Here as everywhere else throughout the church, one feels the Virgin’s presence, with no other thought than her majesty and grace.  To the Virgin and to her suppliants, as to us, who though outcasts in other churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was not a symbol of God’s justice or man’s corruption, but of her own infinite mercy.  The Trinity judged, through Christ;—­Christ loved and pardoned, through her.  She wielded the last and highest power on earth and in hell.  In the glow and beauty of her nature, the light of her Son’s infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, turning the Last Judgment itself into the highest proof of her divine and supreme authority.  The rudest ruffian of the Middle Ages, when he looked at this Last Judgment, laughed; for what was the Last Judgment to her!  An ornament, a plaything, a pleasure! a jewelled decoration which she wore on her breast!  Her chief joy was to pardon; her eternal instinct was to love; her deepest passion was pity!  On her imperial heart the flames of hell showed only the opaline colours of heaven.  Christ the Trinity might judge as much as He pleased, but Christ the Mother would rescue; and her servants could look boldly into the flames.

If you, or even our friends the priests who still serve Mary’s shrine, suspect that there is some exaggeration in this language, it will only oblige you to admit presently that there is none; but for the moment we are busy with glass rather than with faith, and there is a world of glass here still to study.  Technically, we are done with it.  The technique of the thirteenth century comes naturally and only too easily out of that of the twelfth.  Artistically, the motive remains the same, since it is always the Virgin; but although the Virgin of Chartres is always the Virgin of Majesty, there are degrees in the assertion of her majesty even here, which affect the art, and qualify its feeling.  Before stepping down to the thirteenth century, one should look at these changes of the Virgin’s royal presence.

First and most important as record is the stone Virgin on the south door of the western portal, which we studied, with her Byzantine Court; and the second, also in stone, is of the same period, on one of the carved capitals of the portal, representing the Adoration of the Magi.  The third is the glass Virgin at the top of the central lancet.  All three are undoubted twelfth-century work; and you can see another at Paris, on the same door of Notre Dame, and still more on Abbe Suger’s window at Saint-Denis, and, later, within a beautiful grisaille at Auxerre; but all represent the same figure; a Queen, enthroned, crowned, with the symbols of royal power, holding in her lap the infant King whose guardian she is.  Without pretending to know what special crown she bears, we can assume, till corrected, that it is the Carlovingian imperial, not the Byzantine.  The Trinity nowhere appears except as implied in the Christ.  At the utmost, a mystic hand may symbolize the Father.  The Virgin as represented by the artists of the twelfth century in the Ile de France and at Chartres seems to be wholly French in spite of the Greek atmosphere of her workmanship.  One might almost insist that she is blonde, full in face, large in figure, dazzlingly beautiful, and not more than thirty years of age.  The Child never seems to be more than five.