"How such women as these carry one away and throw one, as it were! What strength of soul we see in this Marie Marguerite! What grace must have sustained her, that she could thus shed all the natural frenzy of the senses, and endure so cheerfully and bravely the most overwhelming sufferings!
"Well, now, shall I harness myself to a history of this venerable Abbess? But then I must procure the volume by Joseph de Loignac, her first biographer, the notice by the Recluse of Marlaigne, the pamphlet by Monseigneur de Ram, the narrative by Papebröch; above all I must have at hand the translation, made by the Carmelites of Louvain, of the Flemish manuscript written while the Mother was still alive, by her daughters. Where can I unearth that? In any case the search must be a long one. No, I must set aside that scheme, which for the present is impracticable.
"What I ought to do I know very well; I ought to put the article into shape on Angelico's picture in the Louvre. I promised the paper at least four months ago to the magazine which clamours for it every morning by letter. It is disgraceful! Since I left Paris I have ceased to work; and I have no excuse, for the subject interests me, since it affords me an opportunity for studying the complete system of the symbolism of colour in the Middle Ages. 'The Early Painters, and Prayer in Colour as seen in their Works.' What a subject for thought! However, that is not the immediate matter. I must not sit dreaming, but go to join the Abbé Plomb; and the weather is clouding over again! I certainly have no luck."
As he crossed the square he was lost again in meditations, captivated once more by the haunting thought of the Cathedral, and saying to himself as he looked up at the spires,—
"How many varieties there are in the immense family of the Gothic; and what dissimilarities. No two churches are alike."
The towers and belfries of those he knew rose before him as in those diagrams on which, irrespective of distance, the buildings are placed all close together at the same point of view to show their relative height.
"It is quite true," thought he, "the towers vary like the basilicas. Those of Notre Dame de Paris are thick-set and gloomy, almost elephantine; cleft almost from top to bottom by deep bays, they seem to mount slowly and with difficulty, and stop short, crushed as it were by the burden of sins, dragged down to earth by the wickedness of the city; we feel the effort with which they rise, and we are saddened as we contemplate those captive masses, all the more depressing by reason of the dismal hue of the louvre-boards. At Reims, on the contrary, they are open from top to bottom, pierced as with needles' eyes, long narrow windows of which the opening seems filled with a herring-bone of enormous size, or a gigantic comb with teeth on each side. They spring into the air, as light as filigree; and the sky gets into the mouldings, plays between the mullions, peeps through the tracery and the innumerable lancets, in strips of blue, is focussed and reflected in the little carved trefoils above. These towers are mighty, expansive, immense, and yet light. They are as speaking, as much alive, as those in Paris are stern and mute.
"At Laon they are more especially strange. With their light columns, here thrust forward and there standing back, they suggest a series of shelves piled up in a hurry, crowned merely by a platform, over which lowing oxen look down.
"The two towers at Amiens, built, like those of the Cathedrals at Rouen and at Bourges, at different periods, do not match. They are of different heights, lame against the sky; another that is really magnificent in its solitude, and putting to shame the mediocrity of the two belfries lately erected on each side of the west front, is the Norman tower of Saint Ouen, its summit encircled by a crown. This is the patrician tower among so many that preserve a peasant air, with bare heads, or coifs made narrow and square at the top, sloped somewhat like the mouthpiece of a whistle, such as that of Saint Romain at Rouen, or rustic, pointed caps like that worn by the church of Saint Bénigne at Dijon, or the queer sort of awning which shades the Cathedral of Saint Jean at Lyon.
"And in any case a tower without a tapering spire never soars to heaven. It always rises heavily, pants on the way, and falls asleep exhausted. It is, as it were, an arm without a hand, a wrist without palm and fingers, a stump; or, again, a pencil uncut, having no point wherewith to write up beyond the clouds the prayers from below; in short, it is for ever inert.
"We must turn to the steeple, to the stone spire, to find the true symbol of prayers shot up to pierce the sky and reach the Heart of the Father, which is their target.
"And in this family of arrows what a variety we see; no two darts are alike!
"Some are set in a collar of turrets at their base, held in a circle of pinnacles, like the points of a Magian king's diadem; this we see in the bell-tower of Senlis.
"Others seem to have about them the children born in their image, little spires, all round them; some are covered with bosses, knobs, and blisters; others pierced like colanders and strainers, in patterns of trefoils and quaterfoils that seem to have been punched out; here we find some that are covered with ornament, with teeth like a rasp, ridges of notches, or bristling with spines; others are imbricated with scales like a fish, as we see in the older spire at Chartres; and others again, like that at Caudebec, display the emblem of the Roman Church, the triple crown of the Pope.
"Out of this general outline, which was almost forced upon them, and which they hardly ever tried to avoid, this pyramid or pepper-caster, jelly-bag or extinguisher, the architects of the Middle Ages evolved the most ingenious combinations and varied their designs to infinity.
"How mysterious for the most part is the origin of our cathedrals! Most of the artists who built them are unknown; nay, the age of the stones is rarely a matter of certainty, for the greater part of them have been wrought upon by the alluvium of ages.
"They almost all cover intervals of two, three, or four centuries each; they extend from the beginning, of the thirteenth century till the first years of the sixteenth.
"And on reflection that is very intelligible.
"It has been accurately remarked that the thirteenth century was the great period of cathedral-building. It gave birth to almost every one of them; and then, being created, their growth was checked for nearly two hundred years.
"The fourteenth century was torn by frightful disasters. It began with the ignoble quarrels between Philippe le Bel and the Pope; it saw the stake lighted for the Templars, made bonfires in Languedoc of the Bégards and the Fraticelli, the lepers and the Jews; wallowed in blood under the defeats of Crécy and Poitiers, the furious excesses of the Jacquerie and of the Maillotins, and the ravages of the brigands known as the Tard-venus; and finally, having run so wild, its madness was reflected in the incurable insanity of the king.
"Thus it ended, as it had begun, writhing in the most horrible religious convulsions. The Tiaras of Rome and Avignon clashed, and the Church, standing unsupported on these ruins, tottered on its base, for the Great Western Schism now shook it.
"The fifteenth century seemed to be born mad. Charles VI.'s insanity seemed to be infectious; the English invasion was followed by the pillage of France, the frenzied contest of the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs, by plagues and famines, and the overthrow at Agincourt; then came Charles VII., Joan of Arc, the deliverance and the healing of the land by the energetic treatment of King Louis XI.
"All these events hindered the progress of the works in cathedrals.
"The fourteenth century on the whole restricted itself to carrying on the structures begun during the previous century. We must wait till the end of the fifteenth, when France drew breath, to see architecture start into life once more.
"It must be added that frequent conflagrations at various times destroyed a whole church, and that it had to be rebuilt from the foundations; others, like Beauvais, fell down, and had to be reconstructed, or, if money was lacking, simply strengthened and the gaps repaired.
"With the exception of a very few—Saint Ouen at Rouen for one, a rare example of a church almost entirely built during the fourteenth century (excepting the western towers and front, which are quite modern), and the Cathedral at Reims for another, which appears to have been constructed without much interruption, on the original plans of Hugues Libergier or Robert de Coucy—not one of our cathedrals was erected throughout in accordance with the designs of the architect who began it, nor has one remained untouched.
"Most of them, consequently, represent the combined efforts of successive pious generations; still, this apparently improbable fact is true: until the dawn of the Renaissance the genius of successive builders was singularly well matched. If they made any alterations in their predecessors' plans, they were able to introduce some touch of individuality, inventions of exquisite beauty that did not clash with the whole. They engrafted their genius on that of their first masters; there was the perpetuated tradition of an admirable conception, a perennial breath of the Holy Spirit. It was the interloper, the period of false and farcical Pagan art, that extinguished that pure flame, and annihilated the luminous truthfulness of the Mediæval past, when God had dwelt intimately, at home, in souls; it substituted a merely earthly form of art for one that was divine.
"As soon as the sensuality of the Renaissance revealed itself, the Paraclete fled; the mortal sin of stone could display itself at will. It contaminated the buildings that were finished, defiled the churches, debasing their purity of form; this, with the gross license of sculpture and painting, was the great stupration of the cathedrals.
"And this time the Spirit of Prayer was quite dead; everything went to pieces. The Renaissance, so lauded afterwards by Michelet and the historians, was the death of the Mystical soul of monumental theology, of religious art—all the great art of France.
"Bless me! where am I?" Durtal suddenly asked himself, finding himself in the ill-paved alleys which lead from the Cathedral square to the lower town. He saw that, dreaming as he walked, he had passed the Abbé's lodgings.
He turned up the street again, stopped in front of an old house and rang. A brass wicket was opened and closed, and a housekeeper, shuffling up in old shoes, half opened the door. Durtal was met by the Abbé Plomb, who was watching for him, and who led him into a room full of statues; there were carved images in every spot—on the chimney-shelf, on a chest of drawers, on a side table, and in the middle of the room.
"Do not look at them," said the Abbé, "do not heed them; I have no part in the selection of this horrible bazaar. I have to endure it in spite of myself; these are offerings from my penitents."
Durtal laughed, though somewhat scared by the extraordinary specimens of religious art that crowded the room.
There was every kind of work: black frames with brass flats, and in them engravings of Virgins by Bouguereau and Signol, Guido's Ecce Homo, Pietàs, Saint Philomenas—and then the assembly of polychrome statues: Mary painted with the crude green of angelica and the acrid pinks of English pear-drops; Madonnas gazing in rapture at their own feet, with extended hands whence proceeded fans of yellow rays; Joan of Arc squatting like a hen on her eggs, with eyes raised to heaven like white marbles, and pressing a standard to her bosom in its plaster cuirass; Saint Anthonys of Padua, clean and snug, as neat as two pins; Saint Josephs, not enough the carpenter and too little the Saint; Magdalens weeping silver pills; a whole mob of semi-divinities, best quality, of the class known as "The Munich Article" in the Rue Madame.
"Oh, Monsieur l'Abbé, the donors are certainly terrible people—but could you not, quite by accident, drop one of these objects every day—"
The priest gave a shrug of despair.
"They would only bring me more," cried he. "But if you are willing, we will be off at once, for I am afraid of being caught here if I linger."
And as they walked, talking of the Cathedral, Durtal exclaimed,—
"Is it not a monstrous thing that in the splendour of this Cathedral of Chartres it is impossible to hear any genuine plain-song? I am reduced to frequenting the sanctuary only at hours when there is no high service going on. Above all I avoid being present at High Mass on Sundays; the music that is tolerated infuriates me! Is there no way of having the organist dismissed, and a clean sweep made of the precentor and the teachers in the choir-school, of packing off the basses with their vinous voices to the taverns? Ugh! And the gassy effervescence that rises from the thin pipes of the little boys! and the street tunes eructed in a hiccough, like the run of a lamp-chain when you pull it up, mingling with the noisy bellow of the basses! What a disgrace, what a shame! How is it that the Bishop, the priests, the Canons do not prohibit such treason?
"Monseigneur, I know, is old and ill; but those Canons!—They look so weary, to be sure! As I see them droning out the Psalms in their stalls, I wonder whether they know where they are and what they are doing; they always seem to me in a half unconscious state—"
"The high winds of la Beauce induce lethargy," said the Abbé, laughing. "But allow me to assure you that though the Cathedral scorns Gregorian chants, here, at Chartres, at the little Seminary, at the church of Notre Dame de la Brèche, and at the convent of the Sisters of Saint Paul, they are sung after the Use of Solesmes, so that you can alternately attend that church and those chapels and the Cathedral, since perfection is to be found in neither."
"Of course. Still, is it not horrible to think that the Hottentot taste of a few bawling old men can pursue the Virgin even in Her sanctuary with such musical insults? Ah, there is the rain again," said Durtal with vexation, after a short silence.
"Well, here we are. We can take shelter in the church, and study the interior at our leisure."
They knelt before the Black Virgin of the Pillar; then they sat down in the deserted nave, and the Abbé said in an undertone,—
"I explained to you the other day the symbolism of the outside of the building. Would you like me now to inform you in a few words as to the allegories set forth in the aisles?"
And on seeing Durtal agree by a nod, the priest went on,—
"You are, of course, aware that almost all our cathedrals are cruciform. In the primitive Church, it is true, you will find that some were constructed of a circular form and surmounted by a dome. But most of these were not built by our forefathers; they are ancient temples of the heathen adapted by the Catholics, with more or less alteration, to their own use, or imitated from such temples before the Romanesque style was recognized.
"We need then seek in these no liturgical meaning, since that form was not a Christian invention. At the same time Durand of Mende, in his Rationale, asserts that a building of rounded form symbolizes the extension of the Church over the whole circle of the universe. Others explain the dome as being the crown of the Crucified King, and the smaller cupolas which occasionally support it as the huge heads of the Nails. But we may set aside these explanations, which are but based on existing facts, and study the cruciform plan shown here, as in other cathedrals, in the arrangement of the nave and transepts.
"It may be noted that in a few churches, as, for instance, the abbey church of Cluny, the interior, instead of showing a Latin Cross, was planned on the lines of the Cross of Lorraine, two crosslets being added to the arms.—Now, behold the whole scheme!" the priest said, with a gesture that comprehended the whole of the interior of the basilica of Chartres.
"Jesus is dead; His head is at the altar; His outstretched arms are the two transepts; His pierced hands are the doors; His legs are the nave where we are standing; His pierced feet are the door by which we have come in. Now consider the systematic deviation of the axis of the building; it imitates the attitude of a body bent over from the upright tree of sacrifice, and in some cathedrals—for instance, at Reims—the narrowness, the strangulation, so to speak, of the choir in proportion to the nave represents all the more closely the head and neck of a man, drooping over his shoulder when he has given up the ghost.
"This twist in the church is to be seen almost everywhere—in Saint Ouen and in the Cathedral at Rouen, in Saint Jean at Poitiers, at Tours and at Reims. Sometimes, indeed—but this statement needs verification—the architect had substituted for the body of the Saviour that of the Saint in whose name the church was dedicated, and the curved axis of Saint Savin, for instance, has been supposed to represent the bend of the wheel which was the instrument of that Saint's martyrdom.
"But all this is evidently familiar to you.
"This is less well known: So far we have studied the image of Christ motionless, and dead, in our churches. I will now tell you of a singular instance of a church which, instead of reproducing the attitude of the Divine Corpse, represents that of His still living Body, a church which seems to have a suggestion of movement as if bending like Christ on the Cross.
"In fact it seems to be certain that some architects strove to represent in the plan of their building the motion of the human frame, to imitate the action of a drooping figure; in short, to give life to stones.
"Such an attempt was made in the abbey church of Preuilly-sur-Claise in Touraine. The plan and photographs of this basilica are to be found in an interesting volume that I can lend you; the author, the Abbé Picardat, is the Curé of the church. You will from them readily perceive that the curve of the plan is that of a body leaning on one side, drawn out and bending over.
"And the movement of the body is represented by the curve of the axis, beginning at the very first bay and continued along the nave, the choir, and the apse to the end, which bends aside to imitate the droop of the head.
"Thus, even better than at Chartres, at Reims, and at Rouen, this humble sanctuary, built by Benedictine monks whose names are unknown, represents in its serpentine line, in the perspective of its aisles and the obliquity of its vaulting, the allegorical presentment of our Lord on the Cross. In all other churches the architects have to some extent imitated the cadaverous rigidity of the head fallen in death; at Preuilly the monks have perpetuated the never-to-be-forgotten instant that elapsed between the 'Sitio' (I thirst) and the 'Consummatum est' (It is finished), as recorded in the Gospel of Saint John. Thus the old Touraine church is in the image of Christ Crucified, but still living.
"Now, to look at home once more, we will consider the inward parts of our sanctuaries. It may be noted incidentally that the length of the cathedral figures the long-suffering of the Church in adversity; its breadth symbolizes charity, which expands the souls of men; its height, the hope of future reward; and we can then proceed to details.
"The choir and sanctuary symbolize Heaven; the nave is the emblem of the earth; as the gulf that divides the two worlds can only be passed by the help of the Cross, it was formerly the custom, now, alas, fallen into desuetude, to erect an enormous Crucifix over the grand arch between the nave and the choir. Hence the name of triumphal arch was given to the vast space in front of the High altar. It may also be remarked that a railing or screen marks the limits of these two parts of the cathedral. Saint Gregory Nazianzen regards this as the border line traced between the two parts—that of God, and that of man.
"There is, however, a different explanation given by Richard de Saint Victor, as to the sanctuary, the choir, and the nave. According to him, the first symbolizes the Virgins, the second the chaste souls, and the third the married hearts. As to the altar, or, as old liturgical writers call it, the Cancel (chancel), it is Christ Himself, the spot whereon His Head rests, the Table of the Last Supper, the Stake whereon He shed His blood, the Sepulchre that held His body; and again, it is the Spiritual Church, and its four angles the four corners of the earth over which it shall reign.
"Now behind this altar we find the apse, assuming in most cathedrals the form of a semicircle. There are exceptions; to mention three: at Poitiers, at Laon, and in Notre Dame du Fort at Étampes the wall is square, as in the ancient civic basilicas, and does not describe the sort of half-moon, of which the significance is one of the most beautiful inventions of symbolism.
"This semicircular end, this apsidal shell, with the chapels that surround the choir, simulates the Crown of Thorns on the Head of Christ. Excepting in Sanctuaries which are wholly dedicated to Our Lady—this one, Notre Dame de Paris, and some others—one of these chapels, that in the centre and the largest, is dedicated to the Virgin, to show by the place that it occupies at the end of the church that Mary is the last refuge of sinners.
"She, in person, is again symbolized by the Sacristy, whence the priest comes forth as Christ's representative after putting on his sacerdotal vestments, as Jesus came forth from His Mother's womb after clothing Himself in flesh.
"It must constantly be repeated; every part of a church and every material object used in divine worship is representative of some theological truth. In the script of architecture everything is a reminiscence, an echo, a reflection, and every part is connected to form a whole.
"For instance, the altar, which is the Image of Our Lord, must be draped with white linen in memory of the winding-sheet in which Joseph of Arimathea wrapped His body—and that linen must be woven of pure thread, of hemp or flax. The chalice, which according to the texts adduced by the Spicilegium of Solesmes, is to be taken now as a symbol of glory, and now as a sign of opprobrium, may be regarded, by the most generally received theory, as the figure of the sacred Tomb; then the paten appears as the stone which served to close it, while the corporal is the shroud itself.
"When I tell you further," added the Abbé, "that according to Saint Nilus, the columns signify the divine dogmas, or, according to Durand of Mende, the Bishops and the Doctors of the Church, that the capitals are the words of Scripture, that the pavement of the church is the foundation of faith and humility, that the ambos and rood-loft, almost everywhere destroyed, figure the pulpit of the gospel, the mountain on which Christ preached; again, that the seven lamps burning before the altar are the seven gifts of the Spirit, that the steps to the altar are the steps to perfection; that the alternating choirs represent on the one side the angels, and on the other the righteous, combining to do homage with their voices to the glory of the Most High, I have pretty well explained to you the general meaning and detailed symbolism of the interior of the cathedral, and more particularly that of Chartres.
"Now you must observe a peculiarity which is also to be seen in the Cathedral at Le Mans; the side aisles of the nave in which we are sitting are single, but they are double round the choir—"
But Durtal was not listening; far away from this architectural exegesis, he was admiring the amazing structure without even trying to analyze it.
Wrapped in the mystery of its own shadow thick with the haze of rain, it soared up lighter and lighter as it rose in the skyey whiteness of its arcades, aspiring like a soul purifying itself with increasing light as it toils up the ways of the mystic life.
The clustered columns sprang in slender sheaves, their groups so light that they looked as if they might bend at a breath; yet it was not till they had reached a giddy height that these stems curved over, flying from one side of the Cathedral to the other to meet above the void, mingling their sap and blossoming at last, like a basket of flowers, in the once gilt pendants from the roof.
This church appeared as a supreme effort of matter striving for lightness, rejecting, as though it were a burden, the diminished weight of its walls and substituting a less ponderous and more lucent matter, replacing the opacity of stone by the diaphanous texture of glass.
It grew more spiritual—wholly spiritual, purely prayer, as it sprang towards the Lord to meet Him; light and slender, as it were imponderable, it remained the most glorious expression of Beauty escaping from its earthly dross, Beauty become seraphic.
It was as slender and colourless as Roger Van der Weyden's Virgins, who are so fragile, so ethereal, that they might blow away were they not held down to earth by the weight of their brocades and trains. Here was the same mystical conception of a long-drawn body and an ardent soul, which, unable to free itself completely from that body, strove to purify it by reducing it, refining it, almost distilling it to a fluid.
The building bewildered him with the giddy flight of its vault, the dazzling splendour of its windows. The weather was gloomy, and yet a furnace of gems flamed in the lancets of the windows and the blazing wheels of the roses.
Up there, high in air, as they might be salamanders, human beings with faces ablaze and robes on fire dwelt in a firmament of glory; but these conflagrations were enclosed and limited by an incombustible frame of darker glass which set off the youthful and radiant joy of the flames by the contrast of melancholy, the suggestion of the more serious and aged aspect presented by gloomy colouring. The bugle cry of red, the limpid confidence of white, the repeated Hallelujahs of yellow, the virginal glory of blue, all the quivering crucible of glass was dimmed as it got nearer to this border dyed with rusty red, the tawny hues of sauces, the harsh purples of sandstone, bottle-green, tinder-brown, fuliginous blacks, and ashy greys.
As at Bourges, where the glass is of the same period, Oriental influence was visible in these windows at Chartres. Not only had the figures the hieratic appearance, the sumptuous and barbarous dignity of Asiatic personages, but the borders, in their design and the arrangement of their colours, were an evident reminiscence of the Persian carpets which undoubtedly served as models to the painters; since it is known from the Livre des Métiers that in the thirteenth century hangings copied from those which the Crusaders brought from the Levant were manufactured in France, and in Paris itself.
But, apart from the question of subjects or borders, the various colours of these pictures were, so to speak, but an accessory crowd, handmaidens whose part it was to set off another colour, namely blue—a glorious, indescribable blue, a vivid sapphire hue of excessive transparency, pale but piercing and sparkling throughout, glittering like the broken glass of a kaleidoscope—in the top-lights, in the roses of the transepts, and in the great west window, where it burned like the blue flame of sulphur, among the lead-lines and black iron bars.
Taken for all in all, with the tones of its stone-work and its windows, Notre Dame de Chartres was fair with blue eyes. He personified Her as a sort of white fairy, a tall and slender virgin, with large blue eyes under lids of translucent rose. This was the Mother of a Christ of the North, the Christ of a Pre-Raphaelite Flemish painter. She sat enthroned in a Heaven of ultramarine, surrounded by these Oriental hangings of glass—a pathetic reminder of the Crusades.
And these transparent hangings were like flowers, redolent of sandal and pepper, fragrant with the subtle spices of the Magian kings; a perfumed flower-bed of hues culled at the cost of so much blood in the fields of Palestine; and here offered by the West, under the cold sky of Chartres, to the Virgin Mother in remembrance of the sunny lands where She dwelt and where Her Son chose to be born.
"Where could you find a grander shrine or a more sublime dwelling for Our Mother?" said the Abbé as he pointed to the nave.
This exclamation roused Durtal from his reflections, and he listened as the priest went on,—
"Though this cathedral is unique as regards its width, in spite of its enormous height it cannot compare with the extravagant elevation of Bourges, Amiens, and more especially of Beauvais, where the vault of the roof rises to forty-eight metres from the ground. That cathedral, it is true, was bent on outstripping its sisters.
"Springing into the air at one flight, when it reached the upper spaces it tottered and fell. You know the portions which survived the wreck of that mad attempt?"
"Yes, Monsieur l'Abbé; and that sanctuary and that apse, so narrow and restricted, with columns so close together, and the iridescent light, like filmy soap bubbles, from walls which seem made of glass, disturb and bewilder you; on first entering it gives the impression of indescribable uneasiness, a sort of anxious and distressed anticipation. And in truth it is neither quite healthy nor sound; it seems only to live by dint of aids and expedients; it struggles to be free and is not; it is long drawn and not ethereal; it has—how shall I express it?—large bones. You remember the pillars? They are like the smooth muscular trunks of beech trees, which have also the angular edges of reeds. How different from the harp-strings which form the aerial skeleton of Chartres! No, in spite of all, Beauvais, like Reims, and like Paris, is a fleshy cathedral; it has not the elegant leanness, the perennial youthfulness of form, the Patrician stamp of Amiens, and more especially of Chartres!
"And have you not been struck, Monsieur l'Abbé, by the way in which the genius of man has constantly borrowed from Nature in the construction of his basilicas? It is almost certain that the arcades of the forest were the starting-point for the mystic avenues of our aisles. And again, look at the pillars. I was speaking of those at Beauvais as suggesting the beech and the reed; if you think of the columns at Laon, they have nodes all up their stems, resembling the regular swelling of bamboos, to the point of imitation. Note also the stone flora of the capitals and the pendants of the vault, terminating the long ribs of the arches. Here the animal kingdom seems to have inspired the architect. Might we not conceive of a fabulous spider, of which the key-stone is the body and the ribs stretching under the vaults are the legs? The image is so accurate as to be irresistible. And then what a marvel is the gigantic Arachne, wrought like a jewel and heightened with gold, which might have spun the web of those three flaming rose windows!"
"By the way," said the Abbé, when they had left the church and were walking down the street, "I forgot to point out to you the Number which is everywhere stamped on Chartres; it is identical with Paray-le-Monial. Here, again, everything is in threes. Thus there are three aisles, and three entrances each with three doors; if you count the pillars of the nave, you will count twice three on each side. The transept aisles again have each three bays and three pillars, the windows are in threes under the three great roses. So, you see, Notre Dame is full of the Trinity."
"And it is also the great store-house of Mediæval painting and sculpture."
"Yes, and like other Gothic cathedrals, it is the completest and most trustworthy collection of symbolism; for the allegories we fancy we can interpret in Romanesque churches are on the whole but artificial and doubtful—and that is quite conceivable. The Romanesque is a convert, a pagan turned monk. It was not born Catholic as the pointed arch was; it only became so by baptism conferred by the Church. Christianity discovered it in the Roman basilica, and utilized while modifying it; thus its origin is pagan, and it was only as it grew up that it could learn the language and use the forms of our emblems."
"And yet, to me, as a whole, it seems to be a symbol, for it is the image in stone of the Old Testament, a figure of contrition and fear."
"And yet more of the soul's peace," replied the Abbé. "Believe me, really to understand that style we must go back to the fountain-head, to the earliest times of Monasticism, of which it is a perfect expression; back, in fact, to the Fathers of the Church, the monks of the Desert.
"Now, what is the very special character of the mysticism of the East? It is the calmness of faith, love feeding on itself, ecstasy without display, ardent but reserved, internal.
"In the books of the Egyptian Recluses you will never find the vehemence of a Maddalena de' Pazzi or a Catherine of Siena, the passionate ejaculations of a Saint Angela. Nothing of the kind, no amorous addresses, no trepidations, no laments. They look upon the Redeemer less as the Victim to be wept over than as the Mediator, the Friend, the Elder Brother. To them He was, to quote Origen's words, 'The Bridge between us and the Father.'
"These tendencies, transplanted from Africa to Europe, were preserved by the first monks of the West, who followed the example of their predecessors, and modified and built their churches on the same pattern.
"That repentance, contrition, and awe dwell under these dark vaults, among these heavy pillars, in this fortress, as it were, where the elect shut themselves in to resist the assaults of the world, is quite certain—but this mystical Romanseque also suggests the notion of a sturdy faith, of manly patience, and stalwart piety—like its walls.
"It has not the flaming raptures of the mystical Gothic, which finds utterance in all these soaring shafts of stone; the Romanesque lives self-centred, in reserved fervour, brooding in the depths of the soul. It may be summed up in this saying of Saint Isaac's: In mansuetudine et in tranquillitate, simplifica animam tuam.'"
"You will confess, Monsieur l'Abbé, that you have a weakness for the style."
"Perhaps I have, in so far as that it is less petted, more humble, less feminine, and more claustral than the Gothic."
"On the whole," the priest concluded, as he shook hands with Durtal at his own door, "it is the symbol of the inner life, the image of the monastic life; in a word, the true architecture of the cloister."
"On condition, nevertheless," said Durtal to himself, "that it is not like that of Notre Dame de Poitiers, where the interior is gaudy with childish colouring and raw tones; for there, instead of expressing regret and tranquillity, it rouses a suggestion of the childish glee of an old savage in his second childhood, who laughs when his tattoo marks are renewed, and his skin rough-cast with crude ochres."
CHAPTER VII.
"How many worshippers can the Cathedral contain? Well, nearly 18,000," said the Abbé Plomb. "But I need hardly tell you, I suppose, that it is never full; that even during the season for pilgrimages the vast crowds of Mediæval times never assemble here. Ah, no! Chartres is not exactly what you would call a pious town!"
"It strikes me as indifferent to religion, to say the least, if not actually hostile," said the Abbé Gévresin.
"The citizen of Chartres is money-getting, apathetic, and salacious," replied the Abbé Plomb. "Above all, greedy of money, for the passion for lucre is fierce here, under an inert surface. Really, from my own experience, I pity the young priest who is sent as a beginner to evangelize la Beauce.
"He arrives full of illusions, dreaming of Apostolic triumphs, burning to devote himself—and he drops into silence and the void. If he were but persecuted he would feel himself alive; but he is met, not with abuse, but with a smile, which is far worse; and at once he becomes aware of the futility of all he can do, of the aimlessness of his efforts, and he is discouraged.
"The clergy here are, it may be said, admirable, composed of good and saintly priests; but they vegetate, torpid with inaction; they neither read nor work; their joints become ankylose; they die of weariness in this provincial spot."
"You do not!" exclaimed Durtal, laughing; "for you make work. Did you not tell me that you especially devote yourself to ladies who can still condescend to take an interest in Our Lord in this town?"
"Your satire is scathing," replied the Abbé. "I can assure you that if I had serving-women and the peasant girls to deal with, I should not complain; for in simple souls there are qualities and virtues and a responsive spring, but not in the commercial or the richer classes! You cannot imagine what those women are. If only they attend Mass on Sunday and perform their Easter duties they think they may do anything and everything; and thenceforth their one idea is not so much to avoid offending the Saviour as to disarm Him by mean subterfuges. They speak ill of their neighbour, injuring him cruelly, refusing him all help and pity, and they make excuses for themselves as though these were mere venial faults; but as to eating meat on a Friday! That is quite another thing; they are persuaded that this is the unpardonable sin. To them their stomach is the Holy Ghost; consequently, the great point is to tack and veer round that particular sin, never to commit it, while only just avoiding it, and not depriving themselves in the least. What eloquence they will pour out on me to convince me of the penitential quality of water-fowl.
"During Lent they are possessed with the idea of giving dinners, and rack their brains to provide a lenten meal in which there is no meat, though it would be supposed that there was; and then come interminable discussions as to teal, wild duck, and cold-blooded birds. They should consult a naturalist and not a priest on such cases of conscience.
"As to Holy Week, that is another affair; the mania for water-birds gives way to a hankering for the Charlotte Russe. May they, without offence to God, enjoy a Charlotte? There are eggs in it, to be sure, but so whipped and scourged that the dish is almost ascetic; culinary explanations are poured into my ear, the confessional becomes a kitchen, and the priest might be a master-cook.
"But as to the general sin of greediness, they hardly admit that they are guilty of it. Is it not so, my dear colleague?"
The Abbé Gévresin nodded assent. "They are indeed hollow souls," said he, "and what is more, impenetrable. They are sealed against every generous idea, regarding the intercourse they hold with the Redeemer as beseeming their rank and in good style; but they never seek to know Him more nearly, and restrict themselves, of deliberate purpose, to calls of politeness."
"Such visits as we pay to an aged parent on New Year's Day," said Durtal.
"No, at Easter," corrected Madame Bavoil.
"And among these Fair Penitents," the Abbé Plomb went on, "we have that terrible variety, the wife of the Député who votes on the wrong side, and to his wife's objurgations retorts: 'Why, I am at heart a better Christian than you are!'
"Invariably and every time, she repeats the list of her husband's private virtues, and deplores his conduct as a public man; and this history, which is never ending, always leads up to the praises she awards herself, almost to requiring us to apologize for all the annoyance the Church occasions her."
The Abbé Gévresin smiled, and said,—
"When I was in Paris, attached to one of the parishes on the left bank of the Seine, in which there is a huge draper's and fancy shop, I had to deal with a very curious class of women. Especially on days when there was a great show of cotton and linen goods, or a sale of bankrupt stock, there was a perfect rush of well-dressed women to the confessional. These people lived on the other side of the water; they had come to that part of the town to buy bargains, and finding the departments of the shop too full, no doubt, they meant to wait till the crowd should be thinner, to make their selection in comfort; so then, not knowing what to be doing, they took refuge in the church, and, tortured by the need for speech, they asked for the priest whose turn it was to attend, and to justify themselves, chattered in the confessional as if it had been a drawing-room, merely to kill time."
"Not being able to go to a café like a man, they go to church," said Durtal.
"Unless it is," said Madame Bavoil, "that they would rather confide to an unknown priest the sins it would pain them to confess to their own director."
"At any rate, this is a new light on things: the influence of big shops on the tribunal of penance!" exclaimed Durtal.
"And of railway stations," added the Abbé Gévresin.
"How of railway stations?"
"Yes, I assure you that churches situated near railway stations have a special following of women on their journeys. There it is that our dear Madame Bavoil's shrewd remark finds justification. Many a country-woman who has the Curé of her own parish to dinner dares not tell him the tale of her adultery, because he could too easily guess the name of her lover, and because the propinquity of a priest living on intimate terms in her house would be inconvenient; so she takes advantage of an excursion to Paris to open her heart to another confessor who does not know her. As a general rule, when a woman speaks ill of her Curé, and begins the tale of her confession by explaining that he is dull, uneducated, unsympathetic in understanding and guiding souls, you may be certain that a confession is coming of sin against the sixth (seventh) Commandment."
"Well, well; the people who flutter around the Lord are cool hands!" exclaimed Madame Bavoil.
"They are unhappy creatures, who try to strike a balance between their duties and their vices.
"But enough of this; let us turn to something more immediate. Have you brought us the article on the Angelico, as you promised? Read it to us."
Durtal brought out of his pocket the manuscript he had finished, which was to be posted that evening to Paris.
He seated himself in one of the straw-bottomed arm-chairs in the middle of the room where they were sitting with the Abbé Gévresin, and began:—
THE CORONATION OF THE VIRGIN.
By Fra Angelico. In the Louvre.
The general arrangement of this picture reminds the spectator of the tree of Jesse, of which the branches, supporting a human figure on every twig, spread fan-like as they rise on each side of a throne, while at the top, on a single stem, the radiant beauty of a Virgin is the crowning blossom.
In Fra Angelico's 'Coronation of the Virgin,' to the right and left of the isolated knoll on which Christ sits under a carved stone canopy, placing the crown He holds with both hands on His Mother's bowed head, we see a perfect espalier of Apostles, Saints, and Patriarchs, rising in close and crowded ramification at the lower part of the panel, to burst into a luxuriant blossoming of angels relieved against the blue sky, their heads in a sunshine of glories.
The arrangement of the persons represented is as follows:—
At the foot of the throne, under the gothic canopy—to the left, Saint Nicholas of Myra kneels in prayer, wearing his mitre and clasping his crozier, from which the maniple hangs like a folded banner; Saint Louis the King with a crown of fleurs de lys; the monastic saints; St. Antony, St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Thomas, who holds an open book in which we read the first lines of the Te Deum, St. Dominic holding a lily, St. Augustine with a pen. Then, going upwards, St. Mark and St. John carrying their gospels, St. Bartholomew showing the knife with which he was flayed; and higher still the lawgiver Moses, ending in the serried ranks of angels against the azure firmament, each head circled with a golden nimbus.
On the right, below, by the side of a monk whose back only is seen—possibly St. Bernard—Mary Magdalene is on her knees with a vase of spices by her side, robed in vermilion; behind her come St. Cecilia, crowned with roses, St. Clara or St. Catherine of Sienna, in a blue hood, patterned with stars, St. Catherine of Alexandria, leaning on her wheel of martyrdom, St. Agnes, cherishing a lamb in her arms, St. Ursula flinging an arrow, and others whose names are unknown; all female saints, facing the Bishop, the King, the Recluses, and the founders of Orders. By the steps of the throne are St. Stephen, with the green palm of martyrdom, St. Lawrence, with his gridiron, St. George, wearing a breastplate, and on his head a helmet, St. Peter the Dominican recognizable by his split skull; and yet further up St. Matthew, St. Philip, St. James the Greater, St. Jude, St. Paul, St. Matthias, and King David. Finally, opposite the angels on the left a group of angels, whose faces, set in gold discs, are relieved against the pure ultramarine background.
In spite of injury from the restorations it has endured, this panel, with its stamped and diapered gold, is splendid in the freshness of its colours, laid on with white of egg.
As a whole, it represented, so to speak, a stairway for the eye, a circular stair of two flights, in steps of glorious blue hung with gold.
The lowest to the left is seen in the blue mantle of Saint Louis, and others lead up through a glimpse of blue drapery, the robe of St. John, and then, higher still before reaching the blue expanse of the sky, the robe of the first angel.
The first on the right is the mantle of St. Cecilia; others are the bodice of St. Agnes, St. Stephen's robe, a prophet's tunic; and above these, before reaching the lapis-lazuli border of sky, the robe of the first angel.
Thus blue, which is the predominating colour in the whole, is regularly piled up in steps and spaced almost identically on the opposite sides of the throne. This azure hue of the draperies, their folds faintly indicated with white, is extraordinarily serene, indescribably innocent. This it is which gives the work its soul of colour—this blue, helped out by the gold which gleams round the heads, runs or twines on the black robes of the monks; in Y's on those of St. Thomas; in suns, or rather in radiating chrysanthemums, on those of St. Antony and St. Benedict; in stars on St. Clara's hood; in filagree embroidery in the letters of their names, in brooches and medallions on the bodices of the other female saints.
At the very bottom of the picture a splash of gorgeous red—the Magdalen's robe—that finds an echo in the flame-colour of one of the steps of the throne, and reappears here and there, but softened in fragmentary glimpses of drapery, or smothered under a running pattern of gold (as in St. Augustine's cope) serves as a spring-board, as it were, to start the whole stupendous harmony.
The other colours seem to fill no part, but that of necessary stop-gaps, indispensable supports. They are too, for the most part, common and ugly to a degree that is most puzzling. Look at the greens: they range from boiled endive to olive, ending in the absolute hideousness of two steps of the throne which lie across the picture—two bars, two streaks of spinach dipped in tawny mud. The only tolerable green of them all is that of St. Agnes' mantle, a Parmigiano green, rich in yellow, and made still richer by the lining which affords the pleasing adjunct of orange.
On the other hand, consider this blue which Angelico uses so sumptuously in his celestial tones; when he makes it darker it loses its fulness, and looks almost dull; we see this in St. Clara's hood.
But what is yet more amazing is that this painter, so eloquent in blue, is but a stammerer when he makes use of the other angelic hue—rose-pink. In his hands it is neither subtle nor ingenuous; it is opaque, of the colour of blood thinned with water, or of pink sticking-plaister, excepting when it trends on the hue of wine-lees, like that of the Saviour's sleeves.
And it is heaviest of all in the saints' cheeks. It looks glazed, like the surface of pie-crust; it has the quality of raspberry syrup drowned in white of egg.
These are in the main the only colours used by Angelico. A magnificent blue for the sky and another vile blue, white, brilliant red, melancholy pinks, a light green, dark greens, and gold. No bright yellow like everlastings, no luminous straw-colour; at most a heavy opaque yellow for the hair of his female saints; no truly bold orange, no violet, either tender or strong, unless in the half-hidden lining of a cloak or in the scarcely visible robe of a saint, cut off by the frame; no brown that does not lurk in the background. His palette, as may be seen, is very limited.
And it is symbolical, if we consider it. He has undoubtedly done in his hues what he has done in the arrangement of the work. His picture is a hymn to Chastity, and round the central group of Christ and His Mother he has placed in ranks the Saints who best concentrated this virtue on earth. St. John the Baptist, beheaded for the bounding impurity of an Herodias; St. George, who saved a virgin from the emblematic Dragon; such saints as St. Agnes, St. Clara, and St. Ursula; the heads of the Orders—St. Benedict and St. Francis; a king like St. Louis, and a bishop like St. Nicholas of Myra, who hindered the prostitution of three young girls whom a starving father was fain to sell. Everything, down to the smallest details, from the attributes of the persons represented to the steps of the throne, of which the number is nine—that of the choirs of angels—everything in this picture is symbolical.
It is permissible therefore to assume that he selected his colours for their allegorical signification.
White: the symbol of the Supreme Being, and of absolute Truth, and employed by the Church in its adornments for the festival of our Lord and the Virgin because it signifies Goodness, Virginity, Charity, and is the splendour, the emblem of Divine Wisdom when it is enhanced to the pure radiance of silver.
Blue: because it symbolizes Chastity, Innocence, and Guilelessness.
Red: which is the colour adopted for the offices of the Holy Ghost and of the Passion; the garb of Charity, Suffering and Love.
Rose-pink; the Love of Eternal Wisdom, and, as Saint Mechtildis teaches, the anguish and torments of Christ.
Green: used liturgically at Seasons of Pilgrimage, and which seems to be the colour preferred by the Benedictine Sisterhood, interpreting it as meaning freshness of soul and perennial sap; the green which, in the hermeneutics of colour, expresses the hopes of the regenerated creature, the yearning for final repose, and which is likewise the mark of humility, according to the Anonymous English writer of the thirteenth century, and of contemplation, according to Durand of Mende.
On the other hand, Angelico has intentionally refrained from introducing the hues which are emblematic of vices, excepting of course those adopted for the garb of the Monastic Orders, which altogether changes their meaning.
Black: the colour of error and the void, the seal of death, and, according to Sister Emmerich, the image of profaned and wasted gifts.
Brown: which, as the same Sister tells us, is synonymous with agitation, barrenness and dryness of the spirit, and neglect of duty; brown; which being composed of black and red—smoke darkening the sacred fire—is Satanic.
Grey: the ashes of penance, the symbol of tribulation, according to the Bishop of Mende, the sign of half-mourning formerly used in the Paris ritual instead of violet in Lent. The mingling of white and black, of virtue and vice, of joy and grief, the mirror of the soul that is neither good nor evil, the medium being, the lukewarm creature that God spueth out, grey can only rise by the infusion of a little purity, a little blue; but can, when thus converted to pearl grey, become a pious hue, and attempt a step towards Heaven, an advance in the lower paths of Mysticism.
Yellow: considered by Sister Emmerich as the colour of idleness, of a horror of suffering, and often given to Judas in mediæval times, is significant of treason and envy. Orange: of which Frédéric Portal speaks as the revelation of Divine Love, the communion of God with man, mingling the blood of Love to the sinful hue of yellow, may be taken to bear a worse meaning with the idea of falsehood and torment; and, especially when it verges on red, expresses the defeat of a soul over-ridden by its sins, hatred of Love, contempt of Grace, the end of all things.
Dead leaf colour: speaking of moral degradation, spiritual death, the hopefulness of green for ever extinct.
Finally, violet: adopted by the Church for the Sundays in Advent and in Lent, and for penitential services. It was the colour of the mortuary-shroud of the kings of France; during the Middle Ages it was the attribute of mourning, and it is at all times the melancholy garb of the exorcist.
What is certainly far less easy to explain is the limited variety of countenance the painter has chosen to adopt. Here symbolism is of no use. Look, for instance, at the men. The Patriarchs with their bearded faces do not show us the almost translucent texture, as of the sacramental wafer, in which the bones show through the dry and diaphanous parchment-like skin, or like the seeds of the cruciferous flower called Monnaie du Pape (honesty); they have all regular and pleasant faces, are all healthy, full-blooded personages, attentive and devout. His monks too have round faces and rosy cheeks; not one of his Saints looks like a Recluse of the Desert overcome by fasting, or has the exhausted emaciation of an ascetic; they are all vaguely alike, with the same solidity and the same complexion. In fact, as we see them in this picture, they are a contented colony of excellent people.
At least, so they appear at a first glance.
The women, too, are all of one family; sisters more or less exactly alike; all fair and rosy, with light snuff-coloured eyes, heavy eyelids, and round faces; they form a train of rather an insipid type round the Virgin with her long nose and bird-like head kneeling at the feet of Christ.
Altogether, among all these figures we find scarcely four distinct types, if we take into consideration their more or less advanced years and the modifications resulting from the arrangement of their hair, their being bearded or shaven, and the pose of the head, front face or profile, which distinguishes them.
The only groups which are not of an almost uniform stamp are the angels, sexless youths for ever charming. They are of matchless purity, of a more than human innocence in their blue and rose-pink and green robes sprigged with gold, with their yellow or red hair, at once aerial and heavy, their chastely downcast eyes, and flesh as white as pith. Grave, but in ecstasy, they play on the harp or the theorbo, on the Viol d'Amore or the rebeck, singing the eternal glory of the most Holy Mother.
Thus, on the whole, the types used by Angelico are not less restricted than his colours.
But then, in spite of the exquisite array of angels, is this picture monotonous and dull? Is this much-talked-of work over-praised?
No, for this Coronation of the Virgin is a masterpiece, and superior to all that enthusiasm can say about it; indeed, it outstrips painting and soars through realms which the mystics of the brush had never penetrated.
Here we have not a mere manual effort, however admirable; this is not merely a spiritual and truly religious picture such as Roger van der Weyden and Quentin Matsys could create; it is quite another thing. With Angelico an unknown being appears on the scene, the soul of a mystic that has entered on the contemplative life, and breathes it on the canvas as on a perfect mirror. It is the soul of a marvellous monk that we see, of a saint, embodied on this coloured mirror, exhaled in a painted creation. And we can measure how far that soul had advanced on the path of perfection from the work that reflects it.
He carries his angels and his saints up to the Unifying Life, the supreme height of Mysticism. There the weariness of their dolorous ascent is no more; there is the plenitude of tranquil joy, the peace of man made one with God. Angelico is the painter of the soul immersed in God, the painter of his own spirit.
None but a monk could attempt such paintings. Matsys, Memling, Dierck Bouts, Roger van der Weyden were no doubt sincere and pious worthies. They gave their work a reflection of Heaven; they too reflected their own soul in the faces they depicted; but though they gave them a wonderful stamp of art, they could only infuse into them the semblance of the soul beginning the practice of Christian asceticism; they could only represent men still detained, like themselves, in the outer chambers of those Castles of the Soul of which Saint Theresa speaks, and not in the Hall where, in the centre, Christ sits and sheds His glory.
They were, in my opinion, greater and keener observers, more learned and more skilful, even better painters than Angelico; but their heart was in their craft, they lived in the world, they often could not resist giving their Virgins fine-lady airs, they were hampered by earthly reminiscences, they could not rise in their work above the trammels of daily life; in short, they were and remained men. They were admirable; they gave utterance to the promptings of ardent faith; but they had not had the specific culture which is practised only in the silence and peace of the cloister. Hence they could not cross the threshold of the seraphic realm where roamed the guileless being who never opened his eyes, closed in prayer, excepting to paint—the monk who had never looked out on the world, who had seen only within himself.
And what we know of his life is worthy of this work. He was a humble and tender recluse, who always prayed or ever he took up his brush, and could not draw the Crucifixion without melting into tears.
Through the veil of his tears his angelic vision poured itself out in the light of ecstasy, and he created beings that had but the semblance of human creatures, the earthly husk of our existence, beings whose souls soared already far from their prison of flesh. Study his picture attentively, and see how the incomprehensible miracle works of such a sublimated state of mind.
The types chosen for the Apostles and Saints are, as we have said, quite ordinary. But gaze firmly at the countenances of these men, and you will see how little they really take in of the scene before them. Whatever attitude the painter may have given them, they are all absorbed into themselves; they behold the scene, not with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of the soul. Each is looking into himself. Jesus dwells in them, and they can gaze on Him better in their inmost heart than on His throne.
It is the same with his female Saints. I have said that they are insignificant looking, and it is true; but how their features, too, are transfigured and effaced under the Divine touch! They are drowned in adoration, and spring buoyant, though motionless, to meet the Heavenly Spouse. Only one remains but half escaped from her material shell: Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who, with upturned eyes of a brackish green, is neither as simple nor as innocent as her sisters; she still sees the form of man in Christ; she still is a woman; she is, if one may so, the sin of the work.
Still, all these spiritual degrees clothed in human figures are but the accessories of this picture. They are placed there, in the august assumption of gold and the chaste ascending scale of blue, to lead by a stair of pure joy to the sublime platform whereon we see the group of the Saviour and the Virgin.
And here, in the presence of the Mother and Son, the ecstatic painter overflows. One could imagine that the Lord had merged into him, and transported him beyond the life of sense, love and chastity are so perfectly personified in the group above all the means of expression at the command of man.
No words could express the reverent tenderness, the anxious affection, the filial and paternal love of the Christ, who smiles as He crowns His Mother; and She is yet more incomparable. Here the words of adulation are too weak; the invisible is made visible by the sacramental use of colour and line. A feeling of infinite deference, of intense but reserved adoration, flows and spreads about this Virgin, who, with Her arms crossed over Her bosom, bends Her little dove-like head, with downcast eyes and a rather long nose, under a veil. She resembles the Apostle St. John who is just behind her, and might be his daughter; and she is enigmatic; for that soft, delicate face, which in the hands of any other painter would be merely charming and trivial, breathes out the purest innocence. She is not even flesh and blood; the material that clothes Her swells softly with the breath of the fluid that shapes it. Mary is a living but a volatilized and glorious body.
We can understand certain ideas of the Abbess of Agréda who declares that She was exempt from the defilements inflicted on women; we see what St. Thomas meant who asserted that Her beauty purified instead of agitating the senses.
Her age is indeterminate; She is not a woman, yet She is no longer a child. It is hard to say even that She is grown up, just marriageable, a girl-child, so entirely is She refined above all humanity, beyond the world, so exquisitely pure and for ever chaste.
She remains incomparable, unapproached in painting. By Her, other Madonnas are vulgar; they are in every case women; She alone is the white stem of the divine Ear of corn, the Wheat of the Eucharist. She alone is indeed the Immaculate, the Regina Virginum of the hymns; and She is so youthful, so guileless, that the Son seems to be crowning His Mother before She can have conceived Him.
It is in this that we see the glory of the gentle Friar's superhuman genius. He painted as others have spoken, inspired by Grace; he painted what he saw within him just as St. Angela of Foligno related what she heard within her. Both one and the other were mystics absorbed into God; thus this picture by Angelico is at the same time a picture by the Holy Ghost, bolted through a purified sieve of art.
If we consider it, this soul is that of a female saint rather than of a monk. Turn to his other pictures; those, for instance, in which he strove to depict Christ's Passion; we are not looking at the stormy scene represented by Matsys or Grünewald; he has none of their harsh manliness, nor their gloomy energy, nor their tragic turbulence; he only weeps with the uncomforted grief of a woman. He is a Sister rather than a Friar-artist; and it is from this loving sensibility, which in the mystic vocation is more generally peculiar to women, that he has drawn the pathetic orisons and tender lamentation of his works.
And was it not also in this spiritual nature, so womanly in its complexion, that he found, under the impulse of the Spirit, the wholly angelical gladness, the really glorious apotheosis of Our Lord and His Mother, as he has painted them in this Coronation of the Virgin, which, after being revered for centuries in the Dominican Church at Fiesole, has now found shelter and admiration in the little gallery devoted to the Italian School at the Louvre.
"Your article is very good," said the Abbé Plomb. "But can the principles of a ritual of colour which you have discerned in Angelico be verified with equal strictness in other painters?"
"No, if we look for colour as Angelico received it from his monastic forefathers, the illuminators of Missals, or as he applied it in its strictest and most usual acceptation. Yes, if we admit the law of antagonism, the rules of inversion, and if we know that symbolism authorizes the system of contraries, allowing the use of the hues which are appropriated to certain virtues to indicate the vices opposed to them."
"In a word, an innocent colour may be interpreted in an evil sense, and vice versâ," said the Abbé Gévresin.
"Precisely. In fact, artists who, though pious, were laymen, spoke a different language from the monks. On emerging from the cloister the liturgical meaning of colours was weakened; it lost its original rigidity and became pliant. Angelico followed the traditions of his Order to the letter, and he was not less scrupulous in his respect for the observances of religious art which prevailed in his day. Not for anything on earth would he have infringed them, for he regarded them as a liturgical duty, a fixed rule of service. But as soon as profane painters had emancipated the domain of painting, they gave us more puzzling versions, more complicated meanings; and the symbolism of colour, which is so simple in Angelico, became singularly abstruse—supposing that they even were constantly faithful to it in their works—and almost impossible to interpret.
"For instance, to select an example: the Antwerp gallery possesses a tryptich, by Roger van der Werden, known as 'The Sacraments.' In the centre panel, devoted to the Eucharist, the Sacrifice of the Redeemer is shown under two aspects, the bleeding form of the Crucifixion and the mystic form of the pure oblation on the altar; behind the Cross, at the foot of which we see the weeping Mary, Saint John and the Holy Women, a priest is celebrating Mass and elevating the Host in the midst of a cathedral which forms the background of the picture.
"On the left-hand shutter, the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Penance are shown, in small detached scenes; and on the right-hand shutter those of Ordination, Marriage and Extreme Unction.
"This picture, a work of marvellous beauty, with the 'Descent from the Cross' by Quentin Matsys, are the inestimable glory of the Belgium gallery; but I will not linger over a full description of this work; I will omit any reflection suggested by the supreme art of the painter, and restrict myself to recording that part of the work which bears on the symbolism of colour."
"But are you sure that Roger van der Weyden intended to ascribe such meanings to the colours?"
"It is impossible to doubt it, for he has assigned a different hue to each Sacrament, by introducing above the scenes he depicts, an angel whose robe is in each instance different in accordance with the ceremony set forth. His meaning therefore is beyond question; and these are the colours he affects to the means of Grace consecrated by the Saviour:
"To the Eucharist, green; to Baptism, white; to Confirmation, yellow; to Penance, red; to Ordination, purple; to Marriage blue; to Extreme Unction, a violet so deep as to be almost black.
"Well, you will admit that the interpretation of this sacred scheme of colour is not altogether easy.
"The pictorial imagery of Baptism, Extreme Unction, and Ordination is quite clear; Marriage even as symbolized by blue may be intelligible to simple souls; that Communion should blazon its coat with vert, is even more appropriate, since green represents sap and humility, and is emblematical of the regenerative power. But ought not Confession to display violet rather than red; and how, in any case, are we to account for Confirmation being figured in yellow?"
"The colour of the Holy Ghost is certainly red," remarked the Abbé Plomb.
"Thus there are differences of interpretation between Angelico and Roger van der Weyden, though they lived at the same time. Still, the monk seems to me the more trustworthy authority."
"For my part," said the Abbé Gévresin, "I cannot but think of the right side of the lining of which you were speaking just now."
"This rule of contraries is not peculiar to the ritual of colour; it is to be seen in almost every part of the science of symbolism. Look at the emblems derived from the animal world; the eagle alternately figuring Christ and the Devil; the snake which, while it is one of the most familiar symbols of the Demon, may nevertheless, as in the brazen serpent of Moses, prefigure the Saviour."
"The anticipatory symbol of Christian symbolism was the double-faced Janus of the heathen world," said the Abbé Plomb, laughing.
"Indeed, these allegories of the palette turn completely to the right-about," said Durtal. "Take red, for instance: we have seen that in the general acceptation it is to be interpreted as meaning charity, endurance, and love. This is the right side out; the wrong side, according to Sister Emmerich, is dulness, and clinging to this world's goods.
"Grey, the emblem of repentance and sorrow, and at the same time the image of a lukewarm soul, is also, according to another interpretation, symbolical of the Resurrection—white, piercing through blackness—light entering into the Tomb and coming out as a new hue—grey, a mixed colour still heavy with the gloom of death, but reviving as it gets light by degrees from the whiteness of day.
"Green, to which the mystics gave favourable meanings, also acquires a disastrous sense in some cases; it then represents moral degradation and despair; it borrows melancholy significance from dead leaves, is the colour given to the bodies of the devils in Stephan Lochner's Last Judgment, and in the infernal scenes depicted in the glass windows and pictures of the earliest artists.
"Black and brown, with their inimical suggestions of death and hell, change their meaning as soon as the founders of religious Orders adopt them for the garb of the cloister. Black then symbolizes renunciation, repentance, the mortification of the flesh, according to Durand de Mende; and brown and even grey suggest poverty and humility.
"Yellow again, so misprized in the formulas of symbolism, becomes significant of charity; and if we accept the teaching of the English monk who wrote in about 1220, yellow is enhanced when it changes to gold, rising to be the symbol of divine Love, the radiant allegory of eternal Wisdom.
"Violet, finally, when it appears as the distinctive colour of prelates, divests itself of its usual meaning of self-accusation and mourning, to assume a certain dignity and simulate a certain pomp.
"On the whole, I find only white and blue which never change."
"In the Middle Ages, according to Yves de Chartres," said the Abbé Plomb, "blue took the place of violet in the vestments of bishops, to show them that they should give their minds rather to the things of Heaven than to the things of earth."
"And how is it," asked Madame Bavoil, "that this colour, which is all innocence, all purity, the colour of Our Mother Herself, has disappeared from among the liturgical hues?"
"Blue was used in the Middle Ages for all the services to the Virgin, and it has only fallen into desuetude since the eighteenth century," replied the Abbé Plomb; "and that only in the Latin Church, for the orthodox Churches of the East still wear it."
"And why this neglect?"
"I do not know, any more than I know why so many colours formerly used in our services have been forgotten. Where are the colours of the ancient Paris use: saffron yellow, reserved for the festival of All Angels; salmon pink, sometimes worn instead of red; ashen grey, which took the place of violet; and bistre instead of black on certain days.
"Then there was a charming hue which still holds its place in the scale of colour used in the Roman ritual, though most of the Churches overlook it—the shade called 'old rose,' a medium between violet and crimson, between grief and joy, a sort of compromise, a diminished tone, which the Church adopted for the third Sunday in Advent and the fourth Sunday in Lent. It thus gave promise, in the penitential season that was ending, of a beginning of gladness, for the festivals of Christmas and Easter were at hand.