After the more sober spirituality of the Romanesque churches, the soaring Gothic cathedrals of Chartres, Paris (Notre-Dame), Bourges, and Amiens were at once monuments to the glory of God and testimony to the sheer power, spiritual and temporal, of the Roman Catholic Church.
Chartres, Paris, Bourges and Amines' cathedrals were monuments to the glory of God and, at the same time, testimony to sheer power of the Islamic religion.