The basilica of Rheims is the ideal type of a great Gothic cathedral. Everything has been gathered together here to enchant the eye and touch the mind.
From the outside, with its eight spires, and the lace-work of its bell-towers, and its galleries boldly mounting to the sky, with the breadth of its arrangement, the splendid development of its cruciform plan, with its two cloisters and its magnificent dependencies, it appears as the sublime expression of western genius and the culminating point of the Christian idea.
Within, it is dazzling. All the resources of decoration have been prodigally employed. Indeed, the eye does not know which of the marvels to select, and if this stupendous whole has been preserved to us by a miracle, nothing in the world can be compared to it. The brilliant series of windows, one of the most complete and beautiful in existence; the pavement, with its labyrinth and countless mortuary tombs; the rich altars and chapel paintings; the tomb of St. Nicaise; the pulpit of St. Remi; the rood-screen, a master work by Colard de Givry, made in 1417; the railings of the choir, with precious hangings and stalls; the high altar charged with relics, and presents from the Kings of France; its golden retable and its splendid ciborium of the Thirteenth Century, in silver gilt; the sacrarium, the fonts, and the sepulchres;—form a great mass of treasure.
And how greatly is the feeling increased by memories when you reconstruct the public life of Notre-Dame of Rheims, and the events of which she was the theatre during the long course of centuries; when you dream of all the coronations, councils, and meetings that have taken place beneath its vaults! No edifice, in truth, is, in this respect, more worthy of our honour and admiration.
Notre-Dame of Rheims measures in round numbers one hundred and thirty-nine metres long and thirty-eight metres high beneath the vault; it is not surpassed in length by the Cathedral of Mans, thanks to the unusual dimensions of its absidal chapel, nor in height by Beauvais, Cologne, Metz, Amiens, or Saint-Quentin. The great divisions of the whole, founded upon a triple scale, in height and breadth, are clearly accentuated. From the lower part of the nave the view is one of striking grandeur and harmony; the dazzled glance loses itself in these vast depths, under the luminous sheets of light which spread out from the lateral bays, while the large vault, clouded in the mysterious penumbra of the high windows, ornamented with their glass, invites you to meditation. No cathedral offers so powerful an opposition to light. The arrangement of the great piers cantoned by four half-columns bound together also increases the fleeting perspective.
Of the whole building, I have only to criticize the composition of the triforium, which is truly not of the first order; it demands more elegance and firmness; the arches of that gallery, the decorative function of which is so important in a Gothic church, seem heavy and as if crushed between the robust piers of the ground-floor and the large bays of the upper story.
In all that belongs to the Thirteenth Century, the execution bears witness to an extreme care and luxury. The Cathedral of Rheims, principally in its interior work, is a model that has never been surpassed from the point of view of technique, of show and of the judicious use of material. The carving is of the first order. The capitals of Rheims are celebrated, and very justly. The independence of the Style champenois has introduced some elements of life and fantasy which give them a character of their own. Some of the most beautiful, notably the capital of the Vendanges (The Vintages), have been made popular by the mouldings in the Musée of the Trocadéro; but all of them are remarkable on account of the variety of the motives that decorate them. Viollet-le-Duc has justly observed that the capitals of Rheims present a decisive progress in the union of the capital of the principal column with the capitals of the connected columns: a very great difficulty which Gothic architects did not solve until after numerous groupings. Here the monotony has been avoided by a division of the bound columns into two segments, separated by an astragal. The effect of this division is most happy and constitutes one of the most striking peculiarities of the Cathedral of Rheims.
The choir is unanimously admired. However, it has not the breadth nor the spring of the great choirs of Bourges, Amiens and Mans; but it derives its originality from its depth and its radiating chapels; and to the preservation of its most exquisite windows it owes a poetic charm that very few interiors can equal. The windows of Rheims are, in reality, the most perfect we have seen after those of Chartres, Bourges, Mans and Auxerre. In purity of expression they surpass the windows of Soissons, Troyes, and Châlons. The windows in the apsis are masterpieces; their sweet intensity, in the scale of blue, is truly enchanting. They were executed from 1227 to 1240 under the episcopate of Henri de Braisne, whose figure appears in the principal window, in the centre of nine large, high windows, between the twelve suffragans of Rheims, arranged in order, according to their rank in the province: Soissons, Laon, Beauvais, Noyon, Senlis, Tournai, Cambrai, Châlons, Thérouanne, Amiens, etc., each having at his side a Gothic cathedral.
These figures of bishops of gigantic proportions have a majesty that cannot be described. But in the midst of these splendours, it is the rose of the western window which is perhaps the most worthy of everything to hold your attention. Composition, brilliancy, harmony and elegance of position,—it possesses all these qualities. It would be difficult to find a more admirable witness of the decorative sense of the old glass-workers. When across the network of the immense surface, the light from the setting sun is thrown, the whole interior of the church is illuminated as if by a conflagration. The preservation of this masterpiece is unfortunately greatly compromised by the crack like a sabre cut which crosses the façade near the rose. The high windows in the nave represent the Kings, just as in the Cathedral of Sacres; they are still more beautiful, however, of deep rich colours, but of a less careful execution than the great rose and the windows in the choir.
All these marvels, however, pale before the carved decoration that surrounds on the inside the lower part of the three doors of the façade, a kind of drapery in relief, as unique by the character of its invention as by the perfection of its workmanship.