A Tale of Two Cathedrals

The Owl
Vol. 2, Issue 16
April 24, 2008
Baltimore, Maryland

The spectacular stained glass rose window in the Cathedral of St. Denis, just north of Paris’ 18th arrondissement. Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com.

Dear Inquiring Traveler,

Today The Owl takes you to northern France to visit two of the most daring cathedrals ever conceived. One was built in a mere 50 years. The other took over three centuries to complete, only to be nearly destroyed in WW2—today it offers a strange mix of styles.

And, of course, alongside this cultural food for thought, you’ll discover some of the local delicacies.

Editor, The Owl

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A Tale of Two Cathedrals (Part 1)

by Paul Lewis

This is a tale of two cities and two gothic cathedrals, built during the competitive frenzy of cathedral-building that gripped northern France during the 12th century.

In those years, every town wanted a cathedral and one bigger, better, and taller than its neighbors’. Thus enormous gothic edifices began springing up in Paris, St. Denis, Autun, Beauvais, Soissons, and Senlis, to name a few. For a while, Beauvais won the height stakes. But then the tower fell down. It was rebuilt—only to fall down again, rather ruining its image.

Cathedrals were popular, because the country’s population was growing and the people’s faith strengthening after the Black Death (the economy and the population were devastated by the worst plague until AIDS). A confident church used its influence in the towns to squeeze the prosperous merchants to pay for the cathedral boom. With towns expanding, there was need for more places to pray.

But the main reason for cathedrals being built all over the country was that it was the latest new thing. Gothic had just been invented—a striking way to create imposing, high-roofed buildings filled with light and color. This new technology resulted from a breakthrough in building design.

While the column was invented by the ancient Egyptians—the first to build on a vast scale—the displacement of stress by using curtain walls was invented by the French in the 12th century. Its Silicon Valley was St. Denis, north of Paris, where the bold Abbot Suger’s advisors built in a daring new way. Just as the Egyptians were unsure about columns and attached them to the sidewalls of temples, so too St. Denis is only in transition to Gothic. But Amiens achieved the move, going the whole nine yards.

Lush Pastures and Potent Cider

The two northern French cathedral towns I visited told different stories about how they built up to the sky to get closer to God. One of the fast, smooth trains I delight in whisked me to Amiens, deep in northeastern France, Picardie. This region even has its own ancient language called Pic, though barely 2,000 people speak it.

A similar train conveyed me northwest from the capital to Rouen, a larger town in Normandy. This is a land of lush pastures, fat cows, tons of milk and cream, and brimming barrels of cider—except that Normandy cider is a potent brew with the kick of a bad tempered donkey, not the U.S. toddlers’ apple juice.

The major gothic cathedrals, among the greatest ever built, that dominate the center of each of these towns were both begun at about the same time—Rouen in 1145, Amiens in 1220. But the stories behind them are what account for their completely different look today.

A Miraculous Survival

The Amiens cathedral builders rolled up their sleeves and got to work under Robert de Luzarches, the designer, and following his death in 1236, under two assistants, Thomas and Renault Cormont.

The façade of the Amiens cathedral: a masterpiece of Gothic architecture. Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com.

This makes Amiens cathedral among the few whose architects can be named, even if we know nothing else about them. As a result, the cathedral was finished in 1269, after a mere 50 years, built from one master plan in a consistent style. It thus escaped the fate of many other cathedrals, built slowly and then tinkered with by trendy new bishops wanting to show themselves up to date, decades after the foundation stone had been laid.

In my view this makes Amiens one of the finest of all gothic buildings, with its soaring chancellery supported by slender stone pillars reaching to heaven. But it also took a miracle. Amiens was bitterly fought over in both world wars as witnessed by its memorial plaques to fallen soldiers. The dead are from Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Newfoundland (then an independent colony not yet part of Canada). A special plaque commemorates Raymond, son of British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, who fell nearby in 1916.

Yet although the town was destroyed (as its badly rebuilt center reminds us), the cathedral survived, complete with its magnificently carved wooden choir stalls and a dubious relic of John the Baptist’s face.

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