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.”

Article

Culture

Film & TV

Romance

8 September 2025

5 min read

The summer we turned romantic

Belly, the other Taylor, and the defiant desire to get married

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

The cast of The Summer I Turned Pretty pose on a wedding set.

Netflix.

A new communal rhythm has been unearthed over the hazy summer months, a fresh ritual has made its home among us. Every Wednesday, twenty-five million people are tuning into Amazon Prime’s The Summer I Turned Pretty. This show, an adaptation of Jenny Han’s novel of the same name, tells the story of ‘Belly’ – a young-ish girl who spends her summers staying with family friends at their beach house in the fictional yet notably Hamptons-esque town of Cousins Beach.

It has all the ingredients of a wistful watch:

A summer that we can vicariously bask in – tick.

An absurdly chic beach house – tick.

Two love interests who happen to be brothers and also happen to be tremendously easy on the eye – tick and tick.

It’s time for me to lay my cards on the table, if it wasn’t already obvious, I am one of those 25 million people tuning in.

Every darn Wednesday.

I find the pull that this (OK, I’m going to say it… don’t hate me…) undeniably silly show has on us fascinating. I’m acutely aware that it’s been crafted to hit all the right notes, it is a masterclass in escapism. The show’s writers’ room probably had a tick-list of binge-ability traits plastered on the wall, the writers adhering to each one thoroughly. But there’s also something about our insatiable appetite for romance that shouldn’t be dismissed with an eyeroll. We are romantically-inclined beings, to a notable degree. And, what’s more, we feast on the presumption that romantic love is something that happens to us - some kind of cosmic inevitability, sitting just beyond our control, making fools of our will.

In his essay, ‘Love and Need’, Thomas Merton wrote ‘the expression ‘to fall in love’ reflects a peculiar attitude toward love and life itself – a mixture of fear, awe, fascination and confusion. It implies suspicion, doubt, hesitation in the presence of something unavoidable yet not fully reliable’. While C.S. Lewis similarly speaks of its ‘strength, sweetness, terror and high port.’

Thus, our obsession with romantic love takes a hammer to one of our most ingrained lies: that we want, above all else, to be in control. To be the most powerful force in any room. Immovable. Unshakable. It’s hard to keep up the façade that we want to be steady on our feet when we’re endlessly nurturing the idea of being swept off them.

I could, as I have done before, suggest that this is an inherently spiritual matter. It’s a symptom of not believing in God, but craving him nonetheless.

But, alas, my attention has wandered elsewhere.

The Summer I Turned Pretty is currently running through its third series – so, we’re familiar with the love-triangle at this point, the internet has already decided which brother they’re routing for, we’re chomping down our third helping of Belly’s story. And so, what is the extra ingredient added to this third and final series? What’s keeping us on our toes? What’s ensuring that the stakes stay high enough to captivate 25 million of us? Well, interestingly, it’s the prospect of marriage.

Belly getting engaged to one of the brothers truly upped the ante. At the tender age of 21, the show’s supporting characters are less than elated at Belly’s engagement, with whole episodes dedicated to her mother’s desperate - can’t you just live together?! – pleas. Marriage is too huge. Too weighty. Too significant. Nevertheless, Belly and her fiancé defiantly plan a wedding, determined to dedicate themselves to each other in the most consequential way they know how.

And that interests me. the role that marriage still plays in our collective imagination interests me.

This is a way we still imbue our love (even the fictional kind) with the utmost meaning.

All of the data suggests that we are falling rapidly out of love with the very concept of marriage. In 2022, the UK’s Office for National Statistics told us that – for the first time ever – less than 50 per cent of people in the UK (above the age of 16) were married. And, of course, the minority who are married famously have a fifty-fifty percent chance of staying that way. You could make a robust argument that our society is pretty disenchanted with the whole institution.

And yet, we seem to keep suspending that disenchantment. The Summer I Turned Pretty’s popularity is exhibit A. Exhibit B is Taylor Swift’s obscenely newsworthy engagement announcement. This August, she posted a collection of photos of her and her new fiancé, Travis Kelce, quaintly captioned ‘your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married’. Her words alluding to her songwriting and Kelce’s football career. Journalist, Helen Lewis, notes the ‘defiant conventionality’ of it all. A defiant conventionality that is also woven into Belly’s rebellion – her audacity to rebel against her parents’ wishes and… get married.

It's all just left me wondering, as old-fashioned as it sounds – is there anything more romantic than marriage? Is it ever fully dis-enchant-able? I guess I’m just struck by how it’s still something we do, you know? We are meaning-making creatures, and this is a way we still imbue our love (even the fictional kind) with the utmost meaning.

We bind ourselves to someone else; perhaps defying our survival instincts in the process (it’s certainly the case that unmarried women live longer). It’s costly, it’s hard, it has a certain prodigality about it. Henna Cundill thoughtfully studies marriage as a ‘much slower kind of martyrdom, a decision made not once but daily, in a society where such decisions are frequently undone’. We lay our lives down for something that is bigger than us. It’s a weird human idea, if you think about it. So odd, in fact, that I’m confident in my inkling that it isn’t a human idea at all. It’s dripping with sacrality.

This really has been the summer we turned romantic. Well, 25 million of us, at least.

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