The Story of Chartres

by Cecil Headlam

Briefly, the steps that were now taken to give us the Cathedral which we have may be summarised as follows. Four apsidal chapels were added in the crypt, completing thus the favourite Gothic number of seven; all the soil of the crypt (except the martyrium) was levelled up to that of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre; aisles were constructed over the corridors of the crypt; a vast transept was added; an enormous choir, with double aisles and apsidal chapels, was erected over new vaulting of the crypt; the narthex was displaced and made room for two new bays in the nave; whilst the west porch was moved skilfully westwards, with the same object, and set in a line flush with the two towers. Traces of this latter process will be found in the fact that the three doorways, having existed before the present nave and aisles, do not now correspond with them, and traces of what was once exterior masonry of the towers may also be seen inside the present church, between the Chapel of the Seven Sorrows and that of the Calvary.

At the same time, above the triplet window, in a severe quadrangular framework, was inserted the splendid Rose window, which is a masterpiece of masonry, a superb creation, recalling at once to mind the magnificent circular window of Lincoln, which, however, was a good score years later, and also—for the thick radii of the circle still suggest the spokes of a wheel quite as much as the petals of a rose—the rather earlier Wheel of Barfreston (Kent, 1180). It is 46 feet in diameter, and has been set, designedly, not in the exact centre of its flat stone frame, in order to counterbalance the inequality noticeable in the breadth of the two towers. There, with its double row of sculptured spokes, which radiate from its centre, it looks, to borrow Mr. Henry James’s fine phrase, on its lofty field of stone, as expansive and symbolic as if it were the wheel of Time itself.

Above this window stretch a noble cornice and a simple balustrade which serve for communication between the two towers, and above this again are the sixteen niched figures which have earned for this gallery the title of the Gallery of Kings. Higher still is the gable which terminates the front, containing in a niche a colossal statue of the Virgin and Child, and on the apex a statue of Christ in the act of blessing. (Both these statues were re-made in 1855).

The kings stand upright in their niches; their pose is little varied; their costumes uniform. M. Viollet-le-Duc suggested that they represent the Kings of Judah, but there is no reason to doubt the tradition that, like the royal statues at Wells and Notre-Dame de Paris and the stained-glass figures at Strasbourg, they really represent the kings of the country who were benefactors of the church.

The first seven, then, are the figures of Merovingian Kings, the eighth Pepin-le-Bref, as you may tell by his small stature and the fact that he is standing upon a lion, in allusion to his courageous feat when, after challenging the French nobles who despised him for his smallness, he slew a raging lion single-handed, and then demanded, ‘Do you think me worthy to rule you now?’ The ninth statue was broken by a cannon-ball in the siege of 1591. It was Charlemagne or Charles-le-Fauve. The others are, according to M. Bulteau, Philippe I., Louis le Gros, Louis le Jeune, Philippe Auguste, Louis le Lion, Louis IX., and Philippe le Hardi, in whose reign the gallery was finished (1280).

As at Rouen and at Bayeux, it was originally intended that six new towers, two at each corner of the north and south front, making eight in all, should be grouped round the soaring spire of a central tower which was to rest on the four huge piers at the point of intersection of the transepts of the nave and choir. But they remain incomplete, even as, in accordance it might be fancied with some inscrutable degree, almost every Cathedral in the world is unfinished.

Thus at Chartres the Cathedral type, after which, with tentative, uncertain hand, the twelfth-century architects of Poitiers and Soissons, Laon and Paris had been striving, was struck out at last. It was to serve as a model for Central Europe throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, just as the sculpture of the western porch was to be copied at Corbeil and Paris, Sentis, Laon and Sens.

The name of the genius who achieved this glorious success we do not know, though the names of the builders of Reims, of Rouen and of Amiens have come down to us. All we do know is, as has been said above, that there was an active school of architects and sculptors, drawn chiefly from the monks of the Monasteries of Tiron and S. Père, established at this time in La Beauce, who worked with humble zeal, anonymous.

But, whatever his name, he succeeded at last, after the efforts and by aid of the efforts of his so many predecessors, in striking out the cathedral type, in shaping the mould in which, with various alterations, modifications, improvements and excesses, all the cathedrals of France were henceforth to be cast. In striking out the type he was himself confined by local conditions, and limited by his lack of experience. By bringing the western façade flush with the western extremities of the towers he was enabled to increase the length of that nave, which he made to leap heavenwards with almost the same joyous spring as that of Amiens, and the length and breadth, and height and strength of that nave, with its massive piers, its splendid vaulting, and its jewelled windows casting their purple and crimson rays across its dark roomy spaces, and the dim distances of the mysterious aisles, render Chartres ‘awful’ in a manner seldom or never elsewhere achieved by Gothic architect. But the proportion of the nave to the choir, or, again, to the vast transepts, is not perfect, for the builder was limited by the existing towers. As a pioneer, too, he was limited by inexperience. There is, indeed, no effect of heaviness in this nave, for the massiveness of the work, which is almost equal to that which we call Norman, is relieved by the stupendous height. And the solemnity, the overwhelming impressiveness of Chartres are due, it might almost seem, to that accident of ignorance. For if he had dared, if he had known that it was possible and safe, can you doubt that the architect would have added to the soaring spires of Chartres the soaring nave of Amiens? But what we should have gained in sheer beauty we should have lost in character. For Amiens is light and joyous; Chartres is mysterious and sad. Amiens rises as naturally as the sparks fly upward, as ethereal as the flute-like notes of a treble voice, as careless as a child’s light laughter. But Chartres it would seem has more sympathy with the sadder, deeper sides of human life; it is older, stronger, more masculine, and more wise; combining the stern philosophy of the Pagan Stoic with the comforting tidings of the Christian martyrs and saints; combining, that is, as never before or since so harmoniously, the Romanesque and the Gothic styles, the rounded and the pointed arch, taking the best of each, and uniting them in a transition that is yet a triumph, in an attempt that is an eternal monument of success.

The transition of style is to be observed on almost every side. Not, indeed, so much in the plain round pillars with capitals in imitation of the Roman composite, and with square abaci, as the eye accustomed only to English work might assume, for these in France were retained much later than in England, even throughout the period of Flamboyant. But in almost every direction you can see the tentative mason at work, leaving the old heavy style with its horizontal lines behind him, and making new experiments, discarding or developing fresh ideas which tended to the achievement of lightness and spring, but as yet hardly daring to believe to the full in the capacity of stone. Here, for instance, in the nave, the blind triforium has not broken yet into one continuous window, as it was soon to do in the Church of S. Père, of S. Ouen at Rouen, and at Amiens; nor have the heavy masses of stone been resolved into a network of delicate tracery, leaving not a span uncovered by its gossamer thread. The desire for lightness, again, which was in time to lead to the adoption of bar tracery is, in the case of the windows, evident, but not fully attained. Combined, however, with the rare opportunities offered to the architect by the excellent quality of the stone of Berchères, it has led him to invent a very simple and handsome type of window, which consists of two lancet lights under one arch, with a foliated circle in the head, the plate tracery of which is peculiarly heavy, and is cut through the solid stone. Between these circular openings, which fill a whole bay between the flying buttresses, and the heads of the lower lights, there is, as at Soissons, Bourges, Reims and so forth, a considerable interval of masonry. The foliated circles themselves are surrounded by a number of small trefoil or quatrefoil openings, not formed of bars, but likewise pierced through the solid stone.