It took a Fire

We seldom properly appreciate that which is near our home until something happens.  Last Monday in France April 15, 2019 will go down as the day the Cathedral of Notre Dame burned.  Construction began on the Cathedral in the 12th century and it took two centuries to complete.  But, like most things in life, it under went change over the past 849 years.  For centuries there has been a tension between church and state in France.  By French law, the state owns Notre Dame Cathedral.  Yet, this great Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame seems to not fully have been appreciated until the fire this past Monday.

Notre Dame provided a glimpse into the past times of French history.  The Cathedral began as a way to express thanks to God for blessings.  Think of the generations of artists and masons, and laborers who spent their lives working on a structure highly regarded as a remarkable example of man's capabilities and achievements which is a testament to civilization.  While Notre Dame survived the French Revolution it was not left un-scarred.  Showing that destruction of precious artwork did not begin with ISIS and its swath of destruction through part of the Middle East, the pre-ISIS radicals (hoodlums) of the French Revolution beheaded many statues of old testament beings in the Cathedral wrongly thinking they were of French kings.  In the Middle Ages art work was used to provide learning to a populace generally unable to read and write.  Apparently the vandals of the French Revolution did not well understand the Cathedral and the story being told by its artwork.  As France began its move to secularization with its revolution, the building fell into disrepair.  Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, would kindle the French imagination and lead to some restoration.

The cause of the fire, while still under investigation, is thought to be related to restoration work on the 19th century spire and other areas.  Architects and art historians have been saying for decades that pollution, time, and neglect had taken a toll on the structure.  Limestone is not immune to the effects of pollution, and the forces of wind and rain which erode the stone.  Gargoyles and statutes were falling apart, hunks of limestone fell to the ground, and other items of neglect have caused worry that the structure would not last.  The Notre Dame Foundation has been attempting to raise funds for the restoration work for decades, and due to little interest in secular France, and no help from the government, they turned to large American donors to help fund the project.  Now that it has burned, the French are all of a sudden worried about this part of French identity.  Why were large French donors on the sidelines for decades, yes decades, while funds were attempting to be raised for restorative work?  These donors are now more than willing to help fund a reconstruction after a terrible event. It seems that in secular France the religious symbol was best out of mind, until disaster strikes. 

Is the Cathedral worth now saving?  French President Macron, an agnostic, said of Notre Dame, after the fire:"Notre Dame of Paris is our history, our literature, our imagination.  The place where we survived epidemics, wars, liberation.  It has been the epicenter of our lives."  In this statement Macron identifies place.  The good secularist that he is, he did not mention Notre Dame as a place of worship.  Place is created when space is endowed with value.  For the builders of this remarkable place it was not just imagination and literature, it was for the greater honor and glory of God.  Notre Dame is but one example of the great cathedrals constructed in the middle ages.  The flying buttresses were an innovation that allowed thinner walls in order to provide more light to the inside. It took 1,300 old growth trees, harvested in the 1170's, to build Notre Dame, and no where in Europe are such sized trees present today. The many cynics would wonder the purpose of rebuilding such an inapposite structure.  For it is a structure which sees more selfies than prayers.  Many of those anti-Catholic cynics believe such works of architecture and the art they contain serve no real purpose, and should be sold.  In this they lack the full appreciation of the story they tell, or the incalculable worth they have to to civilization.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Each and everyone of us have a different idea of beauty, but collectively we can come together and create something extraordinary. Buildings such as the Cathedral of Notre Dame tell us about ourselves and our civilization more so than they tell us about God, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary.  Humankind always strives for something greater, and the men and women of 12th to 14th century France this is what they came together to create.  Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan once wrote that "if something is of sufficient importance to us we usually find the means to give it visibility."  The Cathedral of Notre Dame is the result of an expression of mainly peasants, laborers, masons, artists and shopkeepers who came together to fund and build such a remarkable structure.  Echoing their choice of endeavor, author  Robert Louis Stevenson, years later, would note: "Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral."

A young Frenchwoman, Katie Berger, who was quoted in a 4/17/19 "New York Times" echoed this, but went further:  "Notre Dame de Paris is Paris.  It's a reference.  It's kilometer zero.  It's how we measure distance all lover France.  It's our roots, our history, our civilization."  France is centered around Notre Dame, perhaps both literally and figuratively.  In the same news article, Francois Heisbourg noted the different levels on which Notre Dame is viewed.  He noted that even more than St. Peter's in Rome, due to its age, it is a symbol of western civilization.  Yet, it is also embedded in popular culture.  Heisbourg further explained: "It's universal, Western, religious, literary and cultural, and that is what makes it different from any other object. It's the whole spectrum from the trivial to transcendent, the sacred to the profane."

The idea that Parisians, and the French, did not appreciate what they had in their midst was a comment by Claude Mbowou, a Muslim who said in the NY Times: "I'm a Muslim but I'm still deeply moved when I see this place.  It represents something deep, it transcends us.  It's a loss not only for France but for the entire world.  It's as if the pyramids of Egypt were destroyed.  Parisians didn't realize what they had.  They walked on by it was foreigners who came."  Notre Dame was the most visited attraction in France.  It is said to have been one of the top three locations in the world that Chinese tourists visit.  

Cathedrals and Christianity go hand in hand, and together they developed western civilization, and have allowed it to endure.  There is some irony in Notre Dame Cathedral, whose main purpose was religious is now held to be the standard bearer for what is France; a country where many in the population, like so many elsewhere today, are running from religion.  Civilization is hard to define.  This was recognized by the eminent art historian Kenneth Clark in his masterpiece television series "Civilization."  Standing before Notre Dame he asked:  "What is civilization?  I don't know.  I can't define it in abstract terms--yet.  But I think I can recognize it when I see it" and at that he turns around to look at Cathedral de Notre Dame.  That is part of the power and majesty of Notre Dame.    One current commentator noted that "A cathedral was the one architectural monument to which the poor had the same access as the powerful." No admission fee need be paid.   To think, today we build sport stadiums, and thirty years later tear that down and build a new one.

While western civilization is under attack today, the reason it can be attacked is because of  what it produced and allows.  Western countries do not limit access to the internet as in China.  French president Macron has vowed to reconstruct the Cathedral, that piece of tourism for the world.   But does reconstructing the Cathedral in a secular town in a secular nation make sense ? It may only see the same fate a couple hundred years from now fall to the same fate of needing restoration, but no one wanting to pay.  Who knows, perhaps it will become a Mosque.  Maybe  it would be best left as is, and become a monument to a changing Western society in which Christianity is more and more viewed at best as an anachronism, but more realistically with disdain.  Notre Dame is part of a fleeting history that may be little understood a hundred years in the future.    It took a fire for the French to appreciate what they had, but history has shown us that that feeling will be fleeting.

Images from Google