medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (13. January) is the feast day of:
Remigius of Reims (d. 532 or 533). R., the "apostle of the Franks", is said in his Vita by "Fortunatus, bishop of Poiters" (BHL 7150; _not_ by Venantius Fortunatus) to have been elected bishop of Reims at the age of twenty-two and to have performed various miracles, one of which was the suppression of a fire threatening to consume his city. Four letters of his survive; a collection of sermons ascribed to him was known to Sidonius Apollinaris. Gregory of Tours' _Historia Francorum_ is our first narrative source for R.'s having baptized the Frankish king Clovis. R.'s Vita by Hincmar of Reims (BHL 7152-7164) makes him a member of a prominent noble and ecclesiastical family and adds other miracles, including that of the ampule of chrism miraculously provided for Clovis' baptismal ceremony. Florus of Lyon and Hincmar both give today as R.'s _dies natalis_.
R.'s putative remains are kept in a shrine in Reims' largely eleventh- through thirteenth-century Basilique Saint-Rémi. This building sustained massive damage in World War I, so much of what one sees today is restoration work. A brief, French-language account is here:
http://catholique-reims.cef.fr/basilique-stremi.htm
and two sets of expandable views (the latter alas uncaptioned) are here:
http://www.pbase.com/alastairneil/reimsbasilique
http://rpeyre.free.fr/saintremi/
Here's another view of R.'s shrine:
http://tinyurl.com/ylao4o
The St. Rémi window (ca. 1220-25) at Notre-Dame de Chartres:
http://tinyurl.com/yccu6n
http://tinyurl.com/yd5ens
R.'s baptism of Clovis is depicted on the lowest register of the tympanum (ca. 1220-1230) of the "Portail des Saints" (north transept, facade) of Reims' cathédrale de Notre-Dame et de Saint-Jacques (NB: Many of the carvings on this building were reworked in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries):
http://catholique-reims.cef.fr/liturgie.php?f=liturgie/3-stremi.htm
A later fourteenth-century miniature of the baptism (Paris, BNF, Ms. Français 28213, fol. 12v.):
http://tinyurl.com/yfezco
A fifteenth-century depiction of the baptism (Paris, BNF, Ms. Lat. 917, fol. 1):
http://expositions.bnf.fr/fouquet/grand/f630.htm
http://classes.bnf.fr/ema/grands/13-0.htm
Best,
John Dillon
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