Many sympathisers
will have taken down and dusted off their "Guide Book to Paris" for a
reminder that Notre Dame has had its many hard times, suffering the indignity
of damp walls and decay even while Napoleon proudly crowned himself and Josephine
emperor and empress there, seizing the crown from the hands of the Pope to do it.
And how the writer Victor Hugo rescued
the building from final decay by writing
his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Notre Dame de Paris has a strange
fascination for people - and people have such a love for it - that enabled it to
survive for so long.
For us Oldies,
the 1939 film in which Charles Laughton gave a heart-breaking and brilliant
portrait of "the hunchback" was our first rather
doubt-filled fascination with Notre Dame. Those were the days when it was thought
improper and frightening that a man with such a figure should dare hope for love
or sexual life. We have come a long and
blessed way forward since then, may nobody succeed in dragging us back to it.
For our
moment of shared glory watched the Movietone
film of General de Gaulle striding through the crowded cathedral at the
end of the German WW2 occupation, striding straight as a ramrod, while snipers
inside the cathedral were trying to kill him. Thrilling it was to see him and
hear the shots in such a sacred place, even at a distance.
So when eventually
we got to Paris ourselves we thought we knew the Cathedral already because of
Laughton and Victor Hugo; we did not know about the people sleeping under the
bridges who tied bottles on long string
and dangled them in the river to cool their wine. Victor Hugo did his best to
give them new life too but wealthy people were less inclined for that. Sort of
"Buildings Before Prophets" seemed to be their motto.
Now the latest
great restoration will begin, restoring a
national monument that happens to be a place of worship as well - a change from
its origins as a place of worship that became a national monument. The people standing
in the cold streets while the Cathedral burned was a sad reminder of how sad
and inglorious Notre Dame's history
often was. Saint and soldier Joan of Arc
was burned alive and the best Notre Dame de Paris could do for her was to
host a retrial and recognise her as a
saint. Church and state doing their best to make their own history bearable.
The
interaction of financial experts, church and state officials and the demands of
a population who want the old Notre Dame rather than a cold steel substitute
for any part of it will be interesting but probably not fully known about in
detail until the cathedral is flourishing again, as an historic attraction or a
place of living worship, hopefully both.
Who are the
wealthy benefactors then? Hardly novelists like Hugo, although they can help to
lead the way. Not, one may hope, arms manufacturers and their enthusiastic
government customers. Nor destroyers of
the beautiful earth who hope to supply future pilgrims with
plastic bottles. Nor adventurers
who have stocked up vast monies awaiting higher interests of a kind far
different from that of real lovers of either Notre Dame or her cathedral or the
eternally sacred earth they rest on!
Let's hope,
pray and make demands about it. We're
all involved, not just the Parisians !
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