Chartres

Readers who have been in the presence of Chartres Cathedral will be in no doubt that they have stood in sacred space, as countless pilgrims have done for nearly 800 years. In this new book on the relationship between sacred geometry and sacred space, Gordon Strachan enables us to view Chartres in a new way. And his book is all the more timely with its demonstration that the pointed arch of Gothic architecture – referred to in its day as 'the New Style' – owes its origins to Islam. Before he begins this exposition, he makes some intriguing comparisons between the orientation of Chartres and that of Stonehenge, pointing out that they almost share the same axis, and that Chartres points 47 degrees east of north instead of due east.

The story begins at the end of the 11th century when Christendom comes into contact with Islam in Spain, and, more importantly, in Jerusalem, which was captured in 1099. It seems that there was a creative interchange between the Sufis and the Templars, where the Templars would have learned the symbolism of the number nine, and that the Sufis considered the rounded arch as material in pointing back to the earth, while the pointed arch leads up beyond itself to heaven. A visual comparison between the 'one-fifth' arches of the El Aksa Mosque and the portals of Chartres carries more conviction than the explanatory words. The first major sponsor of the New Style was St. Bernard, who persuaded the Archbishop of Sens to rebuild his cathedral around 1130, then Abbot Suger at St. Denis in Paris in 1144 and the Bishop of Chartres on his West Portal in 1145.

Gordon takes his argument to the next stage in the following chapter with his analysis of Christian Platonism, which makes material objects into reflections of spiritual archetypes. Architecture becomes a means of enhancing 'the possibility of a spiritual journey, from the seen to the unseen world, through the visible to the invisible, via the material to the immaterial'. The building thus becomes an expression of mystical spirituality. Gordon explains that geometry was considered the closest analogue to the Divine Mind, and goes on to explain how all these early Gothic cathedrals used the same proportional geometric – rather than arithmetical – system, which he proceeds to demonstrate with reference to Villard de Honnecourt's early 13th century example of a typical Cistercian plan. Thus the pattern of ratios is based on the irrational fractions of geometry (via the compass), not the whole numbers of arithmetic (via the ruler), a point that had escaped many earlier commentators, who failed to grasp this logic.

In the next chapter, Gordon explains how the two dimensions of geometry are translated into the three dimensions of architecture; at the same time, if three dimensions are transformed into two – as in stained glass, the cube becomes a hexagon (p. 61). The geometric ground plan of Chartres is then explained in some detail in terms of these hexagons. Then Gordon comments on the mystical theology of Dionysius the Areopagite with his doctrine of the ineffability of the Godhead, who cannot be grasped by finite minds and language. Perhaps his best known image is that of the Divine Darkness, which Gordon surmises is also reflected in the darkness of the cathedral itself. The architecture is one reflection, the light passing through the glass is another. The beauty of light and darkness interpenetrating each other brings us right back to the starting point of the mystical sense of sacred space experienced in the 'womb' of Chartres. This short book helps convey just this impression of illumination through its subtle interweaving of text, image and plan – and it will perhaps help reawaken the contemplative dimension that has been absent for too long outside the monasteries of Western Christendom and which can so nourish the soul in the fullness of beauty.