Romanesque architecture is the memento of that stage in progressive civilization when the church was yet subordinate to the state; when the civil and spiritual powers came into open collision, the dispute on investitures roused Europe to its very centre, and the battle-cry of Cæsar was lost in the crash of Pontifical thunder. But the aspiring lancets and pinnacles of the thirteenth century commemorate a wider culture and loftier aims. It was not simply a spirit which with one hand poured an unction on the brow of the ruler, and decked both crown and sceptre with the lily and the cross, and with the other girt the bishop and the abbot with ensigns of earthly power, and placed them foremost in the chief councils of the land. But the architecture of that day proclaims the progress of popular education, and is the artistic embodying of the northern spirit, the soul of chivalry and romance, the age of faith, and love, and valor. It is redolent of the lordly prelate and the consecrated knight; of Tancred and Richard grappling with the infidel; of Bayard dying with his eye fixed on his cross-hilted sword; of Wykeham every way a peer beside the throne of Edward, England's mighty king. Then the massy tower was surmounted with lofty turrets, from the midst of which shot up the tapering beauty of the airy spire, bearing the once despised Cross triumphant over every earthly power; while beneath lay the tombs of the great and noble, not with memorials of a fleeting world and signs of hopeless grief, but with the symbols of faith and charity, the hands still clasped in prayer, the eyes still fixed on the altar of God.