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