Sainte-Chapelle: Home of the Crown of Thorns, curtains of stained glass, and Arnold Schwarzenegger

Sit back for a moment and imagine.

Imagine you recently visited Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Now imagine you’re the world’s biggest fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger. You absolutely worship the guy. You’ve followed his career, memorized every line from every movie. When you had a son, you named him…

Alex.

After the character played by Arnold in the 1994 film “Junior,” where he got pregnant.

Now, sit back and imagine you won the lottery.

What are you going to do with all that cold, hard cash? Provide for your family? Donate to charity? Buy yourself that customized conversion van you’ve always wanted?

No, of course not. You’re going to bid on a leather jacket worn by Arnold himself in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

And once it’s yours, you’ll need a special case for it. But where are you going to put your magical Arnold box? I mean, you can’t just stick it in the garage. Even if it’s next to that awesome ‘85 Dodge van you decided to buy anyway.

No. Arnold’s jacket deserves the very best. It deserves its own shrine, filled with stained glass depicting scenes from all his greatest films.

Gateway of Faith

So there’s this dude named King Louis IX. You’ve heard of him, even though you may not know it. He’s the guy who built the chapel we’re talking about.

No, he’s not the Versailles king. That was a different Louis. And incidentally, if you ever have the chance to visit Versailles, I’d highly recommend it — especially if you’re into long lines and shuffling along from room to room, surrounded by large groups of Australians loudly complaining and snapping selfies.

It’s perfect for that.

Anyway, King Louis IX of France was later canonized, and became Saint Louis. There’s a city known for baseball and beer and crippling humidity that’s named after him.

Louis was quite popular in his time, back in the 1200’s. Other rulers looked up to him, and occasionally asked him to settle their arguments.

And as far as regular people were concerned, he wasn’t all that bad — grading on the “Medieval King Curve,” that is. He introduced the presumption of innocence when it came to those being accused of crimes, encouraged laws actually be written down, and banned practices like determining whether or not someone was guilty by making them walk across hot coals.

 God totally wouldn’t let your feet burn if you were innocent, right?

Louis was also religious. Like, really religious. Super duper ultra mega religious. He even invited poor people to eat with him. And like all good and holy Medieval Catholics, he also hated Jews and Muslims.

Wait, were we supposed to just list the positives?

Now, this is obviously a major tangent and isn’t all that relevant to the discussion here — I mean, you could make an argument that 90 percent of what I write is a tangent, and you wouldn’t be wrong — but suffice to say Catholic teachings had certain beliefs at the time, and Louis certainly seemed to follow them.

As part of this, he led two major Crusades. You’ve heard of those, right? Sending a bunch of soldiers to the Holy Land to kick out Muslims, complete with copious amounts of looting and pillaging.

His first Crusade resulted in Louis being taken prisoner and held for ransom.

His second resulted in his death, after he bravely defeated three dozen warriors on his own, armed with nothing but a small dagger and his faith in God.

Just kidding. He died of dysentery.

Nails & Toenails

If you’re the world’s biggest Schwarzenegger fan, you’d consider his leather jacket to be a “relic.”

Back in the olden days, anyone who’s anyone in the Catholic Church had a relic. If you wanted your church or your town to be well known, you had to get yourself one of them.

A relic could be a piece of clothing once worn by a saint. Or a piece of their body, like maybe a tooth. You’d have some really pimped out container built for it, called a “reliquary,” stick it in your church, and boom, instant tourist destination.

Geoffrey the peasant would spend all year preparing for his big pilgrimage to a city a few days away, just to pray at a piece of Saint Jimmy the Bald’s toenail.

Most relics would be something third tier, like a piece of fuzz from Arnold’s Santa hat in the runaway smash hit “Jingle All the Way.”

But if you wanted something really noteworthy, you’d have to track down a gold standard from the man himself, Jesus Christ.

So among these S-tier bits of Jesus debris would be things like pieces of the “true cross,” or maybe one of the nails used in the crucifixion.

Apparently there’s 30 different nails around Europe right now that were supposedly used in the crucifixion. So either the Romans were really meticulous in their executions, or some of them aren’t what they claim to be.

Even Catholic theologians often say it’s unlikely many Christ-adjacent relics are the real deal. They say the early Christians were very much against anything along the lines of idolatry, or worshiping objects, so it doesn’t make sense that any of them would’ve been saved.

If you ask me, I’m not sure it matters if they’re “real” or not. If someone treats others with kindness and gets a sense of peace or happiness out of believing they’re real, then who am I to judge? I’m not going to look down my nose just because there’s enough fuzz to make a dozen Santa hats.

Right around the tippy top of the S-tier of relics would be the Crown of Thorns.

You know what that is, right? Roman soldiers mocked and beat Jesus during his trial, sticking a crown of thorns on his head and calling him “King of the Jews.” This brief episode is referred to in three of the four Gospels included in the Bible.

The Pawn Shop

This brings us to the Crown of Thorns. Like, the legit, 100 percent verified actual thing.

I mean, maybe it is. Probably not, but maybe. Now, most historians agree there was a person named Jesus, and that he was crucified. And it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the story of Roman soldiers sticking a crown made of thorns on his head is a true one.

Would someone have saved that crown? Possibly. It seems unlikely to me, but who knows?

The first reference to it comes in 409 CE, when a guy named Saint Paulinus told people to worship it in a basilica in Jerusalem.

In 591 CE, a bishop named Gregory of Tours wrote:

“They say that the Crown of Thorns appears as if it is alive. Every day its leaves seem to wither and every day they become green again because of divine power.”

At some point it’s moved to Constantinople, where it’s noted as being in the emperor’s treasury in 950 AD. Give or take. Some think it got there a bit later.

This brings us to 1237 CE, when the Latin Emperor Baldwin II needs some cash. He gives up the Crown of Thorns as collateral for a debt from Venetian bankers, which seems a bit odd to me — like going into a payday loan company and handing over the title to your 2007 Cadillac Escalade.

I mean, the dude basically pawned the Crown of Thorns. He might as well have just made a post on Facebook Marketplace:

 For Sale or Trade: One ORIGINAL Crown of Thorns, Graded 9.0, 150k OBO. Papal Certificate of Authenticity included. Will trade for mercenaries. Pickup only, NO LOWBALLS I KNOW WHAT I HAVE!!!1

After the Holy Pawning, Baldwin goes looking for more help, and heads to our old friend Louis IX. He sees an amazing opportunity, pays off the debt, and takes the Crown of Thorns.

Now, France already had a Crown of Thorns — or pieces of one, anyway. There were more than a few thorns from the supposed crown circulating about. But what Louis paid for was the crown. Or that’s the story we’re going with, at least.

Louis paid through the nose for this. Like, 135,000 livres. If that means as little to you as it does to me, the cost of building the Sainte-Chapelle to hold the Crown cost 40,000.

Obviously if you’re paying that much, you’re going to have a huge blowout of a party, and that’s what Louis did. The Crown was brought to Paris from Venice, where Louis himself went barefoot wearing nothing but a plain white tunic and carried it around.

A new liturgy was created as part of the first “Feast of the Crown of Thorns,” with all new chants and lessons from the Gospels. So maybe it wasn’t all that exciting of a party after all. They probably didn’t even have a Dominican DJ, and I doubt Louis was dumping suds on the crowd. I bet there wasn’t even any crowdsurfing.

The Girdle of Sainte-Chapelle

Like I mentioned before, Arnold’s jacket needs a special box. And that special box needs a special room. So while there was a reliquary for the Crown of Thorns, so too was Sainte-Chapelle itself a reliquary: A box for a box.

“Sainte-Chapelle” means “Holy Chapel,” but we’re not going to call it that, because it sounds totally boring that way.

It’s located on the Île de la Cité in Paris. Don’t try to pronounce it, you’ll fail as miserably as I do. It’s an island in the middle of the Seine, the same one on which Notre Dame Cathedral sits.

Sainte-Chapelle was the King’s personal chapel, sitting right next to his palace. Nowadays, it’s hard to see from a distance — it’s engulfed by the Palace of Justice, built much later.

And to be perfectly honest, the Sainte-Chapelle doesn’t look like much from the outside, and it didn’t need to. The inside is the real treasure here.

In order to understand what’s going on, we have to think about Gothic Architecture itself. If a professor uttered that sentence, I imagine half the class would bolt for the door. I promise it’s not as dull as it sounds.

Gothic Architecture was a continuous quest for building higher, and letting in more light. The higher you build, the more weight you have to support. The more weight you have to support, the fewer windows you can have. It was a neverending struggle.

In structures like Notre Dame, you have these huge flying buttresses: Pieces of architecture sticking out from the walls that help hold it up.

Now Sainte-Chapelle is much smaller than a massive church, so they already had a bit of an advantage. It also has ridiculously thick columns and pieces of iron running through the structure like a belt: All for the purpose of allowing the building’s defining feature to exist.

The structure consists of two levels. The Lower Chapel is impressive in its own right, brightly colored with an arched ceiling. It even has little miniature flying buttresses holding it up.

Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, this level is where the non-royal palace inhabitants would come to worship. While the upper level was reserved for the King and his family and his guests, everyone else would come down here.

Which seems like the sort of thing you wouldn’t complain about — you’d probably think you were pretty lucky, getting to come and hang out in such a nice room.

Just as long as you never knew what it looked like upstairs.

Curtains & Crossbows

A small, nondescript spiral staircase made of stone leads you up. What’s up there has often been called a “jewel box.”

It’s difficult to put it into words. It’s compact and relatively narrow, and the windows resemble curtains of color, hanging everywhere you look.

Maybe we should consult the French theologian John of Jandun, who described the chapel like this:

“The most excellent colors of the pictures, the precious gilding of the images, the beautiful transparent of the ruddy windows on all sides, the most beautiful cloths of the altars, the wondrous merits of the sanctuary, the figures of the reliquaries externally adorned with dazzling gems, bestow such a hyperbolic beauty on that house of prayer, that, in going into it below, one understandably believes oneself, as if rapt to heaven, to enter one of the best chambers of Paradise.”

I find it interesting he used the word “hyperbolic” himself, given his rather extreme description, but I can’t say his hyperbole is all that inaccurate. Maybe he didn’t mean that word in the way I’m interpreting it. Although the whole description kind of sounds like he wrote it while the Pope held a crossbow to his head.

Now, stained glass was quite common in Medieval times. It’s often been said that they were a way of teaching Biblical stories to the average Geoffrey on the street, as he likely couldn’t read — although I’ve often wondered how he was expected to make out the tiny images from ground level.

I’m not exactly a Medieval expert, but I’m pretty sure Geoffrey didn’t have a drone he could fly around. Nevertheless, Pope Gregory the Great once said “pictures are the Bible of the illiterate.”

Another reason for the use of stained glass was its “Wow Factor.” Part of the purpose of a church was to create a sense of the sublime — to help convey what true believers felt was the majesty of God. Visitors were meant to be struck with awe and wonder. Kind of like how many of us felt watching Arnold’s performance as Mr. Freeze and his divine puns.

Geoffrey the peasant might spend his day picking vegetables, dragging carts, stumbling through manure — and it’s easy to see how he’d be dazzled by the majesty of a massive Gothic Cathedral, feeling simultaneously honored and insignificant.

Of course, Sainte-Chapelle wasn’t a Cathedral, it was a chapel. But in a lot of ways, it’s the height of Gothic architecture. Certainly there’d be new advancements to come, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a more stunning example of stained glass.

At least when it comes to making an impression, anyway.

And it’s not just the glass itself that’s striking, but the dappled color it throws on everything. If you’ve visited a Gothic Cathedral before, it’s something you’ll see bits of here and there, but in Sainte-Chapelle it’s everywhere. The floor itself seems to radiate color.

Garden of Glass

So let’s look at the glass itself. Obviously it tells Biblical stories, starting with Genesis and running through the life of Jesus. There’s even little scenes showing the Crown of Thorns arriving in Paris.

Most of the glass is surprisingly original. The Sainte-Chapelle was completed in 1248, and holds 1100 individual panes. It was designed by a single architect, unlike many Gothic structures which took hundreds of years to complete — this provides a sense of unity you don’t often come across.

And it’s almost impossible to tell where the iron “belts” are that help hold the building together. They’re there, I promise. They run straight through the windows. But would you know they’re there if I didn’t tell you?

Don’t lie.

At one end lies a giant Rose Window, which actually comes from the 1400’s. If you take a look at the actual scenes between the Rose Window and the rest of the stained glass, there’s a clear difference.

The glass from the 1200’s has its color baked into the glass itself, with the black detail painted on. With the Rose Window, the color and the detail are both painted, which allows for more shading.

The scenes here are a bit creepy. I mean, far be it from me to pass judgment, but…well, that’s what people always say when they’re passing judgment. And it is creepy.

The Rose Window shows parts of the Book of Revelations, complete with a white-haired Jesus in the center, with a sword through his mouth.

“And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

I believe the interpretation here is that the “sword” is the Word of God, and not an actual sword. But I’m not a theologian. I mean, it looks more like Gandalf with Glamdring in his mouth if you ask me.

Surrounding him are seven candlesticks, said to represent the seven churches of Asia Minor.

Don’t ask me to start explaining the imagery of every panel. Some are really bizarre, and I’m not sure I understand it all myself. I think the only plus here would be that we could try to tie it in with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1999 film “End of Days.”

Crown of Flames

At the opposite end of the Rose Window is the famed reliquary platform, where the Crown of Thorns once sat — along with some other relics Louis IX bought, like pieces of the “True Cross” and the “Holy Lance,” which Roman soldiers supposedly used to pierce the side of Jesus while he was on the cross.

They once sat in a large gilded box, covered in jewels. No, it’s not here anymore. Nor are the relics.

You see, there was this thing you may have heard of called the “French Revolution.” It was kind of a big deal. The relics were taken away as that got going, and the box was melted down.

Which was probably a good thing. The exterior of Sainte-Chapelle sustained quite a bit of damage in the revolution — a lot of the sculptures on the outside of the doors aren’t original, as they were destroyed.

The ones inside didn’t fare too well either. The area contains statues of the apostles, which were pulled down, bashed and buried. An elderly woman saved the heads of four of them after the statues were decapitated. So what we see today are restorations or recreations.

Luckily for us, most of the glass remained intact. As for why, I’m not sure. Maybe the people running through the streets smashing nearly everything and hauling off the elites to the guillotine still had a bit of an appreciation for artistic achievements.

As for the Crown of Thorns itself, it made its way to Notre Dame Cathedral, where it was kept completely safe. After all, a building like that wouldn’t ever catch fire or…oh wait. 

Yes, Notre Dame caught fire in 2019, but the Crown of Thorns survived. It was one of the first things firefighters saved.

But what they initially saved wasn’t the “real” Crown of Thorns. The one on display was a replica, and the original was in a safe. To get it open, they needed to find the curator, Laurent Prades. Who happened to be at a party at Versailles. Which isn’t exactly nearby.

I’m picturing the poor guy enjoying some wine at a swanky fundraiser when he gets a text.

“Laurent where you at”

“Gettin trashed in my tux, live laugh love!”

“Dude Notre Dame is on fire.”

“Lol, bet it’s not as hot as Claudette’s looking tonight, totally making my move!”

“No really, can you come open the safe? They think the Crown they got is the real one”

“Fml”

He gets back, and the cops initially won’t let him in. Eventually he runs past them, dodges flames…and can’t remember the code. Poor guy is too stressed.

He calls someone else, enters the code, and the Crown of Thorns is saved — along with other relics, including Louis IX’s famous tunic.

2/10

So what are we to take away from all of this?

Is the Crown of Thorns real, or just a mass of twisted reeds?

Did Louis IX build it to honor God, or to bolster his status as God’s chosen ruler?

Is it a tribute to mankind’s ingenuity and affinity for beauty, or a waste of money that would’ve been better spent improving the lives of people like Geoffrey the peasant?

I’m not sure there’s clear, objective answers to any of these — but for me, there’s no better place in Paris. Not the Eiffel Tower, not the Louvre, and certainly not the scammers trying to give you “free” bracelets in Montmartre.

It’s no longer a church or a chapel — it’s simply a historical monument. One that’s never reached the fame of other Parisian landmarks, though it certainly deserves top 0status.

I think it best to conclude this tale of Sainte-Chapelle with a couple of quotes about it. Here’s the writer John Updike, reflecting on a concert he attended there:

“The celebrated windows flamed with light directly pouring north across the Seine; we rustled into place.

“Then violins vaunting Vivaldis strident strength, then Brahms, seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness, bit by bit, the vigor from the red, the blazing blue, so that the listening eye saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes of shield and cross and strut and brace, that held the holy glowing fantasy together.

“The music surged; the glow became a milk, a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed until our beating hearts, our violins were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead.”

And here’s the famed writer “Nemanja B,” sharing her perspective on TripAdvisor:

“While I was in Paris, I decided to go ahead and believe all of the reviews saying this church is ‘beautiful’ and ‘worth the visit.’ I cashed out my 10€ and went in.

“Just to make it clear, I was aware of how it looks, I looked it up on the Internet so I knew what to expect…

“But when I went inside I realized I just threw 10€ away. It would be better if I gave them to a beggar. Yes stained glass is nice, it looks good but it’s far from ‘magical experience’ and not at all impressive. It’s like any other gothic church and stained glass.

Tourists, please avoid this church since it rips you off for nothing special nor different whatsoever.”

I suppose everything is subjective. Maybe Nemanja would’ve been more forgiving if Sainte-Chapelle had housed an elite collection of Schwarzenegger relics.

Oh…and there’s no wifi inside, either. Some folks on TripAdvisor were very upset about that.