THE CATHEDRAL CRUSADE
“In only three centuries between 1050 and 1350, the amount of building stone extracted in France alone exceeded that extracted in the entire history of ancient Egypt.
Sufficient quantities to build 80 cathedrals, 500 large churches and tens of thousands of parish churches and chapels.
This amazing construction campaign was also termed «the crusade of the cathedrals», and has been compared in terms of commitment and far reaching involvement to the war missions, which pushed the Christians troops over the seas to conquer the Holy Land.


Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropoedia, Chapter “ Building construction”