On 15 April 2019 the world watched as Notre Dame de Paris burned. After the flèche collapsed and smoke appeared through the louvres of the west towers it seemed all but certain that one of the most iconic buildings of Christendom was doomed.
Finding myself far away and sitting with a friend at dinner as the catastrophe occurred, we broke the usual rule of no devices at the table to follow the conflagration in real time. I sent messages to several of my students, urging them to tune in to what surely would be an assassination-of-JFK moment de leurs jours. On the banks of the Seine people chanted Je vous salue Marie as a song of farewell.
By the next morning the story was clearer: the fire, although devastating, had not necessarily been catastrophic. The roof was gone, and the building was drenched, but the main structure appeared to have been saved by the ancient stone vaulting of the ceilings: medieval wisdom brought to bear several centuries later. Not only that, but the Blessed Sacrament had been saved, and also the precious relic of the Crown of Thorns, by the chaplain to the Paris fire brigade, Monsieur L’Abbé Jean-Marc Fournier – the fearless Fr Firekeeper. Nominative determinism at its finest: vive les pompiers.
Since the blaze, the cathedral’s treasures have been safely stored at the Louvre, where a fine exhibition was laid on last year. Meanwhile, a show of a different kind has been on the move. Notre Dame de Paris: The Augmented Edition has already been to Washington, Montreal and Dubai; now it has come for a while to another flame-kissed riverside Gothic masterpiece: Westminster Abbey. Both buildings are most obviously linked by the coronations of Henry VI, who was crowned King of England in the Abbey in 1429 and King of France in Notre Dame in 1431 (though least said, soonest mended).
The show is housed in the Abbey’s glorious Chapter House, with its soaring octagonal vault seemingly balanced on a delicate central column, and stunning medieval wall-paintings all around. Its spectacular tiled floor has been covered with a carpet depicting Notre Dame’s famous rose window, while large installations, annotated on their ends like books on a shelf, radiate out from the centre. Visitors are invited to zigzag their way into the middle and out again, covering far more ground than might otherwise be imagined, passing on their way plaster models of Our Lady of Paris and the cheeky, tongue-poking Stryge.
One might well wonder how an exhibition that seeks to tell the tale of Notre Dame from its beginnings on a muddy island in the middle of a river to the returning glories of the present day could possibly do its subject justice in such a small, if stunning, space. The truth is that, while the physical exhibits as they stand are an interesting diversion away from the humdrum of London, it can’t – at least not without the superlatively spectacular technological kit that goes with it. On arrival each visitor is presented with a small electronic tablet device, which becomes a personal vade mecum tour guide. It is amazingly effective.
Each of the free-standing panels deals with a different period in Notre Dame’s history; they are punctuated with small models of various corners of the site through the centuries. All have a circular code over which one holds the camera of the tablet. Up then pops a whole variety of information about particular aspects of the subject, with introductions to key characters, timelines and illustrations of other artefacts. Click on one for a detailed analysis of the great rose window; choose another for an encounter with the current master of works in charge of the restoration.
The topics covered are impressively thorough. The marriage of Henri of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois on 18 August 1572 took place outside Notre Dame’s west-facing frontage, because it was a Protestant-Catholic match intended to calm sectarian tensions. It is shown in full technicolour, with fascinating details and introductions to the main protagonists. Henri did not attend the Mass that followed, instead returning to collect his bride at the end of the service. As the curators note, it was all in vain: within a week most of the attendants had fallen victim to the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
Much drabber is the period Notre Dame spent as the Temple de la Raison, hung with tricolours by godless revolutionaries who outlawed religion and laid violent hands on the Lord’s Anointed. Opulence returned with the inauguration of the Napoleonic Empire, a splendid yet ultimately pale imitation of the former royal line. A huge reproduction of Jacques Louis-David’s well-known painting shows le petit caporal about to crown himself, decked out like one of the Caesars, with the humiliated Pius VII looking unhappily on.
Through it all the cathedral has been the focus of French national life – for better or worse.
This is a superb exhibition that combines cutting-edge modern technology with the centuries-old history of one of the most important buildings on the planet. France has a strange relationship with its major churches: a lay state that insists on their upkeep, but not without controversy – as seen at Chartres in the last decade.
Happily, it looks as though President Macron’s prediction that France would have its première église up and running again by the end of 2024 – there was much scoffing at the time – will come true. The miraculously undamaged statue of Our Lady of Paris will be carried in procession back to her cathedral at the end of November, and Archbishop Ulrich will sing a Mass of thanksgiving and rededication on 8 December. As that is a Sunday with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception bumped to the following day, a whole octave of celebrations will follow. (I must remember to book my Eurostar ticket.)
How Notre Dame de Paris will look when it reopens remains to be seen, but it appears likely that it’ll be much as it was before the fire – although perhaps we may yet hope for improved sanctuary arrangements. Until then, a trip to the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey is surely the next best thing.
And what of the hunchback? He has not been forgotten; in fact an enormous cartoon version of him, in which he looks rather happier with his lot than in Victor Hugo’s original work, introduces a part of the exhibition designed for younger visitors. Using the tablet again, selfies can be taken and added to templates – rather like standing behind cut-outs on a pier at the seaside, with heads sticking through the holes where faces should be. Among other things one can choose to be a medieval peasant, or a brave firefighter, or the Stryge, or Quasimodo himself, and then email oneself the finished result. How could I possibly resist?
“Notre Dame de Paris: The Augmented Edition” is at Westminster Abbey until 1 June 2024.
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