The burning of Gothic cathedrals has a long history. The early fires during the Medieval and Gothic periods were usually due to candles or a lightening strike. It has been almost two years (April 15, 2019) since Notre Dame-Paris burned, during roof conservation/renovation, ruled accidental.
The fire was a shocking and horrifying spectacle- titanic. It captured the attention and heart of every country in the world. Many Catholics and other Christians saw it as a judgment against the state of their church – the declining of faith and attendance.
Didn’t we all question WHY?
Whether people of faith or not, we grieved en masse, universally, out of respect for the theological power and beauty of Notre Dame -a talisman of Parisian history, conflicts and culture. It was the most visited monument in France. And the most sacred.
A reminder that we are all vulnerable.
In studying Gothic cathedrals, history records Notre Dame-Paris’s pivotal perfections – architectural details that had been slowly developing for centuries, aided by new tools for cutting stone, cranes powered by windlasses, treadwheels that used counterweights, pullys, and engineering. One of the great descriptions of Gothic period building is “using physical forces to create spiritual experiences”.
The Age of Great Cathedrals was 1150-1250. There were over 80 in France.
The Gothic style (coined as a slur by Renaissance critics) – “lofty rib vaults on pointed arches invisibly held in place by external buttresses (flying) and illuminated by colored glass windows” – was wildly criticized initially, seen as non-classical, gaudy, modern, and coming from “over the Alps”, from the Goths.
Along with advancements in engineering, the cult of the Virgin began rising 150 years earlier in the Romanesque period. Intercessions with the Virgin Mary were more prevalent. She was referred to as Madonna.
Hymns, dedications and manuscripts were written to her. Her image was carried into battle on banners. She was portrayed as the “Queen of Heaven”, no longer a young peasant girl. There were rich carvings and naturalistic statues of her in marble and gold as the Mother of Christ. There were windows and sculptures of her Coronation, her Dormition and her Assumption. Notre Dame (Our Lady) cathedrals were everywhere.
Notre Dame: Paris
In 1130 King Louis VI moved the official residence to Paris on the island in the Seine called the Ile-de-la-Cité. The growing population and building boom required a new cathedral to replace the old Merovingian basilica. At this time Paris was financially flush.
The plan for Notre Dame was recorded in 1163, but the cathedral started in the mid 1150. The choir and transept were completed by 1182, the nave about 1225, and the façade 1250-60. The official completion date is 1345, although a centuries’ long building campaign continued.
Here are a few highlights: The architect/designer is unknown. Actually there were three. This is not uncommon for the Medieval/Gothic period, as the architect (or artist) was believed to be in the service of God, an anonymous servant.
The West façade of sand-colored limestone is symmetrical. The arched twin towers, 226’ tall, flank a rose window and sit on lace-like and delicate arcades, giving a feeling of lightness. The spire that is over the transept and nave crossing is visible through the center section. Below the rose window is a frieze of twenty-eight statues, and the three entry portals correspond with the nave and side aisles, each with tympanum carvings, trumeaus (the center figurative column) and jamb statues.
Notre Dame is welcoming, inviting the throngs who gather in the large plaza.
There is a feeling of balance, unity, harmony and peace.
Perhaps you have stood there in awe.
The twenty-eight statues are the Kings and Queens of Judah. These are replacements. The originals were destroyed in the 1789 French Revolution by an uneducated mob who thought that they represented the Kings and Queens of France. In 1843 renovations began to restore them. Fragments of the original figures are in the Museè de Cluny.
The statuary was originally painted.
The rose window on the Western facade is from the 13th century.
The center tympanum, The Last Judgment, a typical subject for the center (entry) portal in Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, reminded the pilgrim of his humble status and coming fate.
The interior: Nave, 118′, and Apse
There is no triforium. Instead stained glass oculi were installed above the pointed arches of the bays and gallery (the second story) and below the smaller clerestory (the top story of windows), thus adding two levels of light. In the 13th century renovation, the oculi were replaced with a taller pair of stained glass windows over each bay (look at the arched pair of windows with the oculi on top) . And in the 19th century a few bays returned to the original oculi (see the first bay).
Windows filled three stories, adding more and more light, and diminishing the strength of the walls.
The windows not only provide light to a massive space but are meant to transport the viewer to the heavens. And they provide illumination for the Cross and the Pietà.
This weightlessness (openness) of the walls decreased the stone wall surface and required exterior buttressing for support – flying buttresses. And it is unfortunate that the architect of this feat of engineering is unknown. The flying buttresses can be thought of as fingers supporting the wall, at the lowest point of the “springing” (the beginning of the rib vaulting.)
Light and verticality were the goals.
The ribbed vaults:
The cathedral design employed “sexpartite” rib vaults. There were two pairs of 6 vaults that corresponded to each bay. And the bungled columns separating the bays sent a transverse arch to distinguish the bay on the ceiling. You can see the thicker “rib” of the transverse arch here, separating the pairs of sexpartite vaults. This was a common pattern for the ceilings of Gothic cathedrals, although you occasionally saw Quadripartite and Septpartite.
The roof:
The roof supports, over the interior vaulting, were oak timbers.
The roof was nicknamed “the forest” because 13,000 trees were cut as rafters in the 13thcentury. Their dry and deteriorating state of kindling contributed to the speed of the 9 hour fire.
Above the timbers were 1300 lead tiles, and the lead spire. The melted lead from the fire emitted toxic waste in the air and on the surrounding environment.
The spire, at the crossing of the nave and trancept, is a 19th century addition, designed by Eugène-Emmanual Violet-le-Duc.
The floor is a checkerboard of dark grey and cream marble tiles.
The cathedral was gradually filled with art and sculpture. The Pietà is one of the more spectacular, and it survived the fire, as did the Cross.
Financing: At the time Notre-Dame was built, the funds for the massive project depended on the contributions of pilgrims, the collection of taxes, booty from wars, and the issuing of indulgences.
Plagues, famines, revolts due to high taxations, and opposition to the Monarchy interrupted the construction.
During the period of 1700-1850 the Cathedral continued to be neglected as the Enlightenment (reason and science) began to displace faith.
Deterioration, dust, water leaks, and misuse continued.
It was the 1831 publishing of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame that revived interest in preserving the cathedral.
France’s cathedrals are owned by the State, held under the Ministry of Culture, and leased to the Catholic church.
Notre Dame was the tallest structure in Paris until the Eiffel Tower was built in 1889.
Surviving the fire:
The radiant Cross
The Altar
The Pietà
The pews
The rose windows
The relics: The Crown of Thorns, a nail from the Crucifixion, a piece of
the Cross discovered by Saint Helena, and the tunic worn by
King Louis IX, the only canonized King of France. Most of
these relics resided at Sainte Chapelle from 1239 until they
were moved to Notre Dame during the French Revolution. In
1930 a piece of the Crown of Thorns was placed inside the
rooster weather vane, and that was saved also.
Miracles.
Since 2013 many structural problems have been discovered, damage mostly from water, neglect and deterioration. Money has been raised for the repair and restoration by Friends of Notre Dame, American and French benefactors with the donations matched by the French State, the owner.
It is now estimated that the re-building will take 15 years and €1 billion.
There are still, in France, craftsmen, masons and builders who are “of the old school”.
With the 3-D laser scannings made in 2010 and 2012 by a Vasser College architectural historian, Andrew Taillon, and the supervision of the current French architect, Philippe Villeneuve, there is hope that we will be able to stand in front of Notre Dame-Paris, awe struck again.