With unaccustomed efficiency I was already well advanced
with a blog essay for the week when news began to arrive about the fire at
Notre Dame de Paris. This news was
coming, as it was to the whole world, though all our major journalistic
organizations, and from the very start it was accompanied by shocking
photographs of the spreading blaze in the timbers of the vast roof. But we also had more in personal
communications from friends at the American
cathedral, of which we are members and, when lucky enough to be in residence in
Paris, fairly active ones. Personal
connections, even rather casual ones, can add immediacy to generality and
abstraction.
Speaking as
a medievalist, I do not regard Notre Dame de Paris as my favorite medieval
French church. I’ll be provocative and
say I’m not sure it even makes my Top Ten.
You’ve got Chartres, Amiens, Mont-Saint-Michel, Sens, Saint-Hilaire in
Poitiers. That’s before you even take
into consideration monastic masterpieces like Vézelay or Conques. A short walk from Notre Dame itself you have
the Sainte Chapelle, possibly the most remarkable building wrought by the
Gothic hand in all of Europe. I could
plausibly go on before arriving at the crucial but. In this instance the but is all important. But Notre Dame has a unique significance for
Parisians, for all of France, and indeed for all of us for whom France has been
a teacher.
The French
ambassador, interviewed by the PBS “News Hour”, declared that the cathedral was
intimately connected with “what it means to be French”. This same phrase, or one very similar, was
used by several others, including “ordinary” Parisians interviewed on the
streets. I try in vain to imagine a building
that many people in this country would say is integral to “what it means to
be American”. Certainly in this
country—which is still in the western context a fairly religious country—it would not be a house of worship. But in France, which underwent a sanguinary
revolution directed in large measure against the Church, where militant
anti-clericalism has been a more or less permanent feature of the political
scene, and where the doctrine of laïcité
(separation of Church and State on steroids) is as the law of the Persians and
the Medes, it is there, in France, that a musty old limestone fossil is the
“essence of what it means to be French.”
The gewgaw
collector in Paris can probably find a Notre Dame ashtray if he wanted to; but
he would be overwhelmed with opportunities in the genre of the Eiffel
Tower. Had the Frenchman in the street
told me that the Eiffel Tower was all about “what it means to be French,” I
might have been scornful, but I would not have been surprised. The Eiffel Tower is a very American kind of
erection. It’s like the Gateway Arch in
Saint Louis or the world’s largest polyurethane peach in Gaffney, S.C. or for
that matter the imposing prestressed concrete pillars surrounding the Woodrow
Wilson School on my own campus. It does
absolutely nothing beyond exulting in the audacity of its own existence. And having no intrinsic meaning, it is
available as a repository for meanings supplied by others.
Americans seem to like to define
the national character by the technique of the via negativa—ruling out what it is not. I notice that several of our current
presidential candidates, when confronting some instance of quintessentially
American behavior of which they disapprove, are prone to say “This is not America” or “This is not who we
are.” I actually resent being told who I
am not by people I have never met, but let it pass. The French are very much into national
navel-gazing. Mr. Macron has just
completed God knows how many hours of a much-touted national conversation about
the French national character; so when he associates the ancient church of
Notre Dame de Paris with the essence of French identity, I take it very
seriously and find it very moving. It is
striking not merely that this great sacred building has been appropriated by
the civil state, but that the civil state would appear to aspire to a monopoly
on it. Among the talking heads who have
been speaking with great emotion about it on American television are
historians, political pundits, erudite art historians, sociologists and random
tourists from many nations. I have not
heard the single opinion of one of the cathedral clergy or of frequent
worshippers at its altars. There are still
a few of these, as I know from personal experience, having attended the odd
service there myself over the years.
For a world in which there often
seems to be a paucity of good news, the devastation of one of the great
monuments of Christian civilization offers paradoxical relief. It became clear within hours that the
cathedral can be, and will be, rebuilt.
Mr. Macron promised that it would be done within five years. I suspect it will be achieved more quickly
yet. The cathedrals of the Middle Ages—often
poetically called the “Age of Faith”--took generations to build in large part
because of challenges presented by capital markets that in retrospect seem
primitive. The financing of Saint
Peter’s in Rome was so dodgy that it played a part in inciting the Protestant
Revolt. We live in an Age of Money. Even as I write this, even before the embers
are cool, even before we have a reliable survey of the damage, a significant
portion of the funding that will be needed for the church’s restoration has
been promised. France has not forgotten
where she came from, nor have the rest of us forgotten France. It’s all rather amazing actually. At least for a brief season we can do
something more satisfying than argue about Brexit.
