Royal Rheims! In this title, "apt alliteration's artful aid" not only
appeals to our ear, but is also fully justified by history. In its
splendid cathedral were crowned almost all the kings of France, the
sacred oil used in the ceremony having been, saith the old legend,
brought from heaven by a dove for the baptism in 496 of Clovis, King of
the Franks, and thereafter preserved in a sacred vessel locked away in
the tomb of St. Remi. Because of this having been for so many years, nay
centuries, the place of royal consecration, what more appropriate
decoration could have been devised for the great clerestory embrasures
than the series of the first thirty-six kings of France, each window
containing in its lower half the archbishop that consecrated the king
above him! All these seventy-two figures are seated, because convention
demanded this if the personage represented was dead. Down upon us from
their lofty station about the nave clerestory gleam these long rows of
the royalties and ecclesiastical dignitaries of France, a marvellous
exemplification of what colour in glass can accomplish. An echoing gleam
comes to us from the clerestory of the choir; but there the figures are
those of great bishops, not only of Rheims, but also of other cities in
its diocese, like Laon, Soissons, etc. At first thought it may seem bad
English to speak of a gleam of light as an echo of another gleam, but
before you criticise the expression, stand patiently for awhile in this
great house of God, looking up at these splendid windows; perhaps there
will at last come over you a feeling that in all this noble harmony of
colour, this blending of soft tones, there is--there must be--some dim
harmony of music. One never receives this peculiar impression except
from glass of the thirteenth century; later glass lacks the depth and
vibration of tone, even though it gains added brilliancy. Especially
splendid is the effect of the kings dominating the nave below. Those
near the transepts have a deep blue background, whilst a few close to
the west end have behind and around them a soft, rich red. There is no
other place where such sombre depth of hue can be seen in a clerestory
glazed during the thirteenth century. At Bourges they are magnificent,
but their beauty is of a different and brighter sort. Here at Rheims,
although raised high in the air, they yield the same dusky glow that
elsewhere we usually find in the medallion panels of the choir chapels
below. So wonderful are the windows above you that there is a fair
chance that you would have left the cathedral without noticing that
below there are no medallion windows at all; in fact, that practically
none of its lower panes are glazed in colour. This is owing to the
almost incredible folly of the monks of Rheims who, in the years
1739-68, removed the coloured glass from the lower embrasures to admit
more light. During the two years following October, 1755, they committed
the same act of vandalism in the church of St. Remi. The cathedral has
three fine rose windows, of which the western one with its bright-hued
gallery of kings below it is far the best. The north rose window is
good, although we miss the qualities which the north rose of Notre Dame
at Paris has taught us to expect. The south rose contains glass of the
sixteenth century and therefore seems pale and out of place amidst the
older glories. The west rosace should be seen toward sunset so as to get
the rays of the sun passing directly through it. Earlier in the day it
is almost gloomy in tone. There has been much discussion as to the
interpretation of the figures in the gallery of kings below, but now it
seems settled that it represents the coronation of the converted pagan
Clovis, King of the Franks. The windows of the transepts are glazed with
grisaille of a very greenish tone and somewhat darker than that
generally found at this time. Among them we observe one of the series of
bishops which has apparently crept away from its fellows in the choir
and come around the corner into the south transept. Although the bishop
series lacks, to some extent, the crude, almost savage glory of the
nave's stern array of kings, they are more carefully made. As in the
king windows, here also we find an upper and a lower row of personages,
but in addition, a feature very much out of the ordinary and which
should be remarked. Instead of placing two bishops below to balance the
two above, there is but one bishop below in each window, while the space
adjoining him is occupied by a fanciful representation of his cathedral.
There is no attempt to accurately portray the building, although the
glass artist might as well have done so, for he has gone to the pains of
making no two of these little cathedral pictures alike. So minutely has
he gone into detail that each has a tiny rose window and each rose is
markedly different from the others. The idea is a quaint one and shows
the artist to have been fertile in ideas. So dark are the faces of the
bishops as to make them look in one or two cases as though they were
wearing masks. This effect is heightened by the fact that the eyes are
glazed in lighter hues.
In the midst of all this gorgeous and sparkling colour, what a splendid
picture may we not conjure up of the scene on the 17th day of July,
1429, when Charles VII, led in by Joan of Arc, had here the kingly crown
placed upon his brow. With what vast satisfaction must the grand old
kings have gleamed and glowed in sombre delight that their glorious
cathedral was once more French, once more fulfilling its centuries-old
duty of consecrating a French king, and especially that all this had
been effected by a staunch French maid, than whom patriotism has never
had a more worthy exemplar. It was but common justice that during the
act of coronation of the king to whom she had restored not only a
throne, but also a united people, she stood at the foot of the altar
holding aloft her victorious standard. A chronicler of the time truly
said that having shared in all the hardships she richly deserved to
share in the honours.
Not only in the cathedral do we glass hunters find justification for the
title "Royal Rheims." Once more we shall see a row of French kings, this
time in the small nave clerestory lights of the old church of St. Remi.
In manner similar to that employed at the cathedral we also find bishops
adorning the choir clerestory. Fine as these two series are, and
valuable, too (because they are earlier), we must confess that they do
not produce the effect which the wonderful depth of colour gave us at
the cathedral. The choir clerestory embrasures are really too small to
afford room for the two rows of bishops one above the other. The choir
chapel windows are partly modern, and partly old with too much
restoration, so that the effect is not coherent. We must, however,
remark a fine Crucifixion in the middle of the east end. It is
undoubtedly twelfth century and, although technically well worthy of
observation, lacks the beauty which we have a right to expect from that
period. The glass in the large, round Romanesque embrasures at the west
end, although copied on old models, is modern and very thin in colour. A
careful look at the nave clerestory will reveal that in order to
complete the set of seated kings a novel method was adopted. Many of the
original panels were divided in two at the middle, the upper half being
used in one embrasure and the lower half in another, the missing half in
each case being supplied by modern glass made to imitate the old. This
reads as though the effect would be bad, but on the contrary, it is
fairly good and, at all events, the designs are in accordance with the
original drawings.
Besides its glass, Rheims has another great attraction for the traveller
in its wealth of tapestry. A magnificent series of ten presented in 1530
by Robert de Lenoncourt hangs in the transepts of St. Remi, whilst in
the cathedral we shall find around the nave walls another series of
fourteen given in the same year by the same donor. The cathedral is also
adorned with other tapestries which, although perhaps not of such
engrossing interest as the Lenoncourt series, are nevertheless
treasures. As glass viewers it is well to observe that the rich
decoration provided by these splendid hangings prevents us from noticing
the otherwise obnoxious glare from the uncoloured windows just over
them. We mention this here because as between two interesting glass
towns some of our readers might incline to one where tapestries can be
seen in addition to the glass. The Cathedral of Angers provides also the
same double inducement.