What about the central portal?  In looking to position each portal within the framework of an overall plot or storyline we might be tempted to follow a temporal sequence leading directly from the Incarnation of Christ in the right portal to the Mission of Christ in the center, ending with the age of Saints on the left.  However, the images of the 12 Apostles do not tell the story of their calling and mission: these are images of humans who have triumphed over sin and death, some of them standing atop the image of the Roman official responsible for his martyrdom.  Brightly painted, although dead, they would have appeared very lifelike, and they occupy the same space as the living visitor.  Yet unlike the figures in the south portal they do not interact one with another: with a couple of exceptions they all turn toward the center where the triumphant Christ in the trumeau tramples two beasts underfoot.  The figures of the Apostles are so repetitive that only four are immediately recognizable: Paul who stands to Christ's right, Peter, to his left, James, the Pilgrim whose pouch carries cockle shells, and the youthful John.  The Apostles appear suspended in time between their earthly state and their perfect re-embodiment after resurrection at the end of time. Within the Augustinian theology of medieval thinkers like William of S-Thierry, likeness conveys the idea of participation: a saint's proximity to Christ is conveyed by physical similitude.  The key to the achievement of this level of proximity to Christ is provided by the way we live--by our choices between virtue and vice.  These choices are expressed in the images in the low-relief quatrefoils (left quatrefoils, right quatrefoils) placed below the Apostles.  Here the designers of our portal program have avoided a binary opposition of virtue to Christ's right side and vice to the left, placing the vices, explicitly depicted, within the distance of our touch, and the virtues, female personifications, hovering just out of reach.  A similar arrangement had already been deployed in the central portal of Notre-Dame of Paris.  The majestic figure of Christ on the trumeau, the Beau Dieu, provides the prototype: visibly, a template or mold forming the image of each of the Apostles (as he also forms the images of the bishops in their bronze tomb effigies directly behind him inside the nave).  We see that the incarnate Christ has triumphed over evil and death expressed in the two beasts, leonine and serpentine trampled under his feet.  His right hand is raised in blessing and the left, holding a book, hitches up the drapery swathing his waist, creating a handsome diagonal cascade of folds.  Christ's feet seem to ride forward on the beasts; high above us, his wide-open eyes stare out into the middle distance.  The beasts trampled by Christ come from Psalm 91: Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet.  In the Speculum Ecclesiae of Honorius of Autun this is the text for the Palm Sunday sermon.  The idea of the Palm Sunday Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem with Christ as the door thus lies at the center of the sculptural program just as the Easter celebration of the resurrection of Christ and the Eucharist lie at the center of Catholic dogma and faith.  Saint Augustine and other Church Fathers stressed the link between Psalm 91 and Matthew's account of the Temptation of Christ.  The devil, tempting Christ to leap from a high pinnacle of the Temple, had the wit and cunning to quote the psalmist's words: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone (Matthew 4: 6).  We can, if we like, see the architectural canopy above Christ as the pinnacle of the Temple.  Christ's ability to triumph over the devil and resist temptation provides the living model or template for those who would wish to emulate him and join the elect.  We can see that the Apostles are human beings who, thanks to the template provided by the living Christ, have achieved perfection.  The visitor to the church is invited to do likewise and is provided a map in the form of the quatrefoil images of the virtues and vices, and the door, Christ, through which to enter.

While the designers of the portal have avoided the binary division of good and evil in the figures lining the embrasures, that division is introduced in the images in the door posts immediately flanking the portal and above in the tympanum where we encounter the Final Judgment at the end of time: the elect go to Christ's right (our left) and the damned to Christ's left.   On the side of the saved, to our left, immediately flanking the door we see the wise Virgins with their lamps upright, indicating that they are full of oil and alight, while to the right the lamps dangle uselessly.  The story of Christ's parable is recounted in Matthew 24: 3 as a sign of the imminent ending of the world and Final Judgment.  The ten virgins were bridesmaids invited to a wedding feast: in the context of the portal that feast might be understood as the Eucharist.

In the tympanum above the events of the Last Judgment and the End of Time unfold with dreadful inevitability from bottom to top.  In the lowest level, the lintel, we see the resurrection of the bodies of all those who have ever lived and died, now rising up from the detritus of the tomb to be reconstituted as human beings.  The corporeality of the resurrected body lends itself particularly to the three-dimensional art of the sculptor, assisted by his colleague, the painter, who rendered the bodies in living shades of pink and red.  Naked and semi-naked men and women, some still wearing their tomb shrouds, force their way out of the heavy-lidded sarcophagi in the eight deeply-carved blocks set in front of the masonry field of the lowest register of the tympanum.  The newly-incorporated look up and react to imminent events with a variety of emotions: fear, anticipation, confusion, some clasping their hands in prayer.  They are surrounded by trumpeting angels.  In the center stands Michael with his scales.  To his right the Agnus Dei with cross is found worthy (weighty) as the scale tips while the devil's head on his left is worthless (without weight).  At the very front of the stage a tiny image of Synagoga, blindfolded, slumps under the devil while under the Agnus Dei Ecclesia sits up and points to her scroll.

The division of saved and damned as it unfolds above follows adds many embellishments to Saint Matthew's narrative.  On the left side a devil chivvies a miserable band of naked people through the gauntlet of a line of angels with flaming swords towards the mouth of hell.  One man staggers under an enormous weight slung around his neck--a miser punished by his own moneybags.  Only two women share the fate of this mostly male group that includes a king and a bishop.  Clutching on to each other they are hustled forward; the two leaders look back in anguish but it is too late: a hairy arm reaches out from the very mouth of hell as a devil pulls them in.  The horrors to be encountered by the damned--strangling, scalding and torture concentrating on the sexual organs--are continued in the lowest elements of the voussoirs which could represent purgatory or hell itself.

The community of the elect, a mixed group of men and women including one crowned figure, wearing the same long robes as the Apostles and prophets in the jambs of the portal below are ushered off to our left by angels offering crowns. They are led by a friar clad in a cowled habit fastened with a triple-knotted girdle.  He covers his hands--a reference to Saint Francis of Assisi who habitually concealed his stigmata.  Saint Peter welcomes the elect to heaven, depicted here as an oversized door attached to a miniscule church with buttresses and spire.  Angels provide light (candles) and sweet odor (censors) and crown the triumphant Francis at the gates of heaven.

Heavenly images are carried over into the bottom of the voussoirs (left voussoir, right vouissoir), matching the infernal scenes on the other side.  Thus, we see souls in Abraham's bosom and pairs of people, male and female, some accompanied by angels, heading toward heaven.  The leading couple carries posies and birds.

Above the separation of the saved and damned sits Christ the Judge, framed within a trilobed architectural canopy.  Above the canopy is a basilical structure with seven red-painted windows, referring to the Apocalyptic narrative which unfolds in sevens, encouraging us to see this as the New Jerusalem.  The seven bays of the nave of Amiens Cathedral and the seven segments of the hemicycle make sense in relation to this dominant theme.  Christ the Judge is not a fearsome or godlike figure: his upper body naked except for a fold of drapery covering the left shoulder and seated on a low pedestal (hardly a throne) and raises his hands, palms forward, displaying his wounds, once painted.  However, the sinner might find Christ's eyes quite alarming: wide open, and with the dilated pupils splaying slightly outwards--unfocussed, yet seeing everything.  With this image an axis is created down the length of the cathedral: this is the sacramental Christ, the body and blood depicted here are the body and blood of the resurrected Christ transformed from the wine and bread on the high altar in the Eucharist.  It was at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 that the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation was codified.  The bishop of Amiens, Evrard de Fouilloy participated in this council. Christ is flanked by the intercessors, Mary and John Evangelist (wearing ecclesiastical garb), while angels on each side bear the instruments of the Passion, cross and crown to his right and spear and nails to his left.

At the tip of the central tympanum is the awesome image of Christ of the Second Coming: the apocalyptic Christ described by Saint John in the first chapter of Revelation.  Two swords issue from his mouth while he holds in his hands two scrolls that disappear into the clouds described by the Revelation text.  Traces of bright red and blue paint can still be seen in his halo: this image was once ablaze with color.  The finality of Christ's Second Coming is underlined by the interruption of the comforting alternation of sun and moon--here held by a pair of flanking angels.

In the voussoirs framing the tympanum images of heaven and hell (or purgatory) occupy the lowest level to our left and right while above we see orders of angels, patriarchs, virgins, apocalyptic elders, kings and prophets.