The Le Mans glass — the Carmelites, Rathouis, Hucher, and the signatures in the windows

1863 – 1888 · manufacture; conserved 1988–91

Sorin's channel: The glass came through a relationship, not a catalogue. The Carmel du Mans glassworks — the workshop of the Carmelite nuns of Le Mans — had provided windows for Notre Dame's first church in 1863, including the round windows and the gifted "The Divine Face" told in the first entry. When Sorin ordered the new church's glass, he ordered from the same house, on a scale the Basilica's published record gives at more than 450 square metres of glass. The contract was negotiated by Sorin himself and signed, for the university, by Fr. Auguste Lemonnier, then its president. Sponsors were solicited for the windows: among the major contributors the Basilica's history names Alexis Coquillard — the South Bend founder whose name runs through this whole record — and Sister M. Germaine of the Passion, C.S.C., who gave her inheritance of 17,000 francs for the chapel and sanctuary windows. Sorin also took a commission: the university received ten percent on windows ordered in America through the publicity his order generated.

The workshop changed hands inside the contract: The Basilica's own history page tells the production whole, and it is the entry the survey-size record never had room for. Only the first windows, painted in 1874, were made by the Carmelite nuns themselves. In 1873 the nuns had sold the business to Edouard Rathouis, an importer and the nephew of Mother Eléonore, the prioress; in 1880 Rathouis sold it to Eugène Hucher. The works signed all the Notre Dame windows with the company name, which it had not previously done — and so the succession is written in the glass itself: the earlier nave windows are signed "Carmel du Mans, E. Rathouis," and the last windows, those of the Lady Chapel, "Fabrique du Carmel du Mans, Hucher et Fils, Successors." The windows came across fifteen years, installed from 1873 to 1888, the Lady Chapel's glass closing the series as the chapel itself closed the building. The tour names one window's making as the type of the whole: the Pentecost window, designed by the Carmelite Sisters of Le Mans and painted by Eugène Hucher and associates. The published accounts name the great transept pair: one window of the Sacred Heart, and one of Sorin presenting the church.

The counts, and the claim: The counts reconcile when they are read as what they count. The tour gives forty-four large stained-glass windows, including 114 life-sized pictures of saints and 106 smaller scenes, produced in the 1870s and 1880s under Hucher's artistic and archaeological direction — and the University of Notre Dame Press's Basilica series, drawn from Stories in Light (2020), gives forty-four windows comprising 220 scenes, which is the tour's 114 and 106 added together. The conservator's count is a different count of a different thing: when Conrad Schmitt Studios conserved the glass in the 1988–91 restoration, the Basilica's history page records 116 windows and over 1,200 panels — every window in the building, not the forty-four large figured ones. The Press states the collection's measure in its hedged form: the Basilica "contains one of the largest collections of late nineteenth-century French stained glass outside of France." The university's 175th-anniversary timeline states it in the stronger form, "the largest collection of 19th-century French stained glass in the world." Both stand as published; the Press's form is the one this record works in.

Sources

1. University of Notre Dame — the Basilica's history page (basilica.nd.edu): the Carmel du Mans order and the 1863 windows; the sales to Rathouis (1873) and Hucher (1880) and the changing signatures; the sponsors Coquillard and Sister M. Germaine's 17,000 francs; Sorin's ten-percent commission; the contract negotiated by Sorin and signed by President Lemonnier; the conservation count of 116 windows and over 1,200 panels.
2. University of Notre Dame Press — the Basilica of the Sacred Heart series, from Stories in Light (2020): one of the largest collections of late nineteenth-century French stained glass outside of France; forty-four windows, 220 scenes, installed 1873–1888.
3. University of Notre Dame, Campus Ministry — Self-Guided Tour of the Basilica: the forty-four large windows with 114 life-sized pictures of saints and 106 smaller scenes, under Hucher's direction; the Pentecost window designed by the Carmelite Sisters and painted by Hucher and associates.
4. The published history of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Notre Dame) — the commission at more than 450 square metres; the transept windows of the Sacred Heart and of Sorin presenting the church.
5. University of Notre Dame — the 175th-anniversary timeline (175.nd.edu): the stronger form of the glass claim, printed beside the Press's.