In all history is there a movement more extraordinary, more far-reaching, more curious than the crusades? They are about as surprising to a reader today as they were to the Emperor of Constantinople when the first disorderly army appeared at his gates. The monk, Guibert, who, at least, seemed to have more grasp of the subject than any other contemporary writer, ingeniously suggested that “God invented the crusades as a new way for his laity to atone for their sins and merit salvation.” Certainly they thus atoned for the great sin of inertia. No army, I suppose, was ever more confident, more surprised or more disappointed than that of the crusaders. However, this much is to be said in favor of Guibert’s hypothesis. From that time forth the laity took their place in the march of civilization. They arose and left the Dark Ages behind. New views were forced upon them at the point of the sword,—most needed of all, new civic ideals. Separation and longing and the sweet sorrow of parting awoke the spirit of poetry, the craving for beauty; and all this new thought and feeling was soon to blossom forth in the one art, whose _metier_ the people had already learned,—architecture. Through a long admixture of races, by the twelfth century (hardly before it) there had arisen in Gaul genuine Frenchmen, who from the beginning were most artistic artisans and most enthusiastic partisans. They spent more on their crusades and on their churches than their neighbors, and they were to reap the rewards of extravagance, always more imposing than those of economy. Money poured into the church alike from those who went to the Holy Land, and from those who thus excused themselves from going. Incidentally the Holy Wars diverted a disorderly element of nobles and serfs from France to Palestine. During the period of the crusades the Cathedral of Chartres suffered from two fires just sixty years apart; thus in rebuilding, the overflowing religious excitement of the era came to be lavished upon the very stones of the cathedral. In 1134 a great fire in the town of Chartres damaged the cathedral so far as to make it necessary to restore the façade. In spite of their own losses the Chartrians decided that their church should be finer than ever. She should have two connected towers, instead of one separated from the building as before. And the design they here evolved has become standard. To effect these grand restorations the workmen formed themselves into permanent guilds. One especially which devoted itself to working on the cathedral was honorably known as the “_Logeurs du Bon Dieu_.” And the nobles who had watched the workmen growing in grace and in skill, raising themselves as they raised the temple, were finally seized with a strange and humble enthusiasm which can only be convincingly described by eye-witnesses.