empress, in what must have appeared an extraordinary piece of choreography
that traversed and animated the mass of spectators like a wave of color:
Immediately a jubilant roar resounds: with a thousand voices the common people
wish the princes good fortune. “Long life to Justin and to the august Sophia,”
they acclaim all around. The applause and cries of joy reverberate, and the crowds
alternate in answering one another. All together they raise their right arm and all
together bring it down. In the whole stadium the people certatim micat (flashes,
palpitates) and dense waves of white sleeves ( manicis albentibus) are produced.
Songs are sung and songs are added to the movement [ . . . ] (Ibid., p. 82)
Alföldi, who dedicates considerable space to the analysis of the political signifi-
cance of acclamations, does not however manage to define its specific nature. On
the whole, in the emergence of the acclamatory and ceremonial aspect of power,
and in the contemporaneous raising up of the sovereign above the community of
citizens, Alföldi sees an element that is in some ways antagonistic to law:
Alongside the juridical formulation of the power of the prince we can also see
another formative principle of imperial omnipotence, which is not objective and
rational, but subjective and imaginary. In it, it is not reason but sentiment that
is expressed. (Ibid., pp. 186–187)
And yet, he has to admit shortly afterward that one cannot correctly understand
phenomena such as acclamations as long as one sees in them only a form of
purely subjective adulation:
It is entirely misguided to glimpse here something like ephemeral individual
adulation, since the praise is beginning to end bound objectively. The official
discourses of the prince, like the acclamations directed at him, betray the same
formal constraints as do works of poetry or art. (Ibid., p. 188)
* Agamben is here referring to Forza Italia—literally “Go Italy!” or “Come on Italy!”—the party Silvio Berlusconi founded in 1993 and led until its dissolution into Il Popolo della Libertà (The People of Freedom) in 2008. —Trans.
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HOMO SACER II, 4
At the end of his 1935 study, he appears to oppose—in the process that leads to
the constitution of the imperial State—right ( Recht) and power ( Macht), which are “incorporated into the army and the senate respectively, and confer on the
empire real power [ Gewalt] and formal sanction” (ibid., p. 272). But the simple
opposition of violence and formal sanction leaves in the shadows the decisive
fact that we are dealing here with two procedures of legitimation that, in the
last instance, are both presented in the form of acclamations. The opposition
between a juridical and a religious element is equally insufficient (ibid., p. 186),
because the acclamation is precisely the point at which they appear to coincide
without remainder. More pertinent is Alföldi’s observation, with regard to the
purple robes of the emperor, which unfortunately he fails to develop, that what
“founds sovereignty juridically is no longer the auctoritas of the Optimates nor
the consensus of the people, but this consecrated symbol of power [ dieses geheiligte Machtsymbol ]” (ibid., p. 169).
In other words, the acclamation points toward a more archaic sphere that
brings to mind the one that Gernet used to call, using an infelicitous term,
prelaw, in which terms that we customarily consider juridical appear to act in
a magic-religious manner. More than a chronologically earlier stage, we must
here think of something like a threshold of indistinction that is always oper-
ative, where the juridical and the religious become truly indistinguishable. A
threshold of this type is that which elsewhere we have called sacertas, in which a double exception, from both human and divine law, allows a figure to emerge,
homo sacer, whose relevance for Occidental law and politics we have attempted
to reconstruct. If we now call “glory” the uncertain zone in which acclamations,
ceremonies, liturgies, and insignia operate, we will see a field of research open
before us that is equally relevant and, at least in part, as yet unexplored.
7.11. Kantorowicz has dedicated an exemplary study to the history of one
liturgical acclamation: the Laudes Regiae, published in 1946 but largely written
between 1934 and 1940 when the scholar, who as a twenty-year-old had fought
against the revolutionary workers’ councils in Munich, figured among the “dis-
placed foreign scholars”* (and it is with this title that, while at Berkeley, he re-
ceived a special subsidy to complete his research). The book reconstructs the
history of a particular acclamation— specifically a laude or laetania, which begins with the phrase “Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat”—that was in
use in the GaulFrankish Church beginning with the eighth century and spread
from here to the whole of Europe in various forms. The peculiarity of this long
* In English in the original.—Trans.
THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY
543
acclamation, which concerns Christ the victor, king, and emperor, is that it unites
the divinity not only with the names of the saints, but also with those of the
pontiff and the emperor. Having called upon Christ the victor three times, the
hymn of praise passes on to the repeated acclamatory exaudi phrase, and acclaims
the pontiff and then the emperor with a phrase of the type vita (“Leoni summo
pontifici et universali pape vita/Carolo excellentissimo et a deo coronato atque
magno et pacifico regi Francorum et Longobardorum ac Patricio Romanorum
vita et victoria”). After a lengthy list of names of angels and saints (acclaimed with
a phrase of the type “Sancte Gabrihel, Sancte Silvestre tu illum adiuva”), the ac-
clamation unexpectedly mentions the functionaries and the imperial army (“om-
nibus iudicibus vel cuncto exercitui Francorum vita et victoria”). At this point, the
tricolon, “Christus vincit ( . . . ) regnat ( . . . ) imperat,” is once again repeated three times and then followed by a series of Christological acclamations of a “military”
type ( Rex regum, gloria nostra, fortitudo nostra, victoria nostra, arma nostra invictissima, murus noster inexpugnabilis, etc.), whose origin Kantorowicz traces back to the pagan imperial acclamations in the Historia Augusta. There then follows a
series of doxologies and hymns of praise to the second person of the Trinity; and,
finally, the invocation of Christe eleison and the closing acclamations Feliciter feliciter feliciter, tempora bona habeas, multos annos, which, as we know, made up part of the acclamations to the Roman emperors.
The acclamation, which promiscuously united heaven and earth, angels and
functionaries, emperor and pontiff, was destined to play an important role at the
point where profane power and spiritual power, courtly and liturgical protocol
met. It is particularly instructive to follow, with Kantorowicz, the incessant com-
ings and goings of the acclamations between the two spheres. It emerges and is
fully comprehensible only in the context of what Kantorowicz calls “Carolingian
political theology” (Kantorowicz 1946, p. 59). This begins to develop with Pepin
as a restoration of biblical regality ( Regnum Davidicum) against the Roman Em-
pire, and culmi
nates in the introduction of the biblical rite of real unction. In this
manner, the Carolingian kings effect a form of liturgization of secular power; it is
in this context that one should place the appearance of the Laudes Regiae. They
“represent an early and most remarkable example of the hierarchical-theocratic
tendency. In this artfully composed chant the orders of dignitaries on earth, both
secular and ecclesiastical, and the series of celestial intercessors reflect, and merge
into, each other” (ibid., pp. 61–62).
In following the successive development of the Laudes in Roman liturgy,
Kantorowicz demonstrates that they contain elements that indubitably stem
from pagan acclamations. Indeed, the imperial ceremony of pagan Rome had
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HOMO SACER II, 4
been progressively “litanized” and transformed into the form of divine service
for which the acclamations were a constitutive element. In the tight interweaving
of the religious and the profane, acclamations, which contained improvised ele-
ments at the very beginning, became increasingly formalized in a process in which
ecclesiastical liturgy and profane protocol mutually reinforced one another.
No matter how much the liturgical language had originally borrowed from that
of the court, the language of the court ceremonial stiffened as the terms became
filled with ecclesiastical spirit and echoed the language of the liturgy. The formula
of dismissing the court dignitaries, Ite missa est, became all the more solemn
as it now matched the words of the dismissal in church, and a change such as
that of the invocation Exaudi Caesar! to Exaudi Christe! is likewise indicative of the shift from a “Here and Now” to a transcendency beyond time and motion.
(Ibid., p. 66)
It is in this context that the laudes became part of the ritual of imperial coronation in the West. In Byzantium in 450, Flavius Marcianus had himself crowned in
a ceremony where, in addition to the acclamation by the senate and the army, an
essential role was reserved for the Church. But in the West, the coronation of the
sovereign only passed into the hands of the clergy with Pepin and Charle magne.
“Recognition by the Church, therefore, gradually gained so much in importance
and esteem that the assent of the other king-creating powers, above all that of
the acclaiming people, was more or less overshadowed by sacerdotal functions”
(ibid., pp. 78–79). In the solemn coronation ceremony of Charle magne that took
place in Rome on Christmas Day, ad 800, the laudes played an essential part,
whose technical-legal significance Kantorowicz tries, at times a little uncertainly,
to define. Of course,
[ . . . ] in the High Mass which followed the consecration [ . . . ] the chant inev-
itably elicited the vision that not only the visible Church acclaimed, confirmed
and recognized the new ruler, but also that through the Church the Heavens
consented to the new Deo coronatus. The chant implied that the new king was
acclaimed also by the choirs of angels and saints, as well as by Christ himself,
who, in his quality as Victor, King, and Commander, recognized the new christus
of the Church as his fellow ruler. (Ibid., p. 82)
According to Kantorowicz, it is not a case of a mere allegory but, to the extent
that one can speak of “realism” in medieval culture, of a perfectly “realistic”
conception. Nothing better than a miniature in the manuscript of the Laudes
shows in what way one should understand their admirable efficacy: the artist
depicts the king, with a crown, scepter, and globe, seated on a throne formed
THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY
545
by a large X, which constitutes the initial of the tricolon Xristus vincit: the regale carmen is the very throne of majesty.
However great the importance of the acclamations, for Kantorowicz it does
not have a constitutive value, but only a recognitional one.
The laudes acclamation, representing the recognition of the king’s legitimacy,
was an accessory manifestation, impressive by its festal and solemn character,
but not indispensable; for legally the liturgical acclaim added no new element
of material power which the king had not already received earlier by his election
and coronation [ . . . ] By means of this chant, the Church professed and publicly
espoused the king in a solemn form. However, the weight of this profession or
espousal cannot be measured by legal standards. (Ibid., p. 83)
And with an implicit but unequivocal polemical reference to Peterson, Kantoro-
wicz denies that this recognition stems from the people:
“People” and “Church” are not the same thing. The laudes, representing the
recognition of the ruler on the part of the visible and invisible Church, therefore
cannot be regarded as an “acclamation on the part of the people” and even less
so as “the people’s consent.” [ . . . ] Besides, the laudes were sung by the clergy,
not by the people. (Ibid., p. 82)
Nevertheless, there is an important exception to this restriction on the juridical
value of the laudes: the coronation of Charlemagne in Rome. In his description
of the ceremony, Kantorowicz comes as close as possible to a veritable theory of
the juridical-constitutional meaning of acclamations.
This event was extraordinary in every respect, and it was extraordinary also with
reference to the ceremonial [ . . . ] However, even through the dimness of the
extant accounts the two acclamations seem to be discernible, those of the people
and those of the Church. It is a question of interpreting the two main sources with
regard to whether or not we are to make a distinction, on the one hand, between
the hails of the “faithful Romans” who, after the pope had placed the crown on
Charlemagne’s head, shouted their “Karolo, piissimo Augusto a Deo coronato,
magno et pacifico imperatori, vita et victoria,” and, on the other hand, the chant
of the laudes proper, in which this hail was repeated by the Roman clergy [ . . . ]
The shouts of the Romans and the laudes, as they then followed one after the
other without a break, seem to have formed one single tumultuous outburst of
voices in which it is idle to seek the particular cry which was “constitutive” and
legally effective. (Ibid., p. 84)
7.12. What is at stake in Kantorowicz’s interpretation of the laudes regiae is
political theology. It unites the 1946 book with the following one, The King’s Two
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Bodies (1957), whose subtitle is A Study in Medieval Political Theology. The latter attempted to reconstruct, through a history of the idea of the mystical body
of the king, the formation of a veritable “myth of the state,” just as the former
reconstructed imperial ideology through the history of acclamations where litur-
gical elements and profane ones were indissolubly interwoven.
Thus, the analysis of the theological-political meaning of the laudes predom-
inates over the analysis of their strictly juridical value. This is evident in the con-
cluding chapter of the book dedicated to “the laudes in modern times.” Between
the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries, the use of the laudes in liturgy and in coronation ceremonies began to fall away everywhere. But
they arise again unexpectedly in the course of the 1920s, revived by theologians and musicologists
at precisely the moment in which, “with the irony of which History is so fond”
(ibid., p. 184), the European political scene was dominated by the emergence of
totalitarian regimes. They play an important role in the convergent itineraries
of Pius XI, elected pontiff in February 1922, and Benito Mussolini, who takes
power in October of that same year. “Fascist challenges were answered, without
closing the door completely, by the papal counterchallenges when Pius XI, at the
end of the Holy Year 1925, instituted the new feast of ‘Christ the King’” (ibid.).
In the solemn mass for this festival, the song Christus vincit [ . . . ] regnat [ . . . ]
imperat was revived in a new rendering that immediately became popular. From
this moment onward, according to the constant oscillation between the sacred
and the profane that characterizes the history of acclamations, the laudes shifted from the faithful to fascist militants, who—among other things—used them in
the course of the Spanish Civil War. Even earlier, in 1929, the fascist minister for
education included the laudes regiae in an official collection of “patriotic songs,”
in which the acclamation vita of the original text assumed the form Regi nostro Victorio Dei gratia feliciter regnante pax, vita et salus perpetua; Duci Benito Mussolini italicae gentis gloriae pax, vita et salus perpetua.
Recounting this new and extreme version of the laudes at the end of his
book, Kantorowicz observes that acclamations are “indispensable to the emo-
tionalism of a Fascist regime” (ibid., p. 185). And in a footnote on Nazi acclama-
tions he launches a final, ironic attack on Peterson, writing that the acclamation
Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer, declared in Vienna in 1938 on the occasion of the annexation of Austria, “leads via Barbarossa [ . . . ] to the Heis theos so brilliantly discussed by Peterson” (ibid., p. 185, note 23). The attempt to exclude the very
possibility of a Christian “political theology,” so as to found in glory the only
legitimate political dimension of Christianity, comes dangerously close to the
totalitarian liturgy.
THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY
547
7.13. The works of Kantorowicz, as well as those by Alföldi and Schramm,
The Omnibus Homo Sacer Page 84
