Notre Dame, Art, Losses

As some of you may know: My degree is in archaeology.

I place a very high value on the past, but I also see it as a living thing, ever changing and always in flux.

Which means I have a few feelings and things to say about the Notre Dame fire.

First of all, I cried. But there's something else I cried for too, something far worse which was not mentioned as much on mainstream media. I'll talk about that a bit later.

I'd rather start by saying this:

The Notre Dame fire was not nearly as terrible as it looked. My mother had a bucket goal of seeing every Medieval great church in the UK. We didn't actually do it, but at an impressionable age I was dragged around places like York Minster, Llandaff with its beautiful "flying" screen. I was also dragged to a couple of modern great churches; most particularly the dueling cathedrals of Liverpool.

When I was eleven years old, the roof of York Minster caught fire. A lightning strike set fire to the roof and wooden vault of the south transept three days after the Archbishop commented that he questioned the resurrection of Christ. (Yes, there were jokes about smiting. Even in 1984 when we didn't have social media yet. If it had happened now, there would be memes. I can see them in my head).

They had to sacrifice the roof to save the building. Four years later, it was rebuilt. You now can't tell one transept roof from the other unless you use the convenient mirrors to study the art in the vault, at which point you might realize the carved bosses in the south transept were carved in...the 1980s. They didn't try to slavishly copy the originals.

This is York Minster. The transept pointing to us is the south one with...oh hello rose window. That rose window was seriously damaged in the fire and had to be repaired. York Minster (it's a cathedral, despite the name) was built over 250 years between 1220 and 1472. It's actually not as old as Notre Dame despite the similar layout. Note what it does not have. Ya know. A spire.

The fire, combined with the knowledge I was picking up from, you know, being dragged to all of those churches, affected my reaction to Notre Dame.

My first thought "Well, the spire is gone."

Here's the thing. Wooden spires are (or at least were, I'll talk about that later in what's turning into a full-blown essay) rather a bad idea. There aren't many left and that's because a lot of them, well. Burned. Notre Dame's spire was built in the 19th century when they should have, ya know, known better about wooden spires. Blame Victor Hugo.

They had no chance of saving the spire. They had very little chance of saving the roof. But as I followed it and looked at the videos I could tell what they may never admit:

They sacrificed the roof to save the building.

The fire looked terrible, especially from above. Mass media claimed multiple times that the building was at best gutted, at worse destroyed. And yes, there was a bit of a concern for a while.

But:

This is the current state of the sanctuary of Notre Dame. I saw another picture of the nave that I now can't find that showed intact pews and racks of hymnals, and that much of the vault of the nave was intact (whether it can be saved or will have to be replaced is unclear, but the stone vault appears to have protected much of the interior.

Of the holy items, some were in the fireproof sacristy, which did its job. Sacristies are designed to be fireproof. Others were in use at the time - Mass was being celebrated when the alarm went off - and were safely evacuated from the building by the celebrants. Firefighters retrieved other artifacts and works of art during the fire. One firefighter was seriously injured, and I suspect they were engaged in that operation. They have not been named, but are now out of danger.

All three of the iconic rose windows survived, although one may have to be temporarily removed from the wall so its surround can be fixed. (Yes, there was a report one was destroyed. It proved inaccurate).

The structure is intact.

Notre Dame will rise again.

And, most importantly of all, nobody died.

There have been great losses. The original roof timbers are irreplaceable, although we have the data needed to rebuild the roof structure as it was. The spire is, of course, gone, and a decision will have to be made on how to replace it. (Whether might be a question, but it is such an iconic landmark I doubt they will not do so). They haven't worked out which of the gargoyles survived yet and they may have lost a number of paintings to water damage.

But most of it was saved.

Which brings me to the other great cultural loss I mentioned. On September 2, 2018, the National Museum of Brazil was gutted by fire.

It was not as well reported in mainstream media, probably because it was in Brazil, but losses included the last recordings of more than one dead indigenous language. Most of the artifacts were lost. Researchers and curators risked their lives to retrieve what they could. Students lost documents they were working on.

It was a museum every bit as important as the British Museum, but because it was in Brazil, many people slid past.

I am not saying the damage to Notre Dame is not a loss, but it is not the worst of losses and much was saved due to the bravery and quick thinking of firefighters and civilians alike.

In a few years, people will walk through Notre Dame again and while there will be signs of the fire, the beauty of the building will be preserved where possible, restored where not and changed where appropriate.

That spire, for example? Last year an American company came up with a flame retardant treatment for wood that makes it suitable for use in high rise cladding. One has to think: Could that be what we use to rebuild the roof and spire so it will last another 800 years...with no risk of fire?

What lessons can we take:

1. Wooden spires are a bad idea.

2. Good fire prevention systems are vital. The Brazilian museum was days away from receiving a new fire control system...the one it had was just too old.

3. Buildings are living things.

And one final reminder to those reading this who may be Christian, a reminder from my own Christian upbringing.

A church is not a building.

A church is the people.