The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-02-28

the next Time Wnen a. rope anu Otesaf met
in the metropolis Of Belgic Gaul In 1O49
'the mickle minister at Remys," begun in
1908, had been brought to perfection by its
Abbot Heremar. A goodly assemblage, in
deed, was gathered for its hallowing A Pope,
and that Pope Leo the Ninth, came TO per-
form the ceremony; an Emperor, and that En-
peror Henry the Third, formed one of con-
gregation gathered from all parts of Western
ChristendOm. Few assemblies could be more
illustrious than the Synod gathered at the bid
ding of such q Pontitf and such a Cesar One
thing that specially strikes us is that in the
list of prelates and ambassadors no
mention occurs of the King of Paris, and
only very secondary mention of the Primate
of Rheims The Metropolitan of Trier was
there: so were the Metropolitans of Lyons
and of Besancon-these two last still cities
of the Empire not yet swallowed up by the
Partisan Maelstrom. But the prelate Of
Rheims itself is placed lowest on the prima-
tial list, and Pope and Emperor seem to have
held their Synod by their own authority
without any reference to the Capetian King.
What, they might well ask, was he in the
presence of the Lord of the World and the
worthy Pontiff of his choosing? When Sun
and Moon shone side by side in all their
brightness, such lesser lights might well
withdraw their shining. For once in the
worlds history, the successor of Augustus
and the successor of Peter sat side by side to
Judge the nations and their rulers.
For once the two swords clashed
not with one another, but were
drawn to smite with common blow host of
ecclesiastical and moral offenders. Most of
them were the princes or prelates within the
Partisan kingdom, and among them the sem
tence went forth which forbade William the
Norman to aspire to the marriage of his
Flemish kinswoman. And among the crowd
which filled the minister stood three ambas-
sadors of England, one of whom, Duduc, the
Saxon Bishop of Somersetshire, first raised
to dignity by the Danish Cnut, and now sent
by the English Eadward to the Franl1ish
Henry and the Lotharingian Bruno might
seem in special way to represent on Gaullsh
soil the union of all the branches of the leu
tonic race. And the stones on which they
gazed we can gaze on still the mas
sive arches and rude capitals of
the church which Leo hallowed are still
there, partly disguised by additions of the
next age, but still essentially unaltered,
forming one of the most living witnesses of
an age of which SO few great architectural
works remain. And yet another thought
occurs to connect those massive arches with
the history of our country. Twelve years
later Gyrth and Tostig and Ealdred
stopped there on their return from their
Roman pilgrimage, and there Burchard, the
son of Hlfgar, the grandson of Leofric, was
buried in the churchyard of the minister. To
the heart of an Englishman the thought of
Popes and Caesars hardly speaks with so much
force as the thought that the stones on which
he is gazing were gazed at in all the freshness
of their first days by the stainless hero of his
own land.
And yet Rheims contains one piece of an
tiquity besides which even the minister of
Saint Remigius may seem modern. The
POrta Mdrt5S, the old Roman gate, still sur
wives, speaking of days when Popes were as
yet unknown, when Caesars still bowed, not
at the shrine of Christian saint, but at the
altar of the father of Rome's founder. The
genuine fragment is noble one, but will it
be believed that the demon of restoration has
seized even on this venerable relic, and that
modern work, modern pillars, modern capi-
tails, are brought into close neighborhood
with the grand, if shattered, remains of the
time which has SO utterly passed away.
Other objects of interest, both ecclesiastic
and domestic, may be found in Rheims, but
these are the chief. A city which can show
one church of such artistic perfection as the
Metropolitan Church, and another of such
surprising historic interest as the ''mickle
minister" claims high place, indeed, among
the historic cities of Christendom.