Randall Webster

Explorer Assignment

Notre Dame de Paris

The Notre Dame Cathedral, to this day, remains one of the most well known features of

Paris. Its founding coincides with the growth of Paris as a intellectual, cultural, religious, and

economic center in the late middle ages. Meant to show the extravagance of Paris, the

Cathedral is now seen forcibly juxtaposed with more modern landmarks leaving it often

brushed aside as archaic. While beautiful, it's true legacy is that of Christianity's social,

political, and economic impact on a society marked by near constant turmoil.

The building itself was built just after the Gothic style of architecture became common

place. This new style is reflected in its structure as the walls are too thin to hold their own

weight, necessitating the use of flying buttresses for support. The Cathedral was

commissioned by a newly appointed Bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, who felt the need to

show the splendor of Paris. The Cathedral that came before it was also massive but, one can

assume, it was either not as nice or seemed outdated at the time. Since its planning the

Cathedral has been renovated and repaired a number of times. Its blending of Romanesque

and naturalist architecture reflects Western Europe's synthesis of Roman culture and religion

with that of barbarism.

The Cathedral is located on an island in the heart of Paris called the le de la Cit. This

island was originally inhabited by a Gaelic tribe who settled there for both strategic and

agricultural advantages. It would later be resettled by Romans and named Lutetia marking the

Romanization and Christianization of the Celtic tribes that inhabited the area. Meanwhile, the

conquest of the Huns pushed together Celtic and Germanic peoples resulting in an unseen
level of cooperation between kin groups. These larger groups were better equipped at

dismantling the Roman Empire, yet not so great at maintaining their own political structures in

the resulting power vacuum. One group, the Franks, managed to establish a lasting kingdom

based heavily on Roman and Christian ideals while naming Paris their capital. The city would

later become the economic, religious, political, and cultural capital of France with the

construction of the Notre Dame serving the dual role of both displaying the city's opulence

and displaying France's loyalty to the papacy.

As previously said, the culture of the French in the Middle Ages was somewhat of a

hybrid between the culture of their tribal beginnings and that of Christian Rome. This

synthesis reflects heavily on the changes to their political, religious, and social structures. The

Catholic Church, unlike the Greek Orthodox Church, provided a religious justification for the

decentralized West European kingdoms in exchange for money. This infusion of religion into

the economic and political culture also provided justification for the economic hierarchy of

Feudalism due to the popular conception of land ownership. Land was considered owned only

by god, giving kings the ultimate authority over it as long as the papacy supported them. This

provided a system of religious indoctrination to justify the class of warrior-nobles' earlier

peacetime acquisition of land.

The religious bureaucracy of the papacy had also set up an extensive system of social

services that further pushed loyalty from the previous realm of ethnicity to that of religion and

creating a tedious balance of power between the church, the king, and the aristocracy.

Though French Monarchs would eventually become powerful enough to weaken the papacy

the popularity of national allegiance would not reemerge until after The Hundred Years War.

The conclusion of which would finalize the unification of the French people around the

concept of citizenship. And idea that had profound effects on enlightenment thought and the

French Revolution.
 Known for its grandeur, the Notre Dame has become a site of historic significance due

to both its appearance an its connection to the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most

influential systems of coercion in western Europe. Situated next to the Palais de Justice, it

stands less as a glorification of the past than it does a reminder of the progress that has been

made.