GERMAN ROMANESQUE OF THE TENTH CENTURY.
In the year 919, Henry I. was elected king of Germany. When the Magyars again made their appearance, in 924, he procured a nine years' peace by payment of tribute. He had need of this rest to reinstate the ruined frontier fortresses erected by the Carolingians and to fortify his castles so that they might become places of refuge. In Saxony and Thuringia fortified towns sprang up, as Quedlinburg, Merseburg, Goslar, Brunswick, Nordhausen, Soest, Schleswig-, etc. At his residence, Qued linburg, Henry built the Church of St. Wipertus and the Convent of St. Servatius, and in 930 he constructed a fortress at Merseburg, and also the stone Church of St. John the Baptist. His palace at Merseburg is described as a two-storeyed stone building, in the upper banqueting-hall of which the king's victory over the Magyars (933) was commemorated by mural paintings. The nucleus of Goslar was the protecting fortress of the Georgsberg. Not only the cities, but also the convents, were fortified, both for their own safety and for the security of the country in general.
Ifrorks of 0/ho lire Greg! iu the Great re-established the empire and conquered Italy. A new epoch dawned on Germany; the chroniclers of the time speak of it as the return of the ancient Golden Age. Bishoprics and monasteries became centres of art and knowledge; building was extensively carried on, especially in Saxon lands. Near the St. Wipertus Church in Ouedlinburg a mon astery was founded, and for this purpose a new building was doubtless undertaken, the crypt of which still remains. The Convent of Fulda was rebuilt, with the help of Otho, by Abbot Hadaniar. The church was a tliree-aisled basilica with two choirs, beneath which were crypts; the walls of the nave were borne by twenty columns. It was ded icated in 94S. Abbot Wehriuhar built in 97o a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and united to it a double colonnade, which surrounded a rectangular court called " Paradise." The eastern part collapsed in 112o, and of this, as of the later constructions of the Middle Ages, there is no trace remaining.
In Magdeburg, Otho founded a Benedictine monastery, in the church of which his wife, Editha (died 946), was buried. It is said that on the
site of the church there were laid in 963 the foundations of the cathe dral in which in 963 the first archbishop was consecrated. Like his predecessors, Otho for this purpose had sent marble columns from Italy; though the structure was devastated by fire in 12o7, these columns, with their capitals, are still to be seen in the present structure. When the cathedral was founded on the site of the St. Maurice Monastery, the monks were transferred by Otho to the Riddagsberg, near Magde burg; here was erected the monastery of Bergen, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, which became so celebrated in after-years. The original structure was destroyed by fire as early as ror7. In Otho's reign there was built in a suburb of Magdeburg a church of red wood which was burned in rot3.
We must not forget that in general most of the churches of that age, as well as the cities in which they were built, were of wood. The Archbishop Adaldag of Hamburg, who founded the bishoprics of Sles wick, Ripe, and Aarhus in 9oS, built here, as elsewhere in his ecclesias tical jurisdiction, churches of wood only.
In Otho's reign a number of other buildings were erected in Saxony by his barons. In the year 939 the Convent of the Virgin at Schil desche, north of Bielefeld, was established, and its church was built by masons and stonecutters brought from France. The canonical establish ment of \Valbeck, founded in 941 and finished in 996, was a stately structure with four churches; in iorr it fell a prey to the flames.
The Cathedral of Minden was built in 952. The nunnery of Hillers leben on the Ohre (in the Altmark), erected in 953, was after its destruction, in the year moo, converted into a monastery. St. Gero, margrave of Lausitz and Nordmark, founded the monastery of Gernrode in 96o. In 961, Bishop Bernhard of Halberstadt instituted the convent of Hadmers leben; in 965, Margraye Rikdag of Meissen, that of Gerbstatt; in the same year the monastery on the Kalkberg, near Luneburg, was erected; and in 967-993 the cathedral at Munster was built. The bishop's church at Zeitz, where Otho founded an episcopal see, was finished in 974.