1 00:01:12,806 --> 00:01:15,866 There have been times in the history of mankind 2 00:01:15,942 --> 00:01:18,968 when the Earth seems suddenly to have grown warmer, 3 00:01:19,079 --> 00:01:21,013 or more radioactive. 4 00:01:21,614 --> 00:01:24,913 I don't put this forward as a scientific proposition 5 00:01:25,018 --> 00:01:28,454 but the fact remains that three or four times in history, 6 00:01:28,555 --> 00:01:31,956 man has made a leap forward 7 00:01:32,058 --> 00:01:36,427 that would have been unthinkable under ordinary evolutionary conditions. 8 00:01:36,529 --> 00:01:39,794 One such time was about the year 3,000 BC, 9 00:01:39,899 --> 00:01:43,232 when quite suddenly civilisation appeared. 10 00:01:43,503 --> 00:01:46,995 Not only in Egypt and Mesopotamia but in the Indus Valley. 11 00:01:47,707 --> 00:01:50,699 Another was in the late 6th century BC, 12 00:01:50,810 --> 00:01:53,836 when there was not only the miracle of lonia and Greece - 13 00:01:53,947 --> 00:01:57,508 philosophy, science, art, poetry, 14 00:01:57,617 --> 00:02:00,984 all reaching a point that wasn't reached again for 2,000 years, 15 00:02:01,087 --> 00:02:05,717 but also in India, a spiritual enlightenment that has perhaps never been equalled. 16 00:02:05,825 --> 00:02:09,454 And another was round about the year 1 1 00. 17 00:02:10,063 --> 00:02:14,159 It seems to have affected the whole world - India, China, Byzantium. 18 00:02:14,434 --> 00:02:19,167 But its strongest and most dramatic effect was in Western Europe, 19 00:02:19,439 --> 00:02:21,202 where it was most needed. 20 00:02:21,474 --> 00:02:23,738 It was like a Russian spring. 21 00:02:24,377 --> 00:02:29,838 In every branch of life - action, philosophy, organisation, technology - 22 00:02:29,983 --> 00:02:33,714 there was an extraordinary outpouring of energy, 23 00:02:33,820 --> 00:02:36,084 an intensification of existence. 24 00:02:37,157 --> 00:02:39,091 Popes, emperors, kings, bishops, 25 00:02:39,192 --> 00:02:43,561 saints, scholars, philosophers - they were all larger than life. 26 00:02:43,663 --> 00:02:48,464 The incidents of history are great heroic dramas, 27 00:02:48,568 --> 00:02:52,971 or symbolic acts that still stir our hearts. 28 00:02:53,773 --> 00:02:56,003 The evidence of this heroic energy, 29 00:02:56,109 --> 00:02:59,135 this confidence, this strength of will and intellect, 30 00:02:59,245 --> 00:03:01,179 is still visible to us. 31 00:03:01,281 --> 00:03:03,181 From where I'm standing, 32 00:03:03,449 --> 00:03:08,443 the east end of Canterbury still looks very large and very complex. 33 00:03:11,157 --> 00:03:13,819 In spite of all our mechanical skills 34 00:03:13,893 --> 00:03:17,693 and the inflated scale of modern materialism, 35 00:03:17,797 --> 00:03:21,130 Durham Cathedral remains a formidable proposition. 36 00:03:22,669 --> 00:03:26,196 These great orderly mountains of stone 37 00:03:26,472 --> 00:03:29,635 rose out of a small cluster of wooden houses. 38 00:03:30,476 --> 00:03:34,139 Everyone with the least historical imagination has thought of that. 39 00:03:34,247 --> 00:03:37,876 What people don't realise is that this happened quite suddenly. 40 00:03:37,984 --> 00:03:39,918 In a single lifetime. 41 00:03:40,019 --> 00:03:45,184 Of course, these changes imply a new social and intellectual background. 42 00:03:45,458 --> 00:03:47,983 They imply wealth, stability, technical skill, 43 00:03:48,094 --> 00:03:53,999 and, above all, the confidence necessary to push through a long-term project. 44 00:03:54,100 --> 00:03:57,433 How had all this suddenly appeared in Western Europe? 45 00:03:58,805 --> 00:04:00,739 There are many answers. 46 00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:03,934 But one is overwhelmingly more important than the others. 47 00:04:05,111 --> 00:04:07,045 The triumph of the Church. 48 00:04:07,981 --> 00:04:09,846 It could be convincingly argued 49 00:04:09,949 --> 00:04:13,817 that Western civilisation was basically the creation of the Church. 50 00:04:14,721 --> 00:04:17,155 In saying that, I'm not thinking for the moment 51 00:04:17,423 --> 00:04:21,951 of the Church as the repository of Christian truth and spiritual experience. 52 00:04:22,061 --> 00:04:27,727 I'm thinking of her as the 1 2th century thought of her - as a power. 53 00:04:27,834 --> 00:04:30,735 Ecclesia - sitting like an empress. 54 00:04:31,838 --> 00:04:34,932 And she was powerful for positive reasons. 55 00:04:35,041 --> 00:04:38,568 Men of intelligence naturally and normally took holy orders. 56 00:04:39,012 --> 00:04:43,540 And could rise from obscurity to positions of immense influence. 57 00:04:43,650 --> 00:04:48,019 The Church was, basically, a democratic institution, 58 00:04:48,121 --> 00:04:54,424 where ability - administrative, diplomatic, sheer intellectual ability - made its way. 59 00:04:58,197 --> 00:05:00,461 And then the Church was international. 60 00:05:01,501 --> 00:05:05,995 The great churchmen of the 1 1th and 1 2th centuries came from all over Europe. 61 00:05:06,105 --> 00:05:11,475 Anselm came here from Aosta via Normandy to be Archbishop of Canterbury. 62 00:05:11,577 --> 00:05:14,740 Lanfranc had made the same journey, starting from Pavia. 63 00:05:15,548 --> 00:05:19,484 It couldn't happen in the Church or in politics today. 64 00:05:19,585 --> 00:05:23,851 One can't imagine two consecutive Archbishops of Canterbury being Italian. 65 00:05:24,691 --> 00:05:28,183 But it could happen and it does happen in the field of science. 66 00:05:29,128 --> 00:05:35,089 Which shows that where some way of thought or human activity is really vital to us 67 00:05:35,868 --> 00:05:39,929 then internationalism is accepted unhesitatingly. 68 00:05:41,708 --> 00:05:46,407 This internationalism of the 1 2th century extended to architecture and sculpture. 69 00:05:46,512 --> 00:05:49,777 The master masons, who were both sculptors and architects, 70 00:05:49,882 --> 00:05:51,816 travelled all over Europe. 71 00:05:51,918 --> 00:05:54,910 Canterbury was built by a Frenchman, William of Sens. 72 00:05:55,021 --> 00:05:57,888 The extraordinary thing is that wherever they went 73 00:05:57,990 --> 00:06:01,426 these masters seemed able to recruit a force of skilled workmen 74 00:06:01,527 --> 00:06:07,432 who carried out technical feats which seem infinitely beyond all that we know, 75 00:06:07,533 --> 00:06:10,468 or think we know, of the mechanical skill of the time. 76 00:06:50,243 --> 00:06:54,680 They were inspired by the feeling that beyond all their hoisting and hammering 77 00:06:54,781 --> 00:06:58,945 there was some great controlling intelligence based on mathematical laws. 78 00:06:59,719 --> 00:07:03,382 A human reflection of God, the great architect. 79 00:07:04,891 --> 00:07:07,519 This expansion of the human spirit 80 00:07:07,627 --> 00:07:09,959 was first made visible in the abbey of Cluny, 81 00:07:10,062 --> 00:07:13,122 about 250 miles to the southeast of Paris. 82 00:07:14,400 --> 00:07:16,163 It was founded in the 1 0th century, 83 00:07:16,436 --> 00:07:20,532 but under Hugh of Semur, who was abbot from 1 049 to 1 1 09, 84 00:07:20,640 --> 00:07:23,404 it became the greatest church in Europe. 85 00:07:24,143 --> 00:07:26,976 A huge complex of buildings, with a famous library 86 00:07:27,079 --> 00:07:30,810 in which was made the first translation of the Koran. 87 00:07:30,917 --> 00:07:33,943 The first attempt to understand the infidel, 88 00:07:34,053 --> 00:07:36,021 instead of merely fighting him. 89 00:07:36,122 --> 00:07:39,114 Well, the buildings were destroyed in the early 1 9th century, 90 00:07:39,225 --> 00:07:41,489 used as a quarry, like Roman buildings. 91 00:07:42,428 --> 00:07:46,797 Only a part of the south transept remains, where I'm standing now. 92 00:07:46,899 --> 00:07:49,993 But we've many descriptions of its original splendour, 93 00:07:50,102 --> 00:07:53,196 the abbey church alone was the size of a large cathedral. 94 00:07:53,473 --> 00:07:57,409 On feast days the whole of the walls were covered with hangings, 95 00:07:57,510 --> 00:08:00,843 the floors were a mosaic with figures, like a Roman pavement. 96 00:08:02,915 --> 00:08:08,114 And of all its treasures the most astonishing was a seven-branched candlestick of gilt bronze, 97 00:08:08,387 --> 00:08:11,379 of which the shaft alone was 1 8 feet high. 98 00:08:11,491 --> 00:08:13,755 A formidable piece of casting, even today. 99 00:08:15,394 --> 00:08:17,157 Of all this, nothing remains. 100 00:08:17,430 --> 00:08:21,457 Only a few candlesticks, later and much smaller. 101 00:08:22,401 --> 00:08:24,164 This is one of them. 102 00:08:24,437 --> 00:08:26,371 It's only about 1 8 inches high, 103 00:08:26,472 --> 00:08:31,034 but it's so full of detail that one can imagine it 1 8 feet. 104 00:08:32,478 --> 00:08:34,969 Although made for the Cathedral of Gloucester, 105 00:08:35,081 --> 00:08:38,414 it's a perfect example of Cluniac elaboration. 106 00:08:45,858 --> 00:08:49,521 This first great eruption of ecclesiastical splendour 107 00:08:49,595 --> 00:08:53,190 was unashamedly extravagant. 108 00:08:54,467 --> 00:08:56,401 Apologists for the Cluniac style 109 00:08:56,502 --> 00:09:00,734 tell us that all the decoration was subordinated to philosophic ideas. 110 00:09:00,840 --> 00:09:02,705 My general impression is 111 00:09:02,808 --> 00:09:07,802 that the invention which boiled over into sculpture and painting in the early 1 2th century 112 00:09:07,914 --> 00:09:09,848 was self-delighting. 113 00:09:10,616 --> 00:09:12,982 As with the similar outbursts of the baroque, 114 00:09:13,085 --> 00:09:16,577 one can think up ingenious interpretations of the subjects, 115 00:09:16,689 --> 00:09:18,623 but the motive force behind them 116 00:09:18,724 --> 00:09:22,558 was simply irrepressible, irresponsible energy. 117 00:09:22,662 --> 00:09:25,688 The Romanesque carvers were like a school of dolphins. 118 00:09:26,866 --> 00:09:30,029 All this we know, not from the mother house of Cluny itself 119 00:09:30,136 --> 00:09:33,936 but from the dependencies that spread all over Europe. 120 00:09:34,707 --> 00:09:37,073 There were over 1,200 of them in France alone. 121 00:09:37,176 --> 00:09:40,009 I'm sitting in the cloisters of a fairly remote one, 122 00:09:40,112 --> 00:09:42,444 the Abbey of Moissac in southern France, 123 00:09:42,548 --> 00:09:46,712 which was important because it was on the pilgrimage route to Compostella. 124 00:09:47,753 --> 00:09:51,849 The carvings have much that is typical of the Cluny style. 125 00:09:53,793 --> 00:09:55,727 The sharp cutting, 126 00:09:56,495 --> 00:09:58,429 the swirling drapery, 127 00:09:58,531 --> 00:10:02,627 the twisting line, as if the restless impulses of the wandering craftsmen, 128 00:10:02,735 --> 00:10:08,503 the goldsmiths of the Viking conquerors, still had to be expressed in stone. 129 00:10:10,176 --> 00:10:13,475 You can see this on the mullion of the door, 130 00:10:13,579 --> 00:10:15,740 with its fabulous beasts. 131 00:10:15,848 --> 00:10:19,045 When one considers that they were once brightly coloured, 132 00:10:19,151 --> 00:10:22,416 because Cluniac ornament seems all to have been painted, 133 00:10:22,521 --> 00:10:25,217 and the manuscripts show what kind of colour it was, 134 00:10:25,491 --> 00:10:30,554 they must have looked even more fiercely Tibetan than they do today. 135 00:10:31,163 --> 00:10:33,495 I can't imagine that even the Medieval mind, 136 00:10:33,599 --> 00:10:36,762 which was adept at interpreting everything symbolically 137 00:10:36,869 --> 00:10:39,736 could have found much in them of religious meaning. 138 00:10:39,839 --> 00:10:43,605 But what has this column to do with Christian values? 139 00:10:44,210 --> 00:10:47,043 With compassion, charity or even hope? 140 00:10:48,280 --> 00:10:51,943 It's not at all surprising that the most influential churchman of his day, 141 00:10:52,051 --> 00:10:53,814 St Bernard of Claireveaux, 142 00:10:53,919 --> 00:10:58,686 should have become the bitter and relentless critic of the Cluniac style. 143 00:10:58,791 --> 00:11:01,658 Some of his attacks are the usual puritan objections, 144 00:11:01,761 --> 00:11:03,922 as when he speaks of "the lies of poetry". 145 00:11:04,030 --> 00:11:06,555 Words that were to echo through the centuries 146 00:11:06,666 --> 00:11:10,193 and become particular favourites in the new religion of science. 147 00:11:10,469 --> 00:11:14,405 But St Bernard had an eye as well as an eloquent tongue. 148 00:11:15,608 --> 00:11:19,977 And in the cloisters, he says, "Under the eyes of the brethren engaged in reading, 149 00:11:20,079 --> 00:11:23,173 what business have those ridiculous monstrosities? 150 00:11:23,449 --> 00:11:26,680 That misshapen shapeliness and shapely misshapenness. 151 00:11:26,786 --> 00:11:29,118 Those unclean monkeys, those fierce lions, 152 00:11:29,221 --> 00:11:32,213 those monstrous centaurs, those semi-human beings. 153 00:11:33,059 --> 00:11:35,687 Here you see a quadruped with the tail of a serpent, 154 00:11:35,795 --> 00:11:37,729 there a fish with the head of a bird. 155 00:11:37,830 --> 00:11:41,857 In short, there appears on all sides, so rich and amazing a variety of forms 156 00:11:41,967 --> 00:11:46,131 that it is more delightful to read the marbles than the manuscripts, 157 00:11:46,872 --> 00:11:50,569 and to spend the whole day in admiring these things piece by piece, 158 00:11:50,676 --> 00:11:53,907 rather than in meditating on the divine law. 159 00:11:59,618 --> 00:12:04,453 That last sentence shows, doesn't it, that Bernard felt the power of art. 160 00:12:04,957 --> 00:12:09,053 In fact, the buildings done under his influence, in the Cistercian style, 161 00:12:09,161 --> 00:12:13,427 are closer to our ideals of architecture than anything else of the period. 162 00:12:14,934 --> 00:12:17,767 Alas, most of them were abandoned and half-ruined 163 00:12:17,870 --> 00:12:20,964 simply because it was part of St Bernard's ideal 164 00:12:21,073 --> 00:12:25,169 that they should be built far from the worldly distractions of towns. 165 00:12:25,444 --> 00:12:27,912 And so, when after the French Revolution, 166 00:12:28,013 --> 00:12:30,607 town monasteries were turned into local churches, 167 00:12:30,716 --> 00:12:33,082 the Cistercian monasteries fell into ruins. 168 00:12:34,053 --> 00:12:38,888 And yet it's there that the spirit of monasticism has survived. 169 00:13:35,714 --> 00:13:38,740 ...quem ponebant quotidie ad portam templi, 170 00:13:38,851 --> 00:13:42,014 quae dicitur Speciosa, 171 00:13:42,121 --> 00:13:47,024 ut peteret elemosynam ab introeuntibus in templum. 172 00:13:48,594 --> 00:13:54,624 Is cum vidisset Petrum et lohannem incipientes introire in templum 173 00:13:54,733 --> 00:13:58,533 rogabat ut elemosynam acciperet. 174 00:13:59,138 --> 00:14:06,510 Intuens autem in eum Petrus cum lohanne dixit respice in nos. 175 00:14:07,112 --> 00:14:14,041 At ille intendebat in eos sperans se aliquid accepturum ab eis. 176 00:14:14,820 --> 00:14:20,884 Petrus autem dixit argentum et aurum non est mihi 177 00:14:20,993 --> 00:14:25,054 quod autem habeo hoc tibi do... 178 00:15:51,016 --> 00:15:54,679 These white monks, in their unchanging habit, 179 00:15:56,055 --> 00:16:01,755 this round of work and prayer, which has continued unbroken since the 1 2th century, 180 00:16:01,860 --> 00:16:04,590 bring the old building back to life. 181 00:16:14,807 --> 00:16:19,710 It's a way of life that is concerned with an ideal of eternity. 182 00:16:21,080 --> 00:16:24,015 And that is an important part of civilisation. 183 00:16:26,685 --> 00:16:32,419 But the great thaw of the 1 2th century was not achieved by contemplation alone - 184 00:16:32,524 --> 00:16:34,458 that can exist at all times - 185 00:16:34,560 --> 00:16:36,152 but by action. 186 00:16:36,929 --> 00:16:40,057 A vigorous, violent sense of movement, 187 00:16:40,165 --> 00:16:42,099 both physical and intellectual. 188 00:16:42,201 --> 00:16:46,035 On the physical side this took the form of pilgrimages and crusades. 189 00:16:47,873 --> 00:16:52,867 I think they're one of the features of the Middle Ages which is hardest for us to understand. 190 00:16:58,450 --> 00:17:02,750 It's no good pretending that pilgrimages were like cruises or holidays abroad. 191 00:17:03,389 --> 00:17:06,916 For one thing, they took far longer. Sometimes two or three years. 192 00:17:07,026 --> 00:17:10,518 For another, they involved real hardship and danger. 193 00:17:11,196 --> 00:17:13,721 In spite of efforts to organise pilgrimages, 194 00:17:13,832 --> 00:17:16,926 and Cluny ran a series of hostels along the chief routes, 195 00:17:17,036 --> 00:17:21,132 elderly abbots and middle-aged widows often died on the way to Jerusalem. 196 00:17:22,041 --> 00:17:25,408 Pilgrimages were undertaken in hope of heavenly rewards. 197 00:17:26,412 --> 00:17:29,506 They were often used by the Church as a form of penitence, 198 00:17:29,615 --> 00:17:31,640 a spiritualised form of extradition. 199 00:17:34,787 --> 00:17:37,381 The point of a pilgrimage was to look at relics. 200 00:17:38,123 --> 00:17:42,492 The Medieval pilgrim really believed that by contemplating a reliquary 201 00:17:42,594 --> 00:17:45,188 containing the head or even the finger of a saint, 202 00:17:45,464 --> 00:17:49,833 he could persuade that saint to intercede on his behalf with God. 203 00:17:53,705 --> 00:17:56,105 How can one hope to share this belief, 204 00:17:56,208 --> 00:17:58,836 which played so great a part in Medieval civilisation? 205 00:18:00,813 --> 00:18:02,678 I'm on my way to the town of Conques. 206 00:18:02,781 --> 00:18:06,444 A famous place of pilgrimage dedicated to the cult of Sainte Foy. 207 00:18:07,419 --> 00:18:11,947 She was a little girl, who in late Roman times refused to worship idols. 208 00:18:12,558 --> 00:18:15,652 She was obstinate in the face of reasonable persuasion. 209 00:18:15,761 --> 00:18:17,695 A Christian Antigone. 210 00:18:18,630 --> 00:18:20,564 And so she was martyred. 211 00:18:20,666 --> 00:18:24,466 Her relics began to work miracles, and in the 1 0th century 212 00:18:24,570 --> 00:18:28,597 one of them was so famous that Bernard of Angers was sent to investigate it 213 00:18:28,707 --> 00:18:30,698 and report to the Bishop of Chartres. 214 00:18:31,643 --> 00:18:35,670 It seemed that a man had had his eyes gouged out by a jealous priest. 215 00:18:37,149 --> 00:18:41,609 After a year or so, the blind man went to the shrine of Sainte Foy 216 00:18:41,720 --> 00:18:43,654 and his eyes were restored. 217 00:18:44,223 --> 00:18:48,717 The man was still alive. He said that at first he had had terrible headaches, 218 00:18:48,827 --> 00:18:51,990 but now they had passed and he could see perfectly. 219 00:18:52,097 --> 00:18:54,190 There was a difficulty. 220 00:18:54,466 --> 00:18:58,960 After his eyes had been put out, witnesses said that they had been taken up to heaven. 221 00:18:59,071 --> 00:19:02,700 Some said by a dove, others by a magpie. 222 00:19:02,808 --> 00:19:04,742 That was the only point of doubt. 223 00:19:06,044 --> 00:19:07,705 The report was favourable. 224 00:19:07,813 --> 00:19:10,407 A fine Romanesque church was built at Conques 225 00:19:10,516 --> 00:19:15,044 and in it was placed this strange Eastern-looking figure 226 00:19:15,154 --> 00:19:17,816 to contain the relics of Sainte Foy. 227 00:19:17,923 --> 00:19:20,551 A golden idol studded with gems. 228 00:19:21,160 --> 00:19:27,429 How ironical that this little girl who was put to death for refusing to worship idols 229 00:19:27,533 --> 00:19:29,728 should have been turned into one herself. 230 00:19:30,702 --> 00:19:34,069 That the very head should be a gold mask of a late Roman emperor. 231 00:19:37,743 --> 00:19:39,677 Well, that's the Medieval mind. 232 00:19:40,145 --> 00:19:42,841 They cared passionately about the truth, 233 00:19:42,948 --> 00:19:45,883 but their sense of evidence was different from ours. 234 00:19:45,984 --> 00:19:49,078 From our point of view, nearly all the relics in the world 235 00:19:49,188 --> 00:19:52,624 depend on some completely unhistorical assertion. 236 00:19:54,793 --> 00:20:01,164 And yet, they, as much as any factor, led to that movement and a diffusion of ideas 237 00:20:01,433 --> 00:20:04,869 from which Western civilisation derives part of its momentum. 238 00:20:07,072 --> 00:20:11,065 Of course, the most important place of pilgrimage was Jerusalem. 239 00:20:11,176 --> 00:20:13,110 After the 1 0th century, 240 00:20:13,212 --> 00:20:16,739 when a strong Byzantine Empire made the journey practicable, 241 00:20:16,848 --> 00:20:20,409 pilgrims used to go in parties of 7,000 at a time. 242 00:20:21,086 --> 00:20:24,920 And this is the background of that extraordinary episode in history - 243 00:20:25,023 --> 00:20:26,957 the first Crusade. 244 00:20:27,059 --> 00:20:30,756 Because, although other factors may have determined its course, 245 00:20:30,862 --> 00:20:34,855 Norman restlessness, the ambitions of younger sons, 246 00:20:34,967 --> 00:20:36,867 economic depression, 247 00:20:36,969 --> 00:20:39,130 all the factors that make for a gold rush; 248 00:20:39,238 --> 00:20:41,172 there can be no doubt 249 00:20:41,273 --> 00:20:45,471 that the majority of people joined the Crusade in a spirit of pilgrimage. 250 00:20:46,078 --> 00:20:51,072 Among many things they brought back from the East were Persian decorative motives 251 00:20:51,183 --> 00:20:54,516 which were combined with the rhythms of Northern ornament 252 00:20:54,620 --> 00:20:56,884 to make the Romanesque style. 253 00:20:58,523 --> 00:21:03,483 I see these as two fierce beasts, tugging at the carcass of Graeco-Roman art. 254 00:21:04,096 --> 00:21:07,623 Very often one can trace a figure back to a classical original, 255 00:21:07,733 --> 00:21:11,533 but it has been entirely tugged out of shape. 256 00:21:11,637 --> 00:21:16,006 Or, perhaps one should say, into shape by these two new forces. 257 00:21:21,847 --> 00:21:26,807 This feeling of tugging, of pulling everything to bits and reshaping it, 258 00:21:26,918 --> 00:21:29,113 was characteristic of 1 2th-century art. 259 00:21:29,888 --> 00:21:35,121 And was somehow complementary to the massive stability of its architecture. 260 00:21:35,227 --> 00:21:38,162 I see rather the same situation in the realm of ideas. 261 00:21:38,930 --> 00:21:42,127 The main structure of the Christian faith was unshakable, 262 00:21:42,234 --> 00:21:46,568 but round it was a play of minds, a tugging and a tension, 263 00:21:46,672 --> 00:21:49,163 that has hardly been seen since. 264 00:21:49,274 --> 00:21:53,973 And was, I think, one of the things that prevented Western Europe from growing rigid, 265 00:21:54,079 --> 00:21:56,445 as so many other civilisations have done. 266 00:21:57,115 --> 00:21:59,640 It was an age of intense intellectual activity. 267 00:21:59,751 --> 00:22:04,188 To read what was going on in Paris about the year 1 1 30 makes one's head spin. 268 00:22:04,456 --> 00:22:10,190 And at the centre of it all was the brilliant, enigmatic figure of Peter Abelard. 269 00:22:10,962 --> 00:22:12,896 The invincible arguer. 270 00:22:12,998 --> 00:22:14,932 The magnetic teacher. 271 00:22:15,834 --> 00:22:18,132 Abelard was a star. 272 00:22:18,236 --> 00:22:20,670 Like a great prizefighter, 273 00:22:20,772 --> 00:22:24,936 he expressed contempt for anyone who met him in the ring of open discussion. 274 00:22:25,877 --> 00:22:29,472 The older Medieval philosophers, like Anselm, had said, 275 00:22:29,581 --> 00:22:33,540 "I must believe in order that I may understand." 276 00:22:34,219 --> 00:22:36,153 Abelard took the opposite course: 277 00:22:36,254 --> 00:22:39,917 "I must understand in order that I may believe." 278 00:22:41,493 --> 00:22:43,825 He said, "By doubting we come to questioning, 279 00:22:43,929 --> 00:22:46,921 and by questioning we perceive the truth." 280 00:22:48,200 --> 00:22:51,067 Strange words to have been written in the year 1 1 22. 281 00:22:51,970 --> 00:22:53,904 Of course they got him into trouble. 282 00:22:54,005 --> 00:22:58,840 Only the strength and wisdom of Cluny saved him from excommunication. 283 00:22:58,944 --> 00:23:02,471 He ended his days calmly in a Cluniac house 284 00:23:02,581 --> 00:23:05,516 and after his death the abbot of Cluny wrote to H¨¦lo? Se 285 00:23:05,617 --> 00:23:11,146 saying that she and Abelard would be reunited where 286 00:23:11,423 --> 00:23:14,654 "beyond these voices there is peace." 287 00:23:21,233 --> 00:23:24,964 I'm standing in a Cluniac house - the Abbey of V¨¦zelay. 288 00:23:25,070 --> 00:23:28,972 I'm in the covered portico where the pilgrims gathered. 289 00:23:29,674 --> 00:23:33,770 Above my head is the relief on the main door, showing Christ in glory. 290 00:23:35,714 --> 00:23:39,616 He's no longer the judge, as at Moissac, but the Redeemer. 291 00:23:42,154 --> 00:23:46,523 V¨¦zelay's full of sculpture - on the doors, on the capitals, everywhere. 292 00:23:46,625 --> 00:23:48,525 But fascinating as this is, 293 00:23:48,627 --> 00:23:54,532 one forgets about it when one looks through the door at the architecture of the interior. 294 00:24:13,552 --> 00:24:18,046 It's so harmonious that, surely, St Bernard, who preached the second Crusade here, 295 00:24:18,156 --> 00:24:22,149 must have felt that this was an expression of the divine law 296 00:24:22,427 --> 00:24:24,588 and an aid to worship and contemplation. 297 00:24:25,630 --> 00:24:27,564 It certainly has that effect on me. 298 00:24:27,666 --> 00:24:31,033 Indeed, I can think of no other Romanesque interior 299 00:24:31,136 --> 00:24:35,869 that has this quality of lightness, this feeling of divine reason. 300 00:24:35,974 --> 00:24:38,408 It seems inevitable 301 00:24:38,510 --> 00:24:43,777 that the Romanesque should here merge into a beautiful early Gothic. 302 00:25:45,110 --> 00:25:48,170 We don't know the name of the architect of V¨¦zelay, 303 00:25:48,446 --> 00:25:51,973 nor of the highly individual sculptors of Moissac or Toulouse, 304 00:25:52,083 --> 00:25:56,713 and this used to be taken as a proof of Christian humility in the artist, 305 00:25:56,821 --> 00:26:00,587 or, alternatively, a sign of their low status. 306 00:26:01,593 --> 00:26:03,356 I think it was just an accident. 307 00:26:03,461 --> 00:26:07,693 Because, in fact, we do know the names of a good many Medieval builders, 308 00:26:07,799 --> 00:26:09,960 including the architects of Cluny. 309 00:26:10,068 --> 00:26:15,529 And the form of their inscriptions doesn't at all suggest excessive modesty. 310 00:26:16,641 --> 00:26:18,370 One of the most famous 311 00:26:18,476 --> 00:26:21,843 is bang in the middle of the main portal of the Cathedral of Autun. 312 00:26:21,947 --> 00:26:24,507 You can see it under the feet of Christ. 313 00:26:24,616 --> 00:26:26,914 "Gislebertus hoc fecit." 314 00:26:27,018 --> 00:26:29,486 "Gislebertus made this." 315 00:26:30,155 --> 00:26:33,989 One of the blessed looks up at the name Gislebertus with admiration. 316 00:26:35,060 --> 00:26:37,585 He must have been considered a very important man 317 00:26:37,696 --> 00:26:40,893 for his name to have been permitted in such a prominent place. 318 00:26:40,999 --> 00:26:45,493 At a later date, it would not have been the artist's name, but the patron's. 319 00:26:46,204 --> 00:26:48,900 And, in fact, Gislebertus was important to Autun 320 00:26:49,007 --> 00:26:54,411 because he did something unique in the Middle Ages, and very rare at any time. 321 00:26:54,512 --> 00:26:58,448 He carried out the whole decoration of the cathedral himself. 322 00:27:00,485 --> 00:27:04,478 This extraordinary feat was in keeping with his character as an artist. 323 00:27:04,589 --> 00:27:08,650 He wasn't an inward-looking visionary, like the Moissac master. 324 00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:10,785 He was an extrovert. 325 00:27:10,895 --> 00:27:15,594 He loves to tell a story and his strength lies in his dramatic force. 326 00:27:16,735 --> 00:27:19,727 Look at the row of the damned under the feet of their judge. 327 00:27:19,838 --> 00:27:22,773 They form a crescendo of despair. 328 00:27:23,575 --> 00:27:28,512 They're reduced to essentials in a way that brings them very close to the art of our own time. 329 00:27:29,047 --> 00:27:33,780 A likeness terrifyingly confirmed by these gigantic hands 330 00:27:33,885 --> 00:27:38,652 that carry up the head of a sinner as if it were a piece of rubble on a building site. 331 00:27:39,758 --> 00:27:43,854 The capitals also have this vivid narrative quality. 332 00:27:44,963 --> 00:27:47,796 They contain rich pieces of ornament. 333 00:27:47,899 --> 00:27:50,993 But, in the end, it's the story that counts. 334 00:27:52,704 --> 00:27:54,638 Look at this charming donkey. 335 00:27:55,573 --> 00:28:01,478 And at the protective way in which the Virgin holds the Christ child on their journey to Egypt. 336 00:28:19,397 --> 00:28:21,524 Even in this abstract-looking design 337 00:28:21,633 --> 00:28:25,592 of the three kings asleep under their magnificent counterpane, 338 00:28:25,704 --> 00:28:28,605 what matters is the angel's gesture 339 00:28:28,707 --> 00:28:35,909 and the delicate way he places one finger on the hand of a sleeping king. 340 00:28:51,830 --> 00:28:53,798 Like all storytellers, 341 00:28:53,898 --> 00:28:57,425 he had a taste for horrors and he went out of his way to depict them. 342 00:28:57,535 --> 00:29:01,369 This really horrifying work is the suicide of Judas. 343 00:29:06,044 --> 00:29:10,947 However, I must, in fairness, admit that he also did a figure of Eve, 344 00:29:11,049 --> 00:29:17,613 which is the first female nude since antiquity to give a sense of the pleasures of the body. 345 00:29:58,596 --> 00:30:02,100 The work of Gislebertus was finished in about 1 1 35, 346 00:30:02,100 --> 00:30:06,434 and by that time a new force had appeared in European art... 347 00:30:06,538 --> 00:30:08,802 the Abbey of St Denis. 348 00:30:42,941 --> 00:30:47,969 The royal abbey of St Denis had been famous enough in earlier times. 349 00:30:48,079 --> 00:30:50,673 But the part it played in Western civilisation 350 00:30:50,782 --> 00:30:55,776 was due to the abilities of one extraordinary individual, the Abbot Suger. 351 00:30:57,055 --> 00:31:01,424 He was one of the first men of the Middle Ages whom one can think of in modern - 352 00:31:01,526 --> 00:31:04,393 I might almost say transatlantic terms. 353 00:31:05,463 --> 00:31:09,092 His origins were completely obscure and he was extremely small, 354 00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:11,896 but his vitality was overwhelming. 355 00:31:12,971 --> 00:31:17,135 It extended to everything he undertook - organisation, building, statesmanship. 356 00:31:17,242 --> 00:31:20,609 He was Regent of France for seven years, and a great patriot. 357 00:31:20,712 --> 00:31:24,580 Indeed, he seems to have been the first to pronounce those now familiar words: 358 00:31:24,682 --> 00:31:28,413 "The English are destined by moral and natural law 359 00:31:28,519 --> 00:31:31,579 to be subjected to the French and not contrariwise." 360 00:31:32,557 --> 00:31:35,822 He loved to talk about himself, without any false modesty. 361 00:31:35,927 --> 00:31:39,021 And he tells the story of how his builders assured him 362 00:31:39,130 --> 00:31:42,463 that beams of the length he needed for a certain roof 363 00:31:42,567 --> 00:31:46,594 could never be found because trees just weren't as tall as that. 364 00:31:47,538 --> 00:31:50,598 Whereupon he took his carpenters into the forests. 365 00:31:50,708 --> 00:31:54,166 "They smiled," he says, "and would have laughed, if they had dared." 366 00:31:54,279 --> 00:31:56,042 And in the course of the day, 367 00:31:56,147 --> 00:32:01,107 he discovered 1 2 trees of the necessary size and he had them felled and brought back. 368 00:32:01,219 --> 00:32:04,120 You see why I used the word "transatlantic". 369 00:32:04,222 --> 00:32:07,385 And, like several of the pioneers of the New World, 370 00:32:07,492 --> 00:32:10,723 he had a passionate love of art. 371 00:32:10,828 --> 00:32:14,423 One of the most fascinating documents of the Middle Ages 372 00:32:14,532 --> 00:32:18,832 is the account he wrote of the works carried out at St Denis under his administration. 373 00:32:18,937 --> 00:32:21,929 The gold altar, the crosses, the precious crystals. 374 00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:25,498 There they are, seen through the eyes of a 1 5th-century painter, 375 00:32:25,610 --> 00:32:28,670 who has, no doubt, made his figures much too large in proportion. 376 00:32:28,780 --> 00:32:32,682 Actually, Suger's great gold cross was 24 feet high 377 00:32:32,784 --> 00:32:34,718 and it was studded with jewels 378 00:32:34,819 --> 00:32:39,722 and inlaid with enamels made by one of the finest craftsmen of the age, Godefroy de Claire. 379 00:32:39,824 --> 00:32:41,758 All destroyed in the Revolution. 380 00:32:43,528 --> 00:32:48,431 All that is left of Suger's treasures is a few of the sacred vessels. 381 00:32:48,533 --> 00:32:51,093 Like this Egyptian porphyry jar, 382 00:32:51,202 --> 00:32:54,069 which he tells us he found, forgotten, in a cupboard. 383 00:32:55,573 --> 00:33:00,101 Suger's feeling for all these objects was partly that of a great collector - 384 00:33:00,211 --> 00:33:03,180 love of brightness and splendour and antiquity - 385 00:33:03,448 --> 00:33:05,382 and a love of acquisition. 386 00:33:06,818 --> 00:33:10,914 But he was not merely a collector. He was a creator. 387 00:33:11,022 --> 00:33:16,016 His work had a philosophic basis that is very important to Western civilisation. 388 00:33:16,127 --> 00:33:20,894 Suger accepted the belief that we could only come to understand the absolute beauty, 389 00:33:20,999 --> 00:33:22,762 which is God, 390 00:33:22,867 --> 00:33:27,429 through the effect of precious and beautiful things on our senses. 391 00:33:28,539 --> 00:33:34,102 He said, "The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material." 392 00:33:35,079 --> 00:33:38,845 Well, this was really a revolutionary concept in the Middle Ages. 393 00:33:38,950 --> 00:33:44,081 It was the intellectual background of all the sublime works of art of the next century, 394 00:33:44,188 --> 00:33:49,421 and in fact has remained the basis of our belief in the value of art until today. 395 00:33:51,529 --> 00:33:53,622 In addition to this revolution in theory, 396 00:33:53,731 --> 00:33:57,997 Suger's St Denis was also the beginning of many new developments in practice - 397 00:33:58,102 --> 00:34:01,401 in architecture, in sculpture, in painted glass. 398 00:34:02,206 --> 00:34:07,075 But one can still see that Suger introduced - perhaps really invented - 399 00:34:07,178 --> 00:34:09,112 the Gothic style of architecture. 400 00:34:09,213 --> 00:34:13,547 Not only the pointed arch, but the lightness of high windows - 401 00:34:13,651 --> 00:34:15,846 what we call the clerestory. 402 00:34:15,953 --> 00:34:18,683 "Bright," he says, "is the noble edifice 403 00:34:18,790 --> 00:34:20,985 that is pervaded by new light." 404 00:34:21,092 --> 00:34:23,424 And in these words he anticipates 405 00:34:23,528 --> 00:34:28,022 all the architectural aspirations of the next 200 years. 406 00:34:29,434 --> 00:34:34,064 Alas, the exterior of St Denis doesn't look too bright today. 407 00:34:34,172 --> 00:34:36,800 It's been knocked about and restored 408 00:34:36,908 --> 00:34:40,605 and is now engulfed in a squalid industrial suburb. 409 00:34:41,579 --> 00:34:44,707 To form any notion of its first effect on the mind, 410 00:34:44,816 --> 00:34:47,216 one must go to Chartres. 411 00:34:52,490 --> 00:34:55,823 In some miraculous way, Chartres has survived. 412 00:34:56,727 --> 00:34:59,855 Fire and war, revolution and restoration, 413 00:34:59,964 --> 00:35:02,125 have attacked it in vain. 414 00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:06,530 One can still climb the hill to the cathedral in the spirit of a pilgrim. 415 00:35:07,438 --> 00:35:10,874 Even the tourists have not destroyed its atmosphere, 416 00:35:10,975 --> 00:35:14,138 as they have in so many temples of the human spirit 417 00:35:14,412 --> 00:35:18,508 from the Sistine Chapel to the Todaiji in Japan. 418 00:35:32,630 --> 00:35:39,695 The south tower is still more or less as it was when it was completed in the year 1 1 64. 419 00:35:40,805 --> 00:35:43,865 It's a masterpiece of harmonious proportion. 420 00:35:44,942 --> 00:35:48,105 Was this harmony calculated mathematically? 421 00:35:49,147 --> 00:35:55,017 Well, ingenious scholars have produced a system of proportions based on measurements, 422 00:35:55,119 --> 00:35:59,453 but it's so complex that I find it very hard to credit. 423 00:36:00,491 --> 00:36:06,157 However, Chartres was the centre of a school of philosophy, devoted to Plato, 424 00:36:06,430 --> 00:36:11,732 and in particular to his mysterious book called the Timaeus, from which it was thought 425 00:36:11,836 --> 00:36:16,102 that the whole universe could be interpreted as a form of measurable harmony. 426 00:36:16,974 --> 00:36:22,173 So, perhaps, the proportions of Chartres reflect a more complex mathematics 427 00:36:22,446 --> 00:36:24,676 than one is inclined to believe. 428 00:36:36,227 --> 00:36:40,561 Chartres contained the most famous of all relics of the Virgin, 429 00:36:40,665 --> 00:36:44,192 the actual tunic she had worn at the time of the Annunciation. 430 00:36:45,436 --> 00:36:47,768 From the first, this relic had worked miracles 431 00:36:47,872 --> 00:36:49,499 but it was only in the 1 2th century 432 00:36:49,607 --> 00:36:52,974 that the cult of the Virgin began to appeal to the popular imagination. 433 00:36:53,077 --> 00:36:57,013 I suppose that in the earlier centuries life was simply too rough. 434 00:36:57,848 --> 00:37:02,444 At any rate, if art is any guide - and in this series I am taking it as my guide - 435 00:37:02,553 --> 00:37:06,751 the Virgin played a very small part in the minds of men 436 00:37:06,857 --> 00:37:09,826 during the 9th and 1 0th, and even the 1 1th, centuries. 437 00:37:09,927 --> 00:37:12,088 The Romanesque churches we've been looking at 438 00:37:12,196 --> 00:37:14,926 were dedicated to saints whose relics they contained - 439 00:37:15,032 --> 00:37:18,468 St Etienne, St Lazarus, St Denis, St Mary Magdalene - 440 00:37:18,569 --> 00:37:20,628 none of them to the Virgin. 441 00:37:20,738 --> 00:37:26,506 Then, after Chartres, almost every great church in France was dedicated to her - 442 00:37:26,611 --> 00:37:28,943 Paris, Amiens, Rheims, Rouen, Beauvais. 443 00:37:29,947 --> 00:37:32,780 What was the reason for this sudden change? 444 00:37:32,883 --> 00:37:36,944 Well, I think the cult of the Virgin must have come from the East. 445 00:37:37,054 --> 00:37:41,718 Because all the early representations of the Virgin as an object of devotion 446 00:37:41,826 --> 00:37:44,624 are in a markedly Byzantine style. 447 00:37:45,463 --> 00:37:49,923 This is a page from a manuscript from Citeaux, the community of St Bernard. 448 00:37:50,034 --> 00:37:55,870 And St Bernard was one of the first men to speak of the Virgin as an ideal of beauty 449 00:37:55,973 --> 00:37:58,737 and a mediator between man and God. 450 00:37:59,710 --> 00:38:03,111 But certainly a strong influence in spreading the cult of the Virgin 451 00:38:03,381 --> 00:38:06,043 was the beauty and splendour of Chartres. 452 00:38:09,487 --> 00:38:11,717 The main portal of Chartres 453 00:38:11,822 --> 00:38:16,486 is one of the most beautiful congregations of carved figures in the world. 454 00:38:17,395 --> 00:38:18,987 The longer you look at it, 455 00:38:19,096 --> 00:38:23,430 the more moving incidents, the more vivid details, you discover. 456 00:38:24,502 --> 00:38:28,836 I suppose the first thing that strikes anyone is this row of pillar people. 457 00:38:29,707 --> 00:38:33,370 In naturalistic terms, as bodies, they're impossible, 458 00:38:33,477 --> 00:38:36,969 and the fact that one believes in them is a triumph of art. 459 00:38:37,882 --> 00:38:41,750 The sculptor was not only a man of genius but one of great originality. 460 00:38:41,852 --> 00:38:43,114 He must have begun carving 461 00:38:43,220 --> 00:38:47,384 when style was dominated by the violent, twisting rhythms of Cluny. 462 00:38:48,092 --> 00:38:53,029 And he's created a style as still and restrained and classical 463 00:38:53,130 --> 00:38:56,588 as the Greek sculptors of the 6th century BC. 464 00:39:08,746 --> 00:39:10,771 But was it really Greek? 465 00:39:10,881 --> 00:39:12,815 I mean Greek in derivation. 466 00:39:12,917 --> 00:39:19,345 Were these reed-like draperies, the thin, straight lines, the fluted folds, the zigzag hems, 467 00:39:19,457 --> 00:39:24,394 and the whole play of texture which so obviously recalls the Greek archaic figure, 468 00:39:24,495 --> 00:39:26,656 arrived at independently 469 00:39:26,764 --> 00:39:30,723 or had the Chartres master seen some fragments of early Greek sculpture 470 00:39:30,835 --> 00:39:32,393 in the South of France? 471 00:39:32,503 --> 00:39:36,599 Well, for various reasons, I'm quite certain that he had. 472 00:39:38,809 --> 00:39:41,642 But the most important thing about the central doorway, 473 00:39:41,746 --> 00:39:44,738 more important even than its Greek derivation, 474 00:39:44,849 --> 00:39:48,910 is the character of the heads of the so-called kings and queens - 475 00:39:49,019 --> 00:39:51,385 no-one knows exactly who they are. 476 00:39:51,489 --> 00:39:58,554 These heads seem to me to show a new stage in the ascent of Western man. 477 00:39:58,662 --> 00:40:06,034 Indeed, I believe that this refinement, this look of selfless detachment and spirituality, 478 00:40:06,137 --> 00:40:09,800 is something entirely new in art. 479 00:40:09,907 --> 00:40:15,777 Beside them, the gods and heroes of ancient Greece look arrogant, soulless - 480 00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:17,905 even slightly brutal. 481 00:40:19,250 --> 00:40:22,014 I fancy that the faces which look out at us from the past 482 00:40:22,119 --> 00:40:26,852 are perhaps the surest indication we have of the meaning of an epoch. 483 00:40:27,725 --> 00:40:30,216 And the faces on the west portal of Chartres 484 00:40:30,494 --> 00:40:34,863 are amongst the most sincere and the most aristocratic 485 00:40:34,965 --> 00:40:37,490 that Western Europe has ever produced. 486 00:40:38,502 --> 00:40:40,026 From the old chronicles, 487 00:40:40,137 --> 00:40:44,130 we know something about the men whose states of mind these faces reveal. 488 00:40:45,209 --> 00:40:47,973 In the year 1 1 44, we are told, 489 00:40:48,078 --> 00:40:51,241 when the towers seem to be rising as if by magic, 490 00:40:51,515 --> 00:40:55,451 the faithful harnessed themselves to carts which were bringing stone 491 00:40:55,553 --> 00:40:59,216 and dragged them from the quarry to the cathedral. 492 00:40:59,490 --> 00:41:02,425 The enthusiasm spread throughout France. 493 00:41:02,526 --> 00:41:04,687 Men and women came from far away, 494 00:41:04,795 --> 00:41:10,165 carrying heavy burdens of provisions for the workmen - wine, oil, corn. 495 00:41:10,434 --> 00:41:13,460 Amongst them were lords and ladies, 496 00:41:13,571 --> 00:41:15,937 pulling carts with the rest. 497 00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:20,636 There was perfect discipline and a most profound silence. 498 00:41:20,744 --> 00:41:25,943 All hearts were united and each man forgave his enemies. 499 00:41:36,026 --> 00:41:38,586 Its very construction was a kind of miracle. 500 00:41:38,696 --> 00:41:43,633 The old Romanesque church had been destroyed by a terrible fire in 1 1 97. 501 00:41:43,734 --> 00:41:46,794 Only the towers and the west front remained. 502 00:41:48,539 --> 00:41:52,635 And the people of Chartres feared that they had lost their precious relic. 503 00:41:54,945 --> 00:41:57,675 Then, when the debris was cleared away, 504 00:41:57,781 --> 00:42:00,648 it was found intact in the crypt. 505 00:42:00,751 --> 00:42:03,447 And the Virgin's intention became clear - 506 00:42:03,554 --> 00:42:09,117 that a new church should be built, even more splendid than the last. 507 00:42:13,597 --> 00:42:16,794 The building is in the new architectural style 508 00:42:16,901 --> 00:42:22,498 to which Suger had given the impress of his authority at St Denis - what we call Gothic. 509 00:42:23,240 --> 00:42:24,673 Only at Chartres, 510 00:42:24,775 --> 00:42:29,405 the architect was told to follow the foundations, of the old Romanesque cathedral, 511 00:42:29,513 --> 00:42:34,644 and this has meant that the Gothic vaulting had to cover a space far wider than ever before. 512 00:42:34,752 --> 00:42:37,812 It was a formidable problem of construction, 513 00:42:37,922 --> 00:42:44,691 and in order to solve it, the architect has used the device known as flying buttresses - 514 00:42:44,795 --> 00:42:51,098 one of those happy strokes where necessity has lead to an architectural invention 515 00:42:51,201 --> 00:42:54,466 of marvellous and fantastic beauty. 516 00:43:18,062 --> 00:43:23,193 Since the beginning of settled life, say, the Pyramid of Sakara, 517 00:43:23,467 --> 00:43:28,461 man had thought of buildings as a weight on the ground. 518 00:43:28,572 --> 00:43:33,839 He'd always found himself limited by problems of stability and weight. 519 00:43:35,045 --> 00:43:37,673 In the end, it kept him down to the earth. 520 00:43:38,716 --> 00:43:41,708 Now, by the devices of the Gothic style - 521 00:43:41,819 --> 00:43:46,586 the shaft with its cluster of columns, passing without interruption into the vault 522 00:43:46,690 --> 00:43:50,854 and the pointed arch - he could make stone seem weightless. 523 00:43:50,961 --> 00:43:53,930 The weightless expression of the spirit. 524 00:43:54,898 --> 00:43:59,631 By the same means, he could surround his space with glass. 525 00:44:00,738 --> 00:44:04,504 Suger said that he did this in order to get more light, 526 00:44:04,608 --> 00:44:06,906 but he found that these areas of glass 527 00:44:07,011 --> 00:44:12,142 could be made into an ideal means of impressing and instructing the faithful. 528 00:44:13,117 --> 00:44:18,111 "Man may rise to the contemplation of the divine through the senses." 529 00:44:19,089 --> 00:44:25,790 Well, nowhere else, I think, is Suger's favourite saying so convincingly illustrated 530 00:44:25,896 --> 00:44:27,830 as it is in Chartres Cathedral. 531 00:44:28,866 --> 00:44:32,666 As one looks at the painted windows which completely surround one, 532 00:44:32,770 --> 00:44:36,968 they seem almost to set up a vibration in the air. 533 00:46:11,735 --> 00:46:16,968 Chartres is the epitome of the first great awakening in European civilisation. 534 00:46:17,975 --> 00:46:20,569 It's also the bridge between Romanesque and Gothic, 535 00:46:20,677 --> 00:46:24,443 between the world of Abelard and the world of St Thomas Aquinas, 536 00:46:24,548 --> 00:46:29,042 the world of restless curiosity and the world of system and order. 537 00:46:30,154 --> 00:46:33,521 Great things were to be done in the next centuries of high Gothic - 538 00:46:33,624 --> 00:46:37,651 great feats of construction, both in architecture and in thought - 539 00:46:37,761 --> 00:46:42,095 but they all rested on the foundations of the 1 2th century. 540 00:46:42,199 --> 00:46:46,898 That was the age which gave European civilisation its impetus... 541 00:46:47,971 --> 00:46:52,067 ...our intellectual energy, our contact with the great minds of Greece, 542 00:46:52,176 --> 00:46:54,644 our ability to move and change, 543 00:46:54,745 --> 00:46:58,010 our belief that God may be approached through beauty, 544 00:46:58,115 --> 00:47:00,083 our feeling of compassion, 545 00:47:00,184 --> 00:47:02,812 our sense of the unity of Christendom - 546 00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:08,222 all this and much more appeared in those hundred marvellous years 547 00:47:08,325 --> 00:47:12,318 between the consecration of Cluny and the rebuilding of Chartres.