Visit to Notre Dame de Paris

Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He has been spending the months of July, August and the first two weeks in September in France. He grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. He is also discerning a vocation to the priesthood and has applied to the seminary through the Archdiocese of Hartford. Please keep both his trip and his vocation in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip. Asher has a love of history so his dispatches are often full of historical details.

"On August 15, after the Mass at Our Lady of Compassion, Fr. Duloisy, the pastor, encouraged me to go down to the procession for the Feast of the Assumption at Notre Dame. Since I had not made it there yet, I decided to go. 

Notre Dame de Paris, as almost everyone knows, is probably the most important and emblematic church in France, and it is probably one of the most well-known churches in the world. For many Frenchmen (not just the Catholics), Notre Dame is not just a Church but an institution, forming an essential part of the national patrimony. No episode of French history, no invasion, no revolution, no development passes without somehow involving Notre Dame. It is as important as the Capitol building is to the Americans, as Buckingham Palace is to the British, as the Kremlin is to the Russians, and yet it is more than all of those, a veritable emblem of France itself.

Notre Dame cathedral is the seat of the archdiocese of Paris, and it is located on an island in the middle of the Seine river, called the Ile de la Cite. It is built in the Gothic style of architecture, having been begun in the late twelfth century and finished in the late thirteenth century. 

Construction started under the reign of Louis VII. I briefly mentioned him during our discussions of the French monarchy yesterday. He was the husband of Eleanor of Aquitane, whose name might ring a few more bells in modern heads than her husband's. Theirs is a well-known story, with Eleanor becoming displeased at Louis's participation in the Second Crusade; their marriage was annulled, and she then married Henry, king of England, thereby transmitting Aquitane to him. Everyone knows the story of the three sons of Henry who rebelled against their father. Meanwhile, it was Louis who helped Abbot Suger in his work on Saint Denis that I spoke of in the last post. 

The Third Crusade, which succeeded in capturing Acre and Jaffa but not Jerusalem, was convoked by the Patriarch of Jerusalem in Notre Dame in 1185. 

It was during the reign of Louis IX, a saint in his own right and a very holy man, that the relics of the Crown of Thorns and the relics from the Passion and the True Cross were purchased at great expense from the Byzantines and temporarily housed in the Cathedral pending the completion of Notre Dame. 

Moving along to the period of history known to all familiar with Shakespeare, we come to the Hundred Years War. As recounted in Henry V, the English defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt, thus rendering the kingdom of France to the English king, Henry V. His son, Henry VI, was crowned king of France in Notre Dame when just a boy. Of course, it would be Joan of Arc who would be instrumental in pushing the English out of France and removing Henry VI as king of France.

Later, to advance to the French revolution, the revolutionaries rendered Notre Dame into a "Temple of Reason," with the "Cult of the Reason." This cult, rather paradoxical in essence, was a kind of Enlightenment atheism. It was disorganized and worshipped variously man, reason, or nothing at all. The inherent atheism of it disgusted Maximilien Robespierre, who proposed instead a "Cult of the Supreme Being," a sort of civic religion that sought to move beyond simple deism to a worship system that focused on the state and civil responsibilities. Both of these cults were instituted at Notre Dame, with statues of the Virgin Mary replaced with statues of "Lady Reason." Additionally, the statues of the ancient Israelite kings I mentioned in my post about the Cluny museum were destroyed. 

This debauched abuse of the beloved church was put to a halt by Napoleon in 1801. He did not give the cathedral back to the Catholic Church but merely allowed the Catholic cult to be practiced there, a situation that continues to this day. Like most Catholic churches in France, it is owned by the government and merely given to the Church to use. 

On December 2, 1804, the coronation of Napoleon was held in Notre Dame Cathedral. This was a very important moment for the Napoleonic empire. Napoleon sought to achieve a kind of legitimacy with his new nobility and imperial status. He had a coronation ceremony that was distinct from the coronations of the French kings of the ancien regime, which were held at Reims Cathedral and presided over by the archbishop of Reims. At Napoleon's coronation ceremony, it was Pope Pius VII who was present. 

The Pope was made to agree to various changes in the typical rite of coronation made by Napoleon to render it unique and to reduce the amount of time he spent kneeling. Perhaps most notably, the Pope did not crown Napoleon; Napoleon himself placed the crown on his head, a stunning (and if one is being honest, humiliating) reversal of the previous tradition. A particularly nice depiction of this event can be found in Jacques-Louis David's The Coronation of Napoleon.

A few decades later, Notre Dame was falling into severe disrepair when a young Romantic writer named Victor Hugo became indignant at the slow decline of this great church. He published The Hunchback of Notre Dame to bring attention to it, and the book saw instant success. As a result, Louis Philippe assigned architects to begin a large restoration project. 

A few decades after that, France suffered a disastrous defeat in the Franco-Prussian War which greatly shook the foundations of the country's confidence and led to the Paris Commune of 1871, a violent uprising in Paris that saw a small group of liberal radicals attempt to erect a new government. As their short-lived revolt was about to be snuffed out by the republic, they prepared to burn Notre Dame to the ground but stopped short of doing so because of the possibility of the fire destroying a hospital next door.

During the Second World War, a Mass of thanksgiving was celebrated to mark the Allied liberation of Paris, with Charles de Gaulle present. His requiem Mass was also celebrated there.

Well, voila, as the French would say. There is a far from comprehensive overview of the story of Notre Dame de Paris. One can see, then, why so many were so horrified when the news broke, on April 15, 2019, that a devastating fire was ripping through the hallowed edifice. The church sustained serious damage, but thankfully the most precious relics were evacuated, and the structure managed to stave off some of the worst eventualities. For example, the stone ceiling was strong enough to prevent the burning roof from crashing through into the nave and severely destroying the interior. Additionally, the firefighters focused on saving the two front towers and not letting them become enveloped by the flames. This was important because the legendary bells of Notre Dame, thirteen in number and considerable in weight, were housed inside, and if the wooden structure of the towers had been compromised, as it very nearly was, then they would likely have collapsed under the weight of the bells and brought down the whole building in a flaming heap. 

After the fire, the restoration effort lasted five years and cost quite a considerable amount of money. There was a generous share of controversy, such as over the idea of installing contemporary stained glass windows and over the modern-style altar. 

But I think in the end, most Catholics, Frenchmen, and Francophiles are content just to have the church open again, to be able to assist at Mass within the hallowed walls, to hear the chant of vespers again, and to worship God as generations of their countrymen have in the same space.

When I went, as I mentioned before, there was the procession for August 15, and I include some pictures. It was a very powerful event, with people packing the streets and streaming into the Cathedral afterward for the Divine Office and Mass. Within a few minutes, all the seats were taken, and people were spilling out into the plaza. I found a seat next to an American pilot from Idaho who had just flown in that morning. He was a convert to Catholicism. 

One thing I quite liked about the church was that, despite the high volume of tourists who come there, the staff and volunteers work hard to ensure that during the liturgical ceremonies, all phones are put away, no pictures are taken, and silence is observed. This, I find, is easier said than done in a space like this, but I very much appreciate the continual effort to maintain an atmosphere of prayer and reverence.

After the end of Mass, I took a few more pictures and then was ushered out before the Cathedral closed for the night. I am very grateful to have been able to visit this legendary and blessed church."

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE