Enthronement

An enthronement is a ceremony of inauguration, involving a person—usually a monarch or religious leader—being formally seated for the first time upon their throne. This ritual is generally distinguished from a coronation because there is no crown or other regalia that is physically bestowed upon the one being enthroned, though regalia may be present at the ceremony. Enthronements occur in both church and state settings, since the throne is seen as a symbol of authority, both secular and spiritual.

Enthronements are most popular in religious settings, as a chair is seen as the symbol of the authority to teach. Thus in Christianity, bishops of almost all denominations have a ceremony of enthronement after they assume office or by which they assume office. Orthodox Churches and the Anglican Church often have elaborate ceremonies marking the inauguration of their episcopates.

However, in the Roman Catholic Church the rite of enthronement is limited to Eastern Catholic Churches. In these, enthronement is the rite by which a new bishop assumes authority over his eparchy and before which he is forbidden to intervene in its governance in any way, whether personally or by proxy. The overwhelmingly majority Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church has no ceremony of enthronement, although when a bishop is ordained in a church of the diocese he is to head, the principal consecrator invites him, after his investiture with mitre and crozier, to be seated on the cathedra of the church; if the ordination takes place elsewhere, the principal consecrator invites him merely to take first place among the concelebrating bishops. Instead of by enthronement, a Latin-Rite bishop takes office through an officially recorded presentation of the papal bull of his appointment, a ceremony that does not necessarily involve his personal presence. In the section in the Caeremoniale Episcoporum on "The Reception of a Bishop in His Cathedral Church" there is no mention of a ritual taking possession of the episcopal cathedra. The same is true even of older editions of this work.

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