In 1831, Victor Hugo saw his Notre Dame de Paris published. That was the total romantic novel, where from the king to the most marginal of society participated in the same events. But the real protagonist, silent as it was, was the Cathedral of Our Lady, Notre Dame.
When the French read the story of Quasimodo, the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda, and the wicked archdeacon Claude Frollo, they suddenly appreciated their old church again. The book was so popular that it aroused a feeling of protest against the terrible state of the temple, which during the French Revolution had fallen victim to anti-clerical fury. In 1844, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc began the restoration of what had been the capital's cathedral for seven hundred years.
Such had been its symbolic role that Napoleon chose it as the setting when he donned the emperor's crown in 1804. Friend as he was bombastic, it seemed to him that, by doing it there, he connected with the very foundation of France. And we can say yes. If you walk away from the façade today, about seventy meters away, on the ground of the esplanade, you will see a small plaque that reads: "Porch of St. Stephen's Basilica".
“People of Paris, my friends, my brothers (…), Attila advances, it is true, but he will not attack your city. I assure you in the name of God." It was the year 451 and the one who harangued the masses like this was Saint Genevieve of Paris. Bad news came from the north. An Asiatic horde numbering in the tens of thousands had crossed the Rhine. Under the bloodthirsty Attila, they had sacked Metz and Reims; in the second, executing Bishop Nicasio at the foot of the altar.
Gathered in assembly, probably in the baptistery of the missing St. Stephen's Basilica – whose façade would remain today in the middle of the esplanade and the apse, where Notre Dame begins – the men discussed leaving the city. Until Genoveva spoke, who because of her reputation for holiness had great authority. The Parisians listened to him, resisted, and Divine Providence fulfilled its part by diverting Attila to the northwest.
So far the legend, because history offers a more complex story. In the final years of the Roman Empire, Lutetia, the old Paris, like the entire region, is threatened by Franks, Alemanni, Vandals, Suevi, Alans and Visigoths. To defend themselves against the barbarians, its inhabitants demolished what was left of the great public buildings and used them to turn the Ile de la Cité – where Notre Dame stands today – into a fort.
That was the appearance of the city – Paris from the year 360 – when Genevieve appeared in the middle of the fifth century. There she led a life of rigorous prayer and mortification.
According to tradition, the prayers of that woman saved the city from Attila in 451. What historiography explains is that it was a coalition between the Visigothic king Theodoric I and the Roman general Flavio Aetius that stopped him in the battle of the Catalan Fields. History wanted this to be the last great victory of the Empire, and that Aetius earned the probably unwanted nickname of "the last Roman".
However, Paris was already far from the Roman orbit, and in 464 the Franks under King Childeric I subjected the square to a brutal siege. And Genoveva comes out on stage again. If the Parisians did not starve, legend has it, it was because they miraculously managed to sneak grain through enemy lines. When Clovis I set out to finish what her father had started, she would also have been the one who negotiated the surrender of the island. She surrendered it to a Christian king, in fact, the first that France had.
Although historians don't know for sure when it was built, St. Stephen's Basilica has to be from that time or a few years before. If it was not there that Saint Genevieve gave her famous speech, it was in an immediately preceding temple, enlarged when Clovis took the city.
Today it would be impossible to make a model of the building, but archaeological remains and pure logic suggest that St. Stephen's must have been similar to the Basilica of San Vitale (Rome) or St. Apollinaris the New (Ravenna), both of which are archetypes. of paleochristian art. It would be made up of a central nave and four lateral ones, separated by marble columns and with a large dome at the head.
At that time the churches tended to imitate not so much the Roman temples, which allocated a lot of outdoor space for worship, but rather the large meeting rooms, called basilicas. Hence the early Christians gave that name to their churches.
With some Romanesque extension, it was the cathedral of Paris for seven centuries, until, in 1160, Bishop Mauricio de Sully found it insufficient. The city had established itself as the capital, and the prelate considered it necessary to have a larger temple. In addition, twenty years before and a few kilometers from there, the Gothic style had been born, which with its flying buttresses and ribbed vaults allowed the ceilings to be raised and the windows to be enlarged, in short, to make impossible shapes.
Following the example of the Saint-Denis basilica, Notre Dame began construction in 1163. Today it is facing its umpteenth restoration, after the 2019 fire.
