The Story of Chartres

by Cecil Headlam

In the case of the remaining windows the evidence of design is less obvious than in that of the groups with which we have dealt. Much was evidently left to the caprice of the donors, who usually chose to represent the lives, the struggles or the martyrdoms of their patron saints. Thus the episodes of the life of a local priest, S. Laumer, are recorded in a series of medallions, just as one of his miracles is related in stone in the south porch. The storied window suggests at once practically all that we know of him. Some time in the seventh century, it is said, he kept his father’s sheep near Chartres, but afterwards, having learned his letters, he was ordained priest and entered a monastery. But he longed for a life of prayer and solitude, and fled to the forest where he hoped none would follow him. It was vain; disciples, hearing of his sanctity and the miracles he wrought, flocked to him. Again he fled and settled in the woods near Dreux. But his cell of green leaves and wattles soon became the centre of a colony of monks, so that he was fain to recognise the call of God and to build a monastery there. Of the miracles recorded as wrought by him there is one characteristic of his gentle individuality. During the night some robbers stole a cow belonging to the monks. The brethren were in despair. The robbers, however, lost their way in the tangled forest. They wandered all night and all next day, unable to discover the road. At last, as evening settled in, they saw the darkness of the forest lighten, and, still driving the cow, they came out upon the clearing of the monastery. S. Laumer himself stood before them. They fell at his feet, asking his pardon and imploring him to direct them aright. He raised them and said, ‘I thank you, kind friends, for finding and bringing back to me my strayed cow. You must be very tired and hungry. Follow me.’ They followed him into his hut and he set before them such food and drink as he had, and they ate and drank and were refreshed. Then he set them on their right road, and they departed—but without the cow.

Or take, as another example, the third window of the north aisle where the lesson of the life of another saint, not local, is taught in another series of medallions, because S. Eustace was the patron saint of the founder. In the bottom panel, Placidius, a centurion of the guard in Trajan’s day, appears hunting a stag. A miracle is wrought which brings about the conversion of the Pagan hunter. For a cross of light shines between the horns of the fugitive. Overwhelmed by the sight of this prodigy, Placidius dismounts from his horse, kneels down and is baptized. The change wrought within is described in the upper panels. Great calamities befall him; his wife is taken from him; his children are devoured by wild beasts. But Eustace, filled with a perfect trust in God, bears all with Christian resignation. He retires to a distant land, and there his virtue waxes daily until at last he is deemed worthy to suffer martyrdom for his faith. Together with his wife he is roasted alive in the belly of a brazen bull.

Thus in all simplicity the glaziers paint the legends which the people have learned. They tell the story of a man’s life from his birth, and do not even hesitate to represent his faults, because these windows were intended to serve as an illustrated catechism for the poor and ignorant, and the saintliness that has no touches of things human proves for ordinary people discouraging. In the lower panels of the windows, therefore, the early years of the saints are shown so that we may be comforted and inspired by the knowledge that they too shared in the weaknesses and the miseries of our nature. And above, when they have risen superior to their trials, we see them in a halo of sanctity, performing miracles by their faith. Frail man has shaken off this vile earth and goes on from strength to strength, according to the simple expression of a chronicler, until he arrives in the house of the Eternal Father, whose glorious person dominates the whole window. As in the case of the sculptured porches so here, when we study and admire the conception and execution of these storied windows, the question arises, Who was it who arranged, who was it who coloured this glorious glass? And again the answer must be that we know not. The artists of the twelfth century have not been careful in this matter: the object of their fecund imagination and their exquisite workmanship has been this only—the majestic expression of the burning faith within them.

One name only, that of Clement, the Chartrain glazier (Clemens, vitrearius Carnotensis), found on a window in the Cathedral of Rouen, has come down to us. And Clement, it is supposed, designed the window which recounts the legend of S. Martin. That name alone survives out of all the artists whose work has for over seven hundred years been the admiration of all Europe!

The donors of the windows, on the other hand, shine there amid a blaze of heraldic glory. You may still behold Louis de Poissy on his white charger and at the head of his men, clad in full armour, setting forth on the Crusade. Ferdinand III. of Castile also, S. Ferdinand, you may see, wrapped in mail for the defence of the faith, and Blanche of Castile, who so often brought her young son to Chartres and inspired him with his so tender devotion to Notre-Dame. Pierre Mauclerc is here, that turbulent spirit who expiated his offences against order by his immense generosity to the Cathedral; Thibault VI., Count of Chartres, the very valiant Crusader; Amaury de Montfort, Constable of France; Pierre de Courtenay; Bouchard de Marly, of the noble house of Montmorency—these and a whole gallery of other counts and barons and knights of chivalry live on in the church which they endowed with their gold and for which they fought with their swords.

But we have seen that this Cathedral was built not by the generosity of the great alone. It was in every sense a popular, a national monument, raised to the glory of God by the contributions and labour of all classes. And if the humble donors have scarcely dared, like the great lords, to represent themselves individually, they have fortunately not shrunk from perpetuating, under the guise of the guilds through which they subscribed, the record of their no less interesting personalities. They all figure in the windows founded by their several trades; masons and skinners, drapers and goldsmiths, bakers and armourers, butchers and tanners, cobblers and water-carriers even, are all portrayed at work with the simple realism of the Middle Ages.

A whole book, and a very interesting one, might be written as a commentary on the thirty or forty trade corporations here depicted. It would exhibit the commercial history of a mediæval shrine, the mart of pilgrims and the bazar of the devout.

All the trading corporations of the Middle Ages were close and exclusive bodies. Admission to them was only possible by the long and narrow path of apprenticeship. Economically, their general aim was to limit competition by limiting the number of masters, by limiting the number of embryo masters in the shape of apprentices whom each master in a guild might receive. Their general result was to maintain a high standard in the quality of the work produced, and by discouraging the modern ideal of quantity to provide a certain and sufficient employment amongst all those who were fortunate enough to be within the sacred circle of their union.

An apprentice was an unmarried lad of from fifteen to twenty years of age, bound to his master for a certain number of years by the payment of a fixed fee and an oath. As elsewhere, so in France,[72] the master was responsible not only for teaching the apprentice his trade, so that he might in due course be approved a master-workman himself, but also for his moral training. By the rules of the craft he was required to cherish the boy ‘beneath his roof, at his board and at his hearth.’

If he did his duty, in fact, the master treated the apprentice as his own sons and thrashed him as heartily. The apprentice frequently returned the compliment by making him his father-in-law. Shortly before the expiration of his apprenticeship the young craftsman was examined by a board of jurés, and was called upon to give a practical exhibition of his skill. If he succeeded in satisfying them that he could fashion a proper doublet or bake a good loaf of bread, he was allowed to call himself a workman, to practise his trade, and to take his share in the management and the benefits of his guild. Those benefits often included comprehensive schemes of charity and mutual aid. The widows and indigent members of a corporation were provided for by funds to which all had contributed their quota. The standard of efficiency was maintained not only by the vigilance of the jurés, who examined each finished article before it was offered for sale, not only by the fear of a fine which might be inflicted for defective work, but also by the pride and sense of honour fostered in each individual craftsman. It was lowered on the other hand by the excessive conservatism of the guilds, who forbade any underselling or departure from customary models, insisted on a minute and absurd division of labour, condemned all inventions, and nipped all developments in the bud.