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Updated: June 15, 2025
The age that has bequeathed us Romanesque, Lombardic, and Norman architecture gives no sign of dissolution. We are still on the level heights of the Christian Renaissance. Artists are still primitive. Men still feel the significance of form sufficiently to create it copiously. Increased wealth purchases increased leisure, and some of that leisure is devoted to the creation of art.
They occur in the jambs of doorways with mouldings or sub-arches springing from them; long shafts and short ones, frequently supporting ornamental arcades, are employed both internally and externally; and altogether that use of the column as a means of decoration, of which Gothic architecture presents so many examples, first began in the Romanesque style.
A new western tower has been erected and a very fine west entrance in the Romanesque style, all very good, except the topmost stage of the tower, which has probably been confided to an inferior architect, who has managed to mar a work of great promise. Jacques Cujas, born at Toulouse in 1520, one of the most famous lawyers of his time, taught at Valence.
Strong is the trace of the development from the Romanesque façade, completed in 1140, to pure Gothic construction of a century later.
How on earth did it ever occur to any one to raise the church at Mondoñedo to a bishopric? Surely the sees in Galicia were badly shuffled; and yet, where can a quieter spot be found in this wide world of ours for the contemplation of a cathedral and a Romanesque one, to boot! It is to the Norman vikings that is due the establishment of a see in this lonely valley.
I do not marvel, therefore, at the common, though I think inexact, opinion that this was the period in which Christian Europe touched the summit of its spiritual history: its monuments are everywhere majestic before our eyes. Not only in France, Italy, and Spain, but in England, and as far afield as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, we can see the triumphs of Romanesque art.
But, after all, the architectural inquirer will be best pleased with the fine Romanesque tower in the suburb of Limay, and the lover of picturesque effect will not fail to dwell on the mediæval bridge which leads thither from the town. So much for the spot, beyond the limits of his own Duchy, where William, in the words of our Chronicles, "did a rueful thing, and more ruefully it him befel."
The Romanesque is the La Trappe of architecture; we find it sheltering the austerest Orders, the sternest Brotherhoods, kneeling in ashes, and chanting in an undertone with bowed heads none but penitential Psalms. These massive cellars speak of the fear of sin, but also of the dread of a God whose wrath could only be appeased by the Advent of the Son.
Another notable and almost universal feature of these cities are the Renaissance or Romanesque gateways, silent reminders to-day of the mediæval communities which they once protected, and of the warlike invasions of the past.
This crypt of the late twelfth century or early thirteenth shows a decided Romanesque tendency in its general appearance: it is low, massive, strong, and crowned by a semicircular vaulting reposing on gigantic pillars whose capitals are roughly sculptured.
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