European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 1, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Minster s storybook windows mix the secular and sacred by Craig  new York times to ask How we should look at a Grea Cathedral is a question that could arise on Yin the modern  All in the medieval age of Faith when the great buildings were raised cathedrals were holy books written in Stone and stained Glass symbolic visions of the world from the creation to the end of time when Christ would return to judge both the Quick and the dead. In no two cathedrals is the Story told exactly the same Way which allows us to learn something of How men and women six or eight Hundred years ago saw the world and interpreted the word. Since they were built Over centuries by Many different artists and architects cathedrals have All the quirks and crotchety failings of human beings and something of the National character of the countries from which they sprung. The style we Call gothic was a French invention springing up in the Middle to late 12th Century in the Lle de France where Over the next 150 years architects and builders pushed their soaring pointed Arches and Stone vaults Ever higher on Walls that soon became Mere ribs Between windows As flying buttresses shouldered the weight instead. It was a fad ecclesiastical because the Church had most of the Money in those Days but a most inspiring and enduring fad nonetheless. England s Kings of the age who were also French brought the prevailing monastic style Over with them after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 so the English Call it Norman instead of romanesque. Later As the new gothic style caught on in France they imported that too bringing architects glaziers and stonecutters across the Channel the first architect of Canterbury Cathedral the Frenchman William of Sens even had Stone for the choir brought Over from Caen. But there is something ineffably English about the great churches these architects and their successors built in Canterbury in York in Lincoln Ely Salisbury and Wells among other Cathedral towns on the Island. While the French built their churches Ever higher reaching such vertiginous Heights in places like Beauvais that the Walls kept falling in the English built theirs Ever wider instead. They slowly modified the pointed Arches in the style conventionally called Early English decorating them More and More with geometrical and foliage patterns in the style known As decorated in the late 13th and Early 14th centuries. Finally in the 15th Century they began stretching out the Arches widening them out and bowing them in a style not found anywhere else in Europe called perpendicular. Every one of the English cathedrals has something special to attract the visitor s interest. In Canterbury the spot where Thomas a Becket was murdered in astronomical clock St. Nicholas Chapel Southeast View of York Minster famed windows pictured below in a painting above by Frederick Mackenzie from about 1835. South transept is oldest part of present Minster and dates from the Early 13th Century. The awesome size massive vaulted Arches Are trademarks of the English Cathedral Nave at right. 1170 in Wells the great Sciss ored buttresses in the Nave holding up the piers to the Central Tower. In Westminster Abbey not a Cathedral technically most visitors come not for theology or the architecture but to see the Many tombs and monuments that actually conceal its stylistic glory. A truly rewarding visit to a Cathedral can concentrate More on its architectural details its sculptural riches and the Story it tells. A Little Advance Reading and preparation a Good guide Book several Are usually available in the bookstores found in every English Catheral and a pair of binoculars and a Bible will help. York actually the metro political Cathedral Church of St. Peter at York second in importance in the Church of England Only to Canterbury could hardly look More English. Its great towers Pinnacles and buttresses Rise majestically Over the half timbered houses and winding streets of the walled City founded in roman times on the site of a British settlement. Like the City itself York Minster did not Spring up All at once the building we see today grew in stages Over an earlier Norman Cathedral and an even earlier wooden Saxon Church from 1220 to 1472, in a glorious mixture of All the English gothic styles. Start outside the West door standing Back a bit. The Western towers and the windows you see with their Stone ribs tracing out a heart shaped figure were built last with the details in the perpendicular style. Walk around the Dean Gate a Little farther to the South transept and you see the unadorned Arches and lower windows All in the Early English style. The Eastern end the choir is perpendicular again and Over on the other Side the free standing octagonal chapter House with its pointed roof is in the decorated style built from 1260 to 1290, and extending from the Early English North transept. Complete the circuit by walking Back to the West Entrance through the Grassy Cathedral close on the North Side and you see How the later styles evolved naturally from the earlier ones building a harmonious whole. Inside the first thing a visitor might want to see nowadays is the restored wooden vault of the South transept destroyed by fire after lightning struck in 1984. All these Serene looking cathedrals have actually led chaotic lives their histories full of stories of fires collapsing Walls and towers falling masonry ceilings and persistent reconstruction through the Ages. And if you wonder what kind of people they were who made these great buildings so lovingly Over the Ages you need Only ask for Peter Gibson the superintendent of the glaziers Trust who started As an altar boy when he was 12 and has been working on conservation of the windows since 1945. Every working Day of my life i come out of my Home where i have lived All my life with my Mother and father who have now passed away and the first thing that greets me Are those great Majestic Western towers of York Minster he said. I Don t think any who come through the West door of York Minster can fail to be impressed by the majesty of the building. Seeing the Beauty of this House of god is part of my life All i am doing is keeping Faith with the medieval craftsmen who created these marvelous windows centuries  allow him a Little local Pride. I be visited the French cathedrals Chartres Bourges Sens be mans and they Are great cathedrals. But in none of these do you get i think the majesty of this building he said standing in the Nave of York. Look at it tremendous size you see. Look at these pillars massive. As we stand Here in the Nave see those windows in the clerestory. Each of those windows 100 feet above our Heads is almost 35 feet High. When you get everything else that goes f along with the size the Glass the architectural details As we look at the armading Here on the South Side of the Nave just look at it 14th Century perfection in  Awe was what the builders intended by creating buildings of such size dwarfing everything else in the town. At York they made the Nave and transepts so wide they could not be spanned by Stone vaults so the ceilings Are of Wood instead. The visitor at the crossing of Nave and transept looks up toward the ceiling of the Central Tower 184 feet above and feels insignificant by comparison in a. Building that measures on the inside 486 feet from the West door Entrance to the windows at the East end and 223 feet Between the two arms of the transept. Light floods in through the huge windows. But Awe was not All the Cathedral inspired it attracted not Only worshippers and pilgrims but beggars thieves circus performers merchants and Money changers who thronged the Nave set apart As the secular part of the building by a thick and heavy Stone screen. This allowed the clergy to say or sing the liturgical offices relatively undisturbed in the Eastern end of the Church the choir. In some cathedrals for instance Winchester a separate Stone screen called a re Edos separates the High altar from the chapels at the Eastern end. Standing on the screen facing out into the Nave is a Row of 15th-Century statues of the Kings of England from William the conqueror to Henry i of the House of Lancaster for the Church was in the Middle of politics in the 15th Century an especially turbulent time in Yorkshire. When the Dean and chapter celebrated the completion of the Cathedral in 1472, Henry i had been murdered in the Tower of London and the archbishop of York banished to France for taking his Side against Edward in in the struggle Between the Lancaster and the Yorks known As the wars of the roses the Early 16th-Century Rose window High in the South transept alternating red and White on red roses was also a political gesture to the House of Tudor which emerged triumphant in 1485. The windows Are much More than prisms to dapple the Stone columns with splashes of red Blue and Orange ight As they do now o n sunny Days. They were not Only intended to dazzle but to inspire and instruct with a mixture of secular and sacred Aims in mind. They Are in fact storybooks Gibson said. Some people say a stained Glass window is a poor Man s Bible but i must say you be got to have pretty Good eyesight for some of  in the Sanctum Sanctorum of York the lady Chapel at the East end the contemplative visitor was invited to study the creation to the end of time. If you go look at the great East window you look at details on the Glass there at the very top 95 feet above the ground and the painting is just As through it was going to be seen at Eye level Gibson said. Did t bother them one Little bit that their work was High up there it was for the glory of  the East window is As big As a Tennis court 76 feet High 32 feet wide with 161 separate panels in the Stone tracery and 117 Square panels below All painted on coloured Glass by an artist named John Thornton from Coventry from 1405 to 1408. The old testament Story of the creation is at the top Over what medieval christians believed to be its new testament fulfilment the revelation of St. John the divine in the Bottom panels. I Only wish we could go up to the gallery extending across the window three quarters of the Way up to look at the detail on those uppermost panels Gibson said. Can you see the creation taking place it starts in the left hand panel up at the top and then the Story works through to the fifth panel in the very Center the Birds and the fishes. On the extreme right hand Side on the first Row you can maybe just make out the figures of Adam and eve in the Garden of Eden. Underneath the gallery the rest of the window Down to the Bottom Row tells the Story of the revelation. And it begins with St. John in a cauldron of boiling Oil. I like to think that people coming Here sit Here in the lady Chapel and Trace verse by verse the unfolding Story it could take an entire  not a windows Are heavy theology Gibson delights in pointing out. One of my jobs during my apprenticeship starting Way Back in 1945 was when i came across a Little Bird or a Little animal in a completely misplaced position to take it out put it on one Side and eventually make two new windows for York Minster full of Birds and animals. You can see the two windows in the touche Chapel named after archbishop William la touche who sat in the Cathedral chair from 1342 to 1352. The Chapel is off the South choir aisle. The miniature animal paintings Are just about at Eye level and you can almost touch them. The most famous piece Gibson told a visitor is the second one from the Bottom there can you see the Little Wren going after the spider in the web i discovered that in a Minster window about 32 years ago no one knew it existed until then. That s late 15th, Early 16th Century. There s an apprentice being beaten by his master a procession of monkeys a circus coming to town there on the left hand Side a one Man band and a Little bashful Bear. On the next window there s a Windmill. If you Are wanting to study windmills or you want to see what a Windmill looked like then Well there you Are if the personality of York is Majestic others May strike the visitor As eccentric again in a typically English Way. At Winchester the original Norman transept and Central Tower with their romanesque Arches stand largely unaltered after eight centuries. At Ely a few Miles North of Cambridge the visitor can see the remarkable octagonal lantern or Central Tower above the transept crossing built of eight tall unblemished Trees selected personally by Alan of Walsingham the prior when the original Central Tower crashed Down in 1322. At Salisbury the dominating feature is the 404-foot High Stone spire built to impress but its 6,000 tons overwhelming and bending out of shape the Stone piers built to support something More modest. At Wells it s the 300 13th-Century sculpted figures on the West front. At Westminster the Stone tracery of the North and South Rose windows arguably among the finest examples of the French style in Northern Europe and Henry vol s private Chapel at the East end a splendid example of perpendicular style with the uniquely English fan shaped Stone vaulting in the ceiling. Some people indeed Are Content simply to study the sumptuous carving of the wooden choir stalls or look for the sculptured self portraits the architects made in the apexes of the choir Arches at Ely. In an English Cathedral it seems there is still something for everybody and perhaps the most inspiring time to see and hear it All come together is at a sunday morning service or More intimately in the choir with the choristers at Evensong usually about 3 o clock sunday afternoon. The exact times of services in All English cathedrals Are listed on saturday on the Gazette Page of the daily the Independent then we in our modern age May begin to understand what the artisans had in mind in doing their work centuries ago to the greater glory of  i j Page 14 the stars and stripes sunday january 1989 the stars and stripes Page 15