St. Remigius

St. Remigius (Remi) was born around 437 in northern Gaul (modern France), and died on 13 January 533 at Reims. Renowned for his learning and holiness even as a young man, he was chosen bishop of Reims while still in his early twenties and went on to govern that see for some seventy years, becoming the most influential churchman of Frankish Gaul.

His great achievement was the conversion of the Franks. When their king, Clovis I, still a pagan, attributed a hard-won battlefield victory to the God of his Catholic wife St. Clotilde, Remigius instructed and baptized him — by tradition at Reims around the year 496, together with thousands of his warriors — with the famous charge, 'Bow your head, proud Sicambrian; adore what you have burned, and burn what you have adored.' This baptism bound the Frankish kingdom to the Catholic faith and shaped the Christian history of France. He is venerated as the 'Apostle of the Franks.'