Tom Stacey on how, as an act of penance, his great-great-uncle donated the great west window to King’s College Chapel
As the choristers of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, fill our ears on radio and our eyes on television with their double Christmas bill of carols for the birth of Jesus, the light that plays upon the Chapel’s sublime fan vaulting is, as ever, exquisite. Yet behind that light I have a tale to unfold, mysterious and dark.
The Chapel’s great west window was the largest single scene in stained glass in Europe when consecrated in 1879. For all I know, it is so still. It depicts the Last Judgment — what mediaeval iconography called a ‘Doom’. Bottom right, angels with flaming swords drive the damned down into one of Saddam Hussein’s torture dens. Bottom left, the blessed are ushered up to Paradise by heavenly facilitators and angels blowing straightened-out trombones.
Paradise is an enormous colonnaded amphitheatre dominated by Our Lord seated in Judgment, flanked by apostles and saints galore and, in Jesus’s own metaphor as reported by Matthew, with his (saved) sheep coming in on his right and the (damned) goats going out on his left.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in