The decoration of the church seems to have been in the highest style of ecclesiastical art of the age. Even glass-makers, who might have been Comacines, were brought from France to make glass for glazing the windows of the church and of the cells of the monks--no glass had ever before in Saxon times been used in England for windows--and even paintings were brought from abroad for the decoration of the walls. Bede, in his sermon on the anniversary of the death of Benedict, states that he imported paintings of holy histories, which should serve not only for the beautification of the church, but for the instruction of those who looked upon them; vases, vestments, and other things necessary for the service of the church, were also brought from Gaul, and those things which could not be obtained there, were brought "from the country of the Romans." [Illustration: S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE, RAVENNA. _To face page 157._] The church was pronounced by monkish writers to be for two centuries the grandest and most beautiful church on this side of the Alps; even Roman architects admitted that they who saw Hexham church might imagine themselves amidst Roman surroundings.[120] There is one point in connection with Saxon architecture not touched. In much of the Saxon building now standing there are projecting ribs of stone in the masonry which are commonly known under the name of pilaster strips. The masonry in which it occurs is perhaps always late Saxon work. The strips seem to be similar to the pilasters in the front of Lombard churches; in the latter they are more ornamental in detail, and are often in the form of shafts occasionally decorated.[121] The external arcading, as in Bradford-on-Avon, seems to be a modification of late Roman work, followed in various forms in Comacine, Lombard, Saxon, and Norman work. In its original form it may be seen on the exterior of the Basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, where external arcadings in the masonry of the walls will be noticed both in the walls of the aisles and in the walls of the nave above the aisles, the arcading being carried on pilasters built into, and forming part of, the walls; the pilasters with the arcading serving to give rigidity to the walls, enabling them to resist the outward thrust of the roof as buttresses were intended to do in later times. This church was built about A.D. 300. In Comacine or early Lombard churches there was an arcading on steps in the gable of the west front, the steps giving access to the roof on the outside. In later Lombard churches this arcading became simply an ornamental detail to the front. To this type belongs the arcading on Bradford-on-Avon church. In Norman churches it degenerated into a corbel table, in which the shafting was omitted, the heads of the arches being supported on corbels.