103. Story of S. Marguerite and S. Catherine of Alexandria. Donors,
Marguerite de Lèves, and her husband, Guérin de Friaise, with her
brother Hugues de Meslay.
104. Life of S. Thomas of Canterbury. Given about thirty years after his
murder by the Tanners and Curriers. John of Salisbury, Bishop of
Chartres, had been the secretary of Thomas à Becket, and an eye-witness
of his murder.
_Chapel of All Saints._
105. The story of S. Martin (by Clement, the glass painter of Chartres,
whose name is recorded in a similar thirteenth-century window in Rouen
Cathedral?). Given by the Shoemakers.
106, 107. White eighteenth-century glass.
108. Fourteenth-century grisailles. The Annunciation. Two coats of arms.
Rose, Christ blessing.
109. Signs of the Zodiac and Months of the year. The life of the Virgin.
Rose, Christ crucified. Given by Thibaut VI., Count of Chartres, for
Thomas, Count of Perche, killed in the Battle of Lincoln, 1217.
110. Notre-dame de la Belle Verrière (_see_ p. 161). Above, the Virgin
(whose mouth has been skilfully restored), enthroned and crowned, with
Christ between her knees, surrounded by angels bearing candlesticks and
censers. Below, the Marriage at Cana, and the Temptation of our Saviour
in the Wilderness, on the Temple and the Mountain.
111. Scenes from the lives of S. Antony and S. Paul, the first hermit.
Given by the Basketmakers.
Rose, Virgin and Child.
CHAPTER VII
_The Cathedral_
‘Monument unique, et qu’il faudrait comparer aux gigantesques
constructions de l’Egypte, aux monstrueuses pagodes de l’Inde pour
lui trouver des analogues.’--DIDRON.
‘Notre-Dame de Chartres! It is a world to explore, as if one
explored the entire Middle Ages.’--PATER.
The Cathedral of Chartres is gifted to a peculiar degree with the
quality of impressiveness. This quality it owes to the living unity, the
animated harmony of its members, and also to the sensation of space, not
emptiness, to the impression of massiveness which is yet not heavy,
suggested by the whole, whether viewed from near or afar, and equally by
the parts, such as the west front or the nave.
‘Dependent,’ says Pater, ‘on its structural completeness, or its wealth
of well-preserved ornament, or its unity in variety, perhaps on some
undefinable operation of genius, beyond, but concurrently with, all
these, the Church of Chartres has still the gift of a unique power of
impressing. In comparison, the other famous Churches of France, at
Amiens for instance, at Reims or Beauvais, may seem but formal, and to a
large extent reproducible, effects of mere architectural rule on a
gigantic scale.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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