Preparations for the Centenary of St. Teresa of Avila

The following information was issued this week on the Carmelite news service Citoc regarding preparations for the Centenary of St. Teresa of Avila in 2015
 
We have been informed in the Curia of a number of significant events taking place throughout the Carmelite world in preparation for the 500th anniversary of the birth of Saint Teresa of Jesus. Our General Curia, through its International Formation Commission, will hold an on-going formation course in Spain from the 7th  - 17th of September 2014. Details of this course will be sent to the provincials, commissaries and delegates in the near future.
In the English speaking countries, the Carmelite Forum of Britain and Ireland (O.Carm./O.C.D. friars and nuns) are holding a series of important events, including conferences in London and Dublin. The former Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Rowan Williams, is among the speakers taking part. A joint letter of the provincials and presidents of the two nuns associations can be read at www.teresaofavila.org. The Carmelite Institute in the United States has already begun a programme that will lead up to the 500th anniversary, entitled “Walking in her shoes for a day”. The will also hold a symposium on St. Teresa in Chicago in June 2015.
The Neapolitan Province held a congress in Bari on the 12th of October, 2013, with the title "Il Cielo è dentro di te" (Heaven is within you): Five lay people gave a presentation of the “Way of Perfection”, from the stand-point of lay people. The previous year, in the month of October, as always, a congress was held on "L'attualità pastorale del Libro della Vita di S. Teresa" (the pastoral relevance of the Autobiography of St. Teresa) with talks by Aniano Alvarez Suarez, O.C.D., in Bari, and Luigi Borriello, O.C.D. in Foggia.
In Portugal, a committee was set up for the Centenary. This committee includes the O.C.D. Province of Portugal, and O.Carm. General Commissariat of Portugal, and other Carmelite Congregations. The first event to be organised was a congress held in Fatima from the 17th to the 19th of October, last, on the Carmelite-Teresian school of prayer. A very good number of people from various Portuguese speaking countries attended.
Similarly, with a view to the Centenary, the publishers of the collection, Textos para un Milenio (Texts for a Millennium) published the work of Tomás de Jesus (d. 1582), the “Suma y compendio de los grados de oración” ( Summa and Compendium of the Stages of Prayer), one of the first attempts to systematise the thought of St. Teresa, as well as the "Sermones en honor de Santa Teresa de Jesús” (Sermons in honour of St. Teresa of Jesus) by the Carmelite Cristóbal de Avendaño (d. 1629). In addition, Edizioni Carmelitane in Rome, published the second edition, with many additions, of “Santa Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz y los Carmelitas Españoles” (St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross and the Spanish Carmelites) by Pablo Garrido, O.Carm.

Actividades de preparación del Centenario de Santa Teresa
De acuerdo a la información recibida en nuestra Curia, podemos destacar ya algunos eventos que se están organizando en todo el mundo con vistas al V Centenario del nacimiento de Santa Teresa de Jesús. La Curia General, a través de la Comisión Internacional de Formación, está preparando un curso de formación permanente que tendrá lugar en España del 7 al 17 de septiembre de 2014. Una información detallada se enviará próximamente a los provinciales.
En los países de habla inglesa, el Carmelite Forum of Britain and Ireland (formado por frailes y monjas O.Carm. y OCD) está desarrollando una serie de conferencias en Londres y en Dublín. Entre los ponentes, hay que destacar al que fue Arzobispo Anglicano de Canterbury, Lord Rowan Williams. Asimismo, los provinciales y las presidentes de las dos federaciones de monjas han escrito una carta al respecto que se puede leer en: www.teresaofavila.org. El Instituto Carmelita de los Estados Unidos ha comenzado ya un programa de preparación para el V Centenario titulado “Walk in her shoes for a day” (Caminando un día con sus sandalias). Igualmente, se está preparando un Simposio sobre la Santa que tendrá lugar en Chicago en junio de 2015.
El pasado el 12 de octubre, la Provincia Napolitana ha celebrado un congreso en Bari, bajo el título "El Cielo está dentro de ti” en el que cinco seglares han presentado el “Camino de Perfección” desde una perspectiva laical. En octubre de 2012 ya se había celebrado otro congreso sobre "La actualidad pastoral del Libro de la Vida de Santa Teresa" con conferencias de Aniano Alvarez Suarez, OCD., en Bari y de Luigi Borriello, OCD, en Foggia.
En Portugal se ha creado un comité integrado por la Provincia de Portugal OCD, en colaboración con el Comisariado General de Portugal O.Carm., y con otras congregaciones carmelitas, para preparar diversos actos con motivo de este importante centenario. El primero de ellos ha sido el congreso celebrado en Fátima los pasados días 17 al 19 de octubre sobre la escuela de oración carmelitana-teresiana, con una nutrida participación de varios países de lengua portuguesa.
En cuanto a publicaciones, la colección TPM (“Textos para un Milenio”) ha publicado la obra de Tomás de Jesús († 1582), “Suma y compendio de los grados de oración” (uno de los primeros intentos de sistematizar el pensamiento de la Santa), así como los "Sermones en honor de Santa Teresa de Jesús” del carmelita Cristóbal de Avendaño († 1629). Asimismo, Edizioni Carmelitane de Roma ha publicado la segunda edición, muy ampliada, de “Santa Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz y los Carmelitas Españoles” de Pablo Garrido, O.Carm.


Attività in preparazione al centenario di Santa Teresa
La Curia è stata informata di varie attività significative che si svolgono in tutto il mondo carmelitano in vista del V centenario della nascita di Santa Teresa di Gesù.
La nostra Curia Generalizia organizzerà attraverso la Commissione Internazionale per la formazione dal 7 al 17 settembre 2014 un corso di formazione permanente in Spagna. Le informazioni in dettaglio saranno inviate in seguito ai provinciali.
Nei paesi di lingua inglese, il Carmelite Forum of Britain and Ireland (composto da frati e monache O.Carm. e OCD), organizzerà una serie di conferenze a Londra e a Dublino. Tra i relatori ci sarà l'ex arcivescovo anglicano di Canterbury, Lord Rowan Williams. Inoltre, si può leggere una lettera scritta dai provinciali e le presidi delle due federazioni di monache su www.teresaofavila.org . L'istituto carmelitano negli Stati Uniti ha già cominciato un programma in preparazione al V Centenario col titolo “Walk in her shoes for a day”. Si sta preparando anche un simposio su S. Teresa per il giugno 2015 a Chicago.
La Provincia Napoletana ha celebrato il 12 ottobre 2013 un convegno a Bari, dal titolo "Il Cielo è dentro di te", nel quale cinque laici hanno presentato il "Cammino di Perfezione" dalla prospettiva laicale. L'anno precedente, sempre nel mese di ottobre, si era svolto un convegno su "L'attualità pastorale del Libro della Vita di S. Teresa" con le relazioni di Aniano Álvarez Suarez, OCD, a Bari, e di Luigi Borriello, OCD, a Foggia.
In Portogallo è stato formato un comitato composto dalla Provincia di Portogallo OCD, il Commissariato Generale di Portogallo O.Carm. e da altre congregazioni carmelitane per collaborare nella preparazione di varie attività per questo Centenario. Il comitato ha già organizzato dal 17 al 19 ottobre a Fatima un congresso sul tema della scuola di preghiera carmelitana teresiana con una viva partecipazione di persone di diversi paesi di lingua portoghese.
In vista del centenario la collana TPM (Textos para un Milenio) ha pubblicato l'opera di Tomás de Jesús (+1582) “Suma y compendio de los grados de oración”, che è uno dei primi tentativi di sistemare il pensiero della santa; ed anche "Sermones en honor de Santa Teresa de Jesús” del carmelitano Cristóbal de Avendaño (+1629). Le Edizioni Carmelitane di Roma hanno pubblicato la seconda edizione, molto ampliata, di “Santa Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz y los Carmelitas Españoles” di Pablo Garrido, O.Carm.

Of Glass and Gold III: Comparisons and Conclusions

James Waller

This is the third part of a paper given by James Waller at the Carmelite Centre on Tuesday evening, the 12^th of November 2013. James’s paper contrasts his discovery of the Trinity Sergius Monastery in Russia, a spiritual centre of Orthodoxy, with Metz Cathedral in France, a remarkable example of Western Catholic spirituality. All images in this presentation come from the camera of James Waller. A bibliography, with links, is at the end of this Part.
We might say that speculative theology is forged by a deep and ongoing tug-of-war, between reason and logic on the one hand, and faith and devotion on the other. Equally we might say that dogmatic theology places one in the hand of the other. The great Orthodox monastic, Fr. Seraphim Rose once wrote that in order to embrace Russian Orthodoxy he “had to crucify his mind.” In surrendering his not inconsiderable powers of reason to the apophatic way of the Eastern Church, Rose acquired what no amount of thought could: simplicity. This is not to say that he stopped thinking: his surrender, rather, channelled his reasoning powers into the tight rivers of Orthodox dogma, revealing with fresh insight its accepted truths, and refuting, with erudition, all that opposed them.

Put very simply, the great split between the Eastern and Western churches was due to the tug-of-war of speculative theology. The double focus of this war was the icon and the formulation of the Trinity. The Eastern Church rejected reason as a tool of theology and embraced instead the apophatic way, the dark way of silent surrender. In doing so it also embraced the icon as a way of “knowing without knowing”, as a mysterious expression of the invisible. It found abhorrent any attempt to reason out the mystery of the Holy Trinity and paved the way for an icon, such as Rublev’s, to, one day, be forged.

The West, on the other hand, continued with the tug-of-war. In doing so it split itself at the seams; it rejected eastern mysticism and iconography and gave birth to a rational philosophy that would ultimately empty itself of God. But that process also gave birth to the Gothic; to awesome symphonies of stained-glass, to immersive prayers of colour, that have continued to be renewed in languages of contemporary vitality and relevance.

In contrast to the icon, the Trinity, in the Neoplatonic Christian West, was manifested as a mathematical formula, for as Von Simson states,

As the icon is thought to partake of the sacred reality it represents, so, according to Augustinian aesthetics, the musical consonances in visual proportions created by man partake of a sacred concord that transcends them.

This sacred concord, expressed most perfectly in Gothic architecture, stained-glass and the music of Bach, is a force of abstraction that is anathema to the Eastern Christian world. Paul Evdokimov’s analysis of abstraction in The Art of The Icon reveals the depth of this anathema. Writing about modern abstraction, he states:

For the great founders of abstract art, the desire to penetrate behind the veil of the real world is obviously “theosophical” and occult in nature. Paul Klee wrote that, “at the higher levels, there is the mysterious.” Is this the new era of the knowledge of God? Perhaps, but if it is, it is a knowledge which knows nothing of the incarnate God. It is a knowledge of the ideal and abstract deity which sets aside the divine Subject himself.

What we might take from this is that the Eastern view is much tighter than the Western; the identification with the image, the icon, is so strong that any other form of spiritual cognizance, even within the Christian framework, amounts to the denial of the Incarnation. Orthodoxy is not an inclusive culture, but a strictly exclusive one. Leonid Ouspensky writes:

The other heresy is to surrender to failure from the start, a rejection of the image. In art, it is iconoclasm, the denial of the immanence of the divinity, that is, of the Incarnation itself.

The contrast with the Western Church could not be greater. The cathedrals of Metz and Rheims reveal a far looser, more inclusive visual culture, one that is able to re-ignite itself with both fresh figurative, and abstract, vision. But is this vision activated into prayer?

Troitski Sobor, in contrast to Metz and Rheims, reveals a deeply active, yet closed visual tradition. It is, I would say, more alive with actual prayer, indeed richly so. The pilgrimage there never ceases and the spiritual atmosphere is such that photography is unthinkable.

Almost the opposite may be said of the French cathedrals. Cultural tourists clearly outnumber spiritual pilgrims, and the clicks of cameras largely put to bed the thought of lighting candles. This is not to say that cultural tourists do not experience awe and wonder, but whether that translates into prayer, or simply remains on the level of sensation, is another story.

For myself, I came really, on an artistic pilgrimage, longing to see the glass that raised Marc Chagall’s luminous vision to its most fully realized expression. And I found that the glass is just one aspect of the vibrational whole, just as the icon is within the iconostasis. It is pertinent to note that Chagall felt the need to remind us (and perhaps himself) that the cathedral is not a gallery, but a place of contemplation. These words of his are quoted from a guide to his stained-glass windows in Rheims:

The Cathedral is not a museum, there should be no mistake about this. I believe in love. One doesn’t do a thing if one does not love. This is a bouquet, a mystical bouquet, my gift to Rheims.

The conditions for such a statement, wonderful as it is, do not occur in the Russian Orthodox Church. Clearly, what constitutes sacred art – unlike theology - remains speculative in the West whereas in the East, the visual program – and any internal aesthetic debate - is closed.
In closing this particular discussion we should note that Western cathedrals such as St Etienne are more the exception than the rule. Even so, the Western Church has proven itself to be permeable to modern and contemporary art culture. The speculative and eclectic nature of its embrace could be seen as a healthy and fluid renovation of its interior aesthetic life. It could also, however, be seen as evidence of a theological system that has largely lost its aesthetic moorings.

When confronted with one modern, jarring, abstract window in Notre-Dame de Rheims, located in the apse to the right of the Chagall, I couldn’t but wonder at the conceptual framework that had enabled it to be commissioned. If I had seen this work in a gallery, as a painting, I would not have lingered. Its cold abstract design seems, now, to confirm Evdokimov’s analysis of abstraction as a subconscious  game of planes and colours “that do not transcend anything.”

We might conclude from this that if abstract expression lacks either an ideal ratio, on the one hand, or true feeling on the other, it becomes extremely problematic. An icon, on the other hand, even if rendered poorly, remains a liturgical language that can be read. The challenge for the Orthodox world is to maintain the vitality of a language that in many ways has already peaked. For the image is also prone to decoration through unfeeling repetition.

Fig. 1. Abstract window, Rheims.

Bibliography

Cowen, 2005: Painton Cowen, The Rose Window: Splendour and Symbol, Thames and Hudson, London 2005.

Evdokimov, 1972: Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: Theology of Beauty, trans. Fr. Steven Bigham, Oakwood Publications, California 1972.

Florensky, 2000: Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis, trans. Donald Sheehan and Olga Andrejev, Saint Vladimir Seminary Press, New York 2000.

Guerlin, 2005: Jean-Marie Guerlin, Marc Chagall’s Stained-Glass Windows, trans. Claire Jardillier, Editions la Goelette, Saint-Ouen 2005.

Hiegel: Philippe Hiegel, The Stained-Glass Windows of Metz Cathedral, trans. Ray Beaumont-Craggs, Editions Oeuvre de la Cathedrale de Metz.

Kenworthy, 2010: Scott M. Kenworthy, The Heart of Russia: Trinity Sergius, Monasticism and Society after 1825, Oxford University Press, New York 2010.

Ouspensky, 1992: Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon: Vol. II, trans. Anthony Gythiel, Saint Vladimir Seminary Press, New York 1992.

Simson, 1988: Otto Von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order, Princeton, New York 1988.

Yazykova, 2010: Irina Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography, trans. Paul Grenier, Paraclete Press, Massachusetts 2010.

On-Line References

Wikipedia: Andrei Rublev (film).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Rublev_%28film%29

Russiapedia: Andrei Rublev (iconographer).
http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/art/andrei-rublev/




Ria, Trinity Iconostasis
http://ria.ru/photolents/20090717/177713112_177708041.html

Wikipedia: Metz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metz

Wikipedia: Metz Cathedral.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metz_Cathedral

Of Glass and Gold II: St Etienne, Notre-Dame and the Stained Glass of Marc Chagall

James Waller

This is the second part of a paper given by James Waller at the Carmelite Centre on Tuesday evening, the 12^th of November 2013. James’s paper contrasts his discovery of the Trinity Sergius Monastery in Russia, a spiritual centre of Orthodoxy, with Metz Cathedral in France, a remarkable example of Western Catholic spirituality. All images in this presentation come from the camera of James Waller. A bibliography, with links, is at the end of Part III.
"To me, stained glass is the transparent wall between my heart and the world’s. Stained glass is uplifting, it requires gravity and passion. It must come alive through the light it receives. The Bible is light already, and stained glass should make this obvious through grace and simplicity."  Marc Chagall

Those are the words of Marc Chagall, whose stained glass windows adorn the magnificent cathedrals of Metz and Rheims in France. Just as Andrei Rublev drew me to Sergiev Posad, so did Chagall draw me to Rheims and Metz. For both these artists are kings of my colour-loving heart.

The stained glass windows of Chagall in St Etienne and in Notre-Dame de Rheims are haunting embers of romantic modernism, smoldering within soaring structures of Neoplatonic  Christian thought. They are visions of the Romantic spirit nestled within the marching vertical lines of an essentially Classical vision; a vision which sought to fuse the rational, even the scientific, with the mystical. It is a vision we call Gothic.

Before exploring the glass of Metz and Rheims, it is, I think essential, to have some idea of what inspired the Gothic vision, of what drove such sublime constructions of stone, lead and glass.

As is the case with all artistic revolutions, the Gothic emerged from the Romanesque style of architecture through a convergence of technical innovation and conceptual inspiration. Advances in stone masonry dovetailed the emergence of translations of key mystical works by Plato, Plotinus, St Augustine, Boethius and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The writings of St Augustine from the 4th century, in particular De Musica, enflamed the imagination of 12th century French bishops, abbots and theologians.   St Bernard of Clairvaux ,  Abbot Suger of St Denis and Thierry of Chartres were some of the principle figures who developed and championed the aesthetics of St Augustine, as well as the ideas of Plato and Pythagoras, with profound implications for French ecclesiastical architecture.

Pythagorian and Neoplatonic number mysticism, and the mystical significance given to the substance of light were the keystones of the Neoplatonic texts. According to the aesthetics derived from Augustine’s treatise De Musica and and Plato’s work, the Timaeus, the divine could be accessed via principles of mathematical order and a system of ideal ratios. St Augustine, in his treatise, was thinking primarily of music, but his thought extended also to architecture, for as Otto Von Simson states, for Augustine, “…architecture mirrors eternal harmony, as music echoes it.”

Thierry of Chartres, a leading, influential thinker amongst a group of Platonists, went so far as to attempt to explain the Trinity by way of geometry. The key to God, it was thought, was to be found in mathematics. This may sound somewhat off the wall to us now, but as Von Simson states “Gothic art would not have come into existence without the Platonic cosmology cultivated at Chartres.”

If a rediscovered enthusiasm for sacred geometry became the basis for a new and more expansive architecture, it was the potentiality of glass to embody Neoplatonic concepts of light that accelerated the shape and character of that architecture. According to Von Simson, for the medieval follower of St Augustine, "Light and luminous objects, no less than musical consonance, conveyed an insight into the perfection of the cosmos, and a divination of the Creator."

A combined vision of theophanic light and sacred geometry, created, as Von Simson so beautifully puts it, “a transparent, diaphanous architecture.” This vision spurred the stonemasons of the 12th century to evolve new solutions in vaulting, buttressing and stone tracery that would support unprecedented fields of stained-glass, where before there had only been small windows, in ever-more complex geometric patterns. The great rose windows of High Gothic and Rayonnant architecture, that evolved from the mid 13th century onwards represent the apex of that geometric complexity.

Painton Cowen, in his work The Rose Window makes a very interesting observation about what he calls “the race to thinness”; that is the increasing elaboration of stone tracery and window design:

In a sense this was a trend toward decoration…Rayonnant roses may seem more ethereal, but lack the mystical – some might say interestingly erratic – qualities found in earlier, more inventive, roses. The perfection came at a cost.
Instead they were hierarchical, ordered, orthodox, relentlessly linear. Everything was logical, ordered, almost standardized. Aristotle had seemingly triumphed over Plato, Reason and Dogma dominated Faith, Orthodoxy over Heresy.

The essential thing to grasp in all this is that figuration within the stained-glass ensemble became utterly subordinate to the geometric impulse. And in later Rayonnant design it disappeared completely. Cowen’s reference to the “triumph” of Aristotle is a nod to the ‘Unmoved Mover’ of Aristotlean metaphysics; a disinterested God emanating a disinterested Divine Light, perceived through perfect geometric order. This is an important point that we’ll come back to, as it represents a complete antithesis to the icon and to Eastern Orthodox aesthetics.

With all that in mind let us return to St Etienne and Notre-Dame de Rheims. As I mentioned earlier, I came to these cathedrals seeking Chagall, whose aesthetic is completely opposed to any kind of order or geometric perfection.

I made my way to the ancient city of Metz by train, a one and a half hour trip from Paris, in the direction of Strasbourg and the German border. Metz itself is a beautiful town with a fascinating history. The capital of the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, it has variously been part of Germany, France, the kingdom of Lotharingia and Gaul, as well as once having been its own independent republic.

St Etienne is a towering Rayonnant Gothic edifice, located in the centre of Metz. Its construction began in the 13th century within the walls of a 10th century Ottonian basilica, which itself had been built on the site of an ancient shrine to Saint Stephen (or St Etienne) dating from the 5th century AD.

On my arrival I could hardly wait to find the Chagall windows which, for years I had looked at in books. My anticipation was heightened by my frustration at not having seen a single Chagall, from the Met in New York to the great galleries of London, Paris, St Petersburg and Moscow, throughout the previous three months. There was, I thought, some diabolical conspiracy afoot, until I discovered that a huge Chagall retrospective had just finished in Paris only one week before my arrival. Such, at times, is life.

As it turned out it took me some time to find the Chagall windows, tucked away in the ambulatory, as there was so much else to take one’s breath away. Chief among them were the windows by Jaques Villon, created for the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in 1957. Villon’s highly expressive contructivism, divided into powerful sections of colour makes a startling impact within the medieval interior. His stained-glass compositions of the Crucifixion (centre), the Jewish Passover and Last Supper (left), and the Wedding Feast of Cana (right), recalling to my mind the work of Franz Marc, flare brilliantly, even on an overcast day, drawing all eyes towards them.


Fig. 1. Windows for the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament,  by Jacques Villon, 1957.

Turning back towards the West façade my vision was engulfed by the great 14th century rose window, by Hermann de Munster. It is a cosmic, largely geometric vision, which pushes all figuration out to the peripheral quadrifoils and trefoils. Below it, large arched windows depict two rows of saints, set amidst elaborate High Gothic ornamentation. Glancing, then, up to the left and right one could see two entirely modernist abstract compositions: two small window sections by Bissierre from 1960, the glass segments of which looked for all the world like mosaic tiles, which had been transported miraculously into lead cames and stone portals.

Pulling myself away from this avalanche of eclectic treasures I eventually found myself in the ambulatory, where I stayed for most of the afternoon. The ambulatory windows by Chagall date from 1960. They were made in collaboration with master glassmaker, Charles Marq, in Rheims, who also facilitated the work of Jaques Villon. 

Fig. 2 & 3. Ambulatory windows, by Marc Chagall, 1960.

The windows, above the door of the Treasury depict scenes from the Old Testament, brought to life with Chagall’s trademark arabesque and filled with his personal iconography of birds, animals, torahs and entwining figures. Where Villon is all constructivist angles and flat-colour planes, Chagall is all curves and tonal flares. His modulation of tone, within the fabulously fragmented and flowing glass panes lends his colours a deeper, more smoldering dimension.

Chagall’s searing, romantic vision, is a stunning contrast to the South and North Transept windows, created in the 16th century by two different masters. The South Transept is a vast Renaissance ensemble, with a rose window at its apex, created by Valentin Bousch. Here we find the stained-glass in the service of an illusionistic aesthetic. Where the modernist compositional devices of Villon and Chagall agree with the translucent and fragmentary nature of the medium, the realism of Bousch seems to be in conflict with it. The illusion of solidity which Bousch achieved contradicts the immaterial nature of the light which the Gothic vision sought to celebrate.

Fig. 4. South Transept windows by Valentin Bousch, 16th century.

The North Transept window, by Thiebaut de Lixheim, is different in tenor again. Its vision is more truly Gothic, integrating as it does elaborate ornamentation, in white and grey glass, with figures of saints – complete with medieval haloes – saturated in reds and blues. The three rose windows at the apex of the arches absorb all figuration into a crystalline Rayonnant scheme that is truly stunning.

Faced with the relentless verticality of Thiebaut’s ornamentation, the dynamic and flowing arabesques of Chagall’s window to its left come as a relief. Chagall represents the Creation of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and the Expulsion from Paradise with a joyous explosion of yellow panes, pierced by fragmentary fields of blue, red and green.

Fig. 5. Genesis window by Marc Chagall, 1960.

Sitting on the cold stone of the ambulatory, on that cloudy day, I truly felt transported beyond time. The dark silhouette of the stone tracery, lending the stained glass a midnight radiance, magnified the feeling that a timeless paradise of sorrow and joy was open before me. To me it felt like the most magical place in the world. The cathedral was a cosmos where one could find the most bewitching and unique planets. And those unique planets were held together by the gravity of the Gothic design.

Three quarters of an hour from Paris I entered another cosmos, just as startling and bewitching. This was the High Gothic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Rheims. Now, I had intended only to discuss Metz, but Rheims, being a centre for stained glass production, its cathedral having facilitated the coronation of kings, and being a bastion for the most modern, as well as the most ancient, stained glass, really can’t go unmentioned! Added to this, the work of Chagall forever links St Etienne and Notre-Dame de Rheims in my mind.

Rheims is the home of the Jaques Simon Stained-Glass studio. It was here that Chagall and Villon worked with master glass-maker Charles Marq. And it was here that Chagall created much of his legacy in stained-glass for churches, synagogues and concert halls around the world.

In 1971 Chagall was approached by the Building Federation of Champagne Ardenne, to help them complete the process of restoring Notre-Dame de Rheims, which had been severely damaged in World War One. He was invited to create some of the most important windows in the cathedral: those of the apse, in central view from the entrance portal, hovering behind and above the Sanctuary.

On entering Notre-Dame de Rheims, the fruit of this invitation glows like a distant fire of soft sorrow, a deep blue flame of lancets and roses, its painted figures smoldering in whites, ceruleans and pinks. Charles Marq had rediscovered an ancient chemical process for the forging of the deep blue glass which was used in these windows, the same blue, so I’ve read that was used in Chartres Cathedral many centuries before.

Fig. 6. Apse windows by Marc Chagall, 1974.

In true Chagall style, the narrative scenes in the windows interpolate. In the right lancet of the central window the crucified Christ hovers above scenes from the story of Abraham. In the left lancet Jacob and his ladder dovetail The Descent from the Cross, with The Sacrifice of Isaac pictured directly underneath.

The left window is a veritable cascade of glowering ultramarines and ceruleans. The lead cames form swirling rhythms, sketching in the Kings of Juda, the Prophets, people in prayer, and a towering Virgin and Child, shown at the top of her lineage, the Tree of Jesse.

The right window is suffused with deep purples, reds, blues and greens. Depicted are several of the kings of France, including Charles VII and Saint Louis, together with Joan of Arc. Also included are scenes depicting The Parable of the Good Samaritan and of The Kingdom of Heaven.

The windows are all beautifully fused by Charles Marq’s chemistry of blues and by the swirling, fractal rhythms of the lead cames. There is one other window in this cathedral with a comparable rhythm, and that is by Brigitte Simon, the artist-wife of Charles Marq. Her work is a song of glass, in semi-abstract grisaille, her forms based on the rhythms of nature and the harvest of grain. The splendid tonal modulations and the use of grisaille provide a link between the new modernist windows and the somber grisaille windows of the Gothic period.

Fig. 7. Modern Grisaille windows by Brigitte Simon.

What I find so arresting about the cathedrals of Metz and Rheims is the sheer variety of the stained glass, as opposed to the unity of vision revealed in cathedrals such as Sainte Chappelle in Paris. That variety reveals a history of tensions in Western culture between the extremes of ascetic rationalism (geometric abstraction and Renaissance illusionism) and unbridled Romanticism (poetic modernism). These two extremes could otherwise be personified by the ancient figures of Aristotle and Moses: Inspired logic and reason opposed to ecstatic vision and intuition.

The tempestuous, magical and smoldering energies of Chagall, Simon and Villon, are thus balanced and held, in a mystical equilibrium, by the beautifully ordered ratios of Plato and Pythagoras, as they are applied to the Gothic vision. The one held so surrealistically, within the other, becomes a unique symbol for the human soul. The “bright-haired wave” of the collective unconscious enters the portal of the supremely ordered mind, awakening both to a greater level of being. This, to me, is the great message of two cathedrals that have never stopped evolving.