name according to the fashion of the humanists to “Lycosthenes” in 1557, published his “Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon”, a chronicle of the prodigies from the times of the Old Testament to his own lifetime. For the author, prodigies were not just a phenomenon of the Old Testament or of the Roman Empire. At the end of this enormous list, Lycosthenes tells of the birth of a grossly deformed child in his hometown of Basle which was discovered in 1557: a boy with oversized ears, without a neck and with an incomplete skull; the baby died the day it was born. Lycosthenes was not the only one interested in prodigies. Many medieval and early modern chronicles mention prodigies, for a variety of reasons: religious motives, eschatological thinking, imitation of the famous Livy or simply the fascination of supra-natural events.

36 Rosenberger 1998: 195.


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References Ando, Clifford 2008. The Matters of the Gods. Religion and the Roman Empire. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press. Baudy, Dorothea 1998. Römische Umgangsriten, Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. Beard, Mary & John North & Simon Price 1998. Religions of Rome. Volume 1: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beard, Mary 2007. The Roman Triumph. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Bendlin, Andreas 2009. “Einleitung”. In: Andreas Bendlin & Jörg Rüpke (eds.). Römische Religion im historischen Wandel. Diskursentwicklung von Plautus bis Ovid. Stuttgart: Steiner. Bernstein, Frank 1998. Ludi publici. Untersuchungen zur Entstehung und Entwicklung der öffentlichen Spiele im republikanischen Rom. Stuttgart: Steiner. Davies, Jason 2004. Rome’s Religious History. Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus on their Gods. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Engels, David 2006. Das römische Vorzeichenwesen (753–27 v.Chr.). Quellen, Terminologie, Kommentar, historische Entwicklung. Stuttgart: Steiner. Krauss, Franklin B. 1930. An Interpretation of the Omens, Portents and Prodigies Recorded by Livy, Tacitus and Suetonius. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. MacBain, Bruce 1982. Prodigy and Expiation: A Study in Religion and Politics in Republican Rome. Brussels: Latomus (Collection Latomus 177). Prescendi, Francesca 2007. Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice. Les réflexions des Romains sur leur propre religion à partir de la littérature antiquaire. Stuttgart: Steiner. Raaflaub, Kurt A. 2005. “Epic and History”. In: J.M. Foley (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Ancient Epic. Oxford: Blackwell: 55–70. Rasmussen, Susanne W. 2003. Public Portents in Republican Rome. Rome: Bretschneider. Rosenberger, Veit 1998. Gezähmte Götter. Das Prodigienwesen der römischen Republik. Stuttgart: Steiner. — 2005. “Prodigien aus Italien: Geographische Verteilung und religiöse Kommunikation”. Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 16: 235–257. — 2007. “Republican Nobiles: Controlling the res publica”. In: Jörg Rüpke (ed.). A Companion to Roman Religion. Oxford: Blackwell: 292–303. Rüpke, Jörg 1993. “Priesternamen und die Annales maximi”. Klio 75: 155–179. ThesCRA = Lambridounakis, Vassilis & Jean Balty (eds.) 2004. Thesaurus cultus et rituum Antiquorum. Vol. 1: Processions, sacrifices, libations, fumigations, dedications. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. Wissowa, Georg 19122. Religion und Kultus der Römer. Beck: Munich.

Paul Töbelmann

The Limits of Ritual Mistakes and Misconceptions, Lies and Betrayals at Peace Conferences in Fifteenth Century France1 Ritual is one of the most powerful tools for establishing hierarchy, as well as bringing about consensus. Providing what may be called a kind of “soft power”2, which can be described in terms of “symbolic” or “cultural capital”3, ritual can be said to influence socio-political reality on a fundamental level. With many of the foremost scholars of the field positing that ritual represents and, in performance, constitutes society’s “cosmological” truths4, that it constructs, recreates, and manipulates social power relations5, and that its structure exerts a subtle influence over practitioners’ perceptions and intentions6, it seems that ritual is quite the universal sociological force. What then are the limits of ritual? Is there anything it cannot do? Are there any ways in which ritual might exert a hampering, ambiguous, even dangerous influence on social action? These questions seem to invoke Philippe Buc’s (in-)famous monograph on the “Dangers of Ritual”.7 Philippe Buc pointedly warns against overestimating the explanatory power of a ritual sciences approach to pre-modern societies. His main argument is the unreliability of many sources, or at least the difficulty of assessing their reliability. The dangers of applying concepts of ritual behaviour developed in anthropology lie in our extremely indirect method of observation. Unlike anthropologists, who can actively observe or even take part in any social action they wish to study, historians can merely read accounts by long-dead writers, whose observer 1 Although I was unable to present this paper at the Heidelberg conference on “Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual” (29 September to 2 October, 2008), I owe many thanks to Prof. Dr. Bernd Schneidmüller, who kindly offered to include my paper in this volume regardless. 2 Cf. Nye 2004. 3 Bourdieu & Passeron 1973. 4 Tambiah 1981. 5 Bell 1992. 6 Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994. 7 Buc 2001.

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status is often in doubt. Not only do many of our sources fiddle with the truth for personal, political, or other reasons; as Buc demonstrates, sometimes they even made up the rituals they were describing. For this reason, he advises the historical sciences against making too much of ritual described in written sources. Yet that is not the main focus of this article. For it seems clear that there must be some accounts which at least come very close to being true. There is so much evidence available, and so much historical information to be gained, so that we cannot just refrain from using the ritual sciences approach in history. For instance, there are those accounts in which rituals went wrong and turned against their creators in some manner. In many cases, ritual behaviour was imperfectly carried out, was misunderstood by some or all of the participants, or was outright usurped for less-than-benign purposes. These are all, basically, reports of ritual failure.8 It seems obvious that they can teach us a great deal about ritual behaviour and its ramifications in pre-modern societies. Thus, studying the limits of ritual will help us understand the power and scope, as well as the nature, of this important social practice. Ritual depends on certain “rules of the game”, as does all structured, social behaviour.9 These can be conceptualised in terms of cultural dispositions expressed in a social habitus,10 which generates a “ritual sense” analogous to other socially constructed senses, such as a sense of humour, sense of justice, or fashion sense.11 Performing a ritual requires the practitioner to make a “ritual commitment” and enter a “ritual stance”, which implies a certain non-intentionality of action on his or her part.12 Therefore, ritual is ideally suited to providing anticipatory reliability for the actions of social actors. In ritualised situations, it is very hard to swim against the stream and act contrary to social expectations. Thus, ritualising an occasion provides power and security for the initiator by stripping everybody else of many of their possible courses of action. Simulaneously though, it applies similar pressure on the person(s) responsible for the ritualisation.13 Ritual makes it possible to at least roughly foresee the likely actions by others whose intentions cannot be gauged or trusted. In short, ritual reduces risk and provides reliability of expectation – traits which are highly desirable in a political context. For these reasons, the study of ritual in the history of pre-modern times has been much interested in situations involving diverging interests, conflict resolution, and

8 9 10 11 12 13

Cf. Hüsken 2007. Althoff 1997a. Bourdieu & Nice 2002: 72. Bell 1992: 80; Bourdieu 2002: 124. Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994: 88f. Bloch 1974: 64; 1989: 45.

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peacemaking.14 In situations characterised by mutual distrust, latent or open belligerence, or even simple ignorance, ritual provided a framework that could serve to contain hostility and ablate stresses between the acting participants. Peace talks in particular were often highly ritualised, with dozens of messengers running to and fro beforehand negotiating the finer points of place, time, etiquette, accoutrement, entourage, and many other details.15 Once these preliminary negotiations were finished, any behavioural minutiae to be observed during the actual talks had already been settled. Even today, questions of etiquette remain important and need to be worked out in advance. In the Middle Ages though, the particulars of the ritualisation did not merely serve to set both parties at ease and establish a smooth and efficient basis for getting “actual” work done: in those times of high conflict potentials and low violence thresholds, getting the ritual framework right was often a question of life and death.16 Thus, the “rules of the game” provided by ritual were vital not only for reaching social or political consensus, but for creating a situation in which consensus was an option to be considered at all. However, rules can be broken.17 Habitual dispositions are not strict mandates rigidly enforcing compliance with ritualised situations. No “ritual commitment” has to be undertaken compulsorily. Bell’s “ritual sense” and Humphrey & Laidlaw’s “ritual stance” refer to mental, thus internal processes, which are hard to judge from the outside. So the notion of ritual as a risk reducer not only presupposes a certain amount of shared cultural dispositions (i.e. all parties involved need to recognise and understand the ritualised situation). It also depends on everybody’s good intentions. In this paper I will show how these two premises could lead to difficult and dangerous situations, and how late medieval society coped with the limits of ritual. Misunderstanding naturally presents great obstacles for successful ritualisation. As a practice relying heavily on semiotics, ritual is dependent on a certain amount of 14 E.g. Althoff 1997b; Becher 2001; Kamp 2001; Koziol 1992; Offenstadt 2000; StollbergRilinger 2005. 15 Cf. Offenstadt 2007. 16 I ask the reader to bear with this oversimplification and let it stand for the moment for the sake of argument. The field of conflicts and feuds and their resolution is, of course, a highly complex one. Several examples further down will show how this premise is to be understood. 17 Obviously, I am not the first to notice this. Althoff (2008) and others have remarked how conflict resolution could suffer and the ‘rules of the game’ were challenged whenever one belligerent was not prepared to abide by the agreed-upon peace terms. Althoff, though, is much more interested in the enforcement of the rules of peacemaking than in the particular ways they could be broken. Moreover, the examples he draws on, taken from the high Middle Ages, do not revolve around abuse of ritual action itself, but rather around later noncompliance.

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common ground, a shared ritual language. Specific schemes of ritualisation will usually not work as well when half of the participants do not understand their symbolic significance. Even seemingly obvious gestures can evoke greatly differing responses. The kiss, for example, seems to be a universal sign of closeness, of love, kinship, or friendship. However, it, too, can be used quite differently, one might even say perversely, as testified by Judas Iscariot’s kiss of betrayal, or the Mafia’s kiss of death.18 If even such simple gestures are unable to engender universal understanding, how much more problematic will larger, more complex rituals be? An example involving a similarly simple gesture will serve to illustrate this basic difficulty: the shaking of hands. In medieval Europe, the handshake had significance as a sign of trustworthiness and as a demonstration of respectability. It was frequently used to confirm promises and agreements and was similarly employed in vows and oaths.19 But the practice of shaking hands was far from universal, as is demonstrated by an anecdote related by William of Tyre.20 In 1164 A.D., amazed Frankish emissaries were led through endless corridors in the Caliph’s magnificent Cairo palace. They had been sent by Amalric I (1136– 1174), ruler of the crusader-founded Kingdom of Jerusalem, to negotiate peace and an alliance with the Egyptian Fatimid caliphate. Negotiations with the Vizier, Shawar, who for all intents and purposes was the true ruler of Egypt, had gone well, and the alliance had already been confirmed by both sides. Shawar, who had asked for the delegation to be sent from Jerusalem, was looking forward to Frankish help against the Seljuqs of Mosul and Damascus. It had been the Seljuqs who had only recently installed Shawar as Vizier after long struggles, but now they were trying to expand their already significant influence in Egypt and threatened to attack. Against his powerful former allies, Shawar turned to Christian help, and readily received it. Much to his chagrin, however, the Christian infidels demanded to speak to the Caliph in person, 16-year-old Al-Ādid, nominal ruler, but in fact a puppet solely relegated to religious functions. The Frankish embassy was headed by Hugo of Cesarea, a warlike cleric descended of French nobility, who obviously did not understand that the Caliph held no real power. Although our informant William describes him as highly educated, 18 Frijhoff 1991: 211. 19 Cf. Siegel 1894. 20 Archbishop William of Tyre’s (c. 1130–1186) History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea is probably the most important narrative source for the history of the crusader kingdoms. Highly educated and intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Frankish dominions, William has been said to have developed a kind of tolerance, even acceptance of the Muslims unusual in his day (Schwinges 1977). This gave him a unique perspective from which he was able to provide us with a most comprehensive overview of politics in 12th century Levant. His chronicle was edited by Robert Huygens (1986).


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Hugo was not too well informed about the actual political situation in the country he was sent to. Neither was he familiar with Muslim religious practice. When he and the other Franks were led into the Caliph’s chamber, Al-Ādid met them sitting, wrapped in silk from head to toe, his face concealed by a veil. Al-Ādid was quite unwilling to extend his bare hand, even to ensure the alliance by oath and handshake. Hugo insisted. “Lord, fides has no angles”, he said, “but in fides, by which princes are wont to bind themselves, everything must be laid bare and open; and with earnest intent ought everything to be bound and loosed that is added to treaties by fides. Therefore, you shall give [your hand] naked, or we will be forced to assume that it contains something less pure, something deceitful.”21 Reluctantly, the Caliph took off his gloves and shook Hugo’s hand, whereupon the treaty was confirmed. William makes a point by his choice of the word fides. It expresses several concepts at once: the oath itself, but also personal fidelity, religious faith, and finally trust. The Franks demanded trust from their Egyptian counterparts, and to be trusted by them, as an integral part of the new pact. Moreover, they also demanded submission under the ritual forms familiar to them. For only in familiar forms, they felt, could a more positive kind of familiarity be established between the former enemies. By the very conventionality of the ritual form alone could Franks and Muslims be convened in alliance. That is the reason why Hugo of Cesarea demanded the handshake, a ritual which – to him – was symbolic of fides. With his typical understanding of Muslim sensitivities, however, William goes on to relate the Egyptians’ horrified reaction. Their religious leader was forced to touch the impure skin of a Christian infidel! The Muslims witnessing this preposterous ritual could not help but think of the handshake as a degradation of the Caliph’s pure and holy being. The modern historian easily perceives this, and William of Tyre, who was quite knowledgeable about Muslim customs, hints at a similar understanding in his chronicle. The ritual handshake, which was demanded to better confirm the new-founded league, endangered it instead. In 1164, the Franks were powerful enough, and the Egyptians needed their help urgently enough, that, despite the very basic misunderstanding, the new alliance was able to prosper for a few years. So in this case, nothing came of a serious ritual misunderstanding – but it could easily have meant trouble. The anecdote narrated here allows us to tentatively formulate several hypotheses. First of all, ritual depends on a shared ritual language, or at least a basic 21 William of Tyre, Chronicon XIX.19, 33–38 (Huygens 1986: vol. 2, 889): Domine, fides angulos non habet, sed in fide media, per quam se obligare solent principes, omnia debent esse nuda et aperta et cum sinceritate et colligari et solvi convenit universa, que fidei interpositione pactis quibuslibet inseruntur: propterea aut nudem dabis, aut fictum aliquid et minus puritatis habens ex parte tua cogemur opinari.

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mutual understanding of ritual schemes, to function properly. Far from being universal, seemingly obvious symbolism employed in ritual can sometimes fail spectacularly if the other party is not aware of its intent. Secondly, using familiar ritual forms in unfamiliar conditions, while carrying a high risk of failure, paradoxically seems to be a common response to cultural alterity. The desire to build mutual confidence in the face of alien surroundings can be quite strong, and to this end what could be more obvious than to erect the familiar framework of ritual? Ironically, a ritual’s confidence-building properties run a greater risk of falling short in those situations when they would be needed the most. Thirdly, it seems that when the stakes are high, people care less about the observance of ritual rules or the lack thereof. This apparent truism is nevertheless important to state. If a Caliph’s purity can be violated because the alliance gained thereby is that important, what else remains that could still be called sacrosanct? In our example, the Egyptians’ willingness to accept strange and, to them, unholy Frankish ritual practice demonstrates the superiority of the raison d’État over ritual concerns. The 1164 example obviously only goes so far. Although useful to illustrate some of the basic points of this essay, it does not teach us much about the actual limits of ritual. For my main argument, I will now turn to an altogether different part of European medieval history: fifteenth-century France. The fifteenth century was a highly dynamic (and very unsafe) period, quite the opposite of the oft-claimed “autumn of the Middle Ages”22 it was long made out to be.23 In France, the Hundred Years’ War was still having a massive impact on all facets of political life. From 1407 to 1435, a second war tore the country apart, civil war between the Armagnac (adherents of the late Louis, Duke of Orléans, and the King’s brother) and Bourguignon (followers of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and the King’s nephew) parties. This conflict arose from a weakness of the monarchy – King Charles VI was mentally ill, rendering him incapable of ruling – and a struggle among the powerful peers of the realm to influence the queen’s regency. After the murder of Louis of Orléans in 1407, the conflict descended into civil war.24 His cousin the Dauphin, the later King Charles VII (mad King Charles VI’s son), joined the Armagnac party when he came of age in 1419 and became the centre of their regency. In the meantime, however, the English invasion and the disastrous battle of Agincourt (1415) had taken place. The dauphin found it neces22 Huizinga 2006. 23 Cf. Aertsen 2004. 24 Ehlers 2003; Schulte 2006.


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sary to end the civil war with the Burgundians, who were already leaning towards a highly dangerous alliance with the English. John the Fearless, who was running short of funds, was ready to negotiate peace terms as well. Three preliminary negotiations in July 1419 made a personal encounter of the adversaries seem viable.25 A meeting between the Dauphin Charles and Duke John would possibly bring an armistice, the crucial precondition of any resistance to the English threat, within arm’s reach. This meeting was scheduled to take place on 10 September, on a bridge over the Seine at Montereau-Fault-Yonne, a small town south of Paris, and is especially well documented, owing to the gruesome events that took place there.26 It was not unusual to hold meetings between rulers, to arrange treaties, and hold peace talks on bridges, on islands in a river, or sometimes even on boats anchored in it.27 Not only did rivers often serve as borders between countries or fiefdoms, they also represented a symbolic boundary between two parties, their claims, and their sovereignties. The river itself was considered neutral “ground”. Furthermore, water, especially running water, was considered wholesome and had apotropaic qualities. In the middle of the bridge of Montereau, a double barricade was erected, blocking the width of the road and creating a pen right over the river. This pen had two doors, one on each side. It can be said to be a typical example of the ephemeral architecture often employed in medieval ritual to create a sacrosanct space. Within such a space, ritual activities – peace talks, but also court sessions, as well as investiture and homage – could take place without fear of outside interference. Moreover, John the Fearless and Charles pledged to dispense with large entourages, bringing only ten men each. In this way, an atmosphere of relative relaxation was created between the belligerents, as it seemed impossible to subvert the sanctity of the ritual encounter. The Armagnac party, however, had no intentions of letting such a chance at the hated Duke of Burgundy slip away unused. As far as they were concerned, the murder of the Duke of Orléans and many other shameful deeds marked John the Fearless for death. Why not have peace with the Bourguignons by removing their

25 Schnerb 2005: 671–679. 26 For a complete list of the numerous sources from which good evidence is available, see Vaughan 1966: 274f. 27 Schneider 1977.

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leader from the game, instead of humiliating themselves before him?28 So as soon as John had entered the stockade, men of the Dauphin’s company slammed shut the door on the Burgundian side. With a shout of “Tuez, tuez!”, “Kill, kill!” they went to work with their axes, struck down the Duke and slew him. In buildings on the bridge, soldiers had been hidden, and while the door on the Burgundian side of the stockade was held shut, more warriors swarmed in from the Dauphin’s side. Those few Bourguignons who dared resist were cut down, taken prisoner, or driven away. The ritual framework of the encounter of princes had been systematically abused for a political assassination. Quite contrary to his moniker, John the Fearless had not felt in the least comfortable with the preparations taken on the bridge. He had not trusted the dauphin and had long been in doubt as to whether it was wise to deliver himself into the hands of his enemies. But the previous encounters had gone off well enough.29 So in the end John decided to put his fears aside and trust in the risk-reducting function of the peace ritual. The combination of centuries-old tradition (meeting in the middle of a river), extensive preliminary agreements (limitations on number and armament of both parties), and the delimitation of a sacrosanct ritual space (the wooden stockade in the middle of the bridge) sufficed to set him at ease. Impressed with the Dauphin’s ritualisation of time, place, and personnel, John entered the commitment necessary to perform a ritual.30 He relied on the dauphin and his people doing likewise. But the “ritual stance” John adopted is an inner condition, which is not necessarily reflected in a person’s outer appearance, so John had no way to judge whether the Dauphin was in a similarly ritual stance. He was not. John the Fearless’ murder on the bridge of Montereau was considered abhorrent by contemporaries and posterity alike. Elements of political ritualisation had been deliberately used to reach an amoral goal directly opposed to the intent of the ritual. The ensuing shock reverberated widely. When peace talks between Bourguignons, Armagnacs, and the English monarch Henry V finally developed in winter, they lay under its long shadow. Only nine months after Montereau, Charles VI of France met Henry V at Troyes.31 Each and every conceivable security measure was taken to prevent a similar disaster. Foremost among them was the spacious setting for the encounter. The two Kings literally had the whole playing field to themselves: a wide meadow was roped off for them to be entered by nobody except 28 The question of whether John the Fearless’ murder was premeditated has long been the subject of debate, especially in French historiography. From the eyewitness accounts, however, it seems clear that there can be no question that premeditation was the case. For a detailed discussion and convincing argument that the murder was indeed planned, see Vaughan 1966: 274–286. 29 Schnerb 2005: 671–679. 30 Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994: 88f. 31 Marie-Cardine 1979; Peyronnet 1980; Schwedler 2008: 257–271.


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for their royal persons. In Troyes, security came first. When John the Fearless was murdered during parlay in 1419, confidence in political ritual itself had taken a blow. In some ways, the impact of this blow was not to cease echoing. Almost 60 years later, it was still vividly remembered. In 1475, another pair of Kings from France and England needed to meet personally to negotiate another peace between their perpetually warring countries. Louis XI of France and Edward IV of England were quite aware of the risks involved in a personal encounter. Philippe de Commynes, whose memoirs provide us with such a depressingly realistic understanding of his times that he has been called a cynic as well as an apologist,32 describes the security measures taken: “After the place [Picquigny] had been determined, it was decided to build here a mighty and very long bridge. We provided the carpenters and material. In the centre of this bridge was made a very strong wooden fence, like it is done around lions’ cages. The holes between the bars were not greater than to allow passing an arm through them. The top was covered against rain with wooden planks, such that on each side ten to twelve persons could fit thereunder. The fence reached out to the bridge’s brink, so that no one could walk from one side to the other. In the river was only one barge with two ferrymen, to ferry those over who wanted to pass from one side to the other.”33 The French King personally ordered these measures, explicitly justifying them with reference to Montereau, where the ritual architecture had made the assassina-

32 Philippe de Commynes (1447–1511) belonged to a new caste of his day: he was a professional politician. As advisor, diplomat, and administrator he served first Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and later Kings Louis XI and Charles VIII of France. Many scholars assume Commynes’ memoirs mainly served to excuse his personal decisions, especially that of leaving Charles the Bold’s service to enter that of his enemy, Louis XI. Apart from that, though, it is one of the richest, most lively, and most intelligent accounts of everyday politics in the late Middle Ages. His memoirs have been critically edited by Joël Blanchard (2007). On their origin, structure, and motivation, cf. Blanchard 1996; Watts 2000. 33 Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires IV.9 (Blanchard 2007: 286): Prinse la conclusion de nostre lieu, il fut ordonné de faire ung pont bien puissant et asséz large; et fournimes les charpentiers et les estoffes. Et au meillieu de ce pont fut faict ung fort treillis de boys, comme on faict aux caiges de ces lyons: et n’estoient point les troux entre les barreaulx plus grans que a y bouter le bras a son aise. Le dessus estoit couvert d’aiz seullement, pour la pluye, si avant que s’i povoit mectre dix ou douze personnes dessoubz de chascun cousté; et comprenoit le treilliz jusques sur le bort du pont, afin que on ne peult passer de l’un cousté a l’autre. … En la riviere y avoit seullement une sentine, ou il y avoit deux hommes pour passer ceulx qui vouldroient aller d’un cousté a l’autre.

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tion possible.34 The fence, similar to a “lions’ cage”, was to keep the royal beasts from each others’ throats. In this way, an impersonal and insurmountable authority separated the Kings. Unfortunately, this prevented or at least hampered the execution of the full range of the rituals rulers usually employed when encountering each other35, especially the embrace and kiss. But on the plus side, the monarchs could be reasonably sure nothing would disrupt the actual peace talks. Weighing ritual desiderata against security necessities, the latter proved much more important, resulting in a “ritual pragmatism” of sorts.36 Even so, Louis XI was not one to take any risks. He ordered our informant Philippe de Commynes to come with him: “It had been the King’s will that I be dressed similar to him that day. He had long been used to having someone who habitually dressed the same as him.”37 Furthermore, a small number of unarmed escorts had been established beforehand (a dozen on each side), and both Kings had four liaisons in the other’s camp to prevent any misbehaviour. It is obvious that both parties desired the greatest possible control over the dangerous situation of personal encounter. They were not content with just assuming that the other was willing to remain in a purely ritual stance. Even the tiniest inkling that the other party might pursue something other than ritual intentions must seem suspicious – yet to do so oneself was to invite disaster. What was needed was everyday, instrumental rationality, which still seemed to be motivated by purely ritual intentionality. “How can you be trusted without giving trust in yourself?”, that was the question. This basic problem was – and to a lesser degree, still is – crucial to political ritual. Philippe de Commynes, always a sharp observer of human nature and its impact on politics, gives quite a few examples of its saliency, a few of which I will examine further. First, let us turn to an example of ritual failure due to an obvious lack of trust. In 1474, one year prior to the royal encounter at Picquigny, Louis XI went to meet his subordinate, Louis de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol, the Constable of France. The Constable held the highest office in the realm. In times of war he was commander-in-chief of the army. He held large estates and was considered inferior only to the King. So when Louis de Luxembourg, an obstinate, greedy, and disloyal man, conspired against the King with the Burgundians and English, the stakes were high indeed.38 The Constable was nervous and feared that the King had found him 34 Ibid.: Et disoit que si n’y eust point eu de huys a ceste veue dont je parle, on n’eust point eu occasion de semondre ledict duc de passer, et ce grand inconveniant n’y feust poinct advenu. 35 Cf. Kolb 1988; Schwedler 2008. 36 Cf. Hack 2006. 37 Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires IV.9 (286): Le plaisir du Roy avoit esté que je fusse vestu pareil de luy ce jour: il avoit acoustumé, de long temps, d’en avoir quelc’un qui s’abilloit pareil de luy souvent. 38 Cuttler 1987; Soumillion 1997.


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out. But Louis XI merely wanted to test the waters and overcome the mounting tensions which had arisen recently. Specifically, he wished to know why his Constable seemed to avoid him of late, and why he kept so many men under arms. According to Commynes, King and Constable met at La Fère (near Noyon) at a small river, where a strong barricade had been erected on a causeway. The Constable walked up to the barricade wearing heavy armour beneath a free-hanging cloak, which engendered quite a little astonishment among the King’s party. The Constable excused himself for coming armed, under the pretext of being afraid of the Count of Dammartin, a personal enemy of his, who was among the King’s entourage. Although the King accepted the apology, and the Constable finally crossed the barrier, was reconciled with his enemy, and accompanied the King to his lodgings at Noyon, this placation did not last long: “When the King had considered all and heard the murmurs of disapproval among his men, it seemed foolish to him that he had conversed with his servant so behind a closed barricade, and accompanied by men-at-arms who were all the King’s subjects and paid for by his money. And while the hatred had been great before, now it was even more so; neither had the enmity become smaller on the Constable’s side.”39 The Constable’s security measures were an affront to the King’s goodwill: barricading the causeway, openly wearing armour, and bringing many men-at-arms, all contradicted the intent of the meeting, namely, to reconcile the two parties. In breaking the conventions of ritual, the Constable had shown his fear of the King too manifestly, and thereby disavowed him. On the other hand, Philippe de Commynes relates a case in which a ruler was considered much too trusting even by his own adherents. In 1465 Charles the Bold, John the Fearless’ grandson and then Count of Charolais, met King Louis XI near Paris to end the civil war between the monarchy and the League of the Common Weal, a confederation of barons who felt set aside by the King.40 Charles the Bold had been appointed leader of the League, so this was another summit conference of great importance. The talks were going very well, so Charles started to relax. In fact, he let down his guard so much and was so absorbed in his conversation with the King that he did not realize where they were going: “So they went straight in the direction of Paris and went so far that they stepped into great earthworks the King had had made outside the city, at the end of a ravine. … With the Count were only four or five persons. When 39 Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires III.11 (Blanchard 2007: 234): Quant le Roy eut bien pencé et ouy le murmure des gens, il luy sembla follie d’avoir esté parler a son serviteur, et l’avoir ainsi trouvé, une barriere fermee au devant de luy, et accompaigné de gens d’armes, tous ses subjectz et paiéz a ses despens. Et si la hayne y avoit esté par avant grande, elle l’estoit encores plus; et du cousté dudict connestable le cueur ne luy estoit point appetissé. 40 Krynen 1995; Rimboud 1996.

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Paul Töbelmann they were inside, they were much dismayed; nevertheless the Count kept as calm a countenance as he could. One will believe that at this time, each of the lords had little trust in the other, although neither did the other any harm.”41

The Count’s followers were alarmed when they heard about this. Quoting the example of Charles the Bold’s grandfather, they fully expected a similar catastrophe, and made ready to break camp. The Marshal of Burgundy, Count de Neufchâtel, in particular condemned the young Count’s foolishness and prepared an orderly retreat. Charles the Bold returned unharmed, however, and spoke to de Neufchâtel: “‘Do not censure me, for I know my great foolishness well, but I realised too late that I was close to the rampart.’ Now in his presence the Marshal told him even more thoroughly what he had already said in his absence. The Count hung his head without reply and went back into camp, where everybody was overjoyed to see him again; and everybody praised the King’s loyalty. Nevertheless the Count never put himself into his power again.”42 This account may be enough to show the superior role of necessary mistrust in fifteenth-century French politics. The dilemma – either to trust in the opposing party to enter a ritual stance, or to dispense with the risk-reducing effects of ritual altogether – was not easily solved. Preliminary negotiations, oaths of personal security, greater or smaller numbers of retainers, even ephemeral architecture in the form of barricades erected specifically for ritual, could not eliminate every risk. All attempts to provide a situation with a solid fundament of trust are made useless by sheer ignorance, turning the ritual into a failure. Even more dangerously, systematic manipulation of ritualised situations always lurks in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity at those foolish enough to perform political ritual in good faith. 41 Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires I.13 (Blanchard 2007: 75f.): … ilz … tiroient droit devers Paris. Et tant allerent qu’ilz entrerent dedans ung grand bolouvard de terre et de boys que le Roy avoit faict faire assez loing hors la ville, au bout d’une tranchee… Avecques ledict conte estoient quelque quatre ou cinq personnes seullement. Comme ilz se trouverent leans, furent tres ebaÿs; toutes fois ledict conte tint la meilleure contenance qu’i peult. Il est a croire que nul de ces deux seigneurs ne sont acreuz de foy depuis ce temps la, veu que a l’un ne a l’autre print mal. 42 Ibid. I.13 (76): “Ne me tansés point, car je congnois bien ma grand follie, mais je m’en suis aparceu si tard que j’estoie ja pres du boulouvart.” [Plus] luy dist ledict mareschal en sa presence qu’il n’avoit faict en son abscence. Ledict seigneur baissa la teste sans riens respondre et s’en revint dedans son ost, ou tous estoient joyeulx de le revoir; et louoit chascun la foy du Roy. Toutesfois ne retourna oncques depuis ledict conte en sa puissance.


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Ritual sense and ritual stance may effect a basic understanding for ritualized situations in the willing participant, letting him act only in ways appropriate for the occasion. But the same can only be assumed in one’s counterpart, never veri-fied, except through the other’s actions. For this reason, it is hard to discern whether the boundaries of ritual have been overstepped or not. This limits the use of ritualisation as a political practice and turns it into a potential hazard – in fact, a mortal peril, at least some of the time. The fifteenth century was quite aware of the danger inherent in some political rituals, and, as solution at least in part, was forced to develop a certain ritual pragmatism. To conclude this essay, perhaps it will be best to once more turn to Philippe de Commynes and hear his slightly cynical verdict. To him at least, the limits of ritual are not the fault of ritual itself. Rather, it is mankind itself which is limited. “Great is the folly of a prince who submits himself into the power of another, especially when they are or were at war. It is of great advantage to princes to have read in their youth some histories in which are contained many assemblies and great frauds, deceptions, and perjury, which some of the ancients have committed one against the other, and in which they have killed or imprisoned those who had delivered themselves unto their faith. This does not mean that they all used to do so, but the example of a single case is enough to make many wise and teach them to be wary. And after I have experienced this world, where for eighteen years or more I have had clear insight into the greatest and most secret matters that were dealt with in the realm of France and the neighbouring principalities, it seems to me, as we are diminished in age, and as neither men’s lives are as long nor their bodies as strong as they used to be, that similarly we have declined in faith and loyalty towards each other.”43

43 Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires II.6 (Blanchard 2007: 120f.): “Grand follie est a ung prince de se soubmettre a la puissance d’un aultre, par especial quant ilz sont en guerre, ou ilz ont esté. En tous endroictz est grand avantaige aux princes d’avoir veu des ystoires en leur jeunesse, esquelles se voient largement de telles assemblees et de grandes frauldes et tromperies et parjuremens que aulcuns des anciens ont faict les ungs vers les aultres, et prints et tuéz ceulx qui en telles seuretéz s’estoient fiéz. Il n’est pas dict que tous en aient usé, mais l’exemple d’ung est asséz pour en faire saiges plusieurs et leur donner vouloir de se garder. Et si me semble, a ce que j’ay veu par [experience] en ce monde, ou j’ay esté l’espace de cix huyt ans ou plus ayant clere congnoissance des plus grandes et secretes matieres qui se soient traictees en ce royaulme de France et seigneuries voisines, que ainsi que nous sommes diminuéz d’eage et que la vie des hommes n’est si longue comme elle souloit ny les corps si puissans, somblablement que nous sommez affoibliz de toute foy et loyaulté les ungs envers les aultres.”

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References Aertsen, Jan A. (ed.) 2004. “Herbst des Mittelalters?” Fragen zur Bewertung des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Berlin et al.: de Gruyter Miscellanea mediaevalia 31. Althoff, Gerd 1997a. “Demonstration und Inszenierung. Spielregeln der Kommunikation in mittelalterlicher Öffentlichkeit”. In: Gerd Althoff. Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter. Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: 229–257. — 1997b. “Das Privileg der ‚Deditio‘. Formen gütlicher Konfliktbeendigung in der mittelalterlichen Adelsgesellschaft”. In: Otto Gerhard Oexle (ed.). Nobilitas. Funktion und Repräsentation des Adels in Alteuropa. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht: 27–52 (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 133). — 2008. “Hinterlist, Täuschung und Betrug bei der friedlichen Beilegung von Konflikten”. In: Oliver Auge et al. (eds.). Bereit zum Konflikt. Strategien und Medien der Konflikterzeugung und Konfliktbewältigung im europäischen Mittelalter. Ostfildern: Thorbecke: 19–29 (Mittelalter-Forschungen 20). Becher, Matthias 2001. “‘Cum lacrimis et gemitu’. Vom Weinen der Sieger und Besiegten im frühen und hohen Mittelalter”. In: Gerd Althoff (ed.). Formen und Funktionen öffentlicher Kommunikation im Mittelalter. Stuttgart: Thorbecke: 25–52 (Vorträge und Forschungen 51). Bell, Catherine M. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Blanchard, Joël (ed.) 1995. Représentation, pouvoir et royauté à la fin du moyen âge. Actes du colloque organisé par l’Université du Maine les 25 et 26 mars 1994. Paris: Picard. — 1996. Commynes l’européen. L’invention du politique. Geneva: Droz (Publications Romanes et Françaises 216). — (ed.) 2007. Commynes, Philippe de. Mémoires. Edition critique. 2 vols. Genf: Droz (Textes Littéraires Français 585). Bloch, Maurice 1974. “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation. Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?”. Archives européennes de sociologie 15: 55–81. — 1989. Ritual, History and Power. Selected Papers in Anthropology. London: Berg (London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology Nr. 58). Bourdieu, Pierre & Jean-Claude Passeron 1973. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction”. Richard K. Brown (ed.). Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. Papers in the Sociology of Education. London: Tavistock (Explorations in Sociology, 2). Bourdieu, Pierre & Richard Nice (transl.) 200214. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology 16). Buc, Philippe 2001. The Dangers of Ritual. Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory. Princeton et al.: Princeton University Press.


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Cuttler, Simon H. 1987. “The Treason of Saint-Pol 1474–1475”. History Today 37/1: 43–48. Ehlers, Joachim 2003. “Ludwig von Orléans und Johann von Burgund (1407/1419). Vom Tyrannenmord zur Rache als Staatsraison”. In: Alexander Demandt (ed.). Das Attentat in der Geschichte. Köln: Böhlau: 107–122. Frijhoff, Willem 1991. “The Kiss Sacred and Profane: Reflections on a Cross-Cultural Confrontation”. In: Jan Bremmer & Herman Roodenburg (eds.). A Cultural History of Gesture, from Antiquity to the Present Day. Cambridge: Polity Press: 210–236. Hack, Achim Thomas 2006. “Nähe und Distanz im Zeremoniell – eine Frage des Vertrauens? Bemerkungen zur mittelalterlichen Ritualpragmatik”. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 39: 431–479. Huizinga, Johan 200612. Herbst des Mittelalters. Studien über Lebens- und Geistesformen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts in Frankreich und in den Niederlanden. Stuttgart: Kröner. Humphrey, Caroline & James Laidlaw 1994. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford studies in social and cultural anthropology). Hüsken, Ute (ed.) 2007. When Rituals go Wrong: Mistakes, Failure, and the Dynamics of Ritual. Leiden et al.: Brill (Numen Book Series 115). Huygens, Robert B.C. (ed.) 1986. William of Tyre. Chronicon. Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum. 2 vols. Turnhoult 1986 (Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio medievalis 63, 63 A). Kamp, Hermann 2001. Friedensstifter und Vermittler im Mittelalter. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Symbolische Kommunikation in der Vormoderne). Kolb, Werner 1988. Herrscherbegegnungen im Mittelalter. Bern et al.: Lang (Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe 3: Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 359). Koziol, Geoffrey 1992. Begging Pardon and Favor. Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Krynen, Jacques 1995. “La rébellion du Bien public (1465)”. In: Marie Theres Fögen (ed.). Ordnung und Aufruhr im Mittelalter: Historische und juristische Studien zur Rebellion. Frankfurt: Klostermann: 81–97 (Ius Commune Sonderheft 70). Marie-Cardine, Pierre 1979. “Le traité de Troyes 21 mai 1420” Le Pays d‘Auge 29/3: 9–14. Moore, Sally Falk & Barbara Myerhoff 1977. Secular Ritual. Assen, Amsterdam: Van Gorcum. Nye, Joseph S. 2004. Soft Power. The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs. Offenstadt, Nicolas 2000. “The Rituals of Peace During the Civil War in France, 1409– 19: Politics and the Public Sphere”. In: Tim Thornton (ed.). Social Attitudes and Political Structures in the Fifteenth Century. Stroud: Sutton: 88–100 (The Fifteenth Century Series 7). — 2007. Faire la paix au Moyen Âge. Discours et gestes de paix pendant la guerre de Cent Ans. Paris: Odile Jacob.

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Peyronnet, Georges 1980. “A propos du traité de Troyes quelques fausses nouvelles chez un historiographe des ducs de Bourgogne”. Annales de Bourgogne 52/1: 43– 50. Rimboud, Michel 1996. “La paix du Bien public démesure et marchandages (août-novembre 1465)”. In: Philippe Contamine & Olivier Guyotjeannin (eds.). La Guerre, la violence et les gens au Moyen Age. Vol. 1: Guerre et violence (Actes du 119e congrès des sociétés historiques et scientifiques, 26–30 octobre 1994, Amiens, section d’histoire médiévale et de philologie). Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques: 333–344. Schneider, Reinhard 1977. “Mittelalterliche Verträge auf Brücken und Flüssen”. Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde 23: 1–24. Schnerb, Bertrand 2005. Jean Sans Peur. Le prince meurtrier. Paris: Payot & Rivages. Schulte, Petra 2006. “Treue und Vertrauen im Zeichen der Ermordung Luwigs von Orléans durch Johann ohne Furcht (23. November 1407)”. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 39: 315–333. Schwedler, Gerald 2008. Herrschertreffen des Spätmittelalters. Formen, Rituale, Wirkungen. Ostfildern: Thorbecke (Mittelalter-Forschungen 21). Schwinges, Rainer Christoph 1977. Kreuzzugsideologie und Toleranz. Studien zu Wilhelm von Tyrus. Stuttgart: Hiersemann (Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 15). Siegel, Heinrich 1894. Der Handschlag und Eid nebst den verwandten Sicherheiten für ein Versprechen im deutschen Rechtsleben. Eine Untersuchung (Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 130/6). Vienna: Rohrer. Soumillion, Daniel 1997. “Le procès de Louis de Luxembourg (1475). L’image d’un grand vassal de Louis Xl et de Charles Ie Téméraire”. Publications du Centre européen d’études bourguignonnes (XIVe–XVIe s.) 37: 205–229. Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara 2005. “Herstellung und Darstellung politischer Einheit: Instrumentelle und symbolische Dimensionen politischer Repräsentation im 18. Jahrhundert”. In: Jan Andres (ed.). Die Sinnlichkeit der Macht: Herrschaft und Repräsentation seit der Frühen Neuzeit. Frankfurt, New York: Campus: 73–92 (Historische Politikforschung 5). Tambiah, Stanley J. 1981. “A Performative Approach to Ritual”. Proceedings of the British Academy 65: 113–169. Vaughan, Richard 1966. John the Fearless. The Growth of Burgundian Power. London: Longmans. Watts, John 2000. “Commynes l’européen. L’invention du politique. By Joël Blanchard (Review)”. English Historical Review 115/463: 954 http://ehr.oxfordjournals. org/cgi/reprint/115/463/954 (17 march 2009).

Peter Seele

Is there an Economic Benefit in Participating in Rituals? An Institutional Economics Analysis of Transaction Costs and Institutional Stability Introduction From an institutional economics point of view, rituals impose costs on the participating individual. These costs – besides monetary costs – may be called transaction costs, opportunity costs or in the case of repeated participation, sunk costs. If someone is willing to pay these costs the question is: what is the benefit of participating in rituals? Or even more economically: is there something like a competitive advantage in participating in rituals? And if so, for whom? For an individual, a group or a notional construction like culture? This paper attempts to describe possible competitive advantages and benefits of participating in rituals. For the sake of simplicity I abstain from defining what exactly a ritual is and how it might be defined. From an institutional economics point of view it is sufficient to understand rituals as rule-governed, performative behaviour with symbolic meaning attached. To elucidate the “benefits” of rituals I follow the axiomatic setting of economics of only taking individuals into account (methodological individualism), who as a matter of course are organised in groups understood here as institutions. Therefore, all social phenomena are articulations, or results, of individual action. Neither below, nor above the individual are there relevant levels, although collectives (or aggregates) may be considered (as at the end of this paper). These collectives, however, do not constitute unified agents of action or decisions: a community is not capable of autonomous action. It is crucial that the behaviour of collectives, or groups, is traced back to the behaviour of individuals that constitute these collectives or groups.1 Participating in rituals can be understood in institutional economic terms as 2 rule-following behaviour. This does not mean that rituals do not change, but here it is important to make clear that the majority of people participating in rituals do 1 Karpe 1997: 22. 2 The dynamics of the institutional change of rituals have been described recently in Michaels 2008.

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not intend to change the ritual, but to follow rules that are path-dependent and thus given by tradition. The difficulty now in describing rituals from an economic point of view is the question of how to deal with culture? In institutional economics we understand culture for example as follows: “Culture consists of language (based on a rule system which governs the sounds and signs we make), ideas, values, internal and external institutions; in most definitions it also covers the tools, techniques, works of art, rituals and symbols to underpin the purely institutional side of culture”.3 So by taking institutions into account as a bridge from economics to rituals, we might get our hands on something called ritual economics. From an economic point of view, culturally determined convictions are therefore crucial for the stability of informal rules. Thus, as Kasper & Streit point out, “culture” determines social behaviour (of which economic behaviour is a part). Under the rubric of “Rule Systems as Part of Culture”, Kasper & Streit emphasise the constitutive impact of culture on behaviour: many of the informal institutions that have evolved and are shared in a community form part of a system that is called “culture”. Indeed, shared rules and values define a society; they are essential to social behaviour, including economic behaviour.4 So to analyse and understand the economic impact of rituals, we need to focus on the benefits and downsides of rituals for the individual, as well as for the community. In addition, the issue of preferences will be addressed. Preferences, as Timur Kuran has shown, are adjustable and sometimes erroneous (preferencefalsification).5 As a consequence, it is important to note that participating in rituals might not always be for the reason of actually choosing to participate, but for the reason of culturally encoded, informal restrictions.

Economic Advantages of Participating in Rituals Reduction of Complexity and Uncertainty Institutions and rules reduce uncertainty by restricting options. What sounds like a disadvantage at first sight turns out to be of use in decision-making. The question is, why would someone accept rules that restrict his or her freedom of choice? Enforcement is one possible answer. The inherent benefits of restrictions is a second answer. This paper does not focus on dictatorship, coercion, or compulsion, but on the question of how non-obligatory restrictions are legitimised. They are if – and only if – the rules, too, are legitimised. In this view institutions are something 3 Kasper & Streit 1999: 162. 4 Casson 1993. 5 Kuran 1995a.

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rather conservative. Nevertheless, in open societies, which this paper addresses, the competition between institutions allows the erosion and in some cases even the disappearance of existing institutions. In a Hobbesian universe with no institutions or social contracts at all, we find “the war of all against all”, which, on the other hand, allows a maximum of choice with a maximum of uncertainty as to what others will do. But by having a social contract, by obeying rules and participating in institutions, the number of choices is reduced for the sake of common rules that make other people’s behaviour predictable. In economic terms, if I have a contract, I need to rely on the fulfilment of the contract. Put more simply, I need to trust others not to harm me. Otherwise I have to pay high costs for control, enforcement, or execution of rights. Public goods and institutions like laws, norms, and customs regulate recurrent transactions. Institutions require and produce trust and belief. To translate the idea of a social contract and public institutions into rituals: rituals do have a function. In transitions, for instance, they offer structure and orientation. In the insecurity of changing from child to adult, for example, rituals guide the way of the particular transition for the individual and his peer group. Rite of passage works like a splint on a fracture. Here we find a solid economic benefit of participating in transition rituals. They reduce the complexity of not knowing what to do at a new stage, phase, or era. By doing so they reduce uncertainty, which is of major economic concern. In positive terms, rituals spread trust, and trust helps to predict what others will do. For Luhmann, the main function of trust is to reduce the complexity of action contexts and to facilitate decision-making and actions for all players.6 The trust mechanism works in situations when the risk exceeds certain well-defined limits. Thus, Luhmann takes the view that trust only becomes effective in situations in which uncertainty – whether through complexity or through irresolution – overcomes the will to make a decision. Easier Decision Making and Institutional Stability As a consequence and in the light of rites de passage, rituals minimise the choice of possible alternatives in decision-making. From a purely free market economic point of view this would be a disadvantage, because the number of possible transactions and the number of possible transaction partners is reduced, which causes opportunity costs. But, as shown above, the idea of a strictly individualistic, distrusting society appears not to be the most durable and effective solution. Social contracts and institutions do have their economic meaning, because the number of trustworthy individuals increases by sharing the experience of a common ritual – even better if a metaphysical authority is involved for legitimation. The effect is that the number of possible transactions is reduced, but what counts is the number 6 Luhmann 1989.

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of trustworthy relations. This might lead to “ceremonial encapsulation”,7 when one is caught in one’s own developmental path – or to put it more dramatically: if one 8 becomes a slave to one’s own path-dependency. Making decisions is easier and more reliable if the group shares certain values that are constituted in rituals (and other activities). If it comes to rites de passage, the transition from adolescent to adult signifies liability and responsibility. After the ritual, the person is accountable for his or her choices. For the individual, decisions are more easily made, because the ritual-bound group is constituted by rules and routines that help in solving problems and making decisions. From the group’s perspective, the newly affiliated person will be guided by traditional problem-solving strategies that make the person easier to handle and oversee. In institutional economic terms, a change in form-bound rules or in their enforcement, according to North, will lead to a situation of disequilibrium, because a stable theoretical frame for decisions consists precisely of the structure of formbound and formless limitations, and the modalities through which they are enforced.9 Change in terms of unanticipated behaviour would disturb this structure of well-balanced mutual understanding approved by ritual. Communities that share a high degree of clear and common understanding of fundamental values manage a more predictable, orderly evolution of their institutions than societies whose members share few values. Shared values thus serve as a filter and as the cohesive cement for the evolving internal rules of society.10 The deep-rootedness of rituals makes for significant stability of behaviour, since it provides an instance that buffers uncertainty with regard to behaviour, even with regard to the making of decisions, and which furthermore constitutes – in the case of religious rituals – an authority that is, literally, “out of this world”, and which therefore does not have a problem of legitimisation in this world. Reduction of Transaction Costs In sum, the reduction of complexity and uncertainty, as well as easier decisionmaking and institutional stability, may lead to a reduction of transaction costs. By “transaction costs” we understand costs that result from planning and achieving a transaction. We distinguish between information acquisition costs, negotiating costs, and initiation costs on the one hand, and control costs, bridging costs, psychic costs, set-up costs, sunk costs, change costs, or governance costs on the

7 Annecke 2001: 172. 8 The encapsulation increases if the group or community loses contact with other transaction partners. Corruption and other inefficiencies may arise. 9 North 1992: 103. 10 Kasper & Streit 1999: 393.


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other. What influences transaction costs is insecurity, frequency of transaction, cultural embeddings, or strategic significance. In the literature there is a controversy over how to deal with transaction costs because they do not appear on the “bill” of the transaction. “Why there is no such thing as transaction costs, after all” is the title of a paper addressing the issue of non-existing costs that nevertheless do have an impact on transactions.11 The transaction costs mentioned above cause costs that are on the societal, psychological, or cultural level. Unlike mainstream economics in the neoclassical paradigm, it is increasingly acknowledged that we live in a world with transaction costs and incomplete predictability. “The individual is unable to attain and process all the information necessary for his [or her] decision-making”.12 If rituals help to select relevant information such as transaction partners and transaction modes, transaction costs will be reduced. And if rituals are able to make the behaviour of people more predictable, transaction costs will be reduced again. In a competitive world with scarce resources the reduction of transaction costs for individuals sharing mental models and sharing the experience of participating in rule-governed rituals creates a competitive advantage for the individual, as well as for the collective. In a text-book on “social order and public policy”, Kasper and Streit introduce the principle of Dharma as the principle of non-competition. They write: “Living under the principle of Dharma may be more comfortable than under the dictate of competition, because people unthinkingly follow established rules, whether this hurts them materially or not. They do not have to put up with the transaction costs of knowledge search”.13 It is necessary to note that the juxtaposition of competition and non-competition is idealistic by nature. Nevertheless the confrontation of religious order and transaction costs makes sense, as long as the culturally defined institutions produce a benefit for all members and the group as a whole.14

Comparative Advantages of Participating in Pilgrimage Pilgrimage and Self-interest and the Cost of Pilgrimage After showing the economic effects of participating in rituals in a very general way, the next step is to exemplify possible economic benefits in a practical ritual situation. To do so, the paper addresses religious holidays and pilgrimages in South 11 Herrmann-Pillath 2000. 12 Richter & Furubotn 1999: 510. 13 Kasper & Streit 1999: 229–230. For an extended interpretation of Kasper and Streit’s understanding of Dharma as the principle of non-competition, please see Seele 2007. 14 Furubotn 1991.

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Asia. Holidays and pilgrimages as such are not specific to India, but their embeddedness in the everyday from childhood onwards makes these holidays a recurrent experience which we must assume to have a sustained influence on the mental models of those who take part. To enumerate the different kinds of pilgrimage, the ritual actions connected with them, and their religious connotations, is beyond the scope of this study. Moreover, such a detailed account is not necessary, since we will be concerned with pilgrimage as a principle, which must be seen as reinforcing ideology. The innermost concern of the religiously motivated pilgrim is self-interest, although it is communicated as a service to the deity. This hypothesis calls for a clarification of the concept of self-interest. A purely material understanding of selfinterest would be deficient, in that it ignores other levels of the concept. To view and understand self-interest on different levels is not a new approach, however – Thomas Hobbes already distinguished between two categories of self-interest, the material and the mental.15 Also, pilgrimage constitutes an action that promises players’ gain. But this gain is not quantifiable in terms of money or otherwise. It is of interest to the player on a qualitatively extended gain level. Stietencron explains that pilgrims in South Asia profit from pilgrimage because they leave behind everyday religious practice and, made receptive through their heightened expectations, can achieve profound religious experiences in sacred places they only knew before from stories.16 For shared mental models, there are two crucial points in this: the first is the fact that pilgrimage offers the possibility of profound religious experience that might have a formative influence. In a way, this intensifies religiosity. The second point is that it is crucial that these pilgrimages be undertaken in the group, or at least that one reaches the pilgrimage’s destination together with other believers. We now return to the utility that pilgrimage offers the faithful and that contributes to the strengthening of religious convictions if it fulfils their expectations. According to Stietencron,17 this utility is seen as purification: the journey itself proves a purification cure, cleansing body and soul for things that have no space in the business of domestic life. Thus, a purification (if it takes place, i.e. if it is perceived) constitutes an improvement in the follower’s position that finds expression in the consolidation of religiosity. Yet this purification also demands investments which can be assessed economically. For one, there are the costs of the pilgrimage as such, along with the loss of income through (materially!) nonproductive time. 15 “[Hobbes] suggested two categories for studying the categories of self interest: The Material and the Mental” (Meyers 1983: 29). 16 Stietencron 2001: 120. 17 Ibid.: 122.


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Perhaps more important, however, is the investment made in the religious gift, which marks the end of the pilgrimage, and must be seen as a decisive instance in the ritual’s dynamics. Stietencron describes this end of the pilgrimage as follows: after purification in the temple pool, one patiently waits in the queue of the faithful to see the god, to bring him a gift, to open one’s heart to him, to say a prayer, or to express a wish. If there is a crowd, the visit to the deity is only brief. Almost in passing, one hands over the gift (brought along or bought at the temple) and receives a sacred countergift and catches a glimpse of the deity. But still, this moment is the central experience, the brief fulfilment for which one came. Afterwards, one has time to walk around the temple, to visit the lesser temples and their gods (whose priests will also ask for gifts), to sit in the shade of a pillar, and to take in the atmosphere of the sacred place with all its business and its calm.18 In this process, we find the elements of religiosity Michaels names prayers, gazes (darshan), gifts, and ritual actions.19 For the tuning of mental models, this interplay means an intensive engagement with one’s own religiosity, which is thereby confirmed and further consolidated. The institutional arrangement of the gift is endowed with a very special meaning in this context. Suffice it to say here that the gift (Dana) constitutes an investment that does not yield an identifiable “return on investment”, but which “pays off” on a religious level, and thus on an existential level, because of the qualitatively expanded utility concept. This pay-off is received in a purely individual way as a reward outside this world, which is explained through the Karma principle of the Hindu world: “The gift will be returned through the impersonal mechanism of Karma, in which each person’s fate is determined by all of his earlier lives, by all past action”.20 This means that the fulfilment of the contract regarding the trade relationship of gifts is not coupled with metaphysical governance, but is already founded in the authenticity of religious convictions. To put it differently, when someone hands over, at the conclusion of a pilgrimage, their gift to the deity (i.e. the temple priests), the return service has already been rendered, since the act of giving is part of a religious ritual in which to give means to receive. The location of receiving is individual Karma and thus, the receiving does not take place in this world and this life, but will be – according to the Karma teachings – accounted for in the shape the next life takes.

18 Stietencron 2001: 122. 19 Michaels 1998: 250. 20 Godelier 1999: 245.

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Rationality in the Religious Frame In order to facilitate scientific inquiry, it is necessary to agree in this context that actors need to believe in what can be achieved through the make-up of the mental models. What appears to be fully irrational in the conventional sense of “rationality” is strictly rational within the religious frame. For the constitution of mental models, conversely, this means that in the sense of the sacred order, or religiosity, they are consolidated; in the sense of profane utilitarian rationality, however, they are “spoilt”. The more people share these models and are united in a common ritual practice, the more firmly and deeply the convictions are rooted. In order to explain this behaviour, the utility-fashioning effect of purity must be pointed out again. Thus, the entire pilgrimage serves the goal of purification, as we saw – but this purification is not restricted to the mental or psychological level. It also extends to the material level, as far as the gift is concerned: the pilgrim returns home liberated from liberated from any uncleanness of the soul and liberated from property, i.e. the need to possess, as Stietencron puts it.21 It must be noted that through the binding nature of rites and their persistent repetition, mental models are consolidated within the peer group, which leads to stability of behaviour. Also, the mental models of individuals are strengthened and deepened as far as the individual’s religiosity is concerned. This is achieved through a structure of governance which does not have to legitimise itself by secular standards, because it is rooted in faith and thus exists solely as a transcendent category. Moreover, mental models are founded in a highly individual manner in a construct that is cultivated from early childhood on, as the discussion of learning demonstrated above. From the point of view of economics, one might point to Kuran’s criticism that this constitutes preference falsifications and a “life of lies”, as the German title of his Private Truths, Public Lies has it. This fact, according to Kuran, is the reason why the so-called untouchables, for example, consider their condition just: “Hindu ideology has contributed to the untouchables’ acceptance of their deprivations as fair, that it has made many treat their wretched existence as natural, and that it has facilitated their complicity in an order that degrades them”.22 As Kasper and Streit put it, the Hindu mental models are “fundamental values”: “[fundamental] values are defined as high preferences revealed, time and again, in human choice and public actions. They are accorded, by most people of the time, a high rank order. This is demonstrated by the subordination of other preferences to

21 Stietencron 2001: 122. 22 Kuran 1995a: 198.


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them.”.23 Greif also emphasises that values, as an integral component of institu24 tional structure, must be considered. If the conception of the Indian caste system is used as a basis, one can find correspondences to the “fundamental values” that can serve to characterise them: high preference, perpetual repetition, hierarchical order, and the subordination of all other preferences. What is particularly important to note here is that it is especially these fundamental values that have a high degree of internalisation and can thus be identified as the decisive mental models. The high and universal preferences that we call fundamental values are often internalised. This means they have been deeply ingrained in the human psyche by practice and experience, and are often brought to bear without explicit reflection. The process of internalising fundamental values probably begins at a young age, and, similarly to conventions such as honesty, they are practised within the microcosm of the family, before they are applied and refined in contact with the macrocosm of the wider community. They become part of “culture” and the definition of what makes up a society.25 It has been emphasised that the development of mental models begins in childhood, when it is undertaken in the microcosm of the family under the “sacred father’s” tutorship, and that it is religiously charged from the very beginning. One conclusion to be drawn from this is surely that in the mental models sketched above, we are dealing with the Hindu “culture”. A further conclusion is that the fundamental values must be viewed as the basis of that social capital which, as we have seen above, must be considered to be very high. If the above-named values constitute the assets of social capital, it can be concluded with Kasper and Streit that the economic advantage of high social capital consisting of “universal values and beliefs” is the manageability of complexity. This leads to the basic prerequisites of action that are the basic prerequisites, also, for successful economising. A broadening of material resources is very much evident in the Hindu world. In order to appreciate this, theoretical constructs like gross national product, economic growth, or per-capita income need to be disregarded in favour of a literal understanding of the term “material resources”: the Hindu world has been accumulating gold for centuries. “Economics of Custom” and Culturally Postulated Supreme Beings For Schlicht, “custom” is the key element for social and economic action – it can be said that we are here dealing with the same phenomenon as “universal values 23 Kasper & Streit 1999: 33. 24 “Values should be viewed as a component in the institutional structure of societies” (Greif 1997: 85). 25 Kasper & Streit 1999: 75.

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and beliefs” or “fundamental values”. He, too, sees the basis for action here, with “economic performance” taking a special place: “Contracting and co-operation rely on [custom]. Social and economic institutions build on it. It forms an important part of social capital. In all that, custom is of prime importance for economic performance”.26 Economically relevant social capital is constituted through shared mental models. The key to understanding economic power thus lies in considering mental models. Through its emphasis on custom, the ideally conceived Hindu world has a relatively high social capital at its disposal. In reality, however, we are not dealing with an ideal conception. Real types are the basis of this study’s practical section. At this point, it can be stated that the religiously-influenced mental models contain the prerequisite for sustained economic power. This conclusion returns us to the terminological question of “utility”. Since it can be assumed that mental models constitute behaviour, the manner of functioning and the nature of the models point to the degree of rationality. Karpe explains that mental models are – to put it simply – the more rational, the lower the knowledge search costs are, and the more strongly the knowledge and sanction feedback of wrongly-made decisions is felt.27 For the Hindu world, it can be said that knowledge search costs are very low, since a large portion of behaviour occurring is religiously connoted, and thus proceeds along firmly-laid tracks. This is owing to the structure of the caste system on the one hand, and to informal rules on the other, which demand a great degree of commitment. Moreover, behaviour and world view are practised and stabilised in rituals. On the other hand, sanction feedbacks are not apparent or easily felt, as Karpe demands. If we follow the religious Karma conception, a sanction is not to be felt within one’s own lifetime, but only in reincarnation, which in our view has no causal connection to a previous life. Still, the presence of the rule has a behaviour-channelling effect on the actors, if their mental models are supported by religious conviction. The same is true of knowledge feedback. In emphasising the importance of ritual, ritual studies testify to the presence, and more importantly, the obligatory nature of religious rules in the Hindu world: Any familial community receives its distinction only from a network of rules and norms which set it apart from the larger categories of caste and sub-caste. In this network of family-bound ritualism, deviating customs and rites are seen as impure, while one’s own count as pure.28 The distinction between “pure” and “impure” is an example of the categorical difference between rules concerning the profane and rules concerning the sacred. However, as regards the Hindu world, these two spheres cannot be separated, as may be shown by the example of the caste system: 26 Schlicht 1993: 178. 27 Karpe 1997: 75. 28 Michaels 1986: 47.


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here, a familial order exists within the order of a society which justifies itself through a proposed transcendental order in the form of religious teachings. As Spiro shows, this claim for legitimacy constitutes a consequence, which in itself does not have to be transcendental: “I shall define ‘religion’ as an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman beings”.29 Traditional religions in particular “constitute the major institutionalized sources of culturally determined behavior”.30 In the case of the Hindu world, religious rules do not merely regulate what must be done, but also, and more importantly, what must not be done. These rules encompass the choice of occupation and spouse as well as restrictions on food, prescribing who may accept nourishment from whom. In doing so, the religious rules fulfil, in their scope, the demands established by North for limitations in prescriptions for that which, by compulsion, either must, or (in the case of prohibitions) must not be done. For according to North, institutional limitations encompass not only that which the individual is not allowed to do, but also on occasion those conditions under which certain persons may undertake particular actions.31 Application of Economic Understanding Participating in rituals requires an effort, and the underlying understanding is that this fulfils a certain purpose that leads to a certain benefit. This might be seen in the production of “religious goods”, as proposed by Azzi and Ehrenberg.32 Nevertheless, this paper aims to develop an understanding of the economic benefit of rituals, where the assumption of an after-life is not nessesarily required. In this paper, ritual and pilgrimage is understood as the production of “public goods” in a broader sense, extending the scope of “public goods” to include education, safety, or health. First of all, ritual has to be seen as a group phenomenon, although the performance of rituals or pilgrimage can be done in isolation. From an institutional economics point of view, we have to deal with a “shared mental model” phenomenon.33 Shared mental models produce predictability of other people’s behaviour. The group event of participating in a pilgrimage and entering into the sanctum sanctorum constitutes a common framework, in which individual faith and the belief in the object of the pilgrimage leads to a common reference.

29 30 31 32 33

Spiro 1966: 96. Fukuyama 1995: 36. North 1992: 4. Azzi & Ehrenberg 1975. Denzau & North 1994: 5.

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In situations of transitions, where rituals are performed repeatedly, the common reference stabilises the institutional setting. Uncertainty is reduced, leading to less freedom, but more firmness and security. Being united in faith, which individuals might experience during their pilgrimage by the unified religious focus, leads to predictability of others and makes decision-making easier if dealing with members of the same faith. The innermost feelings and desires that are affected in the performance might lead to the assumption that others in the same faith are trustworthy and thus more reliable than other individuals. The tonsure as in Tirupati (India) or the shell (Santiago de Compostela) indicates literally shared mental models. Thus, we have to deal with a critical-mass phenomenon. The economic benefit of pilgrimage is only given when the pilgrimage as such forms a standard of its own. In other words, the more successful and popular a pilgrimage, the bigger the economic benefit (if, and only if, faith is the motivation, and not some fashion of participating in pilgrimage) for the participants. An esoteric or private pilgrimage will more likely lead to denial and refusal to recognise the participants from the point of view of the others. To sum up the economic benefit: participating in a ritual such as pilgrimage can be seen as affirmative action, communicating to others that one is part of the community, and thus trustworthy. Therefore the credibility of the faith-based relationship is of essential importance. If someone does participate without sharing the faith behind the ritual – in economic terms: if his mental models are not shared mental models but the opposite – the benefit for him or her is the same, because of the public good produced by the institution of the pilgrimage. We call this phenomenon “the free-rider problem”. Pretending to belong to a “club” and taking advantage of being a club member leads to the reduction of transaction costs when interacting with other club members. The key to understanding the competitive advantage of rituals is the reduction of transaction costs and the production of institutional stability for those who participate. In essence, two thresholds limiting the benefit can be introduced:


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Fig. 1: The two-threshold-approach to the economic benefit of rituals

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The sect threshold: If only a small number of the members of a society or community participate in rituals, the scope of the benefit is limited to those who participate and who notice a difference from the others. The members might be considered as outsiders infringing on institutional stability. Sects, on the other hand, do have the potential to gain critical mass and become “mainstream”, and thus part of the stability-enhancing institutions.

–

The Santiago threshold: If the number of individuals in a community participating in rituals is too large compared to the underlying shared mental models, and the faith-based motivation is not guarded, the benefit of generating trust and predictability of behaviour is at stake. As a conse-quence, the free rider problem arises, for individuals participating but not committed to the ritual, and the community scaling down the ritual’s function of institutional stability.

Between the two thresholds, the benefit for the individual and for the group of those sharing mental models is highest when predictability of behaviour in decision-making and institutional stability is provided. In addition, both effects amount to a reduction of transaction costs, for the individual as well as for the community. The cost in opportunity, on the other hand, brought on by these benefits is the reduction of individual freedom and freedom of choice, once the individual is committed to the shared mental models of specific rituals. If the rituals do not provide the intended benefit for the individual as well as for the group, institutional change is very likely to happen and the transformation of earlier rituals in conformity with the newly created needs and requirements may occur.

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References Annecke, Jan P. 2001. Technischer Fortschritt und institutioneller Wandel. Köln: Verlag Josef Eul Lohmar. Azzi, Corry & Ronald G. Ehrenberg 1975. “Household Allocation Of Time And Church Attendance”. Journal of Political Economy 83: 27–56. Casson, Mark C. 1993. “Cultural Determinants Of Economic Performance”. Journal of Comparative Economics 17: 418–442. Denzau, Arthur T. & Douglass C. North 1994. “Shared Mental Models: Ideologies And Institutions”. KYKLOS 47: 3–31. Fukuyama, Francis 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: The Free Press. Furubotn, Eirik G. 1991. “Transaction Costs And The Concept Of Efficient Allocation”. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 147/4: 662–687. Godelier, Maurice 1999. The Enigma Of The Gift. Cambridge: Polity Press. Greif, Avner 1997. “On The Interrelations And Economic Implications Of Economic, Social, Political, And Normative Factors: Reflections From Two Late Medieval Societies”. In: John N. Drobak & Naomi Shihab Nye (eds.). The Frontiers Of The New Institutional Economics. San Diego: Academic Press: 57–95. Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten 2000. Why There Is No Such Thing Like Transaction Costs, After All. Witten: Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaft der Universität Witten/Herdecke (Wittener Diskussionspapiere 56). Iannaccone, Laurence R. 1997. “Rational Choice. Framework For The Scientific Study Of Religion”. In: Lawrence A. Young (ed.). Rational Choice Theory And Religion. New York: Routledge Chapman & Hall: 25–45. — 1994. “Progress In The Economics Of Religion”. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 150/4: 737–744. Karpe, Jan 1997. Institutionen und Freiheit. Grundlegende Elemente moderner Ökonomik. Münster: Lit Verlag. Kasper, Wolfgang & Manfred E. Streit 1999. Institutional Economics – Social Order And Public Policy. Cheltenham, Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. Kuran, Timur 1995a. Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences Of Preference Falsification. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. — 1995b. Legacies Of Conformism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Luhmann, Niklas 19893. Vertrauen: Ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer Komplexität. Stuttgart: Enke. Meyers, Milton L. 1983. The Soul Of Modern Economic Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Michaels, Axel 1986. Ritual und Gesellschaft in Indien. Frankfurt a.M: Neue Kritik. — 1998. Der Hinduismus – Geschichte und Gegenwart. München: C.H. Beck. — 1999. “‘Le rituel pour le rituel?’ oder Wie sinnlos sind Rituale?”. In: Corina Caduff & Johanna Pfaff-Czarnecka (eds.). Rituale heute. Theorien – Kontroversen – Entwürfe. Berlin: Reimer 23–49. — 2008. Śiva In Trouble. Festivals And Rituals At The Paśupatinātha Temple Of Deopatan. New York: Oxford University Press. North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change And Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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— 1992. Institutionen, institutioneller Wandel und Wirtschaftsleistung. Tübingen: Mohr. Ramesan, Natesa 1999. The Tirumala Temple. Tirupathi: Subba Rao TTD. Reddy, A. R. 1999. “Ramachandra: Tirupati As An Eastern Eldorado: An Analysis Of Stratton Report, 1803”. In: Proceedings Of The 22nd Session Of The Andhra Pradesh History Congress: 100–115. Richter, Rudolf & Eirik Furubotn 19992. Neue Institutionenökonomik: Ein Einführung und kritische Würdigung. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Schlicht, Ekkehart 1993. “On Custom”. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 149/1: 178–203. Seele, Peter 2007. Brains and Gold. Global Transformation Processes And Institutional Change In South Asia. St. Augustin: Academia. Stietencron, Heinrich von 1989. “Hinduism: On The Proper Use Of A Deceptive Term”. In: Günther D. Sontheimer & Hermann Kulke (eds.). Hinduism Reconsidered. New Delhi: Manohar: 11–29. — 2001. Der Hinduismus. München: Beck.

Daniel Schläppi

Politische Riten, Ämterkauf und geschmierte Plebiszite Ritualisierter Ressourcentransfer in der Alten Eidgenossenschaft (17. und 18. Jahrhundert) Was haben Ritual und Ökonomie gemeinsam? Wo könnte die Verbindung zwischen diesen vordergründig unterschiedlichen Handlungsfeldern liegen? So lauten die leitenden Fragestellungen, die hinter dem vorliegenden Beitrag stehen, der aus einem anlässlich des Kongresses „Rituals 2008“ in Heidelberg gehaltenen Vortrag entstanden ist.

1. Theoretische Perspektiven Klassische Ritualdefinitionen fokussieren mit Vorliebe auf das Transzendentale als von Ritualen primär intendierte Sphäre. Und selbst wenn gewisse Rituale gar nicht auf religiöse Praktiken abzielen, so spielt doch immer das „Sakrale“ eine zentrale Rolle. So wird auch in den an sich profanen Ritualen, die zur Inauguration oder späterer Legitimation von – beispielsweise – vormodernen Herrschern vollzogen werden, ein expliziter Gottbezug hergestellt, war die Macht doch direkt von Gott verliehen. Ökonomie und Materielles stellen in den untersuchten Praktiken bloss Nebenschauplätze dar. Selbst besonders wertvolle Objekte, die in Zeremoniellen eine zentrale Rolle spielen, interessieren die Ritualforschung vorab aufgrund ihres Symbolgehaltes. In diesem Aufsatz vertrete ich anhand von Beispielen aus der älteren Schweizer Geschichte einen alternativen Ansatz. Es geht ausdrücklich um Rituale, in denen materielle Güter und Gegenstände prioritär aufgrund ihres Sachwertes von Menschen höheren Standes an Angehörige unterer Sozialschichten transferiert werden. Die beschriebenen Mechanismen haben insofern nichts mit der bekannten Gabentauschökonomie zu tun, als der Symbolgehalt generöser Geschenke und das zwischen den Beteiligten stets angestrebte Gleichgewicht zwischen Geben und Nehmen hier keine Rolle spielen. Vielmehr empfangen die Beschenkten Geld und Waren, oder sie werden grosszügig bewirtet. Aus diesen Dingen ziehen sie einen kon-kreten Nutzen, ohne sich für die Zuwendungen mit materiellen Gegengeschenken zu revanchieren.

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Anhand unterschiedlicher Handlungsfelder wird auf vielfältige Praktiken rituell ausgeformten Ressourcentransfers eingegangen. Im empirischen Teil geht es zuerst um ein Volksfest aus dem Kanton Uri, bei dem in grossem Stil Geld unter die stimmfähige Bevölkerung verteilt wurde (Kapitel 4). Dieser Anlass charakterisiert sich durch einen für Rituale idealtypischen Ablauf und weist fast alle Merkmale auf, die in bekannten Theorien als definitorische Charakteristika von Ritualen postuliert werden.1 So beispielsweise: –

performativer Charakter

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multimediale Ästhetisierung und theatralische Dimension

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eminente Bedeutung von Symbolen

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Öffentlichkeit mindestens einer Kerngruppe

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soziale Abgrenzung

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Herstellung von Gruppenidentität

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Entäusserung der Individuen im Kollektiv

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einigermassen standardisierte Handlungssequenzen

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Regelhaftigkeit

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Wiederholbarkeit und Traditionalität

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Veränderung der Beteiligten bzw. ihrer sozialen Stellung

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kohärenter ideeller Bezugsrahmen und attraktives Ordnungsangebot als Katalysator der Unberechenbarkeit menschlicher Erfahrung

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emotionale Solidarität bei nicht voraussetzbarem Konsens

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über die konkrete Handlung hinausragende symbolische Bedeutung

Dieses Sample definitorischer Kennzeichen hilft dabei, das exemplarische Ereignis aus dem Kanton Uri zu reflektieren und in ein etabliertes ritualwissenschaftliches Raster einzupassen. Allerdings dürfen die Kriterien nicht als Eigenschaften verstanden werden, die notwendigerweise erfüllt werden müssen, damit man von „rituellem“ Handeln sprechen kann. Zu streng gehandhabt, verstellt der Katalog möglicher Qualitäten nämlich den Blick auf spannende Handlungsfelder, aus denen in den anschliessenden Kapiteln (5, 6 und 7) anschauliche Beispiele referiert werden. Es lohnt sich also, über alternative Definitionskriterien nachzudenken, zumal es nach David Kertzer „keine richtige oder falsche Definition des Rituals“ gibt, sondern „lediglich eine, die mehr oder weniger hilfreich ist“, um die Welt zu verstehen.2 1 Bellinger & Krieger 2003: 10; Dücker 2007: 120–122; Kertzer 2003: 372; Platvoet 2003: 179–181; Stollberg-Rilinger 2000: 390–1; Würgler 2004: 81. 2 Kertzer 2003: 372.

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Wer dem von Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger formulierten Programm einer zeitgemässen Kulturgeschichte gerecht werden will, kommt nicht umhin, „Normen, Regeln und Institutionen unter die Lupe zu legen, sie auf das Niveau des individuellen sinnhaften Handelns und der konkreten Kommunikationsakte hinunterzuverfolgen und dann zu beobachten, wie sie sich in ein kompliziertes Geflecht wechselseitiger Geltungsansprüche, -zuschreibungen und -zurückweisungen auflösen“3. Ich greife diese pointierte Position gerne auf und möchte sie in Richtung einiger anhand des untersuchten Materials gemachter Beobachtungen weiterdenken: Es fällt auf, dass bei unterschiedlichsten Gelegenheiten materielle Werte vertikal von oben nach unten transferiert wurden. Generöse Schenkungsgesten fanden auch fernab eng gefasster Rituale oder förmlicher Zeremonielle statt. Sie waren wesenhaft für die informelle Sphäre der Politik und gehörten gleichzeitig zum lebensweltlichen Alltag korporativ strukturierter Personenverbände. Aktuelle Forschungen weiten ihr Erkenntnisinteresse unter den Chiffren „Ritualisierung“ bzw. „ritualisiert“ in neue Anwendungsbereiche hinein. Burckhard Dücker entdeckt entsprechende Praktiken beispielsweise als „subjektive Formungen“ im Feld des Alltagshandelns. Die „Grenzen zwischen Ritualen und Alltag“ scheinen mehr und mehr „perforiert zu sein“. Überhaupt sei rituelles Handeln „in jedem sozialen Bereich möglich“. Prinzipiell könne „jede Alltagshandlung ritualisiert werden“.4 Gabriele Jancke erkennt „ritualisierte Verhaltensweisen“ jenseits klassischer ritueller Handlungsfelder als „Teil von alltäglichen sozialen Beziehungen“ und verwendet dafür den Begriff „Interaktionsrituale“.5 Erving Goffman geht sogar davon aus, dass jede Handlung, die von anderen „irgendwie“ wahrgenommen wird, „auch eine bestimmte zeremonielle Bedeutung hat“.6 Und damit wären wir endgültig auf dem von Stollberg-Rilinger bezeichneten Niveau des basalen „sinnhaften Handelns und der konkreten Kommunikationsakte“, die ein „kompliziertes Geflecht wechselseitiger Geltungsansprüche“ bilden. Will man dieses Geflecht entwirren und das Sinnhafte darin dechiffrieren, muss auch alltägliches Handeln als „ritualisiert“ gelesen werden. Nur so offenbart sich, wenn auch profane Ereignisse plötzlich Funktionen übernehmen, die gemeinhin Ritualen zugeschrieben werden. Als idealisiertes Selbstbild oder Metapher auf gesellschaftliche Koexistenz stiftete grossmütiges Geben aus der Perspektive von unten kollektiven Sinn und Zusammenhalt. Die Mächtigen wiederum legitimierten mit Spenden ihre Herrschaft und überspielten mindestens für den Moment des Schenkens oder Verteilens die faktischen vorhandenen sozialen Gegensätze. Um diese klassischen Wirkungsfelder von Ritualen zu erfüllen, mussten auch die besagten Alltagshandlungen allgemein gehegten und sanktionierten Erwar3 4 5 6

Stollberg-Rilinger 2000: 405. Dücker 2007: 19, 31, 218. Jancke 2008: 25. Goffman 2003: 324.

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tungen an korrekte Verkehrsformen genügen. Sie waren an ein öffentliches Publikum gerichtet, für das sie zugleich eine Orientierungsfunktion übernahmen, indem sie von alter Übung bekannte Gesten von hohem Symbolgehalt repetierten und perpetuierten. Wer gegen den praxeologischen Common Sense verstiess, provozierte Verunsicherung, Irritationen und allenfalls sogar Widerstand. Doch wie stellten sich die historischen Akteure die Gesellschaft vor, die sie in Form ritualisierter Schenkungen und im alltäglichen Ressourcentransfer metaphorisch zum Ausdruck brachten?

2. Paritätische Partizipation als Grundlage korporativer Gemeinwesen In den demokratisch geprägten Gebieten der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft fühlten sich auch einfache Landleute als freie politische Subjekte. Wer das Landrecht einer Landschaft oder das Bürgerrecht eines Ortes besass, hatte an Volksversammlungen Recht und Stimme, selbst wenn er im Alltag in ökonomischer und herrschaftlicher Abhängigkeit von wirtschaftlich und politisch potenten Honoratiorengeschlechtern lebte. In ständischer Tradition leiteten sich aus dem Bürgerrecht Nutzungsrechte an den ökonomischen Ressourcen der korporativ konstituierten Gemein- und Staatswesen ab. Da der Zugang zu den einträglichsten Nutzungschancen aber das Innehaben höchster Ämter erforderte – Soldwesen, Handelsmonopole auf Salz, internationale Diplomatie und lokale Politik bildeten ein einziges, verwickeltes, per Saldo aber höchst rentables Handlungsfeld –, musste die Wahl in einen wichtigen Posten durch symbolische und materielle Leistungen an die einfache Bevölkerung abgegolten werden. Kritik am Regierungsstil der aristokratischen Eliten entzündete sich in der Regel, wenn sich eine Minderheit nach Ansicht der nutzungsberechtigten Teilhaber (Bürgerschaften, Landleutekorporationen, Dorfgenossen) am Gemeinwesen bereicherte, d.h. zu viele Ämter usurpierte, zu viele staatliche Domänen bewirtschaftete, zu viel Erträge der öffentlichen Güter für sich abzweigte. Das Staatswesen wurde als Summe der kollektiven Ressourcen betrachtet, die zum Nutzen aller bewirtschaftet werden sollten.7 Deshalb hatten hohe Politiker für den Nutzen aus ihren Ämtern periodisch Gegenleistungen zu erbringen. Dieser vertikale Ressourcentransfer steht sinnbildlich für die Nutzenlogik, welche die Gesellschaft prägte. Von den führenden Politikern wurde weiter erwartet, dass sie für den stetigen Fluss und die paritätische Verteilung ausländischer Bündnisgelder (Pensionen) sorgten. Neben innerer Konkurrenz durch andere Anwärter auf höchste Ämter beeinflussten auch äussere Ereignisse, die sich der Kontrolle der lokal tonangebenden Akteure vollkommen entzogen (Kriegsgeschehen, Verschiebungen in der 7 Schläppi 2007.


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Machtmechanik der europäischen Grossmächte), das lokale Machtgefüge. Zudem waren Ämter befristet, da in der paritätischen Logik der Rotation mindestens formell möglichst vielen potentiell die Chance geboten werden musste, in ein hohes Amt zu gelangen. Zu guter Letzt mussten die hohen Würdenträger in den Landsgemeindeorten vom Stimmvolk regelmässig gewählt werden, was sie sich einiges kosten liessen, wie in Kapitel 6 gezeigt wird.8

3. Mikrorituale perpetuieren die Kernbotschaft der Metariten Die Summe der eben geschilderten Umstände brachte mit sich, dass die herrschaftliche Stellung der mächtigen Häupterfamilien viel labiler war, als dies die im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert stattgefundene kulturelle und soziale Abschliessung des aristokratischen Herrenstandes vermuten liesse.9 Vor diesem Hintergrund mutet der Aufwand, den die Honoratioren betrieben, gar nicht so verschwenderisch an. In der „Logik des sozialen Austausches“ stellte er „eine sichere Investition“ dar, da sich das damit erworbene Ansehen und Vertrauen in der Öffentlichkeit schnell amortisierten.10 Aufgrund der Unwägbarkeiten und der permanenten Unsicherheit der Verhältnisse wird verständlich, weshalb ritualisierte Schenkungen nicht auf den Anlass politischer Zeremonielle beschränkt blieben: –

Die Verlängerung des ritualisierten Ressourcentransfers ins alltäglich Profane erlaubte es, die soziale Kohäsion im korporativen Solidarverband und die Legitimität der Herrschaft periodisch in Erinnerung zu rufen und auf diese Weise zu konsolidieren.

–

Wer offensichtlich nicht nur auf Besitz und persönliche Vorteile aus war, empfahl sich als würdiger – weil altruistischer – Träger der öffentlichen Macht.

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Ausserdem förderte öffentlich zur Schau gestellter Wohlstand das Vertrauen in die Machthaber. Wer Geld genug hatte und dieses grosszügig verteilte, sorgte sich offenbar nicht über unvorhersehbare Katastrophen, die jederzeit von aussen hereinbrechen konnten. Würde jemand sonst seine materiellen Reserven in eine unberechenbare politische Zukunft investieren?

Den Praktiken regelmässigen Schenkens und des Ämterkaufes kam zur Aufrechterhaltung einer stabilen politischen Ordnung also mehrfache Bedeutung zu. Gegenüber offiziellen Zeremoniellen hatten die regelmässig verteilten, kleinen Aufmerksamkeiten den Vorteil, dass sie in der historischen Face-to-Face-Gesellschaft den Akteuren Gelegenheit gaben, personale Kontakte zu pflegen. Und auf

8 Vgl. zuletzt Landolt 2007. 9 Peyer 1976: 28. 10 Bourdieu 1992: 71–2.

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diesen beruhten intakte Sozialbeziehungen in der Frühen Neuzeit bekanntlich.11 Goffman benutzt für einfache Kontaktformen wie Begrüssungen oder Komplimente den Begriff „interpersonale Rituale“ und begründet die Verwendung des Begriffs „Ritual“ damit, dass derartige Handlungen, „selbst wenn sie informell und profan sind, es dem Individuum ermöglichen, auf die symbolischen Implikationen seines Handelns zu achten und diese zu planen“.12 Man könnte von „Mikroritualen“ reden, um die kategoriale Differenz des Alltagshandelns zu formellen Ritualen zu markieren. Als solche tragen sie die Botschaft der Metarituale in den sozialen Mikrokosmos feingliedriger Beziehungen, in den konkreten – und eben nicht transzendenten – Erfahrungshorizont der einfachen Leute hinein. Aber wenden wir uns zunächst einem formellen Ritual zu, das als Rite de Passage die Eckwerte der klassischen Ritualtheorie erfüllt.

4. Ein klassisches Ritual zur Inauguration in ein politisches Amt Der „Bericht, wie man H. LandtsFändrich und SeckelMr. Jost Antoni Schmidt das Ehren=Zeichen den LandtsFahnen Anno 1731. eingebleittet, eingehändiget und ubergeben hat“,13 beleuchtet ein hochgradig symbolisch saturiertes Handlungsfeld. Am Vortag und am Tag der Amtsübergabe selbst schlugen in Altdorf, dem Hauptort des Landes Uri, im Morgengrauen die Tamboure kräftig „die retretta“. Gegen 11 Uhr kam das so herbei getrommelte Volk zur Fahnenübergabe zusammen. Flankiert von mit Granaten bestückten Grenadieren mit eindrücklichen Mützen auf dem Kopf und trutzigen Oberlippenbärten im Gesicht zog das Urner Landvolk nun vor das Haus des regierenden Landammanns und Landeshauptmanns Oberst Joseph Antonj Püntener, wo die ersten Granaten gezündet wurden. Nach einigen weiteren Stationen gesellte sich schliesslich auch die Landsmannschaft zum Zug. Als „nach gehabter grosser Mühe“ schliesslich alles „in Ordnung stuonde, wurde der spannische grenadier-marche angeschlagen“, und die ganze Prozession, die einen „sechenswürdigen Umbzug“ abgab, machte sich in vorgegebener Ordnung auf den Weg. Bei den „Schiesshütten“ vor der „Nuntiatur“ explodierten die nächsten Granaten. Beim Haus des designierten Landesfähndrichs und Seckelmeisters Jost Antoni Schmid bekam jeder, der in die Hofstatt einmarschierte, in einem Papier eingewickelt 7½ Batzen geschenkt. Und niemand durfte sich auf den Heimweg begeben, bevor alle Teilnehmer eingetroffen waren. Den einmaligen Moment, in dem die Vertreter der Obrigkeit lauter Männer vor sich hatten, die alle eben erst geschenkt bekommenes Geld im Hosensack hatten, liess sich Landschreiber Crivelli nicht 11 Thiessen & Windler 2005: 11. 12 Goffman 2003: 325. 13 anon. 1991.


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entgehen, um aus Anlass der Fahnenübergabe „eine nachtruckliche, und vill anwesende fast zum Weinen bewegliche Sermon“ zu halten, für die sich der neue Landesfähndrich bei der Entgegennahme der Fahne höflich bedankte. Die unterschwellige Intention dieser ausgeklügelten Szenerie liegt auf der Hand. Das Landvolk sollte sich in seiner ganzen Stärke erleben, zugleich in Corpore aber auch sehen, – oder besser – spüren, wie grosszügig und volkstümlich die gewählten Politiker waren. Man zählte an diesem Tag ohne Offiziere und Wachtmeister 2000 wehrfähige Männer. Dazu noch mindestens 200 Jünglinge, welche das wehrfähige Alter von 14 Jahren noch nicht erreicht hatten, die aber trotzdem mit Geldgeschenken bedacht wurden – früh übt sich. Es folgten Vorführungen der Grenadiere, die nochmals die Granaten krachen liessen und demonstrierten, wie gewandt sie mit Flinte und Degen umgehen konnten. Schliesslich wurde – wie könnte es anders sein – allen Anwesenden ein „Trunckh anerbotten“. Obwohl einige wegen der Kälte nicht lange geblieben seien, habe „es vill Wein gekostet“. Namentlich weil sich etliche drei- oder gar viermal anstellten und sich zwischen den Runden noch mit selber besorgtem Brot aus der nahen Bäckerei stärkten. Der Ausschank nahm erst am späten Abend ein Ende. Ohne jedes Detail einzeln zu kommentieren, sollen einige charakteristische Elemente des geschilderten Ereignisses in ritualwissenschaftlichen Kategorien reflektiert werden: Das Geschehen ist performativ und multimedial choreographiert. Das Programm beinhaltet Musik, geordnetes Marschieren, Knalleffekte, kollektive Erfahrung des öffentlichen Raumes, Reden, Essen und Trinken sowie sportliche Wettkämpfe. Das Skript des Aufmarsches bildet die soziale Ordnung ab und weist allen Akteuren bestimmte Handlungssequenzen zu. Neben der Zurschaustellung kollektiver Symbole wird Wert auf Ästhetisierung gelegt, indem die wehrfähigen Landleute Uniform tragen und ihre Bärte kunstvoll hergerichtet haben. Die politischen Würdenträger schmücken sich mit Blumen. Die symbolische Bedeutung des Anlasses wird den Anwesenden mit ergreifenden Reden bewusst gemacht. Dabei werden mit Nachdruck Gruppengefühle geschürt. Das kollektive Erlebnis wird sogar mit Zwangsmassnahmen perpetuiert, denn niemand darf abziehen, ohne den ganzen Ritus durchlaufen zu haben. Der Höhepunkt des Anlasses findet in einem klar umrissenen Raum statt, wodurch nach aussen ein Abgrenzungseffekt erzielt wird. Alles ist selbstverständlich und geht ohne störende Zwischenfälle über die Bühne. Schliesslich wird der Ritus der nächsten Generation didaktisch vermittelt – „ein Leben lang eingeübt“14, indem auch Minderjährige teilnehmen. Und wenn sie vorerst noch eine Nebenrolle spielen, verpflichten sie sich nament-

14 Platvoet 2003: 178, fn.19.

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lich mit der Entgegennahme von Geld schon in jungen Jahren nachdrücklich auf die bestehende Sozialordnung.15 Im Zusammenhang mit unserem Thema von besonderem Interesse ist natürlich die Verteilung von Geld an alle Anwesenden. Obwohl das Geld in ein Papier eingewickelt, als Symbol verschleiert und in wörtlichem Sinn – en passant – übergeben wurde, wird die empfangene Geldspende für die Beteiligten den nachhaltigen Höhepunkt des Anlasses dargestellt haben. Dass der materielle Konnex zwischen Spender und Empfangenden nicht eigens zur Schau gestellt und das Geld in aller Selbstverständlichkeit gleichsam nebenbei eingesteckt wurde, belegt einerseits den impliziten Symbolgehalt des Geldes. Anderseits zeugt es von einem generellen Einverständnis damit, dass soziale Beziehungen materiell unterlegt werden mussten. Gewiss ist, dass durch den Empfang des Geldes von einer Privatperson die Bindungen zwischen den Akteuren modelliert und auf einer soliden Grundlage im Licht wechselseitiger Loyalitätserwartungen neu akzentuiert wurden.

5. Ritualisierter Ressourcentransfer unter Anwesenden Tauchen wir ein in das Jahr 1641 und schauen Jacob Andermatt (1602–1680), einem Ammann der schweizerischen Kleinstadt Zug, bei seinen täglichen Verrichtungen und Begegnungen im Zusammenhang mit seinen politischen Aufgaben zu.16 Von ihm ist ein Tagebuch überliefert, das – im Unterschied zu anderen Selbstzeugnissen aus dem gleichen Zeitraum – kaum religiöse Reflektion enthält, dafür aber genau über die Rundgänge des Magistraten durch die Gemeinde, seine diversen Kontakte und stattgefundene Begebenheiten berichtet.17 Das Diarium des Magistraten liest sich wie Buchhaltung in Prosa. Tatsächlich betreffen die meisten Eintragungen Andermatts irgendwelche ökonomische Handlungen. Man sieht einen Angehörigen der lokalen Honoratiorenschaft bei seinen alltäglichen Tätigkeiten. Er geht auf die Jagd, folgt dabei der Spur eines Wildtiers, besucht die Messe, oder isst und trinkt mit seinen Ratskollegen nach Sitzungen oder ambulant verrichteten Geschäften. Neben der Führung seines Landwirtschaftsbetriebs sind dies die zentralen alltäglichen Handlungsfelder des Politikers. In den Schilderungen seiner Rundgänge erwähnt er – und aufgrund der Menge der Einträge müssen wir annehmen – beinahe lückenlos, wie er diesem oder jenem ein 15 Zur rituellen Dimension im Ablauf einer Landsgemeindewahl vgl. Brändle (2005: 89–93). Die von Brändle beigebrachten Beispiele erfüllen ebenfalls die meisten einschlägigen Definitionsmerkmale von in engerem Sinn gefassten Ritualen. Bei der erwähnten Schwyzer Landsgemeinde schwang zusätzlich eine sakrale Note mit, da die Anwesenden gemeinsam beteten (ibid.: 89). 16 Die folgenden Ausführungen beruhen auf Müller (1900). 17 Zur Bedeutung der „Anwesenheit” in der Frühen Neuzeit vgl. zuletzt Schlögl (2008).


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Geschenk gibt, hier eine Geldsumme an eines seiner zahlreichen Patenkinder aushändigt.18 Auch selbst empfangene Geschenke, Mahlzeiten und Trünke werden minutiös verbucht. Als Gesandter seiner Behörde repräsentierte Andermatt die Stadt auch in offiziellen Missionen. Auf länger dauernden Reisen machte der Magistrat in namhaften Orten halt und wurde von den dortigen Honoratiorenschaften stets bewirtet. Auch hier kann Andermatt genau angeben, in welchem Umfang aufgetragen und konsumiert wurde. Statt in den Golfclub begab sich Andermatt alle paar Tage ins Schützenhaus, wo wahrscheinlich scharf geschossen aber auch wacker geprostet wurde. War ein Wettschiessen angekündigt, spendierte er eine Prämie für den besten Schützen. Ein begehrter Preis war beispielsweise ein Paar Hosen.19 Wenn ein Magistrat als Spender in Erscheinung treten wollte, durfte er sich nicht lumpen lassen. Die Hosen wurden als Objekt der Begierde garantiert an prominenter Stelle und für jeden sichtbar präsentiert. Und alle Anwesenden konnten sich dann ihr eigenes Bild von der Grosszügigkeit des Schenkers machen, und allenfalls gewann ja auch ein Angehöriger gehobenen Standes ein Schiessen, den man nicht mit einem Beinkleid von schlechter Qualität und billigem Stoff abspeisen durfte. Später würde man die Kleider dann vielleicht jahrelang in den Gassen sehen und – wenigstens wenn sie wertvoll waren – den grosszügigen Geber in Ehren halten oder aber im Wirtshaus als jämmerlichen Geizkragen verlachen. Öffentliche Geschenke als subtile Form politischer Meinungsbildung. Andermatt erzählt auch von einem der Ehrverletzung schuldig Gesprochenen, der zur Wiedergutmachung seinen beleidigten Widersacher mitsamt dessen politischem Anhang (immerhin mehr als 50 Personen) zu Gast haben musste, eine kostspielige Sache von hohem Zeichencharakter. Entsprechend symbolträchtig die Tafelrunde. Wahrscheinlich wurde jede Fleischplatte, sicher aber der Wein und wahrscheinlich auch der Getreidebrei von den Zechbrüdern hämisch kommentiert. Aus Andermatts Notizen kann abgeleitet werden, dass die politischen Akteure des 17. Jahrhunderts über Ressourcentransfers eine informelle Sphäre des Politischen kreierten. Sich darin zu betätigen war obligatorisch, denn der Tausch von Gaben, Geld und Essen wurde offenbar so selbstverständlich erwartet, dass er als festgeschriebenes Ritual in Szenen des sich Begegnens genau so gehörte, wie eine anständige Begrüssung mit Namen und den üblichen Ehrbezeugungen. Die integrative Kraft derartiger Handlungen war so stark, dass sie selbst über die Konfessionsgrenzen hinweg verbindend wirkte. So wurde der Katholik 18 Patenschaften waren ein beliebtes Instrument zur Intensivierung von Bindungen mit den politischen Eliten. Nach Kälin (1991: 200–1) hatten in Altdorf, dem Hauptort des Kantons Uri, mehr als die Hälfte der Kinder Repräsentanten der politischen Elite als Paten. Der Magistrat Johann Sebastian Jauch (1696–1731) hatte allein 87 Patenkinder. 19 Die gleiche Art von Sponsoring betrieb auch Ammann Zurlauben, der als Preis einen „bächer”, wohl ein kostbares Trinkgefäss, spendete (Müller 1900: 18).

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Andermatt ins Dorf Kappel geschickt, wo er mit Vertretern des Erzfeinds, der protestantischen Zwinglistadt Zürich, über Nutzungsrechte und Zehntfragen verhandeln musste. Während er sich in seinen Notizen über den Inhalt und die Ergebnisse der Unterredungen ausschwieg, notierte er selbstverständlich, später habe er „müösen mit inen [den Zürchern] zabi äsen; hand mir vil er und früntschaft bewisen.“ Dass die geschilderten Begebenheiten überliefert sind, ist ein glücklicher Zufall. Das darf ihren heuristischen Wert aber nicht schmälern. Im Gegenteil: Mit Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger ist darauf zu insistieren, dass Frühneuzeithistoriker durch ihre Fixierung auf Schriftzeugnisse gerne die „konkrete physische Realität politischsozialer Phänomene“ vernachlässigen.20 Dank Andermatts Aufzeichnungen haben wir Kenntnis von sozialen Vorgängen, die – für vormoderne Strukturen typisch – auf „der persönlichen Präsenz der Beteiligten, auf dem Handeln von Angesicht zu Angesicht beruhten“. Das ist deshalb von Bedeutung, weil bei jedem Zusammentreffen im öffentlichen Raum „die sozialen Beziehungen der Menschen untereinander“21 artikuliert werden.22 Bei derartigen Gelegenheiten unter den Augen mehrerer Anwesender Essen oder materielle Zuwendungen zu bekommen, weckt allseitig Erwartungen an künftiges Verhalten und verpflichtet die Beteiligten verbindlicher auf Gegenseitigkeit als im anonymen Massenverband durchlaufene Rituale. Wenn „jemand einem anderen etwas gibt oder von diesem etwas annimmt bzw. empfängt, auch wenn es nur ein Blick oder ein Gruß ist“, müssen sich nach Dücker stets beide „Seiten exponieren und individualisieren, sichtbar und damit identifizierbar machen“23. Auf dieser Grundlage kann Goffman geltend machen, dass Akte der Ehrerbietung eine „typische Art von Versprechen“ abgeben, die „in verkürzter Form ein Bekenntnis und ein Unterpfand des Handelnden darstellt, den Empfänger bei der nächsten Begegnung entsprechend zu behandeln“.24 Durch den Transfer eines Gegenstandes von materiellem Wert werden diese Versprechen über die symbolische Bindung hinaus objektiv besiegelt. Ungeachtet des jeweiligen instrumentellen Hintergrundes „kann jede Handlung viele Gelegenheiten für kleinere Zeremonien liefern, solange andere Leute anwesend sind“. Werden die geweckten Erwartungen erfüllt, breitet sich „ein ständiger Strom von Gunstbezeu-

20 21 22 23 24

Stollberg-Rilinger 2000: 396. Ibid.: 396–7. Vgl. Bellinger & Krieger 2003: 16–7. Dücker 2007: 136. Goffman 2003: 327.


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gungen über die Gesellschaft“25. Das gemeinsam mit anderen Anwesenden durchlaufene Mikroritual bildet die Basis für vielfältige „Anschlusshandlungen“.26 Über den Sachwert der transferierten Ressourcen können ausser im Fall von Geldspenden nur Vermutungen angestellt werden. In diesem Kontext sollten aber unbedingt folgende Punkte in die Überlegungen einbezogen werden: 1) Im Sinne von Goffman kann festgehalten werden, dass sich alle ritualisierten Schenkungsgesten hinsichtlich ihres materiellen Wertes unterscheiden. Die objektiven Werte der involvierten Gegenstände oder Gefälligkeiten variieren ebenso wie deren subjektive Einschätzung durch die Gebenden und die Empfangenden. Der Sachwert eines Transfers kann zwar als Element „des kommunikativen Werts einer Handlung benutzt werden“27. Gleichzeitig ist die Bedeutung eines Rituals aber in keiner Weise vom Wert der darin einbegriffenen Objekte abhängig. 2) Auch wenn gewisse Gaben aus heutiger Sicht in umgangssprachlichem Sinn rein „symbolisch“ und zur Deckung des Grundbedarfs nie und nimmer hinreichend waren, darf der materielle Gebrauchs-, Nähr- oder Geldwert nicht einfach aus unseren Überlegungen ausgeklammert werden. Für Menschen, die noch nicht wussten, was ein Monatslohn oder eine feste Anstellung ist, konnten selbst vordergründig minderwertige Gebrauchtwaren wertvoll sein.28 Von einer Einladung zu einem üppigen Essen ganz zu schweigen. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass „in einer durch Mangel an Bargeld geprägten Ökonomie“ der 25 Ibid.: 337. 26 Dücker 2007: 34. In Konfrontation mit elaborierten Formen modernen Bettlertums wie z.B. Strassenmusikern, die in U-Bahnen spielen, können die relationalen Effekte von Ressourcentransfers im Selbstversuch erprobt werden. Ein U-Bahnwagen stellt eine kleine aber überschaubare und für einen kurzen Zeitraum abschliessend definierte Form der Öffentlichkeit dar. Wenn die Musikanten nach einem kurzen Ständchen mit dem Hut in der Hand den Wagen abschreiten, können unterschiedliche Reaktionsweisen beobachten werden (Wegsehen, Ignorieren, lächelnde oder forsche Rückweisung, Geld in den Hut legen etc.). Im Raum dieser partiellen Nötigung (zum Zuhören und Zahlen), wo Fluchtmöglichkeiten fehlen und die Anwesenden gleichzeitig der Beobachtung durch eine Gruppe ausgesetzt sind, wird die Symbolwirkung nur schon einer unbedeutenden Geldspende physisch spürbar, obwohl die Gabe einmalig bleiben und keine den Moment überdauernden personalen Bindungen erzeugen wird. Überträgt man das Szenario des beschriebenen Mikrorituals in ein soziales Umfeld, in dem sich alle Anwesenden kennen – etwa in kleinstädtische oder dörfliche Verhältnisse – und nimmt an, die Hauptgasse oder der Kirchplatz nach der Predigt seien die U-Bahn, werden die interpersonalen Implikationen massiv verschärft. Der relationale Grundzug in den Geldspenden wird noch deutlicher. Geben und Nehmen unter miteinander bekannten Individuen hat zwingend rituellen Charakter, denn es transportiert unterschwellig grundlegende Auffassungen über Gesellschaft und sagt etwas aus über die Beziehung, das Charakterprofil sowie die Mentalität der Beteiligten. 27 Goffman 2003: 323 fn.2. 28 Vgl. Fanselow 1992; Fontaine 2004.

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Daniel Schläppi monetäre Wert von Altware und Trödel „allen Beteiligten bewusst und bekannt war“29.

3) In den Kosten-Nutzen-Abwägungen der Gebenden mussten sich Investitionen bezahlt machen.30 Unter diesem für die Ritualherren strategisch wichtigen Gesichtspunkt kamen kleine, aber regelmässige Geschenke wohl günstiger zu stehen, als die horrenden Kosten, wie sie beispielsweise für das in Kapitel 4 beschriebene formelle Ritual angefallen sein dürften. Und damit wären wir im Feld merkantiler Politik angelangt, wo krudes Nutzenkalkül über finanzielles Engagement zum Erreichen mächtiger Positionen entschied.

6. „Ämterkauf“ – Korruption oder Ritual? Seit Bestehen der ersten eidgenössischen Bünde beinhalteten die vertraglichen Abmachungen zwischen den politisch eigenständigen Gemeinweisen (Kantonen, Städten und Talschaften) Bestimmungen zur Unterbindung des Ämterkaufs, bzw. der unlauteren Beeinflussung von Abstimmungen und Wahlen. Über Jahrhunderte wurden die diesbezüglichen Verbote und Vorschriften erneuert, modifiziert, verschärft, neu erlassen, Ausnahmen eingebaut, usw. – mit nur mässigem Erfolg, wie wir aufgrund der historischen Persistenz des Themas annehmen müssen.31 Ämterkauf und Schmieren bei Wahlen und Abstimmungen waren, wie gesagt, verboten. Die herrschenden Häuptergeschlechter versuchten wiederholt, die für sie ruinöse Spirale des gegenseitigen Überbietens zu unterbinden. Obwohl eine gewisse Disziplin aufgrund der hohen Kosten unbedingt im Interesse der Mächtigen gestanden hätte, konnten die tonangebenden Familien die Spenden an das Wahlund Stimmvolk nicht verhindern. Denn wahrscheinlich war die Verteilung von Geld und Gaben ein unverzichtbarer Bestandteil des politischen Brauchtums. Dank minutiös angelegter Notizen des hochrangigen Zuger Politikers Beat Zurlauben (1597–1663), eines Vertreters aus einem sehr angesehenen Schweizer Aristokratengeschlecht und Zeitgenossen Jacob Andermatts, haben wir genaue Kenntnis über die subkutanen Machenschaften der informellen Politik im Vorfeld einer Zuger Landsgemeinde aus dem Jahr 1650. In diesem Jahr mussten die wahlberechtigten Zuger Landleute und Stadtbürger für eine dreijährige Amtszeit einen neuen Ammann wählen. Die Ausgangslage war äusserst spannend, da weder Zurlauben, noch sein ebenfalls kandidierender Intimfeind und langjähriger Gegen-

29 Ehmer & Reith 2004: 21. 30 Vgl. Dücker 2007: 52. 31 Vgl. Landolt 2007.


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spieler Georg Sidler (1594–1672), am Wahltag mit einer sicheren Mehrheit rechnen durften.32 Ich gehe hier nicht auf den dramatischen Wahlverlauf und den überraschenden Ausgang des Plebiszites ein, möchte stattdessen aber beschreiben, was sich laut Zurlaubens Protokoll in den Wochen vor der Wahl in Zug und Umgebung zutrug. Seine Informationen hatte Zurlauben teilweise aus erster Hand, gleichzeitig trugen ihm viele treue Parteigänger zu, was in Zugs Gassen gemunkelt wurde. So wusste Zurlauben, dass sein Konkurrent am 23. April zwei Besucher aus den unberechenbaren Landgemeinden zum Frühstück eingeladen hatte, und nachher noch lange mit ihnen ums Haus herumgestanden hatte. Am 29. April seien sehr viele Leute bei Sidler aus- und eingegangen. Es habe reichlich zu essen gegeben. Er wusste, dass die Gegenpartei 50 Pfund Fleisch auf Vorrat gekauft hatte, um unschlüssige Stimmbürger zu verköstigen. Sidlers Sohn sei mit einem Vorschlaghammer in der Stadt gesehen worden – was liess wohl dieses Gerücht für Unheil befürchten? Zurlauben erfuhr, dass in der Stadt hinter vorgehaltener Hand herum geboten wurde, er selber habe einem Bauer, der ihm daheim einen geschuldeten Zins bezahlt habe, nichts zu trinken angeboten. Ein anderer Bauer erzählte, Zurlauben habe ihn zwei Stunden auf Audienz warten lassen, bis die Bediensteten ihm endlich mitgeteilt hätten, der edle Herr habe gerade zur Ader gelassen. Worauf der Bauer erwidert habe, Zurlauben habe „ob got will nit an der Zungen glan“33, jedenfalls habe er „um Gottes willen nicht an der Zunge gelassen“, der hohe Herr hätte doch gut mit ihm reden können. Bemerkenswert an den letzten beiden Geschichten ist das Faktum, dass die beiden frustrierten Bauern die Verletzung eines alltäglichen Rituals, das abzulaufen hatte, wenn man im Hause eines Aristokraten vorsprach, offenbar nachträglich in der Öffentlichkeit einklagen konnten. Der Magistrat hatte gegen grundlegende Umgangsformen verstossen und das ritualisierte Skript, wie ein Zusammentreffen mit Angehörigen unterer Stände abzulaufen hatte, nicht respektiert. Das machte ihn angreifbar. Fasst man die wesentlichen Punkte im hektischen Szenario vor der Wahl zusammen, so wurde potentiellen Parteigängern viel versprochen und auch schon viel gegeben. Leute wurden von der Strasse weg zum Essen eingeladen und mit Geldspenden geködert, um sie ins eigene Lager zu ziehen. Laut der Chronik von Pfarrer Jakob Billeter (1630–1712) aus Aegeri, war dieser Verlauf einer politischen Entscheidung nicht ungewöhnlich. Einmal kommentierte er einen Eintrag zur Tagespolitik lakonisch, gerade habe die „verechtlichste kleinste Landtsgmeind“ statt32 Zu den im Folgenden geschilderten Begebenheiten und vergleichbaren Ereignissen vgl. Meier 1976ff: 1/13; 27/144, 145; 25/171; 31/13; 48/160; 63/12; 67/87D; 73/95N; 74/108, 121; 83/14A; 90/16, 20, 22B; 93/73; 97/109A; 98/19, 20B, 20C, 20E, 20F, 22–24, 30, 43, 164, 164A, 164B, 174, 176; 134/108; 135/39; Ammannswahl (1881); Müller (1900). 33 Meier 1976ff: 98/164.

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gefunden, „dan mehr menner sich mit essen und trincken in den Heusern, sonderlich H. Hauptmann zur Lauben aufgehalten als an der Landtsgmeind erschinen“34. Die Demokratien der eidgenössischen Landsgemeindeorte lebten in einem seltsamen Widerspruch. Einerseits ergingen regelmässig Mandate gegen das sog. „Trölen“ und „Praktizieren“. Andererseits hatten die geschilderten Techniken des Wählerfangs, die üppige Bewirtung des Stimmvolks im Vorfeld und nach erfolgten Wahlen folkloristischen Charakter und scheinen selbstverständlich zum politischen Betrieb gehört zu haben. Während die Regierungen Verbote von Natural- und Geldspenden erliessen, hatten das politische Personal und die Bevölkerungen der eidgenössischen Republiken den imperativen Bedarf an kulinarischen Gruppenritualen im Kontext von Wahlen und bedeutsamen Abstimmungen verinnerlicht. Dieses kollektive Ritualhandeln funktionierte eigendynamisch, auch wenn es gegen das Gesetz verstiess. Das ist bemerkenswert und erlaubt Rückschlüsse auf die politische Kultur, verdanken Rituale ihren Stellenwert nach Dücker (2007: 37) doch der „Engführung dessen, was – relational zur bestehenden Ordnung – erwünscht und was abgelehnt wird“. Erst wenn wir die rituelle Dimension dessen erkennen, was wir auf den ersten Blick als Korruption brandmarken würden, würden wir auch den entscheidenden Mechanismus verstehen, der die eidgenössische Politik durch und durch prägte: Die Partizipation am Gemeinbesitz als oberstes Gebot. Alle Vollmitglieder der korporativen Personenverbände teilten die Auffassung, dass ihnen selbstverständlich ein Anteil am Reichtum zustand, welche die hohen Politiker aus Staatsämtern und Domänen zogen. Die Verteilung der Erträge indes lag in den Händen der Mächtigen. Einen fixen Verteilungsschlüssel gab es nicht. Dies weckte chronisch das Misstrauen der Nutzungsberechtigten. Hin und wieder wurde gegen Ungerechtigkeiten protestiert, unwirsch auf Forderungen beharrt. Weil jede Form von Auflehnung die herrschaftliche Stellung der Magistraten gefährdete, versuchten die politischen Häupter Ansätze zu renitentem Verhalten im Keim zu ersticken oder solche gar nicht aufkommen zu lassen. So musste ein Mitglied der Zuger Regierung 1655 jedem Landmann eine halbe Dublone „Sitzgeld“ ausrichten, damit eine „Unruhw gestillet“ werden konnte.35 Wollten die Mächtigen nicht permanent unter Druck stehen, Genugtuungsleistungen für unterlassene Wohltaten erbringen zu müssen, taten sie gut daran, die stimmfähige Bevölkerung periodisch in kollektive Rituale einzubinden. So berichtet der bereits bekannte Jacob Andermatt, nach einer Landsgemeindeversammlung und der Wahl eines neuen Ammanns im Jahr 1641 sei „man ufs rad hus zogen und ein drunk don“. Später habe er „ghulfen den amen heim bleiten und derth gwaltig drunken“36. Nach einem offiziellen Wahlapéro im Rat34 Henggeler 1922. 35 Brändle 2005: 93; vgl. Henggeler 1922. 36 Müller 1900: 13.


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haus ging das Feiern auf Kosten des Gewählten bei diesem daheim noch weiter. Laut einer aus dem Jahr 1637 überlieferten Wirtshausrechnung bewirtete ein Kandidat für eine lukrative Mission als politischer Gesandter damals in allen Stuben des Zuger Rathauses 80 Personen. Was in der Forschung vielfach als Korruption missverstanden wurde, diente in republikanisch-korporativen Gemeinwesen als eine rituelle Ausformung der Idee der „Gleichheit“. Im Bewusstsein der Zeitgenossen hatten die fraglichen Praktiken nichts mit Bestechlichkeit zu tun. Sie waren einfach bestens eingespielte Formen ausgleichenden Ressourcentransfers. Zu den wichtigsten Medien dieses rituellen Gebens zählten wohl Einladungen zu Tischgesellschaften.

7. Einladungen zu Tischgemeinschaften Nach Georg Simmel hebt die „gemeinsame Mahlzeit“ das Essen als „Ereignis von physiologischer Primitivität und unvermeidlicher Allgemeinheit in die Sphäre gesellschaftlicher Wechselwirkung und damit überpersönlicher Bedeutung“. An die „Selbstsucht des Essens“ knüpfen sich „eine Häufigkeit des Zusammenseins“ und „eine Gewöhnung an das Vereinigtsein“, wie sie „durch höher gelegene und geistige Veranlassungen nur selten erreichbar“ sind. Deshalb erlangte das Essen in der Gruppe in „früheren Epochen einen ungeheuren sozialen Wert“, eine „unermessliche soziologische Bedeutung“.37 Und so auch in den korporativen Kontexten der alten Eidgenossenschaft.38 Regula Schmid hat für das Spätmittelalter auf den „verbindenden und verpflichtenden Charakter von gemeinsamen Essen“ aufmerksam gemacht.39 Es fällt auf, dass viele korporative Institutionen regelmässig gemeinsame Mahlzeiten im Kreis der Nutzungsberechtigten durchführten. Sie bezweckten damit eine nachhaltige Vergemeinschaftung der Mitglieder. Die Mahlzeiten sollten einerseits den Fortbestand des Verbands steigern. Andererseits bot sich bei gemeinschaftlichen Diners auch Gelegenheit zum paritätischen Konsum von Erträgen aus dem Gemeinbesitz. Gemeindebier, Rechnungsmahle, ritualisierte Armenspeisungen mit synchronem Festschmaus der edlen Spender im Nebenzimmer, der spontane Imbiss oder Umtrunk nach verrichteten Amtsgeschäften – es gibt ganz unterschiedliche Formen gemeinsamer Mahlzeiten, die aber allesamt zur sozialen Kohäsion im Kollektiv

37 Simmel 1910: 1–2. 38 Zu Bedeutung von Tischgesellschaften vgl. auch Stagl (1996). 39 Schmid 1996: 63.

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beitragen sollten.40 Regelmässig stattfindende Gemeinde- oder Korporationsversammlungen, die sich ausschliesslich mit Interna befassten, brachten die Idee der Gleichheit sinnbildlich zum Ausdruck. Allein die physische Anwesenheit der nutzungsberechtigten Gemeindebürger – mancherorts waren auch wohlhabende Hintersassen zugelassen – suggerierte vordergründig Egalität. Zur Bestärkung des Symbolcharakters dieser dennoch ständisch überwölbten Zusammenkünfte schlossen gemeinsame Mahlzeiten aller Gemeindemitglieder auf Kosten der Gemeinde an die eigentlichen Sitzungen an. Diese kollegiale Gestik hob das sozialhierarchisch geprägte Zusammenleben im Moment rituell auf, stärkte es damit aber auf Dauer. Nach Arnd Kluge musste Gruppensolidarität „immer wieder mühsam errungen werden“41, wozu etwa in Zünften die Geselligkeit gedient habe. Für Dücker vermitteln Rituale „die Bedürfnisse der Einzelnen mit den Anforderungen ihrer Bezugsordnungen, um Gemeinschaft entstehen zu lassen“.42 So sicherte das Essen nicht nur die physische Existenz des Einzelnen. Gleichzeitig bringe es kulturelle Werte zum Ausdruck und stelle eine gesellschaftliche Ordnung her.43 In der Tat nahmen korporative Sozialverbände erst konkrete Gestalt an und wurden als Vereinigung von Menschen sichtbar, wenn die Angehörigen physisch präsent waren und gemeinsam handelten.44 Vielschichtiger präsentierte sich die Sachlage, wenn nicht Institutionen oder Körperschaften zu Tisch baten und bezahlten, sondern Privatleute nur ausgesuchte Personen einluden. Wenn hohe Politiker ihren Parteigängern und Klienten ein Zeichen der Freigiebigkeit geben wollten, hätten sie diesen auch einfach ein Stück 40 Vgl. Frefel (2007); Müller (1900: 5, 12–3, 16), Schläppi (2006: 75–77, 109–118). Der Zuger Jakob Andermatt berichtet, dass man nach Ratsversammlungen häufig im „Ochsen” zum Umtrunk zusammengekommen sei. Bezeichnenderweise gehörte der Ochsen den Zurlauben, dem bedeutendsten Aristokratengeschlecht der Stadt Zug. Die mächtige Familie besass damit einen der wichtigsten rituellen Räume am Ort. Stollberg-Rilinger (2001: 23) verweist auf „das charakteristische Gegenüber von vertraulichen Aushandlungsverfahren einerseits und öffentlichen Ritualen andererseits, die das Ergebnis des Ausgehandelten inszenierten und dabei die Art und Weise seines Zustandekommens nicht mehr erkennen liessen, sondern den Konsens demonstrativ symbolisch bekräftigten.” Genau darum ging es, wenn die Magistratspersonen in trautem Kreis ihre Verhandlungen nachschmeckten. 41 Kluge 2007: 364. 42 Dücker 2007: 216. 43 Bezeichnenderweise zählte der Ausschluss von den Gemeinschaftsessen zu den schwersten Strafen, die frühneuzeitliche Korporationsverband gegen ihre Mitglieder zu verhängen pflegten – ein klares Indiz für den hohen Ritualwert der Mahlzeiten in der Gruppenmechanik. Zu den Verboten von Tischgemeinschaften vgl. Simmel (1910: 1–2). 44 Für Valentin Groebner sind beispielsweise grössere Weinspenden eines Rates an Stuben oder Zunfthäuser nicht nur Ausdruck „ritueller Verregelung” und „Zeichen heiterer Soziabilität”, vielmehr generierten sie „offizielle Präsenzpflicht” (Groebner 2000: 53).


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Fleisch und eine Flasche Wein nach Hause schicken können. Wozu aber brauchte es den halböffentlichen Rahmen persönlicher Einladungen, wie sie vielfach dokumentiert sind? Warum spendierten Honoratioren bestimmten, klar definierten Gruppen Wild, beachtliche Mengen Fleisch oder Käse? Die Erklärung liegt auch hier in der rituellen Dimension, die eben sogar Ereignissen innewohnt, die nur in privatem oder halbprivatem Rahmen stattfinden. Die Privateinladung wirkt sozial ambivalent und distinktiv. So werden bestimmte Leute ausdrücklich eingeladen und andere nicht. Diese Exklusivität erlaubt es, feine Unterschiede zu markieren. Dücker zufolge „befindet sich jemand, der zwar zur öffentlichen Ehrung einer Person, aber nicht zur anschliessenden rituellen Mahlgemeinschaft (Kommensalität) im ‚kleinen Kreis‘ geladen wird, erst im Vorhof vollgültiger Zugehörigkeit“.45 Für den inneren Zirkel, der um seine Exklusivität weiss, hebt zeitweilige Gleichheit in einem bestimmten Merkmal – eben des Eingeladenseins – soziale Grenzen temporär und partiell auf.46 In diesem Feld fehlt anschauliches Quellenmaterial aus der frühen Neuzeit leider weitgehend. Allerdings sind über Abrechnungen etwa in den „Acta Helvetica“ entsprechende Anlässe belegt, und manchmal sind sogar Sitzordnungen oder andere Details überliefert47. Der Mangel an Quellen hindert die Geschichtswissenschaft indes nicht, mit gesundem Menschenverstand und einem Schuss Empathie über mögliche rituelle Implikationen der entsprechenden Praktiken nachzudenken. So liegt auf der Hand, dass ein Klima der Vertrautheit geschaffen wird, wenn mehrere Menschen im kleinen Kreis um einen Tisch sitzen und essen. Verfolgen die anwesenden Akteure zudem ein gemeinsames politisches Ziel wie den Gewinn einer umkämpften Wahl, verstärkt dies den Zusammenhalt der Gruppe aufgrund des konspirativen Charakters des Treffens. Bei aller egalisierenden Tendenz der Privatgesellschaft bietet sie dem Gastgeber – er stellt den Raum zur Verfügung, transferiert seine Ressourcen an andere und definiert in dieser Qualität als „Ritualherr“ zwingend den Rahmen – besondere Gelegenheit, ausserhalb sozialer Routine bestehende Bindungen und Loyalitäten aufzufrischen, lockere Beziehungen zu vertiefen und neue anzubahnen. Er tut dies durch ehrliche (oder gespielte) Vertraulichkeit, Tischreden, Trinksprüche, förmlich und selektiv verteilte Aufmerksamkeiten, durch die Subtilitäten der Gesprächsführung. Nach Stegbauer können Beziehungen „nur durch einen kommunikativen, also gegenseitigen Akt“ aktualisiert werden. In der Kommunikation „kann sich keiner der Partner ohne weiteres zurückziehen. Beide sind gefordert“.48 So gesehen birgt die kleine Tischgesellschaft ein erhebliches Potential, die Beziehungen unter den 45 46 47 48

Dücker 2007: 31. Stegbauer 2002: 46. Z.B. bei Müller 1900: 11. Stegbauer 2002: 151–2.

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Beteiligten zu verändern. Für Jan Platvoet integrieren viele Rituale „Menschen in Gemeinschaften und Gruppen“, indem sie „Solidarität, Identität und die jeweiligen Grenzen einer Gruppe“ ausdrücken und „sie immer wieder neu“ schaffen.49 Deshalb verändern gerade die auf die informelle Sphäre beschränkten Rituale jene, die sie durchlaufen, besonders nachhaltig. Und es ist davon auszugehen, dass die Teilnehmenden die impliziten Gesetze der kleinen Ritualgemeinschaft kennen und sich daran halten.50 Für Stegbauer wird durch die Unterwerfung unter Rituale „die Gruppe bestätigt und gefestigt. Es entstehen Erwartungen für zukünftige Zusammentreffen und die Geschichte der gemeinsamen Teilnehmer wird um ein Ereignis, auf das man sich später wieder beziehen kann, fortgeschrieben. All diese Funktionen der Handlung werden den wenigsten derjenigen, die sich so verhalten, bewusst sein. Derjenige, der handelt, tut dies scheinbar aus individuellen Motiven, sein Handeln wird einerseits durch soziale Regeln bestimmt und bringt andererseits gleichzeitig Sozialität hinter seinem Rücken hervor“.51 Und hierin liegen wohl die wichtigste Leistung und das zentrale Wesensmerkmal jedes Rituals.

8. Ergebnisse In allen vorgängig thematisierten Handlungsfeldern spielten jeweils Formen des Ressourcentransfers eine zentrale Rolle. Einladungen, Gesten des Schenkens oder auch einfache Geldspenden brauchten nicht als Rituale im engeren Sinn umgesetzt zu werden. Sie konnten auch in alltägliche Vorgänge eingebettet sein. In Form ritualisierten Alltagshandelns transferierte Ressourcen übersetzten die Kernbotschaft von auf höherer Ebene durchkomponierten Metaritualen ins Profane. Bedeutung, Symbolgehalt und Tragweite der beobachteten Transfers variierten stark. Meist resultierten für die Beteiligten aber reziproke Verpflichtungen. Alle Aktionen konstituierten oder konsolidierten politisch instrumentalisierbare Beziehungen und bereiteten das Terrain für Anschlusshandlungen. Die beschriebenen ritualisierten Praktiken begründeten sich aus dem Selbstverständnis der lokalen Gesellschaften. Gleichzeitig bestätigten und formten sie kollektive Mentalitäten und legitimierten die bestehende Machtverteilung. Dies erklärt, weshalb die tonangebenden Schichten teilweise erhebliche materielle Ressourcen in die Rituale investierten. Das skizzierte Ritualgeschehen fokussierte auf innerweltliche Zusammenhänge und zielte auf die Durchsetzung einer geltenden Gruppenidentität. Ritualisierte Handlungen bestätigten oder modifizierten etablierte soziale und politische Kon49 Platvoet 2003: 182. 50 Vgl. Dücker 2007: 216. 51 Stegbauer 2002: 75–6.


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stellationen, indem sie unterschwellig wirksame Wertmuster zuhanden des Kollektivs spielerisch artikulierten. Die materielle Gabe reduzierte soziale Interaktion auf eine einzige Wertkategorie. Derart vergröbert, verwandelten sich die an sich komplexen Herrschafts- und Legitimationsbedingungen in ein elementares, paternalistisches Wechselverhältnis. Dieser simple Mechanismus konditionierte die schichtübergreifenden Kontakte, blieb normalerweise aber unausgesprochen, stand er doch im Widerspruch zu gesetzlichen Vorgaben. Die implizit geltenden Normen bedurften keiner formellen Rechtfertigung. Vielmehr wurden sie nur in ritualisierter und somit nicht anfechtbarer Form sichtbar gemacht. Und genau deswegen entzogen sie sich jeder kritischen Argumentation.52 Während formelle Versammlungen des Stimmvolks und Promotionsrituale in den Landsgemeindedemokratien nach tradierten Regeln zeremoniell durchgestaltet und von den politischen Eliten gesteuert wurden, bestanden im Bereich informeller Alltagspraktiken und der politischen Propaganda grosse Spielräume zur Variation. Das grundlegende Element blieb aber das Gleiche: Stets wurden Ressourcen von oben nach unten transferiert. Die Öffentlichkeit des vertikalen Gebens und Nehmens verpflichtete alle Beteiligten auf das politische System und trug damit wesentlich zur Stabilität der herrschaftlichen Verhältnisse in den eidgenössischen Orten bei. Wer politische Partizipation in modernem Sinn versteht, wird das beschriebene Ritualgeschehen nicht verstehen und es als Korruption missdeuten. In der Tat war es eine theatralische Inszenierung einer in erster Linie materiell bzw. ökonomisch statt politisch verstandenen Partizipation. In diesem Sinn waren die alltäglichen Mikrorituale raffinierte und trügerische Fiktionen korporativer Gleichheit und politischer Mitbestimmung. Gleichzeitig waren sie für die Beteiligten aber greifbar real, da konkrete Sachwerte involviert waren. Hieraus resultierte ihr eminentes legitimatorisches Potential. Auch deshalb behaupteten sie sich in einer Zeit verstärkter Machtkonzentration unter aristokratischen Führungsschichten und sich verschärfender sozialer Gegensätze. Während in Realität die Mehrheit des Stimmvolks materiell von mächtigen Magistraten abhing, konterkarierten die Rituale und der vertikale Transfer von Ressourcen, der rund um die Verteilung von Posten und Privilegien stattfand, die faktische Machtarchitektur. Dieser Widerspruch konnte nur rituell überspielt werden, denn die sichtbaren Symbole und die kommunizierten Botschaften mussten verständlich, nachvollziehbar und einfach anwendbar sein. Zu diesem Zweck stellten sie auf einen einfachen Code ab: den Transfer materieller Ressourcen. Dieser war ein nützliches Hilfsmittel, denn der Sach- bzw. der Gebrauchswert von verschenkten bzw. empfangenen Gütern erleichterte eine feinstufigere Zueignung von Ehre und Respekt. Geschenke machten es einfach, jedem das ihm auf-

52 Vgl. Bellinger & Krieger 2003: 26.

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grund seines Standes und seiner individuellen Bedeutung Zustehende zukommen zu lassen. In der Summe erweist sich ritualisierter Ressourcentransfer für die alte Eidgenossenschaft als essentielles Moment politischer Legitimation und sozialer Vergemeinschaftung.


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Bibliographie anon. 1881. „Eine zuger’sche Ammannswahl von 1650“. Zugerkalender: 13–16. anon. 1991. „Bericht, wie man H. LandtsFändrich und SeckelMr. Jost Antoni Schmidt das Ehren=Zeichen den LandtsFahnen Anno 1731. eingebleittet, eingehändiget und ubergeben hat“. In: Urs Kälin. Die Urner Magistratenfamilien. Herrschaft. Ökonomische Lage und Lebensstil einer ländlichen Oberschicht 1700–1850. Zürich: Chronos: 49–51. Bellinger, Andréa & David J. Krieger (eds.) 20032. Ritualtheorien. Ein einführendes Handbuch. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Bourdieu, Pierre 1992. „Ökonomisches Kapital – Kulturelles Kapital – Soziales Kapital“. In: Pierre Bourdieu & Margareta Steinrücke (ed.). Die verborgenen Mechanismen der Macht. Hamburg: VSA-Verlag: 49–79 (Schriften zu Politik & Kultur 1). Brändle, Fabian 2005. Demokratie und Charisma. Fünf Landsgemeindekonflikte im 18. Jahrhundert. Zürich: Chronos. Dücker, Burckhard 2007. Rituale. Formen – Funktionen – Geschichte. Eine Einführung in die Ritualwissenschaft. Stuttgart et al.: J.B. Metzler Ehmer, Joseph & Reinhold Reith 2004. „Märkte im vorindustriellen Europa“. In: Joseph Ehmer & Reinhold Reith (eds.). Märkte im vorindustriellen Europa. Berlin: Akademie Verlag: 9–24 (Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2004/2). Fanselow, Frank S. 1992. „Bizarre economies“. Geographical magazine 64/5: 16–19. Fontaine, Laurence 2004. „Die Zirkulation von Gebrauchtem im vorindustriellen Europa“. In: Joseph Ehmer & Reinhold Reith (eds.). Märkte im vorindustriellen Europa. Berlin: Akademie Verlag: 83–96 (Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2004/2). Frefel, Sandro 2007. „Nach dem ein ehrsame gemeind wohlbedächtlich darüber deliberiert“. Berner Gemeindeversammlungen im 18. Jahrhundert. Nordhausen: Verlag Traugott Bautz (Berner Forschungen zur Regionalgeschichte 7). Goffman, Erwing 20032. „Interaktionsrituale“. In: Andréa Bellinger & David J. Krieger (eds.). Ritualtheorien. Ein einführendes Handbuch. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag: 323–338. Groebner, Valentin 2000. Gefährliche Geschenke. Ritual, Politik und Sprache der Korruption in der Eidgenossenschaft im späten Mittelalter und am Beginn der Neuzeit. Konstanz: UVK Universitätsverlag Konstanz. Henggeler, Rudolf 1922. „Pfarrer Jakob Billeter von Aegeri und seine Chronik“. Heimatklänge (Sonntagsbeilage zu den Zuger Nachrichten 2/3). Jancke, Gabriele 2008. „Ritualisierte Verhaltensweisen in der frühneuzeitlichen Gelehrtenkultur – Bettgeschichten“. In: Alf Lüdtke & Reiner Prass (eds.). Gelehrtenleben. Wissenschaftspraxis in der Neuzeit. (Selbstzeugnisse der Neuzeit 18), Köln: Böhlau: 235–246. Kälin, Urs 1991. Die Urner Magistratenfamilien. Herrschaft, ökonomische Lage und Lebensstil einer ländlichen Oberschicht 1700–1850. Zürich: Chronos.

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Kertzer, David I. 20032. „Ritual, Politik und Macht“. In: Andréa Bellinger & David J. Krieger (eds.). Ritualtheorien. Ein einführendes Handbuch. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag: 365–390. Kluge, Arnd 2007. Die Zünfte. Stuttgart: Steiner. Landolt, Oliver 2007. „Trölen und Praktizieren im Alten Land Schwyz. Wahlbestechungen, Wahlmanipulationen und Ämterkauf als Instrumente politischen Handelns in der frühneuzeitlichen Gesellschaft“. Geschichtsfreund der V Orte 160: 219–308. Meier, Kurt-Werner 1976ff. Regesten und Register zu den Acta Helvetica, Gallica, Germanica, Hispanica, Sabaudica etc. necnon genealogica stemmatis ZurLaubiani. Aarau: Sauerländer. Müller, Carl 1900. „Aus Ammann Jacob Andermatts Tagebuch“. Zuger Neujahrsblatt: 3–21. Peyer, Hans Conrad 1976. „Die Anfänge der schweizerischen Aristokratien“. In: Kurt Messmer & Peter Hoppe (eds.). Luzerner Patriziat. Sozial- und wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Studien zur Entstehung und Entwicklung im 16 und 17. Jahrhundert. Luzern et al.: Rex-Verlag: 1–28. Platvoet, Jan 20032. „Das Ritual in pluralistischen Gesellschaften“. In: Andréa Bellinger & David J. Krieger (eds.). Ritualtheorien. Ein einführendes Handbuch. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag: 173–190 Schläppi, Daniel 2006. „Der Lauf der Geschichte der Zunftgesellschaft zu Metzgern seit der Gründung“. In: Zunftgesellschaft zu Metzgern Bern (ed.). Der volle Zunftbecher. Menschen, Bräuche und Geschichten aus der Zunftgesellschaft zu Metzgern. Bern: Lanius Verlag: 15–199, 302–304. — 2007. „Das Staatswesen als kollektives Gut. Gemeinbesitz als Grundlage der politischen Kultur in der frühneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft“. In: Johannes Marx & Andreas Frings (eds.). Neue politische Ökonomie in der Geschichte. Köln: Zentrum für Historische Sozialforschung: 169–202 (Historical social research, Special issue, 32/4). Schlögl, Rudolf 2008. „Kommunikation und Vergesellschaftung unter Anwesenden. Formen des Sozialen und ihre Transformation in der Frühen Neuzeit“. Geschichte und Gesellschaft 34: 155–224. Schmid, Regula 1996. „‘Lieb und Leid tragen’. Bürgerrecht und Zunftmitgliedschaft als Kriterien der Zugehörigkeit im spätmittelalterlichen Zürich“. In: Marc Boone & Maarten Prak (eds.). Individual, corporate and judicial status in European cities (late middle ages and early modern period). Proceedings of the colloquium Ghent, October 12th–14th 1995. Leuven: Apeldoorn: 49–72. Simmel, Georg 1910. „Soziologie der Mahlzeit“. Der Zeitgeist, Beiblatt zum Berliner Tageblatt Nr. 41 vom 10 Oktober 1910 (Festnummer zum hundertjährigen Jubiläum der Berliner Universität): 1–2. Stagl, Justin 1996. „Zur Soziologie der Gastfreundschaft anhand einer bürgerlichen Einladung“. Sociologia Internationalis 34: 129–150. Stegbauer, Christian 2002. Reziprozität. Einführung in soziale Formen der Gegenseitigkeit. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.


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Angelo Torre

Ritual and Jurisdiction in Northern Italy (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)1 In order to examine developments in the analysis of ritual following the cultural turn, one must necessarily take into account the dramatic shift in perspective that has taken place. This shift seems to concern mainly the pragmatic components of ritual, favouring analysis within a deconstructionist framework to the detriment of analogous forms of reflection relied on in the fields of sociology, history, and historical-juridical studies as valuable sources of inspiration for research. With this in mind, I offer here a brief outline of the relations between ritual and action, seeking to contribute to our understanding of the sources as well as of the methods of interpretive analysis available to historians, particularly of the early modern age. I then undertake to outline a specific culture, which I refer to as a “jurisdictional culture”, which suggests pragmatic readings of the rituals described and discussed in the sources. Finally, I present a detailed case study as an illustration of the interpretative potential that such an approach provides.

1. The shift in focus in the analysis of ritual can be traced from dramaturgy through to hermeneutics and communication. As late as the 1970s, Victor Turner maintained that ritual represents the dramatisation, or performance, of pre-existing conceptual entities (such as roles, etc.).2 His stance was criticised as being substantialist by Clifford Geertz, who argued that analysis should focus instead on the decodification or interpretation of what is said (or done).3 During the same years, a third stream of thought emphasised the communicative nature of ritual emerging from its “performative” dimension, that is, from a combination of its interpretive and pragmatic elements.4 This latter approach, however, required that some account be made of the theory of action, for it alone allowed the specificity of ritual to be defined. The specificity 1 2 3 4

Translated by Laura McLean. Turner 1969 and 1974. Geertz 1983. Tambiah 1981.

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of ritual action was regarded as involving elements of intentionality, but at a collective level, rather than being dependent on the strategic capacity of the individual. Identifying such actions as “committed” has the clear advantage of capturing their specificity, which is encapsulated in the formula for “how to get it right”.5 Our notion of the pragmatic nature of ritual was greatly enhanced by the introduction of an approach that does not consider power in isolation from the actions which shape it.6 This resulted in the formulation of a concept of ritualisation as a strategy for the negotiation of power relations.7 Ritualisation can be observed through the differentiation of ritual actions from everyday activity in the specificity of location, frequency of occurrence, codes of communication, individuals, objects, and so on implicated in their occurrence, as well as the privileging of certain activities over others. Ultimately, this leads to the establishment of particular “ways of doing” that influence the social dynamics and confer power on the actors. Adopting this approach allows us to grasp the dual nature of ritual, which conveys both domination and consensus through the negotiation of participation, objectification, and personification. Ritualisation bestows power upon those in charge, but at the same time it sets limits and constraints; it controls the participants, but in ways that allow for negotiation of the terms of participation – or of resistance – itself. The ritual dimension is thus conceived of as having a dynamic capacity of an endogenous nature, which previous schools of thought had instead considered as external to it, whether in terms of human society or of cultural models. This conceptual shift becomes even more obvious when one considers the many attempts that have been made to define ritual as a “significative action”, whether in the sense of an action endowed with meaning, or in the sense of a language that operates by means of specific acts (especially bodily acts). Essential to this approach is the “iterability” of ritual: ritual must be at once the same, yet different. Ritual is thus decontextualised, but is in turn capable of creating contexts. In fact, it is said that one of the “internal” characteristics of the performative dimension is that it “constructs” reality. These intellectual developments have reversed the significance of meaning and context in ritual. The differentiation and specialisation of the practices required by ritualisation generate relations and subjects.8 Ritual is comprised of actions that produce meaning in the specific contexts of other actions and other discourses; the actions generate the performers (they legitimise them), and the repetition (iterativity) of the ritual generates subjectivity and reciprocal relationships. The

5 6 7 8

Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994. Foucault 1980: 187–201. Bell 1992: 197–224. Hollywood 2002: 112. It is emphasised that the body often serves as the medium in this process.

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importance of ritual is in doing it:9 bodily rituals and practices constitute the habitus. This makes possible their repetition, which is in reality based on improvisation, or rather, on interpretations of the context that enable both domination and resistance. One could say that it is a dichotomy that renders the contextual nature of its generality.10 These methodological considerations are particularly important for the study of ritual from the perspective of power and consensus. They imply explicit criticism of the pragmatic approach proposed by Bourdieu, whose interpretation, while also envisaging practice through repetition, none the less fails to locate the habitus in a sphere of influence external to the action itself.11 These critiques have taken different directions. One is surely the well-known deconstructive stance of the works of Jacques Derrida. But some important reflections were also developed concerning the legitimising contents of action, which should be taken into account in addition to its capacity to signify and to communicate. The notion of justification provided the necessary basis for Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot to identify actions – widespread and punctiform – sanctioning the legitimacy of individual conduct. The action of legitimation of power is carried out in all actors at every level, and is rooted in the nexus between legitimacy and the claim to legitimacy: particularly in times of uncertainty, challenge, and dissent, the act of justification serves as a means for the subjects to “increase in generality”.12

2. This approach holds great promise for important developments that will likely influence our approach to the interpretation of historical sources. The cultural turn can be credited with having expanded and enriched the repertoire of tools available to us for interpreting the ritual dimension, allowing the methods of religious anthropology to be used alongside those of philology, for example, or the tools of ethnography to be combined with the analysis of prescriptive texts.13 Nevertheless, it rests on a notion of historical sources that is still too narrow, for historical research obviously deals with more than just written texts.14 This is a crucial point that warrants further reflection.

9 Torre 2007a. 10 Derrida 1982. Derrida insists on the fact that the general nature of a sign requires a context, and consequently social realities are constituted by ritual action, cited in Hollywood 2002: 97, 107. 11 Bourdieu 1991: 190, quoted in Hollywood 2002: 98–99. 12 Boltanski & Thévenot 1991. 13 Michaels 2005. See also Assmann 1992: chapters 2 and 3. 14 Artifoni & Torre 1996.

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We take as a starting point the growing awareness by historians of the nontransparent nature of the sources they study.15 The main target of criticism in the field of social history has been its approach to documentation, an approach which is accused of treating historical documents as a repository of information that needs merely to be compiled and presented. One consequence of the reaction to the uncertain and slippery nature of historical sources is the risk of infinite and arbitrary interpretations grounded in the attribution of meaning to the subjective gaze. One way around this potential pitfall is for analysis to be made not only of the discourse of the text but also of the context of the document’s creation. In fact, we become aware of the particular characteristics of sources only if we pay attention to how they were generated. It is this vantage point which allows us to single out a relationship which is often almost completely disregarded by historians: the relationship between actions and procedures. As far as I am aware, the only real exception is medievalists, who take a great interest in the geography and structure of their sources.16 Yet this relationship is crucial to an understanding of all sources. Documents very often reveal dialogues between two or more actors through which twofold processes of mutual recognition and legitimation develop.17 Many sources from the Ancien Régime in particular bear traces of these dynamics: recognition by the institutions creating the documents of de facto situations, and the use of this recognition as a form of legitimation, both by those who wrote the account and by those whose account was transcribed.18 Until now, we have not been inclined to recognise this type of discourse or to make it an explicit object of analysis. Yet what is significant about it is that people exchanged what was necessary in order to obtain recognition and legitimacy. This could not take place without an audience, however, and took place within a context. Audience and context gave meaning to what was being exchanged.19 A vast number of sources can be interpreted along these lines, ranging from pragmatic texts such as chronicles, to official documents such as visitation reports and judicial texts.20 By and large, what is given to other people to be understood are actions. Actions are exchanged to obtain the recognition of their validity, that is, their binding legitimacy. Why was this recognition so important? Actions which were recog15 Ricoeur 1983: vol. 1, 65–71; vol. 2, 219–246; Ackermann et al. 1985; De Certeau 1980: in part. 215–221. 16 Cammarosano 1991; Keller 1988. 17 Raggio 1990 and 1996. 18 Cottereau 1987: in part. 30–33. Torre 2002 is an attempt to use this approach. 19 We could use Habermas’ formula and say that they gave other people something to be understood. Habermas 1981. Boltanski & Thévenot 1991 show that deeper and more complex issues are at play. 20 Keller & Grubmuller & Staubach 1992; on visitations as jurisdictional sources, see Hespanha 1984; Torre 1995: chap. 1; Grendi 1993: chap. 1.


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nised as legitimate by virtue of their specific relationship with contextual legitimating procedures acquired a higher status and were acknowledged as “practices”, that is, as established practices. If we analyse actions as parts of legitimation processes, we discover that rules (the law, the sacred) were created through actions. Acts are inseparable from messages which are “given to be understood” to an audience whose responses contribute to defining the contextual meaning of those very acts. We are indebted to Alain Cottereau for having singled out this process. Studying the procedures of justice in post-revolutionary France, Cottereau called this sequence (act-audience-practice) the “establishment (founding) of a precedent”. In disputes and trials, the litigants’ actions were reciprocally interpreted as “moves” which, if acknowledged as legitimate, would change the prerogatives of those who carried them out.21 In other words, Cottereau demonstrated that action in itself creates its own rules. I would like to stress the methodological implication of this approach for the sources. Sources often constitute a transcription of moves, and lay claim to prerogatives. Cottereau himself demonstrated how this interpretive framework allows historical records to be approached in a new way. Through the reading of sources as transcriptions, we can achieve an “understanding from inside” the sources. This understanding should aim at obtaining a definition of “the meaning which was given in a situation” to one or to a set of actions.22 For Cottereau, we must explore “the practical aims of situations starting from the practical aims of their transcription”. Otherwise we run the risk of misunderstanding a source. At this point, it is hardly necessary to point out the difference between this formulation and the usual approach to the study of representations, which refrains from studying those who were observed along with the observers. Historical sources present actors who are motivated by the practical aims of legitimation. But these aims alone do not produce documentation. One further interaction is required for the generation of historical sources: interaction between the practical aims of those who were depicted (observed, surveyed, named…) in the documentation while saying or doing something, and the practical aims of those who transcribed them (and the practical aims of transcribing them). The practical aims of those doing the transcribing are usually analysed in terms of control and of power strategies. This, however, is a misleading and reductionist reading, and should be reconsidered. A better understanding of such aims entails reflection on the jurisdictional culture of the Ancien Régime, or perhaps, of traditional societies in general.

21 Cottereau 1987. 22 Ibid.: 30–33.

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3. A convincing interpretation of the rituals of power and consensus (or of the elements of power and consensus contained in rituals in general) requires inquiry into the language (or code) which is adopted, that is, into the sort of language the participants use to express themselves. As this article aims to show, this language can only be discerned if one takes into account insights stemming from research into legal historiography, which reached an important theoretical and methodological turning point in the latter part of the twentieth century. Publication of the sources of private law in Europe from before the codifications23 resulted in important contributions to our understanding of the judicial system in the Early Modern Age, identifying in the ius commune the legal discourse not only of the late Medieval period, but of the entire Early Modern Age.24 It was during the Medieval period that the concept of ius commune developed, but it was in the Early Modern Age, at least up to the French Revolution, that it progressed and flourished. Clavero has identified a number of sources in which the legal discourse developed. Written as tracts of moral theology, they are actually mainly collections of consilia, that is, of sentences. This literature “did not speak of state, but of a multitude of jurisdictions and laws, laws in the plural, strictly dependent on other normative decrees/commands/orders (religious morality, obligations of friendship)”. This arrangement led to the development of an overlapping space, lying somewhere in the juncture between what we call law and religion, that allows us to trace in the ius commune the anthropology of the Early Modern Age.25 Two points concerning the nature of law and the importance of jurisdiction should be made clear. The legal system under the Ancien Régime was based on traditional theories of natural law. The law was born not of the state, but of a literary tradition or, perhaps we could say, of a tradition of collective knowledge. Its confines are more fluid and changeable than other sources of normative knowledge such as ethics and theology. The iurisdictio, the power to administer the law (lit. “to say” the law), that is, to ensure the established equilibria and thereby maintain order at its various levels, is so widespread throughout the society that even the summa iurisdictio, the power to coordinate the lowest levels of jurisdiction, is considered just one form of jurisdiction among many. This results in an intellectual model allowing a single unit to consist of “corporate bodies, limiting the crown’s power by their particular rights, the antagonistic architecture of the order of the law and the dependence of the law itself [on] religion and ethics”.26

23 24 25 26

Coing 1985–1989. Clavero 1994. Ibid. 1986. Hespanha 1999: 43–81.


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An understanding of the multifaceted nature of this political and judicial universe is essential for the purposes of our study. The new legal historiography has emphasised that medieval and early modern Europeans perceived and identified power through jurisdiction, that is, the prerogative to rule over specific people and matters. A variety of powers manifested themselves in a variety of jurisdictions which intersected and overlapped within a single territory. This complex of jurisdictions was accompanied by a multiplicity of legal procedures ranging from ordinary justice to summary proceedings. What is more important, the majority of these procedures were based on what we can call “possessory rulings”, that is to say, on a plaintiff’s request for official recognition from the magistracy of what was a de facto or existing state of affairs.27 Demonstrating possessory rights was critical to the use of resources; this was because customary law recognised many forms of access (collective, corporate, individual) to such resources. One characteristic of traditional societies that, to my knowledge, has never been exploited for analysis is the fact that institutions themselves conceive of their own jurisdiction within the discourse of possession.28 This has been shown to be true even in the behaviour of an institution as high in the echelons as the Turin Senate (the Parliament, or Court of Appeals, of the Savoyard dukes and later kings).29 In other words, even the Turin Senate believed it had to prove its jurisdiction at any point in time through a series of concrete acts, by which the actors asserted and established their possession of goods and rights. The right to judge is no different in this sense from the possession of goods: both must be demonstrated. What can demonstrate possession? First of all, specific, concrete acts such as harvesting, the trampling of grapes, the kissing of altars, the act of judging, and so on. These acts had to be continuous (failing to exercise jurisdictions implied the loss of “rights”). But, most of all, the exercise of jurisdiction could not give rise to “contradiction”, that is, of opposition. This, I believe, is the heart of the matter, which allows us to understand the deeper meaning underlying the generation of sources: the assertion of one’s own right to “acknowledge” cases and to judge practices. This, however, comes at the price of legitimising those performing the practice that was to be established. A number of jurisdictional debates between the state and the church could, and perhaps should, be analysed from this perspective. The notion of an intertwining network of jurisdictions allows us to appreciate the fundamental importance of transcription in the shaping of socio-institutional relationships. The transcription30 of practices and procedures must be seen as taking place within the processes of the authentication and vindication of rights, and of mutual acknowledgement by the interlocutors. This is particularly true in the 27 28 29 30

Grendi 1986a; 1986b; 1989. Raggio 1996. Silvestrini 1997: 52–53. The meaning is very different from Geertz 1983: 31.

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realm of property rights: according to Paolo Grossi, historiography has yet to account for meanings lying between “usus” and “dominium”,31 while an understanding of the acts of possession might lead to a preliminary reconstruction of what Edoardo Grendi has called “the culture of possession”.32 None the less, the processes of transcription have a much deeper meaning, because they shed light on the practical uses of institutions.33 This occurs in two ways: on the one hand, by the use of institutions from below (through manipulation, objectification, consumption, and so on), and on the other, the use of people by institutions. Let me briefly develop this point. Juridical and institutional sources dating from the Ancien Régime reveal a plurality of practical uses of institutions, such as the certification of possession, or interpersonal transactions. To cite just one example, the land survey (and I am wondering if all the sources on surveys can be included), a document which has traditionally been read as a register of landed property and analysed using quantitative methods, can also be interpreted as a statement about which territories are subject to fiscal burden (usually, the village administration and the central, “public” authorities). But if the survey is read topographically, we also recognise that what really matters is that the territory included in the survey is not subject to other powers, e.g. landlords, church institutions or ritual bodies.34 We are now in a better position to understand the socio-cultural significance of ritual in the societies under the Ancien Régime. Ritual is comprehended, often explicitly, as the “quasi ius” held by corporate bodies. In other words, it must be read in light of the culture of possession.35 It is possessed like any other prerogative. As one English witness put it at the beginning of the 19th century, “processioning had been transmuted (and not inaptly) into possessioning”.36 In this sense, we can understand why rituals such as the Rogations involved the use of acts to create memories (for example, children were immersed in a specific place in the river in order to create memorable moments) that would serve for future processes.37 As in every “quasi ius”, ritual demands continuity, not contradiction.

4. With this awareness, our reading of the sources is greatly enhanced, allowing us to distinguish the elements around which the politics of ritual develop. This is best 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Grossi 1992. Grendi 1986a. Giana 2000. Palmero 2000; 2005. The concept is expressed in the sources as: “quasi ius” (almost a right). Bushaway 1982: 83. Hindle 2008.


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demonstrated through detailed analysis of a specific case, for only with this type of close inspection can we identify the ritual actions and what they represented to the participants and the observers, as well as the reactions that they caused. The case to be analysed concerns a peasant ceremony called the “Rama” (or the “Branches”). It was transcribed during the first half of the eighteenth century in the countryside of Asti, a Piedmontese town subject to the dukes of Savoy, then kings of Sardinia.38 On the eves of Ascension Day and Corpus Christi, members of the local male population, led in the former case by the “Abbots of Youth”, and in the latter by the rectors of the confraternity of the Holy Sacrament, made their way to the woods belonging to the local nobility to cut coppice shoots growing from oak and chestnut tree stools. These were trimmed and carried to the parish church at dawn, where they were used as decorations for the day’s procession. In the afternoon, they were auctioned off to the public for use as vineyard stakes. This ceremonial ritual is described in minute detail in a number of eyewitness accounts provided by defence witnesses for the local community in a dispute against the lords of the village of Montaldo Scarampi, who had accused them of property damage. Despite the disparity in social standing of the litigants, the Piedmont Senate, the highest judiciary authority in the kingdom of Sardinia, not once but twice ruled in favour of the peasants, although also setting certain constraints (presently to be discussed) on their ritual behaviour. We start by analysing the actions taken by the participants in the ceremony (and, as shall be seen, by the litigants), in order to observe how they are embedded in a form and create a context, the analysis of which is also necessary for a complete understanding of the ritual itself. The first point of note is that the context of the “Rama” (or of the “Branches”), as it is referred to in the judicial records, is variable. The form it assumes is determined by the feast day being celebrated, but more importantly, it depends on the relative importance attributed to the ritual each year by the local population. Participation rates fluctuated considerably according to the intensity of conflict between the peasants and landowners. As succinctly stated by one witness in 1732, “in some years, only twenty or thirty men go, but when the Lord Counts express a certain displeasure at the cutting, more people take part” (original underlining by the Turin judges).39 Another important variation is the substantial difference in the amount of money raised by auctioning each 38 The case study was transcribed in Montaldo Scarampi, but other examples are coming to light. AST, Camera dei Conti, Senato, serie II, cat. 22, Scarampi del Cairo, m. 140, n. 20: “Copia d’esame Scarampi vs. Montaldo Scarampi per il tagliamento de boschi”. All further citations are extracted from this important trial (cc. 330). It does not represent the only episode of conflict between the Scarampis and their peasant subjects concerning the forests (see AST, Camera dei Conti, art. 595, §1, m. 1; §18. m. 1, n. 18, 19; Del Carretto di Gorzegno, mm. 27–29 for analogous documentation in an imperial area), but it was the only one concerning a ritual of pruning. On the cultural and social meaning of pruning, see Algazi 2000. 39 AST, Scarampi, m. 140, n. 20, c. 22 verso.

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year’s yield of branches. According to one witness, the “price obtained varies from one year to the next according to the amount of branches, which as I have said, is not a fixed quantity, and I remember one year when only four livres was raised, one when they raised forty-five livres, and another fifty […]” (42r–43v). In short, the ritual was extremely subject to variations in the calendar and to existing political and economic contingencies. Nevertheless, the overall form of the ritual always followed the same fixed pattern. We base our description of it on the first attestation, dealing with Ascension Day, and then explore the most important variations. Briefly, the ceremony appears to have had four parts in Montaldo Scarampi in the early to mid-eighteenth century: the opening of the celebration, the cutting of the Rama, the festivities, and the finale. The ceremony commenced on the eve of Ascension Day, a movable feast that falls forty days after Easter, so some time between 29 April and 17 May. In the afternoon, a boy or young man from the area would issue a cry, which the town council envoy was charged with delivering “from house to house”, to “give notice to those who have to go this very night to cut the Rama”. The cutting had to take place at night, and only in the woods of the local lords, and was carried out by “men, married and of marriageable age”. While the abbot was officially designated to “commence the cutting”, his authority did not extend to deciding exactly where it was to take place: “when the Abbot commences, they all go to cut where ever they should so please, so long as it is in the woods of the Lord Counts” (although in another testimony the vaguer but more evocative expression, “in that territory” was used, raising the question as to whether cutting may have been done in other woods as well).The cutting undoubtedly took place in a festive atmosphere, although the “sounds and cries in the night” attributed to the “men and youths” by some accounts would seem to indicate a state of unbridled revelry linked to an emotional show of power. The second phase of the celebration was the actual cutting of the branches at the expense of the lords and in the woods belonging to them, about a mile away from the village. But what exactly was cut? The description of the Rama celebration is very clear on this point (and we shall soon see the reason why): one could cut “Rods, or even green poles”40 from the coppice stools of oak, chestnut, or hornbeam. This was an extremely delicate point, which could possibly be used to strengthen the allegations of damage made by the lords, first of all, in terms of the size of the poles cut. It was generally said that these were “more or less the size of an arm”, although some alluded to a much larger size, that “of a leg” (113). And then there was the question of which rods and poles were to be cut. All of the witnesses unanimously declared that wood was cut only from stools and never from “cultivated trees” or stands; hence, they cut branches originating from natural 40 Ponza 1830–1833: 205 (Broppa: palo, broncone).


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regeneration, and not more valuable timber. Even the cutting technique they used seemed aimed at preventing any significant damage to the lords. The shoots were cut out using an incision that was “hare-eared and a palm and a half from the ground”. After being cut, the poles were not used in their entirety. The men “left the twigs and leaves from half way up to the top”, cleaning only the bottom half of the poles. The foliage thus trimmed from the poles (referred to as the bronda and amounting to “a wagon” full on the particular Ascension Day described) was left scattered on the ground, apparently destined for use by Scarampi’s men: in fact, it was said (239v) that it was to be “gathered by the tenants” of the manor woods. However, the lords obviously suspected that the commoners of Montaldo appropriated it as fodder for their own (perhaps meagre) stock.41 The third phase of the Rama begins just after dawn on Ascension Day (“an hour or two of sun”). A selection was made of “the most beautiful branches”, which were tied “in the form of a sheaf” in bundles of perhaps three, four, or five poles each, but in any case “enough to make a load for a man”. Witnesses claim to have “seen more men join in at sunrise before the high mass” and “lay out the bundles of poles about the parish church walls”. This spreading of the branches around the church is just one step in an extremely complex and multifaceted ceremony. To start with, it immediately becomes clear that the men’s choice to carry the bundles on their shoulders was not coincidental or dictated merely by the modest amount of foliage cut, but was made so they could “carry them through the contrade [neighbourhoods]”; moreover, the significance of the branches’ final destination in the parish church seems to go beyond that of religious devotion and enter the realm of display. Another eyewitness (213v–214) alleged that the “men, married and of marriageable age”, who bore the bundles on their shoulders, did indeed carry the branches to the parish church, but that later “local men and youths carried divers branches about the place, and then carried them back to the church, but without any offering ceremony”. This is a crucial and controversial point. While other eyewitnesses also claim that the Rama were carried to the church “as a sign of offering to the Church”, no one was able to give a description of an offering ceremony. In other words, the Rama were not being presented as a tithe, but as a voluntary and non-obligatory offering. In fact, one might even say that it was a symbol, very obvious to the onlookers, of the rights to the parish claimed by the laity; in some accounts, the parishioners are said to have carried the branches “in front of and around the parish church” “because they had laboured much and entirely restored it”. It is even said that, before the rebuilding of the church, the branches had been collected to be used “to build a frascada [arbour] under which it was customary to dance” (118). 41 Moreno 2004. From 24 June on, the leaves of some plant species become poisonous for pasture.

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The fourth and final phase of the ceremony is strongly linked to the use and management of local material resources. On Ascension Day, the Rama that had been collected were sold at auction. According to the accounts, the young abbot in charge of the ceremony “does not appropriate the money” but “consigns the earnings to the parish priest […] who then uses it for the benefit of the parish Church”. The parish priest seems to have played a more prominent role on Corpus Christi, perhaps because it was he who then presided over the auction. According to one statement: “the branches are auctioned at the Mass with the assistance of the said Abbots and rectors, respectively, and by the parish priest, after the candle, which is lighted, is extinguished; and it is not recorded, and the amount raised from the annual sale is always noted by the parish rector in a book that he keeps, so he can then account for the sums given to him by the aforementioned Abbots and rectors.” Thus, it would seem that the ceremony of ritualised cutting of the Rama in the lords’ woods draws to a close with the equally ritualised consignment of the proceeds to the parish church, which at this point represents in Montaldo Scarampi, as in the rest of Piedmont, the polyphonic voice of the local community.42 The sum of money in this instance was not insignificant, and bought five cartloads of poles, which were essential in a viticultural economy such as this one. Let us not overlook, however, one particular detail in the descriptions of the auction: the witnesses claim never to have “seen any writing on the occasion of the auction” (77). In other words, it was a summary procedure, and it did not benefit the administration or its agents, but only the brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament, who used the proceeds to pay for wax, holiday decorations for the church, and, more generally, for expenses related to other ceremonies dictated by the church calendar. It was not a haphazard undertaking, as we can see from the existence of the parish rector’s ledger, but it was also not one that involved the entire community; rather, it was the manifestation of an individual ritual body within the village, acting on the basis of its own perceived rights. Other variations to the celebration occurring on the Feast of Corpus Christi are also significant. Once again, the branches were used to “make a bower” and other adornments for the procession, but there were differences in the way the branches were collected, in their final intended purpose and in the festivities themselves. To begin with, as trivial as it may seem, the coppice shoots and foliage must either have grown considerably since Ascension Day twenty days prior or else the branches collected on Corpus Christi were destined for another sort of use, for it was said that branches considered “too small or short” were not to be cut, as they would be “insufficient for adornment”. The preference was instead for good-sized “Rods or Poles”. Above all, and in contrast to the Ascension Day ceremony, the poles were not trimmed or “topped” and the leaves were left on (“the side branches 42 Torre 1992.


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are not pruned”:43 207v). This resulted in another difference, for a greater volume of poles was gathered. On the eve of Corpus Christi, the cutters went with “carts, wagons and livestock” and then, “using beasts of all kinds” (24v), carried back to the village “an ever increasing quantity of poles” (unless “rainfall or other bad weather” impeded them). The festival was also organised differently. The parish brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament was assigned a prominent role in the church liturgy, and this prominence was unfailingly respected in Montaldo. In this case, the “rectors” of the Holy Sacrament were responsible for proclaiming the Rama, giving orders to the town council envoy, and cutting the first branches. As on the eve of the Ascension, the cutting itself was “capricious” as to quantity and location, but on Corpus Christi, the cutting clearly had a ceremonial aim. The shoots were being cut to build a “chiovenda”, a hedgerow, to “place all around the contrade, where passes the procession” of the Corpus Christi, which was the main ceremony of parish life in the first half of the eighteenth century in Piedmont.44 All the witnesses make reference to the fact that the “Poles are needed to adorn the contrade” (and it is repeatedly stated that trimmed poles would have been “insufficient for adornment”), and that failure to participate was frowned upon, as it would have resulted in the collection of fewer poles. If that ever happened, “when fewer branches are cut, the contrade are not fully decorated, not even where the procession passes, and certain corners are left undecorated, and the decorations are placed further apart; the procession is always held in the same way and in the same contrade and the poles are needed to adorn the streets in this way, whereas the twigs and leaves are smaller and shorter and do not decorate so well nor so high, so for this reason poles are cut [39v–40r]”. What we have here, then, is the village festival, if by “contrade” we take to mean both the streets and the centres of social life of the village. The exact place, territory (or “finaggio”), and the woods seem not to have borne mentioning, nor was any reference made to the return journey. This, however, by no means implies that the ritual was any less powerful than that of Ascension Day. While it is true, as one witness states, that “on the occasion of this cutting no Abbot is appointed”, all the accounts emphasise the old-fashioned style of the ceremony and its growing solemnity, for the brotherhood had used the proceeds from the sale of the Rama to “make a new baldachin to carry in the procession”. It should also be noted in the descriptions of the ritual of Corpus Christi that there is no mention made of the lords or of their participation in the ceremony, which, although it was on very unequal terms, enlivened the ritual of the abbey on Ascension Day.

43 Pfister 2004: 653: sbrondare: “potare, diramare” (Mondovi 1415). 44 Barbero & Ramella & Torre 1981.

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5. Each of the four phases of the ritual described present a series of characteristic actions which in turn serve to characterise the ritual authorities. For example, the abbot’s actions during the third phase of the celebration confirm his pragmatic authority. It is he who proclaims the start of the Rama celebration, he is the one who carries the “pike” and leads the procession ahead of the “men”, and trailed by the “young people” and finally the “women”, in a clear display of the community’s gender hierarchy. The “pike” itself was also meaningful. Mounted at the top was a heraldic standard, entrusted to the abbot’s care during the year and symbolising his authority. According to a well-known relationship,45 actions are directed towards specific objects. In this case, the red standard seems to be visible evidence of the mutability of local configurations of power. On one side it displayed “the mark with the coat of arms of the Lords Scarampi” and on the reverse, “Saint Peter with his keys”, the “main patron of the Community”. The banner was not an antique, and seems to have fulfilled two different intentions. First of all, the banner was reportedly commissioned by one of the lords relatively recently, some time between 1680–1690 or in 1705 or in 1712, depending on the witness questioned. Others disagreed, however, stating that the banner “was not bought by the Lords but with the proceeds of several years’ Rama celebrations”. In this case, the lords’ participation was said to be limited to that of having chosen the artist. One witness remembers his own brother visiting “Laveglia the painter” in Asti,46 and the cost of two louis d’or was allegedly paid for the banner by the Abbot of Youth. The banner appears to have been a new depiction of the configuration of local powers, and to have replaced an older banner “light blue, with no mark, and extremely old” at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In fact, the relationship between the “marks” – of the lords and of the community – could either vary or was a function of the viewer’s perception. One testimony said that “the aforesaid standard can signify nothing else but honour of the Feast, and it cannot have been introduced for any other aim but this, and I know that the Lord Marquis [Filippo] had the standard made with the abovementioned marks in order to pay further honour to his family and the place”. But “the mark of Saint Peter can now hardly be seen for having been spoiled” (my emphasis). In other words, a devotional investment made by the Scarampi family was ensconced on a ritual object either commissioned together with the community, or by the community alone, whose own symbol instead proved to be faded and “spoiled”. Authority and nobility, protection of the community – depicted on the two sides of the new standard – represented two of the three local powers. The third, the church, could be seen at the head of the Ascension procession in the curious figure 45 Trexler 1994. 46 On the Laveglia family of painters, see Mossetti 1989; Mondo 1989; Ragusa 1999.


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of a “youth”, who since time immemorial had worn a “blue”-coloured “smock”, printed with the “mark of Saint Peter with his keys”, draped over one shoulder. However, this time the saint did not represent the entire community so much as the parish, given that the mark was said to have been “provided by the Church”. That the Corpus Christi celebration was such a well-organised and multifaceted event can be explained by the fact that it was considered to be the main feast day of the village. The Rama was paraded around the neighbourhoods to the accompaniment of “violins, basses and sometimes oboes” (233v) in order to give “greater eminence” to a ceremony that drew spectators from the nearby town of Asti and attracted large crowds of visitors. Their numbers can even be estimated; in Montaldo, with its approximately eight hundred residents,47 “eight or nine calves” were butchered on Ascension Day, and it was probably the auction of the Rama that accounted for such a high level of interest and participation. However, it would be reductive to treat the problem of the material aspect of the resources separately from the ritual and pragmatic component within which they are placed. To begin with, there is absolutely no indication that all of the inhabitants of Montaldo took part in the Rama festival. Some maintain that “one could have four thousand sworn statements”, (10v) testifying as to the importance of the feast, but that still does not include everyone. Only males had the right to participate. By all accounts, women did not go into the woods, did not have the right to cut branches, and did not take part in the auction. Such blatant sexual discrimination is taken for granted in the literature on folklore and ethnology,48 but in the legal record serving as the source of our information it bore potentially serious legal implications. It was the heads of house and their heirs in Montaldo, the “men of marrying age”, who claimed the right to draw on the collective local resources. And it was the latter, the young men, who were responsible for organising the Ascension Day ceremony, which, although less remarkable than the Corpus Christi Rama in terms of the material resources involved, was no less so in terms of the ability to focus attention on a social group, that of the young males, whose ritual claims were so strong as to spill over into the legal realm. This is even more surprising given the nature of society in the areas of Asti and Monferrato, where the power of women in the family system was unquestioned to the point that the strong familial and interfamilial ties they established made inroads on to the ceremonial scene49 and were transcribed in the episcopal records. In particular, women joined important rural confraternities in the Diocese of Asti, kept rights over parish sidealtars, and were entitled to lay benefits in the local parishes.50 47 48 49 50

AST, Camera dei Conti, Art. 531, M, m. 3, 1700. Rey-Flaud 1985. Barbero & Ramella & Torre 1981: 72–77. Torre 1995: part 3.

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The significance of the legal implications becomes more obvious when one considers the Lords of Montaldo, the Scarampi, a fixed cluster of families descended from members of the financial elite from the town of Asti during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They owned lands scattered throughout the region and exercised jurisdictional authority over several dozen communities in Asti and Liguria.51 During the Early Modern age, the Scarampi family took charge of the traffic of men, soldiers, and cargo between the Ligurian coast, the Po valley, and the Transalpine regions, in a contest for power that served them well for at least two centuries. It allowed the family to preserve its authority and survive amidst the various regional powers arising in the area – from Genoa to Casale, from Milan to Turin – as they made decisions favouring now the Monferrato territory, now the empire, married into families in Genoa and Savona, and found employment in Turin. In other words, the family adopted strategies aimed at holding together a particular mosaic of elements and fragments of power that had endured for at least four centuries. In the 1730s, all of this was about to change drastically. The entanglement of jurisdictions that characterised the area of the communities in question was still extant, although gradually becoming less convoluted. Montaldo is located in an area called the “Asteggiana”, which was absorbed first by the duchy of Savoy and later by the kingdom of Sardinia, but its neighbours were not, or were so only in part. Montaldo’s closest neighbours (Rocca d’Arazzo, Mombercelli, Belveglio, Rocchetta Tanaro, Castelnuovo Calcea, Refrancore al di là del Tanaro) were imperial fiefs, others were fiefs of the Church, and still others were establishing institutional ties with entities outside Piedmont (Agliano and Costigliole, which were parishes in the area which belonged to the diocese of Pavia and to the State of Milan). The trade routes were becoming increasingly hazardous.52 The centuries-old strade franche, or duty-free roads, still existed, but they were the site of disputes and clashes between the transporters and the gabellieri, or tax-collectors, of the Savoy.53 The fiefs of the Scarampi were often governed by special statutes that did not grant them the full status of community, thereby leaving them free of fiscal burdens. In addition, the jurisdictional disputes between Turin and Rome had strong legal implications for the internal life of villages around Montaldo which were under papal suzerainty. The trial of the Rama is thus one element in the process of transformation of a family of toll collectors into Savoyard nobility. This transformation was neither minor nor painless. Documents in the Turin archives concerning the dispute of the Rama conjure up an image of the Lords of Montaldo as a vast assemblage of relatives engaged in constant bickering and infighting. In fact, every fief seems to 51 Torre 2003. 52 AST, Corte, Langhe, Misc. II. 53 Torre 2007b; Battistoni 2009.


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have been contested sooner or later by the various branches of the family.54 Villages such as Canelli, Bubbio, Cassinasco, and Loazzolo systematically found themselves at the centre of conflict between the Scarampi family members, as would Montaldo in later decades. Just as the support of Turin was necessary for settling lawsuits against Scarampi family members loyal to Mantua and Vienna, it was also necessary to help resolve frequent disputes with the peasants. Since it was located in the “Asteggiana”, and thus in territory belonging to the Savoys, Montaldo was subject to the processes of the so-called perequazione, or equalisation, of taxes and of the land survey. Thanks to this a legal definition of the Scarampi lands was made. The woods were defined as allodial properties, and the Scarampi were subjected – not without protest – to paying a modest land tax.55 Only gradually did the advantages of the Savoyan solution become clear, and in this, the Feast of the Rama may have played a part. The problem is not so much in determining whether Turin acted “against” the lords and “in favour” of the community, in the name of a universal and enlightened spirit as opposed to relying on ill-defined custom, as is often implied in studies on the perequazione.56 The problem is in understanding the requirements and ramifications of the process of defining the legal status of the land. Records in the Scarampi archives are very explicit on this point. For example, in a dispute in 1687 between Carlo Alessandro del Cairo (Luigi and Giuseppe’s father) and Carlo Antonino di Canelli, it is alleged that the “ceppaia” or “stool” of an oak – one of the very species cut by the men of Montaldo on Ascension Day and Corpus Christi – represented the boundary between the possessions of the two branches of the family.57 This system of defining property can be understood by examining the (conflictual) relationship between the Scarampi and the local peasants. The disputes usually ended with transactions involving the transfer of land from the peasants to the lords, with the risk for legal contamination that is difficult to quantify for periods prior to the perequazione. Other disputes, for example with tenants, reveal how conflict between the lords and peasants served as a useful weapon for the former to impede “normal” management of their concerns, which could then be fallen back upon in case of missed payments.58 54 This terminology is clearly unable to go further than a purely “representational” point of view, one of the best results of which is surely Bizzocchi 1995. The material examined (the reconstruction of Caldera di Monesiglio, Saluzzo, Scarampi, and a number of Del Carretto lineages) shows a clear relationship between the creation of “lineages” and the feud: relatives compete for inheritance by means of systematic retaliations which give way to patrimonial divisions and processes of “localisation” of family name and the ramification of kin groups. The resulting, precarious, truce is unable to prevent disputes following the next death. 55 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, n. 73 and 78. 56 Quazza 1957; Bracco 1981; an exception is Levi 1988. 57 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, n. 47. 58 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, ivi, n. 72 (1729).

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A very turbulent climate, fraught with tension, thus serves as the backdrop for the procession of young men from Montaldo. This realisation significantly alters our reading of the Rama celebration. Some of the most evident and striking elements are described below, providing evidence for the legal ramifications of the Rama ceremony. That there are indeed legal ramifications may seem so obvious and self-evident as to require no further comment. Several generations of historical studies have already demonstrated the existence of conflicting regimes of regional land use in the European countryside in the years in question, which were sustained, and I would daresay personified, by different and contrasting actors pitting the collective, customary interests of the peasant communities against appropriation by individualistic agrarian entrepreneurs.59 Recent research has challenged this view, however, especially by demonstrating how traditional regimes were capable of accommodating and incorporating innovation.60 Other aspects of such a reinterpretation can lead to elements of even greater complexity. For example, the innovators did not necessarily have to come from outside the community, and the collective resources were not always managed in traditional ways. More importantly, the local institutional landscape proves to have been richer and more highly structured than suggested by previous research. These issues are all pertinent to the following discussion. However, the available documents dealing directly or indirectly with the trial of the Rama of Montaldo do not seem to lead in this particular direction. Several aspects do not completely fit within the traditional frame of analysis. In particular, the social identity of the actors is more subtle than might otherwise be presumed in a conflict between lords and peasants. Moreover, the legal and material framework within which they act is much more problematic and dynamic than traditional research has described. Upon closer examination, clues to a juridical reading of the ritual are not to be found in the fact that the ritual itself is woven from ideas that are “technically” legal, or that the ritual of the Rama contains elements related to the exercise of rights. Rather, the ritual in and of itself proves to be a legal issue, consisting of practices and merging with actions based on legal precedent and the prerogative of the participants. To capture the practical and legal dimension of the festival of the Rama requires that the ritual be read within the context of the set of documents in which it was generated. The Scarampi del Cairo archives, fortunately, facilitate this type of reading, thanks to a valuable dossier called “Various records and memories regarding the dispute between the lords and the Community of Montaldo Scarampo over

59 Bloch 1931; Sereni 1961; Thompson 1993. 60 Moreno & Raggio 1991.


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the Woods, or rather, the Rama”.61 From these documents we learn that the trial of the Rama started around 1713, the year that Luigi Scarampi and other local lords62 signed a declaration that they “did not oppose the cutting of the Rama” by the community of Montaldo. According to the claimants, this statement concerned only the possessory, that is, the de facto or existing state of affairs, rather than the petitory, or prerogative. Despite their acknowledgement of the existing situation, the lords then attempted to limit its scope. This move is pertinent to our analysis and touches on such matters as the “discrezione” and the quantity of branches cut, authority, the legal status of the actors, the quantity of branches carried per person, and the route taken by the participants towards the parish church. Let us briefly examine these issues one by one. The quantity of branches cut, the lords firmly declared, had to be “discreto” (modest). Although no further clarification is given, the term may have been a reference to the asymmetrical relation of reciprocity between the lords and the peasants. In other words, said the lords, cutting was not meant to be an act of retaliation by the community. Therefore, they sought to limit the quantity of poles that an individual or wagon would be permitted to carry. In addition, they wanted to define the kind of authority that could be exercised by the abbot and the rectors of Corpus Christi, requesting that they be required to ask for the permission of a seigniorial judge, or of a lord or one of his agents, before issuing the cry “obliging” the men of Montaldo to enter the woods of the lords. They wanted the authority to have to be delegated, in any case, and not to be asserted independently “from below”. Requesting that only males be allowed to engage in cutting concerned not only the scope of practice (since the men were experienced woodcutters), but also, from a legal point of view, it corresponded to a class of people who were accountable to the law, and who could thus be held financially responsible. It is less clear why the return route from the woods was considered to be an issue, as revealed by the lords’ insistence that a “retta via” (“straight path”) be followed. I have long wondered about the actual meaning of this expression, and suspect that it is a reflection of both the liturgical calendar,63 and of the significance of the woods within the local economy.64 The Ascension Day ceremony can easily be traced back to the ritual of Rogations and of the “perambulations” with which, as we know above all from research into the history of English agriculture,65 the peasants defined the borders of the municipality, placing it under the control of the 61 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, n. 77 “Diverse scritture e memorie riguardanti la lite fra li signori e Communità di Montaldo Scarampo per causa de Boschi, o sia della Rama (1731-1732)”. 62 His brother Giuseppe, at that time Abbot of Ferrania and Earl Cacherano of Villafranca. 63 Grimaldi 1995. 64 Rackham 1990. 65 Bushaway 1992.

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community through the blessing of the parish rector. But the records from Montaldo allow us to go even further. The meaning attached by the local juridical culture to the act of patrolling an area had to do with possessory rights. This can be deduced from the very act of cutting the branches – a typical act signalling possessory rights – and above all, from the fact that the “stools”, or the “ceppaie”, were officially recognised in the determination of property lines, and thus as signs of possession. The act of cutting was one’s claim to property, making use of elements conventionally defining its boundaries. On such a reading, use of the expression “retta via” by the Lords of Montaldo may have been related to their attempt to curtail the possessory nature of the cutting and pruning taking place in the noble woods, and thus to transform it into a ritual action in the modern sense of the term, that is, into a symbolic action that stands for a material action and substitutes it, thereby rendering it useless.66 It is not just the peasants’ behaviour that suggests that the legal culture of ownership is shared by peasant and lord, but also that the lords express themselves using the same language. Two later documents make this clear (a “Factum for the dispute over the woods” from 1721,67 and a statement regarding the “motives for forming an allegation in favour of the lords”68). In 1721, the lords once again based their opposition to the Rama ceremony on their ability to demonstrate something that we would take as implicit, i.e. their ownership of the woods. Now, they said, the woods were feudal, and belonged to the lords taking legal action (and not to lords not taking action). This, they continued, could be demonstrated by the fact that the lords could do whatever they liked or needed to do in the woods: they cultivated them, they created vineyards and fields, and they performed all other actions related to ownership, such as renting land to tenants. This statement is of particular interest, as it demonstrates the flexibility of the concept of the woods: woods could be cultivated without losing their intrinsic nature. The exercise of acts of possession, such as those performed by the community of Montaldo, defined the feudal nature of the woods, which were ruled by multiple statutes, comprising them in a circuit of reciprocity. But now, according to the nobility, “the privilege of feudality must be exempted from the dominion of the subject.” This was the cause of the lords’ fear of the risk of contamination posed by the ritual action of the community. The villagers of Montaldo encouraged the partici-

66 Ginzburg 1998. 67 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, “Fatto della causa de Boschi contro Montaldo Roero”, 20.4.1721. 68 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, “Motivi per formare l’allegazione a favore dei confeudatari, 1732.


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pation of outsiders,69 adopted “unfair” (ineguale) methods by refusing to define the areas to be cut, made more than one trip to the woods, cut in other parcels of land in the vicinity, and transferred the wood to their own property (in other words, they were defining a hierarchy of possession of the woods); moreover, they acted as a single body. Above all, they made deliberate choices as to what actions to take. For one thing, their aggression was directed only at those of the nobility who were most active in the pursuit of justice. But most importantly, as we have seen, is that the peasants decided whether or not to participate, depending on the level and nature of their conflict with the nobility. This is an extremely important point: participation in the ritual was determined by the situation, or at least by the situation as it was perceived within the community. The legal ramifications thus hinge on how the Rama was interpreted in this regard. It could be seen as a symbolic or “modest” cut, or else as a cut that was performed with “indiscretezza” (immodestly), and thus the cause of damage. In other words, the practice falls into the realm of the juridical because it is dialogical. At this point, the declaration by the lawyers of the Scarampi that the practice of the Rama was of “absolutely no use, and enjoyed for no advantage, although it is said to be for the church”, appears to be a merely rhetorical strategy of defamation of the ritual sphere, which as we will see, is seized upon by the Turin judges. In 1730, serious aggravation of the conflict concerning the Rama resulted in clarification of the terms of the dispute. It all starts on 6 May with the lords’ appeal to the provincial Intendant in Asti: the community claims they have the right to cut the Rama on fully twenty-seven hectares of forest, and the lord is concerned about damage to timber trees (or “crescita”), and about the large number of people, including women and children, who are taking part in the “devastation”. The Intendant responds by issuing an ordinance forbidding the community from using the “ragione” or reason for cutting (that is, the Rama festival) as an excuse for cutting in any way other than specified in the new law code, the Regie Costituzioni,70 which recommends cutting with “discrezione”, as any good head of the household would. On Ascension Day, none the less, Count Luigi asks the seigniorial judge to prepare a “note of those who went to cut”, distinguishing between “those who did the cutting” and those who “had barrows and carts, carriages, four-wheel wagons and cattle.” The following month, before the Feast of Corpus Christi, the community files a plea, lamenting the judge’s refusal to concede them the licence to cut; the community then decides to sue the prefect, the judge is ordered to collect criminal 69 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, n. 77, “Nota di quelli particolari di Montaldo che sono andati a tagliare”. The presence of foresters in Finale Ligure in 1732 seems to indicate the transitory nature of the economy around Asti until the mid-eighteenth century. For instance, AST, Corte, Materie Criminali, m. XX, 1662: a suspected homicide explains his flight to the imperial feud of Rocca d’Arazzo to discover the price of hay in Finale Ligure. 70 On Regie Costituzioni see Viora 1928; Micolo 1984.

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evidence by Luigi, and the brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament files an appeal in Asti and later with the Senate. The Senate then orders the judge “to deliver the acts”. The following month, however, a new petition is filed by one of the mayors, without a specific mandate from the Community “in favour of the aforesaid rectors and individuals named in said criminal action to release them from any expense or nuisance”. He also requests that Luigi and his vassals be summoned to appear.71 In late July, the community sends Luigi a “copy” “for resumption of the case of the woods” and files against Luigi for harassment in 1730, against the seigniorial judge for having refused to concede the licence, and against the seizure of the poles at the end of the procession; they stigmatise the criminal trial and file a suit against all the lords for the release of the poles seized. The Advocate General finds in their favour, and therefore asks for execution of the sentence of 1718 and revocation of the seizure of the poles. We now arrive at the cross-examination between Luigi and the community. The community insists that he cannot use criminal acts obtained in cross-examination. The rebuttal by Luigi’s attorneys instead focuses on one key issue: if it is true that the licence had always been granted for cutting, then it is also true that possession of a licence was an essential condition for the cutting to take place. If so, he maintains, this is explicit proof that the cutting has always taken place by means of the temporary granting of a privilege “that always and at any moment can be, as it has been, revoked”. If it is presumed that this privilege is given as a form of charity by the lords, it cannot be presumed that the lords must continue providing such charity. The community’s ancestors had not managed to establish an obligation at the expense of the fief, and the cutting had since degenerated into abuse (the cutting of timber); and this at a time when the woods were barely sufficient to provide for basic household needs. In addition to the growing dispute over the right to cut the Rama, 1730 proved to be a pivotal year from at least two other points of view. First, collision between 71 As follows: ordinanza Intendente 16.5.1730: pruning was “indiscreto e sprezante on Ascension Day”; on Corpus Domini eve permission was denied; suit filed against the “prefetto” by the brotherhood, which was denied; pruning without permission by the brotherhood; excessive cutting leads to a complaint by the Marquis Luigi Scarampi; priors of the brotherhood appeal to the Senate; 1.8.1730: “Copia di altro Fatto mandato alli procuratori di Luigi Scarampi per informativa sulla causa” deals the following issues: “indiscretezza” of the men of Montaldo; forests are feudal. Intendant orders a cross-examination between Luigi and the community; 1730 – s.d.: a new plea filed by Luigi’s attorneys: the forests to which the community claims to have rights are feudal; a new examination of witnesses in a trial of 1715 showing recognisance of possessory rights; only men can take part in the ritual, excluding women; transport of poles by carts is forbidden; abuse must be forbidden; each participant can carry wood once. Analogous decrees are requested for the Corpus Christi cutting; poles are said to be an ornament of the streets “where the Venerable will pass”; recall of the decree of 1717, which said that poles could be no larger than a man could carry; men and not women could take part; extensive damage of trees took place; the community will not be able to prove its possessory rights, and the abuses will be demonstrated.


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the two branches of the Scarampi family (the Cairo and Mioglia) resumed, thus making their property holdings even less well-defined. But above all, the effects of the perequazione started to be felt: the forests of the lords were declared to be allodial property, and were thus subject to taxation. This had many serious consequences. From the document “allegation in favour of the lords”72 it is clear that the decision had been made: “All of these assets have now become allodial” and that payments to the tax collector Caredio had already commenced. It is precisely at this point that the Scarampi lawyers make an extraordinarily interesting statement. Since the forests are now allodial property belonging to the lords, they say, no one has the right to “appropriate its cutting and transport”. The statement is significant not so much in that it seems to express the nobility’s acceptance of the status of the land as determined by the Turin Senate, but because it establishes the local consequences. The concept is reiterated with even greater force when it is said that “Since for the aforesaid feudal forests that have become allodial according to Royal Decree, the owners must pay, and indeed do pay; wherefore the cutting and its devastating effects make such payment intolerable and unsustainable.”73 In other words, the lords seem to be saying that if they accept that the woods have become allodial property, then they must put a stop to the practice of ritual possession by the community. Thus, a system of property rights begins to emerge, which although not exclusive, is certainly more restrictive than the established local custom, which, as part of the feudal regime, had in any case allowed for reciprocal use of the land. The new regime opposes the corporate peasants’ ritual practices and their possessory meanings. As a result, from this moment on, emphasis is placed on the provisional or “precarious” nature of the community’s right to cut, and on the lawful right of the lords to refuse it. Finally, in a series of “memoranda for the witnesses”, the lords’ lawyers state even more firmly: “as the Lords pay taxes, it is not reasonable that the owners pay the burden and that they cannot harvest all the fruit [my emphasis])”.74 This is followed by yet another round of argument between the lords and the community on the subjects of the testing of the accuracy of weights and measures owned by the lords, evasion of the feudal levy by the peasants, and evasion of the tax to be paid by the local population for using the lords’ ovens. The Turin Senate was not 72 All quotations from AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, n. 77, 1732, s.d.: “Motivi per formare ecc.”. 73 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, n. 77, 1732, s.d.: “si come detti boschi da feudali di nuova legge esser divenuti allodiali per Regio Editto per quali devono pagare, e pagano i possessori, onde con il suddetto Taglio o sij devastazione ne resta intollerabile ed insopportabile il pagamento”. 74 AST, Camera dei Conti, Scarampi, 144/II, n. 77, 1732, s.d.: “Signori pagano le taglie, non è ragionevole che li Proprietari concorino al pagamento de carichi, e non possino ricavar tutti li frutti”.

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unaware of this strong pressure: the following year it confirmed “ownership or almost” (“possesso o quasi”) to the Community of Montaldo of two areas in the woods. The Senate, however, also imposed a significant transformation of the ritual, decreeing that the cutting of the Rama would have to take place “during the day and not at night”, that no more than fifty young people could participate, that each of them could carry away only a single pole, and that each wagon could only transport a maximum of about 1500 kg. The cutting would have to take place at sites designated by the lords or their representatives, who also reserved the right to give to the community poles that had already been cut, in order to oppose the Rama.75 Between 1718 and 1730 the indiscretion (“indescretezza”) of cutting led to “damage”, because the property of an entire assortment of plots, sometimes cultivated with vines or other crops and referred to as the feudal forest, had been fixed. Full ownership (even if it was not yet exclusive) meant full enjoyment. Anything else was considered to be damage. Simultaneously, as we have seen, the ritual was rigidified and isolated from practice and the law: in other words, it became folkloric. At the same time, however, the nobility seems to have willingly accepted having become “owners”. With this in mind, it becomes even more interesting to ponder what it was about the practice of cutting the Rama that was so objectionable to the Lords Scarampi del Cairo. Given that Montaldo was part of a wine-producing economy, collective use would likely be made of the woods for staking grapevines.76 But this cannot be the entire explanation. For one thing, the Rama festival was preceded by a “sfioratura” (light pruning) by the agents of the nobility, who cut out the best stakes for the lords’ vineyards. But what is most striking is the fact that none of the witnesses, and none of the texts, claims that the noble woods were indispensable for the inhabitants of Montaldo. In fact, it is repeated several times that there were plenty of poles in town, and that those who did not have poles could also make use of the abundant local reeds. Even more to the point, the community had forests that it leased in perpetuity to individuals in the community, but no ritual cutting of the Rama took place on those allotments. Cultivation of the woods took many different forms, as we have seen, and the woods in Montaldo were used for many different purposes.77 The nobility cites its domestic use as firewood, but in reality their tenants also used them for spinning silk. However, only with an awareness of the “dominium” of the woods, which emerged with the unfolding dispute of the Rama, did the lords’ documentation begin to list aspects of the problem that had until then gone unmentioned. In addition to the damage caused by the festival of the Rama, they cite the “continual destruction caused by animals grazing and people stealing firewood, given their vici75 AST, Camera dei Conti, Senato, s. I, cat. I, Sentenze civili, m. 143, 1733. 76 Sereno 1992: especially 40–42. 77 Moreno 1990; and now Cevasco 2007.


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nity to the neighbouring feuds of Mombercelli and Rocha d’Arazzo where people go armed, and the undersigned Lords can do nothing to prevent it given the high cost of maintaining armed men to do so.” Thus we learn that the forests were also used for grazing animals, possibly explaining the importance of the “branches left on the ground” by the pruners on Ascension Day. Also, it must not be forgotten that the forests were situated along the important jurisdictional boundaries with the fiefs of the Empire, which questioned the authority of the sovereign, as expressed by the reference to firearms. From this perspective, the consequences of the dispute over the Rama made it possible for the township territory to be defined. At the same time, agricultural practice became the target of dispute. The lords declare that the cutting of the Rama caused damage because it was performed by “children and the inexperienced, riotously by all” – certainly an undignified description of the Abbot of Youth that debased him to the level of a group of irresponsible children. This alleged irresponsibility now serves as the grounds for judgement to be passed on the agricultural practice itself: according to the Scarampi, the Rama season is not the best for cutting shoots; “the plants being in that season in sap, cutting them then destroys the coppice stool”, and since the undefined and unregulated practice took place throughout the forest, “the pruning of the most beautiful plants damages the neighbouring shoots, resulting in the destruction of all of the forests”. At this point one wonders whether less obvious interests were also at stake in the cutting of the Rama. It is particularly tempting to speculate that behind the community’s resistance to the nobility lies the mayor, who supports their cause, personally bringing suit against the lords so that the council will not be summoned to appear in a criminal trial. The mayor is a member of the Agnisetta family, which appears in the surviving cadastres (1767) as the largest landholder in Montaldo of non-noble lineage.78 But in the survey reports made by the Intendant in the 1740s and 1750s, the mayor does not appear among the “largest registrants”, so it is possible that he is among the individuals that “export” poles to the city markets in Asti and other communities that have less than Montaldo. At the same time, however, he figures as one of the sponsors of the Rama ritual, so it is not inconceivable that he exploited the ceremony to legitimise his own social standing. The Rama ritual was therefore used as a means of defining the local community’s rights over the lords’ woods. Yet, ultimately, the terms of ownership for both the community and the lords grew even more tentative. For the lords, this was a result of their transformation from toll-collectors to landed gentry, coupled with continuing conflict between the different branches of their families. For the community, it related to the transformation of the woods from a thoroughfare into an area of pastures and vineyards. Disputes over the parish, borders, and collective 78 AST, Camera dei Conti, Allegato E, 1767, # 78 and Allegato G, #484. Cf. also Allegato B, # 131.

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rights all come together in the procession of the Rama. In this sense, the ritual was a function of social tensions. The involvement of the sovereign authority in local negotiations seems to have resulted in the setting of limits on the cutting and its undefined factors (such as the timing, quantity, number of people, etc.) in order to better manage the allodial nature of the land. But the actions taken by the participants create a discourse that touches on other issues, demonstrating how the ritual had a dynamic status at the local level that generated a “style”.79 Once again, it is a question of a juridical concept, that is, of a set of procedures performed in a courtroom. It is something more than the concept of “legitimation” that Bob Bushaway sees as linked mainly to the reaffirmation of social stratification, in particular in the enclosure of the commons in England. From the point of view of the theory of justification, we can say that the ritual marks the transition to another level of legitimacy. It creates the style, that is to say, the set of legitimate entities situated in the place. In a certain sense, the ritual we have analysed can be considered as one of the folkloric events that Arjun Appadurai has invited us to read as elements in the process of “production of locality”, which are in fact competences related to local management practices. Thus, the ritual of Rama was a key element in the “social conscience of the space”. But it must be remembered that we are not talking in terms of physical, Euclidean space, but in terms of space experienced as a cultural, social, and legal capability, one of the elements of citizenship. At this point it is understandable why the negotiations between the Turin sovereign court, local landlords, and their peasants were centred on competence. The “meaningful actions” of the latter are different from, and more complex than, the mere representation of social inequalities or asymmetries in local power. They represent a means of asserting rights to local resources via a set of practices revealed through a series of ritual actions. The ritual is thus somehow connected with the negotiation for power, since it expresses legitimate possession. However, interpretation at this level can be achieved only through historical microanalysis, at least for now.

79 Torre 1995.


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Section III: Usurping Ritual Edited by Gerald Schwedler and Eleni Tounta

Gerald Schwedler and Eleni Tounta

Usurping Rituals The Correlation between Formalised Repetitive Behaviour and Legitimacy “Usurping rituals”. When this title was chosen to be the key concept examined in a panel, it did not seem at first sight to be so rich and diverse in meanings and so productive for consequent reflection. The initial consideration was to highlight an aspect in the field of ritual studies that has not yet undergone intensive research. Various important aspects like the meaning(s) of rituals,1 the acceptance of rituals,2 ritual efficacy,3 ritual agency,4 or the consequences of ritual failure5 have fruitfully been examined. The question of the explicit relationship between ritual and legitimacy has not yet been posed: what consequences would arise if someone was to take deliberate measures to use – or abuse – rituals which he is not entitled to employ? This question would contribute to the understanding of both the internal function of ritual patterns and the social-political role of rituals in general. However, the study of the notion of “usurping rituals” requires a clarification of concepts, nomenclature, and definitions, as well as a differentiation of methodical approaches. The concept of “usurping rituals” may be used in a very concrete meaning, although it expresses an abstract phenomenon. As ritual patterns have both a demonstrative and constructive character, they have the ability to display and construct an idea of identity at the same time. If one intends to usurp a certain idea and to be identified with the implication it carries, one can accomplish it more easily by usurping the respective ritual patterns. In a political context, it could be claimed that someone who illegitimatly appropriates an office, right, or asset, thereby employs or imitates ritual behaviour (or does both) which communicates this office in public. By adopting traditional and well-known ritual patterns, an illegitimate ruler could try to further his acceptance, stabilise, and finally legitimise the usurped 1 2 3 4 5

Michaels 2006. Bell 1992; 1997; Handelman 2005. Quack & Töbelmann 2010. Krüger & Nijhawan 2005. Hüsken 2007.

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position. Alexander the Great may be seen as an illuminating example: throughout Roman Antiquity and the Middle Ages it was known that he adopted the cultic practices of the peoples conquered by his armies in order to be accepted as their ruler. Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote about this technique in his Institutio Principis Christiani (1515), a pedagogical book for the instruction of young princes: however many barbarian nations which Alexander the Great conquered, he imitated their cults and customs and in this way gained their good will.6 For instance, the adoption of well-known rituals of passage and investiture (e.g. coronation) as conceptualised in ritual theory,7 has the power to transform the usurper into a legitimate owner of his new status. Nevertheless, the matter is more complicated, and the above statement is only a hypothesis which could be verified or rejected by comparing materials from various societies in various ages in a historical perspective. The examination of the notion of “usurping rituals” within a historical perspective involves simultaneously two central aspects of ritual studies. The first concerns the major question about the ritual agent and its ability to use or to transform a ritual pattern, or to create a new one. The second aspect consists in the efficacy of ritual models, that is to say, the function of rituals in their social-political context. Examining the usurpation of rituals from the perspective of the ritual agent, we touch the core of the social-political context of power. As has already been stated, the usurper intending to gain a specific social-political status anticipates the ritual demonstration of this status. This attempt raises questions both about the sources of the legitimacy which offers the usurper the power of acting, and the acting itself. As far as the legitimating factors are concerned, our attention must focus on the interaction between social institutions and individual initiative. This interaction becomes more complicated if – and this concerns the usurper’s acting itself – the usurper does not confine himself to the (ab)use of traditional ritual patterns, but, on the contrary, transforms them or, in extreme cases, creates new ones. Thus, the question of “usurping rituals” could offer an explanatory model for the study of the ritual agent’s social-political nature. Studying this in a historical perspective may allow light to be shed upon the cultural structures permitting individuals to act as ritual agents. The study of a ritual’s ability to enable the usurper to claim a certain status may contribute to the understanding of the performative structures in ritual patterns. Demonstrating and constructing an identity are two aspects of rituals which are not always simultaneously apparent or in operation. Moreover, if the notion of rituals effecting the construction of an identity is studied within the framework of the 6 Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam 1972: 256 (chap. 3: “Artes pacis”): Alexander Magnus apud quantumvis barbaras nationes agens, initio cultum et mores imitabatur, hac via sese in illorum insinuans benevolentiam. [transl. GS]. 7 Initially: van Gennep 1909.

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usurper’s ritual operating power, it seems to be contradictory to the notion of demonstrating. If a usurper has no convincing identity to demonstrate, there are the rituals themselves that construct or create the identity pursued. Thus, the distinction between demonstrative and constructive ritual capacity must in principle be drawn. The notion of “usurping rituals” entails several ambiguities. Although it is not the intention here to construct a methodical frame of reference in which the terms could be used without uncertainties, it will prove more fruitful to indicate where and how the notion can be used as a heuristic instrument in order to further the understanding of rituals. A first ambiguity is of a socio-linguistic nature. Are we sure that what we qualify today as usurpation – the illegal appropriation of something – had the same semantic value in every society in every era? It is important to verify what the term “usurpation” comprises when used as a methodical tool to analyse different contexts. Nevertheless, such an etymological approach might not answer the question about the perception of the notion of “usurpation” in different social and temporal contexts. Both the term and the notion of usurpation are a relative, and not an absolute, phenomenon. As the primordial denial of legitimacy, the once for all accusation of not having the right to do or be something, the usage of the derogatory term “usurper” is still based on a range of variants. Every occurence of usurpation had a different prehistory and different social, political, or military implications. There is no usurpation of rituals without an existing framework or proto-institutions, where the usurper acts, intending to become a part – although the dominant one – of the functioning systems. Therefore, cases of usurpation have to be considered within the framework of the political institutions of the state where they occur. The political and social status of the usurper, his interaction with the legal ruler, and above all the political institutions which both define legitimacy and permit the specific kind of interaction between the legal ruler and the usurper, are the key notions one must scrutinise closely while studying cases of usurpations. In this way, usurpations can be perceived in their historical context and evaluated in the frame of reference indicated by contemporaries. Perceptions of legality of certain acts of gaining power do change through time. At the same time, the above statement raises an important historiographical and methodological question, namely the contemporary vocabulary defining what today is called “usurpation”. Which words are chosen in each historical context in order to define the act of usurpation? Are we sure that each of these words indeed had the common meaning of today’s definition, that is to say “the unjust attempt to overthrow the legal ruler”? The correlation with the term tyrannus can be seen as an illustrative example. A usurper is not a tyrant, although medieval chroniclers often use both insults in qualifying bad rule: whereas the tyrant is exercising his

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rule in a harmful way – his subjects suffer – the usurper is in possession of power, or at least exercises a reasonable proportion of it, without having the right to do so.8 The second ambiguity concerns the subject of the usurpation itself. If usurpation of an office can scarcely be thought of without a simultaneous usurpation of the ritual manifestations of this office, it seems that ritual patterns impose their rules on the pretenders to office, thus apparently constraining their freedom to do otherwise. In this sense, the ritual is the usurping agent itself. While this statement could be seen as a lexical witticism, it does touch on a very important aspect of ritual studies, namely the question concerning the ritual agent. As long as the usurper is obliged to conform to traditional ritual structures, he has no possible way to intervene in the ritual structure in order to modify it.9 In other words, the usurper may be acting, but he does not exercise full agency. On the one hand, the above statement seems very logical, since the modification of the ritual structure implies a transformation of the idea carried by this structure. On the other hand, it raises questions about the function of the ritual patterns. Do they communicate an idea – in our example the possession of an office – in public or do they create it? If, for instance, only the investiture with nothing other than the traditional royal insignia and in no other location than the traditional crowning place can transform the pretender into the legitimate ruler, the ritual patterns do create the royal power. In one sense rituals appear as an agent, which prevents anyone – both usurper and legitimate ruler – from transforming the ritual structure. The third ambiguity emerging while studying the notion of “usurping rituals” directly concerns both the above thoughts and the important topic of the construction of a ritual. In some respect the usurper’s deliberate decision to legitimise his acts using traditional ritual patterns seems ambivalent, since these patterns inevitably remind people of the former possessor of legitimacy. Even in pre-modern societies in which maintenance of the tradition was an integral part of the mentality, the previous argument must have provoked certain speculations. In modern societies the situation appears more complicated, since ritual structures, especially as far as rituals of power are concerned, for instance crowning ceremonies, were and are defined by public law. Thus the question arises of whether the usurper has the practical and historical possibility to create a new ritual, or to transform the old one, without altering the political structure in which he wishes to intervene at the level of legitimate status, or not. The investigation of this question touches a series of aspects concerning, in the main, the construction of rituals, both from the perspective of contemporary techniques and that of contemporary mentality. The construction of a new ritual requires information. Obtaining and assessing information, and choosing, or avoiding, new ritual materials or old ones, presuppose mental 8 Among ample literature cf.: Condren 2004; Walther 1996; Miethke 1999. 9 Turner 1969; Kelly & Kaplan1990.

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processes which are not always easy to investigate in written sources. One thing is certain: in the framework of ritual structures, the usurper emerges as an innovator. Under this premise, the notion of “usurping rituals” gains more in importance. Moreover, the process of construction of the new ritual, or of transformation of the old one, cannot be considered separately from a simultaneous process of the usurper’s re-identification, both in a social and political aspect and a personal one. Therefore we should study what kind of transformations a person’s political and personal identity undergo, when he takes the deliberate decision to use ritual patterns which belong to another cultural context. It becomes obvious that no theory can be articulated which would combine all these aspects into one common, accepted model of interpretation. Only the study of specific cases in concrete historical contexts can enrich our knowledge about the interdependence between usurpation and the construction of rituals.10 This ambiguity correlates to the general difficulty of identifying effective working ritual patterns from the distance of time and culture. For the medieval context, it has been pointed out that the functioning of ritual processes may easily be misunderstood, as narrators of ritual performances were selective and biased when producing their narratives.11 And the last but not least, there is ambiguity. Is the notion of “usurping rituals” always identical with the notion of “usurping power”, as has been stated so far in this introduction? Could the usurpation of ritual patterns, even of ritual patterns of power, serve another aim than securing the legitimacy of power claims? This question obviously complicates the relation between usurper and usurped. If the usurper has no intention to usurp power, it becomes obvious that the notion of “usurping rituals” must be studied under a different premise from that already proposed. This volume discusses the above-mentioned ambiguities by way of studying the notion of “usurping rituals” in different situations and in different historical contexts, from ancient Assyria through medieval Europe and the Orient, to the modern world. The study cases of usurpation concern rituals of power both in the sociopolitical and ecclesiastical spheres. The rituals of power are not to be seen as a constrained field of research. To the degree that the notion of usurpation informs the study, the rituals in question are rituals concerned with power. A usurper appropriates a ritual pattern, either a ceremony or an object, and an idea in order to legitimise his claims. And this is a usurpation of ritual’s legitimating power. Simultaneously, in most cases, he prevents someone else from using the same ritual or from having the right to use it. In that sense he usurps someone else’s power. The contributions are ordered chronologically, preceded by a study of the term and concept of usurpation by Gerald Schwedler. He contributes to the question 10 Tambiah 1981. 11 Buc 2001; from the perspective of cultural anthropology: Douglas1968.

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with a general overview of the semantic field of “usurpation”. The analysis ranges from the first appearance of the word in Latin, its subsequent integration into medieval European languages such as French, English, or German, and the various changes in its meaning in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The application of the research methods of historical semantics, as a history of concepts in the tradition of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, a field of study initiated by Reinhart Koselleck, gives insight into the changes of meaning that a word like “usurpation” underwent. Fabrice De Backer transports us into the world of the Neo-Assyrian Kingdom, whose rulers practiced extreme cruelty against their newly conquered enemies. Interpreting these practices as a ritualised expression of political power, the author highlights the models of action to which the Neo-Assyrian kings adapted their behaviour. According to him, the dismemberment of the enemies’ bodies has to be linked with the myths of the Mesopotamian deities and heroes fighting evil and building a new world order. Therefore the kings usurped the status and the identity of the deities, through trying to re-enact the fictional mythological achievements in order to impose their control on real political entities, and consequently to create a new order suitable for their interests. The usurpation of rituals and, by association, of the identity these rituals communicated in public, is studied in the context of the relations between macro- and micro-cosmos and opens up new perspectives for the understanding of political thought in primitive societies. Patrizia Arena and Fabian Goldbeck deal with the ritual of salutationes matutinae – the daily morning greetings in the houses of Roman senators, and later in the Roman imperial court. Goldbeck proposes a new theory for the emergence of this ritual, which concerns both the question of the construction of a new ritual and the notion of usurpation. According to him, the archetype of this ritual should be seen in the custom of Roman citizens to visit the houses of certain senators in order to ask for assistance and advice, notably in their legal affairs, this visit having neither a ritualised form nor any political connotation. This custom was “usurped” by Gaius Gracchus in order to make his adherents appear every morning in his house. In that way he could demonstrate his political appeal and consequently his power. His act very soon found imitators, and a new ritual was born. Gracchus took the deliberate decision to use the form of a customary visit in order to acquire the necessary power, so as not to see his policy undermined by other senators. This usurpation highlights the innovative aspect of the usurper’s policy, as a new ritualproduct of usurpation was created and put into the service of a pretender to power. Arena follows the appropriation of this ritual by persons who were not entitled to it – high officers in the imperial court, as well as women of the imperial family accepted salutationes every morning. Does this appropriation constitute a usurpation of ritual and consequently of the emperor’s power, who was the only one to have a right to this ritual? Especially interesting is the gender approach of the

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possible usurpation. Can women’s appropriation of men’s ritual behaviour be seen as usurpation? And if so, under what premise could such a point be made? However, the usurpation of such a popular ritual could be interpreted from the perspective of a fashionable trend. It might be true that collective assumption by masses of people of a ritual act makes this assumption less offensive to the originators (the senatorial caste or the emperor), because it is thereby less visible. Eleni Tounta studies the perception of the notion of “usurpation” in different social and political contexts. In order to highlight that usurpations of political power were not always perceived according to today’s definitions, and moreover, that they were perceived differently according to the cultural environment, she uses a comparative perspective to investigate cases of usurpation which took place in the twelfth century in different states, namely in the Western Empire, in the Byzantine Empire, and in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. She then deals with the political institutions which both structure the notions of “usurpation” and “legitimate power”, and define the interaction between the legitimate king and the pretender. The study of the vocabulary of “usurpation” therefore represents an important part of the paper, since the perception of the notion is reflected in the terms. Following the usurper from the time he made the decision to challenge the legitimate power until his efforts to legitimise his claims, this contribution inevitably raises the question of interdependence between political power and its ritual manifestation. More concretely, it studies the role of ritual patterns in transforming the claims of the usurper into legitimate power. From this perspective, E. Tounta proposes a re-evaluation of the role of ritual patterns, since they seem to act as dominant political and ritual agents. Not only public offices, but also objects of power may be usurped, as shown in the contribution of Georg Gresser. He examines the usurpation of seats in early medieval episcopal synods. After demonstrating the importance of the right seat in Christian thought (already indicated in Biblical writings), he demonstrates the ritual importance of bishops sitting on the chair to the right of the chairman. Gresser explores bishops’ deliberate decisions to take that very seat, even if they were not entitled to it. It is a clear form of usurpation of ritual, and simultaneously of power, in two senses. The usurper appropriates a seat without being entitled to do so, and by so doing he appropriates the identity of the owner of the seat by preventing him from taking that seat. Hermann Kamp demonstrates the ambiguity resulting from the usurper’s decision to make use of the legitimating power of traditional rituals, regardless of whether these rituals constitute a reminder of the former legal ruler. Does the usurper have any other choice? To explore this question, so enriching for the study of rituals, the author focuses his attention on cases of conquest. The conqueror is indeed a usurper of power, since the conquest does not have the approval of the conquered people. The English king Edward III, who conquered and annexed

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Scotland to the Kingdom of England, avoided a coronation as Scottish king, as his lack of royal Scottish lineage would have become apparent. That must have been a deliberate decision, which can be interpreted in the framework of the ambiguity mentioned above by Kamp. Instead, Edward III usurped the ritual power of Scottish people by ordering the transportation of its most important royal insignia – the highly symbolic coronation stone of Scone and the black cross of St. Margaret – to London. In this manner, the usurpation of the royal insignia no longer serves to legitimise the power of the new usurper or ruler, but to prohibit legitimate efforts from being carried out against a strong ritual background. Can a usurped power be restored by legitimate – this time – pretenders without the traditional ritual patterns? The answer is positive. The Scottish noble Robert the Bruce became King of Scotland without the authentic Stone of Scone, and Edward III thus lost the ritual battle. Christian Jaser shifts the study into the ecclesiastical sphere and examines the usurpation of the ritual of excommunication by laymen. He thus deals with the important aspect of ritual patterns in terms of their transport into a different environment from the original, legal one. Questions are raised about the forms of the transformed ritual, the way it is constructed, its efficacy, and, consequently, about the power of the ritual agent. The mostly open institutional situation in the medieval northern Italian citystates not only complicates the question of the usurpation of rituals by the pretender to power, but makes distinguishing between usurper and legal ruler almost impossible as well. Christoph Dartmann, taking as his starting point Max Weber’s definition of legitimacy located on the side of the addressees of power, highlights that the inner political structures of urban northern Italy do not permit a Weberian approach to this phenomenon. In an environment where different worldly and spiritual powers struggled against each other for supremacy, legitimacy appeared only at isolated moments and yet without universal recognition. Consequently, the same political rituals expressed at the same time either the exercise of legitimate power or the attempt at usurpation. Beyond the necessity of historicising the sociological and theoretical framework referred to indirectly in the paper, the study of the interaction between institutions, ritual agents, and ritual efficacy is to be seen as its important contribution. Combining a historical with a sociological perspective, Marian Füssel deals with the question of whether anti-ritualist movements tend to establish new forms of ritualisation. The starting point of his paper is the abolition of traditional German academic rituals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (students’ rites de passage, rituals of graduation, the solemn handing-over of the rectorate) due to social evolution in the Age of Enlightenment. The new cultural and social challenges resulted in changes to the ceremonial life of the universities, in particular to traditional ritual academic behaviour. However, this phenomenon consists of

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a usurpation of power, since, instead of annihilating the ceremonial academic tradition, it adapted traditional ritual practice to meet the learning and scientific needs of the new social system, thus creating alternative forms of symbolic communication. Susan Richter considers the Prussian royal coronation ceremony of Frederick II (1701) as a usurpation of ritual elements from various different European ceremonies. At that time, ceremonies in each state were unique and belonged to the public law of each state. In addition, in the sense of it being a symbol of law, a ceremonial possessed a normative quality. How could such usurpation be interpreted? What were the political and legal consequences of such a decision? This contribution also deals with the relation between usurpation and the construction of new rituals: was a new ritual created, even when it was a compilation of already existing elements? The interdependence between the use of ritual and identity is thereby raised. Did a multi-European crowning ceremonial have consequences for the political identity of Prussia? Cord Arendes takes us back to the modern era, namely to the Central African Republic of the twentieth century. The dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa drew material for his coronation ceremony not from African ritual tradition, but from Napoleon, being as Napoleon’s imperial coronation was not just a source of inspiration, but the very model which was imitated in every detail by Bokassa. The historical implications of this act can hardly be understood without the work of Arendes. Presenting himself as the successor of Bonaparte, Bokassa saw himself as an African dictator in a direct line from Charlemagne and the Roman Empire. This case study enriches this volume with another aspect of the notion of “usurping rituals”. Rituals are not always usurped in order to legitimise a pretender’s claims. It is not difficult to imagine that, in the eyes of the African audience of the ceremony, the ritual in a style à la Napoleon could hardly make much sense. Rituals, as the author argues, can also be usurped in order to cover a profound social and political crisis affecting society. Moreover, the appropriation of European ritual behaviour by pre-colonial African states highlights the close connection between ritual and identity, and furthers the study of this aspect. As a whole, the contributions in this volume illuminate the notion of “usurping ritual” from different angles and cast light on the ambiguities it contains. They demonstrate how the notion of “usurping rituals” may be expressed in different forms. It has become clear that every case needs to be studied in a specific historical, and, consequently, cultural context which prevents the restriction of the explanation of this phenomenon to an ahistorical mechanism. Nevertheless, the outcome of this study contributes to the understanding of the correlation between formalised, repetitive behaviour and legitimacy. In that way it supports the theoretical approaches to the nature of the ritual agent and redefines the functions of the ritual

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patterns in their interaction both with the social-political institutions and the individual’s operating power.

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References Bell, Catherine M. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 1997. Ritual. Perspectives and Dimensions. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Buc, Philippe 2001. The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Condren, Conal 2004. “The Office of Rule and the Rhetorics of Tyrannicide in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe: An Overview”. In: Robert von Friedeburg (ed.). Murder and monarchy. Regicide in European History, 1300–1800. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 48–72. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam 1972. In: Werner Welzig (ed.). Ausgewählte Schriften. Vol. 5. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Douglas, Mary 1968. “The Contempt of Ritual”. New Blackfriars 49: 475–482 (1), 528–535 (2). Gennep, Arnold van 1909. Les rites de passage. Paris: Nourry. Handelman, Don 2005. “Introduction: Why Rituals in Its Own Right? How So?”. In: Don Handelman & Galina Lindquist (eds.). Ritual in Its Own Right: Exploring the Dynamics of Transformation. New York et al.: Berghahn Books: 1–32. Hüsken, Ute (ed.) 2007. When Rituals Go Wrong. Mistakes, Failure, and the Dynamics of Ritual. Leiden: Brill (Numen Book Series 115). Kelly, John D. & Kaplan, Martha 1990. “History, Structure, and Ritual”. Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 119–150. Krüger, Oliver & Michael Nijhawan 2005. “‘Ritual’ und ‘Agency’. Legitimation und Reflexivität ritueller Handlungsmacht”. Forum Ritualdynamik 14: Heidelberg. http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/5785 [1.11.2009]. Quack, Johannes & Paul Töbelmann 2010. “Questioning Ritual Efficacy”. In: William Sax & Johannes Quack (eds.). The Efficacy of Rituals. (Journal of Ritual Studies, Special Issue). [forthcoming: Oxford 2010] Michaels, Axel 2006. “Ritual and Meaning”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Vol. 1. Leiden: Boston: Brill: 247–261. Miethke, Jürgen. 1999. “Tyrannenmord im späteren Mittelalter. Theorien über das Widerstandsrecht gegen ungerechte Herrschaft in der Scholastik”. In: Gerhard Beestermöller & Heinz-Gerhard Justenhoven (eds.). Friedensethik im Spätmittelalter. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer: 24–48. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1981. “A Performative Approach to Ritual”. Proceedings of the British Academy 65: 113–169. Turner, Victor 1969. The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure. London: Routledge & Kegan. Walther, Helmut G. 1996. “Das Problem des untauglichen Herrschers in der Theorie und Praxis des europäischen Spätmittelalters”. Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 23: 1–28.

Gerald Schwedler

Usurpation: Term and Concept A Missing Entry in the “Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe” 1. Introduction; 2. Usurpatio as Terminus Technicus and Metaphorical Usage; 2.1 Classical and Late Antique Latin; 2.2 Legal Concepts of Usurpation: The Appropriation of Property as usurpatio strictu sensu; 3. Usurpator and Usurpatio in Medieval Nomenclature; 4. Usurpation as a Modern Political and Moral Category; 4.1 European Languages; 4.2 Usurpatio vs. Ordo legitimus; 4.3 Usurpation as Political and Moral Incrimination; 4.4 Napoleonic-Era and Post-Napoleonic Definitions; 5. Future Prospects.

1. Introduction The category of “usurpation” is applied as a fundamental incrimination, denying and rejecting legitimacy of use and possession, it accuses of wrongful seizure of something by force, especially of sovereignty or authority.∗ It may be used in the circumstances of the appropriation of things, offices, and even sovereign rule. In an analytical sense, the concept of “usurpation” is a category describing forms of illegitimate government. Different categories would be tyrannis, despotism, or lack of rule and law (anarchy). The term “usurper” describes the potentate who has come to power by violating existing concepts of legitimacy. The application of the term ∗ This article intends to fill a gap in the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (GG). Thus, it is based on the concept of “Begriffsgeschichte” as it was intended by the editors of the 8-volume opus. It is indebted to the work with respect to structure and content, as well as various entries and its index. Despite its 119 entries, several terms that may be considered important did not receive an individual entry, but were dealt with in other articles. Entries like Zeit, Raum, Dienst, Tugend, Pflicht, Ordnung, Erinnerung, Memoria, Gedächtnis, Kunst and Wissenschaft are among the desiderata, Dipper 2000: 281–308 and Uwe Justus Wenzel, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 7 Dec. 2004. However, the original concept by Brunner, Kosellek and Conze, with its focus on the “Sattelzeit” and modern German language use (GG: vol. 1, XV– XIX), is centred on the pre-modern usage of the term and its relevance in other European languages. This article, however, is neither intended to deliver a full account of political thought on usurpation, nor a study on individual language use. I am grateful to many friends and colleagues for their comments and helpful advice.

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assumes the existence of an original right of property or legitimate rule which is disrupted through usurpation. Therefore, an incriminating accusation of usurpation focuses on the existence of legitimate ownership or prior rights on the part of someone else, but does not state explicitly the extent to which the usurpation itself was successful or remained a futile attempt, however it was planned or spontaneously executed. It is therefore part of a practical and theoretical debate on legitimacy.1 The specific meaning of “usurpation” is accentuated differently in each epoch and language, and may signify the change of a rightfully accepted dynasty, the violation of customary forms of political cohabitation, the illegitimate and forceful transfer and exercise of governmental power, a transgression of competences, unsettled administrative acts due to illegitimate office-holders, the neglect of and damage to public welfare, etc. The individual application of “usurpation” in its context reveals historical conceptions of public social coherence in state and society, social sub- and superordination, as well as ethical good and bad conduct within a polity. The concept of usurpation is not only closely linked with considerations of legitimacy, but also directs the attention to factors beyond constituted legal mechanisms (the concept of ultra vires). This broadens the view to include factors, such as political norms and behaviour, that are not explainable in legal terms, but depend on political or sociological concepts.2 These aspects are important for an understanding of rule as an integral exercise which needed more than only one distinct method of legitimation: “[...] des arguments symboliques ont toujours été nécessaires à côté des arguments de fait nés de la force ou même des arguments purement juridiques.”3

2. Usurpatio as Terminus Technicus and Metaphorical Usage 2.1 Classical and Late Antique Latin The Latin verb ūsurpō, –āvī, –ātum and its derived forms are linked etymologically with the terms usu rapere or usu ru(m)pere,4 which means to appropriate something by using it.5 This wide semantic field was present in an early stage of the Latin language, already being used by the Roman playwright Plautus (c. 250–184

1 2 3 4 5

Würtenberger 1982. Flaig 1992; Elbern 1986; cf. Introduction in Szidat 1996: 9. Le Goff 1993: 8. OLD 1982: 2110; Georges 1918: 3323; Mayer-Maly 1961: 1132. Walde & Hofmann 1982: vol. 2, 847: usurpatio known since Cicero, usurpator late Latin, usurpativus since Tertullian; Etymologisches Rechtswörterbuch 1995: 424.

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B.C.).6 Later specific meanings and fields of usage can be illustrated with significant examples. The general meaning was the action of taking (possession) without legal claim. Usurpatio of something could include objects or property in a material sense, but also the arbitrary or unjustified assumption of an honour or title.7 An example for the illegitimate use of a title can be found in Velleius Paterculus in his Historia Romana 2.28.2, where he objects to Sulla’s use of the title “dictator” that had long been unused: Dictator creatus cuius honoris usurpatio per annos CXX intermissa.8 Stronger than the criticism of the use of a title is the allegation that power in general had been appropriated illegitimately.9 In antique use, the connotation of “lack of a legal claim” was not an integral aspect of the term. Usurpatio could also mean the assertion of a right or privilege by the persistent exercise of it, as for example the exercise of right of way (usurpatio itineris, Livy 41.23.14), or the practising of customs, etc. (hanc diutina usurpatione formatam consuetudinem, Valerius Maximus 2.3.1). Consequently usurpatio could also signify the manner of using words or names in speech, i.e. utterance of them or basically any repeated use of the name. Livy mentions that Scipio ordered that Hasdrubal should not be called “king”, despite his royal bearing: regalem animum in se esse […] taciti iudicarent: vocis usurpatione abstinerent (Livy 27.19.5). In this metaphorical sense, usurpatio was applied to describe a way of speaking or discussing. It meant to make frequent use of, i.e. repeat the name of someone, to call habitually (by a name), and to bring up a topic in discussion repeatedly.10 With this meaning of bringing to speech, it could also mean to invoke the memory of someone or something. Cicero used the formulation rerum gestarum memoriam usurpare to indicate the very action of remembering.11 Another metaphorical sense of usurpatio was to grasp with the eyes or ears;12 however, the most specific use of the term was in the sphere of law.

6 Cf. unde meae usurpant aures sonitum? (Plautus, Casina 631); advenio ex […] Asia atque Arabia, quas ego neque oculis nec pedibus umquam usurpavi meis (Plautus, Trinummus 846). 7 OLD 1982: 2110. 8 Wickert 1954: 2119–2123. 9 OLD 1982: 2110. 10 OLD 1982: 2110, s.v. “usurpatio” 5b/c. 11 Cicero, Oratio post reditum in senatu 37: sed unus frater, qui in me pietate filius, consiliis parens, amore, ut erat, frater inventus est, squalore et lacrimis et cotidianis precibus desiderium mei nominis renovari et rerum gestarum memoriam usurpari coegit. 12 Cicero’s metaphorical use of usurpatio in: De officiis 2,40 and Brutus 250; cf. OLD 1982: 2110, s.v. “usurpation” 6.

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2.2 Legal Concepts of Usurpation: The Appropriation of Property as usurpatio strictu sensu Usurpatio and usurpare appeared in Roman Law as technical terms with a very specific meaning, the act of taking possession without legal claim. This connotation remained static over centuries, even millennia.13 Julius Paulus, the important Roman jurist of the third century A.D., was the first to formulate the difference between the language use of jurists and non-jurists. He distinguished the narrow legal meaning from the rhetoricians’ unspecific use: Usurpatio est usucapionis interruptio: oratores autem usurpationem frequentem usum vocant.14 To Paulus, the contradiction between the word’s general use by the public and as a forensic terminus technicus needed no further explanation and was accepted as referring to two spheres of public life. Exact definitions and the limited sphere of precise application led to the fact that the narrow meaning remained unchanged for centuries. To Paulus it was of no interest whether in colloquial Latin the use of the term was more frequent, but had a lot more connotations when used in schools of rhetoric, or in art and literature (above 2.1). However, his formulation usurpatio est usucapionis interruptio shaped legal thought which extended into modern legislation and judicature (see below 4), as it became official Roman Law when Emperor Theodosius II had it incorporated into the Corpus Iuris Civilis (D 41.3.2). The importance of the narrow legal sense is that under certain circumstances the loss of property may be independent from the pre-existing rights to that property.15 An even rarer and more specific use of usurpatio derives from ancient Roman matrimonial customs. The ius trinoctii implies that, as soon as a woman stays in the household of a man’s family for one year, she is subject to his conjugal manus. If she spends, however, three consecutive nights deliberately (usurpandi causa) outside the household, she avoids the usus which would otherwise lead to her entry into the man’s manus. The most common reference is the passage in the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius (c. 125–180 A.D.), which cites as an example for calendar calculations the case of a woman who was not successful in her usurpatio – emancipating herself – because the period was six hours short.16 The even more specific meaning of usucapionis interruptio, interruption of the legal period to gain legal right to an object or property (adverse possession), remained – once formulated and laid down in 13 14 15 16

Pagliaro 1992: 1151f.; OLD 1982: 2110. Commentary preserved in the Corpus Iuris Civilis (D 41.3.2); cf. Mayer-Maly 1961: 1132f. Mayer-Maly 1961: 1132f. Gellius 3, 2, 12f.: Q. quoque Mucium iureconsultum dicere solitum legi non esse usurpatam mulierem, quae, cum Kalendis Ianuariis apud virum matrimonii causa esse coepisset, ante diem IV. 13 Kalendas Ianuarias sequentes usurpatum isset: non enim posse impleri trinoctium, quod abesse a viro usurpandi causa ex duodecim tabulis deberet, quoniam tertiae noctis posteriores sex horae alterius anni essent, qui inciperet ex Kalendis. Cf. Sohm 1949: 505; Lind 2008: 41–45.


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juridical corpora – an unchangeable detail in legal discussion, although its operation for forensic practice is not clear. The periods for successful usucapio were already stated in the laws of the Twelve Tables17 and even Cicero referred to them.18 Little remains of the theoretical discourse on this topic; for example, the work of Appius Claudius Caecus De Usurpatione is known only by name.19 In addition to the strict definitions of usurpatio, there were also moral and political connotations in the semantic field of law. Valerius Maximus rejects any legitimate access to power by a usurper in his formulation audaci usurpatione imperii (Valerius Maximus 7.3.9). The meaning of “exercising rule without legal claim” was to become the most common denotation in modern language use. In Late Antiquity it was not necessarily applied to those who took over government power without legitimation. The Greek term tyrannis (Gr. τυραννίς) was used also, and describes the negative assessment, in the moral and political sense, of a king or political leader, but does not indicate any deficiency in legitimation.20 In Late Antiquity especially, tyrannis took on the role of describing incidents or persons challenging the emperor.21 In the Historia Augusta, the late Roman collection of biographies of Roman Emperors who reigned between c. 117 and 284 A.D., and their challengers, the terms usurpatio and tyrannis were used interchangeably.22 Despite these many variants, the meaning of “usage of goods or concepts without entitlement” prevailed in Late Roman texts.

3. Usurpator and Usurpatio in Medieval Nomenclature The diversity of literary and colloquial connotations in Antiquity was largely retained as a literary heritage with certain alterations in the Middle Ages. The important church authority Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) uses, for example, the word usurpatio even for a philological description: he sees the rhetorical figure of the metaphor as a “usurped translation”, admitting that the word can be used in a most figurative sense itself.23 The implication of a word being used in the wrong circumstance echoes (and derives from) probably one of the best-known phrases 17 Kaser 1971: 423. 18 Cicero, Topica 4,23: usus auctoritas fundi biennium, certarum rerum annus est usus. For usurpation as interruption of usucaptio (cf. German: Unterbrechung einer Ersitzungslage), see Mayer-Maly 1961: 1132. 19 Mayer-Maly 1961: 1132. 20 Berve 1967: 2, 476–479; Nicolet 1990: 181–205; Libero 1996. 21 Neri 1997: 71–73. 22 Historia Augusta, Vita Probi 6: quidem tyrannus sibi usurpasset imperium; cf. Paschoud 1997: 87–89. 23 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum libri XX, cap. 37,2. In: MPL 82: col. 112C: “Metaphora est verbi alicujus usurpata translatio, […]”.

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containing the verb “to usurp” in the Judeo-Christian world: non usurpabis nomen Domini Dei tui frustra quia non erit inpunitus qui super re vana nomen eius adsumpserit – “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Deut 5,11).24 As a phrase in the second of the Ten Commandments,25 it was well known in daily life through regular repetition in liturgy. Thus, the term gained importance in theological and ecclesiastical writings. In writings concerned with moral and ethical categories, it remained one of the most important concepts dealing with illegitimate rule. The Benedictine abbot Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel (d. after 817) explained the meaning of the word tyrannis as usurpatio. In his widely read commentary on the Regula Benedicti he discusses the meaning of the original phrase used by Benedict that the abbot should support the weak and not exercise super sanas tyrannidem (cap. 27.6). He states that tyrannis was the Greek name for the unrightful usurpation of a kingdom, undue honour, unrightful power, haughty action, undeserved dignity, being of bloated pride, and having an arrogant heart.26 The narrow legal meaning, dating from Antiquity, of the appropriation of goods and property without entitlement prevailed throughout the Middle Ages. The importance of the conception elaborated upon in Roman Law was increased, as it also became a category in Canon Law, which was of more importance in most spheres of medieval life. A phrase Pope Nicolaus I (820–867) used in a letter to the Byzantine emperor Michael was to become one of the most important formulations regulating the inferences between the ecclesiastical and the secular sphere: non usurpare que sacerdotibus Domini solum conueniant. Of course, the Biblical allusion to the Ten Commandments (non usurpabis [...]) is evident. As papal letters were assembled into collections and read, particularly pointed formulations were received and absorbed throughout the Christian literary world. One of the references may be found in the argumentation of the early scholastic writer Manegold of Lautenbach (c. 1030–c. 1103), who detested those qui seculari ambitu sacras dignitates usurpant. 27 Nicolaus’ formulation gained legal status, as it found a prominent place

24 Deut 5,11. Vulgata version by Saint Jerome (347–420 A.D.) and King James translation (1611). 25 While it appears in Deut 5,11, the formulation usurpabis does not appear in the parallel tradition of the Ten Commandments in Ex 20,3 and Ex 34,11. 26 Smaragdus S. Michaelis, Expositio in regulam S. Benedicti. In: MPL 102: coll. 853f.: cap. 27: “Tyrannidis Graecum nomen est. Intelligitur enim usurpatio regni injusta, honor indebitus, potestas injusta, actio superba, ordinatio iniqua, de animo tumido et corde procedens superbo.” 27 Manegoldus Lautenbacensis, Ad Gebehardum. In: MGH Libelli de lite 1, cap. 53, pag. 403, lin. 25: LIII: “Quam detestabiles sint qui seculari ambitu sacras dignitates usurpant.”


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within the first distinctions of the Decretum Gratiani, and was accessible in all regions of Latin Christianity – and legally binding until 1917.28 “Usurpation” of offices and titles was one of the main reasons for excommunication within the Church hierarchy throughout the Middle Ages and in Early Modern times. If it was possible to attain ecclesiastical titles without permission, it would damage the image of all those who held similar titles. Therefore one may frequently find the sentence of exclusion of usurpers from office voiced by co-bishops or co-archbishops. The regulation to excommunicate unconfirmed holders of office as a general legal practice was affirmed in the official statutes of synods. The Synod of Pavia in 850, where excommunication was established as the general consequence for persistent and obstinate usurpation, may serve as an example.29 Uncontrolled succession to official positions would ultimately lead to the loss of papal co-determination and the capacity to assign candidates. The many strict passages in the Decretum Gratiani (especially Cap. 7 q. 2f.) were based on the legal view that exercising an office without apostolic legitimation was regarded as a sin. Incrimination of successors who had no consent from the pontifical authorities was obviously a way to strengthen the interests of the papal Curia.30 At times, before the Pope was able to exercise his claim to install bishops in churches and call unwanted candidates “usurpers”, it was in the interest of the Frankish kings to control the exercise of these offices. This awareness can be seen in Charlemagne’s emphatic address to the Frankish clergy. In his admonitio generalis from 789 he forbade all clerics the transgression – and usurpation – of the defined limits (of parishes and dioceses).31 The formulation used goes back to Late Antique canons of the second Council of Carthago.32 28 D.10 c.5 (Corpus Iuris Canonici, vol. 1, ed. Friedberg, col. 19): “Item Nicolaus Papa. [I. in epistola ad Michaelem Imperatorem, cuius initum est: “Proposueramus.”] Imperium uestrum suis publicae rei cotidianis amministrationibus debet esse contentum, non usurpare que sacerdotibus Domini solum conueniant.” 29 Capitularia regum Francorum, 2 Capitularia Hlotharii I. et regum Italiae. Additamenta, ed. A. Boretius & V. Krause, 1890–1897, Additamenta ad capitularia Hlotharii I et Regum Italiae Capit. 2, cap. 228, pag. 121: “qui eius usurpativo fruitur officio, et si ab hac noluerint se temeritate compescere, excommunicentur.” Cf. Niemeyer & van de Kieft & Burgers 2002: 1367. 30 Naz 1965a: coll. 1388f. 31 MGH Karoli Magni capitularia, cap. 1, pag. 56, 789 Mar. 23: “Omnibus. Item in eodem de prohibenda avaritia, ut nullus alienos fines usurpet vel terminos patrum transcendat.” 32 Corpus iuris germanici antiqui 1824: 53; cf. most recently Karl-Georg Schon [last accessed 1.5.2010]: “Aurelius episcopus dixit: Avariciae cupiditas qui rerum omnium malorum matrem esse nemo quis dubitat. Proinde inhibenda est, ne quis alienos fines usurpet aut per praemium terminos patrum statutos transcendit.” Pope Callistus had written on the subject: Let no one trespass upon the boundaries of another, nor presume to judge or excommunicate one belonging to another’s parish (“[…] Nemo quoque alterius terminos usurpet nec alterius parochianum iudicare aut excommunicare praesumpserit.” Ep. 2.3, MPL 130: 132–133).

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Not only Pope and king, but other institutions, too, had a strong interest in preventing “usurpations”. In the case of monasteries, bishoprics, or other ecclesiastical organisations, it was more the matter of usurpation of property, rather than office, that was prosecuted as sinful “usurpation”. Such institutions did not have any direct possibility of regaining illegally appropriated property by force, so they depended on the executive action of other authorities after their legal claim had been acknowledged in court. Armed warriors led by noblemen could easily occupy defenceless property. It was therefore important to have the action of appropriation recognised as treacherous behaviour and henceforth a punishable act. This can be traced in numerous charters, privileges, and warranties, especially royal ones, where the issuing authority promised to punish any act of “usurpation”. Thus the term appeared in standard formulas in the narratio or sanctio of royal charters from the early Middle Ages on.33 Documents would state that an authority punished or threatened to punish the “usurpation” of property. An example would be King Zwentibold, who used the term usurpative to label the methods of a count seeking to get hold of property belonging to the Church of Trier in 898.34 This practice was certainly continued in the late Middle Ages.35 In general, the king or emperor would affirm ownership of property or grant property to institutions such as monasteries or bishoprics. To protect their property, both movables and immovables, against illegal appropriation, the secular office of the advocatus/advocatia (German: Vogt) was created, but it was often the holders of these positions who notoriously abused these rights themselves. Privileges were issued to

33 An example in a narratio in a charter of Louis the German dated 12.4.870: “Ille vero nulla ratione eas sibi usurpare potuit ad possidendum, sed concredidit sibi de illis, quod eas iniuste tenere voluisset, et reddidit tunc eas illiso fratribus in praesentiam nostram.” Ludovicus II, Diplomata (MGH; Urkunden Ludwigs des Deutschen, Karlmanns und Ludwigs des Jüngeren, ed. P. Kehr, 1934) no. 131 183; an example in a sanctio in a charter king Louis II dated 3.6.870: “Quisquis autem successorum nostrorum imperatorum vel alterius cuiusque dignitatis aut conditionis hominum contra huius imperialis praecepti seriem in toto vel in parte agere temptaverit et de his omnibus quicquam auferre vel minuere aut ab aliquo sibi quocumque modo dandum postulare praesumpserit sibique usurpare vel vindicare quolibet ingenio conatus extiterit aut illi super his omnibus vel eis, quibus ipsa horum aliquid contulerit, molestiam aliquam inferre praesumpserit […]”. (MGH Urkunden der Karolinger 4, ed. K. Wanner 1994), no. 51 166; the uncommon use of the term “usurpare” in the charters of Louis might add to the presumption, that the charter was forged by later scribes. 34 Zwentiboldi et Ludowici Infantis Diplomata (MGH Urkunden der deutschen Karolinger 4, Berlin 1960) Aachen 13 May, 898, no. 20, p. 55: “cleroque sibi commisso nesciente huiuscemodi usurpative praecariae invitus [sc. leg. inviti] assensum prebuerunt.” 35 MGH Federici Diplomata 1,3, no. 760, p. 313, Dole 1178, Sept. 6: “jure et protestate, quam sibi Martellus de Maille … usurpaverat et habere volebat […]”; Frederick III, 30 July 1442 Frankfurt. In: Chmel 1859: no. 825: “statuimus et imperiali edicto sanccimus, ne aliquis advocatiam eiusdem loci sibi usurpet.”


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protect from abuse the guardians who had the right of advocacy: ne aliquis aliquod ius advocatie sibi usurpare presumat.36 The significant number of such protective documents in the Middle Ages made the meaning of appropriation or illegal use of property the best-known connotation of usurpatio. The narrow legal connotation of usucapionis interruptio lost importance as long as scholarly jurisprudence was not practised intensively. When Roman Law had its learned renaissance at the law schools in Bologna, this narrow sense found entry into erudite commentaries.37 In Canon Law, especially as a result of distribution in the most important collection, the Decretum Gratiani (c. 1140) usurpatio retained the meaning of a clearly defined criminal affair. The allegation of usurpatio became one of the most important in the juristic nomenclature concerning ecclesiastical rights or property being appropriated by temporal lords.38 In political confrontation as well as in theoretical discourse, usurpatio was used to delegitimise factual and successful exercise of power, indicating that this power is held without entitlement. In this sense, any potentate extending his property could be labelled a “usurper”. If a protagonist was deemed usurpator et invasor his accession to the rights was refused, even if the rule exercised was accepted by the subjects. The chronicler Gislebertus (d. 1224) notes that count Baldwin V, Count of Hainaut, asked for a sentence given by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa to be clarified, whether it was at all possible to gain the right of ownership of possessions held over a longer period of time: quesivit super illis, qui possessiones aliorum iniuste usurpant et eas per aliquot annos vel tempus iniuste detinent. The emperor confirmed the impossibility of property acquisition without legal entitlement, rejecting the category of “adverse possession” known in Roman law.39 Another case shows that it was not only the sum of single material possessions that could be usurped, but power, in the form of territorial rule, as such: Usque ad Rhenum regni gubernacula usurpare, as it is phrased in the Annales Bertiniani.40 A distinctly novel development in the concept of usurpation may be perceived in the chronicle of Johannes of Victring (c. 1270–1347). He listed the countries that were held by king of Bohemia Ottokar II Přemysl (1232–1278) as the result of his military and political abilities. Besides the crown lands Ottokar had by right of inheritance, the 36 MGH Federici Diplomata 1,1, no. 48, p. 79–82, Besançon 15 February 1153: “[…] eandem advocatiam sibi usurpatam cassavimus statuentes, […].” 37 Casentino 1900. 38 Naz 1965a: coll. 1388–1391 and below 3.2. 39 Gislebertus, Chronicon Hanoniense, MGH SS rer. Germ. 29, pag. 180. 40 Annales Bertiniani MGH SS rer. Germ. 5, Pars II auctore Prudentio, a. 840, pag. 24: “840. Imperator autem nativitatis atque apparitionis dominicae festum, sed et beatae semper virginis Mariae purificationem in urbe Pictavorum caelebrans, motus Aquitanicos componere satagebat, cum interim, propinquante quadragesimale observatione, sinistrum quippiam illi nunciatum est, Hlodowicum videlicet, filium suum, consueta iam dudum insolentia usque ad Rhenum regni gubernacula usurparet.”

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chronicler accepted that the entitlement to territories through occupation resulted in what amounted to titles, but that they were unacceptable and empty: usurpacionis et invasionis titulo.41 The abundant use and multifaceted connotations of the term usurpatio led to widespread borrowing of the word by other languages.

4. Usurpation as a Modern Political and Moral Category 4.1 European Languages From Latin as its language of origin, the term and concept of usurpatio entered Europe’s modern languages with stable connotations, but also specific changes. It is not intended here to give a complete survey of the etymological history of the lexeme {usurp} in various European languages. However, it is important to highlight some specific aspects in order to indicate the spectrum of possible meanings. In Italian, the verb form was used by Dante (1265–1321) in his Divina Commedia with the meaning “godere, usare od occupare senza merito o indegnamente”.42 The forms “usurpatore” and “usurpazione” do not appear until 1336 (used by Giovanni Boccaccio), signifying not only “una violazione della cosa sagrata ovvero usurpazione” but also “sacrilegio”. This means that a derogatory aspect prevails.43 The meaning of “illegitimate appropriation” never disappeared, as an example from Spanish-Italian diplomatic correspondence in the fifteenth century shows.44 In French the first usage of “usurper” can be traced back to 1340 with the meaning of “prendre possession par l’usage”.45 “Usurpation” appears in 1374 in the translation of the Rationale divinorum officium of Durandus by Jean Golein in a strict ecclesiastical and Canon Law context.46 However, the meaning of “emploi (d’un mot)” that was still in use in 1539 and around 1550 cannot be confirmed for later 41 Johannes of Victring, Liber Certarum historiarum, ed. F. Schneider (MGH, Scriptores rer. Germ. 36), vol. 1, cap. 2, pag. 271, lin. 10: “Exacta curia rex Ulmam venit et Heinricum purgravium de Nuerenberg dirigit ad Ottakarum, poscentem suo nomine et regni Austriam, Stiriam, Karinthiam et Carniolam, quas iniuste usurpacionis et invasionis titulo possidebat; declarantem eciam, quod regnum Bohemie et marchionatum Moravie sibi propter contemptum et contumaciam abiudicaverat sentencia principum et decretum.” 42 Dante, Paradiso 15.142–144: “Dietro li [sc. King Conrad of Hohenstaufen] andai incontro a la nequizia // di quella legge il cui popolo usurpa, // per colpa d’i pastor, vostra giustizia.” (“I followed him to war against the evil // of that law whose adherents have usurped, // this, through your Pastors’ fault - your just possessions.”; cf. Quarta 1992: 1151; Cortelazzo & Zolli & Cortelazzo 1999) 43 Cortelazzo & Zolli & Cortelazzo 1999. 44 Regesta Imperii XIV 2 no. 8989 27 December 1498 Ocanya: “de usurpare quello de li soi vicini.” 45 Rey et al. 1992: 2203. 46 Today in Paris BNF 437, fol. 336r.


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stages of the language. Despite the decline of this special meaning, the concept of “usurpation” remained flexible, and was to become, in modern metaphorical language use, a categorical distinction for the classification of terms and concepts; thus it can be used in such a sense.47 The word may have entered the English language as late as the fifteenth century.48 The phrase “my lege Lord calde by auntreu [untrue] name Harry of Lancastre usurpur of Ynglond”49 was used in the so-called “confession” of Richard, Earl of Cambridge, when he tried to exculpate himself from the allegation of treason against Henry V in 1415.50 This self-reflective tract contained the notion of Henry V being a “usurper” like his father Henry IV Bolingbroke, who came to the throne when he captured and overthrew Richard II in 1400. Illegitimacy here seems inheritable, and Henry V had still no right to the crown that would have belonged to the deposed Richard II or his descendants. During the period of civil war in the fifteenth century, the Wars of the Roses, “usurper” appeared frequently in political propaganda and in parliamentary speeches. In one of the first parliamentary sessions with the newly enthroned Lancastrian Edward IV in 1461, the Yorkist predecessor Henry IV was referred to as a king “takyng upon hym usurpously the coroune and name of kyng”.51 According to another speech read before Parliament, Henry IV was said to have disguised his usurpation to feign legality.52 Despite the many variant connotations in use that transgress the context of English monarchy,53 William Shakespeare draws attention to the fact that, by his time, “usurper” had lost its distinct legal background, and 47 “La prédominance de la couleur aux dépens du dessin serait une usurpation du relatif sur l’absolu, de l’apparence passagère sur la forme permanente, de l’impression physique sur l’empire des âmes” (Blanc 1876: 573). 48 OED 1989: vol. 11, 480f. 49 Nicolas 1970: Appendix 20; Strohm 1998: 88; The first literary use of “usurpation”. In: Leyerle & Shawver & Leyerle 2002: 1387–1388: “Their name [sc. The devils] of godliheed th[e]y han by usurpacion [… ]” (lib. 109, v. 108, p. 77). 50 Despite the admittance of his deeds he was executed on 5 August 1415; Strohm 1998: 87. 51 Declaracio tituli regii et restitucio ad eundem, speech held at the English Parliament in the presence of Edward IV, 4 November 1461, Given Wilson 2005: membrane 3, art. 9: “and the same Kyng Richard soo beyng in prison and lyvyng, usurped and intruded upon the roiall power, estate, dignite, preemynence, possessions and lordship aforeseid, takyng upon hym usurpously the coroune and name of kyng and lord of the same reame and lordship”; cf. OED 11: 482 s.v. “usurpously”. 52 Speech of Richard Plantagenet, commonly called Duke of York 7 October 1460, Given Wilson 2005: membrane 4, art. 17: “And over that, that his said saying was oonly to shadowe and colour fraudulently his said unrightwise and violent usurpacion, and by that moyen to abuse disceyvably the people stondyng aboute hym.” Transl. by Chris Given Wilson: “And furthermore, that his said words were only to conceal and fraudulently disguise his said unlawful and violent usurpation, and by those means deceitfully to mislead the people around him.” 53 Cf. OED 1989: vol. 11, 480f.

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might be used strictly in the sense of political propaganda by either side. He plays on the ambiguity of the word and the fact that the allegation could be used against either side in a conflict in “Life and Death of King John” (written in the mid 1590s), applying it to the far-away past of King John, who ruled 1199–1216.54 In German the term first appeared in the meaning of “appropriation” (Aneignung) in the narrative of Jacob Rathgeb in 1592.55 Since the seventeenth century, the term has been used in the combination of “Usurpation und Länder-Raub” as “völkerrechtswidrige Inbesitzmassnahme und Souveränitätsanmassung im Gegensatz zur legitimen Eroberung von Territorien (occupatio)”. 56 Various differentiated connotations occurring in other European languages entered active use, as demonstrated by various dictionaries. An example would be the Zedler Grosses vollständiges Universallexikon Lexicon giving for “usurper” as synonyms the varieties invasor, iniustus possessor, or detentor. As an amendment we find the overall formula imported from Latin dictionaries and legal commentaries: “Und endlich heist usurpatum überhaupt alles, was man durch den Gebrauch erlanget”.57 This meaning, without any negative connotation, did not gain general approval and lost importance.58 With regard to the usage in Slavic cultures, we find attestations in these languages at a later date, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Czech we find the derived forms usurpace, usurpátor, usurpátorka co-occurring with the native term samozvanec (“intruder, usurper”) from the seventeenth century onwards.59 Interestingly though, the dictionary example from the PSJČ (Handbook of Czech Language) uses the phrase “The guilt of Richard II justifies fully his punishment, but not the usurpation of the throne on the part of Henry IV”, thus explaining a foreign term with a foreign example.60 In Greek and the nomenclature 54 William Shakespeare, Life and Death of King John, II, 1: “France. Before the walls of Angiers: [Enter, on one side, the ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA and Forces; on the other, PHILIP, King of France, LOUIS, CONSTANCE, ARTHUR, and Forces.] KING JOHN: Alack, thou dost usurp authority. / KING PHILIP: Excuse,—it is to beat usurping down. / ELINOR: Who is it thou dost call usurper, France? / CONSTANCE: Let me make answer;— thy usurping son.” 55 Rathgeb 1592: 68. Also ist es auch ein Manier der vsurpation, wann durch ein zu vil freygebiges vrtheil vil sich der sachen daran sie wol ein theil haben mögen vnwürdig geacht vnd selbige einer kleinen anzahl Münch zu gemessen underm schein daß sie sagen solches gehör vnd gebür ihnen allein; Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch 6, 1983: 65–68; Etymologisches Rechtswörterbuch 1995: 423f. 56 Zedler 1747: 941f.; Etymologisches Rechtswörterbuch 1995: 424. 57 Zedler 1747: 942f. 58 Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch 1983: vol. 6, 65–69. 59 PSJČ 1935–1957: vol. 8, 651f. 60 Vina Richarda II: “ospravedlňuje tu sice úplně trest jeho, nikoli však usurpaci trůnu se strany Jindřicha IV. Pfleg. [Karel z Anjou] donutil zdráhavého papeže, že přece jen legitimoval výslovně jeho usurpaci říšského vikářství nad Toskánou. Šus.”. PSJČ 1935–1957: vol. 8: 651.


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of Byzantine history, the term “usurper” is not historical, but entered academic discourse as a descriptive and hermeneutic term.61 Similarly Polish uzurpacja and uzurpator are simply parallel to the term bezprawne.62 However, in language spheres unrelated to the Latin heritage, such as those in the Islamic world, independent nomenclature had to be developed to cover this ample semantic field.63 Generally, usage of the term “usurpation” in various modern languages reveals contemporary conceptions of legitimacy and the order of the world, which merit more ample reflection. 4.2 Usurpatio vs. Ordo legitimus In debates about legitimacy, the term “usurpation” is used like an antonym of “ordered polity”. Part of the accusation of “usurpatio” is the idea that it would contradict, even destroy, a given legitimate order. Nevertheless, it does threaten the order of the bonum commune. Early evidence for this is the regulation in the Codex Theodosianus 6,5,1, going back to an imperial decree of 383: “Concerning the protection and upkeep of the (honorary) grades that we intend to protect, there is nothing so reprehensible as the usurpative assumption for the selfish reason of ambition.”64 According to this law, usurpation threatens the stability of the social order which the emperor himself was responsible for supervising. In this sense, usurpation of a status had the quality of sacrilege, because an ambitious pretender to an office ignored the cursus honorum and the importance of merits. Overriding both the mechanisms of merit and promotion, as well as the grace of the emperor, any usurper of offices became a rival to the emperor and was a potential danger to him, as well as to the social order.65 Certainly the highest office of the emperor could be usurped as well. If attempts to take over power failed, or emperors were declared usurpers posthumously, this could lead to the reversal of their governmental acts (recissio actorum), and even the destruction of their monuments and buildings (damnatio memoriae).66 This idea of acting against the overall structure was certainly present for authors considering ecclesiastical conceptions of order and 61 62 63 64

Carroll 2005. Kopaliński 1975. Lewis 1984: 284; Drews 2009: 20. Codex Theodosianus 6,5,1 (383): UT DIGNITATUM ORDO SERVET(UR) IMPPP. GRAT(IANUS), VAL(EN)TINIANUS ET THEOD(OSIUS) AAA. (AD CLEAR)CHUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Nihil est tam iniuriosum in co(nser)vandis et custodiendis gradibus dignitatu(m) quam usurpationis ambitio. Perit enim om(nis) praerogativa meritorum, si absque respectu (et con)templatione vel qualitate etiam provect(ionis e)meritae custodiendi honoris locus praes(umitur) potius quam tenetur, ut aut potioribus eripia(tur) id quod est debitum, aut inferioribus prosit (q)uod videtur indebitum. 65 Szidat 1997; Schlinkert 1996: 101–103. 66 Cancik & Hitzl 2003: 176; Flower 2006.

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Church hierarchies. Attributed to Pope Innocence I (401–417) is a formulation, which had a strong impact, in a letter to the Macedonian bishops Rufus and Eusebius, emphasising the importance of legitimate ordination in times of heresy and conversions of priests. He argues that what is helpful in times of distress must cease in orderly times, because ordo legitimus is one thing and usurpatio another.67 This phrase entered various anthologies and was used in theological correspondence, for example, the argument in a tract by Hincmar of Reims (806–882),68 or Ivo of Chartres (c. 1040–1115).69 It gained its firm position in Church Law as Gratian’s Decretum C.1 q.1 c.41: Quod pro necessitate temporis statutum est, cessare pariter quod urgebat, quia alius est ordo legitimus, alia usurpatio ad presens fieri tempus inpellit.70 In his tract on the moral education of princes (“De morali principis institutione“) from ca. 1264 the Dominican brother Vincence of Beauvais explained the very restricted possibilities, how usurped rule could become legitimate government. In chapter 4 with the title “Under what right it is allowed, to retain kingdoms that were once usurped” he writes: “As it is not possible – as already being stated in temporal law – to use (legitimately) stolen things, some ask, on which right, as previously said, modern kings hold their property that was once usurped by their ancestors or taken with force. To this there are four factors, that may stabilize the kingdoms in the hands of them rightfully, that is the orderly disposal of God, the consent and election of the people, the legal approbation by the Church, and that practice done in good faith for very long time.” Vincence of Beauvais certainly searched for a solution of the problem that at some stage of a kingdom, there was illegitimate and forceful usurpation. For the simple welfare of the state, it is better to accept this usurpation as lawful power to avoid further violence. With the idea, that consensus vel electio may legitimize existing power-relationships, he utters as

67 MPL 130, col. 718 Innocentius I: “Ergo quod necessitas pro remedio reperit cessante necessitate, debet utique cessare pariter quod urgebat, quia alius est ordo legitimus, alia est usurpatio, quam ad praesens tempus fieri impellit.” Cf. also Innocentius I, Praefatio Epistola XVII MPL 20, col. 524: “Verum, eodem papa praemonente (Ibid.), distinguendus alius ordo legitimus, alia usurpatio.” 68 Hincmarus Rhemensis, De praedestinatione die et libero arbitrio posterior dissertatio adversus Gothescalcum, cap. 37, MPL 125, col. 413: “Ergo quod necessitas pro remedio reperit, cessante necessitate debet utique cessare pariter quod urgebat, quia alius est ordo legitimus, alia usurpatio quam ad praesens fieri tempus impellit.” 69 Ivo Carnotensis, Decretum (Prologue), MPL 161, col. 53. 70 Decretum Gratiani (Corpus Iuris Canonici, vol. 1, ed. Friedberg, col. 347); cf. also cap. 1 q. 7 d.a.c.7: “Cessante necessitate, debet cessare, quod urgebat”; and Innocent III’s remarks in Etsi Christus, preserved at X 2.24.26: “[...] quia cessante causa cessat effectus.”


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the first medieval scholar a proto-democratic but modern opinion which would take centuries to be fully developed.71 The fundamental opposition between ordo and usurpatio was established, neglecting the question of who had installed this ordo in the first place. Usurpation, however, could never be thought of as being part of a legitimate and ordered system. No ruler could admit to having come to power by means of usurpation, the title “usurper” only being ascribed to opposing parties or by later historiography. The last ruler to be labelled with this title in modern historiography may be Vlad I Uzurpatorul, ruler of Wallachia (ante 1394–139772). Accounts in which usurpation appears as the habitual way of gaining power are either anecdotal or refer to mythical societies. It is, for example, ascribed to the Khazarian Khagans by Arab authors of the Middle Ages. Rule would pass to the usurper after the act of a “young pretender to the power who kills the ruling – even sacral king”.73 Thus, the governing ruler would only be in power as long as he kept his potential murderers under control, knowing that some day a violent successor would end his rule. Although it was already known to Livy, the so-called “Golden Bough motif” (named after James George Frazer’s magnum opus on the mythology of monarchy) never played a role in political disputes.74 Virtue, strength, and being the fittest in a certain field could not sustain the claim of a usurper when he overthrew a set of legitimate rights. 4.3 Usurpation as Political and Moral Incrimination As a political or moral category, “usurpator” and “usurpation” was applied constantly in arguments, a small number of which shall be highlighted. In Late Antiquity, the terms were mainly used to demarcate protagonists in the phase when they were challenging the ruler. Once successful military elites accepted the rule – pivotal men changing sides – the term was mainly applicable to new attempts at a coup d’état.75 However, the debate on usurpation is ultimately a debate on legitimate rule, and hence central to political theory in general. A few aspects shall be highlighted here. During the “usurpation mania” of the third century – a time of extremely frequent succession by violent overthrow of the ruling emperor – political 71 Vincence of Beauvais/Vincentius Belvacensis 1995: 22f.: Quo iure regna quondam usurpata liceat retinere. Cum autem, ut dicit etiam lex humana, res furtive uel ui possesse non possint usu capi, querunt nonnulli, quo iure regna, sicut predictum est, ab antecessoribus suis usurpata uel ui possessa teneant reges moderni. Ad hoc autem quatuor concurrunt, que in manu eorum eadem regna iure stabiliunt, uidelicet ordinationis diuine dispensatio, populi consensus uel electio, ecclesie approbatio, longissimi temporis cum bona fide prescriptio. 72 Cf. Rezachevici 2001: 89f. 73 Petrukhin 2004: 273. 74 Frazer 1917: 382–407. 75 Flaig 1997: 15f.

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debates were also held in Late Antique historiography and legal texts.76 Apart from the incrimination of rulers during their time on the throne as tyrants and usurpers in propagandistic texts, the extreme position was the introduction of the notion of the tempus tyrannicum amnesty as a political method in the fourth century: after the usurper died or was deposed, his acts were declared illegitimate and amnesty was granted to the victims.77 The general question raised is whether usurpation could have become a legitimate and generally approved form of rule in the Roman Empire. This conceivable development was interrupted, at all events, by the Germanic invasions and the convulsions resulting from the migration of nations, all of which changed the frame of reference so that the idea of legitimate rule (over territory? over Romans? over armies?) lost ground. Judgements by contemporary elites could be undecided. For example, Agilulf’s rule as Langobard king (590–615) was constantly criticised as usurpatory, and he later became characterised as the usurper par excellence.78 Great precautions were taken to avoid criticism when the Carolingians replaced the Merovingians as rulers in the Frankish empire. As the new dynasty came to power in 751, the question arose of whether institutional mediation (as, for example, coronation by the pope) could overrule the fact that the virtue of being born into the Merovingian dynasty had been ignored.79 However, Charlemagne’s assumption of the imperial title in the year 800 was not disapproved of as usurpation by the Franks or Italians. Criticism came only from Byzantium, where empress Irene and her successor Nicephorus I disagreed with the Carolingian use of the Augustus-title. Establishing a clear distinction in the political and moral nomenclature of legitimacy of rule was accomplished by Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274). In De regimine principum (The Governance of Rulers), he considers monarchy to be the best form of government.80 Nevertheless he realises that a single ruler is easily corrupted, and that monarchy therefore has a tendency to turn into tyranny. Consequently, he does not seem to countenance revolution against a legitimate ruler who has become tyrannical (De regimine principium 6), but he maintains that the use of radical means, including tyrannicide, against a usurper may be justified. He was probably the first to distinguish the term tyrannus according to its relationship to the absence of legitimacy and the problem that the ruler cares for his bonum privatum and not the bonum commune. Aquinas distinguishes the tyrant quantum ad usum praelationis, who abuses his initially legitimate rule, and the tyrant quantum ad modum adqui-

76 77 78 79 80

Escribano Paño 2000: 221f. Ibid. 1996: 197–204. Kurze 1980: 447–456. Wood 2004: 26. Thomas Aquinas, De regimine principum, lib. 1, cap. 3.


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rendi prelationem, i.e. the usurper ruling without claim to power.81 A hundred years later, this distinction would be put more explicitly by the jurist Bartolus de Sassoferrato (d. 1357) with the formulations tyrannus ex defectu tituli and the tyrannus ex parte exercicii.82 However, Thomas Aquinas had already put forward the idea that secular rule by the Church could be considered usurpation. In his Summa Theologiae he explains that it would not be usurpation if secular rule by the Church was clearly in matters where secular rule was subordinate in general, or where secular rule acceded (voluntarily) to spiritual jurisdiction.83 This thought was expressed explicitly by Marsilius of Padua (d. 1342/43). He argued accurately that especially the legislative capacity held by the pope had no entitlement.84 In this he was supported by his Franciscan co-brother William of Ockham.85 The implication was that because of the absence of legitimate right, the usage of these rights was a condemnable act in itself. The first to value ordinate rule, no matter on what legitimate base it was founded, was Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). Although he uses usurpare in the sense of theft or misappropriation, 86 he describes the appropriation of power from the rightful prince as an act in accordance with reason of state. He comments in his Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio that no prudent person would criticise anyone for having employed any extraordinary means for the purpose of establishing a kingdom or constituting a republic (Discorsi I, 9, 36). Machiavelli goes so far as to state: “It is well that, when the act accuses him, the result should excuse

81 Thomas Aquinas, Sententiae II, dist 44, qu. 2, art. 2. 82 Bartolus de Sassoferrato, De Tyranno, ed. Quaglioni 184f.; cf. Miethke 2000: 36–42. 83 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2-II, q. 60 a.6 ad 3 (Opera Omnia ed. Busa 2, p. 605b): “potestas saecularis subditur spirituali sicut corpus animae, et ideo non es usurpatum iudicium, si spiritualis praelatus se intromittat de temporalibus quantum ad ea, in quibus subditur ei saecularis potestas vel quae ei a saeculari potestate relinquuntur.” Cf. Miethke 2000: 41. 84 Marsilius, Defensor Pacis, Dictio II, cap. 5, pag. 182, lin. 6: “Dixit ergo Bernardus, successorem apostolorum indigne sibi usurpare officium iudiciale. Defensor Pacis: Sive Adversvs Vsvrpatam Rom. Pontificis Ivrisdictionem, Marsilii Patavini Pro iniuctiss. & constantiss. Rom. Imperatore Lvdovico IV. Bavarico, a tribus Rom. Pontificibus indigna perpesso, Apologia Qua politicae & ecclesiasticae potestatis limites doctissime explicantur: circa annum Domini MCCCXXIV. conscripta. [...] Marsilius de Padua 1592.” Cf. Frech 1992: 196–211 and Miethke 2000: 265. 85 “Discipulus: Duplex est potestas cohercendi, scilicet ordinata et usurpata. Christus autem concessit Pilatum habuisse potestatem usurpatam quam tamen Pilatus forte credidit ordinatam sed in hoc erravit.” William of Ockham, Dialogus, Part 1, Book 6, chapters 1–15; cf. Miethke 2000: 226f. 86 Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, cap. 19: “Odioso lo fa sopra tutto, come io dissi, lo essere rapace e usurpatore della roba e delle donne de’ sudditi.”

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him.”87 Here Machiavelli describes not the rightful ruler in power, but the uomo virtuoso – his euphemism for the usurper who has no “benefit” of legitimately gained government. In “Il Principe” he distinguishes between principe naturale and principe nuovo. But this principe nuovo is not someone who conquers territories like an adventurous condottiere in search of glory and booty, a motivation Machiavelli disagrees with. His positive description of an agent – by others unkindly labelled “usurpator” – is nothing fundamentally new, but keeps within the traditional frame of the Fürstenspiegel (specula principum). In times of crisis it is the duty of the prince as innovator to maintain the order of the state with prudence.88 In a similar way, Jean Bodin (c. 1529–1598), jurist and influential political philosopher, rejected any kind of resistance against the ruler, but did not explicitly state the sources of legitimate rule. In his Les six livres de la République he allows the option of usurpation becoming rightful government after a period of one hundred years, “which normally constitutes a title to possession” (Six Livres VI/4). That the concept of usurpation was no longer a contradiction to a given world order is, for example, the argument of Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653), one of the most important royalist political thinkers in seventeenth-century England. To him, usurpation could be part of a legitimately ordered state. He used this argument to support the party of Charles I against Parliament.89 Filmer argued that notions of mixed or limited government were false, and that the powers of all legitimate rulers were derived not from the people, but directly from God, to whom alone rulers were accountable. Therefore, challenging the Monarch was only one of the means of attaining a position of immediate closeness to God. In general, this demonstrates that “usurpation” had become a concept to be used in monarchic theory. John Locke (1632–1704) ardently opposed Filmer’s position in his anonymously published The Two Treatises of Civil Government (1689). He dismissed the possibility of a persistent line of heirs from Adam to modern kings that would warrant the divine right of

87 Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, lib. 1, cap. 9: “Né mai uno ingegno savio riprenderà alcuno di alcuna azione straordinaria, che, per ordinare un regno o constituire una republica, usasse. Conviene bene, che, accusandolo il fatto, lo effetto lo scusi.” 88 Kersting 2006: 79–80. 89 Filmer 1680: cap. 3/3 (Positive laws do not infringe the natural and fatherly power of Kings): “When the Jews asked our Blessed Saviour whether they should pay tribute, He did not first demand what the law of the land was, or whether there was any statute against it, nor inquired whether the tribute were given by consent of the people, nor advised them to stay their payment till they should grant it. He did no more but look upon the superscription and concluded: ‘This image you say is Cæsar’s, therefore give it to Cæsar.’ Nor must it here be said that Christ taught this lesson only to the conquered Jews, for in this He gave direction for all nations who are bound as much in obedience to their lawful kings as to any conqueror or usurper whatsoever.”


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kings (jure divino) (1st Treaty §79).90 In his second treaty he refers to the established distinction between usurpation (rule without right) and tyranny (uncontrolled or bad rule). He combined it with the Hobbesian concept of the social contract and the limitation of the rights of the ruler: if a ruler has no clear legitimation, i.e. there is no positive proof of governmental rights extending his power and influence beyond those endowed by the rights of his predecessors, this would be usurpation and tyranny combined.91 When rule was considered a right of possession in the context of the feudal conception of power, usurpation was applied to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate power. It is not until the time of Voltaire and his contemporary JeanJacques Rousseau that a shift in meaning would be provoked. Voltaire still uses the term in Les droits des hommes et les usurpations des autres92 as a political and moral category. He describes the status of the early Frankish kings: “D’un autre côté, répéter après tant d’autres que Pépin l’usurpateur, et Charlemagne le dévastateur, donnèrent aux évêques romains l’exarchat de Ravenne, c’est avancer une fausseté évidente.” The change of meaning is perceptible in Rousseau.93 He uses the legal term “usurpation” in order to prove the illegitimacy of provenance of rule in general. In his second Discourse, he states that the initial equality of men broke down when there was chaotic conflict between the right of the strong and the right of primordial acquisition (prima occupatio): “C’est ainsi que les usurpations des riches, les Brigandages des Pauvres, les passions effrénées de tous étouffant la pitié naturelle, et la voix encore foible de la justice rendirent les hommes avares, ambitieux, et méchans. Il s’élevoit entre le droit du plus fort et le droit du premier occupant un conflict perpetuel qui ne se terminoit que par des combates et des meurtres.”94 This is, however, not a new thought. It referred back to the long-discussed origin of property touched on in Antiquity (Cicero), the Middle Ages (Ambrose, the Franciscans, William of Ockham, etc.), which had since then never ceased to be under discussion.95 90 Cf. Iorio 1990: 33. 91 Locke 1764: §197 (Of Usurpation): “As conquest may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it being no usurpation, but where one is got into the possession of what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of the government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what of right belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.” 92 Voltaire 1768: 9. 93 Röttgers 2001: 498. 94 Rousseau 1964: 176f. (cf. German translation Meyer 2001: 210f.). 95 Garnsey 2007: 131–134. A strong position was, for example, represented by Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, who belonged to the radical Jacobites and held to a utopian variant of socialism. He even went as far as to state that: “En remontant à l’origine

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4.4 Napoleonic-Era and Post-Napoleonic Definitions The French Revolution and the Napoleonic period brought about essential changes in the system of European monarchies and principalities. Rulers were expelled, territories were restructured, and new titles (kingdom, “Großherzogtum” [Grand Duchy], etc.) were created. The circumstances of the violent transfer of power led to numerous publications ranging from elaborate reflection on legitimate rule to polemical agitation. A polemical use of the term may be seen when Napoleon is addressed as “Erzusurpator” [“Arch-Usurper”].96 A more subtle use may be found in longer tracts on legitimacy. Already during Napoleon’s reign, but most clearly after 1809, the term “usurpator” experienced a renaissance in its use for the evaluation of his political rule. In fact, between the 1780s and 1820s one can perceive a phase in which it was used as a central concept in political debates. These debates on legitimacy and the right to occupy territories led to a refocus of the meaning in the context of property. At times, a history of certain territories could be written with the concept of usurpation as the guiding heuristic tool: the past of Brandenburg was interpreted as a History of Usurpations, as is shown in the anonymous tract Brandenburgische Usurpations-Geschichte.97 The concept of usurpation, as used by Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, that most influential French diplomat and writer, was applied in the negotiations for the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Again, he referred to the opposition to legitimacy and legitimate rule as already established by Aquinas and followers.98 Here, too, the question of legitimacy was closely linked with the question of legitimate dynastic inheritance of rule having been overthrown through Napoleonic changes. This is described by the principle of succession to the throne, unchallenged by usurpation or revolution.99 Where Montesquieu stated already in 1748 that the “spirit of monarchy is war and aggrandisement”,100 enlightened Liberal thinkers of the nineteenth century, led by Benjamin Constant and his essay of 1814, continued this identification of war and conquest with the aim of usurpation.101 Constant tried to introduce the term “usurpation” into contemporary discussion as a new category for political debate. At a late stage in his writings he decided to name his tract on the Napoleonic regime De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation dans leurs rapports avec la civilisation européenne. In a letter he explained that he intended to du droit de propriété, on arrive nécessairement à l’usurpation” (Sade 1998: 285; cf. Röttgers 2001: 499f.). 96 Trollope 1838: vol. 2, 206. 97 Anonymous 1797. 98 Würtenberger 1982: 709 99 Ibid.: 728. 100 Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois 9,2: “L’esprit de la monarchie est la guerre et l’agrandissement. L’esprit de la république est la paix et la moderation.” 101 GG: vol. 6, 678f.; Benrekassa 1988.


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bring new aspects of usurpation into discussion.102 He wanted the term to describe political regimes that were neither monarchic nor despotic in nature. Constant had in mind the rule of the Jacobins, in particular the government of Napoleon. To him “usurpation” was a form of absolutism. He saw it as even worse than the most unbearable despotism, as the latter required nothing but obedience, whereas usurpation demanded the unvarying demonstration of public acceptance: “C’est l’usurpation qui a inventé ces prétendues sanctions, ces addresses, ces félicitations monotones, tribute habituel qu’à toutes les époques, les mêmes hommes prodiguent, presque dans les mêmes mots, aux mesures les plus opposées […] Singulier genre d’artifice, dont nul n’est dupe!”103 In this way despotism rules through silence and does not betray the subjects’ right to be silent. “L’usurpation le condamne à parler, elle le poursuit dans le sanctuaire intime de sa pensée, et, le forçant à mentir à sa conscience, elle lui ravit la dernière consolation qui reste encore à l’opprimé.”104 Besides Benjamin Constant’s very clear standpoint, there were various other positions arguing against Napoleonic changes in the system of governments. Continental experts in constitutional law were concerned about under which conditions the term “usurpation”, which in the strict sense was only an interruption of legitimate possession or sovereignty, could be considered legitimate. Discussions embracing the term “usurpation” increased, but shifted subject-focus in the second half of the nineteenth century, an age termed “Sattelzeit” by Reinhart Koselleck. This led to another phase of intensive usage and shift of meaning in the semantic field of “usurpation” which may be located in the years from 1848 to the beginning of the twentieth century. Whereas legitimate rule was seen by nineteenth-century contemporaries in England and France as the exercise of sovereignty of the people, the concept of legitimacy as seen by scholars in the German territories (e.g. Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, 1823–1897) considered legitimacy to be in the organic constitutional connection of the dynasties with the state, retaining a note of monarchy or a distinction of estates within the German nation.105 The liberal law-professor Johann Caspar Bluntschli (1808–1881) declared that there was no state in Europe that did not experience usurpations or revolutions. He concluded that half the European states would not have legitimate authorities, and the other half would be

102 Benjamin Constant to Charles de Villers on 2.12.1813: “Je vois à la manière dont vous soussignez l’arbitraire, que c’est là le titre que vous me conseillez. Mais j’en ai un meilleur que tous les deux […], c’est: De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation. Je crois qu’il y a sur l’usurpation des choses assez neuves à dire.” Isler 1879: 33. 103 Constant 1957: 1038 (= II, 3). 104 Constant 1957:1038f. 105 Riehl 1862: 131.

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stained through illegitimate government conditions.106 The jurist Karl Buchner accepted that there was no superordinate power to decide over sovereign and usurper. According to him it was necessary that there be an agreement or violence had to decide.107 With regard to one of the major unsolved problems that resulted from the Napoleonic engagement, the Kingdom of Westphalia, he proposed that it was impossible to desire the reversal of all political acts by the usurper, thus accepting even intermediate legislation and financial management.108 Especially the developments in Europe after 1848, like the coups d’état of 1849/50 in Germany, the French interlude of Napoleon III, or the formation of Italy, brought about new constellations of legitimacy. Prior rights stood against “more legitimate” ones, sovereignty of the people against the rule of princes, “legitimate” rule against the breach of law.109 Besides its usage in the field of political theory, a further sphere of the vocabulary of usurpation shall be mentioned here. The term played a vital part in the concepts of the social/socialist movement in the nineteenth century. The acquisition of property of power and property by the bourgeoisie was in general objected to.110 The clearest formulation in the German language was that of the moderate socialist and editor of the Leipzig Neueste Nachrichten Paul Liman. He opined: “Private property and rulership are usurpation, therefore they have to fall. So teach Rousseau, so Robespierre, so Bebel.”111 Especially in socialist writings, the term “usurpation” played a vital part. It may be seen as a further step in the “ideologisation” of the concept into a certain direction. It is no longer only a part of the debate on the semantic field of legitimate rule and monarchic order, it has developed explicitly into a term used in the social conflict about factors and means of influence and supremacy in society: usurpation was turned into the politically immensely charged term challenging the rule of the propertied class. The change through Marxist ideas led to the understanding and use of usurpation within Marxist ideology as additional ammunition and an argument to declare the rule of the bourgeois 106 “Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa, der nicht Usurpationen und Revolutionen erfahren hat. [So] wäre halb Europa ohne legitime Obrigkeiten, und auch die andere Hälfte durch illegitime Staatszustände befleckt.” Buntschli 1861: 355. 107 Buchner 1990: 706: “Der Usurpator und der vertriebene Souverän vereinbaren sich gütlich über die Thronfolge oder die Gewalt der Waffen führt eine Entscheidung herbei.” 108 Buchner 1990: 707: “Oberstes Princip möchte hier sein, dass alle Regierungshandlungen des dann sogenannten Zwischenherrschers […] mit Ausnahme der Verfassungsänderungen als legitime anerkannt werden müssen.” 109 Cf. Müller 2007. 110 Walter 1982: 954 (in GG 3). 111 “Eigentum und Regierung sind Usurpation, darum müssen sie fallen. So lehrt Rousseau, so Robespierre, so Bebel. Der erste der sein Grundstück ummauerte, der es sich einfallen liess zu sagen ‘Es gehört mir’, und die Leute fand, die ihm das glaubten, war der wahre Begründer der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft.” Liman 1906: 198.


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superstructure illegitimate. In this sense the term finally left the legal discourse or classical political science and formed part of the teleological steps within the progress of class conflict.

5. Future Prospects The current usage of the terms derived from the stem {usurp} can neither be documented in all their varieties nor is it easy to indicate potential developments. The ample metaphorical application in almost all contexts leads to further expansion of the term. An example may be seen in the fact that, in historical research, the entire Roman epoch of the Principate can be labelled a “system of usurpations”.112 Usage without delimitations allows consideration of usurpation as a cultural technique: the appropriation of theories from other disciplines. For example, the application of theories, such as those of Norbert Elias, in different research contexts has been labelled “usurpation”.113 The concept may also be important with regard to the appropriation of the past as a means of legitimation. For some historical constellations, research could demonstrate the importance of “usurpation” of historical details, i.e. the intentional use, abuse, and manipulation of the past.114 Authoritarian, but especially totalitarian, regimes of the twentieth century appropriated the past for their own interests. This is true of art, as well as of literature and journalism – for which George Orwell’s 1984 is a telling literary vision.115 The perspective of longue durée demonstrates that there were times and polities in history when usurpations or discourse about usurpation appeared more frequently. Rapid cycles of coups d’état and contre-coup would lead to an ever-increasing instability of society, accompanied by excesses of violence. These “cultures of usurpation” (Staatsstreichkulturen) as Ekkart Zimmermann called them, were marked by individual factors that would need specific analysis. However, even fairly stable monarchies such as the French kingdom suffered exceptions, such as Charles X (Charles de Guise) in 1589 where the mode of obedience and the disposition of loyalty were tested.116 Above that, Kurt Röttgers discovered that the meaning of usurpation was reversed:117 whereas in Antiquity “usurpation” meant that a usurper came to power by force, violating laws, R.J. Neuhaus sees fundamentalist communitarianism as a judicial usurpation of politics.118 In its core field, the judgement of polities and the 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

Wardman 1984; Flaig 1992; Humphries 2008. Heinzle 2001. Escribano Paño 2000; Jara Fuente 2002: 73–103. Lorentzen 2005. Zimmermann 1997. Röttgers 2001: 499. Neuhaus 1997.

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legitimate passing-on of political power, the concept of usurpation is rarely used. Restricted to persons that transgress the constitution by means of military force (e.g. Greece 1967, Chile 1973), it cannot so much be pinpointed and ascribed to individual usurpers, as to the process as a whole as usurpation. Finally, what makes the term “usurpation” still attractive in political and moral discourse is that it is such a vital allegation which oscillates between precise litigable concept and incriminating discursive weapon. It is never said clearly to what degree “usurpation” can be committed or ascribed.


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Abbreviations GG MGH MPL OLD OED PSJČ

Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Edited by Otto Brunner & Werner Conze & Reinhart Koselleck. 8 vols. Stuttgart 1972–1997: Klett-Cotta. Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Munich et al.: Monumenta Germaniae Historica et al. Migne Patrologia Latina. 217 vols. Paris 1844–1855: Migne. Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford 1982: Oxford University Press. Oxford English Dicitonary. 20 vols. Oxford 19892: Oxford University Press. Příruční slovník jazyka českého. 8 vols. Prague 1935–1957: Státni naklad.

References References to Classical authors and standard works are given in the established form of citation; the most recent editions will not be itemised individually here. Anonymous 1797. Brandenburgische Usurpations-Geschichte in den Fränkischen Kreis-Landen insbesondere in dem Reichs-Ständisch Landes-Fürstlichen Gebiete des Hohen Deutschen Ritter-Ordens. [Place of publication not indicated] Benrekassa, Georges 1988. “L’anachronique et le circonstanciel: Constant et l’histoire dans ‘De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation’”. In: Les Annales Benjamin Constant 8/9: 73–85. Berve, Helmut 1967. Die Tyrannis bei den Griechen. 2 vols. Munich: C.H. Beck. Blanc, Charles J. 1876. Grammaire des arts du dessin. Paris: Renouard. Bluntschli, Johann C. 1861. “Legitimität”. In: Johann C. Bluntschli & Karl Brater (eds.). Deutsches Staats-Wörterbuch. Vol. 6. Stuttgart et al.: Expedition des StaatsWörterbuchs: 352–357. Buchner, Karl 1990 [1848]. “Usurpation”. In: Carl von Rotteck & Carl Welcker (eds.). Staats-Lexikon. Encyklopädie der sämtlichen Staatswissenschaften für alle Stände. Vol. 13. Frankfurt a.M.: Hammerich: 706–708. Carroll, Alastair I. 2005. The Role of the Varangian Guard in Byzantine Rebellions and Usurpations, 988–1204. Belfast: Queen’s University of Belfast. Cancik, Hubert & Konrad Hitzl (eds.) 2003. Die Praxis der Herrscherverehrung in Rom und seinen Provinzen. Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen. Cevallos, Pedro 1808. Exposition des faits et des trames qui ont préparé l’usurpation de la couronne d’Espagne, et des Moyens dont l’empereur des Français s’est servi pour la réaliser. Madrid. [Place of publication not indicated] Chmel, Joseph 1859. Regesta chronologico-diplomatica Friderici III. Romanorum Imperatoris (Regis IV.). Auszug aus den im k. k. geheimen Haus-, Hof- und StaatsArchive zu Wien sich befindenden Reichsregistraturbüchern vom Jahre 1440-1493. Wien.

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Fabrice De Backer

Fragmentation of the Enemy in the Ancient Near East during the Neo-Assyrian Period The aim of this paper is to show how the Neo-Assyrian cruelty towards the enemy was not only, maybe also not usually, part of a “thirst for blood”. However, the practices performed by the Neo-Assyrians in newly conquered territory and towards newly submitted people represented a form of ritual exercise of power. In an attempt to understand why these tortures were performed on the vanquished enemy, these rituals have to be linked with the great myths of the Mesopotamian heroes fighting evil, and building a new world with the remains of their slain enemy, like Marduk, Gilgamesh, and Ninurta. The interesting features of this topic regarding usurpation lie in the very way the tortures mentioned and depicted in the Neo-Assyrian materials were, as one might see it, “re-enactments of fictive, mythological achievements” intended to help control a real political and geographical entity. That way, by pretending to be obeying to the gods, the Neo-Assyrians were acting as if they too were gods in relation to their human enemies. At the end of this paper, the reader will see how this tendency to usurp the roles and rituals of deities would prove devastating for the Dynasty and Kingdom of Assyria, finally leading the would-be gods to destruction.

The Sources Three types of sources are available, but only two will be used for this paper, the visual (representational) and textual ones, because the material ones, in this case the fragmentary human remains from the Ancient Near East, can seldom be identified in individual cases as the corpses of tortured people. We will use the visual materials of Assurnasirpal II, Salmanezer III, Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, Senacherib, and Assurbanipal.1 Incidentally, certain gaps in the Neo-Assyrian figurative documentation should be pointed out, bearing on the behaviour previously described, in particular in the period between Salmanezer III and Tiglath-Pileser III (823–746 B.C.), during the reign of Salmanezer V (725–722 1 For the visual materials of the Neo-Assyrian kings, see Albenda 1986; Barnett 1962; Barnett et al. 1976; 1998; King 1915; Wallis-Budge 1914.

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B.C.), of Essarhaddon (680–669 B.C.), and from the end of Assurbanipal’s reign until the fall of Harrân (626–610/609 B.C.). This paper is more a deeper study of the symbolic aspect of the Neo-Assyrian tortures as they relate to usurpation and rituals. As a matter of fact, a fuller study has already been prepared by the author on the discrepancies and similarities found in the tortures represented and ascribed to these Neo-Assyrian kings, combining both sources.2 The aim of this contribution is not to present cruelty as a spectacular asset of the Neo-Assyrians, but to highlight the fact that they are among the few peoples to have granted us such a quantity of representations of the subject, which are still known today. Compared to modern standards, all the Ancient Near Eastern societies were cruel.3 The Neo-Assyrians, especially, provide very detailed visual and textual depictions on the stone slabs they designed to protect the walls of their buildings, constructed underneath out of clay. The palaces of the Neo-Assyrian kings were decorated with stone panels over very long distances, allowing the artists to represent huge cycles of stories. Just the decorative scheme of the south-west palace of Senacherib, discovered by Layard in 1851, features a length of 3.3 km of such stelae. Although decoration of wall slabs was not that common in Babylonia, local buildings could be enhanced with moulded, even glazed, clay bricks. It is unlikely there were any blank walls in public buildings, although the wall-paintings and hanging textiles from this period have not survived in the same quantity as the wall slabs. The large quantity and apparently excessive details of the depictions of cruelty from Neo-Assyrian civilisation may therefore be a consequence of local customs. Certainly, war in this period permitted excesses of violence to happen, but these scenes are more the tactical issues of an ideological aspect than the historical narration of particular events, although cruelty was still a good means of compelling the reluctant inhabitants of enemy cities to think about submitting.4 In the Ancient Near East, there was also the principle of the “Mirror Punishment”, i.e. the punishment reflects the crime. For example, here is an article from the Code of Hammurabi, paragraph 195: “He, the son, who beats his father, he will have the hand cut off”. The same applies in the Middle Assyrian Laws, paragraph 9: “He who touches another man’s wife, they will cut off one of his fingers; he who kisses another man’s wife, he will have his lips cut off”. The same principle also governed warfare: in the case of the inhabitants of a town who refused to acknowl-

2 The reader interested in a full catalogue of the tortures depicted and mentioned during each reign of the Neo-Assyrian kings is invited to refer to De Backer 2009: 13–50. 3 The present author is grateful for the input of the anonymous referee of the SFB Heidelberg. 4 Fuchs 2008: 45–99.

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edge the supremacy of Assurbanipal, their King had his lips cut off.5 Enemies who insulted the god Assur had their tongues torn out on the orders of Assurbanipal.6 In the monumental scenes which have survied from the time of Assurnasirpal II, there may be counted many representations of tortures. Among these, the basic components of this iconographic repertory develop during the reign of Assurnasirpal II as follows: cutting the throats of enemies, decapitation of enemies with the scraping-knife, the bodies of enemies, decapitated or not. Certain details also make it possible to appreciate the scenes of massacres in a more intense way, in particular those with representations of Assur fighting on a winged disc at the margins of the Neo-Assyrian soldiers, or the Imgi eagle, or of Imdugud, or a simple vulture eating the entrails of enemies fallen but alive (?), even eating the eyes of an enemy who has fallen in combat.7 Another of these particular details appears with the counting of the fallen enemies, along with musicians and soldiers playing with heads, while a bird brings an enemy head grasped in its claws to the scribe.8 As such counting also appears on the bas-reliefs of his reign, Assurnasirpal II is very often seen to mention the massacre of a great number of civilian people, or warriors, in his inscriptions.9 In further examples, we can note the repeated representations of mass decapitations.10 The last element to be represented, both in the reliefs and mentioned in the texts of Assurnasirpal II, is the piling up of bodies in the cities, the mountains, or the ravines, or their scattering in the countryside.11 Despite the absence of any pictorial representation, the texts of Assurnasirpal II often mention the erection of pyramids of heads and the impaling of people opposite the gates of the cities or in the countryside, the piles of living and dead, and the decapitated heads attached to posts around the cities, in the mountains or among the trees, in the palaces of conquered enemies.12 The burning of young boys and girls, and the prisoners with their eyes put out, are also missing from monumental scenes.13 The same applies to the pile of living people in front of the gates of the cities, the prisoners immured alive in the walls of the palace of the vanquished kings, and the details of the pyramids of heads set up in the plains, the mountains, 5 Borger 1996: 237. 6 Streck 1916: 331. 7 Wallis-Budge 1914: pl. XIII, 1. More data about this topic will be available for the reader in the article of De Backer 2009: 13–50. 8 Wallis-Budge 1914: pl. XVI, b. 9 Luckenbill 1926: 142, 440; 143, 441; 146, 445; 147, 445; 148, 447; 149, 448; 149, 449; 150, 449; 151, 452; 152, 453; 152, 454; 152, 455; 154, 457; 155, 459; 155, 461; 156, 463; 157, 464; 157, 465; 160, 470; 161, 471; 162, 472; 163, 472; 166, 478; 167, 479; 168, 480. 10 Ibid.: 143, 441; 144, 443; 147, 445; 148, 447; 152, 455; 156, 463; 157, 465; 168, 480. 11 Ibid.: 148, 447; 150, 449; 151, 452; 154, 457; 157, 465. 12 Ibid.: 147, 445; 149, 449; 150, 449; 152, 455. 13 Ibid.: 143, 441; 146, 445; 147, 445; 147, 445; 148, 447; 150, 449; 151, 452-453; 156, 463; 157, 465; 169, 480.

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or in front of the city gates.14 The flaying of prisoners, whose skin was hung up on the walls of the city of Nineveh or other captured cities, the piles of heads, containing living prisoners within, and covered with the skins of defeated enemies, surmounted by impaled prisoners, some of whom have been taken down, some not, and surrounded by enemies hung on posts – none of this appears, either, in the reliefs and extant imagery of this reign.15 The same applies to the prisoners impaled in the mountains, the plains, or around the enemy cities, and to the amputations of the hands or fingers, or the nose, or the ears before releasing the prisoners if required.16 A passage from the Annals of Senacherib also refers to the blood and the filth which stain the wheels of his chariot, although this king does not seem to have chosen to represent this in his reliefs.17 Salmanezer III continued the tendencies innovated by his predecessor, although he developed many more. These include, specifically, the washing of the enemy heads, the piles of heads, or the “tents” of heads covering living prisoners, the heads laid out on the ramparts captured after siege, as well as the dismembering of the bodies of enemies, the amputations, and the preparation of impalement of the “major” type.18 In the end, more and more varieties of torture followed, like the “complete” impalements of whole or dismembered bodies, the mass pyres, the groups of impaled enemies, or, more simply, their scattered, cut-up, and decapitated bodies.19 This king was also the only one to represent the bodies of enemies impaled on the siege ramp and the walls of the cities taken after a siege.20 Once again, and this appears in the reliefs of this reign and others, the massacres of warriors and civilians are often mentioned in the Annals of Salmanezer III.21 The representations and mentions of impalements are still practised, as those of the amputations appear in a significant number.22 The scattering and piling up of the bodies of the enemy, in the vast plains or the mountains, continued, and sometimes the whole countryside was used to bury all the enemy casualties.23 Other scenes illustrate the heads of decapitated enemies floating in a river at the foot of a city, or the bodies which spanned the river Orontes like a bridge, as mentioned in the texts.24 The bronze bands feature representations of the cutting-out of the tongues of the defeated and the suspension of heads from the walls of a burnt city, which 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Ibid.: 143, 441; 144, 443; 146, 445; 152, 455. Ibid.: 144, 443; 146, 445; 147, 445; 157, 465. Luckenbill 1914: 149, 449; 161, 471; 166, 478; 168, 480. See further in this paper. King 1915: ill. 10/3, pl. LVI; De Backer 2009: 13–50. Ibid.: ill. 7/5, pl. XLII. Ibid.: ill. 10/3, pl. LVII. Luckenbill 1926: 203, 563; 206, 581; 210, 588; 215, 599; 216, 599; 219, 605; 223, 610. Ibid.: 208, 585; 219, 605; King 1915: ill. 7/2, pl. XXXIX. Luckenbill 1926: 208, 584; 215, 599; 223, 610. Ibid.: 223, 610 ; King 1915: ill. 13/4, pl. LXXV.


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does not seem to be mentioned in the texts. Other mistreatments, which were not represented in spite of their being mentioned in the preceding reign, make their appearance, like mass decapitations, and the pyramids of heads installed directly in front of the gates of cities.25 However, the artists abstained from illustrating the details of these trophies, which were associated with living prisoners locked up in jails and prisoners impaled outside.26 Although representations of the following tortures do not appear at this time, the texts mention the mass burnings of young boys and girls, and victims whose skins decorated the ramparts of the cities, people with eyes put out, and blood streaking the ground like red wool.27 Among the practices represented under Tiglath-Pileser appear the cutting of the throats of enemies, the decapitation of the dead bodies of enemies with the scraping-knife, the bodies of enemies, strewn about but whole, the dispersed bodies of decapitated enemies.28 The practical details of the dismemberment of the bodies of conquered enemies always develop, for example, in the form of piles of whole bodies, even impaled through the chest, or of the counting and the amassing of the heads.29 Moreover, certain older details treated in a different way also make it possible to appreciate the scenes of massacres more intensely, in particular the representations of a bird – the eagle Imgi, Imdugud, or an ordinary vulture carrying the entrails of a corpse far away.30 However, one notices a very clear reduction in the number of representations of throat-cuttings and decapitations, which may be a result of a lack of surviving original materials, or instead an evolution in figurative conventions, as will be seen in the reigns that followed. As usual, the Annals mention a great number of massacres of warriors and civilian enemies, who are often symbolically represented on the bas-reliefs of Tiglath-Pileser III.31 The impaled enemies also appear in the two sources, in which the bodies are to be covered naturally by the ground, while the piles of bodies of the conquered fill the plains and the chasms.32 As in the reign of Salmanezer III, the burning of living prisoners and the cutting off of fingers are not illustrated, even though the amputated prisoners were returned to their homes, which constitutes an innovation in the Neo-Assyrian Annals.33 Sargon II continued the practice, again employing throat-cutting and the decapitation of enemies, as well as the representations of bodies dispersed, but whole or 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

King 1915: ill. 8/2, pl. XLV. Luckenbill 1927: 214, 599; 215, 599; 219, 605; 220, 607; 221, 609; 223, 610. Ibid. 1926: 215, 599; 219, 605; 221, 609; 223, 610. Barnett 1962: 87. Ibid.: 82–83. Ibid.: pl. LXVII. Luckenbill 1926: 271, 766; 273, 769. Ibid.: 271, 766; 272, 768; 279, 775; 273, 769. Ibid.: 271, 766; 278, 775.

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decapitated, and the impaling of whole bodies through the chest. Sargon II diversified too, and again, the range of representation of the practical details of dismemberment, and the depiction of the destruction of statues of the divinities worshipped by his enemies.34 This type of torture would also have been much appreciated by the successors of Sargon II. He is, so far, the only Neo-Assyrian king under whom the representations of tortures correspond almost completely to the references in the texts. Among these mistreatments are included the massacre of a great number of civilians and warriors, flaying people, as well as putting people in irons.35 Only the impalements, and prisoners with pierced lips, fixed by a ring attached to a leash held by the king, who is busy thrusting a spear in an enemy’s eye, were represented without corresponding examples being found in a preliminary analysis of the texts.36 Senacherib continued the practices initiated by his predecessors, again using certain older motifs, like the vultures or the eagle (?), the cutting up of bodies, the scattered bodies of decapitated enemies, flaying being no new feature, the gathering and counting of heads, or the representation of decapitated scattered bodies.37 Other practices have also survived on the reliefs, such as the impaling of whole bodies through the chest, deportation, and the destruction of the statues of conquered divinities.38 To these, Senacherib would add still further details, such as the reward, in the form of a jewel, given to a soldier in a scene of the counting of enemy heads, and the shaving of the heads of impaled enemies. Once again, representations of cutting the throat and decapitations seem lower in the figurative register of this king, which may illustrate a desire to insist on the death of enemies during combat, which would also better honour the victor. As usual, massacres by throat-cutting and the like are mentioned and represented many times in the texts of Senacherib.39 The impaling of enemies around the cities continues, as does the dispersion of the enemy bodies in the countryside.40 Nevertheless, Senacherib was to add an extra note of horror when he mentioned, fortunately without representing it, the cutting off of the testicles of the enemy prisoners and the twisting of what remained “like cucumbers in June”. Cutting off the hands, as is stipulated in the Annals of this king, made it possible to take and use the rings of the conquered Elamites.41 There is perhaps also a connection with the scene of handing over a bracelet to a light soldier after a victory over the Elamites, about which I shall 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Albenda 1986: pl. 133. Ibid.: pl. 78; Luckenbill 1927: 5, 16, 24. Albenda 1986: pl. 136; 75. Barnett et al. 1998: pl. 300–302, 384a–c. De Backer 2009: 13–50. Luckenbill 1927: 117, 127. Ibid.: 117, 127. Ibid.: 127–128.


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speak later.42 Certain other small, macabre details in the accounts of the campaigns of Senacherib against the Elamites make it possible to see to what extent the treatments were savage. Indeed, the texts recount the eviscerations of enemies, the scattering of their innards, of their contents, and their blood on the ground on the vast plain, and the hopelessness felt by those who fled.43 Assurbanipal continued the practices of his predecessors, again using certain older motifs, like the vultures or the eagle (?), the cutting up of bodies, flaying, the gathering and counting of heads; and then he developed other, more varied elements. In fact, certain representations of the ways human bodies were treated are more violent in their details than those of Salmanezer III, like the crushing of the bones of defeated enemies, cut up and thrown out, as well as the religious ceremonies and the hanging of the head of Te-Umman, as later in the gardens of Nineveh. The fish of the deep and the birds of heaven, mentioned in the texts, are also illustrated, scavenging the bodies of slain enemies, or the living. This king is also the one whose reliefs feature the most varied depictions of birds, as if the particular species had a special importance. One notes the very infrequent occurrence of the representation of throat-cutting and decapitations, which involve mainly enemy figures whose status is suggested by the detail of phylacteries included in the compositions’ scheme.44 In contrast to the preceding reigns, the correspondence between the heads and their decapitated corpses seems more respected. The usual massacres and decapitations, as appear in the bas-reliefs of this period, massacres of many enemies, warriors and civilians compared with lambs, also took place under Assurbanipal.45 The crushing of the bones of the former kings of Elam and their departure towards Assyria, the deprivation of offerings of food and water to the souls of the dead and the control of nobles, likened to dogs, constitute new details in this reign.46 The flaying of conquered enemies also appears in the bas-reliefs of this king, as well as decapitations and certain episodes in the treatment reserved for the head of Te-Umman, which his brother was forced to carry around his neck, before it ended up being hung from the branch of a tree during a meal taken by Assurbanipal.47 The cutting out of the tongues of those who broke the oath made to Assur is quite harshly illustrated in the bas-reliefs of this king, but not the giving of their remains and flesh to the dogs, swine, birds of heaven, wolves, and fish of the depths.48 Scenes of flaying also appear in the reliefs, but not the hanging of skins 42 43 44 45

Barnett et al. 1998: pl. 208, 210, 253. Luckenbill 1927: 127–128. Barnett et al. 1998: pl. 293, 382b. Luckenbill 1927: 294, 773; 300 787; 303, 788; 304, 795-796; 305, 797; 306, 800; 308, 808; 314, 818; 319, 830. 46 Barnett et al. 1998: pl. 289; Luckenbill 1927: 300, 788; 310, 810; 311, 811; 327, 826. 47 Barnett et al. 1976: pl. XLIV; Luckenbill 1927: 295, 774; 300, 787; 306, 800; 312, 815. 48 Barnett et al. 1998: pl. 301; Luckenbill 1927: 304, 795.

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on the ramparts of the conquered cities and of Nineveh.49 The Annals of Assurbanipal also mention other tortures, although these are not found in scenes on the monuments, such as the impalings on the plains or around the cities.50 There were also different ones, like the deposit of bodies and parts of bodies in the streets, in the squares, and on the plains, without letting them be buried, to the greatest joy of the dogs and swine, so that they “died deader than dead”.51 For the religious background of the ritualistic aspect of the fragmentation of the enemy in the Ancient Near East, we must turn to the textual evidence. Among examples of theses, one can think of the Enuma elish, the myth of Ninurta and the Asakku, Ninurta and the Tablets of Destiny, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Baal and Anat Cycle, especially the episode recording the building of the palace of Baal.52 Moreover, the Annals of the Kings of Assyria, during the first millennium B.C., and the captions sometimes carved on monumental scenes, will also be used in this study.53 We have material evidence of slaughter and torture from some archaeological sites associated with the Neo-Assyrians, or at least from the same period.54 These sites are mainly Hasanlu, Ashdod, Lakish, Nimrud, and Nineveh. In any case, this evidence usually consists of common graves,55 or corpses found under collapsed buildings.56 Just one site, Ashdod, has yielded clues for one instance of the amputation of a right hand,57 but this layer of the site reflects destruction by a Judean king, Uzziah, and not by the Neo-Assyrians. At Nineveh, one skeleton has traces of knife-scratching on the eye sockets, but the excavators did not give any further data, so it is of no use for this paper.58

Fragmentation as a Ritual of Religious Power Textual evidence often mentions that war and victory are the will of great gods, like Ishtar, Marduk, Assur, as everywhere else, or Sin, sometimes explicated in prophetic dreams or omens sent by the gods to the King of Assyria or to his atten49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Luckenbill 1927: 295, 774; 304, 795; 320, 831. Ibid.: 295, 774; 319, 830. Ibid.: 298, 786; 300, 787; 304, 796; 312, 815. Annus 2002; Labat et al. 1970. For the annals of the Neo-Assyrian kings, see Luckenbill 1926; 1927. For further discussion on this topic, see De Backer (b) (forthcoming): F) Tactics used against the Gates of the Walls; H) Chronological Phases. At Nimrud, see Mallowan 1966: 390–391, fig. 316; at Lakish, see Ussishkin 1982: 58, fig. 52. At Hasanlu, see Muscarella 1989: 26–34. Haas 1971: 114–115, 213; pl. XXXIX, 1; C, 2. Pickworth 2005: 310.


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dants.59 Several decorative details in the iconography emphasise that the gods and other divinities were in fact amongst the Neo-Assyrian soldiers during battle. For example, sometimes scenes include vultures or eagles, picking out the enemy’s eyes or guts and flying away with them, alongside Assur on his winged disc, using his bow in front of the troops.60 Finally, the presence of the gods is also attested, in the Neo-Assyrian mind, by the divine emblems they carried with them onto the battlefield.61 The cutting up of the fallen enemy into pieces also recalls the deeds of Marduk, Ninurta, Gilgamesh, and Ishtar (Images. 1–2). As Marduk did with Tiamat, the Neo-Assyrian King is the hero who creates a new world upon the dark forces and by using the pieces of their bodies.62 The best example for understanding this is the scene of Assurbanipal’s garden party with the head of Te-Umman suspended in a tree nearby.63 According to this idea, if the Neo-Assyrians did indeed think in this

Image 1: Beheading of Te-Umman. Drawing by the author.

59 Bahrani 2005: 118. 60 See De Backer 2009: 13–50. 61 Von Luschan 1943: 75, fig. 83; Albenda 1986: pl. 113–115; Wallis-Budge 1914: pl. XXII; Barnett et al. 1998: pl. 348, 412. 62 Labat et al. 1970: 74–75, 78; Wallis-Budge 1914: pl. XXXVII. 63 Barnett et al. 1976: pl. LIX, LXIII–LXV.

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Image 2: Body parts of the enemy of Assyria. Drawing by the author.

Image 3: Head of Te-Umman on the top of the walls of Arbela. Drawing by the author.


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way, we may regard the fallen enemies not only as being parts (!) of Tiamat, but also as the Slain Heroes, the demons created and sent by her into battle. In quite the same way, one can evoke the myth of Ninurta against the Asakku, which ends in the same way: victory for Ninurta over the Lion and the Stones and the building of the world with their remains.64 As Gilgamesh did with the head of Humbaba, as recorded in the fifth tablet of the Epic, the Neo-Assyrian King dedicated his trophies to the great gods who helped him and fought for him, as a tribute to their power, and, at the same time, to his own.65 This is perhaps how the exposure and libation of the head of Te-Umman in front of the gate of Nineveh came to be part of an “ancient tradition”, if we are to believe Assurbanipal’s account of the victory at Til Tuba.66 Also, textual evidence often mentions the display of flayed human skins over piles of corpses or on the tops of the walls of captured cities. The reliefs also show the King pouring wine over the head of Te-Umman at the top of a battlement protecting the city of Arbela (Image 3).67 Although this act still remains quite mysterious today, we do know that these parts of the city wall were regarded with some religious feeling at the time, and this certainly played a role in choosing this particular place for this ritual.68 Being protected by Ishtar-Anat-Bêlit, the King of Assyria also found some pleasure in demonstrating his unlimited power and in rejoicing in slaughtering the heroes and brave fighters amongst his enemies.69 According to the Annals of Senacherib, those who would fight him risked particular dangers, as sometimes he would have his enemies’ testicles cut off and their privates torn from their bodies like vegetables, or cover the ground with their entrails and guts.70 In one sense, one may compare this appetite for the details of suffering with the myth of Bel and Anat-Ishtar, when she joyfully tramples in blood, filth, heads, hands, and corpses, after learning that her brother is soon to arrive. Moreover, and according to the oracles of Essarhaddon or Assurbanipal, Ishtar is able to fight for the King of Assyria, since the battlefield is her playground; looking after him, for his power, health, wealth, and glory.71 In this way he also ensures he is the strongest person, so that no one else can contest his authority. A dismembered enemy can hardly fight again.

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Black et al. 1998: 143; Wallis-Budge 1914: pl. XXVII. Bonatz 2005: 100. Ibid.: 98. Ibid.: 94. Porada 1967: 7. Labat et al. 1970: 390–395. Bleibtreu 1991: 60–61. Black et al. 1998: 109; Labat et al. 1970: 250–251; Baharani 2005: 117.

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Since the Neo-Assyrian King liked to compare himself to a “good shepherd”, he had the duty of protecting his flock from dangers which might threaten it.72 Because the enemy, according to the Assyrians, did not honour the gods, he must be punished by their beloved one: the King of Assyria.73 Because they planned evil against Assur, the sinners were first punished by the gods in their own bodies, with diseases for example, and then by the action of the King of Assyria, who cut the throats of their soldiers and people, took their territories and dismembered their bodies.74 In much the same way, we can see the actions of the champion of the gods, Ninurta. He also fought the treacherous lion-headed eagle Imdugud, when it foolishly stole the Tablets of Destiny, and restored them to the gods in order to save the order of the world. By the way, Imdugud is also quite often represented in Neo-Assyrian monumental scenes depicting battles, as another ally of the Assyrians, among vultures, crows, or eagles.75 In a Middle Assyrian poem, the Neo-Assyrian king, maybe Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 B.C.), is portrayed as a hunter chasing the unyielding wild ass, incarnation of his enemies who were hidden in a mountain stronghold.76 As a matter of fact, this text serves to warn any enemy of the King that that enemy will be reduced to ruins. Continuing this idea, and following an analysis of other texts about the Neo-Assyrian Royal Hunt for bulls, lions, or wild asses, one may also consider the numerous depictions of Neo-Assyrian soldiers or kings fighting as archers in battle, and the ritual sometimes enacted over the bodily remains of the enemy’s forces, as a kind of “chasing the human beast”.77 Hunters and bullfighters often eat a special part or keep a trophy of their prey, the horns or a leg, sometimes even the head filled with straw, as a mark of their deeds. Neo-Assyrians perhaps thought the same way when they recorded tongues being cut out, eyes put out, legs, arms, hands, noses, ears, and heads of their enemies being cut off.78 As for the difference to the lions that were hunted by the kings at this time, it might well be thought that the remains of enemies, except for certain parts like Te-Umman’s head, did not receive a libation of wine, or did not deserve to be respectfully transported by the King’s attendants.79 We can perhaps see in this an indication of the negligible respect the Neo-Assyrians had for their human victims. Not so long ago, in Vietnam for example, some soldiers wore the ears of their enemies around their neck, in order to

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Bleibtreu 1991: 57 Labat et al.: 257–258. Bahrani 2005: 118. Thureau-Dangin 1921: 200. Cogan 1983: 756. Cassin 1981: 355–403; Bonatz 2005: 98, 100; De Backer (a) (forthcoming). Bleibtreu 1991: 57. Barnett et al. 1976: pl. LVII–LVIII.


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prove they were hunters, and good ones, and with no pity for their enemies.80 NeoAssyrian warfare also sometimes became a war fought until complete annihilation of the opposing spirit was achieved. To avoid torture, some high officials in the opposition would, on occasion, commit suicide or ask for mercy and be killed before it started, as an Urartean king, Rusa, did when he learned about Sargon II’s advance to his provinces, or as Urtaku the Elamite did at Til Tuba.81 Ethnography shows a very similar mentality in other far-off societies, sometimes called “primitives”, who acted in very much the same way with the heads or body parts of their enemies, such as the Jivaros and Mundurukkus, head-hunters of Amazonia, or the Maoris of New Zealand, for example. These hunters, having chased, killed, and beheaded their victims, shrank the heads and kept them as trophies, Tsantsas, for public display, to acquire their magical power, and to insult them. Sometimes, the body parts were thrown away or to the dogs, once the rituals were finished, or when they were no longer any fun to play with, like old toys.82 It seems that taking the head of the enemy’s king was not current practice in this earlier period, but some older examples from the time of Zimri-Lim and ShamshiAdad were recorded, and others are shown in the Early Dynastic decorations usually found on shells or stones.83 Assurbanipal created a new kind of “traditional” ritual to mark the beheading of Te-Umman, the king of Elam, and enacted rituals with it, including libations, thus changing this body part into a “consecrated medium of communication with the gods”, as has been stated by D. Bonatz.84 The Neo-Assyrians also liked to display the skins of their enemies on piles of corpses in front of the captured cities or on the tops of the battlements (Image 4).85 We know that these parts of the walls had a specific religious meaning for the people of Mesopotamia at this time, so this can be understood as iconoclasm or as the creation of a reserved space, or as a means to mark the newly conquered territory. In considering the flayed skin of enemies as another element to increase this understanding of the ritual aspect of the fragmentation of enemies, one may think, too, of the Aztec priests.86 For a particular fertility and purification ceremony, for a god called Xipe-Totec (Our Lord The Flayed One), they often flayed people and wore these skins on their own bodies like a fresh flesh cloak, for twenty days. They kept them on all day and night, until the particular rituals involved were finished, despite the smell, and everything else such a rotting costume would bring to the person clothed

80 81 82 83 84 85 86

O’Brien 1988: 30. Bleibtreu 1991: 58; Bahrani 2005: 116. Derobert et al. 1940: 13, 27, 67, 84. Bonatz 2005: 93. Ibid.: 95–99. Bleibtreu 1991: 57; Cogan 1983: 755. Derobert et al. 1940: 17.

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in it.87 The Esmeralda and Manta Indians, living on the Equatorial Coast, close to Colombia, also beheaded and prepared the heads of their fallen enemies. Furthermore, as with the Neo-Assyrians, they also had some interest in the flayed skins of their enemies which they kept, filled with straw and ashes, in their temples.88 So, perhaps like the skin of a freshly hunted lion, human skin might be given a kind of symbolic, magical, or religious value. With regard to the cutting off of the ears and nose, also practised by the Assyrian kings, we know that some Indians from North America also took pleasure in keeping those parts of their enemies, drying them over wooden rings, and decorating their houses or shields with them.89 All of these details may lead us to think that the body parts of the enemy, usually the heads and skins duly preserved, were more than just statistical elements, used to count the enemy’s casualties, but were also elements of warfare and ritual objects. As the Neo-Assyrians seemed to think, destroying the bodies of living enemies was not enough, this had to be done for good, in a way that would prevent them from being able to continue to harm Assur (Image 2).90 This may also explain why we see so many scenes of torture and dismemberment of the enemy on the reliefs of the Neo-Assyrian Period (Image 4). As already mentioned in Z. Bahrani’s article about the king’s head, once the eyes, nose, and tongue were cut out, depictions of the fallen enemy then had to receive the same treatment. According to the same thinking, depictions of the face of Senacherib on the reliefs in his palaces were destroyed by his enemies after the fall of Nineveh.91 Even though, with our twentyfirst century view of this practice, this might seem a barbaric tradition, one may remember, as well, that the last Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay, cursed his prosecutors (Philippe le Bel, the King of France; Guillaume de Nogaret, Chief of Police; and Pope Clément V) while he was being publicly burnt alive on a pyre, on the Île aux Juifs, near Paris, in the fourteenth century.92 One may think the Neo-Assyrians were rather more careful, in a way, than Philippe le Bel. This might be why, during the reigns of Salmanezer III and Assurbanipal, we have depictions of the tongues of the enemies being cut out.93 To be sure the task was done, once and for all, the Assyrians also killed their dead enemies again, materially and visually, by destroying the tombs of the ancient kings of Elam, depriving them of food offerings and resting places among the shades.94 Representing these scenes

87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Ibid.: 17. Ibid.: 29. Feest 1979: 38. Bonatz 2005: 98, 100. Bahrani 2005: 118. Buchon 1827: 219–220, nos. 6070–6100. King 1915: vol. 3,5, pl. XVIII; Barnett et al. 1998: pl. 300–302, 384a–c. Bleibtreu 1991: 61.


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repeatedly in the palaces of the Kings of Assyria also ensured their power for a long time.

Image 4: Neo-Assyrian soldier flaying an enemy. Drawing by the author.

Following on from the idea that dismembering the enemies represented, if in part, a kind of religious ritual, we may also consider it as being a particular type of ritual, opening a new political era. Looking at the written evidence describing Marduk’s achievements, one might think that the Neo-Assyrians created space to be available where needed, and made sure their authority was not contested by anyone. As in many royal families, the best way to do so is to erase any potential threat, whether from soldiers or civilians. This might be one of the reasons why the Neo-Assyrians were so keen to change some of their enemies and their gods into physical jigsaws of mashed-up flesh and bones (Image 3). At least from the time of Assurnasirpal II on, enemy gods were sent to Assyria, or destroyed, as under Sargon II (Image 5).95 Under Assurbanipal, there are even scenes of Elamites milling the bones of their relatives, attached like dogs to leashes and being threatened by Assyrians wielding maces.96 On other occasions, Assurbanipal just threw the dismembered bodies of his fallen enemies to wild animals, such as swines, dogs, birds, and fish, before burying the remains.97 Having created a new political world where Assur was king, and dispersing the remains of the old order, the Assyrians displayed their motivation and strength to everyone, friends, neutrals, allies, or enemies. Several govern95 Albenda 1986: pl. 71. 96 Barnett et al. 1998: pl. 289, 381b. 97 Bleibtreu 1991: 61.

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ments have done this with the body parts of their enemies, sometimes exposed in different parts of a territory to a large audience, and even into our twentyfirst century. For example, one can evoke Ravaillac after the murder of Henri IV,98 during the French Revolution, the fate of the Tsar’s family at Ekaterinburg in 1917, or the displaying of Mussolini’s corpse in World War II.

Image 5: Neo-Assyrian soldiers dismembering the statue of an enemy god. Drawing by the author.

Conclusion The Neo-Assyrians re-enacted, or invented, “ancient”, mythological rituals of power to achieve control over certain real geographical and political entities. In this way, they certainly attempted to insert themselves into the mythological epics concerning the Creation of the World after the defeat of Evil. At the same time, they also usurped the identity and the role of the gods, while pretending to be their obedient servants, by destroying huge numbers of cities and their resources, and displacing people from one part of Mesopotamia to another and into the surrounding areas. By doing this, they shaped their world as they needed and wanted it to be, destroying a city here, founding another elsewhere with people from foreign lands they had conquered. To sum up, the Neo-Assyrian kings tried, or better succeeded, in creating a kind of Historical Reality based upon certain Mythological Fictions. Finally, with their habit of trying to show everybody they were better at everything than everyone else, the Neo-Assyrians also set themselves up for the pyre of destruction. This began with the murder of Senacherib (in 681 B.C.), and the civil 98 Voysin 1610.


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war between Prince Essarhaddon and his elder brothers that followed (680 B.C.). Then, a short time after the death of Essarhaddon (in 669 B.C.), came the civil war between King Assurbanipal and his elder brother Shamash-Shum-Ukin (652–648 B.C.). After the death of Assurbanipal (in 627 B.C.), there was a civil war between his successors, Prince Assur-Etel-Ilani, and later Prince Sin-Shar-Ishkun, as too with the eunuch, Sin-Shum-Lishir (630–626/623 B.C.).99 While the Neo-Assyrian princes and the eunuch were fighting with each other for the right to sit on the throne, the Babylonians of Nabopolassar and the Medes of Cyaxares invaded Assyria and took and burnt the holy city, and ancient capital, of Assur (in 614 B.C.). From then on, the remaining capitals of the Assyrian Kingdom, Kalku and Nineveh, fell one after the other to the enemy (612 B.C.), until finally Harrân fell (in 610 B.C.). The fall of this last Neo-Assyrian province would lead to the building of a new world on the remains of the old, Neo-Assyrian one, the “Evil” being dead: this was the Neo-Babylonian empire.

99 Khurt 1995: 543; Joannès 2002: 31–33.

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References Albenda, Pauline 1986. Le palais de Sargon d’Assyrie. Paris: Édition Recherche sur les Civilisations (Synthèse 22). Annus, Amar 2002. The God Ninurta in the Mythology and Royal Ideology of Ancient Mesopotamia. Helsinky: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project (State Archives of Assyria Studies 14). Bahrani, Zainab 2005. “The King’s Head”. Iraq 67/1: 115–120. Barnett, Richard 1962. The Sculptures of Aššur-Nasir-Apli II (883–859 B.C.), TiglathPileser III (745–727 B.C.), Esarhaddon (682–669 B.C.) from the Central and South-West Palaces at Nimrud. London: Trustees of the British Museum. — et al. 1976. Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (668–627 B.C.). London: British Museum Press. — et al. 1998. The Sculptures from the South-West Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh. London: British Museum Press. Black, Jeremy et al. 1998. Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. London: The British Museum Press. Bleibtreu, Erika 1991. “Grisly Assyrian Record of Torture and Death”. Biblical Archaeology Review 17/1: 52–62. Bonatz, Dominik 2005. “Assurbanipal’s Headhunt: An Anthropological Perspective”. Iraq 66/1: 93–101. Borger, Rylke 1996. Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals. Die Prismenklasse. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Buchon, Jean-Claude 1827. Chronique métrique de Godefroy de Paris. Paris: Libraire Verdière (Collection des Chroniques Nationales Françaises 9). Cassin, Elena 1981. “Le roi et le lion”. Revue de l’Histoire des religions 198/14: 355– 403. Cogan, Mordechai 1983. “‘Ripping Open Pregnant Women’ in Light of an Assyrian Analogue”. Journal of the American Oriental Society 103/4: 755–757. De Backer, Fabrice 2009. “Cruelty and Military Refinements”. Res Antiquae, 6: 13–50. — (a) (forthcoming). “The Neo-Assyrian Siege-Archers: Some Remarks”. In: Wilhelm Gernot (ed.). Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Würzburg, 20–25 July 2008. — (b). The Neo-Assyrian Art of Siege Warfare. Current Ph.Diss. at the Université of Strasbourg (France) and at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-LaNeuve (Belgium). Derobert, Léon et al. 1940. Les momies. Le culte des morts dans le monde sauvage et civilisé. Paris: Édition Prisma. Dezsö, Tamas et al. 1991. “Assyrian Iron Helmets now in the British Museum”. Iraq 53: 105–126. Dothan, Mosche 1971. Ashdod II-III The Second and Third Seasons of Excavations 1963, 1965 Soundings in 1967. Jerusalem: Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums (‘Atiqot 9–10).


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Feest, Christian 1979. L’Art de la Guerre. Paris: Rive Gauche Productions. Fuchs, Andreas 2008. “Über den Wert von Verteidigungsanlagen”. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 98: 45–99. Haas, Nigel 1971. “Anthropological Observations on the Human Remains Found in Area D”. In: Mosche Dothan (ed.). Ashdod II-III The Second and Third Seasons of Excavations 1963, 1965 Soundings in 1967. Jerusalem: 212–213 (‘Atiqot 9–10). Joannès, Francis 2002. La Mésopotamie au 1er millénaire av. J.-C. Paris: Armand Colin. King, Leonard W. 1915. Bronze Reliefs from the Gates of Shalmaneser King of Assyria B.C. 860–825. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Khurt, A. 1995. The Ancient Near East: c.3000-330 BC. London: Routledge. Labat, René et al. 1970. Les religions du Proche-Orient asiatique. Paris: Fayard (Le Trésor Spirituel de l’Humanité). Lie, Arthur 1929. The Inscriptions of Sargon II King of Assyria. Part 1: The Annals. Paris: P. Geuthner. Luckenbill, David D. 1926. Ancient Records of Assyria. Vol. 1: From the Earliest Times to Sargon. New York: Greenwood Press. — 1927. Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. Vol. 2: From Sargon to the End. New York: Greenwood Press. Luschan, Felix von & Walter Andrae 1943. Die Kleinfunde von Sendschirli. Berlin: De Gruyter Verlag (Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli 5; Mitteilungen aus den Orientalischen Sammlungen 15). Malbran-Labat, Florence 1982. L’armée et l’organisation militaire de l’Assyrie d’après les lettres des Sargonides trouvées à Ninive. Paris: Librairie Droz (Hautes Études Orientales 2/19). Mallowan, Max 1966. Nimrud and Its Remains. London: Collins. Muscarella, Oscar White 1989. “Warfare at Hasanlu in the Late 9th Century B.C.”. Expedition 31/1–2: 24–36. Nadali, Davide 2001–2003. “Guerra e morte: l’annullamento del nemico nella condizione di vinto”. Scienze dell’Antichità 11: 51–70. O’Brien, Tim 1988. “Mad Mark”. Spécial NAM. L’Histoire vécue de la Guerre du Viet-Nam 24: 19–35. Pickworth, Diane 2005. “Excavations at Nineveh: The Halzi Gate”. Iraq 67/1: 295– 316. Porada, Edith 1967. “Battlements in the Military Architecture and in the Symbolism of the Ancient Near East”. In: David Fraser & Howard Hibbard & Milton J. Lewine (eds). Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Vol. 1. London: Phaedon: 1–12. Postgate, John 2000. “The Assyrian Army at Zamua”. Iraq 62: 89–108. Streck, Maximilian 1916. Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige bis zum Untergang Nineveh’s. Vol. 2. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs (Vorderasiastisches Bibliothek 7). Tadmor, Hayim 1994. The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III King of Assyria. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

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Thureau-Dangin, François 1921. “L’Aigle Imgi”. Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale 24: 199–202. Ussishkin, David 1982. The Conquest of Lachish by Senacherib. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology. Voysin 1610. “Arrêt de justice contre Ravaillac”. Mercure François. http://www. lodace.net/histoire/document/ravailac.htm. Wallis-Budge Ernest A. 1914. Reign of Ashur-Nasir-Pal, 885–860 B.C. London: Trustees of the British Museum.

Fabian Goldbeck and Patrizia Arena

Salutationes in Republican and Imperial Rome Development, Functions and Usurpations of the Ritual∗ 1. Usurping Ritual Interaction: C. Graccus and the salutatio in Republican Rome1 (Fabian Goldbeck) On the last day of his life, the famous Ides of March in 44 B.C., the dictator perpetuus C. Julius Caesar went to the famous senate assembly in the theatre of Pompeius where he was to be killed. As is well known, he could have known better: among other classical authors, Valerius Maximus tells us about a warning prophecy delivered to Caesar by the soothsayer (haruspex) Spurinna. He had predicted a danger to Caesar’s life which could occur within 30 days until the Ides of March. Even on the very day of the assassination, Spurinna repeated his warning. He could do so because both he and the dictator met in the house of Cn. Domitius Calvinus, early in the morning. While Caesar remarked that the Ides of March had already come, Spurinna reminded him: “Do you know that they are not yet gone?”2 In this paper, I will, of course, not try to investigate how Spurinna could have known of the imminent threat to Caesar’s life or why the dictator did not return immediately to his house, shut its doors and windows, and thus try to survive the last day of the danger period. Instead, I will turn to the circumstances in which ∗ Dr. Patrizia Arena and Dr. Fabian Goldbeck presented in the panel “usurping rituals” two different papers concerning both the roman ritual of salutationes, yet in different historical periods. To achieve the unity of the topic, the two authors were requested by the editors to publish their papers as a single one with two distinct parts. Each author is the only responsible for his part. 1 I would like to thank J. Meister (Berlin) for proof-reading the English text; all remaining errors are, of course, my own. The argument developed in this paper results from my dissertation on Roman salutationes. References to the sources and secondary literature are therefore reduced to a minimum; full documentation will be found in the monograph (Goldbeck 2010, forthcoming). The last monograph on the topic dates from the middle of the 18th century (Heusinger 1740), among recent publications cf. Badel 2007; Rilinger 1997; Wallace-Hadrill 1989; Winterling 1999: 117–144. 2 Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia, 8.11.2; cf. Cicero, de divinatione, 1.119; Suetonius, Iulius 81.

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Spurinna and Caesar happened to meet. It is, at least, highly probable that the conversation handed down (or imagined) by Valerius Maximus took place during a very Roman custom: the daily morning greetings in the houses of Roman senators called salutationes. Every morning many Romans citizens from all social strata gathered in the domus (houses) of the senatorial elite to greet its owner, a practice which took up the first two hours of an ordinary Roman day.3 The obvious question is why the rulers of the ancient world and their fellow citizens were ready to sacrifice so much time to such an unusual practice, for which I do not know of any parallels at least in Western civilisation. Scholarship usually sees the salutationes as closely linked to another very prominent feature of Roman society, “patronage” or clientela.4 But this is far less satisfying as may seem at first view: Neither do the ancient texts of Republican times anywhere relate the morning greetings (let alone their origins) to clientela,5 nor does the existence of a patronage system in a society in itself demand widespread daily intercourse between patrons and clients. Instead, I will propose a different explanation for why the Romans began the days in such a way. In this perspective, the fact that many citizens of Rome gathered in the senatorial domus every morning will be understood as a “usurpation” of older, less important practices by a young man near the end of the 2nd century B.C., C. Sempronius Gracchus. But let us start with some remarks on the phenomenon itself and the terms used in the rest of this paper. 1.1 Topic and Terms What did the Romans do during a salutatio, leaving aside discussions of the accuracy of prophecies? Or more specific to the topic of this volume, why can the morning greetings be viewed as a ritual? The salutationes were a rather unusual feature even in a pre-modern society. To describe them as a ritual seems adequate for several reasons: firstly, they always took place at the same time and in the same places. A salutatio was held in the early morning, literally at sunrise (mane or ante lucem in the Latin texts). Their “material frame” used to be the urban houses of the social elite, the domus, and the

3 Cf. the idealised description of a Roman day in Martial, Epigrammata 4.8. 4 E.g. Winterling 1999: 117; Rilinger 1997: 82–84; Badel 2007. 5 The only allusion to “patronage” as far as salutationes are concerned is Syll³ 656, where patrones are mentioned, see below. Things are different in Imperial times, though, when several authors (Juvenal, Martial, Seneca and others) explicitly speak of salutatores as clientes. See Goldbeck 2010 (forthcoming).

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majority of the Roman senators opened their house every day.6 It should be noted that, while every Roman citizen could visit a salutatio (or even more than one), a greater part of the population of the city of Rome was excluded: neither slaves nor women, whether citizens or not, were present, at any rate they are not mentioned by our sources on the salutationes. Not only time, place and participants distinguished the salutatio from other, rather informal greetings.7 Most notable is the ritualised behaviour appropriate during a salutatio. From a passage from Seneca’s De Beneficiis (“On Benefits”) we learn how the visitors, the salutatores, were received into the house and how they had to move once inside. It was the privilege of the owner to determine who was first to enter his house and to which part of it he should be admitted. To be the first (or among the first) was an honour distributed by the house owner. Once inside the house, the salutatores were divided into three groups. Some were received in a separated part of the building (in secretum recipere), others in smaller groups (cum pluribus), the majority only as a whole (universi).8 And as Seneca – with displeasure – comments, the visitors would wait to pronounce their greeting (have) according to their place in the order (ordo) thus established. If we try to connect this arrangement of the salutatores with what is known about the spatial structure of the Roman domus,9 we get a probable picture of how the different groups were placed inside the domus. The privileged visitors were admitted to smaller rooms grouped around the main courtyard of the house, the atrium, or even in the inner parts of the house, whereas the universi, visitors of lesser importance, had to wait in the atrium until they were greeted.10 A short re6 It is, of course, impossible to “prove” this behaviour for every single Roman senator as our sources do not provide any detailed information on the life of the majority of Roman aristocracy. Nevertheless, as the salutatio is one of the “daily duties” (cotidiana officia, Suetonius, Augustus 60, cf. e.g. Cicero, Ad Quintum fratrem 2.15.2; Ad Atticum 2.22.3) its neglect by certain individuals was viewed as a deviation (cf. e.g. Plutarch, Cato minor 3, Winterling 1999: 125f. for the salutationes of the Roman emperors). 7 Cf. Hall 1998 on Roman greetings in general. 8 Seneca, De beneficiis 6.34: Consuetudo ista vetus est regibus regesque simulantibus populum amicorum discribere, et proprium superbiae magno aestimare introitum ac tactum sui liminis et pro honore dare, ut ostio suo propius adsideas, ut gradum prior intra domum ponas, in qua deinceps multa sunt ostia, quae receptos quoque excludant. (2) Apud nos primi omnium [C.] Gracchus et mox Livius Drusus instituerunt segregare turbam suam et alios in secretum recipere, alios cum pluribus, alios universos. Habuerunt itaque isti amicos primos, habuerunt secundos, numquam veros. (3) Amicum vocas, cuius disponitur salutatio? aut potest huius tibi fides patere, qui per fores maligne apertas non intrat, sed inlabitur? huic pervenire usque ad libertatem destringendam licet, cuius volgare et publicum verbum et promiscuum ignotis ‘have!’ non nisi suo ordine emittitur? 9 Cf. the impressive study of Dickmann 1999. 10 On this arrangement cf. Badel 2007; Goldbeck 2010 (forthcoming); Winterling 1999: 119– 122.

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mark in a Ciceronian letter suggests that the house owner perambulated in the domus to greet his callers.11 Finally the greeting itself was marked by a certain etiquette, especially regarding the behaviour of the house owner. He had to emphasise how much he himself was grateful for the visits and how much he esteemed the presence of each individual caller.12 This is best illustrated by the existence of specialised slaves called nomenclatores. Their duty was to know the names of all salutatores and to whisper them into the senator’s ear, so he could address each one by his proper name.13 It should be obvious by now that the salutatio matutina was a ritualised form of human interaction, or a ritual, distinguished in time, space and required behaviour from other kinds of greetings. It becomes even more obvious once we turn to its meaning. If we ask about the importance of these time-consuming, everyday interactions, two different aspects should be considered. On the one hand, the personal intercourse provided manifest advantages for both the salutatores and the senator(s) visited. The vital point is that the Romans counted the morning visits among their officia, i.e. they were part of the mutual obligations omnipresent in Roman society.14 The simple attendance to a senator’s salutatio, therefore, constituted a relationship between him and the salutator. And because the visitor had already supplied an officium he could, in return, expect the senator’s aid, e.g. in juristic or financial matters or by way of a commendation to other important persons or even political support.15 From the senator’s perspective, since it was he who received the callers it was of central importance to establish and stabilise his personal relationship to a visitor. If he successfully convinced him how important the officium salutationis was to him and that he was more than ready to provide his due support in return, he could hope to strengthen the relationship. Thus, not only would the salutator continue to visit his house in future and neglect other salutationes, but he would also, hopefully, support the senator in matters of crucial importance for his political influence and social position, i.e. voting for him in times of elections and other political issues.16 So much for a short overview of the concrete or “instrumental” function of the morning greetings. On the other hand, the daily attendance of many Roman citizens 11 Cicero, Ad Atticum 6.2.5: aditus autem ad me minime provinciales. nihil per cubicularium; ante lucem inambulabam domi ut olim candidatus. 12 Q. Cicero, Commentariolum petitionis 35. 13 See Kolendo 1989 on the nomenclatores. 14 Cicero, Ad Familiares 9.18.3; Pro Sulla 52; Q. Cicero, Commentariolum petitionis 35; Suetonius, Augustus 27.4. 15 Cf. David 1992; Verboven 2002; Deniaux 1993 respectively and still Gelzer 1912 for the whole system of mutual obligations in Roman society. 16 Cf. Q. Cicero, Commentariolum petitionis 35, and Yakobson 1999 for a recent treatment of the Roman elections. For the mutual dependency between political success and social position in Roman society cf. Winterling 2009: 9–33.


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in the senatorial domus had a less concrete, more “symbolic” aspect. The crowd of the salutatores could, in general, be understood as a symbol of power. A well-attended salutatio served as a kind of “indicator”,17 because it made discernible how many Romans were ready to support each respective house owner. Nobody, it must be admitted, could be sure how many of the salutatores really would lend their votes (or, more generally, their support) in the end. But nonetheless, it was impossible to ignore the numerous personal relationships documented in the early morning. This symbolic meaning of a well-attended house (domus frequentata) is illustrated by a passage from Plutarch’s Life of Cicero. According to Plutarch, Cicero abandoned his father’s house and moved to the Palatine region, because he wanted to spare his visitors long distances. His strategy was successful: soon his house was frequented by as many visitors as visited Pompeius and Crassus. The “new man” (homo novus) Cicero, who was the first of his family to reach the office of a consul, could, at least in this domain, compete with the two mightiest men of his time.18 This picture drawn of the salutatio is based on sources from late Republican and early Imperial times when daily calls on the houses of the Roman elite were widespread. Inasmuch as daily, ritualised interaction of this type is rather uncommon in most societies, the question arises how it could emerge. While the majority of scholarship sees, as already remarked in the beginning, the salutationes as a wellestablished and traditional feature of Roman society already in use long before the late Republic, the evidence we have cannot positively support such a view. Though it is true that the sources inform us about interaction between the social elite and other citizens of Rome in the senatorial houses, it differs, in important aspects, from the late Republican salutatio. Therefore, I will argue for a more “dynamic” view of the “history of the morning greetings”. Of major importance, in my view, is the use the Younger Gracchus (assassinated in 121 B.C.) made of personal intercourse with his fellow citizens in his own house. As will be shown, his behaviour was, at the same time, if not illegal (it was not forbidden by law), nevertheless unusual and disturbing to his contemporaries. He did not literally “invent” the salutatio, but he re-interpreted the form of ritualised communication Romans were already used to, and thereby changed its meaning. Or, according to the topic of this volume: he “usurped” older forms of interaction. Two steps will be necessary: first, I will discuss what information we actually do have about interaction in the Roman houses before the tribunate of C. Gracchus.

17 Cf. Rilinger 1997: 84. 18 Plutarch, Cicero 8.6. Cf. Cicero, Ad Atticum 2.22.3; Ad Quintum fratrem 2.15.2.

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In the second step, I will demonstrate how Gracchus re-used it in a concrete historical situation and for concrete personal purposes. 1.2 In Search of the salutatio The reconstruction of the “rules” of the salutatio given above is based on Seneca’s description in De Beneficiis. According to Seneca, the division of the visitors into (three) groups was first practised by C. Gracchus and M. Livius Drusus. So, at least Seneca has no knowledge that Gracchus “invented” the salutatio (and indeed no other classical author does). Instead he seems to assume its existence in pre-Gracchian times. But if we share his assumption and try to find descriptions of earlier salutationes in the extant classical literature, things start to get difficult. The vast majority of the texts on Rome in the third and second century B.C. (or even before) provide no information on the morning greetings.19 And even more, the sources cited as clear evidence for the morning greetings in the second century are far less unambiguous than scholarship usually assumes. For each single passage, its relevance is disputable. On the other hand, the hypothesis of an “invention” of the salutatio by C. Gracchus seems doubtful. Should we really assume that he “invented” a custom which would open a normal Roman day? And if so, why were neither Seneca nor Plutarch in his “Life of Gracchus”, written early in the second century A.D., are aware of this “invention”? In the face of this dilemma, a re-evaluation of the evidence is advisable. It will start with the two most prominent sources for salutationes in the period under 19 The Roman comedy, Plautus and Terence, is nowhere referring to salutationes. While Damon 1997: 60 reads Plautus, Menaechmi 135–140 as an allusion to “a very Roman visit [...]: the morning salutatio”, it must be stressed that Menaechmus seems to be very surprised to see his visitor. Apparently he did not expect to see anyone at this time of day. For the presence of Greek envoys in Roman houses (mentioned, e.g. by Livy), cf. infra. The visit paid to the tribune M. Pomponius by T. Manlius Torquatus can hardly be read as an accurate account, considering the doubtful value of the sources of this period (cf. Livius 7.4–5; Cicero, De Officiis 3.112). Plutarch twice, in his “Life of Aemilius Paullus” (chap. 2 and 10), describes scenes that could hint at morning greetings. While the first one (chap. 2) obviously is shaped after Polybius’ narrative on his son Scipio minor (31.29.8, see below), in chapter 10 the visit of many Romans in front of Aemilius’ domus is sufficiently explained by their extraordinary will to persuade Aemilius to take over the consulate for a second time. Suetonius, Galba 4.4 speaks of a very old custom (mos) still upheld by the emperor Galba. He daily said “good night” as well as “good day” to the members of his household and his (ex-) slaves. Already the fact that Sueton describes Galba’s practice as unusual (exoletus) shows that at least the biographer sees no link to the salutationes still in use among the Romans at this period. Contrary to the opinion of some scholars, therefore, Suetonius’ remark is not attesting the very old age of the ritual.


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question, an account of the behaviour of young Roman aristocrats given by Polybius and an inscription from the Greek city Abdera. 1.2.1 The Polybian χαιρετισμοί In a long digression on the character of his friend P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus, better known as Scipio the Younger, the Greek historian Polybius takes pain to emphasise how much Scipio’s behaviour differed from that of his contemporaries, especially since he took a fancy to hunting wild beasts during his time in Macedonia:20 “So that when he arrived in Rome and when he found in Polybius one equally devoted to the chase, all the time that other young men (οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν νέων) gave up to law affairs and greetings (χαιρετισμοί), spending the whole day in the forum and thus trying to court the favour of the populace, Scipio was occupied by the chase, and by his brilliant and memorable exploits, acquired a higher reputation than anyone.”21 The “greetings” (χαιρετισμοί) referred to by Polybius are often taken as a clear indication of salutationes in the mid-second century B.C.22 Still, in my view, this cannot be taken for granted; in fact, a close reading of the passage suggests a different interpretation. Above all the term χαιρετισμοί is of relevance. Here (as elsewhere in his “Histories”) Polybius uses a rather extravagant word. χαιρετισμοί is unique among his vocabulary and even outside Polybius it is found only very rarely.23 As a noun, it derives from the verb χαιρετίζω, “I greet someone”, but not “I am greeted by someone else”.24 The contemporaries of Scipio, therefore, did not try to be greeted by as many people as possible (as did the Romans of later

20 As Polybius describes the early stages of Scipio’s career, he refers to the late 160s or early 150s B.C. 21 Polybius 31.29.8–10 (transl. W.R. Paton, Loeb Classical): διὸ καὶ παραγενόμενος εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην καὶ προσλαβὼν τὸν τοῦ Πολυβίου πρὸς τοῦτο τὸ μέρος ἐνθουσιασμόν, ἐφ᾿ ὅσον οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν νέων περὶ τὰς κρίσεις καὶ τοὺς χαιρετισμοὺς ἐσπούδαζον, κατὰ τὴν ἀγορὰν ποιούμενοι τὴν διατριβήν, καὶ διὰ τούτων συνιστάνειν ἑαυτοὺς ἐπειρῶντο τοῖς πολλοῖς, ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον ὁ Σκιπίων ἐν ταῖς κυνηγεσίαις ἀναστρεφόμενος καὶ λαμπρὸν ἀεί τι ποιῶν καὶ μνήμης ἄξιον καλλίω δόξαν ἐξεφέρετο τῶν ἄλλων. 22 Cf. e.g. Dubuisson 1985: 211; Flower 1996: 218; Rilinger 1997: 83; Yakobson 1999: 219f. 23 The only other certain reference I know of is PMagPar 1.1046, a late antique papyrus. Χαιρετισμός, there, it is the respectful address to a god. SEG 26.730 (third to second century B.C.) perhaps has χαιρετισμός, but cf. ibid. 24 In this aspect, there is a difference between χαιρετισμός used by Polybius and ἀσπασμός or ἀσπάζομαι, the terms often used as a Greek translation of salutatio/salutare by later authors, especially Cassius Dio.

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times), but they tried to greet as many as possible themselves.25 In addition, I cannot see why the χαιρετισμοί should be seen in a domestic context. In the whole paragraph, there is no mention of Roman houses. Quite the opposite: the conclusion of Polybius’ description is that the young aristocrats spent their whole day in the forum. If we can assume that the Greek historian wanted to be understood by his (Greek) readers, we should expect him to point out, i.e. to clarify that the χαιρετισμοί took place in the domus. However, he certainly could expect his readers not to be surprised by Roman “politicians” trying to win the favour of the people on the forum. And finally, it is also hard to see why the νέοι would greet older senators in their houses for this purpose, as Gelzer wrote nearly a century ago.26 A much more simple explanation of the Polybian text, therefore, is adequate: Polybius does not refer to the morning greetings in the Roman houses, the salutationes, but instead he describes how the νέοι tried to court the people of Rome in the forum. This custom was well known already in the second century B.C. as an important element of electioneering in Roman society, and to this practice the Polybian χαιρετισμοί should be related.27 1.2.2 The Teians at Rome: Syll³ 656 The second document famous as an example of morning greetings is a decree from the Greek city Abdera on behalf of two persons, Amymon and Megathymos, from Abdera’s mother-city, Teos. They are honoured in the text because they led a legation to Rome to support Abdera in its conflict with a Thracian king named Cotys, who claimed part of Abdera’s territory. Amymon and Megathymos then, “met with the [leading men] of Rome, winning them over by their daily perseverance, and induced the patrons (πάτρωνες) of the city to help our people. When [some] preferred our adversary [i.e. the Thracian king Cotys, F.G.] and championed his cause, by their explanation of the affair and by daily calls at their atria (ἐφοδεία ἐπὶ τῶν ἀτρίων), they won over their friendship ...”28 Even though the text does not mention daily visits in the morning, it seems to refer to salutationes in 168–166 B.C., the date ascribed to the inscription since Gelzer and L. Robert. But, although it still can be read in recent publications on Roman 25 Cf. Gelzer 1912: 105: “Polyb meldet daher als eine Hauptbeschäftigung der angehenden Politiker den täglichen Hausbesuch im Hause der Protektoren” (my italics). 26 Cf. note 25. 27 Cf. esp. Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 7.5.2 on Scipio Nasica. See Yakobson 1999: 211–225 for a recent discussion of Roman canvassing. 28 Syll³ 656, ll. 21–27, transl. C. Eilers (2002, Nr. C101).


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social history,29 today this dating is no longer accepted. Already in 1982, G. Chiranky has shown how weak the arguments are for dating the inscription in the early 160s B.C.30 He proposed a much later date (early first century B.C.), a view which now is widely acknowledged.31 And, in fact, we know from a fragmentary passage in Diodorus that at this time too a Thracian king named Cotys was involved in Roman affairs.32 Furthermore, some aspects of the language used in the inscription support a later date: the words ἄτρια and πάτρωνες are Roman terms (atria and patroni) translated into Greek, a practice much more probable around c. 90 than 166 B.C.33 Nevertheless, a safe date cannot be established in the present state of our epigraphical knowledge. But even if Abdera’s decree dates from the early 160s B.C., it does not sufficiently prove daily salutationes. These were interactions among Roman citizens, where sometimes non-Romans could be present too. But an inscription telling us about an embassy from Teos cannot vice versa be taken as a clear reference to the morning greetings.34 1.2.3 The iurisconsulti Important evidence for the morning greetings in the second century is, in my view, not reliable. Finally, the one well-documented example of interaction in Roman houses between members of the senatorial order and ordinary citizens may be considered: the consultations of the so-called iurisconsulti. It was customary for Roman citizens to visit the houses of (certain) senators to ask for assistance and advice, notably in their legal affairs.35 Our main evidence for this practice comes from the Ciceronian corpus. The most interesting passage can be found in his di29 Braund 1989: 137 and Flower 1996: 218 apparently are not aware of Chiranky’s article. 30 Cf. Chiranky 1982. The main argument for dating the inscription to c.166 B.C. is the mention of the king Cotys. A Thracian king Cotys is well known as an important ally of Perseus V, opponent of the Romans in the Third Macedonian War. The name Cotys, nevertheless, is quite common among Thracian kings, so the onomastic coincidence is neither a surprise nor a strong argument. 31 Cf. e.g. Canali de Rossi 1999: 156–160; Eilers 2002: 118–119; Ferrary 1997: 106–107; contra Marek 1997. 32 Diodorus, Bibliotheke 37.5a. 33 For full discussion cf. Chiranky 1982 and Eilers 2002: 118–119. 34 For examples of Greek legations at Rome visiting Roman senatorial domus, cf. Polybius 6.13; Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 4.3.14; Livius 26.29.1–5; 45.20.9f. and Canali de Rossi 1997. 35 See Bauman 1983. Already before the end of the fourth century it was necessary to visit the houses of the pontifices every day, because they alone could tell the sacral "quality" of the day, i.e. whether it was fas or nefas and thereby suited to legal (and political) business or not. Cf. Plinius, Naturalis Historia, 33.17–18; Cicero, Ad Atticum 6.1.8 with Bauman 1983: 24– 31; 44–45; Rüpke 1995: 245–274. For later times David 1992.

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alogue “On the Orator” (de oratore). L. Licinius Crassus, one of the main speakers in the dialogue and consul in 95 B.C., reminds his interlocutors of earlier prominent Roman consuls, Sextus Aelius Paetus Catus (cos. 198 B.C., about whom he was told by his own father) and M’ Manilius (cos. 149 B.C.): “They could recollect Sextus Aelius, while we have actually seen Manius Manilius walking across the forum, and the remarkable thing was that in doing this he was putting his wisdom at the service of all his fellow citizens; and in old days persons resorted to these men both when they were going a walk as described and when seated in their chairs of state (solium) at home, not only to consult them on points of law but also about marrying off a daughter, buying a farm, tilling their estates, and in short every sort of liability or business”.36 In a very similar way, Valerius Maximus illustrates a famous example of extreme paternal severity: in 140 B.C. T. Manlius Torquatus (cos. 165 B.C. and pontifex since 170 B.C.) condemned his (adopted) son D. Silanus to be banished from his house and the whole res publica. Silanus committed suicide, and everyone was shocked. But his father continued to ignore his son. Instead of participating in the funeral, he preferred to keep to his daily routine and opened his house to the Romans who wished to consult him.37 The practice of legal advice as described by Cicero and Valerius Maximus resembles the morning greetings in several important aspects: it took place in the domus,38 usually in the early morning (mane)39 when many Romans came into the houses of the iurisconsulti. However, the important differences should not be overlooked:40 not only was the spatial arrangement of the persons present different (the iurisconsultus sitting in his “chair” [solium]), but also the iurisconsulti seem to have been a rather small and exclusive group among Roman senators. As far as we can see, they were very 36 Cicero, De Oratore 3.133 (transl. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical): meminerant illi Sex. Aelium; M’. vero Manilium nos etiam vidimus transverso ambulantem foro; quod erat insigne eum, qui id faceret, facere civibus suis omnibus consili sui copiam; ad quos olim et ita ambulantis et in solio sedentis domi sic adibatur, non solum ut de iure civili ad eos, verum etiam de filia conlocanda, de fundo emendo, de agro colendo, de omni denique aut officio aut negotio referretur. 37 Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 5.8.3: tam tristis patris sententia Silanus lucem ulterius intueri non sustinuit, suspendioque se proxima nocte consumpsit [...]. at ille (sc. T. Manlius Torquatus, F.G.) neque exsequiis adulescentis interfuit et, cum maxime funus eius duceretur, consulere se volentibus vacuas aures accomodavit. 38 Though not always: Cicero, De oratore 3.133 (transverso ambulare foro); Plutarch, Cato maior 3. 39 Cicero, Philippica 8.31; Brutus 87; Horatius, Sermones 2.1.103–104. 40 As does, in my view, esp. Wallace-Hadrill 1989: 63–64.


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experienced, very influential (and already aged) members of the ordo.41 Younger “politicians” did not receive other Romans in their domus, but rather made their tour at the forum (as described by Polybius) to win the people’s favour. And the iurisconsulti, on their part, apparently did not use the receptions of the consultants to promote their career or their political position, having already reached the highest Roman offices. With this in mind, it is not surprising that the ancient sources, too, make a difference between the practice of the iurisconsulti and the salutationes. It is Cicero, again, who must be cited here. In another dialogue, De legibus (“On the laws”), written in c.52B.C., he imagines how he himself would once be honoured by the visits of his fellow citizens in search of legal advice.42 At the same time, it is beyond doubt that Cicero was visited by salutatores for a long time since. He himself, therefore, draws no connection between the practice of an iurisconsultus and receiving the salutatores. To sum up: it is too rash to see the legal consultations as salutationes. What we know is that already in the second century and before C. Gracchus’ times, some Roman senators were frequented in their houses. These visits were – according to Cicero – dominated by a rather “practical” aspect: the required assistance in legal (and other personal) affairs. Certainly, the visits were, too, an expression of due respect to these men. Nevertheless, more important is what they were not: a widespread Roman ritual to generate political support among the plebs urbana and a field in which Roman “politicians” competed for glory, as were the salutationes in later times. It is precisely this aspect of domestic interaction which started to become of central importance when C. Gracchus entered the stage of Roman history. He, as I will try to demonstrate in the remaining part of the paper, resorted to an already known type of interaction in senatorial houses. But his innovative use of an, in principle, established practice should change its concrete procedure as well as its function, both in instrumental and symbolic aspects of the ritual. 1.3 The “Usurpation” of the salutatio by C. Gracchus According to Seneca’s De Beneficiis, Gracchus’ reception of visitors clearly was innovative in a very concrete way: he divided his salutatores into three groups, which he could greet according to the honour due to them. In this way, he could receive not only a large number of salutatores, but he could receive them simulta-

41 Cf. Baumann 1983. 42 Cicero, De legibus 1.10, see also Horatius, Sermones 2.1.103–104 for whom legal assistance was common “in the good old days”.

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neously, and everyone was able to see how many and how important the salutatores who had come.43 At first sight it is primarily the spatial arrangement of the salutatores which underwent a major change, compared to the rather static one with the iurisconsultus, sitting in his chair. But Gracchus’ modification of the ritual behaviour during a salutatio was closely connected with the new use he made of his personal contacts as becomes obvious once we consider the historical context in which it took place. Unfortunately, Seneca himself is rather (or better: very) disinterested in this aspect. The only hint he gives us is the reference to Gracchus’ “imitator”, Livius Drusus, his colleague as tribunus plebis. More details can be found in Plutarch’s “Life of C. Gracchus”. When Plutarch deals with the political activities of his protagonist he speaks not only of the various legislative projects for which Gracchus is well known, he also emphasises Gracchus’ extraordinary popularity among the people of Rome. Of interest for the present argument is the question of how Gracchus was able to win the favour of the citizens. His biographer not only mentions the Gracchian laws (among them agrarian, frumentary, colonial and judiciary laws),44 but tells us that Gracchus was very much renowned for his friendliness in personal contact: “And as for the multitude, they were astonished at the very sight, when they beheld him closely attended by a throng of contractors, artificers, ambassadors, magistrates, soldiers, and literary men, with all of whom he was on easy terms, preserving his dignity while showing kindliness, and rendering properly to every man the courtesy which was due for him, whereby he set in the light of malignant slanderers those who stigmatised him as threatening or vulgar or violent. Thus he was a more skilful popular leader in his private intercourse with men and in his business transactions than in his speeches from the rostra”.45 Plutarch thus stresses how much Gracchus’ power was based on his unusual ability to gain support by direct personal contact (or interaction) with the Roman citizens. Because and while he dealt fairly with everyone according to the personal relationship between himself and his respective counterpart, he generated extraordinary 43 Seneca, De Beneficiis 6.34. Cf. supra. 44 On the Gracchian period see still Stockton 1979. 45 Plutarch, C. Gracchus 6.4 (transl. B. Perri, slightly adapted, Loeb Classical): οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ καὶ τὴν ὄψιν αὐτὴν ἐθαύμαζον, ἐξηρτημένον ὁρῶντες αὐτοῦ πλῆθος ἐργολάβων, τεχνιτῶν, πρεσβευτῶν, ἀρχόντων, στρατιωτῶν, φιλολόγων, οἷς πᾶσιν ἐντυγχάνων μετὰ εὐκολίας καὶ τὸ σεμνὸν ἐν τῷ φιλανθρώπῳ διαφυλάττων, καὶ νέμων αὐτοῦ τὸ ἁρμόττον οἰκείως ἑκάστῳ, χαλεποὺς ἀπεδείκνυε συκοφάντας τοὺς φοβερὸν αὐτὸν ἢ φορτικὸν ὅλως ἢ βίαιον ἀποκαλοῦντας. οὕτω δεινότερος ἦν ἐν ταῖς ὁμιλίαις καὶ ταῖς πράξεσιν ἢ τοῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ βήματος λόγοις δημαγωγός.


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support among the populace. And, following Plutarch’s comment, it was precisely this personal interaction in a ritualised form by which Gracchus would become a “dreadful demagogue” (δεινὸς δημαγωγός). Now, it is also interesting how his opponents, i.e. the majority of the senators, reacted. Still according to Plutarch, they feared Gracchus becoming invincible (ἄμαχος), and were looking for a method to counteract. In the end, they charged a further tribune with alienating the people of Rome from Gracchus. The tribune chosen was no other than M. Livius Drusus, the one mentioned also in Seneca.46 Two points concerning the strategy of the senatorial majority are striking. First, it is surprising why a rather unknown tribune had to be appointed to counter Gracchus. Plutarch is not very precise about this decision, though apparently the more influential senators were not willing to confront Gracchus by his own means. His biographer mentions that some people in Rome accused Gracchus of acting in a threatening and vulgar, even “violent” way, and these reproaches are clearly linked with his unusually intense (and successful) personal contacts. If my interpretation of Plutarch’s text is adequate, the more important senators did not want to court the citizens in the same way as Gracchus did. While at least some of them did receive visitors in their own houses, it was not regarded as reputable to court them for concrete, political purposes in this domestic context – if not for the outcome of being stigmatised (as Gracchus was). Second, Plutarch’s metaphoric summary of Drusus’ own approach should be taken into account. He instantly began to fight Gracchus’ popularity in a very telling way. Indeed, he tried to surpass his rival in pleasing the people in the same way so closely that Plutarch compares his behaviour to the rival demagogues of a comedy. In the end, the senatorial strategy was successful and Gracchus lost the people’s favour. Even though he tried to gain even more popularity by changing his residence from the Palatine hill to the region adjoining the forum – a strategy known to be connected with the ambition to get more salutatores47 – he lost his strong position and was murdered as his brother Tiberius had been some years before. Plutarch, it is true, does not mention explicitly the ingenious strategy of Gracchus to receive more morning callers than anyone before. Still, when combining his account with Seneca’s De Beneficiis, there can be little doubt that Gracchus as well as his “imitator” Drusus used personal contact in their houses to gain support for their political ambitions. From this perspective, Gracchus “and soon Livius Drusus”, quoting Seneca, did much more than to reorganise the spatial arrangement of his visitors. Three central aspects are to be emphasised: 46 Plutarch, C. Gracchus 8.3–9.1. 47 Plutarch, Cicero 8.6; Marius 32.

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1. Both tribunes tried to attract as many visitors as possible. To organise the great number of salutatores, they needed to rearrange their visitors in their houses, i.e. divide them into three groups. 2. They gave a new, strictly political significance to the visits. As far as we know, they were the first to try to improve their respective political position by constant and intense interaction in a domestic context. While the young aristocrats criticised by Polybius confined this activity to the forum, Gracchus and Drusus transferred the competition for the people’s favour into a new arena, the domus. Senatorial houses had already been accessible to Roman citizens in the earlier period; however, they had not been used for this specific purpose. So, the new use Gracchus made of ritualised interaction in his house was unusual and also ill regarded by his contemporaries who were reluctant to follow Gracchus. In this sense, Gracchus indeed “usurped” older practices, even though he had not, of course, broken any written law. 3. Gracchus and Drusus not only modified the concrete, “instrumental” function of personal interaction in the domestic context, they also modified the symbolic meaning of a well-crowded house (a domus frequentata). While the senators to whom one paid respect in earlier times were very well-known and well-respected people, neither Gracchus nor Drusus could compete with them in terms of the honours achieved by military glory, political success or legal knowledge. Here lies, in my view, the most fundamental effect of the “usurpation of the ritual” salutatio. During the late Republic and under the early Empire, the symbolic meaning of the domus frequentata became more and more important, up to the point that even Romans whose position was (more or less) independent of personal support from most Roman citizens still were forced to manifest their social position by the daily reception of the salutatores. The most notable example is, of course, the Roman Emperors.48 Conclusion So far, the history of the salutationes at Rome can indeed be described as a “usurpation” of a ritual. As we have seen, the daily visits paid to Roman senators in the early morning were a widespread and complex ritual. It was a quite common senatorial strategy to improve one’s political position. For the salutatores, attendance was a way to assure juristic, economical or other kinds of assistance when needed. Beyond this concrete, instrumental aspect, the salutationes demonstrated every day how many personal relationships the senator visited was involved in, thus symbolising his (potential) influence in Roman society and politics.

48 Cf. Winterling 1999: 117–144.


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Because interaction so intense and ritualised as the salutatio is rather uncommon even in pre-modern times, the question was posed how the salutationes could become such an intrinsic and eminent feature of Roman society. While scholarship often tends to regard them as a very old and traditional Roman custom, I have argued for a more dynamic view. A re-evaluation of the sources first resulted in a much more critical analysis of the two most prominent texts usually cited as clear evidence for salutationes in the second century B.C. (Polybius and Syll³ 656). The reception of citizens into the houses of the iurisconsulti are partially comparable to later morning-greetings. Nevertheless, they differ in important aspects from late Republican salutationes. The decisive turning point only came when Gracchus and Drusus made a new and innovative use of interaction in their domus. Unlike the iurisconsulti, they started to court the populace even in a domestic context where they tried to tie as many personal relationships as possible. The domus frequentata thereby acquired a new meaning as a symbol for political power even though the person visited was not necessarily among the most distinguished members of the senatorial order. As we shall see, this symbolic aspect of a well-crowded house should – under the new conditions of the Roman empire – once more be of major importance for the further history of the salutationes.

2. Salutatio in the aula Caesaris (Patrizia Arena) During the imperial age the ritual of salutatio became a constitutive part of the political and social life in Rome and inside the court. Because of this characteristic it has been the object of several studies and of different reconstructions by scholars. Aloys Winterling has made the most recent systematic reflection about the ritual of salutatio in the Roman court between the first and the second century A.D., dealing with the possible development of the ritual, the relationship between salutatio and admissio, and the function, in part new, acquired by this ritual at the birth of the Principate.49 Consequently, the aim of this paper will not be to reconstruct the various phases of the ritual nor to review all the literary sources, but to consider only some salutationes and aspects from a specific point of view, i.e. the real or presumed “usurpation” of rituals, appropriate to throwing light on the meaning of this ritual. My analysis will concentrate, in fact, not on the salutationes held by ruling emperors, but on the salutationes reserved for other relevant persons inside the court, such as the praetorian prefect Seianus aiming at the throne during the Tiberian reign, and the women of the imperial family, Livia and Agrippina. This

49 Pani 2003: 116–144; Winterling 1999: 117–138; Wallace-Hadrill 1996: 290–291; Turcan 1987: 132–139; Talbert 1984: 68–70; Millar 1977: 21–22, 111, 209–210, 241–242.

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choice is determined by the intention to verify if, in these last cases, it is possible to speak of “usurping rituals” and, if the answer is positive, why. 2.1 The “Usurpation” of the Ritual by Seianus Looking at the salutationes held by Seianus in the period in which he wanted to become emperor and successor to Tiberius and starting from the analysis of two passages, one from Tacitus and the other from Cassius Dio, it is possible to think about the meaning of the “usurpation” of a ritual in the context of a specific society. From this specific point of view, in fact, we are in a privileged position, because we have the written comments by an ancient historian on the meaning of the gestures of respect in court life, on the different use of the rituals made by the lawful emperors and by those illegitimately appropriating power, and on the different attitude of those participating in the ritual. From the first passage, dating from the time immediately before the move of Tiberius to the island of Capri (26 A.D.), the strategy enacted by Seianus to increase his power and to “usurp” the ritual emerges: “At the same time, unwilling either to enfeeble his influence by prohibiting the throngs which besieged his doors or to give a handle to his detractors by receiving them, he turned to the idea of inducing Tiberius to spend his days in some pleasant retreat at a distance from Rome. The advantages, he foresaw, were numerous. He would be the only one accessible; letters he could largely supervise, as they were transmitted by soldiers: before long, Caesar, who was already in the decline of life and would be weakened because of the seclusion, would be readier to transfer the functions of sovereignty, while his own unpopularity would diminish with the abolition of his greetings, and the realities of his power would be increased by the removal of its vanities. A little at a time, therefore, he began to denounce the drudgeries of the capital, its jostling crowds, the endless stream of suitors, and to give his eulogies to quiet solitude, where tedium and bickering were unknown and a man’s chief attention could be concentrated on affairs of the first importance”.50 Firstly it is necessary to consider his position inside the court: he was a knight and one of the low-ranking friends, to whom the office of praetorian prefect had given new instruments of power; he was the prime example of the court hierarchy 50 Tacitus, Annales, 4.41.1–3: Ac ne adsiduos in domum coetus arcendo infringeret potentiam aut receptando facultatem criminantibus praeberet, huc flexit, ut Tiberium ad vitam procul Roma amoenis locis degendam impelleret. Multa quippe providebat: sua in manu aditus litterarumque magna ex parte se arbitrum fore, cum per milites commearent; mox Caesarem vergente iam senecta secretoque loci mollitum munia imperii facilius tramissurum; et minui sibi invidiam adempta salutantum turba, sublatisque inanibus veram potentiam augeri.


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trying to prevail over the traditional ranking hierarchy. Therefore the salutationes granted to him in this period and understood by the historian in the expression “adsiduos coetus” were the object of suspicion in Rome and the reason for charges made by the courtiers, who accused him of aspiring to the throne. Secondly we have to raise a question about the meaning of the words “adempta salutantium turba”, because we can presume that the historian, with these words, was referring to the pars of the noble aula that, in this historical period, prevented a new court hierarchy from prevailing over the traditional hierarchy and more precisely referring to the group of L. Arruntius, which from the beginning had opposed Seianus. In 26 A.D. Seianus had the support of the new emerging classes, who had already assembled around Germanicus, and of the new noble pars, the so-called group of Cn. Lentulus Getulicus. We have to consider, in fact, that in the previous chapter (Ann., 4.40.4–6) the response of Tiberius to the request by Seianus to marry Livilla had revealed the division of the new emerging classes from the court nobility, new and old.51 The proximity to the emperor and the unconditional favour of Tiberius, along with the power really exercised by Seianus, and his social and political position, determined both the birth and the reinforcement of relationships of various natures and of friendships more or less sincere.52 Throughout the Principate, proximity to the emperor was one of the most relevant factors which allowed an individual or certain groups to obtain special imperial beneficia (such as offices, statuses, privileges, immunities, money and priesthoods) for themselves, their friends and clients.53 Consequently, Seianus was greeted by people of all conditions, on the one hand clientes and on the other hand senators and knights, i.e. by men belonging to the circles of the highest Roman aristocracy.54 In his plan, 51 S. 413 Anm. 51 For an exhaustive study on these subjects, on the entourage of Seianus, its changes in the course of time and its connections with the entourage of Germanicus, see Pani 1979: 135–146; Pani 1968: 115–116; Pani 1966: 107–110. 52 Obviously the praetorian prefects were among the most influential people in court circles; cf. Millar 1977: 122–131. 53 On the patronage and patronal ideology in the Principate, see Saller 1982: 37–69. 54 The composition of this entourage is well known by the account of Tacitus, concerning the period following his death (18 October 31 A.D.), in which his real or presumed supporters were persecuted. Among his supporters we can mention high-ranking men such as Fulcinius Trio, consul designatus for 31 A.D., the praetors C. Fulvius [-]us and C. Coelius, the procurator of Spain M. Hordeonius, the consulares C. Annius Pollio, C. Appius Iunius Silanus, Mam. Aemilius Scaurus, C. Calvisius Sabinus, the old senator Sex. Vestilius, the knights Geminus, Pompeius, Vescularius Flaccus, M. Terentius, and others who only had a relationship as friends with him. They were probably the participants in these salutationes and had meetings with him. Fulcinius Trio: PIR2, F, 517; C. Fulvius [-]us: PIR 2, F, 524; C. Coelius: PIR2, C, 1238; M. Hordeonius: PIR2, H, 201; C. Asinius Pollio: PIR2, A, 677; Mam. Aemilius Scaurus: PIR2, A, 404; C. Calvisius Sabinus: PIR2, C, 354; Sex. Vistilius: PIR2, V, 489; M. Terentius: Tacitus, Annales, 9.8. On the entourage of Seianus, see Demougin 2001: 215–218; Hennig 1975: 101–121; Pekáry 1966–1967: 105–133.

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after having isolated Tiberius on Capri, the legitimate emperor would not be on a daily basis greeted by the courtiers, especially by the part of the courtiers hostile to him; instead his own popularity and power would increase, because he would become the main protagonist in the rituals and the political power-holder. From this action there would have been two consequences: on the one hand the presence of the courtiers who opposed him and who could have been potential rivals in seeking absolute power would have been eliminated as well as the possibility for them of using the ritual as a source of power and influence; on the other hand the salutatio held by Seianus would have had the greatest visibility and would have become the most important in Rome. Instead Tiberius’ real power, reinforced by the daily contact face to face with his subjects and by the distribution of honours in the salutationes, would have been destroyed. At the same time also the visual representation of Tiberius’ power, one of the constitutive factors of the ritual of salutatio and the other rituals developing in Rome, would have been deleted. In this sense, in my opinion, Seianus can be considered as a “usurper” of the ritual. The second passage, that from Cassius Dio, shows us the situation when Seianus was at the height of his power, in 31 A.D., and was the only intermediary between Tiberius and the exterior world:55 “Seianus was so great a person by reason both of his excessive haughtiness and of his vast power, that, to put it briefly, he himself seemed to be emperor and Tiberius a kind of island potentate, in as much as the latter spent his time on the island of Capri. There were rivalry and jostling about the great man’s doors, the people fearing not merely that they might not be seen by their patron, but also that they might be among the last to appear before him; for every word and every look, especially in the case of the most prominent men, was carefully observed. Those, now, who hold a prominent position as the result of native worth are not much given to seeking signs of friendship from others, and if such manifestations are wanting on the part of these others, they do not tax them with it, for as much as they know very well that they are not being looked down upon; but those, on the other hand, who enjoy an adventitious splendour seek very eagerly all such attentions, thinking them to be necessary to render their position complete, and if they fail to obtain them, are as vexed as if they were being slandered and as angry as if they were being insulted. Consequently, the world is more scrupulous in the case of such persons than in the case of the emperors themselves, one might almost say; since for the latter it counts as a virtue to pardon anyone in case of an offence, but by the former such conduct is thought to argue their weak-

55 See Yavetz 1999: 29–31; cf. Levick 1999: 167–169, 171–174.


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ness, whereas to attack and to exact vengeance is considered to furnish proof of great power”.56 The historian underlines that Seianus already seemed to be the emperor because of his power and his haughtiness. Hence the crowd of courtiers massed before his doors for the salutatio matutina. By arrogating to himself a very important ritual, he arrogated to himself a great part of both the political power in Rome and the ways in which power was displayed. Nevertheless the first phase of the ritual, getting access, didn’t happen with order and composure as it would have done with the lawful emperor. It was characterised, instead, by rivalry and crowding, because the salutantes did not only wanted to be noticed by him but also did not want to seem to be among the last, i.e. among the people who greeted him because of duty and unwillingly, so as not to incur his hatred or be persecuted by him. This part of the passage sheds light on the overturning of the procedures of the salutatio, enacted previously by Augustus and Tiberius to avoid any offence to senators and knights,57 and shows the quarrels between the courtiers in the context of the salutatio to Seianus as well as the flattery existing inside the court, by means of which the people, daily participating in this ritual, could obtain favours, privileges and particular social recognitions. During the Principate, in fact, the development of a peculiar social hierarchy, based on proximity to the emperor, in this case to the “usurper”, was linked with such manifestations of respect and flattery. Furthermore, both being granted respect and consequently becoming the protagonist in the ritual of salutatio were considered by the “usurper” to be a way of establishing his 56 Dio, Historia Romana, 58.5.1–4: Ὁ δέ Σιανὸς τοσοῦτος ἦν τῇ ὑπεροχῇ τε τοῦ φρονήματος καὶ τῷ μεγέθει τῆς ἐξουσίας ὥστε συνελόντι εἰπεῖν αὐτὸν μὲν αὐτοκράτορα, τὸν δὲ Τιβέριον νησίαρχόν τινα εἶναι δοκεῖν διὰ τὸ ἐν τῇ νήσῳ τῇ λεγομένῃ Καπρίᾳ τὰς διατριβὰς ποιεῖσθαι. Σπουδαί τε καὶ ὠθισμοὶ περὶ τὰς θύρας αὐτοῦ ἐγίνοντο ἐκ τοῦ δεδιέναι μὴ μόνον μὴ οὐκ ὀφθῇ τις αὐτῷ ἀλλὰ μὴ καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὑστάτοις φανῇ· πάντα γὰρ ἀκριβῶς, καὶ μάλιστα τὰ τῶν πρώτων, ἐτηρεῖτο καὶ τὰ ῥήματα καὶ τὰ νεύματα. Οἱ μὲν γὰρ οἰκείᾳ ἀξιώσει προύχοντες οὔτε τὰ δεξιώματα παρά τινων πάνυ ἀπαιτοῦσι, κἂν ἄρα καὶ ἐκλειφθῇ τι αὐτῶν, οὐκ ἐγκαλοῦσί σφισιν, ἅτε καὶ ἑαυτοῖς συνειδότες ὅτι μὴ καταφρονοῦνται· οἱ δὲ ἐπακτῷ καλλωπίσματι χρώμενοι πάντα ἰσχυρῶς τὰ τοιαῦτα, ὡς καὶ εἰς τὴν τοῦ ἀξιώματός σφων πλήρωσιν ἀναγκαῖα, ἐπιζητοῦσι, κἂν μὴ τύχωσιν αὐτῶν, ἄχθονταί τε ὡς διαβαλλόμενοι καὶ ὀργίζονται ὡς ὑβριζόμενοι. Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μᾶλλον περὶ τοὺς τοιούτους ἢ περὶ αὐτοὺς ὡς εἰπεῖν τοὺς αὐτοκράτορας σπουδάζουσιν, ὅτι τοῖς μέν, κἂν πλημμεληθῇ τι, ἀρετὴν τὸ συγγνῶναί τῳ φέρει· τοῖς δὲ τοῦτο μὲν τὴν ἀσθένειάν σφων ἐλέγχειν δοκεῖ, τὸ δὲ ἐπεξελθεῖν καὶ τιμωρήσασθαι βεβαίωσιν τοῦ μέγα δύνασθαι ἔχειν νομίζεται. 57 Under Augustus the salutatores probably greeted the emperor according to the traditional order of political-social rank without confusion: Suetonius, Augustus, 35.2; Dio, Historia Romana, 56.26.3. Under Tiberius the senators greeted the emperor as a group avoiding the throng: Suetonius, Tiberius, 27; Dio, Historia Romana, 57.11.1. See Winterling 1999: 132– 133.

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control over society and as a way to display his power. Employing the main ritual of the Principate, Seianus showed that he understood its specific value in political life: through the daily interaction between subjects and ruler, the salutationes symbolised that the emperor surpassed all the other aristocrats; therefore through this ritual Seianus desired to show that he was the most important man in Rome. The “usurpation” of the ritual by the praetorian prefect allows us to question if the model of the European court elaborated by N. Elias and his interpretation of the functions of the court and rituals can be applied to both the Roman emperor and the “usurpers”, or only to the latter.58 This reflection might help us to understand better this particular aspect of court life and the existing differences in terms of ritual habits between legitimate emperors and “usurpers”. Considering that power, as Elias suggested, is a process, a balance among many persons, Seianus, like the French rulers in the interpretation of Elias, tried to stabilise his position of power by also manipulating the ritual of salutatio, with all the key elements connected with it. At the same time he kept all the participants divided, busy competing with each other in paying respect to him and in getting his favours. Seianus usurped the ritual and then used it to rule by dividing. Elias’ model, in my opinion, can be well applied to the “usurpers” of rituals and power in the Roman empire and can help us in clarifying their modus operandi and the reasons for their behaviour. Conversely, it does not sufficiently reflect the normal development of court life and rituals under legitimate emperors as confirmed by the later testimony of Cassius Dio. He, in fact, was commenting on the behaviour and position of Seianus and on excessive manifestations of flattery in order to describe as well a difference in behaviour between the emperors, who based their power on a lawful descent and on the antiquity of their family, and the so-called “usurpers”, who acquired power by force and intrigues without lawful descent. These latter expect to receive all the respect they view as constituting their power and necessary to legitimate it; they need legitimation and therefore usurp certain rituals, expecting to become their focus. Because their position is based on rather weak bases, they understand that the lack of such respect, in the context of a public ritual, automatically discredits them before the whole society and undermines their power. Therefore, they get angry and commit unbecoming actions, revenging themselves and committing assault as if they were being insulted. The lawful emperors, instead, don’t get angry and don’t commit acts of cruelty if courtiers neglect similar manifestations of friendship and flattery, because nothing is taken away from their position and their power. It seems more plausible to consider the reflections by J. Duindam about Elias’ model for explaining the behaviour in the rituals of the legitimate emperors, and in parti-

58 Elias 1983. See also Duindam 2004: 91–103, especially 97–100.


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cular of the so-called good emperors.59 The rituals were not necessarily an effective way of controlling the courtiers, but were particular symbolic “spaces” in which the emperor and his subjects could daily negotiate their identity and reinsure their roles, without tensions and stratagems. On the one hand the participation in the rituals by the courtiers could be a way to demonstrate their loyal support for the ruling emperor and to win his favour; on the other hand the control of the ritual by the emperor could be a way to demonstrate his pre-eminence above all, and his favour and approval of the courtiers.60 Concerning the passage of Cassius Dio just analysed and his opinion on the salutationes held by Seianus and on what happened in the court because of him, it isn’t possible not to ask if they reflect only the reality of the Tiberian age or rather as well the situation of the Severian age, as happens in other passages of his work. The second part of this passage, i.e. the long remark about the differences in behaviour between the emperors and the “usurpers”, might be interpreted also as a comment referring to Seianus eliminating every risk in expressing his opinion about the praetorian prefect Plautianus and court life during the Severian age (during which he lived and wrote).61 In my opinion this doubt might be legitimate if we consider his opinion, not very favourable, on Septimius Severus and absolutely negative on Plautianus, and secondly the sense of worry and fear by which he was dominated for a great part of the Severian reign and to which corresponded his isolation from active political life; hirdly the various dangerous situations which befell him and the other senators,62 and finally the fact that Cassius Dio himself participated as a judge in the trial against Plautianus63 and, after his death, was among the senators excessively praising his informers.64 The doubt is strengthened if we compare what he writes on Seianus and Plautianus, on the salutationes held by Plautianus and their context, whith what historians before him wrote on the salutationes and the behaviour of various emperors. It is telling that Cassius Dio, dealing with Seianus’ praetorian prefecture, judges the power achieved by Seianus and compares it to the power gained by Plautianus,65 and then uses the same words he used for Seianus twice to describe the enormous and illegitimate power of Plau-

59 Duindam 1995. On the possibility of applying Elias’ model to the Roman empire, in particular in the Late Antiquity, cf. Smith 2007: 164–167. 60 Cf. Patterson 2007: 145. 61 On Plautianus and his career, see Grosso 1968: 7–60. 62 Dio, Historia Romana, 75.2; 75.8; 76.8. 63 Dio, Historia Romana, 75.16. 64 Dio, Historia Romana, 76.6. 65 Dio, Historia Romana, 58.14.1.

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tianus and the extraordinary position he reached.66 Obviously, we don’t have passages in which the historian comments on the development of the salutatio before Plautianus in any explicit way, as he had done for Seianus. Nevertheless, what can help us is the well-known passage concerning the senator Coeranus, who after Plautianus’ death in 205 A.D. was in danger of losing his life and was exiled because of his closeness to the prefect: “As for Coeranus, however, though he admitted (a mere pretence, no doubt, such as most men are wont to indulge in when referring to those who are favoured by Fortune) that he had been an intimate of Plautianus and that, whenever the other suspected senators were invited into his house in advance of the general throng among those who came to pay Plautianus their respects, he had accompanied them as far as the last gate, yet he denied that he had shared in Plautianus’ secrets, asserting that he always remained in the space mid-way, thus giving to Plautianus the impression that he was outside and to those outside that he was inside”.67 We are interested in the particular atmosphere of the salutationes, similar to that of the salutationes to Seianus: to be among the first men admitted before the powerful prefect was important for sharing with him secrets and intrigues and for obtaining favours.68 Considering this division, the salutatores belonging to the prima cohors, smaller and more selected, must be privileged in requiring beneficia and obtaining power and respect.69 Furthermore, to give the illusion of being among the most intimate friends of the prefect to those who were waiting before his doors was important for confirming one’s own social status in the court

66 Dio, Historia Romana, 75.15.1: “The only one responsible for this situation was Severus himself, who yielded to Plautianus in all matters to such a degree that the latter occupied the position of emperor and he himself that of prefect”; 76.4.5: “Thus this man, who had possessed the greatest power of all men of my time, so that everyone regarded him with greater fear and trembling than the very emperors”. 67 Dio, Historia Romana, 76.5.3–4: ὁ μέντοι Κοίρανος ἔλεγε μὲν οἷά που πλεῖστοι πρὸς τοὺς εὐτυχοῦντας πλάττονται ἀεί, ἑταῖρός τε αὐτοῦ εἶναι, καὶ ὁσάκις γε ἐκεῖνοι πρὸ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν ἀσπαζομένων αὐτὸν εἰσεκαλοῦντο, συνεφείπετό σφισι μέχρι τῆς κιγκλίδος τῆς τελευταίας, οὐ μέντοι καὶ ἐκοινώνει τῶν ἀπορρήτων, ἀλλ᾿ ἐν τῷ μεταιχμίῳ διατρίβων Πλαυτιανῷ μὲν ἒξω τοῖς δ᾿ ἔξω ἒνδον ἐδόκει εἶναι. 68 In this passage it seems to be a reference to the division of the salutatores in two principal groups, those of prima admissio and those of secunda admissio. For the different interpretations about this division, see Winterling 1999:128–135; Turcan 1987: 132–139; Millar 1977: 111; Crook 1955: 23–24. 69 Cf. Saller 1982: 59–68.


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hierarchy.70 Also worth noting are the flattery and the fiction of the courtiers presenting their daily respects to the prefect who had the power in place of the lawful emperor. Furthermore, in the words used by Cassius Dio about the salutationes to Seianus it is difficult not to catch an echo of what Pliny wrote on the salutationes under Domitian,71 with an understood comparison with the dark and terrifying atmosphere characterising the salutationes held by that tyrant. It was also an echo of the reflection on the differences of behaviour, also in a ceremonial context, existing between good and bad rulers, between lawful emperors and “usurpers”. 2.2 The Women of the Imperial Family and the Ritual The second part of my paper concerns the salutationes held by the empresses Livia and Agrippina. The aim is to verify if in these cases we can correctly speak of a real “usurpation” of rituals or if this is rather the interpretation given by the Roman historians. According to Cassius Dio, Livia, after Augustus’ death and at the beginning of Tiberius’ reign, was greeted in her house: “She occupied a very exalted position, far above all women of former days, so that she could at any time receive the senate and those among the people who wanted to greet her in her house; and this fact was entered in the public records. The letters of Tiberius bore for a time her name too and communications were addressed to both alike. Besides the fact that she never ventured to enter the senate-chamber or the camps or the public assemblies, she managed everything as if she was the sole ruler. For in the time of Augustus she had possessed the greatest influence and she always declared that it was she

70 In 203 A.D. Plautianus, praetorian prefect without colleague and twice consular, exercised his indisputable power over senators and knights and controlled the court life. Obviously there was a circle of Plautianus’ friends that must have been particularly active, because after his death some of these supporters were condemned to death. We have to plausibly suppose that the most assiduous salutatores were these supporters. Among them there was Macrinus, the future emperor, who was administrator of his property and after Plautianus’ death was saved by Fabius Cilo: Dio, Historia Romana, 78.11.2. There was also Aelius Coeranus, who would become the first Egyptian senator under Caracalla: Dio, Historia Romana, 76.5.4. Another supporter must have been Caecilius Agricola, who preferred to commit suicide after having received the sentence of death: Dio, Historia Romana, 76.5.6; PIR II2, p. 4 n.19. Domitius Florus because of his tie with Plautianus didn’t achieve the aedilitas, but achieved the tribunate of the people by Macrinus: Dio, Historia Romana, 78.22.2; PIR III2, p. 48 n. 147, p. 221 n. 554. On Plautianus’ entourage, see Grosso 1968: 44–45. 71 Plinius, Panegyricus, 48–49.

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Fabian Goldbeck and Patrizia Arena who had made Tiberius emperor; consequently she was not satisfied to rule on equal terms with him, but wished to take precedence over him”.72

We don’t have a lot of information about the development of the ritual before Livia; it can only be deduced that such salutationes held by the emperor’s mother had an official character, considering that they were mentioned in the acta diurna as those held by the princeps. It is reasonable to suppose that they happened in Livia’s house on the Palatine, until Tiberius, irritated by her interferences, removed her from public affairs, making her spend her old age in sadness and isolation in her house on the Palatine, while he retired to Capri and Seianus ruled in Rome.73 In reality, from his accession Tiberius’ attitude was one of caution towards the extraordinary honours to be decreed to Livia and towards the power she exercised; already in that period he said in senate that it was necessary to reduce the honours granted to women.74 To completely understand the fact that Livia had been the protagonist of one of the most important rituals in the court life, it is necessary to briefly remember that, already from 35 B.C., she had an important political role, well emphasised by several scholars.75 In this year she had the privilege of receiving statues, of acting without a legal tutor, and of receiving the sacrosanctity of the tribunes, extraordinary honours placing her above the other Roman matrons; she was also consulted by her husband about the most important decisions and ruled on the emperor’s house.76 Furthermore, the women of the imperial family progressively became great patronesses and had a relevant role in granting beneficia, obtained through their proximity to the emperor. The two main moments in which senators, knights and people could ask for beneficia of various natures were the matutina salutatio and the dining, as happened for the emperor.77 As confirmation

72 Dio, Historia Romana, 57.12.2–3: Πάνυ γὰρ μέγα καὶ ὑπὲρ πάσας τὰς πρόσθεν γυναῖκας ὤγκωτο, ὥστε kaὶ τὴν βουλὴν καὶ τοῦ δήμου τοὺς ἐθέλοντας οἴκαδε ἀσπασομένους εἰσδέχεσθαι, καὶ τοῦτο καὶ ἐς τὰ δημόσια ὑπομνήματα ἐσγράφεσθαι. Αἵ τε ἐπιστολαὶ τοῦ Τιβερίου καὶ τὸ ἐκείνης ὄνομα χρόνον τινὰ ἒσχον, τά τε ἄλλα πάντα ὡς καὶ αὐταρχοῦσα διοικεῖν ἐπεχείρει. Ἐπί τε γὰρ τοῦ Αὐγούστου μέγιστον ἠδυνήθη καὶ τὸν Τιβέριον αὐτὴ αὐτοκράτορα πεποιηκέναι ἔλεγε, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐχ ὅσον ἐξ ἴσου ἄρχειν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρεσβεύειν αὐτοῦ ἤθελε. 73 Suetonius, Tiberius, 51.1. Dio, Historia Romana, 57.12.6. 74 Tacitus, Annales, 1.14.1-2; Suetonius, Tiberius, 50.5; Dio, Historia Romana, 56.1. 75 See Barrett 2002; Storchi 2002: 52–68; Fraschetti 1994: 123–151. 76 Bauman 1981: 175–178. 77 During the first two centuries of the Empire, the imperial women continued to exercise their patronage. For example Poppea Sabina under Nero: Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae, 20.11.1; Caenis under Vespasian: Dio, Historia Romana, 66.14.3; Iulia under Domitian: Dio, Historia Romana, 67.4.2; Plotina under Trajan: Plinius, Epistulae, 9.28. See Saller 1982: 61– 66.


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of this role for Livia herself, after her death, an arch was built for her by the senate, because she had been a great patroness.78 Concluding our reflection on the role of Livia in the ritual, from the words of Cassius Dio it emerges that Livia was daily greeted with the permission of Tiberius, in the same way in which she carried out other public acts, like signing letters and receiving official communications. But in the opinion of the historian or better in the tradition followed by him she was acting as a “usurper” because she was arrogating to herself a prerogative of the ruling emperor and especially of men from both points of view, that is to say the ritual and the political power. Concerning Agrippina, Tacitus remarks that in 54 A.D., after the killing of Britannicus, she was daily greeted: “His mother’s wrath cannot be appeased by any liberality; but she caressed Octavia, had frequent and secret conversations with her friends, beyond her innate cupidity she seized money as if she wanted to get herself supporters. She politely received for the greeting tribunes and centurions, she regarded the virtuous men, who still survived from the ancient nobility, as if she was looking for a party and its leaders. Nero, informed of this situation, ordered that the praetorian guards, who in the past she had as emperor’s wife and after she kept as emperor’s mother, had to be removed and that the German guard, who not long ago had been assigned to her person as a sign of honour, had to be taken away. So that the crowd of those greeting her didn’t approach her, he had the house separated and had his mother moved to what had been Antonia’s house. Every time he went there, he was surrounded by a crowd of centurions and went away after giving her a quick kiss. No human thing is as unstable and fluctuating as the fame of power not based on its own force. Immediately her doors were deserted: nobody comforted her, nobody went up to her except a few ladies, whether out of love or malice was doubtful”.79 78 Dio, Historia Romana, 58.2.3. 79 Tacitus, Annales, 13.18.2–3; 19.1: Crebra cum amicis secreta habere, super ingenitam avaritiam undique pecunias quasi in subsidium corripiens; tribunos et centuriones comiter excipere, nomina et virtutes nobilium. Qui etiam tum supererant, in honore habere, quasi quaereret ducem et partis. Cognitum id Neroni, excubiasque militaris, quae ut coniugi imperatoris olim, tum ut matri servabantur, et Germanos nuper eundem in honorem custodes additos digredi iubet. Ac ne coetu salutantium frequentaretur, separat domum matremque transfert in eam quae Antonia fuerat, quoties ipse illuc ventitaret, saeptus turba centurionum et post breve osculum digrediens. […] Nihil rerum mortalium tam instabile ac fluxum est quam fama potentiae non sua vi nixae. Statim relictum Agrippinae limen; nemo solari, nemo adire praeter paucas feminas, amore an odio incertas. On the plausibility that Agrippina was trying to create a faction, in which also members of the senate could be included, see Barrett 1996: 172–173.

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She was greeted by tribunes, centurions80 and men of the ancient nobility and she had secret conversations with her intimate friends81. Nero, irritated by her continuous interferences and her excessive control, understanding the danger of her behaviour and the importance of this ritual in political life, excluded Agrippina from her close daily contact with the men. This change was the first public announcement that she was no longer in favour. The historian in fact comments on what happened, pointing out the instability and the vanity of a power which has no own support. In the passage from Tacitus it is necessary to distinguish three fundamental points to understand the development of the ritual of salutatio and the use of exterior signs of honour: the presence of the praetorian guards before Agrippina’s doors, the presence of German guards to protect her, and her move to a separate house. Agrippina, as Claudius’ wife and Nero’s mother, had the privilege of having her doors always guarded by excubiae; it was both a form of protection and a sign of honour. The action of these guards affected the phases of the ritual of salutatio: before the doors of the place in which the ruler received the salutatio, in this case the mother, the guards were devoted to the admissions and the exclusions. Furthermore, for those who wanted to greet the emperor there were probably three phases of control and keeping order: the first place of control was with guards in the area Palatina, the largest place of meeting from which the people entered the Palace; the second place of control was before the domus in which the emperor lived; the third was before the doors of the room in which the emperor was 80 The important part of her political manoeuvrings had been the dismissal from the praetorian guard of officials who had shown favour to Britannicus and hadn’t been her loyal supporters. Through the method of false promotions she had surrounded herself with faithful friends: Tacitus, Annales, 12.41.5; 14.7.4; 15.50.4; 67.3; Dio, Historia Romana, 60.32.5. On this aspect, see Barrett 1996: 118–121. 81 Among her supporters there was L. Vitellius, the most influential man of Claudius’ entourage, who took care of the institutional acceptance of the choice of Agrippina as Claudius’ wife with a speech in the senate; against him an action of maiestas was brought by the senator Junius Lupus, probably to hit her: Tacitus, Annales, 12.42.4–6; Suetonius, Vitellius, 3.1; see Levick 1999: 75. Another of her supporters was the senator Tarquitius Priscus who, in 53 A.D., charged with corruption and devotion to magic superstitions Titius Statilius Taurus by will of Agrippina: Tacitus, Annales, 11.1.1; CIL 15, 7542. Also the equestrian Tiberius Claudius Balbillus, rewarded by her for his services with the office of Egypt prefect, Sextus Afranius Burrus who became the only praetorian prefect and obviously the imperial freedmen Xenophon and Pallas can be added. Gaius Stertinius Xenophon was the palace doctor who, according to Tacitus and Suetonius, had a role in poisoning Claudius: Tacitus, Annales, 12.66.4–5; Suetonius, Nero, 47.1.3; Dio, Historia Romana, 64.3.41. Pallas supported her for the wedding with Claudius and the adoption of Nero; as a rationibus allowed her to exercise her influence in the financial field: Barrett 1996: 126–127. On the freedmen’s power, see Oost 1958: 113–139; Weaver 1972: 120–125; Boulvert 1970: 89–110; Millar 1977: 69–83.


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greeted.82 The progressive approach to the ruler and to his mother for the salutatio was characterised by these phases giving solemnity to the ritual and putting on display the emperor’s status. Removing the guards from her doors, Nero deprived his mother of both the sign of honour and contact with the men who normally guarded her doors. The other point to consider is the removal of the German guards, the emperor’s bodyguard, first recruited by Augustus and separate from the praetorian guard. Probably Agrippina received this sign of honour after the accession of Nero, in mid 55 A.D.; the deprivation of these guards was another demonstration of the progressive loss of power and favour by the emperor.83 The third point to be considered is the forced move from Nero’s domus. The expression “ac ne coetu salutantium frequentaretur, separat domum” is extremely significant: it allows us to understand that the salutatores, after having paid their respects to the emperor or before or without greeting him, went to greet his mother, who was inside the domus itself, although in other rooms. Therefore Nero made her move out of his domus and stay in another house, so that the salutatores would not go to her for the matutina salutatio. Antonia’s domus in which he made Agrippina move could be the domus Claudii inside the Palatine, placed on the clivus Victoriae and near the area Palatina, but divided from the house in which the emperor lived; it was the same domus in which the proclamations of Claudius and Nero took place, in the opinion of Y. Perrin. What is the meaning of this change of residence from the specific point of view of the ritual? The salutantes generally made a circuitous route inside the Palatine, through the area Palatina and the vestibulum into the domus and then into the main reception halls. Because of the move, Agrippina was kept away from this route and away from a very important part of the court life.84 From the analysis of this passage, in my opinion, it is possible to isolate another piece of information for the reconstruction of the ritual of salutatio in Rome: the empresses, wives and mothers of emperors were greeted like their husbands or sons, probably after the salutatio to them took place. This evolution of the ritual inside the aula was the natural consequence of the development of the court. It is undeniable that by Augustus’ reign some courtiers’ circles or minor courts, inferior

82 An indirect confirmation on the existence of this triple control seems to come from the passages in which Gellius speaks about the place on the Palatine where the salutatores stayed waiting for the salutatio, in vestibulo medium Palatinarum or in area Palatina, although these passages are later: Gellius, Noctes Atticae, 4.1.1; 19.13.1; 20.1.2. It is the place in which the first point of guard was placed, also in the reconstruction proposed by Perrin 2003: 359–365. Regarding the location of the area Palatina and vestibulum in this historical moment in front of the domus Claudii and near the clivus Palatinus, see Perrin 2003: 364– 365. On the area Palatina and gradus Palatii, cf. also Royo 1999: 294–299. 83 On the German guards, see Millar 1977: 62–63. 84 On the route made by the salutatores inside the palace, in the peristyle of the domus Flavia and then in the greater reception halls, see Zanker 2002: 105–130.

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to the emperor’s but endowed with an official character, developed round the member of the imperial family, including empresses and princesses.85 Now going back to the main subject of the paper, what does the fact that these two empresses were greeted as well as their sons mean? Did they usurp the ritual? Our sources, Tacitus and Cassius Dio, present the development of the ritual in front of the empresses as a clear expression of their power, not in a positive but in a negative way, as a usurpation of their sons’ power and of the main ritual in the Empire, through which the emperor’s power and his relationships with his subjects were displayed. The tradition followed by these two historians is one of condemnation; the salutationes to the empresses are presented as a negative aspect of the court life, an illegitimate act and a transgression of the ancient traditions of Roman politic, specifically a usurpation. What instead was the reality hidden behind their words? The salutationes held by the empresses revealed the relationships of power existing in the court and in Rome during the 1st century A.D. The senators, the knights and the people through the ritual recognised the status of the women of the imperial family and legitimised the power they really exercised in that particular period of court life. In my opinion, the women of the imperial family didn’t have any need to usurp rituals exclusively reserved to the ruler, because they had progressively been included in certain important religious rituals and public ceremonies. By the Augustan age all the festivities connected with the emperor and his family had become an important part of the civic time in Rome and of public ceremonies.86 Consequently, Livia, Agrippina and the other women of the domus Augusta had to participate in these ceremonies together with the other matrons, assisting their husbands or sons. For example, Livia had such a role (as afterwards had Julia Domna) in the ceremony of the ludi Saeculares.87 In 7 B.C. she and her son Tiberius dedicated the porticus Liviae, and she then gave a banquet for the matrons as her son had given one for the senators on the Capitol.88 In 14 A.D., on the occasion of Augustus’ death, after the funeral she picked up the remains from 85 On this aspect cf. Demougin 2001: 212. On the circles around Julia Maior and Julia Minor, see Pani 1979: 64, 71–73, 77–78. A further confirmation seems to come from some passages, although later to the period in question. They concern the salutatio to Marcus Aurelius on the occasion of feasts celebrating important events for the imperial family, such as the birthday, the adoptive father’s decennalia that at the same time were the nine-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Rome, and the new year: Fronto, Ad Marcum Caesarem, 1.3.4 (143 A.D.); 5.45 (147–148 A.D.); 5.57.1–2 (151–153 A.D.). It emerges that not only the ruling emperor received the salutatio, but also the princeps designatus on the occasion of the most important feasts. Consequently, various members of the imperial family were involved in this ritual. 86 Benoist 1999: 193–233, 246–257; Fraschetti 1990: 70–90; Salzman 1990: 119–181; Fraschetti 1989: 619–627. 87 CIL 6, 32323; CIL 6, 32326; Ghedini 1984: 32–33; Pighi 1965: 137–194. 88 Ovidius, Fasti, 6.639ff.; Suetonius, Augustus, 29.4; Plinius, Naturalis Historia, 14.11; Dio, Historia Romana, 55.8.2.


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the pyre with the help of the most distinguished equestrian men.89 After his consecratio she was chosen as priestess of the Divus Augustus and offered private ludi on the Palatine for three days.90 In 17 A.D., on the occasion of Germanicus’ triumph, his daughters, among whom was Agrippina, paraded in the triumphal procession behind him on the triumphal chariot;91 it was an event without precedent in the ceremony of Roman triumph.92 In 51 A.D., on the occasion of the official ceremony in which Caracatus and other British prisoners brought to Rome paid homage to Claudius, Agrippina sat behind her husband in front of the Roman standards and was honoured by them in the same manner as Claudius. Her participation in this ceremony confirmed her status as Augusta and her position of power.93 In 52 A.D. she was present at another important public ceremony: the opening of the tunnel beneath the limestone of Mount Salvio to provide a channel from the Fucine Lake into the river Liris. On this occasion, among the spectators with Claudius and Nero was also Agrippina, wearing a cloak woven with threads of gold.94 Again the insignia of these women in cameo images, not before 14 A.D., were the same as those of the rulers: the crown with laurel leaves symbolised their special status, linked not only with their superior rank but also with their specific role in the transmission of power to their sons. These insignia in Livia’s images symbolised her role as mother in the imperial family and her motherly power in assuring the succession.95 This phenomenon fully corresponds to the ideology of the Tiberian age, reflected in some of the most important epigraphic documents, the tabula Hebana and tabula Siarensis and the SC de Pisone patre. The women of the imperial family are superior in rank to all the men of the aristocracy and Livia is praised for her role as mother. She gave a lot of advantages to the men of all the ordines by means of this and her son Tiberius had to show pietas to her.96 The mothers and wives of the rulers seem to be active protagonists in certain rituals, already from the 1st century A.D. It isn’t a surprise that Livia was greeted as her son Tiberius was, if we consider, for example, that her opinion about the organisation of the posthumous honours to Germanicus is reported in the epigraphic text of the lex Valeria-Aurelia.97 The image that emerges from the analysis 89 90 91 92 93 94

Suetonius, Augustus, C 2; Dio, Historia Romana, 56.42.4. Dio, Historia Romana, 56.46.5; Cavallaro 1984: 43 and 47. Tacitus, Annales, 2.41. Suetonius, Claudius, 17; Dio, Historia Romana, 60.22. 2. Flory: 1998: 489–494. Tacitus, Annales, 12.37.5–6; Dio, Historia Romana, 60.33.7. Plinius, Naturalis Historia, 33.63; Tacitus, Annales, 12.56–57; Suetonius, Claudius, 32; Dio, Historia Romana, 60.33.3. 95 For the analysis of these representations and the previous interpretations about the symbolical meaning of the laurel crown worn by the women of the imperial family, see Flory 1995: 43–68. 96 Severy 2000: 329–333. 97 Tabula Siarensis, fr.a, ll. 9–21, text n. 37 ed. Crawford 1996: 515, 527, 533.

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of the rituals is of a world ruled by the emperor but in the centre of which was the whole imperial family with its women. In conclusion, the literary sources reflecting a senatorial point of view, hostile to the power of the women of the imperial family, show the salutationes to the empresses as a “usurpation” of both the power and the ritual. In my opinion, in contrast, it isn’t possible to speak of a real “usurpation” of ritual in these cases, because the women of the domus Augusta had acquired a well-defined position inside the court and were exercising their actual power although in a new form, displaying it in a ritual always reserved to the men. They had well understood one of the functions of the rituals and ceremonies in Rome in the period in which the imperial power was born and was consolidating itself: rituals put the power and the new social relationships on display, and elevated the position of their protagonists.98 The proximity to these women, demonstrated in the ritual of salutatio, determined new social relationships inside court society and consequently increased their power.

98 Sumi 2005: 10.


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Usurpation, Acceptance and Legitimacy in Mediaeval Europe An Analysis of the Dynamic Relations between Ritual Structure and Political Power 1. Introduction The present paper aims to analyse the ritual behaviour of the usurper and to provide new arguments concerning the perception of the notions of usurpation, acceptance, and legitimacy in the Middle Ages. The starting point is the examination of the ritual patterns which the usurper is obliged to use in order to defend his claims and to acquire the necessary legitimating authority for his acts. In conclusion, the paper tries to illuminate which rituals provide political legitimacy, and to evaluate their role in mediaeval political thought and practice. The cases of usurpation which are discussed come from the Western Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This comparative perspective proves necessary, since Mediaeval Europe, even the western parts, was far from being a monolithic civilisation shaped by common institutions and a common way of political thought. Moreover, the comparison between Western and Eastern mediaeval political practices, through a systematic approach to their similarities and differences, not only leads to a better understanding of both cultures, but illumines special depths of each culture as well.1 Before dealing with the specific topics of the paper, some preliminary methodological comments must be made. First of all, usurpation is a conditional and not an absolute phenomenon. It is so, because it depends on mutable elements which do not permit us to give a common definition for this phenomenon nor to study all cases of usurpation from a common perspective. The first mutable element is the political/social status of the usurper. The second concerns his interaction with the legal ruler, which permits him to threaten the central power. And the third refers to the political institutions which, on the one hand, shape the legitimacy of the ruler, on the other hand determine the interaction between the legal ruler and the usurper. 1 Kaelble 1999.

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Therefore, cases of usurpation must be studied in the framework of the political institutions of the state in which they occur. Moreover, only under this premiss may it be discerned how usurpations were perceived in the Middle Ages. Are we sure that what we qualify today as “usurpation” had the same semantic value for mediaeval man? The above comment directly concerns the specific subject of this paper. Ritual patterns have the same conditional character, since they reflect the political institutions and communicate them in public.2 If we consider ritual forms as a constitutive element of the political system, we may assert that a change in the constitutive elements of the system means a mutation in the structure of this system. Therefore, the usurper must adapt his ritual behaviour to the existing political ritual culture in order to legitimise his act. Completely new ritual forms, or the transformation of old ritual forms, imply changes in the political structure and vice versa. Secondly, the notions “acceptance” and “legitimacy”, which are directly associated with the political phenomenon of usurpation, must be clearly distinguished. Though legitimacy defines one’s right to wield authority, giving one the legal right to use force, acceptance denotes the approval that certain people or certain social groups grant to someone so that he may rule in the future, when he acquires the necessary legitimacy. Both notions rely on the idea of consent. The question is, therefore, what converts acceptance to legitimacy and what the role of the ritual patterns in this conversion is. No one can deny that the choice of specific cases of usurpation in “states” which were very often shaken by rebellions against the central power has an arbitrary character. This comment concerns especially the Byzantine Empire, where rebellions constituted the reality of everyday political life.3 Since an exhaustive comparative examination of all usurpations would probably be the subject of a special monograph, this paper has to be confined to typical cases which can both provide evidence for the argumentation and create a theoretical framework for studying usurpations in a ritual perspective. From the Western Empire, the rebellions which have been chosen are those of the successor to the throne, King Henry V, against his father, Emperor Henry IV (1104–1106),4 the rebellion of Conrad, Duke of Swabia, later King Conrad III, against King Lothar III (1127–1135)5 and the double election of 1198 of Philip, Duke of Swabia, and Duke Otto of Brunswick.6 This last case can, in one sense, be regarded as a case of usurpation, since Otto was elected after Philip, yet by the minority of the princes.7 Moreover, the 2 3 4 5 6 7

See among others Stollberg-Rilinger 2004: 505–511; Althoff 2003. Cheynet 1990; Bourdara 1981; 1984; 1986; 2000. See among others Weinfurter 2004: 163–173; Suchan 1997: 166–172. See among others Engels 2005: 25–31; Dendorfer 2005: 213–265; Keupp 2005: 299–321. See among others Csendes 2003: 69–131. Philip was elected on 8 March 1198, and Otto on 9 June 1198. Csendes 2003: 69–83.

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conflict between these two pretenders to the throne provides important evidence for the role played by ritual patterns in converting acceptance into legitimacy. The Byzantine cases concern the usurpations of Alexios Komnenos (Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, 1081–1118)8 and Alexios Angelos (Emperor Alexios III Angelos, 1195–1204),9 which both led to the happy outcome desired by both usurpers, namely the conquest of the Imperial throne, and the rebellions of Alexios Vranas10 and Theodoros Mangafas,11 which did not succeed in gaining the usurpers Imperial dignity. Although in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily royal power was very often threatened by rebellions, I confine myself here to just one case, which took place in the epoch of William I (1154–1166), namely, the efforts of the admiral Maio of Bari (c.1160) to displace the king.12 In this case, we are dealing with one of the clearest forms of usurpation in the Norman Kingdom, since one person attacks the central power in order to appropriate the royal office and title. The examination of all cases will be parallel, according to the stages of usurpation, namely acceptance and outbreak of the rebellion, ritual behaviour of the usurper, and finally the role of ritual patterns in transforming the acceptance into legitimacy. In this way, both similarities and differences among the various mediaeval cultures can be clearly discerned.

8 Alexios Komnenos rebelled in 1080 against the emperor Nicephorus III Botaneiates (1078– 1081). A year later, he succeeded in taking over legal power and was elevated to the throne as Alexios I. Cheynet 1990: 89–90; Bourdara 1984: 69–74. 9 He rebelled in 1195 against his brother, the emperor Isaac II Angelos (1185–1195), and was elevated to the throne as Alexios III Angelos. Cheynet 1990: 128–129; Bourdara 2000: 447– 448. 10 He rebelled in 1187 against the emperor Isaac II Angelos. Cheynet 1990: 122; Bourdara 2000: 438–440. 11 This rebellion took place in 1189–1190 against the emperor Isaac II Angelos. Savvides 1987: 172–174; Cheynet 1990: 123; Bourdara 2000: 440–442. 12 Maio of Bari was William I’s admiral. His efforts to weaken the political status of the Norman magnates aroused their rage. It is very probable that Maio’s conspiracy was “constructed” by the Norman counts in order to persuade the king to deprive Maio of his office. In this regard it must be mentioned that Ugo of Falcando, the main source of these facts, was an enemy of Maio. Moreover, the political situation at that time was very tumultuous. Simultaneously with Maio’s plot, a rebellion of Norman counts in Sicily and (mainly in) Apulia broke out, in which the Byzantine emperor intervened, helping the counts in order to find supporters for his western policy. According to Ugo Falcando, their main purpose was to remove Maio from the royal court. Yet there were others who sought to overthrow the king and place his son William on the throne. Chalandon 1960: 264–275; Matthew 1992: 64–65, 212–213.

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2. Creating Acceptance: the Outbreak of the Rebellion Since the ritual patterns reflect the political institutions, it is important, in order to discern the usurper’s ritual apparatus, to draw attention first to the institutional framework in which the usurpation takes place. The outbreak of rebellion, which presupposes the creation of an acceptance network, is contingent both on the political structure and the social status of the usurper. In the Western Empire everything takes place in public. Both King Henry V and Duke Conrad manifest their intentions outright and prepare themselves for a military encounter with the royal authority.13 There is no question of speaking about a conspiracy. And neither do the relevant sources mention such a thing. What we are dealing with is an official claim to displace the legal ruler. Of course, consultations between the rebel and the magnates, whose acceptance he relies on, are not to be excluded. Yet this understanding has no plot character, since the rebel makes known his intentions from the very beginning. In the Byzantine Empire, rebellions were run in the same public way, since the usurper was equally obliged to make war on the legal ruler. The efforts of Alexios Vranas and Theodoros Mangafas had the same public character. Both rebels induced the army to act outright against the emperor, and, according to the sources, no conspiratorial action had taken place beforehand.14 However, a conspiracy, in the sense that the rebel keeps his plan secret until conditions have matured, cannot always be excluded, since a public declaration of intent would give the emperor time to organise his defence. Alexios Komnenos managed to raise the largest part of the army in front of the walls of Constantinople.15 At the beginning he tried to hide his intentions and, although he was accused in front of the emperor of having gathered the greatest part of the army outside Constantinople, he succeeded in quietening suspicions.16 After that, his efforts were concentrated on gaining the support of high civilian officers who were close to the emperor, in order to create a network of acceptance inside the capital. Rebellions in the Byzantine Empire, as will clearly be seen later, succeeded only when the capital and the palace were subjugated to the usurper. The effort of creating acceptance inside the imperial court took the form of a conspiracy, for obvious reasons. The acceptance of Alexios Komnenos’ attempt at usurpation by his civilian supporters was sealed ritually 13 In the case of Conrad, his brother Duke Frederick II of Swabia had already rebelled against king Lothar III soon after the latter’s royal election in 1125. Conrad was acclaimed king on 18 December 1127 by his supporters, magnates from Swabia and Franconia. Engels 2005: 26–28. 14 Nicetas Choniates 1975: 376 (for Alexios Vranas), 399 (for Theodoros Mangafas). 15 Anna Comnena 2001: B΄, 4, 2: […] ἀφορμῆς εὐλόγου δραξάμενος τοὺς εὔνως πρὸς αὐτὸν ἔχοντας τῶν τοῦ στρατοῦ ἡγεμόνων μετὰ τῶν ὑπ΄αὐτοὺς διὰ γραμμάτων μετεκαλέσατο. Καὶ δὴ κινηθέντες ἅπαντες πρὸς τὴν μεγαλόπολιν ἠπείγοντο. 16 Ibid.: Β΄, 4, 3.


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by an oath, with which usurper and supporters settled their mutual interests: the usurper acquired the necessary acceptance for his attempt, while the supporters secured important returns such as the future possession of a high office.17 Nevertheless, a totally conspiratorial manner of action was in no wise an unusual phenomenon in the Byzantine Empire. Alexios Angelos hatched a plot against his brother, the Emperor Isaac II Angelos. Although his intentions were noticed by members of the Imperial court and they were made known to the emperor, he did not believe these rumours.18 In the meantime, Alexios Angelos managed to gain the support of the civil and military aristocracy. A campaign against external enemies provided him with the perfect time to put his plan into action. The emperor invited him to go hunting with him, but Alexios Angelos refused, pretending to be ill. As soon as the emperor had left, Alexios Angelos appropriated the imperial power.19 Like this Byzantine case, in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, Maio represents the typical conspirator who hatches a plot and waits for the opportune moment to overthrow the king. According to the History of Ugo Falcando, it was only after Maio had thought about how he could seize control of the realm that he started to look for participants in his plot.20 These different forms, which the manifestation of a usurper’s intentions can take, demonstrate the conditional character of the usurpation mentioned at the beginning of this paper. The undisguised action both of Henry V and of Duke Conrad are associated, on the one hand, with the political/social status of the nobility, and, on the other, with the political institutions of the Western Empire, which were founded on the notion of consent. No one could have access to the throne without having the consent of the princes of the regnum teutonicum, who guarded their

17 Anna Comnena 2001: Β΄, 4, 7: Ἔνθέν τοι καὶ πίστεις πρὸς ἀλλήλους δι΄ὅρκων ἐποιησάτην, ὡς ἄρα, εἰ εἰς τὸν βασίλειον θρόνον αὐτὸν ἀγάγοι ὁ Θεός, ἐκεῖνον ἐς τὴν τοῦ δομεστίκου ἀξίαν ἀναγάγῃ […]. In the case of Theodoros Mangafas there was also a ritual creation of acceptance by an oath. At the beginning of his attempt, the citizens of the city which he governed gave him their support, sealing this “agreement” by an oath. See Nicetas Choniates 1975: 399: Κατὰ δὲ τὸν καιρὸν τοῦτον τυραννίδι ἐπεκεχείρηκεν ὁ Φιλαδελφεὺς Θεόδωρος ὁ Μαγκαφᾶς. Καὶ τὰ μὲν πρῶτα τὸ τῆς πόλεως ταύτης ἀγελαῖον, πολυανδρούμενον ὂν θρασύ τε καὶ ἀναιδές, ἑαυτῷ προσῳκείωσε καὶ ὅρκοις τὴν εὶς αὐτὸν πίστιν κατενεπέδωσεν. 18 Nicetas Choniates 1975: 448. 19 Ibid.: 450. 20 Ugo Falcando 1897: 8–9: Subit inde spes animum effectui mancipandi quod preconceperat, visaque temporis adesse oportunitas ut maturet consilium et, quem regnandi libido precipitem agit, moram omnem dampnosam existimat. Nulla interim animo pax datur, nulla tranquillitas; omnia circuit, omnia premetitur, omnia diligenter explorat, quo consilio, quibus artibus regnum optineat. Multaque diu precogitans, intelligit viros nobilissimos, quibus, adhuc regnum florebat Sicilie, suum impedire propositum.

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privilege of free election.21 Moreover, no rex Romanorum could impose his policy without having the consent of the princes.22 In an account, for instance, of the downfall of Henry IV, the archbishop of Mainz is reported to have asserted that what can be conferred by the decrees of the princes should also be taken away by their authority.23 This interaction between princes and king, created by the political idea of consent, shapes such a form of usurpation. Having the acceptance of princes, regardless of whether they represented the majority or the minority, both Henry V and Duke Conrad had the legitimacy to struggle for supreme power. Moreover, the idea of consent secured for the princes the right of resistance against the central power, when it was regarded as either inefficient or illegitimate. To oppose the king by force was not only permissible, but even, in certain circumstances, obligatory. A formal condemnation of the monarch by legal proceedings being unknown, the princes absolved themselves of the duty of obedience and chose a new ruler, who was obliged to lead a war against the king.24 Thus, Henry V tried to save the kingdom when it was threatened by the impious behaviour of his father and his struggle against the Holy See.25 Duke Conrad had every right to rebel, being, according to him and his supporters, the legitimate successor of the previous emperor, Henry V, and, therefore, it was his, Conrad’s, power which had been usurped by king Lothar III.26 As has been stated, the revolts against the king by the local princes of Germany cannot be properly understood unless we recognise that, behind the chaos of selfish antagonism and anarchy, there was a confused and obscure legal belief that anyone who felt prejudiced in his rights by the king

21 The king was elected by the princes. For the legal basis of the succession to the throne see Schmidt 1987: 5–33. 22 For the role of the princes in the Western Empire see Schlick 2001: 55–62. The interaction between princes and king is dealt with by Althoff 1997: 126–153. In the time of Henry IV and Henry V, the power of the princes and their self-perception as co-regents of the kingdom were increased, see Weinfurter 2004: 172–173, 175–186; Dendorfer 2008: 115–172. Compare Schneidmüller 2000. 23 Helmoldi Presbyteri Cronica Slavorum 1937: 62: Quod igitur principum decreto impendere licet, eorundem auctoritate tollere non licet? (cited by Kern 1968: 109). 24 Kern 1968: 83–86. 25 Despite the religious background of Henry’s action, there was a very political reason for his rebellion, in that he tried to secure royal power for his family. Since he realised that the princes resisting his father’s policy were much more powerful, and that he would lose royal office if he continued to support his father, he went over to the opposite party and accepted the leadership. See Weinfurter 2004: 168–172. 26 For the reasons of Conrad’s rebellion which had to do with the royal heritage of Henry V, which was occupied by the Duke of Swabia, see Engels 2005: 26.


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was authorised to take the law into his own hands, and win back the rights which had been denied him.27 It is for that reason that usurpations, I assume, were not always perceived in the Western Empire as the “unjust attempt to displace or the unjust overthrow of the legal ruler”, to use the most common definition of today. This fact is reflected in the vocabulary.28 In the case of Henry V or Duke Otto of Brunswick, no source qualifies their undertaking as usurpation. The most common word used is rebellatio, rebellion, which must have had a neutral sense and implied the right of resistance by the nobility. The word “rebellatio” is not to be confused with the word “usurpatio”, which involves the meaning of illegality. And rebellions referred to by the sources must not always be regarded as a manifestation of usurpation. Mediaeval people were aware of this difference. That is why, for example, Henry V claimed not to be a usurper.29 Admittedly, of course, there can be no doubt that the word “rebellatio” can have both a negative and a neutral sense, according to the political party toward which the chronicler leans. Nevertheless, in the sources for the cases presented in this paper the negative sense is given always in a roundabout way, which underlines not the political aspect of the usurpation, but the moral one.30 Only in the case of Duke Conrad are there sources which speak about a tyrannis.31 What, in my opinion, this word implies is the lack of consent by the nobility, which, furthermore, forced Conrad to abandon the regnum teutonicum and to search for support in the regnum italicum.32 But it can be assumed that Conrad was characterised as a tyrant because of the unsuccessful outcome of his revolt. The rebel was described as a hero or as a miscreant, according to his success and the party bias of the chroniclers.33 Most of the time, the word “rebellatio” is cited

27 Kern 1968: 87–89. However, it is not always possible to distinguish the use of force from the exercise of customary right, or treasonable insurrection from the flaring-up of legally justified feelings. 28 The following remarks are given as an incentive to future research. Only a thorough analysis could lead to any certain conclusion. 29 Ekkehardi Chronicon Universale 1844: 227: Ad a. 1105. Inter haec obortis lacrimis ipsum regem caeli cunctamque caeli militiam testabatur, se nulla regnandi cupiditate paternum sibi regimen usurpare […]. 30 See for instance Sigeberti Chronica 1844: 369: Ad a. 1105. Heinricus filius imperatoris contra ius naturae et fas legum in patrem insurgens. In a feudal society, this moral aspect is connected with the concept of fidelitas between the legitimate authority and the princes, which is broken off by the usurper. See Gauvard 2005: 607. 31 Annales Magdeburgenses 1859: 183: Ad a. 1127. […] tirannice sibi imposuit […]. Chronicon Magni Presbiteri 1861: 492: Ad a. 1127 […] tyrannide assumpta […]. 32 For Conrad’s policy in the regnum italicum see Niederkorn 1993: 589–600. 33 Kern 1968: 91.

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without any other adjunct, apart from the case in which Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick were both characterised as rebelles.34 Unlike the Western Empire, the emperor in the Byzantine Empire was an absolute monarch. Although elected by the three constitutional factors, that is to say the Senate, the army, and the people,35 his latitude in government was wider than that of the Western emperor, the notion of consent not being an integral part of Byzantine political thought. However, the political power of the Byzantine emperor was not unlimited or unquestionable. Practically, in order to govern he was obliged to rely upon the power and the support of the great aristocratic families whose members held the most significant offices both in the civil and the military section. It was for that reason that the emperors tried always to create a large network of political support, appointing the members of these families to high offices. However, from the eleventh century onwards this political network takes on a more familiar aspect, since the emperors granted dignities and offices to the members of their own families, being as their relatives were equally dangerous pretenders to the throne.36 As the army was one of the major constitutional factors and simultaneously the most necessary element in the struggle against legal authority, it is not surprising that most Byzantine pretenders to the throne were high military officers who took advantage of the solidarity created between them and their soldiers.37 The best image of the Byzantine rebel was given by the historian Michael Psellos: the rebel must have an abundance of money and be of noble or royal descent. Moreover, he must have won great wars and enjoy the consent of the army for his plans.38 If we compare the status of the Byzantine army high officers with that of the Western Empire’s princes, the similar way in which the rebellions break out becomes obvious. In both “states” the political and social status of the nobility played an important role. Only members of the aristocracy could move military forces against the legal authority, either because of their role in the election and their active involvement in the emperor’s policy, as was the case in the Western Empire, or because of the high offices they held in the army and because of their relations – founded on the solidarity of familial bonds – with a large network of aristocratic 34 Burchardi Praepositi Urspergensis Chronicon 1916: 88: Ad a. 1206. Iam principes diuturnis bellis fatigati decreverunt ad concordiam rebelles inter se reges revocare. 35 The Byzantine emperor was elected by these constitutional factors. Even one of them could carry the election. After the election, which was validated by acclamationes, the coronation ceremony took place. According to the political circumstances, the importance of these factors in the royal election could vary. Christofilopoulou 1956. 36 For the Byzantine aristocracy, see Cheynet 1990: 249–259; 2006; Angold 1984. 37 For this solidarity see Cheynet 1990: 303–313. 38 Michael Psellos 1926: I, 5: […] πλοῦτόν τε περιβεβλημένος μέγαν, ἀρκοῦντα τυράννῳ, καὶ δυναστείας ἔχων ἰσχὺν πολέμους τε μεγάλους κατωρθωκὼς καὶ τὸ στρατιωτικὸν ἅπαν συννεῦον ἔχων πρὸς τὸ ἐκείνου βούλημα.


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families, as was the case in the Byzantine Empire.39 Differences concerning the more conspiratorial type of action noticeable in the Byzantine Empire, as, for instance, in the case of Alexios Komnenos,40 are due to the political organisation of the two Empires. While in the Western Empire the feudal organisation prevented the emperor from having the control of the entire army, the Byzantine emperor was the supreme figure responsible for the organisation of the military forces, since the army was a state institution.41 This is why, in the Byzantine Empire, no usurpation could be attempted without the consent of the army, while in the Western Empire it was the consent of the princes which provided the pretender with the necessary acceptance for his attempt. However, in cases of conspiracies, such as the case of Alexios Angelos, the acceptance of the civilian aristocracy and the people of Constantinople played the primary role in making it possible to confer royal power, as will be clearly seen later.42 Despite the status of the Byzantine emperor as an absolute monarch, his government was by no means arbitrary, even if it was not determined or sanctioned by law.43 As in mediaeval Western Europe, imperial power had to be based on cardinal virtues, like philanthropy, justice, mercy, and of course care for the subjects, it was in the absence of these virtues that rebellions were justified.44 The legal ruler becomes the scapegoat, whose behaviour shakes the order and thus makes usurpation indispensable for its re-establishment.45 Alexios Komnenos for instance decided, according to the account of his daughter Anna Comnena, to rebel in order to save his life. Close advisers of the legal emperor, who were jealous of Alexios Komnenos because of the privileges the emperor had granted him, tried to accuse him of intending to lead a rebellion. Since the emperor was not convinced, they decided to hatch a deadly plot against Komnenos and his brother.46 This account implies, in my opinion, an accusation against the emperor, who could not recognise 39 The support of relatives and friends was equally necessary. Cheynet 1990: 263–301. Alexios Komnenos had remarkable family support, even that of the female members of his family. In the case of Alexios Vranas, the help of counsellors and compatriots is underlined by the sources. Nicetas Choniates 1975: 378. 40 Above, p. 4. 41 This fact did not, however, prevent magnates from having private armies. For the organisation of the Byzantine army, see, among others, Haldon 1999; 2007; Treadgold 1995. 42 The civilians were obliged either to conspire or to participate in a plot guided by an army officer. Cheynet 1990: 157–158. 43 It was determined only in Eisagoge, a codification which was drafted in the last year of the emperor Basil I the Macedonian (867–886). It was soon abrogated, since it was compiled under the influence of the Church, seeking to weaken the royal power. Troianos 1999: 171– 176. 44 Cheynet 1990: 177–184. 45 Genet 2005: 3–4. 46 Anna Comnena 2001: Β΄, 4, 1–2.

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the danger threatening the safety of his loyal servant, namely Alexios Komnenos. Such behaviour contradicts the role of the emperor as the guardian of common interest, and particularly of the interest and the safety of his subjects, and therefore justifies a rebellion. According to another source, the army detested the emperor – and that is probably an allusion to the emperor’s inefficiency – and for that reason it aligned itself with Alexios Komnenos’ rebellion.47 Even if this moral justification of the Byzantine rebellions granted the usurper the right of resistance, this right was by no means comparable with that of the Western Empire’s princes, which was founded on the idea of consensus and was an integral part of mediaeval Germanic constitutional ideas.48 This fact becomes obvious in the vocabulary, in which the words describing the usurpations must have had always a negative meaning. The pretender to the throne was an ἀποστάτης (rebel against the legal authority), a τύραννος (tyrant), someone who leads a usurpation (σφετερίζειν) or who makes a novitas (νεωτερίζειν), this last word having, in a political context, the meaning of illegal changes to the political status. According to Byzantine political thought, the participants in a rebellion against the legal emperor were always thought of as guilty of crimen laesae maiestatis, regardless of the outcome of the rebellion, and sooner or later they would be punished by either human or divine law.49 It is for that reason that even successful pretenders, like Alexios Komnenos, were characterised with these negative words at the beginning of their attempt, and even by sources which were in favour of them.50 I assume that the main reason for the relative value of the moral base of Byzantine usurpations was because of the ideas about the sacredness and, therefore, the inviolability of the emperor, who was thought elected by God himself.51 Although this perception was common to the Western Empire as well,52 in the Byzantine Empire both the inviolability of the emperor and his special relations with God were consolidated by the law. The Byzantine codifications sanctioned every movement against the emperor as a crimen laesae maiestatis and as a sacrilege,

47 Nicephoros Bryennios 1975: 63–65: Καὶ τὸ ἐκεῖσε στρατιωτικὸν ἄθροισμα εὑρὼν τῇ μὲν τοῦ Βοτανειάτου βασιλείᾳ ὡς τὰ πολλὰ ἀπεχθανόμενον, αὐτῷ δὲ προστιθέμενον καὶ εἰς βασιλέα τοῦτον αἱρούμενον. 48 Kern 1968: 85. 49 Participants in successful rebellions, even such as benefitted the new emperor, were thought to be punished by God when they met a cruel death. Moreover, there is the case of the usurper emperor John I Tzimiskes (969–976), whom the patriarch refused to crown until after he had punished the participants in his rebellion. Finally, only through the charisma of the royal power could he expiate his crime. See Bourdara 1981: 170–171. 50 Anna Comnena 2001: Β΄, 4, 2 and Β΄, 6, 1. 51 See among others Dagron 1996. 52 See among others Erkens 2003.


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which thus concerned not only the person of the emperor, but God as well.53 God himself was best suited to judge the morality of the emperor’s government. Therefore, only the outcome of the rebellion reflected God’s judgement and was the determinant of the rebel’s valuation: success transformed the former usurper into the legal ruler, yet with God’s blessing, meaning that, with the ascension to the throne, God had withdrawn his support from the former emperor. This is why Alexios I Komnenos, after having taken over royal power, underlined that it was God’s will that had given him the power.54 In reality, what conferred legal power on the usurper was victory on the battlefield; all emperors were aware of that. In the case of the rebellion of Alexios Vranas this fact becomes obvious. Before the final battle between the imperial forces and those of the pretender, the emperor Isaac II Angelos spoke to his soldiers in order to encourage them. In his speech he underlined that the subjects’ ideal behaviour, which is esteemed by God, is to fight for the legitimate authority, instead of joining a rebel and provoking a war among people who speak the same language.55 But, he continued, if someone has changed his mind and oscillates between the legal governor and the usurper, or if he has already joined the usurper’s party and refuses to obey the legal ruler, he is simply requested, to stay at home without providing any help to the rebel, instead of supporting him from the beginning, until the battle decides the situation, and then he could become subject to the winner.56 In the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, usurpations took place in a different political framework. Since the king was the vassal of the Holy See and invested with the royal office by the Pope, the nobles of the kingdom did not enjoy the powerful 53 Codex 9,8,5pr: Quisquis cum militibus vel privatis, barbaris etiam scelestam inierit factionem aut factionis ipsius susceperit sacramenta vel dederit, de nece etiam virorum illustrium qui consiliis et consistorio nostro intersunt, senatorum etiam (nam et ipsi pars corpori nostri sunt), cuiuslibet postremo qui nobis militat cogitarit (eadem enim severitate voluntatem sceleris qua effectum puniri iura voluerunt), ipse quidem utpote maiestatis reus gladio feriatur, bonis eius omnibus fisco nostro addictis (= Basilikorum Libri LX 1985: LX, 36,19,1). 54 Anna Comnena 2001: Θ΄, 9, 4: Καὶ τῆς βασιλείας εἰς ἐμὲ Θεοῦ πάντως νεύσει μεταβιβασθείσης. 55 Nicetas Choniates 1975: 385: Κρεῖσσόν ἐστι δήπουθεν καὶ παρά γε θεῷ ἀνεπέγκλητον τοῦ ἐννόμως κρατοῦντος προκινδυνεύειν τοὺς ὑπ΄ἀρχὴν ἢ γοῦν προσρέπειν ἀνδρὶ νεωτεριστῇ καὶ κατ΄ἀλλήλων ἐκπολεμώσαντι τὸ ὁμόγλωττον. 56 Ibid.: Εἰ δέ τινες εἶεν μετακυβευομένην ἔχοντες τὴν γνώμην καὶ ἀμφιτάλαντον ἢ προσκεχηνυῖαν ὅλην τῷ ἀποστάτῃ καὶ δυσερώτως αὐτοῦ ἐξέχονται, καὶ ὃν χθὲς ὡς δεσπότην δεσμόχειρες ἐθεράπευον, τοῦτον ἀθετοῦσι σήμερον, αἴτησιν ταύτην αὐτοὺς αἰτοῦμαι δικαιοτάτην, ἐπ΄οἴκου ἱζάνειν μηδενὶ ἐπαρήγοντας ἕως ἂν πολέμῳ διακριθείη τὰ πράγματα καὶ τῷ νικῶντι πρὸς τοῖς ἄλλοις ὑποπεσοῦνται, ἢ μεταχωρεῖν ἐς τὸν ἀποστάτην ἐξ αὐτῆς καὶ πρὸ τῆσδε τῆς συμπλοκῆς κἀκεῖνου προπολεμεῖν τε καὶ προκινδυνεύειν ὅπως καὶ χάριν εἴσεται πλείονα τροπαίοις ἀναδηθείς.

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weapon of consent. The acceptance that they could offer to a contender of the throne meant nothing, since this person was legitimised only by the Holy See.57 Moreover, since the royal office was inscribed in the feudal bonds, it is not surprising that the idea of hereditary succession was stronger, not to say more applicable, in the Kingdom than in the Western Empire.58 Besides, in the age of William I the political power of the nobles was very much reduced. William I granted the main offices of the court to people of non-noble descent, like Maio of Bari for instance, and additionally he stopped convoking assemblies, as had been the case during the reign of his father Roger II.59 Thus, in no way could Maio reveal his real intentions outright. Even if he could find support with some of the nobles, this support could not legitimise his claims to the throne, since not only was he not a member of the royal family, but he was not countenanced by the Holy See either. In this connection it is not without significance that Ugo Falcando stresses Maio’s efforts to communicate with the Pope, offering him a large amount of money in exchange for royal power, just as one of his predecessors had deposed the useless Frankish king and appointed Pepin in his place.60 Despite this political structure, the moral commitments of royal power were strongly perceived in the Kingdom, as in both Empires. An inefficient or cruel government could justify a usurpation attempt. That is why Maio tried to create a moral base for his action, highlighting William I’s lack of morality and his incapacity to govern.61 Nevertheless the morality of the king was subject only to God’s judgement. Exactly as in the Byzantine Empire, this idea was consolidated by the law. From the age of Roger II onward the interaction between the ruler and his subjects was regulated by a legal code, the assizes of Ariano, which include a certain provision, borrowed from Roman law, by which every act against the ruler was perceived as a sacrilegium.62 The codification of the law in the Norman Kingdom 57 Deér 1972; Ménager 1981: 308–312. 58 The electio through the magnates took place in 1130, when Roger II, Duke of Sicily, was elected as king. After him, the hereditary succession through the designatio of the successor by the king became stronger; this diminished the power of the feudal magnates. See Ménager 1981: 445–449. 59 Delogu 1983: 197–198. 60 Ugo Falcando 1897: 28–29: Alii quoque nichilominus asserebant notarium Matheum, Maionis familiarem, Alexandro pape, [...] multam pecuniam detulisse [...] ut amoto rege Sicilie, admiratus in eius locum succederet, ad exemplum cuiusdam regis Francorum, cui deposito, eo quod inutilis videretur, Romanus pontifex Pipinum, Karoli patrem, substituit. 61 Ibid.: 9: […] dehinc confidentius mentem (Hugoni archiepiscopi) aperit, propositi partem exponit, regnandi tamen dissimulate voluntatem, nec difficile persuadet ut amoto rege inutili, ipsi tutele munus subeant, regnum pueris conservantes incolume dum pubertatis annos impleverint. 62 Zecchino 1984: 38: (Assise di Vaticano, 17) Disputari de regis iudicio, consiliis, institutionibus, factis non oportet. Est enim par sacrilegio disputare de eius iudiciis, institutionibus, factis atque consiliis et an is dignus sit quem rex elegerit, aut decernit.


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of Sicily strengthened the charismatic perception of the royal power and the special relation between king and God63 and, therefore, complicated the usurper’s efforts to create the necessary acceptance network for his attempt.

3. The Usurper’s Ritual Behaviour The political institutions determine the ritual behaviour of the usurper. In the Western Empire, following the attainment of acceptance, the usurper resorts to the use of ritual patterns that reflect both this acceptance and his claims to power. In the cases of Henry V and Duke Conrad, an impressive adventus was organised in the cities, where the usurper was welcomed with honours suited to his future position. Henry V, for instance, went to Saxony, where he was received with honours (honorifice susceptus) and was honoured with royal dignity by the nobles (et optimatibus est dignitate regia satis honoratus).64 Duke Conrad went to Milan, where clergy and laity received him with an ecclesiastical procession (ecclesiastica pompa) and civil triumph that suited a real king (civili triumpho conveniente regi naturali).65 Philip of Swabia must also have appreciated the ritual value of the adventus, since on the Sunday after Easter 1198 he went to church, but wearing a ceremonial crown. Before that he had appropriated the royal title.66 Moreover, he issued a diploma, as though he was already a legitimated king.67 These examples of adventus were not exclusive to mediaeval Western Europe. In the Byzantine Empire, in the case of Alexios Komnenos, adventus must have been organised during the march of the army towards the capital: the inhabitants of small towns came out, spontaneously according to Anna Comnena, and acclaimed the pretender as emperor.68 It is not too bold to argue that the Byzantine adventus implied the election of the new emperor, since the consent of the people, one of the constitutional factors, was articulated in them. Another ritual expression of the usurper’s legal claims in the Western Empire was the convocation of assemblies, in which both secular and ecclesiastical magnates participated. The role of this act is easy to understand. The initiative to convoke and to address the assembly, a royal act par excellence, as well as the deliberative speech, express the acceptance of the nobles which the usurper enjoys and 63 Ménager 1981: 306–307. 64 Ekkehardi Chronicon Universale 1844: 227. 65 Landulfus de Sancto Paulo 1868: 44: Ad a. 1128. Clerus et populus nobilem principem cum ecclesiastica pompa et civili triumpho, conveniente regi naturali, suscepit. 66 Chronica Regia Coloniensis 1880: 164: Ad a. 1198. [...] nomen regium sibi asscribit, et apud civitatem Wangionum in albis paschalibus coronatus progreditur. See Csendes 2003: 72. 67 Csendes 2003: 79. 68 Anna Comnena 2001: Β΄, 6, 10: Ἅπαντες οὖν οἱ κατὰ τὰς κωμοπόλεις αὐτόμολοι προσερχόμενοι ἐφήμιζον τοῦτον βασιλέα.

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creates a simulacrum of royal majesty around him. Moreover, in these assemblies a very distinguished form of usurpation takes place, which is not always mentioned by scholars, namely the moral usurpation of the legal ruler. The usurper seeks to divest the ruler of his moral values, highlighting his moral incapacity to govern the kingdom. This fact is obvious in the case of Henry V, who exploited his father’s struggle with the Holy See.69 In 1105, after Easter, he convoked an assembly in Goslar70, and after that he presided over a synod in Nordhausen, in which he swore to God, with tears in his eyes, that in no case did he want to usurp the power of his father because of a desire to rule. What he was seeking, according to his speech, was to reconcile the Empire with the Roman Church, to obey the Apostle Peter and his successors and to follow the Christian law.71 It could be argued that Duke Conrad acted similarly, since he turned to the traditional enemies of the Empire, that is to say the city of Milan. In the Byzantine Empire the convocation of assemblies was not a common ritual act of the rebel, since it was not an integral part of political life. The Byzantine emperor summoned the Senate or high civil officers in order to make known the decisions he had already taken, and to demand the consensus of the magnates. However, the moral usurpation of the legal ruler is attested in the sources through the dissatisfaction of rebels with the emperor.72 In the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, the conspiratorial character of the usurpation forbade any publicity. There was no place for an impressive adventus in cities, and instead of assemblies, colloquia secreta were organised, in which Maio tried to win supporters for his plans.73 In these secret colloquies a very important ritual took place: the participants created by oath a foedus fraternae societatis, that is to say an alliance of blood-brotherhood. Ugo Falcando, referring to Maio’s efforts to make Archbishop of Palermo Hugo participate in his plot, narrates that they made a foe69 Especially after the Investiture contest, the idea that the people had the right to oppose a king who did not govern justly was strengthened. Spörl 1972: 93–97. 70 Annales Hildesheimenses 1878: 52: Ad a. 1105. Post pascha vero filius Goslare venit et ibi generale colloquium cum Saxoniae principibus habuit, qualiter Dei adiutorio et eorum omnium consilio sua deberet ordinare et aecclesiam modis omnibus violatam purgare et a scissione ad unionem redintegrare. Dendorfer 2008: 124–125. 71 Ekkehardi Chronicon Universale 1844: 227: Ad a. 1105. Inter haec obortis lacrimis ipsum regem caeli cunctamque caeli militiam testabatur, se nulla regnandi cupiditate paternum sibi regimen usurpare, neque dominum et patrem suum a Romano deponi imperio exoptare, immo debitam pertinaciae et inoboedientiae eius semper compassionem exhibere; sique sancto petro suisque successoribus lege Christiana subici velit, sive regno cedere sive serviliter ipsi se subesse promisit. Quod auditum omnis multitude collaudans, lacrimas simul et preces tam pro patris conversione quam pro filii prosperitate fundere cepit, voce magna kyrieleyson declamans. Dendorfer 2008: 125. 72 Above, p. 9-10. 73 Ugo Falcando 1897: 17: […] pro tempore consilium capit et cum admirato secretum habens colloquium, narrat ei […].


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dus fraternae societatis and bound themselves with a mutual oath that each would support the other, that they would be of one mind both in good and in bad circumstances, and that anyone who harmed one of them would become the enemy of both.74 During these colloquia secreta Maio was also engaged in the moral usurpation of William I to indicate how inefficient the king was.75

4. Transforming Acceptance into Legitimacy: the Role of Ritual Patterns It is now time to deal with the greatest problem of the usurper, namely by what means he could succeed in transforming the acceptance of his rule into real and legitimate power. In the Western Empire as thus far described, neither the acceptance nor the ritual behaviour mentioned above can make the usurper the legal ruler of the kingdom. Even his royal election by the princes who supported him means only that he is accepted by them for royal office, but not that he is legitimised to rule. For the recognition of his sovereign rights, the supreme ritual act required is the crowning, with the unction and the handover of the royal insignia. It is at this point that the ritual patterns of power must be reconsidered and evaluated. Moreover, as was said in the preliminary comments of this paper, it must be established what their role was in the conversion of acceptance to legitimacy. Let us first examine the relevant sources. Duke Conrad, although elected, did not have the acceptance he needed in the regnum teutonicum, so he turned to the regnum italiae and was crowned on 29 June 1128 with the traditional iron crown of the Lombards, in the traditional capital of the regnum italiae, the city of Monza.76 Henry V, deceiving his father, appropriated the royal insignia, namely the imperial crown, the sceptre, the cross, the globe, and the lance.77 The importance of the usurpation of 74 Ugo Falcando 1897: 9–10: Dictum est preterea quod hii, iuxta consuetudinem Siculorum, fraterne fedus societatis contraxerint seseque invicem iureiurando astrinxerint ut alter alterum omnibus promoveret, et tam in prosperis quam in adversis unius essent animi, unius voluntatis atque consilii; quisquis alterum lederet, amborum incurreret offensam. 75 Ibid.: 9: […] nec difficile persuadet ut amoto rege inutili […]. 76 Otto of Freising 1974: VII, 17, 528: Ubi a Mediolanensibus, qui tunc Cumanum bellum per X annos profligatione populi utriusque civitatis miserrime protractum capta ac deleta urbe prospere consummarunt, honorifice suscipitur, ac ab eorum archiepiscopo Anshelmo Modoyci, sede Italici regni, in regem ungitur. Niederkorn 1993: 589–598. 77 Annales Blandinienses 1844: 27: Ad a. 1106. Heynricus imperator Romanorum tercius, a filio Heynrico, Teutonicorum dolo, 6. feria ante natale sempiterni Regis, apud Bingam capitur; qui crucea, lancea et imperiali corona spoliatus, fuga tamen elapsus, navi per Renum Coloniam vehitur. [...] Qui tamen antequam moreretur, misit filio anulum imperialem cum gladio. Ekkehardi Chronicon Universale 1844: 231: Ad a. 1106. Cui cum legati communionem seu poenitentiae modum absque generalis synodi et apostolicae discussionis censura reddere ad presens non possent, ipse parties utriusque consiliis annuens, regalia vel imperia-

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the royal insignia must not be underestimated; Henry IV himself communicated news of this act to the king of France, claiming that he exchanged royal power for his life.78 However, following the usurpation of the royal insignia, Henry V was elected one more time on 5 January 1106 in Mainz.79 It was only by taking over the insignia that Henry V could legitimise his power while his father was alive.80 Therefore, in order to take on legitimate power, usurpers were obliged to conform to traditional and well-known ritual patterns, that is to say those of coronation and the taking into possession of the royal insignia. It is not the usurper any more, but the ritual itself in whatever form, act, or object, that is the political agent which imposes its rules on the usurper, determining his path of action. Even more important is the significance and the role of these ritual patterns. Do they communicate the legitimacy publicly, or do they create it? In other words, who or what is the political agent in the act of coronation? The king? The ecclesiastical and secular magnates? Or the act and the objects themselves? In order to answer this question, it is useful to turn to the double election of 1198, which, as has been said, could be considered as a case – not a typical one, of course – of usurpation. The relevant sources emphasise that Philip, Duke of Swabia, possessed the royal insignia.81 But a chronicler argued that Philip wanted to keep the royal power because he had the imperial insignia in his dominion, namely the crown, the cross, and so on.82 It is significant that the Duke of Swabia was aware of the role of these ritual objects, since he negotiated their handover. The insignia were guarded in the castle of Tri-

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lia insignia, crucem scilicet et lanceam, sceptrum, globum atque coronam filii potestati tradidit, prospera illi imprecans, illum primatibus multo fletu commendans, et extunc iuxta summi sacerdotis totiusque aecclesiae decreta suae consulturum animae promisit. Annales Hildesheimenses 1878: 57: Ad a. 1106. Gladium et diadema, quae adhuc secum habebat, filio suo misit. Sigeberti Chronica 1844: 370–371: Ad a. 1106. In illis poenitentiae et tribulationis meae diebus, a filio meo missus venit ad me quidam principum Wicbertus, dicens nullum vitae meae esse consilium, nisi sine ulla contradictione etiam regni insignia redderem, ex voluntate et imperio principum. At ego, et si omnis terra, quantum inhabitur, regni mei esset terminus, volens vitam regno commutare; quia vellem nollem sic agendum et sic definitum intellegebam, coronam, crucem, lanceam, gladium misit Moguntiam. Weinfurter 2004: 164. Schlick 2001: 59, n. 250; Beumann 1972: 159–160. Otto de Sancto Blasio 1912: 74: Ad a. 1198. Nam Philippus regalia tradente Hainrico imperatore fratre suo tenens omnesque thesaurus ipsius possessionesque prediorum aliorumque fratrum suorum, ditissimorum videlicet principum, ipsorum heres […]. See Csendes 2003: 69, 81. Burchardi Praepositi Urspergensis Chronicon 1916: 76: Ad a. 1197. Volebat (sc. Philipp) enim tenere imperium, cum in potestate sua haberet insignia imperialia, utpote coronam et crucem et alia, que attinebant.


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fels, and it was only by giving their guardian, Henry, Bishop of Speyer, the office of Imperial Chancellor that Philip managed to take them into his possession.83 In order to escape from his disadvantageous position, Otto of Brunswick used another ritual pattern which seems to have been capable of offering royal legitimacy, namely coronation at the traditional coronation location of the regnum teutonicum, the city of Aachen.84 Both the elected reges recognised the significance of the sedes imperii, and were engaging in a race to occupy the city. This fact did not remain unremarked by the sources, which mention that both elected reges hastened to conquer the city.85 It was also noted by chroniclers that Otto, following the advice of his supporters, succeeded in conquering the city before Philip, and was festively crowned there.86 Philip, who could not delay the coronation, chose Mainz as the place for it. However, one chronicler seems to seek to balance the “wrong” coronation location with the possession of the royal insignia, asserting that Philipp was anointed in Mainz on 8 September 1198, having in his possession the crown and the royal insignia.87 It is significant that the Duke of Swabia did not abandon his efforts to occupy Aachen, and after succeeding in 1205 he was crowned there one more time.88 From all these details it may be deduced that the ritual patterns, either acts or location and objects, had a more important role than simply to communicate the legitimacy of the ruler. They have a self-existence which is distinct from the persons who appear as political agents. They imposed their own rules by transforming acceptance into legitimisation. The case in the Byzantine Empire was very different. As in the Western Empire, the political act which manifested the acceptance of the constitutional factors was the election of the usurper as Emperor. In the case of high military officers who had gained the support of the army, the accession of the emperor occurred in a mil83 Ibid.: 96: Ad a. 1208. Hainricus vero de Scarphinberc Spirensis episcopus, qui erat prothonotarius in curia Philippi, in potestate habebat in castro Trivels coronam et crucem et insignia regalia, que nec etiam restituere voluit, nisi fieret cancellarius imperialis aule, quod et factum est. 84 See Beumann 1972: 155–158, who deals with the transpersonal concepts concerning the sedis imperii. 85 Burchardi Praepositi Urspergensis Chronicon 1916: 82: Ad a. 1198. Properant electi reges, uterque ut occupet sedem regni Aquisgrani. 86 Continuationes Weingartenses 1868: 480: Ad a. 1198. Otto siquidem consilio and auxilio cunctorum suae partes ad urbem Aquisgrani descendit, et eiectis inde militibus quibus eandem urbem rex Philippus preoccupaverat, in throno regali solemniter a quodam cardinale et episcopo Coloniensi coronatus est. Otto conquered the city on 10 July 1198 and he was crowned two days after. Csendes 2003: 80. 87 Continuationes Weingartenses 1868: 480: Ad a. 1198. Porro Philippus dum nullu conatu Aquasgrani posset adipisci, anno regni sui tercio indicta curia Moguntie […] solemniter consecratus, regalibus cum corona potentialiter potitus est. Csendes 2003: 81. 88 Continuationes Weingartenses 1868: 480: Ad a. 1204. Rex itaque Philippus […] Aquisgrani descendit, et in throno […]. Una cum regina sua gloriosissime coronatus est.

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itary setting. Simultaneously with the election the ritual acts which validated this election took place, namely the granting of the royal insignia par excellence, the porphyry sandals.89 After that, the election and the investiture were validated by the acclamationes of the soldiers. That was exactly the case with Alexios Komnenos.90 The political situation and the balance of powers could result in slight modifications. Alexios Vranas first appropriated the porphyry sandal (and that means, probably, his election) and then, after coming to his homeland, was acclaimed emperor by the army.91 As far as Theodoros Mangafas is concerned, Nicetas Choniates mentions that he was invested with the name of the royal power.92 That implies election, investiture with the royal insignia, and the acclamationes, since Choniates equally mentions that, after his reconciliation with the emperor, Theodoros delivered the royal insignia.93 Alexios Angelos was introduced into the imperial tent by his supporters, senators and ordinary citizens, and the army accepted this political change.94 Although there is no mention of election, insignia, or acclamations, it is probable that the granting of the royal insignia took place in the imperial tent. Moreover, it is not too much to see the entrance into the emperor’s tent as a rite de passage which denoted Alexios Angelos’ transition to royal status. Additionally, the army’s siding with the pretender must have been manifested by acclamationes. From now on the pretender was perceived as emperor and appropriated all the royal acts. Alexios Komnenos was ready to grant high offices by signing a chrysoboule,95 an act reserved only for emperors. More impressive was Theodoros Mangafas’ behaviour, who, according to Niketas Choniates, struck coins with his

89 For porphyry sandals, see Wessel 1978: 445–448. 90 Anna Comnena 2001: Β΄, 7, 7: […] καὶ τὸ ἐρυθροβαφὲς ἐνδιδύσκει ὑπόδημα […]. Τὸ δέ γε λοιπὸν τοῦ στρατοῦ διαδεξάμενον τὴν εὐφημίαν σχεδὸν ἐς αὐτὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνέπεμπον τὰς φωνάς. 91 Nicetas Choniates 1975: 378: Καὶ δὴ συμβούλοις εἰς τοῦτο χρησάμενος τοῖς ὅσοι κατὰ γένος ἐκείνῳ συνήπτοντο πατριώταις (ἐκ τῆς Ἀδριανοῦ δὲ ὥρμητο πόλεως), πολλοῖς οὖσι καὶ ἅπασι δυνατοῖς, τὸ ἐρυθρὸν ὑποδύεται πέδιλον. Καὶ μεταβὰς ἐκεῖθεν εἰς τὴν πατρίδα καὶ πρὸς παντὸς ἀναγορευθεὶς τοῦ στρατεύματος […]. 92 Ibid.: 399: Ὁδῷ δὲ προϊὼν καὶ βασιλείας ἑαυτῷ περιέθηκεν ὄνομα. 93 Ibid.: 399–400: Ὅθεν πρὸς ὁμολογίας καὶ συμβάσεις ἐτράπετο ὥστε τὸν μὲν Θεόδωρον τὰ τῆς βασιλείας ἀποθέσθαι παράσημα. 94 Ibid.: 450–451: […] ὁ δὲ ὡσεὶ σταδίους τρεῖς τὸν ἀδελφόν καὶ βασιλέα προϊόντα ἰδὼν τῆς σκηνῆς μετὰ τῶν πέλας καὶ φίλων, οἷς πεπολίτευτο καὶ οἳ συνδιῴκουν αὐτῷ τὰ κατ΄ἔφεσιν, τὴν βασίλειον εἴσισι καταγωγήν. Ἦσαν δ΄οὗτοι […] καὶ συχνοὶ ἕτεροι ἀνάρσιοι καὶ εὔριποι ἄνθρωποι κατὰ γένος τῷ βασιλεῖ συναπτόμενοι καὶ σμῆνος ἄλλο ἀγελαῖον […] προσχωρεῖ […] ἅπαν τὸ στρατιωτικὸν […]. 95 Anna Comnena 2001: Β΄, 8, 4.


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own image on them.96 The appropriation of royal insignia and privileges must have been considered a crimen laesae maiestatis, although not sanctioned by the law.97 However, just as in the Western Empire, this election meant nothing. It legitimised only the usurper’s effort to attain occupation of the sedis imperii. Thus, success was not granted by the election, since the newly proclaimed emperor had to conquer the city and enter the palace. Comparing the two sedes imperii, Aachen and Constantinople, it is not difficult to realise that the Byzantine one lacks any ritual connotation. While in the Western Empire, as we have seen above, Aachen must have been a legitimising ritual agent, being the traditional place of coronation of the German kings,98 Constantinople was the very political centre of the Empire, the place from which the entire Byzantine territory was governed. The occupation of the capital was not a ritual necessity, but a practical one. Away from the palace and the whole bureaucracy which had been organised there, one could not govern as a Byzantine emperor. Only after he had succeeded in conquering the city did Alexios Komnenos manage to turn the usurpation into legal power, confirming his position then by being crowned by the patriarch.99 Alexios Angelos did not have to fight, as the emperor had been arrested and blinded. Yet even under these favourable circumstances, Alexios Angelos could not have taken over legitimate power without armed intervention if he had not first secured the acceptance of the citizens and, of course, of the aristocracy. In relation to this it should be stressed that a part of the citizenry did not want to be governed by Alexios Angelos and his family, so they rebelled and elected another emperor. The rebellion, however, was stifled very quickly.100 Alexios Vranas besieged Constantinople intending to prevent any supplies getting in and thus force the emperor and the citizens to accept him on the throne. The army, however, which had remained faithful to the emperor, successfully stood up to the pretender.101

96 Nicetas Choniates 1975: 399: […] ἀργυρέον κέκοφε νόμισμα τὴν οἰκείαν ἐγχαράξας ἐν αῦτῷ στήλην. For this see Savvides 1987: 173; Bourdara 2000: 441. Certain usurpers had seals struck which were no different from the imperial seals. Cheynet 2003: 141–142. 97 Bourdara 2000: 441. The only appropriation of a royal act par excellence which was sanctioned by law and considered a crimen laesae maiestatis was that of the fabrication of porphyra. 98 Above, p. 17. 99 Anna Comnena 2001: Γ΄, 2, 6. 100 Nicetas Choniates 1975: 455–456. 101 Ibid.: 378–388. Theodoros Mangafas made peace with the emperor prior to arriving before the walls of the city. Nicetas Choniates 1975: 399–400.

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After the city was conquered, the coronation ceremony took place, in which the new emperor was crowned by the patriarch.102 The crowning by the patriarch had no constitutive role in the proclamation of the emperor, nor were there any specific royal insignia, i.e. traditional ones, without which the emperor would not have had his legitimacy recognised,103 as was the case in the Western Empire. At this point, comparison between the two empires can highlight the different approaches towards the importance and the role of ritual patterns, as far as the taking over of the royal power is concerned. Although Byzantine ceremonial was highly developed and sophisticated, emphasising the special relations between emperor and God,104 in reality it remained an external apparatus, having no function in the attainment of political power. This was because of Byzantine political organisation, characterised as it was by settled institutions, a highly developed bureaucracy, and, of course, by codified laws which regulated both the public and private spheres of the imperium. Within this political framework, even ritual patterns had a consolidating role to play. Their primary function was to reflect the hierarchical political system. The ceremonial protocols, for instance, and all ritual acts taking place at the emperor’s receptions, made clear to the participants their status and their position in the hierarchy, and reminded them of the respect they had to show to this position. The way rituals and ceremonies were carried out provoked “a social psychology of dependence and imperial omnipotence”. It was only in this way that the emperor could control the ambitions of the ruling class, manipulating the aspirations of the 105 aristocratic families. As in the Byzantine Empire, the royal insignia and the crowning ceremony in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily must have been an external apparatus of royal power. As far as Maio’s usurpation is concerned, Ugo Falcando mentions that there were rumors that Maio had prepared for himself a diadem and other royal insignia. There were also some who asserted that the queen had sent them to him from the palace.106 In the first case, the absence of traditional insignia and the fact that any102 Anna Comnena 2001: Γ΄, 2, 6: Καὶ δὴ στέφεται τέως ὁ Ἀλέξιος μόνος παρὰ τῆς δεξιᾶς τοῦ ἀρχιερέως Κοσμᾶ. For Alexios III Angelos see Nicetas Choniates 1975: 457: Εἰσελθὼν δὲ τὸ τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας περίπυστον καὶ μέγιστον τέμενος, ὅπως κατὰ τὸ ἔθιμον ὲς βασιλέα χρισθῇ καὶ περιβαλεῖται τὰ τοῦ κράτους σύμβολα. 103 In relation to this it must be stressed that all relevant sources insisted on the conquest of the city, and not on the coronation ceremony. 104 Treitinger 1938. 105 Kazhdan & McCormick 1997: 196. Compare McCormick 2000: 156; Cameron 1987: 130– 133. 106 Ugo Falcando 1897: 28: iamque totam fere Siciliam varii super hoc dissonique rumores impleverant, passimque vulgatum erat, admiratum diademata quedam aliaque Regis insignia, que sibi preparaverat, multis familiaribus suis ostendisse, nec deerant qui reginam hec ei de palatio dicerent transmisisse.


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one could prepare insignia for himself indicates that these ritual objects simply communicated the royal power. In the second case, in which the queen was involved, this no longer has to do with ritual patterns, but with the significance of being connected with the royal family. Since the idea of hereditary succession prevailed, this connection was itself a source of legitimacy.107 In this context we must not underestimate the fact that Maio, trying to hide his real intentions, asserted that he wanted to overthrow the ineffective William I in order to preserve the kingdom for his children, until they reached adulthood, and to underpin this he asked for the guardianship of the children.108

5. Conclusion The study of usurpation means nothing more than studying the political institutions which both define the features of the legal ruler and determine his interaction with ambitious pretenders to power. The usurper shapes his way of action according to the existing institutions, and it is through them that he seeks to provide his undertaking with the necessary legitimacy, in order to create a political network of acceptance. As has been indicated, different political institutions lead to different forms of usurpation. If we want to understand the way these usurpations were perceived by mediaeval men, we are obliged to examine first the relations to and of authority. Moreover, the comparative perspective can highlight the different approaches mediaeval men had towards the meaning of usurpation and, additionally, elucidate the role of ritual patterns in political life and their dynamic relations with the political structure. In the Western Empire a rebellion must not always have had a negative sense, since it was a part of the princes’ constitutional right of resistance. On the contrary, the charismatic character of the Byzantine emperor and his inviolability, which were sanctioned by law, invested the pretender with a negative connotation. Similar circumstances occurred in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, where they were strengthened by the idea of hereditary succession. The conditional character of usurpation is reflected in the ritual patterns which usurpers employed in order to exhibit the legitimacy of their claims. Since the pre107 It should be mentioned that the queen was accused of having taken part in Maio’s conspiracy. Chalandon 1960: 266. 108 Ugo Falcando 1897: 9: […] dehinc confidentius mentem (Hugoni archiepiscopi) aperit, propositi partem exponit, regnandi tamen dissimulate voluntatem, nec difficile persuadet ut amoto rege inutili, ipsi tutele munus subeant, regnum pueris conservantes incolume dum pubertatis annos impleverint. Ugo Falcando 1897: 36: dicebat enim admiratus puerorum tutelam ac thesauros totumque palatium sibi debere committi, quoniam oporteret regni negotiis insudare, maximeque thesauros necessarios esse ad tumultus rebellantium comprimendos et arcendos exterorum incursus hostium, nec sine magnis sumptibus emersuras dissensiones et intestina bella posse compesci.

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tender to the throne cannot alter the political structure, he cannot alter the ritual manifestation of this structure either. He is therefore obliged to use the traditional, well-known, unquestioned ritual forms of power. Apart from the ritual patterns which grant the façade of royal majesty to the pretender and communicate his legal claims, there are ritual structures which impose themselves by transforming the acceptance of the legal claims into legitimate power. In the Western Empire, the notion of consent led to a different interaction between king and princes. Under these circumstances, ritual patterns acquire a legitimating function capable of transforming acceptance into real legitimate power. Coronation ceremony and insignia appear as the real political agents, by which any pretender to the throne is himself usurped. Without them he cannot attain the potestas regis. He possesses only the nomen regis and therefore his authority can be challenged. In the Byzantine Empire, the ritual patterns reflect the internal reason of a hierarchical bureaucratic state, playing no role in assuming real power. Handing over the porphyry sandals and making the acclamations communicated nothing else than the acceptance of the usurper’s effort. Only the conquest of the governing sedes imperii, namely Constantinople and its palace, could offer the pretender real power. The same unimportance of the royal insignia can be discerned in the Norman kingdom of Sicily. There, the political structure of the regnum, namely the feudal bonds with the Holy See and the prevalent idea of hereditary succession, weakened the role of ritual patterns.


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— 2003. “Official Power and Non-official Power”. In: Averil Cameron (ed.). Fifty Years of Prosopography. The Later Roman Empire, Byzantium and Beyond. New York: Oxford University Press: 137–151 (Proceedings of the British Academy 118). — 2006. The Byzantine Aristocracy and Its Military Function. Aldershot: Ashgate (Variorum Collected Studies Series 859). Christofilopoulou, Aikaterini 1956. Εκλογή, Αναγόρευσις και στέψις του βυζαντινού αυτοκράτορα. Athens: Athens Academy. Chronica Regia Coloniensis 1880. Edited by Georg Waitz. Hannover: Hahn (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 18). Chronicon Magni Presbiteri 1861. Edited by Wilhelm Wattenbach. Hannover: Hahn: 476–523 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores in folio 17). Continuationes Weingartenses 1868. Edited by Ludwig Weiland. Hannover: Hahn: 473–480 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores in folio 21). Csendes, Peter 2003. Philipp von Schwaben. Ein Staufer im Kampf um die Macht. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Dagron, Gilbert 1996. Empereur et prêtre. Étude sur le “césaropapisme” byzantin. Paris: Gallimard. Deér, Josef 1972. Papsttum und Normannen. Untersuchungen zu ihren lehnsrechtlichen und kirchenpolitischen Beziehungen. Cologne et al.: Böhlau Verlag. Delogu, Paolo 1983. “Idee sulla regalità: l’eredità normanna”. In: Potere, società e popolo tra età normanna ed età sveva (1189–1210). Atti delle quinte giornate normanno-sveve, Bari-Conversano, 26–28 ottobre 1981. Bari: Edizioni Dedalo: 185– 214. Dendorfer, Jürgen 2005. “Fidi milites? Die Staufer und Kaiser Heinrich V.”. In: Hubertus Seibert & Jürgen Dendorfer (eds.). Grafen, Herzöge, Könige. Der Aufstieg der frühen Staufer und das Reich (1079–1152). Ostfildern: Thorbecke: 213–265 (Mittelalter Forschungen 18). — 2008. “Heinrich V. Könige und Große am Ende der Salierzeit”. In: Tilman Struve (ed.). Die Salier, das Reich und das Niederrhein. Cologne et al.: Böhlau Verlag: 115–172. Ekkehardi Chronicon Universale 1844. Edited by Georg Waitz. Hannover: Hahn: 33– 231 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores in folio 6). Engels, Odilo 2005. Die Staufer. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Erkens, Franz-Reiner 2003. “Vicarius Christi – sacratissimus legislator – sacra majestas. Religiöse Herrschaftslegitimierung im Mittelalter”. Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abteilung 89: 1–55. Gauvard, Claude 2005. “Le coup d’État, de l’émotion à la sujétion”. In: François Foronda & Jean-Philippe Genet & José Manuel Nieto Soria (eds.). Coups d’États à la fin du Moyen Âge? Aux fondements du pouvoir politique en Europe occidentale. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez: 607–612.


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Genet, Jean-Philippe 2005. “Le coup d’État ou les légitimités contrariées”. In: François Foronda & Jean-Philippe Genet & José Manuel Nieto Soria (eds.). Coups d’États à la fin du Moyen Âge? Aux fondements du pouvoir politique en Europe occidentale. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez: 1–17. Haldon, John F. 1999. Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World 565–1204. London: Routledge. — (ed.) 2007. Byzantine Warfare. Aldershot: Ashgate (The International Library of Essays on Military History). Helmold Presbyter 1937. Cronica Slavorum. Edited by Bernhard Schmeidler. Hannover: Hahn. (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 32). Kaelble, Hartmut 1999. Der historische Vergleich. Eine Einführung zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a.M., New York: Campus Verlag. Kazhdan, Alexander P. & Michael McCormick 1997. “The Social World of the Byzantine Court”. In: Henry Maguire (ed.). Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection: 167–197. Kern, Fritz 1968. Kingship and Law in the Middles Ages. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Keupp, Jan 2005. “Interaktion als Investition. Überlegungen zum Sozialkapital König Konrads III.”. In: Hubertus Seibert & Jürgen Dendorfer (eds.). Grafen, Herzöge, Könige. Der Aufstieg der frühen Staufer und das Reich (1079–1152). Ostfildern: Thorbecke: 299–321 (Mittelalter-Forschungen 18). Landulfus de Sancto Paulo 1868. Historia Mediolanensis. Edited by Ludwig K. Bethmann & Philipp Jaffé. Hannover: Hahn: 17–49 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores in folio 20). Matthew, Donald 1992. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCormick, Michael 2000. “Emperor and Court”. In: Averil Cameron (ed.). The Cambridge Ancient History. Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 135–163. Ménager, Léon-Robert 1981. “L’institution monarchique dans les États normands d’Italie. Contribution à l’étude du pouvoir royal dans les principautés occidentales, aux XIe–XIIe siècles”. In: Léon-Robert Ménager. Hommes et institutions de l’Italie normande. London: Variorum Reprints: 303–468 (Variorum Collected Studies Series 136). Michael Psellos 1926. Chronographie. Edited by Emile Renauld. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Nicephoros Bryennios 1975. Historiarum libri quattor. Edited by Paul Gautier. Brussels: Byzantion (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, Series Bruxellensis 9). Nicetas Choniates 1975. Historia. Edited by Johannes L. van Dieten. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, Series Berolinensis 11/1–2). Niederkorn, Jan Paul 1993. “Konrad III. als Gegenkönig in Italien”. Deutsches Archiv zur Erforschung des Mittelalters 49: 589–600.

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Otto de Sancto Blasio 1912. Chronica. Edited by Adolf Hofmeister. Hannover: Hahn (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 47). Otto of Freising 1974. Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus. Edited by Walther Lammers. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 16). Savvides, Alexis G.C. 1987. Βυζαντινά στασιαστικά και αυτονομιστικά κινήματα στα Δωδεκάνησα και στη Μικρά Ασία (1189–c. 1240 μ.Χ.). Athens: Domos Editions. Schlick, Jutta 2001. König, Fürsten und Reich (1056–1159). Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag (Mittelalter-Forschungen 7). Schmidt, Ulrich 1987. Königswahl und Thronfolge im 12. Jahrhundert. Cologne et al.: Böhlau Verlag (Forschungen zur Kaiser- und Papstgeschichte des Mittelalters. Beihefte zu J.F. Böhmer, Regesta Imperii 7). Schneidmüller, Bernd 2000. “Konsensuale Herrschaft. Ein Essay über Formen und Konzepte politischer Ordnung im Mittelalter”. In: Paul-Joachim Heinig et al. (eds.). Reich, Regionen und Europa im Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Festschrift für Peter Moraw. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot: 53–87. Sigeberti Chronica 1844. Edited by Ludwig K. Bethmann (ed.). Hannover: Hahn: 268– 474 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores in folio 6). Spörl, Johannes 1972. “Gedanken um Widerstandsrecht und Tyrannenmord im Mittelalter”. In: Arthur Kaufmann & Leonhard Backmann (eds.). Widerstandsrecht. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara 2004. “Symbolische Kommunikation in der Vormoderne. Begriffe–Thesen–Forschungsperspektiven”. Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 31: 489–527. Suchan, Monika 1997. Königsherrschaft im Streit. Konfliktaustragung in der Regierungszeit Heinrichs IV. zwischen Gewalt, Gespräch und Schriftlichkeit. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann (Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 42). Treadgold, Warren T. 1995. Byzantium and Its Army, 284–1081. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Treitinger, Otto 1938. Die oströmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee nach ihrer Gestaltung im höfischen Zeremoniell. Jena: Verlag der Frommannschen Buchhandlung Walter Biedermann. Troianos, Spyros N. 1999. Οι πηγές του Βυζαντινού Δικαίου. Athens: Sakkoulas Editions. Ugo Falcando 1897. La Historia o Liber de regno Siciliae e la Epistola ad Petrum Panormitanae ecclesiae thesaurarium di Ugo Falcando. Edited by Giovanni B. Siragusa. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano (Fonti per la storia d’Italia 22). Weinfurter, Stefan 2004. Das Jahrhundert der Salier 1024–1125. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke Verlag. Wessel Klaus 1978. “Insignien”. In: Klaus Wessel & Marcel Restle (eds.). Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst. Vol. 3. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann.


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Usurping Space – Usurping Ritual1 Early Medieval Synods in Comparison Introduction: Usurping the Right Seat – Ritualised Sitting in the Papal Synod in the Eleventh Century The seating order at the synods in medieval times is very poorly reflected in the sources. It is a difficult task to reconstruct the seating plans as we have only limited information on this topic fromonly a few of these events. Often the lengthy and detailed report given by Ordericus Vitalis about the synod of Reims in 1119 is used as a model. There are also several other sources apart from Ordericus that may give us a deeper insight into the rituals of the papal synod in that period. But a closer look at these reports makes clear that they dissent with the rules of a synodical liturgy. Furthermore, one has to consider that the papal synod was usually held in Rome and under far more ritualised circumstances. So the reports from Reims may be very detailed, but they raise some questions. What happened? After the bishops entered the cathedral, the holy mass started. And directly after this liturgical moment the synod began: Finita missa Calixtus papa resedit, et in prima fronte coram eo Romanus senatus constitit.2 We know from Ordericus that more than 200 bishops were present on that first day of the synod on 19 October 1119. The next day, Monday 20th, the plenary session began with the holy mass and then everybody had to turn his seat around to face the pope, who was now sitting in the western part of the church on the opposite side of the altar. Now Ordericus’ aforementioned sentence reveals its hidden information: nobody will believe that the senate of the church, i.e. the cardinals of the Holy See, were sitting in the very last line of chairs during the holy mass. Together with the pope they moved from the altar in the east of the cathedral to their reserved seats in the west. The other bishops just needed to turn their seats around. Still, it might have caused some problems for the high-ranked archbishops to enter one of the front lines to get a better seat that expressed their assumedly ancient rights within 1 This article is dedicated to my colleague Johannes Laudage, who worked hard on the topic of ritual and synods; he died in an accident in January 2008; we miss him. 2 Ordericus Vitalis 1978: 254 (lib. 12 c. 21).

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the hierarchy. Historical research until now has made little difference between synods in Rome and those in the European realm. But we must keep in mind that within the Lateran palace there were several rooms for specific purposes: small cabinets for certain guests to wait in while the pope saw others who had arrived later but were much more important, large rooms to hold meetings of the court or special cardinal committees, chapels and oratories, secret passages between them, audience halls for smaller synodical meetings etcetera.3 And another difference can be stated: most of the people participating in a synod in Rome were Roman clerics or at least Italian bishops. Beginning with Pope Leo IX and ending with Calixt II these roughly 80 years saw more papal synods than the rest of the now more than 2,000 years of Christianity. Most of these synods took place in Rome, so it is safe to assume that at least the cardinals had reserved seats in the first line right in front of the pope. This becomes evident when we consider one of the most impressive and powerful rituals of the synod: when there was a grave excommunication in the form of an anathema, the whole senate of the church together with the pope held lit candles which were then thrown to the ground. It is highly unlikely that this could have happened if the cardinals had had their seats among the crowd of participants. Another source tells us about a synod at Mainz in 1071. We hear about the formal procedure that everybody was welcomed by the archbishop Siegfried of Mainz at the altar of St. Steven after holy mass. In this context it is important to know that, in contrast to other cathedrals, in Mainz the high altar was in the west apse. The altar of St. Steven, on the other hand, was in orientali abside. Having been welcomed the participants inspected the chairs that had been prepared for the following session of the synod. After inspecting (and perhaps adjusting) their seats the participants occupied them in the following way: iuxta authenticam paternae traditionis synodum.4 So it seems to be obvious that the participants moved from the west to the east of the cathedral. The place where mass was celebrated was not the same as for the synod. The chairs must have already been positioned before the plenary session. The reason for this is clear: any controversy about questions of hierarchy could be settled during the preliminary stages of the whole process. This is the same behaviour we have already seen at Reims in 1119.

Seats of Honour Throughout the Middle Ages we have on several occasions – not only at synods – an arrangement of special seats, reserved seats and seats of honour.5 Seats of ho3 All these plans of the old Lateran palace can be found in Herklotz 1985; 1989. 4 Sitting in the order of the fathers of the church means the custom of sitting in the correct order in age and rank of the Episcopal see. 5 Spiess 1997.

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nour at a synod are the ones right beside the president of the synod and of course the place for the president himself. One very well-known event was the Roman synod of 1074. The archbishop of Ravenna claimed the seat to the right of the pope’s seat. He reminded the whole convention of his special right to do so which had been given to one of his predecessors in 1047 by Pope Clement II. We will hear about this event later on. Also we know about a big controversy at the synod of Reims in 1049 when the archbishops of Reims and Trier fought for their right to sit next to the presiding pope Leo IX. This problem was solved by installing the chairs in a circle around the pope’s so that the archbishop of Reims was sitting to his right and the archbishop of Trier to his left. This was called sitting in modo similiter coronae, and modern researchers have assumed that this was the model for sitting during synods from ancient times until the end of the Middle Ages. But is this really true? Indeed the ancient synods, the ecumenical concilia, released special canons on the celebration of synods, but the question is how a large number of participants can be assembled inside a church in such a way that everybody is sitting near the president and is able to hear and talk to everybody else. For we know that only the spoken word, only what was said viva voce, was important and relevant. Thus everybody had to hear exactly what was said by the pope and other speakers. The second requirement for seating was the strict observation of the hierarchy of the participants. Sitting in the biggest possible circle raised the numbers of chairs in the front line, making it perfectly suited for synods. The socalled "round-table" of our times was of no use for the Middle Ages because it left no room for the countless controversies about the question of reserved seating. Apart from the information from the councils and synods we have no other reason to believe that sitting in modo similiter coronae was used in these times. The only exception might be the famous round table of King Arthur at Camelot, but this arrangement was not practicable for synods because at the court of Artus the knights were sitting in equal rank and equal dignity at a table which had no head and no foot. This leads us to the criteria of the rankings of high clerics at these times, one being the age of the bishop and the age of the bishopric. But this criterion was obviously never used at the papal synods. This is because this formal criterion, which would normally establish an objective ranking of the bishops, was never mandatory or binding upon the pope. On the contrary the popes themselves perforate this criterion by papal bulls ad personam or ad sedem on many occasions. And this criterion was only applicable outside of Rome because the cardinals were independent from this criterion (only within the collegium of cardinals were the same criteria compulsory). A look at some pictures from the time, mostly from manuscripts or mosaics in churches, reveals that this model of sitting originated in the East: the Bible usually lies on the most honourable seat in the middle of the convention. But in the West

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we have only few testimonies in medieval manuscripts that concern seating orders. The reason is quite clear: there was no longer a great demand for synods after the Carolingian age. In the eleventh century though the idea of councils and synods was reinstalled by the popes, but with a new aspect. Now the pope himself reigned over the church more and more by himself as the vicarius Petri. This led to a change or modification of the old model. First we see the pope alone in front of all participants, while at a later stage the pope together with the cardinals opposes the plenum. A fine collection of pictures taken from ancient manuscripts was collected by Hermann-Josef Sieben. We find proof for our theory about the special seating order at synods within this collection. Most impressive is a small picture from the plenary session of the synod at Frankfurt in 794.6 All participants are sitting in a wide circle of chairs. On the inside there was a special place for the current speaker but we cannot find a reserved seat for the president. While this picture represents the ancient times, the following sequence of pictures leads us to the Middle Ages. And here we find the kind of seating we have mentioned above: the president (sometimes the pope) is sitting in front of the bishops and he looks like a teacher in a classroom.7

Usurping a Seat An exemplary case of usurpation of an honoured seat within the ritual of the papal synod is the convention of 3 January in 1047, when the new pope Clement II, whose election and enthronement had taken place only a few days before, held his first synod in Rome. This particular synod is an exceptional example of the problem of ritual and law in the times of reform of the eleventh century.8 The first session of this synod was rather uneasy. The situation was triggered by the absence of the young emperor Henry III, who had been crowned by Clement at Christmas. Suddenly the ritual of the synod was disturbed because of the now free seat on the right-hand side of the pope. Immediately three potential candidates claimed this highly desirable seat: the archbishop of Milan, the archbishop of Ravenna and the patriarch of Aquileia. For a better understanding we have to examine these three persons briefly. Archbishop Wido of Milan had been in office since 1045 and had a bad reputation. He came from a poor background and contemporary sources show him as some kind of a trade-off candidate of the king. Also he was ignorant, un-

6 Sieben 1990: 22. This picture was taken from the: Utrecht Psalter, MS 32 (820–840). 7 Sieben 1990: 23. This picture is from the Lateran IV: Chanson de la croisade albigeoise, MS franc. 25425, fol. 81 (end of the XIIIth cent.). 8 Laudage 1997.


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chaste and guilty of simoniac heresy.9 Hunfried of Ravenna had prevailed against Widger of Cologne and had taken up the office of archbishop only a few days before.10 Eberhard of Aquileia probably had been patriarch since the death of his predecessor in 1042, but the sources mention his name for the first time at the synod of Pavia in October 1046.11 To sum up, all these three candidates had never before joined a papal synod and thus had no clear idea of the ritual. Certainly the three Germans had known each other for quite some time (Pope Clement, Hunfried and Eberhard). Wido had taken the emperor’s side since the synod in Pavia. The sources indicate the following setting at the Roman synod of 1047:12 Hunfried was sitting on the left-hand side of the pope while the seat on the righthand side was still unoccupied, because everybody was still awaiting the emperor Henry III. Meanwhile the arriving archbishop Wido of Milan entered the room, being some minutes late – for some reason. Wido immediately claimed the emperor’s seat, and at once Hunfried and Eberhard rose from their seats. Now they claimed the right to sit on the emperor’s chair for themselves and the session was interrupted. As a matter of fact, Pope Clement had no idea how to solve this unexpected problem, but some of the more experienced colleagues in the group of Roman clerics and Italian bishops gave him some advice and worked as counsellors. As we can see from the ritual of other papal synods some cardinal deacons were always present to help the pope deal especially with questions of ritual, canon law, procedures, etc. They were in charge of the correct execution of the synod, established a list of speakers and worked as security guards in the plenary sessions to prevent interferences. Because of their low ranking in the hierarchy of the sacramental ordo, the pope had to bestow authority upon them so that every participant – even an archbishop – must obey their orders. As a ritual sign of this authority only the pope and these cardinal deacons wore the dalmatic in the congregation hall. It also belonged to their duties to have some records and documents ready that were necessary for proper proceedings of the synod. For this duty they can be labelled as secretaries of the papal synod.

9 Wido of Milan (1045–1071). Arnulf of Milan 1994: 127: “idiotam et a rure venientem”. Bonizo of Sutri 1891: 591: “vir illiteratus et concubinatus et absque verecundia symoniacus”. Gresser 2007: 36.85–88. 10 Hunfried (1046-1051) was the former chancellor for Italy; he was elected only two weeks previously and consecrated by Pope Clement at Christmas 1046. Hunfried was a canon of the cathedral at Strasbourg. 11 Eberhard of Aquileia (1046?–1048). He, however, was a former chancellor of the king and a canon of the cathedral at Augsburg. 12 There is one special source which is very extensive, clear and – most importantly – direct, being closely connected to the facts: the papal bull of Clement II himself from this synod covering this struggle and the decision that was made to handle such situations in the future. Gresser 2007: 166–170.

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Presumably some of the older and more skilled staff of the Roman Curia had foreseen this problem. Nearly the same had happened during the synod of 1027 when Emperor Konrad II was installed. Also our three quarrellers had a fresh memory from the synod of Pavia only three months before where the problem of the presidential seat and the bishop of Verona had been discussed.13 The usurper Wido was well-prepared. Therefore one can assume that his late appearance in the plenary session was planned. At once he presented an ancient piece of paper that included a list of canons and the signatories of a papal synod conducted by Pope Symmachus in the year 501. Straight away he read out the whole list aloud and emphasised that the name of his predecessor Laurentius of Milan was mentioned ahead of his opponent’s predecessor Peter of Ravenna. Promptly Hunfried stepped before the pope, also presenting some documents related to this topic. The question is why he brought these papers with him and who had given them to him. Either the Roman clerics or the suffragan bishops must have provided him with these special items. Hunfried now argued against Wido stating that the order of names in an old list did not establish a legal entitlement. He also claimed it had been due to his predecessors’ humility that he had not been put in first place. To support his own aspiration, he showed another document to the convention: a papal bull from Pope John I, a successor of Pope Symmachus, that constituted very clearly the special rights of the archbishop of Ravenna. He always had the right to sit on the right-hand side of the pope with one exception: only when the emperor was present did the archbishop of Ravenna have to sit to the pope’s left. At this point the third quarreller entered the scene. Eberhard of Aquileia tried to reject his opponents’ arguments by presenting a bull of Pope John XIX from 1027 which granted the right of sitting on the right-hand side only to the patriarch of Aquileia. After all these documents had been presented to the pope and the whole synod, Clement II decided that only the papal synod could find the right solution in this difficult case. So he formally opened a papal trial, because at the convention there were quite a number of experts in this field. First the cardinal bishop John of Porto had the floor, and after him followed the papal chancellor Peter. Finally bishop Poppo of Brixen gave his opinion. All three speakers decided in favour of the claims of the archbishop of Ravenna and the whole synod fell into line with this vote. Clement II ordered the chancellor to draw up a charter on this 13 Gresser 2007: 36. Bishop Walter of Verona (1037–1055) argued at the synod that he had the right to sit on the right-hand side of the metropolitan of Aquileia. The decree stated (Mansi, Concilia 19: 617): “residente namque domino Eberhardo venerabili patriarcha in iam dicta Papiensi synodo cum glorioso episcoporum collegio domni Walterii Veronensis episcopi sedile ad iam dicti patriarchae dexteram decenter iussum est poni et per victoriose regis Henrici praeceptum et sanctae synodi laudatione atque corroboratione statutum ut per synodos et concilia urbs Verona apud Aquileiam secundam sibi sedem vindicans possideat et ab hinc perpetualiter secunda habeatur, apelletur pariter et vocitetur sedes.”


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special cause. The pope stated in this charter that neither the archbishop of Milan nor the patriarch of Aquileia would ever be allowed to bring up this issue again. If they should nevertheless do so they would deserve the full measure of punishment according to canon law. In addition the special right of the archbishop of Ravenna was newly confirmed. In all papal synods and councils he had the right to sit on the right-hand side of the pope. If the emperor was present, he would sit on the lefthand side. So this case was closed and it seems that the defeated parties obeyed. But afterwards similar cases were often discussed and led to struggle. We hear from the synod in Lent 1074 that archbishop Wibert of Ravenna, who later became Antipope Clement (III), who devastated the medieval Church, took the place of honour to the right of Pope Gregory VII. The sources underline that this happened because of the papal bull from 1047, which proved that someone had challenged this seat against the archbishop of Ravenna. At the synods in the period before the reform of the Church in the eleventh century the king (or emperor) always presided over these meetings beside the pope or an archbishop. In our example from the synod in 1047 and in the course of the reform there suddenly appears a gap, or better a vacant space, both in law and in ritual. The king is no longer present and president, nor is he any longer part of the synod or the ritual. On the contrary he has become a defendant himself before the court of the synod. The example of Clement II shows the problems very clearly: even the pope and the bishops in general have no idea how to deal with this new situation. How can this vacuum – in the sense of law, ritual and here even literally – be filled? The acting persons feel this vacuum and immediately try to fill it with their own person, idea and rights.

The Dynamic of Ritual If the seat in medieval times was so important it is no surprise that so often conflicts and controversies took place. But today we can be happy about these cases because they allow us a deeper understanding of the dynamic of these ritualised gatherings and also of their mentality, ideals and legal practice. After a lot of trouble and even bloodshed in the early and high Middle Ages, sources of law in later times tried to consider this problem in detail to prevent such struggles. A very famous example is the sophisticated seating order for the convention of the seven electoral princes laid down in the golden bull of 1356. Here is the plan of the seating in detail: the archbishop of Trier was seated opposite the emperor, on the right-hand side was the place for the archbishop of Mainz (except when the gathering took place in a city belonging to the bishopric of Cologne, in Italy or Burgundy), on the left-hand side the archbishop of Cologne (if the gathering took place in one of the above mentioned areas, they changed places). The next seat to the right was reserved for the king of Bohemia as the highest-ranking layman, and

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sitting beside him was the count palatine by Rhine. Following on the left were the duke of Saxony and the margrave of Brandenburg.14 The absence of such detailed orders was a recipe for disaster as we can see from the most famous and bloody struggle for seating in Goslar in 1062.15 Seating arrangements reflected the hierarchy of both bishops and peers. They represented the ritual and the ceremony. The whole case was cluttered with symbols. Especially when connected to celebrations of the church (holy mass, feasts of important saints, festive seasons), the representation took place in important places which were directly related to ritual forms of acting and behaviour. Often the king was present and thus the ritual became more important than on other days. Although there were no substantial advantages – a monetary profit for example – in the way of sitting in a strict order, this belonged to the ritualised rank of these persons and everybody was willing to defend their seat and the right to sit there with their own life. Even if this meant an utter struggle over an extended period, these men would fight for their seat by hook or by crook. Juridically all these problems were entirely unsettled. This is evident from the inconsistent reasoning and the confrontation of canon and civil law and even the court decisions. Only certain criteria like personal reputation or institution-related proximity to the king or pope made the difference. The decision in this case was a question of power and/or intrigue. In this small number of examples most of the important aspects of the medieval dynamic of ritual can be detected. The expressive examples reveal the importance to people of having a certain seat in the Middle Ages. Seat and seating order were a way of expressing power, strength and authority, and also of ascendancy in submission or super-order. Seat and seating order were also symbols in which symbolised contents were alive. Seating was a symbol with demonstrative character within the context of ritual. It symbolised the ranking, the representation and the requirement of rights: memberships, domiciliary rights, sovereignty. Sitting together with others demonstrated affiliation to the community. Seating order was not just a question of etiquette but of estimation. It established, symbolised and confirmed a social ranking, which was conceived as customary law within the unregulated order of God’s plan of salvation. It was also a manifest expression of a legal title created by a personal rank in the hierarchy. Having this meaning, the seating order could easily be a reason for conflicts, for example at a king’s dinner or a papal synod. Seating order then became a means of politics. It was surely not on every occasion that friction occurred because of the wrong seating, as the sources show. But a struggle could easily lead to calamitous disaster. It is interesting that a struggle almost always began with the question of who was allowed to sit next to the president. Very rarely was the struggle aimed at answering the question 14 Text and Translation: Weinrich 1983. 15 Heikkilä 1998.


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of who was the chairman of the convention. It is striking that all efforts to conquer a seat against the order were denied, even if this required the use of certain means, from a simple warning to military actions. Nevertheless at all times these plans were enforced. A symbol could only be achieved when the order was observed. The seating plan was an imitation of ranking and hierarchy, and the hierarchy was – in terms of medieval thinking both in church and society – a reflection of God’s world order. Medieval mentality forced the quarrellers to defend their ranks in symbolic and ritualised forms before a greater audience or even the whole world.

Conclusion As we can see, up to the present say not much has changed in this respect. If we look at most scientific gatherings, symposia, meetings, official visits, diplomatic or parliamentary proceedings, we find certain rules. An explanation for this is offered in the word seat itself: it can be just a chair, but it can also mean a mandate. Seat and vote means the parliamentary right to vote. In the past the act of sitting was not a matter of convenience but one of sublimity. Sitting is an aspect of ritual in the law. It can also be a sign of a high position in administration, at court or at least in the family.16 The act of ritualised enthronement was an essential and fundamental part of the election both of the king and the pope or bishop. How important this was especially to the pope becomes clear if one looks at the word sedes apostolica. A special celebration was installed at the feast of cathedra Petri (22 February) as a sign for the assumption of office.17 The sedes apostolica is just the chair of the pope inside Roman St. Peter’s basilica. But over time it has become the term for the whole institution. Having successfully fought for the right to sit at the head or at least near the head of a convention was similar to getting or usurping the power connected with this special seat. In ecclesiastical cases there was an additional component: the right order on earth reflected the order in heaven. Therefore the hierarchy had to be accepted by everybody. Even humble and pious men, that normally spent their time prying, serving the poor or celebrating the holy mass, just became wild beasts when someone else – in an act of subordination – tried to usurp the seat that they were entitled to.

16 Erler & Kaufmann 1990: 1679–1682. 17 Gussone 1978: 95–119.

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References Arnulf of Milan 1994. Liber gestorum recentium. In: Claudia Zey (ed.). Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). Scriptores rerum Germanicarum (SRG). Vol. 67. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung. Bonizo of Sutri 1891. Liber ad amicum. In: Ernst Dümmler (ed.). Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum (Ldl). Vol. 1. Hannover: Hahn. Chanson de la croisade albigeoise. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS franc. 25425. Erler, Adalbert & Ekkehard Kaufmann (eds.) 1990. Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. Vol. 4. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag. Gresser, Georg 2007. Clemens II. – Der erste deutsche Reformpapst. Paderborn: Schöningh. Gussone, Nikolaus 1978. Thron und Inthronisation des Papstes von den Anfängen bis zum 12. Jahrhundert. Zur Beziehung zwischen Herrschaftszeichen und bildhaften Begriffen, Recht und Liturgie im christlichen Verständnis von Wort und Wirklichkeit. Bonn: Roehrscheid (Bonner Historische Forschungen 41). Heikkilä, Tuomas 1998. Das Kloster Fulda und der Goslarer Rangstreit. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Series humaniora 298). Herklotz, Ingo 1985. “Der Campus Lateranensis im Mittelalter”. Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 22: 1–43. — 1989. “Die Beratungsräume Calixtus’ II. im Lateranpalast und ihre Fresken. Kunst und Propaganda am Ende des Investiturstreits”. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 52: 145–214. Laudage, Johannes 1997. “Ritual und Recht auf päpstlichen Reformkonzilien (1049– 1123)”. Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 29: 287-334. Mansi, Concilia 19 = Mansi, Giovanni D. (ed.) 1728. Sanctorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio. Vol. 19. Florence, Venice, Paris: Zatta. Ordericus Vitalis 1978. Historia ecclesiastica. In: Marjorie Chibnall (ed.). The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis. Vol. 6. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Medieval Texts). Sieben, Hermann-Josef 1990. Konzilsdarstellungen – Konzilsvorstellungen. 1000 Jahre Konzilsikonographie aus Handschriften und Druckwerken. Würzburg: Echter. Spiess, Karl-Heinz 1997. “Rangdenken und Rangstreit im Mittelalter”. In: Werner Paravicini (ed.). Zeremoniell und Raum. Symposium der Residenzen-Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke: 39–61 (Residenzenforschung 6). Utrecht Psalter. Utrecht, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS 32. Weinrich, Lorenz (ed.) 1983. Quellen zur Verfassungsgeschichte des Römisch-Deutschen Reiches im Spätmittelalter (1250–1500). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 33).

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New Masters and Old Rituals Edward I, Robert the Bruce, Philip the Fair and the Role of Rituals in Conquest∗ Conquests and attempts at expansion were not only well known to the Middle Ages. Expanding one’s empire, subjugating other peoples, ruling several realms, all this was part of being a ruler, he was highly esteemed for this, was even celebrated for it by songs of praise.1 However, since the peoples and empires at whose expense a ruler expanded his conquest seldom accepted this without resistance, the conqueror was viewed with ambivalence. What was celebrated by one side was condemned by the other. As a result conquerors were always confronted with the problem of legitimising their newly achieved power.2 Wherever a new ruler, arriving from outside, successfully justified his action, he or his successor soon became legitimate rulers.3 Otherwise he was still considered a tyrant, a usurper who had illegitimately achieved power. However, we find conquering rulers not only as the heads of kingdoms or empires. The very nature of the feudal organization of rule, with its spreading delegation of power, resulted in a devolved system of rule, where often kings did not exert immediate power but left it to dukes, counts or other magnates and were satisfied with a kind of supreme authority or a feudal lordship accompanied by greater or fewer obligations. Customs and rights were gradually developed, later also written down, and these determined relations with subordinate powers. Thus, not infrequently the elimination of such an intermediate power was nothing other ∗ I wish to thank Marko Wittwar for the translation of this paper. 1 To see this, one must only read Einhard, Widukind, Otto of Freising, William of Malmesbury, Saxo Grammaticus or other chroniclers. However, a systematic analysis of the medieval image of the conqueror is still lacking. Bartlett 1998: 161–190 focuses less on the ruler as a conqueror than on princes and the lay aristocracy, by way of which, however, he grasps the driving forces of high medieval expansion. See also Davies 1990: 1–2. On the legal and theological justification of conquest in the Middle Ages see Hehl 2006. 2 See Kortüm 2006: 38. 3 This is true for the Carolingians in Saxony or the Ottones in Italy as well as for the Anjou in the Kingdom of Sicily, and for Peter of Aragon in Sicily, to give just a few examples.

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than usurpation, as the ruler claimed rights which were not granted to him or which he was even denied.4 As a result even a king could appear, in a manner of speaking, to be an interior conqueror within his own kingdom, particularly if this part of the kingdom had developed an identity of its own.5 As in the Middle Ages, conquest seldom meant the incorporation of a foreign empire6 but mostly a change of ruler, the situation of a conqueror being in principle no different from that of a newly elected ruler or a king who had inherited a foreign empire, and this even more so as in this period every beginning of a rule was difficult and full of conflict. Nevertheless, every assumption of power in a conquered empire or annexed country was a unique challenge, as any lack in acquaintance with tradition could lead to the ruler being much more easily confronted with the accusation of illegitimacy.7 To balance this legitimation deficit, the new ruler had to make much more effort in participating in legitimacy-creating acts than others. Particularly rituals suggested themselves in this context, as they not only included the new subjects and let them, so to speak, automatically signal their acclamation but they also visibly tied the participants to their new master.8 As is well known, such legitimating acts included coronations and the appropriation and exhibition of insignia of power, particularly those with ancient significance, if possible. Celebrations could have a similar function, as could symbolic services, to pay homage, or the demonstration of wealth, but so too could the accomplishment of the duties and responsibilities of a ruler – here we may name for example court audiences or trial sessions – which were staged or at least performed openly and in public.9 Of course, in this context those customs or practices which were most required were those which picked up on extant traditions or even developed them. And, for this purpose, above all common rituals and symbolic acts suggested themselves, among which are also counted here, for simplicity’s sake, acts which somehow included symbols. However, as such acts were closely connected to the legitimacy of the preceding rulers and themselves represented the tradition the new ruler had ignored, using them remained problematic, even ambivalent. Anyone making use of them had to do so with careful consideration. Thus, on the one hand, reference to the old rituals offered the possibility of gaining acceptance to the extent that the new subjects 4 A good example in this context is the perception of Heinrich IV by the rebellious Saxons in the years 1073–1085, who presented their own king as somebody depriving them of their freedoms. On this see most recently Althoff 2006: 91–94, 111 and Kortüm 2006: 51–53. 5 This is particularly true for Flanders, as will be shown in the following. 6 This was already emphasized by Hehl 2006: 44. 7 On this see Schnabel-Schüle 2006: 7–8, who is refering to Max Weber. 8 See Althoff 2003: part. 22–24, 199–203. 9 On the use of rituals for formulating and legitimising claims to power see Althoff 2003: 85– 104. Basically on inauguration rituals see Steinecke & Weinfurter 2003.

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joined in; on the other hand, such rituals could have the opposite effect, because in this way the ruler was illegitimately claiming rights connected to his new position and the ritual practiced became evidence for usurpation, by repeating the big usurpation in miniature. Against this background it seems reasonable to ask which role the old symbolic acts and rituals played at all in establishing a new rule, and on which facts their employment depended and what their effect was. In the following these questions shall be pursued by two selected examples from the period of around 1300, namely the conquest of Scotland by Edward I, including the subsequent usurpation of the Scottish throne by Robert the Bruce, and the annexation of Flanders by Philip the Fair. Both case examples represent the increased attempts at expansion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.10 The particular interest in considering these two examples also lies in the fact that in both countries there developed a resistance which was not only based on nobility and Church, but also in the cities, and which thus forced the conquerors to win over and include these powers too in order to make their rule last.

1. For a long time the English King Edward I had not given thought to the conquest of Scotland. However, from 1291 at the latest he considered himself the overlord of Scotland. After the death of the Scottish King Alexander III in 1286, and that of his grand-daughter Margaret, who had been chosen as his successor, in 1290, some Scottish magnates had approached the King of England because they feared the outbreak of a civil war between the various pretenders to the throne. After having expressis verbis accepted the independence of the neighbouring country in the Treaty of Birgham in 1290, on the occasion of his son’s marriage to Margaret, the heiress to the Scottish throne,11 now Edward changed his attitude. The death of his daughter-in-law had put an end to his hope of gaining influence in the neighbouring kingdom by way of marriage. Now he plainly formulated his claim to a feudally organised overlordship, which was at first rejected by the Scottish magnates, but which Edward was then able to enforce because the Scottish magnates had made him the arbitrator to decide on the controversial succession to the throne and were then not able to prevent many pretenders from promising to accept him as

10 In this context, we need only to consider the Anjou expansion to Southern Italy, the expansionist attempts by Peter of Aragon, the repeated attempts of conquest by the Danish King on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea or also in Norway, or the partly successful attempts by the English kings to extend their rule over Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, not to mention the Reconquista and the Crusades. Basically on this see Bartlett 1998, and see Davies 1990 for England and the British Isles. 11 See Brown 2004: 161–165; see also Kalckhoff 1983: 18–20.

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overlord of Scotland in the event of their election.12 This was followed by extended arbitration proceedings, from which finally, in 1292, John Balliol emerged as the victor. At once the new king had to fulfil his promise and to swear the feudal oath as well as to pay homage to the entire Kingdom of Scotland.13 The Scottish King William the Lion had been forced to do this as well already at the end of the twelfth century, but his successors had obviously avoided it.14 Right from the beginning Edward was very active in his role as overlord. Immediately after the coronation King John was obliged to release the English King from all commitments he had made towards Scotland in the preceding years, and of course this included the promise from 1290 to agree that Scotland keep its independence and autonomy.15 From then on Edward not only summoned the Scottish King to his court of law in cases of appeals, but also told him to join him in the war against the French King together with a certain number of barons.16 King John accepted hesitantly. But the grumbling of Scottish magnates became ever louder. And thus finally the Scottish King, together with the barons and representatives of the clergy and cities, made an alliance treaty with the French King on 23 October 1295.17 Not even a modest king would have accepted that. First of all Edward I confiscated King John’s English possessions as well as those of other Scots and then went to the North with an army. In a relatively short period of time he conquered a number of Scottish fortresses and castles, took many prisoners of high rank and thus forced King John to surrender unconditionally.18 John was forced to declare in a document that by his behaviour towards the English King he had forfeited his right to the throne.19 He had to cancel the treaty with France and then, on 10 July 1296, to declare his renunciation of the Kingdom of Scotland, and this out loud in the presence of Bishop Anthony Bec of Durham who represented the King there.20 His seal was broken, and then the English cut the insignia of his royal dignity out

12 See Brown 2004: 166–168. 13 See the instrument concerning the homage in: Stones 1970: No. 20, 127–129. See Brown 2004: 169. 14 See Stones 1970: XVIII–XXVII (Introduction), who shows that it is not possible after all to establish whether there was a de iure overlordship or not. 15 See Brown 2004: 169. 16 See Prestwich 2007: 232. 17 See Brown 2004: 172–173; Kalckhoff 1983: 25–27. 18 See Kalckhoff 1983: 27–29. 19 Stones 1970: No. 24 and see Kalckhoff 1983: 27–29. 20 See Stevenson 1870: No. 372, 59–60. See also Brown 2004: 175; Barrow 2005: 97 and Beam 2008: 158–160.


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of his coat.21 Then Edward sent him to London to the Tower, where John was held in honourable custody.22 In the case of King John, written and oral abdication and ritual devesture went hand in hand. The ritual of devesture gave evidence of Edward’s belief in the efficiacy of political rituals and clearly demonstrated his power to have the Scottish Kingdom at his disposal. However, something else was more important. Edward I made no move to enthrone a new king or to put himself or his son on the Scottish throne. His way of proceeding in 1296 aimed at making Scotland subject to his direct administration. A new government was appointed, with Englishmen at its top positions, which from now on was supposed to administer the country not from Edinburgh any more but from the frontier town of Berwick.23 But Edward was not satisfied with the political destruction of the Scottish Kingdom. Obviously, in his opinion, also its traditions themselves had to be destroyed. And thus, after subduing large parts of Scotland, he had the Scottish coronation stone from Scone, the old place of coronation, packed and taken to London. For centuries, Scottish kings had been made King on this stone, like an act of enthronement, the last being the recently dethroned King John.24 According to the statement of Walter of Guisborough, Edward took possession of the stone in order to express the restoration and the conquest of the kingdom.25 But this was not enough: Edward had further insignia of the Scottish monarchy taken to England, among them the Black Cross of St. Margaret, probably the most important relic of the conquered neighbouring kingdom.26 Three heavy trunks, containing many Scottish documents apart from further relics, were also put on wagons and taken away.27 This way the English King made himself the master of the Scottish monarchy. The Stone of Scone and St. Margaret’s Cross were less trophies28 taken to London than symbols of power, the robbing of which was part of a programme of reorganising the relations between the English King and Scotland. That Edward had the Stone of Scone taken to Westminster Abbey to donate it to St. Edward, the Confessor, may at first look like expressing his thanks to his personal saint and name saint, but the 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

See Beam 2008: 160 and Brown 2004: 175. See Kalckhoff 1983: 27–29. See Brown 2004: 177. Gray 2005: 39. See Brown 2004: 177 and Barrow 2005: 96. On the insufficiently documented coronation of King John see most recently Beam 2008: 113. On the significance of the Stone of Scone see Jäschke 1997: 121–148. Et in redeundo per Scone precepit tolli et Londonias cariari lapidem illum, in quo ut supradictum est reges Scotorum solebant poni loco coronacionis sue, et hoc in signum regni resignati et conquesti. Walter of Guisborough 1957: 281. See Barrow 2005: 96. Stones 1970: No. 25, 151–152. See Watson 1998: 26–27; Barrow 2005: 96–97 and Kalckhoff 1983: 28. As most of all Barrow 2005: 96–97.

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English King considered his canonised predecessor the pre-eminent Saint of the English monarchy,29 so that by presenting the Stone of Scone the handing over of Scotland to the English King was given its most meaningful expression. Thus, Edward did not base his recently achieved rule over Scotland on traditional rituals, nor did he take over any insignia of power. He was interested in making the investiture of a Scottish King impossible in the future. And in this way a usurpation, so to speak, was to be prevented, a usurpation at least from the point of view of the English King, who claimed the right to dispose of the Scottish throne himself, a claim which now, in 1296, he expressed only ritually, but which in 1301 he was also to put into words in a letter replying to Pope Bonifacius VIII.30 Why he did not make himself or his son King is something we may only speculate on. In any case, however, being crowned King of Scotland may be supposed to have presented Edward with even more legitimation problems than would be the case by not doing so. Indeed, for a short period of time, in 1291, he had himself claimed a right to the Scottish Crown, but had then relinquished it, probably because he recognised that his claim would hardly have succeeded against that of other pretenders, and that as an arbitrator on the issue of the succession to the Scottish throne he could more easily achieve his goal of subjugating the neighbouring kingdom.31 And after, as an arbitrator, he had publicly declared the claims of the two main competitors, Balliol and Bruce, justified, by 1296 it was almost impossible to take up his own claims to the throne again. In short, after the dethronement of King John there were candidates, by the Bruces, the descendants of the defeated candidate to the throne from 1291, but also by the Comyns, closely related to King John, whose claim to an inheritance was much more justified and had been recognised by Edward,32 because of which being crowned King of Scotland would easily have made him look like a usurper himself. If he did not want this, he had no other choice than to abandon the traditions of the Scottish kingdom and to prevent anybody else – maybe with a better case – from serving himself in that role. But Edward did not completely give up on rituals to give reason to his rule of Scotland, for on his campaign of conquest he made many Scottish magnates pay 29 On giving the Stone of Scone to Saint Edward as a present and its significance for Edward I see ibid. 30 Stones 1970: No. 30, 192, 208 and part. 216, where Edward I at first describes the dethronement of King John, which in his opinion was both legitimate and unavoidable, and then continues: Quo peracto prelati comites barones nobiles et communitates regni Scocie quos ad pacem nostram regiam suscepimus subsequenter homagia et fidelitates nobis tanquam inmediato et proprio domino ejusdem regni Scocie fecerunt ac eciam prestiterunt ac redditis nobis ejusdem regni civitatibus villis castris municionibus ac ceteris locis omnibus ad dictum regnum spectantibus officiales nostros et ministros ad regimen ejusdem regni Scocie prefecimus jure nostre. The letter to Bonifacius dates from 7 May 1301. 31 See Watson 1998: 12–14. 32 See Beam 2008: 160–161.


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homage to him and promise loyalty.33 This happened without recourse to Scottish traditions, but still, swearing an oath of loyalty had a special touch which was due to the circumstances, as those swearing the oath not only had to promise loyalty to the English King, but also to renounce their alliance with the French King.34 For Edward, these homages were the founding stock of his rule of Scotland, and ultimately they resulted in the great act of homage which he organised at Berwick after his campaign of conquest, where about 1,500 Scottish magnates and representatives of the Church and cities are said to have come to pay homage to him, the King of England.35 As with King John’s devesture, with these homages the ritual act was accompanied by written confirmation, and the names of those paying homage were written down on a roll of parchment, and their seals added36. The significance the King attributed to this roll of parchment becomes obvious if one knows that in 1299 he hurriedly had a copy made of the homage roll from 1296, when the Pope, urged by the Scottish, emphasised the independence of their kingdom.37 Also, to what extent the English King’s rule of Scotland was based on and dependent on the acts of homage is vice versa shown as well by the Scots when in 1328 they negotiated a peace treaty with Edward III, and in this context, among other particulars, demanded to be given back the sealed homage files, specifically the Ragman Roll, on which the oaths of the Scottish magnates had been recorded.38 By the way, the text of the treaty did not say a word about giving back the Stone of Scone, which does not rule out that this topic was dealt with in the course of the negotiations – at least the Chronicle of Lanercost, which also mentions that the cross relic was handed back to the Scottish King, does mention this.39 33 See Stevenson 1870: No. 352, 25–32. Bain 1884: No. 746–748; 750–753; 757–788; 790– 803. See also Beam 2008: 157. 34 See Stevenson 1870: No. 372, 62–65. Basically on the significance of the homages v. Holenstein 1991. 35 See Stevenson 1870: No. 352, 31; see also Brown 2004: 181. Barrow 2005: 100–102 denies the number of people present at Berwick and assumes that most of the oaths had been administered before by the sheriffs in their districts and that they were only recorded in writing in Berwick. 36 See Stevenson 1870: No. 372, 65–77; and see Bain 1884: No. 823. 37 See Stones 1970: 108 and n. 3. 38 See the appropriate passages of the Treaty of Northampton from 1328 in Stones 1970: No. 41, 334–336. That the documents recording Scotland’s dependence which are to be given back refer for the most part to the Ragman Role is also emphasized by the Chronicle of Lanercost. See also the quotation in the following annotation. 39 Stevenson 1839: 261: Reddidit etiam eis partem crucis Christi, quam vocant Scotti Blakerode, et similiter unum instrumentum, sive cartam subjectionis et homagii faciendi regibus Angliae, cui appensa erant sigilla omnium magnatum Scotiae, quam fecerant, ut dictum est superius, avo regis, et a Scottis, propter multa sigilla dependentia, Ragman vocatur. Lapidem tamen de Scone, in quo solent reges Scotiae apud Scone in creatione sua collocari, Londonenses noluerunt a se dimittere quoquomodo. See also Jäschke 1997: 144.

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By basing his rule of Scotland on the homage of both lay and clerical magnates and representatives of the cities, King Edward I consciously denied any difference between his rule of England and that of Scotland. This is made obvious also by the text those paying homage had to say to him. In this, he had his rule of Scotland not mentioned by a word but was addressed, as usual, as King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Gascony.40 And that now the King of England was the ruler of Scotland, and for all time, was again made clear to the world by Edward in 1301, when he had the Scottish coronation stone of Scone built into – under the seat – the new throne of the English King at Westminster Abbey, which he had ordered to be done.41 But no matter how important the Stone of Scone was for the tradition of an independent Kingdom of the Scots, its absence did not prevent Robert the Bruce from being made the new King of Scotland at Scone in the spring of 1306, against Edward’s will. Thus, in a certain sense Edward’s previous policy towards Scotland had become a failure. Even if Robert the Bruce was not a conqueror but a usurper in his own country, nevertheless here we must shed light on his being made King, as certain dimensions of Edward’s way of proceeding only become obvious by the failure of his politics.

2. Of course, Robert the Bruce did not consider himself a usurper. He had grown up with the conviction that his grandfather had been barred from the Scottish throne in 1292.42 In 1297 Robert the Bruce had turned against the King of England, in 1302 he had sworn loyalty to him again, and in 1304 – probably at first covertly – he again joined the opposition against Edward I, thinned out as it had become in the meantime.43 It is difficult to say from what point he had had the intention to become King. At the latest, after the murder of John Comyn of Badenoch in 1306, his main competitor among the Scottish noblemen, Bruce’s intention to become King had become immediately obvious.44 In mid-March Robert the Bruce met the Bishop of Glasgow, who had long been in opposition to Edward, and who granted him absolution for the manslaughter.45 At the same time the Bishop had him swear an oath that he would always keep the freedom of the Scottish Church when fighting from now on for his inheritance.46 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

See the wording of the oath in Stevenson 1870: 62–63. See Prestwich 1988: Fig. 23 and comment; Jäschke 1997: 138–140. Barrow 2005: 186. Ibid.: 183–187; Brown 2004: 182 and 199–200. On the murder of Comyn see Young 1997: 195–199; Barrow 2005: 188–191. Brown 2004: 200; Barrow 2005: 188–191. Barrow 2005: 194.


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Then, as quickly as possible, preparations were made for making Robert King. The Scottish lily banner was brought there, or was newly sewn, the same was true of the coronation robes, and a crown was made.47 The coronation itself took place at the ancient place of coronations, at Scone, at the Abbey there, on 25 March 1306.48 Quite consciously Robert the Bruce took up the ancient traditions of the Scottish Kingdom, and thus did exactly what Edward had hoped to prevent by robbing the Stone of Scone. As the ancient coronation stone was not available any more, Robert the Bruce and his followers had to improvise. Possibly Robert had a new throne made.49 In any case he made attempts at winning over Isabella of Fife. On behalf of her nephew, the Count of Fife, who was still not of age and was in English hands, she was supposed to make Robert the Bruce King.50 This was because since the most ancient times it had been the Count of Fife who had made and announced the new King on the stone which Edward had stolen.51 Now Isabella of Fife was supposed to continue this tradition. We get an idea of how much significance was attributed to her contribution when we see that she was married to a Comyn, thus to one of Robert’s opponents, whom she had secretly left just a short time before to be able to take part in the inauguration at Scone.52 Even so, what exactly Isabella did at Scone remains enigmatic, whether she crowned Robert the Bruce at that time, as most English historians write, or whether she only enthroned him. What speaks against a regular coronation is the lack of a tradition of coronation in Scotland before 1306, at least if we assume that at Scone Robert most of all wanted to use the ancient rituals to announce and legitimise his claim.53 However, without question Robert the Bruce wore a crown during the inauguration, which had been made beforehand54 and by the wearing of which his claim to the Kingdom was expressed most clearly. It was inevitable, in fact, that the absence of the ancient stone of enthronement made other symbols gain in significance and thus changed the ritual.55 The wearing of the crown or enthronement while wearing it moved to become the focus of interest, and this is indeed reflected by the English reports, no matter who now put the crown on to the new King’s 47 On the dating see Duncan 1988: 127–129; and Barrrow 2005: 195–196; Kalckhoff 1983: 37. 48 Barrrow 2005: 195–196. 49 Accordingly Langtoft 1868: 368: Un sé novel à Scone fist reparayller. However, this news is not confirmed elsewhere. 50 Barrow 2005: 197. 51 Ibid. and Kalckhoff 1983: 37. 52 Guisborough 1957: 367: Uxor autem comitis de Bouthan, que erat filia comitis de Fyth, cui de iure hereditario competit coronam apponere capiti noui regis, furtive recessit a domino suo adducens secum destrarios domini sui quos domi dimiserat vt illud officium exerceret. See also Barrow 2005: 196. 53 This thesis is distinctly supported by Duncan 1988: 128. 54 See ibid. 55 See Althoff 2003: 26–28, on the variability of rituals.

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head. However, that no loss of legitimacy accompanied this reform, and that it could definitely be reconciled with the ancient traditions, was not least due to the fact that the enthronement, as it had been commonly performed until then, happened before the religious celebrations and independently of them. For only two days after the secular enthronement, on 27 March 1306, the Bishop of St. Andrews, the highest-ranking clerical dignitary in Scotland, celebrated High Mass for the new King, in which the latter took part while being clad in liturgical robes.56 If we believe the statements of an English notarial instrument from 9 August 1306, which records the questioning of the Bishop of St. Andrews, who had become an English prisoner a short time before, by representatives of the English King, this service served most of all to confirm the previous coronation.57 The strange ritual practised in this context may be supposed to have served as a replacement for the missing anointing, which the Scottish Bishops were not entitled to carry out. Although the earlier Kings had repeatedly but vainly asked the Pope to grant them this right, it was only Robert the Bruce at the end of his time of government who succeeded in making the Pope do so in 1329.58 Although the coronation at Scone was organised at rather short notice, the dates for the coronation and the High Mass seem to have been chosen carefully. The enthronement took place on 25 March, and thus on the tenth anniversary of the English invasion of Scotland in 1296.59 To this degree, Robert the Bruce skilfully connected his claim to the throne with the fight against Scotland’s annexation by the King of England. That the celebrations spanned two days may be because of a striving for additional symbolic gain, for 27 March 1306 was Palm Sunday that year, a day which in referring to Christ’s entry into Jerusalem was perfectly suited to the new King’s entry into the Church of Scone and thus the main seat of the Scottish Kingdom. At first the ritual of enthronement strengthened Robert’s position, simply for the reason that it made a murderer from the high nobility a King, who thus was not only entitled to deal with Church property as he chose, as well as the royal property and offices, but also to simply demand obedience.60 And that was exactly what he did in the days and weeks that followed. He went through Scotland to enlarge his entourage, while – not much different from Edward I in 1296 – forcing many to 56 Barrow 2005: 197 and Brown 2004: 200. 57 Requisitus eciam adhuc dictus episcopus an ipse, postquam dictus Robertus de Brus dominum Johannem Comyn interfecerat, ut predicitur, et se regem Scocie fecerat coronari et eciam proclamari, missam sibi celebraverat pr[…] et ratificatione[m] regii sui status vel honorem alium eidem ut domino fecerat […]. Anglo-Scottish Relations. Stones 1970: No. 35, 276. 58 See Duncan 1998: 128–129. 59 See Barrow 2005: 197. 60 Barrell 2000: 115.


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pay homage to him.61 At the same time, through his coronation he had won over those powers which, as predominantly parts of the clergy, had taken up the cause of Scotland’s independence and for whom the coronation had made it easier to justify their resistance against Edward.62 Nevertheless, Robert’s position remained precarious. Only a small circle had taken part in the enthronement,63 and because of the small number of participants the ritual had lost some of its traditional power and significance. The enthronement did not suggest the image of a King to whom all subjects, or at least a great number of them, were now obliged, it worked only through the message that now there was a King again. Thus, the enthronement at Scone was less a way of securing and legitimising power than achieving it. Robert had still to conquer the country as the King of which he was presenting himself or, to put it more precisely, he had still to conquer large parts.64 Indeed, the act of Scone included a second message. It pointed to the fact that Edward did not by any means rule all of Scotland, even if he had the most important castles and their garrisons in his hands. Edward had been able to rob the Stone of Scone; but at Scone, the heart of the Scottish Kingdom, he was not the ruler. And this message communicated the hope that he could be defeated, and probably in this way, too, should be explained why some bishops and counts had come to Scone at all and had dared to rise up against Edward. However, Edward too saw the danger the act of Scone meant for him. Tellingly, he reacted rather reluctantly to the killing of John Comyn by Robert the Bruce; but upon hearing that the latter had been made King, he acted without any hesitation.65 He sent an army whose leaders were not to show mercy any more, and who were meant to bring death to all those not actively fighting against Robert the Bruce.66 For Edward knew that no matter how much a ritual may be according to tradition, and however much it may secure a tradition, it would have little or no power against 10,000 English warriors. After two military defeats, Robert the Bruce had to retreat to the far West of the country. Many of his followers were captured. The bishops went to prison, Robert’s brothers and some of the magnates were hanged, and Isabella of Fife, who

61 Barrow 2005: 197. 62 See Watson 1998: 28–29. 63 Indeed, only a few counts and barons as well as the closer followers had come. Of the 12 Scottish bishops, only three had come. Most abbots and representatives of the cities were missing. See Barrow 2005: 197 and Jäschke 1997: 140–141. 64 Brown 2004: 201. 65 See Grant 2007: 181–182. 66 See the orders to Aymer de Valence from 26 June 1306, who on behalf of Edward I was to suppress Robert the Bruce’s rebellion. Bain 1884: No. 1790. See Prestwich 2007: 239.

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had enthroned Robert, was put in a cage and exhibited on the walls of Berwick.67 Using punishment as a deterrent was Edward’s attempt to cope with the effect of the revised ancient ritual. But after war there comes politics, and with it the rituals came in again. And that was the time when Edward made clear that he still believed in making any revival of a Scottish kingdom impossible by way of robbing its symbols. He had been forced to recognise that for the bishops, but also for Robert’s followers, the inauguration rituals and the place where they happened were much more important than the ancient stone of enthronement itself. Edward had learned his lesson, and now he wrote to the Pope that, please the latter, he might relocate the Abbey of Scone to a secure place, in other words simply to England, to prevent any evil and rebellious deeds from spreading from there.68 The Pope did not accede, and as a matter of fact it was not necessary any more. One year later Edward had almost defeated the supporters of an independent Scottish Kingdom. But then he died, on 7 July 1307, and his son increasingly lost interest in Scotland, a situation which was exploited by Robert the Bruce to gradually conquer all of Scotland in the course of the following years.69 Finally the English, too, recognised him as King. Thus, in the end, the usurpation of the inauguration ritual by Robert the Bruce appeared as a legitimate founding act which both made Edward I’s conquest of Scotland obvious as a usurpation and reversed it. However, without the change of politics of 1307 the uprising of 1306 would not have been anything else than the insignificant act of desperation of a would-be king. Rituals create legitimacy, but their own legitimacy and effect depend on other factors.

3. In contrast to Edward I, in Flanders in 1301 the French King did not annex a neighbouring empire, but a country whose king he himself was. For, since the early Middle Ages, most parts of Flanders had been a fief of first the West Frankish and then the French King, who was the highest feudal lord of the Counts of Flanders. Alongside this, though, already during the High Middle Ages a strong attitude of autonomy had developed in Flanders, one which was directed towards the Count, but also had reference to the territory and was partially supported by language 67 See Kalckhoff 1983: 39; on the fate of Isabella of Fife see Guisborough 1957: 367 and Gray 2005: 53. How unusual the treatment of Isabella of Fife was is shown in Prestwich 1988: 508–509. 68 This letter in Rymer & Sanderson 1967: 1030; on this see Barrow 2005: 196 and no. 26. 69 See Grant 1984: 5–12, who briefly describes the various stations Robert the Bruce had to pass through to be recognized as King by all Scots.


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differences.70 However, the feudal ties between the French King and his princes, which had been rather loose for a long time, had been strengthened again in the course of the thirteenth century, with royal initiative.71 Guido of Dampierre, the Count of Flanders, was to learn this in the nineties of the thirteenth century. In 1294 Philip the Fair had declared war on the King of England, in hope of finally conquering the English possessions on the mainland, the Duchy of Guyenne.72 At the same time Edward I had made attempts at establishing an alliance with the Count of Flanders and had negotiated a marriage between his son of the same name, and successor, and the Count’s daughter.73 This again was considered an unfriendly act by the French King, and he summoned the Count to Paris and forced him to hand over his daughter, who had been married to England and was to spend her future life at the French court.74 At the same time Philip the Fair undermined the position of the Count of Flanders, who had sympathies for England, by supporting the attempts of the French-speaking upper class in the cities to gain more autonomy, upon which the Count took sides with the guilds, who demanded more participation in the government of the cities.75 In 1296/1297 the Count terminated his feudal relationship with the French King and now placed his hopes for support on the King of England.76 Edward I went to Flanders, where Philip the Fair was heading, too, but after some time an armistice was agreed upon, which then was repeatedly prolonged until January 1301.77 However, once it had ended, Philip grasped the opportunity and had his brother invade Flanders and occupy some of the cities. In the end the Count of Flanders, his eldest son, who meanwhile was ruling for his old father, as well as a number of noblemen, were taken prisoners, while the King of France subjected the County to direct rule by the Crown.78 Philip the Fair was the new master of Flanders and, to start his rule and secure it, he went to Flanders with his wife at the end of May 1301 to pay visits to the various cities and to introduce himself as the new master, by a ceremonial entry. He thus used a ritual which the Counts of Flanders had repeatedly practised at the

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

See Mohr 1977; Blockmans 1994 and Moeglin 2005. Nicholas 1992: 150–151. See Strayer 1980: 317–324. This was established by the Treaty of Lier of 31 August 1294. On the relations between the Count of Flanders and Edward I, see Nicholas 1992: 187 and Favier 1978: 216. Favier 1978: 216. See Strayer 1980: 326–327. Nicholas 1992: 189. Ibid.: 189–190. Ibid.: 191.

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beginning of their rule in the twelfth century, even if it was fixed in more detail only in the course of the fourteenth century.79 Philip made his entry into Douai on 13 May 1301, together with his wife and a big entourage, where he was ceremonially received by the citizens, who used the occasion to clearly show their loyalty.80 After three days he left the city and was received in Lille, Tournai, and Kortrijk with similar luxury.81 The next station was Ghent, where the Count of Flanders had usually made his first visit.82 Ghent meant a particular challenge for Philip, as the supporters of the Count had been predominant in the city since 1297.83 But now the gates opened and the citizens, with the officials at their head, came to meet the King. The patricians wore their finest robes, but still made the split into two groups obvious, as the members of the group of aldermen, which had once been established by the King, wore different clothing from those who had subsequently been established by the Count.84 The representatives of the guilds were also present, and in a huge procession they then made entry into the city, where the aldermen gave extremely precious gifts to the King and organised lance-tournaments as well as other entertainment.85 By the whole city making entry into the place and celebrating together with the King, Ghent had recognised his rule and secured his favour. However, to cap it all the representatives of the guilds grasped the opportunity of the King’s entry to ask him to abandon the unpopular tax on beer and meat. And, to the displeasure of the aldermen and the rich citizens, the King granted this, in order to demonstrate his kindness, and probably also to try to win over the craftsman class, who were mostly supporters of the Count.86 79 See Warnkönig 1835: 312; Murray 1994, and – particularly with regard to the forms and functions of entries – Donckers & Blockmans 1999: part. 82. 80 See Funck-Brentano 1896: 356. 81 Ibid.: 357. 82 See Wielant 1865:, 95–97, who against the background of his own experiences from 1500 reconstructs the custom of entrée. 83 See Strayer 1980: 329. 84 See Annales Gandenses 1985: ad. 1302, 12: Venit autem rex cum magna pompa et gloria, ludendi causa et videndi terram et optimas villas Flandrie; sed ludus iste sibi et suis postea fuit causa et occasio tristissimi et gravissimi eventus. Venit enim primo Duacum, deinde Insulam, postea Gandavum. Gandenses autem honorifice sibi obviam processerunt, omnes novis vestimentis induti, majores duobus modis; quia dissidebant inter se, et communitas suo modo; feceruntque sibi ludos diversos; et scabini miserunt sibi exenia magnifica et copiosa. 85 Ibid.: Scabini igitur et majores Gandenses in exeniis missis regi et regine, et hastiludiis pro ipsis celebratis, bene expenderunt usque ad XXVII millia librarum. 86 Ibid.: 11–13: Cum autem rex ingrederetur Gandavum, communitas, que sibi occurrit, fortiter clamavit et instanter ab ipso petiit, quod liberaretur de quadam gravi exactione, que erat in Gandavo et in Brugis, super omnia venalia et specialiter super cerevisiam et medonem, quam Gandenses vocant malam pecuniam, Brugenses assisiam. Rex autem, quia jocundus et novus


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News of this got around quickly. When Philip the Fair came to Bruges during his tour, the aldermen and patricians, having announced warnings of criminal proceedings, had told the citizens not to ask the King to abandon certain taxes, as had happened in Ghent.87 But the representatives of the guilds were not completely intimidated. They simply stayed silent when Philip the Fair entered into Bruges. The King is said to have been astonished by this, but the Annals of Ghent, which offer the most detailed, if not sufficiently so, reports on Philip’s entry into Flanders, do not say more.88 Nevertheless it becomes obvious that the King had reason to be satisfied with his journey. Everywhere the citizens had shown that they welcomed their new master and by their participation had recognised his rule. They had not spared any expenses to earn his favour. After all, this journey was an opportunity for homage to be paid, albeit in this case under the conditions of a territory dominated by cities.89 To some extent, it also suggests that Philip the Fair based the establishment of his own rule on ancient traditions as far as possible, since there was hardly any precedent for the way he had gone about matters. We need only note the fact that the first reported entry of a French King into Paris occurred in the year 1328.90 On the other hand, the King’s entry did not fulfill its promise. The conflicts within the cities, which in Ghent also divided the families of patricians, had already been revealed there by the wearing of different clothing, whereas the tensions in Bruges could be suppressed only with difficulty. But even if the repeatedly observed difficulties of controlling a mass ritual such as that of the entry91 were overcome by the organisers,92 soon after the King had left the smouldering conflicts broke out again.

87 88 89

90

91 92

erat adventus ejus, annuit precibus acclamantium, quod majoribus ville multum displicuit, qui multa solebant de dicta exactione habere emolumenta, sicut etiam in Brugis. Ibid.: Inhibuerant autem scabini et majores Brugenses communitati, sub pena capitis, ne aliquis ipsorum pro deletione assisie regi acclamaret, vel apud ipsum preces funderet, sicut fuit factum Gandavo. Ibid.: Ex hoc igitur communitas offense in occursu regis stetit quasi muta, ita quod rex de hoc, ut dicitur, mirabatur. That making the new subjects pay homage was the goal of the journey is emphasized by Aegidius li Muisis 1841: 190: anno igitur illo […] rex Franciae […] cum magna comitiva venit, et cum eo regina, et descenderunt et iverunt […] in villa Gandensem, ubi fuerunt honorifice recepti, et Gandenses et tota patria regi fecerunt homagium. Guenée & Lehoux 1968: 10–14 and 47. Bryant 1990: 89 speaks of royal entries already since Louis IX. But he is not able to prove that the three earlier entries were accompanied by special celebrations, rather than just consisting of riding into the city, which was counted as an entry, a custom known from later times. For this reason, it is safe to speak of the practice of entrée royal only from 1328 onwards. Basically on this Arnade 1996: 145–158. Surely the hostage, who Philip the Fair had forced the cities to provide beforehand, also contributed to this. See Warnkönig 1835: 201.

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The further course of events shows that such rituals could only to a certain extent influence political and social contradictions. For no matter how much Philip the Fair’s entries into the cities of Flanders spread the image of harmony between the King and his newly-won cities, in the end the King, or more precisely his governor, were drawn into the conflicts there. The great expense for the celebrations had once more increased the tensions in Ghent and Bruges, as they meant a burden most of all for the poorer classes.93 And then the King had even added fuel to the fire when punishing those cities with fines which had offered resistance to his army.94 And so in Bruges and elsewhere uprisings soon broke out against direct royal rule, which in the end the King believed could be suppressed only by way of war.95 14 months after his peaceful entry, during the campaign, he was suddenly confronted with the full power of the cities of Flanders and was defeated by their militias at Kortrijk in 1302, as a result of which his direct rule of Flanders collapsed.96 What could be seen ex negativo in the conquest of Scotland became obvious both through Robert the Bruce’s uprising and the subjection of Flanders to the French Crown. Ancient rituals were of particular interest for the new masters because they promised legitimacy and future power. That is why there could be the idea of finding ways for them not to be used if one wanted to annex a country, or alternatively they themselves could be used them to help subject an empire or country. The procedure depended on different factors, and there was no guarantee of success. However, we recognise an indispensable core to establishing a lordship. One could take over traditions or abandon them, copy or extend inauguration rituals, but none of the conquerors presented here gave up on homage. Its significance was the result of the understanding, which was almost a matter of course, that lordship was of a personal nature and that consequently individuals had to be tied to the ruler, which happened precisely by way of homage, and this is the case not only in the feudal world but also in cities. Homage could be embedded in a traditional way in extensive rituals and could be used to make continuities visible. Just the same, it could simply be enforced in passing, without much embellishment. Homage was indispensable, sometimes the adaptation of ancient rituals was unavoidable, maybe even an advantage, but in most cases there were other factors which decided the success or failure of conquest and expansion, which does not mean to say that sometimes we may not speak of rituals in this context.

93 94 95 96

See Strayer 1980: 332. See ibid. See Nicholas 1992: 191–193; Strayer 1980: 335. See Nicholas 1992: 191–193.


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References Aegidius li Muisis 1841. In: Joseph-Jean de Smet (ed.). Corpus Chronicorum Flandriae. Vol. 2: Chronica Aegidi li Muisis. Brussels: Hayez: 93–448. Althoff, Gerd 2003. Die Macht der Rituale. Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. — 2006. Heinrich IV. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Annales Gandenses 1985 [1951]. Edited and translated by Hilda Johnstone. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Arnade, Peter 1996. The Realm of Rituals. Burgundian Ceremony and Civic Life in Late Medieval Ghent. Ithaca et al.: Cornell University Press. Bain, Joseph (ed.) 1884. Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland. Vol. 2. Edinburgh: Her Majesty’s General Register House. Barrell, Andrew D.M. 2000. Medieval Scotland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barrow, Geoffrey W.S. 20054. Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bartlett, Robert 1998 [1993]. Die Geburt Europas aus dem Geist der Gewalt. Eroberung, Kolonisierung und kultureller Wandel von 950–1350. Munich: Droemerscher Verlagsanstalt. Beam, Amanda 2008. The Balliol Dynasty: 1210–1364. Glasgow: John Donald. Blockmans, Wim 1994. “Regionale Identität und staatliche Integration in den Niederlanden des 13.–16. Jahrhunderts”. In: Antoni Czacharowski(ed.). Nationale, ethnische Minderheiten und regionale Identitäten in Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Torun: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press: 137–149. Brown, Michael 2004. The Wars of Scotland: 1214–1371. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bryant, Lawrence M. 1990. “The Medieval Entry Ceremony at Paris”. In: Janos Bak (ed.). Coronations. Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press: 88–118. Davies, Robert R. 1990. Domination and Conquest. The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales 1100–1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Donckers, Esther & Wim Blockmans 1999. “Self-representation of Court and City in Flanders and Brabant in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries”. In: Wim Blockmans & Antheun Janse (eds.). Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions in the Late Middle Age. Turnhout: Brepols: 81–111. Duncan, Archibald M. 1988. “Introduction”. In: Archibald M. Duncan (ed.). Regesta Regum Scottorum. Vol 5: The Acts of Robert I. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 127–129. Favier, Jean 1978. Philippe le Bel. Paris: Payard. Funck-Brentano, Frantz 1896. Philippe le Bel en Flandre. Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur.

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Grant, Alexander 1984. Independence and Nationhood. Scotland 1306–1469. London: Edward Arnold. — 2007. “The Death of John Comyn: What Was Going On?”. Scottish Historical Review 86/2: 176–224. Gray, Thomas 2005. Scalacronica (1272–1363). Edited and translated by Andy King. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Guenée, Bernard & Françoise Lehoux 1968. “Introduction”. In: Bernard Guenée & Françoise Lehoux (eds.). Les Entrées royales françaises de 1328 à 1515. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique: 7–30 (Sources d’histoire médiévale 5). Guisborough, Walter of 1957. In: Harry Rothwell (ed.). The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough. London: Office of the Royal Historical Society (Camden Society 89). Hehl, Ernst D. 2006. “Eroberung im Denken des hohen Mittelalters”. In: Markus Meumann & Jörg Rogge (eds.). Die besetzte “res publica”. Zum Verhältnis von ziviler Obrigkeit und militärischer Herrschaft in besetzten Gebieten vom Spätmittelalter bis zum 18. Jahrhundert. Münster: Lit-Verlag: 27–50. Holenstein, André 1991. Die Huldigung der Untertanen. Rechtskultur und Herrschaftsordnung 800–1800. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag. Jäschke, Kurt 1997. “Der Stein von Scone und ‘seine Verwandten’ in England. Ein Beitrag zu Geschichte und Bedeutung politischer und rechtlicher Symbolsteine in England, vornehmlich während des Mittelalters”. In: Axel Huber (ed.). Der Kärntner Fürstenstein im europäischen Vergleich. Tagungsbericht, Symposium Gmünd 20.–22. September 1996. Seeboden: Huber: 121–198. Kalckhoff, Andreas 1983. Nacio Scottorum. Schottischer Regionalismus im Spätmittelalter. Frankfurt a.M. et al.: Peter Lang. Kortüm, Hans-Henning 2006. “Besatzung im Mittelalter”. In: Günther Kronenbitter & Markus Pöhlmann & Dierk Walter (eds.). Besatzung. Funktion und Gestalt militärischer Fremdherrschaft von der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Paderborn et al.: Schönigh: 37–56. Langtoft, Pierre de 1868. The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft. In French Verse, from the Earliest Period to the Death of King Edward I. Edited by Thomas Wright. Vol. 2. London: Longmans et al. (Rolls Series 47). Moeglin, Jean-Marie 2005. “Land, Territorium und Dynastie als Bezugsrahmen regionalen Bewusstseins am Beispiel Flanderns”. In: Matthias Werner (ed.). Spätmittelalterliches Landesbewusstsein in Deutschland. Ostfildern: Thorbecke: 17–52. Mohr, Walter 1977. Die Entwicklung des flämischen Eigenständigkeitsgefühls bis zum Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts. Saarbrücken: Verlag Die Mitte. Murray, James 1994. “The Liturgy of the Counts advent in Bruges, from Galbert to van Eyck”. In: Barbara Hanawalt & Kathryn Reyerson (eds.). City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 137–154. Nicholas, David 1992. Medieval Flanders. London: Longman. Prestwich, Michael 1988. Edward I. London: Methuen.


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— 2007 [2005]. Plantagenet England 1225-1360. Oxford: Oxford University Press (The New Oxford History of England 8). Rymer, Thomas & Robert Sanderson 1967 [1745]. Foedera, conventiones, literae, et cuiuscunque generis acta publica, inter reges Angliae et alios quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates […]. Vol. 1/2. Farnborough. [Facsimile, The Hague]. Schnabel-Schüle, Helga 2006. “Herrschaftswechsel – zum Potential einer Forschungskategorie”. In: Helga Schnabel-Schüle & Andreas Gestrich (eds.). Fremde Herrscher – fremdes Volk. Inklusions- und Exklusionsfiguren bei Herrscherwechseln in Europa. Frankfurt a.M. et al.: Peter Lang: 5–20. Steinecke, Marion & Stefan Weinfurter (eds.) 2003. Investitur- und Krönungsrituale. Herrschaftseinsetzungen im kulturellen Vergleich. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau-Verlag. Stevenson, Joseph (ed.) 1839. Chronicon de Lanercost: 1201–1346. Edinburgh: Maitland Club. — 1870. Documents of the History of Scotland from the Death of King Alexander the Third to the accession of Robert Bruce. Vol. 2. Edinburgh: Her Majesty’s General Register House. Stones, Edward L.G. (ed.) 1970 [1965]. Anglo-Scottish Relations 1174–1328. Some Selected Documents. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Strayer, Joseph R. 1980. The Reign of Philip the Fair. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Warnkönig, Leopold A. 1835. Flandrische Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte bis zum Jahr 1305. Tübingen: Fues. Watson, Fiona 1988. “The Enigmatic Lion: Scotland, Kingship and National Identity in the Wars of Independence”. In: Dauvit Broun & R.J. Finlay & Michael Lynch (eds.). Image and Identity: The Making and Re-making of Scotland through the Ages. Edinburgh: John Donald: 18–37. — 1998. Under the Hammer: Edward I. and Scotland 1286–1306. East Linton: Tuckwell Press. Wielant, Philippe 1865. In: Joseph-Jean de Smet (ed.). Corpus Chronicorum Flandriae. Vol. 4: Antiquités de Flandre. Brussels: Hayez: 1–451. Young, Alan 1997. Robert the Bruce’s Rivals. The Comyns 1212–1314. East Linton: Tuckwell Press: 195–199.

Christian Jaser

Usurping the Spiritual Sword Performative and Literary Alienations of Ritual Excommunication In 1326, the Council of Avignon reported an abominable abuse which, “as one could hear from near and far”, had dispersed “into some regions”: there were laymen who held the sentences of the Church in contempt and hence refused its spiritual medicine; in doing so, they “neither feared God nor honoured their fellow men and swallowed wickedness like water”. And if this was not enough, these “sons of Belial” usurped the clerical office or ministry – “officium et interdictum sibi usurpantes ministerium” – by excommunicating, even cursing, on their part the very prelates and priests who had formerly promulgated or denounced excommunications against them. Now, the laypeople on their part pretended that these ecclesiastics were adulterous and hence rightly punished with the ban. During these excommunications against churchmen – an act being “versa sed perversa vice”, perversely vice versa, as the conciliar decree called it – the laypeople did not abstain from performative gestures: the council indicated that they extinguished burning grease candles, wisps, or pieces of charcoal and wood in bowls or cans.1 Clearly, what we see here is a counter-excommunication with the resources of a peasant household, an inversive practice of excommunicating the excommunicators which originates from and refers to a fixed ritual setting of ordinary excommunication. Since the beginning of the tenth century, rules of implementation for ritual 1 Council of Avignon (1326), c. 7. Mansi: vol. 25, 746: “Caeterum abominabitur, proh dolor! (sicut ad nostrum tam de longinquo, quam e vicino, pervenit auditum) in quibusdam partibus inolere coepit abusio. Nam aliqui filii Belial, qui nec Deum timent, nec homines reverentur, iniquitatem bibunt ut aquam: qui dum sententias vilipendunt, dum medicinam quae fuerat ad salutem rejiciunt, mortis incurrunt periculum, & ad interitum, suae perversitatis exemplo, nonnumquam inducunt alios & seducunt. Isti quidem in Dei opprobrium, in contemptum promulgatoris, et sententiae promulgatae neglectum, non minus viliter quam damnabiliter procedere, immo verius execrabiliter excedere, non formidant, utpote dum adulterium presbyteri vel praelati confingentes, officium et interdictum sibi usurpantes ministerium, excommunicationem, immo verius execrationem, versa sed perversa vice in excommunicatores seu denunciatores suos, simulare praesumunt, accensos palearum fasciculos, aut candelas de sepo, seu carbones aut titiones ardentes, in patellis, conchis, aut sartaginibus, vel in similibus, vituperabiliter extinguendo.”

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excommunications were inscribed in liturgical manuscripts of monastic houses and episcopal churches, particularly in Northern France and England.2 Such formularies contained two major elements: an oral proclamation consisting of the invocation of heavenly authorities; legal speech acts like “excommunicamus” or “anathematizamus” which execute the legal act of excommunication properly and effectuate the spiritual and social liminality of the person concerned;3 cursing formulas emanating from or referring to biblical patterns, and, finally, an “escape clause”4 suggesting the principal reversibility of the just implemented excommunication, provided that the excommunicate is willing to render satisfaction and to perform proper penance.5 At the end of the oral proclamation there is a media shift towards a gestural performance of throwing and trampling on burning candles, whereby the extinguishing of the candlelight corresponds to the spiritual, soul-endangering effects of excommunication. Apart from this local thread of transmission, of which approximately sixty texts are still extant today and which shows a highly variable inventory of cursing formulas, the overall layout of ritual excommunication became in the long run part of the canonistic and liturgical archive of the Church as a whole. Originating from Regino of Prüm’s early tenth-century work on ecclesiastical discipline,6 it diffused into the major canonical collections of Burchard of Worms,7 Ivo of Chartres8 and Master Gratian9, thereby gaining supra-local, virtually official approval. The same tendency is manifest with regard to the liturgical transmission. Regino of Prüm’s formulas found their way into the RomanoGermanic Pontifical from around 950,10 which was widely used in German and 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10

Edwards 1997: esp. 17. For a definition of speech acts see Austin 1976: 1–11. Little 1993: 13. For the notion of satisfaction see Bossy 2004. Regino of Prüm 1964: 369–375 (lib. II, cc. 412–417): 1. II, 412–13: “Qualiter episcopus excommunicare infideles debeat”; 2. II, 414–15: “Item alia excommunicationis allocutio”; 3. II, 416: “Item alia terribilior excommunicatio”; 4. II, 417: “Excommunicatio brevis”. These six chapters belong altogether to the “Capita incerta”, i.e. they are of obscure origin. See in this respect Hartmann 2004b: 217. For the dating and reception of the the mentioned canonical collections see Kéry 1999: 133–148. I use the edition of Wasserschleben because the recent edition by Wilfried Hartmann contains only a selection of the relevant excommunica-tion formularies (Hartmann 2004a: 439–445 [lib. II, cc. 412–413, 416–417]). PL vol. 140: 856–860 (lib. XI, cc. 2–7). For a discussion of the origin of these formularies see Hoffmann & Pokorny 1991: 218–219. PL vol. 164: 844–848 (lib. XIV, cc. 75–79). C.11 q.3 c.106 (Friedberg 1879: vol. 1, 674: “Modus et forma excommunicationis”), C.11 q.3 c.107 (Friedberg 1879: vol. 1, 674: “De eodem”). For the position of these chapters within the Decretum see Winroth 2000: 115–116. PRG vol. 1: 308–317 (cc. LXXXV–XC): LXXXV. “Qualiter episcopus excommunicare infideles debeat”; LXXXVI. “Item alia excommunicationis allocution”; LXXXVII. “Item alia excommunication”; LXXXVIII. “Item alia terribilior excommunication”; LXXXIX.

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Italian episcopal churches. In the late thirteenth century, these formulas were revised and juridically systematised by Guillaume Durand in his Pontifical which was the prototype for all later Roman Pontificals. Borrowing from the differentiation efforts of canon law, Durand distinguished minor excommunication, major excommunication and anathema,11 the latter being defined as a “solemn excommunication for grave delinquency”.12 Durand’s formulary for such a “solemn” – or analytically spoken – “ritual” excommunication retains the oral-gestural layout of the older rules of implementation. It starts with a long address by the excommunicating bishop to the faithful attending Sunday Mass justifying the public act of excommunication by the contumacy of the excommunicate in the face of preliminary admonitions, so that nothing else remained than to “abscise the putrid and incurable member from the body of the Church with the sword of excommunication”.13 Then he proceeds with the speech acts through which the social and spiritual status of the excommunicate is transformed, whereupon the audience “Excommunicatio brevis”; XC. “Excommunicatio Leonis papae”. See for the manuscript diffusion and dating of this work PRG vol. 3: 3–57. 11 PGD: 609 (lib. III, c. VIII, 1): “Super excommunicationis et absolutionis forma, prenotandum est quod triplex est excommunicatio, videlicet minor, maior et anathema. Minor excommunicatio contrahitur per solam participationem cum excommunicatis [...]”. 12 PGD: 612 (lib. III, c. VIII, 14): “Anathema vero, id est sollempnis excommunicatio pro gravioribus culpis”. 13 PGD: 613–614 (lib. III, c. VIII, 14): “Quia P., diabolo suadente, christianam promissionem, quam in baptismo professus est, per apostasiam postponens, ecclesiam Dei devastare, ecclesiastica bona diripere atque pauperes Christi violenter opprimere non veretur, idcirco, solliciti ne per negligentiam pastoralem pereat, pro quo in tremendo iudicio rationem reddere compellemur, iuxta quod ipse dominus nobis terribiliter comminatur dicens: ‘Si non annuntiaveris iniquo iniquitatem suam, sanguinem eius de manu tua requiram’, monuimus eum canonice, primo, secundo, tertio et etiam quarto, ad eius malitiam convincendam, ipsum ad emendationem et satisfactionem ac penitentiam invitantes, et paterno affectu corripientes; ipse vero, proh dolor, monita salutaria spernens, ecclesie Dei quam lesit, vel de hoc superbie spiritu inflatus, satisfacere dedignatur. Sane preceptis dominicis atque apostolicis informamur quid de huiusmodi prevaricationibus agere nos oporteat. Ait enim dominus: ‘Membrum, quod a sua compage resolvitur et a iunctura caritatis dissociatur et omne corpus scandalizat, erue eum et proice abs te’. Et apostolus inquit: ‘Auferte malum a vobis’. Et iterum: ‘Si quis frater nominatur esse fornicator, aut adulter, aut homicida, aut rapax, cum huiusmodi nec cibum sumere licet.’ Et Iohannes, pre ceteris a Christo dilectus, talem nefarium hominem salutare prohibet, dicens: ‘Nec Ave ei dixeris, nec eum in domo receperis’. Dominica itaque et apostolica precepta adimplentur, si membrum putridum et insanabile, quod medicine fomenta non recipit, excommunicationis ferro ab ecclesie corpore abscidatur, ne tam pestifero morbo reliqua corporis membra veluti veneno inficiantur. Igitur quia monita nostra crebrasque exhortationes contempsit, quia tertio, secundum dominicum preceptum, vocatus ad emendationem et penitentiam venire despexit, quia culpam suam nec cognovit nec confessus est, nec, missa legatione, excusationem aliquam pretendit nec veniam postulavit, sed, diabolo cor eius indurante, incepta malitia perseverat, iuxta quod apostolus dixit: ‘Secundum duritiam suam et cor impenitens thezaurizat sibi iram in die ire’”.

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acclaims by responding three times: “Fiat”.14 The final act of the ritual process is described by Durand in the following way, based on the canon “Debent” of Gratian’s Decretum which originated from Regino of Prüm15: “The twelve priests who stand around the bishop with lighted candles in their hand should, at the end of the anathema, throw these candles down on the floor and trample on them with their feet”,16 whereas in some regions they were extinguished by dipping them in a bowl of water, as Durand remarked in his “Speculum Judiciale”.17 In any case, these motoric acts of throwing, trampling and extinguishing could be read as a performance of cursing, similar to many excommunication formularies and, particularly pointedly, to the commentary on the Decretum Gratiani by the fifteenthcentury theologian Juan de Torquemada: “They extinguish the lights as a sign that the excommunicate is given over to Satan and placed outside of the community of the faithful”.18 Against this background, it could be shown that the inversive extinction of combustibles in bowls draws its usurpatory significance and alleged performative power from the established and widely diffused gestural canon of ritual excommunication. This is not merely an act of simple retaliation against the clerical hierarchy. Implicitly, the performative usurpation of the spiritual sword by laymen 14 PGD: 614 (lib. III, c. VIII, 14): “[...] idcirco eum, cum universis complicibus fautoribusque suis, iudicio Dei omnipotentis, patris et filii et spiritus sancti, et beati Petri principis apostolorum et omnium sanctorum necnon et mediocritatis nostre auctoritate et potestate ligandi et solvendi in celo et in terra nobis divinitus collata, a pretiosi corporis et sanguinis domini perceptione et a societate omnium christianorum separamus et a liminibus sancte matris ecclesie in celo et in terra excludimus et excommunicatum et anathematizatum esse decernimus et dampnatum cum diabolo et angelis eius et omnibus reprobis in ignem eternum iudicamus, donec a diaboli laqueis resipiscat et ad emendationem et penitentiam redeat et ecclesie Dei, quam lesit, satisfaciat, tradentes eum Sathane in interitum carnis, ut spiritus eius in die iudicii salvus fiat. Et omnes respondeant tertio: Fiat, Fiat, Fiat.” 15 Regino of Prüm 1964: 372 (lib. II, c. 413): “Debent autem XII sacerdotes episcopum circumstare, et lucernas ardentes in manibus tenere, quas in conclusione anathematis vel excommunicationis proiicere debent in terram, et pedibus conculcare”. Identical rules of implementation in PRG vol. 1: 310–311 (c. LXXXV), and in Gratian’s Decretum (C.11 q.3 c.106, Friedberg 1879: vol. 1: 674). 16 PGD: 614 (lib. III, c. VIII, 15): “Et est notandum quod in prolatione anathematis debent duodecim sacerdotes episcopum circumstare et lucernas, id est candelas ardentes, in manibus tenere, quas in conclusione, id est in fine anathematis, proicere debent in terram et pedibus conculcare; que candele debent, sicut sal infatuatum, proici et ad nullum usum ulterius poni.” 17 Durand 1975: 791 (lib. 2, Tit. De sententia, § Ut autem): “In plerisque tamen locis non conculcantur pedibus, sed extinguuntur in aqua dicendo, Sicut candelae haec extinguuntur, sic eius opera bona coram Deo sint extincta, donec sufficienti satisfactione praemissa ad sinum sanctae matris ecclesiae revertentur”. 18 Torquemada 1519–1520: ad C.11 q.3 c.106 (Debent), v. lucerne: “lucerne quoque extinguunt in signum quod excommunicatus traditur sathane et extra comunionem fidelium ponitur cuius opera a merito gratie et vite sunt extincte.”


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hints at the inversive potential of the spiritual efficiency and maledictory properties of this ritual, intensely propagated and inculcated by the preaching exempla as the mass media of the high Middle Ages.19 With regard to the clerics as the usual ritual performers, this lay challenge points to some basic topics which concerned canon lawyers and theologians alike: to whom is the ritual competence to excommunicate accorded, or to say it with Bourdieu, by what symbolic power is the ritual agency authorised and institutionalized?20 Which gestural elements belong to or have to be removed from the performative code of excommunication? Already, the development and increasing diffusion of excommunication formularies from the tenth to the twelfth century implicate a commitment to procedural guidelines. They organised the spatial and temporal setting, dictated premonitions as prerequisites for the course of action and shaped the performative roles of the ritual actors and their audiences. Given these early efforts to have the power to curse in a ritualised framework, one should be beware not to over-emphasise the twelfth century as a turning point towards a procedural framing of maledictory utterances of excommunication, as Richard Helmholz repeatedly did.21 Although such excommunications belong to the interactive processing of feudal conflicts and were regularly implemented ex parte, that means biased from the view-point of ecclesiastics as the actual or alleged damaged party,22 they stand in a marked contrast to the rather volatile cursing practices of saints and their immediate and fatal consequences in early medieval hagiographical narratives.23 But in other respects, one has to emphasise Helmholz's transition thesis: it is well documented that in the twelfth century excommunication in general and its ritual form in particular underwent a far-reaching process of juridification, resulting, for example, in the already discussed differentiation of minor excommunication, major excommunication and anathema. At the same time, it was tightly bound to a due process of law and integrated into the judicial proceedings of church courts, governed by procedural treatises called “ordines iudiciarii”.24 Thereby, the gestural codes of anathema were envisaged as a means to aggravate or reaggravate the legal sentence of excommunication, according to the legal formula: “crescente culpa crescit et pena”.25 As part of the external or judicial forum of the church, the power to impose excommunication is assigned only to a person with a proper jurisdictional authority. Because of the fact that the anathema was the gravest of all canonical sanctions beyond which, as a canon of

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

See in this respect Schmitt 1994: 254. See especially Bourdieu 2001a and 2001b. Helmholz 1996 and 1995. See for the notion of “ex parte-excommunications” Helmholz 2004: 127–128. See in this respect Bitel 2000 and Davies 1998. Cf. Fowler-Magerl 1994. See in this respect Hageneder 1986: 227–228.

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the Liber Extra frankly admitted, “the church has nothing more to offer”,26 it becomes readily comprehensible that its implementation was defined as an episcopal prerogative, as a “mucro episcopi”, “episcopal sword”,27 whose performance belongs “nisi solus episcopus”, as Hostiensis put it, “alone to the bishop”28 – and, one should not forget to add, to the quasi-episcopal superiors of exempt ecclesiastical institutions. Heavily discussed among canon lawyers was the question whether laymen could exercise the episcopal sword by delegation: whereas Huguccio and Bernard of Parma affirmed this possibility, its denial by John Teutonicus prevailed in the long run. The only exception to this rule was the “plenitudo potestatis” of the papal sovereign29 – a development summed up in the fifteenth century by Antonin of Florence’s “Treatise on excommunication”: “Excommunicare non potest laicus [...], nisi ex delegatione papae.”30 In this struggle for exclusiveness, the usurpations by laymen posed a secondary problem compared to the illicit use of ritual excommunication by inferior ecclesiastical agents. Guillaume Le Maire, bishop of Angers at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, pictured this issue in darkest colours: “It is a damnable custom that rural archdeacons, archpriests and deans [...] abuse the power of the keys by excommunicating persons for slight causes, even sometimes groundless”.31 Because, Guillaume Le Maire continues, this sanction is an “eternae mortis damnatio” – a widely used definition for anathema32 – it should only be promulgated for mortal crimes and “a majori iudice”, by a superior judge, since it is the “mucro episcopi”. Otherwise, the power of the keys would be increasingly neglected by the

26 X.2.1.10 (Friedberg 1881: vol. 2, 234): “Qui si depositus incorrigibilis fuerit, excommunicari debet, deinde contumacia crescente anathematis mucrone feriri. Postmodum vero, si in profundum malorum veniens contempserit, quum ecclesia non habeat ultra quid faciat [...].” 27 Hostiensis 1564: 1887–1888: “Super hoc diversae sunt opiniones, nam quidam dicunt, quod solus episcopus excommunicare potest non inferior, nam excommunicatio est mucro episcopalis. [...] secundum Augu. ipsa quae damnatio nominatur quam facit episcopale iudicium, qua pena nulla maior in Ecclesia invenitur, 14.q.3. corripiantur.” 28 Ibid.: 1888: “Solucio dicas quod nullus potest excommunicare excommunicatione solenni, quae dicitur Anathema, nisi solus episcopus.” 29 See in this respect Le Bras 1953: 229–230. 30 St. Antonin of Florence 1584: 382–383: “Excommunicare non potest laicus & suspendere, nisi ex delegatione Papae”. 31 Port 1874: 293–294: “Nonnullis etiam ejusdem regnis regionibus alia non minus dampnabilis inolet consuetudo, immo pocius corruptela, videlicet quod archidiaconi rurales, archipresbiteri et decani, jurisdictionem ecclesiasticam exercentes, tam per se quam per quosdam substitutos, viles, inscios et ignaros, regni celestis clavibus enormiter abuten-tes, homines pro parvis et levibus causis, immo multitociens sine causa, sentencia excommunicationis percellunt.” 32 For example the council of Meaux-Paris from 846, c. 56, Hartmann 1984: 111.


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faithful.33 The repeated reference to the power of the keys34 is striking: Generally, the competence to excommunicate was based on this very power35 – Durand and many excommunicating bishops before him did not forget to mention the “potestas ligandi et solvendi in celo et in terra” to gather legitimation. However, the efforts of scholastic doctrine from the twelfth century onwards dissociated the jurisdictional power of the church from the hierarchy of ordination, as paralleled by the differentiation between the external and internal forum.36 With regard to the keys, Thomas Aquinas distinguished the sacramental “clavis ordinis” from the “clavis jurisdictionis” of the external forum, which could be delegated even to laymen.37 In this grey area, the power to use the sharpest spritual sword in the Church’s arsenal was negotiated between ordinary and delegatory legitimations and between episcopal claims and jurisdictional realities consistent with the irresistible expansion of papal authority.38 Consequently, the competence to anathematise, which was genuinely accorded to bishops by the very liturgical and canonical norms that could claim universal or at least supra-local validity,39 was not infrequently appropriated by delegates as well as usurped by laymen and inferior clerics. According to a conciliar decree from Tours from 1239, some parish priests excommunicated their parishioners illicitly “auctoritate propria”, by virtue of their own authority.40 Generally, diocesan and provincial synods of this time and afterwards sought to monopolise the properly operative act of excommunication in the hands of bishops and superior judges, confining the role of the parish priests to subsequent publications on the parish level.41 33 Port 1874: 294: “quod cum secundum canones sit eterne mortis damnatio et qua pena nulla major est in Ecclesia, non nisi pro mortali crimine et a majori judice, cum mucro sit episcopi, promulgari deberet. Ex qua erronea corruptela tantum excommunicacionum mundat diluvium, quod quandoque ex una parrochia trescenti vel quadringenti, ut non dicamus, septingenti, sicut oculata fide vidi, reperiuntur per tales iudices, potestatem clavium ignorantes, variis et, ut plurimum, injustis excommunicacionum sententiis irreptiti. Ex quo accedit, quod homines, tam effrenata et monstruosa sentenciarum multitudine assueti, tales sententias omnino contempnunt, potestatem clavium vilipendunt, verba blasphema et scandalosa contra Ecclesiam et ministros ejus proferunt, nervum ecclesiastice discipline laviant et disrumpunt.” 34 See for the power of the keys the still valid study of Hödl 1960. 35 Cf. Beaulande 2006: 26. 36 Cf. Baldwin 1970: 51–52. 37 Cf. Kunze (22.08.2008). Cf. also Puza 1995. 38 Cf. Kunze (22.08.2008). 39 I.e. the canon “Debent” (C.11 q.3 c.106) of Gratian’s Decretum and the implementation rules of the Roman Pontificals. 40 Synod of Tours (1239), c. 6. Mansi: vol. 23, 498: “Item quod rectores seu curati parochialium ecclesiarum, parochianos suos auctoritate propria excommunicare non possunt pro iure suo.” 41 See in this respect for example the synod of Prague from 1349 (Mansi: vol. 26, 105): “Plebani vero seu parochiarum rectores excommunicandi auctoritatem sibi noverint penitus

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A comparable struggle for ritual standardisation and proper procedural sequences applies to the range of gestural elements that were used when the sentence against a contumacious excommunicate was aggravated. Once more, we begin with a quotation from the council of Avignon from 1326: “We decide that no ecclesiastical judge should allow, in order to aggravate his sentence, that stones were thrown on the house of the excommunicate, or that [...] a death-bed or a bier were carried in front of such a house.”42 Both illicit strategies obviously tended to materialise the maledictory and defamatory effects of excommunication and bring them as close as possible to the home of the obstinate person. Consequently, the gesture of throwing stones is to be understood as an act of cursing: “in signum maledictionis aeternae”, as a judge-delegate of the Council of Basle explained its significance.43 Nonetheless, in the procedural context of ritual excommunication, it took no firm roots. Guillaume Durand commented in his “Speculum Iuris” rather laconically on aggravating customs like the throwing of three stones at the door or over the rooftop of an excommunicate’s house, which was carried out by priests in their vestments on behalf of ecclesiastical judges: “quod ridiculum est”, wrote Durand, “this is ridiculous”.44 Notwithstanding, as late as 1651 the “Traité des excommunications” of Jacques Eveillon, canon of Angers, ranked the throwing of stones among the “cérémonies extraordinaires de la fulmination”, disqualifying it as “abusive and absurd”, but showed that this was still ordered in his times in Perigueux, Vienne, Embrun, Grenoble, and, interestingly, Avignon.45 Likewise

42

43 44

45

interdictam. Quod si propria temeritate quempiam excommunicare praesumpserint, superioris arbitrio proinde puniantur. Cum autem in prolatione sententiarum hujusmodi magna maturitas requiratur, episcopi & alii judices ecclesiastici, sententias ipsas, per se ipsos, in rebelles proferant, & demum publicationem seu denuntiationem earumdem plebanis locorum committant. Qui commissione super hoc seu mandato recepto, induti sacerdotali veste ad altare, seu in ambone ecclesiae stantes, exposita populo excommunicationis causa, accensis candelis, projectis ad terram, excommunicatum denuntiabunt publice, & praecipient, ut ab ipsius communione abstineant universi.” Cf. Beaulande 2006: 26. Council of Avignon (1326). Mansi: vol. 25, 746–747: “[...] statuimus, quod ab inde in antea nullus ecclesiasticam jurisdictionem exercens, contra excommunicatos ab ipsis, quantocumque tempore excommunicationis sententiam animo sustinuerint indurato, procedat ad faciendum projici lapides in domum excommunicationis sententia innodati, vel faciendum venire capellanum industum veste sacerdotali, ad domum excommunicati praedicti, vel portandum libitinam seu feretrum, vel alia similia, quae a jure non reperiuntur expressa; sed aliis provisis a iure remediis utantur ad poenam contumacium aggravandam [...]”. Hardouin 1714: 1213: “[...] tres lapides versus eorum habitationes projiciendo in signum maledictionis aeternae [...]”. Durand 1975: 791 (Lib. 2, Tit. De sententia, § Ut autem 32): “Quidam etiam fatui Judices, suas volentes sententias aggravare, faciunt presbyteros indutos vestibus sacerdotalibus venire ad domum excommunicati, et ad ostium vel super tectum domus, tres lapides iactare; quod ridiculum est.” Eveillon 1672: 378–380: “Il se trouve aussi bien en plusieurs lieux d’autres ceremonies abusives de fulmination, introduites par l’ignorance ou indiscretion des Prêtres, lesquelles doi-


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attracting the criticism of Eveillon, the use of biers experienced a post-Tridentine renaissance, at least as a local procedure: as a synod of Evreux decreed in 1576, a “feretrum” covered with a shroud and surrounded by burning candles should be positioned close to the pulpit before the implementation of ritual excommunication, in order to signify the deathlike status of the – likewise unsociable – excommunicate.46 Although the link between excommunication and death is firmly embedded in Christian tradition47 – Augustine comparing the former with an “interfectio”,48 a physical killing, and its proximity to a “mors subita et improvisa”49 being a constant motif in the corpus of exemplary literature – the claim of the synod that this ritual element has been already used by the first Christians50 is rather bold. Maybe it does not go too far to suggest that this “invention of tradition” hid a little pinch of uneasiness in the face of the slightly morbid undertones created by the fact that the framing of the liturgy of the dead was applied to a living person. Even more so, one is inclined to add, owing to the fact that the use of funeral masses and exequies for magical purposes attracted concern from ecclesiastical legislators and alarmed commentators alike, especially from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. More precisely, these practices can be subsumed under the umbrella term “praying to death”,51 meaning that certain malevolent persons exploited liturgical patterns, prayer techniques and textual traditions of the official Church in order to execrate their victims and effectuate their quick death.52 Thereby, the ecclesiastical doctrine of the spiritual and material fruits of the mass and other practices of worship served as a foil for inversive wishes, namely for the projected

46

47 48 49 50 51 52

vent estre supprimées par l’ordre des Messieurs les Prelats; pour ce qu’elles sont absurdes, et ne servent qu’à faire scandale, et exposer l’autorité de l’Eglise au mépris et à la risée du monde, principalement des heretiques [...].” Statuta Synodi aestualis Dioecesis Ebroicensis 1576: 22–23: “Cum vero fulminationis dies advenerit, mandamus ad terrorem conscientiis incutiendum, et ad ponendum ob oculos excommunicationis effectum, ante locum pronai statui feretrum opertum palla mortuorum cum ardentibus cereis, atque aqua benedicta, et in fine fulminationis cereos extingui, atque aquam benedictam effundi: necnon denunciati omnibus, ut excommunicatum quicumque sit lugeant verius mortuum, quam sola corporea morte defunctum: nec magis cum illo conversandum, quam cum mortuo quandocumque agnitus fuerit.” See in this respect Kober 1857: 20–21. Augustinus 1958: 296 (Quaestiones Deuteronomii, quaest. XXXVIIII): “Hoc nunc agit in Ecclesia excommunicatio, quod agebat tunc interfectio.” Lecoy de la Marche 1877: 263 (c. 316). Statuta Synodi aestualis Dioecesis Ebroicensis 1576: 23: “Eo fere ritu primos Christianos usos in promulganda excommunicatione ex antiquitatibus Christianis apparet, et adhuc in quibusdam Ecclesiis observantur quedam vestigia”. See in this respect Schreiner 1991 and Dürig 1976. For definitions of “praying to death” see Schreiner 1991: 337 and Dürig 1976: 71.

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elimination of an enemy.53 In this respect, a provincial synod of Treves from 1227 threatened parish priests with grave punishments who “by hate sing requiems for living persons or who, after placing a bier with the name of the hated person on it in the church room, read there the exequies to accelerate their death.”54 Apparently, this named “feretrum” functioned more like a directly addressed magical object, in contrast to its Evreux counterpart which should emblematically “evoke terror in the consciences and demonstrate to all spectators the effect of excommunication”.55 But apart from this difference, the appropriation of elements of the liturgy of the dead by clerics for the purpose of cursing and execrating living persons is a common intersection of ritual excommunication and “praying to death”. However, the cited abuses were not solely the illicit business of individual parish priests, either themselves entangled in private hatreds and neighbourly brawls or recruited by laypeople who used the parish priests’ spiritual authority and liturgical competence for their own ends, as the fifteenth-century “Summa Angelica” of Angelus of Clavasio insinuated.56 Rather, practices of “praying to death” were also exercised by whole monastic communities with self-ascribed legitimacy. To this category belong for a start the liturgical clamours of Benedictine monasteries, studied by Lester Little and Patrick Geary,57 which were part of the “monastic defense programs” and which can be defined as “liturgical appeal[s] to God for help against adversaries and persecutors”.58 In view of their strictly local transmission and their application in the context of feudal conflict processing, these clamours stand in close connection with the local excommunication formularies already pointed at. Consisting of curse formulas, litanies, prayers and gestures of ritual humiliation, monastic clamours should not, however, be simply lumped together with ritual excommunication as in Little’s analysis.59 It is exactly because these monasteries did not possess a legitimate power to excommunicate on their own,60 that they exercised self-defence using their spiritual authority to curse, without generating the legal effects of excommunication.61 In the thirteenth century, 53 For the fruits of the mass see Franz 1902. 54 Synod of Trier (1227). Mansi: vol. 23, 30: “Item nullus in odium alterius altaria denudet, vel Crucifixum deponat, vel spineis coronis circumdet, vel pro vivis cantet missam pro defunctis, vel nomine eorum quos odit, feretrum cum exequio mortuorum in ecclesia ponatur, ut citius moriantur, quia gravissime puniretur & deponeretur”. 55 See note 46. 56 Cited after Schreiner 1991: 342: “Si dixit vel fecit dici missas vel psalmos ut quisque moreretur”. 57 Little 1993 and Geary 1979. 58 Rosenwein & Head & Farmer 1991: 771. 59 Cf. Edwards 1997: 9. 60 Geary 1994: 148. 61 Cf. for the interrelation of excommunication formularies and the liturgical practice of “clamour” Little 1993: 30–51 and Reynolds 1987: 409–421.


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these monastic defence measures against persecutors by prayers and litanies reached new levels, beyond their former commitment to local contexts. So, the Italian chronicler and Franciscan friar Salimbene de Adam presented the new mendicant orders as real experts in this discipline,62 allegedly killing two anti-mendicant popes, Innocent IV63 and Honorius IV, by their prayers, the latter being struck by God because, as Salimbene stated, “it is impossible to ignore the prayers of so many”.64 In Rome, the expertise of the Dominicans in particular became quickly proverbial, documented by satirical prayers like “Cavete a letaniis prae-

62 Schreiner 1991: 344: “Als Spezialisten des Mordbetens galten die Bettelmönche, die mit Hilfe von Gebeten ihre Widersacher bezwingen wollten.” 63 Salimbene de Adam 1963: 419–420 (ad an. 1250, actually 1254): “Verumtamen papa volens satisfacere clericis, qui nimis eum de hoc negotio sollicitabant, et quia contra ordinem fratrum Predicatorum conceperat odium, ut audivi, et fratres Minores postea sperabat absolvere, contra ambos ordines dedit litteras, ut saltem diebus sollemnibus a mane usque post tertiam ecclesiarum ianuas minime aperirent, ne sacerdotes parochiales et matrices ecclesie oblationibus fraudarentur. Et statim percussit eum Deus, et subito infirmari cepit infirmitate, de qua mortuus est. Et verificatum apparuit verbum Domini quod dicit Za. II: Qui enim tetigerit vos, tanget pupillam oculi mei. Cum autem frater Iohannes de Parma, generalis minister, misisset ad eum fratrem Hugonem Capoldum de Placentia, qui erat bonus fiscus et lector in theologia in ordine fratrum Minorum, et morabatur cum nepote pape domno Octobono, qui fuit postea et ipse papa Adrianus III, ut rogaret papam, quod amore Dei et beati Francisci et etiam pro honore et bono suo totiusque populi Christiani salute litteras illas destrueret, non exaudivit eum, quia volebat eum Deus occidere, sicut et fecit. Et ita erat gravatus papa Innocentius quartus, quod nichil aliud sciebat dicere nisi unum versum Ps., videlicet istum: [38,12] A fortitudine manus tue ego defeci in increpationibus, propter iniquitatem corripuisti hominem. Istam ultimam clausulam tamdiu dixit, quousque expiravit et spiritum emisit; et remansit super paleas nudus et derelictus ab omnibus, sicut mos est Romanorum pontificum quando ultimum diem claudunt”. See in this respect also Lehmann 1963: 74. 64 Salimbene de Adam 1963: 629–630 (ad an. 1287): “Fuit et alia causa mortis summi pontificis pape Honorii quarti. Voluit enim insurgere contra ordinem fratrum Minorum et fratrum Predicatorum auferendo eis predicationes et confessiones ad instinctum quorundam prelatorum ultramontanorum, qui expenderunt propter hoc centum milia librarum monete turonensium. Et domnus Mattheus Rubeus, qui erat cardinalis ordinis fratrum Minorum, protector, gubernator et corrector, flendo venit ad fratres et cum lacrimis dixit eis: ‘Laboravi, fratres mei, quantum potui, ut averterem summum pontificem a cogitationibus suis, et non potui eum revocare a malignitate, quam erga vos habet in corde suo. Quapropter rogate Deum, qui dissippat cogitationes [630] malignorum, ne possint implere manus eorum quod ceperant, ut vos liberet ab importunis et malis hominibus. Rogate etiam beatum Franciscum, ut solita miracula dignetur ostendere contra illos qui ordinem suum turbare nituntur, ut cognoscant viventes et omnes qui male faciunt, quia contra Deum et servos suos pugnare non est facile.’ Hec audientes fratres conversi sunt unanimiter ad Dominum deprecandum, ut eis in isto discrimine succurrere dignaretur. Et quia impossibilie est multorum preces non exaudiri, ut beatus Augustinus dicit, ideo ille qui respexit in orationem humilium et non sprevit preces eorum, cum papa Honorius in crastinum cene Domini prolaturus esset sententiam supradictam, percussit eum Deus in sero quarte ferie majoris ebdomade, et mortuus est.”

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dicatorum”, “Keep off the litanies of the Preachers”, or “A litaniis praedicatorum libera nos, Domine”, “Deliver us, O Lord, from the litanies of the Preachers”.65 The common denominator of all these practices – ritual excommunication, liturgical clamours, “praying to death” – is the major role played by one Old Testament text: the cursing psalm 109, or, reckoning according to the Vulgate, 108. I cite just the core verses 6 to 9 of the King James Translation: “Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”66 First of all, some parts of this psalm were frequently included in local excommunication formularies from the tenth to the fifteenth century,67 whereas in the time of Eveillon it was sung as a whole, preferentially at the end of the aggravation ritual, for example in Périgueux, Embrun and Grenoble.68 Regarding the use of this psalm for the “prayer to death”, the reformers of the sixteenth century could not agree whether monastic communities actually used it for the purpose of deadly cursing or not: John Calvin accused the Franciscan friars in particular of lending their praying skills to everyone who wanted to get rid of an enemy, including, as Calvin knew, one

65 Lehmann 1963: 74. 66 Ps. 108, 6-9: “constitue super eum peccatorem et diabulus stet a dextris eius, cum iudicatur exeat condemnatus et oratio eius fiat in peccatum, fiant dies eius pauci et episcopatum eius accipiat alter, fiant filii eius orfani et uxor eius vidua”. See for a brief overview of the exegesis of this cursing psalm Schreiner 1991: 346–350. 67 So in the following excommunication formularies: 1. Leo-Formulary of the Romano-Germanic Pontifical (around 950), PRG vol. 1: 315–317 (c. XC). – 2. Rochester (1st quarter of the 12th cent.), Textus Roffensis (i.e. the so-called “Curse of Ernulphus”), Liebermann. 1903: 439–440. – 3. Jumièges (12th cent.), Martène 1736: 905–906. – 4. Winchester (12th cent.), Liebermann (ed.) 1903: 436–437. – 5. Compiègne, Saint-Corneille, Lectionary (12th cent.), Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS latin 17304, fol. 74r-74v. – 6. Lyre (2nd half of the 12th cent.), Martène (ed.) 1736, 910-911. – 7. Clairvaux (?) (12th-13th cent.), Addition to a Roman Pontifical, Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 2272, fol. 60r-60v. – 8. Toul (1420), Pontifical of Henri de Ville-sur-Illon, Bishop of Toul, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS latin 12079, fol. 270r-271v. For questions of dating see Edwards 1997: passim. 68 Eveillon 1672, 378: “A Perigueux cette ceremonie se pratique autrement. C’est que la partie plaignante apporte au Curé un cercueil, qui est mis à la porte de l’Eglise, et, la grande Messe finie, le Curé revêtu d’Aube, avec l’Etole, la Croix marchant devant avec deux autres Ecclesiastiques en Surpellis, ayans six caillous en main, et chantans le Pseaume 108, les cloches sonnantes, font brûler ledit cercueil, et jettent leurs cailloux. A Vienne en Dauphiné, à Embrun, à Grenoble, et Avignon, la fulmination se fait par acté separé apres l’Excommunication, Aggravation, et Reaggravation denoncées, et on y observe la ceremonie des chandelles et des cloches, comme dessus: mais ils y a ajoûtent la Croix levée, qu’ils posent vis à vis du Curé qui fait ladite fulmination, et chantent le Respons, Revelabunt coeli, l’Antiphone, Media vita, et le méme Pseaume, Deus laudem meam ne tacueris”.


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gentlewoman whose son had been imprecated by them,69 whereas Luther consigned such practices of monks and nuns to the realms of fantasy.70 But the role of laymen did not end with ordering monastic expertise. As the reform-orientated French theologian and humanist Faber Stapulensis pointed out in his “Quincuplex psalterium” from 1509, laypeople used Psalm 109 to imprecate and curse their parish priests, their superiors or persons whom they did not readily accept as superiors.71 Johann Friedrich Heine, whose Helmstedt dissertation of 1708 entitled “Abusum Psalmi CIX imprecatorii vulgo Das Tod–Beten” is to this day the single major work on this phenomenon, imputed similar subversive inclinations to laypeople of his time, citing superstitious strategies like the matutinal and vespertinal praying of this psalm for the time of one year and nine days in order to pray someone to death. Any interruption would lead to the turnaround of the psalm’s malediction on the head of the praying layman.72 Obviously, the scrupulous temporal sequencing and cumulation of the lay psalm-praying served in some respects as a substitute for the higher spiritual power and authorised speech of clerics exercising the “praying to death”. If one follows Bourdieu that the “power of words is nothing other than the 69 Calvin, Jean. Opera XXII. 149 (Corpus Reformatorum LX, Calvini Opera XXXII), (cited after Dürig 1976: 76, n. 17): “Quo magis detestabile sacrilegium est quod Psalmum hunc monachi profanant, et maxime Franciscani. Res enim minime occulta est, si quis hostem capitalem habeat quem velit perditum, conducere ex illis nebulonibus aliquem qui quotidie Psalmum hunc recitet (i.e. Ps. 109, CJ). Imo in regno Galliae scio primariam quandam feminam conducticios ex Franciscanis habuisse, qui unigenito filio hac forma imprecarentur”. 70 Luther 1897: 595: “Er (i.e. Ps. 109, CJ) flucht und verkündigt so viel übels den feinden Christi, das etliche diesen Psalm haben yn gerucht bracht, das die Mönch und Nonnen yhn sollen beten wider yhre feinde; Und wo er widder yemand gebettet würde, so müste der selbige sterben. Das sind aber lügenteydinge und mehrlin”. 71 Lefèvre d’Étaples 1979: 162 (ad Ps. 108): “[...] sublata fuisset phantasia qua homines sine deo contra preceptum evangelicum aliquando abutuntur credentes aut pastoribus aut maioribus sui aut quos nolint habere superiores deuouere & imprecari & eos maledictione quadam ferire haec suggerende diabolo fiunt divinis abutendo: & vera in caput authorum redit maledictio cum tamen ex intentione prophetae maledictio non sit sed prophetia et predictio. Et novi qui hoc vano & superstitioso velut sic detestabilius licet verius dicam magico ritu luminibus extinctis a sacris altaribus vultibus auersis se turpiter pulveribus voluntates hunc psalmum execrandi deuouendique studio immurmurarent proinde antistites invigilent ne tanta iniuria fiat deo & ne que nobis ad salutem data sunt & ad divinam laudem nobis fiant in perniciem & in dei contumeliam. Quod facile fiet: si hic psalmus per indicativum canatur, ut videtur ex hebraeo esse vertendum”. 72 Heine 1708: 16: “Nostris proh dolor! temporibus, quibus evangelii lux clarissima oculos omnium perstringit, maxime dolendum est, inveniri homines talibus superstitionibus tam impense deditos. Alii vero pluribus, alii paucioribus in psalmi huius abusu se adstringunt observationibus. Quidam putant, psalmum hunc orandum esse mane & vespere per integrum annum & novem dies absque ulla interruptione; quia psalmus in ordine est centesimus nonus, in quo per centum unus denotetur annus & per novem totidem dies. Si vero vel semel intermittatur ista imprecatio, non in caput adversarii, sed orantis retrogredi aestumatur”.

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delegated power of the spokesperson”,73 then the efficiency of the clerical praying lies not so much in the linguistic substance of the speech acts, but rather in his institutionalisation, his personal “ministerium” and ordained status, resulting in his competence to communicate with the supernatural, to bless and to transsubstantiate. In contrast, when laypeople appropriated the verses of a holy text like the Psalm 109 for their own misanthropic ends, they based their confidence to gain their purpose on the use of the psalm verses as divine speech acts or, in other words and by applying the famous expression of John Austin, they wanted to do something with – at least sacred – words alone.74 Finally, in order to build a bridge back to excommunication and the struggle for exclusiveness already discussed, we have to consider a mid-twelfth century letter of Wibald of Stablo, abbot of Corvey, to a certain monk named Walter. Therein, Wibald accused the addressee of a “deed full of sacrilege and detestation”, given that Walter had celebrated the mass of the Holy Trinity “quotidiano [...] sine intermissione”, “daily and without interruption”, in order to harm Wibald himself and the provost with regard to their temporal prosperity and their physical health.75 Alongside this internal monastic conflict, Walter furthermore dared to anathematise a tradesman from nearby Horenhusen as a local competitor in forbidden businesses; thereby, he carried the host out of the church to the cemetery in order to see the house of his enemy in the valley, and excommunicated the tradesman, his wife and his children.76 Particularly the use of excommunication by a monk-priest provoked Wibald to present a legal argumentation:77 “What turns you into a leader of the people? When you ascended towards the grade of a priest, you accepted the power to consecrate the body and blood of Christ, and not the power to bind and loose. The latter was accepted by the Catholic Church together with saint Peter, but it does not diffuse to all persons in priestly orders, but it is only collated to those

73 Bourdieu 2001a: 107. 74 Austin 1976. 75 Letter of Wibald of Stablo to the monk Walter, PL vol. 189, 1265–1266: “Audivimus enim de te rem insaniae junctam, imo vero sacrilegio et detestatione plenam, quod videlicet quotidiano desperationis furore accensus missam de sancta Trinitate sine intermissione celebres, sub hoc caecatae mentis proposito, ut tam nostra persona quam tuus praepositus per hoc tam in temporali prosperitate, quam in corporum nostrorum valetudine acerbius laedamur.” For an alternative edition of this letter see: Jaffé 1864: 293–295 (no. 173). 76 Letter of Wibald of Stablo to the monk Walter, PL vol. 189, 1266: “Praeterea non dissimilem impietatis errorem incurrisse argueris, in eo scilicet, quod mercatorem quemdam saecularibus et tibi prohibitis commerciis socium et amicum anathematizaveris. Soles enim tractatis recenter vivificis sacramentis extra ecclesiam in coemeterium fratrum exire, ut inde possis oppidum Horenhusen, quod in valle situm est, despicere, et contemplata domo tui sodalis, ipsum et uxorem et liberos excommunicare”. 77 For the use of legal argumentations in Wibald’s epistolary see Reuter 1991: esp. 263.


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who are elected to the administration of the spiritual care”.78 In other words: for Wibald of Stablo, the exercise of excommunication in Church is based on jurisdictional powers, and not on the mere fact of ordination and self-claimed charisma, so that the case of the Corvey monk is qualified as an unjust usurpation of the spiritual sword. Additionally, the interpenetration between the practices of “praying to death” and excommunication, or, beyond that, between unauthorised, even criminalised cursing of minor clerics and laypeople and the authorised, ritually and legally proceduralised cursing of bishops and monastic communities is striking in Wibald’s account of Walter’s procedures against his adversaries. In consequence, this implicated a lasting competition over certain gestural elements and certain curse formulas. Particularly the gesture of throwing and extinguishing candles and the pivotal cursing text of Psalm 109 were readily accessible for usurpations of laymen and minor clerics alike, be it in the case of inversive counter-excommunications or “praying to death”. By forbidding these rival cursing performances and excluding accessory ritual elements such as the throwing of stones and the carrying of biers, the oral-gestural core of ritual excommunication was more and more strengthened. Alongside this struggle for performative consolidation, there was a struggle for exclusiveness regarding the authority to implement ritual excommunication. Liturgists and canon lawyers alike sought to forge the sword of anathema as a “mucro episcopi”, whereas the increasing juridification of the concept of the power of the keys pointed to the opposite direction, dissolving the links between ordination and the exercise of excommunication in favour of a more flexible approach by means of delegation. Confronted with the undermining of the hierarchy of ordination by papal delegates and with usurpations on the parish level, the late medieval bishops sought at least to secure the ritual and liturgical pregorative to anathematise. An additional strategy to counter arbitrary excommunication and absolution policies on the parish level consisted in the reservation of defined transgressions to the episcopal jurisdiction.79 Consequently, provincial and diocesan synods promulgated in increasing proliferation and frequency from the thirteenth century general sentences of excommunication for a vast range of misdemeanours – “general” means that the excommunications are phrased in a general way, without naming a person or persons, according to the following pattern: “excommunicamus omnes,

78 Letter of Wibald of Stablo to the monk Walter, PL vol. 189, 1266: “Quis te constituit principem populi? cum ad presbyterii gradum ascendisti, potestatem accepisti consecrandi corpus et sanguinem Dei, non potestatem ligandi atque solvendi. Hanc potestatem accepit Ecclesia Catholica cum beato Petro, sed non est diffusa in omnes, qui sacerdotali officio funguntur, sed eis tantum collata, qui ad curae spiritualis administrationem eliguntur”. 79 Cf. Hausmann 1868.

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qui […]”, “we excommunicate all persons, who […]”80 But the publication of these general excommunications was by no means reduced to these speech acts: to the gestural act of throwing and extinguishing candles still used in this context there was added an acoustic dimension by the ringing of the church bells, signifying, according to the synod of Montpellier from 1214, the detestation against the excommunicated.81 In England, where the publications of vernacular general sentences later named “The Great Curs” or “Generall Sentence” took place in both ecclesiastical provinces down to the parish level,82 the expression “cursing by book, bell, and candle’ became proverbial and found its way into the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare.83 Likewise, similar lists of general excommunications circulated in French, for example one published by the Synod of Cambrai from 1277, which was to be read out in the parishes once a month.84 With these farreaching publication strategies on both sides of the Channel, it is not too hazardous to assume a high level of familiarity with the performative framing of general excommunications which to a certain extent, at least for the transgressions concerned, superseded the implementation of ritual excommunication against named persons in the Later Middle Ages. 80 Cf. Hinschius 1959: 134–135 and Huizing 1955: 315–317. Hinschius 1959: 137 noticed the common use of general excommunications in the thirteenth century: “Mit dem 13. Jahrhundert ist die generelle Exkommunikation ein allgemeines Rechtsinstitut der Kirche geworden”. For an English example from the diocesan level see the constitutions of Richard, bishop of Sarum, from 1287 (Mansi: vol. 22, 1132): “Item omnes illos excommunicationis sententiam innodamus, qui pacem & tranquillitatem regis & regni injuriose perturbare praesumunt: & qui jura domini regis injuste detinere contendunt. [...] Primo quidem excommunicamus, authoritate Oxoniensis concilii, a sanctae memoriae Stephano Cantuariensi archiepiscopo celebrati, omnes qui malitiose ecclesias jure suo privare praesumunt; aut per malitiam, contra justitiam, libertates earumdem infringere, vel perturbare contendunt. Item excommunicamus secundo omnes illos, qui pacem & tranquillitatem domini regis & regni injuriose perturbare praesumunt, & qui cuncta jura regis injuste detinere contendunt”. 81 Synod of Montpellier (1214), c. 41. Mansi: vol. 22, 949: “[...] violatores pacis singulis diebus dominicis excommunicentur et in sero post vesperas campanae omnes per civitatis villas et castra in eorum detestationem pulsentur [...]”. 82 See in this respect Pickering 1981. 83 See Thurston 1915: esp. 20–21 and Earwater 1878: 9–12. In Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus” (Act III, Scene II) this proverbial expression appears during a dialogue between Mephistophilis and Faustus after Faustus had slapped the pope in the face, thereby falling under the canon “Si quis suadente diabolo”, one could add (Marlowe 1976: 302): “MEPHISTOPHILIS. Now Faustus, what will we do now? For I can tell you, you’ll be curs’d with bell, book and candle. FAUSTUS. Bell, book and candle, candle, book and bell, Forward and backward to curse Faustus to hell.” In Shakespeare’s King John (Act III, Scene III) Philipp the Bastard reacts rather indifferently in the face of his imminent excommunication by the pope (Shakespeare 1900: 343): “Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back, When gold and silver becks me to come on.” 84 Synod of Cambrai (1277), c. 17. Pontal & Avril 1995: 106–107.


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Henri Bergson argued in his famous monograph on laughter that the ceremonial of the social life comprises “un comique latent”85, “latent humour”. This dictum applies particularly to highly-standardised performances like excommunication, of which the implementation is prescribed and controlled down to the parish level, as we have already seen. Therefore, it is rather unsurprising that its performance was from time to time foiled by comical intrusions or was periodically prone to satirical appropriations. The former is represented by a Parisian parish priest who, confronted with the charge to publish the papal excommunication against emperor Frederick II in 1245, intentionally ruined this performance by making jocular remarks – “more Francorum”, as the chronicler – and Englishman – Matthew Paris hastened to add.86 Apart from this, literary texts recorded satirical performances referring to the oral-gestural framing of excommunication: the anathema of Genius in Alan of Lille’s “De planctu naturae”,87 written in 1202, or the solemn excommunication against clothes thieves by a Goliard poet from the second half of the twelfth century – “Excommicatus sit in agro et tecto! nullus eum videat lumine directo! [...] nisi resipuerit corrigens peccamen, anathema fuerit! fiat, fiat. Amen”.88 A further example is the excommunications pronounced against unworthy beverages in Henri d’Andeli’s “Bataille des Vins” by an English priest who begins by taking his stole and finishes by casting a candle to the ground.89 By far the most extensive text of this genre is the Old French “Jongleur’s Excommunication” 85 Bergson 1924: 26: “Le côté cérémonieux de la vie sociale devra donc renfermer un comique latent.” See in this respect also Staubach 2005: esp. 231–232. 86 Matthaeus Parisiensis 1877: 406–407: “Ipso quoque Quadragesimali tempore ingrediente, fecit dominus Papa iterato excommunicare imperatorem per totam Franciam, propter quasdam novas invasiones, quas fecereat in suos consanguineos et personas ecclesiasticas. Et cum tale praeceptum per ordinarios suos ad quendam sacerdotem, civitatem Parisius inhabitantem, devenisset, doluit, quod oportuit eum ipsum imperatorem, quem, nescimus ob quas causas, dilexit, et curiam Romanam, quam aliquando expertus fuerat, execrabatur, excommunicare, ait in propatulo toti parochiae suae die sollempni populose; ‘Audite universi. Accepi in mandatis ut candelis accensis et pulsis campanis in imperatorem F[rethericum] excommunicationis feram sententiam sollempnem; causam autem ignorans, non ignoro gravem controversiam et odium inexorabile motum inter eos. Scio etiam, quod unus illorum alii injuriatur; quis cui, nescio. Sed illum, in quantum se mea extendit potentia, excommunico et excommunicatum denuntio, alterutrum istorum, videlicet ipsum, qui alii injuriatur, et absolvo injuriam patientiem, quae tam dampnosa est toti Christianitati.’ Quod licet verbum levitatis, et more Francorum jocose prolatum, ore multorum revolutum est, longe lateque ventilatum, tandem ad audientiam pervenit imperialem. Ipse, dicti pondus librans et commendans, xenia concupiscibilia dicto presbytero duxit transmittenda. Sed dominus Papa de scurrilitate et verbi levitate punivit redargutum.” For this episode see Mierau 2002: 62. 87 Alan of Lille 1964: esp. 520–522. For an interpretation of this poem see Häring 1978: 873– 879 and Baker 1976. 88 Wright 1968: 75–76. See also Lehmann 1963: 154. 89 Héron 1880: 29, ll. 179–182: “S’escommenia la cervoise, qui estoit fete dela Oise, en Flandres & en Engleterre, puis geta la chandeille a terre”.

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dating probably from the first half of the thirteenth century and recently rediscovered by the edition of Darren Burrows.90 Already at first glance it is clear that this poem imitates the contemporary performances of general excommunications just indicated, given that it consists of not less than 63 indicative first-person speech acts – “J’escommeni” in the original – respectively linked to a long list of transgressions, misdemeanours and illicit professions.91 Whereas only some verses refer to offences conventionally sanctioned by general excommunications – for example, “I excommunicate anybody who attacks a tonsured man”,92 this being the essence of the canon “Si quis suadente” of the second Lateran Council93 – others relate at least to actions deemed sinful by contemporary theologians, others again deal with random deeds or totally inappropriate cases stemming from the realm of vulgarity and obscenity.94 To cite just two examples from the translation of Burrows, featuring also curse formulas: “I excommunicate every merchant who fails to earn anything, any woman who abandons their child, and any jongleur who spills wine: may he be cursed, by Saint Amandus [...] I excommunicate any farmer who deceives his neighbour and takes over part of his land [...] I excommunicate any dirty whore as soon as she no longer practises her profession successfully”.95 In this respect, the “Jongleur’s Excommunication”, with its abrupt alternation between the morality of everyday life and obscenity, can be taken as a travesty of the sovereign sobriety claimed by ecclesiastical authority.96 Because of the preponderance of carnivalesque traits, Burrows situated the performance of this poem in the pre-Lenten carnival,97 but it is perhaps even more probable that it followed the temporal sequencing of the publication of the “official” general excommunications. In any case, this monologue by a jongleur exploiting the resources of voice, gesture and even costume,98 marks a performative usurpation of an authorised speech normally exercised by competent ecclesiastical agents. According to the speech-act 90 91 92 93

94 95

96 97 98

Burrows 2005. Ibid.: 29 and 35–43. Ibid.: 68, ll. 205 and 207: “J’escommeni en ceste ligne [...] Et qui home tondu chapigne.” C.17 q.4 c.29 (Friedberg 1879: vol. 1, 822–823): “Si quis suadente diabolo huius sacrilegii uicium incurrerit, quod in clericum uel monachum uiolentas manus iniecerit, anathematis uinculo subiaceat, et nullus episcoporum illum presumat absoluere, nisi mortis urgente periculo, donec apostolico conspectui presentetur, et eius mandatum suscipiat”. For further insights into this canon see Helmholz 1988. Burrows 2005: 4–5. Ibid.: 62, ll. 115–119: “J’escommeni lo marcheant, qui ne gaaigne pou o grant, feme qui giete son enfant, et lecheor qui vin espant: maudiz soit il, de saint Amand!”; ll. 222–224: “J’escommeni lou g[a]aignierre, qui vers son voisin est trechierre, et de sa terre est retaillierre”; ll. 249–250: “J’escommeni orde putain, des qu’ele tient lo cul en vain [...]”. Ibid.: 4. Ibid.: 8. Ibid.: 4.


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theory, one could say that this inversion or maybe even perversion of the power of the keys took place beyond the procedural requirements with regard to time, place, person and authority of the speaker, thereby creating the “infelicities” which invalidated the speech acts of the jongleur from the outset.99 But, from another angle, the imitation of an “official” ritual framing sought to evoke an atmosphere of seriousness which fits rather well to the – according to Burrows – “profound conservatism” inherent in the “Jongleur’s Excommunication”.100 Beyond its satirical character and ostentatious transgression of boundaries, this penalising monologue negotiates a rather rigid moral code and common social values, be it in the field of religion, profession, status, or gender.101 Given this fundamental paradox, the jongleur’s performance shows – quoting again Burrows – “a certain kinship with the very practice that it seeks to deride”.102 Or in other words and more concisely: by linking behavioural standards and role expectations of their social environments to the performative utterances borrowed from general excommunication, the jongleurs transformed the judicial sanction of the ecclesiastical agents into a moral sanction of everyday communitarian life. In this respect, its performance aimed not at invalidating, but, quite to the contrary, at corroborating the ecclesiastical ritual in different terms, in order to constitute the moral consensus of a “laughing community”.103

99 100 101 102 103

See in this respect Austin 1976: 13–24. Burrows 2005: 43. Ibid. Ibid. See for the term “laughing communities” (“Lachgemeinschaften”) Röcke & Velten 2005: esp. XV.

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References Abbreviations PGD = PL = PRG =

Andrieu, Michel (ed.) 1940. Le Pontifical Romain au Moyen-Âge. Vol. 3: Le Pontifical de Guillaume Durand. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Studi e Testi 88). Migne, Jacques P. (ed.) 1844–1864. Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina. 221 vols. Paris: Migne. Vogel, Cyrille & Reinhard Elze (eds.) 1963–1972. Le pontifical romanogermanique du dixième siècle. 3 vols. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Studi e Testi 226; 227; 269).

Alan of Lille 1964. “De planctu naturae”. In: Thomas Wright (ed.). The Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists. Vol. 2. Nendeln: Kraus: 428–522 (Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi Scriptores 59). (Reprint, London 1872). St. Antonin of Florence 1584. “Tractatus utilis et necessarius de excommunicatione”. In: Tractatus illustrium in utraque tum pontificii, tum caesarei iuris facultate iurisconsultorum, De censuris ecclesiasticis. [= Tractatus Universi Iuris]. Vol. 14. Venice. Augustinus 1958. Quaestionum in Heptateuchum libri VII., Locutionum in Heptateuchum libri VII, De octo quaestionibus ex Veteri Testamento. Edited by Johannes Fraipont. Turnhout: Brepols (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 33). Austin, John L. 19762. How to do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Edited by J.O. Urmson & Martina Sbisà. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Baker, Denise M. 1976. “The Priesthood of Genius: A Study of the Medieval Tradition”. Speculum 51/2: 277–291. Baldwin, John W. 1970. Masters, Princes and Merchants. The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle. Vol. 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Beaulande, Veronique 2006. Le Malheur d’être exclu? Excommunication, réconciliation et société à la fin du Moyen Âge. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne (Histoire ancienne et médiévale 84). Bergson, Henri 1924. Le rire. Essai sur la signification du comique. Paris: Éditions Alcan. (Cited after the electronic version by Bertrand Gibier: http://classiques. uqac.ca/classiques/bergson_henri/le_rire/Bergson_le_rire.pdf, 10.01.2009). Bitel, Lisa M. 2000. “Saints and Angry Neighbors: The Politics of Cursing in Irish Hagiography”. In: Barbara Rosenwein (ed.). Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 123–150. Bossy, John 2004. “Practices of Satisfaction, 1215–1700”. In: Kate Cooper & Jeremy Gregory (eds). Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation. Papers read at the 2002 Summer Meeting and the 2003 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Woodbridge: Boydell Press: 106–118.


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Bourdieu, Pierre 20016a. “Authorized Language. The Social Conditions for the Effectiveness of Ritual Discourse”. In: Pierre Bourdieu. Language and Symbolic Power. Edited by John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 108–116. Bourdieu, Pierre 20016b. “Rites of Institution”. In: Pierre Bourdieu. Language and Symbolic Power. Edited by John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 117–126. Burrows, Darren (ed. and trans.) 2005. Two Old French Satires on the Power of the Keys. L’Escommeniement au lecheor and Le Pardon de foutre. London: Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing (Legenda 18). Clairvaux (?). Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 2272. Compiègne, Saint-Corneille. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS latin 17304. Davies, Wendy 1998. “Anger and the Celtic Saint”. In: Barbara Rosenwein (ed.). Anger’s Past. The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press: 191–202. Dürig, Walter 1976. “Die Verwendung des sogenannten Fluchpsalms 108 (109) im Volksglauben und in der Liturgie”. Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift 27: 71–84. Durand, Guillaume 1975. Speculum iuris. Vol. 1. Aalen: Scientia. (Reprint, Basel 1574). Earwater, John Parsons 1878. An Account of the Extraordinary Ceremony of Cursing by Bell, Book, & Candle which Took Place in the Parish Church of Leigh, co: Lancaster, on Sunday, December 4th, 1474. Manchester: T. Sowler & Sons. Edwards, Genevieve Steele 1997. “Ritual Excommunication in Medieval France and England, 900–1200”. (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University). Eveillon, Jacques 16722. Traité des Excommunications, et Monitoire. Avec la manière de publier, executer, et fulminer toutes fortes de Monitoire, et Excommunications. Paris: E. Couterot. Fowler-Magerl, Linda 1994. Ordines iudiciarii and Libelli de ordine iudiciorum from the Middle of the Twelfth to the End of the Fifteenth Century. Turnhout: Brepols. Franz, Adolph 1902. Die Messe im deutschen Mittelalter. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Liturgie und des religiösen Volkslebens. Freiburg: Herder. Friedberg, Emil A. (ed.) 1879–18812. Corpus Iuris Canonici. 2 vols. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz. Geary, Patrick 1979. “L’humiliation des saints”. Annales E.S.C. 34/1: 27–42. — 1994. “Living with Conflicts in Stateless France: A Typology of Conflict Management Mechanisms, 1050–1200”. In: Patrick Geary. Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages. Ithaca et al.: Cornell University Press: 125–160. Häring, Nikolaus M. 1978. “Alan of Lille, De planctu naturae”. Studi medievali 19: 797–879. Hageneder, Othmar 1986. “Peccatum ariolandi est non obedire. Zur Aggravatio und Reaggravatio kirchlicher Strafen im Jahr 1401”. In: Kurt Ebert (ed.). Festschrift Nikolaus Grass zum 70. Geburtstag dargebracht von Fachkollegen und Freunden. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner: 221–243.

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Hardouin, Jean (ed.) 1714. Acta Conciliorum et Epistolae Decretales ac Constitutiones Summorum Pontificum. Vol. 9. Paris: Ex Typographia Regia. Hartmann, Wilfried (ed.) 1984. Konzilien der karolingischen Teilreiche. Hannover: Hahn (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Concilia 3). — (ed.) 2004a. Das Sendhandbuch des Regino von Prüm. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 42). — 2004b. “Die Capita incerta im Sendhandbuch Reginos von Prüm”. In: Oliver Münsch & Thomas Zotz (eds.). Scientia veritatis: Festschrift für Hubert Mordek zum 65. Geburtstag. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke: 207–226. Hausmann, Matthias 1868. Geschichte der päpstlichen Reservatfälle. Ein Beitrag zur Rechts- und Sittengeschichte. Regensburg et al.: Pustet. Heine, Johann F. 17083. Abusum Psalmi CIX Imprecatorii vulgo Das Tod–Beten. Helmstedt: Stanno Hammiano. Helmholz, Richard H. 1988. “‘Si quis suadente’ (C.17 q.4 c.29): Theory and Practice”. In: Peter Linehan (ed.). Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Medieval Canon Law. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: 425–438. — 1995. “Excommunication and the Angevin Leap Forward”. The Haskins Society Journal 7: 133–149. — 1996. “Canonical Sanctions. The Law of Excommunication”. In: Richard H. Helmholz. The Spirit of Classical Canon Law. Athens, London: University of Georgia Press: 366–393. — 2004. The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s. Oxford: Oxford University Press (The Oxford History of the Laws of England 1). Héron, Alexandre (ed.) 1880. Oeuvres de Henri D’Andeli, trouvère normand du XIIIe siècle. Rouen: Cagniard. Hinschius, Paul 1959. Das Kirchenrecht der Protestanten und Katholiken in Deutschland. Vol. 5: System des katholischen Kirchenrechts mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Deutschland. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlags-Anstalt. (Reprint, Berlin 1893). Hödl, Ludwig 1960. Die Geschichte der scholastischen Literatur und Theologie der Schlüsselgewalt. Münster: Aschendorff. Hoffmann, Hartmut & Rudolf Pokorny 1991. Das Dekret des Bischofs Burchards von Worms. Textstufen – Frühe Verbreitung – Vorlagen. Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Hilfsmittel 12). Hostiensis [Henricus de Segusio Cardinalis] 1574. Summa Aurea (…). Venice. Huizing, Peter 1955. “The Earliest Development of Excommunication Latae Sententiae”. Studia Gratiana 3: 279–320. Jaffé, Philipp (ed.) 1864. Monumenta Corbeiensia. Berlin: Weidmann (Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum 1). Kéry, Lotte 1999. Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140): A Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.


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Kober, Franz 1857. Der Kirchenbann nach den Grundsätzen des canonischen Rechts. Tübingen: Verlag der H. Laup’schen Buchhandlung. Kunze, Johannes. “Keys, Power of the”. http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc06/ htm/iii.lxv.htm (22.08.2008). Le Bras, Gabriel 1953. “L’Excommunication des Clercs par les Laiques”. In: Éventail de l’Histoire Vivante. Hommage à Lucien Febvre. Vol. 1. Paris: Colin: 227–232. Lecoy de la Marche, Albert 1877. Anecdotes Historiques, Légendes et Apologues tirés du recueil inédit d’Étienne de Bourbon, Dominicain du XIIIe siècle. Paris: Société de l’Histoire de France. Lefèvre d’Étaples, Jacques 1979. Quincuplex psalterium. Fac-similé de l’édition de 1513. Genève: Droz (Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 179). Lehmann, Paul 19632. Die Parodie im Mittelalter. Mit 24 ausgewählten parodistischen Texten. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. Liebermann, Felix (ed.) 1903. Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. Vol. 1. Halle: Max Niemeyer. Little, Lester K. 1993. Benedictine Maledictions. Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press. Luther, Martin 1897. “Vier tröstliche Psalmen an die Königin Maria von Ungarn (1526)”. In: Martin Luther. D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Vol. 19. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger: 542–614. Mansi, Giovanni D. (ed.) 1759–1827. Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio. 53 vols. Florence, Venice, Paris: Zatta. Marlowe, Christopher 1976. Complete Plays and Poems. Edited by Eric D. Pendry. London: Totowa. Martène, Edmond (ed.) 17362. De antiquis ecclesiae ritibus. Vol. 2. Antwerp: Joannis Baptistae de la Bry. Mierau, Heike J. 2002. “Exkommunikation und Macht der Öffentlichkeit: Gerüchte im Kampf zwischen Friedrich II. und der Kurie”. In: Karel Hruza (ed.). Propaganda, Kommunikation und Öffentlichkeit (11. bis 16. Jahrhundert). Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: 47–80. Matthaeus Parisiensis 1877. Chronica Majora. Edited by Henry Richards Luard. Vol. 4: A.D. 1240 to A.D. 1247. London et al.: Longman & Co. Pickering, Oliver S. 1981. “Notes on the Sentence of Cursing in Middle English; or, A Case for the Index of Middle English Prose”. Leeds Studies in English N.S. 12: 229–244. Pontal, Odette & Joseph Avril (eds.) 1995. Les statuts synodaux français du XIIIe siècle. Les statuts synodaux de l'ancienne province de Reims (Cambrai, Arras, Noyon, Soissons et Tournai). Vol. 4. Paris: Édition du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques (Collection de documents inédits sur l'histoire de France 23). Port, C. (ed.) 1874. Liber Guillelmi Maioris. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. Puza, Richard 1995. “Potestas ecclesiastica”. In: Robert-Henri Bautier (ed.). Lexikon des Mittelalters. Vol. 7. München: Lexma-Verlag: 133–134.

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Christoph Dartmann

The Usurper in the City Rituals of Power in Northern Italian City-States1 To ask about usurpation is to implicitly ask about the legitimacy of the exercise of power, for usurpation can mean nothing other than that someone has laid claim to a position to which others do not see him as entitled. In the arena of political action this can take place either because someone arrogates to himself an office to which he is not entitled because there are other, more legitimate contenders for the same position, or the usurper has obtained the office by legitimate means, but uses it in a manner that far oversteps his authority. In both cases he usurps for himself rights disputed by the other side. The only too-well-known differentiation proposed by Max Weber between the use of power and the exercise of legitimate rule locates the question of legitimacy on the side of the addressees of power. As a fundamental sign of rule Weber cites “a specific minimum of willingness to obey that [belongs] to any genuine relationship of rule.”2 According to recent findings in the cultural history of the political realm, rituals, at least in pre-modern Europe, significantly contributed to the creation of this belief in legitimacy, this trust that rulers are entitled to exercise power. One might restrict this further to state that the circle of those whose support rulers relied upon was rather limited, since it was primarily a matter of the interplay between the king and the princes of his realm. At least in this circle the exercise of rule depended quite directly upon the consensus of those

1 This paper is based on the results of my habilitation work Politische Interaktion in der italienischen Stadtkommune. 1050-1300, completed in April of 2009. It is meant, in an essayistic form, to propose for discussion thoughts that I would like to substantiate more thoroughly elsewhere. Because of this, the footnotes contain only the most essential references to documentary sources and secondary literature. References to my own research might also excuse the large number of citations of my own publications. 2 The use of this term is examined by Würtenberger 1982. On communal Italy, compare Meier 2004; compare also ibid.: 256–260 with the literature cited in note 58 and 73. The quotation Weber 1972: 122.

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affected by it; the recognition of the ruler’s legitimacy thus had to be demonstrated repeatedly, among other ways, by means of political rituals.3 When we now turn to the conditions for political power in urban Italy since the eleventh century, the question of the legitimisation or usurpation of rule seems at first glance easily answered. For since the twelfth century urban communes had been able to assert themselves as the dominant political actors. There, the citizens had joined together in a sworn corporation with the goal of achieving justice and peace for the city and its commune. When disturbers of the peace were to be neutralised, this took place with recourse to violence; but the recourse to violence was justified only by the authority of office conferred by the citizens themselves upon those who ruled: rule legitimised by delegation. As soon as a consul’s or other member of the state government’s term of office expired, he was required to step down into the ranks of the citizens who were all equal before the law.4 If this ideal defined legitimate rule, then any deviation from it meant a usurpation. Flagrant cases consisted predominantly of the various forms of personal rule by individuals, which can be observed with increasing frequency from the middle of the thirteenth century. In the cities of the twelfth century self-rule by means of a collective ruling organ of so-called consuls had become established. As this form of government became unable to act in the face of increasing inner tensions, the government replaced it with a podestà. This was someone from outside the city who was summoned there for the limited term of office of one year. Although in charge of the administration and the military matters of the commune, he nonetheless had to submit to meticulous standardisations and monitoring of his activities. The penalties he could count on for abuse of office ranged from monetary fines to execution; cases of the latter, however, are quite rarely documented. The advantages to the government of using someone from outside are obvious: since he was not interwoven into the tapestry of relationships among the citizens he ruled, he should be in a position to serve only the common good, unaffected by personal loyalties.5 But by the middle of the thirteenth century this model of government, too, was increasingly unable to control the centrifugal powers within urban society. It would now, in hindsight, almost seem that the hour of the usurpers had come. In connection with various key positions in the city, nobles, prelates and sometimes even so-

3 Fundamental on consensus: Schneidmüller 2000; among the extensive literature on rituals in pre-modern societies must be mentioned Stollberg-Rilinger 2004; 2008; Stollberg-Rilinger et al. 2008; for the Middle Ages, see Althoff 2003; summing up the Ottonian empire, see Keller & Althoff 2008; Ambos & al. 2006. 4 An outstanding introduction to the history of the city communes is Milani 2005. 5 The qualitative change connected with the changeover to a government by means of foreign podestà is emphasised for example by Keller 1992. On the dialectic between authorization and control, compare Dartmann 2004a.

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cial climbers were able to transfer to themselves extraordinary dictatorial powers, at first for a few years, then for life or even on a hereditary basis. If one were to pursue this image of history, then the further course of this paper would be foreordained: I would first have to describe the public rituals in which the distribution of political power in the commune was negotiated and, above all, through which the binding consensus of the citizens was given expression.6 Using this model, I could then subsequently show in which places the usurpers reshaped the rituals, modifying them in their own favour. The ambivalence convincingly proposed by the organizers of our meeting, that rituals were usurped, but also that the “usurpers” could just as well be usurped by rituals, can be readily demonstrated, for the holders of precarious ruling positions naturally made use of the usual forms of legitimising acts of staging. But in the remarks that follow, I would like to pursue a different path and examine the question of whether this allocation of legitimate and usurped rituals does justice to the relationships in communal Italy. In order to do so, I would like to ask not only about the acknowledgement by the ruled of those ruling, which was Max Weber’s theme, for Weber was concerned ultimately with differentiating various kinds of rule in terms of the ways in which they were legitimised, thus distinguishing between traditional, charismatic and bureaucratic. But the distribution of power in Italian cities in the High Middle Ages had to be legitimised not only to the citizens, but just as much to rival actors on the same level, for example other cities, nobles, or even church dignitaries. In addition, the Italian communes were part of the Italian kingdom, and within this structure a legitimate place similarly had to be allotted to them. When I subsequently ask about the acceptance of rituals of power in communal Italy, then this is not merely within the commune’s own specific realm of power, but beyond it as well. Every political ritual postulates legitimacy. As long as it proceeds without disruption, it generates the certainty that the actors recognise as binding the social roles they have assumed during the ritual. Elevated from the everyday by means of a special place or time, by means of elevated speech, festive clothing, etc., the ritual is capable of calling upon the society’s fundamental value orientations, which additionally legitimise the power relationships that are being staged. For precisely the question of who rules as king and what services his subjects are obliged to perform is not only a matter of social consensus, but just as much of God’s will. For this reason deficient legitimacy was probably scarcely to be seen in a political ritual. One exception might have been when the armed men of Emperor Henry V dominated the streets of Rome during his imperial coronation, and the inhabitants – who would usually be standing in the streets and cheering – had to remain in their

6 Dartmann 2004a; 2008; Meier 2001.

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houses.7 In the overwhelming majority of cases the participants knew enough to avoid the impression that rituals establishing and representing power relationships were only precarious in nature. For political rituals in communal Italy there is another problem concerning the question of the usurpation of rituals in the sources that have come down to us. The density of these sources is admittedly far greater than in many other milieus of the European Middle Ages. But only in the rarest cases do sources exist that make it possible to circumvent the semi-official view of the ritual. Besides the historical accounts, it is primarily notarial instruments that sometimes contain highly detailed descriptions of ritual proceedings. This is because these documents set down in writing not only the contents of contracts and further legal clauses, but also the circumstances in which the contracts were concluded.8 But if the notarial instrument was meant to set down in writing contracts that had come about properly, then it also, of course, had to attest to the fact of the contract’s being smoothly concluded, whether this was an internal peace treaty within the city itself or the delegation of governmental authority to a foreign prince. For this reason it is not possible to speak of anything other than the voluntary consensus of all participants; if, through their absence, someone evaded the compulsion to reach consensus exercised by the staging of the ritual, or even if dissenting voices were raised, the notarial instrument silenced every voice of dissent. This mechanism might be explained by one of the few examples for which two independent sources exist.9 In the late summer of 1310, Emperor Henry VII travelled over the Alps on the way to his coronation in Rome, also, or so he thought, in order to bring peace to his empire in northern Italy. Among other places, he ceremoniously entered the north-western Italian city of Asti, in which two hostile camps had been irreconcilably facing off for decades. When he entered as king and lord of the city, the Luxemburg native brought back to Asti citizens who had been unsuccessful in the partisan battles and had been living in exile, and sought to reach a peace settlement. To this end he had a citizens’ assembly summoned on 18 November, in which dictatorial authority was supposed to be transferred over to him. The notarial instrument reads as follows: A lawyer close to the king presented the properly called assembly with the powers to be transferred to Henry. Thereupon the honourable citizen Guillelmus de Vayo rose up, placed himself in an elevated spot, silenced the assembled crowd, and then in a voice loud enough that everyone could hear demanded the transfer of every power in the city without any condition or any restriction. The crowd cried as with one 7 On this see Dartmann 2007. 8 Petra Schulte made these facts concerning the question of the communicative and situational embeddedness of the notarial instrument fruitful: Schulte 2003; compare also Schulte 1998. 9 Sources and bibliography can be found in Dartmann 2004b: 363–366. Ultimately it was a question of comparing these two accounts: Ventura 1990: chapter 58, 224f.; Schwalm, 1906: Nr. 471 (Asti, 18 November 1310), 419f.


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voice: “So be it! So be it! We desire truly to transfer full power to the king just named, in the way suggested, and hereby do so! – Fiat, fiat, bene volumus concedere et concedimus bayliam et auctoritatem dicto domino regi, ut superius est expressum.” In this way all conceivable power in the city was transferred to the king. It is obvious that at least the phrasing of the supposedly spontaneous cry is a literary stylisation. It is too differentiated and too legally correct to have been cried out by a large crowd of persons as if in one voice without preparation. In addition the phrases dicto rege and ut superius est expressum make reference to the preceding text of the document and thus would scarcely be meaningful utterances as oral communication. But just how heavily the notary’s account might have stylised the actual course of events can only be gleaned by comparison with the chronicle of an Asti merchant, who, looking back, described Henry VII’s interventions in his city with great scepticism. He reports the following: the king was not satisfied with the powers that had been transferred to him with the oath of allegiance by the city of Asti. He thus had the citizens called together on 18 November in order to present for their approval his more extensive wishes. A cheese merchant cried out that Henry should be named lord of the city. The lawyer from Henry’s retinue, who had led the assembly, suggested that a vote be cast by sitting or standing, but rather than a formal decision, the assembly degenerated into uncoordinated shouting, the majority of which was directed against the cheese merchant’s suggestions. Despite this, the Asti commune’s approval was duly written down by the royal notaries, so that from this point on the city was dominated by Henry. It will not be possible, in retrospect, to clarify what really happened. What is significant is that the supposedly reliable, objective account, which records the notarial instrument in question just like countless other sheets of parchment existing in Italian archives, by no means had to reliably depict how political relationships were staged. In order to claim legitimacy, the documents had to give an account of the proper closing of the contract; as a result it can be presumed that the, at times, so suggestively retold ritual proceedings were stylised to a much larger degree than would seem at first glance. Since having a parallel source that narrates an alternative version of the story is such rare good fortune, it is all too seldom possible to see behind the façade of the stylised text. In asking about the usurpation of rituals in communal Italy, one therefore has to deal with a double veil that conceals the precarious ruling relationships. For one thing, both the directors and the participants of the ritual generally endeavoured to stylise a disputed or temporary distribution of power as a ruling relationship upheld just as much by God’s will as by the voluntary consensus of all, thus excluding any thought of usurpation. But secondly, the authors of the written accounts we have to fall back on made scrupulous efforts to conceal any disturbance of the ritual, especially in the case of the notarial instrument.

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But the second step requires that a much more fundamental question be posed for urban northern Italy, namely whether any non-precarious distribution of power can be presumed to have existed at all. Max Weber’s central idea was to defer the question of legitimacy in the exercise of power on to the addressees of the orders. Did they obey only out of utilitarian considerations or out of fear of sanctions? Or did they recognise the ruler’s legitimacy? Applied to the question of rituals, this would mean: did the participants and viewers of the ritual hold the order of things as staged in the ritual to be legitimate? Was this true as well of more distant circles of political actors who did not themselves participate in the ritual but were likewise affected by its results? And when the staged distribution of roles also continued to exist beyond the moment, did the rituals fulfil the function of ensuring expectations? These questions arise, for example, during Henry VII’s continued journey towards Milan.10 There, too, at the time two hostile camps were facing off, one under the leadership of Guido della Torre and the other under Matteo Visconti. Exiled from Milan in the wake of these conflicts, Matteo Visconti went to see the king in Asti and seemed thereupon to quickly become one of his most influential advisors. As Henry VII now set out in the direction of Milan, Guido della Torre apparently had a sense of foreboding. While many of his city’s nobles travelled far outside the city to greet the king, the signore of the city waited to appear, his actions clearly showing his displeasure at the king’s entry – the king’s followers thereupon threw Guido’s banner into the dirt of the streets. The entry into the city thus resembled a military occupation more than a ceremonial adventus by the ruler. Who in this case was the legitimate lord, who the usurper? As so often during the Italian campaigns of the High Middle Ages, especially those persons who had been unsuccessful in the local conflicts tended to gather around the king. Both could profit from this. The king staged himself as the protector of those exposed to arbitrary power; he ensured peace and justice in his realm. Those who had been inferior in local conflicts – in this case Matteo Visconti – found an ally in the king, whose power was not to be disrespected as long as he was personally present in the region with his contingents. On the other side were protagonists such as Guido della Torre who also, of course, likewise regarded their positions of power as legitimate and were not prepared to bow down to the demands of their enemies, who, from their point of view, were being arbitrarily supported in a partisan manner by the king. In hindsight it cannot be decided who – in Henry VII’s dramatic entrance into Milan – acted as usurper and who as legitimate lord. The perspectives of the actors were simply irreconcilable. At the moment of Henry’s entrance, Guido della Torre appeared to be the signore of Milan, but since he had to leave the city shortly

10 On the following events compare the literature listed in the footnotes by Dartmann 2006: 87– 91.


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thereafter, in retrospect he appears to be a usurper, whose precarious rule began to totter upon the joint appearance of Henry VII and Matteo Visconti. A similar ambivalence was represented in the situation a good thirty years earlier, when on 22 January 1277 the Archbishop of Milan, Otto Visconti, first stepped into his Episcopal city and paid a visit to the grave of Saint Ambrose, the patron of the city.11 For Otto had been appointed already in 1262, but up to this point was not able to enter the city. At the time of his appointment the followers of della Torre dominated the city and had named their own candidate for the office of Archbishop of Milan. But with Otto Visconti, Pope Urban IV had bet on installing in the seat of Saint Ambrose an antagonist to the signore of Milan. In a surprise attack on the night of 20 January 1277 the archbishop was now able to arrest his opponent Napoleone della Torre and two days later ceremoniously enter Milan. As it quickly turned out, the archbishop was not satisfied with only exercising his churchly office. Instead he used his dominating position and his opponents’ weaknesses to dominate the politics of the Lombard metropolis. Whether the clerics and laity who went out to greet Otto Visconti on 22 January 1277 expected this development cannot be ascertained. The descendants of this high ecclesiastic dignitary, in any case, saw a high-point of their own family history in the triumph over Napoleone della Torre and in the ceremonious adventus into Milan. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Matteo Visconti had this event represented in a fresco programme in the castle of Angera. There is no doubt that the Visconti, in retrospect, saw the archbishop’s entrance as a legitimate ritual of the establishment of rule. Among the Milanese eye-witnesses to the entrance, there must also have been numerous supporters of the new lord. In any case, towards the end of his rule in Milan, Napoleone della Torre seems to have visibly lost support. He himself did not have to watch his enemy’s adventus; he was in Como in a cage that was hung from a tower. Borrowing from a poem by Stephanardus von Vimercate, the archbishop ascribed his victory to God’s will, as he spoke before the city gates to the assembled Milanese: The people of Milan should be granted peace. For victory has not been brought about by violence but by the will of God. The rebels have already been punished by divine justice, so that we have no need of stricter measures. Most of all, the innocent must be forgiven, in order that no one be hurt.12 Seen from the Visconti’s perspective, the connection between the visible sign of the people’s approval and this recourse to the will of God evoked the legitimacy of the new power relations; it was not as usurper, but as legitimate lord that the archbishop entered “his” city. Whether the Milanese saw this the same way can, once again, not be decided.

11 The background is developed by Fossati & Ceresatto 1998. 12 Da Vimercate 1912: 87–90.

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Both episodes plainly show that – as far as the Italian cities in the transition from High to Late Middle Ages are concerned – the historical analysis can hardly differentiate between the legitimate exercise of rule and the usurpation of power. Like Asti and Milan, most of the other cities were also torn by inner conflicts, so that in addition to the party ruling in the city, there were always numerous groups of emigrants who did not recognise the legitimacy of the city government.13 This could even be manifested in the fact of a second government in exile. Every political ritual that staged the so-called “fuorusciti” or even the city’s regents, was seen as an expression of usurpation by the other side. The position of any foreign ruler who intervened in these battles was necessarily drawn into this play of alliances and enmities, for it was not possible for anyone to successfully take action without allies on site.14 Thus even on a level above the conflicted parties, there was no power that could have provided a political ritual with universal recognition. Did this look different before the rise of the signoria? Regarded from within the communes, it could seem as if the model of delegated power was quite broadly recognised during the twelfth century. The newly developed communal ritual emphasised above all the consensus and the equality of all citizens before the law. But this picture begins to show cracks when it includes the losers in the rise of the communes. For – in a mostly open institutional situation – the communes competed with numerous worldly and spiritual powers over the question of who could bring which position of power under his control.15 The relationship to these powers was marked by a constant interplay of momentary arrangements, running battles, victories and defeats, which never led to a stable distribution of power. Rituals of reconciliation or even the occasional submission were usually swiftly circumvented if someone saw a chance of improving his position. Within the city as well the exercise of power seldom remained uncontested. It is not always possible to reconstruct the background of inner conflicts; sometimes these were rivalries among the city’s elites, at other times social fractures seemed to have tipped over into violence. The communal governments, which demanded their citizens’ consensus in quite violent ways, could not lastingly repulse these conflicts, and quickly became a party themselves.16 The fact that, in the end, the communal self-organisation of city inhabitants outside of Italy did not enjoy unquestioning recognition is attested to by Otto of Freysing’s famous remarks, for

13 The practice of administering these enmities are analysed by Milani 2003. 14 This structural feature has made research into the Hohenstaufen actions fruitful. Görich 1995. 15 A fundamental work on the institutional fragmentation and the competition for power is Wickham 2003. 16 Particularly vivid reports exist for the internal conflicts in Genoa of the 1160s. On this compare Schweppenstette 2003: 38–43, 219–240.


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example, as well as the actions of the Hohenstaufen lords.17 The rule of the consuls in the name of the commune – grounded ceremoniously in the interplay between oaths of citizenship and oaths of office – thus by no means met with general recognition. This was just as true within the urban societies themselves as in regional dynamics and even on the level of the empire. When therefore consuls appeared in rituals as the bearers of legitimate rule, there would always have been someone who did not recognise these claims. But this is simply not as widely reflected in the sources as the efforts on the part of communal governments to make their actions appear as service to the common good.18 Neither the staging of a political ritual in the Italian cities since the High Middle Ages nor the sources that give an account of it tend to allow for a differentiation between power and its usurpation. Perhaps, in an environment in which no form of the exercise of power was unquestioningly recognised for very long, there was special effort devoted to preserving the appearance of legitimacy at all times. Whether this effort was successful or not is often impossible to know, and can thus hardly be decided in retrospect. At least, with Max Weber, when the question of legitimacy is conceived of as a question of the recognition by others of the exercise of power, this can scarcely be answered in a meaningful way in the case of communal Italy. If the focus is widened to include not only the perspective from within the city’s citizenship, a more facetted, multi-perspective picture results, in which – depending on one’s point of view – the same ritual appears either as the expression of legitimate rule or as an attempt at usurpation. I believe that this multi-perspective view should be made fruitful by seeing the political ritual as an instrument of power, just as much as a document, a legal proceeding, or even actual violence. By all of these means, actors on the political playing field made efforts to maintain their positions, or extend them at the cost of others. In this environment legitimacy appears only at isolated moments, either as the result of a momentary coincidence of interests, or as an internal consensus among a portion of the political actors. For it is possible to do justice to the Italian context only if this momentary legitimacy is taken into account and the resulting diversity and fragility of the recognition of power claims are systematically incorporated into the analysis.

17 On the description of communal Italy by Otto of Freysing, compare Keller 1979: 16–25; fundamental on the ruling practice of the Staufer is Haverkamp 1970–1971; Stürner 1993–2000. A seminal re-evaluation has been undertaken by Görich 2001; see also Görich & Keupp & Broekmann 2008. 18 This self-understanding appeared especially precarious when it was a question of the commune’s financial budget. Until far into the thirteenth century the bulk of it found its way into the pockets of the milites, who reinterpreted their annual campaigns of plunder against neighbouring cities and rulers as service to the commune. While their profits were privatised, all the citizens were responsible for the risks. Maire Vigueur 2003.

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References Althoff, Gerd 2003. Die Macht der Rituale. Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Ambos, Claus & al. (eds.) 2006. Die Welt der Rituale. Von der Antike bis heute. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Dartmann, Christoph 2004a. “Schrift im Ritual. Der Amtseid des Podestà auf den geschlossenen Statutencodex der italienischen Stadtkommune”. Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 31: 169–204. — 2004b. “Friedensschlüsse im kommunalen Italien: öffentliche Interaktion und schriftliche Fixierung”. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 38: 355–369. — 2006. “Adventus ohne Stadtherr – ‘Herrschereinzüge’ in den italienischen Stadtkommunen” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 86: 64–94. — 2007. “Urkunden in der symbolischen Kommunikation des Investiturstreits. Zur situativen Kontextualisierung hochmittelalterlicher Wertediskurse”. In: Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger & Thomas Weller (eds.). Wertekonflikte – Deutungskonflikte. Münster: Rhema: 51–68 (Symbolische Kommunikation und gesellschaftliche Wertesysteme 16). — 2008. “Medien in der städtischen Öffentlichkeit: innere Friedensschlüsse in den italienischen Kommunen des Mittelalters”. In: Bent Jörgensen & Raphael Matthias Krug & Christine Lüdke (eds.). Friedensschlüsse. Medien und Konfliktbewältigung vom 12. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Augsburg: Wißner: 23–53 (Documenta Augustana 18). — 2009. Politische Interaktion in der italienischen Stadtkommune. 1050–1300. Münster (typ. Habilitationsschrift, forthcoming). Da Vimercate, Stefanardo 1912. Fratris Stephanardi de Vicomercato Liber de gestis in civitate Mediolani. Edited by Giuseppe Calligaris. Città di Castello: S. Lapi (Rerum Italicarum Scriptores2 9,1). Fossati, Marco & Alessandro Ceresatto 1998. “La Lombardia alla ricerca d’uno stato”. In: Giancarlo Andenna et al. (eds.). Comuni e signorie nell’Italia settentrionale: la Lombardia. Turin: Utet: 483–572 (Storia d’Italia 6). Görich, Knut 1995. “Der Herrscher als parteiischer Richter. Barbarossa in der Lombardei”. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 29: 273–288. — 2001. Die Ehre Friedrich Barbarossas. Kommunikation, Konflikt und politisches Handeln im 12. Jahrhundert. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. — & Jan Keupp & Theo Broekmann (eds.) 2008. Herrschaftsräume, Herrschaftspraxis und Kommunikation zur Zeit Kaiser Friedrichs II. Munich: Utz (Münchner Beiträge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 2). Haverkamp, Alfred 1970–1971. Herrschaftsformen der Frühstaufer in Reichsitalien. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann (Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 1, 1–2).


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Keller, Hagen 1979. Adelsherrschaft und städtische Gesellschaft in Oberitalien, 9.–12. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom 52). — 1992. “Die Veränderung gesellschaftlichen Handelns und die Verschriftlichung der Administration in den italienischen Stadtkommunen”. In: Hagen Keller & Klaus Grubmüller & Nikolaus Staubach (eds.). Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter. Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungsstufen. Munich: Wilhelm Fink: 21–36 (Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 65). — & Gerd Althoff 2008. Die Zeit der späten Karolinger und der Ottonen. Krisen und Konsolidierungen 888–1024. Stuttgart: Klett Cotta: 348–372 (Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte3. Maire Vigueur, Jean-Claude 2003. Cavaliers et citoyens. Guerre, conflits et société dans l’Italie communale, XIIe-XIIIe siècles. Paris: Les Éditions de l’EHESS (Civilisations et Sociétés 114). Meier, Ulrich 2001. “‘Nichts wollen sie tun ohne die Zustimmung ihrer Bürger’. Symbolische und technische Formen politischer Verfahren im spätmittelalterlichen Florenz”. In: Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (ed.). Vormoderne politische Verfahren. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot: 175–206 (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung Beiheft 25). — 2004. “Die Sicht- und Hörbarkeit der Macht. Der Florentiner Palazzo Vecchio im Spätmittelalter”. In: Susanne Rau & Gerd Schwerhoff (eds.). Zwischen Gotteshaus und Taverne. Öffentliche Räume in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau: 229–271 (Norm und Struktur 21). Milani, Giuliano 2003. L’esclusione dal comune. Conflitti e bandi politici a Bologna e in altre città italiane tra XII e XIV secolo. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo (Nuovi studi storici 63). — 2005. I comuni italiani. Secoli XII-XIV. Rome, Bari: Laterza (Quadrante Laterza 126). Schneidmüller, Bernd 2000. “Konsensuale Herrschaft. Ein Essay über Formen und Konzepte politischer Ordnung im Mittelalter”. In: Paul-Joachim Heinig et.al. (eds.). Reich, Regionen und Europa in Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Festschrift für Peter Moraw. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot: 53–87 (Historische Forschungen 67). Schulte, Petra 1998. “‘Omnis homo sciat et audiat’. Die Kontrolle kommunalen Handelns in Como im späten 12. und 13. Jahrhundert”. Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge 110: 501–547. — 2003. Scripturae publicae creditur. Das Vertrauen in Notariatsurkunden im kommunalen Italien des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: Niemeyer (Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom 101). Schwalm, Jakob (ed.) 1906. Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum. Vol. 4,1. Hannover & Leipzig: Hahn (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Leges 4,4,1). Schweppenstette, Frank 2003. Die Politik der Erinnerung. Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung Genuas im 12. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a.M. et. al: Peter Lang (Gesellschaft, Kultur und Schrift – Mediävistische Beiträge 12).

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Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara 2004. “Symbolische Kommunikation in der Vormoderne. Begriffe – Forschungsperspektiven – Thesen“. Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 31: 489–527. — 2008. Des Kaisers alte Kleider. Verfassungsgeschichte und Symbolsprache des Alten Reichs. Munich: C.H. Beck. — et al. (eds.) 2008. Spektakel der Macht. Rituale im alten Europa 800–1800. Exhibition catalogue. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Stürner, Wolfgang 1993–2000. Friedrich II. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Ventura, Guglielmo 1990. “Memoriale de gestis civium astensium et plurium aliorum”. In: Natale Ferro et al. (eds.). Gli antichi cronisti astesi Ogerio Alfieri, Guglielmo Ventura e Secondino Ventura. Secondo il testo dei Monumenta Historiae Patriae volume V, Scriptores tomo III, Torino 1848. Alessandria: Dell’Orso: 187–244 (Ricerche di storia locale 1). (Reprint). Weber, Max 19725. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Edited by Johannes Winckelmann. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Wickham, Chris 2003. Courts and Conflict in Twelfth-Century Tuscany. Oxford: OUP. Würtenberger, Thomas 1982. “Legitimität, Legalität”. In: Otto Brunner & Werner Conze & Reinhart Koselleck (eds.). Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Vol. 3. Stuttgart: Klett Cotta: 677–740.

Marian Füssel

Rituals in Crisis? The Dynamics of German Academic Ritual in the Age of Enlightenment1 Rituals were a constitutive part of medieval and early modern academic culture.2 They regulated the admission of the future students into the privileged association of the academic corporation, as well as graduation with a master’s or doctoral degree in a solemn ceremony.3 The reproduction of erudite knowledge took place in the ritualised interaction of the disputation, and the external representation of the university occurred in the pompous inauguration rites for the rector.4 When we speak of academic ritual here, this refers to rituals of appointment, or “rituals of institution” (“rites de institution”), as Pierre Bourdieu called them.5 This means rituals that create a change of status through an act of “social magic”, and, in doing this, distinguish their participants from all actors who are not involved, and cannot be involved, in the ritual. In the course of the century of the Age of Enlightenment, not only the institution of the university as such gradually came under attack as an obsolete place of learning, but the mannerof symbolic communication practised within the institution in particular.6 New ideals of knowledge united with new forms of social habitus, and led to a kind of “68 [revolt] avant la lettre”.7 The changing attitudes towards academic ritual offer revealing insights into the changes in the understanding of learning and knowledge. If ritual and knowledge could not be permanently separated, they could, nevertheless, henceforth be regarded as distinct, perhaps even 1 A German version of this paper was published 2009 as “Rituale in der Krise? Zum Wandel akademischer Ritualkultur im Zeitalter der Aufklärung”. 2 For short overviews see Füssel 2006a; 2008a. 3 Füssel 2007a. 4 Ibid. 2008b. 5 Bourdieu 1990. 6 Cf. Füssel 2006b. 7 This is obviously only to be understand as a structural homology. In the strict historical sense such a comparison might lead to severe distortions; see for example my critical review of Kuhn and Schweigard [2005]: Füssel 2007b.

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contradictory, spheres. In the following I will highlight the crisis of ritual in the Age of Enlightenment with the example of three academic rites of institution: the deposition of the future students (1), the doctoral graduation (2), and the institution of the rector (3); in conclusion, I will make some more general observations on the changes in academic ritual culture since the eighteenth century.

1. The Deposition: Becoming a Student From the late Middle Ages onward, after the freshmen had signed the university register and paid the fee for matriculation, they were made into “real” students by a process known as “beanism” (from a word “beanus”, derived from the French béjaune “yellow beak”, referring to freshmen in the sense of “greenhorn”); later, this process was called “deposition”.8 If we look at the development of the deposition ritual over the centuries, we see that it followed a cyclical process from the fee to the ritual and back to the fee. The obscure origins of the custom seem to have started with a certain sum of money, the so called “beanium”, which the prospective students had to pay to the “bursae” in which they lived, these being a sort of early modern college that bore certain similarities to a cloister. Soon, this “entrance fee” was accompanied by all kinds of harassments, badinages, and humiliations by the older students, comparable to the rites of “hazing” at modern American universities and high schools.9 Up to the sixteenth century, deposition at the university was practised inside the bursae. After the decline of the bursae in most of Germany’s university towns, the universities themselves took over the task and employed their own Depositors, who practised the ritual with the students. These initiation rites existed in numerous regional versions and bore strong structural homologies with comparable acts in the cloister, or associated with ordination to the priesthood, or with entering the guilds of the crafts and trades in the cities. Their most important element was the cutting off of artificial horns which were attached to the young students’ heads, the so-called “depositio cornuum”. Even today, the German idiomatic expression “sich die Hörner abstoßen” (literally: “to batter one’s horns off”, meaning “to sow one’s wild oats”) reminds us of this custom.10 The cutting of the horns was accompanied by many humiliations and symbolic examinations, which could range from the manifestly physical violence of flogging to mauling with oversized tools, such as scoops, forceps, combs, and the like. The social sense of the deposition ritual can be looked for on various levels. While, from the perspective of the student community, it secured cohesion and 8 See Füssel 2005; the most important older work is Fabricius 1895. 9 Nuwer 2000. 10 Nail 2003.

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affiliation to a new status group, from the point of view of the universities or the bursae, respectively, it served to render their corporate norms and regulations binding. The future student thus entered a specially privileged area of jurisdiction which offered him the proverbial “academic freedom”. A binding oath of allegiance to the code of conduct formulated in the statutes was the least of the measures imposed by the corporation to prevent deviant behaviour. The ritual of deposition had its heyday during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When, in the course of the eighteenth century, the ritual was gradually discredited within the Holy Roman Empire, the procedure was reduced to paying a fee and receiving a kind of moralising counselling from the dean of the Faculty of Arts. At the University of Halle, which was founded in 1694 and was the leading institution of early German enlightenment, the Deposition was explicitly not introduced, owing to its “inappropriate and absurd” gestures.11 Instead, the dean of the Philosophical Faculty carried out a kind of examination of the candidates during their enrollment, which admonished them to lead a pious and modest way of life. “The rite having been with reason recently abolished”, as it is stated in a rescript to the University of Helmstedt March 1739, it was to “be fully suppressed and abolished” at the retirement of the Depositor and beadle. Instead of the ritual, from this time on an “interview” with the dean of the Faculty of Arts was to take place.12 At most German universities, the deposition was abolished or transformed into an examination of that kind during the first half of the eighteenth century: at Königsberg in 1717, at Rostock in 1717, at Cologne in 1722, at Wittenberg in 1733, and at Ingolstadt in 1747.13 How the deposition was practised during the mid-eighteenth century is depicted in the autobiography of Johann Christian Müller, who studied in Jena around 1740: “Deposition now has little but the name to it. After I had paid him a certain sum, I was shown the old clothes that a young freshman used to have to wear before him, [and] various instruments, such as a large wooden axe, with which they were struck, a great scoop used to clean their ears, a large paternoster on which were hung balls of shot the size of a fist, and below a donkey’s head, which they had to carry through the town in procession, the plane, the great tooth of the Bacchante, the forceps used to pull it out, all made of wood and of monstrous size; other figured symbols, each with its own significance, were simply shown to me, and in the course of this I received a printed sheet, whereon everything was described, and for which I had to put down a sum. Following this, my friend aforementioned brought me to the Prorector [...] Here my obligations were explained to me, I had to 11 Füssel 2005: 634. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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Marian Füssel swear my oath, and was given the laws and statutes, along with a testimonial to the effect that I had now been accepted as one of those academic citizens [....].”14

In Jena, however, deposition was not finally abolished until the year 1785. The reasons for the gradual disappearance of deposition during the eighteenth century are manifold. On the on hand, its crude symbolism was no longer suited to the lifestyle of the student, now orientated towards the “gallant” lifestyle of the courtier, and, in the later eighteenth century, that of the bourgeois; on the other hand, the ritual was an all too explicit reminder of the culture of the craftsmen, which was exactly what the student wished to distance himself from, a cultural ambivalence that was also reflected in contemporary perceptions of the ritual. Georg Andreas Will, for example, wrote in his history of the University of Altdorf at the end of the eighteenth century: “The ceremony of deposition, formerly so popular and much praised in song, is nowadays considered a mere pedantry and a ridiculous custom, which may well be continued by trades and crafts, but is absolutely unsuitable for free and liberal academics”.15 Henceforth, at many universities only the name “deposition” remained, while the custom of physical humiliation was permanently transformed into an early form of tuition fee. Humiliating initiation rites shifted, from the late eighteenth century onward and then markedly during the nineteenth century, to the semi-private space of student fraternities, for example, in the form of the so-called “Fuchsentaufen” (“freshman baptism”). Enrolment now became a mere administrative act, which today does not even necessarily demand the physical presence of the person to be enrolled.

2. An Accolade of the Learned: the Doctorate The completion of studies took place in forms no less ritualised, assuming that the student had decided to take an academic degree at all, which was not the rule in the late medieval and early modern university system. How different the structures of the early modern system of graduation were becomes evident when, for example, the University of Marburg in 1653 only allowed students to write their own theses in exceptional cases. For reasons of quality maintenance, this right was reserved for the professors alone, who found this an inexpensive opportunity to publish smaller pieces of work, since the costs for printing the theses were borne by the students 14 Müller 2007: 57–58. 15 Will 1975: 139.

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applying for the degree.16 After the successful accreditation of the candidate – which involved, in the ideal case, intellectual work approved by examiners, but in any case good moral conduct and a well-filled purse – the solemn ritual of institution could finally be performed, a ritual which had been carried out since the Middle Ages in the university church or main town church, later also in festive rooms, such as the main auditorium of the university. The key moment of the ritual of institution was, apart from the holy doctoral oath which the candidate had to take in accordance with his religious denomination, the solemn investiture with the symbols of the doctorate, the handing over of the doctoral hat and the doctoral ring, the presentation of a closed and an open book, the ascent to the lectern, and finally a kiss. If the conferment of the ring was interpreted by some scholars as a “marriage” to scholarship, yet some “double weddings” were actually held, in which the candidates celebrated their real wedding to a woman right after graduation.17 One could hardly have made the change in status from the compulsory celibacy of student life to the graduated academic subject more obvious. Contemporary observers were already quite conscious of the performative power of transformation inherent in the doctoral graduation ritual. In the dialogue “De vera sapienta”, attributed to Francesco Petrarca, this is articulated with great clarity in the following ironical description: “A foolish youngster marches into the temple to receive the insignia of the doctoral degree. His teachers praise him with blind love. He is bloated with pride. The huge crowd is astonished. His friends and kinsmen applaud him. In taking his seat on the high chair of learning, he believes he can survey all, and he mumbles something incomprehensible. Now everyone elevates him to the heavens as a divine orator. The bells and trumpets sound, rings fly, they embrace him and place the round doctor’s hat on his head. When all this is done, he descends from the lectern a wise man, who ascended to it a fool – a greater metamorphosis than ever Ovid knew of.”18 Women and Jews, however, were generally excluded from the magic consecrations of the doctorate. Exceptions were made only in medicine. Thus, the grant of a doctorate to Jakob Israel at the University of Freiburg in the year 1650 is considered the first doctoral promotion of a Jew in Germany, while Dorothea Christiane Erxleben was the first woman to receive a doctoral degree in medicine in Halle in the year 1754.19 The effects of social exclusion inherent in the doctoral ritual become evident when one brings to mind that both groups – women as well as Jews – had no right to swear an oath in early modern society, so that special rules had to be applied, for example, replacing the regular oath by the so called “Jewish oath” 16 17 18 19

Rasche 2007a: 190. For references see Füssel 2006b: 165. Quoted after Füssel 2006b: 357–358. On Israel see Komorowski 1991: 7–8, 33; on Erxleben cf. Fischer-Defoy 1911 and Knabe 1952.

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(Judeneid).20 To what degree the initiation into the hierarchical, corporate world of scholarship could be connected with initiation into manhood is shown by the example of the Spanish University of Salamanca, where every doctoral graduate first had to kill a bull in the Corrida, the “paseo doctoral”, and to write his name on a wall with the bull’s blood, before he received full recognition of his new title.21 The really expensive part of the whole ritual of doctoral promotion, apart from the several fees to be paid, to everyone from the beadle to the examiner, was, above all, the so-called “prandium doctorale” (“Doktorschmaus”), a collective dinner provided by the candidate for the professors in a public inn or the house of a professor.22 The main effect of this event was, on the one hand, symbolic acceptance into the academic community (of table), or its representation, respectively, and, on the other, the tribute to the inner corporate system of economic empowerment of the university. This marks a striking parallel to other corporate rites of institution within early modern society, such as the election of a city council, and became especially apparent in the course of the eighteenth century, when ever fewer candidates appeared for graduation, and the authorities advocated the rationalisation of ceremonial expenditure typical of the Age of Enlightenment, but left the fee system in place. As had been the case with deposition, the actual ritual performance was reduced more and more, until sometimes little more than a document remained, the acquisition of which did not even necessarily require the physical presence of the candidate, a phenomenon then labelled “promotion in absentia”, which flourished especially in the nineteenth century.23 But the professors were not prepared to surrender their income.24 The costs, sometimes enormous, but which could vary considerably from university to university – many an inexpensive university, such as Harderwijk in the Netherlands, became known as a regular “doctoral factory” – had always been one of the main motivating factors in the vehement criticism levelled against academic ritual, especially that of graduation. The precedence of economic over intellectual power virtually became a topos in the discourse of university satire.25 Probably the most famous example of criticism of academic ostentation is the espousal, on the part of one of the leading figures of the German reformation, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, of the abolition of the degree of Doctor of Theology at Wittenberg in the year 1523.26 Karlstadt himself later renounced his own 20 On the problem of taking the oath for Jews and different ceremonial discriminations of Jews during graduation see Richarz 1974: 42f., for women see Füssel 2006b: 151f. 21 Frijhoff 1996: 287. 22 See Erler 1905 and Trauth 1991. 23 Rasche 2007b. 24 Ibid. 2006. 25 Füssel 2008c: 209–212. 26 Stollberg-Rilinger 2003.

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doctoral degree, temporarily exchanged his scholarly gown with the dress of a peasant, and retreated to the small town of Orlamünde. But in 1533 already the doctorate of theology was reintroduced at Wittenberg, and Karlstadt himself became a professor again in Basel in 1534, and afterwards served several times as dean of the Theological Faculty there, finally becoming Rector of the University. Despite having had little practical effect, the Karlstadt episode was cited repeatedly in the professional literature of early modern academia, thus becoming part of the cultural memory of Homo academicus germanicus.27 Although the conspicuous consumption displayed during the graduation ceremonies was considered a burden in many places at an early stage, its limitation was only very grauḍal in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, until the anti-ritualism of late enlightenment contributed to an overall reduction in ostentation. At most universities, the solemnities accompanying graduation were finally limited in a long and discontinuous process. At the University of Göttingen, inaugurated in 1737, Germany’s leading university of the Enlightenment, the governmental authorities attempted to curtail the ritual of promotion as early as 1745.28 The primary aim was to reduce the costs for the candidates; the learned councillors proposed shifting government expenditure for the University of Helmstedt to Göttingen, and to limit the ritual to two fixed dates annually. The University refused, giving several reasons: a reduction of incomes would depreciate the university in comparison to others; the candidates would not wait for the fixed dates; and performing the ritual several times a year would not cause difficulties. A few years later, in 1751, a new offensive was started, now directly aimed at the students’ feasts, which had taken on a dimension that had persuaded some candidates to take their degrees at another university – and this was what had to be avoided at all costs. So the King of Great Britain and Prince Elector of Hanover commanded accordingly that “each and every festive dinner and supper, having been hitherto common with disputations or promotions […] their names be whatever they want, must from now on cease (with the single exception of the solemn prandium doctorale, introduced on the day of inauguration auctoritate publica, for which the expenses shall be borne by Us).”29 In fact, not unusually for early modern directives, scarcely any of the academics addressed above actually obeyed the prohibition, and the academic community continued to banquet at great expense. Not until 1778 was a radical reform put in hand, now by the professors themselves. Johann David Michaelis, as the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, took the initiative in changing the oath and also in reducing the scope of the “dispensible ceremonies with their somewhat Old Franco27 Cf. Füssel 2006b: 359–363. 28 Cf. for the following Tütken 2005: 175–184. 29 Ibid.: 178.

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nian character”. Under the existing rules, even “Socrates would not have been able to swear, nor Moses Mendelsohn, when Jews take a master’s degree, as well as a doctoral degree in Medicine”.30 Michaelis received support from the classicist Christian Gottlob Heyne, among others, who was a powerful figure at the university, who remarked that the symbols “had long been a mockery”.31 These reforms, too, progressed slowly, but two decades later, in 1802, a professor at Göttingen, Christoph Meiners, was able to take preliminary stock of the general process of academic de-ritualisation, in his work on the constitution and administration of German universities, which certainly also applied to Göttingen: “All faculties have favoured the idea to radically simplify the ceremonies of promotion and to omit most of the solemnities of the past. In no faculty are the Doctors phil. ostentatiously brought hither and taken back again. In no faculty, with perhaps the exception of the Theological, do the candidates wear or receive, during or after the graduation ceremony, the doctor’s gown, much less the doctor’s hat, two pieces of clothing which used to be of different cut and colour in every faculty. The golden ring, during the Middle Ages the sign of ennoblement through the doctoral degree, has long since been dispensed with. Finally, the doctoral candidates are shown neither an open nor a closed book, which formerly indicated that the newly created doctor should, despite his new honour, continue to read books, and furthermore, that he not only needed to read, but also to think. The only remains of the old customs is a cold embrace, upon occasion, when the promotor asks the candidate to ascend to the higher lectern, proclaims him a doctor, and hands him the diploma. The fear of ridicule has delivered most of the old customs at almost all the Universities to oblivion.”32 But it would be all too rash to trace the process of rationalisation of the doctoral ceremonies back to the anti-ritualism of an enlightened and absolutistic state apparatus and its disciples alone. Whereas some thirty to forty promotions to Magister had taken place annually during the seventeenth century, for example, at Jena, owing to the status of the Philosphical Faculty as a scholarly preparatory course, in the early eighteenth century only some fifteen to twenty a year took place, and at the end of the century there were only three promotions annually, owing to a massive decline in enrolment.33 The more philosophy became an academic subject in its own right, the more the demand for the master’s degree decreased. “The title of a master is almost out of fashion”, as Johann David Michaelis could record in his “Reasoning” on the history of universities in 1776.34 As a result of this development, the number of candidates who convened to finance the costly ceremony de30 31 32 33 34

Ibid.: 179. Ibid. Meiners 1970: 357–358. Cf. Rasche 2006: 88. Michaelis 1973: 110.

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creased to the point where there were simply not enough of them. Even when a sufficient number of candidates assembled to perform the ritual, the solemn renunciation of the doctor had to be, often enough, carried out in absentia.35 Of the thirty-four candidates of the last master’s graduation at the University church in Jena in 1770, few indeed were actually present at the ceremony. Against this background, the frequent attempts of many universities to limit the solemn ceremonies take on a different hue. This development, which seems, at first sight, to fit so well with our image of late enlightenment tendencies towards rationalisation, was not just submitted to the institution of the university from some external instance; rather, the phenomenon of “Enlightenment as an inherent necessity” appears to be a spatially and temporally differentiated process of interlocking internal developments in science and the range of values of contemporary society. Enlightened anti-ritualism provided a cultural semantics that made it possible, in a way, to give the practical development of the graduation ceremony a moral foundation, and to supply it with additional sense, in a way making a virtue out of necessity.

3. Representing the Academic Corporation: The Changing of the Rectorate The central academic ritual in which the whole corporation was represented was the solemn handing over of the rectorate, regularly performed at the end of each semester. Exceptions to this rule were found only at Catholic universities, where the office of rector was allotted for a lifetime.36 After the future rector had been elected by the university council or senate, he was publicly introduced into his office by ritually investing him with the signs of his new dignity, such as the sceptre, the rector’s cloak, the keys, and the statutes. As a rule, the outgoing rector handed over the insignia to his successor and introduced him to the audience; the new rector responded with a short speech, formally opening the new semester. From the eighteenth century onward, these speeches were frequently printed, and since then have formed a separate academic literary genre, the “rector’s speech” (Rektoratsrede).37 From this time on at the latest, too, the changing of the rectorate formed an occasion on which the students could publicly express their sympathy with, or resentment against, the rector in charge.38 They celebrated the rector in torchlight processions, which sometimes could degenerate into vociferous demonstrations.39 To the Göttingen Professor Christoph Meiners, this was also a good reason for the 35 36 37 38 39

Cf. the detailed account of Rasche 2007b. Cf. Füssel 2008b. See the references in Erman & Horn 1904: 187–190. Cf. Voigt 2003: 34–36. Cf. Dücker 2006.

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gradual abolition of the ritual. He wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century: “In more recent times,, the solemn renunciations and investitures of rectors and vice-rectors at some universities, and even at our Georgia Augusta have been abrogated. The opinion was that the dignified solemnities of earlier centuries cause people to laugh now, and that especially the solemn handing over of the rectorate or prorectorate disposes the academic youth to express joy or discontent in such a way as to easily disturb the public peace”.40 The important thing here is that formerly “dignified” celebrations had become literally “ludicrous”. The enlightened “Zeitgeist” had now evidently also reached the academic field. In many places the ceremonial expenditure was now drastically reduced or the solemnities were abolished altogether.41 But the reduction of the changing of the rectorate to a mere unceremonious administrative act remained only an episode. In the nineteenth century, although not until the twentieth century in some places, the old rituals were reintroduced in the most elaborate manner.42 At Tübingen, for example, from 1921 the investiture of the rector was inaugurated anew with great pomp and circumstance, while it had been a purely administrative act without any ceremony at all during the Second German Empire.43 In view of the student attitude of protest mentioned above, it is not surprising that the famous slogan of the 1968 German student movement “Under the gowns the fustiness of a thousand years” (“Unter den Talaren der Muff von tausend Jahren”) has its origin in events connected to the celebration of the changing of the rectorate at Hamburg University on 9 November 1967.44 The slogan undoubtedly pointed towards the unreflected past of the universities during the National Socialist period. Most of the anti-ritualist actions of the student protest movement were triggered during such celebrations of the changing of the rectorate, consequently leading to the widespread abolition of these public performances in the Federal Republic of Germany, as a short chronicle of the events may show.45 During the changing of the rectorate at Bonn University on 30 October 1967, the students left the auditorium in silent protest; on 9 November of the same year the actions at Hamburg, which gave rise to the slogan mentioned above, took place; on 24 November 1967 at Berlin Polytechnical University, the changing of the rectorate was massively interrupted by loud chanting, rhythmic clapping, and flyers being thrown into the audience; on 12 January 1968, the rector of Berlin’s Free University announced that the changing of the rectorate would not take place that year; between 2 and 8 April 1968 the AStA (Students’ Union Executive Commit40 41 42 43 44 45

Meiners 1973: 147. Cf. Blessing 1994 and Füssel 2008b: 135–141. Cf. Boehm 1996: 690–691. Paletschek 2001: 197. Cf. Kraushaar 1999. Cf. exemplarily Franz & Siggemann 1998.

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tee) of Freiburg University demanded, in talks with the rector, a new form of rectoral ceremony without professorial gowns, and on 17 April 1968, the changing of the rectorate, already scheduled, was cancelled at short notice.46 In the same year, more actions followed, among other places at Göttingen, Tübingen, Cologne, and Saarbrücken, at all of which the traditional celebration of the changing of the rectorate was cancelled. At the universities within the territory of the (now former) German Democratic Republic, no comparable 1968 student revolt took place, and the rituals continued to be carried out, and enjoyed a new boom, even after the fall of the Wall. Perhaps inspired by its eastern neighbours, but certainly by American models of corporate self-fashioning, West Germany, too, has seen a revival of academic ritual in recent times. A few examples may suffice. Since the year 2005, Bonn University annually celebrates a pompous graduation ceremony with about 700 candidates in cap and gown.47 According to a statement by Bonn University’s press officer, this is intended to enhance the development of an academic “culture of recognition”, following the example of the United States. For Bonn’s rector, Matthias Winiger, these celebrations are “part of a new university culture of partnership and community extending beyond the years of study”, and prorector, and organiser of the event, Max P. Bauer, added that “External symbols, too, are a part of culture […] we have, therefore, decided to dress the graduates in cap and gown during the conferment of the degree”.48 At Ilmenau Technical University in Thuringia, the re-introduction of gowns was discussed in 2005. Rector Peter Schaff commented that “The autonomy of universities, the freedom of research and education, also are expressed for me in symbols that help to define identity, such as wearing the gown during the highlights of academic life”.49 At East German universities, like Rostock or Halle, the changing of the rectorate at the beginning of each semester is performed with sceptres and gowns, and on the occasion of public holidays, such as Reformation Day, the academic senate likes to appear to the public wearing gowns. Just how widespread Americanised graduation ceremonies already are at non-state institutions of higher learning in Germany can be demonstrated by a short look at the website of a gown-rental business situated in Bremen. At www.talaris.de, picture galleries and customer reviews testify to the return of the academic gown. While the re-ritualisation of academic graduation is due to a usurpation of ritual, in other words, a kind of cultural transfer, the re-establishment of ritual symbolic forms in the faculties is constantly confronted with the question of dealing with the faculties’ own traditions.

46 Cf. Becker & Schröder 2000: 156, 158, 160, 167, 182, 186, 188, 189, 191, 202, 207, 211, 212, 214, 271. 47 Cf. Üing 2005. 48 http://www.uni-protokolle.de/nachrichten/id/95127/ [last accessed 30/03/2009]. 49 Wegner 2005.

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4. Conclusion: On the Changes in Academic Ritual Culture Even when examined more closely, the reasons for the changes in academic ritual can hardly be founded upon a single explanation. Practical constraints, governmental measures towards control and rationalisation, and a general enlightened anti-ritualism combined into a complex dynamic of development, which resulted not so much in a total abolition of ritual, as in a change in their meaning and function. Work by Mary Douglas and Hans-Georg Soeffner, among others, has shown that even anti-ritualist movements tend to establish new, alternative forms of ritualisation.50 In addition, anti-ritualist impulses were, time and again, followed by tendencies towards re-ritualisation, what could be described as a kind of wave movement, rather than a straight trajectory of rationalisation. This raises the question of the qualitative specifics of enlightened ant-ritualism.- A closer look at the crisis of academic ritual culture in the eighteenth century can provide insight in at least two ways. On the one hand, it exemplifies the persistency and transformations of ritual practice in the face of strong cultural and social challenges; on the other hand, it shows how science and scholarship, as a social system, developed new ritualisations or alternative forms of communication, respectively. Along with the Reformation, the anti-ritualism of the Age of Enlightenment is one of the historical junctions at which our modern concept of the confrontation of “pure science” and “mere ritual” first came into being, thereby becoming irreversibly etched into science and scholarship, as well as European culture in general, as a template of observation.51 To historicise this moral economy of science in itself thus becomes an important component for analysing the interdependencies of science and ritual. Fundamentally, a religious discourse for criticism of ritual had been available since its medieval origins, but amplified during the reformation, that enabled ostentatious ritualism to be criticised as inappropriate haughtiness. Deriving from Renaissance humanism, an ever more epistemologically-based criticism of ritual appeared in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that sought to distinguish between appearance and reality, or form and content, respectively, and by so doing, tended to regard the formal level as less important. In the later stages of the Age of Enlightenment, the dictate of parsimony and the call for ritual aesthetics suitable to the times appeared, in addition to religious, moral, and epistemological criticism. To many academics, the traditional symbolic forms simply appeared “awkward”, in the sense Norbert Elias gave the term. A final example from the University of Göttingen shall illustrate this. On the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary celebrations of the Georgia Augusta University at the end of the year 1836, ,after 50 Cf. the stimulating reflections in Douglas 1974: 11–57 and Soeffner 1995: 102–130. 51 Cf. as a pioneering work Burke 1996, who describes the beginning of modern anti-ritualism in the time of the Reformation.

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some debate, the custom of wearing academic gowns was re-introduced. Jacob Grimm expressed his disapproval of this academic dress, which, in his opinion, was outmoded: “I declare myself to be against the new gowns. Every costume only works as long as it accords with contemporary custom. […] When, during the sixteenth [and] seventeenth centuries, the professors wore cloaks and caps, this agreed with the dress of the students and the people. The beauty and elegance of costume must develop on the young, that would be applied to older men. It would be odd indeed if professors now walked awkwardly in festive clothing, while their students followed them in modern tailcoats. Apart from this, who wants to spend 5 or 6 Louis d’ors on a gown that will then hang on a nail unused afterwards!”52 In Grimm’s opinion, the gown not only violated the laws of fashion, but represented a useless expense, because it could not be used as everyday clothing. Economic rationality and “modern”, enlightened, bourgeois self-conception went hand in hand here. The fate of the academic gown, hinted at here, foreshadowed that of academic ritual as a whole. Despite some criticism, the symbolic forms returned to the universities during the nineteenth century; indeed, some had survived the end of the ancien régime in any case. Corresponding traditions, to some extent even invented ones, became well-guarded cultural capital at the Humboldtian universities, which had been, by now, almost entirely transformed into state institutions. The language of symbolic forms thus established was to last until the 1960s, and has experienced a kind of renaissance in recent times.53 But these formal similarities should not belie the basic differences implied in the rationalisation processes of the enlightenment: today, the doctoral degree no longer confers a social rank comparable to that in the ancien régime, the legally binding character of enrolment and the doctoral degree has been reduced to taking an oath and signing the documents, and the ritual of appointment can very well be replaced by sending the documents by mail. Ritual elements have not been entirely abrogated by this, but have shifted – as, for example, the sociologist Hans Werner Prahl highlighted in 1975 in his dissertation, which he ironically dedicated to himself “in astonishment” – to the sphere of examinations and the like. Asymmetric distributions of power do not simply belong to history, even in modern universities. Challenging or questioning their ideological foundations, nevertheless, still owes a great deal to the anti-ritualism of the Age of Enlightenment and its separation of content and form.

52 Ebel 1969: 46. 53 Cf. van Ditzhuyzen 2008: 71–75.

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Trauth, Michael 1991. “‘… merendas dari non omnino frugales’: vom Brauch und vom Mißbrauch des Doktorschmauses an der alten Universität Trier”. Aufklärung 5: 59– 77. Tütken, Johannes 2005. Privatdozenten im Schatten der Georgia Augusta. Zur älteren Privatdozentur (1734 bis 1831). Part 1: Statutenrecht und Alltagspraxis. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. Üing, Svenja 2005. “Die Rückkehr der Talare”. Spiegel-Online, Unispiegel http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/wunderbar/0,1518,364924,00.html [last accessed 30/03/2009] Voigt, Friedrich B. 2003 [1824]. Das Leben auf Universitäten […]. Langenhagen: Bödeker & Schellenberg. Wegner, Bettina 2005. “Talare an TU Illmenau. Ein Aufruf zur uniweiten Diskussion!”. Ilmenauer Uni-Nachrichten 48/5: 5. Will, Georg A. 1975 [1801]. Geschichte und Beschreibung der Nürnbergischen Universität Altdorf. Aalen: Scientia.

Susan Richter

The Prussian Royal Coronation – A Usurpation of Ceremonial? In the run-up to attaining royal dignity as King of Prussia, the precise terms of acknowledgement, the Agnoscirung by the emperor and the European monarchs,1 were investigated by the Prince Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick III. Beside the political and legal conditions, the ceremonial conditions were also considered. On 10 June 1700, for example, the ambassador of Brandenburg in Warsaw, Werner, brought Fredrick III a piece of advice from Lithuanian Vice-Chancellor Szruka about the ceremonial coronation: as in England, Sweden, and Denmark, the ceremony must be performed through a bishop and an anointing must be included, otherwise the title of “Holy Majesty” for the new King of Prussia might be refused: “Wegen des Ceremoniels der Krönung, wrote Szruka, es nothwendig durch einen Bischof geschehen müsste: weswegen denn auch selbige in England, Schweden und Dennemark conserviret wären; und könnte man widrigenfalls, wenn das Sacrum der Salbung nicht geschehe, Difficultät machen, den Titulum Sacra Regia Majestas wie gebräuchlich zu geben.”2 The coronation ceremony, which inevitably led to self-coronation and thus the self-elevation of the person through the new establishment of royal dignity, had to include certain acts, in particular those of a sacral nature such as anointing, so that the title of King of Prussian would, in the end, have to be acknowledged by the other crowned heads of Europe, who strongly opposed it. For this reason the aulic council (Dignitäts-Conseil) and the ceremonial master of Brandenburg, von Besser, had to establish a ceremony which would embed the individual form of the coronation, necessarily carried out by the future monarch himself, as well as the concept involved of a Prussian monarch, in European traditions of coronation, and by means of this act legitimise the apparent right to this title. This necessitated copying the basic parts of other coronation ceremonies.

1 Agnoscere means “to recognize” or “to accept”. Zedler 1732: cols. 799−800. 2 Memorandum from the ambassador Werner of 10 June 1700, in: Lehmann 1878: No. 332, 465. I would like to thank my student assistants Shuo Wang and Michael Roth for their help in research.

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In the following I would like briefly to describe the course of coronation in Königsberg, and then introduce the patterns underlying certain parts of it. After that I shall discuss whether there was a usurpation of other, different coronation ceremonies in the case of the Prussian coronation, as seen from a legal and historical perspective and contemporary views of the origins of ceremonies. Moreover, is a ceremony itself a means to usurp royal dignity? Finally, I shall derive and formulate general conclusions about the deed of usurpation, as opposed to the mere reception of ceremonies in the Early Modern Era, from this description of an individual case.

1. The Course of Coronation On 18 January 1701, Frederick III had himself dressed by his senior chamberlain at 8 o’clock in the morning in his bed-chamber at Königsberg Castle, and appeared shortly afterward in the audience chamber. In front of chosen courtiers he himself placed the crown upon his head and took the sceptre. After that he went to the antechamber of his wife, Sophie Charlotte, and placed her crown on her head. Instead of homage being paid – Prussia had already paid homage to Frederick as Prince Elector – he was greeted and acclaimed as King. With this regalia he and his wife strode beneath baldachins held by the noblest persons in Brandenburg and other guests, to the Lutheran castle church, where they were greeted by kettledrums and trumpets, and where they sat down on their thrones. The reformed court chaplain, who had been appointed summus episcopus and bishop by Frederick, Benjamin Ursinus von Bär (1648–1720), gave a short sermon, in which Fredrick was already addressed as King. Then his Lutheran colleague, who had also been appointed bishop, Bernhard von Sanden (1666–1721), anointed the royal couple on their foreheads and wrists with the oil brought by the ruler himself. A courtier assisted him, who also wiped off the oil from the monarch.3 Following this, the coronation feast took place in the castle, with a parallel folk festival which was staged in the castle courtyard, where an ox was roasted over an open fire and wine flowed from two fountains decorated with eagles. The King was also given a dish of beef and a mug of wine, in order to express his solidarity with the people. Fredrick threw the people many coins. After the immediate ceremony had ended, the people took the cloth on which the King had walked from castle to 3 The first ordo of coronation was developed around the middle of the ninth century, in which the clerical part in the ceremonial of proclaiming the ruler became steps of com-pletion and the spoken text was fixed in written form. A liturgy was created around the three highlights: anointing, coronation, enthronement, in which the interaction of the di-vine and terrestrial ruler was eulogized and the enthronement, accompanied by worship, was declared the preliminary stage for coronations in the future, and co-leadership in heaven. On the imperial ordo cf. Elze 1960.

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church, as a kind of tangible relic. After some weeks of festivities, with illuminations, visits to and from institutions, amnesties of prisoners, and the founding of charitable organizations, the new royal couple proceeded back to Berlin. This return journey was intended to serve as a journey for homage and jubilation, with its highlight being the splendid entry into Brandenburg. This is a brief description of the coronation festivities. While scholars have long since comprehensively investigated and interpreted the reversal of the order of acts, tending to view this as an absolutistic statement made by Frederick about himself,4 this article will emphasise the many and conspicuous borrowings from other European ceremonies of coronation.

2. Examples In keeping with English practice, Frederick and Sophie Charlotte, wearing their crowns, strode across the castle courtyard to the Lutheran castle church beneath a canopy decorated with black eagles and crowns. The church service of anointing was patterned in its procedure on the conventional imperial order of coronation (Krönungsordines), but it was modified by deliberately Protestant elements: Thus, elements of the Latin coronation mass were replaced by German versions (e.g. Herr Gott dich loben wir instead of the Te Deum, Allein Gott in der Höh’ instead of Gloria); The congregation sang Lutheran songs in German; the church service included a sermon, in contrast to the Frankfurt coronation ceremony for the emperor; there was no reverential bow by the king in front of the altar; the king was not given a ring or pontifical robes; and there was no communion. The break with the Frankfurt ceremonial tradition was simultaneously a shift toward the ceremony of anointing carried out for the Danish king Christian V in the year 1671. Christian had changed the location of his unction to the court church as a clear signal of his understanding of absolute rule. On the morning of 7 June 1671, he appeared in front of his courtiers in royal regalia with crown, sceptre, and other insignia. Then he had himself anointed.5 Frederick followed this example, thus paying homage to God as the only bestower (eintzigem Geber) of the crown.6 Contemporary witnesses had already noticed obvious parallels to the anointing ceremony carried out for Carl XII of Sweden in 1697 in a further detail of the anointing ceremony. Johann Gottfried Lünig, a compiler of records of different European rituals and ceremonies of state in early modern times, reported the following procedure in Sweden in his Theatrum ceremoniale historico politicum: 4 Duchhardt 1983. 5 Olden-Jorgensen 2002: 192. 6 Quoted in Duchhardt 1983: 90.

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Susan Richter “Da beydes [music and sermon] sein Ende genommen, gingen Jhre Maj. zum Altar, nahmen vor der Salbung, welche der Erzbischof von Upsal verrichtete, die Crone selbst vom Haupt, und setzten selbige nach der Salbung wie neulich auch der König in Preussen gethan, zum Zeichen, daß er ein Souverain und König von unumschränkter macht sey, selbsten, ohne sich helffen zu lassen, wieder auf.”7 (“As both [music and sermon] had now ended, His Majesty went to the altar and, prior to the unction, which was carried out by the Archbishop of Uppsala, took his crown off himself, and, following the anointing, he set the crown upon his own head again, without any help, as was done recently by the King in Prussia, this being a sign that he is a sovereign and king of unlimited might.”)

Frederick, then, had also taken the crown off by himself before his anointing, putting it on again afterwards. His knowledge of the anointing ceremony of Karl XII was based on a copy of the Swedish ceremony provided to him by England in September 1700.8 A last example shall be given here to make clear again a case of the recourse taken to the imperial coronation ceremony: the provision of food for the people. The procession of the crowned Emperor – I refer especially to the coronation of Leopold I in 1658 – in Frankfurt on Main led past the “von Holtz auffgebawte[n] Küch” (“the kitchen built of wood”), erected by the city council, “worin der Ochß gebraten worden” (“in which the ox was roasted”). This ox, together with wine from a fountain and a huge pile of oats, was one of the three gifts presented by the city to the emperor for (symbolically) exercising the duties of the highest offices. This symbolic exercise of duties was commenced before the eyes of the numerous guests and citizens of Frankfurt during the coronation procession. While the envoy of the Saxon Prince Elector and Imperial Marshall, Count Papenheim, fetched a Fruchtmass (an old German measure of volume) of oats and then took it to the square in front of the Frankfurt town hall, known as the “Römer”, the representative of the Prince Elector of Brandenburg and Imperial Treasurer rode to a fountain to fill a silver pitcher with fresh water and fetch a towel, and then he, too, went to the Römer. According to the description given in the coronation chronicle (Krönungsdiarium) by Caspar Merian, “Herr Graff Truchseß von Zeil / holte sich ein Stück von dem gebratenen Ochsen in einer Silbern Schüssel / und begabe sich damit gleicher gestalt auf den Römer Saal.”9 (“The Count Steward of Zeil fetched himself a cut of the roasted ox in a silver dish, and then betook himself with this to the Römer hall.”) After the symbolic exercise of the duties of high office had been 7 Lünig 1719: 1394−1395. 8 Waddington 1888: 273 n. 2. 9 Merian 1658.


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successfully brought to a conclusion, the soldiers let the people take charge of the pile of oats, the ox, and the fountain of wine. In this manner, the Emperor’s subjects could take partake of and participate in the coronation feast, thus cementing the ties between ruler and people. The symbolic feeding of the people by providing free wine and the roasted ox was also used by Frederick after his coronation, and, like the Emperor, he let the first piece of beef be brought to his table by his two court chamberlains (Hofmarschälle).10

3. Reception or Usurpation? The question now poses itself of how earlier examples influenced the form of Frederick’s coronation in 1701. Julius Bernhard von Rohr remarked in the preface of his Einleitung zur Ceremonielwissenschaft der Grossen Herren of 1733 that the ceremonial was different in all courts and that it was to be regarded as a part of public law of every country: “[Das] Ceremonien-Wesen [ist] an allen Höfen gänzlich unterschieden/ und als ein Stück des Juris Publici eines jeden Landes anzusehen.”11 Lünig even assumed, in agreement with Stieve’s Europäischem Hof-Ceremoniel of 1715, that ceremonies had a legal foundation and were based on the privileges (Praerogativa) of a noble family. In the sense of a symbol of law a ceremony possessed normative quality. Stieve’s classification shows, on the one hand, the significance of the ceremoniel for the constitution of sovereign princely rule. On the other hand, wisdom in state matters dictated that the monarch takes care to keep all insignia and the ceremonial rights of his majestic dignity to himself: “sorgfältig bey und für sich allein [zu] behalten”.12 This was especially valid with regard to the ruler’s own subjects, in order to preserve class order, but it was also valid with a view to other rulers. After all, none of these monarchs had provided Frederick with descriptions of their own ceremonies; rather, he had received copies of such ceremonies from their envoys, which had been present at such occasions. But how did other monarchs behave? Or, to revert to the example of Frederick III, how could he, a sovereign Duke in Prussia, strive for royal dignity as a King in 10 Bernd Sösemann describes the procedure, but without discussing its relationship to imperial ceremonial. Cf. Sösemann 2002: 108. 11 Rohr 1733: 2. Stieve argues 1723 similarly: Der Ursprung solches Ceremoniels, ist nicht, wie etwan bey den Complimentisten, die Höflichkeit, denn diese hat keine Leges: sondern vielmehr die aus einer grössern Dignität, so man für einen anderen zu haben vermeynet, herrührende Superbia, welcher am die Qualitäten Juris zueignet, und ihr den Titul der Praerogativae oder Praecedentiae gegeben. Vec 1998: 55f. 12 Gundling 1751: 744. Quoted in Vec 1998: 276 n. 781.

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this territory and thus to be accepted in the extremely limited association of monarchs in Europe? The master of ceremonies in Brandenburg, von Besser, described the difficulties faced by Frederick in achieving acknowledgement of his royal dignity. The higher the rank, the more difficult it was to achieve. Monarchs competed against each other, attempting to limit their number so as not to be forced to share privileges and advantages. “Aber je höher diese Würde, je schwerer ist es, sie zu erlangen. Die Könige, die es am meisten angehet, eyfern auch am meisten darüber; und wollen nicht gern, umb desto mehr unterschieden zu bleiben, die Zahl ihrer Mitgenossen vermehren, noch andere, die es nicht sind, zur Gemeinschaft, dieses ihres Vorzuges lassen. Man weiß, wie schwer es falle, bloß in Stücken des Ceremoniels, die geringste Veränderung mit ihnen zu treffen.”13 (“But the higher the dignity, the more difficult it is to attain. The kings, for whom it is most important, also strive the most for it; and are unwilling to increase the number of their fellow rulers, nor to allow others, who are not kings, to join the community of privilege, in order that these kings may remain the more distinguished. We know how hard it is to obtain their agreement to changes in even the least part of a ceremony.”) But scholars of ceremony, in particular Christoph Heinrich Amthor in his Collegium Homileticum De Jure Decori of 1730, advised precisely those princes whose governments were not altogether stable, or who had limited rights of rule, to simulate powerful princely rule by holding elaborate and costly court. The deliberate use of charismatic rule was intended to counter any deficits in constitutional law, and to suggest those it addressed that an increase of power was being made visible. But scholars of ceremony were quite careful not to actually provide any prescriptions for concrete action. Nevertheless, it is clear that this naturally had an effect on the form and use of ceremonies. Claims and the self-conception of a ruler had to be anchored in these and communicated outwardly, forms and procedures had to be adapted to the status claimed. Johann Christian Lünig, in the first volume of his Theatrum ceremoniale historico politicum of 1719, to Stieve’s court ceremonial lists the following options for a sovereign’s arrangement of a ceremony, with reference to Stieve’s court ceremonial: “Es ist aber das Ceremoniel eine unter souveränen, oder ihnen gleich geltenden Personen aus eigner Bewegniß und Willkühr / durch einen stillschwei-

13 Besser 1702: 24.


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genden Consens, ausdrücklichen Vergleich, Usurpation, Posses14 und Praescription15 eingeführte Ordnung.” (“The ceremonial is order, introduced under a sovereign or persons equivalent in rank to such, through that sovereign’s own motivation and power, and by a silent consensus, express comparison, usurpation, possession, and prescription.”) Because ceremonial, as described above, was regarded as being part of the foundations of law and the traditional hierarchical structure of any high-ranking family, and of the old Holy Roman Empire or European States, respectively, it is not surprising that, in the context of the development of ceremonies apart from original creation by a prince or ancient possession by a family, legal concepts such as usurpation were used and thus illegal appropriation or use were named. Interestingly, Lünig gives no examples of the usurpation of ceremony. It may, however, be assumed that a usurpation of ceremony existed when the public proclamation of a new, as yet not established legal claim on the part of a person or institution was carried out by means of the compilation and thus the use of individual elements of other European ceremonies, or ceremonies from the territories of the Empire. The ceremonies were not under copyright like today, and were not kept secret, but by borrowing and by using some parts of them, the foreign user – in our case Frederick III of Brandenburg – expressed his claim to equality with the other European, and especially the other Protestant, monarchs, a claim established (in his view) by his self-coronation and anointing from 18 January 1701 onward. In particular, he conveyed the message to the Emperor that he had the same relation to his now royal subjects as sovereign ruler of Prussia as the Emperor did with respect to his subjects in the Empire. The usurpation of ceremonial set-pieces was, in fact, of the greatest significance with regard to his intention and later acceptance. Recall the advice from his representative in Warsaw, who had passed on the Lithuanian advice that His Majesty would only be accepted as such once his person had been anointed. Frederick III thus had to refer to a certain conventional range of coronation traditions within Europe, and thus had to have fulfilled all conditions necessary for true legitimation of his actions in the sense of diplomatic recognition beforehand. Frederick’s closest adviser, von Ilgen, put the matter quite rightly: “Es ist nicht genug, jekrohnt zu werden, man mus auch versichert seyn pro Rege anerkannt zu werden.”16 14 “Posses“ means “possession”. Zedler 1741: col. 891. 15 “Praescription“ means “command”. In legal affairs it can, however, also mean “to acquire by adverse possession” (“das Ersitzen von Rechten nach einer gewissen Zeit”) and “to become time-barred” (“Verjähren”). Zedler 1741: col. 53.

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Susan Richter (“It is not enough to be crowned; one must also be sure of being acknowledged as King.”)

But how did the European monarchs deal with the usurper of their status and their ceremonial? While European newspapers presented exact descriptions of the course of the coronation, with all its superlative splendours, the royal courts of Europe remained obstinately silent concerning the coronation ceremonies in Königsberg. They simply ignored the festive production, not even bothering to send representatives. Lünig, in his article on the development of ceremonial, mentions silent consensus or compromise, apart from usurpation. Consensus and compromise could also be, however, a response to ceremonial usurpation: The consensus of individual monarchs and thus the legitimation of the ceremonial act of coronation, or, in other words, the legitimation of Frederick I’s new status, was temporrally strongly displaced as a result of diplomatic practice. Not until this occurred was there public tolerance of the membership of the King of Prussia in the circle of monarchs. In addition to the consensus, political compromises were reached, in which in a legal sense the “Ungewissheit der Parteien über ein Rechtsverhältnis im Wege des gegenseitigen Nachgebens beseitigt wird.”17 As early as 19 February 1701, Denmark, one of only a few such countries, sent Frederick a letter of congratulation on the basis of a secret treaty enacted in April 1700, in which Brandenburg had promised to help Denmark in the Nordic War against Sweden; following rapid recognition, Brandenburg reneged on its promise. Despite this “positive neutrality” on the part of Brandenburg in favour of Sweden in the Nordic War, Sweden did not accept Frederick’s claim to royalty until 1703. France did not acknowledge the royal dignity until the Peace of Rastatt in 1714, but thwarted the acknowledgement by the allied Estates of Empire in the years before – e.g. Bavaria.18 But also at the ceremonial level compromises were reached. Emperor Leopold, for instance, assured Frederick, prior to the latter’s coronation, that he would champion the cause of Frederick’s acknowledgment as new King by the Estates of the Empire and the European states: “[…] in summa zwischen S. Ch. D.19 und anderen europeyischen Königen, in specie den Königen von Schweden, Dennemarck und Pohlen, [so that] in der titulatur und anderen ehrenbezeigungen kein unter-

16 Exposé by von Ilgens, 11 November 1700. Quoted in Baumgart 2001: 176 n. 63. 17 http://juristisches-lexikon.ra-kdk.de/eintrag/Vergleich.html. “[The] uncertainty of the parties concerning a legal relation by means of mutual accomodation is eliminated.” 18 Baumgart 2001: 175. 19 S. Ch. D. means the titel of the Prince Elector of Brandenburg “Seine Churfürstliche Durchlaucht”. (His Most Serene Highness).


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scheid mehr bestehe.”20 What Leopold wanted was that the European monarchs acknowledged Frederick, and that there should be no difference between them. At the same time he forbade the Prussian King to address him, the Emperor, with the words “Majesty, my brother”, which is how the other monarchs handled the question of address. Furthermore, Frederick was prohibited from adding the word “Liebden”21 when addressing the Emperor.22. In practice, then, “equal treatment” was of a purely formal nature; the Emperor was not willing to permit Frederick the same familiarities as he did other monarchs. It is clear that the Emperor was strongly interested in keeping a distance of rank between himself and the Prussian monarchy. The other Estates of Empire wanted no change in the ceremonial relationship between the Emperor and Frederick in his function as an Estate of Empire either, despite Prussia’s rise in rank. Johann Stephan Pütter wrote in his Historischen Entwicklung der heutigen Staatsverfassung of 1798 that the envoys of the non-royal Estates were very watchful that no changes or innovations be introduced to the ceremonial of the Imperial Diet: “Im Reichstagsceremoniel sind die Gesandten der nicht königlichen Stände desto aufmerksamer darauf gewesen, keine Neuerungen aufkommen zu lassen.”23 In fact, this was confirmed again as late as 1764 in the electoral capitulation caused by Prussia, that no difference in ceremony should be introduced anywhere among the Princes Elector. What is interesting in this context is that there was borrowing from other European models in many coronation ceremonies in Europe, e.g. the Danish imperial council followed the French and English models of the late Middle Ages, insofar as from the coronation of King Johann in 1483 onward an archbishop was appointed to place the crown on the King’s head.24 In Poland the order of coronation of 1434 followed the Bohemian model, while Hungarian elements were added in the sixteenth century.25 In such cases ceremonial elements were passed to and fro on the same hierarchical level. But adaptation of the court ceremonial of the Princes Elector to that of the Viennese court ceremonial was also common in the Early Modern Era. Vienna, of course, rather welcomed this, as it generally was accompanied by a very close political association with the Imperial dynasty, as in the case of the Catholic Princes Elector of the Palatinate, of the house of Neuburg. The criti20 “... altogether between His Most Serene Highness of the Prince Elector and other European kings, specifically those of Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, [that there] be no more differences in title and other honourary designations .” So-called “Krontractat”, in: Moerner 1867: 814.Cf. also Baumgart 2001: 173. 21 “beloved”. 22 So-called “Krontractat”, in: Moerner 1867: 815−816. 23 Pütter 1798: 361. 24 Hoffmann 1983: 60. 25 Rhode 1983: 36.

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cal point was reached when a ruler appropriated a rank, without being regarded as equal in this rank. To end with, I would like to answer a question which you probably have been wanting to ask throughout my whole paper. Why, out of all others, has the example of the Prussian coronation been chosen for an analysis of ceremonial usurpation in the Early Modern Era? A very simple answer can be given, which, however, requires a rather long explanation. The usurpation of ceremony implies the unlawful appropriation of power, position, or authority. But the Early Modern Era, in contrast to antiquity or the Middle Ages, is lacking in examples. Why? An answer shall be attempted for the area of sovereignty in the Old Empire. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries a limited number of dynasties connected to each other were able to rise to power, thanks to the arrangement of a binding legal order of succession. They had succeeded in regulating the critical instant of transition of rule by means of internal laws and the reception of Roman law, in a binding and written form, and thus to avoid interregna with their danger of possible attempts at usurpation. With the process of dynastic stabilisation, they succeeded in legalising their rule and applying their rights against other aristocratic elites, as potential competitors, or against the church. Moreover, through this legalisation they succeeded in institutionalising and thus also depersonalising their power. Power, as a rule, was now passed on within a limited princely society, using formal legal processes that hindered arbitrariness and produced a specific authority for the ruler as the successor of his successful ancestors, based on a political, dynastic, and legal construction.26 Concepts of the divine right of kings and a patriarchal system of rule, with close ties between ruler and people, and based on feelings of responsibility and thankfulness, stabilised the power of these dynasties and left fewer vulnerabilities for usurpations in this framework. This stable system changed around 1700 through the increased attempts on the part of local princes to conquer more land and thus new crowns. With this, the old order and superior exclusiveness of European monarchs was forcibly enlarged by the upward climber. The class cooperative had to be acknowledged and the newcomer had to be given a place in this order, one for whom there was no ancient ancestry, ancient rights, or legally-based claims. In fact, Frederick III (as Prince Elector) and I (as King of Prussia) established his royal dignity through his own act. This amounted to usurpation of a position in an order and of a rank, to both of which he was not entitled. The recourse to elements of royal ceremonial and its use as a representation of his majesty represents an encroachment on the instruments of rule and the rights of domination of European monarchs, and thus a further usurpation. Nevertheless, the usurpation of ceremony was important, because it followed basically the old, accepted traditions, yet, through the compilation of older models, 26 The fundamental paper on this is Weber 1998: 104−129.


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it created something new. Frederick acted in every respect as a sovereign and monarch in creating his own coronation ceremony, thus, according to Bodin, exercising the sovereign power of law-giving, the legal potestas. At the same time he corresponded to the idea of sovereign power as put forth by Justus Lipsius. Lipsius had focused mainly on authority of the ruler, which is increased by admiratio, by emotion and which connects majesty primarily with reputation. Authority and reputation – in the long term monarchs had to acquire them in order to legitimise the usurpation of title, status, and ceremonial. For Prussia this was only a matter of time. The foundations of kingly rule had been established.

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References Baumgart, Peter 2001. “Ein neuer König in Europa. Interne Planung, diplomatische Vorbereitung und internationale Anerkennung der Standeserhöhung des brandenburgischen Kurfürsten”. In: Deutsches Historisches Museum und Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten (ed.). Preußen 1701. Eine europäische Geschichte. Vol. 2. Berlin: Henschel: 166−176. Besser, Johann von 1702. Preußische Krönungs-Geschichte: oder Verlauf der Ceremonien, mit welchen […] Herr Friedrich der Dritte, […] die königliche Würde […] angenommen […]. Cölln an der Spree. (Reprint Berlin 1901). Duchhardt, Heinz 1983. “Die preussische Königskrönung von 1701. Ein europäisches Modell?”. In: Heinz Duchhardt (ed.). Herrscherweihe und Königskrönung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa. Wiesbaden: Steiner: 82−95 (Schriften der Mainzer Philosophischen Fakultatsgesellschaft 8). Elze, Reinhard (ed.) 1960. Die Ordines für die Weihe und Krönung des Kaisers und der Kaiserin. Hannover: Hahn. Gundling, Nicolaus H. 1751. Einleitung zur wahren Staatsklugheit. Frankfurt, Leipzig: Varrentrapp. Hoffmann, Erich 1983. “Die Krönung Christians III. von Dänemark am 12. August 1537. Die erste protestantische Königskrönung in Europa”. In: Heinz Duchhardt (ed.). Herrscherweihe und Königskrönung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa. Wiesbaden: Steiner: 57−68 (Schriften der Mainzer Philosophischen Fakultätsgesellschaft 8). Juristisches Lexikon, s.v. “Vergleich”. http://juristisches-lexikon.ra-kdk.de/eintrag/ Vergleich.html (06.11.2009) Lehmann, Max 1878. Preussen und die katholische Kirche seit 1640. Nach Acten des Geheimen Staatsarchivs. Erster Theil von 1640–1740. Leipzig: Hirzel. (Reprint Osnabrück 1965). Lünig, Johann Chr. 1719. Theatrum ceremoniale historico-politicum, Oder Historischund Politischer Schau-Platz des Europäischen Canzley-Ceremoniels. Vol. 1. Leipzig: Moritz Georg Weidmann. Merian, Caspar 1658. Beschreibung und Abbildung Aller Königl. und Churfürstl. EinZüge, Wahl und Crönungs Acta: Beschreibung der Krönung. Frankfurt a.M.: Caspar Merian. Moerner, Theodor von (ed.) 1867. Kurbrandenburgs Staatsverträge von 1601–1700. Berlin: Reimer. (Reprint Berlin: de Gruyter 1965). Olden-Jorgensen, Sebastian 2002. “Zeremonielle Innovation: Die erste dänische absolutistische Königsalbung (1671) und die erste Preußische Königskrönung (1701) im Vergleich”. In: Heide Barmeyer (ed.). Die preußische Rangerhöhung und Königskrönung 1701 in deutscher und europäischer Sicht. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang: 185–196. Pütter, Johann St. 1798. Historische Entwicklung der heutigen Staatsverfassung des Teutschen Reichs. Theil 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.


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Rhode, Gotthold 1983. “Die Königskrönungen in Polen zur Zeit der Wahlkönige 15721795”. In: Heinz Duchhardt (ed.). Herrscherweihe und Königskrönung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa. Wiesbaden: Steiner: 33−45 (Schriften der Mainzer Philosophischen Fakultatsgesellschaft 8). Rohr, Julius B. von 1733. Einleitung zur Ceremoniel-Wissenschaft der Grossen Herren. Berlin: Rüdiger. (Reprint Weinheim: Wiley-VCH 1990). Sösemann, Bernd 2002. “Zeremoniell und Inszenierung. Öffentlichkeit und dynastischhöfische Selbstdarstellung in der preußischen Krönung und den Jubiläumsfeiern (1701–1851)”. In: Bernd Sösemann (ed.). Kommunikation und Medien in Preußen vom 16.–19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Steiner: 85–135. Vec, Miloš 1998. Zeremonialwissenschaft im Fürstenstaat. Studien zur juristischen und politischen Theorie absolutistischer Herrschaftsrepräsentation. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte 106). Waddington, Albert 1888. L’Acquisition de la Couronne Royale de la Prusse par les Hohenzollern. Paris: Leroux (Bibliothèque de la Faculté des Lettres de Lyon 3). Weber, Wolfgang 1998. “Dynastiesicherung und Staatsbildung. Die Entfaltung des frühmodernen Fürstenstaates”. In: Wolfgang Weber (ed.). Der Fürst. Ideen und Wirklichkeiten in der europäischen Geschichte. Köln et al.: Böhlau: 91–136. Zedler, Johann H. 1732. Grosses vollständiges Universallexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, welche bißhero durch menschlichen Verstand und Witz erfunden und verbessert worden. Vol. 1. Halle: Zedler. (Reprint Graz 1961). — 1741. Grosses vollständiges Universallexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, welche bißhero durch menschlichen Verstand und Witz erfunden und verbessert worden. Vol. 28. Halle, Leipzig: Zedler. (Reprint Graz 1961).

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Rituals in Twentieth-Century Dictatorships Jean-Bédel Bokassa and “his” Central African Empire, 1976–1979 1. Totalitarianism in Twentieth-Century Africa The history of the twentieth century, retrospectively often referred to as the “Age of Extremes”,1 is a history of breaks and radical change in a global dimension: condemned as a time of barbarism and catastrophes, or praised as a period of lightning progress and enormous historical leaps. From the United States entering World War I in April 1917 and the Russian Revolution in October of the same year, to the peaceful downfall of socialism and communism in Eastern Europe since 1989, totalitarian systems and modern dictatorships unquestionably belong to its dark side. Different forms of tyranny and despotism were already known in the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, and Early Modern Times. But only the analytically differentiating “modern dictatorships” of the twentieth century add a characteristic shape to the phenomenon of totalitarianism.2 For decades, ideological seduction and would-be totalitarianism lurked even in democratic and pluralistic societies of the Western World.3 The experience of totalitarian dictatorships and autocratic rule had a lasting influence on global history mainly in the second half of the twentieth century. The despotic African regimes of the 1960s and 1970s, the darkest era in the history of Africa, are well-suited examples for the various manifestations of modern dictatorships. The dictators and despots usurped legal power and left “their” countries plundered, devastated and often on the brink of civil war.4 These dictators, 1 Hobsbawm 1994. 2 “Classic” studies range from Ford (1935), S. Neumann (1942), Arendt (1951), Friedrich & Brzeszinski (1956), F.L. Neumann (1957), Duverger (1961) or Stammer (1968) to Lefort (1986). 3 Lee 2008; Traverso 2008. 4 In the confrontation of the Cold War most of the new African states were exploited as well as backed up by the two superpowers. On the other hand ruling African elites tried their best to take their own advantage out of the twofold global constellation. A further aspect was the predefined structure of the later states that rose from the time of colonisation. The foremost young new rulers, who gained power by coups d’état, often were socialised without proper

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especially Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic, happened to be “close friends” of political rituals. They exemplify the need of conventional or even established forms of rituals to prove the attachment with political structures and to legitimise or strengthen stable social acceptance networks. Furthermore, they can be taken as perfect examples for “Usurping Rituals”.5 Some preliminary remarks on this topic seem to be necessary: African politics in general is presented in terms of personality.6 Charismatic power depends heavily on the physical presence of the ruler.7 Personal rule so far can be found in both civilian and military regimes. Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg define personal rule as a “system of relations linking rulers not with the ‘public’ or even with the ruled […] but with patrons, associates, clients, supporters, and rivals, who constitute the ‘system’”.8 Personal rule is a standard model which reflects the inherent contradictions between traditionalism and modernism, and therefore the inability of most of the African leaders to develop a viable synthesis. The bonds of nationhood after the end of dictatorships often seem much weaker than before, thus forming one of the “systematic after-effects of personal dictatorships”.9 But even in the context of common authoritarian and personal rule in Africa as “a permanent feature of political life”,10 a small number of dictatorships stands out: as a type of government, these “brutal and highly idiosyncratic personal dictatorships”11 differ from the “regular” authoritarian regimes in Africa and especially from those in Latin America, South-East Asia and the Soviet era. According to Samuel Decalo, personal dictatorship can be defined as “an authoritarian system of social repression set by an individual – civilian or military – in which whether social or political structures are pro forma retained or not, all policy dictates derive from him, and all of society is viewed as his personal fief.”12 The personal dictator monopolises social, economic and political power, while his rule

5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

education in the colonial army. Due to the colour bar their careers began only after independence. The usurpation of state power in modern totalitarian systems and dictatorships goes along with the adaptation of political rituals for their legitimising effects. For Fascism, National Socialism and Stalinism, this connection seems obvious enough. In democratic and pluralistic societies the use of political rituals takes place in a more hidden form and on a far weaker basis (Edelmann 1964 & 1971; Kertzer 1988; Platvoet 1995). For the German context see Pross 1974; Vogt 1989; Meyer 1992 & 2001. Birmingham 1998: 81. Speitkamp 2007: 406. For the well known sociological category of charismatic leadership see Weber 1980: 140–148. Jackson & Rosberg 1982: 19. Decalo 1989: 195. Ibid.: 1. Ibid.: ix. Decalo 1985: 212.

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faces imperial manners, including self-gratification and -glorification.13 Following the four main types of personal rule named by Jackson and Rosberg, that is the “Prince”, the “Autocrat”, the “Prophet”, and the “Tyrant”, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Emperor of the Central African Empire, and our example for the connection between usurping and the use of rituals for political power, belongs definitely to the fourth type. The tyrant is classified as cruel and unjust; gaining unrestrained power that is noted for its abusiveness, oppression, ruthlessness, despotism, impulsiveness, fear and amorality.14 Personal factors play an crucial role: the entire state often is “privatised” by the military dictator. An “imperial style of personal rule”15 emerges, when societal context and personal idiosyncrasies are in favour of it as in the case of the Central African Republic of the 1960s and 1970s. Another feature makes the African personal dictatorships unique: besides the obvious dynamic interrelation between ritual and state power we can identify an additional addressee of the ritual: the former colonial power. Close to the wish of tying the community closely together and integrating its members into a new form of society, Bokassa as a personal ruler sought to obtain the French elite’s approval. The coronation festivities in 1977 exemplify how “Emperor” Bokassa drew on traditional European or “Napoleonic” rituals. Traditional African elements are hardly found. The Napoleonic style of Bokassa’s coronation has to be judged in the light of what has been described as the “invention of tradition”.16 However, the reason for the later failure of the dictator is not a lack of dynamism in the ritual itself, but the disregard and failed conversion of sophisticated European pomp as well as misunderstood relations with its addressees. First I would like to give a brief outline of the decolonisation and nationbuilding in Francophone Africa with two focal points, the African Nationhood and the history of the Central African Republic with its personal ruler Jean-Bédel Bokassa. I will then proceed to an examination of coronation ceremonies as ritual17 by watching the ritual in Bangui, on 4 December 1979 and then reading the ritual, presenting Bokassa as a dignified successor to Napoleon Bonaparte: in his rise as well as in his fall.

13 14 15 16 17

Decalo 1989: 183–184; Chirot 1996. Jackson & Rosberg 1982: 80–82, 234–244. Decalo 1990: 30. Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983. For a survey of the revival of ritual studies in the Humanities see Bell 1992; Grimes 1995. For introductions to the field see Belliger & Krieger 2003; Wulf & Zirfaß 2004; Dücker 2007.

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2. Francophone Africa and the Central African Republic 2.1 Decolonisation and Nation-building in Francophone Africa Africa’s specific process of decolonisation led to fragile states which seek to tie aspects of European modernity to local forms of social organisation.18 Today’s Central African Republic, the former French colony of Ubangi-Shari, lies in the heart of the continent. The actual boundaries, like those of nearly all other states on the continent, are by colonial inheritance and at least arbitrary.19 The term “francophone Africa” refers to fourteen West and Central African states formerly under French and three formerly under Belgian rule, that have retained French as an official language.20 The term also differentiates these countries from the former Anglophone and Portuguese African colonies. Large parts of today’s francophone African political culture have their roots in the special relationship between these African countries and France – i.e. the collaboration of the African elites with French authorities, the adoption of the French political and educational system, and the knowledge of French as language as well as reference point vis-à-vis their own culture.21 The French political and cultural vision of Africa as an arena for French power had contributed a lot to the maintenance of a strong French presence and influence on the African continent throughout the postcolonial era. At the beginning of the twentieth century France organised its vast African regions into two federations in order to promote a more effective administration and development: French West Africa (Afrique Occidentale Française) and French Equatorial Africa (Afrique Équatoriale Française). In 1894, France created the territory of Ubangi-Shari (Oubangui-Chari)22 the later Central African Republic (République centrafricaine). Ubangi-Shari became one of the four territories of French Equatorial Africa, the second federation. Under a system of “direct rule”, contrary to the British “indirect rule”, traditional African rulers officiated as agents for the transmission of French commands to their African subjects. But the so-

18 For the process of decolonisation see Reinhard 1990: 133–193; for the francophone countries ibid: 147–157; Birmingham 1995: 55–71; Speitkamp 2007: 347–469. 19 The history and the political system of the Central African Republic are “poorly researched even in French and precious little exists in English” (Kalck 1992: v). For short outlines see Kalck 1993: xxii–xl, xliv–liv; O’Toole 1986: 10–39. For the political change from UbangiShari to the Central African Republic see Ballard 1966: 261–267. 20 Gardinier 1997: 9. 21 As introductions to the francophone states: Manning 1988; McNamara 1989; Chipman 1989; Andereggen 1994; Kirk-Green & Bach 1995. 22 In French Oubangui-Chari was named after its two main rivers, the Oubangui and the Chari (Decalo 1989: 172, n. 2; Kalck 1993: xvii–xix; O’Toole 1986: 1–9).


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called colour bar, based on assumed racial differences, was a familiar practice also in the French colonies during the first decades of the twentieth century.23 After World War II nearly all African colonies faced broader movements for independence which were classified as “modern” and “national” even by a rising number of European intellectuals and politicians.24 Barthélemy Boganda, the first Ubangian deputy to the National Assembly in Paris in 1946 and president of the Great Council of French Equatorial Africa (Grand Conseil de l’Afrique Équatoriale Française), dreamed of a larger union of the United States of Latin-Africa.25 However, decisions were ultimately made in Paris and London and the political integration of the territories failed.26 French political elites in Paris tried to reform colonial rule in order to make French presence in Africa acceptable to the African people for the foreseeable future.27 In October 1946 the French re-organised the administration of French Equatorial Africa and confirmed its division into four regions: Congo, Gabon, Chad, and Ubangi-Shari. Political power was not transferred to the two federations but to the remaining 12 countries that had composed them. To avoid further bloody wars like the ones in Madagascar and Algeria,28 the French Government left the doctrine of the “One and Indivisible Republic” aside and offered autonomy (Communauté) to the ruling African elites.29 The main aim was to assimilate the black intellectuals and “transform” them into an “elite of gallicised auxiliaries”.30 France’s colonial policy of creating black Frenchmen led to the successful assimilation of later autocrats like Jean-Bédel Bokassa. It also had led to the integration of the African territories into the French Community and the gradual emancipation of their inhabitants through, for example, the granting of French citizenship and representation in the National Assembly in Paris.31 23 24 25 26 27

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Ansprenger 2004: 90. Ibid.: 92–93. O’Toole 1986: 36–38; Kalck 1993: xvi. O’Toole 1986: 135–137. For a discussion of the so called “Balkanisation” of Africa see Thompson & Adloff 1960. For the Cold War in Sub-Saharan Africa see Collins & Burns 2007: 366–376. For government and politics in Sub-Saharan Africa after the 1940s see Manning 1988: 135–163; Le Vine 2004. For African politics and international relations in general see also Gordon 2007; Schraeder 2007. The 1947 rebellions in Madagascar were caused by the non-recognition of the results of the elections for the new provincial parliaments by the French colonial government. As a horrifying conclusion, between 80,000 and 200,000 people died during the fighting. For Algeria see Elsenhans 1974; Renken 2006. Ansprenger 2004: 96. Gardinier 1997: 11; Ansprenger 2004: 90. The African people were “transformed” from native sujets to French citoyens, though not at once on an equal basis with natives of France (O’Toole 1986: 28–30). Elective franchise was announced in 1957 (Ansprenger 2004: 94).

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2.2 From Ubangi-Shari Territory to Central African Republic The now ex-colonial states in Africa took pride in their new national identities and showed no inclination to subordinate their independence to a wider ideal of PanAfrican unity. They first moved towards autonomy, then independence. Meanwhile, Ubangi-Shari became an overseas territory of France. In 1950 Barthélemy Boganda founded the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (Mouvement pour l’Évolution Sociale de l’Afrique Noire, MESAN).32 As a result of the creation of the French Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle and its new constitution the countries of the former French colonies achieved self-government as member states of the French Community in 1958.33 Boganda died in an aeroplane crash in March 1959 and was supplanted by David Dacko on 5 May as Head of State and Government. In 1960, “the year of Africa”,34 16 former French territories gained full independence although the event was later occasionally described as “flag independence” consisting of “a president, an anthem, a parliament, a capital city and a team of ‘advisers’”.35 To secure the just gained political power, the new heads of state formed single-party systems which dominated Africa for more than two decades following the 1970s.36 In addition, socialist ideas of social justice and economic military power had a massive impact on African intellectuals. As a result, France devised a policy of cooperation (Coopération) to provide the new, politically and economically weak states with the necessary aid. Agreements in key areas such as foreign policy, defence, education, culture, economy, financial and technical assistance were signed soon.37 Although independence profoundly changed the formal nature of relationships since political equality with France was achieved, French assistance and presence continued especially in the field of military cooperation:38 France needed its leading role in Africa as a principal claim to

32 The MESAN was not a political party in the usual sense, but a “quasi-religious movement and a rallying point for Ubangian self-identity and pride […] Like Leopold Senghor’s negritude, MESAN was an affirmation of black humanity.” (O’Toole 1997: 111) 33 The Central African Republic achieved self-government on 1 December 1958. Only Guinea voted for independence in 1958 and was banned from French foreign aid soon afterwards (Gardinier 1997: 13). For the Sub-Saharan African states after independence see Collins & Burns 2007: 331–389. Not without importance in this case is the black shadow of the Algerian uprisings since 1954 which suddenly put independence on the horizon for Central Africa (O’Toole 1986: 35). 34 Crowder 1984: 54–64. 35 Birmingham 1998: 103–104. 36 Ansprenger 2004: 98–99. 37 Chipman 1989: 116–122; Gardinier 1997: 13. 38 For a description of creating a system of national armies and the role of African officers in the former French colonies see McNamara 1989: 143–182. For the Central African Republic and its relations in African and global perspective see O’Toole 1986: 129–142.


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maintain its status as a world-power.39 The record speaks for itself: although supplemented by massive economic and financial aid, France’s continued military involvement in this area had mostly failed to stabilise its client states.40 On 13 August 1960 the Central African Republic finally gained independence and was admitted to the United Nations on 20 September the same year.41 Meanwhile, Dacko took first actions to restrain the liberty of its people: the first was the creation of a Central African national army in 1962. In November, all political parties except the MESAN single-party were dissolved. On 15 November 1963 a constitutional law installed a presidential regime, and on 5 January 1964 David Dacko was elected President of the Republic for seven years. In December that year Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa was named Chief of Staff of the Central African Army. As a result of a coup d’état, Dacko was arrested and, in the night of 31 December 1965 to 1 January 1966, turned his power over to Bokassa.42 The constitution of 20 November 1964 was abolished and a dictatorship based on the Vichy-Regime model was installed. 2.3 African Nationhood: Europeanisation vs. African Traditionalism As a consequence of their new independence, post-colonial African states had to deal with complex problems concerning their identity. It was necessary to find a broadly shared substitute for the concepts of nation enforced by the colonial powers, namely Britain and France. Most of the new ruling elites had adopted the existing concepts of nation, adding hand-picked traditional African cultural aspects by themselves. The success depended largely on the personality and rhetorical quality of the head of state and/or personal ruler. The focus of action was set on the pre-colonial period and on the creation of a new African self-consciousness. Ethnic differences, though a strong impact in most of the new states, were ignored for the purpose of internal consolidation. The so-called politics of authenticity (Authenticité) aimed at creating symbolic forms of expression and actions concerning the colonial relics as well as the creation of new national symbols.43 Authenticity meant “the combination of tradition and modernization, the search for an own African path to the creation and strengthening of the nation”.44 It included the strategy of Africanisation, the agreement on a new and hopefully 39 Gardinier 1997: 17. 40 O’Toole 1986: 40. 41 Kalck 1993: xvi. The independent agreement was signed in the name of the French government by the politician and famous writer André Malraux, (First) Minister of Culture in de Gaulle’s second government (O’Toole 1986: 42). 42 Kalck 1992: xxxi. 43 Speitkamp 2005a: 232. 44 Ibid.: 225 (translation by C.A.).

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broadly shared national identity based on autochthonous traditional African values and principles while remaining open to Western conceptions. The concept’s main aim was the presentation of the sovereign African nation state. Alltogether the modern Western ideas of state and nation were closely linked to Pan-African concepts of creating a new but authentic African culture. Besides Authenticity, another impor-tant and similarly structured role model for Pan-Africanisation was the concept of Blackness (Négritude).45 Both concepts were politically open-minded, flexible in their daily use and nationally adaptable.46 Authenticity, Blackness, and Pan-Afri-canisation reflected well-known aspects of Western scepticism about civilisation and modernisation in the last years of the ninetienth century as the ideal of com-munity, solidarity, a sense of family ties and self-help – aspects of life which were lost in the European process of modernisation and industrialisation. Nevertheless, when creating their national symbols, the now independent states strictly drew on Western tradition: a national flag, in our case based on the French tricolour (Tricolore),47 a coat of arms,48 a national anthem,49 national anniversaries and appropriate national emblems such as official stamps and national currency. National emblems are always ambivalent: they underline the (new) identity of the state to the outside using visual state symbols and they legitimate the power, sometimes expanded with the creation of stabilising national myths, to the inside. In doing this, European concepts and techniques of visualisation were successfully mixed with traditional African content (specific colours, animals, etc.).

45 Adelmann 1957; Markovitz 1967 and 1969. 46 Speitkamp 2005a: 230 & 2005b: 544. 47 The flag of the Central African Republic combines the red, white and blue stripes of the French tricolour and the Pan-African colours red, green and yellow (Znamierowski 1999: 124–125; Brožek 2000: 215). For a detailed introduction to national flags as an important element of cultural identity in an international perspective see Häberle 2008. 48 The coat of arms of the Central African Republic consists of a shield in the centre, with two flags on its edges, and a sun rising over the shield, representing the seventeen prefectures and the autonomous city of Bangui. Below and above the shield are banners with the words Zo Kwe Zo, in Sango, the language of the people, “Every human is human”, and Unité – Dignité – Travail, French for unity, dignity and work, a programmatic statement also mentioned in the national anthem. A medal of honour is located below the shield as well. The elephant and the baobab tree represent nature and the economic backbone of the country. The gold star on the map of Africa symbolises the position of the Central African Republic. The red-brown hand was the symbol of the dominant party when the coat of arms was adopted three years after independence in 1963, the three stars representing the Central African Republic’s wealth of diamonds (Brožek 2000: 215). 49 “La Renaissance”, the national anthem of the Central African Republic, was adopted in the year of independence 1960. The lyrics were written in French by Barthélemy Boganda, the first Prime Minister. For national anthems as elements of cultural identity in African constitutions see Häberle 2007: 30–33.


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Symbols are just an offer to establish meaning; they are always open to various forms of interpretation. In the 1970s and 1980s self-(re)presentation and symbolism were centred in the personal ruler: an attempt to overcome breaks, conflicts and split-ups in the recent history of the young states and to demonstrate unity and the will to build up and to push forward national integration via personal symbolism and visualisation.50 The rulers above all wished to secure “their” nation or state. The symbols aimed at integration, including historical aspects but without relating to a special history.51 All in all, symbols and rituals seemed to be replaceable: in spite of all traditional attitudes, only the Western-European arsenal of symbols was able to include different ethnic and social groups in the newly-created states. In the case of African states, political symbolism therefore often has to be characterised as unrelated and ahistorical. 2.4 Personal Rule: Jean-Bédel Bokassa Jean-Bédel Bokassa,52 born 22 February 1921, claimed to be a relative of Barthélemy Boganda, the founder of the Central African Republic, as well as of David Dacko, his predecessor as president. Bokassa had joined the French forces in 1939, served for duty in World War II and Indochina, and was awarded a variety of war medals and military decorations. After leaving the French Army he participated in the creation of the Armed Forces of the Central African Republic and was chosen as Chief of Staff by president Dacko in 1964. In March 1972 Bokassa, who had granted himself the grade of a General in 1967, was proclaimed “President for Life” of the Central African Republic and his MESAN single party by the official party congress. Bokassa appointed himself “Marshal” (20 May 1974) and later “Prime Minister” (2 January 1975).53 Several attempts on Bokassa’s life and unsuccessful coups d’état were launched in the last decade of his reign between 1969 and 1979. In 1976, after a visit by the Libyan Head of State Muammar al-Gaddafi in Bangui, Bokassa announced his conversion to Islam, changing his name to Salah Eddine Ahmed Bou-Kassa. In December, an extraordinary MESAN congress turned the Central African Republic into an empire of a hereditary monarchical parliamentary type. Bokassa, Marshal and President for Life of the now Central African Empire (Empire Centraficain), became Emperor Bokassa. He abandoned the Muslim religion and converted back to 50 Speitkamp 2005b: 548–549, 553. 51 Speitkamp 2005a: 242 & 2005c: 288. 52 For biographical details see Titley 1997; Decalo 1989: 146–167; Kalck 1992: 27–28. Titley’s book, although not in all aspects a scientific biography, makes available an English written narrative of Bokassa’s life and “career” from an ex-army colonel to a self-chosen “Emperor”. Further examples for stories of Bokassa’s life by journalists are Péan (1977) and Chierici (1980). 53 Decalo 1989: 147.

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Catholicism. One year later, on 4 December 1977, Bangui saw an ostentatious coronation ceremony of Bokassa and his wife, the newly announced empress Catherine Dangueade. In January 1979 the Emperor carried out bloody repressions against schoolchildren and students who refused to wear obligatory official uniforms sold in stores belonging to Bokassa’s wife. The imperial guard killed 150 civilians during the “troubles”, the civil disorders.54 In April, Bokassa himself participated in a raid on school-children of between eight and sixteen years of age, about 100 of whom were killed or died in prison, a lot of them because of the bad conditions of imprisonment.55 Owing to repression and despotism in the Central African Republic, French support for Bokassa decreased rapidly. President Giscard d’Estaing ordered the final and most controversial intervention in Africa during his term of office: in “Operation Barracuda” French paratroopers made a sudden assault on Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, in order to dismiss Emperor Bokassa who was on a mission to Tripoli, Libya. In the night from 20/21 September, French soldiers occupied the airport and city of Bangui without encountering resistance.56 Giscard’s motives seemed highly questionable: he and members of his family were accused of having profited from their “special relation” with Bokassa.57 The “warm personal relationship”58 included hunting trips for elephants and presents for Giscard’s mistresses; the latter including a large amount of diamonds. Three days later (24 September 1979) Bokassa found asylum in Côte d’Ivoire. David Dacko proclaimed his downfall and the re-establishment of the Republic of which he again took the presidency. In September 1981 Dacko had to resign and handed his powers to General André Kolingba, head of a Military Committee of National Recovery (Comité militaire de redressement national). This transfer to power became known as the “coup d’état by mutual agreement”.59 On 24 December 1980 Bokassa was sentenced to death in absentia by the Bangui Criminal Court; Félix Houphouët-Boigny, president of the Côte d’Ivoire, refused his extradition. On 12 November 1981 the High Court of Paris held that Bokassa was no longer a French citizen. Two years later (in December 1983) the ex-emperor made a surprising arrival in France. He settled with parts of his family in his Château de Hardricourt near Paris. But, like his idol Napoleon Bonaparte, Bokassa fled France. On 23 October 1986 he returned to the place of his former 54 Kalck 1992: 5, 28. The massacre happened in the middle of the official United Nations “International Year of the Child 1979” (Amnesty International 1980: 72–74). 55 Amnesty International 1981: 124–128; Kalck 1992: 5, 28. For general insights from the victims about the crimes committed by Bokassa, see Baccard 1987. 56 Chipman 1989: 124; Titley 1997: 125–135. 57 McNamara 1989: 167–169, 198. 58 Decalo 1989: 156. 59 Kalck 1993: xxx.


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reign, Bangui, hoping for the support of the ordinary people.60 Instead of regaining power, Bokassa was arrested at the Bangui-Mpoko Airport and court proceedings against him immediately opened. After a trial lasting at least ninety days in six months of process time the former Emperor was sentenced to death on 12 June 1987 but appealed the verdict. On 14 November the Supreme Court of Appeals rejected the appeal, but in February 1988 Bokassa was granted a presidential pardon. Some months later his death penalty was reduced to life imprisonment with hard labour. Shortly after, his penalty was again reduced to 20 years of imprisonment in a military camp. After only a short period of imprisonment a general amnesty freed Bokassa in September 1993 when the Central African Republic returned to democracy under President André Kolingba. Jean-Bédel Bokassa died from the consequences of a heart attack in Bangui on 3 November 1996. So far for the life-story of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, former emperor of the Central African Empire, and not “the only African leader to fall victim of the Lorelei of megalomania”.61

3. Emperor Bokassa – Coronation Ceremony as Ritual Bokassa was able to consolidate and exercise his dictatorship through a variety of pragmatic calculations: influence networks through clientalism and marriage,62 eradication of all governmental institutions as possible support for political opposition, personalisation of all resources of the state, and ad hoc political alliances ranging from the former colonial power France to Libya or China.63 This list contains a bundle of aspects which belong to all totalitarian states in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the typical African “tyrannical variant of dictatorship” like Macias Nguema in Equatorial Africa, Idi Amin in Uganda or Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic.64 All three stand as “prime examples” as well as “caricatures” of the African authoritarian personal ruler.65 Even in our days “the madcap African ruler”66 is an often-used Western stereotype. In the historical reality of the 1970s this dictum is not adequate: watching and reading the ritual of Bokassa’s coronation ceremony to become “Emperor à la 60 Decalo gives an interpretation of Bokassa’s first attempt to get back to power as a Napoleonic-style “return to the throne” (Decalo 1989: 25), alluding to the fact that Napoleon gets back from the exile in St. Helena to Paris (Thompson 2001: 384–404; Willms 2005: 653– 689). 61 McNamara: 1989: 219. 62 Willeke 2007. 63 Titley 1997: ix–xii. 64 Decalo 1989: 1–29. 65 Speitkamp 2007: 414. 66 Titley 1997: 115.

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Napoleon”67 we get closer to finding out that Bokassa is not a caricature of an African despot but merely one of European and colonial rule: the reference to “European pomp” also marks the failure of the European model of a nation state in Africa. As explained above, political and national symbols of the new African states were closely connected to the European model – an arbitrary and alien form of government in Africa with political structures divorcing the Africans from traditional notions of authority and legitimacy. Official celebrations such as Bokassa’s coronation became political ceremonies, in Western Europe widely practised after the French Revolution.68 Napoleon’s coronation was a pure ritual of rule and power.69 In the African case in general and in Bokassa’s empire in particular, people’s parades, presentation of music, official speeches, etc. referred to the European model, enriched with aspects of traditional African folklore and a background of African symbols, but dispensing with precise historical links.70 Charismatic leadership in Weberian terms forms the heart of the personal rule of the despots: a traditionalist patrimonial state held together by the authority of the ruler and the all-out loyalty of the citizenry to his person.71 While, for example, the legitimacy of Haile Selassie’s feudal monarchy in Ethiopia derived from an ancient lineage and was perpetuated through elaborate rituals, most post-colonial African leaders could not rely on an authentic or traditional legitimisation for their personal or autocratic rule that is the centralisation and personalisation of power. Modernisation and traditionalism including authentic identity had to be brought together and usurpers like Jean-Bédel Bokassa had to come “to extremes in appropriating symbols and rituals to make [their] regime[s] respectable”.72 In choosing the French rather than an African model the aim remained the same: the search for legitimacy. Bokassa’s political power was reinforced by his style of heroic leadership, a leader who was virtually impossible to defy. His political power was represented in institutions named in honour of Bokassa, praise in the media, bronze statues, medals, uniforms, and a grandiose collection of (personal) titles.73 Bokassa wanted to outdo the other African leaders in grandeur and rank. When – as usual – a coup d’état brought about the fall of the one and only African Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia in 1974, the way for Bokassa to realise his imperial dream of his “own” Empire was open. Being a long and committed admirer of French military tradition and especially of Napoleon Bonaparte,74 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Decalo 1989: 25. Düding 1988; Hettling & Nolte 1993. Wulf & Zirfaß 2004: 33. Speitkamp 2005a: 235; 2005c: 284. Titley 1997: 208. Ibid.: 209. Ibid.: 210. O’Toole 1986: 53.


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Bokassa did not search for a closer link to African monarchical traditions but to the Western model and a full-scale revival of the Napoleonic Empire in Central Africa.75 Neither indigenous Central African kingdoms nor African kingdoms or empires in the twentieth century included the pomp and style of Napoleon’s coronation in December 1804.76 After naming himself “Marshal” in May 1974 and the promotion of the hereditary monarchical Central African Empire under his rule in December 1976, the year 1977 saw the long-term preparation of Bokassa’s coronation including his returning to the Catholic fold already getting under way in January. This was a switch of no small consequence for an elaborate “traditional” coronation with the Pope presiding. His predecessor Napoleon had been married only through a civil ceremony; the necessary rite of the Catholic Church was performed the afternoon before his coronation.77 In 1976 contacts had been made with the royal courts in Iran, Japan and Morocco to design the outline of a new imperial constitution.78 Like Bokassa, Napoleon also knew a lot about the remote matters of Franconian court behaviour from the times of Charlemagne,79 in his view his “direct” predecessor. The coronation was finally scheduled for 4 December 1977, the first anniversary of the proclamation of the Empire and almost the 173rd anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation in Paris, 2 December 1804. A number of international artists were commissioned to honour Bokassa: aside from portraits of his majesty an “Imperial March” and an “Imperial Waltz” were composed and a coronation ode was written. Until the French Revolution, official court music marked the important link between ritual and music – as a performance in public – ranging from the Te Deum, the Christian praise of god, to secular hymns and national anthems since the early eighteenth century.80 The ode’s twenty quatrains hailed Bokassa as new Emperor and keeper of the classic French or Napoleonic spirit. Two verses went as follows: “The successor of Clovis the Great / Of the heroes of Greece and Gaul / Of Charlemagne and Saint Louis / Of Bonaparte and de Gaulle // It is Bokassa, Caesar Augustus / The most illustrious of the French! / Let us prostrate ourselves before his bust / Let us celebrate everywhere his favours.”81 Already in these words of praise we can see the ultimate timeline of the coronation ritual. While Napoleon needed a cult of Charlemagne, that is a forced identification or equation of the Napoleonic Empire

75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Titley 1997: 83. O’Toole 1983: 97. Thompson 2001: 213–214; Willms 2005: 391–392. Titley 1997: 84. Willms 2005: 382. Kusch-Arnhold & Glowotz 2008: 48. Titley 1997: 89. Translation by Brian Titley, based on Bokassa’s abandoned 1985 autobiography “Ma vérité” (Titley 1997: 239–242).

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with the empire of the occident,82 Bokassa’s list of ancestors included all important European political rulers since the times of the Roman Empire: a sound claim to the European tradition of rule and power. The whole insignia and the memorable items of the coronation including an antique coach, the throne, the crown and the costumes of the emperor and his empress Catherine were produced by then famous French craftsmen.83 3.1 Watching the Ritual: Bangui, 4 December 1977 Africans as well as Europeans have been and are keen on information and gossip about the personal lives of the former African despots. These “interests” range from the number of wives and children,84 their favoured sport and hunting manners, to their enormous riches and other personal aspects of autocratic rule. Stories about the “career” of famous twentieth-century dictators like Jean-Bédel Bokassa are an emerging subject in the field of historically inspired non-fiction books.85 As an unpleasant result, some dictators were stylised into national cult figures, instead of being demystified by the now democratic press in African countries, as in the Central African Republic and Uganda.86 The coronation has no great prominence in the written histories of the Central African Republic. Nevertheless it is mentioned in literature and a few “thick descriptions”87 exist. Newspaper articles, although few in number, often concern the ludicrous events such as the crowning of the emperor while furthermore presenting a mostly exaggerated and simplistic view of the Central African Republic. The evidence we have of Bokassa’s coronation as ritual includes reports by journalists, pictures taken by photographers from the big news agencies, black and white as well as colour film sequences from French news channels, and years later a film documentary by German writer-director Werner Herzog.88 These reports of the coronation are highly subjective, and from them we can only hint at some highlighted aspects of the ritual performance that is the coronation ceremony:89 As was 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Willms 2005: 381. Harmon 1980: 36; Titley 1997: 90–91. Weyler 2007; Willeke 2007. Orizio 2003: 33–58; York 2005: 131–137. Schober 2008: 70, 129–134. Geertz 1973. Examples of full-scale articles of the coronation ceremony by Crabb 1978; Harmon 1980; for colour photographs of Bokassa’s clothing see the article “Bokassa reçoit Paris Match”, Paris Match 11.11.1977, 54–59; Werner Herzog, Echoes from a Sombre Empire – Bokassa. Germany 1990, SERA-/Werner Herzog-Productions, 93 minutes. For a sample of French TVNews contributions on Bokassa (including his coronation) see http://www.ina.fr/archives pourtous/index.php?full=bokassa&action=ft&x=0&y=0 (18.11.2009). 89 Kalck 1993: xiv. Because of restrictions due to copyright and the fact that most of the sources are difficult to access, only a smaller amount of the existing audio-visual material was


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seen, Bokassa’s adoration of pomp and splendour matched perfectly his desire to imitate Napoleon Bonaparte. Most foreign journalists and observers interpreted it as an attempt to create a spectacle for his French financiers from the economic and political establishment, among them the Prime Minister and Bokassa’s “dear relative” Valéry Giscard d’Estaing who was represented by Robert Galley, minister of cooperation, and René Journiac, presidential adviser on African affairs.90 Nevertheless, the coronation took place without the appearance and sympathy of European heads of state or even members of the European aristocracy. Interestingly, the African countries too were generally represented “only” by their ambassadors. Even close friends of Bokassa like Sese Seko Mobutu (Zaire), Omar Bongo (Gabon), and Idi Amin (Uganda) excused themselves from the festivities. In 1930 all major powers had sent delegations of higher rank or even members of royal families to the coronation of Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa.91 Bokassa wanted to recreate the scenery of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in 1804, when Pope Pius VII “assisted” Napoleon’s coronation to emperor qua presence, but without taking part himself,92 in Bangui cathedral which was also named Notre-Dame.93 The main actors’ motives in both historical situations were the same: a papal coronation should give the new throne prestige at home and abroad. “Emperor of the French” as well as “Emperor of the Central Africans” had been hitherto no more than titles. But they would become “reality” when the head of the Catholic or Universal Church blessed the new empires through a papal coronation. The unction to “Emperor of the French”94 – for Napoleon as for his predecessor Charlemagne – gave the divine rights of kings to the emperor. It actually was a question of social control: the ritual was a symbol of power, the performance an act of exaltation. The unction in this sense was a vital sign indicating an equal position in the circle of European sovereigns.95 The ancient European Emperors – in contrast to the Kings – were crowned by the Pope. Their power was by gratia Dei, by the grace of God, the binding effects depending on the consecration and the

90

91 92 93 94 95

used for writing this paper. Most of the following observations, unless otherwise stated, are based on the description of the coronation by Titley 1997: 82–98. Harmon 1980: 34. “Even in cases where pro-French leaders were overthrown by military coups d’état during the decade of the 1960s, the guiding principle of French involvement was the willingness of a particular leader to support French foreign policy objectives.” (Schraeder 2007: 159) France had delivered weapons and in return was allowed to mine uranium for her nuclear Force de Frappe. In politics, Bokassa returned again and again to (t)his “Francophile standard” (O’Toole 1986: 133). For the scandal concerning the French “misuse” of diamonds see Titley 1997: 141–144. Orizio 2003: 35. Thompson 2001: 210–216; Willms 2005: 373–399. Titley 1997: 5. Willms 2005: 380. Willms 2005: 382–383.

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unction as central acts of the coronation.96 Besides the unction the symbols of power and the official robes were constituents of the ceremony. During the coronation ritual the pre-eminence of the duty, the magnitude of the tradition, and the entity of the idol were “transferred” to the ruler. The coronation constituted the “candidate” as Emperor, the necessary social agreement was formed via public appearance. The coronation itself had to be embedded in the liturgy, but already in 1804 neither the Roman Pontificate nor the old French rite used for the coronations at Reims were applicable for Napoleon’s coronation. The act itself had no real precedent, so a new Order of Coronation was drawn up and finally accepted by Pope Pius VII.97 In 1977 Pope Paul IV harshly refused to take part in a “burlesque and expensive comedy of a coronation”.98 Since the cathedral was not needed, the coronation took place at the “Palais des Sports Jean-Bédel Bokassa”, a basketball stadium built as a present by the Yugoslav government and not quite representing the crème de la crème of socialist architecture.99 Following a strict protocol – “the smallest details of which were copied from that of Napoleon”100 – the imperial cortège arrived at the stadium at 10:15 a.m. in an antique coach pulled by eight imported Anglo-Normand horses and escorted by a few dozen Hussars.101 The guests were brought in 60 new Mercedes-Benz limousines, commonly known insignia of today’s state visits and, like the golden coaches in early modern times, vital signs of political power.102 Napoleon’s coronation processions, in comparison, had involved “thirty or forty new coaches”.103 Guards in Napoleonic military uniforms, carrying the national flag and the imperial standard were followed by crown prince Jean-Bédel Jr. in his white naval uniform and empress Catherine in a shimmering gold lamé dress, a wreath of laurel leaves on her head. A French marine band played the “Imperial March” and Bokassa himself appeared in the stadium in a pearl-decorated coronation toga with a sash in the national colours (blue, white, green, yellow and red), also a wreath of laurel leaves on his head. The toga was an exact duplicate of the uniform of Napoleon’s General Michel Ney, Duke d’Elchingen, Prince de la Moskova.104 Then Bokassa ascended his throne which had the form of a massive eagle sitting upright with its wings outstretched. The throne was 3.5 metres high and 4.5 metres wide, made of gold-plated bronze, and weighed approximately 2 tons. Differing measurements in 96 97 98 99 100 101

Götzmann 2008: 22. Thompson 2001: 214; Willms 2005: 383–389. Kalck 1993: 5. Titley 1997: 92–93. Kalck 1993: 5. O’Toole 1983: 98 mentions 14 Anglo-Normand horses as pairs of horses for the carriage, Harmon 1980: 36 witnesses “only” six Anglo-Normand horses. 102 Meyer 2007: 204; Meyer 1992 & 2001. 103 Thompson 2001: 213. 104 Harmon 1980: 36.


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the literature are 3.3 by 4.2 metres. The bird’s belly, the seat, was coated with red velvet. Meanwhile functionaries had prepared the coronation paraphernalia. The Napoleonic coronation, a “wild” copy of Carolingian symbolism, included the regalia of a sabre or sword, sceptre, imperial orb, coronation cloak, crown and the official oath.105 The first insignia of an emperor, the sword, was given to Bokassa followed by the sceptre, a two-metre long ebony staff encrusted with diamonds.106 Then he put a nine-metre long crimson velvet cloak trimmed with white ermine fur around his shoulders. Finally, Bokassa removed the laurel wreath and planted the crown firmly on his own head – in the same way as his predecessor Napoleon Bonaparte but not officially anointed by the Pope or the Church. The crown was of traditional design with a heavy gold frame encrusted with diamonds resting on an ermine headband and with a golden eagle with outstretched wings sitting on a blue orb representing the earth on top. A salute followed, the audience politely applauded and the new Emperor’s oath to the nation was spoken, before the procedure turned to Empress Catherine, who was crowned on her knees. Photographs recording the coronation of the empress are reminiscent of “Le Sacre”, Louis David’s painting of Napoleon’s coronation in the Louvre, with its arranged painting position in Notre Dame showing the main figures of the ceremony in profile.107 As in Napoleon’s case, the coronation of the Empress was of subordinate interest, because her status was already fixed by marriage to the Emperor.108 All in all, the ceremony lasted about an hour. Now, in full imperial regalia, the festival parade left the stadium, later to be blessed by Archbishop Monsignor Joachim Ndayen in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Bangui. The “picture” of the coronation day was rounded off by a reception for the most prominent guests, a dinner in the evening and a firework display after the end of the meal. The coronation costed an estimated $US 22 million109 and was widely condemned as extravagant self-glorification, although most of the sum was covered by the French state.110

105 Thompson 2001: 213. 106 A cane “rich in ornaments with a silver clutch” as an archaic symbol of traditional African power is also mentioned in connection with the Sudanese “president” and military leader Omar al-Bashir (Kreye 2007: 11). 107 Lévêque 1989: 176–177; Thompson 2001: 214–216. The exact title of the painting is: “Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804”. 108 Götzmann 2008: 22. 109 The sum of $US 30 million is mentioned by Decalo 1989: 160. 110 Titley 1997: 213–214.

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3.2 Reading the Ritual: Jean-Bédel Bokassa as Successor to Napoleon If we describe a public event such as the coronation of Bokassa as a ritual we need to define the criteria for doing so. Following a broader approach by Peter Burke, a ritual should “refer to activities as more or less ritualised (more or less stereotyped, more or less symbolic) rather than to describe ritual as a separate class of action.”111 Rituals thus should be seen and read in terms of more or less ritualised practices. Rituals are cultural and social constructions and like all historical phenomena changeable and dynamic.112 Rituals are able to support the formation of collective temporal cohesion between history, present and future.113 They are highlighted from everyday life and presented for the audience like a play on an open stage. First of all the coronation of Bokassa should be read as an invention of tradition, as traditional African coronations refer to completely different backgrounds. The social aspects range from the strengthening of the Central African identity to the sanctification of Bokassa himself and the protection and legalisation of his power. In the case of Bokassa’s coronation it seems justified to speak of an act of “recycling”114 of an older, that is Napoleonic ritual. Nevertheless, Bokassa attributes new and traditional African elements to his ritual. One concession to traditional African practice was for example made in the choice of the title of the new emperor. Instead of using the European “Jean” or “Jean-Bédel” he used the African “Bokassa” as imperial title.115 The rule and the imperial regalia like the laurel wreath have their roots in ancient Rome: laurel wreaths were worn by Roman consuls as symbols of a gift from the gods. The Napoleonic style of the ritual includes the aspects of modernisation and transfer of the ritual in time and space: from the French capital of Paris 1804 to the Central African capital of Bangui 1977. The Franconian background of Napoleon’s coronation as a successor to Charlemagne will not be discussed in detail here. But it is worth mentioning that Bokassa, as the successor of Napoleon Bonaparte, saw himself as an African personal dictator in one line with Charlemagne and the Roman Empire. The coronation as an activity to “show power” is ritualised to a degree that it differentiates itself from other acts of political everyday life. The sensus historicus, i.e. the literal meaning of the coronation, refers to the Napoleonic era, the sensus figuralis, i.e. the symbolic meaning, refers to the present, the Central African Republic in the 1970s. Rituals have two perspectives, an internal and an external one. The first reflects the participants of the ritual, the latter the ones who do not 111 112 113 114 115

Burke 2004: 115. Dücker 2007: 1. Wulf & Zirfaß 2004: 7–8; Wulf 2007: 182. Chaniotis 2004. O’Toole 1983: 97.


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participate, but who are eager to “understand” the ritual. The coronation includes something like an assertion of continuity, but (only) in the wider context of French politics. The institutional authority of the emperor as personal ruler depends not at all on mutual agreement between the ruler and the ruled but on the toleration by the French government. If through rituals political rulers try to claim their right to reign, to gain a new basis of political loyalty or to uphold their often declining authority,116 in the case of Bokassa the third aspect seems to be dominant. In close context to the guiding theme of “Usurping Rituals”, in (more) traditional societies like the Central African Republic of the 1970s, rituals are necessary to cover the social crisis in a transforming society and not to serve as demonstration of the transcendence and legitimisation of power.117 Although the ritual was performed according to the given rules, its impact was rather limited: the legalisation of personal rule was achieved only through pragmatic aspects. So the functional side of the ritual succeeded, while the semantic side of Bokassa’s coronation bore a sea of at least potential misunderstandings: for European as well as for African observers and participants. These are the “negative” side effects of the coronation as ritual: “Ritualization cannot turn a group of individuals into a community if they have no other relationship or interests in common, nor can it turn the exercise of pure physical compulsion into participatory communality.”118 Bokassa’s Napoleonic attempts to legitimise his authority had an inherent weakness. Neither were they a living part of the average Central African world-view119 nor did they have much in common with the contemporary political rituals in Western Europe, i.e. France, the second addressee of the coronation.

4. Conclusion A line of power, even when it is usurped, needs some kind of symbolic practices, or in other words, political representation depends on a public mise-en-scène, aiming at legitimacy and continuity.120 The twentieth-century antagonism between democracy and dictatorship resumes the need for political representation by public staging but also improves the ambiguity of political rituals and their loss of meaning.121 In dictatorships political rituals convey apparent unity and exclusiveness. In comparison with democratic states they represent different values and political modes: the representation of power without a corresponding process of decision-making. Order is achieved by pure representation of power and the gap 116 117 118 119 120 121

Kertzer 1988; 1–14, 92–101. Meyer 2007: 210–211. Bell 1992: 222. O’Toole 1983: 97. Soeffner & Tänzler 2002. Thamer 2008: 64.

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between assigned claim and reality has to be closed again and again. To sum it up: in the twentieth century rituals are no longer identical to rule but are a strategy of visualisation of political power.122 In Europe, before the French revolution, the symbolic language of rituals is not only verbal, the basic elements or the basic symbolic vocabulary of the ritual – consisting of gestures, objects and common formulas – establish definiteness.123 Already the transformation of the meaning of the coronation ritual into the Napoleonic era was some kind of a balancing act; its binding effects in the Central African Republic seem to be even more doubtful. One might say that the Napoleonic symbolism used for the coronation lacked authenticity or clear links to African traditional values. It was thus consistent within the frame of African-European interaction which I presented above by refering to the Western European model of the national state. Cultural and institutional aspects symbolising status and prestige were adapted in both cases. Both Napoleon’s and Bokassa’s coronations were at least theatrical triumphs. Both rulers knew, as everybody else knew, that their power rested on power and nothing else. The appointment of Bokassa, the same as Napoleon, was not carried out because of the vacant position of the ruler, but for the wish to give their personal rule legitimacy and continuance. Audience and spectators had accepted the anachronistic mixture of elements from the Roman and the Carolingian Empire (Napoleon) or the Napoleonic Empire and several traditional African elements (Bokassa). On the grounds of politically necessary splits between revolution and modernity and the conflicting expectations both of citizens and elites, Napoleon’s coronation had referred partly to the old monarchical coronation ritual and partly to modified elements of the representation of the French revolution such as the republican oath.124 By symbolic overload and “magical” stage settings in the course of the French revolution rituals degenerated to a “hullabaloo of power”.125 In their “need” for representation and visualisation of the new political system and their wish to transfer the sacral status and to “invent” tradition,126 neither Napoleon in his aim to demonstrate a break with the French Ancien Régime, nor Bokassa as his copyist, were able to avoid this tendency. The attempts to found an imperial dynasty were illusory in the ninetienth and more than ever in the twentieth century. In the case of Bokassa it has even been argued that “since Centrafique’s political institutions and practices were largely borrowed from France, […] a Bonapartist monarchy was no less authentic than a republic.”127 The coronation ritual in Bangui in December 1977 was a well-meant 122 123 124 125 126 127

Münkler 1995. Althoff & Stollberg-Rillinger 2008: 18. Thamer 2008: 64. Schröer 2008: 216–217 (translation by C.A.). Ibid.: 217. O’Toole 1983: 105.


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performance but to some extent out of fashion; an interesting object for historians or ritual studies, but a failure in everyday life because of the personal idiosyncrasy of the main character and a wider misunderstanding of the rituals-addressees relations.

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Decalo, Samuel 1985. “African Personal Dictatorships”. The Journal of Modern African Studies 23: 209–237. — 1989. Psychoses of Power. African Personal Dictatorships. Boulder, London: Westview Press. — 19902. Coups and Army Rule in Africa. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Dücker, Burckhard 2007. Rituale. Formen – Funktionen – Geschichte. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler. Düding, Dieter & Peter Friedemann & Paul Münch (eds.) 1988. Öffentliche Festkultur. Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Duverger, Maurice 1961. De la dictature. Paris: Julliard. Edelmann, Murray 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. — 1971. Politics as Symbolic Action. Mass Arousal and Quiescence. Chicago: Markham. Elsenhans, Hartmut 1974. Frankreichs Algerienkrieg 1954–1962. Entkolonialisierungsversuch einer kapitalistischen Metropole. Zum Zusammenbruch der Kolonialreiche. Munich: Hanser. Ford, Guy Stanton (ed.) 1935. Dictatorship in the Modern World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Friedrich, Carl-Joachim & Zbigniew Brzeszinski 1956. Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gardinier, David E. 1997. “The Historical Origins of Francophone Africa”. In: John F. Clark & David E. Gardinier (eds.). Political Reform in Francophone Africa. Boulder, Oxford: Westview Press: 9–22. Geertz, Clifford 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”. In: Clifford Geertz. The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books: 3–30. Gordon, Donald L. 2007. “African Politics”. In: April A. Gordon & Donald L. Gordon (eds.). Understanding Contemporary Africa. Boulder, London: Rienner: 57–107. Götzmann, Jutta 2008. “Weihen – Salben – Krönen. Die vormoderne Kaiserkrönung und ihre Imagination”. In: Jutta Götzmann et al. (eds.). Spektakel der Macht. Rituale im Alten Europa 800–1800. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: 21– 25. Grimes, Ronald L. (ed.) 1995. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. (Revised edition). Häberle, Peter 2007. Nationalhymnen als kulturelle Identitätselemente des Verfassungsstaates. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot (Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen und Reden zur Philosophie, Politik und Geistesgeschichte 44). — 2008. Nationalflaggen. Bürgerdemokratie, Identitätselemente und internationale Erkennungssymbole. Berlin: Dunker & Humblot (Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen und Reden zur Philosophie, Politik und Geistesgeschichte 49 ).

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Harmon, Jeff B. 1980. “His Former Majesty, Bokassa”. Harpers Magazine, may 1980: 34–39. Hettling, Manfred & Paul Nolte (eds.) 1993. Bürgerliche Feste. Symbolische Formen politischen Handelns im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hobsbawm, Eric J. & Terence Ranger (eds.) 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1994. Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1941–1991. London: Joseph. Jackson, Robert H. & Carl G. Rosberg 1982. Personal Rule in Black Africa: Prince, Autocrat, Prophet, Tyrant. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press. Kalck, Pierre 19922. Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic. Metuchen, London: Scarecrow Press (African Historical Dictionaries 51). — 1993. Central African Republic. Oxford et al.: Clio Press (World Bibliographical Series 152). Kertzer, David I. 1988. Ritual, Politics and Power. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Kirk-Green, Anthony & Daniel Bach 1995. State and Society in Francophone Africa since Independence. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Kreye, Adrian 2007. “Ein Besuch beim General”. Süddeutsche Zeitung 17.7.2007: 11. Kusch-Arnhold, Britta & Daniel Glowotz 2008. “Vormoderne Ritualität in den bildenden Künsten und in der Musik”. In: Jutta Götzmann et al. (eds.). Spektakel der Macht. Rituale im Alten Europa 800–1800. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: 45–49. Le Vine, Victor T. 2004. Politics in Francophone Africa: The States of West and Equatorial Africa. Boulder: Rienner. Lee, Stephen J. 20083. European Dictatorships, 1918–1945. London: Routledge. Lefort, Claude 1986. The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy and Totalitarianism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lévêque, Jean-Jacques 1989. La vie et l’œuvre de Jaques-Louis David. Paris: ACR Édition. Manning, Patrick 1988. Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markovitz, Irving L. 1967. Léopold Sédar Senghor. A Case Study of Senegalese Ideology. Berkeley: University of California. (Ph.D. Dissertation). — 1969. Léopold Sédar Senghor and the Politics of Négritude. London, New York: Atheneum. McNamara, Francis Terry 1989. France in Black Africa. Washington D.C.: National Defense University Press. Meyer, Thomas 1992. Die Inszenierung des Scheins. Voraussetzungen und Folgen symbolischer Politik. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. — 2001. Mediokratie. Die Kolonisierung der Politik durch das Mediensystem. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.


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Section IV: State and Ritual in India Edited by Hermann Kulke and Uwe Skoda

Hermann Kulke

Ritual Sovereignty and Ritual Policy Some Historiographic Reflections The year 1980 witnessed the publication of the two seminal books by Burton Stein on the Segmentary State in medieval South India and by Clifford Geertz on the Theatre State in nineteenth-century Bali.1 Whereas in previous decades the debates on rituals and the state in India and “Indianized” Southeast Asia had been dominated by the endeavour to define royal cults and “ancient Indian kingship from the religious point of view”, as known from the title of J. Gonda’s famous monograph,2 the concepts of the segmentary and theatre states contain (at least partly) radically new definitions of the nature and function of royal rituals. Stein invented and defined “ritual sovereignty”, a kind of state ideology of the Great Kings (maharaja) of South India, as fundamentally different from “actual political control” exercised by numerous Little Kings, and Geertz reduced the pre-colonial kingdoms of Bali to an arena for the performance of royally sponsored mass rituals. In view of the sometimes heated debates on these concepts, the present panel “Rituals and the State in India” and its contributions attempt a re-evaluation of the nature of kingly rituals on the “imperial” as well as local level and their relationship with state formation and the state in India. My introductory historiographic reflections about ritual sovereignty and ritual policy are primarily a critical evaluation of the definition of state rituals in Geertz’s theatre state and in particular of Stein’s concept of ritual sovereignty and its important modifications. The issue at stake is the question whether royal rituals are mere cultural-ideological performances or also a means of an intended ritual policy to legitimise and enhance political control and power.

The Theatre State and its Critics After Robert Heine-Geldern’s cosmological concepts in his erstwhile “hegemonic” article on state and kingship in Southeast Asia,3 Clifford Geertz’s concept of the 1 Stein 1980. 2 Gonda 1966. See also Heine-Geldern 1942; Varma 1954; Heesterman 1957 and Dumont 1970. 3 Heine-Geldern 1942.

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theatre state in Bali has become, next only to Stanley Tambiah’s “galactic polity” of Theravada Buddhist Thailand,4 the most famous attempt to define the function and the significance of rituals in Southeast Asia’s processes of state formation.5 The nature of rituals and ceremonies in the theatre state is best introduced by Geertz himself: “The expressive nature of the Balinese state was apparent through the whole of its known history, for it was always pointed not toward tyranny, whose systematic concentration of power it was incompetent to effect, and not even very methodological toward government, which it pursued indifferently and hesitantly, but rather toward spectacle, toward ceremony, toward public dramatization of the ruling obsessions of Balinese culture: social inequality and status pride. It was a theatre state in which the kings and princes were the impresarios, the priests the directors, and the peasants the cast, stage crew, and audience. The stupendous cremations, tooth filings, temple dedications, pilgrimages, and blood sacrifices, mobilizing hundreds or even thousands of people and great quantities of wealth, were not means of political ends: they were the ends themselves, they were what the state was for. Court ceremonialism was the driving force of court politics; and mass ritual was not a device to shore up the state, but rather the state, even in its final gasp, was a device for the enactment of mass ritual. Power served pomp, not pomp power.”6 In continuation of this often quoted passage one may add: “The assiduous ritualism of court culture was not merely the drapery of political order, but its substance”7 and “it was the king’s cult that created him, raised him from lord to icon”8. Geertz’s Theatre State (or often referred to as Negara) “evoked an enormous flood of reaction and further investigation”.9 In view of the fact that Geertz is widely acknowledged as the internationally most influential anthropologist of his time and that he himself regards his Theatre State as one of his most important monographs, it is astonishing that scholars of Southeast Asian and in particular Balinese

4 Tambiah 1976. 5 Other, equally famous models of state formation and the state in pre-colonial Southeast Asia refer to rituals and ritual sovereignty only in limited degree. E.g. K. Wittfogel’s controversial Oriental Despotism (Wittfogel 1957) or O.W. Wolters’s presently most influential concept of mandala states (Wolters 1982); Wheatley 1983; and, more recently, particularly Manguin 2002. 6 Geertz 1980: 13. 7 Ibid.: 32. 8 Ibid.: 131, my emphasis. 9 Hauser-Schäublin 2003: 154.

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studies reacted mostly critically to it. Henk Schulte Nordholt, the author of several important contributions to related Balinese studies,11 pointed out in one of its earliest reviews, “that it is Geertz’s over-fertile imagination which has created the ‘classical’ Balinese state to which he applies his theatre metaphor, and not the Balinese”.12 His conclusion has, as will be shown, also some bearing on Stein’s concept of ritual sovereignty: “The distinction between ‘power’ and ‘pomp’ is largely a false one. In the Balinese state pomp was an essential part of royal power, but not the opposite of it”.13 The major tone of the many other reviews which followed is that Geertz’s concept depoliticises what is essentially a political institution. It is “essentially ahistorical or at least non-processural” and makes the Balinese state “more exotic, more extraordinary and more other than the evidence warrants”.14 Burkhard Schnepel therefore concludes that it “offers little scope for the analysis of political conflicts”,15 which, however, are well documented between Bali’s once flourishing nine “theatre states”. In her comprehensive review article on theories of state formation in early maritime Southeast Asia Jan Wisseman Christie points out that Geertz’s model “moves even a step beyond that of the ‘segmentary state’ in suggesting that the ruler’s hegemony was of ritual nature even in the core of the state.” And although she admits that Geertz’s concept of the theatre state “may be accurate to a degree in describing some Balinese polities at the end of their beleaguered careers, there is no reason to believe that it provides more than a distorted and blurred image of a functioning negara of earlier periods”.16 Her statement gains in significance as Geertz regards his theatre state model as “a sort of sociological blueprint” not only the nineteenthcentury Bali, but also for the “classical Southeast Asian Indic states of the fifth to fifteenth centuries”.17 10 “Geertz is arguably the most influential anthropologist of his generation and inarguably the most influential in other disciplines and among specialists other than Indonesia. [...] Ironically Negara, the apotheosis of his thinking on politics and history, and in his own view one of his most important works (Mark Mosko, personal communication), has remained something of an enigma, rarely referred to even by historians or political scientists. Among anthropologists, however, and especially among specialists in South East Asia, it did not go unnoticed, but reactions were mixed, combining admiration for its scope and ambition with scepticism about its claims” (MacRae 2005: 394). 11 Schulte Nordholt 1991, 1996. 12 Schulte Nordholt 1981: 473. 13 Ibid.: 476. 14 MacRae 2005: 394f. 15 Schnepel 2002: 76. 16 Wisseman Christie 1995: 240. In his study of Negara Ubud, today a centre of tourism and Balinese art, Graeme MacRae remarks “he [Geertz] was largely wrong about pre-colonial Bali, but, ironically and presciently, his model makes increasing sense in early twenty-first century Bali.”(MacRae 2005: 393) 17 Geertz 1980: 10.

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The Relevance of Balinese Studies for Rituals and the State in India This is not the place to refer in greater detail to “the enormous flood of reaction and further investigation” evoked by Geertz, particularly as that pertains to a large extent to important issues in the context of Balinese studies, e.g. the debate on local or kingly management and control of agricultural irrigation which, however, are only of little relevance for rituals and the state in India.18 Suffice it therefore to refer briefly to the results of two of the investigations which were conducted in the wake of Geertz’s theatre state and which may have some bearing on the following deliberations about Stein’s segmentary state in India. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin introduces her paper “The Precolonial Balinese State Reconsidered” with the statement that by critically examining the basis for the construction of hegemonic theories of the pre-colonial Balinese state, “I will outline another state whose formation is based on the construction of ‘localities’”.19 Her examination of Geertz’s model and her own research in Bali led her to the view “that temple and ritual networks creating a series of purposeful, fixed in time, cyclically repeating migrations to different sites within a large area were a fundamental principle of organization of the pre-colonial Balinese state and thus of royal supremacy. [...] It was the regular repetition of the creation of localities that brought people from formerly otherwise unrelated neighbourhoods together on arranged pilgrimage routes that produced the particular form of the Balinese state. The convergence of thousands of people at temples aroused a feeling of social closeness and sense of community that was vital for the constitution of an overarching community”.20 Moreover, we are told that “temples were political places par excellence in which the prestige and claims to power were negotiated again and again”.21 In her quest to establish locality and its identity, based on pilgrimage and temples, as a basis of the Balinese state, she refers several times to Appadurai and his “locality concept”22 and to the segmentary model of Southall,23 both of whom we shall soon meet again as chief witnesses of Stein’s segmentary model. But it is astonishing that she does not refer at all to Stein and his South Indian model of the segmentary state. Especially after its modification in the context of late medieval Vijayanagara, it might be nearer to her locality-based outline of the Balinese state than 18 “The king played a central role in rituals at certain places, especially those most closely connected with irrigation agriculture.” (Hauser-Schäublin 2003: 154) 19 Hauser-Schäublin 2003: 154. 20 Ibid.: 156f. 21 Ibid.: 169. 22 Appadurai 1996. 23 Southall 1956.


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Southall’s African prototype. This can be surmised from her writing on the networks of temples and royal seats that constitute the structure of the Balinese state. “In the case of the Sea Temple of Sakenan and the Crater Lake Temple [which figure prominently in her research] the king’s palace formed the head of a hierarchical-segmentary and functionally structured system of temples that were sometimes far from each other, all integrated into a huge ritual cycle that ended at the royal temple or seat. The regional temples were linked with powerful clans and members of the elite that participated in the main ritual in the royal temple as long as they accepted the sovereignty of the king. The overarching order of the state and the integration into it of hierarchical segments of differing social status were staged by means of ritual performances”.24 Finally, it may be mentioned that in his critical appraisal of Geertz’s theatre state, MacRae suggests “a more dynamic model based on Bourdieu’s metaphor of material and symbolic capital”.25 Even if one does not, as MacRae points out, accept the reduction of Bourdieu’s metaphor to material and its implicit materialism, what matters to him is Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of different kinds of social power which can be converted and re-converted into each other, or, in Bourdieu’s words, “the indifferentiatedness of economic and symbolic capital [and] their perfect interconvertibility.” What matters for us is that MacRae is certainly right when he regards Bourdieu’s metaphor as a “reminder of the dynamic relationship between the material and symbolic dimensions of such institutions as negaras”26 and, by implication, the ritual policy of medieval Indian rulers. But to my knowledge Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital has not yet become an agenda in the discourse on the Indian state, especially of the pre-colonial period.

The Segmentary State and Ritual Sovereignty Burton Stein’s concept of ritual sovereignty is of much greater significance for our debate than Geertz’s theatre state as it refers directly to the state in India and raises several relevant issues of this panel. It is derived from Aidan Southall’s anthropological study of the Alur society in eastern Africa27 which Stein summarised as follows: “In a segmentary state sovereignty is dual. It consists of actual political sovereignty, or control, and what Southall terms ‘ritual hegemony’ or ‘ritual sovereignty’”.28 Stein’s conceptualisation of his Indian segmentary state model and its 24 25 26 27 28

Hauser-Schäublin 2003: 168 MacRae 2005: 393. Ibid.: 409. Southall 1956. Stein 1980: 274.

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inherent ritual sovereignty evolved gradually over three decades. It was first presented in 1973 as a paper at a conference at Duke University which was published in 1977, followed by his magnum opus Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India in 1980. Whereas these early studies focus primarily on the Chola state,29 the realm of the segmentary state was chronologically further extended to Vijayanagara in his volume of the New Cambridge History of India.30 The segmentary state became, next only to Indian Feudalism, the most important but also most controversial theory of the early medieval Indian state.31 Stein “reconsidered” it several times and, as will be seen, modified it considerably.32 Of particular relevance in the context of our panel is his already mentioned differentiation between two kinds of sovereignty. As pointed out by Ronald Inden, Stein distinguishes between ritual sovereignty as a loose and custodial hegemony exercised by the king at the top of the pyramidal segmentary structure on the one hand, and political sovereignty, consisting of the direct rule or control exercised by local authorities and little kings in their immediate localities on the other.33 Stein regards the several hundreds of autonomous and highly developed nuclear areas (nādu) in the river basins as seats of actual political power and as the central element of the South Indian Chola state, which therefore “may be best described as a multi-centred system”.34 In their central dynastic core area, the Cholas exercised an uncontested monopoly of authority and power, based on a fairly well developed administration which, however, faded off gradually into mere ritual sovereignty in its intermediate zones and periphery. The ritual sovereignty of the Cholas was based on the royal Siva cult as “the overarching ideological element which makes these units segments of a whole”.35 The thousands of copper-plate and stone inscriptions of the Cholas, which conventional historians conceive as manifestations of actual political control, had primarily the function of distributing the standardised message of their great kingship to all places of the realm. They have to be taken as evidence of ritual sovereignty rather than actual political control, a difference that, according to Stein, is fundamental. The persons who were distributing the royal message “were involved in the ritual sovereignty which converted a congeries of local political systems into a segmentary state” (Stein 1977: 16). In 1985 Stein even went a step further when he argued that “the Chola state existed as a

29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Stein 1969, 1977, 1980. Stein 1989. Kulke 1995b. Stein 1985a, 1989, 1995 [1989]. Inden 1978: 28; Stein 1980: 274 Stein 1969: 180. Stein 1977: 18.


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state only as the hundreds of the nādus of its realm recognized the overlordship, the ritual sovereignty, of Chola kings”.36 On the one hand, Stein’s theory was praised as an appropriate “alternative model to the unitary state model”37 and as “an immensely powerful deconstructive tool” against conventional models38 which is “far more accurate than the older ‘imperial’ one developed by Nilakanta Sastri”.39 On the other hand, Stein has been strongly criticised by historians of South India for diminishing drastically the administrative control and power of the Chola state even during its “imperial phase” in the eleventh century.40 Thus, for instance, Y. Subbarayalu observes that in the century from the middle of Rajaraja I’s reign about A.D. 1000 through to the reign of Kulottunga I there is a disappearance of chiefly troops and that “inscriptions are bewilderingly silent about the chiefs who were, it seems, replaced by [Chola] officials”.41 K.R. Hall, too, detects during this period “a move toward centralization”42 and J. Heitzman points out that “more ‘segmentary’ or ‘feudal’ political organizations succumbed to royal dominance”.43 In 1983 B.D. Chattopadhyaya took up the issue in the broader context of early medieval India. He criticised the idea that the concept of ritual sovereignty defines the state as a “ritual space” or “state sans politics”, relegating different foci of power to the periphery instead of analysing their transformation into vital components of the political structure of an “integrative polity”.44 And R.S. Sharma, in defence of his concept of Indian Feudalism, ascertains that “the myth of the ritual sovereignty of the Coḷas as distinct from actual political authority exercised by its different local centres (segments) of power was exploded by several scholars. [...] The attempt to project the ‘segmentary’ as a model for the early Indian state and society has proved to be abortive”.45 More recently R. Thapar pointed out that “the changes that led to the consolidation of power of the Chola state were reflected in ways not conforming to the segmentary state, such as in official titles especially at the higher levels of administration, the tendency to reorganize administrative units territorially, standardization of taxation, and the gradual replacement of chiefs by high-status officers”46. In his more 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Stein 1985a: 394. Spencer 1983: 7. Dirks 1987: 403. Shulman 1985: 19. Kulke 1982, 1995b. Subbarayalu 1982: 270. Hall 1980: 196. Heitzman 1995 [1987]. Chattopadhyaya 1983. Sharma 1995 [1985]: 83f.. Thapar 2002: 370f.

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recent comprehensive review B. Schnepel focuses very critically on Stein’s transfer of Southall’s African concept of segmentary lineage societies to South India. He observes that “the distinction, so basic to the model, between ritual and politics [...] remains questionable”47 and that in comparison with other concepts of the Indian state, “the model of the segmentary state is that in which the control and exercise of power by the central power is seen to be at its lowest level”.48 These critiques and my own predicament with Stein’s rigid distinction between rituals and politics were in my mind when I began to draft this paper. But reading Stein again thoroughly after many years soon became an exciting exercise of “revisiting Burton Stein”. I was surprised to “discover” that he was in fact a much stronger advocate of the existence of an intrinsic relationship between rituals and political domination than hitherto acknowledged by his critics. This finding made me realise the need for a more differentiated appraisal of his concepts as well as of possible changes and inconsistencies. In regard to our concern about the relationship between rituals and the state, it is relevant that his earlier and later writings seem to exhibit a certain discrepancy between his estimation of the function and effect of royal rituals at the local level on the one hand and the “imperial” or state level on the other. Looking at the critiques of his much maligned ritual sovereignty and its rigid distinction of two kinds of authority, it turns out that they are based primarily on his earlier writing of the late seventies and early eighties (primarily 1977 and partly 1980) which indeed over-emphasise (or even restrict) the political significance of royal rituals at the local level. Changes in his perception of the political nature of the great state rituals of the Cholas and in particular of Vijayanagara49 as well as the stepwise modification of his concepts in the following years50 have hardly received notice until now.

Local Politics and Royal Ritual Sovereignty Let me begin with the local level by quoting at some length from a letter which Burton Stein wrote after having read the draft of my paper “Fragmentation and Segmentation Versus Integration? Reflections on the Concepts of Indian Feudalism 47 Schnepel 2002: 47. 48 Ibid.: 36. Very recently Noboru Karashima summarised again his strong critique: “ I also criticized it by pointing out that Stein’s theory was nothing but a new version of the old theory of the stagnation of the Oriental Society, based on unchanging village communities, with the village of the old theory having been replaced by the segment (nadu). There are many points to be criticized in his theory, but the crucial point is his categorical denial of centralization or even the efforts made towards it by the Chola kings of the middle period [11th and early 12th centuries].” (Karashima 2009: 3) 49 Stein 1980, 1984, 1989. 50 Stein 1985a, 1989, 1995 [1989].


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and the Segmentary State in Indian History” in which I expressed my reservations against his concept of ritual sovereignty in his early writings.51 “I accept your point about regionalization of bhakti traditions, but insist that the cultic concomitant of this was to strengthen segmental shrines. ... [Regarding] the matter of political implication I reiterate that I see the local level not as passive before royal pressures to control, but seeking such links (not of political but ritual subordination) for purposes of local rule. I reject the idea of ritual ‘as a week substitute’ and do see it as a genuine political means, as you put it. Do we really differ here? A similar kind of disagreement, which may be a false one, is on the matter of integration versus segmentation (or fragmentation, as the title [of the paper] puts it). I contend that the seg. [sic] state formulation is precisely about integration, given segmentation. ... Finally, ‘integration’ is always a key factor ... because the segmentary state only exists as its constituent parts recognize a ritual centre, a king, and by which recognition advance and strengthen the segmental parts. Thus I consider your title mistakes the case: it is not segmentation versus integration, but segmentation and integration.”52 Stein’s expositions are revealing as they locate the political relevance of rituals exclusively at the local or (in Stein’s terminology) “segmental” level. Thus, he insists that the cultic concomitant of regionalisation of Bhakti cults is “to strengthen segmental shrines” and that the local leaders seek ritual subordination under the centre “for the purposes of local rule” and that the recognition of the royal ritual centre “advance and strengthen the segmental parts.” His acceptance of rituals “as a genuine political means” was therefore indeed by no means lip service. But what matters is that he restricted the political function of rituals primarily if not exclusively to the local level rather than considering their impact as well on the authority of the Cholas and thus on the structure of the state as a whole. Of course, none of these statements is wrong. Regionalisation of Bhakti indeed strengthened local shrines and leaders, and the ritual recognition of “the ritual centre, the king” strengthened local leaders. These findings meanwhile belong to the canon of defining “Little Kings” whose local domination is strengthened by, or even based on, mutual ritual recognition by the great and the little kings.53 What is significant is the exclusiveness of the local or segmental level where Stein readily consents that rituals strengthen religious and political leaders and thus enhance and validate “actual power.” Under the chattra (umbrella) of royal ritual sovereignty, the seg51 Kulke 1982. 52 Letter of 20 June 1982 (Stein’s italics); for a more extensive quotation of the letter see Kulke 1982: 263. 53 Dirks 1987; Berkemer 1993, Berkemer & Frenz 2003; Schnepel 2003.

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mental leaders of the intermediate zone and periphery were allowed to enjoy their “actual political control”, given their ritual subordination under the ritual centre. This “ritual subordination”, however, as we are told by Stein, strengthened and validated primarily local or segmental rule. Royal cults seem to figure in Stein’s concept primarily as a means of validating actual political control of local leaders and thus preventing the state from “being transformed into a more unitary kingdom”.54 It was particularly this line of argumentation which provoked the above quoted strong and at times one-sided reactions of historians of South Indian history in the early eighties after the publication of Stein’s “Peasant State”.55

“Revisiting Burton Stein” and his Modifications of Ritual Sovereignty But “revisiting Stein” resulted in the important “discovery” that in addition (and partly contradiction) to his – admittedly at times also one-sided – emphasis of the far-reaching implications of royal rituals for the local level, he conceded them also a considerably stronger effect on the state level than hitherto acknowledged by his critics. This becomes evident already from his estimation of the royal Siva cult of the Cholas56 and then in particular from his account of Vijayanagara’s great annual Mahanavami or Durga festival in an article and his second monograph.57 The truly “imperial” Brhadisvara temple at Tanjore, India’s then largest temple, was built by 58 Rajaraja I (986–1014), the founder of the “Imperial Cholas”: Its monumental central lingam, the Rajarajesvara, unites his name with isvara or Siva which Stein calls “a fitting symbol of a powerful, sacred kingship”. He regards the royal Siva cult at Tanjore and its rituals as “the overarching ideological element” and the “keystone of the system of ritual hegemony”59 which “was recognized by locality chiefs, even very remote ones”.60 Stein emphasised that the Tanjore-centred royal Siva cult was not meant simply for the purpose of securing the central core area under Chola control. “The royal cult, the prominence of Brahmanical forms, and the network of Brahmanical institutions in the intermediate and peripheral zones of the Chola state is best viewed as a means by Chola rulers to affect ritual hegemony over the numerous locality chieftains of the macro region. [...] What Rajaraja and his successors perfected was a conception of dharmic incorporation which did two things: it strengthened Chola authority and it provided locality chiefs with stronger ritual or 54 55 56 57 58

Stein 1977: 14. Stein 1980. Ibid. Stein 1984, 1989. For the political nature of Chola temple architecture, particularly of Tanjore’s Brhadisvara Temple, see Spencer 1969; Heitzman 1991; Champakalakshmi 1996 and Ogura 1999. 59 Stein 1980: 341. 60 Ibid.: 352.


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symbolic bases for their own local rule.” This quotation is necessary to refute the prevalent opinion that Stein failed to consider also political implications of royal rituals for the validation of political sovereignty and the actual power of the central ruler. In his study of state rituals of the Cholas the allegedly fundamental distinction between ritual and political authority which he proclaims as essential in his theoretical deliberations on the segmentary state in 1977 was thus already considerably modified as a means of strengthening the political authority of the Cholas as well as that of their local little kings. This realisation becomes even more evident from Stein’s depiction of the Mahanavami festival of Vijayanagara. “The Peasant State” contains already a fairly detailed depiction62 that was followed by a special article63 which Stein then integrated in his Vijayanagara monograph.64 His historical contextualisation of Vijayanagara’s state ritual is particularly noteworthy for our panel as it is valid for other 65 66 Indian regions too, e.g. for Orissa and Mewar: “In the fifteenth century, a new form of kingly public ritual came into existence that provided a vastly more encompassing form of public ritual, one that transcended locality and involved all in the realm”.67 With its “overwhelmingly royal character and its symbolically incorporative character”68 Stein calls it “the ritual focus of the Vijayanagara kings”69 and refers to B. Saletore who characterised Vijayanagara’s Mahanavami as “religious in atmosphere, it is essentially political in significance”.70 Its ritual arena, the royal centre of Vijayanagara, was even more strongly dominated by the king than the royal Siva cult of the Cholas at Tanjore.71 It is remarkable that in the case of 61 Ibid.: 339, my emphasis. Already in 1969 G.W. Spencer pointed out in his seminal article on religious networks and royal influence in eleventh-century South India: “In order to understand the importance of Rajaraja’s patronage to the Tanjore temple, we must recognize that such patronage, far from representing the self-glorification of a despotic ruler, was in fact a method adopted by an ambitious ruler to enhance his very uncertain power”(Spencer 1969: 45); see also Kulke 1978b. 62 Stein 1980: 384–390. 63 Stein 1984. 64 Stein 1989. 65 “Jagannatha cult was a synthesis of various elements which brought together deities with a strong territoriality, i.e. Viraja-Durga of Jajpur, Siva-Lingaraja of Bhubaneswar and Purushottama-Jagannatha of Puri. The coming together of important sub-regional deities [...] paved the way for political consolidation.” (Sahu 2003: 21). See also e.g. Eschmann 1978; Kulke 1978b, 1979, 1993; Panda 1990; Tanabe 2003. 66 Teuscher 2002. 67 Stein 1984: 311 68 Stein 1980: 389. 69 Ibid.: 384. 70 Saletore 1934: 372; Stein 1980: 388. 71 Fritz & Michell 1991.

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Vijayanagara, Stein clearly admits the existence of “kingly ritual power [which] is expressed in numerous ways: in the manifestation of wealth displayed and elaborately redistributed at many points of the nine-day festivals; in the various consecratory actions involving the king’s weapons as the means of his royal fame and protection; and also in the king’s frequent and often solitary worship (and ultimately his identity with) the deity who presides with him over the festival and in whose name and for whose propitiation the festival occurs”.72 One could easily add to Stein’s list further expressions and means of “kingly ritual power”. One would think particularly of the grand durbar-like Dasara with its ritualised military procession on Dasami, the final and tenth day, about which Domingos Paes, the Portuguese traveller and chronicler, reported in detail c.1520 A.D.73 Attended by all the grandees of the kingdom and ambassadors of allied states, its political function was not unlike the great ritualised Imperial Assemblages at Delhi at the height of the British Raj74 or the May Day Parade in Red Square, Moscow, attended by the Soviet and now Russian leadership on the tribune at the Kremlin Wall or, more recently, the military parades in Pyongyang. Equally surprising as Stein’s perception of royal ritual power is his unexpectedly high esteem of the political role of religious institutions in his Vijayanagara monograph.75 This becomes quite evident if one compares it with the volume “South Indian Temples” which he edited in 1978. His own contribution to it, a detailed survey of temples in Tamil Nadu from 1300–1750, contains no significant reference to their political role during this period.76 However, in his Vijayanagara volume we find plenty of them. Thus he ascertains that “the Vijayanagara age saw temples emerge as major political arenas”77 and “temples and matha were prime instruments for Vijayanagara political purposes”.78 As for Vijayanagara’s astonishingly peaceful relationship with the conquered Tamil country we are told: “The ease with which the remote sovereignty of the rayas [of Vijayanagara] came to be exercised over the Tamils and others depended upon the favour they showed to Tamil deities”.79 In particular the intrusive Telugu Nayakas pursued a similar policy outside their own home country. For them temples “became the arenas where the new stratum of local lords – often outsiders – sought to integrate their armed

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Stein 1980: 390; my emphasis. Sewell 1924. Cohn 1987. Stein 1989. Stein 1978. Stein 1989: 65. Ibid.: 103. Ibid.: 104.


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rule by raising local deities to new, august statuses”. Stein also points out that the mathapati and leader of a sectarian centre “was among the most powerful men of the Vijayanagara age”.81 Together the king and his great commanders and the temples formed “the three great institutions of the Vijayanagara age”.82 And regarding the rise of local deities, usually tutelary deities of clans and local leaders, and their integration into the Brahmanical pantheon he observes “an extension at the level of religion of what had been happening in secular politics to bring local magnates and superior lordships into closer relationship. Political integration of the age was thus matched [...] by a linking of local magnates, their penates and ancient canonical gods”.83 One may rightly ask, how to explain this seeming discrepancy between Stein’s earlier and later estimation of the political nature of royal rituals in South India. Most likely we have to look for historical as well as historiographic reasons. Historically, significant changes had taken place between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, the foci of his two major studies. The above mentioned “vastly more encompassing form of [royal] public rituals” and the mass congregation at royal centres and temples created a hitherto unknown visibility of sacred kingship under Vijayanagara rule. As already pointed out, it is this context where the debate about Geertz’s Theatre State has some relevance for late medieval India too. Another new aspect of “kingly ritual power” was the royally sponsored and at least partly controlled network of powerful sectarian centres.84 And finally the enormous temple donations and building activities of Vijayanagara rulers at South India’s temple cities and places of pilgrimage have to be mentioned. They enhanced and validated their role as “major political arena” through royal presence.85 In this context, Bhairabi Sahu’s observation of a convergence of ritual and political centres is notable.86 Krishnadeva Raya, Vijayanagara’s most powerful king, is praised for his valuable temple donations on the occasion of his coronation in 1509 to the great temples at Srisailam, Tirupati, Kanchipuram, Tiruvannamalai and Chidambaram87 and almost all the big temples of southern India owe some temple towers (gopuram) to his long reign. All these historical developments strengthened the political 80 Stein 1989: 14. But B.D. Chattopadhyaya rightly emphasises that “cult assimilation does not necessarily imply a harmonious syncretism, but it does imply the formation of a structure which combines heterogeneous beliefs and rituals into a whole even while making (or transforming) specific elements dominant.” (Chattopadhyaya 1994: 30) 81 Ibid.: 102. 82 Stein 1989: 65. 83 Ibid.: 105. 84 Appadurai 1978. 85 Sewell 1924; Fritz & Michell 1991. 86 See Sahu’s contribution in this volume. 87 Kulke 1977.

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nature of royal rituals in the age of Vijayanagara not only in the central core area but increasingly also in the intermediate and peripheral zones. These changes, aptly noticed by Stein, induced him to modify his concept of ritual sovereignty, initially based primarily on evidence of the Chola period. However, apart from these historical reasons, Stein’s increased awareness of the existence of kingly ritual power (and not just ritual sovereignty) is also the outcome of the sometimes heated historiographic debates particularly with supporters of Indian Feudalism, the then dominating school of pre-colonial Indian history. These debates are well documented in the belligerent essays of Burton Stein and R.S. Sharma in defence of their models.88 But, as has been shown, initially Stein’s concept of ritual sovereignty and its distinction from “actual political control” played only a minor role in these debates89 which focused on the reproach that, as Stein put it, “I have denied any central features or forces at work in the kingdoms of the Cholas and Vijayanagara”.90 This changed considerably with the publication of an article by Aidan Southall.91 In it he “revisited” his African model of the segmentary state in South India and came forward with several rather strange suggestions for the advancement or even reformulation of Stein’s concept. Without going into the details of this debate,92 suffice it to mention two points raised by Southall. To the great surprise of concerned scholars, he defined the segmentary state of the Cholas as an “expression of the Asiatic Mode of Production”93 and reiterated that “the spheres of ritual suzerainty and political sovereignty do not coincide”.94 Southall’s equation of the Chola state and Stein’s segmentary state concept with the AMP, “the unfortunate thesis that Marx had once propounded”95 provoked strong reactions not only among adherents of the “School of Indian Feudalism” against the segmentary model as a whole and its application to Indian history in particular,96 but also by Stein. In his contribution to a seminar on “State Formation in Pre-Colonial South India” at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1989,97 he admits that Southall’s reformulation poses difficulties for him as it “confuses conceptual levels”.98 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

Stein 1985a, 1995 [1989]; Sharma 1993, 1995. See however Kulke 1982. Stein 1995 [1989]: 139. Southall 1987. See Stein 1995 [1989]. Southall 1987: 65. Ibid.: 52. I. Habib, see Kulke 1995a: 6. Sharma 1995. Stein 1995 [1989]. Ibid.: 151.


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But most important in regard to our deliberations is Stein’s reaction to Southall’s reiteration of his concept of ritual sovereignty. Since, after all, it had formed a major prop too of Stein’s South Indian segmentary model since 1977, it is astonishing that in 1987 he refuted it outright: “It is necessary to reject Southall’s proposition that the ‘spheres of ritual suzerainty and political sovereignty do not coincide’. I am now convinced that in India the proposition is incorrect, that [instead] lordship for Hindus always and necessarily combined ritual and political authority.”99 There can be no doubt that Southall’s interference into the South Indian segmentary state debate induced Stein to clarify his position primarily in order to save his concept from being unnecessarily roped into the sterile AMP debate. However, his unexpectedly clear rejection of Southall’s reiteration of the strict distinction between ritual and political sovereignty has as well a case history and may have to be regarded as Stein’s most significant modification of his concept. One may call it a cumulative effect of his fruitful discussions with colleagues during recent years and Stein’s readiness to integrate the studies of his colleagues into his own concept. Thus, for instance, his comprehensive survey of temples in Tamil Nadu from 1300–1750 has, as already pointed out, no special references to their political significance.100 However, Arjun Appadurai’s seminal article on the kings, sects and temples of South India in the same period focuses exactly on this subject.101 Years later, in his Interim Reflections, Stein acknowledged Appadurai’s strong influence with reference to this article. “We principally owe our understanding of the interposition of royal authority over temples as a form of conquest to Arjun Appadurai”, and to Carol Breckenridge Appadurai that kings and chiefs of the Vijayanagara period “converted sectarian worship groups into political constituencies by collaborating with leaders of popular sectarian orders in the control of temple affairs”.102 Having “revisited Stein” and looked at the development and modifications of his concept of ritual sovereignty, I agree with Kenneth R. Hall’s suggestion in his early review of Stein’s Peasant State: “Perhaps ‘ritual sovereignty’ was a means to implement political power”.103 Hall’s assumption, still cautioned by his wording “perhaps”, has meanwhile become true by Stein’s own conclusion that “lordship for Hindus always and necessarily combined ritual and political authority.” It was this realisation which prompted me to exchange the initially planned title of my paper “ritual sovereignty or ritual policy?” for “ritual sovereignty and ritual policy”. We may therefore look at and use Stein’s writings as textbooks and a store99 100 101 102 103

Ibid.: 160, my emphasis. Stein 1978. Appadurai 1978. Stein 1995 [1989]: 158. Hall 1982: 409.

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house of ideas for our panel on the relationship between rituals and the state in India, rather than as controversial statements against which we have to establish the existence of these relations. Royal rituals are certainly no substitute for “actual political control” and centralised administrative and military coercion, but they may very well legitimise and validate, and thus strengthen, political authority. I regard the methods to achieve this aim as ritual policy, independent of the question of whether it is exercised at the central royal level through ritual sovereignty, based on the performance of royal rituals, or at the local level through the integration of a powerful tribal goddess into the “pantheon” of an emergent little king.104 What matters in both cases is the trans-local integrative function, bottom-up and vice versa. However, one last question remains, even though it may not be necessary to answer it now. What about the validity of Stein’s concept of the segmentary state in South India after his abandonment of the allegedly “fundamental” distinction between ritual and political sovereignty, a definition only recently defended vehemently again by Southall? As a result of the intensive and often controversial debates that followed on his early publications on the segmentary state in South Indian history,105 he seems to have become more sparing in defining the Chola state and Vijayanagara as segmentary. At the great Vijayanagara conference at Heidelberg in 1983 he even considered the possibility of defining Vijayanagara in terms of patrimonialism.106 But in his Vijayanagara volume he reaffirmed its segmentary nature although no longer as affirmatively as previously: “The idea of a ‘segmentary state’ was proposed as appropriate for the Cholas as well as for Vijayanagara. In broad terms, that argument of several years ago is still considered valid.”107 However, it is astonishing to read in his Interim Reflections (presented at a conference in the same year) that “at the time that I adopted the segmentary formulation I was insufficiently alert to a major discordant theoretical element which still remains a part of Southall’s formulation. This is the relationship between what I was calling political segmentation or a ‘segmentary state’ and something called ‘segmentary society’”.108 If one considers Stein’s modification of essential parts of his own concept and his uncertainties about its African prototype in the context of a critical anthropological appraisal of its Indian reconstruction, one wonders about its significance in the context of Indian history. According to Burkhard Schnepel, in the light of the theory of segmentary lineage societies, the transfer of the African model of the segmentary state model to South India is “ultimately not convincing: 104 105 106 107 108

Kulke 1978a, 1992; Mallebrein (in press). Stein 1977, 1980. Stein 1985b. Stein 1989: 10. Stein 1995 [1989]: 135.


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none of the basic units, processes and principles attributed to segmentary lineage societies in modern anthropological theory find correspondence in South India.”109 Since it was not granted to Burton Stein to let his Interim Reflections be followed by another thorough evaluation of his concept, we can only speculate whether he would have further liberated himself from the strict adherence to the African segmentary model and created an “independent South Indian model” which, I think, would have been “possible as well as promising.” Burton Stein seems to imply this cautiously in his Interim Reflections: “Before turning to an examination of changes in what I am calling a segmentary political order that must be made to meet the more serious criticisms against the formulation, I should say that I believe that a reconciliation of the views of Kulke and Chattopadhyaya with my own are possible as well as promising, and I do not mean by the usual compromise method of observing that we three are studying different places at somewhat different times, hence variations are to be expected. Of course, they are, but it is at the level of theory that I believe that a convergence of views is both promising and likely, since I believe that each of us is actually dealing with evolving structures within a single broad form and in our own ways we are privileging certain elements and neglecting others.”110

Concluding Remarks: Ritual Sovereignty and/or Ritual Policy? Let me now try to draw some tentative conclusion from the historiographic reflections on Geertz’s and Stein’s concepts of rituals and the state in pre-colonial Bali and India. The evaluation of their concepts and in particular those of their critics, as well as Stein’s modifications, helped greatly in clearing up a (or most likely the) most relevant question for our panel, the distinction between rituals and actual political control. Stein initially regarded this distinction as fundamental, but withdrew it, being “now convinced that lordship for Hindus always and necessarily combined ritual and political authority.” Geertz did not postulate this distinction explicitly, but by depriving royal rituals of possible political implications even at the centre, he went implicitly even a step further.111 For our considerations it is important that Schulte Nordholt points out, “perhaps it is because of the way Geertz 109 Schnepel 2002: 43. 110 Stein 1995 [1989]: 145f. 111 In the Comments of several scholars, added to Hauser-Schäublin’s article, Geertz writes: “The argument of Negara was and is not that politics and religion were separated realms but that they were deeply interfused. The declaration of authority edicts, rituals, titles, inscriptions, processions, paraphernalia, dance dramas, and the rest cannot be taken as descriptive of institutional relationships.” (Hauser-Schäublin 2003: 171) I don’t see any reason not to agree with this statement. But Geertz fails to integrate these “declarations of authority” into his concept of the Balinese theatre state.

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draws distinctions between ‘power’ and ‘pomp’, between ‘politics’ and ‘religion’ [...] that the idea of the theatre state was able to emerge” a distinction which he regards “as largely a false one.”112 If Geertz’s concept of a theatre state has some validity at all, it is the situation when the political authority of “indigenous” rulers was reduced to a (socially and culturally still influential) ritual authority under the colonial regime, whether in Bali under the Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or in India under the British East India Company.113 These findings are helpful for the clarification of the other major problem, the above mentioned “issue at stake”. Whatever one may derive from these historiographic considerations, one can safely infer that royal rituals were not only cultural-ideological performances but also a genuine means of an intended ritual policy to legitimise and enhance political control and power. We are strengthened in and entitled to this conclusion not only because of Stein’s modification of his concept, but even despite Geertz’s distinction between the “pomp and politics” of his imagined depoliticised theatre state. These results of our debate reveal a new side of Stein’s hitherto strongly criticised concept of ritual sovereignty. For his concept of the segmentary state, based on Southall’s segmentary model, ritual sovereignty is essential as it “converted a congeries of local political systems into a segmentary state”114 and “the Chola state existed as a state only as the hundreds of the nādus of its realm recognized the overlordship, the ritual sovereignty, of Chola kings”.115 Ritual sovereignty was thus not only indispensable for Stein’s model, its importance was also acknowledged as an essential means for the cohesion of the vast Chola state which is certainly not completely wrong. The reason why his concept was rightly exposed to criticism was its inherent negative connotation, that for the Cholas ritual sovereignty was allegedly the only means of retaining their sovereignty in the intermediate and peripheral zones which were supposedly controlled politically only by local leaders, a depiction of the Chola state which caused Chattopadhyaya’s comment that “it is a fine study of the state sans politics.”116 Stein’s early perception of ritual sovereignty is not surprising as it was conceived when he was still under the strong influence of Southall’s African model which he applied as a whole to medieval South India. But since Stein rejected Southall’s proposition that the spheres of ritual suzerainty and political sovereignty do not coincide as he was “now convinced that in India the proposition is incorrect”, we are entitled to define our own concept

112 113 114 115 116

Schulte Nordholt 1981: 476. Cohn 1987. Stein 1977: 16. Stein 1985a: 394. my emphasis. Stein 1984: 214.


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of ritual sovereignty not any longer against Stein, but also by referring to the rich material offered in Stein’s writing on the Cholas and Vijayanagara. Ritual sovereignty doubtless existed in various forms and polities and has accordingly to be defined in detail for different regions and, in particular, different stages of state formation from the rise of tribal chiefdoms to early kingdoms and, finally, to imperial kingdoms.117 In this regard a look at Bourdieu’s metaphor of economic and symbolic capital and their “interconvertibility” may be worth considering while studying the changing role of rituals at these three different stages of state formation. In pre-colonial India at least one observation seems to be appropriate in all these cases. Ritual sovereignty was not a mere substitute for political sovereignty. It was the result and expression of an intended ritual policy which was an additional but essential means to legitimise and thus to enhance not only “actual political control”, but in most cases also actual economic exploitation. In the princely states of colonial India, when its rulers were deprived of their political power, their ritual policy degenerated and in most cases aimed primarily at validation and enhancement of their contested social status among their princely colleagues on the regional and imperial level. Locally, however, ritual policy became increasingly a means to “legitimise” economic exploitation,118 e.g. for the construction of their new vast royal palace complexes.

117 “The shift from early kingdom to imperial kingdom/regional state was accompanied by a change in the ideological domain. The construction of the Jagannatha temple and the emergence of Jagannatha as tutelary deity of the Eastern Gangas demonstrate this. The political advantages accruing from these developments are obvious” (Sahu 2003: 21). See also Berkemer & Frenz 2003; Gutschow 2003; Inden 1987; Kulke 1978a, 1978b, 1979, 1992, 1995c, 2006; Mallebrein (in press); Panda 1990; Schnepel 2003; Tanabe 2003; Teuscher 2002; Tripathi (in press); Veluthat 1982. 118 Pati (in press).

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References Appadurai, Arjun 1978. “Kings, Sects and Temples in South India, 1350–1700”. In: Burton Stein (ed.). South Indian Temples. An Analytical Reconsideration. New Delhi: Vikas: 47–74. — 1996. “The Production of Locality”. In: Arjun Appadurai (ed.). Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 178–199. Berkemer, Georg 1993. Little Kingdoms in Kalinga. Ideologie, Legitimation und Politik regionaler Eliten. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. — & Margret Frenz (eds.) 2003. Sharing Sovereignty. The Little Kingdom in South Asia. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. Champakalakshmi, R. 1996. “Urbanization from Above: Tanjavur, the Ceremonial City of the Colas”. In: R. Champakalakshmi, Trade, Ideology and Urbanization. South India 300BC to AD 1300. Delhi: Oxford University Press: 424–441. Chattopadhyaya, B.D. 1983. Political Processes and Structure of Polity in Early Medieval India. Presidential Address, Ancient India Section, Indian History Congress, 44th session, Burdwan (repr. in B.D. Chattopadhyaya 1994. The Making of Early Medieval India, Delhi: Oxford University Press: 183–222). — 1994. The Making of Early Medieval India, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Cohn, Bernard 1987. “Representing Authority in Victorian India”. In: Bernard Cohn. An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 632–682. Dallapiccola, Anna L. (ed.) 1985. Vijayanagara – City and Empire. New Currents of Research. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag. Dirks, Nicholas 1987. The Hollow Crown, Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dumont, Louis 1970. “The Conception of Kingship in Ancient India”. In: Louis Dumont. Religion, Politics and History in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 62–88. Eschmann, Anncharlott & Hermann Kulke & Gaya Charan Tripathi (eds.) 1978. The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Fritz, John 1985. “Features and Layout of Vijayanagara: The Royal Centre”. In: Anna L. Dallapiccola (ed.). Vijayanagara – City and Empire. New Currents of Research. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag: 240–256. — & George Michell 1991. City of Victory: Vijayanagara, the Medieval Capital of Southern India. New York: Aperture. Geertz, Clifford 1980. Negara.The Theatre State in Nineteenth- Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gonda, Jan 1966. Ancient Indian Kingship from the Religious Point of View. Leiden: Brill. Gutschow, Niels (ed.) 1977. Urban Space and Ritual. Proceedings of an International Symposium on Urban History of South and East Asia. Darmstadt: Technische Hochschule.


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— 1979. Jagannātha-Kult und Gajapati-Königtum. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte religiöser Legitimation hinduistischer Herrscher. Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag. — 1982.“Fragmentation and Segmentation Versus Integration? Reflections on the Concepts of Indian Feudalism and the Segmentary State in Indian History”. Studies in History 4: 237–263. — 1985. “Maharajas, Mahants and Historians. Reflections on the Historiography of Early Vijayanagara and Sringeri”. In: Anna L. Dallapiccola (ed.) 1985. Vijayanagara – City and Empire. New Currents of Research. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag: 120–143. — 1992. “Tribal Deities at Princely Courts: The Feudatory Rajas of Central Orissa and their Tutelary Deities (iṣṭadevatās)”. In: Sitakantha Mahapatra (ed.). The Realm of the Sacred. Verbal Symbolism and Ritual Structures. Calcutta: Oxford University Press: 56–78. — 1993. Kings and Cults. State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia. New Delhi: Manohar. — (ed.) 1995a. The State in India 1000–1700. Delhi: Oxford University Press. — 1995b. “Introduction: The Study of the State in Premodern India”. In: Hermann Kulke (ed.). The State in India 1000–1700. Delhi: Oxford University Press: 1–47. — 1995c. “The Early and the Imperial Kingdom: A Processural Model of Integrative State Formation in Early Medieval India”. In: Hermann Kulke (ed.). The State in India 1000– 1700. Delhi: Oxford University Press: 233–262. — 2006. “The Integrative Model of State Formation in Early Medieval India. Some Historiographic Remarks”. In: Masaaki Kimura & Akio Tanabe (eds.). The State in India: Past and Present. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 59–81. — & Georg Berkemer (eds.) (in press). Centres Out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. MacRae, Graeme 2005. “Negara Ubud: The Theatre-State in Twenty-first-century Bali”. History and Anthropology 16: 393–413. Mallebrein, Cornelia (in press). “Tutelary Deities at Royal Courts in Orissa.” In: Hermann Kulke & Georg Berkemer (eds.). Centres Out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Manguin, Pierre-Yves 2002. “The Amorphous Nature of Coastal Polities in Insular Southeast Asia: Restricted Centres, Extended Peripheries”. Moussons 5: 73–99. Nandi, R.N. 1986. Social Roots of Religion in Ancient India. Calcutta: Bagchi. Ogura, Yasushi 1999. “The Changing Concept of Kingship in the Cōḷa Period: an Analysis of Royal Temple Constructions, c. A.D. 850–1279”. In: Nobory Karashima (ed.): Kingship in Indian History, Noboru Karashima. Delhi: Manohar: 119–142. Panda, Shishir Kumar 1990. “From Kingdom to Empire. A Study of Medieval State Formation under the Eastern Gangas, AD 1038–1434”. Indian Historical Review 17: 48–59. Pati, Biswamoy (in press). “Interrogating Stereotypes: Exploring the Princely States in Colonial Orissa”. In: Hermann Kulke & Georg Berkemer (eds.): Centres Out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar.


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Festivals as Ritual An Exploration into the Convergence of Rituals and the State in Early India The Issue I would like to begin this essay by using two take-off points. One is that generally discussions on early Indian rituals centre around what can be traced in various stages from the Vedic texts, in their various edited versions.1 These are, over time, appropriated by a class of priests, are committed to memory for oral transmission over generations, and even when they come to be codified they remain exclusively the preserve of the sacred elite. A sizeable section of society is prohibited in clear terms from access to the Vedas, and this formal distancing bestows on the Sanskritbased rituals a special power. The privilege to sponsor these sastric rituals and specific techniques for particular rituals are vital elements in ritual performance which, historically, became exclusively coveted and a major source, in association with others, of legitimation of social status. All rulers are expected to protect and sponsor performance of these rituals for the stability and welfare of society.2 There remains, therefore, the space for exploring, as an essential historical exercise, the non-Brahmanic, non-Sanskritic reservoir of ritual practices among the communities which were not governed by the hegemonic Sastric ritual tradition. Such exploration obviously does not imply the search for a ritual space which is homogeneous or completely devoid of interaction with other ritual practices, including the hegemonic Brahmanic.3 However, since the chronology and versions of this heterogeneous reservoir, as it existed in the early phase of history, cannot be precisely ascertained, what one is required to do, as an essential methodology, is to look for evidence of interaction between the Brahmanical and Sanskritic with the non-Brahmanical and non-Sanskritic. Such interaction would be a part of a regular historical process of transformation in society at different historical junctures in different locations in India. 1 Kane 1974; Staal 1986: vol. 1. 2 O’Flaherty & Smith 1991: 9.313–317; anon. 1998: passim; Anderson 1993: 207. 3 Kosambi 1956, 1962, 2009; Bose 1949.

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Historiographically, it has now become clear that as a process of transformation, many non-Sanskritic traditions changed and became parts of major ritual events across the country, and continue to be so even today. Others remained more local and merged into a major event in a largely modified form. There is also evidence of sharing of ritual space by brahmanical ritualists with ritualists representing local practices. All of them are of equal significance, as they together illuminate the Indian religious process in their different patterns of interaction and participation. The second take-off point, which largely follows from the first, is the apparent contradiction between what may be considered orthodox and non-orthodox, not simply in social behaviour but also in attitude towards religious practices and duties. The Vedic rituals came to be regarded as orthodox and normative, irrespective of whether they were of Gṛhya category or of Śrauta category. With social norms being laid down according to one’s exact space in the prescribed social order, Gṛhya or domestic rites corresponded to the social norms, and performance of Śrauta rituals too were exclusive to those who were entitled to perform them or get them performed. What then about community events and public spectacles, not simply in their current forms but also as mentioned in various early texts, which are being considered here to represent non-orthodox traditions? It may be stated as an initial premise that attitudes towards orthodox and non-orthodox may not have been divided along the lines of doctrinal divides or religious differences. At the practical level of social relations with reference to divisions in society, intended to be based on standardised norms, deviations are always dreaded, because they upset the envisaged social order. This, curiously, would be as much true of those who live in society as of those who leave it to become renouncers. Thus, for the Buddhist and other monks, who live away from the world of gṛhya and śrauta rituals in an alternative kind of order, deviation would harm the functioning of the order of which they had become a part. By their very nature, the ritual occasions or the social events that I shall be talking about were intended to turn the social arrangements topsy-turvy, albeit temporarily. The strength of these acts of ritual subversion was that they were ritual events with wide social participation, although by the time we find them as recorded references, they were all considerably modified from original practices. Extended to the field of political transactions, how were even these temporary aberrations or subversions within the social order – and among those who were considered outside the social order − viewed by political theorists and rulers? The monarch was, according to theorists, the protector of the social order, and, therefore, would be expected to take an orthodox position. However, in reality one encounters a contradictory historical situation. While adherence to orthodoxy, irrespective of the social and religious affiliations of this orthodoxy, was the norm, the theorists and the monarchs too, had, at the same time, to reach out to the social,

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religious and ritual practices of public spheres and of “marginal” communities, which constituted the reality of the monarch’s domain. This essay intends to develop the argument that the original Sanskritic ritual system expanded by incorporating elements of diverse, including theistic ritual practices like pūjā; at the same time, heterodox, diverse practices could and did experience convergence with Sanskritic and Sanskritised rituals. There would obviously be areas of tension in actual social contexts over domination and marginalisation, and, presumably, over formalisation in the form of codified rituals. But that the two separate streams could come close historically and even integrate − or exist as parallels within the same ritual structure − can be a possible framework for understanding ritual spectacles and ritual politics in different parts of India even today. From these preliminaries of the issue, let us now turn to the more concrete in empirical and historical terms.

Festivities: the Orthodox and the Laukika At the core of what may be termed Brahmanic-Sastric ritual performance is sacrifice (yajña) in the form of offerings to Agni. The elaborate ritual was characterised, according to Fritz Staal, by three elements: dravya or objects to be offered in sacrifice; devatā or deity; and tyāga or “renunciation” or giving up.4 However, there is the suggestion in the explanation of the ritual that they, along with mantras and their chants, are depicted as instruments used by gods and demons to fight and conquer each other, and sometimes to create. One dimension of the Sanskritic-Brahmanical ritual was its exclusive character, making it perhaps impossible for it to be characterised as people’s ritual. Further, during the later Vedic phases of the elaboration of the Brahmanical ritual system, there emerged a symbiotic relationship between the rituals, ritual specialists and the emerging monarchy5 gradually underlining the role of the priestly authority in sustaining and, if required, destroying the royal authority.6 However, we leave this much discussed field for the moment. The focus of this essay being on popular events, and their representations in the written records, it is necessary to move to considering what was popular and how the popular figured in matters of governance and authority. The key terms bearing upon the theme of public events would be samāja and utsava, although other terms such as yātrā, samūha, goṣṭhī, etc. were of use to denote “assembly” or “gathering” which was the essential sense conveyed by samāja and utsava as well. Samāja and utsava 4 Staal 1986: General Introduction. 5 Majumdar 1951: 377–378. 6 Bhattacharyya 2009.

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were, presumably, not of identical import; if they were, they would not often be paired as separate terms. Perhaps, the history of their use too was somewhat different, the term utsava, i.e. “festival” or festivities becoming more common in later contexts and continuing to be in use in similar contexts even now.7 Samāja, commonly meaning “gathering” or “assembly” was often used without religious import. In the Mahābhārata, when the Pāṇḍava and Kaurava princes are made to demonstrate the kind of training they have gone through in archery and the use of other weapons, a samāja is arranged. The common principle here is that it is open as a public spectacle (mah-ārṇava-iva-kṣubdhaḥ samāja s’obhavat-tadā, Mahābhārata, I. 124), which is described as “agitated like the great ocean” since it was attended by people from the countryside, people from the city, as well as members of the royal household. This Samāja was only a spectacle, a prekṣā in another context. The Harivaṃśa refers to another kind of samāja organised by King Kaṃsa of Mathura for people to witness the wrestling bout of Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma on the one hand, and Cāṇura and Muṣṭika on the other. In the words of D.R. Bhandarkar who traced and analysed the Harivaṃsa reference (verses 4528–4538 and 4642– 4658):8 “Here the word samāja is used synonymously with raṅga and prekṣāgāra, and appears to be a building erected by Kaṃsa for permanent use for entertaining his subjects by the exhibition of public spectacles. The building was at least two storeyed and divided into a number of compartments with passages running inside. They all faced the east, and were provided each with mañcas which were arranged in raised tiers one behind the other. Some of these compartments were specially reserved for the various guilds (śreṇi) and classes (gaṇa), which on festive occasions decorated them with banners indicative of their profession. The prostitutes also had their mañcas separately. But ladies of the harem were accommodated in the compartments of the upper storey, some of which were furnished with minute lattice windows (sūkṣma jāla) and others with curtains (yavanikā). The golden paryaṅkas and the principal seats were covered with painted cloths (kuṭha) and flowers. Drinking pitchers were fixed into the ground at due intervals, and fruits, stimulants (avadaṃśa) and unguents were provided for. A not forgettable feature of the samāja was the offering of bali, which has been twice mentioned in this account.” Both samājas, mentioned here, organised on special occasions as public spectacles, took place on the initiative of the rulers, and at least the second specifies the ritual of the offering of bali as a necessary part of the spectacle. 7 Anderson 1993; Hota 2009. 8 Cited in Bhandarkar 1913.

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Perhaps the earliest references to samajjās or samājas, in which common people generally participated and which were initiated by them, come from Buddhist texts in the context of what a monk was expected not to do. While referring to the practice of some śramaṇas and Brahmanas as otherwise genuine, the Buddha was nevertheless critical of them, pointing out that they continued with the habit of going to shows consisting of dancing, singing, instrumental music, spectacle, narration of stories, imitating the calls of animals, tricks by Candala jugglers, fights between elephants, horses, buffaloes, goats, sheep, cocks, ducks, boxing and wrestling … In short, a comprehensive entertainment package which may have been idealised but most elements of which were common motifs whenever performances were mentioned. In addition to this general reference which occurs in the Bamhajāla sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya, there is a specific mention of a samāja at Rājagṛha in the Cullavagga. The text records: “Now at that time there was a festival on the mountain top (giragga samajjā) at Rājagaha, and the Chhavagiya Bhikkhus went to see it. The people murmured, were annoyed, and became indignant, saying, ‘How can the Sākyaputtiya Samanas go to see dancing, and singing and music like those who are still enjoying the pleasures of the world?’ And they told this matter to the Blessed one. And the Blessed one, the Buddha, instructed the monks with the following words: ‘You are not, O Bhikkhus, to go and see dancing, or singing, or music. Who-soever does so shall be guilty of dukkata’.”9 The samajjā thus drew in bold lines a boundary which the monks were not expected to cross. There was a genuine apprehension that even social boundaries were in danger of being crossed. The commentary on the Dhammapada to a samajjā “organised by a company of actors (nataka) refers numbering even 500, who would give yearly or six monthly performances before the king at Rājagaha for large rewards.10 These performances would last for seven days at which the chief feat shown was that of a damsel walking, dancing and singing on a horizontal bar”. The actors were not located in cities alone; they were itinerant, moved through villages, market places and towns in search of patrons and livelihood. Although festivities and performances are what are highlighted in samājas, reference to the offering of bali in a samāja in the Harivaṃśa is indicative of the presence of a religious ritual core. The utsavas had both the components. Although details are not available, the Ādi Parva of the Mahābhārata contains a reference to a Pāśupata or Śaiva utsava in the context of the visit of the Pāṇḍavas and their mother to Vāraṇāvata. Hopkins’s study of Epic Mythology, in connection with his 9 Digha Nikaya, 1.13 10 Mookerji 2002: 128–130.

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discussion of the Religion and Morals of the Gods, has brought out that even Gods had their festivals (svargasya utsava) with drinking, singing and dancing.11 The Kāmasūtra mentions that on a specified day at half moon or full moon there is always an assembly of invited guests at the temple of Sarasvatī (Sarasvatī-bhavane niyuktānāṃ nityaṃ samājaḥ). One of the features of such samājas is that itinerant performers would perform at such gatherings. The Kāmasūtra also mentions a number of other occasions such as Yakṣa-rātri, Kaumudī-jāgara, Suvasantaka, Madanotsava, Madana-bhañjikā, Holaka and so on, all in connection with nāgaraka-vṛtta or the life-style of an urbanite, and it is extremely interesting that the text stressed the importance of gaṇa dharma or doing things together, whether in calamity or in festivity (Vyāsan-otsaveṣu c-aiṣaṃ paraspar-aika kāryata).12 The hosts of festivities and assemblies on all conceivable ritual occasions are bound to have given rise to perceptions of hierarchy at various levels, although for participants, participation on all occasions in some form or another was equally significant. Of the many occasions, what textual traditions represent as the most colourful, splendid and universal was perhaps the festival of Spring (vasantotsava). Mentioned in texts from the classical period onward,13 in some form or another, the festival has been studied by both text experts and anthropologists.14 This is a festival which represents convergence, over time, of many traditions, and could be observed at various levels. Celebrated by a wide cross-section of the entire society, the following is a textual description, in an urban setting, of how the festival was celebrated with carnival-like abandon, on the streets of the city of Kauśāmbi: “Observe the charm of this Love’s festival which interests one with the citizens who are dancing at the touch of water from syringes. Citizens are voluntarily seized by lovely women now under the exhilaration of wine. The openings of the roads all round are seething with the swelling music of wild songs, and all the quarters are rendered yellowish red with a mass of fragrant powder scattered all about [...]”15 Another description in the text is equally picturesque: “Dear friend! Behold the sporting of courtesans who are charming on account of their hissing uttered when struck by water from syringes discharged by naughty gallants.” 11 12 13 14 15

Hopkins 1915: 65. Doniger & Kakar 2002: 1.4.14–18; 1.4.27–32. Anderson 1993. Kane 1974; Anderson 1993; Bose 1953: 76–135. Anderson 1993: ch. 4.

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This description of the festival in Ratnāvalī, a Sanskrit play perhaps of the seventh century, written specifically for performance at Vasantotsava, is not exceptional in so far as revelries of the festival are concerned, although they are seen from the perspective of the royal court. The king himself witnesses the rejoicing of the citizens, intense because of Madana’s festival, although in this case he is not a direct participant. The celebrations, as they take place in the outside world on the open streets, have certain motifs: in the classical texts, Vasantotsava is also Madanotsava, the festival of Kāma – Desire – who is at the centre of it. One of the characters in the Ratnāvalī dances the spring dance Vasantābhinayam (“enacting the spring”) which is a lāsya, lāsya being imitative of the activities of the common people (laukikavṛtta). The laukika character as one dimension of the festival emerges from references in other texts: the songs of the spring festival are mentioned as Prakrt songs in the musical text Saṅgītaratnākara of a later period; in the Vasavadattā, the dancing and the singing of “vulgar” songs at the spring festival were performed by Vidūṣakas, jesters at the courts. If, as a public event, the Vasantotsava festivities, celebrated with singing, dancing and drinking of wine, remind one of samājas of Buddhist and other texts, there is a serious private ritual performance which takes place in the Ratnāvalī in the inner recesses of the royal garden of the palace. This was not a ritual performed in isolation by the queen; it required the ingredients to perform the worship of Madana or Kāma whose image was set up below the red Aśoka tree, a tree in full bloom in spring, and it also required the king to be physically present there.16 What connected the celebration and revelry of the city dwellers on the occasion of Vasantotsava with the private ritual of the queen was the worship of Kāma or Desire, the significance of which will be further discussed later.

Samāja, Utsava and Governance As an illustration of a monarch’s attitude towards popular events it may be useful to begin with the rather well-known example of Aśoka, the Mauryan emperor of the third century B.C., who banned the holding of samāja.17 This royal act emanated from his perception of what a samāja represented; he was emphatic that he saw many evils in samāja (bahukaṃ hi dosaṃ), and considering that in matters of governance all people were like his own children, he obviously would not like them to be exposed to evil. In fact, the world of Asoka’s dhamma which he created and propagated was a moral world with emphatic exclusion of violence towards living beings. Other royal measures against killing animals and birds, presumably 16 Bhaṭṭācāryya 1978. 17 Sircar 1965: 15.

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even affecting the subsistence of hunting communities, were recorded in other edicts. It is appropriate that the ban on samājas occurs in an edict which also records a drastic reduction in the daily killing of animals in the royal kitchen. The alternative spectacle, presumably a samāja kind of event, which Asoka himself organised for his subjects, was projected as good because it held up promises of an idyllic life in the next world.18 This officially sponsored “samāja”-like spectacle with its censored performances obviously did not have the spontaneity and variety which other samājas had. One can understand that Aśoka with his obsession with a universal moral code would not permit too much variety and excesses within his realm. He even found the performance of domestic rituals, mostly by women, as of little merit.19 One does not know what impact Aśoka’s royal policy regarding samāja had in later times. But it appears that in the Brahmanical tradition too the king is expected to have measured up to a very high moral standard set by Dharma-Śāstra purists. Manu’s listed vices were vices in general; the king was to stay away from them: hunting, gambling, sleeping by day, malicious gossip, women, drunkenness, music, singing, dancing and aimless wandering are the group of ten [vices] born of desire (kāmajo daśako gaṇaḥ). Any deviation, even among subjects, particularly if they were married women, from the model may have been considered fit for different measures of punishment. Amongst the many offences of women for which punishment is prescribed by Manu (9.80; 9.84) are those of drinking, being wasteful of money and going to public spectacles (prekṣā samājaṃ gacched-vā).20 It is thus possible that according to one set of attitudes towards samājas, they were not to be looked upon with favour by rulers and theorists. Buddha’s admonition to Bhikkus for witnessing the various spectacles of samāja may thus have been of wider social application. However, there seems to have existed in the public mind a distinction between the bhikṣus and the common folk. The public in general may have experienced a feeling of disgust, as seen in Vinaya II.5.2.6 at bhikṣus who “like ordinary sensual laymen took delight in dancing, vocal and instrumental music that was going on on a hill at Rajagaha”.21 This distinction in the public mind between the bhikṣus and the ordinary “sensual laymen” in the matter of merrymaking and habits of life may at the same time suggest an alternative to what Aśoka or Manu thought. In other words, if looked at from a different perspective the response of the rulers toward such events would then be positive, rather than negative. Aśoka may have drastically reduced 18 Chattopadhyaya 2007: 145–165; Sircar 1965: 15–16, 20–21. 19 Chattopadhyaya 2007. 20 Doniger & Smith 1991: 7.47; 9.84 (133, 207). 21 Quoted from Mookerji 2002: 129–130.

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the killing of animals in the royal kitchen, but if one goes by the story of Rantideva in the Mahābhārata, the daily slaughter of 4000 animals in the kitchen, with most of the meat being distributed among the people, the act of slaughter must have served as a bond between the royal household and the community outside it even without the occasion of a samāja.22 The tension between the expectations of a ruler as a model individual and the necessity of his contact with various communities of his constituency somehow does not figure clearly in texts concerned with successful statecraft. In the Rāmāyaṇa, for example, which projects the acts of an ideal ruler of the ideal state of Kosala and which represents high moral order, there is an interesting passage in the Ayodhyā-Kāṇḍa. (Rāmāyaṇa 2.67:5). After the death of Daśaratha, the ṛśis assemble at the court of Ayodhyā, and appropriately, discourse on the state of statelessness in the absence of the king. Among the many evils of statelessness, the following is mentioned: N-ārājake janapade prahṛṣṭāḥ naṭa-nartakāḥ Utsavāś-ca samājāś-ca vardhante rāṣṭra-vardhanāḥ “In the a-rājaka country the naṭas and nartakas are not happy; the utsavas and samājas which enhance the prosperity of the state also cease.” Utsavas and Samājas were thus not necessarily activities opposed to the interests of the state. Their prosperity was in fact perceived as conducive to the prosperity of the country. Kauṭilya, the pragmatic theorist of the Arthaśāstra, in fact reiterates the stand of general Dharmasūtras and Dharmaśāstras, when an overall framework for the “Pacification of the Conquered Territory” is prepared. In addition to “granting favours, giving exemptions, making gifts and showing honour […]” it is recommended that the “king should adopt a similar character, dress, language, and behaviour (as the subjects). And he should show the same devotion in festivals in honour of the deities of the country, festive gatherings and sportive amusements.’’23 The king was further asked “not to institute an unrighteous custom, and should stop any initiated by others.”24 The same pragmatic approach extends to the liquor policy of the state with which the official in charge had to be instructed; so in the appropriate section “On the Consumption of Spirituous Liquor”, the Arthaśāstra states: “On the occasions of festivals, gatherings and fairs, permission to manufacture and sell liquor should be granted for four days. On those days he should 22 Bhandarkar 1913: 256. 23 Kangle 1972: 2.25.36. 24 Ibid.: 491–493.

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B.D. Chattopadhyaya charge a penalty per day from those not permitted, till the end of the festivity.’’25

Kauṭilya’s righteous concern for revenue did not come in the way of making special provision for the manufacture and sale of liquor, which too must have earned the state additional revenue. After all, a perusal of various texts would make it abundantly clear that drinking orgies were a natural part of festivities. Historical examples of royal association with utsavas and samājas are to be found in different periods and regions; details too are available on direct royal participation in annual festivals connected with major cult centres. In the early historical period, evidence of the shift from Aśoka’s anti-samāja policy to an active royal role in organising samājas and utsavas is to be found in two inscriptions, one from deltaic Orissa and the other from Nasik in Maharashtra. In the first inscription, from the Udaygiri hills near Bhubaneswar, King Khāravela of Kaliṅga (c. first century B.C.), puts forth the claim that in the third year of his reign, he (the ruler) who himself was proficient in the performing arts, entertained the city (the city of Kaliṅga) by arranging the spectacle of wrestling, dancing, singing and instrumental music (Gaṃdhava - Veda - budho dapa - nata – gīta - vādita - saṃdasanāhi usava - samāja - kārāpanāhi ca kīḍāpayati nagariṃ). Khāravela, the ruler, was personally a follower of the Jaina faith. As a ruler, his association with the activities and aspirations of the city community in his capital was a practical necessity.26 The second inscription, of about the second century C.E., from Nasik is mainly about the many activities and personal qualities of a deceased ruler. Among the many activities of a ruler who upheld the values of an ideal social order and who is compared to many legendary epic figures, it is also stated that he was a “performer of utsavas and samājas on auspicious occasions” (chaṇa - ghanusava - samāja kārakasa). The royal obligation to participate in such public events is a motif continuing through different periods of Indian history. Apart from modern practices, one late piece of textual evidence from the ancient period comes from the Kṛtyakalpa-taru, a digest prepared by Lakṣmīdhara in the twelfth century.27 Unless the duties of the king were duly performed, Lakṣmīdhara stressed, the country would suffer from drought, famine and pestilence. The duties included performance of festivals (utsavas) at prescribed times during the year: “It is the king’s duty to ensure that the celebrations be enacted correctly in order that his country and his people maintain their continued prosperity.” The chronological distance between Aśoka and Khāravela was perhaps two centuries; between Aśoka and the Sātavāhana ruler, more than three. Did the meaning of utsava and samāja undergo any change in the intervening period? There is no direct evidence on this, but there 25 Kangle 1972: 2.25.36. 26 Sircar 1965: 213–220. 27 Cited in Anderson 1993: 99.

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is of course the caveat, present in all Brahmanical texts, that what prevailed in different countries, castes and families may continue to prevail, provided of course that they were not opposed to the sacred texts, i.e. the Vedas. Proximity to the Vedas was of course a problem which could be easily solved, but there was perhaps the reality of social distance between different social groups in the way festive occasions were observed, or even in daily modes of entertainment. For example, the Āpastamba Dharmasūtra prescribed that the assembly hall was open to only three upper varṇas for entertaining themselves with dice, while “assaults of arms, dancing, singing, music and the like (performances) shall be held only (in the houses) of the king’s servants”28 – a strong indication that in one category of brahamanical attitudes, samājas continued to have a strong subaltern association. The Kamasūtra too, which is primarily concerned with how in various ways accomplished city men should entertain themselves, is infused with a spirit of exclusiveness. It does recommend that on various occasions of utsava, as in calamity, the spirit of gaṇa-dharma was to be followed; there were games and other occasions in which participation was open. But there were naimittika occasions such as ghaṭa nivandhanam, goṣṭhī-samavāya, etc. to which open access was not prescribed. Big festive occasions, however, remained occasions of convergence, and governance must have involved negotiating between two contradictory principles: the principle of orthodoxy and exclusion and the principle of heterogeneity. With this dilemma in mind, we may now turn to a brief analysis of what, over time, emerged as a major festival, the Goddess festival of eastern India, which, at the same time was a pan-Indian festival.

A Festival within a Festival Of major significance in connection with the theme and argument of this essay is the most important festival of eastern India, the Durgotsava or Durgā-mahotsava, the elaborate worship of the goddess Durgā, which in turn encapsulates another festival as a part of it. Durga (literally, “difficult of access”) was a composite deity, representing convergence as well as multiple manifestations of different goddesses of disparate locations. The mode of worship of the goddess represents as well a convergence of disparate locations. The festival of Durgā, or Durgotsava, appears in a number of early medieval and medieval Purāṇas and Digests attributed to eastern India: the Devī-bhāgavata, Mahā-bhāgavata, Bṛhaddharma Purāṇa – all generally assigned to Bengal, and the Kālikā-Purāṇa, presumably available by the eleventh century, an enigmatic major compilation of legends and details of how the goddess should be worshipped. Although in terms of its complex of legends and their locale the Purāṇa relates strongly to Kāmarūpa in Assam, the details of wor28 Āpastamba Dharmasūtra 2.10.25.

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ship concern the Devī in her various manifestations and need not be taken as specific to Kāmarūpa, the seat of the goddess Kāmākhyā, alone.29 From the variations one comes across in the texts regarding different calendars for the worship of the goddess, the duration of festivities and exact rituals to be performed, it seems clear that much like Vasantotsava, Durgotsava too represents a convergence of heterogeneous cults and practices in the form of a Devī with different manifestations. That the Devī worship accommodated disparate modes is evident in the use of such terms as tantra, mantra, maṇḍala, mudrā, mūrti and so on. Details of the worship, to be found in the second half of the Kālikā-Purāṇa and narrated by Śiva himself to Bhṛṅgī and Mahākāla, entailed following procedures labelled as Vaiṣṇavī-tantra, Uttara-tantra, Kāmākhyā-tantra, Tripura-tantra, etc. At another level, there is clear space in the text for what is called “religious forms of heterogeneous communities” in the form of the observance of the Vāmabhāva or the left method implying unorthodox behaviour such as the use of intoxicating liquors and meat, and the emphasis laid on sexual intercourse;30 at the same time, accommodated in the same text is the contrasting “correct behaviour of the man who pays honour to the seers, gods, ancestors, men and demons by means of the five great sacrifices (mahāyajña). This is the right method (dakṣiṇabhāva) of the orthodox Brahmans.” There are elaborate discussions and analyses available on the modes of worship of the goddess; the purpose of this section is to briefly refer to the presence of a practice which figures in some of the Purāṇas in connection with the worship of the goddess and which is called Śavarotsava. While enjoining that men should worship her as per the rules (Durgā-tantreṇa mantreṇa kuryād-Durgā- mahotsavam) and that the king in order to strengthen his army shall perform the lustration of the army (Bala-nīrājanam rājā kuryāt-bala-vivṛddhaye), the text of the Kālikā Purāṇa goes on to the finale of the worship by saying that the goddess has to be sent off with Śavarotsava or Śarvarotsava (tataḥ sampreṣita - Devī daśamyāṃ Śarvarotisavaiḥ) on the last i.e. tenth (daśamī) day of worship.31 [In the celebration of Śavarotsava] “people should engage themselves in amorous plays with well-dressed damsels, prostitutes and dancers amidst the sounds of conch shells and musical instruments, beating the drums and kettle drums, by hoisting flags, wearing varieties of clothes, by strewing parched grains (lājā) and flowers, by throwing dust and slinging mud, by sporting, cutting jokes, doing auspicious things, by mentioning the name of male and female organs, singing songs prominently on male and female organs, and uttering lewd words denoting male and female organs, and the like – until 29 Van Kooij 1972; Einoo 1999; Furui 2007. 30 Van Kooij 1972: 8–10. 31 Shastri 1991–1992: 60, 61.

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they have enough of them. If a person does not deride others, and if he is not derided by others, the goddess becomes angry with him and curses him with a dreadful curse.”32 However, the expression Su-vāsinī kumārī of the original was perhaps intended to mean “well-dressed virgin” rather than a “damsel”. In any case, the erotic rites which constitute the Śavarotsava in the Kālikā-Purāṇa reappear in identical or modified form in other Sanskrit texts of the early medieval period. For example, Jīmūtavāhana’s Kālaviveka has an interesting variation in the following:33 Bhaga - liṅg - ā bhidhānai - śca bhaga - liṅga - pragītakaiḥ. Bhaga - liṅga - kriyābhi - śca kriyāyu - ralaṃ janāḥ This was implied to mean actual sexual act, although perhaps symbolically in imitation of the act. It is interesting that the author of the Kālaviveka offered to add a commentary on Śavarotsava in the following terms: Śavara - varṇa iva parṇy – ādy āvṛta kardam - ādi - lipta - śarīro nānā - vidhān - āsam baddhah avalgita - nṛtya - gīta vādy - ādiparo – bhūtva iti Śavarotsava - padārtha. What the commentary underlines is the totally unconnected, implying unsystematised, and unbridled character of the celebration in the manner in which the Śavara community, clad in leaves, would perform it. A slightly different condensed version of the utsava figures in the Bṛhaddharma Purāṇa. Bhaga - liṅg - ābhidhān - aiśca śṛṅgāra - vacanai - stathā Gānaṃ kāryaṃ bhojayec-ca brāhmaṇānaṃ-stoṣayeṃ - striyaḥ. (Songs referring to female and male genitals and erotic words should be sung, brahmanas should be fed and women should be praised). The purely erotic contents of the utsava have been clearly toned down here, by accommodating other elements into the act (1.22.32–35). What is the significance of the incorporation of Śavarotsava into the Mahotsava of Durgā? Admittedly, the great festival of the Devī was intended to be of universal participation. Even for the prosperity of the kingdom of the gods it was necessary to observe the celebrations;34 for mortals: Any person who does not worship the goddess Durgā in the great festival, out of delusion, or laziness, or pride, or spite, the goddess becomes angry with him, destroys his desired objects and he is reborn as a sacrificial animal of Mahāmāyā. 32 Ibid.: 61.19–23. 33 Tarkabhūṣaṇ 1897–1905: 514. 34 Tarkaratna 1909–1910: 60.33.

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The actual social composition of the participants is enjoined to be all varṇas,35 while Śūlapāṇis medieval digest Durgotsava - Viveko Vāsantī - Vivekaśca specifies what really universal participation meant:36 Brāhmanaiḥ Kṣatriyair Vaiśyaiḥ Śudrair anyaśca sevakaiḥ Evaṃ nānā - mleccha - gaṇaiḥ pūjyate sarva - dasyubhiḥ So, it was not the four varṇas alone who were entitled to worship the goddess; worshippers of other categories, different groups of mlecchas and all bandits had the right to worship the goddess. At one level, therefore, the heterogeneity in the ritual performances of the goddess festival may be explained by taking into account the diverse communities who were taking part in it. At the same time, a deeper probe would be necessary to explain the way an elaborate ritual performance obviously associated, as Kālaviveka suggests, with the community of Śabaras, was accommodated within the great festival of the goddess, articulated solely in the medium of Sanskrit.

Conclusion By now, despite dominant orthodox approaches to the origin and study of Indian religious and ritual systems to the single, Vedic, Sanskritic source, it is evident from studies based on scriptures and fieldwork on living religious practices that many sources went into the making of the non-Islamic ritual world of pre-colonial India.37 Essentially, the convergence and reshaping of the diverse sources would constitute what the Conference on Rituals has appropriately called “Ritual Dynamics”. However, looked at chronologically and spatially, the process may have operated with a wide range of variations. For one thing, there is no need to think that it was a one-way process. It was shown, more than half a century back, that even a simple ritual of the Khond tribe of Orissa had absorbed elements of Hindu ritual and motif.38 At the same time, survivals, presumably in symbolic form, of what pre-dated the crystallisation of the complex grammar of Brahmanical rituals, may be traced in the Vedic system itself, whether it was in the Aśvamedha sacrifice,39 or in the performance of the Mahāvrata. On the Mahāvrata, P.V. Kane comments:40

35 36 37 38 39 40

Bṛhaddharma Purāṇa: 1.22.30–33. Siddhāntabhūṣaṇ 1924–1925. Bose 1949; Kosambi 1956; 1962; Sontheimer 1989; Chattopadhyaya 2003: ch. 9. Bose 1949. Bhattacharyya 1975: ch. 1. Kane 1974: vol. 2, pt. 2, 1244.

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“A brāhmaṇa in the front part of the sadas and a śūdra at the back alternatively belaud and abuse those engaged in the sattra, the former saying they have done well and the latter saying they have not done well [...] An ārya and a śūdra engage to the west of the āgnīdhra shed in a contest for a white circular skin [...] A harlot and a brahmacārin abuse each other on the northern hip of the altar. Sexual intercourse between a man and woman (that are strangers to the sacrifice) takes place in a screened shed to the south of the mārjātīya shed [...]” The rites associated with Mahāvrata remind one immediately of the overt eroticism present in both Vasantotsava and Śavarotsava. The significance of such rites and their survivals in festivals which accommodated diverse practices through the process of interaction can be perhaps teased out from what Leona Anderson concluded, after analysing a number of classical Sanskrit plays; to her the central motifs present in them “cluster around the complex of fertility, eroticism and procreation”. Through them, the audience (and the participants) celebrate the theme of renewal and regeneration.41 The valorisation of Kāma or “Desire” in major festivals in this manner has also the dimension of the social order being turned upside down, albeit temporarily.42 Whether the orthodox society or the state would continue to approve the community festivals of the kinds of Vasantotsava or Śabarotsava would very much depend on the historical contingency of inevitable festival moments in society. The Śabarotsava of the Kālikā-Purāṇa continued to figure in medieval texts; however, there is already a marginal reference in the Bṛhaddharma Purāṇa to the act which, in any case, was considerably modified to accommodate the ritual of feeding brahmins and singing the praise of women. If one goes by the standard Bengali version of the Kālikā-Purāṇa one cannot make out what the text actually implied with reference to the Śabarotsava.43 This kind of marginalisation of course would have been impossible for such festive occasions as Vasantostsava, the chariot festival of Jagannātha in Puri or the modern massive pageantry of Dussehra in Mysore. The volume of direct participation in these festivities brought them in direct contact with the state apparatus and the state must have found such occasions to re-validate its own.44 Finally, although there cannot be any formulaic utterances as to the extent community rights in matters of ritual would continue, there is enough evidence that they remain a strong component of the Indian ritual world at local levels. The festival of Ramacandi, to give a single example, is celebrated at Garh Manitri in the 41 42 43 44

Anderson 1993: 84. Ibid. Tarkaratna 1989–1990. Eschmann & Kulke & Tripathi 1978.

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former kingdom of Khurda in Orissa. A local tutelary goddess and a source of ritual authority for the local kingdom,45 the details of the festival of the goddess show what important ritual role is performed by the Saora (Śabara) shaman and the Khond priest in the festival spread over a period of seventeen days. The precedence enjoyed by the Santal community in making the first sacrificial offering to Kālī on the night of her worship at the village of Maluti in the Birbhum district of Bengal (personal communication) is another reminder that an understanding of the Indian ritual world cannot at all be achieved in terms only of what was codified in Sanskrit, although the codified texts in some form or another have crept into all ritual performances.

45 Tanabe 1999: ch. 5.

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References Sources Apastamba Dharmasutra 1965. Translated by G. Bühler as The Sacred Laws of the Aryas, pt.1 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 2), Indian reprint. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas. Brhad-dharma Purana, Sanskrit text, edited with a Bengali translation by Panchanan Tarkaratna, reprint: Kolkata, Nababharat publishers, 1991. Dīgha – Nikāya 1947. Translated into Bengali by Bhikshu Silabhadra. Calcutta: Mahabodhi Society anon. 19984. Śrīmad vālmikīya rāmāyaṇam. Gorakhpur: Gita Press. Bandyopādhyāya, Mānabendu (ed. and transl.) 1991–1992. Kāmasūtra. Kalikātā: Sanskrit Pushtak Bhandar Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (ed.) 1971. The Mahabharata: Text as Constituted in its Critical Edition. vol. 1. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Bhaṭṭācāryya, Tārāpada (ed. and transl.) 1978. Ratnāvalī, vol. 3. Calcutta: Nabapatra Prakashan. Doniger, Wendy & Sudhir Kakar (eds. and transls.) 2002. Kamasutra: a new, complete English translation of the Sanskrit text with excerpts from the Sanskrit Jayamangala commentary of Yashodhara Indrapada, the Hindi Jaya commentary of Devadatta Shastri / Vatsyayana Mallanaga. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press. Kangle, R.P. (ed. and transl.) 1972. Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra, pt.2, Bombay: University of Bombay Müller, Max F. (ed.) 1985. The Cullavagga. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas (Sacred Books of the East Vol. 20). reprint. O’Flanerty, Wendy Doniger & Brian K. Smith (eds. and transls.) 1991. The Laws of Manu, with an Introduction and Notes. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Siddhāntabhūṣaṇ, Satīścandra (ed.) 1924–1925. Durgotsavaviveka vāsantīvivekaś ca. Kalikātā: Saṃskṛtasāhityapariṣad. Tarkabhūṣaṇ, Pramathanātha (ed.) 1897–1905. The Kālaviveka (a Part of Dharmaratna. Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal. Tarkaratna, Pañcānan (ed. and transl.) 1989–1990. Kālikā Purāṇa. Kalikātā: Na. Cakrabartī.

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Bhattacharyya, Narendra N. 1975. “The Priest and the Queen: A Study in the Rituals of Asvamedha”. In: Narendra N. Bhattacharyya. Ancient Indian Rituals and Their Social Contents. Delhi: Manohar Book Service: 1–24. Bhattacharyya, Sibesh C. 2009. “Power and Authority in Early India”. In: Brajadulal D. Chattopadhyaya (ed.). A Social History of Early India. Vol. 2, pt. 5. New Delhi: Pearson Education: 93–114 (History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization). Bose, Nirmal K. 1949. Hindu Samajer Garan. [in Bengali]. Calcutta: Viswa-Bharati. — 1953. “The Spring Festival of India”. In: Nirmal K. Bose. Cultural Anthropology and other Essays. Calcutta: Indian Associated Publ.: 73–102. Chattopadhyaya, Brajadulal D. 2003. Studying Early India: Archaeology, Texts and Historical Issues. Delhi: Permanent Black. — Chattopadhyaya, B.D, 2007. “Accomodation and Negotiation in a Culture of Exclusivism: Some Early Indian Perspectives”. In: Bipan Chandra and Sucheta Mahajan (eds.), Composite Culture in a Multicultural Society. New Delhi: Pearson Longman. — (ed.) 2009. A Social History of Early India. Vol. 2, pt. 5. New Delhi: Pearson Education (History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization). Einoo, Shingo 1999. “The Autumn Goddess Festival: Described in the Puranas”. In: Masakazu Tanaka & Musashi Tachikawa (eds.). Living with Sakti: Gender, Sexuality and Religion in South Asia. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology: 33–70 (Senri Ethnological Studies 50). Eschmann, Anncharlott & Hermann Kulke & Gaya Chandan Tripathi (eds.) 1978. The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Furui, R. 2007. Rural Society and Social Networks in Early Bengal from the Fifth to the Thirteenth Century AD. (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University). Hopkins, Edward W. 1915. Epic Mythology. Strassbourg: Trübner (Grundriss der Indoarischen Philologie und Altertumskunde 3/1B). Hota, Agni K. 2008. “Modes of Articulation of Popular Culture in Early India”. In: Brajadulal D. Chattopadhyaya (ed.). A Social History of Early India. Vol. 2, pt. 5. New Delhi: Pearson Education: 269–293 (History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization). Kane, Pandurang V. 19742. History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Medieval, Religious and Civil Law). Vol. 2, pt. 2; vol. 5, pt. 1. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute Kooij, Karel R. van 1972. Worship of the Goddess According to Kalika-Purana. Leiden: Brill. Kosambi, Damodar D. 1956. An Introduction to the Study of Indian History. Bombay: Popular Book Depot. ― 1962. Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture. Bombay: Popular Prakashan.

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― 20092. Combined Methods in Indology and other Writings. Compiled, edited and introduced by Brajadulal D. Chattopadhyaya. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Majumdar, Ramesh C. (ed.) 1951. The Vedic Age. London: George Allen & Unwin (The History and Culture of the Indian People 1). Mookerji, Radhakumud K. 2002. Aśoka. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. (reprint). Roy, Kumkum 1994. The Emergence of Monarchy in North India, Eighth–Fourth Centuries B.C.: As Reflected in the Brahmanical Tradition. Delhi, New York: Oxford University Press. Sircar, Dineshchandra C. 19652. Select Inscriptions Bearing on Indian History and Civilization. Vol. 1. Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press. Shastri, B.N. 1991–1992. Kālikā-Purāṇa. 3 vols. Delhi: Nag Publishers. Sontheimer, Günther-Dietz 1989. Pastoral Deities in Western India. Translated by Anne Feldhaus. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 1994. “The Vana and the Kshetra: The Tribal Background of Some Famous Cults”. In: Gaya Chandan Tripathi & Hermann Kulke (eds.). Religion and Society in Eastern India. Eschmann Memorial Lectures. Bhubaneshwar: The Eschmann Memorial Fund: 117–164. Staal, Fritz 1986. Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar. Vol. 1. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas. (reprint). Tanabe, Akio 1999. “The Transformation of Sakti. Gender and Sexuality in the Festival of Goddess Ramachandi”. In: Masakazu Tanaka & Musashi Tachikawa (eds.). Living with Sakti: Gender, Sexuality and Religion in South Asia. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology: 137–168 (Senri Ethnological Studies 50).

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Buddha’s Tooth Relic Contesting Rituals and the Early State in Sri Lanka 1. Introduction The tooth relic enjoys a special place in Sri Lankan history and politics. For centuries it determined the sacred space of the island’s capital, and the growing complexity of its annual festival reflected and cemented the socio-political order of the state. In short, from the time of its arrival on the island in the fourth century C.E. to the mid-twentieth century, the tooth relic and its ritual made Sri Lankan kings as much as it made the state. However, much of this picture of an unchanging and unchangeable pillar of kingship and statehood appears to be the result of reading history backwards – taking evidence from later periods and applying it to the relic and the festival through time, thereby denying them any kind of development or change. As recent research has shown, relics continue the Buddha’s biographic process and express his presence in the religious world of today. As living objects relics therefore possess biographies of their own.1 It is the aim of this paper to provide a critical reading of the biography of the tooth relic and especially to look at the early stages of its biographical process in Sri Lanka, a period that was as decisive for the localisation of the relic in the political and religious life of Sri Lanka as it was crucial for the shaping of the relic’s biography. It will be argued that the tooth relic introduced a new element to the ritual map of Anuradhapura, but it did not do so immediately. Rather, it had to compete with existing rituals, which did not cease to exist overnight, but showed a remarkable degree of perseverance, as they were patronised by kings and venerated by the people. As will be shown in the second part of the paper, it took several centuries and eventually a peculiar constellation to make the tooth relic the politically and religiously dominant object that we know today. The final part of the paper will reflect on the possible relationship between relics, their rituals and biographies, and history writing in ancient Sri Lanka. This is in fact a quite complex story that would deserve separate and more extensive treatment than can be provided here, but as research on the role of relics in ancient Sri Lankan Buddhism 1 Strong 2004.

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suggests the possibility of such a connection, some preliminary thoughts at least shall be given here.

2. The Ritual Map of Anuradhapura in the Fourth–Fifth Centuries C.E. By the time the tooth relic arrived in Sri Lanka in the early fourth century,2 several other relics had been brought to Anuradhapura (and other places in Lanka) and had become foci of royally sponsored public veneration. The first of these relics (though not in chronological order) was the sapling of the Bodhi tree, which the nun Sanghamitta had brought from Bodhgaya to Anuradhapura where it was planted in a grove south of the citadel (mid-3rd century B.C.E.). Later, this grove also became the location of Lanka’s first monastery, the Mahavihara. This relic – and the Bodhi tree was a relic, both a relic of use (parabhogikadhatu) and a teaching relic (dhammadhatu)3 – was venerated in two basic forms, by way of a recurring annual festival of watering the tree (normally celebrated in the month of May), and by way of frequent but spontaneous donation ceremonies that could include the construction of buildings as well. A broad, well laid-out street called mahavithi or mahapatha in the chronicles and mangul mahaveyya in the inscriptions led from the south gate of the citadel along past the Thuparama and Mahathupa stupas to the Bodhi tree as well as to the monastic buildings in its surroundings.4 The chronicles describe on various occasions how the king, the court and the people marched down this street in pompous procession, with music, flowers and incense, to ceremonially water the tree, decorate it with banners and flags, set up an image in its shade or inaugurate buildings such as rest houses, gates and the like. Thus, when enshrining the relics of the Thuparama, king Dutthagamani, dressed in royal attire, mounted his decorated carriage drawn by four white horses. Accompanied by a host of warriors, elephants, courtiers, women carrying lights and baskets with flowers, boys waving banners and musicians playing various instruments, the king proceeded to Meghavana, the park in which the stupa stood.5 Another relic that had come to Anuradhapura before the tooth relic was the Buddha’s right collar-bone. It had arrived before the Bodhi tree and was encased in the Thuparama, the first stupa to be built at the capital (mid-third century B.C.E.). Finally, in the second century B.C.E. king Dutthagamani decided to have an even larger stupa constructed, the Mahathupa. Again, the king wanted relics to be enshrined inside the stupa, for which purpose he sent a monk to India to collect fur2 King Sirimeghavanna very likely ruled 301–328 CE and not 362–390 as Geiger in his revision of the chronology of the Sinhalese kings assumed (Geiger 1925-29). 3 In later relic chronicles, the Bodhi tree is regarded as a dhammadhatu (“relics of the teaching”) and even “foundation of the order”, cp. Gunawardana 1979: 230. 4 Wickremasinghe 1912-1927: 38 and 21; Culavamsa (Geiger 1925-29, hereafter Cv.) 67.1. 5 E.g. Mahavamsa (Geiger 1908, 1912, hereafter Mv.) 31.13–17.

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ther relics. In sum, if we look at the structure of relic veneration as it emerged in the fourth–third centuries B.C.E., we can note that the relics were all under the tutelage and within the realm of the Mahavihara, and their veneration had taken a certain standardised form. The basic form of this ritual included a procession along a north-south axis, the “auspicious street”, which linked the citadel with the sacred sites of the stupas and the Mahavihara. In this ritual, the people (starting with the king) had to leave their dwellings and move to the sites of the ritual, whereas the relics had become static and, as far as the Buddha’s bodily relics are concerned, invisible. They were kept in relic chambers, often built at the bottom of a stupa, which were in turn fully covered by the body of the stupa. What emerges is a general structure of relic veneration, which combined the mobility of the people, who had to walk to the sacred sites, with the immobility and invisibility of the relics, which were encased in a stupa. This structure persisted for centuries, and it also survived the fundamental change of the religious map of Anuradhapura in the first century B.C.E. when the Abhayagiri monastery was founded. This created a schism among the sangha as monks quit the Mahavihara to move into the new monastery and establish a separate ordination tradition. Buddhists could thereafter choose between two “fields of merit” when making their donations,6 though it seems that for the time being the Mahavihara as the older and more established institution retained its ritual superiority. However, this situation changed dramatically in the early fourth century C.E., as king Mahasena attempted to extinguish the Mahavihara, driving out its monks and tearing down its buildings. In the end, he failed to achieve his aim,7 and the Mahavihara was partly restored by Mahasena’s son and successor Sirimeghavanna. This king had repairs carried out in the Mahavihara, and it was perhaps in the course of these restorations and the re-establishment of the monastery that the king invented (as I see it) a ceremony and festival for Mahinda Thera, the monk who had both brought the Buddhist teachings to Sri Lanka and founded the monastery. As Mahinda had established the monastery some 700 years ago (i.e. in the third century B.C.E.), his presence was now needed again to restore and re-sanctify the desecrated site of the Mahavihara to its former glory and status. For this purpose, a statue of the monk was first taken to his refuge and burial place on the Mihintale mountains, some 15 miles east of Anuradhapura, and then carried back to the city and the Mahavihara where it was set up next to the Bodhi tree for three months.8 Ordered by the king to be repeated annually, this festival was “celebrated to the present day”, as the author of the Culavamsa dutifully recorded.9 Despite its 6 Frasch 1998. 7 The king only succeeded in reducing the complex in size and building another monastery, the Jetavana Vihara, on a section of the Mahavihara’s original site. 8 Cv. 37.66-90. 9 Cv. 37.89.

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alleged history, the festival has to be seen as an innovation, as never before (at least not in a documented way) had a relic – and the statue of the saintly monk (arhat) was as good a relic as the Bodhi tree or a corporeal relic of the Buddha, the more so since it had been in touch with the sacred space of its founder10 – been taken around in procession and kept at various places (eight days on Mihintale mountain, three days in a monastery east of the city, and finally three months in the Mahavihara) for display and public veneration. It was in this situation of intra-religious and religio-political conflicts that the tooth relic arrived on the island. According to the Culavamsa, which is our closest and nearly contemporary record for the event (though, as will be shown below, the Culavamsa has to be read with caution), this relic was transferred from Kalinga to Anuradhapura by a Brahmin woman in the ninth regnal year of king Sirimeghavanna (c.310 C.E.). However, both the tone of the Culavamsa and indications in other sources – Buddhaghosa, for instance, denied the authenticity of the tooth relic in his Sumangalavilasini11 – suggest that the monks from the Mahavihara were initially rather hostile towards the tooth relic and its veneration. This supposed opposition put the king in an awkward position: as the champion and protector of the Mahavihara, he would have been obliged to respect the attitude of its monks and reject the relic too. The monks from the Abhayagiri Vihara, whose position was strengthened as a result of king Mahasena’s assault on the Mahavihara, would probably have been keen to take it, but simply handing the relic over to them would have affronted the Mahaviharins even more. However, it was a relic after all, and so the king became an inventor again. He gave the relic to neither of the two competing monasteries, but kept it on the ‘middle ground’, on a site within the royal citadel where he built an open, accessible temple for it. Probably after the model of the procession of Mahinda’s image, which was projected on the Mahavihara, the king instituted a procession for the tooth relic centred on the Abhayagiri monastery where the relic was kept for display and veneration for a couple of weeks. The new relic procession extended the old religious north-south axis that linked the citadel and the Mahavihara to the north, but more importantly it replaced the old form of a static, invisible bodily relic of the Buddha with a new type of relic that was both visible and dynamic. The institution of the new relic cult by king Sirimeghavanna perhaps paved the way for yet another innovation in the early sixth century, when the social and religious efficacy of a relic procession was once again exploited, this time by king Silakala. The ritual he created may be seen as an even stronger attack on the Bodhi tree/Mahinda statue festivals than the procession of the tooth relic to the Abhaya10 There is a tradition in Sinhalese Buddhism of using the ashes of deceased monks for making images. 11 Stede (ed.) 1931: 615.


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giri Vihara, as the king apparently tried to superscribe the forms and routes of both of the existing relic processions. The object of veneration in this case was a Mahayanistic text called Dhammadhatu which had been brought from Kasi (Varanasi) to Anuradhapura. The king, “incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood” in the eyes of the (Mahaviharin) author of the Culavamsa, built a separate temple next to the royal palace for this book, from where it was taken in an annual procession to the Jetavana monastery (the new monastery king Mahasena had founded on a site carved out from the compound of the Mahavihara), where a festival was celebrated in its honour. The veneration of the Dhammadhatu is remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, it copied two features from the festival of the tooth relic, viz. being kept in an open temple near the palace and being carried round in an annual procession. Secondly, it seems to have been directed immediately against the festival of the Bodhi tree and the Mahinda procession, also using the mangul mahaveyya as a route and taking place on a site that had been illegally acquired from the Mahavihara. In a way, the Dhammadhatu procession was a ritual palimpsest written over both the cults of the tooth relic and the Bodhi tree.12 With the help of the foregoing, we can now draw a ritual map of early Anuradhapura which shows the various competing rituals. Its basic alignment is along a north-south axis which in its southern part links the citadel to the Mahavihara/Bodhi tree by way of the “auspicious road” (mangul mahaveyya). This road was initially reserved for processions leading towards the old stupas such as the Thuparama and the Mahathupa as well as towards the Bodhi tree, but since the sixth century it also served for the Dhammadhatu procession leading from the temple to the Jetavana monastery. Of the east-west axis, only the eastern part was formally laid out on the ground, serving not only as the route of the Mahinda image procession but also for the people who went on a pilgrimage to Mihintale.13 The area to the west of the citadel was home to the “western monasteries” (a much later name, though) which very likely housed monks of the pamsukulin tradition who preferred to live solitarily in order to practise meditation.14 They seem to have stood above the sectarian struggles between the three monastic traditions and the 12 I would speculate, however, that the procession of the Mahinda image survived the Dhammadhatu procession, assuming that the above claim of the survival of the Mahinda procession “to the present day” refers to the events during the reign of king Silakala. This is certainly open to question, and a fresh investigation into the various stages in which the Culavamsa was compiled and continued seems highly desirable. 13 Mv. 34.75–79. 14 See Hocart 1924; Wijesuriya 1998; and Mv. 36.105. In the chronicles, the pamsukulin tradition is for the first time mentioned in the seventh century (Cv. 47.66), though it may have existed earlier. The pamsukulin monks (“rag wearers”) were practising a higher degree of asceticism by avoiding contact with laymen as far as possible, wearing robes only made from rags rather than accepting donations of proper robes.

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western monasteries may thus have formed a neutral ground within the religious set up. Living in accordance with the Vinaya and practising a higher degree of austerity, the pamsukulin monks were venerated and endowed with donations by the people on numerous occasions. This veneration, however, happened mostly on an individual, spontaneous basis. As far as the sources allow an insight, the western monasteries and their inmates do not appear to have become objects of any cult or ritualised form of veneration before the end of the Anuradhapura period. Fig. 1: A Ritual Map of Anuradhapura

Drawing by the author

At this point, a side-note on the relic procession and its origins seems appropriate. As pointed out above, Buddhist relic veneration traditionally referred to immobile and invisible relics that were kept in reliquaries and relic chambers encased in stupas, while the people had to proceed to the sacred sites for veneration. Given this tradition, the relic processions of Anuradhapura as they emerged in the course of the fourth century and later were innovations. This immediately begs the question for the origin of this innovation: was it a truly Lanka Buddhist invention, or was it copied from somewhere outside the island? In an earlier publication I have indicated that the notion that a religious image or a relic can be sent on a procession may have been first put into practice in Indian/Hindu festivals, or in other words


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that the Sinhalese Buddhists copied and adapted the Hindu tradition of yatras (processions).15 Moreover, the Kalingan origin and Brahmin messenger of the tooth relic suggested a reasonable link to yatras such as Puri’s Jagannath festival. In the meantime, discussions with other scholars and further research have caused me to question this assumption, as neither the Jagannath festival nor any other Hindu yatra apparently existed in the fourth century C.E.; at least no record of any kind of a Hindu yatra whatsoever seems to exist. Nor has the search for a possible Jaina origin of relic processions yielded any results.16 Given this situation, it rather appears that the relic processions of Anuradhapura may have served as a model for the Hindu yatras. But this does still not rule out completely that the Sinhalese copied it from somewhere else. However, unless we find a reasonable connection to some more distant places such as the Greek/Roman empires, Persia or China – which all had varied connections and contacts with Lanka17– it seems fair to assume that the notion to take a relic along on a processional was an original Sinhalese creation and contribution to Buddhist orthopractice.

3. The Rise of the Tooth Relic It is impossible to determine whether this ritual set-up shown in the map above continued to exist for the rest of the Anuradhapura period (i.e. up to c.1000 C.E.) or whether it changed and if so, in what ways. This difficulty arises from the various ways in which the sources can be read. As shown above, the authors of the Culavamsa were generally hostile towards the tooth relic and rarely mentioned it before c.1000 C.E.: the chronicle has many more references for the festival of the Bodhi tree and other festivals connected with the Mahavihara, than for the tooth relic and its procession. The whole period was, however, overshadowed by descriptions of how religious life at Anuradhapura was frequently disrupted by external forces, mainly from South India. Sri Lanka had always been part of the South Indian political arena and was repeatedly drawn into the conflicts among the various powers (Cholas, Pandyas, Pallavas, Cheras, etc.) there. This persisting power struggle occasionally resulted in invasions of the island, in the course of which Anuradhapura was plundered and destroyed. On more than one occasion the whole court and state had to be relocated to the southern province of Rohana and restored after the occupation of the capital was over. In short, the ritual map shown above displays a temporary situation, valid perhaps during the fourth to the seventh centuries, but it may have looked different at other times. Understandably, the authors of the Culavamsa did not always disclose the fate of the relics during periods of occupation, 15 Frasch 2000. 16 I am grateful to Julia Hegewald, Manchester, for this suggestion. 17 Gunawardana 1979: 242–281.

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and thus records of relics or reports of festivals may be missing from the chronicles for decades, sometimes centuries, until they are suddenly mentioned again, reflecting both the changing political situation of the capital/state and the different role a single relic could play in the construction of kingship and statehood. Some of the relics, we may assume, went missing as a result of military conflict, but were – miraculously – rediscovered as required by political needs.18 The most disastrous invasion in the history of Anuradhapura took place around the year 1000 C.E. and was headed by the Chola kings Rajaraja and Rajendra. In two campaigns they conquered Anuradhapura, took king Mahinda prisoner and annexed the island, which became a province of the Chola empire under its new capital Polonnaruwa. However, several leading courtiers managed to escape to Rohana in the south again and successfully defended this region against the Chola attacks. In their flight, several of them had each taken a relic into their custody, most notably the tooth relic, the hair relic and the alms bowl. Unwilling to unite against their common enemy but too weak to challenge the Cholas on their own, these Sinhalese noblemen and their clans began to compete for superiority amongst each other. Initially, a certain Kassapa who is described as “chief of the Kesadhatus”19 brought the exiled Sinhalese clans under his sway, but after some time he was overwhelmed by prince Kitti whose clan was guarding the tooth relic. One descendant of this clan, Vijayabahu I, finally managed to drive out the Cholas from the old “territory of the kings” (rajarattha, i.e. the heartland of the Anuradhapura kingdom in northern Sri Lanka) in 1070 C.E.. His attempt to restore the old Sinhala state was, however, hampered by the fact that the capital city of Anuradhapura had suffered a degree of destruction and looting that made it impossible to revitalise and re-occupy it. The king therefore followed the example of the Tamils and made Polonnaruwa his seat of government. In laying out the city, Vijayabahu I seems to have followed the basic plan of Anuradhapura to a certain degree, as the temple of the tooth relic, which was the most important building of his reign, was built next to the royal precinct which formed the innermost part of the citadel. As most of the religious monuments were also situated on the northern side of the citadel, the king may even have tried to retain the orientation the tooth relic had had at Anuradhapura, where its procession led out through the northern gate. Moreover, Polonnaruwa’s sacred complex (known as the quadrangle) reveals another remarkable feature as the temples of the tooth relic – in the late twelfth century a second temple of the tooth relic was built next to Vijayabahu’s original monument – were surrounded by four more religious buildings, namely a stepped pyramidal stupa 18 The case in point is the relic of the alms bowl, which had been taken to South India in the course of one of the invasions (Mv. 33.55). Its return to the island is not mentioned anywhere in the chronicle, but after the Chola interregnum in the eleventh century it is frequently mentioned in connection with the tooth relic. 19 Cv. 57.74.


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(Satmahal Prasat) in the style of northern Thai stupas, a circular relic stupa in Sinhalese fashion (Vatadage), a Burmese temple (Thuparama) and a small terraced enclosure for a Bodhi tree. We do not know the chronological order of their construction, but it seems possible to read the architecture of the quadrangle as a representation of all major Buddhist countries (Thai, Sri Lanka, Burma and India) standing like devotees in a semi-circle around the tooth relic. Fig. 2: The Quadrangle at Polonnaruwa

Source: A. Seneviratne 1994: 164, numerics supplemented by the author

However, the rise of the tooth relic was the result of more than a struggle for power among Sinhalese noblemen and a king’s decision to assign it a prominent place in the sacred centre of the new capital.20 Recurring invasions and continuing infighting for superiority among the leading Sinhalese clans in the thirteenth century repeatedly necessitated the transfer of the capital city, first to Dambadeniya, then to Kurunegala, Sitawaka and finally to Kandy. Starting with Parakkama Bahu II, the founder of the Dambadeniya kingdom, the first measure kings designing a new capital took was to build a temple for the tooth relic. The relic thus marked the 20 This came with a special form of protection by the South Indian mercenaries known as the Velaikkaras, Wickremasinge 1912-1927: 242–255.

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sacred centre not only of the capital, but also of the Sinhalese state by transferring some of Anuradhapura’s sacredness to the new political centre. In practice, kings revered the tooth relic in a variety of ways, which, however, always included a procession. In the course of time, the manuals outlining the rituals surrounding the tooth relic’s veneration became increasingly elaborate, detailing the powers and duties of the various social groups participating in the procession.21 The manuals both reflected and constructed the socio-political structure of the state. The efforts to build a “theatre state” (Geertz) around a ritual culminated in the eighteenth century under king Kirtti Sri, the second of the South Indian nayyakar kings to occupy the throne of Kandy. He established the esala perahera in its existing form.22 Along with the relic’s rise to dominate the ritual map of Sri Lanka, the historiography of the island changed markedly. Before c.1200 C.E., the chroniclers had treated the history of Lanka as a sequence of kings, giving a more or less balanced overview of each king’s achievements and failures, listing in great detail the various buildings, irrigation works and donations sponsored by them in Anuradhapura and, whenever it happened, on the island. After the twelfth century (and, that is, after the Tamil interregnum), the focus of the chronicle is by and large narrowed down to a history of the tooth relic, singling out those kings who were responsible for the construction of a new temple or a more elaborate form of the festival (or venerated it in some other way). Neither is a full list of kings given, nor do the older sites of memory, the monasteries of Anuradhapura and their traditions, play a role any more. Similarly, the former conflict between the Mahavihara and its competitors is replaced with an emphasis on the new monastic traditions of village dwelling (gamavasin) and forest dwelling (arannavasin). The character of the Culavamsa, in short, changes from a monastic book of merit to a record of the tooth relic and its veneration.

4. Relics, Ritual and History Writing The final part of this paper will address the relationship between ritual, relics and historiography. It is commonplace that Sri Lanka stands out from all South and Southeast Asian countries because of her ancient, fairly elaborate and apparently trustworthy historical records, notably the three major chronicles Dipavamsa, Mahavamsa and Culavamsa. No research on the history of the island or the history of Buddhism can ignore them, and they have been critically examined for this paper as well. One of the major debates concerning ancient Sinhalese historio21 Along with the yearly ritual, the tooth relic was also embedded in daily and weekly rituals, which by the twentieth century had become very elaborate, see Jayawardena-Moser 1975: 113–149; Seneviratne 1978: 38-114; and Herath 2004, passim. 22 For a detailed description see de Silva 1969.


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graphies (apart from the inexorable question of reliability, which will be addressed later on)23 was the search for the ideological reasons that lay behind their writing. Several suggestions have been made, pointing to the historicity of Buddhism and its founder, the sectarian struggle between the two big monasteries of Anuradhapura or the capacity of chronicles to cope with human contingency and repair ruptures in development.24 A different explanation has been presented by Trainor who linked the emergence of history writing to the various relics kept in Sri Lanka. He portrayed the Sri Lankan relic cult as a way of remembering the Buddha(s) of the past and bringing him (or them) back to life. If Buddhist texts and commentaries are immaterial representations of the Buddha, the relics are material representations of him, whose attaining of parinibbana would otherwise mean that he has left without a trace. But as the authenticity and validity of relics cannot be taken for granted, they require a history detailing their origin and transmission. This authorisation is provided by the relic chronicles. The writing of history therefore has a dual function of on the one hand establishing a relic’s validity and thereby securing its efficacy and authority, while chronicles on the other hand provide a mnemonic guideline to cover the gap between the time when the Buddha was alive and his presence in the relic and its ritual.25 In arguing so, Trainor implicitly links the emergence of history writing in Sri Lanka to the advent and veneration of relics in Sri Lanka. In support of Trainor’s assumption, we may note that most of the relics known from the Anuradhapura period predate the conventional historiographies of Sri Lanka (that is, the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa) by several centuries. Moreover, most (if not all) of them are accompanied by their own histories, however short they may occasionally be. These had quite often been recorded first in the vernacular before a standardised version in Pali was produced, in a way similar to the process Geiger has described in connection with the standard Pali chronicles.26 For the tooth relic, which Trainor curiously excludes from his study,27 an additional link can be established by the fact that its arrival on the island coincided approximately with composition of the Dipavamsa, the island’s oldest surviving chronicle. Taking this argument further, we might even postulate a link between the contesting rituals that surrounded the various relics and the need for a standardised, “national” history book to override or perhaps eliminate these particularist tendencies in the fields of Buddhist practice and ideology. Finally, the scope of the Culavamsa which, following the tooth relic’s rise to become the dominant religious 23 For the variety of approaches to the ancient Sinhalese chronicles and explanations of their emergence, see, inter alia, Bechert 1969; Kiribamune 1978; Kulke 1999; and Kemper 1991. 24 See below, footnote 30. 25 Trainor 1997: 66-84. Cp. Berkwitz 2004. 26 Geiger 1973: 47-57. 27 Trainor 1997: 31. The reason is the “substantial body of scholarship” devoted to it.

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cult on the island after 1200 C.E., focuses on recording its rituals, seems to support this notion of a nexus between ritual policy and history writing. But Trainor’s claim works best when we accept that the importance of relic cults in Sinhalese Buddhism has always been paramount. While the importance of the tooth relic and its cult after 1200 C.E. cannot be denied, it seems that before this period – and this refers practically to the Anuradhapura period at large – the significance of relics and relic cults was much less, and when they mattered, they would have to compete with each other. As shown, there are relatively few references to relics in the chronicles before that time, and from reading between the lines of the Culavamsa we may even infer that the monks of the Mahavihara initially viewed the tooth relic with suspicion. While this observation cannot rule out completely the possibility that the Mahavihara’s turn towards the writing of history stemmed from the input of relic histories – in fact, one could take the “standard” chronicles as a reaction to the challenge posed by the relics and their particular histories – a direct connection between relics, their biographies and chronicle writing seems rather unlikely. This question deserves further investigation, which will form the last part of this paper. It is well known that the Pali chronicles of Sri Lanka stand out in ancient South Asian literature, which has otherwise produced very few historiographic writings.28 The search for an explanation of the exceptional has therefore kept scholars busy for almost as long as the Sri Lankan chronicles have been studied, since the 1830s.29 This search resulted in a variety of theories, pointing at, among other things, a specific mindset of Buddhism (in contrast to Hinduism) towards history, the sectarian quarrels between the monks from the Mahavihara and Abhayagiri monasteries, or millennialist expectations.30 The suggestion that the oldest chronicles of ancient Sri Lanka built upon relics and relic cults presents an entirely new approach in this search. In order to assess its veracity, it will be necessary to look again at the evidence of the chronicles, although with due caution to avoid the trap of accepting the reliability of the chronicles uncritically. Just like most regions in Asia, ancient Sri Lanka would suffer from a relative paucity of historical sources – for a period of some 1,300 years before 1000 C.E. there is perhaps one inscription per year on average – were it not for the chronicles, which provided a continuous and, according to a widely held belief, reliable record of events and dates. This situation has all too often led researchers to take the chronicles uncritically for 28 Bechert 1969. 29 Research on the Sri Lankan chronicles began in the early 1830s with the translations prepared by Upham (1833) and Turnour (1836, which laid the foundation for his later translation of the Mahavamsa) and culminated around the turn of the century with the critical editions and translations provided by Oldenberg (1879) and Geiger (1908/1912 and 1925– 1929). 30 Among others, Gokhale 1965; Bechert 1969; Kiribamune 1978; Kulke 1999; Frasch 2000.


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fact, without proper consideration of the context and ideological strategies which informed their writing. One such example is Herath, who meticulously cross-examined various old and younger chronicles without reflecting for a single moment on their narrative structures or ideological trajectories; others to have done so include Rahula, Adikaram and occasionally Western scholars like Bechert or Gombrich as well.31 Using the chronicles therefore requires a “dual reading” for both the factual statements and the ideological context in which these statements are made. In the case of the Culavamsa, which has been the major source for investigating the possible influence of relic cults upon historiography, this dual reading is beset with various difficulties. First of all, the chronicle was composed and updated by various authors at different times, and neither the stages of continuation nor the time when these happened can be established with any degree of reliability. To illustrate this, we will have to look again at the contest of relics and rituals in fourth-fifth-century Sri Lanka as dealt with in the first part of this paper. The record of all these festivals is found in the first part of the Culavamsa, which picks up the story from the Mahavamsa’s rather abrupt end. According to Geiger, the whole text of the Culavamsa, from chapter 37 (continued) to chapter 101, was composed by three different authors. The first one was an anonymous monk who recorded the events up to the end of the Anuradhapura period, the next one was the monk Dhammakitti who portrayed the reign of king Parakkama Bahu I around 1200, and the third one was the monk Tibottuwawe Sumangala who worked in the late eighteenth century and linked the kings of the South Indian Nayyakar dynasty to the royal genealogy of Sinhalese kings.32 This classification by Geiger is now universally accepted and repeated in virtually every handbook on Pali literature.33 In contrast to Geiger, it is argued here that there were more than three authors at work, and already the chapters covering the Anuradhapura period were recorded by at least three, possibly four different writers, who occasionally seem to have worked outside Anuradhapura as well. The part dealing with the relic festivals under consideration here was probably written close to events, possibly during the reign of king Dhatusena in the mid-sixth century. What also matters is the ideological standpoint of this author. He was obviously a resident of the Mahavihara who intended not only to put on record that the monastery had survived the assault of king Mahasena, but that the monastery had regained its former status as the final instance in all relevant matters of the religion. Accordingly, more space (and sympathy) is devoted to those kings who support the Mahavihara and acknowledge its superiority (Sirimeghavanna, Dhatusena), than to those kings who, like Silakala, “cannot distinguish truth from wrong”. These latter kings are usually glossed over 31 Adikaram 1946, Rahula 1993, Bechert 1969; Gombrich 2006: 140–144. 32 Actually, the final chapter 101 was added by yet another author after the British conquest of the island, but this can be ignored here. 33 Von Hinüber 2001: 91–92; Norman 1983: 140–141.

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in a few sentences. The author is also familiar with provisions from ecclesiastical and private law, e.g. when he states that the Mahavihara had never been fully abandoned (claiming monks had stayed in an underground hideaway), and therefore king Mahasena’s removal of the sima stones was an illegal, sinful act. In a similar “orthodox” attitude, he is very reserved about the tooth relic, which threatened to break the Mahavihara’s ritual dominance, and he is also comparatively reserved about the procession of the Dhammadhatu (a work believed to contain the teachings of the Vetulla sect, who are seen as heretics by the Mahaviharins). Undertones in both cases suggest a good deal of hostility towards both rituals. Inserting the report of the Mahinda procession immediately before that of the tooth relic, he puts the two rituals in “proper” order and points out which one of them deserves to take the pride of place, a strategy that is also underpinned by the length of the report. Moreover, the description of the persons who brought the relics – a Brahmin woman from Kalinga in the case of the tooth relic, a merchant from Kasi in that of the Dhammadhatu – can also be read as an expression of detestation and rejection, as true relics would have to be guarded and accompanied on their journey by experts, for instance saintly figures like Sanghamitta, eminent Buddhist monks or at any rate followers of the religion, but not by refugees of uncertain status or possibly wrong gender. Taking all this evidence together, the author apparently intended to convey the message that something must be wrong with a relic if it lacks proper credentials. There is yet another aspect to be taken into consideration when examining the relationship between chronicle writing and relic cults. As pointed out above, the section containing the descriptions of all these relic-centred rituals was probably written during the time of king Dhatusena. This king stands out in the eyes of the chronicler because of his support and protection for the Mahavihara, but his reign is generally marked by huge efforts to restore the Anuradhapura state and religion including its sacred monuments all over the island after the Tamil invasion and interregnum which had occurred in the early fifth century. The king’s efforts were obviously informed by models taken from history, and accordingly we find references to Ashoka and Dutthagamani,34 to a public reading of the Dipavamsa (an interest in the history of the island that combines nicely with the updating of the Mahavamsa sponsored by the king), and of course, as mentioned, to the rituals and festivals established by his predecessors. It is under these circumstances that the two major relic processions are described in detail.35 To make matters more complicated, a further important event fell into the reign of this king, that is the end of the first millennium of the Buddhist calendar, which 34 For an investigation of the Dutthagamani story and its emanations in historical works, see Bretfeld 2001. 35 Fifty years later king Silakala would take these records to create his own relic procession with the Dhammadhatu.


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according to a widely held belief indicated the imminent arrival of the future Buddha Metteyya.36 The king thus not only searched for a “useful past”, he also prepared for an even more glorious future in which the religion was expected to be reconstituted in its pristine state. Here, a string of religious concepts and beliefs, which had little to do with the socio-political necessities of the day, must be taken into account to find out the background of ritual politics and history writing in fifth-century Sri Lanka. Seen in this light, the whole set of restorations and revivals of the place, its people and its history including relic rituals would appear to be subordinate to an overriding aim, the preparation of the city (and, standing at its apex, of the whole island) for the advent of the Buddha Metteyya. Trainor rightly reminds us that relics and their cults have always been an integral part of Buddhist orthopractice, especially in Sri Lanka, and will have been accompanied by histories for validation. The assumption that these biographies of the relics have stimulated (or even necessitated) the writing of “national” histories such as the Dipavamsa or the Mahavamsa does present an interesting new approach for investigating the reasons why the ancient Sri Lankan chronicles were written. However, it seems clear that the advent of the various relics and the establishment of their respective festivals did not immediately result in the writing or updating of a chronicle. Quite the reverse, the chronicles that were written did not put too much weight on relic cults (and especially the ritual of the tooth relic), and ritual politics were first addressed following a period of trouble, in which a king sought to reorganise and reconstitute the order of state, society and religion. In this situation, the rituals of relics served as media to produce continuity, and thus became indispensable parts of historical tradition. The ritual policies centred on relics in fifth-century Lanka thus can only be fully understood and interpreted if seen within the complicated political situation of the time, and must take into account both the generalities of the religious system and the peculiarities of time and place.

36 It was only through the new interpretation of Buddhaghosa who worked around the middle of the fifth century and thus witnessed the non-appearance of Metteyya that the older belief coupled to the period of 1,000 years was replaced with a longer time span of 5,000 years.

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References Adikaram, E. W. 1946. Early history of Buddhism in Ceylon. Migoda: D. S. Puswela. Bechert, Heinz 1969. “Zum Ursprung der Geschichtsschreibung im indischen Kulturbereich”. Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Klasse 2: 3–37. Berkwitz, Stephen C. 2004. Buddhist history in the vernacular. Leiden: Brill. Bretfeld, Sven 2001. Das singhalesische Nationalepos von König Dutthagamani Abhaya. Berlin: Reimer. de Silva, C.M. Austin 1969. “Festivals of Ceylon”. Spolia Zeylanica 31/4: 361–380. Frasch, Tilman 1998. “Religious and economic development in ancient Anuradhapura”. In: Manfred Domrös & Helmut Roth (eds.). Sri Lanka past and present. Archaeology, geography, economics. Weikersheim: Margraf: 61–81. — 2000. “Der Buddhismus im Jahre 1000”. Periplus. Jahrbuch für Außereuropäische Geschichte 10: 56–72. Geary, Patrick 1986. “Sacred commodities: The circulation of medieval relics”. In: Arjun Appadurai (ed.). Social life of things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 169–191. Geertz, Clifford 1980. Negara. The theatre state in 19th century Bali. Princeton: University Press. Geiger, Wilhelm (ed. and trans.) 1908, 1912. The Mahavamsa or the Great Chronicle of Ceylon. London: Pali Text Society. — (ed. and trans.) 1925–1929. The Culavamsa, being the more recent part of the Mahavamsa. London: Pali Text Society. — 1965. Culture of Ceylon in medieval times. Ed. by Heinz Bechert, 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Steiner. — 1973 [1905]. Dipavamsa und Mahavamsa und die geschichtliche Überlieferung in Ceylon. Leipzig: Deichert (repr. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg). Gokhale, Balkrishna Govind 1965. “The Theravada-Buddhist view of history”. Journal of the American Oriental Society 85: 354–360. Gombrich, Richard 2006. Theravada Buddhism. A social history from ancient Benares to modern Colombo. London: Routledge. Gunawardana, R.A. Leslie H. 1979. Robe and plough. Monasticism and economic interest in medieval Sri Lanka. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Herath, Dhammaratna 1994. The tooth relic and the crown. Colombo: Gunaratne. Hinüber, Oskar von 2001. A handbook of Pali literature. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Hocart, A.M. 1924. The western monasteries of Anuradhapura. London: Luzac and Co. (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon 1). — 1931. The temple of the tooth in Kandy. London: Luzac & Co. (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon 4).


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Jayawardena-Moser, Premalatha 1975. Der Kult der Zahnreliquie des Buddha: Untersuchungen zur Frage der Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Buddhismus und Volkskultur Ceylons. Munich University (Diss. Phil.). Kemper, Steven 1991. The presence of the past. Chronicles, politics and culture in Sinhala life. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kiribamune, Sirima 1978. “The Mahavamsa: A study of the ancient historiography of Sri Lanka”. In: Leeleananda Prematilleke et al. (eds.): Senarat Paranavitana Commemoration Volume. Leiden: Brill: 125–136. Kulke, Hermann 1999. “Sectarian politics and historiography in early Sri Lanka: Wilhelm Geiger’s studies on the chronicles in the light of recent research”. In: Ulrich Everding & Asanga Tilakaratne (eds.). Wilhelm Geiger and the study of the history and culture of Sri Lanka. Colombo: Goethe-Institute: 112–136. Liyanagamage, Amaradasa 1968. The decline of Polonnaruwa and the rise of Dambadeniya. Colombo: Government Press. Malalgoda, Kitsiri 1976. Buddhism in Sinhalese society 1750–1900. A study of religious survival and change. Berkeley: University of California Press. Norman, Kenneth. R. 1983. Pali literature. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Oldenberg, Hermann (ed. and trans.) 1879. The Dipavamsa. An ancient Buddhist historical record. London: Williams and Norgate. Rahula, Walpola 1993 [1956]. History of Buddhism in Ceylon. 3rd ed. Colombo: Buddhist Cultural Centre. Seneviratne, Anuradha 1994. Polonnaruwa. Colombo: Dept. of Archaeology. (Arch. Survey of Ceylon). Seneviratne, H.L. 1978. Rituals of the Kandyan state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Bardwell L. 1977. Religion and the legitimation of power in Sri Lanka. Chambersburgh: Anima. Spiro, Melford 1971. Buddhism and society. A great tradition and its Burmese vicissitudes. London: Allen and Unwin. Stede, William (ed.) 1931. The Sumangalavilasini: Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the Digha-nikaya. Vol. 2. London: Oxford University Press. Strong, John 2004. The relics of the Buddha. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Trainor, Kevin 1997. Relics, rituals and representation in Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pagel, Ulrich 2007. “Stupa festivals in Buddhist narrative literature”. In: Konrad Klaus & Jens-Uwe Hartmann (eds.). Indica et Tibetica. Festschrift für Michael Hahn. Vienna: Institut für Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde: 369–394. (Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 66). Turnour, George 1836. “An Epitome of the History of Ceylon”. Ceylon Almanac: 3–67. Upham, Edward (tr.) 1833. The sacred and historical books of Ceylon (Mahavansi, the Rajaratnacari and the Rajavali), 3 vols., London: Parbury, Allen & Co.. Wickremasinghe, Don Martino de Zilva (ed. and trans.) 1912-1927. Epigraphia Zeylanica vol. 2. London: OUP.

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Wijesuriya, Gamini 1998. Buddhist meditation monasteries of ancient Sri Lanka. Colombo: Dept. of Archaeology.

Bhairabi Prasad Sahu

Rituals, Royalty and Rajya in Early Medieval Eastern India Political authority is constituted in complex ways, involving both the ruling elite and the subject population. Ruling elites aspiring to continue in that position make use of religious ideas, symbols and institutions to cohere the segmented identities in the realm and validate their position. They look for justifications to provide a moral basis to their authority and make it appear that it derives from a pool of common societal values. Rulers had to be seen to be conforming to established norms, norms which could be justified with reference to shared community beliefs. Conceptions of power are culturally determined and therefore the constitutive elements in the structure of legitimation are specific to particular societies. Historical processes may be comparable but comparability is not the same as being identical. Legitimation of power is not mechanical; it is dynamic, absorptive and continuously changing across time and space. Contestations and negotiations are integral to the process. Ruling elites stressed their genealogical links, participated in impressive rituals, invoked special relationships with gods, and dispensed their resources on multiple forms of patronage seeking to obtain consent to their power.1 The issue of legitimation was not much of a concern until recently. The historiography on the state which focused on a powerful, centralised state, irrespective of time and place, also did not help much in appreciating the compulsions of the people in power. It was in the 1960s and more particularly the 1970s that legitimation studies emerged, largely as a consequence of the different sets of new questions that were brought to bear on the study of the state.2 Much of the work done in the case of Orissa since the 1970s and after owes a great deal to the German Orissa Research Projects of 1970–1975 and 1999–2005. While the former project was centred on the making of a regional tradition and the cultural and political implications of the cult of Jagannath, and coastal Orissa, notwithstanding its efforts to straddle a range of other issues and areas,3 the latter has actually been involved in a process of decentring or looking at the region from the perspective of the peripheries.4 Meanwhile, other works have addressed the problem of legitimation and the ideo1 2 3 4

Sahu 2004. Chattopadhyaya 1976, 1983; Kulke 1993, 1995, 2006. Eschmann et al. 1978. Kulke & Schnepel 2001; Kulke & Berkemer 2010.

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logy of kingship,5 but the unit of study continues to be the region as a whole. The strengths and weaknesses of these works apart, it may perhaps be useful to choose some historical and cultural regions or sub-regions such as Kalinga, Khijjingakota and Daksina Kosala to gain a comparative perspective of the political processes. Rituals and legitimation are after all culture-specific, and these spatial segments are situated at three corners of the region, overlapping with the modern contiguous states of Andhra, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Rituals, royalty and rajya in the early sub-regions of Orissa were interrelated in numerous ways, and helped in sustaining the socio-political order. The relationships encompassed besides the political, the economic and social dimensions as well. Rituals, religious forms, and ceremonies, in conveying meanings, repeatedly negotiated in the cultural domain and tried to secure conformity and adherence to the emerging order. The community-royalty relationship of subordination and domination was influenced through ritual enactments. Creation of a certain ideology or perception of kingship insured royalty against opposition. Deities and temples enhanced the autochthonous or “Hindu” profile of kingship. Notwithstanding the local-contextual character of most deities, their accommodation in the pan-Indian pantheons needs recognition. Such encompassing processes create wider linkages and integration across situations of plurality. The relationship of rituals with royalty and community across sub-regions needs investigation. The changing forms of patronage and legitimation can provide significant insights into social processes and structural change, in so far as the two move in tandem. Chronologically this paper spans the period up to and including the eleventh century, and is mostly based on inscriptional evidence; supplemented by archaeological data.

1. Khijjingakota: The Case of a “Jungle Kingdom” Khijjingakota mandala largely comprised the modern districts of Mayurbhanja and Keonjhar in northern Orissa and adjoining territories in Jharkhand, and acquired political visibility under the Adi Bhanjas during the tenth-eleventh centuries. Viratgarh or the mound of Khiching on the Orissa-Jharkhand border, in Mayurbhanja district, and Sitabinji in Keonjhar district are the two well-known early historic sites in the hilly, forested sub-region. These sites along with others have yielded evidence for Puri-Kushana coins, usually dated to the early centuries A.D. The Asanapat Nataraja image inscription of Satrubhanja, placed in the sixthseventh century,6 is the next piece of evidence from the area. It describes him as Vindhyatavinatha or the lord of Vindhyatavi, clearly indicating the forested nature of the historical geography, much of which still continues to exist in the region. 5 Singh 1994. 6 Rajaguru 1958; Tripathy 1997.

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The record moves on to eulogise the achievements and generosity of the royal donor. Satrubhanja is shown to have patronised Brahmanas, Buddhists, Jainas and other communities, read the Bharata, Purana, Itihasa, Sruti, etc., and built a temple for God. The king’s effort to create a level playing ground for the various communities and appear to be responsive to their aspirations, despite the Brahmanical tilt, may suggest the march towards a complex society in an essentially jungle kingdom.7 After a gap of about three centuries the Adi Bhanjas emerge on the historical scene. Continued manifestation of some of the earlier tendencies can be seen in their epigraphical records. They made grants to migrant Brahmanas, mostly individual recipients. Gramas were donated in all cases, without delimitation of their boundaries. The exemptions transferred to the beneficiaries were noticeably few except in one instance. The Adipur plate of Narendrabhanja together with revenue terms (uparikara and uddesa) also mentions the shifting of some occupational groups.8 Evidence such as this suggesting low density of settlements, fewer taxes and transfer of weavers, cowherds and brewers along with the land nicely corresponds with the evolution of a state in the forest, and its associated compulsions. The administrative structure too was not much at variance with the above pattern. Many of the records do not mention the officials and even those which record them do not list many. Despite references to the expression denoting numerous feudatories (asankhshya samantanrpati), in the prasasti sections, (Bamanghati copper plate of Ranabhanja) only mahasamanta Narinda clearly emerges as one in the Adipur copper plate of Durjayabhanja. The minister of war and peace, custodian of the royal seal (mudrahasta), door-keeper (pratihari), town banker (purasresthi), scribe (lekhaka), and engraver (khanitaka) are all that we have for state officials. Whether the purasresthi can be construed as an official is quite doubtful. Administratively, Khijjinga mandala was constituted by several vishayas, which in turn comprised differentiated rural settlements. The epithets such as maharajadhiraja, paramesvara and mahamandaladhipati used in the inscriptions are suggestive of lordship in the early medieval times. However, any of the rulers in the lineage did not use any such title. This may be attributed to their fluctuating political fortunes vis-à-vis their Somavamsi overlords, but surely attracts attention; largely because they issued their grants independently. In this background of an evolving state we may proceed to delineate the structure of legitimation. Most of the inscriptions provide a miraculous account of Ganadanda Virabhadra, the mythical founder of the dynasty, bursting out of a peahen’s egg in the hermitage of Kotyasrama and being raised by the sage 7 The transformation of forests into nuclei of local state society entailed long drawn-out changes in landscape, community structure and ideology. For the historical and conceptual details of the range of jungle kingdoms see Schnepel 2002; Chattopadhyaya 2005. 8 All references to the inscriptions in this section are to Tripathy 1974.

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Vasistha. A modified version of the account is encountered in the Kesari plate of Satrubhanja. It mentions the 88,000 sons of Virabhadra, and suggests that because of their prayers Virabhadra was protected by Ramadeva (probably the epic hero) and conferred the lordship of 88,000 villages. The inscriptions refer to Kottabhanja, most likely the first historical figure in the line of Adi Bhanjas, to have been born in Virabhadra’s lineage (Adibhanja vamse), though the relationship between the two is far from clear. The miraculous part of the account is absent in the Adipur plate of Durja-yabhanja, which is supposedly spurious. Nevertheless, there is an allusion to sage Vasistha rearing his father Ranabhanja (Vasistha-muni-palita). The prasastis give information about origins of lineages in so far as they do not explain but explain away their actual origins. Origin myths were tropes for claims to political power and tell us something about the elements that went into the making of kingship in early medieval times, including the emergence of a comparable political culture, the spread of Vedic-epic-puranic ideas and Brahmanic ideology. The overlap between the autochthonous and the Brahmanic elements can be gleaned in the combination of the miraculous component and the sage Vasistha and his hermitage, each defining the relevance of the other. The Adi Bhanjas were not alone in this matter, the early Gangas, Sailodbhavas and the Khinjali Bhanjas with territories within the present state of Orissa, and dynasties such as the Kadambas of Banavasi and the Pallavas of Kanchi in south India, to name some, were a part of this tradition. What were common to them were their humble indigenous origins. The prasasti sections also incorporate attributes of kingship or the way kingship was conceived by the people in power. Narendrabhanja, known from his Adipur copper plate, the grandson of Kottabhanja, is credited with human qualities such as being strong, brave and victorious in battle. He performed good deeds and was engaged in protecting the earth like Yudhisthira. The Bamanghati record of Ranabhanjadeva, a later ruler in the family, presents the ruler as prosperous, mighty as Kamadeva, heroic, victorious over enemies, and devoted to good deeds like Yudhisthira. The Adipur plate of Durjayabhanja uses the title Bhanja kula tilaka maharajadhiraja for his father. Interestingly, the rulers also humbly describe themselves as inhabitants of Khijjingakota. The centrality of the focus being on human qualities, and at best comparisons being engaged with characters possessing human qualities and frailties, and not the major gods or their avataras, might have a bearing on the nature and early stage of kingship and state in the sub-region.9 Like all early medieval donative charters these too begin with an invocation. The rulers worshipped Bhava (Shiva), the lord of Bhavani, one who dispelled worldly fears, was omniscient sovereign of all worlds, and familiar with various modes of 9 Their self-images in the prasastis seem to represent an intermediate stage between those of the Vakatta-kas and the numerous early medieval dynasties at the turn of the millennium, indicating perhaps the early stage in the evolution of complex society in the region. The issue is well argued in Bakker 1992.


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meditation. Some of the grants are said to have been made in the name of Samkara or Mahadeva (Kesari plate of Satrubhanja, Khandeuli plate of Ranabhanja).The centrality of Shiva in the family’s belief system is also reflected in the verse which reads that the king’s sins were removed through his worship of the feet of Hara, or its variations, including his representation as a bee at the lotus feet of Shiva (the two Adipur plates of Narendrabhanja). In one of the Adipur plates Ganesha (Om namo avighnesvaraya) precedes Shiva in the standard invocation. The Shaivite affiliations come through in the seals attached to the copper plates with their motifs of the bull, trident and crescent moon. Notwithstanding the total absence of epigraphic evidence for royal patronage of temples at Khijjingakota, the site stands testimony to several temples, in different stages of preservation, and numerous sculptural relics. The material is partly preserved at the site museum and some of it is also available at the Baripada museum. Some of the temples such as the Shiva temple, Dhavalesvara, Jatesvara, Kichakesvari and Kutaitundi, among others, at present day Khiching have been dated to the tenth-eleventh centuries, i.e. the time of the Adi Bhanjas.10 The sculptural remains present a combination of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina images. The Buddha, Parsvanatha, Rishabhanatha and Tara figure along with Shiva, Vishnu, Durga, Mahisamardini, Ganesha, Kartikeya, Uma- Mahesvara, Ardhanarisvara, Narasimha and Varaha.11 The predominantly Saiva and Sakta presence is unmistakably visible, but the evidence for Vishnu, his popular avataras, and Buddhism and Jainism can not be brushed aside. It may be mentioned that the lotus and conch are a part of the motifs on the seals attached to the copper plates. Similarly, the Dussehra festival has been referred to in the Ukhunda plates of Prithvibhanja.12 The political and cultural capital of the kingdom like many other such contemporary centres exudes an ethos of plurality and social inclusiveness or brings alive a situation of antagonistic tolerance between the believers and followers of multiple religions and sects,13 though the ideology of the state apparently represented the dominant strand.

10 11 12 13

Donaldson 1985. Joshi 1983, Fig. 46–70; Donaldson 1985: 229–243. Joshi 1983: 95. At sites which are shared or appropriated by more than one religion or sect the usage “antagonistic tolerance” seems to be more apt than blanket terms like “harmonic” and “cohesive”. I borrow this expression from a project under the same heading being worked on by Professor Robert Hayden, University of Pittsburgh, and my colleagues Professor Nayanjot Lahiri and Dr. Devika Rangachari. They of course look at the competitive sharing of sites on a much wider canvas, thematically and spatially.

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2. Evolution of Political Society in Daksina Kosala The historico-cultural region of Daksina Kosala is our next case study. It comprises the modern districts of Durg, Bilaspur, Raipur and Raigarh in Chhattisgarh, and the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Sambalpur tract in Orissa. The early history of the region is demonstrable in the archaeological record of sites like Malhar, Asurgarh and Budhigarh, among others.14 The trade route from Kausambi to the Andhra coast cutting through the region provided the necessary cultural connectivity. The Mahanadi and its tributaries were the other arteries of communication. As one enters the Gupta period the area comes to light from the Allahabad prasasti and the local Arang inscriptions, suggesting the existence of atavi-rajyas and the beginning of the spread of Sanskrit as the preferred language for political articulation. The emergence of the Sarabhapuriyas on the political horizon around A.D. 500, followed by the Panduvamsis and the Somavamsis, later marked the process of local state formation and its gradual structural evolution.15 One may add that maharaja Tustikara, known from his Tera-singa plate in Kalahandi district, dated to the middle of the first millennium A.D., seems to have been the earliest ruler in the eastern sector of the sub-region. There were synchronous developments in the social and economic spheres. Agrarian expansion and spread of settlements, including temple towns, were matched by growing social complexity and the shaping of a viable administrative apparatus.16 Maharaja Narendra, the son of Sarabharaja, the founder of the lineage, invoked paramabhattaraka-pada i.e. the Gupta overlord, in his Kurud plates even after more than twenty years of his reign for reasons of political acceptance or for keeping opposition at bay. The next ruler Jayaraja’s Mallar plates present a more colourful image of royalty lording over his chiefs,17 while from the time of Sudeva-raja, a later king in the family, the title samanta-makuta-cudamani came into use (Thakur-diya plates). This registered some advance in the conception of kingship, and on that formative foundation the Panduvamsis built. The Bonda plates of Tivaradeva, for example, colourfully describe him “as an ornament of the three worlds […] and the foremost of all the performers of meritorious deeds […]. He […] obtained lordship over the whole of Kosala country […]. It is said that a number of chiefs who had acquired the five maha-sabdas had the ends of their crowns rubbed at his feet.” Adding colour to the portrait of kingship went a step farther under Mahasivagupta Balarjuna, the most distinguished member of the family, to whom we shall soon return. They make the more general point that there was all round change, but change which was continuous and gradual. 14 15 16 17

Sahu 2009; Yule 2006. Sahu 2007a. Ibid. Shastri 1995: part I, 19.


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This brings us to the legitimatory strategies of the local dynasties, their intervention in the domain of ideas for cultural communication and dissemination. Tustikara, the earliest known ruler from the eastern part of the region of Kosala, is described as a devotee of the goddess Stambheswari (Stambheswari-pada-bhakta). This is the first reference to a deity who subsequently goes on to become important as a family tutelary deity of the Sulki dynasty in forested central Orissa (Dhenkanal-Angul districts). The self-representations of kingship were not very developed under the Sarabhapuriyas, who were the founding local dynasty. The Mallar plates of Jayaraja, the third ruler in the lineage, describe him as the giver of wealth, land and cows (vasu-vasudha-go-pradah), devout worshipper of Bhagavat (Visnu) and as meditating at the feet of his parents.18 Later rulers like Sudevaraja and Pravararaja are also presented in the same way. The use of significant titles or symbolisms is marked by their absence. Some elaboration in the prasastis of the Panduvamsis is easily discernible. Tivara deva’s seals bear the Vaisnava motifs of a garuda, a conch and discus, while those on the copper plates of Mahasivagupta reveal Saiva motifs such as a couchant bull and a trident. In both cases the two lined legends focus on the good qualities of members in the family and their dharmic character. The dynasty claimed to belong to the lineage of the Pandavas, the epic heroes, and Candra vamsa (Sasivamsasambhuteh). While Tivara deva’s claimed to be the lord of Kosala, Mahasivagupta Balarjuna is said to have outdone epic characters like Bhisma, Drona and Karna in the art of the use of arms. He is described as the incarnation of virtue (dharmavatara), upholder of varnas and asramas, and one who blocked the entry of Kali Age by befriending Krita Age and being devoted to dharma. Most of the records of the time of Balarjuna, including the Sirpur Gandhesvara temple inscription and the Sirpur stone inscription, contain invocations to Siva. The Sirpur stone inscription of Vasata, the mother of the above said king, bears an invocation to Visnu as Purusottama and eulogises Narasimha. The inscription is full of comparative analogies and brings in a range of epic characters and divinities to highlight qualities of the members of the ruling family. They range from the epic characters Yudhisthira and Bhima to Krishna, Kalki, Parvati and Sri.19 Numerous attributes went into the making of the courtly ideology of kingship. The images of a kshatriya, warrior and dharmic character provided the political and cultural legitimacy to kingship. Buddhism flourished under the Panduvamsis, and the archaeological remains of monastic establishments not far away from the Laksmana temple at Sirpur dated to the same period unequivocally speak about the plural, tolerant cultural past. However, gradually Brahmanic ideology became more central to the shaping of courtly ideology, and by the time of the Somavamsis the tendency was more clearly manifest in the region. 18 Ibid. 19 Sahu 2009.

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The growth of temple-towns such as Tala, Sirpur, Rajim, all in Chhattisgarh, and a little later the Ranipur-Jharial complex and Baidyanath in the eastern half of the region of present day western Orissa, are markers of the spread of puranic religions, together with the moving frontiers of peasant society. Evidence for patronage is available from the time of Mahasiva-gupta Balarjuna, and more interestingly there is a remarkable correspondence between the titles of Kosaladhipati and Kosalendra which the Panduvamsis and Somavamsi rulers adopted and the name of the presiding deity, Kosalesvara, at Baidyanath. The site was on the eastern periphery of the kingdom, which would have enabled the ruler to appear pervasive and omnipresent. One is reminded of Bakker’s20 insightful work at Ramtek in this context. The rituals of power in this case certainly tell us something about the power of rituals. The bond and affiliation that such overlapping of identities can create and the help they provide in establishing a cord with the people needs to be appreciated. The spread of sastric-epic-puranic ideas can be gleaned from the inscriptions, including those on stone intended to be public documents, and the embellishments on temples at Sirpur, Rajim, and Baidyanath, among others. They are adorned with images of the navagrahas, Gajalakshmi and Dasavatara. These were common post-Gupta cultural trends cutting across regions and located at sites as far removed from each other as Bhubaneswar in Orissa, Ellora and Elephanta in Maharastra and Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu, attesting to wider interactions and the spread and internalisation of new values. Several forms of religious beliefs and practices flourished simultaneously. Early medieval Malhar and Sirpur provide evidence for the coexistence of temples and viharas. Rulers of successive dynasties disbursed their resources on Vishnu and Shiva temples as well as the Buddhist viharas. While one of the brothers of the Panduvamsi king Nannaraja facilitated the repairs of a vihara, another built a temple at Kharod. Temples and Buddhist establishments continued to be recipients of royal favour under Balarjuna. The competitive yet harmonious coexistence of Saivism and Vaisnavism can also be noticed at the predominantly Saivite complex of Ranipur-Jharial, which houses a Krishna temple and where Vaisnavite figures adorn the walls of a Saiva temple.21 The popularity of Mahisamarddini and Narasimha attested by the sculptural renderings extant at Sirpur (site museum), Rajim and Tala, combined with the epigraphical references to Sthambeswari (Terasinga plate) and Narasimha (inscription of Vasata), enhance the range of popular beliefs. Their also being the focus of royal interest bears testimony to the compulsions of political power, which of necessity had to be seen to be broad based and culturally sensitive. Flowing from it, it perhaps tells us something about the autochthonous inheritance of the region. During the times of the Somavamsis and the Kalachuris, 20 Bakker 1990. 21 Das 1990.


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who succeeded them around the turn of the millennium, the shift of patronage towards Saivism is clearly manifest in the artistic record.

3. Secondary States of Kalinga: The Trajectory of Socio-Political Transformations That brings us to our last case study, i.e. the sub-region of Kalinga, the land stretching from roughly the south of the Mahanadi to the northern coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh.22 It has an early recorded history going back to the NandaMaurya times. The Dhauli and Jaugada Asokan Edicts followed by the Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela provide evidence for the area’s early interaction with northern India as well as the history of early local state formation.23 The process of local state formation continued in the post-Kharavela period.24 The Mathara, Vasistha and Pitrbhakta lineages ruled almost simultaneously in parts of Ganjam and Gajapati district in Orissa and northern Andhra during the late fourth/early fifth and early sixth centuries. They were followed by the early Eastern Gangas around A.D. 500 in the south and about a hundred years later by the Sailodbhavas in the north. Notwithstanding the shifts and turns in their history, the Gangas rose to imperial or trans-regional status and continued to rule till the middle of the fifteenth century. This part of the narrative begins with the early local rulers: the Matharas, Vasisthas and Pitrbhaktas. Epithets revealing the religious beliefs of the rulers of Kalinga are available in their records. Anantasaktivarman of the Mathara dynasty was a devotee of Narayana and a Vaishnavite like most others in the family (Ningondi and Andhavaram plates).25 He also bore the epithet paramadaivata (devout worshipper of the gods). The Pitrbhaktas too followed Vaisnavism and were known as paramabhagavata (Chicacole and Bobbili plates). They also identified themselves as paramadaivata. The Vasisthas by way of contrast seem to have adopted Saivism and used the title paramamahesvara (Siripuram plates). Never-theless one may add that the conch motif, a favourite Vaishnavite symbol, continued to be used by them. Some of these early kings went on to present themselves as Kalingadhi-pati/Sakalakalingadhipati (Anantasaktivarman, Candavarman, Nanda-prabhanjanavarman). These are interesting titles suggesting identification with the territory and possible appro-priation of the associated cultural realm for political purposes. They imultaneously indicate the early emergence of the sub-region, however fuzzy, as against the later evolution of Dak-sina Kosala 22 23 24 25

Brandtner 2001. Seneviratne 1981. Sahu 2003. All references to the inscriptions in this section are from Rajaguru 1958 and Tripathy 1997.

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and Khijjingakota. The Panduvamsis used comparable titles around the eighth century and the Adi Bhanjas appropriated a humbler title meaning the inhabitants of Khijjingakota still later. All three early families of Kalinga made land grants, mostly individual villages, in the Ganjam-Srikakulam area. Brahmanas were the beneficiaries of agraharas and collective grants. The fact that villages and not uncultivated or forest land were being donated, and that there is evidence for Brahmanas being already there in such areas26 would suggest that the acts of patronage were motivated more often than not by requirements of political validation. Besides, rulers had to be seen to be conforming to established norms. The indigenous and/or humble origins of many of the ruling dynasties of early Kalinga are quite well illustrated in the legendary accounts of their origins, and their acceptance of autochthonous deities as tutelary deities of their domains. It also makes the more general point that the structure of legitimation was rooted in specific societies. With the conquest of the area south of Mahendragiri mountain close to the end of the fifth century, the Gangas adopted a local tribal deity situated at Mahendragiri as their family tutelary deity. The deity was Siva-Gokarnasvamin, and the local Saora tribe worshipped him. While the early Gangas continued to worship Gokarnasvamin, the memory of the coming together of the tribal folks, their deity and the Ganga ruler seems to have continued over centuries so as to come alive in an early twelfth-century Ganga inscription (Visakhapatnam copper plate of Anantavarman Chodagangadeva). It records how Kamarnava, the founder of the dynasty, worshipped Gokarnasvamin and having been blessed by him went on to kill the Sabara chief (Sabaraditya), and obtain the lordship of Kalinga.27 The autochthonous deity remained the tutelary deity of the Gangas till the conquest and shift of power to central coastal Orissa. While the tribal population was won over through the adoption and appropriation of their deity, alternative strategies were adopted to reach out to the peasant societies. There are evidences of land grants to Brahmanas, and reference to vapis (wells) and tatakas (tanks) in the context of boundary delineation of donated areas. Such evidence may suggest good agrarian conditions. Kutumbins or well-to-do peasants regularly emerge as addressees in the land grant documents. In one case six halas of land were donated to the temple of Narayana for meeting the expenses of bali, charu and satara, and repairs (Narasimhapalli plates of Hastivarman).28 Royal patronage of necessity was broad based. The early Gangas adopted some of the contemporary images of kingship such as representing the ruler as the victor of many battles, one who subdued many chieftains by the prowess of his own sword, and one who had the stains of the Kali Age removed by performing obeisance to the god Gokarnasvamin.29 It has been 26 27 28 29

Sahu 2007b. Kulke 1977; 1978; Rajaguru 1968. Sahu 2007b. Rajaguru 1960: 35, 44.


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argued elsewhere that in a situation of early state formation in various parts of the country outside Gangetic northern India in the course of the first millennium A.D., especially within the framework of Brahmanical ideology, epic-puranic imageries were used to project the Dharmic, cultural hero image of kingship.30 Kali was the opposite of dharma and the ruler in removing its stains was preserving the desired normative order. The use of such significant metaphors would suggest the dissemination and entrenchment of sastric-epic-puranic ideas in society. A comparable origin myth is found in the genealogy of the Sailodbhavas of Kongoda mandala. They ruled the area in northern Ganjam and Puri district around the Chilka lake, with the Mahendragiri mountain in the southern hinterland, during the seventh-mid eighth century. The legendary account introduces a person named Pulindasena, said to be famous among the people of Kalinga. Though himself endowed with great qualities, he worshipped Svayambhu desiring a capable person to rule the land. Siva granted him the boon and he saw a man emerging from the splintering of a rock. This was the eponymous king Sailodbhava (born from the rock). The origin myth occurs in some of the inscriptions of Madhavavarman and his successors (Buguda and Puri plates of Madhavavarman and Banapur plates of Madhyamaraja). The Mahendra mountain is described as kula-giri (tutelary mountain). One is not sure if the lineage emerged from this mountain. However, it may be of some interest that Pulinda like the expression Sabara happened to be a generic term for tribes in early India. Kings of the dynasty are also presented as destroyers of the impurities of the Kali Age largely owing to their virtuous qualities (Banapur plates). The prasastis move on to draw parallels between kings and epicpuranic characters such as Indra, Kartikeya, Arjuna and Hanuman. The personal attributes of royalty, including some of them having studied the sastras (Puri plates of Dharmaraja), their valour and prowess are constantly in focus. Some of them are celebrated as performers of Vedic sacrifices such as the Aswamedha, Vajapeya and the like, particularly when they had fallen into abeyance in the Kali Age (Buguda and Puri plates of Madhavavarman; Ranapur, Banapur and Puri plates of Dharmaraja). The Sailodbhava kings were Saivites and used the title para-mamahesvara. Madhavavarman also used the title paramabrahmanya, whereas Dharmaraja is said to have engaged in discussions on dharma with Brahmanas. The popularity of Vishnu in the region can be perceived from the choice of the use of the simile to express the great deeds of Dharmaraja: his fame is said to have encompassed the earth as did the feet of Vishnu (Banapur grant). Villages, half a village and even certain measures of land, as in the case of the Gangas, were donated to the Brahmanas.31 The quantum of donation would suggest the transfer of areas already under cultivation, as also the spread of royal authority by aligning 30 Sahu 1997. 31 Sahu 2007b.

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with an influential section of the populace. All the familiar tropes from origin myths, through association with Vedic sacrifices, sastric-epic-puranic ideas, characters and deities, to the patronage of Brahmanas were utilised to mediate and negotiate with the cultural domain.

4. Discussion The invention of origin myths or the appropriation and extension of genealogical links to ancient epic heroes across sub-regions, as almost everywhere in early medieval India, were intended to empower the ruling dynasties and invest royalty with respect and support, both within and outside local societies. They also marked the upward social mobility of these lineages and synchronous changes in their respective societies.32 In the above three case studies one notices the forging of broad-based incorporative ideologies. Notwithstanding individual choices, the public face of dynastic patronage was broad based. If political validation accrued from supporting a religion or sect, extending the same to other groups also earned approval and support. The situation at Sirpur during the Panduvamsis or Khijjingakota period under the Adi Bhanjas bears testimony to it. Incidentally, the convergence of the political and religious centres at these sites seems to have provided them with greater visibility. Legitimation strategies sought to appropriate as well as shape popular culture in regions such as those under discussion, which were in the making in the post-Gupta centuries. Rulers were constantly aligning with and tapping ideas and symbols in the process of the trans-localization of indigenous inheritances and the localisation of trans-regional forces, in the course of continuous interactions and change. There was an interesting interface between local tribal and pan-Indian pervasive deities such as Siva and Vishnu. Folk gods were transformed into incarnations of Vishnu, Siva and Sakti in the course of their movement towards being tutelary deities and becoming universalised. Brahmanas, temples and monasteries were the channels of communication and the state’s association with them was meant to extend authority. Constitution of authority did not mean homogenisation of beliefs and practices, but organisation and accommodation of variety and difference. The apparently immutable and timeless dharmasastras endorsed it too.33 Dharma in focusing infinitely more on duty than rights created categories of subjects who would refrain from challenging authority. The king in preserving and defending dharma was projecting and thereby desired to be seen as conforming with tradition. Dharma in its broadest sense encapsulated 32 Sinha 1962; Singh 1977. For excellent recent accounts of the simultaneous operation of numerous processes of interrelated changes in such situations see Chattopadhyaya 1994: 1– 37; 2005. 33 Lariviere 1997; Sahu 2004.


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the political, social and moral order. The king’s undoing of the disorder of Kali Age or washing away its sins also promoted the idea of dharma in a general context of state formation and the introduction of the norms of state society within the Brahmanical ideological framework.34 Agrarian growth and the spread of rural society provided the context for temple, monastery, sculpture and art building activities which transmitted and reproduced ideas and values. The interrelationship between land grants, Brahmanas and state formation has been long acknowledged and need not be reiterated here.35 In absorbing ideas societies were changing somewhat in the process. The making of the draft of the land grants, their inscribing on copper plates or stones and the rendering of epic-puranic episodes on temple doors, pillars and the like bear witness to the dissemination and internalisation of a new value system, which royalty promoted and tapped. It needs to be admitted that what we observe at Khijjingakota, Daksina Kosala and Kalinga is more a comparable reading of socio-political processes than a straitjacket transplantation of the same everywhere. The structure of legitimation was region and culture specific. Sanskrit entered each of these sub-regions with the emergence of the early local states, first Kalinga, followed by Daksina Kosala and Khijjingakota. It was, as in the other regions in the making, the preferred medium of political discourse. Kalinga had a long and more colourful history and so its culture was correspondingly more composite, largely owing to the cultural transactions on the eastern littoral. However, it may be necessary to remind ourselves that Kalinga provides a tale of phased growth in time and space. Dynasties of humble origin such as the Gangas and Sailodbhavas had to forge mythical origins or repeatedly announce the performance of Vedic sacrifices, with transgenerational influence, to win acceptability and status. Daksina Kosala provides a good example of post-Gupta state formation, amenable to adoptions and adaptations, and demonstrating gradual structural evolution in all spheres. While the Sarabhapuriyas only donated land to the Brahmanas for constituting and extending their authority, the Panduvamsis through land grants to Brahmanas, viharas and temples and the construction of self-images of substance sought to extend into the countryside. Khijjingakota is a case of a jungle kingdom, seemingly struggling to fabricate a state system. The donation of full rural settlements in all cases and not parts of it or even certain measures of land, unlike the situation in Kalinga, together with the migrant Brahmanas, the absence of boundary delineations of donated spaces and the transfer of occupational groups36 only reinforces the impression. The cluster of temples at Khijjingakota was perhaps intended to communicate the sovereignty of the royal family, and the accommodation of popular forms of religion ranging from 34 Sahu 1997. 35 Kulke 1995; 1997; Chattopadhyaya 1994. 36 Sahu 2007b.

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Sivaism through Saktism and Tantricism to Buddhism would only have strengthened the family’s leadership role.


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— 1997. “Some Observations on the Political Functions of Copper-Plate Grants in Early Medieval India”. In: Bernhard Kolver et. al. (eds.). The State, the Law and Administration in Classical India. München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag: 237–243 (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 30). — 2006. “The Integrative Model of State Formation in Early Medieval India: Some Historiographic Remarks”. In: Masaaki Kimura & Akio Tanabe (eds.). The State in India, Past and Present. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 59–81. Kulke, Hermann & Georg Berkemer (eds). 2010 (forthcoming). Centres out There: Facets of Sub-regional Identities in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Kulke, Hermann & Burkhard Schnepel (eds.) 2001. Jagannath Revisited: Studying Society, Religion and the State in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Lariviere, R.W. 1997. Dharmasastra, Custom, "Real Law" and "Apocryphal" Smrtis, in Herausgegeben von, Bernhard Kolver et. al (eds), The State, the Law and Administration in Classical India, Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 97–109. Rajaguru, S.N. 1958. Inscriptions of Orissa (300-700 A.D.). Vol. 1, pt. 2. Berhampur: Orissa State Museum. — 1960. Inscriptions of Orissa (600-1100 A.D.). Vol. 2. Berhampur: Orissa State Museum. — 1968. History of the Gangas. Pt. 1. Bhubaneswar: Orissa State Museum. Sahu, Bhairabi P. 1997. “Conception of the Kali Age in Early India: A Regional Perspective”. Trends in Social Science Research 4/1: 27–36. — 2003. “The Early State in Orissa: From the Perspective of Changing Forms of Patronage and Legitimation”. In: Biswamoy Pati & Bhairabi P. Sahu & T.K. Venkatasubramanian (eds.). Negotiating India’s Past. Essays in Memory of Professor P.S. Gupta. New Delhi: Tulika: 29–51. — 2004. “Legitimation, Ideology and State in Early India”. In: Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. Presidential Address, Ancient India Section, Indian Historical Congress, 64th Session. Mysore: 44–76. — 2007a (forthcoming). “Characterizing Early Medieval Indian Polity: The Case of Daksina Kosala and Beyond”. Paper presented at the Seminar on “State Formation and the Early State in South and Southeast Asia”, organised by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 21–23 March. — 2007b (forthcoming). “Changing the Gaze: Facets of Sub-regional Agrarian Economies in Early Medieval Orissa”. Paper presented at the Seminar on “Inscriptions and the Agrarian History of India” (D.C. Sircar Birth Centenary Seminar), Asiatic Society, Kolkata, 16–17 November. — 2010 (forthcoming). “Profiling Daksina Kosala: An Early Historical Sub-Region?”. In: Hermann Kulke & Georg Berkemer (eds.). Centres Out There: Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa. Delhi: Manohar. Schnepel, Burkhard 2002. The Jungle Kings: Ethnohistorical Aspects of Politics and Ritual in Orissa. Delhi: Manohar. Seneviratne, Sudarshan 1981. “Kalinga and Andhra: The Process of Secondary State Formation in Early India”. The Indian Historical Review. 7/1–2: 54–69.


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Shastri, A.M. 1995. Inscriptions of the Sarabhapuriyas, Panduvamsins and Somavamsins, Parts I and II, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Singh, K.S. 19772. “A Study in State Formation Among Tribal Communities”. In: R.S. Sharma & Vivekanand N. Jha (eds.). Indian Society: Historical Probings. In Memory of D.D. Kosambi. New Delhi: People’s Publishing House: 317–336. Singh, Upinder 1994. Kings, Brahmanas and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Study, A.D. 300-1147. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Sinha, Surajit 1962. “State Formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central India”. Man in India 42: 35–80. Tripathy Snigdha 1974. Inscriptions of Orissa. Vol. 6. Bhubaneswar: Orissa State Museum. — 1997. Inscriptions of Orissa. Vol. 1. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Yule, Paul 2006. Early Historic Sites in Orissa. New Delhi: Pragun.

Ulrike Teuscher

Creating Ritual Structure for a Kingdom The Case of Medieval Mewar Introduction This paper seeks to analyse the relationship between changing power structures and the development of rituals involving king and state over a longer period of time. The kingdom of Mewar is an interesting example in this respect because its royal family claimed a continuity of rule over a long period of time, even through farreaching political changes. Between the tenth to the fifteenth century and even later as well the same elements resurface again after having disappeared, and are then reinterpreted, extended or put into new frameworks. This does, of course, not only pertain to rituals, but to other expressions of culture as well, but the following will be restricted to the ritual aspects. Our knowledge about the way royal rituals were actually performed in medieval India, especially in northern and western India, is limited, with one exception: there are documents concerning hundreds of donative rituals, fixed in royal (and nonroyal) inscriptions in copper and stone. As they involved transactions of land or objects, they were written down.1 These documents show that there was a marked difference between royal and non-royal donations. Especially in the period in question, it seems as if they had become the paradigmatic royal ritual. This could be a false impression as there is no innate necessity to write the performance of rituals down. But nevertheless their frequency, their obvious competitive character and the speed with which the power-holder great and small imitated each other in performing them shows that they must have played an important role in the several kingdoms.2

1 Therefore they have often been treated as contracts, even as business records. Here I would like to stress their performative character, which is often overlooked. 2 Concerning these rituals our period is, of course, not a formative one. The way the relationship between gods and king was established and perpetuated was already widely practised by earlier dynasties, for instance the Rāṣṭrakutas and the Gurjara-Pratihāras of the earlier middle ages.

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The king lived in a world that was populated by gods and goddesses, and by gods in human form – Brahmans and ascetics – and he was supposed to enter into a relationship with them by liberality. For the king divine support, and performing the rituals to secure it, was an integral part of state polity, as much as other people sought divine support in their daily lives.3 But of course the hierarchical chain extended via the king down to other groups of people as well, who were linked to the king in various ways. With this factor royal rituals became inevitably political. Every public appearance of a king was a statement. Such a statement could be staged in manifold ways. Obviously there was a possibility to employ the ritual strategically without violating its validity. Probably the actors wouldn't have seen it in this way. The “strategical use” didn't spring from a conspiracy between the king and his Brahman advisors, but from a reaction to the push-and-pull factors of the moment. The interaction between people who take decisions and their culture is always a matter of settling day-to-day problems. Two underlying factors might have been ambition – medieval kings were expected to be ambitious – and fear. What Burghhart observes for the kingdom of Nepal is also true for western India: “The assertion of agency was a constant problem, if not a preoccupation of the king. It was built into the structure of the political economy; and it mattered – regardless how dynamic any particular royal incumbent might or might not have been. With regard to home affairs there were always some courtiers and regional lords who were subverting, or suspected of subverting, the king's exercise of power. With regard to foreign affairs it must be borne in mind that throughout this period, labour, not land, was the scarce resource. The king increased his income not by investing at home but by conquering the cultivated land of neighbours”.4 These two factors probably were not always present in the decisions of the king to perform a ritual, and often they were performed because it just was what kings did on certain occasions. But taken together, a driving force which generates ritual dynamics during changing political and social situations over a longer period of time can clearly be made out. As is well known, a gift was a dangerous thing in ancient and medieval India, and only “worked” if the donor, the donee and the ritual proceedings were perfect.5 Whereas secular transactions were mostly reciprocal, religious gifts were supposed not to be. They included a complete relinquishment of the given object forever, and this only under the correct circumstances.6 The prescriptive texts say that only 3 4 5 6

Burghart 1992: 241 Burghart 1992: 239. see Heesterman 1974: 1-31, Parry 1985: 453-473. Nath 1987: 411-440, Inden 1979: 112-131.

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when six factors are present (proper donor, proper donee, charitable attitude, the gift object, the right time and the right place) the intended reward or merit (pūrta) can be earned, but only invisibly (adṛṣṭaphala).7 Merely giving or taking a thing doesn't constitute a gift and therefore doesn't generate pūrta. Moreover, different rituals had been distinguished, for instance the gift of land (dāna), the gift of objects (pratiṣṭhā) and others.8 The actual performers kept to these prescriptions meticulously and many inscriptions record the ritual proceedings extensively. Although the records and the rituals and transactions they are describing seem repetitive at first sight, a closer look reveals that virtually every part of them was subject to manipulation according to current needs and pressures over time. Distinct statements could be made as to whether the ritual was performed at all, the choice of donee, choice of the donated object, conditions of the grant and the time and place the ritual took place.9 Innovations could be introduced without destroying the validity of the time-honoured ritual and they could be introduced within a holy setting which attached a special importance to them. For instance royal donations became separated from non-royal ones, and even within the first category hierarchies developed which made clear statements about the nature of the power of the performer. 10 Contrary to the wealth of sources on donations, there is only meagre information about other rituals. It seems that from the beginning worship in temples or at holy waters (tīrthas) also played an important role, but a distinctly royal ritual is not discernible. Luckily one important innovation within the structure of donations was that they became vehicles for proclamations. These incorporated, for instance, varied information on the donors' ancestors and their deeds, so sometimes we can catch a glimpse of other rituals from them. In later times it seems they even became the medium for introducing new rituals consciously, as will be seen shortly. 7 Kane 1974: 842 8 Nath 1987: 228 9 The objects donated could be all the income of a village (taxes on land, shops, etc.) or a field etc. or only parts of the income, to a Brahman, a group of Brahmans, an ascetic, or to the spatial manifestation of a god or goddess. In the documents of western India there are a large number of examples in which changes in political circumstances are mirrored in shifts in the donative practice. One just needs to look at the succession of copper-plate grants of the Caulukyas between 976 and 1261. Trivedi 1994: 24-278. 10 A complicated system emerged about who was allowed to perform which donation under which cir-cumstances. For dependent lords a land grant proper was only possible with the consent of their over-lord. In the kingdom of the Caulukyas, for instance, we can see that kings performed dānas in recently occupied areas, identified as the personal estate of the king (svabhujyamāna), and shortly after the gift of a dependent lord, who also called this his personal estate, was made in the same place. So the transfer of the land was ritually marked. Jha 2002: 211-245.

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This information taken as a whole presents the picture of an evolving structure of rituals, which underwent a repeated process of extension and reinterpretation according to the changes in the political fate of the kingdom of Mewar.

Mewar in its Western Indian Setting The development of Mewar, a kingdom situated in today's southern Rajasthan, is particularly interesting in this respect, as its kings were the only ones who claimed a continuity from the tenth to the twentieth century. There are two distinct phases. From the tenth to the thirteenth century Mewar existed on the periphery of a larger system of states that developed many common elements of structure, politics, values and symbolic systems. The developments in Mewar at that time refer to this and try to emulate it. But after the upheaval caused by the conquest of the Delhi Sultan, for a short time in the fifteenth century the kings of Mewar were the only powerful lords upholding a “medieval tradition” in western India. We can follow them on their way through a process of picking up old elements, reinterpreting and combining them with new elements. Although they themselves wouldn't have considered it to be an invention but the renewal of time-honoured practices which had only to be found again after being lost, one could call it an invention of tradition, although this term is ambivalent. First of all, a few characteristics of the western Indian states which probably have influenced the development shall be briefly described. Between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries a group of states emerged in western India that bore on the one hand pan-indian, on the other hand quite distinctively regional characteristics. They were an outcome of the “early medieval state formation”, as B.D. Chattopadhyaya has named it.11 Especially in the area which covers today's Rajasthan, parts of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, we find the building blocks of these political entities to be what Chattopadhyaya called “lineage domains”.12 The ruling lineages were descended from larger, older clans that existed in western India in the seventh century. By the tenth century the impact of two processes was felt in the area. Some lineage members were awarded land and started to form a sort of elite in the kingdoms, whilst others opened up new areas for settlement and control in hitherto uncontrolled areas, often later to be incorporated into larger states.13 In the course of time hierarchies of different lineages or lineage segments became established. This probably generated the appearance of new, non-Sanskritic titles, like rāṇā, 11 Chattopadhyaya 1983: 2 12 Chattopadhyaya 1983: 3 13 I am speaking here of the Caulukyas of Gujarat, the Cāhamāṇas of Marwar, the Paramāras of Malwa and the Guhilas of Mewar particularly.


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rāī, rāvala, rāutta in the twelfth century, which denoted hierarchisation within lineages and which were used alongside older, pan-Indian terms like mahārājan, maṇḍalika, mahāsamāntādhipati, bhūpala, etc. As these sometimes occur in the same title, it seems that they denote hierarchies that intersect each other, but are also distinct. Chattopadhyaya writes that “... monarchical forms of polities often developed through integrating pre-existing lineage areas, and that power distribution through lineages can very well function alongside other, bureaucratic forms of rulership”.14 It seems as if within these lineage domains the king had to share power with kinsmen and affines, and that a hierarchy of these emerged. Within the lineage domains, lineage ideology became very strong, as is amply shown by the elaborate and carefully drafted royal genealogies. This generated a certain set of problems when a king succeeded to expand his power beyond his lineage domain, which often resulted in ritual changes. The kings of Mewar, a small state in a mountainous region, took part in the same development and started to document royal donations from around 950. For a long time they were confined to one or a few closely related lineage domains in the mountainous area. In the eleventh century they came under the overlordship of the more powerful neighbouring Paramāras and became integrated into their “circle of subordinate kings” (sāmantamaṇḍala). When those lost much of their power in the second half of the twelfth century a struggle for power broke out amongst different lineage segments in Mewar. At that time hardly any sources tell us about the performance of donations. Only around 1260 did power come into the hands of one lineage who stabilised its basis and for the first time also expanded into an area which lay outside its lineage domains, the fertile Banas plain with the mighty fortress of Chittor. The situation changed quite dramatically when the forces of the Delhi Sultanate started to attack Malwa, Gujarat and southern Rajasthan more thoroughly, after they had already eaten into the system of medieval states in the north. Especially after 1298, large parts of western India fell prey to the effects of the “Khaljī revolution”15, when the Sultan Ala al-Din Khaljī succeeded in destroying the central powers of all the medieval states of the area. Governors were stationed in the old centres and were supposed to keep the peripheral indigenous powers under control. Several little kingdoms, especially in the south and west of Rajasthan, in Kathiawar and other peripheral areas, were made to acknowledge their supremacy16. Mewar became a province under a governor stationed in Chittor. In the course of the fourteenth century the Delhi Sultanate lost hold over these territories again, especially after the Central Asian conqueror Timur bin Taraghay 14 Chattopadhyaya 1983:15 15 Jackson 1999: 195, 142 16 Habib 1931: 181-201, Ahluwalia 1978: 102

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Barlas (Timur-e Lang) destroyed and plundered Delhi in 1398. Soon after this incident the governors of Malwa and Gujarat declared themselves independent Sultans. In southern Rajasthan several families claiming to be descendants from medieval western Indian royal clans started to fight for power. The governor of Chittor had long disappeared by that time and during the fourteenth century one of the families succeeded in gaining the overlordship of the whole area. This family came from Kelwada, probably stemming from a junior lineage of the medieval kings of Mewar that had branched off as dependent landholders in the tenth century.17 They consolidated their power in the Aravalli region first before they appropriated the fertile Banas plains and Chittor. Around 1425 they started to shift their centre to this new capital, but never lost the connection to Kelwada. A huge fortress, then known under the name of Kuṃbhameru, was built there and functioned as a second capital.18 For a short while, up to ca.1468, this kingdom became a great regional power. The king, at least mahārāṇā Kuṃbha (ca.1433-1460), saw himself as one of the most powerful kings in the subcontinent, at least equal with the Delhi Sultanate, his neighbouring Sultanates of Malwa and Gujarat, and, moreover, with the other great contemporary powers of Orissa and Vijayanagara. Politically, socially and culturally these developments had brought about deep changes. First of all the network of greater and smaller royal families belonging to the tightly interconnected lineages of pre-1298 were not there any more. So the closely knit common culture and interdependent society with their hierarchies and hefty competition for status and recognition had ceased to exist. Instead there seems to have been a large warrior class – called 'rāṇās and rāīs' or 'ṭhakurs and rāīs' by their Muslim neighbours19 - which in all probability still had notions of the importance of blood relationship, but was not hierarchised along these lines any more. The written documents on the other hand show that, at least in the fifteenth century, the main competitors for the kings' power were not their kinsmen or neighbouring lineages sharing the same culture as in medieval times, but the emerging Sultanates of Malwa and Gujarat. To build up a whole new state, incorporate very diverse regions and peoples into it, control them and generate enough resources to fight against the Sultans in a very short time surely was not an easy task. The building of numerous forts, the minting of new coins and the large number of new tanks, temples, roads, the writing of the temple chronicle Ekaliṅgamāhātmya glorifying and explaining the 17 In the Kumbhalgarh-Praśasti of 1460 they describe themselves as such, a claim which is perfectly plausible. Epigraphia Indica XXIV: 304-328, v. 177. (Subsequently EI. The last figure denotes the verse.) 18 Probably the mint was situated there, as all known coins of that period bear the name of Kuṃbhameru. Today the fortress is known as Kumbhalgarh. 19 Jackson 1999: 19-21


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meaning of the royal deity Eklingji etc. bear testimony to it.20 For this undertaking a lot of specialists must have been employed. Some of them at least must have come from other regions, like the architect Mandana invited from Gujarat and remunerated with land in 1425.21

Rituals and Royalty in the Tenth to Thirteenth Century Although royal donative rituals had been performed by earlier kings as well, the prescriptive literature, as well as the inscriptions documenting their performance, increased in our period.22 By the tenth century they were performed regularly on certain occasions, i.e. during eclipses (a time which called for purification) or after victories. Their performance became an essential part of the kings' lives. The rapid spread of the ritual (at least its written document) among kings fighting for supremacy, which sometimes amounted to virtual imitations of the records of each other, show that it carried a strong competitive element. The ability to perform different variations of the rituals became a carefully graduated symbol of sovereignty.23 Already the early medieval dynasties had taken care that one part of the records received special attention and got blown up beyond all proportion, the genealogical section. Originally, when the ritual performance took place, it was necessary to recite the donor's name together with his two ancestors, to identify him properly and make sure that he belonged to the legitimate class of donors. Every emerging dynasty, great or small, adhered to this pattern. But soon this small part of the ritual, the recital of the donor's identity, acquired proclamative status. To perform a royal donation, as opposed to the donation of a respected member of good society, was only possible if the king proved his legitimate status beyond these two generations. In many parts of medieval India legitimacy hinged on the fact that the kings belonged to one of the paradigmatic royal families (solar and lunar) as described in the Purāṇas. If the career of a certain warlord was particularly impressive, probably there would have been some speculations about his real ancestry.

20 21 22 23

This text is abbreviated as "EM" subsequently. Sharma 1954 Nath 1987: 193 Land grants fixed in copper plates seem to have been the prerogative of great kings whose power ex-tended their lineage domains. From the Paramāras we have 27 copper plates and three stone inscriptions altogether from 949 to 1274. In Caulukya Gujarat 32 copper plates and seven inscriptions in stone are still extant which date from 976 to 1261. In the smaller kingdoms there are very few, from the Cāha-māṇas of Nadol we have two, from the Paramāras of Chandravati also two and from Mewar one.

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In medieval western India the focus of the genealogy was different. There the kings had to prove that they were direct descendants of the founders of their lineages or clan according to the ordering principle of senior and junior successors. This could only be proven by a detailed, well-researched and completely unilinear succession. On certain occasions this was newly compiled, and, as it was a matter of great concern to the king, its proclamation took place on the solemn occasion of the donative ritual, probably in front of an audience that was well versed in all things genealogical. Genealogies were much more than just proof that the king came from the right family. In the lineage-oriented society of western India they carried a whole range of meanings, and contained the whole ordering principle of the elite society. Many documents show us how seniors got separated from juniors and how they were allotted different positions in society. A usurper, for instance, had the greatest difficulties with his symbolic representation. It is conspicuous that in the records the rituals are consistently linked with three main characteristics of proper kings: coming from the right family, being victorious in battle and liberality. Probably these three were interdependent. If somebody was a successful warrior, he himself and the nobles in his surroundings would also have presumed that he came from the right family. If unknown the fact had to be found out by specialists employed for the purpose. Both were set into a sacred framework by performing ritualised liberality, and so the rituals became the vehicle for the proclamation of the genealogy as well as the description of victories of the different generations of kings. During the period in question a second attempt to communicate with the divine and to acquire merit was initiated. Access to the gods was also sought in another way. During the tenth to thirteenth century a growing influence of ascetics of the Pāśupata sect in many of the western Indian kingdoms can be affirmed. Originating in Gujarat, these ascetics spread throughout the area by forming branches and subbranches of their institutions and occupied or founded new places of Śiva worship.24 They were considered very powerful on account of their gruesome ascetic practices. Initially their spread seems to have taken place without royal support, but soon several kings chose such ascetics as their personal gurus, although it is impossible to say whether this could be construed as a royal ritual. We don't even know about any royal grants made to them from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, although they must have accumulated enormous power and resources in this period, which they themselves sometimes gave away as grants. The only thing in that context which can clearly be seen is that from the middle of the tenth century onwards there is a marked royal preference for Śiva temples as objects of grants and places at which the donation rituals took place. So obviously 24 Lorenzen 1992, Teuscher 2002: 59-70


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the kings were drawn into the world of sectarian Śaivism and created a most powerful religious figure, but we don't know whether this culminated in a distinctly royal ritual of Śiva worship. Only in the thirteenth century do Pāśupata ascetics figure as receivers of donations. They were already inseparably linked with holy places and institutions. And here a further development took place, a marked preference for certain centres, temples and pilgrimage sites (tīrthas), at which the rituals were performed and which were the receivers of many donations. Obviously the king's dependence on ascetics or a special manifestation of Śiva increased. Between 1209 and 1261 the Caulukyas of Gujarat endowed a sacred centre (two royal temples, a maṭha and a tīrtha) and the head of its monastical institution, the ascetic Vedagarbharāśi, with several donations to be used to enlarge and maintaining it.25 Turning our attention to Mewar, we find that from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries the kings took part in the wider western Indian concept of royal behaviour. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries this small state was comprised of one or a few closely related lineage domains and was sandwiched between the much more powerful Caulukyas of Gujarat and Paramāras of Malwa. Their earliest donations in the middle of the tenth century show that compared to their neighbours their resource base was meagre and their position was more that of a shared sovereignty than that of a king as possessor of all land as their more powerful neighbours claimed to be in their land grants. The first grants were made by a large collective of donors, the king, his mother and different notables of the area.26 In the second half of the tenth century we can see that the collective donors disappear and suddenly a long royal genealogy becomes incorporated, which extended to the founder king of the lineage.27 At the same time the Pāśupata ascetics gained power and resources, although a connection to the king cannot yet be seen. The performance of a land grant proper (dāna), with the relinquishment of all income of a certain piece of land, was obviously beyond the possibilities of the kings of Mewar. Such donations never occurred within the kings' own lineage domains in western India. The power structure allowed the allotment of buildings and taxes for a certain sacred purpose, but not the claim to be the sole proprietor of the land. Only one is documented by the copper plate inscription of 1083.28 At that time Mewar was a feudatory state of the Paramāras. Such feudatory relationships carried several implications. The king was drawn into the competition with the other feudatories, and the right to perform this ritual was one of their battlegrounds. 25 26 27 28

Trivedi 1994: 192-273 Peterson 1890: 67-9 Indian Antiquary XXIX: 191 Epigraphia Indica XXXI: 237-248

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This was the reason for their performance, even against the resistance of kinsmen or other power-holders. On the other hand the new overlords also provided a sort of protection against the king's own kinsmen and other elites. This protection was necessary so they could dare to perform such a donation in the face of their competitors, and it shows that in a certain way the subordinate relationship to an overlord could also include an enhancement of power. Quite a few documents of western India show how this competitive element was cleverly used by kings to control their peripheral areas.29 The dāna ritual of 1083 was performed near to and involving the Pāśupata centre of Eklingji. This is the first discernible link between the ascetics, the deity who was to become so very important later, as described further down, and the king of Mewar. In the thirteenth century the Guhilas extended their power for the first time beyond their lineage domain into the Banas plain. This was also the first time they were unable to derive their legitimacy from the fact that they were the most senior of their lineage. At that moment several donation ceremonies with large transactions were made. Again the genealogy, freshly drafted, took pride of place in the written documents. Obviously highly specialised and very knowledgeable Brahmans had been employed for the task. They created a genealogy of 27 generations with the utmost care, not only consulting earlier inscriptions, but also endowing every king with a poetic description of his deeds. This was linked with the fact that the kings and the god had entered into an exclusive relationship with the help of Pāśupata ascetics for the first time. The mighty neighbours, the Caulukyas, served as a model. They had supported a Pāśupata centre widely, and a document of 1287 reports that the deity Vaidyanātha (Śiva) placed a part of himself in the king.30 The Paramāras and the Caulukyas had already acquired an uninterrupted succession from a true progenitor of the clan, someone who, according to the lineage logic, could not descend from somebody else. Only the dynasties which were accepted as junior to no one and expanded well beyond their lineage domains mention such accounts of origin. They consist of the creation of the original warrior by e.g. Indra or a vedic sage from a water pot or a fire pit.31 Such a creation was essential as their originator couldn’t have an ancestor himself. So claiming common ancestry with the solar and lunar dynasties

29 Interesting examples are found especially in the Caulukya state and its relationship to Marwar, Mewar and Candravati. See Teuscher 2003: 63-80. 30 Epigraphia Indica III: 271-9, v. 6. 31 The originator of the Paramāras is a warrior who sprang from the sacred fire of the sage Vasiṣṭha. EI II: 180-194. The originator of the Caulukyas is Culuka, who emerged from the water pot of Indra. Indian Antiquary XII: 199, v. 54-55.


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of other regions was ruled out, as the question of seniority would immediately have arisen. The moment the Guhilas stepped over the borders of their lineage domain, they also acquired a new originator, Bappa, who had gained the power and right to rule by the grace of the deity Eklingji in the form of a golden anklet, mediated by the Pāśupata ascetic Haritarāśi.32 Two things were proven with that. First, Bappa, although strictly speaking not a legendary figure (he was a historical king), by his boon from Śiva gained a unique source of power and the position of a true progenitor. This special power consisted of the fact that the owner “had unequalled strength in accomplishment of enterprises” and that he was extraordinarily successful in acquiring “navarājyalakṣmī”, the “new goddess of fortune”.33 Second, it was especially mentioned that the king had acquired the right to rule over the whole of Mewar, which included Chittor at that time. So when the new king started to celebrate donative rituals, all this information was proclaimed. What was accommodated here was most vital for the king in his current context, in a situation which was quite unstable for him, when he was confronted with powerful groups that didn't belong to his own lineage. Claiming a new status for the king the ritual became in one more respect exclusively royal.

The “Invention of Tradition” in Fifteenth-Century Mewar, First Stage During the tenth to thirteenth centuries a complicated structure of power involving different levels was consolidated. This was destroyed by the conquest of Ala-al Din Khaljī and his army. Obviously the Sultan took care to make sure that the leading families never again posed any threat to the new power. None of them ever occurred again as patron of a donation. The hierarchical structure of senior and junior lineages and lineage segments ceased to exist, as it could not function with the top removed. In the decades after the conquest some successors of hitherto peripheral junior lineages vied for power, but it took until around 1400 before new, more stable powers emerged, the Sultans in Malwa and Gujarat, and a junior lineage of the Guhilas in Mewar. The emerging kings of Mewar were the only ones on a regional level who claimed to be descended from the old medieval lineages. Other such families, like the Rāṭhoḍs of Marwar, became an important political factor only ca.50 years later. 32 Possibly this Bappa was the king of the tenth century, who had initiated the relationship with the Pāśupata guru. 33 Peterson 1890: 74-75, vv. 10-11. As the Guhilas had propagated an ancestry from a junior lineage of an older, more senior clan for centuries, they were not able now to claim an origin which emulated the Caulukyas' or Paramāras'. So Bappa was invested with the ability to found a "new" line of kings endowed with the supernatural power to acquire success in battle.

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From about 1420 the kings began to employ different Brahman specialists who were supposed to endow king and state with all the appropriate elements which were still lacking. Apart from rebuilding, repairing and constructing fortresses, roads, tanks, palaces and temples, setting up and maintaining administration and military on a large scale, the king had to be installed symbolically as well with all his proper characteristics, for instance an elaborate genealogy and an impressive court. To find out what the proper measures were, the king turned to specialists, mainly knowledgeable Brahmans, who were invited from different areas, preferably Gujarat. It is possible to distinguish two stages of work by these specialists which coincide roughly with the reigns of Mahārāṇā Mokala (ca.142029) and his successor Mahārāṇā Kuṃbha (ca.1433-1460). In the following the focus will be on the development of rituals of royalty and state, but it has to be borne in mind that these are only a part of a more complex pattern. The first generation of specialists tried to revive what they perceived had been the medieval structure of pre-1300. This in itself is already an innovation, as earlier new elements had always come from contemporary competitors, never from a faraway past. Moreover, the political, social and cultural reality had changed deeply in the meantime. For more than a hundred years there had only been petty kingdoms without the scale of rituals fitting for a great king. The Sultanate governors had brought with them a symbolic system which could not be easily integrated by the kings who understood themselves as successors of the medieval clans. These circumstances presented the specialists with a lot of problems, which they solved, stage by stage, with different solutions, which look, at first sight, very conservative, but take into consideration very contemporary needs and pressures. From 1425 inscriptions occur again regularly and tell us that the new kings of Mewar had begun to get involved in a succession of donative rituals. But as the situation the kings lived in was completely different now, significant changes can be made out from the beginning. In the course of time the documents became the vehicle of several other symbolically meaningful subjects surrounding king and state, as for instance the creation of a regional identity by describing the different areas of the emerging state as belonging together. Now also the description of other royal rituals is integrated into the narrative portion of the donative inscriptions. They allow us to catch a glimpse of the “construction work” the specialists, together with the king, undertook, and distinguish two phases with different means and ends evolving out of each other. From the beginning two different directions the specialists took can be made out. One draws on characteristics and values that were decidedly regional. As already shown, medieval western India had developed quite a distinct regional culture. A major element was the strong lineage orientation of the power-holders on different levels. This went together with a strong historiographical tradition kept up by Brahman specialists, who adhered strictly to the method of using older


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inscriptions from the respective areas. Obviously specialists trained in this way of gaining knowledge were also employed in finding out about and re-establishing rituals and in harmonising them with the other findings they made, for instance the royal genealogies. The other direction draws heavily on “pan-Indian” models taken from the Purāṇas and other sacred texts. Meister wrote the following with respect to fifteenth-century Mewar art, but it is valid for other traits as well: “Rajasthan took on the powerful importance it currently holds primarily from the fifteenth century onward, when Rana Kumbha, who ruled Mewar, actively attempted to restore Rajput power in spite of Mughal (sic) rule over North India. His 'renaissant' style, rather than merely extending the synthetic style of the Solankis was conspiciuously self conscious and drew on the past in what might now seem a 'post-modern' way”.34 It should not be forgotten that the main ritual, the reason why we know anything about it, still was the performance of donations. Already in medieval times they had been staged as grand recitals of the intricacies of the royal genealogies, probably received with great interest by an audience well versed with the context of the claims. Now it goes even further. These rituals became the framework for the introduction or publication of other rituals. Again donations were performed frequently. As we have seen, in the tenth to thirteenth centuries two ritual ways to establish a connection to the divine had been employed. The first one was the ritual act of liberality, and the second, quite recently developed, was the attempt to achieve supernatural powers through the worship of a human mediator, an ascetic. On this basis the Śiva temple of Eklingji, situated in a deep valley of the Aravalli mountains ca.20 km north of Udaipur, again became the most important ritual site for the newly emerging kingdom. Possibly the new Guhila lineage from Kelwada, which possibly was related to their medieval predecessors, had an ancestral memory of a special bond to this medieval Śaivite cult, which prompted the kings to focus their attention on it. This was reinforced by the fact that from the first documents onwards the new kings identified themselves as a junior lineage stemming from the medieval Guhilas, the erstwhile royal dynasty. The re-establishment of the medieval cult of Eklingji was the first step, taken before 1425. In the following decades it was reinterpreted and altered according to contemporary needs and pressures. It is not clear whether any regular worship had taken place at all there between 1298 and ca.1400. If so, then it happened only on a very modest scale and hardly 34 Meister 1994: 143

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according to the rules and regulations of the Sanscritised cults of the time. The buildings mainly lay in ruins. It seems, for instance, that at least some of the holy places there had in the meantime been reinterpreted according to a local, more tribal cult. A tenth-century Viṣṇu Temple (with a depiction of Anantaśeṣāyin) had been renamed “lord of the snakes” and was worshipped at for curing snake bites.35 In 1428 it is said that king Mokala's father had been “fixed on the worship of Ekaliṅga”, which implies that a regular worship had been reinstalled by then. Moreover, the inscription of 1425 begins with the words: “by the grace of Ekaliṅga”.36 So the first step was to establish one or more specialists who were able to perform regular worship, who were able to understand the special role of the king vis à vis the deity Eklingji and enact it on the occasions the king was present. Unfortunately there are no records of donations or consecrations made by the king for the rebuilding of the ruined sites (the sacred centre was destroyed again later), but in a later inscription he is credited with rebuilding the temple of the main deity. At the same time, in 1429, the king together with his personal guru were involved in a pratiṣṭhā ceremony in the vicinity of Eklingji. In the inscription the second step of this ritual is recorded, the actual consecration of the tank which the king had donated. By this act a new holy place was added to the sacred centre of Eklingji, probably the first step beyond the mere reconstruction of the already existing sites. This place, Ṛṣyaśṛṅga, originally had been a tribal, aniconic shrine. Now it was integrated as the mythical origin of the ascetics established in Eklingji. It is interesting to note that compared to the earlier period the relationship between guru and king had changed. Here the guru didn't serve as donee, but as someone who gave the permission to perform the ritual to the king.37 Early on, surely before 1439, the researchers of the old inscriptions found out that in the thirteenth century the legend of the founder king of the dynasty, Bappa, had been an important part of the genealogy. We have seen that Eklingji had functioned as the patron deity of the kings' donations and Pāśupata ascetics from this sacred centre had appeared as personal gurus of the kings in that period. By 1439 this legend was known to the king and the establishment of a personal guru in Eklingji follows the medieval model consciously, but omitting the fact that the original guru had been a Pāśupata ascetic. This omission went far beyond a mere reconstruction of the medieval situation. Eklingji had been a Pāśupata centre up to 1300. But now the Pāśupata connection was completely denied. Eklingji himself was shorn of all Pāśupata elements and no temple with Pāśupata connotation is known to have received donations for 35 EM X: v. 15-25. The newly installed deity and temple were sbsequently integrated into the pantheon of Eklingji as Takṣakeśvara, "lord of the lord of snakes". 36 The newly introduced coins of Mahārāṇā Kuṃbha bore these words regularly. 37 Epigraphia Indica XXIII: 238, v. 28, EM XIII: 24-53. See also Teuscher 2002: 190-204.


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rebuilding. Moreover, as priests or ascetics these mendicants didn't play a role any more, although the whole existence of the medieval Guhila kings hinged on the relationship to them. Obviously this ascetic and unorthodox sect had lost its status and was not thought fit to conduct a royal cult. Instead new priests and ascetics with more “mainstream purāṇic” leanings were invited. At about the same time another important ritual was performed in which the new kings played a central role. As their ancestors had lived as landholders or local power-holders in the middle of the Aravalli mountains, they had, as other “Rajput” families38 of that time, acquired a family goddess (kuladevī) there, a non-vegetarian tribal goddess, by the name of Bāṇmātā, “Arrow-Mother”.39 In a donation of 1429 from Chittor it was proclaimed that a goddess from the mountains (girijā) had been brought with a mantra-word to be installed in Chittor and was to be celebrated and worshipped in a big festival (mahotsava).40 This term implies a festival with many participants which has to be held regularly. As she was the royal family goddess, king and inhabitants were bound together in the performance of this ritual. The new festival was proclaimed on the occasion of the king installing the deity of the newly built Sammideśvara temple situated in the sacred centre near the royal palace, the most important Śiva temple in Chittor, on behalf of which also the revenues of a village were donated. This manifestation of Śiva is also called “the companion of Gaurī” in the same inscription. There it is also said that both deities keep watch at the Citrakūṭatīrtha now. So in the donative ritual the proclamation of another ritual was incorporated. It is probable that the worship of the goddess during the new festival was partly to have taken place in the Sammideśvara temple. A contemporary temple for Girijā or Bāṇmātā is not known from Chittor. A large part of the inscription of 1429 is dedicated to the celebration of the capital Chittor as the centre of the emerging kingdom. As this place had only recently been occupied by the king, his legitimacy there was problematic. So here the description of the city and the ritual visibility of the king, who inaugurated perpetual symbols, i.e. donated tanks, streets, temples, etc., together with the introduction and integration of a large festival, are strongly linked. The ritual occupation of Chittor and Eklingji took place at the same time, together with the establishment of Bāṇmātā in the new capital. In this way three important elements were created which in turn would lend themselves to further developments as will be seen. It seems as if the Brahmans in charge of (re-)creating rituals for the king were also responsible for the introduction of another time-honoured act of liberality, which they adjusted to the contemporary situation. Here they went beyond internal 38 The term "Rajput" was not used in the modern sense at that time. 39 The original Bāṇmātā temple in Kelwada was destroyed by the Sultan of Gujarat in 1442. 40 Peterson 1890: 96, v. 3.

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hierarchies and sought to affect new participants in the political structure too. The way the ritual was performed drew on traditional models, but as a whole it was completely new. It is said that war booty was purified by ritual means and then used in a tuladāna, a weighing of the king against valuable objects.41 The tuladāna is an old ritual prescribed in the Purāṇas. But in the medieval texts of the region it never occurs. Either it was not performed or it was not considered necessary to record it. But now it starts to be recorded very often. It became a ritual celebrated after a victory, and became linked to the war booty. It also contained a message to the Muslim neighbours. It has a certain resemblance to the acts of liberality the Sultans performed, the ritual giving of alms to the poor. These tuladānas were not recorded in separate texts, but found their way into the proclamation of the genealogy of the kings. Contemporaries certainly saw them as gifts of a higher order, as the Muslim almsgiving could only be categorised as secular transfer. Sometimes it is said that the valuable objects had been distributed to Brahmans as this represented proper proceedings. In other places it is said that valuables were used to free Gaya and other north Indian pilgrimage centres, then situated under the lordship of the Sultan of Delhi or some Muslim governors, from pilgrim taxes for a certain time. From the abovementioned part of the inscription of 1429 it would easily be possible to draw a connection between these two acts. However, both would have been quite a deviation from the traditional concept of proper proceedings for making donations.

The “Invention of Tradition”, Second Stage As we have seen, in about 1430 a diverse ritual structure had already emerged, which centred on the old sacred site of Eklingji and the new capital Chittor, but in its effects also spread beyond these places. In the meantime the power of the Guhila king had become more stable, more recognised by his contemporaries, but also threatened on a new level by the equally powerful Sultans of Malwa and Gujarat. During the reign of Mahārāṇā Kuṃbha (ca.1433-1460) frequent battles were fought between them, mostly on the territory of Mewar, but none of the contenders could reduce the power of the others substantially. In this context building activity, especially fortresses on a truly gigantic scale, reached its height. The king obviously claimed to be one of the (or the) most powerful leaders in the subcontinent.42

41 Peterson 1890: 107, vv. 38-41. 42 In an inscription he had called himself "lord of the lord of men, the lord of horses and the lord of elephants". These three titles in this context refer to the kings of Orissa, of Vijayanagara and the Sultan of Delhi.


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In his time royal ritual became elevated to a new level. The already constituted ritual centres, like Eklingji, the capital Chittor, the sacred compound of Sammideśvara and possibly the royal palace as focus of worship of the family goddess, became more marked and linked to each other. Eklingji became the most important centre. First the family goddess was integrated into the cult of Eklingji and a cluster of myths, explaining the existence and importance of the holy place, was produced. Shortly afterwards it became converted into a pilgrimage place of pan-Indian importance. To achieve this it was again reorganised and rebuilt according to the concept of “Eight Tīrthas”43. The writing of a temple chronicle (māhātmya) for this important place was duly ordered. The contents of it will be analysed shortly.44 The first step is represented by the contents of the Kumbhalgarh-Praśasti of 1460. The specialists concerned had first collected various elements from older inscriptions, local traditions and consulted the Purāṇas to provide the place with a coherent narrative explaining its existence, its history and the fact that the goddess became a new introduction. The results of their work are, again, publicised in a donative inscription, the Kumbhalgarh-Praśasti of 1460. This inscription records a donation to the Kuṃbhasvāmin temple in Kuṃbhameru, the introduction is extended to accommodate them. The portion called “blessing” (āśīḥ prakaraṇam), after invoking several deities, introduces the Trikuṭa mountain (the location of Eklingji), on which resides the auspicious goddess Vindhyavāsā bearing the emblems noose (pāśa), elephant-hook (aṅkuśa), wish-fulfilling gesture (varadā) and gesture of fearlessness (abhī). Carrying these emblems she is characterised as a “mixture” between the family goddess of the Kelwada Guhilas, Bāṇmātā (pāśa, aṅkuśa, dhanus, bāṇa) in the form she was introduced in Chittor shortly before, and the pan-Indian mountain goddess Vindhyavāsā as she is described in the iconographical texts (śaṅkha, cakra, varadā, abhī). The next verse says that the lord of the world (jagatīpati, the king) worships the eternal Śambhu (Śiva), the lord of the three worlds, as Ekaliṅga. Then a verse follows which describes in short who had worshipped Ekaliṅga in the four ages of the world, namely Indra in the kṛtayuga, the wish-fulfilling cow Kāmadhenu in the tretāyuga, Takṣaka, the lord of the snakes in the dvāparayuga, and finally the muṇi Hārīta in the kaliyuga. Then a long portion follows which describes the different temples and tanks of the emerging pilgrimage site of Eklingji and the fruits that follow from worshipping there. Then, without interruption, the text goes on to describe the holy sites of Samādhīśvara (called Sammideśvara in the inscription of 1429), also in detail. Here Samādhīśvara is called

43 EM XIX, v. 20 44 Because of the parallels with an inscription of 1460 this text is very well datable.

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“girijāpati”.45 In both places Mahārāṇā Kuṃbha had performed donative rituals, in both places the family goddess of the Guhilas was introduced and connected to the resident Śiva. But there were also differences. On the one hand Samādhīśvara is not known to have been identified with Eklingji, but as “Lord of the Mountain-born Goddess” became the focus of the great festival of the kuladevī, whereas on the other hand Eklingji was the deity by whose grace the king ruled his country. Here the goddess had a visible manifestation in Eklingji (a temple was built for her outside the compound). There is a marked difference here although it's impossible to go very deep into this phenomenon. There are indications that the sacred complex of Samadhīśvara in Chittor, not far from the royal palace, was vastly more complex than it appears today. For instance, the most outstanding building, the 37meter- high “Tower of Fame” (Kīrtistambha) of Maharāṇā Kuṃbha, consecrated in 1458, stands on the corner of its compound. There is no convincing theory concerning its meaning. It surely was a sacred building, especially pertaining to Viṣṇu Janārdana46, but its function is entirely unknown. The importance of Eklingji, on the other hand, was underscored with another true innovation. Mahārāṇā Kuṃbha had himself described there as “foremost servant” of the deity, and further on he is even quoted as saying: “I am the personal servant of Ekaliṅga”.47 It is very probable that the king made this vow in public in the framework of a ritual. If, as the inscription suggests, he did it on the occasion of the donation of the Kuṃbhasvāmin temple in Kuṃbhameru, then this pratiṣṭhā was the framework for the publication of another ritual, a dramatic extension of what had become convention for the donative rituals. In all probability the idea was appropriated from contemporary Orissa. By this time the specialists had looked beyond their immediate vicinity and ancient texts and gained a pan-Indian vision. Probably the king himself, having gained a powerful position, started to define himself in pan-Indian terms. In the same year he is called “master of the lords of horses, elephants and men”48, a title which refers to the concept that he is the overlord of the Sultan of Delhi and the kings of Orissa and Vijayanagara. At that time Orissa under the new Sūryavaṃśa dynasty had become one of the two greatest “Hindu” powers of the time. The concept of the deity as real lord of a kingdom had been developed in Orissa already in the first half of the thirteenth century, when the Gaṅga king Anaṅgabhīma III introduced himself as the rāutta of the deity Puruṣottama of Puri. This term has a similar meaning to rāṇā or rāvala in 45 Epigraphia Indica XXIV: 304-328, vv. 1-57. 46 Nath 1999: 91f. 47 Epigraphia Indica XXIV: 304-328 v. 13. 48 Nath 1999: 158


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western India, meaning a subordinate little king. Since the fourteenth century the name Jagannātha (lord of the world) was used for the deity.49 Between 1434 and 1464, at the same time the kings of Mewar consolidated their power, the new Sūryavaṃśin dynasty achieved supremacy there. The usurper Kapilendra may, like mahārāṇā Kuṃbha, have needed a more far-reaching legitimation than was at hand. So he revived the old rāutta-concept. In 1464 he called himself ādyasevaka (first servant) of Jagannātha.50 Sevaka is a term meaning servant, but also has a religious connotation. The successor of Kapilendra is said to have introduced a ritual role for himself in the great festival of Jagannātha in Puri. From then on the kings performed the ritual of sweeping the temple cart during the procession.51 It is still a matter of controversy what this ritual “means”. Sweeping is not a very elevated occupation, be it ritual or not. Perhaps Kapilendra and his successor were under great pressure to establish a stable relationship with the mighty priests of Jagannātha. As Mahārāṇā Kuṃbha called himself śreyasevaka and nijasevaka (highest or personal servant) in 1460 it rules out all coincidences, even though the similar term occurs (to our knowledge) in Orissa slightly later. Here probably two rituals have been performed. The first one constituted the relationship and contained the vow the king made, that from now on he would be the personal servant of Eklingji. The other one was regularly repeated and actualised the instituted relationship from then on. For further information we have to turn to the text glorifiying and explaining the holy site of Eklingji, the Ekaliṅgamāhātmya, parts of which are safely datable to the time around 1460. Although the terms nijasevaka or śreyasevaka don't occur there, it is said of the king that he is “like a servant” (bhṛtyavat). Further on it says: “Together with brahmacarin, vanasthās and ascetics the king, as the wise doorkeeper, conducts the paṃcarātravrata. After he had been at the door, like a servant he stands at the side of the deity, holding a golden and jewel-studded staff in his own hand.” This ritual is to be repeated every year For the first time, as far as can be seen, a ritual role especially created for him was allotted to the king apart from the age-old donative ritual, a role which could not be emulated by anyone, as it most probably refers to and celebrates the fact that his ancestors had gained 49 Kulke 1993: 17, 22; Kulke 1978: 51 50 The dates could also suggest that Kapilendra imitated the new role of the king of Mewar, but this seems improbable to me. It developed out of a logical process in Orissa and the Jagannatha priests were well established there, whereas for Mewar the first half of the fifteenth century was a formative period and there was no strong priestly group or cult at that time. All developments taken together seem to origi-nate directly in the vicinity of the king and his group of specialists and give a very eclectic impression. 51 Kulke 1993: 74

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supernatural power to rule Mewar by a special boon from Eklingji himself. In the Māhātmya the fact that he gained the power to rule all of Mewar (which comprised especially the recently occupied Chittor) is particularly mentioned.52 Thus the concept was im-ported from Orissa, but it was interpreted in a way which perfectly fitted the situation in Mewar. At the same time, also datable shortly before 1460, the family goddess53 (kuladevī) of the kings, Bāṇmātā, was integrated into the sacred centre of Eklingji too, but outside the walled, “vegetarian” compound. The newly built temple bears, unusually for the area, several reliefs of Durgā killing the buffalo demon Mahiṣa. In the shrine there is no Durgā, there is a gruesome mother goddess (mātājī) with her two servants Kāla and Ghoḍa Bheru on both sides. Like the inscription of 1460 this tells us she is a goddess oscillating between Durgā (or Vindhyavāsā) and Bāṇmātā. There she is also eulogised as killing the buffalo demon, the typical epithet of Durgā.54 It is tempting to place the introduction of the great Navarātri festival, the most important royal festival in Rajasthan in later times, into this time, although its introduction is not exactly datable. We know that Navarātri has been celebrated from some time in the fifteenth century onwards, as it is mentioned in the Ekaliṅgamāhātmya.55 It might be possible that Mahārāṇā Kuṃbha's advisors not only looked to Orissa for inspiration but to the other contemporary great Hindu power, the kingdom of Vijayanagara. There a distinct royal ritual had been developed, the Mahānavamī. A short description of the festival brings out the striking parallels between Vijayanagara and Mewar: beginning on Aśvina śukla 1, in Vijayanagara it took ten days. A temporary shrine was erected in a special place in the royal palace, the so-called “house of victory”. Inside the deity resided on a throne (siṃhāsana). Two state jewels were placed to the left and right side of the throne. Every day the king, who fasted the whole time, performed worship there in front of the deity. All dependent lords of the realm had to attend the function. During these days worship of weapons and war animals (śastra pūjā) and fire sacrifices (homa) were performed on several occasions. From the first to the eighth day sheep and buffaloes were sacrificed. On the eighth day the sacrifices stopped. On the last day, Vijayadaśamī,

52 EM X: v. 7 53 EM X: v. 17-18. 54 Epigraphia Indica XXIV: 317, v. 22. It may well be that the statue in the main sanctum is not the origi-nal any more, but the two Bherus are integrated into the walls of the temple and cannot have been replaced. That means that even in the fifteenth century there must have been a mother goddess inside. 55 EM XXIX: v. 36. Unfortunately this part of the EM is not as securely datable as the preceding ones. See Teuscher 2002: 144-149.


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the king and all others, including the deity, moved in a procession to a large field outside the city and a great military parade took place there.56 This festival has a very martial connotation. Temporally it is situated at the end of the monsoon season, traditionally the moment to start campaigning. The central goddess is the exemplary warrior killing the buffalo demon and the king identifies himself with the goddess during the nine days in the course of which he and all weapons become invested with the divine power to succeed in war. The buffalo sacrifices are to be seen in this context. On the eighth day, the day of the goddess’s victory, these sacrifices stop. The tenth day weaves another element into the festival, the victory of the god Rāma over the demon Rāvaṇa on his return to Ayodhya. The eleventh day was considered especially auspicious for starting a campaign. The way Navarātri was celebrated in Mewar rules out all coincidence as well. This important festival in Mewar was a close imitation of the one in Vijayanagara, a truly royal ritual. Later sources tell us the following: temporal and spatial setting are just the same as in Vijayanagara. The focus of the ritual was the royal palace, where a temporary shrine was erected. The family goddess of the kings (called Bāṇmātā by the people concerned) was brought from the priest's house to this shrine. There śastra pūjā and homa were performed and the king, who fasted, attended the pūjā every day. Two state swords were especially important. The first one the founder king Bappa had received from the goddess, and the second one came from a Nāth Yogin, who invested him with the power to rule Mewar a second time after this event. From the first to the eighth day buffaloes were sacrificed, on the fourth day the king himself killed a buffalo with an arrow. On the eighth day these sacrifices stopped. On the evening of that day a great homa was performed. On the tenth day the king and his dependent lords moved to a field outside the capital, a military parade took place there on the eleventh day, while the goddess resided and was worshipped in the vicinity under a Khejri tree (śāmī).57 Although we have no description of Navarātri in Mewar from the fifteenth century, some elements were adopted at that time which would fit in with the picture, especially the fact that a great festival of the goddess was introduced in the new capital Chittor and shortly afterwards the identification of Bāṇmātā with the buffalo-killing goddess Durgā took place. But of course there is no proof so far.58 Nevertheless it can be safely concluded that the introduction of Navarātri must 56 Sewell 1900: 263-284. The most complete description of the festival comes from the Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes in the early sixteenth century. 57 Tod 1920 II: .679-685, Fuller 1993: 115-7, Biardeau 1984, Teuscher 2002: 125-146 58 Another indicator could be a life-size sculpture in Achalgarh (Mount Abu), a place which in mahārāṇā Kuṃbha's time belonged to Mewar, which consists of three buffaloes neatly pierced by an arrow (re-minding us of the king sacrificing a buffalo on the fourth day with an arrow) of a "hunter", a sculpture which could well have been made in the fifteenth century.

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have taken place before 1565, when the kings of Vijayanagara ceased to be a model to draw on. It is amazing how closely the procedure of the festival followed the example from the South even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although several new elements were added in the course of time. Stein wrote: “In the fifteenth century, a new form of kingly public ritual came into existence that provided a vastly more encompassing form of public ritual, one that transcended locality and involved all in the realm.”59 Although the sources for Mewar are meagre compared to South India, we are able to understand quite well how and why this phenomenon came about, how the different specialists and probably the king himself worked and, moreover, how they interwove their innovations with other rituals, creating a veritable ritual structure encompassing the king and the people of the different parts of the realm who had not belonged to one entity before. With the help of this new structure, the king, now the embodiment of his state and under the special protection of the highest of gods, the time-honoured Śiva Eklingji, made a complex statement to the outside world, a statement according to the contemporary context that was well understandable for the different addressees.

59 Stein 1984: 311


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References Ahluwalia, M.S. 1978. Muslim Expansion in Rajasthan. Delhi Biardeau, M. 1984. “The Sami Tree and the Sacrificial Buffalo”. In: Contributions to Indian Sociology 15, pp. 75-97. Burghart, R. 1992. “Gifts to the gods: power, property and ceremonial in Nepal”. In: Cannadine, D. and Price, S. eds., Rituals of Royalty. Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies. Cambridge, pp. 237-27 Chattopadhyaya, B.D. 1983. “Political Processes and the Structure of Polity in Early Medieval India”, Presidential Address, Ancient India Section, Indian History Congress, 44th session, Burdwan. EM = Ekaliṅgamāhātmya Fuller, J. 1993. The Camphor Flame. Popular Hinduism and Society in India. Princeton Habib, M. 1931. “The Campaigns of Ala-ud-din Khilji”. In: Nizam, K.A. ed., Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period. Collected Works of Prof. M. Habib. Delhi Heesterman, J.C. 1964. “Brahmin, ritual and renouncer”. In: Wiener Zeitschrift zur Kunde Süd-Ostasiens 8: 1-31. Inden, R. 1979. “The Ceremony of the great gift (Mahādāna): Structure and Historical Context in Indian Ritual and Society”. In: Asie du sud, traditions et changements. Paris, 112-131. Jackson, P. 1999. The Delhi Sultanate. A Political and Military History. Cambridge. Jha, V.M. 2002. “Feudal Elements in the Caulukya State”. In: Jha, D.N. ed., The feudal order: state, society, and ideology in early medieval India. Delhi, 211-245. Kane, P.V. 1974. History of the Dharmaśāstra, vol. 2. Poona. Kulke, H. 1978. “Jagannatha as the State Deity under the Gajapatis of Orissa”. In: Eschmann, A. et al (eds.) The Cult of Jagannatha and the Regional Tradition of Orissa. Delhi Kulke, H. 1993. Kings and Cults. State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia. Delhi. Lorenzen, D.N. 1972. The Kapālikas and Kālamukhas. Two Lost Śaivite Sects. New Delhi. Meister, M.W. 1994. “Art Regions and Modern Rajasthan”. In: Schomer, K et al. (eds.), The Idea of Rajasthan. Explorations in Regional Identity. Delhi. Nath, R. 1999. Chittorgadh Kirti-stambha of Maharana Kumbha. Delhi. Nath, V. 1987. The Feudal Order. Delhi, 411-440. Parry, J. 1985. “The Gift, the Indian Gift, and the 'Indian Gift'“. In: Man (n.s.) 21: 453473. Peterson, P. 1890. A Collection of Prakrit and Sanskrit Inscriptions, Bhavnagar Archaeological Department under the Auspices of HRH the Maharaja of Bhavnagar 1890. Bhavnagar. Sewell, R. 1900. A Forgotten Empire. London.

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Sharma, G.N. 1954. “A Note on Rāṇā Mokal's Plate V.S. 1482”. In: Indian Historical Quarterly XXX: 178-182. Sharma, P. (ed.) 1978. Ekaliṅgamāhātmya. Delhi. Stein, B. 1984. All the King's Mana. Papers on Medieval South Indian History. Madras. Teuscher, U. 2002. Königtum in Rajasthan. Legitimation im Mewar des 7. bis 15. Jh. Hamburg. Teuscher, U. 2003. “Kingship and Genealogy in Medieval Western India”. In: Berkemer, G. et al (eds.) Sharing Sovereignty. The Little Kingdom in South Asia. Berlin, 63-80. Tod, J. 1920. Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. II. Delhi (reprint). Trivedi, H.V. 1994. Caulukyan Inscriptions. Bhopal. Vergati, A. 1994. “Le roi et les déesses: la fete de Navaratri et Dasahra au Rajasthan”. In: Journal Asiatique 282: 125-146.

G.S.L. Devra

Evolution of Antagonistic Rituals in Pre-modern Societies in Asia A Case Study of Śaka and Jāuhar 1. Śaka and Jāuhar Rituals of the Rajputs in India In India, generally the history of the Rajputs is interpreted as the saga of brave people who throughout the ages fought and performed sacrifices for whatever was dear to them for the defence of their honour and religion. Two prominent rituals of martial sacrifice where both men and women of the Rajput community laid down their lives in order to protect their land and individual honour are those called Śaka and Jāuhar. Usually the decision to make sacrifices such as this was made under the pressure of hopeless situations and with the idea that the victor, despite having conquered fort or land, would be able neither to gain the submission of the people nor to violate the honour of the defeated. The ritual of mass self-immolation by women, particularly the womenfolk of the royal household of the conquered castle, was known as Jāuhar (sometimes spelled jowhar). By way of contrast, Śaka was the tradition whereby the warriors of the clan or tribe would throw themselves into the thick of battle and fight until their last breath. Such extreme sacrificial rituals arose from the rigid sense of honour held by the Rajputs, who for their part would not entertain the idea of losing their independence in this world. Ritual followers of Śaka and Jāuhar remained immortal in the memories of the local people and ballads from generation to generation narrated their acts of sacrifice in a spirit of of extensive glorification. These martial rituals were followed and performed in the utmost sacred manner. Rajputs, upon learning for certain that defeat was unavoidable, would dress in saffron-coloured clothes (Kesaria Bana), put Tulsi necklaces around their necks and rush down from the fort to kill and to be killed. Before that, their womenfolk would first take a bath, dress themselves with bridal costumes and ornaments in bridal finery, and then embrace their funeral pyres with a smile on their lips.1 Writers from the time of Mughal Emperor Akbar have given a brief but important account of these two rituals, as performed at the time of his conquest of 1 Achaldas 1981: 61–63.

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the fort of Chittor (Rajasthan) in 1567 A.D. According to them,2 the people inside the fort, once they had discovered that their commander, Jaimal Rathore, had lost his life, quickly decided to perform the Jāuhar. They collected their wives and children, goods and cattle, and put all of them on the heap of firewood and set fire to it with their own hands. After the burning was finished, they rushed to battle and there met their own ends. The whole structure of Śaka and Jāuhar is greatly informed by the religious doctrines of Karma (duty) and rebirth, which form the core themes of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. James Tod provides two versions of the origin of these rituals.3 In the first, he focused on the narratives of Hindu mythology where Parvati or Sati, the wife of lord Shiva, having noticed the insulting treatment her husband was receiving in her father’s house, self-immolated herself in the presence of all those assembled and from that time the tradition of ritual self-destruction by women was said to have started. Secondly, Tod has pointed out that during medieval times and especially after the invasions of the Tatars into Rajasthan, since there were no definite laws or even any consensus amongst the various warrior clans for the safety and honour of captive women, the latter therefore opted for Sati and Jāuhar. In fact, social practice of these clans tended to allow the victors to take captured women into their possession and that situation forced the brave Rajput women to resort to the Jāuhar. Tod feels bewildered that “a nation so refined, so scrupulous in its ideas with regard to females, as the Rajput, should not have entered into some national compact to abandon such proof of success as the bondage of the sex”.4 Generally speaking, the rituals of Śaka and Jāuhar were inseparable and Śaka followed immediately after the performance of Jāuhar. However, there were some exceptions. Nainsi, the famous Khyat writer of the Mughal period,5 made special mention of the instances of Śaka and Jāuhar which took place in the fort of Pavagarh (Champaner) during the attack by the forces of Mahmud Begda, Sultan of Gujarat, in November 1484 A.D., where both these rituals were performed simultaneously, not one after the other as was usual. Since the battle between the forces of the Sultan and the king of Pavagarh, Rawal Patai (Yaswant Singh Khichi), was fought inside the fort, the women as soon as they saw their husbands killed immediately jumped into the fire. This situation bemused the entire army of the Sultan. It would seem that this is the first account where all the modern writers have de2 Elliot & Dowson 1990: 173–174, 327–328. 3 Tod 1920: 737, 744–745. 4 Tod (1920: 744) compares that in Hindu (Manu) and Jewish laws captive women have been treated as lawful prize whereupon Christianity extended support to these helpless souls. However, the chivalry record of the armies of European powers differs with such assumptions. 5 Munhata Nainsi 1984: 25–26.

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scribed the performance of Śaka and Jāuhar in their distinctive ways. Though Muslim historians preferred to use the word Jāuhar, Nainsi has described the performance of both rituals under two different names.6 It is strange that in the contemporary writings of the medieval period, occurrences of Jāuhar occur frequently whereas references to Śaka are but rarely made. Should we assume that during this period the popularity of Jāuhar outstripped that of Śaka or perhaps that the forces which motivated Śaka had waned. During the medieval period, the rituals associated with Śaka, except for the references which appear in the history of the Bhati Rajputs, are seldom mentioned. In contrast, whilst the menfolk of the fort, after the completion of the rites of Jāuhars are always recorded as coming out with their weapons and fighting till their last breath, the performance of Jāuhar itself is prominently highlighted. Perhaps the lack of cohesiveness and unanimity on the part of the defending forces, notably as recorded from the thirteenth century, marred the spirit underlying the Śaka. At the time of the fall of the fort of Ranthambor its commander could find few companions to him.7 Padmanabha has given a long list of warriors who did not fight alongside king Kanhade at the time of the decisive battle at Jalore in Rajasthan.8 Moreover, during this period in the local literature the word “Shaka” became common for addressing to the Turk Sultans of India. Both Mu‛izz al-Din Muhammad Sām of Ghūr and Ala ud-Din Khalji of Delhi were addressed as “Shakas” or “Shaka” and this styling clearly refers to and recalls the famous struggle which formerly existed between the Malvas and Śakas or Guptas and Śakas to uphold Indian culture in ancient times. In Indian tradition, “Shakas” or “Shaka” are, generally depicted as rivals and enemies of religion and culture.9 In the history of Jaisalmer state, exceptionally, rituals related to both Śaka and Jāuhar have been referred to collectively by the name of Śaka. Researchers usually assume that such practices became popular after the invasions of Muslim Turks into the Rajput States during the early medieval period. Modern historians argue that since the conquerors (who were most often Muslims) came from a different social background and had least consideration for the honour of women from other faiths, therefore women of Rajput royal households preferred the Jāuhar.10 Moreover, Śaka and Jāuhar are associated with the ruling Kshatriya or Rajput (warrior) communities alone.11 It is also difficult to ascertain when the words Śaka and Jāuhar became associated with these rituals. Dasharath Sharma opines that the word Jāuhar originated from the name of the site where this group 6 Nizamuddin 1992: 275; Ferishta 1990: 41–42. 7 Khemkavi 1999: 178. Khemkavi writes that Rana himself killed his queens and family members. 8 Padmanabha 1991: 96–97, 98–99. 9 Suri 1997: 30–63. 10 D. Sharma 1967: 458–460; Arora 1981: 8. 11 G.N. Sharma 1968: 130.

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immolation first took place, i.e. Yamgraha or the place of Yam or the god of death, and from Yamgraha it came to be known as Jamghar or Jāuhar.12 In other words, the practice of Jāuhar began only in India. However, concerning the origin of the word Śaka, scholars are, more or less, silent. From the accounts of the erstwhile Jaisalmer State of Rajasthan13 we notice that for participation in the Śaka certain codes and regulations were adhered to. For example, young warriors as yet unmarried could not participate in the Śaka. The idea was that after their death on the battlefield, who would they then have to meet in the next world. Furthermore, if a member of the royal family for one reason or another failed to participate in the Śaka, he could arrange another Śaka against the same powerful enemy. Bhatis of Jaisalmer did so against the Sultan of Delhi in 1313 A.D. and this was known as second Śaka. Similarly, after the declaration to fight for Śaka, if the fort continued to remain under the possession of the ruling family, that attempt would be termed half Śaka (Adho Sako). The history of Jaisalmer, again, provides the explanation. One Amir Ali Pathan from the fort of Kandhar in Afghanistan, who was recruited to the forces of Maharawal (King) Lunakaran, employed a “Trojan horse” trick to capture the fort of Jaisalmer. He requested the Maharawal to extend permission to let his begums (wives) visit the Zanani Dyodhy (queens’ apartment) in the fort and after getting the consent, he put warriors in place of women inside the palanquin (wooden covered sedan chairs). Once the warriors had got inside the fort they attacked the guards and family members of the Maharawal. This unexpected development took the Maharawal by surprise and he first of all slaughtered his womenfolk with his own hands and thereafter engaged himself along with other members of his family and servants in the fighting and died (1550 A.D.). Soon afterwards reinforcements arrived in the form of other princes of the family and they defeated and killed Amir Ali. Since the fort therefore continued to remain in the possession of the same family, the incident is remembered as a half Śaka. There were other occasions when women did not find time for the ceremonies of Jāuhar and were killed by their own family members instead. Available information suggests that during the medieval period Śaka and Jāuhar were performed under the following conditions: 1. A fort or a place being invaded by a strong army; 2. The realisation by the defenders that defeat was unavoidable and the fort would permanently pass to the enemy; 3. The realisation by the defenders that the honour of their family members could not be protected; 4. The immolation or killing, en masse, of women and young children to avoid molestation by the victorious army; 12 D. Sharma 1967: 458–460. 13 Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981: 53–54, 55–56, 67; Tawarikh Jaisalmer 1999: 35–36, 38, 52.


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5. The resolution on the part of the menfolk, to challenge the enemy and die in the field of war; 6. The underlying motivation that both men and women, after their death, would happily reunite in the next world.

2. Major Instances of Śaka and Jāuhar The political account of seventh-eighth-century Sind, the Chachnama, provides detailed accounts of instances of mass killing or immolation of women. During the time of the Arab General Muhammad Kasim’s expedition to Sind and his attack on the fort of Raor, the guards of King Dahir killed the women of the royal house so that they could not fall into the hands of the enemy. After this the queen “Bai” along with other remaining women undertook their own self-immolation within the fort. On this occasion the queen collected the women living in the fort together and addressed them: “It is certain that we cannot escape the clutches of these Chandals (low-caste Sudras) and cow eaters. Our glory is gone and our term of life has come to its close. As there is no hope of safety and liberty, let us collect firewood, cotton, and oil. The most expedient course for us, I think, is to burn ourselves to ashes, and thus quickly meet our husbands (in the other world). Whoever of you is inclined to go and ask mercy of the enemy, let her go. It is possible she may be saved and set at liberty”. The chronicler further writes that all the women present firmly stood behind the decision of “Bai” and thereafter they entered a house, set fire to it, and were burnt to ashes. It appears that only women of noble families had entered into the fire-house as the writer informs us that Muhammad Kasim, after the victory at Raor, massacred almost 6,000 fighting men in the fort whilst their dependents, including women and children, were made prisoners. Even 30 women of the royal family, including Dahir’s niece, became part of the booty. So far as the menfolk of the fort are concerned, at least 15,000 soldiers stood to fight and died. At the time of the capture of fort of Brahamanabad, the main town of the kingdom, the chief queen of king Dahar of Sind, Ladi, tried to burn herself with her followers and their children but was captured. In the Chachnama phrases, like, Śaka or Jāuhar are not mentioned yet the resolution taken by the warriors and their family members in the besieged fort reflects the presence of the same spirit.14 From the Chachnama it also appears that these rituals of Śaka and Jauhar were already present in the societies of warrior communities in Sind before the coming of the Arabs. There are also examples which show that despite the moral appeal some women did not follow the course of Jāuhar. After the establishment of the Turkish Sultanate instances of Śaka and Jāuhar, occurred almost in all parts of India, however, Jāuhars took place in the fort of 14 Chachnama 1979: 146–147, 152–153, 163.

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Chittor (Mewar) particularly at the time of the invasions of Sultan Ala ud Din Khalji (1303 A.D.), Bahadur Shah of Gujarat (1528 A.D.) and the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1567 A.D.). Folklorists of Mewar and Rajasthan have highlighted these sacrificial ceremonies as rituals in support of the divine and premier status possessed by the Guhilots in particular and Rajputs in general.15 During the reign of the Khaljis and Tughluqs (Turkish dynasties), occurrences of Śaka and Jāuhar increased considerably, whilst in addition to powerful figures in Rajasthan similarly powerful figures elsewhere in India followed these rituals with the same vigour and spirit. It appears that the Chauhans who ruled over most of Rajasthan until the fourteenth century suffered badly at the hands of the Turks and indeed most of them lost their patrimonies forever. They had already lost Ajmer in 1194 A.D. and during the period of the Khaljis, Ranthambor, Shivana and Jalore fell one by one before the forces of Sultan Ala ud Din. On all such occasions the Chauhans performed Jāuhar and thus sacrificed their lives in the decisive battles. In the fort of Ranthambor even the Mongols participated in these rituals too. In fact, the Mongol chief Muhammad Shah, the officer of Rana Hammir, first killed his wives and children in his house and then reported it to his lord. Following that, the members of the Chauhan royal family performed their traditional Jāuhar in the fort.16 Subsequently, Jāuhars were performed at the forts of Shivana (1308 A.D.) and Jalore (1311 A.D.) which further supported and glorified such antagonistic Rajput traditions in the politics and society of Rajasthan. As Padmanabha elaborates that in the fort of Jalore along with the women of the royal family the servants of all castes and the soldiers organised Jāuhars in their houses.17 “Sandalwood, Agar, Tulsi, Bili, Āmli, all sacred wood, were brought for the pyre. After a bath, the queens made offerings to the sun god […] and entered the Jāuhar fire. [...] All were reciting the name of ‘Hari’ (Lord Vishnu) from the innermost depths of their hearts. Such was the scene of Jāuhar. ‘Truly, kith and kin, son, wife, wealth and youth, all are nothing but illusion. The day that fate becomes adverse, they all are of no purpose.’ […] Fifteen hundred and eighty-four Jāuhars were lit that day in the Jalore fort.” The decline of the Turks’ power at Delhi did not offer any respite to the local Rajput rulers of Rajasthan and Central India and thereafter they continued to suffer at the hands of regional Muslim powers. Gagron in the Haroti region of Rajasthan became the target of the Sultan of Malwa whereupon Champaner, near Baroda, was conquered by the Sultan of Gujarat. Both these forts belonged to the Khichi clan of Chauhan Rajputs.18 Muslim writers are 15 D. Sharma 1967: 458–460; G.N. Sharma 1968: 130. Habib and Nizami do not agree and writes that since Amir Khusrau has not mentioned the incident the publicized event of Jāuhar rite of Chittor is a fabrication of later days (Habib & Nizami 1992: 368). 16 Suri 1997: 161–163; Khemkavi 1999: 182. 17 Padmanabha 1991: 93–96. 18 Munhata Nainsi 1984: 25–26; Nizamuddin 1992: 275–276, 479.


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silent as to whether Jāuhar took place at Gagron but in the local text, ‘Achaldas ri Vachnika’, composed in the late fifteenth century, the entire ceremony of the rituals of Jāuhar is well elaborated. In the opinion of the author of this rare manuscript, this Jāuhar was an exceptional event and on that occasion, women from all castes and communities had participated in it.19 It appears that Jāuhar became a normal part of military history so far as the subjugation of forts held by the native powers of the region is concerned. On the other hand, the chroniclers of the former Jaisalmer state of Rajasthan highlight that their ruling clan of Bhatis had chosen the path of both Śaka and Jāuhar, and perhaps on more occasions than any other clan in Rajasthan and India.20 In support of their claim, scholars have recognised three important Śakas, performed at the fort of Jaisalmer during the Khalji and Tughluq period.21 In fact, the Bhatis took pride in elaborating that they followed such rituals as an integral part of their long family traditions and performed them before coming and settling in the Thar Desert of India. In other words, the history of Jaisalmer or of the Bhatis is in a position to throw light on the origin and evolution of these rituals.

3. Early Examples of the Rituals of Sacrifices Dasharath Sharma claimed that such practices were already present in some form since the time of the fourth century B.C.22 However, the learned scholar has not given any specific examples in support of this. He does mention the death of King Har Raj, son of Prithviraj Chauhan, who after his defeat by the forces of Sultan Mu‛izz al-Din Muhammad Sām of Ghūr and the fall of Ajmer in the early thirteenth century, burnt himself to death with his queens. Perhaps the practice of committing suicide by the defeated and desperate kings to protect their honour was thus known in the early periods. King Jaypal of the Hindu Shahi dynasty of Kabul and Punjab, who suffered defeat by the forces of Mahmud of Ghazna, provides another example. He, after his return from captivity, first shaved his head and then burnt himself to death. Historians add that since he had been the prisoner of the Musalmans (Muslims) he did not consider himself worthy to sit on the throne. It is interesting to note that the practice of Sati was prevalent in the family of the Hindu Shahis.23 Even so, the Hindushahis, who ruled Kabul and the frontier regions of 19 Achaldas 1981: 61–63. 20 Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981: 53–54, 55–56, 67; Tawarikh Jaisalmer 1999: 35–36, 38, 52. 21 These writings though compiled and reproduced in the nineteenth century entirely based on the material of the medieval period. Genealogies covered in the Jaisalmer ri Khyat, perhaps, first time composed sometime in the early medieval period. 22 D. Sharma 1967: 458–460. 23 Pandey 1973: 247–248, 250.

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India, were from the ruling Brahaman caste. Moreover, their earlier lords, the Turki Shahis whom they had succeeded after overthrowing them from their seat in Kabul, were either Huns or Turks.24 The historical accounts of the Bhatis or Jadams also provide references to the burning of women in Satis from the ancient period. The earlier instances of Satis in their families belong to the period of the first century when the Śaka-Malav political rivalry in western and northwestern India was at its most intense stage.25 The Bhati records also claim that the first Śaka belongs to the period of King Shalivahan Jadam of Sialkot (Punjab) and Ghazna (Afghanistan). He was a contemporary of Samudra Gupta and Chandra Gupta of the Gupta dynasty in India. He fought several battles against the Guptas and was considered one of the powerful kings of his time. In Punjab he is also remembered as the father of the legendary figure King Rasaloo. He followed the Śaka after his stern but unsuccessful resistance against the world famous invaders of Asia, the White Huns (Ephthalites), or against the king of Khurasan and his Śaka was performed at the fort of Ghazna (south Afghanistan), which was one of the principal centres in his kingdom. This event took place some time during the last decades of the fourth century and as recorded at the time around one Lakh 30 thousand people perished. The number of the people dying in all such cases appears exaggerated and on this particular occasion the description of the Jāuhar is not given; however, considering the death of such a large number of people the possibility that the lives of the family members of the Jadams (Bhatis) were spared looks unlikely. This account, in turn, also suggests that the practice of Śaka was already present in the ruling families or clans of the frontier regions prior to the invasions of the Muslims in these territories and other parts of the sub-continent. Indeed, the Jaisalmer ri Khyat specifically mentioned that the rituals of Śaka became known (or famous) from the period of prince Shalivahan.26 From this we may make the inference that the rituals connected with the pledge of fighting until death came to be known as Śaka, and became popular from the period of this king or during the period when invasions by Huns frequently occurred in the frontier regions of the sub-continent. Another early reference also comes from the history of the Bhatis. Around 654 A.D. or immediately after that when Arabs made their first attempts on the territories of East Persia, Afghanistan and the frontier regions of the sub-continent, Jadams or Bhatis in those areas held their resistance against them and performed Śaka at Ghazna. According to Bhati chroniclers of the time almost three Lakh people died (independently the number is difficult to confirm). Because of such major military and political upheavals, the Jadams-Bhatis lost their land in Punjab 24 Devra 2003. 25 Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981: 29–30. 26 Ibid.; Devra 2006.


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and Afghanistan and from there they shifted to lower Punjab, north Sind and Rajasthan.27 Some of their family members took shelter in the mountainous Ghūr regions of south Khurasan, where ultimately they succeeded in establishing their independent kingdom under the name of Shansabānis. Mu‛izz al-Din Sām of Ghazna, who won the battle of Tarain in 1192 A.D. against the Chauhan power of Ajmer and Delhi and established the Delhi Sultanate, was from this family.28 Bhatis after settling in the plains of north India continued to follow these rituals. The description of their third Śaka is more intriguing. It was performed at Tanot, north of Jaisalmer in western Rajasthan, under the leadership of Tannu Rao Bhati, father of the famous Vijay Ray, in the face of the combined forces of Varhas (Makwana or Jhalas) and Panwars (Parmars), who like them are described as Rajputs, some time around 1004–1005 A.D. Interestingly, this Prince Vijay Ray of Bhatner or Bhatia did not follow the practice of Śaka at the time he lost the fort of Bhatia or Bhatner to the Turk invader Sultān Mahmūd of Ghazna. Vijay Ray was either killed or committed suicide after the return of the Sultān. His local enemies and neighbours the Varhas and Panwars availed themselves of this opportunity and attacked the fort of Tanot where his father Tannu Rao faced the adversaries and performed the Śaka. On that occasion, about 70,000 Bhatis lost their lives. This instance shows the internal political rivalry which had been brewing among the regional powers of Punjab and Rajasthan and hardly focuses on the issues of either religion or external aggression and yet these were equally severe and intense as we discern in the other instances of Śakas, highlighted in the background of foreign or Turkic invasions. The intensity of this regional rivalry can be established from the events which followed; when the Bhatis, under the leadership of Dev Raj, son of Vijay Ray, after regrouping then invaded the territory of the Varhas they proceeded to kill a number of the Varhas. On top of that, they disarmed them and degraded them socially and even terminated the pregnancies of their women.29 Following in the sequence, the next instance of Śaka amongst the Bhatis is more revealing. This time they had chosen the course of Śaka not in any external or Indian power but for the settling of succession disputes within their own family. After the death of king Dusaj Bhati (1122 A.D.), his youngest son, Vijay Raj Lanjha, with the backing of Solankis of Gujarat, succeeded to his ancestral throne at Ludreva, near Jaisalmer; Jaisal, the eldest son, however, put forward his own claim but achieved no success until he received help from Sultān Mahmūd of Ghazna. Sultān Mahmūd whilst returning from Somnath intervened in the matter and sent one of his contingents in support to Jaisal. Bhoj Raj, the nephew of Jaisal and successor of Vijay Raj Lanjha, was unable to resist the combined forces; in consequence he along with his compa27 Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981: 34; Devra 2006. 28 Tawarikh Jaisalmer 1999: 13; Devra 2006. 29 Munhata Nainsi 1984: 17–18; Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981: 29–30; Devra 2008.

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nions opted for Śaka in the fort of Ludreva. Jaisal is the prince who in 1155–1156 A.D., founded the new fort and capital town of Jaisalmer.30 Another branch of the Jadams, ruling at Vijaygarh (Bayana) in the northeastern part of Rajasthan, after losing the battle against the forces of one Abu Bakr, commander of fort of Kandhar in Afghanistan, performed the Jāuhar in 1173 A.D.31 All these instances took place in the early history of the Jadams or Bhatis and reveal that the rituals of Śaka were already in practice before the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate and the Rajput states in India.

4. Racial Background of the Rituals of Sacrifices Recent studies have shown that the Bhatis (Jadams) of Bhatner-Jaisalmer and the Shansabānis of Ghūr in old Khurasan belonged to one royal family and historically share their descent from the Indo-Scythians, who once ruled over parts of Sistan, Kapisa (north Afghanistan) and the frontier regions of Punjab.32 Perhaps the rituals of mass self-immolation or sacrificing life on the battlefield which came to be known as Śaka were primarily called this because the people involved in it at the early stage belonged to the Indo-Scythian race. In India, Scythians were addressed as Śaka.33 Although Śakas emerged as a powerful political entity in western India very early on, in Indian literature they are depicted as rival and negative characters and their struggle with the mighty north Indian Guptas and south Indian Satvahanas is portrayed in terms of a clash of cultures. Customs and rituals belonging to the Śaka people were at the same time recognised as separate and distinctive traditions. In other words, the practice of Śaka did not become popular in the heartland of India until this period. During the reign of Shalivahan all the ruling clans of Punjab and the frontier regions, like the Parthians or Persians, and later the Kushans or Kedarites and Mundas, moved under the single fold of the Scythians and after that they successfully challenged the emerging powers of the Guptas, Huns and Pushyabhūtis. Possibly, after the seventh century social barriers between the various ruling groups in India had become less solid. Warrior groups from all the races or communities of north India through mutual marriage relations and social bonding accelerated the cultural progression of Rajputisation (in the formation of martial groups) and settled down as Rajputs in the Indian polity. The example of the Huns who came to India after the fourth century is most striking. Huns, listed as Rajputs in the genealogies of the time, entered into matrimonial relations with 30 31 32 33

Munhata Nainsi 1984: 34, 36; Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981: 44–45, 47. Alwar, Bandhak: No. 19/27; Koli 2007: 68–69. Devra 2006. Tod 1920: 1170; Sharva 1981: 3–4. For the discussion on the question of the descent, see Bhandarkar 1911: 13–15; R. S. Sharma, 1996: 387; Bhati 2002: 105–106; Devra 2006.


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families of Guhilots in Mewar.34 It appears that people from the Parthian races, who were residents of south Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Sind and lower Punjab, had also adopted the martial customs of their neighbours the Scythians. Apart from this the Śakas or Indo-Scythians had close social relations with Parthians and Kedarites. The Śaka-Parthian rivalry that was a feature of political life either side of the first century was subsequently abandoned in the face of increasing military threats from powers like the Kushans, Turks and Huns both in and outside India. It is possible that during this period both Śakas and Persians, in order to resist the tyranny imposed upon them by the nomads of Central Asia, had established the war custom of sacrifices. Customs such as this might already have been present in one form or another in the social and cultural life of these races. Some scholars argue that Śakas introduced into India the custom of burning a wife together with the remains of a departed chief, and during their long rule it became so common that it percolated down to the lowest level of society and came to be known as Sati. In other words, this practice was quite common among the Scythians.35 The question of the descent of the Guhils (Guhilots) from the races of Parthia or Persia as well as of the Chauhans from either Scythians or Gurzs (Gujjar) is already a subject of historical debate.36 Similarly, the ethno-history of the Partihars or Parihars and Yadavas (Karauli) suggests a similar kind of racial background. In the records from Jaisalmer the Persians and Parthians are addressed as Partihars or Parihars.37 James Tod, who sought to study the ethnic history of the Rajput clans, suggested that they shared similar mythology, martial manners, language and even architectural ornaments with particularly the Scythian and Parthian people.38 While elaborating the similarities and focusing on the descent of the Rajput clans from Scythian groups he emphasised their ability to adopt and continue to follow sacrificial customs in changing times. Among such customs he discusses the rituals of Sati, horse sacrifice, Jāuhar and Śaka, which lifted their status amongst the martial races. Tod, mainly in the context of a Rajput origin from Scythian and other Asian tribes, writes that, “Female immolation, (therefore) originated with the sun worshipping Shaivas, and was common to all those nations who adored this to the most splendid object of the visible creation. Witness the Scythic Gete or Jat warrior of the Jaxartes, who devoted his wife, horse, arms, and slaves, to the flames; the “giant Gete” of Scandinavia, who forgets not on the shores of the Baltic his Transoxianian habits; and the Frisian Frank and Saxon descended from him, who ages after omitted only the female.” Although the views of Tod have come in for severe 34 35 36 37 38

Biswas 1973: 148. Sharva 1981: 111. Bhandarkar 1911; Asopa 1976: 2–9; Chattpadhyaya 1998: 81–89. Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981: 32; Alwar Bandhak: No 19. Tod 1920: 737, 744.

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revision,39 scholars like D.R. Bhandarkar supported his claim of Rajput descent from the “foreign tribes” which included the Scythians. Regional records from Jaisalmer and Karauli support the existence of such martial customs, which were present in both Scythian and Rajput societies. Tod’s observations regarding the popularity of female immolation in the nations of Asia where sun worship by Shaivas, or devotees of lord Shiva, was prevalent deserve attention.40 In general terms, he talks about the regions of Transoxiana or old Khurasan as well as the frontier regions of the Indian sub-continent. Numismatic study reveals that in the region of Ariana located between India and Persia coins bearing images of fire altars along with the Trident and Mithura or Mihira (Sun) are extant from the time of the first century and these figures exemplify the faith and customs of the people. Scholars also state that images of fire altars do not represent the customs of Magians or Zoroastrians alone. On this question, the noted scholar H.H. Wilson writes that, “it appears that the Persians of the later period of the Arsacidan dynasty had departed from the spirit of the ancient elementary worship. They had grouped around the sovereign Sun a variety of deified beings unknown to the pure Magian religion; that the Indo-Scythians adopted these divinities and that we have now for the first time their names and representations on the coins of Kanerki and his successors (Kushans)”.41 From the period of the first century B.C. or immediately after the decline of Greek power in Kabul and Bactria, a hardnosed contest erupted among Greeks, Scythians and Parthians in the entire region adjoining India on the one side, Khurasan and Persia on the other. Later on, although the Greeks had been pushed out, the Yu Chi, Turks and Huns, one by one, through their continuous attacks and agitation did not allow peace to return here, even for a short time. The Hun’s role in bringing complete devastation wherever they attacked and their rapacious activities in conquered areas created a vast space for the growth of antagonistic rituals opposed to them at local level.42 Since Scythians remained in the area for a long time and from time to time succeeded in establishing their rule over an extensive area on both sides of the Indus, a good number of rituals and activities necessarily arose from the severity of military contests and became associated with the people of this race. We do not know much about the role of the priestly class of Magi or Magians (fire worshippers) in promoting such activities in the regions of Persia and Khurasan but they continued to remain integrated parts of the political and religious life of the Parthians and Scythians in India and Afghanistan. Their contribution in spreading sun and goddess worship in the areas of the sub-continent where Scythians and Persians settled is also recog39 Ojha, G. H. (1937: 41–43) differs with the views of Tod and treats Rajputs as Kshatriyas (Aryas) of the Vedic and Puranic period. 40 Tod 1920: 737. 41 Wilson 2002: 360–361. 42 Jaisalmer ri Khyat, 1981: 32; Biswas 1973: 108–109.


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nised in Hindu classical texts.43 Goddess (mother) and sun worship remained most auspicious events in the social and religious life of the Rajputs.

5. Social Propriety and the Decline of Rituals All the tribes or races of Hind (India), Khurasan (Central Aia), East Persia and Sistan (Afghanistan) after their entry into the Rajput fold did not forget to carry on their distinctive war traditions especially in times of military and political crisis. On the contrary, retaining such categories of war rituals put them into the cadre of valuable martial material in the social and political arena of the times. It is interesting to note that those Jadams or Bhatis who remained behind in the Sistan areas and for security reasons moved to the Ghūr Mountains of Herat (northwest Afghanistan) continued to follow their old traditions. Writers contemporary with Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna claim that he invaded the country of Ghūr for the reason that the people living there were still following the old traditions and social customs.44 These Jadams (Bhatis) were here known as Shansabānis or Ghūrids, and at that time were neither treated as Tajiks nor Turks. However, Minhaj claims that they are the descendants of one Zuhak Tazi (Tajik), king of Persia or Kabul.45 According to him these Shansabānis, at the time of the Mongol’s invasion of their territory, first killed all the females and children with their own hands, and then fought against the enemy until their last breath. However, such resolutions were not called either Śaka or Jāuhar. Perhaps the taxonomy of these rituals, particularly Jāuhar, became known by this name only in those family groups who as Rajputs of the Hindu order made their home and nation in the Indian sub-continent. There are a number of references in the Chachnama which show that in Sind and Multan Arabs specifically targeted the warrior groups of local societies and killed them mercilessly.46 Generally, they spared the lives of other sections of society, namely, priests, artisans, agriculturists and traders. Perhaps they selected and slaughtered the warrior groups so that in the future resistance from them would not gain force. The invasions of the Ghaznavids and Ghūrids also brought disaster for the existing order of local societies. Besides that, a number of people who surrendered on the battlefields were forced to become slaves and were sent to the Central Asian markets to be sold. During this period internal conflicts as well became severe, and the space which remained for the political survival of the ruling races and tribes became contested ever more competitively. From the period of the ninth43 Bhavishya Purana from Kalyan, annual issue of 1992 (782): 100; Cunningham 1924: 266– 267; Devra 2007. 44 Nizami 1996: 178–179. 45 Minhaj 1970: 303, 1064. 46 Chachnama 1979: 164.

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tenth centuries, the practice of Śaka gained in popularity among the warrior communities ruling over the northwestern and western parts of India. On the other hand, there are parallel examples which show that people also started defying the course of Śaka. However, such people ran into other types of difficulty, particularly at the social level. A good number of them who for one reason or another did not take part in the Śaka found it difficult to continue being a part of their own clan family. The pressure for separation from the main branch of the clan or tribe because of military, social or economic reasons mounted rapidly. First of all, invaders would in their own interest deprive defeated soldiers of their armed status and relegate them to a lower level in society. Secondly, those who had suffered such defeat out of economic necessity themselves shifted into other sections of society (unjat or outclassed) and engaged in the works of traders, artisans and farmers. Religious conversion also gained momentum during this period. Ultimately, the social position of such new groups of people became institutionalised according to hierarchical and caste lines of the Hindu Varna order. For this reason the presence of people from Bhati, Chauhan, Partihars and several other clans of the Rajputs is noticeable in almost all castes of Hindu social order and amongst other religions. The family branches which continued to follow their martial rituals succeeded in establishing their superior political and social hierarchy over the other groups in society. In actual fact antagonistic rituals became the subject of their social propriety and they took pride in performing them before superior powers.47 In India, the successive Turkish dynasties of the early medieval period did not bother to eliminate the prominence of such antagonism amongst the leading classes, and their successors, the Afghans, also could not find the time to formulate any definite policy against them. Sher Shah Suri had a different political vision and in attempt to make his empire stable made certain attempts of taking the military support from local Indian powers but he reigned for only five years (1540–1545 A.D.). The Mughals of Central Asia found a number of problems in India but soon developed programmes to deal with such political and social issues with a new approach. Meanwhile, the political scenario at local and regional levels in India had considerably changed. By the time the Mughals came to India different ruling clans or new family groups from the old clans of the Rajputs had emerged and they had different kinds of administrative problems and political pursuits. By the end of the sixteenth century, a good number of them had joined the Mughal Empire. Thus the message of sacred antagonistic rituals started losing its spirit. Akbar also learned the lesson from the Jāuhar of Chittor (1567 A.D.) and after that he did not repeat the mistake. At the time of his visit to Nagore (Rajasthan) in 1570 A.D., he made it clear that the ancestral dominions of friendly local powers would not be disturbed. The systematic working of matrimonial alliances chiefly concluded between the 47 Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981: 30–31, 36–37; Devra 2008 A.


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Mughals and the Rajputs also left very little space for the revival of old antagonistic rituals. The final blow came in the form of the acceptance of the concept and working of Watan Jagir within the imperial administrative structure in which Rajputs, for their part, found protection for their hereditary rights within their states. They became free of the fear of losing their patrimonies and instead found new opportunities under the umbrella of Mughal sovereignty. Mughal administration, while granting the Jagirs to the Rajput chiefs in exchange for the payment of Mansab, as a priority first adjusted the income of their patrimonies or Watan jagirs. In most cases the income from ordinary transferable Jagirs proved higher than that of their hereditary Watan Jagirs. Mughals rarely disturbed the chief Thikanas (ancestral fort or place) of the Watan Jagirs whilst on the other hand the rituals of Śaka and Jāuhar no longer took place in times of war.48 When the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (1658–1707 A.D.) and his son Bahadur Shah (1707–1712 A.D.) tried to put the administration of the Watan Jagirs of some of the Rajput Chiefs under Khalisa (direct imperial administration) this was a move which instigated struggle between Mughals and Rajputs, however, the practices of Śaka and Jāuhar were never employed. Satish Chandra writes that the wars of the Mughals with the Rajput states of Jodhpur, Jaipur and Udaipur during the reigns of Aurangzeb and his successors cannot be treated as marking the abandonment of Akbar’s policy of alliance with the Rajputs as a part of a larger policy of allying with the local ruling elements.49 Nevertheless, at the individual level the practice of Sati in Rajput families continued to remain in force for several social and religious reasons.

48 Chandra 1993: 34–36; Devra 1998. 49 Chandra 1993: 97.

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References Achaldas 1981. Achaldas Khichi ri Vachnika, (ed) Bhupatiram Sakaria. Jaipur: Panchsheel. Alwar Bandhak No. 19/27: Non-Archival Records, Bikaner: Rajasthan Archives Office. Arora, Shashi 1981. Rajasthan men Nari Ki Stithi. [Hindi]. Bikaner: Tarun. Asopa, Jai N. 1976. Origin of the Rajputs. Delhi: Bhartiya Publishing. Baloch, N.A. 1987. “The Historical Sind Era”. In: Sind Through the Centuries. Proceedings of an International Seminar Held in Karachi 1975, (ed.) Hamida Khuhro. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Bhandarkar, Devadatta R. 1911. “Foreign Influence in the Hindu Population”. In: The Indian Antiquary, Vol. IX, (ed) Temple R.C. & Bhandarkar D.R. Pune: Bhandarkar Institute. Bhati, Hari Singh 2002. Annals of Jaisalmer. A Pre-Mediaeval History. Bikaner: Kavi Prakashan. Bhavishya Purana 1992. (ed) Sh. Hanuman Prasadji Poddar& Radhey Shyamji Khemka, Kalyan Visheshank. Year 66 (782), No. 1. Gorakhpur: Gita Press. Biswas, Atreyi 1973. The Political History of Huns in India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Chachnama 1979. English Translation by Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg. New Delhi: Idarah-I-Adabiyat-I Delli. Chandra, Satish 1993. Mughal Religious Policies. New Delhi: Vikash. Chattpadhyaya, Braja Dulal 1998. The Making of Early Medieval India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Cunningham, Alexander 1924. Ancient Geography of India. Calcutta: R.C. Chakravarti. Dasharath Sharma,1967. Rajasthan Through the Ages. Bikaner: Rajasthan Archives Office. Devra, G.S.L. 1998. “Raja, Mansab and Jagir – A Re-examination of Mughal–Rajput Relations during the Reign of Akbar”. In: Akbar and His India,(ed.) Iqtidar Alam Khan. New Delhi: Indian Council of Historical Research. — 2003. “Political Wilderness and Social Dismemberment – Varhas: A Forgotten Clan of North-West India (Pre-Medieval Period)”. In: Indian History Congress Proceeding. Delhi: History Department, University of Delhi. — 2006. “Ethnicity of Shansabānis of Ghūr (Central Asia) – A Study Based on Rajasthani (Indian) Sources”. Paper presented at the 19th Conference of the International Association of Asian Historians. Manila. — 2007. Sun Temple of Multan – A Historical Pilgrim Center of India. Paper presented at the International Seminar (January 2007) on Sacred Places and Sacred Journeys. Allahabad: University of Allahabad. — 2008. “Identification of Bhatia”. In: Prof. Krishan Swaroop Abhinandan Granth. Udaipur: Abhinandan Granth Samiti.


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— 2008 A. “Social Formation and Stratification in Northwest India during the Early Medieval Period”. In: Sikh Society, Culture and Polity in Historical Perspective, (ed.) B.L. Gupta. Jaipur: History Department, Rajasthan University. Elliot, Henry M. & John Dowson 1990. History of India as Told by Its Own Historians. vol. VIII. Delhi: Low Price Publication. Ferishta, Mahomed K. 1990. History of the Rise of Mahomedan Power in India, Vol. 4.(ed).John Briggs. Delhi: Low Price Publication. Habib, Mohammad & Nizami Khaliq Ahmad 1992. A Comprehensive History of India. Vol. 5. Part 1: The Delhi Sultanate (A.D. 1206–1526). New Delhi: People’s Publishing House. Jaisalmer ri Khyat 1981. In: Parampara, (ed) Narayan Singh Bhati, Part 57–58. Jodhpur: Rajasthani Research Institute, Chopasani. Khemkavi 1999. Hamirayan. (Tr. in Hindi) B. M. Jawalia. Jodhpur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute. Koli, Ramji lal 2007. Timan garh Durg, unpublished thesis in History, Jaipur: Library, Rajasthan University. Major, Andrea 2007. Sati – a Historical Anthology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Minhaj ud Din, Abu-‘Umar-i-Usmān 1970 [1881]. Tabkat-i-Nasiri. (Tr. & ed) H.G. Raverty. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation. Munhata Nainsi 1984. Munhata Nainsi ri Khyat, Part 3. (ed) Badri Parsad Sakaria. Jodhpur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute. Nizami, K.A. 1996. “The Ghurids”. In: History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol. 4: The Age of Achievement: A.D. 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century. Part 1: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting, (eds.) M.S. Asimov & C.E. Boswoth. Paris: UNESCO Publishing. Nizamuddin, Khwajah Ahmad, 1992. The Tabaqat-i-Akbari. Vol. 3. (Tr) Brajendra Nath De and (ed) Baini Prashad. Delhi: Low Price Publication Ojha G. H. 1937. Rajputane ka Itihas. [Hindi], First Part. Ajmer: Vyas. Padmanabha, Kavi 1991. Kanhadade Prabandha. (Tr & ed) V.S. Bhatnagar. New Delhi: Voice of India. Pandey, D. B. 1973. The Shahis of Afghanistan and Punjab. New Delhi: Historical Research Institute. Sharma, G. N. 1968. Social Life in Medieval Rajasthan (1500–1800 A.D.). Agra: Shiv lal. Sharma, R.S. 1996. “The Northern Subcontinent”. In: History of Humanity. Scientific and Cultural Development. Vol. 3: From the Seventh Century BC to the Seventh Century AD., (eds.) Joachim Herrmann & Erik Zürcher, UNESCO, Routledge: Paris, London, New York: 385–391. Sharva, Satya 1981. Śakas in India. New Delhi: Pranava. Srivastava, Ashoka K. 1981. Khalji Sultans in Rajasthan. Gorakhpur: Poorvanchal. Suri, Nayan Chandra 1997. Hammir Mahakavya. (Tr. In Hindi) Nathulal Trivedi. Jodhpur: Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute.

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Tawarikh Jaisalmer 1999. [Written in 1891 A.D. by Lakhmichand on the order of Mohta Nathmal of Jaisalmer]. Jodhpur: Rajasthani Granthagar. Tod, James 1920. Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Vol. 2. London: Oxford University Press. Wilson, H.H. 2002. Ariana Antiqua. Lahore: Sang e Meel.

Chandi Prasad Nanda

Rethinking “Politico-Ritual States” Sitting on the Lap of a Bhuiyan: Coronation Ceremonies in Keonjhar* This paper seeks to highlight the fact that royal coronation rituals are an integral part of Keonjhar’s statehood and its identity. The strategy of ritual enactment, this paper argues, symbolises the process of political integration of the dominant tribal community of the region into the state. What is equally stressed is that ritual strategy in terms of the coronation ceremony need not only be located in terms of its socio-cultural significance but more critically grasped in its political implications. The study thus offers the possibility to reconsider the issues of the nature of kingship, “Little Kingdom”, and state in India and, more importantly, the linkage between religion and politics. By focusing on the ritual design and strategy of the state, the underlying search of the study seeks to address the debatable question: “who invents rituals and why?” Based on these understandings, the paper in the final section critiques Clifford Greetz’s idea of the “Theatre State” in the context of his analysis of South East Asian Hindu kingdoms. Greetz critically argues that pompous state rituals are “ends in themselves” which are basically prompted by power. This paper, however, seeks to argue with reference to the royal coronation rituals of Keonjhar state that what is crucial to discern in such “pompous” rituals is a strategy of negotiation with the hierarchical structure of power and authority.

Forging Cultural Identity: Bhanja “Little Kingdom’s” Strategies of Ritual Emulation and Ritual Inversion The

Bhanjas of Keonjhar as a “Little Kingdom” managed to retain power and authority by following ritual practices which helped them to acquire legitimacy vis-àvis the dominant Bhuiyan population as well as the sovereign powers of coastal Orissa. Such ritual strategies enabled the kingdom to Hinduise tribal forms of ritual while simultaneously tribalising various Hindu concepts of worship. The Bhanjas * I am grateful to Hermann Kulke and Uwe Skoda for their critical comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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of Keonjhar, who most probably remained as feudal vassals of both the Bhaumakaras and Somavamsis from the eighth to twelfth centuries, rose to share a tensionridden yet enthusiastic politico-ritual relationship with the Gangas and Gajapatis from twelfth to sixteenth centuries, based on the strategy of ritual emulation and inversion.1 In this relationship, they stood in a position of inferiority vis-à-vis the central powers of Orissa. Bhanjas are one of many little kingdoms, which markedly characterise the political system of pre-colonial Orissa. The Bhanja which most probably split off from the royal line of Khijjing Mayurbhanja in the twelfth century and started ruling with its first ruler, Jyoti Bhanja, strove to emulate the model of classical Brahmanism as textured by the Ganga-Gajapati powers of coastal Orissa.2 They gradually settled the non-tribal upper-caste people in their region by inviting them from outside. They exclusively accommodated Brahmins by founding sasan villages in order that Brahmanical culture could be spread into the tribal hinterland as well. The transformation of this tribal state towards the classical Hindu culture of Orissa saw a decisive turn in the fifteenth century with the assumption of Govindadeva as Bhanja king. Traditional historical writing claims that he joined the legendary expedition of Purusottama against Kanchi as commander-in-chief. His participation in this war assumes importance as it is suggestive of an aligning in a “ritual of violence” (royal expedition of Purusottama) resulting from a “ritual of devotion” to Lord Jagannath. Through his involvement in the war, Govindadeva sought to ritually emulate the superordinate king and found his way into the services of Jagannath. He not only became a Vaisnavite and a staunch devotee of Jagannath, he also adopted Madan Mohan as his istadevata. Moreover, the incorporation of Jagannath and Gajapatis as crucial components of the emerging sub-regional identity of the state, as Kulke has significantly argued, is what is evident in the legendary account of this feudatory state as a matter of localisation within a broader linkage to the “supreme sacred and profane Lords of Orissa”.3 Such benevolent interfe-

1 Tripathi (in press). Tripathi clearly shows how a tribal state like Keonjhar vigorously absorbed the elements from both “classical regional” and “pan-Indian” cultural traditions. He also refers to the idea of dedication of Keonjhar state to Lord Baladevji during the nineteenth century in virtual contrast to Jagannath’s image of Rastradevata and the establishment of Dharmaniti Pradyaini Sabha inside the Baladev temple in the early twentieth century by Gopinath Narayan Bhanja as an institution for pronouncing ultimate verdict on socio-religious issues as a parallel to Muktimandap Sabha of Puri. These developments point to acts of ritual subversion on the part of Keonjhar state. Also for similar discussion on Keonjhar see Kulke (in press). 2 Mishra 2003. The legend of the origin of Keonjhar kingdom with the Kshatriya prince Jyoti Bhanja as the first king of the dynasty is emphasised in this traditional account. This account also shows how the Keonjhar kings increasingly adhered to Vedic-Brahmanical tradition. 3 Kulke (in press).

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rence of the greater sacred domain into the “local-tribal” realm of Keonjhar supposedly helped elevate the politico-ritual status of the latter. During the period of ‘imperial Gajapatis’ and their successors, the Khurda/Puri Rajas the Bhanja kings increasingly adopted the worship of Hindu gods and goddesses. The worship of Rama, Lakshman, Madan Mohan and Vana Durga points to this trend. Tarini, the tribal deity, was replaced by Vana Durga, who was also renamed as Tara, betraying the impact of Tantric Hinduism. Similarly, the worship of Madan Mohan was organised along the lines of the worship of Jagannath by combining the doctrinal principles of the Sakta and Vaishnav religions. The Hinduisation process received further fillip with Lakshmi Narayan Bhanjadeva adopting Balabhadra as the Rastradevata of the state in the second part of the eighteenth century. In his bid to emulate and compete with the privileged ritual position of Puri and its king, he built the second highest Vishnu temple in Keonjhar, after the Jagannath temple of Puri, at an exorbitant cost. He also patronised the writing of Ganasammata in line with Puri’s temple chronicle, the Madalapanji. Ganasammata as a text “approved by the people” perhaps stood in contestatory relation with the apparently elite text, the Madalapanji. It may not be entirely out of place to suggest here that the promotion of the Balabhadra cult or the establishment of Dharmaniti Pradayini Sabha inside the Balabhadra temple during the rule of Gopinath Narayan Bhanja (1905–1926) as a parallel to the institution of Mukti Mandap, the Brahmin assembly hall and ritual court at Puri, or preparing the text of Ganasammata all illustrate the process of ritual inversion. It is apt to argue as Kulke has observed, that all these developments symbolise “the ritual declaration of independence” on the part of the feudatory state from “Khurda and Mughal Subhadar at Cuttack”.4 From about the eighteenth century onwards, the impact of pan-Indian Vedic cultural tradition was growingly felt in Keonjhar state. The drive for revitalising Vedic learning was taken up by Raghunath Bhanja. The Rama cult was greatly patronised. The tribal istadevi of the state, Sri Danda Devi, was to be worshipped in the Hindu Sakta manner with Sanskritic mantras instead of the hitherto practised tribal mode of worship. Similarly, animal sacrifice, central to tribal worship, gave way to the Hindu Navaratra festival in which tribals enthusiastically participated. This is how the tribal goddess slipped into the Hindu pantheon to emerge finally as Durga.5

4 Ibid. 5 Tripathi 2010.

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Bhuiyans and the Bhanja Dynasty of Keonjhar: Sharing a Relationship of Primordiality Cobden Ramsay, author of the Gazetteer Feudatory States of Orissa, highlighted in 1910 the socially preeminent position of the Bhuiyans in the region: “[…] Keonjhar, however, has always been the stronghold of the Bhuiyans, and in this state they are undoubtedly the dominant race. They claim to be the children of the soil (bhui, earth), and to possess full proprietary right over the soil in the same manner as other aborginal tribes always term themselves Zamindars. Though the Hindu population in Keonjhar far outnumbers that of the Bhuiyans yet the claim of the hill (Paharia or Pauri) Bhuiyans to be the dominant race is admitted without question even by the Brahmans and Rajputs. In Keonjhar, they claim the indefensible right to install the chief on his gadi and in Bonai this right is similarly claimed by the Saonts, a throughly Hinduized portion of the clan. There are two broad distinctions between the members of the clan viz. the Bhuiyans of the hills and Bhuiyans of the plains: the latter form the feudal militia of the state and hold their lands on service tenure and are supposed to be prepared to take up arms for their chief whenever required, though they are equally prepared to turn their arm against an unpopular Chief. The true hill Bhuiyas are not however bound to fight for their Chief, though they are perfectly prepared to take up arms against him: the duty of the hill Bhuiyans, is to attend the chief on his journey and act as transport. In Keonjhar, the hill Bhuiyas wield an extraordinary power and are capable at any moment of setting the county in a blaze of insurrection and revolt […] Such outbreaks have not been uncommon […]”6 Referring to their right to install the Keonjhar king and their notion of kingship he notes: “The site then chosen by the Bhuiyas as the garh for their Chief has remained unchanged ever since and it is here that the Bhuiyas install each successive Chief, claiming that until the Chief has been actually invested by them, the installation is not complete… The Bhuiyas desire in their Chief a leader to whom they can appeal and obtain advice and have no desire for independence: they claim, however, a prescriptive right to approve of or resent the administrative acts of the Chief whom they have themselves created; the periodical rebellions which have taken place have been due to dislike of the individual ruler by the Bhuiya clans […]”7

6 Cobden Ramsay 1982: 43. 7 Ibid.: 45f.


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Dalton, the author of the Tribal History of Eastern India, similarly pointed out in 1872: “[…] They are then in Keonjhar, as in Bonai, a race whom you cannot help liking and taking an interest in from the primitive simplicity of their customs, their amenability, their anxiety to oblige; but unsophisticated as they are, they wield an extraordinary power in Keonjhar, and when they take it into their heads to use that power, the country may be said to be governed by an oligarchy composed of the sixty chiefs of the Pawri Desh, the Bhuiyan Highlands. A knotted string passed from village to village in the name of the sixty chiefs throws the entire country into commotion, and the order which is verbally communicated in connection with it, is as implicitly obeyed as if it emanated from the most potent despot. It is not because they are stronger, braver or better armed, that they exercise this supremacy; it arises from two causes, prestige and position. The Pawris dispute with the Juangs the claim to be first settlers in Keonjhar, and boldly aver that the country belongs to them. They assert that the prerogative of installing every new Raja on his accession is theirs and theirs alone. The Hindu population of Keonjhar is in excess of the Bhuiyan, and it comprises Gonds and Kols, but the claim of the Pawris to the dominion they arrogate, is admitted by all; even Brahmans and Rajputs respectively acknowledge it, and the former, by the addition of Brahmanical rite to the wild ceremonies of the Bhuiyans, affirm and sanctify their installation […]”8 Such characterisation of Bhuiyan tribes in terms of their notion of kingship, integrally complex relationship with Hindu castes and above all, their consciousness in these accounts, coexists with their nature of their connectivity with their Hindu neighbours including the latter’s influence on them and the overarching process of Hinduisation. Cobden Ramsay categorises Bhuiyan into four principal clans.9 They are Mal (Desh, or Pahari, or Pawri), Rajkuli, Rautali and Pabna ansha Bhuiyans. The Mal Bhuiyan, the Bhuiyan inhabitants of the hills and mountain tracts who claim to be the superior race. The Hindu upper castes recognise the authority of this clan in the region. Even though they were the feudal militia of the ruling chief, they could “turn their arm against the unpopular chief”. The Rajkuli Bhuiyans, on the other hand, were the descendants of royal family from Bhuiyan concubines. Jyoti Bhanja, the first Bhanja king, as per the legendary account, was stolen as a child from the Mayurbhanja royal line and subsequently “admitted freely to intercourse with Bhuiyan girls and the children of this intimacy are the progenitors of Rajkuli.” It is this clan which prominently participates in the coronation ritual of 8 Dalton 1973. 9 Cobden Ramsay 1982: 44.

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the king. Besides, the two other clans namely, Rautali and Pabna ansha Bhuiyans are known for their greater intimacy with Hinduism. What needs to be stressed in this context is that the dominance of the tribe in the region is equally characterised by its cooperation with Hindu castes and other tribes. The pivotal positioning of Bhuiyans in the discourse relating to the origin of the Keonjhar Bhanja dynasty is also revealing. The local chronicle, the Keonjhar vamshavali, which documents the dynastic history of Keonjhar, credits the Bhuiyan tribe with playing a decisive role in the formation of the state.10 According to this tradition it was the Bhuiyans who effected the division of the Mayurbhanj state. Legend has it that the perils and hardship associated with the journey from the remote hills to the ruling chief of Mayurbhanj inspired the Bhuiyans with the idea of installing a chief of their own at Keojhar. It presents a valorised account of the “determination and deeds” of Bhuiyans who, braving all odds, stole the child from the Mayurbhanj royal family, grooming the infant with tremendous care so that they could install their Raja endowed with royal qualities in the future. The account also brings out how Jyoti Bhanja, the first Bhanja king of Keonjhar, was installed on the throne by the Bhuiyan chiefs accompanied by a meticulous celebration of rites and rituals fundamental to a royal coronation. The dominance of Bhuiyan in the political affairs of the state and the privileged position they enjoyed vis-à-vis the Bhanja royal line is evident from numerous instances. The Bhuiyan chieftains, as the traditional legendary account suggests, stole Jyoti Bhanja from the Mayurbhanja royal family, nurtured him and finally made him the King of Keonjhar. They also arranged the marriage of the king to the princess of Pallahara state. In return, Jyoti Bhanja built a palace of worship for the twelve ancestors of the Bhuiyans and erected shrines to five local tribal goddesses (Andheri, Tarini, Dandadevi, Patadevi and Rangadevi). Tarini was the istadevi of most of his tribal subjects. 11 The cordial relationship that the Bhanjas shared with their overlord, the Bhauma Dynasty (eighth-tenth centuries), perhaps emanated from the fact that both Bhuiyans and Bhaumas originally belonged to the same clan as Bhauma was the Sanskritised form of Bhuiyan. Bhanjas who had a dominant Bhuiyan population as their subjects paid ‘special regard’ to the Bhaumas.12 The Bhuiyans who took part in the legendary Kanchi expedition under the leadership of the Bhanja prince Govindadeva and helped in the victory of Purusottama Deva were later elevated to Brahmanical status, being known as “Mastani Brahmanas”. 10 Mishra 1974. 11 Ibid.; Tripathi 2010. 12 Tripathi 2010.


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The reference in Madalapanji to a war between the Bhuiyas of Keonjhar and the Ganga king Pratap Narasinghadeva attests to the dominant position of the Bhuiyans in the state and their sporadic attempts to assert their independence from the central powers of coastal Orissa.13

Coronation Tradition: Tribal Ritual Enactments Interfacing with Brahmanical Rites The coronation rituals of Keonjhar state have been vividly narrated in colonial administrative writings. Specific to this coronation tradition is that the heir apparent to the throne sits on the lap of a Bhuiyan chief and the Bhuiyan carries the Raja on his back in the posture of a human horse. Apart from these two aspects of coronation, the performance of human sacrifice (meriah) by the Bhuiyans is referred to in these accounts. The intimate association of the Bhuiyans in the royal coronation process as well as the complexities of the Bhuiyan rituals in this regard clearly focus on the demonstration of power and the primordial right of the tribe as the original owners of the land, along with the mutual dependence between the king and the tribe. This also indicates the transformation of tribal societies into “little kingdoms” and possibly the tribal origin of kings. I shall very briefly examine the aspect of coronation ritual as reflected in some of these accounts. The account of the colonial administrator cum anthropologist, E.T. Dalton, merits attention here as it is by far the most detailed existing eye-witness account. Referring to the coronation of Dhanurjaya Narayan Bhanja, the 36th king of Keonjhar’s traditional royal line, he observes: “[…] A large shed attached to the Raja’s palace and ordinarily used as lumber room was cleared out, swept and garnished, spread with carpets, and otherwise prepared for the occasion. A number of Brahmans were in attendance in sacerdotal costume, seated amidst the sacred vessels and implements, and articles for offerings used in the consecration of Rajas, according to the ceremonies prescribed in the Veda. Beyond the circle of the Brahmanical preparations a group of the principal Bhuiyas were seated, cleanly robed for the occasion and garlanded. When the company were all seated and these arrangements complete, the young Raja Dhananjay Bhanj entered and distributed pan, confections, spices, and garlands, and retired. Then after a pause there was heard a great crash of the discordant but wild and deep-toned wind instruments and drums of the Bhuiyas and other tribes, and the Raja entered mounted on the back of 13 Ibid.

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Chandi Prasad Nanda a strongly-built Bhuiya chief, who plunged and pawed and snorted under him like a fiery steed. Moving to the opposite side of the Brahmanical sacred circle, followed by a host of the tribe, one of them placed himself on a low platform covered with red cloth, and with his body and limbs formed the back and arms of the throne on which the Raja, dismounting from his biped steed, was placed. Then the attendant Bhuiyas each received from the Raja’s usual servants extemporized imitations of the insignia of royalty, – banners, standards, pankhas, chaurs, chhatras, canopies – and thirty-six of the tribe as hereditary office-bearers, each with his symbol, ranged themselves round their chief. There was a temporary hitch in consequence of the unexpected absence of the hereditary sword-bearer, but after a slight delay a deputy was found and the ceremony proceeded, not, however, until the Bhuiyas had protested against such an irregularity being admitted as a precedent. Then one of the principal Bhuiya chiefs, taking a light flexible jungle creeper of considerable length, binds it round the Raja’s turban as the “siropa”, or honorary headdress, conferred by them. The bands strike up whilst this is done. Bards chant hymns of praise, and Brahmans recite from the Shama Veda, and a leading chief of the clan, Bamdeo Ranha, dipping his finger into the saucer of sandalwood essence, makes on the forehead of the Raja the mark called “tika”. The Brahman priest, the prime minister or bewurtha, and others then repeat the ceremony of giving the tika, so that a considerable amount of such sealing is required to constitute a Raja of Keonjhar. The Brahmanical ceremony of consecration had been duly solemnized on a previous occasion by the Brahmans, but a portion of this ceremony, omitting the anointing with clarified butter, was now again performed by the priests, ratifying and rendering sacred the act of the Bhuiyas. Then the sword, a very rusty old weapon, is placed in the Raja’s hands, and one of the Bhuiyas, named Anand Kopat, comes before him and kneeling side ways, the Raja touches him on the neck with the weapon as if about to strike off his head, and it is said that in former days there was no fiction in this part of the ceremony. The family of the Kopat holds their lands on the condition that the victim when required shall be produced. Anand, however, hurriedly arose after the accolade and disappeared. He must not be seen for three days; then he presents himself again to the Raja as miraculously restored to life. The Bhuiya chiefs next make offering to the Raja, rice, pulses, pots of ghee, milk, honey, and other things – each article being touched by all the sirdars before it is presented. The chief sirdars now solemnly address him, and telling him they have, under the authority exercised by them and their


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ancestors from time immemorial, made over to him the realm and the people therein, enjoin him to rule with justice and mercy. It was a long speech… The ceremony was then concluded with a salute of guns. The Raja arose and again mounted on his curvetting and frisky biped steed left the assembly surrounded and followed by all the Bhuiya office-bearers with their insignia, and was thus escorted to his own apartment in the palace. Soon after – it may be on a subsequent date – the Bhuiyas do homage to the Raja elect. They come in a body bringing in as gifts, produce, gourds, fruits, Indian corn, and laying them at the Raja’s feet, they ask after his health, his establishment, his horses and his elephants, and in return the Raja inquires after their crops, cows, fowls, and children. This over, each sirdar prostrates himself, and taking the Raja’s foot in his hand places the royal toe first on his right and then on his left ear, and then on his forehead […]”14 The account clearly demonstrates how the Bhuiyan chief carries the king on his back and how the king sits on his lap before he is symbolically enthroned as king by being offered the honorary headdress or siropa. The Bhuiyan chief then puts a sandalwood mark (tika) on the king’s forehead. In the ritual of tika, people of other castes and notably Brahmins follow the Bhuiyan. The participation of tribes and castes, which representatively constitute the diverse subject population of the state, in this tika ceremony is crucial as it points to the fact that the king is of their making. s. The king receives his authority to rule from his subject population and chiefly from the dominant Bhuiyan tribe. It is the representatives of the tribes and castes led by Bhuiyans who put the seal of approval of kingship on the forehead of the king by applying layers of tika and thus confirming him as “king of Keonjhar”. The Brahmanical rites which follow this ceremony, as Dalton stresses, are intended to legitimise this act by the Bhuiyans and to render a distinctly tribal rite “sacred”. It is no wonder that a Hindu royal coronation with its dominant and inevitable linkage with Brahamnical tradition could ever have been tempered with a series of non-Brahmanical practices. On the other hand, it shows how traditional tribal ritual in the context of a royal coronation became appropriated within the broader Hindu tradition. The pronounced assertion on the part of the Bhuiyans vis-à-vis royal authority is discernible in the complaints of the Bhuiyans at the absence of a sword-bearer by the side of the heir apparent at the time of coronation. They could hardly have tolerated any lapses in the ritual enactment concerning of the king’s coronation, which was so emotively embedded in their consciousness. The Bhuiyan’s primordial authority over the king is also neatly expressed as part of the ritual in the Bhuiyan sardar’s address to the king. 14 Dalton 1973: 146.

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Further, the symbolism of human sacrifice in the ritual echoes the practice of such sacrifice in the region in olden days. But here also the element of the “reappearance of the victim after symbolic disappearance” is noteworthy. Human sacrifice intended as an offering to a tribal goddess, according to tribal belief, helps sustain the regenerative process on earth. The element of reappearance in the rite is a possible explanation of this phenomenon. It may also be suggested that royal oppression begets resistance from the Bhuiyan community. Hence, the reappearance of the victim before the king can also possibly be interpreted as a strategy of resistance with the victim having been “miraculously healed”. It is worth investigating if the killing of Ratna Naik in the 1860s and the appearance of Dharanidhar in 1890 three decades later (the victim reappears after three days in the symbolic sacrifice), as parts of broader Bhuiyan insurgency to “resist royal oppression”, can be interpreted in this light.15 S.C. Roy in his famous monograph, The Hill Bhuiyans of Orissa, observes: “After the Bhuiya got the permission from the designated Raja to perform the identical ceremonies with which they are reputed to have installed the first Bhanja Raja of Keonjhar, a Bhuiya with the title Mahanayak carries the Raja on his back like a horse to the sinhasan mela or throne room. There another Bhuiyan officiant called Kati sits on the cotton quilt. The Mahanayak in the guise of a horse sits the Raja on a new cloth spread over the knees of the Kati. Another Bhuiya sprinkles sanctified water on him. He then places a crown, made of a long flexible creeper on the Raja’s head, and to invest him with a sacred thread (poita) made of ‘seem’ creeper, and marks a ‘Raj-tika’ or mark of royalty on the Raja’s forehead with vermillion and sandal paste. The headman of the Saonti tribe (probably a sub-tribe of the Bhuiyas) who is styled Berajal Mahapatra then ties a silk turban on the Raja’s head, and another headman of the same tribe who is called Gharpo stands by the side of the Raja, fanning him with a bunch of slaei fibres fastened together in the shape of a chamar or a whisk, and the headman (kabata) of the Khond tribe holds over the Raja’s head an umbrella made of Slaei leaves. A number of Bhuiyas stand all around the Raja, holding in their hands clubs made of tree branches with the leaves and barks on, to represent maces of gold and silver, and also other imitations of the insignia of royalty such as flags and banners, canopies and chamars or fanning whisks, royal umbrellas etc.

15 Nanda 2003: 215.


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After the tribes had demonstrated their power in installing and legitimating the new king through the seal of their istadevi, the ritual that follows brings back the power to the king from the divine to the profane worldly level […] Then the Rajkuli Bhuiyans, who bears the title of Danda-sena sounds a gong and the mahapatra of the Saonti tribe marks the forehead with a mark of dahi (curd). Then the Kabata of the Khond tribe gives the royal umbrella to a Bhuiya to hold it over the head of the Raja and lies down with his face to the ground before the Raja personating Meriah (or victim for human sacrifice). The Bhuiya headman who bears the designation of Rona hands over a sword to the Raja and tells him, ‘I invest thee with the right of beheading the people’. The Raja touches the neck of the Meriah with the sword two times and hands back the sword to the Rona. The Rona, in his turn, similarly touches the neck of the mock Mmeriah with the sword, and puts it back. Then the Khond Meriah gets up and runs away, after three days appears again before the Raja, as if restored to life by a miracle”.16 What is clearly visible in this account is the participation of different Bhuiyan chiefs and other tribes in the different stages of the coronation ritual. More importantly, the vermillion taken from the istadevi of the Bhuiyans and then put as Raj tika or the mark of royalty on the king’s forehead also symbolises the transmission of power to the king from the divine to the profane level. These accounts also reveal very clearly the overall celebratory spirit exhibited by the Bhuiyan community by the playing of drums, and by excited shouting in the context of the performance of the coronation ceremony. However, what is crucial to note is the spirit of reverential empathy for the king coupled with self-assertion in the celebratory performance of the rituals. In this connection, Cobden Ramsay observes in his Gazetteer of the Feudatory States of Orissa, “The Bhuiyans march into the courtyard of the residence of the Chief to the crash of drums and wild fantastic airs, their leaders carrying a pumpkin, as a token of submission or allegiance.” Reflecting on the reverential mentality of the community vis-à-vis the king, he further notes, “[…] Soon afterwards or on a subsequent date the Bhuiyas return, and prostrating themselves before the Chief ask for forgiveness of former misdeeds. Their leader then addressing the Chief inquires after his health, his establishment, horses and elephants. In return, the State karana (writer) reads from a palm-leaf document prescribed inquires touching the health of the Bhuiyas, their families, cattle, hill streams and fields. The leaders thereupon prostrating themselves raise the left foot of the Chief and places it alternately first on one shoulder and then on the other, then touches the Chief’s foot with his forehead and retires. 16 Roy 1935: 119–123.

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This ceremony is annually repeated in the month of May, but the installation portion of the ceremony is omitted”.17 The ritual enactments of the tribals in the coronation ceremony largely reflect the prevailing social conditions of the time in which such rituals were conceived and practised. The tribal community living in deep forests thought it appropriate to enthrone and honour their would-be king, the Kshtriya prince brought by them from outside through symbolic ritual enactments. The Bhuiyan chief, by offering his own body as throne to the Kshatriya prince, helps to symbolically elevate the authority of the latter and endow him with the necessary power to rule.18 As the tribal population lived in an area of forest, they found the creeper of a tree a convenient thing to bind around the new king’s head like a crown. Further, to seal this contract, they put on his forehead a tilak with the soil from their territory and sindur (vermillion) taken from the temple of the local tribal deity. His royal appearance was further enhanced by endowing him with insignia of royalty made of perishable materials mostly available in a forest surrounding. The sindur which is put on the forehead of the “future king”, sitting on the Bhuiyan’s lap, is taken from the istadevi of the dominant tribal community. This is an important step in the ritual as the “divine power” contained in the sindur of the istadevi gets transmitted to the king through the act of sealing of the sindur on his forehead. Thus symbolically power is not only transmitted from the divine to the profane or worldly level (from istadevi to king) but it also invests the “future king” with divinity.19 Interestingly, too, these ritual enactments take place in the royal “harem” of Keonjhar palace perhaps signifying the Bhuiyans’ faith in the mother goddess.

Rajyabhisekavidhi: A Ritual of Abridgement and Appropriation In addition to the above accounts, we have the description of rituals as presented in the local vamshavali chronicle. g. To Pandit Madan Mohan Mishra, the present Rajguru of Keonjhar, we are indebted for the most recent detailed description of the coronation ceremony of Nrusingha Narayan Bhanja: “After the death of Raja Balabhadra Naryan Bhanja in 1963, his son Nrusingha Narayan Bhanja became Raja. On the coronation day, the king took his bath and wore a new white dress. He then prostrated before his mother to pay regards and stood facing east. As per the custom of the Keonjhar royal family, the queen should at first tie the saree on the head of the prince who will become new Raja of the Rajya. Accordingly, the queen tied a white saree on his head and told him – ‘You are now the Raja’. After that, the Raja 17 Cobden Ramsay 1982: 46. 18 Mallebrein (in press). 19 Ibid.


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again offered namaskara to his queen mother. Then, he was led to Muguni Mela, the hall where the ancient coronation stone seat lies. It is said that there is Shalagrama inside that stone seat. So some former kings did not sit on it. It is also said that one king was so religious-minded that he did not sit on the stone seat but sat on another seat by the side of the stone seat keeping a hand on the stone seat at the time of coronation. But this Raja sat on the newly made Asana arranged on the coronation stone seat. Before the seat, there took place Kalasha Puja and other rites. The Asta Kalas were arranged in front. Mangalacharan etc. were performed. Then, eight eminent Brahmins made Abisheka. They threw the contents of Asta Kalash on the head of the Raja each holding a Kalash in their hand chanting mantras in a semi-circle around the stone seat. After that, Abhiseka was performed in Shankarshan Mantra. The Raja sat on the stone seat with royal symbols like Chhatra, Chamara etc. After Abisheka, the new Raja went to the main entrance of the Danda Devi house, which was opened on that day. The royal priest brought Patani from inside the house and tied it around the head of the new king. The Raja offered pranam on the ground to the goddess Danda Devi. Then through the famous Dasha Avatara Dwar, the Raja went up to the spot of Jodi Khajur. Jodi Khajur means a pair of date palm trees inside the old palace where the Raja receives the things such as Dayana Mala, Saptapuri etc. that come from the Baladeba temple in procession […] Then came the Swetachhatra, Ajna Mala and Patanee from Sri Baladeb temple. The Raja paid his devotional regards to these things. Then the Swetachhatra was held over the head of the Raja. The Patani was tied around his head by the priest of Baladebjee and the Ajnamala was touched on the forehead of the new Raja. Then the Raja returned to the palace with Swetachhatra still held on his head. He went to Phula Mandei, a part of the royal palace exclusively meant for women where the Bhuiyan people perform their traditional rites for the coronation of the Raja. A Bhuiyan Sardar namely, Makhamal of Daumla near Gandha Mardan mountain [the mythical origin of the Bhuiyan], sat on the ground. He held on the head of the Raja, who sat on the ground just near him the Swetachhatra. The Bhuiyans declared him Raja and made Namaskar. After that, the Raja gave an order to take the dead body of the late Raja to the cremation ground and went to his royal block. The doors and windows of the rooms of his block were closed because a new Raja should not see the deceased Raja […] It is recorded in the Madala records of Baladebjee temple that both the Swetachhatra of Baladebjee and the Krushnachhatra of Jagannath were taken to

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Chandi Prasad Nanda Jodi Khajur inside the old palace on the occasion of the coronation of Gopinath Bhanja after the death of Raja Dhanurjaya Naryan Bhanja. These two Chhatras were brought back to the temple and were not used any more.”20

What is visible in this account is the vivid description of the performance of Brahmanical ritual that precedes the abridged version of tribal ritual wherein the king sits on the Bhuiyan chief’s lap. What is equally evident in this court historian’s account is the integration of tribal rites into the overall Brahmanical mode of coronation ritual. The symbolic performance of a king sitting on the lap of a tribal chief is appended as the second stage of ritual within the rajyabhiseka coronation ceremony which probably took place in the afternoon and thus completed the royal coronation rites lasting the whole day. The incorporation of the tribal rituals into the fold of the essentially Brahmanical rajyabhiseka ceremony perhaps reflects the idea of respecting the acknowledged tradition and the right of the dominant tribe of the region to install the heir apparent on the throne in the same manner as they did in the remote past during the accession of the first ruler of the kingdom. It is but natural that “modern” court historians of the former “Little Kingdoms” or local vamshavali chroniclers, while espousing the cause of Hinduism as part of the ideology of the ruling class, could have agreed fully with the vigorous claims of the tribals in support of their inevitable rights to rule over the land. As a result, an elaborate Brahmanical rajyabhisekavidhi as shown in these accounts gradually replaced the traditional tribal rites of coronation. However, at the same time, in this transformed coronation tradition, a sort of token concession was made in favour of the tribe by retaining their symbolic rites in an abridged manner in order to acknowledge their privileged social position in the region and also as a reminiscence of the ancestral practices of the tribe. Thus the coronation ritual came to be forged as a balancing act between the Raja, the ruler of the land, and, on the other hand, various tribal groups and clans, who claimed the ancestral and real ownership of the country and their power and associated rights. This is how the Rajas of Keonjhar, as illustrated in the accounts of colonial and post-colonial writing, steadily squeezed the tribal mode of rituals.21 The explanation for such dramatic abridgement in the performance of tribal ritual in the overall coronation ceremony can be located in the gradual yet progressive emulation of the elemental Hindu religious beliefs and practices which characterised the politico-ritual dynamics of Keonjhar state since the fifteenth century and onwards. As the royal house inclined more and more towards the values of classical Hinduism in order to ritually compete with the Gajapati power of coastal Orissa, the royal coronation ceremony increasingly assumed the tone and texture of high Vedic and Brahmanical practices. However, in its attempt to zealously guard 20 Mishra 1974. 21 Mallebrein 2010.


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its own specific identity as a “kingdom” and a “centre”, the ancestral practices of the royal family and the dominant cultural tradition of the tribal subject population were sought out so that they could be echoed in the Vedic-Brahmanical rites concerning royal coronation. It is form this perspective that one needs to explain the recent significant absence of the exciting tribal rite to the extent of its being retained unavoidably as merely a token ritual enactment and its substitution by elaborate Brahmanical rites in the royal coronation. This is clearly discernible in the local chronicle authored by M.M. Mishra, the present Rajguru and royal family historian, Given this shift in the ritual mode, it appears probable that the coronation elaborately based on Vedic-Brahmanical lines was a subsequent incorporation into the traditional coronation ritual of the state. The local vamshavali chronicle of Keonjhar, which only describes the coronation ritual of Jyoti Bhanja, mentions exclusively the tribal ritual enactment of the Bhuiyans. This tradition still continues in Keonjhar though royal coronation has been embellished and elaborated by VedicBrahmanical ritual enactments. Against this backdrop, it is worth delineating the complexities associated with the three-fold coronation investiture of Keonjhar state.22 The first stage of coronation takes place with the prince being declared heir-apparent to the throne. The Rajkuli-Bhuiyans, given their association with the king and royal palace, hold the danda (stick and sceptre) and Chhatra (umbrella) over the prince. They enjoy a privileged position in the coronation ritual of the king. Then the prince visits the deities of Baladeva, the Hindu Rashtradevata, and Dandadevi, the local tribal goddess as his istadevatas and gives his veneration to them. According to traditional accounts, Jyoti Bhanja created a place of worship for the twelve Bhuiyan heroes, who died during his abduction from Mayurbhanj, and erected shrines in honour of five local goddesses namely, Andhari, Tarini, Dandadevi, Patadevi and Rangadevi. Such acknowledgement on the part of the king is unmistakably aimed at ensuring the loyalty of the Bhuiyan subjects. The second stage is the performance of the traditional rituals of coronation underlying the tribal ritual practices of the Bhuiyans. As has been shown above, in this ritual mode, the Bhuiyans remain active participants in the coronation by putting the raj-tilak on the forehead of the new king, carrying the prince in the posture of a human horse (Narayan) and presenting a long knife to the king with which he touches the neck of the chief of the Bhuiyan tribe seven times, signifying the king’s absolute authority over his kinsmen and the right to punish his erring subject population. This symbolic rite that was an integral aspect of the original coronation ceremony could hardly have been wished away despite the drive on the part of the state to emulate the Hindu religious beliefs and practices and to compete 22 Tripathi 2010.

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with ritually and politically superior powers in coastal Orissa. The available strategy left for Keonjhar to negotiate with these specificities was to adopt the double method of coronation: one by traditional tribal method and the other and now more important method, the Vedic-Brahmanical rites. The second ceremony of coronation based on Vedic rites, which seems to be its latter day incorporation, consists of elaborate Brahmanical procedures. The whole procedure has been amply spelt out in the text entitled rajyabhisekavidhi and located surprisingly only in the Keonjhar palace library.23 This text, which compiles the whole range of written and oral tradition about coronation ceremony since Vedic times and including contemporary practices, seems to have been prepared not only for the coronation of the Raja of Keonjhar but for the Rajas of Orissa around the first half of the eighteenth century.24 The Vedic-Brahmanical rites which are based on this palm-leave manuscript enjoin that the coronation of the king should take place in the “open and outside the palace in the full public view or the main hall of the palace” on an auspicious day and at an auspicious time decided by the royal astrologer. This is in sharp contrast to the tribal practice of organising rites in the royal harem and without determining any astrologically auspicious time and in fact at the earliest convenience. It further recommends that after the performance of the bathing ceremony (abhiseka), the king should follow “the practices of his country, his social group and the custom of his gotra and family”.25 This seems to be a significant acknowledgement of the ancestral practices of the royal family and the customs of its local tribal subject. I shall briefly touch upon the rajyabhiseka paddhati, a text from Orissa consisting of Vedic-Brahmanical rites, in order to bring out its distinction from the tribal mode of coronation rituals.26 A pavilion (mandapa) is made in the coronation site and the ritual starts with the worship of venerated deities. The king announces his desire to perform the religious rite of abhiseka through the priests. It is followed by the worship of metallic deities, Lakshmi Narayan (Jagannath, Lakshmi or Subhadra) and Kanaka Durga (made of gold metal). Worship of Durga helps the king to conquer his enemies and wards off evils. Then the royal couple undergoes the whole process of the ceremonial bath by being bathed eight times in eight varieties of water. The royal couple put on silken garments after the bath. Golden crowns are then put on their heads. This is followed by the worship of the royal throne by the priest. The lowermost-level of the throne is worshipped, signifying the worship of the of the earth. The priest therefore then performs the worship of the earth goddess. The 23 24 25 26

See particularly Tripathi 1997. Tripathi 1997 and 2010. Tripathi 2010. Mallebrein 2010.


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king, reciting the Vishnu mantra, steps up to the throne with the queen at his side. The recitation of the mantras by the priests infuses the king with the power of Brahman (spirituality) and thus endowed, he is now deemed fit to rule society appropriately. Then the king receives the royal insignia and attributes namely, Chhatra (umbrella), Chammara (chowrie-whisk), Khadga (sword), Carma (shield), Dhanu (bow) and Daras (arrow). Along with these, the special emblem of his royal family and the flag of the state are received by the king. Immediately upon this, the crowned prince is addressed as Raja and the king becomes full-fledged. The next step consists of rituals which endow the new king with the character of Vishnu which is followed by abhiseka with sanctified sacrificial water to the chanting of mantras. The priest recites Vedic mantras and sprinkles the royal couple with this holy water. This is how the king is transformed into Chalanti Vishnu. The right arm of the king is separately sprinkled with sanctified water and the royal authority is transferred to the right hand of the king. With the conclusion of this rite, the king puts on the royal robe. From this function, which is held in an open space, the king visits the main temple of his capital to pay his obeisance to the deities. When he returns from the temple to the palace, the ladies greet him with tilaka. It has been interestingly observed that the king is the passive recipient in the first part of the abhiseka in the form of a series of bath rituals for the royal couple. In the second part of the ritual, which consists of fixing or tying (bandha) the crown or headband i.e. the crowning rituals, followed by the enthronement and other rites, the king symbolically “acts out” his royal role.

Rethinking “Theatre State”: Ritual Policy and Political Overtones By exploring the implications of a specific ritual practice concerning royal coronation in the context of Keonjhar, the attempt in this paper has been to show how the ritual policy of the state was informed with a broad political orientation. The ritual enactments basically served as significant means for political integration and control of the dominant tribal community of the Bhuiyan while at the same time the state in the form of the “Little Kingdom” became integrated into the broader ritual structure of “greater” regional power. This ritual policy was conceived and forged specifically taking into account the cultural identity of the dominant tribal population of the state that essentially enabled the kings of Keonjhar to hold on to power. Ritual policy also progressively negotiated with the ritual structure of the superordinate Gajapati power of coastal Orissa from an assumed politico-ritual position of inferiority. Such a ritual policy, it is worth emphasising, in the process served to Hinduise tribal modes of rituals while at the same time tribalising Hindu concepts and worship patterns. What is more clearly discernible in this policy is how symbolic rites and royal ceremonies were used to ensure the legitimacy of political au-

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thority. In other words, the ritual and ceremonial rites had distinctly instrumental functions for the exercise, enhancement, negotiation, reconciliation and finally the maintenance of power and authority of the state. As has been repeatedly emphasised and shown in this paper, ritual enactments were not merely religious and symbolic in character but had distinct political implications thereby underlying the inevitable interdependence and complex relationship existing between the twin domains of politics and religion in the context of a “Little Kingdom”. Rajyabhisekavidhi, the coronation ritual based on Vedic-Brahmanical ideas that came to be practised at the royal court of Keonjhar, exemplifies how a “Little Kingdom” sought to emulate the ideals associated with the classical Hinduism of the Gajapati powers. Thus the Bhanja kings not only legitimised their rule internally vis-à-vis the tribal subjects but also externally vis-à-vis especially the allOrissa overlords, i.e. the Gajapati powers of coastal Orissa. Viewed from this perspective, Clifford Geertz’s idea of a “theatre state” as seen in his analysis of South East Asian Hindu Kingdoms appears problematic in terms of its theoretical positions. Geertz highlights the pompous state rituals and courtly etiquette as “ends in themselves” in his analysis of the Negara royal court of Bali and Balinese kingship. He further considers that “mass ritual was not a device to shore up the state, but rather the state […] was a device for the enactment of mass ritual”.27 Based on this understanding, he concludes that these rituals and symbolic actions as “the thing itself” were basically prompted by power and “not pomp power”. On the contrary, what one finds in the coronation ritual at Keonjhar both in the tribal mode as well as rajyabhisekavidhi with its “pompous” elaboration of Vedic-Brahmanical rituals, is a consciously forged strategy by the Keonjhar kingdom or state to negotiate with the hierarchical structure of power and authority. It is in this sense that pomp clearly and consciously serves power. The ritual enactments of power and authority or the essential implications of politics in the rituals are the aspects which impress a critical reader of ritual in the context of such kingdoms as Keonjhar. Moreover, the model of Geertz fails to acknowledge the vibrant relationship existing between the king and his subjects beyond the scope of the royal ceremonies. He instead conceives the relationship between royal houses and subjects as if involved in an “artificial pageant” in the form of a “theatre” performed in the royal court and with the two sides sharing little contact beyond this “theatre”.28 This precariously undermines the otherwise dynamic relationship existing between the king and his subjects. This inevitably leads Geertz to treat politics and religion as essentially two distinct domains without connectivity. It is all the more crucial to recognise the “non-ceremonial” aspect of the king-subject relationship in the con27 Geertz 1980: 13. 28 For a critique of Geertz’s model, see Schnepel 2003.


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text of the pre-colonial Indian state in order to understand the complexities of this relationship at the same time at politico-religious levels. As has been pointed out in this paper, the ritual acts in the context of the Keonjhar royal coronation tend to show how power relations, social status and political acts are “theatralised, aestheticised, glorified and legitimized through cultural performances”29 and demonstrate simultaneously that assertions of power and authority are enacted through these performances as an appropriate means for larger political networking.

29 Ibid.: 177.

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References Berkmer, Georg & Frenz Margret (eds), 2003. Sharing Sovereignity: The Little Kingdoms in South Asia. Berlin: Schwarz. Cobden Ramsay, L.E.B. 1982 [1910]. Feudatory States of Orissa, Calcutta: Firma KLM. Dalton, Edward T. 1973 [1872]. Tribal History of Eastern India. Delhi: Cosmo Publications. Geertz, Clifford 1980. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kulke, Hermann 2010 (forthcoming). “The Feudatory States of Orissa: Centres out There”. In: Hermann Kulke & Georg Berkemer (eds.). Centres out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar: 51–80. Kulke, Hermann & Georg Berkmer (eds.), 2010 (forthcoming). Centres out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Mallebrein, Cornelia 2010 (forthcoming). “Sitting on the Tribal Chief’s Lap: Coronation Rituals in Ex-Princely States of Orissa”. In: Hermann Kulke & Georg Berkemer (eds.). Centres out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar: 309–340. Mishra, Madan M. 1974. Data on Ex-State of Keonjhar: Its History, Religious Institutions, Legends and Rituals Performed in the Royal Palace. (unpublished manuscript). — 2003. History of the Royal Dynasties of Keonjhar. (unpublished manuscript). Nanda, Chandi P. 2003. “Validating ‘Tradition’: Revisiting Keonjhar and Bhuiyan Insurgency in Colonial Orissa”. In: Georg Berkemer & Margret Frenz (eds.). Sharing Sovereignity: The Little Kingdoms in South Asia. Berlin: Schwarz: 205–220. Roy, Sarat Chandra 1935. The Hill Bhuiyans of Orissa. Ranchi: Man in India Office. Schnepel, Burkhard 2003. “The Stolen Goddess: Ritual Enactments of Power and Authority in Orissa”. In: Georg Berkemer & Margret Frenz (eds.), Sharing Sovereignity: The Little Kingdoms in South Asia. Berlin: Schwarz: 165–180. Tripathi, Gaya C. 1997. Rajyabhisekavidhi: An Ancient Sanskrit Text on the Ritual of Coronation of a King in Orissa. Allahabad: Vohra Publications. — 2010 (forthcoming). “The Transformation of a Tribal State into a Centre of Regional Culture”. In: Hermann Kulke & Georg Berkemer (eds.). Centres out There? Facets of Subregional Identities in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar: 81–114.

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The Diverse Implications of Legitimacy Rituals, State and the Common People in Colonial Orissa, 1800–1940s While examining the theme of “Rituals and the State”, this article explores the diversities involved with the process of legitimacy and highlights its interactive and dynamic characteristics. These ranged from the associations that were sought to be established with cults (viz. Jagannatha, Mahima or local cults), myths (viz. invention of genealogies, lineage, etc. by the princes and zamindars) and caste, to practices involving complex, ritualised negotiations with the adibasi/outcaste population. In fact, viewed from this angle, the entire process of the agrarian interventions that was drawn up with the collaboration of the internal propertied classes and the varna order, and which had the footprints of private property, was perhaps the single most important ritual in colonial Orissa. One needs to highlight here that the basic idea was to “order” society and its hierarchies – viz. caste/class/gender – in order to control the productive process and tap resources. What is normally not taken into account by historians is the way the common people re-worked some of these practices to not only undermine the ruling classes but even challenge and attempt to subvert their dominance. Besides being intimately associated with the day-to-day survival strategies of the poor, some of these had long-term implications being distinctly associated with the anti-colonial/feudal aspirations. This paper examines two inter-related and interacting dimensions. The first section focuses on the way colonial and feudal ruling classes1 ritualised diverse aspects in order to tap resources, while exercising control over and exploiting the common people. It focuses on the way the pre-existing system of caste was ritualised, with a distinct association with the colonial land settlements and the impact generated by them. The very “art” of inventing rituals in order to make invisible exploitative practices (like bonded labour) and to incorporate the adibasi population formed part of this drive. Here the methods involved in the effort to Hinduise the tribal population played a rather significant role. Seen in terms of totality these 1 I am not using this term in the way historians like R.S. Sharma, Indian Feudalism, New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers (second edition), 1980, use it, but rather loosely to describe the despotic zamindars and feudal ruling classes.

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aspects sought to create a level of hegemony and acceptance for the feudal and colonial ruling classes, which enabled them to exercise power over the people and tap resources from the region. The second section highlights the way the common people challenged the exploiting classes in fascinating ways that reflect an entire range of rituals of protest and subversion. These included inventing a discourse of equality that was a fall-out of the interactions with modernity that has somehow escaped the notice of social historians, who assume that this was a monopoly of the middle classes/upper castes. After all, pre-colonial adibasi society was far from being equal and it is indeed interesting to witness the invention of equality as a major aspect of many of the popular cults/belief systems that were invented, including the Mahima dharma. This drive also included efforts to explain various features ranging from the origins of different adibasi communities and ideas about a mythical “golden age” of the past that had no restrictions when it came to the use of forests or tapping liquor, to conversions to Hinduism and Christianity and efforts made to turn the codes of the latter upside down – as in the case of the Mundas of Gangpur.

Hinduisation and its Rituals: Cults, Legitimation and Power The Orissa chiefs sought to secure legitimacy and acceptance through their association with and the popularisation of certain social, religious and cultural practices. The Jagannatha cult, which flourished in the wake of Hinduisation, is a prominent example. Efforts to draw upon this cult and integrate it in their states were made by the rulers already in the pre-colonial period. Since the taking over of Orissa in 1803, colonial officialdom too was clearly aware of its potentially useful “integrative” aspect. Thus, in a despatch of September 1803 the governor-general made a “famous pandit of Bengal” write a letter assuring the Puri Brahmins of the religious tolerance of the British. Shortly before reaching Puri, the British troops were informed by the priests that “they had applied to Juggernaut” who had a “decided 2 answer … that the English Government was in future to be his guardian”. This ritual of sanction proved to be an influential source of legitimacy for the British and Jagannatha emerged as “Orissa’s god” over the nineteenth century. 3 Orissa’s colonisation perfected this drive. We find that the cult was ritualised by the durbars in several ways during the course of the nineteenth century. Even 2 Kulke 1978: 346. In fact we are told that Jagannatha’s “decided answer” reached the British camp on 16 September 1803. 3 Kulke 1976: 403–4. Kulke refers to the pre-colonial origins/spread of this cult and specifically to the building of Jagannatha temples in the second half of the nineteenth century. This phenomenon becomes clear if one looks at most of the Revenue Settlement Reports of the princely states (and even the big zamindaris), or studies the architectural pattern of the “castle towns”.

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architectural planning in most of the capitals of the Orissan states recreated a Jagannatha temple, with a “bada danda” (big street) in front of it, and the annual ratha jatra (the chariot festival) – modelled along the lines of Puri. Arguably, the encouragement of the cult enabled the durbars as well as British colonialism to negotiate a region that had a very large adibasi population. This becomes more evident if seen within the context of the Hinduisation/kshatriyaisation/oriyaisation framework and related to various efforts of the princes to invoke “traditions” and establish connections with the cult of Jagannatha and Puri. There were other aspects by which power was ritualised through connections with the Jagannatha cult and Puri. The Dhenkanal durbar, for example, ritualised bethi (forced labour) from every raiyat (peasant) in order to “celebrate” the annual ratha jatra. Thus, it legitimised the exploitative practices of durbars, such as 4 forced-labour recruitment. It also implied ritualising links with the raja of Puri. For example, the Talcher durbar sought to trace its links with the raja of Puri and 5 organised the ratha jatra every year. Similarly, the Nilgiri durbar claimed that one of its chiefs was a commander of Purusottam Deb (the “raja of Orissa”, presumably Khurda) and another married to the sister of a “raja of Puri”. The Ranpur durbar 6 also celebrated the annual ratha jatra in a big way. The colonial officialdom also worked on this and ritualised its association with Jagannatha and Puri during the nineteenth century. Thus, it expressed reverential feelings towards the raja of Puri when Lord Mayo wanted to meet the garjat (derived from garh, fort) rulers during his visit to Orissa in 1872. The local officials organised the seating arrangements and offered the first seat to Parikud, the second to the raja Dhenkanal and the third to the Puri raja. The chiefs of Parikud and Dhenkanal were reluctant to occupy higher chairs than the raja of Puri, and therefore an “elevated seat was reserved” for the raja of Puri, and the others sat in two rows to his left and right according to their rank and position, when they met at the 7 Cuttack Printing Company Hall. This meant that the cult of Jagannatha, which had distinct adibasi (Sabara) origins and incorporated the Puri raja as its high priest, served to ritualise the power structure and legitimise the durbars and the colonialist. This was possible through their association with the cult and the incorporation of the people in tracts that contained a large adibasi population. Interestingly, this power/ritual interaction served to veil and distance the adibasi population from the structure of power, even while the hierarchies of caste and the cult were imposed on it. A closely related aspect was the process that involved ritualising the “past” – with a distinct search for “ancientness” – by most of the princely rulers and the 4 5 6 7

Tripathy 1966: 24. Ghosh 1970: 1, 31. Singh 1963: 10. India: Crown Representative: Indian States Residencies Records, R/2 – 285/1.

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zamindars. This was prompted by colonialism’s desire to classify these enclaves. Thus, most of the princely rulers and zamindaris of Orissa invented their past through their rajabansabalis, which were accounts of their family histories. In fact, this process saw a virtual competition among the princely rulers to prove their “ancientness” and in many cases involved the effort to establish their links with the 8 martial “Rajput” traditions of north India. Simultaneously with this, brahminical Hinduism’s effort at incorporation in order to exercise power contained several drives that need to be highlighted. In fact, the ambition to incorporate the adibasi population and guarantee their loyalty was, arguably, an important driving force behind the princely encouragement and support of adibasi traditions and customs. This existed in different forms in many of the princely states of Orissa. Lt. Elliot, for example, in his Report of 1856, referred to a ritual associated with the coronation ceremony of the Kalahandi raja, where a Kandha Pat Majhi (chief) of a particular Kandha family was dressed especially for the occasion. A rich cloth was thrown on his lap, on which the raja sat during the ceremony. As mentioned, this custom seems to have originated at the time of some 9 ancestor whose name was unknown since “the legend [had] been lost”. Another area associated with the rituals of legitimacy is the health care practices prevalent in some states, such as Keonjhar. Palm-leaf manuscripts and the associated popular oral tradition suggest the widespread use of the Bhramaramari plant 10 as a cure for leprosy since the seventeenth century. It is said that one of the kings of Keonjhar (who ruled some time before the seventeenth century) had learnt in a dream about the plant and was “advised” to popularise it for the welfare of the people. The raja, in fact, looked upon this dream as a divine intervention – a theme that is stressed by the popular oral tradition. In the dream, he was told to locate the plant at a specific site in the dense forest, along with detailed instructions regarding the method of its use in the treatment of leprosy. This dream perhaps became the basis for a process that led to the effective deification of the plant and its subsequent ascendancy to the position of a local deity in the region.

8 India: Crown Representative: Indian States Residencies Records, R/2 – 285/1. This can be cited as a classic example to prove the point made here. Schnepel 2002 examines the Jeypore zamindar’s effort to invoke this rajbansabali tradition. 9 Kuanr 1980: 478–9. 10 Mishra n.d. It needs to be considered here that the palm-leaf manuscripts illustrate the transition from orality to a developing textual tradition. Consequently, it needs to be emphasised that they should be located within a time-frame that is fluid, to the extent that it acknowledges the continuities of certain aspects that it deals with, in so far – as the pre-colonial/colonial transition is concerned. At the same time, although they describe several aspects of treating leprosy in Keonjhar since the seventeenth century, it is highly possible that – given the search for ‘ancientness’ of most of the princely states in colonial Orissa – they might have been actually produced only in the nineteenth century.


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According to the oral tradition, the name Bhramaramari was derived from the wandering beetles that met their death when they came into contact with the plant, the word thus meaning the killing of beetles (bhramara, beetles and mari, to kill). In adibasi perception, the plant itself became a centre of divinity possessing healing qualities. As the plant went through a process of deification there emerged the idea of worship and propitiation of the plant in the larger interest of the community. The ensuing veneration of Bhramaramari was congruent with an established adibasi tradition of focusing on worshipping trees and plants and had some distinct similarities with the Sabara legends associated with the Jagannatha cult. By the nineteenth century, a network had grown up around the treatment of leprosy which reinforced the power of the Keonjhar durbar. The durbar created a priestly class called dehuri for the worship of the Bhramaramari goddess. The dehuri linked the royal order of Keonjhar with the adibasi villages, since they were recruited from the adibasi community. The rituals associated with the cult implied that the dehuris had access to the royal palace at a specified time of a particular day to receive the royal honour. The bodyguards of the king placed the royal gift – a sari – at the feet of the king before symbolically placing it on the head of the dehuri. This ritual simultaneously validated the legitimacy of the office of the dehuri and the position of the raja. The dehuri then visited the palace accompanied by members of his village. Furthermore, he received a basketful of articles from the raja meant for the worship of the goddess. Only after this royal approval could the dehuri begin his role of performing puja for Bhramaramari. The dehuri chanted esoteric mantras, which were known only to him. The possessing and chanting of these secret mantras became a monopoly of the priestly class of the dehuris, and came to be inherited by the family members over generations. The priest prayed for the welfare of his family, the village, the kingdom and the royal family. After the performance of the ritual the dehuri, accompanied by the village folk, visited the royal palace at Keonjhar, carrying the basket of medicine. The arrival of the dehuri at the lion’s gate of the palace was greeted with the sound of conch-shells being blown to the tune of mangalacharan (welcome songs for the guest). Amidst the rejoicing and the songs recited by the queens, the king proceeded to receive the basket of Bhramaramari medicine from the dehuri. The Bhramaramari cult is an example of how a forest deity, associated with healing qualities, was incorporated into the Hindu/Kshatriya power structure. An adibasi medical tradition came to be interwoven with a royal tradition in the state of Keonjhar. References to the dehuris being incorporated in the propitiation of mahasakti (Shiva) suggest a significant degree of Hinduisation. The conception of mahasakti, which had hitherto been associated with the dominant figure of Shiva, merged with Balabhadra (the state deity of Keonjhar and “elder brother” of Jagannath at Puri). Moreover, it seems that Mangala – the local deity of the state – was linked to the pantheon of healing deities and the “divine” cure for patients. Conse-

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quently, in addition to what we have already mentioned, the treatment of leprosy also became associated with local deities and the cult of Jagannatha. The dehuri enjoyed rent-free land grants. This enabled the durbar to launch its drive through these same intermediaries to tap the resources of the state. Consequently, as a social class they began to command tremendous respect within adibasi society on account of the privileges bestowed on them, their role in the treatment of leprosy and their association with the durbar. While legitimising the dehuris through gifts and bestowing upon them a certain degree of power in their localities, the royal order itself was legitimised. What is interesting is that the office and position of the dehuri was neither rivalled nor substituted by any kabirajas or baidyas (the ayurvedic doctors) associated with the royal establishment. In other words, the durbar never attempted to assign the job of acquiring the Bhramaramari plant to the “specialists” in the royal palace. Instead, it preferred to retain the adibasi tradition of treating the plant as a goddess, empowered with the qualities to cure leprosy. Leprosy patients from different parts of the state and beyond thronged the gate of the palace in the hope of getting the Bhramaramari medicine. As the principal devotee of the goddess, the raja distributed this medicine personally, free of cost to the patients at his doorstep. From the point of view of his own people, this demonstrated his charitable inclination, through which he could assert his position as their chief. The palm-leaf manuscripts provide details explaining the use of Bhramaramari medicine to the patients. Among the significant features, the dietary prescription stressed vegetarianism. It also advocated isolation for a few weeks and the idea that “male” patients should not see the “face of women”, which implied sexual restraint. After this period, the patients were expected to come out of the room and offer bhog and puja to Shiva and Balabhadra, the state deities of Keonjhar. Hence both these gods had to be approached for their blessings last of all in order for the patient to get cured. Taken together, these features demonstrate a significant level of Hinduisation through which the durbar made itself acceptable to the largely adibasi population in Keonjhar, even while certain traces of the forest deity and its worship were retained. What is witnessed is a two-way process that involved the appropriation and integration of a cultural tradition by the Keonjhar durbar and the incorporation of adibasi society into both the durbar and the Kshatriya/brahminical order.

Crisis Points and Hinduisation Interestingly, certain drives associated with the rituals of Hinduisation can also be traced to re-negotiate people who had been excommunicated from the varna order in the context of severe strains on society. One can cite here the Naanka Dubikhya


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(viz. the 1866 Famine) which, we are told, severely affected coastal Orissa and wiped out between a quarter and a third of its population. The absence of studies on the western tract comprising the princely states makes this an under-researched area and details are not known, though there is evidence of distress and hunger in the princely states, and a major tribal (Bhuyan)/non-tribal rebellion (meli) in 1866 11 in Keonjhar. In fact, as will be seen later, following the logic of excommunication those people who accepted food from the colonial relief system (chatra) “lost” their caste status, since they had come into contact with “mlechas” and “untou12 chables”. In fact, we come across the emergence of a new caste – Chatra Khia – 13 as a fall-out of this Famine. What needs to be added here is mention of the serious re-negotiations launched by brahminical Hinduism to get these people “back” into its fold. One can refer here to a congregation at Cuttack in 1868, where “brahmins” from different parts of Orissa converged to work this out. One gets some insights from the proceedings of this conclave, which made it clear that this was possible through a host of rituals related to prayaschit (viz. penance).14

Patriarchy The ritualisation of legitimation in order to exercise power involved a distinct association with caste and patriarchy. Here one has to bear in mind features like lower wages for women and targeting them as witches. These indicate gender devaluation that reinforced caste/patriarchy, and together these were essential components that legitimised the power of the durbars. The level of ritualisation of witch-hunting can be explained by citing an example from the early 1870s, from the princely state of Gangpur. When smallpox broke out in Kurumkel it was attributed to witches and the village headman sent out four “witch finders” who located four women. The headman sent a report to the raja, who sent an official (Gajendra Babu) to enquire, who, in turn, ordered all witches to restrain from any mischief and restore peace in the village. The matter seems to have been considered as having a lot of importance, since the raja came over and camped at a nearby village. Later, a small amount of hair was cut from the head of each of the four women who had been identified as witches and was then burnt. This was supposed to deprive the witches of their power. Then the four women were tied to posts and after being questioned they were ritually tortured. One woman denied she was a witch and was beaten with a cane which split in two. After this she was beaten with the 11 12 13 14

Pati 2001: 44–7 and 2006: 192. Debjyoti 1869: introd., 3. O’Malley 1933: 60. Debjyoti 1869: 3. Interestingly, this was based on the number of days – ranging from a few days up to more than a year – that the person concerned accepted relief (chatra).

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green stalk of a castor-oil plant. After about half a dozen blows she confessed to being a witch and fainted when she was released. Another woman had to go through the same ordeal and both of these two died – one the next day and the other a few days later. Of the other two, one admitted that she was a witch and gave the names of the spirits responsible for the outbreak of smallpox, whereas the other denied any knowledge of witchcraft. Both were released with a warning and sacrifices were made to the bhoots named by the “witch” after which “saltanat peace” returned to the village. What is very striking is that the Raja was fined Rs.2,000/– and was given a year’s Rigorous Imprisonment for his complicity in the matter, though he was not sent to the common jail but detained at Ranchi in Bihar (Crown Representative Papers R/2 306/121: Undated, IOL; Mukherji 1938: 5). This perhaps indicates how colonialism also drew upon the world of caste, patriarchy and its associated rituals to assert its existence and power. One also needs to locate the effort to preserve and reinforce patriarchy through practices like dowry, which was legitimised by some chiefs. Thus, by demanding two lakhs of rupees for the marriage of his son, the Talcher chief was legitimising a system that was an integral part of the caste system, and also a burden for the state 15 people.

Common People, Transgressions and Subversions Many scholars tend to assume that features like rituals are one-dimensional and emanated “from above”. As a result, they are immune to the way the common people invented their own rituals – or counter-rituals – to undermine, de-legitimise and even attempt to subvert the exploitative order. These ranged from simple acts like some peasants pulling down the Nilgiri raja from a horse (1880s), the innumerable peasant/tribal rebellions that occurred in Orissa during the nineteenth century and the efforts to draw upon diversities and invent belief systems to fight oppression (viz. the Mahima Movement, 1860s) to the carnival-like images related to the murder of tyrannical exploiters (viz. Banamali Pati – Puri – 1928) and major 16 anti-feudal/imperialist movements of the twentieth century. We shall now explore some aspects related to this area that tend to remain largely invisible.

The Mahima Movement To begin with, let us focus on the Mahima movement in order to explain this phenomenon. The diversity of the Movement can be seen in its many fascinating fea15 India: Crown Representative: Indian States Residencies Records, R/2 – 306/134. 16 For details, see Pati 1993: chapter 1 (pp.1-60) and 2001a: 44-45.


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tures, one extremely vital one being the stress on the “Creator” of the universe who was Alekha (which literally means “unwritten”) or Mahima (viz. glorious) names which delineate certain characteristics of a rather complex cosmology. Alekha or Mahima was the “supreme being”, who was “timeless”, “formless”, “omnipresent” and “omniscient”. The Movement stressed monotheism and clearly rejected caste and idol worship, as well as the rituals associated with brahminical Hinduism. Furthermore, it emphasised bhakti and devotion, and denied the need for any intermediary between the “supreme being” and human beings in the form of the Brahmins or the priests. The primary targets of the Movement were the kings and Brahmins. At the same time, it needs to be stressed that the Movement co-existed harmoniously with upper castes like Brahmins and Karanas, along with Hadis (out17 castes) being permitted to join the Movement. And, going by a Report of the tahsildar of Angul, the Movement aided the colonial administration when it came to reinforcing classification strategies that located Panas as “hard-core criminals”. In fact, we are told that the tahsildar initiated them into “Alekhaism”, after which 18 they gave up their “criminal” past. A lot of importance seems to have been attached to common feasting, and the Movement advocated a rather simplified logic of marriage, with the bride garlanding the bridegroom, and the gathering of rela19 tives/friends loudly calling out to “Alekh” to bless them. What needs emphasis is the importance attached to the oral tradition – not the textual or the scriptural – that transcended the logic of time and space. And, if considered along with the importance attached to some of the attributes of the “supreme being” – especially the “timeless” and “formless” component – one can see this as a strategy aimed to de-legitimise brahminical Hinduism. The stress on monotheism and bhakti, and the emphasis on obliterating any intermediaries between 20 “Him” and human beings, also formed a part of this drive. At the same time the idea of simplifying the marriage system needs to be located as a counter-ritual that had a social reformist edge. The effort to textualise the Mahima movement also offers certain clues to help with an understanding of the invention of an anti-order. Thus, even here we see that its origins are located in “Alekh” or the unwritten oral tradition. Attempts to textualise this focus on its Creator, Mahima Swami, the “supreme being”. We are not 17 Utkala Dipika, 6 September 1873. This report is from Jajpur. 18 Utkala Dipika, 19 November 1881. The effort to incorporate Panas seems to be a part of a major drive of the colonial establishment in Angul; thus Clarke 1985, refers to a plan to start a Pana settlement at Angul and giving the Panas “good” lands and loans, which would be written off. 19 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society 1882; Laeequddin 1937: 120–121. See also Manjit 2008: 191, for insights into this dimension. 20 Eschmann & Kulke & Tripathi 1978; Banerjee-Dube 1999; Banerjee-Dube & Beltz 2008. A somewhat similar effort to Hinduise the medieval sants has been noticed and critiqued by Bahuguna 2005.

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told anything about Mahima Swami’s life story and “He” fits into the “timeless”/“formless” genre. This enables “Him” to transcend both brahminical Hinduism in terms of its origins and the varna system. More significantly, this makes it possible for “Him” to have created the “trinity” of Brahma, Bishnu and Maheswara. Needless to say, it suggests the effort to show the origins of brahminical Hinduism to be rooted in the Mahima. Furthermore, some of the Movement’s initiation rituals which can be traced to its very origins can in turn be cited to illustrate the invention of counter-rituals. Here one can most certainly mention the importance attached to the deletion of memory related to one’s past. Thus, the newly initiated are expected to forget their “past”. Some scholars see this as an effort to set up a rival order to the Jagannatha 21 cult. I would argue that this was a strategy that aimed to transcend the varna order that had been exposed to extreme dislocations in the context of the 1866 Famine, that has already been outlined. Consequently, it created the basis of a new beginning, independent of one’s birth/social origins – vital elements that determined one’s social position as per the logic of the varna system.

The Collapse of “Order”: Banamali’s Murder and the “Carnival” Next we take up the sensational murder of a tyrant – the naib (or manager) of an absentee landlord of Balanga in Puri district on 23 May 1928. The details are outlined in the Sessions Court Proceedings related to this case, and in fact they provide an an insight into the incident which perhaps delineates its deeper meanings associated with a set of rituals that marked an inversion of power relations, at least temporarily. Thus, we are told how the naib was surrounded by the murderers and was struck down by Sama Khatua’s lathi after which Bhikari Pati’s “knife thrusts” led to his intestines protruding from his abdomen. A rope was tied to the dead body and it was dragged to the zamindar’s kutchery – the centre of Balanga’s power structure. It was left in front of the kutchery for some time – perhaps to demonstrate its subversion. Soon after this, it was loaded on to a bullock-cart, pulled by two men and taken through the hata (local market). This act symbolised the world turning upside down, and had to be celebrated with the people of the village. Nidhi Mishra, who carried a sword, had a blood chita on his forehead. He sat on the dead body slapping it and twisting its ears and calling out: “Just see the result of [your] ... khantapania (traitor). You were showing [your] extorsive (sic) mischief now see the re22 sult”; “How fat the sala has become by taking ghee”. We are also told about 21 Das 1997: 33–34. 22 Sessions Court Proceedings 112–13; 259–62; 113–16; 39–40. Khanta could be more accurately translated to mean crook.


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some of the murderers somersaulting and remarking that “Balanga got rest” – presumably from the exploitation of the naib – that they had “captured a fort” and that 23 “they should get Rs.5,000” (“panch hazar rupiya paega”). In fact, popular memory retains the almost carnival-like images, constructed over time, about the murderers chopping Banamali’s body into pieces or the way they garlanded themselves 24 with his intestines. Some of these actions sought to draw upon the “martial” tradition whilst the choice of Hindi seems particularly striking and can be seen as part of the effort of seeking legitimacy here. One also witnesses a certain degree of transgression of caste norms. Thus, even though the lathi blow of Sama Khatua (Cultivator/Chasa – Khandait) initiated the attack, the actions of Bhikari Pati and Nidhi Misra (Brahmins) undermine the normally constructed image of the Brahmin in Oriya society. One ought to add here that all of them were the naib’s guards who had joined the rival camp of Madhab and Michu Pati. Though the case of Sama’s alienation was based on the naib’s viciousness in relation to the filing of false criminal charges 25 against him, the others had borrowed heavily from the naib. Given this, one observes a form of class solidarity between the poorer groups of the Brahmins and the Khandaits (agriculturists), which seems to have been harnessed by the rival camp of Banamali to settle scores with him. Significantly, the people of Balanga seem to have been stunned seeing the murderers moving around with the naib’s dead body. Nevertheless, the murderers feared opposition and displayed their blood-stained weapons to scare away the village-folk. When some of the onlookers broke down and cried they were advised 26 not to fear anything and to say that the naib had died of cholera. The events also included the search for the landlord’s gomasta Dhuli Ratha – the “manager” of the naib’s exploitative pursuits – who had to hide to escape the wrath of the murderers, Panchu Sahu (caste Khandait – one of the murderers) forcibly taking four jagannathballavs (sweets) from the shop of Ram Sahoo (since he was hungry), and kerosene and fire-wood from two other shops, to burn the naib’s dead body. Whereas Panchu’s action does seem to have some bearing on his poor social origins, the idea of wiping out all evidence by burning the dead body suggests a level of fami-

23 Sessions Court Proceedings 144–47; 147–51. SCP Bishwambhar Kanungo PW 76, 144-47; and Keshab Charan Mahanty PW 77, 147-51; both were associated with eri-silk rearing, were touring Balanga and were present on the eventful day. 24 This is the standard memory retained at Balanga and the adjoining villages today; interview with Keshab Biswal, khandayat (peasant) of Rupdeipur, age 58 years, of October 1993. Needless to say, here I draw upon Bakhtin 1984. 25 Sessions Court Proceedings 32–34. Bhikari had borrowed Rs.1,000/– from him and the landlord and Nidhi Misra had mortgaged his land in favour of the naib to fight his legal battles. 26 Sessions Court Proceedings 117–18.

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liarity with the colonial judicial system, which was possible also because of the association of Banamali’s affluent rivals with the murder.27

Counter-Rituals in the Princely States: Nilgiri: Gandhism as “Subversion” The Gandhian mass movements altered the course of the anti-imperialist struggle in India. Nevertheless, the policy of “non-intervention” in the princely states implied that Congress stayed out of these enclaves till about 1938–39, when mass movements assumed explosive forms in some of them. Talking about Orissa, inspired by the Gandhian programme of Harijan uplift, an annual dinner was organised in the princely state of Nilgiri from about 1932, in which people from different castes sat together and ate. In the explosive context of 1937, this was attended by about 2,000 people, and consequently, this was considered to be subversive by the durbar. The durbar issued “show-cause” notices to the Congressmen, who sponsored the “common dinner”, asking them to explain why they should not be 28 excommunicated. Thus, what needs to be highlighted is that by this time the “common dinner” was located as a serious challenge to the durbar. In fact, the durbar’s effort was based on defending and preserving the rituals of hierarchy/power and countering the ritual of subversion associated with the “common dinner”.

Gangpur: The Munda Rebellion Next we take up a Munda rebellion that developed in the princely state of Gangpur in 1938. Orissa had by this time seen two mass movements in the form of the NonCooperation and the Civil Disobedience Movements. Moreover, although the Gandhian policy of “non interference” in the states had been the declared policy of Congress, a spell of major mass movements in some of the princely states during 29 1937–38 had altered the situation considerably. Gangpur had remained comparatively isolated from the Prajamandal (State People’s) Movement and the state did not have a Prajamandal. Nevertheless, as will be seen, the fallout of the movements in the princely states did affect the state people as well. 27 Sessions Court Proceedings 41–42; 213–15; 373–81. For further details see Pati 2001a: 5082; it needs to be added that there was no cremation in the sense that the dead body was hurriedly burnt. 28 Nilgiri Prajamandal Compilation Committee 1981: 64; Krushak, 3 January 1938. 29 Mahtab, Patnaik and Mehta 1939: 144–148. For this ‘policy’ and the Prajamandal Movement see also Pati 1993: chapter 3 “Of Movements, Compromises and Retreats, Orissa, 1936-39” (pp.85-141) and 2005: 165-182.


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Those who rebelled against the Gangpur durbar were Mundas, who had been 30 converted to Christianity from about the 1880s. Interestingly, although a largely un-researched area, it needs to be emphasised that unlike what is normally projected, the association between Christianity and the tribals is rather complex and nuanced. For example, in a colonial context that bred uncertainties and insecurities, the Oraons explained their attraction to Christianity by pointing out that it protected 31 them from the witches and bhoots, who were powerless against this system. Moreover, like the converts to Hinduism who participated in Hindu as well as tribal festivals, tribal converts to Christianity observed certain customs and beliefs that were antithetical to the basic tenets of Christianity. They participated in tribal festivals and when asked about their identity, very often mentioned their tribe, sup32 pressing the Christian connection. Coming to Gangpur, the Munda rising of 1938–39 was precipitated by the sudden increase in the rate of rent which had been raised by the durbar. In the absence of a Prajamandal, Christianity became a source of strength for the Mundas in the sense that it united them in their fight against their oppressors. There was a campaign for a no-rent movement around January-February 1939, which was led by 33 Nathaniel Munda. The Regent Rani announced some meagre concessions (which were not satisfactory), perhaps to prevent any untoward events as in the case of the 34 other princely states. After this the Mundas submitted a petition to the Rani at a meeting on 2 February 1939, which was attended by about 5,000 people from nearly 30 villages. Besides desiring that the rent structure should remain at the 1910 level, this petition articulated the anti-feudal perceptions that had been generated through the contacts with the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal movements sweeping the princely states and the Orissa province, as well as with Christianity, especially with the “native” 35 preachers. Since the durbar did not respond to this petition, the tribals appealed to the Viceroy – the “good Christian” – which failed to produce any result (All India Congress Committee File no.G12/1937–39; National Front 18.6.1939). It was only after these developments that a “no-rent” movement was launched in the state. Out 30 31 32 33

Home Political Files, file no.18/3/1939; National Front, 18 June 1939. Dalton 1872: 247. Senapati & Sahu 1966: 121–22. Home Political Files, file no. 18/2/1939; 18/3/1939. The rent had been raised by 100% to 150% over the 1910 Settlement. 34 National Front, 18 June 1939. 35 Mahtab, Patnaik and Mehta 1939: 146–49; Orissa States News Bulletin, 27 April 1939; All India State People’s Conference, File no. 127. Thus, the petition included the abolition of bethi (forced labour), customary levies, restriction on land transfers, forests and forest products, the right to use roads, irrigation and employment facilities and the freedom to buy and sell (since this was the only state which levied an income tax).

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of a population of 60,000 Mundas, 17,000 were Lutherans and the rest were Roman Catholics. What needs emphasis is that only the Lutheran Mundas rebelled. It is quite possible that they were translating into action the plebeianised version of Christianity that was being preached by their “native” preachers and which matched their own perceptions. This was especially so since the Lutheran mission was initially indifferent to their demands. In sharp contrast, the Roman Catholic Church of Gangpur considered the hike in rent to be reasonable. In fact, it felt that this would be “beneficial” for the people in the long run as it would force the cultivators to work their lands better. Its hold over its following seems to have been quite strong, since it seems to have accepted the position of the Catholic establishment. The no-rent movement was launched by 36 the end of March 1939. Nearly 5,000 Lutheran Mundas refused to pay the second kist (instalment) to the durbar. The rest of the Lutheran and the Catholic Mundas continued to petition against the Settlement. As the no-rent movement gathered momentum there was a shift in the position of the Lutheran establishment – from indifference to anxiety. However, its “holy” intervention proved to be ineffective. Its following seems to have been influenced by two Munda pleaders of Ranchi and the “native” preachers and this reflects the complexities of rural and urban linkages as well as the popular interpretation of Christianity, both at the hands of the “na37 tive” preachers and the Munda followers. In its anxiety the durbar approached the Lutheran Church Council (Ranchi) to send a deputation to Gangpur to show the rebellious Mundas that the path of the durbar was correct. The deputation reached Gangpur around the beginning of April 1939 but failed to achieve the desired results. The secretary of the Church, in fact, 38 advised the diwan that only strong action would make the Mundas “see reason”. In fact, Reverend Schultz (the head of the Lutheran Mission at Gangpur) informed the durbar that the German Government would recall the German members of the Lutheran Mission to Germany in September “on the plea that they can no longer 39 afford the present subsidy”. The durbar, the colonial administration and the Church establishment viewed 40 the situation seriously. On 25 April 1939 about 90 troops and 60 state policemen led by the Assistant Political Agent went over to the village of Sikmo, a mile and a

36 Home Political Files, file no. 18/3/1939. 37 Home Political Files, file no. 18/3/1939. It was suspected that initially Reverend Schultz (the head of the Lutheran council of Gangpur) ‘may possibly have encouraged his community in their resistance’. 38 National Front, 18 June 1939. 39 Home Political Files, file no. 18/6/1939. 40 The context was the aftermath of the murder of Bazellgate, the Political Agent at Orissa (at Ranpur on 5 February 1939); for details see Pati 1993: 124-126.


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half away from the village of the “rebellious” Mundas. This was followed by a 41 confrontation and a bloodbath that left 32 dead and 19 injured. The Munda rebellion reflects the changing nature of Christianity and its association with a struggle against oppression as well as its role as an instrument of solidarity. The way in which Christianity, a product of the West, became a rallying point to fight both internal and external exploitation suggests an obvious transformation or even a possible inversion of its fundamentals. After all, in the state of Gangpur a social historian would expect it to be an instrument of legitimisation of both colonialism and the structure of internal exploitation. That the Mundas sought to set things right in this world through Christianity is both representative of this changing nature of Christianity in a colonial context, as well as the dynamism of popular militancy. The effort of the Mundas to draw upon the ritual of colonial modernity to challenge the exploitation of the durbar and transgress the codes of the church can hardly be missed.

Conclusion Our discussion clearly questions certain typical aspects of colonial Indian historiography, especially when it comes to unravelling the world of the upper classes/castes as well as the common people. As seen, rituals were vital to both these groups. Thus, they served to disguise and legitimise a host of exploitative practices that united the internal and external exploiting classes. Moreover, rituals also served to interrogate, de-legitimise and were closely connected with attempts at subversion of the order of the exploiters by the exploited classes. It goes without saying that the nature and significance of this process was rooted in its interactive logic that saw significant shifts over time. After all, even as it transformed the nature of opposition to British colonialism, the development of the mass movements of the twentieth century did draw upon the “past”. What needs emphasis is the resistance of nationalist and subaltern historiography to come to terms and grapple with these rituals of power and subversion, as well as the interactions and contestation that they generated.

41 National Front, 18 June 1939; Home Political Files 18/2/1939; 18/3/1939; AICC Private Papers G12/1937–39.

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References Primary Sources All India Congress Committee (AICC), Private Papers, file no. G12/1937–39. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. All India State People’s Conference, file no. 127. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. anon. 1909. “Brief Histories of each of the 24 Feudatory States”. In: India: Crown Representative: Indian States Residencies Records, R/2–285/1. London: British Library, India Office Library. Philips, C.L., n.d. “Confidential History of Gangpur State” (up to 1927). In: India: Crown Representative: Indian States Residencies Records c1789-1947, R/2– 306/121. London: British Library, India Office Library. anon. 1926. “Confidential History of Talcher State”. In: India: Crown Representative: Indian States Residencies Records, R/2 – 306/134. London: British Library, India Office Library. Home Political Files, file nos. 18/2/1939; 18/3/1939; 18/6/1939. New Delhi: National Archives. Sessions Court Proceedings (SCP) – Proceedings of the Court of Sessions in the Case of the King Emperor vs. 1. Kasi Pati, 2. Sama Khatua, 3. Govinda Misra 4. Panchu Sahu 5. Uchhab Sahu. Criminal Bench: Reference under section 374 of the number 13 of 1929, appeal number 75 of 1929, Puri.

Settlement Reports Ghosh, Upendranath 1970. Settlement Report of the Talcher State for the Year 1911– 12. Cuttack: Orissa Government Publication (reprint). Ricketts, W.R. n.d. Final Report on the Nilgiri Settlement Report 1917–1922. Berhampur: Sarada Press (reprint). Singh, G.N. 1963. Settlement Report of the Ranpur Ex-State Area in the District of Puri, 1943–1952. Berhampur: Sarada Press. Tripathy, R.K. 1966. Final Report on the Settlement of the Dhenkanal Feudatory State, Orissa 1923–24, vol. 1. Berhampur: Swadheen Press (reprint).

Official Reports and Gazetteers Clarke, R. 1985 [1907]. “Panas of Orissa”. In: M. Kennedy (ed.). The Criminal Classes in India. Delhi: Mittal: 324–29 (reprint). Kuanr, D.C. 1980. “Elliot (Lieutenant) (Deputy Commissioner of Raipur) Report on Kalahandi State, 28 July 1856”. In: Nilamani Senapati & D.C. Kuanr (ed.): Orissa District Gazetteers: Kalahandi. Cuttack: Orissa Government Press: 457–82.


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Laeequddin, Mohammad 1937. Census of Mayurbhanj State 1931, vol. 1. Calcutta: Caledonian Printing Company. Mukherji, Indrabilas 1938. Final Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Gangpur State 1929–1936. Berhampur: Indian Law Publication Press. O’Malley, L.S.S. 1933. Bihar and Orissa District Gazetteers: Cuttack. Patna: Superintendent of Government Press. Senapati, N. & N.K. Sahu (eds.) 1966. Orissa District Gazetteers: Koraput. Cuttack: Orissa Government Press. Singh, G.N. 1963. Final Report on the Original Survey and Settlement Operations of the Ranpur Ex-State Area in the District of Puri, 1943–1952. Berhampur: Sarada Press.

Secondary Sources Bahuguna, Rameshwar Prasad 2005. “Modern Labels on Medieval Sants: The Sant Movement and Limits of Hindu Identity”. Social Science Probings 17/2: 31-59. Bakhtin, M. & Helene Iswolsky (trans.) 1984. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Banerjee-Dube, Ishita 1999. “Taming Traditions: Legalities and Histories in Twentieth-Century Orissa”. In: Gautam Bhadra & Gyan Prakash & Susie Tharu (eds.). Subaltern Studies X: Writings on South Asian History and Society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 98–125. Banerjee-Dube, Ishita & Johannes Beltz (eds.) 2008. Popular Religion and Ascetic Practices: New Studies on Mahima Dharma. New Delhi: Manohar. Dalton, Edward Tuite 1872. Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal. Calcutta: Government Press. Das, Siddhartha 1997. Mahima Dharma: A Cultural Dissent. Cuttack: Arya Prakashan. Debjyoti, Sri Jagannath 1869. Durbikhyakalakranta jati bhramsottirna Bishaye [Issues related to loss of Caste during the Famine]. Cuttack: Cuttack Printing Company. Eschmann, Anncharlott & Hermann Kulke & Gaya Charan Tripathi (eds.) 1978. The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Kulke, H. 1976: “Kshatriyaisation and Social Change: A Study in Orissa Setting”. In: S.D. Pillai (ed.): Aspects of Change in India: Studies in Honour of Professor G.S. Ghurye. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, pages. 398–409. — 1978 “Juggernaut Under British Supremacy and the Resurgence of the Khurda Rajas as Rajas of Puri”. In: A. Eschmann & H. Kulke & G.C. Tripathy (eds.): The Cult of Jagannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Mahtab, Harekrishna, Lalmohan Patnaik and Balavantrai Mehta 1939. Report of the Enquiry Committee: Orissa States. Cuttack: Mission Press: 144–48. Manjit, Debarpit 2008. “Ritual Destruction of Symbols by Mahima Dharmis in Nineteenth Century Orissa”. In: Raj Sekhar Basu & Sanjukta Das Gupta (eds). Narratives of the Excluded: Caste Issues in Colonial India. Kolkata: K.B. Bagchi and Co.: 169–229.

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Mishra, M.M. n.d. “A Note on Leprosy: Sources Based on the Palm-leaf Manuscripts of the Rajasabha of the Erstwhile Keonjhar State”. unpublished manuscript. Nilgiri Prajamandal Compilation Committee 1981. Nilgiri Praja Andolara Itihas [History of the Nilgiri Peoples’ Movement]. Balasore: publisher. History Compilation Committee Pati, Biswamoy 1993. Resisting Domination: Peasants, Tribals and the National Movement in Orissa, 1920–50. New Delhi: Manohar. — 2001a. Situating Social History: Orissa, 1800–1997. New Delhi: Orient Longman. — 2001b. “The High:Low Dialectic in Fakirmohana’s Chaman Atha Gunhta: Popular Culture, Literature and Society in Nineteenth Century Orissa. In: Biswamoy Pati. Situating Social History: Orissa, 1800 –1997. New Delhi: Orient Longman: 26–49. — 2005 “Interrogating Stereotypes: Exploring the Princely States in Colonial Orissa”. South Asia Research 25: 165–82. — 2006. “Survival as Resistance: Tribals in Colonial Orissa”. The Indian Historical Review 33/1: 175–201. Proceedings of the Asiatic Society, January 1882 – from the Orissa Research Project, Heidelberg website. http://www.mahimadharma.de/html/historic.htm (Octobert 2009). Schnepel, Burkhard 2002. The Jungle Kings: Ethnohistorical Aspects of Politics and Ritual in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. anon. 1877. The Orissa Tributary States: Their Present Conditions (“Report from the Bengalee with some additions and alteration”). Cuttack: Orissa Patriot Press.

Newspapers Krushak, 3 January 1938. National Front, 18 June 1939. Orissa States News Bulletin, 27 April 1939. Utkala Dipika, 6 September 1873. Utkala Dipika, 19 November 1881.

Interview Keshab Biswal, khandayat (peasant) of Rupdeipur (Puri district – near Balanga), age 58 years; October 1993.

Margret Frenz

Mahabali Returns to Kerala Rituals of Sovereignty in Past and Present Onam is the main festival in today’s Kerala, the southwestern state of India. It is celebrated by the vast majority of Malayalis across caste, class, creed and gender faultlines, and thus is perceived as a unifying factor in the identity formation of the people of Kerala. In pre-colonial and colonial times, the festival was closely connected to the royal house and the king’s ritual sovereignty in Travancore, besides Malabar and Cochin one of three political entities that preceded the present state of Kerala. Although there are quite a few studies (re)counting and (re)telling the history of Travancore,1 they rarely engage with the social function of rituals and the close link between rituals and the sovereignty of the maharaja. In this paper, I argue that the rituals undertaken by the maharajas of Travancore constituted an essential part of their notion and the process of legitimising their sovereignty. At the same time, the rituals and the festivals connected with such symbolic acts underwrote their claim of being “a people’s king”. This notion was carried through colonial times. However, after the second treaty with the British in 1805, rituals acquired a different quality. They were now performed not only because of their significance in displaying ritual sovereignty – or what remained of it – internally, but also for the British as they closely observed the politics of the state. Even after the union with Cochin in 1949 and subsequently, the integration of TravancoreCochin into the Indian Union in 1956, the festival of Onam remained a central focus in the sociocultural and political calendar of Kerala. The aim of this essay is to show how the festival of Onam has been transformed between c. 1750 and c. 2000. In these 250 years, periods of slower and more rapid social change occurred alternately. It is argued here that amongst other factors, the celebration of the festival of Onam provided a factor of continuity that represented stability in times of rapid social change. Arguably, the societal practice of celebrating such a festival together created a common framework of experience and thus a sense of belonging. Moreover, as a social and cultural experience it produces 1 For instance, Kawashima 1998, Shungoony Menon 1998.

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and constitutes society, and brings about the appearance of continuity in periods of rapid change. I shall first explore the background of Onam, then link it to the rituals of sovereignty conducted by the maharajas of Travancore, and in a third step, look at the practice of Onam since 1956.

1. The Celebration of Onam Today, Onam is perhaps the most significant feast in the yearly calendar of Kerala and in the Malayali diaspora. Wherever you talk to a Keralite, he or she knows it, celebrates it, and usually states that he or she would prefer to be in Kerala at the time of its celebration. Despite the feast’s enormous popularity, Onam is conspicuous by its absence in primary sources as well as in the secondary literature. One author for instance simply states that Onam is celebrated “in all temples [... and therefore,] no detailed accounts are necessary.”2 Thus, a brief (hi)story of the festival and its peculiarities is in place here. Onam takes place in the month of Cinnam (late August to early September) each year. The term “Onam” is derived from sravanam, which is “the 22nd constellation or Aquila”.3 Sravanam is considered to be the birthday of Vamana (Visnu taking the form of a dwarf) and is mainly celebrated in the temple at Tirukkakkara.4 The festival begins on the day of the lunar asterism atham and concludes on the asterism tiruvonam ten days later.5 Several interpretations exist with respect to the genesis of the Onam feast: First, it is traced to the return of the legendary king Mahabali, or Maveli, as he is popularly known in Kerala. According to mythology, the asura Mahabali is said to have been the king of Kerala. Allegedly, his rule was characterised by “uninterrupted peace, plenty and prosperity”,6 and therefore is perceived as “a golden age”. However, his rule ended when he was sent to the underworld by Visnu who embodied himself in his avatar as Vamana. Vamana appeared as a young boy in Mahabali’s presence. They agreed that Vamana would receive the part of the earth that he could cover in three steps. Transforming himself into a huge figure, Vamana meas2 Jayashanker 1999: 229. This remark is typical of a society that perceives history as groupspecific, or endo-historical. Cf. Berkemer 2001. See C. Osella & F. Osella 2001 for a discussion of some issues related to Onam in contemporary Kerala from a structuralist anthropological perspective. 3 Gundert 1872: 183. The astronomical constellation of Aquila, or the eagle, lies at the celestial equator. In Hinduism, the constellation aquila is also identified with Garuda. See MonierWilliams 1993: 1097: Sravana is presided over by Visnu and contains the three stars Aquilae, supposed to represent three footsteps. 4 Census of India 1961: 352. Narayanan 2006: 12. 5 Census of India 1961: 6. 6 Padmanabha Menon 1995: 288.

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ured heaven and earth and in his last step, pushed Mahabali down to the underworld. Thus, Mahabali was dislocated from his kingdom. Popular protest by Malayalis resulted in Mahabali being granted an annual visit to his former kingdom – as mythology has it, to see whether his people were happy under the new regime. According to this interpretation, Mahabali’s return is marked by the splendid Onam celebrations.7 Secondly, Onam is seen as a harvest festival, at times also termed “the national feast on new moon of September”.8 In late August, early September, usually the rains end and the first crop of paddy is harvested. It seems that a redistributive system of taxes and fees to be paid by tenants and workers to landlords and the maharaja on the one side, and of presents and festival contributions from the maharaja to his subjects on the other side, was in place. This greatly aided the celebrations in temples, villages and towns. However, the fragmentary nature of the available sources suggests that taxes and fees varied regionally and over the course of time. In the centuries between 400 A.D. and 1150 A.D., onanel – a certain amount of paddy – had to be given to the landlord during Onam. However, this fee was not popular, according to M.G.S. Narayanan.9 A royal inscription at the Alvar Temple at Manalikkarai in South Travancore near Padmanabhapuram, dated to the year 411 M.E.,10 specifies the taxes that should be paid by the villagers of Kodanallur. It also states that during droughts only a fifth of the tax amount would be collected. Of this fifth, 73 parai11 of paddy should be set aside for the expenses of the Onam celebrations.12 Much later, an observer of the customs in Malabar (northern Kerala) in the mid-nineteenth century refers to “old taxes and fees” called onakkalca,13 which were to be paid at the time of the festival. According to the Reports of a Joint Commission, a survey of Malabar conducted by British adminis-

7 Bhargava & Ananda 1998. In the Mahabharata, the fight took place between Indra and Bali. Only later on, “we have the idea that it was Visnu who took away the kingdom of Bali and gave it to Indra.” (ibid.: 65). 8 Gundert 1872: 183. 9 Narayanan 1996: 131 and 133. 10 Malayalam Era or Kollam Era, 1236 A.D., the time of the ruler Vira Ravikeralavarman of Venatu. 11 A liquid measure: 1 para equals about 18.7 litres. 12 Subrahmanya Aiyar 1999: 59–64. 13 Padmanabha Menon 1995: 296. Onakkalca are described as being a “custom of the country [...] that presents are given by the tenants to their landlords [... and] in return for this the tenants have to be given a sumptuous feast on one of the Onam days before the festival terminates.” Moreover, it is specified that farmers present fruit, vegetables, etc., artisans present a specimen of their craft to the landlord. The landlords return presents of “cloth or rice and curry-stuffs”. These are also mentioned in the Talasseri Rekhakal, one of the major sources with respect to the history of Malabar. See Gundert 1872: 183.

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trators in the late eighteenth century, rajas and landlords would receive presents from tenants at the festivals of Onam and Visu (see below).14 Thirdly, Onam denotes the new year in the Malayalam calendar15 and functions as the complementary festival to Visu. This is noted in C. Raja Raja Varma’s diary, which he kept during the years surrounding the turn of the century, when he writes on 13 April 1903: “This is our “Vishu” or New Year’s day. The official new year begins in the month Chingom and nobody notices it much. [...] The day is kept as a holiday.”16 It is not entirely clear from available sources when Onam was first celebrated. Suggested dates vary considerably. According to some authors, it was first celebrated in the year of Ceraman Perumal’s supposed departure to Mecca which is usually linked to the beginning of the Kollam Era in 825 A.D.17 This view is contested by M.G.S. Narayanan, who attributes the beginning of the Onam celebrations to the reign of a Kulasekara in the eleventh century, who also introduced the Vaisnava bhakti cult.18 At present, Onam celebrations last for about ten days. The most important days of Onam are the first and last day. On the first day, called atham,19 the onappukalam, artistic floral designs spread on the floor, are begun and continued throughout the festive period – every day certain flowers are added to the flower carpet. On anilam, the fifth day of the celebrations, the famous vallamkalli (snake boat) races take place in the Vembanad Backwaters, including the Nehru Trophy Boat Race and the Aranmula Boat Race. The peak of the celebrations is the tenth day of the festival, which is known as tiruvonam and is celebrated as the day on which the legendary king Mahabali visits his former people. In many houses, trays containing a kuni (brass water jug), bananas and coconuts are placed next to house entrances to welcome Mahabali. Often, conic clay figures (known as trikkakkarappan) are placed next to the onappukalam to greet the visiting Mahabali. New clothes are presented to every family member – the material should preferably be yellow or at

14 However, after the establishment of the British administration in Malabar, the northern part of today’s Kerala, the rajas and landlords were not allowed to accept gifts of any kind any more. Reports of a Joint Commission from Bengal and Bombay (n.d.): §§ X, CCLVIII, CCLXII. See also Frenz 2003: 21 and 100. 15 Thurston & Rangachari 2001: vol. 5, 372. 16 Neumayer & Schelberger 2005: 158–159. Visu takes place on the first day of Metam (April), the astronomical new year’s day, the equinox. 17.Logan 1989: 159. 18 Narayanan 2006: 12 and Narayanan 1996: 35. In contrast to this view, Bharghav and Anand suggest that Onam has been celebrated in Madurai as early as the second century A.D., and reflects a South Indian tradition. Bhargava & Ananda 1998: 78. 19 For a description of the Athacayam ceremony, see Padmanabha Menon 1995: 295–296 and Census of India 1961: 275–282.


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least contain a yellow corner, patch or stripe.20 After the presents are exchanged, the Onam festival meal is eaten with family and friends.21 In connection with Onam, onakodi or Onam games and contests were held: for instance, football (pantukali) and martial arts (kalarippayattu). The women are said to have enjoyed singing whilst sitting on swings, as well as dancing.22 The preparations for Onam are described by C. Raja Raja Varma in his diary. In the early twentieth century, he calls for a revival of the customs connected with Onam, as in his perception, they were not being preserved to the extent he thought desirable: “Thursday 3rd September 1903. [...] and next visited the Ranis. They were playing, the senior of them dyeing in tu[r]meric water a small cloth for Onam tomorrow. [...] Friday 4th September 1903. The Onam day, the great national festival of Malabar. We had our bath early in the morning and at about 9 went to the palace where we had our breakfast and next received Onam presents from the Maharaja. We next visited the Senior Rani and got presents from her. [...] Saturday 5th September 1903. It is a pity that the Onam fete is not kept by the people now as they used to do some years ago. During my boyhood I used to hear by day the sounds of mirth and merriment from boys engaged in different kinds of games and by night the singing of women as they oscillated on swings. But nowadays they are becoming rarer and I am afraid in the near future may altogether cease. It is highly necessary to revise these games and swinging and other exercises during the festival.”23 Apart from the women, who sing characteristic Onam songs as C. Raja Raja Varma tells us, other sections of society have also developed a wealth of onappattukal. These are usually classified as folk songs. Onappattukal cover a wide range of topics, from ballads depicting the “golden age” of Mahabali’s reign, to a maid who expresses her sadness at not having received her present (clothes) from her

20 Fawcett 2004: 293. Usually, the senior members distribute presents to junior members of the family, tenants and workmen. But junior members sometimes also give presents to relatives. See Gopal Panikkar1929: 77. 21 For an elaboration on the varieties of food served at Onam, see Padmanabha Menon 1995: 296–299. 22 Gopal Panikkar 1929: 80. For more detailed descriptions of these games in the nineteenth century see Fawcett 2004: 294–295. See also Balaratnam 1940–1941: 132 and Padmanabha Menon 1995: 301–306. 23 Neumayer & Schelberger 2005: 172–173. For the year 1902, his entry runs: “Sunday 14th September 1902. Onam the great Malayalam festival took place to day [sic].” Ibid.: 131.

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father,24 to more outspoken songs of lower-caste groups providing their version of how the demarcations between castes had been established in the past.25 Although Onam is now celebrated across religious affiliations in Kerala, it originated as a Hindu festival. In particular, it is connected with the temple at Tirukkakkara. Tirukkakkara is a village between Ernakulam and Aluva in Central Kerala. The temple there is believed to be where the worship of the mythological king Mahabali had its origin. Its foundation date is a matter of controversy. According to one inscription, the temple at Tirukkakkara was built in 603–4 A.D.,26 whereas other inscriptions mention the tenth and the thirteenth centuries as the time of temple construction.27 According to M.G.S. Narayanan, it was built in connection with Tirupati.28 The temple’s uniqueness is emphasised by its unusual architecture: it is a circular temple featuring only a few murals. The deity worshipped is Vamanamurti, as mentioned in the inscription on the temple walls: “He presents himself to us in the avatar in which he approached Mahabali. He hit Mahabali on his head three times. [A dialogue ensued:] ‘Once a year I will come to my people on earth to meet them. Grant me this wish,’ he requested. The Lord: ‘So be it.’ This is the day in the month of Avani, that the Keralites call Tiruvonam. This occasion is celebrated in this temple as a feast.”29 The deity is revered in aniconic form. The link between the temple of Tirukkakkara and the state-wide Onam celebrations is to be found in the practice of presenting clay figures called trikkakkarappan at house entrances to receive Mahabali. According to some sources, the festival of Onam originated at this temple.30 This is the only Vamana temple in Kerala. It still serves as the major ceremonial centre at Onam. It seems that the rajas of Travancore and Cochin and the Zamorin of Kozhikode worshipped at this temple during Onam, as the historian P.K. Padmanabha Menon describes on the basis of the letters of the Dutch traveller Visscher: 24 Chaitanya 1971: 152–153. 25 I am grateful to Ophira Gamliel for pointing this out to me. See O. Gamliel’s discussion of an Onam song of the Panar and Parayars: Gamliel 2008: 58–65. Onam songs are a specific genre that cannot be analysed in depth here, but which deserves a more detailed analysis and closer research in the future. 26 Rangacharya 1985: 1716. Another set of inscriptions relating to the Tirukkakkara temple can be found in Gopinatha Rao 1999: 39–51. Inscription of the 13th century: Gopinatha Rao 1992: 166–189. 27 Bernier 1982: 80. 28 Narayanan 2006: 12. 29 Paranitaran 1997: 186–187. Another temple that is linked to the Onam festival is the temple at Tiruvalla. See Gopinatha Rao 1999: 85–86. 30 Menon 1997: 293–294 and Census of India 1961: 6.


Image 1: Trikkakkarappan and Onappukalam Photo: courtesy Ophira Gamliel

Image 2: “Mahabali’s Throne” at Trikkakkara Temple Photo: courtesy Ophira Gamliel

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Margret Frenz “The tradition is that the festival had its origin at Trikkakara [sic], now in Travancore, where there is a very ancient temple, now in utter ruin covered with forest growth. It is said to have been of great splendour at one time, the temple festival lasting for 28 days. All the Rajas of Kerala came to attend the temple festival and each of them seems to have had some duty assigned to him and a separate place of abode there. [...] Anyhow it is significant that the Trikkakara Appan or the god of Trikkakara is worshipped throughout Kerala during the Onam days.”31

The Onam celebrations were an integral part of the rituals performed to signify the sovereignty of the maharajas. In the next section the notion of ritual sovereignty and the framework in which these rituals took place are looked at more closely.

2. Ritual Sovereignty in Travancore 2.1 The Practice of Ritual Sovereignty – Internally Rituals were an integral part of kingship in India.32 The close relationship between ritual and political sovereignty can be traced to the notion of sovereignty as participatory and shared. Although a king held the central position within the state, he was linked to other sections of the state structure – and these relationships were expressed and manifested in rituals. They were closely linked to a redistributive process that symbolised and manifested this sharing. A king was bound to rule along the lines of the rajadharma, which can be described as a guideline in interdependency and which needed to be followed to maintain social order. Most importantly, this practice was continuously in process and had to be performed on a regular basis.33 Political and religious acts served to shape and illustrate the ruler’s relationships with other kings, neighbours and allies, i.e. with one another, but also, vis-à-vis his subjects. For the first time, the ritual subordination of the maharaja to Visnu occurred when the ruler Maharaja Martanda Varma,34 who is seen as the founder of “modern” Travancore, decided to present his kingdom to Sri Padmanabha Swami, a form of Visnu worshipped at the main temple in Tiruvanantapuram. After eliminating all his rivals within the royal family and defeating the “little kings” (the pillaimar) in the wider vicinity of Travancore, Martanda Varma apparently deemed 31 Padmanabha Menon 1995: 293–294. 32 Amongst other studies dealing with rituals of sovereignty, see Berkemer 1993; Frenz 2003; Heitzman 1997. 33 For more detail on the importance of processuality in Indian state formation, though with a fous on medieval times, see Kulke 1997: 233–262. 34 1706–1758, ruled 1729–1758.


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it wise to legitimise his rule over the enlarged territory: new administrative structures accompanied the consolidation of rule over the kingdom. In order to achieve ritual sovereignty over the area, Martanda Varma restored and enlarged the Padmanabhasvami Temple in Tiruvanantapuram, and performed a number of rituals.35 Arguably, the most spectacular of these rituals was the transfer of the Kingdom of Travancore into the hands of Padmanabhasvami in 1750.36 In a ceremony lasting eleven days, Martanda Varma made himself the first servant of Padmanabhasvami by presenting to him all symbols of royalty: the royal umbrella, the white twin fans, and, most significantly, his sword. As part of the ceremony, the sword was handed back to him as the first servant of Padmanabha. Thus, he derived his sovereignty directly from Visnu “making the kingdom sacred in the eyes of all Hindus.”37 The consecration of the kingdom, but also of himself, constituted a significant signal towards Travancore’s inhabitants. They were now ruled by a king who had given his kingdom to the care of Visnu. Thus, the maharaja ruled on behalf of Visnu,38 exemplifying his personal bhakti in a publicly announced dedication. Potential enemies would need to think twice before attacking Padmanabhadasa, the servant of Padmanabha.39 The ritual of becoming Padmanabhadasa thus constituted an integral part of the Maharaja of Travancore’s kingship. It illustrates that the religious and political spheres were closely interrelated and mutually constitutive. Only by adhering to certain rituals could a 35 Inscriptions on the Padmanabhasvami Temple mention the initiative of Martanda Varma to rebuild the temple. See Gopinatha Rao 1988: 81. 36 The Tripapati Danam, “Deed of Dedication”, reads: “We, Thrippappoor Keezhperur Veera Bala Marthanda Varma, Mootha Thrivati (Senior member) of Thrippappoor and Sree Pandarakaryam Cheyvarkal, have this day, Wednesday the fifth day of the month of Thai, the seventh day of the bright lunar fortnight with Saturn residing in the eighth sign and Jupiter in the twelfth, Kollam 925, transfer [sic] by absolute gift and dedication, to endure as long as the Sun and Moon shall last, all the lands and functions appertaining thereto together with all rights and dignities, positions of honour and all other possessions that we have been hitherto enjoying as of right within the territories between the Thovala Fort in the East and the Kovana River in the West, in favour of Perumal Sree Padmanabha Perumal. In token whereof we have this day executed this deed of absolute gift and dedication.” Gouri Lakshmi Bayi 1996: 115. 37 Shungoony Menon 1998: 178. Mateer 1991: 120–121 describes the ceremony as follows: “The coronation ceremony of a new maharaja in Travancore followed a protocol put in place by Martanda Varma in 1750. [...] As part of the eleven day long ceremony, the raja is given the title Sri Padmanabha Dasa, the servant of the holy Padmanabham, and receives the sword [...] After many more parts of the ceremony, the maharaja is taken into the city in a public procession, from where the raja returns to the palace, not without a royal salute.” 38 Mary Beth Heston (1996) even argues that the palace of the Travancore kings at Padmanabhapuram “was organized around a particular structure to symbolize the unity of the king and the tutelary deity of the kingdom, [...]”. Heston 1996: 82. 39 See Ouwerkerk 1994: 35: “Sri Padamanabhadasa became the proudest title of the Rajas; they inherited a tradition of total dedication to the service of Travancore.”

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maharaja legitimise his rule to a people. In general, South Indian deities are understood to be rulers of the temple, but also the sovereigns of the redistributive process expressed in temple rituals.40 Arguably, the Maharaja of Travancore gained some of this power by performing the ritual of becoming Padmanabhadasa and thus sharing the power of the deity and at the same time, legitimising his rule. The Padmanabhasvami temple, though by far not the only place of worship in Travancore, and not the only one connected with royal ritual, was considered to be the central seat of religious legitimation. Moreover, even before the consecration of the kingdom to Padmanabhasvami, the rajas were in the fore of the Vaisnava Bhakti which emerged in the eleventh century. The bhakti cult coalesced with brahmanical influence. The Vaisnava perspective became the dominant discourse in Travancore. Part of it is the Vaisnava mythology in the form of the legend of Mahabali and Vamana. As M.G.S. Narayanan argues, the Kulasekaras took part in this discourse.41 Thus, Onam constituted a significant element of the royal ritual calendar in Travancore. It was arguably the time of the year when the raja renewed his ritual sovereignty at the beginning of the harvesting season and the revenue year (see above). At the same time, the myth of Mahabali and a projection of the supposed “golden age” under his rule are extended into contemporary time. An overlap or implicit parallel is drawn between Mahabali and Padmanabhadasa that strengthens the bond between king and subjects, and through public ritual and procession, legitimate the maharaja’s sovereignty. This is symbolically manifested in the exchange of gifts on the morning of tiruvonam day: the maharaja presents the Padmanabha with a gold-laced cloth (mundu) and a certain amount of money. In return, the king receives a bow and arrows from the deity through the hands of the priests. After the ceremony, a public procession takes place in Tiruvanantapuram.42 The beginning of the regional new year is marked thus.43 Sovereignty is also reflected and represented in the titles a king carries. The title of the maharajas of Travancore since the late eighteenth century ran as follows: “His Highness Sri Padmanabha Dasa Vanji Pala Karthika Tirunal Rama Varma Kulashekara Kiritapati Manney Sultan Maharaja Raja Ram Rajah Bahadur Shamsher Jung Maharajah.”44 40 41 42 43

Appadurai & Breckenridge 1976. Narayanan 2006: passim. Padmanabha Menon 1995: 305; Gouri Lakshmi Bayi 1996: 406–407. G.C. Tripathi draws a parallel between Onam and the festival of Indradhvaja that takes place in Orissa in September to mark the new year. Tripati (forthcoming 2009). 44 The titles that were used by the maharajas succeeding Sree Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma, also called Dharma Raja, who reigned from 1758 to 1798. See Gouri Lakshmi Bayi 1996: 121. Apparently, the titles of Manney Sultan, Bahadur Shamsher Jung were bestowed upon this king by the Nawab of the Carnatic. Gouri Lakshmi Bayi 1996: 129.


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In the titles of the maharajas of Travancore, there is a clear structuring principle of the two types of titles that a maharaja earned and received. The titles that precede each raja’s personal name are linked to the rituals that a raja had to perform in order to earn this title, as for instance, the title Padmanabhadasa which could be carried only after the ritual of becoming the servant of Padmanabha had been performed.45 In contrast, the titles that follow the raja’s personal name can be traced to the dynasty and express the relationship a raja has with his neighbours and allies who might confer titles on him – as a recognition or an honour. For instance, the title “manney sultan” was bestowed on the Maharaja of Travancore by the Nawab of the Carnatic in the late eighteenth century.46 The British added another title to this series of titles, as we shall see in the next section. 2.2 The Practice of Ritual Sovereignty – Externally Evidence for the close interrelation between the political and the religious sphere and its deep-rootedness in society can be found in the fact that the ritual of Padmanabhadasa continued after the maharaja had signed the “treaties of friendship” with the British in 1795 and 1805. Although both treaties, and particularly the latter one, meant a loss of sovereignty with respect to foreign policy as well as a certain degree of interference in internal matters, nominally the internal sovereignty of the maharajas of Travancore was kept intact.47 Although the Maharaja of Travancore remained responsible for internal politics, he had to get any political decision ratified by the British resident at court. The realm of rituals, however, remained (largely) his own sphere. It offered the rajas the opportunity to continue with private and public rituals, thereby (re-)assuring himself and the inhabitants of Travancore of his reign. This is expressed in the title he continued to use: “His Highness Sri Padmanabha Dasa Vanchi Pala Sir Rama Varma Kulasekhara Kritapati Manney Sultan Maharaja Raja Ramaraja Bahadur Shamsher Jang, Knight Grand Commander of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, Maharaja of Travancore.”48 What is new here is the “Knight Grand Commander”, a title awarded to the Maharaja of Travancore by the British. Moreover, the act of bestowing upon Indian rajas titles of the British Empire shows their integration into the system of indirect rule. It is equally apparent, however, that the Maharaja of Travancore chose to keep all the titles that he had earned and received in earlier decades. This suggests that

45 46 47 48

See Gouri Lakshmi Bayi 1996: 116. Ibid.: 117. Aitchison 1930: 231–234. Ouwerkerk 1994. See The Regulations & Proclamations of Travancore 1937: 2.

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the maharaja placed great significance on ritually earned titles and long established political relationships.49 During the British residency at the court in Tiruvanantapuram, the maharajas of Travancore and their administrative staff had to take note of the very different notion of a state that the British brought with them and introduced in British India. In particular, the strict separation between the political and religious sphere signalled a very different conceptualisation of rule. Moreover, the notion of absolute sovereignty which was the declared goal of British rule in India stood in great contrast to the idea of participatory sovereignty which was held in high esteem by the rajas. During colonial rule, rituals performed by the maharajas of Travancore, such as Onam, had to be adjusted to the new political situation. Onam was celebrated independent of British influence, and thus demonstrated the maharaja’s internal sovereignty. This also included the upkeep of the balance of the redistributive system with the people. Arguably, the celebration of Mahabali’s return to Kerala and the invocation of a “golden age” could also be interpreted as “hidden resistance” by raja and people alike. In another instance, the Maharaja of Travancore managed to regain the right to mint gold coins in Travancore. The minting right carried high prestige as gold coins were essential to the maharaja as they were used as ritual gifts in temple festivals and thus were essential to keeping the balance of the redistributive system intact. Moreover, gold coins symbolised the sovereignty of the king.50 This partial success of the Maharaja of Travancore shows his creative negotiations in order to create space to implement his own concept of sovereignty. In another instance, the Maharaja of Travancore objected to offering Lord Curzon the expected state honours and meetings due as the latter had insulted the tutelary deity in the presence of the Maharaja. Only after a written apology from Lord Curzon was the programme of the state visit continued.51 Possibly the most significant demonstration of the Maharaja’s conviction to rule Travancore as Padmanabhadasa can be seen in his rejection to obey the regulation of the British Government of India to submit gold coins to the new Emperor, King George, at the Delhi Durbar in 1911. This gesture was seen as a “feudal symbol of vassalage”. The Maharaja of Travancore decidedly objected to perform this act of subordination to King George, on the grounds that he perceived Padmanabha as “his only overlord”. Other rajas followed suit, and the directive had to be withdrawn by the administration of the British Raj.52 This decision of the Maharaja of Travancore shows that although the procedure of subordination under a perceived 49 Even today, the Maharaja of Travancore carries these titles, although he does not have an active political role. 50 See Gouri Lakshmi Bayi 1996: 147. 51 Ibid.: 158–159. 52 Ibid.: 159.


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overlord is structurally identical, the contents are exclusive of each other: the former refers to the subordination to a deity whereas the latter refers to the subordination to a king as ruler of the country. The Maharaja of Travancore made the choice to serve his tutelary deity, and he consequently retained his choice. About 35 years later, an instance occurred that could be interpreted in a similar way. After Indian independence, the new government of India under Jawaharlal Nehru had as one of its highest priorities the inclusion of the princely states into the new state structure. Unifying the political landscape and the administrative structure of what had become India was perceived as one of the most important stepping stones to establishing a democracy. In line with this, princely states were asked to merge and form unions.53 So the Maharaja of Travancore was approached by Nehru’s special ambassador in this matter, V.P. Menon, to consider and agree to a union with Cochin, as was the Raja of Cochin. Whereas the Raja of Cochin seemed to embrace this idea, the Maharaja of Travancore expressed his profound doubts about forming a union with Cochin and swearing an oath on the Indian constitution. His reasons lay in his convictions as to how he conceptualised sovereignty and its legitimacy: he reigned on behalf of Sri Padmanabha, as Padmanabhadasa – and would prefer to abdicate rather than violate this position. Although V.P. Menon dismissed the maharaja’s concept of ritual sovereignty as “border[ing] on fanaticism”,54 Menon had to accept the maharaja’s stand. Negotiations had to be taken up again a few months later, when a compromise was reached between the Maharaja of Travancore, the Raja of Cochin, and the Indian government represented by V.P. Menon. The Maharaja of Travancore was to remain Padmanabhadasa, was to become the Rajpramukh of Travancore-Cochin, and would sign a “letter of solemn assurance” rather than swear an oath on the Indian constitution. Finally, the Union between Travancore and Cochin came into being on 1 July 1949 and lasted until the creation of the state of Kerala in 1956. Both these episodes show how seriously the Maharaja of Travancore took his obligations as a ruler, and how he communicated his concept of ritual sovereignty to the “outside world”. This happened with respect to the British Empire in the early twentieth century, and with respect to the newly established democratic state of India in the late 1940s.

3. Practice of Onam and Tiruvonaghosayatra in Kerala after 1956 When the state of Kerala was created in 1956, comprising the princely states of Travancore and Cochin and the Malabar Province of the former Madras Presidency, with adjustments at the southeastern and northern borders according to lin53 Cf. Ramusack 2004. 54 Menon 1997: 280.

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guistic considerations, Onam continued to play a significant role. It was not merely continued as a “traditional” ritual and festive season, but greatly enhanced by the newly elected Communist government of Kerala. It was invested with new meaning on top of the existing ritual and performative character it already had. Moreover, a special Committee – the Onam Celebration Committee – was established in 1961 to coordinate the procession through the capital city Tiruvanantapuram, to direct budgets, and in short, to make the “Onam festival” a success. The Chief Minister and the Deputy Chief Minister acted as patrons. A large variety of activities were put in place to mark the Onam celebrations, such as onappukkalam (flower carpet) exhibitions, games and boat races to name just a few, and most importantly, the procession through the cities of Tiruvanantapuram, Ernakulam and Kozhikode. The character of Onam shifted from a festival connected to the ritual sovereignty of the maharajas to a festival that became more and more known as a “people’s feast”. The new democratic state has appropriated Onam to its advantage: by administering and financing the public side of the festival, the Kerala government was able to create a sense of belonging and identification amongst Malayalis with the newly established state. This was seen as a crucial requirement, as the three areas of Malabar, Cochin and Travancore had constituted separate political entities with unique characteristics before the merger in 1956. Thus, the idea of a patriotic community55 or an imagined political community56 – not through Benedict Anderson’s print capitalism, but through the shared experience of social practice – could be created. With this, the Kerala government could establish itself as a state, whilst giving people the chance to participate bodily in the affairs of the state. The procession through Tiruvanantapuram, known as tiruvonaghosayatra, formed the peak of the public celebrations on tiruvonam day. Every district was encouraged to send a themed float to be part of the procession, which was led by decorated elephants, music bands, the cavalry and the state police. For instance, one float displayed the myth of Mahabali, while another one depicted the legendary little king Palassi Raja of northern Kerala, who in some circles is perceived as the first “freedom fighter” of Kerala against British rule.57 Not only districts presented their floats but also parts of the new democratic administration, amongst them various ministries and a few industries.58 Onam was re-cast as a “national” feast – here “nation” refers to “region”, bridging borders, unifying cultural characteristics and ritual representation of modern government, even promoting the democratic features of the government, its desire to be inclusive of all segments of society. Arguably, the move to promote Onam as the “national” festival originated from a 55 56 57 58

Tanabe 2010 (forthcoming). See Anderson 1983: passim. See Frenz 2003: 163. For a more detailed description of the floats in the early 1960s, see Census of India 1961: 9– 10.


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conscious policy by the communist government of Kerala to create a unified state and promote a cultural identity for Malayalis.59 The bodily participation of a cross-section of Malayali society in the public procession, and even more so in the various arts and handicrafts competitions across the state, reflects the idea of participation in the modern democratic state. Moreover, it refers to the idea of a participatory ritual sovereignty that was practised in pre-nation-state times. Furthermore, the depictions of a “glorious past” (floats narrating the myth of Mahabali) and an “exciting present” (floats representing contemporary democratic and industrial achievements) were aimed at creating an identification with the new state. Onam thus provided a common denominator between the three different parts of Kerala, an identity marker that could be referred to by any Malayali and that was meant to ease coalescence of the three parts that formed the new federal state.60 In a further transformation, Onam has been marketed by the tourism department of the Kerala government, particularly since the 1990s. For this purpose, the cultural characteristics of Onam were promoted. In recent years Onam has been characterised as the festival that brings all Keralites together – across all creed, caste or class divides.61 The enormous popularity of Onam in Kerala is reflected in the various boa traces that take place in the backwaters, and in the tiruvonaghosayatra, the festive procession on tiruvonam day through the capital of the state, Tiruvanantapuram. Outside Kerala, Onam is celebrated by a larger and larger diaspora in every nook and corner of the globe. For instance, the Leicester Malayali community organised a grand Onam meal at one of the South Indian restaurants in town, and the Stuttgart community dedicated a day with lectures, meals and discussions to the celebration of Onam.62 The festival of Onam, as it is termed today, is appropriated by all sorts of groups and stakeholders in Malayali business and public life. One of the more illustrious personalities offering a hugely publicised speech on Onam day has been Amma Amritanandamayi, who sent out the following “Onam message” in 2006: “In short, the message of Onam is to forget all differences and make life joyful”.63 59 See Zarrilli 2000: 54–56. 60 For an in-depth analysis of the connection between democratic governments and rituals see the comparative research project “Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament: India, South Africa and Westminster” at the University of Warwick (www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ research/gcrp/ accessed on 14 May 2008). 61 See for example Panikkar 1991: 88. Many websites refer to Onam as the cultural festival of Kerala. See for instance www.naturemagics.com/keral-festival-art/thiruvonam-onam-festival accessed on 21 April 2008. 62 In 2008. 63 Amma Amritanandamayi in a speech to her devotees at Amritapuri on Tiruvonam, 5 September 2006: http://archives/amritapuri/org./amma/2006/609onam.php accessed on 21 April 2008.

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Conclusion As this paper has shown, rituals of sovereignty formed an integral part of kingship in Travancore. They were based on a redistributive process involving the maharaja and the people alike, and included both performative and representative aspects reflecting the status of the maharaja and the people. These rituals were central to the conceptualisation of rule, to the understanding of power and to its sharing on different levels in society. Two ritual complexes have been explored in this paper: Onam, which is based on the mythology of the annually returning Mahabali, and the ritual of dedicating the kingdom to Sri Padmanabhasvami at the temple in Tiruvanantapuram. Both have illustrated the centrality that was attributed to rituals, and the participatory nature of these which included all sections of the population in some way or other. The public display of the legitimate rule of the sovereign was underscored by processions through the city, such as at the time of Onam. During early modern times, Onam was a part of the yearly rhythm of royal rituals. A raja’s life consists of rituals. Onam is a public ritual and important because it structures the revenue year. Moreover, Onam as a ritual was independent of direct British influence and demonstrated the maharaja’s internal ritual sovereignty. Thus, it kept the balance of the redistributive system in place with the people. The shift in conceptualising and conducting particularly the Onam festival is remarkable. From a ritual of sovereignty performed by a maharaja to legitimate his rule within the kingdom, it developed into a festival perceived as uniting all sections of Malayali society across class, caste and creed. Onam was appropriated by the new democratic state government of Kerala and thereby, the government established its procedures as a new state whilst also constructing an imagined political community, or a patriotic community. Thus, the shared social and cultural experience of celebrating Onam has itself produced and constituted society. This makes manifest the imagined community and offers people an opportunity to participate bodily in the affairs of the state. The common experience of celebrating the festival evens out the social divisions of society. Moreover, it retains the appearance of continuity during periods of rapid social change such as the transformation of a princely state into a democratic federal state or a republic. Arguably, festivals of this kind were used by the respective people in power to keep society together, but also, to legitimate and manifest power. This has come full circle when Onam is used as a major tourist attraction in what the Kerala government tourism department has termed “God’s Own Country”.


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Gouri Lakshmi Bayi 1996. The Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple. Bombay: Motilal. Gundert, Hermann 1872. Malayalam and English Dictionary. Mangalore: Basel Mission Book Tract Depository. Heitzman, James 1997. Gifts of Power. Lordship in an Early Indian State. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Heston, Mary Beth 1996. “The Nexus of Divine and Earthly Rule. Padmanabhapuram Palace and Traditions of Architecture and Kingship in South Asia”. Ars Orientalis 26: 81–106 Jayashanker, S. 1999. Temples of Kerala. Census of India. Special Studies Kerala. New Delhi: Controller of Publications. Kawashima, Koji 1998. Missionaries and a Hindu State. Travancore 1858-1936. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kulke, Hermann 1997. “The Early and the Imperial Kingdom: A Processural Model of Integrative State Formation in Early Medieval India”. In: Hermann Kulke (ed.). The State in India 1000–1700. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 233–262. Logan, William 1989 [1887]. Malabar. 2 vols. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services. Mateer, Samuel 1991 [1883]. Native Life in Travancore. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services (AES). Menon, V.P. 1997 [1956]. Integration of the Indian States. Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Monier-Williams, Monier 1993 [1899]. A Sanskrit - English Dictionary Etymologically and Philologically Arranged with Special Reference to Cognate Indo-European Languages. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. Narayanan, M.G.S. 1996. Perumals of Kerala. Political and Social Conditions of Kerala under the Cøra Perumals of Makotai (c. 800 A.D. – 1124 A.D.). Calicut: Xavier Press. — 2006. “The Impact of Vaisnahva Bhakti Movement on Kerala: Evolution of Onam Festival in Medieval and Modern Times”. Journal of the Institute for Research in Social Sciences and Humanities 1/1: 1–22. Neumayer, Erwin & Christine Schelberger (eds.) 2005. Raja Ravi Varma. Portrait of an Artist. The Diary of C. Raja Raja Varma. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Onam, www.naturemagics.com/keral-festival-art/thiruvonam-onam-festival (21.04.2008). Osella, Caroline & Filippo Osella 2001. “The Return of King Mahabali: The Politics of Morality in Kerala”. In: Christopher J. Fuller & Véronique Bénéï (eds.). The Everyday State and Society in Modern India. London: Hurst & Company: 137–162. Ouwerkerk, Louise 1994. No Elephants for the Maharaja. Social and Political Change in Travancore (1921-1947). New Delhi: Manohar. Padmanabha Menon, K.P. 1995 [1937]. History of Kerala. Written in the Form of Notes on Visscher’s Letters from Malabar. Vol. 4. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services (AES). Panikkar, K.N. 1991. Folklore of Kerala. New Delhi: National Book Trust. Paranitaran 1972. Kerala Alayankal. Chennai: Kalainan. Ramusack, Barbara 2004. The Indian Princes and Their States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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Rangacharya, V. 1985 [1919]. A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency (Collected till 1915). Vol. 3. New Delhi, Madras: Asian Educational Services (AES). (n.d.). Reports of a Joint Commission from Bengal and Bombay, Appointed to Inspect into the Stae and Condition of the Province of Malabar, in the Years 1792 and 1793. With the Regulations thereon Established for the Administration of that Province. 3 vols. Bombay. The Regulations & Proclamations of Travancore. Vol. 9 1112 M.E. (1937). Trivandrum: The Reddiar Press. Shungoony Menon, P. 1998 [1878]. History of Travancore from the Earliest Times. New Delhi, Madras: Asian Educational Services (AES). Subrahmanya Aiyar, K.V. (ed.) 1999 [1921]. Travancore Archaeological Series. Vol. 3. Trivandrum: Department of Cultural Publications. Tanabe, Akio 2010 (forthcoming). “King, Goddesses and Jaganathas. Regional Patriotism and Subregional and Local Identities in Early Modern Orissa”. In: Hermann Kulke & Georg Berkemer (eds.). Centres out There? Facets of Subregional Identities. New Delhi: Manohar: 255–288. Thurston, Edgar & Kadamki Rangachari 2001 [1909]. Castes and Tribes of Southern India. 7 vols. Madras: Asian Educational Services (AES). Tripathi, Gaya Charan 2010 (forthcoming). “The Transformation of a Tribal State into a Centre of Regional Culture. The Case of the Bhanjas of Keonjhar”. In: Hermann Kulke & Georg Berkemer (eds.). Centres out There? Facets of Subregional Identities. New Delhi: Manohar: 81–113. Zarrilli, Phillip 2000. When the Body Becomes All Eyes. Paradigms, Discourses and Practices of Power in Kalarippayattu, a South Indian Martial Art. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Uwe Skoda

State Rituals after the Abolition of the State Dossehra Rituals in Bonai/Orissa before and after Merger Introduction The goddess Durga, the presiding deity of the Dossehra celebrations, is one of the most popular and most devoutly venerated, yet perhaps also one of the most multifaceted goddesses of India. Accordingly she has received a good deal of scholarly attention devoted to her textual,1 iconographic2 and even more so to her ritual representation.3 In her manifold appearances the goddess Durga is believed to be a primary form of the “feminine sacred” and guardian of dharma;4 the “femininecosmological energy”;5 the “power of the fecund earth” highlighting an ecological dimension.6 The warrior qualities attributed to her did not only turn her into a focal point of imagination for Hindu nationalist women,7 but are emphasised with a considerable historical depth in relation to her central ritual – namely Dossehra – considered to be “the most prominent ritual of kingship across India”8 and as such a state ritual per se. In the Orissan context too intimate relations between the goddess Durga and rulers or Rajas have frequently been mentioned - the tutelary deities often being linked to her.9 Moreover, she has been associated with tribal deities undergoing processes of Hinduisation,10 while her royal patrons might have been also “kshatriyaized” simultaneously.11

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

E.g. Kinsley 1978. E.g. Panda 2004. E.g. Östör 2004; Pfaff-Czearnecka 1998; Sontheimer 1981 etc. Tambs-Lyche 2004. Michaels 1998: 246. Khanna 2000. Kovacs 2004. Fuller 1992: 108. E.g. Hardenberg 2000; Schnepel 2002. Eschmann 1994; Mallebrein 2004. Kulke 2001.

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In this article I will look more closely at the Dossehra rituals in the former western Orissan princely state of Bonai12 – more than 60 years after the formal abolition of kingship (1948) and almost 40 years after the abrogation of royal privileges, notably the privy purses. In order to comprehend the dynamics of royal and local rituals I will start in the first part with my ethnographic observations13 and compare in a second step the present-day affairs with the situation before merger using extensive photographic documentation from the 1930s. As Bourdieu (1983 [1965]) had once argued, photographs always have a surplus of meaning in the sense that they reveal the symbols of a period – even if unintended by the Raja as royal patron of the visualisation. Juxtaposed with the events in 2007 they reveal, so my argument proposes here, substantial processes of change, decline, but also a surprising continuity given the abolition of kingship. On the one hand one notices an ongoing de-ritualisation and de-sacralisation of kingship as far as fort-centred ceremonies are concerned, simplifications leading to dwindling audiences and ultimately also to a loss of authority and power of the former ruler corresponding to a similar loss in the “profane” sphere.14 On the other hand one also finds elements of a persisting ritual vibrancy linking the Raja, the goddess and the Paudi Bhuiyans as a tribal community. Here the rituals have been altered far less and have not lost their appeal – quite the contrary. However, in this paper I will not only look at the fort (garh)- or king-centred rituals, but will in a third step also consider a relatively recent tradition somewhat 12 At present a Sub-Division of Sundargarh District in north-western Orissa, Bonai used to be under the apparently rather loose overlordship of the Marathas and – in closer proximity – to some extent under the Sambalpur Raja in the early nineteenth century until the area was finally under British control in 1818 and officially ceded to them in 1826. However, Bonai remained fairly remote – a hardly accessible kingdom surrounded by hills – and relations with the British appear to have intensified only towards the middle of the nineteenth century, when Bonai became part of the South-Western Frontier Agency (formed in 1833) which was subsequently transformed into the Chota Nagpur Division administered by a Commissioner in Ranchi (from 1854 onwards). It remained a Tributary State of this Division until 1905/06, when Bonai was transferred to the Orissa Tributary States under the Political Agent based in Sambalpur. 13 The field research was conducted between 2003 and 2008. It was funded by the German Research Council (DFG) – initially within the Orissa Research Project and later on as part of the Graduate School “Cultural Encounters and Discourses of Scholarship”. I am grateful to the DFG, but also to Professor G. Pfeffer, Professor J. Roesel and Professor H. Kulke for their support of the project. However, I am much obliged to Shri Kadamba Keshari Chandra Deo, Raja Sahib of Bonai, to Shri Bir Keshari Deo, Yubraj Sahib of Bonai and the whole Raj family as well as to all my local interviewees, who helped immensely in the course of my work. 14 The case of Bonai differs to some extent from former neighbouring states such as Bamra, because the ruling family lost the passive voting rights after the constituency was declared reserved for Scheduled Tribes, while in Bamra former rulers took on new roles as Members of the Legislative Assembly. Differences have also to be noticed in the divine configuration.

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appropriating a royal goddess and increasingly overshadowing the royal festivities.15 I will argue that both ritual practices – the fort-centred rituals usually referred to as Dossehra as well as Durga Puja performed in the market area (patna)16 – stand in clear contrast to each other and represent a power shift in a local society with Durga Puja increasingly taking over the role of Dossehra – and of the Raja – as marker of time and occasion. In this process the goddess Durga central to both rituals appears as contested symbolic capital. Incidentally Durga Puja, initiated in the year of the merger, i.e. 1948, by a migrant and mine owner from coastal Orissa, has evolved into a grander ceremony only in the wake of the recent industrialisation in the last few years. The older tradition of Dossehra under royal patronage is intrinsically linked to the idea of pitha, i.e. a permanent seat of the goddess Durga located inside the fort (and partly inside the palace) where the goddess is manifest explicitly (though not exclusively) in the form of the royal swords as her aniconic idols. This tradition clearly differs from the more public Durga Puja, independently and ostensibly more democratically organised by a committee – instead of the former ruler. This tradition revolves around the idea of a mrunmaya murti, a manifestation of the goddess in a temporary and ideally biodegradable clay idol depicting Durga in her rather well-known anthropomorphic form slaying the demon (Mahisasur mardini Durga). In contrast with the idea of pitha17 the concept of mrunmaya murti patronised by the local middle/upper-middle class lacks a clear territorial grounding. Moreover, in the context of Durga Puja a rather “mild form”18 of the goddess accepting only vegetarian offerings is introduced, differing from her relatively fierce form inside the fort. While such a contrast between “wild” and “mild” goddesses (as a tendency rather than a clear-cut distinction) is also frequently encountered elsewhere in South Asia (Michaels & Vogelsanger & Wilke 1996: 22), the 15 However, there are other recent ritual traditions which I cannot discuss here in detail. But let me mention briefly Lakshmi Puja, which according to many locals started about 10 to 15 years ago and seems to have an even more localised character in the sense that there are several Lakshmi mandaps all over Bonai, which appear to be patronised by neighbourhoods. Significantly, there is no mandap inside the fort. Another still more recent celebration in Bonai is Ramlila, which was initiated in a village about five kilometres from Bonaigarh around three years ago. The village is closely associated with royalty – e.g. the farmhouse of a brother of a former Raja is located here. This might be the reason that the Raja was invited initially every year, though he never went and in 2007 he was not invited at all. 16 The lexical differentiation presented here is not an absolute one. In an inclusive way both names – Dossehra and Durga Puja – may be used to signify the whole “festive season”. However, Dossehra/Durga Puja are also used specifically to refer to the fort-rituals (the former) or the market-based rituals (the latter), but the usage may also depend on the background of the speaker in the sense that migrants may tend to use Durga Puja more frequently, while more established families may use the word Dossehra. 17 See also Galey 1990. 18 Michaels & Vogelsanger & Wilke 1996: 22.

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Dossehra celebrations in Bonai exemplify an empirical situation in which Goddess Durga is (at least temporarily) present and worshipped in multifold forms simultaneously within the locality. Given the historical roots, form and importance attached to Durga Puja in Bengal one may notice a form of post-merger Bengalisation in Bonai – rather than a more general and vague process of Hinduisation. However, one has to take into account that such processes were mediated and translated by agents or ritual patrons from the coastal belt and as such have an element of an “Oriyaisation” of the hinterland, while Bengali traditions were subjected to a process of change simultaneously.19 Moreover, given the social background of the newcomers one may also detect an element of Kshatriya-Vaishya rivalry (both supported by Brahmins) for predominance20 in the present-day performance of both rituals in Bonai. However, Durga Puja, so my argument goes, is not only a ritual challenge of an aspiring middle class to the Raja, but also an expression of ongoing processes of localisation. Thus, it may be understood as the attempt of comparatively recently arrived and well-off migrants to settle down – migrants who, unlike communities arriving earlier, were not explicitly incorporated into royal hierarchies or rituals involving the local society, hierarchies and rituals themselves which increasingly lost their integrative power after the abolition of kingship. As a “power ritual”21 Dossehra/Durga Puja mediates not only a royal centrality or new aspirations to societal centrality, but also and perhaps more importantly here degrees of “outsider-ness”. New power-holders with increasing clout in the local society support a “new” local tradition linked to a well-established deity, but in a novel form. Coming back to processes of religious change in former princely states of Orissa Kulke argued that tribal deities were not only integrated as tutelary deities, but were also increasingly linked to the goddess Durga.22 Without denying such a development in general, the example of Bonai also shows, as Biardieu argued that “[t]he multifold manifestations of the goddess are at least in part connected to fragmentation of the political power”,23 which cannot be fully separated from the ritual sphere. Like a “social prism”,24 the goddess Durga in all her different appearances is linked to and reflects societal fissures. In this way the goddess Durga reflects or rather embodies complexities of the local society. Therefore, claiming access to the goddess Durga as mrunmaya murti may be seen as a potent

19 See e.g. Ghosh 2006; Chatterjee 2008. Ghosh and Chatterjee mention e.g. processes of commercialisation or establishing museums. 20 Tambs-Lyche 1996. 21 Pfaff-Czarnecka 1998. 22 Kulke 2001; see also Mallebrein 2004. 23 Biardieu 1989: 137. 24 Vasudevan 1990.


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challenge – even if indirectly – to the older royal pitha-tradition celebrating another Durga.

Dossehra – the Fort-centred pitha Tradition The Seat of the Goddess: the Concept of pitha As the royal priest (rajpurohit) emphasised, the goddess Durga has a permanent seat inside the fort – something that in his view (and not only his) distinguished the fort-rituals from those of the “upstarts” in the market. Moreover, he links the pitha inside the fort with many other religious centres and with a greater tradition by referring to the locally well-known mythological story of Sati or more generally the Goddess (debi25). According to this legend often quoted at varying length, Sati, consort of Shiva, feeling insulted by her father who had shown disrespect to her husband, finally decided to kill herself. Wherever her body parts fell upon the earth a pitha came up.26 Notwithstanding the indirect link between the Goddess, Sati and Durga here, an important aspect of the myth seems to be the localisation of the goddess and her literal grounding in the story itself. This aspect is also highlighted by Kinsley in his comparative work on Hinduism: “[...] [pitha] tends to emphasize the rootedness of the goddesses associated with these places. Many of the goddesses are pre-eminently tied to the locales in which they are worshipped. They are perceived to be not so much transcendent, heavenly beings as beings whose power is firmly grounded in the earth itself. It may be, too, that the term pītha is appropriate to those aspects of Devī theology which emphasize her association with the earth itself and her motherly nature, which casts her in the role of an ever-present, nurturing presence. [...] the term pītha connotes a fixed point, and by extension the fixedness of the goddesses worshipped at these sites.”27 This aspect of territoriality is also stressed by Galey,28 who translates pitha in relation to kingship in Garhwal as a “seat of mastery” and as “a source of ritual energy” constituting a divine link between the king and the throne as his female counterpart (rather than the goddess29).

25 In the text I prefer the local usage of terms such as debi, Shiv, mandap instead of the more well-known cognate-terms devi, Shiva etc. 26 See also Kinsley 1987: 186; Singh 2006: 91. 27 Kinsley 1987: 186. 28 Galey 1990: 167. 29 As Galey argues, in relation to the goddess in Garhwal, the idea of kshetra/field is stressed (rather than pitha), while the Goddess arms the kings just as she does in Bonai.

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Uwe Skoda “This results in the king becoming attached to a precise point on the earth: a spatially rooted and historically defined point of reference that legitimizes his control upon the political assembly (darbar).”30

Significantly, the aspect of the earth is highlighted also in the newly established mrunmaya murti tradition by worshipping an idol made of soil/clay (mati) – mrunmaya being translated as being made of clay/mud – while the fort-rituals focus primarily on swords or weapons of the goddess. However, in addition to the aspect of the earth and the territorial anchoring it is the aspect of permanence or eternity stressed by the Rajpurohit which is inherent in a pitha in contrast to the ephemeral idol used in the market. Durgas, Swords and other Gods: Multifold Manifestations of the Goddess Durga and Notes on the Divine Configuration of the Former Kingdom of Bonai Before turning to the Dossehra rituals themselves, a few words must be said about the manifold local appearances of the goddess Durga – about the many Durgas present during the ceremonies in her pitha – and the links between her manifestations in Bonai. While the goddess Durga takes on various shapes, during Dossehra her appearances in the form of swords are of central importance. Not unlike other regions in Orissa,31 in Bonai Durga is explicitly linked to the royal sword – particularly to the patkhanda (literally: main sword). Moreover, in Bonai as elsewhere in eastern India she is also associated with the tutelary deity (ishta debi) of the Raja – known specifically as Ma Kumari. In her temple in the outer fort Ma Kumari – or Durga depending on the perspective – appears as a hardly recognisable stone idol.32 The Raja receives blessings by her in the form of another sword known as kumari prasad. While the kumari prasad was used by the Raja for everyday representational needs, the patkhanda figured even more prominently during Dossehra, i.e. being publicly displayed during the procession to the Dossehra field. While it remains unclear how the Raja was presented with the kumari prasad by the tutelary goddess, it is believed that the patkhanda was brought from Rajputana and was used to kill the autochthonous chiefs in order to conquer the new realm (except one chief who became an ally). The empowerment of the Raja is literally re-enacted during Dossehra, when after worshipping patkhanda on the terrace of the king’s palace (rajmahal) the Raja takes the sword himself and points it in all directions – a ritual well known in other parts of India during Vijaydossomi (the victorious

30 Galey 1990: 167. 31 Schnepel 2002; Mallebrein 2004. 32 It is widely believed and narrated in the royal chronicles that the goddess devoured a young disciple of her priest, and when the latter discovered it he threw a plate at her murti. Since then the murti is less identifiable.


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tenth day) and often referred to as digvijaya (digi = direction; vijay = victory),33 but in Bonai the Rajpurohit refers to it as “Dossehra”, signifying it is the essence of the whole Dossehra cycle. Thus, with the sword and with the blessing of the goddess (debi) the Raja symbolically re-conquers his realm – a theme that used to be highlighted during the state-time Dossehra procession, when the patkhanda would precede the Raja on his way to the Dossehra field. Thus, the Raja repeated his ancestors’ deeds in capturing the kingdom, while at the same time alluding to Durga’s victory – freeing the world from the demon Mahirsasur. Even so, there is still another sword in the palace known as mohana khanda and kept inside the palace premises, while the other two were kept in the armoury (khanda ghar). Nowadays, however, the two are kept in the Jagannath temple just opposite the palace gate (Singha Dwar). It is believed that mohana khanda was taken from a tribal chief involved in conquering the realm. The motif of “capturing” a potent idol is fairly widespread in Orissa.34 Mohana khanda too is considered to be a form of Durga, but kept even more invisibly than the patkhanda. The public is given darshan (glancing) on only one occasion and that is during the investiture of every new Raja. This is the only day – once in the lifetime of every king – the sword is brought out of the palace and taken in a procession to accompany the Raja to the Baneshwar temple. At the Baneshwar temple, a Shiv temple about two kilometres away from the palace, every new king is identified with Baneshwar, the sthanpati (lord of the land) of Bonai, and declares that he will rule the kingdom on his behalf. Thus, the Raja is identified with, as well as being considered to be the deputy of Lord Baneshwar and thus shares his divinity.35 However, Lord Baneshwar does not play any significant role during the Dossehra rituals, when the Raja is instead empowered by the goddess Durga in her various manifestations. The goddess is linked to three swords – presented ideally in public either daily (kumari prasad), annually (patkhanda) or generationally (mohana khanda) and thereby marking time. Apart from that the swords partly represent a link to the outside world of Bonai – the patkhanda coming with the “stranger king” to Bonai – and partly represent local traditions, i.e. Ma Kumari as tutelary goddess and mohana khanda as powerful sword of a former autochthonous chief. In relation to Dossehra in Bastar, Gell once argued that there is a certain contradiction in the rituals depicting the goddess as both foreign and local as well as the Raja both as mediator with the outside world, yet also as “vehicle of the goddess”.36 The assemblage of potent swords and their specific usage in rituals in 33 For a further discussion on the theme of digvijaya see Fuller (1992: 125). 34 See e.g. Schnepel 2002: 259. 35 Fuller discusses the possibilities frequently found in India of a king being considered himself an incarnation of a deity or the regent. Here it is apparently a combination of both (Fuller 1992: 107). 36 Gell 1997: 442.

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Bonai expresses both notions simultaneously. Moreover, the goddess may also, as Biardieu pointed out, combine a role as “protectress of a site” located on the boundaries of a marked territory to fend off the enemy e.g. like the tutelary deity in the outer fort with a role as “protectress of a family” situated inside the palace just like mohana khanda.37 The table below briefly summarises this multitude of swords and forms of Durga. Swords

Kumari Prasad

Patkhanda

Mohana Khanda

Visibility every day Origin (unclear)

once a year once in a lifetime from outside the realm, from inside the realm, but but own in origin foreign in origin (Raja’s perspective) “conquered” “conquering” Location inside the fort, but inside the fort, inside the fort and inside outside of the but outside of the the palace (innermost palace (armoury) palace (armoury) sphere) Other temple of Ma men of lineage entitled Kumari marking a to consume sacrificial meat border of the fort during Dossehra The manifestations of the goddess Durga, however, are not limited to swords. She also appears as Naba Durga represented as a bracelet in the rituals on the seventh and eighth days. However, during the Sandhi Puja between the eighth and ninth days she is worshipped as several metal bracelets and also in the form of human idols (small metal figures depicting the goddess with eight arms38), though the bracelet as manifestation of Naba Durga seems to be far more important. The rest of the year all the idols and also patkhanda and kumari prasad are kept inside the Jagannath temple together with the tutelary god (ishta debta) of the Raja, Ragunath, in the form of stones (salegram). Moreover, during Dossehra the goddess Kant Kumari – sometimes also referred to as Kant Mahapru – visits Bonaigarh in the form of a small metal snake carried by the Paudi Bhuiyan. She too is considered by many to be a form of Durga and is also linked as a sister to Ma Kumari. Quite in line with Kulke’s developmental scheme of divinities in the former Garhjat states her presence, if one goes by the royal family chronicles (rajbansaboli), was revealed after the conquering of the

37 Biardieu 1989: 132. 38 These small idols may depict a variety of gods but were collectively worshiped as Naba Durga.


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realm.39 However, in contrast to other states Kulke analysed, the goddess did not become the tutelary goddess of the Raja, but rather preferred to stay in the hills – on the fringe of the kingdom and with the Paudi Bhuiyans. Being at best rather loosely or imperfectly appropriated by the Raja the goddess visits her sister, the tutelary deity Ma Kumari, another Durga, and also the palace annually during Dossehra.40 However, in all cases the Raja arranges the worship and acts as jajman for these fort-centred rituals and thus benefits directly from rituals ostensibly performed for the wellbeing of the kingdom. Dossehra Rituals 2007: A Short Chronology The fort rituals take place in Bonaigarh during the bright fortnight of the month of Asvina starting from the sixth day, Sashti, and ending on the following full moon, Kumar Puni. sixth day, Sasthi Bel barni puja (bel invitation): sometimes also referred to as sashti puja, performed around sunset by the non-brahmanical priest known as Amat (belonging to the Sud community) – with the bel tree being considered auspicious – seen as an invitation – a branch of it being worshipped and then carried to the symbolic khanda ghar.41 seventh day, Saptami Khanda dhua (sword washing): patkhanda and kumari prasad are washed, sharpened and finally wrapped in new white cloth by the Khati (belonging to the Maharona community) within the compound of the Jagannath temple (outside the palace), where the swords are kept and worshipped by him. Khanda basaa (establishing a seat for the swords): performed after sunset by the Amat who brings the two swords from the Jagannath temple to install them together with the bel branch in the khanda ghar facing eastwards – he worships them by placing three rows with nine piles of rice each on bel leaves and invoking the names of 27 local deities – afterwards on the right-hand side of the swords a separate place of worship for Naba Durga is established by the brahmanical Rajpu39 Kulke 2001: 117–118. 40 Thus, one finds a multitude of manifestations of the goddess Durga in Bonai. The variety of images also includes apparently older stone idols in the Mahisasur mardini form worshipped as Andhari Debi inside the fort and as Chandi Debi on the opposite site of the river, but rather neglected during the Dossehra rituals. Panda (2004) also argues that the goddess Durga is also found in this aspect among the fragmented idols scattered around the Ma Kumari temple. In his comparative article Panda lists various examples of Durga worship in the upper Mahanadi valley and dates some of the images found in Bonai to the seventh-ninth centuries. Thus, it seems to document a very early presence of a myth related to the goddess Durga slaying the demon. 41 The former khanda ghar collapsed a few years ago and at present the former Sabha Ghar/Durbar Hall is used for the rituals.

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rohit, who brings the Naba Durga idol (bracelet form) from the Jagannath temple and worships her e.g. with a homa, at the end the first he-goat (buka) is sacrificed for Patkhanda.

Image 1: Non-brahmanical priest (Amat) worshipping Durga in the form of swords (patkhanda and kumari prasad) Photo by the author

eighth day, Astami Khanda dhua (sword washing): again the Khati comes to the fort to repeat the rituals he performed the day before, but this time for mohana khanda inside the palace in a separate room42 together with other smaller swords and daggers, which are included in the ritual. Khanda puja (sword ritual), Durga Astami: the rituals named by the Amat as khanda puja and by the Rajpurohit as Durga Astami are largely a repetition of the evening before, but this time a buka is sacrificed for Naba Durga. Kant beth (meeting the goddess Kant Kumari): after the khanda puja the Raja (or his representative) moves in a procession to a village about 2km south of the fort in order to meet the Paudi Bhuiyan and to receive the goddess Kant Kumari from their hands – the Paudi Bhuiyan had started on the second day/Dwitya from the abode of the goddess in the hills to walk along a route fixed by the Raja beforehand and communicated to them. During the journey she moves clockwise from the hills to the plains and back – when the Raja and Paudi Bhuiyan meet, the latter inquire about the wellbeing of the Raja, who answers positively and presents the 42 The former room was situated next to the old and now defunct kitchen.


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goddess with a new silver umbrella which is attached to her idol (murti); the Raja then passes the goddess on to the Amat who worships her on a special platform – two bukas tied together are sacrificed for the goddess and have to be beheaded in one stroke, before the Raja returns to the palace. Mohana khanda puja: taking place at night inside the palace and supposed to be simultaneous with the kant beth – the Rajpurohit worships the sword and a buka is sacrificed for the goddess, which is prepared immediately after the puja inside the palace, distributed and consumed exclusively among the male relatives of the Raja (in contrast to the sacrifices of khanda puja & khanda basaa, which the Raja distributes at will); the meat should not be taken into the house. Sandhi puja (midnight ritual): celebrated by the Rajpurohit between Astami and Nabarmi – the Rajpurohit worships Naba Durga in a smaller room next to the main hall, because, as the Rajpurohit argues, only Naba Durga is worshipped here and the other gods or goddesses present should not see it; the ritual, like the mohana khanda puja, should be performed secretly, i.e. without the general public. ninth day, Nabarmi Procession of the goddess Kant Kumari through Bonaigarh/mandal puja: continuing the worship of the goddess under the guidance of the Amat, the goddess moves along the fixed route from the village south of the fort to the market (patna) west of the fort and along the way on certain platforms (mandal) the public can worship her; from there she continues to the outer part of the fort (bahari garh) where she meets her sister Ma Kumari, the tutelary deity of the Bonai Raja – the Amat (also generally responsible for the worship of Ma Kumari) arranges this meeting, which remains invisible to the public – from there the goddess proceeds towards the palace. Digi puja (ritual of direction): performed by the Amat just outside the Lion’s Gate (singha dwar), the old main entrance to the palace – according to the Amat the goddess blesses the four directions. Rakta handi (blood rice pot): subsequently the goddess is brought to the khanda ghar, where she is placed in a rice pot (handi) filled with rice (chaul) between the two swords already installed there (people believe the pots used to be filled with blood in former times) the Raja takes darshan in the khanda ghar first with Kant Kumari and patkhanda/kumari prasad, then with Durga/Naba Durga (all without the public) – afterwards the swords are brought back to the Jagannath temple by the Amat, while Durga/Naba Durga are carried by the Rajpurohit; the Raja then personally carries Kant Kumari into the palace where she is worshipped at the altar (bedi) by the Amat, who places the goddess in a pot with mahuli wine, which is distributed as bad bhog (grand offering) among the public gathered for the occasion; from the palace the goddess moves to the Brahmin quarter within the fort and is finally handed over to the Paudi Bhuiyan in a small ritual close to the former house of the Amat in the presence of a relative (Babu) of the Raja.

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tenth day, Vijaydossomi Mandal puja (platform rituals) and neem chakuli puja (neem cake ritual): after a few more mandals in bahari garh the goddess Kant Kumari bids farewell to Bonaigarh – before the Paudi Bhuiyan cross the river to return to the hills a special cake made of bitter neem leaves should be offered, but only a small ritual without cake took place under a pipal tree in 2007; Kant Kumari is supposed to reach her abode on the full-moon day. Mohana khanda birsarjan (immersion of mohana khanda): around noon time the Rajpurohit and the Raja sprinkle water over the sword, after the Rajpurohit has performed a homa. Dossehra puja: celebrated around sunset on the veranda of the former Rajmahal with patkhanda brought from the Jagannath temple – the Raja holds the sword in order to perform “buliba”, i.e. moving it in all directions, before the patkhanda returns to the temple. Somnath puja: in the evening the Rajpurohit performs a ritual on the bedi of the palace to worship Shiv in his form of Somnath in order to purify the house. Full Moon/Kumar Purnima Kumari puja: the Raja moves in a procession from the palace to the temple of his tutelary deity to whom a buka is offered by the Raja (and others by the public). Rituals Before Merger: Photographs of Dossehra in the 1930s How far do these rituals – observed in 2007, i.e. around 60 years after the merger of the princely state with the Indian Union – deviate from a pre-merger period? Though one rarely comes across pictures of a ritual routine in royal photo collections, I was fortunate to find a Dossehra album including around 30 photographs made in 1935–1936. My attempt to reconstruct the rituals performed in the princely state period is based on this visual evidence. The comparison – a gap of roughly 70 years – was supplemented with interviews with interlocutors in Bonai, notably the present Raja, now 81 years old, but also his cousins and others. Though many pictures of Dossehra appear to illustrate a posed life-style in a smaller princely state in the 1930s, the “cult of the self” to use Erwing Goffman’s words (1981) of an Orissan Raja – showing the king in state – the interviewees argued that the events depicted in the photos represented an annual Dossehra celebration as they remembered it and not a one-off affair for the camera. Thus, one sees the Raja being carried on a lion-headed silver palanquin to the Dossehra field in a pompous procession. He is surrounded by Paiks holding bows and arrows as well as symbols of royalty such as the umbrella (chhattar) or banner (bairakh) (see picture 2). The album also shows the Raja, again wearing turban and long coat (achgan), as he comes out of the palace and being preceded by the genealogist (bhat). Still another photo captured the Rajpurohit carrying the patkhanda – both, it was told, would leave before the Raja himself left the palace. Before the


Image 2: The Raja on his way to the Dossehra field. Courtesy: Bonai royal family

Image 3: Gathering in front of the Singha Dwar on Vijaydossomi. Courtesy: Bonai royal family

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Raja’s emergence, Paiks and police constables had gathered in front of the Singha Dwar, the former displaying their fighting skills. Elephants waited to carry the relatives of the Raja and the Zamindars in the procession. Some of the Paiks painted their bodies, the best being given awards (picture 3). A range of sports competitions, including running, tennis and shooting, took place on the Dossehra field and are captured in the photos as well as the performances of a theatre group in the local club. The album in its totality comprises a “sociogram” of Bonai in the sense used by Bourdieu (1996), i.e. a figural representation of social, ritual and also political relationships. Apart from a number of photos including the Diwan and virtually all the important state officials, another photograph shows the Raja holding the Kant Kumari and being surrounded by the Rajpurohit, Amat, relatives, Paudi Bhuiyan and others at the moment of handing over the goddess (image 4).

Image 4: The Raja holding the goddess Kant Kumari. Courtesy: Bonai royal family

Another picture highlights the Raja sitting on his special seat next to the Ma Kumari temple, sitting in front of his subjects and waiting for the final ritual on the full-moon day. While discussing the photographs it turned out that although the pictures exhibit important elements of the Dossehra celebration, other central features have been


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left out.43 As elders or relatives of those involved remember, on the day of Vijaydossomi the Raja used to meet the Zamindar, Jagirdars, his Rajpurohits and other Brahmins inside the Durbar Hall for a separate ritual. Two people known as the Ankulia44 and the Baktria would sit in front of the king clad in yellow cloths with a yellow turban. They would each hold a big battle-axe. The royal priests would go to the Jagannath temple to bring the royal sword (patkhanda), which was held on the necks of the two people as if the two would be slaughtered from behind. The Ankulia, a Kansari by caste, and the Baktria, a Bhuiyan, had already been garlanded with hibiscus flowers – an indicator of the intended sacrifice. After the ritual both had to leave not only the palace, but Bonaigarh for a day, before they would be allowed to return. Only after they had left would the Raja proceed to the Dossehra field to watch the archery and other competitions. But while the competitions cover almost half of the album, the ritual with the Ankulia – possibly arousing British suspicions – is not covered at all. Changing Fort-centred Rituals: Decline, “Short-cut Puja”, Farce and Vitality Observing the fort-centred rituals in 2007 and keeping the photographs of the 1930s in mind one cannot fail to notice a certain decline corresponding to local feelings of decay. There is a widespread feeling of a general retrogression e.g. in the sense that norms are not maintained any longer. A case in point was the final day of the Dossehra celebrations in Bonai. The crowd gathered at the Kumari Temple as the site of the final rituals was considered by participants as not very impressive, and people argued that in earlier days many more devotees and spectators had turned up there. Moreover, as an advisor to the Raja told me, in the old days people feared the goddess and therefore would not commit crimes. In fact there was no need for policemen, I was told. Lamenting a bygone era, of course, fits well with ideas of a dark age (kali yug), sometimes even directly mentioned. And indeed, in many cases expenditure on rituals has been cut down to a bare minimum and even beyond that. For example, the khanda ghar, the armoury, collapsed a few years ago, so the rituals had to be shifted to the former sabha ghar or durbar hall. And even there the roof is already damaged or another room used for the rituals has completely black walls because burglars set fire to it a while ago. The murti of Nabadurga, worshipped in this room, is kept on a half-broken wooden gaddi. 43 One can only speculate about the reasons – they might have been of a technical nature (there are hardly any indoor photographs requiring a flash), due to ritual considerations (a Muslim photographer from Cuttack had been hired) or because of political implications. In the latter case the Raja might been interested in showcasing any form of human sacrifice – however symbolic it might have been. 44 Some derive the name from an = without and kulia from kul = caste and thus explain that the Ankulia was considered as outside the caste system.

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Another clear indicator for further and steady reductions of ritual splendour and royal largesse in more recent times is the number of sacrificial animals offered during Dossehra. As the Raja recollects, his father during state time would give 66 bukas (non-castrated he-goats), not to mention buffalos or rams, while he “cut it all down” to eight in 2006 and further down to seven in 2007. Similarly the music performances, the playing of drums for the first eight days of the half of the month followed by the playing of other instruments for another eight days, thus providing a musical background for the Dossehra celebrations of 16 days in early times, has now been discontinued. And the most radical change probably concerns the end of the procession to the Dossehra field, which, according to most people, came to an end in the 1960s, i.e. presumably prior to the abolition of the privy purses under Indira Gandhi in the early 1970s. Given the fact that certain ritual sequences are tightened, reduced or altogether abolished, observers and actors sometimes refer to the present-day activities simply as “short-cut puja”. The perception of a diminished service to the gods is at times not just linked to feelings of regret, but also of anger and sarcasm. When the Rajpurohit45 came to know of a further reduction of sacrifices on Saptami – the Raja had decided not to offer a he-goat to Durga as was customarily done – he was outraged. Angrily he told the people standing around: “Next time the Raja will just cut my head off instead and that will be the absolute last sacrifice!” Others then tried to calm him down. Another suggestive episode in the present situation occurred the very next day. Not only did the grandson of the Raja have to wait quite some time for the Paudi Bhuiyan in order for him to receive the goddess but the Raja was furious about it and scolded them later on personally. Such things, so the impression that was gathered, would not have happened earlier. But more importantly perhaps the mohana khanda puja, the ritual for the most powerful and secret sword, had not been performed simultaneously as prescribed by custom. Returning to the palace after the kant beth I was informed that the Rajpurohit was “absconding” under the pretext of some family emergency. Though he returned later and performed the puja at last, there was a strong suspicion that he had tried to mitigate his “tension” with some less than brahmanical palliatives. Alleviating his pain in this way and falling asleep subsequently had the effect that he almost missed performing the sandhi puja. The royal priest finally woke up, but saddened by circumstances, and worshipped – after a considerable delay – the goddess Naba Durga seated on a broken wooden platform in a somewhat farcical aura. However, the point here is not so much that certain changes in ritual schedules may occur, or that in some cases family tragedies may happen suddenly in the family of the Rajpurohit preventing 45 Strictly speaking, not belonging to the direct line of former royal priests, but fulfilling the tasks.


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him from conducting his duty. Rather, in earlier times the Raja had engaged two Rajpurohits to avoid any disruption because of such unforeseen events in any one family, while nowadays there is only one priest responsible for the performance. However, deviations in 2007 as just described should not lead to the conclusion that pre-merger rituals were performed in an all-round satisfactory manner – or that accelerated change is a post-merger phenomenon. In fact, one might rather expect certain shortcomings and fluctuations in terms of splendour depending on the financial situation or perhaps the presence of a photographer as in the 1930s. There are, for example, hints in a report of 1948 mentioning considerable changes in the expenditure just around the merger. Thus, the Administrator of Bonai wrote to the Additional Secretary to Government, Cuttack, on 20.09.48: “Prior to the merger in the year 1947 the Ruler drew a sum of Rs. 3.000/- for all his religious ceremonies and festivals for that year. Before that the annual grant from the State for Dessehra [sic] was Rs. 26/- only as sanctioned by the Political Agent from year to year. This amount was being drawn by the Ruler. All the celebrations were done inside the Rajbati. It thus appears that the Dessehra was being celebrated by the Ruler in his private capacity.” 46 If the report is correct the budget for ritual activities was considerably inflated from Rs 26 to Rs 3,000 in 1947 – the Raja using his new, but short-lived financial freedom after the end of British paramountcy. As the report also suggests the amount was considerably reduced to Rs 1,000 a year later. This amount the newly appointed Administrator argued should be spent on the Bhuiyan durbar on Dossehra, but not on the ritual activities. Thus, he hints at another ritual element during Dossehra, a ritual of loyalty neither included in the photographs, nor existing today. At present the Raja, according to his own calculations, spends around Rs 6,000 on palace rituals – half of the money for the bukas. Thus, he organises his rituals – compared to the Durga Puja Committee (below) – on a shoestring budget as compared to the merger period. However, there might not only be financial constraints to abolishing rituals or ritual elements after the abolition of the privy purses. The Raja and other people involved are well aware of the current debate on animal sacrifices, the agitations of NGOs in this field and newly introduced laws, all of which may lead to further alterations in future. While a number of elements important for the pre-merger Dossehra celebration might have been abolished or considerably reduced with everything being organised on a tight budget, another aspect of the Dossehra celebrations seems to have lost nothing of its earlier popularity. This very vibrant element concerns the visit of 46 Reply (No. 10226) by Administrator of Bonai to Additional Secretary to Government, Home Department, States Section, Cuttack (20.09.48).

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the goddess Kant Kumari, usually referred to as Ma (mother), to Bonaigarh being carried once a year by her ritual specialists, the Paudi Bhuiyan from the mountains at the periphery of Bonai to the fort. This vitality of the rituals is expressed e.g. by the wishes of villages not on the route of the goddess to be included in it. In one case villagers came to the Raja in my presence and handed over a written petition to him. The Raja then inquired about the number of houses in the village, about the ways to and from the village – the goddess always moves forward and cannot return the same way –, before he told them to think about the matter and consult his advisors. However, ultimately he decided against an inclusion being afraid of unnecessary delays during the procession. Moreover, there were rumours that during the procession people from a village a few kilometres away from the route had actually taken the goddess illegally on a motorbike to their home, which outraged people in Bonaigarh. Thus, a comparison between the situation in the 1930s and the present-day celebrations of Dossehra brings significant changes to the fore: Ritual element Dossehra in the 1930s Worship of Kant Kumari/Paudi Bhuiyans coming to the Garh Naba Durga Puja/Sandhi Puja Tradition of Ankulia + Baktria/symbolic human sacrifices Procession to the Dossehra field/public competitions at the field Bhuiyan durbar47 Kant Purnima Puja – rituals for the tutelary deity after Dossehra

Present situation Vibrant, perhaps even more popular nowadays, but royal gifts reduced Performed with reductions Completely abolished Completely abolished Completely abolished Performed – gifts reduced

Durga Puja: The Market-centred mrunmaya murti Rituals as an Evolving New Tradition While I have focused so far on the rituals under the direct tutelage of the former ruler I will now shift to a more recent religious tradition intimately linked to the goddess Durga and Dossehra too.

47 The Raja remembers that initially during his “rulership” six to seven Sardars (headmen) still attended the celebrations e.g. those from the Sol-Pargana, who offered gifts and received turbans.


Image 5: The goddess Durga worshipped by a policeman immediately before her clay idol is immersed in the river. Photo by the author

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802 History of the Durga mandap

Looking at the history of this tradition one notices a rather recent local evolution. In fact, shortly after merger the Government of Orissa, Home Department, inquired about “Celebration of Durga Puja or Dussera” in the former princely states.48 In his reply the Administrator of Bonai wrote to the Additional Secretary to Government, Cuttack, on 20.09.48: “It appears that in the past there was no elaborate religious celebration of Deshera [sic] in Bonai. No image is prepared and worshipped according to the customs prevailing in the coastal area. The image of the goddess has been installed in the local Jagarnath temple. It appears that during the Deshera the image is taken to the Rajbati where the ruler offers Puja. … All the celebrations were done inside the Rajbati. It thus appears that the Deshera was being celebrated by the Ruler in his private capacity.” 49 Obviously this statement stands in sharp contrast to the aforementioned photo album and the memories of interlocutors vividly remembering the events outside the palace. It might be explained by the ignorance of a newly appointed outsider-administrator unfamiliar with local customs. However, according to my interviews the statement is correct in a different way: in September 1948 the new state machinery could not identify any Durga Puja according to the customs prevailing in the coastal area. Inquiring into the history of Durga Puja centred in the market area it transpired that this form of worship was celebrated in Bonai for the first time in Dossehra in 1948, i.e. only after the report of the Administrator. It is to some extent contested who took the initiative to arrange Durga Puja in Bonai and a few names are given. Some point to the first post-merger administrator himself, Mr. Das, but most people including the current leaders of the organising committee and the Raja agree that a person named Mangovind Mohanty was the driving force behind the establishment of Durga Puja in Bonai. Most people believe that he came from the coastal belt – in fact most people argue he was from Cuttack, while others believe he came from Balasore and settled in Bonai only a few years prior to independence. 48 Letter (No. 14939(23)) from Government of Orissa, Home Department, inquires about “Celebration of Durga Puja or Dussera” (10.09.1948) to all administrators. “Please report whether in your state in the past Durga Puja or Dussehra has been celebrated as a State function or as the Ruler’s private function. If it was celebrated as a state function the expenditure should have been met from the state revenues and there should have been a budget provision for the purpose. It is likely that though the celebrations were the private celebrations of the Ruler, he used to receive a grant from the state revenues.” 49 Reply (No. 10226) by Administrator, Bonai, to Additional Secretary to Government, Home Department, States Section, Cuttack (20.09.48).


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The Raja narrates that Mohanty “somehow caught hold of the Kumar Sahib” (the Raja’s younger brother) and his relations in the neighbouring state of Bamra as well as in Kalahandi. During “state time”, i.e. prior to merger, he applied with their help for a mining lease in the Koira area of Bonai under the name “Bonai Industrial Mines”. Although the company was a joint project with several shareholders and Mohanty as General Manager, it is said that he managed to dominate the Board of Directors. After independence the company, which even had an export license as the Raja stressed, was sold (presumably with a good profit). Given his history of migration Mohanty is widely considered a Katki, a person coming either from Cuttack itself or from the coastal area in the wider sense. He is also described as clever and educated, having graduated from Hindu University in Benares. The present Raja mentions that before merger Mohanty came frequently to the palace and read out the English newspaper to his father, then Raja, while he was being shaved – indicating that he was loyal as well as educated.50 Immediately before merger Mohanty, as loyal subject, approached the Raja for permission to establish a Durga Mandal. The Raja agreed, but – according to his son – demanded that he would vow to perform it continuously for 12 years, which he did, from 1948 to 1960, before passing on the responsibility to others. From an apparently rather small affair in the beginning, the worship, like Dossehra, has changed considerably over the last 60 years. As a noticeable feature it was always situated outside the fort, though the location shifted after a few years from the Girl’s High School to a place next to the bus stand, also associated with the local Rath Yatra and more specifically the place of Gundicha. While the origin of the Durga Puja is entangled in the processes of migration and the emerging mining industry in Bonai, the present transformations are also linked to the ongoing process of industrialisation. As the organisers state, only recently have celebrations come up “in such a big way”, i.e. because of donations from industrialists and owner of mines and steel-related plants that have been set up in Bonai. The Present Organisation of the mandap puja While initially a single person vowed to shoulder the responsibilities of the rituals, nowadays the worship is organised on a broader basis by the “Universal Durga Puja Committee”, which has according to the President and Secretary about 200 members out of whom, however, only around 15 are active. Significantly, most of the members are relative newcomers to Bonai society, i.e. twentieth-century migrants. Some older families from the fort also insist that certain of the Brahmins involved in the organisation e.g. those with the title Tripathy, have also settled 50 The loyalty is further demonstrated by the fact that even the widow of Mohanty, who had shifted to a posh area of Bhubaneshwar, came immediately after getting the news of the present Raja’s eldest son’s death.

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more recently in Bonai – in contrast to those Brahmins with the title Mishra who migrated to Bonai much earlier. In fact, when I discussed the list of members with the royal family and others in the fort, but also with the Head Pujari of the most important temple outside it – a man who usually has an excellent knowledge of social networks in Bonai – it turned out that they hardly knew any active members in the committee apart from the President and Secretary. The latter functionaries acknowledge the recent entry of many of their members into Bonai society, but maintain that everybody in Bonai is a migrant except a few tribal communities (Adibasi e.g. Bhuiyans, Gonds). Many members are businessmen, engaged in rather small-scale businesses, or are journalists, belonging to families originally from the coastal belt or Cuttack in particular – just like Mangovind Mohanty. However, politically as the President and Secretary stress, members belong to very different parties across the spectrum, ranging from BJP to CPM. In fact the President himself is known to have connections with the local MP and might be regarded as a political broker.51 Moreover, as both figures explained in an interview three years ago the budget for the ceremonies was around Rs 40,000 and only the present organisers managed to raise it to three lakhs.52 Initially, they argued, around 25 or 50 paisa had been collected from various families, but they now collect money from factory owners (particularly from the sponge iron factories53) and businessmen – among them, as some people say, descendants of Mangovind Mohanty – as well as from political leaders (MP, MLA), who contribute. Nevertheless, they still collect Rs 100 from members and others interested to contribute. In this sense there is also an element of a community ritual for the members, though it clearly goes beyond that. As President and Secretary state, the committee decides on a theme for the temporary temple such as Konark or the Taj Mahal. The temple is built with materials, particularly the bamboo poles, but also textiles, from local tent houses, but the workers erecting it come from West Bengal. The clay-murti is prepared in the steel town of Rourkela around 50km away and both, President and Secretary, believed that local potters would not be able to create such an idol. The rituals are conducted by three local head Brahmins and two “helpers”. However, some older people also argue that Mangovind Mohanty had brought in Brahmins from the coastal belt in order to perform the puja – at least for an initial period of two years, although the current President and Secretary of the Committee deny this.

51 He is sometimes described as a “henchman”. 52 However, there was no list of all expenditures or any budget available and there are people in Bonaigarh who suspect that there might be irregularities. 53 Direct-reduced iron is locally referred to as sponge iron.


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The Durga Puja Rituals Without going into the details of the worship, the rituals can be divided spatially into three parts. After welcoming the goddess and keeping her in the form of a branch of the bel-tree – a puja known as bel barni – on Sasthi, a day later, i.e. on Saptami, a murti of Naba Durga is created consisting of nine elements (e.g. banana leaves) representing nine deities.54 This sequence of rituals is known as nabapatrika in Bengal and elsewhere and indicates the close association of Durga with land and agriculture and fertility in the wider sense (see Khanna 2000). Armed with a sugar-stick and wrapped in a sari symbolising a woman, Naba Durga is carried in a procession to the river Brahmani by the side of the fort, where she takes a bath and a special flower known as “aparajita” (undefeated) is offered. The goddess is invoked through mantra before she is carried to the temporary temple (mandap), where a special sacrifice of a mixture of lentils, rice and honey known as maso (meat) is offered. At the same time the mandap (in 2007 a replica of the famous sun temple in Konark) is completed in the market area (patna), where the second and most important part of the rituals takes place culminating on Vijaydossomi. The clay-idol (mrunmaya murti) inside is brought to life in several steps on Saptami (giving of the eyes, giving of life/jiban and others). Here the victorious ten-armed Durga triumphs over the demon Mahisasur whom she is slaying and thus protects the world from evil. The goddess as warrior is seen as the dominant theme of the sacred Devi Mahatmya text which had been read aloud on the banks of the river a day earlier.55 Not only its temporary character but also the arrangements around the mandap stand in stark contrast to the worship inside the fort. This includes extensive illuminations starting already 100 metres before the temporary temple. For the last metres one walks over a red carpet. Though it is the main road of Bonaigarh it has been blocked for this purpose by several policemen who also try to control the substantial crowd, attracted by the sights and sounds, particularly during the most frequented times such as the evening ritual or arthi. On the day of Dossomi a group of drummers from Jharsuguda (capital of a neighbouring district) have been invited to play in front of the temple. Their origin from a relatively distant place is seen by some as a sign of high quality. However, the drummers have to compete with the devotional music coming from the loudspeakers. Every devotee is more or less pushed in and out of the mandap, i.e. having a few minutes only for the darshan. Policemen as agents of the state are supposed 54 The nine elements are banana leaves, saru (a root), haldi/turmeric, jayanti, bel, dalimba (a fruit), asoka, manasaru and dhan/paddy. The nine goddesses/gods are Brahmani, Kali, Durga, Kartika, Siva, Raktadantika, Sakarahita, Chamunda and Laxmi. For a detailed analysis of the rituals in Bengal see Khanna (2000). 55 On the text and the various traditions of the feminine sacred merging in it see Kinsley (1978).

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to guarantee that nobody stops on the stairs to the entrance, but rather keeps on moving, even if slowly. Microphones are supplied to the three Brahmins inside in order for them to be heard in an otherwise noisy environment. Thus, the technical equipment in- and outside is extensive and expensive. Nevertheless, some youngsters are less impressed and find the setting rather unspectacular as compared with more innovative and competitive mandaps elsewhere.56 The final stage of the rituals concerns the immersion of the murti in the nearby river. Some people argue this act should take place in the morning after Dossomi, while it is actually performed after sunset. The murti is carried through town to the banks of the river next to the Baneshwar temple – a place known as tirtha ghat – in the exact opposite direction to the initial procession. While it starts with verve and many participants walking or dancing in front of the murti, only a few accompany the goddess to the ghat and they are almost outnumbered by the police. It is also a brahmanical police officer who conducts a final puja before immersing the idol and offering dipa and dhupa to the goddess and distributing prasad to the worshippers. Only then can the idol be dismantled and handed over to the river, while afterwards a final Satyanarayan ritual is performed at the mandap by the officiating Brahmins in order to pray for forgiveness in case mistakes have been committed during the worship. Preliminary Comparison of Durga Puja and Dossehra Rituals Before coming to a conclusion let me just briefly list features shared by and distinguishing the rituals as performed in 2007. Common features: – Timing of rituals between sasthi and vijaydossomi – Ritual elements such as Bel barni puja and Bisarjan rituals (though different in form) as well as purification/final rites (Somnath/Satyanarayan) after main rituals – Brahmanical priests in charge of worship Main differences: – – – – – – –

Timing of rituals (Dossehra continuing till full moon) Conception of presence of deity Location of rituals and route of processions Form of idol(s) Kind of sacrifices (vegetarian/non-vegetarian) Patron/sacrifier Additional inclusion / exclusion of non-brahmanical priests

56 On the recent competitiveness, commercialisation, but also creativity in Bengal and particularly in Kolkota see Ghosh (2006) and Chatterjee (2008).


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Conclusion On the late morning of Vijaydossomi I was sitting together with the Raja on his veranda discussing the current rituals, when suddenly a young couple appeared carrying their baby. Slowly they walked around the buildings of the Rajbati – neither greeting us, though they must have seen us, nor saying anything else until the Raja called them. Inquiring about their whereabouts we came to know that they had come from Bhadrak (coastal Orissa). The husband had just started working in one of the newly-built sponge iron factories and on his free day the young family apparently opted for a stroll and a bit of sightseeing. Their behaviour differed strikingly from that of a Raja’s cousin appearing shortly after the couple had left. In order to greet the Raja on the occasion of Dossehra he not only showed him respect by touching his feet, but also brought a packet of cigarettes as salami – a customary gift to greet the Raja generally, i.e. not just in the case of relatives. In contrast, even when the young couple came to know about the Raja they did not feel obliged to show any sign of respect, not to mention any gift. I describe these two visits on Vijaydossomi because they seem to be emblematic for the co-existence of various frames of reference and as such resemble the distinction between Dossehra as state ritual and Durga Puja as relatively new and independent performances in Bonai. On the one hand there is the older tradition of pitha, considered to be a permanent seat of the goddess, and intrinsically linked to kingship – the king being empowered by the sword (patkhanda), which is believed to be a manifestation of the goddess. On the other hand, the ritual worship has been reduced – turned into “short-cut pujas” – or has even been abolished in many cases, in the process decreasing the power of the Raja too. As some people would say, the Raja does not have much power any more these days, because he does not perform the rituals for the gods properly. Referring to some of the most potent idols being captured from other chiefs or kings – just like the mohana khanda sword in Bonai – Schnepel argued: “In other words, to acquire an image and to keep it in one’s possession – that is what makes a man a king.”57 After the abolition of kingship and the privy purses one should reformulate this slightly differently: a king also has to arrange an appropriate worship in order to maintain the potency of the image and in order to legitimate his position. Here the increasingly popular mandap-rituals in the market area brought to Bonai from coastal Orissa and depicting the goddess Durga in the form of a temporary mrunmaya murti pose a challenge to the Raja by way of the appropriation of a goddess to whom he is intimately linked. Durga Puja, primarily sponsored by industrialists, traders and politicians, appears to outshine the fort-rituals. However, despite the 57 Schnepel 2002: 267.

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generous and impressive funding one should perhaps not overestimate the impact of Durga Puja vis-à-vis the royal tradition. As Östör stressed in relation to Dossehra/Durga Puja celebrations in Bengal: “The importance of the rājā’s pūjā is not due to its magnificence and magnitude. Rather it is due to the structural position of the pūjā in the ritual scheme of the town, the position of the royal myths in the indigenous ideology, and the role of the goddess in that ideology.”58 Though the committee members of the Durga Puja see their impressive rituals as independent of the fort-ceremonies, they would still nominally refer to the blessings of the Raja and thus to the wider royal framework – no matter how spatially and organisationally separated it is from the Dossehra rituals inside the fort. In fact while inquiring about the relation between the Organising Committee and the Raja I asked the President: “Q: Has the Raja been invited to the Durga mandap? A: No, there is no such tradition. Q: Has the Raja ever been a member of the committee? A: The Raja does not give time. So we do not keep him in the committee. But everything is run with his co-operation [blessing].” This indicates a somewhat ambivalent relationship. The Raja is not at all involved in the work of the committee and its decision-making process, but one finds a nominal reference to his authority. Similarly, the Raja argues that there is no need for him to get involved in the committee or even worship at the mandap, because he worships Durga in the palace. He also mentioned that the worship of Kant Mahapru (Kant Kumari) would be “sufficient” for him. Interestingly the Raja referred to the most popular part of the older Dossehra rituals, i.e. the visit of the Paudi Bhuiyan goddess travelling from the fringe of the kingdom to Bonaigarh and the palace. As the Raja emphasised, though the Government, specifically the Debottar Department is involved in the management of the temples of Lord Baneshwar and Lord Jagannath (though the trust is headed by the Raja) it has nothing to do with Kant Kumari and her rituals. “This is only between the Bhuiyan and me”, as the Raja said. It seems that he is consciously guarding his role in the most vibrant part of the palace-centred Dossehra celebrations. At the same time the Raja’s statement might also indicate an attempt to keep the post-merger state deliberately at bay.59 In contrast in the case of Durga Puja police as agency of the state was relatively visible – controlling the number of devotees entering the mandap etc. – even if no state officials were present during the 58 Östör 2004: 57. 59 Shah analysed the case of the Mundas trying to protect their sacral polity from the post-colonial state in Jharkhand – a case pointing in a similar direction.


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fort-centred rituals. Shrinking audiences may be a reason for the absence, but there might be more to it. Thus, the goddess Durga links and bridges both traditions, state rituals and “post-state” rituals, though her contextual manifestations are distinct. The same cipher Durga “[…] imbibing endemic features from each of the communities who patronise them”60 may empower and continue to legitimise the king, even if insufficiently, and may also empower, through a beneficial performance of the rituals, others, i.e. a broader committee, whose members might be regarded as local brokers mediating with a new appearance of the goddess as well as with new yet at times distant power-holders. In this way, worshipping Durga in Bonai might be seen as conservative, against change – something Gell had noticed in relation to many rituals.61 On Dossehra kingship is celebrated even after its formal abolition. Yet at the same time simultaneous rituals and the very same goddesses with their different contextual identities may very well embody change too.

60 Vasudevan 1990: 122. 61 Gell 1997: 437.

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References Biardieu, Madeleine 1989 [1981]. Hinduism. The Anthropology of a Civilization. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre et al. 1983 [1965]. Eine illegitime Kunst. Die soziale Gebrauchsweise der Photographie. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Chatterjee, Partha 2008. “Critique of Popular Culture”. Public Culture 20/2: 321–344. Eschmann, Anncharlott 1994 [1975]. “Sign and Icon: Symbolism in the Indian Folk Religion”. In: Gaya C. Tripathi & Hermann Kulke (eds.). Religion and Society in Eastern India. Eschmann Memorial Lectures. New Delhi: The Eschmann Memorial Fund: 211–233. Galey, Jean-Claude 1990. “Reconsidering Kingship in India: An Ethnological Perspective”. In: Jean-Claude Galey (ed.). Kingship and the Kings. Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers. Gell, Alfred 1997. “Exalting the King and Obstructing the State: A Political Interpretation of Royal Ritual in Bastar District, Central India”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3/3: 433–450. Ghosh, Anjan 2006. “Durga Puja: A Consuming Passion”. India Seminar 559: http://www.india-seminar.com/2006/559/559%20anjan%20ghosh.htm (30.04.2009). Goffman, Ervin 1981. “Bilder-Rahmen”. In: Ervin Goffman. Geschlecht und Werbung. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp: 45–103. Fuller, Chris J. 1992. The Camphor Flame. Popular Hinduism and Society in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hardenberg, Roland 2000. Ideologie eines Hindu-Königtums. Struktur und Bedeutung der Rituale des „Königs von Puri“ (Orissa, Indien). Berlin: Das Arabische Buch. Khanna, Madhu 2000. “The Ritual Capsule of Durgā Pūjā: An Ecological Perspective”. In: Christopher K. Chapple & Mary E. Tucker (eds.). Hinduism and Ecology. Cambridge: Harvard University: 469–498. Kinsley, David 1978. “The Portrait of the Goddess in the Devī-māhātmya”. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 46/4: 489–506. Kinsley, David 1987. Hindu Goddesses: Vision of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Kovacs, Anja 2004. “You don’t understand, we are at war! Refashioning Durga in the Service of Hindu Nationalism”. Contemporary South Asia 13/4: 373–388. Kulke, Hermann 2001 [1984]. “Tribal Deities at Princely Courts: The Feudatory Rājās of Central Orissa and their Tutelary Deities (istadevatās)”. In: Hermann Kulke. Kings and Cults. New Delhi: Manohar. Mallebrein, Cornelia 2004. “Entering the Realm of Durgā: Pātkhandā, a Hinduized Tribal Deity”. In: Angelika Malinar & Johannes Beltz & Heiko Frese (eds.). Text and Context in the History, Literature and Religion of Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar.


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Michaels, Axel & Cornelia Vogelsanger & Annette Wilke (eds.) 1996. “The Wild Goddess in South Asia”. In: Studia Religiosa Helvetica, Vol. 1, Zürich. Östör, Ákos 2004 [1980]. The Play of Gods. Locality, Ideology, Structure, and Time in the Festivals of a Bengali Town. New Delhi: Chronicle Books. Panda, Sasanka S. 2004. “Durga Worship in Upper Mahanadi Valley”. Orissa Review, Oct. 2004: http://orissagov.nic.in/e-magazine/Orissareview/oct2004/englishPdf/ durgaworshipinupper.pdf (07.04.09) Pfaff-Czarnecka, Joanna 1998. “A Battle of Meaning: Commemorating Goddess Durgā’s Victory over Demon Mahisā as a Political Act”. Asiatische Studien: Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Asiengesellschaft 52/2: 575–610. Schnepel, Burkhard 2002. The Jungle Kings. Ethnohistorical Aspects of Politics and Ritual in Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar. Shah, Alpa 2008 [2007]. “Keeping the State Away”. In: Lidia Guzy & Uwe Skoda (eds.). Power Plays. Politics, Rituals, Performances in South Asia. Berlin: Weissensee Verlag. Singh, Prabhas Kumar 2006. “Sakta Pithas of Purusottama Kshetra”. Orissa Review, June 2006: 91–95. Sontheimer, Günther-Dietz 1981. “Dasarā at Devaragudda: Ritual and Play in the Cult of Mailār/Khandobā”. In: Lothar Lutze (ed.). Drama in Contemporary South Asia: Varieties and Settings. Heidelberg: South Asia Institute (South Asian Digest of Regional Writing 10). Tambs-Lyche, Harald 1996. Power, Profit and Poetry: Traditional Society in Kathiawar, Western India. Delhi: Manohar. — 2004. The Feminine Sacred in South Asia. New Delhi: Manohar. Vasudevan, Sreelatha 1990. “Deity as a Social Prism: A Study of Korravai (Durga)”. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 51: 122–126.

Abstracts Section I: Ritual and Violence Margo Kitts Associate Professor of Humanities, Hawai’i Pacific University Poinē as a Ritual Leitmotif in the Iliad The essay explores poinē, usually translated as revenge or retribution, as a ritual leitmotif for kholos, which is a special member of the Homeric lexicon for anger. It explores the ways that Homeric anger and revenge traditionally have been explained, as well as what is missing from those explanations and why ritual analysis is helpful for understanding poinē as performed kholos. As a ritual leitmotif, poinē may communicate a profound sense of rupture and also may shape a response to that rupture. The argument derives from the text of the Iliad but also from recent thinking about ritual and emotion and relies implicitly on the notion of ritual poetics – itself a synthesis of ideas drawn from Bloch, Tambiah, Fernandez, Rappaport, and Jakobson. Scott Noegel Professor and Chair of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of Washington The Ritual Use of Linguistic and Textual Violence in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East This essay examines the ritual manipulation of words to violent ends and the ritual destruction of texts as found in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Mesopotamian sources. It places these acts within the context of expressed beliefs in the ontology of words, the believed inalterability of their written forms, and their potential for harnessing and/or unleashing illocutionary power. By examining these acts in conjunction with relevant divinatory texts in which one finds similar devices of word manipulation, in particular “word play” or punning, this essay further argues that the manipulation of words and destruction of texts represents more than literary, rhetorical, or performative style – it is the very mantic ritual means by which divine judgment is enacted. Insofar as the acts of lingual manipulation underscore the tie between a sign and its prediction or a human act and its divine consequence, they enact the process and demonstrate theological importance of lex talionis “the law of retribution.”

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Jarrod Whitaker Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions, Wake Forest University Empowering Men Ritually in Ancient India Drawing on recent theories in ritual and masculinity studies, this essay will consider the relationship between masculinity, violence, and ritual practices in the Rgveda, especially the poetic representation and ritualised construction of a warrior’s body. The essay focuses on the way in which poet-priests nurture and strengthen Indra’s body, as this highlights a significant ritual strategy wherein ritual experts wield power over their war-god, other ritual participants, and martially-inclined males. Moreover, the ritual construction of Indra’s body and depictions of his physical exploits communicate to warriors and chieftains a martial ideology that receives legitimization through ritual performances. Hence, men strategically sought bodily invigoration in the ritual arena, especially by drinking sóma, in order to align their own identities and violent actions with that of their war-god, while receiving fame and wealth in the ritual arena and among their communities. Rgvedic ritual practices and poetry thus link being manly with being aggressive and violent, while communicating to boys and adult males that they can only become real men through physical power, control, and domination. Peter Schalk Professor of History of Religions, Uppsala University Memorialisation of Martyrs in the Tamil Resistance Movement of Īlam/Laṃkā Patriotism among Īlattamils under Vēluppiḷḷai Pirapākaraṉ (1954-2009), leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), has comprised a complex concept with voluntary dying as the central ideological theme. This theme was formulated by him in, among other sources, Talaivariṉ cintaṉaikaḷ (Reflections of the Leader), issued in Tamil by his organisation in 1995 and 2005. Under conditions prevailing until 2009, the way to an independent nation state known as Tamilīlam was to be secured, when worst came to worst, by the voluntary death of so called “Great Heroes”, especially of members of the elite group of Great Heroes known as Black Tigers. They were expected to eliminate the obstacles that prevented the coming of Tamilīlam. Their use of their lives as weapons is described in this source (36:5) as “self-annihilation” and as “godly asceticism”. From that, I construct selfannihilation as godly asceticism. There was a prescribed and formalised process to attaining this “godly asceticism”, starting with a Black Tiger’s decision to join and attack and ending with his or her self-annihilation, using life as a weapon. The LTTE text can be downloaded in Tamil and in translations in English, German, Swedish and Siṃhala: http://publications. uu.se/abstract.xsql?dbid=8404.


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Werner Binder Junior Lecturer and Research Assistant in Sociology at the University of Konstanz Ritual Dynamics and Torture: The Performance of Violence and Humiliation at the Abu Ghraib Prison This study explores the use of ritual science for a deeper understanding of torture. The three leading questions are: How has the torture been conceptualized? Can torture be conceptualised as a ritual of violence? What is to be gained by such a conception? The starting point for answering the second and third questions is a thesis posited by Randall Collins: overt violence as a form of cruelty must be understood as a Durkheimian ritual. But this rather static notion of the ritual needs an update from performative approaches to the ritual. Otherwise, we not only fail to grasp the social dynamic of violent rituals, but also miss an important part of their symbolic meaning. In the second half of this contribution, the proposed concept of torture as a ritual will be tested on a case study: the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison depicted in the infamous photographs. Not only did the camera record those abuses, it was also part of the humiliating rituals themselves. They were, at least in part, staged for the camera. Not by chance, the first impression of some observers was that these images were pieces of modern performance art. Examining the acts depicted in the photos from the perspective of ritual performance will improve our understanding of their strange setting and the posing of the soldiers. Alexandra Argenti MD, PhD, and Lecturer in Medical Anthropology at University College, London The Fear of the Sorcerer: Finding a Peaceful Moment for a Sacrifice in Southern Sri Lanka Nearly a decade after the end of the civil war in Southern Sri Lanka, ritualists struggle to maintain the degree of public order necessary to carry out sacrificial rituals. This essay concerns the ways in which young men attempt to disrupt ritual events or sometimes add innovative elements to the performance of sacrifice. I focus on the ways in which the effigy, to be sacrificed to wild spirits in the course of healing rituals, is ritually abused, killed or sexually harassed by a generation of youngsters who grew up during the war. The content of such sacrificial innovation can be explained in reference to the wider history of sacrifice as well as recent forms of political violence. However, I use Brenneis’ typology of indirect communicative practices to explore contemporary sacrificial performance through the lens of local language ideology. I argue that such an approach – based on linguistic anthropology – elucidates processes of ritual change and the techniques that are used to create an indeterminate boundary between ritual and non-ritual violence, sacrifice and everyday low-intensity violence.

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Section II: Rituals of Power and Consent Hans Vorländer Professor of Political Theory and History of Political Thought, Institute of Political Science, Dresden University Verfassungen und Rituale in Vormoderne und Moderne (Constitutions and Rituals in the Pre-Modern and Modern Periods) Political science is rediscovering the significance of symbols and rituals. “Symbolic politics” or a “politics of symbols” was long regarded as wrong, irrational politics, or as politics that misled the public. Ritual politics, or a politics of ritual, was usually seen to have the connotation of a politics of empty gesture, an indecisive “as if” politics. While this understanding has continued to be dominant in everyday speech, political science has found a new analytical approach as a result of the “culturalistic turnaround” in the social and historical sciences, and of more recent approaches on the part of historiography and the theory of institutions. This new approach no longer regards symbols and rituals merely as an expressive surplus of political action and political communication, but considers these as constituent parts of politics and its institutional system. The intention here is to show that the modern democratic and constitutional state, too, does not consist only of abstract rationality and discursive reflexivity, in contrast to its widespread self-perception, but also requires symbolic and ritual forms and practices in order to generate agreement and recognition. Philippe Buc Professor of Mediaeval History, Department of History, Stanford University Religion, Coercion, and Violence in Medieval Rituals Examining ordeals, this chapter highlights the ambiguity of the medieval European attitude towards coercion within rituals. Acceptable for one's camp, and especially in the case of perceived holy causes, including holy war, coercion was highly damnable when perpetrated by one's opponent. Furthermore, the medieval threshold of tolerance for just violence differed also substantially from ours, a factor in particular of a different notion of the will and its freedom. As a limit case, it was fine to coerce the demons in Hell to prostrate themselves before God, rendering Him honor, regardless of their inner lack of love for the Deity; but coercion in ritual was also problematic if it generated hypocrisy and not inward conversion or conviction. These tensions, and emic understandings of coercion, render problematic the classic model of the ordeal owed to Peter Brown, and the unfalsifiable lay theology of sacrificial violence spun by René Girard.


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Wojciech Fałkowski Professor of Medieval History, Institut of History, Warsaw University. Since 2008 on leave at Paris – Sorbonne as Professeur Associé Humility and Humiliation of the King – Ritual and Emotions The paper presents mutual links between humility and humiliation in a case of the prince in the situation of crisis of his kingdom and governance. In this context there are discussed three cases of humility (French king Robert the Pious, Polish duke Casimir the Just and Norman duke William II) and another three examples of humiliation (biblical king David, Trojan king Priam and Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious). The analysis of the examples presented above has led to a conclusion describing the dependence between ritual behaviours, the experience of emotions and the public behaviours of the ruler. The humiliation of a ruler might lead to a restriction, or even loss of his capability to act on the basis of his personal authority. Ritual helped to keep emotions and reactions under control and restrict or even prevent spontaneous behaviour. On the other hand however the utilization of ritual freed emotions, allowed the reference to feelings and transformed them into part of a public communication. The third function of ritual, important in this context was the creation of interpretive frameworks which gave emotions a significance in accordance with the intentions of the participants in the ceremonies and imposed the manner of interpretation of events and behaviours. Apostolos Spanos Associate Professor, Department of Religion, Philosophy and History, University of Agder, Norway Imperial Sanctity and Politico-Ecclesiastical Propaganda in Byzantium (Ninth–Fifteenth Century) One of the most striking elements in Byzantine political history is the close and strong relationship between State and Church. The study of a number of textual sources shows that both the State and the Church – or a part of the Church – used (or at least tried to do so) canonisation as a tool for realization of other purposes than the pure theological, ecclesiastical and liturgical ones. Such a deduction is supported by cases of sanctification of emperors and other royals, as well as of other “political” saints, which are presented briefly in the first part of the article. The second part focuses on the liturgical celebration of three Byzantine emperors, namely Nikephoros II Phokas (963–969), John III Vatatzes (1221– 1254) and Manuel II Palaiologos (1391–1425), and places the composition of the texts celebrating them as saints in its ecclesiastical and/or historical context.

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Joachim Quack Joachim Friedrich Quack is professor for Egyptology at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg. Political Rituals: Sense and Nonsense of a Term and its Application to Ancient Egypt Egyptologists tend traditionally to be interested in royal rituals, mainly in their function as a medium of political propaganda. The performance, and even more the monumental depiction in the form of temple decoration, are seen as a medium for stabilising and legitimising rule. In this perspective, religion is reduced to a role as a political tool. However, it must be asked critically whether such an approach is sufficient and appropriate for analysing Ancient Egyptian rituals. One important point is the question of audience. While some large festivals where crowds gathered would constitute convincing cases of sending out political messages, in many other cases royal rituals were performed in much more restricted circles, or even by the king almost alone. Furthermore, it will have to be asked what meaning the category of “political” as such can have for a civilisation like Ancient Egypt, and with which other terms it can be set in contrast. I will seek for a re-evaluation of the place religion held for the ruler, including the general question of temple building and decoration. This will include a closer look at the way inscriptions with content we tend to see as political reveal themselves, on careful analysis, to be subjected to the global topic of religion and cult. My final goal will be to find a more appropriate tool for analysing royal rituals, which will allow a more fine-tuned evaluation. Peter van Nuffelen Professor of Ancient History at the Department of History, University of Ghent Beyond Bureaucracy: Ritual Mediation in Late Antiquity Attention has recently been drawn to the role public rituals and ceremonies play in the Later Roman Empire (284-610 A.D.), especially acclamations and the adventus ceremony (entry of a ruler into a city). They are usually described as staged events, controlled by the state and the emperor, with little room for spontaneity. Equally, these ceremonies are considered to be part of a political system that focused on the emperor. As such, their function is described as fostering loyalty and political stability. This paper advances a much more dynamic interpretation and argues that imperial ceremonies should be seen as part of the wider role ritual played in Late Antiquity. Ritual functioned on all levels of society as a form of communication to mediate hierarchical relations, and not just as exercises in imperial loyalty. This also implies that rituals and ceremonies were far from being entirely staged. On the contrary, spontaneous events, such as riots, can be shown to have followed a ritual pattern, and staged ceremonies demanded a high degree of improvisation from the emperor. The paper will discuss three examples: acclamations, riots, and religious ceremonies in Constantinople.


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Veit Rosenberger Professor for Ancient History, Department of History, Erfurt University Strange Signs, Divine Wrath, and the Dynamics of Rituals: The Expiation of Prodigies in the Roman Republic Prodigies were seen to be unusual events that announced a disturbance of the pax deorum and the anger of the gods. Prodigies were always unfavourable omens. They occurred at random times within a year, did not refer to any one person, but to the res publica, did not predict any future developments, and were atoned for collectively by the State at the start of the new year. Each of the following phenomena could be seen as a prodigium: strokes of lightning; monstrous births, whether human or animal; wild animals penetrating the city area of Rome; signs in the sky such as eclipses, meteors, and comets; and unusual substances raining down, such as blood, milk, or stones. If the prodigies were an expression of the violation of a boundary, then the boundary was reconstituted by means of the rituals. The search for the correct ritual in the case of a prodigy shows hardly any recognisable automatisms. Even when the signs repeated themselves over a period of centuries, enquiry was made of the priests. Only in the case of stones raining down did there exist a repeated ritual of expiation, the novendiale sacrum. For a period of nine days, feria were declared, during which work and legal business had to cease. Paul Töbelmann Research Fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre 619 “Ritual Dynamics”, Heidelberg University The Limits of Ritual: Mistakes and Misconceptions, Lies and Betrayals at Peace Conferences in Fifteenth Century France The article analyses circumstances under which political ritual in the Middle Ages failed to bring about what it was supposed to do. While many scholars, especially in Germany, stress its confidence-building and trust-inducing nature, the article claims that there are many instances in which the political context negated this function of ritual in politics. Misunderstandings are only the smallest part of this. As is shown with the help of several examples from fifteenth century France, political actors sometimes hold such mistrust and ill will for one another that the ritualisation of personal encounters must take security issues into account first and foremost. Moreover, after the assassination of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, in 1419 during peace talks conducted in highly ritualised circumstances, the high nobility of France became exceedingly wary of ritualisation itself. In a seemingly paradoxical turnabout, the ritualisation of peace talks, which was designed to set opponents at their ease and thus reduce tension, came to be regarded with suspicion, as a potential trap. The article argues that this effect is due to the nature of what Humphrey & Laidlaw (1994) called the ‘ritual stance’, which is an inner commitment and thus not verifiable to an outside observer.

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Peter Seele Professor for Economics of Religion, Center for Religion, Economy and Politics, University of Basel, Switzerland Is There an Economic Benefit in Participating in Rituals? An Institutional Economics Analysis of Transaction Costs and Institutional Stability Whereas mainstream economics mostly ignores cultural issues and shuts out culture as an externality, alternative economics, such as institutional economics, takes cultural embeddedness into account as economically relevant. Rituals allow for an analysis of cultural behaviour in economic terms, in which institutional stability, transaction costs, or the reduction of complexity form subjects of enquiry. Nevertheless, from an economist’s point of view, rituals as an object of investigation only make sense if we uphold the methodological constraints of economics, such as self-interest and methodological individualism. The key question therefore is this: is it possible to maintain economic principles? One conclusion could be that concepts such as altruism do not fit into ritual economics, if we take an economist’s point of view as our point of departure. The conceptual considerations will be exemplified by an analysis of rituals of pilgrimage, examining the benefits for the individual and collective choice. The economic concept of competitive advantages will be employed to shed light on the nexus of economics and culture/religion. Daniel Schläppi Researcher in Early Modern History, Historisches Institut der Universität Bern [Political Rites, the Sale of Offices, and Corrupt Plebiscites: the Ritualised Transfer of Resources in the old Swiss Confederation (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries)] Politische Riten, Ämterkauf und geschmierte Plebiszite: Ritualisierter Ressourcentransfer in der Alten Eidgenossenschaft (17. und 18. Jahrhundert) In the communal country democracies of pre-modern Switzerland, political rituals were of great importance. The gatherings of the voters were ceremonially arranged according to traditional rules, and controlled by the political elite; the sale of office and bribery for votes were the norm. Research has evaluated the democratic character of the country communities with corresponding skepticism. Anyone enquiring only into political participation, understanding by this direct influence on political decisions, will misjudge the deeper significance of proto-democratic procedures and plebiscitary rituals, for these served to transfer resources vertically. Here, the rank and file participated primarily in a material sense. These questionable practices were based on the idea of the community as a corporation whose full members had a right to personal profit. Interpreted as corruption from a modern perspective, the ritualised transfer of resources proves itself to be an essential factor of momentum in political legitimation and social collectivisation.


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Angelo Torre Professor of Early Modern History, Department of Public Policies and Public Choice (POLIS), Università del Piemonte Orientale “A. Avogadro” – Alessandria, Novara, Vercelli Ritual and Jurisdiction in Northern Italy (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) In the last thirty years, a new approach in the history of continental European law (jus commune) has changed our understanding of the meaning and function of ritual in old regime societies, and opened the way to new perspectives on the analysis of action. The new legal historiography has emphasised that medieval and early modern Europeans perceived and identified power through jurisdiction. A variety of powers manifested themselves in a variety of jurisdictions, which intersected and overlapped within one territory, and produced a multiplicity of legal procedures. Not only did this jurisdictional culture generate sources, but it permeated a widespread culture of possession, being at the base of a large number of ritual and ceremonial practices which aimed at demonstrating possessory rights in order to gain access (collective, corporate, individual) to resources. They were recorded in the sources and were responsible for processes of legitimation of actors. I will illustrate this analytical perspective through a case study from northern Italy during the Old Regime, which will show ritual processes of production of locality, of activation of vegetal resources, and of negotiation of space.

Section III: Usurping Ritual Gerald Schwedler Lecturer and Research Assistant in Medieval History at Zurich University, Switzerland Usurpation. Term and Concept: A Missing Entry to the “Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe” The paper offers a general overview of the semantic field of “usurpation” and tries to give answers to the question, what was meant with this term when it was used at different stages of History. The analysis ranges from the first appearance of the word in Latin in Antiquity, its subsequent integration into medieval European languages such as French, English, or German, and the various changes in its meaning in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Methodologically the contribution is intended to apply the approach of historical semantics, a field of study initiated by Reinhart Koselleck. Technically the contribution is shaped according to the model of the articles in the dictionary Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. It is not only intended to give insight into the changes of meaning that a word like “usurpation” underwent, but also to differentiate various contexts (such as legal or literary texts) where the meaning remained stable or was prone to fast adaptation. One of the striking results seems, that the term combines a legally binding allegation, denying and rejecting legitimacy of use and possession, and on the other hand it seems to be a fundamental incrimination used in political debates.

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Fabrice De Backer Research Assistant for Philology and Oriental History at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, and the Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, France Fragmentation of the Enemy in the Ancient Near East during the Neo-Assyrian Period The paper deals with the world of the Neo-Assyrian Kingdom, whose rulers practiced extreme cruelty against their newly conquered enemies. Interpreting these practices as a ritualised expression of political power, the author highlights the models of action to which the Neo-Assyrian kings adapted their behaviour. The dismemberment of the enemies’bodies has to be linked with the myths of the Mesopotamisn deities and heroes fighting evil and building a new world order. Therefore the kings usurped the status and the identity of the deities, through trying to re-enact the fictional mythological achievements in order to impose their control on real political entities, and consequently to create a new order suitable for their interests. The ususrpation of rituals and, by association, of the identity these rituals communicated in public, is studied in the context of the relations between macro- and micro-cosmos and opens up new perspsectives for the understanding of political thought in primitive societies. Patrizia Arena and Fabian Goldbeck Junior Lecturer at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy Research Assistant for Ancient History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany Salutationes in Republican and Imperial Rome: Development, Functions, and Usurpations of the Ritual Every morning, Roman citizens went to the homes of the elite of their city and greeted them. These salutationes were an opportunity to present personal concerns and wishes to the well-off members of the community. These visits served the persons visited to acquire support among the citizenry. At the same time, a large number of visitors underlined the social position of the members of the upper classes. To what changes was this specific form of ritualised meeting subject? The thesis presented here is that daily salutationes were first used to generate might and for purposes of state representation in the late Republic. Older forms of interaction in the Roman home were taken up in a new manner and re-interpreted to this end, i.e. usurped, in a way. The salutatio experienced a second re-interpretation after the introduction of the monarchy under Augustus, at the end of the first century B.C. Now people not belonging to the senatorial elite began to claim the ritual of salutatio for themselves. At the same time, the significance of the salutatio changed in Imperial times. Its representative function became ever more important, while political influence could no longer be obtained by means of a large number of morning visitors. The ritual of salutatio matutina at the court of imperial Rome is one of the rituals inherited from the late Republican tradition, and re-used with fundamental changes in its meaning and function. The ritual played an important role in responding to the needs of power within the court, such as self-presentation and legitimacy, not only of the emperors, but also of other important members of the imperial family and of the court. It became a


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way for the pretenders to power and for the women of the domus Augusta to show their status, to legitimise their acts, and to consolidate their power. A re-examination of the salutationes to Seianus, Livia, and Agrippina (and later, Plautianus) allows us to consider whether the concept of usurpation of ritual manifestations of power can be properly applied to these cases, and to analyse the dynamic relations between ritual and power. Agrippina, for example, attempted to establish a place for herself in her son’s regime and received daily salutationes in her house. Nero, understanding the importance of her behaviour and of this symbolic ritual, excluded Agrippina from her close contact with the men: she was asked to move out of the palace proper to Antonia’s house, and was deprived of the privilege of having her premises guarded by excubiae. Eleni Tounta Professor for Medieval History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Usurpation, Acceptance, and Legitimacy in Medieval Europe: An Analysis of the Dynamic Relations between Ritual Structure and Political Power This paper focuses on several cases of usurpation of political power in medieval Europe, mainly in the Western Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It aims to analyse the ritual behaviour of the usurper, and thus to provide new arguments concerning the perception of the notions of usurpation, acceptance, and legitimacy in the Middle Ages, both from the point of view of the usurper and that of the legal ruler. The starting point of the paper is the examination of the ritual structure which the usurper is obliged to take over in order to defend his claims and to acquire the necessary legitimating authority for his acts. The transformation and the perception of the meaning of the common ritual forms to suit contemporary conditions is the second subject of the paper. On this basis, the attempt is made to examine whether new ritual forms are invented in order to cover the lack of legitimacy and to create a political net of acceptance. Finally, from the perspective of the dynamic relations between ritual and power, the paper tries to illuminate which ritual structures, with their ideological connotations, define political legitimacy, and to evaluate their role in medieval political thought and practice. Georg Gresser Lecturer for Church History and Patrology at the Otto-Friedrich Universität, Bamberg, Germany Usurping Space – Usurping Ritual: Early Medieval Synods in Comparison Ever since Biblical times the question of where to sit has played an important role – the right seat, the suitable seat, the seat allowed, the usurped seat or the seat honorarily conferred. Who may sit on the right, who on the left of the lord? How does the group react to the demand of the individual for a certain, possibly even privileged seat? What rights, what might, what structures can be read from the organisation of seating? Which rituals are to be observed upon taking these seats or leaving them?

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Using concrete examples from the enormous pool of reports on the most varied “seating problems” at the Papal synods, I would like to make some basic observations on a ritual dynamic of seating in situations with a communicative character. Manipulation, deviation from the “script”, tradition versus development, protocol and its disregard: all of these areas are involved in this subject and seem suitable to make clear the creation and further development of a ritual, a ritual to which we are equally as subject as people were in the past Herrmann Kamp Professor for Medieval History at the Universität Paderborn, Germany New Masters and Old Rituals: Edward I, Robert the Bruce, Philip the Fair, and the Role of Rituals with Conquest In the period around the year 1300, in Scotland, Flanders, Sicily, and elsewhere, new rulers came to power, through conquest, usurpation, or the assertion by force of doubtful hereditary titles, claims to the throne, or executions of sentence. In so doing, these new rulers based their power not only on force, or the establishment of a new apparatus of rule, but attempted also to be recognised as natural rulers. This contribution will analyse, from a comparative perspective, what role was played by the rituals of founding and stabilising power that were practised in each country, and how they were used, adapted, changed, or abolished. Christian Jaser Research Assistant for Early Modern History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany Usurping the Spiritual Sword: Performative and Literary Alienations of Ritual Excommunication Ritual excommunication can be understood as an exceptionally harsh way to apply the spiritual sword of the church. It establishes the social and spiritual liminality of a given or unknown offender by means of performative speech acts, cursing formulas, gestures of throwing, and extinguishing candles. The high medieval discourses of canonical law, liturgy, and exemplary literature sought to systematise its application and to reserve the symbolic power to curse by “bell, book, and candle“ exclusively for bishops. Concomitantly, church synods dealt with the usurpation of this oral-gestural staging by lay people. Inversive practices such as the counter-excommunication of ecclesiastics with surrogate objects (charcoal, wisps) were forbidden, as well as the misuse of biblical cursing formulas for magical purposes (praying to death). Furthermore, the practice of ritual excommunication provided the subject matter for literary alienations, which shifted its transformative power to metaphorical, parodical, and polemical contexts. This paper will discuss these modes of usurping the spiritual sword as a dialectical dynamic between corroboration and invalidation.


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Christoph Dartmann Professor for Medieval History at theWestfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany The Usurper in the City: Rituals of Power in Italian City-States Rituals postulate legitimacy; those in power and their subjects are supposed to agree, in festive form, to recognise the distribution of roles. Any deviation from this must seem an illegitimate usurpation of power. In the Italian cities of the High and Late Middle Ages, the competition for power could never be laid to rest. The municipalities had appeared themselves as usurpers of traditional positions of power; in the thirteenth century, several social groups rivalled each other to attain key positions. The gradual transition to the Signorie from the mid-thirteenth century onward, which was long seen as the transition from a democracy to a tyranny, simply marked a further stage in the constant experimentation with political structures. The question of the usurpation of power, and the consequences of this for political ritual, thus leads to the question, to which of the political relations negotiated in the ritual is legitimacy ascribed or denied? Is usurpation a suitable concept for precisely analysing the continual rivalry for political power? Marian Füssel Professor for Early Modern History at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany Rituals in Crisis? The Dynamics of German Academic Ritual in the Age of Enlightenment Combining a historical with a sociological perspective, the paper deals with the question of whether anti-ritualists movements tend to establish new forms of ritualisation. The starting point is the abolition of traditional German academic rituals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries due to social evolution in the Age of Enlightenment. The new cultural and social challenges resulted in changes to the ceremonial life of the universities, in particular to traditional ritual academic behaviour. However, this phenomenon consists of a usurpation of power, since, instead of annihilating the ceremonial academic tradition, it adapted traditional ritual practices to meet the learning and scientific needs of the new social system, thus creating alternative forms of symbolic communication. Susan Richter Junior Research Group Leader in the Field of Early Modern History at the Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg, Germany The Prussian Royal Coronation: A Usurpation of Ceremonial? The author considers the Prussiam royal coronation ceremony of Frederick III (1701) as a usurpation of ritual elements from various different European ceremonies. At that time, ceremonies in each state were unique and belonged to the public law of each state. In addition, in the sense of it being a symbol of law, a ceremonial possessed a normative quality. How could such usurpation be interpreted? What were the political and legal consequences

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of such a decision? This paper deals with the relation between usurpation and the construction of new rituals: was a new ritual created, even whem it was a compilation of already existing elements? The interdependence between the use of ritual and identity is thereby raised. Did a multi-European crowning ceremonial have consequences for the political identity of Prussia? Cord Arendes Akademischer Rat in the Field of Contemporary History at the Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg, Germany Rituals in Twentieth-Century Dictatorships: Jean-Bédel Bokassa and His Central African “Empire”, 1976-1979 The short twentieth century between the disruptions of 1917 and 1989/90 confronts us with different phases, marked by ideological seduction or even potential totalitarianism. In addition, the usurpation of state power in modern totalitarian systems does not work without the adaptation and the legitimising effects of political rituals. For Fascism, National Socialism, and Stalinism, this connection seems obvious. If one requires better established or more conventional forms of rituals to prove the attachment to political structures, and to establish or legitimise stable social acceptance networks, then the despotic African regimes of the 1960s and 1970s are interesting enough in their way: Along with the dynamic interrelation between ritual and state power, we can often find an additional addressee of the ritual: the former colonial power. As can be shown in the coronation festivities in 1977, “Emperor” Jean Bédel Bokassa fell back on traditionally European or “Napoleonic” rituals, in this case, a coronation celebration with insignia such as an imperial orb or eagle sceptre. National, meaning traditional African, elements can hardly be found. However, the later failure of the dictator did not lie in the lack of dynamism in the rituals themselves, but in their disregard.

Section IV: State and Ritual in India Hermann Kulke Professor Emeritus, University of Kiel, Germany Ritual Sovereignty and Ritual Policy: Some Historiographic Reflections There is general agreement that the performance of grand royal rituals like the Vedic Rajasuya or Mahanavami in medieval south Indian Vijayanagara is an essential aspect of Hindu kingship. However, since C. Geertz’ invention of the “Theatre State” in Bali and B. Stein’s rather rigid distinction between “ritual sovereignty” and “actual political control” as a basic feature of the early medieval south Indian state, the political meaning and function of these rituals have been contested. The introductory paper to this panel intends to evaluate critically these concepts and to outline the political significance of various aspects of these


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rituals in their broader context of an intended “ritual policy”, as an essential means of actual political integration and control. Braja Dulal Chattopadhyaya Former Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Festivals as Ritual: An Exploration into Convergence of Ritual Traditions and the State in Early Medieval India One of the most enduring phenomena in the political history and geography of the Indian subcontinent is the constant expansion of the frontier of the state society towards mostly pre-state local communities and polities, and their integration within a larger political and cultural framework. At the level of cultural transactions, rituals were symbolic of the way the state power could reach out to communities and social classes which were constituents of the state. In the early medieval phase, a major pattern, which is noticeable in imperial and other political formations in certain areas, was the centrality of the temple, and the ritual cycles associated with it, as the point of convergence of the ritual aspects of the state. This particular presentation will focus on the present regions of Bengal and Assam in the early medieval period, and attempt to explore the possible relationship between festivals, rituals, and the state. It will look into details of a particular major festival, the Sabarotsava, the rituals associated with the festival, their ‘brahmanization’ for acceptance by elites, and their probable connection with regional powers. Ritual modifications relate both to cultural and political processes, and a detailed study of Sabarotsava, a religious festival originally associated with tribal groups of the region, may be extremely rewarding from the point of view of the problem under study. Dr. Tilman Frasch Senior Lecturer (Asiatic History), Manchester Metropolitan University, UK Buddha’s Tooth Relic: Contesting Rituals and the Early State in Sri Lanka The tooth relic enjoys a special place in the history of the Sri Lankan state. For centuries, it determined the sacred space of the Sri Lankan capital, while its ritual (now known as the Esala Perahara) grew in complexity to reflect the development of of the social and political order of the state. However, although looking back upon a long and well-documented history, the festival and ritual of the tooth relic was invented at a crucial point in Sri Lanka’s history, when the state as a whole was in danger of being obliterated. The new cult centred on the tooth relic superseded not only rituals associated with other relics, but also festivals and holidays dedicated to saints or eminent members of the community of monks (sangha). Investigating the various rituals and festivals of early Sri Lanka, this presentation will attempt to map the ritual landscape of Anuradhapura and, in a second step, explore the factors that led to the ritualistic predominance of the tooth relic.

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Bhairabi Prasad Sahu Professor of Ancient Indian History and Dean International Relations, University of Delhi, India Rituals, Royalty, and Rajya in Early Medieval Eastern India Rituals, royalty, and rajya in the early sub-regions of Orissa were interrelated in numerous ways, and helped in sustaining the socio-political order. The relationships encompassed the political; the economic, and the social dimensions as well. Rituals, religious forms, and ceremonies, in conveying meanings repeatedly negotiated in the cultural domain, tried to secure conformity and adherence to the emerging order. The community-royalty relationship of subordination and domination was influenced through ritual enactments. Creation of a certain ideology or perception of kingship insured royalty against opposition. Deities and temples enhanced the autochthonous or ”Hindu” profile of kingship. Notwithstanding the local character of most deities, their accommodation in the pan-Indian pantheons needs recognition. The relationship of rituals with royalty and community across sub-regions needs investigation. The changing forms of patronage and legitimation can provide significant insights into social processes and structural change, insofar as the two move in tandem. Chronologically, the paper spans the period up to and including the eleventh century, and is mostly based on inscriptional evidence; supplemented by archaeological data. Ulrike Teuscher Ph.D., Asian History, Göttingen, Germany Creating Ritual Structure for a Kingdom: The Case of Medieval Mewar Medieval inscriptions, either in stone or in copper, are almost always protocols, as well as parts of donative rituals. They provide us with an opportunity to see these rituals “from within“, in their context of a certain time, place, and cultural and political setting. Although many elements are drawn from other rituals, as entities they are singular for a certain moment in history, and, of course, as such they are also subject to change. The inscriptions belong to royal cults in a wider sense (including underlords, officials etc.), and can have, in different ways, a function which is often loosely termed “legitimation”. The inscriptions studied here come from a group of regional and subregional kingdoms of medieval Western India. Between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries, a largely common culture with a specific set of rituals developed there, which was interrupted by the conquest of the Sultan of Delhi around 1300. Afterwards, one of the successor states, Mewar, reconstructed its elite culture, and with it a whole range of rituals in a veritable tour de force within a very short time, thereby combining its perception of the past with new elements according to the radically changed political situation.


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Ghanshyam S. Lal Devra Former Vice Chancellor and Professor of History and Indian Culture, V.M. Open University, Kota (Rajasthan), India Evolution of Antagonistic Rituals in Pre-Modern Societies of Asia: A Case Study of Saka and Jauhar The study of the ritual of Śaka, a performance of sacrifice consensually and jointly taken against a powerful enemy for the defence of land and family honour, characterised the political and military culture of some ethnic groups of India during the medieval period. It is still obscured with controversies, chiefly centred on questions of chronological vagueness and it being associated with the theory of foreign invasions. Recently, the exposition of material belonging to those ruling houses of Rajasthan who claim their ancestry from those tribes once settled in the frontier regions of India and Khurasan, has shown that such rituals were initiated long before the advent of Islam. Jadams or Bhatis, belonging to the IndoScythian stock, had performed Śaka against Huns, Arabs, Turks, and the local powers of India and Afghanistan. Parthians from the eastern parts of Iran had also followed this practice. Genealogies of such groups confirm that they, in the later periods, became Rajputs and Tajiks, respectively, on the Indian and Central Asian side. Such transformations at the different cultural levels elaborate that Śaka had been performed from the fear of loss of power, as well as from reservations about degradation in social status. Chandi Prasad Nanda Professor of History, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, India Rethinking “Politico-Ritual States”: Sitting on the Lap of a Bhuiyan: Coronation Ceremonies in Keonjhar The paper seeks to focus on aspects of political ritual and ritual enactment of power and authority by studying the implications of royal coronation rituals in the context of Keonjhar, a former feudal state of Orissa. Focusing on this, the study examines Geertz’s interpretation of “ritual and ceremony” as “theatre and play”. The kingdom of Keonjhar was ruled by the Kshatriya Bhanja kings, who were able to secure internal legitimacy for their authority over the tract and who retained their power by adopting a ritual policy in which tribal values and customs had an overriding and dictatory association. Given the predominance of the Bhuyian tribe in Keonjhar, the “king of the kingdom” could only rule over the territory after being symbolically installed on the lap (throne) of a Bhuyian chief. Moreover, as he reached out to the tribal populace in the course of consolidation of his rule, many tribal forms of rituals became Hinduised. Simultaneously, the process also witnessed the tribalisation of Hindu concepts. The paper probes the whole gamut of relationships between the populace and the royal centre, as well as power and pomp, in order to understand the fundamental relationship that exists between ritual and politics in a specific context.

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Biswamoy Pati Associate Professor in Modern Indian History, University of Delhi, India The Diverse Implications of Legitimacy: Rituals, State and the Common People in Colonial Orissa, 1800s–1940s While examining the theme of Rituals and the State, my paper explores the diversities involved with the process of legitimacy, and illustrates its interactive and dynamic characteristics. Comprising two sections, the paper first focuses on the way the colonial state and the internal ruling classes (viz. princes and zamindars) devised rituals to legitimise their rule. These ranged from the attempted establishment of the associations with caste or land structure, cults, and myths, to practices involving complex, ritualised negotiations with the adibasi or outcast population. The basic drive was to “order” society in order to tap its resources. The second section focuses on how the common people challenged the exploiting classes in fascinating ways that reflect an entire range of subversive rituals. What is normally not taken into account by historians is the way the common people re-worked some of these practices to not only undermine the ruling classes, but even challenge and attempt to subvert their dominance. Besides being intimately associated with the day-to-day survival strategies of the poor, some of these had long-term implications, being distinctly associated with the anti-colonial/feudal aspirations. Dr. Margret Frenz Lecturer in Global History, University of Leicester, UK Mahabali Returns to Kerala: Rituals of Sovereignty in Past and Present This paper explores the changing nature of ritual sovereignty in South India since the early modern period. Of particular interest are the founding legends and their interpretation by the rulers of Tiruvitamkur (Travancore). The first part of the paper focuses on the examination of these legends. This is followed by an analysis of the practice of ritual sovereignty as an integral part of kingship, such as the Onam procession, which still takes place in Tiruvanantapuram every year. Finally, the paper looks at the current practice of the procession, which attracts large numbers of tourists. It will be argued that what once primarily signified ritual sovereignty has now become a unifying factor in the formation of identity in Kerala’s social life.


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Uwe Skoda Assistant Professor, South Asian Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark State Rituals after the Abolition of the State: Dossehra Rituals in Bonai / Orissa before and after Merger The paper attempts to compare Dossehra rituals in the late 1930s and present-day practices. An album of photographs commissioned by the last ruling Chief, and subsequent interviews with still-living participants, form the basis for an analysis of pre-merger rituals. An anthropological observation of the former state rituals in the palace, as well as of the relatively recently introduced Durga Puja rituals performed simultaneously outside the palace, reveal a quite dramatic change in recent years. In stark contrast to the 1930s, palace rituals have been either abolished or subsequently considerably reduced, though the present Raja still privately sponsors a number of rituals for various deities. However, in the wake of recent industrialisation in western Orissa, the initially small Durga Puja, interestingly introduced to Bonai in 1948 by an “outsider”, increasingly overshadows rituals related to the palace, and – being generously funded by industrialists – attracts larger crowds.

Ethno-Indology. Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals Edited by Axel Michaels

4: Martin Gaenszle, Jörg Gengnagel (Eds.)

Words and Deeds

Visualizing Space in Banaras: Images, Maps, and the Practice of Representation

Hindu and Buddhist Rituals in South Asia Edited by

Jörg Gengnagel Ute Hüsken Srilata Raman

2006. 358 pages, 94 ill., hc ISBN 978-3-447-05187-3 € 48,– (D) / sFr 83,–

Harrassowitz Verlag

5: Maha-deva Veda-ntin

1: Jörg Gengnagel, Ute Hüsken, Srilata Raman (Eds.)

Words and Deeds Hindu and Buddhist Rituals in South Asia

2005. 299 Seiten, 10 Abb., br ISBN 978-3-447-05152-1 € 48,– (D) / sFr 83,–

2: Ute Hüsken, Srilata Raman-Müller (Eds.)

Ritual in South Asia Text and Context In preparation.

3: Niels Gutschow, Axel Michaels

Handling Death

The Dynamics of Death Rituals and Ancestor Rituals among the Newars in Bhaktapur, Nepal With Contributions by Johanna Buss and Nutan Sharma and a Film on DVD by Christian Bau 2005. 216 Seiten, 140 Abb., 1 DVD, gb ISBN 978-3-447-05160-6 € 68,– (D) / sFr 116,–

Mı-ma-msa-nya-yasamgraha ˙ ˙ A Compendium of the principles

of Mı-ma-msa˙ Edited and translated by James Benson 2010. 908 pages, hc ISBN 978-3-447-05722-6 Ca. € 148,− (D) / sFr 250,−

6: Niels Gutschow, Axel Michaels

Growing Up

Hindu and Buddhist Initiation Rituals among Newar Children in Bhaktapur, Nepal With a film on DVD by Christian Bau 2008. 307 pages, 138 ill., 17 maps, hc ISBN 978-3-447-05752-3 € 64,– (D) / sFr 109,–

7: Jörg Gengnagel

Visualized Texts Sacred Spaces, Spatial Texts and the Religious Cartography of Banaras 2010. Ca. 358 pages, 20 ill., hc ISBN 978-3-447-05732-5 Ca. € 54,− (D) / sFr 93,−

HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG • WIESBADEN www.harrassowitz-verlag.de • [email protected]

Orient • Slavistik • Osteuropa • Bibliothek • Buch • Kultur

Ethno-Indology. Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals Edited by Axel Michaels

8: Barbara Schuler

Of Death and Birth Icakkiyamman-, a Tamil Goddess, in Ritual and Story With a Film on DVD by the Author 2009. XVI, 501 pages, 1 map, 14 ill., 1 DVD, hc ISBN 978-3-447-05844-5 € 98,– (D) / sFr 166,–

Of Death and Birth by Barbara Schuler deals with dynamics of a local (non-Brahmanical) ritual, its modular organisation and inner logic, the interaction between narrative text and ritual, and the significance of the local versus translocal nature of the text in the ritual context, while providing a broad range of issues for comparison. It demonstrates that examining texts in their context helps to understand better the complexity of religious traditions and the way in which ritual and text are programmatically employed. The author offers a vivid description of a hitherto unnoticed ritual system, along with the first translation of a text called the Icakkiyamman- Katai (IK). Composed in the Tamil language, the IK represents a substantially longer and embellished form of a core version which probably goes as far back as the seventh century C.E. Unlike the classical source, this text has been incorporated into a living tradition, and is being constantly refashioned. A range of text versions have been encapsulated in the form of a conspectus, which will shed light on the text’s variability or fixity and will add to our knowledge of bardic creativity.

9: Ute Hüsken

Vis·n·u’s Children

Prenatal life-cycle rituals in South India Translated into English by Will Sweetman With a DVD by Ute Hüsken and Manfred Krüger

2009. 322 pages, 1 DVD, hc Book + DVD: ISBN 978-3-447-05854-4 € 52,– (D) / sFr 90,– DVD: (available apart) ISBN 978-3-447-05853-7 € 24,– (D) / sFr 42,20

The history of the Vaikha-nasas, a group of Brahmanic priests in the Vis·n·u temples of south India, is characterized by the effort of claiming their status against rivaling priests. Ute Hüsken’s work discusses the controversy, ongoing for centuries, as to what makes a person eligible to perform the rituals in Vis·n·u temples. Since the 14th century CE the discussion in the relevant Sanskrit texts centers around the question of whether the Vaikha-nasas priests must undergo an initiation, or whether their particular prenatal lifecycle ritual vis·n·ubali makes them eligible to perform temple ritual. In addition to the textual perspective, three instances of local conflicts from the 19 th/20th centuries about the question of whether the Vaikha-nasas require an initiation are analysed in their contexts. Three examples of present day performances of the crucial ritual vis·n·ubali are presented and interpreted in the light of the relation between text and performance and from the perspective of the acting priests’ ritual competence.

HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG • WIESBADEN www.harrassowitz-verlag.de • [email protected]

Orient Slavistik • Osteuropa • Bibliothek • Buch • Kultur •

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