LECTURE

THE ICONOGRAPHY AND SYMBOLISM OF CHARTRES CATHEDRAL

Brian Masters, Surrey University, on 3 February 1999

Brian Masters is Director of the London Waldorf Teacher Training Seminar and a Senior Research Fellow at Roehampton Institute of Surrey University. One of his interests is the development of human consciousness as evidenced in art and music.

Mr. Masters said: "Chartres Cathedral has been referred to as one of the most remarkable places on earth. How it has survived the ravages of war and iconoclasm for 700 years is little short of a miracle. It has come down as a breath-taking record of Medieval thought as embodied in art - one of the outstanding achievements of our ancestors of more than twenty generations ago, unrepeatable, indeed unimaginable in our present day climate. Its iconography and symbolism shows the extraordinary contribution that the neo-Platonic school at Chartres made to human consciousness when Western civilisation was cradled in medieval Europe, and it reveals much about the civilisation of that time".

This was a highly illustrated talk with slides showing in detail the sculpture and the magnificent stained glass windows of the cathedral. The cathedral was built by several companies of masons in succession, each leaving their marks in the stone, assisted by workers available in the vicinity. One of its remarkable features is a very visible change, from a simpler to a more flamboyant style, leading to some speculation about underlying changes in religious perspective occurring during the period of building.

Betty Suchar