Monday 14 February 2011

Shane goes off... to France!

G'day,
well we've had a think, a long think and consulted the "good books". Art books that is and have come to the conclusion that if you're going away, go a long way away.




As the Romanesque is 800 - 1000 years away perhaps we should go there... to France. Why France? Well they've still got around 450 buildings dating from the C11th - C13th and then some!




It was a period of wonderful productivity and artistic invention (perhaps re-invention) intermixed with atrocious violence and hypocrisy; relgious as well as civil.
I'd really like to get a handle on this Bernard of Clairvaux character..... did a family take-over of the Cistercian monastries set up by a rather gentle Englishman, Stephen Harding (which was probably the last time the French saw anything gentle in the English), which became (for the so-called "Middle -Ages") a prototype multi-national organisation, calls up the Crusades, castigates Richard the Lionheart's mum for being a little fiesty (and too fun loving) and then he helped set up the Templars who were a multi-national business before Phillip IV tried a terminal take-over of his own a few years down the track.


But where do you start?
Let's go google and start in the capital..

too small...........


ooohhh.....


Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......................... bliss.


See'ya later petals...



...there's some serious research to be done!

cheers, 
Shane

2 comments:

  1. Hahahaha brilliant post! I love Shane's enthusiasm! C'est tres mignon! Funny how France seems so far away for Shane... when Australia feels so far away from the the other end ;)

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