As we wander about this glorious fabric, with its hundreds of statues,[130] its blazing windows, its vaulted roof which hangs its massive weight of stone so safely above our heads, all attempts at detailed description become futile. Let them be left for other books and other moods. Later generations doubtless will record at great length that about the middle of the twelfth century a great activity in church building, as a surpassing work of Christian piety, began to manifest itself especially in northern France. This activity was not to spend itself for more than a hundred years.[131] It absorbed much of the best thought and energy of the time. In addition, it developed a genuinely new type of architecture, a real innovation upon those models traceable back to the pagan Greek. We come to the reign of the pointed arch which adapts itself to endless curves and varieties. We have, too, the grouped columns which uphold the groins of the lofty vaulting, their members radiating outward like the boughs of a stately forest. These columns and piers can be made amazingly light, thanks to the daring use of flying buttresses, an invention not merely of great utility, but of great beauty. Thanks also to these grouped pillars, groins, and buttresses, the walls between the bays (intervals between the columns) are in no wise needed to uphold the roof of stone; and as a result these bays can be filled up with thin curtain walls crowned above with enormous windows which are filled with a delicate tracery and a stained glass that throws down upon the pavement of the church all the rainbow tints of heaven. Each bay is likely to contain a separate chapel or at least an altar to some particular saint. Over the portal, where the main entrance gives access to the long nave, radiates the mighty rose window, the final triumph of the glass and tracery. And so through all the vast structure—huge in proportions, yet, as it were, a harmonious mass of fair carving and jewel work, until (even as says Holy Writ) "the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplyeth, according to the effectual working in every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."
Magnificent Dimensions of Cathedrals
So the apostle of the making of a Christian man, so, too, of the making of the august church. And after saying this, what profit to add that this cathedral has a length of about four hundred feet, that the ceiling of the nave rises at least one hundred feet above the pavement, that the rose window is nearly forty feet in diameter, that the higher tower is much more than two hundred?[132] Numbers are for sordid traffic, they are not for a work wrought out of a passionate love of man toward God.
We cannot stay to linger over the symbolism which they tell us is in every part of the church; how the "Communion of Saints" is proclaimed by the chapels clustering around the choir and nave; how the delicate spire which rises at the center of the transepts teaches that "vanquishing earthly desire we should also ascend in heart and mind"; how the triple breadth of the nave and two aisles, likewise the triple stretch of the choir, transepts and nave, proclaim the Holy Trinity; and how the serried armies of piers and columns announce the Prophets and Apostles who uphold the fabric of the Church; while font, altar, crucifix, and crosses innumerable attest the earthly pilgrimage and redeeming passion of Jesus Christ.
But the cathedral is more than a great collection of allegories. Everywhere in stained glass, and still more in the multitudinous images, is told the Bible story. The characters are not clothed in Hebraic fashion. "Baron Abraham" and "Sire David" appear in ring mail like doughty cavaliers. The history of the good warrior Judas Maccabæus perhaps is told in greater detail than that of prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. But very few important stories are omitted, and, above all, the great pageant of the life of Jesus is worked out in loving detail. The child, who is brought time and again to visit the cathedral, knows almost every essential Bible narrative, albeit he may never learn to read even French, much less to con the Latin of the Vulgate. Likewise, in the cathedral rest the tombs of brave seigneurs and worthy bishops, each covered either with an effigy showing his armor and his beloved hunting dogs couched at his feet, or in his pontificals; and the tombs also of noble women, sculptured as richly clad, who have made life beautiful by their worthy living, and who now rest securely until God's great Judgment. So the cathedral is both a temple for the hopes of the present, and an inspiration from the remote and nearer past.[133]
Stained Glass and Sculptures
After he had prayed beside his father and mother, little Anseau stole away from the altar and wandered timidly about the church. In a corner of a transept he found a stone craftsman completing a small image of St. Elizabeth to adorn some niche. The sculptor was polishing the back of the statue no less carefully than the front. "Why such trouble?" asked the boy curiously. "No one can see the back." "Ah, my fair damoiseau," replied the other, smiling, "no man, of course; but God can see. This is for the Cathedral; and is God 'no one'?"
The next day, having spent all their money and become wearied of the mechanic bustle of Pontdebois, Baron Conon and his company rode back to St. Aliquis. After they had traveled for miles, the great mass of the cathedral was still visible behind them.
The Feudal Age has produced very much that is evil—it has also produced the Gothic church and its builders. By which ought the epoch be judged?