~ Saturday, October 9, 2021 ~
The Chartres labyrinth was measured and built using the Roman foot — 294.45 millimetres — as its basic unit. This is the same unit used throughout the rest of the cathedral. The path length is 888 Roman feet. The diameter corresponds, in whole units, to the building’s master geometric plan. These are not decorative choices. They are the marks left by a measurement system, and they connect the labyrinth to the structure around it in ways that are precise enough to verify.
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~ Wednesday, April 7, 2021 ~
When Judas Iscariot left the apostolic circle — whether at the moment of the betrayal or earlier in the narrative, depending on which gospel’s chronology one follows — there was a period, however brief, during which the circle stood at eleven. The urgency with which Acts moved to correct this tells us, without ambiguity, why the number twelve was never incidental.
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~ Saturday, October 17, 2020 ~
About 12.85 metres from one edge to the other, the labyrinth fills the nave of Notre-Dame de Chartres almost from pillar to pillar. It was laid in white limestone from the Berchères quarries and dark stone from Senlis, sometime in the early thirteenth century. No document from the chapter of Notre-Dame records why it was built, or what it was for, or what its builders called it.
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