Thus Lombardy, Germany, and Normandy, took great successive strides in architectural progress, but neither of them attained to Gothic art of the true Christian type, according to the popular designation. There can now be no doubt but that the Pointed style was invented by the Franks. As on the western edge of continental Europe Romanesque architecture was perfected, and then directly passed to England; so in western France, the aspiring Gothic broke into consummate freedom and beauty, and was thence diffused over the world. It was introduced into Germany, Italy, and the remoter regions, north and south, with innumerable modifications, but without a single improvement east of the meridian of its origin. On the contrary, in passing directly westward over the narrow field of England, it took three distinct forms of improved development, and then perished forever. Down to a late period, the round Gothic style was executed by the Franks, in examples quite insignificant compared with those produced in Normandy. Even in Paris the great church of St. Germain des Près, the burial-place of the earlier kings, and most splendid edifice of the capital, was not more than fifty feet in width, by two hundred in length, before the rebuilding of its chevet in the pointed style. But in the reign of Louis le Gros, 1108-1136, under whom the monarchy of France began to revive, architecture put on new vigor. The culminating point was reached under the reign of Louis le Jeune, and through the transcendent abilities of the Abbé Suger. He began building the Abbey of St. Denis in the pointed manner, 1144, which was still further elaborated with the erection of the Sante Chapelle by St. Louis, 1244, and which received its consummate finish at the completion of the choir of St. Owen at Rouen, by Mark d'Argent, in 1339. St. Denis, therefore, though certainly not the earliest, must be taken as the typical example of primary Gothic of France and of the world. It terminated the era of transition, and fixed the epoch when the northern pointed style became supreme. In due course arose the beautiful and stupendous works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which filled all Europe with the grandest monuments. Thus was completed a perfect cycle of the art, tracing it from its origin back to the place of its birth, Italy, which was also that of its earliest decline, and where it was smothered under Renaissant trash.