When King Clovis conquered the fair territory of Champagne, St Rémi was made bishop of Rheims, and henceforward the kings of France were crowned here. Many famous prelates lived in the city during the succeeding centuries; one, the most celebrated, Gerbert, became pope.
Joan of Arc is an important figure in the drama of Rheims during the great war with England. The peasant's daughter, born on the borders of Champagne, at Domremy, a hamlet which is now a shrine, reached the height of her triumph in 1429, when she led a vast army to the gates of Rheims. "O gentle king, the pleasure of God is done," cried the white maid, as she knelt before Charles VII. after his coronation in the gorgeous cathedral.
A yearning for home and the old tranquil life was in the heart of Joan; she wished to leave the tented field, and to return to her sheep-folds and pastures. But, at the battle of Compiegne, she fell into the hands of the treacherous Bastard of Vendôme, and about a year later Joan la Pucelle was burned to death.
The focus of interest in Rheims is the cathedral. Notre Dame was built on the situation of a Roman basilica. Parts of the present building were first constructed in 1231, but the façade is of the fourteenth century. This magnificent front has a gorgeous portal, with pointed arches of great grace, rising to a large and handsome rose window. There are two towers over two hundred and fifty feet high, very finely decorated. A number of statues adorn this façade, on the portals and in the arch of the rose window. The figure of the Virgin is over the principal doorway, bending to receive the crown from the hands of Christ.
"The three great doorways," writes Mr Henry James, in "Portraits of Places," "are in themselves a museum of imagery, disposed in each case in five close tiers, the statues in each of the tiers packed perpendicularly against their comrades. The effect of these great hollowed and chiselled recesses is extremely striking; they are a proper vestibule to the dusky richness of the interior. The cathedral of Rheims, more fortunate than many of its companions, appears not to have suffered from the iconoclasts of the Revolution; I noticed no absent heads nor broken noses."