First of all, it is necessary to insist upon the straightforwardness, the downright directness of that spirit. It is true that the Courts of Love preached far-fetched doctrines, but they were a conscious revolt against grossness of manners, a sort of counter-excess. With this exception, the time nowhere attempted extravagance. The elaborate sculpture of its buildings is framed in structural lines that are firm and even severe. As yet the Gothic (which was to be the expression of the mediæval temper in its completeness and in its decline) gives only here and there a hint of its coming. Height is indeed attempted, but everywhere the general lines of the buildings remain square and solid. Wherever the architect has expressed his own thought in altering the inherited arrangement of the Roman column and arch, the change tends towards frankness and logic. Each part aims to express its function, whether structural or decorative, in relation to the whole. The classic forms begin to be rationalized so as to be not a façade but living parts of the structure; the column begins to be wedded to the arch. As in architecture, so in the other arts and handicrafts. In general, clothes were cut on simple and serviceable lines without hint of theatricality or excess, either fitting close to the body, or falling in simple and graceful folds. Arms, and especially armour, remained light and simple. In the second half of the century the cylindrical pot-helm, completely covering the face, came in and took the place of the open conical helmet with its nose-guard. Already before the new fashion in helmets had come in, the mail shirt had had its sleeves lengthened to the wrist, and now mittens and separate leg coverings of mail were in use also. But the heavy body armour of plate that was to encumber the warriors of later centuries was unknown. The horse-equipment, too, was simple, made for use and not for parade. In all things the time observed simplicity and, as it were, a natural and effortless logic in the outline of that which it made.