Saint Remigius

He was sent early to the schools, where he made such great progress in divine and human letters and in the practice of Christian virtues that, at the age of twenty-two, he was forced, despite all his resistance, after the death of Bennagius, to accept the archbishopri c of Reims. A ray o archevêché de Reims Site of the baptism of Clovis. f light that appeared on his forehead and a heavenly anointing that perfumed and consecrated his head showed that this election came from God; but one was even more convinced by the manner in which he discharged an office of such importance; for no sooner was he charged with it than he fulfilled all its duties excellently. He was assiduous in vigils, constant and attentive to prayer, careful to instruct his people and to procure their salvation, charitable toward the poor, the prisoners, and the sick, austere toward himself, sober, chaste, modest, prudent, restrained, never giving way to anger, and easily forgiving those who had offended him; it is true that a kind of severity sometimes appeared on his face, but he knew how to temper it with the gentleness of his spirit; and if he had for sinners the ardent zeal of a Saint Paul, he had for good people the benign and loving gaze of a Saint Peter; in a word, he possessed all the virtues, although he hid several of them through the profound humility of which he made a singular profession.

The gift of miracles that he received from God further wonderfully enhanced the brilliance of his holiness. During his meals, birds would come without fear to take bread from his hand. While visiting Chaumuzy, he healed and delivered a blind man who had long been possessed by a demon. At Cernay, by the sign of the cross, he filled a mule that was nearly empty with wine, in recognition of the charity of Celse, one of his cousins, who had received him with great devotion in her home. Having no sacred oil to perform the baptismal ceremonies for a lord who was dying, he suddenly obtained it from heaven; this oil was so salutary that, having contributed to the health of the sick man's soul, it also restored his bodily health. By his presence, he suppressed a great fire that threatened the city of Reims with complete ruin. As he descended from the church of Saint-Nicaise for this purpose, he imprinted his footprints so strongly upon a stone that they have remained there ever since; and he had barely appeared before the flames, making the sign of our Redemption and invoking the name of Jesus Christ, when they fled before him as quickly as he could pursue them. A young girl from Tours, being possessed by the evil spirit, was taken by her parents first to the tomb of Saint Peter in Rome, then to Saint Bene dict, who wa saint Benoît Founder of the Benedictine Order, cited as a chronological reference point. s then at Subiaco or Monte Cassino; but God not granting her deliverance in either place, Saint Benedict sent her to Saint Remi and wrote to him, begging him to exercise his power and charity toward this unfortunate soul. Alaric, King of the Goths, also wrote to him on the same subject. The Saint resisted this request for a long time, not deeming himself worthy to obtain from God what so great a man as Abbot Benedict had been unable to obtain; but he was finally forced by the prayers of his people to offer his prayer over the possessed girl; the demon was immediately obliged to flee and leave her in freedom; but, shortly after, she died from the exhaustion that this infernal monster had caused her. They immediately had recourse to the holy prelate, who had already withdrawn. He returned to the church of Saint-Jean where he had left her; he found her lying on the ground, without breath and without life, and his word, which had had the power to deliver her from the chains of Satan, also had the power to pull her back from the gates of death. We have in the Notes of Colvenerius on Flodoard the letter that the glorious patriarch Saint Benedict wrote to him. Cardinal Baronius doubted that it was his, but that author justifies its truth with good evidence.

However, the greatest wonder of Saint Remi was undoubtedly the conversion of Clovi s and Clovis First king of the Franks to convert to Catholicism. the Franks. It is reported at length in the history of this great prince; but it is necessary to give a summary of it here. Clovis was the fifth king of this warlike nation, which, after having forced the passage of the Rhine, had seized the best part of the Low Countries, Picardy, and the Île-de-France, and was still pushing its conquests into the Gauls, previously occupied by the Romans. He came to the crown in 481, aged only fourteen or fifteen years; but, young as he was, he did not fail to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and to place himself at the head of his armies to make himself master of the neighboring provinces, in order to form a vast kingdom. He gave battle to Syagrius, who was defending the remnants of the Roman Empire in the Gauls. He defeated and killed him, and by this means, finding nothing left to resist the force of his arms, he subjected a large part of the Gauls to his empire. He was still a pagan; however, he did not persecute the Christians, and he even had respect for the bishops and priests of the cities he took or that submitted to his rule. Saint Remi was the one whose virtue he honored most. Indeed, one day his soldiers, passing near Reims, had pillaged a church and carried off the ornaments and sacred vessels; at the mere request that the Saint sent him to return, of all the booty, at least one silver vase which its weight and carving made very precious, he came to the place where the spoils were being divided and asked as a favor of his army that this vase be given to him in preference without drawing lots. Most of the soldiers consented; one alone, more mutinous than the others, struck a blow with his axe on this vase, insolently saying that the king would have, like the others, only what fell to him by lot. Everyone was surprised at this impudence; the king hid his feelings for a time, and did not fail to take the vase and return it to the one whom Saint Remi had sent to him. But at the end of the year, while reviewing his troops to see if their weapons were in good order, and having recognized the rash soldier who had offered him this affront, he threw one of his weapons to the ground, under the pretext that it was not as shiny as it should be; then, while he was bending down to pick it up, he struck him a blow with his axe on the head and killed him with his own hand, saying to him: "You struck the vase at Soissons in this way."

When this great conqueror had also subjugated Thuringia, which he did, according to Gregory of Tours, in the tenth year of his reign, he married Clotilde, daughter of Chilperic, brother of Gondebaud, king of Burgundy Clotilde Queen of the Franks and wife of Clovis, instrument of the conversion of France. , promising in view of this alliance that he would embrace the Christian religion which she professed. Clotilde often urged him to fulfill his promise, having much difficulty living with an idolatrous prince who defiled himself every day with impious and abominable sacrifices that he offered to demons; but her prayers and entreaties were useless for five years. Finally, the Germans having made a great incursion into the lands of the Ripuarian Franks, the king was obliged to march against them with numerous troops. He gave them battle at Tolbiac, which is believed to be Zulpich or Zulch. The Franks, after a few moments of c ombat, Tolbiac Decisive battle where Clovis vowed to convert. turned their backs, and a great slaughter was taking place when the lord Aurelian, who had negotiated the king's marriage with Clotilde, addressed him and advised him to immediately make a vow to Jesus Christ to embrace Christianity if He changed the fate of the battle and made him win the victory. The king, in his desire to win, and moreover touched inwardly by an extraordinary movement of grace, immediately made this vow, and at the same time the Franks turned their heads, threw themselves impetuously upon the Germans, broke their ranks, and defeated them completely. The king of the Germans himself was killed in the fray, so that Clovis remained entirely victorious and made tributaries of those whose number and power had already struck terror into all of France. The queen learned with great joy of this success and the change in her husband. She immediately had notice given to Saint Remi, and begged him to come promptly to the court to finish what fear and the desire for victory had begun, and to prepare the king for baptism. The

OCTOBER 4TH.

Saint did not fail to obey. He found Clovis already half-instructed by the care of Saint Vaast, whom this great monarch had taken at Toul to be his catechist. He finished opening his eyes and revealing to him the excellence and holiness of our mysteries. The ardor of faith and religion ignited so strongly in this martial heart that he became an apostle to his subjects before being a Christian; he assembled the great men of his court, pointed out to them the folly and extravagance of the worship of idols, and solicited them to worship only one God, creator of heaven and earth, in the trinity of his persons. He did the same to his army, and his preaching was so powerful that most of the Franks wanted to imitate his example.

The night before his baptism, Saint Remi came to find him in his palace, and having led him with the queen and a great number of princes and officers into the chapel of Saint Peter, he gave them an admirable discourse on the unity of God, the vanity of idols, the incarnation of the eternal Word, the redemption of the human race, the last judgment, the paradise of the just, and the hell of the impious. Then the chapel was filled with light and an inestimable odor, and a celestial voice was heard saying: "Peace be with you! fear nothing, persevere in my love." The face of the Saint also became all radiant; the king, the queen, all the lords and ladies threw themselves at his feet. The Saint raised them up and predicted the future greatness of the kings of France, if they remained faithful to God and did nothing unworthy of the august quality of Christian kings. The next day, Clovis walked to the church of Notre-Dame, through streets adorned with tapestries. When he was at the font, Saint Remi said to him: "Bow your head gently, proud Sicambrian; burn what you have adored and adore what you have burned." After some exhortations, when it came time to consecrate the baptismal water, no chrism was found, because the clerk who was carrying it had not been able to pass through the crowd. The Saint, in this necessity, lifted his eyes to heaven and asked God to deign to provide for this lack, and, at that very moment, a dove whiter than snow descended from above, carrying in its beak a vial full of a celestial balm formed by the ministry of angels, which it placed in the hands of the holy prelate. He received it with admiration and thanksgiving, poured a portion into the font, and then anointed the head of the king. At the same time, the dove flew away and disappeared; but the vial remained, and this is what we call the Holy Ampulla.

Cardina l Baronius rem sainte Ampoule Vial brought by a dove during the baptism of Clovis. arks that, besides the baptismal anointing, Saint Remi also conferred upon the king the royal anointing which, since then, has always been performed on our kings, separately from their baptism, by the august ceremony of their coronation; this is what the celestial oil of this Ampulla has served for until now, preserved intact until the French Revolution. The truth of this Ampulla, brought by an angel in the form of a dove, has been contested by some foreign authors, enemies of the glory of the kings of France, who alone have the privilege of being anointed with an incorruptible balm come from heaven; but it has been supported and proven with much strength and eloquence by several learned men of our nation, who believed that the testimony of Hincmar, Flodoard, Aimonius, Gerson, Gaguin, and other ancient historians, with the immemorial tradition of our fathers, approved even by a great number of writers from other countries, was sufficient to convince all minds that are at all reasonable. Two sisters of Clovis were also baptized with him: Albofleda, who was pagan, and Lanthilda, who was Arian; the same grace was also granted to three thousand lords, and to an infinity of soldiers, women, and children

who wished to share in the happiness of spiritual regeneration. It is more commonly believed that it was on Christmas Day; but as baptism was then only conferred at Easter time, it is not without reason that many believe, with Hincmar and Flodoard, that it was on Holy Saturday. Colvenius even says that this is constant, and that it should not be doubted at all.

One cannot sufficiently represent the love that Clovis had for Saint Remi, and the favors he showered upon his person and all those who belonged to him. He gave him a multitude of lordships around Soissons and in other places, with which he enriched his cathedral and other churches, both metropolitan and collegiate. At his prayer, he pardoned Euloge, lord of Épernay, guilty of lèse-majesté; this lord, in gratitude, offered the Saint his land, to make it the inheritance of the house of God; but the blessed Prelate thanked him, deeming it unworthy of a generous man, and especially of a good pastor, to receive gifts as the price of his intercession; however, as Euloge wished to leave the world and dispose of his property, Saint Remi accepted it and paid him for it, and, by this means, Épernay belonged to the church of Reims. The same Clovis did nothing of importance without seeking the advice and blessing of this man of God; he sought it to go and fight Gondebaud and Gondegisile, in Burgundy; he sought it to make war on Alaric, king of the Goths; and, by the power of this blessing, he won illustrious victories over these three princes, killed Alaric with his own hand, and added to his empire a large part of the provinces of Gaul as far as the Alps and the Pyrenees. It was also by the same virtue that the walls of Angoulême fell of their own accord before his army, like those of Jericho before the army of Joshua, and that he took this place without being obliged to besiege it. Also, in each of these expeditions, Saint Remi had given him a flask of blessed wine for his use, indicating to him that he would be victorious as long as this wine lasted; and by a great miracle, this wine did not diminish until his return. Finally, this blessing prevented this great conqueror from being killed by two Gothic soldiers who attacked him from behind and made every effort to pierce him with their spears.

The Emperor Anastasius having created Clovis patrician and consul, and having sent him, with the marks of this dignity, what was once the height of the ambition of the Romans, a gold crown of great price, Saint Remi advised him to send it to Rome and have it presented to the Pope, as a testimony that he was the obedient son of the Church. Hormisdas, who was then sove reign Pon Hormisdas Pope contemporary with the end of the life of Lautein. tiff, received this gift with extreme joy, and, knowing that it was to Saint Remi that the Church was indebted for the conquest of the kingdom of France, he gave him the power to create new bishoprics there, as he would find it most appropriate for the establishment of the faith and Christianity. By virtue of this power, he erected into a bishopric the church of Notre-Dame de Laon, the place of his birth, which was previously only a simple parish of his diocese. He placed there as first bishop Génchaud, whose life we gave on September 5.

Shortly after the embassy to Rome, Clovis died laden with trophies. Saint Remi learned, by revelation, of his death before it happened, and perhaps he also learned that his soul had received the reward for so many conversions of which he had been the cause by his exhortations and by his example, and for the establishment of the Christian religion in an infinity of places where the demon was worshipped. Savaron, president of Clermont, in Auvergne, has written a specific treatise on his holiness, which readers may consult.

It was around that time, the year of grace 511, that the first Council of Orléans was held. Saint Remi did not fail to be there with thirty-three bishops from various provinces. When he entered the assembly, all the prelates, who had come before him, rose to do him honor; one alone, who was an Arian and very proud, remained seated out of contempt, and did not even deign to greet him when he passed before him. But his incivility, as well as his perfidy, was punished on the spot; for he lost the use of his tongue and could no longer speak. Then he recognized his fault, and prostrating himself at the feet of the Saint, he begged him, by all the signs of the body he could make, to obtain mercy for him. "Very well!" said Saint Remi to him, "if you have true sentiments of the divinity of Jesus Christ and recognize him as consubstantial with his Father; otherwise the use of your voice would only contribute to your blasphemies." At these words, the bishop renounced Arianism inwardly and by gesture, and his tongue loosening at the same time, he recovered his speech to confess that Jesus Christ was one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

We learn from Sidonius Apollinaris and several authors that Saint Remi was one of the most learned and eloquent men of the early centuries, and that he wrote some commentaries on Holy Scripture, filled with very profound doctrine and a very gentle and elevated style. The difficulty lies in knowing whether the Commentaries on Saint Paul, which bear his name, are among them. Villapand, of the Society of Jesus, endeavored to demonstrate this; several others deny it and attribute them to Remi of Lyon or Remi of Auxerre. There is less doubt regarding the two Epistles found in the Library of the Fathers: one to Clovis, on the death of his sister Albofleda, the other to Saint Geneviev e, for whom he h sainte Geneviève Patron saint of Paris, near whom Ceraunus was buried. ad a particular love and respect. His undoubted work is his testament, which our historians have always regarded as one of the most precious monuments of antiquity. In it, he makes his cathedral church the principal heir to all his goods, along with Bishop Lupus, his brother's son, and the priest Agricola, his other nephew. He also made many pious bequests to other churches, to the clergy, to widows, to orphans, to the poor, and to beggars. This testament is found in Flodoard.

At the end of his life, he was attacked by several very painful ailments and also lost his sight; but, far from being afflicted by it, he continually gave thanks to God, regarding these afflictions as great benefits that gave him the opportunity to exercise patience and made him more like Jesus Christ suffering and dying on the cross. He was ceaselessly in prayer, and tears of contrition flowed from his eyes at every moment. He had knowledge of the time of his passing, but, before it arrived, his sight was restored to him, and he had the consolation of celebrating the holy Mysteries once more. Finally, having embraced his spiritual children and given them his blessing, he rendered his beautiful soul to God, without appearing to have any mortal illness, but being merely exhausted and consumed by old age. This was on January 13, 533: he was about ninety-six years old.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

When they wished to carry his body to the church of Saint-Timothée and Saint-Apollinaire, as he had ordered in his will, the coffin became so heavy in the middle of the road that it was impossible to go further. Everyone recognized that heaven did not approve of this great treasure being taken to that church; thus, they attempted to take it first to Saint-Nicaise, then to Saint-Sixte, but this was also without success. Finally, after a long prayer, the thought came to place it at Saint-Christophe, which was nearby and where there was not yet a holy body. As soon as this resolution was taken, Saint Remi allowed himself to be carried easily, and he was placed in the spot where an altar in honor of Saint Genevieve has since been raised. As for the place where he had remained immobile, called the Ban de Saint-Remi, a cross was planted there with an inscription containing the account of this wonder.

Many miracles occurred at his sepulcher and through his intercession. Here is one of the most famous, reported by Gregory of Tours: The plague was ravaging all of France, after having depopulated Italy and Germany; the people of Reims, to prevent this horrible disease from entering their city, took from this sepulcher a cloth with which the holy body was covered and carried it in procession around their walls. Then a very surprising prodigy was seen; for the plague, approaching up to the circle that the procession had made, never dared to pass beyond it; although even the birds died three paces away, no one was struck within the enclosure of this mysterious circle. This led to the idea of placing the body of the holy prelate in a more decent place. Archbishop Sennance had a grotto made behind the high altar to serve this pious design. October 1st was chosen for the translation; the men wished to perform it, but the coffin having again become immobile, they could not succeed. A sweet sleep having lulled them after the day's work, the angels executed what they had not been able to do. Upon waking, they found the relics in the place intended for them, and the church perfumed with a heavenly odor that those of lilies, roses, and jasmines cannot equal. Archbishop Hincmar made, on the same day, a second translation of this sacred deposit into a silver shrine. This was in the year 852. He found the body whole. Two paralytics and a subdeacon, tormented by a toothache, were then perfectly cured. Since then, various reasons forced it to be carried first to Épernay, then to the abbey of Orbais. Its return to Reims was made illustrious by an infinite number of supernatural healings. There were no blind, lame, deaf, mute, or sick people on the road who did not recover their health. It was kept for a long time at Notre-Dame; but it was finally brought back in 908, by Archbishop Hervé, to the church of Saint-Christophe, where it had been buried, and which had left this first name, under Archbishop Hincmar, to take that of Saint Remi. This church was at the beginning very small and little frequented; but when it was enriched with the spoils of our apostle, they began to enlarge it. They first placed canons there; then Archbishop Tilpin placed religious of Saint-Benedict there. Three different abbots: Errard, Thierry, and Hérimar undertook the great edifice. The last one finished the magnificent temple that we see there at present. Pope Saint Leo IX dedicated it himself in 1049, accompanied by a large number of archbishops and bishops. The shrine of its glorious patron, which had been taken to Notre-Dame during this ceremony, was brought back with pomp and an incredible influx of people. It was again on October 1st that this ceremony took place, and the Pope destined it in perpetuity to be the day of the feast of Saint Remi. He said, in the bull he dispatched for this subject, that, although this blessed prelate is not the apostle of all nations, he nevertheless has this prerogative of being the apostle of the Franks in particular, and that this nation is the mark and honor of his apostolate.

Five mausoleums raised above the ground have successively enclosed the body of Saint Remi. The first was raised by Hincmar (845-882) in the 9th century; the second by Hérimar, abbot of the monastery of Saint-Remi, in the 11th century; the third by Cardinal Robert de Lenoncourt, at the beginning of the 16th century. This mausoleum, begun in 1533 and finished in 1537, lasted until the French Revolution. It was a square about eight meters high and five meters long. It consisted of two stories. The lower one was of the Corinthian order. Seventeen columns of red and white jasper supported the entablature. Between the columns were niches that contained the statues of the twelve peers of France, of natural size. The upper story, of the Doric order, was adorned on each side with twenty-four silver tablets representing the life of Saint Remi. The door of the tomb was covered with gold plates. In the middle was another small door made of very pure gold and inlaid with precious stones. In the center was a piece of rock crystal chiseled with marvelous art, and representing the baptism of Our Lord. This door and this crystal came from the mausoleum raised by Hincmar. The whole monument was surmounted by a small lantern in the shape of a dome adorned with precious stones. The fourth was raised in 1803, at the expense of M. Ludinard de Vauxelles, president of the church fabric, who took upon himself the costs of the monument, which was rebuilt on the old site, but in the shape of a rotunda, instead of the square shape it once had. The marble columns, coming from the high altar of the church of Saint-Pierre-les-Dames, were given by M. Blémont. The reception ceremony took place on March 27, 1803.

Finally, in 1847, under the episcopate of Mgr Thomas Gousset, Archbishop of Reims, the tomb was restored under the direction of M. Brunette, architect, and put into the state in which it is seen today. The twelve statues that are between the columns are made of a very fine white stone and covered with a varnish that makes them shine like marble. They are the same as those of old, the municipality having consented to remove them from the museum to return them to their first destination. They are there as a memorial of institution and dignity that have disappeared with our ancient dynasties. On the right side are the six bishops: the archbishop-duke of Reims, carrying the cross; the bishop of Laon, the scepter; the bishop-count of Beauvais, the royal mantle; the bishop-count of Châlons, the ring; the bishop-count of Noyon, the belt. On the left side: the duke of Burgundy, carrying the crown; the duke of Aquitaine, the standard; the duke of Normandy, a second standard; the count of Flanders, the sword; the count of Toulouse, the spurs; the count of Champagne, the military ensign.

Good Oudard Bourgeois, grand prior of the abbey of Saint-Remi in the 18th century, gave a shrine of solid silver enriched with precious stones. It had the same shape as the tomb raised by Cardinal Robert de Lenoncourt. It weighed nearly fifty-six kilograms and had cost more than fourteen thousand livres. Its length exceeded two meters and its width one meter. On August 19, 1650, the old shrine of Hincmar was placed in the new one without breaking the old seals.

In the tomb of Saint Remi were enclosed two very precious objects: 1st the pastoral staff, covered with gold and precious stones, sent to Saint Remi by Pope Hormisdas, when he named him apostolic legate; 2nd the Holy Ampulla or crystal vial forty-five millimeters high, containing the Chrism intended for the coronation of the kings of France. It was the abbots of Saint-Remi who wore it around their necks at the coronation ceremony. The Holy Ampulla was set in a kind of vermeil rose, in the shape of a paten, artistically worked and enriched with diamonds. It was fixed on the back of a gold dove. It was with a gold needle thirty-seven lines long that one detached from the vial a particle of the balm that was then mixed with the holy Chrism at each new coronation of our kings. The Holy Ampulla was kept with such care that it was never allowed to leave Saint-Remi except for the coronation of a king of France. In 1483, Louis XI, who surrounded himself with all kinds of relics and whose devotion went as far as superstition, seeing himself near death, wanted the Holy Ampulla to be brought to him. The monarch's request was submitted to Pope Sixtus IV, and it was only after having obtained his consent that a deputation was charged with carrying it to Le Plessis. When the relic crossed Paris, the Parliament in a body escorted it to the Sainte-Chapelle, where it was deposited for one night before continuing the journey.

On October 23, 1793, the revolutionaries, glorying in the name of sans-culottes, invaded the church of Saint-Remi around five o'clock in the evening, seized the shrine, tore it to pieces, and threw the holy bones to the ground. Finally, the government commissioner mounted the pulpit and made the vaults ring with his blasphemies against the relics and the future life. Then, having gathered the bones, he went with his infamous accomplices into the garden adjacent to the church, in the middle of which was a cemetery; the venerated remains of the holy apostle of France were thrown into a pit with the corpses of two soldiers who had just died at the Hôtel-Dieu. The tomb was demolished from top to bottom. The gold and silver ornaments were taken to the mint; the statues enriched the communal Museum.

As for the Holy Ampulla, it was broken with hammer blows, to the cries of: Long live the Republic! in the middle of the Place Royale, on the steps of the pedestal that had borne the statue of Louis XV. The executor of this act of vandalism was a representative of the people named Rhull, sent expressly from Paris by the Convention, which also wanted the debris of this reliquary, regarded as dangerous to the salvation of the Republic, to be faithfully transmitted to it.

A municipal officer, M. Hourelle, a fabrician of Saint-Remi, came to an understanding with the Abbé Seraine, parish priest and custodian of the keys to the tomb; and, not being able to substitute another vial for the vial of the reliquary, they removed with the gold needle some particles of the dark-brown balm that adhered to its walls and kept them with care. In 1813, on June 11, under the episcopate of Mgr de Coucy, the possessors, both of these precious particles and of two shards of the vial, deposited them, after a preliminary investigation, into the hands of their archbishop, who provisionally enclosed everything in a modest reliquary and had it carried to the church of Saint-Remi, where it remained until the month of May 1825.

On July 5, 1792, about eighteen months after the desecration of the Saint's body by the revolutionaries, a municipal officer named Favréan persuaded the same gravedigger who had buried the precious bones to exhume them from the cemetery and hand them over to him. An authentic report was drawn up on the spot. The same municipal officer decided, on March 15, 1796, to entrust this deposit to the Abbé Seraine, constitutional priest of Saint-Remi, who placed them in a chapel established in the monks' library. Finally, in the first days of October 1796, the church of Saint-Remi having been returned to worship, the shrine of the holy bishop was transferred there. The bones were examined with care by doctors and found to be complete, in the presence of several witnesses and the intruder bishop Nicolas Diot. A new recognition of the relics took place again, first in 1803, by order of the bishop of Meaux, in whose diocese Reims was included; and then in 1824, by Mgr de Latil, Archbishop of Reims, who had the first rib set aside, and affixed the seals on the bones gathered and wrapped in a shroud, and he himself enclosed them in the new silver-plated copper shrine, also due to the munificence of M. Ludinart de Veuxelles. This shrine is nearly two meters long and more than one meter high. The statuettes of the twelve Apostles are placed on each side.

On May 22, 1825, Cardinal de Latil had the box containing the debris of the Holy Ampulla removed from the tomb of Saint Remi, took from it the various particles stolen from the desecration, mixed them with holy Chrism, and poured everything into a vial cast on the model of the old one. The reliquary, which Mgr de Coucy had ordered from the skilled goldsmith Charles Cahier, was only finished at the time of the coronation of Charles X. The new vial was enclosed in it. The whole of this reliquary is a true masterpiece; its description occupies six in-8° pages in the history of Notre-Dame de Reims by the Abbé Cerf. One of the bas-reliefs represents the baptism of Clovis. The inscriptions are ingenious and perfectly chosen; on the horizontal planes at the base are the medallions and portraits of the kings crowned both at Reims and in other cities, such as Pepin at Soissons, Charlemagne at Noyon, etc. The entire reliquary cost twenty-five thousand francs, not counting a large number of precious stones given by the ladies of the king's court. — Since the coronation of King Charles X, the Holy Ampulla has not returned to Saint-Remi; it remains in the treasury of the metropolis.

Saint Remi has always been held in great veneration in Reims. Since his death, the people of Reims have had recourse to his intercession in all calamities; his relics have often been carried in the streets in procession or exposed at Notre-Dame with the hope of preserving the city from various scourges, from the plague, from war, from invasions; or else to obtain peace, or an heir to the crown, or else to thank God for a benefit granted. The inhabitants of the Saint-Remi parish are so strongly attached to keeping the body of the holy archbishop that, in 1823, a procession with the shrine having been announced by order of the archbishopric, on the occasion of the cholera, there was strong opposition and almost a riot, the people fearing for the shrine of Saint Remi the fate of the Holy Ampulla. The ecclesiastical authority therefore thought it prudent to countermand the ceremony.

The zeal of the current priest, the Abbé Aubert, has introduced the use of an annual and very solemn novena that often extends beyond the ninth day after the feast. It is a kind of retreat, a mission that attracts to the offices and sermons a considerable number of pilgrims, estimated at about forty thousand. Today, when impiety and atheism proudly raise their heads and openly attack the foundations of the religion and the holy Church established by Jesus Christ on earth, one should, from all parts of France, hasten to the tomb of Saint Remi, and solicit above all from the glorious bishop who instructed and baptized Clovis the preservation of the Catholic faith and the sincere practice of the precepts of the Gospel.

A small booklet, which is distributed at the door of the church of Saint-Remi, contains antiphons, prayers, and litanies full of unction and piety that the pilgrims do not fail to recite humbly, kneeling before the precious remains of the apostle of the French.

We have the life of Saint Remi by Hincmar, one of his successors. Saint Gregory of Tours and Flodoard speak of him very amply in their histories. Father René de Cerisiers, of the Society of Jesus, gave a very ample summary o f it, d Hincmar Archbishop of Reims, a central figure in theological and political debates. rawn from these authors, which served us to compose this summary. We have completed it with Notes provided by M. Henri Conguet, of the diocese of Soissons.