CHURCH BUILDING. The Italians began by building churches like Roman basilicas. Roman arches and domes, supported by heavy walls, were also used north of the Alps, and the method of building was named Romanesque, or in England, Norman. The architects or builders of western France discovered a way of roofing over just as large spaces without using such heavy walls, so that the interior could be lighted by larger windows. Instead of having rounded arches they used pointed arches. The walls between the windows were strengthened by masses of stone called buttresses. The peak of the roof of these cathedrals was sometimes more than one hundred and fifty feet above the floor. The glass of the windows showed in beautiful colors scenes from the Bible or from lives of sainted men and women. The outer walls, especially the western front, the doorways and the towers, were richly carved and adorned with statues, and often with the figures of strange birds and beasts which lived only in the imagination of the builders. This method of building was named Gothic, and it was used not only for churches but for town halls and private houses. Architects use similar methods of building nowadays. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT AMIENS A typical Gothic interior.] THE RENAISSANCE. Men who could build and adorn great churches and town halls and who were eager to study in the new universities should be called civilized. The barbarous days were gone, but men still had much to learn from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Many of the ancient buildings were in ruins, the statues half buried or broken, the paintings destroyed, and the books lost. Men began to search for what was left of these things and to study them carefully to learn what the Graeco-Roman world had been like. After a while students could think of nothing else, and tried to imitate, if they could not surpass, what the Romans and the Greeks had done. The age in which men were first interested in these things is called the Renaissance or "rebirth," because men were so unlike what they had been that they seemed born again. With the beginning of the Renaissance the Middle Ages came to an end. [Illustration: ST. PETER'S AT ROME] PETRARCH. One of the earliest of these "new" men was Petrarch, an Italian poet who lived in the fourteenth century, a hundred years before Columbus. He wished above all things to read, copy, and possess the writings of the Romans, and especially of Cicero, an orator and writer who lived in the days of Julius Caesar. Petrarch and his friends searched for the manuscripts of Roman authors which had been preserved, hidden away in monastery libraries.