In December 1377, the Holy Roman emperor Charles ιv visited the kingdom of France, then ruled by his nephew Charles v. According to the Grandes Chro- niques de France, on December 22nd, a French delegation was sent to welcome the imperial cavalcade near Cambrai.
Although both the initial meeting and the visit itself were amicable and mutually respectful, the French king was deÂtermined to take advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate himself to be rex imperator in regno suo - independent from imperial authority and soverÂeign in the kingdom of France.
The emperor was accordingly warned that all ostentatious imperial pageantry and pomp should be withheld from his French hosts: no bells should be chimed, there should be no processions, no white horses, and the use of similar symbols should be repressed. Perhaps surprisÂingly, the French delegation was most intransigent on the question of the emÂperor’s participation in the Christmas mass, a few days after, in Saint Quentin, on French soil.[605] They did not object to the celebration of the mass on its own, but rather to a particular rite to which Charles ιv had become very attached, which he had asked the French to follow: allowing him to read personally the seventh lecture, part of the Infancy Narrative from the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel, which made reference to the Roman emperor Augustus and the uniÂversal census he ordered at the time of Jesus’s birth.[606] To Charles v’s ears thisKoninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:iq.ii63/97890Q4431249_qiq
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allusion to his uncle's assumed superior and universal authority was unpleasÂantly explicit. Charles iv, in the end, attended Christmas mass at Cambrai, within the borders of the empire, where he could follow the traditional liturgy, and then fulfilled his nephew's requests in terms of ceremonial for the rest of his visit - or, at least, this is the account given by the official French chronicle.[607] The beautiful illumination that illustrates the liturgical scene in Cambrai in the manuscript of the chronicle pays vivid witness to Charles v's concerns.[608] This image of the emperor wearing his crown and wielding his sword in the dead of Christmas night in a French cathedral, while proclaiming himself the new Augustus, universal ruler of the earth and entitled to order its registration, was clearly intolerable to a king explicitly - and successfully - committed to the defence of his own sovereign authority in France.
The liturgical praxis at the heart of this quarrel has a long and complex hisÂtory, and the allusions to the universal census held by order of Caesar Augustus are myriad throughout Western culture.
In this chapter I contribute to explorÂing this history, by focusing on the interpretations given by various late mediÂeval authors of the event described in Luke's Gospel. After some remarks on the juridical institution of the census (the so called professio census) in ancient Rome, and on the theological translation of this institution developed by Christian thinkers such as Ambrose and Orosius, I examine the use of this translation in certain medieval political and juridical texts in order to discuss the legitimisation of imperial authority and its relationship with the spiritual authority of the Church. A number of sources, including the Quaestiones de iuris subtilitatibus, Ptolemy of Lucca's De regimine principum, Dante's De MoÂnarchia, Bartolus of Saxoferratus' comment on the lex â€?Hostes', Ockham's Bre- viloquium de principatu tyrannico, and the Somnium Viridarii, are considered.The aim of the chapter is twofold. It argues that the political value of Luke's pericope should be reassessed, which requires that the passage be considered alongside other, nowadays better-known biblical references used to justify poÂlitical subjection.[609] It also demonstrates that the census, and the invocation of an universal authority implicit to it, provides an excellent example of the overÂlapping and intertwining of theological, political, and juridical conceptualisaÂtions and practices in Western thought.[610] If the history of political thought can neither be written exactly like the history of legal thought nor precisely mirror the history of theological thought, it is only by following some of the mutual interactions and analogical translations between these strands of thought that we are able to trace the formation of the historical stratification that underpins our concepts. From this broader perspective, it is hoped, the historical underÂstanding of the conceptualisations of â€?universal authority', â€?empire', and â€?emÂperor' in the Western tradition can then be deepened.
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