"In the Romanesque period, a sharp increase in trade, fostered in part by traveling pilgrims and Crusaders, encouraged the growth of towns and cities.  The independence towns so proudly cherished depended on their charters.  Charters were public documents feudal lords granted, enumerating the communities' rights, privileges, immunities, and exemptions, beyond the feudal obligations they owed the lords. A community could win independence by purchasing outright a charter.  Many of the new Romanesque towns rose on the sites of ancient Roman colonies, which were restored to busy urban life after centuries of relative stagnation.  Often located on navigable rivers, the towns were naturally the nuclei of networks of maritime and overland commerce.  Merchants, traders, moneylenders, artisans, and free peasants populated them."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 454

Convent outside Cuenca

"The new Romanesque towns were also centers of ecclesiastical influence.  Their bishops and archbishops built towers, gates, and walls, as well as churches.  The immense building enterprise that raised thousands of churches in western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was not, however, due solely to the revival of urban life.  It also reflected the widely felt relief and thanksgiving that the conclusion of the first Christian millennium in the year 1000 did not bring an end to the world as many had feared.  In the Romanesque age, the construction of churches became almost an obsession.... The new churches had to be covered with cut stone, because the technology of concrete construction had been lost long before.  The structural problems that arose from this need for a solid masonry were to help determine the "look" of Romanesque architecture throughout most of Europe."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 454

     Note: the facade on this church is a later, Baroque addition.

Casas Colgadas (Hanging Houses) Day View or Night View
 

 (Night View photo credit goes to Mrs. Laura Allen of San Diego)

Central Courtyard - Monastery Cloister from Santo Domingo de Silos, Spain

"Cloister (from the Latin word claustrum, an enclosed place) connotes being shut away from the world.  Architecturally, the medieval church cloister expresses the seclusion of the spiritual life, the vita contemplativa.  It provided the monks (and nuns) with a foretaste of Paradise.  They walked in the cloister in contemplation, reading their devotions, praying and meditating in an atmosphere of calm serenity, each withdrawing into a private world where the soul communes only with God.  The physical silence of the cloister is one with the silence that the more austere monastic communities required of their members."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 469

Capital with Demons - Santo Domingo de Silos

"[The capitals on the columns] are variously decorated, some with abstract patterns, many with biblical scenes or the lives of saints, others with fantastical monsters of all sorts - basilisks, griffins, lizards, gargoyles, and more.  Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, complained that this kind of imagery distracted the monks from their devotions: 'In short, so many and so marvelous are [the sculpted figures] that we are more tempted to read in the marble than in our books, and to spend the whole day in wondering at these things rather than in meditating on the law of God.  For God's sake, if men are not ashamed of these follies, why at least do they not shrink from the expense?' "

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, pp. 469 - 471

  



Descent from the Cross - Santo Domingo de Silos

  

Burial of Christ - Santo Domingo de Silos

  

Doubting Thomas - Santo Domingo de Silos