TOWERS AND PORTALS
For a first visit to Chartres, choose some pleasant morning when the
lights are soft, for one wants to be welcome, and the cathedral has
moods, at times severe. At best, the Beauce is a country none too
gay.
The first glimpse that is caught, and the first that was meant to be
caught, is that of the two spires. With all the education that
Normandy and the Ile de France can give, one is still ignorant. The
spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture,
and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment
almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at
a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell,
for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man's
aspirations were highest. Yet nine persons out of ten--perhaps
ninety-nine in a hundred--who come within sight of the two spires of
Chartres will think it a jest if they are told that the smaller of
the two, the simpler, the one that impresses them least, is the one
which they are expected to recognize as the most perfect piece of
architecture in the world. Perhaps the French critics might deny
that they make any such absolute claim; in that case you can ask
them what their exact claim is; it will always be high enough to
astonish the tourist.
Astonished or not, we have got to take this southern spire of the
Chartres Cathedral as the object of serious study, and before taking
it as art, must take it as history. The foundations of this tower--
always to be known as the "old tower"--are supposed to have been
laid in 1091, before the first crusade. The fleche was probably half
a century later (1145-70). The foundations of the new tower,
opposite, were laid not before 1110, when also the portal which
stands between them, was begun with the three lancet windows above
it, but not the rose. For convenience, this old facade--including
the portal and the two towers, but not the fleches, and the three
lancet windows, but not the rose--may be dated as complete about
1150.
Originally the whole portal--the three doors and the three lancets--
stood nearly forty feet back, on the line of the interior
foundation, or rear wall of the towers. This arrangement threw the
towers forward, free on three sides, as at Poitiers, and gave room
for a parvis, before the portal,--a porch, roofed over, to protect
the pilgrims who always stopped there to pray before entering the
church. When the church was rebuilt after the great fire of 1194,
and the architect was required to enlarge the interior, the old
portal and lancets were moved bodily forward, to be flush with the
front walls of the two towers, as you see the facade to-day; and the
facade itself was heightened, to give room for the rose, and to
cover the loftier pignon and vaulting behind. Finally, the wooden
roof, above the stone vault, was masked by the Arcade of Kings and
its railing, completed in the taste of Philip the Hardy, who reigned
from 1270 to 1285.
These changes have, of course, altered the values of all the parts.
The portal is injured by being thrown into a glare of light, when it
was intended to stand in shadow, as you will see in the north and
south porches over the transept portals. The towers are hurt by
losing relief and shadow; but the old fleche is obliged to suffer
the cruellest wrong of all by having its right shoulder hunched up
by half of a huge rose and the whole of a row of kings, when it was
built to stand free, and to soar above the whole facade from the top
of its second storey. One can easily figure it so and replace the
lost parts of the old facade, more or less at haphazard, from the
front of Noyon.
What an outrage it was you can see by a single glance at the new
fleche opposite. The architect of 1500 has flatly refused to submit
to such conditions, and has insisted, with very proper self-respect,
on starting from the balustrade of the Arcade of Kings as his level.
Not even content with that, he has carried up his square tower
another lofty storey before he would consent to touch the heart of
his problem, the conversion of the square tower into the octagon
fleche. In doing this, he has sacrificed once more the old fleche;
but his own tower stands free as it should.
At Vendome, when you go there, you will be in a way to appreciate
still better what happened to the Chartres fleche; for the clocher
at Vendome, which is of the same date,--Viollet-le-Duc says earlier,
and Enlart, "after 1130,"--stood and still stands free, like an
Italian campanile, which gives it a vast advantage. The tower of
Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, also after 1130, stands free, above the second
storey. Indeed, you will hardly find, in the long list of famous
French spires, another which has been treated with so much indignity
as this, the greatest and most famous of all; and perhaps the most
annoying part of it is that you must be grateful to the architect of
1195 for doing no worse. He has, on the contrary, done his best to
show respect for the work of his predecessor, and has done so well
that, handicapped as it is, the old tower still defies rivalry.
Nearly three hundred and fifty feet high, or, to be exact, 106.5
metres from the church floor, it is built up with an amount of
intelligence and refinement that leaves to unprofessional visitors
no chance to think a criticism--much less to express one. Perhaps--
when we have seen more--and feel less--who knows?--but certainly not
now!
"The greatest and surely the most beautiful monument of this kind
that we possess in France," says Viollet-le-Duc; but although an
ignorant spectator must accept the architect's decision on a point
of relative merit, no one is compelled to accept his reasons, as
final. "There is no need to dwell," he continues, "upon the beauty
and the grandeur of composition in which the artist has given proof
of rare sobriety, where all the effects are obtained, not by
ornaments, but by the just and skilful proportion of the different
parts. The transition, so hard to adjust, between the square base
and the octagon of the fleche, is managed and carried out with an
address which has not been surpassed in similar monuments." One
stumbles a little at the word "adresse." One never caught one's self
using the word in Norman churches. Your photographs of Bayeux or
Boscherville or Secqueville will show you at a glance whether the
term "adresse" applies to them. Even Vendome would rather be praised
for "droiture" than for "adresse."--Whether the word "adresse" means
cleverness, dexterity, adroitness, or simple technical skill, the
thing itself is something which the French have always admired more
than the Normans ever did. Viollet-le-Duc himself seems to be a
little uncertain whether to lay most stress on the one or the other
quality: "If one tries to appreciate the conception of this tower,"
quotes the Abbe Bulteau (11,84), "one will see that it is as frank
as the execution is simple and skilful. Starting from the bottom,
one reaches the summit of the fleche without marked break; without
anything to interrupt the general form of the building. This
clocher, whose base is broad (pleine), massive, and free from
ornament, transforms itself, as it springs, into a sharp spire with
eight faces, without its being possible to say where the massive
construction ends and the light construction begins."
Granting, as one must, that this concealment of the transition is a
beauty, one would still like to be quite sure that the Chartres
scheme is the best. The Norman clochers being thrown out, and that
at Vendome being admittedly simple, the Clocher de Saint-Jean on the
Church of Saint-Germain at Auxerre seems to be thought among the
next in importance, although it is only about one hundred and sixty
feet in height (forty-nine metres), and therefore hardly in the same
class with Chartres. Any photograph shows that the Auxerre spire is
also simple; and that at Etampes you have seen already to be of the
Vendome rather than of the Chartres type. The clocher at Senlis is
more "habile"; it shows an effort to be clever, and offers a
standard of comparison; but the mediaeval architects seem to have
thought that none of them bore rivalry with Laon for technical
skill. One of these professional experts, named Villard de
Honnecourt, who lived between 1200 and 1250, left a notebook which
you can see in the vitrines of the Bibliotheque Nationale in the Rue
Richelieu, and which is the source of most that is known about the
practical ideas of mediaeval architects. He came to Chartres, and,
standing here before the doors, where we are standing, he made a
rough drawing, not of the tower, but of the rose, which was then
probably new, since it must have been planned between 1195 and 1200.
Apparently the tower did not impress him strongly, for he made no
note of it; but on the other hand, when he went to Laon, he became
vehement in praise of the cathedral tower there, which must have
been then quite new: "I have been in many countries, as you can find
in this book. In no place have I ever such a tower seen as that of
Laon.--J'ai este en mult de tieres, si cum vus pores trover en cest
livre. En aucun liu onques tel tor ne vi com est cele de Loon." The
reason for this admiration is the same that Viollet-le-Duc gives for
admiring the tower of Chartres--the "adresse" with which the square
is changed into the octagon. Not only is the tower itself changed
into the fleche without visible junction, under cover of four corner
tourelles, of open work, on slender columns, which start as squares;
but the tourelles also convert themselves into octagons in the very
act of rising, and end in octagon fleches that carry up--or once
carried up--the lines of profile to the central fleche that soared
above them. Clearly this device far surpassed in cleverness the
scheme of Chartres, which was comparatively heavy and structural,
the weights being adjusted for their intended work, while the
transformation at Laon takes place in the air, and challenges
discovery in defiance of one's keenest eyesight. "Regard... how the
tourelles pass from one disposition to another, in rising! Meditate
on it!"
The fleche of Laon is gone, but the tower and tourelles are still
there to show what the architects of the thirteenth century thought
their most brilliant achievement. One cannot compare Chartres
directly with any of its contemporary rivals, but one can at least
compare the old spire with the new one which stands opposite and
rises above it. Perhaps you will like the new best. Built at a time
which is commonly agreed to have had the highest standard of taste,
it does not encourage tourist or artist to insist on setting up
standards of his own against it. Begun in 1507, it was finished in
1517. The dome of Saint Peter's at Rome, over which Bramante and
Raphael and Michael Angelo toiled, was building at the same time;
Leonardo da Vinci was working at Amboise; Jean Bullant, Pierre
Lescot, and their patron, Francis I, were beginning their
architectural careers. Four hundred years, or thereabouts, separated
the old spire from the new one; and four hundred more separate the
new one from us. If Viollet-le-Duc, who himself built Gothic spires,
had cared to compare his fleches at Clermont-Ferrand with the new
fleche at Chartres, he might perhaps have given us a rule where
"adresse" ceases to have charm, and where detail becomes tiresome;
but in the want of a schoolmaster to lay down a law of taste, you
can admire the new fleche as much as you please. Of course, one sees
that the lines of the new tower are not clean, like those of the
old; the devices that cover the transition from the square to the
octagon are rather too obvious; the proportion of the fleche to the
tower quite alters the values of the parts; a rigid classical taste
might even go so far as to hint that the new tower, in comparison
with the old, showed signs of a certain tendency toward a dim and
distant vulgarity. There can be no harm in admitting that the new
tower is a little wanting in repose for a tower whose business is to
counterpoise the very classic lines of the old one; but no law
compels you to insist on absolute repose in any form of art; if such
a law existed, it would have to deal with Michael Angelo before it
dealt with us. The new tower has many faults, but it has great
beauties, as you can prove by comparing it with other late Gothic
spires, including those of Viollet-le-Duc. Its chief fault is to be
where it is. As a companion to the crusades and to Saint Bernard, it
lacks austerity. As a companion to the Virgin of Chartres, it
recalls Diane de Poitiers.
In fact, the new tower, which in years is four centuries younger
than its neighbour, is in feeling fully four hundred years older. It
is self-conscious if not vain; its coiffure is elaborately arranged
to cover the effects of age, and its neck and shoulders are covered
with lace and jewels to hide a certain sharpness of skeleton. Yet it
may be beautiful, still; the poets derided the wrinkles of Diane de
Poitiers at the very moment when King Henry II idealized her with
the homage of a Don Quixote; an atmosphere of physical beauty and
decay hangs about the whole Renaissance.
One cannot push these resemblances too far, even for the twelfth
century and the old tower. Exactly what date the old tower
represents, as a social symbol, is a question that might be as much
disputed as the beauty of Diane de Poitiers, and yet half the
interest of architecture consists in the sincerity of its reflection
of the society that builds. In mere time, by actual date, the old
tower represents the second crusade, and when, in 1150, Saint
Bernard was elected chief of that crusade in this very cathedral,--
or rather, in the cathedral of 1120, which was burned,--the workmen
were probably setting in mortar the stones of the fleche as we now
see them; yet the fleche does not represent Saint Bernard in
feeling, for Saint Bernard held the whole array of church-towers in
horror as signs merely of display, wealth and pride. The fleche
rather represents Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, Abbot Peter the
Venerable of Cluny, Abbot Abelard of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, and
Queen Eleanor of Guienne, who had married Louis-le-Jeune in 1137;
who had taken the cross from Saint Bernard in 1147; who returned
from the Holy Land in 1149; and who compelled Saint Bernard to
approve her divorce in 1152. Eleanor and Saint Bernard were
centuries apart, yet they lived at the same time and in the same
church. Speaking exactly, the old tower represents neither of them;
the new tower itself is hardly more florid than Eleanor was; perhaps
less so, if one can judge from the fashions of the court-dress of
her time. The old tower is almost Norman, while Eleanor was wholly
Gascon, and Gascony was always florid without being always correct.
The new tower, if it had been built in 1150, like the old one, would
have expressed Eleanor perfectly, even in height and apparent effort
to dwarf its mate, except that Eleanor dwarfed her husband without
an effort, and both in art and in history the result lacked harmony.
Be the contrast what it may, it does not affect the fact that no
other church in France has two spires that need be discussed in
comparison with these. Indeed, no other cathedral of the same class
has any spires at all, and this superiority of Chartres gave most of
its point to a saying that "with the spires of Chartres, the choir
of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, and the facade of Rheims," one
could make a perfect church--for us tourists.
The towers have taken much time, though they are the least religious
and least complicated part of church architecture, and in no way
essential to the church; indeed, Saint Bernard thought them an
excrescence due to pride and worldliness, and this is merely Saint
Bernard's way of saying that they were an ornament created to
gratify the artistic sense of beauty. Beautiful as they are, one's
eyes must drop at last down to the church itself. If the spire
symbolizes aspiration, the door symbolizes the way; and the portal
of Chartres is the type of French doors; it stands first in the
history of Gothic art; and, in the opinion of most Gothic artists,
first in the interest of all art, though this is no concern of ours.
Here is the Way to Eternal Life as it was seen by the Church and the
Art of the first crusade!
The fortune of this monument has been the best attested Miracle de
la Vierge in the long list of the Virgin's miracles, for it comes
down, practically unharmed, through what may with literal accuracy
be called the jaws of destruction and the flames of hell. Built some
time in the first half of the twelfth century, it passed, apparently
unscathed, through the great fire of 1194 which burnt out the church
behind, and even the timber interior of the towers in front of it.
Owing to the enormous mass of timber employed in the structure of
the great churches, these recurrent fires were as destructive as
fire can be made, yet not only the portals with their statuary and
carving, but also the lancet windows with their glass, escaped the
flames; and, what is almost equally strange, escaped also the hand
of the builder afterwards, who, if he had resembled other
architects, would have made a new front of his own, but who, with
piety unexampled, tenderly took the old stones down, one by one, and
replaced them forty feet in advance of their old position. The
English wars and the wars of religion brought new dangers, sieges,
and miseries; the revolution of 1792 brought actual rapine and
waste; boys have flung stones at the saints; architects have wreaked
their taste within and without; fire after fire has calcined the
church vaults; the worst wrecker of all, the restorer of the
nineteenth century, has prowled about it; yet the porch still
stands, mutilated but not restored, burned but not consumed, as
eloquent a witness to the power and perfections of Our Lady as it
was seven hundred years ago, and perhaps more impressive.
You will see portals and porches more or less of the same period
elsewhere in many different places,--at Paris, Le Mans, Sens, Autun,
Vezelay, Clermont-Ferrand, Moissac, Arles,--a score of them; for the
same piety has protected them more than once; but you will see no
other so complete or so instructive, and you may search far before
you will find another equally good in workmanship. Study of the
Chartres portal covers all the rest. The feeling and motive of all
are nearly the same, or vary only to suit the character of the
patron saint; and the point of all is that this feeling is the
architectural child of the first crusade. At Chartres one can read
the first crusade in the portal, as at Mont-Saint-Michel in the
Aquilon and the promenoir.
The Abbe Bulteau gives reason for assuming the year 1117 as the
approximate date of the sculpture about the west portal, and you saw
at Mont-Saint-Michel, in the promenoir of Abbot Roger II, an
accurately dated work of the same decade; but whatever the date of
the plan, the actual work and its spirit belong to 1145 or
thereabouts, Some fifty years had passed since the crusaders
streamed through Constantinople to Antioch and Jerusalem, and they
were daily going and returning. You can see the ideas they brought
back with the relics and missals and enamels they bought in
Byzantium. Over the central door is the Christ, which might be
sculptured after a Byzantine enamel, with its long nimbus or aureole
or glory enclosing the whole figure. Over the left door is an
Ascension, bearing the same stamp; and over the right door, the
seated Virgin, with her crown and her two attendant archangels, is
an empress. Here is the Church, the Way, and the Life of the twelfth
century that we have undertaken to feel, if not to understand!
First comes the central doorway, and above it is the glory of
Christ, as the church at Chartres understood Christ in the year
1150; for the glories of Christ were many, and the Chartres Christ
is one. Whatever Christ may have been in other churches, here, on
this portal, he offers himself to his flock as the herald of
salvation alone. Among all the imagery of these three doorways,
there is no hint of fear, punishment, or damnation, and this is the
note of the whole time. Before 1200, the Church seems not to have
felt the need of appealing habitually to terror; the promise of hope
and happiness was enough; even the portal at Autun, which displays a
Last Judgment, belonged to Saint Lazarus the proof and symbol of
resurrection. A hundred years later, every church portal showed
Christ not as Saviour but as Judge, and He presided over a Last
Judgment at Bourges and Amiens, and here on the south portal, where
the despair of the damned is the evident joy of the artist, if it is
not even sometimes a little his jest, which is worse. At Chartres
Christ is identified with His Mother, the spirit of love and grace,
and His Church is the Church Triumphant.
Not only is fear absent; there is not even a suggestion of pain;
there is not a martyr with the symbol of his martyrdom; and what is
still more striking, in the sculptured life of Christ, from the
Nativity to the Ascension, which adorns the capitals of the columns,
the single scene that has been omitted is the Crucifixion. There, as
everywhere in this portal, the artists seem actually to have gone
out of their way in order to avoid a suggestion of suffering. They
have pictured Christ and His Mother in all the other events of their
lives; they have represented evangelists; apostles; the twenty-four
old men of the Apocalypse; saints, prophets, kings, queens, and
princes, by the score; the signs of the zodiac, and even the seven
liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and music; everything is there except misery.
Perhaps Our Lady of Chartres was known to be peculiarly gracious and
gentle, and this may partially account also for the extreme
popularity of her shrine; but whatever the reason, her church was
clearly intended to show only this side of her nature, and to
impress it on her Son. You can see it in the grave and gracious face
and attitude of the Christ, raising His hand to bless you as you
enter His kingdom; in the array of long figures which line the
entrance to greet you as you pass; in the expression of majesty and
mercy of the Virgin herself on her throne above the southern
doorway; never once are you regarded as a possible rebel, or
traitor, or a stranger to be treated with suspicion, or as a child
to be impressed by fear. Equally distinct, perhaps even more
emphatic, is the sculptor's earnestness to make you feel, without
direct insistence, that you are entering the Court of the Queen of
Heaven who is one with her Son and His Church. The central door
always bore the name of the "Royal Door," because it belonged to the
celestial majesty of Christ, and naturally bears the stamp of
royalty; but the south door belongs to the Virgin and to us. Stop a
moment to see how she receives us, remembering, or trying to
remember, that to the priests and artists who designed the portal,
and to the generations that went on the first and second crusades,
the Virgin in her shrine was at least as living, as real, as
personal an empress as the Basilissa at Constantinople!
On the lintel immediately above the doorway is a succession of small
groups: first, the Annunciation; Mary stands to receive the
Archangel Gabriel, who comes to announce to her that she is chosen
to be the Mother of God. The second is the Visitation, and in this
scene also Mary stands, but she already wears a crown; at least, the
Abbe Bulteau says so, although time has dealt harshly with it. Then,
in the centre, follows the Nativity; Mary lies on a low bed,
beneath, or before, a sort of table or cradle on which lies the
Infant, while Saint Joseph stands at the bed's head. Then the angel
appears, directing three shepherds to the spot, filling the rest of
the space.
In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed,
for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at
Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-
mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her
people to share. The Virgin of Chartres was the greatest of all
queens, but the most womanly of women, as we shall see; and her
double character is sustained throughout her palace. She was also
intellectually gifted in the highest degree. In the upper zone you
see her again, at the Presentation in the Temple, supporting the
Child Jesus on the altar, while Simeon aids. Other figures bring
offerings. The voussures of the arch above contain six archangels,
with curious wings, offering worship to the Infant and His Imperial
Mother. Below are the signs of the zodiac; the Fishes and the Twins.
The rest of the arch is filled by the seven liberal arts, with
Pythagoras, Aristotle, Cicero, Euclid, Nicomachus, Ptolemy, and
Priscian as their representatives, testifying to the Queen's
intellectual superiority.
In the centre sits Mary, with her crown on her head and her Son in
her lap, enthroned, receiving the homage of heaven and earth; of all
time, ancient and modern; of all thought, Christian and Pagan; of
all men, and all women; including, if you please, your homage and
mine, which she receives without question, as her due; which she
cannot be said to claim, because she is above making claims; she is
empress. Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported the
Child, Who looks directly forward, repeating the Mother's attitude,
and raises His right hand to bless, while His left rests on the orb
of empire. She and her Child are one.
All this was noble beyond the nobility of man, but its earthly form
was inspired by the Empire rather than by the petty royalty of
Louis-le-Gros or his pious queen Alix of Savoy. One mark of the
period is the long, oval nimbus; another is the imperial character
of the Virgin; a third is her unity with the Christ which is the
Church. To us, the mark that will distinguish the Virgin of
Chartres, or, if you prefer, the Virgin of the Crusades, is her
crown and robes and throne. According to M. Rohault de Fleury's
"Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge" (11, 62), the Virgin's headdress
and ornaments had been for long ages borrowed from the costume of
the Empresses of the East in honour of the Queen of Heaven. No doubt
the Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin recognized by the Empress
Helena, mother of Constantine, and was at least as old as Helena's
pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326. She was not a Western, feudal queen,
nor was her Son a feudal king; she typified an authority which the
people wanted, and the fiefs feared; the Pax Romana; the omnipotence
of God in government. In all Europe, at that time, there was no
power able to enforce justice or to maintain order, and no symbol of
such a power except Christ and His Mother and the Imperial Crown.
This idea is very different from that which was the object of our
pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel; but since all Chartres is to be one
long comment upon it, you can lay the history of the matter on the
shelf for study at your leisure, if you ever care to study into the
weary details of human illusions and disappointments, while here we
pray to the Virgin, and absorb ourselves in the art, which is your
pleasure and which shall not teach either a moral or a useful
lesson. The Empress Mary is receiving you at her portal, and whether
you are an impertinent child, or a foolish old peasant-woman, or an
insolent prince, or a more insolent tourist, she receives you with
the same dignity; in fact, she probably sees very little difference
between you. An empress of Russia to-day would probably feel little
difference in the relative rank of her subjects, and the Virgin was
empress over emperors, patriarchs, and popes. Any one, however
ignorant, can feel the sustained dignity of the sculptor's work,
which is asserted with all the emphasis he could put into it. Not
one of these long figures which line the three doorways but is an
officer or official in attendance on the Empress or her Son, and
bears the stamp of the Imperial Court. They are mutilated, but, if
they have been treated with indignity, so were often their temporal
rivals, torn to pieces, trampled on, to say nothing of being merely
beheaded or poisoned, in the Sacred Palace and the Hippodrome,
without losing that peculiar Oriental dignity of style which seems
to drape the least dignified attitudes. The grand air of the twelfth
century is something like that of a Greek temple; you can, if you
like, hammer every separate stone to pieces, but you cannot hammer
out the Greek style. There were originally twenty-four of these
statues, and nineteen remain. Beginning at the north end, and
passing over the first figure, which carries a head that does not
belong to it, notice the second, a king with a long sceptre of
empire, a book of law, and robes of Byzantine official splendour.
Beneath his feet is a curious woman's head with heavy braids of
hair, and a crown. The third figure is a queen, charming as a woman,
but particularly well-dressed, and with details of ornament and
person elaborately wrought; worth drawing, if one could only draw;
worth photographing with utmost care to include the strange support
on which she stands: a monkey, two dragons, a dog, a basilisk with a
dog's head. Two prophets follow--not so interesting;--prophets
rarely interest. Then comes the central bay: two queens who claim
particular attention, then a prophet, then a saint next the doorway;
then on the southern jamb-shafts, another saint, a king, a queen,
and another king. Last comes the southern bay, the Virgin's own, and
there stands first a figure said to be a youthful king; then a
strongly sculptured saint; next the door a figure called also a
king, but so charmingly delicate in expression that the robes alone
betray his sex; and who this exquisite young aureoled king may have
been who stands so close to the Virgin, at her right hand, no one
can now reveal. Opposite him is a saint who may be, or should be,
the Prince of the Apostles; then a bearded king with a broken
sceptre, standing on two dragons; and, at last, a badly mutilated
queen.
These statues are the Eginetan marbles of French art; from them all
modern French sculpture dates, or ought to date. They are singularly
interesting; as naif as the smile on the faces of the Greek
warriors, but no more grotesque than they. You will see Gothic
grotesques in plenty, and you cannot mistake the two intentions; the
twelfth century would sooner have tempted the tortures of every
feudal dungeon in Europe than have put before the Virgin's eyes any
figure that could be conceived as displeasing to her. These figures
are full of feeling, and saturated with worship; but what is most to
our purpose is the feminine side which they proclaim and insist
upon. Not only the number of the female figures, and their beauty,
but also the singularly youthful beauty of several of the males; the
superb robes they wear; the expression of their faces and their
figures; the details of hair, stuffs, ornaments, jewels; the
refinement and feminine taste of the whole, are enough to startle
our interest if we recognize what meaning they had to the twelfth
century.
These figures looked stiff and long and thin and ridiculous to
enlightened citizens of the eighteenth century, but they were made
to fit the architecture; if you want to know what an enthusiast
thinks of them, listen to M. Huysmans's "Cathedral." "Beyond a
doubt, the most beautiful sculpture in the world is in this place."
He can hardly find words to express his admiration for the queens,
and particularly for the one on the right of the central doorway.
"Never in any period has a more expressive figure been thus wrought
by the genius of man; it is the chef-d'oeuvre of infantile grace and
holy candour .... She is the elder sister of the Prodigal Son, the
one of whom Saint Luke does not speak, but who, if she existed,
would have pleaded the cause of the absent, and insisted, with the
father, that he should kill the fatted calf at his son's return."
The idea is charming if you are the returning son, as many twelfth-
century pilgrims must have thought themselves; but, in truth, the
figure is that of a queen; an Eleanor of Guienne; her position there
is due to her majesty, which bears witness to the celestial majesty
of the Court in which she is only a lady-in-waiting: and she is
hardly more humanly fascinating than her brother, the youthful king
at the Virgin's right hand, who has nothing of the Prodigal Son, but
who certainly has much of Lohengrin, or even--almost--Tristan.
The Abbe Bulteau has done his best to name these statues, but the
names would be only in your way. That the sculptor meant them for a
Queen of Sheba or a King of Israel has little to do with their
meaning in the twelfth century, when the people were much more
likely to have named them after the queens and kings they knew. The
whole charm lies for us in the twelfth-century humanity of Mary and
her Court; not in the scriptural names under which it was made
orthodox. Here, in this western portal, it stands as the crusaders
of 1100-50 imagined it; but by walking round the church to the porch
over the entrance to the north transept, you shall see it again as
Blanche of Castile and Saint Louis imagined it, a hundred years
later, so that you will know better whether the earthly attributes
are exaggerated or untrue.
Porches, like steeples, were rather a peculiarity of French
churches, and were studied, varied, one might even say petted, by
French architects to an extent hardly attempted elsewhere; but among
all the French porches, those of Chartres are the most famous. There
are two: one on the north side, devoted to the Virgin; the other, on
the south, devoted to the Son, "The mass of intelligence, knowledge,
acquaintance with effects, practical experience, expended on these
two porches of Chartres," says Viollet-le-Duc, "would be enough to
establish the glory of a whole generation of artists." We begin with
the north porch because it belonged to the Virgin; and it belonged
to the Virgin because the north was cold, bleak, sunless, windy, and
needed warmth, peace, affection, and power to protect against the
assaults of Satan and his swarming devils. There the all-suffering
but the all-powerful Mother received other mothers who suffered like
her, but who, as a rule, were not powerful. Traditionally in the
primitive church, the northern porch belonged to the women. When
they needed help, they came here, because it was the only place in
this world or in any other where they had much hope of finding even
a reception. See how Mary received them!
The porch extends the whole width of the transept, about one hundred
and twenty feet (37.65 metres), divided into three bays some twenty
feet deep, and covered with a stone vaulted roof supported on piers
outside. Begun toward 1215 under Philip Augustus, the architectural
part was finished toward 1225 under Louis VIII; and after his death
in 1226, the decorative work and statuary were carried on under the
regency of his widow, Blanche of Castile, and through the reign of
her son, Saint Louis (1235-70), until about 1275, when the work was
completed by Philip the Hardy. A gift of the royal family of France,
all the members of the family seem to have had a share in building
it, and several of their statues have been supposed to adorn it. The
walls are lined--the porch, in a religious sense, is inhabited--by
more than seven hundred figures, great and small, all, in one way or
another, devoted to the glory of the Queen of Heaven. You will see
that a hundred years have converted the Byzantine Empress into a
French Queen, as the same years had converted Alix of Savoy into
Blanche of Castile; but the note of majesty is the same, and the
assertion of power is, if possible, more emphatic.
The highest note is struck at once, in the central bay, over the
door, where you see the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven, a
favourite subject in art from very early times, and the dominant
idea of Mary's church. You see Mary on the left, seated on her
throne; on the right, seated on a precisely similar throne, is
Christ, Who holds up His right hand apparently to bless, since Mary
already bears the crown. Mary bends forward, with her hands raised
toward her Son, as though in gratitude or adoration or prayer, but
certainly not in an attitude of feudal homage. On either side, an
archangel swings a censer.
On the lintel below, on the left, is represented the death of Mary;
on the right, Christ carries, in the folds of His mantle, the soul
of Mary in the form of a little child, and at the same time blesses
the body which is carried away by angels--The Resurrection of Mary.
Below the lintel, supporting it, and dividing the doorway in halves,
is the trumeau,--the central pier,--a new part of the portal which
was unknown to the western door. Usually in the Virgin's churches,
as at Rheims, or Amiens or Paris, the Virgin herself, with her Son
in her arms, stands against this pier, trampling on the dragon with
the woman's head. Here, not the Virgin with the Christ, but her
mother Saint Anne stands, with the infant Virgin in her arms; while
beneath is, or was, Saint Joachim, her husband, among his flocks,
receiving from the Archangel Gabriel the annunciation.
So at the entrance the Virgin declares herself divinely Queen in her
own right; divinely born; divinely resurrected from death, on the
third day; seated by divine right on the throne of Heaven, at the
right hand of God, the Son, with Whom she is one.
Unless we feel this assertion of divine right in the Queen of
Heaven, apart from the Trinity, yet one with It, Chartres is
unintelligible. The extreme emphasis laid upon it at the church door
shows what the church means within. Of course, the assertion was not
strictly orthodox; perhaps, since we are not members of the Church,
we might be unnoticed and unrebuked if we start by suspecting that
the worship of the Virgin never was strictly orthodox; but Chartres
was hers before it ever belonged to the Church, and, like Lourdes in
our own time, was a shrine peculiarly favoured by her presence. The
mere fact that it was a bishopric had little share in its sanctity.
The bishop was much more afraid of Mary than he was of any Church
Council ever held.
Critics are doing their best to destroy the peculiar personal
interest of this porch, but tourists and pilgrims may be excused for
insisting on their traditional rights here, since the porch is
singular, even in the thirteenth century, for belonging entirely to
them and the royal family of France, subject only to the Virgin.
True artists, turned critics, think also less of rules than of
values, and no ignorant public can be trusted to join the critics in
losing temper judiciously over the date or correctness of a portrait
until they knew something of its motives and merits. The public has
always felt certain that some of the statues which stand against the
outer piers of this porch are portraits, and they see no force in
the objection that such decoration was not customary in the Church.
Many things at Chartres were not customary in the Church, although
the Church now prefers not to dwell on them. Therefore the student
returns to Viollet-le-Duc with his usual delight at finding at least
one critic whose sense of values is stronger than his sense of rule:
"Each statue," he says in his "Dictionary" (111, 166), "possesses
its personal character which remains graven on the memory like the
recollection of a living being whom one has known .... A large part
of the statues in the porches of Notre Dame de Chartres, as well as
of the portals of the Cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims, possess these
individual qualities, and this it is which explains why these
statues produce on the crowd so vivid an impression that it names
them, knows them, and attaches to each of them an idea, often a
legend."
Probably the crowd did so from the first moment they saw the
statues, and with good reason. At all events, they have attached to
two of the most individual figures on the north porch, two names,
perhaps the best known in France in the year 1226, but which since
the year 1300 can have conveyed only the most shadowy meaning to any
but pure antiquarians. The group is so beautiful as to be given a
plate to itself in the "Monographie" (number 26), as representing
Philip Hurepel and his wife Mahaut de Boulogne. So little could any
crowd, or even any antiquarian, at any time within six hundred years
have been likely to pitch on just these persons to associate with
Blanche of Castile in any kind of family unity, that the mere
suggestion seems wild; yet Blanche outlived Pierre by nearly twenty
years, and her power over this transept and porch ended only with
her death as regent in 1252.
Philippe, nicknamed Hurepel,--Boarskin,--was a "fils deFrance,"
whose father, Philip Augustus, had serious, not to say fatal,
difficulties with the Church about the legality of his marriage,
and was forced to abandon his wife, who died in 1201, after giving
birth to Hurepel in 1200. The child was recognized as legitimate,
and stood next to the throne, after his half-brother Louis, who was
thirteen years older. Almost at his birth he was affianced to
Mahaut, Countess of Boulogne, and the marriage was celebrated in
1216. Rich and strongly connected, Hurepel naturally thought
himself--and was--head of the royal family next to the King, and
when his half-brother, Louis VIII, died in 1226, leaving only a son,
afterwards Saint Louis, a ten-year-old boy, to succeed, Hurepel very
properly claimed the guardianship of his infant nephew, and deeply
resented being excluded by Queen Blanche from what he regarded--
perhaps with justice--as his right. Nearly all the great lords and
the members of the royal family sided with him, and entered into a
civil war against Blanche, at the moment when these two porches of
Chartres were building, between 1228 and 1230. The two greatest
leaders of the conspiracy were Hurepel, whom we are expected to
recognize on the pier of this porch, and Pierre Mauclerc, of
Brittany and Dreux, whom we have no choice but to admit on the
trumeau of the other. In those days every great feudal lord was more
or less related by blood to the Crown, and although Blanche of
Castile was also a cousin as well as queen-mother, they hated her as
a Spanish intruder with such hatred as men felt in an age when
passions were real.
That these two men should be found here, associated with Blanche in
the same work, at the same time, under the same roof, is a fantastic
idea, and students can feel in this political difficulty a much
stronger objection to admitting Hurepel to Queen Blanche's porch
than any supposed rule of Church custom; yet the first privilege of
tourist ignorance is the right to see, or try to see, their
thirteenth century with thirteenth-century eyes. Passing by the
statues of Philip and Mahaut, and stepping inside the church door,
almost the first figure that the visitor sees on lifting his eyes to
the upper windows of the transept is another figure of Philippe
Hurepel, in glass, on his knees, with clasped hands, before an
altar; and to prevent possibility of mistake his blazoned coat bears
the words: "Phi: Conte de Bolone." Apparently he is the donor, for,
in the rose above, he sits in arms on a white horse with a shield
bearing the blazon of France. Obliged to make his peace with the
Queen in 1230, Hurepel died in 1233 or 1234, while Blanche was still
regent, and instantly took his place as of right side by side with
Blanche's castles of Castile among the great benefactors of the
church.
Beneath the next rose is Mahaut herself, as donor, bearing her
husband's arms of France, suggesting that the windows must have been
given together, probably before Philip's death in 1233, since Mahaut
was married again in 1238, this time to Alfonso of Portugal, who
repudiated her in 1249, and left her to die in her own town of
Boulogne in 1258. Lastly, in the third window of the series, is her
daughter Jeanne,--"Iehenne,"--who was probably born before 1220, and
who was married in 1236 to Gaucher de Chatillon, one of the greatest
warriors of his time. Jeanne also--according to the Abbe Bulteau
(111, 225)--bears the arms of her father and mother; which seems to
suggest that she gave this window before her marriage. These three
windows, therefore, have the air of dating at least as early as 1233
when Philip Hurepel died, while next them follow two more roses, and
the great rose of France, presumably of the same date, all scattered
over with the castles of Queen Blanche. The motive of the porch
outside is repeated in the glass, as it should be, and as the Saint
Anne of the Rose of France, within, repeats the Saint Anne on the
trumeau of the portal. The personal stamp of the royal family is
intense, but the stamp of the Virgin's personality is intenser
still. In the presence of Mary, not only did princes hide their
quarrels, but they also put on their most courteous manners and the
most refined and even austere address. The Byzantine display of
luxury and adornment had vanished. All the figures suggest the
sanctity of the King and his sister Isabel; the court has the air of
a convent; but the idea of Mary's majesty is asserted through it
all. The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, in
their judgment, could set off the authority, elegance, and
refinement of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waiting
are there, figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteen
Beatitudes; and, indeed, though men are plenty and some of them are
handsome, women give the tone, the charm, and mostly the
intelligence. The Court of Mary is feminine, and its charms are
Grace and Love; perhaps even more grace than love, in a social
sense, if you look at Beauty and Friendship among Beatitudes.
M. Huysmans insists that this sculpture is poor in comparison with
his twelfth-century Prodigal Daughter, and I hope you can enter into
the spirit of his enthusiasm; but other people prefer the
thirteenth-century work, and think it equals the best Greek.
Approaching, or surpassing this,--as you like,--is the sculpture you
will see at Rheims, of the same period, and perhaps the same hands;
but, for our purpose, the Queen of Sheba, here in the right-hand
bay, is enough, because you can compare it on the spot with M.
Huysmans's figure on the western portal, which may also be a Queen
of Sheba, who, as spouse of Solomon, typified the Church, and
therefore prefigured Mary herself. Both are types of Court beauty
and grace, one from the twelfth century, the other from the
thirteenth, and you can prefer which you please; but you want to
bear in mind that each, in her time, pleased the Virgin. You can
even take for a settled fact that these were the types of feminine
beauty and grace which pleased the Virgin beyond all others.
The purity of taste, feeling, and manners which stamps the art of
these centuries, as it did the Court of Saint Louis and his mother,
is something you will not wholly appreciate till you reach the
depravity of the Valois; but still you can see how exquisite the
Virgin's taste was, and how pure. You can also see how she shrank
from the sight of pain. Here, in the central bay, next to King
David, who stands at her right hand, is the great figure of Abraham
about to sacrifice Isaac. If there is one subject more revolting
than another to a woman who typifies the Mother, it is this subject
of Abraham and Isaac, with its compound horror of masculine
stupidity and brutality. The sculptor has tried to make even this
motive a pleasing one. He has placed Abraham against the column in
the correct harshness of attitude, with his face turned aside and
up, listening for his orders; but the little Isaac, with hands and
feet tied, leans like a bundle of sticks against his father's knee
with an expression of perfect faith and confidence, while Abraham's
left hand quiets him and caresses the boy's face, with a movement
that must have gone straight to Mary's heart, for Isaac always
prefigured Christ.
The glory of Mary was not one of terror, and her porch contains no
appeal to any emotion but those of her perfect grace. If we were to
stay here for weeks, we should find only this idea worked into every
detail. The Virgin of the thirteenth century is no longer an
Empress; she is Queen Mother,--an idealized Blanche of Castile;--too
high to want, or suffer, or to revenge, or to aspire, but not too
high to pity, to punish, or to pardon. The women went to her porch
for help as naturally as babies to their mother; and the men, in her
presence, fell on their knees because they feared her intelligence
and her anger.
Not that all the men showed equal docility! We must go next, round
the church, to the south porch, which was the gift of Pierre
Mauclerc, Comte de Dreux, another member of the royal family, great-
grandson of Louis VI, and therefore second cousin to Louis VIII and
Philip Hurepel. Philip Augustus, his father's first cousin, married
the young man, in 1212, to Alix, heiress of the Duchy of Brittany,
and this marriage made him one of the most powerful vassals of the
Crown. He joined Philip Hurepel in resisting the regency of Queen
Blanche in 1227, and Blanche, after a long struggle, caused him to
be deposed in 1230. Pierre was obliged to submit, and was pardoned.
Until 1236, he remained in control of the Duchy of Brittany, but
then was obliged to surrender his power to his son, and turned his
turbulent activity against the infidels in Syria and Egypt, dying in
1250, on his return from Saint Louis's disastrous crusade. Pierre de
Dreux was a masculine character,--a bad cleric, as his nickname
Mauclerc testified, but a gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, and,
what is more to our purpose, a man of taste. He built the south
porch at Chartres, apparently as a memorial of his marriage with
Alix in 1212, and the statuary is of the same date with that of the
north porch, but, like that, it was not finished when Pierre died in
1250.
One would like to know whether Pierre preferred to take the southern
entrance, or whether he was driven there by the royal claim to the
Virgin's favour. The southern porch belongs to the Son, as the
northern belongs to the Mother. Pierre never showed much deference
to women, and probably felt more at his ease under the protection of
the Son than of Mary; but in any case he showed as clearly as
possible what he thought on this question of persons. To Pierre,
Christ was first, and he asserted his opinion as emphatically as
Blanche asserted hers.
Which porch is the more beautiful is a question for artists to
discuss and decide, if they can. Either is good enough for us, whose
pose is ignorance, and whose pose is strictly correct; but apart
from its beauty or its art, there is also the question of feeling,
of motive, which puts the Porche de Dreux in contrast with the
Porche de France, and this is wholly within our competence. At the
outset, the central bay displays, above the doorway, Christ, on a
throne, raising His hands to show the stigmata, the wounds which
were the proof of man's salvation. At His right hand sits the
Mother,--without her crown; on His left, in equal rank with the
Mother, sits Saint John the Evangelist. Both are in the same
attitude of supplication as intercessors; there is no distinction in
rank or power between Mary and John, since neither has any power
except what Christ gives them. Pierre did not, indeed, put the
Mother on her knees before the Son, as you can see her at Amiens and
in later churches,--certainly bad taste in Mary's own palace; but he
allowed her no distinction which is not her strict right. The angels
above and around bear the symbols of the Passion; they are
unconscious of Mary's presence; they are absorbed in the perfections
of the Son. On the lintel just below is the Last Judgment, where
Saint Michael reappears, weighing the souls of the dead which Mary
and John above are trying to save from the strict justice of Christ.
The whole melodrama of Church terrors appears after the manner of
the thirteenth century, on this church door, without regard to
Mary's feelings; and below, against the trumeau, stands the great
figure of Christ,--the whole Church,--trampling on the lion and
dragon. On either side of the doorway stand six great figures of the
Apostles asserting themselves as the columns of the Church, and
looking down at us with an expression no longer calculated to calm
our fears or encourage extravagant hopes. No figure on this porch
suggests a portrait or recalls a memory.
Very grand, indeed, is this doorway; dignified, impressive, and
masculine to a degree seldom if ever equalled in art; and the left
bay rivals it. There, in the tympanum, Christ appears again;
standing; bearing on His head the crown royal; alone, except for the
two angels who adore, and surrounded only by the martyrs, His
witnesses. The right bay is devoted to Saint Nicholas and the Saints
Confessors who bear witness to the authority of Christ in faith. Of
the twenty-eight great figures, the officers of the royal court, who
make thus the strength of the Church beneath Christ, not one is a
woman. The masculine orthodoxy of Pierre Mauclerc has spared neither
sex nor youth; all are of a maturity which chills the blood,
excepting two, whose youthful beauty is heightened by the severity
of their surroundings, so that the Abbe Bulteau makes bold even to
say that "the two statues of Saint George and of Saint Theodore may
be regarded as the most beautiful of our cathedral, perhaps even as
the two masterpieces of statuary at the end of the thirteenth
century." On that point, let every one follow his taste; but one
reflection at least seems to force itself on the mind in comparing
these twenty-eight figures. Certainly the sword, however it may
compare with the pen in other directions, is in art more powerful
than all the pens, or volumes, or crosiers ever made. Your "Golden
Legend" and Roman Breviary are here the only guide-books worth
consulting, and the stories of young George and Theodore stand there
recorded; as their miracle under the walls of Antioch, during the
first crusade, is matter of history; but among these magnificent
figures one detects at a glance that it is not the religion or
sacred purity of the subject, or even the miracles or the
sufferings, which inspire passion for Saint George and Saint
Theodore, under the Abbe's robe; it is with him, as with the plain
boy and girl, simply youth, with lance and sword and shield.
These two figures stand in the outer embrasures of the left bay,
where they can be best admired, and perhaps this arrangement shows
what Perron de Dreux, as he was commonly called, loved most, in his
heart of hearts; but elsewhere, even in this porch, he relaxed his
severity, and became at times almost gracious to women. Good judges
have, indeed, preferred this porch to the northern one; but, be that
as you please, it contains seven hundred and eighty-three figures,
large and small, to serve for comparison. Among these, the female
element has its share, though not a conspicuous one; and even the
Virgin gets her rights, though not beside her Son. To see her, you
must stand outside in the square and, with a glass, look at the
central pignon, or gable, of the porch. There, just above the point
of the arch, you will see Mary on her throne, crowned, wearing her
royal robes, and holding the Child on her knees, with the two
archangels on either side offering incense. Pierre de Dreux, or some
one else, admitted at last that she was Queen Regent, although
evidently not eager to do so; and if you turn your glass up to the
gable of the transept itself, above the great rose and the colonnade
over it, you can see another and a colossal statue of the Virgin,
but standing, with the Child on her left arm. She seems to be
crowned, and to hold the globe in her right hand; but the Abbe
Bulteau says it is a flower. The two archangels are still there.
This figure is thought to have been a part of the finishing
decoration added by Philip the Fair in 1304.
In theology, Pierre de Dreux seems to show himself a more learned
clerk than his cousins of France, and, as an expression of the
meaning the church of Mary should externally display, the Porche de
Dreux, if not as personal, is as energetic as the Porche de France,
or the western portal. As we pass into the Cathedral, under the
great Christ, on the trumeau, you must stop to look at Pierre
himself. A bridegroom, crowned with flowers on his wedding-day, he
kneels in prayer, while two servants distribute bread to the poor.
Below, you see him again, seated with his wife Alix before a table
with one loaf, assisting at the meal they give to the poor. Pierre
kneels to God; he and his wife bow before the Virgin and the poor;--
but not to Queen Blanche!
Now let us enter!--