Notre Dame and Chartres- The Grandeur of Holy Places

Gothic cathedrals are impressive structures. The flying buttresses, the colorful stained glass, and the intricate detail of the figures carved into their sides are visually stunning, and one cannot help but think of the years of labor their construction required while admiring them. The architects designed them to focus one's gaze upward, toward God and Heaven, and I understand how they parallel the beauty and grandeur that is God. In accordance with the tenets of medieval Catholicism, the imposing cathedrals make you feel small, much as the average French Catholic felt in comparison to the far-reaching power of the Church and, by extension, God. The Masses during much of these cathedrals' existence was performed by a priest who faced away from the congregation, reciting prayers and scripture verses in Latin, a language their parishioners would barely understand. Unless a member of the upper classes, an average parishioner would be lucky to even receive bread at Communion. Thus the vast majority of the attendees on a given Sunday would feel quite small indeed in these large places.

Standing outside Notre Dame, one such French Catholic that came to my mind is Victor Hugo's famous fictional hunchback Quasimodo. However, it was difficult to truly imagine the lonely hunchback ringing the church bells amid the hordes of tourists clamoring about the cathedral. The restoration that Victor Hugo, among other prominent figures of nineteenth century Paris, fought for is admittedly impressive, and one cannot deny Notre Dame's historical importance as the site for many a royal wedding and funeral, such as the wedding of Napoleon III and the funeral of Philip V of Spain. However, it was not until watching for a moment the Mass taking place, despite the eager tourists and their cameras, that I could even remotely get a sense of why an author in our reading packet deemed Notre Dame "a family church with all France for its family" (246). There I saw the cathedral as still a living entity, still a "meeting place," and I found myself wishing I could slip into the congregation and experience that for myself. However, what could I possibly expect from a place so famous in the middle of the day besides throngs of tourists and the corresponding atmosphere?

I had a very different experience at Chartres. Away from the activity of the city, the town was peaceful and the cathedral was, fortunately, not a second-rate Notre Dame. Standing inside the cathedral was made all the more impressive knowing that the stained glass and the facades are all the originals from its construction in the Thirteenth Century. Exploring the altars and stained glass windows was more enjoyable without the crowds from Notre Dame, as I could get a better sense of the place's holiness. It captures well the grandeur and power of God in its own material beauty, and I could imagine myself a parishioner sitting in a pew and admiring this thing so much larger and more impressive than myself, just as its designers intended.

However, I cannot allow myself to fall into the ideological trap that claimed much of the medieval Catholic Church. Clergy members borrowed some of the philosophy of their royal benefactors, making these cathedrals not just as testaments to God's grandeur but to the magnitude of their own power. Just because a building is grandiose, visually stunning, and costly (both in money in labor) does not make it a holier place. In fact, Jesus was, in many ways, the exact opposite of an ostentatious Gothic cathedral- a humble carpenter who exhorted his followers to serve others unselfishly and maintained an unassuming presence. It would be a mistake to believe that grandeur translates into holiness, that Notre Dame or Chartres are any more holy than a small church in Oregon or an organization devoted to helping the disenfranchised members of the community. Visually stunning Gothic cathedrals have their place as historical monuments and impressive houses of worship, but they are not the utmost representation of the God they proclaim.