Scourge of Fire at Notre-Dame

There are must-go places I visit time and again in certain cities, no matter how often I've been before. Notre-Dame...I don't know, I honestly don't know how many times I've been there, because I'd visit the church more than once on some trips.

 

Yeah, I've been lucky enough to spend weeks at a time, several times, in France. I’m not saying that

to humble-brag; I'm flat out acknowledging how fortunate I am. And no lie, I'm not sad that our kids have picked up on my Francophilia. Jack chose French as his high school language, and Julia will be studying abroad in Paris next term.

For me, any cultural destruction hurts. Physically hurts. Palmyra, the National Museums of Iraq and Brazil, the Buddhas of Bamiyan -- all gone, and I mourn the losses. 

I understand why such places are destroyed during wars: destroy culture and you demoralize and defeat your enemies. I suppose the same is true of the reasoning behind three recent Louisiana African-American church fires. Hate is hate is hate, after all. 

But this was not an act of hate; this fire was accidental. That randomness, that feeling of it-didn’t-need-to-happen, gives it unique pain. There are plenty of what-ifs and if-onlies that popped up immediately on social media from people who claimed to Know Things, as if their special knowledge could have prevented or minimized the loss. Perhaps it did, for them. It’s always that way -- and yes, there’s always That Guy (Flying Water Tankers, my ass).  

There were even complaints from some that the secular world had no claim to mourn, that the sorrow should be solely religiously-focused. Yes, of course, let us not forget that Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris is a church, a house of worship. Its loss for the faithful is another special pain.

But the building is not even literally owned by the Church. It is no disrespect to acknowledge that it is far more than church; it is cultural icon.

Just look at your feeds, look at the photos people are posting. It belongs to all who want it. 

I’ve studied and written about medieval history, about Notre-Dame. Here, here's a writing:  LINK. 

(It's an odd hobby, maybe, but it keeps me out of trouble). 

I thus know a fair amount about what parts are really old, what’s old-old, what’s kinda old, and what’s comparatively newish. 

It doesn’t matter, though. Because when that spire collapsed, it pierced my heart. I cried like a banshee in my study and the dogs came running to see if I’d skewered fresh meat for them. 

That spire was a quasi-modern recreation. It wasn’t medieval; it was all 19^th century Viollet-le-Duc (a French architect I have a love-hate relationship with).   

But that layering of history, that piling-on of architecture, that's part of why I so love old buildings. They’re never just the way in the now as when they were built. And Notre-Dame is truly a limestone palimpsest of centuries, sealed with the sweat of men who created and recreated and created yet again. 

Notre-Dame has lost many layers, but will build more. 

I take hope in the few nave photos I've seen. What I feared was total ruin. There appears to be enough left for me to say, when finally I walk through the doors again, that yes, it’s still here. “It” being the accumulated energy in this architectural witness to history, energy generated by the hopes and fears of the centuries of faithful and faithless and everything-in-between visitors who walked the floors. 

Don't get me wrong. I don't believe in actual ghosts. And though raised in one, I am not now a follower of organized religion. When I enter a religious building, I am humbled by the weight of yearning & hope magnified across generations. The walls and floors of such buildings bear witness to all human experience. It is that witnessing and connecting, along with joy in their sculptural majesty, that I treasure and respect in such buildings. 

Enough still remains at Notre-Dame, and more will be added for future generations, for the connections to continue.

It is worth remembering that what we build is ephemeral. What endures is love.

Fluctuat nec mergitur