Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres

-f CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE ''""'^ DC 20.A2ri9l'3"'^"'^ '^°[;t-Saint-Michel and Chartres 3 1924 024 296 208 DATE DUE .i,Si'^'^r!T <^?^m -mm '^yM ' \m^ **?98ff*sr TF^ S PRINTED INU 5. A. ^2 Cornell University "<!®l Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024296208 PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS Mont'Saint'Michel and Chartres ^g^^ Charires: The Tree of Jesse Window {Upper fart) ' , t-A^\>'\'^ Mont-Saint- Michel and Chartres BY HENRY ADAMS WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RALPH ADAMS CRAM Illustrated BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY fCfie SMtaetjJibe ^tt$i Cambribge 1913 'v COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY ADAMS ' ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November igi3 957249 Editor's Note FROM the moment when, through the courtesy of my friend Barrett Wendell, I came first to know Mr. Henry Adams's book, MonU Saint-Michel and Chartres, I was profoundly convinced that this privately printed, jealously guarded volume should be withdrawn from its hiding-place amongst the bibliographical treasures of col- lectors and amateurs and given that wide publicity demanded alike by its intrinsic nature and the causfe it could so admirably serve. To say that the book was a revelation is inadequately to express a fact; at once all the theology, philosophy, and mysticism, the politics, sociology, and economics, the romance, literature, and art of that greatest epoch of Christian civilization became fused in the alembic of an unique insight and precipitated by the dynamic force of a personal and distinguished style. A judgment that might well have been biased by personal inclination received the endorsement of many in two continents, more competent to pass judgment, better able to speak with authority; and so fortified, I had the honour of saying to Mr. Adams, in the autumn of 191 2, that the American Institute of Architects asked the distinguished privilege of arranging for the publication of an edition for general sale, under its own imprimatur. The result is the volume now made available for public circulation. In justice to Mr. Adams, it should be said that such publication is, in his opinion, unnecessary and uncalled-for, a conclusion in which neither the American Institute of Architects, the publishers, nor the Editor concurs. Furthermore, the form in which the book is presented is no affair of the author, who, in giving reluctant consent to publication, expressly stipulated that he should have no part or parcel in carrying out so mad a venture of faith, — as he estimated the project of giving his book to the public. VI EDITOR'S NOTE Mont-Saint-Michel In this, and for once, his judgment is at fault. to litera- and Chartres is one of the most distinguished contributions ture and one of the most valuable adjuncts to the study of mediaeval- ism America thus far has produced. The rediscovery of this great epoch of Christian civilization has had issue in many and valuable works on its religion, its philosophy, its economics, its politics, and its art, but in nearly every instance, whichever field has been traversed has been considered almost as an isolated phenomenon, with insufficient reference to the other aspects of an era that was singularly united and at one with itself. Hugh of Saint Victor and Saint Thomas Aquinas are fully comprehensible only in their relationship to Saint Anselm, Saint Bernard, and the development of Catholic dogma and life; feu- dalism, the crusades, the guilds and communes weave themselves into this same religious development and into the vicissitudes of cres- cent nationalities; Dante, the cathedral builders, the painters, sculp- tors, and music masters, all are closely knit into the warp and woof of philosophy, statecraft, economics, and religious devotion; — indeed, it may be said that the Middle Ages, more than any other recorded epoch of history, must be considered en bloc, as a period of consistent unity as highly emphasized as was its dynamic force. It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Adams deals with the art of the Middle Ages after this fashion: he is not of those who would deter- mine every element in art from its material antecedents. He realizes very fully that its essential element, the thing that differentiates it from the art that preceded and that which followed, is its spiritual impulse; the manifestation may have been, and probably was, more or less accidental, but that which makes Chartres Cathedral and its glass, the sculptures of Rheims, the Dies Ires, Aucassin and Nicolette, the Song Roland, the of Arthurian Legends, great art and unique, is neither their technical mastery nor their fidelity to the enduring laws of all great art, — though these are singular in their perfection, but rather the peculiar spiritual impulse which informed the time, and EDITOR'S NOTE vii by its intensity, its penetrating power, and its dynamic force wrought a rounded and complete civilization and manifested this through a thousand varied channels. Greater, perhaps, even than his grasp of the singular entirety of mediaeval civilization, is Mr. Adams's power of merging himself in a long dead time, of thinking and feeling with the men and women thereof, and so breathing on the dead bones of antiquity that again they clothe themselves with flesh and vesture, call back their sev- ered souls, and live again, not only to the consciousness of the reader, but before his very eyes. And it is not a thin simulacrum he raises by some doubtful alchemy: it is no phantasm of the past that shines dimly before us in these magical pages ; it is the very time itself in which we are merged. We forgather with the Abbot and his monks, and the crusaders and pilgrims in the Shrine of the Arch- angel : we pay our devoirs to the fair French Queens, — Blanche of Castile, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary of Champagne, — fighting their battles for them as liege servants: we dispute with Abelard, Thomas of Aquino, Duns the Scotsman: we take our parts in the Court of Love, or sing the sublime and sounding praises of God with the Canons of Saint Victor: our eyes opened at last, and after many days we kneel before Our Lady of Pity, asking her intercession for her lax but loyal devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away, being as they were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for us than we live in it and are a part of its gaiety and light-heartedness, its youthful ardour and abounding action, its childlike simplicity and frankness, its normal and healthy and all-embracing devotion. And it is well for us to have this experience. Apart from the de- sirable transformation it effects in preconceived and curiously erron- eous superstitions as to one of the greatest eras in all history, it is vastly heartening and exhilarating. If it gives new and not always flattering standards for the judgment of contemporary men and things, so does it establish new ideals, new goals for attainment. To live for VUl EDITOR'S NOTE the a day in a world that built Chartres Cathedral, even if it makes " living in a world that creates the Black Country" of England or an Iron City of America less a thing of joy and gladness than before, equally opens up the far prospect of another thirteenth century in the times that are to come and urges to ardent action toward its attainment. But apart from this, the deepest value of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, its importance as a revelation of the eternal glory of mediaeval art and the elements that brought it into being is not lightly to be expressed. To every artist, whatever his chosen form of expression, it must appear unique and invaluable, and to none more than the architect, who, familiar at last with its beauties, its power, and its teaching force, can only applaud the action of the American In- stitute of Architects in making Mr. Adams an Honorary Member, as one who has rendered distinguished services to the art, and voice his gratitude that it has brought the book within his reach and given it publicity before the world. Whitehall, Sudbury, Massachusetts, June, 1913. Contents Preface xiii I. Saint Michiel de la Mer del Peril . i II. La Chanson de Roland 14 III. The Merveille 32 IV. Normandy and the Ile de France 46 V. Towers and Portals 62 VI. The Virgin of Chartres 89 VII. Roses and Apses 106 VIII. The Twelfth-Century Glass 128 IX. The Legendary Windows 149 X. The Court of the Queen of Heaven . .179 XI. The Three Queens 198 XII. NiCOLETTE AND MaRION 23O XIII. Les Miracles de Notre Dame . 251 XIV. Abelard 285 XV. The Mystics 320 XVI. Saint Thomas Aquinas 347 Index 385 Illustrations Chartres: The Tree of Jesse Window (upper part) (p. 127) Colored Frontispiece Mont-Saint-Michel 2 Mont-Saint-Michel: The Hall of the Knights ... 24 Mont-Saint-Michel: The Refectory 34 Coutances Cathedral 46 Caen: The "Abbaye aux Dames" 58 Chartres Cathedral 62 Chartres: Detail of West Portal 70 Chartres: The North Porch 78 Chartres: The South Porch 86 Chartres: The Nave no Chartres: The Prodigal Son Window 174 Saint Thomas Aquinas 348 Preface [December, 1904.] Some old Elizabethan play or poem contains the lines: — . Who reads me, when I am ashes. Is my son in wishes The relationship, between reader and writer, of son and father, may have existed in Queen Elizabeth's time, but is much too close to be true for ours.

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