Saint Remigius - Remi and The Sainte Ampoule

Remi and The Sainte Ampoule

There was an early legend associated with St. Remigius known as the Legend of the Baptism of Moribund Pagan, according to which a dying pagan asked for baptism at the hands of St. Remigius, but when it was found that there was no Oil of the Catechumens or sacred Chrism available for the proper administration of the baptismal ceremony, St. Remigius ordered two empty vials be placed on an altar and as he prayed before them the two vials miraculously filled respectively with the necessary Oil of the Catechumens and Chrism.

Apparently when the sepulcher containing the body of St. Remi was opened in the reign of Charles the Bald and while Hincmar was the Archbishop of Reims, two small vials were found, the contents of which gave off an aromatic scent the likes of which was like nothing known to those present. If one recalls that when St. Remigius died the ancient art of perfumery was still known and practiced in the collapsing Roman Empire, but was unknown in the Carolingian empire four hundred years later. These vials may have originally simply have bottles of unguents used to cover the scent of decay of St. Remigius’ corpse during his funeral, but the memory of the two vials miraculously filled in the story of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan and the unusual, seemingly otherworldly scents issuing from these two vials found buried with St. Remigius combined to suggest to those present that these two vials were the miraculously filled vials of the legend.

It should be remembered as well that it was not uncommon for chalices, patens and other sacred vessels to be buried with high ranking clergymen.

Hincmar, adroitly combined the discovery of these two vials with their unique, unearthly fragrance, the Legend of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan and the historical memory that St. Remigius had baptized Clovis into a new Legend identifying one of these vials as the actual vial of Chrism used at the baptism of Clovis to create the new Legend of the Sainte Ampoule, (i.e., that the Chrism used by Remigius when he baptized Clovis was miraculously supplied by heaven itself) which Hincmar then used to strengthen his claim that his own archepiscopal see of Reims—as the possessor of this heavenly sent Chrism—should therefore be recognized as the divinely chosen site for all subsequent sacre/anointings of French kings. The fate of the second vial is uncertain. It has been suggested that since in the original form of the legend this would have been the vial containing the Oil of the Catechumens and that the French coronation ordinals prescribe the Oil of the Catechumens, rather than Chrism, for the anointing of queens, it was subsequently used for anointing the queens of France and it is possible that a vial currently identified by some of the Bourbon Legitimists as the Sainte Ampoulle is actually this second vial.