Notre Dame Cathedral Research Articles

Knowing the East (review)

Reviewed by: Knowing the East Patti M. Marxsen Knowing the East. By Paul Claudel. Translated by James Lawler. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. 136 pp. Fifty years after his death, Paul Claudel (1868–1955) is remembered for many things. Not only was he a major twentieth-century poet and playwright, he was an astute observer of Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese art. Not only was he the brother of sculptor Camille Claudel, he was a diplomat who lived for nearly twenty years in Asia, including a stint as the French ambassador to Japan (1921–1927). When he was elected as a member of the Académie Française in 1946 at nearly 80 years of age he quipped, "For an academic, that is puberty." He died at 87, having lived large in two centuries and on three continents. Following an adolescence marked with indifference toward religion, Claudel experienced a profound conversion to Catholicism during a Christmas night service at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris at the age of 18. With Christianity at the center of his universe and under the influence of Symbolist poets Rimbaud and Mallarmé, he developed a response to the world that was at once poetic and spiritual. Through his poetry, plays, and essays, he insisted on a fundamental unity between matter and spirit, a harmonious and vast universe into which the human mind could enter. And, at least for him, the point of entry was the portal of the Church. He struggled at times, but never lost sight of his faith. For all this, he is often credited with the revival of French Catholicism in the wake of WWI. After all, if Paul Claudel could take religion seriously and find meaning in it, pourquoi pas the rest of us? The facts of his extraordinary biography form a peculiar background to the recent translation by James Lawler of Claudel's collection of prose poems titled Knowing [End Page 229] the East. First published in 1946 as Connaissance de l'est, these sixty-one texts were written between 1895 and 1905 during Claudel's first visits to China and Japan as a young vice-consul stationed in Shanghai. He was twenty-six and still finding his poetic voice. And though his stance in the world is decidedly Christian, the content of this intriguing work reveals an inner dialogue with Buddhist ideas of interconnection, harmony, the ongoing quest for a higher life condition, and the overwhelming impact of nature in the lives of mere humans. In "Pagoda," Claudel describes a seven-story Chinese pagoda as it "amplifies and multiplies the roof, exaggerates the horned corners that rise with an elegant surge, and turns their curves upward to the sky." This form that "does away with walls" and concentrates on the uplifting roof creates a space where "Buddha, Prince of Peace, dwells inside with all the gods." In this architecture he reads a structuring of physical and spiritual space, a kind of never ending upward movement divided into "the seven mystical heavens." The culminating effect is the heavenly achievement of the unknowable. And so, after going as far as he can go into the world of the spirit, he ends this prose poem with an abrupt return to temporal reality. "I have no more to say of the Pagoda. I do not know its name." Elsewhere, in "The Wanderer," he turns his sense of awe toward nature. "Every tree has its personality, every small beast its role, every voice its part in the symphony," he writes. "As one understands music, so I understand nature, like a detailed narrative of proper names; as my walk and the day advance, so does the elaboration of the doctrine." The "doctrine," it seems, is the idea of dependent origination, the interrelation of all life that springs from a single source. In the last line, he states, "I understand the world's harmony. When will I grasp its melody?" In "The Temple of Consciousness" Claudel climbs "the black rock's vertical wall, and only at this late afternoon hour do I know myself to be on the right track." Below, he observes golden rice fields. Ahead there is an "old stairway overlaid with hoary moss...

Correspondance: Repertoire, Tome 1: 1816-1839 (review)

Henri-Dominique Lacordaire. Correspondance:Repertoire, Tome 1:1816-1839. Edited and arranged by Guy Bedouelle and Christoph-sAlois Martin. (Paris: Editions du Cerf. 2001. Pp. lxxvii, 1429. euro72.-.) Jean-Baptiste-Henri (later Dominique) Lacordaire (1802-1861) is known to American and European Catholics (well, at least to priests and seminarians) for one quote: To live in the midst of the world with no desire for its pleasure; to be a member of every family, yet belong to none; . . To go daily from men to God to offer Him their homage and petition; to return from God to men to bring them His pardon and hope, . . Oh God, what a life, and it is thine, O priest of Jesus Christ. But the life of this one-time agnostic lawyer turned priest is emblematic of the creative energies and diverse personalities that constructed nineteenth- and twentieth-century French Catholicism. Much of the creativeness went into the new relationship with the Pope's authority, which was diminished by Napoleon relative to the French government but augmented many times over relative to the French church. The Concordat of 1801 had allowed a government voice in church appointments, but it also required the total and absolute submission of French bishops to the Pope. They were all obliged to tender their resignations, so that the differend between the constitutional Catholicism of the Revolution and the Rome-dedicated refractory church could be settled. In the beginning was Felicite de Lamennais. This high-profile intellectual priest formed around himself a quasi community of younger intellectuals including Lacordaire, by this time a priest for several years, and the Comte de Montalembert, a politically and intellectually engaged young aristocrat. Lamennais wanted to shape a dynamic French Catholicism upon the absolute authority, religious and political, of the Pope; and the journal he founded to promote his program was confidently entitled L'Avenir. Ironically, the Pope and his entourage thought they had more to fear from Lamennais than they did from his opponents and so condemned a number of the propositions of Lamennais and ordered the closing down of L!Avenir. Lacordaire was profoundly disappointed-as were the other members of the Lamennais circle-but led the way in submission to Rome. Henri Lacordaire's own personal combination of submission to Rome and maintenance of philosophical, or at least literary, originality has become a waystation along the historical road of modern French Catholicism. His ultramontanism was tempered to greater strength by the condemnation crisis and gave him leverage in problems with French hierarchical authority, chiefly Archbishop Quelen of Paris; his oratorical gifts merited invitation (from this same prelate) to give a high-profile series of sermons in Notre-Dame cathedral; his emotion-fraught relationships -were filled with high controversy and, some say, sexual tension; and his combination of humility and self-importance in ecclesiastical renewal bought for him a unique in French Catholic life in the middle third of the century (he had a major role in the re-establishment of the French Dominicans shortly after a one-year novitiate). Not that it is easy to place Lacordaire in French church history. He is known, glibly perhaps, as a romantic, as much to dispel suspicions of homosexuality as to situate him on the complex range of literary and artistic romanticisms; known also for high sermonizing but not for spirituality; known as a political liberal but not for a political theology; known for his biography of St. …

"Europe's Worst Enemy Is Europe Itself"

For a half century now, Europe has been beset by the torments of repentance. Reflecting on its past crimes-imperialism, fascism, Stalinism-it sees nothing more in its long history than continual episodes of slaughter and plunder culminating in two world wars. The average European, man or woman, is highly sensitive, forever ready not only to be moved by the world's misfortunes but to claim responsibility for them. For proof, we need only look at the evening of September 11: in spite of their compassion for the victims, a majority of my fellow French citizens arrived at the conclusion that the Americans had deserved it. But let there be no doubt: the same reasoning would have prevailed had the terrorists destroyed the Eiffel Tower or the Notre Dame cathedral. Someone strikes us, we must be guilty. Of our own accord, we validate our enemies' claims in the judgments we bring to bear upon ourselves. Europe has, of course, given birth to its share of monsters, but it has also, in the very same movement, given birth to the theories that would make it possible to understand and destroy those monsters. Here lies Europe's great paradox: feudal despotism engendered democracy, an oppressive Church gave rise to critical thinking, overseas conquests led to anti-colonialism, and revolutionary ideologies have ended up generating anti-totalitarian thought. Similar to a jailer who

Evidence of pre-industrial air pollution from the Heads of the Kings of Juda statues from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

Pollution originating from wood combustion characterised the urban atmospheres of the past and led to the formation of thin grey crusts on the surface of the stone of monuments. The grey crusts discovered on the Heads of the Kings of Juda statues, which adorned the facade of Notre Dame in Paris from the 13th century until 1792, constitute a material record of the effects of this ancient air pollution. The height at which the statues stood suggests that the effect was not the result of a point phenomenon, but was caused by a generalised pollution of the Paris atmosphere at the time.

Bringing VR to the desktop: are you game?

The goal of bringing photorealistic, real-time technology to desktop computers has challenged the virtual reality (VR) community. Some day, we will not need to travel across the globe to visit historically significant places; we'll simply select them from an interactive encyclopedia and virtually visit them from our classrooms and living rooms. Imaging technologies have advanced in great leaps and bounds, and most of this technology is readily available to average consumers today. In the forefront, video game companies have made great strides in this area. They have spent millions of dollars developing real-time 3D graphics engines that focus on a series of new core technologies specifically dealing with presenting complex 3D environments, comprised of textured and shaded polygon-based worlds, to a low-end audience running standard personal computers. Taking all this quickly-evolving technology into consideration, Digitalo Studios and the Virtual Systems Laboratory in Japan developed two projects using 3D video-game engine technologies, generating high-resolution, real-time 3D imagery for photorealistic walk-throughs of the Florida Everglades and the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The latter, nicknamed the Virtual Reality Notre Dame (VRND) Project, is a multi-user environment that is accessible to the public via the Internet.

La topographie du haut Moyen Age à Tournai. Nouvel état des questions archéologiques

Durant les quinze dernières années, l'archéologie du haut Moyen Age à Tournai a fait l'objet de découvertes importantes dans le quartier Saint-Brice, dans le quartier Saint-Pierre et autour de la cathédrale Notre-Dame. Elles précisent notamment l'image de l'héritage antique dans le chef-lieu tournaisien et matérialisent quelque peu le cadre des séjours royaux attestés à la période mérovingienne. Même si de très nombreuses questions restent en suspens et si certains de ces sites attendent d'être exhaustivement publiés, il semblait opportun de livrer une nouvelle synthèse récapitulant les acquis en brossant un paysage archéologique actualisé de la ville jusqu'à l'aube du second millénaire. A cet effet, nous évoquons également les sources écrites susceptibles de nous aider dans la lecture de la topographie archéologique. Leur rareté et la critique acerbe conduite par les historiens n'ont cependant d'égales que les contraintes très particulières de conservation des archives du sous-sol, conditionnées par les aménagements incessants qui caractérisent le milieu urbain depuis l'Antiquité, et les modalités de leur accès quand elles sont préservées.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (review)

Reviewed by: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Beth Cleary The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Adapted from the Victor Hugo novel by Robert Rosen, Steven Epp and Paul Walsh. Théâtre de la Jeune Lune, Minneapolis. 26 November 1995. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Esmeralda (Sarah Agnew) and Quasimodo (Dominique Serrand) in the Théâtre de la Jeune Lune’s stage adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, directed by Robert Rosen. Photo: Michal Daniel. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Esmeralda (Sarah Agnew) and Paquette (Barbara Berlovitz Desbois) in the Théâtre de la Jeune Lune’s stage adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, directed by Robert Rosen. Photo: Michal Daniel. In his 1831 preface to Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo invokes a word hand-carved in a dark recess of one of the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral: Anankh (“fatality”). This memory-trace of Anankh was the inspiration for the fictional Quasimodo, Hugo’s so-called “ideal of grotesqueness,” the hunchback bell-ringer of Notre-Dame in 1482. Quasimodo is a quintessentially Romantic figure, around whom Hugo built a sprawling critique of tyranny, philistinism, and the cruelty we visit on each other in the name of God and country. Quasimodo’s love for the gypsy girl Esmerelda pits him against his surrogate father, cathedral archdeacon Dom Frollo, whose repressed lusts for Esmerelda manifest themselves in sadomasochistic schemes that send her finally to the gallows. Esmerelda is the virtuous heroine at the novel’s center; she is also the ground for fatal battles between church and state, soldier and artist, priest and suppliant. Théâtre de la Jeune Lune is an ensemble of theatre artists known for their adaptations of classic literary texts. TJL’s latest work adapts Victor Hugo’s novel along with liberal and intelligent quotations from the 1923 and 1939 American film adaptations. The intertextual richness of the production is further enhanced by quotations from mummers’ plays, puppetry, and commedia dell’arte—creating a performance assemblage which is, on the whole, enormously successful. [End Page 372] TJL’s performance space is a roughly-fitted former warehouse in Minneapolis. The Hunchback designers do not play the space for its obvious associations with a cathedral interior, but instead configure the audience around a central playing area, representing Hugo’s lovingly described Île de la Cité. Actors wheel scenic elements into the playing area, and a miniature illuminated cut-out city descends periodically from the clouds, forcing actors to negotiate the “grid” of Paris as it hangs under and over them. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame emerges like a giant pushup toy from a simple stage-base, its rose window midsection lifting first, and its twin towers pushing up into the mid-air of the warehouse. The material history of Paris which Hugo describes as a cycle of emanations and disfigurements found form in the miniature architectural cut-outs, and in how actors’ bodies and scenic objects filled and flowed from the space. TJL’s production moves the Hunchback story with delightful rapidity through the imaginative space of Paris, inspired by Hugo’s cinematic imagination and a motion picture camera’s field of vision. The carts which carry whole scenes on and off—functioning in turn as altars, lovers’ chambers, and gallows carts—suggest the portable playing-stages of the medieval theatre. Esmerelda’s beloved Phoebus is a delightful version of the braggart soldier from commedia dell’arte; Paquette the mother-harlot signals Mother Courage as she serves out her sentence as cart-puller to the King’s Executioner, himself a creature from Genet’s s/m milieux. Scenic objects become symbolic agents: the character Gringoire uses a child’s chair, seat of innocence, to fence with an interrogating Frollo; the undisclosed baby shoe around Esmerelda’s neck is “born” when its twin is proffered by Esmerelda’s long lost m/other, Paquette. The TJL ensemble members in the major roles display the company’s customary physical vigor and prowess, using a precise and varied gestural vocabulary, as well as demonstrating the musicality and muscularity of their voices. The performances of Sarah Agnew (Esmerelda), Stephen...

Paris: an African explorer on the Beaubourg plateau

The Georges Pompidou National Centre for Art and Culture is often called the Pompidou Centre or just Beaubourg, from the name of the plateau on which it stands in Paris, not far from the River Seine and Notre Dame Cathedral. Its reputation has spread worldwide. But how many people, apart from its staff and a handful of inveterate visitors (inveterate almost to the point of obsession in some cases, it is said), have actually explored every nook and cranny of the place, felt its pulse and captured its every mood?To enable you to discover or rediscover it from a new angle Museum asked a museologist from the Central African Republic, Victor Bissengué, to forget his scientific background for a minute (he holds a doctorate in cinematographic and audio‐visual studies) and his experience of some years as a sound engineer at the Pompidou Centre, and take us with him up onto the Beaubourg plateau on a guided tour or, rather, on a voyage of discovery of a country whose hinterland has much to reveal.We wager that the ‘log’ of this journey will be full of surprises for you, even (especially?) if you are one of the Pompidou Centre's regular visitors.

Faits contemporains dans le vitrail du XIXe siècle

During the 19th Century, the iconography of stained-glass concerns sometimes a contemporary moment. So, in St-Denis's abbey, two Windows call up some events : Louis XVIII's fanerail, and, The king Louis-Philippe visiting the works executed by J.B. Debret, restaurator's brother on 1841. In Paris, two Windows recall Mgr Affre's heroic death on "barricades", on 1848 in St Roch's church and in the sacristy of Notre-Dame's cathedral, the one was made by "Manufacture de Sèvres" and the other by Maréchal de Metz in 1851. Through generosity of donators who remembered the bloody fights of the 1870's War in this country, Ladon 's church (Loiret) owns two stained- glass Windows made by Charles Lorin in 1894.

THE SAVING OF NOTRE–DAME CATHEDRAL

Medical Journal of AustraliaVolume 1, Issue 23 p. 865-865 Comment and Abstract THE SAVING OF NOTRE–DAME CATHEDRAL First published: 01 June 1963 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1963.tb25774.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume1, Issue23June 1963Pages 865-865 RelatedInformation

The Chancellor and Jeanne d'Arc: February-July, A. D. 1429

THE CHANCELLOR AND JEANNE D'ARC FEBRUARY—JULY, A. D. 1429 Scrutiny, in 1956, of a rare black-letter volume in Latin, printed in 1484 at Cologne, Germany, led to the suspicion that for five centuries the true opinion about Jeanne d'Arc, rendered in March, 1429, by John Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, had been hidden from historians. Collation of later editions and study of the sources used by historians ever since, forced the conclusion that a substitution had been contrived in 1429, by the machinations of politicians. These politicians, inimical to Chancellor Gerson and to La Pucelle, were partisans of England and of Burgundy, bent on crowning as King of France, the infant King Henry VI of England. It is, literally, a 'cloak-and-dagger story,' for Gerson, loyal to the cause of Charles VII of France, wrote his opinion in 1429 as an exile in Lyons, threatened with assassination by the Burgundians. Jeanne d'Arc, finally captured by Burgundians, sold to the English, was burned at the stake in Rouen, May 30, 1431. Here follows the story of the Chancellor and the Maid. I The politics of the Fifteenth Century in Europe were as complex in dynastic allegiances as ideological loyalties of the Twentieth.1 Mediaeval government was based on 'the divine right of kingship,' rather than on 'the consent of the governed.' Succession of rule was upheld by force of arms, instead of by self-determination with ballot or plebiscite. Powerpolitics revolved around royal marriages. England, pent in her island, time and again arranged marriages that would unite royal blood-lines for continental alliances. Henry V (1387—1422), dreamed of winning France as preliminary to leading a crusade to build again the walls of Jerusalem. He found the ambitious Duke of Burgundy 1 Ernest Lavisse: Histoire de France, Paris, 1911: IV, pt. 2, p. 8. "We cannot make any of these characters 'the villain' of this historical drama. Take the Duke of Bedford, John of Lancaster. In his own estimation he was a patriot, fighting for 'the divine right of kingship' for the baby king of England, Henry VI." (Tr.) 18 Franciscan Studies, 1957273 274D. G. WA YMAN an eager ally. Burgundy made himself master of Paris and of the insane king, Charles VI (1369—1422) and negotiated the Treaty of Troyes, May 21, 1420, by which Henry V espoused Catherine of France and was recognized as heir to the crown of France. In a matter of months, both Henry V and Charles VI were dead. The French king left an heir, the Dauphin (1403—1461) later Charles VII. The English king also left an heir, the infant Henry VI of England (1421—1471). John Gerson (1363—1431), Chancellor of the University of Paris, opponent of the Burgundian policies, in 1420 was living in exile in Lyons, France, avowed target for assassination. Many University professors were also in exile at Poitiers, France, loyal to Charles VII. In that same year of 1420, Jeanne d'Arc (1412 ?—1431) was a child in Domremy, eight or nine years old, hearing the discussions of her elders over the civil war, complicated by foreign invaders in her country. On the home side was the Armagnac party, those Frenchmen loyal to the house of Valois, ready to risk homes, fortunes and lives to uphold the lineal right of Charles VII as ruler of a unified France. On the opposite side, English men allied with the House of Burgundy, included such historic names as Talbot, the Duke of Bedford and Cardinal Beauvais, uncle to the baby Henry VI. They fought to crown the infant king of France in Notre Dame Cathedral. Ironically, they achieved this only in 1431, after Jeanne d'Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen. Catalyst between the opposing parties was Jeanne, born of country stock in Domremy in the province of Lorraine. A World War I Marshall of France, Ferdinand Foch, would hail her five centuries later as "un grand chef de guerre."2 An English university professor would write that "the wonderful mission of the Maid of Orleans taught Frenchmen that France was France and England England,"3 4 The Burgundian and English opinion...