Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/396

Rh 378 K E M R E M of one than of the other." Indeed M. Vosmacr points out in his life of ReinbraiK.lt that there is a marked parallelism between Rembrandt's painted and etched work, his early work in both cases being timid and tentative, while he gradually gains strength and character both with the brush and the graver's tools. M. Vosmaer's scheme of chronological order has doubtless been challenged in some respects, but it gave the deathblow to the older svstem. Mr Seymour Haden has started the theory that many of the etchings ascribed to Rembrandt up to 1640 were the work of his pupils, and seems to make out his case, though it may be carried too Jar. He argues (in his monograph on the Etched Work of Rembrandt, 1877) that Rembrandt's real work in etching brgan after Saskia's death, when he assumes that Rembrandt betook him- self to Elsbroek, the country house of his "powerful friend" Jan Six. But it must be remembered that the future burgomaster was then but a young student of twenty-four, a member of a great family it is true, but unmarried and taking as yet no share in public life. That Rembrandt was a frequent visitor at Elsbroek, and that the Three Trees and other etchings may have been pro- duced there, may be admitted without requiring us to believe that he had left Amsterdam as his place of abode. The great period of his etching lies between 1639 and 1661, after which the old painter seems to have renounced the needle. In these twenty years were produced his greatest works in portraiture, landscape, and Bible story. They bear the impress of the genius of the man. In addition to the nutliors name!, the reader Is referred to W. P>iirger (the nom dt plume of Th. Thore), Museei de la lloltande, 1858-1800; E. Fromentin, ttaitres d'autrr/ois; II. Havard, L'Ecole Ifo/landaise; Scheltema, ntmbrand, 2)iscoursturta Vie, 1866; Atli. Cocquerel flls, Rembrandt, sonindividiialismedans I'art, Paris, 1869. Since the foregoing was put in type, a new and valuable work on Rembrandt, chiefly as the etcher, has tippeared fioin tlie pen of M. Eugene Dutait (L'CEuvre coniplet de Rembrandt, 1'aris, 1885). M. inituit rejects the classification of M. C. Blanc as dubious and unwarranted, dismisses the chrono- logical arrangement, proposed by M. Vosmaer and adopted by Mr Seymour Haden anl Mr Middleton as open to discussion and lucking in possibility of proof, and reverts to the order established by Gcrsaint, ranging his materials under twelve heads: Portraits (real and supposed), Old Testament and New Testament subjects, histories, landscapes, <tc. (J. F. V. REMIGIUS (or REMEDIES, as the name is spelt in Fredegarius and elsewhere), or REMI, was born of noble parents and, according to a later tradition, in the district of Laon. In one of his own letters, written apparently about 512 A.D., Remigius speaks of himself as having been a bishop for fifty-three years. This throws back his election to about 459; and, as all his earlier biographers agree in making him twenty-one years of age on his appointment to this office, the date of his birth may be fixed at somewhere about the year 438. The bishop- ric was forced upon the young recluse by the townspeople of Rheims, who in this century had not yet lost the right of electing their own pastor. For the next thirty-seven years of Remigius's life we have no clue excepting one, or at most two, allusions in the letters of Sidonius Apollin- aris (Ep. viii. 14 ; ix. 7,8), both of which epistles M. Baret has assigned to from 472 to 474. It is true that Fredegarius (Du Chesne, i. 728), writing about 658, and the later biographers associate the name of Remigius with that of Clovis in the story of the famous vase of Sois- sons. But the earlier account of Gregory (c. 590) lends no sanction to this association ; and it is not till 496 that Remigius figures definitely in history. On the Christmas day of this year he baptized Clovis at Rheims with the greatest pomp. " Bow thy head meekly, O Sicambrian," were his words to the royal convert ; " adore what thou hast burnt and burn what thou hast adored." Two of the king's sisters were baptized about the same time ; and on the death of one of these, Albofledis, Remi- gius wrote Clovis a letter of consolation that is still pre- served (Dom. Bouq. iv. 51). The traditions and perhaps the documents of Hincmar's time enumerated the immense possessions conferred by Clovis upon his favourite pre- late. Hemigius, in his turn, does not seem to have been slack in urging the orthodox king to undertake the deliverance of his fellow believers who in southern Gaul reluctantly submitted to the yoke of the Aryan Burgun- dians and Visigoths. His intrigues with the discontented bishops of Burgundy are said to have paved the way for Clevis's invasion (500). Hincmar has preserved the tradition that Remigius blessed Clovis before he set out on his war against the Visigoths (507) ; r.nd wo still have the letter in which he recommends the king to be merciful in his new conquests (Bouquet, iv. 52 ; see, however, Junghans's remarks on the probable date of this letter). It is not, however, solely as a statesman or as the mentor of a barbarian king that Remigius claims atten- tion. In Hincmar's time he was recognized as the second founder of the church of Rheims, to whose influence that see owed the greater part of its possessions ; and in such a matter the popular tradition can hardly have been entirely wrong. One of his few remaining letters is directed in the most vigorous terms against the encroach- ments of a neighbouring bishop, Falco of Maastricht (Bouq., iv. 53). He is said to have established a bishopric at Laon, his native place. So great was 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 few 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 was bishop of Rheims for more than seventy years (De Gloria Conf., 89), a fact which 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 we may fix upon 533 as the date of his decease, more especially as this conclusion coincides well enough with the little that is known as to the chronology of his two imme- diate successors (Ste Marthe, ix. 10-13). In 882, when the Northmen were threatening a descent upon the un- walled city of Rheims, Hincmar had the body of St Remi removed from its first resting-place in the little church of St Christopher to lipernay. Next year it was brought back to Rheims, but it was not restored to its original home, till some years later. "NVe learn from Gregory of Tours that, even so early as the reign of Chiklebert II. (575-596) the first of October was 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 81 3 and a capitulary of Louis le Uebonnaire in 821 (Dessailly). In 1049 Pope Leo IX. assisted at the removal of the relics and issued a decree for the observation of the fete. The authorities for the life of St Rcmi are very meagre. An almost contemporary Vita Remigii, written in the popular Latin of the period (cothurno Gallicano), and known to Gregory of Tours, was, according to Hincmar, almost entirely destroyed in the troubled times of Charles Martel, but not before it had been abbreviated and stripped of nearly all historic value by Fortunatus between the years 565 and 590. This abridgment, which still exists, formed the basis of the Vita Ilcmigii written by Hincmar, archbishop of liheims 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 (ob. 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. Ixxxviii., cxxv., &c. See also Fredcgarins 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. J)u Chesne, Bouquet, and Labbe. Lc Cointe's Annalcs Ecclesiastici, vol. i. ; Miihillon's Annales Ordinis JBcncd., vol. i. ; Ste Marthe's Gallia Christiana, vol. ix. ; and the Ada Sanctorum (October 1), which contains the best modern life of St liemi, may be consulted with advantage. Of French lives see that by the Erior Armand. The so-called Testamcntum Rcmigii, which has cen preserved in a longer and shorter form by Flodoard and