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Title: The Cathedral Builders: The Story of a Great Masonic Guild

Author: Leader Scott

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
CATHEDRAL BUILDERS: THE STORY OF A GREAT MASONIC

GUILD ***

Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original
document have been preserved.
The anchor for Footnote 11 is missing in the text. Its location
has been approximated.
The reference to Hexham church on page 157 is a possible
typo.
The comma in the Roman numeral on page 204 is a possible
typo.
Schmarzow on pages 230 and 405 should possibly be
Schmarsow.
The index entry to Giovanni Buoni da Bissone points to
entries for both Buoni and Bono, and Bissone and Bissoni.

THE CATHEDRAL BUILDERS

Cloister of S. John Lateran, Rome, 12th
century.
(From a photograph by Alinari.)
Frontispiece
See page 66.

THE

CATHEDRAL BUILDERS
THE STORY OF A GREAT MASONIC GUILD

BY LEADER SCOTT
Honorary Member of the 'Accademia delle Belle Arti,' Florence
Author of 'The Renaissance of Art in Italy,' 'Handbook of Sculpture,' 'Echoes of Old Florence,' etc.

With Eighty-three Illustrations

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
153-157 Fifth Avenue
1899

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.

PROEM

In most histories of Italian art we are conscious of a vast hiatus of several
centuries, between the ancient classic art of Rome—which was in its
decadence when the Western Empire ceased in the fifth century after Christ
—and that early rise of art in the twelfth century which led to the
Renaissance.
This hiatus is generally supposed to be a time when Art was utterly dead
and buried, its corpse in Byzantine dress lying embalmed in its tomb at
Ravenna. But all death is nothing but the germ of new life. Art was not a
corpse, it was only a seed, laid in Italian soil to germinate, and it bore
several plants before the great reflowering period of the Renaissance.
The seed sown by the Classic schools formed the link between them and the
Renaissance, just as the Romance Languages of Provence and Languedoc
form the link between the dying out of the classic Latin and the rise of
modern languages.
Now where are we to look for this link?
In language we find it just between the Roman and Gallic Empires.
In Art it seems also to be on that borderland—Lombardy—where the
Magistri Comacini, a mediæval Guild of Liberi Muratori (Freemasons),
kept alive in their traditions the seed of classic art, slowly training it
through Romanesque forms up to the Gothic, and hence to the full
Renaissance. It is a significant coincidence that this obscure link in Art, like
the link-languages, is styled by many writers Provençal or Romance style,
for the Gothic influence spread in France even before it expanded so
gloriously in Germany.

I think if we study these obscure Comacine Masters we shall find that they
form a firm, perfect, and consistent link between the old and the new, filling
completely that ugly gap in the History of Art. So fully that all the different
Italian styles, whose names are legion—being Lombard-Byzantine at
Ravenna and Venice, Romanesque at Pisa and Lucca, Lombard-Gothic at
Milan, Norman-Saracen in Sicily and the south,—are nothing more than the
different developments in differing climates and ages, of the art of one
powerful guild of sculptor-builders, who nursed the seed of Roman art on
the border-land of the falling Roman Empire, and spread the growth in far-
off countries.
We shall see that all that was architecturally good in Italy during the dark
centuries between 500 and 1200 A.D. was due to the Comacine Masters, or
to their influence. To them can be traced the building of those fine Lombard
Basilicas of S. Ambrogio at Milan, Theodolinda's church at Monza, S.
Fedele at Como, San Michele at Pavia, and San Vitale at Ravenna; as well
as the florid cathedrals of Pisa, Lucca, Milan, Arezzo, Brescia, etc. Their
hand was in the grand Basilicas of S. Agnese, S. Lorenzo, S. Clemente, and
others in Rome, and in the wondrous cloisters and aisles of Monreale and
Palermo.
Through them architecture and sculpture were carried into foreign lands,
France, Spain, Germany, and England, and there developed into new and
varied styles according to the exigencies of the climate, and the tone of the
people. The flat roofs, horizontal architraves, and low arches of the
Romanesque, which suited a warm climate, gradually changed as they went
northward into the pointed arches and sharp gables of the Gothic; the steep
sloping lines being a necessity in a land where snow and rain were frequent.
But however the architecture developed in after times, it was the Comacine
Masters who carried the classic germs and planted them in foreign soils; it
was the brethren of the Liberi Muratori who, from their head-quarters at
Como, were sent by Gregory the Great to England with Saint Augustine, to
build churches for his converts; by Gregory II. to Germany with Boniface
on a similar mission; and were by Charlemagne taken to France to build his
church at Aix-la-Chapelle, the prototype of French Gothic.

How and why such a powerful and influential guild seemed to spring from a
little island in Lake Como, and how their world-wide reputation grew, the
following scraps of history, borrowed from many an ancient source, will, I
hope, explain.
It is strange that Art historians hitherto have made so little of the Comacine
Masters. I do not think that Cattaneo mentions them at all. Hope, although
divining a universal Masonic Guild, enlarges on all their work as Lombard;
Fergusson disposes of them in a single unimportant sentence; and Symonds
is not much more diffuse; while Marchese Ricci gives them the credit of the
early Lombard work and no more. I was led at length to a closer study of
them by the two ponderous tomes on the Maestri Comacini[1] by Professor
Merzario, who has got together a huge amount of material from old writers,
old deeds, and old stones. But valuable as the material is, Merzario is
bewildering in his redundancy, confusing in his arrangement, and not
sufficiently clear in his deductions, his chief aim being to show how many
famous artists came from Lombardy.
I wrote to ask Signor Merzario if I might associate his name with mine in
preparing a work for the English public, in which his research would
furnish me with so much that is valuable to the history of art, but to my
regret I found he had died since the book was written, so I never received
his permission; though his publisher was very kind in permitting me to use
the book as a chief work of reference. With Merzario I have collated many
other recognized authorities on architecture and archæology, besides
archivial documents, and old chronicles. I have tried to make some slight
chronological arrangement, and some intelligible lists of the names of the
Masters at different eras. The researches of the great archivist Milanesi in
his Documenti per la Storia dell' Arte Senese, and Cesare Guasti in his
lately published collection of documents relating to the building of the
Duomo of Florence, have been of immense service in throwing a light on
the organization of the Lodges and their government. All that Signor
Merzario dimly guessed from the more fragmentary earlier records of
Parma, Modena, and Verona, shines out clear and well-defined under the
fuller light of these later records, and helps us to read many a dark saying of
the older times.

My thanks for much kind assistance in supplying me with facts or
authorities, are due to the Rev. Canonico Pietro Tonarelli of Parma
cathedral; the Rev. Vincenzo Rossi, Priore of Settignano; Commendatore
John Temple Leader of Florence; and to my brother, the Rev. William Miles
Barnes, Rector of Monkton, who has written the "English link" for me.
Acknowledgments are also due to Signor Alinari and Signor Brogi of
Florence, and to Signor Ongania of Venice, for permitting the use of their
photographs as illustrations.

CONTENTS

PAGE
PROEM v

BOOK I
ROMANO-LOMBARD ARCHITECTS

CHAP.
I. THE GUILD OF THE COMACINE MASTERS 3
II. THE COMACINES UNDER THE LONGOBARDS 31
CIVIL ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE
III. 60
LONGOBARDS
COMACINE ORNAMENTATION IN THE LOMBARD
IV. 71
ERA
V. COMACINES UNDER CHARLEMAGNE 90
VI. IN THE TROUBLOUS TIMES 108

BOOK II
FIRST FOREIGN EMIGRATIONS OF THE
COMACINES

I. THE NORMAN LINK 121
II. THE GERMAN LINK 133
THE ORIGIN OF SAXON ARCHITECTURE (A
III. 139
SUGGESTION), BY THE REV. W. MILES BARNES
IV. THE TOWERS AND CROSSES OF IRELAND 161

BOOK III
ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTS

I. TRANSITION PERIOD 171
II. THE MODENA-FERRARA LINK 192
III. THE TUSCAN LINK.
1. PISA 206
2. LUCCA AND PISTOJA 225
IV. ROMANESQUE AND GOTHIC ORNAMENTATION 242
CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMANESQUE
V. 256
ERA

BOOK IV
ITALIAN-GOTHIC, AND RENAISSANCE
ARCHITECTS

I. THE SECESSION OF THE PAINTERS 265
II. THE SIENA AND ORVIETO LODGES 282
III. THE FLORENTINE LODGE 308
IV. THE MILAN LODGE 345
1. THE COMACINES UNDER THE VISCONTI 349
2. THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA 372
V. THE VENETIAN LINK 383
VI. THE ROMAN LODGE 400

EPILOGUE 423

AUTHORITIES CONSULTED 427

INDEX 429

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Cloister of S. John Lateran, Rome Frontispiece

Comacine Panel from the Church of San To face
9
Clemente, Rome page

Frescoes in the Subterranean Church of San
" 10
Clemente, Rome

Church of Sta. Costanza, Rome " 12

Door of the Church of S. Marcello at Capua " 13

Ancient Sculpture in Monza Cathedral " 38

Comacine Capital in San Zeno, Verona " 44

Basilica of S. Frediano at Lucca " 50

Façade of San Michele at Pavia " 52

Tracing of an old print of the Tosinghi Palace,
a mediæval building once in Florence, with " 60
Laubia on the front

Tower of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Rome " 64

Byzantine Altar in the Church of S.
" 74
Ambrogio, Milan

Fresco in the Spanish Chapel, S. Maria
" 78
Novella, Florence

Door of the Church of San Michele, Pavia " 80

Comacine Knot on a panel at S. Ambrogio,
" 82
Milan

Sculpture from Sant' Abbondio, Como " 82

Pulpit in the Church of S. Ambrogio, Milan " 88

Door of a Chapel in S. Prassede, Rome " 90

Pluteus from S. Marco dei Precipazi, now in
" 90
S. Giacomo, Venice.

Comacine Capitals " 96

Exterior of San Piero a Grado, Pisa " 102

Comacine Capital in San Zeno, Verona,
emblematizing Man clinging to Christ (the " 110
Palm)

Capital in the Atrium of S. Ambrogio, Milan " 112

The West Door, St. Bartholomew, Smithfield " 122

South Side of the Choir, St. Bartholomew the
" 124
Great, Smithfield

Palazzo del Popolo and Palazzo Comunale,
" 136
Todi

Fiesole Cathedral. Interior " 145

S. Clemente, Rome. Interior showing ancient
" 146
screen

Tower of S. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna " 153

Tower of S. Satyrus. Milan " 154

S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna " 157

Door of the Church of S. Zeno at Verona " 166

Baptistery at Parma, designed by Benedetto
" 186
da Antelamo

Façade of Ferrara Cathedral " 198

Church of S. Antonio, Padua " 200

Tomb of Can Signorio degli Scaligeri at
" 204
Verona

Interior of Pisa Cathedral " 212

Pulpit in the Church of S. Giovanni
" 222
Fuorcivitas, Pistoja

Church of S. Michele, Lucca " 226

Cathedral of Lucca (San Martino) " 228

Pulpit in Church of S. Bartolommeo, Pistoja " 230

Church of S. Andrea, Pistoja " 234

Church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, Pistoja " 236

Church of S. Maria, Ancona " 242

Door of S. Giusto at Lucca " 244

Pilaster of the Door of the Cathedral of
" 246
Beneventum

Baptismal Font in Church of S. Frediano,
" 248
Lucca

Pulpit in the Church of Groppoli near Pistoja " 249

Pulpit in Siena Cathedral " 250

The Riccardi Palace, built for Lorenzo dei
" 252
Medici

Tomb of Mastino II. degli Scaligeri, at Verona " 254

Capital of a Column in the Ducal Palace,
" 256
Venice

Doorway of the Municipal Palace at Perugia " 258

Palazzo Pubblico at Perugia " 260

Court of the Bargello, Florence " 262

Tower of Palazzo Vecchio at Florence " 263

Eighth-century Wall Decoration in
" 266
Subterranean Church of S. Clemente, Rome

Frescoes of the eighth century in the
Subterranean Church of S. Clemente,
" 268
Rome, with portraits of the Patron Beno di
Rapizo and his Family

Interior of Church of San Piero a Grado near
" 270
Pisa, with Frescoes of the ninth century

Figures from paintings in Assisi by Magister
" 272
Giunta of Pisa

Fresco at S. Gimignano " 278

Front of Siena Cathedral " 296

Door in Orvieto Cathedral " 300

Monument to Cardinal de Braye " 314

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence " 316

Shrine in Or San Michele, Florence " 332

Small Cloister of the Certosa of Pavia " 358

Marble Work on the Roof of Milan Cathedral " 364

Capital in Milan Cathedral " 366

North Door of Como Cathedral, sculptured by
" 368
Tommaso Rodari

Renaissance Front of the Church of the
" 378
Certosa at Pavia

Façade of Monza Cathedral " 380

The Cathedral and Broletta at Como " 382

The Ca d'Oro, Venice " 388

Ducal Palace at Venice. The side built by the
" 390
Buoni Family

Court of the Ducal Palace at Venice " 392

Apse of the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo
" 404
on the Cœlian Hill, Rome

Basilica of S. Paolo fuori le mura, Rome " 406

Pulpit in Church of S. Cesareo in Palatio,
Rome. Mediæval Sculpture inlaid in " 408
Mosaic

Candelabrum in S. Paolo at Rome " 412

BOOK I
ROMANO-LOMBARD ARCHITECTS

THE CATHEDRAL BUILDERS

CHAPTER I

THE GUILD OF THE COMACINE MASTERS

In looking back to the great church-building era, i.e. to the centuries
between 1100 and 1500, do not the questions arise in one's mind, "How did
all these great and noble buildings spring up simultaneously in all countries
and all climates?" and "How comes it that in all cases they were similar to
each other at similar times?"
In the twelfth century, when the Italian buildings, such as the churches at
Verona, Bergamo, Como, etc., were built with round arches, the German
Domkirchen at Bonn, Mayence, Treves, Lubeck, Freiburg, etc.; the French

churches at Aix, Tournus, Caen, Dijon, etc.; and the English cathedrals at
Canterbury, Bristol, Chichester, St. Bartholomew's in London—in fact, all
those built at the same time—were not only round-arched, but had an
almost identical style, and that style was Lombard.
In the thirteenth century, when pointed arches mingled with the round in
Italy, the same mixture is found contemporaneously in all the other
countries.
Again in the fourteenth century, when Cologne, Strasburg, and Magdeburg
cathedrals were built in pure Gothic; then those of Westminster, York,
Salisbury, etc., arose in England; the Domes of Milan, Assisi, and Florence
in Italy; and the churches of Beauvais, Laon, and Rouen in France. These
all came, almost simultaneously, like sister buildings with one impronto on
them all.
Is it likely that many single architects in different countries would have had
the same ideas at the same time? Could any single architect, indeed, have
designed every detail of even one of those marvellous complex buildings?
or have executed or modelled one-tenth of the wealth of sculpture lavished
on one of those glorious cathedrals? I think not.
The existence of one of these churches argues a plurality of workers under
one governing influence; the existence of them all argues a huge universal
brotherhood of architects and sculptors with different branches in each
country, and the same aims, technique, knowledge and principles
permeating through all, while each conforms in detail to local influences
and national taste.
If we once realize that such a Guild must have existed, and that under the
united hands of the grand brotherhood, the great age of church-building was
endowed with monuments which have been the glory of all ages, then much
that has been obscure in Art History becomes clear; and what was before a
marvel is now shown to be a natural result.
There is another point also to be considered. The great age of church-
building flourished at a time when other arts and commerce were but just
beginning. Whence, out of the dark ages, sprang the skill and knowledge to

build such fine and sculpturesque edifices, when other trades were in their
infancy, and civic and communal life scarcely organized?
It is indeed a subject of wonder how the artists of the early period of the rise
of Art were trained. Here we find men almost in the dark ages, who were
the most splendid architects, and at the same time sculptors, painters, and
even poets. How, for instance, did Giotto, a boy taken from the sheep-folds,
learn to be a painter, sculptor, and architect of such rank that the city of
Florence chose him to be the builder of the Campanile? Did he learn it all
from old Cimabue's frescoes, and half Byzantine tavole? and how did he
prove to the city that he was a qualified architect? We find him written in
the archives as Magister Giotto, consequently he must have passed through
the school and laborerium of some guild where every branch of the arts was
taught, and have graduated in it as a master.
All these things will become more and more clear as we follow up the
traces of the Comacine Guild from the chrysalis state, in which Roman art
hybernated during the dark winter of the Middle Ages, through the grub
state of the Lombard period, to the glorious winged flights of the full
Gothic of the Renaissance.
And first as to the chrysalis, at little Como. The origin of the name
Comacine Masters has caused a great deal of argument amongst Italian
writers new and old. Some think it merely a place-name referring to the
island of Comacina, in Lake Lario or Como; others take a wider
significance, and say it means not only the city of Como, but all the
province, which was once a Roman colony of great extension. Others again,
among whom is Grotius, suggest that it is not a place-name at all, but comes
from the Teutonic word Gemachin or house-builders. As the Longobards
afterwards called them in Italian Maestri Casarii, which means the same
thing, there is perhaps something to be said for this hypothesis.
The first to draw attention to the name Magistri Comacini, was the erudite
Muratori, that searcher out of ancient MSS., who unearthed from the
archives an edict, dated November 22, 643, signed by King Rotharis, in
which are included two clauses treating of the Magistri Comacini and their
colleagues. The two clauses, Nos. 143 and 144, out of the 388 inscribed in
crabbed Latin, are, when anglicized, to the following intent—

"Art. 143. Of the Magister Comacinus. If the Comacine Master with his
colliganti (colleagues) shall have contracted to restore or build the house of
any person whatsoever, the contract for payment being made, and it chances
that some one shall die by the fall of the said house, or any material or
stones from it, the owner of the said house shall not be cited by the
Magister Comacinus or his brethren to compensate them for homicide or
injury; because having for their own gain contracted for the payment of the
building, they must sustain the risks and injuries thereof."[2]
"Art. 144. Of the engaging or hiring of Magistri. If any person has engaged
or hired one or more of the Comacine Masters to design a work (conduxerit
ad operam dictandum), or to daily assist his workmen in building a palace
or a house, and it should happen that by reason of the house some
Comacine should be killed, the owner of the house is not considered
responsible; but if a pole or a stone shall kill or injure any extraneous
person, the Master builder shall not bear the blame, but the person who
hired him shall make compensation."[3]
These laws prove that in the seventh century the Magistri Comacini were a
compact and powerful guild, capable of asserting their rights, and that the
guild was properly organized, having degrees of different ranks; that the
higher orders were entitled Magistri, and could "design" or "undertake" a
work;—i.e. act as architects; and that the colligantes worked under, or with,
them. In fact, a powerful organization altogether;—so powerful and so
solid, that it speaks of a very ancient foundation.
But when and how did it originate?
Was it a surviving branch of the Roman Collegium? a decadent group of
Byzantine artists stranded in Italy? or was it of older Eastern origin? A
clever logician could prove it to be all three.
For the Roman theory, he could base his arguments on the Latin
nomenclature of officials, and the Latin form of the churches.
For the Byzantine theory, he would have the style of certain
ornamentations, and the assertions of German writers, such as Müller, and
Stieglitz.

For the ancient Eastern theory, he might plead their Hebrew and Oriental
symbolism.
We will take the Byzantine theory first. Müller (Archaeologie der Kunst, p.
224) says that: "From Constantinople as the centre of mechanical skill, a
knowledge of art radiated to distant countries, corporations of builders of
Grecian birth were permitted to exercise a judicial government among
themselves according to the laws of the country to which they owed
allegiance;" and Stieglitz, in his History of Architecture, records a tradition
that at the time the Lombards were in possession of Northern Italy, i.e. from
the sixth to the eighth century, the Byzantine builders formed themselves
into guilds and associations, and that on account of having received from
the Popes the privilege of living according to their own laws and
ordinances, they were called Freemasons.[4] Italian and Latin writers,
however, place the advent of these Greek artists at a later period; they are
supposed to have been sculptors, who, rebelling against the strict
Iconoclasm of Leo, the Isaurian—718 A.D. to 741—came over to Italy
where art was more free, and joined the Collegia there.
But at this time most of the chief Longobardic churches were already built
by the Comacine Masters, and were Roman in form, mediæval in
ornamentation, and full of ancient symbolism. Herr Stieglitz must have pre-
dated his tradition. Besides this I can find no sign in Italian buildings, or
writers about them, of any lasting Byzantine influence. Indeed pure
Byzantine architecture in Italy seems sporadic and isolated, not only in
regard to site, but in regard to time. The Ravenna mosaics, a few in Rome, a
little work in Venice, is all one can call absolutely Byzantine; and the
influence never spread far. The Comacine ornamentation indeed has
qualities utterly distinct in spirit, though in some of its forms allied to
Byzantine. It is possible that some of these Eastern exiles joined the
Comacine Guild, but there is quite enough in the communications of Como
with the Greeks, to account for their having imbibed as much as they did of
Byzantine style. Some of the Bishops who were rulers of Como before and
after Lombard times were Greeks; notably Amantius the fourth, who was
translated there from Thessalonica, and his successor, S. Abbondio. Also
through the Patriarch of Aquileja, under whose jurisdiction they were
brought later, the guild was put into contact with the Greek sculptors then at
Venice, Grado, and Ravenna.

Comacine Panel from the Church of San
Clemente, Rome. The Lattice-work is made of a
single strand interlaced. Date, 6th century.

We will leave the Oriental theory aside as too vague and traditional for
proof, depending as it does on a few Oriental symbols, and certain forms of
decoration, and will look nearer home—even to Rome, with which a
connection may certainly be found, and that in a form visible to our modern
eyes.
Rome is almost as full of remains of what is now styled Comacine
architecture, as it is of classic and pagan ruins, and they are nearly as deeply
buried. Go where you will, and in the vestibules or crypts of churches, now
of gaudy Renaissance style, you will find the sign and seal of the ancient
guild. Investigate any church which has a Lombard tower—and they are
many—and you will discover that the hands which built that many-
windowed tower have left their mark on the church. In that wonderful third-
century basilica, which was discovered beneath the thirteenth-century one

of S. Clemente; in the almost subterranean basilica of S. Agnese fuori le
mura; in the vestibule of the florid modern SS. Apostoli; in Santa Maria in
Cosmedin; and various other buildings, are wonderful old slabs of marble
with complicated Comacine knots on them. Our illustration is from a slab in
San Clemente, which was evidently from the buried church, though used as
a panel in the parapet of the existing choir. A marvellous piece of basket-
work in marble, which, if studied, will be found composed of a single cord,
twined and intertwined. An almost identical panel is preserved in the wall of
the staircase to S. Agnese, another has just been found reversed, and the
back of it used for the thirteenth-century mosaic decoration of the pulpit in
S. Maria in Cosmedin.
Then in the later Lombard churches of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, SS. Giovanni
e Paolo, S. John Lateran, etc., one may see the crouching Comacine lions,
now mostly minus their pillars, and shoved under square door-lintels, or
built into walls, where they remain to tell of the ancient builders whose sign
and seal they were.
And here and there we get a name.
In the vestibule of the SS. Apostoli is a red marble lion, on the base of
which in Gothic letters is the name BASSALECTI. Beneath it is an old
inscription, "Opus magister Bassalecti Marmorari Romano sec, XIII." This
same Magister's name, spelt Vassalecti, has lately been discovered inscribed
on the capitals of some columns in the nave of S. John Lateran.
In the under church of S. Clemente, an ancient fresco of the eighth century
takes us further back than this. Here we see a veritable Roman Magister
directing his men. He stands in magisterial toga (and surely one may descry
a masonic apron beneath it!), directing his men in the moving of a marble
column, and with the naïve simplicity of the primitive artist each man's
name is written beside him. Albertel and Cosmaris are dragging up the
column with a rope, the sons of Pute, who are possibly novices, are helping
them, while Carvoncelle is lifting it from behind with a lever. These men
are all in short jerkins, but the master, Sisinius, is standing in his toga,
directing them with outstretched hand.
Here is the Magister of a Roman Collegium embalmed and preserved for us,
that we may see him and his men at work as they were in the early centuries

after Christ. We know that Masonic Collegia were still existing in Rome in
the time of Constantine and Theodosius; we know that Constantine built the
basilica of S. Agnese, afterwards restored by Pope Symmachus; also those
of S. Lorenzo—at least the round-arched part of it—enlarged by Galla
Placidia in the fifth century; S. Paolo fuori le Mura, and other ancient
churches. We see from remains recently brought to light, that these were
originally of the exact plan of the churches built "in the Roman manner" at
Hexham and York in England, and of the Ravenna churches, and S. Pietro
in Grado at Pisa, also nearly contemporary. We further realize that all of
these were identical in style with the finer specimens of Lombard building
some centuries later. There is only the natural decline of art which would
have taken place in the century or two of barbarian invasion, between the
two epochs, but the traditionary forms, methods, etc., are all reproduced in
the Lombard-Comacine churches. Compare the fourth-century door of the
church of S. Marcello at Capua with the eighth-century one of S. Michele at
Pavia, and you will find precisely the same style of art. Compare the Roman
capitals of the church of Santa Costanza, built by Constantine, with the
capitals in any Comacine church up to 1200, and you will see the same
mixture of Ionic and a species of Corinthian with upstanding volutes. Some
of the Comacine buildings have these upright volutes plain instead of
foliaged. The effect is rude, but I think these plainer capitals were not a sign
of incapacity in the architects of the guild, for one sees richly ornate ones
on the same building. It was only the stock design of the inferior masters,
when funds did not allow of payment for richer work.

Frescoes in the Subterranean Church of San
Clemente, Rome. Upper line, Byzantine, 4th
century; under ones, Comacine, 8th century.

Therefore it may be inferred: (1) That architects of the same guild worked
in Rome and in Ravenna in the early centuries after Christ; (2) that though
the architects were Roman, the decorators up to the fourth century were
chiefly Byzantine, or had imbibed that style as their paintings show; (3) that
in the time when Rome lay a heap of ruins under the barbarians, the
Collegium, or a Collegium, I know not which, fled to independent Como;
and there in after centuries they were employed by the Longobards, and
ended in again becoming a powerful guild.

Hope, the author of an historical Essay on Architecture, had a keen
prevision of this guild, although he had no documents or archives, but only
the testimony of old stones and buildings to prove it. After sketching the
formation of the Roman Collegia, and the employment of their members as
Christian architects under the early Popes, he says "that a number of these,
finding their work in Rome gone in the times of invasion, banded together
to do such work in other parts of the world." He seems to think that the
nucleus of this union was Lombardy, where the superiority of the
architecture, under the Lombard kings, was such that the term Magistri
Comacini became almost a generic name for architects. He says that
builders and sculptors formed a single grand fraternity, whose scope was to
find work outside Italy. Indeed distance and obstacles were nothing to them;
they travelled to England under Augustine, to Germany with St. Boniface,
to France with Charlemagne, and again to Germany with their brother
magister, Albertus Magnus; they went to the east under the Eastern
Emperors, to the south under the Lombard Dukes, and in fact are found
everywhere through many centuries. The Popes, one after another, gave
them privileges. Indeed the builders may be considered an army of artisans
working in the interest of the Popes, in all places where the missionaries
who preceded them had prepared the ground for them.

Church of Sta. Costanza, Rome. Built in the 4th
century.
(From a photograph by Alinari.)
See page 11.

Diplomas and papal bulls confirmed to the guild the privileges they had
obtained under their national sovereigns, and besides guaranteed their
safety in every Catholic country which they visited for the scope of their
association. They assumed the right to depend wholly and solely on the
Pope, which absolved them from the observance of all local laws and
statutes, royal edicts, and municipal regulations, and released them from
servitude, as well as all other obligations imposed on the people of the
country. They had not only the power of fixing their own honorarium, but
the exclusive right of regulating in their own lodges everything that

appertained to their own internal government. Those diplomas and bulls
prohibited any other artist, extraneous to the guild, from establishing any
kind of competition with them.... Encouraged by such a special protection,
the Romans in great numbers entered the Masonic Guild, particularly when
they were destined to accompany the missionaries sent by the Pope to
countries hitherto unvisited by them. The Greeks also did not delay to take
part. The Exarchate of Ravenna, first detached from the Greek Empire by
the power of the Lombard princes, had by King Pepin been given to the
Popes.... The commercial relations and communications of all kinds
maintained with Constantinople by the many cities of Northern Italy, daily
attracted many Greeks to this city; finally, the political turbulence of
Constantinople, and chiefly the fanaticism of the Iconoclasts, continued to
associate Greek artists with Italy, and many of these were received in the
lodges, whose number constantly increased.

Door of the Church of S. Marcello at Capua,
4th century.
(From a photograph by Alinari.)

As civilization became more diffused, the inhabitants of northern countries,
French, Germans, Belgians, and English, were admitted to form part of
these guilds. Without this concession they would probably have had to fear
a perilous competition, encouraged by the sovereigns of other countries....
These corporations were always in league with the Church, which in those
times of war and constant struggle, of military service and feudal slavery,
was the only asylum for those who wished to cultivate the arts of peace.
Therefore we see ecclesiastics of high rank, abbots, prelates, bishops,

exalting the respect in which the Freemasons were held, by joining the guild
as members. They gave designs for their own churches, overlooked the
building, and employed their own monks in the manual labour.
Such is broadly the substance of Hope's account of the great Lombard
Guild. It shows remarkable insight, for when he wrote, the documentary
evidences which have lately been collected were wanting.[5] It also explains
precisely the close connection with monks and the Church, which appears
in all the story of the guild, and it accounts for the Greek influence in the
ornamentation.
In all the course of the history of building we see that each country or
province had to obtain its architects from this Collegium at Rome, as Villani
says all the cities of Italy did, and were obliged to apply to the Grand
Master of the whole guild. Thus the early Popes had to beg architects for
Rome from the Lombard kings; Pope Adrian had to apply to Charlemagne
for builders; and so on up to the time when all the church-building
Communes had to seek architects from some existing lodge.
Giovanni Villani shows us the intimate connection of the Roman Collegium
with Florence. He says that after Cæsar had destroyed Fiesole he wished to
build another city to be called Cesaria, but the Senate would not permit this.
The Senate, however, gave his Generals Macrinus, Albinus, Cneus Pompey,
and Martius equal power to build, and between them they founded
Florence, bringing the water from Monte Morello by an aqueduct. Villani
says the Magistri came from Rome for all these works. That was in the days
when the great masonic company had their Grand Lodge in Rome, before
the martyrdom of the Santi Quattro, afterwards their patron saints.
In Chapter XLII. Villani relates how when the citizens of Florence wished
to build a temple to Mars, they sent to the Senate of Rome to beg that they
would supply the most capable and clever Magistri that Rome could
furnish. This was done,[6] and the Baptistery was erected in its first form.
Again whilst Charlemagne and Pope Adrian were employing the Comacines
to rebuild the ruins of Rome, we find from Villani (lib. iii. chap. 1) that
Charlemagne sent some Romans with "all the masters there were in Rome"
(e vennero con quanti maestri n'avea in Roma per più tosto murarla) to
fortify Florence, which had appealed to him for succour against the

Fiesolans. In this manner, says Villani, "the Magistri who came with the
Romans began to rebuild our noble city of Florence."
As early as the fifth century Cassiodorus seems to refer to the work of the
Comacines when writing about the "public architects"—the very expression
implies a public company—and admiring the grand Italian edifices with
their "airy columns, slight as canes," he adds, "to be called Magister is an
honour to be coveted, for the word always stands for great skill."[7]
This brings us to the question of the Latin nomenclature. No really qualified
Comacine architect is ever mentioned either in sculptured inscription,
parchment deed, or in the registers of the lodges, without the prefix
Magister, a title which Cassiodorus, for one, respected. It was not a term
applied indiscriminately to all builders, like murarius; and we find that the
subordinate ranks of stone-cutters or masons were called by the generic
name of operarius. I take it that the word, as applied to the higher rank of
the Comacine Guild, has the same value as the title of Master in the old
trade guilds of London, i.e. one who has passed through the lower rank of
the schools and laborerium, and has by his completed education risen to the
stage of perfection, when he may teach others.

Morrona[8] gives the same definition. Judging from ancient inscriptions and
documents, he says that "operator" (Latin operarius) is used for one who
works materially; while Magister signifies the architect who designs and
commands. When a Magister carries out his own designs, he is said to be
operator ipse magister, as in the case of Magister Rainaldus, who designed
and sculptured the façade of the Duomo at Pisa.
In warlike times such as the Middle Ages, the only means by which artisans
could protect their interests was by mutual protection, and hence the
necessity and origin of Trade Guilds in general. The Masonic one appears to
have been a universal fraternity with an earlier origin; indeed many of their
symbols point to a very ancient Eastern derivation, and it is probable it was
the prototype of all other guilds.
Since I began writing this chapter a curious chance has brought into my
hands an old Italian book on the institutions, rites, and ceremonies of the
order of Freemasons.[9] Of course the anonymous writer begins with

Adoniram, the architect of Solomon's Temple, who had so very many
workmen to pay, that not being able to distinguish them by name, he
divided them into three different classes, novices, operatori, and magistri,
and to each class gave a secret set of signs and passwords, so that from
these their fees could be easily fixed, and imposture avoided. It is
interesting to know that precisely the same divisions and classes existed in
the Roman Collegium and the Comacine Guild—and that, as in Solomon's
time, the great symbols of the order were the endless knot, or Solomon's
knot, and the "Lion of Judah."
Our author goes on to tell of the second revival of Freemasonry, in its
present entirely spiritual significance, and he gives Oliver Cromwell, of all
people, the credit of this revival! The rites and ceremonies he describes are
the greatest tissue of mediæval superstition, child's play, blood-curdling
oaths, and mysterious secrecy with nothing to conceal, that can be
imagined. All the signs of masonry without a figment of reality; every
moral thing masquerades under an architectural aspect, in that "Temple
made without hands" which is figured by a Freemasons' lodge in these days.
But the significant point is that all these names and masonic emblems point
to something real which existed at some long-past time, and, as far as
regards the organization and nomenclature, we find the whole thing in its
vital and actual working form in the Comacine Guild. Our nameless Italian
who reveals all the Masonic secrets, tells us that every lodge has three
divisions, one for the novices, one for the operatori or working brethren,
and one for the masters, besides a meeting or recreation room; and that no
lodge can be established without a minimum of two masters. Now wherever
we find the Comacines at work, we find the threefold organization of schola
or school for the novices, laborerium for the operatori, and the Opera or
Fabbrica for the Masters of Administration.
The anonymous one tells us that there is a Gran Maestro or Arch-magister
at the head of the whole order, a Capo Maestro or chief Master at the head
of each lodge. Every lodge must besides be provided with two or four
Soprastanti, a treasurer, and a secretary-general, besides accountants. This
is precisely what we find in the organization of the Comacine Lodges. As
we follow them through the centuries we shall see it appearing in city after
city, at first dimly shadowed where documents are wanting, but at last fully

revealed by the books of the treasurers and Soprastanti themselves, in
Siena, Florence, and Milan.
Thus, though there is no certain proof that the Comacines were the veritable
stock from which the pseudo-Freemasonry of the present day sprang, we
may at least admit that they were a link between the classic Collegia and all
other art and trade guilds of the Middle Ages. They were called Freemasons
because they were builders of a privileged class, absolved from taxes and
servitude, and free to travel about in times of feudal bondage. The term was
applied to them both in England and Germany. Findel quotes two old
English MSS., one of 1212, where the words "sculptores lapidum
liberorum" are in close conjunction with cœmentari, which is the oldest
Latin form for builder; and another dated 1396, where occurs the phrase
"latomos vocatos fremaceons." In the rolls of the building of Exeter and
Canterbury cathedrals the word Freimur is frequent, and no better proof can
be given of the way the early Masonic guild came into England. The Italian
term liberi muratori went into Germany with the Comacine Masters, who
built Lombard buildings in many a German city, before Gothic ones were
known; thence it passed Teutonized as Freimur into England.[10]
Cesare Cantù (Storia di Como, vol. i. p. 440) thus describes the Guild—
"Our Como architects certainly gave the name to the Masonic companies,
which, I believe, had their origin at this time, though some claim to derive
them from Solomon. These were called together in the Loggie (hence
Lodge) by a grand-master to treat of affairs common to the order, to accept
novices, and confer superior degrees on others. The chief Lodge had other
dependencies, and all members were instructed in their duties to the
Society, and taught to direct every action to the glory of the Lord and His
worship; to live faithful to God and the Government; to lend themselves to
the public good and fraternal charity. In the dark times which were slowly
becoming enlightened, they communicated to each other ideas on
architecture, buildings, stone-cutting, the choice of materials and good taste
in design. Strength, force, and beauty were their symbols. Bishops, princes,
men of high rank who studied architecture fraternized with them, but the
mixture of so many different classes changed in time the spirit of the
Freemasons. The original forms of building were lost when the science fell
into the hands and caprice of venal artisans."[11]

We shall see the way in which the Comacines spread fraternity wherever
they went. When they began building in any new place, they generally
founded a lodge there, which comprised a laborerium and school. Thus we
find one under the Antellami family in Parma before 1200, and not long
after one in Modena under the same masters from Campione. The lodge is
clearly defined at Orvieto and Siena. In Lucca there was a laborerium
before the year 1000. In 1332 it had obtained privileges. At Milan there was
evidently another, for on February 3, 1383, the archbishop invites the
architects Fratelli (brethren), and others who understand the work, to
inspect the models for the cathedral; now these words evidently refer to a
Masonic brotherhood, as does the term Opera Magiestatem so often met
with in old documents.
In the Marches of Ancona is a sepulchre inscribed to the fratres Comacini,
and in the Abruzzi are chapels dedicated by them. In Rome it is recorded
that they met in the church of SS. Quattro Coronati. These patron saints of
the guild, the four holy crowned ones (Santi Quattro Coronati), strike me as
having a peculiar significance in regard to their origin. We are told that
during the persecutions under Diocletian, four brethren, named Nicostratus,
Claudius, Castorio, and Superian[12] (either brothers, or more likely
members of the same Collegium), who were famous for their skill in
building and sculpture, refused to exercise their art for the pagan Emperor.
"We cannot," they said, "build a temple for false gods, nor shape images in
wood or stone to ensnare the souls of others." They were all martyred in
different ways: one scourged, one shut up and tortured in an iron case, one
thrown into the sea; the other was decapitated. Their relics were in the time
of St. Leo placed in four urns, and deposited in the crypt of the church,
which was built to their honour, in the time of Honorius, by the Comacines
then in Rome. It has always been the especial church of the guild, and their
meeting-place. They had an altar dedicated to the same saints at Siena, and
another at Venice. We find from the statutes of the Sienese guild as late as
the fourteenth century, that the fête of the "Quattro" was kept in a special
manner by the Masonic guild. All the Church fêtes are classed together as
days when no work is to be done, but the day of the SS. Quattro has two
laws all to itself, and is kept with peculiar ceremonies.[13]
On the altar of this church on Mount Aventine are silver busts of the four
Magister martyrs; and on the wall is an ancient inscription, as follows—

BEATVS LEO IIII PAPA
PARITER SVB HOC SACRO ALTR̄
REC̄ DENS COLLOCAVĪ CORPOR̄ SCŌ
M͞ R CLAVDII NICOSTĪ SEMPRON̄ I
CAST̄ ET SIMP̄ ET HII FR̄ M SEVERI
SEVERIANI CARPOFORI ET VICTO
RINI MARII AVDIFAX EABBACV̄
FELICISSIMO ET AGAPITO YPPOLT̄
OVDE CV̄ SVA FAM̄ L NV̄ O X ET
VIIII ACQVILINI ET PRISCI ARSEI
AQVNI NARCISI ET MARCELLI
NI FELICIS SIMETRII CANDI
DAE ATO PAVLINÆ ANASTASII
ET FELICIS APOLLIONIS
ET BENEDICTI VENANTII
ATO FELICIS DIOGENIS ET LI
BERALIS FESTI ET MARCELLI
ATO SVPERANTII PVDENTIAN̄ E
ET BENEDICTI FELICIS ET BENE
DICTI NECN̄ CAPITA SANCTO
PROTI SC̄ EO CECILIA E
SC͞ I ALEXANDRI SC̄ IO XISTI
ET SC͞ I SEBASTIANI ATQ
SACRATISSIME VIRGINIS
PRAXEDIS ET ALIA MVLTA
CORPORA SANCTORVM
QVORVM NOMINA DEO
SVNT COGNITA

If I interpret the abbreviations M͞ R. F͞ RM and FA͞ ML aright, this inscription
would imply that members of each of the three grades of the Roman
Masonic guild, Magister, Fratres, and Famuli (apprentices), were martyred
together, and their remains placed in this church with the relics of some
proto-martyrs. The Magistri were afterwards canonized, and the four I have
named became the patron saints of the guild. S. Carpophorus was held in
special veneration in Como, of which place he was probably a native, or
else a Greek member of the Comacine Lodge there.

The other side of the inscription chronicles the restoration of the altar which
was ruined and broken down, in the time of Pope Paschalis Secundus, A.D.
1111, in the fourth Indiction.
The church of the SS. Quattro has remains of a fine atrium or portico. In the
wall of the atrium is a fragment of intreccio. The original form of the
church is well preserved, and is identical with that of S. Agnese, fuori le
mura. The gallery for the women is well preserved.
The especial veneration for the four crowned martyrs seems to point to their
Roman origin, and to specify the reason why the remnant of the particular
Collegium to which they belonged fled from Rome, and took refuge in the
safe little republic of Como, so that it was not only the Goths and Vandals
from whom they fled. It explains also the intense religion in their work, and
rules; the very first principles of which were to respect God's name, and do
all to His glory.
It need not excite wonder that any guild should have fled from Rome in
these centuries. This was the time that Gregory the Great, painted so
graphically in his passionate Homily of Ezechiel, preached at Rome.
"Everywhere see we mourning, hear we laments; cities, strongholds,
villages are devastated; the earth is a desert. No busy peasants are in the
fields, few people in the cities, and these last relics of human kind daily
suffer new wounds. There is no end to the scourging of God's judgment....
We see some carried into slavery, others cruelly mutilated, and yet more
killed. What joy, oh my brethren, is left to us in life? If it is still dear to us
we must look for wounds, and not for pleasures. Behold Rome, once Queen
of the world, to what is she reduced?—prostrated by the sorrows and
desolation of her citizens, by the fierceness of her enemies and frequent
ruin, the prophecy against Samaria has been fulfilled in her. Here no longer
have we a senate; the people are perished, save the few who still suffer
daily. Rome is empty, and has barely escaped the flames; her buildings are
thrown down. The fate of Nineveh is already upon her...."[14]
The Longobard invaders were more merciful than the Goths, for not long
after their rule was over, another Pope wrote to Pepin—"Erat sanæ hoc
mirabile in regno Longobardorum, nulla erat violenta nulla struebantur
insidiæ. Nemo aliquem iniuste angariabat, nemo spoliabat. Non erat furta,

non latrocinia, unusquisque quodlibebat securus sine timore pergebat."—
Histor. Franc. Scrip. Tom. III. cap. xvi.
Whatever the moving cause, the fact remains that in the Middle Ages the
Comacine Masters had a nucleus on that strong little fortified island of
Comacina, which, together with Como itself, stood against the Lombards in
the sixth century for twenty years before being subjugated; and in the
twelfth, held its own independence for a quarter of a century against Milan
and the Lombard League, which it refused to join.
When at length the Longobards became their rulers, they respected their art
and privileges. The guild remained free as it had been before, and in this
freedom its power must have increased fast.
The Masters worked liberally for their new lords, but it was as paid
architects, not as serfs. As a proof we may cite an edict signed by King
Luitprand on February 28, 713. It is entitled Memoratorio, and is published
by Troya in his Codex Diplomaticus Longobardus.
It fixes the prices of every kind of building. Here are the titles of the seven
clauses, referring to the payments of the Magistri Comacini: De Mercede
Comacinorum—
CLVII. Capit. i. De Sala. "Si sala fecerit, etc."

CLVIII. Capit. ii. De Muro. "Si vero murum fecerit qui usque ad pedem unum
sit grossus ... cum axes clauserit et opera gallica fecerit ... si arcum volserit,
etc."
Capit. iii. De annonam Comacinorum.
CLIX. Capit. iv. De opera.

CLX. Similiter romanense si fecerit, sic repotet sicut gallica opera.

Capit. v. De Caminata.
CLXI. Capit. vi. De marmorariis.

CLXII. Si quis axes marmoreas fecerit ... et si columnas fecerit de pedes
quaternos aut quinos ...

Capit. vii. De furnum.
[15]
CLXIII. Capit. viii. De Puteum. Si quis puteum fecerit ad pedes centum.

The Longobard rule explains why the Comacine Masters of the thirteenth
century were known as Lombards, and the architecture of that time as the
"Lombard style." In the same way they were called Franchi when
Charlemagne was their king; and Tedeschi when the German dynasty
conquered North Italy; if indeed the words artefici Franchi do not merely
signify Freemasons, which I strongly suspect is the true meaning.
To understand the connection of this guild of architects with little Como we
must glance backwards at the state of that province under the Romans,
when it was a colony ruled by a prefect. Junius Brutus himself was one of
these rulers, and Pliny the Younger a later one. At this time Como was a
large and flourishing city. It had in Cæsar's time a theatre whose ruins were
found near S. Fedele; a gymnasium for the games, which was near the
present church of Santa Chiara. A document dated 1500 speaks of the Arena
of Como as then still existing. The campus martius was at S. Carpoforo,
where several Roman inscriptions, urns, and medals were found. This
valuable collection of Latin inscriptions, found in and about Como, proves
the successive rule of emperors, prefects, military tribunes, naval prefects,
Decurions, etc. We have records also of Senators, Decemviri, and other
municipal magistrates. The inscriptions also show that there were temples
to Jove, Neptune, the Dea Bona, the Manes, the Dea Mater, Silvanus,
Æsculapius, Mars, Diana, Hygeia, and even Isis.
Some Cippi are dedicated to Mercury and Hercules; and one found near S.
Maria di Nullate was inscribed by order of the Comacines to Fortuna
Obsequente, "for the health of the citizens." To this day a Prato Pagano
(pagan field) exists near Como. All these proofs, together with Pliny's
testimony, go to show that Como was in Roman times an important centre,
and as such was likely to have its own Collegia or trade guilds, to one of
which probably Pliny's builder, Mustio, belonged, and to which the Roman
refugees naturally fled as brethren.
Pliny the Younger at that time lived at Como, in his delightful villa,
Comedia. In his grounds, on a high hill, were the ruins of the temple of the
Eleusinian Ceres, and he determined to restore this temple, as devotees

flocked there during the Ides of September, and had no refuge from sun or
rain.[16] His letter to "Mustio," a Comacine architect, gives the commission
for this restoration, and after explaining the form he wished the design to
take, he concludes—"At least unless you think of something better, you,
whose art can always overcome difficulties of position." For Pliny, fresh
from Rome, to give such praise to an architect at Como, shows that even at
that time good masters existed there.
Another letter of Pliny's (Lib. X. Epist. xlii.) speaks of the villa of his friend
Caninus Rufus, on the same lake, with its beautiful porticoes and baths, etc.,
and of the many other villas, palaces, temples, forums, etc., which
embellished Como and its neighbourhood.
Catullus lived here when the poet Cæcilius, whose works have now
perished, invited him to leave the hills of Como, and the shores of Lario, to
join him in Verona.

Pliny seems to confirm the existence of guilds,[17] as he speaks of the
institution of a Collegium of iron-workers, who wished to be patented by
the Emperor, but Trajan refused to form new guilds, for fear of the Hetæriæ
or factions which might infiltrate into them.
Mommsen, in his work De Collegiis et Sodalitiis Romanorum, says that
under the emperors no guild was allowed to hold meetings, except by
special laws, yet though new companies were not to be formed, the existing
ones of architects and artisans were permitted to continue after public
liberty was lost. Several documents prove that the chief scope of these
unions was to promote the interests of their art, to provide mutual assistance
in the time of need, to succour the sick and poor, and to bury the dead.
The trade guilds in London, the Arti in Florence, and the town clubs kept up
in England till lately, seem to be all survivals of these ancient classical
societies.
Besides the Builders' Society, Como had, in Roman times, a nautical guild.
An inscription is extant, dedicated to C. Messius Fortunatus by the
Collegium nautarum Comensium. This guild sent twenty ships of war to
Venice in Barbarossa's time.

But besides having privileged societies, Como and its Comacine islands
were a privileged territory, and might almost have been called a republic.
We have, it is true, no documentary evidence of this dating back to pre-
Longobardic times, but as Otho in 962[18] confirmed the islands in all
former privileges granted by his predecessors on the Imperial throne, we
may fairly suppose the privileges dated from times far anterior to himself.
This is an anglicized version of his decree, which was granted on the
petition of the Empress Adelaide—
"In the name of the Holy and indivisible Trinity, Otho, by the will of God,
august Emperor. If we incline to the demands of our faithful people, much
more should we lend our ear to the prayers of our beloved consort. Know
then, all ye faithful subjects of the Holy Church of God, present and future,
that the august Empress Adelaide, our wife, invokes our clemency, that for
her sake we receive under our protection the inhabitants of the Comacine
islands, and surrounding places known as Menasie (sic), and we confirm all
the privileges which they have enjoyed under our predecessors, and under
ourselves before we were anointed Emperor, viz. they shall not be called on
for military service, nor have arbergario (taxes on roads and bridges), nor
pay curatura (tax on beasts), terratico (tax on land), ripatico (on ships), or
the decimazione (tax on householders) of our kingdom, neither shall they be
obliged to serve in our councils, except the general assembly at Milan,
which they shall attend three times a year. All this we concede, etc. Given
on the 8th before the calends of September, in the year of the Incarnation
962, first year of the reign of the most pious Otho."—Indiction V. in Como.
The hypothesis that this decree refers to a long-existing liberty is confirmed
by the history of Como in the time of Justinian I. Up to the middle of the
sixth century a certain Imperial Governor of Insubria, named Francione,
who had seen Rome sacked and his own state taken, fled to Comacina as a
free place of refuge when Alboin invaded Italy. He helped the Comacines to
hold out against the barbarians for more than twenty years, and so secure
was the place considered that the island was by Narses and others made the
depositary of infinite treasures. With him multitudes of Romans had taken
refuge there, but finally even this fell into the hands of the Longobards. We
are told that Autharis subjugated Istria, and after a six months' siege,
possessed himself of the very strongly fortified island of Comacina on the

lake of Como, where he found immense treasures, doubtless part of the
traditional wealth amassed by Narses, and which as well as much private
property had been deposited here for security by the neighbouring peoples.
[19]

Here then, four centuries before Otho's decree, we have Comacina as a
place of refuge in troublous times, chosen because, being a free city, it was
considered more safe than other towns. We need not then consider it
improbable, if in the dark centuries when the Roman Empire was dying out,
and its glorious temples and streets falling into ruin under the successive
inroads of half-savage despoilers; when the arts and sciences were falling
into disuse or being enslaved; and when no place was safe from persecution
and warfare, the guild of the Architects should fly for safety to almost the
only free spot in Italy; and here, though they could no longer practise their
craft, they preserved the legendary knowledge and precepts which, as
history implies, came down to them through Vitruvius from older sources,
some say from Solomon's builders themselves.
Among the treasures must have been works of Greek and Roman art, that
kept alive the old spirit among the guild of builders gathered there; but alas!
after the long generations when art was decaying, and uncalled for, their
hands lost their skill, they could no longer reproduce the perfect works.
It was here the Longobards found them, and in their new Christian zeal
soon furnished them with work enough.

LONGOBARD KINGS
568. Alboin conquers Italy; he was poisoned by his
wife Rosamund for compelling her to drink
out of her father's skull.
573. Cleoph (assassinated).
575. Autharis (poisoned).
591. Agilulf.

615. Adaloald. He was poisoned.
625. Ariold.
636. Rotharis. He married Ariold's widow, and
published a code of laws.
652. Rodoald (son), assassinated.
653. Aribert (uncle).
661. Bertharis and Godebert (sons); dethroned by—
662. Grimoald, Duke of Beneventum.
671. Bertharis (re-established).
686. Cunibert (son).
700. Luitbert; dethroned by—
701. Ragimbert.
701. Aribert II. (son).
712. Ansprand elected.
712. Luitprand (son); a great prince, favourite of the
Church.
744. Hildebrand (nephew), deposed.
744. Ratchis, Duke of Friuli, elected, but afterwards
became a monk.
749. Astolfo (brother).
756. Desiderius, quarrelled with Pope Adrian, who
invited Charlemagne to Italy. He defeated and
dethroned Desiderius, and put an end to the
Lombard kingdom.

CHAPTER II
THE COMACINES UNDER THE LONGOBARDS

LONGOBARD MASTERS
About

1. 712 Magister Ursus Sculptured the altar at Ferentilla,
and a ciborium at S. Giorgio di
Valpolicella, for King
Luitprand.
2&3. 712 M. Ivvintino and Disciples of Ursus.
Ivviano. (Joventino
and Joviano)
4. " Magister Giovanni Made the tomb of S. Cumianus.
5. 739 M. Rodpert Worked at Toscanella, and bought
land there.
6. 742 M. Piccone Architect employed by Gunduald
at Lucca: he received a gift of
lands in Sabine in 742.
7. M. Auripert A painter patronized by King
Astolph.

It was on April 2, 568, that the Longobards under Alboin, with their wives
and children and with all their belongings, "colle loro mogli e figli, e con
tutte le sostanze loro," first came down and took Friuli. Alboin gave the
government there to Gisulph, his nephew, leaving with him many of the
chief and bravest families, and a high-bred race of horses (generosa razza
di cavalli).
Next he took Vicenza and Verona, and in September 569 passed into Liguria
—which then extended from the Adda to the Ligurian Sea,—and conquered
Milan. To this add Emilia, and later, Ravenna and Tuscany, and the first
Lombard kingdom was complete.
From this kingdom depended the three dukedoms of Friuli, Spoleto, and
Beneventum. The last was added in the time of Autharis (575-591) when,
like Canute, he rode into the sea at Reggio in Calabria, and touching the

waves with his lance, cried—"These alone shall be the boundary of the
Longobards."[20]
This Autharis married Theodolinda, a Christian. He was an Arian, but by
her means he became Catholic. After his death, in 590, she chose Agilulf,
who reigned with her twenty-five years.[21]
Paulus Diaconus gives the following very pretty account of Theodolinda's
two betrothals—
"It was expedient for Autharis, the young King of the Lombards, to take a
wife, and an ambassador was sent to Garibald, King of Bavaria, to propose
an alliance with his daughter Theodolinda. Autharis disguised himself as
one of the suite, with the object of seeing beforehand what his bride was
like. She was sent for by her father and bidden to hand some wine to the
guests. Having served the ambassador first, she handed the cup to Autharis,
and in giving him the serviette after drinking, he managed to press her hand.
The princess blushed, and told the incident to her nurse, who in a prophetic
manner assured her that he must be the king himself, or he would not have
dared to touch her.
"Soon after, on the Franks invading Bavaria, Theodolinda with her brother
fled to Italy, where Autharis met her near Verona, and the marriage was
solemnized on the Ides of May, A.D. 589.
"Amongst the guests were Agilulf, Duke of Turin, and with him a youth of
his suite, son of an augur; in a sudden storm a tree near them was struck by
lightning, on which the young augur said to Agilulf—'The bride who has
arrived to-day will shortly wed you.' Agilulf was so angry at what seemed a
disrespect to the king and queen, that he threatened to cut off his page's
head, who replied—'I may die, but I cannot change destiny.' And truly,
when a few years after Autharis was poisoned at Pavia, Theodolinda's
people were so attached to her, that they offered her the kingdom if she
would elect a Longobard as husband.
"Destiny had decreed that she should choose Agilulf. The same ceremony
of offering him a cup of wine was gone through, and he kissed her hand as
she gave it. The queen blushing said—'He who has a right to the mouth
need not kiss the hand.' So Agilulf knew that he was her chosen king.

"She was a Christian, and a favourite disciple of Gregory the Great. Her
good life and prayers were able to convert Agilulf to orthodox Christianity,
for like many Longobards of the time he had fallen into the Arian heresy. In
gratitude for this she vowed a church to St. John Baptist, and a miraculous
voice inspired her as to the site at Modœcia, or 'oppidum moguntiaci.'"
It was under these Christianized invaders that the Comacine Masters
became active and influential builders again, and it is here that the actual
history of the guild begins.
It is apparent that what are called Lombard buildings could not have been
the work of the Longobards themselves. Symonds realized this difficulty,
but had not solved the question as to who built the Lombard churches, when
he wrote[22]—"The question of the genesis of the Lombard style, is one of
the most difficult in Italian art history. I would not willingly be understood
to speak of Lombard architecture in any sense different from that in which
it is usual to speak of Norman. To suppose that either the Lombards or the
Normans had a style of their own, prior to their occupation of districts from
the monuments of which they learned rudely to use the decayed Roman
manner, would be incorrect. Yet it seems impossible to deny that both
Normans and Lombards, in adapting antecedent models, added something
of their own, specific to themselves as northerners. The Lombard, like the
Norman, or the Rhenish Romanesque, is the first stage in the progressive
mediæval architecture of its own district."
It appears possible, however, that the Longobards had very little to do with
the architecture of their era except as patrons. Was there ever a stone
Lombard building known out of Italy before Alboin and his hordes crossed
the Alps? or even in Italy during the reigns of Alboin and Cleoph, their first
kings?
But there were older buildings of precisely the same style, in Italy and in
Como itself, dating from the time when the Bishops ruled, long before the
Longobards came. There were the churches of S. Abbondio and S. Fedele.
The latter was built in Abbondio's own time, about 440-489, and first
dedicated to S. Euphemia. It was rebuilt later by the Comacines under the
Longobards, but its form was not changed. The former, said to have been
built by the Bishop Amantius, was first dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul,

whose relics he placed here. These two are certainly the oldest churches
existing in Como.
Amantius the Byzantine ordained S. Abbondio, who was a Macedonian, as
his successor, and he too became eminent in his time, and is still venerated
as a patron Saint in all the Milanese district. Pope Leo sent him to
Constantinople as his Legate, to interview the Patriarch Anastasius, and also
deputed him to form the Council with Eusebius, at Milan. The Greek touch
in the Lombard ornamentation may be accounted for by Greek sculptors
assisting the Italian builders in the time of these Eastern bishops.
But, to return to the Longobards:—it was only when the civilization of Italy
began to tell on them, and Christianity refined their minds, that they
commenced to patronize the Arts, and revived the fading traditions of the
builders' guild into practice, for the glorification of their religious zeal.
"Little by little," says Muratori, "the barbarous Longobards became more
polished (andavano disrugginendo) by taking the customs and rites of the
Italians. Many of them were converted from Arianism to Catholicism, and
they vied with the Italians in piety and liberality towards the Church of
God, building both Hospices and Monasteries."[23]
The Comacine Masters were undoubtedly the only architects employed by
them, so we are sure that in the Lombard churches of this era, we see the
Comacine work of the first or Roman-Lombard style.
Autharis and Theodolinda were the first orthodox Christians: indeed
Theodolinda, who was baptized by Gregory the Great, and formed a special
friendship with him, became a shining light in the Church. To them is
probably due the honour of inaugurating the Renaissance of Comacine art.
Autharis, though an Arian, first employed the Masters of the guild to build a
church and monastery at Farfa on the banks of the Adda, not far from
Monza. They have long been ruined, but ancient writers quote them as fine
and rich works of architecture. Next, Theodolinda and her second husband,
Agilulf, the succeeding king, built the cathedral at Monza, which they
resolved should be worthy of the new creed. This cathedral was the
prototype of all the Lombard churches.
Before proceeding further it may be well to define precisely the difference
between Eastern and Western forms in these centuries, while they were as

yet distinct.
As we have said, the Basilica was the type of Roman or Western
architecture, a type which passed afterwards to the East, where the cupola
was added to it.
The Comacine Guild, being a survival of the Roman Collegium, had of
course Roman traditions, and took naturally this Roman type of the
Basilica,[24] which form they adapted to the uses of the Christian Church,
while its ornamentation was suited to the taste of the Longobards.
The Basilica, as Vitruvius explains it, was a room where the ruler and his
delegates administered justice. But when, after the persecutions, Christians
were allowed their churches, the Basilicæ so well supplied the needs of
Christian worship, that either the ancient ones were used as churches, or
new buildings were erected in the same form; so that by the fourth century
the word Basilica was understood to mean a church remarkable for its size,
and of a set form and grandeur, with a raised tribune. The Basilicæ of
Constantine were all dedicated to Saints—St. Peter, St. Paul, Beato
Marcellino. The Sessorian Basilica was begun in 330, to hold the relics of
the Cross, discovered by the Empress Helena. From the time of the edict of
Theodosius, however, Christian architecture took a new and independent
character; and this was when the Basilica became amplified and beautified.
The Oriental churches, on the other hand, were derived from the antique
synagogue, in which concentric forms, either circular or polygonal,
predominated. In their later development four equal arms were added, and
here we get the Greek Cross, in the centre of which arose the dome.
In the Romanesque, or Comacine style of the ninth to the fourteenth
centuries, the form becomes more complicated. We have, 1. the sanctuary or
presbytery; 2. the apse for the choir; 3. the transepts; 4. the normal square or
centre; 5. the elongated nave; 6. the aisles; 7. the atrium or portico.
In Theodolinda's time, however, church architecture in Lombardy was
wholly and purely Roman, with the influences of mediæval Christianity.
Ricci tells us that the construction of the first churches followed a
symbolical expression. "Hermeneutic symbolism required that the apse or

choir should face the east, so that the faithful while praying had that part
before them."
A very usual form was the tri-apsidal church, of which many specimens still
exist. S. Pietro a Grado, near Pisa, is a beautiful specimen of this.
Around the apse of a Lombard church was a portico where the penitents and
catechumens might stand, who were not yet admitted to the altar. On high
were loggie (galleries) "for the virgins and women." The tribune was
elevated and often ornamented with a railing, the crypt or confessional
being beneath it. The crypt signified a memory of the early Christians, when
subterranean catacombs formed the church of the faithful. The altar was
generally the tomb of a martyr, in fulfilment of the text—"I saw under the
altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the
testimony which they held" (Rev. vi. 9).
Where the original form of the Lombard church has not been altered, as in
the first Monza church, all these parts may be still seen.

We are expressly told by Ricci,[25] that for the building of her church at
Monza, Queen Theodolinda availed herself of those Magistri Comacini,
who, as Rotharis describes them in his laws 143 and 144, were qualified
architects and builders.
It seems that even though all Italy was subjugated by the Longobards, the
Magistri Comacini retained their freedom and privileges. They became
Longobard citizens, but were not serfs; they retained their power of making
free contracts, and receiving a fair price for their work, and were even
entitled to hold and dispose of landed property.[26]
Therefore it was by a free contract, and not in any spirit of servitude, that
the Comacines undertook the building of Theodolinda's church.
It is difficult to imagine what the church was in Theodolinda's time, as its
form was altered in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Ricci says that the
antique Monza Basilica terminated at what is now the first octagon column,
on which rest the remains of the primitive façade. Four columns supported
the arched tribune, and the high altar was raised above the level of the

church. In front was the atrium, supported by porticoes, and he thinks that
the sculptures in the present façade are the old ones.

Ancient Sculpture in Monza Cathedral.
See page 39.

Cattaneo, the Italian authority on Lombard architecture, does not believe in
the present existence of even this much of Theodolinda's church, and in
disclaiming the façade, disclaims also the sculpture on it, especially the one
over the door, where Agilulf and Theodolinda offer the diadem of the cross
to St. John the Baptist, and are shown as wearing crowns, which the early
Lombard kings did not do.[27] The figures have, it is true, the entire style of
the twelfth century, when later Comacines restored the church. Cattaneo
thinks that the only sculpture which can safely be dated from Theodolinda's
own time, is a stone which might have been an altar frontal, on which is a
rude relief of a wheel circle, emblem of Eternity, flanked by two crosses
with the letters alpha and omega hanging to the arms of them. It is a
significant fact that the Alpha is in the precise form of the Freemason
symbol of the compasses, and in the wheel-like circle one sees the
beginning of that symbol of Eternity, the unbroken line with neither end nor
beginning, which the Comacines in after centuries developed into such
wonderful intrecci (interlaced work). The sculpture is extremely rude; by
way of enriching the relief, the artist has covered the crosses and circles
with drill-holes. Now this is a most interesting link, connecting the debased
Roman art with this beginning of the Christian art in the West (the early
Ravenna sculptors do not count, being imported from the East). On

examining any of the late Roman cameos, or intagli, or even their stone
sculpture, after the fall of classical art in Hadrian's time, one may perceive
the way in which the drill is constantly made use of instead of the chisel.
So these Comacine artists began with the only style of art they had been
educated up to, and though retaining old traditions they had fallen out of
practice, during a century or two, while invaders ravaged their country, and
had to begin again with low art, little skill, and unused imagination. But
with the new impulse given to art, their skill increased, they gained a wider
range of imagination, greater breadth of design, going on century by
century, as we shall trace, from the first solid, heavy, little structures, to the
airy lightness of the florid Romanesque—the marriage of East and West.
Another chiesa graziosissima, said to have been founded by Theodolinda,
was that of Santa Maria del Tiglio, near Gravedona, on the left bank of
Lake Como, which Muratori says was already ancient in 823, when the old
chronicler Aimoninus describes it (Aimoninus de Gestis Francorum, iv. 3).
It has been much altered since that time, but as Prof. Merzario writes
—"When one reflects that it was the work of a thousand years ago, and
when one considers the lightness of design, the elegance of the arches,
windows, columns, and colonnettes, one must perforce confess that even at
that epoch Art was blossoming in the territory of Como, under the hands of
the Maestri Comacini."
Theodolinda also founded the monastery of Monte Barro, near Galbiate; the
church of S. Salvatore in Barzano, a little mountain church at Besano above
Viggiu; that of S. Martino at Varenna; and the church, baptistery, and castle
of Perleda above it; in which latter it is said she died. Queen Theodolinda
was accustomed to spend the hot months of summer on the banks of the
lake, and a part of the road near Perleda Castle is still called Via Regina (the
Queen's road), in memory of her. King Cunibert, too, loved the banks of
Como.
There is always some pretty, graceful reason in Theodolinda's church-
building, very different to the reasons of many of the kings. Theirs were too
often sin-offerings, built in remorse, but hers were generally thank-
offerings, built in love. For instance, the church at Lomella, which she
erected in memory of having first met her second husband Agilulf there.

Theodolinda also built a church to S. Julia at Bonate, near Val San Martino,
in the diocese of Bergamo; but in these days not much sign is left of it. The
author of the Antichità Long. Mil. (Dissertation I., p. 120) says that Mario
Lupo has published the plan and section of the church in his Codice
diplomatico (T. I., p. 204), together with another, still more magnificent, of
almost the same date. It is dedicated to S. Tommaso, and stands near the
river Brembo, at Lemine in the same diocese. "This church," says the monk
who wrote the Antichità, etc., "still exists (in 1792), and is of circular form,
with inferior and superior porticati in the interior, recalling the design of the
ancient church of S. Vitale at Ravenna." Lupo describes it even in its ruin as
an "admirable temple, whose equal, whether for size, solidity, or elegance,
can scarcely be found in Lombardy. Its perimeter," he says, "may be traced
among the thorns and briars of the surrounding woods, and its form and size
may thus be perceived. The ruins confirm the assertion of the splendour of
buildings in Queen Theodolinda's time, and show that in the beginning of
the seventh century architecture was not so rude as has been supposed, and
that besides solidity of structure, it preserved a just proportion and harmony
of parts, excepting perhaps in the extreme lightness and inequality of the
columns."
We read much in ancient authors of Queen Theodolinda's palace, with its
paintings on the walls, representing Alboin and his wild hordes of
Longobards, with their many-coloured garments, loose hosen, and long
beards. We can believe that these paintings were as rude and mediæval as
their sculpture, whether they were done by savage Longobards or decayed
Romano-Comacine artists. They prove, however, that painting was one of
the branches of art in the guild.
King Agilulf also employed the architects; but it was in a more military
style of architecture—to build castles and bridges. The castle of Branigola
dates from his reign, as does the fine bridge over the Brembo, and another
over the Breggia, between Cernobbio and Borgovico, near Como. He is also
accredited with the building of the Palazzo della Torre at Turin, with its two
octangular towers, and mixed brick and stone solid architecture. In all these
works the builders, as in modern times, seem to have sometimes lost their
lives. So much so that King Rotharis, A.D. 636, made, as we have seen,
special laws on the subject.

Gundeberg, the daughter of Theodolinda, had a similar fate to her mother in
being the wife of two successive kings (Ariold and Rotharis). She also
imitated her in church-building. The church of S. Giovanni in Borgo at
Pavia, was erected by her.[28] It is said that after S. Michele this was the
finest building of the age. It had a nave and two aisles, with a gallery over
the arches. The apse had the external colonnade, and practicable gallery,
and the octagonal dome. The façade, as usual, was divided into three parts,
and was rich in symbolical friezes. Half-way up the façade was an
ambulatory, on six double arches and small columns, which communicated
with the internal galleries for the women. This was reached by two spiral
stairways cut in the pilasters of the façade. (In reading this we seem to be
reading over again the description of Hexham in England.) The lower half
of the façade was of sandstone, the upper half of brick adorned "a cacabus,"
i.e. inlaid with various convex plates in different-coloured smalto.[29] It is a
great pity that this interesting church was destroyed in 1811, and its
symbolic reliefs and carved stones ruthlessly used in the foundation of
modern buildings. Some were, however, saved by a nobleman of Pavia,
Don Galeazzo Vitali, and are preserved in his villa between Lodi and Pavia.
Here, on May 13, 1828, the Signori Sacchi[30] went to see them, and found
many valuable specimens of Comacine symbolical art. Here are square
slabs which may have been parts of friezes or plutei (panels of marble),
covered with interlaced work, formed of entwining vines, or even serpents;
sometimes a simple cord in mystic and continuous knots, precisely similar
to the ones recently discovered in S. Agnese and S. Clemente at Rome.
There were several capitals of columns and pilasters with significant
grotesques, such as a man between two lions; a maze of vines with a satyr
in them, possibly an emblem of Christianity which constrains and civilizes
even the wildest natures; two armed warriors on horseback meeting in
battle, figuring the Church militant. (There is a similar capital in S. Stefano
at Pavia.) In one, two hippogriffs meet at the angles; in another, two
dragons with tails intertwined are biting a man between them placed at the
angle. (The same emblem of the strife with sin is represented in S. Pietro of
the "golden roof.") One is a curious symbol which would seem to be a
remnant of paganism, and represents the fish goddess of Eastern religions.
A woman, with only a fig-leaf for dress, has a double tail instead of legs.
She holds the two ends of this dual tail, while serpents coiling into it suck
her breasts—a very mystic conception of Eve. There is a very remarkable

round mass of stone, with a toothed circle carved on each side, and in the
circles a cross. It is said by Muratori that this stone was placed high up over
the altar so that all worshippers should behold the cross.
A singular ancient Pavian custom was connected with this church. Once a
year a kind of fair was held there, at which nothing was sold but rings, and
no one was allowed to buy them except children and unmarried women. It
is thought that the custom was begun by Gundeberg herself in
commemoration of the gift of three rings, one with a pearl, and two with
jacinth stones, from Gregory the Great.[31] His letter of congratulation to
Theodolinda on the baptism of her little son Adaloald is still existing. He
says "he sends some gifts for her boy, and three rings for her young
daughter Gundeberg." Possibly the gift of the Pope was placed in the
treasury of the church, and commemorated at first by the sale of blessed
amulets in the form of rings, but which afterwards degenerated into a fair.
The custom lasted till 1669.
Industries of all kinds seem to have flourished under the Longobards; and
the Popes of Rome and other sovereigns made frequent use of Lombard
artificers. A letter from Gregory to Arichi, Duke of Lombardy, dated 596,
asks him to send workmen and oxen to Brescia, to cut down and cart to
Rome some trees for beams in the church of SS. Peter and Paul, promising
him in return a dono che non sarà indegno di voi (a gift not unworthy of
you).[32]
In A.D. 600, Cacanus, King of the Avari (Huns), sent to Agilulf for marine
architects and workmen to build the boats with which Cacanus took a
certain island in Thrace.[33]
As for the Comacine Masters at home, they had plenty of church-building.
The seventh and eighth centuries were times of great devotion to the
Church, and consequently a great church-building era. King Luitprand
realized this so strongly that he added to the laws of Rotharis, a clause
permitting his subjects to make legacies to the Church pro remedio animæ
suæ; a law, by the way, which was not always healthy in its action; for it
permitted the evil-disposed to indulge in crimes during their lifetime, and
then, by defrauding their natural heirs of their inheritance, to secure, as they

believed, their souls against eternal punishment, by leaving funds for
building a church or a monastery.

Comacine Capital in San Zeno, Verona. Dragons,
interlaced.

See page 43.

The will of Eriprand, Duke of Cremona, dated 685, is still extant, with a
legacy to the churches of S. Maria Maggiore, and S. Michele in Borgo, of
that city. Pope Sergius I. restored the Basilica of Ostia, and founded S.

Maria in Via Lata, giving them rich gifts, and Pope John II. repaired and
endowed S. Maria in Trastevere.[34]
Bertharis and Godebert, sons of Aribert, were in 661 dethroned by
Grimoald, Duke of Beneventum; but Bertharis being re-established in 671,
recalled his wife Rodelinda and son Cunibert from Beneventum, where they
had been taken as hostages, and in sign of gratitude for their release,
founded the church of S. Agatha al Monte at Pavia,[35] while his wife
Rodelinda founded that of S. Maria fuori le mura in the same city. Bertharis
dedicated his church to S. Agatha because on the eve of S. Agatha's day he
was miraculously saved from being assassinated by Grimoald, his deposer.
On the façade of the church is inscribed, "Pertharitus Longobardorum Rex
Templum hoc S. Agathæ Virg. et Mart. dicavit anno Christi DCXXVII."
The church had the usual "three naves," and the façade faced the west. It
has since been turned round. As in the Middle Ages it menaced ruin, the
central nave had to be supported by large external buttresses and internal
arches, one of which may be seen above the present doorway; it once
formed the entrance to the choir. When the nave was restored some of the
old Lombard capitals were discovered under the brickwork. They show the
same style as those at S. Michele, and S. Pietro in Ciel d'oro at Pavia, and
have all the marks of Comacine work. One has two lions very well carved.
They meet at the corner, where one head serves for both. On another is a
human figure, his hands holding two dragons which he has conquered, but
whose tails still coil round him. A fine mediæval allegory of man's struggle
with sin.
Rodelinda's round church, S. Maria foris portam (now no more), became
better known as S. Maria delle pertiche (of the poles), because a royal
cemetery was there in which many Lombard kings and nobles were buried,
and according to the usage of the nation the graves were marked by wooden
poles, on the top of each of which was perched a wooden dove (emblem of
the soul), looking towards the place where the person had died or been
killed.[36]
We may account for its circular shape by the fact that it was more a
ceremonial church, than one for ordinary worship. In it Hildebrand was
crowned, or rather received the regal wand of office. It had an interior

ambulatory, an arched colonnade all round it under the roof in true Lombard
style. This colonnade was much used in circular churches to assist the want
of space on great occasions.[37] Some of the columns were fluted, and
appear to have been adapted from an earlier Roman edifice. Two of them,
shortened and with the fluting planed down, now adorn the gate of Pavia
towards Milan. The foundation of this church has been attributed by
Cattaneo to Ratchis. This cannot be, for in 736, ten years before Ratchis
was king, Luitprand became very ill, and the Longobards met in the church
of S. Maria delle pertiche, and proclaimed Hildebrand as his successor.
To Aribert II. (701-712) is attributed the foundation of the church of S.
Salvatore, outside Porta Marengo at Pavia, where, says Malaspina, may be
noted a great improvement in style in the acute arches, and more regular
and elegant proportions.
The Basilica of S. Pietro de Dom in Brescia dated from about this time,
though it was built independently of Longobardic royal patronage, being a
thank-offering by Bishop Anastasius for the triumph of the Church over
Arianism. This was destroyed when the new Duomo was built in the
seventeenth century, but ancient writers tell us it had all the true Lombard
symbolism of form. The choir was on the west, facing east; it had the triple
nave and triple apse, and the usual inequality of the columns, some of
which are large, others small; some long, others short, these last being
lengthened, some by white marble, others by dark. I do not understand the
significance of this diversity of column which may be seen in all the
Comacine churches of this era.
If we cannot see S. Pietro de Dom, we may see in Brescia a church equally
old, the Rotonda of Santa Maria Maggiore, which the chroniclers say was
begun by the Brescian Duke Marqward, and finished by his son Frodward,
with the assistance of King Grimoald, about 665. The plan of the church is
very interesting; there are two concentric circles, the inner one formed by
eight pilasters, whose arches sustain the dome, and form the front of the
usual ambulatory above. This is all that can be judged as belonging to the
seventh-century church. The tribune and the upper parts are later, and the
crypt is earlier, being, it is believed, the remains of an early Christian
church of S. Filastrio, though some claim it as Roman.

Cunibert is next on the list of Longobardic church-builders. He built a
church to St. George as a votive offering after his escape from the attempt
which was made to dethrone him in 691 by Alachi, Duke of Brescia, and
two citizens named Aldone and Gransone. To the church of St. George was
attached a cloister for monks, the first Longobardic monastery founded in
the diocese of Milan. Documents and diplomas, dated 784 and 901, prove
the existence of both buildings till the latter date, but a deed of sale in 998
only speaks of the church, which still existed in 1792.
On the king's triumphal return to Pavia, he erected at the door of S.
Giovanni, a grand tomb to the priest Zeno, who had lost his life for him, by
dressing in the royal armour and rushing from the king's tent into the battle.
In A.D. 700 Cunibert descended to Lucca, which had then become a
Longobardic town, and interested himself in the building of a church to the
three saints, Stephen, Laurence, and Vincent; it afterwards became S.
Fredianus. The actual patron may not have been Cunibert himself, but his
majordomo Faulus, who probably was his vice-gerent there. Two ancient
deeds in the adjoining monastery of St. Vincent and S. Fredianus, dated
respectively 685 and 686, prove that Faulus restored and richly endowed
the monastery, and that Bishop Felix afterwards conceded to the Abbot
Babbinus and his monks, a diploma confirming the munificence of Faulus.
The monastery was, so say the chroniclers, originally built by S. Frediano,
Bishop of Lucca, in the sixth century, and that, when the first unconverted
Longobards came down and drove him out and destroyed his cathedral, he
fled for some years, but on his return he built another church outside the
town with a monastery attached. In this he availed himself of the sculptured
stones and columns of the ancient Roman amphitheatre, erected in Lucca by
Vibius in the time of Trajan. This was the monastery which was restored by
Faulus. When the bones of S. Fredianus were removed to it, in the time of
the Bishop Giovanni II., the church became known as S. Fredianus. The
church built in Cunibert's time was not by any means the fine building we
see now, though, as in Monza, the form of the old building may be
perceived. The ancient apse which has been traced in the course of some
excavations, is a fifth smaller than the present one, and it is conjectured that
the old church, if turned the same way, would have ended near where the
present pulpit stands; and there was a portico in front of it which is
mentioned in some ancient MSS.

The church was certainly differently orientalized, following the symbolic
formula that the choir should face the east; for the excavations disclosed
part of the columns of the nave, buried under the present presbytery at the
back. The circular walls of the choir were retraced in front of the present
altar, and it was proved that the wall was not continued where the semi-
circle of the apse opens; whereas if the church had been in the same
direction it now takes, the walls would have been continued to the length of
the nave.
Cav. Cordero di S. Quintino, in his Disamine su di alcuni monumenti
Lucchesi, 1815, was the first to draw attention to the reversed plan of the
old church, which the recent excavations have proved. He states that it was
in the form of a Latin cross, had a nave, and four aisles and transepts; that
its choir was at the west end, facing east, its façade on the east. It is a
misfortune that its origin cannot be precisely proved, as the archives of S.
Fredianus must have been burned in 1596, when the convent, with other
houses, was set on fire, even if they had survived the former sacking and
burning of the Ghibellines, under Uguccione della Faggiola in 1314.
Next comes Hic gloriosissimus Rex, Luitprand, who, we are told, built
many Basilicæ in honour of Christ, in the places where he had his
residences. He was to Lombard art what Lorenzo de' Medici was to that of
the Renaissance. Luitprand was a great employer of our Comacine Masters,
and very probably found them expensive luxuries, for, as we shall see in the
next chapter, he was obliged to legislate to fix their prices. He even gave the
length of his royal foot, as a guide to measurement.
Luitprand's foot was said to have been an extra long one, and yet, after great
discussions among writers, it has at length been agreed that Luitprand's
foot, and the Roman one used before it, were of the same length!
Very little, which is at all authentic, remains to us of Luitprand's churches.
S. Pietro[38] in Ciel d'oro (of the golden roof), at Pavia, which was
consecrated by Pope Zacharias in 743, is now a mere modern church,
containing nothing but the round form of its apse to speak of its antiquity.
This golden roof must refer to some mosaics originally in the tribune, and
is, I believe, the first instance of mosaics being used in a Lombard church.
It was built by the Christian king, "for the better reverence of the sacred

remains of that great light of the church, St. Augustine, which were placed
here by him." The corpse of the saint was redeemed from the Saracens in
Sardinia in 743, and the relics remained in S. Pietro for ten centuries.[39]
Luitprand's church, we are told, was symmetrical and graceful (grazioso).
The façade was of the usual Lombard form, with a rather flat gable, and
galleries beneath the eaves; it had narrow, round-arched windows, and a
cross over the central one, cut deep in the stone, as we see in S. Michele in
Pavia.

Basilica of S. Frediano at Lucca, 7th century.
(From a photograph by Brogi.)
See page 49.

The finest existing church of the Longobardic times is the Basilica of S.
Michele at Pavia, which is still intact, and may be taken as the culminating
point of the first Lombard style. It has all the distinctive marks of Comacine
work at the period. There is the Roman form of the Latin cross with nave
and two aisles divided by clustered columns supporting round arches. The
walls above the central nave terminate in a sculptured string course, and
over that a clerestory, the double Lombard arches of which are divided by
marble colonnettes with sculptured capitals. The central nave terminates in
a semi-circular apse, surrounded with pilasters and arches; beneath it is a
crypt supported on two rows of columns whose capitals are covered with
bizarre sculptures. The crypt is now entered by steps beneath the ones
leading to the tribune, but originally it had two entrances at the sides of the
tribune as in the crypt at Torcello, and that of San Zeno at Verona, which are
also of the seventh century. Another particularity is in the inequality of the
aisles, the left wall tending to the right, the right transept being longer and
larger than the left. This is not, we are told, an accident, but one of the many
symbolical forms used by the Comacines. Cordero and Vitet both refer to it.
The latter says—"Souvent le plan de l'église penché de gauche à droite.
Cette inclination est attribuée, comme on sait, au pieux désirs d'imiter la
position du Sauveur expirant sur la croix."[40] As a whole the interior is
grand and imposing, and as it stands now, retains the general plan of the
original church. Some parts have been restored in the fifteenth century,
especially the four principal piers which sustain the central arch, but by the
difference in the work and in the sculptures we may easily distinguish the
added parts. A Latin inscription in the apse, without date, proves that the
great central arch of the roof and that of the choir were renewed by
Bartolommeo Negri. There was a Bartolommeo Negri who was canon in
1496, but the antique style of the epitaph would point to an earlier restorer
of the same name (we all know how families keep the same set of Christian
names for centuries in Italy), especially as the painting in the apse is
attributed to Andrino d'Edesia, who lived about 1330. Some interesting
relics in the church are the circular slabs of black and green marble, now in
the floor of the nave. Tradition, confirmed by Padre Romualdo, says that
these were the stones on which the daïs was placed for the coronation of the
Lombard kings.

Just as the interior of S. Michele at Pavia is the most perfect existing
example of the classical form reduced by the Comacines to Christian use
and symbolism, so is the façade as perfect a specimen of their mediæval-
oriental decoration at this time as can be found. We give an illustration of it.
The Comacines at this era were perfectly sincere and their façade was
always a true face to the church. The eaves with the airy gallery of
colonnettes beneath them followed the exact line of the low-pitched roof. It
was only when they became eclectic, and their style got mixed and over-
florid, that the false fronts such as we see at Lucca came in. The inward
division of nave and aisle is faithfully marked on the outside by piers or
pilasters. S. Michele has four pilasters dividing it into the three portions,
each one supplied with its round-arched door. In the fifteenth century the
central windows were altered and a large ugly round orifice was placed
above the three Lombard ones. But in 1861 they had the good taste to open
the original windows, indications of whose masonry were visible in the
wall, and to add the cross, deep cut in the stone, which was a distinctive
feature in façades of this era. Indeed the church may be taken as a type, in
all its aspects, of the Romano-Lombard building. The most remarkable part
is perhaps its ornamentation, which is unique and fanciful to the highest
degree. Besides the carvings on door and window, the whole façade is
striped with lines of sculptured stones, a queer mixture of angels, demons,
saints, and monsters, that seems a nightmare dream of mediæval
superstitions, but are really a mystic Bible in stone. I shall speak more fully
of this in the chapter on Lombard ornamentation.

Façade of San Michele at Pavia. Upper part
restored to its original form; lower part
antique. 7th century.

See page 52.

We must now turn for a few moments to its history, on which great
uncertainty rests. Some authors say that S. Michele at Pavia was built by
Constantine the Great as a thank-offering for the aid given him by that Saint
in his victory over the Franks in 325; but it is possible they may have
confused this church with the one which Sozomenus asserts that
Constantine erected to St. Michael on the banks of the Hellespont. Other
writers, of whom Malaspina is one, claim it as an Ostrogoth foundation;
others again, finding a suspicion of Arianism in the sculpture of the
Annunciation on the south side of the church, assign it to Agilulf before his
conversion from Arianism; while Gabriel Rosa, author of Storia dei feudi e
dei comuni in Lombardia, attributes it to King Grimoald.
This last, however, is disproved by one of Paulus Diaconus' curious stories.
He says "that in A.D. 661, King Bertharis being in peril of his life by the

usurper Grimoald, was saved by his faithful servant Unulphus, who,
throwing over his royal master's shoulders a blanket and a bearskin, drove
him with ill words out of the palace, making believe he was a drunken
slave. Having thus eluded the guards, who were in Grimoald's pay, and put
the king in safety, Unulphus fled for refuge to the Basilica of St. Michael,
till the new king pardoned him."[41] The church is again mentioned by
Paulus Diaconus when he relates how in 737, when Luitprand judged
Pemmonis, Duke of Friuli, and other noble Longobards accused of sacrilege
against Callistus, Patriarch of Aquileja, one of them named Ersemar fled for
refuge to the Basilica of St. Michael. Again in 774 a certain Trinidius, agent
of King Desiderius, left a house near the Pò at Gravenate, as a legacy to the
"Basilica beatissimi Archangeli Michaelis intra civitatem Ticinensum pro
anima sua." All these things go to prove that the church existed before
Luitprand's time, and that it was especially venerated.
St. Michael, being a warlike saint, was the Longobards' favourite object of
reverence. When Alachi tried to depose King Cunibert, he suddenly and
mysteriously refused to fight the king, because he saw a vision of St.
Michael standing beside him; then Alachi knew the battle would go against
himself if he hazarded it.
When the Longobards went forth to war, they carried the effigy of St.
Michael before them on their standard. It was also impressed on their coins
with the inscription S. C. S. Màhel, or sometimes Mihail, spelling in those
days not being at all a fixed quantity.
But to return to our church-building king, Luitprand.
He erected the monastery of S. Abbondio at Bercela in the mountains, and
one dedicated to S. Anastasia, near his suburban villa called Cortelona
(Corte di Alona). In this villa he had a private chapel, he being the first
prince who had daily mass said by priests in his own house.[42] He had a
favourite doctor named Gunduald, who, assisted by Luitprand's royal
munificence, founded the monasteries of Palazzolo and Pitiliano near
Lucca. At his intercession Luitprand, by a diploma dated 742, gave
Magister Piccone, Gunduald's architect, lands in Sabine, which shows the
value Luitprand set on the arts, and this Magister especially.

Astolfo, a later king, was an equally liberal patron of the arts; he gave the
revenues of the church of S. Pietro at Pavia to Auripert, a painter whom he
greatly esteemed. Astolfo built the monastery of Nonantola, of which some
parts still remain, proving its fine architecture. He seems to have been very
unscrupulous in his avidity for relics; an anonymous MS. at Salerno,
speaking of his fierceness and audacity, says that, "having taken many
bodies of saints from the neighbourhood of Rome, he had them removed to
Pavia."[43] The same old chronicler does him the justice to say that "he built
both churches and monasteries which he very largely endowed."
Next followed Ratchis, who on his brother Astolfo's death came out of the
convent to which he had retired on abdicating in 749. His reign was of the
shortest; he soon went back to his convent, for Pope Stephen III. wrote
commanding him not to oppose the election of Desiderius, who had been
Duke of Friuli and was high in favour with the Pope.
Desiderius was a liberal patron to the Comacine Guild, and built
monasteries, churches, and palaces. Of the first we may record the convent
for nuns near Milan, known as La Maggiore, or the Greater. Its foundation
by Desiderius is mentioned in a diploma dated A.D. 1002 in favour of the
Abbot of S. Ambrogio, who was in that year appointed spiritual guardian to
the nuns. At Brescia, of which town Desiderius was a native, he built the
monastery near Leno, known as the Monasterio Leonense, and the still
more famous one of Santa Giulia for nuns, which he founded in 766.
Desiderius and his wife Ansa endowed this convent with landed property
which spread over all the Lombard kingdom. It was first called S. Salvatore,
but when the remains of Santa Giulia were brought from Corsica and placed
here, it was re-dedicated to her. Its first Abbess was Desiderius' own
daughter, Anselberga, who took the vows here. Says the old chronicler
—"its opulence and the number of holy virgins who have lived within its
walls render it one of the most illustrious convents in Italy."
Signor Odorici has exemplified the church in its Lombard form to have
been quadrilateral, divided by two peristyles of eight columns each, into a
nave and two aisles (or three naves, as Italian architects say). The arches are
a tutto sesto (semi-circular), and support walls bordered with a simple
string course. There was originally a semi-circular apse or tribune, which
was probably flanked by two smaller ones. The white marble columns are,

or were, of different proportions, the capitals being sculptured, some in
marble and some in arenaria.[44]

The mixture of Roman and Byzantine types in these is taken by Ricci[45] to
be a proof of its really dating from the time of Desiderius, when the two
styles got confused. Some capitals are entirely of Byzantine design, others
imitate the Corinthian. On one is a mediæval sculpture of the martyrdom of
Santa Giulia, on another is the effigy of Queen Ansa. These two are
doubtless Comacine work of the eighth century.
Up on the slope of Monte Civate near Lake Annone, an hour's climb from
the village of Civate, is an ancient Lombard church dedicated to St. Peter,
which is almost intact. It is said to have been built as a thank-offering by
King Desiderius. His son Adelgiso was chasing a wild boar on this
mountain, and suddenly became blind. The father vowed that if he
recovered, a church to St. Peter should be built on the spot. Adelgiso soon
after recovered his eyesight, and Desiderius was faithful to his oath. An
ancient MS. said to be contemporary,[46] minutely describes the ceremonies,
when the king with all his royal pageantry came up the mountain to lay the
first stone. The plan is similar to most other Lombard churches of its era. A
great flight of twenty-seven steps leads up to the portico, beneath which is
the principal door. This, however, does not lead immediately to the church,
but to a covered atrium, on the lateral walls of which are sculptured in
relief, hippogriffs with triple tails, i.e. threefold mysteries. The entrance into
the nave has two spiral columns,[47] an unusual form for the Comacines of
that era. There is a great peculiarity in the position of the altar, which is a
low table without a reredos, standing on the tribune, to which five steps
give access. The palio faces the choir, so that the priest when celebrating
would confront the people, and face the east.[48] It would be a question for
archæologists whether, considering the reverse orientalizing of Lombard
churches, in comparison to later ones, the front of the raised tribune was not
the usual position of their altars. This is the only church which seems
enough intact, to judge by. The altar was placed beneath a canopy supported
on four slight columns, whose sculptured capitals show the symbolic
animals of the four Evangelists. The canopy has rude bas-reliefs of the
Saviour and apostles, the crucifixion and resurrection. There are remains of
similar altars at Corneto Tarquinii in the south, and at S. Piero in Grado near

Pisa. The rest of the building is entirely unadorned, excepting by some
carved capitals of columns in the crypt.
The church-building days of King Desiderius were now drawing to a close.
He thought he had strengthened his seat on the throne by alliances with the
all-powerful Charlemagne of France, whose brother Carloman married
Desiderius' daughter Gilberga; and some historians assert that his son
Adelchi espoused Gisla, the sister of Charlemagne. Here we have the link
connecting the Comacine Masters under the Lombard rule, with
Charlemagne, through whose patronage they spread northward, developing
the Gothic architecture. Politically the link was not a strong one. In 770,
Charlemagne having been menaced by Pope Stephen III., the protector of
Desiderius, revenged himself by causing Carloman to repudiate Gilberga
and send her back to her father with her two sons. Carloman died in 771,
and Pope Stephen III. did not live long after him, for in 772 Charlemagne
entered into a league with the new Pope Adrian I. to dispossess Desiderius
of his kingdom. This unkind scheme was by Pope Adrian dignified by the
name of a "restitution to the Holy See."
The famous unequal fight at Pavia, between Desiderius and the
multitudinous hosts of France, is well known. Desiderius was vanquished,
and the Longobardic supremacy of two centuries was over.
Charlemagne vaunted himself in having released Italy from the
Longobardic yoke, but whether his own yoke were lighter is an open
question. In any case there was no "restitution to the Holy See." The
Lombard cities were no more given to the Pope by Charlemagne, than they
had been by Desiderius. On the contrary, he crowned himself Rex
Francorum et Longobardorum, and his son Pepin inherited the same title.
With him begins the next era in the development of Comacine art.

CHAPTER III

CIVIL ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE LONGOBARDS

Ecclesiastical as was the work of the guild, the Comacine of Lombard times
was nevertheless a fine civil architect. He worked as willingly for the prince
in palace-building and for the country in fortification, as for the Church in
building monasteries and cathedrals. Indeed war of all sorts bore such a
large proportion in the life of the Middle Ages that the fortress was of more
importance than the home.
In civil architecture the Magistri Comacini of the seventh and eighth
centuries followed much the same style as in their ecclesiastical buildings,
of course adapting it to its different uses. In the Lombard palace we find on
the upper floor the usual double-light windows, with the two round arches
and dividing column enclosed in a larger arch of masonry.
We also find the inevitable Lombard cornice beneath the roof. In civil
buildings, instead of a complete gallery with colonnettes, this becomes a
row of brackets with carvings in the corbel heads. The windows of the
lower floor are square orifices barred with iron, for defence in warlike
times. The walls are either of the solid brickwork opus romanum, or the
great smoothly hewn stones of the opus gallicum. In Lombardy there are
more of the former, as clay for bricks is easily attainable. In Tuscany and
southward the buildings are more frequently of stone. The Florentine
Bargello, though later, offers a very fine specimen of this work, in the older
portions of wall, where the smooth-cut stones fit solidly together. If the
building required an inner courtyard it was of the same Lombard style as
their churches—showing the round arch, and the convex capital, often
sculptured.

Tosinghorum Palatium Florentiae celeberrimum
in Foro Veteri situm lapide dolato comlumnisque
marmoreis extructum cui Turris adjacens ulnar.
130 proceritate erigebatur.
Tracing of an old print of the Tosinghi Palace,
a mediæval building once in Florence, with
Laubia on the front.
See page 61.

The municipal palace only came in with the Communes after 1100. In
Longobardic times, the only buildings that had any pretensions to
architecture were the palaces of the dukes or kings. Luitprand's palace in

Milan, which fell into disuse after the tenth century, is as graphically
described by old chroniclers and in legal documents in the archives of St.
Ambrose, as Theodolinda's at Monza had been by Paulus Diaconus.
Before the days of the Communes, when the Brolio or Broletta, and the
Palazzo Pubblico were as yet unknown, the palace of the ruling prince was
the hall of justice, the nearest Basilica being the public meeting-place. King
Luitprand's palace was styled in his time Curtis ducati. In Charlemagne's
reign it was Curti domum Imperatoris; in other parchments Curtis
Mediolanensis. Across the front ran an open gallery, called Laubia,[49]
formed, as were the galleries of the Comacine churches, of a row of arches
on colonnettes. Here the placiti were held, and sentences pronounced, as in
the regal and imperial public buildings, the populace being assembled in the
street below. The ringhiera of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence served the
same purpose in Communal times.
The Loggia, which is such a feature in all old Italian houses, is the natural
descendant of the Laubia. In its private aspect, as part of a citizen's house,
the Loggia was the place where the master of the house received his friends.
An ancient MS. by Landolfo tells us that the space occupied by Luitprand's
palace was not very wide. It extended from the monastery of St. Ambrose to
the church of St. Protasius ad Monacos (now no more), and the road leading
to it was known as Strada de Civite Duce.
That King Desiderius also employed the Masonic guild in civil as well as
ecclesiastical architecture seems implied by the tradition of his palace at S.
Gemignano. Certain it is that a solid mediæval building with decidedly
Lombard windows and Lombard arches under the machicolations, exists at
S. Gemignano, but whether it was really built by and for Desiderius, I leave
wiser antiquaries to judge. The style is that of the times.
As a rule, Lombard houses had small rooms. This seems to have applied
even to royal and public buildings, for, as mentioned above, all public
meetings had to be held in a church, or in its ante-portal. When Desiderius
convoked a Diet at Pavia, each prince or bishop was assigned a house
which had a church or oratory near, in which he could meet his committee.

The different methods and processes of house-building are very plainly
enumerated in the laws of Luitprand, of which we have given the headings
on a previous page. It would seem that since the reign of Agilulf, the
Masters of the Guild had become overbearing, and by Luitprand's time
required to have special legislation to limit their prices. Luitprand's code of
laws regulated the strength of the external walls of a building, in regard to
the different height, construction, and material.
Art. 160 speaks of two different constructions, the Roman mode, and the
Gallic style. It begins—"Similiter romanense si fecerit, sic repotet sicut
gallica opera." (Roman work shall be accounted of equal value to Gallic
work.) This distinction of terms has caused great argumentation among
commentators. Prof. Merzario[50] says that "two national terms cannot apply
to any small distinction of masonry," and he takes them to mean the Roman
style with the round arch, in which most Lombard churches are built, and
the Gothic with the pointed arches. As, however, Charlemagne's church, the
father of the Gothic, was not yet built in Luitprand's time, we should be
more inclined to take the opinion of Marchese Ricci and Troya, who
interpret the phrase opus gallicum to mean the style which they say was
introduced into Ravenna by Theodoric and his Goths, and which they
brought from Gaul. It was the most solid style imaginable, seemingly a
remnant of Cyclopean building; if so it was not Gallic at all, but came from
the Pelasgi through the Etruscans, and so was a natural sequence of Italian
architecture; the Etruscans having taught the Romans. It consisted of hewn
stones of large size and perfect fitness, still further strengthened with
cement. "Mirum opus manu gothica, et quadris lapidibus," it was said of the
builders of S. Oveno at Rouen. If this definition be admitted, then the other
term opus romanum would mean building with flat bricks, which was
equally practised by the Comacines, especially in Lombardy.

Luitprand's laws speak of the asse, tavolati,[51] scindule (Longobardic term)
by which the houses were internally divided, and of a cheap species of
house-building called by the Gauls pisè, probably from the same root as
pigiato (pressed together). According to that method, the walls were
composed of masses of earth pressed, and then bound together so as to form
a solid mass. The same method is still used in Africa and Spain, and in Italy
by the peasants in the subalpine regions near Alessandria (Piedmont).

In Clause II., De Muro, where they use the term si arcum volserit, it cannot
refer to vaulted roofs, which were then unknown, but to the slight arch of
the window or door in the thickness of the wall, often only a sloping off of
stones. The roofs were supported on wooden beams, and the laws determine
the size and value of these, according to whether they are scapitozzati or
capitozzati, i.e. hewn or carved. They also decide the quality of the wood
for beams or planking, and the cost of roofing in regard to the number of
wooden slabs or tiles required in a raised roof.
Thus any Longobard who wished to build himself a house, might consult
the laws of Luitprand, and count the cost beforehand.
These laws also decide the strength of the defensive walls of a city. Law IV.
gives the trade price of this sort of work; for those built in massa, or per
maxa, the builder shall for every sixty feet be paid in solidum unum (one
soldo, a gold coin). Ricci adds—"This per maxa is the same construction
which the Greeks and Romans styled implectans, i.e. conglomerate."
They had several kinds of walls, some of brick, others with a base of stone
(nella base a sassi), like the walls of Milan, which have lasted till now.
Luitprand assigns different money for different kinds of work. Thus at times
the Magistri Comacini were paid solidum unum for every foot of wall,
sometimes solidum vestitum, a distinction of soldi which has puzzled
commentators very much; some opining that vestitum refers to a coin on
which the emperor is represented as regally clad, and others that it means a
copper coin plated (vestito) with gold.
We find also that terra-cotta vases were much used as ornamentation in
building. This style was, as we have said, called "a cacabus." Broken vases
were adopted in the foundation of large buildings and houses; others, which
probably were not perfect enough for household use, were built into the
walls and put as ornaments between the arches. The tower of S. Giovanni e
Paolo at Rome and the church of S. Eustorgio at Milan are good instances
of this style.

Tower of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Rome, 12th
century.
(From a photograph by Alinari.)
See page 65.

Here we have another link with ancient Rome. Promis instances an
amphora found in the walls of an imperial edifice in Aosta. At the fountain
of Egeria, near the Porta Tiburtina in Rome, the walls are full of amphoræ
and oil-jars.
On the whole these Masonic laws show that the principal scope of the
Longobardic architecture was to make strong and lasting buildings.
The building of convents were frequent commissions of the Comacines, and
in these, as in their churches, they had a set form. A solid framework of
walls either of hewn stone, in the Gallic manner, or of brick in the Roman

style, and a few beams and planks, were the simple elements of which a
convent was composed.
But of course a Comacine could not make any building without his slight
columns and arches, and here he disposed of them in his cloister. This, too,
was a heritage from classic Rome, recalling the atrium. A Lombard or
Romanesque cloister is a delight. Here you have a square court more or less
spacious, containing a picturesque well in the centre, surrounded by a
colonnade of small columns generally in couples, resting on a low wall and
supporting a roof on a row of arches. It was usually on the sunny cloister
that the Comacine poured out his imagination; here are fancifully-
sculptured capitals, pillars of every variety of form and style, grotesque
gargoyles between the arches, and often delicate tracery above them.
Hope[52] instances as the more rude and early style of Lombard cloisters,
those of San Lorenzo at Rome and Santa Sabina and San Stefano at
Bologna, and as models of the more splendid style those of S. John Lateran,
which are resplendent with porphyry, serpentine, and gold enamel, inlaid in
the marble; and those of S. Zeno of Verona of every tint of marble which
the Euganean hills can afford. For the interior arrangements of a
Longobardic monastery we will take Padre Ricci's account of the first plan
of Monte Cassino which Petronax the Brescian engaged the Comacines to
build. "It had on the ground floor a Sala anciently called caminata, because
the fire-place was there. The upper floor was divided by wooden partitions
into cells and other rooms requisite in a cenobitic life. Although at that time
houses only had one floor, monasteries generally had two. Monte Cassino
boasted of three storeys, the upper one being only used for keeping fodder
and stores. As the chief aim was solidity of building, great attention was
paid to the proportionate thickness of the outer walls. The laws determined
the adequate value of these, which were generally of the thickness of five
feet. The inner walls were of planks or assi—'si cum axe clauserit.'"
This mode of separation by wooden partitions is still usual in convents,
though it has gone out of use in houses. The convents of S. Marco and S.
Salvi at Florence both show this style of division for the cells. The windows
were protected by abietarii or cancelli (gratings) made of wood.
A strong point in Lombard building was the fortress, which the Magistri
were past masters in erecting. Their castles and forts and city walls stand to

this day solid and strong, with towers standing up commandingly in all
directions—all the mediæval cities bristled with them; the tower was, in
fact, a weapon of war. On these, too, they set their seal—the pillared
Lombard window becoming larger and more airy as the tower rises into the
air, and the crowning cornice of bracketed or pillared archlets.[53]
Their towers seem to have been of two forms, ecclesiastic and civil. The
ecclesiastical bell-tower, square with a straight unbroken line, with neither
buttress nor projection till the summit, where the bracket-supported arches
expand like a flower. Sometimes each storey had a string course, with
smaller arches beneath it, as in the tower at Prato. The windows, too, as we
have said, had a fixed rule; they are smaller below, and grow larger and
more airy as they ascend. You go up from a mere orifice on the first floor to
a one-arched window on the second, a two-arched on the third, to a three or
even four-arched one near the summit.
The characteristics of civil towers at this time were their solidity as a means
of defence, and their height as a means of vigilance; they appear to be
chiefly circular, offering no corners, but a curved surface from which
missiles could easily glance off. The windows were narrow outside,
expanding wider within. If there were a double-light window, it would be
on the very high storeys, out of arrow aim. Nearly all the ancient fortresses
have round towers, but I know of very few church towers that are so, except
the one at Classe near Ravenna.
Before the thirteenth century, neither brackets nor projecting cornices were
used, and the tower rose in a single straight line from base to battlement, so
that projectiles fell straight down. It was later that architects discovered the
value of the projecting baluardo. As to battlements, these too came from the
antique; Babylon and Nineveh show proofs of them, and Homer speaks of
the battlemented towers of Asia and Greece. Muratori[54] derives the Italian
term merlo, from mirare (to take aim), the battlements being made for the
shelter of the archers, and their convenience in shooting. When fire-arms
came in, the need of battlemented towers ceased.
The principal Longobardic military towers remaining to our day, are, the
tower of the ruined fortress of Baradello, which dominates the road to

Camerlata, and the towers, now mutilated, in the wall of Como, one of
which, erected on arches, forms the gate of the city towards Camerlata.
The ninth-century sculptures on the altar at S. Ambrogio prove that the
Longobards had towers above their city gates. The author of the Ant.
Longob. Milanesi (Dissert. iii. p. 193) says that the ancient gates of Milan,
before the enlargement of the walls, were of this construction with towers
over them. They were furnished with heavy wooden doors covered with
iron, which were suspended on chains, and slid down in grooves in the wall,
thus completely closing the entrance—a portcullis, in fact. Livy, in his
twenty-seventh book, describes the gates of Rome as being of the same
construction; some existing examples at Rome, Tivoli, and Pompeii prove
the fact. A famous gate in the time of the Longobards was the one
chronicled by Paulus Diaconus, which King Bertharis (671-686) caused the
Magistri to erect beside his palace in Pavia. It was named the Porta
Palatinense, and was, says Paulus Diaconus, an admirable work (opera
mirifica). Some antique documents quoted by Passano,[55] prove that this
gateway was furnished with bronze gates.[56]
Some writers think that the battlemented fortress came from the East,
because ancient specimens of it are found there. In reading an Italian
translation of Procopius, Degli edifici di Giustiniano Imperatore, I was
struck by the many slight expressions which seem to prove that Justinian
brought his fortress-builders into Byzantium from Italy. Procopius says that
Justinian made a new style of fortress with towers all round the walls; with
stairs in the towers, and galleries (baluards) round them with holes in them
to throw down stones, and that it was called Pirgo castello, because in the
Latin tongue, fortresses are styled castelli. Now this description is precisely
that of an Italian fortress, such as the Comacines knew how to build, and
built for centuries all over Italy. If it came from the East in ancient times,
why was it specified by Procopius as a new style there?—and if its origin
were Eastern, why had they no name for it, but had to take the Latin one?
The Bishop of Salisbury, in a letter in the Salisbury Diocesan Gazette (May
1898), speaks of an inscription of the twelfth century, preserved in the
museum at Jaffa, which is in memory of Magister Filipus, who came over
with the King of England (Richard), and who had built a portion of the wall
"from gate to gate": evidently Magister Filipus from the English Masonic

Lodge, fraternized and worked with his brethren of the Roman and Eastern
Lodges.
Again, on p. 21, Procopius speaks of a town or village now known as
Eufratisia, but which was once called Comagene, because there were
Romans as well as Persians living there. Romans, of course, meant subjects
of the Italian Empire, but the name Comagene is certainly suggestive of
those Italians being the Comacine builders who made the castles. Then
Procopius's description of the rebuilding of the church of Santa Sofia is, to
say the least of it, interesting to a student of Lombard architecture. The
passage translated runs thus—"The church then (Sta Sofia) being thus
burned, was, at that time, entirely ruined. But Justinian, a long while after,
rebuilt it in such a form that if any one in older times could have foreseen it,
he would have prayed God that the old church might be completely
destroyed, so that it may be rebuilt as it now is. Therefore the Emperor sent
to call artificers and masters, as many as there were in all the universal
world. And Anthemius Trallianus, the head architect, was a great machinist,
learned in all kinds of machinery, not only that of his own time, but in all
that the ancients knew, and he had the power to regulate and organize
perfectly the working of all things necessary to building, and to the ordering
and executing of his own designs and inventions. And Isidore, another
Milesian, was also a master of machinery. The church then, was so
marvellously made that it was a beautiful thing to see; it seems supernatural
to those who behold it with their own eyes, and incredible to those who
only hear of it, because it is so high that it seems to touch the sky.... The
face of the church looks towards the rising sun, but where the secret offices
to God are performed, it is built in this manner. It is a half-round edifice
which those of this profession call Hemiciclo, which is to say half a circle ...
and in this there are columns planted beneath its floor." Here we have a
decided Basilica with raised tribune and semi-circular apse; both the form
and nomenclature seem to have been imported as a new thing from Italy.
"The golden dome appears suspended from heaven, so light are the columns
supporting it that it seems to be in the air.... One can never arrive at
understanding how it was built (apprendere l' arteficio), but one goes away
astonished at one's inability to enough admire such a work."
Does not this seem an argument for the universality of the Masonic
Brotherhood, even in Byzantine days? Here are certainly Italian artists,

Italian basilican forms, and Italian nomenclature, among the Greeks
working at Sta Sofia. And here too are Lombard galleries and windows with
an Eastern touch added. Which way did the influence come? Was this the
origin of that characteristic Eastern mark of the Lombard style in Italy?—or
was it an importation from Italy to Byzantium, where Procopius at least
seems duly astonished by it? It is a question for experts to solve. There is
much for the archæologist to do yet in finding the true pedigree of
architecture.

CHAPTER IV

COMACINE ORNAMENTATION IN THE LOMBARD ERA

The Comacine Masters were distinctly sculptor-architects, and their
ornamentation was an essential part of their buildings. Yet, to them,
sculpture was by no means mere ornament. It was not a mere breaking up of
a plain surface, as a beautifying effect; nor a setting of statues and niches
for symmetry. It was an eloquent part of a primitive language of religion
and art. The very smallest tracery had a meaning; every leaf, every rudely
carved animal spoke in mystic language of some great truth in religion. But
it was a language as yet artistically unformed, because the mediæval man
had more articles of creed than he could express in words, and his hand like
his mind was as yet unpractised.
Thus it came that, as we have said, the Comacine Masters were much given
to symbolism.
The old Italian writers class this symbolism under two heads—the ermetica
(hermeneutic?), which they define as symbolism of form or number; and
orfica (orphic), that of figures or representations. Under the first head
would fall the symbolical plan of their churches to which we have referred;
the form of the windows, which were double-lighted, and emblematized the

two lights of the law and the gospel; the rounded apse, emblem of the head
of Christ; the threefold nave shadowing forth the Trinity; the octagonal
form of the baptisteries, which St. Ambrose[57] says was emblematical of
the mystic number 8, etc.
Under the head of orphic would come all those mystic signs of circle and
triangle; of sacred monograms, and the mysterious Solomon's knot;—that
intricate and endless variety of the single unbroken line of unity,—emblem
of the manifold ways of the power of the one God who has neither
beginning nor end. It would also include all the curious possible and
impossible animals that abound in the Comacine work of earlier
Longobardic times; all the emblematic figures of angels and saints; and the
figurative Bible stories of the later Masters.
It has been said by Ruskin that the queer monsters sculptured on the early
Longobard churches, such as Sant' Agostino at Milan, San Fedele at Como,
and San Michele at Pavia, were the savage imaginings of the lately civilized
Longobards, as seen through the medium of the sculptors employed by
them. This is, however, proved not to be the case; animal symbolism was in
those days an outward sign of Christianity, which, in a time when there was
no literature, was to the unlettered masses a mystical religion represented to
their minds in signs and parables. Christ Himself used this parabolic style of
teaching. And it was even more than that,—it was a sign of an older Bible
lore among the Hebrews, and other ancient peoples. As in many early
Christian ceremonies in the West (i.e. in Europe) we can trace the remains
of the old Latin paganism, so in the East we may trace signs of the older
Hebrew faith.
Speaking of the Longobardic mixtures of labyrinths, chimeræ, dragons,
lions, and a hundred other things, which at first sight do not seem to be
connected with Christianity, Marchese Ricci asks—"If these queer mixtures
were only the effect of the architects' caprice, whence came the first
impulse to such caprice? Not from classic Rome certainly. Not from the
Goths and Longobards, because they being barbarians had to employ Italian
artists."[58] The theory propounded by Pietro Selvatico, in an article in the
Rivista Europea, is suggestive of a reply to this question. He supposes that
the Byzantines originally took their symbolism from the Hebrews, and from
the traditions of Solomon's Temple, which are also shared by the

Phœnicians;[59] and that this animal symbolism changed its character in the
East, owing to the restrictions imposed by the Emperor Leo and his
successors, but that in freer Italy it still flourished. It is difficult to say
whether the Comacines took their ornamentation direct from the Byzantines
at Ravenna in the early centuries after Christ, or whether they got it by
longer tradition, from that same Eastern source from which the Byzantines
took theirs. It is true that Como had more than one bishop who was a Greek,
[60]
and that when it fell under the government of the Patriarch of Aquileja,
the Comacines were employed by him in Venice, Grado, and Torcello, etc.,
where they would have seen a good deal of Byzantine work; but their
earliest employment at Torcello was in the seventh century, and we have
seen them using their chisels for Theodolinda long before that time.
The Byzantine ornamentation became conventional after 726 A.D., when the
Emperor Leo III. (the Isaurian) promulgated his iconoclastic edict in the
Eastern Empire. Some Greeks had begun to feel that, under the appearance
of Christianity, they were only keeping up the ancient paganism. They were
taunted by the Hebrews and Mussulmen, who, inspired by the Koran, had a
great hatred of images. This sect found a champion in Leo III., who had
lived much among the Arabs, and shared their prejudices against idols. He
convoked a council, prohibited images, and proscribed all reverence and
use of them either public or private. A figure of the Christ over his own
palace fell the first victim to his iconoclastic destruction. Several Greeks
who would not bow to this decree fled to Italy, and put themselves under
the protection of Pope Gregory II. From this time the eastern Byzantine
architectural ornamentation was entirely confined to linear and geometric
design, and vegetable forms. In pure Byzantine work one sees no dragons
or fighting monsters, only conventional doves and scrolls. The sculptors
took to imitating woven stuffs, and Oriental patterns in marble, and to
twining their capitals with conventional leaves, but the life had gone out of
their work; it was all set and precise, but dead.
The Italian architect, not being under the power of the edict of Leo,
continued to carve his mythic animals, his symbolic birds and fishes, and
even tried his hand at the first rude revival of the human figure in sculpture.
His figures were disproportionate and mediæval in form,—what could one
expect from a man of the Middle Ages just reawakening to the conception
of art?—but they were full of fire and life. Their mystic beasts were horrible

as any nightmare could conceive them; they were indeed conceived in the
darkness of that night of superstition, ignorance, and fierce strife. Their
angels were grotesque, not from want of imagination, but from want of
models of form and proportion; their men are full of all kinds of expression,
with their heads too large and their limbs too short; but their attitudes are
lively, their faces grotesquely keen.
As a proof of this distinctive style, compare the Byzantine altar of S.
Ambrogio at Milan, here illustrated, with the Comacine pulpit of the same
church. (See page 88.)

Byzantine Altar in the Church of S. Ambrogio,
Milan.

See page 74.

So many students of architecture roughly class as Byzantine every kind of
intricate decorative work of the centuries before the Renaissance; but I
think that, excepting in some instances in Venice and Ravenna (and not all
the work of the era there), most of the Italian ornamental sculpture is
Comacine, and not Byzantine. Certainly if you see a sly-faced lamb, or a
placid lion with rolling eyes, peering out from beneath the abacus of a
column, or a perky bird lifting up its claw over a vase, with an extremely
lively expression of eagerness, that work is not Byzantine, though it may be
surrounded and mixed with the most intricate possible weaving of lines or
foliage. However, I leave the question of derivation of style to wiser
students than myself, and return to the Comacine Masters and their
symbolism.
It seems impossible that the Comacine sculptures on S. Michele could have
come through the Byzantine. It is true they show rude and unskilled
technical execution, but they have intense spirit, belief, life, and
spontaneity. The Magistri must have got their ornamentation as they did
their architecture from an older source,—and a traditional one. It came
down like their Freemasonry from ancient Eastern builders through pagan
Rome, and ages of mystic religions such as Gnostic and other deistic forms,
till it became incorporated in Christianity. "We might," says Sacchi,[61]
"define Christian symbolism as the representation of mysteries and
religious truths by means of forms, cyphers, and determinate images." (La
rappresentazione di dogmi, misteri e verità religiose, per mezzo di forme,
cifre ed immagini determinate.)
An older and more authoritative testimony is given by Dionysius the
Areopagite, the associate of St. Paul, by whom he was consecrated. In his
De angelica seu celesti Hierarchia, Epistola ad Timotheum Ephæsiæ
civitatis episcopum, he writes—"It is necessary to teach the mind as to the
spiritual hierarchies, by means of material figures and formal compositions,
so that by comparing the most sacred forms in our minds, we may raise
before us the spiritual and unpictured beings and similitudes on high." As
he says elsewhere, "ascendere per formas veritatim."

Again he writes to Titus—"Only by means of occult and difficult enigmas,
is it given to the fathers of science to show forth mystic and divine truths."
[62]
In the second epistle to Timotheus, St. Dionysius writes—"We must
raise ourselves from ascetic facts by means of imaginative forms, and we
should not marvel as do the unknowing, if for this end are chosen many-
footed beings, or creatures with many heads; if we figure bovine images, or
lions, or eagles with curved beaks; flying creatures with three-fold wings,
celestial irradiations, wheel-like forms, vario-tinted horses, the armed
Sagittarius, and every kind of sacred and formal symbol which has come
down to us by tradition." St. Nilus, too, writes to Olimpiodorus—"You ask
me if I think it an honourable thing that you erect temples to the memory of
martyrs as well as to that of the Redeemer—those martyrs who are certainly
among the saints, and whose pains and sufferings have borne witness to the
gospel. You also ask whether it would be wise to decorate the walls on the
right and left with animal figures, so that we may see hares (conies) and
goats, and every kind of beast flying away, while men and dogs follow them
up. Whether it would be well to represent fish and fishermen throwing the
line or the net; whether on the calcareous stone shall be well-carved effigies
of all kinds of animals, and ornamental friezes and representations of birds,
beasts, and serpents of divers generations?" St. Nilus says later that he quite
agrees with all these things; so if the Fathers of the Church respected them,
we need not heed Mr. Ruskin's diatribes.
St. Nilus lived in the time of John XVI., 985-996, nearly 900 years after
Dionysius, but this extract from his letter shows that Christian symbolism
had not altered in all those centuries, and the church he describes is no more
or less than a Comacine church of that era. The chase is figured forth on the
façades of S. Michele and S. Stefano at Pavia, and S. Zeno at Verona. The
huntsman and his dogs are generally used as emblems of the faithful
Christian driving out heresies.[63] The fisherman symbolizes the priesthood,
fishing for souls out of the ocean of sin. There is a beautiful example of this
myth in the fresco of the ship (the ark of the Church) on the roof of the
Spanish chapel at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, where the fisherman is
casting his line from the bank.
Seen through the medium of these early lights, we no longer look on the
façade of S. Michele as Ruskin does, as a sign of savage atrocity, but every
line of the time-worn sculptured friezes stands out as full of meaning as an

Egyptian hieroglyphic, to one who can interpret it. On the angle to the left
we have the army of the Church militant, figured as armed soldiers, whose
horses trample some quadrupeds underfoot: symbol—the vanquishing of
sins. Above this a frieze of four animals—first, a lion; second, too much
broken to be decipherable, but from the context it is probably a man-headed
creature; third, a bull; fourth, a winged creature. Here we have the four
beasts of the Apocalypse,—emblems of the Evangelists. "And the first beast
was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a
face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle" (Rev. iv. 7). The
connection between the two friezes is evident. First, the Church militant
clad in the whole armour of God, and the second emblematizing the shield
of the Gospel.
In the next compartment of the façade, that on the left of the door, we have
the chase of a deer and other animals flying from fierce dogs, which we
have explained above; over this a frieze of vine-leaves. Here, again, the
connection of thought is apparent. The vine figures Christ, the only true
refuge from heresy.
High up on each side of this left door is a peacock with an olive-leaf in its
claw-symbol of the Church bringing peace. In the centre between these is
the bishop with his robes and pastoral staff—the visible dispenser of peace
in the Church. On the fourth frieze, which is above the door, we go into the
mythic animals: here is a hippogriff with the three-fold tail; a woman with
six breasts, carrying two pine-cones; she is in a long robe with large
sleeves, and veiled as an Egyptian; two sphinxes, on each of which a man
rides, and whispers in their ears; a dragon with wings and bird's feet, on its
neck a child; a priest with vase of holy water and an asperge, who is
blessing some people; a man (Zohak) between two winged serpents which
bite his head; a sphinx to whom a man presents a little branch of a tree; two
hippogriffs, seated opposite each other with a man in the centre who places
their claws on his head. A marvellous frieze indeed, and one which in spite
of St. Dionysius speaks as much of Eastern traditions long before Christ, as
of Christianity itself. The many-breasted woman with the pine-cones is the
ancient mother goddess, Isis, Cybele, or Cupra, according to the age and
clime; here I take it the old image is turned to new uses, and she figures
Eve, the primitive mother. The two sphinxes are obscure, but they would
seem to emblematize man wresting the secrets of knowledge of good and

evil from the mystery of the unknown, as when Adam and Eve ate the
apple; the dragon, always emblem of sin or the devil, ridden by a child, is a
fine symbol of the child Christ, the seed of Eve, who should overcome sin.
Then comes the purification by benediction, as shadowing Abel's accepted
sacrifice, and the serpent-fanged remorse of Cain, as shown in Zohak.

"There where the narrowing chasm
Rose loftier in the hill
Stood Zohak, wretched man, condemned to keep
His cave of punishment.
His was the frequent scream
Which when far off the prowling jackal heard,
He howled in terror back.
For from his shoulders grew
Two snakes of monster size
Which ever at his head
Aimed their rapacious teeth.
He, in eternal conflict, oft would seize
Their swelling necks, and in his giant grasp
Bruise them, and rend their flesh with bloody nails
And howl for agony,
Feeling the pangs he gave, for of himself
Co-sentient and inseparable parts
The snaky torturers grew."[64]

Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer.

Next the man giving the branch to the sphinx must shadow the
reconciliation of man with God, and the hippogriffs the final redemption of
man. The hippogriff is a combination of horse and eagle. The horse, as St.
Dionysius says, was symbol of evangelical resignation and submission; if
white, it sheds divine light. The eagle, he tells us, is a high and regal bird,
potent, keen, sober and agile; the winged horse consequently stands for
man's upward flight to heaven through submission to God. In the fifth

frieze, the Christian virtues of strength, fortitude, sobriety, and obedience
are symbolized by bulls and horses.

Fresco in the Spanish Chapel, S. Maria Novella,
Florence.
See Page 77, note.

Around the door are sculptures of the same kind of emblems with vines
entwining—which teach that all manly strength must be used for Christ.
In the central portion are more friezes, all symbolizing the struggle between
good and evil; the war between angels and demons; between man's earthly
nature and his heavenly soul.
Here are men fighting dragons, and struggling with serpents; winged angels
riding on heavenly horses; and over the door the grand central idea, St.
Michael triumphant over the dragon-serpent, the favourite hero and great
example of those days.

On the other side of the church we seem to get the symbolism of the New
Testament. Here, mixed still with the dragons and hippogriffs of the time,
we can see the Virgin with the Divine Child at her breast.
On the capitals of the north door, round the corner, are the entirely Christian
emblems of the man, the lamb, a winged eagle, and two doves pecking at a
vase, in which are heavenly flowers. In the lunette, Christ is giving to St.
Paul on one side a roll of parchment, and on the other hand entrusting the
keys to St. Peter; under it are the words: Ordino Rex istos super omnia
Regna Magistros.
The capitals in the church are carved with similar subjects; one has the
emblems of the evangelists; another Adam and Eve with the tree of
knowledge on one side, and a figure offering a lamb on the other. On one
are griffins at the corners, and Longobards with long vests, beard, and long
hair, crouching between them; on another, a virgin martyr bearing the palm.
The fourth column on the left has a curious scene of a man dying, and an
angel and a demon fighting for his soul, which has come out of him in the
form of a nude child. Two pilasters show the sacrifice of Isaac, and Daniel
in the lions' den.

Door of the Church of San Michele, Pavia.
See page 80.

So we see, that mediæval as he was at that time, the Comacine Master of
the seventh and eighth centuries, even though his execution were low, had a
high meaning in his work. As to the rudeness of the handling, there is this to
be said. We see the work after more than a thousand years' exposure to the
atmosphere, and the sculptures are not in durable marble, but in sandstone,
which has a habit of getting its edges decayed, so we may fairly suppose the
cutting looked clearer when the ornamentations were fresh. The form of

both animals and men is, however, and naturally always was, entirely
mediæval, which seems synonymous with clumsy.
The use of marble ceased for some centuries with the fall of the Roman
Empire. Theodosius had made a law, forbidding any one below the rank of
a senator to erect a building of marble, or valuable macigna; thus the
Christian buildings after the fifth century were generally of humble
sandstone; and this continued till the time of St. Nilus, who tells his friend
that "in arenaria he may effigy every kind of animal, which will be a
delightful spectacle" (dilettoso spettacolo di veduta). It was a stone
peculiarly adapted to building, as it was easily cut, and yielded to all the
imaginations of the sculptor with very little labour. I have given an
especially lengthy description of the façade of S. Michele, because it
embodies all the special marks of the ornamentation of the Comacine under
the Longobardic era. The church of S. Fedele at Como is another instance;
here, too, the capitals of the columns, and the holy water vase, which is held
up by a dragon, are full of orphic symbolism. The left door has an
architrave with obtuse angles bearing a chimerical figure, half human, half
serpent—the gnostic symbol of Wisdom. Serpents and dragons entwine on
the lintels, and emblematize the Church's power to overcome.
In studying the scrolls and geometrical decoration of the Comacines, one
immediately perceives that the intreccio, or interlaced work, is one of their
special marks. I think it would be difficult to find any church or sacred
edifice, or even altar of the Comacine work under the Longobards, which is
not signed, as it were, by some curious interlaced knot or meander, formed
of a single tortuous line.
As far as I can find from my own observations, there is this difference
between the Byzantine and Comacine mazes; the Byzantine worked for
effect, to get a surface well covered. His knots and scrolls are beautifully
finished and clearly cut with geometrical precision, but the line is not
continuous; it is a pretty pattern repeated over and over, but has no
suggestion of meaning.
The Comacine, on the contrary, believed in his mystic knot; to him it was,
as I have said, a sign of the inscrutable and infinite ways of God, whose

nature is unity. The traditional name of these interlacings among Italians is
"Solomon's knot."
I have seen a tiny ancient Lombard church, in the mountains of the Apuan
Alps, built before the tenth century, of large blocks of stone, fitted and
dovetailed into each other with a precision almost Etruscan. High up in the
northern wall is a single carved stone some three feet long, representing a
rude interlaced knot.[65] We asked a peasant what it was.
"Oh, it's an ancient girigogolo," said he, by which I presume he meant
hieroglyphic.
On going to a higher fount and asking the priest, we got the information that
it was a "Solomon's knot," and that such intrecci were found on nearly all
the very ancient churches. He supposed it had some meaning—and thought
it expressed eternity, as the knots had no end and no beginning. The Italian
philologist, Sebastian Ciampi, gives these interlacings a very ancient origin.
"We may observe," he writes, "in the sculpture of the so-called barbarous
ages on capitals, or carved stones, that they used to engrave serpents
interlaced with curious convolutions. On the wall too they sculptured that
labyrinth of line which is believed to be the Gordian knot, and other similar
ornaments to which Italians give the generic name of meandri. I do not
think that all these representations were merely adapted for ornament, but
that they had some mystic meaning. I am not prepared to say whether our
forefathers received such emblems from the Northern people who so
frequently peregrinated in Italy, or from the Asiatic countries. This is
certain, the use of such ornamentation is extremely antique, and we find it
adopted by the Persians, and see it in Turkish money, and carpets, and other
works of Oriental art."[66] Ciampi goes on to find the root of these emblems,
both the Runic knot and the Comacine intreccio, in the Cabirus of the
ancient Orientals. It is possible that the ancient serpent worship of the
Druids and other Northern nations, was in some way descended from the
same root. In any case they were transmitted to the Longobardic Comacines
through the early Christian Collegia of Rome, as we see by the plutei in San
Clemente, S. Agnese, etc., and by the beautiful single-cord interweavings
on the door of a chapel in S. Prassede.

Comacine Knot on a panel at S. Ambrogio,
Milan. One strand forms the whole. From
Cattaneo's "Architettura."
See page 83.

Sculpture from Sant' Abbondio, Como, 5th
century. (The circle and centre a single strand.)

See page 84.

There is a marvellous knot sculptured on a marble panel of the ninth
century from S. Ambrogio Milan, which Cattaneo has illustrated.[67] The
whole square is filled with complicated interweavings of a single strand,
forming intricate loops and circles, the spaces between which are filled with
the Christian emblems, the rose, the lily, and the heart. Another pluteus,

originally from San Marco dei Precipazi at Venice, but now over the altar at
S. Giacomo, is dated 829 A.D., and is covered with what seems at first sight
a geometric pattern of circles and diamonds, but if analyzed will be found a
single strand interwoven in the most mysterious and beautiful manner. It
seems that the parapet of the tribune in all these early Basilicas was the
place chosen especially by the Roman architect of the third and fourth
centuries, and the Comacine of the eighth and ninth, to set their secret and
mysterious signs upon, and to mark their belief in God as showing infinity
in unity.
It is very curious to notice in the churches which the guild restored in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when their tenets had altered, and their
sign changed, how they themselves removed these old stones, but yet being
careful not to destroy them, they turned them and sculptured them again on
the other side. In the excavations or restorations in Rome many of the
intrecci have come to light at the back of panels of Comatesque pulpits,
recarved into altar frontals, or used as paving-stones before the altar.
Some of the earlier and less intricate forms of knots may be seen in the
church of S. Abbondio at Como, which was built in the fifth century and
again rebuilt in the ninth. Some excavations in the last century revealed the
foundations of the fifth-century church, and also brought to light a number
of sculptured stones which had been turned face downwards to form the
pavement. We give illustrations from two of these which have the
Comacine signs plainly written on them, and show even in this early and
simple form the reverence for the line of unity. Cattaneo thinks they may
have formed the front of the gallery above the nave in the eighth-century
building.
In the museum of Verona is a precious fragment of Comacine work dating
from Luitprand's time. It was a ciborium which Magister Ursus was
commissioned to make for the church of S. Giorgio di Valpolicella. It is
especially valuable as the first dated piece of sculpture of the Longobardic
era, and the first signed specimen of Comacine interlaced work. The
columns which remain support a round arch, covered with sculptured
intrecci. As it stands now the two halves of the arch do not match, so it must
be conjectured that the ciborium had four columns, and that the halves of
the arch were originally on different sides of the erection. The intrecci are

beautiful and varied, displaying the unbroken continuity of the curved line
which marks the Comacine work of the eighth to the twelfth centuries. The
capitals are curious in form and not at all classical. Beneath the capitals of
the two columns are the following inscriptions in rough letters and dog
Latin. One runs—"IN NOMINE DNI. IESU XRISTI DE DONIS SANCTI IUHANNES
BAPTISTE. EDIFICATUS EST HANC CIVORIUM SUB TEMPORE DOMNO NOSTRO
LIOPRANDO REGE, ET VB PATERNO DOMNICO EPESCOPO, ET COSTODES EIUS,
VIDALIANO ET TANCOL, PRESBITERIS, ET REFOL GASTALDO, GONDELME INDIGNUS
DIACONUS SCRIPSI." And the other—"URSUS MAGESTER CUM DISCEPOLIS SUIS,
IVVINTINO ET IVVIANO EDIFICAVET HANC CIVORIUM, VERGONDUS TEODAL
[68]
FOSCARI."

The date of Bishop Dominic's death coincides with Luitprand's accession to
the throne, so we may safely say Magister Ursus worked in 712. Ursus
Magister fecit is also engraved in the same style on an ancient altar recently
discovered in the abbey church of Ferentillo near Spoleto. It is known that
Luitprand went to Spoleto in 739, and installed Hilderic in the Dukedom. In
any case this inscription is of priceless value to our argument that the
Comacine Guild which worked for the Lombard kings was really the same
guild that built the latter Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and palaces.
Here we get the exact organization which becomes so familiar to us in the
later lodges whose archives are kept, Ursus or Orso proves his right to the
title of Magister by having disciples under him. The work is done in the
time of "Our Lord Luitprand and our Father the Bishop," who are the
presidents of the lodge, just as in later lodges the more influential citizen or
body of citizens are presidents of the Opera. Then there is Refol, the
Gastaldo (Grand Master). The very same term is kept up in the Lombard
lodges till the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the head of the
Venetian laborerium is styled the Gastaldo instead of capo maestro as in
Tuscany; there is even the notary to the guild, the unworthy scribe
Gondelmus.
The work is so far inferior to the ciborium at Valpolicella, that it would
seem to be, as Cattaneo remarks, by an earlier hand. The ornamentation is
not a finished sculpture, but only rudely cut into the surface of the stone,
like a first sketch. Possibly the remuneration offered by the employer was
not liberal enough to encourage Orso to put any elaborate work into the

altar, or he might have blocked out the work, and left it unfinished either by
reason of death, or absence.
Another famous work of that time was one which Luitprand himself caused
to be sculptured by Magister Giovanni, of the Comacine Guild. It was the
covering for the tomb of S. Cumianus in the monastery of Bobbio. It will be
remembered that Agilulf and Theodolinda gave shelter to the Irish Saint
Columbanus, and assisted him to found the convent of Bobbio. One of the
monks there, another Irishman, named Cumianus, was afterwards
canonized, and Luitprand built his tomb. We are told it was covered with
precious marbles, which would seem to indicate something in the style
which the Cosmati afterwards made so famous.
The tomb of Theodata at Pavia is a fine specimen of Comacine-
Longobardic sculpture. It is now to be seen in the cortile of the Palazzo
Malaspina with some other old sarcophagi. This has been called a
Byzantine work, but the extreme vitality and expression in the hippogriffs
and the Solomon's knots which sign it, mark the work as Comacine;
besides, we are told by the most early authors that the Longobards never
employed Greek artists. There is the usual mixture of Christianity and
Mediævalism in the sculptures on the top of the tomb. Winged griffins with
serpent tails prance on each side of a vine, from which serpents' heads look
out. Fishes are in the corner, and an interlaced border, whose spaces are
filled with grapes and mystic circles, frames, as it were, the design. The side
is entirely Christian; and if the peacocks which drink out of a vase with a
cross in it, were less lively, it might almost pass for a Byzantine design; but
the Comacine Magister has set his mark even here, in his knots with neither
end nor beginning, his concentric circles, and roses of Sharon; and has told
us in his mystic language that Theodata was a Christian, and though
tempted, clung to the cross. Theodata, a noble Roman dame, was one of the
ladies of honour to Ermelind, King Cunibert's Anglo-Saxon wife.[69]
One day Ermelind incautiously described the exquisite beauty of this lady,
whom she had seen in the bath, and greatly inflamed his imagination. He
brutally ruined the lovely Theodata, and afterwards shut her up in a
monastery, probably that of St. Agatha, which his father had built. This took
place in A.D. 720. The beautiful tomb was but a poor atonement for the
coarse cruelty which had spoiled her life.

The pulpit in S. Ambrogio at Milan is a really fine specimen of sixth-
century work. It is supported on ten columns. Here is the true Comacine
variety of columns: they are all sizes and all shapes; some round, some
hexagonal; some longer, some shorter; the difference in height being made
up by the capitals and pedestals being more or less high. One, which is
peculiarly short, and whose capital is carved in complicated Solomon's
knots, has a lion placed as abacus. This is the earliest instance I know of, of
the use of the lion of Judah, in connection with the pillar (Christ). Here the
lion rests on the column and supports the arches, instead of being the root of
the pillar as it became in the later Romanesque style. The arches are
surrounded with intricate scrolls and interlaced work; some of them clearly
copied from Byzantine designs. The spaces between the arches are enriched
with allegorical subjects. In one, the emblems of the apostles; in another, a
choir of angels, very mediæval and heavy-headed; in another, a winged
archangel. At the corner is a man in Lombard dress, holding two animals,
one in each hand. It is peculiarly suggestive of the Etruscan deity with the
two leopards, which is so frequently seen on the black Chiusi vases, and
confirms more than ever, the tendency in mediæval Christians to cling to
ancient pagan forms, giving them a new Christian significance. The frieze
above the arches which forms the base of the marble panels of the Ambone,
is peculiarly Comacine. Here are all the mystic animals, representing the
powers of evil;—dragons, wolves, etc., bound together in a knotted scroll of
one continuous vine-branch, here and there training into foliage. Reading
the ornamentation by the light of mediæval symbolism, the whole thing
gives us lessons appropriate to a pulpit. It tells us that Christ the pillar of the
Church, descended from David the lion of Judah, is the foundation of all
Gospel; that angels and saints sing the glory of God; and that Christ the
vine can bind and subdue the powers of evil. The fine early Christian tomb
beneath the pulpit is not necessarily connected with it. It has been called the
tomb of Stilicho, with how much reason I am not prepared to say. If so it
must date from the early part of the fifth century, as it was on October 8,
405, that Stilicho marched up to Fiesole from Florence to his victory over
Radagaisus the Goth. The Florentines had but just been converted to
Christianity at that time. The sculpture, though Christian in subject, has
many signs of debased Roman style mingled with much of the mediæval.

Pulpit in the Church of S. Ambrogio, Milan, 6th
century.
(From a photograph by Brogi.)
See Page 88.

There is a similar pulpit at Toscanella, in the church of S. Maria Maggiore,
a three-naved Lombard church with the choir facing east. The pulpit, which
is of the square form used before A.D. 1000, is supported on four columns,
and has sculptured parapets and arches, on which are various interlaced
designs of marvellous intricacy.[70]

CHAPTER V

COMACINES UNDER CHARLEMAGNE

MASTERS OF THE CARLOVINGIAN ERA
1. 805 Magister Natalis A Lombard, employed at
Lucca to build a church and
make a canal.
2. 900? M. Johannis de Menazio Built the church of S.
(and many other Masters Giacomo at Pontida.
from Como)
3. " A "famous Magister" from Worked at S. Zeno at Verona,
Como (name not given) and built S. Zeno at
Pontida.
4. " M. Adami Sculptured the capitals in the
atrium of S. Ambrogio at
Milan.

We may safely say that Charlemagne, who was more a warrior than a man
of æsthetic tastes, had no influence whatever on Italian architecture; neither
the form nor the symbolism was changed by him. The Italians were always
conservative, and clung to old traditions. The Roman basilica, and not the
Eastern mosque, still continued to be the plan of the Italian church. Ricci
asserts that by the end of the eighth century all imitation of Oriental
architecture had disappeared from Italian churches. It was not the same,
however, with the ornamentations, in which the frozen Byzantine forms
became vitalized under hands less technically skilful, but more natural.

Door of a Chapel in S. Prassede, Rome.
See page 83.

Pluteus from S. Marco dei Precipazi, now in S.
Giacomo, Venice.
See page 84.

Charlemagne did not even alter the Longobardic laws, and he certainly did
not interfere with the freedom and privileges of the Comacines or Liberi
Muratori. In fact he ratified the Lombard code (the laws of Rotharis and
Luitprand), only adding a few others which are known as Capitolari.
They do not, however, refer specially to our Magistri, but to jurisprudence
in general. The older laws still held good for the Comacines, and they went
on building their Basilican churches, which were at the same time classic in
form, solid in style, and fanciful in decoration—a curious and characteristic
mixture. But Charlemagne certainly patronized the Comacines, and not only
employed them himself, but sent them to restore Roman churches for Pope
Adrian, and to fortify Florence.
The early Carlovingian churches in Italy have so much analogy with the
Longobardic ones, that it is very difficult to distinguish precisely to which
era certain churches belong.

Rumhor instances the Florentine Basilica of S. Scheraggio, which was
much used as a meeting-place for civil councils in the early days of the
Republic. This is usually said to have been a Carlovingian church; but
either it was pure Lombard, as the barbarous name Scheraggio implies, or
else Charlemagne employed the Lombard architects.[71] Padre Richa, who
saw the ruins of it, gives a design of the church, which was the usual
Lombard form, three naves, the central one wide, and an apse to each. The
columns and capitals were from some Roman building.
The architecture was entirely similar to that of S. Paolo in ripa d'Arno, close
to Pisa, which has also been styled Carlovingian. The chronicle of the monk
Marco, written in 1287, preserved in the archives of Vallombrosa, shows
that although the guide-books date S. Scheraggio as twelfth-century
architecture because a papal bull of that time refers to the name, it belonged
to the Vallombrosian monks long before, having been given to them by
Countess Beatrice in 1073,[72] and was probably founded in the ninth
century.
We must not omit to mention the most interesting of Comacine churches,
that of San Donato in Polenta, where Dante worshipped, and near which
Paolo and Francesca lived. It was built in the eighth century, and is
mentioned in a document of 976. It is of the usual triple-apsed form. The
columns have diverse capitals, some square, some diminished, ornamented
with foliage and interlaced work; some have grotesque figures, and animals
in low relief, with a rude technique. Here are men like monkeys,
hippogriffs, sea monsters, etc. It has been graphically described in Sapphic
verse by Carducci, as follows—

To that gaunt Byzantine there crucified,
Whose hollow eyes gaze from his livid face,
The faithful pray for blessings on their Lord,[73]
And glory to Rome.

From every capital dread shapes obtrude
And memories bring of ancient sculpturing hands
Whose works show visions weird, and horrors from
The dreadful North.

The eastern gleam from pallid altar lamps
Falls on degenerate inhuman forms,
Writhing around in many-coiled embrace
Like things of Hell.

Rude monsters spew above the kneeling flock.
Behind the very font, crouching beast
Red-haired and horned, and demonlike
Doth gaze and grin.

The original runs thus—

Al bizantino crocefisso, atroce
Ne gli occhi bianchi livida magrezza,
Chieser mercè de l'alta stirpe e de la
Gloria di Roma.

Da i capitelli orride forme intruse
A le memorie di scapelli argivi,
Sogni efferati e spasimi del bieco
Settentrione.

Imbestiati degeneratamente
Ne l'Oriente, al guizzo de le fioca
Lampade, in turpi abbracciamenti attorti,
Zolfo ed inferno.

Goffi sputavan su la prosternata
Gregge: di dietro al battistero un fulvo
Picciol cornuto diavolo guardava
E subsannava.

This church, so full of poetic and historic interest, was lately going to be
destroyed, but the priest, Don Luigi Zattini, appealed to the Inspector of
Monuments for the province of Forli, who had recourse to the Deputazione
Storica Romagnola. Efforts were made to save it, and instead of being
pulled down, it is now only to be restored, which may be as fatal. The castle
of Guido da Polenta, husband of Francesca da Rimini and brother of Paolo,
is now ruined, but a cypress on a plateau of the grounds is still called
Francesca's cypress.
It was about this era that the Comacines began their many emigrations, and
spread throughout Italy. The church-building Longobards, being subjugated
themselves, had no longer the power to employ them, so this large guild had
to look further afield for their work.
Hitherto they seem to have been almost exclusively employed in the
Lombard kingdom and its dukedoms, except the few who went to England

and Germany in the seventh century. But Charlemagne had a wider rule in
Italy; and good architecture was needed in other parts. Some documents
quoted by Professor Merzario[74] not only prove these travelling days of the
Magistri, but connect them with many of the finest and most interesting
churches in Central and South Italy. One is a deed of gift for the weekly
distribution of bread and wine to the poor at Lucca in 805. It begins—"Ego
Natalis, homo transpadanus, magister casarius, Christo auxiliante, ædificavi
Ecclesiam in honori Dei et Mariæ et B. Petri Apostoli, intra hanc
civitatem"—"I, Natalis, a man from beyond the Pò, being a master builder,
by Christ's help have constructed within this city, a church in honour of
God, of Mary, and of the blessed apostle Peter."[75] Here we see the
Comacine Master settled as leading architect in Lucca, far from his native
land beyond the Pò, and so flourishing that he can dispense large charities.
He seems to have done some public works too; there was a canal called the
Fossa Natale, which ran through the city, and had a bridge over it. There
must have been others of the guild in Lucca, before Natalis, working at the
churches of S. Frediano and S. Michele.
The latter building was not long prior to the era of Magister Natalis. It was
founded in 764 by the Lombard Teutprandus or Iutprand, and his wife
Gumbranda. It coincides with S. Frediano in its plan of the Latin cross.
Here, however, we find no Roman capitals, as in S. Frediano, but the twelve
columns which sustain the arches of the nave are of rough white marble,
from the neighbouring mountains of Carrara. They are of the same size
upward, not narrowed at the top. The capitals are of somewhat composite
order, with a leaning to Orientalism. The eight columns in the nave have
simple arches a sesto intero (semi-circular) springing from them; the four
which support the tribune are heightened by piers of a Gothic form, flanked
by pilasters, which raise the arch over the central nave. This seems to be the
first instance of an attempt to render the sanctuary of the high altar more
grand and majestic than the rest of the building. The façade is of quite a
different epoch, and has nothing to do with the interior. It was the work of
Guidectus in 1188, who also built the cathedral of Lucca.
The windows show the same divergence of style. In S. Frediano they are
large and classical, in S. Michele narrow and Neo-Gothic.

The other document is less decisive, but has its significance. An ancient
mediæval Memoriale, in the monastery of Pontida,[76] has the following
entry—"Guglielmo de Longhi di Adraria built the church of San Giacomo
di Pontida, employing Magister Johanne de Menazio et multis aliis de
episcopatu comensi." This was finished in 1301, and was consequently later
than the building of S. Zeno at Pontida, of which another MS. in the same
monastery relates a fact, which the chronicler says happened avanti il mille
(before the year 1000).
"A master very famous in the art of building, who came 'de regione juxta
lacum cumanum' (from the region about Lake Como), met with robbers at
Cisano, as he returned from Verona to his native place. The which Master
being struck with terror, recommended himself, calling with all his heart on
the blessed Zeno, and made a vow that if the saint brought him safe and
sound out of that deadly peril, he would build a church in his honour. As
soon as he had spoken the words, the horse on which he was mounted took
fright and galloped away, so that the robbers could no more harm him. Thus
he escaped safely with all his belongings ('potè scampare sano con tutte le
sue cose'), and returning the following year with his workmen, he began the
building of the church of S. Zeno at Valle Ponzia (now Pontida), the people
of the neighbourhood lending him aid, both in money and in labour."
We may be excused for jumping at conclusions if we opine that as he was
returning from Verona after a long sojourn, he had been employed there.
Probably it was at the church of S. Zeno; particularly as he felt he had a
special claim on the help of that saint.
There is very little left of the first church of S. Zeno at Verona (which was
rebuilt entirely in the twelfth century), except the curious mausoleum in the
crypt, which is supposed to be King Pepin's tomb. Our Comacine who
escaped the brigands may possibly have made that, as the era (before the
year 1000) corresponds. Or he might have been working at the church
which Bishop Lothaire, aided by Bertrada, mother of Charlemagne, built
780 A.D., and dedicated to S. Maria Matricolare, and which the Bishop
Ratoldo (802-840) chose as the cathedral. Of this, too, little remains now, it
having been rebuilt in the twelfth century, but some indications of the old
building were found in the excavations made in 1884. At the depth of two
metres, in the Lombard cloister adjoining it, a mosaic pavement was

discovered with a design of foliage, animals, and inscriptions. There was
also a fallen column, which they were able to stand on its own base with its
capital. Cattaneo[77] thinks that these are the remains of Lothaire's church,
as the capital of the column is undoubtedly of the eighth century. It has a
rigid abacus, and the form is rudely Corinthian, with solid straight leaves
curled back, instead of the usual acanthus. The same style is seen in S.
Salvatore of Brescia, and S. Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, both Comacine
works.

Comacine Capitals.
See page 96.

Another Carlovingian church in Verona is that of S. Lorenzo, said to have
been founded by Pepin. Some interesting bits of its primitive architecture
remain, and are precious relics. There is, for instance, a little spiral stairway
in the wall, which led to different divisions of the women's gallery.[78]
At this era a change in the form of windows may be observed; they were
narrowed and heightened, a first step towards the Gothic form.

In Carlovingian times the Comacines worked much in Rome. Cattaneo[79]
says that there exist letters from Pope Adrian I. to Charlemagne, begging
him to send architects (Magistri) from the north of Italy, to execute some

works in Rome. Now these Magistri could be no other than the Comacine
Guild of Lombardy, who with the Longobards had lately become subjects
of Charlemagne, and were without doubt the finest builders in Italy, if not
monopolists of the art. The buildings which they designed and erected in
Rome at that time were the churches of S. Maria in Cosmedin, S. Lorenzo
in Lucina, S. Saba on Mount Aventine, and the residence of the Patriarch
near S. John Lateran. The door of a chapel in S. Prassede with its Comacine
intrecci is a standing proof of their work there in the ninth century.
Anastasius, the librarian, gives an account of the rebuilding of the church of
S. Maria in Cosmedin.[80] He says that Adrian found it absolutely beneath a
pile of ruins (sub ruinis positam) of a former temple to Ceres and
Proserpine, which literally hung over it. As this mass of ruin prevented the
enlargement of the new church, it was entirely demolished "by fire, and by
the labours of the people." The space being cleared, a new and spacious
Basilica was erected "a fundamentis tres absides, in ea constituens."
The writer mentions this form with three apses as being new in Rome. We
have, however, seen that in the north of Italy the Comacines had been, for
the past century or two, building Basilican churches on precisely this plan.
In fact the three round apses had become one of the special marks of their
churches. Cattaneo argues that the form came from the East, as some of the
Syrian churches of the fifth century and the great Basilica of St. Simeon
Stylites at Kaiat Senian, erected in 500, have signs of the same
conformation. Whether these were of absolutely Oriental origin, or the
result of some early emigration of the liberi muratori, archæologists must
judge. The two rows of columns which divide the nave from the aisles, have
solid piers of masonry interposed between each three columns; these are
elongated above the colonnade to support the roof, and strengthen the upper
gallery.[81]
It is evident that the Comacines availed themselves of old material in this
work; the columns are of all species and styles, some fluted, some smooth,
some with antique Corinthian capitals, others of Comacine work. One is of
the same form as those we have described in S. Maria Matricolare at
Verona, with solid volutes, placed perpendicularly, instead of the graceful
acanthus. The same capital is seen in S. Agnese fuori le mura.

There is in S. Maria in Cosmedin a very interesting fragment of the
Comacine decoration of the time when Adrian I. was the patron of the guild.
It is a bit of cornice, formed of a little colonnade of round arches; beneath it
an inscription in a curious early style, the letters all sizes and shapes. It runs
—

"DE DON IS D͠ I ET S͠ CE D͠ I GENETRICIS MARIÆ. TEMPORIBUS DO͞ NI
ADRIANI PAPE EGO GREGORIUS."

I have seen another fragment during the recent restorations. A fine intreccio
on a marble slab in one of the pulpits, which had been reversed and inlaid
on the other side in thirteenth-century mosaic.
The church of S. Saba on Mount Aventine, which was also built under
Adrian I., has every mark of Comacine work, especially in the mediæval
and unclassic form of capitals. Probably the supply of ancient capitals fell
short after the building of the other churches, and the builders had to supply
them with their own chisels. They made a rude imitation of the Ionic form,
as far from the classic grace of the original, as their plain hard volutes were
from the elegance of the Corinthian.
A better artist seems to have been placed by the Comacine Guild in S.
Lorenzo in Lucina, which was contemporary to this. The capitals of the
same form are much more clearly and firmly cut, and in a better style of
ornamentation. Here too are the Comacine lions, now built into the wall
under the square lintels of the door. Of the Comacine work in the house of
the Patriarch near S. John Lateran, i.e. the papal residence of those times,
not much remains to show the hand of the Comacines, except the sculptures
on the well in the cloister, the parapet of which is adorned with two zones
of reliefs, divided by an interlaced band. The under one consists of alternate
crosses and rude palms, the upper is a row of round arches, adorned with
upstanding volutes, like vine-tendrils; under one arch is a dove with grapes
in his beak, and in the other a cross. There are also two sculptured stones in
the same cloister, one showing various interlaced patterns, the other a cross
formed by weavings of the continued line, enriched in the groundwork of
foliage.

One of the most interesting churches of the Carlovingian era is that of San
Pietro in Grado near Pisa. In the Middle Ages this was a great shrine for
pilgrimages, being, it is said, built on the spot on which St. Peter first set
foot in Italy. (Gradus—a step.) Legend (supported by the assertion of a
certain Archbishop Visconti, who preached in Pisa in the thirteenth century)
says that the Apostle Peter was driven ashore at that spot, and having made
an altar he began to baptize—giving his disciples commands to build a
church there. What the first church was like is not known; the present one
was built between 600 and 800 A.D., and was decorated with frescoes before
A.D. 1000. There is a great similarity in structure between this building and
that of S. Apollinare in Ravenna; they are both of similar brick masonry,
and three-apsed, and the aisles are in about the same proportion to the
greater height of the nave. The proportions of the short round arches on the
tall classic columns of the interior are extremely similar, as is the scheme of
ornamentation, with the difference that at Ravenna the medium is mosaic,
and at S. Pietro a Grado it is fresco. The line of Bishops in the spring of the
arches in Ravenna is reproduced at Grado by a line of Popes in medallions,
ending with Leo III., 795, which would probably mark the era of the
foundation of the church.[82]
San Pietro, however, has one very great peculiarity. It has no façade, but is
built with the usual Lombard three apses at one end, and a single semi-
circular tribune at the other. The only door is at the side. The priest, who is
naturally proud of his church, and learned in its history, told us that by this
peculiar form the builders wished to represent a ship, and pointing out the
great square pilasters that break the line of columns at the fourth arch from
the west, he showed how the raised poop of a vessel was expressed by the
greater height and width of the four arches at the west end. Certainly the
narrowing effect being towards the chancel instead of the reverse, is most
remarkable.
I was not, however, convinced by his symbolism, and realizing the greater
proportions of the west end, where three arches with fluted columns
stretched across a tribune, now turned into an organ-loft, I felt convinced
that the present form was not the original. Either the ancient altar once
stood at the west end, and the church, like so many Lombard ones, had
formerly faced the opposite way; or else the semi-circular tribune, which
seems to be of later work, has been added by restorers, to cover in the three

arches of the ancient façade. That, in fact, the large solid pilasters in the
nave marked the ancient wall of the interior, and the four arches on the
other side of them formed the narthex. To support the first theory, is the fact
that the altar called St. Peter's altar stands now isolated in that west end, and
the canopy in the form of an ancient Lombard ciborium stands on four
columns above it, carved in stone in very early style. The opposite theory of
the narthex having been at that end, may on its side be confirmed by one of
the frescoes, the last but two on the south wall, which represents the church
itself as it was prior to A.D. 1000. Here the artist has, with a curious
mediæval disregard of perspective and possibility, represented both ends of
the church in one view, and here we see plainly the three apses with their
marble perpendicular ribs on one side, and the façade of large arches with a
row of smaller ones across the building above them on the other. I leave the
question of this puzzling west tribune to wiser judges than myself, and trust
that some new Fergusson, Hope, or Street may some day discover the truth.
The columns of the nave are all of antique marble, the ruins of a Roman
temple to Ceres at Pisa; some are of cipollino, others Oriental granite, one is
of fluted white Greek marble. The capitals are mostly antique and classical,
though a few show the hand of the early Comacine in their straight
upstanding volutes. The ingenuity of the Magistri in making use of old
material is shown in the various devices by which these columns are
adapted. Where they are too short the base is raised on two pedestals; where
too small for the massive pillar, a wide abacus is placed on the top to
support the arch. One of the columns which support the altar is made long
enough by a base made of an antique carved capital reversed beneath it. We
have a distinct sign of the Comacines in a stone let into the wall near the
door, and which evidently formed part of the ancient architrave. It is carved
in an intricate interlaced knot. I shall speak in the chapter on Comacine
painting, of the frescoes in the nave, which are unique of their kind, and of
deep interest to the Art historian.

Exterior of San Piero a Grado, Pisa, 8th
century.

See page 101.

These churches of the Carlovingian era in Italy cannot be documentally
proved to have been at all connected with Charlemagne himself, except that
he sent the Magistri Comacini to Rome, at Pope Adrian's request. The same
cannot be said of the great church of Aix-la-Chapelle, with which his name
must be for ever united, but which is certainly not entirely unconnected
with this Lombard Guild. Where history gives no precise information, and
where authors, ancient and modern, fail to fix the precise era of this
important work, it is of course impossible to say who was the architect. We
can only judge by the style, and by inferences drawn from previous works
of the same style. First, as to the few facts we are able to gain: Eginbertus, a
Lombard, the biographer of Charlemagne, in his De vita et gestis Caroli
Magni, Capit. 26, tells us that Charlemagne "built the Basilica of
Aquisgrana of wonderful beauty, and adorned it with much gold, silver
lamps, and with gates and doors of bronze. For this construction, not being

able elsewhere to find columns and marble, he provided that they should be
brought from Rome and Ravenna." This fact, of a want of proper material in
France, would seem to imply that skilled workmen to build in stone must
have been imported with the material. It is difficult, or indeed impossible, to
prove that French workmen were equal to the occasion, by showing other
contemporary works in France. Any churches they may have then had, have
long since perished, for at that date they were usually built of wood; another
argument that France could not have supplied accomplished architects in
stone.
Some say the church was designed by Ansige, Abbot of Fontanelles, others
give the credit to Eginhard, or Eginbertus, as his Lombard name is spelt; but
as he does not claim it for himself in his writing,—indeed, we see from the
above extract that he speaks quite impersonally of it,—there is certainly no
documentary evidence to prove this assertion. Speaking dispassionately, it
would be strange for a man of letters, private secretary to a great king, to
suddenly develop into a full-fledged architect. It is much more likely that as
he was a Lombard, he was interested in employing the builders whom all
his countrymen had employed for centuries. D'Agincourt, who had a good
deal of amour propre, and would, if he could, always give glory to France,
says (vol. i. p. 27, 139)—"It is natural to believe that the Italian architects
whom Charlemagne had brought with him, designed the buildings they
made for him in France, on the lines of those of their own country." Dartein,
in his Lombard Architecture, writes of it—"If we inspect the octagonal half-
domes which terminate the centre of the cross in S. Fedele at Como, we see
that they reproduce the rotunda of Aix-la-Chapelle. The form of the shafts,
the outline of the wall, and the disposition of the collateral vaults are alike
in both edifices. The similarity is so great as to prove imitation, especially
as other churches in the Rhone district remind one of churches in the
territory of Como." The fact of similitude is significant, but is it not more
likely that the imitation was the other way? S. Fedele, or S. Eufemia as it
was first called, was built in S. Abbondio's time, A.D. 440, before the era of
the Longobards, and we are told is the only church of that time which
retains its original architecture, especially in the rounded apse. The
similarity would then go to prove what has been an hypothesis, that
Charlemagne really brought builders as well as marble from Italy, and that
the Magistri Comacini were those builders.

The church has also been compared to S. Vitale at Ravenna, but the
Comacines were accustomed to build circular churches, such as the
Rotunda at Brescia, and others. They were generally used as baptisteries or
mausoleums; in fact were ceremonial churches.
Aix-la-Chapelle was designed as the tomb of Charlemagne, and here the
builders mingled the rotunda of the ceremonial church with the basilica for
worship. The workmanship is much more rude than that of S. Vitale, where
Greek artists were employed. It is easy to distinguish the parts added by the
Comacines, from the classical and Byzantine imported adornments
furnished by the spoils of Rome and Ravenna. The Italians were not left
entirely free in their designs, but had to conform to a more northern climate
and different national taste; the windows were narrowed and elongated, and
the pitch of the roof raised to a sharper angle. As Pliny had said to Mustio,
his Comacine architect, seven centuries before—"You Magistri always
know how to overcome difficulties of position," and Charlemagne's
architects, in an equal degree, studied both climate and position. The further
we go south or east the roofs have a tendency to flatten, the further we go
north they have a tendency to rise into sharper gables. The cause is this, I
take it—a climatic one. Where there is much rain or snow, the sloping roof
is a necessity; therefore this first indication of pointed architecture, as
adaptable to the northern climate, makes Charlemagne's church an
interesting link between the Romano-Lombard and Gothic in the north: just
as Romano-Lombard stands between the classic and Romanesque in the
south. If Ansige suggested these modifications to the Italian builders, he had
a wider office in the history of art than he knew; for Aix-la-Chapelle
became the root from which the French and German so-called Gothic
sprang; improved in the first instance under the hands of the Franchi-
Muratori, who in the succeeding generations were called to work on
churches in both countries. After all, the first step was but a slight one,
being more a raising and narrowing of the round arch than the innovation of
the pointed one. It might stand better as a first indication of the stilted
Norman arch.
Of the civil architecture of the Carlovingian era we have very few instances
remaining. The Emperor Charlemagne built no especial palace for himself,
but used that of Luitprand at Milan, which in Charlemagne's time was
known as Curtis domum imperatoris. An old chronicler tells us that he

fortified Verona. He says—"In the time when King Pepin was still young,
the Huns or Avars invaded Italy. When Charlemagne heard of their
approach he caused Verona to be fortified, and walls erected all round, with
towers and moats; and with pali fissi fortified the city to its very
foundations, leaving there his son Pepin." Forty-eight towers rise from these
walls, of which eight are very high, the others well raised above the walls.
These must have been what the old writer quaintly called pali fissi.
A diploma of Ludovic II., dated 814, proves that the walls of Piacenza also
date from this era. It is in favour of his wife Analberg, giving her
permission to incorporate a part of the walls into a monastery. It runs—"Of
our own authority, we add to the monastery and give in perpetuity, all the
steccato, internal and external, of the said wall of the city, from the
foundations to the battlements, as much as extends from Porta Milano to the
next postern gate; and not only this, but also the macie (rubble) which is
found round the walls and ante-walls, and the same of the towers, gates, and
posterns."
The use of hospices is much connected with Carlovingian times; they came
in when the Church ruled, and pilgrimages became the fashion. The first
hospices were in monasteries. In 752 S. Anselmo founded one for pilgrims
at Nonantola, in Agro Mutinense. The council of Aquisgrana (Aix-la-
Chapelle) made decrees as to the establishment of hospices, and
Charlemagne made laws on the subject, "ut in omni regno nostro, neque
pauper perigrinus hospitia denegare audeant." To the ordinary fine for
homicide, Pepin II. added sixty soldi more if the person killed were a
pilgrim. One who denied food and shelter to a pilgrim was fined three soldi.
These humane provisions, like all such, soon became abused; so many non-
religious people travelled on pilgrims' privileges, that at the end of
Charlemagne's reign it was found necessary to provide real pilgrims with a
Tessera trattoria to prove their authenticity.
Among the earliest hospices might be mentioned the leper hospital founded
in Classis near Ravenna in S. Apollinare's time, and one in Rome, founded
by the Roman lady Fabiola for destitute or abandoned sick and poor. In 785
a certain Datheus, arch-priest at Milan, founded an exonodochio (home for
destitute children), and Queen Amalasunta built a foundling hospital at
Ravenna, in the sixth century. Charlemagne commanded that there should

be a place in the peristyle of the churches for the reception of foundlings.
The Loggia del Bigallo, though a later building, is a beautiful specimen of
such a peristyle.

CHAPTER VI
IN THE TROUBLOUS TIMES

After the Carlovingian dynasty had withdrawn from Italy, the country had
two or three centuries of troublous times, in which very few people thought
of church-building, and if the Comacine Masters found work in their own
land, it was more the building of castles and strongholds in their most solid
opera gallica, than the sculpturing of saints or the rearing of gorgeous
basilicæ.
After the Carlovingians came the House of Berengarius, which held the
Italian throne from 888 to the intervention of Otho I. of Germany in 951.
During this time there was always a military fermentation going on; Duke
Guido of Spoleto fighting Berengarius; Arnolph and his son Sventebald
fighting Guido; the Hungarians overrunning and sacking Italy on the north,
where there were battles at Brenta, Garigliano, Firenzuola, and bloodshed
generally till the murder of Berengarius.
Nor were things more peaceful in the south. Between A.D. 924 and 950 the
Saracens invaded Sicily, and having established themselves there, assaulted
Rome, and marched on towards the Alps.
In Central Italy the Dukes of Burgundy, Provence, and Bavaria were found
contesting with Lothaire for the succession. At length, in 951, Otho came
down from Germany and scattered them all, restoring comparative peace
for a time, though an arbitrary one; but it did not last long.

Next came superstitious fears; the poor battered Italians, demoralized by
fierce human foes, succumbed entirely to the moral subjugator, superstition.
They were firmly persuaded that the year 1000 should be the end of the
world, and every activity, public and private, was paralyzed. It was only
after that era had passed, and found Italy still existing, that new life began
to stir in its inhabitants. Of course, fighting still continued, but these were
holy wars—the Crusades, of which Urban II. preached the first in 1096.
Then the art of sculpturesque architecture, which is the handmaid of
religious enthusiasm, began to revive, and the Comacine Masters again had
palmy days.
But they had not been entirely idle during these warlike times. Prof.
Merzario says[83]—
"In this darkness which extended over all Italy, only one small lamp
remained alight, making a bright spark in the vast Italian necropolis. It was
from the Magistri Comacini. Their respective names are unknown, their
individual works unspecialized, but the breath of their spirit might be felt all
through those centuries, and their name collectively is legion. We may
safely say that of all the works of art between A.D. 800 and 1000, the greater
and better part are due to that brotherhood—always faithful and often secret
—of the Magistri Comacini. The authority and judgment of learned men
justify the assertion."
Here Prof. Merzario quotes several of these uomini dottissimi. First,
Quatremal de Quincy, in his Dictionary of Architecture, who, under the
heading "Comacine," remarks that "to these men, who were both designers
and executors, architects, sculptors, and mosaicists, may be attributed the
renaissance of art, and its propagation in the southern countries, where it
marched with Christianity. Certain it is that we owe it to them, that the
heritage of antique ages was not entirely lost, and it is only by their tradition
and imitation that the art of building was kept alive, producing works which
we still admire, and which become surprising when we think of the utter
ignorance of all science in those dark ages." Our English writer, Hope,
taking their later appellative of Lombards, credits Lombardy with being the
cradle of the associations of Freemasons, "who were," he says, "the first
after Roman times to enrich architecture with a complete and well-
ordinated system, which dominated wherever the Latin Church extended its

influence from the shores of the Baltic to those of the Mediterranean."[84]
We will omit the witnesses, Kugler of Germany and Ramée of France, and
take the Italian great authority, Pietro Selvatico.[85] He notes that art in
Europe, from the seventh to the thirteenth century, consisted of a
combination of Byzantine and Roman elements, but in the ninth century a
third element mingled, which had in itself so much that was original, as to
constitute an independent style. "This," he goes on to say, "was the
Lombard or Comacine architecture, as it is called, which is distinguished by
its low-pitched roofs, its circular arches, rounded on columns, which
assimilate to the Greek and Roman styles. This gained a certain systematic
unity after the first half of the ninth century." Prof. Selvatico seems to have
ignored all the Comacine architecture under the Longobards, who were
certainly the nurses of the guild, and takes it up just when it was freeing
itself from the bonds of superstitious tradition, i.e. the transition between
Roman-Lombard and Romanesque.

Comacine Capital in San Zeno, Verona,
emblematizing Man clinging to Christ (the
Palm).
See page 111.

No doubt the genealogy of the style was this. First, the Comacines
continued Roman traditions as the Romans continued Etruscan ones; next,
they orientalized their style by their connection with the East through
Aquileia, and the influx of Greek exiles into the guild. Later came a
different influence through the Saracens into the South, and the Italian-
Gothic was born.

The Comacine art of the interregnum after Charlemagne may be judged by
the church of S. Zeno at Verona. This had been rebuilt in 810 by King
Pepin, whose palace was in Verona. His church fell a prey to the devastation
dealt by the Huns in 924, and Bishop Rothair restored it in the tenth
century, the Emperor Otho the First furnishing the funds. There was a third
restoration in 1139, when the present front and portico were added. The
general form of Otho's church still remains, and shows the usual "three
naves" (emblematical of the Trinity), and the circular arches supported by
alternate columns and pilasters. The roof, as in all the older Lombard
churches, was of wood, and not vaulted. It is not recorded whence Otho
obtained his architects, but though no names are written, the Comacine
mark is there. Later restorations have wiped out most of the old signs, but
they have left us some capitals on the columns and the reliefs on the arches
leading into the crypt under the tribune. Two of the columns are here
illustrated. In one may be seen human figures clinging to palm-branches, by
which the Magister who carved it symbolized man clinging to Christ. The
other is a veritable Comacine knot, formed of mystic winged creatures, with
their serpent tails entwined. On the arches of the crypt are a wealth of
mediæval imaginings, mystic beasts, Christian symbols, scriptural
characters and ancient myths, all mingled together as only a Freemason of
the Middle Ages could mingle them. Otho's architects were certainly
Magistri of our guild, and probably our friend from Pontida, who called on
S. Zeno to save him from the brigands, was one of them.
It is undeniable that later Comacines put the elegant façade to the church in
1139, when Magistri Nicolaus and Guglielmus carved the wonderful porch
with its columns resting on lions, and its very mediæval reliefs, in which we
see Theodoric, King of the Goths, going straight to the devil in the guise of
a wild huntsman. On the architraves are allegorical reliefs of the twelve
months. But this front is not of the era we are now discussing, and we shall
mention it again.
A work which is indubitably of the ninth century, and has all the marks of
the time, is the atrium of S. Ambrogio at Milan, which was a commission to
Magister Adam of the Comacines, by Anspert of Bissone, who was
Archbishop of Milan from 868 to 881. The atrium of a church was anciently
used for the catechumens, as they were not admitted into the body of the
church till they were baptized. The atrium of S. Ambrogio is a square space

surrounded by a portico composed of columns supporting round arches. The
proportions are so fine and majestic that it is looked on as the best
mediæval edifice existing in Lombard style. The capitals are composed of
foliage, strange ornaments, and groups of grotesque animals and monsters
rudely sculptured; and yet with the imperfect chiselling there is such a
freedom of design and wealth of imagination as you find in no Byzantine
work, however precise its execution. We give an illustration of one of its
capitals. The Comacine intreccio is there, but floriated and luxurious. The
significance of these sculptures, though unintelligible to us, is believed to
be the occult and conventional art language of the Comacines or
Freemasons. On the doorway, among the foliage and symbolic animals, one
may still read the name of "Adam Magister."

Capital in the Atrium of S. Ambrogio, Milan. By
Magister Adam.
See page 112.

Another very important church of the ninth century is the cathedral of
Grado, near Venice, which had been first built between 571-586, seemingly
by Byzantine artists, though they also used old classical capitals from

former buildings. The plan of this Basilica in its older form shows very
clearly the leaning to one side which we have said was a symbol of Christ's
head being turned in pain on the Cross. Here not only the left aisle reaches
higher up than the right, but the wall of the façade slopes considerably. In
the ninth century Fortunato, Patriarch of Grado, who lived about 828, sent
for artefici Franchi[86] to restore the Baptistery of S. Giovanni on the island
which was the metropolis of maritime Venice. Now what were these artefici
Franchi? It is clear they could not have been French, for Charlemagne
himself had to get builders from Lombardy, his own country not having as
yet enough skill in masonry. It is natural to suppose they were the guild
from Cisalpine Gaul, which though composed of Italians had been styled
"Lombards" while under the Lombard kings, and may have been "Franchi"
while the Carlovingian kings ruled. They were known as "Tedeschi" when
later they were under the protection of the German emperors, a term which
puzzled old Vasari greatly. It is still a question whether the real
interpretation would not be the literal one, Free-masons, who may well have
been recalled from France where they were at work.
The wording of a phrase in the will of the Patriarch Fortunato, where he
says "feci venire magistros de Francia," shows plainly that he referred to
architects belonging to a guild in which the higher orders were called
Magistri.
Having begun to work at Grado, the Lombards were evidently employed in
other Venetian churches. Their style is said to be very evident in the Duomo
of Murano, but how much they did, and whether they worked with Eastern
or other architects, will, I suppose, never be precisely known.
A curious little church of this epoch is existing in almost its original form at
a village called Abadia, near Sesto Calende on Lake Maggiore. It has a
crypt and a portico, three naves and three apses.[87] The crypt is supported
on round arches and small thin columns, the roof is of wood. The portico
has three arcades resting on columns and pilasters with capitals of
Lombard-Byzantine style.
We find the guild at work not only in the north, but in the south of Italy at
this epoch. One of the famous buildings in South Italy with which the
Comacine Masters were connected, is the celebrated monastery of Monte

Cassino with its church. This monastery had been built in the first instance
by a Brescian named Petronax, who made a pilgrimage to Rome to see
Pope Gregory II. The Pope urged Petronax to go to Monte Cassino where
St. Benedict was buried. He went and there was inspired to found a
monastery.
By the beginning of the eleventh century this had been much ruined by the
Saracens and others, and Desiderius its abbot, in 1066, decided to restore it.
He was of the race of the Lombard Dukes of Beneventum, was a friend of
Pope Gregory VII., and became his successor on the papal throne under the
name of Victor III. Desiring that his church should be a very "majestic
temple," he sent to call artificers from Amalfi and from Lombardy.[88]
Among the Italians was a certain Andrea, from Serra di Falco, near Como, a
fine worker in metal, who, with his disciples, made the bronze doors.
Some interesting baptisteries were erected in the tenth century by the
Comacines. The baptistery at this time seems to have had a set form—the
octagon; and a mystical significance, that figure being highly symbolical of
the Trinity, being formed by a conjunction of three triangles. In the earlier
days of the Romano-Lombard style, the baptistery generally had only a
small arcade, or row of brackets supporting arches round the outer wall
beneath the roof, and a practicable gallery round the interior. Of this shape
was the Florentine Baptistery, that of Como and many others.
When the later Comacines worked in more florid Romanesque style, the
Baptisteries were often covered with little galleries or rows of colonnettes
like those of Pisa, Parma, Lucca, etc.
A fine specimen of Lombard work of about 1000 A.D., or a little later, which
shows the approach towards a more Gothic style, may be seen in the
cloister of Voltorre, a little walled town on Lake Varese. The cloister of
Voltorre is thus described—"The beauty of this eleventh-century Lombard
building is singular. The four sides are formed of porticoes which sustain
the upper storey. The porticoes facing the open court are formed on one side
of small graceful arches in brick, with friezes and reliefs sustained by
elegant colonnettes, some round and some octangular, with capitals of
various forms. On two other sides the colonnettes are smaller and shorter,
but still graceful; they terminate in varied and bizarre capitals surmounted

by a kind of bracket on which the large stones of the upper building rest.
Among the sculptures of the little columns on the left as one enters the
court, is incised in mediæval characters and abbreviations the following
—'Lanfrancus magister filius Dom. Ersatii de Livurno.'" Livurno most
probably stands for Ligurno, a place a few miles from Voltorre. So our
master Lanfranco Ersatti, having graduated in the Comacine Guild, set
himself to embellish his native place. In 1099 Magister Lanfranco designed
the Duomo of Modena, which, as will be seen hereafter, was the work of
centuries, he being followed by a long series of architects.
Then came more troublous times for the Comacines in their own country.
From 1118 to 1127 A.D. the republic of Como was at fierce war with the
Milanese. A long poem by a Comacine poet, quoted by Muratori, describes
the workmen and artisans fighting in the streets in their working dress, and
wielding any tool or weapon they could find. The masons and builders
worked as sappers and miners, dug the trenches, built up barricades, and
destroyed the enemy's houses and castles. One of these brave citizens,
named Giovanni Buono, is especially mentioned by the ancient poet, and he
is peculiarly connected with the Comacine Masters as the first of a long line
of Magisters of the Buono family. He forms a tangible link between the
half-traditional Comacines of Lombard times, and the more clearly defined
guild of the Romanesque epoch. From that to the Italian Gothic period their
identity is traceable by documents. A warlike bishop, Guidone, was the
leader of the Comacines, but after three years' war he fell ill, and on his
death-bed prophesied the fall of his fatherland.
The Comacines were indeed at the end of their resources, they were
exhausted of means, of food, and of warriors; and after several victories at
length fell under the power of the Milanese, becoming a tributary state. But
it was not till Milan had called in the aid of several other cities that brave
little Como succumbed to her on August 27, 1127. She was not enslaved
even then, and must have retained her political freedom, for we find her
siding with Frederic Barbarossa in 1167, against the whole Lombard
League, to her cost, for she was a great sufferer in the battle of Legnano on
May 29, 1176.
Barbarossa tried to make some compensation, by ceding to Como the
castles of Baradello and Olona. A coin exists, of the Como mint of that

time, with an eagle and Imp. Federicus on one side, and Cumanus populus
on the other. Frederic had reason to cultivate the Comaschi, for they sent
200 ships to the Venetian war for him. An edict of Barbarossa's in 1159, and
another dated 1175, shows that he allowed the Comacines to rebuild their
walls and city at that date, civitatem in cineres collapsam funditos re
ædificavimus nos. This occupied them a long time. The tower towards
Milan bears the date of 1192. The round tower that of 1250. There were
eight gates in these new walls.

BOOK II
FIRST FOREIGN EMIGRATIONS OF THE COMACINES

CHAPTER I

THE NORMAN LINK

The great building guild of the Middle Ages had another connection with
France, independently of Charlemagne, and one which perhaps left a more
lasting impression on the nation than the church of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was
through the Normans, who held a prominent place in the history of
Romanesque art, some authors giving them the credit of its introduction
into Italy.
This may be, but between the tenth and twelfth centuries architecture and
sculpture underwent so many transformations and became mingled with so
many different elements that its history is most difficult to disentangle.
There was a maze of different influences brought together in Sicily, such as
Norman, solid and heavy, from the north; Byzantine, set and precise, from
the east; Saracenic, warm and fanciful, from the south—all mingling
together in the temples of Monreale and Palermo, where I think we may add
a fourth and Italian element, in the Comacines or Lombards.
The first consideration is: How did the Norman architecture first arise? Was
it indigenous? Did the Normans about the tenth and eleventh centuries

suddenly begin building round-arched and pillared churches from their own
inner consciousness?—for all histories assure us there were no stone
Norman-arched buildings before the tenth century, and that by 1150 the
pointed style had already begun to supersede it. All the great and typical
examples are crowded into the last fifty years of the eleventh century, at
which time the Norman dukes were very powerful. It was a time of
enterprise and excitement of all kinds, not the least of them being the rage
for church-building, awakened by the early missionaries.

The West Door of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield,
showing the Comacine style of building (opus
gallicum).
(From a photograph by Mr. Freeman Dovaston,
Oswestry.)
See page 124.

Some light may be thrown on the way the round arch first got into
Normandy, by the following bits of old Norman chronicles, which show
that a very important event took place in the history of the Comacines at the
end of the tenth century, connecting them in a remarkable and suggestive
manner with the rise of Norman architecture. We find from old chronicles
that S. Guillaume, Abbot of S. Benigne in Dijon, was a Lombard, born in
961 on the island of Santa Giulia, in Lago di Orta, part of Lago Maggiore.
He was the son of a certain Roberto, Lord of Volpiano; Otho the Great
himself had been his godfather at the time when he besieged the island, and
took prisoner Willa, wife of King Berengarius. Guillaume (William) was, as
his friend and biographer, Glabrius Rodolphus, tells us, "of a keen intellect,
and well instructed in the liberal arts." In his youth he travelled much in
Italy, and was often at Venice, where he formed a close friendship with
Orso Orseolo, Patriarch of Aquileja. The Patriarch Orso was at that time
engaged in the restoration of the church of Torcello, one of the gems of
architecture of the age; while his brother, the Doge Otho Orseolo, was
pressing forward the works of S. Marco at Venice. It was here probably that
S. Guillaume was interested in the Masonic guild, and recognizing its
power as an aid to mission work, would have joined it. He founded the
famous monastery of S. Benigno di Fruttuaria in Piedmont, and towards the
end of the tenth century he went to France with the venerable Abbot of
Cluny; here he decided to build a monastery to S. Benigne in Dijon, which
he himself designed. But to effect his design he had to send to Italy, his own
country, for "many people, men of letters, masters of divers arts, and others
full of science."[89] The chronicler goes on to say that Guillaume displayed
much wisdom in bringing these masters (magistri conducendo) to
superintend the work (ipsum opus dictando). These two phrases are
identical with those of Article 145 in the Edict of Rotharis, and I think
might be equivalent to a proof that the Italians who built S. Benigne at
Dijon were indeed of the Comacine Guild. The chroniclers further tell us
that the Abbot Guillaume was invited to Normandy by Duke Richard II., to
"found monasteries and erect buildings." The very phrase implies his
connection with, and command of architects. He at first refused, because he
had heard that the Dukes of Normandy were barbarous and truculent, and
more likely to deface than to erect sacred temples; but afterwards he
decided to go. He stayed there twenty years, founding forty monasteries,
and restoring old ones, which were in those days chiefly built of wood. "He

had many of his Italian monks trained to continue the work he had begun.
These propagated such love and taste for art in those rude and bold
Normans, that stone buildings multiplied there, and when William of
Normandy conquered England, the style passed over with him." Hope,
whose judgment is unerring on all subjects connected with the Lombard
style, confirms this. He says[90] that some time before the style came into
England, Normandy had given remarkable models of a tutto-sesto (round-
arched) or Lombard style, and that the same precedence is noticeable in the
pointed or composite style. Indeed, the English owe to the Normans the
erection of many fine edifices of both kinds. Thus some gave the name of
Norman to the Gothic buildings and others gave it to Lombard ones, and it
was imagined that the pointed arch came originally from Normandy. And
yet Normandy was one of the stations of pointed architecture in its
pilgrimage towards us from the south. As an illustration and convincing
proof of this pedigree of Norman style from the Lombard, we may give one
of our oldest so-called Norman churches, that of St. Bartholomew the Great
at Smithfield, London. The original nave has vanished, but the tribune
remains, divested, it is true, of the two great piers in front of the apse, which
were removed in 1410. The semi-circle of the apse has, however, been
replaced in the old style; and, with its pillared arches and ambulatory,
harmonizes well with the ancient part, now the nave, which is perfectly
Lombard. The ambulatories below, and the women's gallery, such as we
find in St. Agnes at Rome, and many Comacine churches, both have a
distinctly Italian origin. Even the stilted arches in the choir only seem in
their outline like magnified Lombard windows. The masonry is the true
Comacine style, great square-cut blocks of stone, smoothed and fitted with
exact precision; while the windows of the triforium are clearly a four-light
development of the two-light Lombard window, divided by its small
column; the very form of the column is identical, though it lacks the
sculpture. Probably the Italian artists were few, and English assistants not
yet trained. The clerestory was a reflex of a later style, being added in 1410,
to replace the so-called Norman one, which no doubt had the usual round-
arched windows with a column in the centre. Indeed, I think it would be
worth the while of archæologists to find out whether the whole church were
not originally built by Italian architects, as Rahere, its founder, was in
Rome on a pilgrimage, when he fell very ill of fever, and vowed to build a
hospital if he recovered. He soon after had a vision of St. Bartholomew,

who instructed him to return to London, and build a church in the suburbs
of Smithfield. He founded both the church and hospital of St. Bartholomew
in about 1123. There seems to me to be such a difference between this
church and other more heavy Norman contemporary buildings, that it might
be suspected Rahere followed the older example of St. Wilfrid and St.
Benedict Biscop, and brought over the Comacines with him.

South Side of the Choir, St. Bartholomew the
Great, Smithfield.
(From a photograph by Mr. Freeman Dovaston,
Oswestry.)
See page 124.

I cannot agree with Mr. Fergusson in his assertion that the members of the
early Freemason guilds were only masons, and never designed the works
entrusted to them, but always worked under the guidance of some superior
person, whether he were a bishop or abbot, or an accomplished layman.
Certainly the architects who worked for the Longobards must also have
sometimes given the design, or what do the words opus dictando mean in
the Edict of Rotharis? Surely Theodolinda could not have been architect
enough to draw the plan for Monza. Nor do I think that the word Magistro
in the masonic or any other art guild, applied to mere masons or underlings,
but to those who were so far masters of their craft as to direct others, and

make a working plan for them. The bishop or abbot, or educated layman,
might have formed his own idea about the style he wished his building to
take, and have made a sketch of it; but the practical working plan would
have been drawn by the Magister, who directed his workmen or colligantes
to put it into execution.
It is true that many ecclesiastics were, like the monks of S. Guillaume at
Dijon and other Dominicans, members of the Masonic guilds, and were
accordingly versed in the science of architecture. In that case the monk,
when he became bishop or abbot, might furnish a plan, and very often did
so. Fra Sisto and Fra Ristori built Santa Maria Novella in Florence; but they
were connected with the Florentine lodge, so their doing so would certainly
be no proof that the Masters of the guild could not have done equally well
themselves.
That the oldest churches in Normandy have a great affinity to Lombard
buildings is evident on examination. See the Lombard-shaped windows in
the towers of St. Stephen's at Caen; the exterior of the circular apse of St.
Nicholas, Caen, which still keeps its original hexagonal form, with pilasters
like slight columns running from ground to roof at each division, and a
colonnade surrounding it of perfect Lombard double-arched form, with a
small pillar in the centre of each. (See Fergusson's Architecture.)
The local Norman developments are equally well defined in this building;
the usual little Lombard gallery beneath the roof has given way to large,
deep, circular-headed windows, and the roof has taken the high pitch
natural to the climate. Both of these are climatic distinctions; the northerner
aiming at more light, the southerner trying to shut out the sun: the damp
climate, of course, necessitated the sloping roof.
Now, before the Normans came back to Italy they had made Italian
architecture their own, and impressed on it their own character, rugged and
robust, and it was so different to the buildings in South Italy with which
they have been accredited, that I think this theory will have to be revised.
The arts were certainly not influenced in Sicily by the first Norman
invasion in 1058 under Roger I., son of Tancred, he being entirely a
bellicose and rough warrior. It was when the Normans had taken root there,
had become more softened, and had formed a settled government; in fact,

after Roger II. had been crowned King of Apulia and Sicily in 1130, that
they began to give their minds to artistic architecture. This was a century
and a half after Abbot Guillaume took his countrymen over to build at
Dijon. The first stone of the Duomo of Cefalù was laid in 1131, and the
royal palace of Palermo begun during the next year. Under Roger's
successors the fine churches of Martorana, and the cathedral of Monreale in
1172, the cathedral of Palermo (1185), and the palace of Cuba arose. An
Italian writer, La Lumia, is very enthusiastic over the Duomo of Monreale
—"that visigoth (sic) art which had in Normandy erected the cathedrals of
Rouen, Bayeux, etc., multiplied in Monreale the ogival forms which had
been known and practised in Sicily since the sixth century,[91] and took its
upward flight in towers and bold spires. In the mosaics and decorations the
majestic Arabic art espoused Byzantine and Christian types. The varied and
multiplex association has impressed on these works an impront both
singular and stupendous. The columns show the ruins of pagan classicism,
the incredible profusion of marbles, verd-antique, and porphyry speak of a
rich and florid political state; while the solemn mystery of those sublime
arcades, profound lines and symbolic forms; the dim religious light, the
ecstatic figures of prophets and saints with the gigantic Christ over the altar
offering benediction to men, all shadow forth the mediæval idea of
Christianity—full and ingenuous faith, vivified by conquest."
Then he goes on grandiloquently to say—"The names of the builders are
unknown to us, and we need not trouble to seek them: a generation and era
is here with all its soul made visible, with all its vigorous and fruitful
activity."
But if we cannot find the names it would at least be interesting to know
whether the Norman-Siculo architecture were entirely the work of the
Normans or not. Gravina, Boitò, and other Italian writers think that the
Normans took a similar position in Sicily to that of the earlier Longobards
in the north, i.e. that they were the patrons, and employed the artists whom
they found in Sicily.

Merzario,[92] giving as his authority Michele Amari,[93] brings forward as a
suggestive fact, that precisely at the time of the Norman occupation, there
was a large emigration into Sicily of members of the Lombard or Comacine
Guild. Amari thinks that the feudal government of the Normans at that time

did not allow their subjects to emigrate from land to land (excepting of
course their armies for purposes of conquest), while in North Italy
feudalism was going out, and with the establishment of republics the
movement of the inhabitants was freer. "This," he says, "accounts for the
so-called colonies of Lombards, which came to Sicily at that time, but of
which, unfortunately, we have no reliable historical evidence."
These Lombardo-Siculan colonies, however, have been clearly traced by an
Italian writer, Lionardo Vigo, in his Monografia critica delle colonie
Lombardo sicule.[94] He has proved that there were four Lombard colonies
in Sicily. That the first went down with Ardoin and Mania, between 1002,
when, on Otho's death, Ardoin was elected King of Italy, and his retirement
to S. Benigno in 1013 after his long struggle with Henry II. The second was
during the Norman conquest of Sicily in 1061; the third later in the century,
at the time of the union of the Norman and Swabian dynasties; and the
fourth about 1188 under the Emperor Frederic,—this colony was led by
Addo di Camerana.
The first two colonies left no lasting traces in the island, but the third
founded the town of Maniace, and the last planted a settled colony which
has left its mark, not only in the language, but in the many Lombard place-
names. Thus there are in Sicily villages named Carona, Gagliano, Novara,
Palazzolo, Padernò, Piazza, Sala, and Scopello, all of which are names of
older places in the Comacine territory. Another name, "Sanfratelli" (the holy
brethren), is very suggestive of the patron saints of the Lombard Guild, the
"Quattro Incoronati." It is in this district precisely that Signor Vigo finds a
special language, which has no affinity with Sicilian, or central Italian, and
which he describes as a "hybrid, bastard language; a decayed Longobardic,
only intelligible to those who use it; a frightful jargon and perfectly satanic
tongue."
In the same volume of the Archivio Storico Siciliano is another collection of
documents, regarding an episode of the war between the Latin and
Catalonian factions at Palermo in the time of Ludovico of Aragon, about
1349. It shows in a list of volunteers, several names of Magistri which seem
to be familiar to us. Here is Magister Nicolao Mancusio, Magister
Guillelmo, Magister Nicolao de Meraviglia, Magister Chicco, Magister
Juliano Guzù, Magister Roberto de Juncta (Giunta), Magister Vitalis, both

from the Pisan lodge, Julianus Cuccio, Salvo di Pietro, etc. We find that
Benedictus de Siri, a Lombard, was paid for twenty soldiers for ten days.
Again on July 31, 1349, among the payments made to those who fought to
defend Vicari during the siege, we find Magister Vanni di Bologna, Paulo
de Boni, Magister Gaddi, Magister Benedicto de Lencio (Lenzo near
Como), and Johanni de Gentile, and various others, all mixed up with
ordinary folks who have no magic Master before their names. This seems to
imply that the Lombard colony at that time had been long enough in Sicily
to be nationalized, and that they furnished men for the war like any other
citizens.
In some cases the payments are made to the heirs of Magister Johanne or
Vitale, thus proving them to have become possessed of property. This was a
privilege accorded to the Comacine Masters even in feudal times, when
other classes were bound and enslaved. From the example of Magister
Rodpert, the Longobard who sold his land at Toscanella many centuries
before, we judge that when the Comacine remained long in a place, he
made use of his earnings to buy land. Indeed in those days when no banks
existed, landed property was the only secure disposition for wealth. And
having bought his house and vineyards, it was but natural that he should
name the estate after his own native place in Lombardy.
It is gratifying to find these direct proofs of the constant presence of the
Lombard Masters in Sicily during the whole Norman and Swabian
dynasties. It accounts for so much. It accounts for the so-called Norman
architecture in Sicily having so much more affinity to Italian forms than to
French-Norman; and it accounts for the Saracenic cast which Lombard
architecture took after that era. The influence was a lasting one, and showed
itself in all the subsequent work of the guild, during the eleventh and
twelfth centuries.
Was this influence imbibed by the Normans who are said to have caused it?
Evidently not.
Was Norman architecture proper, in the north of Europe, immediately
changed? Not at all. It remained the same through all the Norman rule from
Robert Guiscard to the fall of the line. It was not till the thirteenth century
that the elegant pointed Gothic found its way into England—but not

through Normandy—and took the place of the solid round-arched, short-
pillared buildings introduced by William the Conqueror. We have seen that
this round-arched style was first taught the Normans by the Italian builders
whom the Abbot Guillaume brought northward with him.
But the Lombard influence in France was not confined to Normandy nor to
Aix-la-Chapelle. Hope, the English authority on Lombard architecture, who
spent eight years studying European churches, finds many a sign of
Lombard handiwork on French soil. At Tournus is an abbey church of
extremely interesting Lombard form. Fergusson[95] thus describes it—"Its
antiquity is manifested by the rudeness both of its design and execution.
The nave is separated from the aisles by plain cylindrical columns without
bases, the capitals of which are joined by circular arches at the height of the
vaults of the aisle. From the capitals rise dwarf columns supporting arches
thrown across the nave. From one of these arches to another is thrown a
tunnel vault which runs the cross way of the building, being in fact a series
of arches like those of a bridge extending the whole length of the nave."
Here we have, I believe, the first step towards the vaulted roof of the later
Gothic buildings. The church of Ainay at Lyons, is said by Fergusson to be
very similar to this.
Then there is the cathedral of Avignon in Provence, with its octagonal
cupola, and its porch of Charlemagne's era in Romano-Lombard style. It is
not unlikely that the earliest Provençal churches were built by Italian
architects, for Avignon was closely connected with the Papacy at that time,
and the Popes as we know were the especial patrons of the Masonic guild.
In the church of S. Trophime at Arles we have distinct signs of the
Comacines, in the lion-supported columns of the central porch, and the
frieze of sculpture above. There are three richly-sculptured porches; the
central door is divided in two like a Lombard window, by a slight column
which rests on kneeling figures, and has angels carved in the capital. The
richly ornate architrave has lions on each side of it.
The church at Cruas in Provence has three apses with Lombard archlets
round them all. Its dome is surrounded by a colonnade, and a superimposed
round turret with Lombard windows. The tower has the usual double-arched
windows.

Provence shows some beautiful specimens of Italian cloisters, at Aix, at
Arles, and at Fontifroide. The latter has a row of arches supported by
double columns of elegant slightness, and with foliaged capitals of varied
form and great freedom of design. Fergusson says that the freedom and
boldness are unrivalled. The cloister at Elne is still more varied and unique;
the capitals mix up Egyptian, classic, and mediæval art in a manner truly
unique.
As for towers, those left in Provence show a distinctly Lombard style. The
tower at Puissalicon near Beziers is perfect in every particular, with its
pillared Lombard windows increasing in width and lightness as they ascend.
From Provence, the land of the Popes, the Comacines penetrated further
into France. The church of S. Croix at Bordeaux, attributed to William the
Good, Duke of Aquitaine, who died in 877, has its round-arched porch,
decorated with a profusion of Comacine intrecci of intertwined vines; and
spiral pilasters grouped at the angles. Hope quotes the façade of the
cathedral of San Pietro at Angoulême, as the finest Lombard one existing.
There are numerous files of round arches, on elegant little columns, statues
in niches, rich bas-reliefs, friezes, and arabesques. The nave is divided into
three portions, each with a cupola. In this we see another step forward
towards the vaulted roof. At Tournus the arches are simply thrown across
the three divisions of the nave; here they are arched into the shape of a
dome. The tower is entirely Lombard in form. There are Lombard churches
at Poictiers, Puy, Auxerre, Caen, Poissy, Compiègne, etc., in all of which
the style is perfectly distinct from the Norman, as it was then developed;
and also from the later Gothic.

CHAPTER II

THE GERMAN LINK

The heading of this chapter implies nothing that can impugn the claims of
the Teutons to the perfecting of the Gothic style, which claims are
undoubtedly fair. It only implies that the pointed Gothic architecture was
not an invention of the Germans, so much as a national development of
some earlier form; and, like all developments, must have had some link
connecting it with that earlier source. Was the Comacine Guild that link?
Legends and traditions pointing to it are many, but, as usual, absolute proofs
are few. Some proofs might be found if, with a clue in one's hand, search
could be made among the archives of the German cities in which round-
arched Lombard-style churches were built before the pointed Gothic and
composite style came in. Some German savant should sift out certain
traditions, which, from want of authorities and unfamiliarity with the
language, I am not able to do. These are—
Firstly: That St. Boniface came to Italy before proceeding on his mission to
Germany in A.D. 715, and that Pope Gregory II. gave him his credentials,
instructions, etc., and sent with him a large following of monks, versed in
the art of building, and of lay brethren who were also architects, to assist
them.[96] This is the precise method in which St. Augustine and St. Benedict
Biscop were equipped and sent to their missions in England, and S.
Guillaume to his bishopric in Normandy. What resulted in England from the
missions of St. Augustine, St. Wilfrid, and St. Benedict? The cathedral of
Canterbury, the abbeys of Hexham, Lindisfarne and others—all distinctly
Lombard buildings. What did S. Guillaume do in Normandy? He built the
churches of Caen, Dijon, etc., also in pure Lombard style, not in the heavier
Norman by which the natives followed it. So in Germany we hear that
among the bishoprics founded by St. Boniface were Cologne, Worms, and
Spires,[97] precisely the cities which have remains of the earliest churches in
Lombard style. There are many other German churches, now fine Gothic
buildings, whose crypts and portals show remains of older round-arched
buildings.
Secondly: It is necessary to discover the precise connection of the Emperors
Charlemagne, Otho, and the German monarchs who successively ruled in
Lombardy, with the Masonic guild there. Whether, as they employed them
in the Italian part of their kingdom, they did not also employ them across
the Alps.

Thirdly: To find out whether, when Albertus Magnus went back to Cologne
from Padua, he had not become a Magister in the Masonic guild, as many
monks were, and whether he propagated the tenets of the brotherhood in
Germany.
Certain proof exists that he designed the choir of the cathedral there, if
nothing more. He also wrote a book entitled Liber Constructionum Alberti,
which afterwards became the handbook for Gothic work. It is probable that
this was in great part borrowed from an earlier Italian work on the
construction of churches, named L' Arcano Magistero. This, however, was a
secret book of the guild, and was kept most strictly in the hands of the
Magistri themselves. Kügler relates that in 1090 a citizen of Utrecht killed a
bishop, who had taken L' Arcano Magistero away from his son who was an
architect. I am strongly of opinion that Albertus Magnus was much
connected with the importation of Freemasons into Germany.
Fourthly: To discover whether in the cities where great buildings went on
for many years, there remains any trace of the same threefold Masonic
organization, which we find in the Italian cathedral-building towns; and
whether the administration thereof was jointly managed by the Magistri or
head architects, and the patrons or civic authorities of the city in which the
buildings were carried on.
All these things can only be verified, in case the works of contemporary
chroniclers still exist, or if there remain any traces of archives of so early a
date.
As far as style in building goes to prove anything, the Lombards certainly
preceded the native Gothic architects in Germany. Hope enumerates several
churches, such as those at Spires, Worms, Zurich, and several old ones at
Cologne, built before or about the Carlovingian era, which have every sign
of Lombard influence.
The Gross Münster of Zurich was begun in 966 as a thank-offering of the
Emperor Otho for his victories in Italy, and its plan, arches, windows,
towers (excepting only the climatic addition of the pointed roofs) are all in
Lombard style. The cloister adjoining it is very Italian, with its double
columns and its sculptured capitals. Now, as Otho granted a special charter
to the Masonic guild of Lombardy, it is natural to suppose that when he

wanted a church built, he would employ this valuable class of his new
subjects. At Basle we have a distinct sign of the Comacine Masters in the
intrecci and other symbols sculptured round the Gallus-pforte of the
cathedral, while in the crypt are two carved lions which were once beneath
the columns of the door. They were removed in the restoration of the
cathedral, after the earthquake of 1356. These lions are precisely the
counterparts of those in the doorways of Modena and Verona. But it is at
Cologne, the city of Albertus Magnus, that the Lombard style is
unmistakable. Can one look at the three apses of the churches of the
Apostles and of St. Martin, with the round arches encircling them, and little
pillared galleries above, or at the double-arched windows in the towers,
without at once recalling the Romanesque churches of Lucca, Arezzo, and
Pisa, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries?[98]
Santa Maria del Campidoglio at Cologne, which was founded by Plectrude,
wife of Pepin, has the same Lombard galleries running round the apses, and
Cunibert's church in its western door shows not only pure Comacine
sculpture, but the characteristic lion of Judah between the column and the
arch. S. Andrea and S. Pantaleone, both founded in 954 by Bishop Bruno,
brother of Otho the Great, were in the same style. This group of buildings
all in one city, and all founded under the Emperors who ruled in Italy, surely
suggest that when Charlemagne took over the builders for Aix-la-Chapelle,
they as usual left their school and laborerium there, and that Otho and his
successors in their turn had not far to go for architects.

Palazzo del Popolo and Palazzo Comunale,
Todi.
See pages 137 and 257.

If their churches are not enough, the civil architecture of that epoch also
affords proof of Lombard influence in Germany. Compare the windows and
style of the ancient dwelling-house at Cologne which Fergusson illustrates,
p. 590, with those of any Lombard building whatsoever, from the Palace of
King Desiderius in the eighth century to the Bargello of Florence in the
thirteenth, and you will find them identical. The only German innovation is
in the high gabled roof. Again, compare St. Elizabeth's home, the Castle on
the Wartburg, with the ancient Communal Palace at Todi, or at Perugia, or
other Lombard building of the twelfth century, and its genesis will at once
be seen.[99]

Ferd. Pitou, author of the fine monograph on the Cathedral of Strasburg,
confirms the presence of Italian builders in Germany, not only in the time of
the Carlovingians and the line of Otho, but also in the later times of the
Swabian dynasty. He says, when speaking of the works at Strasburg, that
"colonies of artisans, chiefly sent from Lombardy and other parts, where
church-building was prevalent, accompanied the monks and ecclesiastics
who directed the work. These spiritual leaders, however, had all the glory of
the buildings up to about the end of the twelfth century, when ogival
architecture arose. These Lombard colonies pushed on beyond the Rhine, to
the Elbe, the Oder, and the Vistula, and even penetrated to the forests and
lands of Sarmatia and Scythia."
There seems little doubt that the German lodges founded by the Comacine
emigrations took root, and became in time entirely national. Traditions are
many, and most of them point back to Italy. For instance, legend says a
brotherhood of stone-carvers existed in Spires and Bamberg from the time
when those cathedrals were begun. Others say that Albertus Magnus on his
return from Padua formed the first Masonic association in Germany,
making special laws and obtaining especial privileges for the immense
number of builders he collected to put into execution his cathedral at
Cologne.[100] Again, L' Abbé de Grandidier, writing to a lady in November
1778, tells her that he has discovered an ancient document three centuries
old, which shows that the much-boasted society of the Freemasons is
nothing but a servile imitation of an ancient and humble confraternity of
real builders whose seat was anciently in Strasburg. Hope, however, says
that the Strasburg lodge, which was the earliest acknowledged German one,
was first recognized by a legal act executed at Ratisbon in 1458, and that
the Emperor Maximilian ratified and confirmed the act by a diploma given
at Strasburg in 1498.
My theory is this, that in their early emigrations the Comacine Masters
founded the usual lodges; that the Germans entered their schools and
became masters in their turn; that in the end the German interest
outweighed the foreign element in the brotherhood, and the Germans,
wishing to nationalize an art which they had so greatly developed, split off
from the universal Masonic Association, as the Sienese builders did in
Siena in the fourteenth century, and formed a distinct national branch: that
this decisive break probably took place at Strasburg, and that other lodges

followed suit and nationalized themselves in their turn. No doubt some
German searcher into archives may arise, who will do for Cologne and
Strasburg what Milanesi has done for Siena, and Cesare Guasti for
Florence, and so throw light on the complicated organization of patrons,
architects, builders, and sculptors which banded together under one rule, to
build the multiplex and grand old cathedrals.

CHAPTER III

THE ORIGIN OF SAXON ARCHITECTURE (A

SUGGESTION)

BY THE REV. W. MILES BARNES[101]

Wherever the Romans planted colonies, there they established Collegia;
without its colleges Roman society was incomplete; the Collegium was an
element essential to Roman life.
The Collegium was a corporation or guild of persons associated in support
of a common object; there were colleges of artists, of architects, builders,
and artisans, as well as colleges associated with the administration and
government, with religion and law.
The Collegium consisted of Collegæ or sodales (fellows, as we should term
them), with a president who was styled "Magister"; the Collegium was
recognized by the State, which confirmed the regulations made by the
members for the government of their body, provided they were in
conformity with the laws of the land. There is evidence that Roman
Collegia were established in Britain shortly after its conquest by the
Romans, and there was certainly a Collegium fabrorum in Britain in the
reign of Claudius, the first Roman emperor to whom the island was subject.

Under the direction of the Roman college, the Britons as builders reached a
high degree of excellence in their craft, "so that when the cities of the
empire of Gaul and the fortresses on the Rhine were destroyed, Constantius
Chlorus, A.D. 298, sent to Britain for and employed British architects in
repairing and re-edifying them" (Archæologia, vol. ix. p. 100).
Mr. Coote affirms that Collegia existed here after the final departure of the
Romans from the island, and that the Saxons found them here, and did not
interfere with them. Now if Collegia fabrorum, which certainly existed in
Britain throughout the Roman occupation, were still in existence during the
Saxon occupation, it needs explanation why the earliest missionaries to the
Saxons had to bring or to send abroad for workmen to build churches.
On the Continent the barbarians who overran Italy dreaded the influence of
the Collegia, and vigorously suppressed them, prohibiting them everywhere
under the hardest penalties; under such circumstances we can understand
that the societies in Rome could scarcely escape observation, and we shall
be prepared to hear that the college of architects and builders in that city
removed from thence and took refuge elsewhere. According to tradition
they settled at or near Comum, where in mediæval times, under the title of
Comacine Masters, they gained fame as architects, and their services were
in much request throughout the Continent and beyond it. Had the
barbarians, however, treated the Roman colleges with the same indifference
as the Saxons are reputed to have shown towards them in England, all
guilds of artists and artisans must, for a time at least, have ceased to exist,
or have removed from Rome, where there was no longer any appreciation
of art, or demand for their services.
It is true there is no documentary evidence to prove the continuous
existence of the Collegia from Roman to mediæval times, or to show that
the Roman college, which removed to Comum, was identical with the
Comacine Guild which emerged from the darkness which shrouds the
history of those early times;—there is, however, such evidence as can be
derived from the similarity of the institutions, in their aims and
constitutions. In the latter institution even the title of Magister was retained,
though the use of the term was no longer limited to the president of the
body, every competent and fully instructed member of the society was
admitted to the order of Magistri,[102]—possibly because these members

formed the governing body—and the president became a Grand Master. The
members generally were called Liberi muratori—Freemasons—because
they were not subject to the sumptuary and other laws which regulated the
work and pay of ordinary workmen.[103]
Comum, which possessed all the privileges of a Roman municipium, stood
at the head of Lacus Larii—the Lake of Como—on the northern shores of
which, from Como to the island of Comacina, P. Strabo and C. Scipio
settled Greek colonies, which Julius Cæsar added to and consolidated. The
names of villages on these shores of the lake are still some guide to its
extent and limits. Comum was made the chief seat of the colony.
After the fall of the Empire, this Romano-Greek colony seems to have
withstood the attacks of the barbarians, and preserved its independence for
a long time. At the time of the invasion of Italy by the Longobards, the
whole of the northern end of the lake was in the hands of the imperial
(Byzantine) party, and it was not until the year 586 that the island of
Comacina fell into the hands of the Longobard King Autharis, though the
lake and country northwards of the island seem to have still continued
under imperial rule. The country around Comum, therefore, remained in
comparative quiet, and if much progress in art was not possible, there at
least it did not become altogether degenerate.
The Greek influence was evidently strong in the colony. Even the bishop in
the latter end of the fifth century was a Greek, for S. Abbondio, who died
Bishop of Comum in 489, had previously held the bishopric of
Thessalonica; possibly other bishops of that diocese were of the same
nationality: it would be surprising if the Roman architectural college, which
took refuge there, had been altogether unaffected by it, particularly as the
Romans derived their knowledge of architecture as well as of art from the
Greeks, and Greek architecture was at all times treated by the great Roman
architects with respect, as we learn from Vitruvius; besides, with the fall of
the Empire, all progress in Roman art had ceased, and Byzantium was the
quarter to which men looked for instruction in Christian and secular art.[104]
It could only be that the work of a Roman society of architects in the midst
of a Greek colony would show marked traces of Byzantine influence, and
none the less because in all probability there were Byzantine societies of a
similar kind beside it.

Müller says, after the fall of Rome, Constantinople was regarded as the
centre of mechanical and artistic skill, and a knowledge of art radiated from
it to distant countries.[105]
Let us turn our attention now to Britain. The Italian chroniclists relate that
Pope Gregory in A.D. 598 sent over the monk Augustine to convert the
British, and with him several of the fraternity of Liberi muratori
(Freemasons), so that the converts might speedily be provided with
churches, oratories, and monasteries; also that Augustine, in 604,
despatched the priest Lorenzo and the monk Pietro back to Rome with a
letter to Pope Gregory, begging him to send more architects and workmen,
which he did.[106] We shall presently see, that although Bede does not say in
so many words that Augustine was accompanied by architects and builders,
yet that is the only inference which can be drawn from his words, and from
Pope Gregory's instructions to Mellitus.
It was a common practice in mediæval times for missionaries, whether
bishops or monks, to have in their train builders and stone-cutters, and they
themselves were often skilful architects. St. Hugh of Lincoln was not the
only bishop who could plan a church, instruct the workmen, and handle a
hod.[107]
Even female saints appear to have included in their retinue, persons who
were capable of building churches, though the followers of St. Modwen,
[108]
who, on landing in England from Ireland about A.D. 500, left her
attendants to erect a church at Streneshalen, near the Arderne forest, while
she went to visit the king, may have been only capable of building in
wattle-work or in wood, "of hewn oak covered with reed," "after the
manner of the Scots." Bede (iii. 25) describes the church of Lindisfarne as
"a church of stone," that material not being usual amongst the Britons (iii.
4); still it is one instance among many, of the prevalence of the custom for
missionaries, whether priests, monks, or nuns, to take in their train on their
missionary journeys workmen experienced in building, and to employ them
where necessary to build churches for their converts.
Professor Merzario states, on the authority of ancient MSS., that the
architects and builders sent were Liberi muratori. Now, the members of the
Comacine Society were known and are described in ancient MSS. under

that title; besides, what other guild would Gregory be likely to invite to
send members to join the mission?—were there indeed any other building
guilds existing at the time, except the Byzantine societies. It is certainly not
probable that Gregory would have invited Greek etairia to send members
with the Roman mission, to build churches "after the Roman manner,"
which is what the first builders in Saxon England did, and in preference to
builders belonging to a society which was of Roman origin, and held all the
traditions of the Roman school of architecture.
But without the record of the Italian chroniclists it would have been clear to
any careful reader that architects accompanied Augustine, and other early as
well as the late missionaries to England. The first evidence will be found in
Bede (i. 26), where it is stated that after King Ethelbert had been converted
to the faith, the missioners built churches and repaired old Romano-British
churches in places whither they came, for their converts to worship in.
And again (i. 30), Gregory instructs Mellitus not to destroy the idol temples,
but if well built to cleanse them and put altars in them, and convert them
into churches. Gregory states that he decided on this course after mature
deliberation; which shows that Gregory knew that many of the old Roman
temples were still in use, and that Mellitus had with him architects who
were qualified to carry out the necessary repairs to them.

Fiesole Cathedral Interior.

Again, in 601, Pope Gregory sent Paulinus and others to assist Augustine in
his work, and by them he sent sacred vessels, ornaments for the church, and
vestments. Now experienced architects and builders to build churches for
the converts were as necessary as the ornaments wherewith to furnish them,
and it is fair to conclude that this essential had not been overlooked, and
that there were with those who brought the ornaments, men competent to
erect the churches to place them in. Indeed it seems possible that Paulinus
himself may have graduated in the Comacine school of architecture; it is a
curious fact that he is spoken of under the title of Magister,[109] the title
given to fully-instructed members of that order, and we know that many
monks were amongst the enrolled members of the Comacine body.
The strongest evidence, of course, would be the evidence of his work as a
builder; unfortunately very little of that remains—though the little we know
about it is consistent with the fact that either he was of that order, or he had

Comacine Masters with him. The Whalley cross which is attributed to him
is ornamented with that peculiar convoluted ornament which is found in
early Comacine work; and he was certainly a great builder of churches, of
the precise type which the Comacines would have built at that time. Bede
relates that he built in Lincoln a stone church of beautiful workmanship, in
which he consecrated Honorius, Bishop of Canterbury, in the place of
Justus. The "beautiful workmanship" implies an experienced architect. Bede
who thus describes it was a competent witness, and in all probability he
knew the church, which was in his time roofless. Again, King Edwin under
the direction of Paulinus built a "large and noble church of stone" at York
(ii. 14). At this time the Comacine builders had not begun to build in the
style which was afterwards known as the Lombard or Romanesque style,
and of which indeed they were the authors, and this church seems to have
been an Italian Basilican church with an atrium at the west end as was
customary in churches of the period; this particular atrium being built round
the little wooden oratory which Edwin had put up when under the
instruction of the bishop, before his baptism, the oratory being in the midst
of the open court.
The Basilican church of the period has been so often described that it will
not be necessary to give a detailed description of it. It generally consisted of
a nave, with two aisles separated from the nave by arcades; at one end
(sometimes at both) the building terminated in an apse, of which the floor
was raised; this raised floor in later times projected into the nave and was
protected by a railing.[110] The altar was in the centre of the string of the arc
of the apse, and round the arc were seats for the clergy, the bishop's throne
being in the centre, in the place which would be occupied in a Roman
heathen Basilica by the presiding magistrate. Beneath the raised floor of the
apse was the confessio or crypt, in which the body or relics of the saint to
whom the church was dedicated were deposited. Plans of several Saxon
crypts still remaining in England will be found in Mr. Micklethwaite's
valuable paper in the Archæological Journal, New Series, vol. iii. No. 4.
At a little later period a further change was made; on the floor of the nave
from the chancel westward a space was divided off by a low screen, in each
side of which was a bema or pulpit; from which the Gospel and Epistle
were read, and the services sung by the Canonical singers.[111] A very
complete screen of a little earlier date than St. Augustine may still be seen

in the church of San Clemente, Rome; the ancient church from which it was
removed is underneath the present church; westward of the church was the
atrium, an open court surrounded by a colonnade; the atrium seems to have
been used in some British churches for the canons, who had cells round it.

S. Clemente, Rome. Interior showing ancient
screen.

St. Cadoc early in the sixth century built a church in Lancarvan monastery,
which monastery he rebuilt; each of the thirty-six canons had a residence in
atrio,[112] the residence being probably a cell with a door opening into the
atrium, such as may still be observed in some old monastic cloisters on the
Continent. There is evidence of an atrium at the west end of Brixworth
church, and the construction of the basements of the towers at St. Mary,
Deerhurst, at Monkswearmouth, and Barton-on-Humber, seems to show
that there was a similar construction at the west end of those churches.
The church of S. Ambrogio, Milan, possesses an atrium built by the
Comacines, but it is of much later date, and would therefore afford a
general idea of an early Saxon church atrium only in plan.

Though we have little ornament of the early Saxon period, and that little is
mainly limited to the ornamentation on early Christian crosses and fonts, it
is clearly of the same character as Comacine work. The convoluted
ornament on Paulinus' cross at Whalley has been noticed; similar work may
be seen on the Kirkdale cross, Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses, Crowle and
Yarm crosses, and others in England and Ireland. On the Bewcastle and
Ruthwell crosses there are stiff flower convolutions with birds and beasts
on the branches. Collingham cross has interlacing monsters, and on others
are panels sculptured in representation of Scripture subjects and characters.
Some of these crosses are decorated with another and very mark-worthy
ornament, consisting of bands of interlaced work. These bands are
sometimes of a single strand, but more frequently of three strands. An
interlaced ornament of this kind was found on the Corinthian base of a
column in the church of S. Prassede in Rome. On comparing these
interlaced patterns and convolutions with the carving on the ambo in the
Basilica of S. Ambrogio, Milan, which is Comacine work, it will be seen
how nearly they correspond; whilst the ornaments and sculptured figures in
the façade and round the portals of the doors of S. Michele, Pavia, an early
Lombard church of the eighth century, show treatment similar to Saxon
work. It appears to me possible that this façade has been rebuilt presumably
about the twelfth century, but there can be little doubt that the carvings as
well as a considerable portion of the church itself are of the earlier date.[113]
All the crosses above-mentioned bear Runic inscriptions upon them, but on
examination it will be seen that these inscriptions are generally by another
hand, and of ruder workmanship than the carving of the crosses. Sometimes
they are little more than scratches, and in one, namely, the Yarm cross, a
panel was evidently left by the carver for the inscription, which was
afterwards cut upon it, but being too small, the last two lines had to be
compressed to be got into the space. In the Kirkdale and Lancaster crosses,
the runes are certainly inferior in workmanship, and they seem to have been
an afterthought. The borders on which they are cut do not appear as if they
were originally intended to bear them.
The date of the fragment of the Yarm cross is fixed by the inscription, if it
has been correctly read, being dedicated to Bishop Trumberht, Bishop of
Hexham, who lived towards the close of the seventh century.

The ornament on Saxon fonts, not being so well known, would require
illustrations beyond the scope of this article, to render remarks upon them
intelligible. One instance may, however, be given of the similarity of
ornament in early Italian and Saxon carving. Both the Saxon font in Toller
Fratrum church, Dorset, and the well-head (of the eighth century) at the
office of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rome, are decorated with precisely
similar patterns. Interlacing bands in three strands, bordered by a cable
moulding, encircle the top of each. Similar ornament will be found in Saxon
MSS. of the eighth century in the British Museum Library, as in Evangelia
Sacra Nero, d. 4.
Besides the ornament on the ancient crosses and fonts, which clearly
belongs to the Saxon period, there are in our churches fragments of
ornament which in all probability are of that era.
The angel carved in stone, built into the north wall of Steepleton church,
near Dorchester, may have formed part of the tympanum of the doorway of
the Saxon church. Floating angels with their robes and legs bent upward
from the knee, precisely similar in treatment to the Steepleton angel, may
be seen in illuminations in Saxon MSS. in the British Museum. I have
examined them, but have mislaid my references to the press-marks. And in
the Museum of the Bargello at Florence is a small antique carving of Christ
in Glory (a vesica piscis enclosing the whole figure), and angels of this
form and attitude surrounding it with curiously drawn symbols of the four
evangelists. The angels in the east wall of Bradford-on-Avon church are of
a similar character.
This seems to be an instance of Byzantine ornament adopted by the Italian
builders. The convoluted and basket-work ornament may also have been
derived from the same source.
The stiff foliage and intrecciatura on Barnack church tower are rude
imitations of Comacine work.
Wherever the Comacines established themselves they founded lodges; to
each lodge a schola and a laborerium were attached, where the members
received instruction and training in the several branches of their craft. The
Comacines who settled with Augustine in the royal city of Canterbury, must
have established according to their custom a lodge and a schola in that city,

for there Wilfrid some seventy years later sent for architects and builders
(cœmentarii) to renew the Cathedral Church of York which had been built
by Paulinus, but possibly through increase of population was now
inadequate. The plan of the ancient church has been traced; it was Basilican
in form, with aisles and an apse.[114]
Wilfrid, Bishop of York for forty-three years, was, while still a young man,
sent to Rome as a companion to Biscop, a Saxon thane who was afterwards
Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow. There, says Bede, he spent some months
in the study of ecclesiastical matters. On his way home he remained in Gaul
for three years. When he returned to Britain at the expiration of that time,
King Alfred gave him land and the monastery of Ripon where he built a
spacious church, which excited universal astonishment and admiration;
though not so large as the church he afterwards built at Hexham, it was a
noble building. The apse with its altar was at the west end, and underneath
the apse was a confessio, which with its passages still exists. The round-
headed arches within the church were supported by lofty columns of
polished stone.
But beautiful as this church was, that at Hexham exceeded it. Eddius
Stephanus, precentor of York, the biographer of Wilfrid, and Richard of
Hexham, give enthusiastic descriptions of it which accord exactly with what
we know the Comacine church of the period to have been.[115]
From them we learn that St. Andrews, Hexham, built by Wilfrid, was a
Basilican church, and in one respect at least it was similar to Ripon; the
apse was at the west end, and beneath it was a crypt with passages around
it; the crypt with its passages is still to be seen. The proportions of the
church were however nobler and the details richer. The walls were covered
with square stones of divers colours and polished; the columns were also of
polished stone; the capitals of the columns, arches, and vault of apse, and
space over the apse-arch were decorated with sculptures and histories (i.e.
with paintings representing sacred scenes) all very splendid and very
beautiful, according to Eddius.
As regards the sculptures, the examples we have of Saxon sculptures show
them to have been generally vigorous, and often grotesque. A writer in
Archæologia, vol. viii. p. 174, states that in the vaults of Hexham there were

at the time he wrote many Roman inscriptions and grotesque carvings. The
capitals of columns in Saxon as well as in later times not infrequently bore
grotesque ornament for decoration, and it was commonly used for other
purposes; not even coffins were exempt from decorations of this nature.
Reginaldus de Coldingham (de virtutibus S. Cuthberti) describes the double
coffin of St. Cuthbert, the inner one being of black oak elaborately carved,
the subject of one of the carvings being a monk turned into a fox for
stealing new cheese.
As regards their paintings, the Comacines were rather given to colour—it
was in one of their churches, that of S. Maria del Tiglio, built by
Theodolinda, wife of King Autharis, that the Emperor Lothaire beheld a
brilliantly painted picture which adorned the vault of the apse and
represented "The three kings presenting gifts to the Child Jesus." The
picture moved the king to undertake the restoration of the church.
The Comacines also used frescoes in Theodolinda's palace at Monza in the
fifth and sixth centuries.
From the foregoing description of Hexham church by Eddius Stephanus, it
would appear that there were galleries over the aisles to which access was
gained by spiral stairways in the wall. Similar galleries and spiral stairway
still exist in the church of S. Agnese in Rome. In this church between the
nave and the aisles there is a double arcade of open arches one above the
other; the higher arcade on each side forms the front of the galleries—above
these is a clerestory. The church of S. Lorenzo at Verona, also a Comacine
church, contains a spiral stairway in the wall which led to the different
divisions in the women's gallery for the widows, matrons, and girls. So far I
have not heard of any ancient spiral stairways as still existing in any other
than in these Comacine churches.[116]

Tower of S. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna.

These galleries and arcades may be regarded as the original of the triforium.
Eddius relates that there were also bell-towers at Hexham of surprising
height, and this suggests reflections. Hexham was built about A.D. 674, early
in the Saxon period, and these tall towers were built wholly at that time.
What were they like? The early Comacine towers were built in several
stages; the lowest generally had either no windows or slits; the next stage
above had single-light windows, plain round-headed and straight-sided, as
if cut out of the wall; in the stages above the windows were of two or three
lights divided by colonnettes, the larger number of lights being in the
windows of the upper stages; in each stage there were commonly four
windows, one opening to each quarter of the compass. Wolstan's description
of the tower of Winchester answers very nearly to this. He says it consisted

of five storeys; in each were four windows looking towards the four
cardinal points, which were illuminated every night.
As examples of early Latin towers, the round towers of S. Apollinare
nuovo, and S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, and perhaps the square tower
of S. Giovanni Evangelista, may be given. Take any one of them, that of S.
Apollinare nuovo, for instance. Cut off the upper stages by holding the hand
above the eyes, and regard only the lower stages with the single-light
windows, and you have a structure which might be Roman. It looks very
much older than the complete tower; and it is the same with well-known
Saxon towers in England, so that some persons have been misled into
thinking that the lowest stages with straight-cut single-light windows are
much older than the upper portion with double or treble-light windows—
which does not at all follow, at least not from that fact, for they might be of
the same date;—and they have argued that these lower stages both in Italy
and England are older than the upper ones, notwithstanding the
improbability that the old builders would place a heavy tower on walls
originally intended to carry only a light roof.
The Saxon towers have clearly a Latin or Comacine origin. The walls are
usually of stone grouted in the old Roman manner; and when Lombard
windows, of two or more lights, with a column dividing them, are used,
they are, as a rule, in the upper and not in the lower stages. Unfortunately
we have no towers of the earliest Saxon period still standing; but the
resemblance between the later Saxon and the early Italian towers is
apparent. The same may be said of the later Comacine towers, S. Satyrus,
Milan, for instance (see plate), which Cattaneo assigns to the ninth century,
and regards as the prototype of Lombard towers; take away the little pensile
arch ornament, which was characteristic of the Comacine style known as
Lombard, and you have a tower which might be Saxon.
Whilst Wilfrid was engaged in building Hexham, his friend and companion
in travel, Biscop, was building the monastery and monastic church of
Wearmouth. Biscop was a Saxon thane of Northumberland; he became a
monk of the monastery of S. Lerino, and, according to Henry of
Huntingdon, on his return from Rome, King Egfrid gave him sixty hides of
land, on which he built the monastery of Wearmouth. Eight years later, the

king granted him more land at Jarrow, upon which he built a monastery and
church. The former was dedicated to St. Peter, the latter to St. Paul.

Tower of S. Satyrus, Milan.

On obtaining possession of the lands at Wearmouth, Biscop, according to
Bede,[117] set out for Gaul, to find builders to build the monastic church,
"juxta Romanorum quem semper amabat morem."
It might be asked, If there was at Canterbury a Comacine school of
architecture whose special function it was to build on the Roman model,
why did not Bishop Benedict send there for architects and masons? The
simple answer is, that Wilfrid had already engaged them for his work at
Hexham. Wilfrid was building both a church and monastery there, and
evidently had employment for every hand he could obtain.

The building of Hexham was commenced in 674, and it was not till that
date that Biscop was in a position to engage workmen for Wearmouth, so
that Wilfrid was just beforehand with Biscop, who in consequence had to
look elsewhere for his architects, and he set out for Gaul to engage them
there.
Now it does not at all follow that because Biscop brought his masons from
Gaul, therefore they were not Comacines. It was as easy to find Comacines
in Gaul as in England. We find them settled there at a later date, when they
were called artefici Franchi. There is nothing to show definitely, but there
is presumptive evidence of a settlement of a guild in Gaul at this time, and
it was probably some of the French Comacines that Biscop employed, for
Biscop insisted on a church built after the Roman manner, a Basilica; he
would have nothing else, and no builders could build a Basilica better than
the successors to the Roman college of architecture.[118]
It seems further probable that these Gallican architects were Comacines,
from the fact that they followed the practice of the Comacines in
establishing a schola at Wearmouth, possibly amongst the monks, for
Naitan, King of the Picts, sent to Cedfrid, who succeeded Benedict as
abbot, and begged him to send architects to him to build a church in his
nation "after the Roman manner," and the abbot complied with his request.
Mr. Micklethwaite states that "the doorway under the tower of the church at
Monkswearmouth in Durham was doubtless a part of the church which
Benedict Biscop erected there in the seventh century in imitation of the
Basilicas in Rome. The twined serpents with birds' beaks on the right
doorpost are, as we know from MSS. of that age, singularly characteristic of
the style."[119] There is a similar design on the architrave of an ancient door
in San Clemente, Rome.
The decoration of the church seems to have been in the highest style of
ecclesiastical art of the age. Even glass-makers, who might have been
Comacines, were brought from France to make glass for glazing the
windows of the church and of the cells of the monks—no glass had ever
before in Saxon times been used in England for windows—and even
paintings were brought from abroad for the decoration of the walls. Bede, in
his sermon on the anniversary of the death of Benedict, states that he

imported paintings of holy histories, which should serve not only for the
beautification of the church, but for the instruction of those who looked
upon them; vases, vestments, and other things necessary for the service of
the church, were also brought from Gaul, and those things which could not
be obtained there, were brought "from the country of the Romans."

S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna.

The church was pronounced by monkish writers to be for two centuries the
grandest and most beautiful church on this side of the Alps; even Roman
architects admitted that they who saw Hexham church might imagine
themselves amidst Roman surroundings.[120]
There is one point in connection with Saxon architecture not touched. In
much of the Saxon building now standing there are projecting ribs of stone
in the masonry which are commonly known under the name of pilaster
strips. The masonry in which it occurs is perhaps always late Saxon work.
The strips seem to be similar to the pilasters in the front of Lombard
churches; in the latter they are more ornamental in detail, and are often in
the form of shafts occasionally decorated.[121]

The external arcading, as in Bradford-on-Avon, seems to be a modification
of late Roman work, followed in various forms in Comacine, Lombard,
Saxon, and Norman work. In its original form it may be seen on the exterior
of the Basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, where external
arcadings in the masonry of the walls will be noticed both in the walls of
the aisles and in the walls of the nave above the aisles, the arcading being
carried on pilasters built into, and forming part of, the walls; the pilasters
with the arcading serving to give rigidity to the walls, enabling them to
resist the outward thrust of the roof as buttresses were intended to do in
later times. This church was built about A.D. 300.
In Comacine or early Lombard churches there was an arcading on steps in
the gable of the west front, the steps giving access to the roof on the
outside. In later Lombard churches this arcading became simply an
ornamental detail to the front. To this type belongs the arcading on
Bradford-on-Avon church. In Norman churches it degenerated into a corbel
table, in which the shafting was omitted, the heads of the arches being
supported on corbels.
The Byzantine character of some of the ornaments in Comacine and Saxon
work is accounted for by the fact that the Comacine order found refuge in a
Romano-Greek colony in which the Greek influence was strong, and in all
probability there were Byzantine guilds working alongside of it. That there
is a trace of Oriental form in it is not surprising, when it is remembered how
much communication there was between all parts of the Christian world
notwithstanding the difficulties of travelling. Teliau, David, and Paternus
journeyed to Jerusalem. On arriving at the Temple they were placed in three
ancient stalls in the Temple, and after expounding the Scriptures were
elected by the people and consecrated bishops (Vita S. Teliaui Episcopi).
Columbanus, an Irish saint, established a monastery amidst the ruins of the
ancient Roman city of Bobbio in Italy. St. Cumean, born in 592, obtained
possession of a deserted church in the same city, restored it and served it.
According to the chronicles of Fontenelle, bishops and clergy, abbots and
monks came from all parts, even from Greece and Armenia, to visit Richard
Duke of Normandy, brother-in-law of our Saxon King Ethelred and a great
church-builder; the Oriental character of some of the ornaments in Oxford
cathedral, which Ethelred rebuilt, is attributed to the influence of Richard

and his Oriental visitors, for Ethelred took refuge in Normandy for a time to
avoid the Danes.
Some Saxons left England at the Norman Conquest and settled in
Constantinople, where they built a church for themselves and other
members of the Saxon colony there.
St. Germanus when he left Britain went to Ravenna, then the royal city.
Asser relates that Alfred received embassies daily from foreign parts, from
the Tyrrhenian Sea to the farthest limits of Spain, and that he had seen
letters and presents which had been sent to the king by Abel, Patriarch of
Jerusalem.
Many British monks, some of whose lives and legends may still be found in
early MSS., travelled to the south and east, and all over the known world,
and being skilled in architecture, might readily have made copies of
ornaments which took their fancy when travelling in Eastern countries, and
introduced them on their return.
Let us restate the argument briefly—
1. When Italy was overrun by the barbarians, Roman Collegia were
everywhere suppressed.
2. The architectural college of Rome is said to have removed from that city
to the republic of Comum.
3. In early mediæval times, one of the most important Masonic guilds in
Europe was the Society of Comacine Masters, which in its constitution,
methods, and work was essentially Roman, and seems to have been the
survival of this Roman college.
4. Italian chroniclists assert that architects and masons accompanied
Augustine to England, and later Italian and continental writers of repute
adopt that view.
5. Whether this is proved or not, it was customary for missionaries to take
in their train persons experienced in building, and if Augustine did not do
so, his practice was an exception to what seems to have been a general rule.
Besides, a band of forty monks would have been useless to him unless some

of them could follow a secular calling useful to the mission, for they were
unacquainted with the British language, and could not act independently.
6. Masonic monks were not uncommon, and there were such monks
associated with the Comacine body; so that qualified architects were easily
found in the ranks of the religious orders.
7. From Bede's account of the settlement of Augustine's mission in Britain,
it seems clear that he must have brought Masonic architects with him.
8. Gregory would be likely to choose architects for the mission from the
Comacine Order, which held the old Roman traditions of building, rather
than those of a Byzantine guild, and the record of their work in Britain
proves that he did.
9. In Saxon as in the earlier Comacine carvings, there are frequent
representations of fabulous monsters, symbolical birds and beasts, the
subjects of some of these carvings being suggested, apparently, by the
"Physiologus," which had a Latin origin.
10. In the writings of the Venerable Bede, and Richard, Prior of Hagustald,
we meet with phrases and words which are in the Edict of King Rotharis of
643, and in the Memoratorio of 713 of King Luitprand, which show that
these writers were familiar with certain terms of art used by the Comacine
Masters.[122]

CHAPTER IV

THE TOWERS AND CROSSES OF IRELAND

The saints or early missionaries seem to be as closely connected with the
first church-building in Ireland as they were in Gaul, Normandy, and
England; only by some curious circumstance, Ireland became christianized

and built her churches some centuries earlier than England and Normandy.
It is my conviction that in casting off the legends connected with saints, we
have also cast off much real history belonging to the early missions. Now,
the preceding chapter shows that it is precisely to these first missionaries
that we are indebted for the imported architecture of the pre-Norman date in
England, and presumably also in Ireland. This architecture has been an
enigma and a stumbling-block to archæologists for ages; because while
rejecting everything connected with the saints as legend, they also reject the
only reasonable hypothesis of the genesis of these first stone buildings,
which sprang up in a country as yet only accustomed to build in wood or
earth.
The Round Towers of Ireland, for instance, have formed a greater puzzle to
antiquaries than the churches of Hexham or Lindisfarne—partly because of
their antiquity, and partly from their unlikeness to any local buildings of the
time. The theories in regard to them are wild beyond all probability. They
have been attributed: (1) By Henry O'Brien to the Tuatha De Danaan, a
Persian colony which is supposed to have built them for phallic worship. (2)
By Vellaney to the Phœnicians, the buildings being afterwards used by the
Druids as fire-towers. (3) By Dr. Lynch, Peter Walsh, Molyneux, etc., to the
Danes, as war-towers.
Petrie, with clearer arguments, claims them as Christian. In his Prize Essay
on the origin and uses of the Round Towers (A.D. 1820) he proves that no
buildings except these towers were known to have cement in pre-Christian
Ireland. For the Pagans and Druids have left us the great fortresses of Dun
Ængus, and Dun Connor on Aran Mor, and the great sepulchres of Dowth
and New Grange, all built without cement and of unhewn stones. Now the
Round Towers are of hewn stones closely fitted and cemented, till they are
solid as a rock, standing firm as ever, after their fifteen centuries of
existence. They are called in Ireland by the generic name of "cloic-theack,"
or bell-house, and are invariably found close to the ruins of a monastery or
a church. In some cases, like the one at Clonmacnoise, the church has
entirely disappeared, leaving only the graveyard to mark its site, and in the
graveyard a veritable Comacine cross!
It cannot be proved that the towers belong to an earlier age than the
churches attached, for we have a witness in the ruins themselves. The

masonry of the tower and the remaining walls of the church at Kilmacduagh
is identical, as are the later tower and church-porch at Roscrea—i.e. good,
solid opus gallicum.

Miss Stokes and the Rev. John Healy uphold the theory[123] of their being
towers of refuge in warlike times. They may well have been used as such,
on account of their strength, and also their proximity to the churches, which
were always, in the Middle Ages, inviolable cities of refuge. This, however,
does not affect our question as to how the towers came into Ireland, and
whence came their builders. In the first place, where can similar towers be
found dating from times contemporary? The answer is decided: in Italy. In
Ravenna and Lombardy, from the date A.D. 300 to the fifth and sixth
centuries; and they show just that Eastern touch which distinguishes the
Byzantine-Roman architecture at Ravenna, and has caused authors to seek
the origin of the Round Towers further east than Italy.
The next question that arises is: What was the point of contact between
Ireland and Italy? As in England and Normandy we shall, I believe, find it
in the first missions. The first Irish missionary was doubtless St. Patrick,
A.D. 373-464, who has been taken as the sign and symbol of Celticism. Yet
he was not an Irishman by birth. His father was a Christian named
Calphurnius, his mother was niece to St. Martin of Tours; he was
consequently of continental origin. His birthplace was Nempthur near
Dumbarton, and while yet a boy he was carried a prisoner to Ireland, and
the heathendom there appealed so strongly to his feelings, that after his
release he was haunted by visions foretelling his future mission to convert
Ireland. Pope Celestin I. gave him his mission in about A.D. 430, and he
settled in Armagh, where he laboured more than thirty years converting and
baptizing both kings and people. He founded schools and built churches.
Probably the first worship was conducted in the open air, where a cross was
set up, as by the English missionaries. The cross was of the Byzantine form
used at that time in Italy; but on its adoption by the northern saint-
missionaries it became known in Britain as the Irish cross. The ancient
Italian one, once in the Forum at Rome, is of identical style, though of
earlier date. St. Patrick's influence remained and spread. Many of his
followers in the ministry made the pilgrimage to Rome which he had made,
and so great was the fame of sanctity of these Irish preaching brethren, that
they were reverenced in Italy even more than in their native land.

S. Fredianus became Bishop of Lucca, and Columban was Abbot of
Bobbio. It is to these later missionaries rather than to St. Patrick himself
that we must look, as having introduced Italian or Comacine architecture
into Ireland. That they were addicted to church-building is evident from
their at once setting to work wherever they went; S. Fredianus building a
church and monastery at Lucca; St. Columban doing the same at Bobbio.
And what architects did they employ? Surely some members of the
Comacine Guild, or their monk colleagues. They had seen them at the court
of the Longobardic kings where they tarried and were entertained during
their journey to Rome. And seeing the beautiful churches and towers in
Italy, all made by the magic hands of this guild, is it not most likely that the
Pope, who patronized the guild as one of the most practical instruments in
christianization, should have counselled them to take back some Magistri
with them to Ireland? There is, I presume, no documentary proof of this, but
there are more imperishable witnesses in the works themselves. The only
difference between the Round Towers of Ireland and those of Italy in the
first five centuries after Christ is the conical roof, which is due entirely to
exigencies of climate. The hewing of the square stones, the close-fitting
masonry, the Roman cement, the simple arches of the windows with their
solidly cut supports, are all pure Lombard-Roman of the time when S.
Fredianus and Columban were in Italy. It is true that with this similarity
there is also a certain clumsiness of workmanship in the Irish towers, which
suggests that either the Italian architects imported by the Irish missionaries
were the less skilful men of the guild, or, what is more probable, they were
few, and had to train native and unskilled workmen to assist them; but the
style they aimed at, and the forms they used, are the early Italian ones of
from A.D. 300 to 500.
In Cormac's chapel at the Rock of Cashel we get the square tower such as
later Comacines used from the sixth to the tenth centuries, with the double-
arched window of the period; and the church beside it has the same signs.
Here are the string courses supported by the row of little arches, the
projecting apse, and the double-light windows, with only that same northern
desideratum—the high gable and sloping roof. Cormac was an early Bishop
of Cashel, who was killed in 907 A.D.

Look at the shrine of the Bell of St. Patrick, which I presume dates from
about the eighth century, i.e. the time of Fredianus, and you will see a fine
collection of Comacine intrecci or interlaced work in sculpture. As for the
crosses of Ireland, one may trace in them the development of Comacine
work, from the early Christian Roman style to the mediæval Lombard.
The beautifully illustrated article in the Studio for Aug. 15, 1898, by J.
Romilly Allen, F.S.A., shows the whole line. In the earliest form of Irish
cross, i.e. that where the cross and Christian symbols are merely cut into the
face of a slab of stone, such as in the cross at Reask, Co. Kerry, we see
precisely the primitive style of art shown in the Catacombs. The "Gurmarc"
stones have their prototype in the earliest Longobardic carving, such as the
pluteus of Theodolinda's first church at Monza. The smaller of the three
inscribed circles has an even more advanced Comacine intreccio enclosed
within the circle, while the cross of Honelt at Llantwit Major (Fig. 5) has a
splendid Comacine knot such as one sees on every Longobardic church,
placed beneath a very Byzantine geometrical design in which circles,
crosses, triangles, and three-fold knots are marvellously intermingled.
These are all stones merely incised, and foreshadow the predilection of the
Irish converts for the symbolism of the time, the cross of Christ within the
unending circle of eternity. The next development shown by Mr. Romilly
Allen is the upright cross slab at St. Madoes in Perthshire, where the cross
and the circle are in distinct relief and not merely incised. Here, instead of
the circle enclosing the Greek cross, it has become subordinate, and is
placed behind the arms of a Latin cross. In fact a complete Irish cross in
relief. But how is it adorned?—with splendid Comacine intrecci, and all the
symbolism so familiar to us in early Italian art. Here are the coiled serpent
and the dove above, with the four mystic beasts of the Apocalypse below,
two on each side of the stem of the cross; and the workmanship and designs
are literally identical with those of the sculptures on the façades of the first
church of S. Michele at Pavia, and S. Zeno at Verona, and that of S. Pietro
at Spoleto, all of the fifth and sixth centuries. (Spoleto church was rebuilt in
1329, but the ancient Lombard sculptures around the doorway were
preserved.)

Door of the Church of S. Zeno at Verona. A.D.
1139.
See page 166.

By the ninth and tenth centuries the Irish cross had reached its full
development. It was no longer a sign on a slab, but a beautiful upright
sculptured cross, with a circle crowning it like a halo, and suggesting the
eternity of the human cross of our Saviour. And here again the art is
precisely that of the Italian sculptors. There was a cross of earlier date than
either the cross of King Flami at Clonmacnoise, King's County, A.D. 904, or
the cross of Mucreadach at Monasterboice, Co. Louth, A.D. 924, in the
Roman Forum, of which the shape and ornaments are similar to both of
them. The cross of SS. Patrick and Columban at Kells has, too, all the
marks of the Comacine work in the eighth and ninth centuries, as one sees it

in the oldest churches at Como and Verona, at Toscanella and Spoleto. All
these things being considered, I think Irish archæologists would do well to
work up the undoubted connection of the early Irish missionaries with Italy,
and the influence their travels there had, not only on the religion, but the art
of Ireland. They might discover whether St. Columban, when King Agilulf
sheltered him at Pavia, took from the artists then at work at the wondrous
front of S. Michele, any ideas which he caused to be reproduced in the
crosses placed by him to sanctify the open-air worship of his Irish converts;
or whether he took a few monkish Magistri skilled in sculpture from his
monastery at Bobbio to carve those very crosses, and to build the first stone
churches, that now lie in ruins at the feet of the rugged old towers.

BOOK III
ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTS

CHAPTER I

TRANSITION PERIOD

THE LODGES OF BERGAMO AND CREMONA
1. 1137 Magister Fredus or Gufredus Built S. Maria
Maggiore,
Bergamo.
2. 1212 M. Adam of Arogno Chief architect of
Trent cathedral.
3. 1274 M. Jacobus Porrata of Como Made the wheel
window at
Cremona.
4. 1289 M. Bonino with Guglielmo da Made the stairway on
Campione the north of
Cremona cathedral.

5. 1329 M. Ugo or Ugone of Campione Sculptured the tomb
of Longhi degli
Alessandri at
Bergamo.
6. 1340 M. Giovanni, son of Ugone Built the Baptistery
and façade of S.
Maria Maggiore at
Bergamo.
7. M. Antonio, son of Jacopo da Worked under
Castellazzo in Val d'Intelvi Giovanni di Ugo in
8. M. Comolo, son of M. Gufredo building Bellano
da Asteno church.

9. M. Nicolino, son of Giovanni
Helped Giovanni di
10 1351 M. Antonio
sons of Cattaneo Ugone in the
11 M. of Campione façade at Bergamo.
Giovanni

12 M. Niccola, son of Giovanni Worked at the church
13 M. Pergandi, another son of of St. Anthony of
Ugone Padua in 1263.
14 1360 M. Giovanni, son of Giovanni da Finished his father's
Campione work at Bergamo.

THE ANTELAMI SCHOOL.—PARMA
1. 1178 Magister Benedetto Pulpit of Parma cathedral
da Antelamo (1178). Baptistery of Parma
(1196).

2 & 3. 1181 M. Martino and M.
Otto Bono
4. 1256 M. Giorgio da Iesi Fermo cathedral (1227). Iesi
(1237). Parma (1256).
5. 1280 M. Giovanni Bono Chief architect at Padua (1246),
da Bissone at Parma (1280).
6. M. Guido Worked with Giovanni Bono at
Padua and Pistoja.
7. M. Niccolao, son of
Giovanni
This group forms the link with
8. M. Bernardino Pistoja and the Tuscan
schools.
9. M. Johannes
Benvenuti

PADUA
1. Magister Graci Employed.
2. 1263 M. Egidio, son of
M. Graci
3. M. Ubertino, son
of Lanfranco
All worked together at the church of
4. M. Nicola, son of St. Anthony.
Giovanni
5. M. Pergandi, son
of Ugone of
Mantua

6. 1264 M. Zambono, or Father of M. Nicola. These two form
Giovanni the link with Parma.

1264 Bono da Bissone,
near Como
7. 1264 M. Benedetto da Worked at Padua with Zambono. At
Verona Verona he is styled Benedetto da
Antelamo. Probably a descendant
of the one at Parma.

The rise of the Romanesque is the stepping-stone to the Renaissance of Art
in Italy. We need not enter at length into all the vexed questions of how this
Renaissance began, and which school was the link between that and classic
art, but a slight glance must be given to the subject. Some make everything
begin from Niccolò Pisano, as though he suddenly sprang ancestorless out
of the darkness, a full-fledged artist. Some date the rise of art from the
Byzantines in Aquileja and Venice; others again from the union of the
Normans with the Saracens in Sicily.
First, as to Pisa. There are no records or signs of a school of art indigenous
to Pisa, before the building of the Duomo there. Both Morrona[124] and
Ridolfi, the historians of the respective cities, have well searched the
archives in both Pisa and Lucca, but can find no single reference to any
native artist before the Duomo of Pisa was begun, or even of any Pisan who
worked at that building as early as the eleventh century. All the first
architects seem to have been imported. Morrona asserts that when the
cathedral was begun "the most famous Masters (mark the word) from
foreign (stranieri) parts, assembled together to give their work to the
building." The word stranieri is used by all old Italians not only as meaning
foreigners, but Italians from other provinces. Ridolfi, on his part, affirms
that at the beginning, the Maestri di Como were the only ones employed in
building the chief churches at Lucca; adding that—"Many of the works
show certain symbols, monsters and foliage, which were always a special
characteristic of the Comacines, and a sign of the Freemasonry founded and
propagated by them."[125]
From this it may be deduced that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries
no indigenous Pisan school existed, and that the mediæval buildings were
of the Lombard type. Certainly the old church of S. Pietro a Grado, three
miles out of Pisa on the Leghorn road, which we have described, is a

standing witness to the presence of the Comacines before this era. It still
exists, the most perfect specimen extant of a Lombard tri-apsidal church.
Not a shaft, not an archlet is wanting.

As to Aquileja and Venice, Selvatico's[126] theory is that the Friuli people,
and those of Aquileja, being driven out in 450 by Attila, fled to Grado
(another Grado near Venice), thence spread to Torcello and Murano, and
then founded Venice. That they built the cathedrals on those islands, and
founded the Veneto-Oriental school. Did this native school ever exist? asks
Merzario, seeing that the church of Grado was built by artefici Franchi,
which might mean Freemasons, or French builders, i.e. the Comacines
under Charlemagne; and that those of Santa Fosca and Murano were,
judging by their style, of the same origin?
The church of Torcello was rebuilt in the eleventh century by the Bishop
Orso Orseolo, and if it comes into the question at all, would prove that the
Lombard school had something to do with it then. In spite of these two
opposing opinions, it is certain that architecture took a certain distinctive
form in Venice; but it was a later development which occurred after the
twelfth century, and with which the Greeks and Byzantines had little or
nothing to do.
Selvatico, although the champion of the Veneto-Friuli theory, is constrained
almost in spite of his own arguments to own that the Lombard architects
had their part in early Venetian architecture, saying—"Although the
prevalent architecture of Venice from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries
consists of Byzantine and Roman elements, yet after A.D. 1000 another
element mingled with it, which though partly the product of the two,
nevertheless had in itself elements so original as to be truly national. This is
the art which modern writers style Lombard, which, born first in Lombardy,
diffused itself over the greater part of Italy, and then crossing the Alps
expanded greatly in Northern Europe."[127]
The learned Domenico Salazari is at the head of the Siculo-Norman theory,
but the influence of the mingling of Oriental and Saracenic architecture
with the Norman and Lombard elements in Sicily are so well known, and so
fully acknowledged, that it is useless to go over his prolix arguments.

It seems to me that each party is right as far as it goes. Venetian architecture
has Oriental elements in it; the Tuscan Renaissance truly dates from
Niccolò Pisano, and the Romanesque style was formed by the marriage of
north and south in Sicily; but none of their advocates have got hold of the
missing link in the development of each special school from the old
classical styles. And that missing link, if anywhere, is to be looked for in the
Comacines.
In the ninth century they went northward, and laid the seeds of the round-
arched Norman architecture at Dijon, under S. Guglielmo; a seed which
took root and developed. In the next century they appear to have planted the
seed of French Gothic at Aix-la-Chapelle, and of German Gothic at
Cologne and Spires, and these grew to be goodly trees. In the eleventh
century they again met their brethren of the north in Sicily; and all worked
together, adding to their own beauties those of the rich and varied Saracenic
style—and the Romanesque style was thus formed.
The Venetian link dates about the same era. Fortunato, the Patriarch of
Aquileja, called in the Comacines about A.D. 828, and their churches there
show a groundwork of form and masonry quite Romano-Lombard, with an
ornamentation of which it is difficult to say whether it be more Byzantine
than Comacine, the two being so similar in conception, and the distinctive
difference in technical work being at this distance of time not always
distinguishable. Where the Byzantines worked in sandstone, the sharp edges
of their precise cutting would have worn off during many centuries; and
where the Comacines worked in marble, their marvellous knots and
interlacings may look as clean-cut now as any time-worn Byzantine
sculptures. In any case the union of Lombard and Byzantine in Venice was
the forging of the link connecting Venetian art to the classic Roman.
The part the Comacines had in forging the connecting chain between the
Tuscan Renaissance and the classic Roman, and the artistic pedigree of
Niccolò Pisano, who is the first link in that branch of the threefold chain,
will be traced in a future chapter. We must now inquire how the first
Romano-Lombard style of the Comacines, from the sixth to the tenth
centuries, became changed into the florid Romanesque, in which the same
guild was building in all parts of Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth

centuries. This development was possibly derived from both Northern and
Southern sources.
The close connection of the Comacine or Lombard architects with the
Patriarch of Aquileja in the seventh and eighth centuries brought them in
touch with the Greek artists of the earlier period, from whom they learned
much, especially in varying the plan of their circular churches, and in
richness of ornamentation. Their later emigrations to the southern Lombard
dukedoms, and their work in Sicily had a still greater effect on them. It
seemed to break up their fixed traditions as a thaw breaks up ice. Before
this time, every church must be of a fixed plan; every apse round; every
space of wall headed by a gallery or arched brackets; every arch a pure half-
circle on colonnettes. But the varied arches of the Oriental-Saracenic style
influenced their fancy; they saw that art lay in variety, and learned that the
pointed arch was as strong as the round one, the ogival arch more graceful.
The Moorish arch never entirely took their fancy, though they sometimes
gave a slight Moorish curve to their stilted arches.
It must be remembered that the Magistri of the Comacine Guild were no
longer of the same calibre as those mediæval men who built for the
Longobards. Those were the products of an age of slavery and
degeneration, who, lacking literature, clung to tradition, and could only act
according to the small portion of intellectual light vouchsafed to the Dark
Ages. They put stone and stone together, precisely as their forefathers had
taught them. In form they clung to their ancient teacher, Vitruvius, and for
their ornamentation to their ancient pagan superstitions, grafted on a
mystical Christianity. Yet, as we have seen, they so far improved on these,
as to build several Basilican churches which might be called grand for the
time, though still holding close to traditional forms.
The Comacine after A.D. 1000 was a man beginning to feel his intellect; the
feudal system was breaking up, republics beginning to be established,
schools were opened, and man began to feel himself no longer a vassal
bound hand and foot, but a human being who might use his own intellect
for his own pleasure and good.
What wonder then, that the arts began to flourish, commerce to increase,
and riches to accrue in this joyous freedom?

And what wonder that man's thankfulness for freedom first took the form of
building churches for the glory of the God of the free?
The architects of the Masonic loggie (lodges) who had held together
through the troublous times, became alive with new enthusiasms. They
compared their own buildings with others, and instead of varying the
principles of Vitruvius, to suit early Christian demands as heretofore, they
passed on to new and freer lines. Instead of solid and rude strength,
elegance of form and aspiring lines gave lightness and beauty.
The starting-point of the change was, of course, the adoption of the pointed
arch, which at this time began to be substituted for the circular one as
giving greater strength with greater lightness. "Curvetur arcus ut fortior,"
says an old chronicler of Subiaco. According to their method of gradual
development the Comacine Masters did not blindly throw themselves into
new forms. They went cautiously, and first tried their acute arches in
clerestories, and triforia, over naves supported by the old Lombard arches
of sesto intiero, as we see in several churches of the Transition period. A
little later they mixed the two inextricably, as in Florence cathedral, where
the windows are pointed with Gothic tracery, the interior arches round and
Roman in form.

"The early Lombard architecture," said Cesare Cantù,[128] "was not an
order, nor a system, so much as a delirium. Balance and symmetry utterly
disregarded, no harmony of composition or taste, shameful neglect in form
proportion; to the perfect classic design which satisfies the eye, they
substituted incoherent and useless parts, with frequently the weak placed to
support the strong, in defiance of all laws of statics. Columns—which used
to be composed of a base, shaft, and capital, in just proportions, supporting
a well-adapted architrave or frieze more or less fitly adorned, and a cornice
which only added beauty and strength—were exchanged for certain
colonnettes, either too short or too slight, knotted, spiral, and grouped so as
to torture the eye, and above the disproportioned and inharmonious abacus
of the capitals were placed the arches, which in a good style should rest on
the architrave. In fine, there was an endless modanature, ribs, reliefs, and
windows of elongated form and walls of extraordinary height." In spite of
Cantù's leanings to the classic, this tirade shows the first indication of the
change towards the Gothic, and it only proves that the Comacine Masters

did not take up new forms borrowed entire from other nations, but
assimilated what they saw in other places, gradually developing their style.
To find the origin of the pointed arch would be difficult. Was it evolved
from the arching trees in the German forest? or was it from the rich Arabian
mosque or ancient Indian temple? or did the Comacines find it, just as they
acquired their Basilican forms, on Italian soil?
Germany, it is pretty well proved, got the seed of her glorious Gothic from
France or Italy, and nourished it right royally. But the pointed arch is much
more ancient than German Gothic. It is to be seen in the tomb of Atreus at
Mycenæ, in an Etruscan tomb at Tarquinii, and even in the subterranean
gallery at Antequere in Mexico.[129] The pointed arches in the Mosque El
Haram on Monte Morea date from Caliph Omar's time, between 637 and
640. The Mosque of Amrou, with its curious combination of pointed and
horse-shoe arches, dates from 640.
The church of St. Francis at Assisi (1226) has generally been accepted as
the first instance in Italy, and it was soon followed in the design for the
church of S. Antonio at Padua five years later; but there are two little
churches annexed to the monastery of Subiaco on Monte Telaso, which
were built, so say the chroniclers, one in A.D. 981, the other in 1053, in
which some arches are round and others acute.[130] Hope[131] quotes
examples of this mixture of round and acute arches in the ninth and tenth
centuries at Cluny, 1093-1134; the Abbey of Malmesbury in England,
which is in Lombard style; St. Mark's at Venice, 976-1071; Subiaco, 847,
and others.

"But," as Selvatico remarks,[132] "these are isolated instances determined by
static reasons, and do not point to a system." The Arab used the pointed
arch as a decorative principle, as well as for stability. As the style spread in
Europe it got modified, some countries keeping to the ancient type, and
others changing its proportions. So the Arab arch became in the eleventh
century the germ of the ogival arch, and in the twelfth expanded in the
North into the most glorious forms of ecclesiastical Gothic architecture.
The Comacines made their first steps towards a more florid style, about the
end of the eleventh century. The change, as in all such growths of

circumstance, was a gradual one. First, a little more ornamentation, then a
slight change in the forms of arches; next, a less fixed ground-plan of the
churches, a mingling of the Greek cross with the square-walled Basilica.
After these slight trials of their wings, came flights of imagination, and
endless variety of form and ornamentation; that variety which could only
spring from the ideas of many minds, united in one work.
To see the earliest signs of a wider scheme of design we must go to the
region of Parma. Here in a little town called Borgo S. Donnino—the ancient
"Fidentia Julia"—about fifteen miles north of Parma, is one of the finest
early Romanesque churches in Italy. It was a great place for pilgrimages in
the Middle Ages, as it contained the tomb of S. Domninus, who was
martyred in the persecutions of Maximian. Great miracles were worked at
his shrine, and religious fervour rose to such a height in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, that the devotees collected money enough to build a
church, which they desired should be the finest and most majestic of those
times.
The work was finished before 1195. An ancient document shows that the
Rettori (civil governors) of Milan, Verona, Mantua, Modena, Brescia,
Faenza, Bologna, Reggio, Gravedone, Piacenza, and Padua, with their
suites, all met there in that year to form a league against Henry VI., son of
Frederic Barbarossa, who seemed likely to carry on the hostility of his
father.[133] We have no documents to show who was the architect of the fine
Basilica of S. Donnino, but as the Comacines had their laborerium at
Parma, and as the work is clearly and distinctly Romanesque, we may
believe the old authors who say that it arose per lo scarpello dei Comacini.
[134]
If internal evidence is wanting, the three lion portals of the ornate
façade bear witness to the hand of the Comacines of the Romanesque
epoch.
Another of their buildings which shows a marked advance, was the
cathedral of Trent—the gate of Italy leading into Germany. This had been
built in the first Lombard style between 1124 and 1149, when it was
consecrated by the Patriarch of Aquileja. In 1207 the Bishop Federigo
Manga, Chancellor of the Emperor Otho IV., formed a design to enlarge and
almost rebuild it. He commissioned a Magistro Comacino to superintend
the works, as appears from an inscription in Gothic letters on the tomb of

that very Magister. Anglicized it would run—"In the year of our Lord 1212,
the last day of February, Master Adam of Arogno, of the diocese and district
of Como (Magister Adam de Arognio cumanæ diocesis et circuito), began
the work of this church and constructed it. He with his sons and his
abbiatici (underlings) built the interior and exterior of this church with its
adjoining parts. He and his sons lie below in this sepulchre. Pray for them."
Prof. Cipolla, in an article in Arte e Storia di Firenze, quotes a poem written
in 1309, in honour of the Duomo of Trent and of the Comacine Master who
had achieved so much with his potent and clever hands (Cumani Magistri
qui potenti manu non inani complevit).
The church has since then undergone several restorations, but in none of
them has its plan been materially altered. There is still the octagonal dome,
the circular apse at one end of the building, and the narthex at the other. The
façade still honestly follows the lines of the roof, and has its little rows of
pillared galleries across. The outside of the apse shows the new tendency to
Romanesque more than the façade does; here arches and friezes in
horizontal circles around it, take the place of the perpendicular shafts, and
the single row of archlets on the top. It is more in the style of the thirteenth
and fourteenth-century Lucca churches. The arch of the north door rests on
lions, which we may take as the secret sign of Romanesque Comacine work
between the tenth and twelfth centuries, as the intreccio or Solomon's knot
had been their mark in the Lombard period.
The church of S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo is a valuable specimen not
only of this transition in its early stage, but of the culmination of the
Romanesque, two centuries later. An inscription on the arch of the portico
records that it was founded in the time of Pope Innocent II. and King
Lothair II., i.e. about 1135, Rogerius being then the Bishop of Bergamo.[135]
The builder's name is also recorded as Magister Fredus, probably short for
Godfredus. Magister Fredus is not expressly said here to be of the Guild of
Comacines, but as his work was entirely in Lombard style, with a few slight
indications of a freer school, and as the architects who succeeded him were,
as may be proved by documents, Comacine Masters chiefly from
Campione, we may fairly make the hypothesis that he too was one of the
guild. The little that remains of his work is to be seen in the interior, where

the round arch still predominates, and in the exterior walls of the apse, with
its crown of arches and colonnettes.
The parts due to the later brethren of the guild are the rich ornamentation of
the two façades with their grand and characteristic Comacine porches, and
also the Baptistery. It was in 1340 that Giovanni, son of Ugone (Big Hugh)
of Campione, a celebre scultore ed architetto, was commissioned to build
this Baptistery. According to the fixed laws of the Comacines he made it
octagonal—the mystic sign of the Trinity, being formed of a threefold
triangle. Around it entwine circles of arches and colonnettes, some lines
having double columns; these reach to the cornice of the roof, which
cornice is composed of reliefs allusive to the Sacrament of Baptism.
This work finished, Magister Giovanni went to Bellano on the east bank of
Lake Como, together with two of his brotherhood, the Magister Antonio,
son of the late Jacopo of Castellazzo da Peglio in the valley of Intelvi, and
Magister Comolo, son of the late Magister Gufredo—probably a descendant
of the Magister Fredus mentioned above—of Asteno, near Porlezza, to
rebuild the church there, which had been ruined by age and repeated floods.
[136]
This church is in pure Lombard style, and has a façade in black and
white marble, with a fine rose window, encircled with terra-cotta foliaged
decorations. After this Magister Giovanni of Campione was recalled to
Bergamo to adorn the façades of the church which Fredus had left in a
rough state 200 years before. These two façades faced north and south.
Strange to say, the part opposite the altar has no door. In this new emprise
Giovanni brought as his assistants his son Nicolino, a relative named
Antonio (probably the one who had worked with him at Bellano), and a
certain Giovanni Cattaneo, also from Campione. Giovanni, who was head
architect, decided not to renovate the whole south façade facing the Piazza
on which he began first, but to concentrate his ornamentation on a fine
vestibule and doorway, to form a species of frontal. The vestibule was
finished in 1351, having taken only two years. On the architrave he has
himself chronicled it—"1351, m. Johannes de Campillione C. B. (civis
Bergomensis) fecit hoc opus." The whole front seems to have taken three
years more, as on the base of the horse on which St. Alexander, patron saint
of Bergamo, sits, may be read—"Filius Ughi de Campillione fecit hoc opus
1355."

Good Master John of Campione did not long survive the execution of this
masterpiece, for on the north porch is inscribed—"1360. Magister Johannes
f. q. (filius quondam) Dom. Johannes de Campilio ... (abrasion) fecit hoc
opus in Christi nomine. Amen."
This north porch, though so nearly coeval, shows a much greater advance in
style. It is an eloquent proof of how architecture was progressing at this
time by the grafting on of different influences. John the father, being older,
kept more closely to his Lombard traditions. John the son, being youthful
and more open to conviction, took up new ideas. He has kept the Lombard
arch in his porch, the moulding of which is extremely rich, and the lions of
Judah duly support his pillars, but he has filled in his arch with very Gothic
tracery, in trefoil arches, and over the Lombard columns of the upper storey
of the porch are arches and decorations decidedly Oriental in appearance. It
is about as good a specimen of the rich chaos of ideas that marks a
transition stage as one can get, and shows that John the younger had been
influenced by the Saracen-Norman influence in Sicily.
Fergusson, in his Handbook of Architecture, p. 790, gives an illustration of
this porch. The Campione family evidently came from a race of sculptor-
architects, for the church of S. Maria at Bergamo contains a sculptural work
of much merit for the time, by Ugo da Campione, the father of Giovanni
senior. It is the tomb of Cardinal Longhi degli Alessandri, who died at
Avignon in 1329. The almost mediæval artist compares not unfavourably
with a very modern master from Como, Vincenzo Velada Ligurnetto, who in
1855 sculptured the neighbouring tomb of Donizetti placed near it.
Coming down the valley of the Pò to Cremona, we find ourselves on a
scene of great Comacine industry. There is the Baptistery, dating before A.D.
1000, and the Cathedral begun in 1100. These were both works of the
Lombard Masters; their style is identical, and over the architrave of the
great cathedral door may be read in the Gothic characters used by them—
MCCLXXIIII.
Magister Jacobus Porrata.
da Cumis, fecit hanc Rotam.

Rotam refers to the wheel window, which is a remarkably fine one, and is
not, as some writers think, an illiterate mis-spelling of portam (door). The
rose window is prior to the one which Jacopo or Lapo, the so-called father
of Arnolfo, placed in the façade of the Duomo of Arezzo, and is even
superior to it in richness of design. To Jacobus Porrata is also attributed the
principal entrance of Cremona cathedral, with the statues of the four
prophets beside it. Over the architrave rises a species of porch, formed of
little Lombard galleries, fringing as it were the arch. Below are the usual
lion-supported pillars, the lions being carved in fine red marble. The
vestibule above is formed of pointed arches, on each of which a lion
crouches to sustain the finishing loggia. The Comacine Masters seem to
have formed a school and laborerium at Cremona, for among the archives
of the Duomo a deed has been found entitled laborerio, of the year 1289. It
was drawn up by the notary Degoldo Malatesta on December 12 of that
year, and on the part of the Revdo. P. Cozzaconte, Bishop of Cremona, and
the monk Ubertini, director and treasurer to the works of the Duomo,
making a contract with Bonino and Guglielmo da Campione to build a
stone stairway on the north of the cathedral towards S. Nicolò, etc. etc. The
stairs still exist, with remains of some little turrets which formed part of the
design.

Baptistery at Parma. Designed by Benedetto da
Antelamo, A.D. 1178.
See page 187.

At Parma we have also precise data, and a name carven in stone. The
cathedral was begun in 1059, four years before that of Pisa. It was finished
by 1106, when Pope Pasquale II. consecrated it, the great Countess Matilda
being present. In 1117 a part of it fell in an earthquake, and the Bishop
Bernardo apportioned the receipts of several taxes to the rebuilding.
Frederic Barbarossa in 1162 confirmed this disposition of the taxes and the
work was continued. The laborerium of the Comacines at Parma was at

different times under two of their chief sculptor-architects, Benedetto da
Antelamo being master of the lodge in 1178, and Giovanni Bono of Bissone
in 1281. Benedetto sculptured the now ancient pulpit of the cathedral,
which was supported on four columns, and to which the relief of the
Crucifixion, signed by him, belonged. It is now in the third chapel on the
right. He also designed and erected the Baptistery, which, more than any
building of the time, shows an originality of idea quite remarkable. It is
built entirely of white marble, is of course octagonal, that is de règle, and is
surrounded by rows of little pillared galleries, but in these he has made his
colonnettes classical, and has left out the arches entirely, except in the upper
one, substituting a solid flat marble entablature for them. The lower part
only has a circular arch in each of the eight sides. The arches of the
doorways are very deep, and richly sculptured. One has four dark marble
pillars on each side of the door, of which the lintels and architrave are richly
carved in reliefs. The north door has a Nativity of Christ in the lunette, and
a story of John the Baptist beneath it. The west portal shows a realistic Last
Judgment above, and on the sides the seven ages of man, and Christ
performing the seven works of mercy. On the south door is the allegory of
Death from the mediæval religious romance of Barlaam and Josaphat. The
arches between the doors are filled in with niches containing statues
supported on black marble Corinthian columns.
All round the building above the base is a frieze of the real old animal
myths and symbols, such as the Comacines of two or three centuries earlier
delighted in. The march of the times had now substituted actual
representations of scriptural subjects, instead of mere symbols of dark
mysteries, but the Magister could not all at once leave behind him the old
emblems which had served his guild for centuries in the way of
ornamentation. The building is unique, and shows daring independent
thought at a time when independence was most difficult.
Fergusson, however, blames the false principles of design. He says the four
upper storeys are only built to conceal a dome, which is covered by a flat
wooden roof. The roof seen from above seems to be a flat tiled roof, and it
has a pretty solid bell-turret in the centre. The little arches forming the
upper range are slightly pointed. This Baptistery, as well as the pulpit in the
Duomo, bears the signature of the builder and sculptor, and the date 1196.

"Bis binis demptis annis de mille ducentis.
Incepit dictus opus hoc sculptor Benedictus."[137]

Val d'Antelamo, the native place of Benedictus, is a valley near Lago
Maggiore towards Laveno. It seems probable that a branch school or lodge
of the Comacines existed here, of which Benedetto was at this epoch at the
head,[138] and gave the name to his pupils. They must have emigrated like
other branches of the guild, for in the ancient statutes of Genoa we find
several mentions of experts in architecture, called Magistri da Antelamo,
who were called in by the city magistrates, when any building work had to
be valued or judged.[139]
As early as 1181 in the archives of S. Giorgio, one finds the names Martino
and Ottoboni, Magistri Antelami, and as late as Nov. 27, 1855, a sentence
was given at the Collegio dei Giudici at Genoa by a Maestro Anteramo. The
substitution of r for l is to this day a very common error among Italians.
In 1161 a squadron of Masters from Lombardy was called to renovate the
cathedral of Faenza, which was much ruined. These Masters accepted, and
showed themselves most proficient. So says an old writer quoted by
Merzario, but whether these very clever architects were the same Antelami
branch who worked at Parma cannot be decided.[140] A later Comacine
Master at Parma, whose name has come down to us, is Giovanni Bono of
Bissone, a little village between Como and Lugano. The grand vestibule of
the principal door of Parma cathedral, with its lion-supported columns, its
bands of colonnettes and its rich sculpture, was designed by him. In a
Gothic inscription over the door deciphered by Sig. Pezzana, we learn that
the lions were made by Giovanni Bono da Bissone in 1280, at the time
when Guido, Niccolao, Bernardino, and Benvenuti worked in the
laborerium.[141]
This inscription, for which I am indebted to Canonico Pietro Tonarelli, is
especially valuable, not only in fixing the epoch of Giovanni Buono da
Bissoni's work, but as proof of the organization of the lodge and the
brotherhood of its members. The word fratrum certainly implies that the
laborerium was in the hands of a guild. The Canonico Tonarelli writes in a
letter from Parma, that in an estimate in the archives of the Chapter, dated

1354, the Fabbriceria was denominated Domus laborerii seu fabricæ ...
majoris Ecclesiæ, and that the administrators were called fratres de
Laborerio. In Tuscany they were called Operai, and the office of
administrator was the Opera del Duomo. The four names of the fratres, too,
have a significance when read in the light I have since found thrown on the
organization by the archives of the Opere in Siena and Florence. In those
lodges one perceives plainly that the administration of the lodge was placed
under four persons, of whom two were Masters of the guild, and two were
influential persons of the city, i.e. half the council of administration gave
the votes of the architects employed, and the other half those of the patrons
who employed them. That the same rule held in this earlier lodge at Parma
is confirmed by the fact that Niccolao and Benvenuti are found working
together with Giovanni Buono at Pistoja in 1270.[142]
Sometimes a single name stands out among the file of Comacines, and one
finds several well-known buildings that have emanated from one mind.
Such a Master was Magister Giorgio of Jesi, near Como. His name is
graven in the stones of many a church. At Fermo on the Adriatic, a
"sumptuous" cathedral was built in 1227; a certain Bartolommeo
Mansionarius being the patron. On the left south door was a slab with the
inscription—"A.D. MCCXXVII Bartolomeus Mansionarius Hoc opus fieri
fecit Per Manus Magistri Georgii de Episcopatu Com".... That the mutilated
word is Como we prove by a similar inscription on the cathedral at Jesi (the
ancient Æsis where the Emperor Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa, was
born). The ancient cathedral of S. Septimus, a truly Lombard building, still
exists in part. Here the inscription runs—"A.D. MCCXXXVII tempore D.
Gregorii Papae domini Federici Imperatoris, et domini Severini. episcope.
æsini. Magister Georgius de Cumo civis æsinus fecit hoc opus."
Here we get the city as well as the bishopric to which Magister Giorgius
belonged. He was a citizen of Jesi in the diocese of Como, and a qualified
member of the higher rank of the Comacine Guild. In the little town of
Penna in the same province, where the church was ruined in an earthquake,
an ancient stone was found with the following inscription in old Latin—"In
the name of God. Amen. This work was commenced in the time of the
Priest Gualtieri, and completed in that of the Priest Grazia, by Master
George of Jesi in the year 1256." By these stones we find that Master
George worked in the province of Piceno for thirty years, between Fermo,

Jesi, and Penna. To him is attributed the ancient communal palace of Jesi
which was rebuilt in the fifteenth century by other Comacine Masters.

CHAPTER II
THE MODENA-FERRARA LINK

THE CAMPIONESE SCHOOL AT MODENA
1. 1050 Magister Ersati di Ligorno
2. 1099 M. Lanfranco, son of Ersati Chief architect at
Modena in 1099.
His son Ubertino
forms a link with
Padua, where he
worked at the
church of S.
Antonio in 1263.
3. 1130 M.
Guglielmo
or Vigilelmo Sculptors on the
façades of Modena
4. M.
and Ferrara
Ambroxius,
cathedrals
his son
5. M. Nicolaus

6. M. Meo di Assist in the façade of
Cecco, and Ferrara cathedral.
There was a Marco
di Frixone da
7. 12th M. Antonio
Campione at Milan
century di Frix of
a century later in
Como 1300, probably a
descendant of this
one.
8. 1209 M. Anselmo da Campione Sculptured the porch
of Modena
cathedral; was chief
architect in 1181.
9. 1244 M. The office of head
Ottaccio Sons of Anselmo architect was made
da Campione, hereditary in the
who was also family.
10. M. Alberto called Jacopo is supposed
Anselmo to be the Jacopo
11. M. Jacopo Tedesco. Tedesco, reputed
father of Arnolfo.
12. " M. Arrigo, son of M. Ottaccio Arrigo was head
architect in 1244.
13. 1322 M. Enrico, grandson of M. Built the tower and
Arrigo sculptured the
pulpit at Modena.

At Modena, which was once a prosperous Roman colony, and then an
independent commune, we find a most interesting family of Comacines,
who for more than two centuries worked at the cathedral there, son
succeeding father, and nephews following their uncles as architects. The
building of a worthy church was the first thought of the newly-made
commune in 1099. In Muratori's copy of the Acts of the translation of the
body of S. Gemignano to Modena, we read—"So then, in the year 1099, the
inhabitants of the said city began to demand where they could find an

architect for such a work, a builder for such a church; and at length, by the
grace of God, a certain man named Lanfranco, a marvellous architect, was
found, under the counsels of whom the foundations of the Basilica were
laid."[143]
Lanfranco is a name very frequent in Lombardy, but this man, probably
from his already acquired fame, was the same Magister Lanfrancus filius
Dom. Ersatii de Livurno (Ligurno), who built the cloister of Voltorre, near
Lake Varese, in the neighbourhood of the Antelami.[144] The fact remains
that all his successors were Comacines, and from places near Ligurno.
There is also a similarity of style between the cloister at Voltorre, and the
older parts of S. Gemignano at Modena, both showing a grafting of Gothic
on the Romano-Lombard style. A curious document exists, a kind of
contract, quoted by Tiraboschi in his Codice Diplomatico in the Appendix
to the historical memorials of the building of the cathedral, long after
Lanfranco's part was done. It runs, when Anglicized—"In the name of
Christ, in the year of His nativity, 1244, in the second indiction, on the day
of Mercury (Wednesday), the last of the month of November. It has been
recorded that between Ser Alberto, once treasurer to the Opera et Fabbrica,
and the late Master Anselmo da Campione in the episcopate of Como
(Magistrum Anselmum de Campilione, Episcopatus Cumani), a contract
was made, by which the said Magister and his heirs in perpetuo should
work at the said church of Modena, and either the said Master, or any other
Master, his descendant, should receive every day, six imperials in the days
of May, June, July, and August, but five imperials only in those of the other
months, for their recompense and their work. Ser Ubaldino, now
Administrator of the said Fabbriceria, seeing and considering that the said
stipend or remuneration does not seem sufficient according to the course of
these and succeeding times, has deliberated and taken counsel with the
venerable Bishop Signor Alberto, and with Ser Giovanni, Archpriest of
Modena, at the instance and petition of Magister Arrigo (Henry), son of
Magister Ottaccio, who was the son of Anselmo aforesaid; and in the
presence of the aforementioned Signori, Bishop, and Archpriest, and of the
subscribing witnesses, promises and agrees that to the said Magister Arrigo,
for himself and his sons and heirs, and for Magister Alberto and Magister
Jacopo, his paternal uncles (patruis suis), and the sons and heirs of the
same, shall be given over and above to them, and to their said sons, or

successors, who shall be masters in that art (qui magistri fuerint hujus
artis), eight imperials for each day they work, from the calends of April to
the calends of October. In the days of the remaining months in which they
shall have worked at the will of the Administrator of the building, they
should, and shall have, only six imperials, receiving nevertheless their food
from the said lodge, not only on festal days, but on all others, as they have
from the beginning been accustomed to have. And if at the will of the said
Administrator they shall bring other competent Masters necessary to the
said works, these shall receive seven imperials for each day, from the said
calends of April to those of October, but in other months only five imperials
per diem."
This deed was drawn up in the Canonica of Modena, and duly signed by
witnesses.
Tracing the predecessors of Arrigo of Campione, father and grandfather,
back from 1244, we come very near the time of the first Lanfranco; and
following his descendants from Arrigo, head architect in 1244, to his
grandson, who finished the tower of the Dome,[145] and made the marble
pulpit in the cathedral in 1322, we get a family line of builders lasting
unbroken for nearly two hundred years. There still exists an inscription in
bad Latin on the cornice of the pulpit, which says that Tomasino di
Giovanni, treasurer of the Fabbriceria, S. Gemignano, had the pulpit
carved, and the tower built by Arrigo or Enrico, the Campionese sculptor
(actibus Henrici sculptoris campionensis). It would be difficult now to
assign his due share to each of this long line of master-builders; but the
Italian critic, Marchese Ricci, gives Lanfranco the credit of the interior,
which is in pure Romano-Lombard style, with two aisles and a nave. The
nave is much higher than the aisles, and is supported on columns with high
Corinthian capitals from some ancient Roman temple. Lanfranco has given
a clumsier Lombard air to them by a very large abacus. The crypt is
supported on sixty columns, the capitals of which are all Lombard, and of
endless variety of form and sculpture. In the centre is the ark (tomb) of S.
Gemignano. The wall of the façade, with its little pillared gallery, is also of
Lanfranco's time.
The porch, with its knotted pillars supported on lions, is adjudged by Ricci
to be the work of Anselmo of Campione in 1209. The sculpture on the

façade by Nicolaus and Guglielmo is said to date from early in the twelfth
century, and probably belonged to Lanfranco's design before Anselmo put
this doorway. They are to our eyes most naïve Bible stories told in rude
sculpture—the one side representing the Creation, the other the first men as
far as Noah. To contemporary eyes, however, they were great works, for an
old grandiloquent low Latin inscription on the façade says—"Inter scultores
quanto sis dignus honore Claret scultura nunc Viligelme tua." "Worthy of
honour art thou among sculptors. So shines, O William, this thy sculpture."
Marchese Ricci, from the peculiar spelling of Guglielmo, thinks that he
might have been a German, but as in the Ferrara inscription he is spelt in
the Italian way, I think the Viligelme may be only one of those queer
reversals of consonants so common in illiterate Italians. If a poor Florentine
has a son named Arturo, he will surely call him Alturo, or if Alfredo, he will
always be Arfledo. In any way we can descry in this artist, as in many
others of his age, the forerunner of Niccolò Pisano, and see in the art of
Niccolò only a link in development, not a new art entirely. To Nicolaus and
Guglielmo are also attributed the sculptures in the choir, representing the
Passion. We shall find them again at Ferrara.
We see, then, that the family of Anselmo, hereditary sculptors and architects
of Modena, were certainly the founders of the great school of the
Campionese, which lasted some centuries, and to whose hands may be
attributed nearly all the great churches in North Italy. The schools,
laborerium, and fabbricerie of Modena furnish another prototype of the
threefold organization, which becomes so distinct in the Opera of Florence
and the Lodges of Venice, Siena, and Orvieto. Tiraboschi publishes a
notarial Act, dated January 7, 1261, which speaks of the laborerium near
the Duomo, where the stones for the fabric were carved; and that there was
a covered way between the church and this building which must not be
removed or changed.
Gerolamo Calvi, in his Matteo de Campione, architetto e scultore, says that
nearly all the architecture and sculpture executed in and around Milan in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries may be attributed to the Campionesi. He
instances the Sala della Ragione at Padua, with its enormous span of roof,
its characteristic arcades and galleries, and the Loggia degli Assi, or Loggia
del Consiglio, once the Podestà's palace; the church of S. Agostino at
Bergamo, built by Ugo da Campione and his son Giovanni, the castle of the

Visconti at Pavia, and many others. Campione, though a place of
importance in Roman times, and cited in Carlovingian documents, is now
only a village on the side of a mountain, near Val d'Intelvi, containing 500
inhabitants. Calvi writes of it that from the earliest times before the
renaissance of art,[146] the men of Campione dedicated themselves to
building and sculpture, and diffused themselves throughout the north of
Italy, working rudely at first, but gaining in style and experience till they
produced great works worthy of eternal fame.
It seems probable that in this school we have a link with Florence. The
Jacopo de Campione, who was mentioned in 1244 as uncle of the petitioner
Arrigo, is named in other documents as a Campionese, is thought by
Merzario and other authors to be that famous architect, Jacopo il Tedesco—
or the Lombard, who was for centuries taken with certainty to be the father
of Arnolfo. We shall speak of his pedigree in another chapter.
The builders of the Duomo of Ferrara were decidedly connected with the
laborerium at Modena, both lodges originating from the Campione school.
The façade has the usual three perpendicular divisions formed by means of
chiselled shafts, but each division is divided horizontally into three levels,
each one enriched with Lombard galleries. Besides these is a wealth of
ornamentation, figures, reliefs, trafori (open work), and foliage of the most
fantastic kind. This and the framework of the church are all that remain of
the Comacine work, excepting the vestibule, which has all their signs on it.
Four columns resting on four red marble lions support it; one of them
guards a lamb, and another has a serpent beneath its paw. Here we have still
the Comacine mysticism: the lion of Judah guarding the Paschal Lamb, and
one of the House of Judah crushing the serpent. Over the porch are more
sculptures, and an arched vestibule; over that a kind of Gothic gable, and
above the gable a rose window. The whole speaks eloquently of its kinship
with the churches of Verona, Parma, and Bergamo. Tradition says the
interior and façade were built not much later than 1103. The inscription
over the door runs—
"Il mille cento trempta nato. Fo questo templo a Zorzi (Giorgio) consacrato.
Fo Nicolao scultore, e Ghelmo fo lo auctore." These are evidently the same
Guglielmo and Nicolao who sculptured Lanfranco's front at Modena.

Guglielmo was the leading man, and made the design (auctore); Nicolaus
chiefly executed it.
But these two were not the only Comacines employed at Ferrara; a MS.
copy of an ancient inscription on some old reliefs in the front of the church
of St. George, records the names of Meo and Antonio of Como. "Da Meo di
Checco, e da Antonio di Frix. da Como."[147]

Façade of Ferrara Cathedral, 12th century.
See page 198.

Before the middle of the thirteenth century, Padua had become the shrine of
a miraculous saint. St. Anthony had come over from Lisbon in 1220, and
founded at Padua a new order of monks, called Minori Conventuali, under
similar rules to the Franciscans. St. Anthony attracted great crowds of
people by his preaching and miracles, and at his death in 1231 he was
canonized, and his devotees desired to build a beautiful church over his
tomb. The first attempt failed from not having means to pay a good
architect, or competent builders, and in 1265 the commune set to work to
remedy their mistake. They assigned four thousand lire a year to the re-
edification, until such time as the church should be completed. By 1307 all
was complete except the cupola, which was added a century later. Vasari
attributes the design to Niccolò Pisano; but his able commentator, Milanesi,
who lived all his life studying archives, asserts that neither document,
inscription, nor tradition remain to prove Niccolò's connection with Padua,
while the style of the building is utterly unlike the edifices known to be his.

Some documents in the archives of Padua, unearthed by Padre Gonzali,
prove that in 1263, on May 11, there were working in the church as
builders, Egidio, son of Magister Gracii; Ubertino, son of Lanfranco;
Niccola, son of Giovanni; and Pergandi, son of Ugone of Mantua; and that,
in 1264, a Zambono of Como and a Benedetto of Verona, who lived in the
district of Rovina, are recorded as builders. There is no record of the
architect who designed the church; but judging from the Moorish
innovations of style it was very probably either planned by the monks, or
designed by them. St. Anthony was a Portuguese. On his way here he would
have passed through Spain, and may have been attracted by the Moorish
architecture. He may have even brought a drawing or two of some many-
domed building, and have given them to the Lombard architects to work
from. Probably some of his monks were—like many Franciscans and
Dominicans—members of the Guild of Freemasons, and so trained in the
science of architecture.
In any case, the buildings at Padua are neither true Lombard nor true
Gothic, and not even Oriental, but a mixture of all three. The Lombard has
partly had his way in the façade, where the upper part is full of galleries and
archlets; the lover of the new Gothic arches has put his mark on the lower
part of the façade; and the monks, who remembered the native land of their
saint, have put the seven domes and minarets; the domes, however, were
beyond the Comacines of that time, and were not placed till the fifteenth
century, when it is to be imagined that the Renaissance doorway and
various pilasters and adjuncts were added. Altogether, for a church where
Como Masters undoubtedly worked, St. Anthony of Padua is the most
unlike their style. They seem to have taken so little interest in the outlandish
plan, that they did not sanctify it by a bit of their biblical sculpture.
That monks at that era really did occupy themselves in architecture, we
have consistent proofs in the monkish builders of fine churches; and that
when they followed this branch, they were probably trained in, and became
members of, the great Masonic Guild, is also indicated by the close
connection between the Magistri-frati and the secular Magistri. In the
transactions of the guild, monks were frequently called into council by the
Opera or Fabbriceria; and they often worked at their churches in
conjunction with the secular members.[148] In the church of S. Francesco at
Lodi is an interesting old painting, representing S. Bernardino directing a

group of monks engaged in building a convent. Beneath it is written
—"Qualiter in ædificatione monasterii Bernardinus fratres hortatus fuerit."
[149]

Church of S. Antonio, Padua, 13th century.
See page 199.

It is through this order at Padua that the link with Germany became
strengthened. Albertus Magnus was a Dominican, born in Bavaria. He came
to Padua for his studies in theology and the exact sciences, which evidently
included the science of building. Merzario says that up to 1223 he taught
publicly in Padua, and wrote a work on Perspective.[150]
Don Vincenzo Rossi, Prior of Settignano, however, writes to me, I believe
on the authority of Montalembert, that Albertus Magnus attended the

university at Padua, and some think also that at Pavia, but only as a student.
He held a cattedra at Cologne, where St. Thomas of Aquinas was his pupil.
[151]

The name of Albertus Magnus is much connected with the Freemasonry of
Germany; and soon after his stay in Padua we find Comacine Masters
working in Germany. Some German savant might work out this clue, and
see if he did not start, or aid in establishing, a lodge at Cologne, for all
authors agree that the architectural Maestranze (as the Italians called the
mixed clerical and lay Masonic Guilds) passed over the Alps from Italy, and
flourished greatly in northern cities, such as Strasburg, Zurich, Cologne,
etc., etc.
In the twelfth century the beautiful church and monastery of Chiaravalle,
near Milan, were erected by the Campionese Masters, on the commission of
the noble family of Archinto of Milan. It is a fine specimen of Italian
Gothic, with the dome peculiar to that style.
The Visconti of Milan were large patrons of the Campionese school. The
fine castle at Pavia, built in the time of Galeazzo II., shows by its style the
Comacine hand. It has been assigned to Niccola Sella from Arezzo and
Bernardo of Venice, but, as Merzario shows, these men only came to Pavia
thirty years after it was finished.
The first stone was laid on March 27, 1360. The archives have been
searched in vain to find the architect's name: it is, however, proved that
Bonino da Campione was in Pavia in 1362, working at the Area di S.
Agostino, so it is probable that some of his brethren of the Campionese
school were also employed by Galeazzo. Unluckily, these are so
individually sunk in the company, that one rarely gets a prominent name.
Merzario, quoting other writers, attributes to the Campionesi that sepulchral
monument of Beatrice della Scala, now in the church of S. Maria at Milan;
the mausoleum of Stefano Visconti in S. Eustorgio, and that of Azzo, son of
Galeazzo I.; but beyond a tradition that Bonino da Campione sculptured the
last, there is no positive proof.[152]
Great conjectures have been made as to the real author of the Arca di
Agostino at Pavia. Vasari says—"La quale è di mano secondo che a me pare

di Agnolo e Agostino, scultori senesi." His expression, "As it seems to me,"
is not very decisive proof, truly. Cicognara is not more exact. He "wonders
that this most grand and magnificent work is not more famous than it is—
and thinks it shows the style of the Sienese brothers, but opines it is more
likely to be by some pupil of theirs, if it is not by Pietro Paolo and Jacobello
the Venetians." This is vague with a vengeance. Merzario, however, proves
that there are no documents to show that the Sienese brother sculptors ever
came to Pavia, and asserts that the style of the Arca is not at all Venetian.

The learned Difendente Sacchi[153] brings more logic and less imagination
to bear on the point. The inscription on the monument proves that it was
begun in 1362, placed in 1365, and that the accessory ornamentation was
finished in 1370. The books of the administration show that the sums paid
for its construction amounted in all to seventy-two thousand lire italiane.
As no artist in especial is named as having received this sum, I should
myself imagine that as usual several Masters of the guild worked at it, but
that one was capo maestro, and drew the design. Comparing it with the
monument of Can della Scala at Verona, which is a certified work of
Bonino da Campione, Sacchi argues that he was the designer and sculptor
of this Arca. The style in both is semi-Gothic, the arches following the same
curve and resting on columns; the friezes and ornaments are so much alike
as to be in some parts identical in design; the crown of pyramids and
cupolini which finishes the monument on the top, the form of the pinnacles,
and their floriations are more than similar.
The Arca di S. Agostino is, however, the more elaborate. It has ninety-five
statues in its niches, not counting statuettes. One may count nearly three
hundred distinct works of sculpture in the composition. (Would not this
redundancy prove it the work of a school rather than one hand?) Sacchi
justly observes that if Can Scaliger confided to Bonino the commission for
his monument, it must have been because he had seen proofs of his skill;
and where could this have been more probable than in the Arca at Milan?
A suggestive proof of the Arca di S. Agostino being the joint work of the
Comacine Guild, is suggested by Merzario.[154] Over the colonnade of the
Arca are twelve statues, but in front of these stand the Quattro Santi
Coronati, the four artist martyrs. One of these is represented stooping to

examine the base of a pillar; another trying the diminution of a column with
the T square, and a third measures a reversed capital, and holds a scroll on
which is written in Gothic letters, Quatuor Coronatorum; the fourth is
working with hammer and chisel.
Now these four saints, being the special patrons of the Comacine Guild,
would have little significance to any other artists.
The sepulchre of Can Signorio de Scaliger in Verona was begun in his
lifetime, and on his own commission, and cost 10,000 gold florins. He died
in 1375, so it must date slightly prior to that. Bonino de Campiglione
Mediolanensis has signed his name in marble on the frieze. It is a fine
specimen of Gothic ornamentation, at the culmination of the Campionese
school.
There were also earlier works of Bonino's at Cremona; one a sepulchre to
Folchino de Schicci, a jurisconsult, in the chapel of St. Catherine in the
Duomo, beautifully worked with friezes, etc., in bas-reliefs. It is signed in
Gothic characters—
"Hoc sepulcrum est nobilis et
Egregii militis et juris periti
D Folchini de Schiciis qui
obiit anno D,MCCCLVII
Die Julii et heredum ejus
Justitia, Temperantia Fortitudo Prudentia
Magis. Bonino de Campilione me fec."[155]

Tomb of Can Signorio degli Scaligeri at Verona.
By Magister Bonino da Campione, 1374.
See page 204.

The other one is the urn for the relics of S. Omobono, protector of
Cremona. Unfortunately the urn, which is said to have been very rich and
beautifully worked, has been ruined and dispersed. One slab only remains,
bearing the inscription, Magister Boninus de Campilione me fecit, with the
date, June 25, 1357. So Can Scaliger would have had also other famous
monumental works to recommend his choice of Bonino.

CHAPTER III

THE TUSCAN LINK

I.—Pisa
The very mention of Pisa brings to our minds Niccolò Pisano, whose name
stands in all art histories as the fountain-head of that Tuscan development of
art which led to the Renaissance. But where was Niccolò Pisano trained and
qualified for this high post of honour? A great architect and sculptor does
not suddenly become famous and obtain important commissions without
having some undeniable credentials.
In those mediæval days, when the arts protected themselves by forming into
constituted guilds, no one could call himself a Master unless he were
trained and qualified in one of these guilds and had reached the higher
grades. To trace Niccolò's place in the great chain of the Masonic Guild, we
must go back a little, and gather together the threads of information we
have been able to glean, as to the expansion of the guild itself, and here the
valuable collections of archivial documents made by Sig. Milanesi from the
books and archives of the Opera del Duomo at Siena, and by Sig. Cesare
Guasti from those of the cathedral at Florence, will materially assist us. By
studying these and putting facts and statements together the whole
organization becomes clear, and our former glimpses into the threefold
aspect of the lodges at Modena, Parma, and other northern cities become
confirmed.
Here in Tuscany we again find the three branches. First: There is the school
where novices were trained in the three sister arts—painting, sculpture, and
architecture. When pupils were received from outside the guild, they had to
pass a very severe novitiate before being admitted as members; but the sons
and nephews of Magistri were, we learn, entitled to be members by heritage
without the novitiate.[156] The hereditary aspect of the lists of Masters
certainly displays this right of heritage very strongly. The qualified Masters
were entitled to take pupils and apprentices in their own studios. The large

number of pupils who studied under Niccolò Pisano suggests his eminent
position in the guild.
Second: There was the laborerium, or great workshop, where all the hewing
of stone, carving of columns, cutting up of wood-work was done—in fact,
the head-quarters of the brethren who had passed the schools, but were not
yet Masters.[157] A graphic sketch from a Masonic laborerium is given by
Nanni di Banco, in the relief under the shrine of the Quattro Coronati on Or
San Michele at Florence, where the four brethren are all at work. In looking
at it, one is reminded of the old story of the block of marble from which
Michael Angelo's David was made, which had laid for many years in the
stores of the Opera del Duomo at Florence, it having been once assigned to
Agostino di Ducci, who was commissioned in 1464 to make a statue for the
front of the Duomo, which was blocked out so badly that the marble was
taken away from him, and he was expelled from the laborerium.[158]
Third: There was the Opera or Office of Administration, which formed the
link between the guild and its patrons. The Freemasons evidently adapted
their nomenclature to the dialect of the part they were in. In Tuscany the
word for this office was Opera (or Works). There was the Opera di S.
Jacopo at Pistoja as early as 1100; and the Opera del Duomo at Pisa, Siena,
and Florence. In cities of the Lombard district, such as Modena, Parma,
Padua, Milan, etc., the name is Fabbriceria. The members of this Ruling
Council are generally four in number, and are called Operai in Tuscany, and
Fabbricieri in Lombardy. These were elected periodically, two of them
being influential citizens, who acted on the part of the patrons, and two
from the Masters themselves. Where the lodge was very small there was
only one operaio, as in Pistoja, when in 1250 Turrisianus was overseer
(superstans) for a year. Later, when the Pistoja lodge was larger, there were
two. At Milan there were more than four. Above these was the Superiore, a
sort of president. If there were a reigning Prince, he was usually elected
president. In the Opera, all commissions were given, and contracts signed
between the city and the Masters, every contract being duly drawn up in
legal manner by the notary of the Opera. Here orders were given for the
purchase of materials, and estimates considered for the payment of either
work or goods. The Opera had to provide the funds for the whole expenses.
Usually this was done in the first instance by appropriating to the work the

receipts of one or more taxes. In course of time people left legacies, and the
Opera had a knack of growing very rich.
Between the Opera and the laborerium was a responsible officer called the
Provveditore. Judging from the entries in his private memorandum-book,
his responsibilities must have been endless, and his occupations
multitudinous.
There was also a treasurer, a secretary, and two Probiviri, sometimes called
Buon uomini, who acted as arbiters, for purposes of appeal and verification
of accounts.
The identical form of the lodges in the different cities is a strong argument
that the same ruling body governed them all. An argument equally strong is
the ubiquity of the members. We find the same man employed in one lodge
after another, as work required. Unfortunately no documents exist of the
early Lombard times, but the archives of the Opere, which in most cities
have been faithfully kept since the thirteenth century, would, if thoroughly
examined, prove to be valuable stores from which to draw a history of the
Masonic Guild.
We will now return to Pisa.
Sig. Merzario asserts that no school of art indigenous to Pisa existed there
before the building of the Duomo. He might almost have said before the
time of Niccolò, for so far was the half-mythical Buschetto from being a
Pisan, that the world has for eight centuries been arguing where he came
from! To arrive at Niccolò it is necessary to start from Buschetto. Who was
Buschetto? Whence came he? Vasari, in his ignorance of monumental Latin,
says, "From Dulichium," and thus the idea was promulgated that he was a
Greek. But the inscription (given on next page) on Pisa cathedral says
nothing of the kind. It is a flowery eloquence which Cavalier Del Borgo
reads as comparing him for genius to Ulysses, Duke of Dulichium, and for
skill to Dædalus.
Cicognara judges from his name that he was Italian. Most probably
Buschetto was a nickname, "little bush," given him either from a shock
head of hair, or derived from Buscare, to thrash or flog. It is quite possible,
though the proofs are not very strong, that he may have been of Greek

extraction, descended from some of the Byzantine members of the guild of
whom we have spoken before.

BUSKET.[159] JACE ... HIC .... INGENIOR͞ U
DULICHIO ... PREVALUISSE DUCI[160]
MENIB' JLIACIS CAUTUS DEDIT ILLE RUIN͞ A
HUJUS AB ARTE VIRI MENIA MIRA VIDES.
CALLIDITATE SUA NOCUIT DUX INGENIOS
UTILIS ISTE FUIT CALLIDITATE SUA.
NIGRA DOM' LABERINTUS ERAT TUA DEDALE LAUS͞ E
AT SUA BUSKET͞ U SPLENDIDA TEMPLA PROBANT.
N̄ HABET EXPLU NIVEO[161] DE MARMORE TEMPL͞ U
QUOD FIT BUSKETI PRORSUS AB INGENIO.
RES SIBI COMISSAS TEMPLI C͞ U LEDERET HOSTIS
PROVIDUS ARTE SUI FORTIOR HOSTE FUIT.
MOLISET IMMENSE PELAGI QUAS TRAXIT AB IMO
FAMA COLUMNARUM TOLLIT AD ASTRA VIRUM
EXPLENDIS A FINE DECEM DE MENSE DIEBUS
SEPTEMBRIS GAUDENS DESERIT EXILIUM.

The partisans of the Grecian theory hold much to a MS. said to be now in
the archives of the Vatican,—but which Milanesi asserts cannot be found,—
which says that the Pisans "Buschetum ex Grecia favore
Constantinopolitani Imperatoris obtinuerunt." Morrona also suspects this to
be apocryphal; but even if it be genuine, the Pisans may only have asked for
one of the Italian architects who were working in large numbers in the East
under the Emperors, and building Lombard churches on Oriental ground. It
was only in 1170 that Desiderius, Abbot of Monte Cassino, begged
Comnenus to send him back some architects, and the Italian sculptor Olinto
was among them.
It may well be true, as Sig. Merzario says, that no school existed at Pisa
before the Duomo was begun. But soon after that, we certainly find the
usual organization of laborerium and Opera.
Old authors tell us that "the most famous Masters from foreign parts vied in
lending their help to the building of such an important edifice, under the

direction of Buschetto."[162] Another old MS.[163] records that the "Opera of
the Duomo was instituted in 1080, some years after Buschetto was engaged,
and that the first operai of the Council were Hildebrand, son of the Judge
Uberto, son of Leo, Signoretto Alliata, and Buschetto of Dulichium who
was architect. The head of these was Hildebrand, and the others were
ministers and officers of the Opera, as may be found in the archives of the
said Opera."[164] Here we have the full organization of the Comacine House
of Works. The dignitaries of the city as President, Treasurer, and Ministers,
the head architect also a member of the Council of the Opera. Another old
writer calls Buschetto capo della scuola Pisana.
Niccolò, Giovanni, and Andrea da Pisa are fine proofs that the school at
Pisa flourished and brought forth brave artists. Even as late as the sixteenth
century, when Sansovino was sculpturing the casing of the Holy House at
Loreto, we are told that thirty of the best carvers in stone were sent from
Pisa to work under the Capo Maestro, Andrea Contucci of Monte
Sansovino.[165]
Among the Magistri from other parts in Buschetto's time, one of the chief
was doubtless Rainaldo, who, judging from the inscription near the
principal door of the façade, was not only a working sculptor in the guild,
but also a full-fledged Master—
HOC OPUS EXIMIUM TAM MERUM TAM PRETIOSUM:
RAINALDUS PRUDENS OPERATOR, ET IPSE MAGISTER:
COSTITVIT MIRE, SOLLERTER, ET INGENIOSE.

It is much to be deplored that this inscription bears no date, so that we
cannot tell whether Rainaldo were chief architect after Buschetto, or
whether he were only sculptor and executed the front; Buschetto being
architect, and designing the whole. Here we have several things to suggest
both these artists as Italians, (1) Their names. (2) The Comacine form of
their institutions, with the Opera at the head. (3) The concourse of Italian
Magistri which followed them; but as usual, absolute proof is wanting.
Let us see if their work can throw more light on the question. Is the Pisan
church Byzantine? Decidedly not. There are no domes except the central
one, which is seen in most Lombard churches; no Oriental arches resting on

bulging capitals; but round arches supported on the identical Romano-
Lombard composite capitals one sees in every Italian church of the time.
The façade too is a very wilderness of Lombard galleries in every direction.
Instead of following the line of roof, they cover the whole front, one below
another. If Buschetto had brought back from Byzantium an idea of more
richness of ornamentation, he certainly worked it out in Italian forms, by
merely multiplying his little pillared galleries till a network was formed
over the whole building. This was not confined to him; it became a mark of
Comacine work for the next two or three centuries, as we may see at Lucca,
Ancona, Arezzo, and other places. The style is called Romanesque, and it
stands between the heavier Lombard style of the earlier Comacines, and the
more finished Italian Gothic of the later ones, as shown in Florence and
Milan. They are all, however, only different developments of the same
guild.

Interior of Pisa Cathedral, 11th century.
See page 212.

The richness of ornamentation suited the temper of the Pisans at that time.
They were proud of many victories, and had brought back from Majorca,
Palermo, and other places, various spoils, such as porphyry colonnettes,
rare marble, etc. etc.[166] They desired a particularly grand and gorgeous
church, and that it should be in a style hitherto unknown. The many antique
capitals and columns among the spoils placed at his disposal suggested, of
course, arches, so by way of being very original, Buschetto or Rainaldo,
whichever of the two designed it, made his façade with four arcades,
instead of one, or two, as his brethren in the north were accustomed to do.
The colonnettes in these four galleries are fifty-eight in number, some of
rosso antico, others of the black and gold-streaked Luna marble. The two
large columns at the central door are also of antique Greek work; they are
beautifully carved in foliage intertwined; the other four columns are fluted
and wreathed with foliage. The capitals also are chiefly ancient classic
work; there are Corinthian and composite ones. The remaining capitals are
Comacine work, and have their usual mixture of animals and hieroglyphic
figures. Here, too, are the lions of Judah in juxtaposition with the pillars,
but as yet they appear above the pillar and not beneath it, as was the
invariable custom a century later.
The rude figures of saints at the extremities of the roof, both of the aisles
and nave, mark the beginning of that revival of the human figure in
sculpture, which was the forerunner of the work of Niccolò Pisano. The
tower and Baptistery are the natural results of the Duomo, the style being
identical; the same round arches in the foundation, and the same circles of
Lombard galleries covering the super-structures.
The Baptistery was built by Magister Diotisalvi, somewhere about 1152.
We have no proofs of his origin, but his work and title prove him to have
graduated in the same guild as Buschetto and Rainaldo,[167] and we find his
son and grandsons in Siena and other lodges.
In the Baptistery, the old mystic octagonal form was abandoned, and the
circle takes its place. Diotisalvi has here made a perfect bell in tone as well
as in form. It is the most acoustic building possible, as any one may prove
by singing in rotation the notes of a chord. The whole chord echoes on for
several moments with exquisite effect. The Baptistery was begun in August
1152, the first stone being laid in the presence of the Consul Cocco di Tacco

Grifi; and two of the Operai (members of the administrative council or
Opera) named Cinetto Cinetti, and Arrigo Cancellieri, were appointed
soprastanti (overseers). Here again we have a distinct connection between
the Opera del Duomo and the laborerium.
Some of the classic spoils of war were given to Diotisalvi for this building.
Several of the capitals on the twenty columns supporting the foundation
circle of round arches, are Corinthian; and the two pillars at the chief portal
are beautiful specimens of ancient work, similar to those in the façade of
the Duomo. Between the classic remains incorporated into the building, and
the statues and sculptures which belong to a later century, it is difficult to
distinguish which were the absolute work of Diotisalvi himself. The
sculptures on the door-jambs—rather mediæval scenes relating to Christ
and David—and the hieroglyphics of the months were probably his own
work. The Baptism of Christ on the architrave, which has the mediæval
expression of baptism by immersion, may be his; and if so, it seems to
explain how the Greek element got into Niccolò di Pisa's work, for here is
his antecedent of a century, showing in his work signs of the same leaning
to classicism in the midst of a rude and early style. How could he help it
when he was living among classic remains of sculpture?
The other three doors have also antique spiral columns of Greek marble. A
fine piece of work, in Comacine style, is the frieze of interlaced foliage over
the west entrance. The second order is a colonnade of fifty-eight arches
with sculptured capitals. The third consists of eighteen pilasters and twenty
windows. Here are seen the lion between the pillar and the arch, various
animals and human heads at the spring of the arches, while above each
order is a complicated cornice of pyramids, spires, and arabesques, which
suggest a Southern or Eastern influence. The interior is less ornate, but of
fine solid architecture. Twelve Corinthian columns and four large pilasters
support the arches, forming a peristyle round the building; a similar gallery
with slight columns runs above it. The columns are not all of antique
marble. Three of them are of granite brought from the Isle of Elba, on May
4, 1155, and two from Sardinia, by Cinetti, one of the overseers we have
mentioned.[168] The first pillar was placed on October 1, 1156. The capitals
are ornate; some antique, Corinthian, others in Comacine style with animals
and intrecci. On one of the pillars is engraved—"Deo-ti-salvi, magister
hujus operis." Morrona thinks the Baptistery shows a Moorish influence.

This is possible, as the whole of the three buildings show the Comacines'
first great change of style, after their works in the south at Palermo, and the
kingdom of Naples.
Old writers call the style Arabo-Tedesco; and this brings us to the meaning
of the word Tedesco in Italian architecture at this epoch.
The fallacy that the Italian Gothic came from Germany, must have got into
art histories from a misconception of Vasari's term of opprobrium, "quei
Tedeschi." He uses it when he speaks of any architecture which is not purely
classic, even blaming buildings such as Arnolfo's Florentine dome, the
churches of Assisi, Orvieto, Lucca, Pisa, etc.
But the writers who interpret this term as meaning the German nation, are
reasoning on a fallacy. In the first place, was there any pointed Gothic in
Germany before the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries? We will just run over
the principal Gothic cathedrals. Bruges was begun in 1358; Cologne is
modern of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Lubeck was built in
1341; Attenburg in 1265-1379; Freiburg Dom Kirche in 1484. At Freiburg
in Breisgau, the older parts are of the same style as Comacine, while the
Gothic parts date from 1513; Strasburg, the Gothic parts between 1318-
1439; Magdeburg, 1363.
Before these were built we have at Cologne, S. Gereon's Kirche, with
circular arches, date 1227, and S. Pantaleon, 980, but there is not a sign of
Gothic in either. Bonn cathedral, built in 1151-1270, is also round-arched.
Coblenz is Carlovingian. Mayence, round-arched of the tenth and eleventh
centuries (the Gothic side-chapels date from 1260 to 1500). Treves, with
round arches, early Romanesque of the eleventh century; choir, later
Romanesque of the twelfth century; some parts which are pointed were of
the thirteenth century. Hildesheim, a Romanesque Basilica, built in the
eleventh century. Dom Insel at Breslau, 1170, is tripartite, on the Comacine
plan, and very quaint. Worms, 996-1016, Lombard style, with round arches;
the parts with pointed architecture are much more modern. This list proves
that the earliest churches were built by Italian Masters, or at least in the
Italian style.
Indeed Hope classes most of them as Lombard. The Germans themselves
expanded the Lombard style into the pointed, which also came up through

Italy, its first signs being seen at Assisi, next at Pisa, and then Florence.
Milan was a later reflex of the perfected German Gothic, though chiefly
executed, as we shall see later, by the hands of Comacine Masters.
As I have before remarked, climatic influences greatly determine the style
of a national architecture. To the sunny south belong the flat roof; the shady
colonnade; the horizontal line and frieze; the fountained court; the smaller
windows; and the solid tower. To the north the pointed roof, that snow and
rain shall not decay it; the solid buttress to resist the greater outward
pressure of the high and aspiring sloped roof; the perpendicular tendency in
design; the larger windows for a less sunny atmosphere; and the pointed
spire to carry up the general lines.
On these lines of fitness the Germans and French perfected their style, and
imported it into England. The differences are great, between this northern
Gothic and the Italian Gothic, which is always more or less Romanesque.
Now if in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries[169] the Germans had not
begun to build their glorious pointed minsters, what did Vasari mean by
quei Tedeschi? I will show from his own description. In his chapter called
"dell' Architettura," forming the introduction to his Lives, after discussing
the three classical orders, he says (I will translate literally)—"There is
another kind of work which they call Tedesco (German), in which the
ornamentation and proportions are very different from the ancient or the
modern. (Modern in Vasari's time would be the Renaissance style of
Michael Angelo.) This is not used by good architects of these days, but is
shunned by them as monstrous and barbarous. Every sign of order is
forgotten, it ought rather to be called confusion and disorder. In the
buildings, which are so many that they have infected the whole world, you
see the portals adorned with thin columns twisted like a vine, and so slight
that they could not be supposed to support the weight. And then on their
façades and other places they made a cursed mass of little tabernacles
(archlets) one on the other, with many pyramids and points, and such
foliage (here Vasari evidently has his eye on Pisa Baptistery), that it seems
impossible how they clung together; they seem made of paper, rather than
of stone or marble. In these works there are many protuberances, broken
lines, brackets, and intrecci, quite disproportionate to the building; and
frequently, by piling one thing on another, they run up so high that the top

of a door touches the roof. (Here Vasari is certainly thinking of the porches
of San Zeno at Verona, and the cathedral of Bergamo.) This style was
invented by the Goths (does he mean Longobards perhaps?), who having
ruined the buildings, and murdered the architects, made the ones who
remained build in this way. They arched their roofs with acute quarti
(vaulted roofs) and filled all Italy with this cursed style of building.... God
save any country from coming to such ideas and orders of architecture,
which, being utterly deformed and unlike the beauty of our buildings, do
not deserve that we should speak any more of them."
Again, in the Proemio delle Vite, when praising the solid buildings of the
Goths in Ravenna, especially the tomb of Theodoric, with its huge
monolithic roof, he goes on to speak of the Dark Ages—"After which," he
says, "there arose new architects, who from their barbarous nation derived
the kind of buildings which we of to-day call tedeschi, the which seem
ridiculous to us, although to them they may have appeared to be
praiseworthy."
Here are tirades from the old chronicler of art, who swore by the three
classic orders, and worshipped Michael Angelo and the Renaissance style!
Certainly the flat pilaster, triangular pediments, and straight unadorned lines
of that art were as far removed as the poles from the florid but meaningful
sculpture-architecture of the Comacines in Romanesque times, or its rich
Norman and Gothic developments.
However, we gather plainly from this, that when Vasari calls a master
Tedesco, he means merely Lombard. The reason is easy to see. Lombardy
and North Italy, down to Lucca, were from about 1170 under the rule of the
German Emperors, consequently the Comacines were no longer Lombards,
nor French as in the Carlovingian times, but Germans.
This is curiously emphasized by an episode in the building of the cathedral
at Pisa. When the Pisans wanted to endow the building fund of the church,
they wished to buy some land on the Serchio, near Lucca, to help to form a
revenue. They had, however, to send Gualando Orlandi and Aldebrando de'
Visconti as ambassadors to Germany to obtain permission from the
Emperor Henry IV., that the lands close by Lucca might be ceded to Pisa.
[170]

The tower of Pisa is too well known to need any description here. The joint
masters were Bonanno of Pisa, and a very confusing Tedesco. In some
authors he is called Giovanni d'Innspruck, in others Guglielmo from
Germany. On inquiry as to how Innspruck comes into the question, we find
the following perplexing passage in Morrona. After quoting the inscription
on the tower, "A.D. MCLXXIV campanile hoc fuit fundatum mense
Agusti," he continues—"We find from ancient documents belonging to the
Opera, that the building was begun on the vigil of San Lorenzo, and the two
above-mentioned architects (Bonanno and Guglielmo) are precisely
indicated, excepting only that instead of Guglielmo Tedesco, it is written
Giovanni Onnipotente of Germany—a misinterpretation of the word
Œnipons or Œnipontanus, which signifies native of Innspruck."[171] The
italics are my own, and emphasize what Sig. Morrona styles a precise
indication! The passage is an astounding bit of unreason, but as neither
Giovanni nor Guglielmo is a German form of name, I do not think this
theory need trouble us. Whether the builder were German or Italian,
whether named John or William, he only carried out the general design of
the two buildings, and made a veil of Lombard archlets all over his leaning
tower.
We shall find both Bonanno and Guglielmo working at Orvieto some time
later. The tower was finished much later, when Andrea di Pisa was Grand
Master of the Pisan Lodge; the upper circle of arches belongs to his part of
the work.
At Pisa then we have an artistic sphere which might well have produced
Niccolò di Pisa, even without the influences of the south. We will, as far as
the few inscriptions and documents allow, see who were the members of
this Masonic lodge, which had painters before even the rise of the Siena
school, and whose building was the earliest model for the Romanesque
style.
Bonanno, who assisted in the building of the tower, was more famous in the
guild for his metal working than for architecture and marble sculpture. The
fame of the bronze doors of the Duomo which he cast is now only
traditionary, as they were destroyed by the fire on October 25, 1596. The
antique inscription has been preserved, and proves that in 1180 Bonanno

cast the doors, which had taken him a year to model, and that a certain
"Benedict" was operarius at the time.[172]
Bonanno's successor as a master in bronze was a certain Bartolommeo di
Pisa, who was, like Bonanno, sculptor, architect, and metal-worker. He was
much patronized by the Emperor Frederic, for whom he built the palace at
Foggia, and made a tomb. He seems to have been a famous bell-caster;
there are inscriptions quoted by Morrona,[173] which have been found on
bells in the leaning tower of Pisa, the bells of the churches of St. Francis at
Assisi, S. Francesco at Siena, S. Paolo a Ripa d'Arno, and S. Cosimo at
Pisa, S. Michele at Lucca, etc. Sometimes his name stands alone;
sometimes one of his sons, Lotteringo or Andreotti, is associated with him.
Later we find the sons' names alone in independent works, and then with
the distinctive title of Magister.
Through this group of Pisan Masters a special connection was established
with the south, a link which might account for Pietro, the father of Niccolò,
being called Pietro da Apulia, for there certainly was an offshoot of the
Pisan lodge in that part. Bonanno of Pisa cast the famous bronze doors of
Monreale; Bartolommeo was at Foggia; and his son, Magister Lotoringus,
passed most of his life at Cefalù, where his name appears on a bell dated
A.D. 1263. The Emperor Frederic, his father's patron, nationalized him in
Cefalù, and after ten years of residence, in 1242 he gave him permission to
take a wife from Castro-Vetere in Calabria.
Other metal-workers and bell-casters at Pisa were a Nanni, a Pardo Nardi,
and others whose names appear inscribed in the twelfth century. I do not
know whether the Angelo Rossi, whose name with the date 1173 is on a
sculptured bell once in the church of S. Giovanni in Pisa (now at Villa di
Pugnano), was a fellow-pupil or scholar of Bonanno's. His work is less
artistic and masterly.
And now for the sculptors of the lodge. A famous master of the twelfth
century was Biduinus, who sculptured the façade of the ancient church of S.
Cassiano, near Pisa, the building of which was undoubtedly the work of the
Pisan Lodge. It is a round-arched church of the usual large smooth square-
cut blocks of stone, and is externally adorned by pilasters with capitals of
varied form and sculpture. Biduinus' façade has five round arches with a

simple double-light window above. The capitals and architraves are all
carved with the mystic beasts and hippogriffs belonging to the religion of
the day. The architraves show the resurrection of Lazarus, and Christ's entry
into Jerusalem. On one of the doors is the inscription in Gothic letters
—"Hoc opus quod cernis. Biduinus docte peregit"; the other bears the date
1180. The whole style of the church is similar to the Pistoja buildings of
that epoch, and recalls the school of Gruamonte. It is certain that Biduinus
as well as Gruamont worked in Lucca, for the relief of the architrave of S.
Salvatore at Lucca is signed "BIDUVINO ME FECIT HOC OPUS."

Pulpit in the Church of S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas,
Pistoja. By Magister Guglielmo d'Agnello, 13th
century.

See page 223.

The next great names are Niccolò and Giovanni Pisani, the glory not only
of their own lodge, but of the universal Guild. Until the time when his
famous pulpit was sculptured, Niccolò seems to have worked little in Pisa,
though he endowed it with one of his most original designs—the bell-tower
of S. Niccolò. From the evidence of southern influence in his style, it is
probable that his father Pietro was one of the artists whom Frederic called
to South Italy, and that Niccolò passed his novitiate with him there. In any
case, by the time he wrote Magister before his name he had already attained
a high rank as sculptor and architect, and was chosen for most important
works out of Pisa, such as the Arca di S. Domenico at Bologna, and the
building of the church and convent near it. Niccolò Pisano's work in
Florence was almost exclusively architectural; he also designed the
cathedral churches of Arezzo and Cortona. His pupil, Fra Guglielmo, a
relative of the Doge dell' Agnello of Pisa who was Niccolò's assistant in the
Arca di S. Domenico at Bologna in 1272, worked in 1293 at the reliefs in
the façade of Orvieto, and in 1304 put the Romanesque front to S. Michele
in Borgo, in Pisa. The Virgin and Child over the door of the latter is a copy
of Niccolò's famous statue. Some authors give him the credit of being the
Tedesco who Vasari says sculptured the fine pulpit in S. Gio. Fuorcivitas at
Pistoja, and who assisted Bonanno in the tower of Pisa.
A sculptor named Bonaiuto must, I think, have belonged to Niccolò's
school. Two interesting sculptured doorways by him still exist in what was
once the Palazzo Sclafani at Palermo (now the barracks of S. Trinità). The
doorway is carved in tufo, and above it is a kind of gable supported by two
small pilasters, enclosing the arms of the family, a pair of cranes;
surmounting the gable is a carved eagle, with a hare in its claws, standing
on a kind of capital, which is unmistakably Comacine; beneath this is a
bracket inscribed, "Bonaiuto me fe-cit de Pisa." Sig. Centofanti, in a private
letter to Professor Clemente Lupi, who wrote to ask for information about
Bonaiuto, says that a register of expenses of the Opera del Duomo of Pisa
contains several mentions of the name. In one dated 1315 Bonaiutus
magister lapidum is noted as working at the Duomo, and receiving two
soldi a day, his companions receiving four or five, and the capo maestro
eight. Here it would seem he is still in the lower ranks of the brotherhood.
In 1318 he is noted as Boniautus Michaelis, and receives four soldi a day. In

1344 he has become full capo maestro of the Duomo, and is paid nine soldi
a day.[174]
From his school also sprang Arnolfo, the first of a long line of sculptor-
builders of the Florentine Lodge. From it, too, through his son Giovanni,
came the best builders of the Siena cathedral, and their followers who
worked at Orvieto.
Thus Niccolò and Giovanni are proved to be links in the old chain that
came from classic Rome through the Lombard Comacines to the
Renaissance. All the famous names that ever were, may be traced in this
universal Guild from father to son, from master to pupil. After Giovanni
Pisano went to Siena, Andrea di Pisa, his scholar, carried on his school in
Pisa. In 1299 we first hear of Andrea, the son of a notary at Pontedera, as
famulus magistri Johannes.[175] His first authentic works were the bronze
doors of the Florentine Baptistery, proving that he had been trained in the
many-branched fraternity at Pisa, where metal-working ranked so high. As
instances of his sculptures in marble, we may take many of the statues
which were on the Duomo at Florence, and the second line of reliefs on
Giotto's campanile. But like all the Magistri, he was, above all, an architect,
and in that branch we find him as Grand Master at Orvieto in 1347. His son
Nino succeeded him in the onerous office. His other son Tommaso was also
in the guild, but did not rise to eminence in it. He designed a palace, and
painted two caskets for the Doge dell' Agnello of Pisa.
Nino's sculptures show a greater fidelity to nature than those of his artistic
ancestors. A Madonna and two angels over the door of the canonry of the
Duomo at Florence are very charming, as are his statues in the church of the
"Spina" at Pisa. We next find Nino's son Andrea receiving payment for a
sepulchre for the Doge dell' Agnello, which Nino did not live long enough
to finish.
One among Andrea's pupils who were not his relatives rose to special and
wide-spread eminence in the guild, i.e. Magister Giovanni Balducci di Pisa,
whose artistic career was mostly in Milan, where the Visconti patronized
him. He sculptured several tombs, among them the beautiful Arca of St.
Peter Martyr in S. Eustorgio in 1336. The figures of the Christian Virtues
are very sweet and naturalistic. On a sculptured pulpit at S. Casciano near

Florence, of the same shape and style as that by Guido di Como at Pistoja,
but infinitely more advanced in art, he has signed, "Hoc opus fecit Johs
Balducci Magister de Pisis." The only architectural work that is mentioned
as signed by him is the door of S. Maria in Brera at Milan.

II.—Lucca and Pistoja

THE BUONI FAMILY AT PISTOJA
1. 1152 Magister Employed at Ravenna and at Naples,
Buono where he built Castel dell' Uovo and
Castel Capuano. At Arezzo the
palace of the Signory.
2 & 3. 1168 "M. Johannes Made the Ciborium at Corneto.
and Guitto"
(Guido)
4. 1196 Magister Built the churches of S. Andrea and S.
Buono, called Gio. Evangelista at Pistoja. This man
Gruamont is said by Vasari to be identical with
the first Buono.
5. M. Adeodatus, Worked with him at Pistoja.
his brother
6. 1206 "Magister Designed Fiesole cathedral.
Bonus," or
Buono
7. 1264 M. Giovanni Worked at St. Anthony, Padua; in 1265
Buono built the cathedral of S. Jacopo, in
(Zambono) Pistoja.

8. M. Andrea These brothers worked together at the
Buono, his pulpit at Corneto Tarquinia, and
brother probably built the church. Niccolao
di Rannuccio sculptured the door,
inlaid in Cosmati style.
9. 1285 M. Alberto
di Guido
Buono
Sculptured at S. Pietro, Bologna.
10. " M. Albertino
di Enrico
Buono

The family were leading members of the guild up to the fifteenth century, when
Bartolommeo Buono and his sons won fame in Venice.

We have seen the long connection of the Comacines with Lucca, during
Lombard times, when they helped to build S. Frediano and other churches
there. Sig. Ridolfi, author of L' Arte in Lucca, proves that not only the chief
churches, but the cathedral itself, were the work of the Lombard "Maestri
Casari" who had established their schools there, since they restored S.
Frediano for the Lombard Faulone in 686, and built the Basilica of S.
Martino for Bishop Frediano in 588.
By the tenth century the church of S. Martino was very dilapidated, which
much grieved the mind of Bishop Anselmo, who sought to gather together
funds for its restoration. Two wealthy Lucchesi, Lambertus and Blancarius,
both dignitaries of the cathedral, gave large donations towards it. Not long
after this, Bishop Anselmo was elevated to the Papal See as Pope Alexander
II., and immediately began the long-desired work of rebuilding his ex-
cathedral.

Church of S. Michele, Lucca.
See page 228.

He being a Milanese, and the Comacines his countrymen, besides their
having a long connection with Lucca, it is natural to suppose he chose them
as his architects. Every sign of the work confirms this, although no names
have come down to us. As was frequently the case, the church was left
without a façade for over a century, and at the end of the twelfth century the
Lucchesi wished to put this finishing touch.
There was in Lucca at the time a certain Magister Guido da Como, who had
in 1187 built the church of S. Maria Corteorlandini. It was built for the
feudal Lords Rolandinga, whose palace was called Corte Rolandinga, on
the occasion of one of their family joining in the crusades.[176] There is
mention of a Comacine sculptor named Guido before this date, at Corneto-
Tarquinia, where in the church of S. Maria di Castello is a fine Ciborium,
signed "Johannes et Guitto hoc opus fecerunt, MCLXVIII." This, being
only nineteen years previous, may have been an earlier work of this same
Guido. This Magister evidently had a son who followed his father's art, and

was named after himself Guido, though called Guidetto, or young Guido, to
distinguish him from his father. To these two men were confided the
commission for the front of the Duomo. Probably the elder did not live to
complete it, for although the commission was given to Maestro Guido
Marmolario (sic), the inscription on the façade runs—"Mille
C.C.|IIII.|condi|dit|ele|cti tam pul| chras. dextra|Guidecti."[177] Among the
sculptures is one figure with a very young face, supposed to be a portrait of
Guidetto. This façade is a perfect specimen of pure Comacine-Romanesque,
and shows that the Saracen influence under which the Masters had been
placed in the south, when employed by the Lombard Dukes of Beneventum,
had not led them to change entirely their old style, but only to develop it
into a species of Oriental richness which (so far we may agree with old
Vasari) sometimes errs against truth and good taste. It shows also the close
connection between the Pisan and Lucchese Lodges.
The row of archlets which used to form a cornice under the roof now, as at
Pisa, run wild over the whole façade. The outlines which used to follow
honestly the shape of nave and aisles, now, for the sake of heaping on more
ornament, stretch up far beyond the roof-line, forming a mask.
A still more glaring instance of the same fault is seen in Guidetto's other
church, S. Michele, at Lucca, where the two upper galleries are the frontage
of a mere useless wall in the air.
As an architect, young Guido left something to be desired; as a sculptor he
was marvellous. Variety seems to have been his aim. In both S. Martino and
S. Michele, among all the hundreds of colonnettes, you can scarcely find a
duplicate. They are plain, fluted, foliaged, clustered, inlaid; black, white,
red, green, yellow or parti-coloured, in endless variety. As for capitals, you
get every imaginable shape and style, symbol and ornamentation. He
outdoes his prototype Rainaldus of Pisa, and no clearer proof of a guild,
rather than a single mind, can be furnished, than by this infinite variety of
detail, which plainly speaks of the imaginings of many minds.

Cathedral of Lucca (San Martino), erected 11th
century; Façade 1204. By Guidectus.

See page 228.

The Comacines here are still in the transition stage, though near its end, for
the sign of the lion of Judah holds its place above the pillar, under the
spring of the arch. In the Italian Gothic, their next development, it is always
beneath the column.
One of the lion-capped columns is entirely covered with sculptures
representing the genealogical tree of the Virgin. The statue above the door,
of St. Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar, is sufficiently well
modelled as to suggest its belonging to a later century.
Signor Ridolfi, who has studied much in the archives of Lucca for his
learned work L' Arte in Lucca, thinks that, in 1204, Guidetto the younger
was only just beginning his career. His father must have died about this
time, for the son loses his diminutive, and becomes in his turn Guido
Magistro. In 1211 he was called to Prato to work at the Duomo there (then

known as S. Stefano). The contract, which still exists, does not specify what
part of the church he was to build. It is drawn up by the Notary Hildebrand,
and binds "Guido, Maestro marmoraio" of S. Martino of Lucca, to go to
Prato on fair terms, and there to remain working, and commanding others to
work, at the church of S. Stefano. After this he was recalled to Lucca, to put
the above-mentioned façade to S. Michele, which Teutprand had built in the
eighth century, and which had been rebuilt, when in 1027 Beraldo de'
Rolandinghi had left a large legacy for the purpose. This façade, which, as I
have said, is precisely similar in style to that of the Duomo, was finished in
1246.[178] Guido was then called to Pisa, to sculpture the altar and font in
the Baptistery there. Not much remains of the altar—which appears to have
been the usual edifice on four columns—except some very ancient
sculpture, and two small columns with extremely rude statues on them. The
inscription, however, is preserved, and runs—"A.D. MCCXLVI, sub Jacobi
Rectore loci—Guido Bigarelli da Como fecit hoc opus."[179] This valuable
discovery was made by the German Schmarzow. Here we have the family
name of this busy sculptor, and of his father Guido of Como. It is one of the
first instances, for surnames only became fixed about this time.
Guido or Guidetto's last work appears to have been the pulpit in San
Bartolommeo in Pantano, at Pistoja, executed in 1250. This is particularly
interesting, as being the immediate precursor of Niccolò Pisano's pulpit at
Pisa in 1260. It has been thought that Guido, either from death or other
cause, left the work imperfect, and his pupil Turrisianus finished it. The
inscription as quoted by Cav. Tolomei is—"Sculptor laudator qui doctus in
arte probatur|Guido de Como quem cunctis carmine promo| Anno domini
1250|Est operi sanus superestans Turrisianus |Namque fide prova vigil K
Deus indi corona."[180]
Tolomei is puzzled by the cypher K, and Ciampi, the collector of
inscriptions, has, in reporting this one, left out the last line altogether. He
interprets it as implying that Guido having left the work unfinished,
Turrisianus finished it. Whilst I was studying lately some old documents in
the archives of S. Jacopo at Pistoja, Signor Guido Macciò of that city, who
kindly assisted me to read the crabbed old characters, threw a new light on
that inscription. He says Tolomei has misread it; that the cypher is not a K
but H C, which was plainly legible in a rubbing he took of it, and that

superstans merely means overseer; in fact, the Latin form of operaio. The
same term superstans was used for the head of the laborerium in Rome up
to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, and survived in the later lodges as
soprastante. Signor Macciò interprets the inscription thus—"The famous
sculptor Guido of Como has proved himself learned in art, and his name
should be sung in verse, A.D. 1250. Turrisianus (Torrigiani) acted as
overseer to this fine work, and may God crown him for superintending the
work so well." I leave more learned classics to say which interpretation is
the true one. But as in most of the inscriptions, documents, etc. of the guild,
the name of the head of the lodge, and often those of the councillors are put
in, I incline to think Signor Macciò may be right, and the inscription is
another proof of a Masonic lodge in which Torrigiani was, at the time, the
head of the administration.

Pulpit in Church of S. Bartolommeo, Pistoja. By
Guido da Como.

See page 230.

Guido's pulpit is of white marble, and in the ancient square form, with eight
panels in bas-relief. It rests on three columns; the first stands on a lion with
a dragon at its feet, the second on a lioness suckling a cub, the third on a
human figure. In this pulpit, and the older one at Groppoli, we have a
perceptible link, connecting Niccolò Pisano with the Comacine Guild,
which we shall trace more closely when speaking of Romanesque sculpture.
There were at that epoch three lodges in the immediate neighbourhood. One
in connection with the Opera del Duomo at Pisa, one at Pistoja in the Opera
di S. Jacopo, and a third one at Lucca, where Guido and Guidetto were
chief sculptors. Besides this there was another in Apulia, where it is thought
Niccolò's father Pietro worked. Niccolò's work, and that of Guido the
younger, are so very much alike as to warrant the suspicion that they were
both pupils of one master, but that Niccolò had in him these greater
qualities which go to form an epoch-making artist.
Little has hitherto come to light respecting the Masonic lodges of Lucca and
Pisa. The laborerium at Pistoja is rather more clearly defined, and furnishes
some definite names. It existed from the twelfth century, but I do not think
the archives were kept quite so early as that. There is the name Rodolfin's
op, anni 1167, carved on the architrave of the principal entrance of the
Lombard church of S. Bartolommeo in Pantano; but as critics cannot tell
whether it means "Rodolfinus opus" or "Rodolfinus operaius" or head of the
Opera, it is not a very decisive bit of history. The reading "Rodolfinus
Operaius for the year 1167" would, like "Turrisianus, overseer in 1250," be
quite intelligible in its connection with the guild.
The façade of S. Bartolommeo is a masterpiece of Lombard work. It has the
usual three round-arched doors, whose pilasters and architraves are rich
with interlaced scrolls and foliage, and whose richly-carved arches rest on
lions more or less fiercely dominating other animals, as emblems that
divine strength is able to overcome sin. Whether all the animal sculptures
on this church are due to the twelfth-century builder, or whether some are
remains of Gundoaldo's[181] first edifice in 767, I cannot say. The
architraves are certainly of the later date.

The head, or capo-maestro of the laborerium of Pistoja in the twelfth
century, was evidently one of the Buono family, whose race and school
became as famous as the Antelami and Campionesi, all three being
branches of the original Lombard Guild. Like the Antelami and the
Campionesi, the school founded by the Buoni furnished several shining
lights among the Lombard Magistri. The name is first met with in the poem
of which we have spoken,[182] on the Ten Years' War between Milan and the
people of Como. Among the brave citizens who threw down their tools to
take arms, and distinguished themselves in wielding them, was a certain
Giovanni Buono from Vesonzo (now Bissone) in Vall' Intelvi, who took part
in the siege of the fortress of S. Martino on Lake Lugano. The war took
place in the tenth century; the poem was written a little later than 1100. Sig.
Merzario[183] opines that the Maestro Buono of whom Vasari speaks as the
"first architect who showed a more elevated spirit, and aimed after better
things, but of whose country and family he knows nothing,"[184] was one of
this line of sculptor-architects originally from Vesonzo (Bissone) in
Inteluum (Val d'Intelvi). The name Giovanni occurs constantly in the lists.
Certainly the head of the line, as far as regards art, was the Magister
Giovanni Buoni here mentioned by Vasari, who goes on to say that this
Buono in 1152 had been employed on buildings in Ravenna, after which he
was called to Naples, where he built the Castel dell' Uovo and Castel
Capuano; and that in the time of Doge Domenico Morosini, i.e. 1154, he
founded the Campanile of S. Marco at Venice, which Vasari asserts was so
well built that up to his time it had never moved a hair (non ha mai mosso
un pelo).
Vasari says that Giovanni Buono was in 1166 at Pistoja, where he built the
church of S. Andrea. Both Milanesi, Vasari's annotator, and Merzario[185]
complain that Vasari was very confused in these statements. The tower of S.
Marco was, Cicognara says, by a later Bartolommeo Buono from Bergamo,
who also built the Procuratie Vecchie in the sixteenth century. It is curious
how Vasari, living in the same century, could have made such a statement;
he must have known whether the tower were being built then, or had been
standing for several centuries. The fact was that one Buono built the older
tower in Venice to which Vasari refers, and the sixteenth-century
Bartolommeo Buono was its restorer. The style is certainly antique.

Vasari's annotators agree that this Buono worked at Arezzo, where he built
the bell-tower, and the ancient palace of the Signoria of Arezzo (cio è un
palazzo della maniera de' Goti), i.e. with large hewn stones; after which he
came to Pistoja, where he built S. Andrea and other churches.
But even here some confusion exists. It is difficult to decide whether the
builder of S. Andrea at Pistoja, and the cathedral of Lucca was indeed
named Buono or Gruamonte. There is an inscription on the sculpture of the
architrave of the façade which has been a great bone of contention. It
proves, however, beyond a doubt that the usual organization, with the
Opera as the administrative branch, existed in Pistoja in 1196. It runs
—"Fecit hoc opus Gruamons magister bon(us) et Adot ... (Adeodatus) frater
ejus. Tunc erāt operarii Villanus et Pathus filius Tignosi A.D. MCIXVI."[186]
This work was done by Gruamons, Master Buono, and Adeodatus his
brother; Villanus and Pathus, son of Tignosi, being then operai (i.e. on the
administrative council).
In that word bonus lies the difficulty. Some say it is merely placed in
encomium: Gruamons the good master; but it does not seem to me probable
that a man would habitually sign his name with a boastful adjective; and
habitual it was, because on the white stripes of the architrave of the church
of S. Giovanni Evangelista Fuorcivitas he has again signed himself
"Gruamons magister bonus fêc hoc opus." Knowing the Italian love of
nicknames from the earliest ages, I take it that the architect was really, as
Vasari says, Master Bonus or Buono, and that either from a long neck and a
stoop, or from his clever use of a crane, he was nicknamed Gruamons, "the
crane man,"[187] grue being Italian for both bird and machine. That the
Gruamons who carved the Magi on the architrave of S. Andrea was one of
the very early Masters, is evident from the mediæval grossness of his work
in carving the human figure; that he may very likely be Comacine is
suggested by the style and mastery of his ornamento and the life in the
figures of his animals. The capitals supporting this architrave are evidently
by one of his subordinates; they are very rough, but full of meaning,
explaining the mystery of the Annunciation and Conception; below them
the signature Magister enricus mi fecit. These early sculptures are
especially interesting, for they are the first efforts of the Comacines to show
Bible events and truths by actual representation instead of by symbols, and
so form the link with the development under Niccolò Pisano. Hence the

greater want of practice in the human figures, compared to the animals and
scrolls, with which the guild had been familiar for ages.

Church of S. Andrea, Pistoja. Designed by
Gruamons.
See page 235.

It is interesting to compare Gruamons' work with that of the later sculptor of
the façade of S. Bartolommeo, and note the rapid progress that art was
making towards more perfect and natural form in sculpture. There are only
twenty-two years between them, but the sculptor of S. Bartolommeo is far
in advance of Gruamons in his representation of the human figure. It is said
that Gruamons has left his sign in a portrait of himself on the doorway of S.
Andrea, where a curiously negro-like head stands out from the middle of a

column. It seems, however, to have acquired its blackness by being used
through several centuries as a torch extinguisher at funerals.
Another of Gruamons' churches in Pistoja is that of S. Giovanni Evangelista
Fuorcivitas, which is extremely interesting as showing a perfect specimen
of the practicable Lombard gallery or outer ambulatory, which in two orders
here surrounds the church. The building is entirely encrusted with black and
white marble, mostly in alternate lines, but in some places inlaid in
chequers. This fashion, which began in this very city of Pistoja, has an
historical significance, and was introduced as a symbol of the peace
between the factions of Bianchi and Neri, which so long harassed Pistoja. It
was taken up afterwards by Siena and Orvieto, and in Florence and Prato,
when their respective civic feuds were healed.
Gruamons, or Magister Buono, may have been the chief master of the
laborerium at Pistoja with its accompanying Opera di S. Jacopo, which
began to keep its registers in 1145. At any rate his family name was kept up
in that lodge for more than a century. The Buoni followed the usual custom,
and sought commissions in other towns. In 1206 we find one of them
restoring and almost rebuilding the cathedral at Fiesole, which had been
built in 1028, in the time of Bishop Jacopo Bavaro, but was menacing ruin
two centuries later. On the sixth column of the nave, on the right, is
inscribed—
"MCCVI. Indict VIII Bonus Magister Restaurus.
Operarius Ecclesiæ Fesulanæ Fecit Ædificare
IIII columnas I. Allex P.P."

Here even at this early date we have the Opera or administration under the
direction of the dignitaries of the cathedral. The tower was built by a
Maestro Michele in 1213. An inscription on the left of the apse tells us that
the building of the tower cost seventy mancussi, a gold coin in use in the
Middle Ages.[188] It is supposed that Maestro Buono copied his church from
S. Miniato near Florence. The plan is nearly identical, and both have the
same peculiarity of the omission of the narthex, or portico, which till this
time had been an indispensable part of the ecclesiastic Basilica. It is true the
Fiesole church is built of stone, and is simple in ornament, while S. Miniato

is of marble and rich in decorations, but in plan and form the two are
identical. In each case the same use has been made of the older buildings on
the site by leaving them as crypts.

Church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, Pistoja.
Designed by Gruamons.
See page 236.

The first San Miniato church was built under Charlemagne, by Bishop
Hildebrand in 774; the second was endowed by the Emperor Henry the
Saint, and Saint Cunegonda his wife; both times the patrons were
accustomed to employ the Comacine Masters. In San Miniato we see one of
their masterpieces.
In the thirteenth century another distinguished scion of the Buono race
came down to join the lodge at Pistoja. We have seen Giovanni Buono, or
Zambono as he writes himself, at work at S. Antonio at Padua in 1264,
together with Egidio, son of Magister Graci; Nicola, son of Giovanni;
Ubertino, son of Lanfranco, etc. In 1265 Magister Bonus or Buono was
capo-maestro and architect of the Duomo at Pistoja, and in 1266 he erected

the tribune of S. Maria Nuova there, on the cornice of which he has carved
—"A.D. MCCLXVI tempore Parisii Pagni[189] et Simones, Magister Bonus
fecit hoc opus," i.e. A.D. 1266, in the time when Paris Pagni and Simones
were operai, Magister Bonus executed this work.
In 1270 Buono was commissioned to make the façade of the church of S.
Salvatore in the same energetic little town. The inscription on the pretty
little façade is—
"Anno milleno bis centum septuageno
Hoc perfecit opus qui fertur nomine Bonus
Præstabant operi Jacobus, Scorcione vocatus
Et Benvenuti Joannes, quos Deus omnes
Salvator lenis millis velit augere penis. Amen."

Here we get the names of two operai instead of one. It is evident that the
lodge has increased since Gruamons was head of the laborerium, and
Turrisianus head of the Opera. According to custom, one was an eminent
Pistojese, and the other a Magister. We find Johannes Benvenuti working
with Giovanni in several other cities.
The question we have now to answer is whether this Giovanni Buono, who
was in Pistoja from 1265 to 1270, was the same man who worked at Padua
in 1264, and was afterwards head of the lodge at Parma in 1280? An
indication, if not a lateral proof, is found in studying who were his
companions. At Pistoja in 1264, Nicola, son of Giovanni, was his assistant,
and in 1270 Johannes Benvenuti was with him. At Parma in 1280 we find
that Guido, Nicola, Bernardino, and Benvenuto were in the laborerium
when he was chief architect. Here we have at least two of his companions,
not including Guido, with him in the works of all three cities, which would
go far to prove his identity.
The Buono family form a curious connection between Corneto Tarquinia
and Pistoja. We have already spoken of the Ciborium at Corneto, sculptured
by Johannes and Guitto (Guido) in 1168. The pulpit in the same church, and
another at Alba Fucense, are both signed by Giovanni Buono and Andrea
his brother, but date a century later than the Ciborium, i.e. precisely the time
of our Giovanni Buono of Pistoja. The façade of the same church at Corneto

Tarquinia is full of Comacine sculptures; and on the double-arched
windows with the tesselated columns is an epigraph saying that the "inlaid
work in porphyry, serpentine, and giallo antico" was done by Nicolao, son
of Ranuccio. Now this must have been the Nicolao who worked under this
same Giovanni Buono in 1280 at Parma, with a certain Guido and Johannes
Benvenuti. Guido was evidently a kinsman of Giovanni Buono, for we find
that in 1285 Albertus, son of Guido Buono, and Albertinus, son of Enrico
Buono, were employed together in the sculptures at S. Pietro at Bologna.
In any case we have a long connection of the Buono family with the Opera
di S. Jacopo at Pistoja, and shall find them still engaged in other important
works at Pisa and Lucca, besides being chief architects at Parma and Padua,
etc. Two centuries later their descendants were building fine Gothic works
in Venice.
The Baptistery of Pistoja has been attributed to Andrea Pisano, but a
document in the archives of the Opera di S. Jacopo not only shows who was
the real architect, or rather head-master, but proves that it was done by a
Magister Cellini of the Masonic Guild from the lodge at Siena, who became
Grand Master of the lodge at Pistoja. It runs—"Et per Magistrum Cellinum
qui est caput magistrorum edificantium Ecclesiam rotundam S. Joannis
Baptistæ."[190] There also exists in the archives the contract made between
the Opera (administrative council) and Magister Cellini on July 22, 1339,
for the completion and ornamentation of the building which he had so far
constructed. There is no mention of Andrea Pisano in either deed.
The Pistojan Baptistery is not a very pleasing building. There is something
inharmonious in its proportions. It is of the usual octagonal form, but too
high for its width; the horizontal lines of white and black marble still further
detract from its beauty, and cut up the ornamentation.
On the whole the architect who wants to study Comacine churches cannot
do so better than at Pistoja, where there is so much of the old work left.
Besides the edifices we have already mentioned, are other two very
interesting churches, S. Piero Maggiore and S. Paolo, although nothing but
the outer shell of either is now remaining.[191] The architrave of S. Piero
Maggiore has a very mediæval relief on it, representing Christ giving a
huge key to St. Peter, while the Apostles and the Virgin stand in a row

beside them. The capital of one pilaster has a man-faced lion, whose tail
forms an interlaced knot. The other has upstanding volutes of a heavy kind
of foliage. Lions lie beneath the spring of the arch, and winged griffins and
other mystic animals are on brackets along the façade. I think the capitals
and mystic beasts must have belonged to the first Longobardic church built
by Ratpert, son of Guinichisius, in 748, as well as the lower part of the
façade, which is certainly of the most ancient opus gallicum, of large
smooth stones closely fitted. The architrave and the upper part, which
consists of an arcade patched on in white and black marble, belong to
Giovanni Buono's restoration in 1263. In old times a curious ceremony used
to take place in this church, which belonged to the Convent of Benedictine
nuns. When a new bishop took possession of the see, he was espoused
(spiritually of course) to the abbess of this Order, with solemn rites and
ceremonies.
S. Paolo was a priory church. This, too, had been built in 748 by the first
Comacines under the Longobards, and evidences still remain that it was
originally turned from east to west, the façade being then where the choir is
now. It was rebuilt when S. Atto was bishop of the city in 1133, and besides
a very pretty frontal, has a good specimen of the upper external gallery
surrounding the church.
I will end my chapter on Pistoja with a mention of an interesting old MS.
from the archives of the Opera di S. Jacopo, which, with Signor Macciò's
aid, we found to be the marriage contract of a certain Maestro Jacopo Lapi.
The bridegroom is named as Jacobus Dominus Lapus, fili Turdi, di
Inghilberti, who wishes to contract marriage with Marchesana filia
Sannutini, and to "live with her according to Longobardic law." The deed
then goes on to specify the lands and possessions he bestows on his bride as
a morgincap. This might be interesting in art history, if it could be proved
whether the Jacopo Lapi were that pupil of Niccolò Pisano's who worked
with him and Arnolfo at Siena in 1266.
In that case it gives the Jacopo Lapi's family an added interest as of
Longobardic origin through his grandfather, Inghilbert. We further learn by
the document that his great-grandmother's name was Molto-cara (very
dear). This, taken together with the name Tordo (thrush) given to her son,

proves how the nickname outweighed the family or baptismal name in
mediæval times.

CHAPTER IV

ROMANESQUE AND GOTHIC ORNAMENTATION

When the romantic style of building, which the Comacine Masters had
imbibed in Sicily, came in, their serious set-by-rule building went out. The
first use they made of their new ideas was to increase the richness of
decoration, and this they did by the almost childish expedient of
multiplying their old ornaments. Instead of one little pillared gallery on the
top of a façade, they now put whole rows of galleries, or covered the fronts
all over with them, as in Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo. There is a very early
instance of this in the church of Santa Maria at Ancona, of which we give
an illustration. Here the network of arches are not real galleries, but only
sculpturesque simulations; each arch is simply placed on the top of the
other, without architrave or frieze. The doorway has the usual Comacine
interlaced knots and no lions, so the façade may stand as an early sample of
the transition into Romanesque, dating about the eleventh century.
The style shows a much further advance in Magister Marchionni's façade to
the church of Santa Maria della Pieve at Arezzo, which is a fine sample of
Romanesque. It was done in 1216. The façade has four rows of arches, one
on the other, "growing small by degrees and beautifully less" as they
ascend. Of all the hundred columns which support them, no two are alike.
They are round, square, octagonal, sexagonal, pentagonal, multi-angular,
fluted, twisted, grotesque, crooked, Byzantine, Corinthian, Ionic, Doric,
Gothic, Egyptian, Babylonian, caryatid, black, green, white, striped, or
inlaid. Some have single bases, a round on a square, or vice versâ, and so on
ad infinitum. Yet with all this variety there is a certain unity of design,
which bespeaks a multitude of Masters, each one using his own fancy in his

particular part of the work, but one chief to whose general design the
masters of the parts are subservient. Ruskin realized the beauty of this
variety of idea, though he had not perceived that it came from a multitude
of minds working together, when he said—"The more conspicuous the
irregularities are, the greater the chance of its being a good style." And
again—"The traceries, capitals, and other ornaments must be of perpetually
varied designs."

Church of S. Maria, Ancona.
See page 242.

The very same style and variety, showing a multiplex manufacture, is
displayed by the cathedral, and the church of San Michele at Lucca, and the
old church of San Michele in Borgo at Pisa. The two Lucca ones are
extremely enriched by friezes of the symbolic animals above each row of
arches. The cathedral and tower of Pisa show greater unity of conception.
The next great change was, that after the eleventh century, the interlaced
work, or Solomon's knot, was no longer the secret sign of the Comacine

work. They probably found that there was a limit even to the combinations
of the interlaced line, or that it did not give enough relief. Certain it is, that
on the rise of Romanesque architecture, the intreccio faded away into mere
mouldings, or got changed into foliaged scrolls for architraves; but the
mystic knot with neither beginning nor end was no more used with special
significance. The rounded sculpture of figures was everywhere replacing
low relief, and the Comacine sign and seal of this epoch, was the Lion of
Judah. From this time forward for the 400 years that Romanesque and
Gothic architecture lasted, there is, I believe, scarcely a church built by the
great Masonic Guild in which the Lion of Judah was not prominent.
My own observations have led me to the opinion that in Romanesque or
Transition architecture, i.e. between A.D. 1000 and 1200, the lion is to be
found between the columns and the arch—the arch resting upon it. In Italian
Gothic, i.e. from A.D. 1200 to 1500, it is placed beneath the column. In
either position its significance is evident. In the first, it points to Christ as
the door of the Church. In the second, to Christ the pillar of faith springing
from the tribe of Judah. Thus at Lucca, Pisa, and Arezzo, where the guild
worked in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the lion is always above the
column. In Verona, Como, Modena, and where Italian Gothic porches were
added in the thirteenth century, and in Florence, Siena, Orvieto, where the
cathedrals date from the fourteenth century, you find the lion beneath the
column. And in minor works of sculpture there is the same difference. In
the pulpit of Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, the lions are beneath the spring of the
arches; in the pulpits of Niccolò Pisano at Siena and Guido di Como
(thirteenth century) at Pistoja, they are beneath the column.
A most beautiful instance of the transition between Lombard and
Romanesque is in the door of the church of San Giusto at Lucca, dating
from the twelfth century. The architrave is a grand intreccio of oak branches
while the pilasters, which form the door-jambs, have richly-carved capitals
of mixed acanthus leaves and Ionic volutes, with a mystic beast clinging to
each. The arch superimposed on the architrave has a rich scroll of cherubs
and foliage, and it rests on two huge lions. It is altogether a perfect
Comacine design.
The next change in the sculpture of the Comacine Masters was the
humanization of their sculpture. The rude old carvings of symbolical beasts

no longer satisfied them. Christianity had now endured a thousand years
and was understood, so that it was no longer needful to use parables and
mystic signs. They still made the fronts of their churches Bibles in stone, as
they had done before; only the Bible was in a language all could read, i.e.
the sculptured story. From Adam and Eve to Christ and the Virgin, and even
the least of the Saints, the Comacine put all Scripture upon his church. His
Bible lay open that all might read.

Door of S. Giusto at Lucca, 12th century.
See page 244.

The representation of the human figure was at first heavy and
disproportionate, but as the centuries passed on, it grew in grace; and
sculptors were able to express their conceptions more completely. The
animal symbolism did not, however, entirely disappear. It is seen in every
quaint fancy of the Gothic artist of the north, in every naïve bit of church
ornamentation in the south; but it is no longer the object and end of design.
It had become subservient; the human figure now took the first place.
In the earlier transition stage, even this actual representation was more or
less allegorical. As an interesting instance of the allegorical nature of
Comacine sculpture, we may take the relief of the Crucifixion in the
cathedral at Parma (third chapel on the right), carved by Benedetto da
Antelamo in 1178. In this almost mediæval relief, the artist has managed to
put a symbolical history of the greatest events of his own times—the defeat
of Barbarossa, the fall of Victor Antipope, the triumph of Pope Alexander
III., the cessation of schism, and the gleams of coming peace on Italy.
Around the cross where Christ hangs, he represents the Church as a
symbolic personage waving the flag of victory; and the schismatic enemy
with his banner broken. Every figure in the composition has its meaning,
and the whole displays a thinking mind, even though the hand be still a little
heavy and mediæval. That this is a veritable Comacine work the sculptor
himself has chronicled. On the top of the relief is written in the Lombard
Gothic characters—
"Anno milleno centeno septuageno
Octavo scultor patravit M͠ se secundo
Antelami dictus scultor fuit, hic Benedictus."

An old chronicler of the sixteenth century tells us that this relief once
ornamented an ambone or pulpit supported on four columns, which was
destroyed in 1566.
Another very interesting work is the font for immersion in S. Frediano at
Lucca, sculptured by Maestro Roberto in the twelfth century. The figures
which surround it are as usual full of meaning but grotesque in proportion;
though one can see in the draperies a foreshadowing of that return to
classicality which Niccolò Pisano afterwards advanced towards perfection.
We have here a queer representation of Adam and Eve, both clad in

classical garments and standing by a conventional fig tree, out of which
looks the head of the Eternal Father in a cloud like a medallion. Eve is
clutching the tail of a monstrous serpent. In the next compartment the four
Evangelists carry their emblems on their shoulders. St. Mark, with his lion,
sits in a curule chair, and looks like a Roman Prefect, mediævalized. St.
John has his eagle standing on a Roman altar beside him, while St. Matthew
carries the child on his shoulder like a St. Christopher. As the work of a
forerunner of Niccolò Pisano in the same brotherhood, the font is intensely
interesting.
The cathedral at Beneventum (one of the Lombard dukedoms) has some
beautiful Comacine arabesques on the pilasters of the great door. We give
an illustration from one of them. The interlaced maze is formed by a
conventional vine, in the branches of which are symbolical animals. Here is
the Lamb of God, signed as divine and eternal by numberless circles all
over it. The eagle, symbol of faith, is strangling sin in the form of a serpent;
above, is a calf, emblem of the Christian, overcoming evil in the form of a
bird of prey. In meaning, the intention is the same as the old sculptures on
San Michele, executed six centuries previously; but speaking technically,
sculpture as an art has advanced greatly. There is rich and clear relief, and
intelligibility of design in this work.

Pilaster of the door of the Cathedral of
Beneventum, 12th century.
See page 246.

Symonds,[192] speaking of this stage of art, says—"The so-called
Romanesque and Byzantine styles were but the dotage of second childhood
(it was a childhood which grew and developed into virility, however),
fumbling with the methods and materials of an irrevocable past. It is true
indeed that unknown mediæval carvers had shown an instinct for the
beautiful, as well as great fertility of grotesque invention. The façades of
Lombard churches are covered with fanciful and sometimes forcibly

dramatic groups of animals and men in contest; and contemporaneously
with Niccolò Pisano, many Gothic sculptors of the north were adorning the
façades and porches of cathedrals with statuary unrivalled in one style of
loveliness. Yet the founder of a line of progressive artists had not arisen,
and except in Italy the conditions were still wanting under which alone the
plastic arts could attain independence." Here Symonds goes on to speak of
Niccolò Pisano, as the fountain-head of sculpture.
And now we can no longer evade the knotty question of who and what
Niccolò was, where did he arise from, and where was he trained in art?
There are always those conflicting documents which Milanesi found to be
reconciled. The first, in the archives of the Opera di S. Jacopo at Pistoja,
dated July 11, 1272, which runs—Magister Nichola pisanus, filius Petri de
—(here is an illegible word which Ciampi reads as Senis[193]). He chose this
reading because another document dated November 13, 1272, styles
"Niccolò" Magister Nichola, quondam Petri de (Senis) Ser Blasii pisa ...
(hiatus).
Milanesi, however, who found at Siena the contract for Niccolò's pulpit
there, dated October 5, 1266, says the word Senis should be read Sancti, for
in the Sienese contract the words are plainly—Magister Niccolus de
parroccia ecclesie sancti Blasii de ponte de Pisis, etc. etc. In another
document also at Siena, in which Niccolò is commanded to send for his
pupil Arnolfo to work with him, we get Magistrum Nicholam de Apulia. In
two others of the next year, Magister Niccholus olim Petri lapidum de Pisis.
Now all this is very puzzling, and yet being documentary it must all be true.
We will put Siena entirely out of the question, the word proving to be a
misreading of Sancti, so that instead of the second document meaning
Niccolò son of the late Peter son of Ser Blasius or Biagio of Siena, it must
read Niccolò son of Peter of the parish of St. Blasius at Pisa. We have then
the two different nationalities of his father Pietro—Pisa and Apulia—to
account for. Milanesi suggests that Apulia means a little place near Lucca
called Puglia.
The further light we have found thrown on the peregrinations of Magistri of
the guild may assist us to reconcile the conflicting statements. It is certain,
as we said before, that Niccolò Pisano was a Magister of the guild, and

being a man of genius he became one of its most important members. His
membership was moreover hereditary; his father had been also a Magister
lapidum. Now the Comacines had a lodge in Apulia, from the time of the
Longobards, and traces of it still remained after 1100, in a small colony in
the valley of Æterno, which preserved as a kind of monopoly the art of
building.[194]

Baptismal Font in Church of S. Frediano, Lucca.
By Magister Roberto, 12th century.
See page 246.

The church of S. Sofia at Beneventum, A.D. 788, and the monastery of S.
Pietro were built by them, as well as the later cathedrals of Trani, Bari, and
Ruvo. The latter still retains its ancient Lombard façade covered with
figures of animals, the portal being flanked by columns surmounted by a
fine rose window. When the Normans succeeded the Longobards and
Saracens in Apulia, the Masonic Guild was still more busy there, and it was
very probable that Pietro the sculptor worked in Apulia under the Norman
dynasty, with many of his brethren. I am told that there is in Bari cathedral a

pulpit of the same form as that by Niccolò, but of an earlier date. This is a
significant proof of Niccolò's early training in Apulia, probably under his
own father, as was the custom of the guild. It would also account for the
Saracenic touch in his arches and ornamentation. The lions under the
columns were used by the Masonic Guild a century before Niccolò's time,
so it is evident they were not, as Ruskin and others suppose, borrowed from
the Saracens by Niccolò. There is a most interesting pulpit of the older
square form at Groppoli near Pistoja, dated 1194, with lions beneath the
pillars. It offers one of the very early specimens of the sculptured scriptural
story. The panels represent the "Nativity of Christ" and the "Flight into
Egypt," both most naïvely designed. The square pulpit of Guido da Como in
S. Bartolommeo at Pistoja is dated A.D. 1250, and shows the immense
improvement art had made in those sixty years. In some ways Guido da
Como quite equals Niccolò. He does not strain after the classic, but there is
great and simple dignity, and even grace in his figures, some of which are
almost worthy of Fra Angelico. It was ten years after Guido's lion-pillared
pulpit was finished, that we find Niccolò—who had for some years been
working at Pisa, where he was then domiciled—sculpturing his famous
pulpit there, and though altering the form from square to octagon, using the
same symbolism, and in many ways the same treatment of his subject, as
Guido had done before him. It would be a suggestive proof of the same
influence in training, to compare the panels representing the Nativity, in the
three pulpits. The Lombard one at Groppoli, Guido da Como's at Pistoja,
and Niccolò's at Pisa, and one might add a fourth, i.e. Giovanni Pisano's
pulpit in S. Andrea at Pistoja, which is in some respects an advance on his
father's design, although it is evidently not only inspired, but almost copied
from it. There are in all four, the same kind of lectis for bed, the same cows,
out of perspective, high up in the background, and in the two last the same
treatment of drapery. In some ways, however, Niccolò has passed far
beyond Guido. While Guido followed his forefathers' traditions, Niccolò
had been first revelling in the richness of Saracenic types in Apulia, and
then living among the classic spoils of Pisa, where Diotisalvi had worked
before him.

Pulpit in the Church of Groppoli near Pistoja.
A.D. 1194.

See page 249.

His school at Pisa inaugurated a revival which was to change art for all the
world. Yet it was only a step and not a sudden leap. He was no ancestorless
genius springing from darkness and chaos, but a link in the chain of art
from which in him a new strand departed, leading towards Donatello and
Ghiberti. He took the forms of his sect, but improved and freed them; he
held to the traditional symbolism of his guild, but classicized and enriched
it. His greatest advance was in the modelling of the human figure, and here
his classic models helped him. One suspects that he depended much on
those models, for where he had no antique to copy from, he degenerated
into the mediævalism of his fraternity. The mixture of the two styles is very
apparent in the different panels of his pulpit, some of which look as if they

had come from Antonine's column, while others are heavier and less
graceful by far than Guido da Como's simple natural figures. The fact was,
that in his time the whole guild was developing under the freer conditions
of art, and Niccolò was one of its leading masters, and endowed with
especial talent.
With him the Romanesque period closes, and the Italian Gothic begins. Led
by him the Comacines in Tuscany left the rude, distorted images and
meaningless monsters behind, and marched on towards the perfection of
sculpture of the human form as shown by Donatello and Michael Angelo.

Pulpit in Siena Cathedral. By Niccolò Pisano.
a.d. 1266.

See page 250.
Among the Comacines in Lombardy the same change was in progress.
Jacopo Porrata, working at nearly the same time, carved the life-like
prophets and bas-relief on the façade of the cathedral of Cremona, which

bears the legend, "Magister Jacobus Porrata de Cumis fecit hanc rotam
MCCLXXIIII."
Antonio de Frix of Como, working in concert with Meo di Checco, carved
the beautiful roof of the Duomo at Ferrara, while other Masters were
sculpturing sacred stories on pulpits and doorways, vestibules and
decorations in many a church which their forerunners had built.
With the development of the Gothic, the guild again changed the style of
their ornamentation.
The pointed gable over the circular arch was one of the first signs of this
change. You see it in Siena, Orvieto, Florence, and the fourteenth-century
porches in Lombardy.
The gable gave an opening for statuary, floriated crockets, and ornate
pinnacles; the pointed arch opened a way to beautiful tracery; the upward
shaft and pilaster afforded space for the ornate tabernacle or saint-filled
niche; for the sculptor-architect never let an inch go plain which could be
effectively sculptured.
Between the solid Lombard round arch and the pointed traceried one stands
the cusping of the circular arch. Ruskin credits Niccolò Pisano also with
this; saying grandiloquently that "in the five cusped arches of Niccolò's
pulpit you see the first Gothic Christian architecture ... the change, in a
word, for all Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens cathedral. For Italy it
means the rise of her Gothic dynasty—it means the Duomo of Milan
instead of the Temple of Paestum."[195] This is very poetic, but it will not
bear analysis. The cusps of Niccolò's arches were by no means the first to
be seen in Italy; we find them in several churches of the twelfth century;
and as for Amiens cathedral, that was nearly completed when Niccolò's
pulpit was carved.
The cusping of the round arch came up from the south; it was suggested to
the Comacines by the Saracenic architecture, as a variety on their usual twin
archlets under a round arch, and was used some time before they adopted
the pointed arch.

The first real Italian step to the pointed Gothic began at Assisi, in the hands
of Jacopo il Tedesco, and his fellow-countryman, Fra Filippo di Campello,
or Campiglione. Jacopo stands to Italian Gothic architecture in the same
place as Niccolò Pisano stands to Renaissance sculpture. In Italy, the land
of classic Rome, true Gothic never developed in the form in which we see it
further north. Her finest buildings retained in parts the older forms, and
with the humanism of the classic revival of literature, a classic revival of
architecture also took place. The Gothic style in Italy was strangled in its
infancy by Bramante and Michael Angelo. Even Milan, though a glorious
Gothic building, was masked and disfigured by a Renaissance front, with its
straight lines and geometric pediments.
The Germans and French, taking the germ from Italy, developed it
magnificently; and it is fortunate that they had broken the bonds of the old
Masonic brotherhood, and nationalized themselves and their art in time to
keep their Gothic forms pure.
If we should attempt to particularize examples of Italian Gothic
ornamentation, volumes would not be enough. We will be content with a
few instances of sculpture by the Lombard guild at this epoch.

The Riccardi Palace, built for Lorenzo dei
Medici.
(From a photograph by Giannini, Florence.)
See page 258.

Some beautiful illustrations of their allegorical style are to be seen in
studying the capitals of the colonnade of the Ducal Palace at Venice, some
of which were by Bartolommeo Buono, son of the fifteenth-century
Zambono or Giovanni Buono. We give an illustration of one with
allegorical representations of the classical goddesses, Venus, Minerva, and
Juno, throned in acanthus leaves. Minerva looks like a mediæval school-
mistress as she teaches Hebe and the Loves, from a ponderous tome. The
famous Adam and Eve capital, of which Ruskin writes so eloquently, was
probably by the same hand. Bartolommeo's best carving was in his "Porta
della Carta," the door of the Grand Ducal Palace, next San Marco, which is
rich in the extreme, and is signed on the architrave "Opus Bartolommei."

Bartolommeo's father, Giovanni Buono, was the head architect of the
beautiful "Ca' d'oro," and here the richness of decorative sculpture under
florid Gothic forms reaches its height.
The family Buono came from Campione, and I think it probable that this
was the same Bartolommeo da Campione whose name is on several of the
Gothic capitals of Milan cathedral. We give an illustration of one of them,
which is extremely rich in statues and pinnacles.
The rapid march from the early pointed towards florid Gothic sculpture, is
evidenced in a remarkable manner by the tombs of the Scaligers in Verona.
The monument to Mastino II., who died in 1351, by Magister Porino or
Perino, is only a quarter of a century previous to that of Can Grande, who
died in 1375, which was by Bonino da Campione.[196] Yet between the two
there lies an immense development of style. In Perino's work there are the
seeds of all the forms in Bonino's, but in one the Gothic style is
undeveloped, in the other it is in full flower.
Perino has his columns; his cusped pointed arches with high gables above
them; his tabernacles, pinnacles, and pyramidal roof, with an equestrian
statue on the summit; but his lines are simple, direct, and unbroken, though
enriched here and there with reliefs and figures. In Bonino's the columns are
richly carved, the arches lavishly cusped, the tympanum filled with
sculptured medallions. The tabernacles are richer and more emphatically
Gothic in their lengthened lines and multiplied pinnacles. The figures even
have grown into more true proportions, and are elongated into gracefulness.
Every inch of the whole design is foliated and rich to a degree—as beautiful
a bit of Gothic sculpture as any German or English cathedral can show, but
yet the work of pure Italians, and men of the Comacine Guild.
The sepulchral monument of Gian Galeazzo Visconti in the Certosa of
Pavia is of an entirely different style to those of the Scaligers. It is
principally the work of Gio. Antonio Amedeo, and has the same ornate
Renaissance style as the façade of the Certosa in which he assisted. An
arched base contains the sarcophagus, on which rests the beautiful and
dignified figure of the Duke, guarded at head and foot by classic angels.
Above this is a statue of the Virgin and Child in a central niche, flanked by
reliefs of scenes from the life of the Duke. The whole surface of the marble

is covered with sculpture, but of a style removed as far as the poles from the
work of the Comacine Guild, 800 years back. There all was life and naïveté,
here all is classical decorum and convention. Pilasters covered with armour
and coats of mail like a Roman trophy, friezes of set garlands and shields
like a Roman pediment, vases with conventional plants rising stiffly out of
them. The severe architectural lines are straight and unbroken; here are no
Gothic pinnacles and graceful shrines, no ornamental gables or pyramids,
only the plain arch and pediment classically set and correct. The Italians
had revived the Roman; and the Renaissance style was the result. Comacine
art began with true Roman, and ended with a return to a false classicism,
that with rule and line crushed out the life of the rich Gothic floriation.

Tomb of Mastino II. degli Scaligeri, at Verona.
Sculptured by Magister Perino, of the Milan

Lodge.
See page 253.

CHAPTER V
CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMANESQUE ERA

The Comacines were always fine fortress builders from the early times,
when they fortified not only their own island and city against the Goths, and
against their civil foes at Milan, etc., but also other cities which had foes to
keep off. Their towers and forts were so solid and strong that their builders
were taken by Justinian to the East to build castles there, with the strong
battlemented walls which aroused Procopius's admiration, and which he
confesses were called Castelli, because that was the Italian name for them.
After the eleventh century, when the Communes were formed, the building
of the fortress was less frequent, and the Communal Palace took its place.
The guild was always gradual in its adoption of new styles, and the palace
of the Podestà or the "Signoria" differed only in form, and not in style, from
the older castle. There is the same solid masonry—either opus Gallicum of
smoothly-hewn stones fitted with nicety, or opus Romanum of flat wide
bricks welded together with cement till they are strong as a Roman wall.
There are the same battlements and cornice of arches supported on brackets;
and wherever a window is needed, high enough to be safe without an iron
grating, it is invariably of the old Lombard form, with its two round arches
enclosed in a larger one. There was the same pillared courtyard with its
flight of steps to the upper floor. Jacopo Tedesco's Bargello at Florence, his
Castle at Poppi, and his Palazzo Pubblico at Arezzo are the most beautiful
examples of this style.

Capital of a Column in the Ducal Palace,
Venice.
See page 253.

Arnolfo's Palazzo Vecchio, the Palazzo of the Commune at Siena, and the
Palazzo Pubblico at Pistoja show the next step towards a less military style.
There still remains much of the fortress, in the solidity and rigidity of the
masonry below, and the battlemented lines above, but the tower is no longer
a solid weapon of war; it becomes an airy ornamental shrine for a peaceful
civic bell, that rings for the joys and sorrows of the people.
These buildings may stand as the fair examples of the work of the Masonic
Guild for the thirteenth century; in the fourteenth and fifteenth the style
changed gradually towards less rigid lines. The windows were widened and
cusped, and the arches over the archlets of the windows became pointed; a
gable with crockets placed above the windows still further lightened the
effect, and emphasized the new Gothic influence. The ancient Palace of the
Priors and Palazzo del Popolo, which stand close together at Todi, of which
we give an illustration, show this progress in a very marked degree. There is

just the difference between the two buildings that there lies between the
palace of King Desiderius at S. Gemignano, and the Palazzo Vecchio of
Florence. The Palazzo Pubblico, at Perugia, with its noble Ringhiera and
Loggia, might be taken as the culminating point of Romanesque civil
building. Its principal doorway is a masterpiece of Comacine work. The
Masters have set their sign of the lion beneath the column, but both lion and
pillar are secularized; instead of the ecclesiastic column, here is a square
pilaster with niches containing graceful figures of the civic virtues—justice,
mercy, fortitude, charity, etc. In the tympanum of the arch stand three
bishops, and over the architrave two other lions on brackets mark the spring
of the arch. The door is surrounded with course upon course of beautiful
mouldings, arabesques, and spirals rich in the extreme. Though
exceptionally beautiful, yet if one compares this Palazzo Pubblico of
Perugia with other public edifices of its time in Italy, the similarities are
such that one cannot deny that a single influence must have dominated them
all.
In the Palazzo Pubblico at Udine, which was later, being built in the
fifteenth century by Giovanni Fontana of Melide (Master of Palladio) and
Matteo his son, we get the link between these Romanesque civil buildings
and the Venetian Gothic. The upper windows have still the Lombard
columns, but the little arches are more ornately cusped and gothicized. The
colonnade forming the Ringhiera is formed of decidedly pointed arches.
There is in this a marked affinity to the Venetian architecture, and its origin
accounts for it. The Fontanas were much employed at Venice, and worked
with the Lombardi, to whom Venice is indebted for so much of her beautiful
Gothic civil architecture. In cinquecento times there was a great call on the
Masonic Guild for palaces. The republics had begun to fade into
principalities, wealth and aristocracy again got the upper hand. The great
churches were already built, and so to employ the many great Masters of
architecture and sculpture whose families had for generations beautified
Italian cities, the dominant families in them vied with each other in palace
building.

Doorway of the Municipal Palace at Perugia
(1340).
See page 257.

In Florence the Medici led the way, the Strozzi following them close. Then
all the other old families, Guicciardini, Rinuccini, Antinori, Borghini, etc.,
also called in the masters of the Florentine Guild to make them palaces.
Cronaca, Sangallo, Baccio d'Agnolo, all names whose ancestors were well
known at either Siena, Orvieto, or in Lombardy, made the plans and
directed the works. And one who compares these palaces one with another,
cannot but confess that different as were the hands that fashioned them, one
type and one style shows through them all, which is to say that the
architects were all brethren of the same guild, and had received the same
training. The Florentine palace bore on its face the imprint of its race; you
can trace it gradually from the Brolio of Lombard times, through the

mediæval fortress, and the republican public palace. Here in the Riccardi
and Strozzi, the Pitti and Guadagni Palaces, is the same solidity of
architecture; but instead of the smooth hewn blocks, the huge stones are left
rough, alla rustica.[197] Here are the same shaped windows, enlarged and
beautified with tracery and mullion in place of the ancient column, but
directly derived from the older form. Here is the ancient crown of Lombard
archlets diminished into a rich cornice; it is only in the older buildings that
the battlements are seen above, as in the Palazzo Ferroni.
In the interior the cortile, with its arched and pillared loggie around it, holds
its own in the centre of the building. There is little change of form between
the Court of the Palazzo Vecchio in 1299 and the Riccardi, Strozzi, and a
score of other private palaces of the fifteenth century. The loggia, which
was such an important feature in the private house of the Republic, is now
either relegated to the garden front or the upper storey, where it is a delight
to the family itself, and is no longer the public meeting-place. This is a
difference entirely depending on a changed state of society.
As in Florence, so it was in Milan, Venice, and other cities where Masonic
lodges were established in the great church-building era. The nobles
employed the builders whose hands were craving for work. And what
palaces they built, and what a wealth of rich Gothic decoration they
lavished on them! We are indebted for most of the Venetian Gothic palaces
to the Buoni and Lombardi families, whose course we have traced in the
chapter on Venice. The Renaissance buildings belong chiefly to the
members of the Florentine Lodge, such as Sansovino and San Michele, who
went to Venice in the sixteenth century.
At Rome, where the Pope's rule was absolute, there was less palace-
building, but the Lombard Guild was employed greatly in their old branch
of fortress and bridge building. The Masters Bartolommeo and Bertrando of
Como were engaged by Pope Pius II. to strengthen the fortifications of S.
Angelo. Maestro Antonio of Como built the Ponte Lucano, Maestro
Antonio da Castiglione the Ponte Mammolo and Ponte Molle. Maestro
Manfredo da Como was commissioned by Pius II. to build a new fortress on
the heights of Tivoli to defend the valley of the Anio from incursions on the
Abruzzi side. The following entries from the registers prove Maestro
Manfredo's employment there—

"1461. August 12. Twenty-five ducats given to the treasurer by command of
his Holiness, to be paid to Maestro Manfred the Lombard, to begin the
castle of Tivoli (roccha di Tiboli)."
"1462. May 14. To Maestro Manfredino, builder, 200 gold florins on
account of the works at the fortress of Tivoli."
"1462. October 6. 400 ducats di camera to Master Manfredino the
Lombard, who works at the castle of Tivoli."[198]

Palazzo Pubblico at Perugia.
See page 257.

Master Manfred with Paolo da Campagnano, both Comacines, built the
Ponte Sisto, which has been erroneously attributed to Baccio Pontelli.
Pope Sixtus IV. employed Giovanni di Dolci to build the citadel of Civita
Vecchia, which Baccio Pontelli finished after Giovanni's death. Antonio di
Giovanni da Canobbio built the fort at Zolfanella in the same reign, while
Francesco di Pietro da Triviago, Francesco da Como, and Giorgio

Lombardo were joint architects of the castle at Santa Marmella. So we see
that nearly all the papal forts were the work of Lombards connected with
the Roman Lodge. In their own native hills the Lombards were doing
similar works.

Court of the Bargello, Florence. Built by
Jacopo "Tedesco."
See page 257.

Tower of Palazzo Vecchio at Florence.
Designed by Magister Arnolfo.
See page 257.

In A.D. 1500 Maestro Jacopo Dagurro da Bissone, who was a most able
engineer, constructed a splendid viaduct, forty-eight metres long, over the
Natisone, among the rocks and beetling cliffs of Civitale in Friuli.

BOOK IV
ITALIAN-GOTHIC, AND RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTS

CHAPTER I

THE SECESSION OF THE PAINTERS

Painting is not generally supposed to be connected in any great degree with
architecture: indeed it has now become a distinctly independent art. In the
Middle Ages I believe the case was different. The great primitive Comacine
Guild seems to have embraced all the decorative arts, though especially
sculpture, as integral branches of architecture. There are indisputable proofs
of the many-sided nature of the training in a Comacine laborerium. There
were Magistri insigneriorum, or Master architects; Magistri lapidum, or
sculptors, and Magistri lignorum, or master carpenters. These latter seem in
old times to have been the designers of scaffoldings and makers of beams
for roofing; wood-carvers and inlayers were called Maestri d'intaglio. Then
there were certainly ironworkers and masters in metal, and fresco-painters,
who also attained to the rank of Master. But no one branch was entirely
separate from the others, until the fourteenth century, when the painters'
companies were founded. We find the same man building, designing,
sculpturing, painting, and even working in gold or iron, and seeming
equally good in all styles, so that the training of the laborerium must have
been especially comprehensive.

The reason appears to be that all the fine arts—painting, sculpture and
metal-working—were considered by the Comacines as indispensable
handmaids to architecture, and no builder was in their eyes fit to be a
Master till he could not only erect his edifice, but adorn it. Their symbolic
church was to them a kind of Bible, figuring all the points of creeds, but the
building itself was but the paper and binding of the Bible; the sculptor put
the frontispiece which explained its inner meaning, and the mosaicist and
fresco-painter added as it were the letter-press and illustrations. The
churches of Ravenna show how full and rich was this inner illustration, how
Christ and the Apostles, angels and prophets, saints and martyrs, have shone
on those walls, a beautiful Bible picture-book for ages. That this was the
light in which the early Christians regarded their churches is plain from
many passages in the early Fathers. St. Basil (A.D. 379) in preaching, says
—"Rise up, now, I pray you, ye celebrated painters of the good deeds of this
army. Make glorious by your art the mutilated images of their leader. With
colours laid on by your cunning, make illustrious the crowned martyr, by
me too feebly pictured. I retire vanquished before you in your painting of
the excellences of the martyr, etc. etc."[199]

Eighth-century wall decoration in subterranean
Church of S. Clemente, Rome.
See pages 10 and 268.

Here is the description of a Christian shrine by St. Gregory of Nyssa (fourth
century)—"Whoso cometh unto some spot like this, where there is a
monument of the just and a holy relic, his soul is gladdened by the
magnificence of what he beholds, seeing a house as God's temple
elaborated most gloriously, both in the magnitude of the structure, and the
beauty of the surrounding ornament. There the artificer has fashioned wood
into the shape of animals; and the stone-cutter has polished the slabs to the
smoothness of silver; and the painter has introduced the flowers of his art,
depicting and imaging the constancy of the martyrs, their resistance, their
torments, the savage forms of their tyrants, their outrages, the blazing
furnace and the most blessed end of the champion; the representation of
Christ in human form presiding over the contest—all these things as it were

in a book gifted with speech; shaping for us by means of colours, has he
cunningly discoursed to us of the martyr's struggles, has made this temple
glorious as some brilliant fertile mead. For the silent tracery on the walls
has the art to discourse, and to aid most powerfully. And he who has
arranged the mosaics has made this pavement on which we tread equal to a
history." (From Father Mulroody's translation, in San Clemente, pp. 34, 35.
St. Gregory wrote before A.D. 395.[200])
No doubt the richness of colour in these Byzantine mosaics inspired the
taste for pictorial embellishment in the interiors of buildings, and the
Comacines, not having Greek mosaicists at command, found an easier and
quicker method of writing their scriptures on their walls—i.e. fresco. The
first mention of frescoes is of those in the palace of Theodolinda, where her
Lombards were portrayed on the walls. Several Lombard churches also
retain signs of having been frescoed.
But if one desires to see what the early Christian Comacine could do in
fresco, let him go to that interesting Roman church of San Clemente, where
some excavations made in 1857 revealed the ancient fourth-century
Basilica, almost complete under the present one, which dates from about the
twelfth century. This ancient church was built by St. Clement, the third
bishop of Rome, and in it Gregory the Great read his thirty-second and
thirty-eighth homilies. From the subterranean remains, with their grand
ancient marble pillars and the huge semi-circle of the tribune, masked and
built in though they are by the foundations of the upper church, we judge
that it was a far finer building than the one above. Its walls were moreover
covered with frescoes, some of which are precisely similar in style to the
ones at S. Piero a Grado, also said to date before the tenth century. The
frescoes, which have been discovered on the subterranean walls, are, as will
be seen by our illustrations of them, in three rows, which appear to be of
three different eras—two certainly. The upper band of saints and martyrs
are distinctly Byzantine in style, drawing, and colouring. They show the
usual rows of immobile saints and martyrs in set robes with jewelled
borders, which are seen in the mosaics of the Ravenna churches. These
would, I believe, date from the fourth-century church, when the Roman
builders were employing Byzantine decoration. The second row beneath
this is of the more naturalistic Comacine school, and would probably date
from Pope Hadrian's restoration in the eighth century. In these and the

frescoes of S. Piero a Grado one gets the veritable link between the
conventional Byzantine school and the naturalistic Renaissance in Tuscany.
Here are no longer icons or abstract images of saints; the people are no
longer rigid and set, but are full of action and expression, though both are
imperfectly expressed. They are, in fact, real persons and their stories. The
life of St. Clement is all told in scenes. There are even portraits of living
people, such as Beno di Rapizo and his wife Maria, who "for love of the
blessed Clement" caused the frescoes to be painted. Nor are their children,
the boy Clement (puerulus Clemens) and little Atilia his sister, forgotten.
They are veritable portraits, for the face of Beno in two different scenes is
identical. The colouring, too, is unlike the Byzantine saints above. Those
are rich with solid heavy tints; these are lighter, and more in the style of the
early Sienese or Tuscan ones. Beneath this row of scenes are ornamental
friezes, in which one recognizes Roman classical forms naturalized into
floriated scrolls, and under these a line of panelling in fresco. One panel
appears to be copied from the mosaic of the ceiling at the circular church of
Sta. Costanza; another is suggestive of the emblematic circles and signs of
the Catacombs. A third, the most interesting of all, is the one
commemorating the building of the church to which we have before
referred. Here stands Sisinius, and whether he be the hero of St. Clement's
miracle, as Father Mulroody asserts, or not, he is certainly a Master
architect standing in his toga, and wearing a Freemason's apron under it,
directing his men, Albertus, Cosma, and Carvoncelle, in the moving of a
column. The figures in this are so much more rude and out of drawing than
the ones above, that they scarcely would seem to be by the same hands. I
account for it by the fact that in representing a natural sketch from real life,
the artist had no traditionary models to guide him, as he had for his saints
and virgins, and consequently he found it difficult to depict his fellow-
workmen in complicated attitudes. The art of the Catacombs has no affinity
with these frescoes, which are of a more free and natural style, and the true
ancestors of the Tuscan school of fresco-painting.

Frescoes of the 8th Century in the subterranean
Church of S. Clemente, Rome, with portraits of
the Patron Beno di Rapizo and his Family.

See pages 10 and 268.

We might place these as the earliest revival of nature after the Byzantine
conventional influence was withdrawn; the next link is to be seen in the
church of S. Piero a Grado, three miles from Pisa, where are extant by far
the finest specimens of Comacine fresco-painting. The church, which I have
described in the chapter on the Carlovingian era, was built soon after the
time of Pope Leo III. (795-816). The frescoes are said to date before A.D.
1000. Like those of St. Clement they are not Byzantine, and yet, though full
of life and action, they have an Eastern air; they are not like the later Tuscan
art, the colouring being lighter and the drawing of the figures different. The

prevailing tint is a beautiful ethereal pale green, which is like nothing in
Tuscan art, though Peruzzi produced a tint something like it in the sixteenth
century. Standing at one end of the church and looking down the nave, one
could imagine a Ravenna church, with its mosaics softened and toned down
into frescoes. They are a valuable proof that among the Comacine Masters
pictorial decoration was considered an integral part of a building. They told
the articles of their creed in their sculptures outside, but they wrote the
history of the church on the walls inside. The story of the church in the
abstract is told in the line of popes above the arches, ending at Leo III.; the
story of this church in particular is told in large scenes above them. Here is
the church as it looked when built, and here is the ship of St. Peter cast
ashore at Grado, and his preaching and baptizing, imprisonment, etc. In fact
all his life still glows, though fading out on the south wall. The north wall is
given to his death and miracles. Here is his crucifixion, near an obelisk on
the Janicular Hill, and the beheading of his fellow-martyr St. Paul at the Tre
Fontane, with the mysterious blood-red bird that drank his blood. Another
scene shows the Pope Symmachus (A.D. 498) disinterring the bodies of the
two Saints, and his vow of building S. John Lateran, and the last scene
shows his consecration of that church. It is interesting to mark the
Comacine influence in the drawing. The towers are Lombard towers, and
the buildings all have round apses. The people who are not ecclesiastic or
saints seem to be Longobardic, with reddish tunics, leather-thonged sandals,
and long hair. As for the lions, which lie waiting before the cross of St.
Peter, they are in the precise form of the crouching lions beneath a
Comacine arch. The drawing of other beasts shows that the artists were less
accustomed to them than to their traditional lions.

Interior of Church of San Piero a Grado near
Pisa, with Frescoes of the 9th century.
See page 270.

If it be true that these frescoes, like the ones beneath San Clemente, were
really of the ninth or tenth centuries, and if they were by native artists, this
would place Pisa far before Siena in the history of art, and Merzario would
be wrong when he asserts that there was no school of art in Pisa before the
cathedral was begun. The state of art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
strongly inclines me to place these Byzantino-naturalistic paintings,
according to legend, in the ninth century—that is, before the fall of art,
which took place during the times of German invasion and feudal
oppression after Charlemagne.
Certainly Cimabue, who is called the "Father of Tuscan Art," could not have
painted them, though in the revival of his time he may have studied them,
as earlier works of his guild, for we have documental evidence of his
connection as a Magister with the Pisan Lodge. The first great painter of
that lodge was Giunta di Pisa, sometimes written Magister Juncte. He was
the son of a still older painter, Guidotto dal Colle, who was a Master in A.D.

1202, and lived till 1255.[201] We give a facsimile of an old print showing
two of his paintings, one a figure from the fall of Simon Magus, in the
church of St. Francis at Assisi; another a St. John from an ancient crucifix
in S. M. degli Angeli at Assisi. The Byzantine style in Cimabue's painting
may be traced to the influence of Giunta, of whom an ancient writer, Padre
Angeli, when speaking of his paintings at Assisi, says—"that though his
teachers were Greeks, yet he learned his art in Italy, about A.D. 1210."[202]
This is a proof of the connection of Eastern artists with the Western
architects.
Giunta, who became a Magister in 1210, preceded Giotto by a century, in
the frescoes of St. Francis of Assisi, where among other things he painted a
crucifix with Frate Elias kneeling at the foot. Brother Elias was a scholar of
St. Francis, and contemporary with Giunta himself, who has inscribed on
his crucifix—
FRATER ELIAS FIERI FECIT
JESU CHRISTE PIE
MISERERE, PRECAUTIS HELIC.
GIUNTA PISANUS ME PINXIT A.D. 1236. IND. 9.

Morrona has reproduced, by a copper engraving, a veritable work of
Giunta's—a crucifix with the Holy Father above, and the Madonna and St.
John at the sides, which was for many years left in the smoke of the kitchen
of the Monastery of St. Anna at Pisa. There is a decided effort to overcome
the stiffness of his first Byzantine teachers, and a good deal of lifelike
expression in the smaller figures. The same leaning toward nature is visible
in the figures of his Fall of Simon Magus at Assisi. Del Valle and Morrona,
judging by evidences of style, assert that Giunta di Pisa was the master of
Cimabue. But as Giunta graduated as Magister in 1210, and Cimabue was
not born till 1240, this does not seem possible. It is more likely, in regard to
time, that Guido of Siena, painter of the famous Madonna in San
Domenico, may have learned something of Giunta; but as all three of these
primary Masters, each of whom became the head of the painting school in
his own lodge, were members of the great guild, the source of instruction
might have been common to all, and moreover that source must have been
originally or partly Byzantine.

From paintings in Assisi by Magister Giunta of
Pisa.
See page 271.

While mentioning that Giunta learned of Greek masters in Italy, we may
note that Vasari, à propos of Cimabue, tells a story of the Florentines calling
in Greek masters to teach painting there. The assertion has been much
derided by modern authors, but it might contain a grain of truth after all.
Taking it with the fact (which becomes impressed on us the more we study
early Comacine churches) that the architecture is Roman, and the
ornamentation shows a Greek influence naturalized, we get at what may be
the truth; that the Byzantine brethren who joined the guild after the edict of
Leo the Isaurian, still had their descendants in it, among the ranks of the
painters, as the Campionese and Buoni families had for centuries theirs
among the architects. This would account for Andrea Tafi working, together
with Apollonius the Greek, at the mosaics in the tribune of the Florentine
Baptistery.[203]
Del Migliore, in his Aggiunte to Vasari's Lives, says that in a contract dated
1297 he read "Magister Apollonius pictor Florentinus." Here we get one of

the very Greek masters Vasari has been derided for mentioning, and he is
certainly connected with the Masonic lodge.
With a common origin, each lodge nevertheless developed its own distinct
style, yet so much was general to the whole guild, that in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries one spirit seemed to permeate them all, and only
experts can tell a Lorenzetti from a Memmi, or a Giotto from a Spinello
Aretino. We find them working now in one lodge, now in another. Cimabue,
though his principal work was in Florence where his school was, is found
working in the Pisan Lodge in 1301.
The archives of the Duomo there have three documents of that year
referring to him. One proves the payment of X solidi II libr. a day to
"Magister Cimabue" and his famulus (apprentice) for their work there. Who
knows whether the famulus may not have been young Giotto, or Joctus, as
he is written in old deeds!
The second paper is Cimabue's receipt for the payment by the Lord operaio
(Dominus operarius) for a figure of St. John, painted for that guild
(Magiestatem).
The third seems to be the payment for a coloured glass window which had
been painted on glass by Baccio, son of Jovenchi of Milan, from Magister
Cimabue's design.[204]
Cimabue's school in Florence must have prospered greatly. A long list of
names of painters between 1294 and 1296, who are qualified and who agree
to teach their art in Florence, may be made from an ancient law register
kept at that date by the notary Ser Matteo Biliotti, which is preserved in the
general archives of Contracts in Florence.[205] Here we find several of the
Masters trained at Pisa, such as Lapo de Cambio, Lapo di Beliotto, Lapo di
Taldo, Corso di Buono, Andrea di Cante, Grifo di Tancredi, Tura di
Ricovero, Vanni di Rinuccio, Michele di Pino, Ranuccio di Bogolo,
Guiduccio di Maso, Cresta di Piero, Bindaccio di Bruno, Guccio di Lippo,
Bertino della Marra, Rossello e Scalore di Lettieri, Dino and Lippo
Benivieni, Asinello d'Alberto, Lapo di Compagno, called Scartapecchia,
Vanuccio di Duccio, and Bruno di Giovanni, the companion of Buffalmacco
and Calandrino, of whom Vasari tells such funny stories.

Another act, dated 1282, is a contract by which Azzo, son of the late
Mazzetto painter, of the parish of S. Tommaso, engaged to teach his art for
six years to Vanni di Bruno; probably Giovanni the father of Bruno
mentioned above.
Rossello di Lottieri was the great-grandfather of Cosimo Rosselli. Vanuccio
was the son of the famous Duccio of the Sienese Lodge. Indeed I think we
could find, by close investigation, that most of these Magistri pittori were
connected with one or other of the Tuscan Lodges.
Painters abounded in the guild at this era. There was Tommaso de Mutina
(Modena) whose Madonna painted in 1297 is in the Gallery at Vienna.
There was Margaritone of Arezzo (1216-1293), a great tre-cento painter of
Madonnas and crucifixes, whose works are yet preserved in Florence,
London, Siena, etc. He generally signed them "Margarit . . . de Aretio
pingebat." A portrait of St. Francis, however, in the Capuchin Convent at
Sinigaglia, is inscribed "Margaritonis devotio me fec. . ." A Madonna
enthroned in the church at Monte San Savino is not only signed but dated
1284. Guido of Siena and Margaritone were the leaders of that flourishing
school at Siena which culminated in Spinello Aretino and the Lorenzetti,
one of whom, Lorenzo Monaco, rivalled our Fra Angelico.
Various painters are found in Pisa up to the fourteenth century, artistic
descendants from the school of Giunta. Signor Morrona (Pisa Illustrata
nelle Arti del Disegno, vol. ii. p. 154) gives a list of Giunta's scholars. There
are Bonaventura and Apparecchiato da Lucca, Dato Pisano, Vincino da
Pistoja, a list which proves the affinity between all the Tuscan schools. A
little later in 1321 we find a certain Vicino of Pisa as Gaddo Gaddi's scholar
in Florence, where he finished his master's mosaics in the Baptistery.
Ciampi has written a long dissertation to prove that Vicino of Pisa ought to
be Vincino of Pistoja, because he has found the latter name in some
documents. But as his documents refer to paintings done by Vincino of
Pistoja in 1290, and the mosaics of Vicino and Gaddi date 1321, it seems
more probable they were really two different men—one, the Pistojan, being
the scholar of Giunta at Pisa mentioned above; the other, the Pisan, a
scholar of Gaddi in Florence somewhat later. In 1302 we find painters from
all the lodges assembled in Pisa. Here are Magister Franciscus, painter from
S. Simone, named as a Magister of the highest rank. He works with his son

Victorius, and his apprentice Sandruccio. Here are Lapo of Florence,
Benozzo Gozzoli,[206] and "Michaelis the painter"; Duccio and Tura of
Siena, painters; and Datus Pictor, who might be that Dato Pisano mentioned
as a scholar of Giunta.[207]
The books of the Duomo of Pisa contain among other things an entry which
indicates the use of oil-painting long before the time of Antonello de
Messina. It is nothing less than the payment by the Provveditore of the
Opera for 29 lbs. of turpentine, 104 lbs. of linseed oil at 28 denari per lb.,
and 43 lbs. of varnish, all of which were for the use of the painters of the
operam Magiestatis. The entry is dated 1301, and is No. 26 in the books of
the Provveditore of the Opera at Pisa in the year MCCCI. "Johannes
Orlandi sua sponte dixit se habuisse ad Operario libras duas den. pis. pro
pretio libre viginti novem trementine operate adoreram Magiestatis.
"Libras quinquaginta quatuor, et solidos decem et octo den. pisanorum
minutorum pro pretio centinarum quatuor olei linseminis ad operaio
Magiestatis, et aliarum figurarium que fiunt in majori Ecclesia, ad rationem
denariorum XXVIII pro qualibet libra."

Upechinus Pictor[208] pro libris quadraginta tribus vernicis emptis Comunis
an. 1303, is named as a painter of Pisa.
These entries clearly prove what a large part the painters took in the work of
the Masonic brotherhood, and how the frescoing of the wall was a
component part of a Comacine church, and carried on, like their building,
by the joint labour of many Masters. If proof of this is wanting, go where
you will in Italy, and if you can find any church that has a wall of its
original early Christian or mediæval building remaining, of any age
between the fourth and the fourteenth century, scratch that wall, and you
will find frescoes have been there. For instance, in Santa Croce, and San
Miniato at Florence, and at Fiesole, wherever the restorer's plaster has been
taken off, precious works of the old Masters have come to light. But in all
these we have to imagine what a mediæval church was like from the
fragments that remain: to see the real Comacine church of the twelfth or
thirteenth century, one must go to the ancient city of San Gimignano with
its many towers, where they remain untouched by the restorer, and
unwhitewashed by the seventeenth-century destroyer. There the whole