Saving the Light at Chartres

by Victor A. Pollak

  “Hilltop with subterranean grottoes”: A well almost one hundred feet deep stands under the cathedral. It is believed to have been used by druids for divination. They studied the water after stirring it with an oak rod.

  “Four thousand sculptures”: The sculptures are arrayed in nine sculpted portals, three on each of the three facades, which display a portion of the collection, giving a striking educational overview of religious history. Scholars say we know nothing of the individuals who carved the sculptures, including friezes of scenes from the Bible, grotesques of demons, and portraits of saints. A surge in cathedral building that began around 1100 created a demand for architects, craftsmen, and masons. Bands of masons formed into guilds and moved across Europe, taking work where they could find it. At the time, serfs were tied to the land they farmed, so the masons became known as freemasons. They infused new ideas into the cathedrals, from alchemy and tones in music to theological and philosophical notions of harmony.

  “Precious relics”: They include the Sancta Camisa of Mary (a piece of Middle Eastern cloth, the tunic or chemise worn by Mary, either on the day of the Annunciation or on the night of the Nativity, depending on the version), which was donated by the grandson of Charlemagne. They also include the head of Mary’s mother, Anne, donated by Blanche of Castile.

  “Groundbreaking innovations”: The four major innovations follow: Side doors in its transept allowed pilgrims to view the relics without disturbing the Mass in progress.

  Special features were created to display an array of windows that project light in a new way, by means of a three-part elevation, which starts with its low nave arcade. Above that is its new medium-level triforium, and above that is its high clerestory (with its upper oculus windows and lower lancet windows). By removing the lofts that often surrounded the side naves of previous churches, the nave was directly illuminated, allowing light from the aisle windows to reach the center of the nave. Émile Mâle, art historian, wrote that a Gothic building can be regarded as the shrine to that set of stained glass it accommodates.

  New four-part pointed-ribbed groin vaults allowed for higher vault (more room for stained-glass windows), more than forty-five feet high.

  And flying buttresses also allowed more room for stained glass—and light, as an expression of the divine.

  “How to ‘read’ a window”: Leo J. O’Donovan, “The Voice of Chartres: Malcolm Miller Illumines the Gothic Jewel,” America, December 22, 2008, https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/681/article/voice-chartres, quoting Malcolm Miller. Mr. Miller is an English iconographer whose life’s work since the 1950s has been to teach and conduct tours of the cathedral.

  “Glass . . . uneven surface and impurities . . . play a vital role”: The blue of panes in Chartres Cathedral is said to have been obtained by grinding down sapphires, and the deep red by mixing in pure gold. Victoria Finlay, “My Lifelong Quest for Color,” Iris, November 2, 2014, http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/my-lifelong-quest-for-color/.

  “The tonal beauty of the older windows is in part due to the very imperfections of this technique. The unequal thickness of the panes, the inclusion of little air bubbles and grains of sand create sparkling refractions of light.” Alfons Lieven Dierick, The Stained Glass at Chartres (Berne: Hallway Ltd., 1960), 6.

  Little is known about who produced the windows. The windows were contributed by various donors, including forty-three by many of the guilds at the time, including bakers, money-changers, vintners, winesellers, innkeepers, apothecaries, haberdashers, farriers, wheelwrights, fishmongers, carpenters, shoemakers, fur merchants, and butchers, images of whom appear in some of the windows. Miller, Chartres Cathedral, 14–15. Others were donated by dignitaries, such as Blanche of Castille; Louis de Bourbon, Count of Vendôme; Count Thibault VI of Chartres; and Pierre Mauclerc, Count of Dreux. Miller, Chartres Cathedral, 49, 50, 71, 90.

  “Light at Chartres has special significance”: Joan Gould, “Seeing the Light in Chartres,” New York Times, December 18, 1988, https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/18/travel/seeing-the-light-in-chartres.html.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 2

  “War . . . already affecting Texas ranchers and . . . farmers”: Russian supplies of grain had been cut off, and the United States—with a price guaranty—was urging farmers to plant wheat, which transformed wheat into a global commodity and would stimulate a sharp increase in the acreage of wheat harvested nationwide, a tenth of it from Texas.

  “Quanah in 1909”: Life in Quanah, Texas, had been difficult, even for an eight-year-old, but challenges had been cushioned by support among neighbors. Settlers had come with high hopes, bringing families in prairie schooners piled with household goods, but many had failed in drudgery and disease, victims of drought.

  Bill Neal, grandson of settlers, described their solidarity: “Unity was a dominant beat. . . . Settlers, though a crusty, individualistic lot, were thrown together in this melting pot, and they overlooked individual differences in the common goals of survival and conquering the frontier. Hardships only cemented this spirit of unity. Being a neighbor meant much more than simply living next door, and the latch string was always open.” W. O. Neal, The Last Frontier: The Story of Hardeman County (Quanah, TX: Quanah Tribune-Chief, 1966; Medicine Mound, Texas: Downtown Medicine Mound Preservation Group, 2015), vi.

  NOTES TO CHAPTER 3

  “Camille Enlart”: Jean-Marc Hofman, “Camille Enlart s’en va-t-en guerre: Le musée de Sculpture comparée pendant la Première Guerre mondiale,” In Situ 23 (2014), http://insitu.revues.org/10894. For a dozen years Camille Enlart had been director of the comparative sculpture museum (later the Musée national des monuments français—or the National Museum of French Monuments). After the war, Enlart would write, “The war made our patriotism more conscious, and the jealous fury of our enemies, by striving upon the works of art, rendered them dearer to those whom the artistic glories of France left indifferent.”

  “Albert Thomas”: A thirty-seven-year-old politician and diplomat, Albert Thomas had spent seven months organizing munitions factories and increasing production in factories aggressively as subminister of artillery and munitions under the minister of war and became undersecretary of state for artillery and munitions.

  “One journal . . . fall of a bundle”: “Workers were installing crates of explosive material on a truck when one of them fell, causing all the machinery in the vicinity to explode.” “L’explosion de la rue de Tolbiac,” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, October 22, 1915, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k4858090/f3.item.r=explosion%20rue%20de%20tolbiac.

  “Another newspaper reported . . . a truck . . . passing over a gutter”: Testifying to the “stigmata” of the event. “L’explosion de la rue de Tolbiac,” Journal des débats politiques et litteŕaires, October 22, 1915, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k4858090/f3.item.r=explosion%20rue%20de%20tolbiac. It reported that there “is nothing left” and continued, “Not a wall, not a pillar standing, nothing but burned debris, wrecks of all kinds, twisted pieces of metal, beams and half-burned boards, reduced glass in crumbs, plaster, rags, and everywhere spots of blood. In the whole neighborhood, there is not a house that has not suffered the violence of the explosion: all the windows of the shopkeepers, all windowpanes, were broken, the shutters ripped off. The floor is littered with pieces of glass and seems riddled with grape shot, debris iron, and cast iron.” A church suffered all of its stained-glass windows broken. An old movie theater nearby was transformed into a morgue. Forty-five people died; sixty more were injured.

  “Newspaper reported that the president . . . moved to tears”: “L’explosion de la rue de Tolbiac,” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires.

  “State refused to recognize its responsibility”: Ségolène Cuerq, “4 mars 1916, 9h25,” Saint-Denis et la guerre de 14, City of Saint-Denis website, municipal archives, February 25, 2016, http://archives1418.ville-saint-denis.fr/explosion-fort-double-couronne/. Thereafter, a petition by neighbors of the fort against
the state failed when the state was found not responsible for maintaining a deposit of ammunition in the unexploded part of the fort. Text archived at “Arret Regnault Desroziers,” Repertoire de Jurisprudence II, accessed February 19, 2018, cached at http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lexinter.net%2FJPTXT2%2Farret_regnault_desroziers.htm.

  “Archeological Society of Eure-et-Loir”: The ASEL, as it is known, is a secular nonpolitical body founded in 1856 and accredited by France’s Ministry of National Education, which controlled historic monuments. The society continues today with a mission to study and disseminate local and national history and heritage of the department of Eure-et-Loir, which includes Chartres.

  “Father Yves Delaporte”: He was then preparing what would become a leading book published in 1926 depicting the stained-glass windows of Chartres Cathedral. Yves Delaporte and Étienne Houvet, Le vitraux de la cathédrale de Chartres: Histoire et descriptions, 4 vols. (Chartres: É. Houvet, 1926).

  “Firemen from Paris and two glassworkers . . . attempt a salvage operation”: Pneu Michelin, Reims and the Battles for Its Possession, Illustrated Michelin Guides to the Battle-Fields (1914–1918) (Clermont-Ferrand: Michelin & Cie, 1919), 32.

  “February 22, 1918”: This meeting of the Historic Monuments Commission was attended by, among others, M. Bernier, M. Berr de Turique, and M. Paul Boeswillwald; fifteen commission members were also present at the May 10 meeting, along with nonmembers Gabriel Ruprich-Robert and Pierre Paquet (in 1920 Paquet would go on to become inspector general). “22 février 1918,” minutes of the French Historic Monuments Commission (Commission des monuments historiques), archived at École nationale des Chartres (website), accessed February 18, 2018, http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/monumentshistoriques/Annees/1918.html.

  “Big Bertha cannon”: It was powerful enough to reach Paris from the border between Picardy and Paris, seventy-five miles away. With it, the Germans’ aim was to show the French in Paris that they were as vulnerable as people at the front. Big Bertha shot 350 times, killing 250 Parisians and wounding another 620. The worst of it hit on March 29, 1918. A single shot hit the roof of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Church of Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais in Paris, collapsing it on the congregation during Good Friday services, killing eighty-eight and wounding another sixty-eight.

  “Carlier . . . felt indignation”: Achille Carlier, “Des mesures preventives qui permettraient d’assurer le sauvetace des vitraux de la Cathédrale de Chartres en cas d’attaque brusquee: Danger que fait courir au monument le voisinage immédiat d’un camp d’aviation militaire. Matérial de dépose et préparation d’équipes (400,000 francs at 350 hommes) permettant la descente simultanée et rapide de toutes les verrières dès l’instant de l’alerte. Etude remise à la Direction des Beaux-Arts en Juin 1935” [Preventive measures to ensure the rescue of the stained-glass windows of the cathedral of Chartres in the event of a sudden attack: Danger posed by the monument in the immediate vicinity of a military aviation camp. Equipment for the laying and preparation of teams (400,000 francs at 350 men) allowing the simultaneous and rapid descent of all glass-works from the moment of the alert. Study submitted to the Direction des Beaux-Arts in June 1935], Les pierres de France 7 (June 3, 1935): 1–26 [in reprint] (hereafter Carlier, “Study”), 18–20.

  “Explosion . . . blew out numerous windows at the Basilica of Saint-Denis”: The basilica windows damaged by the explosion of La Courneuve were windows of the basilica’s choir that had not been removed and were among the oldest stained glass in the world, deep blue in color, which had proved to be irreproducible using current scientific methods. Three stained-glass windows were spared. Jean Baert, “1918 Catastrophe de la Courneuve,” Aux carrefour de l’histoire, no. 46 (October 1961), text available online at https://e-nautia.com/jnono.masselot/disk/Histoire%2011/1918%20Catastrophe%20de%20la%20Courneuve.pdf. The cardinal of Paris visited La Courneuve after the explosion and deplored the loss of the windows at Saint-Denis and also at the churches of Bourget, de Stains, and de Bobigny, likewise damaged by the explosions. “Visite de Son Eminence le cardinal de Paris à La Courneuve,” La semaine religieuse (Paris), March 23, 1918, 353–54.

  Irony suffused the tragedy at La Courneuve. The town had become a place of passage and shelter for many refugees coming from France’s regions torn apart by the war. The town had developed the function of hosting and treating wounded, including in a factory where munitions had been produced. The disaster made the front page of many French newspapers and attracted worldwide press coverage.

  “Spring offensive”: Although the German Army still occupied much French territory, the war developments that precipitated the May 10 meeting may have been Germany’s launching of its second spring offensive (Ludendorff Offensive), the Battle of the Lys (in the British sector of Armentières), and the subsequent appointment of General Ferdinand Foch as commander in chief of Allied forces on the Western Front. And although the United States had declared war on Germany on April 6 of the prior year, 1917, it would not be until June 21, 1918, that a significant American troop force of fourteen thousand was deployed in France.

  “Paul-Louis Boeswillwald”: Then seventy-four years old, Boeswillwald had been preceded on the Historic Monuments Commission by his father, Émile. Collectively, the two served on that commission and in the Historic Monuments Service for most of the first hundred years of the organizations’ existence. Father and son are credited with leaving their mark on both.

  “Émile Brunet”: He was president of the Société des Antiquaires de France—the Society of Antiquaries of France—and a member of other learned societies, who would go on to be a recipient of prestigious awards and a noted amateur photographer.

  “Proximity . . . of the Lucé artillery factory”: The members discussed the proposal, recounting that over the past seven months the ministry, the prefecture of Eureet-Loir, and the Ministry of Armaments had debated the extent of the risks posed by the Lucé factory. They had also heard from the prefect and from the mayor of Chartres, who reported being shocked by the explosion at La Courneuve and its impact on windows at Saint-Denis and who had pressed the minister of armaments to move the factory. They reported that the minister had considered the request but refused—although he did order that the quantity of explosives stored at the Lucé factory be reduced by three quarters and imposed greater security measures and more careful monitoring.

  “Étienne Houvet”: The resulting collection of the photographs would be published in 1926 by Houvet and Canon Delaporte as the first major collection of such images for the cathedral. Delaporte and Houvet, Les vitraux.

  “Three master-glassmaker workshops”: The work excluded the cathedral’s several forty-foot-diameter rose windows, probably because their removal would have been too difficult or time-consuming.

  “Membership . . . again met”: A Canon François argued in the meeting that the removal project should continue, if for no other reason because of the danger posed by the large stocks of munitions surrounding the Lucé factory. During the meeting it was also noted that the ministry overseeing the Historic Monuments Service had mandated that color photographs from all angles be taken and all precautions taken to ensure perfect conservation and that measures should be employed to ensure that the windows not end up being taken to Germany or to America.

  In the meeting Canon Delaporte said he would in a subsequent meeting point out various errors and transpositions that had been committed at various times in the past in the course of repairs made to certain of the stained-glass windows and the steps he proposed to take to ensure that in the reinstallation of the windows such errors would be corrected and similar transpositions not happen again. The canon would then guide the work of the glassmakers at the appropriate times. He also proposed that certain clear glass panels that had been inserted in the past would now be replaced to the extent possible with new panels based on drawings previously made of the stained-glass panels that such clear glass had replaced. The drawings had be
en completed previously by Gaignières.

  Professor Mayeux of the École des Beaux-Arts and Mr. Hausoulier, member of the institute, also attended the July 25 meeting.

  “On August 30, the commission convened”: The meeting was attended by ten members, eight of whom had also attended the May 10 meeting. Among them were Charles Louis Génuys and Paul-Frantz Marcou. Génuys, then sixty-five years old, had been a diocesan architect and then, for two decades, chief architect of historic monuments of the Marne, Ardenne, and the dome of Les Invalides; for five years he had been an inspector general of historic monuments, and he was also professor-lecturer at the Trocadéro. Marcou, then fifty-eight, an inspector of historic monuments, had written a report in 1917 on difficulties presented when intervening to protect art close to the front; this report led to the creation of an interdepartmental commission and protection service for artworks. Both Génuys and Marcou had been present for the March 2 inspection at the Trocadéro. Non-members Pierre Paquet and Gabriel Ruprich-Robert attended, together with Lucien Sallez, then fifty years old, who had also been a chief architect under the prior diocesan regime and would later become inspector general of historic monuments.

  “They continued the removal work”: It is unclear where the removed windows were stored.

  “Conceptual framework to identify”: In some cases, as important as the substantive story told by the windows’ images was determining who had donated and who had created certain of the windows. For example, guilds of bakers, farriers, and carpenters had joined to donate certain windows that feature images of them performing their trades. That information has led to research regarding the origins of the cathedral and its various components, construction, and financing.