It might be asked, If there was at Canterbury a Comacine school of architecture whose special function it was to build on the Roman model, why did not Bishop Benedict send there for architects and masons? The simple answer is, that Wilfrid had already engaged them for his work at Hexham. Wilfrid was building both a church and monastery there, and evidently had employment for every hand he could obtain.
The building of Hexham was commenced in 674, and it was not till that date that Biscop was in a position to engage workmen for Wearmouth, so that Wilfrid was just beforehand with Biscop, who in consequence had to look elsewhere for his architects, and he set out for Gaul to engage them there.
Now it does not at all follow that because Biscop brought his masons from Gaul, therefore they were not Comacines. It was as easy to find Comacines in Gaul as in England. We find them settled there at a later date, when they were called artefici Franchi. There is nothing to show definitely, but there is presumptive evidence of a settlement of a guild in Gaul at this time, and it was probably some of the French Comacines that Biscop employed, for Biscop insisted on a church built after the Roman manner, a Basilica; he would have nothing else, and no builders could build a Basilica better than the successors to the Roman college of architecture.[118]
It seems further probable that these Gallican architects were Comacines, from the fact that they followed the practice of the Comacines in establishing a schola at Wearmouth, possibly amongst the monks, for Naitan, King of the Picts, sent to Cedfrid, who succeeded Benedict as abbot, and begged him to send architects to him to build a church in his nation "after the Roman manner," and the abbot complied with his request.
Mr. Micklethwaite states that "the doorway under the tower of the church at Monkswearmouth in Durham was doubtless a part of the church which Benedict Biscop erected there in the seventh century in imitation of the Basilicas in Rome. The twined serpents with birds' beaks on the right doorpost are, as we know from MSS. of that age, singularly characteristic of the style."[119] There is a similar design on the architrave of an ancient door in San Clemente, Rome.
The decoration of the church seems to have been in the highest style of ecclesiastical art of the age. Even glass-makers, who might have been Comacines, were brought from France to make glass for glazing the windows of the church and of the cells of the monks—no glass had ever before in Saxon times been used in England for windows—and even paintings were brought from abroad for the decoration of the walls. Bede, in his sermon on the anniversary of the death of Benedict, states that he imported paintings of holy histories, which should serve not only for the beautification of the church, but for the instruction of those who looked upon them; vases, vestments, and other things necessary for the service of the church, were also brought from Gaul, and those things which could not be obtained there, were brought "from the country of the Romans."
S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna.
The church was pronounced by monkish writers to be for two centuries the grandest and most beautiful church on this side of the Alps; even Roman architects admitted that they who saw Hexham church might imagine themselves amidst Roman surroundings.[120]