Sublime

Historians have always been fascinated by the brief passage in Gregory’s History that records victory’s payoff: Therefore he received from the Byzantine emperor Anastasius codicils of the consulate and in the basilica of the blessed Martin, placing a diadem on his head, he was clothed in a purple tunic [tunica blattea] and the chlamys.e Then, mount

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Kings’ legitimacy was earned through a combination of sword-wielding leadership in war and noble bloodline – as the sons or grandsons of men who had been kings (or at least great lords) three or four generations in the past. In Ireland, that birthright was called rigdomna – eligibility to rule. In the absence of legitimacy, power was seized by main

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Kings had to be more than mere warlords, as Clovis’s investiture shows: they must hold their sceptres and wear their ornamented battle helms as of divine right – whether that divinity was Christian or not. They must be able to claim that their family had always been kings; that the territories over which their writ ran had always been theirs. They

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