. Mazes and labyrinths; a general account of their history and developments. Fig. 54.—Labyrinth in Abbey of St. Bertin, St. Omer. (Wallet.) This labyrinth was apparently destroyed at about thesame time as that at Rheims, and for a similar reason. In the cathedral there is no pavement-labyrinth, al-though it may possibly have possessed one in formertimes, but beneath the organ, at the west end of the nave,is a curiously engraved slab which is worth mentioning 63 in this connection, for it represents a sort of chemin deJerusalem, though not indeed of the usual type. It shows,around a large circl
. Mazes and labyrinths; a general account of their history and developments. Fig. 54.—Labyrinth in Abbey of St. Bertin, St. Omer. (Wallet.) This labyrinth was apparently destroyed at about thesame time as that at Rheims, and for a similar reason. In the cathedral there is no pavement-labyrinth, al-though it may possibly have possessed one in formertimes, but beneath the organ, at the west end of the nave,is a curiously engraved slab which is worth mentioning 63 in this connection, for it represents a sort of chemin deJerusalem, though not indeed of the usual type. It shows,around a large circle, mountains, rivers, towns, roads,and animals, together with the word iIiervsalem, whilstthe interior of the circle is divided into three horizontalcompartments, in each of which are placed various ob-jects indistinguishable through wear. The slab was very. Fig. 55.—Labyrinth in Poitiers Cathedral. (Auber.) much worn when described by Wallet and has possiblybeen replaced by now. A queer type of labyrinth was formerly represented inthe Cathedral of Poitiers. It perished long ago, but forsome time subsequently there remained on the wall of thenorth aisle a sketch of it (Fig. 55), which, however, gaveno clue to the dimensions of the original. It will be seenthat the construction is such that he who traces the patheventually emerges—like the poet of the Rubaiyat—by that same door at which he entered; he will have 64 encountered no stops/* but he may have looped theloop an indefinite number of times. In the old abbey of Toussaints, Chalons-sur-Marne,which was destroyed in 1544, there was a series of tileseach bearing a small labyrinth of the conventional Cretantype (Fig. 56. See plate, p. 74). Pavement-tiles withlabyrinths were also found in the Abbaye de Pont lAbbe(Finistere). A pavement labyrinth has been described as existingin the f
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectlabyrin, bookyear1922
