at the Liberation, the cathedral of the nation (5/5)
Notre-Dame is inseparable from the Liberation of Paris, the story of which is itself the quintessence of the victory over the German occupiers. August 1944: we all have in mind these black and white images of armored vehicles at the foot of the towers, of a flight of bells in the sky of the capital, of a general crossing the nave to the sound of The Marseillaise, in a fervor disturbed by the sound of gunfire. The context of these days and the role the cathedral plays is a little more complex than that, however.
De Gaulle arrived on the afternoon of August 25 in Paris and immediately went to Montparnasse station, where Leclerc, at the head of the 2nd Armored Division, had set up his command post that very morning. Then around 5 p.m., the hero of Free France arrived at the Hôtel de Brienne, rue Saint-Dominique, which had housed the Ministry of War since the beginning of the 19th century. It was from there that Georges Clemenceau led the victory in 1917. The choice of place has a double meaning because it is the place that Charles de Gaulle occupied before the capitulation. He will say that he found the office in the exact state in which he left it. The circle is complete.
De Gaulle invokes “eternal France”
Brienne is the first of a series of steps that will all have a specific symbolic significance. He received the authorities there, the prefect of police, the general delegate of the provisional government Alexandre Parodi, but not the Resistance, to which he held he owed nothing. Parodi urges the general to go to the town hall where the representatives of the National Council of the Resistance (CNR) and the Parisian Committee of the Liberation (CPL) are waiting for him. In this Paris where fighting continues, his convoy has already suffered gusts between Montparnasse and Brienne. However, it was less security than politics that preoccupied him, because he knew that a declaration of the restoration of the Republic was expected of him. However, in the Gaullist vision, this has never ceased because it is the government of Free France which has embodied it since June 18, 1940.
De Gaulle gives in but, before going to the town hall of Paris, around 7 p.m., he makes a detour by the police headquarters, on the Ile de la Cité. He crosses the Seine on foot to get to the town hall where, after the official speeches, he launches into his famous tirade: “Paris indignant! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the support and the help of all of France, of France which is fighting, of France alone, of the real France, of eternal France. » The General is careful not to mention the Resistance. For the Liberation specialist Jean-François Muracciole (1), the flight was probably not improvised, witnesses reporting having heard him repeat these sentences the day before.
The General’s Ruse
The staging of the Gaullist coronation takes place the next day, August 26. “He invents the descent of the Champs-Élysées, an unprecedented gesture, without reference to monarchical, revolutionary or republican rites”, recalls the historian. The General declares to entrust his security to the people of Paris, whom cars equipped with loudspeakers invite to gather on the avenue. Historic success. At 3:18 p.m., the procession, in which representatives of the Resistance, civil and military officials mingle, descends the Champs to Place de la Concorde. It is now that Notre-Dame comes into play.
General de Gaulle knows that passing through the cathedral is compulsory, but he is wary of it. On July 1, the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Suhard, designated the funeral of Philippe Henriot, head of Vichy propaganda, accomplished by resistance fighters. With this prelate hated by the Communists and by a party of Christian Democrats, the General must not compromise himself. The challenge is also to affirm a secular conception of the Republic. Marshal Pétain never ceased, during his travels in France, to be received on the forecourts of cathedrals before attending services. The subject also remains very sensitive, as the precedent of 1918 reminds us. Clemenceau had then refused the participation of his government in the Te Deum at Notre-Dame, November 17, to celebrate the armistice. The Church refuses the next day to participate in the official ceremony at the Concorde.
De Gaulle will use trickery. At the beginning of the afternoon, he only informs Cardinal Suhard of his arrival at the cathedral at 4.30 p.m. for a Te Deum and informs him that his presence is not desirable, henceforth to ensure the security of the threatened archbishop. An alleged that the General will allusively take up in his memoirs. After the Champs-Élysées, the General arrives on the forecourt at 4:05 p.m., 25 minutes early to avoid any ceremony. He is welcomed by Mgr Brot, the archpriest of Notre-Dame. Due to a blackout, the great organ cannot start the Te Deum. “We just sing a Magnificat and play The Marseillaiseno one speaks, it’s all over in fifteen minutes,” summarizes Jean-François Muracciole.
A humiliated cardinal
The ceremony, boycotted by all the canons of the chapter, in solidarity with the cardinal, is disrupted by shootings whose authors will never really be known. If they create panic in an assembly of 10,000 people, they cause no injuries. It is undoubtedly about shootings of the ground towards the galleries, can be caused by a movement in the assistance badly interpreted by a feverish shooter. Be that as it may, the stage at Notre-Dame was a double success for de Gaulle, who honored it with his presence without falling into the traps that awaited him.
The General then took care to re-establish ties with the Church, in particular the humiliated cardinal, by participating alongside him in a Te Deum, May 9, 1945. Much later, this fervent believer will still rely on Notre-Dame to reconcile the people of France, those who believe in heaven and those who do not. The founder of the Fifth Republic died on November 9, 1970. In his will written in 1952, he planned a ceremony “extremely simple” and excluded from state funerals. “I will have to transport my body home”, he insists to underline the intimacy of the moment. The ceremony took place in Colombey on November 12 in the afternoon, in the presence of his family, parishioners and the Companions of the Liberation.
Presidential funeral
In the morning, the nation honors his memory during a designated religious office at Notre-Dame, in the presence of the greats of this world, but without the body of the General. De Gaulle installs a new rite of presidential funerals, which is based on the distinction between the man and the function, the private and the public. In 1974 and then in 1996, it is this same symbolic pattern that will be followed by Georges Pompidou and François Mitterrand with the particularity, for the latter, of the simultaneous holding of the two celebrations, at Notre-Dame and at Jarnac. “De Gaulle had the ambition to reconcile the two Francesanalyzes political scientist Olivier Ihl. It makes this building, which has spanned nine centuries of our history, a symbol of this reconciliation. » Notre-Dame, whose cultural power Hugo had awakened in the 19th century is embodied, now politically something chosen“A French, ecumenical spirituality. She is a point of sharing”again explains the university.
On April 15, 2019, the popular emotion manifested around the burning cathedral – and the billion euros of national subscription that followed – showed, in the era of globalization and secularization, that it remains the monument the most emblematic of France, a heritage marker of a collective identity that is always questioned.
——–
A cathedral and heads of state
August 25, 1944. Arrival of General de Gaulle in Paris.
August 26. Descent from the Champs-Élysées, then a very brief ceremony at Notre-Dame, without the presence of Cardinal Suhard, dismissed by de Gaulle.
May 9, 1945.Te Deum at Notre-Dame to celebrate the armistice, with de Gaulle alongside Cardinal Suhard.
November 9, 1970. Death of General de Gaulle.
November 12, 1970. Celebration in the morning, without the body of the General, at Notre-Dame, and funeral at Colombey-les-deux-Eglises in the afternoon.
April 6, 1974. National funeral of Georges Pompidou during a ceremony performed by Cardinal Marty. His burial takes place in Orvilliers (Yvelines) in privacy.
January 11, 1996. Parallel to the national ceremony at Notre-Dame designated by Cardinal Lustiger, the funeral of François Mitterrand takes place in Jarnac (Charente).