Notre Dame
In 1163, Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, decided to build a new cathedral for the expanding population, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It took 180 years to complete Notre Dame Cathedral, finished in about 1345. One of the many secrets of the cathedral was the “Secret Garde” (guarded secret).. a small stone about 8 inches square, built into one of the cathedrals top parapets, just underneath the gargoyle on the southwest corner of the nave. We know nothing of the architect of Notre Dame other than the small stone. It had a circle inside the square, and inside the circle was a triangle, and inside the triangle another square. That was the architect’s only signature. 8 inches of stone, hand carved, that could not be seen from the ground. In fact, even if they’d have had binoculars in 1163, you couldn’t see it. It was tucked up underneath the stone work. Somehow it got the name mentir.. the French word for rascal. Perhaps because it was such a rascal to find. Actually, because if its location, no one in France had ever actually seen the Mentir, but its design appeared on French currency during the reign of Napoleon and was there until the money was redesigned during the presidency of Charles DeGaulle. The little eight inch square took on a fable of its own. There is a popular pantomime performed at Christmastime about Pierre, a small French boy who climbed one night to the top of Notre Dame to make a rubbing of the Mentir to give to his mother. He had no money, but he wanted to give her something that no one on earth had. A cathedral in Lion, France, claims to have the original rubbing that he made. By last count there were over 25 songs written about the “rascal,” and one such song is still sung on the opening day ceremonies in many French schools.
The “first section,” the French competency test for entering the university has a section dedicated to the rascal, and it there is a section of study on the piece of stonework in each grade, kindergarten through high school. If you attend the University of Paris, and major in architecture, you must be able to draw an exact replica of the Mentir. For three years the test was given and the instructors were amazed that every architecture student could draw the Mentir perfectly until it was discovered that since the Mentir was the symbol of the architectural school, it was imprinted on all the school’s stationery, including the test booklet itself. In 1995, a special hinged camera was imported from Germany, designed to reach over the top of the roof of Notre Dame, and photograph the Mentir. This would be the first time the actual piece would be seen since the 1300’s when the Cathedral was completed. The camera was originally designed for photographing shipwrecks in the Atlantic. The BBC was the highest bidder for live television rights to the event, paying over 3 million euros for the live feed. On July 14, Bastille Day, the long, elastic neck of the camera inches over the southwest wall, under the gargoyle and photographed the Mentir. At least it tried. The Mentir wasn’t there. Either the thing fell off about 500 years ago or it never was there. Not only had the BBC wasted 3 million euros, but songs had been written about nothing, the annual Christmas story was a fraud, and thousands of hours of children’s school time had been spent on something was at least out of date and perhaps completely worthless.
Now..I’ve got to apologize. I made this whole thing up. I know nothing about Notre Dame other than a guy tried to pick my pocket there in 1981. And there’s a lady who sells rum crepes right outside the cathedral. I remember her because I didn’t know the French word for rum and by the time I got my kids on the bus, the Cathedral was starting to dance. In fact, the French word “Mentir” means “to lie.” Sorry about all that.
I first made up the story of the mentir when I was preparing my seventh-graders to learn participial phrases because the high school teachers wanted them to know this so they would recognize them on their ACT tests so they could get into colleges which didn’t give a damn about participial phrases…or mentirs.