S. Ives died at the end of the year 1115. But during his busy lifetime there had been springing up the great monument which is his in Chartres, the Western Towers and the Porche Royal of the Cathedral, with its sculptured kings and queens, than which no sculpture in the world is more beautiful. During his lifetime also it had been necessary to rebuild in great part the Church of Fulbert. The rapidity with which it had been built in troublous times of war and famine may account for this necessity. S. Ives increased the length of the building by some twenty-five yards and, whilst carrying the nave and aisles one bay further west, he prolonged the crypt to the foot of his new towers, adorning it with mural paintings, of which traces yet remain. The towers were built at the end of each aisle, and the lower part of the west front, though actually the same now as that then built, lay back at that time on a line within the eastern sides of the towers. It was afterwards brought forward so as to be where it now is, flush with their western sides.

S. Ives also constructed the two new entrances to the crypt, with staircases and passages, through the Cave du Bois on the north and S. Martin’s Chapel on the south. The roof of the apse was also renewed, and an angelot or guardian angel set thereon.[52] But one of the chief works of S. Ives was the construction of the beautiful Jubé,[53] of which we have seen the few remaining fragments in the crypt.[54] Meanwhile the rest of the Cathedral, its chapels and altars, were being adorned by the pious generosity of the people of all classes. The choir was paved with marble and mosaic, and tapestries were hung round it where now runs the sculptured clôture. The beautiful glass through which the light still pours its coloured streams were being set up in the lower lights of the western façade, and in the sacristy was accumulating that collection of jewels and relics, of chalices, censers and crucifixes, of liturgies bound in silver, gold and precious stones, and of ecclesiastical ornaments, which was to render the treasury of Chartres one of the richest in the world, till the Vandals of the eighteenth century laid their sacrilegious hands upon it.

In order to obtain funds for the building of his towers and the restoration of his church, S. Ives, like Fulbert before him, begged freely of Kings.

It will be understood that his relations with Philippe were not of the kind to encourage him to ask for aid in that quarter. But he sent two monks to Henry I. of England with a letter, in which, after expressing the pious hope that Henry would continue to walk in the footsteps of his father, and recognise that, as the body ought to be subject to the mind, so ought the civil government to be subject to the ecclesiastical, he tells him that he is the servant of the servants of God, and not their master; their protector, and not their lord; and then adds that the bearers of the letter will explain to His Highness the needs of the Church, which he is conjured to satisfy with the same generosity as his parents showed.

It is scarcely surprising that a letter couched in such terms was not productive of alms from the English King who had taken his spouse from a nunnery; nor was an appeal to Matilda in the following year ‘to show that love for the Queen of the Angels which the Queens of the Angles have always so generously displayed’ any more successful. But a third more likely letter knocked, to borrow S. Ives’s own phrase, at the door of Henry’s generous heart with better result. Queen Matilda was charged with the duty of replying to it, and she made many gifts to the Church, among which were several bells, of which S. Ives writes in acknowledgment that ‘they are doubly dear to us, both on account of your piety and of their own sweet melody. Every time that they are put in motion to indicate certain hours, our ears are soothed with such delicious music that your memory is renewed within our hearts.’ He also reminds her, amid many such graceful sayings, that the roof wants mending; and at her death we find that his words bear fruit, for she made many bequests to the Cathedral, and left money to defray the expenses of a lead roof. But it was not only Kings and Queens who fell under the charm of S. Ives and the love of his Church, and it was not only the great who received his thanks. Such phrases as the following occur again and again in the Necrology of Notre-Dame:—‘On Nov. 24th, died Jean, son of Vital, the clever and faithful carpenter of this Church, who always worked with love and zeal at the work of this Church.’ That is but one name among the thousands, who now, with an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm, came from far and near to build the superb monument of Chartres Cathedral.

CHAPTER V
The Cathedral and Its Builders

‘By suffrage universal it was built
As practised then, for all the country came
From far as Rouen, to give votes for God,
Each vote a block of stone securely laid
Obedient to the Master’s deep-mused plan.’
James Russell Lowell.

‘Like some tall palm the mystic fabric grew.’
Reginald Heber.

‘Elle est enfin, cette basilique, la plus magnifique expression de l’art que le Moyen Age nous ait léguée.’—J. K. Huysmans.

THE grey spire of the Clocher Vieux,[55]—