St. Bernard, quick to see the danger, sent his masons back to the essential. Nave and choir were to be of low elevation, and without towers; within must be neither painting, nor sculpture, nor crucifix, nor colour, nor any other ornament. Even the tympanum of the porch, so richly carved in Clunisian churches, might show only a cross in bas-relief, sometimes surmounted by the Lamb of God. Any sculpture in the interior must be confined to simple flowers and foliage on the capitals, with perhaps a claw at the base of the pillars; the apse and chapels were to be square, not polygonal nor semi-circular, as in the work of the other school. Above all, the Cistercians banished from their churches the scenes from the Ancient and New Testaments, the symbolical figures and fantastic animals, of which the Clunisians were so fond. Their cloisters were low and heavy, and the windows of the monastic buildings were narrow, almost, as loopholes. In ceremonial observances they were equally simple, and contented themselves with a monotonous psalmody, poor and thin compared with the melodious chants that rang down the aisles of Cluny. The manuscripts showed the same scorn of art. Cluny bound their parchments beautifully in gold and silver, and ornamented them with precious stones; Citeaux was content with a rough binding of pig-skin, decorated with nails, and fastened with copper bands. It was inevitable that such vital difference of opinion should find contemporary expression in words, as well as deeds. Bernard protests vehemently against luxe. His correspondence on the subject with his friend, Pierre le Vénérable, is full of interest. "I do not speak," he writes, "of the prodigious height of the churches, of their immeasurable length, of their unnecessary width, of their sumptuous ornaments, of their curious paintings, which draw the glances of those who are at prayer, and prevent them from praying. As a monk, I address myself to monks, and I say to them: You who should be poor, what do you with this gold in the sanctuary? Other than this should be the conduct of the bishops, other than this that of the monks. The bishops, as we know, extend their solicitude to the foolish as well as to the wise. That they should seek to arouse by exterior ornament the devotion of a carnal people insensible to the ornaments of the soul, we can well understand; but we who have come forth from the bosom of this people, who, for the love of Christ, have left the world and all which is precious and apparent, we who regard as dung all that shines by beauty, all that flatters the ear by harmony, that pleases the senses of smell and touch, in a word, all that can give rise to sensual pleasure, whose devotion do we aspire to arouse by these ornaments?