1805 Napoleon crowns himself, again
Having already crowned himself Emperor of the French, Napoleon saw no reason to alter the ceremony in his conquered lands. On the 23rd of May 1805, during the rite to create him King of Italy at Milan, he, with his own hands, placed the ancient iron crown of Lombardy on his head, saying, Dieu me la donne, gare à qui la touche — ‘God has given it to me, let him beware who would touch it’, a phrase used in the ancient coronation ceremony.
This celebrated crown is composed of a broad circle of gold, set with large rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, on a ground of blue and gold enamel. The small size of the regalia may be due to its missing two pieces in the centuries since its creation.
But the most important part of the iron crown, from which, indeed, it derives its name, is a narrow band of iron, about three-eighths of an inch broad, and one-tenth of an inch in thickness, attached to the inner circumference of the circlet. This inner band of sacred iron—perfectly visible in the above engraving —is said to have been made out of one of the nails used at the crucifixion, given by the Empress Helena, discover of the True Cross, to her son Constantine, as a miraculous protection from the dangers of the battlefield. Helena had found the other nails used in the crucifixion: she supposedly cast one nail into the sea to calm a storm, another was incorporated into a diadem for Constantine’s helmet, another was fitted to the head of a statue of the Emperor, and a fourth was melted down and molded into a bit for Constantine’s horse. Since then, alleged pieces of the holy nails can be found in almost thirty European countries. (I, myself, saw one of these in the Patriarch of Constantinople’s church in Istanbul.)
The ecclesiastics who exhibit the crown point out as a ‘permanent miracle,’ that there is not a single speck of rust upon the iron, though it has now been exposed more than fifteen hundred years. Recent research has shown that the so-called iron band does not attract a magnet and is, in fact, silver; but a medieval manuscript suggests that a band of iron was used on the outside, not the inside of the crown. Scientific examination suggests that at least parts of the crown date back to c. 500.
Bonaparte, after his coronation at Milan, instituted a new order of knighthood for Italy, entitled the Iron Crown, on the same principles as that of the Legion of Honour for France. After his fall, the order was maintained by the Austrian emperors. The crown itself is preserved as a relic in Monza Cathedral.