Early medieval charms invoke the service of the Visitation of the Sick through the use of liturgical elements central to that rite, as Chapter 4 argues. Charms import the singing of psalms, sprinkling of holy water, praying of anointing and healing formulas, imposing of hands, anointing of the body, and the chanting of antiphons and litanies. Once present in charms, these and other sacred practices serve as indices of the Visitation of the Sick. When allusions to the Visitatio Infirmorum are successfully recognized or evoked, charms invoke the liturgy. Because recognition proves crucial, the question of charm participants’ familiarity with the Visitation of the Sick leads us to assess the resonance of Visitatio references through the construct of a continuum. At one end we find charms containing references to the Visitation of the Sick that seem subtle in light of their brevity or context. At the opposite end we find charms with numerous, lengthy utterances based in the sacramental rite. Over all, associations with Christ’s healing and liturgical Unction are meant to transform faithful charm participants in their time of need.

The fifth chapter explores the sacralisation and liturgification of the royal investiture ceremony in eighth- and ninth-century Western Europe. With the progressive fusion of the rites of unction and coronation in the Carolingian monarchy, the royal investiture ceremony was sacralised and liturgified, and confirmed the increasingly prominent function of the bishop as its ordinary minister. Ceremonial liturgification and iconographic Christification are the two main processes in the consolidation of the ideology and practice of Western monarchies from the eighth century. Carolingian ceremonial practices developed the basic ceremonies of royal accession which would become prevalent in medieval Europe and early modern monarchies, and constitute the main formative period for the ideology and rituals of medieval royalty in the West, between the mid-eighth century and the mid-ninth century. This sacralisation preludes the transgressive nature of the performance of self-coronation among some late Western medieval kings, in which the mediating function of the priest will be damaged. The iconographical Christ substitutes (or, perhaps more accurately, is transferred from) the pagan and theocentric models of pre-Carolingian ceremonies and rites.

This chapter analyses the five steps in the itinerary of the royal accession of the kings of Navarra from the eleventh century to the fourteenth: the effects of the restoration of the kingdom of Navarra in 1134 with the investiture of García Ramírez, against the will of the Pope; Theobald I of Champagne’s oath, which took place some years after his accession to the throne in 1234; the reintroduction of the anointment with Theobald II in 1257; Joanna II and Philip III of Navarra’s oath and anointment in 1329; and Charles III’s self-coronation in 1390. The evolution of the Navarrese royal accession ceremonies emphasises two specific characteristics of Navarrese politics: resistance to ecclesiastical mediation and consensualism. Charles III’s majestic self-coronation should not be regarded thus as an isolated or exceptional ritual since it responds to the tradition of the other Iberian kingdoms in which the ceremony of self-coronation had been enacted, reflects the particular idiosyncrasy of the kingdom of Navarra and reacts to a particular need generated in a given context, reinforcing once more the idea of the malleability of the rituals and the power of the king’s agency.