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Chartres, the cathedral of light A writer spends three weeks under the spell of one of the world's great Gothic masterpieces By Paul McGeary, Globe Staff, 4/15/2001
But far worse, the ''voile de la vierge'' (the veil of the Virgin), was nowhere to be found. The veil - really more a long garment rather like an Indian sari - had been given in the 9th century to Pepin, son of Charlemagne and Holy Roman Emperor, by the Byzantine Empress Irene. He in turn had given it to Chartres, whose cathedral was dedicated to the Virgin. (Paris's cathedral at the time was dedicated to St. Stephen; only later did it become Notre Dame.)
By the 12th century, the cult of the Virgin had grown so that Chartres, once a sleepy Roman garrison town and otherwise a middling country marketplace, had become a pilgrimage site that drew from all over Europe. If the relic of the Virgin were lost, the future of the cathedral and of Chartres itself would be in jeopardy. The faithful fell on their knees, so the story goes, and three days later their prayers were answered. Members of the cathedral chapter descended into the crypt beneath the wreckage and emerged bearing the unscathed garment. It was a miracle, the crowd murmured. Instantly, it was determined to build a new, even more magnificent church on the footings of the old. From that ruin rose the church we call Notre Dame de Chartres. It took only 30-odd years to rebuild the new cathedral - extraordinarily quickly in an era when cathedral building typically took hundreds of years. The secret, as it is in so many things, was money. The rich and powerful of Christendom contributed to the project. With money being no object, the cathedral quickly rose from its ashes.
The architect, whose name is lost to us, decided to rebuild the cathedral in the new Gothic style. Begun at nearby St. Denis in Paris, Gothic was the gift of its protean abbot, Suger, prelate, king's minister, and visionary. Suger had cast aside the thick walls and dark interiors of Romanesque and replaced them with a celebration of light. Using the comparatively new architectural device of the flying buttress to take the load of the heavy roof, he was able to make the walls much lighter, and, more to the point, the style afforded the opportunity to pierce the walls with enormous window spaces. The new technique also allowed the cathedral to rise much higher than its predecessor, offering even more opportunities for windows and light. Stained glass images are the hallmark of Gothic. The light pouring through the panes of ruby and gold and the particular cobalt color that even today is known as ''Chartres blue,'' created the effect of a giant reliquary or jewel box. The cathedral was to re-create St. John's vision of a heavenly city, whose very walls were made of jewels.
Chartres is the ultimate expression of that vision. It has 174 windows and is the largest extant collection of medieval stained glass. For more than 800 years it has been a focal point of pilgrimage. Whether the faithful coming on foot or tourists in tour buses, Chartres has drawn them to the place above the Beauce plain.
Most tourists see Chartres for an hour or two on a weekday afternoon. They take the 40-mile bus ride out from Paris and wander up the nave and around the altar, looking at the windows through the viewfinders of video or still cameras. If they're lucky, they spend an hour or so with Malcolm Miller, the expatriate Briton who has made a career by leading groups in Bermuda shorts and belly bags on a 90-minute tour, introducing them to the history of the place and giving a quick lesson in how to ''read'' a stained glass window. Along the way they get a bit of theological history and biting wit, and, if they're not careful, a bit of fire, as one retiree found out when he asked if Miller gave a ''senior discount'' of his $8 fee. Miller's face grew even more florid than usual under his shock of white hair. ''No I do not!'' he said withering the tourist with an icy stare. ''I'm a senior myself.''
Then, Miller or not, the tourists remount their buses and return, perhaps with a stop at Versailles to round out the afternoon.
Nearly 20 years ago, I made my first trip to Chartres. In college and graduate school, I had studied the art and culture of medieval Europe. At the time I envisioned becoming a college professor. But things happen; life surprises you. I ended up working for a newspaper where my sometimes less than rigorous research style was more at home than it might have been in the groves of Academe.
On that afternoon in 1982, I had wandered briefly through the great pillars of the cathedral and been washed over by its afternoon light. I had seen the interplay of the light and dark places and the sacred relic of the Virgin. Then I had hopped back on the bus and returned to Paris.
Over the years I wanted to return, but I didn't get the chance until last year. For a 50th birthday present, my wife gave me a trip to France. This time, I decided, I would stay more than an afternoon.
Working on the Internet and through the Chartres tourist office we found a small apartment a five-minute walk from the cathedral. We worked out the details. We'd stay three weeks. We'd make some side trips, but mostly we'd be in Chartres.
I kept a journal during the stay. Here are some of the entries.
Saturday, June 10
Exploring around Chartres.
We go to the cathedral and our first of several tours with Miller. At noon, Miller arrives. He's been doing this for 42 years with curmudgeonly good grace. He makes sure to collect his fee first. He counts the coins and deposits them in a medieval-looking pouch that he carries with him. He used to wait to collect his fee till the end of the tour, he said, but the Americans, especially, had a habit of wandering off and forgetting to pay.
Miller begins his lecture at the west front, the three lancet windows, tall and thin and pointing upward to the vast rose window of the Last Judgment. Starting on the right with the Tree of Jesse recording Jesus' lineage through the incarnation, the whole Christian vision is laid out in soaring images, assembled four-foot squares on stained glass, building one upon the other until the story is told.
The tour ends on the North Porch. There a bit of one statue has been scoured of the centuries of grime and we can see the original creamy color of the sandstone of which the cathedral is built. Miller holds up a picture to show how once the statues had been painted in vibrant color, etching the windows. The windows of the north transept are being restored for nearly $1 million; if we're lucky the scaffolding will come down while we're here and we'll be able to see the windows restored, with centuries of soot and grime removed.
After the tour, we pause in the nave. Just after the entry is a maze of stones inlaid into the floor - an allegory for a journey of a soul and a pilgrim. On Saturdays, people are allowed to follow the tortuous path from circumference to center. Quietly, some in reverence and some in high spirits, visitors trace the path. An ancient French couple walk slowly, rosaries in hand, thumbing one bead with every stone. Some German tourists walk the maze in a kind of Maypole dance, rocking backward and forward, advancing two stones, then backing up one.
Sunday, June 11
Today is Pentecost: Pentecost of a Jubilee Year. All the churches in the diocese are closed in preparation for a great event at the cathedral. In the afternoon, young people from all the deaneries in the diocese gather for the rite. Each deanery's delegation marches behind a billowing banner through the rarely opened great doors of the Royal Portal and takes its place inside. Each carries a glass tube filled with shards of stained glass in the same color as its banner, a tribute to the place and its history. Ten thousand invited guests fill the church; others, like ourselves, gather to watch the proceedings on a huge portable TV screen that has been erected in the square. Youngsters clamber up the sides of the statue of Bishop Fulbert who looks back at the cathedral. At the moment of confirmation, priests descend from the high altar to assist the bishop in giving the sacrament to 500 confirmands. At the Eucharist, the priests, each accompanied by two acolytes, one with an umbrella to shield against the hot June sun and another bearing a punchbowl-sized ciborium, give Communion to the crowds on the square in front of the cathedral.
Saturday, June 17
Saturday is market day in Chartres. Meat and poultry sellers, farmers, and produce vendors arrive early in their trailers and vans and set up shop. Rabbits and chickens hang in the open air. Amid the clatter of gas-powered generators, coolers full of ham and beef vie with pungent cheeses for attention. Absurdly luscious French vegetables, the gift of a near-perfect climate and government subsidies for farmers, burgeon out of baskets and carts. There are cheeses from all over Europe. On the way back to our apartment we stop in the flower market in the Place du Cygne and pick up a bouquet of mixed cut flowers. From there, we go to the patisserie (Au Bon Croissant de Chartres) that is just around the corner in the pedestrian mall near our apartment. We get a warm baguette. Add some delightful white bordeaux from the supermarket at around $3 a bottle, and you have the makings of a splendid dinner at very low cost.
It's fun to sample the different cheeses, but nothing can compare with true French camembert. It is said that the recipe was given to a woman from a village of the same name in Normandy by a priest whom she sheltered from the authorities during the Revolution. In the markets, French women poke each wheel lightly, assessing its ripeness. When perfect, the creamy smooth camembert is much like brie, but with a piquance that brie lacks. Spread on bread, with a bit of duck-liver pate and a lasciviously re d tomato and some sweet onion on the side, it is sumptuous. Alas, like Guinness, it doesn't travel well; we've tried several American versions since our return, but they seem stiffer, less tasty, and drier than the French original.
After dinner we go to a ''Fete de l'eau'' (Festival of the waters). Houses lighted with Christmas lights or candles lean over the smallish, shallow river Eure that wends its way through the town. People gather in upper rooms and throw open their shutters to hear concerts in small squares and along closed streets. Restaurants set up tables with white linen cloths along the river's edge. At one river crossing, a woman sings Edith Piaf songs accompanied by a grind organ. On another corner a band plays Dixieland with a distinctly French flavor. We walk along the river from concert to concert and then ascend in the gloaming up the ''Tertre St. Nicolas,'' one of many stone staircases cut into the hillside that ascends to the park behind the cathedral. We return to the apartment around 11 and fall deliciously exhausted into bed.
Monday, June 18
In the mornings, I go to the cathedral. It's quiet then, before the tourists arrive. The sun pours in from the east, through the windows of the choir. At the very center of the apse, the Virgin sits in majesty- the Sedes Sapientiae (Seat of Wisdom). There is a great stillness - in the cathedral, in the image. I am still myself. I stay for a long time, watching the light make its way into the day. Light, of course, is what it's all about. Chartres is the earthly shadow of the heavenly city with its jeweled walls. From a distance it's amazing how much these blue and red curtains of glass resemble a jewel box. Up close they teach stories, but from a distance they create a world that seems to float and drift in a place free of time.
Time or the end of time is what this place is all about. The stories are lost to us in our modern secular age but known in minute detail by the people of a more faithful one. Those stories are of redemption and hope. It is that hope that shines through the jewel curtain and shatters the stillness in shades of cobalt blue and vermilion.
Below, in the apse, is the garment that Our Lady was said to have worn, the one that made Chartres different from all the other market towns in France. For a thousand years the poor in spirit made their difficult way to this place to look upon the ''veil of the Virgin.'' This was her special place, for the lost and aching it was a place of solace.
I watch as the light plays behind the Virgin's face, softening then darkening as the morning goes on. Today, another day, always the Virgin above the choir - motionless, impassive, iconic, still as wisdom. As the morning wears on the footsteps and the murmurings build. The sexton occasionally issues a ''ssshh'' to restore order among the noisy crowds.In the corner bathed in the light of a hundred candles is a pearwood carving of the Lady. The devout sit there, oblivious as the morning wears on and the crowd begins to surge around them. Marble plaques on the wall, hung in a less faithless age, express thanks for favors granted - just a ''merci,'' some initials, and a date usually in the late 19th or early 20th century.
Late in the day, I am seated in the north aisle, looking across to the south windows. A general golden glow warms the windows, adding to the deep mysterious blue, a dark golden light that illumines the side aisle. People move through it ghostlike, now there, now not. The afternoon quiet is not quite as clean and still as the morning - more a weary feeling - but nicely spent. The great mother cathedral is sending her sometimes obstreperous children back out into the world whence they came. A group of gabbling tourists walks by, filling the silence. Then the sound recedes and the silence returns. I can pick out a single footfall behind me.
The silence reminds me again of those who built this place. Their names are lost, their work stands. They tried to re-create the City of God in the heart of France. Eight hundred years later, it's astonishing how close they came.
W ednesday, June 20
Last night, there was a concert at the cathedral, given by the Chicago Master Singers. They are 75 voices, all professionals, though they do this work on a volunteer basis. They did a program of modern liturgical music.
It was surprising how this music written eight centuries after this church was completed fit so sweetly, but one piece in particular-an Ave written by Morten Lauridsen - stood out. It started very quietly in the basses and the altos, a murmured ''Ave Maria'' repeating over and over. Then it built until the passage ''Sancta Maria'' became a kind of demand, its power and urgency swelling the huge church. The prayer, the demand, swept upward into the vast vault. Then the piece descended in dynamics and ended quietly with a murmured recapitulation of the Ave Maria line. When it finished, the music lingered-it seemed for several seconds-not echoing, just lingering, drifting down the long nave and back and up into the clerestory and to the portrait of the Virgin. It was breathtaking.
Sunday, June 24
We have dinner with the Celiers, the family from whom we rented our apartment. They live in a lovingly restored farmhouse. Benoit, his wife, Jeanne Marie, and their daughter Cyrilla greet us outside at twilight. They take us on a tour of the farmyard. The barn was built in the 12th century; Benoit explains the tedious process of building layer upon layer of mud and straw to raise the walls.
They met as young volunteers in Bourkina Faso, part of an organization called ''Agriculture sans frontieres,'' a kind of Peace Corps helping Third World nations improve their agricultural efforts. They had moved back to her family farm in Le Boullay Mivoie, a tiny village on the main road from Chartres. There they raised their family (a son and two daughters of whom Cyrilla was the youngest at 15).
We hopped into Benoit's aging Volvo and he drove along dirt tracks to his fields. He showed us the barley and petit pois and poppies that he grows. He has planted almost 200 trees since the spring, as a windbreak, but also to preserve the look of a traditional farm in France's breadbasket.
Tradition is only part of the story, however - he is a scientific farmer and one who cares about the earth. When he fertilizes his fields he does so from a tractor equipped with a Global Positioning System receiver. By knowing exactly where he is in the fields, he can tailor the amount of fertilizer he uses to just the proper amount required for that exact spot. Upstairs in the house, there is an office with the latest in computers. It's an addition that Benoit built himself. The floor in the office is covered with 18th-century paving stones reclaimed when a driveway had to be replaced to accommodate heavy farm equipment.
After a dinner of quiche with fresh farm vegetables, marinated steak, couscous (the most popular takeout meal in France, they inform us), and fresh garden raspberries and cream, we spend the evening conversing in French until long after the sun sets at 10:30.
Tuesday, June 26
Today the scaffolding around the restored north transept windows is coming down. The centuries of grime and soot have been washed away, tediously, lovingly. For the first time in over a year, light will be able to reach the lancet windows in which David, Solomon, Mechisidek, and Aaron flank St. Anne and the Virgin in the center. As the light pours in, I compare the windows with the image in a guidebook, taken before the restoration. Gone are the sooty veils on the face of St. Anne holding the Virgin. Above in the vast North Rose Window, in the center of the rose, the Virgin and Christ Child are surrounded by 12 kings of Judah and they in turn are surrounded by 12 minor Old Testament prophets. The prophets, the kings, the angels, the doves, and the Virgin and child return in majesty. In the summer morning, light streams through, unhindered, unmuted. The effect is breathtaking. At lunchtime, the workmen who have been toiling for months in the restoration, make their way down the scaffolding. In their heavy coveralls and tool belts, carrying their hard hats, they walk across the nave to the south side, from where they can see the results. They stop and look back to the north. For a long time they say nothing, just stare. They quietly bow their heads. They don't seem to be praying, just thinking. Then they raise their heads together and take one more look at the vast rose, open again to the sky. A bit of chatter, a smile, and then they quietly return to the workspace, redon their hardhats, and clamber back up the scaffolding.
Sunday, June 30
This is our last day in Chartres. I walk out from the town center to the Picassiette house, a weird monument to monomania. Monsieur Picassiette made his life's work the creation of art from shards of pottery and glass. He built his artwork into the stucco walls of his small cottage and garden on the east side of town. The building, the sidewalks, the interior and exterior walls, even the garden furniture are covered with images of all kinds, but especially the great cathedrals of France. Notre Dame, Rouen, Orleans and, of course, Chartres, are all re-created in loving detail.
On the way back from the Picassiette House, I stopped by the cathedral for one last moment. As I had so often, I stumbled upon a concert. It was late afternoon, a choral group from Monter ey, Calif., was singing. I listened a while and then quietly made my way around the ambulatory, silently drinking it in, trying to freeze every detail in my mind. Then, as I made my way past the reliquary of the Virgin's veil, they sang DuRufle's ''Ubi Caritas'' with its signature line, ''Deus Ibi Est'' (God is here). I walked slowly along the ambulatory, listening to the words, until I came to the window called ''La Belle Vierge. ''
The image is different from most of the other windows at Chartres. For one thing, it's one of the few that survived the fire, it was found amid the rubble of Fulbert's cathedral and raised to a place of honor overlooking the high altar. The Virgin holds the Christ Child as the sun pours in from the South. She is dressed in blue and white and surrounded by panes of ruby colored class. I stood for a while before the image of mother and child, profoundly peaceful, unmoving, unstirred, blessing. God was there.
This story ran on page L01 of the Boston Globe on 4/15/2001.
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In an age when building cathedrals often took a century, Chartres was built in 30 years. (Globe Photo / Paul McGeary)
n a June day in 1194 a tragedy occurred in the market town of Chartres, near Paris. A fire started in the wooden buildings that surrounded the great Romanesque cathedral. When the fire was finally extinguished, only the west front of the great church was standing. The remainder had collapsed in upon itself. The cathedral that had stood on the square was barely a hundred years old, the vision of Bishop Fulbert, who had built Chartres and its cathedral school into a continental center of learning and culture.