Boisserée places in this age the original cathedrals of Fulda and Cologne, both which he assumes to have been double-apse basilicas, but apparently without any sufficient data. There is no doubt that the cathedral at the latter place, burnt in 1248, was a double-apse cliurch; but if it was anything like his restoration it could not have been erected earlier than the 11th or 12th century, and must have replaced an older building, which, for anything we know, may have been circular as probably as rectangular; and such would likewise appear to have been the case at Fulda, though there is as little to reason upon there as at Cologne.
Leaving these somewhat apocryphal examples, we must come down to the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century for examples of the class we are now speaking of. Of these, one of the most perfect and interesting is the church at Gernrode in the Hartz, founded a. d. 960, when probably the eastern part (not the extended choir) was commenced, and the whole building maybe assumed to have been erected within a century after that date. From the plan (Woodcut No. 457) it will be seen how singularly like it is to the St. Gall example, except that it appears to have been originally about 50 ft., or one-fourth less in length. The western circular towers, instead of being detached, are here joined to the building. Piers too are introduced internally, alternating with pillars; and altogether the church shows just such an advance on the St. Gall plan as we might expect a century or so to produce. It exemplifies most satisfactorily the original form of these churches.
It possesses what is rare in this country—a bold triforium gallery and externally that strange frontispiece, forming the connecting gallery,
this in every respect between the old basilica and the baptistery, so as to make a double-apse church out of the old Romanesque arrangement. The similarity of the two buildings may probably bring down the date of that at Ratisbon to the 10th century.
