Chapter XXIV: The Cathedral and Its Builders.
Baron Conon and Adela had still another duty ere they returned to St. Aliquis. They were fain to go with their sons, and each burn a tall candle before the altar of Our Lady in the cathedral. All dwellers near Pontdebois are intensely proud of their great church. It has been building now these forty years. At last it is fairly complete, although the left tower has still to be carried up to the belfry, and very many niches lack the sculptured saints presently to occupy them. A worthy cathedral, like a worthy character, is growing continually. Probably the Feudal Age will end before Notre Dame de Pontdebois is completed as its pious designers have intended.[127]
The cathedral is the center for a large group of buildings whereof most are in the noble pointed (Gothic) style of architecture. As just explained, in the sacred close there is the bishop's palace and the houses of the canons; there are also a cloister for promenading, a school (much like that at the monastery), a room for a library, and a synodal hall for meetings of the canons and where the bishop can conduct litigation. There is, in addition, a hospital for sick clerics. The whole forms a little world sequestered from the uproar and sordid bustle of the marts and workshops of Pontdebois. As you enter the cathedral compound, exterior cares are suddenly left behind you—a great sense of peace is realized. One hears the wind softly whistling through the soaring tracery of the massive right tower. There is a whirring flutter of doves from their homes under the flying buttresses. Through a section opened in the floral tracery of a great window comes the rumbling of an organ and the deep Gregorian chant of some hymn from the psalter. Utter contrast it all is either to the hammering and chaffering of the city, or the equally worldly clatter of the castle court! The vast tower pointing upward speaks even to the thoughtless, "Fortress and city, trade and tourney endure only for the instant—the things of the Spirit abide forever."
The cathedral, by its vast and soaring bulk, completely dwarfs the comparatively small and mean houses of the town. They are of thatch and wood. It is of stone. They lack even a tawdry magnificence. The cathedral could gaze with contempt on royal palaces. This fact teaches even more clearly than words the enormous place occupied by the Church in the Feudal Age. It is not by its literature and learning (though these are not to be despised), but by its sacred architecture and sculpture that the spirit of this era displays its power and originality. In contemplating so magnificent a fabric, it is best to remember that it is the work of men of ardent faith, profoundly convinced that in the church building there dwells continually upon the high altar God himself, invisible but ever present. Squalid dwellings may suffice for man, but not for the Creator. And since God actually takes his abode in such an edifice, every art must contribute to its splendor. Architects, sculptors, painters, jewelers, all perform their best, each rendering his homage to the Eternal. The cathedral, therefore, sums up all that is noblest in the art of the time when it is erected.
NOTRE DAME AND THE BISHOP'S PALACE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY