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 Professor Murray and participants in nave of Notre-Dame |
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Copyright 1998 Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.For academic use only. These and following photographic images were taken by participants in the 1998 Summer Seminar and workshop under the direction of Professor Stephen Murray and the Media Center for Art History sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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Now 50,000 people visit the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris every day to stare at her windows, sculpture, enormous pillars, and magical stone vaults. But for what purpose was this building designed and who needed it--who usedit in the thirteenth century?
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| If we look down on the inside of the church from above, as if we are on the ceiling like this little royal thirteenth-century head in a similar church at Mantes, just north of Paris, we see the altar area appearing before us as the central focus of current usage for these buildings. However, in the Middle Ages, the altar area was only for some of the religious functions of the building and it was approached from different directions by different people.
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Detail of sculptural decoration in nave vaulting, collegiate church of Mantes-la-Jolie |
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View of main altar in choir at collegiate church of Mantes-la-Jolie |
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 Notre-Dame de Paris, floor plan Adapted from Aubert's plan (1920) after Lecomte
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We can generally separate three entrance areas for three different user groups. The non-clerical visitors included everyone from the royal family to thieves and beggars. They came in the doors in the west portal, or "back" of the cathedral. Usually only one of the side doors in this portal was unlocked for passage. Usage of the central door was reserved for the elaborate ceremonies of high feast days and special events like royal coronations or funerals. Along the side walls of the aisles in the nave, or long hall inside these doors, were altars at which 120 chaplains took turns performing memorial services.
listen to a composition from the thirteenth-century liturgy for a high feast day |
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