12-08-2024 4:52am

Craig Bennett Offers History, Celebrates Re-opening of Historic Notre Dame Cathedral de Paris

Lesley Misko Editor

Image from November 29, 2024, on Facebook that brings together the workers who have spent the last five years restoring the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Editor's Note: Due to publisher error, we are sharing again to make certain everyone gets to read Craig’s timely and inspiring story.

by Craig Bennett*

When I opened up my email one morning just after this past Thanksgiving, my eye was caught by an item from my Yahoo news feed: the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France. My mind went immediately back to April 15, 2019, when I discovered—again, through my Yahoo news feed—that the eight-hundred-year-old cathedral was on fire! I switched immediately to whatever internet feed I could find that would, I hoped, give me up-to-the-minute information on how the fire was being fought. But what I found out made my heart sink.

Photo credit: Fabien Barrau

You see, I had been there. I had seen with my own eyes and felt with all the sensitivity my soul could muster the indescribable beauty of the entire edifice: the magnificent towers flanking the main entrance; the flying buttresses along each side, giving the whole structure an almost futuristic appearance as they served to support the unusually high, thin walls characteristic of the relatively new Gothic architectural style; the needle-like spire emerging from the point in the roof directly above where the long nave and the two shorter transepts intersect; and its impressive array of statuary arranged all around the lower parts of the façade. And the even more strikingly beautiful interior, with its vast proportions, light filtering dimly through its stained-glass windows, and its artistic splendor, emphasized by the gleam of gold and the many pieces of devotional art visible everywhere, especially in the area surrounding the altar. That such a treasure, steeped in more than eight centuries of French history and a widely recognized symbol of the influence of the Church on that history, could be irreversibly damaged or even destroyed within a matter of hours seemed almost inconceivable. But that appeared to be exactly what was happening.

My reaction may have been a bit stronger than that of the average American or, for that matter, even the average European. But I found myself to be deeply affected by those ancient, magnificent, and overwhelmingly beautiful buildings during a summer of traveling around Europe during which I was fortunate to visit some of the largest, oldest, and most famous churches on the continent. I recall, for example, traveling across a broad, flat plain on the approach to Chartres and noticing a couple of tiny, block-like protrusions, side-by-side, just slightly above the horizon. I didn’t think much about them as we drew closer to the town itself until it gradually became apparent that these were—and had been right along, from however many miles away—the huge twin towers of the cathedral. When I finally stood only a few yards away from them and looked up, they were, indeed, overwhelming.

But this was part of the “madness” behind the method. These huge Gothic churches were designed and constructed to glorify God—and to impress the worshippers of the power and majesty of the deity whom they worshipped. We have no such tradition here in America. As Henry Miller (a far better writer than he’s usually given credit for) observed, we have no great cathedrals, temples, pyramids, and other such works “created out of love and faith and passion.” What we have instead are bridges, dams, highways, and skyscrapers—purely utilitarian creations for which something like beauty was not even an afterthought.

Nor do we have much in the way of history that’s comparable to that of most other countries in the world. We are indeed a young nation. Notre Dame, on the other hand, had its beginning back in the year 1163—on the site of a former and much more ancient Roman temple. And it took approximately one hundred years to build, not counting a few final touches completed after it had been opened for worship. For several years after the French Revolution in 1789, it became a “Temple of Reason” in keeping with the new government’s official abolition of religion. It saw the coronation of Napoleon as emperor, when he scandalized the rest of Europe by seizing the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope and placing it upon his own head. In 1831 the publication of Victor Hugo’s immensely popular Hunchback of Notre Dame(Notre-Dame de Paris in the original French) made it famous well beyond the borders of France as the novel was translated into many different languages.

As a result of this popularity, large numbers of tourists made their way to Paris with a visit to the cathedral high on their list of things to do. But Notre Dame had not been very well taken care of. Much of the damage wrought during the Revolution was still present, and the once magnificent edifice looked more like a ruin in the making. So, the government ordered a renovation and chose Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as the architect to take charge of the project. But Viollet-le-Duc’s renovation was much more of a restoration; and although some of the major replacements were of his own design, they were very much in keeping with the medieval spirit of the architecture. It took twenty years, but the most famous church in Paris, and perhaps in all of France, once again appeared as ready to impress visitors as it had been several centuries before.

In 1944, however, the great cathedral was once again threatened. But when Hitler’s troops occupied Paris, the Führer had enough sense to recognize the city as a European cultural treasure and refrain from causing unnecessary destruction. However, when Allied troops liberated Paris, there were still some Nazi snipers who remained there in hiding, a few in the great towers of the church itself. On August 26, the morning after the liberation, there was a service in the cathedral. The nave of Notre Dame is large, but more than three hundred Allied soldiers attended, overflowing into the aisle and other available spaces, many standing, holding their helmets and with their rifles still slung over their shoulders.

And then on April 15, 2019, Notre Dame started to burn.

Although I don’t expect to get there again to see it, I am extremely grateful that it was not lost and that it has been restored still again so that others may experience something like what I myself did when I first walked into that cool, dimly lighted, magnificent interior many years ago. And, although am not conventionally religious in any way, I believe that there is something afoot in the universe that humans have generally referred to as “God” and that whatever that is will be looking on with favor when another Christmas mass is finally held in the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, taking up again an infrequently broken tradition going back more than eight centuries and celebrating peace and good will toward our fellow human beings. And I will hope that as a result these values might spread just a little more widely throughout the troubled world in which we live. Merry Christmas. [The "official" re-opening of the cathedral will be held again on Sunday, December 8, 2024.]

Photo credit: David Bordes

* Craig H. Bennett, author of Nights on the Mountain and More Things in Heaven and Earth, available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and the Firefly Bookstore in Kutztown, PA

Sources: Follett, Ken. Notre Dame. New York: Viking, 2019

Miller, Henry. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare Vol.1, 1945. New York: New Directions, 1970. p. 228