The south cloister and beyond

Unlike that to the west, the south parvis – the open, public space lying before the fagade – maintains its medieval configuration virtually unchanged (Figure 4.4). The south transept fagade fronts onto a relatively broad area which, in the Middle Ages, allowed the erection of merchants’ stalls, documented along the south flank of the nave as early as 1224.9 Vendors of pilgrims’ tokens and candles were specifically licensed to sell them on the broad flight of steps climbing up to the south porch or under the porch itself (Figure 4.9, see p. 93).10 In the cathedral precinct – conventionally called the doftre or ‘cloister’ in French sources, although it neither took the form nor imitated the function of a monastic garth – revenue was greatest on the four main Marian feast days of the church, with the largest fairs accompanying celebration of the Annunciation to the Virgin and her Nativity, in March and September respec­tively.11 The September fair devoted to the sale of objects related to the cult of the Virgin lasted a whole week and continued to be held to the south of the cathedral until the mid-nineteenth century.12 The major part of

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I Church of Notre Dame of Chart re*

II Church of Saint Nicola* du Cloitre former!) SS Sergiu* and Bacchu*

III Former hotpUl of Notrr Dame

IV ОіареІ of Sami Etienne du Cloitre

V Bnhop * Palace

VI Cemetery and Chapel of Sami lerome Vlf Former Chaprl of Saint leme

VIII WJI of Loern

A Chapter library В Bnhop* office* «now a house)

С Notary’ Mcretane* of the chapter i Aulbe children*

D Flaberd**her* Най

E How dating from I COO (now Chamber of Commerce E" How dating from 1<*2* not» drmotnhed E Building contracted in 1954 f I IfC canon* how now Tountt Office)

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4.5

Plan of the city of Chartres at the end of the thirteenth century

commercial activity in the cloister occurred to the south of the cathedral for one very simple and logical reason: that was where the greatest number of customers congregated.13

Based on primary sources, maps reconstructing Chartres in the thirteenth century show that the major urban constellation lay to the south of the cathedral (Figure 4.5). Particularly important evidence is provided by the early parish organization of the town in the twelfth century: of the six parish churches mentioned in the thirteenth-century ordinal, none lies to the north of the cathedral.14 Indeed, whereas artisanal and commercial activity flourished to the east and south, following the course of the River Eure, such develop­ment seems to have been inhibited to the north by the clerical domination of that end of town, with the result that the cathedral sat close to the northern reach of urban settlement.15

From the Gallo-Roman period on, episcopal precincts in France typically formed cities within cities centred on the cathedral edifice.16 On the political plane, the topography of hill and river valley helped to underscore the differentiation of episcopal and comital areas at Chartres long before the town developed commercially in the High Middle Ages. Directly south of and below the cathedral, the Counts of Chartres maintained a sphere of influence centred on their castle and this became the hub of urban development.17 Thus,

the town was carefully structured by the residences of two competing feudal

lords – the bishop in his cathedral and the count in his castle opposite – who

disputed their relative temporal powers throughout the medieval period and chartres, 1575′ beyond. According to the late fourteenth-century Vieille Chronique, ‘the count and the bishop, in exacting the principal dues which from antiquity belonged to [each], are like equals, and each of them claims the city to be his’.18

Even this brief sketch suggests that the south fagade may well have served as the logical point of public entry into the Gothic cathedral, a situation that obtained at Amiens as well.19 Early modern prints support this contention, revealing a continuity of use that has since been disrupted.

Engraving after engraving from the sixteenth century on shows the cathedral from the south, with the economically important River Eure and the fertile plain of the Beauce in the foreground. We might take as representa­tive a ‘portrait’ of the town of Chartres published in 1575 (Figure 4.6) and another view printed in 1697 (Figure 4.7).20 From the engraver’s perspective, presentation of the town from a southern vantage point had the advantage of

cartographic accuracy – i. e. the chevet of the cathedral is to the right, as it would be on a map – allowing accurate representation of the second most important church in town, the abbey church of St-Pere, to the south of the cathedral and west of the draughtsman’s perch.

4.7

‘La ville de Chartres’ by N. de Larmessin, 1697

If, today, one travels to Chartres by car rather than train, one obtains the same view from the south-southeast and this is the view which dominated until the arrival of the railway, in part because it corresponded to the siting of the main road coming from Paris. The passage of that road from countryside to city street was marked by the fortified Porte Guillaume which stood on the site from the late twelfth century until its near total destruction in the Second World War.21 Early views of Chartres, especially the sixteenth – century print mentioned above, rearranged the components of the town in order to create a strong pictorial axis beginning at the Porte Guillaume in the foreground and ending at right angles to the south fagade of the cathedral in the middle ground, thereby clarifying the relationship between city gate and cathedral according to the norms of sixteenth-century axial planning. A pragmatic topological perception of the continuity of the urban path leading to the cathedral is thus rendered in the precise formal language of geometric regularity. In fact, the street in question, although large, led to the south flank of the cathedral from an oblique angle.22 Comparison of the 1575 image of

Chartres with that of another city such as Paris, published in the same volume, confirms the suspicion that in early views the vantage point was consistently chosen so as to maximize visibility of the town’s extent and its most important structures. In contrast to Chartres, therefore, Paris is seen from the west, so that the Tle-de-la-Cite and the two flanking banks of the Seine are clearly distinguished and legible.

Responding to, and reinforcing, these patterns of circulation, the south transept fagade as an architectural ensemble is, in many ways, more visually commanding than its northern counterpart (Figures 4.8 and 4.9). First, it towers over the landscape in a way the north fagade does not, due to the fact that the site falls away to the south; moreover, the lower ground level necessitated a much higher flight of steps up to the porch, increasing the effect of vertical thrust (Figure 4.2). Indeed, the height and projection of the south porch platform seem to have made a strong impression on its viewers; another engraver presents the porch head-on in a perspective so exaggerated as to make it swell to an importance that dominates the whole cathedral exterior.23 Second, verticality is further highlighted by the consistent architec­tural decor of long, slender colonnettes that screen the upper masses of the buttresses and towers. By contrast, the narrower space in front of the north fagade does not afford easy contemplation of the whole (Figure 4.4), the ground level does not require quite so many steps up to the porch, and the applied colonnette decoration was never completed. The evident visual authority of the south fagade is reflected in the fact that up to the present day it has continued to be much more frequently reproduced than the north which began to be depicted only in the eighteenth century, when a new aesthetic of the picturesque prompted a few oblique, fragmented views of it.

Like a silhouette drawing of a face, a view from the south afforded an image of the cathedral that included all of its characteristic features, including both the rebuilt north tower and the shorter, older south tower (Figures 4.6 and 4.7). Such images proclaim that this, the south, was the public face of the cathedral – not the official, ceremonial face located to the west, but the more broadly public one for the laity. This interpretation is confirmed by liturgical details such as the placement of the cathedral’s baptismal fonts in the south gallery of the crypt, where an altar dedicated to John the Baptist stood.24

Updated: 3rd October 2014 — 1:37 pm