Rheims Cathedral

“ The other two of the four great cathedrals have no setting equal to the hill pedestal of Chartres or to the river island of Notre Dame of Paris. Seldom is a French cathedral surrounded by the pleasant precincts and cloisters preserved by the English minsters, and Rheims Cathedral is no exception in its abrupt rise from flat city streets. Its druidical massiveness can easily dispense with a pedestal. Rheims imposes itself. Even in the night its prodigy of magnificence endures. ”

“ Rheims Cathedral was what may be styled a great consistency, that placed it quite in a category by itself.
It was quite completely without a fault.
All other cathedrals of France form a chronicle of splendor. They record changing epochs, times, and architectural impulse. The varying personalities of their great designers were wrought out in their details; they present the thoughts of many men, each expressing his highest thought and ideals, and the result is magnificent agglomeration, covering many years of work. With Rheims however, which was begun in 1211, the case is different. ”

“ It is an enviable thing to live in an ancient city like Rheims till its history becomes a part of the texture of one's mind, till the background of that 125 history, hangs like a series of distinct pictures in one's thought, not to be effaced by anything that shall come afterward. The streets of Rheims as they then stood are photographed clearly on the retina of my mind's eye, and, dominating all, as it did at my first sight of it, is the majestic shape of the cathedral. ”

“ Rheims Cathedral is the Mecca of the student of mediæval sculpture. The array of statues on the exterior is amazing, and a walk around the great structure reveals unexpected riches in corbels, gargoyles, and other grotesques, hidden at all heights, each a veritable work of art, repaying the closest study, and inviting the enthusiast to undue extravagance at a shop in the vicinity, which advertises naïvely, that it is an "Artistical Photograph Laboratory." ”

“ The towers are particularly serene and impressive. The deterioration is, of course, tremendously severe. Scores, if not hundreds, of statues, each of which was a masterpiece, are spoilt; great quantities of carving are defaced; quite half the glass is irremediably broken; the whole of the interior non-structural decoration is destroyed. But the massiveness of the Cathedral has withstood German shrapnel. The place will never be the same again, or nearly the same. Nevertheless, Rheims Cathedral triumphantly exists. ”

“ The German Foreign Minister put it all in one word: "Let the neutrals cease their everlasting chatter about the destruction of Rheims Cathedral. All the paintings, statues and cathedrals in the world are not so much as one straw to the Germans over against the gaining of our goal and the conquest of their land." ”

“ In the Cathedral of Rheims there is a range of colossal angels as a grand procession along the vaults of the nave, who appear as approaching the altar: these bear not only the gospel, the missal, the sacramental cup, the ewer, the taper, the cross, &c., but also the attributes of sovereignty, celestial and terrestrial: one carries the sun, another the moon, a third the kingly sceptre, a fourth the globe, a fifth the sword; and all these, as they approach the sanctuary, they seem about to place at the feet of Christ, who stands there as priest and king in glory. ”

“ Chartres, that treasure-house of glass, is the nearest approach to a perfectly complete example. Le Mans, perhaps, is next. Bourges is splendid in its thirteenth century glory, but there the hypercritical may find that the fifteenth century glazing of the nave chapels interferes with the earlier effect. The clerestory of Rheims Cathedral boasts row on row of gorgeous kings and bishops, but there we look in vain for the medallion windows to give us the usual glowing chapels below. ”

“ As if the architect felt that he had thus over-accentuated the horizontal line, he bound his triforium and clearstory into one composition by continuous moldings, a precocious first step toward the glazed triforia of Rayonnant Gothic. Originally no flying buttresses braced this early-Gothic choir; those that were added, about 1180, are probably the first ever made. Nothing could better show the swift development of Gothic structure than to compare the plain old flying buttresses of St. Remi with the luxuriant counterbutting members of Rheims Cathedral built fifty years later. ”

“ Of the three buildings which surrounded every Cathedral in the Middle Ages—the bishop's palace, the cloister of the canons, and the house set apart for the sick and poor (Hôtel-Dieu) —only the archbishop's palace existed at Rheims in 1914. It extended all along the south lateral façade of the Cathedral, on the site of the ancient abode of St. Nicaise, which had replaced a Roman palace. Of the ancient building erected by the successors of St. Nicaise down to the 13th century, there remained only the graceful two-storied chapel, doubtless contemporary with the chevet of the Cathedral. ”

“ The interior proportions of Rheims are harmonious; the side aisles are relatively right with the central vessel, and the nave leads up well to the sanctuary, which, inside and out, is beyond criticism. As a whole, however, the interior of this cathedral has not the slender upwardness of Amiens nor the ascetic holiness of Chartres. It stands more than it soars. It praises the deity in another fashion than does the mystic cathedral. The keynote here is a right-minded human splendor. ”

“ LOUIS GONSE The basilica of Rheims is the ideal type of a great Gothic cathedral. Everything has been gathered together here to enchant the eye and touch the mind.
From the outside, with its eight spires, and the lace-work of its bell-towers, and its galleries boldly mounting to the sky, with the breadth of its arrangement, the splendid development of its cruciform plan, with its two cloisters and its magnificent dependencies, it appears as the sublime expression of western genius and the culminating point of the Christian idea. ”

“ There's the Canal of the Aisne and the Marne, too—oh, many wide waters and little streams, to breathe out mist, for Rheims is on the pleasant Île-de-France. There was so much mist this autumn day that it hid from our eyes for a long time the tall form of the Cathedral which should dominate the plain for many miles; a thick, white mist like the sheet with which a sculptor veils his masterpiece until it's ready to face the world. ”

“ We were still in the hills when we looked on the valley of the Vesle and saw a city outspread there, and in its center, mellowed and glorified by seven kindly centuries, the architectural and ecclesiastical pride of the world, the Cathedral of Rheims. Large as the city was, that great central ornament dwarfed and dominated its surroundings. Thus Joan of Arc had seen it when, at the head of her victorious army, she conducted 110 the king to Rheims for his coronation. ”

“ The lower part of the south exterior of the cathedral is entirely marred, as to picturesque effect, by the recent buildings attached to it. Upon the whole, however, the Cathedral at Rheims is a very pure and interesting specimen of Gothic architecture. Nor must I omit an anecdote connected with its present state of preservation. That it escaped the ravages of the revolution, was owing, as I learnt, to the respect which was paid to the Curé of some neighbouring parish. He came down to the armed multitude, when they were ripe for every species of destruction. ”

“ Rheims Cathedral has the terrors of the Last Day thus depicted on its North side. The arrangements of the church services also show traces of the influence now under discussion. In the North of Europe, where the usual rule for orienting churches is observed, the Gospel is read from the North side of the altar, so that, according to Mediaeval symbolism, light may be given “to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death [866] .” Or, as Durandus has it, the North side is allotted to sinners, and the Gospel calls sinners to repentance [867] . ”

“ The old cathedral at Rheims can never be restored. No one can ever bring back the old beauty and color; no one can revive those statues and paintings so that ever again they will seem to breathe forth the soul of the artists who fashioned them seven hundred years ago. The walls may be rebuilt, and artists of tomorrow may beautify them, but the spirit of the great men of the Middle Ages is gone—it has fled from the place forever. ”

“ No edifice, in truth, is, in this respect, more worthy of our honour and admiration.
Notre-Dame of Rheims measures in round numbers one hundred and thirty-nine metres long and thirty-eight metres high beneath the vault; it is not surpassed in length by the Cathedral of Mans, thanks to the unusual dimensions of its absidal chapel, nor in height by Beauvais, Cologne, Metz, Amiens, or Saint-Quentin. The great divisions of the whole, founded upon a triple scale, in height and breadth, are clearly accentuated. From the lower part of the nave the view is one of striking grandeur and harmony ”

“ The field embraced all that existed, or might have existed, or could never exist. The immense structure rested on Aristotle and Saint Augustine at the last, but as a work of art it stood alone, like Rheims or Amiens Cathedral, as though it had no antecedents. Then, although, like Rheims, its style was never meant to suit modern housekeeping and is ill-seen by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, it reveals itself in its great mass and intelligence as a work of extraordinary genius; a system as admirably proportioned as any cathedral and as complete; a success not universal either in art or science. ”

“ Occasionally an ancient shrine grew into a great church in consequence of some tradition or superstition which caused a continuous stream of illustrious persons to shower wealth, privileges and honors upon it. Pope Honorius prescribed collections in all Christendom for the building of Rheims Cathedral. ”

“ What modern architect was ever accorded such prominence as was allowed by the bishops of Amiens and Rheims to their masters-of-works when they inscribe those laymen names in the labyrinth designs of the cathedral pavements? The monks of Marmoutier and of St. Germain-des-Prés were proud to bury in their abbey-churches their architects Étienne de Mortagne and Pierre de Montereau. In Rheims, the architects Hugues Libergier and Robert de Coucy were likewise honored.
By digging in old archives, the modern student is ever adding new names to the nation’s honor roll. ”

“ The cathedral of Rheims is most unquestionably a very noble, I might almost say, a perfectly noble, piece of architecture, and nevertheless it seems to fail in producing so great an effect on the mind as many other French churches of smaller dimensions and less architectural pretension. ”

“ Beyond Braisne the country is less hilly, the pastures are replaced by vineyards, and the road runs across a wide plain to Rheims. The extent of the town, and its modern manufacturing outskirts, make its distant silhouette less characteristic than that of Bourges or Chartres, which are still so subordinated to the central mass of their cathedrals. At Rheims the cathedral comes on one unexpectedly, in the centre of the town; but once seen it enters into the imagination, less startlingly but perhaps more completely, more pervasively, than any other of the great Gothic monuments of France. ”

“ The archbishop was staring with incredulous eyes at the gaping wound the shot had made.
“No,” he declared firmly, without removing his eyes. “It is not possible. This injury is an unfortunate mistake. Sacred edifices are protected by human and moral laws, and, besides, the Cathedral of Rheims, because of its perfection, belongs to all time and all peoples. No one destroys his own heritage.” ”

“ Not only was the west frontispiece of Rheims unique, but its transept façades would have distinguished any cathedral. One of the three doors of the north façade is composed of fragments from a monument which had been in the Romanesque metropolitan burned in 1210. The middle door commemorates local saints, for cathedrals were historians and linked the generations with that continuance of tradition which makes the strength of a race. To honor their spiritual forefathers was held to be patriotism by those believing generations. ”

“ The chapel itself was beautified with carved work in stone. Over the Altar, and in front of it, were painted panels, enriched with gold, and translucent enamel over colour. If we could picture to ourselves the manner of the sculptor's work we may recall the "Vine-Capital" in Rheims Cathedral, where the very stone itself seems to have been metamorphosed into tender foliage by the unknown artist. ”

“ As a spectacle, the Cathedral of Rheims cannot compare with the Cathedral of Arras.
In the north transept a 325-mm. shell has knocked a clean hole through which a mastodon might wriggle. Just opposite this transept, amid universal wreckage, a cafe is miraculously preserved. Its glass, mugs, counters, chairs, and ornaments are all there, covered with white dust, exactly as they were left one night. You could put your hand through a window aperture and pick up a glass. Close by, the lovely rafter-work of an old house is exposed, and, within, a beam has fallen from the roof to the ground. ”

“ Better than any other, this part of the building reveals the desire for unity and harmony which guided the various builders of the Cathedral. The doorway, probably designed by Jean d'Orbais, was very likely not begun till about 1250, by Gaucher, of Rheims. Bernard of Soissons built the great rose-window and the façade as far as the Gallery of the Kings. ”