frontier, the “City of the Great King,” where culture lightened again after the long night, and where, of all the churches and palaces of the Emperor, only one remains as evidence of what he did. The royal chapel has been built onto and over and around, but the original norm remains in the shape of that polygonal form with surrounding arcades that was a step in the development of the perfect Gothic chevet. To a great extent it is a replica of San Vitale in Ravenna, and may very well have been built by the descendants of those Roman craftsmen who, after the fall of the one-time capitol of the world, sought refuge either under Byzantine protection in Ravenna or on Lake Como, where the tradition is they carefully cherished the traditions and the esoteric mysteries of their art, perpetuating the slowly fading memory through secret lodges that, some held, were the progenitors of modern freemasonry. When the possibilities of a new culture and a restored civilisation revealed themselves to the conqueror, who was also statesman, patriot, and (after his dim and flickering light) Christian, two centuries had left the West a wilderness, and all was to do over again. There were, it seemed, neither scholars nor artists nor righteous leaders of any sort in the world, and the task must have appeared hopeless. Charlemagne, undaunted, sent east and west, from Britain to Spain, searching out those who, by report, rose above the hopeless level of barbarian mediocrity. Alcuin of Britain, Peter of Pisa, Theodulphus, Hincmar, Eriugena, Radbertus Maurus, gathered around him at Aix, forming a cultural centre, reforming the Church, building up schools, creating an art almost out of nothing.