Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
Unfortunately she is gone, or comes here now so very rarely that we
never shall see her; but her genius remains as individual here as
the genius of Blanche of Castile and Pierre de Dreux in the
transepts. That the three lancets were her own taste, as distinctly
as the Trianon was the taste of Louis XIV, is self-evident. They
represent all that was dearest to her; her Son's glory on her right;
her own beautiful life in the middle; her royal ancestry on her
left: the story of her divine right, thrice-told. The pictures are
all personal, like family portraits. Above them the man who worked
in 1200 to carry out the harmony, and to satisfy the Virgin's
wishes, has filled his rose with a dozen or two little compositions
in glass, which reveal their subjects only to the best powers of a
binocle. Looking carefully, one discovers at last that this gorgeous
combination of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides a Last
Judgment--the one subject carefully excluded from the old work, and
probably not existing on the south portal for another twenty years.
If the scheme of the western rose dates from 1200, as is reasonable
to suppose, this Last Judgment is the oldest in the church, and
makes a link between the theology of the first crusade, beneath, and
the theology of Pierre Mauclerc in the south porch. The churchman is
the only true and final judge on his own doctrine, and we neither
know nor care to know the facts; but we are as good judges as he of
the feeling, and we are at full liberty to feel that such a Last
Judgment as this was never seen before or since by churchman or
heretic, unless by virtue of the heresy which held that the true
Christian must be happy in being damned since such is the will of
God. That this blaze of heavenly light was intended, either by the
Virgin or by her workmen, to convey ideas of terror or pain, is a
notion which the Church might possibly preach, but which we sinners
knew to be false in the thirteenth century as well as we know it
now. Never in all these seven hundred years has one of us looked up
at this rose without feeling it to be Our Lady's promise of
Paradise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account