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chapel in Paris, in France
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The Sainte-Chapelle (French: [sɛ̃t ʃapɛl]; English: Holy Chapel) is a royal chapel located on the Île de la Cité in the middle of the River Seine in Paris. It was part of the medieval Palais de la Cité, the main residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century. Built between 1238 and 1248, the chapel was commissioned by King Louis IX of France to house his collection of relics of the Passion, including one of the most important relics in medieval Christendom: the Crown of Thorns. During the French Revolution, the relics were removed from the Sainte-Chapelle, later to be given to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, where they continue to be displayed.
Today, the Sainte-Chapelle is considered among the highest achievements representing the Rayonnant period of Gothic architecture. Along with the neighbouring Conciergerie, it is also one of the only surviving buildings from the Capetian royal palace (now part of the judicial complex known as the Palais de Justice). Despite being damaged by the Revolution and restored during the 19th century, the upper chapel's windows are among the most extensive collections of original 13th-century stained glass anywhere. The Sainte-Chapelle is currently operated as a museum by the Centre des monuments nationaux, attracting visitors from around the world.
More than a place of worship, the Sainte-Chapelle was motivated by the political and cultural ambitions of King Louis IX. Housing the Crown of Thorns and other relics in the royal chapel would bring enormous prestige to Louis; as Pope Innocent IV would proclaim, it symbolised that Christ himself had crowned the French king. Furthermore, with the imperial throne at Constantinople occupied by a mere Count of Flanders and the Holy Roman Empire in disarray, Louis saw an opportunity to position himself as the central monarch of western Christendom through artistic patronage. The Sainte-Chapelle was thus designed to fit into a long tradition of imperial palace chapels: just as the Emperor in Constantinople could pass privately from his palace into the Hagia Sophia, so too would Louis have direct access from his palace to his royal chapel; and the recalling of precedents such as Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel in Aachen (which, like the Sainte-Chapelle, featured a two-level hierarchy) would allow Louis to present himself as a worthy successor to the first Holy Roman Emperor.
By 1238, Louis IX had already built an earlier royal chapel at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye whose design seemed to directly prefigure that of the Sainte-Chapelle itself. It had only one level, but the same plan and architectural concepts would be adopted at a much larger scale to build the Holy Chapel in Paris.
The Sainte-Chapelle in the courtyard of the Palais de la Cité was built to house Louis IX's collection of relics of Christ, which included the Crown of Thorns, a fragment of the True Cross, the Image of Edessa, and some thirty other items. Louis purchased the relics from Baldwin II, the Latin emperor at Constantinople, for the sum of 135,000 livres. This money was paid to the Venetians to whom the relics had been pawned.
The relics arrived in Paris in August 1239, carried from Venice by two Dominican friars. Upon arrival, King Louis hosted a week-long celebratory reception for the relics. For the final stage of their journey they were carried by Louis IX himself, barefoot and dressed as a penitent, a scene depicted in the Relics of the Passion window on the south side of the chapel. The relics were stored in a large and elaborate silver chest, the Grand-Chasse, on which Louis spent a further 100,000 livres.
The entire chapel, by contrast, cost 40,000 livres to build and glaze. It was designed with two levels, equal in area, serving entirely different purposes. The upper level, where the sacred relics were to be kept, was reserved exclusively for the royal family and their guests. The lower level was for the courtiers, servants, and soldiers of the palace. The whole structure was very large for a chapel: at 36 meters (118 ft) long, 17 meters (56 ft) wide, and 42.5 meters (139 ft) high, it was more comparable to some of France's great Gothic cathedrals.
Until the construction was completed in 1248, the relics were housed in the chapels of the Château de Vincennes and the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In 1246, fragments of the True Cross and the Holy Lance were added to Louis' collection, along with other relics. The Sainte-Chapelle was consecrated on 26 April 1248 and the relics were moved to their new home with great ceremony. Shortly afterward, the King departed on the Seventh Crusade, in which he was captured and later ransomed and released.
The Parisian scholastic Jean de Jandun praised the building as one of Paris' most beautiful structures in his "Tractatus de laudibus Parisius" (1323), citing:
that most beautiful of chapels, the chapel of the king, most decently situated within the walls of the king's house, enjoys a complete and indissoluble structure of the most solid stone. The most excellent colors of the pictures, the precious gilding of the images, the beautiful transparence of the ruddy windows on all sides, the most beautiful cloths of the altars, the wondrous merits of the sanctuary, the figures of the reliquaries externally adorned with dazzling gems, bestow such a hyperbolic beauty on that house of prayer, that, in going into it below, one understandably believes oneself, as if rapt to heaven, to enter one of the best chambers of Paradise.
O how salutary prayers to the all-powerful God pour out in these oratories, when the internal and spiritual purities of those praying correspond proportionally with the external and physical elegance of the oratory!
O how peacefully to the most holy God the praises are sung in these tabernacles, when the hearts of those singers are by the pleasing pictures of the tabernacle analogically beautified with the virtues!
O how acceptable to the most glorious God appear the offerings on these altars, when the life of those sacrificing shines in correspondence with the gilded light of the altars!
The chapel and its site underwent considerable changes over the centuries, during which sections were added, replaced, damaged, or lost completely due to shifting priorities and weather events. In the 14th century, Louis X of France had a monumental enclosed stairway added, leading from the courtyard on the south side to the upper level of the chapel. It lasted many years, being damaged by fire in 1630 and rebuilt, but was ultimately demolised. The original rose window of the west facade was replaced around the end of the 15th century by a new one in the Flamboyant style of the time, which can still be seen today. While the chapel survived the palace fires of 1630 and 1776, substantial damage was sustained, especially to the furniture and the roof. The roof's timber-and-lead spire (or flèche) was destroyed and replaced several times. A flood in the winter of 1689–1690 also did major damage to the painted walls of the lower chapel, causing the ground floor to be raised and its original stained glass removed; however, it would later receive new glass during the lower chapel's restoration in the 19th century. The 13th-century Trésor des Chartes (Treasury of Charters) which had been built on the north side of the chapel shortly after its completion, and which contained the treasury, vestry, sacristy, and guardian's residence, was finally demolished in 1783 to make way for the new Palace of Justice. There also used to be a small walled cemetery behind the chapel where people who worked at the Sainte-Chapelle choir were buried, including the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier, but this too has disappeared.
The Sainte-Chapelle, as both a symbol of religion and royalty, was a prime target for vandalism during the French Revolution. The chapel was turned into a storehouse for grain, and the sculpture and royal emblems on the exterior were smashed. The spire was pulled down, and some of the stained glass was broken or dispersed (despite this, nearly two-thirds of the original stained glass survived). The sacred relics were dispersed, although the Crown of Thorns and some others survived, now kept as the Relics of Sainte-Chapelle in the treasury of Notre-Dame de Paris. Various reliquaries, including the grande châsse, were melted down for their precious metal.
Between 1803 and 1837, the upper chapel was turned into a depository for the archives of the Palace of Justice next door. The lower two meters (6 ft 7 in) of stained glass was removed to facilitate working light. Some of the glass was used to replace broken glass in other windows, and other panes were put on the market. Beginning in 1835, scholars, archeologists and writers demanded that the church be preserved and restored to its medieval state. In 1840, under King Louis-Philippe, a long campaign of restoration began. It was first conducted by Félix Duban, then by Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Émile Boeswillwald, with the young Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as an assistant. The work continued for twenty-eight years, and served as a training ground for a generation of archeologists and restorers. It was faithful to the original drawings and descriptions of the chapel that survived.
The restoration of the stained glass was a parallel project, which lasted from 1846 until 1855, with the goal of returning the chapel to its original appearance. It was carried out by the glass craftsmen Antoine Lusson and Maréchal de Metz and the designer Louis Steinheil. About one third of the glass, added in later years, was removed and replaced with medieval glass from other sources, or with new glass made in the original Gothic style. Eighteen of the original panels are found today in the Musée de Cluny in Paris.
The stained glass was removed and placed into safe storage during World War II. In 1945 a layer of external varnish had been applied to protect the glass from the dust and scratches of wartime bombing. This had gradually darkened, making the already fading images even harder to see. In 2008, a more comprehensive seven-year programme of restoration began, costing some €10 million to clean and preserve all the stained glass, clean the facade stonework and conserve and repair some of the sculptures. Half of the funding was provided by private donors, the other half coming from the Villum Foundation. Included in the restoration was an innovative thermoformed glass layer applied outside the stained-glass windows for added protection. The restoration of the flamboyant rose window on the west facade was completed in 2015 in time for the 800th anniversary of the birth of St. Louis.
The royal chapel is a prime example of the phase of Gothic architectural style called "Rayonnant", marked by its sense of weightlessness and strong vertical emphasis. It stands squarely upon a lower chapel, which served as parish church for all the inhabitants of the palace, which was the seat of government.
The contemporary visitor entering the courtyard of the Royal Palace would have been met by the sight of a grand ceremonial staircase (the Grands Degres) to their right and the north flank and eastern apse of the Sainte-Chapelle to their left. The chapel exterior shows many of the typical characteristics of Rayonnant architecture—deep buttresses surmounted by pinnacles, crocketted gables around the roof-line and vast windows subdivided by bar tracery. The internal division into upper and lower chapels is clearly marked on the outside by a string-course, the lower walls pierced by smaller windows with a distinctive spherical triangle shape. Despite its decoration, the exterior is relatively simple and austere, devoid of flying buttresses or major sculpture and giving little hint of the richness within.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Sainte-Chapelle”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.