They are built, they get burned, they are rebuilt
More “it’s horrifying but it’s fixable and it’s not actually as horrifying as most of us thought” news: Sara L. Uckleman on Facebook, with a “please share”:
While what has happened to Notre Dame today has shocked me and moved me to tears more than once over the course of the evening, I’m finding that my background and training as a medievalist means I’m, overall, finding it a lot less devastating than many people.
Why?
Because I know how churches live. They are not static monuments to the past. They are built, they get burned, they are rebuilt, they are extended, they get ransacked, they get rebuilt, they collapse because they were not built well, they get rebuilt, they get extended, they get renovated, they get bombed, they get rebuilt. It is the continuous presence, not the original structure, that matters.
The spire that fell, that beautiful iconic spire? Not even 200 years old. A new spire can be built, the next stage in the evolution of the cathedral.
Ah. That does help, actually. 200-ish is still old, but it’s not the one from a 12th century workshop, so yeah.
The rose windows? Reproductions of the originals. We can reproduce them again.
Notre Dame is one of the best documented cathedrals in the world. We have the knowledge we need to rebuild it.
But more than that: We have the skill. There may not be as many ecclesiastical stone masons nowadays as there were in the height of the Middle Ages, but there are still plenty, and I bet masons from all over Europe, if not further, will be standing ready to contribute to rebuilding. Same with glaziers, carpenters, etc.
Precious artworks and relics may have been lost. There is report of one fireman seriously injured, but so far, from what I’ve read, no one else, and no deaths.
This isn’t the first time Notre Dame has burned. I’m dead certain it won’t be the last.
It was the watching it happen in real time that was so painful.
H/t Emily
“This, milord, is my family’s axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y’know. Pretty good.”
I was very disturbed to find out Notre Dame housed a “Crown of Thorns” and everyone is very happy it was saved.
I guess Frank can’t come out and say “it’s a load of old cobblers, get rid of it” after all these years, but that’s seriously medieval fraud.
Many of the artworks were too big to be gotten out. Such an incredible loss.
And it was being solemnly reported on. “They saved the crown of thorns.” Oh do shut up.
The crown is one of a limited set of 100 that were sequentially placed on Jesus’s head by the Roman soldiers with the expectation that they would be worth big bucks someday.
I see that the French government is looking to rebuild the cathedral, and seeking (and getting) international funds to do so. I hope the Catholic Church ponies up a substantial amount of money toward this effort. I have mixed feelings about the use of public funds for a religious building. Maybe it would be better if France owned the cathedral and the Catholic Church paid rent for the right to use it?
Ha! (para one)
It’s a religious building but also more than that, more and other. It’s art, history, landmark, public gathering place, music hall, memorial site…It’s a lot of things. I’m a bit ambivalent about the public funding issue. I of course think the state shouldn’t be funding religious buildings, but I think it should be funding those other things. Maybe it can just be an accounting arrangement, whereby donors fund the religious part and public funds go to the public purpose part.
yep – that spire was a new-ish. I heard a very interesting report on the news yesterday by a woman who is a ND specialist – she commented that above the stone ceiling the vault in gothic cathedrals may be 50 to 60 feet high and full of wood structures that keep it all together. And some of that wood was 850 years old. Very dry. And the church part downstairs was especially full of oxygen b/c of making it airy and spacious to rise up to touch heaven or whatever. Her words “an accident waiting to happen.” Another “fire in ancient structures” expert said he cringes every time he sees an old structure w/scaffolding around it b/c. . . fire danger from renovation and construction work. The cathedral in Reims is an example of a destroyed in war + rebuilt structure. Pictures of it bombed and burned are pretty ugly. Today it’s pretty. . . much is possible.
i think a good part of the shock and sadness is simply witnessing a huge fire like that and thinking about the structure and what it means. . . it’s shocking in an almost primal way. I saw a lot of comments on FB about not being allowed to be sad about ND unless I am also sad about the Louisiana church burnings last month. And the destruction caused by Western countries and their wars. And violence of the plunder of humans and minerals and metals in Africa. Well. I can be sad about more than one thing at the same time. I have a big enough heart to let French people be sad for whatever ND means to them w/o telling them all the other stuff they have to be sad about.
(PS I can make a crown of thorns for you any time for a cut rate price. I can put it on someone’s head too, for a small fee).
Ah, I just finished a post drawing on a Guardian piece saying much the same thing – old dry buildings plus roof work involves heat.
Yes. A huge part of the sadness-shock yesterday was watching it in real time, all the more so since it went so fast. One minute I followed the BBC headline and the next minute the fire had spread to the edges of the roof.
Sorry, doesn’t wash. I can be sad about whatever makes me sad. I might have different reasons for being sad about one thing and not another. Not everything is equal. Not everything makes me sad. Not everything is worthy of tears. I get to choose where I shed those tears, and why. Just because I loathe the Catholic Church with a special loathing matched only by my loathing for those who perform FGM and those who picket abortion clinics does not mean I cannot feel sad about the destruction of this monument.
Sorry. Still angry about 20 years of being told I didn’t get to be hurt about my ex walking out on me in a particularly shitty way, because my ex was gay and to be angry and hurt about that was to be homophobic. And I should be glad I got the opportunity to be married to a gay guy anyway (though I did not know he was gay, he didn’t share that with me until a year after leaving, and he treated me like crap, so yeah, I get to be hurt and angry).
I am just tired of people telling me how I need to feel, or what I get to feel. That’s one reason I avoid Facebook.
iknklast, I’m sorry you had to go through all that. It sounds awful.
Re Facebook and telling other people what to feel: I wish people who don’t care so much about something could just say that, rather than listing everything else in the world that needs attention and chastising the rest of us for implicitly prioritizing the Thing That Just Happened. The cynic in me (they are tasty) wants to find something they missed (the mosque fire, hello) and chastise back, but that’s just petty.
I hate the institution of the Catholic Church as well, but my wife and her family are Catholic, so I don’t discuss it much except online.