fect disposition and
development of the double apse so frequently met with in German
churches.

In general, its architecture is of a heavy order, and the whole
structure is grim, though by no means gaunt nor cold.

[Illustration: NEUSS]

St. Quirinus is of the epoch when the Romanesque was being replaced
nearly everywhere by the new-coming Gothic.

In spite of this, its style is, curiously enough, neither one nor the
other, nor is it transition, though the pointed arch has crept in and
often eliminated the Romanesque attributes of the round-arch style round
about. It is manifestly not transition, because there was no transition
here from Romanesque to Gothic. It remained palpably Romanesque in spite
of Gothic interpolations.

In the windows one can but remark the indecision which prompted the
builders to fashion them in such extraordinary squat shapes, and they
certainly serve their purpose of lighting the interior very badly.

The nave and aisles of St. Quirinus are ample, and its spacious
_maennerchoere_ in the triforium is like all its fellows in the German
churches, an adjunct which adds to the general effect of size.

The church dates from 1209, the period when the Gothic influence was not
only making itself felt over the border, in the domain of France and
Burgundy, but was already extending its influence elsewhere. But here,
westward even of the borders of the Rhine, the round arch lingered on,
to the exclusion of any very marked Gothic tendency.

There is an inscription in stone on the south wall of the church which
places the date of its erection beyond all doubt. It reads thus:

ANNO . INCARNA.
DNI . MC.C.V.I.I.I.I.
PMO . IPERII . AN
NO . OTTONIS . A
DOLFO . COLON

EPO . SOPHIA . A
BBA . MAGISTER
WOLBERO . PO
SUIT . PMU . LAP

IDE . FUNDAME
NTI . HUI . TEM
PLI . I . DIE . SCI . DI
ONISII . MAR.

When a former Count of Cleves founded the primitive church here in the
ninth century, it was a collegiate church attached to the abbey of which
the mother superior was the Abbess Sophia, presumably the same referred
to in the above inscription. The abbey itself was destroyed in 1199
during a civil warfare.

Though not really a massive structure, the church of St. Quirinus is, in
every particular, of a strength and solidity which rank it as a
masterwork of its age. There is nothing weak and attenuated about it,
and its transept