The younger Isidorus who re-erected the dome of S. Sophia Procopius mentions as having been employed by Justinian in rebuilding the city of Zenobia in Mesopotamia with its fortifications, churches, baths and porticoes. “All this work was done under the superintendence of Isidorus and Joannes, of whom Johannes was a Byzantine and Isidorus a Milesian by birth, being the nephew of that Isidorus I mentioned before.”
To the master builders Procopius, Paulus, and Theophanes give the names mechanikos, polumechanos, mechanopoios, to which other writers add protooikodomos—“first of the builders,” magistros and maistor. The craftsmen appear to have been classed as technitai with a foreman over each subdivision. The Latin names of the different building crafts are given both in Theodosius’ code,[337] and in the edict of Diocletian,[338] which fixed their wages. This edict is bilingual, but unfortunately the Greek synonyms for the workmen are wanting. In the description of the building of S. Sophia, Procopius speaks of the lithologos or “stone-layer,” who built the big piers, Paulus and the Anonymous use laotoros and laotomos a “mason” and “stone-cutter,” wherever marble workers are mentioned, to which must also be added lithoxos “stone polisher.” The general bricklayers, &c. are comprised as oikodomoi. Tektonikos implies a carpenter. S. Gregory of Nyssa, in describing a church of S. Theodore, calls the craftsman who arranged the mosaic tesserae, ὁ συνθέτης τῶν ψηφίδων.
A list of the chief classes of workmen employed in the sixth century on a monumental building in Italy given by Cassiodorus,[339] names the following—Instructor-parietum, sculptor-marmorum, camerarum-rotator, gypsoplastes, and musivarius. The instructor-parietum is probably the man who set out the work, the camerarum-rotator is he who turned the vaults. The gypsoplastes, a literal transcription of γυψοπλάστης, signifies a worker or modeller in stucco, corresponding to the plastes-gypsarius of the edict of Diocletian. The musivarius is the “putter together of tesserae” of S. Gregory. Workmen who understood the mysteries of “vault turning” seem to have been especially appreciated, as Theophanes tells us that Isaurian workmen were employed to build the dome of S. Sophia.
In the humblest work the personality of the maker is often delightfully expressed. A Byzantine brick in the British Museum is stamped “ΧΡ. made by the most excellent Narsis,” and a late Roman glass cup bears the legend “Ennion made this. Think of it, O buyer.”
In his inquiry as to the methods of workmanship, M. Choisy says the Byzantine Greeks did not efface from buildings all traces of the workman’s individuality. “The workman is no mere passive instrument, obedient, without any regard to initiative or responsibility, to the workshop foreman; he is treated as an intelligent power, and finds in front of him liberty, and a field open to his imagination.”
In Roman times the system was that we call “division of labour.” “L’art roman est un fait d’organisation.” The workman was not an independent citizen working at his own pleasure for his daily wants; he was a functionnaire, and compulsorily a member of an association organised by the state on the model of military service. In the East an altogether freer system seems to have obtained. The guilds were independent associations, and in Palestine the Carpenter’s Son and the tentmaker followed their callings irrespective of state authority. “In Byzantine buildings the same name occurs in turn upon columns, capitals, or simply squared blocks of stone, and there is nothing to show that the foreman of the works kept one man at one particular kind of work. The East never changes; at present the absence of division of labour in Oriental buildings is most striking. The proprietor chooses a master workman (protomaistor); to this improvised architect he adds a certain number of head workmen (maistores) and their companions, and these same men will work at digging the foundations, at the masonry of the walls, and at the carpentry of the roof; even the ironwork and joinery is scarcely reserved for special workmen.” The terms masters and companions suggest an arrangement which merits consideration. Like western workmen the Greek artizans were affiliated to corporations which have lived to our days. These associations (sunergasiai) had a council, composed exclusively of those, who, by apprenticeship and trial, had earned the title of masters (maistores).
Each society was presided over by a “protomaistor” helped by secretaries (grammateus and kerux) to summon the meetings. It was at once a corporation of workmen, a religious brotherhood, and a mutual aid society: and such societies engaged in mutual acts of hospitality and assistance between one town and another.
All workers in the East seem to have been thus associated into guilds, and municipal life was organised on the guilds. This is evident at Constantinople as early as the Notitia, see p. [11] above. The members of the guilds had to help at fires, and Lydus gives the cry which brought them together, “Omnes Collegiati.” Demetrius, the silversmith of Ephesus, called together the Sunergasia when the craft was in danger; we even hear of strikes. Even unskilled labourers had their guilds, and Mr. Ramsay has described the Guild of Street Porters of Smyrna in Roman times (American Journal of Archæology, Vol. I.). The existence of the guilds is the most significant fact of the social history of the middle ages. In such craft organisation of labour, free of the financial middlemen who now rightly call themselves “Contractors,” we see the only hope that building for service, and ornamenting for delight, can again be made possible.
Our studies have convinced us that “shop production” went on side by side with the building organisation. This shop production will be at once allowed for such things as gold cups and altars, lamps and bronze doors, but we believe that decorative marble work was largely produced in this way, and that just as enamelled cups and damascened doors were “ordered” in Constantinople, so also were sculptured slabs and capitals. It would be possible to account for mere resemblance by “influence,” but absolute likeness between the capitals and sculptured or inlaid slabs found in contemporary buildings, at cities so far apart as Constantinople, Salonica, Parenzo, Ravenna, and Rome show that in the fifth and sixth centuries such works were dispersed from a common centre. So early as the fourth century S. Gregory Nazianzenus speaks of a priest who came to Constantinople “from Thasos bringing with him the gold of the church wherewith to buy slabs (plakes) of Proconnesian marble.”[340] These things were not only bought, but specially commissioned; for instance, the marbles of St. Clemente, which are almost certainly Constantinople work, bear fine monograms of John, afterwards elected pope in 532. The great contributing cause for this, besides the political and artistic position of Constantinople, was doubtless its possession of an absolutely perfect material in boundless profusion—the coarse white marble, which we may see to-day so delightfully wrought in small shops into the tombs, each of which has its carved tree of cypress, palm, or rose.