ON YOUR NEXT VISIT, DON'T FORGET TO GO UPSTAIRS

The Parisian Jewel for the Jerusalem Crown


A friend once mentioned that she had recently visited the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. When I asked her, "Isn't it the most exquisite church you've ever seen?" she looked at me with astonishment and replied that she didn't think it was particularly special. In fact, she said, she had found the chapel rather dark, its decorations garish.
"Dark! Was it raining when you were there?" I asked.
"No."
"Didn't you feel that the stained-glass windows gave the church a radiant, jewel-like quality?"
She replied that she hadn't noticed any stained glass, but that the ceiling was low and claustrophobic and covered with so many golden fleurs-de-lis that the overall effect was tasteless. I asked if she had gone upstairs to the king's chapel or only visited the ground floor chapel built for servants and lesser nobility.
"Upstairs? Is there an upstairs?"
There is, indeed, an upstairs. One not to be missed. (click below to read more)


A perfect way to end a day in Paris is to take the Line 4 Métro to the Cité stop and attend a concert in the Sainte-Chapelle. Sitting in the upper portion of this 13th-century chapel is like sitting inside a giant inverted jewel box. The walls seem entirely made of stained glass, and what stone remains is so delicately sculpted into radiating tracery or gilded that it doesn't seem like stone at all; the vaulted ceiling is studded with stars.
The Sainte-Chapelle is the most perfect embodiment of the Gothic Rayonnant style. It evolved from the High Gothic of Chartres, Reims and Amiens cathedrals, but adds far more elaborate, radiating window tracery. When completed in 1248, it overawed and delighted everyone who saw it.
Although I have said that the inside of the Sainte-Chapelle is like a jewel box, it is more like an opulent inverted reliquary (a box containing holy relics) in which stone has replaced precious metals and stained glass has replaced enamels and gems. Like a reliquary crafted by a goldsmith, every inch of the interior of the Sainte-Chapelle is covered with elaborate decoration. Even the 12 statues of the apostles, each of which stands on a platform between two windows, and all of which are carved so they look like they are the pillars holding up the Sainte-Chapelle, are similar to the embossed figures that decorate reliquaries. They were meant to symbolize the 12 apostles' role as pillars of the church.

The Sainte-Chapelle was constructed to house the most sacred of all Christian relics: the Crown of Thorns and a large segment of the True Cross. In 1237, King Louis IX's cousin, Baldwin (Baudouin) II, the emperor in Constantinople, had traveled to Paris, hoping to borrow money from Louis to solve his financial problems. Once there, Baldwin admitted to Louis that he had pawned the Crown of Thorns, pieces of the True Cross and other relics.
Whether because of piety, or because he realized that by bringing them to Paris he would bring to the French monarchy the prestige and symbolic value of the relics, Louis agreed to get the Crown of Thorns out of hock. It cost him 135,000 livres, an enormous sum at that time—more than half the annual revenues of the royal domains.
But before allowing her son to purchase any of the relics, Blanche of Castile spent two years making sure they were authentic. Not the Crown actually worn by Christ and the True Cross on which he died—such an authentication could never have been made—but the relics that had been found in Jerusalem and claimed as such by St. Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, around 280, kept at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre there until 628, then transferred to Constantinople, where they remained until Baldwin II pawned them. After Blanche was satisfied with their authenticity, the Crown of Thorns was brought to Paris. (Louis eventually acquired what was left of the True Cross and other relics, including those of more dubious authenticity: the Iron Lance, the Sponge and the Nail of the Passion.)
The Crown was actually a straw circle to which a few fragments were attached. Portions had been dispersed throughout Europe over the centuries by a succession of emperors. Charlemagne had been given pieces of the Crown and of the Cross as a reward for a successful crusade. He had brought them back to Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen), where he built a chapel, modeled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to display them. This established in the mind of a pilgrim the symbolic transfer from Jerusalem to Aachen.
With the building of Saint-Denis and Notre-Dame, and the growth of its university, Paris had become a cultural and intellectual center. Now, with the transfer of these most sacred of all Christian relics from Constantinople to Paris, a symbolic prestige was transferred both to Paris and to the French monarchy.
Blanche of Castile selected Thomas de Cormont, the architect who in 1240 had just completed work on the Rayonnant choir at Amiens, to design a chapel to house the relics. He was instructed to model it after Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel at Aachen. Because of the Palatine's resemblance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the new chapel would provide a symbolic connection with both Charlemagne and Jerusalem.
As you enter the nave of the Sainte-Chapelle, facing the apse and the angels over the altar, look at the last window on the right. It tells the story of the relics from when St. Helena found them to when Louis IX brought them to Paris. Gothic cathedral windows typically were pictorial narrations of biblical stories, but this one, unusually, depicts events that took place during Louis IX's lifetime.
Although today the relics of the Passion are gone from the Sainte-Chapelle, we can still see that the walls are filled with stained glass to allow the sun to create the illusion of dazzling jewels on stone floors, and that stone becomes delicate tracery. Every time I visit this exquisite chapel, I am overwhelmed by its ethereal, ornate beauty, created by luminous walls in which everything concrete seems to disappear and the mind is allowed to float.
—Ms. Caro is an authority on medieval and modern French history. This essay is adapted from "Paris to the Past: Traveling Through French History by Train," out this month from W.W. Norton & Co.