After our epic adventure on the Eiffel Tower, we strolled over to see this place…
You might recognize it… it is a church that is famous both for its architectural beauty and its equal-opportunity, nondiscriminatory bell-ringer hiring practices.
The countries of Europe have a long-standing rivalry… and I don’t only mean in the military sense. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the moment there was a glimmer of light at the end of the Dark Ages, the Europeans began to compete with each other in two important arenas… that of Church and that of State… which were not always clearly separated. We already explored the way that the royal families tried to outdo one another by building the biggest, fanciest palaces in my hilarious series ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and French’ last week. I think we covered the houses of the rich and royal. Now we will explore the houses of worship…
For fifteen hundred years or more, the Europeans have been vying with each other to see who could build the fanciest churches. Oh sure, they say it is all done for the glory of god, but you can clearly see, looking back, how national and even civic pride played a huge part in this game of one-upmanship.
Now we, as tourists… and even those of us who aren’t at all religious… get to enjoy the benefits of this contest.
And it never hurts to pay attention to how old these buildings are. I mean, they were built way back before heavy machinery or even blueprints had been invented.
Obviously, the churches were judged for their sheer size, but there was much more to it than that. The intricacy of the carving work, the gracefulness of the symmetry, the grandeur of the entryway, even the proper placement of the gargoyles, all played a part in being chosen as one of Europe’s grand cathedrals.
You just couldn’t afford to be lazy.
This is just the front of this famous building… wait until you see the rest of the outside and what is inside past these fancy doors.
Who were the people who carved all these saints and martyrs? We will never know.
But they left us this incredible… wait… is that guy holding his own head??? The two angels on either side appear to be worried that he might fall over at any moment… which is understandable… and why is there a cow… or goat or whatever… and that weird dog thing over on the smaller column to the right? Undoubtedly it all makes sense from a biblical perspective.
These cathedrals are still in use, but the tourists far outnumber the worshippers. This is the true mark of the winners of this architectural battle of the wills. It might not be surprising that the French hold claim to many of the victors of this struggle, just as Versailles, which we visited earlier, is, arguably, the winner of the ‘which royal family can drain its own treasury to the point where the starving masses rise up in revolution just to build a palace that makes all the other kings and queens purple with royal jealousy’ contest.
But hey, what do I know, I was just there to take some pictures to share with you on a silly little blog.
Pouring My Art Out 