While the image of David’s military prowess was ubiquitous, the figure of David as penitent also provided a model for Louis’s kingship. This chapter explores a number of musical settings of centonized psalm texts composed for the singers of the chambre in the difficult circumstances surrounding his early reign that engage with the idea of a penitent king, a king responding to adversity through an intensification of personal devotion. As part of this process, Psalm 19, Exaudiat te Dominus came into particular focus, being appended to the celebration of Mass at the chapelle royale from the 1580s, and gradually becoming part of the wider liturgy of the French church. But although this psalm would later become associated with the chapelle royale of Louis XIV, it is clear that from the very earliest times it was heard as a prayer for the king in times of adversity or when he was under military threat.

A tradition and practice dating back centuries by which a monarch was welcomed into a loyal city by its dignitaries, clerics, and citizenry, the typical entrée in the hands of the last Valois kings was a spectacular festival, calling on all the creative resources of a city – artists, poets, architects, set designers, composers, and musicians – to produce a visual and aural feast that is generally considered to have given expression to the king’s power. Yet the concluding ceremony that took place in the city’s cathedral, in which a Te Deum was sung, has received almost no attention from scholars. This chapter identifies the liturgy used at this event and considers the role of the psalm central to the ceremony, typically Psalm 19, Exaudiat te Dominus. At the same time, a corollary ceremony, the ‘Te Deum’ was also frequently performed in Paris, it too placing frequently placing Psalm 19 at its center. In contrast to Fogel’s reading of these events, both were as much prayers for the safekeeping of the king in a time of profound national turmoil as they were celebrations of his victories.

The coronation of Louis XIII is generally recognized as a turning point in the history of dynastic continuity. Just hours after his father Henri IV was assassinated, Louis was proclaimed king; this chapter describes, therefore, how Louis XIII’s coronation some weeks later was concerned, for the first time, with more than just marking his accession to the throne. Instead, a complex series of ceremonies reinforced the idea that, like David, Louis acted as an agent of the Holy Spirit. At a ceremony the day before the coronation, he received the sacrament of confirmation at Vespers of the Holy Spirit. During the coronation ceremony itself, he was anointed with oil brought down from heaven by the dove of the Holy Spirit and celebrated the Mass of the Holy Spirit. On the following day, he was inducted as a member and Grand Master of the Knights of the Order of the Holy Spirit. The fiery symbolism of the Holy Spirit found a vivid counterpart in the Phoenix, one of the emblems of the order, understood to reflect the perfect continuity between father and son, and a symbol (along with the flames of the Holy Spirit itself) that underpinned both Louis XIII’s and Louis XIV’s appearances as a fire demon or the sun itself.