The intricate stained glass panel undoubtedly owes its evolution to a longstanding use of decorated window glass that predates the Gothic period. Coloured but unpainted fragments of glass excavated at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth of northeastern England suggests that window glass was manufactured as early as 674. Alongside innovations in Gothic architecture that accommodated a growing number of windows, the costly commissioning of stained glass was also seen as a means of salvation for the donors’ souls, which accounted for the rise of the panels’ popularity. The strongest testament of this is Chartres Cathedral, which once boasted 185 figurative windows totaling nearly 2000 square metres of glass. It is for these reasons that the installation of stained glass in both churches and stately homes peaked during the Gothic age, seen so ubiquitously across medieval ecclesiastical and secular spaces that it is still regarded today as an archetypal feature of the period.

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Stained glass differs from illuminated books, which present stories in registers that read left to right and from the top of the page down. Gothic stained glass panels are composed of combinations of smaller circles, mandorlas, rectangles or lozenges. The stone bars and traceries inevitably hinder the smooth interpretation of glass panels. As complete installations, Gothic windows are generally read horizontally from the bottom up, with no consideration of the stone bars. The flexibility of narrative order in Gothic stained glass can be illustrates by listing outliers: the bottommost register of the Redemption window of Chartres Cathedral is read first, then from the top down. The same window also illustrates the increasingly common use of star compositions in the thirteenth century, which highlights the central themes of biblical stories. Through a review of both linear and non-linear examples of Gothic stained glass, Caviness demonstrates that the narrative art presented in the medium of glass required the reader to have some preexisting knowledge of biblical stories. In that case, the more learned reader would use stained glass as mnemonic devices to recite Scripture. Novices with little knowledge of sacred events may struggle to learn by ‘reading’ stained glass alone. The examples of Gothic stained glass highlighted from the McCarthy Collection are fragments of larger insitu panels from cathedrals, which naturally demand a different interpretive approach. Beyond iconography, these fragments offer rich insight into the circumstances behind the separation of glass fragments from their original monumental settings.

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The overwhelming perception of the function of stained glass is that the panels served the laity as didactic instruments, imparting to the ‘unlettered’ audiences various sacred events. Though this discussion ultimately fits into a broader discourse on the function of images, the power of sight, and general literacy in the medieval period, it is worth briefly examining this perception and reconsidering what constituted being ‘unlettered’. The claim that stained glass was the Bible for the poor is substantiated by a litany of primary sources. Gregory the Great in 600, stated that images of sacred events were useful for teaching gentiles and illiterate Christians, ‘who read in them what they cannot read in books’. Thirteenth-century canonist William Durandus claimed that ‘pictures and ornaments in churches are the lessons and scriptures of the laity’. However, these claims stand in opposition to other sources such as Abbot Suger, who noted that only the literate were capable of truly understanding the complex stained glass installations in the Basilica of Saint-Denis. On a fundamental level, forms of art can act as mnemonic devices that enable the learning of Scripture, but that is dependent on the individual viewer, as opposed to serving the clergy or laity exclusively. Art historians present a more nuanced conclusion: by the High Middle Ages, images such as stained glass were ‘multivalent devices used by various groups in diverse ways’. Scholars offer an interesting perspective on the laity and clergy, the literate and illiterate, when they argue that to be ‘unlettered’ in the thirteenth century referred to a range of competencies (including Latin), or even someone who did not have access to the truths of the Christian faith, regardless of their ability to read. He then cites an examination conducted by the Archbishop of Rouen in the thirteenth century of clerics who aspired to become parish priests. This examination revealed that even the clergy had varying degrees of ‘literacy’.

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