St Bruno, St Bernard, St Francis, Savonarola, and practically all the creative minds in medieval religion took a puritan view of the Fine Arts. Latitudinarian and unorthodox reformers naturally took a similar view; perhaps the fullest and most detailed architectural description in all medieval English poetry (apart from Chaucer's imaginary House of Fame) is that of the great Dominican friary in Piers Plowman's Crede, 11. 153 ff., where the writer admires indeed, but is mainly conscious of the sinful waste. It is astonishing how few medieval documents testify directly to the artist's love of his work: even Matthew Paris, though he tells us a little about Walter of Colchester the “pictor incomparabilis” and other artists who worked at St Albans, is disappointingly jejune on this subject. This was mainly, however, because the medieval artist seldom (except in Italy) enjoyed literary connections; we must therefore piece out the lack of English documents by an extract from the monk Theophilus, who probably wrote in Rhineland or in N.E. France between 1150 and 1250. It is from the Prologue to Bk III. (Le Moine Théophile, ed. C. de l'Escalopier, 1843). The writer is addressing his pupil: