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Handout #114 |
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The beginnings of romanesque art in the eleventh century |
| When the third year after the year 1000 approached, you could see churches being rebuilt almost everywhere, and above all in Italy and Gaul; although most of them had been very well constructed and did not really need this, keen rivalry moved each Christian community to "have a more sumptuous church than that of its neighbors. One could have said that the very world was shaking itself stripping off its old raiment and reclothing itself everywhere with a white robe of churches. At that time almost all the churches in the episcopal sees, those of the monasteries dedicated to all kinds of saints, and even the little village chapels, were rebuilt by the faithful to make them more beautiful. Ralph Glaber, Histories, II 1,4. |
