Her Beloved Rose Windows: The Masterpieces of Notre-Dame Cathedral

Her Beloved Rose Windows: The Masterpieces of Notre-Dame Cathedral

This article relates to A Private Man

The magnificent rose windows of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris are considered masterpieces of engineering for their artistic beauty, mathematical precision, and structural stability. Amazingly, the windows remained intact after the debilitating Paris fire of 2019.

The windows were created for medieval viewers, many of whom were illiterate. They were visual homilies that communicated faith, love, and salvation. They were glass books telling the story of Christ and his mother. The rose shape of the windows (a Gothic design for churches widespread in Europe) was circular to represent Christ as eternal. When the sun is at its highest point, the cathedral's interior is alight in colors with the message that God's radiance is the source of all light and salvation.

The windows were a collaboration under the supervision of cathedral architects Jean de Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil but were largely the work of anonymous glaziers and artisans who specialized in stained glass.

The North Rose Window was created around 1250 and is the only rose window to maintain most of its original 13th-century glass. In the center, the Virgin Mary is holding the Christ Child. Around them are prophets, kings, judges, familiar people of the Old Testament. It is colored in striking blues.

The South Rose Window is also referred to as the "midday rose." It was donated by Saint Louis (King Louis IX of France), and built in 1260. It measures about the same size as the North Rose Window, nearly 42 feet in diameter. Both the North and South windows have around 80 panes of glass spread across multiple concentric circles. The Last Judgement is the theme of the South window, with Christ in the center surrounded by angels and images of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Its colors include intense reds. The South Rose Window has had significant color stability issues and has had to repeatedly be restored.

The West Rose Window is the smallest, around 31 feet in diameter, and is in the cathedral's front façade. It was completed around 1225 and none of the original glass remains. It illustrates the Madonna and Child. The first circle represents the 12 tribes of Israel. The 12 signs of the zodiac associated with the labors of the months of the year make up the lower half of the window.

In the novel A Private Man, the female protagonist, Margaret Bendelow, becomes agitated by the possibility that the rose windows of Notre-Dame Cathedral were destroyed after the terrible Paris fire. Margaret, when she was younger, was a religious scholar, but dementia has picked apart her brain, creating instability. Her loving grandson Adrian bikes to see her every Wednesday despite the difficulty of witnessing her belligerence and rage. The day after the Paris fire, he brings with him the local papers and puts them onto her lap so she can see the damage. Margaret grabs Adrian's wrist in desperation.

"What of the windows? What has happened to the rose windows…The ones from the thirteenth century. The works of Jean de Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil. The largest rose windows in Europe?"

The passage continues: She releases his wrist and brings her hand up over her eyes, and begins to cry. The sound of her sobs lags, and then rasps out drily. She is shaking.

Margaret is aghast at the thought that replacement windows might be fireproofed. The radiant glaze and how light filters through the cathedral would be affected. It would be one more example of the world losing its past as Margaret is losing her memories. The stained glass windows of the cathedral offer her hope with their collective stories of sacrifice and salvation. Their brilliant filtered light is confirmation that the darkest moments of her life are temporary. Dawn is coming. In other words, the Latin phrase that symbolizes Margaret Bendelow and her beloved rose windows: Fluctuat nec mergitur.

She is tossed by the waves but does not sink.

Top to bottom:
North Rose Window by Krzysztof Mizera (2008), CC BY-SA 4.0
South Rose Window by David Bordes / CMN (2024), Licence Ouverte 1.0
West Rose Window by Zairon (2017), CC BY-SA 4.0

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This article relates to A Private Man. It first ran in the May 20, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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