麻豆社

鈥淧art of us is burning鈥�. President Macron cancelled his planned address to the nation last night and instead found himself consoling not just Parisians but the whole of France. Notre Dame, the vast Gothic cathedral on top of the hill in the Ile de la Cite caught fire and burned, to the shock of everyone who saw it.

Constructed over 200 years, and completed in 1345, the entire wooden frame of the cathedral burned and the spire fell in on itself. Yesterday, eye witnesses were crying in the streets, and the pervading reaction from those who were there was that they were heartbroken.

Notre Dame, as other cathedrals, was built to the glory of God of course but their meaning extends beyond specific religious observance. And it doesn鈥檛 have to be an identifiably religious reaction to the fire to be described as a sort of soul sadness. Sadness at losing such a tangible link with our past. Joan of Arc was made a saint there. Henry VI was crowned King of France there. Notre Dame has survived revolution and occupation. But has come perilously close to not surviving this fire.

One 19th century commentator drew a distinction that sounds curiously contemporary for our own day: , 鈥淧eople in those old times鈥� he wrote 鈥渉ad convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.鈥� (Heinrich Heine). In post modern Europe, we鈥檙e not so much full of religious conviction as spiritual questions. We live our lives full of longing and inarticulate hope 鈥� and we look up at a beautiful and ancient building like Notre Dame that seems so certain, so convinced, which in itself gives some kind of reassurance; a sort of kindness, like the sight of an old friend.

At the beginning of the most holy week in the church鈥檚 year, Notre Dame at the weekend would have been packed with worshippers marking Palm Sunday. Ahead of them in a few days time lies Good Friday and what must seem this morning like a very distant Easter Day.

When the medieval St Paul鈥檚 Cathedral in London was burned down in the 17th century, the architect commissioned to rebuild it, Sir Christopher Wren, sifted through the rubble and found a large stone from the old cathedral with a word already carved on it. He picked it up in front of the assembled workmen and placed it on the ground as the cornerstone of the new cathedral. On it was carved the Latin word Resurgam; I shall rise again.

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