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glory, defied by their own subjects and unsupported by standing armies.
But these haughty barons were met face to face by equally haughty
bishops, armed with spiritual weapons. These bishops were surrounded and
supported by priests, secular and regular,--by those who ruled the
people in small parishes, and those who ruled the upper classes in their
monastic cells. Learning had fled to monasteries (what little there
was), and the Church became a new attraction.

The architects of the Romanesque, who were probably churchmen, retained
the nave of the basilica, but made it narrower, and used but two rows of
columns. They introduced the transepts, or cross-enclosures, making them
to project north and south of the nave, in the space separated from the
apsis; and the apsis was expanded into the choir, filled with priests
and choristers. The building now assumes the form of a cross. The choir
is elevated several steps above the nave, and beneath it is the crypt,
where the bishops and abbots and saints are buried. At the intersection
of choir, nave, and transept,--an open, square place,--rises a square
tower, at each corner of which is a massive pier supporting four arches.
The windows are narrow, with semicircular arches. At the western
entrance, at the end opposite the apse, is a small porch, where the
consecrated water is placed, in an urn or basin, and this is inclosed
between two towers. The old Roman atrium, or fore-court, entirely
disappears. In its place is a grander facade; and the pillars--which are
all internal, like those of an Egyptian temple, not external, as in the
Greek temple--have no longer Grecian capitals, but new combinations of
every variety, and the pillars are even more heavy and massive than the
Doric. The flat wooden ceiling of the nave disappears, on account of
frequent fires, and the eye rests on arches supporting a stone roof. All
the arches are semicircular, like those of the Coliseum and of the Roman
aqueducts and baths. They are built of small stones united by cement.
The building is low and heavy, and its external beauty is in the west
front or facade, with its square towers and circular window and
ornamented portal. The internal beauty is from the pillars supporting
the roof, and the tower which intersects the nave, choir, and transepts.
Sometimes, instead of a tower there is a dome, reminding us of Byzantine
workmanship.

But this Romanesque church is also connected with monastic institution