In fact, the Lady Mother was absent from the ceremony. On the second level of the gallery, Jacques-Louis David has painted himself, surrounded by his family, making a preliminary draft of his masterpiece. The diplomatic corps consists of the ambassadors of Austria and the Ottoman empire, as well as the United States ambassador. Next to her is Julie Clary, wife of Joseph Bonaparte. Among the group of Marshals of France, Joachim Murat is holding the cushion of the imperial crown. Circa 9am , the pontifical procession, accompanied by dragoons, set out from the Tuileries Palace.
The procession was led by the nuncio Speroni riding an ass and carrying the cross. This piece of pontifical protocol greatly amused bystanders. After 10am , the imperial procession, comprising 25 carriages, drawn by hundred and escorted by six regiments of cavalry, cuirassiers, mounted chasseurs and mounted grenadiers, left the Tuileries Palace. At It is fastened at the shoulder and at the waist on the left-hand side. Circa midday , Cardinal du Belloy greeted Napoleon and Josephine at the entrance to Notre-Dame and sprinkled them with holy water.
Pius VII then blessed the kneeling imperial couple with the triple benediction taken from the coronation rite of Rheims. The imperial couple then moved towards the high altar where they received the sacred coronation unction, on the forehead and on both hands. He would have preferred to have drawn a veil over the authorities which had preceded him post and to have made the consular power the heir of the monarchy. For this reason, much later on, he tried to place no intermediary between Charlemagne and the proclamation of Empire.
He was strangely obsessed with the pretension that he was de facto and de jure the latter's successor. So Napoleon would set himself alongside the royalty of Europe and go one better by becoming an emperor, whose descendants would rule France, just as he had. First the Pope was to come and consecrate Napoleon just like the Pope had done for Charlemagne but with the improvement that the Pope would leave the Vatican and come to France to perform the ceremony — better than the Capetians and their merely national ceremony at Rheims.
As for the kings of old, a sumptuous Livre du sacre would be produced by the greatest artists of the period, and as for the ceremony itself, the old coronation ceremonies the papal one for crowning emperors and the royal one from Rheims were to be fused along with modern adaptations, creating a liturgy quite unlike any other before. The etiquette for the new imperial Court was to be produced in the same way, using the old royal etiquette books and adapting them.
Some of the mediaeval gestures were to be preserved, such as the receiving of the blessed unction. I have elsewhere argued that even the touching of the scrofulous, a traditional ceremony for French kings in Rheims, was to take place though only virtually.
Shortly before the coronation, Josephine was to commission the Baron Gros to paint the extraordinary evocation of Napoleon touching the plague victims in Jaffa. Ostensibly this painting showing the young general touching and curing?
But the juxtaposition with the coronation and the exhibition of a painting at the Salon which opened on 18 September, , apparently showing Napoleon performing miracles consonant with the idea of miracle working king must surely have led contemporary viewers to link the two ideas. A myth was to grow up around this act, namely that it was an extraordinary gesture of hubris, before a shocked Pontiff. This shock and hubris are, however, all additions to the story.
In fact, the complicated hybrid liturgy compiled for Napoleon's coronation on 2 December, , was produced by a committee of French and papal negotiators.
Each gesture and prayer had been debated and agreed upon beforehand, from the reduction of the number of unctions, the introduction of the honours of Charlemagne to the crowning moment and Napoleon's taking of communion. The royal court of the French Emperor became a public spectacle of pomp and elegance. Court protocol and rules of etiquette became very complex and regimented. Josephine reveled in her new role as Empress, and cultivated a famously impressive style. Yet Napoleon himself, even though he had intentionally made a spectacle of his court, found his new role somewhat uncomfortable and difficult.
He preferred to work long hours in his study to escape from court life. Napoleon now led a double life. On the one hand, he was a stately Emperor cloaked in ermine robes. On the other hand, he was an obsessive workaholic, often staying in his study for days on end writing letters and preparing various plans.
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