Saturday Aug 7th – Steve
We took it easy this morning and started out a little later for a day trip to Chartres Cathedral. Quick jump on the metro with a transfer to the train, for a 1-hour ride out of town. It was nice to look the countryside over on the way out, with small villages and farms dotting the horizon. I was a little surprised to see how small some of the fields are, just an acre or two, with the wheat having just been harvested. Doesn’t seem like much economy of scale. Guess I’m just used to big fields in eastern Washington!
Chartres Cathedral is a smaller version of Norte Dame, but is Europe’s best example of French-style or Gothic cathedrals because it was built in one generation and there was less chance to make changes with the changing building styles. This current church, a big city cathedral, was quickly built to replace the old one that burned down in 1194, by a very small community of around 10,000 people. Chartres is the home of Mary’s 2,000-year-old veil or birthing gown, acquired in 876 and it became the focus of worship at the church with pilgrims making trips to view it. So it was quite important to replace the church as quickly as possible. Chartres Cathedral was started around the same time as Notre Dame, but finished in about 60 years compared to 200 years for Notre Dame. Chartres then became a leading center of learning in the middle ages until the focus shifted to Paris.
Much of the church is going through a restoration process and it is amazing to compare the before to after sections of the church. We even got to see a wedding take place as we, among hundreds of other tourists, walked through the cathedral. It seemed a little strange at first, but it is a working church. Maybe a bit too much noise for my taste, but what a setting!
The entryway of the cathedral floor has a large round maze inlaid in black marble that is about 900 ft long. The pilgrims would follow the maze on knee or foot with the idea being to symbolize the journey of life and to meet Christ in the center of the maze.
There are 28,000 square feet of stained glass, and it was interesting to find out that the financial donors (local merchants) of 42 of these window have at least a small stained glass advertisement in the lower corner of the window. I guess things haven’t changed much when it comes to advertising except we have big names on Safeco Field, etc. The stained glass is quite beautiful and we spent quite a bit of time looking at the various Bible stories spread out before us in picture form, which is just what the people in the middle ages would do, as they could not read and this was one of the ways to bring to life the stories they heard.
We took a short stroll through part of the city center and stopped to eat dinner at a pub. Our timing for the return train trip turned out to be perfect as it began to rain as we waited for the train and turned into quite a storm on the return trip.
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