Originating from the desire of Saint

Louis to provide a bejewelled casket

worthy of housing his collection of relics, the

Sainte Chapelle offers the visitor the splendour of

its stained glass windows, "this glass curtain, this

ardent confession made of pulverized colours and

luminous points that have less value as stories than

as a simultaneous hymn and a permanent explosion

[...] These panels of coloured glass around

us are matter that feels, abstract matter, sensitive

to the intellectual ray [...] Here is Paradise

regained" (Paul Claudel, The Eye Listens ).