Let there be light.
Friends of mine are in Paris this week and they visited one of my favorite buildings, Sainte Chapelle.
It's hard to know why certain places remain with us while others fade away. Christopher Alexander's The Timeless Way of Building speaks of a pattern language - a type of seeing, living, and building that appeals to the deepest parts of our humanity. Pattern language "has at its core that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being." (inside book flap)
There are certain sacred buildings that I appreciate aesthetically and historically - Brunelleschi's dome, the Sistine Chapel, Saint Paul's - that do not have much of an imprint on my soul. I remember them as artistically impressive but only mildly interesting, a "I was there" postcard sent by my memory.
Sainte Chapelle could have impressed me in the same way. It was built by Louis IX in only a few years having a lot to do with equating France with some kind of New Jerusalem during the fading crusades.Of course, this involved procuring and housing relics. Relics are interesting things. I once read an essay about dueling monasteries who would steal relics back and forth over several decades as a good relic could procure a financially beneficial parade of pilgrims.
So Sainte Chapelle's impact as a place built for the glory of God or some such thing is only so much noise, mixed up in monarchies and associated religious propaganda as much as any sad little inauguration prayer or religious influence peddling is today.
Many tourists also give Sainte Chapelle the once over. There are no elaborate grounds, they say. There is too much security and it is too cold and quiet. I liked such and such better. It reminds me of being at the small holocaust memorial on the tip of Ile de la Cite just behind Notre Dame. As my friend and I contemplated the significance of the space, two women rushed in with their thumbs jammed inside their tour books. They took a quick look around, shrugged their shoulders and moved their thumbs to yet another place in their holy book. There was no there anywhere for them except in checking off another attraction. There was no waiting for what the space might bring.
For me and many others, Sainte Chapelle is all about the light. The lower entry way consists of a small chapel impressive in its own right with its sharp blue ceiling and fleur-de-lis columns in red and blue. A narrow stone staircase leads to the upper chapel - a u-shaped space with thin pillars of stone holding what seems like an endless field of woven stained glass. I know that all the panels tell different bible stories but I've never been interested in what parts of the windows correspond to which narrative. I want to spend my time inside this incredible kaleidoscope and watch the light filter in and out changing in hue - deep rose with hints of blue, sometimes sparkling, sometimes holding steady as the sky changes outside. Looking straight above, another blue ceiling with painted gold stars mimic some kind of perfect night. I am now the relic - possibly holy, more probably false - housed by this expanse of light. I am both mysteriously ordered and comfortably lost amidst ancient glass and painted stars.
