Location: Pl St- Remi
Tel. +33 326 85 31 20
Open: daily
The Saint-Remi basilica of Reims is a basilica built
around the year one thousand in the city of Reims (Champagne).
After the cathedral, which it almost equals in size, the Saint-Remi
basilica is the most famous church in Reims. For a long time it was
attached to an important abbey, the Saint-Remi de Reims abbey.
The Saint-Remi basilica dates from the 11th, 12th, 13th and 15th
centuries.
Saint-Remi Abbey has been listed as a historical
monument since 1840.
Some Reims citizens argue that the story of Victor Hugo's novel "Notre Dame de Paris" really happened here during medieval times. But in order to give his story more value, author simply moved the action to Notre Dame Cathedral in the middle of Paris.
primitive chapel
This church contains the relics of Bishop
Saint Remi, who baptized Clovis, King of the Franks, on Christmas
Day in a year between 496 and 506, possibly 499 from the
Incarnation, after the Battle of Tolbiac . However, tradition
retains the year 496, celebrated by the visit of Pope John Paul II
in 1996 to celebrate the 1,500 years of the baptism of France. The
bishop died in 533, at the age of 96. His reputation for holiness
and repeated miracles quickly attracted many pilgrims.
In
533, Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, wished to be buried in the chapel
dedicated to Saint Christopher, which was located two kilometers
from the cathedral. Very quickly this Saint-Christophe chapel became
a place of pilgrimage. As people flocked, monks were installed to
guard the body of the holy man. The primitive chapel was then
enlarged to the dimensions of a church, where the body was
transferred on October 1, a day which then became Saint-Remi.
Birth of an abbey and its Carolingian abbey church
Around
760, Abbot Tilpin (romanticized as Turpin in Roland's song) founded
the Saint-Remi abbey and set up a Benedictine religious community
there, which remained there until the French Revolution.
In
the middle of the 9th century, Archbishop Hincmar enlarged the
building and consecrated the Carolingian abbey.
Carolingian
abbey church replaced by a Romanesque abbey church
This abbey
disappeared after the year 1000 to be replaced by a large Romanesque
abbey built by Abbé Airard. The plan, which was too ambitious, was
revised by Father Thierry, his successor. There remain the eleven
bays of the nave, with stands and aisles as well as the transept. At
the time, a wooden frame covered the whole.
The abbey was
consecrated by Pope Leo IX in 1049, during the Council of Reims.
This pope, born in an unknown place in the county of Dabo or that of
Eguisheim, traveled a lot between the current regions of Italy,
France and Germany. After he was taken prisoner by the Normans and
after his death in 1054, there was a schism between East and West.
Between 1118 and 1151, Abbot Odon had the sanctuary and the
monastic choir decorated and this decoration was preserved until the
Revolution. Odo had had a mosaic pavement made in the monks' choir,
which occupied the last four bays of the nave, and in the crossing
of the transept. The pavement surrounded and highlighted funerary
slabs of important figures, buried in the church since Carolingian
times. There was in particular the tombstone of Queen Gerberge,
sister of Otto the Great and wife of Louis IV, as well as that of
her daughter Albrade. The 10th century kings, Louis IV and Lothaire,
were the subject of a more outstanding presentation: their stone
statues, the figures seated on thrones, were placed on either side
of the great altar, to the east of the crossing. On the other hand,
King Carloman I was not concerned by this decoration program and
before the revolution, no epitaph mentions him.
In 1162, Pierre de Celle, new abbot, decided on major
modifications: the Romanesque porch was demolished and the nave
was extended with two Gothic bays. A new facade connects the two
preserved Romanesque towers. A new Gothic choir, deeper, with an
ambulatory and five radiating chapels, replaces the Romanesque
choir. Many stained glass windows are made.
In 1181, Dom
Simon succeeded Pierre de Celle. It raises and reinforces the
Romanesque walls of the nave in order to vault the building.
Archbishop Robert de Lénoncourt, at the beginning of the
16th century, had the portal with a flamboyant window erected in
the south arm of the transept. The Congregation of Saint-Maur,
which reformed the abbey from 1627 and took over many
residential buildings, returning novices, built the Renaissance
colonnade, which encloses the choir.
A great fire ravaged
the abbey and destroyed the library on the night of January 15
to 16, 1774, it will be remodeled by the architect Louis
Duroché, the courtyard, the staircase and the current facade are
his.
The building of the abbey escaped the demolitions of the
revolutionary turmoil, but the interior was desecrated and ransacked.
Priceless items of interior furniture disappear like the Holy Ampulla
destroyed by the revolutionaries in 1793, when the Benedictines were
driven from their monastery. After the Revolution, the abbey became the
parish church for the southern districts.
The 19th century saw
the reconstruction of the north tower and the top of the facade,
starting from the rose window, that of the vaults of the nave replaced
by false wooden vaults, as well as the erection of a new mausoleum.
On June 17, 1870, the abbey was elevated to the rank of minor
basilica.
The gilded bronze reliquary enclosed in the mausoleum
was made on the occasion of the 14th centenary of the baptism of Clovis,
in 1896. "The crown of light", symbol of the celestial Jerusalem and
whose ninety-six candles evoke the duration life of Saint Rémi, is
redone.
The building adopts the plan of the basilica. The nave and
transepts, in Romanesque style, are the oldest, while the facade
of the south transept is the most recent part. The choir and the
apse date back to the 12th and 13th centuries.
The
valuable monuments that were in the church in the past were
looted during the Revolution; the saint's tomb is a 19th century
reconstruction. However, there are still 12th century stained
glass windows in the apse and the tapestries donated by Robert
de Lenoncourt, exhibited in the museum housed in the former
abbey. The Saint-Remi basilica as well as the adjoining 18th
century Benedictine abbey (Saint-Remi museum, Gallo-Roman
collections in particular) were classified as World Heritage by
UNESCO in 1991.
On August 1, 1918, it had housed a
hospital since the Napoleonic wars, bombs dropped by German
planes fell on the basilica, the roof caught fire and collapsed.
The false vaults in wood and plaster collapse along the entire
length of the nave and part of the transept. The walls are
pierced, the ground is covered with rubble and only the
transmissions of the Brisset organ remain. The damage was
aggravated by the bad weather of winter, which then saw the
south aisles collapse in April 1919, while rain and storms
knocked down the north gable of the transept in 1920.
Exterior length: 126 meters (like Notre-Dame de Paris).
Exterior width: 58 meters
It was not until 2000 that the basilica was again equipped with
a large organ by organbuilder Bertrand Cattiaux. 43 stops, three
manual keyboards and pedals, it is integrated into the south
aisle at the level of the tenth bay. It is also exceptional for
the height of its pipes, 6.5 m integrated into an 11.5 m buffet
by Jean-Luc Giraud, the realization was entrusted to the
workshop of Yves le Huen.
It follows a whole series of
organs, an organ commissioned by the monks in 1662 with
twenty-five stops and the work of Jacques Carouge and Jean de
Villers which was destroyed during the French Revolution. A
chancel organ with 23 stops by F. Verschneider was made in 1842.
A large organ of the eleventh bay made by Brisset was installed
in 1898 but burned down on August 1, 1918 during the First World
War, it had fifty stops. In 1972, a ten-stop organ from the
college chapel of the University was installed.
Kings
crowned in the abbey of Saint-Remi in Reims
A commemorative
plaque affixed in the south collateral nave recalls that three
kings of the Franks were crowned in this basilica:
Charles III the Simple in 893,
Robert I in 922,
Lothair in
954.
Carloman I King of the Franks;
Louis IV of France King of the
Franks;
Lothair of France (circa 941-986) King of the Franks;
Frederune, queen of the Franks, 917;
Gerberga of Saxony, queen of the
Franks, 969;
Saint Sonnacius, Archbishop of Reims, 633;
Landon de
Reims, Archbishop of Reims;
Saint Nivard of Reims, Archbishop of
Reims;
Saint Réol, Archbishop of Reims;
Tilpin, Archbishop of
Reims;
Vulhard, archbishop of Reims, in 816;
Hincmar;
Fulk the
Venerable;
Boson, Frankish prince in 937;
Artault;
Renauld,
Comte de Roucy, in 963 (probably error of reproduction: read "973");
Albrade, Frankish princess, in 989;
Gilbert, Frankish prince, in 998;
Agnes, Frankish princess, in 1000;
Arnoul, illegitimate son of King
Lothaire, Archbishop of Reims;
Burchard, English earl, in 1060;
Gauthier, Count of Crepy, in 1070;
Airard, abbot of Saint-Remy, in
1036;
Thierry, abbot of Saint-Remy, in 1048;
Gui de Chatillon,
abbot of Saint-Remy, in 1048;
Herimard, abbot of Saint-Remy, in 1071;
Azenaire, abbot of Saint-Remy, in 1122;
Raoul le Verd, archbishop of
Reims, in 1124;
Solon, French knight;
Odon, abbot of Saint-Remy,
in 1151;
Pierre de Celle;
Rémi de Thuisy, in 1231;
Thierry de
Raunay, in 1305;
Thibault de Thuisy, in 1360;
Jean Canart, abbot
of Saint-Remy, in 1439;
Nicolas Robillard, abbot of Saint-Remy, in
1461;
Guillaume De Villers, abbot of Saint-Remy, in 1472;
Dom
Théobalde, grand prior, in 1509;
Robert de Lénoncourt, Archbishop of
Reims, in 1532;
Dom G. Moët, grand prior, in 1554;
Dom A.
Lavineau, grand prior, in 1589;
Dom A. Solin, grand prior, in 1592;
Dom J. Lepagnol, grand prior, in 1619;
Dom Odouart-Bourgeois, grand
prior, in 1649;
Dom E. Vilquin, Grand Prior, in 1668.
Among
the royal and ecclesial personalities buried in the basilica, we can
note the Carolingian kings Louis IV and Lothaire who have been the
subject of descriptions: at the time of their destruction during the
Revolution, the two tombs of Louis IV and his son the King Lothaire were
on either side of the choir, on the epistle side for Louis IV and on the
gospel side for Lothaire. Their remains had been moved in the middle of
the 18th century and transported to the right and left of the mausoleum
of Carloman I under the first arcade of the collateral nave on the side
of the sacristy of the basilica of Saint-Rémi in Reims. The statues
placed on the initial graves were left in their place.
Both
statues were painted, and gold fleur-de-lys could be seen on the mantle
thrown over the shoulder of each king. The throne of Louis IV was
similar to a bench placed on a base of the same material. The seat had a
back that rose above the royal head which it sheltered using a gable
roof, three arches adorned the underside of this roof. The king was
wearing a cap and had a long beard. Louis held in his hand a scepter
ending in a pinecone; he was shod in extremely simple boots and covered
with a chlamys. The base on which his feet rested was decorated at the
corners with figures of children or lions. Lothair's throne was more
ornate than that of Louis IV. A little higher and less wide, it carried
on the pediment of its roof a fleur-de-lis and two other flowers.
Lothaire's crown was a circle surmounted by a few flowers, another
flower rather similar to a fleur-de-lis was at the top of his scepter.
He wore a tunic and over it a chlamys tied over his right shoulder. At
his feet, one could see the figure of a child or a dwarf who seemed to
put his shoes on or take him off.
VIP visits
Pope John Paul II traveled to Reims in 1996 to
celebrate the 1500th anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, first King of
the Franks, by Saint Remi.
The Saint-Remi basilica celebrated its
millennium in 2007 and welcomed 80,000 visitors in 1999.
Other
events
Throughout the year, cultural activities are organized such as
concerts by the great organ, the Flâneries Musicales de Reims and every
summer a sound and light show.
The basilica hosts part of the performances of the Reunion Baroque
Meetings.
Noticed
In the Reims region, it is customary to
pronounce Saint Remi (or even R'mi). This custom of pronunciation still
persists today.