Chartres Cathedral

Friday, August 14, 2009

Bernie’s wanted to see this cathedral for decades. If you’ve studied history, art history, architecture, or half a dozen other areas, you’ve been exposed to Chartres Cathedral.





If you read Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth or World Without End, you’ve been obliquely introduced to Chartres. And after reading either of those you could stand here and, amidst the 21st century crowds, see the stonemasons and builders, the townspeople and pilgrims, the hawkers and merchants of the 12th and 13th centuries.

All this is on my mind as we leave our car in a parking building just around the corner from the cathedral. “Be sure your wallet is secure here,” I say. “Thieves have been hanging around here for almost 1000 years.” On the square in front of the church I see the restaurants and souvenir shops and think again that people have been selling food and souvenirs here for nearly ten centuries.

All that dry description in books of the amazing heights the builders achieved with everything pointing toward heaven to remind the peasants of God’s glory fail to prepare you for the real thing.

Our eyes are drawn upward to the vaulted ceilings. I think it would be impossible not to be inspired, looking up in this vast hushed space in which our steps echo even though hundreds of people walk silently around us.

Many people are barefoot, walking the labyrinth in prayer, as did pilgrims in the Middle Ages, symbolizing Jesus’ pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The stained-glass windows seem more accessible here than at Notre Dame. I am ashamed to confess that I have often not been able to grasp the artistry, craftsmanship, inventiveness and intellect of these people of previous centuries, as if they were not as bright or capable as we of the modern world are. Looking at these exquisite creations I am aware of how far off the mark my thinking has been. I can hardly take my eyes off beautiful “Chartres blue” glass, made by master stained glass makers in the twelfth century. The colors are so rich, so clear and bright - but those words are inadequate.

After we’ve walked around the perimeter, stood in the transept, and peeked in the beautiful side chapels, including the one that holds Mary’s veil, Bernie and I seek out walls and columns that have not been restored, like this column with a small chunk out of the base. We touch the surface, here worn to a silky texture by the thousands of hands that have traced along the circle of marble.

We feel we’re connected to those men and women. They lived out their lives as peasants or kings, believers or power-seekers, eager to do God’s will or to bend God to their purposes, but they all came to Chartres, and now we have come.