Architectural treatises published in the 18th century provide a particularly well-documented account of the spread, geographically and linguistically throughout Europe, of the codified principles based on Classical and High Renaissance architectural theories. Comprised of both non-referentially universal and culturally specific components, rooted in both the aesthetic sensitivities of a common European antiquity and the individual technological potentials of these developing cultural and political identities, the art and science of building provides an excellent forum within which the nature of the Enlightenment in Europe may be considered and examined.