Dieu, le souverain et la cour Stratégies et rituels de légitimation du pouvoir impérial et royal dans l’Antiquité tardive et au

The question of the construction of political power and its legitimacy is at the heart of this work. From the end of the 3rd century to the beginning of the 7th century was a period in which the Roman Empire found itself confronted with new challenges, including the fragmentation of its political space caused by the arrival and installation of new barbarian protagonists on its soil. The influence of Latin culture on these first barbarian rulers was extremely deep. They inscribed their power in symbolic frameworks inherited from the imperial courts or from the governors’ court. This study aims to determine to what extent and according to what modality the reappropriation of some ceremonies, be it their symbolic or ritual elements, took place at a time when the Christianization of power forced both emperors and kings to redefine some aspects of political rituals. 

This investigation has highlighted first the importance of practical models which, dating back to the High Empire, were imitated and reinterpreted in all the barbarian kingdoms, their meaning varying according to the circumstances in which they were mobilized. Secondly, it also reveals that Christian references were less quickly imposed in imperial rituals than in royal rituals. Eventually, the place that sovereigns, empresses or queens took in all these evolutions by participating in the process of legitimization of political power is noteworthy. From the end of the third century to the beginning of the seventh century, the staging of the rulers, Roman emperors or barbarian kings, and of their legitimacy at their court was the object of innovative practices, because the political circumstances, particularly shifting, meant that power had to constantly renew and redefine itself. This period between the reign of Aurelian and the Fourth Council of Toledo - because of its heterogeneity, its complexity, the multiplicity of political actors and the coexistence of different models of legitimization - was an age of experimentation from which the model of medieval royalty was built in Europe.