The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel stands for Church and State, and bot

Molz pelerins qui vunt al Munt  Enquierent molt e grant dreit unt  Comment l'igliese fut fundee  Premierement et estoree.  Cil qui lor dient de l'estoire  Que cil demandent en memoire  Ne l'unt pas bien ainz vunt faillant  En plusors leus e mespernant.  Por faire la apertement  Entendre a cels qui escient  N'unt de clerzie l'a tornee  De latin tote et ordenee  Pars veirs romieus novelement  Molt en segrei por son convent  Uns jovencels moine est del Munt  Deus en son reigne part li dunt.  Guilla

The nineteenth century moved fast and furious, so that one who moved in it felt sometimes giddy, watching it spin; but the eleventh moved faster and more furiously still. The Norman conquest of England was an immense effort, and its consequences were far-reaching, but the first crusade was altogether the most interesting event in European history. Never has the Western world shown anything like the energy and unity with which she then flung herself on the East, and for the moment made the East r

From Mont-Saint-Michel, the architectural road leads across Normandy, up the Seine to Paris, and not directly through Chartres, which lies a little to the south. In the empire of architecture, Normandy was one kingdom, Brittany another; the Ile de France, with Paris, was a third; Touraine and the valley of the Loire were a fourth and in the centre, the fighting-ground between them all, lay the counties of Chartres and Dreux. Before going to Chartres one should go up the Seine and down the Loire,

For a first visit to Chartres, choose some pleasant morning when the lights are soft, for one wants to be welcome, and the cathedral has moods, at times severe. At best, the Beauce is a country none too gay. The first glimpse that is caught, and the first that was meant to be caught, is that of the two spires. With all the education that Normandy and the Ile de France can give, one is still ignorant. The spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, and needs least study i

We must take ten minutes to accustom our eyes to the light, and we had better use them to seek the reason why we come to Chartres rather than to Rheims or Amiens or Bourges, for the cathedral that fills our ideal. The truth is, there are several reasons; there generally are, for doing the things we like; and after you have studied Chartres to the ground, and got your reasons settled, you will never find an antiquarian to agree with you; the architects will probably listen to you with contempt; a

Like all great churches, that are not mere storehouses of theology, Chartres expressed, besides whatever else it meant, an emotion, the deepest man ever felt,—the struggle of his own littleness to grasp the infinite. You may, if you like, figure in it a mathematic formula of infinity,—the broken arch, our finite idea of space; the spire, pointing, with its converging lines, to unity beyond space; the sleepless, restless thrust of the vaults, telling the unsatisfied, incomplete, overstrained effo

At last we are face to face with the crowning glory of Chartres. Other churches have glass,—quantities of it, and very fine,—but we have been trying to catch a glimpse of the glory which stands behind the glass of Chartres, and gives it quality and feeling of its own. For once the architect is useless and his explanations are pitiable; the painter helps still less; and the decorator, unless he works in glass, is the poorest guide of all, while, if he works in glass, he is sure to lead wrong; and

One's first visit to a great cathedral is like one's first visit to the British Museum; the only intelligent idea is to follow the order of time, but the museum is a chaos in time, and the cathedral is generally all of one and the same time. At Chartres, after finishing with the twelfth century, everything is of the thirteenth. To catch even an order in time, one must first know what part of the thirteenth-century church was oldest. The books say it was the choir. After the fire of 1194, the pil

All artists love the sanctuary of the Christian Church, and all tourists love the rest. The reason becomes clear as one leaves the choir, and goes back to the broad, open hall of the nave. The choir was made not for the pilgrim but for the deity, and is as old as Adam, or perhaps older; at all events old enough to have existed in complete artistic and theological form, with the whole mystery of the Trinity, the Mother and Child, and even the Cross, thousands of years before Christ was born; but

After worshipping at the shrines of Saint Michael on his Mount and of the Virgin at Chartres, one may wander far and wide over France, and seldom feel lost; all later Gothic art comes naturally, and no new thought disturbs the perfected form. Yet tourists of English blood and American training are seldom or never quite at home there. Commonly they feel it only as a stage-decoration. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, studied in the pure light of political economy, are insane. The scientific m

C'est d'Aucassins et de Nicolete. Qui vauroit bons vers oir  Del deport du viel caitiff  De deus biax enfans petis  Nicolete et Aucassins;  Des grans paines qu'il soufri  Et des proueces qu'il fist  For s'amie o le cler vis.  Dox est li cans biax est li dis  Et cortois et bien asis.  Nus hom n'est si esbahis  Tant dolans ni entrepris  De grant mal amaladis  Se il l'oit ne soit garis  Et de joie resbaudis    Tant par est dou-ce. This is of Aucassins and Nicolette. Whom would a good ballad please

Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio,  Umile ed alta piu che creatura,  Termine fisso d'eterno consiglio,  Tu sei colei che l'umana natura  Nobilitasti si, che il suo fattore  Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura….  La tua benignita non pur soccorre  A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate  Liberamente al dimandar precorre.  In te misericordia, in te pietate,  In te magnificenza, in te s'aduna  Quantunque in creatura e di bontate. Vergine bella, che di sol vestita,  Coronata di stelle, al sommo sole  Piacest

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 firs

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

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 w