Peter Ellard, The Sacred Cosmos: Theological, Philosophical, and Scientific Conversations in the Twelfth-Century School of Chartres, University of Scranton Press, Scranton and London, 2007.
According to Ellard, the twelfth-century scholars at Chartres perceived all tangible reality to be an expression of the mind of God. They immersed themselves in the newly rediscovered philosophical works of antiquity and were especially fascinated by the teachings of Pythagoras, Plato and the later neo-Platonists. They were eager to understand the inter-relationships between the macrocosm and microcosms of the universe and believed this to be a key to insight into the workings of the divine. A cathedral that was a microcosm of the divine macrocosm, they began to discover, could be a bridge between the human and the divine. The wisdom of the ancients, they realized, could open a doorway to God.
Ellard writes that “Neo-Platonic metaphysics dominated the thought of the School of Chartres.” The masters of Chartres sought to unravel the mathematical foundations of the expression of the divine into the physical world. God, they held, was enfolded within both the visible and invisible universe. A clear grasp of this interface could, they believed, open the way into the hidden dimensions where God dwelled. Such a vessel could be a crucible for human transformation. Chartres cathedral was designed to function as an ark for a revelatory journey into the heart of creation.
Ellard describes as well the dramatic changes that swept over France during the 13th century. “In an age when heretics were stoned and burned,” he writes, “charges of heresy could not be taken lightly…masters of the schools and even some bishops were brought to trial before ecclesiastical authorities.” The School of Chartres, with its controversial focus on Platonism, was not immune. Much profound learning, one master wrote, now needed to be kept hidden for “the matter is deadly, the enemy hypocritical.” “The perception and presence of the love of God that had flourished at Chartres,” Ellard writes, “of the Holy Spirit and world soul as woven into the fabric of the cosmos, the trees, the oceans, the birds, and the human body, was lost.”