The Story of Chartres

by Cecil Headlam

The church itself is one of the most remarkable in existence, and would doubtless be better known had Chartres no Cathedral. As it is, the magnificence of Notre-Dame obscures the excellence of the smaller church, and obliterates from the memory its striking characteristics. In any other town its glass alone would bring pilgrims from afar. For not only are the thirty-six great lancet windows of rare beauty, being filled, to a great extent, with thirteenth and fourteenth-century glass, but the impression which they give you on first entering the church is almost unique. The apse is ablaze with colour, the triforium of the choir glazed, chiefly in grisaille, and the delicate triforium of the nave is topped by huge lights of colour and grisaille, which are interrupted by hardly any framework of stone. It seems as if the whole of the upper part of the building were one continuous sheet of glass gloriously coloured. The effect, indeed, is scarce an illusion.

For the monks of S. Père have taken up the idea of the flying buttresses where the builders of the Cathedral had left it. We have seen (p. [189]) how those builders had felt their way with the buttresses of the nave, and developed those later ones of the choir. In happy rivalry of the Cathedral, our monks now, it would appear, determined to show the full possibilities of the idea. They built a temple of glass and supported it with flying buttresses. Windows took the place of walls in their church, and the walls were set several yards outside the windows. That is the effect of this amazing tour-de-force as you look at it from the east or west. The line of buttresses show like the solid wall of the church without. Yet so cunningly were those buttresses arranged to carry the thrust of the building, that the church, windows and roof and all, still stands unimpaired.

Something of the history of this once large and famous abbey we have already given in the course of our extracts from the Chartulary of S. Pierre, which was written in great part by the monk Paul in the eleventh century. There is an old tradition, quite devoid of foundation, that a church was built at Chartres in honour of S. Peter, who then held the See of Rome, by S. Potentian and his disciples. This church, tradition further asserts, was connected with an abbey by Clovis, and endowed by Queen Clotilda on the death of her husband. However that may be, the church was certainly founded by the middle of the seventh century, and probably the monastery also. They grew and flourished exceedingly in spite of wars and sieges, burnings and bishops, and waxed in wealth and importance to such an extent as to provoke serious jealousy in the hearts of the clergy and adherents of Notre-Dame. Thus, even as early as the year 840, we find the monks asserting the rights of their constitution against the Bishop Hélie, and refusing to recognise the episcopal jurisdiction. The bishop did not hesitate to have recourse to arms. The very threshold of the Church of S. Père was stained with blood. The greater part of the monks were forced to flee from their monastery, whilst the prelate seized all the precious ornaments and property that belonged to them, and left but a bare sustenance for the small band of brethren who had dared to remain. The hand of the Northman completed, in 857 and 911, the ruin of the abbey thus begun by the bishop, and it was not till 930 that that ‘noble, rich and virtuous prelate,’ Aganon, built on the site of the ruins a vast monastery and great church, and restored to the brethren and canons thereof their confiscated vineyards and property. The work of the material and spiritual reformation of the monastery was continued by his successor, Ragenfroy. To this period must be referred the great square western tower, of which we have spoken as being contemporary with the Cathedral of Fulbert (see [p. 66] ff.). It is even possible that it formed a part of the church reconstructed by the Bishop Aganon about the year 940. It is certainly much the oldest portion of the building. The rest, together with the monastic buildings, perished in the great fire which destroyed the town and damaged the Cathedral in 1134. After that disaster the monk Hilduard was entrusted by his abbot with the task of rebuilding the church of the monastery, and he began to work in the year 1150. After he had finished the choir, however, lack of funds brought matters to a standstill. A wall was built across the western end of the choir in order to enclose it. But whilst the foundations of this wall, which was meant to serve as a temporary west end, were being dug a discovery was made, the result of which was quickly to furnish the means needful for continuing the construction of the church. A small vaulted chamber was opened, in which was found the body of S. Gilduin. Miracles began to occur. The faithful flocked to the new shrine, bringing rich gifts, and about the year 1210 the building was again able to be taken in hand. The church was completed. But when this was done, either because they were not content with the choir of Hilduard, as being unworthy of the later nave, or because it was already in need of repair, the monks of S. Père rebuilt the choir towards the end of the reign of S. Louis. The apse was finished in or about the year 1310. The monks made it, as it were, almost one sheet of glass, and supported their beautiful, if daring, creation by a series of sixteen buttresses without, which are higher, lighter and more graceful than those of the nave. A beautiful thirteenth-century doorway on the north side of the church is the remaining feature of note on the exterior. But, in spite of the variety of dates to which the various portions of the building belong, it is, as a whole, singularly well proportioned and full of grace.

Within, since the Revolution, when the tombs of Fulbert and many other bishops were destroyed together with much valuable and artistic furniture, carved stalls and a Renaissance jubé, there are two main attractions—the windows and the Limousin enamels. But before speaking of them we must mention the epitaph of Robert, son of Richard, first Duke of Normandy, who was not Archbishop of Rouen, as the inscription which is in the aisle states. Also the very rich and graceful triforium of the nave, and the later and still more delicate triforium of the choir, cannot fail to please.

The unique gallery of fourteenth-century glass presented by the windows of S. Père is, as M. l’Abbé Bulteau remarked, arranged methodically in a carefully-considered combination and not according to the whims of the various founders, as was to a large extent the case with the thirteenth-century lights of the Cathedral. On the left-hand side of the nave are represented the Apostles and episodes from the Gospel story; on the right, the Confessors and incidents drawn from the lives of the martyrs; in the choir, martyrs, prophets and saints group round our Saviour, who, as a little child, is borne on His mother’s arm, and as a grown man hangs upon the tree of the Cross.

All the windows of the church, therefore, viewed thus, seem to converge towards a common centre, which is Jesus Christ our Lord.

The scheme of the majority of windows is the presentation of large single figures of stained glass surrounded by broad bands of grisaille.

On the north or left-hand side, beginning from the west end, next the old tower, are two Apostles, set in a broad frame of grisaille.

These two Apostles are S. James the Less and S. Matthias. The next window gives S. Jude and S. Barnabas, and the next two tell the story of S. John the Baptist—(a) Baptizing Jesus; the daughter of Herodias demanding his head and presenting his head in a charger to her mother; John showing the Divine Lamb to his disciples. (b) The announcement to Zacharias; his childhood, preaching, and answering Herod. The fifth window shows S. Andrew (with a book) and S. John (with a book open). In the next S. Bartholomew holds a cutlass and S. James a book, whilst the seventh and eighth recount the history of S. Peter. For the seventh shows him with his disciples, healing a man born blind, preaching, and being delivered from prison by an angel. In the eighth S. Peter receives the keys, appears before Nero, confronts Simon, is crucified and taken up to heaven.

S. Thomas and S. Philip, S. Matthew and S. James fill the ninth and tenth windows. The eleventh and twelfth recount the chief incidents in the life of Jesus Christ. In the eleventh, the entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Betrayal, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the ‘Touch me not’ are represented, and in the twelfth the disciples of Emmaus, S. Thomas, the Ascension, Pentecost and Judgment. On the right-hand or south side of the nave we are shown the Confessors and incidents from ecclesiastical history. The first, next to the tower, gives S. Benedict and S. Maur, for the Church of S. Père, it will be remembered, was the church of a Benedictine monastery. The second light gives S. Avitus and S. Laumer. The third relates the legend of S. Agnes; she repels the son of the Proconsul and her modesty is miraculously shielded; she is burnt at the stake and transferred. The story of S. Catherine, who disputed with the Emperor and converted the heathen philosophers and led them to martyrdom, is told in the fourth.