Please take a seat

Abstract

How does one establish one’s authority? Situated between the seat of power and the foundation of authority, this final session seeks to take stock of the reflections carried out over the course of this academic year on the sites of power, drawing on a seemingly simple figure: that of the chair and the lectern, the professor’s chair and the throne. Yet the history of the semantic network stemming from *sedere/*assedere* quickly reveals its complexity and ambivalence. It is not merely a matter of defining the rules of propriety and precedence; the question of the ordo sedendi raises the far more formidable issue of majesty (as seen in Fouquet’s depiction of the ‘lit de justice’ at Vendôme in 1458). But it also raises the question of the persistence of places and the tenacity of successions, as can be seen in the dual example of the so-called ‘throne’ of Dagobert and the chair of Edward I. Yet this is not merely a ‘Game of Thrones’ of European monarchies: by taking a detour via the sultan’s diwan and the public benches of Italian civic spaces, the session ultimately leads to the contemporary political question of what constitutes our common spaces today.

Contents

• The three key questions of politics: ‘Who is in charge? What do they control? In what tone do they exercise that control?’ (Paul Veyne, *Le Pain et le Cirque. Sociologie historique d’un pluralisme politique*, Paris, Seuil, 1976)
• Exercises in style: a thousand and one ways of postponing, of sitting down and of making others sit down
• Assedere and sedere : the seat of power and the foundations of authority
• Sessions, propriety, precedence
• ‘And on the highest throne in the world, we sit on nothing but our own backsides’ (Montaigne)
• Back beneath the oak of Saint Louis, who ‘had carpets spread out for us to sit around him’
• Chairs, pulpits and cathedrals
• Aula and camera : there is no throne room in a medieval palace
• Audiences and the State Palace: a ceremonial turning point in the 16^th century
• The liturgical origins of the king’s rising (Ernst Kantorowicz, *Le Lever du roi*, Paris, 2004)
• Dios thronous : when the Greek gods take their seats on the thrones of the temples
• From Constantinople to Aachen: the imperial dream of the throne
• A symbol of royal succession: the King Edward’s Chair
• The kings of England sit upon the Scottish history of the Stone of Destiny
• Thwarting the topographical insistence of locations and the stubborn succession of legacies: the example of Dagobert’s ‘throne’
• A ‘noble, dilapidated and disjointed cathedra’: the patchwork of memory (Cécile Lagane and Lise Saussus, ‘The thorny interpretation of the “Throne of Dagobert”: stylistic, technical and material analyses. Use, representation and interpretation’, Medieval Archaeology , 2024)
• When the folding chair buckled under Napoleon’s weight: an allegory of the fragility of empires
• Benches and drapery: a look back at Charles VII’s bed of justice at Vendôme in 1458, depicted by Jean Fouquet in the Munich Boccaccio
• Majesty, an empty form: the interplay of perspectives, drapery and positions (Franck Mercier, ‘A spectacular ritual trompe-l’œil’, in Lucien Faggion and Laure Verdon (eds.), Rite, justice et pouvoirs , Presses universitaires de Provence, 2012)
• Ordo sedendi : on the art of sitting in the right place (Fabrice Delivré, ‘The bishops before the Pope. Conflicts of precedence at the general council (11^th–15^th centuries)’, in François Foronda, Christine Barralis and Bénédicte Sère (eds.), Sovereign Violence in the Middle Ages: Papers from a Historical School, Paris, 2001)
• ‘In their lands, unlike elsewhere, thrones and chairs are not used; people discuss matters and eat whilst lying on beds, with their legs crossed’ (Jean de Gorze, ambassador to the court of the Umayyad Caliph Abd-al-Rahman III of Córdoba in 956)
• The diwan: from a collection of poetry to administrative offices, via the symbol of power (Jocelyne Dakhlia, *The Divan of Kings: Politics and Religion in Islam*, Paris, 1988)
• Common places, common goods, public benches
• There are no ‘non-places’ (Michel Bussi, Martine Drozdz and Fabrice Argounès (eds.), Our Common Places: A Geography of the Contemporary World , Paris, 2025)
• Lessons in topophilia: new forms of appropriation of urban space (Thierry Paquot, *L’Amour des lieux*, Paris, 2025)
• The ringhiera of Piazza della Signoria in Florence: public space and ceremonial theatre
• Still in Florence, but at the foot of the Medici Palace: ‘Please take a seat’ (Yvonne Elet, ‘Seats of Power. The Outdoor Benches of Early Modern Florence’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 61-4, 2002)
• ‘Goodbye’.