The Unknown Architect Of The Minster

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Title:     The Unknown Architect Of The Minster
Author: Elizabeth Rundle Charles [More Titles by Charles]

A LEGEND, NOT OF COLOGNE.

In the days when Gothic architecture was still a vital force in the world, ever spontaneously renewing itself in varied forms, nourishing itself with all the life around it, enriching itself with all the changes of the times and seasons, and giving them forth in new and ever-varying forms of growth and beauty, as living things do, the Architect of the Minster lived.

Day by day, and night by night, the beautiful thought grew in his heart and brain. For, as with the Kingdom of God itself, so more or less with all the works of the Kingdom, is it not "as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how"?

All the beauty of all he saw and heard in the City and in the fields grew into it, the wonder and the joyousness of his childhood, the aspirations of his youth, the power of his manhood,--all the joys and sorrows of his life, its sacred memories, and its more sacred hopes.

When, he went through the streets of the City near at hand, the happy faces of little children, the patient toil of working-men and women, the furrows on the faces of the aged who could toil no more, all were sacred to him, and inspiring; for all said: "You are building a home for us, a home for each, where children's voices shall soar in praise, and the toil-worn find rest in the sacred shadow, and the aged a foretaste of the rest to which they are drawing near. A home for all, which, like the Great Home that abideth, shall unite, not separate."

When he wandered over the undulating reaches of solitary moorland near the city, or through the shades of forest and copse, or listened to the little rills trickling from their gravelly sources through the sedges of the marshy hollows, not a golden arrow of sunshine that shot through the trees, nor a curve of sedge or grass in the quiet places, but sowed some germ of beauty in his brain.

The sweep of the great River round meadow and tower, the rush of the current which linked it with the heart of the land, and the ebb and flow of the tides which bound it to the heart of the changing sea; the day, with its revelations of earth, and its awakening of eyes to see and work; the night, with its revelations of heaven, and its awakening of souls to see and pray; the steadfast arch of starry sky, which was no roof, but an unveiling of the Infinite; the changing gleams of cloud and sunshine, clothing the earth with her robe of light and tears; the intervening brief glows of dawn and sunset, when earth and sky held festival with blaze of colour and burst of choral song;--all these sank deep into his spirit, to live again in the pillars of his forest aisles, and the arch of the aspiring roof, which, like the starry roof of heaven itself, was not to shut the adoring heart in and down, but to lift it up and up for ever.

So the Minster grew--grew as human works do grow, by patient mechanical toil of brain and hand elaborating the original inspiration, by accurate measurement, by rigid faithfulness to law, by lowly learning from God's work, by patient study of man's needs. Curve by curve, line by line, stone on stone, till the vision of the poet's heart grew into a vision of beauty for the refreshment of the hearts of all men.

* * * * *

But the Architect did not live, on earth, to see his thought grow into sight.

On a pallet, in a cell of the monastery, he lay, smitten with fever.

And while the thought of his brain was growing into solid stone on the sunny earth outside his cell, the solid earth itself was passing away, like a dream, from him.

It was Easter Eve. In the deepest dusk before the dawn, in the silence of his cell, a stirring and shadowing of something unholy seemed to darken and disturb the air.

Unloving voices answered each other in hoarse whispers, like a hot, dry wind through the crisp and shrivelled sedges of a dried-up watercourse.

"Ha!" laughed the voices; "he thinks he has been working for immortality. But we know better. A century hence, not a creature will remember his name, any more than they remember or care who planted the first tree in the forests around the city.

"He dreams of the gratitude of men; and centuries after he has mouldered into dust, the generations of the dust-born will be gazing up with stupid wonder at the thing he built, and pouring out their prayers and praises to the stone roof which rises above his dust and theirs, fancying their words pierce through, instead of falling back like the echoes. But we know better.

"Among all the names glorified there, no mention will be made of his. He fancies his name is written in stone, and in men's hearts. It is written in dust, and in men's breath. 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is Vanity.'"

A faint ray of gray light crept in through the window of the cell, and the mocking voices died away among the chill morning winds.

But the Architect lay on his bed in a rapture of gratitude and content.

"Father," he said in his heart, "can this be true? Shall this thing for which I have thought and toiled indeed grow up into a holy place, wherein men shall adore Thee for centuries after I am gone--even Thee? Shall this offering of mine be indeed so accepted on Thine altar? First me, and then it?--Wilt Thou indeed accept both altogether thus? Wilt Thou indeed let me be altogether hidden in this thing I have thought, in it and in Thee?"

Then from all the churches of the city rang forth the Easter bells.

And through the victorious peal of the Resurrection music, through the slow dawning of the newly-risen light, through the chirping and carolling of the waking birds, there came to the patient sufferer voices, and white visions of glory--white so as no fuller on earth can white them.

And the voices spoke thus into his heart:--

"Thine offering is altogether accepted. Thou and it. Thy work shall live on earth, faithfully fulfilled according to the thought of thine heart. Thy name shall be written in Heaven, in the Temple not made with hands.

"Thy work shall live where thou no longer art, to help men for ages, to be bread to the eater and seed to the sower of the generations to come. Thy name shall live where thou shalt be; among the great multitude which no man can number, yet each one of which is graven on One divine and human Heart.

"For ages to come, whilst thou art blessed and at rest, men and women, still toiling and struggling on this earth, and children, shall praise God in this beautiful place of thy building, with such praise as toiling, sinning, repenting, human creatures can give.

"The voice of the great River shall be heard no more beside it, for the ebb and flow of the great tide of human life which shall surge round it on every side.

"Day after day the sunbeams, ever new, shall come and go across its pillars, like a harp touched by an invisible hand, or be caught in its delicate traceries and entrapped down into the shadows.

"Easter after Easter, the Resurrection hymns of victory, ever new, shall echo from its vaulted roofs.

"Generation after generation shall worship there, and pass away, and rest beneath its shade.

"But thy name shall not be written there.

"Not there, among the dying and the sinning. Above; among the living and the holy. In the Book of Life. On the heart of the Holiest. For ever and for ever. Art thou content?"

Softly the light and music died away into heaven.

And the sufferer sighed.

"Content! Are the archangels content before the throne? Father, Redeemer, hast Thou indeed accepted my work thus? My offering and me--even me?"

And softly the humble and blessed spirit died away into the eternal light, into the hands of God, and was satisfied.

[The end]
Elizabeth Rundle Charles's short story: Unknown Architect Of The Minster

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