Did you ever spend some time in an empty church or cathedral trying to contemplate the space? It's my habit to visit some places like that when I have time and occasion. I like fragrance of flowers, candles and quietude. Sound of a city, coming from the nearby street, is softened by the thick walls of the church. It's so different around - quiet. Light there like the sound can be also special, sinking down through stained glass and giving a little bit of purple mix. Not very visible effect right away yet I can feel it. In a subtle way it expands the space. Sometimes it's like the delicate smile of a child who is looking through a kaleidoscope. It transports my imagination to the past. Of course, glass is common today, for so many things around are made out of it. It's cheap and even, more often than not, substituted by plastic. Might be that it doesn't impress us with the same power as before in Medieval time. The small price for an empty bottle, already stripped away from glass its nobility and transcendental, metaphoric meaning. The glass used in art and architecture still gives me aesthetic feelings. It took me some time to feel the appeal of the modern, American architecture. Now I am truly enchanted by big skyscrapers which are mirroring moods of the sky. Nevertheless in the Medieval Ages the impact of glass was incomparable with anything today. Back then, it was a real treasure, going to its apogee in the devotional art. At that time it spoke the gospel stories to illiterate minds and by its colors to theirs souls. Through stained glass and mosaics, the two very medieval art expressions, it was giving new hope to many and awaking in others the sleeping God within.

Stained glass was a new tool in the fight for the new faith. Light in Medieval philosophy became a central focus and the very adequate expression of God himself. In fact, all parallel expressions for beauty, goodness were tied with words like "claritas" describing qualities of light.¹ Medieval aesthetic used more adjectives and synonyms for the description of light than for colors. The amusement over light was constantly repeated in philosophical and theological disputes. The greatest authorities of that time, beginning from Pseudo-Dionizus to people like Bonaventura, St.Bernardyn or John the Scott of Erugina, were developing an ontology of light to a point never known before. ² The Stained glass illustrates what John the Scott expressed in words:

Materialia lumina, sive quae naturaliter in caelestibus spatiis ordinata sunt, sive quae in terris humano artificio efficiuntur, imagines sunt intelligibilium luminum, super omnia ipsius verae lucis

The material lights, both those which are disposed by nature in the spaces of the heavens and those which are produced on earth by human artifice, are images of the intelligible lights, and above all of the True Light Itself.³

Basically there are three ingredients for producing glass: alkali, silica and heat. Glass had its beginning somewhere around 4000-3000 B.C, during the Old Kingdom in Egypt. It was used as a glaze to cover beads and small vessels. As a legend has it, the very first discovery happened to some Syrian merchants by accident, while they were transporting a load of natron and it melted in a camp fire. This is just a story, a folk tale, though the first glass blowing technique probably did come to the Roman Empire from Syria. Around first century A.D, Romans made the earliest window glass. ⁴

The two techniques were available at the beginning: one by casting the glass in a shallow mold and the other by cutting a glass bubble and forming a flat sheet out of it. Glass was a luxury reserved for the rich and noble. In the Middle Ages the price for glass was not much less than the price of precious stones. It was produced in small pieces, just enough to make a colorful puzzle. Usually, a given manufacturer would produce only a certain color. Glass was sold by weight and it was a basic measurement. Five lbs. of glass was called "wey" or later similar amount "wisp". Amount of twenty-four "wey" (120 lb.) was forming a "seam" or "chast", "case" or "cradle".⁵ The glass used in a stained window was irregular in color and surface included inner bubbles. These features give a textural, artistic quality to stained glass compositions.

The function of stained glass windows in Gothic architecture was very complex, but the colorful glass walls served two distinct purposes: providing light to cathedral interiors and insulating that space from the outside world. The dominating use of blue glass, the color of distance, psychologically expanded the interior space. Not the blue by itself, but its rich interrelation with other colors - primarily red. This relation created visual complexity of stained glass. If we think about restrictions imposed by technological limits of the time, plus consciously designed daily light into the whole effect, then final product seems to be almost on the edge of a wonder. Some authority on the subject pointed out the different use of colors in stained glass is in relation with the sides of cathedrals. ^6. The daily change and difference between the light from north and south side was foresighted. The balance was achieved by intuition and profound knowledge, which was derived from careful observation and understanding of relation between light and colors in nature.

We can trace the medieval craftsmen's considerations in so-called the "Purcinis phenomenon". Purcini noticed, that in dusk light, the red range of colors has tendency to darken while in range of blue there is tendency to brighten.⁷ Hence the medieval masters of the Gothic magic were carefully thinking through their compositions accordingly to its effectiveness. Through the precise method, called "en cameieu" every single piece of glass was patiently worked up. After that all puzzles of glass were harmoniously orchestrated into the stained glass window.⁸ The effect was incomparable to any visual achievements in other techniques of painting. In the method "en cameïeu", every piece was painted with a dark substance, composed out of oxides of copper, iron and tin. The piece of glass was usually painted in three stages. The first was almost transparent, the second darker and the third almost close to value of the black lead's rim which contours the shape of the glass piece. Lead was used as the technical necessity - as a contour line in compositions, black color and the border between the two other colors. The main interaction occurred between red, blue and dark spaces of lead. Sometimes, if it was necessary, white or yellow glass was introduced in order to equal differences in transparency. White glass was adjusted through the method "en griseille" - underpainting of the gray color which tuned its transparency.⁹ Blue glass has the highest intensity while red the lowest, so that red required more elaboration. Also blue pigments were better absorbed by glass-mass than red. In XIII c. the range of blue was amazingly expanded and the subtle difference achieved from ultramarine to turquoise. ¹⁰ Shades of blue created the colorful symphony of spiritual amusement.

Stained glass "spoke" to people not only through colors, but primarily by content of its story. The biblical message was the main menu: scenes from lives of Jesus, saints and martyrs. Nevertheless we can find windows memorializing knights of Holy War, the local history as well as history of the nation. As an illustration, we can take just few stories from the Chartres cathedral. There are windows like The Life of Our Lord with scenes; Annunciation, The Baptism of Christ or The Entry into Jerusalem etc., The Passion Window with The Last Supper, The Betrayal etc., The Story of S.Remy, also there is The Story of Charlemagne that includes Emperor Constantine, the story about Roland and his magic sword Durendal.¹¹ At St.- Genogoult in Toul, there are stories from saint's lives like Nicolas, Agatha and Agapit. Every saint took care about certain group of people, jobs or protected followers of the new faith against forces of nature as water, fire or sickness. ¹² Over the centuries some of stained glasses were destroyed; other still in a good shape are waiting for identification with their original place. For example the twelfth-century stained glass panels, which are collected in France, England, Canada and the United States, belonged, as far as the latest analysis proved, to the cathedral in Troyes.¹³

The brief story of glass is quite fascinating. Around the first century A.D. the first glass window was made and then around the sixth century, the use of color glass began. In the background of this summary I can picture for myself the population of Medieval Europe, which was rather small and still surrounded by dark forests full "of animals and unearthly looking monsters". The earth was still for them "flat and unfriendly, inhabited in other sides by people with fewer heads, hands, and legs or with pigs' faces," and so forth. For peasants to survive was important to keep their tradition alive from generation to generation with the same rituals of the four seasons and the same set of primitive tools. The new Christian religion and innovations, had to dig in something harder than December soil - the illiterate population. Stained glass with their colorful stories was a perfect tool in spreading new faith. ¹⁴

In the ninth century, 95 percent of the population were peasants. They were living in a world unimaginable for most of us, beyond the question of intimacy and individual freedom. Three generations could live together in the same small house and sleep on the straw. During the wintertime they slept together with animals, making love in the presence of others, eating from one pot simple and monotonous food. Life was difficult and filled with work which in the feudal reality had to support the rest of society - feudal aristocracy with its army, fine cloth and ambitions. The law was essentially based on "God and my right," engaging noble people in constant quarreling with their neighbors over property borders. I am saying it with a small dose of exaggeration to contrast the splendor, in these times, of a church space with marble, gold and stained glass in it. ¹⁵ The only people with any education were monks, who scrupulously preserved their virtue of writing and the gospel of the Lord.

The new faith since Constantine's time, was carving, painting and building on the ruins of the ancient world. The Greek and Roman's achievements melted (not only in a metaphoric way) into the new picture of European civilization. In this context, what was the meaning of stained glass? I know it's sounds subjective, but when I look the cathedral from outside I see in its architectural structure the deep human longing for better world, which tries reach to heaven, almost in the physical way. The flaying buttresses look like metal scaffolds, which are ready to fall down in flames of starting towers-spaceships. Stained glass, with its visionary quality, was the fuel. The "cathedral-vehicle" was transporting its passengers into the new dimension of human experience. In “Heaven and Hell”, Aldous Huxley, while describing his mescaline experiments, pointed out the transporting-consciousness quality of the objects, which are reflecting light, like for example, precious stones, glass, metals or crystals.¹⁶ In the words of the Gothic Abbot of St.Denis - Suger, I can find the echoes of stained glass experience:

Then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world. ¹⁷

He was an interesting character - a monk who as one of the first, left behind on this earth more than prayers. He was writing a diary to leave for us a small pleasure of knowing a little bit more about spiritual joys of medieval times. His description after the "shock of the stained glass" recalls more psychedelic trip after LSD than natural agitation yet it was just the power and novelty of the cathedral stained glass, which was for these people a silent voice of The Light.

The technology of medieval time was very much oriented into human inner experience. Stained glass like alchemy was changing the outlook of individuals. The teaching of the Master (doesn't matter how much used, changed and manipulated in fight for the power) lived in a form of experience. The Golden Medieval period from the 12th Century up is considered to be a short, but the most balanced time between rational and spiritual aspects in the Western Thought. The Light captured in stained glass has been survived to our time. Today, during the quiet day in an old empty church I can feel the whisper of The True Light, which never was created and never will be destroyed, for I know - it's always inside us.

©written by Adam Rupniewski