The magic of that light flows from a great, multicolored stained glass window in the front wall, over the main entrance. It’s round, divided into eight symmetrical petals like a giant flower.
“It’s a rose window,” the sacristan explains to us. “It’s called that because of its shape. You’re standing in front of a wondrous architectural innovation. It involves removing a chunk of thick stone wall and filling the hole with colored glass. The glass is cut into small pieces, which are joined by a thin ribbon of lead to form this complex universe of lights, forms, and figures.”
Aquinas is speechless before this great marvel. To him, the enormous rose window’s luminosity and beauty are unparalleled. He can’t believe that human ingenuity produced a vision so similar to that of Heaven itself.
I, on the other hand—poor me, infinitely blind in my ignorance—get the opposite sense: Something bothers me about this flagrant innovation, though in the moment I can’t put my finger on what. Might it not be inconvenient, even disrespectful, such a huge artificein a sacred space? My spirit isn’t open to wonder the way Thomas’s is, a quality that makes him exceptional. Aware of my limitations, I don’t dare speak my qualms; I don’t want to bring him down from his soaring state of awe. I keep silent and push down my unease, but inside I continue to brood on the matter. It’s clear that this ostentatious stained glass window looks scandalous when compared with the discreet ones found in the old churches dotting our region of Lazio: small plain ocher rectangles made with the ancestral and almost monochromatic technique of dying glass with uranium oxide.
My own feeling is that nothing in this Strasbourg church invites zeal or seclusion. On the contrary, everything here fosters fantasizing, distraction, even delirium. Doesn’t Thomas realize this bold novelty borders on sacrilege? No. Thomas is still staring at this architectural chimera, and I study his avid gaze and the beatific smile that lights his face.
I grow more confused, and wonder how the hierarchies of our strict Dominican order could have allowed the construction of such a stupid thing at the heart of the Christian world. What can I do to keep Thomas’s overwhelming, slightly childish enthusiasm from leading him into a trap?
“Master, I see your pupils are dilated. Might you feel ill?” I ask. “You’re sweating quite a lot. Do you feel all right?”
The truth is, Thomas Aquinas is sweating buckets under his black and white habit, perhaps because of the summer weather, or his ample flesh. Without wanting to judge, much less offend, I can’t help but note the markedly different appearances of the two most revered male saints of the time: the ethereal, ascetic figure of Francis of Assisi, and the big, voluminous body of Thomas Aquinas, sensual and pulpy by nature.
My master sweats. But it doesn’t seem to be only from the summer heat. Perhaps there’s a fever behind his sudden flush. A rise in temperature from the intense emotions he’s experiencing? So much perspiration can’t be a good sign, not at all.
“Close your eyes for a moment, dear Master,” I say, and he complies. “Do you understand? All this is nothing more than lies and artifice, don’t let the light trick you, my dearest master. You see? If you close your eyes, the trickery goes away. The light doesn’t exist if we can’t see it...”
“Are you saying light exists only because we see it? No! We are the ones who wouldn’t exist if it did not see us!” Thomas Aquinas replies, preempting the famous phrase that Goethe would utter many years later.
I can’t help but notice that the master’s ecstasy doesn’t come from the rose window so much as from one of the oblong stained glass windows that flank it, specifically the one on the left, which shows a feminine figure directly lit up from behind, at this instant, by the sun, whose slant has shifted.
“You see her?” Thomas asks me.
“See who, Master?”
“Her, the woman in the stained glass, how can you not see her? Right now she radiates light... she seems to have emerged from the spell of a dream.”
An intense glowing blue aura surrounds the glass woman. The sacristan approaches and explains to us that the local glassworkers have never before achieved that striking shade of blue. In the East, however, it’s existed for a long time, thanks to an old technique of crushing precious lapis lazuli into a powder. When it arrived in France, this lapis lazuli blue was hailed as extremely valuable and given the name blue ultramarine, because it came from across the sea. It’s a deep and breathtaking blue, somewhere between azure and turquoise. A sea blue that sometimes seems to belong more to the sky, but not just any sky:a sky of cosmic spectacle and mysterious comfort.1
“Is she a saint?” I ask, hoping to justify my master’s enchantment by the svelte feminine figure beaming colored light from on high.
“A saint, yes. In her own way,” Thomas says, half lost in thought.
Thomas is indeed thinking about something else; he’s started turning around an idea Goethe would put into words five centuries later: What if colors are the actions and afflictions of light? As he stands before the vision of this woman with her startling cobalt blue or ultramarine halo, Aquinas utters pompous words, declaring that, as they move through colored glass, sunrays pulverize time, gilding the everyday with beauty, making it eternal. He also says that this Blue Woman, though nonexistent, is made real by the rare alchemy of light, color, and time.
“Are you suggesting, Master, that this woman exists in flesh-and-blood form?”
“Yes. She exists in flesh and light.”
I stare at the woman in the glass, and take in her sullen face—displeased, or defiant?—almost a frown, or at least neither beatific nor friendly, nor is it long-suffering, as would be appropriate for the Blessed Virgin, Mater Dolens. What’s more, her tunic is too tight on her body, and its cadmium yellow is hardly demure, so bright it borders on gold. Her skin, visible on her face, neck, and hands, has been wrought in pale blue glass, unlike other biblical characters portrayed on the great rose window, whose skin is made of milky-white glass, as if the artist had wanted to mark this woman’s race as different, browner, though not Black: Moorish skin. The warm, alluring skin of a North African woman. I think with disgust that the mere presence of this foreigner mars a temple of the Christian faith.
“Look!” Aquinas shouts suddenly. “It’s Regina Sabae! It’s her, son, I’m sure, I recognized her immediately! I know you well.” Now Thomas was speaking directly to the glass image. “You’re the same Blue Woman who appears to me in dreams!”
“Listen, Master, that blue lady who you say visits your dreams must be the Blessed Virgin, remember that Mary is the only woman with the right to flaunt the sky’s color on her mantle, and no other female should be in friars’ dreams...” I’m still trying to come to terms with a Thomas who’s carried away to the point of not hearing me anymore,he’s talking and talking, uttering words in a low voice as if just for himself or perhaps for the private audience of that apparition.
“Until now, she had only been a sweet flicker of blue light before my eyes,” Thomas murmurs. “But now she’s taking shape... she is incarnate!”
Goodness, I think, if that’s how we’re starting, where on earth are we headed?
I suppose it’s not my fault that I don’t understand what’s happening, it’s beyond what I can manage. My devotion to the master sharpens my angst in the face of signs that, to me, suggest that he might be getting confused, straying from the rightful path, getting senile with age, or just plain going mad.
“Don’t be afraid.” Aquinas tries to calm me down. “Nothing strange is happening here, Regina Sabae is nothing more than a waking of the soul... but even that is a great deal. Of course there’s nothing malignant here, nor even anything devoid of reason,capisci, ragazzo?She, the Queen of Sheba, is teaching me to perceive secret vibrations, she’s an open window to a vast yet delicate power...”
The blue lady wears an extravagant crown, not bejeweled with precious stones, like those of queens, but topped with a pair of small deer horns.
“Look, please, Master,” I beg. “The woman in the glass has horns, that’s a bad sign, demonic, even, a message warning us to stay away...”
