Mr Brightman thinks that there was no anointing in the Greek rite before the twelfth century, but it is difficult to believe that this was the case[157].
In the earliest accounts of the Eastern Coronations there is nothing at all said that can be in any way construed as implying any anointing. In the year 602 Theodosius the son of the Emperor Maurice, fleeing for refuge to the Persian monarch Chosroes, ‘was received with great honour by the king, and he (Chosroes) commanded the Catholicos to bring him to the Church, and that the crown of the Empire should be set upon the altar, and then set upon his head, according to the custom of the Romans[158].’ Since the detail of the crown being deposited on the altar is given in this passage, it is most improbable that all reference to an anointing would have been passed over, had such anointing been at this date ‘the custom of the Romans.’
On the other hand St Gregory the Great, commenting on the anointing of Saul, speaks of the anointing of kings in his own day; ‘“Then Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it upon his head.” This, surely, is signified by this unction, which is even now actually seen (materialiter exhibetur) in holy Church; for he who is set at the head of affairs (qui in culmine ponitur) receives the sacraments of unction.... Let the head of the king, then, be anointed, because the mind is to be filled with spiritual grace. Let him have oil in his anointing, let him have abundant mercy, and let it be preferred by him before other virtues[159].’
Here the expression ‘materialiter exhibetur’ is hardly compatible with figurative language. But if St Gregory is thinking of unction in a coronation rite, what is the rite which he has in his mind? Is he thinking of the rite as used in the Spanish Visigothic kingdom[160], in which in all probability unction already found a place? Or is he thinking of the imperial rite of Constantinople? It seems hardly likely that he should speak in such general terms with only the Spanish practice in his mind; but on the other hand there is not a vestige of any other evidence in favour of any Constantinopolitan use of unction. It is true that the ‘Prayer over the Chlamys’ would quite cover the use of an anointing, including as it does such an expression as χρίσαι καταξίωσον τῷ ἐλαίῳ ἀγαλλιάσεως, but it is equally true that these words might quite naturally bear a merely metaphorical significance.
It is not until the ninth century that we seem to get upon more solid ground, when Photius, in a letter written during his exile to the Emperor Basil the Macedonian (867-886), speaks of the χρίσμα καὶ χειροθεσίαν βασιλείας[161]. These words, taken in connection with a sentence at the end of the same letter in which he speaks of himself as ‘he at whose hands both he (Basil) and the Empress were anointed with the Chrism of the Empire (αὐτός τε καὶ ἡ βασιλὶς τὸ χρίσμα τῆς βασιλείας ἐχρίσθη),’ make it very difficult to believe that Photius is here using simply figurative language[162]. It is much more natural to take his words literally and to conclude from them that in the ninth century unction was already included in the rite of Constantinople.
The references of Eastern writers to the unction of Charlemagne have already been mentioned. But since they all lay stress on the manner of that anointing no conclusion can safely be drawn from their language that unction was unknown at that time in the Eastern rite.
There remains the consideration of the Abyssinian use. Abyssinia was cut off by the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century from all communication with Constantinople, and there is no evidence of the use of unction in coronations at Constantinople at that time. It is on the whole, as has been suggested in a preceding chapter, more probable that the Abyssinian unction was an independent Abyssinian developement, more especially as at one time there were strong Jewish influences at work in that country, the effect of which remains to this day clearly stamped on the face of Abyssinian Christianity.
As regards the West, we know that Unction was used at the sacring of the Visigothic kings in the eighth century and that it was used at the coronation of Pippin by Archbishop Boniface in the middle of the eighth century. In fact from the time of the original introduction of the coronation rite into the West, an unction seems to have been one of its features, and it is quite possible that it may have been an independent developement in the West. But is it so easy to think of the unction in the Eastern coronation rite as a feature borrowed from the West?
So we must leave it at this, that while an unction was used in Spain in the seventh century, and is found in all Western coronation rites, on the other hand with regard to the East we can only say that it appears probably in the ninth century in the case of Basil the Macedonian, whatever may be the probabilities or possibilities of any earlier use of it.