Saint Bernard's Cloister
In his celebrated Apologia of 1125, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux questions the purpose of the most enigmatic genre of Romanesque art: the monstrous and ostensibly profane images that intrude upon the garden-paradise of the cloister. After a broader critique of religious art in cathedral and monastery, Bernard asks:
... in the cloisters, before the eyes of the brothers while they read--what is that ridiculous monstrosity doing, an amazing kind of ...