Language has changed since those windows spoke to Godfrey of Bouillon.
But when a general stops on his line of march for higher council and
then steers so true through the darkest day toward a faint, far-distant
light, must he not have seen through the glass darkly?
It was but a few years after this “parfit gentil” knight passed away
before he was as dear a hero of romance as King Arthur had become after
many centuries, so little was there in his life for men to forget, so
much that was sweet to dream upon. I suppose his story must have been
related many times in beautiful glass, though as the panes grew larger
and finer they told their stories less personally; but gallant knights
on windows far and near are still reflecting an ideal that came to the
First Baron of Jerusalem through the old church’s windows. Might it not
be said of these old church builders, who builds from the heart feeds
three: himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me?
To make windows like those of Saint Denis, an orderly, organized
factory was necessary, and organization was the crying need of that
age. Another astonished old chronicler repeats, that in those days of
serfdom Suger paid his glass-workers. But the men learned their rights
more readily than the chroniclers. Thereafter we constantly run upon
the records of powerful workmen’s unions or guilds. In fact, we read of
them later on the glass itself. These splendid church windows were, of
course, very costly, and then, as now, they were usually presented to
the churches. We find the guilds are the proud donors of many of them;
two fine old church windows come down to us proudly representing some
_imagiers_ and glass-makers at their work, those guilds having thus
elected to “with the angels stand.”
Complaints of the luxury of the church also come down. Saint Bernard
declares “their stones were gilded with the money of the needy and
wretched to charm the eyes of the rich” (but had the poor no eyes?).
Being against the government by temperament, Saint Bernard especially
abominated the royal Abbey of Saint Denis. He complained of the
“unclean apes and befowled tigers” upon which Suger’s _imagiers_
developed their skill, and it is written (how the writer arrived at the
scene he does not explain) that as Suger’s confessor, Bernard commanded
him to divest his mind of mundane cares and to dream only of the
heavenly Jerusalem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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