PGB 16: Notre Dame in the 19th Century

You’ve been planning your trip for months.  Maybe even years.  After a harrowing journey, you’ve arrived in Paris.  And at long last, you’re  visiting the cathedral of Notre Dame.  She’s eternal.  Inspiring.  A wonder of any age.  And under construction?  It’s the mid-19th century and Notre Dame is in the early stages of one of the biggest glow-ups in her history.  What would we have seen as the process began?  And, more importantly, would we have liked it? Join us as we visit Notre Dame, circa 1850!

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Welcome to this episode of Paris Gone By, the Parisian history podcast for the curious traveler.  I’m Michelle, your host and guide to the Paris of the past.

In this episode, we’re revisiting the travelogue Paris with Pen & Paper [*Pencil] by David W. Bartlett.  As a quick refresher, he’s an American author who visited Paris twice in the mid-19th century, the first sometime between 1848 and 1852  and the second sometime between 1852 and the publication of the book in about 1858.  He compiled his memoirs into a quirky travelogue/ memoir / treatise thing on Paris and France in that time of turmoil.  And what a period it was!  The  February Revolution of 1848 had definitively ended the Bourbon monarchy — for reals this time — and in its place was the shiny new 2nd Republic.  With, by November of that year, a new President, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.  Yes, Bonaparte.  Who would go on, December of 1851, to crown himself Emperor Napoleon III, as Bonapartes are wont to do.

Bartlett, as an American from his own very new democracy—America  had only been independent for about 70 years at this point—clearly  prefers Paris under the 2nd Republic as compared to the 2nd Empire.

When we first met him, back in Episode 13, we followed his travel adventures from London to Paris and took a peek at his rather imperfect history of France.  And, this time, we’ll be getting another dose of imperfect history, which gives us an excellent excuse to take a look at some of the actual history of Notre Dame.

Without further ado, let’s get reading!  Here is his take on Our Lady:

“The churches of Paris are full of gorgeous splendor—how much vital religion they contain, it is not, perhaps, my province to decide. But in beauty of architecture, in the solemnity and grandeur of interior, no city in the world, except Rome, can excel them. The church of the Madeleine is the most imposing of all; indeed, it seemed to me that in all Paris there was no other building so pretentious. But Notre Dame has that mellow quality which beautifies all architecture—hoary age.

I started out one morning to see it, crossing on my way one of the bridges to Île de la Cité, and was soon in sight of the two majestic towers of the old cathedral. You can see them, in fact, from all parts of Paris, rising magnificently from the little island city, like beacons for the weary sailor.

The morning was just such a one as Paris delights to furnish in the month of June—fair, clear, and exhilarating—no London fog, mud, or rain, but as soft a sky as ever I saw in America. We stopped a moment before the church, to gaze at the high-reaching columns, and admire the general architecture of the church. Workmen were scattered over different portions of the building and towers, (this was on my first visit to Paris,) engaged in renewing their ancient beauty. My first emotion upon entering, was one of disappointment, for although externally Notre Dame is the finest church in Paris, internally it is gloomy, exceedingly simple, and has an air of faded beauty. Still, the ‘long-drawn aisles’ were very fine. Gazing aloft, the eye ached to watch the beautiful arches meet far above. Then to look away horizontally on either hand through the graceful aisles, filled one with pleasure.

I noticed that the threshold of Notre Dame, like that of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, was very much worn away by the feet of the crowds who have crossed it during many centuries. The organ is an excellent one. It is forty-five feet high, thirty-six feet broad, and has three thousand four hundred and eighty-four pipes. Its power is great, and as the organist touched some of the lower notes, the cathedral walls reverberated with sound.

The Porte Rouge is a splendidly sculptured door-way. Under the arch-way there is a sculpture of Jesus Christ and the Virgin crowned by an angel. Behind it there are bas-reliefs representing the death of the Virgin—Christ surrounded by angels, the Virgin at the feet of Christ in agony, and a woman selling herself to the Devil. The interior of the church abounds with sculpture of every description, and some of it was executed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

There now remains only one of the old peal of bells which used to exist in Notre Dame—but one has escaped the fury of French revolutions. It was hung in the year 1682, and was baptized in the presence of Louis XIV and Queen Theresa. Its weight is thirty-two thousand pounds—the clapper alone weighing a thousand pounds. A clock in one of the towers is world-renowned for the intricacy and curiosity of its mechanism. The feats it performs every time it strikes the hour and quarter-hour, can hardly be credited to one who has not seen them.

It is supposed that the first foundations of a church on this spot were laid in the year 365, in the reign of Valentian I (He mean’s Valentinian). It was subsequently several times rebuilt, a portion of the work which was executed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries still remaining. The other portions were built in 1407, by the duke of Burgundy, and are of a deep red color. The Porte Rouge was built under his special superintendence. He assassinated the duke of Orleans, and built this red portal as an expiation for his crime.

In 1831, when the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois was sacked, the mob crowded into Notre Dame and completely destroyed everything within its reach, including, among other things, the coronation robes of Napoleon. The archbishop’s palace was next attacked, and in one short hour all its rich stores of ancient and modern literature were thrown into the Seine. The palace itself was so completely ruined, that the government afterward removed every vestige of it. Nothing is more terrible in this world than a mob of maddened people. And though such Vandal acts as these cannot be defended, still it behooves us to remember, that the conduct of the inhabitants of these palaces was such as to bring down on their heads the just indignation and censure of the people.

Slowly passing through the aisles of the cathedral, I passed again the threshold into the street. The majestic towers and turrets were bright beneath the gaze of the sun, and it seemed to me that I could stand for hours to look at them. It is not so with the Madeleine. Its architectural beauty is great, but it is new—it has no age. Notre Dame has seen centuries, and is full of historical associations, and I could have lingered about it and dreamed over them till the sunlight faded into the night.”

Well, there we go.  I think we’ve all felt that way about Notre Dame or other historical monuments.  Some places just capture our imaginations.  Notre Dame is definitely one of those places for me!

But how much of the historical and architectural details he mentions here were accurate?  Well, some more than others.  We’ll start by  putting what he’s seeing into context.  The Notre Dame of this period was under the long overdue restoration by Viollet-le-Duc and his partner Lassus.  They started the renovations in 1845 on the exterior of building, which lines up with Bartlett seeing workers on the exterior of the cathedral.  They had a huge task addressing everything from missing window glass and crumbling masonry to more serious structural issues that had to be fixed before they could continue on the interior.  And, controversially at the time and, to an extent, today, Viollet-le-Duc also took the opportunity to return some of the features to their original medieval versions, including some of the upper story windows which had been converted pretty early on from smaller circular oculi to the larger arched windows.  And, more important for us today, he added back a spire. 

That spire, the Viollet-le-Duc spire,  was lost in the fire of 2019.  It was completed back in 1859, well after Bartlett had completed his travels.   Which is why it’s not mentioned or shown in the drawing that accompanies this entry in the book. Just like with our modern restoration, the structure had to be made architecturally secure before they could add the spire, so it’s one of the last tasks to be completed.  There had been a medieval spire before that but it was taken down sometime in the late 18^th century due to decay.  Somewhat bizarrely, there is not a definitive date for when it was taken down.  Even the French Ministry of Culture website lists two different date ranges for it.  But it seems fairly safe to say it came down sometime in the late 1780s or the 1790s. 

That said, what did happen during the Revolution was the melting down of the bells as described in the text.  The bulk of the bells of Notre Dame and all of the other churches in France—I saw a number of 100,000 bells in one source—were removed from their belfries and melted down to be made into coins and munitions like cannons.  He does have the details about the bell Emmanuel a little bit off, but understandably.  There were actually three castings of Emmanuel.  The first, in 1680, was a total fail.  It was cast by a Franciscan friar named Jean Thibault of the Cordelier convent in Paris—parts of that convent are still there.  According to a quote on the Ministry of Culture website, Jean was “very knowledgeable about the theories that one must know to make good bells, but unskilled in the art of making them well.”  I think we all know some version of that guy.

After the Jean debacle, the clergy regrouped and a new Emmanuel bell was finished in 1682 and baptized in the presence of King Louis XIV and his queen Maria Theresa.  They even served as the godparents of the bell, because, yes, apparently baptized bells have godparents, just like baptized children.  Honestly, learning these sorts of details is one of the best parts of this job; I love this stuff. 

But apparently this new bell was an out-of-tune dud. It was a half-step or semitone off of where it should have been.  The church officials demanded a replacement for the poor sounding Emmanuel but the manufacturer refused.  So they ended up having to sue the manufacturer to get a replacement, which Parliament had to approve for them.  And the bell we still have today is that replacement.  It was baptized and mounted in 1686. 

Moving forward in time, Viollet-le-Duc replaced a number of those missing bells during his restoration but they were not of the highest quality either and the ones in the north tower were replaced in 2013 with better quality bells.

Those 2013 bells survived the fire, thanks to the incredible intervention of the firefighters, who took a lot of risks to keep the bell tower safe and the structure of Notre Dame intact.  We did lose the smaller bells, though, housed in the spire and in the transepts up in the roof structure – the forest.  Those smaller bells were used for religious services and they’ve been replaced in the current restoration.

Some of the smaller bells, though, were and are now attached to a clock in Notre Dame.  You’ll be forgiven for having missed it.  The current clock, a replica of the one installed in the 19th-century restoration, has clock faces visible on the sides of the transepts near the roofline on the exterior of the church.  And frankly, I’ve never noticed them! So if you haven’t either, don’t feel bad. 

The clock mechanism that our author mentions, however, was its predecessor.  It was an elaborate 18th-century mechanism that started out housed in the north transept and was later moved to the interior of the north tower, which would be to your left as you enter from the courtyard or the parvis.  The clock face of this mechanical wonder, however, was attached to the façade of the organ, which is located on a platform between the two towers.  Not those two towers; the towers of Notre Dame.  The clock face was supposedly four feet across but thanks to the sheer size of Notre Dame and her organ, the clock looked almost like an afterthought.

The organ that Bartlett saw would have been smaller than the current version as well, which comes in at an incredible 8000 pipes!  The pre-Viollet-le-Duc organ was a more modest affair of, as he said, about 3500 pipes, many of which are included in the current iteration.  So they didn’t scrap the old organ, they just sort of built it out.   

Looking at the details in the text, so far, so good.  Bartlett’s history and info didn’t go too far off the rails.  But then we take a look at the history of the building itself, including his bizarre history of the Porte Rouge and the 15^th-century construction. 

And oh boy, where do we begin?  His origin story of the mid-4th century aligns with what we know of the origins of the original church on the site of Notre Dame.  If there was one (there is some debate), it was likely housed in a repurposed Roman basilica.  And a basilica under Rome was a government building not a religious building and it was near the current site of the cathedral.  The name, however, was more likely St. Etienne or St. Stephen.  Roman Emperor Valentinian I was Christian and did spend some time in Paris during his reign.  But the original church being consecrated during his reign does not seem to have any sort of solid basis; in fact, I couldn’t find anything.

The church we have today replaced a set of smaller churches on the site, including one dedicated to Mary, our lady.  It was started in 1163 and was finished in about 1250, with major renovations then running for about another century after that as they continued to kind of perfect Notre Dame, tweaking the dimensions of the church, shoring up the structure with the flying buttresses, building on those side chapels, and trying to keep up with modern design trends.  You know how it is, you finish building your cathedral and then you realize that the earliest parts of the building are just so last century. 

It was during this period of renovation and updates that King St. Louis the IX donated funds for the Porte Rouge in about 1270. 

The famous or infamous John the Fearless or Jean sans Peur, could not have built it, because John was born about a century after the door was built. 

It also means he could not have built the bulk of the existing building.  The renovations wound down around 1360-ish, give or take a decade, as the aftermath of the plague and the ongoing war with England took priority.  John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, entered the fray in the late 1300s, joining the political chaos under the reign of Mad King Charles VI, who we met in the Petit Pont episode. That said, John did assassinate the king’s brother, Louis, Duke d’Orleans—he had Louis murdered in the streets of what is now the Marais—but far from being repentant about this, he quickly claimed ownership of the dastardly deed.  And he basically got away with it scot-free until he himself was assassinated twelve years later in 1419.  I could find no evidence that he contributed anything of significance to Notre Dame, nor were there any major building projects at that point. 

So, definitely don’t rely on Bartlett  for historical accuracy.  But I was curious about where he would have gotten such erroneous information; like it’s so patently wrong.  So I did some searching and discovered that the much more famous American author Mark Twain recited a similar history in his own travel memoir Innocents Abroad.  Seeing this overlap, I wondered if it might be coming from a travel guide and it was!  The still operating Galignani’s – I think I’m pronouncing it correctly – bookstore in Paris, which has served the English-speaking community since 1801, had their own very popular guidebook in the 19th century. And somewhere in the 1830s, the guidebook started giving this really erroneous information. Pre-1830 printings I could find online did not have this oddball info about John the Fearless or the Porte Rouge.  It’s definitely on of those mysteries that I would love to be able to time travel and figure out!  Sit down with the editor and be like, “So, what were you were thinking?”

Bartlett’s info on the destruction of the Archbishop’s Palace, though, is a little more accurate.  It was raided in February of 1831 in the second of two ransackings that happened at Notre Dame during the 1830 Revolution.  And this is the revolution portrayed that’s portrayed in Les Misérables and the painting Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix.  They did throw some books and other valuables into the Seine but they also destroyed a lot more of books by just tearing them up or burning them.  And they did not destroy Napoleon’s coronation robes.  They weren’t even held at the palace and were likely either destroyed or sold off by the restored Bourbon monarchy.  They were not eager to hold on to the relics of a man who still had many supporters who wanted to overthrow them.  To get an idea of how destructive the mob was to just Notre Dame at this time, one total I found was 127,000 francs, which roughly converts to several million dollars today.  The palace, however, was unfortunately a total loss and was torn down. 

So, all in all, Bartlett’s history is a mixed bag, but his connection to Notre Dame is one that I and millions of others share.  Who hasn’t looked at her in wonder of her longevity and of what history she has witnessed?  Though I doubt he would say her interior is so plain and unadorned now!  Viollet-le-Duc and the current restoration artists brought her back to life in vivid color.  

Should you have the good fortune of visiting Notre Dame, make sure to take a walk around her exterior, stroll through the park along the Seine-between the church and the Seine-that replaced the palace, find the little clock faces on the transepts, admire the spire, and on the northeast side, find the very red Porte Rouge.

And afterwards, maybe walk over to Galignani’s on rue Rivoli and grab something to read.  Just watch out for those 19^th-century guidebooks!

I hope you enjoyed this little trip back to 19th century Paris through a traveler’s eyes.  To go deeper into this episode, read the blog, support PGB, and explore more resources, please check out the website at parisgoneby.com.   And if you loved what you heard, please do subscribe or leave a comment–it really does help bring PGB to the masses!

Thank you so much for listening! À bientôt!

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