When we babysit our granddaughters here at the house, we tap into several items to make the job easier. A big basket of toys and stuffed animals sits in the corner of our living room. A dozen children’s books line the lowest shelf just waiting to tell their stories. Sesame Street is easily streamed on the nearby television. And at dinner time we roll out the high chair so everyone’s on the same level. So who would’ve thought a high chair would be my blog topic for today? Maybe you, if you know anything about cathedrals.
We’re almost there, loyal readers. I will lay the corner-block of my LEGO model of Notre-Dame de Paris next week. Why not this week, you ask? Because before we crack the seal on the giant box of pieces, we need to pay a little respect to the real Cathedral. I want you to know a few things about the stone and glass Notre-Dame before you witness the rising of the plastic one.
It’s a cathedral in the middle of Paris, Dave… what more do I need to know? Uh, a LOT more. To begin with, do you even know what a cathedral is? I didn’t (and I have a background in architecture, for gosh sake). It’s a big, giant church with stained glass and chapels and a raised altar, you say. Well yes, you’re right, but what makes a church a cathedral? Interestingly, it has nothing to do with the building itself. Instead, a cathedral is the seat of a bishop (the ordained clergy-person who presides over the surrounding parishes). For lack of a church this person could just as easily be in a small house and it would still be considered a cathedral.
Cathedrals really do have “high chairs” on their altars for the bishops (cathedra in Latin means “seat”) but Notre-Dame de Paris is much more than a place for furniture. First and foremost, it took a hundred years to construct (1163-1260). In that era the building evolved from the common Romanesque style of the period to the more elegant French Gothic. Notre-Dame feels unusually vertical and airy for a structure of its time and there’s a novel reason for this: flying buttresses.
Imagine Notre-Dame’s architect – Eugène Viollet-le-Duc – talking to the Paris city council in the twelfth century and saying, “Look guys, let’s think outside the box here… literally. The structural support for this church ought to be outside of the building instead of inside”. Why would the architect want this? Because the flying buttresses assume the structural load that was previously handled by short, thick interior walls. The result is taller, more dramatic spaces, filled with the light of high-up stained glass windows. In other words, flying buttresses allow Notre-Dame to “reach for the heavens” much better than its Romanesque predecessors.
There’s also more to this French “grande dame” than structure, of course. Notre-Dame has twenty-nine chapels surrounding the main sanctuary (that’s gonna take a lot of LEGO). It features three spectacular stained glass “rose” windows that would not be as large or as high were it not for those flying buttresses. Notre-Dame’s twin towers host ten massive bronze bells and they each have first names. “Emmanuel” (listen to his sound bite below) and “Marie” are so big they take up the entire south tower, while their eight ringing siblings all fit into the north tower.
Notre-Dame also has a central flèche, a spire not unlike the ones you see on more modest churches. This spire, however, is topped by a bronze rooster, which is not only the symbol of the French state but also a container for (supposedly) a small piece of the Crown of Thorns, worn by Jesus leading up to his crucifixion.
As you would expect, Notre-Dame de Paris hosts countless works of art, whether paintings or sculptures. Many of the sculptures are biblical scenes intended to educate the illiterate parishioners of the twelfth century. But my favorite sculptures may be those of the twelve apostles, way up high surrounding the base of the flèche and looking outwards towards Paris… all except one. St. Thomas – patron saint of architects – faces Notre-Dame itself, and was given the facial features of Viollet-le-Duc.
Okay, so now you know more about Notre-Dame de Paris than just the LEGO model. Considering there are over 500 Gothic cathedrals in Europe, it’s impressive to see Notre-Dame at the very top of at least one “Top Ten Cathedrals” list. We’ll visit some of those other “high chairs” in future posts, to add even more life to my pile of plastic pieces. In the meantime, my LEGO “church service” begins promptly at 10am next Thursday.
Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
Life In A Word 
Fascinating. If tested, I would have defined “cathedral” as “big church!”
One of the biggest adjustments my wife had to make when we started raising grandchildren in our home was when each room slowly turned into a play station, including the recreation room which is now the Lego Room.
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My home office will be a “Lego Room” for the next several weeks. And yes, you’d be forgiven for thinking a cathedral is simply a church on a larger scale. I’m guessing 98% of the world would’ve given the same answer.
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One of our regrets on our trip to France was not seeing the inside of Notre-Dame. We were about four months to early for the re-opening after the fire. The exterior with scaffolding – that was all we could see. Interesting post, Dave!
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I had less of an excuse for not seeing the Cathedral than you did – in 1983, when I was studying abroad in Italy. A whirlwind tour of Paris could’ve been slowed down if I’d simply insisted on more time at Notre-Dame. Instead it was more of a drive-by. I must go back!
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I had the chance to visit Notre-Dame in 2014. It’s an amazing place and much bigger than I thought it would be. I think we spent half a day going through it and I know we didn’t see everything.
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I hope they still offer the same tours you would’ve had the choice of in 2014. In particular, I want to go up on the roof of the Cathedral, not just for the views but to get a better look at the fleche and all those Apostles!
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The roof was one place we didn’t get too, but I would like to see it now.
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Great post, I did not know about the “high chair” in the Cathedral. The next posts will be interesting. Will have ND Cathedral done by Easter? 😉
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If Easter is my goal I have just over three months to complete the build. I have to believe I’ll get it done before then, but I sure like the idea of bringing it across the finish line on Easter Sunday!
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Ok, we’ll be watching!
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Looking forward to your build and stories!
What with living in England, touring many countries in Europe, living in the Middle East and touring many countries in that part of the world – we have seen many many places of worship! So many that on our Danube cruise, The Car Guy and a friend took to wearing shorts on tours because they knew they would not be allowed into the churches. They were ‘churched out’!
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The architect in me never got “churched out” in Italy. Some of my favorites were smaller and in the shadow of the more famous cathedrals the tourists would flock to. I look forward to brief visits with some of these in my upcoming posts!
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I have never seen the “real” Notre Dame, but it makes me pine for the age when even local parish churches could evangelize merely by their beauty. It makes me sad that so many of the great Cathedrals of Europe are treated more like cultural sites than sites designed to celebrate a God who is far more than we can imagine by being far grander than any other area structure than we can imagine.
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I thought the same when we visited St. Patrick’s in downtown NYC, J P. Tourists were wandering all over the place – into the chapels, close to the altar, up and down the main aisle of the sanctuary – and not always acting reverent. How do you give your full attention to worship with so much distraction in the background?
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This was very interesting Dave – I have probably tossed around the word “cathedral” not realizing the exact definition of a cathedral. I looked on the top cathedrals list and found only one I had been to, Canterbury Cathedral, back in 1979 when I visited England, The paragraph on Canterbury Cathedral mentioned how old the windows are – amazing. The facts and figures as to the Notre Dame Cathedral are staggering as well. You have your work cut out for you as you put together the Lego version … I hope you do not set a hard deadline for completing it. (A side note – you’ve mentioned living in California and growing up there in the past – are your family members and their homes near these horrible raging wildfires? I read on Twitter/X that a Frank Lloyd Wright building, Arch Oboler Complex, had been destroyed and I thought of you as you admired his architectural style.)
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Interesting reference to the Wright design, Linda. I’m not familiar with the Arch Oboler Complex (no surprise, given the sheer number of FLW structures out there). The website said the buildings were destroyed in a fire in 2018. I hope they weren’t rebuilt since, only to be taken out again now. The Palisades fire breaks my heart because it is the neighborhood of my youth (including my high school). The area and homes were much more modest back then than they are (were) today. Yes, I have family members nearby (as the crow flies) but they live comfortably outside of the evacuation zones. Thank you for your concern.
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Yes, it would be a shame as to the FLW structure you mentioned. I have watched a lot of videos about the fires and interviews with people as they return to the neighborhood and see the rubble that was once their home – it is heartbreaking. I’m sorry your neighborhood from your youth is ruined – it must be tough to see that, but on a brighter note, I’m glad your family members and their homes are safe. Let’s hope they are able to contain more as the winds have died down somewhat.
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Enjoyed learning about cathedrals here, Dave, including Notre Dame. I remember learning about flying buttresses in school; didn’t remember that Notre Dame was the first structure to utilize them. That’s my new fact for today! Looking forward to following your experience of building the Lego model. I’m especially curious if the rose windows are included and how they’re added to the structure.
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I’m happy to report my LEGO Notre-Dame model includes rose windows! They’re not nearly as intricate as the real ones of course (and I think they’re each a single LEGO piece). Now you have me wanting to research stained glass art. It’s a wonder these beautiful windows were created hundreds of years ago.
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