Crown (headgear)

For other uses, see Crown.
The Imperial State Crown of Great Britain, Tower of London. It incorporates the "Black Prince's Ruby", a 140 ct. Badakhshan spinel. This image of the crown was taken prior to the 1953 coronation, when the crown was modified for Queen Elizabeth II
Crown of Bolesław I the Brave from Poland. Replica made between 2001 and 2003 after the original 1000-year-old crown was destroyed in the late 18th century.

A crown is a traditional headwear worn by a monarch or by a deity, for whom the crown traditionally represents power, legitimacy, victory, triumph, honor, and glory, as well as immortality, righteousness, and resurrection. In art, the crown may be shown being offered to those on Earth by angels. Apart from the traditional form, crowns also may be in the form of a wreath and be made of flowers, oak leaves, or thorns and be worn by others, representing what the coronation part aims to symbolize with the specific crown. In religious art, a crown of stars is used similarly to a halo. Crowns worn by rulers often contain jewels.

As an emblem

A crown is often an emblem of the monarchy, a monarch's government, or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, particularly in Commonwealth countries, as an abstract name for the monarchy itself, as distinct from the individual who inhabits it (see The Crown). A specific type of crown (or coronet for lower ranks of peerage) is employed in heraldry under strict rules. Indeed, some monarchies never had a physical crown, just a heraldic representation, as in the constitutional kingdom of Belgium, where no coronation ever took place; the royal installation is done by a solemn oath in parliament, wearing a military uniform: the King is not acknowledged as by divine right, but assumes the only hereditary public office in the service of the law; so he in turn will swear in all members of "his" federal government.

Terminology

Three distinct categories of crowns exist in those monarchies that use crowns or state regalia.

In Classical antiquity, the crown (corona) that was sometimes awarded to people other than rulers, such as triumphal military generals or athletes, was actually a wreath or chaplet, or ribbon-like diadem.

Styles

Indian

Crowns have been used in India since ancient times and are described adorning Hindu gods in ancient texts

Thai

Thai crowns called "Mongkut"(มงกุฎ) are a unique style that resembles a stupa. They

ไฟล์:พระมหาพิชัยมงกุฎ.jpg |Thai crown

History

The Iron Crown of Lombardy, probably the most ancient royal insignia of Europe, used by the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, kept in the Cathedral of Monza.
Crown of King George XII of Georgia made of gold and decorated with 145 diamonds, 58 rubies, 24 emeralds and 16 amethysts. It took the form of a circlet surmounted by ornaments and eight arches. A globe surmounted by a cross rested on the top of the crown.
The Imperial State Crown of the United Kingdom.

The precursor to the crown was the browband called the diadem, which had been worn by the Achaemenid Persian emperors, was adopted by Constantine I, and was worn by all subsequent rulers of the later Roman Empire.

Numerous crowns of various forms were used in antiquity, such as the Hedjet, Deshret, the Pschent double crown, and Khepresh of Pharaonic Egypt.

The corona radiata, the "radiant crown" known best on the Statue of Liberty, and perhaps worn by the Helios that was the Colossus of Rhodes, was worn by Roman emperors as part of the cult of Sol Invictus prior to the Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity. It was referred to as "the chaplet studded with sunbeams” by Lucian, about 180 AD.[1]

Perhaps the oldest extant Christian crown in Europe is the Iron Crown of Lombardy, of Roman and Longobard age, later again used to crown modern Kings of Napoleonic and Austrian Italy, and to represent united Italy after 1860.

In the Christian tradition of European cultures, where ecclesiastical sanction authenticates monarchic power, when a new monarch assumes the throne in a coronation ceremony, the crown is placed on the new monarch's head by a religious official. Some, though not all early Holy Roman Emperors travelled to Rome at some point in their careers to be crowned by the pope. Napoleon, according to legend, surprised Pius VII when he reached out and crowned himself, although in reality this order of ceremony had been pre-arranged (see coronation).

Today, only the British Monarchy and Tongan Monarchy continue this tradition as the only remaining anointed and crowned monarchs, though many monarchies retain a crown as a national symbol in heraldry. The French Crown Jewels were sold in 1885 on the orders of the Third French Republic, with only a token number, with their precious stones replaced by glass, held on to for historic reasons and displayed by the Louvre. The Spanish Crown Jewels were destroyed in a major fire in the 18th century while the so-called "Irish Crown Jewels" (actually merely the British Sovereign's insignia of the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick) were stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907, just before the investiture of Bernard Edward Barnaby FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown.

Special headgear to designate rulers dates back to pre-history, and is found in many separate civilizations around the globe. Commonly, rare and precious materials are incorporated into the crown, but that is only essential for the notion of crown jewels. Gold and precious jewels are common in western and oriental crowns. In the Native American civilizations of the Pre-Columbian New World, rare feathers, such as that of the quetzal, often decorated crowns; so too in Polynesia (e.g. Hawaii).

In other cultures, no crown is used in the equivalent of coronation, but the head may still be otherwise symbolically adorned, as a royal tikka in the Hindu tradition of India.

Image gallery

Numismatics

Because one or more crowns, alone or as part of a more elaborate design, often appear on coins, several monetary denominations came to be known as 'a crown' (see Crown (British coin)) or the equivalent word in the local language, such as krone. This persists in the case of the national currencies of the Scandinavian countries and the Czech Republic. The generic term "crown sized" is frequently used for any coin roughly the size of an American silver dollar.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Crowns.

References

  1. ↑ in Alexander the false prophet)
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