None the less is this most original basilica magnificently and romantically beautiful. Upon entering the church for the first time one feels the gripping sensation of beholding a thing audacious and gigantic. And yet the impression conveyed is not that of overweening pride. There is reverence here. Bishop Durandus tells us that the piers of a church are the bishops and doctors who sustain the temple of God by their doctrines, that the length of a church representeth fortitude which patiently endureth till it attain heaven; its breadth, charity; its height, courage that despiseth prosperity and adversity, hoping to see the gladness of the Lord in the land of the living. The windows are hospitality with cheerfulness, and tenderness with charity. They are Holy Scriptures which expel the wind and the rain--that is, all things hurtful--but transmit the light of the true Sun--that is, God--into the hearts of the faithful.[132] So wrote the wise old XIII-century Midi bishop for whom the whole world and everything in it were symbols.
Sound doctrine, fortitude, and warm protecting hospitality--such are qualities supremely understood of Bourges. There is awe in this church and there is magic. Of the boundless imagination of dreams are certain sunset aspects here, when from the wide western window of Jean de Berry gleams of light strike athwart these vast arches of wonderland, across these sixty big pillars of stone, and night-time hours--during the May evening services of Our Lady--when the great church as in fearsome meditation is shrouded in shadow.
[Illustration: _The Apse of Bourges (1200-1225)_]
Some four or five cathedrals have stood, in turn, on the same site which was close by the Gallo-Roman city walls. For the early Christians were despised as pariahs, and allowed to build only on the outskirts of cities, until the edict of Constantine permitted them to exercise their religion with honor. All over France churches are to be found abutting on the ancient ramparts of towns. Of the early cathedrals of Bourges only the core of the present crypt remains. From the Romanesque edifice immediately preceding the present cathedral come its XII-century side portals.
There are strong analogies between the ground-plan of St. Étienne of Bourges and that of Notre Dame of Paris, especially if one recalls that the cathedral of Paris, as first designed, possessed no transept. Probably the plans of both were made at the same time, but the work in the capital of the royal demesne started immediately in 1163; hence it retained the galleries over the side aisles--a Romanesque tradition--whereas, at Bourges the actual building began only in the last decade of the XII century, when such tribunes were passing out of vogue. Bourges thereupon undertook to modify its first design, and it tried the startling experiment of making an inner aisle whose height comprised both aisle and tribune.