Flowers from Mediæval History

by Minnie D. Kellogg

In all history is there a movement more extraordinary, more far-reaching, more curious than the crusades? They are about as surprising to a reader today as they were to the Emperor of Constantinople when the first disorderly army appeared at his gates. The monk, Guibert, who, at least, seemed to have more grasp of the subject than any other contemporary writer, ingeniously suggested that “God invented the crusades as a new way for his laity to atone for their sins and merit salvation.” Certainly they thus atoned for the great sin of inertia. No army, I suppose, was ever more confident, more surprised or more disappointed than that of the crusaders. However, this much is to be said in favor of Guibert’s hypothesis. From that time forth the laity took their place in the march of civilization. They arose and left the Dark Ages behind. New views were forced upon them at the point of the sword,—most needed of all, new civic ideals.

Separation and longing and the sweet sorrow of parting awoke the spirit of poetry, the craving for beauty; and all this new thought and feeling was soon to blossom forth in the one art, whose metier the people had already learned,—architecture.

Through a long admixture of races, by the twelfth century (hardly before it) there had arisen in Gaul genuine Frenchmen, who from the beginning were most artistic artisans and most enthusiastic partisans. They spent more on their crusades and on their churches than their neighbors, and they were to reap the rewards of extravagance, always more imposing than those of economy. Money poured into the church alike from those who went to the Holy Land, and from those who thus excused themselves from going. Incidentally the Holy Wars diverted a disorderly element of nobles and serfs from France to Palestine. During the period of the crusades the Cathedral of Chartres suffered from two fires just sixty years apart; thus in rebuilding, the overflowing religious excitement of the era came to be lavished upon the very stones of the cathedral.

In 1134 a great fire in the town of Chartres damaged the cathedral so far as to make it necessary to restore the façade. In spite of their own losses the Chartrians decided that their church should be finer than ever. She should have two connected towers, instead of one separated from the building as before. And the design they here evolved has become standard.

To effect these grand restorations the workmen formed themselves into permanent guilds. One especially which devoted itself to working on the cathedral was honorably known as the “Logeurs du Bon Dieu.” And the nobles who had watched the workmen growing in grace and in skill, raising themselves as they raised the temple, were finally seized with a strange and humble enthusiasm which can only be convincingly described by eye-witnesses.

“In this same year” (1144), writes Robert Du Mont, “at Chartre men began to harness themselves to carts laden with stones, wood and other things, and drag them to the site of the church, the towers of which were then a-building.”

Says Abbé Haimon: “Who has ever seen or heard in all the ages of the past that kings, princes and lords, mighty in their generation, swollen with riches and honor, that men and women, I say, of noble birth, have bowed their haughty necks to the yoke and harnessed themselves to carts like beasts of burden, and drawn them laden with wine, corn, oil, stone or wood and other things needful for the maintenance of life or the construction of the church, even to the doors of the asylum of Christ.”

“Mighty are the works of the Lord,” exclaims Hugh of Rouen (ready to use the example). “At Chartres men have begun, in all humility, to drag carts and vehicles of all sorts to aid the building of the cathedral, and their humility has been rewarded by miracles. The fame of these events has been heard everywhere and at last roused this Normandy of ours. Our countrymen, therefore, after receiving our blessing, have set out for that place and then fulfilled their vows. They return with the resolution to imitate these Chartrians, and a great number of the faithful of our diocese and the dioceses of our province have begun to work at the Cathedral, their Mother.”

But since it is the spirit that makes the action fine, the services of these builders were accepted only under the triple condition of confession, penitence and reconciliation with their enemies; they delivered their offerings in tears, while disciplining themselves with blows.

George Eliot speaks of a common feeling of good-will among a mass of men affecting her like music; to such music the incomparable tower of Chartres was built, and a later age sees tears transformed to pearls when another great fire destroyed the old part of the cathedral, and they had, in rebuilding, to live up to their splendid new façade.