The Iron Crown of Lombardy is the oldest surviving royal regalia in Europe. The crown consists of six rectangular chased gold segments connected by vertical hinges and adorned with enamel and precious stones that form embossed inserts in the form of crosses and flowers.
Each segment, made of approximately 800 karat gold, measures 5.3 to 5.5 cm in height and 7.9 to 8.1 cm in width. The Iron Crown gets its name from a narrow strip of iron about one centimeter wide running along the inside of it. According to tradition, this strip is a flattened nail - one of those nails with which Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross.
The history of the Iron Crown dates back to 324, to the time when Empress Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, began her famous excavations in Jerusalem on Calvary in order to find authentic relics associated with the last hours of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. She managed, in particular, to find the Cross of the Lord and the nails with which the body of Christ was nailed to the cross. The cross remained in Jerusalem, and Helen sent the nails to Constantinople to her son, Emperor Constantine the Great.
Constantine sent several nails as gifts to various political and church leaders, using the relics as a tool of diplomacy. Thus, one nail ended up in Italy - it is not known exactly. Two centuries later, Pope Gregory the Great (590 - 604) presented this nail to Theodolinda, Queen of the Lombards (Lombards). At that time, the Lombards were the most serious threat to Italy. Pope Gregory the Great, through long negotiations, managed to eliminate the danger from the Lombards, and the nail of the Cross of the Lord, presented to Queen Theodolinda, should obviously consolidate the achieved success. According to legend, Theodolinda ordered to make the royal crown of Lombardy and insert into it a nail donated by the Pope.
In 628, Theodolinda donated this crown to the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Monza, where, due to a nail inserted into it, it was kept as a sacred relic. Monza was its actual capital of the kingdom of the Lombards (the nominal capital was another Italian city, Pavia), the palace of Theodolinda (previously serving as the palace for the king of the Ostrogoths Theodoric the Great, 470 - 526) and the palace Palatine Chapel, in which the state treasury and symbols of royal power were kept including the Iron Crown.
The iron crown became a symbol of the Lombard Kingdom, and later - of all medieval Italy. In 800, its status rose to a common European level: the first emperor of the post-Roman period was crowned with this crown. In the future, without exception, all the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire were crowned with the Iron Crown. She was crowned such famous historical figures as Charlemagne, Otto I, Henry IV, Frederick I Barbarossa.
According to custom, the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire had to be crowned three times: once as kings of Germany, once as kings of Italy and the third time as emperors (in this case, they were usually crowned by the Pope). Between coronations, the Iron Crown was kept in the Cathedral of Monza.
According to a tradition dating back to the times of Queen Theodolinda, Monza was considered a royal city, the direct property of the emperors, its inhabitants enjoyed various privileges and were exempted from paying taxes. This circumstance, however, did not guarantee the townspeople from financial problems, and one day, in 1248, the Iron Crown even had to be pledged as a guarantee for the payment of an emergency war tax. It was possible to return it to Monza only in 1319. Following this, the crown was sent to Avignon, where the papal court was at that time. The crown remained here until 1345. During this period, she was even kidnapped, but the thief was quickly found, and the crown was returned to its place.
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The tradition of triple coronations was interrupted by Emperor Charles V. In 1556 he divided the lands of the empire between my son Philip and my brother Ferdinand, which actually meant the separation of Italy from Germany.
Vienna became the capital of the German lands, where the imperial court and the governing bodies subordinate to it were located. Two centuries later, the Duchy of Milan came under the control of Austria, and the ancient tradition was renewed: the Austrian Emperor Franz II was crowned in 1792 with the Iron Crown.
On May 26, 1805, one of the most famous coronations using the Iron Crown of Lombardy took place in Milan: Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned king of Italy. The Archbishop of Milan endowed Bonaparte sitting on the throne with signs of royal dignity, after which Napoleon took the Iron Crown from the altar, placed it on his head and pronounced the traditional formula used for the enthronement of the kings of Lombardy: “God gave it to me - woe to those who touch it ! In memory of this event, on June 15, 1805, Napoleon founded the Order of the Iron Crown. After the fall of Bonaparte and the annexation of Lombardy to Austria, this order was re-established by the Austrian Emperor Franz II on January 1, 1816.
On September 6, 1838, in Milan, Emperor Ferdinand I was crowned with the Iron Crown as King of Lombardy and Venice. In 1859, after a war between Austria and Italy, as a result of which the Austrians had to leave Lombardy, the Iron Crown was moved to Vienna, where it remained until 1866, after which it was returned to Italy.
The rulers of the united Italian kingdom (861 - 1946) never used the Iron Crown for their own coronations, in part because in the preceding decades it had become a kind of symbol of Austrian rule. In 1883, King Umberto I confirmed the status of a relic and a national historic monument for the Iron Crown, officially assigning responsibility for it to the clergy of the Cathedral of Monza.
There was a plan for the coronation of Umberto I with the Iron Crown in conditions when the political climate would become more favorable for this (in those years, relations between the Italian state and the Church were quite tense). However, the assassination of the king in 1900 did not allow these plans to come true. At the grave of Umberto 1 in the Roman Pantheon, there is now a bronze copy of the Iron Crown.
The last "adventure" in the history of the crown took place during the Second World War: in 1943, Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, fearing that the Nazis would confiscate the relic, secretly transported it to the territory of the Vatican, where the crown remained until 1946. With the proclamation of the Italian Republic in 1946, the Iron Crown finally lost its role as a symbol of power, retaining its value as an outstanding historical relic.
In recent years, it has become the object of close attention of scientists seeking to unravel the mysteries of the most ancient royal regalia in Europe. The origin of the Iron Crown remains uncertain, although most experts agree that it represents the work of oriental jewelers. Most likely, it was made in the 5th century in Constantinople. In 1345 the crown was restored in the workshop of the famous jeweler Antelotto Bracciforte.
The small size of the crown and its hinged design led some researchers to assume that the Iron Crown was not originally intended for coronation purposes (it is too small for a human head) and was either votive or not a crown at all, but a wide bracelet. However, a careful study of the crown and the search for new historical documents shedding light on its history made it possible to establish that the original crown consisted of not six, but eight segments, two of which were lost, apparently, in the period 1248-1300. when the crown was pledged at Umiliati, where it was kept in the monastery of Agatha. After 1300, all documents describe the crown as small."
A strip of iron about 10 mm wide and 1 mm thick is the flattened nail of the Cross of Christ, stretching along the lower part of the crown from the inside. Confidence that this is the nail of the Crucifixion appeared, I must say, rather late: in the 16th century.
The aforementioned historian Bartolomeo Zucci wrote in 1602 that the Iron Crown is undoubtedly the diadem of Emperor Constantine and that the strip of iron inserted into it is nothing more than the nail of the Cross of Christ.
A century later, another Italian historian, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, expressed the exact opposite opinion. He noted, in particular, that in comparison with the nails of the Roman era, which, in particular, were used in such a specific execution as a crucifixion, a strip of iron inserted into the crown is excessively small. The church authorities turned to the problem only at the beginning of the 18th century. Finally, in 1717, Pope Clement XI decreed that in the absence of certainty about the real origin of the nail of the Cross of Christ in the Iron Crown, the crown should be honored as a relic based on established tradition.
In 1985, Italian researchers studying the crown discovered that a strip of gray metal on the inside, traditionally believed to be iron … does not attract a magnet! This was the impetus for the beginning of a thorough study of the crown. In 1993, his sensational results were published: the imaginary iron turned out to be not iron at all! It is silver that has darkened with time.
According to the Italian scientist Valerian Maspero, the silver strip is the result of a restoration carried out in 1345 by the jeweler Antelotto Bracciforte - with its help the master strengthened the dilapidated crown, which had lost two links from the original eight by that time. The legend of the "sacred nail" was born at least a hundred years later, when it was discovered that a strip of darkened metal "miraculously" does not rust.