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