Notre Dame can rise again
Paris’ fabled cathedral has been in ruins before. Then it was saved by a novel about a hunchback, writes Gillian Brockell.
Notre Dame has gone through a lot in its 856 years. It has endured ill-advised remodelling, revolutionary ransacking and pollution-induced decay. Hitler once had it slated for demolition.
Now fire has raged through the cathedral, causing its central spire to collapse. The full scale of ‘‘colossal damage’’ has yet to be assessed, but French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed the landmark will be rebuilt.
‘‘Notre Dame of Paris is our history,’’ Macron said. ‘‘The epicentre of our lives. It’s the many books, the paintings, those that belong to all French men and French women, even those who’ve never come.’’
Paris has done rebuilds before. In the early 1800s, Notre Dame was half-ruined when a writer used the crumbling structure as the setting for one of his greatest works, setting in motion a rescue operation nearly as grand as its original construction.
‘‘Parisians have had a direct relationship with their cathedral,’’ says Stephen Murray, an art historian and professor emeritus at Columbia University in New York. ‘‘And I think it was largely because of the wave of interest because of the book.’’
The first stone of the cathedral was laid in 1163 in the presence of Pope Alexander III, according to the Notre Dame website. The altar was finished about 20 years later; the two towers were constructed between 1225 and 1250, and the entire cathedral was completed in 1345.
During the reign of Louis XIV
(1643-1715), Notre Dame underwent a rather unfortunate renovation. Stained glass was replaced with clear windows, a pillar was demolished to allow carriages to pass through, and the original rood screen – an ornate partition usually made of wood or stone that divides the nave from the chancel – was torn down.
The French Revolution was even worse for it. The cathedral was seized by revolutionaries, and dozens of statues were destroyed. The bishop’s palace was burned to the ground and never rebuilt. The spire was deconstructed after it was damaged by wind. Lead from the roof was reportedly used for bullets, and bronze bells were melted down for cannons.
The cathedral was returned to the Catholic Church by 1802, but it continued to decay.
Then, in 1831, the writer Victor Hugo published his novel
.It tells the tale of Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of the cathedral, who becomes obsessed with the beautiful Esmeralda.
But beyond the star-crossed love, Notre Dame is the star of the show. Hugo wrote two chapters just describing it. And he notably set his novel in the
1400s, in Notre Dame’s heyday. He wrote: ‘‘[I]t is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer.’’
A classic novel now – with more than a dozen movies based on it – it was also a hit when it