Note: This piece originally ran the day after the April 15, 2019 fire at Notre Dame. The cathedral reopened today.
On my way to Lebanon 19 years ago I stopped in Paris for a few days and stayed with a childhood friend who’d done very well for himself. His fifth-floor apartments had a stunning view of the city.
From his dining room window, wider than I am tall and almost floor to ceiling in length, you could see all of Paris: the Eiffel Tower to the right with its hourly light show of shimmers after dark, the Invalides, which used to be a colossal retirement home for veterans and now is, like all things colossal in Paris, a museum, the Panthéon, where those old enemies Voltaire and Rousseau are forever coffined together, the brutally ugly Tour Montparnasse, the second-tallest structure in Paris after the Eiffel Tower, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, which to me has the same effect as looking at my late father because of a black and white photograph he took of the basilica in the early 70s, and that hung in our living room as I grew up.
And of course the twin towers of Notre Dame.
I had asked myself: “Would a French ever excuse Notre Dame’s architecture being linguistically or in any way linked to Manhattan’s World Trade Center?” That was the phrase I wrote in my travel notes at the time, 19 months before the attacks on the towers, 19 years before those two sets of twin towers, each equally magnificent in their own way, each as close to the hearts of millions as if they were living, breathing beings, became tragically linked. Because watching Notre Dame burn live Monday evoked many of the same emotions of September 2001.
There are fortunate differences. Though hundreds of pilgrims and tourists were in the nave of Notre Dame when the fire started, all escaped. With the exception of a serious injury to one firefighter, no one was hurt. There’s no word of mischief or terrorism. It’s improbable that an arsonist would have risked a journey to the roof, where the fire started, to start a blaze. Rather, the fire seems to have originated with the same mysterious, malicious spark that set off the fire that destroyed the roof and much of Canterbury Cathedral in 1174, around the same time when Notre Dame was being built.
As in Canterbury, much of the roof was lost, but the structure itself somehow survived, thanks to prudence and no overreactions. Donald Trump was quick to yell a tweet Monday, telling firefighters to dump water from the air. I admit that dunces like me wondered about that at first. But that would have been like dropping bombs on the nearly thousand-year-old structure. It would have collapsed.
Firefighters had their own plan, and it worked.
Just Four hours in, and Paris’s fire chief could declare that the twin towers had been saved, as had the surrounding structure, though with immense damage. The 63,000 square foot church is gutted. The millennial oak roof called “the forest,” made of lumber already hundreds or 1,000 years old when the church was built, and so as old as Christianity when today’s fire started, may be gone. It’s hard to imagine the rose windows of stained glass surviving, though it appears most have, and authorities say the most precious artwork was safeguarded. “The lines and harmonies of Notre Dame make a greater poem than the Divine Comedy,” the historian Will Durant wrote. Not only has the poem survived, but even amid the destruction those firefighters have added new verse.
Notre Dame is a marvel of 13th century architecture. It is now also and forever a marvel of 21st century firefighting. We see it on a small scale all around us routinely, taking it for granted. We rarely see it on a scale global enough for all to see. The firefighters who saved the majority of the cathedral, which could very well have collapsed without their heroism, now stand as tall and as anonymous as the architects and masons of Notre Dame. They deserve their own Victor Hugo.
You don’t have to be a believer or a Catholic to mourn the loss, which is substantial, or to celebrate the regeneration that began even as the flames were going Lucifer on the roof. I think hearts were breaking across the globe Monday whether they were Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Shinto, atheist or pagan. I wouldn’t doubt it if even descendants of the St. Bartholomew massacre were mourning.
Something terrible happened the night of April 16 on Paris’s City Island. But Something awe inspiring happened that night, too. I would not call it a miracle anymore than I’d call the Crown of Thorns an actual relic. But the prayers of human beings for human beings, for one of human beings’ greatest creations, were answered—not by god: she doesn’t have her fire certification. But by firefighters. If Pope Francis is looking for his next saints to canonize, he need look no further than the firehouses of Paris.
Pierre Tristam is FlaglerLive’s editor. Reach him by email here.
Pogo says
@Pierre Tristam
You sir, are wise, eloquent, and poignant. And in some pretty good company:
“I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire truck.”
–Kurt Vonnegut
Willy Boy says
“the greatest massacre in European history.” – Billy Pilgrim
The first alarm sounded at 6:20 p.m. For 23 minutes, it seemed like a false alarm. “So it goes” – KV
Fredrick says
Very eloquently written Pierre. I have visited the cathedral several time and it was truly majestic.
Jan says
Thank you. A beautiful tribute.
Bc says
Very nice Pierre
Laurent says
Merci Pierre pour ce beau témoignage.
Je pleurais lundi devant ce drame considérable, minoré toutefois par le professionnalisme et le dévouement des Pompiers de Paris (qui sont des militaires). Fussent-ils intervenus 20 minutes plus tard, les tours se seraient écroulées.
Je ne sais pas si Notre-Dame de Paris sera reconstruite dans cinq ans, comme l’a annoncé hier le président Macron, mais la résurrection pascale sera au bout du chemin. C’est la Bonne Nouvelle des Chrétiens.
Bonne Semaine Sainte à tous les Chrétiens de Floride et du reste du monde.
Amitiés.
jack howell says
Nicely written Pierre. It is a tribute to all who love the Notre Dame cathedral. By the way, one of my classmates at Harvard is the number 2 leader for the Brigade DE Sapeurs-Pompiers De Paris. I emailed him the other day to congratulate he and firefighters for the outstanding job they did in extinguishing this horrendous fire.
Guy Duprey says
Pretty much as soon I got the news about this, my feeds were getting filled with posts about the fire. Most were sympathetic, but a lot of them were also bitter and angry. They saw this as tiny payback for centuries of calamity, all perpetrated by the west, and the catholic church. They see the enlightenment, not as a great achievement, but as the perpetration of oppressor over oppressed. They tap these condemnations on their smart phones and tablets, totally ignoring the fact that the west, and the enlightenment were the beginnings of science, and without it, they’d be tapping on rocks. They forget that the oppressed were also just as vicious oppressors. That all men are good and bad, and that the real struggle isn’t against each other, it’s within. It’s the battle we all wage with good and evil. The west embraced that idea. The cathedral is a testament to that idea.
Outside Looking Out says
Another asinine article from Pierre. I agree that the French firefighters and ALL firefighters should be applauded for their efforts, for their dedication to a dangerous job that we all take for granted, but , as always he had to take a shot at our president.
This time;however, he takes a shot at our Lord. Our God (who is a man, otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have referred to him as our father) who he doesn’t believe in.
I’m sorry you are so heart broken over a damn building, but I’m more sorry that you have no beliefs. As a christian, I will pray for you. The only sin you cannot be forgiven for, is denying Christ.
You’ll have 5+ more years to take your cheap shots at President Donald Trump, but you’ll have the rest of your life to deny God.
Pierre Tristam says
(Laurent above is the friend referred to in the first paragraph.)
Cher Laurent, je ne peux qu’imaginer l’émotion de voir en personne, de toucher et sentir ces chênes millénaires en cendres et fumée: nous pleurions avec toi, mais aussi nous nous réjouissons—d’une manière, dumoins—maintenant que cette semaine sainte réverbère déjà d’une certaine resurrection, qu’elle soit de cinq ou dix ans n’importe pas autant qu’elle l’est déjà et nous rassure (nous rappele) que le patrimoine français n’a aucune frontière, surtout dans nos coeurs. Quand a ces énergumènes qui me disent sans croyance, que dire mais pleurer ce manichéisme américain qui ne cesse de brûler comme les auto-da-fé d’antan. Aucun sappeur-pompier ne réussirait à éteindre ces flammes du sixième cercle.
DoubleGator says
Nice perspective and bullseye!
Will be a 2019 renovation for sure!
Hopefully to last a 1000 years.
Bravo to the firefighters.
👍
Mondexian Mama says
Trump should have suggested throwing rolls of paper towels,it worked in Puerto Rico.
Just a thought says
I do not remember reading about Pierre’s denial of god?
Pierre Tristam says
To be fair, I neither confirm nor deny belief, though the Christian conception of god is to me too much between something like an inebriated Tex Avery might have dreamed up and something out of the fantasies of a totalitarian brute, so I personally can’t take it seriously.