There yet remains the sixth, seventh and twelfth of the statues, the absorbing, seductive, inexpressible queens of the central bay. Her sexless shape, the book in her hands, her expectant gaze, rapt as it were in a vision of the ages, proclaim the first to be a nun rather than a queen, albeit she is clad in royal raiment;—S. Radegonde, Queen of France (582), Bulteau suggests.

The second is younger, and her beauty of a more earthly type. She wears a halo, and is clad like the other, save that she has no mantle, and her head is not shrouded in a veil. Her long hair falls in two plaits over her shoulders, and the tight-drawn body of her garment reveals the curves of her figure. Her expression is that of a rebellious, artful and vindictive nature, and, if she is rightly supposed to be Queen Clotilde, she is, as M. Huysmans[65] remarks, Clotilde before her repentance, the Queen before the saint.

The last, the angelic mysterious queen with the sweet, ingenuous smile, and the great deep eyes, is, according to local tradition, Bertha aux grands pieds, mother of Charlemagne. Her right hand once lay open upon her breast, and there it has left its impression. In the left hand she carried a sceptre, terminating in an ornament that still remains. She is clad in sumptuous raiment, most delicate in texture, and fringed with lace. Her figure is elongated, so that she seems to be like some rare lily swaying forward on its stalk. And thus, beneath her eyebrows slightly raised, she smiles down upon the visitor in the childlike grace of her chaste simplicity, saintement gamine.

Of the other statues that complete the company of Christ—martyrs, prophets and patron saints of donors in the jambs of the doorways, or between the other figures—I shall only call attention to the merchant on the right pier of the Porte Royale, who is being robbed by the earliest cut-purse in mediæval sculpture, and to the name Rogerus, cut above the broken head of an adjacent butcher. Was this the architect Roger who built the Tour-Grise at Dreux, and who was then chosen by S. Ives to build this western porch?

M. Bulteau suggests the question. But it cannot be answered.

Over the three doorways two pilasters with simple mouldings run up on either side of the central window as far as the rose, terminating in symbolic carvings—the northern one in the head of an ox, representative of sacrifice, symbolising here, it is said, the abolition of Judaism, with its sacrifices and cult; the southern one in that of a lion holding a man’s head, which is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and here symbolises Christ triumphant in the hearts of men.

The two towers, the old spire, and the western porch described, together with the west front up to the rose-window, including, therefore, the three enormous windows (34 feet by 13 feet, and 28 feet by 9 feet), and their unrivalled treasure of twelfth-century glass, which, through repeated dangers, has been preserved to us, are all that remain of the Church of Fulbert, rebuilt by S. Ives.

For in 1194, when Regnault de Mouçon was bishop, and when they were about to begin the spire of the Clocher Neuf, the Cathedral was destroyed by fire. Mirabili et miserabili incendio devastata, says a manuscript of the year 1210, now in the Vatican, and Jehan le Marchand in his Book of Miracles writes of this year:—

It is worth while to quote this and other accounts because the patriotic desire to see in the present building the Cathedral of Fulbert has led to some unpardonable garbling of evidence, with a view to concealing the fact of this fire.

Guillaume-le-Breton, who died in 1226, records in his Latin poem, ‘The Philippide,’ written in honour of King Philippe-Auguste, that the church was burnt at this time. ‘It was so ordered,’ he infers, ‘in order that the present church might be built and shine in its unequalled splendour.[66] For the former one was not yet worthy to be called the “mestre maison de Marie.” Completely rebuilt of hewn stone, and covered throughout its whole length by a roof as it had been by the shell of a tortoise, it now need have nothing to fear from fire till the day of judgment. And from that fire springeth the salvation of the many by whose efforts the Cathedral was rebuilt.’

The account of another contemporary, William of Newbridge, the chronicler of the wars of Philippe-Auguste and of our Richard, whose lion-heart lies in the tomb at the Cathedral of Rouen, gives another explanation of the burning, and incidentally throws a vivid light upon the state of the country at that time.

‘The troops of King Philippe,’ he says, ‘had retired precipitately from Évreux on the approach of King Richard. Now the King of the French, to wipe out the dishonour of this shameful retreat, threw himself with implacable fury on Évreux, which he had already sacked a short time before. He did not even spare the Church of S. Taurin, so famous in that country. He gave orders, indeed, that it should be given to the flames, and, as no one in his army would, for fear of God, execute so sacrilegious a command, the King himself, it is said, with some abandoned men called Ribauds, entered the sacred edifice and set fire to it. It is said, further, that he transferred to Chartres the spoils of the Church of S. Taurin; but these spoils were as fire to that famous city. It fell, in consequence, a prey to the flames, and was almost completely destroyed.’

All the inhabitants of the town, we learn from the author of the Book of Miracles, clergy and laymen alike, lost all their houses and their wealth in this disastrous conflagration. Yet their distress at their own losses was as nothing compared with their grief at the destruction of the church. But when the Sainte Châsse, containing the precious relic which they called

could no more be seen, their sorrow passed all bounds. Bitter tears filled their eyes, and they cried aloud that the glory of Chartres and of the whole country side was departed. They despaired of their town, and were ready to quit forever the homes which they no longer had the heart to rebuild.

But the legate of the Pope, Mélior, Cardinal of Pisa, who happened to be at Chartres, summoned the bishop and Chapter, and called upon them to take courage and to begin rebuilding their Cathedral. He exhorted them to fast and pray that their sins, which had brought upon them this calamity, might be forgiven, and to set an example to the laity by emptying their purses,

His eloquence met with such success that the bishop and his clergy devoted the greater part of their incomes for three years to the work of rebuilding and paying those ‘skilled labourers and masons.’

Next he called together all the people, and exhorted them also to devote themselves to the task. And when he had finished speaking there emerged from the depths of the crypt some devoted clerks, bringing with them the holy casket and its priceless contents, ‘the true mirror and the precious treasure,’ which all thought had been destroyed. The people fell on their knees in a transport of delight, weeping tears of gratitude and joy. For a miracle had been wrought. As Jonah was kept from harm three days in the belly of the whale, as Noah was preserved from the flood and Daniel from the lion’s jaws, so these devout servants of the Lord had been saved alive in the deep recesses of the martyrium, ‘in the grotto near the altar which the men of old had prudently constructed,’ whither they had retired with the Veil, and had lived unharmed and unafraid, whilst the walls and roofs of the Cathedral fell about their ears, and the molten bells and glass surged in a fiery flood around them.

Their appearance gave point to the eloquence of the cardinal. All classes, in gratitude, devoted themselves to rebuilding the Cathedral. And, in order that resources might not be lacking, in order that pilgrims might come from far and near, bringing money and labour to supplement the contributions of the Chapter and people, a series of miracles was wrought.[67]

It appears, says the chronicler Jehan de Marchand, with whose poetical legends, let me advertise the reader, I shall fill the remainder of this chapter, that the first miracle which roused the enthusiasm of the people was the healing of a little child of Le Perche, young Guillot. His tongue had been cruelly cut out by a knight whom he had surprised in an intrigue. Poor and mutilated, the orphan lad fled to Chartres to beg his bread. Kneeling there, on Shrove Tuesday, before the altar of Our Lady, he burst suddenly into loud praise of God, albeit he was tongueless. All the people when they heard him were filled with amazement. They crowded to the scene of his healing to render thanks and make their offerings before the altar, whilst the boy, that he might not be stifled by the crowd, was placed upon a scaffolding near the Châsse of S. Lubin. And the Virgin, ‘qui voloit la chose parfeire,’ obtained for him that on the day of Pentecost he should receive a new tongue. ‘This child,’ says the author, ‘object of a double miracle, is still living in our midst.’

At the news of these marvels multitudes began to come together from every part, bringing waggons and carts laden with corn, wine, iron and all things useful or necessary for the building of the church. Jewels also and precious things they brought. The devotional enthusiasm of 1145 was repeated. The marvellous spectacles presented to-day by the Grotto of Lourdes were seen then at Chartres.

So great was the crowd of pilgrims that they were obliged to pass the night in their carts about the Cathedral, for they could not all find shelter within the Cathedral, and the clerks coming to perform their offices therein could not for the press make their way into the cloister.[68]

These pilgrims were but one wave on the ocean of Catholic devotion: pilgrims, whether kings like Charles, coming to replace an image disfigured by profane Huguenots, or courtiers bringing with them the very presence and perfume of the Paris of their day, or pious wanderers from the remotest provinces of France and from strange lands beyond the seas, scholars from the universities and weather-beaten travellers from the New Continent, with outlandish offerings to Our Lady, they wash forever against the hospitable shores of Chartres, and break peacefully upon the gray cliffs of the Cathedral. A trace of their offerings, stranded on the shores of time, is to be found in the coins dug up in the Butte des Charbonniers in 1846, now in the Musée; coins which range in date from the earliest days of the Roman occupation down to the latter part of the sixteenth century, and which bear the superscription of innumerable kings and dukes and princes of various climes.

Of the wave of pilgrims which now occupies our attention you may see a record in the first window in the clerestory of the choir on the north side. There, beneath a Virgin enthroned and the blazon of the bishop, Regnault de Mouçon, are two groups which show what manner of men were they who came to swell the tide of workers for Our Lady of Chartres, and through whose aid, says the chronicler, the piers, the vaults and the altars of the Cathedral rose as if by magic.

The Chapter was not content to sit idly and wait for miracles. They had recourse to human means. To obtain contributions towards the expense of this mestre maison de la Reine des Cieux, they sent priests afar to collect in all the countries and cathedrals of Europe. Now a young Englishman who had been studying in the schools of Paris and was returning home passed by Soissons by chance and entered the church. A Chartrain preacher was describing in eloquent and touching terms the disasters that had befallen Notre-Dame of Chartres. The audience was so moved by his eloquence that they all emptied their purses in response to his appeal. But the young Englishman had nothing to give except a golden necklace, which he intended for the girl he loved in London. Moved by the words of the preacher, after a long struggle, he made the offering of this necklace and, leaving Soissons, set out for the sea, passing the night in the barn of a friendly innkeeper, for, as we have seen, he was penniless. Overwhelmed with fatigue, he fell asleep upon the straw. But in the dead of night the barn was filled with a celestial light, and, waking, he beheld three women of rare beauty, one of whom revealed herself to him as the Lady of Chartres. Then she restored to him his necklace, and he vowed to consecrate himself to her service. He returned to his own country,

and after taking leave of his parents, withdrew to a desert island, where he lived the chaste life of a hermit and enjoyed the ineffable bliss of communion with his fair visitant.

Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England, when he heard of this miracle, conceived a great veneration for the Church of Chartres, and, although he was at that time at war with Philippe-Auguste, he welcomed, encouraged and endowed with alms the emissaries of the Chapter, gave them safe conduct through his lands, and himself did obeisance before the sacred coffer and its relics. It was he who told the tale of this miraculous vision to his sister, Countess of Blois, and he loved to speak of it to the faithful on every occasion.

Thus the solemn voice of the Church, through the agency of these emissaries, made itself heard throughout the land, promising ‘indulgences’ to those who responded generously to her appeals, and threatening with anathemas those who dared to pillage the convoys of the pilgrims. The inhabitants of Château-Landon, as our poet relates, stirred, man and woman alike, by the discourse of their pastor, resolved to load a waggon with wheat and take it to aid the workers at Chartres. They yoked themselves to the waggon and began to pull with all their strength, but the road was so heavy that they made but slow progress. Ere they reached Chartres they ran short of provisions. The villagers gave them bread out of their small store, and behold, the loaves of bread were multiplied unto them, and they found, when they had eaten, that the villagers had as many loaves as they had had at first.

The inhabitants of Bonneval, of Puiset, of Pithiviers and of Corbeville, filled with a like spirit and parting on a like errand, experienced similar miracles, thanks to ‘la dame, qui est salu de cors et d’ame.’

The Bretons, also, who were established at Chartres in the street called La Bretonnerie, met together and decided to go out together to Berchères-l’Évêque and bring back as their tribute a waggon-load of stone, a task in which none but a Breton born should take a hand. They set out, therefore, one evening, every man of them who could help with collar or trace, but ere they could regain the town with their burden the sun went down behind a thick bank of clouds; there was no moon nor any light, but in marvellous wise an obscure and dreadful night was upon them. The unhappy pilgrims soon lost their path, and wandered astray over the vast plains of La Beauce. Blind terror seized their hearts, but God sent three brands of flaming fire before them to lighten their way. Rejoicing and amazed, they regained the road to Chartres, whose iglise et la tour (church and the tower) were rendered visible by these heavenly torches. Then they deposited their offering and spread abroad the news of the miracle which they had beheld.

Of another sort was the marvellous deliverance of a rich merchant of Aquitaine, who, whilst he was bringing on his horse a barrel of oil for the lamps of Notre-Dame, was made prisoner by the English soldiers of Cœur-de-Lion. To him, in answer to his prayer, the Virgin appeared, and she enabled him to pass out of the prison into which he had been thrown, without the knowledge of his gaolers.

The fame of these and other wonders of the sort, narrated by the pilgrims and repeated by the inhabitants of the town, soon filled the countryside and spread to the more distant provinces. The renown of the Church of Chartres filled the land and reached beyond the seas. In La Beauce every hamlet was eager to contribute something to its glory. Those who had no possessions to offer gave their services loading and drawing vehicles: the roads were crowded with these humble servants of the Lord. The blind, the dumb, the lame and the halt awaited in each village the passing of the pilgrims and besought to be allowed to join their company. Rich and poor, all came to Chartres with their offerings, so that, in the words of the chronicler, money came to support the workmen, rather from the hand of Providence than human purses.[69]

The deduction of the historian from the legends of our Trouvère is one which we shall find illustrated by the Cathedral windows. It is, that this Cathedral is a popular and national monument, built by the free labour of the people gathered together freely from all parts of France, joining and rejoicing in the new democratic movement of the Communes, and recording, therefore, in stone and glass their new aspirations, their new dignity.

CHAPTER VI

Mediæval Glass and Mediæval Guilds

The three western windows of limpid blue belong, as we have said, to the twelfth century. And we know that by the year 1220 all the great legendary lights of the nave and all the windows of the choir, with the exception of those given by S. Piedmont of Castile and Jeanne de Dammartin, had been placed in the bays. Almost all the original glazing remains. There is, of course, fine thirteenth-century glass in England, at Canterbury for instance, and at Lincoln, whilst Salisbury and York are scarcely to be surpassed for the pale beauty of their silvery grisailles. But we have nothing in this country to compare in quantity, and therefore in effect, with the gorgeous glass which illustrates the great French churches. It is at Reims, Le Mans and Bourges, and most of all at Chartres, that are to be found the largest and most complete and therefore the most gorgeous galleries of the deep, rich mosaic glass of that date. At Chartres, throughout the whole vast expanse of jewelled lights, there is scarcely one that is not early, and there are very few that are not of the thirteenth century.

Consider the list of them now as they have come down to us across the ages, in spite of fires and sieges, artists and vandals, cleansing and restoring, in spite of the winds that sweep across La Beauce and the desire of the people to read: in spite even of the eighteenth-century architects and their eagerness to throw daylight upon their abominable deeds. This is the reckoning:—One hundred and twenty-four great windows, three great roses, thirty-five lesser roses, and twelve small ones! And in these are painted 3889 figures, including thirty-two contemporary historical personages, a crowd of saints and prophets in thirty-eight separate legends, and groups of tradesmen in the costumes of their guilds. This is the national portrait gallery of mediæval France! It is one of the most precious documents of mediæval archæology. It is one of the most rich and poetical applications of symbolic art.

Amazing, unspeakable are the glories of this unrivalled treasure of stained glass. ‘I gaze round on the windows, pride of France!’ Language is futile in the presence of their rich, deep, gem-like colouring, and the memory of them, faint though it must be, compared with the intense impression conveyed by the immense reality, makes the tongue to falter, the pen to fail.

The building is Aladdin’s cave, and the glass a myriad jewels set in lead lines and in tracery of stone! But metaphors are unavailing, epithets are quite powerless to convey the beauty of the light which pours through them. It is as marvellous, and it changes as unceasingly as the ever-changing hues of a sunset on the western shores of Scotland, or on the iridescent waters of the Venetian lagoons. And it is even more brilliant than these. When the noonday sun is darting his angry rays across the aisles, or soft rain-laden beams streak the spaces with stripes of bloom; when the shades of evening have begun to fall, or when the dawn is gathering strength, and is now lighting the dim distances of the vast nave, you may sit and gaze round on those windows. You watch the wine-red, the blood-red, the yellow and the brown of the Rose of France and the lancet lights beneath, till the memory of all other beauty upon earth fades in the intoxication of that stupendous colouring. You turn at last, and, since no memory, however vivid, can retain to the full the impression of the beauty of that glass, you are startled into another ecstasy. For you have forgotten that there can be other windows as beautiful. You cannot believe that there are other colours as exquisite, until you see once more those blues and greens, ultramarines and peacock blues and azures, and those fiery reds which shine in upon the astonished sight from the windows of the south transept and the aisles. And still there remain the lights of the choir and the apse, and still the old glories, ever new, of the azure of the western lancets, the sapphires and rubies of the western rose.

The reds, like those at Reims, are everywhere wonderful; the saffron also and the citron yellows, the brown and the emerald green; but most superbly beautiful of all are the blues, the lucid transparent azure of the twelfth-century lancets, and the deep sapphire, the blue of Poitiers, which fills the lower windows of the nave. The secret of its manufacture is lost, but you can understand, when you behold it, how easily that story was believed which said that in order to secure this depth of blue the monkish glaziers used to grind sapphires to powder and mix them with their glass. There is only one thing that can be compared with the stained glass of the North, and that is the mosaics of the South, of Ravenna, Palermo, San Sofia.

You ‘gaze round on those windows, the pride of France,’ and as you feast your eyes upon the sparkling azure and the blood-red rays that stream from the rose, you understand also how easily the lad who saw it for the first time was led to say, when suddenly above him the organ burst forth into music, that it seemed to him as if the window spoke!

The Cathedral offers to the student of glass a perfect model, not indeed of detail, for upon the path which leads to the perfection of detail the thirteenth-century glazier had still many steps to take, but of effects in decorative colouring. In the rose you have a confused effect of colour, in which there is not any too definite form to spoil the charm of the broken bits of colour upon the senses. The meaning is there, too, as we shall see, many meanings, simple and elaborate, direct and mystical. But it is in the lancet windows of the nave that the row of otherwise (let it be confessed) ungainly figures supplies us at once, by means of the drapery, cloaks and borders, with that mixture of colour and shade that makes colour beautiful, and with those broad masses of stain combined with absolute simplicity and severity of design which should be the ideal of the glazier. And they are not crowded with too much story.

The lesson of the army of saints and martyrs which they represent is printed in large type, so that it may be easily read and understood from the distant level of the nave. Each light exhibits one enormous figure of a saint, with features strongly marked, clad in bright robes of blazing colour, set off by a border that is more sober in tone and opaque. The fire dies out of these broad patches of limpid blue and emerald green, of flaming red and saffron yellow, as they approach the deep, cool borders of brown and black, violet and grey, mingled with lower tones of red and green. You see, then, the object and the successful result of these bold designs of huge saints. The mediæval glaziers had considered the position which their glass was to occupy in the Cathedral. They did not merely design it with a view to its being effective in the studio. There is another point to be noted. Working, as they did, with small fragments of the precious glass as it came out of the melting-pot, and binding each fragment in lines of lead till the whole formed a pattern or drawing in a leaden framework, they were able to watch and test their work in its progress. Thus, watching and testing, they were able also to arrange for the proper mingling of the rays diffused on all sides by each piece of the mosaic. They did not aim so much at painting a good preliminary design upon paper as at producing a fine effect of colour in glass. When in succeeding centuries painters invaded the realms of glass they would appear to have ignored the obvious requirements of the new medium in which they were to work. Experimentally and intuitively the mediæval glazier, on the other hand, must have studied the whole question of radiation as it affected his task. And the result is, that for the most superb effects of stained glass we have to go, not to the pictures burnt on the large sheets of glass by famous painters, but to the designs of the thirteenth-century anonymous monkish craftsmen. In the matter of stained glass the latter had this advantage also in their favour. They had to work with a material which, being less scientifically compounded, was artistically immensely superior. In the manufacture of the old pot-metal something was left to Nature, much, that is to say, to accident. The colour, in other words, was not so evenly and exactly spread as by more modern processes. Being more unevenly distributed, it would frequently tone off at the edges, and the rays diffused from it would mingle in a softer harmony with those of the neighbouring coloured fragments. And greater variety was obtained, because a chemically imperfect process never gives two batches of glass from the pot quite alike. In early work, again, the fact that large pieces of glass could not be made was also on the side of the craftsmen. Perfect colour is the product of varied colours; the multiplicity of small pieces of glass set in deep black lines of lead yielded a result of rich, deep colouring, which is in the nature of things not to be obtained from one large sheet, however fine.

But though the palette of the early glazier was so rich in quality with those splendid reds and ineffable blues, the secret of which has long been lost, and other primary colours, it was poor in extent. To this poverty must be ascribed the curious colouring of many details. Beards are often painted blue, and faces usually brown. Some shade of a rich purplish brown was in fact the ordinary flesh tint of the early glazier. In the window of the north transept, where S. Anne is portrayed, we have a very striking example of this. The brown face of S. Anne is there so large (it must be at least 2 feet in length), that the craftsman has been able to glaze it in several pieces. The eyes are of white, and so strongly leaded that they seem to stare out of the picture.

The sunburnt effect of their brown visages only accentuates the Oriental aspect of many of these glass figures. As at Bourges, so here, the influence of the East is plainly visible, not only in the hieratic type of the personages and their sumptuous apparel, but also and still more undoubtedly in the mosaic borders by which they and the medallions beneath are framed. The tones are rich and soft as those of a Persian rug; the patterns and devices are clearly related to those in Byzantine ivories and enamels. Nor will the simile I have used seem inept when it is remembered that at this very time imitations of the Persian rugs brought home by the Crusaders were being deliberately manufactured in Paris.

The enjoyment of colour is one of the finest of pleasures, but it was not merely to give pleasure that this glass was stained, and these figures drawn in lead. There is a reasoned aim, a definite symbolic purpose in all mediæval art, and not least in the art of stained glass.

We have seen how the huge figures of the guardian saints in the nave are made to stand out from their borders and tell, in spite of the height at which they are placed, their story, plain for every eye to see. If you now look at the windows of the lower row, of the aisles that is, you will notice that the breadth and importance of the borders which form the framework of the circular and quatrefoil medallions are striking. They are not, however, intended to make the medallions stand out—if they were, they would fail in their object—but to give the effect of an immense blaze of subdued, indeterminate colour.

That effect is reasoned: the light in the nave is subdued for a mystic purpose. It is not the chance result of light playing upon a fortuitous collection of coloured fragments of glass. It is a result knowingly and scientifically produced by the artist. The dim religious light which fills the threshold of the temple grows less dim as it approaches the centre of the Cross; it borrows still more transparent colours from the painter’s palette as it circles round the choir, and in the sanctuary gives place to the most lively and brilliant tones, which pour in from above. ‘What poetry is there,’ exclaims M. Ferdinand de Lasteyrie,[70] ‘in this immense gamut of tones, so cleverly arrayed. It is an admirable symbol of the light of Christianity escaping in great floods from the summit of the Cross, but throwing a lesser brillance upon those who stand afar off.’

To produce this striking effect the artist has availed himself of very simple means. In the aisles the windows are cold in tone, and the medallions,[71] as we have said, set in very broad borders. And these borders themselves, filled with a variety of patterns and ornaments, are composed of an infinite number of pieces of glass, mosaic work, the leaden frames of which contribute to the desired gloom. It is a clever application of the ‘legendary’ style, and the very choice of subjects here is in keeping with the place they occupy. The same tones prevail in the lofty windows of the nave, but there the figures are larger; huge saints and tall apostles look down from their posts upon the Cross of Christ and guard His church, S. Piat at their head; and the broad bands of colour give more access to the light. Advancing to the centre of the Cross, you perceive that the aisles are still plunged in a gloom, which is rendered yet more obscure by the unlit spaces of the great transept doors. But the roses set on high throw rainbow lights aslant the transepts, which mingle at the entrance of the choir with the mysterious tints of the nave, and the gallery of lights beneath these roses seem intended to effect the needed transition between their transparent loveliness and the opaque mass of stone beneath. In the apse, again, with its unique double aisles and the series of chapels, which form, as it were, the crown of thorns about the head of Christ upon the Cross, symbolised by the Church, there reigns a luminous obscurity. Here we have once more storied windows with medallion subjects and broad borders of topaz, emerald and ruby, rich and deep, and warmer in tone than were those of the nave. And in the centre of this sacred aureole of chapels rises the sanctuary in a blaze of light, like Jesus in the midst of His Apostles, and floods of warmly-coloured light pour down into the choir through the huge figures which fill the windows. ‘It seems,’ says M. Lasteyrie, ‘that the artist has borrowed a ray of light divine to animate his work, a ray which is brilliant at first but dies away at the entrance of the sanctuary, as if to indicate the spot in which the Christian enters into communion with his God.’

The mediæval artist, however, was not content with a reasoned effect of colour, however beautiful. His windows must be ‘storied’ as well as ‘richly dight.’ They must repeat in glass the lessons read to the people by the statuary without. In those three superb twelfth-century azure windows of the west the Tree of Jesse, the Childhood of the Saviour, and the principal scenes of the Passion are represented. The rose above them, with its rubies and sapphires in a deep setting of stone, tells again the story of the Last Judgment. From the wounds of Jesus, who is seated on a throne of clouds, flows the blood which saves or condemns mankind. Angels, cherubim and apostles surround him. An aureole in quatrefoil is about His head. Above shine the instruments of the Passion, and four angels are blowing the last trump. The earth opens and the sea gives up its dead. Emerging from their tombs, the dead look towards the Supreme Judge. S. Michael (as on the south porch) is weighing souls in the balance. Some are being led to Abraham’s bosom, whilst others, dragged by demons, fall into the vivid flames of hell.

A panel under the centre circle was destroyed by a cannon ball in the siege of 1591. It has been replaced by some fragments from another window. The rose of the north transept is called the Rose of France, because it was given to the Cathedral by S. Louis and Blanche of Castile. The Fleurs-de-lys of France and the Castles of Castile recall this fact when you see them repeated in their blue and gold in the medallions and the spandrels of the window. The rose itself is not so large as that of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, nor so delicately graceful as that of Amiens, but, as in the case of the western rose, the boldness of the masonry and the clear depths of the colouring lend to it a charm and beauty all its own. It represents the Glorification of Mary, the subject of the noble porch without.

In the centre, Mary seated on a throne, holds in her arms the Saviour of the world, and receives the homage of the angels, the Kings of Judah and the prophets, who are painted in these circles of twelve medallions. The panels of the second circle are rectangular.

Beneath the rose are five tall pointed windows of unforgettable splendour and extraordinary interest. King David with his harp of gold, Solomon the monarch with the blue fleur-de-lys and Jeroboam worshipping his calves of gold below, both stand forth from a background of purple, prefiguring the Kingship of the Son; Aaron, the high priest, with the rod that budded and the book of the law, wearing a curious red hat, and beneath him Pharaoh engulfed in the Red Sea; Melchisedek, with chalice and censer, and beneath him Nebuchadnezzar in front of the statue of gold, silver, iron and clay, represent beforehand the Priesthood of Christ. And all these rich Oriental figures support the enormous brown-faced portrait of S. Anne, who sits in the central light and carries the infant Mary.

The great white eyes of these figures seem to stare across at the rose of the south transept opposite, which represents the fulfilment of all that they had foreshadowed—the Glorification of Christ. The story is repeated by the statuary of the south porch without. This window was founded by Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux and Duke of Bretagne, who figures therefore with his wife and family and arms in the lower portions of the windows below the rose.

The arms of Dreux and Bretagne also appear with fine effect in the twelve quatrefoils of the rose, which correspond to the rectangular panels of the windows opposite. In the centre of the rose Christ enthroned blesses the world and holds in His left hand a large chalice. The surrounding medallions contain eight angels censing the four beasts and twenty-four elders before the throne, referred to in the Book of Revelations.

As in the north transept, five large pointed windows beneath complete the subject. The central figure is that of Christ presented to the faithful in the Virgin’s arms, whilst on either side are the four evangelists carried on the shoulders of the four great prophets; S. Matthew seated on Isaiah, S. Luke on Jeremiah, S. John (beardless, as always in mediæval portraiture, to typify his virginity) on Ezekiel, and S. Mark on David. The strange position of these naïve evangelists is intended to symbolise the fact that the new dispensation rests upon the old, even as the Christian Gothic of the upper church is built upon the Pagan Romanesque of the old basilica, the crypt beneath.

To the east, in the apse, seven great windows repeat the motive of the Glorification of Mary, and the artists, who, throughout this Cathedral of Notre-Dame, are never weary of portraying its patroness in every guise and every form, at every age, and almost as of every clime, represent her as receiving homage from the personages of the Old Testament, and even of S. Peter.

Not the least famous, not the least fascinating of these innumerable Madonnas, though candles are no longer burnt to her as they were of yore, is the window—the second in the south aisle of the choir after leaving the transept—which is known as the Notre-Dame de la belle Verrière. She is clad in bright vestments of azure, and, like the Virgin who appeared to the peasant girl at Lourdes, she has about her head an aureole of blue. Deep tones of red and brown form the background of the window from which the figure of the Madonna stands out, so that you might almost believe that she is about to step through into the dark aisles of the Cathedral that is hers.

This window belongs to the thirteenth century, but it is probably modelled on an earlier one of which there is mention. Like the three twelfth-century windows of the west, and especially the southernmost of these three, it is strikingly Byzantine in character. The Miracle at the Marriage of Cana and the Temptations of Christ fill the lower part of the light.

In the case of the remaining windows the evidence of design is less obvious than in that of the groups with which we have dealt. Much was evidently left to the caprice of the donors, who usually chose to represent the lives, the struggles or the martyrdoms of their patron saints. Thus the episodes of the life of a local priest, S. Laumer, are recorded in a series of medallions, just as one of his miracles is related in stone in the south porch. The storied window suggests at once practically all that we know of him. Some time in the seventh century, it is said, he kept his father’s sheep near Chartres, but afterwards, having learned his letters, he was ordained priest and entered a monastery. But he longed for a life of prayer and solitude, and fled to the forest where he hoped none would follow him. It was vain; disciples, hearing of his sanctity and the miracles he wrought, flocked to him. Again he fled and settled in the woods near Dreux. But his cell of green leaves and wattles soon became the centre of a colony of monks, so that he was fain to recognise the call of God and to build a monastery there. Of the miracles recorded as wrought by him there is one characteristic of his gentle individuality. During the night some robbers stole a cow belonging to the monks. The brethren were in despair. The robbers, however, lost their way in the tangled forest. They wandered all night and all next day, unable to discover the road. At last, as evening settled in, they saw the darkness of the forest lighten, and, still driving the cow, they came out upon the clearing of the monastery. S. Laumer himself stood before them. They fell at his feet, asking his pardon and imploring him to direct them aright. He raised them and said, ‘I thank you, kind friends, for finding and bringing back to me my strayed cow. You must be very tired and hungry. Follow me.’ They followed him into his hut and he set before them such food and drink as he had, and they ate and drank and were refreshed. Then he set them on their right road, and they departed—but without the cow.

Or take, as another example, the third window of the north aisle where the lesson of the life of another saint, not local, is taught in another series of medallions, because S. Eustace was the patron saint of the founder. In the bottom panel, Placidius, a centurion of the guard in Trajan’s day, appears hunting a stag. A miracle is wrought which brings about the conversion of the Pagan hunter. For a cross of light shines between the horns of the fugitive. Overwhelmed by the sight of this prodigy, Placidius dismounts from his horse, kneels down and is baptized. The change wrought within is described in the upper panels. Great calamities befall him; his wife is taken from him; his children are devoured by wild beasts. But Eustace, filled with a perfect trust in God, bears all with Christian resignation. He retires to a distant land, and there his virtue waxes daily until at last he is deemed worthy to suffer martyrdom for his faith. Together with his wife he is roasted alive in the belly of a brazen bull.

Thus in all simplicity the glaziers paint the legends which the people have learned. They tell the story of a man’s life from his birth, and do not even hesitate to represent his faults, because these windows were intended to serve as an illustrated catechism for the poor and ignorant, and the saintliness that has no touches of things human proves for ordinary people discouraging. In the lower panels of the windows, therefore, the early years of the saints are shown so that we may be comforted and inspired by the knowledge that they too shared in the weaknesses and the miseries of our nature. And above, when they have risen superior to their trials, we see them in a halo of sanctity, performing miracles by their faith. Frail man has shaken off this vile earth and goes on from strength to strength, according to the simple expression of a chronicler, until he arrives in the house of the Eternal Father, whose glorious person dominates the whole window. As in the case of the sculptured porches so here, when we study and admire the conception and execution of these storied windows, the question arises, Who was it who arranged, who was it who coloured this glorious glass? And again the answer must be that we know not. The artists of the twelfth century have not been careful in this matter: the object of their fecund imagination and their exquisite workmanship has been this only—the majestic expression of the burning faith within them.

One name only, that of Clement, the Chartrain glazier (Clemens, vitrearius Carnotensis), found on a window in the Cathedral of Rouen, has come down to us. And Clement, it is supposed, designed the window which recounts the legend of S. Martin. That name alone survives out of all the artists whose work has for over seven hundred years been the admiration of all Europe!

The donors of the windows, on the other hand, shine there amid a blaze of heraldic glory. You may still behold Louis de Poissy on his white charger and at the head of his men, clad in full armour, setting forth on the Crusade. Ferdinand III. of Castile also, S. Ferdinand, you may see, wrapped in mail for the defence of the faith, and Blanche of Castile, who so often brought her young son to Chartres and inspired him with his so tender devotion to Notre-Dame. Pierre Mauclerc is here, that turbulent spirit who expiated his offences against order by his immense generosity to the Cathedral; Thibault VI., Count of Chartres, the very valiant Crusader; Amaury de Montfort, Constable of France; Pierre de Courtenay; Bouchard de Marly, of the noble house of Montmorency—these and a whole gallery of other counts and barons and knights of chivalry live on in the church which they endowed with their gold and for which they fought with their swords.

But we have seen that this Cathedral was built not by the generosity of the great alone. It was in every sense a popular, a national monument, raised to the glory of God by the contributions and labour of all classes. And if the humble donors have scarcely dared, like the great lords, to represent themselves individually, they have fortunately not shrunk from perpetuating, under the guise of the guilds through which they subscribed, the record of their no less interesting personalities. They all figure in the windows founded by their several trades; masons and skinners, drapers and goldsmiths, bakers and armourers, butchers and tanners, cobblers and water-carriers even, are all portrayed at work with the simple realism of the Middle Ages.

A whole book, and a very interesting one, might be written as a commentary on the thirty or forty trade corporations here depicted. It would exhibit the commercial history of a mediæval shrine, the mart of pilgrims and the bazar of the devout.

All the trading corporations of the Middle Ages were close and exclusive bodies. Admission to them was only possible by the long and narrow path of apprenticeship. Economically, their general aim was to limit competition by limiting the number of masters, by limiting the number of embryo masters in the shape of apprentices whom each master in a guild might receive. Their general result was to maintain a high standard in the quality of the work produced, and by discouraging the modern ideal of quantity to provide a certain and sufficient employment amongst all those who were fortunate enough to be within the sacred circle of their union.

An apprentice was an unmarried lad of from fifteen to twenty years of age, bound to his master for a certain number of years by the payment of a fixed fee and an oath. As elsewhere, so in France,[72] the master was responsible not only for teaching the apprentice his trade, so that he might in due course be approved a master-workman himself, but also for his moral training. By the rules of the craft he was required to cherish the boy ‘beneath his roof, at his board and at his hearth.’

If he did his duty, in fact, the master treated the apprentice as his own sons and thrashed him as heartily. The apprentice frequently returned the compliment by making him his father-in-law. Shortly before the expiration of his apprenticeship the young craftsman was examined by a board of jurés, and was called upon to give a practical exhibition of his skill. If he succeeded in satisfying them that he could fashion a proper doublet or bake a good loaf of bread, he was allowed to call himself a workman, to practise his trade, and to take his share in the management and the benefits of his guild. Those benefits often included comprehensive schemes of charity and mutual aid. The widows and indigent members of a corporation were provided for by funds to which all had contributed their quota. The standard of efficiency was maintained not only by the vigilance of the jurés, who examined each finished article before it was offered for sale, not only by the fear of a fine which might be inflicted for defective work, but also by the pride and sense of honour fostered in each individual craftsman. It was lowered on the other hand by the excessive conservatism of the guilds, who forbade any underselling or departure from customary models, insisted on a minute and absurd division of labour, condemned all inventions, and nipped all developments in the bud.

Such, briefly, was the constitution of the famous mediæval guilds, such were their faults and excellences. The record of these Cathedral windows helps us to realise their importance in the history of Chartres, and also enables us to imagine the state and the character of the old town’s trade. In spite of the exactions and taxes levied by bishop and count, chapter, monastery and viscount, the merchants of Chartres flourished mightily in the thirteenth century, and the fairs of the town held during the four feasts of Our Lady rivalled in importance even those of Brie and Champagne. Chartres was one of the seventeen towns in France where the trades were separate and distinct, and each trade had its statutes regulated and enforced by jurés in the manner I have sketched. She owed her commercial activity to the gatherings of pilgrims at the shrine of Notre-Dame, and when these gatherings ceased her trade drooped and dwindled away till once more, as in the Merovingian days, it was confined to traffic in wool and corn.

Take first, for instance, the window which gives us the story of S. Eustace, the third in the north aisle of the nave, and the third in the north clerestory of the nave, with its medallions of apostles and S. Thomas of Canterbury, that favourite saint of the Middle Ages. They were given by the furriers and drapers, the Bourgeois, as they were called, of the River, members of the renowned corporation known as the Métier de la Rivière. This métier included the professions of the woollen-drapers, combers and cleaners, felt-makers and dyers.

Six jurés were elected annually by the masters of the guild, whose duty it was to examine, and pass or reject every piece of cloth or wool-work made at Chartres or anywhere within a radius of three leagues. Latterly every piece approved was stamped with a leaden trademark. The trade flourished and brought great reputation to the town from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. But the wars with England, and plague and famine greatly affected its prosperity. These and other causes led to its gradual decay and final disappearance.

The tanners and cobblers who gave the third and fourth windows in the south aisle of the nave formed one corporation, and the curriers were for a long time included under the heading of tanners. The latter were attracted to Chartres by the excellence and quantity of the skins to be obtained there, and by the peculiar quality of the water of the Eure, which, together with the bark supplied by the trees of the neighbouring forests, was specially adapted for curing them. The tanners flourished exceedingly, and were accustomed to celebrate with great magnificence at the riverside Church of S. André the feast of their patron, S. Louis. The difficulty of procuring skins and other accessories had considerably injured them by the time of the Revolution, and their industry, like that of the shoemakers, has to-day no more than a quite local importance. But the river is still to some extent the scene of their labours. For though agriculture is now the chief industry of the department, and though the great fairs of May and September are great no longer in comparison with their splendid past, the commerce of Chartres is not altogether dead. There is a considerable traffic not only in corn and wool but also in sheep and horses, and a walk along the river banks between the Pont Neuf and the Porte Guillaume will

show you that the chief ateliers of the district are the wash-houses of the tanners and the wool-workers. Along the base of the mouldering wall which skirts the diverted arm of the Eure lie the backs of old houses with their adjoining tanyards. Many of them, too, are garnished with little wooden galleries, lavatories of the town’s soiled linen. ‘These galleries are filled with washerwomen, who crane over and dip their many-coloured rags into the yellow stream. The old patched and interrupted wall, the ditch with its weedy edges, the spots of colour, the white-capped laundresses in their little wooden cages—one lingers to look at it all.’[73]

Wine was another commodity for which Chartres was once famous. The author of the Book of Miracles tells us of a troubadour who left his companion to pursue his pilgrimage alone whilst he himself paid a prolonged visit to a cabaret.