Book excerpt: The book traces the unbroken development of the Sacred Arts and their interrelationships throughout Europe from the Renovatio of the arts - the 'Rebirth of Antiquity' - encouraged under the Emperor Charlemagne in the late eighth century, until a renewed and fresh appreciation of the natural world - the Gothic - began to replace the powerful stylisations and the last vestiges of the classical tradition of the Romanesque in the early thirteenth century.