How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth CenturiesO'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
History
How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
Architecture, Gothic; Cathedrals -- France
The Beau Dieu of Rheims of most benign majesty is the central image of
the transept's northern façade. Surmounting it is a Last Judgment that
speaks well for the honesty of the clerics whose pupils were the
sculptors. Here at the king's own basilica, whither he came for the most
brilliant hour of his life, was sculptured a crowned monarch, as the
front figure, marching to hell, and behind him walked a bishop. No
pharisees were the men of the XIII century. Sin was sin, and all men
were equal before sin's punishment.
There are statues on the towers of that same north frontispiece to which
names have been given. One has been called Philippe-Auguste, and it
certainly was a portrait study, whether or not it represented the most
able monarch of the feudal ages, the victor of Bouvines, who tripled the
area of France and under whom was begun almost every Gothic cathedral in
the land. The name of his grandson, St. Louis, has been given to another
image. In a niche of the façade stands a charming Eve holding a very
mediæval serpent.
One can merely indicate, in passing, the astounding wealth of
Rheims--five thousand images whose verve and fecundity are marvelous.
"If your heart is right, all creatures will be for you a book of holy
doctrine," so they dared to carve clown, dog, cat, or sheep on pinnacle,
or in hidden nook, and their flora was as generous as their fauna. A
local botanist has found that every leaf growing to-day by the roadsides
was reproduced in the cathedral. It was only natural that in Champagne
the vine leaf should be popular; on one of the capitals of the nave a
pleasant vintage scene is represented.
If the gorgeous west approaches of the Cathedral-Royal were suited for
earthly pageantry, its eastern end paid homage, in holier simplicity, to
the Spiritual King. Around the exterior wall of the apse was set a guard
of angels, each carrying an emblem of the Passion, or of its symbol, the
Mass--chalice, censer, missal, spear--and the procession met at the
Christ image placed in the center of the curving wall. The ordinance
was derived from Byzantine art. Many an artist has said of the apse
sculpture of Rheims that the Greeks can show no lovelier work. A few
years later, more angelic thrones, dominations, and powers were set
around this, the Cathedral of the Angels. A seraphic sentry adorned each
buttress and at the same time increased its counterbutting force, and
were agents toward the swifter grounding of the load.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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