TWILIGHT AND DAWN FROM THE 6TH TO THE IOTH CENTURY

8. CENTURA: ABBEY CHURCH, 790-99 (RECONSTRUCTION).
were still used. But the spirit in which they were used was blunt and
crude. And since during the pre-Carolingian centuries intercourse
with Roman architecture had not entirely ceased* the period between
about 850 and 930 seems even more barbaric.
Not much of this dark age has stood the ravages of war and the
zeal of later builders in France and Germany* To see greater num-
bers of pth- and loth-century buildings in anything like their
original state one must go to the borderlands of Western
civilisation, to Spain and Britain*
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