The attitude of medieval men of letters towards plastic arts, architecture and applied art has so far been studied from a primarily aesthetic point of view. The cause of this may be found, I offer no opinion on it, in the conceptions of the authors who have been publishing on this during the last seventy-five years or in the fact that most medieval texts that until recently were available in editions, were for the greater part works of a theological, mystical or l encyclopaedic-theoretical kind. Anyhow, it is an estab- lished fact that these studies were brought to bear on the texts of a...