All The King’s Swords
The coronation of Charles III will see the use of no fewer than five swords. Whilst none of them is from the middle ages - all having been made for the coronations of monarchs from Charles I onwards - their form, and the role and symbolism they have within the inauguration of the new king, is very much medieval.
Swords of Offering, of Justice, and of State
So what are the five swords that feature in the king’s inauguration as monarch, and where do they come from?
The newest of the bunch is the so-called ‘Sword of Offering’. This was made for the coronation of George IV in 1821, to his own design.
Illustrations of the Sword of Offering, the Sword of State, and the Sword of Mercy. (Wikimedia, taken from G. Younghusband & C. Davenport, The Crown Jewels of England. (London, 1919).
It is this sword that is blessed by the Archbishop and presented to the monarch with the injunction that they use it to protect the good and punish evil’, the invocation that lies at the heart of the use of swords in the medieval inaugurations of kings, first recorded in England at the coronation of Richard I in 1189.
Originally the sword was the monarch’s own, and its offering to the altar was a personal pledge. George’s sword was also meant to be retained by the monarch (unlike the others in the ceremony, which were returned to the Tower as part of the regalia) but, after being reused in Edward VII’s coronation of 1902, it too was incorporated into the Crown jewels.
The Sword of State, preceding Elizabeth I and Prince Charles, after the State Opening of Parliament in 2010. (Image: National Pictures; UK Parliament).
The next two swords - the ‘Sword of Temporal Justice’ and the ‘Sword of Spiritual Justice’. These were made for the coronation of Charles I in 1626, and represent the monarch as the defender of his realm (the temporal sphere) and of the Faith (the spiritual). The concept derives from a medieval Christian doctrine that the Church possessed two metaphorical swords - one of Temporal Justice and one of Spiritual Justice - with which it protected the faithful from physical and spiritual harm. The former duty, the Church devolved onto monarchs and princes, whilst the latter it retained itself. In medieval inaugurations, the presentation of a sword to the monarch by the officiating bishop represented this transfer of responsibility.
When Henry VIII split from Rome and declared himself head of the church in England, he took on responsibility for spiritual justice too, and with it the second sword.
The Sword of State, which was made in 1678, is a more general symbol of the king’s authority. It is the sword that is carried before the monarch on state occasions, such as the opening of Parliament., traditionally by the Gentleman Usher to the Sword of State, but for this coronation by Penny Mordaunt, Lord President of the Privy Council. Similar Swords of State can be seen preceding the mayors of many English towns. Again, the carriage of these is medieval in origin, and originally represented a loaning of authority, this time from the monarch to the mayor.
A fairly faithful copy of the current Curtana (although the tip of the original is slightly narrower and cut square).
Sword of Mercy (c. 1936), brass, copper, steel, velvet, synthetic fur, paste, metallic cord, (stuffing), (z-bb) 104.5 × 20.0 × 2.5 cm (overall), in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. A gift of Mr. Alex Isaacson, 1938 Photo: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
The Sword of Mercy - Curtana - An Arthurian Heritage?
The fifth sword to have a place in the coronation is, in many ways the most interesting, and the one with the strongest links back to the medieval past. The ‘Sword of Mercy’ is also the only one of the swords to have a proper name - Curtana or ‘short’.
The current sword is not much older than any of the others, again having been forged for the coronation of Charles I. Its most notable feature is that it lacks a tip, the end of the sword being squared off. It seems that it is this feature that resulted in the sword being related to mercy; without its tip, modern commentators say, the sword cannot be used to thrust and is therefore somehow representative of the sparing of life. Its ability to cut is ignored (the sword is not blunt, nor is there anything to suggest that the previous versions were either). Another, more likely reason for the connection is that the sword is very similar to the swords used by early modern executioners in western and central Europe, as their blades uniformly have the same blunted profile, a clear mark that the weapon’s sole purpose was decapitation.
The name Curtana, however, links the sword to an older tradition of English royal coronations. Courte was the sword of the Arthurian hero Tristan. This Cornish hero travelled to Ireland and slew the Irish giant and champion Morholt, who had been extorting taxes from the Cornish people. When he did so a fragment of his sword was broken off in the giant’s skull, leaving a notch in the blade. In a later romance, Tristan’s sword passes to a new warrior, Ogier the Dane, a contemporary of the great French hero Roland, and a knight of Charlemagne. Ogier fins the sword a little long and heavy, and has the blade cut down, after which he finds it is now too short, and so he names the sword ‘Courte’, which over time is rendered as Courtain, or Curtana.
The first historical figure to receive Courte was King John, who was given the sword by his father Henry II when he knighted him and invested him with the lordships of both Ireland and Cornwall. The symbolism of granting him Tristan’s sword is clear. Henry’s gift links John with the Cornishman Tristan’s subjugation of the Irish, reinforcing the links between Cornwall and England and the suzerainty of the English Crown over the native Irish kings.
Curtana appears next in the marriage of John’s son, Henry III, to Eleanor of Provence in 1236. The chronicler Matthew Paris writes that John of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon and Chester ‘carried the sword of St Edward, which was called “Curtein,” before the king, as a sign that he [John of Scotland] was Earl of the Palace, and had by right the power of restraining the king if he should commit an error.’ Apart from the link to Edward the Confessor, a unique departure probably reflecting Henry’s dedication to the saintly king, Matthew’s account is interesting in that it suggests the sword borne before the monarch, far from being a symbol of his power, was actually a symbol of the limits of royal power.
In this illustration from the French Ordo ad coronandum regem et reginam Francorum, depicting the anointing of a king, his sword appears three times, representing the transfer of power from the Church via the altar to the secular authority. (Image: BnF)
Five Swords where one would suffice?
One of the striking things about all five of the swords in use in the modern coronation is that they share, more or less, the same functions: they are all reflections of the monarch’s judicial, and martial, authority, and the responsibility they have to protect their subjects. In this regard, the Sword of Offering and the Sword of State serve to duplicate the Swords of Temporal and Spiritual Justice, as they represent the same authority of the Crown. They just do so in separate and distinct parts of the rite.
Indeed, in medieval inaugurations, one sword might be passed back and forth between the monarch and the presiding bishop, in a sort of sword-y hokey-cokey, as the sword’s symbolism shifted with each new phase of the ritual: first belted around his waist as a symbol of his martial authority, then taken back, placed on the altar, passed to him again, unsheathed, as a symbol of his bearing the Church’s temporal authority, returned again before being passed to a swordbearer who would precede the newly anointed monarch away from the church, carrying the sword, point uppermost, as a Sword of State.
The inclusion of the five different swords in the forthcoming coronation, like all of the regalia to be used, is a reflection of the complex symbolism of coronations, medieval and modern, and of the monarch as a man and an institution.
Selected readings:
Robert W. Jones, A Cultural History of the Medieval Sword: Power, Piety, and Play. (Woodbridge, 2023)
Lieutenant Colonel (Retd) Edward Barrett MBE, Ceremonial Swords of Britain: State and Civic Swords. (Cheltenham, 2017)
Johanna Dale, Inauguration Rituals and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century. (York, 2019)
J. Le Goff, ‘A Coronation Program for the Age of Saint Louis: The Ordo of 1256’ in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. János M. Bak (Berkeley, CA, 1990)
David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000-1300. (London, 1992)
