REIMS
726
REIMS
of Charlemagne, whose name was afterwards, not
later than the end of the eleventh centurj', forged to a
chronicle of Charlemagne and Roland, very popular
in the Middle Ages.
The political importance of the See of Reims, situated geographically between France and Ger- many, was manifested in the ninth centurj' during the episcopates of Ebbo (S16-35), whose disagreements with Louis the Debonnaire are matters of history; of Hincmar (845-82), the most illustrious of the archbishops of Reims;ofFulk (883-900), chancellor of Charles the Simple, who maintained the rights of the Carlovingians against Eudes, Count of Paris, an- cestor of the House of Capet; of Herve (900-22), who laboured for the conversion of the Normans and, eventually rallying to the Capet ians, crowned Robert king in 922. In 925 Count Herbert of Vermandois had his son Hugh, a boy of less than five years of age, consecrated Archbishop of Reims, but in 932 King Raoul caused Ai'taud (932-61) to be consecrated, and Hugh, who insisted upon his archiepiscopal rights, was excommunicated by a council in 9-18 and by Pope Agapetus in 949. The decisive part taken by Archbishop Adalbero (969-SS) in the elevation of the Capets to the throne, the political part plaved by Archbishop .\rnould (988-91 and 995-1021), as a partisan of the Carlo\'ingians, and the brief occupancy of the see by Gerbert (991-95), after^-ards Sylvester
II, are treated in the articles Hugh C.\pet and Sylvester II, Pope. Manasses de Gournay (1069-80) was deposed for simony at the behest of Gregory VII in the Council of Lyons. Henry of France, second son of King Louis VI (1162-75\ did much to secure the recognition in France of Pope Alexander III against the antipope Octavian, and resisted the attempts of the burghers to form themselves into a commune. William of the ^^^lite Hands (1176- 1202), uncle to Philip Augustus and cousin of Henry II of England, was made a cardinal in 1179, and was legate in France and Germany under Innocent
III. It was he who granted to the liurghers of Reims in 1182 the ^^"ilhehnine Charter, a concession to the communal movement. Cardinal Gui de Paray (1204-06). formerly Abbot of CIteaux, sup- pressed Manichseism in his diocese. Alb^ric de Humbert (1206-18) took part in the Albigensian War and, in 1211, laid the first stone of the present cathe- dral. In 1250, Johel de Mathefelon (1244-50), con- ferred the office of Grand Archdeacon of Reims on Cardinal Ottoboni, nephew of Innocent 1\, who be- came pope under the name of Adrian V. Pierre Babette (1274-98) petitioned Gregory X in 1276 for the canonization of St. Louis, and obtained it from Boniface VIII in 1297. The Dominican Humbert, Dauphin of Viennois, occupied the See of Reims from 1352 to 1355. Guy de Roye (1390-1409), who was killed in Italy on his way to the Council of Pisa, was the author of the "Dortrinale Sapienti;^". Simon de Cramaud (1409-13), created cardinal in 1413, had an important share in putting an end to the Great Schism. Renaud de Chartres (1414-44), made car- dinal in 1439, chancellor to Charles VII, showed him- self ver>' unfavourable to the mission of Joan of Arc; when the heroine was captured (23 May, 1430) he wrote a letter to the inhabitants of Reims in a spirit hostile to her, and he took no steps to rescue Joan from his suffragan, Bishop Cauchon of Beauvais. Renaud was one of the plenipotentiaries who signed the treaty of Arras between Charles VII and the Duke of Burgundy. Jacques Juvenel des Ursins (1444-9) was commissioned b.\- Charles VII, in 1447, to notify Amadeus of Savoy that he must abdicate the papal throne, and to treat with Nicholas V for the restora- tion of peace to the Church. Jean Juvenel dos Ursins (1449-73) was ordered by Callistus III to revise the process of Blessed Joan of Arc; he also wrote a history of the reign of Charles VI. Guillavmie
Bri^onnet was created cardinal in 1493 and occupied
the See of Reims from 1497 to 1507. His successor,
Charles Dominique de Carrette (1507-8) was Car-
dinal of Final after 1505. Robert de Lenoncourt
(1508-32) enriched the cathedral with sumptuous
tapestries representing the life and death of the
Blessed N'irgin, and the church of St. Remigius with
tapestries on the life of its titular saint.
In 1553 the House of Lorraine began to acquire a hold upon the See of Reims, where it was first rep- resented bj- John V of Lorraine (1533-S), next bv Cardinal Charles of Lorraine (1538-74), and then by Cardinal Louis de Guise (1574-88). In 1585 Reims had taken sides with the League, and the Duke of Mayenne and the Mar^chal de Saint Paul ruled as masters in the city until 1594. The "Journalier" of Jean Pussot, the car[)enter, is even now a capital source of information on the League spirit which animated the people of Reims, showing at the same time how the}- gradually rallied to Henry IV. Phil- ippe du Bee, one of the prelates who had laboured most earnestly for Henry IV's conversion, was by him nominated Archbishop of Reims in January, 1595. The see was next occupied by another Guise, Louis of Lorraine, made a cardinal in 1615. At his death the see was given to William Gilford, an Englishman bj^ origin. This personage, who had been successively canon-theologian of the cathedral of Milan under St. Charles Borromeo, dean of St. Peter's at Lille, rector of the University of Reims, a monk in the monastery of St-Benolt en Voi\Te, at Metz, and founder of two Benedictine houses at St. Malo and Paris, spent his whole life helping the ex- patriated English Catholics in France and the apostles who were going thence, \\ith all caution, to strengthen persecuted Catholicism in England. He wrote a treatise on predestination and a work against the Calvinists entitled "Calvino-Furcismus". His suc- cessor, in 1629, Henry of Lorraine, the adventurous Guise who afterwards attempted an expedition against Naples, never received Holy orders, and in 1641 Richelieu compelled him to give up the emolu- ments of the archbishopric. In the course of the seventeenth century two religious women who be- longed to the House of Guise had also been abbesses at St-Pierre-les-Dames at Reims, and Mary Stuart, at the age of six, had spent some time and received a part of her education there.
Among the later archbishops of Reims may be mentioned: Antonio Barberini (1657-71), cardinal in 1627; Charles-Maurice Le Tellier (1671-1710), who, unliappil}', caused to be demolished the superb archiepiscopal palace raised by men of preceding ages, distinguished himself by his hatred of the Jesuits and his antipathj' to Roman doctrines, and bequeathed his magnificent library to the Abbey of Ste-Genevieve at Paris; Francois de Mailly (1710- 31), cardinal in 1698; Charles-Antoine de La Roche Ajinon (1762-77), cardinal in 1771; Alexandre- Angclique de Talleyrand-P<5rigord (1777-1801), who was a deputy in the States-General of 1789, com- bated the project of the civil constitution of the clergj- in several of his \%Titings, emigrated under the Revolution, refused to resign after the Concordat, remained near Louis XVIII after 1803, returned with him to France in 1814, accepted his dismissal from the Archbishopric of Reims in 1816, and in 1817 was made a cardinal and Archbishop of Paris; Jean- Baptiste-Marie-.\ntoine de Latil (1824-39), chaplain to the future Charles X from 1804, cardinal in 1826, joined Charles X in England, and spent the last nine vears of his life awav from his diocese; the theologian Thomas Gousset (1840-66), cardinal in 1851; the ^\Titer and preacher Landriot (1867-74), famous dur- ing the Franco-German War through his protest ag.ainst the military execution of Ahb6 ISIiroy, one of his parish priests, by the Germans in the middle
