gh, but the scope is too wide to limit any
special form of art expression, so that one may judge it comparatively
with that which had gone before or was to come after.

Mostly, mediaeval art groups itself around the two distinct styles of
Byzantine and Gothic, and they are best divided, one from the other, by
the two centuries lying between the tenth and the twelfth.

In truth, the architecture of Germany, up to the end of the tenth
century, was as much Byzantine as it was Romanesque, and the princes and
prelates alike drew the inspiration for their works from imported
Italians and Greeks, a procedure which gave the unusual blend that
developed the distinct Rhenish architecture.

The Popes themselves gave a very material aid when they sent or allowed
colonies of southern craftsmen to undertake the work on these great
religious edifices of the Rhine valley.

The grander plan of the cathedrals at Speyer, Worms, Mayence, Basel, and
even Treves are all due somewhat to this influence, and for that reason
they retain even to-day evidences of these foreign and even Eastern
methods, though for the most part it is in the crypt and subterranean
foundations only that this is found.

Carlovingian architecture was perhaps more indigenous to Germany than to
any other part of the vast Empire. "This extraordinary man," as the
historians speak of Charlemagne, did much toward developing the arts.

In the southeast, the Grecian Empire was already become decrepit in its
influences, and a new building spirit was bound to have sprung up
elsewhere. "If Charlemagne," says Gibbon, "had fixed the seat of his
empire in Italy, his genius would have aspired to restore, rather than
violate the works of the Caesars." He confined his predilections to the
virgin forests of Germany, however, and he despoiled Lombardy to enrich
his northern possessions; as witness the columns which he brought from
Ravenna and Rome wherewith to decorate his palace and church at
Aix-la-Chapelle.

No country has preserved finer or more numerous examples of Romanesque
architecture than Germany. The Rhine was so powerfully under Roman sway
that it adopted as a matter of course and without question quite all of
the tenets and principles of the Romanesque; not only with respect to
ecclesiastical structures, but as regards civil and military works as
well.

On the Rhine, as in Lorraine, Lyonnaise, and Central France, the
Romanesque endured with little deviation from Lat