Notre Dame

Notre Dame

I never really thought about what Notre Dame meant, but when it was said, I had a duh moment.  Notre- our and Dame-lady.  Our Lady.  How very appropriate for a Catholic nation.  

This cathedral was built in the center of France.  It was also the center of Paris 2300 years ago when the Parisli tribe lived here.  The Romans conquered the Parisli and in 52BC built their Termple of Jupiter where Notre Dame stands today.  When Rome fell, the pagan temple was replaced by a Christian church.  Many, many years later, the cathedral was built.

Charlemagne
Charlemagne was king of the Franks from 768 to his death in 814.  His reign marks the birth of modern France.  He expanded the Frankish kingdom to incorporate much of Western and Central Europe.  During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on December 25, 800, in an attempted revival of the Roman Empire in the West.  He helped
define the Middle Ages and Western Europe by his foreign conquests and internal reforms.

We also encountered mention of Charlemagne when we were in Ireland in regards to 

the monks on the Dingle.  The monks' reputation for recording history reached 

Charlemagne, and he recruited many of them to record his history.

This is one of the glorious bell towers.  We got to hear them peal 

while we were waiting to go into the cathedral.

Gargoyles

The gargoyles are actually water spouts.  The shape of the gargoyle is to 

demonstrate a body/soul between life and death.

Mary, Notre Dame, Our Lady
Mary, holding the baby Jesus, is bookended by two angels
The window looks like a giant halo surrounding them.

Saints, including St Dennis, the one holding his head in his hands.  When Christianity began in Roman Paris, Saint Dennis was beheaded as a warning for anyone worshiping any other god than the Roman gods.  But, as tradition tells it, Dennis got up, tucked his head under his arm, and headed north, paused at a fountain to wash it off, and continued until he found just the right place to meet his Maker.  The Parisians were impressed by this miracle, Christianity gained ground, and a church soon replaced the pagan temple.

Last Judgement
Christ sits on the throne of judgement.  Below Him are an angel and a demon weighing souls in the balance.  The demon hopes to steal a soul, cheats by pressing down on the balance.  The good people stand to the left, gazing up to heaven.  The ones going to hell are chained up.
Below them are those still in their graves.  Angels are on either side with trumpets announcing that it is time for them to be judged.
Every walk of man is represented on this to show that everyone will be judged.

Joan of Arc

A 15th century French teenager who rallied French soldiers to try to drive 

the English invaders from Paris.  She was later arrested and tried for 

heresy and burned at the stake for claiming to hear heavenly voices.  This was a politically motivated execution, and in 1909, the church started steps to have her sainted.

Thomas Aquinas
Here he is teaching, while his students drink from the fountain of knowledge.  Thomas Aquinas did his undergrad and master's work at the University of Paris and taught there for several years while he wrote his theoligical works.  His goal was to fuse faih and reason.

This beautiful window is one of the church's three rose windows with its original medieval glass.

Choir Wall

This is where more intimate services were held without being overwhelmed by the vastness of the cathedral.  The choir wall feature Biblical scenes.

The scene on left depicts our resurrected Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene.  

The one on the right is when he appeared to his female disciples. 

Here are more Biblical scenes in the choir wall.

Conversion of Paul Claudel

Paul Claudel was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptress Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism. Claudel was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in six different years.

An unbeliever in his teenage years, he experienced a sudden conversion at the age of eighteen on Christmas Day 1886 while listening to a choir sing Vespers in the cathedral of Notre Dame: "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed." He would remain a strong Catholic for the rest of his life.

There are many chapels around the sanctuary.  Each is dedicated to a particular saint.  

They all have beautiful stained glass windows and a a place for devotion.

Plaque dedicating the cathedral (I think!)

In one of the chapels is this model of the cathedral.

The model below demonstrated how the church was built.  The French broke ground to build this cathedral in 1163.  It was two centuries later before it was completed.  The community raised the moeny to build this place.  Master masons supervised the construction, but the people did much of the grunt work themselves for free.  They would haul the huge stones, dig the trench to lay the foundation, and walk on a treadmill to lift the stones up, one by one.

This is in the ceiling in the middle.

The Progression of the building of the Cathedral

On display were a series of pictures with explanations of the progression of the building of the cathedral.  Below are these images with the explanation typed below each image.

Notre Dame of Paris is the Gothic cathedral par excellence.  It set the standard for a new architecture called Gothic from the moment of its inception in the second half of the twelfth century; it was a building to which all eyes were turned, set at the heart of the nascent capital city of the kingdom of France.

The cathedral was not created in a single bound; it is the product of a long history that is anything but linear.  The first stage of construction ran from the 1160's to the middle of the thirteenth century.  The modifications undertaken soon thereafter, which extended through the middle of the fourteenth century, established what has become an archetype of the Gothic cathedral, with vast sheets of glass held in place by sophisticated, seemingly prehensile flying buttresses.  This of the image of Notre Dame of Paris, that we retain today, as one of the greatest monuments of world heritage.

Altered and restored again and again over the course of eight centuries the architectural history of the building has become difficult to decrypt.  State of the art imaging technology, however, supplies a new mode of understanding.  A highly precise spatial map of over one billion laser-measured points has made it possible to retrace, in visual terms, the story of the construction, transformation and reconstruction of Notre Dame.  This exhibition and the book from which it is deriverd are the fruit of this research.

Over the course of the 1160's the Gothic cathedral progressively repalced a multitude of buildings, many of them of modest scale, which were spread over the eastern extremity of the Ile de la Cite.  They were in various states of repair and built at various times; they stood witness to the great diversity of the mother church of the diocese of Paris, itself dating from the fourth century.

Written sources indicate three sanctuaries on the site at the beginning of the twelfth century: one was a church dedicated to Saint Stephen, began perhaps in the early Middle Ages; another, mentioned in a ninth century text was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.  None, however, can be located with any certainty.

Other documentary sources, in concert with archeological data, make it possible- through only hypothetically- to reconstruct further buildings in the vicinity of the largest church (perhaps dedicated at this point to Our Lady).  From west to east: Saint-Christophe; the baptistry of Saint-Jean with centralized plan; three churches set in parallel; and Saint-Denis-du-Pas.  All were oriented, that is, facing east, with primary entrance to the west.  The new cathedral follows this disposition. 

The construction of the Gothic cathedral was initiated by Bishop Maurice de Sully, and it marked the peak of the Parisian episcopate.  It was he who managed to gather the considerable diocesan forces required to erect such a vast edifice.  In 1177 the choir of the cathedral is complete except for the high vaults.  The roof protects the worksite from rain; it also supplies a framework from which the vaulting stones and their temporary wooden supports, called centering, can be hoisted.  The flying buttresses have been installed in antici[ation of the vaults to assure that vault thrust is safely transmitted to the ground.  The pressure which the flyers exert against the upper walls is resisted for the moment by the centering.  Construction of the transept and the first bays of the nave, on the south side, continues toward the west.

Twenty years after the start of work, on 19 May 1182, the clergy solemnly take possession of the cathedral.  The building is closed to the elements by a temporary wall; construction advances to the west.  The stalls for the clergy are placed in the four straight bays of the choir, just to the east of the transept, the transversal space whose wall is under construction here.

At the eastern extremity of the central vessel is the sanctuary, raised by several steps.  The main altar is the focal point of the space.  It is here that High Mass is celebrated daily with great solemnity in the midst of relics contained within lavish silver reliquaries.  In addition to the biship and fifty-one members of the cathedral chapter, called canons, there were several dozen chaplains, clerics and choir boys who participated in the religious services.  All told, over one hundred people might pray daily in the space of the choir- a considerable force.

The nave, the western portion of the central vessel of the church, was begun before the choir was complete.  Though it follows, generally speaking, the design established in the choir, several important changes were introduced- the most obvious of which is the slenderness of the walls.  These modifications were for the most part the result of technical innovations and can perhaps e credited to a new architect.  The facades of the transepts were probably fitted with great rose windows such as were found in the Cistercian abbey church of the Vaux-de-Cernay , south of Paris, used here as a model.  

Construction proceeds in the nave; the bases of the western towers are in place.  Design modifications are also visible on the exterior of the building: the flying buttress uprights rise higher than their counterparts in the choir, and the flying arch itself is sturdier, surely for reasons of security.  A series of wooden struts has been placed against each of the peirs and against the western walls; these are designed to prevent deformation in the building as the martar dries.  

The cathedral is complete but for the upper portion of the towers: the western rose window is finished.  The monumentality of this great western block, intended to announce the presence of the mother church of the diocese throughout the city, is already striking.  The three portals below constitute the principal entry and celebrate the saints of the diocese and the Virgin Mary, the patroness of the cathedral.  At the center is a representation of the Last Judgement, a strong reminder to those who pass below to live according to the example of Christ.  The sculpted ensemble of the portals can be understood as both an allegory of Paradise as a reflection of the decisions of the Foutrth Lateran Council of 1215, which promulgated a new vision of pastoral care.  A gallery of twenty-eight colossal statues of kings just above the portals proclaims the privileged relationship between the French monarchy and the Church of Paris; each French king, from the outset of his reign, promised both to protect and respect this alliance.

Only a few years after its completion, the superstructure of the cathedral was partially demolished and reworked to enlarge the upper windows.  Above, to the left, the remodeling of the choir has already taken place; the lean-to roofs over the tribunes and the circular openings (called oculi) in the wall above them are replaced by large windows composed of two lancets and an oculus.  Peaked roofs now cover the tribunes.  The upper wall of the main vessel is raised in height and a new main roof has been built.  The dismantling of the old roof is under way in the nave as is the installation of a new drainage system; rainwater enters a gutter at roof level and is carried along the backs of the flying buttresses, which are being reworked for this purpose.  The apparent regularity of the facade conceals a serious constructional problem; over the course of several years the entire western block has pivoted outward to the north and west by thirty centimeters because of foundation settlement.

The major structural work of the cathedral is at last complete.  The towers rise 69 meters into the sky and are visible well beyond the medieval city.  They perform a dual role: as visual signals for the surrounding countryside and as the voice of the cathedral, because of the bells they contain.  The bells were first installed only in the north tower, known in the Middle Ages as either the "big tower" or the tower of Saint William because of donations made for its construction by Bishop William of Auvergne (1249).  Only in the fifteenth century would the south tower be fitted with a series of great bells, or bourdons, among them Jacqueline, later recast and christened Emmanueal during the reign of Louis XIV. 

The ongoing renovation of the cathedral takes a particularly spectacular turn.  A lead-covered wooden spire broadcasts the intersection of the two main vessels of the cathedral, which together form a Latin cross.  The transept arms are also given completely new facades, a modification tied to the contemporary redesign of the cathedral's principal reliquary, which contains the remains of Saint Marcel, a fifth century bishop of Paris.  The transept facades thus announce, in a monumental way, the presence of the reliquary in the sanctuary-just as the royal chapel on the Ile de la Cite, the Sainte-Chapelle, had served since 1248 as a splendid reliquary of colored glass for the relics of the passion of Christ acquired by Saint Louis.  Through these renovations, the bishop and chapter of Notre Dame kept their building at the forefront of the Parisian monumental landscape.

The transformations of Notre Dame continue; chapels are added along the periphery of the choir.  This multiplication of devotional spaces, from the late twelfth century onward, is linked to the popularity of private mass endorsements by members of the clergy, and, less frequently by lay members of the community.  The increase in the number of altars-required to celebrate the offices-had begun to crowd the interior of the cathedral, in response, chapels were constructed between the outer buttresses, first in the choir, and then in the nave.  It was an ingenious solution: new space could be created efficiently by displacing the wall of the building outward to the extremity of the buttresses.  This expansion was accomplished in less than a century, beginning with the first four chapels on the north side of the nave (around 1225-1235) and ending with the axial chapel in the choir; founded by Bishop Simon de Bucy (1304).

The major transformation to the building fabric are complete.  The choir is terminated to the west by a great screen, the jube; the entrances to the aisles around the choir, the ambulatory, are framed with highly colored gables.  The interior walls are covered throughout with polychromy in combinations of white and yellow-ochre; the paint is intended both to highlight the structure of the building and harmonize it with new and brighter stained glass windows.

The construction of Notre Dame was a collective operation whose actors remain anonymous until the middle of the thirteenth century.  At this point the documentary sources begin to record the names of architects celebrated for their skill, from Jean de Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil, who were responsible for the faceades of the transepts, to Raymond du Temple, the great architect of King Charles V (1364-1380).  The recurrence of certain family names suggests that there were veritable dynasties of builders, a common situation in medieval worksites given that access to building-related professions was lightly controlled.  The architect, master of the works, stood at the head of a body of artisans whose number depended on the financial resources of the cathedral, the political and economic situation, and the relative urgency of the works.

After a phase of intense constructional activity that lasted from the 1160's through the middle of the fourteenth century, Notre Dame seems to settle into a state of immobility.  The great church would remain essentially unchanged over the course of the three following centuries-though the surrounding urban fabric and many of the city's parish churches would be profoundly altered.

Only after the promotion of Paris to archbishopric in 1622 are new large-scale modifications undertaken.  The interior walls are repainted in white; colorless glass installed throughout; and the choir is entirely reworked in a classical more, with a profusion of marble, to welcome the "Vow of Louis XIII," which placed the kingdom under the protection of the Virgin Mary, patroness of the cathedral.  A series of great paintings known as "Mays," which depict the events of the Acts of the Apostles, is placed above the piers of the nave.

The cathedral was returned to the Catholic Church on 18 April 1802; it was in an advanced state of dilapidation after the tumultuous years of the Revolution.  Repairs to the building were minimal until the arrival on the scene of two young architects; Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugene-Emmanuel   Viollet-le-Duc, who in 1846 won the competition for the restoration of Notre Dame.  The cathedral had come to epitomize a nascent movement to preserve national artistic patrimony, launched in the early 1830's by a dedicated and resourceful group of individuals.  The great restoration, carried to fruition by Viollet-le-Duc following the death of Lassus, supplied new radiance to the cathedral- whatever reservations one might have about the choices that were made.  The work of the nineteenth century is now as much a part of the architectural history of Notre Dame as that undertaken in previous centuries.

The major changes to the building from the twentieth century onward result from evolutions in liturgical practice.  In 1989, a new altar was installed at the crossing; in 2004, its function was enhanced as part of a reorganization of the liturgical space.  The Cross of Glory that stands above the Pieta at the rear of the choir was installed in 1993.

In the tradition of its medieval builders, Notre Dame continues to be modernized to keep it fully in the present.  The great organ, rebuilt in 1898, continues to expand; in 1960, the nave was fitted with abstract stained glass windows which underline the coherence and sobriety of the space; in 2000, after nearly ten years of work, the facade regained much of its original splendor.  In 2013, eight new bells and a new bourdon were cast and took their places in the towers along with the bourdon of 1686.  The Treasury, the Red Door, and the lighting-among many other things-have also been updated.

each year, fourteen million visitors from around the world enter through the portals of Notre Dame, this masterpiece of Gothic architecture.  Yet the cathedral is more than just an historic monument: it is, above all else, "the house of God and the house of man"-alive with faith and prayer and filled with Christian and human experience alike.  The cathedral is witness to the life of the People of God.

Reliquary dedicated to St Genevieve.

This box is said to hold a saint's mortal remains.  It is dedicated to St Genevieve.  In the fifth century, when Attila the Hun was ravaging Europe, it was Genevieve's fervent prayers that miraculously saved the city of Paris from destruction.

In front of Notre Dame.

To the side of Notre Dame

Behind Notre Dame

Info from Ken Runquist, Rick Steves and Wikipedia