A new look into the history of Notre Dame’s Lady Chapel
Tucked behind the main altar of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the Lady Chapel is a space of luminous beauty and devotion. In the quiet stillness beneath its vaulted ceiling, many find a place to pray a Rosary or simply sit silently in the presence of God.
Through its magnificent artwork, this small chapel encapsulates Notre Dame’s sacramental vision: the belief that God’s grace is mediated through the material world, and in this case, in its artistic splendors. Despite all the grand history and art crowded into this small room, it remains intensely human in scale, intimately drawing the viewer into encounters with the Sacred Heart, the Passion of Christ, as well as the ever-present veneration of His cross.
The Lady Chapel’s showpiece is a magnificent gilded altar.
With its twisting columns, sunburst centerpiece, and ornate angels, the altar indeed looks plucked from a Roman basilica. In fact, many believed it came from the studio of Gian Lorenzo Bernini—the same Baroque master who designed St. Peter’s Basilica’s baldacchino, and the bronze and gold encasement around the Chair of St. Peter.
While it’s likely the creation of one of Bernini’s pupil’s rather than Bernini’s own hand, Notre Dame’s founder Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C. purchased this altar on a fundraising trip to Europe in the 1880s. As one archive recounts, Fr. Sorin spotted the altar for sale in Rome in 1887 but initially balked at the price; after returning to campus and seeing the empty chapel awaiting adornment, he changed his mind and cabled Rome to buy it. By 1888, the glittering Baroque altar had arrived at Notre Dame, just in time to help complete the Lady Chapel for the basilica’s consecration that year.
Beyond its artistic pedigree, the Bernini altar became a spiritual focal point for Notre Dame. Featuring a spectacular reredos with a radiating sunburst at its center, this halo of golden rays surrounds the monogram “IHS” and a smaller crucifix, symbolizing the Eucharistic presence of Christ.
Fittingly, Fr. Sorin chose this splendid altar as the place where the Blessed Sacrament would be adored by the campus community. “It is perhaps the most attractive altar in the church, and it is the one before which the students … adore the Blessed Sacrament,” noted one early account.
Flanked by the basilica’s defining ombrellino and tintinnabulum, it is also adorned with the papal keys and coat of arms, symbolizing Notre Dame’s status as a papal basilica.
The altar’s connection to the foundations of the universal Church are furthered by the fact that it carries a treasured relic—a small piece of wood from a table where St. Peter himself celebrated Mass. Just as the high altar of St. John Lateran in Rome encases the wooden altar of the Apostle Peter, Notre Dame’s little “Roman” altar in the Lady Chapel invites the Notre Dame faithful to marvel at the continuity of the Eucharist from St. Peter’s time to our own.
While the Lady Chapel is popularly named for Mary, its art reveals a combination of Marian devotion, Sacred Heart devotion, and Holy Cross spirituality—a blend of emphases dearest to Father Sorin.
On the chapel’s ceiling is a luminous fresco entitled Exaltation of the True Cross, painted by Italian artist Luigi Gregori.
At the center of the mural, the Cross of Christ is lifted high by angels under a banner with the phrase “Ave Crux Spes Unica,” the motto of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. The fresco depicts a triumphant vision: the Cross as the hope of the world, surrounded by a host of Old and New Testament figures carrying the instruments of Christ’s Passion. In the foreground Gregori included Saint Helena, who is said to have discovered the True Cross in 4th century Jerusalem, and Bishop Saint Macarius of Jerusalem, who aided St. Helena’s efforts. By elevating the relics of the Passion in art, Gregori’s mural connected Notre Dame’s chapel to the broader story of salvation history and the zeal of Holy Cross missionaries.
Gregori also slipped a unique tribute into this scene. At the urging of Notre Dame’s students, he added Saint Patrick into the assembly behind Saint Mark, holding a shamrock. This detail honored the Irish heritage of many early students and the patron of Ireland, linking the chapel’s imagery to the Notre Dame family in a personal way.
If the ceiling celebrates the Holy Cross, the stained glass windows of the Lady Chapel shine a spotlight on the Sacred Heart of Jesus—another great devotion that animated Fr. Sorin.
In the east wall, one window shows Bishop Henri de Belzunce of Marseilles dedicating his plague-stricken city to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1720, a bold act of faith that tradition says helped end the Great Plague. Another window features Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, the 17th-century Visitation nun whose visions of Jesus revealed the image of His Heart ablaze with love—sparking the spread of the Sacred Heart devotion in the Church. Yet another scene highlights St. John Eudes, the French priest who developed liturgical feasts in the 1660s honoring the Heart of Jesus and Mary. Through these vivid colored panes, the chapel becomes a mini-gallery of Sacred Heart history: French saints, bishops, and visionaries all promoting love for Christ’s Heart.
This focus was quite deliberate. Fr. Sorin saw Notre Dame’s campus as a “City of the Sacred Heart,” a fulfillment of French Catholic hopes in America. In front of Notre Dame’s church, he even landscaped a heart-shaped garden (a cour d’honneur), and in 1893 installed a large statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at its center, modeled after the statue at the famous Sacré-Cœur Basilica in Montmartre, Paris.
Notably, Mary is not absent in this thematic ensemble. In one Lady Chapel window, Father Desgenettes (pastor of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires basilica in Paris) is shown in 1836 dedicating his once-lifeless parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, sparking a miraculous spiritual renewal. And above the entrance to the Lady Chapel, Luigi Gregori painted a beautiful mural of the Coronation of the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven, completed in 1887. In that scene, Mary is crowned by Christ and God the Father amid a throng of patriarchs and prophets—a celestial honor for Our Lady at the culmination of her earthly life.
Brett Perkins, Assistant Director for Evangelization and Religious Education, told the Rover about his appreciation for the ceiling of the Lady chapel, saying, “The vision of heaven shown in the Triumph of the Holy Cross mural on the ceiling is probably my favorite feature. … From the nave of the basilica, this mural appears as a continuation of the scene of the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven that is shown on the principal arch of the church, thus confirming Our Lady as the one who brings the Savior to us and through whom we come to Jesus and His Cross as our salvation.”
The richly layered artwork of the Lady Chapel hints at an evolution in its identity over time. Originally consecrated as the Chapel of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in August 1888, it was one of several side chapels that received specific dedications at the consecration ceremony.
Just a year after the church’s dedication in 1889, however, a graceful new statue of the Madonna and Child was installed in the Lady Chapel’s central niche. This statue, made in France and donated by a student sodality, depicts Mary crowned as a queen holding the infant Jesus. With the Madonna now presiding over the altar, people naturally began referring to the space as “the Lady Chapel,” in keeping with the medieval tradition of a church’s principal Marian chapel being called Lady Chapel. The name was used informally alongside the Holy Cross title within Notre Dame’s community.
Throughout the late 19th century, there were even instances where Notre Dame’s entire basilica was poetically called “Our Lady of the Sacred Heart,” reflecting Fr. Sorin’s early dream to honor Mary under that title. In October 1878, after the church’s completion, the formal name settled as the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with the side chapel keeping the Holy Cross dedication. Nevertheless, popular imagination had already claimed the apse chapel for Our Lady, eventually leading the tradition to continue to the title it currently bears today.
Marcelle Couto is a senior studying theology and is in the Program of Liberal Studies. She can be reached at mcuoto@nd.edu.
Photo Credit: Library of Congress
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