Whether the building was inspired of God, or was merely a successful exercise of a fast-developing art, the new Cluny was not unworthy of the great order for which it stood. Not only was it, with the exception of St. Peter's at Rome, the largest Church in existence,[80] but it remained also one of the most perfect examples of the Romanesque architecture, and became the accepted model for many a later Burgundian church and cathedral. The architect, according to Pignot, was a former canon of Liège, named Etzebon; artist, orator, theologian, and author of the life of St. Hugues. He appears to have had no difficulty in acquiring the first necessity of his work, namely, funds. Kings, nobles, and bishops vied with one another in their eagerness to make offerings to the new Church; the neighbouring princes made handsome donations, the pious of all classes brought gifts, offered voluntary labour, or the loan of beasts of burden. The two lordliest givers were Alonzo VI., King of Castille, and Henry I. of England, the former of whom was deeply indebted to Hugues, whose influence with his kinsman, Eudes, Duke of Burgundy, had often smoothed Alonzo's path. The Abbot, in recognition "of the incessant benefits of this faithful friend," founded, on his behalf, almsgivings and special prayers throughout the order, and every day served, at the chief table, as though the King were present, a royal dinner, which was afterwards distributed among the poor. Meanwhile, as the gifts poured in, the building grew. From the great double gates,[81] Roman in style, and imitated, probably, from the Porte d'Arroux, at Autun, the land sloped downwards to the parvis, from the midst of which rose a great stone cross. Thence flights of balustraded steps, broken, at intervals, by terraced platforms, led down to the porch, flanked on each side by square towers, the Tour de la Justice, and Tour des Archives, each a hundred and forty feet high, and crowned with a pyramidal flêche. This porch, ornamented with statues of the saints and the Virgin, was surmounted, in the space between the towers, by a great rose, thirty feet in diameter, with the figure of a Benedictine monk above. [Illustration: THE ABBEY OF CLUNY AS IT WAS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XIX^{TH} CENTURY·]