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One architect, attracted to the picturesque history on view in Hugo’s novel, would ultimately heed his call. Hugo hoped that his novel might spur the building’s rebirth, allowing it to renew France’s ethical core during the Industrial Revolution. He believed that back then, the cathedral was able to inspire the masses and guide them toward a life of devotion and morality. Like other Romanticist writers and artists, Hugo imagined the Middle Ages as a simpler time, an era when society was governed by pure faith. He continues, “The book will destroy the edifice.”

“Alas! This will kill that,” he laments, directing his finger to the cathedral looming magisterially outside his window. In one of the book’s most famous moments, the archdeacon Frollo points sadly to a printed book on his table.

In the novel, Hugo lamented that the printing press had supplanted architecture as the primary communicator of civilization’s cherished values. Set in the 15th century, the novel alluringly evoked a different period in French history. Only the great bells avoided being melted down, and the church interior was used as a warehouse for the storage of food. During the French Revolution, many of the treasures of the cathedral were either destroyed or plundered.

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