FAIRFORD, FROM THE RIVER COLN.
A legend long current, accounting for these windows, says that John Tame, asked to pilot a vessel containing them from Nuremberg to Rome, turned his course to England instead, and in fact stole the windows. Now, however fantastic this story, it probably contains this much of truth, that it hands down a foreign origin; but that this glass was acquired in any chance way is altogether unlikely, for it bears every sign of having been designed for this church, and for the exact position and size of the windows it occupies. The designs have been ascribed by some to Albrecht Dürer, and an old manuscript goes so far as to relate a visit paid by Vandyck to Fairford, when he said the drawing was Dürer’s work. This, however, would seem to be impossible, as Dürer was but twenty-three years of age when Fairford church was in course of building.
The great west window affords the chief interest, illustrating as it does the Last Judgment. The upper half, above the dividing transom, displays the company of the blest, assembled round the central figure of Christ in majesty, with St. John Baptist on His right hand, and the Virgin on the left. Three half-circles, somewhat resembling rainbows, surround these figures; the first a deep red band, filled with representations of the seraphim; the second, yellow, with figures of the apostles; the third, blue, filled with the cherubim. Angels fill the outer spaces, quiring before the Throne. These be the glorious surroundings of the good, the constant, and the true.
The Doom, occupying the lower portion of the window, is a striking example of imagination applied to the subject of retribution for sin. The Devil and his infernal host and the flames of Hell were evidently very real to those who pictured these scenes of torment, and to those who first looked upon them, and they could certainly never have thought it possible a time would come when people would either laugh at these ideas of a real personal Devil with attendant fiends, or look upon them as curiosities; certainly without any fear or awe.
Here, in all the grotesque drawing and vivid colouring of which that age was capable, we see the rewards of wickedness. St. Michael the Archangel, in the centre, is shown, holding the scales of justice, wherein the souls of the dead are being weighed. On the left of him is St. Peter, with his key, standing at the gates of Paradise; while on the right are seen the dead rising from their graves, and the flames of Hell, a little subdued by the weathering of the centuries, awaiting them. In the lower right-hand corner is a representation of the Devil himself, with a head like a cottage loaf, in the very opening of his own especial region, holding the red-hot bars, and grinning out between them. Curious auxiliary devils are shown, actively engaged in carrying the dead to torment; among them the remarkable group illustrated here. The tall scaly devil on the right, carrying one of the damned on his back, is a blue fiend; the other, displayed in the act of lashing a woman just rising from her grave, is a strawberry-coloured devil, covered with pips, and glaring with eyes of flame.
Other fiends in green, in red, and in yellow, are pursuing shrieking souls, or, having caught them, are seen flinging them into pits of fire. Some of these places of torment are shown neatly enclosed in masonry, like blast-furnaces. Another fiend, illustrated here, regarding a woman clasping her knees, seems to be rather of an apologetic, gentlemanly type. It is his business to be a tormentor, but he looks genuinely sorry for it.
