Pope Decreed a Feast for France's Archbishop Remigius
Statue of Remigius in a Netherland’s church.
LATE IN THE FIFTH CENTURY, Rheims, about eighty miles northeast of Paris, became a center of French Christianity largely because of the influence of Remigius. A nobleman, he was so studious and saintly that the people of Rheims chose him to be their bishop at the young age of twenty-two, around the year 462.
At the time of his election, the region around Rheims was largely pagan. Remigius threw himself into efforts to convert these people and dispatched missionaries to Teouanne, Boulogne, and Arras. Later, as archbishop, he appointed bishops for other cities: Cambrai, Laon, and Tournai.
We only know one definite date in the life of Remigius: 24 December 496. That day he baptized Clovis, king of the Franks, in Rheims—a red letter day for the Christianization of France. Ever since then, Rheims has usually been the place French kings were crowned. Clovis was generous with land grants to Remigius, who used the property to establish and support religious institutions.
Yet for all his influence and fame, little is really known about Remigius. Early sources tell mostly legends of incredible miracles, such as a dove bringing a vial of ointment from heaven so that Remigius could consecrate Clovis.
Time has not been kind to Remigius’s writings, either. Just four of his letters survive and a few fragments from his commentaries. Everything else attributed to him, including his will, seems to be fake. His commentary on Christ’s Olivet Discourse makes heavy use of metaphors to explain the text: “For Mount Olivet has no unfruitful trees, but olives, which supply light to dispel darkness, which give rest to the weary, health to the sick. And sitting on Mount Olivet over against the temple, the Lord discourses of its destruction, and the destruction of the Jewish nation, that even by his choice of a situation he might show, that abiding still in the Church he condemns the pride of the wicked.”
Remigius died in the first half of January somewhere between 530 and 535. Pope Leo IX consecrated the church of St. Remigius in September, 1049 and decreed that the saint’s feast should be kept on this day, 1 October, throughout France.
—Dan Graves
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For more on Remigius, read our January 13 story.
Learn more about the giants of church history in History of Christianity.