The Cathedral Builders: The Story of a Great Masonic Guild

by Leader Scott

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]
III.	CIVIL ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE LONGOBARDS	[60]
IV.	COMACINE ORNAMENTATION IN THE LOMBARD ERA	[71]
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]
III.	THE ORIGIN OF SAXON ARCHITECTURE (A SUGGESTION), BY THEREV. W. MILES BARNES	[139]
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]
V.	CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMANESQUE ERA	[256]
	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]