The Cathedral Builders.

by Leader Scott.

PROEM

In most histories of Italian art we are conscious of a vast hiatus of several centuries, between the ancient cla.s.sic 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 Cla.s.sic 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 cla.s.sic 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 mediaeval Guild of _Liberi Muratori_ (Freemasons), kept alive in their traditions the seed of cla.s.sic 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 Provencal 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 cla.s.sic 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 sc.r.a.ps of history, borrowed from many an ancient source, will, I hope, explain.

It is strange that Art historians. .h.i.therto 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 a.s.sociate 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 archaeology, besides archivial doc.u.ments, 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 _Doc.u.menti per la Storia dell' Arte Senese_, and Cesare Guasti in his lately published collection of doc.u.ments 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 a.s.sistance 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 ill.u.s.trations.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Professor Giuseppe Merzario.--_I Maestri Comacini. Storia Artistica di Mille duecento anni, 600-1800._ Published in 1893 by Giacomo Agnelli, of 2, Via S. Margherita, Milan. Two vols., large octavo. (Price 12 frcs.)

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 n.o.ble 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, a.s.sisi, and Florence in Italy; and the churches of Beauvais, Laon, and Rouen in France. These all came, almost simultaneously, like sister buildings with one _imp.r.o.nto_ 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.serting their rights, and that the guild was properly organized, having degrees of different ranks; that the higher orders were ent.i.tled _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.