round the sovereign, and raising their hands to the crown,
they held it for a moment, and then they conducted the King to the throne.
The consecrating prelate, putting down his mitre, then knelt at the feet
of the monarch and took the oath of allegiance, his example being followed
by the other peers and their vassals who were in attendance. At the same
time, the cry of "_Vive le Roi_!" uttered by the archbishop, was repeated
three times outside the cathedral by the heralds-at-arms, who shouted it
to the assembled multitude. The latter replied, "_Noel! Noel! Noel!_" and
scrambled for the small pieces of money thrown to them by the officers,
who at the same time cried out, "_Largesse, largesse aux manants_!" Every
part of this ceremony was accompanied by benedictions and prayers, the
form of which was read out of the consecration service as ordered by the
bishop, and the proceedings terminated by the return of the civil and
religious procession which had composed the _cortege_. When the sovereign
was married, his wife participated with him in the honours of the
consecration, the symbolical investiture, and the coronation; but she only
partook of the homage rendered to the King to a limited degree, which was
meant to imply that the Queen had a less extended authority and a less
exalted rank.

[Illustration: Fig. 387.--Dalmatica and Sandals of Charlemagne, Insignia
of the Kings of France at their Coronation, preserved in the Treasury of
the Abbey of St. Denis.]

The ceremonies which accompanied the accessions of the emperors of Germany
(Fig. 388) are equally interesting, and were settled by a decree which the
Emperor Charles IX. promulgated in 1356, at the Diet of Nuremberg.
According to the terms of this decree--which is still preserved among the
archives of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and which is known as the _bulle d'or_,
or golden bull, from the fact of its bearing a seal of pure gold--on the
death of an emperor, the Archbishop of Mayence summoned, for an appointed
day, the Prince Electors of the Empire, who, during the whole course of
the Middle Ages, remained seven in number, "in honour," says the bull, "of
the seven candlesticks mentioned in the Apocalypse." These Electors--who
occupied the same position near the Emperor that the twelve peers did in
relation to the King of France--were the Archbishops of Mayence, of
Treves, and of Cologne, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the
Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the