ARCHITECTURE - Karatunov.net

172 THE SECULAR TRANSITION [CH.xxvin which the burgher could take pride, as being hisown 1 .Practice Architecture now passed from the cloister to theLcture'SSFay handslay guilds of workmen. They were originally trainedno doubt in the convent workshop, for though the monkshad at first been their own workmen when all skilledlabour was in their hands,they had long given that upand had trained craftsmen to work for them. Workingnow under free conditions and in a freer atmosphere thebuilders and master-masons gave new life to the art,discovered new methods, and developed a new style,newboth in outward form and inward principle. Romanesqueart in France was mainly a monastic art :only in theshelter of the cloister could art have survived in theconfusion of the dark ages: and with the decline ofmonasticism itpassed into other phases more expressiveof the tendencies of the age.The change was mostrapid and complete in the royal domain, the centre of, the new social and political movements, and thoughin theremoter provinces Romanesqueart lingered longer and insome parts can hardly be said to have quite disappeared,the new art finally triumphed and made itself felt fromthe English channel to the Pyrenees.1V.-le-Duc, Diet. Rais. ill. 227. "Les cathe'drales ...a la fin du XIl esiecle avaient a la fois un caract&re religieux et civil ; et la, sauf 1'autel quitait entourde ses voiles, rien n'obstruait la vue."This is disputed by M. Luchaire (Social France at the time of PhilipAugustus) who thinks the secular canons in the new cathedrals enclosedtheir choirs from the first with tapestries ifnothing more.The two views do not seem irreconcileable. M. Luchaire is no doubtright in not believing that the bishops had any democratic sympathies,this would not prevent their siding with the popular party, as the Popes didwith the Guelfs, for political reasons, without any affection for their principles.But