By Carol Symes, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
In 1831, Victor Hugo published Notre-Dame de Paris, whose explicit purpose was to draw attention to the plight of this particular church, as representative of all medieval monuments. In 1834, he authored War on the Demolishers!, which condemned the acceleration of a full-frontal assault on France’s medieval buildings.
Victor Hugo’s Concerns
Hugo decried the fact that the English were actively purchasing French spolia and other medieval objets d’art from the recent destruction of monasteries and cathedrals, and so on. He said, “The sacrileges of Lord Elgin are repeated in our own land, and we draw profit from it. The Turks sold nothing but the Greek monuments; we are doing better, we are selling our own.”
In the decades to come, Hugo’s broader concerns about the degradation of France, as embodied in its medieval patrimony and common people, were realized by unfolding events. Just like the left-leaning Romantic medievalists of Britain, Hugo’s medievalism was deeply informed and motivated by political and socioeconomic commitments.
Effects of the February Revolution
Hugo began to compose components of the masterpiece that would become Les Misérables in the 1830s, in the wake of popular uprisings against the government that would establish the July Monarchy of King Louis Philippe, and amidst widespread social injustice. In 1848, Hugo supported the Paris insurrection, which he later narrated very vividly in that novel.
Although the February Revolution led to the nominal abolition of the monarchy for the second time, it also brought Napoleon III to power, first as president and then emperor of France. This sent Hugo, by now an opposition politician, into exile in the Channel Islands, where he completed Les Misérables.
This article comes directly from content in the video series The Medieval Legacy. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Napoleon’s Destruction of Medieval Structures
Meanwhile, Napoleon III and his henchman, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, completed the destruction of medieval Paris. Beginning in 1854, they tore down thousands of structures in the central part of the city, especially on the Right Bank, to make way for the Neoclassical buildings and grand boulevards that could not be barricaded as the narrow medieval streets had been—that is, for the cityscape that we now take for granted as quintessentially Parisian.
By the time Hugo returned from exile in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War, medieval Paris was all but gone, relegated to just a few ecclesiastical structures on the Île-de-la-Cité and the Left Bank, and a few houses in the neighborhood of the Marais (the Swamp). Ironically, the humiliating losses of this short war, which was accompanied by another Parisian uprising, led to a Catholic revival in France and, with it, a revival of medieval Romanesque styles, exemplified by the basilica of Sacré-Cœur.
American Architectural Medievalism
In the United States, a growing public consciousness of the young republic’s international importance during this same period led many influencers to argue that America, too, needed to mark that importance with medieval monuments.
Although the Romantic movement had already influenced public and domestic architectural styles by the middle of the 19th century—witness the neo-Gothic buildings on many new college campuses, as well as many Gothic urban mansions and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City—yet American architectural medievalism is best exemplified by two fin-de-siècle Episcopal cathedrals: St. John the Divine in Manhattan and the National Cathedral in Washington DC.
Begun in 1892 and 1907, respectively, St. John the Divine the National Cathedral have never been completed, in part because—true to the Arts and Crafts movement—they are medieval in construction as well as style; their architects and sponsors were adamant that no materials or techniques unknown to medieval builders would be allowed to sully them.
Collegiate Gothic Style
Meanwhile, the Collegiate Gothic style championed by leading architectural firms became the aesthetic standard of American higher education by the beginning of the 20th century, meaning that generations of students and their families came to associate this style with all that is beautiful, cultured, noble, and racially superior.
As one critic noted, in 1904, American universities should resemble those of Oxford and Cambridge, rather than Padua or Wittenberg, precisely because “the British base of the design is indispensable, for such were the racial foundations” of the United States.
And just as real medieval cathedrals had relied on the artistry of workers who weren’t paid properly, so these medievalist monuments to American wealth and pride relied on the skilled but often poorly compensated work of artisans and artists, many of them impoverished immigrants from southern Italy, eastern Europe, and Ireland.
Common Questions about the Destruction and Revival of Medieval Architectural Styles
The February Revolution led to the nominal abolition of the monarchy and brought Napoleon III to power. This sent Victor Hugo, by now an opposition politician, into exile in the Channel Islands.
American architectural medievalism is best exemplified by two fin-de-siècle Episcopal cathedrals: St. John the Divine in Manhattan and the National Cathedral in Washington DC. Begun in 1892 and 1907, respectively, they have never been completed, in part because as they are medieval in construction as well as style, their architects and sponsors were adamant that no materials or techniques unknown to medieval builders would be allowed to sully them.
Beginning in 1854, Napoleon III and his henchman, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, tore down thousands of structures in the central part of medieval Paris, especially on the Right Bank, to make way for the Neoclassical buildings and grand boulevards. By the time Hugo returned from exile in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War, medieval Paris was all but gone.
