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
Work on the cathedral was taken up with energy after Jeanne, carrying
her standard, had hallowed the streets of Troyes. As the XV century
closed, the nave's radiant late-Gothic windows were installed. They are
of the _Biblia pauperum_ type, and are surprisingly like big translucent
woodcuts. They tell the story of Daniel, Tobias, Joseph and his
brethren, Job--a window especially to be noticed--some parables, too,
and edifying legends. The scenes are set quite as they appeared in the
mystery plays, the costumes being not of Syria, but of the very stuffs
and damasks bought in their own international fairs. The same masters of
Troyes, Verrat, Godon, Lyénin, Macadré, who signed a rose window of Sens
transept, put their signatures here.
Bible stories such as these suit the layman's part of a church, for they
serve to hold the attention of the average man. In the choir of Troyes
are thirteen large windows of an earlier day, profounder in color and
more spiritual in suggestion. They are like a jeweled cloistral screen
around the Holy of Holies. In the upper central windows are the Passion
scenes, and on either side rise tier on tier of martyrs who witnessed to
the Faith--bishops, abbots, and a few important personages, such as Pope
Innocent III, Bishop Hervé, the builder, and the archbishop of Sens, the
learned Pierre de Corbeil. On one side of the choir Henry I, emperor of
Constantinople, of the house of Champagne, is pictured, and
Philippe-Auguste, suzerain of Champagne. And opposite in the fourth
window are donjons and fleurs-de-lys showing that the queen-regent,
Blanche of Castile, was generous here as elsewhere.
The upper choir windows of Troyes allowed more light to pass than had
their immediate predecessors, the lancets of Chartres. Their colors were
clear and bright; only such stone mullions were used as were absolutely
required for the support of the glass. The eight lateral windows of the
upper choir belong to the XIII century, the five at the eastern curve to
the XIV century. In the lower choir are various ancient windows,
liberally restored, the Tree of Jesse, of Byzantine character, being the
best. Two hundred years later another Tree of Jesse was made by
Lyénin,[145] for the clearstory of the nave. It gave Christian folk a
feeling of pride to record the Lord's high ancestry according to Isaias
and the Acts. This cathedral of Troyes was one of the first to glaze its
triforium, even before St. Denis' abbatial. The present triforium lights
are, in most part, modern.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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