[Illustration: 0349]
The twin towers, more than two hundred and fifty feet high, which
were without spires, were none the less impressive. The north portal
contained statues of the Bishops of Rheims from Clovis down, and there
was here a doorway walled up containing a Gothic tympanum of the Last
Judgment, the figures of which, however, with the exception of the
Christ, were greatly mutilated.
History states that Rheims was known at the time of the Roman invasion
as _Durocortorum_. Briefly, about the year 352 a. d. the worthy SS.
Sixte and Sinice came here to preach Christianity, and converted the
consul Jovinus, whose cenotaph is in the archevêché. The Vandals arrived
forty years later, and captured the town, murdering St. Nicaise on the
very steps of the cathedral which he had founded. The See of Rheims
was occupied for seventy-five years after the Conquest of Champagne, by
Clovis, by St. Remi, or Remigius, who was already a bishop at the age
of twenty-two. He it was who baptised Clovis in the cathedral, which
act gave such renown to the place that thereafter the kings came to be
consecrated with the oil, which according to tradition was brought by a
snow white dove in a holy phial (ampoule) for the baptism of the first
Christian king, and was thereafter preserved in the Abbey of St. Remi.
Rheims was taken in 563 by Chilperic, and in 720 by Charles Martel,
despite the great courage and resistance by the Bishop, St. Rigobert,
who was exiled. Here took place, too, the interview of Pope Stephen III
and Pepin, and Charlemagne and Leo III. Also the coronation of Louis le
Debonnaire by Stephen IV in 816.
In the following years the Archbishops of Rheims became world famous,
for instance the Scholar Hincmar, and Gerbert, who was afterwards
Pope Sylvester II, and who as a simple monk under the great Adalbéron
attained great celebrity for his lectures.
Until the fourteenth century Archbishops had temporal power over Rheims,
coining their money and ruling as sovereigns.
Calixtus II in 1119 held here a council to excommunicate the Emperor,
Henry V.
In 1429 Rheims was delivered from the English yoke by Jeanne d'Arc, who
personally gave the keys of the town to Charles VII and assisted at his
coronation in the Cathedral.
Lubke, writing of the sculptural details of the Cathedral, says, "All
the dignity and grace of the style here reaches a truly classical
expression. Nevertheless, even here, in one of the master works of the
time, we find a great variety in the mode of treatment. There are
heavy stunted statues with clumsy heads and vacant expression, like the
earlier works of Chartres; others are of the most refined beauty, full
of nobility and tenderness, graceful in proportion, and with drapery
which falls in stately folds, free in movement and with a gentle
loveliness or sublime dignity of expression; others again are
exaggerated in height, awkward in proportion, caricatured in expression,
and affected in attitude."