Ch. 5 - Towers and Portals

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 in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment
almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at
a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell,
for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man's
aspirations were highest. Yet nine persons out of ten--perhaps
ninety-nine in a hundred--who come within sight of the two spires of
Chartres will think it a jest if they are told that the smaller of
the two, the simpler, the one that impresses them least, is the one
which they are expected to recognize as the most perfect piece of
architecture in the world. Perhaps the French critics might deny
that they make any such absolute claim; in that case you can ask
them what their exact claim is; it will always be high enough to
astonish the tourist.

Astonished or not, we have got to take this southern spire of the
Chartres Cathedral as the object of serious study, and before taking
it as art, must take it as history. The foundations of this tower--
always to be known as the "old tower"--are supposed to have been
laid in 1091, before the first crusade. The fleche was probably half
a century later (1145-70). The foundations of the new tower,
opposite, were laid not before 1110, when also the portal which
stands between them, was begun with the three lancet windows above
it, but not the rose. For convenience, this old facade--including
the portal and the two towers, but not the fleches, and the three
lancet windows, but not the rose--may be dated as complete about
1150.

Originally the whole portal--the three doors and the three lancets--
stood nearly forty feet back, on the line of the interior
foundation, or rear wall of the towers. This arrangement threw the
towers forward, free on three sides, as at Poitiers, and gave room
for a parvis, before the portal,--a porch, roofed over, to protect
the pilgrims who always stopped there to pray before entering the
church. When the church was rebuilt after the great fire of 1194,
and the architect was required to enlarge the interior, the old
portal and lancets were moved bodily forward, to be flush with the
front walls of the two towers, as you see the facade to-day; and the
facade itself was heightened,