Political Rituals and Consolidation of Power in Cilician Armenia: The Evidence of the Coronation Ordo and Its Eurasian Entanglements

The Grand Mashtotsʻ of Sis is a little-studied early fourteenth-century liturgical manuscript containing the detailed descriptions of several post-coronation rituals, which were meant to be an integral part of the royal inauguration ceremonies in the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (1198–1375). In the appendix to this article, I have offered the first English translation of that text, while discussing the textual tradition of the Cilician coronation ordo and its Mediterranean models in the first part of the article. The next section analyzes the courtly etiquettes and ceremonial roles ascribed to various officials of rank, which greatly reveal the administrative mechanisms through which the state apparatus functioned in Cilician Armenia. Orchestrated by the sovereign, these symbolically charged rituals reflect the hierarchical and reciprocal relationship between the principal representatives of the body politic. By focusing on the outdoor procession, the royal banquet, and the gift-giving ceremony, the article demonstrates how the kings and queens of this northeastern Mediterranean state made use of their ceremonial presence for consolidating political power and what the intended implications of these aesthetic enactments were in the long and ambiguous process of governance.