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stained glassshrine, planned by Louis IX
(Saint Louis) to display the treasure it held :
relics relating to the Passion of Christ -
fragments from the crown of thorns, from
the cross, from the spear and the sponge
of the crucifixion. It was a collection that
had been toughly negotiated with the
Byzantine emperor (in fact an occidental
since the capture of Constantinople by the
crusaders in 1204 and a master under
supervision of the Oriental Roman Empire).
It was a political treasure making the
Palais of the king of France into a place
with as much weight in Christendom as
Constantinople, Rome or Jerusalem. Since
Clovis, the new Constantin, and until
Napoleon I, the masters of France considered
themselves the agents of the Western
Roman Empire, Which brought about the
typically French way of seeing Paris as the
new Rome, a beacon for the West.
The cathedral also bears witness to
this : first through its plan with double
aisles, designed by Childeric I, Clovis's
son and successor. His ambition was to
echo the Roman basilicas - St Peter's,
St Paul's beyond the city, St John Latran (the cathedral
of Rome). This ambition was upheld and outdone by the
Capetians at the time of the Gothic rebuilding of the building that we
now see : with double aisles, of course, but also vaulted and very lofty. This Notre-Dame
Cathedral, started in the 12th century, took the place of two earlier churches.
One, the old cathedral of Childeric, which was dedicated to Saint Stephen (itself
transplanted from the original site in the Forum and for which Saint-Etienne-du-Mont,
now a parish church, bears memory) and two, a sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin
(Notre-Dame), which was situated behind it and took its place for the sake of its name.
Snobbery rules : in the scale of the sacred, the Madonna was closer to Christ than Saint
Stephen and more or less as well placed as the Apostle Peter, the evangelist Paul or
John the Baptist.
