WINDOWS
The windows of the chapel tell a series of dark, beautiful and mystical stories of women’s lives.
Mary’s birth, life and death are commemorated in sequence in the chapel windows.
In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, the longest set of words spoken by a woman is Mary's Magnificat.
The Magnificat was banned in colonial British India, in 1980s Guatemala and in Argentina, after mothers whose children had been 'disappeared' pasted it on posters all over the capital plaza. Before being executed by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in a sermon during Advent 1933:
“The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.”
Other women who influence this piece include:
Bathsheba who crowns her son Solomon in Window 12;
The Queen of Sheba whose presentation of gifts to King Solomon represented both subservience and threat;
Eve, who is tempted by a female serpent in a window that shows women as the source of both sin and salvation;
Mary Magdalen, the first apostle, disbelieved by the men around her;
Anna, mother of Mary;
Queen Athaliah, who killed the male members of the Royal family and seized the throne for herself;
Jehosebah, who hid one of these young men from Athaliah;
Orpah, Naomi, Ruth, Mary Cleopas, Mary Salome, and an unnamed girl who was 'healed' by Paul, after which Paul was arrested by people who were earning money from her powers of divination.