Namesake

Abstract

Namesake Remi Recchia (bio) Named after a medieval French bishop, a transgender poet and essayist reflects on the inheritances we’re born with and those we fashion for ourselves. Click for larger view View full resolution TRANSFER OF SAINT REMI RELICS, STAINED GLASS WINDOW IN THE BASILICA OF SAINT CLOTILDE IN PARIS, FRANCE A blinding light filled the sanctuary as the two vials, once empty, filled with chrism and oil of the catechu-mens. Candles dimmed in the wake of the sharp white light. The onlookers watched the vials with disbelief, but the moribund pagan had eyes only for Remigius, archbishop of Reims. Documentation of the legend of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan, also known as Remigius and the Holy Ampulla, does not include description of white light, a shocked congregation, or a mesmerized pagan. In truth, the sixth-century baptism of a dying man may have been a nonevent with the exception of the miraculously filled baptismal artifacts. In his early twenties, Remigius was ordained as the archbishop of Reims in 459. He is most known for converting Clovis, king of the Franks, to Christianity in 496, along with three thousand of the king’s followers. Theologians credit the canonized archbishop with the miracle performed in the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan, a [End Page 18] miracle confirmed upon the discovery of the same vials emitting an “unworldly” fragrance when his tomb was opened during the reign of Charles the Bald. _______ My own connection to France runs deep. My mom, a French professor and medievalist, went on sabbatical in 2000 in pursuit of Saint Martial, taking my dad, my twin sister, and me with her to Bretagne, or Brittany. Brittany is a rainy province in northern France, primarily dairy country, that draws much of its revenue from the local farming industry. Neither my sister nor I spoke French; it was a quick learning curve. By the end of our fourteen months there—at the end of which we would be eight years old—we would be fluent. After spending our seventh birthday in Paris, we arrived in Brittany for what would be my sister’s and my second-grade year. My parents had rented what had once been an old chateau called Tréhorenteuc, or Tregarantec, which was now a dairy farm, except we weren’t staying in the chateau proper—we lived in a section of the property that was just outside the big house. On the phone years later, my mom describes the grand chateau as shaped like a huge semicircle, or something U-shaped. Our part of the property was at the end of one of the hedges of the semicircle. Our own French haven. Tregarantec was in the small village of Mellionec. Mellionec’s geographical landscape is similar to rural Ohio or Michigan in soft rain with cows and abandoned wells and tractors. Tregarantec was a seventeenth-century chateau; my mom tells me now that it was rumored to have been a gift to one of Louis XIV’s mistresses. Our living space had two floors with the kitchen on the first floor and one or two bedrooms on the second floor. A clothesline ran through my parents’ bedroom, safe inside because it rained so frequently in Brittany. The kitchen was a claustrophobia of walls and cupboards. My sister and I went to a Catholic school in the nearby town of Rostrenen called L’École Notre Dame. Though Catholic in name, it was run fairly secularly according to my mom, and it cost a mere ten euros, or eleven US dollars, a month. Our dad drove us down the long dirt driveway from Tregarantec each day. We had to time our arrival and departure perfectly so as not to get stuck behind the cows on their way to the milking parlor at regular intervals throughout the day. Sometimes if we were running late, we had to duck beneath the electric wire to get in the car. It was my favorite game. I do not think I can offer anything new on the trope of foreboding nuns at Catholic school, but I will try. I remember that the nuns did not preside over...