BOOK FIFTH.
CHAPTER 2. THIS WILL KILL THAT.
(continued)
Let us take as an example the Middle Ages, where we see
more clearly because it is nearer to us. During its first
period, while theocracy is organizing Europe, while the Vatican
is rallying and reclassing about itself the elements of a
Rome made from the Rome which lies in ruins around the
Capitol, while Christianity 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.
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