Hincmar of Reims

Hincmar of Reims was born in 806 into a noble family of northern Francia and was raised at Saint-⁠Denis under the abbot Hilduin, who brought him to the court of the emperor Louis the Pious. After Louis's death he supported Charles the Bald, and in 845, with the king's help, he became archbishop of Reims; he was consecrated on 3 May 845 and shepherded the see until his death in 882.

He was a jurist and theologian and the king's adviser, and he stood at the centre of great disputes of his time. He opposed the teaching on predestination of the monk Gottschalk, whom he had arrested in 849; the synods of Quierzy (853) and Valence (855) condemned it. In 860 he opposed, in his treatise on divorce, the dissolution of King Lothar II's marriage to Theutberga, and he clashed with Rome and with other bishops over the authority of metropolitans. Among his writings are a Life of Saint Remigius, On the Order of the Palace, and works on predestination and on the Holy Trinity. Fleeing a Norman raid, he died at Épernay on 21 December 882.

He is honoured in the West as a saint and remembered on 21 December in the Western calendar (new style); the Benedictines also remember him on 5 March.