Of the other statues that complete the company of Christ--martyrs, prophets and patron saints of donors in the jambs of the doorways, or between the other figures--I shall only call attention to the merchant on the right pier of the _Porte Royale_, who is being robbed by the earliest cut-purse in mediæval sculpture, and to the name Rogerus, cut above the broken head of an adjacent butcher. Was this the architect Roger who built the _Tour-Grise_ at Dreux, and who was then chosen by S. Ives to build this western porch?
M. Bulteau suggests the question. But it cannot be answered.
Over the three doorways two pilasters with simple mouldings run up on either side of the central window as far as the rose, terminating in symbolic carvings--the northern one in the head of an ox, representative of sacrifice, symbolising here, it is said, the abolition of Judaism, with its sacrifices and cult; the southern one in that of a lion holding a man’s head, which is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and here symbolises Christ triumphant in the hearts of men.
The two towers, the old spire, and the western porch described, together with the west front up to the rose-window, including, therefore, the three enormous windows (34 feet by 13 feet, and 28 feet by 9 feet), and their unrivalled treasure of twelfth-century glass, which, through repeated dangers, has been preserved to us, are all that remain of the Church of Fulbert, rebuilt by S. Ives.
For in 1194, when Regnault de Mouçon was bishop, and when they were about to begin the spire of the Clocher Neuf, the Cathedral was destroyed by fire. _Mirabili et miserabili incendio devastata_, says a manuscript of the year 1210, now in the Vatican, and Jehan le Marchand in his _Book of Miracles_ writes of this year:--
‘A Chartres prist en la cité Un feu qui ne fu pas a geus, Car trop fu grant et domageus ... Moult fu grant douleur dou veoir Telle iglise ardoir et cheoir.’
It is worth while to quote this and other accounts because the patriotic desire to see in the present building the Cathedral of Fulbert has led to some unpardonable garbling of evidence, with a view to concealing the fact of this fire.
Guillaume-le-Breton, who died in 1226, records in his Latin poem, ‘The Philippide,’ written in honour of King Philippe-Auguste, that the church was burnt at this time. ‘It was so ordered,’ he infers, ‘in order that the present church might be built and shine in its unequalled splendour.[66] For the former one was not yet worthy to be called the “mestre maison de Marie.” Completely rebuilt of hewn stone, and covered throughout its whole length by a roof as it had been by the shell of a tortoise, it now need have nothing to fear from fire till the day of judgment. And from that fire springeth the salvation of the many by whose efforts the Cathedral was rebuilt.’