Ch. 8 - The Twelfth Century Glass

At last we are face to face with the crowning glory of Chartres.
Other churches have glass,--quantities of it, and very fine,--but we
have been trying to catch a glimpse of the glory which stands behind
the glass of Chartres, and gives it quality and feeling of its own.
For once the architect is useless and his explanations are pitiable;
the painter helps still less; and the decorator, unless he works in
glass, is the poorest guide of all, while, if he works in glass, he
is sure to lead wrong; and all of them may toil until Pierre
Mauclerc's stone Christ comes to life, and condemns them among the
unpardonable sinners on the southern portal, but neither they nor
any other artist will ever create another Chartres. You had better
stop here, once for all, unless you are willing to feel that
Chartres was made what it is, not by artist, but by the Virgin.

If this imperial presence is stamped on the architecture and the
sculpture with an energy not to be mistaken, it radiates through the
glass with a light and colour that actually blind the true servant
of Mary. One becomes, sometimes, a little incoherent in talking
about it; one is ashamed to be as extravagant as one wants to be;
one has no business to labour painfully to explain and prove to
one's self what is as clear as the sun in the sky; one loses temper
in reasoning about what can only be felt, and what ought to be felt
instantly, as it was in the twelfth century, even by the truie qui
file and the ane qui vielle. Any one should feel it that wishes; any
one who does not wish to feel it can let it alone. Still, it may be
that not one tourist in a hundred--perhaps not one in a thousand of
the English-speaking race--does feel it, or can feel it even when
explained to him, for we have lost many senses.

Therefore, let us plod on, laboriously proving God, although, even
to Saint Bernard and Pascal, God was incapable of proof; and using
such material as the books furnish for help. It is not much. The
French have been shockingly negligent of their greatest artistic
glory. One knows not even where to seek. One must go to the National
Library and beg as a special favour permission to look at the
monumental work of M. Lasteyrie, if one wishes to make even a
beginning of the study of French glass. Fortunately there exists a
fragment of a great work which the Government began, but never
completed, upon Chartres; and another, quite indispensable, but not
official, upon Bourges; while Viollet-le-Duc's article "Vitrail"
serves as guide to the whole. Ottin's book "Le Vitrail" is
convenient. Male's volume "L'Art Religieux" is essential. In
English, Westlake's "History of Design" is helpful. Perhaps, after
reading all that