1 October. Day of Remembrance: 1662 Book of Common Prayer: Bishop Remigius & Apostle of the Franks
1 October. Day of
Remembrance: 1662 Book of Common Prayer: Bishop Remigius & Apostle of the Franks
Kiefer, James E.
“Remigius of Rheims, Bishop, Apostle of the Franks.” Biographical
Sketches. N.d. http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/257.html/ Accessed 27 May 2014.
[Clotilda, Queen of the Franks (3 June 545)]
[Clotilda, Queen of the Franks (3 June 545)]
A 1987 motion picture,
"The Big Easy" (a nickname for the city of New Orleans), and a
current (1996) television series of the same name based on it, have as the male
lead a Cajun police detective named Remy McSwaine. In the first episode of the
series (I am not sure of the film) we are informed that "Remy" is
short for "Remington." I fear that this shows that the scriptwriters
have not troubled to research Cajun culture. Remi is one of the three great national
saints of France (the others are Denis (Dionysius) of Paris and Joan of Arc, or Joan the Maid
(Jeanne la Pucelle)), and it is thoroughly natural for a Cajun to be named
Remi. How is that for a topical introduction?
[Note: a Cajun (rhymes with
"raging") is an Acadian. In 1755, the British, having taken Eastern
Canada from the French in a war, expelled the French settlers from the maritime
region called Acadia because they were expected to side with France in the next
Anglo-French war. Many of them settled in southern Louisiana, where their
descendants remain an identifiable group, a majority in many areas, with its
own language, music, cuisine, and culture. They have been immortalized for
American schoolchildren in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Evangeline:
a tale of Acadia." This is the one that begins,
This is the forest primeval; the murmuring pines and the
hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic, stand like harpers
hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
It is the
standard example for critics who maintain that the meter of Virgil's Aeneid is
not suited to English verse. Present-day Cajuns, by repute at least, are a
somewhat less sedate lot than Longfellow's heroes.]
Remi (Latin
Remigius) was born about 438 and became bishop of Rheims about 460, at the
remarkably young age of 22. (Both he and the city were named for his tribe, the
Remi.) In his time, the Roman Empire and the Christian church were jointly
faced with a serious practical problem -- the barbarian invasions. A series of
droughts in central Asia had driven its inhabitants out in all directions in
search of more livable territory. This brought the Goths, for example, across
the Danube in the early 300's. Now the Emperor Constantine had died in 337, and
during his lifetime the Church had debated the question of whether the Logos,
the Word who was made flesh for our salvation in the person of Jesus of
Nazareth, was (as Arius taught) the first and greatest of the beings created by
God, but nevertheless not eternal, and not God; or was (as Athanasius taught) fully God,
co-eternal and co-equal with the Father. At the Council of Nicea in 325, the
Athanasian position had been endorsed by an overwhelming majority of the
bishops assembled from throughout the Christian world. But the Arians refused
to accept the decision, and there were attempts to re-negotiate and find a
compromise that would make everyone happy. Then Constantine died, and his
Empire was divided among his sons, with Constantius Emperor of the East, and
eventually of the whole Empire. And Constantius was an Arian, and made a
serious attempt to stamp out the Athanasian position by banishing its leaders
and pressuring churches into electing or accepting Arian bishops. During his
reign, missionaries, led by one Bishop Ulfilas, were sent to convert the Goths.
And naturally, Ulfilas was an Arian. He preached with great vigor and eloquence
among the Goths, and translated the Bible into their language (omitting, we are
told, the wars of the Hebrews, on the grounds that the Goths were quite warlike
enough without further encouragement). In fact, the portions of his translation
that have survived are the only material we have in the Gothic language, and as
such are highly valued by students of the history of languages. So the Goths
became Arian Christians, and so did the Vandals. And these two highly warlike
peoples were most of the time either making war on the settled peoples of the
Empire or hiring out as mercenaries to defend the borders of the Empire from
the next wave of invaders. You may remember that Ambrose, bishop of Milan (died
397, remembered 7 December), was commanded by the Empress Mother to hand over a
church for the use of her soldiers, who were Goths and Arians, and that Ambrose
refused, and filled the church with members of his congregation, who sang hymns
composed by Ambrose for the occasion, and the soldiers did not attack. You may
also remember that when Augustine lay on his deathbed in his town of Hippo in
North Africa (near Carthage or modern Tunis), the city was under attack by
Vandal troops, who had come into Africa out of Spain, and who captured and
vandalized (that is where we get the term) the cities of North Africa, and
Sicily and Sardinia and Corsica (which they made into bases for piracy) and the
southern part of Italy. Long after Arianism had died out elsewhere, it was the
religion of the Goths and Vandals and related peoples, and being an Arian was
the mark of a good Army man.
Now a new
people appeared on the scene, a pagan warrior tribe called the Franks. In the
late 400's, they were led by a chief called Clovis, a pagan but married to a
Christian wife, Clotilda. His wife and Bishop Remi (remember him?) spoke to him
about the Christian faith, but he showed no particular signs of interest until
one day when he was fighting a battle against the Alemanni, and was badly
outnumbered and apparently about to lose the battle. He took a vow that if he
won, he would turn Christian. The tide of battle turned, and he won. Two years
later, he kept his vow and was baptized by Remi at Rheims on Christmas Day,
496, together with about 3000 of his followers. (Rheims became the traditional
and "proper" place for a French king to be crowned, as we learn from
the story of Joan of Arc. It remained so until
the French Revolution.) Now Clovis was converted to the Athanasian (or
orthodox, or catholic) faith rather than the Arian, and this fact changed the
religious history of Europe. The clergy he brought to his court were catholic,
and when the Franks as a whole became Christians, which did not happen
overnight, they became catholic Christians, meaning in this context that they
were Athanasian rather than Arian, and accepted the belief that it was God
himself, and not a particularly prominent angel, who came down from heaven and
suffered for our salvation. During the preceding century, the Arians had had a
near-monopoly on military power, and now this was no longer true. The
conversion of the Franks brought about the conversion of the Visigoths, and
eventually (about 300 years later) the empire of Charlemagne and the beginning
of the recovery of Western Europe from the earlier collapse of government and
of city life under the impact of plague, lead poisoning, currency inflation,
confiscatory taxation, multiple invasions, and the assorted troubles of the
Dark Ages.
As noted
above, Clot(h)ilda, a Christian princess of Burgundy, married the pagan Clovis,
King of the Franks, thus preparing the way for his baptism by Remi in 496, and
for the conversion of the Franks. Their great-grandaughter, Bertha, married the
pagan Ethelbert, King of Kent, thus preparing the way for his baptism by Augustine of Canterbury in 601, and for the
eventual conversion of southeast England. Bertha and Ethelbert's daughter,
Ethelburga, married the pagan Edwin, King of Northumbria, thereby preparing the
way for his baptism by Paulinus in 627, and for the
eventual conversion of many in the North of England.
PRAYER (traditional language)
O God, who by the teaching of thy faithful servant and bishop
Remigius [and the loving influence and example of thy handmaid Clotilda] didst
turn the nation of the Franks from vain idolatry to the worship of thee, the
true and living God, in the fullness of the catholic faith; Grant that we who
glory in the name of Christian may show forth our faith in worthy deeds;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy
Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
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