And the "holy oil" which is poured from it, are connected, like the
royal chair, with some of the miracles that no one now believes, and
with some interesting historical facts.
Amongst the honours bestowed by the Virgin on St. Thomas a Becket,
(according to a MS. in the Cotton Library,) he received from our Lady's
own hands, at Sens, in France, a golden eagle, and a small phial of
stone or glass, containing an unction, on whose virtues she largely
expatiated. Being then in banishment, he was directed to give them in
charge to a monk of Poictiers, who hid them in St. Gregory's church at
that place, where they were discovered in the reign of Edward III., with
a written account of the vision; and, being delivered to the Black
Prince, were deposited safely in the Tower. Henry IV. is said to be the
first prince anointed with these vessels.
"Holy oil" still retains its use, if not its virtue, in our coronations.
The king was formerly anointed on the head, the bowings of the arms, on
both shoulders, and between the shoulders, on the breast, and on the
hands; but the ceremonials of the last two coronations only prescribe
the anointing of the head, breast, and hands. In these, too, nothing is
said of the "consecration" of the oil, which seems anciently to have
been performed on the morning of the coronation[15].
Historically, the custom of anointing kings is to be traced to the times
of the Jewish judges; the consecration of one of whose descendants,
Abimelech (before noticed), connects the subject with the earliest and
one of the most beautiful fables of the East--that of the trees going
forth to anoint a king[16]. Selden regards this fable as a proof "that
anointing of kings was of known use in the eldest times," and "that
solemnly to declare one to be a king, and to anoint a king, in the
Eastern parts, were but synonymies[17]." The elegant allusion to the
olive tree, "honouring both God and man" with its "_fatness_" or oil,
should not escape us, as corroborating this conjecture. This poem is
dated by the learned antiquary "about 200 years before the beginning of
the [Jewish] kingdom in Saul."
We have several instances in Scripture of the inauguration of the Jewish
kings by anointing, and of its being performed at the express command of
God[18]--a circumstance which was held to communicate an official
sanctity to their persons, their attire, &c. The noble David twice
spares the life of his bitterest enemy, Saul, upon this
ground.--"Jehovah shall smite him," he says; "or his day shall come to
die; or he shall descend into the battle, and perish"--"Who can stretch
forth his hand against Jehovah's anointed, and be guiltless[19]?"--and
he finely alludes to the general reverence of his country for these
appointments, when he exclaims, in his memorable ode over his fallen
rival, "The shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of
Saul, as though it had not been anointed with oil!"
With the spread of Christianity, or rather of the papal domination, over
the kingdoms of western Europe, came the adoption of this rite into the
coronation ceremonies of its princes. It at once increased the influence
of the church, and surrounded the monarch with a popular veneration. The
three distinct anointings yet retained (_i.e._ on the head, breast, and
hands or arms,) were said by Becket to indicate glory, holiness, and
fortitude: another prelate, one of the greatest scholars of his age,
assured our Henry III., that as all former sins were washed away in
baptism, "so also by this unction[20]."
"Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an ANOINTED king,"--
Richard II. is made to say, by Shakspeare, on the invasion of
Bolingbroke. Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to Marmion, speaks of a
singular ancient consecration of the kings of arms in Scotland, who seem
to have had a regular coronation down to the middle of the sixteenth
century,--only that they were anointed with _wine_ instead of oil[21].