THE most famous European labyrinth is the great one set into the floor of Chartres cathedral measuring over 40' across.[1] It is one of many, for Matthews[2] lists twenty three in churches without including the many open-air labyrinths and mazes made of stones or cut into the turf of Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia. It is an extremely ancient device, as the story of the Cretan labyrinth shows. There was an Egyptian one at Hawara from about 1800 B.C., and if the idea hales from the Middle East it must be much older, for there is one at New Grange in Ireland dated seven centuries earlier.

The prelates of the Middle Ages placed them in prominent positions in their churches as testaments to their faith, but it took the eighteenth century to recognise their essentially pagan origins—for they destroyed many of them: at Reims, Sens, Arras, Auxerre and St. Omer, and in the next century at Amiens and Caen. The brass plaque in the centre of the Chartrain labyrinth was pulled up at the same time.

Yet would the Middle Ages have used a pagan motif without ensuring that it had been totally pervaded by a Christian message? And would they have given it such prominence and placed it in such an important position in the centre of the nave if its Christian qualities had not superceded its pagan ones? The material in this article convinces me that, after the sacred relics and the cathedral building itself, the labyrinth was the most meaningful if esoteric cult-object of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Its sacred nature is indicated by the names given it throughout Europe—'Chemin de Jérusalem', 'Iherusalem', and 'City of God'. The one in San Savino, Piacenza, is inscribed

The labyrinth represents the world we live in, broad at the entrance, but narrow at the exit, so he who is ensnared by the joys of the world and weighed down by its vices, can regain the doctrines of life only with difficulty.
It is not a maze, but a single way. It is not a mindless trick but an ordered track. The design used at Chartres was repeated in many other places including Lucca, and the Mappa Mundi in Hereford; and with embellishments at Amiens and St. Quentin. This is why the Chartres labyrinth is so important—it is a canonic arrangement approved by the clergy, repeatedly used from one end of Europe to the other, and placed in conspicuous places in their churches.

The most important ingredients are: eleven concentric rings split into four parts, a path which leads from the outside to the inside and passes once over every track, and a picture or an inscription.

Equally basic is the arrangement of the pathway. It always enters on the left of the centre-line, and passes straight into the seventh ring counting from the inside; and it exits into the centre from the fifth. This order is standard, as is the arrangement of tracks in between.

If you follow the path with your finger you will see that we first traverse the inside five rings on the left half, and then those on the right. The path continues right across the top of the sixth to join the remaining outer five circles, first passed on the left and then on the right. A clear and consistent pattern. There is a symmetry from one side to the other, and from the inside to the outside.

In the centre of the Chartres labyrinth there had once been fixed a bronze plaque—taken up and melted for cannon during the Revolution—on which was incised a most un-Christian tableau of Theseus killing the Minotaur with Ariadne holding the thread which was to show him the way home.[3] This motif was not unusual either—Amien's was called the House of Dedalus, while Lucca and Cremona both depicted Theseus in the centre and many of the others were popularly known as 'Dardale'.

In the Greek myths Daedalus was the legendary architect who invented many builder's tools, built a flying machine, and also designed the Cretan labyrinth. He is the archetypal mason, and was a byword for the master's craft. Can we therefore say that these many labyrinths were placed just to celebrate the master architects? Certainly the ones in Reims and Amiens commemorated the names of the building's masters, yet the other names given the labyrinths —of Jerusalem and so on—show that this was not their only message.

We must not forget that the clergy at Chartres were famous for their Platonic scholarship, and ranked, in the century before the cathedral was rebuilt, as the foremost centre in Europe for teaching these views. Their Way was the Gnostic one through knowledge rather than through faith. Their kindred order in the Moslem world, the Sufis, wrote

Beware, for love alone without knowledge, remains unfocused, unaimed, undirected. The consequences of such a love is pointless, leading to a confused state of perpetual 'Hallelujah' comparable to the village idiot's perpetual good humour. Through the medicine of knowledge joy is anchored so that love is directed to the Subject of all love


The Mystery of the Great Labyrinth,
Chartres Cathedral