INTRODUCTION: THE ROSE WINDOW AND THE GOTHIC EXPERIENCE

The rose window is one of the most spectacular of all of the

creations of the Gothic era. Its power to impress people in

today’s world – a world saturated with visual spectacle and

a seemingly infinite variety of multi-media diversions – is

something of a miracle in itself. Although generally of a

very different genre to those of the Middle Ages today’s

‘pilgrims’ to the great Gothic cathedrals and churches,

mostly tourists, still often stand mesmerised by the

startling displays of colour and geometry afforded by the

rose windows in the cathedrals, such as at Paris, Chartres,

Reims or Strasbourg. Like all great works of art such rose

windows often seem to ‘speak’ directly to the individual,

catch us unawares, slipping past the enquiring intellect by

the impact solely of their form, light and colour:

"The device not only instructs us but affects us. Arguments may convince but images have a more direct impact on our mind. He who SEES the truth can no longer err. He who is granted a vision of the supra-natural ideas becomes atuned to them: knowledge through symbols is higher knowledge. …. The higher orders reveal themselves to our limited mind through the sign language of nature …… The feeling of a revelation of universal harmony roused through the aesthetic experience may be its most sublimated form." 1

1 Gombrich, E.H.Icones Symbolicae: “The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thought” p174-186

The above remarks come from an article on NeoPlatonic

thought in the sixteenth century by E.H. Gombrich, but there

is something here that many people can identify with and

know to be true, namely that of images “having a more direct

impact on our mind” than words. Likewise, the “feeling of a

revelation of universal harmony roused through the aesthetic

experience” also has a ring of truth about it whether we are

Neoplatonists or not.

One person whose life was certainly change by the powerful

image of a rose window was the young Violet le Duc who, when

taken to Notre Dame ‘by an aged domestic’ in the early

nineteenth century, was seized by ‘une belle terreur’ in the

presence of the cathedral’s south rose:-

“The cathedral was shrouded in darkness. My look was focussed at the stained glass in the south rose window through which the rays of the sun passed, sparkling with great subtlety. I can still see the spot where we were forced to stop by the crowd. Suddenly the great organ came to life; for me it was the rose that was before my eyes that was singing…. AsI was looking I had come to believe in my imagination that some of the panes of glass produced the low sounds and others the high ones: I was seized by so beautiful a terror that I had to be taken out.”

Violet-le-Duc later wrote that in that moment he knew that

his destiny was to be bound up with the then crumbling

cathedral. One beneficiary of his restoration work there is

the current organist at Notre Dame, Olivier Latrie, who

writes:-

“Situated midway between heaven and earth on the west wall, the organ of Notre-Dame de Paris projects its sonorities under the cathedral’s vaults like a musical extension of the medieval rose window playing with the colours just above it.”

My own reaction to rose windows is partially caught by the

opening words of the first edition of Rose Windows in 1979,

inspired by my own experience at Chartres in 1973 in front

of the north rose:-

“The ability to create beauty is God's greatest gift to man. And the appreciation of beauty - whether man-made or natural - is not only a joy but an active call to something much greater than oneself. At rare intervals in our lives we may experience moments of magic, when a person, a place, a view, an object or a situation seems to transfix us, and we suddenly see the world in a quite different light. Such momentsare often accompanied by an equally sudden 'inner expansion' and therealization that there is much more of life to be experienced, much that is unfulfilled. However unexpected the moments may be, they have a feeling of the Absolute about them. They are rare and elusive but leave us with a sense of awe and wonder which we feel is our birthright.”

However, mysticism is not enough for the modern mind and

once it has regained its composure we want to know more

about these strangely beautiful webs of glass and stone,

woven into intriguing flowers of light; How and when were

they built; What imagery do they contain; Who ‘invented’

them? Above all, what do they mean?

This book is an exploration of the rose window as an

architectural device, a phenomenon even, central to the High

Gothic style of the early thirteenth century, but considered

an essential element in great church building for a long

time afterwards – arguably right up to the twenty-first

century. It is also an investigation into the meaning or

meanings of these phenomenal creations, both generally and

specifically. In this context it is useful to see the rose

window as being formed of two mutually dependent parts: the

stone tracery within the circle and the glass. The tracery

gives essential architectural form both internally and

externally; the glass (which only very rarely has survived

intact) gives a specific meaning to the form. Often this

meaning was part of a larger architectural programme, and in

this sense the rose window is central to the conception of

the great church. These two concerns – the formal

development of the rose window and its iconography – are

reflected in the division of this book into a chronological

survey of the rose window from tentatively origins in Spain,

Sicily or even Syria to the present day (Chapters 1-4), and

a section on meaning of both the form and the stained glass

(Chapter 5). The geometry that governs the form of rose

windows is discussed in the final chapter: geometry in its

architectural function to create the windows and also in its

symbolical sense where it becomes a kind of language of its

own.

For such a familiar feature the rose window is surprisingly

difficult to define. The French names la rose or rosace can be

used to cover a number of architectural details in churches

and cathedrals incorporating round windows and related

unglazed forms. In English the term is commonly used to

denote round windows containing stone tracery that radiates

in a symmetrical pattern from and around the centre, like

the spokes of a wheel – the classic examples would be the

transept roses at Notre Dame [see Illustr XXX]. However,

this definition is clearly not sufficient, since a number of

so-called rose windows do not exhibit radiating spokes.

Indeed, by these criteria such famous examples as the rose

in the north transept of Laon cathedral, or the so-called

‘Bishop’s Eye’ in the south transept of Lincoln cathedral

[see Illustr XXX], would not quality. Neither would the

huge round panels of glass that are found particularly in

Italy and Spain from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

containing a single scene, even though they are often

referred to as such (rosoni in Italian). Nor, even, would the

giant thirteenth-century window in Siena cathedral [see

Illustr XXX] that seems to patch together lancet windows to

fill a circular space, be called a rosone.

This book includes all of these examples, alongside many

other variations, with the assumption that all monumental,

circular, glazed and unglazed, with or without tracery,

typically axial openings may reasonably be called ‘rose

windows’. In the interests of context, it is also

sufficiently liberal to admit what are sometimes described

in France as rosaces, carved stone rosettes of similar form

to a rose window but which are purely decorative and have

never carried glass nor were intended to do so.

Furthermore, some of the examples are wholly or partially

destroyed, yet still give a hint of their presence and

sometimes, with imagination, even of their former glory.

These include ruins that once housed giant rose windows,

such as at Longpont, St Jean des Vignes at Soissons (both

around 12 meters [38 feet] in diameter), Crépy en Valois

[see Illustr XXX] and numerous remains of smaller roses.

That many rose windows have not survived is because they are

inherently fragile, some of them being a kind of

architectural challenge to utilize as little stone as

possible in order to support as big an area of glass as

possible.

There is also the problem of the name ‘rose window’ and even

‘la rose’ in French in referring to windows. Applying this

term to circular windows is a comparatively recent habit,

originating probably in the eighteenth century; Helen Dow

points out that Camille Enlart2 suggests that the word

2 Dow ref 104

derives from “roue” or “roe” in old French. Certainly the

word “wheel” - or its Latin equivalent rota - was in use at

least by the mid-thirteenth century. Above the portal

beneath the rose / wheel window at Cremona [see Illustr XXX]

cathedral is the inscription “M.CC.LXXIIII Magister Jacobus Porrata de

Cumis Fecit Hanc Rotam,” (“Magister Jacobus Porrata of Cumis made

this wheel, 1274”). The west rose window at Reims cathedral

was referred to as the “O” by the Master Mason Bernard de

Soissons on his plaque that once used to be in the cathedral

and it is as the “O” that Jean de Landun refers to the

transept roses at Notre Dame in Paris writing in 1323 – or

in his language as “the fourth vowel”:-

“I would be happy to learn where (else?) one find two circles like this directly facing each other, resembling the fourth vowel. (Within?) are lesser circles and others even smaller, artistically positioned, some round, others lozenged-shaped, containing sparkling stained glass of precious colours and figures painted with great delicacy.”3

The itinerant Cistercian Villard de Honnecourt referred to

the Chartres rose that he sketched in the early thirteenth-

century as “fenestra” (Latin for window) and the rose at

Lausanne as “une reonde verriere” (“a round stained glass

window” in old French). In Italy the wheel windows have

been known as rosone probably only from recent times.

What all these examples share is a common origin in the

round opening – the oculus – and this essential form is 3 Jean de Landun: “Traité de Louanges de Paris” quoted in Corpus Vitrearium volume on Paris

central both to the formal characteristics and the meaning

of every rose window. It is now clear that oculi and rose

windows proper find their origins centuries before the world

of the Romanesque – even before Christianity itself. They

take on a new dimension – both physically and symbolically -

during the twelfth century, until by 1260 a number of them

take up the entire width of facades of many of the leading

cathedrals and churches in not only around Paris and the Ile

de France but further afield, particularly in Spain, Italy

and Britain. This sudden, and in many respects

unanticipated, explosion of creativity was the result of a

new monumentality in architecture combined with a demand for

increasingly complex iconographic programmes. From this new

vigour in church building came the style now known as

gothic, the rose window – the epitome of the new style – at

its centre, physically even. Many of the innovations of

gothic architecture are often traced to Suger’s St Denis and

the rose on the west façade, dating from around 1150, can

probably be counted among the very first proper examples in

the gothic age. By the end of the thirteenth century

hundreds of these fantastic structures – sometimes exceeding

40 feet (13 meters) in diameter and comprising over 50,000

pieces of glass – were to be seen all over Europe. Their

forceful presence on three – and sometimes even on all four

– of the axes of the leading churches and cathedrals around

Paris in the middle of the thirteenth century, such as

Chartres, Laon, Reims, Paris and Braine, seems to indicate

something beyond the forces of mere fashion and competition.

It is often the form alone of those windows that impresses

us with its ‘power’ that seems to force light into

kaleidoscopic displays governed by precise and brilliant

geometry.

Those medieval rose windows that still contain a significant

proportion of their original glass can also tell us another

story that appeals to the head as well as the heart.

Indeed, the symbolism and iconography that they transmit

through the images can ‘speak’ to us at many ‘levels’. Hugh

of St Victor, who almost certainly advised Suger as he

planned the rebuilding of St Denis, and inevitably

contributed to the thinking and planning behind the project,

puts the problem more bluntly:

“The foolish man wonders at only the beauty in those things; but the wise man sees through that which is external, laying open the profound thought of divine wisdom”4

What Hugh exactly meant by “seeing through” is somewhat

ambiguous, but essentially it would seem that the viewer is

invited too bring all of his or her faculties of perception

to bear when encountering the ‘new’ art that was being

introduced at St Denis. It is difficult to uncover accounts

4 Didascalicon: quoted in Conrad Rudolph

of the reactions of medieval contemporaries to the

architecture that was evolving in their midst: Hugh of St

Victor’s writings are a great help, but his follower Richard

of St Victor upheld that there were four different levels of

seeing Biblical truths (see chapter 5). Writing around 150

years later the great medieval poet Dante, said that his

Divine Comedy could be understood at four levels of

appreciation: the literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical

(mystical). Something of these ‘levels’ can also be seen to

exist in architecture and particularly, I believe, in rose

windows. This will be discussed more fully in chapter 5.

The few medieval accounts that do exist often seem to be

somewhat prosaic, and one cannot help but wonder whether our

twenty-first century reactions to rose windows - and other

stained glass - may, on occasion, contain much latent

romanticism and perhaps even a longing for something

miraculous to be revealed.

One particularly apposite contemporary account does survive.

It comes from the Metrical Life of St Hugh and concerns the two

rose windows at Lincoln cathedral as they were in the 1220s

(the north window is still as it was then, apart from the

rearrangement of some of the panels and the interpolation of

some others):-

The double majesty of the windows displays shining riddles before men's eyes; it is emblazoned with the citizens of the Heavenly City, and the arms

with which they overcame the tyrant of Hell. And the two larger windows are like two blazing lights, whose circular radiance is looking at the north and south end, and surpasses all the windows with its twin light. The others may be compared with the common stars; but of these two, one is like the Sun, theother, the Moon.Thus two candelabra make sunlit the head of the church, imitating the rainbow in semblance and variegated colours; Nay, not imitating, but rather outdoing it; for when the sun is broken up in the clouds it makes a rainbow; but these two shine without a sun, and glitter without a cloud ...”

And later:-

“Illuminating the world with heavenly light is the distinguished band ofthe clergy, and this is expressed by the clergy…. The twin windows thatoffer a circular light are the two Eyes of the cathedral and rightly thegreater of these is seen to be the bishop and the lesser the dean. For thenorth represents the devil, and the south the Holy Spirit and it is in thesedirections that the two Eyes look. The bishop faces the south in order toinvite in, and the dean the north in order to avoid; the one takes care to besaved, the other takes care not to perish. With these Eyes the cathedral’sface is on the watch for the candelabra of heaven and the darkness ofLethe.”

Commenting on this passage Alain Erland-Brandenburg suggests

that it indicates that the cathedral itself is a spiritual

entity:

“Its significance resides in the level of symbolism and allegory that it can be made to yield …. (the author) does convey something of the power and meaning which it must have had for his contemporaries, and which is largely a closed book for us today.”

It is difficult for us in the twenty-first century to ‘get

into’ the mind of an age living over 800 years ago. Their

whole world ‘image’ must have been fundamentally different

from ours in the twenty-first century: what was ‘magical’ or

even ‘spiritual’ for them can be – and often is – explained

by modern theories in science and psychology or dismissed as

fantasy with the hindsight afforded by scholarship.

Nevertheless, "the medievals did in fact conceive of a

beauty that was purely intelligible,” says Umberto Eco,5

“the beauty of moral harmony and of metaphysical splendour …

Intelligible beauty was in medieval experience a moral and

psychological reality." Eco quotes E. R. Curtis as saying

“When the scholastics spoke about beauty they meant by this

an attribute of God.”

The Metrical Life of St Hugh and certain other writers in

the Middle Ages do give us an insight into the medieval way

of seeing things that today, rightly or wrongly, we often

leave to art historians to describe for us; people such as

Abbé Suger, Villard de Honnecourt, Hildegard of Bingen,

Robert Grosseteste and the monk Theophilus. In his writings

Suger described how he saw that the jewels and coloured

glass in his new church possessed the ability to:

“transform that which is material to that which is immaterial. ... Then itseems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strangeregion of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of theearth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God,1 can be transported from this inferior to that higher world.”

This ‘transportation’ was what is often referred to as the

anagogical effect, a word that Suger himself used and Dante

5 Eco, Umberto: “Art & Beauty in the Middle Ages,” p 5

repeated in his letter to his patron Can Grande della Scala.

Whether the rose window on the façade of St Denis, created

in around 1150, had such an effect on him is a matter of

conjecture. However, this window does still cast a pleasing

light into the room above the western portal onto which it

looks, although if it was originally furnished with twelfth

century stained glass – as much of the rest of the building

seems to have been at this time – the effect would no doubt

have been truly magical.

This rose window at St Denis is often cited as being the

first real member of the species, even though Suger did not

draw our attention to it in particular; we do not even know

how many ‘spokes’ the wheel originally had as the present

tracery dates from the nineteenth century. However it would

seem that it stood at a significant position in the line of

the evolution of the species, for the facades of Sens and

Senlis both incorporated a small wheel / rose windows high

up on their facades a few years after St Denis. The so-

called Wheel of Fortune at St Stephen, Beauvais, dates from

just about the same time as the St Denis façade and appears

considerably larger at 3.5 meters in diameter, dominating

the north transept façade.

Although the true origins of rose windows are somewhat

obscure, it can be said with some certainty that the first

rose window probably existed well before the wheel at

Suger’s St Denis. There is a beautiful little wheel high up

on the west wall of the church of St Miguel de Lillo in

Asturia in Spain, dating from the ninth century (see illust.

xx ) that gives all the appearance of being a window,

allowing light into an upper room. However, the ultimate

source is probably the Middle East where round openings that

could perhaps be called windows go back some centuries, even

before the Christian era. So, too, do the associated

circular symbols that probably influenced oculi and rose

window design, the process evolving as ideas and styles

‘travelled’ around the Mediterranean through Spain and

Asturia, or through Sicily and southern Italy and even Rome

– or through all of these – ultimately to influence the

architects of the Ile de France from the 1150’s onwards.

With pilgrims travelling to St James shrine at Compostello,

crusaders and camp followers passing through Italy and the

Norman kingdom in Sicily the means by which influences could

travel back from these countries were considerable.

Initially these round windows were ‘oculi’, sometimes

serving the practical consideration of allowing in light,

but also possibly acting as the equivalent talismans in pre-

Christian buildings providing protection against the forces

of evil when sited over the doors facing the cardinal points

of the compass, although there is little evidence of their

use for this. Nevertheless a strange echo of this can be

perceived in the above contemporary account of the Lincoln

rose windows with mention of the “devil” being “represented”

by the Dean’s Eye . Another theory proposed by Patrik

Reuterward6 is that in some instances where these oculi are

too small to allow in any significant daylight they, along

with other small windows on the east-west axis of the

church, were rather designed to transform daylight with

sheets of inserted expensive glass or thin marble in order

to symbolise and differentiate precious Divine Light from

daylight. The reasons for this, Reuterward suggests, were

in order to detract from the idea of seeing Christ as a

substitute for any kind of sun god. Christ’s statement “I am

the Light of the World” has always been taken by Christianity in

this divine rather than literal sense.

This Divine Light aspect of the oculi seems to remain as the

form is adopted by architects further north in Europe. Here

they needed to be larger in order to let in more real light

– but this, of course, also meant allowing in more of the

weather as well. Filling the larger spaces with transparent

material was a challenge sometimes met by using sheets of

alabaster, or more commonly, by using a wooden or lead frame

within the circle to hold panes of glass. Divine Light

could then help daylight illumine both the bodies and souls

of those in the building. It is from the filling-in of

6 “Windows of Divine Light” in “The Forgotten Symbols of God”, reprint from Stockholmstudies in History of Art, 25

these growing oculi that the rose window was born, or born

again, and the interest shown in Neo-Platonism at St Denis,

Chartres and Paris in the twelfth century must have

contributed to the perceived mystical aspect of both stained

glass and, particularly, of the oculi as they metamorphosed

into rose windows. Scholars argue – as scholars always do –

as to the real extent of the influence of this ‘mystical’

interest on the rise and development of Gothic architecture.

For many years the so-called School of Chartres has been

seen as having played a crucial role in providing much of

the intellectual and philosophical backing behind this

twelfth century ‘renaissance’ that gave birth to hundreds of

cathedrals and churches of cathedral size. Others have

preferred more earthly and pragmatic considerations, such as

economics, a favourable climate, fashion and competition

between the building sites as the prevailing forces, but the

truth probably involves both aspects. The School of

Chartres was believed to have included in its studies ‘light

metaphysics’, an aspect of Dionysian thought, by which real

light when transmitted through jewels and stones symbolised

Divine Light and could affect an individual conscious of

this – but only if he or she could awaken such faculties in

their soul. Such an awakening could only be brought about

by a thorough study of the scriptures and this was what

Suger was encouraging the monks in his charge at St Denis to

do. Moreover Suger required that stained glass images

should be centred on the Old and New Testaments’ stories and

personages, such that the New was to be seen as the Old

Revealed by the Incarnation. The ‘Light’ by which this

relationship could be seen and understood at the personal

level was light metaphysics.

It is possible to see the rose window as an architectural

form that must have bloomed against this background of

metaphysics. It was as if that which scholars had been

studying in theory was being given an opportunity of being

symbolised in the powerful image of the light-filled

‘spheres’ as concentric layers of coloured glass. Neo-

Platonism was concerned with light and the celestial

spheres, inhabited by the Celestial Hierarchy of angels.

Hildegaard of Bingen’s Scrivas, written between 1141-51

contains her portrayal of the choir of angels in the 9

spheres of the cosmos. A later similar portrayal of De

Hierarchia by the so-called Pseudo-Areopagite appeared in 1317

(Paris Bibl. Nat. MS FR 2090 fol 107v) – and soon after

Dante was to set much of his Paradiso amid the light-filled

spheres.

Music, Geometry and architecture all had a common

denominator in numbers and proportion: “God created the

world in measure number and weight,” said the Bible (The

Wisdom of Solomon, 11.21). Nor was it only the Neo-Platonists

that were interested in that connection, for the Cistercians

built their abbeys along simple numeric proportions of 1:1,

1:2, 2:3, 3:4, all of which also play an important part in

musical theory, as Pythagoras first explained and Plato

upheld. Cistercian architecture was an evocation of their

spirituality and, suggests Verdon and Front, “we must recall

first of all what has become unfamiliar to us, although it

was self-evident to the Middle Ages”, namely “the intrinsic

rapport between architecture and music."7 This goes back to

St Augustine and his De Musica, a work that was elaborated by

Boethius in the sixth century, Boethius being much studied

in the Middle Ages.

Hugh St Victor took a great interest in Neo-Platonism,

advising Suger on many matters, but he was also a friend of

the great Cistercian abbot St. Bernard, who in turn was not

entirely happy with the ‘excesses’ he saw emerging at St

Denis, even though he generally remained on good terms with

Suger. It is interesting to see therefore that after St.

Bernard’s death the Cistercians seemed to have lightened

their austerity at some of their establishments and in the

second half of the twelfth century took a particular

interest in rose windows, in Yorkshire at least.

7 Verdon, T & Front, W: “Monasticism and the Arts,” 1984

The other impulse towards the development of rose windows

probably came from the scholastic interest taken in

cosmological schemes, namely the Microcosm-Macrocosm

relationship. Again, Hildegaard of Bingen produced diagrams

on the matter, although Bede's De Temporibus from the ninth

century may well have been the inspiration here, copied in

around 1110 and called “The Diagram of the Physical and Physiological

Fours” or "The Concordance of Measure and the Elements." “It

correlates,” says Madeleine Caviness, “the four elements

with the four seasons, the four directions, the months, and

the signs of the zodiac and moons, as well as with the four

humours and the four ages of man.”8 As we shall see in the

iconographic chapter, order was something of a medieval

passion and we find the rose window particularly suited to

portraying and linking these numeric-based philosophical

‘systems of relationships’.

After the rose windows greatest era, the thirteenth century,

a period of some two hundred and fifty years or so sees the

evolving form retain its popularity right up until the end

of the Middle Ages. But its function as a great visual

‘philosophical visual aid’, if it could be called as such,

is less assured. As the ‘magic’ of the glass of the twelfth

and thirteenth centuries with its jewel-like quality gives

8 Caviness, M.H.: “Images of Divine Order and the Third Mode of Seeing,” p107

way to more graphic realism and uniformity of physical

quality, so too the essential aspects of the radial and

layered form tend to get lost in the weaving, twisting and

turning of the flamboyant tracery. The viewer can still

become entranced with the often spectacular forms that these

later roses exhibit, but this would seem to be a display of

form for its own sake, the subject matter and its portrayal

being generally less engaging. There are, however some

exceptions, like the splendid north window at Sens and The

Creation at Beauvais, while the wheels of Italy never cease

to impress or delight - depending whether they are large or

small – regardless of age. And our own age has produced –

and is continuing to produce - some significant additions to

the canon, continuing to challenge the viewers’ ability to

‘respond.’

But it is to the heyday of the rose window, the High Gothic,

that we need to return if we wish to acquire the basics of

the visual language of this particularly splendid feature in

architecture. Auguste Rodin advocated that if we could

understand Gothic art “we should be irresistibly led back to

truth,” but in order to begin to do this we ultimately need

to understand the medieval world, its thinking and imagery –

a virtually impossible task involving a huge paradigm shift

for a twenty-first century mind to take! Nevertheless there

are certain truths concerning human nature and knowledge

that are eternal, independent of any age, and some of these

are to be found in the rose widow, its symbolism and form:

such as concepts involving the battle in the human soul

between vices and virtues, good and evil, free-will and

fate, of love, of man’s perceived place in the universe, of

the fundamentals of the Christian faith, all of which are to

be seen or implied in rose windows - and as relevant today

as they were in the Middle Ages. The ultimate Christian

truths are seen by the faithful to be the same today,

yesterday and forever, despite the immense difference in

perspective, knowledge and information that the intervening

years have generated. Coupling those truths with other

medieval images and considerations peculiar to that age that

scholarship has uncovered enables us to begin to understand

the meaning or meanings of rose windows. Rodin suggests how

we can go about this great task:-

“There is no beginning. Start where you arrive. Stop before what entices

you. And work! You will enter little by little into the entirety. Method will

be born in proportion to your interest; elements which your attention at

first separates in order to analyse them, will unite to compose the whole.

… “

[Chris: The bit that follows I can’t quite fit in!

Perhaps you can find a place? Possibly it could go into an

extended caption – all or in part - concerned with Light or

the School of Chartres?]

Pseudo-Dionysius was probably a late fifth century Syrian

mystic. Dionysius translates as Denis and Pseudo-Dionysius

was often confused in medieval times with St Denis the

patron saint of France at that time and to whom the abbey at

St Denis was dedicated. To add to the complications,

Pseudo-Dionysius wrote under the name of Dionysius the

Areopagite, who in turn was sometimes confused with the

Athenian convert in the New Testament! The Syrian mystic

was probably a pupil of a pupil of Proclus, one of the last

teachers of the Athenian Platonic School. He is best known

for The Celestial Hierarchies and for the anagogical approach that

came out of Neo-Platonic philosophy that he blended with the

theology of light as expounded in St John’s Gospel. It had

an enormous influence on the Byzantian world. Another Irish

monk, Johannes Scotus Erigena, translated Pseudo-Dionysius’

works in the ninth century and commentated on them and it

was this version that Suger and his fellow monks studied.

“Light”, according to the Platonizing metaphysics in the

Middle Ages and as expressed by von Simson, is “the most

noble of natural phenomena, the least material, the closest

approximation to pure form. For a thinker like Grosseteste

(in the thirteenth century), light is actually the mediator

between bodiless and bodily substances, a spiritual body, an

embodied spirit, as he calls it. Light, moreover, is the

creative principle in all things, most active in the

heavenly spheres, whence it causes all organic growth here

on earth, and weakest in the earthly substances….”9

However, the roles and influence of both Pseudo-Dionysius

and the School of Chartres in the development of Gothic

architecture have been questioned over the past thirty years

or so. Professor Louis Grodecki was sceptical about the

influence of NeoPlatonism in the development of Gothic

architecture and so too was the much admired medieval

scholar Peter Kidson, who comments: “The great metaphor of

light came more from St.Augustine and Gregory rather than

Pseudo Dionysius," that is, from more respectable Christian

sources both of which were studied at St Denis.

R.W.Southern has also questioned the assumption that the

“so-called School of Chartres” had anything like the

influence on Chartres cathedral or on Gothic architecture in

the C12 and C13 that it was seen to have had in the middle

of the twentieth century. He suggests its importance has

been exaggerated. “After its great master – i.e. Bernard in

c1124 - there is no convincing evidence of a continuation of

9 Simson, O. “The Gothic Cathedral.” New York, 1962 p51

an intellectual tradition in the School beyond what might be

expected at any cathedral school.” Moreover, “the

association of Chartres with a unique tradition of Platonism

comes mainly from a mistaken identification of Bernard of

Chartres with Bernard Silvester.” He adds that Paris

outstripped Chartres as a place of teaching and study in the

twelfth century and that by 1140 “Paris was in the full tide

of its progress towards scholastic dominance."10

10 R.W.Southern: "The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres," in “Renaissance & Renewal in the Twelfth Century,” Oxford, 1982, p128