845–882), served as chief counselor to Emperor Charles the Bald. Hincmar’s Vita
Remigii, by promoting the primacy of the saint, sought to elevate the archbishop to the
status of a protector of the Frankish kingdom.
The power of the archbishops in the city remained uncontested until the 12th century,
when Reims entered a period of dynamic development as a center of cloth production.
Rapid population increase resulted in the urbanization of the area between the Roman
cité, centered on the cathedral, and the settlement that had grown up around the ab-bey of
Saint-Remi to the south. Industrialization led to a growing secular presence in the city,
and the rising bour-geoisie established a communal government in 1139. Clashes with
church authorities over matters of taxation and jurisdiction grew frequent; civic unrest
chased the cathedral clergy out of Reims between 1234 and 1237. The abolition of
ecclesiastical courts at the end of the 14th century completed the secularization of
Reims’s civic institutions.
The 14th and 15th centuries were a period of crisis for Reims, along with the rest of
Champagne. Stagnation in the textile industry and the collapse of the Champagne fairs in
the years immediately after 1300 led to a new network of relationships with the Low
Countries that was to have enormous consequences during the Hundred Years’ War.
Located strategically between the two poles of Bur-gundian power in Burgundy and
Flanders, Reims was pulled toward England through its economic ties, while its
continuing identity as the site of French royal coronations formed an unbreakable link to
Paris. The political impor-
Reims, Notre-Dame, west façade,
central portal, Annunciation and
Visitation. Photograph courtesy of
Whitney S.Stoddard.
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