The naves, the north and south transept portals, and the choir belong to the thirteenth century, the north tower to the fifteenth, and the magnificent jubé, or screen, which runs round the choir, is evidently sixteenth century style, being an example of that Renaissance employment of Gothic details, of which we find such glorious counterparts at Rouen and Albi. The western façade of Chartres is plain in comparison with those of Amiens or Rheims. The voussures of the three central portals are comparatively shallow. Above them are three lancet windows which resemble windows of the Early English Style. The rose-window, beneath which the lancets are placed, is of great dimensions and effective tracery. The highest story of the front between the towers is screened by a rich arcade, over which rises the gable point.
This arcade, or gallery, is intended to break the abruptness with which the pointed roof rises between the two spires. These spires are different in design, the southern tower being much earlier than that at the north. The southern spire, in its austere simplicity and exquisite proportions, is certainly the finest I have seen in France, and can only be paralleled elsewhere by that which rises like a flower-bud almost ready to burst over Salisbury plain. The northern tower is very much more elaborate, and reminded me of those examples with which the traveler becomes so familiar in the many churches of Rouen. The richly crocketed gables, the flying buttresses and pinnacles which run half way up this spire, while they adorn it, seem to stunt the profile and rob it of its towering altitude, just as is the case with the western spires of St. Ouen. Yet this northern tower is considerably higher than the ancient one at the south, being 374 feet high, while the more ancient spire is only 348. The other dimensions of the church are as follows: It is 420 feet long; 110 feet wide; its height from ceiling vault to pavement is 115 feet. The modern tower was built by Louis XII. in 1514, the architect being an inhabitant of Beauce, a certain Jean Texier.
The carvings in the west front of the cathedral are examples of the beginning of French sculpture, as it emerges from the severity and rigidity of Byzantine types. The human figures are long, slender, and swathed almost like mummies in their drapery. The faces are strongly individualized and seem to be portraits. While these statues must be attributed to a period previous to the middle of the twelfth century, we see in them the originality of French genius struggling to break away from the fetters of Eastern precedent.
Viollet-de-Duc thinks that these faces belong to the type of the ancient Gaul; the flat forehead and raised arch of the eyebrows, the projecting eyes, the long jaws, the peaked and drooping nose, the long upper lip, the wide, closed mouth, the square chin, the long wavy hair are neither German, Roman, or French. There is a blending of firmness, grandeur and refinement in these wonderful countenances, each of them apparently copied from a different model. They are crowned and nimbused as the kings and saints of antique France. A more impressive gallery of illustrious personages is nowhere else to be found.
Rheims
By Epiphanius Wilson
[Footnote: From "The Cathedrals of France." By permission of the author. Copyright, 1900.]
French cathedrals have, as it were, a royal character, and this is emphasized especially in the history and architecture of Rheims cathedral, which became, from the time of Philippe Auguste, the church at whose altar the kings of France were crowned.
The origin of the Church at Rheims dates from the third century; when we are told Pope Fabian sent into Gaul a band of bishops and teachers. Rheims was chosen as the seat of an episcopal primacy, and it was in the church built by St. Nicaise, or Nicasius, in 401, that Clovis was baptized and crowned in 496. This ancient building, doubtless of simple Roman proportions, was rebuilt in the reign of Louis the Debonair in 822, when Ebon was archbishop.
It was completed with a magnificence which vied with the churches of Constantinople, Ravenna and Rome. It was considered in its day the most splendid church in France. Its roof and walls blazed with gilding and many-tinted paintings. Its floors were of marble mosaic. Rich tapestries hung round the choir, and its treasury was filled with masterpieces of the goldsmith and the jeweler. This church continued to be the wonder of Gallic Christianity until the beginning of the thirteenth century, when it was destroyed by fire. It is remarkable to notice in the history of French cathedrals how many of them were rebuilt just at the time when the pointed style, which may be called preeminently the Christian style of architecture, had come to birth almost simultaneously in various countries of Europe.