History of art . the desire of the people andburning out at the same time that it did. The crenel-ated towers, proclaimed, to be sure, in the face of theproductive commune, the apparently antagonisticprinciple of the right of conquest. But with it they pro-claimed the same principle of life: they were built bythe master mason who directed the work of the cathe-dral. And the cathedral was born with the communes,grew during their time of maturity, covered itself withstatues and stained glass, and then languished andceased to grow when they declined and died. Noyon,Soissons, Laon, Rheims, Amiens,
History of art . the desire of the people andburning out at the same time that it did. The crenel-ated towers, proclaimed, to be sure, in the face of theproductive commune, the apparently antagonisticprinciple of the right of conquest. But with it they pro-claimed the same principle of life: they were built bythe master mason who directed the work of the cathe-dral. And the cathedral was born with the communes,grew during their time of maturity, covered itself withstatues and stained glass, and then languished andceased to grow when they declined and died. Noyon,Soissons, Laon, Rheims, Amiens, Sens, Beauvais—wherever we find a great commune the great cathedral CHRISTIANITY AND THE COMMUNE 283 appears, vast and bold in the proportion that the com-mune is well armed and well established, and in pro-portion to the vitality of the communal spirit. The cities of France, during two centuries of relativepeace, had torn down their walls. Their houses spreadall along the rivers and the roads; the neighboring. Le Thoronet (Var) (xii and xiii Centuries). Cloister of the abbey. forests were cleared away. In observing the new organsthat grew little by little from the re-formed socialbody—to build dwellings, to pave the streets andstretch chains there, to bring vegetables and wood fromthe country, to kill animals and shear them, to tanleather and forge iron—men saw that their commoninterests in these activities increased their concentration of the social forces made possiblethe birth of that wonderful hope which is born spon- 284 MEDIEVAL ART taneously in an organism, when all its elements har-monize in the mind which is directed toward a prac-tical purpose that lies within reach. All the guildstogether felt that from their instinct there was germi-
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectart, bookyear1921
