the arms.  After this the King rose up, and with the assistance of his officers, put on his royal robes.  The Archbishop handed to him successively the ring, the sceptre, and the rod of justice, and lastly placed the crown on his head.  At this moment the twelve peers formed themselves into a group, the lay peers being in the first rank, immediately around 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 Margrave of Brandenburg.  On the appointed day, the mass of the Holy Spirit was duly solemnized in the Church of St. Bartholomew