th century are mostly
anonymous. Jean de Chelles, one of the masons of Notre Dame, has left
his name on the south portal and the date, Feb. 12, 1257, on which it
was begun, "in honour of the holy Mother of Christ." He was followed
by Pierre de Montereau, "master of the works of the church of Blessed
Mary at Paris," whose name thus appears in a deed of sale dated 1265.
The Sainte Chapelle is commonly attributed to Pierre de Montereau, but
the attribution is a mere guess.

[Footnote 60: The researches of Professor Strzygowski of Gratz, and
other authorities in the field of Byzantine and Eastern archaeology,
tend to prove the dominant importance of the Christian East in the
development of early ecclesiastical architecture and the subordinate
influence of Roman models.]

Nor did the love of beauty during this marvellous age express itself
solely in architecture. If we were asked to specify one trait which
more than any other characterises the "dark ages" and differentiates
them from modern times, we should be tempted to say, love of
brightness and colour. Within and without, the temples of God were
resplendent with silver and gold, with purple and crimson and blue;
the saintly figures and solemn legends on their porches, the capitals,
the columns, the groins of the vaultings, the very crest of the roof,
were lustrous with colour and gold. Each window was a complex of
jewelled splendour; the pillars and walls were painted or draped with
lovely tapestries and gorgeous banners: the shrines and altars
glittered like Aaron's breastplate, with precious stones--jasper and
sardius and chalcedony, sapphire and emerald, chrysolite and beryl,
topaz and amethyst and pearl. The Church illuminated her sacred books
with exquisite painting, bound them with precious fabrics, and clasped
them with silver and gold; the robes of her priests and ministrants
were rich with embroideries. "People," said William Morris, "have long
since ceased to take in impressions through their eyes," indeed so
insensible, so atrophied to colour have the eyes of moderns grown amid
their drab surroundings, that the aspect of a building wherein skilful
hands have in some small degree essayed to realise the splendour of
the past dazes the beholder; a sense of pain rather than of delight
possesses him and he averts his gaze.

Nor were the churches of those early times anything more than an
exquisite expression of what men were surrounded by in their daily
lives a