Front Burner - How Notre-Dame Cathedral survived centuries of war and change

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

On Monday, as Parisians and tourists watched in horror, a fire ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral, destroying much of the historic church and its famous spire. Despite worries that the church will never be the same, about a billion dollars has been raised to pay for extensive renovations of the landmark. Today on Front Burner, as France mourns, French historian Paul Cohen explains how Notre-Dame Cathedral survived centuries of change in its over 850 years of history.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you new ideas and insights to expand your worldview. Like an app that's helping refugees know and pursue their rights to how science fiction ignited a real-life culture of space exploration. And a lot more. You can listen to TED Talks Daily wherever you get FrontBurner.

Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So those are the iconic bells of Notre Dame Cathedral. On Monday, a fire ravaged the historic church, destroying much of the monument and its famous spire. Oh my God, this people just fell inside the church. Oh my God. Since then, nearly a billion dollars has been raised to pay for extensive renovations of the landmark, despite worries that the Lady of Paris will never be the same. We will rebuild this cathedral, all of us together. But over its 850-year history, the cathedral has survived centuries of change, from the times of kings and queens to a bloody revolution to Napoleon's rule.

I'm joined today by Paul Cohen, a French historian, and he's here with me now to explain the resilience of Notre Dame Cathedral. That's today on FrontBurner. Hi, Paul. Thanks so much for joining me today. Hi, it's a pleasure to be with you. So what I want to do today is kind of float through history and highlight some of the incredible moments of Notre Dame as sort of a love letter to this church.

But first, what did you think when you saw the cathedral in flames? The world watched in horror as one of the most recognized buildings on the planet and one of the most important to the Catholic faith burned for hours on end. I felt two distinct emotions. The first was a deeply personal sense of sadness and loss that I think a great many people felt that this extraordinary monument that had survived for eight centuries was on fire, was certainly going to be heavily damaged. And at one point when the Paris Fire Department warned at the height of the fire that the structural integrity of the cathedral was at risk

and that it might actually collapse, a sense that we might see this monument disappear. I gasped and saw thisire engulfed in flames. And from there, you know, we watched as the rest of Paris watched in silent shock. And as someone who lived nearly half my life in France, my mother is Parisian, it's one of the cities that I consider home, though I no longer live there. There was kind of a personal sense of loss that I think a great many Parisians felt, that this old friend that I didn't necessarily visit very often,

it's also a kind of object of mass tourism, and on a typical day, you're kind of cheek by jowl in a line to get in and so forth. Yes, the most visited monument in Paris, 13 million people a year, which is twice the Eiffel Tower. For me, I was immediately taken back to this memory that I have of standing in front of this beautiful church. I've been lucky enough to see it in person, and I remember being in awe of its beauty

and how humbling it felt to stand in front of something that is at the center of, in some ways, Western civilization. Can we talk about the structure itself? What makes it so impressive? And then I want to talk about some of the characters that have come through it. I think we could spend our entire conversation talking about the structure because there is so much in it. It's a structure that inspires, as you just underscored, awe and wonder, both at the extraordinary balance and symmetry of the front facade and the two iconic towers, to the sense of lightness, of flamboyant lightness around the sides and the back with the extraordinary flying buttresses. And then once one gets inside, this remarkable sense of space,

of volume. And if one is lucky enough to be there on a sunny day, of the light pouring through the stained glass, and in particular, the three stunning stained glass rose windows. Right. These are unbelievable. Two of them dating from the 13th century. Yeah. It appears one of the good pieces of news that came out of the fire, it appears that they have survived. And I think it's that sense of wonder, of awe, is a product of the genius of the design. That was the purpose, the goal of its architects and its confessional. This was to be and remains a house of worship, a house of Catholic Christian worship. And the sense of transcendence and awe was tied to this, to a specifically Christian theology and cosmology. It's a testament to their success that this sense of transcendence and awe today in the 21st century reaches well beyond confessional

and religious boundaries and evokes those kinds of emotions in believers of all faiths and non-believers. So let's talk about some of the history, starting with why it was constructed in the first place. Now the King of France has ordered a new grand cathedral that will be the envy of all of Europe. Well, it's a project launched in the 12th century around 1160 by the then Bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, who wants to launch a major building project. And he wants to build it in an altogether new style. It's in part an affirmation of the kind of the medieval church triumphant and his own personal authority. But also it marks an aesthetic transition from an older style that architecture historians today call Romanesque and the introduction into France of the new then modern Gothic style. And it takes a couple of centuries.

200 years. Yeah. But by 1250, the structure is complete and the cathedral is a functioning house of centuries. 200 years, yeah. But by 1250, the structure is complete and the cathedral is a functioning house of worship. And I want to get to the relationship between the church and the state in a second. But at this time, how is the construction of the church tied up in the idea of the French kingdom? It's tied up in a couple ways. I think it is first and foremost a house of worship, but it's also a reflection of the extraordinary power of the church in the medieval period. And it's the fact that the bishop can undertake this on his own authority, mobilizing his own or the church's own financial resources.

Bishops in this period, they are powerful and wealthy and have a considerable amount of authority. And in the 12th century, the French monarchy, it's not an insignificant institution, of course, but it has nothing like the power that it will wield by the 15th or 16th or 17th centuries. And so this is not a state project. This is really a church project undertaken with ecclesiastical financial resources and on the authority of the bishop. And its purpose really is to affirm the church's glory, of course, but also to write into stone and into glass and into sculpture, to teach in architecture, in stone, in sculpture, the fundamentals of Christian theology. But you're absolutely right to signal

there is a political dimension from the very beginning. In the medieval period, all the way up until the French Revolution, there is no real separation between church and state in France or anywhere in Western Europe. And it's not an accident that Notre-Dame is located, was built where it is. It's built on the Ile de la Cité, an island right in the center of Paris,

birthplace of Paris. And it's basically across the street from where the medieval royal residence for the French kings was and where the royal law courts were, and which are still functioning French law courts today. So it signals the close proximity between what we might call throne and altar. We'll be back in a second. Discover what millions around the world already have. Audible has Canada's largest library of audiobooks,

including exclusive content curated by and for Canadians. Experience books in a whole new way, where stories are brought to life by powerful performances from renowned actors and narrators. With the free Audible app, you can listen anytime, anywhere, whether you're at home, in the car, or out on a jog. The first 30 days of the Audible membership are free, including a free book. Go to www.audible.ca slash cbc to learn more.

So let's fast forward then to one of the biggest conflicts that the cathedral has survived. What effect does the French Revolution have on Notre Dame? The revolution is really a decisive chapter in the history of the church. And we can think of the church in two ways, Notre Dame as a church, but also the church as an institution. By 1791, the new revolutionary regime is entering increasingly into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. And by the start of the radical phase of the revolution, the Declaration of the Republic, and the terror, Notre Dame, like most houses of Catholic Christian worship, were decommissioned

and suffered a significant degree of vandalism and iconoclasm. And this is also around the time of the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, right? Absolutely. And in fact, the conflict between the revolutionary regime and the monarchy is really closely tied to issues of religion. Right. And the church itself is at some point seized by revolutionaries. The church itself is at some point seized by revolutionaries. Absolutely. And most famously, the heads of 28 statues of Old Testament kings were famously lopped off, being symbols of old regime monarchy. But their wretched extravagance led to revolution, bringing the empire to the brink of ruin.

So what happens to Notre Dame after the French Revolution? It then, later in the late 1790s, it actually opened again as a house of worship, but not as a house of Christian worship. It was put to use as a temple of reason, a church for a state-sponsored, enlightenment-inflected religion that was briefly put in place in the late 1790s. And it's only in 1801, when Napoleon has just risen to power, that Notre Dame will resume its function as a Catholic cathedral. So let's talk about Napoleon for a little bit and how he plays this important role in restoring the cathedral. The most famous episode that both signals his use of Notre Dame specifically, but also the ways in which he's trying to mobilize Catholicism to his own ends, are his coronation, the coronation as emperor that takes place in 1804 and is celebrated inside the cathedral. It's certainly one of the most enduring images of the Napoleonic era, is the painter Jean-Louis David's monumental painting of the coronation that represents the ceremony as it takes place inside the cathedral.

Confidently, Bonaparte lifted the imperial crown and brought it to rest on his own head. Famously shows Napoleon who's grabbed, he's already crowned himself, grabbing the crown out of the Pope's hands. He's dragged the Pope basically as a prisoner from Rome to attend the ceremony. And David's painting shows the very moment

where Napoleon is placing his empress's crown on her head, Josephine. So I'm hoping to talk to you today about one of my favorite books, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And so what was the state of the church when Victor Hugo's novel, Notre Dame de Paris, came out in 1831, so around three decades after Napoleon was crowned emperor in the church? It's a great question because Hugo's novel isn't just a

kind of emblematic story about the cathedral that has entered not just French popular culture, but global popular culture. But it's also a text that plays a crucially important role, a decisive role in the history of the cathedral itself in shaping what the cathedral looks like today and how we look at it. And it's important to recall the context. And the context is that by the 16th century, that Gothic style that the 12th century bishop had wanted to import and use in the construction of this grand new cathedral had fallen very much out of fashion. Gothic art and architecture was seen during the French Renaissance in the 16th century

and all the way through the revolution as gauche, as bad taste, as a barbaric mishmash of curlicues and grotesques. And there were a series of modifications of Notre Dame between the medieval period and the revolution, which were all aimed at kind of de-Gothicizing. which were all aimed at kind of de-Gothicizing. And so it's not entirely surprising that Gothic buildings like Notre Dame had fallen into disrepair by the 1820s, precisely the time when Victor Hugo, then a young man but already a successful writer, began to turn his attention to Notre Dame. Before he published his novel, he had already written a series of

pamphlets condemning the neglect into which Gothic architecture had fallen, calling on people to look at them in a new light, to see them not as kind of relics of a barbaric dark age past, but as aesthetic triumphs, as valuable elements. That's interesting to me because in the book, you can tell his love for this monument. He spends two chapters just describing the church. Absolutely. I think most literary critics who study the novel argue that the central character, in a sense, the hero, the protagonist of the novel, isn't a human being. It's the building.

It's the cathedral itself. And that's precisely, I think, the way in which Notre Dame de Paris, which is the French title, is really aimed. It's one of his major aims. It's to convince people, convince Parisians who weren't paying attention to this structure, look at it. This is a beautiful structure, and we need to save it. We need to appreciate it. We need to love it.

And in a very real sense, he succeeded. The emotion that almost everyone felt watching the cathedral burn and the reaction subsequent is a sign of Hugo's success. When I was watching images of the church on television, I immediately thought about that scene in the novel, and in subsequent movies, many subsequent movies, where Quasimodo is swinging down from that famous bell tower to rescue Esmeralda. This was what was in my mind. what was in my mind.

I also have read that French architect Eugene Viollet-Leduc had a role in convincing Victor Hugo to write this book. And is that true? And then let's talk about the role that Leduc has played in the church. Viollet-Leduc is certainly one of the most important figures in the history of the cathedral,

particularly because he's put in charge of the restoration in 1843. His role really is not so much inspiring Hugo, but rather as being the man who takes up the challenge that Hugo lays down. Hugo has warned, has kind of hammered away the message that Notre Dame is crumbling and we need to fix it and we need to restore it. And Viollet-le-Duc is the man who sets out to do it. Right, the French architect. He's put in charge.

That's right. He's an architect who's already had experience restoring French monuments as an employee of the state, and he's put in charge of the Notre Dame restoration in 1843. He's an interesting character. He's Parisian himself, and like Hugo, he was steeped in the same romantic valorization of the medieval and of the Gothic. His goal is to restore the original Gothic aesthetic,

to clear away as much of the subsequent modifications as he can, tearing out, for example, the marble that Louis XIV had put in in the 17th century. And I think it's important to emphasize this isn't just what Viollet-le-Duc undertakes, and it will take decades, isn't just a restoration to the original. After all, there are no detailed plans or images of what it originally looked like in the 12th or 13th centuries. And in any event, the building, like all of the great Gothic cathedrals, had been constantly modified and renovated and adapted. And of course, importantly, that incredible spire that burned down this week, this was his doing.

Absolutely. What he undertakes here is a restoration not of what Notre Dame looked like when it was built in the 12th and 13th centuries, but what Viollet-le-Duc thought a Gothic cathedral should look like. And he basically introduces new sculptures, new details, new modifications. The gargoyles that I think most of us deeply associate with the cathedral are mostly Le Duc's doing. And so he's just as important, every bit as important as you go in the story. So interesting. I'm so grateful for this conversation today, for the opportunity to really step back and think of the story of this church and how it has gone through or

bared witness to so much change. You know, what we've talked about today, like its origins, the French Revolution, its reinvention after Hugo's novel, the role that it plays in popular culture. You know, it has also been there for these incredible moments in history. Joan of Arc was beautified by Pope Pius X. Mary, Queen of Scots, was married there. It has gone through the German occupation of France during World War II. It is amazing to just take pause and think about everything that it's gone through. I think it forces us to interrogate a little bit

our emotional reaction to what took place this week. Because I think the sadness that I felt and a great many people felt watching the cathedral burn was a sense that something, some part of this beautiful and historically significant monument will be lost forever. But also the sadness was a reckoning with the notion that a cathedral like Notre Dame is a kind of eternal monument. That sense that something like Notre Dame is permanent and unchanging isn't true. Notre Dame itself as a structure has undergone a succession of changes and renovations. And from the very moment the fire alarms went off in Notre Dame and at the very moment that we all began watching the images on television, there was no question, however extensive the damage that would take place, that France would rebuild the cathedral. Paul, thank you so much for this really enlightening conversation today. It was my pleasure. Thank you. So on Wednesday, France announced sort of a competition.

They put out an international call for architects around the world to submit their design for a new spire atop the cathedral. President Emmanuel Macron wants it done within five years. We will rebuild the Notre Dame Cathedral even more beautifully, and I want this to be done within five years. That's it for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus.

Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.