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Page 1 of 12 “Lighting up the Soul”
The Affective Power of Stained Glass
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CHAPTERS
Prologue - the Heraldic & Religious Fleur-de-Lys: an Analogy; The Fleur-de-Lys as Icon - PAGE 1
One - The Fleur-de-Lys: Heraldry as a Filter of Light - PAGE 2 Two - Telling a Story: Bathing in Multi-Coloured Light - PAGE 3 Three - Tradition in a New Shell; New Light from Older Beginnings: Revolution by Transformation - PAGE 4 Four - A Lost Gem? - PAGE 5 Five - A Jewel Box: Slightly Dashed Hopes, or a Loss of Vision & Purpose? - PAGE 6 Six - John Piper: Achieved Hopes - Just a True Sense of Vision & Purpose? - PAGE 7 Seven - Reims Cathedral: Harmony, Moderation & Variety - PAGE 8 Eight - Hidden Illumination from Heaven: Marvels Letting in Light - PAGE 9 Nine - Conclusion? What we Mean by “Enlightenment” - PAGE 10 Surprise? - an Answer to a Question? - PAGE 11 Footnote - PAGE 12 NOTE THAT MOST IMAGES USED ARE WITHIN THE TEXT, BUT SOME ARE FOUND BY DIRECTIONS TO LINK YOU TO THE 'GALLERY' OF THIS WEBSITE  North Rose, Chartres Cathedral, c. 1230 - from Painton Cowen, 'The Rose Window: Splendour & Symbol' (Thames & Hudson) Prologue - the Heraldic & Religious Fleur-de-Lys: an Analogy
The Fleur-de-Lys as Icon
My possible obsession with the fleur-de-lys as a heraldic device or charge certainly relates partly to its association with France (our main holiday-location) and its importance & proliferation there as a royal, religious & cultural emblem. Whatever the versions of the story about how the Kings of “France” came to “receive” the fleur-de-lys, they were clearly jealously possessive of it (as were the contemporaneous English royals who also claimed it for their own, along with the territory it represented). The emblem of the fleur-de-lys thus acquired a mystique of its own, boosted by its wider religious, devotional, spiritual, emotional & cultural resonances, from Christian Trinity back to pre-Classical fertility, from similarities with other religious symbols or shapes down to the simplicity of natural forms - in short, a fleur-de-lys, a prized possession for many an armiger, echoed for holder and beholder a multitude of associations, conscious and sub-conscious, even in the human cultural memory or inheritance from ancient to Christian times. Byzantine Christianity, such as the marvellous Royal Academy “Byzantium” exhibition (2008-9) sampled, illustrates just how prolific, over more than a millennium, was the use of fleurs-de-lys or related natural-form shapes, prolific beyond overt symbolism, religious establishmentarianism, or family identification. My feeling (perhaps something stronger, approaching conviction) is that the fleur-de-lys’s ability to create emotions & sub-conscious reactions is comparable to the way in which the overall effect of stained glass, especially but not just in churches, works often, perhaps mostly, on the affective side of the psyche rather than the coolly intellectual or cognitive. The fleur-de-lys, my thesis here maintains, is an emblem which goes beyond its power for physical identification into the realms of sub-conscious connection & effect.
Writers like Serge Martin, to whose “Histoire Mythique de la Fleur-de-Lys” (Paris 2002) I am much indebted, have produced convincing pieces of research reflecting how Western Christianity & its associated religious & secular hierarchies have developed the symbol from earlier origins (the acanthus, lotus or bulrush, as well as the more recognisable lily & iris flowers …):
 01 Florentine Fleur  02 Heraldic Dove  03 Eagle Displayed  04 Pelican in her Piety
The fleur-de-lys shape here (01) & other variants echo the images (02-04) that follow: the heraldic dove image (and the “real” symbol of peace, grace & salvation it represents) has clear religious associations, but the fleur-de-lys is also reflected in the more powerful emblem of the eagle, which Napoleon later used with even more fleur-de-lys-like downward-pointing wing-tips, thereby recalling the royal emblem as well as another strongly religious heraldic charge, the pelican-in-her-piety, an image of devotion to care.
 05 Paganel Arms, Cinquefoil  06 Six-Pointed Molet
More “static” but still “natural” symbols, the trefoil, the quatrefoil & (05) the cinquefoil, take a similar fleur-de-lys shape, as also echoed in the heraldic stars, the 5- & (06) 6-pointed molets, linking the lys with ideas of growth & beauty, but also, in the case of the molets, evoking the power of, not just the Bethlehem star, but also a chivalric, even warlike, spur-rowel.
 07 Heraldic Anchor Reversed
Following this theme, other stark, more power-intended heraldic images echo the shape of the fleur-de-lys, such as the anchor (07), symbol of strong hope (cf the dove); and the mill-rind. The last of these three shapes is the origin of the heraldic cross-Moline (the ‘millstone cross-iron’, one could call it) and is hence the eponymous, “energetic” emblem for (08) the Molyneux family:
 08 Cross-Moline The most common (& probably most important) echoed symbol from the point of view of my current argument is, of course, the cross, in its various forms:  09 Nevill Arms, Notts  10 City of Lincoln Badge
Here we have two out of many examples: the saltire (or St Andrew’s cross), in this case part of the coat of arms of a branch of the famous (09) Nevills ; & the very modern shield of (10) the City of Lincoln, a plain cross relevantly & beautifully surmounted by the fleur-de-lys associated with the Virgin & St Hugh.
A simple set of diagrams (11-13) here shows how the fleur-de-lys is so much associated with the cross, echoing & signalling the essential Christian symbol, and perhaps explains how the fleur-de-lys can be categorised as a devotional, sometimes subliminal but very emotional image:
 11 Fleur-de-Lys Outline  12 Montfort, Cross-Moline  13 Lys aligned to Cross
Napoleon, however much he seems to have acted unwittingly in his adoption of the lys-like eagle symbol, instead may well have shown characteristic caution & canniness in his efforts to appear to disassociate himself from the line of Capetian, Valois, & Bourbon French royalty but also to retain enough similarity of image to satisfy folk-culture in their hearts & minds. This pragmatism is evident too in his adoption of the bee-symbol (industry + devotion-to-duty + “sting”), which, as my overlay of (14) a bee-brooch by (15) the reversed fleur-de-lys shape below may illustrate:
 14 Bee Brooch  15 Lys aligned to Bee Brooch
There are images of Napoleon on which the array of bees on his emperor’s cloak at first seems exactly like the royal robes, bedecked with fleurs-de-lys, of his Bourbon predecessors, as in a statue in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille (click link for Gallery image ).
At the other end of the historical spectrum, one myth (among several) suggests how the French kings came to have the fleur-de-lys as their emblem, and how it therefore became a key part of Gallic psychology & emotion; it arose from the idea of the metamorphosis of the toad, of all things, into the fleur-de-lys, as (16) the diagram below, showing 4 stages of this metamorphosis, illustrates: 16 Toads to Lys
In other words, again the lys image subsumes, consciously or not, a symbol that it supplants.
The mythology of the fleur-de-lys has great importance in the French Royal story, as well as in the efforts for authenticity made for or by the English Kings - for example, in the organisation of the young Henry VI’s coronation rituals - to claim it as part of what they regarded as their right to the land of France after the 14th-15th Century campaigns of Edward III & Henry V in particular). So powerful indeed was the French feeling about the claim & the emblem that they continued & created this mythology of authentication & legitimacy despite the fact that it didn’t seem to be bringing them much luck in battles like the disaster of Creçy, Poitiers & Agincourt.
The mythology is explored beautifully by William M. Hinkle in ‘The Fleur de Lis of the Kings of France: 1285- 1488’, but we can, in the context of the psychological & emotional impact of repeated symbolism, concentrate on one element of his exploration. One version of this metamorphosis of the toad derives from a myth that Clovis, 4th-5th Century AD King of the Franks, converted by or through his wife to conventional Western Christianity, was somehow “given” the fleur-de-lys by God (there are various versions of the legend as to how, perhaps put about by the proselytising cult of Roi-St-Louis IX , continuing via his Valois descendants). The toad was projected as possibly a pagan symbol of magical, ominous, even at times evil, power which had purportedly been the emblem of Clovis. An imaginative reproduction, from the 14th Century, may just reveal to you the toads metamorphosing, on shields & flags, into fleurs-de-lys, neatly, if imaginatively, bookending, from toads to Napoleon’s bees, the era of Christian rule in the development of France towards the more secular modern “Hexagone”, the culmination of Capetian/Valois/Bourbon/Napoleonic endeavours (click here for “Gallery” Image) .
It would be foolishly unscholarly to accept uncritically such a version of the provenance of the fleur-de-lys as the French royal symbol & talisman. Both chronology & fact in the political and religious history of the period of Clovis’s reign & achievements (& for a century after) are flavoured by their dependence on sources handed down, by arguably dubious oral & written tradition, to 14th-15th Century Valois mythologisers. The resultant highly-coloured epic regarded the fleur-de-lys as having divine properties, very handy for dynasties purporting to descend from Clovis & claiming divine rights of kingship. The mythology & associated confusion over Clovis’s “faith”, “conversion” & “baptism” reflect religious & political aspirations rather than history. This supports my perspective in this monograph, that the fleur-de-lys has associations and a power that go beyond its actual history or origins into the area of the emotional, the devotional and the subconscious. The symbol or emblem goes beyond its strength as an intellectual political or religious statement or reminder, & attains a less-easily analysable forcefulness.
The fleur-de-lys, then, is highly evocative, so much so that it proliferates, like many of the shapes it echoes, in decorative schemes & motifs. In the following chapters of this article, I shall look at how the effect of light through glass may parallel this assimilation of a “natural”-cum-religious-cum-political shape into the less conscious & more affective human psychology. If something definitive could be offered by this Prologue, it is my view that it’s not necessarily what a phenomenon cognitively means that’s always important; it is the sub-conscious, often emotional, effect which phenomena have that sometimes transcends conscious thought and “lights the soul”, and serves, in its very form and proliferation, rather than in its cognitive symbolism or specific attachment to human groups, to inspire in a way in which more mundane loyalties might not. The fleur-de-lys, therefore, can often act as a trigger to something deeper in the psyche, drawing on ancestral memory rather than simple “history”.
 17 Both Sides of Byzantine Closure Panel, Thebes? 9th C (Royal Academy, “Byzantium” exhibition, 2008-9)
In Early Christian basilicas such panels (17) formed the ends of the screen of the holy bema (parapet of the gallery in which clergy take their places for sermons & readings) - this example contains a proliferation of fleurs-de-lys shapes, shapes echoing them, and other natural objects the shapes reflected, all building up a totality for devotion, all working, I would say, subliminally, on the affective side of the psychology.
In short, the fleur-de-lys carries a baggage of associations and echoes that transcend any cognitive affiliations one might attribute to it: nature, growth, peace, beauty, grace, hope, duty, talismanism, sacrifice, martyrdom, salvation, strength, power, energy, industry, mystique …. The human affiliations of such a heraldic image usually by now draw on potent psychological stores.
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