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

Attention

Culture

Digital

22 April 2025

5 min read

Let me level-up about playing games on my phone

Like all art, there's no standard for 'good', but good art doesn’t leave you puzzling over how you wasted an hour.

Mark Gilbert

Mark is a research mathematician who writes on ethics, human identity and the nature of intelligence.

Onur Binay on Unsplash.

Earlier this year I got a bit too into a mobile phone game. In the game, I was master and controller of a small virtual grid of assorted shiny objects. By the flick of my finger on the screen, I’d swap the objects to try to match groups together. If I did this in the right way, then the matching objects would merge into shinier ones which would help me win the game. I’d want to know what the next shiny thing would be and how I could use it to beat the next level.

I first started playing on my commute to work – usually I like to read or write and listen to music and sometimes to catch up on emails – but on that day I felt too tired for any of that. The puzzles started easy but got gradually harder. They were challenging enough to occupy the mind, but never felt too taxing, and the satisfaction-hit from each small win along with the visuals and sound-effects made me really want to keep playing. On the train home, it felt easier to just open the app and play a few levels than do anything else. I’d start the journey by telling myself I’d do a few levels and would do something else, but I’d easily spend the best part of the journey rearranging shiny objects.

I knew this wasn’t ideal. I’ve come to see my commutes as a rare unfilled moment, each a scrap of time, a space to read and think, and I was filling this gift with a pixellated dopamine hit. I’d try to stop and bargain with myself – setting a limit of say five levels per journey, but knowing this to be an arbitrary number, I’d blow straight through it. There are other empty moments, waiting for the bath to run or once the children are in bed, but these other scraps are empty only in appearance, and I started to play in these too.

My phone has a ‘sleep mode’ which tries to mitigate the by now well-documented negative effects of phone use on sleeping – lower sleep quality, duration and interference with circadian rhythms. In sleep mode, you choose a time – after this the colours of your phone will be replaced by black and grey. I started using this feature, thinking that at least if I dulled the bright colours to greys then I’d take the enjoyment out of playing and it’d be harder to tell the shiny squares apart. It was a good try, but it didn’t work. I learnt to tell the grey objects apart, and played on.

Mainly, what I'm not doing when I’m glued to my phone is engaging with life.

You’ve heard it before, but our devices are not that good for us – excessive smartphone use fuels depression, anxiety and insomnia, and the average teenager spends seven to eight hours a day in front of a screen. Smartphones are closely related to social media - a recent study found one in six adolescent girls showed signs of social media addiction. Smartphone use has become a well-worn topic with a familiar set of talking points: How lucky we are to have all the world’s knowledge in our pocket; how bad we should all feel about being so distracted; how smug we can feel about the fools stuck to their phones. These discussion points aren't new - many of the concerns about smartphones and screen-time started decades earlier in response to TV and video games.

These concerns are certainly valid, but I find it easier to consider what some of my smartphone habits are stopping me from doing. I'm not sure I'd advocate that we all stop using smartphones - having easy access to the Internet is a huge convenience, but I do pause to think about what I'm not spending time doing when I obsessively scroll or click. I'm also not convinced that all mobile games or even all social media use is bad. Computer games can be entertaining and thought provoking. Like all art, there's no globally agreed standard about what's good, but good art doesn’t leave you puzzling over how you wasted an hour. What differentiates social media and certain phone games is their business model – your time and attention is their revenue stream.

Mainly, what I'm not doing when I’m glued to my phone is engaging with life. If I put the phone down, I could be more attentive to the people I'm with – be able to listen to all the subtle ways we tell each other how we are – in short, I could be more fully present. I could read books, and I could read whole magazine articles or news stories on my phone, actually stopping to read rather than scrolling from headline to headline. Or I could do nothing and just be, undisturbed. If I’m commuting, I could enjoy the scenery or just let my mind wander. And I can remember that even in the quietest moments I'm not alone - God is always alongside us, and we can always spend time and speak to Him in prayer. Even for a few short moments to lift up the joys and troubles of the day.

“Well”, you may say, “That's all very nice hearing about these possibilities I could enjoy if I clawed back time from social media and freemium games. But how do I actually do it!?” Most of the answers I’ve found to this involve either stopping the habit completely – deleting the app or even not having a smartphone, or else they involve enforced periods away. Some have found that a digital detox of several days or weeks has helped to reset their relationship with tech, others set fixed times in their day when they can and can’t use their devices or certain apps, and some observe a “digital sabbath” where they intentionally avoid or reduce technology use for a full day each week.

As for me, my only way out was to delete the shiny object game, losing all record of all 1,500 completed levels. Given that I rejected my own help by outsmarting “night mode”, I doubt moderation would have helped. Unsettlingly, my fingers and part of mind really seemed to miss it. As I unlocked my phone, I’d feel a tinge of absence, as though checking my emails or messages didn’t have the same grip as matching colourful blocks

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