The stained-glass windows of Chartres form the largest ensemble of stained glass bequeathed to us by the Middle Ages: nearly 2,600 m² of colored glass, spread across more than 170 windows of the 12th and 13th centuries, still occupying, for the most part, the openings for which they were made.[1][2] No other cathedral has kept such a treasure so nearly intact. At Chartres, visitors do not merely look at beautiful pictures: they step inside a Bible of glass and light, designed to teach the faith to a people who, for the most part, could not read.
The cathedral, Notre-Dame de Chartres, is first of all a sanctuary of the Virgin Mary. It keeps the Sancta Camisia, the Veil of the Virgin, a relic venerated since the 9th century. When a terrible fire ravaged the Romanesque building in June 1194, the relic was believed lost; its rediscovery intact was understood as a sign of Mary's protection and triggered the rebuilding of the present Gothic cathedral — and of its glazing.[3][4] It is within this Marian setting that the whole must be read: hundreds of glass figures all pointing toward Christ and his Mother.
These windows are sacred images before they are works of art: they teach Scripture, recount the lives of the saints, and let light enter into prayer, in accordance with the doctrine of the image set out in the theology of the icon.[5] Here you will discover a color, Chartres blue; masterpieces rescued from the 12th century, the Tree of Jesse and Our Lady of the Belle-Verrière; the three 13th-century rose windows; the town's craftsmen among the donors; and the rescue of 1939.
"For what writing presents to readers, this presents to the unlearned who behold, since in it even the ignorant see what they ought to follow; in it the illiterate read." — Saint Gregory the Great, letter to Serenus, Bishop of Marseille (October 600)[6]
A unique ensemble in the world
What makes Chartres exceptional is not only the beauty of its windows, but their survival. Elsewhere, wars, fires, and the 18th-century "modernizations" — when chapters replaced their stained glass with clear glass — left only fragmentary ensembles. At Chartres, the essential has held firm.[7]
The largest surviving medieval ensemble
The cathedral counts more than 170 windows: 172 according to the Centre des monuments nationaux, 176 openings according to the cathedral's chronology, the tallies varying with how the roses, oculi, and grouped lancets are counted. They cover nearly 2,600 m² — about 2,500 m² according to the cathedral's website.[8][9] The cathedral has kept, says UNESCO, "almost the totality of its homogeneous 13th-century stained-glass decoration," even though every window was completed and restored in the 19th and 20th centuries.[10][11] This ensemble is not a collection of isolated pieces: it is a coherent program, conceived by the theologians and executed by the glaziers of the day, in which each window converses with the others and with the architecture framing it.[12]
The table below compares what survives of medieval glazing in several great French Gothic cathedrals.
| Cathedral | What survives of the medieval glazing | Notable feature |
|---|---|---|
| Chartres | Nearly 2,600 m², more than 170 windows | 13th-century glazing preserved "almost in its totality" (UNESCO), plus three 12th-century windows |
| Bourges | The ambulatory windows (c. 1210–1215) | An ensemble "on a par with Chartres" according to the Centre des monuments nationaux; typological windows, including a Good Samaritan |
| Paris (Notre-Dame) | Only the three 13th-century roses | North rose the best preserved; most of the stained glass replaced with clear glass in the 18th century |
| Reims | The great west rose, clerestory windows, the north rose | Stained glass shattered by German bombardment from 19 September 1914 onward |
| Amiens | Almost nothing of the original glazing | Windows removed in the 18th century; those stored in Paris during the Great War destroyed by fire |
Only Bourges, in its ambulatory, preserves a comparable 13th-century ensemble; nowhere else has so complete a program remained in place.[13]
Two campaigns: the 12th-century windows and the great 13th-century glazing
The windows of Chartres belong to two great periods that must be distinguished.[14][15]
The first, of the 12th century, survives only in a few windows spared by the 1194 fire: the three west-front lancets (c. 1145–1155), contemporary with Abbot Suger's works at Saint-Denis, and the Virgin and Child of Our Lady of the Belle-Verrière (c. 1180). These Romanesque windows are recognizable by their denser drawing, hieratic figures, and a particularly luminous blue.[16]
The second, of the 13th century, makes up the overwhelming majority of the glazing. It accompanies the Gothic rebuilding undertaken after the fire: the nave windows were executed for the most part between 1205 and 1215, those of the choir, ambulatory, and radiating chapels between about 1210 and 1225, the transept clerestory windows between 1225 and 1235; by about 1235–1240, all the windows were in place.[17][18] The cathedral was consecrated in October 1260 — the 17th according to the date retained by the cathedral and its chapter, the 24th according to other sources — in the presence, according to tradition, of King Saint Louis.[19] To this campaign belong the clerestory windows, the monumental rose windows, and the famous trade scenes.
The 1194 fire and the Veil saved from the flames
On the night of 10–11 June 1194, a fire devastated the Romanesque cathedral of Bishop Fulbert. The townspeople believed the flames had carried off the Veil of the Virgin, their most precious relic. The collection of the Miracles of Our Lady of Chartres, written about 1210, recounts what had happened: during the disaster, a few men had carried the shrine down into the crypt and shut themselves in with it, beneath an iron trapdoor which the molten lead of the roof could not pierce. A few days later — "two days or three," specifies Jean le Marchant's verse version — the bishop and the dean presented the intact shrine to the assembled people.[20][21]
The joy matched the dismay. The miracle accounts saw in this rescue the will of the Mother of God herself, who wished to have a "new and incomparable church" built for her.[22] Cardinal-legate Melior, witness of the disaster, obtained from the canons that they devote a large share of their revenues, for three years running, to the rebuilding. The catastrophe was thus the starting point of the masterpiece: the destroyed Romanesque nave called for a swift and ambitious Gothic reconstruction, whose program of windows became one of the vastest ever conceived. The fire had spared the crypt and the mid-12th-century western block — the towers, the Royal Portal, and its three great windows: that is why these 12th-century windows were able to join, across the fire, the glazing of the 13th century.[23]
"Chartres blue"
No color has done more for the glory of Chartres than its blue. So deep, so luminous that it gave its name to a shade: Chartres blue, sometimes called "Romanesque blue."[24] To understand why this blue fascinates, one must first understand how a stained-glass window was made in the Middle Ages.
How was a stained-glass window made in the Middle Ages?
The process remained essentially the one described, in the first half of the 12th century, by the monk Theophilus in the second book of his treatise De diversis artibus, devoted to glass.[25] The simplest image is that of a jigsaw puzzle of light. The master glazier first traced the design of the window full-size on a wooden table coated with chalk. He then cut the pieces of colored glass with a heated iron, trimmed their edges with a grozing iron, and laid them on this drawing like the pieces of a mosaic.
The colors were not painted on the surface: they were obtained by tinting the glass through its mass, by adding metallic oxides to the molten glass paste. Only the fine details — faces, folds of clothing, inscriptions — were then drawn with a brush in a brown paint, grisaille, and fixed by firing in the kiln.[26][27] Finally, all the pieces were set in a network of flexible lead cames that form those characteristic black outlines, and the whole was mounted in panels about a meter square. Theophilus knew where excellence in this craft was to be found: he lists among the knowledge to be handed down "whatever France esteems in her precious variety of windows."[28]
"The eye of man knows not where first to fix its gaze: if he raises it toward the ceilings, they bloom like brilliant draperies; if he considers the walls, they are a picture of paradise; if he contemplates the floods of light poured forth by the windows, he admires the inestimable beauty of the glass and the variety of the most precious work." — The monk Theophilus, De diversis artibus, prologue of Book III, translated from Charles de L'Escalopier's 1843 French edition[29]
The secret of the blue
The blue of the 12th-century windows is a cobalt-colored soda glass, whereas most other medieval glasses are potash glasses, that is, melted with wood ash.[30] Very little cobalt is needed to obtain this color: in the medieval windows of the great rose of Reims, analyzed in 2019, it accounts for on the order of a thousandth of the glass's mass.[31] This minute proportion suffices to produce a saturated, deep blue, which belongs to the very body of the glass sheet and not to a layer of paint laid upon it. That is what gives it its transparency and radiance in the light.
This glass has also weathered time better. The Chartres soda blues show no visible trace of corrosion; one geochemist's calculations credit them with an alteration of about three thousandths of a micrometer per year, while comparable potash window glasses alter nearly seventy times faster.[32] Eight centuries later, this blue has kept its intensity, where other hues have dulled. Visitors who raise their eyes to Our Lady of the Belle-Verrière behold almost exactly the blue a resident of Chartres saw around 1180.
A Bible of glass: the windows as sacred images
The windows of Chartres are not decoration: they are sacred images in the strong sense — images meant to teach the faith, to nourish prayer, and to lead the gaze toward God.
The book of those who could not read
In the 13th century, the immense majority of the faithful could not read the Latin of the Bible. The Church therefore offered them another reading: that of images. This doctrine goes back to Saint Gregory the Great, who, in two letters of 599 and 600, reproached Serenus, Bishop of Marseille, for destroying images in his church, laying down a principle the whole Middle Ages retained: for those who cannot read, the image stands in place of reading.[33] The windows are the monumental application of this principle: a catechesis of glass, legible to all.
On this foundation, Romanesque art and the catechesis of images is useful reading, showing how, even before the Gothic, sculptures and frescoes taught the faith to the faithful. The Gothic window carries this tradition to a summit: it no longer merely illustrates, it floods the space of prayer with light.
How does one read a stained-glass window?
A narrative window at Chartres reads like a vertical comic strip. The low windows tell stories: superimposed medallions unroll, scene after scene, the great episodes of a life of Christ, a saint's life, or a parable, generally from bottom to top and from left to right.[34] At the very bottom, a panel often identifies the window's donor.
The high windows, farther from the eye and therefore less narrative, present large isolated figures: prophets, apostles, patriarchs, saints, bishops. Seen from afar, they form an immense assembly of witnesses of the faith surrounding the faithful on every side. This double register — accessible narratives below, figures of glory above — structures almost the entire building.
Typology: the Old Testament foretells the New
One of the profoundest keys to reading Chartres is typology: the conviction that Old Testament events prefigure those of the New. Several windows are built on this principle. The famous Good Samaritan window does not merely illustrate the parable (Lk 10:30–37): it pairs it with the story of Adam and Eve, making the Samaritan a figure of Christ raising up humanity wounded by sin.[35] The traveler fallen among robbers is Adam; the inn where he is tended is the Church.
This way of overlaying the two Testaments is no artist's fancy: it translates into images the reading the Church Fathers gave of the parable. Saint Augustine had deciphered it feature by feature: the robbers are the devil and his angels, the Samaritan — whose name means "guardian" — is the Lord himself, and the inn is the Church.[36]
"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho: by him we are to understand Adam himself, in the human race; Jerusalem is that heavenly city of peace […]." — Saint Augustine, Questions on the Gospels, Book II, Question 19[37]
The window thus becomes a visual biblical commentary, in which each scene illuminates another.
Light: theology in act
Lastly, at Chartres, light itself preaches. Medieval theologians, heirs of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, saw in sensible light an image of divine light, and in its passage through colored glass a figure of the Incarnation: God makes himself visible without diminishing himself, as the sun passes through the window without breaking it.[38] Gothic architecture, by piercing walls with glass, turns the church into a space traversed by brightness.
The metaphysics of lux and claritas, of which Chartres is one of the highest realizations, is set out in Gothic as theology of light.
The rescued 12th-century masterpieces
The 12th-century windows are few, but they rank among the most precious in the world. All survived the 1194 fire and bear witness to the art of stained glass at its Gothic dawn.
The Tree of Jesse
The north lancet of the west front — on the right as seen from inside the nave —, c. 1145–1155, is a Tree of Jesse: the genealogy of Christ depicted as a tree.[39] At the foot of the window, Jesse, father of King David, lies asleep; from his side springs a trunk rising to bear four kings of Judah, ancestors of the Messiah, then the Virgin Mary, and finally Christ at the summit, ringed by seven doves figuring the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. On either side, fourteen prophets announce his coming.
The motif comes from a prophecy of Isaiah:
"There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD." — Isaiah 11:1–2[40]
The window takes up the model created a few years earlier for Abbot Suger at Saint-Denis, c. 1140–1144. Dismantled in 1799 by Alexandre Lenoir for his Musée des Monuments français, then reassembled in the 19th century, the Saint-Denis original lost many of its panels: the Chartres Tree of Jesse is today the best-preserved version of this model, which inspired many glazed Trees of Jesse, from Canterbury c. 1200 to Cologne.[41] It states in images a central truth: Christ is the endpoint of a long history of waiting, the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel.
The Incarnation and the Passion: the two other lancets
The two other west lancets form, with the Tree of Jesse, a coherent triptych.[42] The central lancet unrolls the Childhood and public life of Christ, from the Annunciation to the Entry into Jerusalem, culminating in a Virgin and Child between two angels; the south lancet recounts his Passion, from the Transfiguration to the pilgrims of Emmaus, by way of the Resurrection. Read together, the three windows sum up the whole economy of salvation: the waiting (Jesse), the coming (the Incarnation), the sacrifice and the victory (the Passion and the Resurrection). Believers passing through the Royal Portal received, on raising their eyes, a veritable abridgment of the Gospel.
Our Lady of the Belle-Verrière
If a single window had to stand for Chartres, it would be Our Lady of the Belle-Verrière, in the south ambulatory. Its panels of the Virgin and Child, of the 12th century — c. 1180 according to the Inventaire général, as early as 1145–1155 according to the dating scheme established from the Corpus Vitrearum — escaped the 1194 fire and were reset c. 1215–1220 in a new surround.[43] The Virgin sits enthroned, crowned, the Child Jesus on her knees as on a second throne: the image of the Sedes Sapientiae, the "Throne of Wisdom," where Mary bears Christ, the Wisdom of God.
Above her hovers the dove of the Holy Spirit. All around, angels honor her: some swing censers, others carry tall candlesticks — the heavenly court renders worship to the Mother of God and her Son. At the foot of the window, two narratives frame the scene: Christ's Temptations in the desert and the Wedding at Cana, the first sign obtained through Mary's intercession.[44] The Virgin wears that limpid, deep blue which made this "beautiful window" famous.
"Thou art all fair, O Mary, and the stain of original sin is not in thee." — Traditional Marian antiphon (Tota pulchra es)[45]
The Belle-Verrière sums up the vocation of all the glazing: a sacred image that is not a mere picture, but an object of prayer, venerated for centuries, in which Chartres blue becomes as it were the Virgin's mantle spread above the city. For the long iconographic tradition of the Virgin in majesty it inherits, see Byzantine icons and the theology of the icon.
The great 13th-century glazing
The bulk of the present glazing dates from the campaign of c. 1205–1240. It turns the cathedral into a sacred encyclopedia of glass, unfolding the Old and New Testaments, the lives of the saints, the parables, and, at the summit, the glory of God in the rose windows.
The great narrative windows
In the aisles, the transept, and the ambulatory, each low window unrolls a complete story: Old Testament narratives, parables, saints' lives, and even the legends of medieval Christendom. The following table presents four of these windows, chosen to show the breadth of the repertoire, based on the Inventaire général notices.[46]
| Window | Location | Date | Donors depicted at the foot | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The story of Noah | North aisle (bay 47) | 1205–1215 | Carpenters, cartwrights, and coopers | Noah, the ark, and the Flood |
| The Prodigal Son | North transept arm (bay 35) | 1205–1215 | No donors depicted | The parable (Lk 15:11–32), beneath the blessing Christ |
| The Zodiac and the labors of the months | South ambulatory (bay 28) | 1217–1220 | The winegrowers and Theobald VI, Count of Chartres | The signs of the zodiac and the year's labors, beneath the blessing Christ, Alpha and Omega |
| Charlemagne | North ambulatory (bay 7) | c. 1225 | The furriers | The legend of Charlemagne and Roland |
The Zodiac window says in its own way what all this glazing is: human time, month after month, with its labors, set beneath the gaze of Christ, who is the beginning and the end.
The three rose windows
Three monumental rose windows crown the cathedral's three great fronts, each bearing a distinct theological program.[47]
The west rose (c. 1205–1215) depicts the Last Judgment. It is the one believers discover on turning back toward the doors: the Christ who will return "to judge the living and the dead."[48]
The north rose (c. 1230–1235) bears in its spandrels the fleurs-de-lis of France and the castles of Castile: hence its attribution to the House of France, and traditionally to Blanche of Castile, regent, and the young Louis IX. It celebrates the Virgin and Child, ringed by four doves and eight angels, then by the twelve kings of Judah and the twelve prophets: the very lineage figured by the Tree of Jesse, unfurled in glory. In the five lancets, Saint Anne bearing the Virgin — the cathedral has owned a relic of Mary's mother since 1205 — is flanked by Melchizedek, David, Solomon, and Aaron, standing above Nebuchadnezzar worshipping an idol, Saul taking his own life, Jeroboam worshipping the golden calf, and Pharaoh engulfed in the Red Sea.[49]
The south rose, "set between 1221 and 1230" according to the Inventaire général, is a gift of Peter of Dreux, called Mauclerc, Duke of Brittany, and his wife Alice of Thouars, whose arms fill the quatrefoils. It shows the Christ in glory of the Apocalypse, ringed by the four Living Creatures, eight angels, and the twenty-four elders bearing musical instruments and bowls of incense (Rev 5:8). In the lancets, around the Virgin and Child, the four major prophets carry the four evangelists on their shoulders: Jeremiah carries Luke, Isaiah Matthew, Ezekiel John, and Daniel Mark; at the foot stand the donors with their children.[50]
These lancets give visible form to the most famous saying of the School of Chartres, that of its master Bernard, at the start of the 12th century, as reported by John of Salisbury — who ended his days Bishop of Chartres:
"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more things than they, and things farther off, not indeed by the sharpness of our own sight or the height of our bodies, but because we are lifted up and raised aloft by their giant stature." — John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, Book III, Chapter 4 (1159)[51]
No 13th-century document expressly links the window to this saying; but the comparison, often made since, says exactly what the window shows: the evangelists see farther because they stand upon the prophets, and the New Testament fulfills the Old without disowning it.
| Rose | Date | Donors | Program |
|---|---|---|---|
| West rose | c. 1205–1215 | — | The Last Judgment |
| North rose | c. 1230–1235 | The House of France (arms of France and Castile) | The Virgin and Child, the kings of Judah and the prophets; Saint Anne in the lancets |
| South rose | Between 1221 and 1230 | Peter of Dreux, called Mauclerc, and Alice of Thouars | The Christ of the Apocalypse and the twenty-four elders; the evangelists on the prophets' shoulders |
The high windows: an assembly of witnesses
Above the aisles, the 13th-century high windows unfold chiefly great standing figures: patriarchs, prophets, apostles, bishops, and saints, with a few scenes. Designed to be read from afar, they form, all around the liturgical space, an immense glass communion of saints. At the back of the apse, the axial window presents the Virgin and Child in majesty, with the Annunciation and the Visitation; it was given by the bakers, the "bread bearers."[52] Believers at prayer find themselves literally ringed by "so great a cloud of witnesses" spoken of by the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 12:1) — the Church of Heaven made visible above the Church on earth.
The donors: kings, clergy, and craftsmen
One feature sets Chartres apart among cathedrals: the place given there to working people. Beside the kings, lords, bishop, and canons, whose arms or portraits sign many windows, the town's artisans appear at the foot of a great many openings.[53]
The trades' "signatures"
At the foot of many windows, where one would expect a lord's arms or a bishop's portrait, one discovers artisans at work: shoemakers cutting leather, bakers carrying bread, wine merchants rolling their barrels, money-changers weighing coins, carpenters, drapers, coopers, cartwrights. With Bourges, Chartres preserves the oldest known examples, c. 1200–1215, of these images of workers set in the place usually reserved for noble or clerical donors.[54]
Canon Yves Delaporte, the historian of the Chartres windows, recorded donors depicted in 116 of the 173 original windows, including craftsmen in forty-two; they contain 125 scenes showing at least twenty-five trades, spread almost evenly between the high and the low windows.[55] On the traditional reading, these panels worked as "signatures": by giving a window, the members of a trade inscribed their gift in the cathedral's light.
This meaning has been debated. For the art historian Jane Welch Williams (Bread, Wine, and Money, 1993), these artisans would not be pious donors but dependents of the clergy, and the images would express the canons' view of the town's trades. Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, who examined this thesis, recognizes in the chapter the commissioner and designer of the program, but not the donor of the trade windows.[56] In either reading, one thing strikes home: daily labor, set at the foot of a window recounting a saint's life, is placed in God's light. The work of hands literally upholds the holy image.
The Good Samaritan given by the shoemakers
The Good Samaritan window (bay 44, c. 1205–1215) perfectly illustrates this marriage of the sacred and the craft. Its first three panels show the donors; nine panels then recount the parable, eleven more Genesis, from the creation of Adam and Eve to the murder of Abel, and the Christ in majesty crowns the whole.[57] At the foot of the window, it is the shoemakers of Chartres who depicted themselves at their benches. During the 1987–1988 restoration, the stylistic examination conducted by Claudine Lautier distinguished in it a principal workshop — the same as that of the Saint John the Evangelist window — and other painters, authors notably of the Temptation and the Expulsion from paradise: a sign of numerous workshops laboring side by side.[58]
Memory and survival of the windows
That windows of fragile glass should have crossed eight centuries borders on the miraculous. This survival is anything but automatic: it is the fruit of courageous human decisions, above all in the 20th century.
Saved from the two world wars
Four years after shells had shattered, from 19 September 1914 onward, much of the stained glass of Reims Cathedral, Chartres in turn put its windows in safety: in May 1918, all of them, except the roses, were removed. The reinstallation lasted five years and was used to restore the windows; Canon Yves Delaporte re-established the logical order of scenes where it had been lost. The works were completed in 1924.[59]
The Second World War was better prepared still. Wooden crates lined with insulating panels and cork powder had waited in the crypt since 1937–1938. From 26 August to 6 September 1939, under the direction of chief architect Jean Trouvelot, five master-glazier workshops removed the whole of the windows; the openings received for seven years a provisional "vitrex" protection, the low windows wooden and sheet-metal cladding and bags of earth.[60] On 8 June 1940, as the German army approached Paris, 539 of the cathedral's 923 crates left for the Fongrenon quarry, at Cercles in Dordogne, with the agreement of the prefect of Eure-et-Loir, Jean Moulin; the rest stayed in the crypt. Brought home at the end of 1945, the windows were fully reinstalled in October 1948.[61]
Restorations and controversies
A first restoration campaign, from 1974 to 1976, concerned the three Romanesque windows of the west front; restoration resumed on a sustained basis from 1985–1986: nave and transept aisles (1986–1988), ambulatory (1990–2003), upper choir (2004–2010).[62] These works, conducted by the State, draw on the studies of the Laboratoire de recherche des monuments historiques. They raise a delicate question: how far to clean eight-hundred-year-old glass without erasing its patina? The restoration of the cathedral's interior, undertaken by the State from 2007–2009 and completed in 2024, moreover stirred a lively international controversy, notably after Martin Filler's article, "A Scandalous Makeover at Chartres" (The New York Review of Books, 14 December 2014), answered by art historians Madeline H. Caviness and Jeffrey F. Hamburger.[63]
In 1979, Chartres Cathedral was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List, and its windows expressly count among the reasons for this inscription:[64]
"Its vast nave, in pure ogival style, its porches adorned with fine sculptures from the middle of the 12th century, and its magnificent 12th- and 13th-century stained-glass windows make it an exceptional and remarkably well-preserved masterpiece." — UNESCO, description of the property "Chartres Cathedral" (inscribed 1979)[65]
Praying before the windows
At the end of this journey, one must return to the primary meaning of these images. The windows of Chartres were never made for a museum: they were made for prayer. Medieval pilgrims entering the cathedral did not "visit" a monument; they stepped into an image of Heaven, where God's light, filtered through a thousand figures of saints, descended upon them.
There lies the whole logic of the sacred image: "the honor rendered to an image goes back to the original model," teaches the Catechism, taking up Saint Basil (CCC 2132), and visible beauty raises the soul toward invisible beauty.[66] The blue of the Belle-Verrière, the Tree of Jesse, the court of censing angels, the kings of Judah of the roses, down to the humble shoemakers at the foot of the windows: everything conspires to say a single thing — that Christ is the true Light, and that all earthly beauty is but a reflection calling us to contemplate Him face to face.
"God is light and in him is no darkness at all." — First Letter of Saint John 1:5[67]
Further reading
- Notre-Dame de Chartres — the Marian sanctuary, the history of the Virgin's Veil, the Gothic cathedral, and the pilgrimage.
- The architecture of a cathedral — how the rib vault and the flying buttress made it possible to open walls to light.
- The theology of the icon — the doctrinal foundation of the sacred image: Incarnation, veneration and adoration, the image as "window."
- Romanesque art and the catechesis of images — how medieval art taught the faith to the faithful before and around the Gothic.
- Gothic as theology of light — the metaphysics of lux and claritas of which Chartres is the culmination.
- Byzantine icons — the iconographic tradition of the Virgin in majesty inherited by the Belle-Verrière.
- Duccio's Maestà — another great Marian image in majesty, painted a century later in Siena.
Notes and References
Stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral, Wikipedia (consulted June 2026): ensemble of about 167 windows across 176 bays, ~2,600 m², majority made between 1205 and 1240; three west-front lancets dated c. 1145–1155, the only part to survive the fire; west rose (Last Judgment, c. 1215), north rose (Blanche of Castile and Louis IX, c. 1230), south rose (Peter Mauclerc and Alice of Thouars, 1221–1230); consecration in 1260 under Louis IX; removal of the windows during both wars; conservation since 1972 (Laboratoire de recherche des monuments historiques); up to five glass-painters identified on the Good Samaritan window. See en.wikipedia.org.
1 8 11 14 17 47Chartres Cathedral, official website, The stained-glass windows of the cathedral — an exceptional ensemble, the largest collection in the world: about 2,500 m² of stained glass, more than 170 windows, mid-12th-century west front, bulk of the glazing 1205–1225; coloring process using metallic oxides in molten glass, cutting with a hot point, grisaille touch-ups, mounting in panels about a meter square; reading of the low windows "from bottom to top, left to right." cathedrale-chartres.org.
2 9 12 15 18 26 34Miracula beatae Mariae Virginis in Carnotensi ecclesia facta (c. 1210), ed. Antoine Thomas, "Les miracles de Notre-Dame de Chartres, texte latin inédit," Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes, vol. 42, 1881, pp. 505–550 (passages pp. 508–511, on persee.fr): the fire is dated to the "3rd day before the Ides of June" 1194, i.e. 11 June (Chartres tradition retains the 10th); the shrine, carried "by a few" into the lower crypt, is then presented to the people by the bishop and the dean; Cardinal-legate Melior, present, obtains from the canons a notable share of their revenues for three years; original text on the Virgin's will: "beata Dei genitrix novam et incomparabilem ecclesiam sibi volens fabricari" ("the blessed Mother of God, wishing to have a new and incomparable church built for her"). French verse version by Jean le Marchant (between 1252 and 1262), Le Livre des miracles de Notre-Dame de Chartres, écrit en vers, ed. G. Duplessis, 1855, p. 28: "Deux iors ou trois la aual furent" ("Two days or three they remained there"). On what survived (mid-12th-century western block and Fulbert's crypt): Claudine Lautier, "Les vitraux de la cathédrale de Chartres. Reliques et images," Bulletin monumental, vol. 161-1, 2003, p. 4 (persee.fr).
3 20 22 23Official cathedral website ("Pilgrimages" section): the relic "was given to the Church of Chartres, around 876, by Charles the Bald"; "It was said she had worn this garment on the day of Christ's birth" (cathedrale-chartres.org). The date of the gift rests on tradition, not on a charter (C. Lautier, Bulletin monumental, 2003, p. 23). The Miracula connect this garment with the Virgin's pregnancy and childbearing. The relic's history is traced in Notre-Dame de Chartres.
4 21Doctrine of the sacred image: foundation in the Incarnation, distinction between the veneration of images and the adoration due to God alone, honor which "goes back to the original model" — the Second Council of Nicaea (787); Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1159–1162 and 2131–2132 (no. 2132, which quotes Saint Basil, On the Holy Spirit 18, 45, on vatican.va). Full exposition in The theology of the icon.
5 66Saint Gregory the Great, Registrum epistularum, XI, 10, to Serenus, Bishop of Marseille, October 600 (ed. Dag Norberg, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 140A, Turnhout, Brepols, 1982, pp. 873–874; XI, 13 in Migne's numbering, PL 77). Original text: "Aliud est enim picturam adorare, aliud per picturae historiam quid sit adorandum addiscere. Nam quod legentibus scriptura, hoc idiotis praestat pictura cernentibus, quia in ipsa ignorantes vident quod sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt qui litteras nesciunt." — "It is one thing to adore a picture, another to learn, through the story it presents, what should be adored." An earlier letter (IX, 209 in Norberg, IX, 105 in Migne, July 599) had already laid down the principle: "Idcirco enim pictura in ecclesiis adhibetur, ut hi qui litteras nesciunt saltem in parietibus videndo legant quae legere in codicibus non valent" — painting is used in churches so that those who cannot read may at least read on the walls what they cannot read in books. English translations: second letter on newadvent.org, first letter on newadvent.org.
6 33Bourges: the Centre des monuments nationaux sees there "one of the richest collections in the world, on a par with Chartres," with the ambulatory windows (c. 1210–1215). Paris (Notre-Dame): according to the Ministry of Culture, "the only medieval windows still in place are those of the three roses," the north rose being the best preserved — most of the stained glass having been removed in the 18th century and replaced with clear glazing. Reims: German bombardment from 19 September 1914; surviving notably the great west rose, nave and choir clerestory windows, and the north rose. Amiens: windows removed in the 18th century; those sheltered in a Paris depot during the Great War were destroyed by fire.
7 13UNESCO, World Heritage Centre, "Chartres Cathedral" page (property no. 81): inscription date 1979, criteria (i), (ii), and (iv). Full description: "Built in part from 1145, and rebuilt in twenty-six years after the 1194 fire, Chartres Cathedral is the quintessential monument of French Gothic art. Its vast nave in the purest ogival style, its porches displaying admirable sculptures from the mid-12th century, and its shimmering array of 12th- and 13th-century stained-glass windows make it an exceptional and remarkably well-preserved masterpiece." See whc.unesco.org.
10 64 65The Tree of Jesse of the right-hand lancet of the west front (c. 1145–1155) figures Christ's genealogy: Jesse asleep at the base, the trunk rising through the kings of Judah to the Virgin then to Christ, ringed by the seven gifts of the Spirit (doves). It is one of the oldest and most influential surviving Trees of Jesse. Sources: Stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral, Wikipedia; The Tree of Jesse at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres.
16 39 42The cathedral and its chapter retain 17 October 1260; other sources, including the catalogue Trésors de la cathédrale de Chartres (2002), give 24 October. King Saint Louis's presence at the ceremony belongs to tradition (Jean Favier; the Catholic Encyclopedia writes that he "is supposed to have attended").
19Jérôme Sterpenich, Altération des vitraux médiévaux. Contribution à l'étude du comportement à long terme des verres de confinement, doctoral thesis, Nancy, 1998, chap. 5: archaeological soda glasses "to be related to the blue windows of Chartres Cathedral" (p. 110); "altered soda glasses on windows, such as the Chartres blue glasses, show no visible corrosion figure" (p. 114); calculated alteration rate of about 3·10⁻³ µm/year for a Chartres blue glass, i.e. a film on the order of 2 µm in 700 years, versus about 0.2 µm/year for the potash windows of Tours, Oppenheim, and Meissen (end of chapter). Thesis on theses.hal.science. See also G. A. Cox and K. J. S. Gillies, "The X-ray fluorescence analysis of medieval durable blue soda glass from York Minster," Archaeometry, vol. 28, no. 1, 1986, pp. 57–68, which compares these 12th-century soda blues with those of Chartres.
24 30 32The monk Theophilus, De diversis artibus (Schedula diversarum artium), first half of the 12th century (c. 1100–1140 according to scholars); his identification with the Benedictine Roger of Helmarshausen, proposed by Albert Ilg in 1874, remains debated. Book I deals with painting, Book II with glass, Book III with metal. Book II: ch. 17, wooden table coated with chalk on which the window is drawn; ch. 18, cutting with a hot iron and trimming with the grozing iron; ch. 19–21, painting of details; ch. 22–23, kiln and firing; ch. 24–27, casting of cames, leading, and soldering. Editions: Robert Hendrie, An Essay upon Various Arts, London, John Murray, 1847; Albert Ilg, Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte, VII, Vienna, 1874; C. R. Dodwell, The Various Arts, London, Nelson, 1961. Latin text and Hendrie's English translation on archive.org.
25 27Theophilus, De diversis artibus, prologue of Book I. Original text: "quicquid in fenestrarum pretiosa varietate diligit Francia" ("whatever France esteems in her precious variety of windows," trans. C. R. Dodwell, 1961).
28Theophilus, De diversis artibus, prologue of Book III (the book of metal, which first recalls the church decoration already completed). Translation published in Essai sur divers arts (Diversarum artium schedula), edited and translated by Charles de L'Escalopier, introduction by J. Marie Guichard, Paris, 1843, pp. 122–123. Original text (Ilg ed., 1874, p. 151): "Nec enim perpendere valet humanus oculus, cui operi primum aciem infigat ; si respicit laquearia, vernant quasi pallia ; si considerat parietes, est paradysi species ; si luminis abundantiam ex fenestris intuetur, inaestimabilem vitri decorem et operis pretiosissimi varietatem miratur." L'Escalopier edition on archive.org.
29N. Capobianco, M. O. J. Y. Hunault, S. Balcon-Berry, L. Galoisy, D. Sandron and G. Calas, "The Grande Rose of the Reims Cathedral: an eight-century perspective on the colour management of medieval stained glass," Scientific Reports, vol. 9, 2019, article 3287 (doi:10.1038/s41598-019-39740-y): about 1,600 ± 500 ppm of cobalt when it is the only colorant, about 800 ± 400 ppm when combined with another.
31The Good Samaritan Window, Chartres Cathedral, Wikipedia: the Good Samaritan window (bay 44, c. 1205–1215), given by the shoemakers' confraternity, pairs the parable (Luke 10:30–37) with a typological reading linking the wounded traveler to Adam and the Samaritan to Christ. On the typological reading of the windows of Sens, Chartres, and Bourges (c. 1200–1215), see also this notice and the literature it cites.
35 57Saint Augustine, Quaestiones Evangeliorum (Questions on the Gospels), Book II, Question 19 (PL 35). Original text: "Homo quidam descendebat ab Ierusalem in Iericho, ipse Adam intellegitur in genere humano ; Ierusalem civitas pacis illa caelestis…". The rest of the question identifies the robbers with the devil and his angels, the Samaritan (the name interpreted as "guardian") with the Lord, the inn with the Church. Latin text on augustinus.it.
36 37Medieval theology of light is rooted in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (The Celestial Hierarchy) and was developed notably by Abbot Suger at Saint-Denis: material light is an image of divine light, and light's passage through colored glass evokes the Incarnation. Developed in Gothic as theology of light.
38Isaiah 11:1–2 (RSV): "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD." The seven doves ringing Christ at the top of the Tree of Jesse figure these gifts of the Spirit (the Latin tradition, with the Vulgate, counts seven by adding piety). Text on aelf.org.
40The Saint-Denis Tree of Jesse, created for Abbot Suger c. 1140–1144, was dismantled by Alexandre Lenoir in 1799 for the Musée des Monuments français, then reassembled in the 19th century with the loss of many panels (Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d'Île-de-France). Saint-Denis and Chartres supplied the model for many later Trees of Jesse, notably at Canterbury Cathedral (c. 1200) and Saint Cunibert's in Cologne (1220–1235) — see Jesse Tree, Wikipedia (after Gertrud Schiller, 1971).
41Our Lady of the Belle-Verrière: the central panel of the Virgin in majesty dates from about 1180 (Romanesque window); having survived the 1194 fire, it was reset in the 13th century in a new surround. The Virgin is figured there as Sedes Sapientiae (Throne of Wisdom). Source: Stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral, Wikipedia.
43 44The antiphon Tota pulchra es, Maria, traditional Marian prayer inspired by the Song of Songs (4:7) and the Book of Judith, sung notably on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Original text: "Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te." ("Thou art all fair, Mary, and the stain of original sin is not in thee.")
45Notices of the Inventaire général, Palissy database (Ministry of Culture, pop.culture.gouv.fr): Charlemagne window, bay 7, north ambulatory, c. 1225, furrier donors (IM28000516); Zodiac and labors-of-the-months window, bay 28, south ambulatory, 1217–1220, winegrowers and Theobald VI, Count of Chartres (IM28000515); Noah window, bay 47, north aisle, 1205–1215, carpenters, cartwrights, and coopers (IM28000473); Prodigal Son window, bay 35, north transept arm, 1205–1215, no donors depicted, twenty-seven scenes (IM28000467).
46West rose (Last Judgment): c. 1205–1215, per the Corpus Vitrearum dating scheme (Painton Cowen: c. 1215). North rose: "ensemble given by the House of France c. 1230" (Palissy database, IM28000460); "bay 121 executed c. 1235 was given by the House of France" (PM28000814) — the attribution rests on heraldry (fleurs-de-lis of France and castles of Castile); at the center the Virgin and Child, ringed by four doves and eight angels, the twelve kings of Judah and the twelve prophets; in the lancets, Saint Anne bearing the Virgin Mary (the cathedral has owned a relic of Saint Anne since 1205) between Melchizedek and Nebuchadnezzar, David and Saul, Solomon and Jeroboam, Aaron and Pharaoh (Corpus Vitrearum page, "North rose"). South rose: "set between 1221 and 1230, by the House of Dreux-Brittany" (Palissy database, PM28000814) — Peter Mauclerc (Peter of Dreux) and Alice of Thouars; at the center the Christ in glory of the Apocalypse, the four Living Creatures, eight angels, and the twenty-four elders with musical instruments and bowls of incense; in the lancets, the Virgin and Child between the four evangelists borne by the four major prophets, with the donors and their children at the foot.
48 49 50John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, Book III, Chapter 4 (work completed in 1159), ed. Clement C. J. Webb, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1929, p. 136: "Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora uidere, non utique proprii uisus acumine aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subuehimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea." The comparison of this saying with the evangelists perched on the prophets' shoulders in the south rose is a widespread reading (e.g. Thomas Merton, 1965; Painton Cowen: "A coincidence or a wish to acknowledge the influence of Bernard and the School?"), but it is attested by no document of the period (Édouard Jeauneau, 2009, does not mention the window).
51The 13th-century high windows bear chiefly large figures; the axial window of the apse (bay 100, c. 1210–1225) presents the Virgin and Child in majesty, with the Annunciation and the Visitation — donors: the "bread bearers" (bakers). Iconographic tables of the upper level (Service d'archéologie et de valorisation, 2010).
52The "trade windows" first appear at Chartres and Bourges c. 1200–1210. At Chartres, some forty-two trade-related windows are counted, with about 125 depictions of artisans practicing twenty-five different occupations (shoemakers, bakers, wine merchants, money-changers, carpenters, drapers, coopers, cartwrights, apothecaries, butchers, etc.). For the first time in medieval art, the lower register of the windows shows ordinary workers rather than nobles or clerics. Sources: Stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral, Wikipedia; The Trade Windows' Depictions of Food in Chartres Cathedral (Gettysburg College, student scholarship).
53 54 55Jane Welch Williams, Bread, Wine, and Money: The Windows of the Trades at Chartres Cathedral, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993, p. 1: "125 depictions of at least twenty-five different occupations"; p. 12, after Yves Delaporte (1926): donors depicted in 116 of the 173 original windows, including artisans in 42 — see also Daniel Russo, review in Revue de l'Art, no. 102, 1993, p. 64 ("forty-two windows"). For Williams, these artisans are dependents of the clergy and the images express the canons' viewpoint; Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, Bulletin monumental, vol. 154-1, 1996, pp. 60–69, recognizes in the chapter the commissioner and designer of the program, but adds that "the consequences she draws from it for the donors do not convince us." The phrase "trade windows first appeared at Chartres and Bourges around 1200" comes from Williams ("Trade windows first appeared at the cathedrals of Chartres and Bourges around 1200," p. 1): these are the first surviving examples, not necessarily the first created.
56Claudine Lautier, Bulletin monumental, vol. 148, 1990: five painters distinguished for the Mary Magdalene window (bay 46, pp. 25–26); for the Good Samaritan (bay 44, p. 19), a principal workshop — the same as that of the Saint John the Evangelist window (bay 48) — and other painters, authors notably of the Temptation (panel 18) and the Expulsion from paradise (panel 20); stylistic analysis conducted during the 1987–1988 restoration. Window registers (Palissy database, IM28000406): panels 1–3, the shoemaker donors; 4–12, the parable; 13–23, Genesis (creation and fall); 24, the Christ in majesty.
58First World War: in May 1918, all the windows, except the roses, were removed and sheltered; reinstallation lasted five years and ended in 1924. Second World War (Thierry Baritaud, Corpus Vitrearum, "Dépose des vitraux de Chartres"): crates prepared in 1937–1938, complete removal from 26 August to 6 September 1939 by five workshops (Lorin, Gaudin, Tournet, Bourgeot, Delange), under chief architect Jean Trouvelot; 923 crates, 539 of which left on 8 June 1940 for the Fongrenon quarry (Cercles, Dordogne), with the agreement of the prefect of Eure-et-Loir Jean Moulin, the rest remaining in the crypt; return home at the end of 1945, complete reinstallation in October 1948. See also Victor A. Pollak, Saving the Light at Chartres: How the Great Cathedral and Its Stained-Glass Treasures Were Rescued during World War II (Stackpole Books).
59 60 61Claudine Lautier, Bulletin monumental, vol. 169-1, 2011, pp. 3–11: "After a first campaign, between 1974 and 1976, which concerned only the three Romanesque windows of the west front, restoration of the windows resumed actively from 1985," under the project management of the Centre Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs; nave and transept aisles (1986–1988), ambulatory (1990–2003), upper choir (2004–2010). Preliminary studies by the Laboratoire de recherche des monuments historiques from 1972.
62Martin Filler, "A Scandalous Makeover at Chartres," The New York Review of Books, daily edition, 14 December 2014; reply by Madeline H. Caviness and Jeffrey F. Hamburger, "The New Chartres: An Exchange," 17 December 2014. The State-led interior restoration program has run since 2007–2009 (choir vaults, 2009) and ended with the opening of the treasury in September 2024 (Monumental, 2025-2).
63First Letter of Saint John 1:5 (RSV): "God is light and in him is no darkness at all." Text on aelf.org.
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