Stained Glass of Horror 

Imagine yourself 100 feet or more off the ground trying to piece together hundreds of different panels of glass in order to make a scene come together. That is what stained-glass craftsmen in the middle ages had to deal with on a daily basis all the while trying not break the glass or fall to their death. Stained glass windows produced in the middle ages were primarily used in Gothic churches, monasteries and for the wealthiest of people and usually consisted of Biblical scenes.  

You can imagine the time and energy it must have taken to produce an image like the one shown above. This stained-glass window that takes its shape as a rose is hung in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, and was built in 13^th century by Pierre De Montreuil. Stained glass craftsmen belonging to a guild often installed the windows that can still be seen today in cathedrals, churches and castles alike. These were dedicated and very skilled labors that performed these dangerous jobs. Stained glass windows reigned supreme in the middle ages and still inspire artists today. The largest stained-glass window in the world is in Texas. Over the centuries many of the stained-glass windows in Europe have had replacement work done to them in order to preserve their history. We know how stain glass windows were made in the middle ages because of a set of instructions wrote down by a monk using a pseudonym Theophilus. In this book Theophilus states how to prepare wood ash, mix sand, melt together, blow frit which means to add color, and flatten into sheets of glass. He also explained how to make colored glass. Stained glass windows also doubled as teaching tools allowing one to follow along all the different Biblical scenes.

This beautiful window is hung in the Chartres Cathedral, France

Caldwell, Zelda. "How was stained glass made in the Middle Ages?" Aleteia, 15 Oct. 2018, aleteia.org/2018/10/15/how-was-stained-glass-made-in-the-middle-ages/.

Getty, Paul J. "Stained glass: history and technique." , www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/gothic1/a/stained-glass-history-and-technique.