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从我的朋友巴雷特·温德尔（Barrett Wendell）的好意，我第一次知道亨利·亚当斯先生的书《圣米歇尔山和沙特尔》那一刻起，我就坚信，这本私人印刷、受到严密保护的书应该从它的书本中撤回。它隐藏在收藏家和业余爱好者的书目宝藏中，考虑到它的内在本质和它可以如此令人钦佩地服务的事业，需要广泛的宣传。

说这本书是一个启示并不足以表达一个事实。基督教文明最伟大时代的所有神学、哲学和神秘主义、政治学、社会学和经济学、浪漫主义、文学和艺术都融合在一种独特洞察力的蒸馏器中，并由一种独特的洞察力的动力沉淀出来。个人而尊贵的风格。一个很可能因个人倾向而产生偏见的判断得到了两大洲许多人的认可，他们更有能力做出判断，更有能力以权威的方式说话；正因为如此，我有幸在 1912 年秋天对亚当斯先生说，美国建筑师学会请求获得其特许出版一个普通销售版本的特权。其结果是该书现已可供公众流通。

公平地说，亚当斯先生认为，这样的出版在他看来是不必要的，也是没有必要的，美国建筑师协会、出版商和编辑都不同意这个结论。此外，这本书的呈现形式与作者无关，他在勉强同意出版时明确规定，他不应该参与进行如此疯狂的信仰冒险，正如他估计的那样向公众赠送他的书的项目

这一次，他的判断出现了错误。圣米歇尔山和沙特尔是对文学最杰出的贡献之一，也是迄今为止美国中世纪主义研究最有价值的辅助材料之一。对基督教文明这一伟大时代的重新发现，在许多关于其宗教、哲学、经济、政治和艺术的有价值的著作中都有争议，但几乎在每一个例子中，无论穿越哪个领域，都几乎被认为是最重要的。这是一种孤立的现象，没有充分提及这个时代的其他方面，这个时代是一个独特的团结和一体的时代。圣维克多的休和圣托马斯·阿奎那只有在他们与圣安瑟姆、圣伯纳德的关系以及天主教教义和生活的发展中才能被充分理解。封建主义、十字军东征、行会和公社都将自己融入到同样的宗教发展和新月民族的变迁中。但丁、大教堂的建造者、画家、雕塑家和音乐大师，所有人都与哲学、治国之道、经济和宗教信仰的经纬紧密相连；——事实上，可以说，中世纪比任何时期都更加紧密地结合在一起。历史上其他有记录的时代，必须被视为一个整体，作为一个高度强调其动力的一致统一的时期。

不必说，亚当斯先生就是以这种方式处理中世纪艺术的：他不是那些根据艺术的物质前身来决定艺术中的每一个元素的人。他非常充分地认识到，它的基本要素，即它与之前和之后的艺术的区别，是它的精神冲动；这种表现可能或多或少是偶然的，但正是它造就了沙特尔大教堂及其玻璃、兰斯雕塑、Dies Irae、奥卡森和尼科莱特、罗兰之歌、亚瑟王传奇、伟大的艺术和独一无二的，既不是他们对技术的掌握，也不是他们对所有伟大艺术的持久法则的忠诚——尽管这些艺术在完美方面是独一无二的——而是他们独特的精神冲动，通过它的强度、穿透力和影响力，影响了那个时代。它的动力创造了全面而完整的文明，并通过一千种不同的渠道体现出来。

也许，亚当斯先生的力量比他对中世纪文明的独特整体的把握更伟大，他将自己融入到漫长的死寂时间中，与其中的男人和女人一起思考和感受，从而呼吸着古代的枯骨。他们再次披上血肉和外衣，召回他们被割断的灵魂，重新活过来，不仅在读者的意识中，而且在他的眼前。这并不是他通过某种可疑的炼金术创造出的一个薄薄的拟像：这不是在这些神奇的书页中在我们面前隐约闪耀的过去的幻象；它是一种幻影。这就是我们融合的时间本身。我们与方丈和他的僧侣们，以及大天使圣殿中的十字军和朝圣者欢聚一堂：我们向美丽的法国女王——卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇、阿基坦的埃莉诺、香槟的玛丽——致敬，为她们而战。作为领主仆人：我们与阿伯拉尔、阿基诺的托马斯、苏格兰人邓斯争论：我们在爱的法庭上各司其职，或者用圣维克多的信条歌颂上帝的崇高而响亮的赞美：我们的眼睛终于睁开，并且许多天后，我们跪在慈悲圣母面前，请求她为她松懈但忠诚的奉献者代祷。七个世纪消失了，就像它们本来的样子一样，十三世纪对我们来说并不像我们生活在其中那样，是它的欢乐和无忧无虑、它的青春热情和丰富的行动、它的孩子般的简单和坦率的一部分。 ，这是正常健康的、包容一切的奉献精神。

我们有这样的经历是有好处的。除了它对历史上最伟大时代之一的先入为主和奇怪错误的迷信所带来的理想转变之外，它还非常令人振奋和令人兴奋。如果它为当代人和事物的判断提供了新的、并不总是讨人喜欢的标准，那么它也确立了新的理想、新的成就目标。在一个建造了沙特尔大教堂的世界里生活一天，即使这让生活在一个创造了英国“黑国”或美国钢铁之城的世界里不再像以前那样令人愉悦和高兴，也同样敞开了心扉。未来的另一个十三世纪的遥远前景，并敦促采取积极行动以实现这一目标。

但除此之外，圣米歇尔山和沙特尔的最深层价值，其作为中世纪艺术永恒荣耀的启示及其形成要素的重要性，也不容轻易表达。对于每一位艺术家来说，无论他选择什么表达形式，它都必须显得独特且无价，对建筑师来说也是如此，建筑师最终熟悉了它的美丽、它的力量和它的教学力量，只能为建筑师的行为喝彩。美国建筑师学会授予亚当斯先生为荣誉会员，因为他对艺术做出了杰出的贡献，并对亚当斯先生将这本书带到了他的手中并在全世界面前进行了宣传表示感谢。

马萨诸塞州萨德伯里白厅，1913 年 XNUMX 月。

大天使喜爱高处。圣迈克尔站在教堂顶上的塔顶，翅膀张开，剑高举，魔鬼在下面爬行，象征永恒警惕的公鸡栖息在他的铠甲脚上，圣米迦勒在天堂和世界上都占有一席之地。在十一世纪，地球似乎几乎没有给沙特尔地穴圣母留下空间，更不用说给十三世纪亚眠的美基督了。大天使代表教会和国家，两者都是好战的。他是撒但的征服者，是所有受造之灵中最强大、最接近神的。他所在的地方是最危险的地方。所以你在这里找到他。出于同样的原因，当异教徒的危险持续存在时，他是法国的守护神。因此，当诺曼人皈依基督教时，他们将自己置于他强大的保护之下。因此，他在海上危险山上站立了几个世纪，眺望着浩瀚海洋的震颤——巨大的海洋震颤——正如路易十一，一次受到诗歌的启发，刻在圣米迦勒勋章的衣领上。他创造了。于是士兵、贵族和君主都前往他的神社朝圣。因此，普通百姓效仿，并且仍然效仿，就像我们一样。

教堂高高地矗立在这块花岗岩的山顶上，西面是一个平台，游客应该首先爬上去。从这个平台的边缘，目光向下俯冲两百三十五英尺，看到宽阔的沙滩或更广阔的海洋，随着潮水的退去或前进，在无边无际的天空下，在躁动不安的大海上，即使我们游客无需书籍或指南即可理解和感受；但是，当我们从西方视角转向教堂大门时，距离我们所在的护墙有三十或四十码远，一个人需要八个世纪的历史才能知道这一块坚硬的建筑对其建造者意味着什么，即使在那时人们仍然必须学会去感受它。徘徊在十二世纪的人已经迷失了，除非他能够过早地变得年轻。

一个人可以做到这一点，就像一个人可以和孩子们一起玩一样。华兹华斯的实际意义与他的直觉天才不相上下，他小心翼翼地将我们限制在“天气平静的季节”，这当然是最好的。但只要心态平和，我们仍然可以“看到那片不朽的海洋”，它把我们从十二世纪带到了这里。人们甚至可以去那里看看孩子们在岸边玩耍。我们的感觉因不用而部分萎缩，但它仍然存在，至少对老年人来说是这样，因为只有老年人作为一个阶层，才有年轻的时光。

一个人只要足够老，就能变得尽可能年轻。 从这座修道院教堂的顶部，人们可以看到海湾对面的阿夫朗什、库坦斯和科唐坦（康斯坦丁帕古斯），其海岸面向我们，让人想起新英格兰的海岸。 一个海岸的花岗岩与另一个海岸的花岗岩之间的关系可能是想象的，但生活在每一海岸的人们之间的关系就像花岗岩本身一样坚定和实际的事实。 当人们进入教堂时，首先会注意到位于中殿和耳堂交叉处的四个巨大的凯旋桥墩或柱子，并向 M. 科罗耶的建筑研究是人们了解这座山的主要来源，人们了解到这些桥墩建于 1058 年。 五分之四的美国游客会立即回忆起他们所知道的中世纪历史的唯一日期，即诺曼征服的日期。 这些码头建成八年后，即 1066 年，诺曼底公爵威廉在这些地区和法国北部召集了一支四万人的军队，他将这些军队带到了英国，他们大部分都居住在那里。 一百五十年来，直到 1204 年，诺曼底和英格兰一直处于统一状态。诺曼农民随他的精神或世俗领主自由前往英格兰。诺曼女人是一个非常有能力的人，跟随她的丈夫或她的父母。诺曼人几乎占据了所有英国封地。充满了英国教堂；英国宫廷里挤满了人；制定了英国法律；我们知道，直到 1400 年左右，“在 Stratford atte Bowe 的 scole 之后”，英国目前仍在使用法语。诺曼贵族的名字仍然有一部分保留下来，如果我们在这里查找它们的起源，我们通常会发现它们位于如此偏远和微不足道的村庄，以至于在任何普通地图上都很难找到它们的位置；但普通民众没有姓氏，也无法追踪，尽管对于在英格兰或诺曼底留存的每一个名字或血统的贵族来说，我们必须算出数百名农民。 自1066年跟随威廉来到英国的那一代人以来，我们可以算出从父亲到儿子有二十八或三十人，而且，如果你愿意算一下总数，你会发现你有大约两亿五千万的算术祖先。在十一世纪中叶。 那么，英格兰和法国北部的总人口可能有五百万，但即使是五十万，也不会太大影响这样的确定性：如果你有英国血统，那么你也有诺曼人血统。 如果我们能回到十一世纪的两亿五千万算术祖先那里，我们会发现自己做了许多令人惊讶的事情，但在其他事情中，我们肯定会耕种科唐坦地区的大部分土地，卡尔瓦多斯;去诺曼底每个教区教堂参加弥撒；向整个地区的每一位领主，无论是精神上的还是世俗的，提供军事服务；并帮助建造圣米歇尔山修道院教堂。

从那以后，再也没有如此完全了解过它！对于十一世纪的我们来说，头脑冷静、拳头紧闭、贪婪、精明，就像我们过去的那样，正如人们仍然所说的诺曼人一样，我们比我们的英国后裔更充分地站在世界运动的中心。我们是教会、法国和欧洲的一部分，而且是重要的一部分。十世纪和十一世纪的利奥和格雷戈里在他们伟大的改革斗争中依靠我们。我们的理查德-桑斯-佩尔公爵于 966 年将旧教规从山上移走，以便将当时最具影响力的卡西诺山本笃会修道士带到这里。征服者威廉的祖父理查二世于 1020 年开始建造这座修道院教堂，并帮助修道院院长希尔德伯特 (Abbot Hildebert) 建造它。 1066年，当征服者威廉出发征服英格兰时，教皇亚历山大二世站在他身后并祝福他的旗帜。从那时起，我们的诺曼公爵就让法国国王黯然失色。我们的活动不仅限于北欧，甚至不限于安茹和加斯科尼。当我们在库坦斯停留时，我们将驱车前往奥特维尔，看看坦克雷德来自哪里，当修道院教堂在山上建造时，他的儿子罗伯特和罗杰正在征服那不勒斯和西西里岛。 1066 年，诺曼人无处不在，并且在他们的时代中处于领先地位。我们是一场严肃的比赛。如果你想要其他证据，除了我们在战争和政治方面的记录之外，你只需看看我们的艺术就可以了。宗教艺术是衡量人类深度和真诚的尺度；任何琐事，任何弱点，都会大声哭泣。如果这座山上的教堂不足以证明诺曼特色，我们将在库坦斯停留以获得更广阔的视野。然后我们将前往卡昂和巴约。从那里，我们几乎值得立即跳到巴勒莫。大约在 1131 年，罗杰开始建造切法鲁大教堂和巴勒莫皇家教堂；大约在 1174 年，他的孙子威廉开始修建蒙雷阿莱大教堂。没有任何艺术——无论是希腊的还是拜占庭的，意大利的还是阿拉伯的——创造了两种如此美丽、如此严肃、如此令人印象深刻但又如此不同的宗教类型，就像圣米歇尔山俯瞰着北面的海洋，而蒙雷阿莱俯视着北海。巴勒莫和西西里海域的橘子和柠檬森林。

直到十二世纪末，诺曼人在建筑和武器方面都堪称世界大师，尽管十三世纪属于法国，我们必须在塞纳河、马恩河和卢瓦尔河上寻找它的辉煌；但目前我们正处于十一世纪，——公爵、教会或小封建领主的佃户，他们的名字取自附近地区，——博蒙特、卡特雷特、格雷维尔、珀西、皮尔庞特——他们在公爵家出价后，每个人都会召集他的佃户，也许是十名武装人员及其随从，去布列塔尼作战，或者在前往巴黎的韦克辛作战，或者参加十年内征服英格兰的伟大战役， ——自三百年前查理曼大帝和罗兰在龙塞斯瓦勒斯被击败以来，西欧最伟大的军事努力。目前，我们正在帮助为修道院教堂开采花岗岩，并将其拖到山上，或装载到我们的船上。我们每年都会在 16 月 1058 日大天使节去圣山朝圣。我们期待着参加一场威廉公爵威胁布列塔尼的新战役，我们还听到强大的威塞克斯伯爵撒克逊人哈罗德的故事在英格兰，他是公爵宫廷的客人，或者，正如某些人所说，是囚犯或人质，并将与我们一起参加竞选活动。公元XNUMX年。

一直以来，我们都站在帕尔维斯上，眺望大海和沙滩，这些都是十一世纪的美丽风景。或者有时转向教堂的大门，那是我们和祖先之间的桥梁，即岁月之桥。既然我们已经做出了这样的尝试，让我们的思想进入一种状态，在不放弃努力的情况下过桥，我们进入教堂，与十一世纪的建筑面对面； 1020 年的平面图；一座中央塔楼或其桥墩，其历史可追溯至 1058 年；一座于 1135 年竣工的教堂。法国很少有如此重要的建筑，历史如此悠久，日期如此准确。也许与圣米歇尔山最相似的是卢瓦尔河畔的圣伯努瓦，位于奥尔良上方，它似乎同时也是一个几乎和圣米歇尔山一样受欢迎的圣地。沙特尔也是一座著名的圣母圣地，而沙特尔的西门廊，也就是我们特有的朝圣地，比圣米歇尔山的平面图晚了一百年，尽管沙特尔门廊是常见的法国北部艺术的起点。玛蒂尔达女王的修道院教堂，现为卡昂三一教堂，可追溯至 1066 年。图卢兹的圣瑟宁教堂、穆瓦萨克修道院教堂的门廊、克莱蒙杜港圣母院、位于图卢兹的修道院教堂Vezelay，都说是十二世纪的。就连威尼斯的圣马可在 1020 年也是新的。

然而到了 1020 年，诺曼艺术已经过于雄心勃勃了。当然，九百年的时间在花岗岩和其他材料上留下了痕迹，但如果院长希尔德伯特的花岗岩没有要求太多的话，它就足够安全了。也许他对大天使长的要求太多了，因为大天使长的优越感显然是他计划的灵感来源。花岗岩的顶端像一块糖面包，高出平均海平面 73.6 英尺（1300 米）。方丈没有砍掉山顶，为教堂提供一个安全的岩石地基，这会牺牲大约三十英尺的高度，而是选择岩石的顶端作为他的水平面，并在所有侧面建造砖石地基来支撑墙壁他的教会。岩石的顶端是十字路口的地板，即中殿和耳堂的交汇处。修道院院长将教堂的主要重量放置在这个坚固的地基上，即中央塔楼，由至今仍矗立的四个大桥墩支撑。但从中心向西的十字路口到平台的护墙，方丈用砖石填满了整个空间，他的继任者又建造了更远的地方，直到大约两百英尺的石雕现在尽头是一堵八十英尺或更多的垂直墙。在这个空间里有几个房间，但如果建筑的时尚没有在一百五十年的伟大建筑时代发生改变，这个结构可能已经足够坚固，足以支撑十一世纪常见的轻型罗马式正面。后来，修道院院长罗伯特·德·托里尼认为重建西线是合适的，并在其侧翼建造了两座塔楼。如果人们可以从巴约塔和库坦斯塔来判断的话，这些塔无疑是美丽的，但它们的重量压垮了下面的拱顶，其中一座于 1618 年倒塌。1776 年，整个立面开始塌陷，XNUMX 年还没有倒塌。除了正面外，中殿的七个跨度中的三个也被推倒了。希尔德伯特修道院院长的中殿仅存四个拱门。

尽管如此，十一世纪的压倒性力量仍然在这里留下了巨大的烙印，不仅体现在中殿的四个跨度和耳堂中，而且主要体现在十字路口的凯旋柱上。没有人会忘记诺曼式建筑是什么，谁不厌其烦地走过这片它最早绽放的碎片。尽管尺寸大于安全施工所保证的尺寸，但尺寸并不大。希尔德伯特院长的整座教堂内部长度不超过两百三十英尺，而凯旋门的跨度只有大约二十三英尺（如果书籍可信的话）。女士修道院的中殿似乎具有相同的宽度，并且它们可能都不是拱形的。屋顶是木头的，顶部大约六十三英尺高。与十三世纪的伟大教堂相比，这座建筑很不起眼，但它的大小对我们来说并不重要。它的风格是我们未来所有旅行的起点。这是您的第一座十一世纪教堂！它对你有何影响？

严肃简单到过分！不是吗？年轻人很少享受它。他们更喜欢哥特式，即使你在这里看到它，从唱诗班透过伟大的诺曼拱门看着我们。毫无疑问，他们是对的，因为他们还年轻：但是那些活得长久、疲惫不堪的男男女女——他们想要休息——他们已经完成了抱负和野心——他们的生活已经破碎了——感受到了这种宁静和自我克制，因为他们没有其他感觉。这些曲线的安静力量，这些沉重的柱子的坚实支撑，适度的比例，甚至修改过的灯光，没有展示，没有努力，没有自我意识，这些都比其他艺术更能满足他们。经过一圈漫长的朝圣之旅，他们回到这里休息——他们的祖先就是从这里开始休息的。即使在这里，他们也能找到不太深的宁静。

事实上，当你长时间观察它时，你会开始怀疑它是否有任何宁静——这是否是建筑形式中最不宁静的想法。战斗教会及其雄心勃勃的大天使栖息在这块陡峭岩石的最顶端，高高地矗立在世界​​之上，似乎威胁着天堂本身。这个想法更加强烈和不安，因为圣米迦勒教堂受到世界和它所在的社会的包围和保护，就像威廉公爵依靠他的男爵和他们的部下一样。圣人和公爵都没有因为对自己的使命产生怀疑而感到困扰。教会与国家、灵魂与身体、上帝与人，都在圣米歇尔山合而为一，所有人的任务就是以自己的方式战斗，或者互相守护。教会和国家都不是知识分子、学识渊博的人，甚至在教条上也不是严格的。在这里我们根本感受不到三位一体；我们根本感受不到三位一体。圣母但很小；基督几乎没有更多；我们只感受到大天使和上帝的统一。我们这里几乎没有逻辑，也没有简单的信仰，但我们有能量。我们无法做在文明中心、拜占庭所做的许多事情，但我们可以战斗，我们可以建造一座教堂。毫无疑问，我们首先想到的是教会，其次才是我们世俗的主。只有在最后的情况下，我们才会考虑我们的私人事务，而我们的私人事务有时会因此受到影响。但我们也认为教会和国家的事务是我们的，并且我们将这一想法贯彻得很远。我们的山上教会雄心勃勃，焦躁不安，力求效果；我们对英格兰的征服更是野心勃勃，公爵对此十分着迷。但所有这些对于下一代即将到来的爆发来说都是小事一桩。圣迈克尔在他的山上表达了这一切。

将建筑视为能量的表达，有一天我们可以将圣米歇尔山与博韦进行比较，并从比较中得出适合我们心态的道德观；但你首先应该注意到，在十一世纪，教会无论头脑多么简单或没有受过什么教育，都不便宜。它的自尊值得注意，因为它的艺术是短暂的。圣米歇尔山自始至终都是由花岗岩建造的，甚至包括其回廊中精致复杂的石雕。墓穴和下部结构的构造与最暴露在外的表面一样好。当我们到达沙特尔时，它主要是十二世纪的作品，你会发现那里的大教堂也同样是用触手可及的最坚硬、最重的石头建造而成的，没有任何地方沉降或塌陷；而在下面，您会发现一个与上面的教堂相媲美的地下室。十三世纪并非如此。 1200年后的伟大大教堂表现出经济，有时甚至更糟。世界变得越来越便宜，世界必然如此。

你可能会更喜欢它，因为它不那么严肃，不那么英雄，不那么好战，更像法国人所说的资产阶级，就像你可能比路易十四更喜欢路易十五的风格——杜巴里夫人胜过杜巴里夫人de Montespan——因为品味是自由的，所有的风格都是好的、有趣的；但既然我们现在从最早的开始，为了优雅地走上舞台，无论它是什么，你想停在哪里，我们必须尝试理解一点诺曼艺术所表达的能量，或者将会拥有的能量。表达它是否以我们的模式思考。唯一描述诺曼风格的词是法语单词naif。利特说，“naif”来自“natif”，正如“vulgar”来自“vulgus”，就好像原生特征必须是简单的，而普通性必须是粗俗的。这两种派生意义对于十一世纪来说都是陌生的。天真只是自然，粗俗只是粗俗。诺曼底的天真与勃艮第、加斯科尼或伦巴第的天真没有什么不同，但在表达上却略有不同，正如你向南旅行时会看到的那样。在圣米歇尔山，我们只有一座十一世纪教堂残缺不全的主干来判断。我们甚至没有门面，必须在索恩或乌伊斯特勒昂的某个诺曼村庄停下来寻找可能适合这里修道院的西面，但无论我们找到它，我们都会发现一些更严肃、更军事化的东西，比您在更南边的其他罗马式作品中看到的更实用。同样，诺曼教堂最引人注目的特征——中央塔楼或灯笼——已经在圣米歇尔山倒塌了，我们必须从塞里西拉福雷、莱赛和法莱兹更换它。关于诺曼教堂上的灯笼的价值，以及它所表达的独特力量，我们会有很多话可说。关于诺曼教堂西侧的塔楼，我们还有更多要说的，但这些塔楼大多是十二世纪的，它们将引导我们远远超出库坦斯和巴约，从弗莱什到弗莱什，直到我们来到所有的弗莱什。弗莱什，在沙特尔。

我们还将用一整章的时间来研究十一世纪的后殿，但在圣米歇尔山，修道院院长希尔德伯特的唱诗班走的是他的中殿和塔楼的路。他比向西更大胆地向东建造，虽然唱诗班已经存在了大约四百年，这对大多数建筑来说已经足够了，但地基最终垮塌了，它于 1421 年倒塌。英国战争期间，这里一直是废墟，直到 1450 年。然后它被重建，成为哥特式末日的纪念碑，所以现在，站在西门，你可以俯视教堂，看到哥特式建筑的两个界限。中世纪建筑结合在一起——最早的诺曼建筑和最新的法国建筑。透过 1058 年的罗马式拱门，您可以看到 1521 年竣工的最新哥特式合唱团。虽然这两座建筑相隔约五百年，但它们相处融洽。哥特人在法国优雅地死去。唱诗班是迷人的——远比中殿迷人，就像美丽的女人比老人更迷人一样。人们不必为美的风格而争吵，只要男人和女人明显感到满意，仍然彼此相爱和欣赏，并有坚定的信念来支撑他们；但是，至少，当人们从年长的风格转向年轻的风格时，人们会情不自禁地发现，无论十六世纪女性的魅力如何，它都不是十一世纪男性的天真特质；远非如此！十一世纪的朴素、严肃、沉默的尊严和活力已经荡然无存。取而代之的是更复杂的东西；优雅，自觉，修辞，优美如完美的修辞，清晰，轻盈，线条，丰富的窗饰近乎华丽。

下面的同一时期的地下室几乎更加精美，甚至在严肃的情况下也大胆地矗立在罗马式建筑的旁边；但我们没有时间跑到十六世纪：我们仍然需要学习法国的艺术字母。一个人必须深入到十一世纪才能理解十二世纪，即使在十二世纪过去了很多年之后，我们也会发现十三世纪在很多方面都有自己的世界，它的美并不总是遗传的，有时也不是遗赠的。在山上，就建筑而言，我们不能再深入到第十一处了。我们将不得不沿着罗马式风格到达卡昂，然后沿塞纳河到达法兰西岛，然后穿过卢瓦尔河和罗纳河，到达其故乡的南部。所有其他 11 世纪的作品都在这里被毁掉或重建，除了一处，在我们刚刚从唱诗班下面的华丽地下室（称为 Gros Piliers）的水平上。

根据 M. Corroyer 的说法，在 1058 世纪的伟大建筑和 XNUMX 世纪的巨大 Merveille 之间的拐角处，XNUMX 世纪的旧食堂被留下作为从一组建筑到另一组建筑的通道。下面是希尔德伯特的厨房。上面，在教堂的一层，是宿舍。这些十一世纪的修道院建筑面向北和西，靠近现在的帕尔维斯，对面是中殿的最后一个拱门。希尔德伯特计划的较低层充当了上面教堂的支撑或支撑，因此必须比中殿更古老；可能比 XNUMX 年的凯旋码头还要古老。

希尔德伯特于 1020 年规划了这些建筑，并在将其计划实施到可以由修道院院长拉尔夫·德·博蒙特 (Ralph de Beaumont) 完成后去世，拉尔夫·德·博蒙特 (Ralph de Beaumont) 于 1048 年被威廉公爵特别选中，“更多的是因为他的出身高贵，而不是因为他的功绩”。拉尔夫·德·博蒙特 (Ralph de Beaumont) 于 1060 年去世，由玛蒂尔达公爵夫人特别宠爱的院长拉努夫 (Abbot Ranulph) 继任，并受到威廉公爵的高度尊重。名单显示了这个地方的社会重要性。方丈的职责包括大规模的娱乐活动。这座山是北欧最著名的圣地之一。我们可以理所当然地认为，诺曼底的所有伟人都在山上睡觉，并且假设 M. Corroyer 是对的，他们在这个房间里用餐，从 1050 年（当时该建筑一定已在使用）到 1122 年当新的休假宿舍建成时。

寺院规矩对社会习惯的限制程度如何，是古文物研究者们可以解决的问题，而这些规矩在伟大的世俗君主身上得到了多大程度的遵守。但十一世纪并不是很严格，本笃会的统治一直很温和，直到西多会和圣伯纳德在 1120 年加强了纪律。即使在那时，教会也表现出对世俗诗歌和流行品味的强烈倾向。戏剧几乎完全属于它，在其赞助下上演的神秘剧和奇迹剧往往除了奇迹之外不包含任何宗教内容。十一世纪最伟大的诗歌是《罗兰之歌》，教会在某种程度上拥有了它。在沙特尔，我们会发现圣母玛利亚所钟爱的查理曼大帝和罗兰，大约在同一时间，远在佩鲁贾国家的阿西西，我们会看到圣弗朗西斯本人——这是西方世界有史以来最接近东方神圣化身的地方。本质上——热爱法国罗马小说，并以《罗兰之歌》为代表。对于圣米歇尔山来说，“罗兰之歌”几乎就是其中之一。 “香颂”之于诗歌，正如山之于建筑。如果没有“香颂”，人们就无法体会十一世纪在大天使教堂中所营造的感觉。几个世纪以来，也许没有一天，当然也没有一周，在山上不有人唱或朗诵《香颂》的某些部分，如果说有一个房间是最自在的，那就是这个房间，假设这是旧食堂，声称就是这个地方。

这些诗句以“圣米歇尔山罗马”开头，如果拼写正确，它们仍然几乎和伏尔泰一样容易阅读；比魏尔伦更容易；很像一首童谣；但是，由于游客无法停下来清理道路，或抚平鹅卵石，因此必须将他们抬过崎岖不平的地方，即使崎岖不平也是美丽的。翻译是一种罪恶，主要是因为每一个关心中世纪建筑的人都关心中世纪法语，更应该关心中世纪英语。这个“罗马”的语言就是英格兰的文学语言。圣普尔的威廉是英格兰和诺曼底国王亨利二世的臣民。他的诗句与理查德·科尔德莱恩的诗句一样，都是英国文学的丰碑。直到今天，他们的民谣小节更适合英语而不是法语。就连单词和习语也比法语更像英语。任何大胆攻击它们的人都会发现，“vers romieus”就像一首民谣，唱着自己的意思，而不管其含义是否准确，他们自己都不会感到困扰。一个人的翻译肯定充满了严重的错误，但最大的错误是当一个人试图抓住的不是事实而是一种感觉时，就根本没有进行翻译。如果必须翻译，我们最好从字面意思开始，抗议我们是否成功并不重要。十二世纪的艺术并不精确；更不用说像莫里哀著名的十七世纪假正经者那样的“precieuse”。

年轻修道士威廉来自诺曼小村庄圣派尔，该村位于格兰维尔附近，可以看到山，他的诗句并不意味着精彩。简单的人比散文更喜欢押韵，尽管两者可能说同样的事情，因为他们更喜欢曲线而不是直线，或者蓝色比灰色更喜欢；但是，除了肉欲之外，他们在创作文学时选择韵律是因为他们比散文更容易记住韵律。人们必须把图书馆记在心里。

威廉的故事开头的这些台词很有价值，因为它们第一次给出了名字和日期。托里尼修道院院长罗伯特 (Robert of Torigny) 从 1154 年到 1186 年在山上统治。 这些年来，我们不得不一次又一次往返于圣米歇尔山和沙特尔之间，但目前我们必须赶紧回到征服者威廉和“罗兰之歌。”圣普尔的威廉来到这里，显得格格不入，只是因为他对一年一度的圣山朝圣做了一个漂亮的描述，这通常被认为或多或少类似于他每年在大天使节看到的情况，以及自 912 年诺曼人成为基督教徒以来一直存在的情况：

如果您对这个翻译不满意，任何法语学者都会很容易地帮助做出更好的翻译，因为我们不是在研究语法或考古学，并且宁愿在这些问题上不准确也不愿不准确，如果以这个价格，更自由的感觉艺术的一部分可以被捕捉到。更好的是，你可以转向乔叟，他在 200 年后写下了《坎特伯雷朝圣》：——

自从我们可以追溯到我们的祖先以来，对朝圣的热情就在我们的祖先中普遍存在。至少一千年来，这是他们的主要乐趣，而且至今尚未消失。为了感受圣米歇尔山和沙特尔的艺术，我们必须再次成为朝圣者：但是，就目前而言，最感兴趣的点不是朝圣者，而是那些唱歌逗他开心的吟游诗人——杂耍者或吟游诗人，——他在每一座修道院、城堡或小屋，以及每一座神殿中都感到宾至如归。杂耍者变成了杂耍者，并堕落为街头杂耍者。吟游诗人或menestrier很早就成为一个辱骂性的词，相当于无赖。从一开始，这个职业似乎就受到了社会的谴责，就像后来音乐厅歌手或舞蹈家的职业一样。但在十一世纪，或者也许更早，吟游诗人似乎是一位诗人，并且创作了他所唱的歌曲。被称为“Chansons de Geste”的大量诗歌似乎是由法国的无名荷马以及法语及其多种方言盛行的许多省份的所有地点（圣山）创作和演唱的。 -米歇尔应该是琼格勒人的最爱，不仅因为成群的朝圣者向他保证食物和偶尔的一小块银子，而且还因为圣米歇尔是所有战士中的圣斗士，他们在战争中的功绩是战争的主题“勇气之歌”。圣普尔的威廉是一位牧师兼诗人。他不是吟游诗人，他的“罗马”也不是香颂。它是用来阅读的，而不是用来背诵的；但《罗兰之歌》却是另一回事。

威廉的同时代人、竞争对手或前辈、诺曼英国文学的不朽诗人也是如此。瓦斯（Wace）的诺曼公爵历史押韵，被他称为“Roman de Rou”或“Rollo”，是第一流的英国经典。圣米歇尔。他的竞争对手贝诺伊斯特就同一主题写了另一部著名的编年史，他也是一位历史学家，而不是一位歌手。在那个时代，文学意味着诗歌；法国散文中的优雅还不存在；但十二世纪诗歌的优雅与十一世纪的宏伟风格在本质上是不同的，就像维吉尔与荷马不同一样。

圣普尔的威廉向我们介绍了朝圣和吟游诗人，因为它们至少在他的时代之前两百年就已经存在，并且在他之后两百年也将存在。在十一世纪中叶踏上朝圣之旅的两亿五千万算术祖先中，八百年过去后，大家可能最感兴趣的两个人是诺曼人威廉和撒克逊人哈罗德。通过圣普尔的威廉、韦斯和贝诺瓦，以及最迷人的文学纪念碑，玛蒂尔达女王的贝叶挂毯，我们可以构建这样一个朝圣的故事，它的历史意义将与黑斯廷斯之战一样准确，并且与修道院教堂一样具有艺术真实感。

根据瓦斯的《Roman de Rou》，当哈罗德的父亲戈德温伯爵于 15 年 1053 月 1064 日去世时，哈罗德希望获得某些人质的释放，其中包括一名兄弟和一个表弟，戈德温将这些人质交给了忏悔者爱德华作为他的担保。爱德华将他送到威廉公爵那里保管。韦斯从其他更古老的来源中获取了这个故事，其准确性有很大争议，但哈罗德前往诺曼底的事实似乎是确定的，你会在巴约看到哈罗德请求爱德华国王允许进行这次旅行的照片，带着他的鹰、猎犬和追随者骑马出发，前往奇切斯特和朴茨茅斯附近的博舍姆乘船。仅日期就值得怀疑。常识似乎表明，最早可能的日期对于解释1054世纪的王位追求者的鲁莽鲁莽将自己置于对手的权力之下来说并不算太早。当那个对手碰巧是私生子威廉时，即使是童年也无法原谅这种愚蠢的行为。但是弗里曼先生，这个敏感问题的主要权威，倾向于认为哈罗德犯下错误时已经四十岁了，而且那一年大约是1064年。在1058年和XNUMX年之间，历史学家可以自由选择他喜欢的年份，游客还是比较自由的。为了省去记忆的麻烦，我们选择 XNUMX 年，因为这一天是山上修道院教堂凯旋门的建造日期。哈罗德从朴茨茅斯附近航行，一定是开往卡昂或鲁昂，但通常的西风把他吹向东，直到他被抛到阿布维尔和布洛涅之间的蓬蒂厄海岸上，在那里他落入了法国人的手中。他被诺曼底公爵威廉从蓬蒂厄伯爵手中救出或赎回，并被带到鲁昂。根据瓦斯和“Roman de Rou”的说法：

也许对丰富比赛的暗示属于韦斯时代，而不是一个世纪前，即第一次十字军东征之前的哈罗德时代，但哈罗德确实与威廉一起参加了至少一次对布列塔尼和迷人挂毯的巴约的袭击，传统上以玛蒂尔达女王的名字命名，展示了威廉的士兵穿越圣米歇尔山下的沙地，并附有拉丁传说：“Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis”。 Hic Harold dux trahebat eos de 竞技场。 Venerunt ad Flumen Cononis。”他们来到圣米歇尔山，哈罗德把他们从流沙里拖了出来。

他们来到库埃农河边。哈罗德一定因在沙滩上救人而获得了巨大的名声，在诺曼人杀死他之后，他们自己也记住并记录了哈罗德；但这是历史学家的事。游客们只注意到哈罗德和威廉来到了山上：——“Venerunt ad Montem”。他们决不敢在执行这样的任务时不停下来请求圣米迦勒的帮助而通过它。

如果威廉和哈罗德来到山上，他们肯定会在旧食堂吃晚饭，那是我们等待他们的地方。威廉公爵所在的地方，他的 jongleur（杂技演员）就在不远的地方，而韦斯知道，诺曼底的每个人似乎都知道，这个最喜欢的人是谁，他的名字，他的性格和他的歌曲。韦斯在黑斯廷斯袭击故事中最著名的段落之一就是他的功劳，威廉公爵和他的战斗就是从黑斯廷斯开始向英国战线推进的：

当然，批评家怀疑这个故事，因为他们怀疑一切。他们认为《罗兰之歌》的历史不如黑斯廷斯战役那么古老，而且韦斯当然也没有提供足够的证据。诗歌通常不是为了证明事实而写的。韦斯在黑斯廷斯战役一百年后写下了这本书。从道德上讲，一个人并不需要迂腐到比韦斯知道的更多的地步，但在圣米歇尔山这样严肃的纪念碑面前，怀疑的感觉是令人讨厌的。 《罗兰之歌》不应该被忽视，至少对于寻求艺术的游客来说是这样。人们对美国家谱的起点可能被欺骗感到震惊。泰勒弗和这首歌所依据的证据与威廉公爵和哈罗德以及战斗本身所依据的证据相同，怀疑“香颂”就是对战斗修道院的曲子提出质疑。整个社会结构摇摇欲坠；英国贵族的脸色变得苍白。

韦斯并没有发明他所有的事实。据推测，马姆斯伯里的威廉在 1120 年左右写下了他的散文编年史，当时许多在黑斯廷斯作战的人一定还活着，威廉明确表示：“Tune cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium v​​iri exemplum pugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praelium consertum ”。奏响《罗兰之歌》，点燃众人的斗志，战斗打响。这似乎足以满足任何怀疑论者的证据，但批评者仍然认为“cantilena Rollandi”一定是诺曼“Chanson de Rou”或“Rollo”，或者充其量是“Chanson de Roland”的早期版本；但任何诺曼香颂都无法激发威廉军队的军事精神，因为这支军队主要是法国人。至于版本的年代，对于圣米歇尔山来说并不重要；实际版本已经足够旧了。

塔勒弗本人对食堂晚餐的兴趣更为重要，马姆斯伯里的威廉没有提到他的名字。如果这首歌是根据公爵的命令开始的，那么它肯定是由公爵的吟游诗人开始的，而这位吟游诗人的名字恰好比马姆斯伯里的威廉更有权威。亚眠的盖伊于 1068 年作为玛蒂尔达女王的施舍者前往英国，并写了一首关于黑斯廷斯战役的拉丁诗，这首诗一定是在战斗打响后十年内完成的，因为盖伊于 1076 年去世。泰勒弗说，领导了公爵的战斗：—

切牙-ferri mimus cognomine dictus。

“Taillefer，一个以这个名字闻名的jongleur。”哑剧演员本来就是歌手，但是
Taillefer 也是一名演员：-

Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat。

“一个勇敢的心使他变得高贵的吟游诗人。”琼格勒并非出身高贵，而是因他的勇敢而变得高贵。

盎格鲁土地园艺
Alte Projiciens ludit et ense suo。

就像鼓手手拿手杖一样，他将剑高高抛向空中并接住它，同时向法国人高喊他的歌曲，吓坏了英国人。约 1150 年杰弗里·盖默 (Geoffrey Gaimer) 和韦斯 (Wace) 的竞争对手贝诺伊斯特 (Benoist) 的押韵编年史中添加了塔勒弗 (Taillefer) 在混战中死亡的故事。

毕竟，这个故事中最不可能的部分不是“香颂”的演唱，而是塔勒弗向公爵的祈祷：

“Otrieez mei que io ni failurele
Le Premier Colp de la Bataille”。

经过法律翻译，塔勒弗要求封爵，并提出用自己的生命作为代价。一位骑士请求领导公爵的战斗似乎令人难以置信。在早期法语中，“bataille”的意思是营，即攻击纵队。公爵的授权：“Io l'otrei！”看来还是比较奇特的。然而，亚眠人明确证实了这个故事：“Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat”；一位舞台演员、一位杂技演员、公爵的歌手，他的勇敢使他变得高贵。公爵授予他——octroya——他在球场上的高贵专利。

所有这些序言只会通过威廉公爵和他 1058 年的布列塔尼战役将“香颂”与山上的建筑结合起来。这首诗和教堂是相似的；他们一起走，互相解释。他们的共同特征是十一世纪特有的军事性格。圆拱门是男性化的。 《香颂》是如此阳刚，以至于在它的四千行诗中，唯一被提到的基督教女性是阿尔达，她是奥利弗的妹妹，也是罗兰的未婚夫，其中有一节非常像是后来插入的，是给她的。 ，接近尾声。第一次十字军东征之后，还没有哪一首伟大的诗能达到如此英雄主义的程度，以至于在没有女英雄的情况下也能维持下去。甚至但丁也没有尝试过这样的壮举。

那么，威廉公爵的聚会被认为是在 1058 年在旧食堂吃晚饭时聚集的，而上面教堂的凯旋桥墩正在升起。院长博蒙特的拉尔夫 (Ralph of Beaumont) 担任主持人；威廉公爵和他一起坐在讲台上。哈罗德在他身边“真是太好了”；公爵的兄弟、巴约主教奥多和其他主要封臣也在场。公爵的酒王塔勒弗就在他身边。房间里挤满了士兵和僧侣，但所有人都同样渴望听到塔勒弗唱歌。晚餐一结束，在公爵的点头下，塔勒弗开始说道：

《香颂》以这些诗句开头，对每一个听到它们的人都有如此直接和个人的影响，听起来就像预言一样。十年之内，威廉将站在英格兰，就像查理曼站在西班牙一样。他的脑子里充满了它，以及实现它的方法。哈罗德甚至比他更专注于这个职位的焦虑。哈罗德被迫宣誓支持威廉继承英国王位，但他仍未做出决定，而威廉太了解人了，对宣誓没有太大信心。随着塔勒弗的歌唱，他到达了加内隆的角色，典型的叛徒，中世纪社会的不变形象。没有哪个封建领主没有加内隆。威廉公爵看到了他周围的一切。

他可能觉得哈罗德会扮演这个角色，但如果哈罗德选择扮演罗兰，威廉公爵可能会预言他自己的兄弟奥多主教在狼吞虎咽地掠夺了半个英格兰后，会变成加内隆，所以危险到需要终身监禁。当泰勒弗到达战斗场景时，不再需要想象力来实现它们。这些都是昨天和明天的场景。就此而言，查理曼大帝或他的继任者仍在艾克斯，而摩尔人仍在西班牙。兰斯大主教图尔平曾在西班牙用剑和狼牙棒作战，而巴约主教奥多则在黑斯廷斯指挥他的部下，就像现代将军一样，手持参谋，但两人在战场上都同样游刃有余。这首歌逐句逐句地呈现出山的一面镜子。黑斯廷斯之战定于大天使节进行。在龙塞斯瓦莱斯发生在罗兰身上的事情也同样发生在哈罗德在黑斯廷斯的身上，而哈罗德，当他像罗兰一样死去时，也将看到他的兄弟吉尔斯像奥利弗一样死去。甚至塔勒弗也成为了他的香颂的一部分，而且是一个杰出的部分。迟早，所有人都会以十一世纪的大而简单的方式死去。二十年后，威廉公爵本人也以同样的精神在曼特斯惨死，即使奥多主教没有战死，他至少也像十一世纪的英雄一样死于第一次十字军东征。首先或最后，整个连队都死于战斗、监狱或十字军东征，而僧侣们则将他们绞死并祈祷。

然后，塔勒弗当然演唱了伟大的死亡场景。即使直到今天，每个法国男孩，如果他不懂其他诗歌，也能背诵这些诗句。在十一世纪，他们绞尽了欧洲每一个战士的心，他们的学校是战场和肉搏战。没有哪个现代歌手能像塔勒弗对这些既是演员又是听众的人一样对观众拥有如此大的影响力。在龙塞斯瓦莱斯的混战中，奥利弗被无数撒拉逊人制服，最后呼救：——

当然，这节经文的全部价值无法恢复。人们既不知道它是如何唱的，也不知道它是如何发音的。共鸣已无法恢复； “laisse”或诗句的束缚，或与结尾呼喊“葵”的谐音，早已从诗句或歌曲中消失了。感觉就像《切维蔡斯之歌》一样简单，但你必须想象声音和表演。毫无疑问，泰勒弗的每一个动机都是如此。当奥利弗大声而清晰地喊叫时，塔勒弗的声音提高了。当罗兰说“doulcement et suef”时，歌手一定唱得很轻柔；当这两个朋友带着骑士般的礼节和士兵的尊严，在分别时互相鞠躬并转身面对死亡时，塔勒弗可能在唱歌时就暗示了这个动作。这些诗句为出色的表演提供了空间。听到奥利弗的呼救声，罗兰策马而上，看到绝望的田野，一时失去了知觉：

没有人应该试图将其翻译成英语——或者实际上，翻译成现代法语——诗句，但任何一个愿意费力地抓住韵律并记住“皮带”中的每一节诗句都以相同的声音结尾的人，—— aimer、parler、cler、mortel、damnede、mel、deu、suef、nasel——无论结尾音节如何拼写，都可以遵循诗歌的感觉，就像它是希腊六音步一样。他会感受到言语和行动的简单力量，就像他感受到荷马一样。这是宏伟的风格，——十一世纪：——

Ferut vus ai！ Kar le me pardunez！

没有一个音节丢失，并且总是选择最强的音节。
就连情感也是单音节且简短的：——

Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer！

塔勒弗在这样的剧本中具有法国喜剧或大型歌剧从未达到的戏剧效果，这使得拜罗伊特显得单薄而无力。威廉公爵的贵族们肯定紧抓着他的声音和行动，就好像他们正处于混战中一样，攻击镶有宝石的金头盔。他们都曾经去过那里，而且还会再去那里。当高潮临近时，他们看到了场景本身；也许他们每年都或多或少地看到过它，因为他们可以挥舞剑。塔勒弗高呼奥利弗和特平大主教以及后卫中所有其他男爵的死亡，除了罗兰，撒拉逊人听到查理曼大军归来的号角声后逃跑，罗兰被留下等死。罗兰回过神来，感觉到一个撒拉逊掠夺者正在拉扯他的杜伦达尔之剑。他一吹他的象牙角——奥利芬特——就杀死了异教徒。然后他感觉到死亡临近，他做好了准备。他首先想到的是杜伦达尔，他的剑，他不能把它留给异教徒。在奇异的三重重复中，这给诗句带来了更多相同的坚固性和结构重量，他三次尝试折断剑，每一次都发出一声哀叹——一声哀叹。他用尽全力击打岩石三次；每次剑都反弹而没有折断。第三次——

这种“自由”比另一种更具有十一世纪的风格，但它不再对武士有吸引力；它不再对武士有吸引力。它更像是对僧侣说话。对于武士来说，剑本身就是宗教，而遗物则是装饰或力量的细节。对于牧师来说，这份遗物清单比剑柄上的摄政钻石和刀鞘上的科希诺尔钻石更有说服力。如果它被理解的话，即使对我们来说也是很有趣的。罗兰前往圣地朝圣。正如牙齿所证明的那样，他在罗马停留并赢得了圣彼得的友谊。他经过君士坦丁堡并得到了圣瓦西里的帮助。他到达了耶路撒冷并赢得了圣母的喜爱。他回到了法国，并得到了他的“领主”圣丹尼斯的支持。因为罗兰和休·卡佩一样，都是圣丹尼斯的臣民，是一位彻头彻尾的法国人。对他来说，法国就是圣但尼，最多就是法兰西岛，但不是安茹，甚至不是缅因州。这些是他用杜伦达尔征服的国家：——

他在他的直接精神领主或领主圣但尼的帮助下为他的皇帝查理曼征服了这些，但僧侣们知道，如果没有圣彼得、圣瓦西里和圣母玛利亚的帮助，他永远不可能完成这些壮举。他剑柄上的遗物比任何国王的赎金都更有价值。直到今天，圣母的束腰外衣仍然是沙特尔大教堂最珍贵的财产。罗兰的任何一件遗物都足以让欧洲任何神殿都辉煌，每个修士都知道它们的巨大价值和力量，比罗兰征服的价值更清楚。

然而，即使是这个宗教也是尚武的，就好像它是为了战斗的大天使和巴约的奥多而存在的。遗物为剑服务；剑不为遗物服务。随着死亡场景的临近，这首歌变得更加军事化：——

到目前为止，没有一个想法或一个词偏离了战争领域。带着孩子般的强度，每个音节都指向一个想法——

Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz。

直到那时歌手才允许教会主张其一些权利：-

我们的时代已经失去了对诗歌的大部分耳朵，因为它对色彩和线条有眼睛，对战争和崇拜、美酒和女人有品味。现在，十万人中没有一个人能够感受到十一世纪在《香颂》这些诗句中所感受到的感受，而且没有理由尝试这样做，但是尝试一下去理解不那么多是有一定用处的。感觉即意义。诗歌的天真就是社会的天真。天父上帝是封建领主，他将拉撒路——他的男爵或封臣——从坟墓中复活，并释放了但以理，作为他权力和忠诚的证据；一位从不说谎或不食言的领主。作为封建领主的圣父吸收了三位一体，更重要的是，还吸收或排除了祈祷中未提及的圣母玛利亚。临死前的罗兰向这位领主伸出了右手的手套。死亡是一种致敬的行为。上帝派遣他的大天使加百列作为他的代表接受敬意并接受手套。对于威廉公爵和他的贵族们来说，没有什么比这更自然和正确的了。上帝离查理曼并不远。

尽管法律可能是正确的，但即使在当时，僧侣们也认为宗教需要专业建议。罗兰的一生并不堪称典范。 《香颂》煞费苦心地表明，龙塞斯瓦莱斯的灾难是由于罗兰任性的愚蠢和脾气造成的。罗兰临终时，从未想到过这些过错，也没有为自己的世俗野心悔过，也没有提及过他的未婚夫阿尔达的名字。他牢牢记住了他的战争和征服、他的血统、他的世俗领主查理曼和“可爱的法国”。他忘了提及基督。诗人将所有这些事情视为教会的事情。战士所关心的只是勇气、忠诚和英勇。

这些细节的趣味不在于学术或历史真相，甚至不在于地方色彩，而在于艺术。诗句的简洁重复了思想的天真。言语和思想同样是单音节的。没有任何东西可以与之匹配。这些话像树林里的溪流一样冒泡：——

公司发送了 Rollanz de suntens ni 广告 plus。

试着把它们翻译成现代法语，看看会发生什么：——

Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui。

文字可能一模一样，但诗意却已消失。五百年后，就连英国批评家也对军事诗歌失去了理智，他们声称对弥尔顿的单音节诗感到震惊：

他内心勃然大怒，当他们谈话时，
用石头打他的腹部
那打败了生活。

弥尔顿的语言确实或多或少是古老的、符合圣经的。这是清教徒的矫揉造作；但食堂里的《香颂》实际上反映、重复、回响着刚刚升起的修道院教堂的桥墩和拱门。这节经文是建立起来的。建筑的品质在歌曲中再现：同样的直接、简单、没有自我意识；相同的目标强度；即使是相同的材料；祈祷文是花岗岩：——

Guaris de mei l'anme de tuz perils Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fisi

死亡的动作让人感觉到，就像一块拱心石落入拱顶，如果教堂里的罗马式拱门可以说话，他们会用诗中的精确文字描述他们正在做的事情：

Desur sun braz teneit Ie Chief enclin Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin。

他们的头倾斜在他们的肩膀上，
他们双手合十，躺下休息。

这些诗句肯定在山上被唱过数千次，并在每一座城堡和每一个战场上回荡，从威尔士边境到死海沿岸。没有任何现代歌剧或戏剧能与《香颂》的受欢迎程度相媲美。从来没有人以同样完整的方式表达过产生它的社会。每一位吟游诗人都吟诵着——从头到尾，每一个男人、女人和孩子，无论是俗人还是神职人员，都牢记在心——被翻译成各种语言——如果可能的话，在意大利和西班牙比在诺曼底和英格兰更能强烈地感受到，——作为一件艺术品，当圣殿骑士在圣地的伟大城堡中演唱时，这也许是最有效的——现在在圣米歇尔山感受得最好，而且从一开始就在家里。证据就是这句台词，显然是为了局部效果而插入的，它在罗兰死亡的高潮处援引了《海难》中的圣米迦勒，人们不需要原始文件或当代权威来证明这一点，当塔耶弗谈到这一点时在祈祷中，不仅威廉公爵和他的男爵们，而且修道院院长拉努尔夫和他的修道士们都爆发了一阵疯狂的同情，这种同情比圣本笃的规则更好地表达了大天使的阳刚和军事热情。

十九世纪的脚步快速而激烈，以至于身处其中的人有时会在看着它旋转时感到头晕；但第十一个动作更快、更猛烈。诺曼征服英格兰是一项巨大的努力，其影响也是深远的，但第一次十字军东征完全是欧洲历史上最有趣的事件。西方世界从未表现出如此的活力和团结，她随后向东方发起进攻，暂时使东方退缩了。除非她的家庭发生争吵，否则欧洲在思想、意志和目标上都是一个统一体。基督教是一个单位。圣米歇尔山和拜占庭距离很近。在流行的传说中，君士坦丁皇帝和查理曼皇帝被视为盟友和朋友。东方是共同的敌人，总是在财富和数量上占优势，经常在能源上占优势，有时在思想和艺术上占优势。第一次十字军东征的爆发即使在军事意义上也是辉煌的，但它在建筑、装饰、诗歌、色彩、宗教和哲学方面的反映是无与伦比的。它的男人令人惊叹，而它的女人则值得其他一切。

圣米歇尔山比世界上任何其他地方都更好地保存了这种发酵的建筑记录，就像西西里神庙保存了一千五百年前希腊能量、艺术、诗歌和思想的类似爆发的记录一样。 。确实，十一世纪的山上除了教堂外什么都没有留下，如果进一步研究，这个世纪就必须到别处去寻找，这并不困难，因为它在每条道路上的任何数量的教堂中都得到了保存的旅游旅行。诺曼底充满了它；巴约和卡昂几乎没有其他的东西。在圣山，十一世纪的作品在完成之前就已经过时了。 1112年，方丈罗杰二世被迫匆忙规划和建造一个新建筑群，据说已于1122年竣工。它从我们认为是旧食堂的地方延伸到帕尔维斯，毗邻教堂失去的三个跨度，占地约一百二十英尺。和往常一样，分为三个级别；下面有一个地下室或画廊，称为 Aquilon；上方有回廊或前廊；教堂一层有一间宿舍，现已消失。该建筑群是法国最有趣的建筑群之一，是沙特尔西门的另一个 pons seclorum 前厅，其日期相同（i 110-25）。这是著名的过渡时期，是十二世纪的辉煌，是我们朝圣的对象。

艺术是一个相当大的领域，没有人需要与邻居推挤，也没有人需要把自己关在角落里；但是，如果有人坚持偏爱某一角落，人们可能会为选择哥特式过渡提供一些借口。罗马式的安静、内敛的力量与哥特式的优雅曲线和丰富的想象力相结合，使婚姻比婚姻中通常允许的更接近理想。法国人在他们最好的日子里，对它有着一种坚定不移的热爱，从那以后，这为他们的浮躁蒙上了一层光环。他们从不厌倦它的可能性。有时他们将尖拱放在圆形内或上方；有时他们把圆形放在尖头内。有时，罗马拱门覆盖着一组尖窗，仿佛在保护和爱抚它的孩子；有时，一个巨大的尖拱覆盖了一个巨大的玫瑰窗，横跨整个大教堂的正面，下面是罗马式窗户的拱廊。法国建筑师并没有感到不和谐，事实上也没有。甚至纯粹的哥特式建筑也与纯粹的罗马式建筑并列。你不会看到比上面修道院教堂的唱诗班（1450-1521）更晚的哥特式建筑，除非它是沙特尔大教堂的北弗莱切（1507-13）；如果你俯视中殿，穿过凯旋门，看看现代四百年后的尖尖唱诗班，你就能判断是否存在任何真正的不和谐。对于那些感受艺术的人来说，没有什么；力量与恩典携手并进；男人和女人仍然相爱。

性别差异并不是想象出来的。 1058年，当凯旋柱正在建造时，泰勒弗向私生子威廉和撒克逊人哈罗德唱歌，罗兰仍然向天父上帝祈祷他的“道歉”，并没有想到他的未婚夫阿尔达。十二世纪，圣伯纳德在圣母像前怀着奇迹般的狂喜背诵了“Ave Stella Marts”，法国军队在战斗中高喊“Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie”。罗马人无法表达的东西，在哥特式中得以绽放；男性思想在战士身上无法理想化的东西，却在女人身上理想化了。除了哥特式建筑之外，地球上从来没有哪一种建筑能够产生如此将激情倾注于天空的效果。

当人们不再感受到激情时，他们就会回归自我，或者更低落。建筑师回归了圆拱门，甚至进一步回归了希腊柱廊的平坦度；但这并不是十二世纪或十三世纪的错。他们该说的他们都说了；他们表达了什么感受；如果十七世纪忘记了它，那么二十世纪也会忘记十七世纪。历史只是被遗忘者的目录。十一世纪的情况并不比它的邻国更糟。第十二个在建筑方面比第十九个要好得多。这两个房间，Aquilon 和 promenoir，标志着过渡的开始，总体上比罗马的 Saint-Sulpice 或 Il Gesu 更现代。在同样的情况下，出于同样的目的，今天任何建筑师都会自豪地重复它们。

阿奎隆虽然在当时是一个重要的大厅或画廊，但似乎属于地下室。卡米尔·恩拉特先生（M. Camille Enlart）在他的《法国考古学手册》（第252页）中列出了大约一百二十个罗马式和过渡时期的墓穴清单，作为研究的例子。阿奎隆不是其中之一，但圣但尼和沙特尔大教堂的地下室将有助于向任何过度好奇的游客传授他想了解的有关此类事情的一切。

历史古迹等照片回答了地下旅行的所有正当目的。 Aquilon 是过渡建筑的第一课，因为它已经过时了（1112 年）；圣但尼的墓穴几乎同样完好，因为苏格神父一定在 1122 年左右开始了他的计划。两者都有相同的双弧和前弧，尽管排列相反。两者都显示了破碎拱门的第一个沉重暗示。没有神经，没有肋骨拱顶，除了精心交叉的拱顶和沉重的柱子之外，几乎看不到哥特式的暗示，就像人们在近在咫尺的格罗斯填充者的辉煌墓穴中所看到的那样；但上面的序言是时间和艺术上的惊人飞跃。前廊的布局和柱子与阿奎隆相同，但拱顶呈美丽的拱形和尖顶，肋骨直接从方形首都升起并与中央间隔相交，这种精神你我都不知道如何与纯粹的拱顶区分开来。十三世纪的哥特式，除非拱门不够尖；它们的眼睛看起来几乎是圆的。高度似乎约为十四英尺。

修道院院长罗杰二世的前廊对前往圣母朝圣地的朝圣者很感兴趣，因为前廊的日期似乎与阿贝布尔托为沙特尔西门指定的日期完全相同。平时约会没什么大不了的，但当一个人必须在两三个固定点之间来回跑动时，以有轨电车般的敏捷性，一次就把它们固定下来很方便。早在 1115 年就规划好了的海滨长廊就完成了这一过渡。对于美术学院的毕业生来说，这并不容易。很少有建筑领域受到如此认真的讨论和争议。我们绝对不能碰它。 《罗兰之歌》的时代本身并不是一个危险的话题。我们的重要需求或多或少得到了足够的满足，将山上的前廊、圣但尼的墓穴和沙特尔的西大门作为我们过渡的三位一体，并将它们的日期粗略地称为 1115-20 年，用日期填满记忆是每个校长的恶习，也是每个二流学者的激情。游客希望尽可能少的约会；他们想要的是诗歌。然而，每个教室都非常熟悉的一个奇特的巧合，使这些年份成为了一个奇怪的方便组，而 15 年与过渡世纪之初的任何年份一样方便。那一年，圣伯纳德为他的克莱尔沃修道院奠定了基础。也许是在 1115 年，或者最晚是在 1115 年，阿伯拉尔在位于巴黎圣母院修道院旁、香特街 (Rue des Chantres) 的卡农·福尔伯特 (Canon Fulbert) 家中为爱洛伊丝唱了情歌。苏格神父、伯纳德神父和阿贝拉尔神父是法国过渡时期的三位有趣的人物。

那么，promenoir 的年份应为 1115 年，因此，它是一座极其美丽的大厅，将罗马式的辉煌平静和严肃与哥特式的精致线条结合在一起。在十二世纪你几乎看不到它的对手。在昂热，主教宫的大厅幸存下来，可以作为一个比较点，但当时的大厅通常不是拱形的；他们有木屋顶，但已经消亡了。走廊长约六十英尺，被一排柱子分成两条十英尺宽的过道。如果在重大场合将其用作食堂，餐桌上可容纳八十或一百人，也许这就是当时修道院的需求规模。无论需要多么费力的想象才能将威廉公爵和哈罗德安置在 1058 年的旧食堂里，而要在罗杰二世的大厅里见到他的继任者则不需要任何努力。除了一个例外，他们都不是有趣的人。英格兰和安茹的亨利二世和他的妻子吉耶纳的埃莉诺是个例外，她曾一度担任诺曼底摄政王。他们的一个孩子出生在阿夫朗什附近的多姆弗朗特，修道院长被要求担任教父。 1158 年，即威廉公爵来访仅一百年后，亨利国王及其全体随员来到修道院，聆听弥撒，并在餐厅用餐。 “Rex venit ad Montem Sancti Michaelis，audita missa ad magis altare，comedit in Refec-torio cum baronibus suis。”托里尼的修道院院长罗伯特是他的东道主，圣普尔的威廉很可能也在旁观。也许他在国王面前背诵了部分《罗马书》。人们可以非常确定，当埃莉诺女王来到山上时，她要求诗人背诵他的诗句，因为埃莉诺为诗人颁布了法律。

人们可能会对托里尼的修道院院长罗伯特念念不忘，他在当时是一位非常伟大的人，也是一位特别伟大的建筑师，但野心太大。他的所有作品，包括两座塔楼，都因缺乏适当的支撑而倒塌。与努瓦永和苏瓦松大教堂以及沙特尔古老的克洛赫和弗莱切相对应的东西已经消失了。我们别无选择，只能立即进入下一个世纪，进入新沙特尔正在建设的伟大时代的完整而完美的哥特式。

1203年，腓力·奥古斯都将英国人驱逐出诺曼底并征服了该省；但是，在战争过程中，布列塔尼公爵自然是在他眼皮底下发生的任何战争的一方，他碰巧烧毁了修道院下面的城镇，并在这样做时无意中放火烧毁了修道院本身。这种亵渎行为震惊了菲利普·奥古斯都，为了安抚像圣米歇尔或其修道院院长这样强大的封臣，法国国王拨出了一大笔钱来修复这些建筑。修道院院长乔丹（1191-1212）立即承诺超越他的所有前任，并怀着巨大的野心，规划了覆盖整个山北面的巨大堆，并且一直以“默维尔”这个富有表现力的名字命名。

建造修道院的总体动机对他们来说是共同的。修道院是大家庭。教堂是中心，而圣米歇尔山是山顶，因为这种情况迫使那里的修道院院长将一座建筑堆叠在另一座建筑上，而不是将它们排列在正方形或平行四边形的水平上。无论如何，宿舍必须靠近教堂门口，因为规则要求日夜不间断的礼拜。回廊也紧挨着教堂门，而且在山上，回廊必须位于同一水平线上才能处于露天状态。当然，食堂必须紧邻这两个主要建筑之一的正下方，而大厅或与外界进行业务、内部管理或重要客人的会议场所必须在食堂旁边。如果没有其他原因，厨房和办公室将被放置在最低的平台上，因为弹匣在着陆点下方两百英尺处，所有补给品，包括水，都必须用卷扬机从斜面上拖上来。管理这样一个社会需要最有效的管理。确实，如此规模的修道院院长是一位非常伟大的人，他在附近拥有自己的机构，并拥有不少官员。仅修道士就有六十人，即便如此，也不足以在朝圣季节进行定期的教堂礼拜。方丈必须用大套房招待数十名和数百名客人，这些客人也是最重要的。每一盎司的食物都必须从大陆带来，或者从海上捕捞。所有佃户和他们的农场、他们的租金和捐款都必须得到照顾。没有哪个世俗王子承担着比这更严肃的行政任务，也没有一个王子做得这么好。租客总是更喜欢修道院院长或主教作为房东。修道院是中世纪最高的行政建筑，当一个人去沙特尔朝圣后，人们很可能会花另一个夏天的时间去参观克莱尔沃、西托、克鲁尼和其他著名修道院的遗迹，其中包括维奥莱修道院- 引导，为了满足一个人的思想，从总体上看，这样的生活可能没有活动和闲散。

这是一个经济问题，需要与更现代的酒店的管理者解决，但艺术必须适应条件，当修道院院长乔丹决定将这座巨大的建筑贴在山的一侧时，建筑师有一个相对简单的想法要处理的任务。仅工程困难就非常严重；建筑平面图很简单。当方丈向建筑师提出他的要求时，他似乎已经开始确定能够容纳 37.5 名客人的餐厅的规模。可能欧洲没有哪个国王在他的餐桌上喂饱的人数比这更多。根据 M. Corroyer 的规划，新餐厅的长度为一百二十三英尺（XNUMX 米）。中心下方的一排柱子将房间分成两条通道，从柱子到柱子间隔十二英尺，穿过房间。如果桌子布置在两条过道的整个长度上，那么可以轻松地坐四排四十人，即一百六十人。如果不拥挤，同样的空间可以容纳五十位客人，总共两百位客人。

规模确定后，安排就很容易了。从尽可能低的一层开始，一间朴素的、建筑非常坚固的拱形房间作为另一间更高、更精致的拱形房间的基础。这又产生了另一个，它矗立在教堂的水平上，直接通向北耳堂。然后，这种安排加倍；第二组房间位于西端，包括下层的地窖、上面的另一个大房间或大厅，以及教堂门口的回廊，也进入北耳堂。门口、通道和楼梯将它们联系在一起。最底层的两个厚重的大厅现在被称为施舍处和地窖，这是行政安排的区别，与我们无关。

从建筑角度来看，在我们未经训练的人眼中，这些房间可能与 Aquilon 处于同一时代。就游客所能看到的而言，它们是最早的过渡，或者至少它们属于具有自己的建筑结构的墓穴类别。我们关心的房间是上面的那些房间：西端所谓的骑士厅；以及东边所谓的食堂。每个作家都给这些房间起不同的名字，并赋予它们不同的用途，但无论它们的用途如何，它们作为大厅，都是法国最好的；十三世纪最纯粹的完美。

圣迈克尔勋章骑士厅由路易十一世于 1469 年创建，曾经或将用于旅游目的，是每座宫殿和城堡都包含的大厅，也是城堡生活的中心。与沙特尔大教堂（1195-1210）几乎同时规划，在圣但尼修道院教堂之前，这个大厅及其邻居食堂与大教堂和修道院一起研究，为人们提供了极其自由的教育。任何人，无论是游客、工程师还是建筑师，如果有一位聪明的历史学家碰巧存在的话，他就会发财。但我们对他们要求的最后一件事就是教育或指导。我们只想要他们的诗歌，必须到别处去寻找。这里只有空壳——死去的艺术——和寂静。大厅长约九十英尺，最宽处约六十英尺。它有三层柱子，形成四个拱形过道，看起来高约二十二英尺。窗户之间的外墙上有两个巨大而沉重的壁炉或壁炉来取暖。它的灯光非常漂亮，但大部分是从上方通过拱顶拱形的圆窗照射的。跳马是一项比我们更聪明的人的研究。二十多根坚固的圆形柱子，无论是自由的还是啮合的，带有罗马式的柱头，支撑着沉重的肋骨或神经，虽然两个中央过道有十八英尺宽，但窗户打开的外面过道的宽度只有十英尺，因此，它拥有我们所见过的最尖锐的拱顶之一。整个设计与现存的早期哥特式一样美丽，但如果时间充裕的话，需要花费大部分时间来研究的是大天使存在的本能，这使他的建筑充满活力。圣迈克尔的阳刚和军事能量仍然存在于每块石头中。意识到这种好战情感的天才将他的力量印在了他作品的每一厘米处。在每一缕光线中；每个影子的质量；目光落在哪里；更强烈的是眼睛所看到的一切，以及感觉上像光一样的阴影。建筑师有意为之。任何怀疑的人只要从角落里的门口走进食堂就行了。在那里，建筑师致力于表达十三世纪大天使的想法；他已经把十二世纪抛在了身后。

食堂已经具有修道院院长的规模，给人的感觉与大厅尽可能不同。六根迷人的柱子沿着中心延伸，将房间分成两个拱形过道，显然高约二十七英尺。大厅里沉重而严肃的地方，食堂则变得轻盈而优雅。几乎没有留下任何罗马式的痕迹。只有细小的圆形柱尚未开槽或开槽，其圆形柱头仍稍显严肃。每个细节都被照亮。大壁炉被移至房间的两端。最有趣的变化是在窗户上。当您到达沙特尔时，这本伟大的建筑学著作将以“Fenestration”（开窗）一词打开，这个词既丑陋又美丽；然后，带着痛苦和悲伤，你将不得不辛苦工作，直到你看到 1200 的建筑师如何将所有其他问题置于照明他们的空间的问题之上。不感受它们的光，你永远无法感受它们的影子。圣米歇尔山的这两座大厅是沙特尔中殿的前厅。他们的内部和外部的开窗控制着整个设计。餐厅的灯光非常棒，但只有当它与大厅的灯光联系起来时，人们才能感受到它的艺术价值，而两者都是沙特尔窗户浪漫的简单序言。

餐厅展示了建筑师为了减轻效果而想要利用每一平方厘米的光线时所做的事情。他做了九扇窗户；北边有六个，东边有两个，南边有一个。它们近五英尺宽，约二十英尺高。他们淹没了房间。它们可能是用于玻璃的，M. Corroyer 的书包含一些在他的各种发掘中发现的 13 世纪玻璃碎片的木刻；但人们可能会理所当然地认为，在如此多的光线下，色彩就是预期的目标。地板铺的是彩色瓷砖；墙壁上会挂满颜色；拱顶可能被漆成了彩色；人们可以从大量的插图手稿中看到这一切。十三世纪对色彩充满热情，并创造了一个我们必须探索的自己的色彩世界。

这两座大厅几乎仍然是哥特式艺术早期和完美时期（1200-10）所谓世俗建筑的唯一纪念碑。以沙特尔为首的教堂仍然存在，但当时所有伟大的修道院、宫殿和城堡都成了废墟。阿尔克、盖拉德、蒙塔日、库西、老卢浮宫、希农、昂热，以及克鲁尼、克莱尔沃、西托、瑞米日、维泽莱、圣但尼、普瓦西、丰泰夫罗以及其他许多皇家或半皇家住宅，完全消失，或者失去了他们的住宅楼。当第二帝国统治下的维奥莱·勒·杜克获准修复一座伟大的城堡时，他选择了最新的皮埃尔丰城堡，由路易·奥尔良于 1390 年建造。圣路易宫殿的遗迹仍保留在古监狱中，但第一座伟大的城堡与 Merveille 相比的皇家住所是 Amboise，其历史可追溯至大约 1500 年，即三个世纪之后。文明几乎横扫了艺术。只有在这里，在圣米歇尔山，人们仍然可以轻松地坐在石凳上；餐厅窗户的射孔，俯瞰十三世纪的海洋，看着建筑师制定细节，这些细节将产生或强调他的对比或和谐，增强他的效果，或隐藏他的努力表现，以及所有这些手段如此真实、简单、明显容易，以至于人们似乎几乎有能力跟随他。随着时间的推移，一个人会学得更好。人们会觉得这些事情部分是由于建筑师本人可能无法解释的一种本能。随着时间的流逝，这种本能消失了。鲁昂或布卢瓦的大厅更容易理解；卢浮宫皮埃尔·莱斯科特 (Pierre Lescot) 的女像厅 (Salle des Caryatides) 尽管很迷人，但更加简单。玻璃厅 (Salle des Glaces) 充满了路易十四 (Louis XIV) 在凡尔赛宫的雄心壮志，让人感觉宾至如归。

如果对建筑师的专业智慧和研究的彻底性还有任何疑问，我们最好回到大厅，穿过一扇极外角的低门，上几步，进入一个小房间。大约十三英尺见方，有漂亮的拱形，有一个大石壁炉照明和取暖，在角落里，有一个螺旋楼梯通向上面的另一个方形房间，直接通向回廊。这是一个小图书馆或特许学校。对于重力来说，这种布置几乎太聪明了，就像 Merveille 中不止一种布置​​的情况一样。从外面可以看到，在这个拐角处，建筑师必须提供一个沉重的支撑来抵抗双重压力，他从下面的岩石上建造了一座方形角塔作为支撑，并在其中建造了一个从地窖向上延伸的螺旋楼梯到回廊。就在大厅的上方，他设法建造了这个小房间，一个宝石。这个地方有近有远；它安静而中心；圣普尔的威廉，如果他还活着的话，可能会在那里写下他的《罗马书》。僧侣们可能在那里做过彩绘弥撒书。向上几步，他们就来到了回廊进行冥想。还有一些人带他们到教堂祈祷。往下走几步，就到了大厅，去办事，再往下走几步，就到了餐厅，去吃晚饭。当一个人有这样一个房间工作时，沉思上帝的良善是一种简单的快乐。暴风雨来袭时，可以在大厅里散步；或在阳光明媚时冥想的回廊；餐厅等餐厅；从窗户望出去，可以看到无边无际的海洋和撒旦流沙的诡计。圣普尔的威廉在天堂的城垛上羡慕地俯视着它。

夏天，在梅尔维尔的所有地方中，最迷人的一定是回廊。只有山上修道院才足够富丽堂皇，才能建造一座这样的回廊，全部用花岗岩建造，雕刻的形状轻如木头。柱子以奇特的三角形排列，这引起了维奥莱·勒·杜克的钦佩。 “这是法国最奇特、最完整的修道院之一，”他说；尽管在法国有许多美丽而好奇的修道院。出于另一个原因，它具有价值。建筑师的意思是，用他所能掌握的所有艺术和优雅，在宗教中对爱、思想和诗歌的掌控，对下面大厅的阳刚和军事能量的掌控。十三世纪很少放过任何一个坚持爱就是法律这一道德的机会。 1215 年，圣方济各在阿西西向鸟类传教，建筑师于 1226 年在圣米歇尔山建造了这座回廊。这两场布道都充满了时代感，如果一个人渴望感受艺术，那么这两场布道都同样值得注意。

一个认真的学生还没有从外面爬下许多台阶，从下面抬头仰望 Merveille。在法国，很少有建筑比这里更值得花费精力。屋顶的水平线长二百三十五英尺。扶壁的垂直线大约有一百英尺。正如罗伯特·德·托里尼所表明的那样，要让如此高度和长度的墙壁竖立起来绝非易事。因此，建筑师用十二个长扶壁从下到上支撑它们，以抵抗内部拱门的推力，另外三个则靠在内墙上。这在北面的正面 235 英尺的空间内形成了 15 条强烈的垂直线。在字里行间，窗户讲述着它们的故事；餐厅一侧的七扇长窗；另一边是大厅的七扇圆形窗户。就连带有包租屋的角塔也变得和其他地方一样简单。这堵不可能的墙及其夸张的垂直线条的总和就是休息时的力量和智慧。

整座山仍保持着宏伟的​​气派；它表达了教会与国家、上帝与人、和平与战争、生与死、善与恶的统一；它解决了宇宙的整个问题。无论是在 1215 年，还是在 1115 年或 1058 年，牧师和士兵都在这里如鱼得水。政治家并不在其中；罪人受到欢迎；诗人在自己的精神上感到高兴，带着同情，几乎是一种感情，这表明方丈和建筑师都有诗歌的习惯。神使一切和解。世界是明显的、明显的、神圣的和谐。就连战争的不和也是修道院拒绝坚持的细节。直到两个世纪后，这座山才以现代的方式表达战争，将其视为上帝旨意中的不和谐。然后，在 XNUMX 世纪初，方丈皮埃尔·勒罗伊 (Pierre le Roy) 在阳光明媚的 XNUMX 世纪入口处（称为“贝尔躺椅”(Belle Chaise)）上粉刷了城堡的大门，正如您现在所看到的那样，该入口过去只是以一种安静的方式对待军事建筑。鄙视。当你遇到另一个人时，你就会知道什么是小别墅；它皱起眉头的神情与十二世纪完全不同。它与当地的宗教产生冲突；它预示着宗教战争；社会解散；失去团结；世界末日。没有什么比哥特式艺术、宗教和希望的灾难更令人悲伤的了。

回顾这一切，就像一幅画；团结的象征；其他艺术表达了上帝与人比以往任何时候都更大胆、更强大、更紧密的结合；当这个想法被吸收、接受，或许还有部分被理解时，人们就可以继续前进。

从圣米歇尔山开始，这条建筑之路穿过诺曼底，沿塞纳河上游到达巴黎，而不是直接穿过稍南一点的沙特尔。在建筑帝国中，诺曼底是一个王国，布列塔尼是另一个王国。法兰西岛和巴黎位列第三；都兰和卢瓦尔河谷是第四个，而在中间，即它们之间的战场，是沙特尔和德勒县。去沙特尔之前，应该沿着塞纳河上游，沿着卢瓦尔河下游，从昂热到勒芒，然后从布列塔尼绕一圈后进入沙特尔；但如果我们打算在这种规模上享受我们的乐趣，我们就必须从胡夫金字塔开始。我们从圣米歇尔山出发；我们接下来要去巴黎。

建筑高速公路穿过库坦斯、巴约、卡昂、鲁昂和曼特。每一个伟大的艺术王国都以自己的方式解决其建筑问题，就像它解决其宗教、政治和社会问题一样，没有两种解决方案是完全相同的。但其中诺曼人通常是最实际的，有时也是最有尊严的。我们可以用我们停靠的第一个城镇库坦斯的标准来检验这条规则。我们可以在巴约或卡昂同样很好地测试它，但在圣米歇尔山之后，库坦斯首先出现，让我们从它开始，并陈述他们的诺曼解决方案的问题，以便可以随时与法国解决方案进行比较，然后再讨论沙特尔的解决方案。

库坦斯大教堂据说大约有 Merveille 的历史（1200-50 年），但确切的日期不得而知，而且这座建筑是诺曼风格的，以至于独立存在；然而，建筑师所面临的问题比法国任何一座教堂所希望解决的问题还要多。即使在沙特尔，尽管两块石雕已破例完成，但它们的年代却与此处不同。无论是在沙特尔还是在巴黎，无论是在拉昂、亚眠、兰斯还是布尔日，你都看​​不到一座中央塔楼可以与库坦斯的巨大建筑群相比。事实上，法国的建筑师未能解决这个特殊的教堂问题，我们将在离开诺曼底时将其抛在脑后，尽管它是任何可能的教堂中最有效的特征。 “那个时期（大约 1200 年）的钟楼，建在大教堂的十字形上方，线条如此愉快，应该是一座最美丽的纪念碑；不幸的是，我们在法国没有一个。火和人类的手比时间更能摧毁它们，我们在我们最伟大的宗教建筑上发现的只是这些美丽建筑的底座和碎片。仅库坦塞斯大教堂就保留了十三世纪的中央钟楼，但即便如此，它也不完整。它的石质脆弱。从风格上看，它属于诺曼式建筑，与法国建筑的特点相差甚远。”维奥莱·勒·杜克如是说；但是，尽管大多数大教堂都没有中央钟楼，而以亚眠、布尔日或博韦的规模来看，这需要一个不可能的弥撒，但较小的教堂经常仍然保留着它们，而且它们就像圆顶一样，他们可以携带的最有效的功能。他们生来就是为了主宰整体。

毫无疑问，库坦斯缺乏箭羽，但你可以想象一下，西边塔楼的两根箭羽，就像战士的长矛一样简单而严厉。供给弗雷切，塔的意义不会被误解；它和《罗兰之歌》一样具有军事性；这是战士本人，已骑上马，准备战斗，长矛处于休息状态。横跨教堂的中央塔楼的座位，如此坚定，如此固定，如此严肃，如此挑衅，是诺曼人，就像山上修道院教堂的座位一样。在私生子威廉的出生地法莱兹，我们将看到教堂中央的一座塔楼，上面是威廉本人，他身穿盔甲，骑在马背上，准备为教会而战，也许，在他心情不好时，也会反对教会。这些好战的教会有能力强迫天堂本身。他们看上去都好像曾在黑斯廷斯作战或袭击过耶路撒冷。无论诺曼中央钟楼矗立在哪里，十一世纪的战斗教会仍然存在；——不是玛丽女王的教会，而是大天使米迦勒的教会；——不是基督的教会，而是天父上帝的教会——他从不说谎！

与立面的绒毛一起，这个库坦斯的钟形罩形成了一个很少见的群体。立面的两座塔楼是分开的，在哥特时代无数的教堂塔楼中显得十分独特。只要寻找这些教堂塔楼，我们就已经度过了一个快乐的夏天。在晴朗的天气里，没有比像采蘑菇一样狩猎它们更生动的娱乐了，建筑学的研究也没有比这更令人愉快的了。人类的任何作品都没有像弗莱奇那样具有生命力。与任何其他人类结构相比，人们可以看到它的距离更远，感觉它的时间更长，除非它是圆顶。当太阳围绕八角形表面移动时，其八角形表面上的光线比从方形、圆锥形或任何其他表面组合中发出的光线要多。由于某种原因，六边形或八边形的刻面比圆锥体的圆形表面更令人赏心悦目，据说诺曼底是这种哥特式教堂装饰品的故乡；然而，钟形罩和箭形罩散布在法国各地，直到人们在地平线上寻找它们，就好像每个村庄的每座教堂都是一座建筑纪念碑一样。其中数百个确实如此，-历史古迹，-受政府保护；但是当你开始比较它们，或者决定诺曼底的它们是否比法兰西岛、勃艮第、卢瓦尔河或夏朗德河更美丽时，你就迷失了，甚至八角形的优越性也不明显给每一个人。距离拉罗谢尔不远的夏朗德省菲尼奥的小教堂上方有一座圆锥形尖塔，异教徒可能会喜欢它。如果你必须在省份之间做出选择，你必须考虑建筑师和业余爱好者的决定，他们似乎都同意，第一个 filches 是在沙特尔，第二个是在离都兰布卢瓦不远的旺多姆，第三个是在都兰的布卢瓦。在勃艮第的欧塞尔。库坦斯的塔楼不在列表中，巴约的塔楼和卡昂的塔楼也不在列表中。法国艺术资源丰富。然而，库坦斯的塔楼在某些方面即使不是那么美丽，也和最好的塔楼一样有趣。

这里的两块石制羽毛具有八角形的表面，不像其他教堂那样下降到方塔上的休息位置，连接处的计划或多或少地被掩盖了；他们扔出较小的羽毛筑成的巢，这些巢覆盖支撑角塔，其绳索直接通向地面。无论艺术家是否有意为之，效果都是扩大了立面并将其提升到空中。立面本身具有明显的军事外观，就好像一座堡垒被改造成一座教堂。顶部有一个迷人的拱廊，有一种为了掩饰这种改变而被扔过去的感觉，也许它的魅力很大程度上归功于它与军事防线的严厉形成的对比。就连那扇巨大的西窗看起来也像是事后才添加的。一个人的本能需要一堵空白的墙。然而，从地面到尖顶上的十字架，人们都能感受到诺曼底的本质，它使整体充满活力，将一切统一起来，并在其中融入了各种聪明的原始动机，这些动机将建造十几座晚期哥特式教堂。它没有什么是刻板的或传统的——甚至不是传统。

如果您对此有任何疑问，您只需将库坦斯的照片与沙特尔的照片进行比较即可；然而，沙特尔的外表确实足以让圣伯纳德本人满意。与后来的兰斯和亚眠战线相比，没有可比性。他们几乎没有任何共同点；然而，据说库坦斯与兰斯是同一时期，或者说几乎是同一时期，这一点一进入内陆就可以相信。诺曼人慢慢地展现自己，展现出最意想不到的品质。人们似乎听到了隐藏在铁鼻后面的地下洞穴的感觉。在法国或欧洲，没有任何一座大教堂的内部装饰比这更精致——人们甚至会忍不住使用“更温柔”这个形容词，或者更仔细地研究。无论在哪里，一次测试都是至关重要的。后殿和唱诗班的处理是建筑师最严格的标准。这是一个不能轻易触及的话题；我们必须以谦虚的精神回到沙特尔，做好耐心研究的准备；但库坦斯的唱诗班与沙特尔的唱诗班是近亲，因为外墙也是近亲。像沙特尔这样的Coutances 属于巴黎圣母院，人们也能感受到同样的精神。教堂是为唱诗班和后殿而建，而不是为中殿和耳堂而建；为了圣母而不是为了公众。从某一方面来说，库坦斯在圣母特有的优雅的女性魅力方面甚至比沙特尔还要精致，但这是十四世纪的事后想法。围绕后殿呈放射状的小教堂系统一直延伸到中殿，据维奥莱·勒·杜克说，这种布置“如此美丽且如此罕见”，人们必须远远寻找才能找到与之匹敌的。在突然令历史学家震惊的人性的意想不到的揭示中，最不合理的一个是在诺曼底这里发生的对女性优雅、慈善和爱的理想的宗教信仰的热情爆发，当时它仍然是英国的一部分王国，并在欧洲最铁石心肠、最顽固的种族中爆发出近乎狂热的狂热。

因此，在这座教堂里，在后殿和礼拜堂排列的中心，四个巨大的桥墩支撑着巨大的中央塔楼，它们的优雅程度非常不寻常——也许是非常独特——提供了一个杰作，几乎与教堂的精致一样非凡。教堂。在圣米歇尔山，修道士们力量与优雅的结合是引人注目的，但在库坦斯，这种结合却被夸大了，就像《崔斯特瑞姆》和《伊索特》——一部骑士精神的罗马小说。正如维奥莱·勒·杜克（Viollet-le-Duc）所说，十字路口的四根“巨大”圆柱承载着“巨大的八角形塔楼”，就像圣克里斯托弗在圣母像前支撑着圣婴一样，以纪念她。在沙特尔或法国后来为天后的欢乐而建造的任何宫殿中都看不到这样的景象。我们再次滑入十三世纪；对于脆弱的头脑和旅游本性来说，这种诱惑是可怕的；但大量十二和十一世纪的作品仍有待观察和感受。回去并不像开始那么容易；与尖尖的尖顶尖顶的香槟相比，厚重的圆拱门就像陈年的干邑白兰地。离开库唐斯之前，一定要游览通往瑟堡的莱赛永 (Lessayon​​)，那里有一座 12 世纪的教堂，有一座方形塔楼，内部几乎未受破坏的诺曼风格，与圣米歇尔山修道院教堂极为相似。 “这是诺曼底发现的最完整的罗马式建筑模型之一，”M. de Caumont 说道。中央钟楼将开始收集方形塔楼的照片，以取代山上丢失的塔楼；第二个例子是在巴约附近一个叫 Cerisy-la-Foret 的小地方，据 M. Corroyer 说，那里的教堂与山上的教堂相匹配。因为塞里西拉福雷也是一座修道院，这座教堂由诺曼底公爵理查德二世于十一世纪初建造，比山上的教堂还要大。它仍然保留着它的中央塔楼。

所有这些都是典型的诺曼底风格，对法国没有什么帮助。它在英国会更有用；但在巴约，这是一座伟大的大教堂，其目的更加明确，有两座宏伟的西塔，顶部有石制的弗莱克斯塔楼，与库坦斯的塔楼类似，并且与沙特尔​​十二世纪的弗莱克斯塔楼明显相关。维奥莱·勒·杜克说：“诺曼人没有法兰西岛、博韦和苏瓦松的建筑师所具有的那种高度的比例本能；然而，其大胆的构造、完美的执行、高度的檐口，对法国学派产生了明显的影响，这种影响在沙特尔的古老尖塔中也能感受到。”诺曼人似乎在另一个方面表现出了与众不同，而法国人则不太容易效仿。他们开始的事情，他们完成了。法国没有一座伟大的教堂拥有两座同一时代的完整石质尖顶，而库坦斯、巴约和卡昂的每个小镇都拥有双塔和石制的箭羽，现在和七百年前一样坚固和完美。几年前。还有另一个诺曼人物值得注意，因为这是在沙特尔感受到的影响的一部分。如果你仔细观察贝叶大教堂西部的两座塔楼，也许你会感受到它们建造方式的力量。它们从地基上升起，带着一种安静的信心和支撑，直接传递到箭尖顶上的风标。在方塔变为八角尖顶的平面上，你会看到角楼和中间的长窗，它们毫不掩饰地影响了这种变化。人们很难称其为一种设备；它是一种设备。它的结构非常简单明了，无需解释；然而，你必须携带这张箭的照片到沙特尔，然后从那里到旺多姆，因为在这个交汇点附近将会发生一场伟大的箭之战，而诺曼人的计划是对法国人的一种长期的耻辱。

库坦斯和巴约很有趣，但卡昂是罗马式麦加。在那里，征服者威廉处理了同样的建筑问题，并将他的解决方案放在他的修道院中，该修道院以圣斯蒂芬的名字命名。玛蒂尔达女王将她的解决方案放入了她的修道院（Abbaye-aux-Femmes），即三位一体教堂。人们特别应该看看郊区沃塞勒教堂美丽的中央钟楼；人们必须驱车前往托恩（Thaon）参观其十一世纪的教堂，外面有一个迷人的罗马式盲道拱廊，还有一个小钟楼，“这对我们来说更有趣，”维奥莱特·勒·杜克（Viollet-le-Duc）说，“因为它承载着建在门廊上的原始塔楼的防御传统的印记。”甚至“一种圆形的小路”仍然保留在钟楼周围，也许曾经设有防御栏杆。 “这就是这座迷人的建筑。”不远处的塞克维尔教堂有一座带有石制箭尖的塔楼，在一个著名的记录中实际上是用来防御的。这座美丽的塔楼与诺曼艺术中的任何事物一样迷人，众所周知，它在 1105 年曾作为堡垒，这提供了一个宝贵的年代。乌伊斯特勒昂小教堂漂亮古老的罗马式正面，其大门似乎来自普瓦捷和穆瓦萨克，开车经过时可以欣赏到它；但我们绝对不能错过迪夫河畔圣皮埃尔的一次认真的朝圣，那里的教堂塔楼和弗莱什不仅被列为诺曼底最好的教堂之一，而且有一个确切的日期，1145 年，并且非常接近与沙特尔的关系，如下所示。最后，如果没有其他原因，至少出于对制革商的女儿阿莱特的兴趣，人们必须去法莱兹，看看圣热尔韦精美的钟楼，它于 1135 年竣工并祝圣。

有一天，如果你愿意，我们可以沿着这种罗马式风格到南方，甚至到意大利，那里可能是它的诞生地；但当这些十二世纪的教堂建成时，法国的建筑历史已有整整一千年的历史，而且在艺术上和政治上早已独立。诺曼人在法国是新事物，但罗马式建筑却不是新事物。他们只是采取形式，并在上面打上自己的性格。这是我们想要区分的印记，以便追溯我们的艺术血统。诺曼十二世纪的印记并不容易被抹去。如果我们在圣米歇尔山、库唐斯、巴约和卡昂还没有看够的话，我们可以去鲁昂，然后开车去博舍维尔，参观破败的瑞米耶日修道院。凡是有高耸的教堂塔楼的地方，如博舍维尔、塞克维尔、迪夫河畔圣皮埃尔、卡昂和巴约，维奥莱·勒·杜克都会注意到八角形尖塔是如何安装在方形塔楼上的。从八边形到正方形的通道似乎总是很简单。哥特式或罗马式尖顶的优点是，木制的尖顶和石头的尖顶一样可以作为其合理的覆盖物，如果诺曼人愿意的话，他们可能很容易沉迷于怪异的形式，但他们似乎从未想过这一点。最接近木屋顶自由的方法不是高耸的弗莱奇，而是巨大的方形中央塔楼的覆盖物，如法莱斯或沃塞勒，一个巨大的四边形屋顶，试图成为一个弗莱奇，并且与它所覆盖的重型结构。

维奥莱勒杜克坚持建造的最后一座诺曼塔楼是所谓的圣罗曼钟楼 (Clocher de Saint-Romain)，它位于鲁昂大教堂西侧的北塔楼。不幸的是，它已经失去了原始的八角形弗莱德（如果有的话），但“这座塔仍然完整，”根据维奥莱·勒·杜克的说法，“无疑是法国这一地区最美丽的塔之一；它混合了法兰西岛和诺曼底两种风格，其中前一种元素占主导地位”；它与沙特尔旧塔（1140-60）同一年代，并遵循相同的内部布置； “但在这里，法国建筑大师采用了诺曼塔楼的小而混乱的布局，将它们划分为相同高度的楼层，尽管在服从这些当地习俗的同时，他仍然在他的作品中投入了优雅和技巧，对细节的研究，投影的冷静，轮廓、雕塑和整体效果之间的完美和谐，这些都属于他出身的流派。他以特别聪明的方式管理着空隙和实体，随着塔楼高度的升高，空隙变得更加重要，并扩大了细节的规模。这些细节极具美感；建筑采用小尺寸材料，十二世纪建筑师对其建筑的精心设计；轮廓投射很少，尽管极其精致，却产生了很大的效果；扶壁的种植和造型都经过巧妙的设计。东侧的楼梯打乱了海湾的布局，是建筑的杰作。”维奥莱·勒·杜克写的这篇长篇颂词，以牺牲诺曼人脾气为代价，颂扬法国品味，值得在鲁昂大教堂前阅读，并与巴约的照片进行比较。可以肯定的是，诺曼人和法国人从来没有讲过完全相同的语言，但同样可以肯定的是，对于英国人来说，诺曼语言的表达与法语一样清晰，有时似乎有更多的东西要表达。

这位法国艺术家对诺曼人的抱怨是，将他的塔楼分成相同高度的“mesquin”处理方式。即使在十二世纪，在宗教建筑领域，艺术家们也已经在为二十世纪这一美国特有问题的最佳解决方案而奋斗，当游客回到纽约时，他们可能会看到装饰城市的二十层高塔，看看诺曼或法国的计划是否获胜；但这一点至少可以提前确定：——诺曼人将是陈述事实的实用方案，然后停止；而法国人则比较优雅，述说着美丽，或多或少符合事实，适合他们。两种风格都很棒：两种风格有时都会令人厌烦。

我们必须在这里告别诺曼底；一个小地方，但像阿提卡或托斯卡纳一样，对世界说了很多话，甚至直到今天还在继续说一些事情——这在著名的无聊流派中并不常见；对于古斯塔夫·福楼拜来说，他的风格与圣罗曼塔和男子修道院的风格非常相似。沿着塞纳河而上，人们可能会读几页他的信，或者《包法利夫人》，看看一种古老的艺术如何在不改变其方法的情况下将自己转变为一种新的艺术。一些批评家认为福楼拜有时就像诺曼塔一样，但正如法国人所说，这些都是他品质的缺陷；我们可以越过它们，让我们的目光停留在刺穿我们地平线的诺曼弗莱奇的简单上。

最后的诺曼艺术出现在曼特斯，那里有一座加西库尔小教堂，标志着该风格的影响力最远。无论是在武器方面还是在建筑方面，曼特斯都挡住了诺曼征服的道路。征服者威廉于 1087 年在此逝世。从地理位置上看，曼特斯位于法兰西岛，距巴黎不到 XNUMX 英里。从建筑角度来说，它就是巴黎本身；从建筑角度来说，它就是巴黎本身。向南四十英里处是沙特尔，一个独立的或只是封建附属国家。无论建筑游客有多匆忙，都不能不停歇地跨越法兰西岛的边界线。如果他从北边或东边下来，他同样必须停下来——要么在博韦，要么在拉昂，要么在努瓦永，要么在苏瓦松——因为有一个建筑门要经过，一个人的建筑包袱必须打开。巴黎圣母院和沙特尔圣母院都不是很容易理解的，除非你第一次看到曼特圣母院，并在维奥莱勒杜克先生的神圣资料中研究过它。

曼特圣母院是巴黎大教堂的姊妹教堂，“是在同一时间建造的，也许是由同一位建筑师建造的，并复制了它的总体布局、结构模式和一些细节”；但是巴黎大教堂已经发生了很大的改变，因此它原来的布局发生了很大的变化，而曼特的教堂几乎保持着原样，大约是在1200年，两者都是新的时候。大教堂于 1170 年完工，直至其拱顶，不久之后在曼特斯仿造了较小规模的建筑。根据 Viollet-le-Duc（文章“大教堂”和“玫瑰”和典故“Triforium”），除了平面图没有改变之外，几乎没有什么变化。要了解 1230-1160 年间的巴黎设计（比旧计划有很大进步），必须来到曼特斯。而且，沙特尔的伟大胜利在于它的开窗，它一定是在 70 年之后立即设计的，人们可以理解，在这个相距仅四十或五十英里的三角形教堂中，建筑师们在观看彼此的实验时受到了怎样的影响，巴黎建筑师在 1195-1160 年计划并在 70-1190 年在曼特斯重复的开窗法几乎每天都被他们所看到的失败或成功完全放弃，并在成功后立即引入了新系统。 1200年的沙特尔。

现在，曼特斯是最年长的。虽然我们认真地努力尽可能远离技术，我们对技术一无所知，如果可能的话，我们应该关心，更不用说，如果只有无知才能帮助我们感受我们不理解的东西，但如果良心能获得一点点，那就更快乐了信念，建立在它认为的事实之上。即使是神学家——甚至是十三世纪伟大的神学家——甚至是圣托马斯·阿奎那本人——也不只相信信仰，也不假定上帝的存在；而是相信上帝的存在。圣托马斯认为哲学中必要的东西也可能是艺术困难中的安慰源泉。曼特斯教堂是哥特式艺术中一个非常早期的事实。事实上，它是最早的之一；就我们的目的而言，它将成为过渡之后最早的纯哥特式教堂，我们被告知要在它的窗户里研究这一点。

在人们能够足够近地观察正面的细节之前，人们会看到巨大的玫瑰窗，它占据了近二十七英尺宽的空间。哥特式狂热分子普遍认为，十三世纪的大玫瑰窗是他们艺术中最美丽的装饰细节。这种特殊的玫瑰是沙特尔玫瑰的直接亲本，沙特尔玫瑰与帕特农神庙一样经典，而它们都充当了巴黎玫瑰（可追溯至 1220 年）以及兰斯南北耳堂（约 1230 年）的模型或指南。等等，从父母到孩子，直到玫瑰永远凋零。毫无疑问，1200年之前就已经出现了罗马式玫瑰，我们将会看到它们，但曼特斯的这朵玫瑰是第一朵大尺寸的哥特式玫瑰，也是其他玫瑰的基础。如果维奥莱·勒·杜克先生是一位真正的向导，那么它的简单性、诚实性和计划的广泛性也是最好的之一。但你会看到一百朵玫瑰，无论是第一朵还是最后朵，你都可以像在鲜花中一样进行选择。

比大门上的大玫瑰更有趣的是，教堂的整个开窗系统都带有同样的玫瑰图案。顺着它看，从外面看，你会发现所有的窗户都是按照同一个玫瑰图案建造的。但最奇怪的安排是在​​教堂内的唱诗班。你通过一种隧道或望远镜抬头看每一扇窗户：一个向外扩大的拱门，末端的玫瑰类似于“oeil-de-boeufs”，“oculi”。这种安排是如此令人好奇，以至于维奥莱·勒·杜克（Viollet-le-Duc）在“Triforium”标题下以图纸和剖面图展示了它，任何人都可以研究谁喜欢。我们感兴趣的是，唱诗班的这种安排可能是巴黎圣母院的一次实验，被证明是失败的，并导致拆除旧窗户并替换仍然存在的窗户。也许玫瑰花没有提供足够的光线，尽管曼特斯的教堂似乎光线充足，甚至在巴黎，玫瑰窗仍然保留在耳堂和中殿的一个海湾中。

所有这些都是对沙特尔窗户的介绍，但这三座教堂打开了另一个难题，因为人们一点一点地了解了一些被遗忘的中世纪的问题。曼特斯的教堂塔楼无论从里到外都非常有趣。显然，它们的设计者是用爱和劳动来研究它们的；但他们却没有羽毛。巴黎圣母院怎么可能也没有檐口，尽管根据维奥莱·勒·杜克的说法，塔楼已经做好了充分的准备？这位法国建筑师的这种双重遗漏似乎非常奇怪，因为他在沙特尔的对手完成了他的弗雷切，而巴黎和曼特的建筑师正在完成他的塔楼（1175-1200）。这位法国人当然对法兰西岛任何建筑师从未取得过的如此规模的胜利感到嫉妒。事实上，他当时至少在巴黎附近的两座堡垒上工作，一座在圣但尼，另一座在圣勒德埃塞朗，这证明了他对在沙特尔克服的困难表现出积极的兴趣，并且他的完美的能力来对付他们。

事实上，人们很容易说，巴黎和曼特这对双胞胎教堂是当时（1200 年）唯一没有被保留的法国教堂。当我们从曼特前往巴黎时，我们在中途经过了普瓦西，一座非常古老而有趣的教堂的塔楼下，这座教堂的另一个优点是见证了 1215 年圣路易的洗礼。普瓦西的历史可以追溯到七世纪和九世纪。塔楼的方形底座可以追溯到休·卡佩时代之前的加洛林时代，与巴黎圣日耳曼德佩区的方形塔楼一样，属于古老的防御性军事建筑；但它有一个后来的石制弗莱彻，而且例外地还有一个中央八角形钟形罩，其木材弗莱彻的历史可以追溯到 1100 年左右。 巴黎本身没有什么可展示的，但在附近有许多早期的教堂埃唐普斯 (Etampes) 位于以南约三十五英里处，有一座极其有趣的教堂，拥有精美的弗雷什 (Fleche)，可能需要一个下午的时间来参观。在 Saint-Leu-d'Esserent 的游览更加容易，因为只需从尚蒂伊开车几英里即可到达。迷人的古老圣勒修道院教堂俯瞰着瓦兹河谷，就建筑而言，它是沙特尔的前厅。它的箭形建筑建于 1160 年，当时沙特尔的箭形建筑正在崛起，与其他建筑不同，这表明了法国建筑师对他们可爱的法国创作的重视程度。在它的八角形面上，它带有直立的警棍或长矛，作为减轻轮廓严重程度的装置；这是一种既智能又有趣的装置，尽管它从未被模仿过。距离巴黎稍远一点的桑利斯 (Senlis) 是另一个弗莱切 (fleche)，它更清楚地显示了法国建筑师为改变和完善沙特尔方案所做的努力。至于拉昂，它自始至终都很有趣，而且是法兰西岛最令人愉快的建筑，塔楼已经消失了，但塔楼还在那里，在研究沙特尔的塔楼之前，你必须用所有的智慧来研究它们。你必须有余力。在他自己看来，它们是中世纪建筑师的杰作。

所有这些都使得弗莱什在巴黎和曼特斯的缺席变得更加奇怪。缺钱当然不是原因，因为巴黎人有足够的钱把他们的整个大教堂拆成碎片，而就在他们视线范围内的一半城镇中出现了弗雷德的时候。可能他们野心太大，找不到似乎能满足他们野心的设计。他们为自己的大教堂感到自豪，并努力使圣母朝圣地与沙特尔的伟大朝圣地相媲美。当然，我们必须研究一下他们美丽的教堂，但这可以在闲暇时完成，因为就目前情况而言，它比沙特尔晚，也更传统。圣日耳曼德佩 (Saint-Germain-des-Pres) 更直接通往沙特尔 (Chartres)；但也许最值得了解的教堂根本不再是一座教堂，而是艺术与工艺博物馆的一部分——被亵渎的圣马丁德尚教堂，这个名字表明它的历史可以追溯到现在的圣马丁门远在田野之中。值得一提的是，M. Enlart 说，圣马丁唱诗班的历史可以追溯到 1150 年左右。它隐藏在巴黎圣母院桥附近的旧巴黎遗迹中，那里是中世纪学生生活的场所。拉丁区最动荡、最著名的是圣朱利安勒保夫尔小教堂，建于 1170 年。总体而言，在巴黎进一步搜寻对我们没有多大帮助。如果要追寻早期的几个世纪，就必须去更远的地方，因为诺曼底和法兰西岛的学校只是在圣路易王国统一的各个省份中蓬勃发展的六所学校中的两所。他的继任者。我们甚至没有向南方和东方看去，冲动是从哪里来的。以艾克斯拉夏贝尔为中心的古老加洛林学派远远超出了我们的视野。莱茵河有自己伟大的罗马式建筑。一股巨大的建筑浪潮席卷了罗纳河，席卷了勃艮第各省，直至塞纳河分水岭。另一条沿地中海排列，以阿尔勒为中心。另一条则沿着西部河流夏朗德河和卢瓦尔河蔓延，到达勒芒并触及沙特尔。另外两个位于法国中部，从奥弗涅的佩里戈尔和克莱蒙蔓延开来。这些学校都有个性，都有魅力；但我们在十一世纪、十二世纪和十三世纪三个世纪里从圣米歇尔山出发前往沙特尔，试图在途中获得的不是技术知识；信息不准确；对历史、艺术或宗教的看法不正确；不是任何可能有用或有启发性的东西；但只是对那些世纪不得不说的话的理解，以及对他们说话方式的同情。我们直奔沙特尔吧！

第一次访问沙特尔时，请选择一个光线柔和的宜人早晨，因为人们想要受到欢迎，而且大教堂的气氛有时很严峻。博斯充其量只是一个不太同性恋的国家。

第一个被捕捉到的，也是第一个应该被捕捉到的，是两个尖塔。尽管诺曼底和法兰西岛可以提供如此多的教育，人们仍然一无所知。尖顶是罗马式或哥特式建筑中最简单的部分，只需最少的研究即可感受到。这是一种几乎纯粹出于实用目的的情感。它一目了然地讲述了它的全部故事，它的故事是建筑所能讲述的最好的故事，因为它代表了人类在人类愿望最高的时刻的愿望。然而，十分之九的人（也许是一百人中的九十九人）如果被告知两个尖塔中较小的一个、较简单的一个、给他们印象最浅的那个，当他们看到沙特尔的两个尖塔时，他们会认为这是一个笑话。 ，是他们认为世界上最完美的建筑之一。也许法国批评家可能会否认他们提出了任何这样的绝对主张。在这种情况下，您可以询问他们的确切主张是什么；它总是足够高，足以让游客感到惊讶。

不管你是否感到惊讶，我们都必须把沙特尔大教堂的这座南尖塔作为认真研究的对象，在把它当作艺术之前，必须把它当作历史。这座塔一直被称为“老塔”，据说是在 1091 年，即第一次十字军东征之前奠基的。弗莱切可能是半个世纪后（1145-70）。对面的新塔楼的地基在 1110 年之前就已经奠基，当时位于塔楼之间的大门也开始动工，上面有三个柳叶刀窗，但没有玫瑰花。为了方便起见，这座古老的立面——包括大门和两座塔楼，但不包括羽毛，以及三个柳叶刀窗，但不包括玫瑰——的完整年代可能约为 1150 年。

最初，整个门户——三扇门和三把刺血针——位于塔楼内部地基或后墙的线上，向后近四十英尺。这种安排将塔楼向前推，三侧自由，就像在普瓦捷一样，并在大门前留出了一个 parvis 的空间，这是一个有屋顶的门廊，以保护在进入教堂之前总是在那里停下来祈祷的朝圣者。当教堂在 1194 年的大火后重建时，建筑师需要扩大内部空间，旧的门户和刺血针被整体向前移动，与两座塔楼的前墙齐平，正如你看到的正面一样-天;立面本身被加高，为玫瑰提供空间，并覆盖后面更高的猪和拱顶。最后，石头拱顶上方的木制屋顶被国王拱廊及其栏杆所覆盖，按照 1270 年至 1285 年在位的菲利普·哈代 (Philip the Hardy) 的风格完成。

当然，这些变化改变了所有部件的价值。正如您在耳堂入口上方的南北门廊中看到的那样，门户原本应该矗立在阴影中，但由于被扔到强光下而受到伤害。塔楼因失去浮雕和阴影而受到伤害；但是老弗莱切却不得不遭受最残酷的错误，当它被建造成自由站立并翱翔在整个立面之上时，它的右肩被半朵巨大的玫瑰和一整排国王拱起。从第二层的顶部。人们可以很容易地想到这一点，并从努瓦永正面或多或少随意地更换旧立面丢失的部分。

只要看一眼对面的新弗莱彻就可以看出这是多么令人愤慨。 1500年的建筑师断然拒绝屈服于这样的条件，并以非常自尊的态度坚持从国王拱廊的栏杆开始作为他的水平。他甚至不满足于此，在他同意触及他的问题的核心之前，将方塔改造成八角形的弗莱奇之前，他已经将方塔抬高了一层。在这样做的过程中，他再次牺牲了旧的拳头。但他自己的塔却像应有的那样自由地矗立着。

在旺多姆，当你去那里时，你会以某种方式更好地欣赏沙特尔弗莱切发生的事情；对于旺多姆的钟楼来说，它是同一日期的——维奥莱-勒-杜克早些时候说，而恩拉特则说“1130年后”——矗立着，而且仍然矗立着，就像一座意大利钟楼，这给了它巨大的优势。 Saint-Leu-d'Esserent 塔也是在 1130 年之后，自由矗立在第二层之上。事实上，在法国著名尖塔的一长串名单中，你很难找到另一个像这座尖塔一样受到如此侮辱的、最伟大、最著名的尖塔；也许最烦人的部分是你必须感谢 1195 的建筑师没有做得更糟。相反，他尽最大努力表达对前任工作的尊重，而且做得非常好，以至于尽管老塔楼有缺陷，但仍然无法与竞争对手竞争。它高近三百五十英尺，确切地说，距教堂地面 106.5 米，其建造过程充满智慧和精致，让非专业的参观者没有机会提出批评，更不用说表达批评了。也许——当我们看到更多——感受更少——谁知道呢？——但肯定不是现在！

“这是法国最伟大、最美丽的此类纪念碑”，维奥莱·勒·杜克 (Viollet-le-Duc) 说道。但是，尽管无知的旁观者必须接受建筑师在相对优点上的决定，但没有人被迫接受他的理由作为最终决定。 “没有必要沉迷于构图的美丽和宏伟，”他继续说道，“艺术家在其中证明了罕见的清醒，所有的效果都不是通过装饰，而是通过公正和熟练的比例来实现的。”的不同部分。方形底座和弗莱切八角形之间的过渡很难调整，但其管理和实施的地址在类似的纪念碑中尚未被超越。”人们一听到“地址”这个词就会有点结结巴巴。在诺曼教堂中，人们从来不会发现自己使用这个词。您在巴约、博舍维尔或塞克维尔拍摄的照片将让您一目了然地知道“地址”一词是否适用于它们。就连旺多姆也宁愿被称赞为“droiture”，而不是“adresse”。——无论“adresse”一词意味着聪明、灵巧、灵巧，还是简单的技术技巧，事物本身就是法国人比诺曼人更钦佩的东西。曾经做过。维奥莱·勒·杜克本人似乎有点不确定是否应该将最大的压力放在一个或另一个质量上：“如果一个人试图欣赏这座塔的概念，”阿贝·布尔托 (Abbe Bulteau) 引用 (11,84)，“一个会发现它是坦率的，执行起来也是简单而熟练的。从底部开始，到达 Fleche 的顶部，没有明显的中断；没有任何东西破坏建筑物的整体形式。这个钟形建筑的底座宽阔（pleine）、巨大且没有任何装饰，当它弹起时，它自己转变为一个有八个面的尖塔，无法说出巨大结构在哪里结束和轻型结构在哪里开始。 ”

诚然，人们必须承认这种对过渡的隐藏是一种美，但人们仍然希望确定沙特尔方案是最好的。诺曼钟楼被扔掉了，旺多姆的钟楼无疑很简单，欧塞尔圣日耳曼教堂的圣让钟楼似乎被认为是次重要的，尽管它只有大约一百六十英尺高度（四十九米），因此与沙特尔几乎不在同一级别。任何照片都可以看出欧塞尔的尖顶也很简单；在埃唐普，您已经看到了旺多姆而不是沙特尔的类型。 Senlis 的 clocher 更加“灵活”；它表现出聪明的努力，并提供了比较的标准；但中世纪的建筑师似乎认为他们中没有人能在技术技能上与拉昂竞争。其中一位名叫 Villard de Honnecourt 的专业专家，生活在 1200 年至 1250 年之间，留下了一本笔记本，您可以在黎塞留街国家图书馆的玻璃柜中看到它，它是大多数已知的实用知识的来源。中世纪建筑师的想法。他来到沙特尔，站在门前，也就是我们所站的地方，他画了一幅草图，画的不是塔楼，而是玫瑰花，这在当时可能是新的，因为它一定是在 1195 年至 1200 年间规划的显然，这座塔并没有给他留下深刻的印象，因为他没有注意到它。但另一方面，当他前往拉昂时，他对那里的大教堂塔楼赞不绝口，这在当时一定是很新的：“我去过很多国家，正如你在这本书中看到的那样。我在任何地方都没有见过像拉昂那样的塔。-J'ai este en mult de tieres, si cum vuspore trover en cest livre。 En aucun liu onques tel tor ne vi com est cele de Loon.”这种钦佩的原因与维奥莱·勒·杜克（Viollet-le-Duc）对沙特尔塔的钦佩是一样的——正方形变成八边形的“地址”。塔本身不仅变成了没有明显接合处的弗莱切，在四个角图雷尔的覆盖下，开放式的，在细长的柱子上，开始是正方形；但是，图雷尔在上升的过程中也会将自己转变为八边形，并以八角形的弗莱结束，这些弗莱尔将轮廓线承载（或曾经承载）到高耸于其上方的中央弗莱。显然，这个装置在聪明程度上远远超过了沙特尔的方案，沙特尔的方案相对沉重和结构性强，重量根据其预期工作进行调整，而拉昂的转变是在空中进行的，挑战了人们最敏锐的视力的发现。 “看……图雷勒在上升过程中如何从一种性格转变为另一种性格！沉思一下吧！”

拉昂的弗莱什已经消失，但塔楼和图雷尔仍然存在，展示了十三世纪建筑师认为他们最辉煌的成就。人们无法直接将沙特尔与其同时代的任何竞争对手进行比较，但至少可以将旧尖塔与矗立在其对面并高于其的新尖塔进行比较。也许您会喜欢新的最好的。它建于一个普遍认为具有最高品味标准的时代，并不鼓励游客或艺术家坚持制定自己的标准来反对它。这座建筑于 1507 年动工，于 1517 年竣工。罗马圣彼得大教堂的圆顶，布拉曼特、拉斐尔和米开朗基罗曾在其上辛勤劳作，同时也在建造中。列奥纳多·达·芬奇当时在昂布瓦斯工作；让·布兰特 (Jean Bullant)、皮埃尔·莱斯科特 (Pierre Lescot) 和他们的赞助人弗朗西斯一世 (Francis I) 开始了他们的建筑生涯。新旧尖塔相隔四百年左右。还有四百人将新人与我们分开。如果自己建造哥特式尖塔的维奥莱·勒·杜克愿意将他在克莱蒙费朗的尖顶与沙特尔的新尖顶进行比较，他也许会给我们一条规则，其中“地址”不再具有魅力，细节也不再具有吸引力。变得厌烦；但如果需要一位校长来制定品味法则，你可以随心所欲地欣赏新的弗莱奇。当然，人们会发现新塔的线条并不像旧塔那样干净；覆盖从正方形到八边形过渡的装置过于明显；弗莱奇与塔的比例极大地改变了部件的价值；严格的古典品味甚至可能暗示新塔与旧塔相比，表现出某种暗淡而遥远的粗俗倾向。对于一座致力于平衡老塔经典线条的塔来说，承认新塔有点缺乏休息，这并没有什么坏处。但没有法律强迫你在任何形式的艺术中坚持绝对的休息；如果这样的法律存在，它就必须先处理米开朗基罗，然后再处理我们。新塔有很多缺点，但它也有很大的美感，这一点可以通过将它与其他晚期哥特式尖顶（包括维奥莱勒杜克的尖顶）进行比较来证明。它的主要错误在于它所处的位置。作为十字军东征和圣伯纳犬的同伴，它缺乏紧缩。作为沙特尔圣母的伴侣，它让人想起黛安·德·普瓦捷。

事实上，这座新塔虽然比它的邻居年轻了四个世纪，但感觉上却足有四百年之久。即使不是虚荣，也是有自我意识的。它的发型经过精心布置，以掩盖年龄的影响，脖子和肩膀上覆盖着蕾丝和珠宝，以隐藏某种尖锐的骨架。但它可能依然美丽；当亨利二世国王以堂吉诃德般的敬意将黛安·德·普瓦捷理想化时，诗人们嘲笑了她的皱纹。整个文艺复兴时期笼罩着一种美丽而衰败的气氛。

即使对于十二世纪和旧塔来说，也不能把这些相似之处推得太远。作为一种社会象征，这座老塔究竟代表了哪个年代，这个问题可能和黛安·德·普瓦捷的美丽一样备受争议，但建筑的一半兴趣在于其对所建造的社会的真诚反映。仅仅在时间上，按照实际日期，这座旧塔就代表了第二次十字军东征，当 1150 年，圣伯纳德在这座大教堂——或者更确切地说，在被烧毁的 1120 年大教堂里——被选为十字军东征的领袖时，——工人们可能正在将我们现在所看到的箭形石块放入灰浆中。然而，弗雷切并不代表圣伯纳德的感觉，因为圣伯纳德惊恐地把整座教堂塔楼视为炫耀、财富和骄傲的标志。弗莱切代表的是圣但尼修道院院长苏格 (Suger of Saint-Denis)、克吕尼修道院院长彼得 (Peter the Venerable of Cluny)、圣吉尔达德鲁伊斯 (Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys) 修道院院长阿伯拉尔 (Abelard of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys) 以及吉耶纳 (Guienne) 王后埃莉诺 (Eleanor of Guienne)（后者于 1137 年与路易·勒·热恩 (Louis-le-Jeune) 结婚）； 1147年，他从圣伯纳德手中接过十字架； 1149年从圣地返回； 1152 年，他迫使圣伯纳德批准她离婚。埃莉诺和圣伯纳德相隔几个世纪，但她们生活在同一时间，住在同一座教堂里。确切地说，老塔并不代表他们，而是代表着他们。新塔本身并不比埃莉诺更华丽。如果我们能从她那个时代的宫廷服饰时尚来判断的话，也许情况就不那么严重了。旧塔几乎是诺曼人的风格，而埃莉诺则完全是加斯科尼人的风格，而加斯科尼人总是华丽的，但并不总是正确的。如果新塔像旧塔一样建于 1150 年，它就能完美地展现埃莉诺的形象，即使在高度和明显的努力上都让其伴侣相形见绌，只不过埃莉诺毫不费力地让她的丈夫相形见绌，无论是在艺术上还是在艺术上。历史结果缺乏和谐。

不管怎样，这并不影响法国没有其他教堂有两个尖顶需要与这些尖顶进行比较的事实。事实上，同类教堂中没有任何其他大教堂有任何尖顶，沙特尔的这种优越性在很大程度上体现了这样一种说法：“沙特尔的尖顶，博韦的唱诗班，亚眠的中殿，亚眠的外墙兰斯，”可以为我们游客建造一座完美的教堂。

塔楼花了很多时间，尽管它们是教堂建筑中最不具有宗教色彩和最不复杂的部分，而且对教堂来说绝不是必不可少的；事实上，由于骄傲和世俗，圣伯纳德认为它们是赘生物，这只是圣伯纳德的说法，它们是为了满足艺术美感而创造的装饰品。尽管它们很美丽，但人们的目光最终必须落到教堂本身。如果说尖塔象征着志向，那么门则象征着道路；沙特尔的大门是法式门的类型；它在哥特式艺术史上首屈一指；而且，在大多数哥特式艺术家看来，首先是为了所有艺术的利益，尽管这与我们无关。这是教会和第一次十字军东征的艺术所看到的永生之路！

这座纪念碑的命运是圣母玛利亚奇迹中最能证明的奇迹，因为它几乎毫发无伤地穿过了可以准确地称为毁灭之口和地狱之火的地方。它建于十二世纪上半叶的某个时候，经历了 1194 年的大火，烧毁了后面的教堂，甚至前面塔楼的木质内部，但显然毫发无伤。由于大教堂结构中使用了大量木材，这些反复发生的火灾具有极大的破坏性，但不仅是带有雕像和雕刻的大门，还有带有玻璃的柳叶刀窗，都没有被烧毁。火焰；而且，几乎同样奇怪的是，后来也逃脱了建筑商的手，如果他像其他建筑师一样，他会为自己建造一个新的正面，但他以前所未有的虔诚，温柔地把旧石头拆下来，一一地把它们放回原来的位置前四十英尺处。英国战争和宗教战争带来了新的危险、围困和苦难。 1792 年的革命带来了实际的掠夺和浪费；男孩们向圣徒扔石头；建筑师们在室内外都展现了他们的品味；一场又一场的大火烧毁了教堂的拱顶；最糟糕的破坏者，十九世纪的修复者，一直在它附近徘徊。然而，门廊仍然矗立着，被毁坏但没有修复，被烧毁但没有被烧毁，它雄辩地见证了圣母的力量和完美，就像七百年前一样，也许更令人印象深刻。

你会在许多不同的地方或多或少地看到同一时期的门户和门廊——在巴黎、勒芒、桑斯、欧坦、维兹莱、克莱蒙费朗、穆瓦萨克、阿尔勒——其中有很多；因为同样的虔诚不止一次地保护过他们；但你不会看到其他如此完整或如此有启发性的，并且你可能会寻找很久才能找到另一个同样出色的工艺。对沙特尔门户网站的研究涵盖了其余所有内容。所有人的感受和动机几乎都是相同的，或者只是为了适应守护神的性格而有所不同。最重要的是，这种感觉是第一次十字军东征的建筑产物。在沙特尔，人们可以在门户中读到第一次十字军东征，就像在阿奎隆和 Promenoir 的圣米歇尔山一样。

布尔托神父 (Abbe Bulteau) 给出了假设 1117 年为西门雕塑的大概年代的理由，你在圣米歇尔山修道院院长罗杰二世 (Abbot Roger II) 的长廊上看到了一件日期准确的同一年代的作品；但无论计划的日期是什么，实际的工作及其精神都属于1145年左右。自从十字军从君士坦丁堡涌向安条克和耶路撒冷以来，已经过去了大约五十年，他们每天都在往返。您可以看到他们用在拜占庭购买的文物、弥撒书和珐琅带回的想法。中央门上方是基督，可能是按照拜占庭珐琅雕刻而成的，其长长的光环、光环或荣耀包围着整个人物。左门上方是耶稣升天像，上面刻有同样的印记；右门上方是坐着的圣母，戴着她的王冠和两个随从的大天使，是一位皇后。这就是十二世纪的教会、道路和生活，我们已经着手去感受，即使不是去理解！

首先是中央门口，上面是基督的荣耀，正如沙特尔教堂在 1150 年所理解的基督一样；因为基督的荣耀有很多，而沙特尔基督则是其中之一。无论基督在其他教会中的身份如何，在这里，在这个门户上，他将自己奉献给他的羊群，作为救赎的使者。在这三个门的所有意象中，没有任何恐惧、惩罚或诅咒的暗示，这是整个时间的基调。 1200年之前，教会似乎并不觉得有必要习惯性地诉诸恐怖；希望和幸福的承诺就足够了；甚至连奥坦的门户，展示了最后的审判，都属于圣拉撒路，是复活的证据和象征。一百年后，每个教堂的大门都显示基督不是救世主，而是法官，他在布尔日和亚眠主持了最后的审判，而在南大门上，被诅咒者的绝望是艺术家明显的喜悦，如果有时甚至不是他的一点玩笑，那就更糟糕了。在沙特尔，基督与他的母亲、爱与恩典的精神融为一体，他的教会是胜利的教会。

不仅没有恐惧，而且没有恐惧。连一丝疼痛的迹象都没有；没有一个烈士有他的殉难标志；更引人注目的是，在基督的生命雕塑中，从诞生到升天，装饰着柱头，唯一被省略的场景是受难。在那里，就像这个门户中的其他地方一样，艺术家们似乎实际上已经竭尽全力避免暗示痛苦。他们在生活中的所有其他事件中都描绘了基督和他的母亲。他们代表福音传道者；使徒；天启二十四位老人；圣人、先知、国王、王后和王子，按分数计算；十二生肖，甚至七门文科：语法、修辞、辩证法、算术、几何、天文学和音乐；除了痛苦之外，一切都在那里。

也许沙特尔圣母以特别仁慈和温柔而闻名，这也可能部分解释了她的神殿为何如此受欢迎。但无论出于什么原因，她的教会显然只是想展示她本性的这一面，并给她的儿子留下深刻的印象。你可以从基督严肃而仁慈的面容和态度中看到这一点，当你进入他的国度时，他举起手来祝福你；入口处排列着一排长长的人物，在您经过时向您致意；南门上方宝​​座上圣母玛利亚本人的威严和仁慈的表达；你从来没有被视为可能的反叛者、叛徒、被怀疑对待的陌生人，或者被视为被恐惧所影响的孩子。同样明显，也许更明显的是，雕塑家的真诚让你感觉到，无需直接坚持，你正在进入天后的庭院，她与她的儿子和他的教会合而为一。中央的门总是被称为“皇家之门”，因为它属于基督的天上威严，自然带有皇室的印记；但南门属于圣母玛利亚，也属于我们。停下来看看她是如何接待我们的，记住，或者试图记住，对于设计门户的牧师和艺术家，以及参加第一次和第二次十字军东征的几代人来说，她神殿中的圣母至少是一样的活生生的，像君士坦丁堡的巴西利萨公主一样真实、个性化的皇后！

门口正上方的门楣上有一系列的小团体：首先是天使报喜；玛丽站起来迎接大天使加百列，他向她宣布她被选为上帝的母亲。第二个是探访，在这个场景中，玛丽也站着，但她已经戴上了王冠；至少，布尔托神父是这么说的，尽管时间已经残酷地对待了它。然后，在中心，跟随耶稣诞生；玛丽躺在一张矮床上，在一张桌子或摇篮的下面或前面，婴儿躺在上面，而圣约瑟夫则站在床头。然后天使出现，引导三个牧羊人到该地点，填满了剩余的空间。

在正确的神学中，圣母不应该在床上被描绘，因为她不能像普通妇女一样受苦，但她在沙特尔的宫殿并没有受到神学的太多困扰，而且对她来说，作为皇后母亲，分娩的痛苦她希望她的人民能够分享这种快乐。正如我们将要看到的，沙特尔圣母是所有女王中最伟大的，也是最女性化的。她的双重性格贯穿整个宫殿。她还具有最高程度的智力天赋。在上层区域，您会在圣殿的展示中再次看到她，她在祭坛上支撑着圣婴耶稣，而西蒙则在旁边帮忙。其他人物带来了祭品。上面的拱门上有六位大天使，长着奇怪的翅膀，向婴儿和他的母亲致敬。以下是十二生肖；鱼和双胞胎。拱门的其余部分则由七门文科填满，以毕达哥拉斯、亚里士多德、西塞罗、欧几里得、尼科马科斯、托勒密和普里西安为代表，证明了女王的智力优势。

中间坐着玛利亚，头戴王冠，膝上坐着她的圣子，接受天地的顶礼膜拜。古往今来，古往今来；所有的思想，基督教的和异教的；所有男人和所有女人；如果您愿意的话，包括您和我的敬意，她毫无疑问地接受了她应得的敬意；不能说她主张这一点，因为她无法提出主张；她是皇后。她的左手拿着权杖；她的右手支撑着圣子，圣子直视前方，重复母亲的态度，并举起右手祝福，而他的左手则放在帝国的球体上。她和她的孩子是一体的。

所有这一切都超越了人类的高贵，但其尘世形式的灵感来自于帝国，而不是路易·勒格罗的小皇室或他虔诚的萨伏依王后阿利克斯。这一时期的标志之一是长椭圆形的雨云。另一个是圣母的帝王性格；第三是她与基督即教会的合一。对我们来说，沙特尔圣母，或者如果你愿意的话，十字军东征圣母的标志是她的王冠、长袍和王座。根据 M. Rohault de Fleury 的《Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge》(11, 62)，圣母玛利亚的头饰和装饰品长期以来一直借用东方皇后的服装，以纪念天后。毫无疑问，沙特尔圣母是君士坦丁的母亲海伦娜皇后所承认的圣母，其历史至少与海伦娜326年前往耶路撒冷朝圣的历史一样悠久。她不是西方的封建女王，她的儿子也不是封建国王；她是君士坦丁大帝的母亲。她代表了人民想要、封地害怕的权威。罗马和平；上帝在政府中的全能。当时，在整个欧洲，除了基督和他的母亲以及皇冠之外，没有任何权力能够执行正义或维持秩序，也没有这种权力的象征。

这个想法与我们去圣米歇尔山朝圣的目的非常不同。但由于所有沙特尔都将对其进行长篇评论，如果您愿意研究人类幻想和失望的令人厌倦的细节，您可以将此事的历史搁置在架子上，以便在闲暇时研究，而在此我们祈祷向圣母致敬，全神贯注于艺术，这是你的乐趣，但它不会教授道德或有用的教训。 玛丽皇后正在她的门户前接待您，无论您是一个无礼的孩子，还是一个愚蠢的老农妇，还是一个无礼的王子，或更无礼的游客，她都会以同样的尊严接待您；事实上，她可能认为你们之间几乎没有什么区别。 今天的俄罗斯皇后可能不会觉得她的臣民的相对等级有什么不同，而圣母玛利亚是皇帝、族长和教皇之上的皇后。 任何人，无论多么无知，都可以感受到雕塑家作品中持久的尊严，这是他竭尽全力强调的。 三个门口排列的这些长长的人物中，没有一个是侍奉皇后或她儿子的军官或官员，并且带有帝国宫廷的印记。 他们被肢解，但是，如果他们受到侮辱，那么他们的世俗对手也经常在神圣的宫殿和竞技场中被撕成碎片、践踏，更不用说仅仅被斩首或中毒，但不失去那种特殊的感觉。东方尊严的风格，似乎披上了最不端庄的态度。 十二世纪的宏伟气势有点像希腊神庙；如果你愿意，你可以把每一块单独的石头锤成碎片，但你无法锤出希腊风格。 这些雕像原本有二十四座，现剩下十九座。 从北端开始，经过第一个人物，它带着一个不属于它的头，注意第二个人物，一个国王，拿着帝国的长权杖，一本法律书，穿着拜占庭官方华丽的长袍。 在他的脚下是一个好奇的女人的头，她的头发扎着厚重的辫子，戴着一顶王冠。 第三个人物是一位王后，她像女人一样迷人，但衣着特别考究，装饰品和人物细节都经过精心打造。如果一个人会画画，那么就值得画画；值得仔细拍摄，包括她站立的奇怪支撑物：一只猴子、两条龙、一条狗、一只长着狗头的蛇怪。 接下来有两个先知——不那么有趣；——先知很少引起兴趣。 然后是中央海湾：两位需要特别关注的女王，然后是一位先知，然后是门口旁边的圣人；然后在南边的门柱上，有另一位圣人、一位国王、一位王后和另一位国王。 最后是南湾，是圣母玛利亚的海湾，首先站着一个据说是年轻国王的人物。然后是一座雕刻精美的圣人；门旁边有一个人物，也被称为国王，但他的表情是如此迷人而精致，光是长袍就暴露了他的性别。这位戴着光环的精致年轻国王可能是谁，他站在圣母的右手边，离她如此之近，现在没有人能透露。

这些雕像是法国艺术中的埃吉纳大理石；所有现代法国雕塑都可以追溯到或应该追溯到它们。它们非常有趣；就像希腊武士脸上的笑容一样天真，但并不比他们更怪诞。你会看到很多哥特式的怪诞，你不能误解这两个意图；十二世纪宁愿在欧洲每一个封建地牢中遭受酷刑，也不愿将任何可能令她不悦的人物摆在圣母眼前。这些人物充满感情，充满崇拜；但最符合我们的目的的是她们所宣扬和坚持的女性化的一面。不仅是女性人物的数量和美丽，还有几个男性人物异常年轻的美丽；他们穿着华丽的长袍；他们的面部表情和身材；头发、衣服、装饰品、珠宝的细节；如果我们认识到它们对十二世纪的意义，那么整体的精致和女性品味就足以引起我们的兴趣。

对于 18 世纪开明的公民来说，这些人物看起来僵硬、又长、又瘦、可笑，但它们是为了适应建筑而制作的。如果你想知道狂热者对它们的看法，请听听 M. Huysmans 的“大教堂”。 “毫无疑问，世界上最美丽的雕塑就在这里。”他几乎找不到言语来表达他对皇后的钦佩，尤其是对中央门口右边的皇后。 “在任何时期，人类的天才都没有创造出如此具有表现力的人物；这是婴儿般的优雅和神圣的坦率的杰作……。她是浪子的姐姐，圣路加没有提到浪子，但如果她存在的话，她会为缺席的人辩护，并坚持要求父亲杀死那头肥牛。等他儿子回来了。”如果你是归来的儿子，这个想法很有吸引力，正如许多十二世纪的朝圣者自己所想的那样。但事实上，这个人物是一位女王。吉耶纳的埃莉诺；她在那里的地位是由于她的威严，这见证了宫廷的天国威严，而她在其中只是一个侍女：而她在人性上并不比她的兄弟，圣母右手边的年轻国王更迷人。他没有《浪子回头》的影子，但肯定有很多《罗恩格林》的影子，甚至——几乎——《特里斯坦》的影子。

布尔托神父已尽力为这些雕像命名，但这些名称只会妨碍您的理解。雕塑家将它们命名为示巴女王或以色列国王，这与它们在十二世纪的意义无关，当时人们更有可能以他们认识的女王和国王的名字来命名它们。对我们来说，全部的魅力在于玛丽和她宫廷的十二世纪人性。不是以它被定为正统的圣经名称。在这里，在这个西方门户中，它正如 1100-50 年十字军想象的那样矗立着；但如果绕着教堂走到北侧耳堂入口处的门廊，一百年后你会再次看到它，就像卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇和圣路易想象的那样，这样你就会更好地知道尘世的属性是否被夸大了，或者是否被夸大了。不真实的。

门廊，就像尖塔一样，是法国教堂的一个特色，法国建筑师对门廊进行了研究、变化，甚至可以说是宠爱，其程度在其他地方几乎没有尝试过。但在所有法国门廊中，沙特尔的门廊最为著名。有两处：一处位于北侧，供奉圣母；另一处位于北侧，供奉圣母玛利亚。另一个在南边，献给圣子，“在沙特尔的这两个门廊上花费的大量智慧、知识、对效果的了解、实践经验，”维奥莱·勒·杜克说，“足以建立整整一代艺术家的荣耀。”我们从北门廊开始，因为它属于圣母玛利亚。它属于圣母玛利亚，因为北方寒冷、荒凉、没有阳光、多风，需要温暖、和平、关爱和力量来抵御撒旦和他那群蜂拥而至的魔鬼的攻击。在那里，这位受尽苦难却全能的母亲接待了其他像她一样受苦但通常并不强大的母亲。传统上，在原始教堂中，北门廊属于妇女。当他们需要帮助时，他们就来到这里，因为这是这个世界上或任何其他地方他们最有希望找到接待的地方。看看玛丽是如何接待他们的！

门廊延伸到耳堂的整个宽度，约一百二十英尺（37.65米），分为三个约二十英尺深的海湾，并覆盖着由外部桥墩支撑的石质拱形屋顶。建筑部分于 1215 年菲利普·奥古斯都 (Philip Augustus) 领导下动工，于 1225 年路易八世 (Louis VIII) 领导下竣工。 1226 年他去世后，装饰工作和雕像由他的遗孀卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇 (Blanche of Castile) 摄政，并在她的儿子圣路易 (1235-70 年) 统治期间继续进行，直到大约 1275 年，该作品被由菲利普·哈代完成。它是法国王室的礼物，所有家族成员似乎都参与了建造，并且他们的几尊雕像应该装饰它。墙壁上排列着——从宗教意义上来说，门廊里住着——有七百多个大大小小的雕像，所有人都以这样或那样的方式献身于天后的荣耀。你会发现，一百年来，拜占庭皇后变成了法国女王，正如同一年，萨伏依的阿利克斯变成了卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇。但威严的基调是一样的，而且如果可能的话，权力的主张也更加强调。

最高的音调立即在门上方的中央海湾响起，在那里你可以看到玛丽作为天后的加冕礼，这是早期艺术中最受欢迎的主题，也是玛丽教堂的主导思想。你看到玛丽在左边，坐在她的宝座上；右边，坐在一个完全相同的宝座上的是基督，他举起右手显然是在祝福，因为玛丽已经戴上了王冠。玛丽向前弯腰，双手举向她的圣子，仿佛在表达感激、崇拜或祈祷，但绝对不是封建致敬的态度。两侧都有一位大天使挥舞着香炉。

下面左侧的门楣上描绘了玛丽的死亡；右边，基督在他的斗篷的褶皱中抱着小孩子形式的玛利亚的灵魂，同时祝福被天使带走的身体——玛利亚的复活。

门楣下方，支撑门楣并将门口分成两半的是特鲁莫（trumeau），即中央码头，是门户的一个新部分，西边的门不知道。通常在圣母玛利亚的教堂里，如兰斯、亚眠或巴黎，圣母玛利亚本人抱着她的儿子，站在码头上，用女人的头践踏龙。在这里，站着的不是圣母与基督，而是她的母亲圣安妮，怀里抱着婴儿圣母；下面是她的丈夫圣约阿希姆（Saint Joachim），在他的羊群中，正在接受大天使加百利（Archangel Gabriel）的通告。

因此，圣母在入口处宣布自己是神圣的女王。神圣诞生的；第三天，神圣地从死亡中复活；凭借神圣的权利坐在天上的宝座上，在上帝圣子的右边，她与上帝合而为一。

除非我们感受到天后的神圣权利主张，除了三位一体之外，但与它合一，沙特尔是难以理解的。教堂门口对它的极度强调表明了教堂的内在含义。当然，这种说法并不完全是正统的。也许，由于我们不是教会成员，如果我们一开始就怀疑对圣母的崇拜从来都不是严格的正统，我们可能会被忽视，也不会受到指责；但沙特尔在属于教会之前就已经是她的了，就像我们这个时代的卢尔德一样，沙特尔是一座因她的出现而受到特别青睐的圣地。仅仅因为它是一个主教辖区，这一事实并没有体现出它的神圣性。主教对玛丽的恐惧远胜过对任何一次教会会议的恐惧。

批评者尽最大努力破坏这个门廊的特殊个人利益，但游客和朝圣者坚持他们在这里的传统权利可能是可以原谅的，因为即使在十三世纪，门廊也是独一无二的，因为它完全属于他们和皇家。法国家族，仅服从圣母。真正的艺术家，转变为批评家，考虑的也不是规则而是价值观，没有无知的公众可以相信他们会与评论家一起明智地对一幅肖像画的日期或正确性发脾气，直到他们了解了它的动机和优点。公众一直确信门廊外墩上的一些雕像是肖像，他们认为没有理由反对这种装饰在教堂中不常见。沙特尔的许多事情在教会中并不常见，尽管教会现在不愿详述它们。因此，学生回到维奥莱勒迪克时，会像往常一样高兴地发现至少有一位批评家的价值观比他的统治感更强：“每一尊雕像，”他在他的“字典”中说道（111, 166）， “具有其个人特征，这种特征铭刻在记忆中，就像人们对一个认识的生物的回忆一样……。沙特尔圣母院门廊以及亚眠和兰斯大教堂大门上的大部分雕像都具有这些独特的品质，这就是为什么这些雕像在人群中产生如此生动和震撼的效果。给人的印象是它命名了它们，了解它们，并给它们每个人赋予了一个想法，通常是一个传说。”

也许人们从看到雕像的第一刻起就这么做了，而且有充分的理由。无论如何，他们给北门廊上两个最具个性的人物起了名字，这两个名字也许是 1226 年法国最著名的名字，但自 1300 年以来，这两个名字只能向任何人传达最隐晦的含义。纯粹的古物学家。该团体非常美丽，以至于在“专着”（第 26 号）中获得了一个板块，代表菲利普·于勒佩尔（Philip Hurepel）和他的妻子马豪·德·布洛涅（Mahaut de Boulogne）。任何人群，甚至任何古物学家，在六百年内的任何时间里，都不太可能说服这些人与卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇以任何形式的家庭团结联系在一起，以至于这种建议似乎很疯狂；然而布兰奇比皮埃尔多活了近二十年，直到 1252 年她作为摄政王去世时，她对这座耳堂和门廊的权力才结束。

菲利普，绰号胡勒佩尔（Boarskin），是一个“法国之子”，他的父亲菲利普·奥古斯都在他婚姻的合法性问题上与教会发生了严重的、甚至可以说是致命的分歧，并被迫抛弃了他的妻子。 1201 年生下许勒佩尔后，于 1200 年去世。这个孩子被认为是合法的，并与比他大 1216 岁的同父异母兄弟路易继承了王位。几乎在他出生时，他就与布洛涅伯爵夫人马豪订婚，并于 1226 年举行了婚礼。 于勒佩尔富有且关系密切，他自然地认为自己（而且确实是）仅次于国王的王室首领，当他的一半1228年，他的弟弟路易八世去世，只留下一个儿子，后来是一个十岁的圣路易继位。他认为——也许是公正的——是他的权利。 1230 年至 XNUMX 年间，当沙特尔的这两座门廊正在修建时，几乎所有的大领主和王室成员都站在他一边，并与布兰奇展开了内战。这场阴谋的两位最伟大的领导人是于勒佩尔，我们预计会在这个门廊的码头上认出他，还有来自布列塔尼和德勒的皮埃尔·莫克勒克，我们别无选择，只能在另一个门廊的特鲁莫上认出他。在那些日子里，每一位伟大的封建领主或多或少都与王室有血缘关系，尽管卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇也是王太后的堂兄，但他们将她视为西班牙入侵者，其憎恨程度就像一个时代的男人所感受到的那样当激情是真实的。

这两个人应该在这里找到，与布兰奇在同一部作品中，在同一时间，在同一屋檐下，这是一个奇妙的想法，学生们可以在这种政治困难中感受到更强烈的反对接纳于勒佩尔进入布兰奇女王学院的想法。门廊比任何所谓的教会习俗规则都重要；然而，无知的游客的首要特权是有权用十三世纪的眼睛来观看或尝试观看他们的十三世纪。经过菲利普和马豪的雕像，走进教堂大门，参观者抬起头看耳堂上方的窗户时，几乎第一个看到的人物是菲利普·于勒佩尔的另一个雕像，他在玻璃中，跪在地上，双手合十，在祭坛前；为了防止出错，他的纹章外套上写着：“Phi：Conte de Bolone”。显然他就是捐赠者，因为在上面的玫瑰花中，他骑着一匹白马，手持带有法国徽章的盾牌。 1230年，于勒佩尔被迫与女王讲和，于1233年或1234年去世，当时布兰奇仍在摄政，并立即成为与布兰奇的卡斯蒂利亚城堡并列的教会伟大捐助者之一。

下一朵玫瑰下方是马豪本人，作为捐赠者，带有她丈夫的法国纹章，这表明窗户一定是一起捐赠的，可能是在 1233 年菲利普去世之前，因为马豪于 1238 年再次结婚，这次嫁给了葡萄牙的阿方索， 1249 年，她抛弃了她，并于 1258 年将她留在了自己的布洛涅镇。最后，在该系列的第三个窗口中，是她的女儿珍妮（“Iehenne”），她可能出生于 1220 年之前，她是1236 年与当时最伟大的战士之一戈谢·德·沙蒂永 (Gaucher de Chatillon) 结婚。根据布尔托神父 (Abbe Bulteau) (111, 225) 的记载，珍妮也拥有她父亲和母亲的手臂；这似乎表明她在结婚前就给了这个窗口。因此，这三扇窗户的历史至少可以追溯到 1233 年菲利普·于勒佩尔 (Philip Hurepel) 去世的时候，而接下来的窗户后面还有两朵玫瑰，以及法国的大玫瑰，大概是同一日期的，全部散落在法国的城堡中。布兰奇王后。外面门廊的图案在玻璃中得到了重复，正如它应该的那样，而内部的法国玫瑰圣安妮则重复了门廊上的圣安妮。王室的个人印记很强烈，但圣母玛利亚的个性印记则更加强烈。在玛丽面前，王子们不仅隐藏他们的争吵，而且还表现出最有礼貌的举止和最优雅甚至严厉的言辞。拜占庭式的奢华和装饰已经消失。所有的人物都表明国王和他的妹妹伊莎贝尔的神圣性。法庭有修道院的气氛；但这一切都彰显了玛丽的威严。艺术家、捐赠者和牧师认为，没有什么可以衬托出天后的权威、优雅和精致的东西。连侍女们也在那里，以十二德、十四福为代表。事实上，虽然男人很多，而且有些还很英俊，但女人却赋予了气质、魅力，而且主要是智慧。玛丽宫廷是女性化的，它的魅力是优雅和爱；如果你看看八福中的美和友谊，从社会意义上来说，也许比爱更有恩典。

于斯曼斯先生坚持认为，与他十二世纪的《浪子女儿》相比，这件雕塑是很差劲的，我希望你能体会到他的热情精神；但其他人更喜欢十三世纪的作品，并认为它可以与最好的希腊作品相媲美。接近或超越这一点——随你的喜好——是你在兰斯看到的同一时期、也许出自同一双手的雕塑。但是，就我们的目的而言，位于右侧海湾的示巴女王就足够了，因为您可以在现场将其与西门上的休斯曼先生的雕像进行比较，后者也可能是示巴女王，作为所罗门的配偶，她象征着教会，因此也预示着玛丽亚本人。两者都是宫廷美丽和优雅的类型，一种来自十二世纪，另一种来自十三世纪，你可以选择你喜欢的;但你要记住，每个人在她的时代都令圣母高兴。你甚至可以认为这是一个既定的事实，即这些女性的美丽和优雅比其他任何人都更令圣母高兴。

品味、情感和礼仪的纯洁性，在这几个世纪的艺术中留下了印记，就像圣路易宫廷和他的母亲一样，除非你了解了瓦卢瓦家族的堕落，否则你不会完全欣赏到这一点。但还是可以看出圣母的品味是多么的精致，多么的纯洁。你还可以看到她在看到痛苦时如何退缩。在这里，在中央海湾，站在她右手边的大卫王旁边，是亚伯拉罕即将献祭以撒的伟大人物。如果有一个主题比另一个主题更让代表母亲的女人感到反感，那就是亚伯拉罕和以撒的这个主题，以及它对男性愚蠢和野蛮的复合恐惧。雕塑家甚至试图使这一动机变得令人愉悦。他以正确的严厉态度将亚伯拉罕放在柱子上，他的脸转向一侧并向上，听他的命令。但是小以撒，手脚都被绑着，像一捆木棍一样靠在父亲的膝盖上，脸上带着完全的信心和自信，而亚伯拉罕的左手让他安静下来，抚摸着男孩的脸，动作一定是笔直的。对马利亚来说，因为以撒总是预表基督。

玛丽的荣耀并不令人恐惧，她的门廊除了她完美的优雅之外，没有任何情感。如果我们要在这里待上几个星期，我们就会发现只有这个想法才体现在每一个细节上。十三世纪的圣母不再是皇后，而是皇后。她是王太后，一个理想化的卡斯蒂利亚布兰奇；她地位太高，不能想要、不能受苦、不能复仇、不能渴望，但又不能太高而不能怜悯、惩罚或宽恕。女人们自然而然地到她的门廊寻求帮助，就像婴儿向母亲求助一样。男人们当着她的面跪下，因为他们害怕她的聪明才智和她的愤怒。

并不是所有的男人都表现出同样的温顺！接下来我们必须绕过教堂，到达南门廊，这是另一位王室成员、路易六世的曾孙、路易八世和菲利普·于勒佩尔的远房表弟德勒伯爵皮埃尔·莫克勒克的礼物。 。 1212 年，他父亲的表弟菲利普·奥古斯都 (Philip Augustus) 与这位年轻人与布列塔尼公国的女继承人阿利克斯 (Alix) 结婚，这次婚姻使他成为王室最有权势的封臣之一。 1227年，他与菲利普·于勒佩尔一起抵抗布兰奇女王的摄政，布兰奇经过长期斗争，于1230年迫使他被废黜。皮埃尔被迫屈服，并被赦免。直到 1236 年，他一直控制着布列塔尼公国，但后来被迫将权力交给他的儿子，并将他的动荡活动转向叙利亚和埃及的异教徒，并于 1250 年从圣路易斯灾难性的十字军东征归来时去世。皮埃尔·德·德勒是一个阳刚的人物，一个糟糕的教士，正如他的绰号莫克勒克所证明的那样，但他是一位绅士、一名士兵和一位学者，而且，更符合我们的目的，他是一个有品味的人。他在沙特尔建造了南门廊，显然是为了纪念他在 1212 年与阿利克斯结婚，而雕像的日期与北门廊的雕像相同，但同样，当皮埃尔于 1250 年去世时，它还没有完工。

人们想知道皮埃尔是否更愿意选择南面入口，或者他是否是因为皇家要求圣母玛利亚的青睐而驱使他到那里的。南门廊属于圣子，北门廊属于母亲。皮埃尔从来没有对女性表现出太多的尊重，而且在圣子的保护下可能比在玛丽的保护下更自在。但无论如何，他尽可能清楚地表明了他对人的问题的看法。对皮埃尔来说，基督是第一位的，他坚持自己的观点，就像布兰奇坚持她的观点一样。

哪一个门廊更漂亮，是艺术家们可以讨论并决定的问题。对于我们来说，无论谁的姿势是无知的，谁的姿势是严格正确的，都足够了；但除了它的美丽或艺术之外，还有情感和动机的问题，这使得德勒保时捷与法国保时捷形成鲜明对比，而这完全在我们的能力范围之内。一开始，中央海湾在门口上方展示了基督，坐在宝座上，举起双手展示圣痕，即人类得救的证据的伤口。母亲坐在他的右手边，——没有她的王冠；在他的左边，与圣母同等地位的是福音传道者圣约翰。两者都具有代祷者同样的恳求态度；玛利亚和约翰之间没有等级或权力的区别，因为除了基督赋予他们的权力之外，他们都没有任何权力。事实上，皮埃尔并没有让母亲跪在儿子面前，就像你在亚眠和后来的教堂里看到的那样——这在玛丽自己的宫殿里肯定是很糟糕的品味。但他不允许她有任何区别，这并不是她严格的权利。上方和周围的天使带有受难的象征；他们没有意识到玛丽的存在；他们全神贯注于圣子的完美。正下方的门楣上是最后的审判，圣迈克尔再次出现，称量死者的灵魂，而上面的玛丽和约翰正试图将死者的灵魂从基督的严格正义中拯救出来。整个教堂恐怖的情节按照十三世纪的方式出现在这座教堂的门口，完全不考虑玛丽的感受；下面，靠着特鲁莫，矗立着基督的伟大形象——整个教会——踩在狮子和龙的身上。门口的两侧矗立着六个伟大的使徒雕像，他们声称自己是教堂的柱子，他们俯视着我们，脸上的表情不再是为了平息我们的恐惧或鼓励奢侈的希望。门廊上没有任何人物暗示肖像或回忆。

这扇门确实非常宏伟；庄重、令人印象深刻、充满阳刚之气，在艺术上很少有人能与之媲美；左湾与之相媲美。在那里，在鼓膜中，基督再次出现；常设;头上戴着王冠；独自一人，除了崇拜他的两位天使，周围只有殉道者，他的见证人。右边的海湾供奉着圣尼古拉斯和圣徒忏悔者，他们在信仰中见证了基督的权威。在二十八位宫廷官员中，使教会的力量在基督之下的伟大人物中，没有一位是女性。皮埃尔·莫克莱克 (Pierre Mauclerc) 的男性正统观念既不放过性，也不放过青春。所有的人都成熟得令人毛骨悚然，除了两个之外，他们的青春之美因周围环境的严峻而更加突出，因此布尔托神父甚至大胆地说“圣乔治和圣西奥多的两座雕像可以被视为作为我们大教堂中最美丽的一座，甚至可以与十三世纪末的两座雕像杰作相媲美。”就这一点来说，各人随心所欲吧；但在比较这二十八个人物时，至少有一个想法似乎强行浮现在脑海中。当然，无论在其他方面与钢笔相比，剑在艺术上比所有的钢笔、书籍或权杖都更强大。你们的《黄金传说》和《罗马祈祷书》是这里唯一值得查阅的指南书，年轻的乔治和西奥多的故事就记录在那里；因为他们在第一次十字军东征期间在安条克城下创造的奇迹已成为历史。但在这些宏伟的人物中，人们一眼就能看出，激发人们对神父长袍下的圣乔治和圣西奥多的热情的不是宗教或主题的神圣纯洁性，甚至不是奇迹或苦难；而是那些伟大的人物。对他来说，就像对那些朴素的男孩和女孩一样，只是青春，拿着长矛、剑和盾牌。

这两个人物站在左海湾的外射孔中，在那里可以得到最好的欣赏，也许这种布置展示了佩隆·德·德勒（Perron de Dreux）（他通常被称为）内心深处最喜爱的东西；但在其他地方，甚至在这个门廊里，他放松了严厉的态度，有时对女人变得近乎仁慈。事实上，优秀的法官更喜欢这个门廊而不是北门廊。不过，随意吧，它包含了大大小小的七百八十三个人物，以供比较。其中，女性元素也有其一席之地，但并不显眼；甚至圣母也得到了她的权利，尽管她的儿子除外。要看到她，你必须站在外面的广场上，用玻璃观察门廊中央的小山墙。在那里，就在拱门上方，您会看到玛丽坐在她的宝座上，戴着王冠，穿着皇家长袍，将圣婴抱在膝盖上，两侧有两位大天使在献香。皮埃尔·德·德勒或其他人最终承认她是摄政王，尽管显然并不急于这样做。如果你把望远镜转向耳堂本身的山墙，在巨大的玫瑰和上面的柱廊上方，你可以看到另一个巨大的圣母雕像，但站着，圣婴在她的左臂上。她似乎戴着王冠，右手拿着地球仪；但布尔托神父说这是一朵花。两位大天使还在那里。该雕像被认为是 1304 年菲利普一世添加的最终装饰的一部分。

在神学方面，皮埃尔·德·德勒似乎比他的法国堂兄们表现得更有学识，而且，作为玛丽教堂应在外部展示的意义的表达，德勒的门廊即使不是那么个人化，也同样充满活力。法国门（Porche de France），或西方门户。当我们乘坐特鲁莫车进入伟大的基督下方的大教堂时，您必须停下来看看皮埃尔本人。婚礼当天，新郎头戴鲜花，跪下祈祷，两名仆人向穷人分发面包。下面，你再次看到他和他的妻子阿利克斯坐在一张桌子前，桌上摆着一条面包，协助他们为穷人提供膳食。皮埃尔向上帝跪下；他和他的妻子向圣母和穷人鞠躬；但不是向布兰奇王后！

现在让我们进去吧！——

我们必须花十分钟让眼睛适应光线，最好用它们来寻找我们来到沙特尔而不是兰斯或亚眠或布尔日的原因，因为大教堂符合我们的理想。事实是，有几个原因：通常有，为了做我们喜欢的事情；当你对沙特尔进行了深入研究并解决了你的理由之后，你将永远找不到一个古文物学家同意你的观点。建筑师可能会轻蔑地听你说话；即使这些优秀的牧师，他们的仁慈是伟大的，他们的耐心是属天的，你很乐意获得他们的好感，但他们也会痛苦地离开你，如果不是恐惧的话。哥特式建筑在这一点上是独一无二的。人们在文艺复兴时期似乎很自在；拜占庭式的人并不太奇怪；至于罗马人，就是我们自己；我们可以蒙着眼睛走过希腊思想的每一个缝隙和缝隙；当我们走近时，所有这些风格都显得很现代；但哥特式却消失了。没有两个男人的想法是一样的，也没有女人会同意任何一个男人的观点。教会本身从来没有同意过这一点，建筑师甚至比神父们更不同意。对大多数人来说，它投射了太多的阴影；它把自己包裹在神秘之中；当人们谈论神秘时，他们通常指的是恐惧。对于其他人来说，哥特式似乎因岁月和衰老而变得苍白，它的阴影意味着死亡。令人好奇的是哥特式狂热者的狂热信念，对​​他们来说，十二世纪意味着旺盛的青春，是华兹华斯永恒的孩子，它的不朽像白天一样笼罩在他身上；它是如此简单，却又如此复杂；它看到的那么多又那么少；它喜欢那么多的玩具，却只关心那么少的必需品；它的青春是那么年轻，它的年龄是那么苍老，它对旧思想的年轻向往是那么令人不安，就像婴儿神秘的衰老一样——

人们不需要比对待婴儿本身更认真地对待它。我们的乐趣在于与它玩耍，并从它的微笑中领会它的意义；不管沙特尔现在怎么样，年轻时那都是微笑。对于教会来说，毫无疑问，这里的大教堂具有固定的行政意义，这与其他主教座堂的意义相同，与我们无关。对我们来说，这是孩子的幻想；一个取悦天后的玩具屋，——让她非常高兴，让她在里面感到高兴——让她着迷，直到她微笑。

太后威严如你所愿；她是绝对的；她可以很严厉；她忍不住生气。但她仍然是一个女人，热爱优雅、美丽、装饰——她的梳妆台、长袍、珠宝；——她仔细考虑宫殿的布置，喜欢光线和色彩；她密切关注着宫廷，要求国王、大主教以及乞丐和醉酒的牧师迅速而自愿地服从。她保护她的朋友，惩罚她的敌人。她需要的空间超出了国王法庭所知道的范围，因为她随时都有可能有成千上万的人向她乞求好处——大多不符合法律——而且对拒绝充耳不闻。她对周围的忽视、不愉快的印象以及缺乏智慧极其敏感。她是地球上有史以来最伟大的艺术家，就像她是最伟大的哲学家、音乐家和神学家一样，除了她的儿子，他在沙特尔仍然是她监护下的婴儿。她的品味绝对不会出错。她的判决永远是最后的。这座教堂是本着这种简单、务实、功利的信仰精神为她建造的——在这种单一的思想中，就像一个小女孩为她最喜欢的金发娃娃搭建一个玩具屋一样。除非你能回到你的娃娃身边，否则你在这里格格不入。如果你能回到他们身边，摆脱习俗的重压一小小时，你就会看到沙特尔的辉煌。

与天后在沙特尔、巴黎、拉昂、努瓦永、兰斯、亚眠、鲁昂、巴约、库唐斯的宫殿相比，人间女王的宫殿简直就是简陋的小屋——这份名单可以延伸成一卷。我们距离宫殿最近的地方是圣米歇尔山的梅尔维尔宫，但没有一位女王拥有与它相媲美的宫殿。 Merveille 大约于 1200 年建造或设计； 1500 年左右，路易十一在都兰的洛什 (Loches) 建造了一座宏伟的城堡，安妮·布列塔尼 (Anne de Bretagne) 女王在那里拥有至今仍存在的公寓，我们将参观这些公寓。在布卢瓦，您将看到凯瑟琳·德·美第奇 (Catherine de Medicis) 的住所，直到她于 1589 年去世为止。安妮·德·布列塔尼 (Anne de Bretagne) 是三重王后，凯瑟琳·德·美第奇 (Catherine de Medicis) 的舒适标准源自佛罗伦萨的奢华。在凡尔赛宫，您可以看到波旁王朝的女王们在一个世纪的辉煌时期所居住的公寓。所有这些加在一起，重要性增加了三倍，无法与任何一座十三世纪献给玛丽女王的大教堂的辉煌相媲美。其中，沙特尔的建造是为了让她特别高兴。

人们已经习惯了这种松散的比较，这种鲁莽的文字浪费，以至于人们不再采用一种想法，除非它是用统计数据和数字的锤子来推动的。对字面精确性和完美直线的令人恼火的要求照亮了每一个真正的美国人的眼睛，你肯定会问玛丽的这种抬举是从什么时候开始的，除非你得到日期，否则你会怀疑事实。如果它们令人厌烦，那是你自己的错；您可以在 M. Rohault de Fleury 于 1878 年出版的《圣维尔日肖像》中轻松读到它们。您可以从 326 年海伦娜皇后的拜占庭开始，或者从 431 年的以弗所议会开始。圣母玛利亚是君士坦丁堡和皇宫的守护神，其名字与阿耳忒弥斯或阿佛洛狄忒的名字一样多。正如教母（希腊语）黛帕拉（希腊语）、探路者（希腊语）后来给穆里略一幅名画的主题一样，有一次，当他在她的雕像前背诵“Ave Maris Stella”时，他说：说到“Monstra te esse Matrem”这句话时，神像按着胸口，将三滴滋养救世主的奶滴在她仆人的嘴唇上。同样的奇迹以不同的形式被讲述给许多其他人，包括圣人和罪人。但它给那个时代的人们留下了如此深刻的印象，以至于在十四世纪，但丁在天堂寻求对王座脚下的一些官方介绍，发现没有比圣伯纳德更有效的与天后的调解者。如果您愿意，您仍然可以阅读伯纳德对圣母玛利亚的赞美诗，甚至他的布道。对他来说，她是伟大的调解人。在有罪的人类眼中，基督太崇高、太可怕、太公正，但即使是最软弱的人类也不会害怕接近他的母亲。她的特点是谦虚。她的爱和怜悯是无限的。 “谁敢说他曾经徒劳地请求过你的怜悯，就让他拒绝你的怜悯吧。”

圣伯纳德是情绪化的，并且在某种程度上是神秘的，就像亚当·德·圣维克多一样，他的赞美诗同样著名，但情绪化的圣徒和神秘诗人无论如何都不允许建立对圣母玛利亚的青睐的专有权利。阿伯拉德和他们一样虔诚，也写赞美诗。哲学占据了她的地位，经院哲学的领袖、托马斯·阿奎那的老师阿尔伯特大帝在“圣母是否完美地拥有七门文科”这个问题上做出了对她有利的决定。一百年前，沙特尔教会就做出了这样的决定，将七门文科置于她的宝座旁边，亚里士多德本人也见证了这一点。但阿尔贝图斯给出了理由：“我认为她做到了，因为经上写着，‘智慧为自己建造了一座房子，并雕刻了七根柱子。’”那座房子是受祝福的圣母；七栏是七文科。因此，玛丽对科学有着完美的掌握。”当然，她也精通经济学，她的大部分伟大教堂都建在经济中心。如果可能的话，行会比僧侣更热衷于她。巴黎、鲁昂、亚眠、拉昂的资产阶级花费数百万美元来博取她的青睐。最令人惊讶的是，伟大的军事阶层也许是最吵闹的。对于温柔、彬彬有礼、怜悯的玛丽来说，在所有不恰当的地方中，战场似乎是最糟糕的，即使不是明显的亵渎。然而，最伟大的法国战士坚持要她带领他们参加战斗，在欧洲每一个战场上，至少五百年来，在人们互相残杀的实际混战中，玛丽都在场，领导着双方。著名的盖克兰警官的战斗口号是“盖克兰圣母院”。 “库西圣母院”是伟大的库西爵士的呼喊。 “欧塞尔圣母院”； “桑塞尔圣母院”； “埃诺圣母院”； “盖德尔圣母院”； “波旁圣母院”； “Notre-Dame-Bearn”——所有众所周知的战斗口号。国王自己的战斗曾一度喊出“Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie”；勃艮第公爵喊道：“勃艮第圣母院”。据说连教皇的士兵都喊着“圣皮埃尔圣母院”。

这种奉献精神的衡量标准是它所花费的金钱，它无可挑剔地向任何有宗教信仰的美国人证明了其严肃而实际的现实。据统计，在1170年至1270年的一个世纪里，法国人建造了1840座大教堂和近1000座大教堂级教堂，按照1000年的估计，更换这些建筑将花费超过1300亿美元。五亿法郎相当于一亿美元，而这仅仅涵盖了一个世纪的伟大教堂。自XNUMX年以来，同样规模的支出一直在进行，法国几乎每个教区都用石头重建了教堂；直到今天，法国仍布满了这种建筑的废墟，但仍然保存下来的十一世纪和十二世纪的教堂，在属于罗马式和过渡时期的教堂中，有数百座，甚至数千座。如果可以使用商业数字的话，投资于圣母的这笔资本的份额不能固定，不会超过 XNUMX 至 XNUMX 年间用于宗教物品的总金额；但从精神和艺术的意义上来说，它几乎是全部，表达了一种强烈的信念，这是任何激情都无法再达到的，无论是宗教、忠诚、爱国主义还是财富；或许除了战争之外，任何单一的经济努力都无法与此相提并论。十二世纪和十三世纪的几乎每座大教堂都属于玛丽亚，直到在法国，人们将巴黎圣母院视为大教堂。但是，她并不满足于此，她养成了要求所有教堂都有一个自己的小教堂的习惯，用英语称为“女士教堂”，它往往与教堂一样大，但总是要更漂亮。玛丽坐在高坛后面，在她自己的私人公寓里，接受无数的恳求，并准备随时走上高坛，支持当地圣人摇摇欲坠的权威。

像这样的支出总是基于经济理念。正如十九世纪的法国人将剩余资本投资于铁路系统，相信他们今生会靠铁路系统赚钱一样，十三世纪的法国人将钱托付给天后，因为他们相信她有能力创造财富。用来世的利息来偿还它。这项投资是基于玛丽作为女王的权力，而不是基于任何正统教会对圣母合法地位的概念。罗马教皇从来没有非常喜爱拜占庭皇后或法国皇后。沙特尔圣母从未完全同情罗马教廷。直到今天，教会作家——比如布尔托神父或罗哈尔·德·弗勒里先生——都对真正的圣母玛利亚感到特别害羞，无论是在沙特尔还是在拜占庭，或者在任何能看到她的地方。布尔日的马丁和卡希尔父亲独自留下了她的真正价值。如果教会控制了她，圣母也许会一直匍匐在十字架下。在拜占庭宫廷的拖累下，在民众的坚持下，在压倒性的自身利益的推动下，教会接受了圣母加冕并加冕，基督加冕，法官加冕；但即便如此，十三世纪的法国人似乎一心要把基督吸收到母亲身上，使母亲成为教会，使基督成为象征。

教会几乎从一开始就为她加冕并加冕，即使愿意，也无法废黜她。在所有基督教艺术中，无论是雕塑还是马赛克、绘画还是诗歌，圣母的地位都得到了明确的体现。圣伯纳德和约翰·科穆宁一样，可能在同一时间（1120-40），向作为女王的圣母吟唱赞美诗：

作为十二世纪的抒情诗人，亚当·德·圣维克托的地位似乎比圣伯纳德高，他对圣母的赞美诗无疑同样强调了她的威严：

毫无疑问，以中世纪拉丁语的幼稚顺口溜为乐，是思想无用的表现，我请求您和教会原谅您在诗歌上浪费了宝贵的夏日，诗歌在当时被认为是神秘的，而现在听起来像一首童谣；但是亚当关于圣母升天的赞美诗中的一两节就完成了她的地位的记录，也完成了她在沙特尔陛下的文献证明：

不断地——最好立即说，正式地，人们用这些至高无上的威严称呼她：“Imperatrix supernorum！” “科莉·蕾吉娜！” “王者荣耀！”但十二世纪似乎决心无视教条，将这一想法付诸实践，得出合乎逻辑的结论。不仅圣子全神贯注于母亲，或者代表在她的监护之下，而且圣父也没有表现得更好，圣灵也紧随其后。诗人将圣母视为“圣殿”。 “totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium。”她是三位一体教堂的食堂——“Triclinium”——因为食堂是最大的房间，容纳了全部成员，并被两排柱子分成三部分。她就是“Templum Trinitatis”，即拥有三重过道的教堂本身。三位一体被她吸收了。

这是教会中一个微妙的话题，你必须敏锐地感受它，而不是粗暴地坚持其必要的矛盾。所有的神学和所有的哲学都充满了公然的矛盾，而且远没有那么令人同情。这种特殊的宗教信仰是人类独有的，并且以某种形式出现在几乎所有宗教中。但是，尽管十二世纪将它推向了极端，并且在沙特尔你可以看到它最迷人的表现形式，但我们总是必须考虑到人们头脑中潜藏的、有意识或无意识的事情。潜伏在所有信仰背后的怀疑主义。教会本身从未完全接受所谓的马里奥崇拜的全部主张。人们也可以肯定，资产阶级资本家和学校的学生，各自从自己的角度，怀着焦急的兴趣注视着圣母。资产阶级将其大部分资本投入到事实上的经济投机中，这与南海计划或我们时代的铁路系统没有什么不同。除了在一种情况下，精力被投入到缩短通往天堂的道路上；另一方面，缩短通往巴黎的道路；但没有一个严肃的学者能够完全相信上帝会与人类建立商业伙伴关系，建立一种股份制社会来改变神圣和普遍法则的运作。资产阶级并不关心经济结果是否良好的哲学怀疑，但他以他一贯的实践洞察力观察这一结果，并且只需要大约三代人（1200-1300）的经验就可以确信文物是不确定的。其效果；圣徒并不总是能够或愿意提供帮助；玛丽本人肯定不可能被收买或贿赂；没有钱的祈祷似乎和有钱的祈祷一样有效。法国财富的最大部分的资本投资并没有使通向天堂的道路和天堂本身变得更加可靠或更加接近。从经济上来说，他感到满意的是，他的巨额资金投资几乎全部损失殆尽，他内心的反应和情绪一样剧烈。它使法国屈服了三百年。资产阶级和农民为收回他们的财产而进行的努力，只要是可以收回的，一直持续到今天，我们最好注意不要卷入这些激情之中。

如果你想充分享受沙特尔，你必须暂时像伯纳德和亚当那样相信玛丽，并像建筑师那样在他们放置的每一块石头和他们凿出的每一个细节中感受到她的存在。你必须首先尝试摆脱传统观念，即哥特式是宗教阴郁的有意表达。对光的需求是哥特式建筑师的动机。他们需要光，而且总是更多的光，直到他们为了获得光而牺牲了安全和常识。他们将墙壁改造成窗户，抬高拱顶，缩小桥墩，直到教堂无法再矗立为止。您会看到博韦的极限；在沙特尔，我们还没有做到这一点，但即使在这里，在圣母想要的地方——比如在高祭坛上方——建筑师已经吸收了所有需要吸收的光线。出于同样的原因，开窗成为哥特式建筑师作品中最重要的部分，在沙特尔，开窗异常有趣，因为建筑师有义务设计一个新的系统，同时满足建筑规律以及品味和想象力。玛丽的。毫无疑问，天后的第一个命令是关于光的，但第二个命令是关于颜色的，至少同样重要。凡是尘世间的女王，尽管她的品味并非拜占庭风格，但她都喜爱色彩。最真实的女王——唯一真正的女王中的女王——对颜色的品味比五十个尘世王国的女王更丰富、更精致，当我们在窗户玻璃上为满足她而付出巨大努力时，你就会看到这一点。幻觉归幻觉——假设玛丽只是一个幻觉——在这种情况下，圣母玛利亚向她的崇拜者回报的金钱回报比资本家至少在这个世界上从任何人那里获得的回报都要大。他试图将其作为快乐和利润的来源的其他财富幻想。

玛丽显然坚持的下一点是她的私人公寓的安排，后殿，与她的王座室，唱诗班区分开来。两者都与公共大厅或接待室截然不同，后者是带有扩大耳堂的中殿。这种安排标志着为神灵建造的教堂和为公众礼拜堂建造的教堂之间的区别。区别主要在于后殿，从这个角度来看，沙特尔后殿是所有后殿中最有趣的。

圣母玛利亚主要需要这三样东西，或者，如果你愿意的话，这四样东西：空间、光线、便利；以及色彩装饰，使整体统一、协调。这涉及到内部；在外部，她需要雕像，而现存的唯一完整的装饰雕塑系统似乎属于她的教堂：巴黎、兰斯、亚眠和沙特尔。玛丽需要沙特尔的所有这些辉煌，只是为了她自己，而不是为了公众。就建筑者的精神而言，沙特尔是专门为圣母而建的，就像阿比多斯神庙是为奥西里斯而建的。除了屋顶和某种程度上的空间之外，人类的需求在很大程度上不会影响沙特尔的问题。人们前来表达敬意或寻求帮助。女王在她的宫殿里接待了他，只有她一个人在家，并且独自下达命令。

艺术家的第二个想法是从他的作品中排除一切可能令玛丽不高兴的东西。由于玛丽与在世女王的不同之处仅在于无限更大的威严和优雅，因此艺术家只能承认那些在法国和英国宫廷中决定品味的伟大女士的实际品味，这些女士围绕着沙特尔伯爵的小宫廷。她们是谁——这些十二世纪和十三世纪的妇女——我们必须从其他方向去观察或寻找；但沙特尔也许是他们留下的最宏伟、最永久的纪念碑，我们可以从这里开始了解他们所没有的某些东西。

首先，它们绝不是现代意义上的模糊、梦幻或神秘；——远非如此！他们似乎只是急于将这些谜团暴露在光天化日之下。或许，与其说是身体上的——因为她们像所有女人一样，喜欢在她们的梳妆台上涂上适度的阴影——但在信仰意义上却是明亮的。沙特尔没有什么能让你觉得神秘的地方，因为他们知道你的罗恩格林、齐格弗里德和帕西法尔。如果您想研究该主题的全部文献，请阅读 M. Male 的《法国十三世纪艺术宗教》，并将其用作指南。在这里，您只需注意门户和门廊上的雕塑是多么具有象征意义和多么简单。即使看起来怪诞或抽象的想法也不过是最简单的孩子的化身。你可能注意到墙上的 Ane qui vielle，即弹奏竖琴的驴子；在所有古老的教堂里，你都可以看到所谓的“动物寓言集”，内容是神话动物，无论是否具有象征意义。但其象征意义就像拉昂牛的现实意义一样简单。它发挥了艺术家在各种装饰方面的努力，并且使人们感到有趣，——也许圣母也被逗乐了；——时不时地，它似乎暗示着你所说的深奥意义，那就是也就是说，我们每个人都可以认为私有财产是为我们自己的娱乐而保留的，公众被排除在外；然而，事实上，在圣母玛利亚的教堂里，公众从来没有被排除在外，而是受到邀请。圣母玛利亚对公众来说甚至还有额外的魅力，因为人们普遍认为她对牧师本身没有什么特别的喜爱。她是一位女王、一位女人、一位母亲，所有这些功能都是祭司无法履行的。因此，她似乎对任何神秘事物都没有什么兴趣，甚至那些看起来最神秘的符号对她教堂里的每个老农妇来说都是清楚的。其中最令人赏心悦目的、最有希望的就是你在巴黎大教堂前面看到的那个女人的身影；她的眼睛缠着绷带；她低下头；她的王冠掉落；没有斗篷或皇家长袍；她手里拿着一面旗帜或旗帜，其杖杆多处折断。对面的码头上站着另一个女人，她披着皇家斗篷，挺拔而威严。这个符号非常优美，让人很想知道它的含义；但中世纪的每个孩子都会立即告诉你，戴着王冠的女人只意味着犹太教堂，就像穿着王袍的女人意味着基督教会一样。

女性品味似乎不太关心的另一个问题是形而上学意义上的神学。玛丽很少为神学烦恼，除非她和皮埃尔·德·德勒一起退到南耳堂。即使在那里，人们也很少谈到三位一体，而三位一体始终是教会最形而上学的微妙之处。事实上，在大教堂中寻找任何关于三位一体作为玛丽所认可的教条的独特表达方式时，你可能会发现很多乐趣。

人们不能认真对待三扇门、三个门户和三个过道表达三位一体的想法，因为首先，没有关于它的规则；教堂可以有他们喜欢的入口和过道；巴黎和布尔日都有五个；门本身并没有分配给三位一体的三个成员，门户也没有分配给三位一体的三位成员。而另一个更严重的反对意见是，侧门和过道并不与中央门同等重要，而只是附属物和附属物，因此误导无知公众接受如此黑色异端的建筑师应该受到火刑，并且可能会去那里。即使是这种三位一体的暗示在只有一个过道的耳堂和有五个以及五七个礼拜堂的唱诗班中也是缺乏的，而且，就无知的头脑所能理解的范围而言，根本没有三连音。毫无疑问，偶尔你会在一些雕塑或窗户中发现三位一体的象征，但这一发现本身就等于承认它的缺失是一种控制性的观念，因为普通的崇拜者肯定至少和我们一样盲目。 ，对他和我们来说，这似乎都是一个完全次要的细节。即使三位一体在任何地方都有表达，你也很难在这里找到解释其形而上学意义的尝试——甚至连神秘的三角形都没有。

教会完全交给母亲和圣子。父亲很少出现；圣灵就更罕见了。至少，这是一个没有正统动机的普通游客给人的印象；十三世纪的崇拜者一定也是这样，他来到这里，全神贯注于玛丽亚的完美。沙特尔代表的不是三位一体，而是圣母和圣子的身份。圣子代表三位一体，因而被母亲吸收。这个想法并不正统，但这不关我们的事。教会看管自己的教会。

圣母的需求和品味，积极的和消极的，现在应该足够清楚，让你感受到艺术家试图满足他们的诚意；但首先你还是得说服自己，人民有雇用艺术家的诚意。这一点是最简单的，因为证据是明确的。 1145 年，当旧弗莱切开始时，即圣伯纳德在维泽莱宣讲第二次十字军东征的前一年，诺曼底迪夫河畔圣皮埃尔的修道院院长海蒙 (Abbot Haimon) 给英国塔特伯里修道院的僧侣们写了一封著名的信这封信讲述了圣母在法国所做的伟大工作，这项工作始于沙特尔教堂。 “Hujus sacrae 机构 ritus apud Carnotensem ecclesiam est inchoatus。”它从沙特尔传播到诺曼底，在那里产生了我们在迪夫河畔圣皮埃尔看到的美丽的尖顶。 “Postremo per totam fere Normanniam longe Lateque convaluit ac loca per single Matri Misericordiae dicata praecipue ocpavit。”这场运动尤其影响到了供奉玛丽的地方，但也席卷了整个诺曼底，四面八方。在玛丽的所有奇迹中，最能证明的，除了保存她的教堂之外，就是建造它。与其说是因为它让我们感到惊讶，不如说因为它让当时的人们和它的工具人更加惊讶。如此深入的民众运动总是令人惊讶，而在沙特尔，奇迹似乎已经发生了三次，或多或少与十字军东征的日期相吻合，并组织了十字军东征，正如鲁昂大主教雨果在给他的信中所描述的那样。亚眠主教蒂埃里。这封信中最有趣的部分是作者的明显惊讶，他今天可能正在与我们交谈，他是如此现代：

沙特尔的居民联合起来，通过运输材料来帮助建造他们的教堂。我们的主以奇迹回报了他们谦卑的热心，这促使诺曼人效仿他们邻居的虔诚……从那时起，我们教区和其他邻近地区的信徒为了同一目标而结成协会；他们不允许任何人加入他们的行列，除非他已经忏悔，放弃了敌意和报复，并与敌人和解。完成后，他们选出一位酋长，在他的领导下，他们安静而谦逊地驾驶马车。

Bercheres-l'Eveque 的采石场距离沙特尔约五英里。这块石头非常坚硬，并且被切成相当大的块，正如您亲眼所见；需要付出很大努力才能运输和铺设到位的砌块。正如现在所显示的那样，这项工程完成得异常迅速，但它是那个时代最坚固的建筑，而且还没有任何软弱的迹象。院长带着更多的惊讶而不是自豪，讲述了用石头建造在大教堂里的精神：——谁曾见过！——谁曾听说过，在过去的时代，世界上强大的王子，人们带来了在荣誉和财富中，贵族们，男人和女人，都把他们骄傲而傲慢的脖子弯到了马车上，像负重的野兽一样，他们把这些装满酒的马车拖到了基督的住所，谷物、石油、石头、木材以及一切生活所需或建造教堂所必需的东西？但是，当他们承担这些负担时，有一件令人钦佩的事情值得观察：常常是，当战车上载着一千多人时——难度如此之大——但他们却在安静中行进，听不到任何杂音，真的，如果不是亲眼所见，人们可能会认为，这么多人中几乎没有一个人在场。当他们在路上停下来时，除了认罪和向上帝祈求宽恕的纯洁恳求之外，什么也听不到。在祭司劝告他们内心平静的声音下，他们忘记了所有的仇恨，不和被抛在一边，债务被免除，心灵的团结得以建立。

但如果有人罪孽深重，不愿宽恕冒犯者，或者拒绝虔诚劝告他的祭司的劝告，那么他的供品就会立即被视为不洁而从马车上扔掉，而他本人也会受到侮辱和侮辱。可耻地被排除在神圣社会之外。在那里，人们看到主持每辆战车的牧师劝告每个人忏悔，忏悔过错，下定决心过上更好的生活！在那里，人们看到老人、年轻人、小孩，都用恳求的声音呼求主，并从内心深处向主发出荣耀和赞美的哭泣和叹息！当人们在号角声和横幅声的警告下恢复上路后，行军进行得如此轻松，没有任何障碍可以阻碍……当他们到达教堂时，他们像精神领袖一样安排马车在教堂周围。露营，整个晚上他们都会唱赞美诗和颂歌来庆祝守夜。他们在每辆马车上点燃蜡烛和灯；他们将体弱多病的人安置在那里，并为他们带来圣人的珍贵遗物以缓解他们的痛苦。随后，神父和神职人员以游行结束仪式，人们虔诚地跟随，祈求主和圣母的仁慈，使病人康复。

当然，在所有这些劳动过程中，圣母玛利亚实际上一直在场，并给予了她帮助，但你不会从聆听她的奇迹的叙述中了解这座建筑，也不会增强大众信仰的影响。如果没有她本人的存在，人们就不会受到启发。但是，对我们来说，艺术的灵感证明了圣母的存在，我们可以在作品中比在文字中更好地看到它的信念。每天，随着工作的进行，圣母玛利亚都在场，指导着建筑师，如果你现在已经意识到它的含义的话，我们将研究这个方向。没有这个感觉，教会就死了。大多数具有深厚宗教本性的人都会强调地告诉你，十三世纪之后，十分之九的教堂实际上已经死了，教堂建筑变成了纯粹的机械和数学问题;但这是一个由你来决定的问题；快乐不在于看到死亡，而在于感受生命。

现在就让我们来看看吧！

像所有伟大的教堂一样，沙特尔教堂不仅仅是神学的宝库，除了它的其他含义之外，它还表达了一种人类所感受到的最深刻的情感——他自己的渺小为抓住无限而进行的斗争。如果你愿意，你可以在其中算出一个无限的数学公式——破碎的拱门，我们对空间的有限概念；尖顶以其汇聚的线条指向超越空间的统一；穹顶不眠不休、不安的推力，诉说着人类为与上帝的能量、智慧和目的相抗衡而付出的未满足的、不完整的、过度紧张的努力。托马斯·阿奎那和经院学者试图用语言表达它，但他们的教会是另一章。实际上，所有人类的工作都到此结束；——数学、物理、化学、动力学、光学、各种机械科学可能发明的——这一恩惠最终到来，就像科学诞生之前宗教和哲学所做的那样。几个世纪所能做的就是以不同的方式表达这个想法：——一个奇迹或一个发电机；圆顶或煤坑；大教堂或世界博览会；有时会将这两个表达式混淆在一起。世博会越来越趋向于表达无穷能量的思想；中世纪的大教堂总是反映世界博览会的产业和利益。沙特尔的表现不如拉昂或巴黎，因为沙特尔从来都不是一个制造业城镇，而是一个圣地，就像卢尔德一样，人们知道圣母在那里创造了奇迹，并被人亲眼见过；但神社仍然把自己变成了一个市场，并创造了有价值的产业。事实上，这是圣保罗对以弗所和圣伯纳德对大教堂提出的主要反对意见。在某些方面，他们更工业化，而不是宗教化。仅仅砖石和结构就为劳动力提供了广阔的市场。固定的金属制品和木制品是另一个；但装饰是迄今为止最棒的。木雕、玻璃窗、雕塑，里里外外，大多是在现场的作坊里完成的，但除了这些固定的物品外，教堂的宝库里还装满了最完美的珍贵作品。那时他们的钱价值很高；现在更大了。今天的世界博览会不可能做得更好了。经过五百年的掠夺，这些物品仍然充斥着博物馆，每次拍卖都会被人们热烈购买，价格不断上涨，质量却不断下降，直到一块十二世纪的玻璃变成了像祖母绿一样的艺术品； 1600年以前的挂毯不只是游客所希望的；中世纪的珐琅、弥撒书、水晶、杯子、刺绣只属于我们的上层人士，几乎总是属于富有的犹太人，即使不是属于国家，他们的本能品味已经占据了整个艺术领域，依赖于它们的退化。皇室和封建国家把钱花在武器和衣服上。只有教会才是普世的守护神，而圣母则是品味的独裁者。

以圣母的品味，在她摄政期间，批评家从来不会挑剔。人们无法了解它的全部辉煌，但人们可以将其视为一种信仰和信任，就像人们接受她所有其他的奇迹一样，而不会对事实的小细节吹毛求疵。十八世纪对这些问题以及伏尔泰和狄德罗的资产阶级趣味的怀疑时期早已过去，随着科学趣味的出现，更加神奇；维奥莱特·勒·杜克 (Viollet-le-Duc) 在《法语词典》中收录了圣母艺术的整个世界，分六卷； M. Labarte、M. Molinier、M. Paul Lacroix 将其叙述为历史；杜索默拉尔先生和其他许多人在博物馆中编目，其作品几乎与主题一样昂贵，所有属于教会的各种各样的小摆设，无论是有用的还是装饰性的，都因贪得无厌而大大增加，对图像的普遍的、私人的需求，用象牙、木头、金属、石头制成的图像，用于每间房子的每个房间，或挂在每个脖子上，或粘在每顶帽子上，形成了一个艺术家以前或之后从未知道的市场，例如立即向务实的美国人解释了教会顽强生命力的原因，以及其掠夺的诱因。圣母玛利亚尤其需要所有的艺术资源，而且是最高的资源。如果沙特尔圣母院发现她的长袍很节约，她一定会嘲笑巴黎圣母院的。如果兰斯或鲁昂圣母院表现出一种女性化的、家庭的、母性的转向廉价的态度，她一定会嘲笑亚眠圣母院。圣母从来不便宜。她的盛大仪式与她天上地下女王的地位所要求的一样辉煌。当她的游行队伍沿着过道蜿蜒前行，穿过人群，到达高高的祭坛时，当时是不可能的，现在也不容易，无法抗拒她光芒四射的存在所带来的狂喜。许多年轻人，时不时地看到这样一个教会的宗教气氛中的景象，而不是怀疑易感性，突然看到了保罗在去大马士革的路上所看到的，并且他和人群一起倒在了十字架的脚下，这是他有生以来第一次感受到十字架的存在。

如果你想知道教堂是为了什么而建的，那就在某个盛大的圣母节来到这里，并投入其中吧；但一个人来！这种知识无法教授，也很少能够分享。我们现在不是在寻求宗教；而是在寻求宗教。事实上，真正的宗教通常是不寻求的。我们只是想感受哥特式艺术。对我们来说，世界不是教室或讲坛，而是一个舞台，而且这个舞台是地球上迄今为止最高的。在这座教堂里，古老的罗马式建筑在我们眼前一跃变成了哥特式建筑。突然之间，在门户和神殿之间，无限升华成一种新的表达方式，永远是思想中罕见的、卓越的奇迹。这两种表达方式相差无几。不比母亲离儿子更远。新艺术家不情愿地松开了他父亲或祖父的手；他回顾自己作品的每一个角落，看看它是否与旧的相符。他不会离开西门或柳叶刀窗；他靠近唱诗班的圆柱；如果可以的话，他会保留圆拱门，但圆拱门无法完成这项工作；它无法上升；于是他打破了它，抬起了拱顶，扔出了飞扶壁，满足了圣母的愿望。

哥特式拱顶有两个弱点，即飞扶壁和虚假的木制遮蔽屋顶，这是美术学院最讨厌的问题。防御的责任并不在于游客，他们充其量也很难理解墙的支撑是外支撑还是内支撑，以及屋顶是单屋顶还是双层屋顶有什么关系。没有人反对圣彼得大教堂的圆顶。没有人对新桥有任何挑剔。然而，这位哥特式建筑师确实表现出了对事实的蔑视。由于他无法在轻型柱子上支撑沉重的石拱顶，因此他建造了尽可能轻的石拱顶，并用不断燃烧的木制遮蔽屋顶对其进行保护。减轻重量的拱顶对于墙壁和柱子来说仍然太重，因此建筑师将支撑物扔掉了，支撑物放置在单独的地基上，暴露在极端不均匀的天气条件下，并且容易成倍增加发生事故的可能性。结果无疑是灾难性的。屋顶被烧毁；墙壁屈服了。

飞扶壁并不是必需品。 Merveille 没有。安茹学派相当假装没有它们。阿尔比没有。阿西西独立；但他们确实在建筑师需要的地方提供支持，而不是在其他地方；它们可能很便宜；他们很优雅。无论他们如何形容教堂，至少它不是堡垒。亚眠和阿尔比是不同的宗教。这个表达与我们有关；该建筑涉及美术学院。令拱门建造者苦恼的永久平衡问题是一个技术问题，对于我们这些坐在观众席上、兴高采烈地观看哥特式拱顶的戏剧舞台装饰的人来说，这并不令人担忧，而只是有趣。这是一项令人惊叹的壮举，用石质肋骨和椎骨建造了一个骨架，在骨架上每一磅的重量都被调整、分配，并从一层到另一层向下移动，直到它像鸟儿降落时那样远距离接触地面。如果任何部分的任何石头，从顶端到地基，风化或塌陷，整个建筑都必须屈服，维修费用可能很高，但是，在巴黎美术学院可以建造的最好的建筑上，维修费用是不可完全忽视，至少沙特尔大教堂，尽管使用非常艰苦，今天仍然像建造时一样坚固，而且铅直，没有裂缝或缝隙。即使是博韦的高耸碎片，从一开始就建造得很差，比大多数哥特式建筑更容易倒塌，而且每当风吹过其多风的平原时，似乎就会再次倒塌，但也设法幸存下来，在时尚之后，有六七座一百年，这是我们这一代人有权要求的。

博韦拱顶高近一百六十英尺（48 米），建造成本低廉。罗马圣彼得大教堂的拱顶高近一百五十英尺（45 米）。亚眠的高度为一百四十四英尺（44 米）。兰斯、布尔日和沙特尔的高度几乎相同；在入口处，一百二十二英尺。巴黎有一百一十英尺。 Abbe Bulteau 负责这些测量；但在沙特尔，正如其他几座非常古老的教堂一样，中殿向入口处倾斜，因为——正如所说的——朝圣者蜂拥而至，他们不得不睡在教堂里，中殿必须用水冲洗才能进入。打扫。沙特尔的真实高度（位于中殿和耳堂的交叉处）尽可能接近一百二十英尺（36.55 米）。

测量的高度是教堂最不感兴趣的。建筑师的职责是让一座小建筑看起来很大，而他的失败在于他把大建筑弄得看起来很小。哥特式建筑的一大美感在于夸大高度，而其最令人好奇的品质之一就是它成功地强加了尺寸的错觉。不用离开巴黎市中心，任何人都可以在巴黎圣母院和圣叙尔皮斯这两座伟大的教堂里研究这种幻觉；因为圣叙尔皮斯教堂的拱顶与巴黎圣母院一样高大，其他尺寸也更大，此外，它的风格也是一座精美的建筑。然而，它的罗马拱门，仿佛是十一世纪的拱门，表明了为什么哥特式建筑的长长、干净、不间断、精致的线条，弯曲成点，并以一种强迫性的方式引导眼睛到上面的顶点，取得了令整个欧洲欣喜若狂的建筑胜利。也许除了君士坦丁堡圣索菲亚大教堂的圆顶之外，世人从未见过任何可以接近它的地方。这一发现是在欧洲为进入天国而进行最团结和最绝望的斗争的时刻出现的。

维奥莱·勒·杜克认为，沙特尔是大规模实验的最终胜利，因为沙特尔从未被改变，也从未需要加强。沙特尔的飞扶壁满足了他们的目的，如果这不是一个纯粹的建筑问题，那​​么阅读维奥莱·勒·杜克对它们的评论是值得的（文章，“Arcs-boutants”）。上面的拱顶很重，大约十五英寸厚；支撑也必须很重；为了减轻重量，建筑师设计了一种有趣的拱廊，应用于他的外部扶壁上。整个教堂的一切都非常坚固，超出了后来的惯例，因此建筑师必须首先研究十一世纪的地下室，该地下室建造得非常坚固，以至于它仍然支撑着教堂，墙壁上没有裂缝；但如果我们深入研究，我们将一无所知；所以我们将从前面开始，就像我们在外面所做的那样。

一眼就能看出建筑师对旧立面和塔楼有多大的麻烦，以及将它们全部推倒的诱惑。 我们不能完全说他在试图拯救旧教会的过程中破坏了自己的教会，但如果他没有完全破坏它，那么他只是通过运用我们永远学不到足够的智慧来拯救它。感到我们无法理解。 真正的无知比任何数量的知识都更接近无限，而且，在我们的例子中，无知被十九世纪冷漠的某种元素所强化，这种冷漠拒绝对它无法理解的事物感兴趣。这是来自十三世纪的强烈反应，除了那些难以理解的事情之外，他们不关心任何事情。 圣母玛利亚要求沙特尔的建筑师在教堂内为她的崇拜者提供更多的空间，同时又不破坏她所喜爱的旧门户和箭形。 这个命令直接来自圣母玛利亚，这可能被认为是理所当然的。 在沙特尔，人们到处都能看到圣母玛利亚，却看不到任何竞争对手的权威。人们看到她下达命令，建筑师就服从他们；但很少有犹豫，就好像建筑师自己做决定一样。 在他的西线，建筑师严格地服从命令，以至于他甚至没有为未完成的细节而费心道歉，如果他对这些细节负责的话，他会焦急地关心这些细节。 他不厌其烦地把沉重的门道向前移，这样，原本在门廊上开放的塔楼小教堂，现在通向中殿，而中殿本身的跨度在外观上比实际多了两个跨度。老教堂；但作品表现出盲目服从，仿佛他在尽最大努力取悦圣母，而不是试图取悦自己。 也许他在任何情况下都无法帮助侧面过道与两座塔楼的坚固墙壁突然碰撞，但他至少可以将中殿中的两个新开间的拱顶降低到地面，并完成了。 在这两个海湾里的拱顶很尴尬，但他却费了很大的劲才完成了这件乍一看似乎很小的事情。 巨大的玫瑰窗是否是事后添加的，我们永远不得而知，但任何人都可以通过玻璃看到，并且在建筑平面图上更好地看到，主教堂的拱顶不够高，无法容纳巨大的玫瑰，而且建筑师不得不将他的两座塔楼跨度向上倾斜。 高度如此之大，即使用玻璃也无法清楚地看到这种高度差，但在平面图上，它似乎有几英尺；也许一米。

当然，这种关于处女干涉的想法对你来说听起来只是一点幻想，这是一个可以在处女和你之间解决的问题；但即使是二十世纪的人也能看到玫瑰救赎了一切，主宰一切，并赋予整个教会以个性。

考虑到艺术家所面临的困难，玫瑰激发了天才的灵感——莎士比亚在改编别人的戏剧时所表现出的天才。到目前为止，它主要通过挺身而出并占领西线来显示其力量，但如果你想要一把尺子来衡量，你可能会注意到它下面那些古老的、十二世纪的柳叶刀窗是不完全在其轴上。最初，在 1090 年左右的原始规划中，旧塔（南塔）的宽度比北塔更大。这种不平等在早期教会中很常见，现代书籍中也有很多争论，无论它们是偶然的还是故意的，但没有人否认它们很有趣。在这些塔楼中，差异并不大，可能是十四或十五英寸，但这导致建筑师进行了纠正，以便将其正面向南倾斜六或七英寸，以使其正面适合教堂的轴线，并将南门和南柳叶刀缩小到一定程度。即使在当时，效果也很糟糕，甚至毁坏了南面的窗户。但是，在 1194 年的火灾之后，建筑师插入了他的大玫瑰，填满了刺血针和拱顶之间的每一英寸可能的空间，他又进行了另一次修正，使他的玫瑰与刺血针偏离了轴线六七英寸。十万人中没有一个人会注意到这一点，在室内，我们完全处于艺术家和圣母的控制之下；但这是玫瑰力量的衡量标准。

再往远处看，人们会看到占据西面主导地位的玫瑰图案围绕着教堂，并在耳堂中再次绽放出绚丽的光芒。这就导致了大规模的开窗，这对游客来说是一次非常雄心勃勃的飞行。更重要的是，因为在这里游客几乎得不到建筑师的帮助，而建筑师在现代几乎没有机会研究这个主题，并接受早期哥特式开窗问题的解决。人们一听到这个词的发音就会变得迂腐和自命不凡，这本身就是一种令人难以忍受的迂腐。但沙特尔全是窗户，它的窗户像圣母玛利亚一样胜利，是她的奇迹之一。沙特尔的窗户就像窗户里的玻璃一样，是无法被人看到的。我们已经看过曼特斯的窗户了；我们已经看到了巴黎窗户发生的事情。巴黎一跃比努瓦永高出二十五英尺，即使在努瓦永，建筑师在大约 1150 年也不得不发明新的开窗法。二十年后，帕里斯和曼特斯再次做出努力，但失败了。 1195 年，沙特尔的建筑师将他的拱顶加高了 XNUMX 英尺，并一劳永逸地展示了一座伟大的大教堂应该如何照明。作为一个建筑问题，即使解决了，它也远远超出了我们的理解能力；但我们总是可以转而看看不可避免的维奥莱-勒-杜克对其在沙特尔的解决方案有何评论：

十三世纪初，沙特尔大教堂的建筑师找到了全新的窗户组合，从上方照亮中殿。下面，在侧廊里，他保持着当时的习俗。也就是说，他打开了尖窗，但这些窗并没有完全填满桥墩之间的空间。他想要，或者愿意把这里留在下面，墙的效果。但在他大楼的上半部分，我们看到他改变了系统；他从一个桥墩直接扔到另一个桥墩，建造了一个圆拱门；然后，在每个跨度内的巨大空间中，他插入了两扇巨大的尖窗，上面有一朵巨大的玫瑰……我们在沙特尔圣母院的这座建筑中认识到一种大胆、一种力量，这与建筑师在建筑中的笨拙形成鲜明对比。法兰西岛和香槟。人们第一次在沙特尔看到建造者坦率地处理天窗或上部开窗，占据拱门的整个宽度，并将拱顶的拱门视为窗户的拱门。建筑简洁、形式优美、工艺精湛、结构真实坚固、材料选择明智，所有优秀作品的特点，都集中在这座十三世纪初宏伟的建筑典范中。

维奥莱·勒·杜克并没有提请人们注意建筑师脑海中必须考虑到的许多其他问题，例如光线的分布，以及一种布置与另一种布置的关系：中殿与过道，以及两者的关系。耳堂，还有唱诗班。跟着他，我们必须单独占领唱诗班，以及后殿的过道和小教堂。人们不可能希望理解艺术家的所有实验和改进，无论是成功还是失败，但是，人们可以带着自信问自己，与巴黎最初的布置相比，这种布置的美丽是否没有改变。包括始终保留玫瑰主题，同时将整个上墙扔进窗户。尽管天窗很辉煌，但它们的魅力很大程度上归功于它们的玫瑰，正如您通过在耳堂正面更大范围内应用的相同方案所看到的那样；然后，站在十字形下方，连续观察所有事物。

玫瑰窗不是哥特式的，而是罗马式的，需要大量的哄骗才能在尖拱内有宾至如归的感觉。起初，建筑师们强烈地感觉到这种尴尬，所以他们尽可能地避免它。在拉昂美丽的外观中，最美丽的地方之一是玫瑰花镶嵌在深圆拱门下。曼特斯和巴黎的西部玫瑰也以同样的方式处理，尽管挑剔的批评家可能会抱怨它们的处理不那么有效或那么合乎逻辑。兰斯大胆地将玫瑰囚禁在尖拱内；但亚眠在 1240 年左右，避难到了 1200 年沙特尔这里所青睐的方形外部环境中。在亚眠的内部，玫瑰圆拱门是中殿的最后一个拱顶，透过尖顶拱顶的远景可以看到，就像这里一样。所有这些都被认为是哥特式立面的主要美丽之处，尽管哥特式建筑师，如果他是一个有逻辑的人，就会坚持他的线条，并在他的前面放一扇尖窗，事实上他就是这样做的在库坦斯。他感受到了玫瑰在艺术上的价值，也许在宗教上更有价值，因为玫瑰是玛丽的象征。人们相当肯定，西边那棵巨大的沙特尔玫瑰是为了取悦她而放在那里的，因为它总是在她的眼前，是她从高高的祭坛上看到的最显眼的物体，因此也是最仔细考虑的装饰品。整个教堂，唱诗班外面。仅仅尺寸就证明了她对它的重视。外径接近四十四英尺（13.36 米）。沙特尔的中殿可能仅次于昂热的中殿，是所有哥特式中殿中最宽的。约五十三英尺（16.31米）；玫瑰占据了这个巨大跨度的每一寸空间。在当时的建筑师中，玫瑰的价值是巨大的，因为它是维拉尔·德·奥内库尔绘制的教堂的唯一部分。从他的时代起，它就被一代又一代的建筑师重新绘制、描述和评论，直到它成为像帕特农神庙一样的经典。

然而，这款沙特尔玫瑰却是坚实、严肃、平静的，在其所处的时代达到了不同寻常的程度。它甚至比纯粹的罗马式玫瑰更具罗马式风格。在博韦，您必须停下来看看圣艾蒂安教堂耳堂上的罗马式玫瑰；维奥莱-勒-杜克（Viollet-le-Duc）在一幅图画（文章，“皮尼翁”）中提到了这一点，时间不早于 1100 年，因此比沙特尔的玫瑰早了大约一个世纪；它并不是一朵真正的玫瑰，而是一个命运之轮，上面有人物爬上爬下。另一种被认为是十二世纪的玫瑰产区是埃唐普 (Etampes)，它与拉昂 (Laon)、圣勒德埃塞朗 (Saint-Leu-d'Esserent) 和曼特 (Mantes) 的玫瑰相得益彰。沙特尔的玫瑰是所有玫瑰中最严肃的，维奥莱·勒·杜克用它的材料来解释它——贝尔谢尔的沉重石头；——但这种材料不允许影响伟大的耳堂玫瑰，建筑师只要他认为值得，他的材料就会屈服于他的目标。站在中央十字花下，只需转过头，您就可以看到所有三朵玫瑰。北边的法兰西玫瑰园建于或计划于 1200 年至 1210 年菲利普·奥古斯都统治时期，因为外面的门廊是后来的建筑，于 1212 年开始建造。直径与西方玫瑰相同，但更轻，并且由更轻的石头制成。与“法国玫瑰”相对，在南面，矗立着皮埃尔·莫克勒克（Pierre Mauclerc）的“德勒玫瑰”（Rose de Dreux），它的日期相同，动机相同，但颜色更淡。更像是一朵玫瑰，而不是像一个轮子。所有三朵玫瑰一定是在大约同一时间规划的，也许是由同一个建筑师在同一个工作室里规划的；然而，西方玫瑰却显得十分与众不同，仿佛它是专门为适应它所统治的十二世纪的立面和大门而设计的。这是否真的是艺术家的想法，是一个需要艺术家回答的问题；但这就是效果，无需专家证明；它盯着一个人的脸。无论在内部还是外部，人们都会感觉到十二世纪的精神受到了尊重和保存，就像宗教情感迫使建筑师不顾祖父的作品而伤害了自己的作品一样。

那么，在西前线有两种明显的感觉：——对十二世纪作品的尊重，以及对玫瑰窗饰的热情；两者都服从于对光的需求。如果您担心必须相信这三件事实际上是一体的；建筑师就像石头亚伯拉罕一样，在爱抚和牺牲他的孩子的同时，聆听着圣母的命令；玛丽而不是她的建筑师建造了这个立面；如果你觉得神圣的意图是不必要的无礼，那么你很快就可以通过去任何后来的教堂摆脱它，在那里你不会被迫看到除了建筑师圆规之外的任何作品。根据维奥莱·勒·杜克的说法，灵感在 1250 年左右停止，或者按照圣母的说法，在卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇于 1252 年去世时停止。沙特尔的作品中清楚地展示了她自己的手，属于感觉，如果没有执行，到十二世纪的最后几年（1195-1200）。伟大的西方玫瑰为整个装饰提供了动机，并在耳堂的伟大玫瑰中重复出现，标志着圣母的意愿，即“cele qui la Rose est des Roses”的品味和知识，或者，如果您更喜欢Adam de Saint-Victor 的拉丁语，她的手，“Super rosam rosida”。

这一切都很容易；但如果你真的在这些广阔的公共法庭上看不到玛丽本人的手，这些法庭的目的不是为了她个人的存在，而是为了她的普通民众的使用，那么你最好停在这里，不要冒险进入唱诗班。大厅似乎是简单的建筑。中殿和耳堂并不常见。外立面，甚至塔楼和护墙板都或多或少地成功，因为它们或多或少是理性和思想的平衡的、数学的、可计算的产物。最严重的困难只从唱诗班开始，即使如此，直到建筑师到达后殿的曲线时才变得绝望，那里有不可能的拱顶，复杂的线条，交叉推力，内部和外部的双重问题，它的结构。有缺陷的屋顶和不均匀的照明。完美的哥特式后殿是不可能的；完全满足其主要目的的后殿是罕见的。最简单、最便宜的解决方案是根本没有后殿，这就是英国的方案，拉昂也尝试过这种方案。方形、平坦的墙壁和窗户。如果说寻找诺曼塔楼可以提供夏季的娱乐，那么寻找后殿则可以提供教育，但它会带你远离法国。事实上，立即从君士坦丁堡的圣索菲亚教堂、拉文纳的圣维塔莱教堂和巴勒莫的蒙雷阿莱教堂，以及托尔切洛和穆拉诺的教堂以及威尼斯的圣马可教堂开始会更简单；承认没有任何装置可以与拜占庭半圆顶的惊人和神秘的威严相媲美，其奇妙的马赛克圣母玛利亚从入口处就以她帝国和神圣的存在占据了教堂的主导地位。不幸的是，北方的教堂需要光线，北方的建筑师们转而拼命建造一个新的后殿。

拉昂大教堂的计划似乎遭到了一致否决。唱诗班尽头光秃秃的、平坦的墙壁很碍眼。中殿的尽头已经够糟糕的了，在耳堂的尽头又变得烦人了，因此在努瓦永和苏瓦松，建筑师凭借对室内形式的敏锐感觉，将耳堂的末端修成了圆形。但是，尽管外部需要可能需要方形耳堂，但东端的平坦墙壁的愚蠢变得令人难以忍受。方形唱诗班既不适合教堂仪式和游行，也不具有法国人所理解的相同的安排优势。法国建筑师似乎异口同声地拒绝了拉昂的实验，转而采用直接取自罗马式的解决方案。

很早——十一世纪——在奥弗涅——例如克莱蒙和伊苏瓦尔——可能由一位建筑师建造了整组教堂，这些教堂有一个圆形后殿，分成五个后殿小教堂。向南到达图卢兹的游客可以在十二世纪著名的圣塞尔宁教堂中看到罗马式后殿的另一个例子。很少有评论家会因为喜欢它而生气。事实上，就外观而言，人们甚至可能会认为它比有史以来建造的任何哥特式后殿的外观都更迷人。许多十一世纪和十二世纪的罗马式后殿仍然保留在法国，在一些意想不到的教区教堂中出现，但它们安静、不引人注目的优雅总是令人惊讶，与罗马式塔楼和谐相处，如果有的话，他们升入其中，如圣瑟宁；但所有这些教堂都只有一条过道，当拱顶升高时，内部总是会出现麻烦。 1200年，沙特尔的建筑师无法从这些地方获得直接帮助，甚至无法从巴黎获得直接帮助，因为巴黎有一个美丽完美的后殿，但没有后殿小教堂。最早的后殿可以作为沙特尔的一个建议，或者至少作为我们的一个观察点，是我们在巴黎参观的圣马丁德香修道院教堂的后殿，据说可以追溯到1150年左右。

这里有一个圆形唱诗班，周围是两排间隔不规则的柱子，外面有圆形教堂，这似乎或多或少是沙特尔的建筑师为了圣母的目的而一心想要得到的。紧随圣马丁德香教堂的计划而来的是维泽莱修道院教堂的计划，该教堂建于 1160-80 年左右。这里的拱顶直接从唱诗班的最后一个拱门上伸出，如图所示，首先支撑在唱诗班的轻质柱上，这些柱间隔均匀，然后落在外面一排较重的柱上，这些柱也均匀分布间隔开，最后停在巨大的码头上，码头之间有五个圆形教堂。该平面图一目了然地表明，这种布置将第二排柱子拉得很远，而一座比维泽莱大得多的教堂需要将它们间隔得更远，以至于将它们连接起来的拱门必须无限期地升高；而如果除此之外，在外面再增加一条过道，桥墩最终将需要不可能的拱顶。

当宏伟的大教堂建成时，问题就出现了，巴黎的建筑师大胆地解决了双通道的问题，其规模需要新的方案。在这里，尽管最善意的决议不是技术性的，但我们必须尝试技术性，因为没有它，沙特尔最有趣的怪癖之一就会消失。维奥莱·勒·杜克再一次：——

由于建筑师不想让柱间后殿空间（AA）的内部开间小于平行开间（BB），因此第一个辐射开间给出了第一个空间（LMGH），这是很难设计的。保险库和第二个空间（HGEF），这是不可能的；如何建立从F到E的拱门？即使是圆形的，它的琴键也会比尖头 archivolt LM 的琴键高得多。随着第二个放射状海湾的开口越来越宽，难度也随之增加。因此，建造者在第二过道的柱子（H、G和I）之间插入了两根中间柱O和P；他在教堂的外墙上通过后殿第一个海湾中的一个相应的桥墩（Q）和第二个海湾中的两个类似的桥墩（R和S）来支撑它。

“没有必要指出，”维奥莱-勒-杜克继续说道，似乎他很怀疑可能需要指出，“这个系统展示了什么样的技能，以及建筑艺术在当时已经发展了多少。”十二世纪末的法兰西岛；编排和风格的统一在多大程度上吸引了该省的艺术家。”

事实上，这种安排在数学和技术上似乎都是完美的。无论如何，我们所知甚少，无法批评它。然而，人们很想知道为什么任何其他建筑师或任何其他教堂都没有重复这一点。显然，巴黎人自己对此并不太满意，因为他们在一百年后的 1296 年对其进行了改造，以便在码头之间建造教堂。由于每座新大教堂的建筑师在此期间都坚持采用背面小教堂，人们可能会大胆猜测巴黎的计划阻碍了服务。

在沙特尔，教堂的礼拜仪式是玛丽自己的喜好。教会是玛利亚；教堂是她的私人房间。她对巴黎宫殿里为她所做的安排并不满意；它们太建筑化了；过于规则和数学化；太受欢迎；太没有人情味；她突然命令沙特尔的建筑师恢复原来的安排。在沙特尔的建筑师采用了一项全新的计划之前，巴黎的后殿几乎没有被它的领导所覆盖，根据维奥莱·勒·杜克的说法，这对他没有什么好处，但这显然是强加给他的，就像十二世纪的门户一样。它不仅没有巴黎方案的数学正确性和精确性，易于理解和模仿，而且它的系统中甚至带有一种暴力——一种扳手——就像圣母用她宏伟的拜占庭风格所说的那样：——我会的！

“在沙特尔，”维奥莱·勒·杜克说，“大教堂的唱诗班提出的计划并没有给建筑师带来多大的荣誉。圆形后殿和圣所的平行侧面之间缺乏协调；第二个抵押品的柱间距松散（松弛）；拱顶组合得很差；尽管第二过道的柱子之间的空间很宽，建筑师仍然必须缩小内部柱子之间的空间。”

该计划表明，从一开始，建筑师一定是故意拒绝巴黎方案的；他一定是从缩小内部柱子之间的空间开始的；然后，他以一种暴力的方式安装了第二排柱子。最后，他通过建造一座原始或不寻常形状的外墙来表明他的动机。任何女人都会立即看出所有这些聪明才智和努力的秘密。沙特尔后殿的尺寸和宽度都非常巨大，灯光优美。在这里，就像整个教堂的其他地方一样，窗户赋予了法律，但在这里它们实际上取代了法律。圣母亲自负责她闺房的照明。根据维奥莱·勒·杜克的说法，沙特尔大教堂与所有其他大教堂的不同之处在于，沙特尔大教堂的建造不是为了中殿，甚至不是为了唱诗班，而是为了后殿。它不是为人民或宫廷而计划的，而是为女王而计划的；不是教堂而是神殿；神殿是后殿，女王在那里安排灯光来取悦自己，而不是她的建筑师，建筑师已经在西门被牺牲了，他只能在女王从未去过的中殿和耳堂中自由活动，而且，在她自己的公寓里，她甚至没有看到。

事实上，这就是维奥莱·勒·杜克用他的专业语言所说的话，这对游客来说也许——或者听起来——更合理，因为游客的想象力很难与想象一个真正的神灵所付出的努力相媲美。也许，事实上，人们可能会变得如此高尚，想象一位真正的拉昂主教，他应该命令他的建筑师建造一座巨大的宗教大厅，与当时巨大的修道院相媲美，并吸引人们，就好像它是一间俱乐部房间。在那里，他们可以看到所有伟大的风景。教堂仪式；戏剧；政治职能；他们在那里做生意，经常应酬。他们在教堂里有宾至如归的感觉，因为那是他们的教堂，不属于神职人员或罗马。对罗马的嫉妒是哥特式建筑的主要动机，罗马对此给予了充分的回报。拉昂主教至少承认了耳堂的习俗或传统，但布尔日大主教甚至废除了耳堂，除了拉昂放弃的圆形后殿及其小教堂外，大厅没有特殊的宗教表现。人们很难决定拉昂和布尔日哪个更受欢迎、更工业化、更政治化，或者换句话说，哪个更不那么宗教化。但正如维奥莱·勒·杜克的计划所表明的那样，巴黎人与其中任何一个计划都相当先进，直到后来才将其计划改为为宗教服务提供教堂的计划。

亚眠和博韦各有七个礼拜堂，但只有一条过道，因此它们与巴黎、布尔日和沙特尔的后殿不属于同一类，尽管这些计划值得研究比较，因为它们显示了多少侧面问题是，建筑师对自己的方案有多不满意。与沙特尔相比，最有趣的是勒芒，那里的后殿教堂被带到了狂热的地步，而拱顶似乎足够合理，双通道成功地管理，如果维奥莱勒杜克允许无知的人对建筑教条形成意见。就我们的目的而言，建筑教条可能成立，巴黎方案可能被认为是理所当然的，因为它本身就是正确和正统的；维奥莱·勒·杜克所教导的只是沙特尔计划是非正统的，更不用说是异端了。而这正是他的话中最有趣的一点。

沙特尔的教会不属于人民，不属于神职人员，甚至不属于罗马。它属于圣母玛利亚。 “在这里，宗教的影响完全显现出来；后殿的三座大教堂；另外四个不太明显；唱诗班周围有宽阔的双通道；巨大的耳堂！教堂的仪式在这里可以展现其全部的盛况。合唱团是主要目标，比巴黎、布尔日、苏瓦松、尤其是拉昂更重要。为此，建造了教堂。”

一个痛苦地意识到自己的无知，并且永远不会梦想向任何人提出纠正建议的人，可能不会冒险向建筑师提出任何形式的想法;但是，如果允许将维奥莱·勒·杜克的话转述为一种或多或少的情感或十二世纪的形式，那么在他之后，人们可能会说，与巴黎或拉昂相比，沙特尔后殿表现出了同样的天才。在沙特尔玫瑰；同样的博大的胸怀，能够战胜困难，同样的坚强意志，能够战胜困难。沙特尔后殿与所有其他哥特式后殿一样有趣，因为它凌驾于建筑师之上。如果你真的没有想象力，你可以拒绝认为圣母玛利亚自己制定了这个计划。我们想象力的薄弱现在是先天性的、有机的，超越了兴奋剂或马钱子碱的影响，我们像敏感的植物一样在视觉或精神的触摸下退缩。但至少有时人们仍然可以感觉到女人的品味，而在沙特尔的后殿里，人们感觉不到其他任何东西。

我们终于面对面看到了沙特尔的至高无上的荣耀。其他教堂也有玻璃——数量很多，而且非常精美——但我们一直在努力一睹沙特尔玻璃背后的荣耀，并赋予它自己的品质和感觉。这一次，建筑师毫无用处，他的解释也很可怜；画家的帮助就更少了。装饰者，除非他在玻璃中工作，否则是最糟糕的向导，而如果他在玻璃中工作，他肯定会引导错误。他们所有人都可能辛苦劳作，直到皮埃尔·莫克勒克的石头基督复活，并在南部门户上谴责他们为不可饶恕的罪人，但他们或任何其他艺术家都不会创造另一个沙特尔。你最好在这里停下来，一劳永逸，除非你愿意感受到沙特尔是由圣母创造的，而不是由艺术家创造的。

如果这种帝国主义的存在以一种不容误解的能量印在建筑和雕塑上，那么它透过玻璃散发出的光芒和色彩实际上使玛丽真正的仆人失明。有时，人们在谈论它时会变得有点语无伦次。一个人为自己想要的奢侈而感到羞耻；一个人没有必要费力地向自己解释和证明什么是像天空中的太阳一样清晰的东西；人们在思考什么只能被感觉到，什么应该立即感觉到时，就会发脾气，就像在十二世纪一样，甚至通过“truie qui file”和“ane qui vielle”。任何人只要愿意就应该感受到它；任何不想感受它的人都可以不去管它。尽管如此，可能没有百分之一的游客——也许不是千分之一的英语国家——确实感受到了这一点，或者即使向他解释也能感受到这一点，因为我们已经失去了很多感觉。

因此，让我们继续努力，费力地证明上帝，尽管即使对圣伯纳德和帕斯卡来说，上帝也无法证明；并使用书中提供的材料来寻求帮助。并不多。令人震惊的是，法国人忽视了他们最伟大的艺术荣耀。人们甚至不知道该去哪里寻找。如果有人想开始研究法国玻璃，就必须去国家图书馆，请求获得观看拉斯蒂里先生的不朽作品的特别许可。幸运的是，政府在沙特尔开始了一项伟大工程，但从未完成，其中有一个片段。另一个是关于布尔日的，这是必不可少的，但不是官方的。 Viollet-le-Duc 的文章“Vitrail”则作为整体的指南。奥丁的书《Le Vitrail》很方便。马累的著作《L'Art Religieux》是必不可少的。英文方面，西湖的《设计史》很有帮助。也许，在阅读了所有可读的内容之后，最大的希望将是提供具有最大视场的最好的眼镜；并选择教堂空无一人的时间，坐在中殿的中间位置，面向有晨光的西入口，这样西窗的玻璃就不会受到阳光直射。

三把柳叶刀的玻璃是大教堂里最古老的。如果它下面的大门和雕塑是在 1150 年之前的二十年或三十年前建造的，那么玻璃也不会晚得多。它与圣但尼的 Abbe Suger 玻璃杯相匹配，该玻璃杯肯定早在 1140-50 年就已制造，因为 Abbe 在 1152 年去世之前花了很长时间制作它。正如他的传记作者所说，它们的完美证明了，苏热神父在圣但尼的窗户上花费了很多年和很多钱，专家们也确认沙特尔的三把柳叶刀与苏热的剩余作品一样好。 Viollet-le-Duc 和政府专家 M. Paul Durand 确信，就现有记录而言，这种玻璃是有史以来最好的。代表杰西之树的北方柳叶刀矗立在所有玻璃制品的顶端。因此，窗户被认为是世界上最绚丽的色彩装饰，因为没有任何其他材料，无论是丝绸还是黄金，也没有用刷子涂上的不透明颜色可以与半透明玻璃相比，甚至拉文纳马赛克或中国瓷器在它们旁边是黑暗的。

这个说法可能并不谦虚，但这不是我们的。维奥莱勒杜克必须为自己的罪孽负责，他选择了杰西树的柳叶刀窗作为他关于玻璃的讲座的主题，作为这一最伟大的装饰艺术最完整和完美的例子。在追随他的过程中，人们不自觉地再次被拖入技术之中，更糟糕的是，被拖入一个色彩世界，而其技术在五百年前就被遗忘了。维奥莱·勒·杜克试图恢复它。 “在研究了我们最好的法式窗户之后，”他谨慎地建议，“人们可能会坚持”，作为他们和谐的秘诀，“玻璃艺术家的首要条件是知道如何处理蓝色。蓝色是窗户里的光，光只有通过对立才有价值。”因此，蓝色的辐射力是起点，在这个问题上，维奥莱·勒·杜克有很多话要说，学生需要掌握这些话；但游客永远不应该学习，否则他就不再是游客了；如果我们知道，为了获得他们想要的价值，艺术家们用线条孵化他们的蓝色，用数字覆盖他们的表面，就像用屏幕一样，并用白色或白色的窄圆圈将他们的蓝色绑在自己的领域内，这对我们来说就足够了。黄色，而黄色则串珠，以将蓝色更牢固地固定在其位置上。我们首先要记住蓝色是光的定律：——

但也正是这种发光的颜色为所有其他颜色赋予了价值。如果你设计的窗户中不应该有蓝色，你会得到一个脏的、暗淡的（blafard）或粗糙的表面，眼睛会立即避开；但如果你在所有这些色调中加入一些蓝色，即使没有巧妙地和谐，你也会立即得到惊人的效果。因此，十二世纪和十三世纪的玻璃工匠特别关注蓝色玻璃的成分。如果最多只有一种红色、两种黄色、两三种紫色、两三种绿色，那么就会有无限深浅的蓝色……并且这些蓝色的放置要经过非常细致的观察，才能对其他颜色产生影响。音调，以及它们上的其他音调。

维奥莱·勒·杜克以杰西之树的窗户作为他对规则的第一个例证，因为它的蓝色底色是从上到下的一条连续的条带，两侧是从属的红色，并且有一条边界将整体如此清晰，任何人都看不出它的对象或它的方法。

主要主题（即杰西树的地面）的蓝色调主导了所有其他主题的色调。这种媒介对于使发光的光彩能够展示其能量是必要的。这个主要条件决定了先知的红色地面，以及到达外部半圆形带后返回蓝色的地面。为了充分体现红色的活力和蓝色的辐射透明度，角落的底色采用了翠绿色；但是，在角落本身，蓝色被唤起，并通过方形的精致装饰赋予了额外的坚固性。

这个翻译是很自由的，但是想要了解这些窗户的人必须阅读整篇文章，并且在教堂这里阅读它，一手拿着字典，另一只手拿着望远镜，因为望远镜比字典更重要。它到达了复杂的边界，该边界详细地重复了中心的配色方案：-

边界重复了分配给主要主题的所有色调，但以小片段的形式重复，因此该边界具有坚固而有力的效果，不会与中心部分的大型布置相竞争。

人们可能会认为这很简单；但事实并非如此。轻松在任何插图手稿（阿拉伯、波斯或拜占庭）上进行测试；由任何东方地毯（无论新旧）验证；在明罐或景泰蓝花瓶上自由绘制任何中国图案；并为巴黎时装店的橱窗提供一种字母表。浓烈的红色；强黄色和弱黄色；强紫色和弱紫色；强绿色和弱绿色，都被捆绑在一起，给定它们的值，并由蓝色固定在它们的位置。当透视被禁止，这些十二世纪和十三世纪的玻璃窗就像东方地毯一样，意味着平坦的表面、不能被视为开放的墙壁时，事情似乎就更简单了。十二世纪的玻璃工匠宁愿把风景画背在背上，也不愿用它来装饰他的教堂。他宁愿用油漆孔装饰他的地板，就像他的墙壁一样。他想让彩色窗户保持平坦，就像挂在墙上的地毯一样。

艺术家无法修改窗户中半透明颜色的辐射；他所有的才华都在于从中获利，根据单一平面上给定的调和方案，如地毯，而不是根据空中透视的效果。做你喜欢做的事，玻璃窗永远不会，也永远不能代表除了平面之外的任何东西；它的真正美德甚至只有在这种条件下才存在。每一次向眼睛呈现多个平面的尝试对于色彩的和谐都是致命的，而且不会在观众中产生任何错觉……半透明绘画只能提出一种尽可能有力地支持色彩和谐的设计作为其对象。

这条定律是否绝对，你可以通过观察现代玻璃（大部分是透视玻璃）来最好地判断。但是，无论你喜欢与否，透视问题在十二世纪的窗户中并不比在日本的绘画中更重要，而且可能会被忽略。就我们而言，十二世纪的装饰仅适用于一个平面，而窗户则是另一种形式的地毯、刺绣或马赛克，挂在墙上以增加色彩——简单的装饰，可以被视为一个整体。如果说杰西之树有什么教导的话，那就是艺术家首先想到的是控制他的光线，但他这样做并不是为了使颜色变暗；而是为了控制光线。相反，他像镶嵌钻石和红宝石的珠宝商一样辛勤工作，以增加它们的光彩。如果他对蓝色的使用说明了这一点，那么他对绿色的使用也证明了这一点。杰西之树的外缘是我们校长Viollet-le-Duc设定的一个样本，他要求我们从这个样本中研究出方案，从光的处理开始，到翠绿的价值结束角落里的地面。

尽管杰西之树的边界很复杂，但它在另外两扇十二世纪窗户的边界上有它的伴侣，在侧过道上也有一些十三世纪的窗户。但三把柳叶刀中的南边则展示了艺术家们如何应对扰乱他们统治的困难。南窗的边界不算应有的；它出了问题，一项研究表明，应该归咎于建筑商，而不是玻璃工人。由于他对南塔宽度的错误估计——如果真的是错误估计的话，建造者在南门和柳叶刀上节省了六八英寸，这足以破坏颜色值之间的平衡，因为质量，南窗和北窗。艺术家被迫选择是牺牲南边窗户的中心还是边界，并决定如果缩小中心，窗户就无法保持平衡，但他必须通过丰富中心和牺牲窗户来平衡它们。边界。他在中心布置了尽可能丰富的奖章，并用边框包围了这些奖章，这些边框也被丰富到了极致。但是这些徽章的边框遍布整个窗户，当你用双筒望远镜寻找外边框时，你只能在顶部和底部清楚地看到它的图案。在两侧，徽章以大约两英尺的间隔覆盖并中断它；但这部分得到了纠正，因为它的边界变得如此丰富，超过了大教堂中的任何其他边界，甚至超过了杰西之树的边界。艺术家是否成功是由其他艺术家（或者如果你愿意的话）由你来决定的问题；但显然他确实成功了，因为没有人注意到这个困难或装置。

南方的柳叶刀代表基督的受难。承认维奥莱·勒·杜克认为杰西之树的完整垂直配色方案是更有效的窗户，人们可能仍然会问奖章方案是否不是更有趣。一旦通过了研讨会，就不会再有任何疑问了；杰西之树是所有三个窗口中最不感兴趣的。家谱树没有什么价值，无论是艺术价值还是其他价值，除了那些属于它的分支的人之外，杰西之树被放在那里，不是为了取悦我们，而是为了取悦圣母。耶稣受难的窗户也是为了取悦她而放在那里的，但它讲述了一个故事，并且以一种比主题更新颖的方式进行。在用作素描板的白色桌子上画出设计的绘图员要么是希腊人，要么面前有一本拜占庭弥撒书，或者是珐琅或象牙。这些传奇窗户上的第一个奖章是左下角的奖章，它开始了故事或传说；这里它按照希腊教会的方式代表基督。下一个奖章是《最后的晚餐》；盘子里的鱼是希腊的。在窗户的中间，借助双筒望远镜，您会看到一个或什至两个受难像，因为左边是十字架上的基督，右边是从十字架上下来的；这是一个人用钳子拔出固定基督脚的钉子的形象。西方宗教艺术中未知的人物。右边靠近顶部的 Noli Me Tangere 具有某种希腊特色。所有的评论家，尤其是保罗·杜兰德先生，都注意到了这种拜占庭式的外观，这在圣但尼的苏格窗户上更为明显，以至于表明两者出自同一个人之手，而且是希腊人的手。如果这位艺术家真的是希腊人，那么他的作品比拜占庭留下的任何作品都更美丽，并且比开罗的美丽作品中的任何作品都要精美得多，但尽管人物和主题或多或少是希腊的，就像金字塔上的雕塑一样。门户网站，艺术似乎是法国的。

看中央的窗户！自然地，圣母坐在那里，她的家谱树在她的左边，她儿子的见证在她的右边，以证明她的双重神性。她坐在长光环中；在西边的门户上，在她的正下方，她的儿子以石头呈现，她的王冠和头颅，以及孩子的王冠和头颅，都是十四世纪的修复品，或多或少与原作相似；但她的坐垫王座和帝国长袍，以及双手的花朵权杖，都和大门的雕塑一样古老，让人想起第一次十字军东征。在她的两侧，太阳和月亮给予赞美；她的两位大天使米迦勒和加百列，带着灿烂的翅膀，不像后来那样献上香火，而是献上象征精神和世俗力量的两根权杖。而坐在她腿上的孩子则重复着母亲的动作，甚至她的特征和表情。乍一看，人们会理所当然地认为这一切都是纯粹的拜占庭风格，也许确实如此。但它更像是拜占庭的法国式外观，并呈现出一种诗意的法国理想。在圣但尼，圣母脚下阿贝·苏格的小雕像具有非常东方的外观，在双奖章中，圣母与沙特尔圣母非常相似，然而，对我们来说，直到一些专家向我们展示了拜占庭的原作，这件作品就像教堂的fleches一样完全是法国式的。

拜占庭艺术完全是另一章，如果我们能花点时间在拜占庭研究它，我们可能会得到很大的乐趣；但沙特尔的艺术，即使在 1100 年，也是法国的，而且是完美的法国艺术，正如建筑所展示的那样，而玻璃甚至比建筑更法国，这一点你可以通过许多其他方式发现。也许最可靠的证据就是玻璃本身。制作它的人不是专业人士，而是业余爱好者，他们可能具有一些珐琅知识，但他们像珠宝商一样工作，不习惯玻璃，并且按照圣物盒或权杖所需的精致程度进行制作。这些窗户的造价一定非常昂贵；人们几乎会感到惊讶的是，它们不是用金镶嵌的，而是用铅镶嵌的。苏格神父既不逃避麻烦，也不逃避费用，他的传记作者给出了证明这位艺术家是希腊人的唯一重要证据，他无意识地表明这位艺术家欺骗了他：“他仔细寻找窗户制造商和精致玻璃的工匠。质量，尤其是由大量蓝宝石制成的，这些蓝宝石被粉碎并熔化在玻璃中，使其呈现出他很高兴欣赏的蓝色。” “materia saphirorum”显然是某种珍贵的东西，就像未经加工的蓝宝石一样珍贵，而且这些词毫无疑问地暗示着艺术家索要蓝宝石，而苏格为此付出了代价；然而所有专家都一致认为，这种被称为蓝宝石的宝石如果经过研磨，根本无法产生半透明的颜色。苏格所喜爱的蓝色（可能与沙特尔窗户的蓝色相同）不能由蓝宝石制成。也许“materia saphirorum”仅指钴，但无论它是什么，玻璃制造商似乎都同意这种 1140-50 的玻璃是有史以来最好的玻璃。保罗·杜兰德先生 (M. Paul Durand) 在 1881 年的官方报告中表示，这些窗户无论在艺术上还是在机械上都是最高等级的：“我还要提请注意，从材质上讲，玻璃和绘画的制作都是由质量远远优于十三和十四世纪的窗户。当我临摹这些珍贵的作品时，经过几个月的接触，我能够让自己相信它们在每个细节上的优越性，特别是在三个窗户的上部。”他说他们是完美的、无可挑剔的。真正的玻璃爱好者会在内心深处直截了当地说，这三扇窗户比法国人从那天到现在所做的所有彩色窗户更有价值；但这件事引起我们的关注，主要是因为它表明了这个实验是多么法国化，以及苏格的品味和财富如何使之成为可能。

可以肯定的是，南面的窗户——“受难号”——是在现场或附近制作的，并根据其成本精心安装到特定的空间。所有这些都由沙特尔圣母之手标记。他们不仅是为了她而执行的，而且是由她执行的。在圣但尼，苏热神父出现了——确实，他匍匐在她的脚下，但他仍然出现了。在沙特尔，没有人——没有人为机构的暗示——被允许出现。圣母不允许任何人接近她，甚至崇拜她。她以女王、皇后和母亲的身份登上王位，象征着排他性和普遍性的权力。在她的脚下，她让世人看到她尘世生活的辉煌；——天使报喜、探访和诞生；东方贤士；希律王；埃及之旅；唯一的奖章显示埃及众神在她到来时从神座上跌落，比整个油画画廊更有趣。

在整个法国，十二世纪玻璃的精美标本仅存十几个。除了沙特尔的这些窗户和圣但尼的碎片之外，勒芒和昂热也有窗户，旺多姆、沙隆、普瓦捷、兰斯和布尔日也有碎片；其他作品上也时不时地出现这种情况，但最早的就是最好的，因为玻璃制造商在这项工作上是新手，在这方面花费了无数的麻烦和金钱，随着他们积累了经验，他们发现这些都是不必要的。即使在 1200 年，这些窗户相对于新窗户的价值也已广为人知，因此人们对它们进行了最精心的保存。制造这种窗户的努力从未重复过。它们的珠宝完美不符合十三世纪大型教堂的规模。把头转向侧廊的窗户，你可以看到后来的艺术家对旧作品的批评。他们发现，对于新大教堂的规模来说，它太精致、太辉煌、太像宝石了；光线和色彩的变化让眼睛得不到休息；确实，肉眼无法看到它们的全部美丽，它们的一半价值都被扔在了这巨大的石头镶嵌中。充其量，他们一定是在荒凉、寒冷、多风的博斯平原上迷失了方向，想念巴勒斯坦或开罗，渴望蒙雷阿莱或威尼斯，但这不是我们的事，而且，在圣母玛利亚皇后的保护下，圣伯纳德本人甚至可能犯下罪恶，甚至沉醉于色彩之中。只要花费一点点想象力，人们仍然可以在玻璃的辉煌中瞥见十字军东征。人们研究它的时间越长，它就越具有压倒性，直到人们几乎开始感觉到我们两亿五千万算术祖先沉醉于青春的激情和圣母的光辉中所呼唤我们的回声。来自圣米歇尔山和沙特尔。没有任何言语和美酒能够如此生动地唤起他们的情感，让他们在纯净的色彩中焕发光彩。蓝调的清澈；红色的深度；绿色的强度；复杂的和声；光的闪耀和辉煌；以及群众的安静和确定的力量。

据说，由于阳光直射太强，窗户会受到影响，变成一簇珠宝——一种色彩缤纷的幻觉。这些线条也有不同程度的优点。这些批评很少会引起偶然的旅行者的注意，但他总是发现奖章内的设计很幼稚。如果他愿意的话，他可以很容易地纠正它们，并看看窗户会发生什么；尽管这是艺术的字母表，而且我们已经不再拼写单音节的单词，但批评至少给我们上了一课。原始人似乎有一种天生的色彩感觉，就像狗的气味一样本能。社会没有权利认为它是一种道德上的谴责，因为它已经到了一个不能再像童年那样依赖其味觉、嗅觉、视觉、听觉或记忆的年龄；这个事实似乎很可能，而且绝不是有罪的；然而社会总是否认它，并且总是对此感到愤怒；因此，最好不要说出来。另一方面，我们可以让德拉克洛瓦和他的学派继续他们在近一百年前在法国艺术领域与安格尔和他的学派展开的斗争，这场斗争的实质是在同一点上。安格尔认为，色彩装饰的首要动机是线条，画得好的图画色彩也足够好。总的来说，社会似乎同意他的观点。十二世纪的社会同意德拉克洛瓦的观点。法国人当时认为色彩装饰的第一点是色彩，他们毫不犹豫地将颜色放在他们想要的地方，也不关心绿色的骆驼或粉红色的狮子是否像狗或驴，只要它们和谐即可。或值。从广义上讲，除了色彩之外的一切都被牺牲了，但绘画的细节却是传统的和从属的。因此，当我们看到一个蓝脸骑士骑着一匹绿马时，我们会笑，看起来就像是一个四岁孩子画的，也许艺术家也笑了；但他是一位色彩学家，从不为了笑而牺牲自己的色彩。

我们游客通常认为他并不了解更多情况。在我们对自己的简单信念中，蕴藏着巨大的希望，因为它所表现出的真诚不亚于十字军战士。但在颜色问题上，人们可能不太相信，或者更容易好奇。当今世界不存在任何肤色学派，而中世纪则有十几个。但这些十二世纪的窗户确实打破了法国的传统。他们没有前因，也没有合适的继承。所有的权威人士都强调他们的非凡品格。人们很容易怀疑它们在某种程度上是一场意外。如果这种艺术真的是法国的，那么它就不可能从无到有，如此完美。它一定在其他地方有它的家——在莱茵河上——在意大利——在拜占庭——或者在巴格达。

同样的争议在哥特式拱门以及中世纪的其他一切问题上持续了近两百年，一直到学校的哲学。 除了占领耶路撒冷之外，生活在第一次和第二次十字军东征期间的一代人还尝试了许多原创实验。 除其他外，它还制作了沙特尔的西门，以及它的雕像、玻璃和箭羽，作为一个副戏。因为它产生了阿伯拉尔、圣伯纳德和特鲁瓦的克里斯蒂安，我们还有待认识他们。 它把思想带到任何地方——德国、意大利、西班牙、君士坦丁堡、巴勒斯坦，或者像磁石一样吸引着法国人思想的源头——古希腊。 没有人质疑它确实采用了这些想法，也许除了那些认为这些想法都是原创的爱国者之外。但对于大多数学生来说，这些想法需要被考虑的比处理它们的品味以及它们发展的速度要少。 你可以在建筑中看到这种品味是法国式的，或者你会发现你是否在其他地方遇到过哥特式风格；它迅速抓住并发展了一个想法，你可以在拱门、fleche、门廊、窗户以及玻璃中看到这一点；但我们不理解、也永远不会理解的是这一切背后的欲望。对新奇事物的贪婪：生活的乐趣。 每一个生活在十六世纪以来的人都对每一个生活在十六世纪之前的人以及每一个相信中世纪的人都感到深深的不信任。 确实，最后一位 13 世纪的艺术家早在我们的星球开始以目前的速度运转之前就去世了。它必须停下来，然后重新开始；但这并不能阻止人们对这个十二世纪的行星旋转得如此之快感到惊讶。 尖拱不仅作为一种想法传入法国，而且发展成为一种建筑体系，在全国范围内布满了除了圆顶之外从未尝试过的高度建筑，其财富支出足以建造一条铁路系统看起来很便宜，所有这些都在大约五十年的时间内完成；玻璃随之而来，又随它而去，至少就我们而言是这样。但是，如果你需要其他证据，你可以咨询最高权威雷南：“中世纪文学史上最独特的现象之一，”阿威罗伊的雷南说，“就是知识商业的活动，以及书籍从欧洲一端传播到另一端的速度。 阿伯拉尔的哲学在他一生中（1100-42 年）已经渗透到意大利的尽头。 游吟诗人的法国诗歌在不到一个世纪的时间里就被翻译成德语、瑞典语、挪威语、冰岛语、佛兰芒语、荷兰语、波西米亚语、意大利语、西班牙语。他可能会补充说，英国不需要翻译，而是帮助创作诗歌，当时英国不像后来那样与世隔绝。

人们很容易忘记欧洲的渺小，以及跨越它的速度有多快。在夏季天气好时，人们可以从亚历山大或从叙利亚航行到西西里岛，甚至西班牙和法国，绝对安全，并且有足够的货运空间，现在就像人们在没有援助的情况下可以轻松做到的那样蒸汽；但现在人们不再承载哲学、诗歌或艺术的货物。世界仍在为团结而斗争，但方法、武器和思想不同。让勒南感到惊讶、让历史学家困惑的商业交流是在观念上的。十二世纪对它们的贪婪程度与十九世纪对它们的贪婪程度一样。法国为此付出了高昂的代价，并悔恨了几个世纪。但令人惊奇到难以置信的是她对它们的渴望，她吞食它们时的年轻贪婪，她打扮它们的绝对正确的品味。尖拱、石制弗莱奇、彩色玻璃、彩绘弥撒书、香颂、罗马和田园诗、亚里士多德的片段、阿维森的注释，与立即赋予形式和形式的天才相比，那焦躁不安的胃口根本算不了什么。为他们所有人献花。

这一集仅仅意味着这位法国十二世纪的艺术家可能应该知道他的生意，如果他创作了一个怪诞的人物，或者一个绿脸的圣人，或者一座蓝色的城堡，或者一个三段论，或者一首歌，那么他所做的带着他想要的效果的概念。玻璃窗对他来说是一个整体——一团——而它的细节却是他的乐趣。因为十二世纪的法国人很享受他的乐趣，尽管它有时对于现代法国人的品味来说相当沉重，而且不如教会喜欢的那么精致。这三扇 1200 世纪的窗户，就像外面的当代门户以及与之相伴的弗莱奇一样，是中世纪艺术爱好者的理想；它们以宗教形式高于所有已知艺术的水平；他们受到启发；他们是神圣的！这是沙特尔及其维尔京群岛的主张。事实上，这位法国艺术家，无论是建筑师、雕塑家还是玻璃画家，在这里确实超越了他平常的水平。当他这样做时他就知道这一点，并且可能他像我们一样将其归因于圣母玛利亚；因为当老教堂的其余部分被烧毁时，他的这些作品还不到五十岁。艺术家已经感觉到他的美德已经消失了。他在 1150 年的表现不如 XNUMX 年那么好；圣母玛利亚离我们并不那么近。

它的证据——或者，如果你愿意这么认为，反对它的证据——就在我们眼前，位于柳叶刀窗上方的墙上。当维拉尔·德·奥内库尔来到沙特尔时，他立即把西方玫瑰作为他的研究对象，尽管其他两种玫瑰可能也在那里，因为它们的美丽和轻盈。他在西部玫瑰中看到了一些令他感兴趣的建筑质量；事实上，西方玫瑰是建筑之花之一，它的美丽慢慢地、永无休止地展现出来。但它的主要美感在于它与门户、柳叶刀和弗莱奇结合在一起的感觉。室内的玻璃工人也有同样的任务要做。当计划用于玫瑰花的玻璃时，刺血针的玻璃已经有五十年历史了；也许是七十岁，具体日期不得而知，但这并不重要，因为间隔越大，治疗就越有趣。不管是哪一天，西洋月季的玻璃期不可能比其他玫瑰或合唱团的玻璃期早或晚得多，但你一眼就能看出它受到的待遇截然不同。当然，在这些问题上，人们必须服从艺术家的意见，而人们更容易这样做，因为他们总是不同意。但在艺术家告诉我们更好的信息之前，我们可能会自娱自乐地幻想玫瑰的玻璃是为了与柳叶刀的玻璃相协调，并将其与十三世纪中殿和耳堂的玻璃结合起来。在所有 13 世纪的窗户中，只有西方玫瑰似乎能与柳叶刀的光彩相媲美，并且表现得如此之远，以至于单独的奖章和图画完全消失了——尤其是在阳光直射下——混合成一种混乱的效果。蛋白石的色彩和光芒令人陶醉，就像珠宝中的一簇宝石。假设一个人必须在需要艺术家的指导的情况下知道他想做什么，并且做到了，那么人们就必须理所当然地认为他将玫瑰视为一个整体，并旨在使其与三扇珍贵的窗户和谐相处。下面。效果就像是一个大型装饰品；圆形胸针，或者现在称为旭日形的珠宝，下面有三个大吊坠。

我们是无知的游客，在试图寻找艺术家的动机时容易犯很多错误，这些艺术家七百年前为一个以与我们完全不同的形式思考和感受的社会工作，但中世纪的朝圣者比我们更无知，头脑也更简单。 ;如果我们想到了装饰品的想法，那么他肯定也想到了，尤其是那些以激发幻想为己任的玻璃工匠。一个艺术家如果有什么用处的话，他会预见到他的公众会看到什么；他的公众将看到的是他应该想要的东西——他的天才的程度。如果公众看到的比他自己看到的多，这是他的功劳；如果少了，那就是他的错。无论我们多么简单或无知，我们都应该感受到艺术家想让我们感受到的不和谐或和谐，当我们看到一个动机时，我们得出结论，其他人在我们之前已经看到了它，并且它必须，因此，已有意为之。两朵耳堂玫瑰都没有像这朵那样对待。既没有个人装饰品的作用；两者都不被视为宝石。没有人比艺术家更清楚这样的处理必须产生珠宝的效果。法国和德勒的玫瑰具有不可磨灭的、鲜明的法国和德勒的特征。西方玫瑰上刻有比他们中任何一个都更强大的力量的特征，更加精致，但同样的决定。

没有哪个艺术家会冒险在玛丽陛下的眼前，在她如此珍爱的窗户上方，放置任何不是她亲自下令的物品。奇迹是否必要，或者天才是否足够，是一个你可以与艾伯特·马格努斯或圣伯纳德解决的疑难问题，当解决了之后你会像以前一样一无所知。但对于我们来说，毫无必要的怀疑是徒劳的，圣母为我们设计了这朵玫瑰；也许与她设计刺血针时所秉持的完美精神不同，但仍然完全是为了她自己的快乐和她自己的想法。她在象征着她自己的教堂的胸前放了一颗宝石，它如此华丽，没有任何尘世的威严可以与之相比，也没有其他天上的威严可以与之匹敌。当人们看着灯光照射在它上面时，人们仍然会被宝石玫瑰及其三颗宝石吊坠的光辉所征服；人们感受到了她的意图，甚至对异教徒、摩尔人和异端分子也产生了一点影响，但对那些害怕她的男人和崇拜她的女人来说，影响更大；——不必在这方面纠缠太久，人们承认她的影响是巨大的。唯一的教堂。她应该要求的任何事情都会承认。如果你只有虾的灵魂，你就会像苏格神父那样爬过去亲吻她的脚。

不幸的是，她已经走了，或者说现在很少来这里，我们永远也见不到她了。但她的天才在这里仍然像卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇和耳堂中的皮埃尔·德德勒的天才一样独特。三把柳叶刀是她自己的品味，就像特里亚农宫是路易十四的品味一样，这是不言而喻的。它们代表了她最珍视的一切；她儿子的荣耀在她的右边；她自己的美好生活在中间；她的左边是她的皇室血统：她的神圣权利的故事已经讲了三次。这些照片都是个人的，就像全家福一样。在它们上方，那个在 1200 年致力于实现和谐并满足圣母愿望的人，在他的玫瑰花中装满了一打或两幅玻璃小作品，只有双筒望远镜的最佳能力才能揭示它们的主题。仔细观察，人们最终会发现，天堂所有色彩的华丽组合包含或隐藏着最后的审判——这个主题被小心翼翼地从旧作品中排除，并且可能在接下来的二十年里不会出现在南门上。如果西方玫瑰的计划可以追溯到 1200 年，那么这最后的审判是教会中最古老的，并且在第一次十字军东征的神学和南方皮埃尔·莫克勒克的神学之间建立了联系门廊。教士是他自己教义的唯一真实和最终的法官，我们既不知道也不关心知道事实；但我们和他一样对这种感觉有很好的判断力，我们完全可以自由地认为，这样的最后审判以前或以后从未被牧师或异端见过，除非凭借异端邪说，认为真正的基督徒被诅咒一定很高兴，因为这是上帝的旨意。这道天国之光的目的，无论是圣母玛利亚还是她的工人们，都是为了传达恐怖或痛苦的观念，这是教会可能宣扬的观念，但我们罪人在十三世纪也知道这是错误的。据我们现在所知。在这七百年里，我们当中任何一个人抬头望着这朵玫瑰，都会感受到它是圣母对天堂的许诺。

在这里，就像整个教堂的其他地方一样，人们可以感受到圣母的存在，除了她的威严和恩典之外，没有其他想法。对于圣母玛利亚和她的恳求者来说，对于我们来说，尽管被其他教堂抛弃，但仍然可以在她的教堂里抱有希望，最后的审判并不是上帝正义或人类腐败的象征，而是她自己无限仁慈的象征。三位一体通过基督进行审判；——基督通过她爱和赦免。她掌握着人间和地狱最后的、最高的力量。在她本性的光彩和美丽中，她儿子无限的爱之光像透过玻璃的阳光一样闪耀，将最后的审判本身变成了她神圣和至高权威的最高证明。中世纪最粗鲁的恶棍，当他看到这最后的审判时，笑了起来；对她来说最后的审判是什么！装饰品、玩物、乐趣！她戴在胸前的宝石装饰！她最大的快乐就是宽恕。她永恒的本能是爱；她最深的激情是怜悯！在她的皇心上，地狱之火只呈现出天堂的乳白色。三位一体的基督可以随心所欲地审判，但母亲基督会拯救；她的仆人可以大胆地注视火焰。

如果你，或者甚至是我们仍然服务于玛利亚神殿的神父朋友们，怀疑这种语言有一些夸大的成分，那只会迫使你立即承认事实并非如此。但目前我们忙于玻璃而不是信仰，这里还有一个玻璃世界有待研究。从技术上讲，我们已经完成了。十三世纪的技术自然而然地、非常容易地从十二世纪的技术中脱胎而出。从艺术角度来说，动机是一样的，因为它始终是圣母。尽管沙特尔圣母始终是圣母玛利亚，但即使在这里，女王陛下的主张也有一定程度的不同，这影响了艺术，并限定了它的感觉。在回到十三世纪之前，人们应该看看圣母玛利亚王室形象的这些变化。

第一个也是最重要的记录是西门南门上的圣母石像，我们研究了它和她的拜占庭宫廷；第二个也是同一时期的石头，位于门户的雕刻首都之一上，代表东方贤士的崇拜。第三个是中央柳叶刀顶部的玻璃圣母。毫无疑问，这三部作品都是 12 世纪的作品。你可以在巴黎看到另一幅作品，在巴黎圣母院的同一扇门上，在圣但尼阿贝·苏热尔的窗户上，以及后来在欧塞尔的一幅美丽的灰色画中看到更多。但都代表同一个数字；一位加冕的女王，戴着王权的象征，膝上抱着婴儿国王，她是国王的监护人。在不假装知道她戴着什么特殊王冠的情况下，我们可以假设，在纠正之前，这是卡洛林帝国，而不是拜占庭。除了基督所暗示的之外，三位一体在任何地方都不会出现。一只神秘的手最多可以象征天父。法兰西岛和沙特尔的十二世纪艺术家所描绘的圣母玛利亚似乎完全是法国人的作品，尽管她的作品带有希腊气氛。几乎可以肯定，她金发碧眼，脸庞饱满，身材魁梧，美得耀眼，年龄还不到三十岁。孩子似乎永远不会超过五岁。

你同样可以自由地看到她脸上的南方或东方类型，也许玻璃暗示着深色类型，但中央柳叶刀上的圣母脸是十四世纪的修复品，可能会也可能不会复制原作，而除一位外，所有其他玻璃中描绘的圣母都属于十三世纪。可能的例外是南耳堂旁边唱诗班中一位名叫 Notre-Dame-de-la-Belle-Verriere 的著名人物。一种奇怪的、几乎不可思议的感觉似乎萦绕在这扇窗户上，长期以来，它被视为圣地，受到人们的崇敬，尽管现在它已经被位于唱诗班对面的皮利耶圣母院所遗弃，但这种感觉更加强烈。这种魅力部分是由于天使们的美丽计划，他们以奇异的优雅和精致的感觉支持、致敬和焚香圣母子，这更像是十三世纪的风格，而不是十二世纪的风格。在这里，圣母的面容也并不古老。显然，原来的玻璃因时间或意外而受损，颜色被简单的油画覆盖或更新。其他地方的颜色被认为特别好，窗户是艺术家最喜欢利用的动机，但对我们来说，它的主要兴趣是它独特的感觉深度。太后正面坐在华丽的宝座和讲台上，圣子坐在她的腿上，重复着她的态度，只是她的手支撑着圣子的肩膀。她戴着王冠；她的脚搁在一张凳子上，凳子、地毯、长袍和宝座的色彩和装饰都非常丰富。最后，一只带着圣灵光芒的鸽子出现了。尽管圣母玛利亚是帝国，但它不再是西方柳叶刀的无限帝国。光环只围绕着她的头；她没有权杖；圣灵似乎给了她以前不需要的支持，而她的大天使圣加百列和圣米迦勒，以及他们力量的象征，却消失了。尽管环绕并支撑着她宝座的天使们非常优雅，但他们并不主张任何权威。窗户本身并不是一个单一的组合；它是一个整体。下面的面板似乎是后来插入的，只是为了填补空间；六个代表迦拿的婚姻，底部的三个代表一个怪诞的小恶魔在沙漠中诱惑基督。从这个几乎总是黑暗或充满阴影的角度来看，整体的效果是深沉而悲伤的，仿佛皇后感到她的权威失败，并从西门下来责备我们的疏忽。这张脸令人难以忘怀。也许它的力量可能是由于接近，因为这是玻璃中唯一的一个例子，她下降得如此之低，以至于我们几乎可以触摸到她，并看到十二世纪本能地感受到的特征，即使在他们的幸福中，也是严肃和严肃的。在无限怜悯和权力的严峻责任下几乎感到悲伤。

毫无疑问，这扇窗户非常古老，或者可能是对更古老窗户的模仿或复制品，但对朝圣者来说，它的兴趣主要在于它的个性，而且它独自矗立在那里。尽管圣母像一次又一次地出现在较低的窗户中，就像在贝尔维里埃两侧的窗户中一样；在代表她在沙特尔奇迹的窗户的残余物中，在耳堂旁边的南过道上；在接下来的旺多姆教堂的十五世纪窗户里；在旺多姆窗口之后的第三个窗口中，代表着她的加冕礼——直到我们抬头仰望上方的高窗时，她才再次展现出她的威严。在那里，我们将在高祭坛上方的宝座上看到她的辉煌，在北耳堂的法国玫瑰中更加引人注目。她再次坐在北耳堂旁边唱诗班的第一个窗口。我们可以在其他地方看到她站立的样子，但她从来没有以她的光辉出现在我们面前。然而，无论我们在沙特尔的什么地方、无论什么时期，她总是女王。她的表情和态度总是冷静而威严。她从不歇斯底里地诉诸我们的感情来博取同情；她甚至不完全命令，而是接受人类自愿的、毫无疑问的、毫不犹豫的、本能的信仰、爱和奉献。她会接受我们的，我们也不忍心拒绝；我们甚至没有权利，因为我们是她的客人。

第一次参观伟大的大教堂就像第一次参观大英博物馆一样；唯一明智的想法是遵循时间的顺序，但博物馆在时间上是混乱的，而大教堂通常都是同一个时间。在沙特尔，十二世纪结束后，一切都是十三世纪的。即使是为了及时收到订单，我们也必须首先知道十三世纪教堂的哪一部分最古老。书上说是唱诗班。 1194 年火灾后，朝圣者将大墓穴用作教堂，在那里举行礼拜活动。但建造者一定是从中央桥墩和唱诗班开始的，因为唱诗班是教堂唯一重要的部分。中殿和耳堂可能会被压制，但如果没有唱诗班，教堂就毫无用处，而在像沙特尔这样的圣殿中，唱诗班就是整个教堂。那么，神父或艺术家首先看向唱诗班，然后再看向唱诗班。而且，由于日期很有用，因此合唱团必须注明日期。 1145 年爆发的同样的民众热情在 1195 年又重新燃起，以帮助重建。工作也以同样狂热的速度推进，因此，即使没有更多的时间，十年也足以满足合唱团的需要。早在 1206 年，那里的服务就已恢复；当然是在1210年。也许建筑师一给出尺寸，窗户就被设计并投入使用，任何想要提供窗户的人都会倾向于选择后殿中的一个空间，当着玛丽本人的面，接下来是圣所。

第一个要求日期的唱诗班窗户是 Belle-Verriere，它通常被归类为 13 世纪早期，并且可能与旁边的两个窗户一起使用，其中一个 - 所谓的 Zodiac 窗户 - 带有独特的图案有趣的铭文：“COMES TEOBALDUS DAT…AD PRECES COMIXIS PTICENSIS。”如果莎士比亚能写出《约翰王》的悲剧，我们就不能承认自己没有读过它，而这段铭文可能是该剧的一部分。 “pagus perticensis”位于向西不远的地方，在通往勒芒的路上大约十五或二十英里，在历史上被称为 Comte du Perche，尽管它的记忆现在主要是由其著名的佩尔什马品种保存下来的。也许这匹马也可以追溯到十字军东征，并且可能载着理查·狮子之心，但无论如何，那天的伯爵是理查的封臣，也是他的一位亲密朋友，他的记忆被一个单一的人永远保存着。理查德监狱歌曲中的歌词：——

1194 年，理查·科德·利昂 (Richard Coeur-de-Lion) 写下这些诗句时，佩什伯爵 (Comte du Perche) 是杰弗里三世 (Geoffrey III)，他曾是理查 1192 年十字军东征时的同伴，根据《编年史》，“他表现得只是一个胆怯的人” ”;对于理查德的同伴来说，这似乎不太可能；但沙特尔的窗户所讲述的并不是他，而是马豪或香槟玛蒂尔达的儿子，玛蒂尔达是法国王后香槟阿利克斯的妹妹。因此，该表显示，杰弗鲁瓦的儿子和继任者，即杜佩尔什伯爵托马斯，是狮子路易的第二表弟，即法国国王路易八世。他们的年龄可能差不多。

如果这就是全部，人们可能会在脑海中记住一段时间，但主导这一时期历史的关系是所有这些伟大的统治家族与理查德·科尔·德·莱昂和他的兄弟约翰（绰号拉克兰）的关系，两人都是其中依次是法国最有权势的法国人。该表显示，他们的母亲吉耶纳的埃莉诺（路易七世的第一位王后）为他生了两个女儿，其中一个叫阿利克斯，于 1164 年左右与沙特尔和布卢瓦的蒂博伯爵结婚，另一个叫玛丽，嫁给了伟大的国王。香槟伯爵。她们都是狮子心和约翰同父异母的姐妹，他们的孩子是所有在位君主的侄子或同父异母的侄子，不分青红皂白，狮子心在他的监狱里用一条线使其中一个人永垂不朽——歌曲，正如他使 Le Perche 永垂不朽的那样：

因此，“洛伊斯”，即沙特尔的路易伯爵，不仅是狮子心和约翰·拉克兰的侄子，而且像勒佩尔什的托马斯伯爵一样，也是路易八世的远房表弟。从封建意义上和个人角度而言，他直接隶属于狮子之心，而不是腓力·奥古斯都。

如果十二世纪的社会能够追随这些个人和封建关系的影响，那么它比二十世纪的社会更聪明。但事情其实很简单：法国的路易、沙特尔的蒂博和勒佩尔什的托马斯在 1215 年是表兄弟和亲密朋友，他们都崇拜沙特尔圣母。从路易未来的王后卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇的性格来看，如果可能的话，他们的妻子更加忠诚。同年，布兰奇生下了圣路易斯，他似乎是所有人中最忠诚的一个。

与此同时，他们最喜爱的叔叔狮子之心于 1199 年去世。蒂博的曾祖母吉耶纳的埃莉诺于 1202 年去世。约翰国王独自一人，迅速在国内外树敌无数。 1203年，菲利普·奥古斯都没收了他从法国王室手中拥有的所有封地，并于1204年占领了诺曼底。约翰的处境迅速每况愈下，直到最后英国贵族们奋起反抗，迫使他于 1215 年在朗尼米德颁布了大宪章。

因此，1215 年是沙特尔和圣米歇尔山值得纪念的一年；历史上最方便的日期之一。即使是现在，每个人都应该知道当时发生的事情，就像 1066 年的诺曼征服一样，给社会带来了另一场暴力扳手。他们发送到

[显示英格兰之间关系的家谱图，
香槟、沙特尔、法国和拉佩尔什。]

法国寻求帮助，并向年轻的路易提供英格兰王位，而他的父亲菲利普·奥古斯都召集了一个委员会，承诺支持路易。当然，杜佩尔什伯爵和沙特尔伯爵一定是最重要的，他们肯定会承诺支持与路易一起前往英国。当时他二十九岁；他们可能更年轻一些。

刻有铭文的十二生肖窗口就是直接的结果。
历史上通常出现的权威是罗杰
温多弗，但对我们的目的而言，更有趣的是一个喋喋不休的人
被称为梅内斯特雷·德·兰斯 (Menestrel de Rheims) 的法国人，写了大约五十本著作
多年后。在讲述了他令人愉快的十三世纪之后
法语，英国贵族如何将人质送往路易，“et me sires
Loueys les fit bien gardeir et honourablement，”Menestrel
继续：-

Et ssembla granz genz par amours, et par deniers, et par lignage。他与佩尔什、蒙福特、沙特尔、蒙布莱特、安乔兰斯·库奇先生等人，以及其他人授予领主，我不得假释。

因此，沙特尔伯爵可能与杜佩尔什伯爵一起前往，目睹了约翰国王死后 20 年 1217 月 XNUMX 日发生在林肯的灾难：

Et licuens dou Perche faisait l'avantgarde, et courut tout leiz des portes； et la garnisons de laienz issi hors et leur courrent sus； et i ot asseiz 特质 et lancie； et chevaus morz et chevaliers abatuz, et gent a pie morz et navreiz. Et licuens dou Perche i fu morz par un ribaut qui li leva le pan dou hauberc, et l'ocist d'un coutel； et fu desconfite l'avantgarde par la mort le conte。路易先生的先生们，我和格雷格尼尔决斗了，我的车是我的朋友。

这样的语言会被翻译破坏。对我们来说，知道“ribaut”就足够了，当他坐在马上拒绝向英国叛徒投降时，举起伯爵“hauberc”或锁子甲的“pan”或裙子的“ribaut”并刺伤了他。他从下面拿着一把刀，可能是梅奈斯特雷的发明；或者用长矛刺穿面甲直达大脑的骑士，可能是温多弗的罗杰的发明；但无论哪种情况，托马斯·杜佩尔什伯爵都于 20 年 1217 月 XNUMX 日在林肯丧生，他的表弟狮子路易以及沙特尔伯爵蒂博伯爵都深感遗憾，他委托后者为他安装一扇窗户以纪念圣母玛利亚。

这扇窗户肯定是立即订购的，因为“le Jeune ou le Lepreux”蒂博伯爵在一年内即 22 年 1218 月 1210 日去世，因此给出了其中一个唱诗班窗户的确切日期。它可能是最新的之一，因为最早提供的肯定是中央后殿礼拜堂的那些。根据 Viollet-le-Duc 制定的规则，像圣西尔维斯特这样以蓝色为主的窗户很可能早于那些以红色为主色调的窗户。我们必须理所当然地认为，其中一些伟大的传奇窗户早在 1200 年就已经存在，因为当年 1200 月，菲利普·奥古斯都在这里参加了弥撒。仅在合唱团就有大约两打这样的窗户，每个窗户很可能代表了当天缓慢过程中一年的工作，我们很难想象 1225 人的工作室的规模足以允许超过两个同时在手。三十或四十年后，当圣礼拜堂建成时，作坊一定被大大扩大了，但随着扩大，玻璃也变质了。因此，如果该建筑在 XNUMX 年就已经先进到可以开始在后殿的玻璃上进行工作，那么 XNUMX 年就可以在唱诗班中完成它了。

枣子真是太烦人了；——我们想要的不是枣子，而是味道；——但没有它们，我们会感到不舒服。除了Perche窗外，唱诗班中较低的窗子没有任何帮助。但天窗更有用。他们在那里成双成对地奔跑，每对身上都戴着一朵玫瑰。第一对（编号 27 和 28）位于北耳堂旁边，描绘了法国圣母像，根据布尔托和克莱瓦尔神父的说法，由雷诺·德·穆孔主教（Reynault de Moucon）的手臂支撑着，他是大帝时期的沙特尔主教。 1194 年火灾，1217 年死亡。28 号窗户显示两组农民朝圣；下面跪着的是贝鲁的罗伯特，作为捐赠者：“罗伯特·德·贝鲁：卡恩。坎塞拉留斯。”大教堂的目录中有一个条目（Bulteau，i，123）：“26 年 1216 月 1215 日，总理罗伯特·德·贝鲁去世，他给了我们一扇窗户。” 《卡特勒》提到了 XNUMX 年教会的教士或其他显贵所赠送的几件窗户礼物。

接下来，或者曾经跟随的是一对窗户（编号 29 和 30），它们被雕塑家 Bridan 于 1788 年拆除，以便为下面的雕像获取光线。捐赠者是“DOMINA JOHANNES BAPTISTA”，据我们所知，她是珍妮·德·达马丁（Jeanne de Dammartin）；这扇窗户是为了纪念或纪念她于 1237 年与卡斯蒂利亚的费迪南德结婚而建造的。珍妮是一位非常伟大的女士，是奥马勒伯爵和玛丽·德蓬蒂厄的女儿。 1235 年，她的父亲将她许配给英格兰国王亨利三世，甚至委托代理人庆祝了这段婚姻，但布兰奇女王在 1231 年禁止了布列塔尼的约兰德的婚姻，因此中断了婚姻。她态度软化，允许珍妮于 1237 年与卡斯蒂利亚的费迪南德结婚，下一朵玫瑰花“REX CASTILLAE”中费迪南德仍然骑在马背上。他于 1217 年赢得了卡斯蒂利亚的王冠，并于 1252 年去世，当时珍妮女王返回阿布维尔，最后在沙特尔竖起了这扇窗户以纪念她的丈夫。

31 号和 32 号窗户是很多争议的主题，但无论捐赠者是让·德·沙蒂永 (Jean de Chatillon) 还是香槟大帝蒂博 (Thibaut le Grand of Champagne) 的三个孩子，他们都必须同样属于 1260-70 的后期系列，而不是早期的系列。 1210-20。下一对 33 号和 34 号也同样如此，它们于 1773 年被移除，但记录显示，34 号底部是圣路易之子法国路易的雕像，他于 1260 年去世，在他的父亲面前，他仍然骑在玫瑰上面。

因此，唱诗班的北侧展示了一系列窗户，准确地涵盖了圣路易斯（1215-70）的一生。南侧从后殿旁边开始，有 35 号和 36 号窗户，根据阿曼库尔伯爵的说法，这些窗户属于蒙特福特家族，该家族的城堡废墟位于通往巴黎的路上的蒙特福特拉莫里山上。位于沙特尔东北约四十公里处。每个人都应该知道西蒙·德·蒙福特的故事，他于 1218 年在图卢兹之前被杀。西蒙留下了两个儿子，阿莫里和西蒙。雕塑家布里丹也终止了阿毛里的窗户，但据阿贝们说，在玫瑰花中，阿毛里仍然骑着一匹白马。阿莫里的历史众所周知。 1231 年，布兰奇王后任命他为法国警察； 1239年参加十字军东征；被异教徒俘虏，带到巴比伦，被赎回，返回法国后，于 1241 年在奥特朗托去世。在那个年纪，阿毛里还只是一个普通人，完全被他的兄弟西蒙所掩盖，西蒙去了英格兰，娶了约翰国王的女儿埃莉诺，并差点成为国王，成为莱斯特伯爵。闲暇时，您可以阅读马修·帕里斯 (Matthew Paris) 对他以及他在 5 年 1265 月 37 日伊夫舍姆战役中阵亡的戏剧性记述。他可能是 38 世纪最伟大的人物中最后一位，除了圣路易本人，他一生都在又长了几年。达曼库尔先生坚持认为，那是伟大的莱斯特伯爵，他戴着护目镜，全副武装，骑着一匹棕色的马，在 1240 号和 XNUMX 号窗户上方的玫瑰花丛中。无论如何，窗户会晚一些。超过 XNUMX。

旁边的 39 号和 40 号窗户也于 1788 年被拆除，但在玫瑰花中仍保留着考特尼家族成员的雕像。吉本被考特尼家族的浪漫深深吸引，以至于在这个与我们或大教堂无关的话题上做了一个有趣的题外话，除了它告诉我们，考特尼家族和沙特尔大教堂的许多其他捐助者一样，属于沙特尔大教堂。皇家血统。路易·勒格罗斯于 1137 年去世，他的儿子路易·勒·热恩 (Louis-le-Jeune) 于当年与吉耶纳 (Guienne) 的埃莉诺 (Eleanor) 结婚，他还有一个小儿子皮埃尔 (Pierre)，他与伊莎贝尔·德·考特尼 (Isabel de Courtenay) 结婚，皮埃尔与菲利普·于勒佩尔 (Philip Hurepel) 一样。 ，取得了妻子的称号。皮埃尔有一个儿子皮埃尔二世，他是菲利普·奥古斯都的表弟，成为当时最耸人听闻的悲剧的英雄。 1216年，他被选为君士坦丁堡皇帝，接替他的姐夫亨利和鲍德温，他试图率领一支五千人的小军，从布林迪西对面的杜拉佐出发，横渡伊利里亚和马其顿，但立刻就永远消失了。 1217 年夏天，伊庇鲁斯人俘获了他，从那时起，他的命运就无人知晓。

总的来说，这场灾难也许是十三世纪所有莎士比亚悲剧中最残酷的一场。人们可能会认为沙特尔的窗户是对皮埃尔的纪念，他是法国的表弟，也是一位没有帝国的皇帝。但达曼库尔先生坚称，这扇窗户不是为了纪念这位皮埃尔，而是为了纪念他的侄子，另一位皮埃尔·德·考特尼，孔什领主，他于 1249 年与圣路易一起前往埃及进行十字军东征，并在战争爆发前不久去世。 8 年 1250 月 1271 日，国王战败并被俘。他的兄弟拉乌尔·迪利耶 (Seigneur d'Illiers) 于 40 年去世，据说他是下一个窗户（编号 1270）的捐赠者。因此，考特尼窗户的日期应该是早于 1218 年圣路易去世；然而，人们想知道皮埃尔的第一任女婿塞纳河畔巴尔的戈谢或高提耶留下的另一扇考特尼窗户怎么样了，他似乎是沙特尔子爵，在达米埃塔之前去世XNUMX年，他立下遗嘱，留给沙特尔圣母院三十块银马克，“de quibus fieri debetmilesmontatussuperequumsuum”。这位骑马的骑士不仅可以为这些有趣的人物提供一个早期的日期，而且还可以确定成本，因为一个马克含有八盎司白银，价值十苏或半里弗。我们很快就会看到，奥卡桑为一头强壮的牛付出了二十苏（或一里弗），因此，如果是巴黎的钱，玻璃中的“miles montatus super equum suum”相当于十五头牛，这一点还远不确定。

这是一个属于专家的经济问题，但这些早期证据的历史价值仍然是有价值的——也许仍然高达十苏。所有的窗口都倾向于相同的结论。即使是最后一对，即编号 41 和 42，也提供了三个导致相同结果的个人线索：——布沙尔·德·马尔利 (Bouchard de Marly) 的手臂，他于 1226 年去世，几乎与路易八世同时去世；某位科林努斯 (Colinus) 或科林 (Colin)，“decameraRegis”，生于 1225 年；玫瑰中的博蒙特的罗伯特，他似乎是勒珀什的博蒙特，但人们对他的了解还很少或根本不知道。一般来说，有两个系列的窗户，一个是路易八世（1215-26）的同伴或追随者；另一个是路易八世（1226-70）的同伴或追随者。另一个是圣路易斯（1210-1220）的朋友或同伴，布兰奇王后将两者结合在一起。 1200年，唱诗班已经完成，礼拜仪式定期恢复，而耳堂和中殿在1225年完成并呈拱形，这有助于将这些顺序保持在一定的顺序。因此，对于顶侧窗户，我们将假设其设计和工艺的日期为 1220 年至 1236 年（经更正）；对于耳堂，1236 至 1270；中殿的总体趋势与 1240 年至 1248 年圣路易实际统治时期有关。由于早期玻璃中散落着大量晚期玻璃，因此误差范围很大；但是，通过将路易八世及其人物的统治与路易九世及其一代人的统治区分开来，我们可以相当确定我们的主要事实。与此同时，巴黎圣礼拜堂于 XNUMX 年至 XNUMX 年间全部建成并竣工，为传奇窗户提供了一个比较标准。

沙特尔的唱诗班与中殿一样长，而且更宽，而且后殿规划有七个圆形突出物，大大增加了窗户空间，因此指南上估计有三十七个窗户。其中许多都是纯灰色画，真正的玻璃爱好者认为纯灰色画与传说中的窗户一样值得研究。它们是一种与教堂没有特别关系的装饰，也没有明显的宗教意义，但维奥莱·勒·杜克似乎很难解释它的宗教价值；而且，由于他的解释不是很技术性，我们可以在看图例之前先看一下它：

窗户的颜色的优点是在不透明的墙壁上铺上一层极其精致的面纱或彩色玻璃，总是假设彩色窗户本身的色调是和谐的。无论他们的资源不允许艺术家采用完整的彩色玻璃系统，还是他们想要将更纯净的日光引入室内，无论他们的原因是什么，他们都诉诸了这种美丽的纯灰色装饰，这也是凭借对光对半透明表面影响的长期经验的帮助而获得的色彩和谐。我们的许多教堂都保留了灰色的窗户，填充了全部或部分的海湾。在后一种情况下，灰色条纹被保留给侧窗，以便从斜方向看到，在这种情况下，彩色玻璃填充了侧窗的海湾，即从远处可以看到的背面开口。这些侧面的灰色条纹仍然不透明，足以防止穿过它们的太阳光线照亮背面的彩色窗户；然而，在一天中的某些时间，这些太阳光线会在彩色窗户上投射出珍珠般的光芒，赋予它们难以形容的透明度和精致的色调。欧塞尔大教堂唱诗班的侧面窗户，一半是纯灰色画，一半是彩色的，与全彩色的背面窗户相映成趣，通过这种方式，玻璃的柔软程度令人难以想象。乳白色的光线穿过这些侧向的开间，在高耸的拱顶下形成一种极其透明的面纱，与后面窗户的明亮色调相交叉，使宝石熠熠生辉。然后，坚实的轮廓看起来就像透过一片清澈的水面看到的物体一样摇摆不定。距离会改变它们的数值，并导致眼睛迷失的深度。一天中的每一个小时，这些效果都会发生变化，而且总是伴随着新的和谐，人们永远不会厌倦尝试去理解；但研究得越深入，人们就越会在这些艺术家所获得的经验面前感到震惊，他们关于色彩效果的理论，假设他们有的话，对我们来说是未知的，而我们当中最友善的人却认为他们是简单的。孩子们。

其余部分您可以自行阅读。灰色画是色彩装饰的一个独立分支，属于整个照明和门窗系统，并且将不得不保持为一本合上的书，因为曾经解释过它的感觉和经验已经消失，我们也无法恢复。这些事情肯定是人们一直感觉而不是理性思考的，就像建筑商计划中的不规则之处一样；最好时代的最好作品所表现出的微妙感觉，就像狗在寻回时所表现出的感觉，或者蜜蜂在飞翔时所表现出的感觉一样微妙，但游客却失去了这种感觉。我们所能做的就是注意到纯灰色画本来就具有价值。它们是沙特尔后殿如此拥挤的光线和色彩的精致之一，以至于人们必须满足于感受自己所能感受到的，而放弃其他的。

明白了，我们不能！没有什么能证明有史以来最伟大的艺术家从逻辑意义上理解了！或者说全能者曾经理解过！或者说，最大的表达能力曾经能够表达的不仅仅是一种能量对另一种能量的反应，但不能表达两种能量对两种能量的反应；当你坐在这里，在这个复杂的后殿的中轴线上时，你仅仅在光的照射下就能看到数百种能量的反应，尽管时间只留下了艺术家在这里放置的东西的残骸。最好的窗户空间之一完全被圣皮亚教堂的十四世纪门口填满，只有通过观察北面对应的两扇窗户，好奇的询问者才能了解可能的损失。同一个教堂或多或少地阻挡了其他三个主窗户的光线。七百年来，阳光、灰尘、滴水的酸性物质以及其他时间的作用，腐蚀、磨损或改变了玻璃，尤其是南侧的玻璃。窗户因时间的流逝而变暗，并因故意伤害而支离破碎。许多面板经过完全修复，是现代复制品或仿制品。即使在经历了所有这些损失之后，玻璃可能是保存最完好的，或者也许是唯一保存完好的彩色装饰部分，因为我们永远不会知道拱顶、墙壁、柱子或地板的彩色装饰。只有一点是相当确定的：在节日期间，即使不是在其他时间，整个后殿的每一英尺空间都以某种方式覆盖着颜色；要么是油漆，要么是挂毯，要么是刺绣，要么是拜占庭锦缎，还有东方的东西或地毯，衬在墙壁上，覆盖着祭坛，遮住了地板。有时，您会看到带有彩色装饰的教堂内部装饰的插图手稿；但除了玻璃之外，这里的一切都已消失。

如果人们可以从后来几个世纪的玻璃来判断，十三世纪的窗户给人的第一印象应该是失望。 你会发现它们太女性化、太软弱、太小，而且最重要的是不是特别虔诚。 事实上，除了传说中名义上的主题外，人们看不出它们有任何宗教色彩。当用双筒望远镜观察时，会发现这些纪念章与其说是宗教性的，不如说是装饰性的。 圣米迦勒在这里不会有宾至如归的感觉，而圣伯纳德也会不以为然地离开他们。但当它们被安置起来时，圣伯纳德早已去世，圣米迦勒也将自己的位置让给了圣母。 这个后殿就是为她准备的。 在它的入口处，她坐在贝尔维里埃的两侧，或者作为圣母柱子，接受那些希望亲自向她直接讲话的恳求者的秘密和祈祷；在那里，她弯下腰，与我们齐平，恢复了人性，感受到了我们的悲伤和激情。 里面，十字光穿过高祭坛后面宽阔的柱子空间，是她的休息室，装饰者和建筑者只想取悦她。 建筑的缺陷和品味的女性化见证了艺术家的目标。 如果玻璃工匠想到的是他们自己、公众，甚至是牧师，他们就会竭力追求效果、强烈的色彩和引人注目的主题，以给人留下深刻的印象。 甚至没有任何此类建议。 拜占庭半圆顶的巨大、令人敬畏的马赛克雕像具有绚丽的宗教效果，但这位艺术家的脑海里却有完全不同的想法。 他受雇于圣母玛利亚；他正在她自己的宫殿里装饰她自己的房间；他想取悦她；即使她没有向他下达个人命令，他也知道她的品味。 对他来说，梦想就是命令。 十二世纪艺术家的薪水与二十世纪装饰师的比例毫无关系。 1200年的艺术家可能是最后一个不太关心男爵，不太关心牧师，也不关心公众的人，除非他碰巧由行会支付报酬，然后他只关心他的雇佣程度，或者，如果他本人是一名牧师，甚至连这个也不会。 他的报酬大多是不同的，与那些在他烧炉时从贝尔谢雷斯采石场拖石头的农民的报酬相同。 当他被提升去装饰新耶路撒冷的天后宫殿时，他的奖赏就会到来，而他侍奉的情妇比他更清楚什么工作是好的，什么是坏的，以及如何给他合适的位置。 玛丽的品味绝对不会出错。她的知识就像她的力量一样没有限制。她了解男人的思想和行为，不会被欺骗。 或许，即使在我们这个时代，如果一位艺术家知道，无论有没有陪审团审判，任何达不到他最佳水平的事情都会把他送上绞刑架，他的想象力就会受到极大的激发，他的作品也会得到极大的改进。但在十二世纪，绞刑架是小事一桩。女王几乎不认为这是对侵犯她尊严的惩罚。

所有这些都完整地写在这个后殿的每一块石头和每一扇窗户上，对于任何愿意阅读的人来说，就像传说一样清晰易读。艺术家们竭尽全力，不是为了取悦一群平耳农民或迟钝的男爵，而是为了满足天后玛丽的需要，法国国王和王后不断向她求助，她的绝对权威权力几乎是皇帝、教皇和小丑所承认的唯一约束。色彩装饰是她的，而且只属于她。对她来说，光线柔和，色调柔和，选择的主题，保留女性品味。其他伟大的女士们很可能对此事感兴趣，甚至对其技术改进也感兴趣。事实上，在中央的小礼拜堂里，暗示着维奥莱·勒·杜克提到的欧塞尔灰色画，是一幅带有卡斯蒂利亚和布兰奇王后纹章的灰色画；此外，另外三幅灰色画也带有著名的城堡，但这绝不是女性品味的最有力证明。困难在于在整个后殿中找到一丝明显的男性品味。

由于中央的教堂是最重要的，我们可以从那里的窗户开始，记住中央窗户的主题是基督的生平，这是由规则或习俗决定的。基督的左手边是圣彼得的窗户；接下来是圣保罗。一切都恢复了很多；其中三十三个奖章是全新的。圣彼得对面，基督的右手边，是圣西门和圣裘德的窗户；接下来是带有卡斯蒂利亚徽章的纯灰色画。如果这些窗户是在 1205 年至 1210 年间订购的，那么出生于 1187 年、结婚于 1200 年的布兰奇在用灰色画绘制这扇窗户来调节、协调和柔化光线时，就会是一位 XNUMX 岁或 XNUMX 岁的年轻公主。圣母的闺房。中央礼拜堂必须被认为是教堂中最严肃、研究最多、最古老的礼拜堂，位于地下室上方。这里的窗户的重要性应该仅次于西线的柳叶刀，而后者仅在六十年前出现。他们充分展示了这种差异。

这里必须亲眼看看。很少有艺术家对它了解甚多，更不用说关心这门已经死了四百年的艺术了。对于英国传统的普通建筑师来说，尼普尔的废墟并不比沙特尔建筑者在十二世纪的努力更容易理解。即使是维奥莱·勒·杜克的学识在处理这样一座如此个人化的建筑时也是错误的，其历史几乎完全消失了。这座中央礼拜堂一定是为了给后殿定调，它以女王沙龙的色彩装饰为特色，这种主题装饰对于异端来说过于严肃。乍一看，主题装饰的灵感来自于教堂习俗，而色彩则是一种实验，这个巨大窗户空间的装饰者可以自由地作为色彩师来取悦沙特尔伯爵夫人、布兰奇公主和布列塔尼公爵夫人，没有太多考虑已故的克莱尔沃的伯纳德甚至希波的奥古斯丁的意见，因为宫廷里的伟大女士们比圣徒更清楚什么适合圣母玛利亚。

中央窗户的主题是由传统规定的。基督就是教会，在这个教会里他和他的母亲合而为一；因此，基督的生平是中央窗口的主题，但处理方式是圣母的，正如颜色所显示的那样，并且除了她的影响之外，没有任何影响，包括受难，这正式证明了这一点。圣彼得和圣保罗作为两位伟大的大臣，代表了西方宗教中的两大派别：犹太教和外邦派，处于其应有的位置。在他们对面，玛丽的两个侄子西蒙和裘德通过家族的影响力平衡了委托权力的重量。但这个话题再次分支到对玛丽来说非常私人的事情，以至于西蒙和裘德需要更进一步的了解。人们必须学习一本新的指南——《黄金传奇》，作者是神圣的詹姆斯，热那亚主教和多米尼克骑士团成员，他出生在瓦拉泽或沃拉吉奥，几乎与托马斯出生在阿基诺同一年，他的《奥雷亚传奇》写于十三世纪中叶，是比《圣经》本身更通俗的历史，也被更广泛地视为权威。十三世纪的装饰者的动机完全超出了《圣经》，热那亚的詹姆斯将资料汇编成一本书，几乎与《圣弗朗西斯的菲奥雷蒂》一样引人入胜。

根据“黄金传说”以及耶路撒冷朝圣者和十字军所接受的传统，玛丽的家庭联系很大。看来她的母亲安妮结过三次婚，每一位丈夫都有一个女儿玛丽，所以玛丽有三个同父异母的姐妹。

约阿希姆-安妮-克利奥帕斯--莎乐美

约瑟夫-玛丽·阿尔菲斯-玛丽·玛丽-西庇太

基督詹姆斯约瑟夫西蒙裘德小詹姆斯约翰少校福音传道者使徒只是孔波斯特拉的圣伊阿古

因此，西门和裘德是玛利亚的侄子和基督的表兄弟，他们的生活不仅证明了圣经的真理，而且特别证明了他们的姨妈，即基督的童贞母亲的私人和家庭地位。他们被选中，而不是他们的兄弟，或者表兄弟詹姆斯和约翰，是因为与彼得和保罗站在对面的显着荣誉，无疑是因为他们自己的某些优点，但也许也因为在艺术上两者被视为一体，因此一扇窗户提供了两个证人，这使得艺术家能够插入一幅纯灰色画来代替另一扇传奇的窗户，以完成他们右边的教堂。根据维奥莱-勒-杜克的说法，这个位置的灰色画可以调节光线，从而完成效果。

如果习惯为中央教堂规定了一般规则，那么附近的窗户似乎就留下了很大的自由度。在沙特尔，包含接下来两扇窗户的弧形投影不是教堂，而只是一个窗台，为了窗户的缘故，如果艺术家们旨在取悦圣母，他们就会把最好的作品放在那里。在布尔日，在同一相对位置有建筑物中最好的三个窗户：浪子、新联盟和好撒玛利亚人；它们都充满了生活、故事和色彩，很少涉及崇拜或圣人。沙特尔的选择更加引人注目，窗户也是建筑中最好的，仅次于西侧的十二世纪玻璃。第一幅位于中央礼拜堂中布兰奇的灰色画旁边，被赠予玛丽的另一位侄子、基督的使徒圣詹姆斯少校，他的生平被记录在正确的圣经词典中，最后的评论如下：

有关他的死亡和他与西班牙的联系的传说，请参阅《罗马祈祷书》，其中瘫痪病人的治愈和赫莫根尼的皈依都归功于他，并且断言他在西班牙传播了福音，并且他的遗骸被翻译成康波斯特拉……由于这里提到的任何传说都没有基础的影子，我们忽略它们，恕不另行通知。就连巴罗尼厄斯也为他们感到羞耻……

如果博学的巴洛尼乌斯认为自己需要为所有已成为历史的传说感到羞耻，那么他在辛勤的一生中一定遭受了残酷的痛苦，而他的痛苦也不会仅限于教会的编年史；但玻璃窗的历史准确性与我们无关，历史学家也不会特别关心圣母一生的事件，无论是记录的还是传说的。宗教是，或者应该是，一种感觉，十三世纪的窗户是原始文献，比《圣经》中的任何记录都更具历史性，因为它们的灵感与其权威不同。在法国宫廷的贵妇们看来，圣詹姆斯、圣裘德或任何其他使徒的真实生活并没有提供足够令人愉快的主题来装饰天后的宫殿；任何将这两扇窗户与教条主题进行比较的人都一定会觉得他们是对的。圣詹姆斯，更广为人知的名字是孔波斯特拉的圣地亚哥，是对年轻王妃的赞美——在王妃存在之前——卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇公主，她的手臂或城堡就在旁边的灰色画窗户上。也许她选择了他站在那里。当然，她的手在教堂里随处可见，值得怀疑。作为侄子，圣詹姆斯对圣母玛利亚很亲爱，但作为西班牙的朋友，对布兰奇来说更亲爱，而且不可能纯粹的意外导致三个相邻的窗户呈现西班牙风格。

圣詹姆斯让十三世纪的人们感到高兴，人们在布尔日、图尔以及扇贝壳讲述朝圣者的任何地方都能看到他的窗户，它不属于《圣经》，而是属于“黄金传说”。这扇窗户是由商人裁缝提供的，他们的签名出现在十三世纪上半叶沙特尔裁缝店的两幅图画的底部和角落里。店童从箱子里取出布料，让他的主人向顾客展示，并在他的衣橱里量尺寸。圣詹姆斯的故事从下面的面板开始，他在那里接受了基督的使命，在上面的右边，他似乎正在讲道。左边有一个人物，讲述了这个故事受欢迎的原因。这是阿尔莫根尼，或者拉丁语中的赫莫根尼，一位在法利赛人中享有盛誉的著名魔术师，他拥有恶魔的指挥权，正如你所看到的，因为在他的肩膀后面，站着一个小恶魔，而他则命令他的学生菲勒图斯皈依了詹姆斯。接下来，詹姆斯与一群听众进行讨论。菲勒图斯给了他一本错误的教义。阿尔莫吉尼斯随后进一步指示菲勒图斯。詹姆斯被一根绳子带走，边走边治愈了瘫痪病人。他将自己的斗篷送给菲勒图斯，以驱除恶魔。菲勒图斯收到了斗篷，滑稽的小恶魔流着泪离开了。阿尔莫吉尼大发脾气，派了两个头上顶角、手里拿着棍棒的恶魔去跟詹姆斯讲道理。他派他们回去向阿尔莫吉尼抗议。随后，恶魔们捆绑了阿尔莫吉尼斯并将他带到詹姆斯面前，詹姆斯与他讨论了分歧，直到阿尔莫吉尼斯烧毁了他的魔法书并跪倒在圣人面前。然后两人都被带到希律王面前，阿尔莫吉尼斯打破了一个漂亮的异教偶像，而詹姆斯则入狱。这里出现了一幅不合时宜的画板，显示阿尔莫吉尼斯对菲勒图斯施了魔法，而恶魔则占据了他的身体。然后，阿尔莫吉尼斯被一名年轻的犹太人粗暴地对待，而旁观者似乎对此表示赞同。接下来，詹姆斯让阿尔莫吉尼斯把他的魔法书扔进海里；两人都被带去执行死刑，并在途中医治体弱多病的人。他们的头被砍下来；在顶端，上帝祝福这个世界。

这扇窗户的目的是为了取悦圣母，这似乎是一个合理的想法，就像它应该被用来指导人们或我们一样。它的幽默在当时和现在一样幽默，因为十三世纪的法国人甚至在教堂里也喜欢幽默，正如他们的怪诞所宣称的那样。圣詹姆斯之窗是一个神奇的故事，以童话般的活泼方式讲述着。但如果它的娱乐动机似乎仍然是一个强迫的想法，我们可以立即转到教堂中占据最佳位置的同伴窗户，在通常的大教堂中，人们期望找到圣约翰或其他使徒;或圣约瑟夫；或者是教义课程，例如所谓的“新联盟”，其中旧约和新约是统一的。艺术家在这里设置的窗户被认为是十三世纪最好的窗户，而且是最不带有宗教色彩的。

这个主题正是彩色玻璃图片中的《罗兰之歌》，其边框值得悠闲地与西方柳叶刀的 1200 世纪边框进行比较。即使在沙特尔，艺术家们也不能冒着不悦圣母和教会的风险，去遵循像《香颂》本身这样完全亵渎的作品，而罗兰在宗教中没有地位。只能通过查理曼介绍他，而查理曼在那里几乎和他一样少。十二世纪为让查理曼进入教会做出了不懈的努力，而教会却没有做出什么努力将他拒之门外。然而，到了 1165 年，除了 1122 年反教皇帕斯卡三世之外，查理曼还没有被封为圣人，尽管西班牙有一种流行的信念，并得到必要文件的支持，即教皇卡利克斯图斯二世于 1200 年宣布了所谓的编年史特平大主教的说法是真实的。 XNUMX年的沙特尔主教是一位非常开明的高级教士，他不会接受《编年史》、特平或查理曼本人，更不用说罗兰和蒂埃里了，认为其神圣性是真实的。但是，如果年轻美丽的法国王太子妃、她在沙特尔的表兄弟姐妹以及他们的艺术家们坚信圣母会对查理曼和罗兰的故事感到高兴，那么主教可能会让他们为所欲为，尽管存在违规行为。显而易见，窗户是不规则的；可以肯定的是，它一直受到极大的赞赏；无可否认，雷诺主教一定已经同意了。

关于这个窗口最详尽的描述可以在马累的“Art Religieux”（第 444-50 页）中找到。它的感觉或动机完全是另一回事，就像北门廊上的雕像一样。毛皮商或毛皮商人支付了查理曼大帝橱窗的费用，他们的签名立在底部，商人向他的顾客展示一件毛皮衬里的斗篷。玛丽个人对毛皮感兴趣，似乎没有任何权威可以证实，但布兰奇和伊莎贝尔以及宫廷的每一位女士，以及每一位国王和每一位伯爵，在那个时代，都对这个主题产生了浓厚的兴趣，这一点得到了证明他们支付的价格以及他们穿着的数量。即使是裁缝商人在宫廷中的地位也不比皮货商更高，这也许可以解释为什么他们的地位如此接近圣母玛利亚。无论出于什么原因，皮货商都被允许在这里签名，与裁缝店并排，在布兰奇公主旁边。他们的天赋证明了这一点。在第一个面板的签名上方，君士坦丁皇帝正在君士坦丁堡的一张精致的床上睡觉，而一位天使正在向他下令向查理曼寻求援助以对抗撒拉逊人。查理曼身穿 1200 年的全套盔甲，骑在马背上出现。然后，戴着光环的圣人查理曼与两位主教就拯救君士坦丁的十字军东征进行了交谈。在下一个场景中，他到达君士坦丁堡的城门，君士坦丁接待了他。第五张图最有趣；查理曼大帝率领他的骑士进攻撒拉逊人。法兰克人身穿铠甲，手持长而尖的盾牌。异教徒携带圆盾；戴着王冠的查理曼一剑砍掉了一位撒拉逊埃米尔的头颅。但战斗是绝望的；战马全速驰骋，一名撒拉逊人正用战斧攻击查理曼大帝。取得胜利后，君士坦丁皇帝奖励查理曼三件无价的礼物，即三件圣物箱或圣物箱，其中包含一块真正的十字架； Suaire 或救世主的墓布；和圣母的外衣。查理曼大帝随后返回法国，在下一个奖章中向艾克斯教堂展示了三辆战车和撒拉逊国王的王冠，对于法国观众来说，艾克斯教堂意味着圣但尼修道院。这个场景结束了故事的第一卷。

第二部分以查理曼开始，他坐在两人之间，仰望天空的银河，当时被称为圣詹姆斯之路，这条路引导他前往西班牙的圣詹姆斯坟墓。圣詹姆斯本人在梦中向查理曼显现，并命令他从异教徒手中赎回坟墓。然后查理曼带着兰斯大主教图平和骑士们出发了。当着他的军队面前，他下马并祈求上帝的帮助。然后他到达潘佩鲁纳（Pampeluna）之前，并在飞入城市时用长矛击中了撒拉逊酋长。他骑马指挥工人们建造一座教堂以纪念圣詹姆斯。一朵小云代表上帝之手。接下来展示的是长矛的奇迹；晚上它们被困在地里，早上人们发现它们长出了叶子，预示着殉难。两千人在战斗中丧生。然后开始了罗兰的故事，艺术家和捐赠者们都非常渴望讲述这个故事，因为他们知道，地球上的男人和女人如此感兴趣的东西，也一定会引起爱他们的玛丽的兴趣。你看到特平大主教正在庆祝弥撒，这时天使出现了，警告他罗兰的命运。然后罗兰本人也戴着光环出现，正在杀死巨人菲拉格斯。罗兰和菲拉格斯的战斗在顶部，没有顺序，就像传奇窗口中经常发生的那样。查理曼和他的军队穿过比利牛斯山脉向家乡进军，而罗兰则吹响号角，劈开岩石，但未能攻破杜伦达尔。蒂埃里（Thierry）同样是圣人，戴着头盔给罗兰送水。最后蒂埃里宣布了罗兰的死讯。顶部，罗兰和菲拉格斯的两侧，各有一个拿着香的天使。

据说这个窗口的执行效果非常出色。 对于这种颜色及其与圣詹姆斯颜色的关系，人们需要时间和长期的了解才能了解其价值。 感觉上，与十二世纪相比，不需要时间就能看到变化。 这两扇窗户就像兰克雷特的画一样具有法式和现代感；它们是纯粹的艺术，就像大歌剧院的装饰一样简单的装饰。 十三世纪对宗教和装饰的了解比二十世纪还要多。 这些窗户既不具有象征意义，也不神秘，也不像它们假装的那样具有宗教色彩。 只要人们承认罗兰和费拉格斯的战斗，或者罗兰缠绕他的奥利芬特，或者查理曼砍下头颅和刺穿摩尔人，这些都是从未有意为之的主题，那么他们更聪明、更昂贵或更有效就没有任何意义。教导宗教或教导无知的人，而是为了取悦天后，就像他们用罗马人取悦人间女王一样，不是用诗句而是用色彩，尽可能接近完美的装饰。 人们本能地向对面相应的海湾望去，看看艺术家们可以做些什么来平衡他们艺术的这两项伟大努力；但对面的海湾现在被圣皮亚教堂的入口占据，人们不知道十四世纪可能做了什么改变来重新排列玻璃；然而，即使是现在，与查理曼大帝相对应的西尔维斯特窗，作为玻璃，是整个大教堂中最坚固的。 在我们左边的下一个教堂里，有殉道者，第一个殉道者圣斯蒂芬就在中间的窗户里。 自然题材比较严肃，但色彩上并没有区别对待。 再进一步，你会看到艺术家们回到了他们更轻松的主题。 圣朱利安和圣托马斯的故事比十三世纪半个浪漫故事的情节更有趣，但宗教色彩并不多。 圣托马斯的主题是圣詹姆斯主题的附属，因为圣托马斯是一位伟大的旅行家和建筑师，他将玛丽的崇拜带到了印度，就像圣詹姆斯将它带到了西班牙一样。 在沙特尔和布尔日的“专着”或“黄金传奇”的帮助下，以及偶尔访问勒芒、图尔、克莱蒙费朗的帮助下，研究这些窗户的故事、颜色和制作是许多天的乐趣和其他大教堂；不过，顺便提一句，我们必须指出，圣托马斯的窗户是法国赠送的，并带有皇家徽章，也许是为国王菲利普·奥古斯都国王而建的。圣朱利安的窗户是木匠和库珀夫妇捐赠的。 人们觉得没有必要解释为什么王室家族以及他们的裁缝、毛皮商、木匠和制桶匠的品味会如此奇妙地契合，彼此之间，以及与圣母的品味如此契合。但我们可以将对面的石匠的品味与他们的品味进行比较，例如圣西尔维斯特和圣梅尔基亚德的窗户，他们的蓝色几乎杀死了查理曼本身，以及坎特伯雷的圣托马斯的制革工人的品味。或者，在南侧的最后一个小教堂中，圣马丁的窗户上有鞋匠的教堂，出于某种原因，归因于某个克莱门斯·维特雷乌斯·卡努滕西斯（Clemens vitrearius Carnutensis），他的名字就在鲁昂大教堂的窗户上。 即使可以证明身份，名字也无法说明任何问题。 玻璃制造商克莱门特可能为自己工作，也可能为他人工作。玻璃杯的不同之处仅在于品味或成本的精致程度。

至少可以解释的是，为什么一些本应位于此处的窗口却出现在其他地方。在大多数教堂中，人们可以在唱诗班中找到一扇教义的窗口，例如所谓的新联盟，但在这里，新联盟被放逐到中殿。除了后殿中昂贵的查理曼和圣詹姆斯窗户外，毛皮商和布商还赠送了其他几扇窗户，其中一扇似乎特别适合作为圣托马斯、圣詹姆斯和圣朱利安的伴侣，因此最好与这些窗户一起使用在比较它们的同时。它位于中殿，新塔的第三个窗户，在北过道上，即圣尤斯塔斯的窗户。这件作品的故事、处理方式和美感足以使其成为阿尔莫吉尼的吊坠，位于海湾，现在是圣皮亚教堂的大门，对于传奇故事来说，这应该是教堂中所有位置中最有效的位置。圣尤斯塔斯，名叫普拉西达斯，指挥图拉真皇帝的卫队。有一天，他与猎人和猎犬一起出去打猎，正如窗户下方面板上的传说开始的那样；一幅 1200 年左右猎鹿的漂亮照片；接下来是更漂亮的一幅，雄鹿跳上一块岩石后转身，在它的角之间展示了一个十字架，雄鹿一侧平衡着另一侧的马，而跪下的普拉西达斯屈服于基督的奇迹。然后普拉西达受洗为尤斯塔斯。在中间，你可以看到他和他的妻子和两个孩子——另一个迷人的构图——离开了这座城市。据说角落里的四个小面板上有 Drapers 和 Furriers 的签名。上面，冒险的故事还在继续，尤斯塔斯与一位船长讨价还价，以获取他的通行权。他与妻子和孩子一起登船，到达某个海岸，两个孩子在那里登陆，船长开车带着尤斯塔斯追赶他们，同时拘留了妻子。这里的四个小面板尚未被识别，但这个传说无疑是中世纪所熟悉的，他们知道尤斯塔斯和孩子们如何来到一条河边，在那里你可以看到一只粉红色的狮子叼着一个孩子，而一只狼，哪个抓住了另一个，就受到牧羊人和狗的攻击。孩子们被救了，妻子再次出现，跪在她的主人面前，讲述她逃离船长的故事，孩子们站在后面；然后，一家人团聚，重新得到皇帝的宠爱，他们吃喝玩乐，幸福快乐。最后，尤斯塔斯拒绝向一尊优雅的古董偶像献祭，然后和他的家人一起被关在一头铜牛里。其下方燃起一团火；从上面，一只手授予了殉难者的王冠。

另一个本应放在后殿的科目却处于一种奇异的孤立状态，这让教会学习这一分支的许多学生感到震惊。在桑斯，圣尤斯塔斯在唱诗班中，他身边是浪子。在布尔日，《浪子》也在合唱团中出现。在沙特尔，他被放逐到北侧耳堂，在那里你会在中殿旁边的窗户里找到他，几乎就像他受到了耻辱一样。然而，据说玻璃非常精美，是教堂里最好的玻璃之一，而故事的讲述却比平时更加​​生动。就颜色和做工而言，这扇窗户有一种年代久远的感觉，质量也高于平均水平。在底部你可以看到屠夫公司的签名。布尔日的窗户是坦纳家族给的。故事开始于一张照片，显示小儿子向父亲索要他应得的遗产，他在下一张画中收到了这笔遗产，然后骑在马背上，在巴黎的拉丁区消费，这让人不禁怀疑，他到达那里，受到两位女士的欢迎。没有人愿意解释为什么沙特尔应该认为两位女士在神学上比一位女士更正确。或者为什么桑斯应该选择三个，或者为什么波治应该要求六个。也许这是艺术家的想象；但是，在离开十二世纪之前，我们将看到，那些带着自己那一份遗产到拉丁区学习的普通年轻人，发现了两种学术教学流派，一种称为现实主义，另一种称为唯名论，每种流派都属于唯名论和现实主义。反过来，教会也不得不谴责。与此同时，浪子与他们一起享受盛宴，头戴鲜花，就像一个新的阿伯拉德，向爱洛伊丝唱着歌，直到他的宗教资本耗尽，他被从床上拖下来，赤身裸体地被赶出家门。棍棒，在这一点上我也很像阿伯拉德。在布尔日，他被轻轻地赶了出来；在桑斯，他被三个魔鬼拖走。然后他寻求服务，人们看到他从树枝上敲落橡子来喂雇主的猪；但是，在成千上万直接从学校来到这里的年轻人中，十分之九的人说他正在给雇主的孩子们教书信，或者给拉丁区的学生讲课。最后，他决定回到他的父亲身边——可能是巴黎大主教或圣但尼修道院院长——父亲张开双臂接待了他，并给了他一件新长袍，这对粗俗的学生来说意味着教堂生活——一座修道院，也许是布列塔尼或其他地方的圣吉尔达德瑞斯修道院。肥牛被宰杀，盛宴开始，大儿子（被恶意学生称为伯纳德）出现以示抗议。在上方，上帝在他的宝座上祝福着地球。

浪子的最初象征是一种相当不同的浪子形式。根据教会的解释，圣父有两个儿子：较年长的是犹太人；年轻的，外邦人。天父将他的物质分配给他们，将神圣法则赋予年长者，将自然法赋予年幼者。正如人们必须相信的那样，弟弟离开了，把他的物质分散到了亚里士多德身上。但当天父牺牲受害者——基督——作为团聚的象征时，他悔改并回归。犹太教堂是否也接受祭品这一点还不清楚。但教会坚持认为改造犹太教堂是基督神圣品格的必要证明。直到这个窗口可能已经打开的时候，新教会在圣多米尼克的影响下才放弃犹太人，绝望地只转向外邦人。

古老的象征主义属于第四和第五世纪，正如耶稣会教父马丁和卡希尔在布尔日的“专着”中所说，它应该让特别受到年轻人喜爱的圣母感到高兴，并习惯性地表现出她对圣母的依恋。他们。在布尔日，窗户紧挨着后殿的中央礼拜堂，而在沙特尔，窗户是圣皮亚礼拜堂的入口。但布尔日不属于圣母院，桑斯也不属于。从 1200 年到 1230 年这些年的浪子故事给这个窗口带来了一点个人兴趣，而圣路加福音中的浪子甚至在 1209 世纪也几乎不可能有这样的兴趣。忏悔者。教会和王室都不喜欢浪子。 1215年，主教们非但没有为他们宰杀肥牛，反而在巴黎焚烧了至少十头牛，因为他们与亚里士多德的阿拉伯和犹太门徒过于亲密。沙特尔主教在学校之间的地位一直很尴尬。至于卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇，她的第一个儿子，即后来的圣路易斯，于 1229 年出生。从那时起，浪子就不可能在她经常光顾的任何社交场合受到欢迎。浪子们对她最反感，直到XNUMX年，争吵变得如此激烈，她才派出警察来对付他们，并在街上打死了一些人。他们不顾忠诚或体面进行报复，远非模范青年，而且即使得到宽恕和恩惠，也容易道德败坏。

天后圣母玛利亚对浪子甚至浪子女儿都没有偏见。当布尔日和桑斯的圣斯蒂芬没有表现出这样的清教主义时，她几乎不会自愿命令这些人离开她的后殿。然而沙特尔的窗户却被收在北耳堂。即使在那里，它仍然矗立在柱圣母对面，在教堂的女性和布兰奇王后一侧，位置极佳，从唱诗班本身的一些窗户可以更好地看到它，因为夏末的阳光照耀着充满了它，并将其色彩带到了后殿。这可能是圣母玛利亚品味的众多例子之一，对于她的官方宫廷来说，这种品味几乎过于帝国主义。尽管玛丽无所不知，但她并不知道卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇们和拉丁区的学生之间有什么区别。她相当喜欢浪子，对那些消耗浪子物质的女士们也很温柔。她接纳抹大拉的玛丽和吉卜赛人玛丽加入她的社团。只要浪子崇拜她，她就不会为亚里士多德烦恼，自然，浪子崇拜她，几乎把三位一体排除在外。她总是不太关心自己的尊严，而不是所希望的。尤其是在中殿和门廊上，在农民中间，她喜欢表现得像他们中的一员。她坚持躺在马厩里的床上，周围是牛和驴，她的孩子放在床边的摇篮里，就好像她和其他妇女一样受苦，尽管教会坚称她没有。她的丈夫圣约瑟夫在她的宫廷里是出了名的不舒服，总是喜欢尽可能靠近门口。相反，沙特尔的唱诗班是贵族式的。那里的每一扇窗户都具有宫廷气质，甚至包括当代上流社会的时尚殉道者托马斯·贝克特。神学被放置在耳堂或更远的中殿，新联盟的窗户肘部浪子回头的地方。即使对卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇来说，玛丽也既不是慈善家，也不是神学家，也不仅仅是一位母亲——她是一位绝对的女皇，无论她说什么都会被遵守，但有时她似乎会做出令她最有权势的仆人担心的命令。

玛丽选择把她的浪子放进耳堂，人们想知道原因。这是对主教或女王的让步吗？还是为了取悦老百姓，把《好撒玛利亚人》、《浪子》等那些耳熟能详、深受大众喜爱的图画书挂在大厅的墙上？这几乎不可能，因为人们肯定会更喜欢查理曼和圣詹姆斯而不是其他人。我们永远不会知道；但坐在后殿柔和的午后阳光下，人们可以花几个小时阅读打开的彩色书籍，聆听十三世纪的建筑师、艺术家、牧师、王子和公主关于建筑安排的持续讨论。这个后殿。无论他们的意志多么坚强，无论是牧师、贵族还是玻璃工匠，都一定会吸引圣母，我们可以想象建筑师仍然在我们身边，在夜色渐浓的时候，精神上祈祷，就像他看起来的那样在结束一天的工作时：“处女女士，告诉我你最喜欢什么！我知道中央教堂是正确的。 Lady Blanche 的灰色画很好地掩盖了相当强烈的蓝色调，我相信它会适合你。在我看来，查理曼大帝的窗户非常成功，但主教对此感到一点也不轻松，如果不是布兰奇夫人坚持要一个西班牙海湾，我根本不敢把它放在这里。为了同时平衡主题和颜色，我们尝试了下一个教堂的斯蒂芬窗，用更多的红色；但如果圣史蒂芬还不足以让您满意，我们又尝试了圣朱利安，他的故事确实值得像我们讲述的那样告诉您；我们把圣托马斯和他放在一起，因为你爱他并把你的腰带给了他。我本人不太关心对面的坎特伯雷圣托马斯，尽管伯爵对此很狂热，主教也想要它；但西尔维斯特号在早晨的阳光下显得格外美丽。最让我烦恼的是右手边的第一个海湾。公主们不会让我把浪子放在那里，即使它是为这个地方而做的。除了尤斯塔斯号之外，我没有其他任何东西足以平衡查理曼号。慈悲的女士，我该怎么办？请原谅我的错误、我的愚蠢、我可怜的缺乏品味和感觉！我爱你并且崇拜你！我的一切，都是为了你！如果我不能取悦你，我就不在乎天堂！但如果没有你的帮助，我就会迷失方向！”

老实说，你可能会永远坐在这里，想象七百年前在这些金库下每天听到的这样的呼吁以及无休止的讨论和批评。我坚信圣母回答了这些问题，就像我坚信她在其他地方没有回答这些问题一样。人们在每一方面都能看到她的个人存在。任何一个愿意感觉自己像个孩子的人都能感受到这一点。任何周日下午坐在这里，当女院长的孩子们在唱诗班中吟唱时，你的思绪就会被建筑的强烈线条和阴影所抓住；你的眼睛充满了玻璃的秋色；你的耳朵被纯净的声音淹没；一种感觉对另一种感觉产生反应，直到感觉达到其范围的极限——如果你愿意看和听，你或任何其他迷失的灵魂都可以感受到一种超越人类的感觉，准备揭示一种神圣的感觉，这将使那个世界变得美好再次变得可理解，并将使圣母再次复活，在她在这里所表现出的所有情感深处——线条、拱顶、教堂、颜色、传说、圣歌——比祈祷书更雄辩，更美丽胜过秋天的阳光；任何愿意尝试的人都可以像孩子一样，在他已经学过一百遍的艺术中不断地读出新的思想；但更令人信服的是，他可以随意地、在一瞬间，通过调用他自己的单一动机来粉碎整个艺术。

所有的艺术家都热爱基督教教堂的圣地，而所有的游客都热爱其他的地方。当人们离开唱诗班并回到中殿宽敞开放的大厅时，原因就变得清晰起来。唱诗班不是为朝圣者而生，而是为神而生，其历史与亚当一样古老，甚至更古老。无论如何，早在基督诞生之前几千年，就已经以完整的艺术和神学形式存在了，包含了三位一体、母亲和孩子、甚至十字架的全部奥秘；但基督教会不仅掌握了圣所，赋予了它一种新的形式，比罗马人、希腊人或埃及人想象的更美丽、更精致，而且还增加了中殿和耳堂的概念，并发展了它进入了帝国的辉煌。朝圣游客在中殿里会感到宾至如归，因为它是为他而建的。艺术家热爱这座圣所，因为他是为上帝建造的。

沙特尔的目的是轻松容纳一万人，或者在拥挤时容纳一万五千人，这个巨大空间的装饰虽然不是一个全新的问题，但必须以新的方式对待。圣索非亚大教堂是由查士丁尼皇帝动用了帝国的所有资源，在六年内一次性建成的，并在总体方案上用马赛克进行了装饰，以帝国和教会能够给予的统一为基础。一起行动。西西里岛的诺曼国王，十二世纪最富有的王子，能够按照既定计划，从头到尾一次持续的努力，完成一项最昂贵的工程。沙特尔是一个当地的圣地，位于一个农业省份，甚至不属于皇家领土的一部分，它的大教堂是社会的作品，没有比圣母玛利亚赋予它更多的联系。从社会角度来看，沙特尔的石雕作品似乎大部分都是乡村地区。它的门廊和耳堂的装饰是皇家和封建的。中殿和唱诗班主要是资产阶级风格。缺乏统一并不比统一更令人惊讶，但它仍然很明显，尤其是在玻璃中。蒙雷阿莱的马赛克开始和结束；它们是一个系列；他们的联系既是艺术的又是神学的；他们团结一致。沙特尔的窗户没有顺序，它们的魅力是多种多样的、个性化的，有时甚至是彼此完全敌对的，反映了赋予它们如画的社会。它们还有一个魅力，那就是世界并没有试图将它们普及到现代用途，因此，除了阿贝·克莱瓦尔（Abbe Clerval）那本有用的小指南之外，人们看不到任何关于传说中的混乱的线索；人们拥有它，不用担心被批评家或犹太艺术品商人践踏；任何沙特尔的乞丐妇女仍然可以在这里度过一个夏日，而且永远不会因为对每个小摆设商人都应该知道的事情的无知而感到羞愧。

然而，艺术家们似乎已经从这里开始有了一些顺序的想法，因为北过道的第一扇窗户，紧邻新塔，讲述了诺亚的故事；但下一篇则深入探讨沙特尔的当地历史，并专门介绍圣卢宾（Saint Lubin），他是该教区的一位主教，于 556 年左右去世，出于某种原因，他被酒商们选为代表。他们有趣的奖章展示了。然后跟随三个有趣的主题，经过迷人的处理：圣尤斯塔斯，他的故事已被讲述；约瑟和他的弟兄们；圣尼古拉斯是十三世纪希腊和罗马教会中最受欢迎的圣人。中殿北过道上的第六个也是最后一个窗口是新联盟。

与这些相反，在南过道，该系列从福音传道者约翰的塔楼开始，然后是由运水者提供的圣玛丽抹大拉。第三个是鞋匠们提供的“好撒玛利亚人”，它在桑斯有一个竞争对手，批评者认为后者更好。第四个是圣母的死亡、升天和加冕。然后是十五世纪的旺多姆教堂，可以比较早期和晚期的玻璃。第六个现在或曾经致力于圣母在沙特尔的奇迹；但只剩下一个完整的主题。

这些窗户照亮了中殿的两个过道，并用大量的色彩和各种线条装饰了教堂的下墙，尽管受到了很大的伤害，但实际上仍然完好无损；但同一层耳堂的窗户几乎消失了，除了浪子和北部曾经是圣劳伦斯教堂的边界；南边是拉文纳圣阿波里纳里斯 (Saint Apollinaris) 的窗户的一部分，上面有有趣的天使等级：六翼天使和基路伯，有六个翅膀，红色和蓝色；统治；权力；公国；所有，除了《权力的游戏》。

所有这一切似乎都很简单，至少对于那些建造中殿的人来说，以及窗户本来就是要向他们说话的。这里没有什么深奥的；只不过是适合一座宏伟宫殿的大厅的东西。唱诗班里的圣母和门口的挑水人在品味上没有什么区别。年轻的女王布兰奇喜欢她的杂货店和面包师喜欢的颜色、传说和线条。所有人都同样热爱圣母。甚至没有社会差异。在唱诗班中，沙特尔伯爵蒂博（Thibaut），该省的直接领主，让自己被安排在贝尔维里埃旁边的一个黑暗的角落里，而让面包师们在教堂最严肃的地方——中央窗户——展示他们的财富。中央教堂的部分，而在中殿和耳堂，所有带有签名的较低窗户都是由行业提供的，就好像教堂的这一部分被遗弃给公共场所一样。人们可能会认为封建贵族会在天窗和楼上窗户里加固自己，但即使在那里，资产阶级也入侵了它们，你可以通过玻璃看到糕点师和车工看着对面的纺织工、咖喱工和货币兑换商。 ，以及“旅行之人”。在圣母的宝座下，没有恩赐之分。最重要的是，这种区别有利于普通人。

高坛上方和周围的七个巨大窗户是一体设计的，没有一个是由王子或贵族捐赠的。布商、屠夫、面包师、银行家肩负着为维珍号服务的最高职责。显然，无论是圣路易，还是他的父亲路易八世，还是他的母亲布兰奇，还是他的叔叔菲利普·于勒佩尔，还是他的表弟卡斯蒂利亚的圣斐迪南，还是他的另一个表弟皮埃尔·德·德勒，还是布列塔尼公爵夫人阿利克斯，都不关心他们的肖像或徽章盾牌被糕点师和卡车司机塞到角落里看不见的地方，或者占据了教堂的整面墙。连接他们的唯一关系是他们与圣母的共同关系，但这种关系是强调的，并且主导着整体。

如果我们反思它，它也主宰着我们，即使七百年后它的意义已经消失。当人们仰望天窗中这种辉煌的表现，并询问那些付出如此巨大的努力和如此自我牺牲而共同创造出这一惊人效果的人们的内心想法时，这个问题似乎就这样回答了自己：一个回声。凭借着一半萎缩的想象力，我们仍能在愉快的心情中看到中殿和耳堂里挤满了跪着的万人，以及头戴王冠、身穿长袍的圣母坐在覆盖她皇座的绣花垫子上。闪闪发光的宝石；她右手拿着权杖，膝上抱着婴儿国王；但是，在她坐下时，我们应该看到她停顿了一下，以爱和同情的目光低头看着我们——她的人民——他们挤满了巨大的大厅，远远地挤在敞开的大门之外；片刻之后，她抬头一看，看到她的伟大领主，无论是精神上的还是世俗的，她判断力的顾问，她权威的支持者，她意志的代理人，都已就位。身穿长袍、戴冠冕、武装；带有她的权威和职务的象征；骑在马背上，手持长矛；他们都准备好执行判决或仁慈的任务；用权杖触碰或用剑击打；并且永远不会犯错。

他们还站在那里！没有改变，没有褪色，像代表现实世界时一样鲜活而完整，而下面的人就是虚幻而短暂的盛会！那么现实就是天上的女王坐在圣所的宝座上，而她的宫廷则在玻璃中。不是那些和人群一起匍匐在她脚下的女王或王子。这些人了解圣母就像了解自己的母亲一样。她王冠上的每一颗宝石，她许多长袍上的每一针金线刺绣；每种颜色；每一个折叠；她那张庄严、帝王般的面孔上的每一个表情都非常熟悉；潜伏在她力量的无声悲伤中的每一个关心；一遍又一遍地重复，用石头、玻璃、象牙、珐琅、木头；在每个房间里，在每张床头，挂在每个人的脖子上，站在每个街角，圣母像对他们每个人来说都像太阳或季节一样熟悉。尽管她们在日常生活中并不陌生，但比她们在世的女王或伯爵夫人还要熟悉得多。从最早的童年到最后的痛苦都很熟悉；在每一个欢乐、每一个悲伤和每一个危险中；在生活中的每一个行为和几乎每一个思想中，圣母玛利亚都呈现出一种从来不属于她的儿子或三位一体的现实，也几乎不属于任何尘世的存在，主教，国王或凯撒。她的日常生活对他们来说就像他们自己的忠诚一样真实，他们为她带来了最好的东西，作为对她无限同情的回报。然而，虽然他们对圣母的了解就好像她是他们中的一员一样，而且因为她曾经是他们中的一员，但他们对沙特尔宫廷中的所有官员却不太熟悉。来自国外的朝圣者，就像我们一样，一定总是以好奇的兴趣观看这场盛会。

中殿深处，西边的塔楼旁边，排列着各个时代、各个国家的圣人、先知和烈士。当地的，如圣卢宾；国家级的，如图尔的圣马丁和普瓦捷的圣希拉里；像圣尼古拉斯一样受欢迎；像圣乔治一样好战；没有订单；亚伯拉罕和以撒等象征；圣母玛利亚本人，膝上抱着圣灵的七件礼物；基督与阿拉法和俄梅戛；摩西和圣奥古斯丁；圣彼得；埃及圣玛丽；圣杰罗姆；整个王座房间充满了天国的力量，在里面重复着雕刻在门廊和外面门户上的盛会。从中心的十字路口，人群最密集的地方，人们看到的整体几乎比玛丽在她高高的祭坛上看到的更清楚，因为那里所有巨大的玫瑰窗依次闪烁，三支十二世纪的柳叶刀在圣坛上闪闪发光。西太阳。当人群的目光投向北方时，法国玫瑰几乎用一种物理上的色彩震撼他们，而从南方来看，德勒玫瑰则挑战法国玫瑰。

谁都知道，两者之间正在发生战争！十三世纪几乎没有什么秘密。没有外人。我们是一个家庭，正如我们是一个教会一样。这里的每个男人和女人，从王座上的玛丽到门廊上的乞丐，都知道皮埃尔·德·德勒厌恶卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇，他们的两扇窗户在大教堂的中心进行着战争。两人只有向玛丽寻求帮助才团结起来。但布兰奇是一个女人，在这个世界上独自一人，还有年幼的孩子需要保护，大多数女人都强烈怀疑玛丽永远不会抛弃她。皮埃尔虽然具有男子气概，但他并不是朝臣。他想以武力统治。他将自己的性别主张带到了天后面前。

今年正好是 1230 年，人们认为玫瑰花刚刚在此时绽放，并首次展现出全部的光彩。布兰奇王后四十三岁，她的儿子路易斯十五岁。布兰奇 (Blanche) 已守寡四年，皮埃尔 (Pierre) 自 1221 年起便成为鳏夫。两人都是各自继承人的摄政王和监护人。他们必然把争论带到玛丽面前。布兰奇王后声称她的儿子，即圣路易斯，在玛丽的右手边享有荣誉地位；她占领了外面的北门廊和里面的北耳堂，并在窗户上装满了玻璃，就像她在门廊上装满雕像一样。上面是巨大的玫瑰；下面是五个长窗；所有人都宣扬法国对天后的敬意。

法国玫瑰的中心展示了圣母玛利亚的威严，她坐着，戴着王冠，右手拿着权杖，而她的左手则跪在婴儿基督国王上；这表明她也在担任她儿子的摄政王。在她周围，有一圈十二个奖章；四只包含鸽子；四个六翼天使或王座；四位较低级别的天使，但都象征着天后的天赋和天赋。在这些之外还有十二个带有犹大国王的奖章，第三个圆圈包含十二个较小的先知。玛利亚就这样坐着，周围是所有赐予地上或天上君王的神性。两个外圈之间有十二个四叶形，蓝色底色上有法国的金色百合花；玫瑰下方的每个角度都有四个开口，交替显示路易的百合花和布兰奇的城堡。我们这些在下的普通民众都明白，法国声称要保护和保卫沙特尔圣母，作为她的主要封臣，而这种招摇的百合花和城堡并不是为了向法国致敬，而是为了表明忠诚巴黎圣母院，并主张她作为天堂摄政王的权利，反对所有来者，特别是反对叛逆者皮埃尔，皮埃尔胆敢在对面耳堂主张竞争权利。

玫瑰下方有五个长窗，与十二世纪西方玫瑰的吊坠非常不同。这五扇窗户闪耀着红色的光芒，它们的辉煌将上面的圣母玛利亚完全抛入了背景。艺术家们觉得十二世纪的玻璃对于教堂的新规模来说太精致太精致了，他们不仅扩大了规模，粗化了设计，而且粗化了他们的色彩方案，放弃了蓝色，以便将我们压碎在红色的尘世威严之下。这些窗户也带有布兰奇西班牙脾气的印记和印记，就像上面刻着她的肖像一样。整个教堂中最高、最威严的中心人物不是圣母玛利亚，而是她的母亲圣安妮，她笔直地站在下面的门的门框上，左臂抱着婴儿玛丽。她没有戴王冠，但手持鲜花权杖。玛丽和她母亲之间唯一的另一个区别似乎是为了引起人们的注意，那就是玛丽坐着，而她母亲站着。但似乎是为了更明确地宣布法国支持圣安妮王室和神圣的主张，布兰奇王后在雕像下方放置了一面蔚蓝背景上绘有金色百合花的巨大盾牌。

由于对这一动机的独特坚持，圣安妮在两边都拥有自己的皇家宫廷，通过只包含旧约中的人物来标记她自己的宫廷。站在她右边的是所罗门，她的首相，他用世俗的建议带来智慧，践踏人类的愚蠢。超越智慧的是法律，由亚伦用圣书描绘，践踏无法无天的法老。在他们对面，圣安妮的左边，是大卫，国家的能量，践踏着扫罗，暗示着对扫罗·德·德勒的怀疑；最后，麦基洗德，即信仰，践踏了不听话的尼布甲尼撒·毛克勒克。

当我们知道皮埃尔·德·德勒多年来一直与王室和教会发生冲突时，我们普通民众如何能帮助看到这一切以及更多的事情呢？他非常英勇，有雄心壮志；——编年史家、祭司们也这么说；——无论是陆战还是海上战争，他都非常熟练且经验丰富；非常机敏，比法国其他伟大的领主更有见识；但焦躁不安、派系纷争、不顾他的话。勇猛如日；充满礼貌和“慷慨”；但对神职人员非常严厉；一个好的基督徒，却是一个坏的牧师！米什莱说，这无疑是他那个时代的第一人！布兰奇说：“我从来没有发现任何人比他对我的伤害更大。”茹安维尔一字不漏地对她说。事实上，今年，即 1230 年，她已将我们自己的沙特尔主教以及其他主教传唤到巴黎，在贵族法庭上，皮埃尔被判犯有叛国罪并被废黜。战争仍在继续，但皮埃尔必须屈服。布兰奇在政界和赛场上都击败了他！让我们看看他在神学和艺术上的表现如何！

这是他的玫瑰——如此美丽，以至于布兰奇很可能认为它是想害她的玫瑰！至于颜色，请自行判断它是否能与对面墙壁燃烧的自我主张抗衡！作为主体，它公然蔑视布兰奇女王的君主制。在中心圆圈中，基督作为君王坐在王座上，双臂举起，一只手握着永恒祭司的金杯，另一只手祝福着世界。两支巨大的火炬在他旁边燃烧。四个天启人物围绕并崇拜他；中央徽章周围的同心圆中是色彩绚丽的天使和国王，象征着新耶路撒冷。

天启的所有力量都在那里，神学的一些弱点也在那里，因为在下面的五个大窗户中，皮埃尔展示了他在学校的训练。其中四个窗口代表着所谓的新联盟（因为没有更好的名字）。新约对旧约的依赖；但皮埃尔对符号的选择是男性化的，而布兰奇则是女性化的。在四个窗户的每一扇窗户中，都有一位巨大的福音传教士跨过一位巨大先知的肩膀。圣约翰骑在以西结身上；圣马可骑在但以理身上；圣马太站在以赛亚的肩膀上；圣路加是由耶利米怀抱的。效果近乎怪诞。基督教会的平衡似乎不确定。福音传道者抓住先知的头发，当犹太教堂屹立不倒时，教堂却显得渺小、软弱、摇摆不定。新的体制在体力和智力上都没有掌握的气氛。旧的给予了它所有的支持，而且，在圣保罗缺席的情况下，新旧似乎都不关心法国人的同情。犹太教堂比教会更强大，但即使是教会也是犹太人。

皮埃尔可能有这样的意思，这是做梦也想不到的。但当真正的学者全身心投入工作时，他的逻辑是无情的，他的艺术是无情的，他的幽默感是枯萎的。在上方的玫瑰中，皮埃尔宣称基督在新耶路撒冷拥有专属权威，他的计划要求他展示教会如何依靠下方的福音传教士，而除了先知给予他们的支持之外，他们没有任何可见的支持。然而，艺术家削弱福音传教士的力量可能是有原因的，因为圣母仍然存在！人们只敢暗示一种对福音传教士如此不尊重的动机；但毫无疑问的是，在中央的窗户里，就在基督及其主要支撑物的正下方，圣母玛利亚站立着，两侧是四位令人震惊的福音传道者和先知，并且没有表现出软弱的迹象。

这种赞美是非常男性化的。一种十二世纪的奉承，如果圣母是她自己的话，也许可以减轻布兰奇本人的愤怒。但德勒圣母并不是法国圣母。毫无疑问，她仍然戴着王冠，头上还环绕着光环；她的右手仍然握着鲜花权杖，她留下了婴儿基督，但她站着，基督是国王。还要注意的是，在法国玫瑰中，她与她的母亲圣安妮正对面站立，以便将她在等级制度中比法国圣母低一级。她是法国的圣安妮，这一点也得到了体现。官方专着说：“她不再是那个坐在王座上、双脚踩在荣誉凳子上的威严女王；人物变得不再那么威严，头像也显出颓废。”她是神学圣母；她有她的权利，仅此而已；但她不是沙特尔圣母。

她也站在祭坛或基座上，上面悬挂着一面刻有貂皮的盾牌，与圣安妮下方的皇家盾牌一模一样。在这种过度展示的徽章轴承中——因为上面的两朵玫瑰挤满了它们——人们喜欢认为这些伟大的王子在他们的头脑中并没有那么多地考虑自己的重要性——这是一种现代的宗教——而是想到他们对玛丽的忠诚。一方宣示权力和依恋，另一方则宣示同等的奉献精神，虽然双方都大声宣扬对圣母玛利亚的敬意，但双方都对整个教堂投以挑衅的目光。皮埃尔的意思是让天后知道，在需要的时候，她的左手和她的右手一样好，而且更真实。貂鼠和百合花一样能够保护她，布列塔尼将像法国一样勇敢地战斗。他的意思是更多地忠于圣母还是更多地蔑视法国，这在一定程度上取决于窗户的日期，但是，仅仅作为历史的一个点，每个人都必须承认布列塔尼更忠实地遵守了皮埃尔的效忠承诺。比布兰奇和圣路易斯更被法国保留。

日期似乎是由窗户本身确定的。先知们跪在皮埃尔和他的妻子阿利克斯下方，而他们的两个孩子约兰德和让则站着。阿利克斯于 1221 年去世。让出生于 1217 年。约兰德于 1227 年订婚，当时还是个孩子，并被嫁给布兰奇王后，作为她小儿子约翰未来的妻子抚养，当时约翰已经八岁了。约翰去世后，约兰德于1231年与香槟的蒂博订婚，据说布兰奇因此写信给蒂博：“香槟的蒂博爵士，我听说您已立约并承诺娶佩隆伯爵的女儿为妻。布列塔尼。因此我嘱咐你，如果你不想失去你在法兰西王国所拥有的一切，就不要这样做。如果你珍视或热爱上述王国中的任何事物，请不要这样做。”不管布兰奇是否写过这些话，她肯定阻止了这桩婚姻，约兰德一直单身，直到1238年她嫁给了德拉马尔什伯爵，顺便说一句，他几乎和皮埃尔一样是布兰奇的死敌；但到那时布兰奇和皮埃尔都不再担任摄政王了。窗户里约兰德的身影是一个女孩，大概十二岁或十四岁。吉恩更年轻，肯定不超过八岁或十岁；两个孩子的出现表明，这扇窗户本身的年代应该在 1225 年至 1230 年之间，这一年皮埃尔·德·德勒因放弃对路易国王的效忠、向他宣战并邀请英国国王进入法国而受到谴责。 。如前所述，自从 1226 年布兰奇摄政开始以来，几乎所有伟大的贵族，菲利普·于雷佩尔·德·布洛涅 (Philippe Hurepel de Boulogne)、拉马尔什伯爵 (Comte de la Marche)、昂盖朗·德·库西 (Enguerrand de Couci) 都与皮埃尔·德·德勒 (Pierre de Dreux) 结盟。

这些耳堂窗户的协调一致是圣母玛利亚的功劳，而不是捐助者的功劳。在设计它们时，假设是在布兰奇摄政期间（1226-36），这些捐赠者的热情使法国陷入了短暂的毁灭，而布兰奇的法国玫瑰中的圣母，当她望向教堂对面时，她看不见布兰奇的单身朋友。更奇怪的是，她看到了很多敌人，并且做好了战斗的准备。我们看到，在北耳堂的小玫瑰中心，菲利普·于勒佩尔仍在等待她的命令。穿过中殿，在南耳堂的另一座小玫瑰丛中，皮埃尔·德·德勒骑在马上。唱诗班侧壁上的窗户非常有趣，但即使使用最好的眼镜，从教堂的地板上也无法看到。它们的顺序和日期已经讨论过；但他们的感情是通过圣母的性格表现出来的，在法国领土上，北耳堂旁边，圣母仍然是法国圣母，但在皮埃尔的领土上，德勒玫瑰，又变成了德勒圣母，她被吸收了在孩子身上，而不是孩子全神贯注于她，因此窗户上显示了格子和貂。

这些人物像外面的石像一样，是法国艺术中最早的艺术，早于任何绘画流派的存在。其中，看不到布兰奇的朋友。事实上，除了她自己的直系亲属和教会之外，布兰奇没有什么重要的朋友，除了著名的香槟蒂博（Thibaut of Champagne），他是王室中唯一的成员，他站在她一边，为她而受苦，就书籍而言，他是一位王室成员。告诉我，这里没有窗户或纪念碑。人们可能会认为既爱布兰奇又爱圣母的蒂博会占据一席之地，也许他确实做到了；但人寻找他是徒劳的。即使布兰奇在这里有朋友，他们也已经走了。皮埃尔·德·德勒手持长矛，公然反抗她，而她不能依靠她的姐夫菲利普·于勒佩尔来保卫。

这是圣母玛利亚的宫廷盛会，向跪下弥撒的人们展示自己。我们，公众，无论我们是谁，——查特兰人、布列塔尼人、诺曼人、安茹人、法国人、佩尔什兰人，或者其他什么人——都像我们的领主一样熟悉甚至更好，因为我们的想象力是活跃的，我们不爱卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇。我们知道如何解读教会中充满的激情。布兰奇从北侧耳堂向我们喷出绚丽的红色火焰，将她的西班牙城堡抛到我们面前。皮埃尔从南侧耳堂以一种残酷的能量进行反驳，这种能量在充当战马的先知和充当骑士的福音传道者身上表现出来，这些骑士是信仰的骑马战士，他们的大眼睛跟随我们穿过教堂，蔑视圣安妮对面是她的法国盾牌。皮埃尔并不女性化。布兰奇相当有男子气概。在他们之间，就性别而言，我们几乎看不到什么选择。而且，无论如何，这都是一场家庭争吵；他们都是表兄弟；他们在地球上都是平等的，除了天上的圣母和她的儿子之外，没有人可以服从任何更高的人。圣母并不害怕。她见过很多比这更糟糕的麻烦。她知道如何管理乖僻的孩子，如果有必要，她会把他们关在一个比他们的母亲在这个世界上为他们敞开的房间更黑暗的房间里。只要看看圣母就可以看到！

当然，她就在那里，从高坛上方的大窗户俯视着我们，我们永远不会忘记她的存在！那里有扰乱的念头吗？唱诗班的曲线周围有七扇没有玫瑰的大窗户，填满了整个半圆和整个拱顶，四十七英尺高，旨在主宰中殿，一直到西门，这样我们就永远不会忘记玛丽如何充满了她的教堂，没有受到争吵的打扰，并且可能会理解为什么圣斐迪南和圣路易斯悄悄地离开我们的视线，靠近圣母玛利亚的身边，远远高于争吵；为什么法国和布列塔尼将他们丑陋或辉煌的激情隐藏在耳堂的尽头，远离高坛，玛丽将在圣坛上以王后的身份坐着，年轻的国王坐在她的腿上。她马上就会来，但我们还有时间看看她宫殿最后的精美装饰，看看艺术家们是如何布置的。

自圣索非亚大教堂建成以来，还没有艺术家有过这样的机会。毫无疑问，现在正在建设的兰斯、亚眠、布尔日和博韦可能会更好，但它们都还没有完工，所有人都必须从这里汲取灵感。人们希望在看它之前先思考一下这个问题，就好像它是新的一样，因此如果是第一次装修的话，请选择最适合我们的方案。架构是固定的；我们所关心的只是这七扇巨大窗户的颜色，四十七英尺高，位于天窗中，围绕着唱诗班的曲线，从入口处看去，这些窗户关闭了教堂的景色。这幅景象大约有三百三十英尺长。窗户高出一百英尺。如此广阔的空间该如何填补呢？建筑垂直向上的跳跃是否应该跟随并强调色彩的垂直跳跃？十五和十六世纪的装饰师似乎也这么认为，并用模拟金色的黄色绘制了垂直的建筑图纸，并绘制了与建筑物的总体线条相一致的线条。许多十五世纪的窗户似乎都是由华丽的哥特式细节组成的，这些细节逐步上升到拱顶。毫无疑问，批评者曾经抱怨过，而且仍然抱怨说，这个计划的单调性和情报的廉价性，都是反对意见。但至少效果是轻便的、装饰性的、安全的。艺术家不会犯太大的错误，仍然可以自由地创作美丽的作品，这一点可以从散布在欧洲各地以及聚集在巴黎和法国的许多教堂中看到。另一方面，艺术家是否会不顾建筑而用色彩的高潮来填充空间？他难道不能将法国玫瑰和德勒玫瑰在高坛上统一起来，呈现出压倒性的紫色和红色吗？十七世纪可能更喜欢大量的云彩和色彩，而十六世纪的米开朗基罗可能知道如何做到这一点。我们想要的不是艺术家的感觉，而是沙特尔的感觉。它会是什么——西边窗户的珠宝光彩，或者皮埃尔·莫克勒克的强烈自我主张，或者布兰奇王后的皇家辉煌，或者后殿中查理曼和圣地亚哥窗户的女性优雅和装饰精致？

无论是在此之前还是之后，在艺术领域中，从来没有出现过如此出色的问题，因为沙特尔的艺术家解决了这个问题，就像他解决了整个开窗问题一样，后来的艺术家只能在他的作品上提供一些变化。你会在布尔日和图尔看到它们，在许多十三、十四、十五、十六世纪的教堂和窗户里，也许在二十世纪的某些地方，——所有这些都很有趣，有些很漂亮——而且远非如此。我们这些卑鄙无知的艺术朝圣者，谴责任何改变或改善效果的明智努力；但我们已经开始寻找这种感觉，当我们思考艺术与我们自己的关系时，沙特尔的布道从头到尾都在教导、宣讲、坚持、重申和锤击我们麻木的头脑，艺术所带来的道德圣母不是她的艺术家的作品，而是她自己的作品。我们不可避免地会想到自己的品味；他们本能地想到了她。

在耳堂中，布兰奇王后和佩隆公爵合法拥有自己的领地，他们表示，他们既为圣母着想，也为彼此着想，并大声宣称，他们应该首先支持圣母。他们就站在原地，就像十三世纪所感受到的那样。根据他们对玛丽的忠诚，耳堂属于他们，如果布兰奇没有像皮埃尔那样，在圣母的窗户上宣称自己和她的儿子，也许她认为圣母会更加憎恨皮埃尔的大胆与她自己的良好品味相比。据我们所知，布兰奇本人并没有出现在沙特尔。她觉得自己太接近圣母玛利亚了，以至于无法强行插入一个无用的形象，或者她太虔诚了，无法为自己要求任何东西。一位女王要让两个孩子被封为圣人，以便在玛丽的王位上为她求情，她站在几乎和玛丽一样独特的孤独中，可能会忽视一个战士的原始残暴；但她和皮埃尔都没有把争吵带到玛丽面前，圣母也没有屈尊俯就，似乎意识到他们的脾气。这就是艺术家的主题——玛丽本性的纯洁、美丽、优雅和无限崇高，超越尘世的事物，超越国王的喧嚣。

因此，当我们和我们周围跪着的崇拜者们在弥撒的奇迹之后最终抬起眼睛时，我们看到，在高高的祭坛之上，高高地笼罩着所有祈祷的激动、政治的激情、苦难的痛苦，罪孽的恐怖，只有圣母玛利亚的形象，威严，俯视着她的子民，加冕，坐在宝座上，受到荣耀，婴儿基督跪在她的膝盖上。她不坚持自己的主张；也许她想要被人感觉到而不是被恐惧。与希腊圣母像相比，如您在托尔切洛看到的那样，沙特尔圣母像正在退休，对于这个地方来说几乎不够重要。她的比例、绘画或色彩都不夸张。她没有表现出任何自我意识的迹象，没有为了辉煌而努力，没有一丝舞台效果——甚至几乎没有想到自己，除了她在家里，在她自己的人民中间，在那里她也被爱着和被认识。因为她认识他们。七个大窗户是一个组合；很明显，如果艺术家被命令展示力量，他可能会用紫色、红色、黄色的风暴淹没我们，或者给我们一个会把拱顶撕裂的激情圣母；他的能力是毋庸置疑的，如果他忠实于西方门户和十二世纪的精神，那是因为沙特尔圣母是恩典圣母，并命令他如此画她。一想到一个错误的音符——在线条和色彩的高潮中暗示着卑鄙——就会使整个结构变成废墟，而下面唱诗班十八世纪的卑鄙，让人不寒而栗。人们几乎羞涩地指出了艺术家们为平息其影响而采取的权宜之计。所以七个窗户的线条是建立起来的，避免水平，但又不夸张垂直。

在这里，建筑师比调色师更重要。但当你研究它的颜色时，你会发现同样的克制。圣母右侧的三扇大窗户与左侧的另外三扇窗户相平衡，展示了她儿子的先知和先驱。所有的建筑都在支撑和颂扬圣母，在她蓝色的天国氛围中，在红色的照射下，在天堂的确定性中平静。任何一个过早好奇地想了解不同世纪之间待遇差异的人都应该去下城区的圣皮埃尔教堂，并在那里研究文艺复兴时期的方法。然后我们可以再回来研究十三世纪的方式。圣母会等待；她不会生气；她知道自己的力量；我们最终都会回到她身边。

或者，如果你愿意的话，文艺复兴也可以同样等待，而你跪在十三世纪，感觉小孩子仍然能感受到它的感受。从技术上讲，这些背面窗户并没有受到太多关注。书中很少提及它们；旅行者很少看他们；而且它们的高度使得即使使用最好的玻璃，作品的质量也超出了我们的判断范围。我们看到的，而艺术家的意思是我们应该看到的，只有伟大的线条、色彩和圣母。唱诗班前的大批祈求者仰望这个伟大空间的光芒、清澈的蓝色和红色，并在那里感受到玛丽的自然和居所的天堂般的和平与美丽。有天堂！玛丽从那里俯视她的教堂，在那里她看到我们跪着，并且知道我们每个人的名字。她实际上就在那里——不是象征性的，也不是想象中的，而是亲自的，她降临到她的仁慈的差事上，倾听我们每一个人的心声，正如她的奇迹所证明的那样，或者仅仅通过她的存在来满足我们的祈祷，这让我们的兴奋平静下来，就像她的存在一样。一位母亲安抚她的孩子。她作为女王而不仅仅是作为调解者，她的力量如此之大，对她来说，我们地球上的生物之间没有任何区别。她的安静、阳刚的力量最让我们着迷。皮埃尔·莫克勒克（Pierre Mauclerc）和菲利普·于勒佩尔（Philippe Hurepel）以及他们的士兵都害怕她，而主教本人在她面前也从来不感到轻松。但对于农民、乞丐和陷入困境的人们来说，这种她的力量和冷静的感觉比积极的同情更好。那些承受着无法表达的痛苦的人——那些被压入沉默、超越痛苦的人——不想表达情感——不想流血的心——不想在十字架下哭泣——不想歇斯底里——不想言辞！他们想要见到上帝，并知道他正在看顾自己的子民。在这群十三世纪的哀求者中，有多少失去孩子的妇女？可能几乎全部，因为在中世纪的生活条件下死亡率非常高。这里有成千上万这样的女性，因为正是这个阶层人数最多。也许他们每个人都曾在她的大窗户里仰望过玛丽亚，并感到真正的确定性，就好像她亲眼看到了——在那里，在天堂，当她看着时——她自己迷失的婴儿正在与圣婴玩耍在圣母膝下，就像圣徒一样自在，而且比国王更自在。在起身之前，这些妇女中的每一位都会弯下腰亲吻石板路，以感谢玛丽的仁慈。她说，地球是一个令人遗憾的地方，毫无疑问，即使是最好的地方也已经够糟糕了，即使对于布兰奇女王和阿利克斯公爵夫人来说，他们不得不把孩子们独自留在这里；但天上有玛利亚，她能看到我，听到我的声音，就像我看到她一样，她守护着我的小男孩，直到我到来。所以我或多或少可以耐心等待！圣徒、先知和殉道者都很好，基督非常崇高和公正，但玛利亚知道！

它非常孩子气，非常愚蠢，非常美丽，而且非常真实——至少作为艺术：——如此真实，以至于其他一切都逐渐变得粗俗，就像你看到锡拉库扎硬币的珀尔塞福涅逐渐变成了粗俗的硬币一样。罗马皇帝；仿佛在我们婴儿期，我们周围的天堂很快就染上了不那么清醒的颜色，而是肮脏的颜色，如果不比这更糟糕的话，我们会受到欢迎。粗俗也有情感，它在艺术中的表达有真实，甚至悲情，但我们一生中将有足够的时间这样做，更重要的是，当我们现在起身时，我们已经完成了我们的朝圣。我们已经和沙特尔谈完了。七百年来，沙特尔一直见证着朝圣者的到来，他们或多或少地像我们一样来来去去，也许还会再看到他们七百年；但我们不会再看到它了，并且可以安全地让圣母玛利亚在她的威严中，她的三位伟大的先知在两侧，对自己的力量和上帝的天意保持平静和自信，就像圣路易斯出生时一样，但是看着带着死的信心，从荒凉的天堂降到空荡荡的教堂。

在圣米迦勒山上的圣地和沙特尔圣母的圣地朝拜之后，人们可以在法国各地漫步，并且很少感到迷路。所有后来的哥特式艺术都是自然而然的，没有新的思想扰乱其完美的形式。然而，具有英国血统和美国训练的游客很少或从来没有在那里感到宾至如归。通常他们只觉得它是一种舞台装饰。纯粹从政治经济学的角度来研究十二世纪和十三世纪是疯狂的。当科学心智与永恒的女性——阿斯塔特、伊希斯、得墨忒尔、阿佛洛狄忒以及最后也是最伟大的神——圣母玛利亚接触时，科学思维就会萎缩，并遭受遗传性大脑弱点的困扰。很少有人会带着一种温和的同情心徘徊不去，这种同情心适合研究人为错误的耐心学生，愿意对他无法理解的事物感兴趣。更罕见的是，由于古老本能的复苏，他重新发现了那个女人。这也许是艺术家独有的标志，也是他独有的特权。我们其他人无法感觉到；我们只能学习。对人类的正确研究是对女人的研究，而且自亚当时代以来人们一致认为，对人类的研究是最复杂和艰巨的。正如沙特尔艺术所表明的那样，对圣母的研究直接追溯到夏娃，并揭示了性的整个主题。

如果值得争论一个悖论，人们可能会认为大自然认为女性是她的世界的本质，而男性是她的世界的多余。也许研究圣母的最佳起点是对蜜蜂，尤其是蜂王的实际了解。确切地说，法国人可能会在单性生殖的谱系树上出现，人们犹豫不决地说；但可以肯定的是，法国女人从很早开始就表现出了自己特有的品质，而且中世纪的法国女人具有男性特征。几乎所有涉及 1899 世纪社会方面的书籍都会谈到这个主题，就像 M. Garreau 于 XNUMX 年出版的关于“十字军东征期间法国社会状况”的书中的下一页一样：

这个时代的一个特有特征是男人和女人的举止极为相似。一种性别允许这种感觉或行为而另一种性别禁止这种感觉或行为的规则尚未得到公平的解决。男人有流泪的权利，女人有不拘一格说话的权利……。如果我们观察她们的智力水平，就会发现女性明显更胜一筹。他们比较严肃；更微妙。和她们在一起，我们似乎并没有面对她们丈夫所属的粗鲁文明状态……。一般来说，女人们似乎都有衡量自己行为的习惯。不屈服于短暂的印象。虽然她们的基督教意识比她们的丈夫更发达，但另一方面，她们在犯罪方面表现出更多的背信弃义和艺术……。毫无疑问，我们可以通过一系列例子来证明，当母亲的影响在儿子的教育中占主导地位时，他会比同时代的人表现出明显的优越性。理查·科德·莱昂（Richard Coeur-de-Lion），这位加冕诗人、艺术家、国王，尽管他残暴，但他的高贵举止和优雅思想给他的时代留下了如此深刻的印象。尽可能地将她的儿子们保留在她的势力范围内，以便让他们成为党的首脑。众所周知，我们伟大的圣路易是由卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇独自抚养长大的。若安维尔是一位迷人的作家，非常值得圣路易斯的友谊，而且显然比他的周围环境更优越，但她也是一位寡居的摄政母亲的学生。

女人的优越感并不是空想，而是事实。 人类的职责就是战斗、狩猎、宴饮或做爱。 男方也是商业旅行的伙伴，通常会一起离开家几个月，而女方则负责生意。 妇女掌管家庭和作坊。关心经济；提供情报，决定品味。 她与教会结盟，并把她最聪明的孩子送入教会，从而确保了她的优势。牧师或职员在很大程度上在社会上被视为女性。 正如男人们经常抱怨的那样，女人的身体和精神都很强壮，而且她并没有很反感被当作男人对待。 有时，丈夫会殴打她，揪着她的头发拖来拖去，把她锁在屋里。但他很清楚，她最终总是报复他。 事实上，她得到的可能还不止。 在这一点上，历史、传说、诗歌、浪漫故事，尤其是那些为满足粗俗阶层的粗俗品味而发明的通俗小说，都达成了共识，人们可以用几十卷书来说明这一点。 最伟大的人最好地说明了这一点，就像一个人可能几乎处于危险之中一样。 十一、十二和十三世纪最伟大的人物是诺曼人威廉。他的曾孙亨利二世金雀花；法国圣路易；如果需要第四个，理查德·科尔·德·莱恩（Richard Coeur-de-Lion）。 众所周知，所有这些男人和路易十四本人一样，与家族中的女性相处时遇到困难。 传统夸大了它所涉及的一切，但同时也显示了传统社会的思想中正在发生的事情。 在诺曼底，卡昂人一直保留着一个传统，在其他地方也以其他形式流传着：有一天，征服者威廉公爵因玛蒂尔达公爵夫人不断地把他的私生子扔到他脸上而恼怒，抓住她的头发将她拖走。 ，拴在马尾上，一直到沃塞勒郊区；这个传说解释了圣母修道院的辉煌，因为普通人相信威廉后来后悔了这种不当行为，并通过给她钱建造修道院来弥补这一点。 这个故事暴露了这个人的弱点。 女士修道院与男子修道院的关系与玛蒂尔达对威廉的关系相同。 没有什么自卑感；相反，这个女人在社会上处于上位者，威廉可能比她更害怕他，如果先生。 弗里曼坚持要娶她是正确的，尽管她有一个丈夫在世，当然还有两个孩子。 如果说威廉是十一世纪最强壮的人，那么他的曾孙英格兰国王亨利二世就是十二世纪最强壮的人。但当时的历史却回响着他与埃莉诺王后的争斗声，最后他将埃莉诺王后关押在监狱里十四年。 尽管她是个囚犯，但她最终还是把他击垮了。 人们很容易怀疑，如果她的丈夫和孩子得到她的指导，并遵循她作为吉耶纳利益的和平缔造者的政策，英国和法国的大部分灾难可能会暂时推迟；但我们永远无法知道真相，因为僧侣和历史学家憎恶解放的妇女——这是有充分理由的，因为这些妇女很容易憎恶她们——而且争吵永远无法平息。 历史学家通常都会表现出对女性的恐惧，但他们却不承认，但中世纪的男人至少知道他为什么害怕女人，并公开地讲述了这一点，而不是残酷地讲述了这一点。

关键是巴斯的妻子，就像布兰奇王后和王后
埃莉诺不仅想要主权，而且还赢得并控制了它。

圣路易即使在成年后成为国王，仍然对他的母亲卡斯蒂利亚的布兰奇心存敬畏，这不仅是臭名昭著的，而且似乎被认为是理所当然的。若安维尔记录这一切，与其说是为了表明国王的软弱，不如说是为了表明这个女人的力量。因为他的王后普罗旺斯的玛格丽特表现出了国王所没有的勇气。布兰奇和玛格丽特非常嫉妒对方。 “有一天，”茹安维尔说，“布兰奇王后来到王后（玛格丽特）的寝宫，她的儿子（路易九世）之前曾去过那里安慰她，因为她面临着因难产而死亡的巨大危险；他躲在女王[玛格丽特]身后，以免被发现。但他的母亲认出了他，拉着他的手说：“走吧！”你在这里不会有任何好处！并把他赶出了密室。玛格丽特王后看到这一幕，知道自己要与丈夫分开，大声喊道：“唉！你不让我见见我的主人吗？无论是活着还是死去？’”据茹安维尔记载，当路易国王听到母亲到来时，他总是躲在妻子的卧室里。

哥特式建筑的伟大时期始于埃莉诺的到来（1137年），结束于布兰奇的去世（1252年）。埃莉诺漫长的一生充满了鲜为人知的活力和激情。女人总是太滑，僧侣或士兵抓不住。

1137 年，年仅 XNUMX 岁的埃莉诺来到巴黎，带来了普瓦捷和吉耶纳，这是有史以来向法国王室提供的最丰厚的嫁妆。她还带来了南方的品味和礼仪，与圣伯纳德的品味和礼仪不太协调，圣伯纳德在宫廷中的权威与她自己的权威不相上下。苏热神父支持她，但国王却偏向伯纳德神父。这种清教徒的反应意味着一件需要单独研究的事情，如果一个人能找到一个修道院来学习的话；但它带有大多数清教徒反应的标志，即对女性的敌意。只要女人保持温顺，她就通过教会进行统治。但那个男人害怕她，嫉妒她，而她也嫉妒他。伯纳德特别崇拜圣母，因为她是三位一体的温顺服从的典范，为夏娃的不驯服赎罪，但夏娃本身仍然是撒旦的工具，整个法国社会都表现出对夏娃的喜爱。

【家谱图显示了三位女王之间的关系。】

埃莉诺很难说是温顺。不管她还喜欢什么，她当然喜欢统治。她与英国王位上唯一伟大的继任者和竞争对手伊丽莎白女王充分分享了这种热情，而她恰好成为法国女王，当时社会正从崇拜其军事理想圣迈克尔转向崇拜它的社会理想是圣母。根据僧侣奥德里克的说法，早在第一次十字军东征之前，即威廉·鲁弗斯（William Rufus，1087-1100）时代，男性就已经开始抛弃旧的军装和礼仪，并开始影响女性时尚。古往今来，神父和僧侣或多或少都有理由谴责社会日益增长的罪恶。但在第一次十字军东征时，似乎真正爆发了展示，这在各种社会表达方式上都留下了深刻的印记，甚至连沙特尔西大门上雕像的鞋子也留下了深刻的印记：

大约在威廉·鲁弗斯时代，一个名叫罗伯特（奥德里克说）的放荡小伙子是第一个，他引入了用丝束填充鞋子的长点，并将它们像公羊角一样翻起来的做法。因此他得到了康纳德这个姓氏。这种荒谬的时尚很快就被许多贵族所采用，作为一种自豪的荣誉和功绩的标志。此时，女性气质在全世界盛行……她们的头发从额头两侧的头顶分开，头发像女人一样长长，穿着长衬衫和束腰外衣，用点紧紧地绑在一起……如今，古老的习俗几乎都被新的时尚所改变。我们的放荡青年陷入了娘娘腔……他们把脚趾伸进蛇尾之类的东西里，呈现出蝎子的形状。他们用长袍和斗篷的长裙清扫尘土飞扬的地面，用手套遮住双手……

如果你有兴趣了解这些对你祖先习惯的僧侣式批评，你可以在闲暇时阅读《Orderic》；但你只想记住这样一个事实：在黑斯廷斯作战并占领耶路撒冷的那一代战士被他们自己认为是女性化的，并且陷入了奢侈的生活。 “他们的头发是用热熨斗卷曲的，他们不戴帽子，而是用鱼片绑住头。根据使徒的戒律，骑士很少在公开场合不戴帽子并剃光头发。”第一次十字军东征的女性气质在沙特尔的西大门和圣但尼的玻璃中形成了艺术形式，并立即导致了圣伯纳德的清教徒反应，随后是布兰奇女王和圣路易的温和禁欲主义。无论前往耶路撒冷朝圣和与东方的接触是这场革命的原因还是结果，还是这一切都是一场革命——北方异教徒转变为和平习惯以及随之而来的北欧富裕的结果——都是无关紧要的。 ;事实和日期就足够了。艺术是法国的，但思想可能来自任何地方，就像朝圣者或十字军从叙利亚带回家的国际象棋游戏一样。在东方游戏中，国王一步一步跟随一位大臣，其职能是私人的。十字军将这件作品从控制中解放出来；让它自由地向上、向下、对角线、向前和向后移动；使其成为棋盘上最任意和最强大的冠军，而国王和骑士的行动受到最严格的限制；他们将这件作品命名为女王，并称其为圣母：——

aufin 或 dauphin 成为法国游戏中的“缰绳”，以及英国游戏中的“主教”。鲍德温扮演他的圣母来拯救他的棋子；他的对手扮演主教来威胁处女或棋子。

一百五十年来，圣母玛利亚和皇后们成功地统治了法国人的品味和思想，以至于法国人从未完全决定是否应该为此感到更加自豪或感到羞耻。从那时起，生活对他来说就显得有些平淡，艺术也变得有些廉价。他发现这个女人抬高自己的行为让他显得很可笑，他试图以一种并不总是闪闪发光的机智来报复，而且常常以牺牲自己为代价。有时，在博物馆或小摆设收藏品中，您会在彩绘手稿中看到，或刻在石头上，或铸成青铜，一个男人的形象用手和膝盖着地，骑在另一个拿着缰绳的人物身上，一根鞭子；它是亚里士多德，男性智慧的象征，被女性束缚和驱动。六百年后，丁尼生在梅林身上复活了同样的动机，不是暂时的奴役，而是永远的奴役。在这两种情况下，讽刺都公正地惩罚了这个人。同一个故事的另一个版本（也许是最初的版本）是《亚当之谜》，它是最早的教会戏剧之一。加斯顿·帕里斯说：“它是十二世纪英国写成的，作者具有真正的诗歌天赋；夏娃被蛇引诱的场景是基督教戏剧中最好的作品之一……这部非凡的作品似乎不再在教堂内上演，而是在门廊下上演”：——

亚当的堕落归咎于女人的智慧。夏娃受到了公正的惩罚，因为她应该更了解，而亚当，正如魔鬼所说，是一个迟钝的动物，不值得费心去欺骗。亚当也不忠诚，在对他的创造者不忠诚之后，又对他的妻子不忠诚：——

The audience accepted this as natural and proper. They recognized the man as, of course, stupid, cowardly, and traitorous. The men of the baser sort revenged themselves by boorishness that passed with them for wit in the taverns of Arras, but the poets of the higher class commonly took sides with the women. Even Chaucer, who lived after the glamour had faded, and who satirized women to satiety, told their tale in his “Legend of Good Women,” with evident sympathy. To him, also, the ordinary man was inferior,—stupid, brutal, and untrue. “Full brittle is the truest,” he said:—

Neither brutality nor wit helped the man much. Even Bluebeard in the end fell a victim to the superior qualities of his last wife, and Scheherazade’s wit alone has preserved the memory of her royal husband. The tradition of thirteenth-century society still rules the French stage. The struggle between two strong-willed women to control one weak-willed man is the usual motive of the French drama in the nineteenth century, as it was the whole motive of Partenopeus of Blois, one of the best twelfth-century romans; and Joinville described it, in the middle of the thirteenth, as the leading motive in the court of Saint Louis, with Queen Blanche and Queen Margaret for players, and Saint Louis himself for pawn.

One has only to look at the common, so-called Elzevirian, volume of thirteenth-century nouvelles to see the Frenchman as he saw himself. The story of “La Comtesse de Ponthieu” is the more Shakespearean, but “La Belle Jehanne” is the more natural and lifelike. The plot is the common masculine intrigue against the woman, which was used over and over again before Shakespeare appropriated it in “Much Ado”; but its French development is rather in the line of “All’s Well.” The fair Jeanne, married to a penniless knight, not at all by her choice, but only because he was a favourite of her father’s, was a woman of the true twelfth-century type. She broke the head of the traitor, and when he, with his masculine falseness, caused her husband to desert her, she disguised herself as a squire and followed Sir Robert to Marseilles in search of service in war, for the poor knight could get no other means of livelihood. Robert was the husband, and the wife, in entering his service as squire without pay, called herself John:—

Molt fu mesire Robiers dolans cant il vint a Marselle de cou k’il n’oi parler de nulle chose ki fust ou pais; si dist a Jehan:

—Ke ferons nous? Vous m’aves preste de vos deniers la vostre mierchi, si les vos renderai car je venderai mon palefroi et m’acuiterai a vous.

—Sire, dist Jehans, crees moi se il vous plaist je vous dirai ke nous ferons; jou ai bien enchore c sous de tournois, s’ll vous plaist je venderai nos ii chevaus et en ferai deniers; et je suis li miousdres boulengiers ke vous sacies, si ferai pain francois et je ne douc mie ke je ne gaagne bien et largement mon depens.

—Jehans, dist mesire Robiers, je m’otroi del tout a faire votre volente

Et lendemam vendi Jehans ses .ii. chevaux X livres de tornois, et achata son ble et le fist muire, et achata des corbelles et coumencha a faire pain francois si bon et si bien fait k’il en vendoit plus ke li doi melleur boulengier de la ville, et fist tant dedens les ii ans k’il ot bien c livres de katel. Lors dist Jehans a son segnour:

—Je lo bien que nous louons une tres grant mason et jou akaterai del vin et hierbegerai la bonne gent

—Jehan, dist mesire Robiers, faites a vo volente kar je l’otroi et si me loc molt de vous.

Jehans loua une mason grant et bielle, et si hierbrega la bonne gent et gaegnoit ases a plente, et viestoit son segnour biellement et richement, et avoit mesire Robiers son palefroi et aloit boire et mengier aveukes les plus vallans de la ville, et Jehans li envoioit vins et viandes ke tout cil ki o lui conpagnoient s’en esmervelloient. Si gaegna tant ke dedens .iiii ans il gaegna plus de ccc livres de meuble sains son harnois qui valoit bien .L. livres.

Much was Sir Robert grieved when he came to Marseilles and found that there was no talk of anything doing in the country, and he said to John: “What shall we do? You have lent me your money, I thank you, and will repay you, for I will sell my palfrey and discharge the debt to you.”

“Sir,” said John, “trust to me, if you please, I will tell you what we will do, I have still a hundred sous, if you please I will sell our two horses and turn them into money, and I am the best baker you ever knew, I will make French bread, and I’ve no doubt I shall pay my expenses well and make money”

“John,” said Sir Robert, “I agree wholly to do whatever you like”

And the next day John sold their two horse for ten pounds, and bought his wheat and had it ground, and bought baskets, and began to make French bread so good and so well made that he sold more of it than the two best bakers in the city, and made so much within two years that he had a good hundred pound property Then he said to his lord “I advise our hiring a very large house, and I will buy wine and will keep lodgings for good society

“John,” said Sir Robert, “do what you please, for I grant it, and am greatly pleased with you.”

John hired a large and fine house and lodged the best people and gained a great plenty, and dressed his master handsomely and richly, and Sir Robert kept his palfrey and went out to eat and drink with the best people of the city, and John sent them such wines and food that all his companions marvelled at it. He made so much that within four years he gained more than three hundred pounds in money besides clothes, etc, well worth fifty.

The docile obedience of the man to the woman seemed as reasonable to the thirteenth century as the devotion of the woman to the man, not because she loved him, for there was no question of love, but because he was HER man, and she owned him as though he were child. The tale went on to develop her character always in the same sense. When she was ready, Jeanne broke up the establishment at Marseilles, brought her husband back to Hainault, and made him, without knowing her object, kill the traitor and redress her wrongs. Then after seven years’ patient waiting, she revealed herself and resumed her place.

If you care to see the same type developed to its highest capacity, go to the theatre the first time some ambitious actress attempts the part of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare realized the thirteenth-century woman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did; but that is no new thing to say of Shakespeare. The author of “La Comtesse de Ponthieu” made no bad sketch of the character. These are fictions, but the Chronicles contain the names of women by scores who were the originals of the sketch. The society which Orderic described in Normandy—the generation of the first crusade—produced a great variety of Lady Macbeths. In the country of Evreux, about 1100, Orderic says that “a worse than civil war was waged between two powerful brothers, and the mischief was fomented by the spiteful jealousy of their haughty wives. The Countess Havise of Evreux took offence at some taunts uttered by Isabel de Conches,—wife of Ralph, the Seigneur of Conches, some ten miles from Evreux,—and used all her influence with her husband, Count William, and his barons, to make trouble … Both the ladies who stirred up these fierce enmities were great talkers and spirited as well as handsome; they ruled their husbands, oppressed their vassals, and inspired terror in various ways. But still their characters were very different. Havise had wit and eloquence, but she was cruel and avaricious. Isabel was generous, enterprising, and gay, so that she was beloved and esteemed by those about her. She rode in knight’s armour when her vassals were called to war, and showed as much daring among men- at-arms and mounted knights as Camilla …” More than three hundred years afterwards, far off in the Vosges, from a village never heard of, appeared a common peasant of seventeen years old, a girl without birth, education, wealth, or claim of any sort to consideration, who made her way to Chinon and claimed from Charles VII a commission to lead his army against the English. Neither the king nor the court had faith in her, and yet the commission was given, and the rank- and-file showed again that the true Frenchman had more confidence in the woman than in the man, no matter what the gossips might say. No one was surprised when Jeanne did what she promised, or when the men burned her for doing it. There were Jeannes in every village. Ridicule was powerless against them. Even Voltaire became what the French call frankly “bete,” in trying it.

Eleanor of Guienne was the greatest of all Frenchwomen. Her decision was law, whether in Bordeaux or Poitiers, in Paris or in Palestine, in London or in Normandy; in the court of Louis VII, or in that of Henry II, or in her own Court of Love. For fifteen years she was Queen of France; for fifty she was Queen in England; for eighty or thereabouts she was equivalent to Queen over Guienne. No other Frenchwoman ever had such rule. Unfortunately, as Queen of France, she struck against an authority greater than her own, that of Saint Bernard, and after combating it, with Suger’s help, from 1137 until 1152, the monk at last gained such mastery that Eleanor quitted the country and Suger died. She was not a person to accept defeat. She royally divorced her husband and went back to her own kingdom of Guienne. Neither Louis nor Bernard dared to stop her, or to hold her territories from her, but they put the best face they could on their defeat by proclaiming her as a person of irregular conduct. The irregularity would not have stood in their way, if they had dared to stand in hers, but Louis was much the weaker, and made himself weaker still by allowing her to leave him for the sake of Henry of Anjou, a story of a sort that rarely raised the respect in which French kings were held by French society. Probably politics had more to do with the matter than personal attachments, for Eleanor was a great ruler, the equal of any ordinary king, and more powerful than most kings living in 1152. If she deserted France in order to join the enemies of France, she had serious reasons besides love for young Henry of Anjou; but in any case she did, as usual, what pleased her, and forced Louis to pronounce the divorce at a council held at Beaugency, March 18, 1152, on the usual pretext of relationship. The humours of the twelfth century were Shakespearean. Eleanor, having obtained her divorce at Beaugency, to the deep regret of all Frenchmen, started at once for Poitiers, knowing how unsafe she was in any territory but her own. Beaugency is on the Loire, between Orleans and Blois, and Eleanor’s first night was at Blois, or should have been; but she was told, on arriving, that Count Thibaut of Blois, undeterred by King Louis’s experience, was making plans to detain her, with perfectly honourable views of marriage; and, as she seems at least not to have been in love with Thibaut, she was obliged to depart at once, in the night, to Tours. A night journey on horseback from Blois to Tours in the middle of March can have been no pleasure-trip, even in 1152; but, on arriving at Tours in the morning, Eleanor found that her lovers were still so dangerously near that she set forward at once on the road to Poitiers. As she approached her own territory she learned that Geoffrey of Anjou, the younger brother of her intended husband, was waiting for her at the border, with views of marriage as strictly honourable as those of all the others.

About no figure in the Middle Ages, man or woman, did so many legends grow, and with such freedom, as about Eleanor, whose strength appealed to French sympathies and whose adventures appealed to their imagination. They never forgave Louis for letting her go. They delighted to be told that in Palestine she had carried on relations of the most improper character, now with a Saracen slave of great beauty; now with Raymond of Poitiers, her uncle, the handsomest man of his time; now with Saladin himself; and, as all this occurred at Antioch in 1147 or 1148, they could not explain why her husband should have waited until 1152 in order to express his unwilling disapproval; but they quoted with evident sympathy a remark attributed to her that she thought she had married a king, and found she had married a monk. To the Frenchman, Eleanor remained always sympathetic, which is the more significant because, in English tradition, her character suffered a violent and incredible change. Although English history has lavished on Eleanor somewhat more than her due share of conventional moral reproof, considering that, from the moment she married Henry of Anjou, May 18, 1152, she was never charged with a breath of scandal, it atoned for her want of wickedness by French standards, in the usual manner of historians, by inventing traits which reflected the moral standards of England. Tradition converted her into the fairy-book type of feminine jealousy and invented for her the legend of the Fair Rosamund and the poison of toads.

For us, both legends are true. They reflected, not perhaps the character of Eleanor, but what the society liked to see acted on its theatre of life. Eleanor’s real nature in no way concerns us. The single fact worth remembering was that she had two daughters by Louis VII, as shown in the table; who, in due time, married—Mary, in 1164, married Henry, the great Count of Champagne; Alix, at the same time, became Countess of Chartres by marriage with Thibaut, who had driven her mother from Blois in 1152 by his marital intentions. Henry and Thibaut were brothers whose sister Alix had married Louis VII in 1160, eight years after the divorce. The relations thus created were fantastic, especially for Queen Eleanor, who, besides her two French daughters, had eight children as Queen of England. Her second son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, born in 1157, was affianced in 1174 to a daughter of Louis VII and Alix, a child only six years old, who was sent to England to be brought up as future queen. This was certainly Eleanor’s doing, and equally certain was it that the child came to no good in the English court. The historians, by exception, have not charged this crime to Queen Eleanor; they charged it to Eleanor’s husband, who passed most of his life in crossing his wife’s political plans; but with politics we want as little as possible to do. We are concerned with the artistic and social side of life, and have only to notice the coincidence that while the Virgin was miraculously using the power of spiritual love to elevate and purify the people, Eleanor and her daughters were using the power of earthly love to discipline and refine the courts. Side by side with the crude realities about them, they insisted on teaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted the realities, and had no value for them or for us except in the contradiction.

The ideals of Eleanor and her daughter Mary of Champagne were a form of religion, and if you care to see its evangels, you had best go directly to Dante and Petrarch, or, if you like it better, to Don Quixote de la Mancha. The religion is dead as Demeter, and its art alone survives as, on the whole, the highest expression of man’s thought or emotion; but in its day it was almost as practical as it now is fanciful. Eleanor and her daughter Mary and her granddaughter Blanche knew as well as Saint Bernard did, or Saint Francis, what a brute the emancipated man could be; and as though they foresaw the society of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they used every terror they could invent, as well as every tenderness they could invoke, to tame the beasts around them. Their charge was of manners, and, to teach manners, they made a school which they called their Court of Love, with a code of law to which they gave the name of “courteous love.” The decisions of this court were recorded, like the decisions of a modern bench, under the names of the great ladies who made them, and were enforced by the ladies of good society for whose guidance they were made. They are worth reading, and any one who likes may read them to this day, with considerable scepticism about their genuineness. The doubt is only ignorance. We do not, and never can, know the twelfth-century woman, or, for that matter, any other woman, but we do know the literature she created; we know the art she lived in, and the religion she professed. We can collect from them some idea why the Virgin Mary ruled, and what she was taken to be, by the world which worshipped her.

Mary of Champagne created the literature of courteous love. She must have been about twenty years old when she married Count Henry and went to live at Troyes, not actually a queen in title, but certainly a queen in social influence. In 1164, Champagne was a powerful country, and Troyes a centre of taste. In Normandy, at the same date, William of Saint Pair and Wace were writing the poetry we know. In Champagne the court poet was Christian of Troyes, whose poems were new when the churches of Noyon and Senlis and Saint Leu d’Esserent, and the fleche of Chartres, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, were building, at the same time with the Abbey of Vezelay, and before the church at Mantes. Christian died not long after 1175, leaving a great mass of verse, much of which has survived, and which you can read more easily than you can read Dante or Petrarch, although both are almost modern compared with Christian. The quality of this verse is something like the quality of the glass windows— conventional decoration; colours in conventional harmonies; refinement, restraint, and feminine delicacy of taste. Christian has not the grand manner of the eleventh century, and never recalls the masculine strength of the “Chanson de Roland” or “Raoul de Cambrai.” Even his most charming story, “Erec et Enide,” carries chiefly a moral of courtesy. His is poet-laureate’s work, says M. Gaston Paris; the flower of a twelfth-century court and of twelfth-century French; the best example of an admirable language; but not lyric; neither strong, nor deep, nor deeply felt. What we call tragedy is unknown to it. Christian’s world is sky-blue and rose, with only enough red to give it warmth, and so flooded with light that even its mysteries count only by the clearness with which they are shown.

Among other great works, before Mary of France came to Troyes Christian had, toward 1160, written a “Tristan,” which is lost. Mary herself, he says, gave him the subject of “Lancelot,” with the request or order to make it a lesson of “courteous love,” which he obeyed. Courtesy has lost its meaning as well as its charm, and you might find the “Chevalier de la Charette” even more unintelligible than tiresome; but its influence was great in its day, and the lesson of courteous love, under the authority of Mary of Champagne, lasted for centuries as the standard of taste. “Lancelot” was never finished, but later, not long after 1174, Christian wrote a “Perceval,” or “Conte du Graal,” which must also have been intended to please Mary, and which is interesting because, while the “Lancelot” gave the twelfth-century idea of courteous love, the “Perceval” gave the twelfth-century idea of religious mystery. Mary was certainly concerned with both. “It is for this same Mary,” says Gaston Paris, “that Walter of Arras undertook his poem of ‘Eracle’; she was the object of the songs of the troubadours as well as of their French imitators; for her use also she caused the translations of books of piety like Genesis, or the paraphrase at great length, in verse, of the psalm ‘Eructavit.'”

With her theories of courteous love, every one is more or less familiar if only from the ridicule of Cervantes and the follies of Quixote, who, though four hundred years younger, was Lancelot’s child; but we never can know how far she took herself and her laws of love seriously, and to speculate on so deep a subject as her seriousness is worse than useless, since she would herself have been as uncertain as her lovers were. Visionary as the courtesy was, the Holy Grail was as practical as any bric-a-brac that has survived of the time. The mystery of Perceval is like that of the Gothic cathedral, illuminated by floods of light, and enlivened by rivers of colour. Unfortunately Christian never told what he meant by the fragment, itself a mystery, in which he narrated the story of the knight who saw the Holy Grail, because the knight, who was warned, as usual, to ask no questions, for once, unlike most knights, obeyed the warning when he should have disregarded it. As knights-errant necessarily did the wrong thing in order to make their adventures possible, Perceval’s error cannot be in itself mysterious, nor was the castle in any way mysterious where the miracle occurred, It appeared to him to be the usual castle, and he saw nothing unusual in the manner of his reception by the usual old lord, or in the fact that both seated themselves quite simply before the hall-fire with the usual household. Then, as though it were an everyday habit, the Holy Grail was brought in (Bartsch, “Chrestomathie,” 183-85, ed. 1895):—

The simplicity of this narration gives a certain dramatic effect to the mystery, like seeing a ghost in full daylight, but Christian carried simplicity further still. He seemed either to feel, or to want others to feel, the reality of the adventure and the miracle, and he followed up the appearance of the graal by a solid meal in the style of the twelfth century, such as one expects to find in “Ivanhoe” or the “Talisman.” The knight sat down with his host to the best dinner that the county of Champagne afforded, and they ate their haunch of venison with the graal in full view. They drank their Champagne wine of various sorts, out of gold cups:—

they sat before the fire and talked till bedtime, when the squires made up the beds in the hall, and brought in supper—dates, figs, nutmegs, spices, pomegranates, and at last lectuaries, suspiciously like what we call jams; and “alexandrine gingerbread”; after which they drank various drinks, with or without spice or honey or pepper; and old moret, which is thought to be mulberry wine, but which generally went with clairet, a colourless grape-juice, or piment. At least, here are the lines, and one may translate them to suit one’s self:—

The twelfth century had the child’s love of sweets and spices and preserved fruits, and drinks sweetened or spiced, whether they were taken for supper or for poetry; the true knight’s palate was fresh and his appetite excellent either for sweets or verses or love; the world was young then; Robin Hoods lived in every forest, and Richard Coeur-de-Lion was not yet twenty years old. The pleasant adventures of Robin Hood were real, as you can read in the stories of a dozen outlaws, and men troubled themselves about pain and death much as healthy bears did, in the mountains. Life had miseries enough, but few shadows deeper than those of the imaginative lover, or the terrors of ghosts at night. Men’s imaginations ran riot, but did not keep them awake; at least, neither the preserved fruits nor the mulberry wine nor the clear syrup nor the gingerbread nor the Holy Graal kept Perceval awake, but he slept the sound and healthy sleep of youth, and when he woke the next morning, he felt only a mild surprise to find that his host and household had disappeared, leaving him to ride away without farewell, breakfast, or Graal.

Christian wrote about Perceval in 1174 in the same spirit in which the workmen in glass, thirty years later, told the story of Charlemagne. One artist worked for Mary of Champagne; the others for Mary of Chartres, commonly known as the Virgin; but all did their work in good faith, with the first, fresh, easy instinct of colour, light, and line. Neither of the two Maries was mystical, in a modern sense; none of the artists was oppressed by the burden of doubt; their scepticism was as childlike as faith. If one has to make an exception, perhaps the passion of love was more serious than that of religion, and gave to religion the deepest emotion, and the most complicated one, which society knew. Love was certainly a passion; and even more certainly it was, as seen in poets like Dante and Petrarch,—in romans like “Lancelot” and “Aucassin,”—in ideals like the Virgin,—complicated beyond modern conception. For this reason the loss of Christian’s “Tristan” makes a terrible gap in art, for Christian’s poem would have given the first and best idea of what led to courteous love. The “Tristan” was written before 1160, and belonged to the cycle of Queen Eleanor of England rather than to that of her daughter Mary of Troyes; but the subject was one neither of courtesy nor of France; it belonged to an age far behind the eleventh century, or even the tenth, or indeed any century within the range of French history; and it was as little fitted for Christian’s way of treatment as for any avowed burlesque. The original Tristan—critics say—was not French, and neither Tristan nor Isolde had ever a drop of French blood in their veins. In their form as Christian received it, they were Celts or Scots; they came from Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the northern ocean, or farther still. Behind the Welsh Tristan, which passed probably through England to Normandy and thence to France and Champagne, critics detect a far more ancient figure living in a form of society that France could not remember ever to have known. King Marc was a tribal chief of the Stone Age whose subjects loved the forest and lived on the sea or in caves; King Marc’s royal hall was a common shelter on the banks of a stream, where every one was at home, and king, queen, knights, attendants, and dwarf slept on the floor, on beds laid down where they pleased; Tristan’s weapons were the bow and stone knife; he never saw a horse or a spear; his ideas of loyalty and Isolde’s ideas of marriage were as vague as Marc’s royal authority; and all were alike unconscious of law, chivalry, or church. The note they sang was more unlike the note of Christian, if possible, than that of Richard Wagner; it was the simplest expression of rude and primitive love, as one could perhaps find it among North American Indians, though hardly so defiant even there, and certainly in the Icelandic Sagas hardly so lawless; but it was a note of real passion, and touched the deepest chords of sympathy in the artificial society of the twelfth century, as it did in that of the nineteenth. The task of the French poet was to tone it down and give it the fashionable dress, the pointed shoes and long sleeves, of the time.

In the twelfth century he wanted chiefly to please women, as Orderic complained; Isolde came out of Brittany to meet Eleanor coming up from Guienne, and the Virgin from the east; and all united in giving law to society. In each case it was the woman, not the man, who gave the law;—it was Mary, not the Trinity; Eleanor, not Louis VII; Isolde, not Tristan. No doubt, the original Tristan had given the law like Roland or Achilles, but the twelfth-century Tristan was a comparatively poor creature. He was in his way a secondary figure in the romance, as Louis VII was to Eleanor and Abelard to Heloise. Every one knows how, about twenty years before Eleanor came to Paris, the poet-professor Abelard, the hero of the Latin Quarter, had sung to Heloise those songs which—he tells us—resounded through Europe as widely as his scholastic fame, and probably to more effect for his renown. In popular notions Heloise was Isolde, and would in a moment have done what Isolde did (Bartsch, 107-08):—

At any time of her life, Heloise would have defied society or church, and would—at least in the public’s fancy—have taken Abelard by the hand and gone off to the forest much more readily than she went to the cloister; but Abelard would have made a poor figure as Tristan. Abelard and Christian of Troyes were as remote as we are from the legendary Tristan; but Isolde and Heloise, Eleanor and Mary were the immortal and eternal woman. The legend of Isolde, both in the earlier and the later version, seems to have served as a sacred book to the women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and Christian’s Isolde surely helped Mary in giving law to the Court of Troyes and decisions in the Court of Love.

Countess Mary’s authority lasted from 1164 to 1198, thirty-four years, during which, at uncertain intervals, glimpses of her influence flash out in poetry rather than in prose. Christian began his “Roman de la Charette” by invoking her:—

Christian chose curious similes. His dame surpassed all living rivals as smoke passes the winds that blow in May; or as much as a gem would buy of straws and sardines is the Countess worth in queens. Louis XIV would have thought that Christian might be laughing at him, but court styles changed with their masters. Louis XIV would scarcely have written a prison-song to his sister such as Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote to Mary of Champagne:—

Richard’s prison-song, one of the chief monuments of English literature, sounds to every ear, accustomed to twelfth-century verse, as charming as when it was household rhyme to

mi ome et mi baron Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon.

Not only was Richard a far greater king than any Louis ever was, but he also composed better poetry than any other king who is known to tourists, and, when he spoke to his sister in this cry of the heart altogether singular among monarchs, he made law and style, above discussion. Whether he meant to reproach his other sister, Alix of Chartres, historians may tell, if they know. If he did, the reproach answered its purpose, for the song was written in 1193; Richard was ransomed and released in 1194; and in 1198 the young Count “Loweis” of Chartres and Blois leagued with the Counts of Flanders, Le Perche, Guines, and Toulouse, against Philip Augustus, in favor of Coeur-de-Lion to whom they rendered homage. In any case, neither Mary nor Alice in 1193 was reigning Countess. Mary was a widow since 1181, and her son Henry was Count in Champagne, apparently a great favourite with his uncle Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The life of this Henry of Champagne was another twelfth-century romance, but can serve no purpose here except to recall the story that his mother, the great Countess Mary, died in 1198 of sorrow for the death of this son, who was then King of Jerusalem, and was killed, in 1197, by a fall from the window of his palace at Acre. Coeur-de-Lion died in 1199. In 1201, Mary’s other son, who succeeded Henry,—Count Thibaut III,—died, leaving a posthumous heir, famous in the thirteenth century as Thibaut-le-Grand—the Thibaut of Queen Blanche.

They were all astonishing—men and women—and filled the world, for two hundred years, with their extraordinary energy and genius; but the greatest of all was old Queen Eleanor, who survived her son Coeur-de-Lion, as well as her two husbands,—Louis-le-Jeune and Henry II Plantagenet,—and was left in 1200 still struggling to repair the evils and fend off the dangers they caused. “Queen by the wrath of God,” she called herself, and she knew what just claim she had to the rank. Of her two husbands and ten children, little remained except her son John, who, by the unanimous voice of his family, his friends, his enemies, and even his admirers, achieved a reputation for excelling in every form of twelfth-century crime. He was a liar and a traitor, as was not uncommon, but he was thought to be also a coward, which, in that family, was singular. Some redeeming quality he must have had, but none is recorded. His mother saw him running, in his masculine, twelfth-century recklessness, to destruction, and she made a last and a characteristic effort to save him and Guienne by a treaty of amity with the French king, to be secured by the marriage of the heir of France, Louis, to Eleanor’s granddaughter, John’s niece, Blanche of Castile, then twelve or thirteen years old. Eleanor herself was eighty, and yet she made the journey to Spain, brought back the child to Bordeaux, affianced her to Louis VIII as she had herself been affianced in 1137 to Louis VII, and in May, 1200, saw her married. The French had then given up their conventional trick of attributing Eleanor’s acts to her want of morals; and France gave her—as to most women after sixty years old—the benefit of the convention which made women respectable after they had lost the opportunity to be vicious. In French eyes, Eleanor played out the drama according to the rules. She could not save John, but she died in 1202, before his ruin, and you can still see her lying with her husband and her son Richard at Fontevrault in her twelfth-century tomb.

In 1223, Blanche became Queen of France. She was thirty-six years old. Her husband, Louis VIII, was ambitious to rival his father, Philip Augustus, who had seized Normandy in 1203. Louis undertook to seize Toulouse and Avignon. In 1225, he set out with a large army in which, among the chief vassals, his cousin Thibaut of Champagne led a contingent. Thibaut was five-and-twenty years old, and, like Pierre de Dreux, then Duke of Brittany, was one of the most brilliant and versatile men of his time, and one of the greatest rulers. As royal vassal Thibaut owed forty days’ service in the field; but his interests were at variance with the King’s, and at the end of the term he marched home with his men, leaving the King to fall ill and die in Auvergne, November 8, 1226, and a child of ten years old to carry on the government as Louis IX.

Chartres Cathedral has already told the story twice, in stone and glass; but Thibaut does not appear there, although he saved the Queen. Some member of the royal family must be regent. Queen Blanche took the place, and of course the princes of the blood, who thought it was their right, united against her. At first, Blanche turned violently on Thibaut and forbade him to appear at the coronation at Rheims in his own territory, on November 29, as though she held him guilty of treason; but when the league of great vassals united to deprive her of the regency, she had no choice but to detach at any cost any member of the league, and Thibaut alone offered help. What price she paid him was best known to her; but what price she would be believed to have paid him was as well known to her as what had been said of her grandmother Eleanor when she changed her allegiance in 1152. If the scandal had concerned Thibaut alone, she might have been well content, but Blanche was obliged also to pay desperate court to the papal legate. Every member of her husband’s family united against her and libelled her character with the freedom which enlivened and envenomed royal tongues.

Maintes paroles en dit en
Comme d’Iseult et de Tristan.

Had this been all, she would have cared no more than Eleanor or any other queen had cared, for in French drama, real or imaginary, such charges were not very serious and hardly uncomplimentary; but Iseult had never been accused, over and above her arbitrary views on the marriage-contract, of acting as an accomplice with Tristan in poisoning King Marc. French convention required that Thibaut should have poisoned Louis VIII for love of the Queen, and that this secret reciprocal love should control their lives. Fortunately for Blanche she was a devout ally of the Church, and the Church believed evil only of enemies. The legate and the prelates rallied to her support and after eight years of desperate struggle they crushed Pierre Mauclerc and saved Thibaut and Blanche.

For us the poetry is history, and the facts are false. French art starts not from facts, but from certain assumptions as conventional as a legendary window, and the commonest convention is the Woman. The fact, then as now, was Power, or its equivalent in exchange, but Frenchmen, while struggling for the Power, expressed it in terms of Art. They looked on life as a drama,—and on drama as a phase of life—in which the bystanders were bound to assume and accept the regular stage-plot. That the plot might be altogether untrue to real life affected in no way its interest. To them Thibaut and Blanche were bound to act Tristan and Isolde. Whatever they were when off the stage, they were lovers on it. Their loves were as real and as reasonable as the worship of the Virgin. Courteous love was avowedly a form of drama, but not the less a force of society. Illusion for illusion, courteous love, in Thibaut’s hands, or in the hands of Dante and Petrarch, was as substantial as any other convention;—the balance of trade, the rights of man, or the Athanasian Creed. In that sense the illusions alone were real; if the Middle Ages had reflected only what was practical, nothing would have survived for us.

Thibaut was Tristan, and is said to have painted his verses on the walls of his chateau. If he did, he painted there, in the opinion of M. Gaston Paris, better poetry than any that was written on paper or parchment, for Thibaut was a great prince and great poet who did in both characters whatever he pleased. In modern equivalents, one would give much to see the chateau again with the poetry on its walls. Provins has lost the verses, but Troyes still keeps some churches and glass of Thibaut’s time which hold their own with the best. Even of Thibaut himself, something survives, and though it were only the memories of his seneschal, the famous Sire de Joinville, history and France would be poor without him. With Joinville in hand, you may still pass an hour in the company of these astonishing thirteenth-century men and women:—crusaders who fight, hunt, make love, build churches, put up glass windows to the Virgin, buy missals, talk scholastic philosophy, compose poetry: Blanche, Thibaut, Perron, Joinville, Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, Saint Dominic, Saint Francis—you may know them as intimately as you can ever know a world that is lost; and in the case of Thibaut you may know more, for he is still alive in his poems; he even vibrates with life. One might try a few verses, to see what he meant by courtesy. Perhaps he wrote them for Queen Blanche, but, to whomever he sent them, the French were right in thinking that she ought to have returned his love (edition of 1742):—

Does Thibaut’s verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of the thirteenth-century glass—so refined and complicated that sensible people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the Queen of Heaven!

This little thirteenth-century gem is called a “chante-fable,” a story partly in prose, partly in verse, to be sung according to musical notation accompanying the words in the single manuscript known, and published in facsimile by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon at Oxford in 1896. Indeed, few poems, old or new, have in the last few years been more reprinted, translated, and discussed, than “Aucassins,” yet the discussion lacks interest to the idle tourist, and tells him little. Nothing is known of the author or his date. The second line alone offers a hint, but nothing more. “Caitif” means in the first place a captive, and secondly any unfortunate or wretched man. Critics have liked to think that the word means here a captive to the Saracens, and that the poet, like Cervantes three or four hundred years later, may have been a prisoner to the infidels. What the critics can do, we can do. If liberties can be taken with impunity by scholars, we can take the liberty of supposing that the poet was a prisoner in the crusade of Coeur-de-Lion and Philippe- Auguste; that he had recovered his liberty, with his master, in 1194; and that he passed the rest of his life singing to the old Queen Eleanor or to Richard, at Chinon, and to the lords of all the chateaux in Guienne, Poitiers, Anjou, and Normandy, not to mention England. The living was a pleasant one, as the sunny atmosphere of the Southern poetry proves.

Dox est li cans; biax est li dis,
Et cortois et bien asis.

The poet-troubadour who composed and recited “Aucassins” could not have been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, and not of ours. What rather interests us is his poetic motive, “courteous love,” which gives the tale a place in the direct line between Christian of Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, and William of Lorris. Christian of Troyes died in 1175; at least he wrote nothing of a later date, so far as is certainly known. Richard Coeur-de-Lion died in 1199, very soon after the death of his half-sister Mary of Champagne. Thibaut-le-Grand was born in 1201. William of Lorris, who concluded the line of great “courteous” poets, died in 1260 or thereabouts. For our purposes, “Aucassins” comes between Christian of Troyes and William of Lorris; the trouvere or jogleor, who sang, was a “viel caitif” when the Chartres glass was set up, and the Charlemagne window designed, about 1210, or perhaps a little later. When one is not a professor, one has not the right to make inept guesses, and, when one is not a critic, one should not risk confusing a difficult question by baseless assumptions; but even a summer tourist may without offence visit his churches in the order that suits him best; and, for our tour, “Aucassins” follows Christian and goes hand in hand with Blondel and the chatelain de Coucy, as the most exquisite expression of “courteous love.” As one of “Aucassins'” German editors says in his introduction: “Love is the medium through which alone the hero surveys the world around him, and for which he contemns everything that the age prized: knightly honour; deeds of arms; father and mother; hell, and even heaven; but the mere promise by his father of a kiss from Nicolette inspires him to superhuman heroism; while the old poet sings and smiles aside to his audience as though he wished them to understand that Aucassins, a foolish boy, must not be judged quite seriously, but that, old as he was himself, he was just as foolish about Nicolette.”

Aucassins was the son of the Count of Beaucaire. Nicolette was a young girl whom the Viscount of Beaucaire had redeemed as a captive of the Saracens, and had brought up as a god-daughter in his family. Aucassins fell in love with Nicolette, and wanted to marry her. The action turned on marriage, for, to the Counts of Beaucaire, as to other counts, not to speak of kings, high alliance was not a matter of choice but of necessity, without which they could not defend their lives, let alone their counties; and, to make Aucassins’ conduct absolutely treasonable, Beaucaire was at that time surrounded and besieged, and the Count, Aucassins’ father, stood in dire need of his son’s help. Aucassins refused to stir unless he could have Nicolette. What were honours to him if Nicolette were not to share them. “S’ele estait empereris de Colstentinoble u d’Alemaigne u roine de France u d’Engletere, si aroit il asses peu en li, tant est france et cortoise et de bon aire et entecie de toutes bones teces.” To be empress of “Colstentinoble” would be none too good for her, so stamped is she with nobility and courtesy and high-breeding and all good qualities.

So the Count, after a long struggle, sent for his Viscount and threatened to have Nicolette burned alive, and the Viscount himself treated no better, if he did not put a stop to the affair; and the Viscount shut up Nicolette, and remonstrated with Aucassins: “Marry a king’s daughter, or a count’s! leave Nicolette alone, or you will never see Paradise!” This at once gave Aucassins the excuse for a charming tirade against Paradise, for which, a century or two later, he would properly have been burned together with Nicolette:—

En paradis qu’ai je a faire? Je n’i quier entrer mais que j’aie Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, que j’aim tant. C’en paradis ne vont fors tex gens con je vous dirai. Il i vont ci viel prestre et cil vieil clop et cil manke, qui tote jour et tote nuit cropent devant ces autex et en ces vies cruutes, et ci a ces vies capes ereses et a ces vies tatereles vestues, qui sont nu et decauc et estrumele, qui moeurent de faim et d’esci et de froid et de mesaises. Icil vont en paradis; aveuc ciax n’ai jou que faire; mais en infer voil jou aler. Car en infer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier qui sont mort as tornois et as rices gueres, et li bien sergant et li franc home. Aveuc ciax voil jou aler. Et si vont les beles dames cortoises que eles ont ii amis ou iii avec leurs barons. Et si va li ors et li agens et li vairs et li gris; et si i vont herpeor et jogleor et li roi del siecle. Avec ciax voil jou aler mais que j’aie Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, aveuc moi.

In Paradise what have I to do? I do not care to go there unless I may have Nicolette, my very sweet friend, whom I love so much. For to Paradise goes no one but such people as I will tell you of. There go old priests and old cripples and the maimed, who all day and all night crouch before altars and in old crypts, and are clothed with old worn-out capes and old tattered rags; who are naked and footbare and sore; who die of hunger and want and misery. These go to Paradise; with them I have nothing to do; but to Hell I am willing to go. For, to Hell go the fine scholars and the fair knights who die in tournies and in glorious wars; and the good men-at-arms and the well-born. With them I will gladly go. And there go the fair courteous ladies whether they have two or three friends besides their lords. And the gold and silver go there, and the ermines and sables; and there go the harpers and jongleurs, and the kings of the world. With these will I go, if only I may have Nicolette, my very sweet friend, with me.

Three times, in these short extracts, the word “courteous” has already appeared. The story itself is promised as “courteous”; Nicolette is “courteous”; and the ladies who are not to go to heaven are “courteous.” Aucassins is in the full tide of courtesy, and evidently a professional, or he never would have claimed a place for harpers and jongleurs with kings and chevaliers in the next world. The poets of “courteous love” showed as little interest in religion as the poets of the eleventh century had shown for it in their poems of war. Aucassins resembled Christian of Troyes in this, and both of them resembled Thibaut, while William of Lorris went beyond them all. The literature of the “siecle” was always unreligious, from the “Chanson de Roland” to the “Tragedy of Hamlet”; to be “papelard” was unworthy of a chevalier; the true knight of courtesy made nothing of defying the torments of hell, as he defied the lance of a rival, the frowns of society, the threats of parents or the terrors of magic; the perfect, gentle, courteous lover thought of nothing but his love. Whether the object of his love were Nicolette of Beaucaire or Blanche of Castile, Mary of Champagne or Mary of Chartres, was a detail which did not affect the devotion of his worship.

So Nicolette, shut up in a vaulted chamber, leaned out at the marble window and sang, while Aucassins, when his father promised that he should have a kiss from Nicolette, went out to make fabulous slaughter of the enemy; and when his father broke the promise, shut himself up in his chamber, and also sang; and the action went on by scenes and interludes, until, one night, Nicolette let herself down from the window, by the help of sheets and towels, into the garden, and, with a natural dislike of wetting her skirts which has delighted every hearer or reader from that day to this, “prist se vesture a l’une main devant et a l’autre deriere si s’escorca por le rousee qu’ele vit grande sor l’erbe si s’en ala aval le gardin”; she raised her skirts with one hand in front and the other behind, for the dew which she saw heavy on the grass, and went off down the garden, to the tower where Aucassins was locked up, and sang to him through a crack in the masonry, and gave him a lock of her hair, and they talked till the friendly night-watch came by and warned her by a sweetly-sung chant, that she had better escape. So she bade farewell to Aucassins, and went on to a breach in the city wall, and she looked through it down into the fosse which was very deep and very steep. So she sang to herself—

The lions were a touch of poetic licence, even for Beaucaire, but the wolves and wild boars were real enough; yet Nicolette feared even them less than she feared the Count, so she slid down what her audience well knew to be a most dangerous and difficult descent, and reached the bottom with many wounds in her hands and feet, “et san en sali bien en xii lius”; so that blood was drawn in a dozen places, and then she climbed up the other side, and went off bravely into the depths of the forest; an uncanny thing to do by night, as you can still see.

Then followed a pastoral, which might be taken from the works of another poet of the same period, whose acquaintance no one can neglect to make—Adam de la Halle, a Picard, of Arras. Adam lived, it is true, fifty years later than the date imagined for Aucassins, but his shepherds and shepherdesses are not so much like, as identical with, those of the Southern poet, and all have so singular an air of life that the conventional courteous knight fades out beside them. The poet, whether bourgeois, professional, noble, or clerical, never much loved the peasant, and the peasant never much loved him, or any one else. The peasant was a class by himself, and his trait, as a class, was suspicion of everybody and all things, whether material, social, or divine. Naturally he detested his lord, whether temporal or spiritual, because the seigneur and the priest took his earnings, but he was never servile, though a serf; he was far from civil; he was commonly gross. He was cruel, but not more so than his betters; and his morals were no worse. The object of oppression on all sides,—the invariable victim, whoever else might escape,—the French peasant, as a class, held his own—and more. In fact, he succeeded in plundering Church, Crown, nobility, and bourgeoisie, and was the only class in French history that rose steadily in power and well-being, from the time of the crusades to the present day, whatever his occasional suffering may have been; and, in the thirteenth century, he was suffering. When Nicolette, on the morning after her escape, came upon a group of peasants in the forest, tending the Count’s cattle, she had reason to be afraid of them, but instead they were afraid of her. They thought at first that she was a fairy. When they guessed the riddle, they kept the secret, though they risked punishment and lost the chance of reward by protecting her. Worse than this, they agreed, for a small present, to give a message to Aucassins if he should ride that way.

Aucassins was not very bright, but when he got out of prison after Nicolette’s escape, he did ride out, at his friends’ suggestion, and tried to learn what had become of her. Passing through the woods he came upon the same group of shepherds and shepherdesses:—

Esmeres et Martinet, Fruelins et Johannes, Robecons et
Aubries,—

who might have been living in the Forest of Arden, so like were they to the clowns of Shakespeare. They were singing of Nicolette and her present, and the cakes and knives and flute they would buy with it. Aucassins jumped to the bait they offered him; and they instantly began to play him as though he were a trout:—

“Bel enfant, dix vos i ait!”

“Dix vos benie!” fait cil qui fu plus enparles des autres.

“Bel enfant,” fait il, “redites le cancon que vos disiez ore!”

“Nous n’i dirons,” fait cil qui plus fu enparles des autres. “Dehait ore qui por vos i cantera, biax sire!”

“Bel enfant!” fait Aucassins, “enne me connissies vos?”

“Oil! nos savions bien que vos estes Aucassins, nos damoisiax, mais nos ne somes mie a vos, ains somes au conte.”

“Bel enfant, si feres, je vos en pri!”

“Os, por le cuer be!” fait cil. “Por quoi canteroie je por vos, s’il ne me seoit! Quant il n’a si rice home en cest pais sans le cors le conte Garin s’il trovait mes bues ne mes vaces ne mes brebis en ses pres n’en sen forment qu’il fust mie tant hardis por les es a crever qu’il les en ossast cacier. Et por quoi canteroie je por vos s’il ne me seoit?”

“Se dix vos ait, bel enfant, si feres! et tenes x sous que j’ai ci en une borse!”

“God bless you, fair child!” said Aucassins.

“God be with you!” replied the one who talked best.

“Fair child!” said he, “repeat the song you were just singing.”

“We won’t!” replied he who talked best among them. “Bad luck to him who shall sing for you, good sir!”

“Fair child,” said Aucassins, “do you know me?”

“Yes! we know very well that you are Aucassins, our young lord; but we are none of yours; we belong to the Count.”

“Fair child, indeed you’ll do it, I pray you!”

“Listen, for love of God!” said he. “Why should I sing for you if it does not suit me? when there is no man so powerful in this country, except Count Garin, if he found my oxen or my cows or my sheep in his pasture or his close, would not rather risk losing his eyes than dare to turn them out! and why should I sing for you, if it does not suit me!”

“So God help you, good child, indeed you will do it! and take these ten sous that I have here in my purse.”

“Sire les deniers prenderons nos, mais je ne vos canterai mie, car j’en ai jure. Mais je le vos conterai se vos voles.”

“De par diu!” faits Aucassins. “Encore aim je mix center que nient.”

“Sire, the money we will take, but I’ll not sing to you, for I’ve sworn it. But I will tell it you, if you like.”

“For God’s sake!” said Aucassins; “better telling than nothing!”

Ten sous was no small gift! twenty sous was the value of a strong ox. The poet put a high money-value on the force of love, but he set a higher value on it in courtesy. These boors were openly insolent to their young lord, trying to extort money from him, and threatening him with telling his father; but they were in their right, and Nicolette was in their power. At heart they meant Aucassins well, but they were rude and grasping, and the poet used them in order to show how love made the true lover courteous even to clowns. Aucassins’ gentle courtesy is brought out by the boors’ greed, as the colours in the window were brought out and given their value by a bit of blue or green. The poet, having got his little touch of colour rightly placed, let the peasants go. “Cil qui fu plus enparles des autres,” having been given his way and his money, told Aucassins what he knew of Nicolette and her message; so Aucassins put spurs to his horse and cantered into the forest, singing:—

But the peasant had singular attraction for the poet. Whether the character gave him a chance for some clever mimicry, which was one of his strong points as a story-teller: or whether he wanted to treat his subjects, like the legendary windows, in pairs; or whether he felt that the forest-scene specially amused his audience, he immediately introduced a peasant of another class, much more strongly coloured, or deeply shadowed. Every one in the audience was—and, for that matter, still would be—familiar with the great forests, the home of half the fairy and nursery tales of Europe, still wild enough and extensive enough to hide in, although they have now comparatively few lions, and not many wolves or wild boars or serpents such as Nicolette feared. Every one saw, without an effort, the young damoiseau riding out with his hound or hawk, looking for game; the lanes under the trees, through the wood, or the thick underbrush before lanes were made; the herdsmen watching their herds, and keeping a sharp look-out for wolves; the peasant seeking lost cattle; the black kiln-men burning charcoal; and in the depths of the rocks or swamps or thickets—the outlaw. Even now, forests like Rambouillet, or Fontainebleau or Compiegne are enormous and wild; one can see Aucassins breaking his way through thorns and branches in search of Nicolette, tearing his clothes and wounding himself “en xl lius u en xxx,” until evening approached, and he began to weep for disappointment:—

Il esgarda devant lui enmi la voie si vit un vallet tei que je vos dirai. Grans estoit et mervellex et lais et hidex. Il avoit une grande hure plus noire qu’une carbouclee, et avoit plus de planne paume entre ii ex, et avoit unes grandes joes et un grandisme nez plat, et une grans narines lees et unes grosses levres plus rouges d’unes carbounees, et uns grans dens gaunes et lais et estoit caucies d’uns housiax et d’uns sollers de buef fretes de tille dusque deseure le genol et estoit afules d’une cape a ii envers si estoit apoiies sor une grande macue. Aucassins s’enbati sor lui s’eut grand paor quant il le sorvit…

“Baix frere, dix ti ait!”

“Dix vos benie!” fait cil. “Se dix t’ait, que fais tu ilec?”

“A vos que monte?” fait cil.

“Nient!” fait Aucassins; “je nel vos demant se por bien non.”

“Mais pour quoi ploures vos?” fait cil, “et faites si fait doel? Certes se j’estoie ausi rices hom que vos estes, tos li mons ne me feroit mie plorer.”

“Ba! me conissies vos!” fait Aucassins.

“Oie! je sai bien que vos estes Aucassins li fix le conte, et se vos me dites por quoi vos plores je vos dirai que je fac ici.”

As he looked before him along the way he saw a man such as I will tell you. Tall he was, and menacing, and ugly, and hideous. He had a great mane blacker than charcoal and had more than a full palm- width between his two eyes, and had big cheeks, and a huge flat nose and great broad nostrils, and thick lips redder than raw beef, and large ugly yellow teeth, and was shod with hose and leggings of raw hide laced with bark cord to above the knee, and was muffled in a cloak without lining, and was leaning on a great club. Aucassins came upon him suddenly and had great fear when he saw him.

“Fair brother, good day!” said he.

“God bless you!” said the other.

“As God help you, what do you here?”

“What is that to you?” said the other.

“Nothing!” said Aucassins; “I ask only from good-will.”

“But why are you crying!” said the other, “and mounring so loud? Sure, if I were as great a man as you are, nothing on earth would make me cry.”

“Bah! you know me?” said Aucassins.

“Yes, I know very well that you are Aucassins, the count’s son; and if you will tell me what you are crying for, I will tell you what I am doing here.”

Aucassins seemed to think this an equal bargain. All damoiseaux were not as courteous as Aucassins, nor all “varlets” as rude as his peasants; we shall see how the young gentlemen of Picardy treated the peasantry for no offence at all; but Aucassins carried a softer, Southern temper in a happier climate, and, with his invariable gentle courtesy, took no offence at the familiarity with which the ploughman treated him. Yet he dared not tell the truth, so he invented, on the spur of the moment, an excuse;—he has lost, he said, a beautiful white hound. The peasant hooted—

“Os!” fait cil; “por le cuer que cil sires eut en sen ventre! que vos plorastes por un cien puant! Mal dehait ait qui ja mais vos prisera quant il n’a si rice home en ceste tere se vos peres len mandoit x u xv u xx qu’il ne les envoyast trop volontiers et s’en esteroit trop lies. Mais je dois plorer et dol faire?”

“Et tu de quoi frere?”

“Sire je lo vos dirai. J’estoie liues a un rice vilain si cacoie se carue. iiii bues i avoit. Or a iii jors qu il m’avint une grande malaventure que je perdi le mellor de mes bues Roget le mellor de me carue. Si le vois querant. Si ne mengai ne ne bue iii jors a passes. Si n’os aler a le vile c’on me metroit en prison que je ne l’ai de quoi saure. De tot l’avoir du monde n’ai je plus vaillant que vos vees sor le cors de mi. Une lasse mere avoie, si n’avoit plus vaillant que une keutisele, si h a on sacie de desous le dos si gist a pur l’estrain, si m’en poise asses plus que denu. Car avoirs va et viaent; se j’ai or perdu je gaaignerai une autre fois si sorrai mon buef quant je porrai, ne ja por cien n’en plorerai. Et vos plorastes por un cien de longaigne! Mal dehait ait qui mais vos prisera!”

“Certes tu es de bon confort, biax frere! que benois sois tu! Et que valoit tes bues!”

“Sire xx sous m’en demande on, je n’en puis mie abatre une seule maille.”

“Or, tien” fait Aucassins, “xx que j’ai ci en me borse, si sol ten buef!”

“Listen!” said he, “By the heart God had in his body, that you should cry for a stinking dog! Bad luck to him who ever prizes you! When there is no man in this land so great, if your father sent to him for ten or fifteen or twenty but would fetch them very gladly, and be only too pleased. But I ought to cry and mourn.”

“And—why you, brother?”

“Sir, I will tell you. I was hired out to a rich farmer to drive his plough. There were four oxen. Now three days ago I had a great misfortune, for I lost the best of my oxen, Roget, the best of my team. I am looking to find him. I’ve not eaten or drunk these three days past. I dare n’t go to the town, for they would put me in prison as I’ve nothing to pay with. In all the world I’ve not the worth of anything but what you see on my body I’ve a poor old mother who owned nothing but a feather mattress, and they’ve dragged it from under her back so she lies on the bare straw, and she troubles me more than myself. For riches come and go if I lose to day, I gain to-morrow; I will pay for my ox when I can, and will not cry for that. And you cry for a filthy dog! Bad luck to him who ever thinks well of you!”

“Truly, you counsel well, good brother! God bless you! And what was your ox worth?”

“Sir, they ask me twenty sous for it. I cannot beat them down a single centime.”

“Here are twenty,” said Aucassins, “that I have in my purse! Pay for your ox!”

“Sire!” fait il, “grans mercies! et dix vos laist trover ce que vox queres!”

“Sir!” said he; “many thanks! and Go! grant you find what you seek!”

The little episode was thrown in without rhyme or reason to the rapid emotion of the love-story, as though the jongleur were showing his own cleverness and humour, at the expense of his hero, as jongleurs had a way of doing; but he took no such liberties with his heroine. While Aucassins tore through the thickets on horseback, crying aloud, Nicolette had built herself a little hut in the depths of the forest:—

So night came on, and Nicolette went to sleep, a little distance away from her hut. Aucassins at last came by, and dismounted, spraining his shoulder in doing it. Then he crept into the little hut, and lying on his back, looked up through the leaves to the moon, and sang:—

How Nicolette heard him sing, and came to him and rubbed his shoulder and dressed his wounds as though he were a child; and how in the morning they rode away together, like Tennyson’s “Sleeping Beauty,”—

singing as they rode, the story goes on to tell or to sing in verse—

There we will leave them, for their further adventures have not much to do with our matter. Like all the romans, or nearly all, “Aucassins” is singularly pure and refined. Apparently the ladies of courteous love frowned on coarseness and allowed no licence. Their power must have been great, for the best romans are as free from grossness as the “Chanson de Roland” itself, or the church glass, or the illuminations in the manuscripts; and as long as the power of the Church ruled good society, this decency continued. As far as women were concerned, they seem always to have been more clean than the men, except when men painted them in colours which men liked best.

Perhaps society was actually cleaner in the thirteenth century than in the sixteenth, as Saint Louis was more decent than Francis I, and as the bath was habitual in the twelfth century and exceptional at the Renaissance. The rule held good for the bourgeoisie as well as among the dames cortoises. Christian and Thibaut, “Aucassins” and the “Roman de la Rose,” may have expressed only the tastes of high- born ladies, but other poems were avowedly bourgeois, and among the bourgeois poets none was better than Adam de la Halle. Adam wrote also for the court, or at least for Robert of Artois, Saint Louis’s nephew, whom he followed to Naples in 1284, but his poetry was as little aristocratic as poetry could well be, and most of it was cynically—almost defiantly—middle-class, as though the weavers of Arras were his only audience, and recognized him and the objects of his satire in every verse. The bitter personalities do not concern us, but, at Naples, to amuse Robert of Artois and his court, Adam composed the first of French comic operas, which had an immense success, and, as a pastoral poem, has it still. The Idyll of Arras was a singular contrast to the Idyll of Beaucaire, but the social value was the same in both; Robin and Marion were a pendant to Aucassins and Nicolette; Robin was almost a burlesque on Aucassins, while Marion was a Northern, energetic, intelligent, pastoral Nicolette.

“Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion” had little or no plot. Adam strung together, on a thread of dialogue and by a group of suitable figures, a number of the favourite songs of his time, followed by the favourite games, and ending with a favourite dance, the “tresca.” The songs, the games, and the dances do not concern us, but the dialogue runs along prettily, with an air of Flemish realism, like a picture of Teniers, as unlike that of “courtoisie” as Teniers was to Guido Reni. Underneath it all a tone of satire made itself felt, good-natured enough, but directed wholly against the men.

The scene opens on Marion tending her sheep, and singing the pretty air: “Robin m’aime, Robin ma’a,” after which enters a chevalier or esquire, on horseback, and sings: “Je me repairoie du tournoiement.” Then follows a dialogue between the chevalier and Marion, with no other object than to show off the charm of Marion against the masculine defects of the knight. Being, like most squires, somewhat slow of ideas in conversation with young women, the gentleman began by asking for sport for his falcon. Has she seen any duck down by the river?

“Ane,” it seems, was the usual word for wild duck, the falcon’s prey, and Marion knew it as well as he, but she chose to misunderstand him:—

C’est une bete qui recane;
J’en vis ier iii sur che quemin,
Tous quarchies aler au moulin.
Est che chou que vous demandes?

“It is a beast that brays; I saw three yesterday on the road, all with loads going to the mill. Is that what you ask?” That is not what the squire has asked, and he is conscious that Marion knows it, but he tries again. If she has not seen a duck, perhaps she has seen a heron:—

Hairons, sire? par me foi, non!
Je n’en vi nesun puis quareme
Que j’en vi mengier chies dame Eme
Me taiien qui sorit ches brebis.

“Heron, sir! by my faith, no! I’ve not seen one since Lent when I saw some eaten at my grandmother’s—Dame Emma who owns these sheep.” “Hairons,” it seems, meant also herring, and this wilful misunderstanding struck the chevalier as carrying jest too far:—

Par foi! or suis j’ou esbaubis!
N’ainc mais je ne fui si gabes!

“On my word, I am silenced! never in my life was I so chaffed!” Marion herself seems to think her joke a little too evident, for she takes up the conversation in her turn, only to conclude that she likes Robin better than she does the knight; he is gayer, and when he plays his musette he starts the whole village dancing. At this, the squire makes a declaration of love with such energy as to spur his horse almost over her:—

Aimi, sirel ostez vo cheval!
A poi que il ne m’a blechie.
Li Robin ne regiete mie
Quand je voie apres se karue.

“Aimi!” is an exclamation of alarm, real or affected: “Dear me, sir! take your horse away! he almost hurt me! Robin’s horse never rears when I go behind his plough!” Still the knight persists, and though Marion still tells him to go away, she asks his name, which he says is Aubert, and so gives her the catchword for another song:—”Vos perdes vo paine, sire Aubert!”—which ends the scene with a duo. The second scene begins with a duo of Marion and Robin, followed by her giving a softened account of the chevalier’s behaviour, and then they lunch on bread and cheese and apples, and more songs follow, till she sends him to get Baldwin and Walter and Peronette and the pipers, for a dance. In his absence the chevalier returns and becomes very pressing in his attentions, which gives her occasion to sing:-

J’oi Robin flagoler
Au flagol d’argent.

When Robin enters, the knight picks a quarrel with him for not handling properly the falcon which he has caught in the hedge; and Robin gets a severe beating. The scene ends by the horseman carrying off Marion by force; but he soon gets tired of carrying her against her will, and drops her, and disappears once for all.

Certes voirement sui je beste
Quant a ceste beste m’areste.
Adieu, bergiere!

Bete the knight certainly was, and was meant to be, in order to give the necessary colour to Marion’s charms. Chevaliers were seldom intellectually brilliant in the mediaeval romans, and even the “Chansons de Geste” liked better to talk of their prowess than of their wit; but Adam de la Halle, who felt no great love for chevaliers, was not satisfied with ridiculing them in order to exalt Marion; his second act was devoted to exalting Marion at the expense of her own boors.

The first act was given up to song; the second, to games and dances. The games prove not to be wholly a success; Marion is bored by them, and wants to dance. The dialogue shows Marion trying constantly to control her clowns and make them decent, as Blanche of Castile had been all her life trying to control her princes, and Mary of Chartres her kings. Robin is a rustic counterpart to Thibaut. He is tamed by his love of Marion, but he has just enough intelligence to think well of himself, and to get himself into trouble without knowing how to get out of it. Marion loves him much as she would her child; she makes only a little fun of him; defends him from the others; laughs at his jealousy; scolds him on occasion; flatters his dancing; sends him on errands, to bring the pipers or drive away the wolf; and what is most to our purpose, uses him to make the other peasants decent. Walter and Baldwin and Hugh are coarse, and their idea of wit is to shock the women or make Robin jealous. Love makes gentlemen even of boors, whether noble or villain, is the constant moral of mediaeval story, and love turns Robin into a champion of decency. When, at last, Walter, playing the jongleur, begins to repeat a particularly coarse fabliau, or story in verse, Robin stops him short—

Ho, Gautier, je n’en voeil plus! fi!
Dites, seres vous tous jours teus!
Vous estes un ors menestreus!

“Ho, Walter! I want no more of that: Shame! Say! are you going to be always like that? You’re a dirty beggar!” A fight seems inevitable, but Marion turns it into a dance, and the whole party, led by the pipers, with Robin and Marion at the head of the band, leave the stage in the dance which is said to be still known in Italy as the “tresca.” Marion is in her way as charming as Nicolette, but we are less interested in her charm than in her power. Always the woman appears as the practical guide; the one who keeps her head, even in love:—

Elle l’a mis a raison:
“Aucassins, biax amis dox,
En quele tere en irons nous?”
“Douce amie, que sai jou?
Moi ne caut ou nous aillons.”

The man never cared; he was always getting himself into crusades, or feuds, or love, or debt, and depended on the woman to get him out. The story was always of Charles VII and Jeanne d’Arc, or Agnes Sorel. The woman might be the good or the evil spirit, but she was always the stronger force. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period when men were at their strongest; never before or since have they shown equal energy in such varied directions, or such intelligence in the direction of their energy; yet these marvels of history,—these Plantagenets; these scholastic philosophers; these architects of Rheims and Amiens; these Innocents, and Robin Hoods and Marco Polos; these crusaders, who planted their enormous fortresses all over the Levant; these monks who made the wastes and barrens yield harvests;—all, without apparent exception, bowed down before the woman.

Explain it who will! We are not particularly interested in the explanation; it is the art we have chased through this French forest, like Aucassins hunting for Nicolette; and the art leads always to the woman. Poetry, like the architecture and the decoration, harks back to the same standard of taste. The specimens of Christian of Troyes, Thibaut, Tristan, Aucassins, and Adam de la Halle were mild admissions of feminine superiority compared with some that were more in vogue, If Thibaut painted his love-verses on the walls of his castle, he put there only what a more famous poet, who may have been his friend, set on the walls of his Chateau of Courteous Love, which, not being made with hands or with stone, but merely with verse, has not wholly perished. The “Roman de la Rose” is the end of true mediaeval poetry and goes with the Sainte- Chapelle in architecture, and three hundred years of more or less graceful imitation or variation on the same themes which followed. Our age calls it false taste, and no doubt our age is right;—every age is right by its own standards as long as its standards amuse it;—but after all, the “Roman de la Rose” charmed Chaucer,—it may well charm you. The charm may not be that of Mont-Saint-Michel or of Roland; it has not the grand manner of the eleventh century, or the jewelled brilliancy of the Chartres lancets, or the splendid self- assertion of the roses: but even to this day it gives out a faint odour of Champagne and Touraine, of Provence and Cyprus. One hears Thibaut and sees Queen Blanche.

Of course, this odour of true sanctity belongs only to the “Roman” of William of Lorris, which dates from the death of Queen Blanche and of all good things, about 1250; a short allegory of courteous love in forty-six hundred and seventy lines. To modern taste, an allegory of forty-six hundred and seventy lines seems to be not so short as it might be; but the fourteenth century found five thousand verses totally inadequate to the subject, and, about 1300, Jean de Meung added eighteen thousand lines, the favourite reading of society for one or two hundred years, but beyond our horizon. The “Roman” of William of Lorris was complete in itself; it had shape; beginning, middle, and end; even a certain realism, action,—almost life!

The Rose is any feminine ideal of beauty, intelligence, purity, or grace,—always culminating in the Virgin,—but the scene is the Court of Love, and the action is avowedly in a dream, without time or place. The poet’s tone is very pure; a little subdued; at times sad; and the poem ends sadly; but all the figures that were positively hideous were shut out of the court, and painted on the outside walls:—Hatred; Felony; Covetousness; Envy; Poverty; Melancholy, and Old Age. Death did not appear. The passion for representing death in its horrors did not belong to the sunny atmosphere of the thirteenth century, and indeed jarred on French taste always, though the Church came to insist on it; but Old Age gave the poet a motive more artistic, foreshadowing Death, and quite sad enough to supply the necessary contrast. The poet who approached the walls of the chateau and saw, outside, all the unpleasant facts of life conspicuously posted up, as though to shut them out of doors, hastened to ask for entrance, and, when once admitted, found a court of ideals. Their names matter little. In the mind of William of Lorris, every one would people his ideal world with whatever ideal figures pleased him, and the only personal value of William’s figures is that they represent what he thought the thirteenth- century ideals of a perfect society. Here is Courtesy, with a translation long thought to be by Chaucer:-

You can read for yourselves the characters, and can follow the simple action which owes its slight interest only to the constant effort of the dreamer to attain his ideal,—the Rose,—and owes its charm chiefly to the constant disappointment and final defeat. An undertone of sadness runs through it, felt already in the picture of Time which foreshadows the end of Love—the Rose—and her court, and with it the end of hope:—

The note of sadness has begun, which the poets were to find so much more to their taste than the note of gladness. From the “Roman de la Rose” to the “Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis” was a short step for the Middle-Age giant Time,—a poor two hundred years. Then Villon woke up to ask what had become of the Roses:—Ou est la tres sage Helois Pour qui fut chastie puis moyne, Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis? Pour son amour ot cest essoyne.

Between the death of William of Lorris and the advent of John of Meung, a short half-century (1250-1300), the Woman and the Rose became bankrupt. Satire took the place of worship. Man, with his usual monkey-like malice, took pleasure in pulling down what he had built up. The Frenchman had made what he called “fausse route.” William of Lorris was first to see it, and say it, with more sadness and less bitterness than Villon showed; he won immortality by telling how he, and the thirteenth century in him, had lost himself in pursuing his Rose, and how he had lost the Rose, too, waking up at last to the dull memory of pain and sorrow and death, that “tout porrist.” The world had still a long march to make from the Rose of Queen Blanche to the guillotine of Madame du Barry; but the “Roman de la Rose” made epoch. For the first time since Constantine proclaimed the reign of Christ, a thousand years, or so, before Philip the Fair dethroned Him, the deepest expression of social feeling ended with the word: Despair.

Dante composed one of these prayers; Petrarch the other. Chaucer translated Dante’s prayer in the “Second Nonnes Tale.” He who will may undertake to translate either;—not I! The Virgin, in whom is united whatever goodness is in created being, might possibly, in her infinite grace, forgive the sacrilege; but her power has limits, if not her grace; and the whole Trinity, with the Virgin to aid, had not the power to pardon him who should translate Dante and Petrarch. The prayers come in here, not merely for their beauty,—although the Virgin knows how beautiful they are, whether man knows it or not; but chiefly to show the good faith, the depth of feeling, the intensity of conviction, with which society adored its ideal of human perfection.

The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries believed in the supernatural, and might almost be said to have contracted a miracle-habit, as morbid as any other form of artificial stimulant; they stood, like children, in an attitude of gaping wonder before the miracle of miracles which they felt in their own consciousness; but one can see in this emotion, which is, after all, not exclusively infantile, no special reason why they should have so passionately flung themselves at the feet of the Woman rather than of the Man. Dante wrote in 1300, after the height of this emotion had passed; and Petrarch wrote half a century later still; but so slowly did the vision fade, and so often did it revive, that, to this day, it remains the strongest symbol with which the Church can conjure.

Men were, after all, not wholly inconsequent; their attachment to Mary rested on an instinct of self-preservation. They knew their own peril. If there was to be a future life, Mary was their only hope. She alone represented Love. The Trinity were, or was, One, and could, by the nature of its essence, administer justice alone. Only childlike illusion could expect a personal favour from Christ. Turn the dogma as one would, to this it must logically come. Call the three Godheads by what names one liked, still they must remain One; must administer one justice; must admit only one law. In that law, no human weakness or error could exist; by its essence it was infinite, eternal, immutable. There was no crack and no cranny in the system, through which human frailty could hope for escape. One was forced from corner to corner by a remorseless logic until one fell helpless at Mary’s feet.

Without Mary, man had no hope except in atheism, and for atheism the world was not ready. Hemmed back on that side, men rushed like sheep to escape the butcher, and were driven to Mary; only too happy in finding protection and hope in a being who could understand the language they talked, and the excuses they had to offer. How passionately they worshipped Mary, the Cathedral of Chartres shows; and how this worship elevated the whole sex, all the literature and history of the time proclaim. If you need more proof, you can read more Petrarch; but still one cannot realize how actual Mary was, to the men and women of the Middle Ages, and how she was present, as a matter of course, whether by way of miracle or as a habit of life, throughout their daily existence. The surest measure of her reality is the enormous money value they put on her assistance, and the art that was lavished on her gratification, but an almost equally certain sign is the casual allusion, the chance reference to her, which assumes her presence.

The earliest prose writer in the French language, who gave a picture of actual French life, was Joinville; and although he wrote after the death of Saint Louis and of William of Lorris and Adam de la Halle, in the full decadence of Philip the Fair, toward 1300, he had been a vassal of Thibaut and an intimate friend of Louis, and his memories went back to the France of Blanche’s regency. Born in 1224, he must have seen in his youth the struggles of Thibaut against the enemies of Blanche, and in fact his memoirs contain Blanche’s emphatic letter forbidding Thibaut to marry Yolande of Brittany. He knew Pierre de Dreux well, and when they were captured by the Saracens at Damietta, and thrown into the hold of a galley, “I had my feet right on the face of the Count Pierre de Bretagne, whose feet, in turn, were by my face.” Joinville is almost twelfth-century in feeling. He was neither feminine nor sceptical, but simple. He showed no concern for poetry, but he put up a glass window to the Virgin. His religion belonged to the “Chanson de Roland.” When Saint Louis, who had a pleasant sense of humour put to him his favourite religious conundrums, Joinville affected not the least hypocrisy. “Would you rather be a leper or commit a mortal sin?” asked the King. “I would rather commit thirty mortal sins than be a leper,” answered Joinville. “Do you wash the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday?” asked the King. “God forbid!” replied Joinville; “never will I wash the feet of such creatures!” Saint Louis mildly corrected his, or rather Thibaut’s, seneschal, for these impieties, but he was no doubt used to them, for the soldier was never a churchman. If one asks Joinville what he thinks of the Virgin, he answers with the same frankness:—

Ung jour moi estant devant le roi lui demanday congie d’aller en pelerinage a nostre Dame de Tourtouze [Tortosa in Syria] qui estoit ung veage tres fort requis. Et y avoit grant quantite de pelerins par chacun jour pour ce que c’est le premier autel qui onques fust fait en l’onneur de la Mere de Dieu ainsi qu’on disoit lors. Et y faisoit nostre Dame de grans miracles a merveilles. Entre lesquelz elle en fist ung d’un pouvre homme qui estoit hors de son sens et demoniacle. Car il avoit le maling esperit dedans le corps. Et advint par ung jour qu’il fut amene a icelui autel de nostre Dame de Tourtouze. Et ainsi que ses amys qui l’avoient la amene prioient a nostre Dame qu’elle lui voulsist recouvrer sante et guerison le diable que la pouvre creature avoit ou corps respondit: “Nostre Dame n’est pas ici; elle est en Egipte pour aider au Roi de France et aux Chrestiens qui aujourdhui arrivent en la Terre sainte centre toute paiennie qui sont a cheval.” Et fut mis en escript le jour que le deable profera ces motz et fut apporte au legat qui estoit avecques le roi de France; lequel me dist depuis que a celui jour nous estion arrivez en la terre d’Egipte. Et suis bien certain que la bonne Dame Marie nous y eut bien besoin.

This happened in Syria, after the total failure of the crusade in Egypt. The ordinary man, even if he were a priest or a soldier, needed a miraculous faith to persuade him that Our Lady or any other divine power, had helped the crusades of Saint Louis. Few of the usual fictions on which society rested had ever required such defiance of facts; but, at least for a time, society held firm. The thirteenth century could not afford to admit a doubt. Society had staked its existence, in this world and the next, on the reality and power of the Virgin; it had invested in her care nearly its whole capital, spiritual, artistic, intellectual, and economical, even to the bulk of its real and personal estate; and her overthrow would have been the most appalling disaster the Western world had ever known. Without her, the Trinity itself could not stand; the Church must fall; the future world must dissolve. Not even the collapse of the Roman Empire compared with a calamity so serious; for that had created, not destroyed, a faith.

If sceptics there were, they kept silence. Men disputed and doubted about the Trinity, but about the Virgin the satirists Rutebeuf and Adam de la Halle wrote in the same spirit as Saint Bernard and Abelard, Adam de Saint-Victor and the pious monk Gaultier de Coincy. In the midst of violent disputes on other points of doctrine, the disputants united in devotion to Mary; and it was the single redeeming quality about them. The monarchs believed almost more implicitly than their subjects, and maintained the belief to the last. Doubtless the death of Queen Blanche marked the flood-tide at its height; but an authority so established as that of the Virgin, founded on instincts so deep, logic so rigorous, and, above all, on wealth so vast, declined slowly. Saint Louis died in 1270. Two hundred long and dismal years followed, in the midst of wars, decline of faith, dissolution of the old ties and interests, until, toward 1470, Louis XI succeeded in restoring some semblance of solidity to the State; and Louis XI divided his time and his money impartially between the Virgin of Chartres and the Virgin of Paris. In that respect, one can see no difference between him and Saint Louis, nor much between Philippe de Commines and Joinville. After Louis XI, another fantastic century passed, filled with the foulest horrors of history—religious wars; assassinations; Saint Bartholomews; sieges of Chartres; Huguenot leagues and sweeping destruction of religious monuments; Catholic leagues and fanatical reprisals on friends and foes,—the actual dissolution of society in a mass of horrors compared with which even the Albigensian crusade was a local accident, all ending in the reign of the last Valois, Henry III, the weirdest, most fascinating, most repulsive, most pathetic and most pitiable of the whole picturesque series of French kings. If you look into the Journal of Pierre de l’Estoile, under date of January 26,1582, you can read the entry:—

The King and the Queen [Louise de Lorraine], separately, and each accompanied by a good troop [of companions] went on foot from Paris to Chartres on a pilgrimage [voyage] to Notre-Dame-de-dessous-Terre [Our Lady of the Crypt], where a neuvaine was celebrated at the last mass at which the King and Queen assisted, and offered a silver-gilt statue of Notre Dame which weighed a hundred marks [eight hundred ounces], with the object of having lineage which might succeed to the throne.

In the dead of winter, in robes of penitents, over the roughest roads, on foot, the King and Queen, then seven years married, walked fifty miles to Chartres to supplicate the Virgin for children, and back again; and this they did year after year until Jacques Clement put an end to it with his dagger, in 1589, although the Virgin never chose to perform that miracle; but, instead, allowed the House of Valois to die out and sat on her throne in patience while the House of Bourbon was anointed in their place. The only French King ever crowned in the presence of Our Lady of Chartres was Henry IV—a heretic.

The year 1589, which was so decisive for Henry IV in France, marked in England the rise of Shakespeare as a sort of stage-monarch. While in France the Virgin still held such power that kings and queens asked her for favours, almost as instinctively as they had done five hundred years before, in England Shakespeare set all human nature and all human history on the stage, with hardly an allusion to the Virgin’s name, unless as an oath. The exceptions are worth noting as a matter of curious Shakespearean criticism, for they are but two, and both are lines in the “First Part of Henry VI,” spoken by the Maid of Orleans:—

Christ’s mother helps me, else I were too weak!

Whether the “First Part of Henry VI” was written by Shakespeare at all has been a doubt much discussed, and too deep for tourists; but that this line was written by a Roman Catholic is the more likely because no such religious thought recurs in all the rest of Shakespeare’s works, dramatic or lyric, unless it is implied in Gaunt’s allusion to “the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son.” Thus, while three hundred years caused in England the disappearance of the great divinity on whom the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had lavished all their hopes, and during these three centuries every earthly throne had been repeatedly shaken or shattered, the Church had been broken in halves, faith had been lost, and philosophies overthrown, the Virgin still remained and remains the most intensely and the most widely and the most personally felt, of all characters, divine or human or imaginary, that ever existed among men. Nothing has even remotely taken her place. The only possible exception is the Buddha, Sakya Muni; but to the Western mind, a figure like the Buddha stood much farther away than the Virgin. That of the Christ even to Saint Bernard stood not so near as that of his mother. Abelard expressed the fact in its logical necessity even more strongly than Saint Bernard did:—

“After the Trinity, you are our ONLY hope”; spes nostra unica; “you are placed there as our advocate; all of us who fear the wrath of the Judge, fly to the Judge’s mother, who is logically compelled to sue for us, and stands in the place of a mother to the guilty.” Abelard’s logic was always ruthless, and the “cogitur” is a stronger word than one would like to use now, with a priest in hearing. We need not insist on it; but what one must insist on, is the good faith of the whole people,—kings, queens, princes of all sorts, philosophers, poets, soldiers, artists, as well as of the commoners like ourselves, and the poor,—for the good faith of the priests is not important to the understanding, since any class which is sufficiently interested in believing will always believe. In order to feel Gothic architecture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one must feel first and last, around and above and beneath it, the good faith of the public, excepting only Jews and atheists, permeating every portion of it with the conviction of an immediate alternative between heaven and hell, with Mary as the ONLY court in equity capable of overruling strict law.

The Virgin was a real person, whose tastes, wishes, instincts, passions, were intimately known. Enough of the Virgin’s literature survives to show her character, and the course of her daily life. We know more about her habits and thoughts than about those of earthly queens. The “Miracles de la Vierge” make a large part, and not the poorest part, of the enormous literature of these two centuries, although the works of Albertus Magnus fill twenty-one folio volumes and those of Thomas Aquinas fill more, while the “Chansons de Geste” and the “Romans,” published or unpublished, are a special branch of literature with libraries to themselves. The collection of the Virgin’s miracles put in verse by Gaultier de Coincy, monk, prior, and poet, between 1214 and 1233—the precise moment of the Chartres sculpture and glass—contains thirty thousand lines. Another great collection, narrating especially the miracles of the Virgin of Chartres, was made by a priest of Chartres Cathedral about 1240. Separate series, or single tales, have appeared and are appearing constantly, but no general collection has ever been made, although the whole poetic literature of the Virgin could be printed in the space of two or three volumes of scholastic philosophy, and if the Church had cared half as truly for the Virgin as it has for Thomas Aquinas, every miracle might have been collected and published a score of times. The miracles themselves, indeed, are not very numerous. In Gaultier de Coincy’s collection they number only about fifty. The Chartres collection relates chiefly to the horrible outbreak of what was called leprosy—the “mal ardent,”—which ravaged the north of France during the crusades, and added intensity to the feelings which brought all society to the Virgin’s feet. Recent scholars are cataloguing and classifying the miracles, as far as they survive, and have reduced the number within very moderate limits. As poetry, Gaultier de Coincy’s are the best.

Of Gaultier de Coincy and his poetry, Gaston Paris has something to say which is worth quoting:—

It is the most curious, and often the most singular monument of the infantile piety of the Middle Ages. Devotion to Mary is presented in it as a kind of infallible guarantee not only against every sort of evil, but also against the most legitimate consequences of sin and even of crime. In these stories which have revolted the most rational piety, as well as the philosophy of modern times, one must still admit a gentle and penetrating charm; a naivete; a tenderness and a simplicity of heart, which touch, while they raise a smile. There, for instance, one sees a sick monk cured by the milk that Our Lady herself comes to invite him to draw from her “douce mamelle”; a robber who is in the habit of recommending himself to the Virgin whenever he is going to “embler,” is held up by her white hands for three days on the gibbet where he is hung, until the miracle becomes evident, and procures his pardon; an ignorant monk who knows only his Ave Maria, and is despised on that account, when dead reveals his sanctity by five roses which come out of his mouth in honour of the five letters of the name Maria; a nun, who has quitted her convent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and finds that the Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceased to offer every day her prayer, has, during all this time, filled her place as sacristine, so that no one has perceived her absence.

Gaston Paris inclined to apologize to his “bons bourgeois de Paris” for reintroducing to them a character so doubtful as the Virgin Mary, but, for our studies, the professor’s elementary morality is eloquent. Clearly, M. Paris, the highest academic authority in the world, thought that the Virgin could hardly, in his time, say the year 1900, be received into good society in the Latin Quarter. Our own English ancestors, known as Puritans, held the same opinion, and excluded her from their society some four hundred years earlier, for the same reasons which affected M. Gaston Paris. These reasons were just, and showed the respectability of the citizens who held them. In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, could the Virgin feel at home, and the same thing may be said of most other saints as well as sinners. Her conduct was at times undignified, as M. Paris complained, She condescended to do domestic service, in order to help her friends, and she would use her needle, if she were in the mood, for the same object. The “Golden Legend” relates that:—

A certain priest, who celebrated every day a mass in honour of the Holy Virgin, was brought up before Saint Thomas of Canterbury who suspended him from his charge, judging him to be short-witted and irresponsible. Now Saint Thomas had occasion to mend his hair-cloth shirt, and while waiting for an opportunity to do so, had hidden it under his bed; so the Virgin appeared to the priest and said to him: “Go find the archbishop and tell him that she, for love of whom you celebrated masses, has herself mended his shirt for him which is under his bed; and tell him that she sends you to him that he may take off the interdict he has imposed on you.” And Saint Thomas found that his shirt had in fact been mended. He relieved the priest, begging him to keep the secret of his wearing a hair-shirt.

Mary did some exceedingly unconventional things, and among them the darning Thomas A’Becket’s hair-shirt, and the supporting a robber on the gibbet, were not the most singular, yet they seem not to have shocked Queen Blanche or Saint Francis or Saint Thomas Aquinas so much as they shocked M. Gaston Paris and M. Prudhomme. You have still to visit the cathedral at Le Mans for the sake of its twelfth- century glass, and there, in the lower panel of the beautiful, and very early, window of Saint Protais, you will see the full-length figure of a man, lying in bed, under a handsome blanket, watching, with staring eyes, the Virgin, in a green tunic, wearing her royal crown, who is striking him on the head with a heavy hammer and with both hands. The miracle belongs to local history, and is amusing only to show how little the Virgin cared for criticism of her manners or acts. She was above criticism. She made manners. Her acts were laws. No one thought of criticizing, in the style of a normal school, the will of such a queen; but one might treat her with a degree of familiarity, under great provocation, which would startle easier critics than the French, Here is an instance:—

A widow had an only child whom she tenderly loved. On hearing that this son had been taken by the enemy, chained, and put in prison, she burst into tears, and addressing herself to the Virgin, to whom she was especially devoted, she asked her with obstinacy for the release of her son; but when she saw at last that her prayers remained unanswered, she went to the church where there was a sculptured image of Mary, and there, before the image, she said: “Holy Virgin, I have begged you to deliver my son, and you have not been willing to help an unhappy mother! I’ve implored your patronage for my son, and you have refused it! Very good! just as my son has been taken away from me, so I am going to take away yours, and keep him as a hostage!” Saying this, she approached, took the statue child on the Virgin’s breast, carried it home, wrapped it in spotless linen, and locked it up in a box, happy to have such a hostage for her son’s return. Now, the following night, the Virgin appeared to the young man, opened his prison doors, and said: “Tell your mother, my child, to return me my Son now that I have returned hers!” The young man came home to his mother and told her of his miraculous deliverance; and she, overjoyed, hastened to go with the little Jesus to the Virgin, saying to her: “I thank you, heavenly lady, for restoring me my child, and in return I restore yours!”

For the exactness of this story in all its details, Bishop James of Voragio could not have vouched, nor did it greatly matter. What he could vouch for was the relation of intimacy and confidence between his people and the Queen of Heaven. The fact, conspicuous above all other historical certainties about religion, that the Virgin was by essence illogical, unreasonable and feminine, is the only fact of any ultimate value worth studying, and starts a number of questions that history has shown itself clearly afraid to touch. Protestant and Catholic differ little in that respect. No one has ventured to explain why the Virgin wielded exclusive power over poor and rich, sinners and saints, alike. Why were all the Protestant churches cold failures without her help? Why could not the Holy Ghost—the spirit of Love and Grace—equally answer their prayers? Why was the Son powerless? Why was Chartres Cathedral in the thirteenth century— like Lourdes to-day—the expression of what is in substance a separate religion? Why did the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother so exasperate the Pilgrim Father? Why was the Woman struck out of the Church and ignored in the State? These questions are not antiquarian or trifling in historical value; they tug at the very heart-strings of all that makes whatever order is in the cosmos. If a Unity exists, in which and toward which all energies centre, it must explain and include Duality, Diversity, Infinity—Sex!

Although certain to be contradicted by every pious churchman, a heretic must insist on thinking that the Mater Dolorosa was the logical Virgin of the Church, and that the Trinity would never have raised her from the foot of the Cross, had not the Virgin of Majesty been imposed, by necessity and public unanimity, on a creed which was meant to be complete without her. The true feeling of the Church was best expressed by the Virgin herself in one of her attested miracles: “A clerk, trusting more in the Mother than in the Son, never stopped repeating the angelic salutation for his only prayer. Once as he said again the ‘Ave Maria,’ the Lord appeared to him, and said to him: ‘My Mother thanks you much for all the Salutations that you make her; but still you should not forget to salute me also: tamen et me salutare memento.'” The Trinity feared absorption in her, but was compelled to accept, and even to invite her aid, because the Trinity was a court of strict law, and, as in the old customary law, no process of equity could be introduced except by direct appeal to a higher power. She was imposed unanimously by all classes, because what man wanted most in the Middle Ages was not merely law or equity, but also and particularly favour. Strict justice, either on earth or in heaven, was the last thing that society cared to face. All men were sinners, and had, at least, the merit of feeling that, if they got their deserts, not one would escape worse than whipping. The instinct of individuality went down through all classes, from the count at the top, to the jugleors and menestreus at the bottom. The individual rebelled against restraint; society wanted to do what it pleased; all disliked the laws which Church and State were trying to fasten on them. They longed for a power above law,—or above the contorted mass of ignorance and absurdity bearing the name of law; but the power which they longed for was not human, for humanity they knew to be corrupt and incompetent from the day of Adam’s creation to the day of the Last Judgment. They were all criminals; if not, they would have had no use for the Church and very little for the State; but they had at least the merit of their faults; they knew what they were, and, like children, they yearned for protection, pardon, and love. This was what the Trinity, though omnipotent, could not give. Whatever the heretic or mystic might try to persuade himself, God could not be Love. God was Justice, Order, Unity, Perfection; He could not be human and imperfect, nor could the Son or the Holy Ghost be other than the Father. The Mother alone was human, imperfect, and could love; she alone was Favour, Duality, Diversity. Under any conceivable form of religion, this duality must find embodiment somewhere, and the Middle Ages logically insisted that, as it could not be in the Trinity, either separately or together, it must be in the Mother. If the Trinity was in its essence Unity, the Mother alone could represent whatever was not Unity; whatever was irregular, exceptional, outlawed; and this was the whole human race. The saints alone were safe, after they were sainted.

This general rule of favour, apart from law, or the reverse of law, was the mark of Mary’s activity in human affairs. Take, for an example, an entire class of her miracles, applying to the discipline of the Church! A bishop ejected an ignorant and corrupt priest from his living, as all bishops constantly had to do. The priest had taken the precaution to make himself Mary’s MAN; he had devoted himself to her service and her worship. Mary instantly interfered,— just as Queen Eleanor or Queen Blanche would have done,—most unreasonably, and never was a poor bishop more roughly scolded by an orthodox queen! “Moult airieement,” very airily or angrily, she said to him (Bartsch, 1887, p. 363):—

The story-teller—himself a priest and prior—caught the lofty trick of manner which belonged to the great ladies of the court, and was inherited by them, even in England, down to the time of Queen Elizabeth, who treated her bishops also like domestic servants;— “matinet bien main!” To the public, as to us, the justice of the rebuke was nothing to the point; but that a friend should exist on earth or in heaven, who dared to browbeat a bishop, caused the keenest personal delight. The legends are clearer on this point than on any other. The people loved Mary because she trampled on conventions; not merely because she could do it, but because she liked to do what shocked every well-regulated authority. Her pity had no limit.

One of the Chartres miracles expresses the same motive in language almost plainer still. A good-for-nothing clerk, vicious, proud, vain, rude, and altogether worthless, but devoted to the Virgin, died, and with general approval his body was thrown into a ditch (Bartsch, 1887, p. 369):—

Mais cele ou sort tote pities
Tote douceurs tote amisties
Et qui les siens onques n’oublie
SON PECHEOR n’oblia mie.

“HER sinner!” Mary would not have been a true queen unless she had protected her own. The whole morality of the Middle Ages stood in the obligation of every master to protect his dependent. The herdsmen of Count Garin of Beaucaire were the superiors of their damoiseau Aucassins, while they felt sure of the Count. Mary was the highest of all the feudal ladies, and was the example for all in loyalty to her own, when she had to humiliate her own Bishop of Chartres for the sake of a worthless brute. “Do you suppose it doesn’t annoy me,” she said, “to see my friend buried in a common ditch? Take him out at once! I command! tell the clergy it is my order, and that I will never forgive them unless to-morrow morning without delay, they bury my friend in the best place in the cemetery!”:—

Cuidies vos donc qu’il ne m’enuit
Quant vos l’aves si adosse
Que mis l’aves en un fosse?
Metes Ten fors je le comant!
Di le clergie que je li mant!
Ne me puet mi repaier
Se le matin sans delayer
A grant heneur n’est mis amis
Ou plus beau leu de l’aitre mis.

Naturally, her order was instantly obeyed. In the feudal regime, disobedience to an order was treason—or even hesitation to obey— when the order was serious; very much as in a modern army, disobedience is not regarded as conceivable. Mary’s wish was absolute law, on earth as in heaven. For her, other laws were not made. Intensely human, but always Queen, she upset, at her pleasure, the decisions of every court and the orders of every authority, human or divine; interfered directly in the ordeal; altered the processes of nature; abolished space; annihilated time. Like other queens, she had many of the failings and prejudices of her humanity. In spite of her own origin, she disliked Jews, and rarely neglected a chance to maltreat them. She was not in the least a prude. To her, sin was simply humanity, and she seemed often on the point of defending her arbitrary acts of mercy, by frankly telling the Trinity that if the Creator meant to punish man, He should not have made him. The people, who always in their hearts protested against bearing the responsibility for the Creator’s arbitrary creations, delighted to see her upset the law, and reverse the rulings of the Trinity. They idolized her for being strong, physically and in will, so that she feared nothing, and was as helpful to the knight in the melee of battle as to the young mother in child-bed. The only character in which they seemed slow to recognize Mary was that of bourgeoise. The bourgeoisie courted her favour at great expense, but she seemed to be at home on the farm, rather than in the shop. She had very rudimentary knowledge, indeed, of the principles of political economy as we understand them, and her views on the subject of money-lending or banking were so feminine as to rouse in that powerful class a vindictive enmity which helped to overthrow her throne. On the other hand, she showed a marked weakness for chivalry, and one of her prettiest and most twelfth-century miracles is that of the knight who heard mass while Mary took his place in the lists. It is much too charming to lose (Bartsch, 1895, p. 311):—

The accent of truth still lingers in this remonstrance of the squire, who must, from all time, have lost his temper on finding his chevalier addicted to “papelardie” when he should have been fighting; but the priest had the advantage of telling the story and pointing the moral. This advantage the priest neglected rarely, but in this case he used it with such refinement and so much literary skill that even the squire might have been patient. With the invariable gentle courtesy of the true knight, the chevalier replied only by soft words:—

“Amis!” ce dist li chevalier,
“Cil tournoie moult noblement
Qui le servise dieu entent.”

In one of Milton’s sonnets is a famous line which is commonly classed among the noblest verses of the English language:—

“他们也服务，他们只会站着等待。”

Fine as it is, with the simplicity of the grand style, like the “Chanson de Roland” the verse of Milton does not quite destroy the charm of thirteenth-century diction:—

“Friend!” said to him the chevalier,
“He tourneys very nobly too,
Who only hears God’s service through!”

No doubt the verses lack the singular power of the eleventh century; it is not worth while to pretend that any verse written in the thirteenth century wholly holds its own against “Roland”:—

“Sire cumpain! faites le vus de gred?
Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vos soelt amer!”

The courtesy of Roland has the serious solidity of the Romanesque arch, and that of Lancelot and Aucassins has the grace of a legendary window; but one may love it, all the same; and one may even love the knight,—papelard though he were,—as he turned back to the altar and remained in prayer until the last mass was ended.

Then they mounted and rode on toward the field, and of course you foresee what had happened. In itself the story is bald enough, but it is told with such skill that one never tires of it. As the chevalier and the squire approached the lists, they met the other knights returning, for the jousts were over; but, to the astonishment of the chevalier, he was greeted by all who passed him with shouts of applause for his marvellous triumph in the lists, where he had taken all the prizes and all the prisoners:—

The moral of the tale belongs to the best feudal times. The knight at once recognized that he had become the liege-man of the Queen, and henceforth must render his service entirely to her. So he called his “barons,” or tenants, together, and after telling them what had happened, took leave of them and the “siecle”:—

Observe that in this case Mary exacted no service! Usually the legends are told, as in this instance, by priests, though they were told in the same spirit by laymen, as you can see in the poems of Rutebeuf, and they would not have been told very differently by soldiers, if one may judge from Joinville; but commonly the Virgin herself prescribed the kind of service she wished. Especially to the young knight who had, of his own accord, chosen her for his liege, she showed herself as exacting as other great ladies showed themselves toward their Lancelots and Tristans. When she chose, she could even indulge in more or less coquetry, else she could never have appealed to the sympathies of the thirteenth-century knight- errant. One of her miracles told how she disciplined the young men who were too much in the habit of assuming her service in order to obtain selfish objects. A youthful chevalier, much given to tournaments and the other worldly diversions of the siecle, fell in love, after the rigorous obligation of his class, as you know from your Dulcinea del Toboso, with a lady who, as was also prescribed by the rules of courteous love, declined to listen to him. An abbot of his acquaintance, sympathizing with his distress, suggested to him the happy idea of appealing for help to the Queen of Heaven. He followed the advice, and for an entire year shut himself up, and prayed to Mary, in her chapel, that she would soften the heart of his beloved, and bring her to listen to his prayer. At the end of the twelvemonth, fixed as a natural and sufficient proof of his earnestness in devotion, he felt himself entitled to indulge again in innocent worldly pleasures, and on the first morning after his release, he started out on horseback for a day’s hunting. Probably thousands of young knights and squires were always doing more or less the same thing, and it was quite usual that, as they rode through the fields or forests, they should happen on a solitary chapel or shrine, as this knight did. He stopped long enough to kneel in it and renew his prayer to the Queen:—

One is at a loss to imagine what a young gentleman could do, in such a situation, except to obey, with the fewest words possible, the suggestion so gracefully intended. Queen’s favours might be fatal gifts, but they were much more fatal to reject than to accept. Whatever might be the preferences of the knight, he had invited his own fate, and in consequence was fortunate to be allowed the option of dying and going to heaven, or dying without going to heaven. Mary was not always so gentle with young men who deserted or neglected her for an earthly rival;—the offence which irritated her most, and occasionally caused her to use language which hardly bears translation into modern English. Without meaning to assert that the Queen of Heaven was jealous as Queen Blanche herself, one must still admit that she was very severe on lovers who showed willingness to leave her service, and take service with any other lady. One of her admirers, educated for the priesthood but not yet in full orders, was obliged by reasons of family interest to quit his career in order to marry. An insult like this was more than Mary could endure, and she gave the young man a lesson he never forgot:—

A mistress who loved in this manner was not to be gainsaid. No earthly love had a chance of holding its own against this unfair combination of heaven and hell, and Mary was as unscrupulous as any other great lady in abusing all her advantages in order to save HER souls. Frenchmen never found fault with abuses of power for what they thought a serious object. The more tyrannical Mary was, the more her adorers adored, and they wholly approved, both in love and in law, the rule that any man who changed his allegiance without permission, did so at his own peril. His life and property were forfeit. Mary showed him too much grace in giving him an option.

Even in anger Mary always remained a great lady, and in the ordinary relations of society her manners were exquisite, as they were, according to Joinville, in the court of Saint Louis, when tempers were not overwrought. The very brutality of the brutal compelled the courteous to exaggerate courtesy, and some of the royal family were as coarse as the king was delicate in manners. In heaven the manners were perfect, and almost as stately as those of Roland and Oliver. On one occasion Saint Peter found himself embarrassed by an affair which the public opinion of the Court of Heaven, although not by any means puritanic, thought more objectionable—in fact, more frankly discreditable—than an honest corrupt job ought to be; and even his influence, though certainly considerable, wholly failed to carry it through the law-court. The case, as reported by Gaultier de Coincy, was this: A very worthless creature of Saint Peter’s—a monk of Cologne—who had led a scandalous life, and “ne cremoit dieu, ordre ne roule,” died, and in due course of law was tried, convicted, and dragged off by the devils to undergo his term of punishment. Saint Peter could not desert his sinner, though much ashamed of him, and accordingly made formal application to the Trinity for a pardon. The Trinity, somewhat severely, refused. Finding his own interest insufficient, Saint Peter tried to strengthen it by asking the archangels to help him; but the case was too much for them also, and they declined. The brother apostles were appealed to, with the same result; and finally even the saints, though they had so obvious interest in keeping friendly relations with Peter, found public opinion too strong to defy. The case was desperate. The Trinity were—or was—emphatic, and—what was rare in the Middle Ages—every member of the feudal hierarchy sustained its decision. Nothing more could be done in the regular way. Saint Peter was obliged to divest himself of authority, and place himself and his dignity in the hands of the Virgin. Accordingly he asked for an audience, and stated the case to Our Lady. With the utmost grace, she instantly responded:—

One can see Queen Blanche going to beg—or command—a favour of her son, King Louis, and the stately dignity of their address, while Saint Peter and the virgins remain in the antechamber; but, as for Saint Peter’s lost soul, the request was a mere form, and the doors of paradise were instantly opened to it, after such brief formalities as should tend to preserve the technical record of the law-court. We tread here on very delicate ground. Gaultier de Coincy, being a priest and a prior, could take liberties which we cannot or ought not to take. The doctrines of the Church are too serious and too ancient to be wilfully misstated, and the doctrines of what is called Mariolatry were never even doctrines of the Church. Yet it is true that, in the hearts of Mary’s servants, the Church and its doctrines were at the mercy of Mary’s will. Gaultier de Coincy claimed that Mary exasperated the devils by exercising a wholly arbitrary and illegitimate power. Gaultier not merely admitted, but frankly asserted, that this was the fact:—

If the Virgin took the feelings of the Trinity into consideration, or recognized its existence except as her Son, the case has not been reported, or, at all events, has been somewhat carefully kept out of sight by the Virgin’s poets. The devils were emphatic in denouncing Mary for absorbing the whole Trinity. In one sharply disputed case in regard to a villain, or labourer, whose soul the Virgin claimed because he had learned the “Ave Maria,” the devils became very angry, indeed, and protested vehemently:—

As regards Mary of Chartres, these charges seem to have been literally true, except so far as concerned the “laid maufe” Pierre de Dreux. Gaultier de Coincy saw no impropriety in accepting, as sufficiently exact, the allegations of the devils against the Virgin’s abuse of power. Down to the death of Queen Blanche, which is all that concerns us, the public saw no more impropriety in it than Gaultier did. The ugly, envious devils, notorious as students of the Latin Quarter, were perpetually making the same charges against Queen Blanche and her son, without disturbing her authority. No one could conceive that the Virgin held less influence in heaven than the queen mother on earth. Nevertheless there were points in the royal policy and conduct of Mary which thoughtful men even then hesitated to approve. The Church itself never liked to be dragged too far under feminine influence, although the moment it discarded feminine influence it lost nearly everything of any value to it or to the world, except its philosophy. Mary’s tastes were too popular; some of the uglier devils said they were too low; many ladies and gentlemen of the “siecle” thought them disreputable, though they dared not say so, or dared say so only by proxy, as in “Aucassins.” As usual, one must go to the devils for the exact truth, and in spite of their outcry, the devils admitted that they had no reason to complain of Mary’s administration:—

True it was, although one should not say it jestingly, that the Virgin embarrassed the Trinity; and perhaps this was the reason, behind all the other excellent reasons, why men loved and adored her with a passion such as no other deity has ever inspired: and why we, although utter strangers to her, are not far from getting down on our knees and praying to her still. Mary concentrated in herself the whole rebellion of man against fate; the whole protest against divine law; the whole contempt for human law as its outcome; the whole unutterable fury of human nature beating itself against the walls of its prison-house, and suddenly seized by a hope that in the Virgin man had found a door of escape. She was above law; she took feminine pleasure in turning hell into an ornament; she delighted in trampling on every social distinction in this world and the next. She knew that the universe was as unintelligible to her, on any theory of morals, as it was to her worshippers, and she felt, like them, no sure conviction that it was any more intelligible to the Creator of it. To her, every suppliant was a universe in itself, to be judged apart, on his own merits, by his love for her,—by no means on his orthodoxy, or his conventional standing in the Church, or according to his correctness in defining the nature of the Trinity. The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over human imagination—as you can see at Lourdes—was due much less to her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people who suffered under law,—divine or human,—justly or unjustly, by accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil. She cared not a straw for conventional morality, and she had no notion of letting her friends be punished, to the tenth or any other generation, for the sins of their ancestors or the peccadilloes of Eve.

So Mary filled heaven with a sort of persons little to the taste of any respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough in making this world decent and pay its bills, without having to continue the effort in another. Mary stood in a Church of her own, so independent that the Trinity might have perished without much affecting her position; but, on the other hand, the Trinity could look on and see her dethroned with almost a breath of relief. Aucassins and the devils of Gaultier de Coincy foresaw her danger. Mary’s treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had no favours to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heaven by the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply that three hundred years later the Puritan reformers were not satisfied with abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether as the cause of all evil in heaven and on earth. The Puritans abandoned the New Testament and the Virgin in order to go back to the beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. This is the Church’s affair, not ours, and the women are competent to settle it with Church or State, without help from outside; but honest tourists are seriously interested in putting the feeling back into the dead architecture where it belongs.

Mary was rarely harsh to any suppliant or servant, and she took no special interest in humiliating the rich or the learned or the wise. For them, law was made; by them, law was administered; and with their doings Mary never arbitrarily interfered; but occasionally she could not resist the temptation to intimate her opinion of the manner in which the Trinity allowed their—the regular—Church to be administered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it, but she took little thought about her divine rights, if she had any,—and in fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them,—while she was scandalized at the greed of officials in her Son’s Court. One day a rich usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dying in the same town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accurate historian should, that he was present, nor did he mention names or dates, although it was one of his longest and best stories. Mary never loved bankers, and had no reason for taking interest in this one, or for doing him injury; but it happened that the parish priest was summoned to both death-beds at the same time, and neglected the old pauper in the hope of securing a bequest for his church from the banker. This was the sort of fault that most annoyed Mary in the Church of the Trinity, which, in her opinion, was not cared for as it should be, and she felt it her duty to intimate as much.

Although the priest refused to come at the old woman’s summons, his young clerk, who seems to have acted as vicar though not in orders, took pity on her, and went alone with the sacrament to her hut, which was the poorest of poor hovels even for that age:—

Close de piex et de serciaus
Comme une viez souz a porciaus.

Roof of hoops, and wall of logs,
Like a wretched stye for hogs.

There the beggar lay, already insensible or at the last gasp, on coarse thatch, on the ground, covered by an old hempen sack. The picture represented the extremest poverty of the thirteenth century; a hovel without even a feather bed or bedstead, as Aucassins’ ploughman described his mother’s want; and the old woman alone, dying, as the clerk appeared at the opening:—

The clerk, in terror, hesitated whether to turn and run away, but Our Lady beckoned him to the bed, while all rose and kneeled devoutly to the sacrament. Then she said to the trembling clerk:—

“Friend, be not afraid!
But seat yourself, to give us aid,
Beside these maidens, on the bed.”

And when the clerk had obeyed, she continued—

After the sacrament came a touch of realism that recalls the simple death-scenes that Walter Scott described in his grand twelfth- century manner. The old woman lingered pitiably in her agony:—

The rest of the story concerned the usurer, whose death-bed was of a different character, but Mary’s interest in death-beds of that kind was small. The fate of the usurer mattered the less because she knew too well how easily the banker, in good credit, could arrange with the officials of the Trinity to open the doors of paradise for him. The administration of heaven was very like the administration of France; the Queen Mother saw many things of which she could not wholly approve; but her nature was pity, not justice, and she shut her eyes to much that she could not change. Her miracles, therefore, were for the most part mere evidence of her pity for those who needed it most, and these were rarely the well-to-do people of the siecle, but more commonly the helpless. Every saint performed miracles, and these are standard, not peculiar to any one intermediator; and every saint protected his own friends; but beyond these exhibitions of power, which are more or less common to the whole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary was the mother of pity and the only hope of despair. One might go on for a volume, studying the character of Mary and the changes that time made in it, from the earliest Byzantine legends down to the daily recorded miracles at Lourdes; no character in history has had so long or varied a development, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets long ago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what was most dramatic for popular use. The Virgin’s most famous early miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was what one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantine miracle was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as their masters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic material untouched. Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain untouched, for, although a good miracle was in its day worth much money—so much that the rival shrines stole each other’s miracles without decency—one does not care to see one’s Virgin put to money- making for Jew theatre-managers. One’s two-hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors shrink.

For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the little Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when the furnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the flames, with the little child unharmed in her lap. Better is that called the “Tombeor de Notre Dame,” only recently printed; told by some unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any of Gaultier de Coincy’s. Indeed the “Tombeor de Notre Dame” has had more success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as one knows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modern French taste as much as it pleased the Virgin. One fears only to spoil it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as a glossary or footnote, it need not do fatal harm.

The story is that of a tumbler—tombeor, street-acrobat—who was disgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation for becoming, and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into the famous monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerly been blessed by the Virgin’s presence. Ignorant at best, and especially ignorant of letters, music, and the offices of a religious society, he found himself unable to join in the services:—

Car n’ot vescu fors de tumer
Et d’espringier et de baler.
Treper, saillir, ice savoit;
Ne d’autre rien il ne savoit;
Car ne savoit autre lecon
Ne “pater noster” ne chancon
Ne le “credo” ne le salu
Ne rien qui fust a son salu.

For he had learned no other thing
Than to tumble, dance and spring:
Leaping and vaulting, that he knew,
But nothing better could he do.
He could not say his prayers by rote;
Not “Pater noster”, not a note,
Not “Ave Mary,” nor the creed;
Nothing to help his soul in need.

Tormented by the sense of his uselessness to the society whose bread he ate without giving a return in service, and afraid of being expelled as a useless member, one day while the bells were calling to mass he hid in the crypt, and in despair began to soliloquize before the Virgin’s altar, at the same spot, one hopes, where the Virgin had shown herself, or might have shown herself, in her infinite bounty, to Saint Bernard, a hundred years before:—

“Hai,” fait il, “con suis trais!
Or dira ja cascuns sa laisse
Et jo suis ci i hues en laisse
Qui ne fas ci fors que broster
Et viandes por nient gaster.
Si ne dirai ne ne ferai?
Par la mere deu, si ferai!
Ja n’en serai ore repris;
Jo ferai ce que j’ai apris;
Si servirai de men mestier
La mere deu en son mostier;
Li autre servent de canter
Et jo servirai de tumer.”
Sa cape oste, si se despoille,
Deles l’autel met sa despoille,
Mais por sa char que ne soit nue
Une cotele a retenue
Qui moult estait tenre et alise,
Petit vaut miex d’une chemise,
Si est en pur le cors remes.
Il s’est bien chains et acesmes,
Sa cote caint et bien s’atorne,
Devers l’ymage se retorne
Mout humblement et si l’esgarde:
“Dame,” fait il, “en vostre garde
Comant jo et mon cors et m’ame.
Douce reine, douce dame,
Ne despisies ce que jo sai
Car jo me voil metre a l’asai
De vos servir en bone foi
Se dex m’ait sans nul desroi.
Jo ne sai canter ne lire
Mais certes jo vos voil eslire
Tos mes biax gieus a eslicon.
Or soie al fuer de taurecon
Qui trepe et saut devant sa mere.
Dame, qui n’estes mie amere
A cels qui vos servent a droit,
Quelsque jo soie, por vos soit!”

Lors li commence a faire saus
Bas et petits et grans et haus

Primes deseur et puis desos,
Puis se remet sor ses genols,
Devers l’ymage, et si l’encline:
“He!” fait il, “tres douce reine
Par vo pitie, par vo francise,
Ne despisies pas mon servise!”

“Ha!” said he, “how I am ashamed!
To sing his part goes now each priest,
And I stand here, a tethered beast,
Who nothing do but browse and feed
And waste the food that others need.
Shall I say nothing, and stand still?
No! by God’s mother, but I will!
She shall not think me here for naught;
At least I’ll do what I’ve been taught!
At least I’ll serve in my own way
God’s mother in her church to-day.
The others serve to pray and sing;
I will serve to leap and spring.”
Then he strips him of his gown,
Lays it on the altar down;
But for himself he takes good care
Not to show his body bare,
But keeps a jacket, soft and thin,
Almost a shirt, to tumble in.
Clothed in this supple woof of maille
His strength and health and form showed well.
And when his belt is buckled fast,
Toward the Virgin turns at last:
Very humbly makes his prayer;
“Lady!” says he, “to your care
I commit my soul and frame.
Gentle Virgin, gentle dame,
Do not despise what I shall do,
For I ask only to please you,
To serve you like an honest man,
So help me God, the best I can.
I cannot chant, nor can I read,
But I can show you here instead,
All my best tricks to make you laugh,
And so shall be as though a calf
Should leap and jump before its dam.
Lady, who never yet could blame
Those who serve you well and true,
All that I am, I am for you.”

Then he begins to jump about,
High and low, and in and out,

Straining hard with might and main;
Then, falling on his knees again,
Before the image bows his face:
“By your pity! by your grace!”
Says he, “Ha! my gentle queen,
Do not despise my offering!”

In his earnestness he exerted himself until, at the end of his strength, he lay exhausted and unconscious on the altar steps. Pleased with his own exhibition, and satisfied that the Virgin was equally pleased, he continued these devotions every day, until at last his constant and singular absence from the regular services attracted the curiosity of a monk, who kept watch on him and reported his eccentric exercise to the Abbot.

The mediaeval monasteries seem to have been gently administered. Indeed, this has been made the chief reproach on them, and the excuse for robbing them for the benefit of a more energetic crown and nobility who tolerated no beggars or idleness but their own; at least, it is safe to say that few well-regulated and economically administered modern charities would have the patience of the Abbot of Clairvaux, who, instead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor and sending him back to the world to earn a living by his profession, went with his informant to the crypt, to see for himself what the strange report meant. We have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, and how easily one might hide in its shadows while mass is said at the altars. The Abbot and his informant hid themselves behind a column in the shadow, and watched the whole performance to its end when the exhausted tumbler dropped unconscious and drenched with perspiration on the steps of the altar, with the words:—

“Dame!” fait il, “ne puis plus ore;
Mais voire je reviendrai encore.”

“Lady!” says he, “no more I can,
But truly I’ll come back again!”

You can imagine the dim crypt; the tumbler lying unconscious beneath the image of the Virgin; the Abbot peering out from the shadow of the column, and wondering what sort of discipline he could inflict for this unforeseen infraction of rule; when suddenly, before he could decide what next to do, the vault above the altar, of its own accord, opened:—

L’abes esgarde sans atendre
Et vit de la volte descendre
Une dame si gloriouse
Ains nus ne vit si preciouse
Ni si ricement conreee,
N’onques tant bele ne fu nee.
Ses vesteures sont bien chieres
D’or et de precieuses pieres.

Avec li estoient li angle
Del ciel amont, et li arcangle,
Qui entor le menestrel vienent,
Si le solacent et sostienent.
Quant entor lui sont arengie
S’ot tot son cuer asoagie.
Dont s’aprestent de lui servir
Por ce qu’ils volrent deservir
La servise que fait la dame
Qui tant est precieuse geme.
Et la douce reine france
Tenoit une touaille blance,
S’en avente son menestrel
Mout doucement devant l’autel.
La franc dame debonnaire
Le col, le cors, et le viaire
Li avente por refroidier;
Bien s’entremet de lui aidier;
La dame bien s’i abandone;
Li bons hom garde ne s’en done,
Car il ne voit, si ne set mie
Qu’il ait si bele compaignie.

The Abbot strains his eyes to see,
And, from the vaulting, suddenly,
A lady steps,—so glorious,—
Beyond all thought so precious,—
Her robes so rich, so nobly worn,—
So rare the gems the robes adorn,—
As never yet so fair was born.

Along with her the angels were,
Archangels stood beside her there;
Round about the tumbler group
To give him solace, bring him hope;
And when round him in ranks they stood,
His whole heart felt its strength renewed.
So they haste to give him aid
Because their wills are only made
To serve the service of their Queen,
Most precious gem the earth has seen.
And the lady, gentle, true,
Holds in her hand a towel new;
Fans him with her hand divine
Where he lies before the shrine.
The kind lady, full of grace,
Fans his neck, his breast, his face!
Fans him herself to give him air!
Labours, herself, to help him there!
The lady gives herself to it;
The poor man takes no heed of it;
For he knows not and cannot see
That he has such fair company.

Beyond this we need not care to go. If you cannot feel the colour and quality—the union of naivete and art, the refinement, the infinite delicacy and tenderness—of this little poem, then nothing will matter much to you; and if you can feel it, you can feel, without more assistance, the majesty of Chartres.

Super cuncta, subter cuncta,
Extra cuncta, intra cuncta,
Intra cuncta nec inclusus,
Extra cuncta nec exclusus,
Super cuncta nec elatus,
Subter cuncta nec substratus,
Super totus, praesidendo,
Subter totus, sustinendo,
Extra totus, complectendo,
Intra totus est, implendo.

According to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop of Tours, these verses describe God. Hildebert was the first poet of his time; no small merit, since he was contemporary with the “Chanson de Roland” and the first crusade; he was also a strong man, since he was able, as Bishop of Le Mans, to gain great credit by maintaining himself against William the Norman and Fulk of Anjou; and finally he was a prelate of high authority. He lived between 1055 and 1133. Supposing his verses to have been written in middle life, toward the year 1100, they may be taken to represent the accepted doctrine of the Church at the time of the first crusade. They were little more than a versified form of the Latin of Saint Gregory the Great who wrote five-hundred years before: “Ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extra omnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; et superior est per potentiam et inferior per sustentationem; exterior per magnitudinem et interior per subtilitatem; sursum regens, deorsum continens, extra circumdans, interius penetrans; nec alia parte superior, alia inferior, aut alia ex parte exterior atque ex alia manet interior, sed unus idemque totus ubique.” According to Saint Gregory, in the sixth century, God was “one and the same and wholly everywhere”; “immanent within everything, without everything, above everything, below everything, sursum regens, dear sum continens”; while according to Archbishop Hildebert in the eleventh century: “God is overall things, under all things; outside all, inside all; within but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up; below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling.” Finally, according to Benedict Spinoza, another five hundred years later still: “God is a being, absolutely infinite; that is to say, a substance made up of an infinity of attributes, each one of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.”

Spinoza was the great pantheist, whose name is still a terror to the orthodox, and whose philosophy is—very properly—a horror to the Church—and yet Spinoza never wrote a line that, to the unguided student, sounds more Spinozist than the words of Saint Gregory and Archbishop Hildebert. If God is everywhere; wholly; presiding, sustaining, embracing and filling, “sursum regens, deorsum continens,” He is the only possible energy, and leaves no place for human will to act. A force which is “one and the same and wholly everywhere” is more Spinozist than Spinoza, and is likely to be mistaken for frank pantheism by the large majority of religious minds who must try to understand it without a theological course in a Jesuit college. In the year 1100 Jesuit colleges did not exist, and even the great Dominican and Franciscan schools were far from sight in the future; but the School of Notre Dame at Paris existed, and taught the existence of God much as Archbishop Hildebert described it. The most successful lecturer was William of Champeaux, and to any one who ever heard of William at all, the name instantly calls up the figure of Abelard, in flesh and blood, as he sang to Heloise the songs which he says resounded through Europe. The twelfth century, with all its sparkle, would be dull without Abelard and Heloise. With infinite regret, Heloise must be left out of the story, because she was not a philosopher or a poet or an artist, but only a Frenchwoman to the last millimetre of her shadow. Even though one may suspect that her famous letters to Abelard are, for the most part, by no means above scepticism, she was, by French standards, worth at least a dozen Abelards, if only because she called Saint Bernard a false apostle.

Unfortunately, French standards, by which she must be judged in our ignorance, take for granted that she philosophized only for the sake of Abelard, while Abelard taught philosophy to her not so much because he believed in philosophy or in her as because he believed in himself. To this day, Abelard remains a problem as perplexing as he must have been to Heloise, and almost as fascinating. As the west portal of Chartres is the door through which one must of necessity enter the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century, so Abelard is the portal of approach to the Gothic thought and philosophy within. Neither art nor thought has a modern equivalent; only Heloise, like Isolde, unites the ages.

The first crusade seems, in perspective, to have rilled the whole field of vision in France at the time; but, in fact, France seethed with other emotions, and while the crusaders set out to scale heaven by force at Jerusalem, the monks, who remained at home, undertook to scale heaven by prayer and by absorption of body and soul in God; the Cistercian Order was founded in 1098, and was joined in 1112 by young Bernard, born in 1090 at Fontaines-les-Dijon, drawing with him or after him so many thousands of young men into the self-immolation of the monastery as carried dismay into the hearts of half the women of France. At the same time—that is, about 1098 or 1100—Abelard came up to Paris from Brittany, with as much faith in logic as Bernard had in prayer or Godfrey of Bouillon in arms, and led an equal or even a greater number of combatants to the conquest of heaven by force of pure reason. None showed doubt. Hundreds of thousands of young men wandered from their provinces, mostly to Palestine, largely to cloisters, but also in great numbers to Paris and the schools, while few ever returned.

Abelard had the advantage of being well-born; not so highly descended as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas who were to complete his work in the thirteenth century, but, like Bernard, a gentleman born and bred. He was the eldest son of Berenger, Sieur du Pallet, a chateau in Brittany, south of the Loire, on the edge of Poitou. His name was Pierre du Pallet, although, for some unknown reason, he called himself Pierre Abailard, or Abeillard, or Esbaillart, or Beylard; for the spelling was never fixed. He was born in 1079, and when, in 1096, the young men of his rank were rushing off to the first crusade, Pierre, a boy of seventeen, threw himself with equal zeal into the study of science, and, giving up his inheritance or birthright, at last came to Paris to seize a position in the schools. The year is supposed to have been 1100.

The Paris of Abelard’s time was astonishingly old; so old that hardly a stone of it can be now pointed out. Even the oldest of the buildings still standing in that quarter—Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Saint-Severin, and the tower of the Lycee Henri IV—are more modern; only the old Roman Thermae, now part of the Musee de Cluny, within the walls, and the Abbey Tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, outside, in the fields, were standing in the year 1100. Politically, Paris was a small provincial town before the reign of Louis-le-Gros (1108- 37), who cleared its gates of its nearest enemies; but as a school, Paris was even then easily first. Students crowded into it by thousands, till the town is said to have contained more students than citizens, Modern Paris seems to have begun as a university town before it had a university. Students flocked to it from great distances, encouraged and supported by charity, and stimulated by privileges, until they took entire possession of what is still called the Latin Quarter from the barbarous Latin they chattered; and a town more riotous, drunken, and vicious than it became, in the course of time, hardly existed even in the Middle Ages. In 1100, when enthusiasm was fresh and faith in science was strong, the great mass of students came there to study, and, having no regular university organization or buildings, they thronged the cloister of Notre Dame—not our Notre Dame, which dates only from 1163, but the old Romanesque cathedral which stood on the same spot—and there they listened, and retained what they could remember, for they were not encouraged to take notes even if they were rich enough to buy notebooks, while manuscripts were far beyond their means. One valuable right the students seem to have had—that of asking questions and even of disputing with the lecturer provided they followed the correct form of dialectics. The lecturer himself was licensed by the Bishop.

Five thousand students are supposed to have swarmed about the cloister of Notre Dame, across the Petit Pont, and up the hill of Sainte-Genevieve; three thousand are said to have paid fees to Abelard in the days of his great vogue and they seem to have attached themselves to their favourite master as a champion to be upheld against the world. Jealousies ran high, and neither scholars nor masters shunned dispute. Indeed, the only science they taught or knew was the art of dispute—dialectics. Rhetoric, grammar, and dialectics were the regular branches of science, and bold students, who were not afraid of dabbling in forbidden fields, extended their studies to mathematics—”exercitium nefarium,” according to Abelard, which he professed to know nothing about but which he studied nevertheless. Abelard, whether pupil or master, never held his tongue if he could help it, for his fortune depended on using it well; but he never used it so well in dialectics or theology as he did, toward the end of his life, in writing a bit of autobiography, so admirably told, so vivid, so vibrating with the curious intensity of his generation, that it needed only to have been written in “Romieu” to be the chief monument of early French prose, as the western portal of Chartres is the chief monument of early French sculpture, and of about the same date. Unfortunately Abelard was a noble scholar, who necessarily wrote and talked Latin, even with Heloise, and, although the Latin was mediaeval, it is not much the better on that account, because, in spite of its quaintness, the naivetes of a young language—the egotism, jealousies, suspicions, boastings, and lamentations of a childlike time—take a false air of outworn Rome and Byzantium, although, underneath, the spirit lives:—

I arrived at last in Paris where for a long time dialectics had specially flourished under William of Champeaux, rightly reckoned the first of my masters in that branch of study. I stayed some time in his school, but, though well received at first, I soon got to be an annoyance to him because I persisted in refuting certain ideas of his, and because, not being afraid to enter into argument against him, I sometimes got the better. This boldness, too, roused the wrath of those fellow students who were classed higher, because I was the youngest and the last comer. This was the beginning of my series of misfortunes which still last; my renown every day increasing, envy was kindled against me in every direction.

This picture of the boy of twenty, harassing the professor, day after day, in his own lecture-room before hundreds of older students, paints Abelard to the life; but one may safely add a few touches that heighten the effect; as that William of Champeaux himself was barely thirty, and that Abelard throughout his career, made use of every social and personal advantage to gain a point, with little scruple either in manner or in sophistry. One may easily imagine the scene. Teachers are always much the same. Pupils and students differ only in degrees of docility. In 1100, both classes began by accepting the foundations of society, as they have to do still; only they then accepted laws of the Church and Aristotle, while now they accept laws of the legislature and of energy. In 1100, the students took for granted that, with the help of Aristotle and syllogisms, they could build out the Church intellectually, as the architects, with the help of the pointed arch, were soon to enlarge it architecturally. They never doubted the certainty of their method. To them words had fixed values, like numbers, and syllogisms were hewn stones that needed only to be set in place, in order to reach any height or support any weight. Every sentence was made to take the form of a syllogism. One must have been educated in a Jesuit or Dominican school in order to frame these syllogisms correctly, but merely by way of illustration one may timidly suggest how the phrases sounded in their simplest form. For example, Plato or other equally good authority deemed substance as that which stands underneath phenomena; the most universal of universals, the ultimate, the highest in order of generalization. The ultimate essence or substance is indivisible; God is substance; God is indivisible. The divine substance is incapable of alteration or accident; all other substance is liable to alteration or accident; therefore, the divine substance differs from all other substance. A substance is a universal; as for example, Humanity, or the Human, is a universal and indivisible; the Man Socrates, for instance, is not a universal, but an individual; therefore, the substance Humanity, being indivisible, must exist entire and undivided in Socrates.

The form of logic most fascinating to youthful minds, as well as to some minds that are only too acute, is the reductio ad absurdum; the forcing an opponent into an absurd alternative or admission; and the syllogism lent itself happily to this use. Socrates abused the weapon and Abelard was the first French master of the art; but neither State nor Church likes to be reduced to an absurdity, and, on the whole, both Socrates and Abelard fared ill in the result. Even now, one had best be civil toward the idols of the forum. Abelard would find most of his old problems sensitive to his touch to-day. Time has settled few or none of the essential points of dispute. Science hesitates, more visibly than the Church ever did, to decide once for all whether unity or diversity is ultimate law; whether order or chaos is the governing rule of the universe, if universe there is; whether anything, except phenomena, exists. Even in matters more vital to society, one dares not speak too loud. Why, and for what, and to whom, is man a responsible agent? Every jury and judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and clergyman has his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every nation may have a different system. One court may hang and another may acquit for the same crime, on the same day; and science only repeats what the Church said to Abelard, that where we know so little, we had better hold our tongues.

According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universals which convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has never received an adequate answer. What is a species? what is a genus or a family or an order? More or less convenient terms of classification, about which the twelfth century cared very little, while it cared deeply about the essence of classes! Science has become too complex to affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives for nothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits, almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole field of human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriers of substance, universals, and particulars. Little has changed except the vocabulary and the method. The schools knew that their society hung for life on the demonstration that God, the ultimate universal, was a reality, out of which all other universal truths or realities sprang. Truth was a real thing, outside of human experience. The schools of Paris talked and thought of nothing else. John of Salisbury, who attended Abelard’s lectures about 1136, and became Bishop of Chartres in 1176, seems to have been more surprised than we need be at the intensity of the emotion. “One never gets away from this question,” he said. “From whatever point a discussion starts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is the madness of Rufus about Naevia; ‘He thinks of nothing else; talks of nothing else, and if Naevia did not exist, Rufus would be dumb.'”

Abelard began it. After his first visit to Paris in 1100, he seems to have passed several years elsewhere, while Guillaume de Champeaux in 1108, retired from the school in the cloister of Notre Dame, and, taking orders, established a class in a chapel near by, afterwards famous as the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The Jardin des Plantes and the Gare d’Orleans now cover the ground where the Abbey stood, on the banks of the Seine outside the Latin Quarter, and not a trace is left of its site; but there William continued his course in dialectics, until suddenly Abelard reappeared among his scholars, and resumed his old attacks. This time Abelard could hardly call himself a student. He was thirty years old, and long since had been himself a teacher; he had attended William’s course on dialectics nearly ten years before, and was past master in the art; he had nothing to learn from William in theology, for neither William nor he was yet a theologist by profession. If Abelard went back to school, it was certainly not to learn; but indeed, he himself made little or no pretence of it, and told with childlike candour not only why he went, but also how brilliantly he succeeded in his object:—

I returned to study rhetoric in his school. Among other controversial battles, I succeeded, by the most irrefutable argument, in making him change, or rather ruin his doctrine of universals. His doctrine consisted in affirming the perfect identity of the essence in every individual of the same species, so that according to him there was no difference in the essence but only in the infinite variety of accidents. He then came to amend his doctrine so as to affirm, not the identity any longer, but the absence of distinction—the want of difference—in the essence. And as this question of universals had always been one of the most important questions of dialectics—so important that Porphyry, touching on it in his Preliminaries, did not dare to take the responsibility of cutting the knot, but said, “It is a very grave point,”—Champeaux, who was obliged to modify his idea and then renounce it, saw his course fall into such discredit that they hardly let him make his dialectical lectures, as though dialectics consisted entirely in the question of universals.

Why was this point so “very grave”? Not because it was mere dialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave today is the part that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirty years later put in, on behalf of William. We should be more credulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard’s word in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most accomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar that no other dialectician was ever silenced by it—whatever may have been the case with theologians—and so obvious that it could not have troubled a scholar of fifteen. William stated a settled doctrine as old as Plato; Abelard interposed an objection as old as Aristotle. Probably Plato and Aristotle had received the question and answer from philosophers ten-thousand years older than themselves. Certainly the whole of philosophy has always been involved in the dispute.

The subject is as amusing as a comedy; so amusing that ten minutes may be well given to playing the scene between William and Abelard, not as it happened, but in a form nearer our ignorance, with liberty to invent arguments for William, and analogies—which are figures intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent toys if they fail—such as he never imagined; while Abelard can respond with his true rejoinder, fatal in a different sense. For the chief analogy, the notes of music would serve, or the colours of the solar spectrum, or an energy, such as gravity—but the best is geometrical, because Euclid was as scholastic as William of Champeaux himself, and his axioms are even more familiar to the schoolboy of the twentieth, than to the schoolman of the twelfth century.

In these scholastic tournaments the two champions started from opposite points—one, from the ultimate substance, God—the universal, the ideal, the type—the other from the individual, Socrates, the concrete, the observed fact of experience, the object of sensual perception. The first champion—William in this instance— assumed that the universal was a real thing; and for that reason he was called a realist. His opponent—Abelard—held that the universal was only nominally real; and on that account he was called a nominalist. Truth, virtue, humanity, exist as units and realities, said William. Truth, replied Abelard, is only the sum of all possible facts that are true, as humanity is the sum of all actual human beings. The ideal bed is a form, made by God, said Plato. The ideal bed is a name, imagined by ourselves, said Aristotle. “I start from the universe,” said William. “I start from the atom,” said Abelard; and, once having started, they necessarily came into collision at some point between the two.

William of Champeaux, lecturing on dialectics or logic, comes to the question of universals, which he says, are substances. Starting from the highest substance, God, all being descends through created substances by stages, until it reaches the substance animality, from which it descends to the substance humanity: and humanity being, like other essences or substances, indivisible, passes wholly into each individual, becoming Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, much as the divine substance exists wholly and undivided in each member of the Trinity.

Here Abelard interrupts. The divine substance, he says, operates by laws of its own, and cannot be used for comparison. In treating of human substance, one is bound by human limitations. If the whole of humanity is in Socrates, it is wholly absorbed by Socrates, and cannot be at the same time in Plato, or elsewhere. Following his favourite reductio ad absurdum, Abelard turns the idea round, and infers from it that, since Socrates carries all humanity in him, he carries Plato, too; and both must be in the same place, though Socrates is at Athens and Plato in Rome.

The objection is familiar to William, who replies by another commonplace:—

“Mr. Abelard, might I, without offence, ask you a simple matter? Can you give me Euclid’s definition of a point?”

“If I remember right it is, ‘illud cujus nulla pars est’; that which has no parts.”

“Has it existence?”

“Only in our minds.”

“Not, then, in God?”

“All necessary truths exist first in God. If the point is a necessary truth, it exists first there.”

“Then might I ask you for Euclid’s definition of the line?”

“The line is that which has only extension; ‘Linea vocatur illa quae solam longitudinem habet.'” “Can you conceive an infinite straight line?”

“Only as a line which has no end, like the point extended.”

“Supposing we imagine a straight line, like opposite rays of the sun, proceeding in opposite directions to infinity—is it real?”

“It has no reality except in the mind that conceives it.”

“Supposing we divide that line which has no reality into two parts at its origin in the sun or star, shall we get two infinities?—or shall we say, two halves of the infinite?”

“We conceive of each as partaking the quality of infinity.”

“Now, let us cut out the diameter of the sun; or rather—since this is what our successors in the school will do,—let us take a line of our earth’s longitude which is equally unreal, and measure a degree of this thing which does not exist, and then divide it into equal parts which we will use as a measure or metre. This metre, which is still nothing, as I understand you, is infinitely divisible into points? and the point itself is infinitely small? Therefore we have the finite partaking the nature of the infinite?”

“Undoubtedly!”

“One step more, Mr. Abelard, if I do not weary you! Let me take three of these metres which do not exist, and place them so that the ends of one shall touch the ends of the others. May I ask what is that figure?”

“I presume you mean it to be a triangle.”

“Precisely! and what sort of a triangle?”

“An equilateral triangle, the sides of which measure one metre each.”

“Now let me take three more of these metres which do not exist, and construct another triangle which does not exist;—are these two triangles or one triangle?”

“They are most certainly one—a single concept of the only possible equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face.”

“You told us a moment ago that a universal could not exist wholly and exclusively in two individuals at once. Does not the universal by definition—THE equilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face—does it not exist wholly, in its integrity of essence, in each of the two triangles we have conceived?”

“It does—as a conception.”

“I thank you! Now, although I fear wearying you, perhaps you will consent to let me add matter to mind. I have here on my desk an object not uncommon in nature, which I will ask you to describe.”

“It appears to be a crystal.”

“May I ask its shape?”

“I should call it a regular octahedron.”

“That is, two pyramids, set base to base? making eight plane surfaces, each a perfect equilateral triangle?”

“Concedo triangula (I grant the triangles).”

“Do you know, perchance, what is this material which seems to give substantial existence to these eight triangles?”

“我不。”

“Nor I! nor does it matter, unless you conceive it to be the work of man?”

“I do not claim it as man’s work.”

“那是谁的？”

“We believe all actual creation of matter, united with form, to be the work of God.”

“Surely not the substance of God himself? Perhaps you mean that this form—this octahedron—is a divine concept.”

“I understand such to be the doctrine of the Church.”

“Then it seems that God uses this concept habitually to create this very common crystal. One question more, and only one, if you will permit me to come to the point. Does the matter—the material—of which this crystal is made affect in any way the form—the nature, the soul—of the universal equilateral triangle as you see it bounding these eight plane surfaces?”

“That I do not know, and do not think essential to decide. As far as these triangles are individual, they are made so by the will of God, and not by the substance you call triangle. The universal—the abstract right angle, or any other abstract form—is only an idea, a concept, to which reality, individuality, or what we might call energy is wanting. The only true energy, except man’s free will, is God.”

“Very good, Mr. Abelard! we can now reach our issue. You affirm that, just as the line does not exist in space, although the eye sees little else in space, so the triangle does not exist in this crystal, although the crystal shows eight of them, each perfect. You are aware that on this line which does not exist, and its combination in this triangle which does not exist, rests the whole fabric of mathematics with all its necessary truths. In other words, you know that in this line, though it does not exist, is bound up the truth of the only branch of human knowledge which claims absolute certainty for human processes. You admit that this line and triangle, which are mere figments of our human imagination, not only exist independent of us in the crystal, but are, as we suppose, habitually and invariably used by God Himself to give form to the matter contained within the planes of the crystal. Yet to this line and triangle you deny reality. To mathematical truth, you deny compulsive force. You hold that an equilateral triangle may, to you and all other human individuals, be a right-angled triangle if you choose to imagine it so. Allow me to say, without assuming any claim to superior knowledge, that to me your logic results in a different conclusion. If you are compelled, at one point or another of the chain of being, to deny existence to a substance, surely it should be to the last and feeblest. I see nothing to hinder you from denying your own existence, which is, in fact, impossible to demonstrate. Certainly you are free, in logic, to argue that Socrates and Plato are mere names—that men and matter are phantoms and dreams. No one ever has proved or ever can prove the contrary, Infallibly, a great philosophical school will some day be founded on that assumption. I venture even to recommend it to your acute and sceptical mind; but I cannot conceive how, by any process of reasoning, sensual or supersensual, you can reach the conclusion that the single form of truth which instantly and inexorably compels our submission to its laws—is nothing.”

Thus far, all was familiar ground; certainly at least as familiar as the Pons Asinorum; and neither of the two champions had need to feel ruffled in temper by the discussion. The real struggle began only at this point; for until this point was reached, both positions were about equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on the defensive, but William’s last thrust obliged him to strike in his turn, and he drew himself up for what, five hundred years later, was called the “Coup de Jarnac”:—

“I do not deny,” he begins; “on the contrary, I affirm that the universal, whether we call it humanity, or equilateral triangle, has a sort of reality as a concept; that it is something; even a substance, if you insist upon it. Undoubtedly the sum of all individual men results in the concept of humanity. What I deny is that the concept results in the individual. You have correctly stated the essence of the point and the line as sources of our concept of the infinite; what I deny is that they are divisions of the infinite. Universals cannot be divided; what is capable of division cannot be a universal. I admit the force of your analogy in the case of the crystal; but I am obliged to point out to you that, if you insist on this analogy, you will bring yourself and me into flagrant contradiction with the fixed foundations of the Church. If the energy of the triangle gives form to the crystal, and the energy of the line gives reality to the triangle, and the energy of the infinite gives substance to the line, all energy at last becomes identical with the ultimate substance, God Himself. Socrates becomes God in small; Judas is identical with both; humanity is of the divine essence, and exists, wholly and undivided, in each of us. The equilateral triangle we call humanity exists, therefore, entire, identical, in you and me, as a subdivision of the infinite line, space, energy, or substance, which is God. I need not remind you that this is pantheism, and that if God is the only energy, human free will merges in God’s free will; the Church ceases to have a reason for existence; man cannot be held responsible for his own acts, either to the Church or to the State; and finally, though very unwillingly, I must, in regard for my own safety, bring the subject to the attention of the Archbishop, which, as you know better than I, will lead to your seclusion, or worse.”

Whether Abelard used these precise words is nothing to the point. The words he left on record were equivalent to these. As translated by M. de Remusat from a manuscript entitled: “Glossulae magistri Petri Baelardi super Porphyrium,” the phrase runs: “A grave heresy is at the end of this doctrine; for, according to it, the divine substance which is recognized as admitting of no form, is necessarily identical with every substance in particular and with all substance in general.” Even had he not stated the heresy so bluntly, his objection necessarily pushed William in face of it. Realism, when pressed, always led to pantheism. William of Champeaux and Bishop or Archbishop Hildebert were personal friends, and Hildebert’s divine substance left no more room for human free will than Abelard saw in the geometric analogy imagined for William. Throughout the history of the Church for fifteen hundred years, whenever this theological point has been pressed against churchmen it has reduced them to evasion or to apology. Admittedly, the weak point of realism was its fatally pantheistic term.

Of course, William consulted his friends in the Church, probably Archbishop Hildebert among the rest, before deciding whether to maintain or to abandon his ground, and the result showed that he was guided by their advice. Realism was the Roman arch—the only possible foundation for any Church; because it assumed unity, and any other scheme was compelled to prove it, for a starting-point. Let us see, for a moment, what became of the dialogue, when pushed into theology, in order to reach some of the reasons which reduced William to tacit abandonment of a doctrine he could never have surrendered unless under compulsion. That he was angry is sure, for Abelard, by thus thrusting theology into dialectics, had struck him a full blow; and William knew Abelard well:—

“Ah!” he would have rejoined; “you are quick, M. du Pallet, to turn what I offered as an analogy, into an argument of heresy against my person. You are at liberty to take that course if you choose, though I give you fair warning that it will lead you far. But now I must ask you still another question. This concept that you talk about— this image in the mind of man, of God, of matter; for I know not where to seek it—whether is it a reality or not?”

“I hold it as, in a manner, real.”

“I want a categorical answer—Yes or No!”

“Distinguo! (I must qualify.)”

“I will have no qualifications. A substance either is, or not.
Choose!”

To this challenge Abelard had the choice of answering Yes, or of answering no, or of refusing to answer at all. He seems to have done the last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle, and to answer:—

“Yes, then!”

“Good!” William rejoins; “now let us see how your pantheism differs from mine. My triangle exists as a reality, or what science will call an energy, outside my mind, in God, and is impressed on my mind as it is on a mirror, like the triangle on the crystal, its energy giving form. Your triangle you say is also an energy, but an essence of my mind itself; you thrust it into the mind as an integral part of the mirror; identically the same concept, energy, or necessary truth which is inherent in God. Whatever subterfuge you may resort to, sooner or later you have got to agree that your mind is identical with God’s nature as far as that concept is concerned. Your pantheism goes further than mine. As a doctrine of the Real Presence peculiar to yourself, I can commend it to the Archbishop together with your delation of me.”

Supposing that Abelard took the opposite course, and answered:—

“No! my concept is a mere sign.”

“A sign of what, in God’s name!”

“A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance.”

“Nothing, then! So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at all. You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing God; therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of your ignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not exist except as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannot regard as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in a Trinity which exists only as a sound, or a symbol. I will not repeat your words, M. du Pallet, outside this cloister, because the consequences to you would certainly be fatal; but it is only too clear that you are a materialist, and as such your fate must be decided by a Church Council, unless you prefer the stake by judgment of a secular court.”

In truth, pure nominalism—if, indeed, any one ever maintained it— afforded no cover whatever. Nor did Abelard’s concept help the matter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was often driven into it. Conceptualism was a device, like the false wooden roof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction. Unity either is, or is not. If soldiers, no matter in what number, can never make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do not make a Church, and all humanity united would not necessarily constitute a State, equally little can their concepts, individual or united, constitute the one or the other. Army, Church, and State, each is an organic whole, complex beyond all possible addition of units, and not a concept at all, but rather an animal that thinks, creates, devours, and destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasm between multiplicity and unity is the oldest problem of philosophy, religion, and science, but the flimsiest bridge of all is the human concept, unless somewhere, within or beyond it, an energy not individual is hidden; and in that case the old question instantly reappears: What is that energy?

Abelard would have done well to leave William alone, but Abelard was an adventurer, and William was a churchman. To win a victory over a churchman is not very difficult for an adventurer, and is always a tempting amusement, because the ambition of churchmen to shine in worldly contests is disciplined and checked by the broader interests of the Church: but the victory is usually sterile, and rarely harms the churchman. The Church cares for its own. Probably the bishops advised William not to insist on his doctrine, although every bishop may have held the same view. William allowed himself to be silenced without a judgment, and in that respect stands almost if not quite alone among schoolmen. The students divined that he had sold himself to the Church, and consequently deserted him. Very soon he received his reward in the shape of the highest dignity open to private ambition—a bishopric. As Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne he made for himself a great reputation, which does not concern us, although it deeply concerned the unfortunate Abelard, for it happened, either by chance or design, that within a year or two after William established himself at Chalons, young Bernard of Citeaux chose a neighbouring diocese in which to establish a branch of the Cistercian Order, and Bishop William took so keen an interest in the success of Bernard as almost to claim equal credit for it. Clairvaux was, in a manner, William’s creation, although not in his diocese, and yet, if there was a priest in all France who fervently despised the schools, it was young Bernard. William of Champeaux, the chief of schoolmen, could never have gained Bernard’s affections. Bishop William of Chalons must have drifted far from dialectics into mysticism in order to win the support of Clairvaux, and train up a new army of allies who were to mark Abelard for an easy prey.

Meanwhile Abelard pursued his course of triumph in the schools, and in due time turned from dialectics to theology, as every ambitious teacher could hardly fail to do. His affair with Heloise and their marriage seem to have occupied his time in 1117 or 1118, for they both retired into religious orders in 1119, and he resumed his lectures in 1120. With his passion for rule, he was fatally certain to attempt ruling the Church as he ruled the schools; and, as it was always enough for him that any point should be tender in order that he should press upon it, he instantly and instinctively seized on the most sensitive nerve of the Church system to wrench it into his service. He became a sort of apostle of the Holy Ghost.

That the Trinity is a mystery was a law of theology so absolute as in a degree to hide the law of philosophy that the Trinity was meant as a solution of a greater mystery still. In truth, as a matter of philosophy, the Trinity was intended to explain the eternal and primary problem of the process by which unity could produce diversity. Starting from unity alone, philosophers found themselves unable to stir hand or foot until they could account for duality. To the common, ignorant peasant, no such trouble occurred, for he knew the Trinity in its simpler form as the first condition of life, like time and space and force. No human being was so stupid as not to understand that the father, mother, and child made a trinity, returning into each other, and although every father, every mother, and every child, from the dawn of man’s intelligence, had asked why, and had never received an answer more intelligible to them than to philosophers, they never showed difficulty in accepting that trinity as a fact. They might even, in their beneficent blindness, ask the Church why that trinity, which had satisfied the Egyptians for five or ten-thousand years, was not good enough for churchmen. They themselves were doing their utmost, though unconsciously, to identify the Holy Ghost with the Mother, while philosophy insisted on excluding the human symbol precisely because it was human and led back to an infinite series. Philosophy required three units to start from; it posed the equilateral triangle, not the straight line, as the foundation of its deometry. The first straight line, infinite in extension, must be assumed, and its reflection engendered the second, but whence came the third? Under protest, philosophy was compelled to accept the symbol of Father and Son as a matter of faith, but, if the relation of Father and Son were accepted for the two units which reflected each other, what relation expressed the Holy Ghost? In philosophy, the product of two units was not a third unit, but diversity, multiplicity, infinity. The subject was, for that reason, better handled by the Arabs, whose reasoning worked back on the Christian theologists and made the point more delicate still. Common people, like women and children and ourselves, could never understand the Trinity; naturally, intelligent people understood it still less, but for them it did not matter; they did not need to understand it provided their neighbours would leave it alone.

The mass of mankind wanted something nearer to them than either the Father or the Son; they wanted the Mother, and the Church tried, in what seems to women and children and ourselves rather a feeble way, to give the Holy Ghost, as far as possible, the Mother’s attributes —Love, Charity, Grace; but in spite of conscientious effort and unswerving faith, the Holy Ghost remained to the mass of Frenchmen somewhat apart, feared rather than loved. The sin against the Holy Ghost was a haunting spectre, for no one knew what else it was.

Naturally the Church, and especially its official theologists, took an instinctive attitude of defence whenever a question on this subject was asked, and were thrown into a flutter of irritation whenever an answer was suggested. No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself. The distinguishing essence of the Holy Ghost, as a theological substance, was its mystery. That this mystery should be touched at all was annoying to every one who knew the dangers that lurked behind the veil, but that it should be freely handled before audiences of laymen by persons of doubtful character was impossible. Such license must end in discrediting the whole Trinity under pretence of making it intelligible.

Precisely this license was what Abelard took, and on it he chose to insist. He said nothing heretical; he treated the Holy Ghost with almost exaggerated respect, as though other churchmen did not quite appreciate its merits; but he would not let it alone, and the Church dreaded every moment lest, with his enormous influence in the schools, he should raise a new storm by his notorious indiscretion. Yet so long as he merely lectured, he was not molested; only when he began to publish his theology did the Church interfere. Then a council held at Soissons in 1121 abruptly condemned his book in block, without reading it, without specifying its errors, and without hearing his defence; obliged him to throw the manuscript into the fire with his own hands, and finally shut him up in a monastery.

He had invited the jurisdiction by taking orders, but even the Church was shocked by the summary nature of the judgment, which seems to have been quite irregular. In fact, the Church has never known what it was that the council condemned. The latest great work on the Trinity, by the Jesuit Father de Regnon, suggests that Abelard’s fault was in applying to the Trinity his theory of concepts.

“Yes!” he says; “the mystery is explained; the key of conceptualism has opened the tabernacle, and Saint Bernard was right in saying that, thanks to Abelard, every one can penetrate it and contemplate it at his ease; ‘even the graceless, even the uncircumcised.’ Yes! the Trinity is explained, but after the manner of the Sabellians. For to identify the Persons in the terms of human concepts is, in the same stroke, to destroy their ‘subsistances propres.'”

Although the Saviour seems to have felt no compunctions about identifying the persons of the Trinity in the terms of human concepts, it is clear that tourists and heretics had best leave the Church to deal with its “subsistances propres,” and with its own members, in its own way. In sum, the Church preferred to stand firm on the Roman arch, and the architects seem now inclined to think it was right; that scholastic science and the pointed arch proved to be failures. In the twelfth century the world may have been rough, but it was not stupid. The Council of Soissons was held while the architects and sculptors were building the west porch of Chartres and the Aquilon at Mont-Saint-Michel. Averroes was born at Cordova in 1126; Omar Khayyam died at Naishapur in 1123. Poetry and metaphysics owned the world, and their quarrel with theology was a private, family dispute. Very soon the tide turned decisively in Abelard’s favour. Suger, a political prelate, became minister of the King, and in March, 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis. In both capacities he took the part of Abelard, released him from restraint, and even restored to him liberty of instruction, at least beyond the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Abelard then took a line of conduct singularly parallel with that of Bernard. Quitting civilized life he turned wholly to religion. “When the agreement,” he said, “had been executed by both parties to it, in presence of the King and his ministers, I next retired within the territory of Troyes, upon a desert spot which I knew, and on a piece of ground given me by certain persons, I built, with the consent of the bishop of the diocese, a sort of oratory of reeds and thatch, which I placed under the invocation of the Holy Trinity … Founded at first in the name of the Holy Trinity, then placed under its invocation, it was called ‘Paraclete’ in memory of my having come there as a fugitive and in my despair having found some repose in the consolations of divine grace. This denomination was received by many with great astonishment, and some attacked it with violence under pretext that it was not permitted to consecrate a church specially to the Holy Ghost any more than to God the Father, but that, according to ancient usage, it must be dedicated either to the Son alone or to the Trinity.”

The spot is still called Paraclete, near Nogent-sur-Seine, in the parish of Quincey about halfway between Fontainebleau and Troyes. The name Paraclete as applied to the Holy Ghost meant the Consoler, the Comforter, the Spirit of Love and Grace; as applied to the oratory by Abelard it meant a renewal of his challenge to theologists, a separation of the Persons in the Trinity, a vulgarization of the mystery; and, as his story frankly says, it was so received by many. The spot was not so remote but that his scholars could follow him, and he invited them to do so. They came in great numbers, and he lectured to them. “In body I was hidden in this spot; but my renown overran the whole world and filled it with my word.” Undoubtedly Abelard taught theology, and, in defiance of the council that had condemned him, attempted to define the persons of the Trinity. For this purpose he had fallen on a spot only fifty or sixty miles from Clairvaux where Bernard was inspiring a contrary spirit of religion; he placed himself on the direct line between Clairvaux and its source at Citeaux near Dijon; indeed, if he had sought for a spot as central as possible to the active movement of the Church and the time, he could have hit on none more convenient and conspicuous unless it were the city of Troyes itself, the capital of Champagne, some thirty miles away. The proof that he meant to be aggressive is furnished by his own account of the consequences. Two rivals, he says, one of whom seems to have been Bernard of Clairvaux, took the field against him, “and succeeded in exciting the hostility of certain ecclesiastical and secular authorities, by charging monstrous things, not only against my faith, but also against my manner of life, to such a point as to detach from me some of my principal friends; even those who preserved some affection for me dared no longer display it, for fear. God is my witness that I never heard of the union of an ecclesiastical assembly without thinking that its object was my condemnation.” The Church had good reason, for Abelard’s conduct defied discipline; but far from showing harshness, the Church this time showed a true spirit of conciliation most creditable to Bernard. Deeply as the Cistercians disliked and distrusted Abelard, they did not violently suppress him, but tacitly consented to let the authorities buy his silence with Church patronage.

The transaction passed through Suger’s hands, and offered an ordinary example of political customs as old as history. An abbey in Brittany became vacant; at a hint from the Duke Conan, which may well be supposed to have been suggested from Paris, the monks chose Abelard as their new abbot, and sent some of their number to Suger to request permission for Abelard, who was a monk of Saint-Denis, to become Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, near Vannes, in Brittany. Suger probably intimated to Abelard, with a certain degree of authority, that he had better accept. Abelard, “struck with terror, and as it were under the menace of a thunderbolt,” accepted. Of course the dignity was in effect banishment and worse, and was so understood on all sides. The Abbaye-de-Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, though less isolated than Mont-Saint-Michel, was not an agreeable winter residence. Though situated in Abelard’s native province of Brittany, only sixty or eighty miles from his birthplace, it was for him a prison with the ocean around it and a singularly wild people to deal with; but he could have endured his lot with contentment, had not discipline or fear or pledge compelled him to hold his tongue. From 1125, when he was sent to Brittany until 1135 when he reappeared in Paris, he never opened his mouth to lecture. “Never, as God is my witness,—never would I have acquiesced in such an offer, had it not been to escape, no matter how, from the vexations with which I was incessantly overwhelmed.”

A great career in the Church was thus opened for him against his will, and if he did not die an archbishop it was not wholly the fault of the Church. Already he was a great prelate, the equal in rank of the Abbe Suger, himself, of Saint-Denis; of Peter the Venerable of Cluny; of Bernard of Clairvaux. He was in a manner a peer of the realm. Almost immediately he felt the advantages of the change. Barely two years passed when, in 1127, the Abbe Suger, in reforming his subordinate Abbey of Argenteuil, was obliged to disturb Heloise, then a sister in that congregation. Abelard was warned of the necessity that his wife should be protected, and with the assistance of everyone concerned, he was allowed to establish his wife at the Paraclete as head of a religious sisterhood. “I returned there; I invited Heloise to come there with the nuns of her community; and when they arrived, I made them the entire donation of the oratory and its dependencies … The bishops cherished her as their daughter; the abbots as their sister; the laymen as their mother.” This was merely the beginning of her favour and of his. For ten years they were both of them petted children of the Church.

The formal establishment of Heloise at the Paraclete took place in 1129. In February, 1130, on the death of the Pope at Rome, a schism broke out, and the cardinals elected two popes, one of whom took the name of Innocent II, and appealed for support to France. Suger saw a great political opportunity and used it. The heads of the French Church agreed in supporting Innocent, and the King summoned a Church council at Etampes to declare its adhesion. The council met in the late summer; Bernard of Clairvaux took the lead; Peter the Venerable, Suger of Saint-Denis, and the Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de- Rhuys supported him; Innocent himself took refuge at Cluny in October, and on January 20, 1131, he stopped at the Benedictine Abbey of Morigny. The Chronicle of the monastery, recording the abbots present on this occasion,—the Abbot of Morigny itself, of Feversham; of Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, and so forth,—added especially: “Bernard of Clairvaux, who was then the most famous pulpit orator in France; and Peter Abelard, Abbot of Saint-Gildas, also a monk and the most eminent master of the schools to which the scholars of almost all the Latin races flowed.”

Innocent needed popular support; Bernard and Abelard were the two leaders of popular opinion in France. To attach them, Innocent could refuse nothing. Probably Abelard remained with Innocent, but in any case Innocent gave him, at Auxerre, in the following November, a diploma, granting to Heloise, prioress of the Oratory of the Holy Trinity, all rights of property over whatever she might possess, against all assailants; which proves Abelard’s favour. At this time he seems to have taken great interest in the new sisterhood. “I made them more frequent visits,” he said, “in order to work for their benefit.” He worked so earnestly for their benefit that he scandalized the neighbourhood and had to argue at unnecessary length his innocence of evil. He went so far as to express a wish to take refuge among them and to abandon his abbey in Brittany. He professed to stand in terror of his monks; he excommunicated them; they paid no attention to him; he appealed to the Pope, his friend, and Innocent sent a special legate to enforce their submission “in presence of the Count and the Bishops.”

Even since that, they would not keep quiet. And quite recently, since the expulsion of those of whom I have spoken, when I returned to the abbey, abandoning myself to the rest of the brothers who inspired me with less distrust, I found them even worse than the others. It was no longer a question of poison; it was the dagger that they now sharpened against my breast. I had great difficulty in escaping from them under the guidance of one of the neighbouring lords. Similar perils menace me still and every day I see the sword raised over my head. Even at table I can hardly breathe … This is the torture that I endure every moment of the day; I, a poor monk, raised to the prelacy, becoming more miserable in becoming more great, that by my example the ambitious may learn to curb their greed.

With this, the “Story of Calamity” ends. The allusions to Innocent II seem to prove that it was written not earlier than 1132; the confession of constant and abject personal fear suggests that it was written under the shock caused by the atrocious murder of the Prior of Saint-Victor by the nephews of the Archdeacon of Paris, who had also been subjected to reforms. This murder was committed a few miles outside of the walls of Paris, on August 20, 1133. The “Story of Calamity” is evidently a long plea for release from the restraints imposed on its author by his position in the prelacy and the tacit, or possibly the express, contract he had made, or to which he had submitted, in 1125. This plea was obviously written in order to serve one of two purposes:—either to be placed before the authorities whose consent alone could relieve Abelard from his restraints; or to justify him in throwing off the load of the Church, and resuming the profession of schoolman. Supposing the second explanation, the date of the paper would be more or less closely fixed by John of Salisbury, who coming to Paris as a student, in 1136, found Abelard lecturing on the Mont-Sainte- Genevieve; that is to say, not under the license of the Bishop of Paris or his Chancellor, but independently, in a private school of his own, outside the walls. “I attached myself to the Palatine Peripatician who then presided on the hill of Sainte-Genevieve, the doctor illustrious, admired by all. There, at his feet, I received the first elements of the dialectic art, and according to the measure of my poor understanding I received with all the avidity of my soul everything that came from his mouth.”

This explanation is hardly reasonable, for no prelate who was not also a temporal lord would have dared throw off his official duties without permission from his superiors. In Abelard’s case the only superior to whom he could apply, as Abbot of Saint-Gildas in Brittany, was probably the Pope himself. In the year 1135 the moment was exceedingly favourable for asking privileges. Innocent, driven from Rome a second time, had summoned a council at Pisa for May 30 to help him. Louis-le-Gros and his minister Suger gave at first no support to this council, and were overruled by Bernard of Clairvaux who in a manner drove them into giving the French clergy permission to attend. The principal archbishops, a number of bishops, and sixteen abbots went to Pisa in May, 1135, and some one of them certainly asked Innocent for favours on behalf of Abelard, which the Pope granted.

The proof is a papal bull, dated in 1136, in favour of Heloise, giving her the rank and title of Abbess, accompanied by another giving to the Oratory of the Holy Trinity the rank and name of Monastery of the Paraclete, a novelty in Church tradition so extraordinary or so shocking that it still astounds churchmen. With this excessive mark of favour Innocent could have felt little difficulty in giving Abelard the permission to absent himself from his abbey, and with this permission in his hands Abelard might have lectured on dialectics to John of Salisbury in the summer or autumn of 1136. He did not, as far as known, resume lectures on theology.

Such success might have turned heads much better balanced than that of Abelard. With the support of the Pope and at least one of the most prominent cardinals, and with relations at court with the ministers of Louis-le-Gros, Abelard seemed to himself as strong as Bernard of Clairvaux, and a more popular champion of reform. The year 1137, which has marked a date for so many great points in our travels, marked also the moment of Abelard’s greatest vogue. The victory of Aristotle and the pointed arch seemed assured when Suger effected the marriage of the young Prince Louis to the heiress Eleanor of Guienne. The exact moment was stamped on the facade of his exquisite creation, the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, finished in 1140 and still in part erect. From Saint-Denis to Saint-Sulpice was but a step. Louis-le-Grand seems to stand close in succession to Louis-le-Gros.

Fortunately for tourists, the world, restless though it might be, could not hurry, and Abelard was to know of the pointed arch very little except its restlessness. Just at the apex of his triumph, August 1, 1137, Louis-le-Gros died. Six months afterwards the anti- pope also died, the schism ended, and Innocent II needed Abelard’s help no more. Bernard of Clairvaux became Pope and King at once. Both Innocent and Louis-le-Jeune were in a manner his personal creations. The King’s brother Henry, next in succession, actually became a monk at Clairvaux not long afterwards. Even the architecture told the same story, for at Saint-Denis, though the arch might simulate a point, the old Romanesque lines still assert as firmly as ever their spiritual control. The fleche that gave the facade a new spirit was not added until 1215, which marks Abelard’s error in terms of time.

Once arrived at power, Bernard made short work of all that tried to resist him. During 1139 he seems to have been too busy or too ill to take up the affair of Abelard, but in March, 1140, the attack was opened in a formal letter from William of Saint-Thierry, who was Bernard’s closest friend, bringing charges against Abelard before Bernard and the Bishop of Chartres. The charges were simple enough:—

Pierre Abelard seized the moment, when all the masters of ecclesiastical doctrine have disappeared from the scene of the world, to conquer a place apart, for himself, in the schools, and to create there an exclusive domination. He treats Holy Scripture as though it were dialectics. It is a matter with him of personal invention and annual novelties. He is the censor and not the disciple of the faith; the corrector and not the imitator of the authorized masters.

In substance, this is all. The need of action was even simpler. Abelard’s novelties were becoming a danger; they affected not only the schools, but also even the Curia at Rome. Bernard must act because there was no one else to act: “This man fears you; he dreads you! if you shut your eyes, whom will he fear? … The evil has become too public to allow a correction limited to amicable discipline and secret warning.” In fact, Abelard’s works were flying about Europe in every direction, and every year produced a novelty. One can still read them in M. Cousin’s collected edition; among others, a volume on ethics: “Ethica, seu Scito teipsum”; on theology in general, an epitome; a “Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum”; and, what was perhaps the most alarming of all, an abstract of quotations from standard authorities, on the principle of the parallel column, showing the fatal contradictions of the authorized masters, and entitled “Sic et Non”! Not one of these works but dealt with sacred matters in a spirit implying that the Essence of God was better understood by Pierre du Pallet than by the whole array of bishops and prelates in Europe! Had Bernard been fortunate enough to light upon the “Story of Calamity,” which must also have been in existence, he would have found there Abelard’s own childlike avowal that he taught theology because his scholars “said that they did not want mere words; that one can believe only what one understands; and that it is ridiculous to preach to others what one understands no better than they do.” Bernard himself never charged Abelard with any presumption equal to this. Bernard said only that “he sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a mirror, but looks on everything face to face.” If this had been all, even Bernard could scarcely have complained. For several thousand years mankind has stared Infinity in the face without pretending to be the wiser; the pretension of Abelard was that, by his dialectic method, he could explain the Infinite, while all other theologists talked mere words; and by way of proving that he had got to the bottom of the matter, he laid down the ultimate law of the universe as his starting-point: “All that God does,” he said, “He wills necessarily and does it necessarily; for His goodness is such that it pushes Him necessarily to do all the good He can, and the best He can, and the quickest He can … Therefore it is of necessity that God willed and made the world.” Pure logic admitted no contingency; it was bound to be necessitarian or ceased to be logical; but the result, as Bernard understood it, was that Abelard’s world, being the best and only possible, need trouble itself no more about God, or Church, or man.

Strange as the paradox seems, Saint Bernard and Lord Bacon, though looking at the world from opposite standpoints, agreed in this: that the scholastic method was false and mischievous, and that the longer it was followed, the greater was its mischief. Bernard thought that because dialectics led wrong, therefore faith led right. He saw no alternative, and perhaps in fact there was none. If he had lived a century later, he would have said to Thomas Aquinas what he said to a schoolman of his own day: “If you had once tasted true food,”—if you knew what true religion is,—”how quick you would leave those Jew makers of books (literatoribus judaeis) to gnaw their crusts by themselves!” Locke or Hume might perhaps still have resented a little the “literator judaeus,” but Faraday or Clerk-Maxwell would have expressed the same opinion with only the change of a word: “If the twelfth century had once tasted true science, how quick they would have dropped Avicenna and Averroes!” Science admits that Bernard’s disbelief in scholasticism was well founded, whatever it may think of his reasons. The only point that remains is personal: Which is the more sympathetic, Bernard or Abelard?

The Church feels no doubt, but is a bad witness. Bernard is not a character to be taken or rejected in a lump. He was many-sided, and even toward Abelard he showed more than one surface. He wanted no unnecessary scandals in the Church; he had too many that were not of his seeking. He seems to have gone through the forms of friendly negotiation with Abelard although he could have required nothing less than Abelard’s submission and return to Brittany, and silence; terms which Abelard thought worse than death. On Abelard’s refusal, Bernard began his attack. We know, from the “Story of Calamity,” what Bernard’s party could not have certainly known then,—the abject terror into which the very thought of a council had for twenty years thrown Abelard whenever he was threatened with it; and in 1140 he saw it to be inevitable. He preferred to face it with dignity, and requested to be heard at a council to meet at Sens in June. One cannot admit that he felt the shadow of a hope to escape. At the utmost he could have dreamed of nothing more than a hearing. Bernard’s friends, who had a lively fear of his dialectics, took care to shut the door on even this hope. The council was carefully packed and overawed. The King was present; archbishops, bishops, abbots, and other prelates by the score; Bernard acted in person as the prosecuting attorney; the public outside were stimulated to threaten violence. Abelard had less chance of a judicial hearing than he had had at Soissons twenty years before. He acted with a proper sense of their dignity and his own by simply appearing and entering an appeal to Rome. The council paid no attention to the appeal, but passed to an immediate condemnation. His friends said that it was done after dinner; that when the volume of Abelard’s “Theology” was produced and the clerk began to read it aloud, after the first few sentences the bishops ceased attention, talked, joked, laughed, stamped their feet, got angry, and at last went to sleep. They were waked only to growl “Damnamus—namus,” and so made an end. The story may be true, for all prelates, even in the twelfth century, were not Bernards of Clairvaux or Peters of Cluny; all drank wine, and all were probably sleepy after dinner; while Abelard’s writings are, for the most part, exceedingly hard reading. The clergy knew quite well what they were doing; the judgment was certain long in advance, and the council was called only to register it. Political trials were usually mere forms.

The appeal to Rome seems to have been taken seriously by Bernard, which is surprising unless the character of Innocent II inspired his friends with doubts unknown to us. Innocent owed everything to Bernard, while Abelard owed everything to Innocent. The Pope was not in a position to alienate the French Church or the French King. To any one who knows only what is now to be known, Bernard seems to have been sure of the Curia, yet he wrote in a tone of excitement as though he feared Abelard’s influence there even more than at home. He became abusive; Abelard was a crawling viper (coluber tortuosus) who had come out of his hole (egressus est de caverna sua), and after the manner of a hydra (in similitudinem hydrae), after having one head cut off at Soissons, had thrown out seven more. He was a monk without rule; a prelate without responsibility; an abbot without discipline; “disputing with boys; conversing with women.” The charges in themselves seem to be literally true, and would not in some later centuries have been thought very serious; neither faith nor morals were impugned. On the other hand, Abelard never affected or aspired to be a saint, while Bernard always affected to judge the acts and motives of his fellow-creatures from a standpoint of more than worldly charity. Bernard had no right to Abelard’s vices; he claimed to be judged by a higher standard; but his temper was none of the best, and his pride was something of the worst; which gave to Peter the Venerable occasion for turning on him sharply with a rebuke that cut to the bone. “You perform all the difficult religious duties,” wrote Peter to the saint who wrought miracles; “you fast; you watch; you suffer; but you will not endure the easy ones—you do not love (non vis levia ferre, ut diligas).”

This was the end of Abelard. Of course the Pope confirmed the judgment, and even hurried to do so in order that he might not be obliged to give Abelard a hearing. The judgment was not severe, as judgments went; indeed, it amounted to little more than an order to keep silence, and, as it happened, was never carried into effect. Abelard, at best a nervous invalid, started for Rome, but stopped at Cluny, perhaps the most agreeable stopping-place in Europe. Personally he seems to have been a favourite of Abbot Peter the Venerable, whose love for Bernard was not much stronger than Abelard’s or Suger’s. Bernard was an excessively sharp critic, and spared worldliness, or what he thought lack of spirituality, in no prelate whatever; Clairvaux existed for nothing else, politically, than as a rebuke to them all, and Bernard’s enmity was their bond of union. Under the protection of Peter the Venerable, the most amiable figure of the twelfth century, and in the most agreeable residence in Europe, Abelard remained unmolested at Cluny, occupied, as is believed, in writing or revising his treatises, in defiance of the council. He died there two years later, April 21, 1142, in full communion, still nominal Abbot of Saint-Gildas, and so distinguished a prelate that Peter the Venerable thought himself obliged to write a charming letter to Heloise at the Paraclete not far away, condoling with her on the loss of a husband who was the Socrates, the Aristotle, the Plato, of France and the West; who, if among logicians he had rivals, had no master; who was the prince of study, learned, eloquent, subtle, penetrating; who overcame everything by the force of reason, and was never so great as when he passed to true philosophy, that of Christ.

All this was in Latin verses, and seems sufficiently strong, considering that Abelard’s philosophy had been so recently and so emphatically condemned by the entire Church, including Peter the Venerable himself. The twelfth century had this singular charm of liberty in practice, just as its architecture knew no mathematical formula of precision; but Peter’s letter to Heloise went further still, and rang with absolute passion:—

Thus, dear and venerable sister in God, he to whom you are united, after your tie in the flesh, by the better and stronger bond of the divine love; he, with whom, and under whom, you have served the Lord, the Lord now takes, in your place, like another you, and warms in His bosom; and, for the day of His coming, when shall sound the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God descending from heaven, He keeps him to restore him to you by His grace.

The schoolmen of the twelfth century thought they could reach God by reason; the Council of Sens, guided by Saint Bernard, replied that the effort was futile and likely to be mischievous. The council made little pretence of knowing or caring what method Abelard followed; they condemned any effort at all on that line; and no sooner had Bernard silenced the Abbot of Saint-Gildas for innovation than he turned about and silenced the Bishop of Poitiers for conservatism. Neither in the twelfth nor in any other century could three men have understood alike the meaning of Gilbert de la Poree, who seems to one high authority unworthy of notice and to another, worthy of an elaborate but quite unintelligible commentary. When M. Rousselet and M. Haureau judge so differently of a voluminous writer, the Council at Rheims which censured Bishop Gilbert in 1148 can hardly have been clear in mind. One dare hazard no more than a guess at Gilbert’s offence, but the guess is tolerably safe that he, like Abelard, insisted on discussing and analyzing the Trinity. Gilbert seems to have been a rigid realist, and he reduced to a correct syllogism the idea of the ultimate substance—God. To make theology a system capable of scholastic definition he had to suppose, behind the active deity, a passive abstraction, or absolute substance without attributes; and then the attributes—justice, mercy, and the rest— fell into rank as secondary substances. “Formam dei divinitatem appellant.” Bernard answered him by insisting with his usual fiery conviction that the Church should lay down the law, once for all, and inscribe it with iron and diamond, that Divinity—Divine Wisdom —is God. In philosophy and science the question seems to be still open. Whether anything ultimate exists—whether substance is more than a complex of elements—whether the “thing in itself” is a reality or a name—is a question that Faraday and Clerk-Maxwell seem to answer as Bernard did, while Haeckel answers it as Gilbert did; but in theology even a heretic wonders how a doubt was possible. The absolute substance behind the attributes seems to be pure Spinoza.

This supposes that the heretic understands what Gilbert or Haeckel meant, which is certainly a mistake; but it is possible that he may see in part what Bernard meant and this is enough if it is all. Abelard’s necessitarianism and Gilbert’s Spinozism, if Bernard understood them right, were equally impossible theology, and the Church could by no evasion escape the necessity of condemning both. Unfortunately, Bernard could not put his foot down so roughly on the schools without putting it on Aristotle as well; and, for at least sixty years after the Council of Rheims, Aristotle was either tacitly or expressly prohibited.

One cannot stop to explain why Aristotle himself would have been first to forbid the teaching of what was called by his name in the Middle Ages; but you are bound to remember that this period between 1140 and 1200 was that of Transition architecture and art. One must go to Noyon, Soissons, and Laon to study the Church that trampled on the schools; one must recall how the peasants of Normandy and the Chartrain were crusading for the Virgin in 1145, and building her fleches at Chartres and Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives while Bernard was condemning Gilbert at Rheims in 1148; we must go to the poets to see what they all meant by it; but the sum is an emotion—clear and strong as love and much clearer than logic—whose charm lies in its unstable balance. The Transition is the equilibrium between the love of God—which is faith—and the logic of God—which is reason; between the round arch and the pointed. One may not be sure which pleases most, but one need not be harsh toward people who think that the moment of balance is exquisite. The last and highest moment is seen at Chartres, where, in 1200, the charm depends on the constant doubt whether emotion or science is uppermost. At Amiens, doubt ceases; emotion is trained in school; Thomas Aquinas reigns.

Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Aquino were both artists,—very great artists, if the Church pleases,—and one need not decide which was the greater; but between them is a region of pure emotion—of poetry and art—which is more interesting than either. In every age man has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from side to side, beating against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he has sunk into indifference or scepticism. Religious minds prefer scepticism. The true saint is a profound sceptic; a total disbeliever in human reason, who has more than once joined hands on this ground with some who were at best sinners. Bernard was a total disbeliever in scholasticism; so was Voltaire. Bernard brought the society of his time to share his scepticism, but could give the society no other intellectual amusement to relieve its restlessness. His crusade failed; his ascetic enthusiasm faded; God came no nearer. If there was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical Englishman of the future Church of England type than John of Salisbury, he has left no trace; and John wrote a description of his time which makes a picturesque contrast with the picture painted by Abelard, his old master, of the century at its beginning. John weighed Abelard and the schools against Bernard and the cloister, and coolly concluded that the way to truth led rather through Citeaux, which brought him to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild scepticism in faith. “I prefer to doubt,” he said, “rather than rashly define what is hidden.” The battle with the schools had then resulted only in creating three kinds of sceptics:—the disbelievers in human reason; the passive agnostics; and the sceptics proper, who would have been atheists had they dared. The first class was represented by the School of Saint-Victor; the second by John of Salisbury himself; the third, by a class of schoolmen whom he called Cornificii, as though they made a practice of inventing horns of dilemma on which to fix their opponents; as, for example, they asked whether a pig which was led to market was led by the man or the cord. One asks instantly: What cord?—whether Grace, for instance, or Free Will?

Bishop John used the science he had learned in the school only to reach the conclusion that, if philosophy were a science at all, its best practical use was to teach charity—love. Even the early, superficial debates of the schools, in 1100-50, had so exhausted the subject that the most intelligent men saw how little was to be gained by pursuing further those lines of thought. The twelfth century had already reached the point where the seventeenth century stood when Descartes renewed the attempt to give a solid, philosophical basis for deism by his celebrated “Cogito, ergo sum.” Although that ultimate fact seemed new to Europe when Descartes revived it as the starting-point of his demonstration, it was as old and familiar as Saint Augustine to the twelfth century, and as little conclusive as any other assumption of the Ego or the Non-Ego. The schools argued, according to their tastes, from unity to multiplicity, or from multiplicity to unity; but what they wanted was to connect the two. They tried realism and found that it led to pantheism. They tried nominalism and found that it ended in materialism. They attempted a compromise in conceptualism which begged the whole question. Then they lay down, exhausted. In the seventeenth century the same violent struggle broke out again, and wrung from Pascal the famous outcry of despair in which the French language rose, perhaps for the last time, to the grand style of the twelfth century. To the twelfth century it belongs; to the century of faith and simplicity; not to the mathematical certainties of Descartes and Leibnitz and Newton, or to the mathematical abstractions of Spinoza. Descartes had proclaimed his famous conceptual proof of God: “I am conscious of myself, and must exist; I am conscious of God and He must exist.” Pascal wearily replied that it was not God he doubted, but logic. He was tortured by the impossibility of rejecting man’s reason by reason; unconsciously sceptical, he forced himself to disbelieve in himself rather than admit a doubt of God. Man had tried to prove God, and had failed: “The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote (eloignees) from the reasoning of men, and so contradictory (impliquees, far-fetched) that they make little impression; and even if they served to convince some people, it would only be during the instant that they see the demonstration; an hour afterwards they fear to have deceived themselves.” Moreover, this kind of proof could lead only to a speculative knowledge, and to know God only in that way was not to know Him at all. The only way to reach God was to deny the value of reason, and to deny reason was scepticism:—

En voyant l’aveuglement et la misere de l’homme et ces contrarietes etonnantes qui se decouvrent dans sa nature, et regardant tout l’univers muet, et l’homme sans lumiere, abandonne a lui-meme et comme egare dans ce recoin de l’umvers, sans savoir qui l’y a mis, ce qu’il y est venu faire, ce qu’il deviendra en mourant, j’entre en effroi comme un homme qu’on aurait porte endormi dans une ile deserte et effroyable, et qui s’eveillerait sans connaitre ou il est et sans avoir aucun moyen d’en sortir. Et sur cela j’admire comment on n’entre pas en desespoir d’un si miserable etat. Je vois d’autres personnes aupres de moi de semblable nature, et je leur demande s’ils sont mieux instruits que moi, et ils me disent que non Et sur cela, ces miserables egares, ayant regarde autour d’eux, et ayant vu quelques objets plaisants, s’y sont donnes et s’y sont attaches Pour moi je n’ai pu m’y arreter ni me reposer dans la societe de ces personnes, en tout semblables a moi, miserables comme moi, impuissants comme moi. Je vois qu’ils ne m’aideraient pas a mourir, je mourrai seul, il faut donc faire comme si j’etais seul or, si j’etais seul, je ne batirais pas des maisons, je ne m’embarrasserais point dans des occupations tumultuaires, je ne chercherais l’estime de personne, mais je tacherais settlement a decouvrir la verite.

Ainsi, considerant combien il y a d’apparence qu’il y a autre chose que ce que je vois, j’ai recherche si ce Dieu dont tout le monde parle n’aurait pas laisse quelques marques de lui. Je regarde de toutes parts et ne vois partout qu’ obscuritd. La nature ne m’offre rien que ne soit matiere de doute et d’inquietude. Si je n’y voyais rien qui marquat une divinite, je me determinerais a n’en rien croire. Si je voyais partout les marques d’un Createur, je me reposerais en paix dans la foi. Mais voyant trop pour nier, et trop peu pour m’assurer, je suis dans un etat a plaindre, et ou j’ai souhaite cent fois que si un Dieu soutient la nature, elle le marquat sans Equivoque; et que, si les marques qu’elle en donne sont trompeuses, elle les supprimat tout a fait; qu’elle dit tout ou rien, afin que je visse quel parti je dois suivre.

When I see the blindness and misery of man and the astonishing contradictions revealed in his nature, and observe the whole universe mute, and man without light, abandoned to himself, as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him here, or what he has come here to do, or what will become of him in dying, I feel fear like a man who has been carried when asleep into a desert and fearful island, and has waked without knowing where he is and without having means of rescue. And thereupon I wonder how man escapes despair at so miserable an estate. I see others about me, like myself, and I ask them if they are better informed than I, and they tell me no. And then these wretched wanderers, after looking about them and seeing some pleasant object, have given themselves up and attached themselves to it. As for me I cannot stop there, or rest in the company of these persons, wholly like myself, miserable like me, impotent like me. I see that they would not help me to die, I shall die alone, I must then act as though alone, but if I were alone I should not build houses, I should not fret myself with bustling occupations, I should seek the esteem of no one, but I should try only to discover the truth.

So, considering how much appearance there is that something exists other than what I see I have sought whether this God of Whom every one talks may not have left some marks of Himself. I search everywhere, and see only obscurity everywhere. Nature offers me nothing but matter of possible doubt and disquiet. If I saw there nothing to mark a divinity, I should make up my mind to believe nothing of it. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I should rest in peace in faith. But seeing too much to deny, and too little to affirm, I am in a pitiable state, where I have an hundred times wishes that, if a God supports nature, she would show it without equivocation; and that, if the marks she gives are deceptive, she would suppress them wholly; that she say all of nothing, that I may see my path.

This is the true Prometheus lyric, but when put back in its place it refuses to rest at Port-Royal which has a right to nothing but precision; it has but one real home—the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The mind that recoils from itself can only commit a sort of ecstatic suicide; it must absorb itself in God; and in the bankruptcy of twelfth-century science the Western Christian seemed actually on the point of attainment; he, like Pascal, touched God behind the veil of scepticism.

The schools had already proved one or two points which need never have been discussed again. In essence, religion was love; in no case was it logic. Reason can reach nothing except through the senses; God, by essence, cannot be reached through the senses; if He is to be known at all, He must be known by contact of spirit with spirit, essence with essence; directly; by emotion; by ecstasy; by absorption of our existence in His; by substitution of his spirit for ours. The world had no need to wait five hundred years longer in order to hear this same result reaffirmed by Pascal. Saint Francis of Assisi had affirmed it loudly enough, even if the voice of Saint Bernard had been less powerful than it was. The Virgin had asserted it in tones more gentle, but any one may still see how convincing, who stops a moment to feel the emotion that lifted her wonderful Chartres spire up to God.

The Virgin, indeed, made all easy, for it was little enough she cared for reason or logic. She cared for her baby, a simple matter, which any woman could do and understand. That, and the grace of God, had made her Queen of Heaven. The Trinity had its source in her,— totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium,—and she was maternity. She was also poetry and art. In the bankruptcy of reason, she alone was real.

So Guillaume de Champeaux, half a century dead, came to life again in another of his creations. His own Abbey of Saint-Victor, where Abelard had carried on imaginary disputes with him, became the dominant school. As far as concerns its logic, we had best pass it by. The Victorians needed logic only to drive away logicians, which was hardly necessary after Bernard had shut up the schools. As for its mysticism, all training is much alike in idea, whether one follows the six degrees of contemplation taught by Richard of Saint- Victor, or the eightfold noble way taught by Gautama Buddha. The theology of the school was still less important, for the Victorians contented themselves with orthodoxy only in the sense of caring as little for dogma as for dialectics; their thoughts were fixed on higher emotions. Not Richard the teacher, but Adam the poet, represents the school to us, and when Adam dealt with dogma he frankly admitted his ignorance and hinted his indifference; he was, as always, conscientious; but he was not always, or often, as cold. His statement of the Trinity is a marvel; but two verses of it are enough:—

Digne loqui de personis
Vim transcendit rationis,
Excedit ingenia.
Quid sit gigni, quid processus,
Me nescire sum professus,
Sed fide non dubia.

Qui sic credit, non festinet,
Et a via non declinet
Insolenter regia.
Servet fidem, formet mores,
Nec attendat ad errors
Quos damnat Ecclesia.

Of the Trinity to reason
Leads to license or to treason
Punishment deserving.
What is birth and what procession
Is not mine to make profession,
Save with faith unswerving.

Thus professing, thus believing,
Never insolently leaving
The highway of our faith,
Duty weighing, law obeying,
Never shall we wander straying
Where heresy is death.

Such a school took natural refuge in the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, —Grace and Love,—but the Holy Ghost, as usual, profited by it much less than the Virgin. Comparatively little of Adam’s poetry is expressly given to the Saint Esprit, and too large a part of this has a certain flavour of dogma:—

Qui procedis ab utroque
Genitore Genitoque
Pariter, Paraclite!
. . . . . . . . . Amor Patris, Filiique
Par amborum et utrique
Compar et consimilis!

The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the
Son; neither made nor created nor begotten,
but proceeding.

The whole three Persons are coeternal
together; and coequal.

This sounds like a mere versification of the Creed, yet when Adam ceased to be dogmatic and broke into true prayer, his verse added a lofty beauty even to the Holy Ghost; a beauty too serious for modern rhyme:—

Oh, juvamen oppressorum,
Oh, solamen miserorum,
Pauperum refugium,
Da contemptum terrenorum!
Ad amorem supernorum
Trahe desiderium!

Consolator et fundator,
Habitator et amator,
Cordium humilium,
Pelle mala, terge sordes,
Et discordes fac Concordes,
Et affer praesidium!

Oh, helper of the heavy-laden,
Oh, solace of the miserable,
Of the poor, the refuge,
Give contempt of earthly pleasures!
To the love of heavenly treasures
Lift our hearts’ desire!

Consolation and foundation,
Dearest friend and habitation
Of the lowly-hearted,
Dispel our evil, cleanse our foulness,
And our discords turn to concord,
And bring us succour!

Adam’s scholasticism was the most sympathetic form of mediaeval philosophy. Even in prose, the greatest writers have not often succeeded in stating simply and clearly the fact that infinity can make itself finite, or that space can make itself bounds, or that eternity can generate time. In verse, Adam did it as easily as though he were writing any other miracle,—as Gaultier de Coincy told the Virgin’s,—and any one who thinks that the task was as easy as it seems, has only to try it and see whether he can render into a modern tongue any single word which shall retain the whole value of the word which Adam has chosen:—

Ne periret homo reus
Redemptorem misit Deus,
Pater unigenitum;
Visitavit quos amavit
Nosque vitae revocavit
Gratia non meritum.

Infinitus et Immensus,
Quem non capit ullus sensus
Nec locorum spatia,
Ex eterno temporalis,
Ex immenso fit localis,
Ut restauret omnia.

To death condemned by awful sentence,
God recalled us to repentance,
Sending His only Son;
Whom He loved He came to cherish;
Whom His justice doomed to perish,
By grace to life he won.

Infinity, Immensity,
Whom no human eye can see
Or human thought contain,
Made of infinity a space,
Made of Immensity a place,
To win us Life again.

The English verses, compared with the Latin, are poor enough, with the canting jingle of a cheap religion and a thin philosophy, but by contrast and comparison they give higher value to the Latin. One feels the dignity and religious quality of Adam’s chants the better for trying to give them an equivalent. One would not care to hazard such experiments on poetry of the highest class like that of Dante and Petrarch, but Adam was conventional both in verse and thought, and aimed at obtaining his effects from the skilful use of the Latin sonorities for the purposes of the chant. With dogma and metaphysics he dealt boldly and even baldly as he was required to do, and successfully as far as concerned the ear or the voice; but poetry was hardly made for dogma; even the Trinity was better expressed mathematically than by rhythm. With the stronger emotions, such as terror, Adam was still conventional, and showed that he thought of the chant more than of the feeling and exaggerated the sound beyond the value of the sense. He could never have written the “Dies Irae.” He described the shipwreck of the soul in magnificent sounds without rousing an emotion of fear; the raging waves and winds that swept his bark past the abysses and up to the sky were as conventional as the sirens, the dragons, the dogs, and the pirates that lay in wait. The mast nodded as usual; the sails were rent; the sailors ceased work; all the machinery was classical; only the prayer to the Virgin saved the poetry from sinking like the ship; and yet, when chanted, the effect was much too fine to bear translation:—

Ave, Virgo singularis,
Mater nostri Salutaris,
Quae vocaris Stella Maris,
Stella non erratica;
Nos in hujus vitae mari
Non permitte naufragari,
Sed pro nobis Salutari
Tuo semper supplica!

Saevit mare, fremunt venti,
Fluctus surgunt turbulenti;
Navis currit, sed currenti
Tot occurrunt obvia!
Hic sirenes voluptatis,
Draco, canes cum piratis,
Mortem pene desperatis
Haec intentant omnia.

Post abyssos, nunc ad coelum
Furens unda fert phaselum;
Nutat malus, fluit velum,
Nautae cessat opera;
Contabescit in his malis
Homo noster animalis;
Tu nos, Mater spiritalis,
Pereuntes liberal!

Finer still is the famous stanza sung at Easter, in which Christ rises, the Lion of Judah, in the crash of the burst gates of death, at the roar of the Father Lion:—

Sic de Juda, leo fortis,
Fractis portis dirae mortis,
Die surgens tertia,
Rugiente voce patris
Ad supernae sinum matris
Tot revexit spolia.

For terror or ferocity or images of pain, the art of the twelfth century had no use except to give a higher value to their images of love. The figures on the west portal of Chartres are alive with the spirit of Adam’s poetry, but it is the spirit of the Virgin. Like Saint Bernard, Adam lavished his affections on Mary, and even more than Saint Bernard he could claim to be her poet-laureate. Bernard was not himself author of the hymn “Stella Maris” which brought him the honour of the Virgin’s personal recognition, but Adam was author of a dozen hymns in which her perfections were told with equal fervour, and which were sung at her festivals. Among these was the famous

Salve, Mater Pietatis,
埃托蒂乌斯·三位一体
金钗三斜晶！

a compliment so refined and yet so excessive that the Venerable Thomas Cantimpratensis who died a century later, about 1280, related in his “Apiarium” that when “venerabilis Adam” wrote down these lines, Mary herself appeared to him and bent her head in recognition. Although the manuscripts do not expressly mention this miracle, they do contain, at that stanza, a curious note expressing an opinion, apparently authorized by the prior, that, if the Virgin had seen fit to recognize the salutation of the Venerable Adam in this manner, she would have done only what he merited: “ab ea resalutari et regratiari meruit.”

Adam’s poems are still on the shelves of most Parisian bookshops, as common as “Aucassins” and better known than much poetry of our own time; for the mediaeval Latin rhymes have a delightful sonority and simplicity that keep them popular because they were not made to be read but to be sung. One does not forget their swing:—

Infinitus et Immensus;

要么-

Oh, juvamen oppressorum;

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Consolatrix miserorum
Suscitatrix mortuorum.

The organ rolls through them as solemnly as ever it did in the Abbey Church; but in mediaeval art so much more depends on the mass than on the measure—on the dignity than on the detail—that equivalents are impossible. Even Walter Scott was content to translate only three verses of the “Dies Irae.” At best, Viollet-le-Duc could reproduce only a sort of modern Gothic; a more or less effaced or affected echo of a lost emotion which the world never felt but once and never could feel again. Adam composed a number of hymns to the Virgin, and, in them all, the feeling counts for more, by far, than the sense. Supposing we choose the simplest and try to give it a modern version, aiming to show, by comparison, the difference of sound; one can perhaps manage to recover a little of the simplicity, but give it the grand style one cannot; or, at least, if any one has ever done both, it is Walter Scott, and merely by placing side by side the “Dies Irae” and his translation of it, one can see at a glance where he was obliged to sacrifice simplicity only to obtain sound:—

Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet seclum in favilla,
测试大卫和西比拉。

Quantus tremor est futurus，
Quando judex est venturus,
Cuncta stride discussurus!

Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum.

That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away,
What power shall be the sinner’s stay?
How shall he meet that dreadful day?

When shrivelling like a parched scroll
The flaming heavens together roll;
When louder yet and yet more dread
Swells the high trump that wakes the dead.

As translation the last line is artificial.

The “Dies Irae” does not belong, in spirit, to the twelfth century; it is sombre and gloomy like the Last Judgments on the thirteenth- century portals; it does not love. Adam loved. His verses express the Virgin; they are graceful, tender, fervent, and they hold the same dignity which cannot be translated:—

In hac valle lacrimarum
Nihil dulce, nihil carum,
Suspecta sunt omnia;
Quid hic nobis erit tutum,
Cum nec ipsa vel virtutum
Tuta sit victoria!

Caro nobis adversatur,
Mundus cami suffragatur
In nostram perniciem;
Hostis instat, nos infestans,
Nunc se palam manifestans,
Nunc occultans rabiem.

Et peccamus et punimur,
Et diversis irretimur
Laqueis venantium.
O Maria, mater Dei,
Tu, post Deum, summa spei,
Tu dulce refugium;

Tot et tantis irretiti,
Non valemus his reniti
Ne vi nec industria;
Consolatrix miserorum,
Suscitatrix mortuorum,
Mortis rompe retia!

In this valley full of tears,
Nothing softens, nothing cheers,
All is suspected lure;
What safety can we hope for, here,
When even virtue faints for fear
Her victory be not sure!

Within, the flesh a traitor is,
Without, the world encompasses,
A deadly wound to bring.
The foe is greedy for our spoils,
Now clasping us within his coils,
Or hiding now his sting.

We sin, and penalty must pay,
And we are caught, like beasts of prey,
Within the hunter’s snares.
Nearest to God! oh Mary Mother!
Hope can reach us from none other,
Sweet refuge from our cares;

We have no strength to struggle longer,
For our bonds are more and stronger
Than our hearts can bear!
You who rest the heavy-laden,
You who lead lost souls to Heaven,
Burst the hunter’s snare!

The art of this poetry of love and hope, which marked the mystics, lay of course in the background of shadows which marked the cloister. “Inter vania nihil vanius est homine.” Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God. If ever modern science achieves a definition of energy, possibly it may borrow the figure: Energy is the inherent effort of every multiplicity to become unity. Adam’s poetry was an expression of the effort to reach absorption through love, not through fear; but to do this thoroughly he had to make real to himself his own nothingness; most of all, to annihilate pride; for the loftiest soul can comprehend that an atom,—say, of hydrogen,—which is proud of its personality, will never merge in a molecule of water. The familiar verse: “Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” echoes Adam’s epitaph to this day:—

Haeres peccati, natura filius irae,
Exiliique reus nascitur omnis homo.
Unde superbit homo, cujus conceptio culpa,
Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori?

Heir of sin, by nature son of wrath,
Condemned to exile, every man is born.
Whence is man’s pride, whose conception fault,
Birth pain, life labour, and whose death is sure?

Four concluding lines, not by him, express him even better:—

Hic ego qui jaceo, miser et miserabilis Adam,
Unam pro summo munere posco precem.
Peccavi, fateor; veniam peto; parce fatenti;
Parce, pater: fratres, parcite; parce, Deus!

One does not conceive that Adam insisted so passionately on his sins because he thought them—or himself—important before the Infinite. Chemistry does not consider an atom of oxygen as in itself important, yet if it wishes to get a volume of pure gas, it must separate the elements. The human soul was an atom that could unite with God only as a simple element. The French mystics showed in their mysticism the same French reasonableness; the sense of measure, of logic, of science; the allegiance to form; the transparency of thought, which the French mind has always shown on its surface like a shell of nacre. The mystics were in substance rather more logical than the schoolmen and much more artistic in their correctness of line and scale. At bottom, French saints were not extravagant. One can imagine a Byzantine asserting that no French saint was ever quite saintly. Their aims and ideals were very high, but not beyond reaching and not unreasonable. Drag the French mind as far from line and logic as space permits, the instant it is freed it springs back to the classic and tries to look consequent.

This paradox, that the French mystics were never mystical, runs through all our travels, so obstinately recurring in architecture, sculpture, legend, philosophy, religion, and poetry, that it becomes tiresome; and yet it is an idea that, in spite of Matthew Arnold and many other great critics, never has got lodgment in the English or German mind, and probably never will. Every one who loves travel will hope that it never may. If you are driven to notice it as the most distinctive mark of French art, it is not at all for the purpose of arguing a doubtful law, but only in order to widen the amusement of travel. We set out to travel from Mont-Saint-Michel to Chartres, and no farther; there we stop; but we may still look across the boundary to Assisi for a specimen of Italian Gothic architecture, a scheme of colour decoration, or still better for a mystic to compare with the Bernadines and Victorians. Every one who knows anything of religion knows that the ideal mystic saint of western Europe was Francis of Assisi, and that Francis, though he loved France, was as far as possible from being French; though not in the least French, he was still the finest flower from the French mediaeval garden; and though the French mystics could never have understood him, he was what the French mystics would have liked to be or would have thought they liked to be as long as they knew him to be not one of themselves. As an Italian or as a Spaniard, Francis was in harmony with his world; as a Frenchman, he would have been out of place even at Clairvaux, and still more among his own Cordeliers at the doors of the Sorbonne.

Francis was born in 1186, at the instant when French art was culminating, or about to culminate, in the new cathedrals of Laon and Chartres, on the ruins of scholastic religion and in the full summer of the Courts of Love. He died in 1226, just as Queen Blanche became Regent of France and when the Cathedral of Beauvais was planned. His life precisely covered the most perfect moment of art and feeling in the thousand years of pure and confident Christianity. To an emotional nature like his, life was still a phantasm or “concept” of crusade against real or imaginary enemies of God, with the “Chanson de Roland” for a sort of evangel, and a feminine ideal for a passion. He chose for his mistress “domina nostra paupertas,” and the rules of his order of knighthood were as visionary as those of Saint Bernard were practical. “Isti sunt fratres mei milites tabulae rotundae, qui latitant in desertis”; his Knights of the Round Table hid themselves for their training in deserts of poverty, simplicity, humility, innocence of self, absorption in nature, in the silence of God, and, above all, in love and joy incarnate, whose only influence was example. Poverty of body in itself mattered nothing; what Francis wanted was poverty of pride, and the external robe or the bare feet were outward and necessary forms of protection against its outward display. Against riches or against all external and visible vanity, rules and laws could be easily enforced if it were worth while, although the purest humility would be reached only by those who were indifferent and unconscious of their external dress; but against spiritual pride the soul is defenceless, and of all its forms the subtlest and the meanest is pride of intellect. If “nostra domina paupertas” had a mortal enemy, it was not the pride beneath a scarlet robe, but that in a schoolmaster’s ferule, and of all schoolmasters the vainest and most pretentious was the scholastic philosopher. Satan was logic. Lord Bacon held much the same opinion. “I reject the syllogism,” was the starting-point of his teaching as it was the essence of Saint Francis’s, and the reasons of both men were the same though their action was opposite. “Let men please themselves as they will in admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain:—that, as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure and section, so the mind … cannot be trusted …” Bacon’s first object was the same as that of Francis, to humiliate and if possible destroy the pride of human reason; both of them knew that this was their most difficult task, and Francis, who was charity incarnate, lost his self-control whenever he spoke of the schools, and became almost bitter, as though in constant terror of a poison or a cancer. “Praeodorabat etiam tempora non longe ventura in quibus jam praesciebat scientiam inflativam debere esse occasionem ruinae.” He foresaw the time not far off when puffed-up science would be the ruin of his “domina paupertas.” His struggle with this form of human pride was desperate and tragical in its instant failure. He could not make even his novices understand what he meant. The most impossible task of the mind is to reject in practice the reflex action of itself, as Bacon pointed out, and only the highest training has sometimes partially succeeded in doing it. The schools—ancient, mediaeval, or modern—have almost equally failed, but even the simple rustics who tried to follow Francis could not see why the rule of poverty should extend to the use of a psalter.

Quum ergo venisset beatus Franciscus ad locum ubi erat ille novitius, dixit ille novitius: “Pater, mihi esset magna consolatio habere psalterium, sed licet generalis illud mihi concesserit, tamen vellem ipsum habere, pater, de conscientia tua.” Cui beatus Franciscus respondit: “Carolus imperator, Rolandus et Oliverus et omnes palatini et robusti viri qui potentes fuerunt in proelio, prosequendo infideles cum multa sudore et labore usque ad mortem, habuerunt de illis victoriara memorialiter, et ad ultimum ipsi sancti martyres sunt mortui pro fide Christi in certamine. Nunc autem multi sunt qui sola narratione eorum quae illi fecerunt volunt recipere honorem et humanam laudem. Ita et inter nos sunt multi qui solum recitando et praedicando opera quae sancti fecerunt volunt recipere honorem et laudem; … postquam habueris psalterium, concupisces et volueris habere breviarium; et postquam habueris breviarium, sedebis in cathedra tanquam magnus prelatus et dices fratri tuo:—Apporta mihi breviarium!”

Haec autem dicens beatus Franciscus cum magno fervore spiritus accepit de cinere et posuit super caput suum, et ducendo manum super caput suum in circuitu sicut ille qui lavat caput, dicebat: “Ego breviarium! ego breviarium!” et sic reiteravit multoties ducendo manum per caput. Et stupefactus et verecundatus est frater ille … Elapsis autem pluribus mensibus quum esset beatus Franciscus apud locum sanctae Mariae de Portiuncula, juxta cellam post domum in via, praedictus frater iterum locutus est ei de psalterio. Cui beatus Franciscus dixit: “Vade et facias de hoc sicut dicet tibi minister tuus!” Quo audito, frater ille coepit redire per viam unde venerat. Beatus autem Franciscus remanens in via coepit considerare illud quod dixerat illi fratri, et statim clamavit post cum, dicens: “Expecta me, frater! expecta!” Et ivit usque ad eum et ait illi: “Revertere mecum, frater, et ostende mihi locum ubi dixi tibi quod faceres de psalterio sicut diceret minister tuus.” Quum ergo pervenissent ad locum, beatus Franciscus genuflexit coram fratre illo, et dixit: “Mea culpa, frater! mea culpa! quia quicunque vult esse frater Minor non debet habere nisi tunicam, sicut regula sibi concedit, et cordam et femoralia et qui manifesta necessitate coguntur calciamenta.”

So when Saint Francis happened to come to the place where the novice was, the novice said: “Father, it would be a great comfort to me to have a psalter, but though my general should grant it, still I would rather have it, father, with your knowledge too.” Saint Francis answered: “The Emperor Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver, and all the palatines and strong men who were potent in battle, pursuing the infidels with much toil and sweat even to death, triumphed over them memorably [without writing it?], and at last these holy martyrs died in the contest for the faith of Christ. But now there are many who, merely by telling of what those men did, want to receive honour and human praise. So, too, among us are many who, merely by reciting and preaching the works which the saints have done, want to receive honour and praise; … After you have got the psalter, you will covet and want a breviary; and after getting the breviary, you will sit on your throne like a bishop, and will say to your brother: ‘Bring me the breviary!'”

While saying this, Saint Francis with great vehemence took up a handful of ashes and spread it over his bead; and moving his hand about his head in a circle as though washing it, said: “I, breviary! I, breviary!” and so kept on, repeatedly moving his hand about his head; and stupefied and ashamed was that novice. … But several months afterwards when Saint Francis happened to be near Sta Maria de Portiuncula, by the cell behind the house on the road, the same brother again spoke to him about the psalter. Saint Francis replied: “Go and do about it as your director says.” On this the brother turned back, but Saint Francis, standing in the road, began to reflect on what he had said, and suddenly called after him: “Wait for me, brother! wait!” and going after him, said: “Return with me, brother, and show me the place where I told you to do as your director should say, about the psalter.” When they had come back to it, Saint Francis bent before the brother, and said: “Mea culpa, brother, mea culpa! because whoever wishes to be a Minorite must have nothing but a tunic, as the rule permits, and the cord, and the loincloth, and what covering is manifestly necessary for the limbs.”

So vivid a picture of an actual mediaeval saint stands out upon this simple background as is hardly to be found elsewhere in all the records of centuries, but if the brother himself did not understand it and was so shamed and stupefied by Francis’s vehemence, the world could understand it no better; the Order itself was ashamed of Saint Francis because they understood him too well. They hastened to suppress this teaching against science, although it was the life of Francis’s doctrine. He taught that the science of the schools led to perdition because it was puffed up with emptiness and pride. Humility, simplicity, poverty were alone true science. They alone led to heaven. Before the tribunal of Christ, the schoolmen would be condemned, “and, with their dark logic (opinionibus tenebrosis) shall be plunged into outer darkness with the spirits of the darkness.” They were devilish, and would perish with the devils.

One sees instantly that neither Francis of Assisi nor Bacon of Verulam could have hoped for peace with the schools; twelfth-century ecstasy felt the futility of mere rhetoric quite as keenly as seventeenth-century scepticism was to feel it; and yet when Francis died in 1226 at Assisi, Thomas was just being born at Aquino some two hundred kilometres to the southward. True scholasticism had not begun. Four hundred years seem long for the human mind to stand still—or go backward; the more because the human mind was never better satisfied with itself than when thus absorbed in its mirror; but with that chapter we have nothing to do. The pleasantest way to treat it was that of Saint Francis; half-serious, half-jesting; as though, after all, in the thought of infinity, four hundred years were at most only a serio-comic interlude. At Assisi, once, when a theologian attacked Fra Egidio by the usual formal arraignment in syllogisms, the brother waited until the conclusions were laid down, and then, taking out a flute from the folds of his robe, he played his answer in rustic melodies. The soul of Saint Francis was a rustic melody and the simplest that ever reached so high an expression. Compared with it, Theocritus and Virgil are as modern as Tennyson and ourselves.

All this shows only what Saint Francis was not; to understand what he was and how he goes with Saint Bernard and Saint Victor through the religious idyll of Transition architecture, one must wander about Assisi with the “Floretum” or “Fioretti” in one’s hand;—the legends which are the gospel of Francis as the evangels are the gospel of Christ, who was reincarnated in Assisi. We have given a deal of time to showing our own sceptical natures how simple the architects and decorators of Chartres were in their notions of the Virgin and her wants; but French simple-mindedness was already complex compared with Italian. The Virgin was human; Francis was elementary nature itself, like sun and air; he was Greek in his joy of life:—

… Recessit inde et venit inter Cannarium et Mevanium. Et respexit quasdam arbores juxta viam in quibus residebat tanta multitudo avium diversarum quod nunquam in partibus illis visa similis multitudo. In campo insuper juxta praedictas arbores etiam multitudo maxima residebat. Quam multitudinem sanctus Franciscus respiciens et admirans, facto super eum Spiritu Dei, dixit sociis: “Vobis hic me in via exspectantibus, ibo et praedicabo sororibus nostris aviculis.” Et intravit in campum ad aves quae residebant in terra. Et statim quum praedicare incepit omnes aves in arboribus residentes descenderunt ad eum et simul cum aliis de campo immobiles perman serunt, quum tamen ipse inter eas iret plurimas tunica contingendo. Et nulla earum penitus movebatur, sicut recitavit frater Jacobus de Massa, sanctus homo, qui omnia supradicta habuit ab ore fratris Massei, qui fuit unus de iis qui tune erant socii sancti patris.

Quibus avibus sanctus Franciscus ait: “Multum tenemini Deo, sorores meas aves, et debetis eum semper et ubique laudare propter liberum quem ubique habetis volatum, propter vestitum duplicatum et triplicatum, propter habitum pictum et ornatum, propter victum sine vestro labore paratum, propter cantum a Creatore vobis intimatum, propter numerum ex Dei benedictione multiplicatum, propter semen vestrum a Deo in area reservatum, propter elementum aeris vobis deputatum. Vos non seminatis neque metitis, et Deus vos pascit; et dedit vobis flumina et fontes ad potandum, montes et colles, saxa et ibices ad refugium, et arbores altes ad nidificandum; et quum nec filare nec texere sciatis, praebet tam vobis quam vestris filiis necessarium indumentum. Unde multum diligit vos Creator qui tot beneficia contulit. Quapropter cavete, sorores mes aviculae, ni sitis ingratae sed semper laudare Deum studete.”

… He departed thence and came between Cannara and Bevagna; and near the road he saw some trees on which perched so great a number of birds as never in those parts had been seen the like. Also in the field beyond, near these same trees, a very great multitude rested on the ground. This multitude, Saint Francis seeing with wonder, the spirit of God descending on him he said to his companions: “Wait for me on the road, while I go and preach to our sisters the little birds.” And he went into the field where the birds were on the ground. And as soon as he began to preach, all the birds in the trees came down to him and with those in the field stood quite still, even when he went among them touching many with his robe. Not one of them moved, as Brother James of Massa related, a saintly man who had the whole story from the mouth of Brother Masseo who was one of those then with the sainted father.

To these birds, Saint Francis said: “Much are you bound to God, birds, my sisters, and everywhere and always must you praise him for the free flight you everywhere have; for the double and triple covering; for the painted and decorated robe; for the food prepared without your labour; for the song taught you by the Creator; for your number multiplied by God’s blessing; for your seed preserved by God in the ark; for the element of air allotted to you. You neither sow nor reap, and God feeds you; and has given you rivers and springs to drink at, mountains and hills, rocks and wild goats for refuge, and high trees for nesting; and though you know neither how to spin nor to weave, He gives both you and your children all the garments you need. Whence much must the Creator love you, Who confers so many blessings. Therefore take care, my small bird sisters, never to be ungrateful, but always strive to praise God.”

Fra Ugolino, or whoever wrote from the dictation of Brother James of Massa, after the tradition of Brother Masseo of Marignano reported Saint Francis’s sermon in absolute good faith as Saint Francis probably made it and as the birds possibly received it. All were God’s creatures, brothers and sisters, and God alone knew or knows whether or how far they understand each other; but Saint Francis, in any case, understood them and believed that they were in sympathy with him. As far as the birds or wolves were concerned, it was no great matter, but Francis did not stop with vertebrates or even with organic forms. “Nor was it surprising,” said the “Speculum,” “if fire and other creatures sometimes revered and obeyed him; for, as we who were with him very frequently saw, he held them in such affection and so much delighted in them, and his soul was moved by such pity and compassion for them, that he would not see them roughly handled, and talked with them with such evident delight as if they were rational beings”:—

Nam quadam vice, quum sederet juxta ignem, ipso nesciente, ignis invasit pannos ejus de lino, sive brachas, juxta genu, quumque sentiret calorem ejus nolebat ipsum extinguere. Socius autem ejus videns comburi pannos ejus cucurrit ad eum volens extinguere ignem; ipse vero prohibuit ei, dicens: “Noli, frater, carissime, noli male facere igni!” Et sic nullo modo voluit quod extingueret ipsum. Ille vero festinanter ivit ad fratrem qui erat guardianus ipsius, et duxit eum ad beatum Franciscum, et statim contra voluntatem beati Francisci, extinxit ignem. Unde quacunque necessitate urgente nunquam voluit extinguere ignem vel lampadem vel candelam, tantum pietate movebatur ad ipsum. Nolebat etiam quod frater projiceret ignem vel lignum fumigantem de loco ad locum sicut solet fieri, sed volebat ut plane poneret ipsum in terra ob reverentiam illius cujus est creatura.

For once when he was sitting by the fire, a spark, without his knowing it, caught his linen drawers and set them burning near the knee, and when he felt the heat he would not extinguish it; but his companion, seeing his clothes on fire, ran to put it out, and he forbade it, saying: “Don’t, my dearest brother, don’t hurt the fire!” So he utterly refused to let him put it out, and the brother hurried off to get his guardian, and brought him to Saint Francis, and together they put out the fire at once against Saint Francis’s will. So, no matter what the necessity, he would never put out fire Or a lamp or candle, so strong was his feeling for it; he would not even let a brother throw fire or a smoking log from place to place, as is usual, but wanted it placed gently (piano) on the ground, out of respect for Him Whose creature it is.

The modern tourist, having with difficulty satisfied himself that Saint Francis acted thus in good faith, immediately exclaims that he was a heretic and should have been burned; but, in truth, the immense popular charm of Saint Francis, as of the Virgin, was precisely his heresies. Both were illogical and heretical by essence;—in strict discipline, in the days of the Holy Office, a hundred years later, both would have been burned by the Church, as Jeanne d’Arc was, with infinitely less reason, in 1431. The charm of the twelfth-century Church was that it knew how to be illogical—no great moral authority ever knew it better—when God Himself became illogical. It cared no more than Saint Francis, or Lord Bacon, for the syllogism. Nothing in twelfth-century art is so fine as the air and gesture of sympathetic majesty with which the Church drew aside to let the Virgin and Saint Francis pass and take the lead—for a time. Both were human ideals too intensely realized to be resisted merely because they were illogical. The Church bowed and was silent.

This does not concern us. What the Church thought or thinks is its own affair, and what it chooses to call orthodox is orthodox. We have been trying only to understand what the Virgin and Saint Francis thought, which is matter of fact, not of faith. Saint Francis was even more outspoken than the Virgin. She calmly set herself above dogma, and, with feminine indifference to authority, overruled it. He, having asserted in the strongest terms the principle of obedience, paid no further attention to dogma, but, without the least reticence, insisted on practices and ideas that no Church could possibly permit or avow. Toward the end of his life, his physician cauterized his face for some neuralgic pain:—

Et posito ferro in igne pro coctura fienda, beatus Franciscus volens confortare spiritum suum ne pavesceret, sic locutus est ad ignem: “Frater mi, ignis, nobilis et utilis inter alias creaturas, esto mihi curialis in hac hora quia olim te dilexi et diligam amore illius qui creavit te. Deprecor etiam creatorem nostrum qui nos creavit ut ita tuum calorem temperct ut ipsum sustinere valeam.” Et oratione finita signavit ignem signo crucis.

When the iron was put on the fire for making the cotterie, Saint Francis, wishing to encourage himself against fear, spoke thus to the fire: “My brother, fire, noblest and usefullest of creatures, be gentle to me now, because I have loved and will love you with the love of Him who created you. Our Creator, too, Who created us both, I implore so to temper your heat that I may have strength to bear it.” And having spoken, he signed the fire with the cross.

With him, this was not merely a symbol. Children and saints can believe two contrary things at the same time, but Saint Francis had also a complete faith of his own which satisfied him wholly. All nature was God’s creature. The sun and fire, air and water, were neither more nor less brothers and sisters than sparrows, wolves, and bandits. Even “daemones sunt castalli Domini nostri”; the devils are wardens of our Lord. If Saint Francis made any exception from his univeral law of brotherhood it was that of the schoolmen, but it was never expressed. Even in his passionate outbreak, in the presence of Saint Dominic, at the great Chapter of his Order at Sancta Maria de Portiuncula in 1218, he did not go quite to the length of denying the brotherhood of schoolmen, although he placed them far below the devils, and yet every word of this address seems to sob with the anguish of his despair at the power of the school anti-Christ:—

Quum beatus Franciscus esset in capitulo generali apud Sanctam Mariam de Portiuncula … et fuerunt ibi quinque millia fratres, quamplures fratres sapientes et scientiati iverunt ad dominum Ostiensem qui erat ibidem, et dixerunt ei: “Domine, volumus ut suadetis fratri Francisco quod sequatur consilium fratrum sapientium et permittat se interdum duci ab eis.” Et allegabant regulam sancti Benedicti, Augustini et Bernardi qui docent sic et sic vivere ordinate. Quae omnia quum retulisset cardinalis beato Francisco per modum admoni admonitionis, beatus Franciscus, nihil sibi respondens, cepit ipsum per manum et duxit eum ad fratres congregatos in capitulo, et sic locutus est fratribus in fervore et virtute Spirit us sancti:—

“Fratres mei, fratres mei, Dominus vocavit me per viam simplicitatis et humilitatis, et bane viam ostendit mini in veritate pro me et pro illis qui volunt mini credere et imitari. Et ideo volo quod non nominetis mihi aliquam regulam neque sancti Benedicti neque sancti Augustini neque sancti Bernardi, neque aliquam viam et formam vivendi praeter illam quae mihi a Domino est ostensa misericorditer et donata. Et dixit mihi Dominus quod volebat me esse unum pauperem et stultum idiotam [magnum fatuum] in hoc mundo et noluit nos ducere per viam aliam quam per istam scientiam. Sed per vestram scientiam et sapientiam Deus vos confundet et ego confido in castallis Domini [idest dasmonibus] quod per ipsos puniet vos Deus et adhuc redibitis ad vestrum statum cum vituperio vestro velitis nolitis.”

When Saint Francis was at the General Chapter held at Sancta maris de Portiuncula … and five thousand brothers were present, A number of them who were schoolmen went to Cardinal Hugolino who was there, and said to him: “My lord, we want you to persuade Brother Francis to follow the council of the learned brothers, and sometimes let himself be guided by them.” And they suggested the rule of Saint Benedict or Augustine or Bernard who require their congregations to live so and so, by regulation. When the cardinal had repeated all this to Saint Francis by way of counsel, Saint Francis, making no answer, took him by the hand and led him to the brothers assembled in Chapter, and in the fervour and virtue of the Holy Ghost, spoke thus to the brothers:

“My brothers, my brothers, God has called me by way of simplicity and humility, and has shown me in verity this path for me and those who want to believe and follow me; so I want you to talk of no Rule to me, neither Saint Benedict nor Saint Augustine nor Saint Bernard, nor any way or form of Life whatever except that which God has mercifully pointed out and granted to me. And God said that he wanted me to be a pauper [poverello] and an idiot—a great fool—in this world, and would not lead us by any other path of science than this. But by your science and syllogisms God will confound you, and I trust in God’s warders, the devils, that through them God shall punish you, and you will yet come back to your proper station with shame, whether you will or no.”

The narration continues: “Tunc cardinalis obstupuit valde et nihil respondit. Et omnes fratres plurimum timuerunt.”

One feels that the reporter has not exaggerated a word; on the contrary, he softened the scandal, because in his time the Cardinal had gained his point, and Francis was dead. One can hear Francis beginning with some restraint, and gradually carried away by passion till he lost control of himself and his language: “‘God told me, with his own words, that he meant me to be a beggar and a great fool, and would not have us on any other terms; and as for your science, I trust in God’s devils who will beat you out of it, as you deserve.’ And the Cardinal was utterly dumbfounded and answered nothing; and all the brothers were scared to death.” The Cardinal Hugolino was a great schoolman, and Dominic was then founding the famous order in which the greatest of all doctors, Albertus Magnus, was about to begin his studies. One can imagine that the Cardinal “obstupuit valde,” and that Dominic felt shaken in his scheme of school instruction. For a single instant, in the flash of Francis’s passion, the whole mass of five thousand monks in a state of semi- ecstasy recoiled before the impassable gulf that opened between them and the Church.

No one was to blame—no one ever is to blame—because God wanted contradictory things, and man tried to carry out, as he saw them, God’s trusts. The schoolmen saw their duty in one direction; Francis saw his in another; and, apparently, when both lines had been carried, after such fashion as might be, to their utmost results, and five hundred years had been devoted to the effort, society declared both to be failures. Perhaps both may some day be revived, for the two paths seem to be the only roads that can exist, if man starts by taking for granted that there is an object to be reached at the end of his journey. The Church, embracing all mankind, had no choice but to march with caution, seeking God by every possible means of intellect and study. Francis, acting only for himself, could throw caution aside and trust implicitly in God, like the children who went on crusade. The two poles of social and political philosophy seem necessarily to be organization or anarchy; man’s intellect or the forces of nature. Francis saw God in nature, if he did not see nature in God; as the builders of Chartres saw the Virgin in their apse. Francis held the simplest and most childlike form of pantheism. He carried to its last point the mystical union with God, and its necessary consequence of contempt and hatred for human intellectual processes. Even Saint Bernard would have thought his ideas wanting in that “mesure” which the French mind so much prizes. At the same time we had best try, as innocently as may be, to realize that no final judgment has yet been pronounced, either by the Church or by society or by science, on either or any of these points; and until mankind finally settles to a certainty where it means to go, or whether it means to go anywhere,—what its object is, or whether it has an object,—Saint Francis may still prove to have been its ultimate expression. In that case, his famous chant— the “Cantico del Sole”—will be the last word of religion, as it was probably its first. Here it is—too sincere for translation:—

Cantico Del Sole

The verses, if verses they are, have little or nothing in common with the art of Saint Bernard or Adam of Saint-Victor. Whatever art they have, granting that they have any, seems to go back to the cave-dwellers and the age of stone. Compared with the naivete of the “Cantico del Sole,” the “Chanson de Roland” or the “Iliad” is a triumph of perfect technique. The value is not in the verse. The “Chant of the Sun” is another “Pons Seclorum”—or perhaps rather a “Pons Sanctorum”—over which only children and saints can pass. It is almost a paraphrase of the sermon to the birds. “Thank you, mi signore, for messor brother sun, in especial, who is your symbol; and for sister moon and the stars; and for brother wind and air and sky; and for sister water; and for brother fire; and for mother earth! We are all yours, mi signore! We are your children; your household; your feudal family! but we never heard of a Church. We are all varying forms of the same ultimate energy; shifting symbols of the same absolute unity; but our only unity, beneath you, is nature, not law! We thank you for no human institutions, even for those established in your name; but, with all our hearts we thank you for sister our mother Earth and its fruits and coloured flowers!”

Francis loved them all—the brothers and sisters—as intensely as a child loves the taste and smell of a peach, and as simply; but behind them remained one sister whom no one loved, and for whom, in his first verses, Francis had rendered no thanks. Only on his death- bed he added the lines of gratitude for “our sister death,” the long-sought, never-found sister of the schoolmen, who solved all philosophy and merged multiplicity in unity. The solution was at least simple; one must decide for one’s self, according to one’s personal standards, whether or not it is more sympathetic than that with which we have got lastly to grapple in the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Long before Saint Francis’s death, in 1226, the French mystics had exhausted their energies and the siecle had taken new heart. Society could not remain forever balancing between thought and act. A few gifted natures could absorb themselves in the absolute, but the rest lived for the day, and needed shelter and safety. So the Church bent again to its task, and bade the Spaniard Dominic arm new levies with the best weapons of science, and flaunt the name of Aristotle on the Church banners along with that of Saint Augustine. The year 1215, which happened to be the date of Magna Charta and other easily fixed events, like the birth of Saint Louis, may serve to mark the triumph of the schools. The pointed arch revelled at Rheims and the Gothic architects reached perfection at Amiens just as Francis died at Assisi and Thomas was born at Aquino. The Franciscan Order itself was swept with the stream that Francis tried to dam, and the great Franciscan schoolman, Alexander Hales, in 1222, four years before the death of Francis, joined the order and began lecturing as though Francis himself had lived only to teach scholastic philosophy.

The rival Dominican champion, Albertus Magnus, began his career a little later, in 1228. Born of the noble Swabian family of Bollstadt, in 1193, he drifted, like other schoolmen, to Paris, and the Rue Maitre Albert, opposite Notre Dame, still records his fame as a teacher there. Thence he passed to a school established by the order at Cologne, where he was lecturing with great authority in 1243 when the general superior of the order brought up from Italy a young man of the highest promise to be trained as his assistant.

Thomas, the new pupil, was born under the shadow of Monte Cassino in 1226 or 1227. His father, the Count of Aquino, claimed descent from the imperial line of Swabia; his mother, from the Norman princes of Sicily; so that in him the two most energetic strains in Europe met. His social rank was royal, and the order set the highest value on it. He took the vows in 1243, and went north at once to help Albertus at Cologne. In 1245, the order sent Albertus back to Paris, and Thomas with him. There he remained till 1248 when he was ordered to Cologne as assistant lecturer, and only four years afterwards, at twenty-five years old, he was made full professor at Paris. His industry and activity never rested till his death in 1274, not yet fifty years old, when he bequeathed to the Church a mass of manuscript that tourists will never know enough to estimate except by weight. His complete works, repeatedly printed, fill between twenty and thirty quarto volumes. For so famous a doctor, this is almost meagre. Unfortunately his greatest work, the “Summa Theologiae,” is unfinished—like Beauvais Cathedral.

Perhaps Thomas’s success was partly due to his memory which is said to have been phenomenal; for, in an age when cyclopaedias were unknown, a cyclopaedic memory must have counted for half the battle in these scholastic disputes where authority could be met only by authority; but in this case, memory was supported by mind. Outwardly Thomas was heavy and slow in manner, if it is true that his companions called him “the big dumb ox of Sicily”; and in fashionable or court circles he did not enjoy reputation for acute sense of humour. Saint Louis’s household offers a picture not wholly clerical, least of all among the King’s brothers and sons; and perhaps the dinner-table was not much more used then than now to abrupt interjections of theology into the talk about hunting and hounds; but however it happened, Thomas one day surprised the company by solemnly announcing—”I have a decisive argument against the Manicheans!” No wit or humour could be more to the point— between two saints that were to be—than a decisive argument against enemies of Christ, and one greatly regrets that the rest of the conversation was not reported, unless, indeed, it is somewhere in the twenty-eight quarto volumes; but it probably lacked humour for courtiers.

The twenty-eight quarto volumes must be closed books for us. None but Dominicans have a right to interpret them. No Franciscan—or even Jesuit—understands Saint Thomas exactly or explains him with authority. For summer tourists to handle these intricate problems in a theological spirit would be altogether absurd; but, for us, these great theologians were also architects who undertook to build a Church Intellectual, corresponding bit by bit to the Church Administrative, both expressing—and expressed by—the Church Architectural. Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and the rest, were artists; and if Saint Thomas happens to stand at their head as type, it is not because we choose him or understand him better than his rivals, but because his order chose him rather than his master Albert, to impose as authority on the Church; and because Pope John XXII canonized him on the ground that his decisions were miracles; and because the Council of Trent placed his “Summa” among the sacred books on their table; and because Innocent VI said that his doctrine alone was sure; and finally, because Leo XIII very lately made a point of declaring that, on the wings of Saint Thomas’s genius, human reason has reached the most sublime height it can probably ever attain.

Although the Franciscans, and, later, the Jesuits, have not always shown as much admiration as the Dominicans for the genius of Saint Thomas, and the mystics have never shown any admiration whatever for the philosophy of the schools, the authority of Leo XIII is final, at least on one point and the only one that concerns us. Saint Thomas is still alive and overshadows as many schools as he ever did; at all events, as many as the Church maintains. He has outlived Descartes and Leibnitz and a dozen other schools of philosophy more or less serious in their day. He has mostly outlived Hume, Voltaire, and the militant sceptics. His method is typical and classic; his sentences, when interpreted by the Church, seem, even to an untrained mind, intelligible and consistent; his Church Intellectual remains practically unchanged, and, like the Cathedral of Beauvais, erect, although the storms of six or seven centuries have prostrated, over and over again, every other social or political or juristic shelter. Compared with it, all modern systems are complex and chaotic, crowded with self-contradictions, anomalies, impracticable functions and outworn inheritances; but beyond all their practical shortcomings is their fragmentary character. An economic civilization troubles itself about the universe much as a hive of honey-bees troubles about the ocean, only as a region to be avoided. The hive of Saint Thomas sheltered God and man, mind and matter, the universe and the atom, the one and the multiple, within the walls of an harmonious home.

Theologians, like architects, were supposed to receive their Church complete in all its lines; they were modern judges who interpreted the laws but never invented it. Saint Thomas merely selected between disputed opinions, but he allowed himself to wander very far afield, indeed, in search of opinions to dispute. The field embraced all that existed, or might have existed, or could never exist. The immense structure rested on Aristotle and Saint Augustine at the last, but as a work of art it stood alone, like Rheims or Amiens Cathedral, as though it had no antecedents. Then, although, like Rheims, its style was never meant to suit modern housekeeping and is ill-seen by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, it reveals itself in its great mass and intelligence as a work of extraordinary genius; a system as admirably proportioned as any cathedral and as complete; a success not universal either in art or science.

Saint Thomas’s architecture, like any other work of art, is best studied by itself as though he created it outright; otherwise a tourist would never get beyond its threshold. Beginning with the foundation which is God and God’s active presence in His Church, Thomas next built God into the walls and towers of His Church, in the Trinity and its creation of mind and matter in time and space; then finally he filled the Church by uniting mind and matter in man, or man’s soul, giving to humanity a free will that rose, like the fleche, to heaven. The foundation—the structure—the congregation— are enough for students of art; his ideas of law, ethics, and politics; his vocabulary, his syllogisms, his arrangement are, like the drawings of Villard de Honnecourt’s sketch-book, curious but not vital. After the eleventh-century Romanesque Church of Saint Michael came the twelfth-century Transition Church of the Virgin, and all merged and ended at last in the thirteenth-century Gothic Cathedral of the Trinity. One wants to see the end.

The foundation of the Christian Church should be—as the simple deist might suppose—always the same, but Saint Thomas knew better. His foundation was Norman, not French; it spoke the practical architect who knew the mathematics of his art, and who saw that the foundation laid by Saint Bernard, Saint Victor, Saint Francis, the whole mystical, semi-mystical, Cartesian, Spinozan foundation, past or future, could not bear the weight of the structure to be put on it. Thomas began by sweeping the ground clear of them. God must be a concrete thing, not a human thought. God must be proved by the senses like any other concrete thing; “nihil est in intellectu quin prius fuerit in sensu”; even if Aristotle had not affirmed the law, Thomas would have discovered it. He admitted at once that God could not be taken for granted.

The admission, as every boy-student of the Latin Quarter knew, was exceedingly bold and dangerous. The greatest logicians commonly shrank from proving unity by multiplicity. Thomas was one of the greatest logicians that ever lived; the question had always been at the bottom of theology; he deliberately challenged what every one knew to be an extreme peril. If his foundation failed, his Church fell. Many critics have thought that he saw dangers four hundred years ahead. The time came, about 1650-1700, when Descartes, deserting Saint Thomas, started afresh with the idea of God as a concept, and at once found himself charged with a deity that contained the universe; nor did the Cartesians—until Spinoza made it clear—seem able or willing to see that the Church could not accept this deity because the Church required a God who caused the universe. The two deities destroyed each other. One was passive; the other active. Thomas warned Descartes of a logical quicksand which must necessarily swallow up any Church, and which Spinoza explored to the bottom. Thomas said truly that every true cause must be proved as a cause, not merely as a sequence; otherwise they must end in a universal energy or substance without causality—a source.

Whatever God might be to others, to His Church he could not be a sequence or a source. That point had been admitted by William of Champeaux, and made the division between Christians and infidels. On the other hand, if God must be proved as a true cause in order to warrant the Church or the State in requiring men to worship Him as Creator, the student became the more curious—if a churchman, the more anxious—to be assured that Thomas succeeded in his proof, especially since he did not satisfy Descartes and still less Pascal. That the mystics should be dissatisfied was natural enough, since they were committed to the contrary view, but that Descartes should desert was a serious blow which threw the French Church into consternation from which it never quite recovered.

“I see motion,” said Thomas: “I infer a motor!” This reasoning, which may be fifty thousand years old, is as strong as ever it was; stronger than some more modern inferences of science; but the average mechanic stated it differently. “I see motion,” he admitted: “I infer energy. I see motion everywhere; I infer energy everywhere.” Saint Thomas barred this door to materialism by adding: “I see motion; I cannot infer an infinite series of motors: I can only infer, somewhere at the end of the series, an intelligent, fixed motor.” The average modern mechanic might not dissent but would certainly hesitate. “No doubt!” he might say; “we can conduct our works as well on that as on any other theory, or as we could on no theory at all; but, if you offer it as proof, we can only say that we have not yet reduced all motion to one source or all energies to one law, much less to one act of creation, although we have tried our best.” The result of some centuries of experiment tended to raise rather than silence doubt, although, even in his own day, Thomas would have been scandalized beyond the resources of his Latin had Saint Bonaventure met him at Saint Louis’s dinner-table and complimented him, in the King’s hearing, on having proved, beyond all Franciscan cavils, that the Church Intellectual had necessarily but one first cause and creator—himself.

The Church Intellectual, like the Church Architectural, implied not one architect, but myriads, and not one fixed, intelligent architect at the end of the series, but a vanishing vista without a beginning at any definite moment; and if Thomas pressed his argument, the twentieth-century mechanic who should attend his conferences at the Sorbonne would be apt to say so. “What is the use of trying to argue me into it? Your inference may be sound logic, but is not proof. Actually we know less about it than you did. All we know is the thing we handle, and we cannot handle your fixed, intelligent prime motor. To your old ideas of form we have added what we call force, and we are rather further than ever from reducing the complex to unity. In fact, if you are aiming to convince me, I will tell you flatly that I know only the multiple, and have no use for unity at all.”

In the thirteenth century men did not depend so much as now on actual experiment, but the nominalist said in effect the same thing. Unity to him was a pure concept, and any one who thought it real would believe that a triangle was alive and could walk on its legs. Without proving unity, philosophers saw no way to prove God. They could only fall back on an attempt to prove that the concept of unity proved itself, and this phantasm drove the Cartesians to drop Thomas’s argument and assert that “the mere fact of having within us the idea of a thing more perfect than ourselves, proves the real existence of that thing.” Four hundred years earlier Saint Thomas had replied in advance that Descartes wanted to prove altogether too much, and Spinoza showed mathematically that Saint Thomas had been in the right. The finest religious mind of the time—Pascal— admitted it and gave up the struggle, like the mystics of Saint- Victor.

Thus some of the greatest priests and professors of the Church, including Duns Scotus himself, seemed not wholly satisfied that Thomas’s proof was complete, but most of them admitted that it was the safest among possible foundations, and that it showed, as architecture, the Norman temper of courage and caution. The Norman was ready to run great risks, but he would rather grasp too little than too much; he narrowed the spacing of his piers rather than spread them too wide for safe vaulting. Between Norman blood and Breton blood was a singular gap, as Renan and every other Breton has delighted to point out. Both Abelard and Descartes were Breton. The Breton seized more than he could hold; the Norman took less than he would have liked.

God, then, is proved. What the schools called form, what science calls energy, and what the intermediate period called the evidence of design, made the foundation of Saint Thomas’s cathedral. God is an intelligent, fixed prime motor—not a concept, or proved by concepts;—a concrete fact, proved by the senses of sight and touch. On that foundation Thomas built. The walls and vaults of his Church were more complex than the foundation; especially the towers were troublesome. Dogma, the vital purpose of the Church, required support. The most weighty dogma, the central tower of the Norman cathedral, was the Trinity, and between the Breton solution which was too heavy, and the French solution which was too light, the Norman Thomas found a way. Remembering how vehemently the French Church, under Saint Bernard, had protected the Trinity from all interference whatever, one turns anxiously to see what Thomas said about it; and unless one misunderstands him,—as is very likely, indeed, to be the case, since no one may even profess to understand the Trinity,—Thomas treated it as simply as he could. “God, being conscious of Himself, thinks Himself; his thought is Himself, his own reflection in the Verb—the so-called Son.” “Est in Deo intelligente seipsum Verbum Dei quasi Deus intellectus.” The idea was not new, and as ideas went it was hardly a mystery; but the next step was naif:—God, as a double consciousness, loves Himself, and realizes Himself in the Holy Ghost. The third side of the triangle is love or grace.

Many theologians have found fault with this treatment of the subject, which seemed open to every objection that had been made to Abelard, Gilbert de la Poree, or a thousand other logicians. They commonly asked why Thomas stopped the Deity’s self-realizations at love, or inside the triangle, since these realizations were real, not symbolic, and the square was at least as real as any other combination of line. Thomas replied that knowledge and will—the Verb and the Holy Ghost—were alone essential. The reply did not suit every one, even among doctors, but since Saint Thomas rested on this simple assertion, it is no concern of ours to argue the theology. Only as art, one can afford to say that the form is more architectural than religious; it would surely have been suspicious to Saint Bernard. Mystery there was none, and logic little. The concept of the Holy Ghost was childlike; for a pupil of Aristotle it was inadmissible, since it led to nothing and helped no step toward the universe.

Admitting, if necessary, the criticism, Thomas need not admit the blame, if blame there were. Every theologian was obliged to stop the pursuit of logic by force, before it dragged him into paganism and pantheism. Theology begins with the universal,—God,—who must be a reality, not a symbol; but it is forced to limit the process of God’s realizations somewhere, or the priest soon becomes a worshipper of God in sticks and stones. Theologists had commonly chosen, from time immemorial, to stop at the Trinity; within the triangle they were wholly realist; but they could not admit that God went on to realize Himself in the square and circle, or that the third member of the Trinity contained multiplicity, because the Trinity was a restless weight on the Church piers, which, like the central tower, constantly tended to fall, and needed to be lightened. Thomas gave it the lightest form possible, and there fixed it.

Then came his great tour-de-force, the vaulting of his broad nave; and, if ignorance is allowed an opinion, even a lost soul may admire the grand simplicity of Thomas’s scheme. He swept away the horizontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part of decoration. The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latest Gothic, where the eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of the nervures, from the rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above down to the church floor. In Thomas’s creation nothing intervened between God and his world; secondary causes become ornaments; only two forces, God and man, stood in the Church.

The chapter of Creation is so serious, and Thomas’s creation, like every other, is open to so much debate, that no student can allow another to explain it; and certainly no man whatever, either saint or sceptic, can ever yet have understood Creation aright unless divinely inspired; but whatever Thomas’s theory was as he meant it, he seems to be understood as holding that every created individual— animal, vegetable, or mineral—was a special, divine act. Whatever has form is created, and whatever is created takes form directly from the will of God, which is also his act. The intermediate universals—the secondary causes—vanish as causes; they are, at most, sequences or relations; all merge in one universal act of will; instantaneous, infinite, eternal.

Saint Thomas saw God, much as Milton saw him, resplendent in

That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherewith he wont, at Heaven’s high council-table,
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity;

except that, in Thomas’s thought, the council-table was a work- table, because God did not take counsel; He was an act. The Trinity was an infinite possibility of will; nothing within but

The baby image of the giant mass
Of things to come at large.

Neither time nor space, neither matter nor mind, not even force existed, nor could any intelligence conceive how, even though they should exist, they could be united in the lowest association. A crystal was as miraculous as Socrates. Only abstract force, or what the schoolmen called form, existed undeveloped from eternity, like the abstract line in mathematics.

Fifty or a hundred years before Saint Thomas settled the Church dogma, a monk of Citeaux or some other abbey, a certain Alain of Lille, had written a Latin poem, as abstruse an allegory as the best, which had the merit of painting the scene of man’s creation as far as concerned the mechanical process much as Thomas seems to have seen it. M. Haureau has printed an extract (vol. I, p. 352). Alain conceded to the weakness of human thought, that God was working in time and space, or rather on His throne in heaven, when nature, proposing to create a new and improved man, sent Reason and Prudence up to ask Him for a soul to fit the new body. Having passed through various adventures and much scholastic instruction, the messenger Prudence arrived, after having dropped her dangerous friend Reason by the way. The request was respectfully presented to God, and favourably received. God promised the soul, and at once sent His servant Noys—Thought—to the storehouse of ideas, to choose it:—

Ipse Deus rem prosequitur, producit in actum
Quod pepigit. Vocat ergo Noym quae praepaert illi
Numinis exemplar, humanae mentis Idaeam,
Ad cujus formam formetur spiritus omni
Munere virtutum dives, qui, nube caducae
Carnis odumbratus veletur corporis umbra.
Tunc Noys ad regis praeceptum singula rerum

Vestigans exempla, novam perquirit Idaeam.
Inter tot species, speciem vix invenit illam
Quam petit; offertur tandem quaesita petenti
. Hanc formam Noys ipsa Deo praesentat ut ejus
Formet ad exemplar animam. Tunc ille sigillum
Sumit, ad ipsius formae vestigia formam
Dans animae, vultum qualem deposcit Idaea
Imprimit exemplo; totas usurpat imago
Exemplaris opes, loquiturque figura sigillum.

God Himself pursues the task, and sets in act
What He promised. So He calls Noys to seek
A copy of His will, Idea of the human mind,
To whose form the spirit should be shaped,
Rich in every virtue, which, veiled in garb
Of frail flesh, is to be hidden in a shade of body,
Then Noys, at the King’s order, turning one by one

Each sample, seeks the new Idea.
Among so many images she hardly finds that
Which she seeks; at last the sought one appears.
This form Noys herself brings to God for Him
To form a soul to its pattern. He takes the seal,
And gives form to the soul after the model
Of the form itself, stamping on the sample
The figure such as the Idea requires. The seal
Covers the whole field, and the impression expresses the stamp.

The translation is probably full of mistakes; indeed, one is permitted to doubt whether Alain himself accurately understood the process; but in substance he meant that God contained a storehouse of ideas, and stamped each creation with one of these forms. The poets used a variety of figures to help out their logic, but that of the potter and his pot was one of the most common. Omar Khayyam was using it at the same time with Alain of Lille, but with a difference: for his pot seems to have been matter alone, and his soul was the wine it received from God; while Alain’s soul seems to have been the form and not the contents of the pot.

The figure matters little. In any case God’s act was the union of mind with matter by the same act or will which created both. No intermediate cause or condition intervened; no secondary influence had anything whatever to do with the result. Time had nothing to do with it. Every individual that has existed or shall exist was created by the same instantaneous act, for all time. “When the question regards the universal agent who produces beings and time, we cannot consider him as acting now and before, according to the succession of time.” God emanated time, force, matter, mind, as He might emanate gravitation, not as a part of His substance but as an energy of His will, and maintains them in their activity by the same act, not by a new one. Every individual is a part of the direct act; not a secondary outcome. The soul has no father or mother. Of all errors one of the most serious is to suppose that the soul descends by generation. “Having life and action of its own, it subsists without the body; … it must therefore be produced directly, and since it is not a material substance, it cannot be produced by way of generation; it must necessarily be created by God. Consequently to suppose that the intelligence [or intelligent soul] is the effect of generation is to suppose that it is not a pure and simple substance, but corruptible like the body. It is therefore heresy to say that this soul is transmitted by generation.” What is true of the soul should be true of all other form, since no form is a material substance. The utmost possible relation between any two individuals is that God may have used the same stamp or mould for a series of creations, and especially for the less spiritual: “God is the first model for all things. One may also say that, among His creatures some serve as types or models for others because there are some which are made in the image of others”; but generation means sequence, not cause. The only true cause is God. Creation is His sole act, in which no second cause can share.” Creation is more perfect and loftier than generation, because it aims at producing the whole substance of the being, though it starts from absolute nothing.”

Thomas Aquinas, when he pleased, was singularly lucid, and on this point he was particularly positive. The architect insisted on the controlling idea of his structure. The Church was God, and its lines excluded interference. God and the Church embraced all the converging lines of the universe, and the universe showed none but lines that converged. Between God and man, nothing whatever intervened. The individual was a compound of form, or soul, and matter; but both were always created together, by the same act, out of nothing. “Simpliciter fatendum est animas simul cum corporibus creari et infundi.” It must be distinctly understood that souls were not created before bodies, but that they were created at the same time as the bodies they animate. Nothing whatever preceded this union of two substances which did not exist: “Creatio est productio alicujus rei secundum suam totam substantiam, nullo praesupposito, quod sit vel increatum vel ab aliquo creatum.” Language can go no further in exclusion of every possible preceding, secondary, or subsequent cause, “Productio universalis entis a Deo non est motus nec mutatio, sed est quaedam simplex emanatio.” The whole universe is, so to speak, a simple emanation from God.

The famous junction, then, is made!—that celebrated fusion of the universal with the individual, of unity with multiplicity, of God and nature, which had broken the neck of every philosophy ever invented; which had ruined William of Champeaux and was to ruin Descartes; this evolution of the finite from the infinite was accomplished. The supreme triumph was as easily effected by Thomas Aquinas as it was to be again effected, four hundred years later, by Spinoza. He had merely to assert the fact: “It is so! it cannot be otherwise!” “For the thousandth and hundred-thousandth time;—what is the use of discussing this prime motor, this Spinozan substance, any longer? We know it is there!” that—as Professor Haeckel very justly repeats for the millionth time—is enough.

One point, however, remained undetermined. The Prime Motor and His action stood fixed, and no one wished to disturb Him; but this was not the point that had disturbed William of Champeaux. Abelard’s question still remained to be answered. How did Socrates differ from Plato—Judas from John—Thomas Aquinas from Professor Haeckel? Were they, in fact, two, or one? What made an individual? What was God’s centimetre measure? The abstract form or soul which existed as a possibility in God, from all time,—was it one or many? To the Church, this issue overshadowed all else, for, if humanity was one and not multiple, the Church, which dealt only with individuals, was lost. To the schools, also, the issue was vital, for, if the soul or form was already multiple from the first, unity was lost; the ultimate substance and prime motor itself became multiple; the whole issue was reopened.

To the consternation of the Church, and even of his own order, Thomas, following closely his masters, Albert and Aristotle, asserted that the soul was measured by matter. “Division occurs in substances in ratio of quantity, as Aristotle says in his ‘Physics.’ And so dimensional quantity is a principle of individuation.” The soul is a fluid absorbed by matter in proportion to the absorptive power of the matter. The soul is an energy existing in matter proportionately to the dimensional quantity of the matter. The soul is a wine, greater or less in quantity according to the size of the cup. In our report of the great debate of 1110, between Champeaux and Abelard, we have seen William persistently tempting Abelard to fall into this admission that matter made the man;—that the universal equilateral triangle became an individual if it were shaped in metal, the matter giving it reality which mere form could not give; and Abelard evading the issue as though his life depended on it. In fact, had Abelard dared to follow Aristotle into what looked like an admission that Socrates and Plato were identical as form and differed only in weight, his life might have been the forfeit. How Saint Thomas escaped is a question closely connected with the same inquiry about Saint Francis of Assisi. A Church which embraced, with equal sympathy, and within a hundred years, the Virgin, Saint Bernard, William of Champeaux and the School of Saint- Victor, Peter the Venerable, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure, was more liberal than any modern State can afford to be. Radical contradictions the State may perhaps tolerate, though hardly, but never embrace or profess. Such elasticity long ago vanished from human thought.

Yet only Dominicans believe that the Church adopted this law of individualization, or even assented to it. If M. Jourdain is right, Thomas was quickly obliged to give it another form:—that, though all souls belonged to the same species, they differed in their aptitudes for uniting with particular bodies. “This soul is commensurate with this body, and not with that other one.” The idea is double; for either the souls individualized themselves, and Thomas abandoned his doctrine of their instantaneous creation, with the bodies, out of nothing; or God individualized them in the act of creation, and matter had nothing to do with it. The difficulty is no concern of ours, but the great scholars who took upon themselves to explain it made it worse, until at last one gathers only that Saint Thomas held one of three views: either the soul of humanity was individualized by God, or it individualized itself, or it was divided by ratio of quantity, that is, by matter. This amounts to saying that one knows nothing about it, which we knew before and may admit with calmness; but Thomas Aquinas was not so happily placed, between the Church and the schools. Humanity had a form common to itself, which made it what it was. By some means this form was associated with matter; in fact, matter was only known as associated with form. If, then, God, by an instantaneous act, created matter and gave it form according to the dimensions of the matter, innocent ignorance might infer that there was, in the act of God, one world- soul and one world-matter, which He united in different proportions to make men and things. Such a doctrine was fatal to the Church. No greater heresy could be charged against the worst Arab or Jew, and Thomas was so well aware of his danger that he recoiled from it with a vehemence not at all in keeping with his supposed phlegm. With feverish eagerness to get clear of such companions, he denied and denounced, in all companies, in season and out of season, the idea that intellect was one and the same for all men, differing only with the quantity of matter it accompanied. He challenged the adherent of such a doctrine to battle; “let him take the pen if he dares!” No one dared, seeing that even Jews enjoyed a share of common sense and had seen some of their friends burn at the stake not very long before for such opinions, not even openly maintained; while uneducated people, who are perhaps incapable of receiving intellect at all, but for whose instruction and salvation the great work of Saint Thomas and his scholars must chiefly exist, cannot do battle because they cannot understand Thomas’s doctrine of matter and form which to them seems frank pantheism.

So it appeared to Duns Scotus also, if one may assert in the Doctor Subtilis any opinion without qualification. Duns began his career only about 1300, after Thomas’s death, and stands, therefore, beyond our horizon; but he is still the pride of the Franciscan Order and stands second in authority to the great Dominican alone. In denying Thomas’s doctrine that matter individualizes mind, Duns laid himself open to the worse charge of investing matter with a certain embryonic, independent, shadowy soul of its own. Scot’s system, compared with that of Thomas, tended toward liberty. Scot held that the excess of power in Thomas’s prime motor neutralized the power of his secondary causes, so that these appeared altogether superfluous. This is a point that ought to be left to the Church to decide, but there can be no harm in quoting, on the other hand, the authority of some of Scot’s critics within the Church, who have thought that his doctrine tended to deify matter and to keep open the road to Spinoza. Narrow and dangerous was the border-line always between pantheism and materialism, and the chief interest of the schools was in finding fault with each other’s paths.

The opinions in themselves need not disturb us, although the question is as open to dispute as ever it was and perhaps as much disputed; but the turn of Thomas’s mind is worth study. A century or two later, his passion to be reasonable, scientific, architectural would have brought him within range of the Inquisition. Francis of Assisi was not more archaic and cave-dweller than Thomas of Aquino was modern and scientific. In his effort to be logical he forced his Deity to be as logical as himself, which hardly suited Omnipotence. He hewed the Church dogmas into shape as though they were rough stones. About no dogma could mankind feel interest more acute than about that of immortality, which seemed to be the single point vitally necessary for any Church to prove and define as clearly as light itself. Thomas trimmed down the soul to half its legitimate claims as an immortal being by insisting that God created it from nothing in the same act or will by which He created the body and united the two in time and space. The soul existed as form for the body, and had no previous existence. Logic seemed to require that when the body died and dissolved, after the union which had lasted, at most, only an instant or two of eternity, the soul, which fitted that body and no other, should dissolve with it. In that case the Church dissolved, too, since it had no reason for existence except the soul. Thomas met the difficulty by suggesting that the body’s form might take permanence from the matter to which it gave form. That matter should individualize mind was itself a violent wrench of logic, but that it should also give permanence—the one quality it did not possess—to this individual mind seemed to many learned doctors a scandal. Perhaps Thomas meant to leave the responsibility on the Church, where it belonged as a matter not of logic but of revealed truth. At all events, this treatment of mind and matter brought him into trouble which few modern logicians would suspect.

The human soul having become a person by contact with matter, and having gained eternal personality by the momentary union, was finished, and remains to this day for practical purposes unchanged; but the angels and devils, a world of realities then more real than man, were never united with matter, and therefore could not be persons. Thomas admitted and insisted that the angels, being immaterial,—neither clothed in matter, nor stamped on it, nor mixed with it,—were universals; that is, each was a species in himself, a class, or perhaps what would be now called an energy, with no other individuality than he gave himself.

The idea seems to modern science reasonable enough. Science has to deal, for example, with scores of chemical energies which it knows little about except that they always seem to be constant to the same conditions; but every one knows that in the particular relation of mind to matter the battle is as furious as ever. The soul has always refused to live in peace with the body. The angels, too, were always in rebellion. They insisted on personality, and the devils even more obstinately than the angels. The dispute was—and is—far from trifling. Mind would rather ignore matter altogether. In the thirteenth century mind did, indeed, admit that matter was something,—which it quite refuses to admit in the twentieth,—but treated it as a nuisance to be abated. To the pure in spirit one argued in vain that spirit must compromise; that nature compromised; that God compromised; that man himself was nothing but a somewhat clumsy compromise. No argument served. Mind insisted on absolute despotism. Schoolmen as well as mystics would not believe that matter was what it seemed,—if, indeed, it existed;—unsubstantial, shifty, shadowy; changing with incredible swiftness into dust, gas, flame; vanishing in mysterious lines of force into space beyond hope of recovery; whirled about in eternity and infinity by that mind, form, energy, or thought which guides and rules and tyrannizes and is the universe. The Church wanted to be pure spirit; she regarded matter with antipathy as something foul, to be held at arms’ length lest it should stain and corrupt the soul; the most she would willingly admit was that mind and matter might travel side by side, like a doubleheaded comet, on parallel lines that never met, with a preestablished harmony that existed only in the prime motor.

Thomas and his master Albert were almost alone in imposing on the Church the compromise so necessary for its equilibrium. The balance of matter against mind was the same necessity in the Church Intellectual as the balance of thrusts in the arch of the Gothic cathedral. Nowhere did Thomas show his architectural obstinacy quite so plainly as in thus taking matter under his protection. Nothing would induce him to compromise with the angels. He insisted on keeping man wholly apart, as a complex of energies in which matter shared equally with mind. The Church must rest firmly on both. The angels differed from other beings below them’ precisely because they were immaterial and impersonal. Such rigid logic outraged the spiritual Church.

Perhaps Thomas’s sudden death in 1274 alone saved him from the fate of Abelard, but it did not save his doctrine. Two years afterwards, in 1276, the French and English churches combined to condemn it. Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, presided over the French Synod; Robert Kilwardeby, of the Dominican Order, Archbishop of Canterbury, presided over the Council at Oxford. The synods were composed of schoolmen as well as churchmen, and seem to have been the result of a serious struggle for power between the Dominican and Franciscan Orders. Apparently the Church compromised between them by condemning the errors of both. Some of these errors, springing from Alexander Hales and his Franciscan schools, were in effect the foundation of another Church. Some were expressly charged against Brother Thomas. “Contra fratrem Thomam” the councils forbade teaching that—”quia intelligentiae non habent materiam, Deus non potest plures ejusdem speciei facere; et quod materia non est in angelis”; further, the councils struck at the vital centre of Thomas’s system—”quod Deus non potest individua multiplicare sub una specie sine materia”; and again in its broadest form,—”quod formae non accipiunt divisionem nisi secundam materiam.” These condemnations made a great stir. Old Albertus Magnus, who was the real victim of attack, fought for himself and for Thomas. After a long and earnest effort, the Thomists rooted out opposition in the order, and carried their campaign to Rome. After fifty years of struggle, by use of every method known in Church politics, the Dominican Order, in 1323, caused John XXII to canonize Thomas and in effect affirm his doctrine.

The story shows how modern, how heterodox, how material, how altogether new and revolutionary the system of Saint Thomas seemed at first even in the schools; but that was the affair of the Church and a matter of pure theology. We study only his art. Step by step, stone by stone, we see him build his church-building like a stonemason, “with the care that the twelfth-century architects put into” their work, as Viollet-le-Duc saw some similar architect at Rouen, building the tower of Saint-Romain: “He has thrown over his work the grace and finesse, the study of detail, the sobriety in projections, the perfect harmony,” which belongs to his school, and yet he was rigidly structural and Norman. The foundation showed it; the elevation, which is God, developed it; the vaulting, with its balance of thrusts in mind and matter, proved it; but he had still the hardest task in art, to model man.

The cathedral, then, is built, and God is built into it, but, thus far, God is there alone, filling it all, and maintains the equilibrium by balancing created matter separately against created mind. The proportions of the building are superb; nothing so lofty, so large in treatment, so true in scale, so eloquent of multiplicity in unity, has ever been conceived elsewhere; but it was the virtue or the fault of superb structures like Bourges and Amiens and the Church universal that they seemed to need man more than man needed them; they were made for crowds, for thousands and tens of thousands of human beings; for the whole human race, on its knees, hungry for pardon and love. Chartres needed no crowd, for it was meant as a palace of the Virgin, and the Virgin filled it wholly; but the Trinity made their church for no other purpose than to accommodate man, and made man for no other purpose than to fill their church; if man failed to fill it, the church and the Trinity seemed equally failures. Empty, Bourges and Beauvais are cold; hardly as religious as a wayside cross; and yet, even empty, they are perhaps more religious than when filled with cattle and machines. Saint Thomas needed to fill his Church with real men, and although he had created his own God for that special purpose, the task was, as every boy knew by heart, the most difficult that Omnipotence had dealt with.

God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man? The schools answered: Man is a rational animal! So was apparently a dog, or a bee, or a beaver, none of which seemed to need churches. Modern science, with infinite effort, has discovered and announced that man is a bewildering complex of energies, which helps little to explain his relations with the ultimate substance or energy or prime motor whose existence both science and schoolmen admit; which science studies in laboratories and religion worships in churches. The man whom God created to fill his Church, must be an energy independent of God; otherwise God filled his own Church with his own energy. Thus far, the God of Saint Thomas was alone in His Church. The beings He had created out of nothing—Omar’s pipkins of clay and shape—stood against the walls, waiting to receive the wine of life, a life of their own.

Of that life, energy, will, or wine,—whatever the poets or professors called it,—God was the only cause, as He was also the immediate cause, and support. Thomas was emphatic on that point. God is the cause of energy as the sun is the cause of colour: “prout sol dicitur causa manifestationis coloris.” He not only gives forms to his pipkins, or energies to his agents, but He also maintains those forms in being: “dat formas creaturis agentibus et eas tenet in esse.” He acts directly, not through secondary causes, on everything and every one: “Deus in omnibus intime operatur.” If, for an instant, God’s action, which is also His will, were to stop, the universe would not merely fall to pieces, but would vanish, and must then be created anew from nothing: “Quia non habet radicem in aere, statim cessat lumen, cessante actione solis. Sic autem se habet omnis creatura ad Deum sicut aer ad solem illuminantem.” God radiates energy as the sun radiates light, and “the whole fabric of nature would return to nothing” if that radiation ceased even for an instant. Everything is created by one instantaneous, eternal, universal act of will, and by the same act is maintained in being.

Where, then,—in what mysterious cave outside of creation,—could man, and his free will, and his private world of responsibilities and duties, lie hidden? Unless man was a free agent in a world of his own beyond constraint, the Church was a fraud, and it helped little to add that the State was another. If God was the sole and immediate cause and support of everything in His creation, God was also the cause of its defects, and could not—being Justice and Goodness in essence—hold man responsible for His own omissions. Still less could the State or Church do it in His name.

Whatever truth lies in the charge that the schools discussed futile questions by faulty methods, one cannot decently deny that in this case the question was practical and the method vital. Theist or atheist, monist or anarchist must all admit that society and science are equally interested with theology in deciding whether the universe is one or many, a harmony or a discord. The Church and State asserted that it was a harmony, and that they were its representatives. They say so still. Their claim led to singular but unavoidable conclusions, with which society has struggled for seven hundred years, and is still struggling.

Freedom could not exist in nature, or even in God, after the single, unalterable act or will which created. The only possible free will was that of God before the act. Abelard with his rigid logic averred that God had no freedom; being Himself whatever is most perfect, He produced necessarily the most perfect possible world. Nothing seemed more logical, but if God acted necessarily, His world must also be of necessity the only possible product of His act, and the Church became an impertinence, since man proved only fatuity by attempting to interfere. Thomas dared not disturb the foundations of the Church, and therefore began by laying down the law that God— previous to His act—could choose, and had chosen, whatever scheme of creation He pleased, and that the harmony of the actual scheme proved His perfections. Thus he saved God’s free will.

This philosophical apse would have closed the lines and finished the plan of his church-choir had the universe not shown some divergencies or discords needing to be explained. The student of the Latin Quarter was then harder to convince than now that God was Infinite Love and His world a perfect harmony, when perfect love and harmony showed them, even in the Latin Quarter, and still more in revealed truth, a picture of suffering, sorrow, and death; plague, pestilence, and famine; inundations, droughts, and frosts; catastrophes world-wide and accidents in corners; cruelty, perversity, stupidity, uncertainty, insanity; virtue begetting vice; vice working for good; happiness without sense, selfishness without gain, misery without cause, and horrors undefined. The students in public dared not ask, as Voltaire did, “avec son hideux sourire,” whether the Lisbon earthquake was the final proof of God’s infinite goodness, but in private they used the argumentum ad personam divinam freely enough, and when the Church told them that evil did not exist, the ribalds laughed.

Saint Augustine certainly tempted Satan when he fastened the Church to this doctrine that evil is only the privation of good, an amissio boni; and that good alone exists. The point was infinitely troublesome. Good was order, law, unity. Evil was disorder, anarchy, multiplicity. Which was truth? The Church had committed itself to the dogma that order and unity were the ultimate truth, and that the anarchist should be burned. She could do nothing else, and society supported her—still supports her; yet the Church, who was wiser than the State, had always seen that Saint Augustine dealt with only half the question. She knew that evil might be an excess of good as well as absence of it; that good leads to evil, evil to good; and that, as Pascal says, “three degrees of polar elevation upset all jurisprudence; a meridian decides truth; fundamental laws change; rights have epochs. Pleasing Justice! bounded by a river or a mountain! truths on this side the Pyrenees! errors beyond!” Thomas conceded that God Himself, with the best intentions, might be the source of evil, and pleaded only that his action might in the end work benefits. He could offer no proof of it, but he could assume as probable a plan of good which became the more perfect for the very reason that it allowed great liberty in detail.

One hardly feels Saint Thomas here in all his force. He offers suggestion rather than proof;—apology—the weaker because of obvious effort to apologize—rather than defence, for Infinite Goodness, Justice, and Power; scoffers might add that he invented a new proof ab defectu, or argument for proving the perfection of a machine by the number of its imperfections; but at all events, society has never done better by way of proving its right to enforce morals or unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can only assert force. Rigid theology went much further. In God’s providence, man was as nothing. With a proper sense of duty, every solar system should be content to suffer, if thereby the efficiency of the Milky Way were improved. Such theology shocked Saint Thomas, who never wholly abandoned man in order to exalt God. He persistently brought God and man together, and if he erred, the Church rightly pardons him because he erred on the human side. Whenever the path lay through the valley of despair he called God to his aid, as though he felt the moral obligation of the Creator to help His creation.

At best the vision of God, sitting forever at His work-table, willing the existence of mankind exactly as it is, while conscious that, among these myriad arbitrary creations of His will, hardly one in a million could escape temporary misery or eternal damnation, was not the best possible background for a Church, as the Virgin and the Saviour frankly admitted by taking the foreground; but the Church was not responsible for it. Mankind could not admit an anarchical—a dual or a multiple—universe. The world was there, staring them in the face, with all its chaotic conditions, and society insisted on its unity in self-defence. Society still insists on treating it as unity, though no longer affecting logic. Society insists on its free will, although free will has never been explained to the satisfaction of any but those who much wish to be satisfied, and although the words in any common sense implied not unity but duality in creation. The Church had nothing to do with inventing this riddle—the oldest that fretted mankind.

Apart from all theological interferences,—fall of Adam or fault of Eve, Atonement, Justification, or Redemption,—either the universe was one, or it was two, or it was many; either energy was one, seen only in powers of itself, or it was several; either God was harmony, or He was discord. With practical unanimity, mankind rejected the dual or multiple scheme; it insisted on unity. Thomas took the question as it was given him. The unity was full of defects; he did not deny them; but he claimed that they might be incidents, and that the admitted unity might even prove their beneficence. Granting this enormous concession, he still needed a means of bringing into the system one element which vehemently refused to be brought:—that is, man himself, who insisted that the universe was a unit, but that he was a universe; that energy was one, but that he was another energy; that God was omnipotent, but that man was free. The contradiction had always existed, exists still, and always must exist, unless man either admits that he is a machine, or agrees that anarchy and chaos are the habit of nature, and law and order its accident. The agreement may become possible, but it was not possible in the thirteenth century nor is it now. Saint Thomas’s settlement could not be a simple one or final, except for practical use, but it served, and it holds good still.

No one ever seriously affirmed the literal freedom of will. Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible only to himself. This principle is the philosophical foundation of anarchism, and, for anything that science has yet proved, may be the philosophical foundation of the universe; but it is fatal to all society and is especially hostile to the State. Perhaps the Church of the thirteenth century might have found a way to use even this principle for a good purpose; certainly, the influence of Saint Bernard was sufficiently unsocial and that of Saint Francis was sufficiently unselfish to conciliate even anarchists of the militant class; but Saint Thomas was working for the Church and the

State, not for the salvation of souls, and his chief object was to repress anarchy. The theory of absolute free will never entered his mind, more than the theory of material free will would enter the mind of an architect. The Church gave him no warrant for discussing the subject in such a sense. In fact, the Church never admitted free will, or used the word when it could be avoided. In Latin, the term used was “liberum arbitrium,”—free choice,—and in French to this day it remains in strictness “libre arbitre” still. From Saint Augustine downwards the Church was never so unscientific as to admit of liberty beyond the faculty of choosing between paths, some leading through the Church and some not, but all leading to the next world; as a criminal might be allowed the liberty of choosing between the guillotine and the gallows, without infringing on the supremacy of the judge.

Thomas started from that point, already far from theoretic freedom. “We are masters of our acts,” he began, “in the sense that we can choose such and such a thing; now, we have not to choose our end, but the means that relate to it, as Aristotle says.” Unfortunately, even this trenchant amputation of man’s free energies would not accord with fact or with logic. Experience proved that man’s power of choice in action was very far from absolute, and logic seemed to require that every choice should have some predetermining cause which decided the will to act. Science affirmed that choice was not free,—could not be free,—without abandoning the unity of force and the foundation of law. Society insisted that its choice must be left free, whatever became of science or unity. Saint Thomas was required to illustrate the theory of “liberum arbitrium” by choosing a path through these difficulties, where path there was obviously none.

Thomas’s method of treating this problem was sure to be as scientific as the vaulting of a Gothic arch. Indeed, one follows it most easily by translating his school-vocabulary into modern technical terms. With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomas might now be written thus:—

By the term God, is meant a prime motor which supplies all energy to the universe, and acts directly on man as well as on all other creatures, moving him as a mechanical motor might do; but man, being specially provided with an organism more complex than the organisms of other creatures, enjoys an exceptional capacity for reflex action,—a power of reflection,—which enables him within certain limits to choose between paths; and this singular capacity is called free choice or free will. Of course, the reflection is not choice, and though a man’s mind reflected as perfectly as the facets of a lighthouse lantern, it would never reach a choice without an energy which impels it to act.

Now let us read Saint Thomas:—

Some kind of an agent is required to determine one’s choice; that agent is reflection. Man reflects, then, in order to learn what choice to make between the two acts which offer themselves. But reflection is, in its turn, a faculty of doing opposite things, for we can reflect or not reflect; and we are no further forward than before. One cannot carry back this process infinitely, for in that case one would never decide. The fixed point is not in man, since we meet in him, as a being apart by himself, only the alternative faculties; we must, therefore, recur to the intervention of an exterior agent who shall impress on our will a movement capable of putting an end to its hesitations:—That exterior agent is nothing else than God!

The scheme seems to differ little, and unwillingly, from a system of dynamics as modern as the dynamo. Even in the prime motor, from the moment of action, freedom of will vanished. Creation was not successive; it was one instantaneous thought and act, identical with the will, and was complete and unchangeable from end to end, including time as one of its functions. Thomas was as clear as possible on that point:—”Supposing God wills anything in effect; He cannot will not to will it, because His will cannot change.” He wills that some things shall be contingent and others necessary, but He wills in the same act that the contingency shall be necessary. “They are contingent because God has willed them to be so, and with this object has subjected them to causes which are so.” In the same way He wills that His creation shall develop itself in time and space and sequence, but He creates these conditions as well as the events. He creates the whole, in one act, complete, unchangeable, and it is then unfolded like a rolling panorama, with its predetermined contingencies.

Man’s free choice—liberum arbitrium—falls easily into place as a predetermined contingency. God is the first cause, and acts in all secondary causes directly; but while He acts mechanically on the rest of creation,—as far as is known,—He acts freely at one point, and this free action remains free as far as it extends on that line. Man’s freedom derives from this source, but it is simply apparent, as far as he is a cause; it is a reflex action determined by a new agency of the first cause.

However abstruse these ideas may once have sounded, they are far from seeming difficult in comparison with modern theories of energy. Indeed, measured by that standard, the only striking feature of Saint Thomas’s motor is its simplicity. Thomas’s prime motor was very powerful, and its lines of energy were infinite. Among these infinite lines, a certain group ran to the human race, and, as long as the conduction was perfect, each man acted mechanically. In cases where the current, for any reason, was for a moment checked,—that is to say, produced the effect of hesitation or reflection in the mind,—the current accumulated until it acquired power to leap the obstacle. As Saint Thomas expressed it, the Prime Motor, Who was nothing else than God, intervened to decide the channel of the current. The only difference between man and a vegetable was the reflex action of the complicated mirror which was called mind, and the mark of mind was reflective absorption or choice. The apparent freedom was an illusion arising from the extreme delicacy of the machine, but the motive power was in fact the same—that of God.

This exclusion of what men commonly called freedom was carried still further in the process of explaining dogma. Supposing the conduction to be insufficient for a given purpose; a purpose which shall require perfect conduction? Under ordinary circumstances, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the conductor will be burned out, so to speak; condemned, and thrown away. This is the case with most human beings. Yet there are cases where the conductor is capable of receiving an increase of energy from the prime motor, which enables it to attain the object aimed at. In dogma, this store of reserved energy is technically called Grace. In the strict, theological sense of the word, as it is used by Saint Thomas, the exact, literal meaning of Grace is “a motion which the Prime Motor, as a supernatural cause, produces in the soul, perfecting free will.” It is a reserved energy, which comes to aid and reinforce the normal energy of the battery.

To religious minds this scientific inversion of solemn truths seems, and is, sacrilege; but Thomas’s numerous critics in the Church have always brought precisely this charge against his doctrine, and are doing so still. They insist that he has reduced God to a mechanism and man to a passive conductor of force. He has left, they say, nothing but God in the universe. The terrible word which annihilates all other philosophical systems against which it is hurled, has been hurled freely against his for six hundred years and more, without visibly affecting the Church; and yet its propriety seems, to the vulgar, beyond reasonable cavil. To Father de Regnon, of the extremely learned and intelligent Society of Jesus, the difference between pantheism and Thomism reduces itself to this: “Pantheism, starting from the notion of an infinite substance which is the plenitude of being, concludes that there can exist no other beings than THE being; no other realities than the absolute reality. Thomism, starting from the efficacy of the first cause, tends to reduce more and more the efficacy of second causes, and to replace it by a passivity which receives without producing, which is determined without determining.” To students of architecture, who know equally little about pantheism and about Thomism,—or, indeed, for that matter, about architecture, too,—the quality that rouses most surprise in Thomism is its astonishingly scientific method. The Franciscans and the Jesuits call it pantheism, but science, too, is pantheism, or has till very recently been wholly pantheistic. Avowedly science has aimed at nothing but the reduction of multiplicity to unity, and has excommunicated, as though it were itself a Church, any one who doubted or disputed its object, its method, or its results. The effort is as evident and quite as laborious in modern science, starting as it does from multiplicity, as in Thomas Aquinas, who started from unity; and it is necessarily less successful, for its true aims, as far as it is science and not disguised religion, were equally attained by reaching infinite complexity; but the assertion or assumption of ultimate unity has characterized the Law of Energy as emphatically as it has characterized the definition of God in theology. If it is a reproach to Saint Thomas, it is equally a reproach to Clerk-Maxwell. In truth, it is what men most admire in both—the power of broad and lofty generalization.

Under any conceivable system the process of getting God and man under the same roof—of bringing two independent energies under the same control—required a painful effort, as science has much cause to know. No doubt, many good Christians and some heretics have been shocked at the tour de force by which they felt themselves suddenly seized, bound hand and foot, attached to each other, and dragged into the Church, without consent or consultation. To religious mystics, whose scepticism concerned chiefly themselves and their own existence, Saint Thomas’s man seemed hardly worth herding, at so much expense and trouble, into a Church where he was not eager to go. True religion felt the nearness of God without caring to see the mechanism. Mystics like Saint Bernard, Saint Francis, Saint Bonaventure, or Pascal had a right to make this objection, since they got into the Church, so to speak, by breaking through the windows; but society at large accepted and retains Saint Thomas’s man much as Saint Thomas delivered him to the Government; a two- sided being, free or unfree, responsible or irresponsible, an energy or a victim of energy, moved by choice or moved by compulsion, as the interests of society seemed for the moment to need. Certainly Saint Thomas lavished no excess of liberty on the man he created, but still he was more generous than the State has ever been. Saint Thomas asked little from man, and gave much; even as much freedom of will as the State gave or now gives; he added immortality hereafter and eternal happiness under reasonable restraints; his God watched over man’s temporal welfare far more anxiously than the State has ever done, and assigned him space in the Church which he never can have in the galleries of Parliament or Congress; more than all this, Saint Thomas and his God placed man in the centre of the universe, and made the sun and the stars for his uses. No statute law ever did as much for man, and no social reform ever will try to do it; yet man bitterly complained that he had not his rights, and even in the Church is still complaining, because Saint Thomas set a limit, more or less vague, to what the man was obstinate in calling his freedom of will.

Thus Saint Thomas completed his work, keeping his converging lines clear and pure throughout, and bringing them together, unbroken, in the curves that gave unity to his plan. His sense of scale and proportion was that of the great architects of his age. One might go on studying it for a lifetime. He showed no more hesitation in keeping his Deity in scale than in adjusting man to it. Strange as it sounds, although man thought himself hardly treated in respect to freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, man was in action much the superior of God, Whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under restraints that man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas did not allow God even an undetermined will; He was pure Act, and as such He could not change. Man alone was allowed, in act, to change direction. What was more curious still, man might absolutely prove his freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his life he could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being done for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a single instant His continuous action. If man had the singular fancy of making himself absurd,—a taste confined to himself but attested by evidence exceedingly strong,—he could be as absurd as he liked; but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict Himself, which is one of man’s chief pleasures. While man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an unlimited freedom to be wicked,—a privilege which, as both Church and State bitterly complained and still complain, he has outrageously abused,—God was Goodness, and could be nothing else. While man moved about his relatively spacious prison with a certain degree of ease, God, being everywhere, could not move. In one respect, at least, man’s freedom seemed to be not relative but absolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space or time or order or object or sense; but God’s thought was His act and will at once; speaking correctly, God could not think; He is. Saint Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, as Abelard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of a divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. The atmosphere of Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, and its pure ether shuts out the corruption and pollution to come,—the Valois and Bourbons, the Occams and Hobbes’s, the Tudors and the Medicis, of an enlightened Europe.

The theology turns always into art at the last, and ends in aspiration. The spire justifies the church. In Saint Thomas’s Church, man’s free will was the aspiration to God, and he treated it as the architects of Chartres and Laon had treated their famous fleches. The square foundation-tower, the expression of God’s power in act,—His Creation,—rose to the level of the Church facade as a part of the normal unity of God’s energy; and then, suddenly, without show of effort, without break, without logical violence, became a many-sided, voluntary, vanishing human soul, and neither Villard de Honnecourt nor Duns Scotus could distinguish where God’s power ends and man’s free will begins. All they saw was the soul vanishing into the skies. How it was done, one does not care to ask; in a result so exquisite, one has not the heart to find fault with “adresse.”

About Saint Thomas’s theology we need not greatly disturb ourselves; it can matter now not much, whether he put more pantheism than the law allowed or more materialism than Duns Scotus approved—or less of either—into his universe, since the Church is still on the spot, responsible for its own doctrines; but his architecture is another matter. So scientific and structural a method was never an accident or the property of a single mind even with Aristotle to prompt it. Neither his Church nor the architect’s church was a sketch, but a completely studied structure. Every relation of parts, every disturbance of equilibrium, every detail of construction was treated with infinite labour, as the result of two hundred years of experiment and discussion among thousands of men whose minds and whose instincts were acute, and who discussed little else. Science and art were one. Thomas Aquinas would probably have built a better cathedral at Beauvais than the actual architect who planned it; but it is quite likely that the architect might have saved Thomas some of his errors, as pointed out by the Councils of 1276. Both were great artists; perhaps in their professions, the greatest that ever lived; and both must have been great students beyond their practice. Both were subject to constant criticism from men and bodies of men whose minds were as acute and whose learning was as great as their own. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Paris condemned Thomas, the Bernardines had, for near two hundred years, condemned Beauvais in advance. Both the “Summa Theologiae” and Beauvais Cathedral were excessively modern, scientific, and technical, marking the extreme points reached by Europe on the lines of scholastic science. This is all we need to know. If we like, we can go on to study, inch by inch, the slow decline of the art. The essence of it—the despotic central idea—was that of organic unity both in the thought and the building. From that time, the universe has steadily become more complex and less reducible to a central control. With as much obstinacy as though it were human, it has insisted on expanding its parts; with as much elusiveness as though it were feminine, it has evaded the attempt to impose on it a single will. Modern science, like modern art, tends, in practice, to drop the dogma of organic unity. Some of the mediaeval habit of mind survives, but even that is said to be yielding before the daily evidence of increasing and extending complexity. The fault, then, was not in man, if he no longer looked at science or art as an organic whole or as the expression of unity. Unity turned itself into complexity, multiplicity, variety, and even contradiction. All experience, human and divine, assured man in the thirteenth century that the lines of the universe converged. How was he to know that these lines ran in every conceivable and inconceivable direction, and that at least half of them seemed to diverge from any imaginable centre of unity! Dimly conscious that his Trinity required in logic a fourth dimension, how was the schoolman to supply it, when even the mathematician of to-day can only infer its necessity? Naturally man tended to lose his sense of scale and relation. A straight line, or a combination of straight lines, may have still a sort of artistic unity, but what can be done in art with a series of negative symbols? Even if the negative were continuous, the artist might express at least a negation; but supposing that Omar’s kinetic analogy of the ball and the players turned out to be a scientific formula!—supposing that the highest scientific authority, in order to obtain any unity at all, had to resort to the Middle Ages for an imaginary demon to sort his atoms!—how could art deal with such problems, and what wonder that art lost unity with philosophy and science!

Some future summer, when you are older, and when I have left, like Omar, only the empty glass of my scholasticism for you to turn down, you can amuse yourselves by going on with the story after the death of Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, and William of Lorris, and after the failure of Beauvais. The pathetic interest of the drama deepens with every new expression, but at least you can learn from it that your parents in the nineteenth century were not to blame for losing the sense of unity in art. As early as the fourteenth century, signs of unsteadiness appeared, and, before the eighteenth century, unity became only a reminiscence. The old habit of centralizing a strain at one point, and then dividing and subdividing it, and distributing it on visible lines of support to a visible foundation, disappeared in architecture soon after 1500, but lingered in theology two centuries longer, and even, in very old-fashioned communities, far down to our own time; but its values were forgotten, and it survived chiefly as a stock jest against the clergy. The passage between the two epochs is as beautiful as the Slave of Michael Angelo; but, to feel its beauty, you should see it from above, as it came from its radiant source. Truth, indeed, may not exist; science avers it to be only a relation; but what men took for truth stares one everywhere in the eye and begs for sympathy. The architects of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took the Church and the universe for truths, and tried to express them in a structure which should be final. Knowing by an enormous experience precisely where the strains were to come, they enlarged their scale to the utmost point of material endurance, lightening the load and distributing the burden until the gutters and gargoyles that seem mere ornament, and the grotesques that seem rude absurdities, all do work either for the arch or for the eye; and every inch of material, up and down, from crypt to vault, from man to God, from the universe to the atom, had its task, giving support where support was needed, or weight where concentration was felt, but always with the condition of showing conspicuously to the eye the great lines which led to unity and the curves which controlled divergence; so that, from the cross on the fleche and the keystone of the vault, down through the ribbed nervures, the columns, the windows, to the foundation of the flying buttresses far beyond the walls, one idea controlled every line; and this is true of Saint Thomas’s Church as it is of Amiens Cathedral. The method was the same for both, and the result was an art marked by singular unity, which endured and served its purpose until man changed his attitude toward the universe. The trouble was not in the art or the method or the structure, but in the universe itself which presented different aspects as man moved. Granted a Church, Saint Thomas’s Church was the most expressive that man has made, and the great Gothic cathedrals were its most complete expression.

Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of all the elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothic cathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slender nervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwards of the flying buttress,—the visible effort to throw off a visible strain,—never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. The equilibrium is visibly delicate beyond the line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril of the heavy tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; the uncertainty of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, the irregularities of the mental mirror,—all these haunting nightmares of the Church are expressed as strongly by the Gothic cathedral as though it had been the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion had ever been expressed before or is likely to find expression again. The delight of its aspirations is flung up to the sky. The pathos of its self-distrust and anguish of doubt is buried in the earth as its last secret. You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youth and confidence; to me, this is all.