the time of Louis XIV, there was nothing apparently extraordinary in Alexander Sumarokov’s depiction of Catherine, in the ode he dedicated to her ‘On the First Day of 1763’, as the light to drive out all darkness (by which he meant any surviving vestige of support for Peter III). Sophisticated Russian readers, however, would have had no difficulty in recognising an additional allusion to the transfigured Christ. Vasily Petrov, the empress’s ‘pocket poet’, later made still more explicit references to Catherine as ‘the beginning and end of all things’ and the ‘image of the all- powerful Deity’, pouring ‘light from [her] lofty throne’.70 Whilst the jewels in the empress’s regalia reflected hundreds of flickering candles and glinted in the pale light filtering through windows set high in the cathedral walls, the most important illumination at her coronation was that which radiated metaphorically from Catherine herself.
Only the most accomplished of actresses could have carried off the part of a Christ-like virgin queen when all present knew her as both an adulteress and a usurper and many suspected her of regicide to boot. Yet while the Russian elite suspended its disbelief in the face of the realities of power, Catherine’s theatrical talents were never in doubt. No less a rival than Louis XV acknowledged shortly before the coronation that her courage and powers of dissimulation marked her out as ‘a princess capable of planning and executing great deeds’.71 Unlike contemporaries unwisely tempted to regard coronations as so much mumbo-jumbo, Catherine was determined to take hers with all seriousness. Whereas Austria’s Francis Stephen had seemed playfully to wave his regalia during the procession that followed his installation as Holy Roman Emperor in 1740—a ceremony that his wife Maria Theresa dismissed as ‘a comedy’72—Catherine invested even those elements of the ritual in which she could scarcely believe with the dignity expected of a rightful sovereign, beginning with a confident public declaration of her adherence to the articles of the Orthodox faith.73
She was at her most convincing in the investiture—the central act of the coronation, developed from the ceremony invented in the sixteenth century, on the basis of selective use of Byzantine ideas, to give religious sanction to the conquests of Ivan the Terrible. As Catherine passed Tsar Ivan’s elaborately carved throne of Monomakh on her way into the cathedral, she can hardly have forgotten the promise she had made six years earlier to her confidant, the British ambassador Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, when she recalled seeing a treaty signed by Queen Elizabeth and Ivan himself: ‘That prince, tyrant though he was, was a great man; and since I shall try, as far as my natural weakness will allow me, to imitate the great men of this country, I hope one day to adorn your own archives with my name, and I shall be proud to go wrong in the steps of Peter the Great.’74 Now she emulated the tendency of Tsar Peter and his successors to elevate the importance of the monarch in the coronation ritual at the expense of the Church.
First she invested herself with the ermine imperial mantle, decorated with the insignia of the Order of St Andrew the First Called, the highest of the Russian orders of chivalry established by Tsar Peter, ceremonially presented to her by Countess Vorontsova and her successor as the Court’s senior lady-in-waiting, Yelena Naryshkina.75 Then Aleksey Razumovsky approached the throne bearing on a cushion the new crown designed by the Court jeweller, Geremie Pauzie. Working on characteristically explicit instructions from Catherine herself, Pauzie had fashioned a diadem to rival any in Europe. At its centre was a cross mounted on a 389-carat ruby purchased in Peking from the Emperor Kangxi on the orders of Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich. Further encrusted with 75 unusually large pearls, 2500 diamonds and more than 5000 other precious jewels, Catherine’s crown weighed almost two kilograms and was valued at 2 million roubles at the time of the coronation.76 Following the precedent set by Elizabeth in 1742, she lowered it onto her own brow.
As cannon fired a 101-gun salute and the bells rang out to signal the high-point of the ceremony, the newly crowned empress stood before her throne, grasping in her left hand the great golden orb and in her right a sceptre made only a fortnight earlier when a panic-stricken search for the old one ended in failure.77 Three times the deacon chanted ‘many years’, and three times the congregation of notables prostrated themselves before her. As silence fell, Catherine returned both orb and sceptre to their bearers and prayed to God to preserve her ‘in the hearing of all present’. While she remained standing, the congregation sank to its knees to hear Dimitry pray for her in the name of the whole people.78 Then the archbishop—‘a prelate of great learning’ who ‘combined with his other qualities a moving and manly eloquence that entranced his audience’79— made a congratulatory speech, driving home Catherine’s central theme of selflessness. Not for her the temptations of worldly power and glory, Dimitry insisted. ‘Only maternal love for the fatherland, only faith in God, and ardour for piety, only compassion for the suffering and oppressed Russian children impelled You to take on this great service to God.’80
Only now, once the investiture was over, did the anointment take place (in France and England, it was significantly the other way around).81 Having removed her crown, the empress processed towards the iconostasis, where the gates swung open to admit her to the holy sanctuary. There the final act of her coronation was completed as this sceptical convert from Lutheranism became the first female ruler of Russia to take her own communion bread from the platen, a sacerdotal privilege hitherto restricted to members of the Orthodox priesthood.82
Nothing in the coronation rite implied the existence of any contract between monarch and subjects. Neither did they expect it. Monarchy in Russia was intensely personal and Catherine intended that it should remain so. Since she was nevertheless aware that ‘power without the confidence of the nation is nothing’, it was a relief to emerge from the cathedral’s north door to be greeted by cheering so wild that she allowed it to continue for half an hour before continuing her procession.83 Convinced that such popular acclaim owed more to stage- management than to genuine affection, the French ambassador gleefully reported the alarm which ensued when a section of the soldiery and crowd unexpectedly hailed not Catherine, but ‘Our Emperor Paul Petrovich’: officers were immediately sent to silence them.84 This, as even Breteuil admitted, was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-ordered ceremony. As her procession snaked along the wooden walkway into Ivanov Square, round the Ivan the Great bell tower and then back into Cathedral Square—first to allow the empress to pay her respects at the tombs of her Muscovite predecessors in the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael and then to kiss the relics in the Annunciation Cathedral—Catherine rewarded the attendant populace for their devotion by showering them with gold and silver coins from 120 oak barrels, each containing coins worth 5000 roubles.85
Naturally, the elite were not forgotten. Still in full regalia, Catherine lavished rewards on them when she returned to the Palace of Facets. Dashkova recovered some pride when she was made a lady-in-waiting; the title of count was conferred on all five Orlov brothers. For the remainder of her reign, Catherine was to remain powerfully attached to Aleksey, the scar-faced giant who had been responsible for guarding her husband at the time of his death. Vladimir became the president of the Academy of Sciences; Fedor kept an eye on proceedings in the Senate; and Ivan was close enough to the empress to broker her eventual split with Grigory in 1772. Now, however, Grigory was appointed Adjutant General, an office that carried ceremonial duties to allow the favourite to remain at his sovereign’s side. Nor were titles and promotions the only gifts on offer. Catherine’s coup was by far the most expensive in eighteenth-century Russia. Between July and December 1762, she paid out 1.5 million roubles to buy support at a time when the annual state budget amounted to little more than 16 million. By the following March, she had given away 21,423 male peasants since her accession—almost three times as many as Peter III had distributed to his henchmen during his short reign.86
Not until three in the afternoon did Catherine finally process to a banquet that was to last long into the evening. As late as 17 September, Trubetskoy remained uncertain of the guest list because the Synod had characteristically failed to tell him how many clergy would be attending. In the end, on the model of Elizabeth’s coronation, he arranged for four tables to be laid in the Palace of Facets for the churchmen and 102 senior courtiers, while 259 lesser ranking guests were accommodated in the hall above and 26 more in a neighbouring gallery. Catherine, as was customary, dined alone on a dais under a silken canopy. To her right, Countess Anna Vorontsova sat at the head of a table of Court ladies. To the left of the throne, the leading male courtiers occupied the second table; the third, placed opposite, was for the clergy; gentlemen of the third rank were served at the remaining table. Although de Veilly’s illustration of the banquet depicts a far from solemn occasion, every effort had been made to ensure that it proceeded in an orderly way. Count Karl Sievers, one of four Court stewards, had instructed his chamberlains in the sternest terms to organise the liveried servants in teams for each table, to take good care of the silver, and to report drunken or disorderly lackeys to the Court administration so that none should escape a fine.87
The ceremonies were brought to a close with a magnificent firework representing a statue of Russia under an
