Explainer

Culture

Royalty

29 April 2023

4 min read

Making sense of the coronation’s oaths, oils and acclamations

The significance of the thousand-year-old coronation ceremony is unpacked by Ian Bradley to reveal the vulnerability at its heart.

Ian Bradley

Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews.

A medieval illustration of King Edgar's coronation shows him between his predecessor and successor, while angels hover above him.

King Edgar enjoys his coronation, the first in English history.

Life of St Edward the Confessor, CC BY-NC 3.0, University of Cambridge.

Coronations point to the sacred nature of the United Kingdom monarchy. Packed with religious symbolism and imagery, they exude mystery, bind together church and state through the person of the monarch and clearly proclaim the derivation of all power and authority from God and the Christian basis on which government is exercised and justice administered. At their coronations kings and queens are not simply crowned and enthroned but consecrated, set apart and anointed, dedicated to God and invested with sacerdotal garb and symbolic regalia. Here, if anywhere, we find the divinity which, as Shakespeare observed more than four hundred years ago, hedges the British throne.

The United Kingdom is the only country which still marks the accession of a new monarch with a coronation. Of the other European monarchies, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have never held coronations, Spain discontinued them in 1492 (they were not revived when the monarchy was restored there in 1975), Denmark in 1849 and Sweden in 1873. Norway abolished coronations in 1908 although since then its monarchs have undergone a ceremony of consecration or blessing in Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim, with the royal regalia present in the church but not used in the ceremony.

Anglo-Saxon innovation

Coronations are religious services rather than constitutional ceremonies. While details have been subtly adapted over the centuries, the basic format has essentially remained the same for over a thousand years. The crowning of the monarch is just one of several distinct elements in the service. Others include recognition by the assembled congregation representing the people of their new sovereign, administration of oaths, anointing with holy oil, investiture with the royal regalia and celebration of Holy Communion. All these elements are present in the earliest surviving order for the coronation of an English monarch, prepared by St Dunstan as Archbishop of Canterbury for the Anglo-Saxon King Edgar in 973.

Edgar’s coronation, which took place in Bath Abbey, included many features found in all subsequent coronations. Held on Whit Sunday, the traditional day for ordinations to the priesthood, it laid considerable emphasis on the theme of consecration and the priestly aspects of kingship, exemplified by the wearing of priestly robes. Anointed and crowned by Dunstan, Edgar was entrusted with the protection and supervision of the church and graced with the titles rex dei gratia (king by the grace of God) and vicarus dei (Vicar of God). His wife, Aelfthryth, was anointed and crowned as queen. This practice, of a double crowning and anointing, was followed in the coronations of all subsequent married kings and queens as it will be with Charles and Camilla on 6 May.

Oaths and oil

Edgar was led into Bath Abbey by two bishops, as Charles will be as he enters Westminster Abbey which has been used for all English coronations since 1066. Before crowning, he was required to swear three oaths which form the basis of those still taken by every British monarch. As now framed, they include promises to adhere to the rule of law and the principles of justice and mercy, and to maintain the laws of God, the Protestant religion and the Church of England. Having taken the oaths, the monarch is anointed with holy oil, a further sign of being set apart and consecrated in the manner of a priest.

Earning the right

Edgar’s coronation included the celebration of Mass and it remains the case that the coronation is embedded in a celebration of Holy Communion. Dunstan’s order clearly established the church’s control over royal inauguration rites in England and specifically the key role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in presiding over the ceremony. In the sermon that he preached at a second coronation over which he presided, that of Ethelred the Unready at Kingston Upon Thames in 979, he preached on the duties of a consecrated king, describing him as the shepherd over his people and reminding him that while ruling justly would earn him ‘worship in this world’ as well as God's mercy, any departure from his duties would lead to punishment at Doomsday.

A sense of sharing

Rooted in tradition as they are, coronations still have the power to connect with the popular spiritual and religious instincts that remain strong, if often hidden, in our so-called post-Christian society. In a much-quoted article on Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953 two sociologists, Edward Shils and Michael Young, described it as:

‘the ceremonial occasion for the affirmation of the moral values by which the society lives. It was an act of national communion and an intensive contact with the sacred.’

They noted that it was frequently spoken of as an ‘inspiration’ and a ‘re-dedication of the nation’. The ceremony had ‘touched the sense of the sacred’ in the population, heightening a sense of solidarity in both families and communities. They pointed to examples of reconciliation between long-feuding neighbours and family members brought about by the shared experience of watching the ceremony together on television.

We have recently witnessed something of this sense of national communion and intensive contact with the sacred in the public reaction to the death of Elizabeth II, as shown by the numbers who came out to witness the progress of the late queen’s coffin on its last journeys and to file past it in the High Kirk of St Giles in Edinburgh and Westminster Hall.

Ultimately, Christian monarchy points beyond itself to the majesty, mystery and vulnerability of God. It is a lonely, noble and sacrificial calling. What our sovereign needs and deserves most is our loyal and heartfelt prayers. As we prepare for the king’s coronation, we could do well to reflect on and respond to the request that his mother made before hers:

“You will be keeping it as a holiday; but I want to ask you all, whatever your religion maybe, to pray for me on that day, to pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve them and you, all the days of my life.”

Interview

Community

Culture

Loneliness

S&U interviews

27 March 2025

5 min read

Why we need friendship more than romance

Friendship Lab's founder opens up on opening up.

Jack Nicholson

Jack is a graduate of Peterhouse, University of Cambridge and Blackfriars, University of Oxford. He writes, and also works in local government.

A speaker, standing in front of a screen, beckons with one hand, holding a mic with the other.

Voysey at the Lab launch.

Henri Nouwen, the Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer, and theologian, wrote in Reaching Out of an encounter with one of his students who entered his room with the disarming remark:

“I simply want to celebrate some time with you.”

Recently, I had the great pleasure of celebrating some time with Sheridan Voysey, the founder of Friendship Lab, which is the first non-profit organisation dedicated to enabling adults to reach out and making friendship thrive.

Sheridan, an Australian by birth, describes himself as a ‘writer, speaker, and broadcaster with ‘a keen interest in what makes life deeply worthwhile’. Beyond that, he goes on, “I am a husband to Merryn” and “big dog” to a cockapoo called Rupert, and he makes Oxford his home.

He and I met in the Liddon Room of Pusey House, one of the chaplaincies to the University of Oxford, which is where I have made many of my adult friendships over the years. We had tea.

We began our conversation by talking about solitude and silence. Sheridan told me that the Friendship Lab, which launched in London last month, had its genesis in a solo spiritual retreat he went on in 2019. He left thinking about friendlessness and wanting to write a book about adult friendship. The pandemic played into this, creating an opportunity for Sheridan to broadcast about this issue when he was made Creative Lead of BBC Radio 2’s four-day Friendship Season in 2020. People pondered, when they were apart from one another, why it is that friendship is so difficult in the modern world. Sheridan led the way.

“You’re thinking too small” were the words he heard on his second retreat at St Katherine’s House, Parmoor in 2021. He told me he was scared. Rather than writing a book, Sheridan resolved to rectify our world’s obsession with romance at the expenses of what he calls “its less glamorous sibling”. Friendship Lab, which provides courses and resources to build friendships that make life deeply worthwhile, was the result.

Sheridan told me that he did not have many friends growing up in Brisbane, Australia. In the 1970s, he remembers, Brisbane was “a bit coarse, a bit rough”, and “to be an Australian male in Brisbane then was to be into beer, barbecues, football”, he said with a laugh. As a child, Sheridan stuck out. He was tall. “I was the kid who would be walking around the playground at lunchtime, constantly moving around to cover up the fact that I had no friends to sit with.” I asked him how this might have contributed to his thinking about friends as a fifty-year-old man.

The answer was rooted in his these childhood experiences—and his faith. His parents were Jehovah Witnesses when Sheridan was growing up, which he told me meant that his family were “absolute outsiders”. Then, his mum had “a wonderful encounter with God” in the late 1990s, where she came to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. It was, he said, “profoundly transformative” for the whole family. He had been “trying to find [his] life” “among the flashing lights and throbbing beats of Brisbane’s nightclubs” but felt “completely empty inside” until he made a commitment to Christ himself, aged 19. He told me that fostering friendship in others, matters to him because of his faith. “I have always had a heart for those on the periphery, and I want to bring them in.”

Reaching out is connected to comfy silence in the company of others.

Another factor which has shaped Sheridan’s sure-fire purpose to recover the lost art of friendship has been his marriage to Merryn. His book Resurrection Year recounts the decision he and his wife made in 2011 to move from Australia to Oxford, to recover from the death of a dream to have a child together. Merryn started out as a medical researcher within the University, soon earning a PhD through the college in the building where we met for our time together. Sheridan tells me, he had a “real identity crisis”. His own came through leaving a successful career broadcasting and speaking in Australia, on top of the childlessness, gave rise to questions about his legacy. He also told me, it was “a great stimulus to think very deeply” about his friends. “How intentional am I being?”

I can tell you, having spent one hour and a half with Sheridan, that he oozes intentionality in how he engages with others. This is why I was reminded of Henri Nouwen. The ‘twentieth-century Kierkegaard’, Nouwen was able to announce the arrival of another way to relate to others in the world. Reaching out is connected to comfy silence in the company of others, which Sheridan knows well. After some time in silence with Nouwen, his student said, ‘“From now on, wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground between us will be holy ground.”’ I might have said likewise to Sheridan as our time together drew to a close.

Sheridan said,

“I hope that Friendship Lab in its tiny little embryonic state will one day grow to the point where we can actually have some kind of cultural influence, and we can turn the tide.”

I hope so too.

Friendship Lab aspires to a world in which every adult has at least three ‘2am friends’, people who will help ‘at 2am when everything has gone wrong’. Sheridan Voysey is no longer thinking small.

Like the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he believes to be the Son of God, Sheridan is looking unrelentingly at what makes life deeply worthwhile: love, and not just the romantic kind. Reaching out, this man is making friends.

Find out more about Friendship Lab

Visit the Lab

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