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Tempus
Edax, Homo Edacior
The Lessons of Notre Dame de Paris
(from the
July/August 1999 issue)
A RECENT ARTICLE in The
Cincinnati Enquirer addressed the Archdiocese of
Cincinnati’s mandated changes to the interior of St.
Martin of Tours Church in Cheviot, a subject covered at
length some months ago in these pages. The article,
seasoned with stultifying quotes from well-placed
clerics, called to mind Victor Hugo’s classic novel The
Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Hugo, writing in 1831,
provides an emotional reflection on the architecture of
the famous cathedral of the Ile-de-France. The French
novelist expressed his sorrow and indignation at the
"numberless degradations and mutilations" which
the hand of time and that of man had inflicted upon the
venerable monument.
"Upon the face of
this old queen of the French cathedrals, beside each
wrinkle we constantly find a scar," wrote Hugo.
"Tempus edax, homo edacior. Which would
willingly render thus: Time is blind, but man is
stupid."
Hugo drew up a list of
criticisms: the colored stained-glass windows had been
removed, the interior white-washed, rows of statues
removed, niches left empty, the tower over the central
part of the cathedral had been ripped off, the shape of
the central entrance to the Cathedral had been deformed,
and the chapels were filled with "ugly
decorations."
He explains that the ruin
of his beloved Notre Dame was precipitated by three
forces:
1. Time, which "has
gradually made deficiencies here and there, and has
gnawed over its whole surface";
2. "Violence,
brutalities, contusions, fractures—these are the
works of revolutions." This is the type of
destruction, wrote Hugo, wrought by indiscriminate
revolutionary violence; and
3. Fashion, which, Hugo
contested, has done more mischief than revolutions:
"It has cut to the quick—it has attacked the
very bone and framework of the art."
Hugo observed that the
first two inroads to destruction of the cathedral
devastated the edifice with impartiality and grandeur.
Yet the third, "fashion," was perpetrated by
"school-trained architects, licensed, privileged,
and patented, degrading with all the discernment and
selection of bad taste." Thus, Hugo is saying that
the worst destruction was perpetrated not by the
atheistic iconoclasts of the bloody French Revolution, as
many historians have it, but by these school-trained
architects, slaves to bad taste.
Hugo accused these men,
who assume the character of the architect, of willful
destruction, perversion, and re-creation, all in the name
of fashion. The results? Mutilations, amputations,
dislocation of members—"restorations."
And so, in the same manner
it appears that, to appease liturgical
fashion—surely it is not the universal Church making
such demands, just look at how Rome treats its own
treasured churches of centuries past—a certain caste
of "school-trained architects," licensed,
privileged and patented by a local bishop, gallop from
one house of worship to the next, requiring the
disfigurement of priceless works of sacred art, in the
end mangling the entire edifice of the church—in its
form as well as in its meaning, in its consistency as
well as in its beauty.
In St. Martin’s case,
fashion has audaciously fitted into the wounds of
Romanesque architecture its wretched gewgaws of the
day—its stage platform, its rearranged pews, its
dry-wall sanctuary, its emasculated baldacchino and so
on…
Even so, looking to Notre
Dame de Paris, we understand there is hope. Despite the
traces of destruction imprinted on this ancient church,
Our Lady at Paris is still at this day a majestic and
sublime edifice.
In the 1850s, inspired by
Hugo’s novel, architect Eugene Emmanuel
Violet-le-Duc drew up a plan to properly restore the
cathedral to its former splendor. He created stained
glass windows by copying stained glass from the
cathedrals in other French cities that had escaped the
fashion-driven architects and the indiscriminate
destruction wrought by the Revolution.
He also replaced all the
sculptures; he researched the pictorial records of other
French Gothic cathedrals, and by doing so he was able to
recreate the works of the medieval sculptors.
He designed a new flêche
to top off the crossing of the cathedral as it had once
been. He also restored the great doors of the cathedral
and the gargoyles on the rooftop. Lastly, he had the
interior scoured of the old whitewash and treated the
exterior with a chemical that would preserve the stone
from the industrial pollution which was already becoming
a problem in the 19th century.
Thus, Violet-le-Duc took
on one of the greatest projects in the history of
restoration, and was very much successful in returning
the cathedral to its original beauty and charm. Perhaps
then, in a decade to come, after some semblance of sanity
returns to certain diocesan bureaucracies, our
churches—those still left standing and still owned
by the Church—can be restored to their original
beauty—stained glass windows, statues, communion
rails, tabernacles, murals, stencilwork, pews, and the
various traditional furnishings—fonts,
confessionals, altars, shrines, tabernacle lamps, and
people—in essence, the "stuff" that
makes a building a Catholic church.
--Michael
S. Rose
RELATED ARTICLE: Renovation
Swindle at St. Martin of Tours Church
[ St. Catherine Review ]
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