The interior, which was cruciform, was 455 feet long and 99 feet wide; the distance from the middle isle to the highest point in the roof was 125 feet. Here in niches in the walls was another multitude of statues, and in the nave and transepts were preserved valuable tapestry, representing biblical scenes and scenes from the history of medieval France. Here also hung a treasure of paintings, including canvases by Tintoretto, Nicolas Poussin, and others, and some fine old tapestries.
In the treasury were reliquaries, one said to contain a thorn from the Holy Crown, the skull of St. Remi and a collection of valuable vessels in gold, the most remarkable in France. The treasures included not only the coronation ornaments of various kings, but the vase of St. Ursula, the massive chalice of St. Remigius, and countless crucifixes in gold, silver and precious woods.
In the treasury was also preserved the Sainte Ampoule—the vessel in which the oil used to anoint the kings of France was preserved—a successor to the famous ampulla, which a dove was said to have brought from heaven filled with inexhaustible holy oil at the time of the baptism of Clovis, in 496. During the Revolution the sacred vessel was shattered, but a fragment was piously preserved, in which some of the oil was said still to remain.
CATHEDRAL A TARGET
The Cathedral of Notre Dame is now no more than an empty shell of charred and blackened walls. The fire started between four and five o’clock Sunday afternoon, September 20, 1914, after shells had been crashing into the town all day. Over five hundred fell between early morning and sunset.
The cathedral had been turned into a hospital for the German wounded, to secure for the building the protection of the Red Cross flag. When the first shell struck the roof everyone believed it was a stray shot, but later in the day a German battery four miles away, began making the great Gothic pile its target. Shell after shell crashed its way into the old masonry and stonework that had stood the storms of centuries.
At 4.30 some scaffolding around the east end of the cathedral, where repairs were going on, caught fire and soon the whole network of poles and planks was ablaze. Then the roof of old oak timbers caught fire and soon the ceilings of the nave and transepts were a roaring furnace.
The blazing piers of carved woodwork crashed to the floor, where piles of straw had been gathered in connection with the work of the field hospital. As soon as this caught fire the paneling of the altars, the chairs and other furniture were devoured.
Twenty wounded Germans would have perished by the efforts of their own countrymen if several French army doctors, with their bearers, had not carried them one by one at their own risk out of the church by one of the side doors.