If you are a New York and take the subway, then during your commute it is inevitable to avoid stained glass. As far as historians can go, stained glass has been around since 686 AD. It’s an ancient form of art from Europe and is commonly found in churches. One church known for its stained glass art is the Chartres in France (shown below).
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres
The Chartres was built before Christianity and was a devotional to the fertility Goddess. However, when Catholicism changed the art of the time period, the temple was the Virgin Mary. The art was for more than just gazing upon but told Christian stories in a colorful manner that would appear to the illiterate.
Legend has it that in the 800s the church acquired the Sancta Camisa, the tunic said to have been worn by Mary at the time of Jesus’s birth. Because of this holy relic, the church became a popular pilgrimage site. When a new and larger church was to be built in the 1100s, local trade guilds and the nobility donated large amounts of money for its decoration.
Fisher, Tom, and Jane Fisher. “ Stained Glass Windows, Chartres.” France Travel Planner, Travel Info Exchange Inc, francetravelplanner.com/go/chartres/see/windows.html.
So just in case no one remember where they saw stained art here’s a subway station I frequented as a child:
The Past in Present Tense 