It was center stage for protests by groups pushing for marriage equality in France, which became legal in 2013. A massive counter-demonstration by opponents of same-sex marriage also sought to use the cathedral as a symbol.

Now, the fire-gutted cathedral has assumed a new role. It has quieted — if only for a moment — a city typically consumed by the same fights that rage across ideological fissures throughout the West.

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They often reach a particular fever pitch in France, where nothing is as explosive as the question of national identity.

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Paris this week grieves as a whole. Even the airwaves that often stoke political fragmentation were quiet as investigators looked into the cause of the fire. Officials appeared still to be working under the assumption that it was accidental.

“I’m not certain that all of these French fractures will heal, and we’ve certainly known many since Charlie Hebdo and the November 13 attacks,” said Alain Finkielkraut, a prominent conservative intellectual and radio host who often finds himself at the center of France’s culture wars.

He was referring to a pair of deadly terrorist strikes in 2015: the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and the coordinated assaults that included a mass shooting at the city’s Bataclan theater.

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“But it’s also true that in this affair, many of the French — regardless of their origins and beliefs — have rediscovered their patrimony,” Finkielkraut added.

The unity is certain not to last. But Notre Dame — and the years of reconstruction ahead — will offer a counterpoint to a city that had become accustomed to anger and suspicion.

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Every Saturday since mid-November, the elegant boulevards of Paris have been on lockdown during the “yellow vest” demonstrations, one of the most violent political protest movements France has known since the student revolts of 1968.

The yellow vest protests began in response to concerns about rising social inequality — some legitimate, some exacerbated by social media. Most of all, the yellow vests have epitomized a country bitterly divided between police and protesters, elites and the underclasses, Paris and the provinces.

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Add to that the constant acrimony over national identity — a term that in local parlance is little more than a code word for mounting anxieties over Islam, Muslims and immigrants.

Every few months, a new controversy will erupt over something as seemingly trivial as a runner’s hijab. The same cast of professional intellectuals will appear on television talk shows to deliver warring orations on secularism, pluralism and what they call the soul of “la France profonde.”

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“Emotions in politics are like good cholesterol and bad cholesterol,” said Dominique Moïsi, a French political scientist who has written extensively on the question of emotions in public discourse. “If the yellow vests were an example of negative emotions, what we saw on Monday night was profoundly positive.”

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There were powerful displays of national unity after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and Paris’s Bataclan concert hall and cafe terraces in November 2015. More than 230 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in France since 2015. No one died in the fire at Notre Dame. But there is a funereal atmosphere in Paris just the same.

For Moïsi, Notre Dame is a symbol everyone understands and whose destruction is visible for all to see.

“There’s the anonymity of a human life, but the singularity of a building,” he said.

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On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron had been set to deliver a long-anticipated address on the results of a two-month national conversation inspired by the grievances of the yellow vests. The speech was called off as the world watched helplessly as Notre Dame burned.

On Tuesday, Macron said that any mention of politics would be inappropriate.

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“It’s not the time today,” he said.

So far, Macron’s opponents have respected his appeal — even those who have stopped at nothing to galvanize the yellow vests against him.

For Jérôme Fourquet, the head of the Ifop polling agency and the author of a popular book on France’s political fragmentation, this is because the cathedral sits at the intersection of multiple ideological narratives. It can mean whatever one wants it to mean: religion and tradition for the right, enlightenment for the left, art for the aesthetes and history for tourists.

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Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National, or National Rally party, has almost echoed Macron in her public statements.

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“All the French tonight feel an infinite sorrow and a dizzy sense of loss,” she tweeted on the night of the fire. But her emphasis has been on Notre Dame’s religious significance, and she praised the firefighters for rescuing priceless relics from the fire.

By contrast, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, heralded the cathedral as “the incarnation of the victory of our elders against obscurantism.”

For Fourquet, Notre Dame is Macron’s latest chance to appease a nation that may be unappeasable, something he tried to do — and failed — after the murder of a police officer in a March 2018 terrorist attack and France’s victory in the World Cup in July 2018.

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