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Ch. I WESTERN EUROPE ON THE EVE OF THE CRUSADES 29 
and extensive exterior sculpture. Appropriately enough the queen of all Romanesque
churches graced the abbey of Cluny. 
 In all the varied phases of civilization the eleventh century was a period
of vital growth and energetic development. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries
were to see the flowering of medieval civilization, but the plant matured
and the buds were formed in the eleventh. The men of western Europe had faith
in God and in their own strong arms. They also had a willingness to adventure,
to innovate, and to organize. The two great complexes of insti tutions, the
church and the feudal system, had achieved the strength of maturity without
losing their capacity for further development and expansion. And it was the
church and the feudal system that made the crusades possible.