Even in 1468, when the Duomo of Cividale was restored by Pietro Lombardo, several of his brethren worked with him.
In 1420, the Venetians, led by Roberto Morosini, took Friuli and annexed it to Venice. By the treaty of Lodi in 1454 they added Bergamo, Brescia, and Crema. Many Lombards flocked to Venice at that time, and the Masonic Guild had its schools and laborerium there. From that date the Masters of the guild were known in Venice as "Mistri (Masters) Lombardi." Merzario dates from this epoch the renewed connection of the Comacine Guild with Venice, but it must have begun much earlier than that, if it had not continued unbroken from Lombard times. A lodge must certainly have existed in Venice from the time when the first Maestro Buono (Vasari's Buono) went there in 1150. It is unlucky for history that the original Freemasons, being a secret society, kept no archives. It is only after the twelfth century, when other art guilds were formed on the same system, but without the secrecy, that we get an insight into what had been, all the ages through, the management of the guild. At Siena, as we have seen, the painters seceded in the thirteenth century from the universal brotherhood, and founded their academy of painters, the sculptors following their lead. They, not being bound to secrecy, let the world know their statutes and their customs.
The same thing took place in Venice. On September 15, 1307, the sculptors appealed to the Signory of Venice for permission to form statutes and hold chapters under the denomination of the Arte de tajapiere (stone-cutters). They were not at liberty to form a Masonic or building guild, because the original one had then the monopoly. Sig. Agostino Sagredo,[278] in his valuable work on the building guilds in Venice, says—"While we are speaking of the Masonic Companies and their jealous secrecy, we must not forget the most grand and potent guild of the Middle Ages—that of the Freemasons. Originating most probably from the builders of Como (Magistri Comacini) it spread beyond the Alps; Popes gave them their benediction, monarchs protected them, and the most powerful thought it an honour to be inscribed in their ranks. They, with the utmost jealousy, practised all the arts connected with building, and by severe laws and penalties (perhaps also with bloodshed) prohibited others from the practice of building important edifices. Long and hard were the initiations to aspirants, mysterious were the meetings and the teaching, and to ennoble themselves they dated their origin from Solomon's Temple." This monopoly would account for none of the Communes having a civic guild of architecture; and their secrecy explains the want of documentary evidence in the earlier centuries, while the monopoly was undisputed.
The new local branches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were evidently absolved from secrecy; they started fresh as independent companies, and thus freed, art was able to expand more largely. With this light on its formation, it is interesting to find in the Venetian Guild of sculptors, organized in 1307, the self-same rules and government as in Siena, and all the other cities. We find the school and laborerium and the usual Administrative Council of four Soprastanti elected on the first Sunday of every month, the outgoing officials having to instruct the new ones. In Venice the Grand Master of the Lodge was called, as in the ancient Lombard Lodges, Gastaldo; the chief architect of a work was designated in more classic language, Proto.
On the third Sunday of the month every Master of the arte was obliged to pay a gold soldo to the company, which money was only to be spent for the use of the school.
Again a marked similarity. At the beginning of November the feast of the Quattro Coronati was kept,[279] and no one was to work on that day under pain of a fine of 100 soldi. There is the usual rule about every Master bringing a wax candle when he attends a meeting, and on the day of the Patron Saints the candle must weigh four ounces. The fines for those who absent themselves from the fête of the Patron Saints are the same as at Siena, and so also are the rules about matriculation of members, the making of contracts, the introduction of foreign Masters, etc.
The first name of a Gastaldo or Grand Master in the Venetian Lodge is a Mistro Lorenzo de Vielino in 1407, who makes a law that no Master shall have more than three fanti scritti (apprentices?) besides his own sons or brothers. Sagredo says that the Masters in all these arti were a privileged aristocracy, whose sons were allowed to enter the guild without the usual novitiate.
In 1509 Mistro Manfred de Polo was Grand Master, and decreed a kind of census. Every Master was obliged within eight days to hand in a list of his relatives in the guild and the apprentices in his studio.
