The Holy Ampulla or Holy Ampoule

Ampoule

An ampoule is a small sealed vial which is used to contain and preserve a sample, usually a solid or liquid. Ampoules are commonly made of glass, although plastic ampoules do exist....

(Sainte Ampoule in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

) was a glass vial which, from its first recorded use, by Pope Innocent II

Pope Innocent II

Pope Innocent II , born Gregorio Papareschi, was pope from 1130 to 1143, and was probably one of the clergy in personal attendance on the antipope Clement III .-Early years:...

 for the anointing of Louis VII

Louis VII of France

Louis VII was King of France, the son and successor of Louis VI . He ruled from 1137 until his death. He was a member of the House of Capet. His reign was dominated by feudal struggles , and saw the beginning of the long rivalry between France and England...

 in 1131 to the coronation of Louis XVI

Louis XVI of France

Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....

 in 1774, held the chrism

Chrism

Chrism , also called "Myrrh" , Holy anointing oil, or "Consecrated Oil", is a consecrated oil used in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Rite Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, in the Assyrian Church of the East, and in Old-Catholic churches, as well as Anglican churches in the administration...

 or anointing oil for the coronation

Coronation

A coronation is a ceremony marking the formal investiture of a monarch and/or their consort with regal power, usually involving the placement of a crown upon their head and the presentation of other items of regalia...

 of the kings of France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

.

The role played by the Sainte Ampoule in the sacre of the kings of France is specified in a document of ca 1260, recently republished and examined in detail.

The ampoule, a vial of Roman glass

Roman glass

Roman glass objects have been recovered across the Roman Empire in domestic, industrial and funerary contexts. Glass was used primarily for the production of vessels, although mosaic tiles and window glass were also produced. Roman glass production developed from Hellenistic technical traditions,...

 about 1½ inches tall, came to light at Reims

Reims

Reims , a city in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, lies east-northeast of Paris. Founded by the Gauls, it became a major city during the period of the Roman Empire....

 in time for the coronation of Louis VII

Louis VII of France

Louis VII was King of France, the son and successor of Louis VI . He ruled from 1137 until his death. He was a member of the House of Capet. His reign was dominated by feudal struggles , and saw the beginning of the long rivalry between France and England...

 in 1131. The legend

Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

 that was associated with it at that time, asserted that it had been discovered in the sarcophagus of Saint Remi

Saint Remigius

Saint Remigius, Remy or Remi, , was Bishop of Reims and Apostle of the Franks, . On 24 December 496 he baptised Clovis I, King of the Franks...

 and identified it with the baptism of Clovis I, the first Frankish king converted to Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

; it was kept thereafter in the Abbey of Saint-Remi

Abbey of Saint-Remi

The Abbey of Saint-Remi is an abbey in Reims, France, founded in the sixth century. Since 1099 it has conserved the relics of Saint Remi , the Bishop of Reims who converted Clovis, King of the Franks, to Christianity at Christmas in AD 496, after he defeated the Alamanni in the Battle of...

, Reims and brought with formality to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Reims at each coronation, where the emphasis was on the unction rather than on the crowning. As C. Meredith Jones remarked, in reviewing Sir Francis Oppenheimer's monograph of the Holy Ampulla, "It gained a reputation for holiness and authenticity that brought fame, wealth and great honours to the see of Reims."

An order of knights named after the ampoule, the Knights (later Barons) of the Holy Ampulla was created for the coronation of kings. The Bishop of Laon held the right to carry the Holy Ampoule during the coronation ceremony. Only three of the kings who ruled between Louis the Pious

Louis the Pious

Louis the Pious , also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813...

 and Charles X were not anointed with holy oil at Reims Cathedral.

The ampoule was destroyed in 1793 by French revolutionaries

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, when the Convention sent Philippe Rühl to smash the ampoule publicly on the pedestal of the statue of Louis XV

Louis XV of France

Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

 with a hammer. The day before its destruction the constitutional curé, Jules-Armand Seraine and a municipal officer, Philippe Hourelle had nevertheless largely emptied the ampulla of its balm and they as well gave some part of it respectively to Bouré, curé of Berry-au-Bac and Lecomte, judge at the tribunal of Reims. Furthermore, Louis Champagne Prévoteau
a witness of the destruction by Rühl ensured the preservation of two pieces of glass of the vial with some remaining balm on them. All these fragments except the one kept by Hourelle which was lost were gathered on Mai 25, 1825 by the archbishop of Reims and placed in a new reliquary made in time for the coronation of Charles X

Charles X of France

Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...

 four days later and now displayed at the Palace of Tau

Palace of Tau

The Palace of Tau in Reims, France, was the palace of the Archbishop of Reims. It is associated with the Kings of France, whose coronation was held in the nearby cathedral of Notre-Dame de Reims....

. But since 1906 the content of the ampoule is kept at the archbishopric of Reims.

Legend of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan

There was an early legend associated with St Remigius known as the Legend of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan, according to which a dying pagan asked for baptism at the hands of St Remigius (Remi), but when it was found that there was no Oil of the Catechumens or sacred Chrism available for the proper administration of the baptismal ceremony, St Remigius ordered two empty vials be placed on an altar and as he prays before them these two vials miraculously filled respectively with the necessary Oil of the Catechumens and Chrism. Apparently when the sepulcher containing the body of St. Remi was opened in the reign of Charles the Bald and while Hincmar was the Archbishop of Reims, two small vials were found, the contents of which gave off an aromatic scent the likes of which was like nothing known to those present. When St Remigius died the ancient art of perfumery was still known and practiced in the collapsing Roman Empire, but was unknown in the Carolingian empire four hundred years later. These vials may have originally simply have bottles of unguents used to cover the scent of decay of St Remigius’s corpse during his funeral, but the memory of the two vials miraculously filled in the story of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan and the unusual, seemingly otherworldly scents issuing from these two vials found buried with St Remigius combined to suggest to those present that these two vials were the miraculously-filled vials of the legend. It should be remembered as well that it was not uncommon for chalices, patens and other sacred vessels to be buried with high ranking clergymen.

Legend of the Holy Ampulla

Hincmar, adroitly combined the discovery of these two vials with their unique, unearthly fragrance, the Legend of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan and the historical memory that St Remigius had baptized Clovis into a new legend identifying one of these vials as the actual vial of Chrism used at the baptism of Clovis to create the new Legend of the Holy Ampulla, (i.e., that the Chrism used by Remigius when he baptized Clovis was miraculously supplied by heaven itself) which Hincmar then used to strengthen his claim that his own archepiscopal see of Reims-—as the possessor of this heaven-sent Chrism—-should therefore be recognized as the divinely chosen site for all subsequent anointings of French kings. The fate of the second vial is uncertain. It has been suggested that since in the original form of the legend this would have been the vial containing the Oil of the Catechumens and that the French coronation ordinals prescribe the Oil of the Catechumens, rather than Chrism, for the anointing of queens, it was subsequently used for anointing the queens of France and it is possible that a vial currently identified by some of the Bourbon Legitimists as the Holy Ampulla is actually this second vial.

Coronation of the Kings of England

The coronation regalia of the Kings of England includes an ampulla which is believed to be the one first used in the coronation of Henry IV in 1399. According to legend it was made to contain the oil presented by the Virgin Mary in a vision seen by St Thomas of Canterbury. It is accompanied by a golden spoon which is certainly of the 13th century. It is likely though not certain that the ampulla, an eagle crafted in pure gold, escaped destruction in 1643 when most of the regalia were destroyed or sold.

External links

• La Sainte Ampoule et le sacre des rois de France