A strange world of fabulous creatures dwell on the roof of Our Lady's church--conceptions that are half terrible and half fantastic, imaginations that are survivals of the old pagan superstitions which Christianity could not wholly extirpate. The XII and XIII centuries were not so far removed in time from the invasions of the northern Barbarians, and the Church made concessions to primitive inheritances. Artists were allowed to carve on roof or pinnacle the chimeras and vampires which through long centuries had haunted the imagination of their ancestors, provided that they expounded the truths of Christian doctrine in such principal places as portals, façades, and choir screens. Might not a mocking grotesque beside an angel be taken as emblem of the external antagonism of the animal and the spirit in man? The choir screen of Notre Dame of Paris is sculptured with the apparitions of the risen Lord, from Easter Day to the Ascension. "If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain."[83]
The cathedral of Paris during the first centuries of its existence was the setting of many national scenes. Here the kings of France deposited their crown and renewed their vow to be just fathers of their people. Before its altar their newborn heir was blessed. In 1182 the main altar of Notre Dame was consecrated, and three years later the patriarch of Jerusalem preached from it the Third Crusade. On the eve of both his crusades St. Louis prayed here, and in 1270, when his remains were brought back from Tunis, they rested in Notre Dame for a solemn night of chanted mourning.
In Notre Dame the Duke of Bedford had his nephew, Henry VI of England, crowned as king of France. Factional hate and a foreign enemy in control caused a _Te Deum_ of rejoicing to be sung in this, the most national of French cathedrals, when the news came that Jeanne the Maid had been taken prisoner before Compiègne, in 1429, but solemn reparation was made in 1456, when, in the presence of Jeanne's mother and brothers, the bishop of Paris (a Norman, and brother of the poet Alain Chartier) opened in Notre Dame the inquest that was to lead to the Rehabilitation of the heroine of Orleans.
To the hidden places over the vaults of Notre Dame fled the illustrious chancellor of Paris University, Gerson, to whom during two centuries was attributed the _Imitation of Christ_. In 1407 he had reprobated the murder of the Duke of Orléans (builder of Pierrefonds) by the Duke of Burgundy (of the regal Dijon tomb), and the mob rose and sacked his house. It is said that for months Gerson lay concealed in Notre Dame, alone with his books, and given over to prayer and meditation.