Throughout this volume, I have examined the particularities of individual representations of monsters in the belief that these addressed needs specific to their original contexts. When examined in sustained fashion, these carvings can be shown to embody ideals, offer sophisticated transformations of, or commentaries on, traditions, and function as decorous embellishments of churches. Stepping away from this series of focused case studies for a moment, one might reasonably ask if broader trends might be identified. What do the monsters found in so many twelfth-century churches tell us about the period? Why, in short, were so many carvings of monsters deemed necessary?

These are difficult questions to answer, in part because the twelfth century witnessed a host of transformations in economic, intellectual, political, religious, and other spheres. These myriad developments have proven difficult to characterize in the arts from across Europe, which have increasingly been characterized more for their eclecticism than for their unified purpose. Charles Homer Haskins's 1927 epithet, “The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century”, remains the best description of the flurry of cultural creativity during this period. Haskins recognized the complex origins of the outburst of cultural achievements in legal theory, poetry, philosophy, and many other fields. For example, he attributed the emergence of vernacular lyrics such as the Chanson de Roland and the Poema de mio Cid with the rise of pilgrimage, increases in trade, urbanization, and other factors. ‘Renaissance’ likewise signaled for Haskins a revival of Classical traditions, such as Bernard Sylvester's commentaries on Virgil's Aeneid or John of Salisbury's ‘‘Ciceronian attitude’’. Indeed, the Harvard professor devoted substantial attention to the transmission of Greek traditions via Arab authors, including Gerard of Cremona's Latin translation of Galen and of Islamic medical treatises from the Arabic. Yet, Haskins repeatedly stressed that the twelfth-century Renaissance was more than a classical revival. The development of history writing, he argued for one, owed little to the examples of Livy, Tacitus, or Suetonius. Rather, these are testimony to the particular genius of twelfth-century authors.

Subsequent scholarship has offered a more nuanced view of these cultural developments, which intersected with various aspects of the visual arts.