Revaulx
Full Member
Oh I agree. It’s just that occasional big projects tend to be more effective (and cost effective) than little-and-often type repairs, although that can appear counterintuitive.'Ongoing maintenance' is the fact of these cathedrals throughout their entire history. You'd be hard pushed to find a time in the entire history of these buildings where something isn't being fixed, enlarged, or rebuilt. The current state of Notre Dame is the result of a dispute about who should pay for repairs rather than a deliberate policy. This article covers it: http://time.com/4876087/notre-dame-cathedral-is-crumbling/
That’s an interesting article. The relationship between the Church and the State in France has been a fraught one for centuries, and many devout French catholics have long felt a degree of ambivalence towards the institution of the Church, while also believing that the State’s pursuit of secularism has occasionally bordered on persecution. All Church property was nationalised in 1905 by a secularist government, which gave little thought to the ongoing expenditure it was committing itself to.