I seem to have become slightly
fixated on Notre Dame and in particular, its history since the
calamity of the fire. The glossy Notre Dame magazine about which I
wrote last week has really stirred up my
feelings and interest! I have had an absorbing time online
learning of some significant events in its turbulent story following
its creation between 1160 and 1260 A.D.
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| Abelard and Heloise in a 14th century manuscript of the Roman de la Rose. |
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| Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Templars burned at the stake adjacent to the apse of Notre Dame. 1314.. |
The construction of Notre Dame
marked a high point in French Gothic architecture. It stands,
dominating the Latin Quarter in the Fourth arrondissement, home of
scholars and students over many centuries and has always been
regarded as an elegant marker of Paris as a city of high culture,
epitomising Paris’s emergence as a centre of learning. Pierre
Abelard, the historically
famous philosopher, taught Logic and Theology at the great cathedral school of Notre Dame in the 12th
century before the commencement of the present building. The famous names and historical occurrences
associated with Notre Dame enable the world to understand what this
majestic cathedral represents in intellect and culture to the soul of
France. But its history has been turbulent!
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| 1572 the future Henri 1V, a Huguenot, married Marguerite de Valois, a Catholic, at Notre Dame. |
The last Grand Master of the
Templars, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake in 1314 on an
islet next to the apse of Notre Dame. In
1431 the boy King Henry V1 of England was crowned there as King of
France to underline English claims to the French throne. From the
16th
century, the cathedral fell victim to France’s political and
religious strife and to changing cultural tastes. For instance in
1548 Huguenot Protestants vandalised the church’s holy statues. In
1572, following the wedding designed to end the blood shed in the
name of religion, when the future Henri 1V, a Huguenot, married
Marguerite de Valois, a Catholic, in front of the cathedral, [and not
inside, in Henri’s nod to religious sensitivities) within days,
thousands of Protestants, in Paris for the wedding, were slaughtered
in the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
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| The beginning of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, four days after the wedding. Spread from Paris, August 1572 throughout France ending in October 1572. Tens of thousands of Protestants [Huguenots] were killed. |
The 18th
century equated Gothic art, the mediaeval period, to the Dark Ages;
thus, in
the early 1750s the clergy removed the splendid stained glass
replacing it with clear, ‘to
let in the light’
and priceless sculptures were knocked down to ease the way for
processions. The 13th
century spire, judged unsteady, was removed and not replaced but the
period of the French Revolution and afterwards, was much more
destructive and
disrespectful. The Notre
Dame bells were removed and melted down in 1791; the 28 statues of
the Biblical Kings of Judah along
the front portal, were beheaded in 1793 and everything
transportable, was looted. Later
that year, religion was banished in
France, and Notre Dame
became an atheist Temple of Reason dedicated to Enlightenment and
Revolutionary ideals. Eventually, increasingly
little-used, it became a warehouse for storing food. However, it was
rescued and returned to the Catholic Church in 1802 in time for the
1804 coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte who had an eye for theatre and
for his destiny!
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| Victor Hugo, |
As many mediaeval Parisian
buildings were pulled down in the early 19th
century, Notre Dame trembled but
lingered, generally unloved, until Victor Hugo’s The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, published
in 1831
re-awakened widespread popular interest and affection for
the cathedral, and a
massive restoration project between 1844 and 1864 restored it
to its former glory It was
during this period that Eugene Viollet-le-Duc’s spire was designed
and erected; the wonderful Rosette windows restored; the headless
sculptures repaired and mediaeval-looking gargoyles created! Twenty
one of the severed heads were only recovered in 1977 behind a wall in
an old Parisian mansion.
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| Hitler in Paris 1940 |
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| De Gaulle leading the march down the Champs Elysees to Notre Dame, Aug. 26th 1945. |
In the 20th
century came a succession of traumas: two World Wars with the German
occupation of Paris, in the 1940s; student riots in 1968 and the
subsequent political turbulence. But de Gaulle marched his troops
down the Champs Elysees to a thanksgiving
Mass for
deliverance in Notre Dame
in August 1945. In 1970 his memorial service was held in Notre Dame,
attended by world leaders. The
only other French president thus honoured was Francois Mitterand in
1996.
The mass devotion of the French
to Notre Dame, despite the determinedly secular nature of the State,
thus gained huge impetus in the 19th
century and continues today. The popular emotion may be less
spiritual than intellectual and cultural for a building in the heart
of the nation’s cultural life: the Left Bank, the Sorbonne, the
bookshops and the bouquinistes along the Seine all nearby and all
delineating the intellectual mirror of the city in which Paris sees
itself. The drama of the fire, uncontrollably
destructive and theatrically terrifying, assaulted this complex
devotion, causing the shared public anguish.
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| Outside Notre Dame, crowds listen to the Mass for Francois Mitterand relayed. January 1996. |
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| Les bouquinistes de Paris. |
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| Shared French anguish during the fire. |
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