Thanks so much for your thorough and thoughtful reply.
K
[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > I know this is intellectual laziness, but I'll ask nonetheless: can
> > someone give me a brief (I don't want to impose on anyone's time -
> > especially to attenuate the effects of my laziness) summary of just
> > what's wrong with J. W. Williams' book?
> > Thanks,
> > KWildgen
>
> To compound your laziness, here is an entirely off-the-cuff response.
> The early 13th-century stained glass in Chartres Cathedral is unique
> for many reasons, not least of which is that, alone among the large
> churches of this era, it has survived. So has much of that of
> Canterbury Cathedral, but the latter is very different, comprising a
> well organized programme, or programmes of imagery, all undoubtedly
> decided and arranged by the monastic cathedral chapter. What one
> finds at Chartres, however, is not so much an organized programme as
> a relative chaos of individual "donations", most of which carry
> "signatures" of the "donors". I use quotation marks to indicate that
> these are contentious interpretations of the situation. Among those
> "donors", one can count clerics (undoubtedly including
> cathedral canons), identified by images of them kneeling before an
> altar on which is a covered chalice; nobles, usually identified by
> their coats of arms, often accompanied by images of them in armour
> and either on horseback or kneeling before altars; and then there are
> many windows in which the "donors" are represented by images of
> various tradesmen at work. Until Williams' thesis and book appeared,
> these were unproblematically interpreted as collective images of
> working class donors whose collective identity was signalled by the
> respective images of furriers, wheelwrights, carpenters, etc,
> suggesting to many the involvement of confraternities or guilds,
> organized along trade lines. Williams pointed out that there were no
> guilds per se in early 13th-century Chartres (which was only
> incorporated as a city, in fact, near the end of the 13th century),
> and that, in any case, there were some curious patterns in the trades
> represented in the windows. Scenes of bakers and bread, scenes
> involving wine and scenes of "moneychangers" predominated over those
> of the other trades, and she interpreted this in a highly novel way.
> She made a case for these windows not originating with the trades
> represented, but with the cathedral chapter, in an attempt to
> construct images of social control over what she saw as a contested
> situation in Chartres for control of the trades between the chapter
> and the count of Chartres. She made use of documents mentioning
> "avouees" or "advocati" of the chapter who were specifically exempted
> from comtal control, and brought in the windows as evidence for a
> civic power struggle between bishop and chapter, on the one hand, and
> the count on the other. She also fit the images into the economy of
> oblations at the cathedral, in which gifts of bread, wine and money
> were prominent. Thus, in her thesis, these images register the
> attempts of a cash-strapped institution to bolster its economic
> position with respect to both competing institutions and to its
> constituency. There are several prominent problems with this
> interpretation, in my view. For one thing, the discourse into which
> these "trade images" immediately fit is, indeed, that of "donor
> images", however unproblematically that term has been used by art
> historians, and there is evidence both in the documents and in the
> images of working-class donors in other churches, that working-class
> people did band together to pay for stained glass windows (the
> prostitutes of Paris even attempted to pay for one in Notre-Dame, but
> it was refused!). Particularly since such images appear to
> constitute a discourse just in process of formation, based on the
> relatively new phenomenon of working class consciousness and
> philanthropy, it does not seem likely that the chapter could have
> manipulated it very successfully to its own ends; viewer
> expectations had simply not been sufficiently shaped for such a
> subtle strategy. Another of the limitations of Williams' thesis is
> that she limits her consideration of possible working-class
> participation exclusively to the city of Chartres, even though one of
> the windows in the nave clerestory is clearly marked as coming from
> the people of Tours and there is other evidence, particularly amongst
> the noble donors, that the cathedral fabric drew much wider attention
> than the city of Chartres and its immediate region (or even the
> diocese). Broadening consideration beyond the city of Chartres
> negates many of her arguments about the presence of workers and their
> organization. The absence of actual guilds in early 13th-century
> Chartres, as they became formalized in the late 14th and 15th
> centuries, is not to be wondered at, and in fact, some of the
> evidence she marshals for proving their non-existence indicates that
> there was indeed some kind of trade organization, however informal,
> in early 13th-century Chartres. Moreover, I believe that she has
> misread the documents concerning advocati or avouees. In the absense
> of properly constituted guilds, which would have regulated the
> trading practices of their members, the chapter appointed a
> representative from each trade to act as an advocate for the chapter
> in its dealings with the members of that trade; rather than
> constituting a whole class of workers in each trade, as Williams
> claims, the advocates were single members, who were indeed exempt
> from comtal control, but the power struggle she constructs between
> the chapter's workers and those of the count is not, in my view,
> valid. Her argument pointedly ignores other trades, as well. One
> could point, particularly, to the furriers, who I can't believe were
> that thick on the ground in early 13th-century Chartres: but their
> prominence in the glass is not explained by Williams' arguments. It
> cannot be denied that she has usefully problematized the issues
> concerning the trade images in the Chartres glass, and her more
> socially and economically engaged arguments concerning them are
> highly stimulating. But she has raised more questions than she has
> answered. That is to her immense credit, and her book should -- and
> indeed, I believe is -- stimulating further consideration of this
> largely ignored phenomenon. Williams claimed that she wanted to
> rewrite the discourse on this subject, but since one only marginally
> existed previously, I would rather credit her with starting a serious
> discourse that had previously been missing.
> Cheers,
> Jim Bugslag
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