_The Cathedral and Its Builders_
‘By suffrage universal it was built
As practised then, for all the country came
From far as Rouen, to give votes for God,
Each vote a block of stone securely laid
Obedient to the Master’s deep-mused plan.’
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
‘Like some tall palm the mystic fabric grew.’
REGINALD HEBER.
‘Elle est enfin, cette basilique, la plus magnifique expression de
l’art que le Moyen Age nous ait léguée.’--J. K. HUYSMANS.
The grey spire of the Clocher Vieux,[55]--
‘molten now in driving mist,
Now lulled with the incommunicable blue,’
was not completed till near the end of the twelfth century, for upon the
soffit of the topmost window facing the Clocher Neuf you may read in
great Roman letters the name of the master of the works, HARMAN, 1164.
N.D.D. Such, at least, is the inference drawn, though it may well be
only the weary vigil of a watchman who nightly gazed over the plains of
La Beauce on the look out for beacon signals of alarm, or for the first
evidence of a fire in the town, that is recorded in these deep-cut
letters. The foundations of the old tower at any rate were laid as early
as 1091, and both the square towers were finished by 1145. They carry
the spires that are the pride of Chartres, and which have given rise to
the popular saying that the perfect cathedral, if it could ever be
built, would be composed of the spire of Chartres, the nave of Amiens,
the choir of Beauvais, the porch of Reims.[56]
Of the two spires, the northern, Clocher Neuf, with its airy staircases
and pierced traceries, built by Jean le Texier, called Jean de Beauce,
in the sixteenth century, is the more popular, the Clocher Vieux the
more beautiful. The former is flamboyant, decked out with delicate
ornament, graceful, rich, and feminine; the latter sober, severe,
robust, clad, you might fancy, like a man in armour. These giant towers,
indeed, and their aerial pinnacles are not twin sisters, but rather, it
might seem, sister and elder brother, with their points of resemblance
and their points of difference; the one, weatherbeaten and grey, but
still preserving, in spite of the wrinkles of old age, a noble, male and
mellowed beauty; the other, the young sister, smiling through the lace
of a wedding veil, comely as a bride, fair as the spouse of Christ.
The one, fashioned by the Byzantine chisel, sprang into complete being
in the heroic ages of faith, in the days of war, and beheld at its feet
Thomas, exiled from Canterbury, and Bernard, when preaching the second
Crusade, hailed there by bishops and barons as generalissimo of that
great enterprise. The other rose, after a long peace, under the hands of
the still Christian architects of the Renaissance, when all dangers and
difficulties had been surmounted. She arose in her smiling elegance,
rose till it seemed that she would touch the stars, and her mantle shone
with a thousand lights and sparkled with a thousand
[Illustration: The Spires of Chartres]
ornaments. Statues and buttresses, gargoyles, arabesques and crochets
pile themselves in successive stages, until the eye loses the sense of
everything but a sort of architectural lacework.
The Cathedral is truly a Bible in stone. And just as in the sculptured
porches the mediæval masons carved in a symbolic type, which the
illiterate could read, the story of the Pentateuch and the Gospels; just
as in their jewelled windows the monkish glaziers told again the same
Bible story for all to see and understand, so it would seem that here in
Chartres, the architects also, but by fortune rather than design, have
symbolised in stone the Old Testament and the New. In that amazing
window of the south transept the prophets of the former dispensation are
portrayed carrying on their shoulders the naïve evangelists. Similarly
the builders have made the Romanesque crypt to carry the Gothic upper
church, and the old tower, eloquent of Byzantine art, massive and
superb, confronts the joyous, soaring sister who has sprung up, from
like foundations, at his side, the last effort, or rather the last
amusement, of that Gothic art which is typical of aspirations that are
justified, of a faith that is fulfilled.
The Clocher Vieux combines to the highest degree grandeur with
harmonious unity of proportion. From the bottommost stone to the highest
there is never a break in the perfect line; and the plain massive base
of enormous quarried stones, some of which, they say, measure ten feet
by three, passes into the light octagonal spire, covered with its
curious coat of mail or fishes’ scales, by imperceptible and inevitable
gradations. It is a triumph of sheer beauty of proportion unaided by the
art of ornament. The transition from the square tower to the tapering
_flèche_ is, in spite of this simplicity, so exquisitely treated that it
cannot be distinguished. It is a perfect masterpiece of masonic skill.
Two terrible fires and more than 700 winters have left it with not one
stone displaced.[57]
The mere size of the enormous blocks of stone of which the base is built
will fill the most casual visitor with astonishment. It has been
suggested that they formed part of those city walls described by the
monk Paul which once ran close to the Cathedral, and which were at this
period being dismantled in order to admit of the enlargement of
_enceinte_ of the town. But we know, from independent contemporary
sources, how the labour required to quarry and fetch these huge masses
of material was supplied. It was supplied by popular enthusiasm,
inspired by religious fervour. For though the work of building, impeded
by plague and famine, and a terrible fire which destroyed the town in
1134, went on slowly at first, in 1144 a great outburst of devotion
occurred throughout the land. Whole populations arose and came to
Chartres to labour at the work of God’s house. A noble rivalry urged
every man to toil, and women even took their share in a burden which
their faith rendered light, in a task which their devotion made both
pleasant and honourable.
‘In this same year,’ writes Robert du Mont, Abbot of Mont S. Michel, to
quote one only among all the twelfth-century chroniclers who mention
this fact, ‘In this same year at Chartres men began to harness
themselves to carts laden with stones and wood, corn and other things,
and drag them to the site of the church, the towers of which were then
a-building. It was a spectacle the like of which he who hath not seen
will never see again, not only here, but scarcely in all France or
Normandy or elsewhere. Everywhere sorrow and humility prevailed, on all
sides penitence, forgiveness and remorse. On every side you could see
men and women dragging heavy loads through the marshy bogs, and
scourging themselves with whips. Miracles were being done on every side,
and songs and hymns of praise sung to the Lord. You might say that the
prophecy was being fulfilled which says, The Spirit of Life was in the
wheels of their chariots.’
A curious confirmation of this statement exists in the form of a
correspondence which passed at this time between the Bishop of Rouen and
the Bishop of Amiens.
‘Mighty are the works of the Lord,’ exclaims Hugh of Rouen. ‘At Chartres
men have begun in all humility to drag carts and vehicles of all sorts
to aid the building of the Cathedral, and their humility has been
rewarded with miracles. The fame of these events has been heard
everywhere, and at last roused this Normandy of ours. Our countrymen,
therefore, after receiving our blessing, have set out for that place and
there fulfilled their vows. They return filled with a resolution to
imitate the Chartrains. And a great number of the faithful of our
diocese and the dioceses of our province have begun to work at the
Cathedral, their mother.’ The north-west tower of the Cathedral of
Rouen, the Tour S. Romain, was built in this way. The visitor will
notice its resemblance to the Clocher Vieux of Chartres, and this letter
will explain why in workmanship and spirit it does so resemble it.
These poor Norman workmen departed on a new crusade, as it were, of
chisel and trowel to offer their labour for the adornment of Our Lady’s
Church. They travelled in small bands, forming part of a vast
association, and, so the bishop informs his reverend brother, admitted
no one to join their company unless he had first been confessed and done
penance, and laid aside all anger and malevolence, and been reconciled
with his enemies. One of their number was chosen to lead them, and under
his directions they drew their waggons in silence and humility, and
presented their offerings, not without penance and tears.
There is yet another letter which I shall readily be forgiven for
quoting, so graphic is the picture which it gives. It is the text to
which the beautiful window in the south aisle of the choir furnishes the
perfect illustration. The Abbot Haimon of S. Pierre-sur-Dive wrote to
his brethren of Tutbury, in Staffordshire, a small priory dependent on
S. Pierre, in the following strain:--
‘Who has ever seen or who heard in all the ages of the past that kings,
princes and lords, mighty in their generation, swollen with riches and
honours, that men and women, I say, of noble birth have bowed their
haughty necks to the yoke and harnessed themselves to carts like beasts
of burden, and drawn them, laden with wine, corn, oil, stone, wood and
other things needful for the maintenance of life or the construction of
the church, even to the doors of the asylum of Christ? But what is even
more astonishing is that, although sometimes a thousand or more of men
and women are attached to one cart--so vast is the mass, so heavy the
machine, so weighty the load--yet so deep a silence reigns that not a
voice, not a whisper even can be heard. And when there is a halt called
on the way there is no sound save that of the confession of sins and the
suppliant prayer to God for pardon. There, whilst the priests are
preaching peace, all hatred is lulled to sleep and quarrels are
banished, debts forgiven, and the union of hearts re-established. But if
anyone is so hardened that he cannot bring himself to forgive his
enemies or to beg the pious admonitions of the priests, then his
offering is withdrawn from the common stock as unclean, and he himself
is separated, with much shame and ignominy, from the society of the holy
people. Forward they press, unchecked by rivers, unhindered by
mountains. You might think that they were the children of Israel
crossing Jordan, and for them, as for the children of Israel, miracles
are wrought. But when they come to the church, they set their waggons in
a circle so as to form, as it were, a spiritual camp, and all the
following night the watch is kept by the whole army with hymns and songs
of praise. Candles and lamps are lit on each waggon; the sick and the
feeble are placed thereon; the relics of the saints are brought to them
in the hope that they may find relief. The clergy at the head of a
procession, and the people following, pass by and pray with renewed
fervour that the sick may be healed.’
Then occurred scenes such as may be beheld to-day before the grotto in
the mountain village of Lourdes. For Chartres was the Lourdes of the
Middle Ages. The maimed and the halt recovered their powers, leapt from
the waggons and flung away their crutches; the blind received their
sight, the sick were healed, and all joined, after returning thanks
before the altar, in the task of building the house of their Redeemer.
You see their work, you behold the material in which they wrought, as
you stand before the western façade[58] and gaze in wonder; for the
stones, it seems, have become intelligent, and matter is here
spiritualised. But you will almost cease to wonder when you remember the
spirit in which they wrought it. Such was the spirit, and such only
could be the spirit, which produced the master-art of Gothic, and led
the daring architects from step to step in the attainment of their
triumphs, as they left behind them the heavy piers and the thick dark
arches of the Pagan Romanesque and arrived at last at the perfect
expression of the Christian spirit in their soaring arches, their airy
buttresses, and their pointing pinnacles flaming upwards to the skies.
Seven miles distant from Chartres lie the quarries of
Berchères-l’Évêque, whence, in the spirit and manner that has been
described, they brought this ‘miraculous’ stone--miraculous, for it was
in a vision that the existence of the quarry was said to have been
revealed. Miraculous one may almost call it still, by reason of its
quality of hardness, its gift of wear, and the exquisite tones which it
has taken on with years. Of the two towers the old one is the better
built; many of the stones of the other were laid in too little mortar
and have consequently split. These blocks of stone are marked with
various masonic signs, a fact which confirms the supposition that the
two towers were built by the Frères Maçons or Logeurs du bon Dieu, as
they were called, those famous associations of the Middle Ages,
corporations of artist workmen, who were indeed ‘masters of the living
stone.’
The first time that the traveller beholds the porches of Chartres he is
filled with admiration for the exquisite effect of the whole, and
afterwards for the exquisite details of which that whole is composed. He
may, if he is of an imaginative temperament, fall into some reverie and
picture to himself a host of historic fantasies.
But later he will begin to realise that the sculpture which had pleased
his eye and inspired his dreams is not a mere ornament of the building.
Each part of the Cathedral, like the Cathedral as a whole, is the
superb product of the intimate alliance of nameless architects, nameless
sculptors, nameless painters of glass, working with the one object of
setting forth the glory of God and His Son and the Virgin to the
multitude, of illustrating for all unreading eyes the Word of the Lord.
The Cathedral is a Bible in stone, and the porches a gospel in relief, a
sculptured catechism, a preface and a _résumé_ of the book. Each stone,
thus understood, is seen to be a page of a great drama. This drama is
the history of humanity from the creation of the world to the day of the
Last Judgment. Within, the same story is repeated. The jewelled windows
are there not only for the sake of the holiness of their beauty, not
merely to provide the pilgrim with the dim religious light suitable to
his mood, or that the placid sunshine of La Beauce may be transformed
into imperious angry fire. The five thousand figures in those legendary
lights are the commentary and the repetition of the sculptured text
without.
Who conceived, the question arises again and again, this admirable plan,
this marvellous whole? Who were the artists of Notre-Dame? We are in
great ignorance of the matter, and the question cannot be definitely
answered.
The cloister we know was the only refuge of art; the monasteries the
sole asylums for those who would study science. And to those peaceable
retreats painters, sculptors, artists perforce retired to practise, to
invent, to teach the secrets of their trade; secrets, alas! of colour
among them, which have been irretrievably lost to this scientific
generation. We know, for instance, that in the Monastery of Tiron, which
S. Bernard founded on lands given to him for that purpose by S. Ives,
more than five hundred artists of one sort or another were to be found.
S. Bernard insisted on the observance of that point in the Benedictine
rule which recommends that ‘if there be artists in the monastery they
shall with all humility practise their arts.’ These monks, we also know,
established a branch at Chartres, ‘near the market-place.’ Perhaps,
therefore, S. Bernard paid his debt to S. Ives and the Chapter of
Notre-Dame by furnishing the hands which carved the statues and the
storied capitals of the three bays of the western façade.
In the S. Sylvester window, to the right of the entrance to the Chapel
of S. Piat, and in the S. Chéron window of the Chapel of the Sacred
Heart of Mary, the old glass painters have well represented the masons
of Notre-Dame. Here is a beardless dresser of stone, there a sculptor
with his rough, pointed cap. The iron hardness of the miraculous stone
yields to the untiring application of chisel and mallet, and beneath
their ceaseless blows its formless mass by degrees becomes shapely.
Above the workers appears the chapel in which the window now is. A mason
in a round hat is quietly laying a cornice stone, whilst his help-mate,
carrying a piece of sculpture, climbs up a little ladder. In the
background four other masons, shaven and clad like the common people,
are busy shaping the statues of kings--the very statues which now,
representing the ancestors of Christ, stand in the porch without. The
statue is as yet only blocked out: the artist is beginning to model it
with his chisel. His companion the while, warm with his past exertions,
is drinking. The royal statue begins to be distinguishable. The eyes and
the mouth are leaping into life: the crown is being adorned with pearls,
the sceptre decorated, the robe and mantle draped, the hands modelled.
The man who has blocked it out has finished his task and takes his rest;
his companion carves, polishes and puts the finishing touches to the
work he has begun.
What were their names? No one knows. The names of some of the donors
are preserved in the necrologies of the grateful canons, but of all the
clever artists of Notre-Dame hardly one has left his name behind him,
like the Robbir who carved his signature beneath the combat of David and
Goliath on the north porch.
This is in no way surprising, when we remember the spirit in which these
works were done. The Cathedrals were built and decorated for the glory
of God, not for the glorification of the artists. Men dedicated to the
Church their money and their labour for the remission of their sins, and
not with the object of acquiring fame. We have seen, and shall see
again, how whole populations rose up and came on a pilgrimage from afar
to build and to rebuild the house of God, when to the enthusiasm of the
Crusades succeeded the holy ardour of religious construction and men
took the Cross, not to depart to war in the East, but to labour humbly
at the work of God, Our Lady and the saints. Then from the distant
cloister came forth the architect, and artists and, at the voice of a
bishop calling for aid, the sacred work began. The peasants quarried
stone and brought material, the young men dressed it, and the masons
raised the lofty piers and fashioned the groined roof beneath the eye of
the ‘master of the work.’ The pilgrims would sojourn, perhaps, for a
year in the town, labouring with such ardour that when the light failed
they would often continue by the light of torches. Not far from the site
of the church, in some adjacent monastery, the glass-painters designed
and stained and fitted into the leads their coloured windows, and the
sculptors chiselled bas-reliefs and statues. A man’s labour was his
offering, his art very often his best and only alms. His name was one
name only among a thousand, his work might surpass in excellence but it
would be the same in spirit with that of a thousand other pilgrims like
unto himself. Why should his name therefore be recorded?
So it came about that the ‘master of the work’ received from the many
workers statuary of varying excellence, and gave it all its place in the
Cathedral. Among the thousands of sculptures at Chartres or Reims many
are of very inferior merit. Many a chef-d’œuvre, on the other hand,
on which the pious sculptor has lavished all his skill is hidden in
inaccessible nooks, or scarcely visible in the loftiest part of a
building, thus showing clearly the motive of devotion which inspired the
worker.
It was in this sense, then, that the Cathedral of Chartres was built ‘by
universal suffrage,’ as Lowell put it, just as the entire population
from the Coquet to the Tees, headed by the Earl of Northumberland, rose
up to build the Cathedral of Durham. The nearest modern analogy to such
enthusiasm is to be found in the history of Christianity in Uganda or in
the building of the church at Swindon by the united, unpaid efforts of
the working men of that town. It was the living faith of the people, not
the mere feudal requisition of their labour by the bishops (corvées)
which created the mediæval temples, faith strong and simple as that
which inspired Sabine of Steinbach or her who laid the last stone of the
Dom of Köln.
It would, however, be misleading to suggest that, because many pilgrims
worked for the love of God, all the workers were unpaid. We hear of
occasions when money failed and
‘Ne porent pas païer assez
Li mestre de l’œuvre aus ouvriers.’[59]
Such things as the Jubé, the porches and the rose windows, executed
after elaborate consultations and under the supervision of the ‘master
of work,’ were inspected again by a clever master from another country.
The chief workers were lodged in houses of the cloister belonging to the
Chapter, who granted them doles from time to time and furnished them
yearly with gloves and a mantle.
The _naïveté_ of the mediæval artists is one of their chief charms, but
there is often a spice of wickedness in their work. Read the _fabliaux_
and mysteries of the time, from the Bible of Guyot de Provins to the
play acted on the Piazza of Troyes in 1475, and you will find passages
enough that offend the taste and are worthy of the actors in the Feast
of Fools. The satire of the _Trouvères_, whether they are scourging
monks, barons or sovereign pontiffs, is often extremely gross.
Similarly, while the Count of Chartres was chanting in chivalrous
fashion the praises of his lady, the porches of the Cathedral were
receiving into their niches here and there the representations of
certain ugly vices and their punishment, such as Dante ere long was to
translate into the harmonious verses of his _Divina Commedia_. Fallen
nuns and erring queens are delivered over to grinning demons, and Satan
rubs his hands at the sight of his innumerable victims (south porch). S.
Augustin might protest against the apocryphal Scriptures, and Popes
denounce the legendary poetry of the early centuries, but painters
persisted in depicting with excessive freedom the histories of S. Thomas
and S. James, and sculptors still waxed wanton when they carved the sins
of the Prodigal Son. S. Bernard, the enigma of his age, was constrained
to cry out against the grotesque ornamentation of the churches.
But it is not the mere naughtiness of some satirical mason giving
expression to the humour of the people which accounts for all the
mediæval grotesques--for the Imp of Lincoln, the Noah of Bourges, the
Devils of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, the Ass of Chartres. Vices were portrayed
in order to illustrate their punishment. ‘Let faithful souls but see the
Passion of Our Lord represented,’ says an old writer, ‘and rarely will
they fail to be filled with compunction and to raise their eyes to
heaven.’ To the impressionable, childlike, illiterate men of the Middle
Ages, accordingly, the clergy taught the lessons of dogma and belief
through the personages of drama or the medium of art. The sculpted bays
of a porch or the storied windows of a nave were a lesson for the
ignorant, a sermon for the believer, appealing through the eyes to the
heart. The representation of the mysteries and miracle plays showed to
him in action and helped him to realise the persons whose figures were
already familiar to him as painted on glass, sculptured on capitals,
incrusted on the vaulting of the doors. Graphic and dramatic art
constituted the books of those who did not know how to read. With the
aid of these material objects, as the Abbot Suger, the great artist of
S. Denis, declared,[60] the feeble spirit can mount to the truth and the
soul which was plunged in darkness rise to the light which bursts upon
its terrestrial eyes. We need not wonder then if the paintings of the
Middle Ages have not always the severity of modern ecclesiastical art,
for vices were portrayed with a view to condemning them the more
thoroughly. The mediæval masons were strangers, it would seem, to the
legend of Spinello. Evil for them was always ugly, and the Devil a
monster, not Lucifer.
But at Chartres this side of life is not dealt with overmuch. The bases
of the pillars of the bays in the south and the western porches give
some examples of
[Illustration: L’Âne qui Vielle]
men and women in the thralls of vice. Apart from these instances, the
most famous and striking examples of the masons’ satiric warning are the
_Âne qui vielle_ and the _Truie qui file_. These curious imposts of the
closed doorway on the south side of the _clocher Vieux_ represent a
donkey playing a harp and a sow spinning.[61] They are epigrams in
stone, intended to remind us of the maxims, Asinus ad lyram, and Ne sus
Minervam doceat; warnings against the pretentious ambitions of the
awkward and incompetent, equivalent to the French dictum _Que Gros-Jean
n’en remontre pas à son curé_; a proverb of which we have some obvious
but homely versions. But of infernal beasts and Vices there is at
Chartres, so much is this the Church of Our Lady, a decided scarcity. Of
the Virtues there are many: most celebrated is the proud statue of
Liberty in the left bay of the north porch, in which some writers have
seen a reference to the Communal freedom granted to the people by the
Kings, but which is in reality only one of the series of fourteen
Heavenly Beatitudes as described by the mediæval theologians, which fill
some of the rows of the vaulting of this bay.
On the south angle of the Clocher Vieux there is an angel carrying a
sun-dial, of whom one would gladly know more. There is an angel-dial on
the corresponding part of the S. Laurence Church at Genoa, and one which
much resembles this, and may have been by the same hands, is at the
south corner of the cloister at Laon. Our angel stands with bare feet on
a bracket, and above his head is a ‘Heavenly Jerusalem’--a daïs showing
a city with turrets and windows. He is clad in a long tunic covered by a
mantle which fits close to his long, thin body. His hands are intended
to support a disc on which a sun-dial was traced. His arms are
outspread. Clearly the present dial traced on a heavy square stone, with
the date 1578, which covers his breast, was an addition of that year,
but does not mark the date of the angel. For though the smile which
lurks about his fair monastic countenance is scarce angelic, and may
suggest rather the disquieting, seraphic types of the Renaissance, yet
the whole figure, with its simple and successful treatment of the hair
and draperies, is redolent of the Byzantine style, which we shall trace
in the family of kings and queens grouped beneath the Porche Royal. To
that family he must belong.
[Illustration: The Angel Dial]
You will move gladly into the porch to study its beautiful
twelfth-century sculpture, for whilst you have been looking at this
angel you will have learnt that round the south-west corner of the
Cathedral, as about the Abbey in Old Palace Yard in Westminster, the
wind never ceases to blow, and often blows a hurricane. Before the
Hôtel-Dieu, which was quite close to the Clocher Vieux, was destroyed,
the gusts of wind were so violent that the passage called _L’Âne qui
vielle_ had the reputation of being impassable. One Canon Brillon, a
hundred years ago, wrote a poem in which he related that ‘On a time Wind
and Discord were travelling over the plains of La Beauce and suddenly
turned in the direction of the Cathedral. Arrived at the foot of the
towers, Discord left his companion, asking him to wait near _L’Âne qui
vielle_ whilst he went into the Chapter-house. Contentious business
detained him there so long that the Wind is still waiting, waiting for
him outside;
Le Vent dehors l’attend encore!’
As I struggle through Old Palace Yard I often wonder whether it is in
the House of Commons or in the Chapter-house of the Abbey that Discord
is so busily engaged, for the wind here, as in Chartres and at
Kill-Cannon Corner at Lincoln, is always waiting outside, a truly Gothic
draught![62]
The western porch is composed of three large bays, of which the middle
one was, as always in Christian churches, known as the Porte Royale.
This name was given it because in the tympanum Christ was always
represented triumphant, the King of Kings. Nor, as you gaze at the
wealth of statuary and ornamentation upon which, as upon the
architecture, the artists have lavished all their resources and all
their skill in their endeavour to illustrate the Story of the Triumph
of Our Lord, will you grudge this entrance its other names of Porta
Speciosa and Porta Triumphalis. The sculptured figures are of every
size. Once the whole porch was a blaze of colour. Of this colour and
gold you may still see a few traces left.
Begun about 1110, under S. Ives, this typical example of early Gothic
work was not completed till nearly 1150, and among those who wrought the
images which people it were, some think, the artists who had worked at
the Porch of S. Sermin at Toulouse, and knew that of S. Trophimus at
Arles.
They would thus connect it with the art of the South, and, through that,
with Roman art. It appears to me rather to be directly under the
influence and inspiration of Byzantine art. There is to one’s eye
something Eastern in this work as surely as there is something Eastern
also to one’s ear in the rhythms of a Gregorian chant. However that may
be, nowhere, at any rate, has the story of Christ’s Triumph been told so
fully and with such a wealth of detail in stone as at Chartres. We are
shown here not only His triumph but the events which led up to it. The
whole Gospel is revealed to the gaze of the Christian who is about to
enter the house of the Lord. The story is taken from the apocryphal as
well as the canonical Gospels. It begins with the scenes represented by
the thirty-eight miniature groups of the capitals, the figures of which,
in spite of their small size and occasional lack of proportion, are full
of life and interest. The first series starts northwards from the
central doorway, and here the chisel literally reproduces the legend of
S. Joachim and S. Anne and the Birth of the Virgin: then follows the
story of Joseph and Mary and the Nativity of Our Lord, up to the episode
of the Massacre of the Innocents. This brings us to the Clocher Neuf. We
must now return to the right hand portion of the central doorway, and
take up the story again, moving in the direction of the Clocher Vieux.
The events recorded, up to the last appearance of Jesus to His disciples
on the Mount of Olives, it is hardly necessary to enumerate.
Thus in this rich stone compendium of the Christian story even the
capitals of the pillars, which we are accustomed to see adorned only
with foliage, flowers, fantastic figures and mere patterns, have been
pressed into the service of the teller of the tale, and recount _in
petto_ scenes from the life of Christ upon earth. We have been shown Him
expected, prophesied, prefigured and again realising the prophecies and
fulfilling all the acts of His divine mission. If we look now above, in
the tympanums of the three doorways, we shall find the triumph, joys and
glory of the life to come portrayed, and the crowning of religion in the
person of its Chief. First of all, in the tympanum of the left bay, we
have His Last Coming.
The artists of the Middle Ages never omit the scene of the Last Judgment
from the western façade of their churches; but, curiously enough, the
Last Judgment before us is always interpreted as an Ascension or a
Descent into Hell, and writers have been exercised to explain the
omission of what after all has not been omitted.
Not only is a Last Judgment required here, but any other explanation of
the sculpture fails to suit the attitude of the figures represented. The
tympanum is divided into three sections. In the upper portion Christ is
standing upright on a ground of fire or cloud. His right hand is raised,
His left lowered. Two angels accompany Him, whose pose is not
symmetrical, as would be that of censing angels, for Christ is saying to
the angel on the right, ‘Come, ye blessed of My Father,’ and to the
angel on the left, ‘Depart from Me, ye who work iniquity.’ In the
central section are four angels emerging from the clouds. Their open
mouths, and the gestures of their arms, one beckoning, the other
pointing above, indicate that they are heavenly messengers, who have
come ‘to gather together the elect from the four winds.’ And below them,
gazing heavenward in holy calm and happiness, sit the Apostles, chosen
to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. They are clad in long robes and
mantles with borders of pearls after the Byzantine fashion. There is
room for only ten of them on the lintel (which is nearly 9 feet broad),
and several of them are mutilated. We may regret but we cannot wonder
that many of the seven hundred statues have suffered more or less from
the hand of Time or of men. There is more reason to be amazed that for
over seven hundred years they have so successfully escaped the perils of
war and of sacrilege that have threatened them.
In the vaulting of this doorway are the signs of the months and the
signs of the Zodiac which roughly correspond with them. But since there
was room for only ten of the latter, the remaining two were inserted in
the vaulting of the right bay, where they are really out of place. Here
they suggest the meaning that Christ is of all time, ‘the same
yesterday, and to-day and for ever.’
The Cathedral can boast five such almanacs, which it may be found
interesting to compare--three in the porches, one in a window of the
south aisle of the choir, and one (sixteenth century) on the clock of
the choir screen.
Mediæval masons followed the example of Pagan antiquity, and like the
architects of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India and Mexico, loved to
trace upon their holy buildings the allegories of Time, whether in the
form of the personification of the twelve months, of the four seasons,
or the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The months are symbolised with
extraordinary cleverness of detail, in a manner at once naïve and
effective, by the recreations and employments to which they lend
themselves.
The zodiacal signs are given in the verses of Ausonius:--
‘Sunt Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo,
Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces.’
And as to the months, they, in the quatrain attributed to the venerable
Bede, describe themselves as follows:--
‘Poto--ligna cremo--de vite superflua demo;
Do gramen gratum--mihi flos servit--mihi pratum:
Fenum declino--messes meto--vina propino;
Semen humi jacto--pasco sues,--immolo porcos.’[63]
The studious visitor may compare the treatment of them in the windows
and porch at Chartres with that which they receive at Venice, Reims,
Verona, Sens, Amiens, Bruges and the English churches.
In the tympanum of the right-hand doorway the Virgin (1150) sits,
crowned and throned, a sceptre in her hand, sharing the triumph of her
Son. The Holy Child is in the act of blessing the world, and on either
side are two archangels, censing. Beneath are the chief scenes of the
life of Mary--the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, appearance of the
Angels to the Shepherds and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple;
and above, in the vaulting which forms the frame of this picture, are,
in one row, six archangels carrying incense in honour of Mary, and, in
the other, the seven Liberal Arts, each of them symbolised by two
statuettes, the one representing the inventor or paragon, the other the
allegory of the art. Here, then, as at Laon, Sens, Auxerre and many
other places, we have the carved expression of the opinion of Albertus
Magnus, that in Music (Pythagoras), Dialectic (Aristotle), Rhetoric
(Cicero), Geometry (Euclid), Arithmetic (Nichomachus), Astronomy
(Ptolemy), and Grammar (Priscian), in all the knowledge of the Middle
Ages, in fact, the Virgin Mary was well skilled.
The tympanums of the right and the left bays have both suffered much
from years: they are blurred and defaced with age, and it is perhaps
partly for this reason that, in spite of many fine points, they seem
inferior, crude even, by the side of the tympanum of the central bay.
This is one of the most beautiful masterpieces of mediæval statuary. In
the centre is the risen Christ, enthroned, triumphant, yet full of mercy
and tenderness. An aureole is about His head, His feet are set upon the
footstool of the earth. With an infinite pity, it would seem, He beholds
and blesses the thousands who for seven hundred years pass, and have
passed, beneath Him into the Cathedral. With one hand He blesses, with
the other He holds the book sealed with the seven seals. He is there,
clad in an antique mantle, which falls in a cascade of folds about His
naked feet, a bearded Christ, with long, straight hair, and an
expression of sweet gravity, and the artist has succeeded somehow in
convincing us that this is the Christ expected and foretold, fulfilling
the past as He will fulfil the future, and reigning for ever in time
upon earth, and hereafter for ever beyond time in heaven. Above Him two
angels hold a large crown, destined for the eternal King of the Ages.
He is surrounded by the four-winged symbols of the
[Illustration: TYMPANUM OF THE ROYAL PORCH.]
evangelists. On the lintel, as if on the first step of the throne, are
grouped beneath an arcade, and in pairs, as they were sent forth to
preach the Gospel, the twelve Apostles. And, to complete the scene from
the Apocalypse, in the rows of the vaulting above, are the twelve angels
and the heavenly choir of four-and twenty elders, having every one of
them a different and curious mediæval instrument of music. They are
clothed in white raiment, and on their heads are crowns of gold.[64]
They form, as it were, a living halo round the King of Ages, in a
picture of incomparable grandeur and simplicity, the conception of which
reveals not only the genius of art, but also, and, above all, the genius
of faith.
But we have not yet completed the tale of the western porch. It yet
remains to mention those strange colossal figures, which are by far the
most beautiful and remarkable among all these
‘Dedicated shapes of saints and kings,
Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch.’
These curious figures, these seven kings and seven prophets and five
queens, these nineteen survivors of the twenty-four once here, with
their thin, elongated bodies, their small heads, their Eastern drapery,
their anatomical faults, and their haunting faces, may strike you at
first as unattractive, bizarre. But nothing is more certain than that,
if you study them, you will find in them an unutterable beauty and an
ineffable charm. For this is the most spiritual and fascinating
sculpture in the world, wrought with an infinite delicacy and an
inimitable cleverness of detail, by the hands of artists who were
consummate in their craft, and had learned, if not the perfection of
form of the old Greeks, yet the secret, as it has been said, of
spiritualising matter.
[Illustration: PILASTER OF THE ROYAL PORCH.]
The figures stand upright, with an air of inviolable repose, beneath
canopies like that of the Angel-sundial, heavenly Jerusalems, miniature
Zions. Their hands are glued to their sides, their drapery falls, in
most cases, in straight parallel folds; a halo is, or has been, behind
the head of each. They are clad in the long, rich robes of the East.
Over some of these a kind of dalmatic reaches to the knees. The girdles
and the broidered robes, the arrangement of the sleeves and veils, and
the jewellery of the crowns they wear, all demand the closest study. The
hard stone has been handled with such precision and such feeling that
you might almost fancy it, here, a delicate brocade, and there, a
necklace of veritable jewels. You could almost untie the knots of those
girdles, unplait almost the long braided tresses of those mystic queens.
And the heads of these silent watchers, who have waited here and
watched, with ever the same living smile about their thin, ironical
Gallic lips, are portraits startling in their lifelike reality.
The bare feet rest upon pedestals which are not the least exquisite
portions of these sculptured monoliths. For they are richly ornamented
with carved chequerwork, so delicately chiselled as to seem the work of
a goldsmith rather than a mason; mosaic patterns, which, like the
borders of the stained-glass windows, betray the influence of the East
through the medium of the Crusades. An exception, however, must be made
in the case of the three first statues of the left bay, next to the
Clocher Neuf. These have no halo, and the pedestals on which they rest
their feet are groups of enigmatic beings. The first, a king who has
been given by some modern restorer a thirteenth-century Virgin’s head,
treads underfoot a man, now scarce recognisable, enfolded by two
serpents; the second, a king also, rests upon a woman, who holds with
one hand the tail of a dragon, on which she is trampling, and with the
other she fingers a tress of her long, plaited hair; the third, a queen
of grosser type, but very richly clad, has beneath her feet a curious
group, composed of a large ape, two dragons, a toad, a dog and a
basilisk with a monkey’s face.
It has been supposed that this group represents the benefactors of the
Cathedral, William the Conqueror, Henry the First and Queen Matilda. But
this explanation, like that of the last-named group as representing the
Deadly Sins, is mere conjecture. Nor can we do more than name as kings,
prophets and queens the remaining sixteen statues which line the porch.
The fourth and fifth, counting from the Clocher Neuf, are prophets,
Isaiah and Daniel perhaps, according to the suggestions of M. l’Abbé
Bulteau: the eighth, ninth and tenth, Ezekiel, James-the-Less and
Thaddæus; the eleventh, thirteenth and fourteenth, kings with missals
and sceptres in their hands, may be Edward the Confessor, Charlemagne
and Cnut; the fifteenth, S. Paul; the sixteenth, a haloed, virgin king,
beardless, and full of the holy charm and freshness of youth, S. Henry
(1024); the seventeenth, S. Peter; the eighteenth, S. Constantine; the
last, a queen, much defaced, like several of the others, Pulcheria,
beloved of the Byzantines.
[Illustration: PILASTER OF THE ROYAL PORCH.]
There yet remains the sixth, seventh and twelfth of the statues, the
absorbing, seductive, inexpressible queens of the central bay. Her
sexless shape, the book in her hands, her expectant gaze, rapt as it
were in a vision of the ages, proclaim the first to be a nun rather than
a queen, albeit she is clad in royal raiment;--S. Radegonde, Queen of
France (582), Bulteau suggests.
The second is younger, and her beauty of a more earthly type. She wears
a halo, and is clad like the other, save that she has no mantle, and
her head is not shrouded in a veil. Her long hair falls in two plaits
over her shoulders, and the tight-drawn body of her garment reveals the
curves of her figure. Her expression is that of a rebellious, artful and
vindictive nature, and, if she is rightly supposed to be Queen Clotilde,
she is, as M. Huysmans[65] remarks, Clotilde before her repentance, the
Queen before the saint.
The last, the angelic mysterious queen with the sweet, ingenuous smile,
and the great deep eyes, is, according to local tradition, Bertha _aux
grands pieds_, mother of Charlemagne. Her right hand once lay open upon
her breast, and there it has left its impression. In the left hand she
carried a sceptre, terminating in an ornament that still remains. She is
clad in sumptuous raiment, most delicate in texture, and fringed with
lace. Her figure is elongated, so that she seems to be like some rare
lily swaying forward on its stalk. And thus, beneath her eyebrows
slightly raised, she smiles down upon the visitor in the childlike grace
of her chaste simplicity, _saintement gamine_.
Of the other statues that complete the company of Christ--martyrs,
prophets and patron saints of donors in the jambs of the doorways, or
between the other figures--I shall only call attention to the merchant
on the right pier of the _Porte Royale_, who is being robbed by the
earliest cut-purse in mediæval sculpture, and to the name Rogerus, cut
above the broken head of an adjacent butcher. Was this the architect
Roger who built the _Tour-Grise_ at Dreux, and who was then chosen by S.
Ives to build this western porch?
M. Bulteau suggests the question. But it cannot be answered.
Over the three doorways two pilasters with simple mouldings run up on
either side of the central window as far as the rose, terminating in
symbolic carvings--the northern one in the head of an ox, representative
of sacrifice, symbolising here, it is said, the abolition of Judaism,
with its sacrifices and cult; the southern one in that of a lion holding
a man’s head, which is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and here
symbolises Christ triumphant in the hearts of men.
The two towers, the old spire, and the western porch described, together
with the west front up to the rose-window, including, therefore, the
three enormous windows (34 feet by 13 feet, and 28 feet by 9 feet), and
their unrivalled treasure of twelfth-century glass, which, through
repeated dangers, has been preserved to us, are all that remain of the
Church of Fulbert, rebuilt by S. Ives.
For in 1194, when Regnault de Mouçon was bishop, and when they were
about to begin the spire of the Clocher Neuf, the Cathedral was
destroyed by fire. _Mirabili et miserabili incendio devastata_, says a
manuscript of the year 1210, now in the Vatican, and Jehan le Marchand
in his _Book of Miracles_ writes of this year:--
‘A Chartres prist en la cité
Un feu qui ne fu pas a geus,
Car trop fu grant et domageus ...
Moult fu grant douleur dou veoir
Telle iglise ardoir et cheoir.’
It is worth while to quote this and other accounts because the patriotic
desire to see in the present building the Cathedral of Fulbert has led
to some unpardonable garbling of evidence, with a view to concealing the
fact of this fire.
Guillaume-le-Breton, who died in 1226, records in his Latin poem, ‘The
Philippide,’ written in honour of King Philippe-Auguste, that the church
was burnt at this time. ‘It was so ordered,’ he infers, ‘in order that
the present church might be built and shine in its unequalled
splendour.[66] For the former one was not yet worthy to be called the
“mestre maison de Marie.” Completely rebuilt of hewn stone, and covered
throughout its whole length by a roof as it had been by the shell of a
tortoise, it now need have nothing to fear from fire till the day of
judgment. And from that fire springeth the salvation of the many by
whose efforts the Cathedral was rebuilt.’
The account of another contemporary, William of Newbridge, the
chronicler of the wars of Philippe-Auguste and of our Richard, whose
lion-heart lies in the tomb at the Cathedral of _Rouen_, gives another
explanation of the burning, and incidentally throws a vivid light upon
the state of the country at that time.
‘The troops of King Philippe,’ he says, ‘had retired precipitately from
Évreux on the approach of King Richard. Now the King of the French, to
wipe out the dishonour of this shameful retreat, threw himself with
implacable fury on Évreux, which he had already sacked a short time
before. He did not even spare the Church of S. Taurin, so famous in that
country. He gave orders, indeed, that it should be given to the flames,
and, as no one in his army would, for fear of God, execute so
sacrilegious a command, the King himself, it is said, with some
abandoned men called Ribauds, entered the sacred edifice and set fire to
it. It is said, further, that he transferred to Chartres the spoils of
the Church of S. Taurin; but these spoils were as fire to that famous
city. It fell, in consequence, a prey to the flames, and was almost
completely destroyed.’
All the inhabitants of the town, we learn from the author of the _Book
of Miracles_, clergy and laymen alike, lost all their houses and their
wealth in this disastrous conflagration. Yet their distress at their own
losses was as nothing compared with their grief at the destruction of
the church. But when the _Sainte Châsse_, containing the precious relic
which they called
‘la gemme
Et la gloire de leur cité’
could no more be seen, their sorrow passed all bounds. Bitter tears
filled their eyes, and they cried aloud that the glory of Chartres and
of the whole country side was departed. They despaired of their town,
and were ready to quit forever the homes which they no longer had the
heart to rebuild.
But the legate of the Pope, Mélior, Cardinal of Pisa, who happened to be
at Chartres, summoned the bishop and Chapter, and called upon them to
take courage and to begin rebuilding their Cathedral. He exhorted them
to fast and pray that their sins, which had brought upon them this
calamity, might be forgiven, and to set an example to the laity by
emptying their purses,
‘Por loer ovriers et maçons
Qui sache bien et tout ovrer.’
His eloquence met with such success that the bishop and his clergy
devoted the greater part of their incomes for three years to the work of
rebuilding and paying those ‘skilled labourers and masons.’
Next he called together all the people, and exhorted them also to devote
themselves to the task. And when he had finished speaking there emerged
from the depths of the crypt some devoted clerks, bringing with them the
holy casket and its priceless contents, ‘the true mirror and the
precious treasure,’ which all thought had been destroyed. The people
fell on their knees in a transport of delight, weeping tears of
gratitude and joy. For a miracle had been wrought. As Jonah was kept
from harm three days in the belly of the whale, as Noah was preserved
from the flood and Daniel from the lion’s jaws, so these devout servants
of the Lord had been saved alive in the deep recesses of the martyrium,
‘in the grotto near the altar which the men of old had prudently
constructed,’ whither they had retired with the Veil, and had lived
unharmed and unafraid, whilst the walls and roofs of the Cathedral fell
about their ears, and the molten bells and glass surged in a fiery flood
around them.
Their appearance gave point to the eloquence of the cardinal. All
classes, in gratitude, devoted themselves to rebuilding the Cathedral.
And, in order that resources might not be lacking, in order that
pilgrims might come from far and near, bringing money and labour to
supplement the contributions of the Chapter and people, a series of
miracles was wrought.[67]
It appears, says the chronicler Jehan de Marchand, with whose poetical
legends, let me advertise the reader, I shall fill the remainder of this
chapter, that the first miracle which roused the enthusiasm of the
people was the healing of a little child of Le Perche, young Guillot.
His tongue had been cruelly cut out by a knight whom he had surprised
in an intrigue. Poor and mutilated, the orphan lad fled to Chartres to
beg his bread. Kneeling there, on Shrove Tuesday, before the altar of
Our Lady, he burst suddenly into loud praise of God, albeit he was
tongueless. All the people when they heard him were filled with
amazement. They crowded to the scene of his healing to render thanks and
make their offerings before the altar, whilst the boy, that he might not
be stifled by the crowd, was placed upon a scaffolding near the Châsse
of S. Lubin. And the Virgin, ‘qui voloit la chose parfeire,’ obtained
for him that on the day of Pentecost he should receive a new tongue.
‘This child,’ says the author, ‘object of a double miracle, is still
living in our midst.’
At the news of these marvels multitudes began to come together from
every part, bringing waggons and carts laden with corn, wine, iron and
all things useful or necessary for the building of the church. Jewels
also and precious things they brought. The devotional enthusiasm of 1145
was repeated. The marvellous spectacles presented to-day by the Grotto
of Lourdes were seen then at Chartres.
‘Undique dona ferunt burgenses atque coloni,
Pontifices, clerus cum militibus dare pronis!’
So great was the crowd of pilgrims that they were obliged to pass the
night in their carts about the Cathedral, for they could not all find
shelter within the Cathedral, and the clerks coming to perform their
offices therein could not for the press make their way into the
cloister.[68]
These pilgrims were but one wave on the ocean of Catholic devotion:
pilgrims, whether kings like Charles, coming to replace an image
disfigured by profane Huguenots, or courtiers bringing with them the
very presence and perfume of the Paris of their day, or pious wanderers
from the remotest provinces of France and from strange lands beyond the
seas, scholars from the universities and weather-beaten travellers from
the New Continent, with outlandish offerings to Our Lady, they wash
forever against the hospitable shores of Chartres, and break peacefully
upon the gray cliffs of the Cathedral. A trace of their offerings,
stranded on the shores of time, is to be found in the coins dug up in
the Butte des Charbonniers in 1846, now in the Musée; coins which range
in date from the earliest days of the Roman occupation down to the
latter part of the sixteenth century, and which bear the superscription
of innumerable kings and dukes and princes of various climes.
Of the wave of pilgrims which now occupies our attention you may see a
record in the first window in the clerestory of the choir on the north
side. There, beneath a Virgin enthroned and the blazon of the bishop,
Regnault de Mouçon, are two groups which show what manner of men were
they who came to swell the tide of workers for Our Lady of Chartres, and
through whose aid, says the chronicler, the piers, the vaults and the
altars of the Cathedral rose as if by magic.
The Chapter was not content to sit idly and wait for miracles. They had
recourse to human means. To obtain contributions towards the expense of
this _mestre maison de la Reine des Cieux_, they sent priests afar to
collect in all the countries and cathedrals of Europe. Now a young
Englishman who had been studying in the schools of Paris and was
returning home passed by Soissons by chance and entered the church. A
Chartrain preacher was describing in eloquent and touching terms the
disasters that had befallen Notre-Dame of Chartres. The audience was so
moved by his eloquence that they all emptied their purses in response to
his appeal. But the young Englishman had nothing to give except a golden
necklace, which he intended for the girl he loved in London. Moved by
the words of the preacher, after a long struggle, he made the offering
of this necklace and, leaving Soissons, set out for the sea, passing the
night in the barn of a friendly innkeeper, for, as we have seen, he was
penniless. Overwhelmed with fatigue, he fell asleep upon the straw. But
in the dead of night the barn was filled with a celestial light, and,
waking, he beheld three women of rare beauty, one of whom revealed
herself to him as the Lady of Chartres. Then she restored to him his
necklace, and he vowed to consecrate himself to her service. He returned
to his own country,
‘A Londres dont il fu nais,’
and after taking leave of his parents, withdrew to a desert island,
where he lived the chaste life of a hermit and enjoyed the ineffable
bliss of communion with his fair visitant.
Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England, when he heard of this miracle,
conceived a great veneration for the Church of Chartres, and, although
he was at that time at war with Philippe-Auguste, he welcomed,
encouraged and endowed with alms the emissaries of the Chapter, gave
them safe conduct through his lands, and himself did obeisance before
the sacred coffer and its relics. It was he who told the tale of this
miraculous vision to his sister, Countess of Blois, and he loved to
speak of it to the faithful on every occasion.
Thus the solemn voice of the Church, through the agency of these
emissaries, made itself heard throughout the land, promising
‘indulgences’ to those who responded generously to her appeals, and
threatening with anathemas those who dared to pillage the convoys of the
pilgrims. The inhabitants of Château-Landon, as our poet relates,
stirred, man and woman alike, by the discourse of their pastor, resolved
to load a waggon with wheat and take it to aid the workers at Chartres.
They yoked themselves to the waggon and began to pull with all their
strength, but the road was so heavy that they made but slow progress.
Ere they reached Chartres they ran short of provisions. The villagers
gave them bread out of their small store, and behold, the loaves of
bread were multiplied unto them, and they found, when they had eaten,
that the villagers had as many loaves as they had had at first.
The inhabitants of Bonneval, of Puiset, of Pithiviers and of Corbeville,
filled with a like spirit and parting on a like errand, experienced
similar miracles, thanks to ‘la dame, qui est salu de cors et d’ame.’
The Bretons, also, who were established at Chartres in the street called
La Bretonnerie, met together and decided to go out together to
Berchères-l’Évêque and bring back as their tribute a waggon-load of
stone, a task in which none but a Breton born should take a hand. They
set out, therefore, one evening, every man of them who could help with
collar or trace, but ere they could regain the town with their burden
the sun went down behind a thick bank of clouds; there was no moon nor
any light, but in marvellous wise an obscure and dreadful night was
upon them. The unhappy pilgrims soon lost their path, and wandered
astray over the vast plains of La Beauce. Blind terror seized their
hearts, but God sent three brands of flaming fire before them to lighten
their way. Rejoicing and amazed, they regained the road to Chartres,
whose _iglise et la tour_ (church and the tower) were rendered visible
by these heavenly torches. Then they deposited their offering and spread
abroad the news of the miracle which they had beheld.
Of another sort was the marvellous deliverance of a rich merchant of
Aquitaine, who, whilst he was bringing on his horse a barrel of oil for
the lamps of Notre-Dame, was made prisoner by the English soldiers of
Cœur-de-Lion. To him, in answer to his prayer, the Virgin appeared,
and she enabled him to pass out of the prison into which he had been
thrown, without the knowledge of his gaolers.
The fame of these and other wonders of the sort, narrated by the
pilgrims and repeated by the inhabitants of the town, soon filled the
countryside and spread to the more distant provinces. The renown of the
Church of Chartres filled the land and reached beyond the seas. In La
Beauce every hamlet was eager to contribute something to its glory.
Those who had no possessions to offer gave their services loading and
drawing vehicles: the roads were crowded with these humble servants of
the Lord. The blind, the dumb, the lame and the halt awaited in each
village the passing of the pilgrims and besought to be allowed to join
their company. Rich and poor, all came to Chartres with their offerings,
so that, in the words of the chronicler, money came to support the
workmen, rather from the hand of Providence than human purses.[69]
The deduction of the historian from the legends of our Trouvère is one
which we shall find illustrated by the Cathedral windows. It is, that
this Cathedral is a popular and national monument, built by the free
labour of the people gathered together freely from all parts of France,
joining and rejoicing in the new democratic movement of the Communes,
and recording, therefore, in stone and glass their new aspirations,
their new dignity.