0:00

Welcome to the first Footnoting History episode of 2020 and the first episode of our series:

0:05

Footnoting Disney. This is Elizabeth, producer and contributor for Footnoting History,

0:10

and while, in just a minute, Kristin will entertain you with the story behind "The Hunchback

0:14

of Notre Dame," we want to start the year by sending out a special thank you for listening and

0:19

also ask you to consider supporting us through our new Patreon account as recent changes have raised

0:24

our production costs. Our goal, as always, is to bring you excellent, enjoyable and free content.

0:31

We appreciate any and every contribution. You can learn more through our website or go

0:35

directly to patreon.com/footnoting_history. Thank you, and now, enjoy the episode.

0:46

The story of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" is as much about unlikely heroes and stirring

0:50

suspense as it is about the cathedral itself. When the novel was first published in 1831,

0:56

Notre Dame was over 600 years old and crumbling. It was in need of a few champions,

1:01

and it found them in Victor Hugo, a beautiful but marginalized street performer,

1:05

and a one-eyed, deaf bell ringer who brought the cathedral back to life.

1:09

Hi! And welcome to Footnoting Disney. I'm your host, Kristin, and today we will be visiting an

1:15

old Footnoting History friend: the cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris, which is the central

1:20

character of Victor Hugo's 1831 novel by the same name. You may remember from Footnoting History's

1:26

200th episode that the English translation of the title - usually "The Hunchback of Notre

1:32

Dame" - tends to obscure this fact by focusing on the figure of the bell ringer, Quasimodo,

1:37

but Notre Dame itself is the story, and it's one that started over 800 years ago. Victor Hugo's

1:44

novel "Notre Dame of Paris" had the effect he was going for: it was instantly, immensely popular

1:51

and inspired people to care about Paris' cathedral in ways they hadn't in centuries.

1:56

Notre Dame was reprinted thousands of times, translated into many languages, and adapted to art

2:02

and later film. The first Hunchback-themed movie came out in 1905, a silent 10-minute short called

2:10

"Esmerelda." Others were soon to follow. The first television mini-series debuted in 1966,

2:17

and rumor has it that Idris Elba is working on a modern version for Netflix ... fingers crossed!

2:23

The story also made it to the theater, the opera, and the ballet. Different versions

2:27

tended to emphasize different aspects of the story. One 1923 movie was all about the love of

2:33

Quasimodo for Esmeralda, and the ballets featured her dancing, of course. And in a 1983 arcade game,

2:40

you play Quasimodo, and you jump over extremely pixelated objects and ring bells.

2:46

If anyone comes across this gem in what I assume will probably be a Pizza Hut somewhere, please

2:52

contact Footnoting History immediately so I can go play it. In 1993, a creative development executive

2:59

at Disney named David Staton was inspired by a Classics Illustrated comic book of the story.

3:05

Apparently he found it charming, and it was what inspired his initial proposal to make the film.

3:10

The 1996 Disney version borrows heavily from a 1939 film adaptation directed by William

3:16

Dieterle. Take a look at the 1939 version of Quasimodo, played by Charles Laughton,

3:22

and you'll probably see a few similarities to the Disney one. The 1939 movie also emphasizes justice

3:28

and the monumental importance of the cathedral itself, themes that the 1996 animated version

3:34

embraces - along with accepting otherness and the importance of one's character. There are arguably

3:40

three main characters in Disney's adaptation of "The Hunchback:" Quasimodo, Esmeralda,

3:46

and the cathedral itself. Quasimodo and Esmeralda each capture very different aspects of otherness

3:52

in medieval society. Quasimodo is deformed and unable to leave his home. Esmerelda is beautiful,

3:59

but as a Gypsy, is excluded from society and has no place that can truly be home. The

4:05

cathedral is a refuge to each. For Esmeralda, the cathedral provides sanctuary when she is attacked.

4:11

For Quasimodo, the cathedral is this place to be beautiful, to soar gracefully among the

4:16

lofty beams while ringing out the melodies of his beloved bells. The cathedral plays a key role in

4:21

the story, but in Victor Hugo's time, Notre Dame was neither as beautiful nor integral to society

4:28

as it appears in the Disney film or the novel. When he first began writing, Notre Dame of Paris

4:33

in 1829, Victor Hugo wanted to highlight how the cathedral was a shell of its former self. It was

4:39

falling apart, and it had been for a while. Before French Revolutionaries got to it in the 1790s,

4:45

and before they got to it again in the 1830s and the 1840s as Christine and Elizabeth discussed,

4:51

the Protestant Huguenots in the 16th century had the first major go at vandalizing Notre Dame.

4:57

No one cared too much to fix it up and instead focused on building projects that today make

5:01

Paris just so Parisian. Hugo was well aware of this, and in the novel, he predicts that Notre

5:07

Dame might soon "disappear from the face of the earth." By the time Hugo was writing in the 1820s,

5:15

the cathedral was as neglected as his Esmeralda and as debilitated as his Quasimodo. For Hugo, the

5:22

cathedral itself is the central character. When the stone gargoyles come alive to interact with

5:27

cartoon Quasimodo, that's not far off from Victor Hugo's original intention, where the cathedral is

5:33

a personified centerpiece of the tale - it lives, it breathes, it hurts. There are pages upon pages

5:41

devoted to the cathedral's description in the novel. It's part of Quasimodo and of Paris, and it

5:46

is alive. For Hugo, architecture was the way that humanity communicated before the printing press.

5:52

It was history, it was science, it was "wonderful art." Nearly two centuries later, in 2019,

6:01

at one of the cathedral's darkest moments France's president, Emmanuel Macron,

6:05

would echo Hugo's sentiment saying, "Notre Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche,

6:12

the place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our

6:18

lives." Construction of the cathedral of Notre Dame began on a small island in the Seine,

6:25

called the Ile-de-France, in 1163. When Notre Dame was being built, it employed hundreds of

6:30

stone cutters, carpenters, builders, sculptors, and glassmakers. It was an economy in miniature.

6:36

When the cathedral was finished, it was where scholars like Peter Abelard wanted to be,

6:41

and it needed a staff of priests to keep up with the religious and everyday running

6:45

of a complex that included a church, a large collection of relics, and a cloister for monks. It

6:51

would come to feature the dazzling stained glass windows, soaring pointed arches, and dramatic

6:56

flying buttresses that would become iconic of high and later medieval European cathedrals.

7:02

This style of architecture would ultimately become known in the 16th century as Gothic.

7:07

Gothic style architecture allowed for the super high ceilings that you see in the movie.

7:11

The stress and pressure of the walls and ceilings were directed down and out by the pointed arches

7:17

and were supported by the flying buttresses. With these newer structural designs, the central

7:22

portion of the cathedral - the large main aisle called "the nave" - could be surrounded by slender

7:26

arcades of columns and galleries, giving the area an open feel. More of the walls could be cut away

7:32

for windows - immense kaleidoscopes of vivid color that drew their viewers up and into the world of

7:38

saints and kings ... the multimedia devices of their day. Modern visitors of cathedrals

7:44

often do not realize just how colorful and alive the medieval cathedral once was.

7:50

Years have stripped away the saint shrines and tapestries and wall paintings that once

7:54

adorned cathedrals, but in the later 15th century, there would have been a riot of art on display.

8:00

The chantry chapels - those individual altars that were eventually built by the very wealthy along

8:05

the sides of the nave - give some hint as to the types of decorations that once filled the space -

8:11

things like altar cloths, paintings, flowers, candles and sculptures. Many of the sculptures

8:16

that would have greeted a medieval visitor to Notre Dame were either replaced in the Baroque

8:20

period (which is from around 1600 to 1740) or were destroyed in the Revolution, but they once would

8:27

have provided a focus for worship and reflection and religious instruction. Disney's Quasimodo

8:32

hangs out with the most famous type of Notre Dame sculpture, what he calls "the gargoyles." His

8:37

three friends hop around and play cards and sing, but none actually redirect rainwater away from

8:43

the cathedral, which is what would qualify them as technical, medieval gargoyles. More appropriately,

8:48

they would have been called "grotesques," but will give them an artistic pass since

8:52

they're cartoons. Medieval grotesques were these little monster figures that adorned the upper

8:56

portions and the exterior of cathedrals, in the misty airs where demons were thought to dwell,

9:01

and they were supposed to remind their medieval audiences that the dangers of hell were very real

9:06

and very close. Today there are 54 grotesques above the three, big main doors of Notre Dame,

9:12

but those are 19th-century reconstructions. We don't know how many there were in the Middle Ages,

9:17

but there were certainly some, based on archaeological remnants on the cathedral itself

9:22

and a 1699 drawing made of the outside. The grotesques were smaller and fewer and shaped

9:27

a lot like birds. They were part of Victor Hugo's vision of what made the cathedral

9:32

"medieval." In the novel, the grotesques are part of the face of the cathedral,

9:36

and Quasimodo is, in some ways, a living grotesque. He is the cathedral, and the

9:41

cathedral is him. For fans of Quasimodo's story, the bells of Notre Dame are the main attraction.

9:48

Medieval cathedral bells were rung to announce the times of religious services, for funerals,

9:53

or for celebrations, and they were pretty complicated to ring, depending on how many

9:58

there were. In the book and in the movie, Quasimodo names them. In all, he has 15 bells

10:03

to ring when his story takes place in 1482. Medieval Notre Dame had between 9 and 10 bells

10:10

(sources differ on the number) but the largest bell still in existence today, named Emmanuel,

10:15

was actually cast in the 17th century. It was the only bell to survive the French Revolution,

10:20

and even though it's not medieval, it probably does sound a lot like Quasimodo's great bell,

10:25

Marie. Quasimodo has a bit of a love affair with those bells, and in many ways, it's tragic.

10:31

In the Disney version, the villain figure, Frollo, forbids Quasimodo from ever leaving the cathedral.

10:37

He's there to ring the bells, and no one wants to see him. In the novel,

10:41

Quasimodo is a recluse in Notre Dame, but he's not forbidden to leave. He just strongly prefers

10:46

to remain in what he views as his sanctuary from the world, in a kind of symbiotic relationship,

10:52

rather than wander too far beyond its protection. The first time Quasimodo rang one of the bells,

10:57

Frollo was thrilled, like a parent who hears their child's first word. And for Quasimodo,

11:03

the reaction was intoxicating. He became a bellringer extraordinaire, and he loved his job.

11:09

But, those bells would ultimately severely damage his hearing. In the 1831 novel, Quasimodo is deaf.

11:17

Quasimodo has to deal with a lot of physical impairment, and in the 15th century, this was an

11:22

especially difficult and complicated situation. Medieval people had many ways of describing

11:27

people with disabilities - as infirm, crippled, diseased, deformed, malformed, and defective.

11:36

These terms are both insensitive by modern standards and also pretty vague. We don't

11:41

always know what physical impairments medieval people were dealing with, but sources do

11:46

mention individuals who suffered from vision and hearing loss, as well as speech and orthopedic

11:51

impairments, all things that Quasimodo was dealing with in the novel. Many of the physically impaired

11:56

in the Middle Ages could not perform the jobs that would support them - things like farm work or

12:01

domestic service, and without networks of support, these individuals were incredibly vulnerable.

12:08

Victor Hugo writes his Quasimodo as having difficulty hearing and speaking,

12:12

but he has no trouble treating the cathedral like his personal jungle gym or performing

12:16

his very physically demanding job. It's really more Quasimodo's ugliness that is the problem.

12:23

The name Quasimodo works on a few levels. In the Disney version, Claude Frollo (here described as

12:29

"Judge Frollo") reluctantly adopts Quasimodo at the urging of the kindly archdeacon of the

12:34

cathedral because Frollo killed his mother. Frollo is horrified by the baby, calls him a monster,

12:40

and the narrator of the scene tells the audience the name Frollo chose was to emphasize the

12:45

baby's appearance. Quasimodo, he tells us, means "half-formed." That is ... half correct. In the

12:53

novel, Frollo is actually the archdeacon, and he's a much more complicated figure than Disney, who

12:59

needed an unambiguous villain, makes him out to be. As a young priest, Claude Frollo voluntarily

13:05

adopts an abandoned baby left on a small wooden bed in the cathedral, called the foundling cradle,

13:10

where it was customary to leave unwanted or orphaned babies, in the hopes that someone

13:14

who was able would take them and care for them. The chapter that immediately follows describes

13:19

how Frollo lost his own parents to plague and how he assumed the care of his little brother, Jehan.

13:25

Jehan does not make an appearance in the cartoon "Hunchback," but in the book, he's kind of a brat,

13:30

who Frollo nevertheless indulges and protects. On the second Sunday after Easter,

13:35

Frollo is returning from saying mass at "the altar of the lazy," and he's thinking about his brother.

13:43

He sees the screeching helpless baby, who's being heckled by a group of old women for his ugliness,

13:49

and his heart "melted with pity." He thought, Hey, if I die, this could be my little brother. I'll

13:57

take this little guy. Oh ... you really are ugly. Huh. But, Frollo still takes him, and the day he

14:04

does is Quasimodo Sunday, which gets its name from a bible verse used during this particular service.

14:11

It reads "as newborn babies desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby."

14:19

In Latin, the language used by the medieval church, this verse begins "quasimodo geniti

14:26

infantes," and that's how you get the name for the holy day and a major character of

14:31

the novel. Victor Hugo leaves it open as to which of these two meanings the name is meant to relay.

14:38

It's because of the day Frollo adopts the baby, but he says it could also be to

14:43

"express the incomplete and scarcely finished state of the poor little creature," and he goes

14:49

on to list the large wart over the left eye, the hunched back, and the crooked legs of the baby.

14:56

Today some people think that Victor Hugo may have had a particular condition in mind when he wrote

15:00

the character of Quasimodo. His description of Quasimodo largely matches something called Type 1

15:06

Neurofibromitosis, which is a genetic disorder of the soft tissue and the skeleton, also sometimes

15:12

called Von Recklinghausen’s disease. Because the gene that produces the protein that helps

15:17

regulate cell growth is not working as it should, severe complications can arise. The condition can

15:23

cause neurological impairment, tumors, and bumps near the eye area, larger-than-average head size,

15:29

short stature and bone deformities, and deafness. The medieval understanding of the human body was

15:36

complicated. There were a lot of competing ideas about what lay behind a person's physicality.

15:41

Physical impairment could be understood as either a spiritual punishment or a gift,

15:46

the result of unfortunate planetary influence, or a medical condition. Things like hearing, speech,

15:52

visual, and orthopedic impairments were treated as illnesses by medieval medical practitioners,

15:58

who tried to correct what they saw as imbalances in the body. The 2nd-century Greek physician,

16:03

Galen, who was still immensely popular in Europe in the Middle Ages, cautioned that the squishy

16:08

bones of infants were at risk of becoming deformed due to placing them incorrectly in their cribs or

16:13

wrapping them too tightly in blankets. It's stuff like this, he said, that can lead to the growth

16:19

of a hunchback. Others wrote that children born under the influence of Saturn were thought to be

16:24

especially vulnerable to physical conditions that would make it hard for them to walk,

16:28

and those who were conceived when the moon was in a waning phase were fated to be "infirm, weak,

16:34

and not virtuous." This highlights the bridge between physical and spiritual well-being that

16:41

medieval people very much believed in. An impairment of the soul could - not always,

16:46

but could - result in an external impairment of the body. Many medieval people looked at the

16:51

disabled as wearing their sin for all to see, and so they didn't have to feel bad about it.

16:56

Some of the physically impaired who were forced into begging provided an opportunity for others

17:01

to do good. They were chances to be charitable, and in fact Frollo does say that, by taking in

17:07

Quasimodo, he was offering up to God an act of charity that he hoped his ne'er do well little

17:13

brother could benefit from. The vast majority of people in the book are not kind to Quasimodo,

17:18

and their animosity usually turns on their perception of his physicality. To them, he is

17:23

ugly and deformed, and they are just not prepared to deal. His body is how they know him, and at the

17:29

end of the novel, it is Quasimodo's crooked spine, his head sitting between his shoulder blades,

17:35

his one leg that was shorter than the other - his skeleton - that identifies him as the bell ringer

17:40

of Notre Dame. He is still holding his beloved Esmeralda, who has been hanged. Yeah ... you're

17:46

probably not surprised, but the novel takes a bit of a darker turn than the Disney version.

17:52

Esmeralda comes pretty close to death in the movie, but it's Disney, so their "Hunchback"

17:57

has a happier ending than the original novel's. But, there are still some similarities. In the

18:02

novel, Esmerelda still falls in love with a stereotypically handsome prince-figure, Captain

18:07

Phoebus. She still is rescued from Frollo by Quasimodo and claims sanctuary in the cathedral,

18:13

and there is a final scene featuring the death penalty. However, in the book, Phoebus is a bit of

18:18

a playboy, and Esmeralda is not saved at the last moment. In neither scenario does Quasimodo get to

18:24

end up living happily-ever-after with the woman he has fallen in love with. Esmeralda is described

18:30

in the book, and in the film, as a Gypsy, a group that is now known today as the Roma. In 1482 when

18:36

the novel is set, Gypsies were new to the medieval scene, and people only started recording them in

18:42

Central and Western Europe in the first half of the 1400s. The consensus among historians is that

18:47

the Roma were originally from the Balkans. When the Ottoman Empire expanded, they moved to areas

18:52

close by, like Greece, but also Italy. This group was referred to by a lot of different names, based

18:58

on where Europeans believe they came from. They called them "Egyptians," after an area in Greece

19:03

known as "Little Egypt," which is where we get the word "Gypsy." As the Roma continued to move

19:07

around, they acquired other names based on their location - "Gitanos" in Spain, "Bohemians" in

19:13

France - but the fabled origin of Egypt remained. Their itinerant, exotic nature was part of their

19:19

identity. Victor Hugo writes that Esmeralda came to Paris by way of Hungary, then through Spain,

19:24

and then through the kingdom of Algiers. Her name and dress are labeled "Egyptic." She's a mishmash

19:30

of cultures that is simultaneously alluring and Other with a capital O. The encompassing term

19:36

"Gypsy" would become synonymous with thievery and dishonesty, something that the Disney version does

19:41

highlight. "Watch out child," a concerned mother tells her young son, when he gets too close to

19:45

Esmeralda who's dancing on the street for coins, "they're Gypsies, they'll rob you blind." When

19:51

the Roma were moving into Western Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, the economic boom of

19:56

the 12th and 13th centuries was over. It was now a time of population increase and economic decline,

20:02

along with religious upheaval and the beginnings of modern state formation. In general,

20:06

there was a fair amount of change and anxiety. The newcomers were not welcomed. When Victor Hugo was

20:12

writing Orientalism was more the game. This was the practice of the Western world imagining the

20:17

world anywhere East of them, or 'The Orient" - and it was marked by a patronizing tendency

20:23

to see Eastern cultures as unchanging, undeveloped, and thus easily reproduced and

20:28

subjugated. The French in particular had been enamored with Egyptology ever since Napoleon,

20:33

and the "Egyptic Gypsies" fulfilled a similar role. Hugo's Esmeralda, like the Disney Esmeralda,

20:40

dances, plays the tambourine, wears earrings, and reads palms. Whether or not medieval Roma actually

20:45

did these things remains an open question, but medieval Europeans certainly thought they did.

20:51

19th-century Europeans did, too. Hugo's Esmerelda is a marginalized figure,

20:56

but she's also characterized by her exotic beauty, and she is definitely an object of

21:01

desire. She is kind and compassionate, but she's not actually a Gypsy at all. Her name was once

21:07

Agnes and she's the long-lost daughter of a French woman named Paquette. She was stolen by Gypsies,

21:14

and they left in her place a "little monster, a hideous, deformed, one-eyed, limping thing," who,

21:22

of course, grew up to be the bell ringer of Notre Dame. Before he loved Esmeralda,

21:27

Quasimodo loved those bells. Victor Hugo writes that he "loved them, he caressed them,

21:33

he talked to them, he understood them." And when both Esmeralda and Quasimodo's stories end

21:39

tragically, the bells lose their luster, and the once vibrant cathedral becomes "like a skull,

21:46

the sockets of the eyes still there but the gaze has disappeared." It's some heavy

21:53

foreshadowing of the state of the cathedral as Victor Hugo saw it in the early 1800s,

21:58

but Notre Dame of Paris reminded its readers of Paris' extraordinary medieval history and

22:04

its responsibility in maintaining that history. Following the novel's 1831 publication, there was

22:10

an effort to preserve and renovate Notre Dame to what it largely looked like until very recently.

22:15

The evidence of the success of Victor Hugo's mission was apparent at the heartbreak following

22:20

the 2019 fire. Probably Victor Hugo would be pretty sad about the facts - the damage done

22:26

and the things lost, the uncertainty still about its fate - but he would also probably be comforted

22:32

by how the cathedral of Notre Dame has been restored to a place of incredible importance.

22:37

The cathedral, thanks to Victor Hugo, Esmerelda, and Quasimodo, was once again embraced as a symbol

22:44

of French national identity, and today, as a world treasure. This has been Footnoting Disney.

22:50

If you like the podcast, be sure to visit our website footnotinghistory.com

22:55

where you can find links to further reading suggestions related to this week's episode, as

22:59

well as a calendar of upcoming podcasts. You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter

23:05

@historyfootnote. Until next time, remember the best stories are always in the footnotes.