Repair at Rouen

Ever since the 13th Century, when they started to build it, the people of the French city of Rouen have taken a mighty pride in their gothic cathedral. Architecturally, it is too much of a hodgepodge to rank with the cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens or Reims. But Rouen's delicately detailed Butter Tower,* fine sculptures and stained glass are among the prides of France. The largest of its great bells was named for Joan of Arc, who was brought to Rouen for imprisonment and trial, was burned in 1431 near the cathedral in Rouen's market place.

In 1944, a week of pre-invasion bombing of nearby Seine docks, bridges and warehouses by waves of Allied aircraft tore away rows of buttresses, flattened the whole southern side of the nave. Incendiaries set the tower afire and sent the bells crashing 253 feet to the floor. One huge stone column known as Pillar 58, which supports 2,000 tons of walls and roof, was blasted and bent. When the bombers were through with Rouen, the cathedral was a hollow, burnt-out shell in danger of collapsing completely.

To save it, townsmen, under the leadership of Architect Albert Chauvel, felled pine trees from a nearby forest, dragged them to the cathedral to reinforce crumbling columns, collected bricks from wrecked houses to make emergency walls.

After the war, Chauvel got money from the French government, set about reconstructing the cathedral in earnest. By last week, after six years of patient reconstruction work, citizens of Rouen could proudly announce that their cathedral was out of danger.

To reproduce destroyed sections as faithfully as possible, Chauvel had sent workmen to Chartres and Reims to learn what other church builders knew about medieval construction techniques. Scholars were commissioned to search out old books and manuscripts containing hints on gothic church building.

With his newly acquired knowledge Chauvel set up school in Rouen, taught his workmen to use old-style hand tools instead of mechanical saws in stonecutting. Thus, the new stone has the finely granulated look of the original. "This kind of surface softly reflects the light," said a Rouen expert, "whereas, with modern saws, we would have got a flat, shiny, modern surface." In similar spirit, the new timbers have been shaped with small axes, to give a delicately chiseled surface.

With ten more years of reconstruction work still ahead of them, Chauvel and his workmen have developed a deep respect for the men of the Middle Ages who originally built the church. Said a foreman last week: "Today we may be able to repair their work, but I'm afraid we wouldn't be able to build a cathedral from the ground up."

* Built with money donated by the faithful for the privilege of eating butter during Lent. In the Middle Ages, the Lenten fast generally ruled out milk, butter and eggs as well as meat.

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