is seeking all the stages of
society amid the rubbish of anterior civilization, and rebuilding with
its ruins a new hierarchic universe, the keystone to whose vault is the
priest--one first hears a dull echo from that chaos, and then, little by
little, one sees, arising from beneath the breath of Christianity, from
beneath the hand of the barbarians, from the fragments of the dead Greek
and Roman architectures, that mysterious Romanesque architecture, sister
of the theocratic masonry of Egypt and of India, inalterable emblem of
pure catholicism, unchangeable hieroglyph of the papal unity. All the
thought of that day is written, in fact, in this sombre, Romanesque
style. One feels everywhere in it authority, unity, the impenetrable,
the absolute, Gregory VII.; always the priest, never the man; everywhere
caste, never the people.

But the Crusades arrive. They are a great popular movement, and every
great popular movement, whatever may be its cause and object, always
sets free the spirit of liberty from its final precipitate. New
things spring into life every day. Here opens the stormy period of the
Jacqueries, Pragueries, and Leagues. Authority wavers, unity is divided.
Feudalism demands to share with theocracy, while awaiting the inevitable
arrival of the people, who will assume the part of the lion: _Quia
nominor leo_. Seignory pierces through sacerdotalism; the commonality,
through seignory. The face of Europe is changed. Well! the face of
architecture is changed also. Like civilization, it has turned a
page, and the new spirit of the time finds her ready to write at its
dictation. It returns from the crusades with the pointed arch, like the
nations with liberty.

Then, while Rome is undergoing gradual dismemberment, Romanesque
architecture dies. The hieroglyph deserts the cathedral, and betakes
itself to blazoning the donjon keep, in order to lend prestige to
feudalism. The cathedral itself, that edifice formerly so dogmatic,
invaded henceforth by the bourgeoisie, by the community, by liberty,
escapes the priest and falls into the power of the artist. The artist
builds it after his own fashion. Farewell to mystery, myth, law. Fancy
and caprice, welcome. Provided the priest has his basilica and his
altar, he has nothing to say. The four walls belong to the artist. The
architectural book belongs no longer to the priest, to religion, to
Rome; it is the property of poetry, of imagination, of the people. Hence
the rapid