This book deals with the art of church treasuries and cloisters in the early middle ages in Europe - the work of goldsmiths, ivory carvers, bronze casters, enamellers and wood carvers. These so-called 'Minor Arts' played a major creative role alongside the other pictorial arts and architectural sculpture.

The book traces the unbroken development of the Sacred Arts and their interrelationships throughout Europe from the Renovatio of the arts - the 'Rebirth of Antiquity' - encouraged under the Emperor Charlemagne in the late eighth century, until a renewed and fresh appreciation of the natural world - the Gothic - began to replace the powerful stylisations and the last vestiges of the classical tradition of the Romanesque in the early thirteenth century.