The Spire That's Seen it All

By Raven Navarro

The history of Notre Dame’s spire runs centuries deep. It can be traced as far back as the thirteenth century, but its origins and everything that transpired after is anything but clear cut. The spire has witnessed hundreds of years of history unfold before her eyes, all while remaining a symbol of perseverance to the people of Paris. The cathedral’s spire’s roots are linked to a bold visionary who not only replaced the spire and the cathedral, but who may also have been the cause of the confusion around the spire’s history. I am here to plot the spire’s timeline and understand, alongside you, just what happened to it before the fire of 2019.

Entry of Queen Isabella into Paris.  Notre-Dame is shown on the far right with the original spire visible between the two towers.  From the Jean Froissart's Chroniques, BL Harley 4379.  Attributed to Philippe de Mazerolles, 1470-72.  Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Our story begins in the year 1265, when the spire was first added to the cathedral.  The lead-covered wooden spire was a gothic architectural addition to the place of worship at the time. It stood tall and overlooked Paris as it stood watch at the city center. It witnessed event after event as Paris underwent numerous rulers, participated in warfare, and turned from a medieval city into a modern urban center. 

However, the story gets tricky from here. Some sources say that the spire was removed sometime during the 1780s. According to these sources, the removal was due to the tower's framework having been weakened by taking the brute force of some much wind so that it became unstable. It was taken down, they say, before it fell and in order to keep it from falling.

But a majority of sources say that the tower was not removed due to the wind damage, but by revolutionaries in the 1790’s. During the rebellion, the revolutionaries wanted to strip Notre Dame of its religious symbols and symbols of the kings and they wanted to make use of its resources for themselves. This meant that statues were beheaded, bells turned into canons, and – according to these sources - the spire removed so that rebels could utilize the lead-based frame as they had the bells.

However, still other sources state that, in 1803, the spire received donations from the city in order to fund needed repairs. But why would a spire that is not there need any kind of repair? Perhaps they were repairing damage to the spire’s supports and the roof around it caused by the revolutionaries – it is hard to believe that they would have been very careful in removing the spire (if they removed it). But it is impossible to say.

I speculate that the cause of this confusion is Engéne Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. He is the bold visionary I spoke of earlier, who was commissioned in 1844, in partnership with Jean Baptiste Lassus, to lead a restoration project to build back up what was a crumbling Notre Dame. And he designed and built the spire that fell so dramatically during the 2019 fire.

Model of Viollet-le-Duc's spire for Notre-Dame, 1859.  Tangopaso, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The problem is that Viollet-le-Duc wrote different things about the demolition of the original spire at different times and in different places. In one piece, titled “Entretien et Restauration des Cathedrals de France: Notre Dame de Paris,” published in 1851, he blamed the revolutionaries for the removal of the spire, listing it alongside other damage done to the cathedral at the time. But in another piece, specifically about the spire, published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1869, he presents yet another different account of its removal. Here he states it was demolished by his predecessor, Godde, who was the architect in change of the cathedral from 1813 until 1842, because it was in danger of ruin and he wasn’t given the funds needed to save it. If we can identify Viollet-le-Duc as the source of the confusion about the destruction of the original spire, however, that just raises another question. Why did he say different things at different times? That I can’t answer.

Aerial view of the spire, September 2018.  Hilader, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Instead I suggest that we look beyond all this to the spire that he built for cathedral. His goal was to build a thirteenth-century spire, but also one with a nineteenth-century flare. He created a slimmer design that showcased sculptures at its base. When the fire of 2019 struck the cathedral and engulfed it in flames, the world watched in horror as the spire fell. In the next few years another new spire will be built for the cathedral and, after some debate, it will be a replica of the one created for the building by Viollet-le-Duc.

Sources:

Lynne T. Courtenay. “Viollet-le-Duc et la Flèche de Notre-Dame de Paris: La Charpente Gothique au xiiie et xixe siècle,” Journal d’histoire de l’architecture, Vol. 2, 53-68.

Kevin D.Murphy. “The Historic Building in the Modernized City: The Cathedrals of Paris and Rouen in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Urban History, Vol 32. No. 2, 278-296.

Dany Sandron and Andrew Tallon.  Notre Dame Cathedral: Nine Centuries of History. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University, 2020.