Observations on the Dead Emperor Collected from Annals and Laws

present, was deprived of the right of carrying the sword. He denied that the funeral rites of the Emperor pertained to the Empire; he said that the sword was of the Caesar, not the Empire, and that it was shown not empty of its scabbard, but hidden within it. But the Pappenheimer responded that many orders of the Empire had been summoned to the funeral; that the Emperor had never carried such a large sword, and furthermore, that the Hungarian and Bohemian swords were carried in front, and that no naked sword had been used at the election of King Maximilian. The objection was useless at that time, but afterwards, on June 3, 1566, the Emperor decreed at Augsburg that what had happened at the funeral rites should not be a detriment to hereditary offices. LONDORP, Vol. I, Acts of State, Book VI, ch. 192. Nor can anything be detracted from the hereditary offices of the Empire by the courtiers today, if the funeral were to be conducted according to the ancient custom, we gather from the Capitulation of Charles VI, art. 3, in the words: We also wish to make the arrangement, etc.

How is it to be prepared?

The Romans displayed the images of their ancestors and bronze statues of the subject provinces at the funeral, and, as TACITUS writes in his Annals, Book I, L. Arruntius proposed that the titles of the laws passed should be carried before in the funeral of Augustus; among the Germans, however, weapons are observed above all. Hence, they sent men to the funerals of the Emperors who, by hereditary right, would carry the banners, helmets, and shields, and lead the horse. Cf. FUGGER, p. 1076 sq., where the funeral of Frederick III is discussed; add the description provided by MÜLLER in his Reichstags-theater Parliamentary Theater, Part I, p. 194 sq. Finally, the following age diminished such apparatus and such expense, making the Caesar’s funeral as if it were a private one. The funeral bed is generally carried by honorable men of lower rank; why not also that of the Emperor?

Who should carry the bier?

Metellus was carried to the pyre by four sons, one a praetor, three consulars, two triumphal, one censorious. PLINY, Book VII, ch. 44. Augustus was carried to the Field of Mars on the shoulders of senators. See SUETONIUS in his Augustus, ch. 100. From our own examples, ADELBOLD provides one in his life of Henry the Saint, in Ludewig’s Scriptores Bambergenses Writers of Bamberg, Vol. I, p. 793: When Otto...