probably belonged to the tombs of the rich merchants of Londinium. The coins of Roman Britain shew a similar likeness to those of Trèves, which in the fourth century was the capital of the western section of the Empire. In the museum at Sens are important remnants of a façade, which was largely decorated with boldly designed vine foliage of a curiously "Romanesque" character.
Romanised Europe was a soil well prepared, for the upspringing of Romanesque art, and many centres, down to the end of the twelfth century, shew us how the old monuments were turned to for inspiration and guidance. In some places there was hardly any interruption of continuity; in others the conquering peoples from the North (although they entered into that which they could not properly understand or use) could not help crude imitation when they themselves had to build. The problem of architectural history is now less one of inquiry as to sources than a question as to the vigour of building impulse. An energetically expanding school always gathers from everything it may reach, but a declining school does not know how to use even what it has. When the Romanesque movement in architecture was under way, the Roman background was searched, and at the same time the current customs of the more powerful art of the East were drawn upon.
In the fifth century, western Europe had a vast system of splendid roads linking up a great number of provincial Roman cities. Many of them were burned and ruined, but few can have been destroyed. Even in Britain these Roman cities were sights to wonder at, as the poem on the ruins of Bath witnesses, and Bede tells us how the citizens of Carlisle guided St Cuthbert round the city shewing him the walls and a fountain of marvellous workmanship constructed formerly by the Romans. In Rome itself the early Christian tradition was being continued, and there, as at Ravenna and Milan, at Lyons and Arles, Byzantine influences were all the time being absorbed and passed on to the West.
The third strain in Romanesque art was the barbaric element in the blood and traditions of the people. After the Roman and Byzantine influences, which came from the Church, had been absorbed and transformed, the art began to put on more and more of a barbaric character. This was especially the case in the West after the Danish irruptions. Some of the stone carvings wrought in England during the tenth century were extremely savage in their character.
A school of art, which should be of extraordinary interest to us, is that which arose in Northumbria in the second half of the seventh century, but was soon to disappear. There is ample documentary record of the culture of the time when Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop built churches and formed monastic libraries, and when Bede wrote his famous history. Some remnants of Wilfrid's churches yet remain, and Bede tells us how they were decorated by paintings forming a consistent series of Biblical
