Chartres

I have neglected the Buttress for about a week and the internet is miserable quality this evening so we'll see how far I get, but I'll begin with last Wednesday at Chartres. Because it was in decent condition to begin with, it hasn't been nearly as well restored as Saint-Denis or Notre-Dame have been. The crossing and choir were unfortunately full of scaffolding behind a big screen and the whole interior was poorly lit. The stained glass, on the other hand, was stunning, though not all of it has been cleaned yet. All but six windows are original twelfth-century glass; some even date from the Romanesque structure that stood on the site prior to the current cathedral.

Chartres was built on an old site used by a Druid cult to honor "the virgin to come," and early Christians reconsecrated it as a regional center of Marian devotion. Sometime after the Carolingians lost power Chartres acquired the "tunic" that Mary allegedly wore while giving birth to Jesus. Interestingly enough, the piece of cloth, currently on display in the cathedral inside a reliquary, was recently dated to about two thousand years of age.

The cathedral is a giant stone-and-glass Bible. All of the windows can be "read" and interpreted easily (if you know what you're looking for, that is). And the colors are unusually saturated, supplemented by glass that is thicker than usual. The flying buttresses are also unique among Gothic cathedrals in France; they are lighter and lacier rather than solid masses of stone.

The town of Chartres itself is actually tiny, as it always was, and had Mary's tunic not escaped a late eleventh-century fire, the current cathedral, which functioned primarily as a pilgrimage site, might never have been constructed. Even today it dominates the little town, which sits on a hill amid wheat fields about an hour from Paris by train.

Here are some photos of the exterior (including the flowers around the cathedral), interior (including stained glass and votive devotional candles), and surrounding area. Note that most of the windows feature "sponsors" at the very bottom in the form of images of a particular trade guild that paid for the window, such as shoemakers, tailors, or masons.