In the vaulting of this doorway are the signs of the months and the signs of the Zodiac which roughly correspond with them. But since there was room for only ten of the latter, the remaining two were inserted in the vaulting of the right bay, where they are really out of place. Here they suggest the meaning that Christ is of all time, ‘the same yesterday, and to-day and for ever.’
The Cathedral can boast five such almanacs, which it may be found interesting to compare--three in the porches, one in a window of the south aisle of the choir, and one (sixteenth century) on the clock of the choir screen.
Mediæval masons followed the example of Pagan antiquity, and like the architects of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India and Mexico, loved to trace upon their holy buildings the allegories of Time, whether in the form of the personification of the twelve months, of the four seasons, or the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The months are symbolised with extraordinary cleverness of detail, in a manner at once naïve and effective, by the recreations and employments to which they lend themselves.
The zodiacal signs are given in the verses of Ausonius:--
‘Sunt Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libraque, Scorpius, Arcitenens, Caper, Amphora, Pisces.’
And as to the months, they, in the quatrain attributed to the venerable Bede, describe themselves as follows:--
‘Poto--ligna cremo--de vite superflua demo; Do gramen gratum--mihi flos servit--mihi pratum: Fenum declino--messes meto--vina propino; Semen humi jacto--pasco sues,--immolo porcos.’[63]
The studious visitor may compare the treatment of them in the windows and porch at Chartres with that which they receive at Venice, Reims, Verona, Sens, Amiens, Bruges and the English churches.
In the tympanum of the right-hand doorway the Virgin (1150) sits, crowned and throned, a sceptre in her hand, sharing the triumph of her Son. The Holy Child is in the act of blessing the world, and on either side are two archangels, censing. Beneath are the chief scenes of the life of Mary--the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, appearance of the Angels to the Shepherds and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple; and above, in the vaulting which forms the frame of this picture, are, in one row, six archangels carrying incense in honour of Mary, and, in the other, the seven Liberal Arts, each of them symbolised by two statuettes, the one representing the inventor or paragon, the other the allegory of the art. Here, then, as at Laon, Sens, Auxerre and many other places, we have the carved expression of the opinion of Albertus Magnus, that in Music (Pythagoras), Dialectic (Aristotle), Rhetoric (Cicero), Geometry (Euclid), Arithmetic (Nichomachus), Astronomy (Ptolemy), and Grammar (Priscian), in all the knowledge of the Middle Ages, in fact, the Virgin Mary was well skilled.