The present stained glass in Notre Dame is modern, save for the north, south, and west rose windows, the trilogy of light usually found in big cathedrals. The roses of the transept belong to the Paris school which led in the art of glassmaking during the second half of the XIII century. So large were the spaces then to be filled that the scrupulous patience of the St. Denis craftsmen was no longer possible. Backgrounds had to be made quickly by bold, simple trellis designs, and as the most frequent background was a red trellis on a blue field, and the juxtaposition of red and blue makes violet, in too many of the windows of that period prevails a melancholy purplish hue. Originally the choir of Notre Dame boasted some glass given by Abbot Suger himself to the preceding Romanesque cathedral. In the XVIII century, those over-confident _gens de goût_, the cathedral canons, whose taste admitted only the neo-classic, substituted uncolored glass for the ancient windows. They say that when the workmen were removing Suger's priceless glass, they were dumfounded by its deep, ineffable blue.[84]
Many a treasure of Notre Dame was destroyed by the Revolution, and the church itself was put up for sale and escaped demolition by merest chance. It served as Temple of Reason, as warehouse, as fête hall. Again, during the Commune, in 1871, for the purpose of destroying it, chairs were piled high in the choir and set on fire, but brave men broke in the doors and extinguished the flames. Early in the World War, in 1914, a German airship dropped a bomb on Notre Dame which pierced the roof of the transept's northern arm.
Li cuers doit estre semblans à l'encensier, Tous clos envers la terre et overs vers le ciel. --(Old song of the Middle Ages).
On the same isle in the Seine with Notre Dame stands the Sainte-Chapelle, the reliquary of stone and jeweled glass which the saint-king had made to enshrine the Crown of Thorns redeemed from Constantinople. To-day it is a body without a soul, as the revered crown is kept in the treasury of Notre Dame, and until a memorial service during the World War, Mass had not been said in the _reliquaire de souvenirs_ for fifteen years.
The chapel, which was connected with the king's palace, was begun in 1246 and dedicated in 1248. "It was," said one who knew St. Louis well, "the king's citadel against the adverses of the world." He would rise at midnight to pass into the chapel for the singing of matins. "Into this shrine Louis IX put all the memories of his crusading ancestors, all the hues of the Orient. It was his vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem." The walls were rich with gold and color. The present polychromatic decorations of the walls are a deplorable modern experiment. Fifteen splendid windows told the Bible story in a thousand small medallions; ninety-one scenes related Genesis; one hundred and twenty-one gave Exodus. A window on the south side told the True Cross story, and the three central windows were devoted to the lives of the Saviour and John the Baptist. The western rose was added during the Flamboyant Gothic revival following the expulsion of the English invaders.