Most all of the old cathedrals in Europe have very beautiful and ornate stained glass windows. A tour guide once explained the windows as comic books for the worshippers to view and read as lessons. (As to how and why stained windows got to be such a feature in these places of worship (click here.))
On last month’s trip to Europe I visited several very impressive churches and cathedrals and yes, all of them were full of stained glass windows. (In case you are wondering, the difference between what is a church and what is a cathedral has something to do with a bishop hanging out at the latter as head of the diocese click here.)
On our tour’s first stop in Germany we visited the Cologne Cathedral. Bob Mann took these photos of some of the windows inside the cathedral.
I have seen my share of stained glass windows. While I am not quite at the Buzzy-take “Seen one, seen ’em all” I now find that the stained windows that catch my eye and make me want to look more closely at them are the ones that are a little different than the busy, not-sure-what-I’m-looking -at-ones. For example, while I didn’t bother taking any photos of the windows in the Cologne Cathedral, I did shoot this one at the Strasbourg cathedral just because it was different.
However, the story behind this one is that it depicts sheaves of wheat as symbolic of Strasbourg’s commercial power during the Middle Ages (click here for more info.) Our tour guide related how during World War II, the Strasbourg windows were removed, hidden in a salt mine and eventually recovered by “Your American Monuments Men whom they made a movie about.” (For a very fascinating interesting, first hand account of this undertaking click here and go to the 3:30 mark of the enclosed video.)
Found this Stained Glass Window tune from Clay Crosse. Who would ever have thought – a Christian singer with the last name Crosse?