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"THE CREDENTIAL"
January 2025
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The Great Handwriting of the Human Race
How Notre Dame de Paris
Became a Universal Symbol |
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Understanding what truly makes architecture sacred explains how a Catholic cathedral built during the Middle Ages now stands as a universal symbol in post-revolutionary France. |
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Welcome
Guest Author:
Doug Staker is the Principal Architect with Squaremoon Studio, a small design firm based in Salt Lake City focusing on residential architecture, adaptive reuse, and sacred space. Since receiving his Masters in Architecture at UCLA, Doug has been a design architect in the Mountain West. He explores new conceptions of sacred space with his art/architecture installation series entitled Sanctuary.
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At its reopening, French politician Gabriel Attal called the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, “the jewel of our nation, reborn from its ashes,” a sentiment echoed by many French citizens who described it as a “universal symbol.” Curiously, this is not the first time this building has been reborn from its ashes, nor was it always seen as such a positive symbol. Leaders of the French Revolution saw the clergy as part of the system of repression they were attempting to overthrow. More than six percent of those beheaded during the Reign of Terror were clergy. The cathedral was looted, statues were symbolically beheaded, and the space was turned into a wine storage facility. How is it then, that some 236 years later the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris has been fully restored and celebrated as a symbol not only of the strength of France, but of the basic rights of humanity? The history tells a compelling story about the the state of sacred architecture.
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During the revolution, the cathedral became a “temple of reason.” The cathedral was sold and slated for demolition until it was revived by Napoleon to serve as the location of his coronation. Though preserved, it was in disrepair. It was not until Victor Hugo took up the story of the cathedral with his novel
The Hunchback of Notre Dame that the political will shifted to restore it.
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Hugo was displeased by the state of the cathedral after visiting it multiple times in the 1820s. By his account, the cathedral suffered from “three sorts of ravages.” He listed them and their causes as “wrinkles and warts on the epidermis” (the work of time); deeds of violence (the work of the revolution); and misguided renovations, which Hugo described as “mutilations and amputations.” High on this list of atrocities was the replacement of much of the stained glass by royal architects who had considered the building too dark.
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Vision of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo, c. 1832 |
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Hugo’s main literary project was to construct a story around the cathedral that illustrated—and arguably reinvented—its place as a symbol of the core values of the French people. He did this by staging the cathedral as the point of convergence between societal forces that clashed in scenes of violence some four centuries prior. None of these warring parties seem to fully embody the ideals he imbues to the cathedral and his central characters, though all attempt to in some compromised way. Imperfection is the theme, as the book points to an ideal that is buried beneath the mele. The heroes that emerge are the innocent who suffer and the innocent who sacrifice, not the brokers of power—cleric or kings.
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The author’s careful positioning of the cathedral on the side of human rights and dignity, and not with any of the warring political or religious factions, dislodges the building from its negative associations in his post-revolution world. He sets it up to emerge from the bloody conflict not as a symbol of the enemy, but as a symbol of the very rights fought for in the revolution. This literary twist renders the building a physical reminder that tradition is built incrementally over centuries, an amalgamation of the values and sacrifices of many subsequent generations. As Hugo puts it:
Architecture’s greatest products are less individual than social creations; the offspring of nations in labor rather than the outpouring of men of genius; the deposit left behind by a nation; the accumulation of the centuries. … Each wave of time lays down its alluvium, each race deposits its own stratum on the monument, each individual contributes his stone.
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The
Hunchback of Notre Dame both describes and demonstrates how symbols can take on new layers of meaning. In a lengthy aside, Hugo describes how the cathedral emanates from more than one era, a series of layers of which “time is the architect.” He describes how this has happened physically through contributions by artisans from different eras layered over time. He then proceeds to demonstrate how the structure’s identity is also formed by successive layers of the building’s interactions with the culture that surrounds it. Hugo’s novel becomes a plea to the people of his time to think of longer arcs of history than just the events of destruction and upheaval they had lived through. In the culminating scene of the book, three parties—the clergy, the king’s forces, and the embittered vagabonds—converge on the cathedral to battle for their interests. In doing so, each is shown to compromise their values in the pursuit of victory. Caught in the middle are the story’s protagonists: the innocent refugee La Esmerelda, and her protector, Quasimodo. It is of these innocent victims battling for their lives that the Cathedral becomes the symbol, above the French King, and even above the compromised Catholic archdeacon. Notre Dame is a fortress where the hero Quasimodo can sacrifice himself in defense of the innocent Esmerelda and in defense of the principles abandoned by others. In doing so, this lone defender of the innocent becomes a symbol himself, mirroring the cathedral in its form and values. Victor Hugo positions the Cathedral on the side of the innocent and their defenders, and in doing so sets it on a course to becoming the universal symbol it is today—a symbol of values that transcend politics and culture.
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Hugo’s fictional story provides distance for the society of his day to reassess their own values. It also constructs the cathedral as a multi-layered symbol as we read the story of its narrow survival told at a time when it was severely threatened, just as it has been in our own time. Importantly, it is the actions of the parties involved that reinforce and recreate the symbolism. The novel highlights that our current peril is only a repeat of history. The structure and all it represents has been threatened before: by revolution, by decay, and by ignorance. Each time Notre Dame emerges from a new calamity, it is strengthened as a functional religious structure sacred to the Catholic church, a symbol of national pride to the French state, and a symbol of human imagination and dignity to people from many countries who chose not to let it disappear. It is not just in the architectural design and details that the structure finds its status as a sacred edifice, but in people and institutions choosing to respect, honor, and preserve the structure and all it stands for.
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Through the history of Hugo’s creation, real and imagined, we can see the power of both written and architectural art. Architecture’s power lives in far more than the stones that compose it. Its layers of material, history, and people give symbolic form to the values that bind together generations of people. It preserves ideals from eras past and extends them into the future, binding together through time what is most precious and valued, and what is at risk of being lost and forgotten. The fire in Paris in 2019 risked the destruction of a precious historical building, but more damaging was the threat of the loss of a symbol. Perhaps all would not have been lost if the cathedral had collapsed, but in coming together to save it, much was preserved. The decisive actions of artisans, citizens, and political leaders preserved the symbolic edifice for generations to come. Human values are only as strong as our will to preserve them. “Architecture was the great handwriting of the human race,” declared Victor Hugo; “Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought, has its page and its monument in that immense book.”
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