Churches and States (Updated)

Abstract:The public anguish, debates, recriminations, and political struggles that have come in the wake of the April 2019 fire that destroyed the roof and spire of Notre-Dame in Paris are not without precedent. The present essay—a revised and extended version of a text first published in September 2019 in Places Journal—relates the post-fire saga of Notre-Dame to an uncannily similar (if rarely noted) nineteenth-century precedent: the debate and reconstruction of the early Christian basilica of San Paolo fuori le mura (Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls) subsequent to its destruction by fire in 1823. The essay aims to use the remarkably suggestive parallels between the two events as a means of informing the current debate.