The Royal Portal of Chartres Cathedral

Patronage (funding) for The Royal Portal was donated by a king of France. It has three doors, three being symbolic of the number of persons in the Christian Trinity.

The left door depicts Christ ascending. The center door depicts Christ sitting in judgment ; below him are the twelve apostles. They are arranged in three groups of four. The number three is again symbolic of the Trinity and also of the perfection of the spiritual world. The number four is symbolic of the perfection of the material world, as there are four cardinal directions, and also there were 4 elements for the ancient Greeks: Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. Multiples of four and three are also considered sacred numbers for the medievals. Twelve, the number of apostles, represents the perfection of the cosmos, as it contains four and three within it. Seven is another number which represents the perfection of the cosmos.

The right door portrays Christ seated on the knee of Mary. Around this scene are depictions of the seven liberal arts. The seven liberal arts signified knowledge, and as it is expressed in seven basic disciplines, this expression also represents the perfection of the cosmos. The seven liberal arts were clustered in groups of four and three: The Quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy) and the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic).

The Royal Portal expresses the medieval idea of the harmony of heaven and earth, and of human knowledge with the structure of the cosmos.

copyright © Dr. Deborah Vess 1998-2001, Georgia College & State University and the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. All rights reserved. Rights to chapters authored by contributing faculty members reserved to Georgia College & State University, to the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at GC&SU, and to the individual faculty authors.