The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-02-28
R ~ n 4 m y.

1s IN most peoples ears far more familiar
the renowned metropolis of Rhei ms. 1t would
not be hard TO draw out a series of points of
contrast between the two. First of all, no
two towns could be more unlike in position
Instead of the hill Of Laon, Rheims, if not,
like some English cities, absolutely in hole
stands in plain, with no obvious reason at
frst sight why it should have been pitched
ON that particular spot rather than
on any other. Secondly, while Daon
is emphatically a city of the past,
Rheims has firm hold on the present as a
Aourishing seat of modern business and mo-
dern wealth. The history, too, of the two
cities is full of points of contrast. Though
the history of Laon really does spread itself
over the whole range of the last thirteen
hundred years, yet it is only for one short
and remote period that it becomes of para
mount importance. Rheims, as never having
been q seat of royalty, never becomes quite so
prominent as Laon was in the tenth century;
but the interest of its history is spread in
q more equable way over the whole of the
ages from the Frankish conquest of Gaul
down to our own day. As the metropo-
Titan see of France, the seat of the first
ecclesiastical Peer, as the scene of the con-
version of the first Frankish King, as the
burlal-place of so many early sovereigns and
the crowning-place of an all but unbroken
line of sovereigns of later date, Rheims, in
different sources of the interest which is
awakened in an Englishman by Canterbury,
by Winchester, and by Westminster. As
contrasted with Laon, Rheims, as the burial
place of the Laon Kings, may claim a
Joint interest in them. And as regards
the succession of its prelates, Laon
supplies no names which at once
flash across the mind like those of
Remigius, Hincmar, and Gerbert. And if
fl,a, ant ,N.a Of kha 6
the tenth century, it is to Rheims that we
owe the preservation of that history. By
sort of special propriety, the two great eccle-
siastical foundations of Rheims supplied the
two historians who recorded the memorable
struggle between Laon and Paris, between
the Frank and the Frenchman. The metro
politan church numbered the discreet, if
somewhat meagre, Flodoard among its canons,
while the livelier tale of Richer was penned
under the shadow of the great monastic
church of Saint Remigius.
To an Englishman Laon and Rheims have
each alike special interest of its own. The
king who made Laon most famous was all
but an Englishman, the son of an English
mother, the pupil of an English uncle. And
each of the two minister's of Rheims has its
points of connection with England. The
abbey of Saint Remigius became in the ele-
venth century a sort of place of meeting for
hSu VI OIhSI lduuS, dLuOuSSb W1OIn bUu10 Ol
the most famous Englishmen of those days
were not slow to appear. And in the
metropolitan church, the crowning-place of
the Capetian kings, there is one special
crowning of which we can hardly fail to
think. On that spot we cannot but be re-
minded of the day which forever checked the
English dominion in France, when the Maid
stood by at the conservation of the king for
whom she had opened apathway to his crown,
s,Lx
to wipe out the moral effect of that great rite
by fantastic coronation of their own king,
not at Rheims but at Paris. Yet it may be
some comfort to reflect that the formulas of
the august ceremonial were borrowed from
ourselves, and that the kings of the French
were fain to be admitted to their Office with
rites which were at first devised for the sove-
reigns of the Island Empire.
To write the early history of Rheims would
be almost to write the early history of the
Frankish Kingdom. We can hardly turn to
page of Frankish history without lighting
on some mention of the metropolitan city. A
king is to crowned or to be buried; saint is
to be translated or a synod is to be held; a
primate is to be appointed or to be deposed,
and all Gaul and half Europe is in excitement
about the merits of the several candidates.
In the tenth century especially, when the see
of Rheims had attained something like the
pOblIlOu VI Ooruldu 0cCleSldSUlCHl prIncl-
pality, the revolutions of the Arch
bishropric, each commonly involving
siege of the city, well nigh divide
the interest with the revolutions of
the kingdom. Nor is Rheims less fertile in
matters of more purely ecclesiastical concern;
it has its crop of saints and of miracles of
which any church in Christendom might be
proud. Let us take one out of many. A band
of sacrilegious Northmen, bent on plundering
the city and the minister of Saint Remigius
without its walls were kept then from their
wicked purpose by preternatural mist of
three days which hindered them from finding
their way either to the minister or to the city.
But the main historical interest of Rheims
mainly grows out of the connection of the
city and its Primates with the conversion of
the German conquerors of Gaul. 1t is with
true instinct that the crowning group of
statues on the west front of the metropolitan
church represents Hlodwig in the font, his
Christian wife on one side of him, and the off
ciating Primate on the other. Thelegend of the
miraculous oil-who does not remember Mr.
Froude and Saint Ampull ?--is possibly due
to the inventive brain of Hincmar; but it is
certain that the baptism of Hlodwig made the
fortune of Rheims. 1t was no doubt the
memory of that great event which made
Rheims 80 often chosen for royal consecra-
tious and royal burials, till, under the
Partisan dynasty, it became the one place
where king of the French could be rightly
admitted to his Office And whatever may
have been Remigius' other claims to sanctity,
we may suspect that, had he not had the good
fortune to baptize the first Frankish king he
might never have become the patron of his
citv and the minister which bears his name