Enthrone (pronounced en-throhn)
(1) To put
on the throne in a formal installation ceremony (sometimes called an
enthronement) which variously could be synonymous with (or simultaneously
performed with) a coronation or other ceremonies of investiture.
(2) Figuratively
in this context, to help a candidate to the succession of a monarchy or by
extension in any other major organisation (ie the role of “kingmakers”, literal
and otherwise).
(3) To
invest with sovereign or episcopal authority (ie a legal instrument separate
from any ceremony).
(4) To
honour or exalt (now rare except in literary or poetic use).
(5) Figuratively,
to assign authority to or vest authority in.
Circa 1600:
The construct was en- + throne and the original meaning was “to place on a
throne, exalt to the seat of royalty”.
For this purpose it replaced the late fourteenth century enthronize, from the thirteenth century Old
French introniser, from the Late
Latin inthronizare, from Greek the enthronizein. In the late fourteenth century the verb throne (directly from the noun) was used
in the same sense. Throne (the chair or
seat occupied by a sovereign, bishop or other exalted personage on ceremonial
occasions) dates from the late twelfth century and was from the Middle English trone, from the Old French trone, from the Latin thronus, from the Ancient Greek θρόνος (thrónos) (chair, high-set seat, throne). It replaced the earlier Middle English seld (seat, throne). In facetious use, as early as the 1920s, throne
could mean “a toilet” (used usually in the phrase “on the throne”) and in theology had the special use (in the plural
and capitalized) describing the third (a member of an order of angels ranked
above dominions and below cherubim) of the nine orders into which the angels
traditionally were divided in medieval angelology. The en- prefix was from the Middle English en- (en-, in-), from the Old French en- (also an-), from the Latin in-
(in, into). It was also an alteration of
in-, from the Middle English in-, from the Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in (in).
Both the Latin & Germanic forms were from the primitive
Indo-European en (in, into). The intensive use of the Old French en- & an- was due to confluence with Frankish intensive prefix an- which was related to the Old English
intensive prefix -on. It formed a transitive verb whose meaning is
to make the attached adjective (1) in, into, (2) on, onto or (3) covered. It was used also to denote “caused” or as an
intensifier. The prefix em- was (and
still is) used before certain consonants, notably the labials b and p. Enthrone,
dethrone, enthronest & enthronize are verbs, enthronementm, enthronization
& enthroner are nouns, enthroning is a noun & verb, enthroned is a verb
& adjective; the noun plural is enthronements. The noun enthronable is non-standard. The derived forms include the verb
unenthrone, reenthrone & disenthrone and although there have been many
enthroners, the form enthronee has never existed.
In
colonial-era West Africa the coined forms were “enskin” (thus enskinment, enskinning,
enskinned) and “enstool” (thus enstoolment, enstooling, enstooled). These words were used to refer to the
ceremonies in which a tribal chief was installed in his role; the meanings thus
essentially the same as enjoyed in the West by “enthrone”. The constructs reflected a mix of indigenous
political culture and English morphological adaptation during the colonial
period, the elements explained by (1) the animal skins (the distinctive
cheetah often mentioned in the reports of contemporary anthropologists although
in some Islamic and Sahelian-influenced chieftaincies (including the Dagomba,
Mamprusi, Hausa emirates), a cow or lion skin often was the symbol of authority)
which often surrounded the new chief and (2) the tradition in
Africa of a chief sitting on a stool. Sometimes,
the unfortunate animal’s skin would be laid over the stool (and almost always,
one seems to have been laid at the chief’s feet) but in some traditions (notably
in northern Ghana and parts of Nigeria) it was a mark of honor for the chief to
sit on a skin spread on the ground.
The stool was the central symbol of chieftaincy and kingship among Akan-speaking peoples (still in present-day Ghana where “to enskin” is used generally to mean “to install as a leader of a group” and the constitution (1992) explicitly protects the institution of chieftaincy and judicial decisions routinely use “enstool” or “enskin” (depending on region)). In Akan political culture, the most famous use was the Sika Dwa Kofi (the Golden Stool) of the Asante and it represented the embodiment of the polity and ancestors, not merely a seat (used rather like the synecdoches “the Pentagon” (for the US Department of Defense (which appears now to be headed by a cabinet office who simultaneously is both Secretary of Defense & Secretary of War)) or “Downing Street” (for the UK prime-minister or the government generally). Thus, to be “enstooled” is ritually to be placed into office as chief, inheriting the authority vested in the stool. Enskin & enstool (both of which seem first to have appeared in the records of the Colonial Office in the 1880s and thus were products of the consolidation of British indirect rule in West Africa, rather than being survivals from earlier missionary English which also coined its own terms) were examples of semantic calquing (the English vocabulary reshaped to encode indigenous concepts) and, as it was under the Raj in India, it was practical administrative pragmatism, colonial officials needing precise (and standardized) terms that distinguished between different systems of authority. In truth, they were also often part of classic colonial “fixes” in which the British would take existing ceremonies and add layers of ritual to afforce the idea of a chief as “their ruler” and within a couple of generations, sometimes the local population would talk of the newly elaborate ceremony as something dating back centuries; the “fix” was a form of constructed double-legitimization.
A classic
colonial fix was the Bose Levu Vakaturaga
(Great Council of Chiefs) in Fiji which the British administrators created in
1878. While it's true that prior to
European contact, there had been meetings between turaga (tribal chiefs) to settle disputes and for other purposes,
all the evidence suggests they were ad-hoc appointments with little of the
formality, pomp and circumstance the British introduced. Still, it was a successful institution which
the chiefs embraced, apparently with some enthusiasm because the cloaks and
other accoutrements they adopted for the occasion became increasingly elaborate
and it was a generally harmonious form of indigenous governance which enabled
the British to conduct matters of administration and policy-making almost
exclusively through the chiefs. The
council survived even after Fiji gained independence from Britain in 1970 until
it was in 2012 abolished by the military government of Commodore Frank
Bainimarama (b 1954; prime minister of Fiji 2007-2022), as part of reform
programme said to be an attempt to reduce ethnic divisions and promote a
unified national identity. The
commodore's political future would be more assured had he learned lessons from
the Raj.
There was
of course an element of racial hierarchy in all this and “enskin” &
“enstool” denoted a “tribal chief” under British rule whereas “enthrone” might
have been thought to imply some form of sovereignty because that was the
linkage in Europe and that would never do.
What the colonial authorities wanted was to maintain the idea of “the
stool” as a corporate symbol, the office the repository of the authority, not
the individual. The danger with using a
term like “enthronement” was the population might be infected by the European
notion of monarchy as a hereditary kingship with personal sovereignty; what the
Europeans wanted was “a stool” and they would decide who would be enstooled,
destooled or restooled.
English words and their connotations did continue to matter in the post-colonial world because although the colonizers might have departed, often the legacy of language remained, sometimes as an “official” language of government and administration. In the 1990s, the office of South Africa’s Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi (1928–2023) sent a series of letters to the world’s media outlets advising he should be styled as “Prince” and not “Chief”, on the basis of being the grandson of one Zulu king and the nephew of another. The Zulus were once described as a “tribe” and while that reflected the use in ethnography, the appeal in the West was really that it represented a rung on the racist hierarchy of civilization, the preferred model being: white people have nations or states, Africans cluster in tribes or clans. The colonial administrators recognized these groups had leaders and typically they used the style “chief” (from the Middle English cheef & chef, from the Old French chef & chief (leader), from the Vulgar Latin capus, from the Classical Latin caput (head), from the Proto-Italic kaput, from the primitive Indo-European káput). As the colonial records make clear, there were “good” chiefs and “troublesome” chiefs, thus the need sometimes to arrange a replacement enstooling.
Unlike in the West where styles of address and orders of precedence were codified (indeed, somewhat fetishized), the traditions in Africa seem to have been more fluid and Mangosuthu Buthelezi didn’t rely on statute or even documented convention when requesting the change. Instead, he explained “prince” reflected his Zulu royal lineage not only was appropriate (he may have cast an envious eye at the many Nigerian princes) but was also commonly used as his style by South African media, some organs or government and certainly his own Zulu-based political party (IQembu leNkatha yeNkululeko (the IPF; Inkatha Freedom Party). He had in 1953 assumed the Inkosi (chieftainship) of the Buthelezi clan, something officially recognized four year laters by Pretoria although not until the early 1980s (when it was thought he might be useful as a wedge to drive into the ANC (African National Congress) does the Apartheid-era government seem to have started referring to him as “prince”). Despite that cynical semi-concession, there was never a formal re-designation.
In the matter of prom queens and such, it’s
correct to say there has been “an enthronement” because even in the absence of
a physical throne (in the sense of “a chair”), the accession is marked by the announcement
and the placing of the crown or tiara.
This differs from something like the “enthroning” of a king or queen in
the UK because, constitutionally, there is no interregnum, the new assuming the
title as the old took their last breath and “enthronement” is a term reserved casually
to apply to the coronation. Since the
early twentieth century, the palace and government have contrived to make an
elaborate “made for television” ceremony although it has constitutional
significance beyond the rituals related to the sovereign’s role as Supreme Governor
of the Church of England.
In October 2025, the matter of enthronement (or, more correctly, non-enthronement) in the
Church of England made a brief splash in some of the less explored corners of
social media after it was announced the ceremony marking the accession of the
next Archbishop of Canterbury would be conducted in Canterbury Cathedral in
March 2026. The announcement was
unexceptional in that it was expected and for centuries Archbishops of
Canterbury have come and gone (although the last one was declared gone rather sooner
than expected) but what attracted some comment was the new appointee was to be “installed”
rather than the once traditional “enthroned”.
The conclusion some drew was this apparent relegation was related to the
next archbishop being Dame Sarah Mullally (née Bowser; b 1962) the first woman
to hold the once desirable job, the previous 105 prelates having been men, the
first, Saint Augustine of Canterbury (circa 630s-circa 604) in 597 (not to be confused with the still influential Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430)).
Despite the suspicions the event was being in some way "devalued" because a woman got the job, there is in the church no substantive legal or theological significance in the
use of “installed” rather than “enthroned” and the choice reflects modern
ecclesiastical practice rather than having any doctrinal or canonical effect. A person become Archbishop of Canterbury through
a sequence of juridical acts and these constitute the decisive legal instruments;
ceremonial rites have a symbolic value but nothing more, the power of the
office vested from the point at which the legal mechanisms have correctly been
executed (in that, things align with the procedures used for the
nation’s monarchs). So the difference is
one of tone rather than substance and the “modern” church has for decades sought
to distance itself from perceptions it may harbor quasi-regal aspirations or
the perpetuation of clerical grandeur and separateness; at least from Lambeth
Palace, the preferred model long has been pastoral; most Church of England
bishops have for some times been “installed” in their cathedrals (despite “enthronement”
surviving in some press reports, a product likely either of nostalgia or “cut
& paste journalism”). That said, some
Anglican provinces outside England still “enthrone” (apparently on the basis “it’s always been done that way” rather
than the making of a theological or secular point”).
Interestingly,
Archbishops of York (“the church in the north”) continued to enjoy ceremonies of enthronement even after those those at Canterbury underwent installations.
Under canon law, the wording literally makes no difference and
historians have concluded the retention of the older form is clung to for no
reason other than “product differentiation”, York Minster often emphasizing
their continuity with medieval ceremonial forms; it’s thus a mere cultural artefact,
the two ceremonies performing the same liturgical action: seating the
archbishop in the cathedra (the chair (throne) of the archbishop. Because it’s the Archbishop of Canterbury and
not York who sits as the “spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican community”,
in York there’s probably no lingering sensitivity to criticism of continuing with
“Romish ways”. It's not that northern noses are less troubled by the “whiff of popery”, it just that few now care.
In an
indication of how little the wording matters, it’s not clear who was the last
Archbishop of Canterbury who could be said to have been “enthroned” because
there was never any differentiation of form in the ceremonies and the documents
suggest the terms were used casually and even interchangeably. What can be said is that Geoffrey Fisher (1887–1972;
AoC-99: 1945-1961) was installed at a ceremony widely described (in the official
programme, ecclesiastical commentaries and other church & secular publications)
as an “enthronement” and that was the term used in the government Gazette; that’s
as official an endorsement of the term as seems possible because, being an
established church, bishops are appointed by the Crown on the advice of the prime
minister although the procedure has at least since 2007 been a “legal fiction”
because the church’s CNC (Crown Nominations Commission) sends the names to the
prime minister who acts as a “postbox”, forwarding them to the palace for the
issuing of letters patent confirming the appointment. When Michael Ramsey (1904–1988; AoC-100: 1961-1974),
was appointed, although the term “enthrone” did appear in press reports, the
church’s documents almost wholly seem to have used “install” and since then, in
Canterbury, it’s been installations all the way.
So, by the early
1960s the church was responding, if cautiously, to the growing anti-monarchical
sentiment in post-war ecclesiology although this does seem to have been a
sentiment of greater moment to intellectuals and theologians than parishioners. About these matters there was however a kind
of ecumenical sensitivity emerging and the conciliar theology later was crystallised
(if not exactly codified) in the papers of Second Vatican Council (Vatican II,
1962-1965, published 1970). The
comparison with the practice in Rome is interesting because there are more similarities
than differences although that is obscured by words like “enthronement” and “coronation”
being seemingly embedded in the popular (and journalistic) imagination. That’s
perhaps understandable because for two millennia as many as 275 popes (officially
the count is 267 but it’s not certain how many there have been because there
have been “anti-popes” and allegedly even one woman (although that’s now
largely discounted)) have sat “on the throne of Saint Peter” (retrospectively
the first pope) so the tradition is long.
In Roman Catholic canon law, “enthronement” is not a juridical term; the universal term is capio sedem (taking
possession of the cathedral (ie “installation”)) and, as in England, an
appointment is formalized once the legal instruments are complete, the
subsequent ceremony, while an important part of the institution’s mystique,
exists for the same reason as it does for the Church of England or the House of
Windsor: it’s the circuses part of panem
et circenses (bread and circuses). Unlike popes who once had coronations, archbishops of Canterbury never did because they made no claim to temporal sovereignty.
So, technically, modern popes are “installed as Bishop of Rome” and in recent decades the Holy See has adjusted the use of accoutrements to dispel any implication of an “enthronement”, the last papal coronation at which a pope was crowned with the triple tiara was that of Paul VI (1897-1978; pope 1963-1978) but in “an act of humility” he removed it, placing it on the on the alter where (figuratively), it has since sat. Actually, Paul VI setting aside the triple tiara as a symbolic renunciation of temporal and monarchical authority was a bit overdue because the Papal States had been lost to the Holy See with the unification of Italy in 1870 though the Church refused to acknowledge that reality; in protest, no pope for decades set foot outside the Vatican. However, in the form of the Lateran Treaty (1929), the Holy See entered into a concordat with the Italian state whereby the (1) the Vatican was recognized as a sovereign state and (2) the church was recognized as Italy’s state religion in exchange for which the territorial and political reality was recognized. Despite that, until 1963 the triple tiara (one tier of which was said to symbolize the pope’s temporal authority over the papal states) appeared in the coronations of Pius XII (1876-1958; pope 1939-1958), John XXIII (1881-1963; pope 1958-1963) and Paul VI (who didn’t formally abolish the rite of papal coronation from the Ordo Rituum pro Ministerii Petrini Initio Romae Episcopi (Order of Rites for the Beginning of the Petrine Ministry of the Bishop of Rome (the liturgical book detailing the ceremonies for a pope's installation)) until 1975.
The Chair
of St Augustine sits in Canterbury Cathedral but technically, an AoC is “twice
installed”: once on the Diocesan throne as the Bishop of the see of Canterbury
and also on the Chair of St Augustine as Primate of All England (the nation's
first bishop) and spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. So,
there’s nothing unusual in Sarah Mullally being “installed” rather than “enthroned”
as would have been the universal terminology between the reformation and the
early twentieth century. Linguistically,
legally and theologically, the choice of words is a non-event and anyone who
wishes to describe Dame Sarah as “enthroned” may do so without fear of
condemnation, excommunication or a burning at the stake. What is most likely is that of those few who
notice, fewer still are likely to care.
