' Junghans’s remarks on the probable date of this letter).

It is not, hoAvever, solely as a statesman or as the mentor of a barbarian king that Remigius claims attention. In Hincmar’s time he Avas recognized as the second founder of the church of Rheims, to whose influence that see OAved the greater ])art of its possessions; and in such a matter the popular tradition can hardly have been entirely Avrong. One of his feAv remaining letters is directed in the most vigorous terms against the encroachments of a neighbouring bishop, Falco of Maestriclit (Bouq., iv. 53). He is said to have established a bishopric at Laon, his native place. So great Avas his fame that it reached the ears of Alaric and his Gothic counsellors at Toulouse, and that, at last, Pope Hormisdas or one of his immediate predecessors appointed him his vicar throughout the Frankish domains. Of Remigius’s writ-ings only a feAv verses and the letters alluded to above have been preserved; but his credit for learning and eloquence is amply attested by Sidonius Apollinaris and Gregory of Tours. The former, writing to Remigius (c. 472), declares him to be unsurpassed by any living orator.

Gregory has also preserved the tradition that Remigius Avas bishop of Rheims for more than seventy years (De Gloria Conf., 89), a fact Avhicli inclines us to lay some confidence on the more detailed statement of Hincmar that he died on January 13, in the ninety-sixth year of his age, after an episcopate of seventy-four years. Hence Ave may fix upon 533 as the date of his decease, more especially as this conclusion coincides Avell enough Avith the little that is known as to the chronology of his îavo immediate successors (Ste Marthe, ix. 10-13). In 882, Avhen the Northmen AA־ere threatening a descent upon the un-AA r allecl city of Rheims, Hincmar had the body of St Remi ' removed from its first resting-place in the little church of! St Christopher to Epernay. Next year it aa־us brought back to Rheims, but it Avas not restored to its original home till some years later. We learn from Gregory of Tours that, even so early as the reign of Childebert II. (575-596) the first of October AA 7 as held sacred to the memory of the saint. During the Carlovingian times this day became ; one of the great feasts of the year, its observance being : sanctioned by the council of Mainz in 813 and a capitulary of Louis le Débonnaire in 821 (Dessailly). In 1049 Pope Leo IX. assisted at the removal of the relics and issued a decree for the observation of the fête.

The authorities for the life of St Remi are very meagre. An almost contemporary Vita Rcmigii, written in the popular j Latin of the period (cothurno Gallicano), and known to Gregory of Tours, Avas, according to Hincmar, almost entirely destroyed in the I troubled times of Charles Martel, but not before it had been! abbreviated and stripped of nearly all historic value by Fortunatus j between the years 565 and 590. This abridgment, which still exists, formed the basis of the Vita Rcmigii Avritten by Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims from 845 to 882, who, however, professes to incorporate with his work some fragments of the original Vita and other ancient documents, as he has most certainly incorporated the living traditions of his own age. In the course of the next century Flodoard, a canon of Rheims {oh. 966), compiled his account of St Remi, by making a very free use of his predecessors’ labours, with, however, some traditional information of his own. The above works are all in Mignc’s Patrologia, vols, lxxxviii., exxv., kc. See also Fredegarius and Gregory of Tours, whose authority is only second to that of Fortunatus. The scattered documents of the Merovingian period are to be found in the great collections of A. I)u Cliesne, Bouquet, and Labbé. Le Cointe’s Annales Ecclesiastici, vol. i.; Mabillon’s Annales Ordinis Bened., vol. i.; Ste Marthe’s Gallia Christiana, T ol. ix.; and the Ada Sanctorum (October 1), which contains the best modern life of St Remi, may be consulted with advantage. Of French lives see that by the prior Armand. The so-called Testamenlum Rcmigii, which has been preserved in a longer and shorter form by Flodoard and Hincmar, has lately found an able champion of its authenticity in the Abbe Dessailly. For Remigius’s connexion with Vedastus (who assisted in the conversion of Clovis), St Medard, St Eleutherius, &c., see the Bollandist Vita Jtemigii alluded to above and the Acta Sanctorum for Feburary 6, June 8, and February 20.