Notre Dame is a cathedral. The word cathedral comes from the Latin wordcathedra, which is the name that was given to the throne was called where thebishop sat in his church.
The cathedral was the house of God and the seat ofthe bishop. The bishop is the powerfull leader of the church and the churchrules the land. Cathedrals were a sign of both economic prosperity and faith. Building Notre Dame required a great deal of things, such as skilledbuilders, millions of tons of stone, many workers, powerful leadership, andabove all else, lots of money. Most of the money, at first, came from came fromthe middle class people, but kings and rich merchants ended up spending the moston the project. The man in charge of building was called the master builder.
The peopleunder him were the master craftsmen, the manuel laborors, loaders, and pieceworkers. For these workers, a day of hard work was worth about 2 or 3 loaves ofbread. The stone used to build Notre Dame was gotten by digging in the ground forit. In a location as close to where the cathedral was to be built as possible. The stone was pulled up by oxen who could transport approximately 8000 lbs. in asingle load.
The stones were held together by mortar, which was made by sandand water mixed with lime. Notre Dame is so tall, to make sure it wouldn’t crumble, the builder had touse framework to support their creation called a flying buttress. The roofswere made from lead and gutters were placed to draw rain water from the walls,The spouts to these gutters were stone “Gargoyles” that were carved to look likemonsters who spit water when it rained.Category: Religion
