The stained glass windows of Canterbury Cathedral constitute one of the greatest surviving achievements of medieval biblical art - a comprehensive programme of typological interpretation rendered in colored light, spread across choir, Trinity Chapel, and the circular Corona chapel, that survived the Reformation largely intact and retains, in many panels, extraordinary 12th and 13th-century glass of the highest quality.
The windows employ the typological method that dominated medieval biblical hermeneutics: the conviction that events, persons, and objects in the Old Testament are 'types' or prefigurations of their New Testament antitypes, the fulfillments that give them their full meaning. Moses lifting the bronze serpent in the wilderness (Numbers 21:9) prefigures Christ lifted up on the cross, as Jesus himself declared: 'Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up' (John 3:14). Jonah spending three days in the belly of the fish (Jonah 1:17) prefigures Christ's three days in the tomb, as Matthew 12:40 makes explicit.
The Canterbury typological windows are arranged in circular medallions, with Old Testament scenes in the outer rings surrounding central New Testament scenes, making the structural relationship visible. A viewer who could not read could nonetheless follow the theological argument: this Old Testament event points forward to this Gospel event; the Scripture is all one story, progressively revealed.
The windows were created by workshops closely related to those responsible for the great windows at Chartres, and the quality of the glass - the deep blues and reds that characterize the best French and English Gothic glazing - is comparable. The Trinity Chapel windows, created around 1200 to celebrate the shrine of Thomas Becket, include narrative scenes of Becket's miracles alongside typological biblical content, situating the recent martyr within the typological framework that connected all sacred history.
The Corona chapel at the east end of the cathedral retains one of the finest individual windows in England: a magnificent 13th-century image of Christ in Majesty, enthroned in a mandorla, based on the vision of Revelation 1:13-16 - 'someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.'
The medieval glass at Canterbury suffered losses during the Reformation, when much figural glass was destroyed as idolatrous, and during the Second World War, when the most vulnerable panels were removed to safety. The restoration and conservation of what remains is an ongoing programme of the cathedral's glazing workshop.
The windows are best seen on a bright morning when the sun illuminates them from the east and south. The medieval glass is concentrated in the choir and Trinity Chapel; the nave contains mainly 19th and 20th-century glass. The cathedral provides guided tours that include detailed explanations of the typological programme.