La Mort De Notre Dame

The Cathedral in Paris, of course, for her namesake is immortal. All the same, a grave tragedy this Easter week.

UPDATE: "Some of Notre Dame's centuries-old relics are safe despite the devastating fire at the in Paris cathedral Monday. Just days before the fire, workers carefully removed more than a dozen medieval statues from the cathedral's spire as part of a a $6.8 million renovation project."

I was actually interested in the formal "relics," which include an alleged piece of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns. But it is nice to hear that some of the medieval statuary will have survived.

UPDATE: Songs outside the shell.

Sometimes it is the loss of a thing that reminds you of its value. If the faith endures, the cathedral will return. If it does not, the cathedral would have been lost soon enough anyway. If this moment causes reflection and a return, then this fire like a wildfire may prove fertilizing. The Church knows the way out of the grave; and, after all, it is springtime.

21 comments:

raven said...

Even odds it was the ROP. Just when did the French construction workers start working on Palm Sunday?

And if the French gov finds out it was The R O P,(GB's greatest lie) I bet they will cover it up tight.

Grim said...

Even money? I wouldn't put it that high. But if you're right, it'll be ugly.

Grim said...

All the same, listen to them sing. It's the song that matters. The cathedral is stone, but the song is alive. It's a great sacrifice, but 'sacrifice' and 'sacred' are cognates. Just as the Easter sacrifice was redeeming, so too may the death of Notre Dame bring new life. If it does, we will someday account it a blessing in spite of its cost.

Tom said...

This Free Dictionary entry on ROP is interesting.

douglas said...

Yes, I saw someone saying that he thought many French might dismiss it as an outdated relic of silly religiousity. I responded that I thought the odds that some might find their pain at seeing it burn as more compelling than they would have expected given their disdain for religion, and perhaps it could revive them in some way.

Also, I'm seeing some pictures going around social media now that indicate that the stone vaulted seiling has mostly remained intact, except where the spire punctured through as it fell. This is potentially great news as it would have possibly protected much of the stained glass and other objects inside the nave and transept. One of the pictures clearly showed the wood candle racks and pews at the rear of the church unburned. Others showed the bured out roof charcoal from above, clearly sitting on top of the ceiling. So there's some hope yet that it's not quite as bad as we thought at first.

Crown of thorns was saved as well.

Grim said...

Good to hear. Apparently there have been several attacks.

https://www.newsweek.com/spate-attacks-catholic-churches-france-sees-altars-desecrated-christ-statue-1370800

E Hines said...

...thought many French might dismiss it as an outdated relic of silly religiousity

My wife saw a report that a crowd had gathered just outside the police line that began singing Ave Maria. Apparently, the relics of both of France's patron saints that also were in the spire were saved along with the bit from the Crown of Thorns.

As to the parts of the cathedral that remain intact, I wouldn't put much stock in that just yet. Significant portions of the cathedral may well be standing, but I wouldn't bet on their soundness. Most of that place, along with castles and other such structures of the era had the stonework supported by post and beam frameworks. That wood will be well and truly dried out over the centuries, down to ambient humidity--which is to say, dry. The heat from the fire will have done that wood no good at all. Beyond that, the heat also will have sorely weakened and made brittle the stonework and the mortar that held the stones together.

There's a lot left that can be recovered, but it will have to be thoroughly inspected and actively recovered.

Eric Hines

douglas said...

Yes Grim, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious of the usual suspects, but there are other reasonable possibilities.

Mr. Hines, you are certainly correct, but compared to what I was thinking might happen, it's a far better outcome. And that video of the singing was a thing of true beauty

E Hines said...

Oh, yeah, this is a far better outcome than seemed likely at the start of this.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

A group of French billionaires already have pledged $700MM to the repair. My confident prediction: by the close of business today, many news outlets will be running stories with at least these two themes: the donated money is a mere drop in the bucket to these fatcats, who should have offered more, and anyway the money should be spent on some more worthy cause. By the end of the month, there will be a pitched battle over whether the repairs should seek as much as possible to restore the building in its original form ("living in the DWM past"), or instead impose some kind of edgy post-modern graft onto it, à la the Pei pyramid at the Louvre, with the design and construction carefully assigned to an inclusive gender-neutral areligious team.

Texan99 said...

https://twitter.com/Iron_Spike?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Texan99 said...

CNN:

Authorities may wish to stay faithful to earlier renditions of cathedral. But it's also possible that France takes a bold new direction with one of its most iconic national monuments.

"We're assuming, maybe wrongly, that the cathedral will be restored as it was (before) the fire but that isn't the only way to go," said Riddington. "The cathedral has had fires in the past and it's been rebuilt in different styles over the years."

Indeed, the spire that collapsed to gasps from stunned onlookers Monday evening, was itself a break from the past, having been built during a sweeping 19th century restoration. Its designer, the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, made his spire taller and more elaborate than one that had existed previously.

That restoration also resulted in other significant changes to the cathedral's facade and interiors. "Notre Dame is not a building that has been fossilized in time, Foyle said. "It has not remained static since the early 13th century."

Grim said...

It’d be so much more welcoming and less divisive if they got rid of the altar, made it more of a museum.

Grim said...

Maybe make room for an ashram in there, or a mosque.

ymarsakar said...

The Vatican had better not have torched the place just so they could get more donations and faith rolling in.

Not that the faithful would ever believe or do anything about it, if the Vatican did a false flag arson job.

ymarsakar said...

The altar is already destroyed. That has removed the unHoly sanctification of the Church of Rome, throughouts its history of blood, lust, and who knows what else.

Everything else there is meaningless before the eyes of the Divine.

Cracking and destroying the altar was enough.

Why? The old energy of France needs to be removed in order for the new energy to take its place. I know that makes no sense to the readers here. Just consider it... clearing the landing field for the fleet and air drop.

E Hines said...

Maybe make room for an ashram in there, or a mosque.

Nah. Raise it altogether and put in a soccer stadium for a new team. Paris Saint-Germain could use the competition, Paris can have their subway series, and French soccer might, from the competition, finally get themselves up to a point where Ligue 1 can compete the the British Premier League.

It'd be win-win all around.

Eric Hines

Larry said...

They set your sanctuary on fire;
they profaned the dwelling place of Your Name,
bringing it down to the ground.
...
Yet God my King is from of old,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.

douglas said...

" Its designer, the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, made his spire taller and more elaborate than one that had existed previously."

Yes, but he worked within the style constraints of the existing work, and simply made it 'more' of what had been there previously. He did not seek to 'play off of it' or 'contrast it with a new contemporary message'. God forbid a thousand times that they should think to go in that direction.

Here's a 'good' example of such a thing.

Texan99 said...

The "spaceship crashing into the roof" aesthetic, so daring and transgressive. Really shows Those People a thing or two about what's going to happen to their precious ascendant culture when we get into power. In fact, the now familiar theme of art as hatred.

ymarsakar said...

Just as the Easter sacrifice was redeeming, so too may the death of Notre Dame bring new life.

Ymar and Grim now agree on something? That is amazing synchronicity!