The windows of the Chartres cathedral. Relics and images

Between the early middle ages and the reconstruction of Notre Dame at Chartres in the early thirteenth century, the cathedral's treasury was considerably enriched, especially by relics brought back from the fourth crusade. Given the agreement among the documents (cartulary, inventories, descriptions) concerning the contents of the treasury between the Romanesque period and the eighteenth century, it is possible to identify the relics present at Chartres at the time its decoration was being planned and carried out. Apart from the tunic of the Virgin, presented to the cathedral by Charles the Bald in 876, and the fragment of the skull of Saint Anne sent from Constantinople by Louis, count of Blois-Chartres, the cathedral owned an immense treasure of relics before 1215. This study shows that a large number of the iconographic themes in the windows - around 64% - can be related to the relics. The comparison of the cathedrals two ordinaries, dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and an analysis of the original position of several altars reinforce our knowledge of the place the relics occupied in the liturgy of the cathedral. Among their many functions, the windows made known which relics were in the treasury, relics that for the most part could not be continuously displayed for the veneration of the faithful, and also affirmed that place of Notre-Dame as the "mother church" of the diocese.