They worked humbly, anonymously.
And what souls these artists had! For this we know: they laboured only in a state of grace.

To raise this glorious temple, purity was required even of the workmen.
This would seem incredible if it were not proved by authentic documents and undoubted evidence.
We possess letters of the period preserved in the Benedictine annals, a letter from an Abbot of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dive, found by Monsieur Leopold Delisle, in MS.

929 of the French collection in the Bibliotheque Nationale, and a Latin volume of the Miracles of Our Lady, discovered in the Vatican Library, and translated into French by Jehan le Marchant, a poet of the thirteenth century.

And these all relate the way in which the Sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin was rebuilt after destruction by fire.
What then occurred was indeed sublime.

This was a crusade, if ever there was one.