VOL. XXXI

NO. 4

W

ITH Notre Dame de Chartres, we reach the high-light of a beautiful picture - Catholic architecture-and while the vandal hands that broke the crucifixes in the public squares, and tore them down from hospital walls and halls of justice on a recent Good Friday, are making ready to desecrate the old cathedrals of fair France, let us cast one last and loving look at this, the most beautiful of them all.

For whether we consider the shrine from the historic, the architectural, the devotional point of view, it still remains the marvel. Our Blessed Lady touches the Infinite. She is, as it were, its human expression, as in another way is this her fittest shrine. Like a queen, conscious of beauty unapproached, the cathedral rises in sublime proportions, proudly disdainful of ornament. It is aquiline. It soars. It is never done with soaring as you gaze. The old tower, which is the most perfect expression of the beautiful in simple architectural lines, runs straight up to heaven like a thought, like a prayer, and, looking down upon the city it has made, sings: "I am all of Heaven! God's alone!"

The Cathedral of Chartres is a poem. It is the spirit of the great crusades pet

'rified and undying. For it was erected. by the confraternity of the "Lageurs du Bon Dieu"-translate this simple sweetness who can-penitents who would not join the crusaders, but who, instead, went about fasting and singing canticles in honor of Our Lady, and lending their skilful hands to the labor whenever a church was to be erected and the Blessed Sacrament to be housed. Men, young and old, women and children, carried mortar, harnessed themselves by thousands to carts and silently and with the ineffable hope of their hearts built these marvels which Our age cannot reproduce.

Victor Hugo voices the thought with a touch of exquisite melancholy: "This has banished all that!" says his alchemist, looking from a book in his hands to the towers of the beloved Notre Dame of Paris.

For these grand cathedrals were the books of the olden time, and this one of Chartres is a veritable religious cyclopaedia, hundreds of its unnumbered statues being perfect both as to art and to theological and Biblical interpretation. Listening to the suggestions of learned divines, these toilers with the chisel wrote in stone before printing was invented or the generality could read, and it would seem that the restless hun

ger and hurry bequeathed us by the inventors of the press have swept away forever this race of patient, because eternal, builders that toiled from generation to generation, 'neath the eye of God alone, with that angelic purity of intention and lofty enthusiasm of love that spent itself on the highest summits, content that God should see, as of old, "that it was good," certain that the son would take up the trowel or the chisel laid down by the father in the supreme agony of the last hour.

Miracles countless and stupendous rewarded the builders and benefactors. The sick awaited their passage on the roadside, and were healed by her whom, from the beginning, they called, "Notre Dame aux Miracles."

Who will say that legions of unseen angels did not assist and direct these wonder-workers? The touch of angels' wings, the might of holy lives, the smile of chaste eyes, the intensity of strong and penitent hearts, centuries of prayer and benediction lie upon every stone of Chartres' beautiful cathedral!

Situated on a hill on the left bank of the Eure, Chartres, the ancient "Autricum" the center of Druidism, stoutly resisted the conquering hosts of Julius Caesar. Saints Altin and Eodald, sent by SS. Savinien and Potentien, disciples of St. Peter, brought it the faith, and St. Aventin was the first of its long line of saintly and distinguished bishops. It suffered much during the Merovingian sway, and was attacked in 911 by Rolla the Norman, who, afterwards converted, received holy baptism in this city of Mary.

Chartres often changed hands until the year 1346, when it was finally settled upon the French crown.

In 1360 Edward III, advancing with hostile intent, was disarmed by a miraculous shower of stones, and, coming a conqueror, he entered a pilgrim and signed, in honor of his Liege Lady, the Queen of heaven and of earth, the treaty of Bretigny.

Condé, besieging the fortified city during the fierce religious wars, swore that his horse should feed upon Our

Lady's altar, but just as his troops had made a breach in the walls confusion was spread upon his counsels, and he suddenly withdrew, while the jubilant population set about marking the spot where now rises the memorial shrine of "Notre Dame de la Breche."

Henry IV, by assuming the royal diadem in the cathedral, put an end to the disastrous religious wars, and Louis XIV gave the city to his brother, the Duke of Orleans, whose eldest son ever since has borne the official title of "Duke of Chartres."

The history of the city and its cathedral thus merges into that of France, to whom it furnishes several well-known names. We might mention St. Fulbert, the builder of the cathedral; St. Yoes, its canonist, the patron of lawyers; St. John of Salisbury, secretary of St. Thomas of Canterbury; the illustrious orator and cardinal, Mgr. Pie, Archbishop of Poitiers: Pierre Nicole of Port Royal fame and ChauveauLagarde, the defender of three. beautiful and unfortunate women: Charlotte Corday, Marie Antoinette and Madame Elizabeth.

But its cathedral is Chartres' greatest glory. There is an old saying that the towers of Chartres, added to the nave of Amiens, the choir of Beauvais, the portal of Rheims, and the belfry of Strasburg would, united, make the most beautiful cathedral in the world, but we prefer the statement of Visconti, of the Vatican, who says: "If other cathedrals boast more perfection in some detail, none is ' equal to Chartres, taken as a whole." High it rises above the antique city, its grand act of faith epitome and teacher of religion.

The origin of the cathedral is most interesting; it runs back into almost prehistoric stillness. historic stillness. Loretto, La Garde, Fourviere honored Mary during and soon after her blessed life, but the lily of Chartres strikes its roots way back into the darkness of paganism. We read that the hope of a Redeemer to come was cherished by all people from the beginning. Nor were the Jews alone to believe that a virgin should bear Him. The Erythrean sybil re-echoes the prophecy of Isaiah, and sings: "Rejoice, O young and beautiful virgin. Break forth in accents of joy! The Creator of the universe shall live in thee and thou shalt possess eternal light. He is the sun that is to burst forth from the chaste heart of a virgin."