The maze in Chartres Cathedral, of which I give an illustration (Fig. 2), is 40 feet across, and was used by penitents following the procession of Calvary.  A labyrinth in Amiens Cathedral was octagonal, similar to that at St. Quentin, measuring 42 feet across.  It bore the date 1288, but was destroyed in 1708.  In the chapter-house at Bayeux is a labyrinth formed of tiles, red, black, and encaustic, with a pattern of brown and yellow.  Dr. Ducarel, in his “Tour through Part of Normandy” (printed in 1767), mentions the floor of the great guard-chamber in the abbey of St. Stephen, at Caen, “the middle whereof represents a maze or labyrinth about 10 feet diameter, and so artfully contrived that, were we to suppose a man following all the intricate meanders of its volutes, he could not travel less than a mile before he got from one end to the other.”

[Illustration:  FIG. 4.—­Maze at Saffron Walden, Essex.]

Then these mazes were sometimes reduced in size and represented on a single tile (Fig. 3).  I give an example from Lucca Cathedral.  It is on one of the porch piers, and is 191/2 inches in diameter.  A writer in 1858 says that, “from the continual attrition it has received from thousands of tracing fingers, a central group of Theseus and the Minotaur has now been very nearly effaced.”  Other examples were, and perhaps still are, to be found in the Abbey of Toussarts, at Chalons-sur-Marne, in the very ancient church of St. Michele at Pavia, at Aix in Provence, in the cathedrals of Poitiers, Rheims, and Arras, in the church of Santa Maria in Aquiro in Rome, in San Vitale at Ravenna, in the Roman mosaic pavement found at Salzburg, and elsewhere.  These mazes were sometimes called “Chemins de Jerusalem,” as being emblematical of the difficulties attending a journey to the earthly Jerusalem and of those encountered by the Christian before he can reach the heavenly Jerusalem—­where the centre was frequently called “Ciel.”

Common as these mazes were upon the Continent, it is probable that no example is to be found in any English church; at least I am not aware of the existence of any.  But almost every county has, or has had, its specimens of mazes cut in the turf.  Though these are frequently known as “miz-mazes” or “mize-mazes,” it is not uncommon to find them locally called “Troy-towns,” “shepherds’ races,” or “Julian’s Bowers”—­names that are misleading, as suggesting a false origin.  From the facts alone that many of these English turf mazes are clearly copied from those in the Continental churches, and practically all are found close to some ecclesiastical building or near the site of an ancient one, we may regard it as certain that they were of church origin and not invented by the shepherds or other rustics.  And curiously enough, these turf mazes are apparently unknown on the Continent.  They are distinctly mentioned by Shakespeare:—­

    “The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud,
     And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
     For lack of tread are undistinguishable.”