 This new "architecture of light" was intended to raise the observer "from the material to the immaterial" – it was, according to the 20th-century French historian Georges Duby, a "monument of applied theology".Although St Bernard saw much of church decoration as a distraction from piety, and the builders of the Cistercian monasteries had to adopt a style that observed the numerous rules inspired by his austere aesthetics, the order itself was receptive to the technical improvements of Gothic principles of construction and played an important role in its spread across Europe.This new Cistercian architecture embodied the ideals of the order, and was in theory at least utilitarian and without superfluous ornament.