One of the manuals so used was known as the “Bible of the Poor.” Many legends drawn from pagan mythology were included in these manuals[147] as types of events in the life of Christ. As Didron says, the iconography of the pagans dovetailed into that of the Christians. The architect of the _Pórtico de Gloria_ drew his inspiration not from manuals, not from popular legends, but purely and simply from the Bible alone. “Protestants,” says Ferreiro, “accuse Catholics of not letting the people have the Bible, but Mateo, in the twelfth century, certainly knew it as well as any Reformer ever did, and what is more, he wished to put it before the eyes of the ignorant.” Yes, the _Pórtico de Gloria_ was begun in the twelfth century, twenty years earlier than the façade of Notre Dame de Paris. The façades of Rheims, Chartres, Amiens had not yet come into existence, and Italy still gave the preference to mosaic rather than to statuary, and, as Ferreiro adds, she had not yet grasped the way to adapt statuary to architecture. Even if Mateo had prepared himself by studying the two façades which were already in existence, Repoll and Vézelay, he must have felt dissatisfied with them. The pervading idea in Christian art as seen in the sculpture of the primitive sarcophagi was the Fall and the Redemption. Every epoch[148] had its own ideal: in the early ages of Christianity the martyrdom of the saints was the favourite subject; then followed a period when asceticism came into vogue; and after the beginning of the thirteenth century the struggle against the temptations of the world, and especially against sensuality, became the principal topic. In the _Pórtico de Gloria_ all these are represented. My first thought on seeing it was instinctively, “How did the architect manage to get that wealth of statuary into so small a space without giving the slightest impression of overcrowding, or in any way disturbing the grand architectural outlines of his magnificent design?” He not only succeeded in getting them in, he did more: he succeeded in producing a piece of work in which architecture and sculpture were interwoven and inseparable. M. Roulin, a French Benedictine, who studied this masterpiece from a printed plan (being unable to go and see the original), published a critical article on it, in which he stated that the archivolts of the lateral arches were _overcrowded_ with statues.[149] When he looks at the real thing he will retract this statement.