Jim Bugslag wrote:

>but there does not appear to be a lot of documentary evidence for pilgrimage
at Chartres, outside of the miracle collections sponsored by the chapter. 

to which I candidly replied:

>If you say so. 

To rub it in, he querries:

>If there *is* indeed evidence, has it been gathered together, or are you
speaking from archival experience?

Noap.
I really *do* know not from pilgrimages.

Nothing specifically pilgrimatical that I can think of off hand in the
charters (not surprising, given their _raisons d'etres_), though I have 
to say that I am *least* familiar with the documents from the Cathedral 
( {%( ), so there could *easily* be something there I'm not aware of.

As for secondary gatherings together, plowing through van der Meulen's Bibl.
is the only thing I can suggest, starting perhaps with his own work (if you
can stand it) on the accesses to the crypt (one of the important _loci
sancti_) through the West towers in his _Notre-Dame de Chartres; 
die vorromanische Ostanlage_ (1975).
 
But surely the cathedral was not the only goal for a stranger comming to 
town; at the least there was the town's main cemetery (Saint-Cheron, on the
hill accross the river, SE of the Cathedral), which appears to have been the
seat of an abbey of canons from early times. 

L'abbé Guy Villette discusses St-Cheron as a pilgrimage site at some length,
mentioning Delaporte's article in the DHGE (XII, col. 634-635), which might be
of some use.

The ultimate source for the speculation about this site would be the 9th c.
_Vita_ of this (apparently) fictif Saint (AASS, Mai, VI, 740-745) which, being
pretty much made out of whole cloth (according to Villette), tells us about
conditions on the ground in the 9th c., not before. 

>From his account, it looks to me like the monks there were trying to gear up
for the tourist trade, big time. (cf. Villette/Delaporte's citations 
of Clerval, _Les écoles_, p.28; and Souchet's 18th c. _Hist. du dioc._I,
320-334.

And, I would *suppose* that, if we knew more--which we would if all you 
working stiffs out there would get off your collective duffs and do a little
spade work--we might find that, by the mid-12th c. (if not before) the town
was thought of as a kind of type for Jerusalem--with it's own Golgotha
(St.-Cheron), abbey of St. Mary in the valley of Josaphat (at Lèves), etc.,
lord knows what else. 

Where else do the processions from the Cathedral go on High Holy days??

As to the "dogged attachment to a scholarly construct: that which
architectural and sculptural historians had/have to the pre-eminence of
Chartres in the development of the 'Gothic' (now, **there's** a concept for
you) style in those media" (I shamelessly quote myself.):

It seems to me that these "Gothic/Romanesque" art historical constructs 
have caused *so* much mischief that they should be euthanized forthwith,
a.s.a.p., the sooner the better. 
("Feudalism"--the Very Rock and One Sure Thing on which all middlevil
scholarship firmly rests--at least has more than somewhat of a 
documentary basis; but these stylistic catagories are the products of 
pure, over-heated art hysterical imagination.)

Your "Language does sometimes get in the way" is an eloquent bit of
understatement.

Pernicious, noxious, corrupting, counter-productive notions, they are. 

>a recent massive tome on French *Gothic* architecture points out that
Chartres Cathedral was provided with transepts on a scale unknown in *Gothic*
architecture but comparable to that of the largest of *Romanesque* pilgrimage
churches, i.e. Santiago de Compostella.  

I was thinking more along the lines of the "Resistance to Chartres"
contraversy of a generation ago, and the idea (still _au courant_ in many
minds, it seems) that Chartres was the necessary source of everything 
Good and Beautiful.

Which idea Southern appropriately deals with--in the scholastic arena--in his
essay on the school: L'abbé Clerval saw himself as at once 
re-creating (in the new Seminary) and continuing the great tradition of the
School of Chartres.

>Even more puzzlingly, the mid-12th-century Royal Portals, although an
important monument in the development of *Gothic* portal sculpture, are
usually considered *Romanesque* in style.  

Ain't puzzling at all.

The words mean whatever anyone wants them to mean--which is, of
course--*_Never_* defined or discussed, to my knowledge, in the Chartres
literature at least.

One can count on the fingers of one hand the number of art historians who
seriously come to grips with fundamental stylistic problems.

>The *Gothic* windows of Abbot Suger's east end at Saint-Denis 
are also filled with *Romanesque* stained glass.  

As above.

My modest suggestion: re-think the whole thing, using George Kubler's (_The
Shape of Time_) "sequences," "patterns," and "replications," as a guide and
starting point.

>Re...the Evangelists on the shoulders of Prophets in the south transept
window....an article in Notre-Dame de Chartres [for the unitiated: the
diocesean magazine] recently claimed that the window must be post-medieval,
since it would have been unthinkable in the Middle Ages to associate the
Evangelists with dwarves!...

Sounds about right.

That mag has gone down hill ever since Delaporte died.
Though Jean Villette still publishes in it, I assume.

>There are other comparable images scattered about Europe, moreover, all 
of them equally unexplained.  It seems to be an iconographic motif with 
no surviving documentary presence, although I'm still looking.

Worth doing.

Be very curious indeed if there wasn't *some* literary parallel, at 
least.

Perhaps some of the heavy-duty theological types on this list could lend 
a hand: anyone seen the giants/dwarves reference specifically applied to
evangelists/prophets?

Best to all from here,

Christopher








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