Deuteronomy, Judith and Job: Windows 7 and 8

In Window 7, the story leaves the forty years in the desert behind and arrives at the edge of Canaan, the Promised Land. An aged Moses gazes at it. He has led his people across the wilderness for forty years, but God tells him, "You have seen the land, but you will not enter it." At the bottom, God himself buries Moses after his death, and the baton passes to his successor, Joshua.

One tier up, the Jordan parts like Moses' Red Sea, and the people cross on dry ground. The middle of the window holds the climax, Jericho, a fortress ringed with high walls that falls without a single weapon. All it takes is marching around the city seven times and blowing trumpets, and the walls come tumbling down, a symbol of God's grace.

In the fourth tier's battle, the sun is setting and Joshua cries out to the sky, "Sun, stand still!" And it does. A man raises his hand to the heavens beside a stopped sun, and this scene, too, is original.

Why would such stories decorate a king's chapel? The 13th century was the age of the Crusades, and Louis IX himself set out on two of them. The idea that God's people conquering a promised land was God's will used an ancient story to justify the wars of the day. At the very top of the tympanum, though, love replaces war: Ruth, a foreign woman who lost her husband and followed her mother-in-law Naomi, meets Boaz and marries him. Her great-grandson is David, the hero of the next window over.

Window 8 is across the apse and may be under restoration when you visit, but here is what it holds. An Assyrian army besieges a city, its water supply is cut off, and the Judean town is on the brink of surrender. Then a widow stands up: Judith. Her weapon is neither sword nor army but sheer nerve. In the second tier, a splendidly dressed Judith walks into the enemy camp with only one maid. The enemy general Holofernes falls for her, throws a feast, and drinks himself to sleep. In the center of the window, Judith draws her sword and cuts off his head. This scene is also 13th-century original.

The two tiers above present the opposite kind of test: the Book of Job. A wealthy, devout man loses everything overnight, his children, his fortune, even his health. Sitting on a heap of ashes, he hears his wife tell him to curse God and his friends blame him for his own sins, yet he never breaks. Job on the ashes is original as well.

Windows 7 and 8 gave us an epic of conquest and two stories of trial. Next is the window that hides the biggest secret in all of this, Window 10, back toward the entrance.