AACHEN, FULDA AND CENTULA

basilicas with transept?,1 Fulda was begun in 802 (fig. 7) , the other
St. Denis, even before Charlemagne came to the throne, about

Centula (or St. Riquier near Abbeville), on the other hand (fig.
is in most features unprecedented. The church which was buSt in
790-99 no longer stands, and is known to us only by an old engrav-
ing and a still older description. First of all it had in its exterior just
as much accent on the west as on the east parts. Both were strongly
emphasised by towers over the crossings rising in several stages and
by additional lower staircase towers — a group, varied and interest-
ing, and very different from the simple detached campanile or clock-
tower which Early Christian churches occasionally possessed. Then
there were two transepts, one in the east and one in the west. Also
the east apse was separated from the transepts by a proper chancel.
This became almost a matter of course in the coming centuries. The
Western part has a complicated spatial organisation, with a low,
probably vaulted entrance hall and a chapel above, open towards
the nave. Such a Westwork, as it is called in Germany, was also a
popular feature of later churches, especially in Germany, as was the
bold grouping of manifold blocks with manifold towers. However,
we cannot trace a direct uninterrupted connection from Centula to
the nth and I2th centuries.

Some of the ideas of Centula appear again in an immensely inter-
esting original plan on vellum which, about the year 835, had been
sent by some bishop or abbot close to the emperor's court to the Abbot
of St. Gall as an ideal scheme ('exemplar') for the rebuilding of his
monastery. But then, under the grim frosts of the later pth and the loth
centuries the premature flowering of Carolingian thought and im-
agination withered away. Less than thirty years after Charlemagne's
deathin8i4theEmpirewas divided. France and Germany henceforth
took separate courses. But internal struggles, earl against earl, duke
against duke, shook both. And from outside, the Vikings ravaged the
North-West — Normans they called them in France, Danes in England
— the Hungarians menaced the East, the Saracens, i.e. Mohammedan
Arabs, the South. No progress was possible in art and architecture.
What we know is almost as primitive as Merovingian work, although
forms taken up under Charlemagne and his immediate successors

1 The plan may have suggested itself to the Carolingian rulers on a Northum-
brian precedent, if the published plans of excavations at Hexham (apparently
badly handled and recorded) are at all reliable. They show a large church of the
same type of plan, and there is no reason not to assume that it is Wilfrid's, that is
a building of the yth century.

II