On the Silent Words of the West Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral

[This is a paper I wrote for a class on the Medieval Tradition. The topic was to write on a window at Chartres Cathedral. The particular window I wrote on, the West rose window, can be seen here in detail. There are a few slight differences between this one and the one I handed in. I prefer this version, but I did not feel that referencing Narnia would be counted quite academic enough for class.]

On the Silent Words of the West Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral

As I began to contemplate the West rose window of Chartres Cathedral, more and more I began to realise that nothing I could ever speak in words would ever come closer than a loose paraphrase of all that is contained therein. What follows, then, is, at best, the briefest of primers on beginning to recognise all that the window has to share. There is no articulation that can ever compare to that of the window itself.

This discussion of the West rose window of Chartres Cathedral will begin by considering its location in the church, and progressively look with more detail a the window and its individual components. Contained in this window is not a story, but rather an icon of the Last Judgement. I say an icon, rather than a picture or a scene, because it stands static outside of time, not fixed in a specific place inside of time.

The first thing to notice is the fact that the window is in the West—the West, where the sun sets, signifying an end: closure and completion. Thus, it is fitting that the window proclaiming the Last Judgement be in the West. And it is past this window that one must progress when exiting the back of the church, just as all must go through the Last Judgement at the end of the world. Beneath the window, set into the floor, is a labyrinth, with its opening on the West side. This allows the person who has arrived at the centre to look up at the window before beginning the journey outward, and to also look up upon exiting the labyrinth and see the Final Judgement before them.

The next thing to notice is that it is a rose window. A rose window is a particularly large window in the form of a circle, just as the labyrinth below this particular one. A circle is a sign of wholeness and completion, as well as a symbol of the world. And further, Alain de Lille, from the school of Chartres in the twelfth century, the same century in which the Cathedral was built, wrote in his Regulae caelestis iuris, "[S]olam monadem esse alpha et omega sine alpha et omega. Ex eo enim quod principio caret et fine, deus spera dicitur."¹ So the circle is not just a reflection of the world, but indeed a reflection of God in His infinite being. In this way, then, the West rose window may be said to be an image of the macrocosm: it points to the image of the culmination of the creative act, that is, the creating of the universe.

It also stands apart from the other two rose windows, which bear the Glorification of the Virgin and the Glorification of Christ, in that they each form complete, bounded circles: the perimeter of each is clearly demarcated. In the West window, however, the placement of the component panels gives the impression that the window is expanding outwards, compared to the North and South rose windows which appear to be complete circles with clearly defined edges. This is appropriate for the Last Judgement because its consequences are eternal and without limit. Further, while the labyrinth has only one entrance, one way to the centre, this window has no edges, thus beckoning all people to come unto Christ who is at the centre.

These open boundaries emphasise the enormity of the one at the centre who is larger than the outside. In the window, the outside appears to point to limitlessness, and yet Christ is at the centre, whose limitlessness is assured. As Alain de Lille wrote in same work mentioned above, "Deus est spera intelligibili cuius centrum ubique circumfrentia nusquam."² Thus Christ, who is God, the beginning and end of all, containing all existence, is shown at the centre, despite having a circumference which is nowhere. And by that same token, all, save for those clearly damned, in that window are fixed on Christ at the centre of all in that limitless circle. As C. S. Lewis adeptly put it, there was once a stable whose inside was greater than the whole world.³

As already stated, Christ is at the centre of the window, and all of the window is focused on Him and pointing to Him. (As a note, the top of the window is presupposed to be East, and the other cardinal and ordinal directions follow from there.) At the cardinal points, in the layer of the window nearest to Christ, we find the four beasts surrounding the heavenly throne signifying the four Evangelists. In the West we have Matthew, in the North is Mark, in the South is Luke, and in the East is John. Both Mark, the lion, and Luke, the ox, have a single forefoot on a book, and all four figures are facing Christ. These two Evangelists with their gospels being portrayed draw us from the Western gospel, that of Matthew, which emphasises the human elements of Christ, up to the Eastern gospel, John, which emphasises the divine elements of Christ. Between each of the Evangelists are two angels, eight in total, completing a circle around Christ, all of whom are looking at Christ in the centre.

Connected to these windows are larger windows, making the combination of the smaller inner window and the larger outer window look like a series of twelve arrows pointing to the centre, or beaming outwards. At the West-most point, there is an image of St. Michael the Archangel weighing souls and devils attempting to tip the scale in their favour. In the window to the North of this one, the one on Christ's right, there is an image of an angel guiding souls away from the scale. On the South side, on Christ's left, demons herd damned souls away from the scale. At the East-most point, there is an image of St. Abraham with three souls in his bosom, a reference to the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.⁴ At the windows to the right and the left of this are Cherubim. Then, at the North-most point, at the right-hand side of Christ, resides St. Peter holding a key, as well as another apostle, both of whom are looking and gesturing towards Christ in the centre. At the South-most point are two more apostles, also looking and gesturing towards Christ, one of whom is likely to be St. Paul as they hold books (a symbol often associated with St. Paul) and the rose window has a tendency to mirror from North to South. To both the East and West of both the windows of St. Peter and St. Paul are windows each showing two more apostles looking and gesturing to the centre and to Christ, bringing the total number of apostles to twelve. Again, as we saw with the placement of the four Evangelists, with the human in the West and the divine in the East and the gospel books to draw us up to the divine, we see that judgement lies in the West, and that through the teachings of the Church and the apostles, we may be drawn upwards to be higher than the Cherubim, and reside in the bosom of Abraham.

In the outermost ring of windows, at the Western end are two windows depicting the damned. In the Southern of the two are two demons carrying off damned souls, and in the Northern of the two are three souls in the Hellmouth. At the centre is a figure with a sack about his neck, signifying Judas and the thirty pieces of silver. In the two windows to the East of these, in both the North and the South, are images of two souls in each window climbing out of sarcophagi. Above these two sets of two windows are two more windows, one in the North and one in the South, depicting souls, three in each, awaiting judgement. Then there are two more windows, each showing two angels blowing horns. At the top of the window, as a foil to the two windows in the West, are two windows showing angels bearing the instruments of the Passion. In the one to the South, to mirror the demons bearing off souls, is an angel holding the crown, the lance, and the three nails; in the one to the North, to mirror the Hellmouth, is an angel carrying the cross.

Surrounding all of the windows in the outer ring are small images of chrysalises at the ordinal points, surrounded by red which is encompassed by a blue ring, and images of butterflies at the cardinal points, surrounded by blue which is encompassed by a red ring. The chrysalises at the ordinal points signify our state of being betwixt and between. This is emphasised by the red colour surrounding it, red signifying the fire of the Holy Spirit and His divine love,⁵ and the blue encasing it all, blue signifying the purified life.⁶ The butterflies at the cardinal points signify our glorified state at the end of time, the cardinal points being pure directions, not in-between ones. In this life the holy are filled with the divine fire as they are changed, and purity shines forth; but, in the glorified state, the divine fire shines out because they have been made pure in all ways.

It is notable that while this window depicts the Last Judgement, there are only three windows that clearly depict the damned. Two of these are in the outer ring at the West-most point, and one is just above and to the left of Christ and the scale where St. Michael is weighing souls. Aside from these three, the fate of the souls in all the rest of the windows is either unclear, but suggested that they are to live in heaven, or is clear that they are to live in heaven. The Last Judgement, then, according to this window, is not about the damning of souls, but the resurrecting of souls for life in Christ. Instead of emphasising fear of Hell, the iconography seeks to draw the viewer further up and further in⁷ Christ who is at the centre and encompasses the whole of the vastness of eternity.

1 "[A] sole monad is the alpha and omega without alpha and omega. From this indeed, because He lacks beginning and end, God is said to be a sphere." Alain de Lille, Regulae caelestis iuris, ed. N.M. Häring, Archives D'Histoire Doctrinale et Litteraire du Moyen Age 48 (1981) 97-226, at pp.131-132.

2 "God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." Ibid.

3 Lewis, C. S. The Last Battle. London: Fontana Lions. p.134.

4 The HarperCollins Study Bible : New revised standard version, with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books 1993. , eds. Wayne A. Meeks, Jouette M. Bassler and Society of Biblical Literature. 1st ed. ed. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco, Lk. 16:19-31

5 Morrisroe, Patrick. "Liturgical Colours." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 30 Mar. 2009 .

6 Besançon, Alain. 2000. The forbidden image : An intellectual history of iconoclasm. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 97.

7 Lewis, C. S. The Last Battle. London: Fontana Lions, 162.

And in His Image He Created Them

Recently Greg and I have been discussing the question of what does perfection in heaven look like and how does it fit with being ad imaginem Dei creavit -- creavit in imago Dei -- that is, created to the image of God, created in His image. To wit, what is the image of God and what is perfection and how do these concepts apply to people who are physically or mentally impaired?

There are a few things to keep in mind. The first is that we are commanded to be perfect as God is perfect. God never gives us a command that cannot be followed. This means that, if Christianity is for everyone, it must be possible for everyone to follow this command, regardless of any physical or mental impairment. This fits with the suggestion that perfection does not mean of the body but of the soul, and that we must rely on the grace of God to effect holy perfection in us. Still, one may bring up that we shall all be judged according to what we knew, and this may be the loophole to include physical perfection, but that suggests that God has made us unequal in our ability to be made perfect instead of it being our circumstances that allow us to see clearer the grace of God. The child who never hears of Jesus but strives to live as good a life following the Noachide Laws unknowingly is not the same as the deaf child who grows up following and serving Jesus; nor can we say that they are equally distant from perfection, one by not having the opportunity to know Christ by name and the other by not having full use of hearing. Rather, the former receives grace based upon the little they knew, and the latter based upon the great amount they knew. The physical impairment does not limit the relationship with the heart of God.

The second is that God is love. The case has been made that as with light and dark, and hot and cold, so with love and evil. Dark and cold are not measurable things in themselves, but absences of light and heat. In that way evil is not a thing in itself, but the absence of love -- the absence of God, to be exact. Therefore, if we say there is evil in the world, what we really mean is that there is an absence of love in the world. We see this absence by the presence of love, which is in truth the presence of God. The first sin, then, was in its nature a refusal or rejection of God and of love. If before the original sin the world was good, and therefore full of love and fully reflecting that which is of God (for that which is full of love is modeled and shaped to the image of love, which is the image of God), then after the original sin the world was deprived of love and reflected less that same image of God. One might say, then, if this is an imperfect world, and if Eden was perfect, that perfection depends on the full presence of love.

We are created ad imaginem Dei, but by being born to human parents in this world we are injured by the shadow of sin. But we are commanded to be perfect, so this means reaching for God who restores us to love, that is, to Him -- to His image.

So now we know how perfection is achieved and what it looks like. It is achieved by the grace of God healing us from sin and filling us with the love that is Himself, so that we reflect His love. It is a change in the soul. Anyone of any age, nation, race, culture, or background of any sort is able to experience this change to be like the complete image of God. Anyone. And in heaven we will all be made perfect and even the persistent inclination to sin will be gone so that we may unashamedly and totally without reservation reflect the love of God. Heaven, then, may well look like the end of The Last Battle where all the world is the same, except it is bigger, brighter, truer. And devoid of the shadow of evil and sin -- the true image of creation and of God and fully reflective of God's love.

So what, then, of deafness? Of blindness? Of lameness, autism, or Down's? How do these impairments found in the physical body fit into this image of perfection? We already understand that perfection is a matter of grace and the soul. We understand that these people can follow and serve God and be made perfect by His grace. What does their perfection in heaven look like, then? Does it necessarily include a physical change to that which we call normal, or is it possible that these impairments will remain with them in heaven?

Now some people will argue that with the Fall of Man, the whole of creation was shaded by evil, and they would be correct. And they may further say that deafness, blindness, lameness, autism, Down's, and all the rest are manifestations of the physical effects of the Fall. And they may be right. But they may not be. They could argue that these people claim to be whole in who they are, impairment and all, simply because they are deluded by the sin that is in the flesh, but that is too simple. Rather, I think that perhaps God gave these people to us as a blessing and an opportunity for us to reflect His love. Just as The Necessary Beggar has mendicants who give us the chance to offer a blessing, so those who are impaired give us the chance to show them love and grace. And in return, they are given the chance to show love and grace by accepting it from us and by teaching us to see the world through their eyes. I am a poor person to speak on the blessings we receive from spending time with those who are impaired, although I have heard repeatedly from those who have had good opportunities to do so that it really is not you who blesses them, but they who bless you. And if that is true in this world, why should that not be true in the next as well, only all the more so?

I cannot say anything conclusively, having never been to heaven, but this is what I suspect: Heaven will be exactly as this world, except with infinitely more love for God will live in, among, and around us. We will be glorified in our bodies, yes, but we will retain those characteristics that make us His unique creations who all serve to reflect His image like the blind men and the elephant. And we will bless each other by our strengths and weaknesses and bless the Lord by doing so.