The French faith

So many churches, so many styles. All breathtaking. Read somewhere that France has the most stained glass windows in the world, which were used to illustrate the narratives of the Bible to Medieval illiterates. The Romanesque Abbey of Saint-Georges, was stark, and stripped of its murals - clean and ghostly, characterised by thick walls, lack of excess and ornament, oddly modern, a contrast to the opulence of Rouen's Gothic Notre-Dame cathedral, where the style emphasized verticality and light, a landmark rising above everything else. The most modern version I have visited so far, Lisieux's Basilica, built in the 1920's, has tiny mosaics painstakingly applied to the entire church's interior. Each one of them making even the most non-religious of visitors stare up in wonder.