Bearing witness …

… No Words: In Paris, as Notre Dame burned | City Journal,

Medieval cathedrals are designed for the illiterate; everything in them, however seemingly trivial, is meant to aid the memory. The cruciform shape, the statues, the altars and reliquaries, the chapels and windows, the asps and the gargoyles, the Stations of the Cross—cathedrals are memory-palaces, every detail meant to allow everyone who sees them, everyone, to understand and remember the story they tell. The medievals’ assumptions about the human mind and memory are the opposite of the principles that rule the Internet. Yet they work extremely well. I can’t stop remembering everything in the cathedral.