Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
This is an economical problem which belongs to experts, but the
historical value of these early evidences is still something,--
perhaps still as much as ten sous. All the windows tend to the same
conclusion. Even the last pair, numbers 41 and 42, offer three
personal clues which lead to the same result:--the arms of Bouchard
de Marly who died in 1226, almost at the same time as Louis VIII; a
certain Colinus or Colin, "de camera Regis," who was alive in 1225;
and Robert of Beaumont in the rose, who seems to be a Beaumont of Le
Perche, of whom little or nothing is as yet certainly known. As a
general rule, there are two series of windows, one figuring the
companions or followers of Louis VIII (1215-26); the other, friends
or companions of Saint Louis (1226-70), Queen Blanche uniting both.
What helps to hold the sequences in a certain order, is that the
choir was complete, and services regularly resumed there, in 1210,
while in 1220 the transept and nave were finished and vaulted. For
the apside windows, therefore, we will assume, subject to
correction, a date from 1200 to 1225 for their design and
workmanship; for the transept, 1220 to 1236; and for the nave a
general tendency to the actual reign of Saint Louis from 1236 to
1270. Since there is a deal of later glass scattered everywhere
among the earlier, the margin of error is great; but by keeping the
reign of Louis VIII and its personages distinct from that of Louis
IX and his generation, we can be fairly sure of our main facts.
Meanwhile the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, wholly built and completed
between 1240 and 1248, offers a standard of comparison for the
legendary windows.
The choir of Chartres is as long as the nave, and much broader,
besides that the apse was planned with seven circular projections
which greatly increased the window space, so that the guidebook
reckons thirty-seven windows. A number of these are grisailles, and
the true amateur of glass considers the grisailles to be as well
worth study as the legendary windows. They are a decoration which
has no particular concern with churches, and no distinct religious
meaning, but, it seems, a religious value which Viollet-le-Duc is at
some trouble to explain; and, since his explanation is not very
technical, we can look at it, before looking at the legends:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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