The result is undoubtedly interesting as a religious revival; but we may be permitted to regret that the intellectual impetus given to art progress by the great Benedictine lords spiritual of Cluny should have been checked by the frigid utilitarianism to which architecture—then an epitome of all the arts—was reduced by the purists of Citeaux in its application to the monasteries of the reform.
The Cistercian monuments are not, however, wanting in interest.
Of Clairvaux and Citeaux little remains but fragments embedded in a mass of modern buildings, for the most part restorations of the last century. As records these are less to be relied upon than the historical and archæological documents which guided Viollet-le-Duc in his graphic reconstruction of famous Cistercian abbeys, an essay not to be bettered as a piece of lucid demonstration (see his Dictionary, vol. i. pp. 263-271).
CHAPTER III
ABBEYS AND CARTHUSIAN MONASTERIES
In the eleventh century a large number of monasteries had been built throughout Western Europe by monks of various orders, in imitation of the great monastic schools of Lérins, Ireland, and Monte Casino. Among the famous abbeys of this period may be mentioned "Vézelay and Fécamp, sometime convents for women, afterwards converted into abbeys for men; St. Nicaise, at Rheims; Nogent-sous-Coucy, in Picardy; Anchin and Annouain, in Artois; St. Étienne, at Caen; St. Pierre-sur-Dives, Le Bec, Conches, Cerisy-la-Forêt,[48] and Lessay, in Normandy; La Trinité, at Vendôme; Beaulieu, near Loches; Montierneuf, at Poitiers, etc."[49]
[48] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer, chap. iii. part ii.
[49] Anthyme St. Paul, Histoire Monumentale de la France.