Stained Glass of the Middle Ages in England and France Part 6

It was at Sens that Thomas a Becket took refuge during his exile. His mitre and chasuble are still preserved there, and the connection between the two places seems to have remained very intimate.

It will be remembered that William of Sens was the first architect of the choir of Canterbury, and it is not surprising to find the resemblance between the cathedrals at the two places very marked indeed. Not only does one at once perceive the same hand in the architecture, but what remains of the early gla.s.s at Sens is quite incontestably the work of the same artist who gave us the east window and the Jordan Fitzeisulf window at Canterbury.

[Sidenote: The Good Samaritan.]

There are four of these windows at Sens, all in the north choir aisle. They have suffered a little from restoration but not very much.

Their subjects respectively from left to right are, the Life and Death of St. Thomas a Becket, the Story of St. Eustace, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan. This last is another "type and ant.i.type" window, and corresponds exactly in the arrangement of its subjects with one of the lost windows in the choir of Canterbury as described in the ma.n.u.script catalogue before mentioned. The verses, however, which were in the Canterbury window are omitted at Sens. To the mediaeval mind the parable of the Good Samaritan was much more than a mere ill.u.s.tration of "neighbourliness."

To them the "man who went down from Jerusalem"--the City of G.o.d--"to Jericho," was Adam leaving Paradise, the thieves were the seven deadly sins, the Priest and the Levite were the law of Moses, and the Good Samaritan was Christ Himself. It is this reading of the subject which is here ill.u.s.trated. From the fact that at Sens it is isolated, while at Canterbury it was, as we have seen, one of a series, I think we may conclude that Sens is the later of the two. The drawing of the medallions resembles that of the older work at Canterbury, whereas the setting of them is a little later in character, showing the beginnings of "mosaic diaper." It seems to me probable, therefore, that for the subjects the actual drawings from Canterbury were used in a fresh setting. We know from the Treatise of Theophilus that designs for windows at this time were drawn out in full size on whitened boards, which also served apparently as the bench on which the window was put together. Not much would be left of the drawing when the window was finished, and the bench would be re-whitewashed for the next window; but from the fact that similar treatments of the same subject repeatedly occur, it seems to me not unlikely that drawings of figure subjects for medallions were kept on separate sheets of parchment, or in a book, and used again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XV THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT, POITIERS Late Thirteenth Century]

To the scene of the Good Samaritan rescuing the traveller there are four scenes showing as a "type" the Pa.s.sion of Christ. Of these the Crucifixion is treated in the most striking and original way, which I rather think occurs also at Bourges. On one side of the cross stands a female figure wearing a crown and with a nimbus, and receiving in a chalice the blood which flows from the side of Christ; on the other, a six-winged seraph is sheathing a sword. The latter is, no doubt, a symbol of the peace made between G.o.d and man by the atonement on the Cross,--I think PP. Cahier and Martin identify him with the angel that guarded the gates of Paradise,--while the crowned female figure is, of course, the Church.

[Sidenote: The Prodigal Son.]

The next window, containing the Parable of the Prodigal Son, differs from the others in having straight iron-work and a more formal arrangement of the medallions. I do not think, however, that it is older. One charming panel in it is a good ill.u.s.tration of the att.i.tude of the artists of that day on the question of colour. The Prodigal Son is feeding pigs, of which one is white, two blue, one green, and one red! The next scene shows him making his way homeward, undeterred by the efforts to hamper him of several devils as gaily and variously coloured as the pigs. There is considerable dramatic power shown in this figure of the Prodigal. Let no one call the drawing of this period _bad_ drawing. It would be as true to call j.a.panese drawing "bad." It is drawing in a convention--a convention different from our own, but which, once mastered, set the artist free to express action and emotion without being further hampered by technical difficulties.

[Sidenote: The Becket window.]

Of the other two, the one dealing with the story of St. Thomas a Becket is the one which most reminds me of Canterbury. Here there is no doubt that we have the same hand that gave us the Jordan Fitzeisulf window there. The border is identical,--an unusual thing at that time even in the same church,--and the representation of Becket's tomb in the crypt is precisely the same.

[Sidenote: The story of St. Eustace.]

I am less certain about the St. Eustace window. Its general effect is very different from the others, being flatter and less sparkling; but this may be due to the work of a restorer. The figures, however, do not fit and decorate the medallions as well as in the other windows or in those at Canterbury; in many cases part of a figure has to project into the border.[9] The medallions themselves, too, are of rather awkward shapes, and the design of the iron-work not very restful. The scroll work, however, is very like that in the east window at Canterbury--so like that one can hardly doubt their common origin. It may be that here, too, the artist has used some one else's figure designs, less successfully than in the Good Samaritan window.

There is a Life of St. Eustace at Chartres in which the scenes bear a general resemblance to those at Sens, but decorate their s.p.a.ces much better.

To sum up, I think that these windows at Sens, with the possible exception of the Life of St. Eustace, are the work of the same artist as the Jordan Fitzeisulf window and the east window in "Becket's Crown" at Canterbury; that in the Good Samaritan window he was using the cartoons of his master, who designed the windows in Canterbury choir, of which two, as we have seen, remain. He may have come from Canterbury at the time of the interdict in King John's reign (1208-1213), when all work there must have been suspended, and not returned, leaving another to finish the work after the interdict was removed. It would be a very probable date for the Sens work, but in the absence of the destroyed windows at Canterbury it is pure conjecture.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XVI HERALDIC PANEL, FROM THE CLERESTORY OF THE NAVE, YORK MINSTER Early Fourteenth Century]

[Sidenote: Chartres.]

Meanwhile, ever since the fire in 1194, the people of Chartres, careless of their personal losses, had been working in a flame of enthusiasm and devotion at the rebuilding of their Cathedral. Every one, n.o.bles, merchants, craftsmen, and peasants, gave what they could.

Some gave money, some materials, some provisions for the workmen.

Those who had nothing else gave their labour, even harnessing themselves to carts to drag stone for the building. Heaven itself seemed to lend its aid, for it is said that Our Lady worked many miracles of healing at her shrine at Chartres, which soon became a thirteenth century Lourdes, to which pilgrims came from all countries, leaving offerings of money or jewels.

Finally, in 1210 the main part of the building seems to have been finished. "Entirely rebuilt in hewn stone," says William le Breton some years later, "the Cathedral of Chartres has nothing to fear from temporal fire from now till the day of judgment, and will save from eternal fire the many Christians who by their alms have contributed to its reconstruction."

The great church was now ready to receive its decoration: The altars, the painting, the sculpture were still to be done, and above all the one hundred and twenty-five great windows, with the three great roses, and forty-seven lesser ones had to be filled with the gla.s.s which still makes Chartres Cathedral one of the wonders of the world. In the year 1226 Saint Louis came to the throne. Eight years later he acquired the Comte of Chartres, and lent his powerful aid to the work, giving the great rose window in the north transept and the five lancets below it, as well as other windows. The King of Castile gave a window too, and following these royal donors a crowd of princes, seigneurs, and churchmen added their gifts, while forty-seven windows were given by the Guilds of Chartres alone. Yet even so it was thirty years more before the bulk of the work was completed, and the actual consecration did not take place, for some reason, till October 17, 1260, when it was performed with great pomp and rejoicing before Saint Louis and his family and an immense concourse of prelates, n.o.bles, and common people.

There is nothing in the world quite like the Cathedral of Chartres. In the quality of its work Canterbury is as good or even better, but for the proper appreciation of the gla.s.s of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it is necessary to have _every_ window of the building filled with it in order that the eye may get used to the gloom and attuned to the pitch of the colour; and it is only at Chartres that this is even approximately the case. I know nothing like the effect on one of several hours spent in the building, the awe and wonder, mingled with a strange sort of exaltation, which it produces.

Even when its windows were complete, Canterbury can hardly have had quite the same effect, for its clerestory is much smaller, and it has not the splendid width of nave and choir which enables one to see the great clerestory windows of Chartres so well. In the thirteenth century the nave at Canterbury was still the old Norman nave of Lanfranc, of which the windows were, as an old drawing shows, comparatively small; nor indeed do we know for certain if they had coloured gla.s.s in them.

York is almost as complete as Chartres, but the gla.s.s there is nearly all of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and though it is in a sense quite as beautiful, with all its great windows twinkling with lovely colour, yet the subjects are too small to be seen from below, and there is nothing like the awe-inspiring majesty of the ranks of colossal saints which fill the clerestory of Chartres.

That the master or masters of Canterbury and Sens came to Chartres is, I think, certain; the Canterbury tradition is traceable in so much of the work. Here I imagine he or they ended their life's work, leaving their pupils and their pupils' successors to carry it on in the later style which they developed as they went along. One of these, no doubt, was that Clement of Chartres who signed his name in the window at Rouen which Mr. Saint has sketched in Plate XIV. I think I can trace his hand in some of the windows on the south side of the nave at Chartres, in the treatment of the mosaic diaper in which various shades of blue have been so skilfully blended as to produce, as at Rouen, a lovely play and ripple of colour over the whole surface of the window.

Perhaps the most notable development of the style at Chartres is the increase in the use of mosaic diaper, of the kind ill.u.s.trated in Plate VIII., as a setting for the medallions, instead of the leafy scroll work formerly used.

At Canterbury the mosaic diaper setting is the exception, only occurring in one window; at Sens it is introduced tentatively, but at Chartres it is the rule. The scroll-work filling only occurs, I think, in three windows of the lower tier. One of these is the St. Eustace window already mentioned, which to me is strongly reminiscent of Canterbury work--more so, indeed, as far as the medallions go, than the similar one at Sens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XVII DETAILS FROM WINDOWS IN THE NORTH AISLE OF NAVE, YORK MINSTER Fourteenth Century]

[Sidenote: The four extremities.]

It is only at the four extremities of the Cathedral at Chartres that we find any connected idea governing the choice of subjects. The three twelfth century windows were already, as I have said, devoted to the ancestry and life of Christ, and the thirteenth century rose window above them shows His second coming. The seven great lancets of the apse are given up to the glorification of the Virgin, the especial patroness of Chartres. The north rose and the lights below it seem to show the human ancestry of Christ culminating in Saint Anne and the Virgin, while opposite in the south transept is the Christ of the Apocalypse.

In other parts of the church the choice of theme seems to have been left to the taste of the donors, subject only to the general arrangement of medallion windows in the lower tier and huge single figures in the clerestory lights. Thus in the lower windows we find the story of Noah next to that of St. Lubin, Bishop of Chartres; the story of St. Eustace next that of Joseph.

One or two of the clerestory windows are medallion windows, the medallions being on a very large scale, but most of them are filled, as I say, with single figures of saints, nearly twice life-size. So large are they that their faces have had to be composed of several pieces of gla.s.s. A brownish pink is used for the flesh, and the eyes are separate pieces of white with the pupil painted in. As the flesh colour has in many cases darkened considerably from the effects of time and weather, the effect of the brilliant whites of the eyes is somewhat weird and startling.

Here again there seems to be no special idea governing the order of subjects, which were probably left to the donors, who would choose their patron saints.

[Sidenote: The Guild windows.]

It is at Chartres that for the first time, as I believe, the donors of the windows are made much account of in the gla.s.s. It is true that at St. Denis there are two very tiny figures of Abbot Suger,--in one case, prostrate, in simple monk's dress, at the feet of the Virgin in the Annunciation, and in the other, holding up a model of the Jesse window,--and there is a donor at Poitiers, but at Canterbury and Sens there is nothing to show by whom the windows were given. At Chartres, however, it is far otherwise. Partly, perhaps, because of the emulation that had been shown in presenting windows, nearly every one contains some record of its donor. In the case of those given by the Guilds this takes the form of a little panel introduced into the bottom of the window, showing members of the Guild at work--bakers, butchers, tanners, furriers, money-changers and so on--charming and valuable little pictures of the everyday life of the time. More n.o.ble donors are represented by their portraits, either kneeling at the foot of the window or, as in the clerestory of the choir, where the rose-lights of the tracery are filled with a splendid series of princes and n.o.bles armed and on horseback, each recognizable by his shield and banner.

[Sidenote: Amaury de Montfort.]

The one ill.u.s.trated in Mr. Saint's sketch in Plate XII. is Amaury de Montfort, brother of our own Simon de Montfort who led the rebellion of the barons against Henry III., and son of that Simon de Montfort who led the crusade against the Albigenses and was made Lord of Languedoc for his pains. Amaury, who succeeded him in 1218, finding himself not strong enough to hold the country, had ceded his rights six years later to the King of France, and was made in return Constable of France.

[Sidenote: Pierre Mauclerc.]

The great rose window of the south transept and the lancets below it are the gift of Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux and Duke of Brittany.

His arms are in the trefoils of the rose and in the central lancet. At the foot of the lancets on either side are portraits of himself, his wife, Alix de Thouars, and his son and daughter, all kneeling. From the fact that his wife died in 1226 it has been argued that the window must have been executed, or at least designed, before that date. I do not know that the argument is absolutely conclusive, but the fact seems probable. The window, however, cannot be many years older than this date. The choir would almost certainly be the first part of the church to be glazed, and the windows in the clerestory there were certainly not finished till after 1220. One, indeed, has the figure of a king of France on horseback as donor, who has always been called St.

Louis. It is, however, quite possible, as far as I can see, that the figure is his father, Louis VIII., or even Philip Augustus, who died in 1223, for he bears the lilies of France only, without the castle of Castile.

[Sidenote: St. Louis.]

a.s.suming therefore that the date of the south rose is shortly before 1226, then Pierre Mauclerc, at the time he gave this and the other windows in the church which bear his arms, was practically an independent sovereign. When St. Louis ascended the throne as a boy in 1226, under the Regency of his mother, the wise and beautiful, if somewhat imperious, Blanche of Castile, Pierre Mauclerc, in company with Thibault of Champagne, who was Count of Chartres, and many other barons of France, took up arms against his sovereign, scorning to acknowledge the overlordship of a boy and a woman. Eight years later the boy and the woman, aided by the devoted support of the Commons, had brought them all to submission, and Thibault had yielded up Chartres to the Crown. It seems to me not unlikely that this latter event is marked by the gift of the north rose and the lancets below, which contain St. Louis's own arms and those of his mother. If so, the gla.s.s of Chartres may be considered as a landmark in the history of the growth of France into a nation. Whether this is so or not, the north rose cannot in any case be earlier than 1226, the year of St.

Louis's accession.

[Sidenote: The north rose and lancets.]

This north rose, or Rose of France as it is called, has in its centre light the Virgin with the Child, in a purple tunic with a blue robe and nimbus against a ground of rich ruby. In the twelve radiating lights round her are: above her head, four doves; on her right and left, four angels,--two on either side,--two incensing and two holding candles; and below, four six-winged seraphs. Outside these are twelve kings of Judah, the Virgin's ancestors, and outside these again is a ring of the Prophets who foretold Christ's coming. Below, in the five great lancets, is a huge figure of Saint Anne carrying the infant Virgin, having on her right King David and on her left Solomon, and beyond these Melchizedek and Aaron, types of Christ as King and High Priest. Below St. Anne is a great shield with the arms of St. Louis, but under each of the four other figures is a kind of "predella," in which are shown, as a contrast: below David, Saul falling on his sword; below Solomon, Jeroboam worshipping the golden calves; below Melchizedek, Nebuchadnezzar; and below Aaron, Pharaoh being whirled away, horse and man, in the Red Sea. In this last scene the artist has been in a dilemma. The backgrounds of these lancets are alternately red and blue, and Pharaoh's should have been blue, but it represents the _Red_ Sea, and the artist has had to get out of the difficulty by making it a kind of maroon purple.

[Sidenote: The south rose and lancets.]

The idea of the window is the same as that of Jesse Tree: Humanity preparing, through the ages, for the coming of Christ, and culminating in His Mother. The rose and lancets opposite show the fulfilment. Here Christ is seen enthroned in the centre of the rose, as St. John beheld Him, surrounded by angels and by the four great beasts, and by the four-and-twenty elders seated on their thrones, in a double ring round the whole.

In the five lancets below are, in the centre, the Virgin and Child, and on either side the four Evangelists, borne, by a quaint conceit, like children on the strong shoulders of the major Prophets. The general arrangement of the windows is the same, but the detail seems to me to bear out the supposition that the southern rose is by some years the earlier of the two. In both windows the outer and the inner ring of figures are contained in circular medallions, but where in the south rose the "filling in" is done by means of scroll work, in the north transept "mosaic diaper" is everywhere used. The borders of the lancets, too, are of an older type, and more beautiful in the south transept than in the north.

Both, however, are very lovely, and the more I look at them the more I admire the nameless workers who could so use red and blue--such difficult colours to combine well. For red and blue are everywhere the groundwork of the colour scheme--green, purple, brown, and yellow being only used in small quant.i.ties to relieve them. It must be remembered, too, that the artist _could never see the effect of his work till it was finished_. Nowadays the stained-gla.s.s painter can put his work together temporarily by fastening it with beeswax to a large sheet of white gla.s.s, and can work on it so; but the artist of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as we know from Theophilus, and as was probably the case for long after, did all his work "on the bench."

The most he could do would be to hold a few pieces together in his hands up to the light, but for the rest he had to trust to his experience and training.

Not quite always did he succeed. Much depended upon his getting just the right quality of blue, and sometimes this seems to have failed him. I have already noticed the rather purplish blue which is found in some of the windows at Lincoln, and this occurs again at Chartres in the central lancet of the apse, and the one next it on the north containing the big angel ill.u.s.trated in Plate X. This purplish blue when interspersed with red produces at a distance the effect of a rather unpleasant mauve, making these two windows less attractive in colour than the others. This purplish blue occurs again in the north rose of Notre Dame at Paris, but there the artist has countered it by the use of a good deal of a rather sharp pale green, which completely balances it and turns the window into perhaps the most glorious of all the great rose windows of France.