CORRESPONDENCE.
REIMS CATHEDRAL.
[To TIM EDITOIL OP TER "erscIvres."1 SIn,—According to Victor lingo's happy sentence, " each cathedral is a book of atone," a book the leaves of which are wrought and painted by the artisans of the Middle Ages, under the direct inspiration of its doctors. The church was not only at that time the sanctuary holding the sacred relics of the Saints, a place of prayer and worship. It played a much larger part in the general scheme of mediaeval civilization. It was at the same time the religious book, the popular teacher, and the newspaper of the period, something like the Bible, the Encyclopaedia Brilaanica, and Who's Who rolled into one —into one giddy cliff of eloquent stones.
Chartres is, of course, the most perfect example of this universal wisdom. To be able to recognize the ten thousand images carved on its façade and painted on its windows is to understand the spirit of the Middle Ages, to think as Europe thought eight hundred years ago, to see life as she saw it. For the whole world, at least the whole mediaeval world, finds its adequate expression in the cathedral. First, the Old Testa- ment, not considered by itself as it has been in modern times, but merely in its Messianic aspect—as a preparation, an expeo- tation, a promise; the prophets who told of Christ's coming, the Saints, like Abraham, Solomon, Sm., whose actions prefigured His mission, the Kings of David's seed who. from generation
to generation, tended the tree of Jesse and allowed it to give to the world its miraculous flower. Then the New Testament, not evoked in its historical aspect as it is to-day, but in its mystical meaning, as it affects the two great Christian feasts : Christmas and Easter—with the cycle of the episodes relat- ing, on one hand, to the Nativity, on the other, to the Passion.
Then the life of the Saints, the Apostles, the local Saints of the city, all those who, down to the time when the building was erected, maintained the Christian tradition of martyrdom and heroism. Then, again, the Virtues and the Sins, the Sciences and the Arts, the Trades, the Months typified by some simple scene of peasant labour, sowing in the spring, reaping in the autumn, &c., down to the plants and the leaves and the birds and the real or mythical beasts ornamenting the highest capital and the most obscure corner of the venerable shrine. There is not an idea which the Middle Ages thought worth telling, there is not a fact which it thought worth mentioning, which is not told or mentioned on the windows and in the deep porches of the cathedral. From the awful vision of the Last Judgment to the familiar
image of a peasant sharpening his scythe, the whole human life evolves itself from the shade of its porches. From the aspect of God enthroned to that of a humble acorn with its cluster of oak leaves, the whole world, visible and invisible, is carved in its stones.
Now, if this universal, this encyclopaedic aspect of the cathedral appears specially at Chartres, it is no less marked in the other great French cathedrals, in Amiens, in Paris, and in Reims. But, whilst at Chartres the whole plan is so perfectly balanced that it would be impossible to discover a distinctive character in the church, in Amiens, Paris, and Reims we may notice some prominent features.
In Amiens, for instance, the Messianic and prophetic mission of the Church is especially insisted upon. In Paris the figure of the Virgin stands foremost, four of the six porches being devoted to Her, as well as two stained-glass windows. In Reims, on the other hand, the national character of the Church became prominent. All the other great churches which surround Paris like an architectural constellation, like a crown of miraculous stars, Amiens, Laon, Chartres, Bourges, &c., are essentially catholic, that is to say, universal. Their teaching may be found in Germany, in Italy, in England, all over Western Europe. Reims alone was French. It cele- brated the conversion of the first French King, and proclaimed the intimate union of Christianity with France, symbolized by her rulers. It possessed, of course, like most of the great French Gothic churches, a wonderful procession of statues of Saints and Prophets, each in his own niche. The Apostles of the northern porch could rival those of Amiens. The series of Sciences—among which figured even Medicine—and the sculptured calendar of the Months, with their respective sign of the zodiac, were among the most interesting and the best preserved in France. The Seven Sins duly faced the Seven Virtues—cardinal and theological—on both sides of the western porch. But the unique feature of Reims—which could not be found in any other French cathedral—was the representation, in the centre of the west front, of Clovis's baptism by St. Remy. The row of fifty-six Kings, on the same front, may indeed refer to the genealogy of Christ, as the modern critics will have it, and not to the succession of French monarchs, but there is no doubt that one at least of the stained-glass windows was devoted to the Kings of France, emphasizing again the national character of the great historical church in which Joan of Arc saw her King crowned.
These windows are almost certainly destroyed. We do not know yet exactly how much the exterior of the church—and especially the wonderful west front, "so richly decked with sculptures that it seems always to expect the visit of a King" —has suffered from the German shells. We do not know how many pages have been torn from this marvellous " book of stone" by the "mailed fist" of Nietzschean paganism. One thing we know only. However heavy the loss may be, we must lose no time in wailing over it. The smoking ruins of Reims have a last lesson to teach us, a last crusade to preach. If it were not waged for King and for country, for the respect of treaties and the defence of the most sacred principles of civilization, this war ought to be waged for Christianity. In the twentieth century as in the eleventh the old cry still rings true : "Dien le
Previous page
