♪ ♪ ♪ >> Good evening and welcome to this edition of "Carolina Journal."

You know, all of us have interests that take us away from our everyday lifestyles... You may be interested in sailing ships or colonial living, things of that nature.

Generally, you would fulfill these desires by taking trips to places like Mystic Seaport in Connecticut or Williamsburg, Virginia.

For some, these sidelines turn into passions.

In France, the cathedral in Chartres is the center of a lifelong passion that belongs to this evening's guest on "Carolina Journal."

He is Malcolm Miller, who has spent his adult life studying the art, history, and mystique of this centuries-old cathedral.

Welcome to "Carolina Journal," the state of South Carolina, and the United States.

Mr. Miller, what is it about this cathedral that attracts tourists from all over the world?

Miller> I think the main point is... for many people it is the only medieval cathedral.

As you know, every major town in Europe had its cathedral, the seat of a bishop, constructed, especially over this extraordinary period, which is my period-- 1150, let's say, to 1250, 1300-- which is amazing, the stone that was quarried and the craftsman that were involved in the constructing of these great cathedrals.

Everybody knows about the Age of Faith, the building of these great cathedrals.

What most people don't know, though, is that there is only one left out of all these hundreds that is still practically intact in the 20th century.

That's because of the vicissitudes of European history, which is your history, too, when we're speaking of the 12th and 13th centuries.

It's your cultural heritage as much as ours, Europeans'.

Because in England we had our Reformation and in France a revolution and two world wars in which you were involved, other great cathedrals have been vandalized.

My comparison is with a library.

The knowledge is written in the cathedral.

The cathedral wasn't just a church, in modern sense, but a library in stained glass and sculpture, before there was printing, before there was paper.

So if we continue the simile, the other cathedrals are libraries that have burned their books... or it's one great book with its pages torn out, or so dirty and spoiled you can't read them.

Coming back to Chartres... Chartres is the only medieval cathedral that still has some pages missing, but the complete text.

Perhaps your audience will understand better if I say that only one copy of "Macbeth" existed.

It wouldn't matter...we'd have the complete Shakespeare text.

At Chartres we have the complete text of a medieval cathedral.

In a moment, we're going to look at just one chapter.

Peter and I talked about how to read a library in half an hour.

You can't do it.

So we're just going to read one chapter.

Poore> What is the, uh...

I shouldn't say... well, the fascination that you've had with the cathedral?

You've literally dedicated your life to this...study.

Miller> Oh, Peter, this is another hour and a half!

Just briefly, a little autobiography, that's what you're asking about.

As a young man, perhaps there are many watching now I wasn't really quite sure what I wanted to do with my life.

One often doesn't know that.

I think the main thing to do is to get an intellectual training.

So my intellectual background was in languages.

That's the relationship with France.

I studied at the University of Durham in England.

for some time... We were made to work, and we had to spend a year abroad.

If you were studying French, you would go to France.

If you were studying German, you go to Germany, and so on.

So my year abroad was in Chartres.

I was already attracted to cathedral towns anyhow.

Durham, as many know, is, itself, one of the great cathedral cities of Europe.

So I chose to write my... we call it an honors paper.

Perhaps the equivalent here would be a master's thesis.

It's a one-year, small dissertation... small... 150 pages or so.

So I wrote my final honors paper...British language on Chartres Cathedral.

So that's the link with France and then with Chartres.

But I had no idea, when I was 23, 24 that 26 years later I'd be sitting here, still talking about it.

My life has become more and more involved because I started guiding as a student, not intending it to be a profession.

It has become more involved, mainly because people always ask me to do things, and I've never been able to refuse.

I taught for a number of years, English, to French students and spent the summers at Chartres.

Then Boeing invented 747s, so then mass tourism began.

So I found I was needed much more at Chartres.

Then the winter occupation of lecturing in England at the universities began.

I did what you call extension lecturing, and then for the last 12 years, I have gotten more and more involved with American lecture tours.

So in fact, I'm in South Carolina as one stop in a 40-lecture tour from coast to coast.

I just got here from Edmonton.

When I finish today in the studio, I'll be off to West Virginia.

Poore> You have literally hundreds of slides that could reasonably demonstrate-- Miller> Correction, Pete...thousands!

[laughter] Poore> We've asked you to do something very difficult, and that was to limit it only to a few to demonstrate the mystique is all about.

Why don't we start looking at some.

Miller> Okay... so if we could have the first slide on.

Just to illustrate something I just said, that Chartres is by far the best preserved of all the great medieval cathedrals, here's a general view... just to impress you with the dimensions of the building, those who've never been there.

On the outside are literally thousands and thousands-- people have no idea-- thousands and thousands and thousands more of details.

People say, "Don't you ever get bored, Malcolm, with showing the same things?"

Well, you don't.

If you have a library, you don't keep reading the same book.

If you like music, you don't listen to the same record.

So let's have a brief view, a little closer, of the west portal, 1145 to '55.

I have friends, some of them profess in this country, who've spent their whole lifetime studying this west portal... or the transept doors.

The cathedral is in the form of a cross, the Latin cross.

We're just seeing the old west door.

I'll give a little historical background in a moment.

I'm just really answering your question, still, about how one gets involved in something which is so complex.

Here we're in the south door with, again, literally thousands of details.

Hardly a week goes by without my saying, "Well, I haven't noticed that before."

I like speaking in metaphors.

Imagine the biggest jigsaw puzzle in the world, for the young people listening Children love Chartres... it's a picture book.

Trillions of pieces, and each piece in the puzzle only has its real meaning when it's read together with all the other pieces.

These are some of the pieces outside in sculpture, in this case the early 13th century, 1210 approximately.

Then inside-- if you've never been to Chartres, I think it's something that you should look forward to, speaking of the mystique of Chartres.

It's the only cathedral that still has practically all of its original glass of the 12th and 13th centuries, so that when you first enter the building, there is the sort of gothic twilight.

It is a mystery in the real sense, a sort of half-light.

The light is filtered through the trillions of details in jewel-like glass.

(silence) Here's just a view of the choir, a little on the left of the transept glass.

Again, I hope to give you an idea of the dimensions.

We're dealing with more than 2,000 square yards-- or square meters-- of early 13th-century glass and some even mid-12th-century glass.

One that I shall show you will, in fact, be one of the early windows.

This, then, is the medieval city library, a library for every man.

That would include the simple folk, the peasant, the pilgrim... and it would also include the scholars.

If you like, it would be the equivalent of a city library today and the university library combined.

Let's now have just a very brief history.

Thirty minutes is absurd to try to tell you about Chartres.

I shall not try to cover the whole building by any means, but I think, perhaps, that some of you would like to know a little of the historical background.

It's a very ancient town.

In fact, nobody knows how old it is.

Was pre-Christian...in Roman days was called Autricum.

Those who've traveled or know about Europe have noticed that many of our cathedral cities were Roman.

That's because early Christians evangelized Roman communities.

Caesar mentioned Chartres.

He didn't call it Chartres... that's a much later name.

Its Roman name was Autricum because the river-- perhaps you can see just running behind the cathedral-- was called the Autura in Latin.

We know three cathedrals-- I remind you cathedral comes from the Latin cathedra that means "seat."

So cathedral means "the seat of a Bishop."

Bishops of Chartres are known from the 4th century onwards.

Therefore there have been Chartres cathedrals since the 4th century.

The present one, then, is only the last of a sequence of, certainly, five... very early buildings existed about which we know nothing.

All I'll say now in this short introduction is that during the first millennium there have been three cathedrals that are documented.

It was for the dedication ceremony of the third cathedral that Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald, brought to Chartres its famous relic.

Nearly all early churches were built around a sacred relic.

The Chartres relic is still there.

You can see it when you come-- I'll show it to you-- the Sancta Camisia.

Some of you will smile and be a bit skeptical, but we're not dealing with how we feel today.

We're skeptical about such things, but I'm helping you to understand the role of relics in the medieval church.

That is, that this piece of cloth-- it is now in a glass vacuum-- was supposed to have been Mary's clothing when she gave birth to Jesus Christ.

You can imagine that as devotion to Mary grew in the Western church, this relic, supposed to have been worn by Mary, made this cathedral into one of the most famous, most important, most prestigious of all pilgrim churches.

If you really did believe that saints helped you upstairs... and you would in the 12th and 13th centuries.

You wouldn't question these things...

If you did, you'd keep it quiet!

Mary was the most powerful saint.

Then you, like everybody else, would want to go to that place where Mary the most powerful saint helps humanity best of all.

Don't forget that across medieval Europe, you'd constantly see in your churches Mary sitting on her Son's right hand.

So everybody knew that the most powerful saint-- I'm laboring the point, it's important-- would intercede for humanity most favorably at Chartres.

So the cathedral I'm showing you this evening is, or was, known as the Palace of the Virgin.

It mustn't surprise you, then, that there's considerable emphasis at Chartres upon Mary, firstly because of the time when it was built, when there was this strong devotion to Mary in the whole of Western Europe-- there's only one church, remember-- and especially because of the relic.

Then, in 1020, a brilliant scholar came to Chartres-- his name was Fulbert-- and established Chartres to be one of the most outstanding centers of learning in Western Europe before the coming of universities.

No universities in the modern sense just yet, so the Chartres Cathedral School would be the equivalent today of, let's say, your Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, Yale...other places.

I don't want to upset anybody, but you know what I mean.

That's why I said earlier, then, that this is the library for every man, and some aspects will reflect the scholastic, um... aspects that this was a great center of learning.

Rushing on, because our time is limited... so much I'd like to tell you.

But 1006, this great scholar Fulbert, who founded the school, became Bishop of Chartres and was renowned throughout his day as the Venerable Socrates of the Chartres Academy.

In 1020, he commissioned the construction of the fourth cathedral-- this is number five-- which collapsed in a fire in 1194.

It was after this fire-- which must have been terrible because it's mentioned in chronicles all over Europe-- which was the reason for the construction of the present building.

The sacred relic was considered far more important than the cathedral.

Then two priests emerged from the smoldering ruins on the third day, a chronicle tells us, the 13th of June, 1194.

The people were told by the clergy that this was a miraculous sign from Mary that she desired a more praiseworthy church, and she got it... you're looking at it.

Funds came pouring in from England, Spain, from kings, dukes, counts, clergy.

The 12th century had seen the decline of feudalism.

People were leaving land, coming to towns.

Chartres was no exception.

It was growing, becoming a trading center.

A new middle class was emerging.

Richard in England was allowing the people of London to elect their first lord mayor.

Local government was beginning.

With the help that poured in, financially, physically, they could bring professionals to the building site.

You couldn't carry things around.

The stone, yes, you would bring from the quarry, but the craftsman would have to come to the site.

We know from chronicles and recent research into the fabric, the present building you're looking at now on screen was almost, not quite, but almost finished by 1220.

So 1194 to 1220...that means that this great cathedral was built in only 25 years.

That's much quicker than some places here... Washington Cathedral, the national one.

I was in New York recently looking at John the Divine.

That's still unfinished, not doing too well.

That speed at Chartres, which is absolutely fantastic-- you can, from the picture, understand its dimensions.

You're looking at a 13th-century high rise.

We're amazed, and we're accustomed in our modern cities to seeing huge buildings.

Imagine the effect this had on the people of the 12th and 13th centuries, or at least the 13th century, when the present building was completed.

The speed explains the unity of the building, except for that west facade, because they kept the old, 12th-century parts, and then they added a 16th-century steeple.

I'll just mention that in passing.

So the west facade excepted, behind that a great unity of architecture and then this fantastic text... an iconographic text.

Icon means "picture," as you know, so a picture book that takes us from the beginning of the world to the end... an extraordinary narrative from beginning to the end.

It's a long story, from the fall of Adam and Eve, paradise lost, to the end of time, the last judgment, paradise awaiting those who had been judged worthy... of course, not everybody.

It's a Christian church, so Christological time, with Christ at the beginning, the middle, and the end.

I've chosen to read the middle of the book because it's just such a short program.

To whet your appetites, I'd much rather show you I've talked about this before beginning to show you just one thing in detail.

It's like music, again.

If you went to your local symphony orchestra, you wouldn't like them to play little tunes from everything but to play one or two works in depth.

That's what we're going to do.

We're going to read just one window.

This text takes us from beginning to end, and we're going to read the middle, the narrative of how God was made man.

We're looking down the whole length of Chartres Cathedral at the three windows of the west facade that survived the fire of 1194, date to about 1150, and we're going to read the central window.

We can only see part of it on the screen, but enough that you'll notice the design of alternating red squares and blue circles.

The squares and circles make up a cross design.

We're going to read the narrative of the incarnation and interrelate the Old and New Testaments.

It's an idea throughout the whole building... the Old Testament prepares for the New, the New is built upon the Old.

St. Augustine wrote, "The Old Testament is the New Testament veiled.

The New Testament is the Old Testament unveiled."

We're going to read one chapter, perhaps one of the most important, the fulfillment of the prophecies, that God was made man in Jesus Christ.

All right, let's read.

We start at the base and read from left to right.

I should add that these particular slides were taken in the laboratories in 1975, whilst this window was being cleaned.

The annunciation to Mary... a bit of debate... for those who just switched on, about 1150.

Some of the finest glass from medieval Europe.

The angel Gabriel is announcing, raised ankle, two raised fingers, herald scepter-- like Mercury, Hermes, a long tradition of announcers-- to Mary that she would be the Mother of God.

She's let from her seat behind her with a raised hand, parted thumb.

There's a whole language of hands.

All artists know this.

You can express human emotions-- you don't need to write underneath what it is-- with hands and with eyes.

Mary said, "But I'm a virgin," meaning that, in her mind, she could not be with child.

So Gabriel said, "Your cousin Elizabeth is an old woman, and she conceived six months ago."

So the next scene, Mary visited Elizabeth... look at her raised hand, again showing her surprise when she saw Elizabeth in red, with parted hands, greeting her, six months with child.

As you all know, Elizabeth was the mother of John the Baptist, and we feast John's Day on Midsummer's Day and Christ's Day, Midwinter's Day, Christmas Day, the winter solstice.

Jesus is the light of the world, John is the precursor, so after John's day the light decreases , and after Christ's day it increases.

These things should be treated symbolically.

The Nativity... note that, even at birth, the Christ child is placed upon an altar because He is predestined to be sacrificed.

The prophets have foretold that too.

You've noticed the ox and ass?

Traditional.

If you build a crib at home at Christmastime, people automatically put the ox and ass there.

You ask them why, and they usually don't know.

That's because Isaiah foretold, "The ox will know its Master, and the ass will know its Master's crib."

The annunciation to the shepherds... the early Christians gave symbolic interpretations to both Old and New Testaments, and the shepherds represent the local people, the Jews, so that, then, the Magi, we call them, represent the non-Jews coming from other lands.

In fact, it's foretold by... one of the... Psalms, I beg pardon.

In Psalm 72, the kings of Tarshish, Sheba, Seba, and the islands-- that's four of them.

The islands would be the Mediterranean, so it would be the North.

It implies the four cardinal points.

So the Magi represent the representatives of other peoples, non-Jews, the gentiles coming.

And a later idea, they represent the three continents.

Sometimes one of them is shown Black-- not here, but later-- to represent Africa.

So the coming of the Magi and Epiphany means a demonstration of Christ's divinity to all peoples.

They visit Herod... behind him, on the left there, they asked, "Where is he, this new king of the Jews?"

Behind Herod, the Pharisee-- he has that Phrygian hat-- and a scribe arguing.

Look at the hands on each other's shoulders, and they point to a text, Micah 5:2, that foretold He should be born in Bethlehem, the city of the David.

The Magi follow a star, upper right corner... the first Magi, if you notice, is already genuflecting, kneeling.

They've come to adore the Christ... seated on His mother's knee.

We're more accustomed through Renaissance paintings to the homely manger.

This is much more intellectualized.

remember this was a famous school a center of learning.

It's more theologified The child sits upon his mother's knee as though upon a throne.

One of Mary's titles is Throne of Solomon.

Solomon, in the Old Testament, prefigures Christ in his wisdom.

Christ, is wisdom incarnate, sits upon His mother's knee as though upon a throne.

She is the Throne of Solomon.

The Magi depart... the middle one shows his empty hand.

The crossed legs indicate a forward progression.

They are leaving, and their gifts are symbolic... gold, to show that the child is a king, myrrh is used to embalm, and incense is God.

So it's triple nature... man, king, God.

Mary was a Jewess, so she had to conform with the Jewish Law, do two things... go through a Jewish ritual called purification after childbirth, on the 40th day for boys and-- the Jewish law said this, not me, ladies-- 80 days for girls because girls are twice as impure as boys.

That won't get us into trouble ...it's in the scriptures and...if it were a first boy she had to, as in this scene, present her child at the temple and sacrifice two turtledoves.

The man on the left, Simeon, rushed forward, saying, "He is the Christ and will enlighten the Gentiles."

So behind them are three women.

Can you see the first is bringing turtledoves for the Jewish ceremony, another two, candles, because Christians also feast Mary's purification on the 40th day after childbirth, so the second of February, which involves a procession of candles.

So the second of February, which many Christians feast, involves the purification of Mary, a Jewish ceremony; the presentation of her child to all peoples, an Epiphany; and the carrying of the candles, which some people call Candlemas, incidentally, the second of February, to enlighten the gentiles.

Return to the Magi.

Doesn't this remind you of the medieval wheel of fortune, the semicircular movement?

It's not that, though.

It's an angel warning the Magi not to return to Herod because he's sending out his soldiers.

The one on the left is snarling, and he's drawn a sword to murder the innocents.

In this next scene, a bristling composition... Look at that sword on the right, through the neck of a child, and the mother in the bottom left corner is mourning her dead infant The Holy family escapes to Egypt, traditional iconography Mary sits side saddle with the child upon her knee Joseph leads with backpack over his shoulder It's in scripture because Christ child is an art.

Jesus commanded the palm tree would you can see behind the ass' head to give of it's fruit.

and then Mary plucks, she's holding from her hand the branch of the palm tree and Jesus said to the palm tree I shall take one of your branches into the kingdom of my father the heavenly Jerusalem, Shalom...Peace, the heavenly Jeursalem and it's linked to Psalm Sunday when Jesus enters the earthly Salem, Jerusalem (silence) or...almost the same panel from back to front Palm trees are not the same panel in fact Joseph looks straight ahead and Jesus has a raised hand because they are arriving at a city in Egypt called Cetinum the detail is absolutely fantastic with the ramparts and city walls and palpits and... At Cetinum, Jesus performed a miracle, which is not in the scriptures.

He's displayed as the Egyptian idols, as one of them falling The people of the 12th century, Egypt is the land of the false gods, so this is not to be interpreted literally but symbolically If Jesus is the true God, then he has the power to destroy the false gods, this is a theophany.

This is a theophanic window Theophany means demonstrating the divine nature of Jesus.

Atop of the window, the last scene naturally, Mary in a Mangola, meaning the eternal scheme, ...of the times, with two scepters between the heaven and the earth The angel paying homage to her throne She's the queen of the angels like the city in California, Los Angeles.

The proper name is City of our Lady, the queen of angels.

That's one of her titles.

And in the corners beside Mary Poore> We're going to have to interrupt you.

I know you're not quite finished your presentation with your slides, but we're out of time.

Thanks for watching.

Have a good evening.

Miller> Okay.

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