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On Arson and Notre Dame
Thank you for your warm, kind, and compassionate comments about the fire at Notre Dame. For most of the world, this was a tragedy in a far-away place; for me, it was a devastating fire in my neighborhood, one that’s left everyone here, including me, quite shaken up.
I’ve received several e-mails, and seen in the comments, suggestions to the effect that “it’s hard not to wonder if the fire were started by Muslim terrorists,” along with comments that say, “We’ll never know the truth,” because were this so, it would be hidden from “the likes of us.”
I think I can ease your concerns in this respect. Here is what is true. It is true, according to a report of the Ministry of the Interior, that in 2017, there were 978 attacks on religious buildings and graveyards in France, including 878 against Christian sites. It is also true that recently, thugs and vandals have done an extraordinary amount of violence and damage to buildings of every sort during demonstrations in Paris, Lyon, and many other cities. But yes, arsonists and vandals have been targeting French churches in a wave of attacks that’s lasted nearly two months. Some have been set on fire, while others have been desecrated or damaged. For example:
- The large wooden door on the southern transept St. Sulpice, the second-largest church in Paris, after Notre Dame Cathedral, was set ablaze on March 17. Investigators confirmed one day later that arsonists were to blame. Someone drenched rags in kerosene and threw them in the church. It’s still unclear whether it was a settling of accounts between homeless people—the clothes belonged to a homeless person—or a deliberate attack on the church itself.
- In early February, the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Enfants in Nimes, near the Spanish border, was invaded by intruders who drew a cross on a wall with excrement then stuck consecrated hosts to it. The tabernacle was broken, and other consecrated hosts were destroyed.
- The Church of St Nicholas in Houilles, in north-central France, was targeted by intruders who destroyed a statue of Mary and threw the altar cross to the floor.
- Statues of saints were broken and an altar cloth set on fire in Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, in south-central France. Hosts were stolen from the Church of Notre-Dame in Dijon, in eastern France, and scattered on the ground.
- French media reported a 35-year-old man has confessed to police to carrying out the attack in Houilles, but the mystery surrounding the identities of other culprits has fueled speculation that the offenses might have been carried out by Islamic extremists, secularists, radical feminists, or in response to revelations of sexual abuse in the clergy.
- In February, the French bishops expressed their solidarity with the country’s Jews following the release of figures that showed a 74 percent increase in anti-Semitic attacks the previous year, with 541 crimes documented in 2018. Most attacks involved physical violence and abuse, the profaning of shops, and the desecration of monuments and cemeteries.
- On February 6, vandals broke into the tabernacle at the church of Notre-Dame-des-Enfants, in Nîmes. (6 February). They scattered the hosts on the ground, drew a cross on the wall with excrement and damaged other religious items in the churchs.
- On February 9, fire broke out and a church was vandalized in Dijon.
- Fire and vandalism damaged the Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur, south-central France, on February 5. An altar cloth was found burnt and crosses and statues were torn down or disfigured.
- From January 25 to February 25, Yvelines suffered repeated acts of vandalism. A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary was found smashed on the ground, another on the tabernacle. Before that, the altar cross had been found on the ground and the celebrant’s chair was damaged.
- The church of Saint Nicolas in Maisons-Laffitte was vandalized on February 10. The tabernacle was opened and the Eucharist scattered. An altar cloth was stained and a missal book was torn.
The spate of vandalism recalls the series of attacks and vandalism committed by ISIS against the Catholic Church in France and Belgium in 2016, culminating in the unbearable murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel, killed by jihadists while celebrating Mass at a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy. NB: The suspects, in all the above cases, are not only usual ones. In some cases the motive for the attacks is not known; in others, the police have blamed anarchist and feminist groups. (Despite being a secular country, France has long been viewed as a culturally Christian one. So, any nut who’s keen to carry out an attack against authority and “the patriarchy” would think first of targeting a church. There has been some speculation, too, that the attacks may be connected to revelations of the sexual abuse scandal in Catholicism. That has not, at least, helped to reduce ambient levels of anticlericalism. The weekly orgies of lawlessness and vandalism associated with the Gilets Jaunes’ movement have also lowered the barrier to entry to anyone who wants to try giving vandalism for kicks a shot.
That said, I see no reason to think the fire at Notre Dame was started intentionally. Notre Dame is the country’s highest-value terrorist target — second perhaps only to the president and the Senate. It is under 24-hour security watch, with cameras trained on it from every angle; it’s patrolled both by the military and the counter-terror police, including plainclothes. Also, there are thousands of personal cameras trained on it at any given minutes because tourists take pictures there all day long. If an arsonist had done something as strange as scaling the church, Spiderman-style, to reach the place where the fire broke out, we’d have thousands of photos of it — and someone would have stopped him.
The fire started from the top (I saw this). Or more precisely, from the base of the steeple. No arsonist, however determined, could have made his way up there without anyone noticing. I’ve been up to the attic, with my grandfather. It isn’t easy to get up there—it’s nearly 60 meters above the ground, to get there you use a spiral staircase which is closed at the base by a heavy, locked door —and there’s just no way someone could have evaded detection to do it. The attic isn’t open to the public.
Their working hypothesis is the obvious one. They’d been carrying out restoration work in the spire to strengthen it. As part of the work, they installed elevators to the roof. The suspicion is that an electrical fault started the blaze. Negligence may have been involved: One of the fire alarms went off but in a different section of the building. The inspectors didn’t see the fire, so they dismissed it, losing precious time. By the time the security guards saw the first flames, they were already several meters high.
The authorities know exactly who had access to the attic. That night, even before the fire had been put out, prosecutors interrogated roughly 30 people from five different construction companies who had been there before the fire broke out. These people are not ordinary construction workers; they’re highly trained professionals who have trained for years in the painstaking art of restoring gothic cathedrals. You don’t make a career in restoring gothic cathedrals if you’re the sort who wants to see them burn. They interrogated them on the night of the fire and had probably already cross-checked their names in all their databases to see if any of them had a criminal record or a radical political past, Islamist or anti-clerical. That’s not a “too-quick dismissal” of the arson theory; it’s most than enough time to come to a reasonably strong conclusion that arson is not the lead hypothesis.
An arsonist would have done what the vandals did in the cases I cited above, or he would have thrown a Molotov cocktail into the nave. He wouldn’t have climbed to the attic, with everyone on the street watching, then set a tiny blaze that no one would notice for another half an hour.
Nor would the police here be in the least hesitant to say they suspected it was arson, if indeed they suspected it. The reason you know that the the fires at other churches were started by arsonists is because the police said so. You can’t hide something like that. Just like Washington, Paris leaks, and if there had been any decision to try to cover up the truth, you can be sure someone would have tipped off the press and the Senate and the opposition politicians. France, like the US, is a fractious, vibrant democracy, and it’s still under the rule of law. A cover-up like that would be illegal as hell. Being told to cover up the results of a lawful investigation would scandalize the prosecutors. They wouldn’t consent. It would leak, a thousand times over; or more likely, they’d just come forward, we’d see resignations on principle, and total political hysteria. They couldn’t even cover up what Benalla did, and that was a thousand times less significant. No government official, fire service official, or police service official in Paris has suggested any evidence of arson. That means there’s probably no evidence.
Now to be precise, they haven’t ruled out the idea that it was deliberate. They’ve said their chief investigative thesis is that it wasn’t, because there’s thus far no evidence that it was, and by appeal to Occam’s razor, “an accident” is the most obvious hypothesis. Great buildings are vulnerable to fire during restoration because of the tools and chemicals that must be used, and because they’re very old. Cathedrals like Notre Dame are at acute risk because of their ancient wooden roofs. If they weren’t so old and precious, they’d be condemned as firetraps. Construction work on a cathedral is always especially risky because of the open flames and sparks associated with welding and other construction hazards. Windsor Castle burned in 1992, IIRC; the fire began with a bright lamp and cleaning solvent. I don’t wager the workers would have been reckless enough to have smoked in Notre Dame, but then again, I notice that the workers who are right now carrying out restoration on my building sometimes smoke on the scaffolding.
As the cathedral burned on Monday, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and deliberate disinformation campaigns went viral on social media—many of them coming from Our Friends the Russians, as usual, and some even gaining mention on live US TV coverage. I suppose it’s inevitable. When you combine an international event of so much emotional significance with the rapid dissemination of news on social media, you’re going to get misinformation and, sometimes, completely fabricated conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, this is upsetting for people who lived through the event and who experienced it not only as the global trauma it was but as a personal one, too. Or to put it more plainly: It upsets me.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue told Neil Cavuto that, “if it is an accident, it’s a monumental tragedy. But forgive me for being suspicious.”
“Just last month, a 17th-century church was set on fire in Paris,” Donohue said. “We have seen tabernacles knocked down, crosses have been torn down, statues have been smashed.” In another interview with Host Shep Smith, Philippe Karsenty — the deputy mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine — said something similar: “We’ve had churches desecrated each and every week all over France” over the past few years. “You will hear the story of the political correctness which will tell you it’s probably an accident, but I don’t think,” he said before he was abruptly (but rightly) cut off by Smith.
Internet users speculated that it was a terrorist act, as did one video that made the rounds showing some guy walking toward one of the cathedral’s towers not long after the fire started with the caption: “No workers present at the time that the Notre Dame Cathedral fire started……So who is this guy dressed in Muslim garb??”
Well, first, he wasn’t dressed in “Muslim garb.” Second, he was a firefighter.
There’s a long history of church fires caused by renovation accidents (the easiest way to ensure that your church is burned down is to try to repair it) because welding and cutting tools are often in use, and large parts of older structures are made of wood. The roof of Notre Dame was made of 5,000 oak trees, felled some 750 years ago and now perfect tinder, so any spark or electric arc from the renovation could easily start a fire. So that’s probably what happened. There’s no evidence of foul play, and if there were, we’d be told of it. And there is some chance we will never know: Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said the investigation would be “long and complex,” explaining that approximately 50 investigators had begun a probe into the 12-hour-long fire. The evidence may have perished in the blaze.
I hope that sets your minds at ease. Alas, here, our complaint is with a much higher authority.
Published in General
Perfectly plausible. Also that someone sent an incendiary up one of the temporary elevators and walked out of the building undetected.
I agree, the hasty announcement it was accidental is the problem. If they have video feed from the attic at the time of ignition, they should show it. Until there’s firmer ground than “because we said so,” I remain skeptical that the cause is known or knowable.
True enough. I guess I had a flashback to the FBI’s conclusions from the James Hodgekinson investigation and figured that some times that official investigators ability to gaslight people knows no limit. Maybe the French deserve more credit that the FBI.
Kind of on a tangent, but if it hadn’t been mentioned before in other posts, Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth provides a fascinating insight into the architecture, engineering, and construction of these cathedrals. Follett gives the reader a good idea of the timespan, demonstrating how generations of families could work on a project like this and never see it finished. There’s more to it than that, but I haven’t read it in a while. I do remember that it held my attention at at a time when my usual reading choices leaned toward Tom Clancy novels.
Good book.
I’ve just been reading a book called “Ships of Heaven: The Private Lives of Britain’s Cathedrals” by Christopher Somerville, and I’m struck again and again how fragile these massive stone structures are. Many have been damaged (or even destroyed) several times by fire during their lives – and not just in antiquity. York Minster suffered an arson by a deranged man in 1829 that caused significant damage. Then there was an accidental fire in 1840 that also caused a lot of damage. In 1967, a survey determined that the structure, particularly the central tower, was dangerously unsound and significant repairs had to be made. Then in 1984 there was a serious fire in the south transept that resulted in that part of the structure being destroyed – and the rest of the cathedral being threatened with destruction. Subsequently, the overwhelming conclusion was that the fire resulted from a lightning strike to an electrical box mounted on the roof (but apparently the investigators were unable to completely rule out the possibility of arson or an electrical fault). The point is, these ancient structures are very fragile and it doesn’t take much to cause them to burn or topple. And Notre Dame de Paris, because of its prominence, will attract lots of attention and speculation that might not arise if the subject was Chichester Cathedral or some other less prominent cathedral.
Thank you, Claire, for keeping us all informed. It’s comforting to have someone we trust giving us updates.
Claire’s account is a accurate assessment of what we know about the origins of the fire. The balance of probability is that the fire was accidental.
The problem with any incident which winds up in the hands of the French judiciary is that there is little likelihood of the truth ever being known. The Paris DA, Mr Heitz, works, like all other DA’s in France, under the direct orders of the French DOJ. The order has certainly gone out from the Elysées palace: declare the fire accidental. It may be, it probably is, but any official report will certainly support this theory.
The French justice system is hideously biased in favor of the strong. The judges exist not to render justice but to apply the law (big difference, particularly when the laws are clumsily drafted and often ambiguous).
My late wife, who presided one of the chambers of the Court of Appeal when illness forced her retirement, told me time and time again: “If you want justice, don’t look for it in a French courtroom.” The judges themselves are independent, hence their contempt for the DA’s, who are not.
Anyway, our thanks to Claire for this contribution. It complements nicely my own, which you can find under the heading “When a Cathedral burns” (Apr 17).
Claire,
Dr. Berlinski, how nice it always is to hear from you. However, at this moment I must disagree with some of the ideas you expressed in your very professional post.
1.) In no way do I suggest any particular motive or any particular type of person at this time. I have merely suggested the possibility of arson being involved.
2.) The fire started after the workmen had left. If it had started below the attic, inside the Cathedral, it would have been visible to people inside the Cathedral. It was not visible so the fire didn’t start below the attic. The fire didn’t start in the spire as the spire itself would have burned first. It was obvious that the fire started beneath the spire and when it had gained a great deal of power consumed the spire. This leaves only one conclusion. The fire started in the attic where it could grow undetected until it was large enough to be seen from a distance outside of the Cathedral.
3.) The was no electric power in the attic. The workmen had already left for the day. Spontaneous combustion of the large beams inside the attic which have been there for hundreds of years is very unlikely. I understand that the surveillance systems make entry by a human arsonist very unlikely without being detected. Yet, so is an electrical fire caused in an area with no electricity extremely unlikely.
4.) Yes, the internet is a very large place and there will always be people who would exaggerate conspiracies. However, we have also seen people on the internet expressing pleasure in seeing Notre Dame burn. We have, as you have pointed out, experienced a few years of extreme violence against Catholic holy places (not to mention the antisemitic attacks). Yes, France’s general political climate is anything but calm. However, all I have asked for is a statement from the authorities that both you and I have probably heard hundreds of times. “At this time the cause of the fire has not been determined. The investigation will take quite some time to complete. At this time we are not ruling out any possibility.”
5.) I am all for calm. However, I make a distinction between calm and comatose. Calm means rational people are withholding judgment waiting for an expert opinion. Comatose means that people have accepted an empty hypothesis and given up on knowing the truth. This is fine for children but it isn’t what adults in a free society are supposed to do. As long as people understand that the investigation will take a long time to complete and no cause has been determined I don’t see that you can do better than this. By pre-empting one particular cause, ruling it out, you will not prevent speculation but only make it worse.
There are now reports that the Cathedral will not be restored to its original design but be altered. I don’t mean some artificial unseen structural improvements to hold it up. I mean the actual original design of the Cathedral will be altered. You might cover this issue also as I think you will have an opinion to express about this too.
You know the quote about “living in interesting times”. I am very sorry that Paris must be so “interesting” right now. You and your father are very hardy and resourceful, however, I apologize if my post intruded on you in any way. I suspect that shortly you will recover your bearings and be back to being the buoyant Berlinski clan that is much loved. This post seems evidence that you already have.
Regards,
Jim
It’s too bad that officials feel this kind of pressure. I don’t know why they do.
When Jack Kennedy was assassinated, the FBI swooped in dramatically and took the body away from the Dallas coroner. The FBI acted legally within some federal laws, but we all know how layered federal and state laws are, so it wasn’t perfectly clear at that moment, who had the preeminent authority. Years later, there were rumors about what happened that day, and even Robert Kennedy questioned the FBI’s findings. It was not what was done. It was the way it was done that spooked people.
The same thing happened with TWA Flight 800 that crashed off Long Island on July 17, 1996. The Clinton administration for some unknown reason swooped in and took the pieces of the airplane that the NTSB was gathering and studying, and the administration turned them over rather summarily to the FBI before the NTSB had completed its investigation, and then shut out the NTSB from the FBI’s investigation.
As these crisis situations are playing out, there is a lot of ego and self-importance on display when calm and clear thinking is called for. When the bluster and belligerence that got the bureaucrats through the crisis moment are over, accusations start flying every which way.
Why don’t they simply say “I don’t know”? Why can’t the agencies work together, with mutual respect, and simply follow the evidence where it takes them. Bring along some good reporters.
Panic is not the problem in these cases. It’s simply turf wars between the people and agencies investigating. And what follows the turf wars are forty years of conspiracy theories.
We need to return to a common commitment to find the simple truth, no matter how long it takes. No one gets extra points for speed or being the first to say they solved the case.
@claire I just noticed that several of your bullet points at the opening of the story are repeated twice – not that it makes it any less appalling, but first time reading it sounded like multiple major sites. The reason I’m mentioning is it almost sounds as if its the same group in the way the churches are being ruined. That might narrow it down for the authorities. I’m still shocked – the 74% increase in anti-antisemitism is also very disturbing. As I said, the gory details and the frequency of attacks is not being reported here in the US – that really makes me mad. The insanity over the Mueller Report, and obsession with it has taken many eyes away from what is really happening in the world – Sri Lanka, a tiny island on the tip of India where you can’t even buy a gun is attacked with such vengeance? Yes – even if Notre Dame was an accident, it can be viewed as a symbol of the shift away from what is good and decent to diabolical hatred of the innocent, but evil cannot overcome good no matter what.
There seems to be a concerted effort to squash out any criticism of Islam. Imagine during the Cold War if there was a concerted effort to squash out criticism of communism.
There was. I remember.
Probably. Perhaps the media wasn’t as overtly Liberal then and wasn’t wide spread. Personally I think it’s even the conservative media that is trying to squash out criticism of Islam.
#MeToo