> As for the Rose windows evoking the Garden of Eden, I don't think I ever
> asked myself when "rose" was first applied to those great glasses (thinking
> it to be a post-medieval phenomenon), but a Rose window could evoke the
> Garden of Eden in (and only in) connection with the Romance of the Rose, a
> 13/14th century poem in which there is that famous wall around the Lover's
> domain, and the notorious scene of the Lover at the fountain in the midst
> of a forest--aptly the hortus conclusus. Is this Garden evoked by the
> interior of Chartres cathedral >for its late 13th/14th century users? or
> maybe for its 19th century Romanic users?< ? I don't want to go down that
> path!! But maybe someone else does.
>
Leah,
You are right about the term "rose window" which may, in fact, be as
recent as the 18th century. In the Middle Ages they were variously
referred to as "oculi" (cf the Bishop's Eye and the Dean's Eye in
Lincoln Cathedral) and as wheel windows (cf the carvings on the
exterior of the rose window at St Etienne, Beauvais, which depict
the Wheel of Fortune). "Wheel" in French being "roue", one theory of
the appearance of "rose" windows is by a distortion of "roue". As
for the cathedral as a garden qua lovers' domain, this is unlikely,
despite the antics of Guillaume de Machaut in the mid-14th century,
who notoriously used churches as trysting places. My own feeling
about cathedrals is that they were so grand and impressive,
particularly in relation to their medieval architectural settings,
that they could undoubtedly provoke a wide range of metaphoric
enthusiasm. I'm not exactly sure what difference it makes whether an
image is applied to a cathedral, or anything else, before the fact or
after it, but surely there is some difference there that impacts on
what one might fairly say a cathedral "symbolizes".
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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