The great personages in the windows of St. Julien Cathedral looked down
upon a portentous spectacle on that day in the year 1133, when Henry I
of England stood holding in his arms his little grandson, Henry
Plantagenet, to be baptised by the Bishop of Le Mans. The vast throng
that gathered for this ceremony, both within and without the newly
completed cathedral, little thought that the helpless babe would one day
become not only Henry II, King of England, but also the ruler of the
mighty Angevin empire, which included all of England and the western
half of France. They could not have foreseen that this little one would
cause the House of Plantagenet to take its place in history as one of
the greatest of royal houses. Strange sights have these splendid old
windows gazed down upon, but never have they tempered the glare of the
sun for the christening of a babe who so widely outgrew the place of his
birth. In one way or another this cathedral has been connected with many
a royal family. In its archives we read that when in November, 1217, it
was decided to extend the choir over the Gallo-Roman wall, not only was
the consent of King Philip Augustus necessary, but also that of Queen
Berengaria, the widow of Richard Coeur de Lion. This double approval
was needed, since Philip Augustus, although overlord, had given Le Mans
to Queen Berengaria in settlement of her claims upon certain Norman
towns which he had captured. Perched upon a hill rising from the river
Sarthe the cathedral soars into the air from its lofty site as boldly as
befits the chief sanctuary of an embattled city boasting of more than
twenty sieges. Impressive as it is from the river, it is still more so
from the little plain which lies just below it inside the town. There is
hardly a cathedral whose east end is so beautifully revealed as is St.
Julien's from this viewpoint. We cannot help but be deeply impressed as
it swings out clear against the sky, girdled by its thirteen chapels,
hung about by its innumerable flying buttresses and to us rendered
specially alluring by the great area of window space filled with the
many lead lines and heavy iron saddle-bars which we have learnt to know
mean glazing of the thirteenth century. The view of the east end of an
elaborate Gothic church is always fascinating, but in this instance its
height above us, the great number of chapels and the unobstructed view
make it unique. The nave was constructed too early to be greatly
elaborated, but if compensation is needed, it is fully provided by the
thoroughly mediaeval feeling which awaits one on entering the little
square just before its west entrance. The opposite side of the square is
occupied by Le Grabatoire, an ancient dwelling built in the first half
of the sixteenth century and in an admirable state of preservation. The
traveller in France generally finds that buildings which surround an old
cathedral are so much more recent in construction that they provide a
jarring contrast. Here at Le Mans, on the contrary, its immediate
surroundings thoroughly imbue us with the spirit of the middle ages and
we are in a proper frame of mind to enter the portal and appreciate the
Old World beauty inside. The interior amply fulfills the promises of the
exterior. The luminous glory of the broad surfaces of the glass that
seem suspended about the lofty choir is something long to be remembered.
This is not the place to speak of the transepts because they were glazed
in the fifteenth century; they are very fine, especially the one to the
north. Oddly enough, the south end of the south transept has no window
at all; its large wall space serves as a back for the organ (see page
178). Let us begin our investigations with the nave. Its triforium is a
graceful gallery, but is not pierced, while the clerestory above it
contains only modern glass, and therefore they will not long detain us.
In the west front is one broad window of the round arched Norman type,
obviously of the period which we are now considering. Within a wide
border are square panels representing scenes from the life of St.
Julien, after whom the edifice is named. Although this window is very
broad, even for its early type, it is nevertheless not large enough to
appear alone in the great west wall, and as a result, it narrows the
appearance of the nave. When we move up into the choir and look back,
this effect becomes all the more noticeable, while the nave is even
further dwarfed by the fact that the architect, taking advantage of the
greater height of the transepts, placed a clerestory window just above
the point where the ridge pole of the nave joins the crossing. Thus the
lone west window and the clerestory opening just above the nave roof
combine to lower and contract that oldest part of the church. But to
return to the nave windows; all the lower range are small and all modern
except eight, the three western ones on each side and those over the two
smaller west entrances. Of these eight all but two are medallions. One
of them (the third from the west on the north side) is of interest
because it has a border consisting of four little panels on each side
enclosing figures. This sort of border is extremely rare, except in Tree
of Jesse windows, where the personages are sometimes used in this way to
help make up the border. An instance of this may be seen in the central
panel of the second triforium window on the south side of the choir and
it may also be noticed in the fifth window on the left in the east end
of Angers Cathedral. We have just said that all but two of these lower
nave lights are filled with medallions--of these two (the second and
third on the south side), one might write a book. The writer prefers the
second window to any other in France. It was made some time between 1093
and 1120 and represents the "Ascension." As this book is not written to
describe glass, but only to persuade the reader to view it, we will
content ourselves by saying "go and see." The blue and the ruby
backgrounds have a limpidity of colour that cannot be rivaled. Of the
third window it is fair to say that some of the panes were brought from
other embrasures of this church. The upper panel, enclosing a bust of
Christ, with the drapery of blue and a blue halo upon a background of
ruby sprinkled with blue stars, is most delightful. These two are indeed
treasures and are all that were left by the ravages of the great fire
which in 1120 destroyed the earlier church. Passing from the nave to the
choir we are at once struck by the grandiose effect there caused by the
loftier sweep of its lines. The choir chapels have lost nearly all their
original glazing, but fortunately that little gem, the Lady Chapel,
still has all its eleven windows filled with medallions. These
encircling chapels not only give great width to the choir, but still
further width is added by the fact that the ambulatory is double. The
first triforium that goes around above us is not pierced, but just
above it we find the spacious embrasures of the second triforium. These
latter are the largest of their kind the writer has ever seen; in fact,
they are large enough to be placed in the clerestory of most cathedrals.
Not satisfied with these, the architect has still further increased the
lighting of the choir and given greater scope for the glazier by placing
above this second triforium the lofty windows of the true clerestory,
those toward the west of six lancets each, and those toward the east of
two. All the panels of this great curtain of light are glazed in the
mosaic style, but the pieces of glass used are noticeably larger than we
have been accustomed to find in the medallion treatment. As a result,
the amount of leading is reduced and a great deal more colour meets our
eye, colour whose individual tones we can recognise, and not the sort,
which, conflicting with other colour, produces a confused purple. At St.
Julien Cathedral we get a richer tone from the medallions than we find
anywhere else, but this gain in richness is partially offset by losing
some of the sparkling gleam which would have resulted from smaller bits
of glass set in more leads. Perhaps some of our readers will agree with
Viollet-le-Duc and other great architects and writers, in regarding this
choir a finer monument of the thirteenth century than that of Bourges or
Chartres. If the nave of Le Mans Cathedral were as splendidly glazed as
the other parts of that edifice, we might have to reconsider our
opinion that Chartres affords the best chance for the student of that
early period to pursue his researches.