Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
Very grand, indeed, is this doorway; dignified, impressive, and
masculine to a degree seldom if ever equalled in art; and the left
bay rivals it. There, in the tympanum, Christ appears again;
standing; bearing on His head the crown royal; alone, except for the
two angels who adore, and surrounded only by the martyrs, His
witnesses. The right bay is devoted to Saint Nicholas and the Saints
Confessors who bear witness to the authority of Christ in faith. Of
the twenty-eight great figures, the officers of the royal court, who
make thus the strength of the Church beneath Christ, not one is a
woman. The masculine orthodoxy of Pierre Mauclerc has spared neither
sex nor youth; all are of a maturity which chills the blood,
excepting two, whose youthful beauty is heightened by the severity
of their surroundings, so that the Abbe Bulteau makes bold even to
say that "the two statues of Saint George and of Saint Theodore may
be regarded as the most beautiful of our cathedral, perhaps even as
the two masterpieces of statuary at the end of the thirteenth
century." On that point, let every one follow his taste; but one
reflection at least seems to force itself on the mind in comparing
these twenty-eight figures. Certainly the sword, however it may
compare with the pen in other directions, is in art more powerful
than all the pens, or volumes, or crosiers ever made. Your "Golden
Legend" and Roman Breviary are here the only guide-books worth
consulting, and the stories of young George and Theodore stand there
recorded; as their miracle under the walls of Antioch, during the
first crusade, is matter of history; but among these magnificent
figures one detects at a glance that it is not the religion or
sacred purity of the subject, or even the miracles or the
sufferings, which inspire passion for Saint George and Saint
Theodore, under the Abbe's robe; it is with him, as with the plain
boy and girl, simply youth, with lance and sword and shield.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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