Romanesque and Gothic, the great architectural styles of the Middle Ages, evolved in the context of church architecture. Out of the desire to create grander and more beautiful structures that spoke of the glory of God, the resources and skills of the age were heavily devoted to the design and building of these churches. The Romanesque style drew on many sources and reflected enormous advances in building technique. Stone vaulted ceilings, narrower piers, increased width of the naves, and new arrangements of interior space characterized the Romanesque effort. When these technological strands had come together the Gothic manner improved on them. Earlier advances in vaulting were used by the Gothic architects to create thinner piers and lighter walls that could be fitted with numerous windows, thereby producing a wholly new type of interior. Each style had its own theological rationale but the elaborate sculpture and decoration of the Romanesque and the glowing stained glass of the Gothic, along with the grandeur of both styles, were widely understood as earthbound reflections of heavenly glory.
Though many elements contributed to the Romanesque, the term generally refers to the architectural style that first coalesced in the churches established by the monastic orders along the lucrative pilgrimage routes of France and northern Spain. The internationalism that resulted from these pilgrimages brought together elements from many places and then spread the style far and wide. The Romanesque style developed in far-flung rural monasteries but its successor, the Gothic, arose with the increasing urbanism that accompanied the rise of the centralized monarchy in France. It was at this emerging power's geographic center, the Ile-de-France, that this new, specifically French, manner originated. Where the earlier style signified the power of the monastic orders and their papal sponsors to the hordes of pilgrims, the Gothic impressed ...