 I would like to thank the organisers for placing me after Jeremy Ashby and magnifying my desire to be about a hundred-fold. That really, for organising this fascinating event. I would like to also not only to ask a speech, but I must thank my supervisor, my former supervisor, Paul Crosby, for sitting here, for being a continuing inspiration and for being very much present in this paper, although he is not actually responsible for it. I would like to begin this paper with a confession. On entering the Imperial Treasure in Vienna's Hofburg in 2016, I experienced something that can only be described as an unagogical spiritual magnet. Like the 12th century Adam Tsuja of Saint-Amy, I too felt called away from earthly cares and through the multi-coloured logginess of the treasure performing, I was more intelligent transported from this inferior level to that superior one to his quote Tsuja. With its harsh velity interiors, his strategically positioned lighting which caresses the gleaming objects while plunging everything else into near darkness, the Vienna Schatzkammer intentionally plays up the preciousness and visual power of the objects on this plane. Quite weathered power eminence from is harder to identify in this eclectic medieval collection of obsolete coronation vestments and regalia and to modern server questionable roles of the passion. The extraordinary craftsmanship of the undersized or the superhuman vestments is undoubtedly striking. The tactile nature of some of its items, the socks, the bluffs, the shoes offer a palpable input of past. We can imagine the weather in the full regalia not so puzzled on how they fit a difficult proportion met over the centuries, how they were assembled on the day, whether they had inhibited movement while cadding into the sense of majesty. The intrinsically precious quality of imperial insignia and referees, Tsuja's multi-coloured logginess of gems, extends their lure far beyond their now lost symbol of it's function. For me, this was also an end of a personal journey which we come with a different on that very same spot a decade earlier and has led to years of study of the treasure and in particular of its role in shaping the divisional landscape and the perpendicularity of four medieval cities. But my research covered only a small part in their long and suspenseful past which runs like a thread through German history. We are merely a settlement through the king's rule declared in German Proud. The source of early rule is divine as the enthroned image of Christ clearly shows. But in their long history the instruments which confer the right to rule have themselves acquired supernatural power. More than mere symbols of rulership, the insignia were objects of desire, conflict and forgery. There were barometer of national self-fulfillment and the sheer germania of the many who lost the empire as imagined by good fight and much copied by the spatter of Nazarene painters. The empire is persignified by iconic objects and places that for long crowned the golden ball that was your constitution of the empire, the sword and the shield with the double eagle, the pastoral rhyme and the distant massing of Cologne Cathedral. The image appeared in multiple decades before the unification of Germany, but the apparent insignia of the first rhyme were often seen as an oracle for the future empires. This first world war monument shaped like a crown implores the subjects to follow the anchor of the victory through suffering and death. Every aspect of the insignia is laden with potential symbolism that has transcended their immediate function. The iconic octagonal form of the crown itself is often associated with the shape of the crown in the heart and even the platform events where German kings are set to have been elected in their ages. In modern European history, Chalvin's crown jewels have frequently been deployed to a legitimate political discourse. Both in the Pogin and Hetling there are separate ways to believe and try to convince others, for they were reviving Chalvin's in the era of project, although the crown was spirited away to Vienna shortly before the arrival of Napoleon's troops to Aachen, the moving counties here on the right never actually took place. The loss of the crown was a lasting blow to Aachen, the place where German kings had been crowned since the 9th century and the city commissioned at a considerable cost a set of copies of the insignia in 1915. These replicas were used in times of Yvonne, staging for Chalvin's anniversary, which you see here on the left, and also in more light-hearted moments at the end of World War II, the imperial crown and everything it stood for could be the subject of exaltation and power, the equal measure. But how did we come to this? In order to understand that, we need to return to the 14th century and consider how the perception of presentation of the imperial insignia changed fundamentally under the Lassenberg dynasty, but it began by offering a sound background, and apologies for those of you who know this or who are. Since Chalvin's reign in Rome in 800, only Roman coronation bestowed the imperial title on the Roman king, but the coronation insignia had for centuries been seen as divine instruments of imperial office, and their relationship alone conferred the right to rule. In addition to these insignia, the Deryl Traja also contained the large number of relics, including a set of passion relics, whose custody was originally the exclusive prerogative of the southern evidence in Constantinople. Although some of the relics, the Holy Gals and the True Cross, for example, were thought to have been collected by Constantine, by the 14th century it was firmly believed that insignia were the authentic crown jewels of Chalvin. In truth, many of these objects were made for the members of the saving debt dynasty, two centuries after Chalvin's death. The most important among them were the crown, the pyrosaur, the old embarrassed carnation rose added by the fine staff of the rulers. The set of pieces of the collection was there very last to get in the 11th century the jewel procession cross, which you see on the right, but when a good-pent also revealed a fragment of the True Cross, the relics of Sir Anson, John the Baptist, and a nail wedged into the spear of the lanceture, quite first as the lancet of Constantine, and even as late as the 13th century as the lancet of St Moris. By the 14th century it had firmly established as being the spear of the ritual of the guidance of the Christ side of the cross. As a protein symbol, the lancet was carried in battles and sermons and it conveyed a series of complex meanings which were exploited by successive Holy Roman emperors. The arrival of these ancient, if not in our authentic items to Pram on Easter Sunday, 1350, opened a new chapter in their history with lasting consequences for the religious landscape of several centuries in cities. At the time of their removal from Munich to Pram, much anxiety was expressed in contemporary sources about the alienation of the sacred treasure from the German soil. All of that anxiety may have influenced Emperor Charles IV's tactical valence about his time application. The trial and manner of his reception in Pram immediately set the term. So, according to the Council of Francis, the relics were first brought to Pram's ancient fortress of Bishop at the bottom of this map here, where a sign of the session led by Charles IV and the Archbishop carried them to the heart of the town's recently founded Dawson in the District, known as the New Town. That's called the Archbishop of St John Mather, specifically in France, and here's Charles IV. All the Francis does not specify the exact new town occasion. It is literally certain that the relics were taken to Charles IV, where they were exhibited for the very first time. The event, I believe, was commemorated subsequently in this bohemian version of St John Mather's travels, where it allegedly shows His Majesty Emperor being presented with passion relics in Constantinople, where I live down at this section, Charles IV and Pram. This symbolic eventus, or the imperium, as the treasures of Louis XIII into the Bohemian capital, stood in sharp contrast with its earlier, more secretive existence. For most of its history, the treasures moved between the national residences of its keepers, where it had been out of tree-fills, barth gorg, and keep gorg, in a certain way. Settings of the treasure were rare outside major events, such as imperial coronations and barracks, and they were more than their viewers with nothing more than a memory, so they were indulged in it. First known public displays in Basel in 2015, Regensburg and Nuremberg in 1323-24 were memory-state, but still one of events. Regensburg's concerted effort to provide a setting for a public display in Cyngor was made by Charles IV's predecessor and arch-rival, Louis the Bavarian. In 1323 and 1350, Nuremberg, the capital of Louis VIII's family, played host in Cyngor, and their presence in the city showed up Louis' contested claim in the imperial title. During that time, the regs were deposited in the chapel of his castle, the Alton Hall, which was ran on into a hall, name, and a choir decorated with sculpture. Five months from Louis' Cistercian Foundation of Crescentville, celebrated last day in the chapel. The chronicle composing the monastery around 1330, but was evidence it sometimes doubted, is cracked up after Louis had brought the relics in the city, thousands falling into the chapel hoping to catch the glimpse of the treasure. Although Louis was designed to publicise the sacred treasure, made of him motivated by the sparing critical crisis of Israel, and his ostracism by the highs of his ystafell circles, it is beyond doubt that the public taste for its veneration flew rapidly in the first decades of the 14th century. The growing taste of communal spectacle was in tune with the change of religious climate of late-earth medieval Europe. Processions and radical displays staged not only in interiors, but also in the experience of churches that were attracting an increasing number of pilgrims and were seen as essential steps in the quest for personal salvation. Charts of the force and increasing collections, collection of sacred treasures, personal, royal and imperial, resulted in a gradually evolving sequence of purposely designed architectural settings. Between 1365 and 1424, Carstine Castle was the permanent repository for the burial treasure of Bohemia. The value of its context was reflected in the psychological iconography of its chapels, culminating in the watchful finds of saints painted on the panels in the Holy Cross chapel, and of the dozen walls polished on the precious stone. This was Charles the force's own corner of heaven, where his acquisitive devotion and his imperial rank were rewarded with an intimate audience with Christ himself, who recedes crack there for Charles's pledge of loyalty with the traditional funeral gesture of handclasping. With its mixture of early Christian aesthetic, Sancho peilion, beagle, succodotum and grair and inspired vision worthy of the other dditer of, Carstine presents a unique and complex variation of the traditional fortified princely chess camera. Carstine's chapels served that purpose for a range of relics distributed across its ascending structures in a suitably hierarchical order. One chapel, now entirely lost, but described in the records, celebrated in the absence of a relic and the stark confirmation of the miraculous palace. Sennichwys' oratory in the lower palace marked here with the tomb. The pictorial miracle of Sennichwys is a bleeding figure which would be meant to resist the Charles the force's attempt to remove from the Franciscan artistry in France or the town. Charles the force's more diplomatic attempts at relic collecting were celebrating a well-done sequence of murals in the Leicester town's chapel of Our Lady. The gift of the fragment of the true cross and the form of the crown forms the self-argument of what relics have exactly been handed over here. Were assembled in this specially commissioned relic request which you see here and in the heritage in the flesh, which contained Charles the force's personal collection of the passion relics, and was deposited in the intimate commentary of the instruments of the passion of Our Lord, adjacent to the chapel of Our Lady, so we were here just a moment ago and so it's through this little passage that they add here this is what it is. We are on board the relics into the chapel required for the decoration to be occupied with more spectologically meaningful stone, precious stone, as this is a remnant of wall paintings from our state life of the decoration. The material reserved for other ministerial terms such as the Holy Cross chapel and that of St. Aethysus in the Vitus Cathedral. The consecration of the Holy Cross chapel in 1365 marked the end of the journey of imperial treasure, which was deposited into the spacious ombry to learn to master the modernist tripty, only purpose built repository in its long history. That clears the treasure's initial location in Prague following that's a area of entry in 1350. The chronicler bench of caviter's assertion that was taken to the cathedral following its first public display has been frequently questioned since the radical coincided with the militia of the old basilica and the erection of the new Gothic choir. Other locations certain sought in the city. The new town church of St. Charlemagne's of Carlton in Czech founded in 1350 in a mountainous homage to Martin and the First Emperor, was singled out by Zechael Lenko as a fitting temporary treasury and a main reservoir for its existence. However, the smooth progress of building work and the perilous location of the church next to the new town halls makes that downfall so it wears carves just as this is all the new town issue that we can see at the beginning and Charles Graves. In my doctoral thesis, the creation of the chapel in the course of the Denditian emers monastery also in Newtown with recurrent images of the crucifixion now obliterated by these 19th century paintings which was directly connected with the occasional storage of the Passion Roads but only prior to the animal display Charles Graves which you can see was very close by. The new Gothic choir of St. Wight's Cathedral on the other hand maintained its own identity as a vast national pantheon of saints and insignia. Some of the collection went back to the pre-romanised groups of St. Wightists and to its founder, Ventuslus, whose 75 body wrestled in the chapel adjacent to the new south chancel. What number is visiting the cathedral? The experience with sacred sites will be magnified by the presence of relics and royal treasure. There will be two sacrifices on the north and the south side so one about New York space here and the other there. Tucked away in discreet chambers which were hoisted about longboardly vaulted and decorated spaces that supported them. Thus the coronation insignia of the crown man of Bohemia were and still are kept in the Sacristianava above the south portal so these windows belong to it. The abandoned Sacristia accessible only through the seal door in the Ventuslus Chapel next to it so that's the chapel of the Sacristian. Here's the sterling as an image there who was seen as their ultimate guardian and just to show because we're discussing about kind of decorated vaults and their relationships it's very interesting to hear Leslie's thoughts about that. So we here have several ideas. First of all the vaults don't appear in this structure essentially kept and that's the same situation on the other side. We do have some very scary capitals there that have been written about but this is the part of Sacristia that nobody's allowed to enter and we've been very periodic in the back of the four years and this is what's such occasion where at least I think five different people have to be present with their own keys in the artificial command of the President of the Republic inside. So these really seeing separate objects of the state were brought to Symbitis's altar the coronation of each successive Rehunion Monarch. At the close of Charles and Paul's extensive exequism in 1778 the crown of ceremonies will return to some of the spirits by the Queen who placed it on the altar in his chapel so he is as he's trying some sort of original also this is the 19th century record that was written there. Nevertheless the main focus of the religious theater with the people was on the relics and their display. For in Charles and Paul's coronation journey in 1355 the cathedral treasury received a large nation of relics collected from Tria and Minasyn Road and their copiousness resulted in the institution of two new feasts. The first celebrate the relics of the Virgin's veil obtained from Tria and was the tenured feasts which involved a large number of other relics especially based on Metasus. The second relics where the Alansio Rei Ffarrin the Celebration of the Relics commemorated the translation of the relics from Ryan that was celebrated every January. A small balcony situated community of barfields that was not far thanks for another set of old leather palerian bolts was used as a platform for a carefully orchestrated ceremony designed for the large number of feftasins and these are the original sacristy with these bolts looks a bit different more spectacularly palerian and these now have a head of windows which also belong to the same structure head of balcony there which is only made from records following the fire of the disastrous fire of 1541. So for the little treasure the real departure representation and reception came with the institution in 1354 of the Feast of the Holylarts and Nails celebrated annually on the second Friday after Easter with a public display in France child square this site of the first reception in 1350 so from this structure you can see here I'll mention the name three aspects of this new original fire of particular interest in the first instance is the choice of location a large secular arena or market place rather than a cathedral or one of cities numerous churches secondly the presentation of the insignia and relics was given a sound theological basis the ceremony was conducted according to a service devised by the emperor and his theologians and followed by the ground for the indulgences finally the Holylarts feast also inaugurated the development of a new reddit centre of architecture according to Chekhaïr Ysbemesh their architecture was initially rather modest it consisted of a temporary platform made in Germany that was heard as part of short nothing more permanent nothing of permanent was required since the rents were kept and were brought in in town shortly before the ceremony in 1382 four years after Charles IV's death the new town's temporary home to school was replaced by a permanent Siborium-like edifice dedicated to Corpus Christi to see in the middle of the square left the initiative was construction did not come from Charles' increasing mythogic sun that is the fourth while permanent Vatican return to the circle of the pendant hammer worked to this custodians of the chapel until the early 15th century the chapel was pulled down in 1789 in order to make way for a landscape park but the Sibari Eddinshire is a centrally shaped structure placed in the middle of Charles' square in circle by wall and topped by a tower the next chapter in the history of the royal treasure suggests that Corpus Christi's ambitious arrangement was not considered to be entirely successful in 1423 following the sudden death of Francis IV and the erection of the castle and the rest in Bohemia, Charles IV's second son Emperor Seismund spurred to the treasure work of the culture to the safety of his Hungarian fortress in Visigra Seismund's son changed his mind sorry Seismund's son changed his mind and resorted to depositing scene and permanently in the politically and strategically important era town of Muirberg and in his words near the centre of the Antwerp the entrance of the treasure into the city in 1424 was also an auspicious occasion but Emperor was conspicuously absent instead of the processional labour organized at town pellets and citizens the insignia and the relics were not deposited in the royal residence pellets to be expected but in the chapel of the high guise here were a large silver chest and the treasure was suspended over the quarter in chains and so here is the chesfer suspended by chains and so the chest still survived the march of mountain alism and the quarter part which we didn't see when it was placed above the old church space of the mountains and the crust the reputation was deserved only for rare private displays in the chapel and once a year for the peace of the holy mass and nails which was translated to the city with the treasure the wealth of records surviving from the last and work piece and from the last and work piece gives us better idea of the fysion literature and also its changing nature although the town council continued to use the actual setting of the hut mark it gradually distanced the sermon from the earlier event Emperor propaganda so instead of the explicitly imperial facade the church of our lady which you can see here in his head there and also here the treasure was shown through a wooden platform a rectific of the purpose on the opposite side of the square in front of the house of the chesfer found which is quite close to the shown room of the found just there and the wooden platform actually has been drawn in the 18th century so this is what we looked up in the hands of numerous authorities the holy mass festival was formed from a vehicle for imperial advertisement to a holy municipal affair the construction of the platform and its adornment was the responsibility of the council and the couches the decorative hangings for the heraldi devices of their donors and not those of the empire instead of the emperor the elders of the town council were known to elevate the reliquaries alongside senior poets when in 1513 the council commissioned Dura to paint two imperial portraits for the chesfer house the choice was not an impressive expression of political regions for historical perspective but homage to the two rulers who directly or indirectly connected Nerovo with the treasure Charlemagne on the left as a mythologised collector of the crown jewels and Zillithmund on the right who donated them to the city the latter adribingly realistic depiction of an elderly gold ruler armed fully with his private rather than any official imperial signal Zillithmund's metaphorical disrobing was symbolic of the physical and figurative separation of the empress from their treasure which had put centuries being the most empowering, sacred contribute of their office The idealised union of the supreme Christian ruler and earthly desire and the sacred treasure actively constructed in Prague at the Charles IV was replaced in Nerovo by the collective identity of the emperor and prophet The image of the emperor once essential for the promotion of Prague's last festival disappeared entirely for pilgrimage momentas in Nerovo focusing instead on the iconic shape of the lands and the town's patron saints What coincident do you perhaps? The development in Nerovo came in the time of a cute political crisis in the empire who's called now residing in Halsberg in Vienna When in 1442 Frederick III Halsberg claimed the imperial insignia for his coronation and challenged the Nerovo's historical rights the city sought legal advice from Padural gods and one With a continuing threat of the Turks and the Balkans and the looming presence and retires for the US on the Hungarian border Frederick, like Louis the Barbarian in the previous century may have hoped to exploit the treasure as a symbol of divine order and legitimacy and to give his troubled reign Vienna did find again the custodianship of the imperial insignia including the army of Prague and the passion roads but only in 1800 and with a brief interview between 1938 and 1946 when Adolf Hitler rather did this photoshop here on the second world war sense of that word with a sorgina actually So he hadn't returned to Nerovo to the spiritual centre of Nerovo thereby circing up all rivals between former imperial cities and pointedly demoting Vienna More than a thousand years after Charlemagne, his crown jewels still had the power to mythologise the past and to remind the sector of the long departure of the German empire The discovery of the treasure in 1946 given in the so-called Historicia Puntbocker castle is a thrilling work for you, John and Harry The installation of insignia and the treasure of the artwork on the 3rd of July 1954 was a master in the history of post-war of Austria and it also marked the transition from the instruments of veneration to the objects of aberration but that is a whole other story