The remainder of this porch was of secondary interest. In the mouldings
of the arches and in the pillars of the bays the ranks of the Confessors
appeared again, the nine choirs of Angels, the parable of the wise and
foolish Virgins, a replica of the four-and-twenty elders on the royal
front, the Prophets of the Old Testament, the Virtues, the Vices, the
Christian Virgins, and small statues of the Apostles, all more or less
injured and more or less invisible.
This south porch, with its seven hundred and eighty-three statues and
statuettes, spoken of by the guide-books as the most attractive of all,
was to artists, on the contrary, the least absorbing; for, with the
exception of the noble effigies of Saint Theodore and Saint George, the
glorification of the others who dwell there was on the whole, from the
artistic point of view, very inferior in interest to the sculpture on
the twelfth-century west front, or even to that of the north porch--that
complete embodiment of the Two Testaments--where the sculpture, if more
barbarous, was less placid and cold.
And Durtal came to this conclusion: "The exterior of the cathedral of
Chartres may be summed up in three words: _Latvia_, _hyperdulia_, and
_dulia_. _Latria_, the worship of Our Lord, on the west front;
_Hyperdulia_, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, in the north porch;
_Dulia_, the worship of the Saints, in the south porch.
"For although the Redeemer is magnified in this south portal in His
character of Supreme Judge, He seems to make way for the Saints. And
this is quite intelligible, since He is enthroned there for two
purposes, and His true palace, His real throne, is in the triumphal
tympanum of the royal doorway in the west front."
Before quitting this side of the building, as he glanced once more at
the ranks of the Elect, Durtal stopped in front of Saint Clement and
Saint Gregory.
Saint Clement, whose extraordinary death almost casts his life into
oblivion--a life exclusively occupied in harrowing souls. Durtal
recalled the narrative of Voragine. After being exiled to the
Chersonesus, in the reign of Trajan, Clement was cast into the sea with
an anchor tied to his neck, while the assembled Christians kneeling on
the strand besought Heaven to restore his body. Then the sea withdrew
three miles, and the faithful went dry-shod to a chapel which the angels
had just erected beneath the waters, where the body of the saint was
found reposing, lying on a tomb; and for many centuries the sea retired
every year for a week, to allow pilgrims to visit his remains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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