The making of the vast windows of the Sainte-Chapelle raised Paris to the leadership of the vitrine industry during the second half of the XIII century. Of that school are windows in the cathedrals of Angers and Clermont, and Soissons’ western rose. Though of splendid effect, such windows do not equal those of the preceding hundred years, when Chartres and St. Denis led. The borders round each medallion had now become mere zigzags, since expedition was required for the glazing of enormous spaces.
The Sainte-Chapelle, as Gothic science, could be carried no farther without violating its own laws and becoming what an English critic said of the late-Gothic of France, “all muscle and glass.” Everywhere was the ascending line accentuated; over the windows are some of the earliest gables extant. They break the horizontal band of the balustrade above, and serve structurally as weights on the longitudinal wall arches.
Perhaps it was because the architect felt he was overemphasizing the ascending line that he interrupted the soar of the columns marking the chapel walls, by placing against each shaft the amply draped statue of an apostle—the twelve pillars of the Church. To-day only the forth and fifth statues on the north side are originals; there are merely ancient fragments in the other images. For some time it was thought that the Sainte-Chapelle was the work of Pierre de Montereau, the king’s own architect. A newly discovered record proves that he designed St. Denis’ abbatial, which shows, however, no family likeness with the chapel of the Cité palace. Now, that chapel does display a certain likeness to the façades of Notre Dame’s transept, and it has been suggested that Jean de Chelles, who designed the transept, was the architect of the Sainte-Chapelle.
ST. JULIEN-LE-PAUVRE[86]
La France est l’homme,
Paris est le cœur.
—Henry IV.
Close to the Seine, under the hill of St. Geneviève, stands a small contemporary of the choir of Notre Dame, St. Julien-le-Pauvre, built by the Cistercians of Longpont, about 1180, and claiming as its patrons three saints of the same name, St. Julian, martyr, St. Julian, bishop of Le Mans, and a humble St. Julian who had founded a hospice for pilgrims by the Seine and used to help the poor across the river. It is said that a leper whom he was piloting over vanished in midstream, whereupon the people said it had been the Lord himself come to test the holy man’s charity.
The western bays of St. Julien-le-Pauvre have been demolished and all that remains intact of the Primary Gothic church are the choir, with three apsidal chapels, the side aisles’ vaulting, and the columns against the side walls. The same sculptor who worked at Notre Dame made the virile capitals of this little church.
St. Julien to-day is used by the Greek-Melchite rite of Roman Catholics. It long was the patron church of letters and science, and every year from its altar started the procession of the University of Paris to the fair at St. Denis called Lendit, for the solemn purchase of a twelve months’ supply of parchment. The rector of the university led the throng, and so vast was the concourse of students that the head of the procession was in St. Denis’ abbatial before the rear ranks had quitted St. Julien-le-Pauvre. For four hundred years Paris University elected its rector in this little church, and tradition says that Dante prayed here when he crossed the Alps in 1304. In his imagination was then surging his mighty poem, and the men of France have pictured him pausing to muse over the images of Hell at their own cathedral doors. The great exile of Florence was himself the purest product of scholasticism, as impassioned as were the cathedral builders for theology and philosophy, for symmetry and rhythm and the mysterious beauty of numbers. The Divina Commedia was a poetic Summa.
ST. GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS, ST. MARTIN-DES-CHAMPS, AND ST. PIERRE-DE-MONTMARTRE[87]
Ces vénérables bénédictines dont la science n’était égalée que par leur modestie—F. Brunetière.