Reims Cathedral

Notre-Dame de Reims, known in English as Reims Cathedral, is a Catholic cathedral in the French city of the same name, the seat of the Archdiocese of Reims. The cathedral was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and was the traditional location for the coronation of the kings of France. The cathedral is considered to be one of the most important works of Gothic architecture. A major tourist destination, it receives about a million visitors annually. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.
The cathedral is thought to have been founded by the bishop Nicasius in the early 5th century. Clovis was baptized a Christian here by Saint Remigius, the bishop of Reims, about a century later. He was the first Frankish king to receive this sacrament. Construction of the present cathedral began in the 13th century and concluded in the 14th century. A prominent example of High Gothic architecture, it was built to replace an earlier church destroyed by fire in 1210. Although little damaged during the French Revolution, the present cathedral saw extensive restoration in the 19th century. It was severely damaged during World War I and was again restored in the 20th century.
Since the 1905 law on the separation of Church and state, the cathedral has been owned by the French state, while the Catholic Church has an agreement for its exclusive use. The French state pays for its restoration and upkeep.

History

5th century – the Merovingian Cathedral

The settlement of a tribe of Gauls called the Remes, named Durocortorum, had been recorded by Julius Caesar in his accounts of the Gallic Wars. During the High Roman Empire, it became the capital of a province extending to the delta of the Rhine, and in the 3rd century A.D. was capital of the Roman province known as Second Belgium. The first Christian church there was founded by the first bishop, Saint Sixtus of Reims between 250 and 300.
At the beginning of the 5th century, in the Merovingian period, the Bishop Nicasius transferred the cathedral its present location, the site formerly occupied by Gallo-Roman bath built by the Emperor Constantine. The new church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, anticipating the decision of the Council of Ephesus in 431 establishing her enhanced status. The new cathedral, with the plan of a square exterior and a circular interior, measured approximately by. In the 1990s, the Baptistry of this original Merovingian church, directly under the present cathedral, was excavated and fragments of the old structure were brought to light.
Clovis I, the King of the Franks, was baptised there in about 496 A.D. by Saint Remigius. This was the event that inspired the long tradition of royal coronations at Reims.

9th century – the Carolingian cathedral

In 816, Louis the Pious, the King of the Franks and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was crowned in Reims by Pope Stephen IV. The coronation and ensuing celebrations revealed the poor condition and inadequate size of the early cathedral. Beginning in about 818, the archbishop Ebbo and the royal architect Rumaud began to build a much larger church from the ground up on the same site, using stone from the old city ramparts.
The work was interrupted in 835, and then resumed under a new archbishop, Hincmar, with the support of Emperor Charles the Bald. The interior of the church was adorned with gilding, mosaics, paintings, sculptures and tapestries. On 18 October 862, in the presence of the Emperor, Hincmar dedicated the new church, which measured and had two transepts.
At the beginning of the 10th century, an ancient crypt underneath the original church was rediscovered. Under the archbishop Heriveus, the crypt was cleared, renovated, and then rededicated to the sainted bishop Remigius. The cathedral altar is still in the same place, directly over the crypt, where it has been for 15 centuries.
Beginning in 976, the archbishop Adalbero began to enlarge the Carolingian cathedral. The historian Richerus, a pupil of Adalbero, gives a very precise description of the work carried out by the archbishop:
The prestige of the Holy Ampulla, the sacred vial filled with myrrh with which French Kings were anointed, the fact that Clovis I had been baptised there, and the political power of the archbishop of Reims led to Reims becoming the regular site of the coronation of the French monarch, a tradition that was established with the coronation of Henry I of France in 1027. All but seven of France's future kings --Hugh Capet, Robert II, Louis VI, John I, Henry IV, Louis XVIII, and Louis Philippe I-- were crowned at Reims.
The cathedral hosted other royal ceremonies as well. On 19 May 1051, Henry I of France and Anne of Kiev were married in the cathedral While conducting the Council of Reims in 1131, Pope Innocent II anointed and crowned Louis VII, the son of the ruling king Louis VI in the cathedral.

12th century – the Early Gothic cathedral

By the 12th century, the Carolingian cathedral was considered too small for the ambitions of the Archbishop, Samson of Mauvoisin. He preserved the existing nave and transept but rebuilt and enlarged the two ends of the cathedral. He demolished the west front and adjoining tower in order to build two matching flanking towers, in imitation of the Royal Abbey of Saint Denis outside of Paris, whose choir dedication Samson himself had attended a few years earlier. The new church was longer than the old cathedral,. On the east end, he created a larger choir and a disambulatory and ring of radiating chapels. At the end of the century, the nave and the transept were still of the Carolingian style while the apse and façade were in the Early Gothic style.

13th–14th century – the High Gothic cathedral

On 6 May 1210, the partly Carolingian and partly Early Gothic cathedral was destroyed by fire, allegedly due to "carelessness." One year to the day afterwards, archbishop Aubrey laid the first stone of the new cathedral's chevet. The work on the new cathedral moved with exceptional speed, because Reims was one of the first buildings to use stones and other materials of standardised sizes, so each stone did not have to be cut to measure. In July 1221, the chapel at the east end of the cathedral entered use. In 1230, work began on the west front, indicating that the nave was nearly complete.
In 1233, a long-running dispute between the cathedral chapter and the townsfolk boiled over into open revolt. Several clerics were killed or injured during the resulting violence and the entire cathedral chapter fled the city, leaving it under an interdict. Work on the new cathedral was suspended for three years, only resuming in 1236 after the clergy returned to the city and the interdict was lifted following mediation by the king and the pope. Construction then continued more slowly.
In 1241, the members of the Chapter were able to meet in the choir, showing that the vaults of the apse and the five last traverses of the nave on the east, where the stalls were located, were finished, but the nave was not roofed until 1299. Work on the western façade did even not begin until 1252, and the portals were not completed until after 1260. Thereafter work moved from the west to the east, with the completion of the nave; the level of the rose windows was completed between 1275 and 1280. The roof of the nave and upper galleries were finished in 1299. A comparison of the roses of the western façade to the roses of the transepts demonstrates the temporal stylistic progress: the rose windows of the transepts are decorated by bar tracery, but all glass is inside the round frames -- that is, a mix between Classic Gothic and High Gothic. In the rose windows of the western façade, however, the glass exceeds the round frames to fill the whole pointed-arched areas available.
Unusually, the names of the cathedral's successive architects, succeeding each other until the completion of the cathedral's structural work in 1275, are known. A labyrinth built into floor of the nave at the time of construction or shortly after included the names of these four master masons and the number of years they worked there, though art historians still disagree over who was responsible for which parts of the building. The labyrinth itself was destroyed in 1779, but its details and inscriptions are known from 18th-century drawings. The clear association here between a labyrinth and master masons adds weight to the argument that such patterns were an allusion to the emerging status of the architect. The cathedral also contains further evidence of the rising status of the architect in the tomb of Hugues Libergier. Not only is he given the honour of an engraved slab; he is shown holding a miniature model of his church and wearing the academic garb befitting an intellectual.
Even after the structural work had been completed in 1275, a lot of work remained to be done. The Gallery of Kings on the west front, and the octagonal upper towers were not finished until the 1460s. Documentary records show the acquisition of land to the west of the site in 1218, suggesting the new cathedral was substantially larger than its predecessors, the lengthening of the nave presumably being an adaptation to afford room for the crowds that attended the coronations.
The towers, tall, were originally designed to rise. The south tower holds just two great bells; one of them, named "Charlotte" by Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine in 1570, weighs more than.
Following the death of the infant King John I, his uncle Philip was hurriedly crowned at Reims, 9 January 1317.
During the Hundred Years' War's Reims campaign the city was under siege by the English from 1359 to 1360, but the siege failed. In 1380, Reims Cathedral was the location of Charles VI's coronation and eight years later Charles called a council at Reims in 1388 to take personal rule from the control of his uncles.

15th–16th century

After Henry V of England defeated Charles VI's army at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415, most of northern France including Reims fell to the English. They held Reims and the cathedral until 1429, when it was captured by Joan of Arc, allowing the dauphin Charles to be crowned king on 17 July 1429. For her feat -- a turning point in the Hundred Years' War -- Joan is memorialized at Reims Cathedral with two statues: an equestrian statue outside the church and another within the church.
On 24 July 1481, a fire caused by the negligence of workers covering the high wood-and-lead flèche that was being constructed over the transept destroyed the part of the spire's framework, the cathedral's central bell tower, and the galleries at the base of the cathedral roof, while dripping molten roofing lead caused further damage. However, recovery was quick with kings Charles VIII and Louis XII making donations to the cathedral's reconstruction. In particular, they granted the cathedral an octroi of the Gabelle salt tax. In gratitude, the new roof was adorned by fleur-de-lis and the royal coat of arms "affixed to the top of the façade". However, this work was suspended before the arrows were completed in 1516. The upper galleries of the nave were completed in 1505. These were so expensive that the remaining planned projects, including a bell tower over the transept, spires on the west front and the planned upper towers flanking the transept, were never built.
Following the death of Francis I, Henry II was crowned King of France on 25 July 1547 in Reims Cathedral.