The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  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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  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.

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  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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  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

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  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.

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  7.13. The works of Kantorowicz, as well as those by Alföldi and Schramm,