Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Was this liturgy so different from the campaign songs we sing now? It was really more called for, since enthusiasm over the royal person is one of the legitimate tools of monarchy, and Louis VI is an early monarch who deserves credit for abetting the gradual advance of France from a feudality to a veritable kingdom.

Suger, individually, did not stand too greatly in awe of royalty, for he peremptorily ordered Louis VII to come back from the “Holy Wars” to attend to his mundane duties, and be it credited to that monarch that he graciously obeyed the old friend of his father.

Suger is the most interesting personality that comes down to us from France of the twelfth century. Though a few characteristic anecdotes are told of him, we know him most intimately as the builder of Saint Denis and the far-seeing friend of the arts and crafts. It was said that he was a good goldsmith, and his sympathy with skilled labor lends color to the statement; but however hazy our other impressions of Suger may be, we know how he loved the old Abbey of Saint Denis—“_sa mère et sa nourrice_.” As a churchman he loved the blessed spot to which the angels had escorted brave old Saint Denis, when, after his martyrdom, he picked up his head and walked along with them unto the place “where he now resteth by his election and the puveance of God. And there was heard so grete and swete a melody of angels that many that heard it byleuyd in oure lorde.” He loved the old building that Dagobert, the Robin Hood of French monarchs, had built so royally, almost five hundred years before his day, for the poor and lowly, and for which the pleasant Saint Eloi, patron of goldsmiths, singing as he worked, had made the wondrously beautiful old reliquary; and as a man of literary feeling, he loved the old Abbey as his Alma Mater. But the diocese had grown, and on festal days so pressing were the crowds who would touch the holy relics of Saint Denis that good people were continually being trodden underfoot by eager and other worldly worshipers. So Suger decided to enlarge the church. He did not touch the dear old choir of Saint Denis: that was consecrated to God and, too, it was tenderly hallowed to man by many human associations; but he decided to add to it a great nave.

Of course at first the crowds vigorously abetted him, humbly harnessing themselves together like beasts of burden to draw the stone from the quarry. The trumpet sounded; banners were unfurled, and the procession marched; except for the murmur of those who confessed their sins to God, silence reigned. When the concourse arrived at the holy site, the multitude burst forth into a song of praise. Their sins once disposed of, the ardor of the multitude may have flagged, for we read of the busy little Abbé leaving the cares of state to go himself to the forests in search of the big timber others had not the enthusiasm to find.

That the very earth might pay its tribute to the blessed martyr, Suger studded the new golden screen in front of the tomb of Saint Denis with gems from “every land of the world,” and then the little old Abbé conceived of a still higher tribute: he gathered skill from “every country in the world” (his world was small, it is true); he gave to these skilled craftsmen the honor of working on “the Church, his Mother”; besides, they taught in the layman’s school of architecture, which he established in the yard of the old abbey.

To the amazement of the world, in that day of serfdom, Suger voluntarily paid his workmen and paid them by the week; and with the force and intensity that was in him, he advanced architecture as much in the ten years he was rebuilding Saint Denis as others had done in a hundred. The influence of his school of architecture still lives. It was one of our earliest instances of systematic training for the laity, and those who would trace the Italian Renaissance to French and classic sources, attach especial importance to the _imagiers_ of Saint Denis.

An immense number of statues, varying greatly in excellence, were made during the Middle Ages to decorate the churches. In our meagre records of the period, we even come across instances of peasants traveling far and spending their all to secure an especially beautiful Madonna, and we are assured of miraculous rewards, spiritual and temporal, coming to them from it. Actually, through the enthusiasm and liberality of these rude people, miracles of art have wrought their magical effect upon the imagination of generations and generations of men. These _imagiers_ became so numerous that they formed a powerful guild in which a race of sculptors was born and bred. While Sculpture was merely the hand-maiden and scribe of Architecture, her craftsmen were called _imagiers_. But the _imagiers_ became so expert that in the seventeenth century the French Academy changed the name of their order to the “Sculptor’s Guild.”

That the _imagier_ loved the cathedral which he was dowering with what talent he possessed is most likely; for, added to the simple conscientiousness, alike in all ages, of the worker who loves his craft and respects himself, was the intensity of the Age of Faith.

Gothic art may have been lived more generally even than Grecian, for it was the only intellectual outlet of its age. Much of its symbolism is now a dead language. We guess at the meaning of the gargoyles and grotesques, and draw liberal interpretations from the lips of the smiling angels who spoke more familiarly to a childish people; but when we count the decorative kings and bishops ranged in rows upon the grand façades, their supremacy over the souls, bodies and estates of men, of which we know so well, seems the myth of myths. However, we can read some of the old carvings, which had nothing in particular to say at the time they were made, like a book. Hybrid designs on pillars, capitals and cornices speak of the chivalrous meeting of the east and the west on the broad field of art. They bring up pictures of the rude crusaders overpowered by their first view of oriental elaboration, and we smile to see how it set them imitating, or, better still, adapting, and how the arts of war may bring about the arts of peace; for, in the fulness of time, those who strive, achieve, if not for themselves and their cause, for others and perhaps for a better cause.

Another art made great strides during the rebuilding of Saint Denis,—the glass-maker’s. We read about Vitrearii as far back as Charlemagne’s time. The windows they made were glass mosaics, held together with lead instead of stucco, forming little gem-like pictures above the holy altars, which told sacred stories beautifully, for in this way many scenes could be connected on one window; besides, color, like music, takes the emotions captive. One must examine a statue to realize it, but, in the phrase of the studio, color “sings.” A childish old chronicler relates that the retainers of Godfrey of Bouillon were obliged almost to tear him away from the churches, so absorbed was he in gazing on the windows. Was it through beautiful windows that the mystic aspiration of the mute minor poets of the cloister was finally reflected upon the man of action who took the first step, all unconsciously, toward the deliverance of his age from its dark, narrow bondage?

As a soldier, Godfrey de Bouillon had answered the call of the pilgrims who demanded protection; as a soldier, he had kept the peace (when there was any to keep). He was the one early crusader of whom we have record, who seems to have had the slightest idea of the fitness of things; indeed, in feeling, he was as truly a poet as a soldier. “So, day after day, in silence and in peace, with equal measure and just sale, did the Duke and the people pass through the realms of Hungary,” writes an astonished old chronicler, for Godfrey de Bouillon had paid the way of his army to the Holy City—an unheard of idea in warfare! How quixotic he must have seemed!

Language has changed since those windows spoke to Godfrey of Bouillon. But when a general stops on his line of march for higher council and then steers so true through the darkest day toward a faint, far-distant light, must he not have seen through the glass darkly?

It was but a few years after this “parfit gentil” knight passed away before he was as dear a hero of romance as King Arthur had become after many centuries, so little was there in his life for men to forget, so much that was sweet to dream upon. I suppose his story must have been related many times in beautiful glass, though as the panes grew larger and finer they told their stories less personally; but gallant knights on windows far and near are still reflecting an ideal that came to the First Baron of Jerusalem through the old church’s windows. Might it not be said of these old church builders, who builds from the heart feeds three: himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me?

To make windows like those of Saint Denis, an orderly, organized factory was necessary, and organization was the crying need of that age. Another astonished old chronicler repeats, that in those days of serfdom Suger paid his glass-workers. But the men learned their rights more readily than the chroniclers. Thereafter we constantly run upon the records of powerful workmen’s unions or guilds. In fact, we read of them later on the glass itself. These splendid church windows were, of course, very costly, and then, as now, they were usually presented to the churches. We find the guilds are the proud donors of many of them; two fine old church windows come down to us proudly representing some _imagiers_ and glass-makers at their work, those guilds having thus elected to “with the angels stand.”

Complaints of the luxury of the church also come down. Saint Bernard declares “their stones were gilded with the money of the needy and wretched to charm the eyes of the rich” (but had the poor no eyes?). Being against the government by temperament, Saint Bernard especially abominated the royal Abbey of Saint Denis. He complained of the “unclean apes and befowled tigers” upon which Suger’s _imagiers_ developed their skill, and it is written (how the writer arrived at the scene he does not explain) that as Suger’s confessor, Bernard commanded him to divest his mind of mundane cares and to dream only of the heavenly Jerusalem.

But the world weighed on Suger as long as he remained in it: his dream was of two splendid powers, England and France, separated, but living in peace! Suger was not in favor of crusades. He was the one ecclesiastic who would subject the clergy as well as the laity to royal authority, rendering unto Cæsar that which was Cæsar’s. Though a priest, in his political methods Suger was a broad, true and practical patriot, and if, unlike Saint Bernard, he was not adapted for canonization, he was a hero to his private secretary and to his king; and he still is a hero to the modern student of architecture, or of economics.

Into the very walls of his big and simple old church the “little old Abbé” built his big and simple sermon. It read: “Let us have good, honest, beautiful work, doing honor alike to God and man. Let us train our craftsmen, pay them and respect them.”

Though Saint Denis may lack the mystical beauty of the best Gothic, so noble and satisfactory is its design that the nineteenth century could do no better than to restore it.

Though Suger’s economics were very simple, the twentieth century has found no better platform: “Pay your workmen voluntarily, and summon all, from the king down, into their respective fields of labor; only when they all respond, we shall have a lovelier church than the old Abbey of Saint Denis.”

_The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres_

The Episcopal Church recognizes three distinct divisions: the High Church, or mystical element that, words failing, would speak by symbols; the Low Church, that would say what it means and mean what it says; and the Broad Church, that would set aside details and seek in religion a general harmony.

Though they are not so formally defined, these same divisions, being based on human temperaments, exist in other sects so literally that the same symbols have met with the identical adoption and objection. About 205, Tertullian ridiculed the use of candles on the altars of the early church, and Lactance took up the subject some hundred years later. Thereafter Saint Jerome laid these still troublesome candles at the door of the laity, especially of the women. However, the symbol and the women conquered.

In this desultory search of ours for hints of the social history of the old French cathedral builders, we meet with the high and low church elements which seem, though this idea may be fanciful, to have influenced the appearance even of their respective churches. There is the grandly simple and direct architecture, the Cathedral of Laon, which inclined to Low Church, allowing its votaries considerable latitude, and the symbolically ornate cathedral at Chartres, which from remote ages has been a noted shrine of mysticism. Its site was holy ground to the early Christian and perhaps to the Druids before him. Tradition has it that even to them on this hallowed spot came a prophecy of the Messiah. (If it did, it probably came from some Jewish source in the days of the Romans.)

There is a charming story, more than legend, if less than history, of “Notre Dame Sous Terre” of Chartres. While most of the early Christians, in a spirit of hatred, were destroying false gods and their shrines, some pioneers of Christianity found in a grotto at Chartres a figure which had been worshiped by the Druids, resembling their own Madonna, whereby, to these gentle priests, she seemed doubly hallowed. Accepting her grotto as already consecrate, they located their high altar there, upon it reinstated the old Madonna of the Druids, and in a humble spirit, along with their simple converts, they bowed down before her, for upon them had descended that sovereign reverence which appreciates another man’s god.

From the time this old druidic figure was raised upon a Christian altar to this day, first honors have been accorded to her shrine. Before her or her representative have bowed, weary and footsore, every one of the French kings, from Clovis to Louis XV, as well as innumerable other pilgrims, rich or poor, gathered from every land of Christendom by the democracy of the church.

Even the revolutionists recognized this “First Lady of Chartres,” for while they lumped other relics together in general destruction they paid Notre Dame Sous Terre the back-handed compliment of a special bonfire at the cathedral door.

The sansculottes have passed away without individual record, but a charmingly carved representative of the old Notre Dame Sous Terre still occupies the most venerated shrine of Chartres; while its old-time spirit of church hospitality yet pervades the noble cathedral that has developed above her grotto, her clergy still smile kindly upon the pilgrim and the stranger, even though his interest in their church be solely artistic. They seem to say: “Take from our old cathedral what you may, surely her beauty is pure and holy.”

True religious art can but lead to some phase of piety, as August Rodin declares that all true art must. It may be but a chance title; however, the latest book on French Gothic speaks of “Chartres, the House of Prayer”; but certainly the feeling which has been lavished on this spot, the passionate generosity of devotees through long ages, has brought forth one of the most sacredly beautiful churches in the world.

Now let us investigate literally the claims of Notre Dame Sous Terre. Recent excavations prove that the present Cathedral of Chartres is built over a grotto, where the Druids probably held their services. In excavating under and around the choir of the cathedral, vestiges of ancient altars and idols were unearthed which prove conclusively that the symbols of the heathen were not cleared away violently. The policy of Rome tended toward religious tolerance; the gods of the Romans often mixed peaceably in the temples with the gods of the people Rome conquered, hence the cult of the Virgin might have existed along with that of the pagan gods.

In the early days of Christianity the Virgin was not given the prominence she acquired after the eighth century; this figure known as the druidic Madonna may even have represented some sweet, motherly goddess of another name. Symbols are elastic, therein lies their supreme value; they may be all things to all men. Words always have brought division to the church; symbols, unity. The wisest and kindest of the early bishops had the most grace in translating the old symbols of their converts into the picturesque language of their new church. For instance, Gregory the Great changed the pagan memorial custom of putting food on graves on a certain fête-day to bringing flowers for the graves and praying for the dead on All Souls Day. The early Christian missionaries at Chartres may have believed this figure to be a Madonna or they may have translated it into one. Indeed, it is not the genuineness of the figure itself that is the point of this story; it is the attitude of the Chartrians toward it.

From the character of the Gallo-Romaine substructure of the Chapel of Saint Lubin in the crypt of Chartres, the list of the early bishops of that diocese and the general history of the evangelization of Gaul, it is inferred that ever since the beginning of the fourth century a bishop’s church has stood on the site of the present cathedral. Mingled with all the superstition of its age there was a certain tolerant broad-church element maintained at Chartres from the first. Perhaps that made the church so peculiarly dear to the people of France, for though the French kings were crowned at Rheims and buried at Saint Denis, Chartres seems the most intimately associated with their lives. It is written that after his conversion Clovis stopped there for further instruction, and Gibbon observes his measures were sometimes moderated by the milder genius of Rome and Christianity. The Carlovingian kings were very partial to Chartres. Charles the Bald, who comes down to us familiarly as a church builder through an old picture in which he holds a cast of a cathedral in his hand, conferred the most precious of relics upon Chartres—the _Sancta Camisia_ of the Virgin! Robert the Pious contributed a sapphire. Within her mystic walls sensible Louis the Fat pardoned his enemies; there Philippe le Bel, Charles le Bel and Philippe de Valois gave thanks for their victories, childishly presenting their armor and their beloved war-horses to this Church, their Mother. Saint Louis marched barefooted about twenty-one miles to endow Chartres with her beautiful _Portail Septentrionale_. And when Henry IV changed his religion, let us believe with the really good intention of bringing about a little peace on earth to Frenchmen, he elected to be consecrated at Chartres, “by reason of the peculiar devotion of his ancestors, the Dukes of Vendome, to the old cathedral, the most ancient in Christendom.” There were reasons why he could not conveniently have been crowned at Rheims like other French kings, that city being hostile to him. But Henry IV always had a clever and sufficient answer.

To return to the material story of the old bishops’ church near the well of Saint Lubin, our first dated record takes us back into a feudal war. In 743, Hanald duc d’Aquitaine, fighting the Comte de Chartres, burned the town cathedral; but when he realized what he had done he retired to a monastery to do penance all the rest of his days. Was it in superstition? Was it in true repentance? Did he burn the church by accident? That might have been. The simple piety of the Dark Ages that would build “The House of God” for all time rendered the churches the strongest of buildings, and defensive armies often resorted to them; then, too, there were spiritual objections to attacking a church. This factor was sometimes over-estimated.

The Cathedral of Chartres was rebuilt, only to be burned down one hundred and fifteen years after by the Normans. During this siege the non-combatants of the town confidently took refuge in the cathedral with their bishop instead of buying off the pirates with gold from the Holy Altar as the people of Rheims had done (they are all gone now and God knows which did best). Unexpectedly, neither church nor bishop impressed the Normans, who overturned the city walls, burned the buildings, massacred the bishop, and every one else who came in their way; but after the Normans left, the Chartrians had the cold comfort of gathering their dead and laying them away beside the Well of Saint Lubin and “through the merits of those there reposing a crowd of miracles were wrought.” About this period the disease we now know as erysipelas came to be highly respected. In France it was called _le mal des ardents_; in England, the “sacred fire”; for, one thousand years ago processions like those that now visit Lourdes were pressing on to Chartres to drink of the holy spring. The world moves, but somewhat in a groove. At this Lourdes of the Dark Ages the afflicted were tended by nuns, but we find a certain telltale regulation:—after nine days (ample time for blood poisoning to develop unmistakably) the sick must go home, “cured or not.”

Was medical practice then so much worse than ours during the Rebellion, when old rags of the nation were collected and all sorts and conditions of women scraped them into lint full of germs for the wounded soldiers? But if the church was a crazy physician, she was a gentle nurse. She established a chivalry toward the sick that no Cervantes would laugh away. It lives in medical ethics, and the quixotic obligation of the doctor to leave no stone unturned for his patient has been the foundation of medical science. Some of the old Hotels-Dieu of blessed name and memory have developed into up-to-date hospitals and medical schools, like Charing Cross Hospital, London, which still enjoys its mediæval benefice, while modern hospitals, in general, are moral descendants of the old ideal.

Again the old Church of Chartres was rebuilt, again to stand for a little over a century. This building had the satisfaction (may we not use the figure, for the mediæval church was very human) of seeing the Normans, under Rollo, defeated by an army marching under its blessed standard, the _Sancta Camisia_ of the Virgin borne aloft as a banner. But later, Rollo married the daughter of Charles the Simple, settled down in Normandy, presented his castle to the see of the Bishop of Chartres and adopted the Christian religion. A double victory for the church! Many of the first Norman converts were baptized a dozen times, for the sake of excitement or for the white garment given them at the ceremony. Thereafter the funeral of Rollo was rendered doubly memorable by the slaughter of one hundred captives and rich gifts to the monasteries.

In spite of the _Sancta Camisia_, in spite of all the remains of all of the martyrs that had been aggregating in the _martyrium_ under the church for seven hundred years, in 962 Richard of Normandy burned the cathedral with the town. But the relics had not been powerless, for this was the last pagan outbreak. The church had the holy triumph of Christianizing her adversaries, and the _martyrium_, between the excellence of its building material, the water of the spring of Saint Lubin near by, and “the merits of those there reposing,” remained intact and was found in the excavations of 1901; but the spring is gone; it was probably diverted by the foundations of the present cathedral.

Though a paralyzing conviction had come upon the people, Bishop Vulpard immediately started to rebuild. It had somehow been very generally decided that the world would come to an end in the year 1000, so near at hand.

How did this private information regarding the future affect the multitude? They probably took it riotously,—at least, such has been the experience in times of plague and horror, when it seemed that the race was about to be wiped out. Indeed, it is only for others that the saner, better life is led—best of all, unconsciously led.

We do know that at that time church building flagged. Ah, be it credited to these old builders, they worked for others rather than themselves! Nevertheless, the latter part of the tenth century is the day of vast and massive crypts of which Chartres is one of the noblest examples. Let us hope that brave old Vulpard lived to see it under way.

History has very little to say of the delusion regarding the year 1000, except that it shows that the church gained ground therefrom. Many persons thought it well to present their goods to the churches since they could not use them much longer themselves. Scarce as records are, we have one instance of the church helping the world out of one of the dilemmas arising from this misunderstanding. We do know positively that the valuables of the Church of Saint Benignus of Dijon were all sold to relieve the famine of the year 1001. Probably the ground had not been sown the previous autumn.

However often it has fallen from grace, in the main the Christian Church has won its way by service. However often its services have been mistaken, it has maintained the ideal that the Christian should serve the world.

Instead of the world’s coming to an end according to their schedule, to the astonishment of the Chartrians, lightning singled out their holy church and burned it to the ground. Some of the more or less logically inclined suggested that some of the pilgrims might have been guilty of indiscretions within its consecrated walls and thus have brought down this celestial disaster.

The church had a particularly charming bishop at that time who arose to the astonishing occasion and called for help from the whole religious world regardless of nationality. He might be known as the successful correspondent of history. We still have some of his letters. The one to Cnut, King of England and Denmark, is certainly a flower of history, showing, as it does, the sympathy of a great king with a great scholar (as the times went) and a great movement. Fulbert writes, in acknowledgment of Cnut’s donation to his building fund: “When we saw the offering which you deigned to send us, we admired at once your astonishing wisdom and religious spirit; your wisdom, in that you, a prince, divided from us by language and by sea, are zealously concerned not only with the things around you but also with things that touch us; in your religious spirit, in that you, of whom we have heard speak as a pagan king, show yourself a very Christian and generous benefactor of churches and servants of God. We render lively thanks to the King of kings through whose mercy your gifts have descended upon us, and we beseech Him to make your reign happy and prosperous, to deliver your soul from all sin.” The result of Fulbert’s appeals proves that Christianity had established a brotherhood on earth. Though much of Fulbert’s structure was burned within ten years the church inherits both spiritually and materially from him; his crypt is left and it gives lines to the splendid church we know. Saint Thierry rebuilt the upper church, and it grew in beauty under Saint Ivo, who succeeded in getting the ear of Mathilda of England. Not that Saint Ivo was a snob, for in his time we may see among the records timely rebukes to royalty and dignified acknowledgment of the services of individual workmen upon the mighty edifice. After all, there is nothing sweeter than the “widow’s mite.” A great deal is said by social historians about the tax upon the communities for these splendid churches, but they overlook the joy of public giving, which also moulds and unites a people.

And now this wonderful old church, which echoes from tower to crypt with the human story, commences to speak picturesquely of the wild Holy Wars. The heavy Dark Ages developed its crypt. The body of the church passed through many metamorphoses in the time intervening until a period of the greatest religious enthusiasm crowned the cathedral with its marvelous towers.

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.

The cardinal assembled the people of Chartres around the smoking ruins of their dear old church and persuaded them to forget their personal losses and to think only of rebuilding the House of God; and the people, united by the strongest of bonds, a common disaster, arose again to work for the common good, and again Christians from far and near sent in their donations. The old chroniclers say that the very Holy Virgin multiplied her miracles. One of them we still have before us. It was then and there that an architect, whose name is forgotten but whose genius is immortal, perfected the cathedral type of thirteenth century Gothic. All designers of Gothic churches still do him homage; all lovers of Gothic architecture still sing his praise.

And the old church at Chartres grew on, gently developing her people on many lines. She watched her _imagiers_ grow into sculptors, her glass-workers into painters, the more or less serfs of the soil develop into workmen, then guildsmen and free burghers of the town; of this they themselves have written upon her very walls. About half of the windows of the cathedral we find were presented by the guilds; the other half by kings, princes and seigneurs, lay and ecclesiastic. The glass of Chartres, by the way, is considered the finest in the world.

The eighteenth century was a bad day for churches in France; the general contempt in the air for the past led them to destroy the “barbarians’ art,” which was good, to make way for their own, which happened to be bad. The Cathedral of Chartres, as ever so truly in touch with the times, suffered from the artists in the early part of the century, while in 1793 the revolutionists invaded it. They buried the relics and appraised the barbarians’ statues at 100 francs. Then the next idea was to knock down the cathedral, which they found was not so easy; so they concluded to transform it into a Temple of Reason, wherein they behaved most unreasonably. Somebody started to destroy the immense group of the Assumption on the grand altar. It represents the Virgin on an embankment of clouds with her arms extended and her figure coming toward the congregation. Her “pied-à-terre” of clouds (excuse the hibernicism) is upheld by angels and every face and attitude in the group is full of aspiration and action. Although as sculpture, this group is not of the first order, as allegory, it is perfect. A bright idea occurred to an architect present; he put the Phrygian cap upon the head of the Virgin and a lance in her hand, and the old symbol became the new; with her arms open to the world and her eyes turned a little above it, the Virgin of Chartres became a beautiful emblem of liberty. I wonder if she impressed any of the wild congregation before her; not long thereafter Napoleon observed that “Chartres was no place for an atheist.”

In about six months the church managed to reinstate itself in its old stronghold, though the Revolutionary Commission of public works (or rather the commission for the destruction of public works) had had the impertinence to strip the lead from the cathedral roof to make its ammunition.

But the old church was built to weather all storms, and so was the French nation. The revolutionists besieged the Louvre and turned it into a public art gallery. The republic has quietly advanced much farther in its right of eminent domain and taken under its enlightened protection all the great monuments of architecture in all fair France. Nothing is more charming than the enthusiasm throughout the land, extending even to the simplest people, over these “national monuments.” As the building of them long ago formed a bond of union with the communes, so the love of them now forms a bond of union with the nation. Fostered in their shadows, French genius was able to bring forth at need architects capable of restoring them almost to their pristine beauty, a beauty which, growing out of mystic relics, seems fraught with a relic’s power through love and awe to lead men on. May its magic transform these Roman Catholic cathedrals of the Age of Faith into Holy Catholic churches of the Age of Doubt!

In the nineteenth century James Russell Lowell wrote a poem containing some lovely lines on the Cathedral of Chartres, but if a twentieth century poet approach the theme he will treat it in a more Catholic spirit, for the messages of these venerable fanes must grow broader and gentler as time goes on. A greater poet than Lowell said: “I never can feel sure of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty.” From this idea he framed his invocation to beauty, which applies alike to a Grecian urn and to the Cathedral of Chartres:

“Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend[2] to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

_Caen: An Eleventh Century Tableau_

Two hours from Cherbourg, as the motor flies, lies the old town of Caen, founded by William the Conqueror.

A curious peace reigns in this old fortress, with the drawbridge down, and the moat a bower of trees and flowers: the peace of consummated action; the returns are all in, and you may receive them according to your humor, for the burning questions of other days have faded into dreamy generalities.

Were all those wild centuries of struggle and warfare vain? Or is the old Greek battle-cry, “Now let us go forward, whether we shall give glory to other men, or other men to us,” the normal note of primitive manhood? Were Rollo the Norseman and William the Norman, following the war-gods fiercer than they, commissioned by fate to lead great armies across the great waters, and, sailing under sealed orders, to found two great nations and one great language? Or are all things vanity?

Perhaps, after receiving the children’s children of his loyal subjects, who may have crossed a certain wide ocean unknown to him to attend the great Court of History that William the Norman holds at Caen, the Shades of the Conqueror growing more familiar might conduct the musing cortége into the beautiful abbey near-by, which he built in expiation of the love-match he made in defiance of the church.

I wonder here if the old king might not laughingly recall the story of his first meeting with Lanfranc.

Like other forceful men, William married upon his own responsibility. Accordingly, the Pope not only excommunicated him, but laid various bans upon his realm. Such bans were once marvelously inconvenient, to say the least. William fought the church valiantly for six years. It may have been then that he got his measure of the uses and abuses of that institution, which, in the long run, proved most valuable to England. Among others, Lanfranc, Prior of Bec, became a target for William’s displeasure and was ordered to leave his monastery. Lanfranc started forth forlornly enough on a lame horse. Thus caparisoned, he met the furious Duke William. Lanfranc had but one weapon at his command—tact. He approached the great duke, saying, “I am obeying your command as quickly as I can. I will obey faster if you will give me a better horse.” William was blessed with humor. He impressed Lanfranc into his service then and there, and made him his friend forever: the Conqueror could make good friends. Then he sent Lanfranc to make his peace with the Holy See. Understanding William’s passion for building, Lanfranc, the peacemaker, arranged that William and Mathilda should each build an abbey in expiation of their marriage. And William and Mathilda performed their contract so royally that France has lately restored their abbeys, line for line, as national monuments.[3] Thus a tableau of Caen, as the Conqueror saw it, actually lies before twentieth century eyes.

Ah, put yourself in his place! I never knew a traveler to leave this old town without becoming attached to its founder. The strong, orderly, noble and logical Norman buildings express the old Conqueror at his best; at Caen one prefers his older, gentler, more unique title of William, the builder, for, indeed, many have conquered in England, but William I built up his conquest.

In this interesting old Norman church, with its suspicion of the pointed arch (probably the earliest instance) pointing toward the unparalleled Gothic that developed in Normandy, one feels like congratulating the old Conqueror, both as lover and architect, and reinstating his old claim to romance, even though modern research has discovered that he was not a very gentle knight.

William I was no saint; but why should he have been one? Professional saints were only too common in his day: he was but a strong, direct man in a most superstitious, childish and indirect age. Is not the position of one who can stand alone through his age heroic enough?

What a curious world the old Conqueror lived in! A world of professional marauders and their soldiers, of professional saints and their serfs; with a confusion of fighting barons, lay and ecclesiastic, some or the most interesting bishops being no mean warriors; and worst of all, a lot of begging friars producing little but corruption. To the day of his death, the Conqueror makes no apology for his wars in Normandy. There he was simply holding his own. The behavior of the wild and worldly barons was not all he had to contend with; there were also the visions and the notions of the unworldly clergy, who, with intent, more or less good, more or less self-seeking, interfered absolutely with good government, and William’s tact and breadth with them, considered at a time when it is easy to be wise, nearly one thousand years after the event, is astonishing. It fell to his lot to deal with that peculiarly well-intentioned pope, Gregory VII, who, by his ability to conceive and carry out his well-intentioned policy, worked such incalculable evil. Spain is struggling with his Shades today.

What a problem the mystics of the eleventh century, with their tremendous following and their curious allegorical interpretations of everything great or small in heaven or on earth, must have been to a statesman! Listen to this eleventh century letter of thanks from Saint Ivo to Gerard of Ham, for “an instrument of the whiteness of snow for combing the hair.” This comb is agreeable to him in and of itself, like other objects of beauty; but above all, it pleases him because of the elevation of ideas, which it so beautifully symbolizes: he is quite sure that thy prudence (_ta prudence_) has wished hereby to give a suggestion to his vigilance to seek constantly by all sorts of exhortations to reform the disorderly manners of his people, whom he compares to a disarranged head of hair. And yet Saint Ivo was in his day a strictly practical person, not to be fooled as Savonarola was four hundred years later by the ordeal of fire. Saint Ivo forbids a husband to condemn his wife even when the man he has accused could be burned by hot irons; and when the martial old bishop of Le Mans, who is accused of having treacherously surrendered that town, offers to walk on hot irons to prove his innocence, Saint Ivo writes him that ordeals are uncanonical and that he must not submit to them. But then no reader of his correspondence can fail to see that Saint Ivo was very timid. How he did dread the Channel! He entreats the holiest men of his acquaintance to pray unceasingly for him while he is on the water.

But let us turn to the Conqueror’s own review of his life, as he discussed it on his death-bed. Two of his clergy took it down. Thus, as he would speak to his sons, he speaks to history. Here we have his perplexities at first hand. That we may put ourselves in his place as literally as possible, let us repair with the document to the beautiful Abbey aux Dames, so tenderly connected with the Conqueror’s queen. There, it is said, she made her thank-offering for her lord’s safe deliverance, alike from the perils of war and the perils of the Channel. This abbey was consecrated the year of the Conquest, eleven years before the Abbey aux Hommes (ladies first). Many of the Conqueror’s followers supplied their own ships, but Mathilda herself fitted out the Conqueror’s,—the regal _Mora_—so splendidly stocked with wine. Her good ship bore him safely to England and victory, and brought him back, as ever, true to his queen. To this abbey they dedicated their daughter Cicely, when she was a child, and she became a great and powerful abbess. Here we may picture her praying, as a woman in the intense Age of Faith could pray, for the souls of her parents.

Eight hundred and twenty-five years after its original construction we found another high-bred cloistered Lady of the Trinity in passionate prayer at the tomb of Mathilda. Was this pretty young nun a legitimate part of the restoration? Though the cloisters of France were supposed to have been abolished, this one had been passed by, for the Conqueror holds Caen, and some iron hand of the past seems to have retained this spiritual young girl in prayer at the tomb of his queen. A strange sight it was, one of the curious tragedies of conservatism; but like many every-day tragedies imperceptible to its actors.

To the eye all seemed beauty. From a fine old garden we stepped into a majestic aisle of a great abbey. As we walked down in its dim half-light, a curtain was drawn displaying a brass grill impassable in the eyes of the church. Impassable it had been, in fact, for nearly eight hundred and fifty years, but now to climb over it would be a minor athletic feat. It separated the chapel of the foundress and the nuns of the order of the Trinity from the whole outside world. The entire central space of this chapel was occupied by Queen Mathilda’s enormous cream-colored sarcophagus (restored). One might read the inscription in eleventh-century characters, fresh from a modern chisel. The chapel walls were lined with dark, carved wooden stalls, freshly oiled, and new-born sunbeams peered decorously through rich-colored glass on two kneeling nuns clad in the old-time flowing ivory-colored robes of the Ladies of the Trinity.

One was a fleshy, middle-aged woman, mechanically counting her beads, the other was young and beautiful. She was looking up, and, though she was as motionless as the tomb beside her, her attitude expressed action as sculpture may. What was she thinking of? Is the life of today any less inscrutable than that of one thousand years ago? Here, in the charity of the church, let us consider the Conqueror’s apology (_apologia_); we are translating the word too literally, but the spirit of the document is humble and explanatory and, withal, very winning.

In this _apologia_ William considers that he has done his duty to the church, and history endorses him; in general, when he was at variance with it he was in the right. But of his expedition to England—every move of which is justified upon the Bayeux Tapistry—he repents, although, fortunately, not fanatically enough to try and undo the deed. He only makes what reparation he can to certain victims. Though on his death-bed he liberated Harold’s son and nephew, he seems to overlook a curious persecution, cruel in intent but easily repaired, that, in the confidence and fury of his power, he had directed against the soul of the defeated king. The Conqueror carried Harold’s body from the battlefield (he wrapt it in the purple, it is true), but he had insisted upon burying it in unhallowed ground, although for it Harold’s mother had offered the weight in gold,—both parties firmly believing that to lie in unconsecrated ground would militate against the repose of the spirit. Though he tried to undo many a deed, the Conqueror ignores entirely his arrogant revenge upon a soul. Facing death matures our sense of value.

Though but one century removed from a forebear whose God was Odin, whose Valhalla was a place where heroes cut each other to pieces daily in fair fight, but where the blest are perpetually restored to life at meal-time that they may eat of the wild boar and fight again and forever,[4] at least the Conqueror came to shudder at his massacres at Hastings and York, to truly repent and to die humbly commending his soul to Mary.

The spirit of the nineteenth century was iconoclastic; it demolished alike old heroes, old superstitions and old faiths. But the twentieth century would call them back, not as realities, but as heroes, superstitions and faiths, treating them philosophically, as great moving forces, or poetically, as starting points for new ideals. The hard, rational doubt which emancipated thought in the nineteenth century develops into the sympathetic doubt of the twentieth. The nineteenth century laughed at barbaric old heroes, while the twentieth century smiles at them. Who wants to live in a world without heroes? All men are not equal; but by reverent appreciation the small man may become brother to the genius.

Every place, every document connected with the Conqueror bears his strong individuality. Read of him where you may, between the lines of the Domesday Book (that conscientious effort to tax all that the traffic will bear), or in the broken lays of the troubadours, or by the light or the density of contemporary chroniclers, Norman or Saxon, you find before you a man great in himself and a forerunner of greater things: a great builder, building better than he knew; a great ruler, ruling farther than he knew—a true hero of the strenuous life.

Following the chance records from which the Conqueror’s biography is put together, one is amazed by the integrity of his political instinct. William the Norman is an instance for the poet who said, “The world is what a few great men have made it.” The Conqueror seems such a typical Englishman, alike in his love of the forests and the “high deer,” of which the old Saxon chronicler complains, and in his appreciation of justice and stability, for which the same chronicler gives thanks on the spot. The Conqueror’s appeal is a very wide one. Even the economists, who hold that the world is what demand and supply have made it, write with an enthusiasm peculiarly their own of the Domesday Book and its wisely self-seeking, avaricious author.

It cannot be argued that the Conqueror was a popular king, but sinners, like saints, may be proven by their influence after death—the Conqueror’s was strong and manly. His spirit entered widely into mediæval legend. He is the Arthur, the ideal ruler, whom Malory commends for manly purity, justice and probity; also for “open manslaughter.” We may take Malory’s word for it, it was better than the savage treachery known even four hundred years later, when that old _raconteur_ was mixing probabilities, improbabilities and impossibilities so picturesquely, and we have our old hero back. Although we must alter Malory’s ideal, we can add to it as well as subtract from it. We have the splendid barbarian who brought order out of chaos both in England and Normandy, who loved and trusted his wife, who loved nature and had an instinct for art, whose intelligent attitude toward religion and learning left the Dark Ages behind, and whose loyal leadership opened the romantic days of chivalry.