or the lamps signify the Apostles and other doctors, whose doctrine lights the church. Moses also made seven lights, which are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Durandus next devotes a whole chapter to the symbolism of the altar, and another to the significance and function of ornaments, pictures, and sculpture. The latter opens with the words: "The pictures and ornaments in a church are the texts and scriptures (lectiones et scripturae) of the laity." This chapter is long; it explains how Christ and the angels, also saints, Apostles and others, should be represented, and describes the proper kinds of church ornament and utensils. Much of the detail is symbolical.
Thus Durandus devised or brought together meanings to fit each bit of the church edifice, its materials and furnishings. In the work of a contemporary are stored the allegorical meanings of the subjects of Gothic sculpture and painted glass. The thirteenth century had a weakness for the word "Speculum," and the idea it carried of a mirror or compendium of all human knowledge. The chief of mediaeval encyclopaedists was Vincent of Beauvais, a protégé of the saintly King Louis IX. An analysis of his huge Speculum majus is given elsewhere.[1] It was made up of the Mirror of Nature, the Mirror of human Knowledge and Ethics, and the Mirror of History. The compiler and his assistants laboured during the best period of Gothic art, and from their work, industry may draw an exhaustive commentary upon the series of topics presented by the sculpture and glass of a cathedral.[2]
The Mirror of Nature appears carved in the sculpture of Chartres or Bourges. In rendering the work of the Six Days, the Creator is shown (under the form of Christ)[3] con-
- ↑ Post, Chapter XXXV., i.
- ↑ The application of Vincent's work to the sculpture and painting of a Gothic cathedral is due to Didron, Iconographie chrétienne, histoire de Dieu, Introduction (1843). Other writers have followed him, like Émile Male in his L'Art religieux du XIIIᵉ sièle en France (2nd ed., Paris, 1902), to which the present writer is much indebted. It goes without saying, that the sources from which Vincent drew (e.g. the works of Albertus Magnus) likewise form a commentary upon the subjects of Gothic glass and sculpture, and may even have suggested the manner of their presentation.
- ↑ The opening verses of John's Gospel account for this. Christ, or God in the person of Christ, is shown in Old Testament scenes as early as the fourth century upon sarcophagi in the Lateran at Rome.
