Prince's Stone

The Prince's Stone (Fürstenstein, knežji kamen) is the reversed base of an ancient Ionic column that played an important role in the ceremony surrounding the installation of the princes of Carantania in the Early Middle Ages. After the incorporation into the Frankish Empire, the procedure, held in Slovene, was continued as the first part of the coronation of the Dukes of Carinthia. It was followed by a mass at Maria Saal cathedral and the installation at the Duke's chair, where he swore an oath in German and received the homage of the estates. The column probably originates from the nearby Roman city of Virunum, established as capital of the Noricum province under the reign of Emperor Claudius (AD 41–54). During the Middle Ages, the coat of arms of the Duchy of Carinthia was engraved on its top surface. Until 1862, when it was transferred to the Landhaus provincial assembly at Klagenfurt, it stood northwest of the Kaiserpfalz of Karnburg (Slovene: Krnski grad) in the Zollfeld plain, built by Emperor Arnulf of Carinthia. The ceremony involving this notion has been confirmed by several sources, including the medieval reports and the writing of Pope Pius II in 1509. It was also described by Jean Bodin in his Treatise on Republican Government (1576) as "unrivaled in the entire world", although there is evidence that the Stone of Scone in Scotland and the Lia Fáil in Ireland were used in a similar fashion. An echo of the notion of a stone of kingship is present in European literature in the form of the Arthurian motif of the Siege Perilous – itself derived, ultimately, from ancient Irish conceptions of kingship. The peasant, sitting on the Stone, was representing the people during the ceremony and he had to ask in Slovene: "Who is he, that comes forward?" Those sitting around him would reply: "He is the prince of the land". "Is he an upright judge seeking the well-being of the country; is he freeborn and deserving? Is he a foster and defender of the Christian faith?" the representative of the people had to ask them.