Thoughts on the Tragic Burning of the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral

The Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral in Paris, France is widely considered one of the greatest examples of medieval Gothic architecture, an international symbol of French culture, and a testament to over seven hundred years of human history. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and attracts millions of tourists and pilgrims every year. Tragically, however, at around 6:45 p.m. Paris time on 15 April 2019, the historic cathedral was engulfed in flames. The fire blazed for around fourteen hours before it was finally put out completely, completely consuming the cathedral’s iconic spire and most of its roof, as well as wreaking massive damage to other parts of the cathedral as well.

Historical background

The construction of the Notre Dame de Paris was first begun in 1160 AD. The cathedral was mostly completed by around 1260, although many significant additions were added to the cathedral over the course of the next few centuries. The cathedral was desecrated during the French Revolution (1789 – 1799) and, in December 1804, it was where Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of France.

Renewed attention was brought to the cathedral in 1831 with the publication of the bestselling novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by the great French writer Victor Hugo. Largely as a result of Hugo’s novel, the cathedral underwent a major restoration between 1844 and 1864 under the supervision of the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

When the city of Paris was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, it was to the sound of Emmanuel, the great bourden of Notre Dame and it was in Notre Dame that the people celebrated with the Magnificat. It is understandable, given all that this cathedral has seen, that the fire earlier this week has come as an almost unthinkable horror to many people all around the world.

ABOVE: Photograph of the exterior façade of the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral from before the fire

ABOVE: Photograph of the interior of the nave of the Notre Dame de Paris from before the fire

Causes of the fire

As of the time I am writing this, the exact cause of the fire is still unknown, but it is known that the cathedral was undergoing major restoration work and authorities have concluded that the fire originated near the site of construction. There is currently no evidence to support the notion that the fire is the result of arson or a terrorist attack. Authorities are treating the fire as an accident. It is very common for old buildings, especially cathedrals, to catch fire during renovations, since renovations often involve use of blowtorches and other welding and cutting tools.

Both the interior frame and the exterior of the roof of the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral were made almost entirely from wood, which is itself a highly flammable material. There was so much wood in the roof of the Notre Dame cathedral that it was known as “The Forest.” The problem of flammability was further compounded by the fact that most of this wood was around 750 years old and extremely dry. As anyone who has ever built a campfire will tell you, old, dry wood burns extremely easily and it takes only a little flame to catch the whole thing alight.

ABOVE: Photographs of a few small portions of the roof of Notre Dame that burned during the fire, showing just how much old, dry wood there was to burn

The fact that the fire was near the very top of the cathedral also made it extremely difficult for firefighters to reach. Although Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States, suggested in a tweet that “flying water tankers” should be dumped on the cathedral to put out the fire, this method was not used because it would have very likely caused structural damage to the cathedral, which was precisely what firefighters were trying to avert. All of these factors together created a perfect storm for the fire to rapidly spread out of control.

Damage to the cathedral

Although the Notre Dame cathedral remained structurally intact after the fire, the damage inflicted on the cathedral was still immense. Most of the roof of the cathedral as well as the wooden interior frame of the roof have been completely burned. Additionally, the cathedral’s famous spire has collapsed and the upper walls and windows have suffered severe damage. The two towers of the cathedral are safe and the stone vaulted ceiling is mostly intact, although some sections of it have collapsed, primarily due to falling debris from the roof.

ABOVE: Photograph of the Notre Dame de Paris burning

ABOVE: Photograph showing severe damage to the stone vaulted ceiling of the cathedral from the inside

Thankfully, the fire did not kill anyone, but one firefighter and two police officers were injured. Most of the art and religious artifacts held in the cathedral have either been saved or managed to survive the fire intact, including the cathedral’s famous rose windows, the crown of thorns kept in the cathedral said to have been the one worn by Jesus Christ before his crucifixion, a tunic said to have belonged to King Louis IX of France, the cathedral’s grand organ, and the altar of the cathedral, complete with its statue of the Virgin Mary.

Many objects were saved due to the fact that much of the art that is normally kept in the cathedral had already been removed due to ongoing renovations. For instance, sixteen statues depicting the twelve apostles and four evangelists had been removed from their usual location around the spire of the cathedral only the week before the fire and transported to a workshop near Bordeaux for restoration. Since the spire collapsed during the fire, if the statues had still been attached when the fire broke out, they would have almost certainly been destroyed.

ABOVE: Photographs capturing the very moment of the spire’s collapse

ABOVE: Photograph showing sixteen statues of the apostles and the evangelists that were removed from around the spire only the week before the fire

Reactions to the burning of Notre Dame

The French president Emmanuel Macron has promised that Notre Dame will be rebuilt within five years in time for the 2024 Olympic Games, which will be held in Paris, and that it will be “even more beautiful than before.” This is probably little more than the usual reassuring political rhetoric, since it is unlikely that Notre Dame, with all the damage it sustained, will really be rebuilt in just five years.

Nonetheless, there is strong commitment to the rebuilding of Notre Dame and I am certain that it will indeed be rebuilt eventually. It may not happen as soon as Macron hopes, but it will definitely happen. Politicians and leaders from all around the world, including Pope Francis, Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Mike Pence, have expressed sorrow at the destruction that has been inflicted upon this historic monument.

As I write this, over one billion dollars have already been raised for the rebuilding of the great cathedral, donated by both ordinary people and by wealthy billionaires alike. Although France no longer has forests with enough trees large enough to furnish replacements for the original wooden frame of the cathedral’s roof, other countries may be able to provide the necessary lumber.

ABOVE: Photograph showing the Notre Dame cathedral burning against the night sky

ABOVE: Photograph of the burning cathedral taken by a drone from above

Some personal thoughts

Ironically, my very first thought about the burning of the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral was not about the cathedral of Notre Dame, but rather about a much more ancient monument in a completely different country, one whose fate bears certain striking similarities to Notre Dame: the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.

Like the Notre Dame de Paris, the Parthenon was originally built as a house of worship and, like Notre Dame, it is named after a famous virgin. (The Parthenon’s name in Greek means “House of the Virgin,” originally referring to the virgin goddess Athena. Notre Dame de Paris means “Our Lady of Paris,” referring to the Virgin Mary.)

Construction on the Parthenon began in 447 BC and it was completed in 432 BC. Just to put into perspective how incredibly old that is, at the time when the Parthenon was built, the land on which the city of Paris now stands was nothing but swampland; not only had the New Testament not been written yet, but the canon of the Hebrew Bible had not yet been compiled and many of the books that now make it up had not even been written yet; not only did the French language not exist, but Classical Latin did not even exist yet either; and Rome was just a tiny city in Italy that few people outside of the immediate region had heard of or even cared about.

By the time the Gallic city of Lutetia, which is now the modern city of Paris, was founded in the first century BC, the Parthenon was already around three and a half centuries old—roughly half the current age of Notre Dame. By the time Old French evolved from Vulgar Latin in around the eighth century AD, the Parthenon was already around 1,100 years old—nearly one and half times as old as Notre Dame is today.

By the time the Notre Dame de Paris was completed in around the late 1250s or thereabouts, the Parthenon was already over 1,690 years old—over twice as old as Notre Dame is today. Now, in 2019, it has been 2,451 years since the Parthenon’s final completion in 432 BC—making the Parthenon over three times as old as Notre Dame. The Parthenon has stood on the Akropolis for so long that you could fit the entire 243-year history of the United States into the lifespan of the Parthenon ten times over and still have years left over. To put it simply, the Parthenon is very old.

Then, on 26 September 1687—a day which will forever live in infamy—the unthinkable happened. The Parthenon suffered a fate even worse than the one which befell the Notre Dame de Paris yesterday; the Parthenon was literally blown up. The small Ottoman-ruled village of Athens was caught in the midst of a battle between the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks. The Turks were using the Parthenon to store gunpowder and, in the middle of the battle, a stray Venetian artillery shell struck the Parthenon, igniting the gunpowder stored within.

The result was an absolutely catastrophic explosion that completely destroyed the roof of the temple, destroyed three of the four inner walls of the temple’s sanctuary, crumbled the cella completely to rubble, knocked over six columns on the southern side of the temple, eight on the northern side, and the destroyed entire eastern porch of the temple. As the columns came down, down with them came the architraves, triglyphs, and metopes.

Fire and fragments of ruined marble rained down on the village of Athens that day. The explosion is estimated to have killed around 300 people and caused massive fires which raged throughout the city for days afterwards. When the fires finally ceased, anyone seeing the rubble of the once-great temple would have agreed that that was the end of the Parthenon, that the temple had finally been thoroughly destroyed.

Here is an illustration from 1688, showing the Parthenon as it looked before the explosion:

Here is a painting of the ruins of the Parthenon as they appeared in 1715. As you can see, there was not much of it left:

Here is the earliest known photograph of the Parthenon, taken in October 1839:

Even today, after over a century of extensive restorations to the Parthenon, the damage from that terrible 1687 explosion is still readily apparent, as these photographs clearly demonstrate:

Why am I talking about the Parthenon in an article about the Notre Dame de Paris? Well, it is because I want to make a point about how looking back at our history can inform us about the present. Even though anyone alive at the time who had heard about the explosion in the Parthenon would have said that that was the Parthenon’s final destruction, today the Parthenon is still one of the most famous monuments in the entire world. It is widely considered a symbol of the glories of democratic Athens, of Greek culture, and of what human beings are capable of. It is still visited by roughly 7.2 million tourists every year.

Here are some photographs of the Notre Dame cathedral now, after the fire:

As you can see, although the damage is certainly severe, there is still quite a lot left of Notre Dame. Indeed, there is a lot more of Notre Dame left than there was of the Parthenon after it was blown up in 1687. Other cathedrals have suffered even worse damage. The Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany was almost totally destroyed during World War II, but it has since been rebuilt and is now one of the most iconic monuments in Germany.

Even if it is impossible for us to fully repair the serious damage that the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral has suffered, this is still not the end of Notre Dame. It will almost certainly remain one of the finest examples of medieval Gothic architecture for centuries to come.