[437-533]
Life stuff has kept me from the saint newsletter lately, which isn’t good for anyone, so I’ve invented a short series to bring me back to you, dear reader. Over the next three weeks and 21 stages, while some 200 cyclists compete in the grand Tour de France, I’ll research saints with connections to the racers’ route. 🚴♂️💨
Today, for Stage 3, the riders passed the abbey of Saint Remigius, who, in the year 496, baptized Clovis I, king of the Franks, setting into motion one of the most powerful Christian kingdoms of early medieval western Europe.
Certain ceremonial vials of oil used in Clovis’s baptism had an interesting backstory. A few years earlier, Remigius set out to baptize a moribund pagan when he realized he was out of oil. He set the vials on the altar, gave it a prayer, and oil appeared.
The vials had an interesting… front-story, too. Long after Remigius’s death, an excavation of his tomb revealed the same vials inside, still smelling like nothing else on Earth. They their way to the Pope, who used them to coronate French kings up until Louis XVI.
Naturally, today’s stage winner was a swarthy Frenchman!