Reims

“ So crowded was the town that, the weather being warm, in mid July, many lay in tabernacles of boughs, in the great place of Reims, and there was more singing that night than sleeping. But my master had lain at the hostelry called L’Asne Roye, in the parvise, opposite to the cathedral, where also lay Jean d’Arc, the father of the Maid. Thither she herself came to visit him, and she gave gifts to such of the people of her own countryside as were gathered at Reims. ”

“ It is impossible to analyse Reims, to describe its vital and exquisite organism, to laud its impeccable scale, its vivid and stimulating originality, to explain the almost incredible competence and beauty of its buttressing, the serene delicacy of its detail, to dwell once more on the glory of its sculpture that ranked with that of Greece, on the splendour of its glass that was rivalled only at Chartres. It is impossible to do this now, for its passing has been too recent and too grievous. Death brings silence for a time to those that knew the dead. ”

“ Reims accorded an enthusiastic welcome to the youthful and ill-fated Marie Antoinette, on her passage through the city on May 12, 1770, shortly after her arrival in France; [215] and five years subsequently the Rémois were regaled with the splendours of a coronation, when the young King, Louis XVI., and his radiant Queen passed beneath the elaborately wrought escutcheon surmounting the Porte de Paris, expressly forged by a blacksmith of Reims in honour of the occasion, [216] and received from the hands of the Lieutenant des Habitans the three silver keys of the city. ”

“ The catastrophe of Reims supplies a very sure index as to what passes as the quality of the German mind. Although of all churches the most French, the cathedral of Reims belongs to the whole world, a rare, beautiful and precious structure, hallowed with great memories and endowed with exquisite art. The question is thus very simple: is the world better with the cathedral [Pg 18] of Reims or without it? The Germans seem unquestionably to have decreed its destruction. Of this the record of the bombardment offers ample proof. ”

“ A bull from the Pope empowered them to do that. They came to Reims to tell fortunes in the name of the King of Algiers, and the Emperor of Germany. You can readily imagine that no more was needed to cause the entrance to the town to be forbidden them. Then the whole band camped with good grace outside the gate of Braine, on that hill where stands a mill, beside the cavities of the ancient chalk pits. And everybody in Reims vied with his neighbor in going to see them. ”

“ The drive from Reims to Sillery has nothing attractive about it. A long, straight, level road bordered by trees intersects a broad tract of open country, skirted on the right by the Petite Montagne of Reims, with antiquated villages nestled among the dense woodland. ”

“ SOME CIRCULAR NOTES. CHAPTER III. Reims—Night—Streets—Arrival—Lion d'Or—Depression—Landlady—Boots—Cathedral—Loneliness—Bed.
It is just ten o'clock. Reims seems to be in bed and fast asleep, except for the presence in the streets of a very few persons, official and unofficial, of whom the former are evidently on the alert as to the movements, slouching and uncertain, of the latter.
We drive under ancient Roman Arch ”

“ Eventually a royal edict of 1776, which suppressed the privileges of the majority of the guilds in France, deprived the Reims gingerbread-makers for ever of the right of figuring with swords by their sides and three-cornered hats on their heads at all local ceremonies, civil or religious, and threw their trade open to all.
It was at the close of Louis XIV.’s reign that the pain d’épice of Reims reached the summit of its renown. At the coronation of his successor, the échevins of Reims presented the monarch with several baskets of it ”

“ SOME CIRCULAR NOTES. CHAPTER IV. Reims—Solemnity—Relief—En voiture—Politeness—Calling—Calves—Caves—Starting—Cocher—Duet.
Seen the Cathedral. Grand. As I am not making notes for a Guide-book, shall say nothing about it. "Don't mention it." I shan't. Much struck by the calm air of repose about Reims. So silent is it, that DAUBINET's irrepressible singing in the solemn court-yard of the Hotel comes quite as a relief. It is an evidence of life. ”

“ After Cluny and Jumièges, Paris, Bourges, Chartres, and Reims are inevitable, and the working out of a great destiny is headlong and almost incredible. Jumièges was finished in 1066, the year of the Norman conquest of England; Reims was begun in 1212. Within a space of a century and a half the greatest architectural evolution in history had taken place, so echoing and voicing an equally unprecedented development in human character and culture. In 1066, hardly more than fifty years had passed since Christian society emerged from two centuries of barbarism ”

“ The curve of the roof is very beautiful; after Reims it struck us as low, though at least 80 feet high. The west front is fine, though the portals require more work to conceal their vast depth. I could not but greatly admire the skill of the architect of Reims, who had evidently studied and adopted the towers and western front of this church, which is said in its time (1130) to have been the finest in France, and yet has produced a work incomparably more beautiful, and quite original. Laon has a double triforium, making four stages in its interior. ”

“ The tax on land in France is nearly one-fifth of the produce; very heavy; 200l. a year in land a deputy's qualification. Soon after getting to our inn, which was right opposite the west front of the Cathedral, we attended a Low Mass, and at eight o'clock a chanted Mass: it was a Mass for the dead. The outside of Reims is all that can be conceived of beauty, grandeur, unity of conception, delicacy and boldness of execution; and this, though the one great design of the architect has not been {93} completed, for the four towers of the transepts have had no spires since the great fire of 1491 ”

“ We do not know; and it is a mystery which will never be solved. The judges at Rouen thought they knew that she received letters from Saint Michael. [90] It is possible that her simplicity was sometimes taken advantage of. We have reason for believing that the march to Reims was not suggested to her in France; but there is no doubt that the Chancellor of the kingdom, Messire Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, eagerly desired his restoration to the see of the Blessed Saint Remi and the enjoyment of his benefices. ”

“ Through her the Dauphin Charles was to be anointed at Reims. The white dove, which of old was sent to the blessed Remi, was to come down again at the Virgin's call. God, who loves the French, marks their king with a sign, and when there is no sign the royal power has departed. ”

“ RICHERUS, monk of St Remi at Reims, and a chronicler of the 10th century, son of Rodulf, a trusty councillor and captain of Louis IV. He studied at Reims under Gerbert, afterwards Pope Silvester II., who taught him mathematics, history, letters and eloquence. He was also well versed in the medical science of his time, and in 991 travelled to Chartres to consult the medical MSS. there. ”

“ This American artist and tourist long familiar with the ravaged regions of northern France ... describes and pictures the now vanished glories of Reims, Noyon, Arras, Léon, Verdun, St Quentin, and many other towns and villages of which we have been hearing so much, and in so tragic a way, of late. ”

“ The important point is to cause the garrison, fortunately a small one, to make off. Five hundred men are too few for defence, but too many for surrender. As for enjoining the citizens of Reims to demand succour for themselves and for us, that is merely to prove our good-will to the Duke of Burgundy; and we risk nothing by it, for we know that our trusty comrades of Reims will take care that when they ask for succour they do not receive it, and that they will await a favourable opportunity for opening their gates to King Charles, who comes with a strong army. ”

“ Humanity held its breath while the heroic battle of Verdun was in progress, because it was a military event of the first magnitude. But so little has been heard of Reims that a revelation of its daily martyrdom must come as a shock to those who have closely followed the war. ”

“ To lose Reims and regain after long years the impulse and the power to build after the same fashion would be{323} more than ample compensation. We have tried for many centuries and have failed; no man has built anything approaching it for seven hundred years, nor has any one matched the statue of Our Lady at Paris, or the “Worship of the Lamb” at Ghent, or the glass of Chartres, or the tapestries of Arras, or the metal work of Dinant and Tournai. ”

“ The catastrophe itself is so unthinkable that the world does not now half realise it. And yet, what of all that remains in the pathway—backward or forward—of Attila and his Huns? St. Gudule of Brussels, St. Bavon of Ghent, and the cathedrals of Antwerp, Tongres, and Tournai; and in France that matchless sequence of which Reims was once the central jewel, Soissons, Senlis and Noyon, St. Remi, Amiens, and Laon; here, with Reims, are seven churches such as man never surpassed, and equalled only at Paris, Chartres, Coutances, and Bourges ”

“ It is true that the figures of Kings in the ‘Galeries des Rois’ across the west fronts are as a rule rudely carved, but this is because they are so purely formal and give the artist little opportunity. At Reims some of the finest and most finished work is to be found in the effigies of Kings, the Angels, and other figures, on the upper stages of the building, while the ‘Church Triumphant’ up above on the southern transept façade is every whit as delicately beautiful as the ‘Mary of the Visitation,’ in the western porch. ”

“ The region to the eastward of Paris, which has played no unimportant part in the history of France, while prolific as to varied types of church building, possesses but one example of the very first rank,—and that, as a style which typifies Gothic art, may be said to rank supreme over all others,—Notre Dame de Reims. ”

“ Leading out of the Place Royale is the Rue de Cérès, in which there is a modernised sixteenth-century house claiming to be the birthplace, on the 29th August 1619, of Jean Baptiste Colbert, son of a Reims wool-merchant, and the famous minister who did so much to consolidate the finances of the State which the royal voluptuary, masquerading at Reims in Roman garb, afterwards made such dreadful havoc of. ”

“ The metropolitans of Reims played a great local as well as a great national part. The bishops of Châlons became counts of their cathedral city; the bishops of Troyes, the local capital, only just failed in attaining the same end. ‘Everywhere,’ we are told, ‘the mighty oppressed the feeble, and men, like fishes, swallowed each other up.’ In the course of the tenth century a strong lay power arose in this district under the counts of Troyes. During the tenth century the country was held by a branch of the house of Vermandois. In 1019 it passed, as we have seen, to the house of Blois. ”

“ On the same day the King knighted his two eldest sons, the Dauphin, and Louis, afterwards Duc d’Anjou, his brother Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, his stepson Philippe, Duc de Bourgogne, his cousins the Comtes d’Alençon and d’Etampes, and other young nobles. The King and Queen left Reims on Monday evening and journeyed by Laon, Soissons,9 and Senlis to Paris, which they entered in state on Sunday, the 17th October, after vespers. ”

“ At Reims we have very rudely drawn figures in rich colour against a deep background, standing with splayed feet upon little rounds or half rings of colour, representing the earth, their names inscribed in bold lettering, which forms a band of yellow behind their heads. At Augsburg the figures, equally rude in drawing, equally splay-footed, are in white and colour upon a white ground. They stand upon little [Pg 119] hemispheres of Byzantine ornament, and their names are writ large in black letters upon the white glass around their heads. ”

“ His history of the cathedral church at Reims (Historia Remensis Ecclesiae) is one of the most remarkable productions of the 10th century. Flodoard had been given charge of the episcopal archives, and constructed his history out of the original texts, which he generally reproduces in full; the documents for the period of Hincmar being especially valuable. The Annales which Flodoard wrote year by year from 919 to 966 are doubly important, by reason of the author’s honesty and the central position of Reims in European affairs in his time. ”

“ In case a battle takes place today or very soon in the environs of Reims or in the city itself, the inhabitants are advised that they should keep absolutely calm and are not to take part in the battle in any manner. They must not attempt to attack isolated soldiers nor detachments of the German army. It is formally forbidden to build barricades or tear up pavement of the streets in such a fashion as to hinder the movement of the troops. In a word nothing must be done which will in any way tend to hinder the German army. ”

“ This escutcheon shows the arms of Reims, which at first consisted of rinçeaux or branches; subsequently a cross and a crozier, placed saltire-wise, and a sainte Ampoule, were added. When the government of the city passed from the archbishop, the entwined olive-branches and chief strewn with fleurs de lis were adopted, the old motto, ‘Dieu en soit garde,’ being retained. The iron gates of the Porte de Paris were removed to their present position in 1843, to allow of the passage of the canal. ”

“ This letter was delivered to the Council. "You may have heard tidings," said the King to his good people of Reims, "of the success and victory it hath pleased God to vouchsafe unto us over our ancient enemies, the English, before the town of Orléans and since then at Jargeau, Beaugency, and Meung-sur-Loire, in each of which places our enemies have received grievous hurt; all their leaders and others to the number of four thousand have been slain or taken prisoners. ”