In which Doris continues to indulge her new-found interest in cathedrals.
Good lord, did you click on that? Well, welcome to another post where Doris (now consciously incompetent on the subject of cathedral building) gets to nose in detail round another example while Sid sidles hopefully towards the exit.
The choir end of Chartres cathedral was built between 1287 and 1329, so it was started after Salisbury was finished, and work carried on until there was a pause for the 100 (or 116) Years War. By the time it was finished in the 1400’s the masons had a really good grasp of how to make a high (but not too high, cf Beauvais) vault stay reliably up.
All was going well until 1538. I need to type out the next bit from the cathedral’s own guide:
“In 1568, during the religious wars, Orleans was in the hands of the Duke de Conde, leader of the Protestants. Not wishing to destroy the cathedral, he bricked up the doors. In March 1568, fanatics from Conde’s troops entered the cathedral through the windows and destroyed the four pillars of the transept. The building collapsed, leaving only the apse chapels and two spans of the nave.”
Egad.
The “four pillars of the transept” are the huge ones at the main crossing in the church. How did they destroy them? How did they keep going at the destruction after the first one had been knocked through? Fortunately the French government archives are here to help with an account recorded at the time:
…these “accursed heretics […] removed a few stones from the four large pillars which supported the bell tower, and in their place put a few pieces of wood with gunpowder: and attaching long cables at the top of the above-mentioned bell tower, at the same time caused the said powder to be set on fire, and the bell tower to be pulled down by force of men and horses.”
The repairs started in 1601 and were completed in 1829.
As a result the interior is Gothic with a Victorian twist as you will see:
PS Today’s relic is a splinter from the True Cross.