St. Cadoc early in the sixth century built a church in Lancarvan monastery, which monastery he rebuilt; each of the thirty-six canons had a residence in atrio,[112] the residence being probably a cell with a door opening into the atrium, such as may still be observed in some old monastic cloisters on the Continent. There is evidence of an atrium at the west end of Brixworth church, and the construction of the basements of the towers at St. Mary, Deerhurst, at Monkswearmouth, and Barton-on-Humber, seems to show that there was a similar construction at the west end of those churches.

The church of S. Ambrogio, Milan, possesses an atrium built by the Comacines, but it is of much later date, and would therefore afford a general idea of an early Saxon church atrium only in plan.

Though we have little ornament of the early Saxon period, and that little is mainly limited to the ornamentation on early Christian crosses and fonts, it is clearly of the same character as Comacine work. The convoluted ornament on Paulinus' cross at Whalley has been noticed; similar work may be seen on the Kirkdale cross, Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses, Crowle and Yarm crosses, and others in England and Ireland. On the Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses there are stiff flower convolutions with birds and beasts on the branches. Collingham cross has interlacing monsters, and on others are panels sculptured in representation of Scripture subjects and characters. Some of these crosses are decorated with another and very mark-worthy ornament, consisting of bands of interlaced work. These bands are sometimes of a single strand, but more frequently of three strands. An interlaced ornament of this kind was found on the Corinthian base of a column in the church of S. Prassede in Rome. On comparing these interlaced patterns and convolutions with the carving on the ambo in the Basilica of S. Ambrogio, Milan, which is Comacine work, it will be seen how nearly they correspond; whilst the ornaments and sculptured figures in the façade and round the portals of the doors of S. Michele, Pavia, an early Lombard church of the eighth century, show treatment similar to Saxon work. It appears to me possible that this façade has been rebuilt presumably about the twelfth century, but there can be little doubt that the carvings as well as a considerable portion of the church itself are of the earlier date.[113]

All the crosses above-mentioned bear Runic inscriptions upon them, but on examination it will be seen that these inscriptions are generally by another hand, and of ruder workmanship than the carving of the crosses. Sometimes they are little more than scratches, and in one, namely, the Yarm cross, a panel was evidently left by the carver for the inscription, which was afterwards cut upon it, but being too small, the last two lines had to be compressed to be got into the space. In the Kirkdale and Lancaster crosses, the runes are certainly inferior in workmanship, and they seem to have been an afterthought. The borders on which they are cut do not appear as if they were originally intended to bear them.

The date of the fragment of the Yarm cross is fixed by the inscription, if it has been correctly read, being dedicated to Bishop Trumberht, Bishop of Hexham, who lived towards the close of the seventh century.

The ornament on Saxon fonts, not being so well known, would require illustrations beyond the scope of this article, to render remarks upon them intelligible. One instance may, however, be given of the similarity of ornament in early Italian and Saxon carving. Both the Saxon font in Toller Fratrum church, Dorset, and the well-head (of the eighth century) at the office of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rome, are decorated with precisely similar patterns. Interlacing bands in three strands, bordered by a cable moulding, encircle the top of each. Similar ornament will be found in Saxon MSS. of the eighth century in the British Museum Library, as in Evangelia Sacra Nero, d. 4.

Besides the ornament on the ancient crosses and fonts, which clearly belongs to the Saxon period, there are in our churches fragments of ornament which in all probability are of that era.

The angel carved in stone, built into the north wall of Steepleton church, near Dorchester, may have formed part of the tympanum of the doorway of the Saxon church. Floating angels with their robes and legs bent upward from the knee, precisely similar in treatment to the Steepleton angel, may be seen in illuminations in Saxon MSS. in the British Museum. I have examined them, but have mislaid my references to the press-marks. And in the Museum of the Bargello at Florence is a small antique carving of Christ in Glory (a vesica piscis enclosing the whole figure), and angels of this form and attitude surrounding it with curiously drawn symbols of the four evangelists. The angels in the east wall of Bradford-on-Avon church are of a similar character.

This seems to be an instance of Byzantine ornament adopted by the Italian builders. The convoluted and basket-work ornament may also have been derived from the same source.

The stiff foliage and intrecciatura on Barnack church tower are rude imitations of Comacine work.

Wherever the Comacines established themselves they founded lodges; to each lodge a schola and a laborerium were attached, where the members received instruction and training in the several branches of their craft. The Comacines who settled with Augustine in the royal city of Canterbury, must have established according to their custom a lodge and a schola in that city, for there Wilfrid some seventy years later sent for architects and builders (cœmentarii) to renew the Cathedral Church of York which had been built by Paulinus, but possibly through increase of population was now inadequate. The plan of the ancient church has been traced; it was Basilican in form, with aisles and an apse.[114]

Wilfrid, Bishop of York for forty-three years, was, while still a young man, sent to Rome as a companion to Biscop, a Saxon thane who was afterwards Abbot of Wearmouth and Jarrow. There, says Bede, he spent some months in the study of ecclesiastical matters. On his way home he remained in Gaul for three years. When he returned to Britain at the expiration of that time, King Alfred gave him land and the monastery of Ripon where he built a spacious church, which excited universal astonishment and admiration; though not so large as the church he afterwards built at Hexham, it was a noble building. The apse with its altar was at the west end, and underneath the apse was a confessio, which with its passages still exists. The round-headed arches within the church were supported by lofty columns of polished stone.

But beautiful as this church was, that at Hexham exceeded it. Eddius Stephanus, precentor of York, the biographer of Wilfrid, and Richard of Hexham, give enthusiastic descriptions of it which accord exactly with what we know the Comacine church of the period to have been.[115]

From them we learn that St. Andrews, Hexham, built by Wilfrid, was a Basilican church, and in one respect at least it was similar to Ripon; the apse was at the west end, and beneath it was a crypt with passages around it; the crypt with its passages is still to be seen. The proportions of the church were however nobler and the details richer. The walls were covered with square stones of divers colours and polished; the columns were also of polished stone; the capitals of the columns, arches, and vault of apse, and space over the apse-arch were decorated with sculptures and histories (i.e. with paintings representing sacred scenes) all very splendid and very beautiful, according to Eddius.

As regards the sculptures, the examples we have of Saxon sculptures show them to have been generally vigorous, and often grotesque. A writer in Archæologia, vol. viii. p. 174, states that in the vaults of Hexham there were at the time he wrote many Roman inscriptions and grotesque carvings. The capitals of columns in Saxon as well as in later times not infrequently bore grotesque ornament for decoration, and it was commonly used for other purposes; not even coffins were exempt from decorations of this nature. Reginaldus de Coldingham (de virtutibus S. Cuthberti) describes the double coffin of St. Cuthbert, the inner one being of black oak elaborately carved, the subject of one of the carvings being a monk turned into a fox for stealing new cheese.

As regards their paintings, the Comacines were rather given to colour—it was in one of their churches, that of S. Maria del Tiglio, built by Theodolinda, wife of King Autharis, that the Emperor Lothaire beheld a brilliantly painted picture which adorned the vault of the apse and represented "The three kings presenting gifts to the Child Jesus." The picture moved the king to undertake the restoration of the church.

The Comacines also used frescoes in Theodolinda's palace at Monza in the fifth and sixth centuries.

From the foregoing description of Hexham church by Eddius Stephanus, it would appear that there were galleries over the aisles to which access was gained by spiral stairways in the wall. Similar galleries and spiral stairway still exist in the church of S. Agnese in Rome. In this church between the nave and the aisles there is a double arcade of open arches one above the other; the higher arcade on each side forms the front of the galleries—above these is a clerestory. The church of S. Lorenzo at Verona, also a Comacine church, contains a spiral stairway in the wall which led to the different divisions in the women's gallery for the widows, matrons, and girls. So far I have not heard of any ancient spiral stairways as still existing in any other than in these Comacine churches.[116]

As examples of early Latin towers, the round towers of S. Apollinare nuovo, and S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, and perhaps the square tower of S. Giovanni Evangelista, may be given. Take any one of them, that of S. Apollinare nuovo, for instance. Cut off the upper stages by holding the hand above the eyes, and regard only the lower stages with the single-light windows, and you have a structure which might be Roman. It looks very much older than the complete tower; and it is the same with well-known Saxon towers in England, so that some persons have been misled into thinking that the lowest stages with straight-cut single-light windows are much older than the upper portion with double or treble-light windows—which does not at all follow, at least not from that fact, for they might be of the same date;—and they have argued that these lower stages both in Italy and England are older than the upper ones, notwithstanding the improbability that the old builders would place a heavy tower on walls originally intended to carry only a light roof.

The Saxon towers have clearly a Latin or Comacine origin. The walls are usually of stone grouted in the old Roman manner; and when Lombard windows, of two or more lights, with a column dividing them, are used, they are, as a rule, in the upper and not in the lower stages. Unfortunately we have no towers of the earliest Saxon period still standing; but the resemblance between the later Saxon and the early Italian towers is apparent. The same may be said of the later Comacine towers, S. Satyrus, Milan, for instance (see plate), which Cattaneo assigns to the ninth century, and regards as the prototype of Lombard towers; take away the little pensile arch ornament, which was characteristic of the Comacine style known as Lombard, and you have a tower which might be Saxon.

Whilst Wilfrid was engaged in building Hexham, his friend and companion in travel, Biscop, was building the monastery and monastic church of Wearmouth. Biscop was a Saxon thane of Northumberland; he became a monk of the monastery of S. Lerino, and, according to Henry of Huntingdon, on his return from Rome, King Egfrid gave him sixty hides of land, on which he built the monastery of Wearmouth. Eight years later, the king granted him more land at Jarrow, upon which he built a monastery and church. The former was dedicated to St. Peter, the latter to St. Paul.

On obtaining possession of the lands at Wearmouth, Biscop, according to Bede,[117] set out for Gaul, to find builders to build the monastic church, "juxta Romanorum quem semper amabat morem."

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."

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]

There is one point in connection with Saxon architecture not touched. In much of the Saxon building now standing there are projecting ribs of stone in the masonry which are commonly known under the name of pilaster strips. The masonry in which it occurs is perhaps always late Saxon work. The strips seem to be similar to the pilasters in the front of Lombard churches; in the latter they are more ornamental in detail, and are often in the form of shafts occasionally decorated.[121]

The external arcading, as in Bradford-on-Avon, seems to be a modification of late Roman work, followed in various forms in Comacine, Lombard, Saxon, and Norman work. In its original form it may be seen on the exterior of the Basilica of S. Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna, where external arcadings in the masonry of the walls will be noticed both in the walls of the aisles and in the walls of the nave above the aisles, the arcading being carried on pilasters built into, and forming part of, the walls; the pilasters with the arcading serving to give rigidity to the walls, enabling them to resist the outward thrust of the roof as buttresses were intended to do in later times. This church was built about A.D. 300.

In Comacine or early Lombard churches there was an arcading on steps in the gable of the west front, the steps giving access to the roof on the outside. In later Lombard churches this arcading became simply an ornamental detail to the front. To this type belongs the arcading on Bradford-on-Avon church. In Norman churches it degenerated into a corbel table, in which the shafting was omitted, the heads of the arches being supported on corbels.

The Byzantine character of some of the ornaments in Comacine and Saxon work is accounted for by the fact that the Comacine order found refuge in a Romano-Greek colony in which the Greek influence was strong, and in all probability there were Byzantine guilds working alongside of it. That there is a trace of Oriental form in it is not surprising, when it is remembered how much communication there was between all parts of the Christian world notwithstanding the difficulties of travelling. Teliau, David, and Paternus journeyed to Jerusalem. On arriving at the Temple they were placed in three ancient stalls in the Temple, and after expounding the Scriptures were elected by the people and consecrated bishops (Vita S. Teliaui Episcopi). Columbanus, an Irish saint, established a monastery amidst the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Bobbio in Italy. St. Cumean, born in 592, obtained possession of a deserted church in the same city, restored it and served it.

According to the chronicles of Fontenelle, bishops and clergy, abbots and monks came from all parts, even from Greece and Armenia, to visit Richard Duke of Normandy, brother-in-law of our Saxon King Ethelred and a great church-builder; the Oriental character of some of the ornaments in Oxford cathedral, which Ethelred rebuilt, is attributed to the influence of Richard and his Oriental visitors, for Ethelred took refuge in Normandy for a time to avoid the Danes.

Some Saxons left England at the Norman Conquest and settled in Constantinople, where they built a church for themselves and other members of the Saxon colony there.

St. Germanus when he left Britain went to Ravenna, then the royal city.

Asser relates that Alfred received embassies daily from foreign parts, from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the farthest limits of Spain, and that he had seen letters and presents which had been sent to the king by Abel, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Many British monks, some of whose lives and legends may still be found in early MSS., travelled to the south and east, and all over the known world, and being skilled in architecture, might readily have made copies of ornaments which took their fancy when travelling in Eastern countries, and introduced them on their return.

Let us restate the argument briefly—

1. When Italy was overrun by the barbarians, Roman Collegia were everywhere suppressed.

2. The architectural college of Rome is said to have removed from that city to the republic of Comum.

3. In early mediæval times, one of the most important Masonic guilds in Europe was the Society of Comacine Masters, which in its constitution, methods, and work was essentially Roman, and seems to have been the survival of this Roman college.

4. Italian chroniclists assert that architects and masons accompanied Augustine to England, and later Italian and continental writers of repute adopt that view.

5. Whether this is proved or not, it was customary for missionaries to take in their train persons experienced in building, and if Augustine did not do so, his practice was an exception to what seems to have been a general rule. Besides, a band of forty monks would have been useless to him unless some of them could follow a secular calling useful to the mission, for they were unacquainted with the British language, and could not act independently.

6. Masonic monks were not uncommon, and there were such monks associated with the Comacine body; so that qualified architects were easily found in the ranks of the religious orders.

7. From Bede's account of the settlement of Augustine's mission in Britain, it seems clear that he must have brought Masonic architects with him.

8. Gregory would be likely to choose architects for the mission from the Comacine Order, which held the old Roman traditions of building, rather than those of a Byzantine guild, and the record of their work in Britain proves that he did.

9. In Saxon as in the earlier Comacine carvings, there are frequent representations of fabulous monsters, symbolical birds and beasts, the subjects of some of these carvings being suggested, apparently, by the "Physiologus," which had a Latin origin.

10. In the writings of the Venerable Bede, and Richard, Prior of Hagustald, we meet with phrases and words which are in the Edict of King Rotharis of 643, and in the Memoratorio of 713 of King Luitprand, which show that these writers were familiar with certain terms of art used by the Comacine Masters.[122]

CHAPTER IV
THE TOWERS AND CROSSES OF IRELAND

The saints or early missionaries seem to be as closely connected with the first church-building in Ireland as they were in Gaul, Normandy, and England; only by some curious circumstance, Ireland became christianized and built her churches some centuries earlier than England and Normandy. It is my conviction that in casting off the legends connected with saints, we have also cast off much real history belonging to the early missions. Now, the preceding chapter shows that it is precisely to these first missionaries that we are indebted for the imported architecture of the pre-Norman date in England, and presumably also in Ireland. This architecture has been an enigma and a stumbling-block to archæologists for ages; because while rejecting everything connected with the saints as legend, they also reject the only reasonable hypothesis of the genesis of these first stone buildings, which sprang up in a country as yet only accustomed to build in wood or earth.

The Round Towers of Ireland, for instance, have formed a greater puzzle to antiquaries than the churches of Hexham or Lindisfarne—partly because of their antiquity, and partly from their unlikeness to any local buildings of the time. The theories in regard to them are wild beyond all probability. They have been attributed: (1) By Henry O'Brien to the Tuatha De Danaan, a Persian colony which is supposed to have built them for phallic worship. (2) By Vellaney to the Phœnicians, the buildings being afterwards used by the Druids as fire-towers. (3) By Dr. Lynch, Peter Walsh, Molyneux, etc., to the Danes, as war-towers.

Petrie, with clearer arguments, claims them as Christian. In his Prize Essay on the origin and uses of the Round Towers (A.D. 1820) he proves that no buildings except these towers were known to have cement in pre-Christian Ireland. For the Pagans and Druids have left us the great fortresses of Dun Ængus, and Dun Connor on Aran Mor, and the great sepulchres of Dowth and New Grange, all built without cement and of unhewn stones. Now the Round Towers are of hewn stones closely fitted and cemented, till they are solid as a rock, standing firm as ever, after their fifteen centuries of existence. They are called in Ireland by the generic name of "cloic-theack," or bell-house, and are invariably found close to the ruins of a monastery or a church. In some cases, like the one at Clonmacnoise, the church has entirely disappeared, leaving only the graveyard to mark its site, and in the graveyard a veritable Comacine cross!

It cannot be proved that the towers belong to an earlier age than the churches attached, for we have a witness in the ruins themselves. The masonry of the tower and the remaining walls of the church at Kilmacduagh is identical, as are the later tower and church-porch at Roscrea—i.e. good, solid opus gallicum.

Miss Stokes and the Rev. John Healy uphold the theory[123] of their being towers of refuge in warlike times. They may well have been used as such, on account of their strength, and also their proximity to the churches, which were always, in the Middle Ages, inviolable cities of refuge. This, however, does not affect our question as to how the towers came into Ireland, and whence came their builders. In the first place, where can similar towers be found dating from times contemporary? The answer is decided: in Italy. In Ravenna and Lombardy, from the date A.D. 300 to the fifth and sixth centuries; and they show just that Eastern touch which distinguishes the Byzantine-Roman architecture at Ravenna, and has caused authors to seek the origin of the Round Towers further east than Italy.

The next question that arises is: What was the point of contact between Ireland and Italy? As in England and Normandy we shall, I believe, find it in the first missions. The first Irish missionary was doubtless St. Patrick, A.D. 373-464, who has been taken as the sign and symbol of Celticism. Yet he was not an Irishman by birth. His father was a Christian named Calphurnius, his mother was niece to St. Martin of Tours; he was consequently of continental origin. His birthplace was Nempthur near Dumbarton, and while yet a boy he was carried a prisoner to Ireland, and the heathendom there appealed so strongly to his feelings, that after his release he was haunted by visions foretelling his future mission to convert Ireland. Pope Celestin I. gave him his mission in about A.D. 430, and he settled in Armagh, where he laboured more than thirty years converting and baptizing both kings and people. He founded schools and built churches. Probably the first worship was conducted in the open air, where a cross was set up, as by the English missionaries. The cross was of the Byzantine form used at that time in Italy; but on its adoption by the northern saint-missionaries it became known in Britain as the Irish cross. The ancient Italian one, once in the Forum at Rome, is of identical style, though of earlier date. St. Patrick's influence remained and spread. Many of his followers in the ministry made the pilgrimage to Rome which he had made, and so great was the fame of sanctity of these Irish preaching brethren, that they were reverenced in Italy even more than in their native land.

S. Fredianus became Bishop of Lucca, and Columban was Abbot of Bobbio. It is to these later missionaries rather than to St. Patrick himself that we must look, as having introduced Italian or Comacine architecture into Ireland. That they were addicted to church-building is evident from their at once setting to work wherever they went; S. Fredianus building a church and monastery at Lucca; St. Columban doing the same at Bobbio.

And what architects did they employ? Surely some members of the Comacine Guild, or their monk colleagues. They had seen them at the court of the Longobardic kings where they tarried and were entertained during their journey to Rome. And seeing the beautiful churches and towers in Italy, all made by the magic hands of this guild, is it not most likely that the Pope, who patronized the guild as one of the most practical instruments in christianization, should have counselled them to take back some Magistri with them to Ireland? There is, I presume, no documentary proof of this, but there are more imperishable witnesses in the works themselves. The only difference between the Round Towers of Ireland and those of Italy in the first five centuries after Christ is the conical roof, which is due entirely to exigencies of climate. The hewing of the square stones, the close-fitting masonry, the Roman cement, the simple arches of the windows with their solidly cut supports, are all pure Lombard-Roman of the time when S. Fredianus and Columban were in Italy. It is true that with this similarity there is also a certain clumsiness of workmanship in the Irish towers, which suggests that either the Italian architects imported by the Irish missionaries were the less skilful men of the guild, or, what is more probable, they were few, and had to train native and unskilled workmen to assist them; but the style they aimed at, and the forms they used, are the early Italian ones of from A.D. 300 to 500.

In Cormac's chapel at the Rock of Cashel we get the square tower such as later Comacines used from the sixth to the tenth centuries, with the double-arched window of the period; and the church beside it has the same signs. Here are the string courses supported by the row of little arches, the projecting apse, and the double-light windows, with only that same northern desideratum—the high gable and sloping roof. Cormac was an early Bishop of Cashel, who was killed in 907 A.D.

Look at the shrine of the Bell of St. Patrick, which I presume dates from about the eighth century, i.e. the time of Fredianus, and you will see a fine collection of Comacine intrecci or interlaced work in sculpture. As for the crosses of Ireland, one may trace in them the development of Comacine work, from the early Christian Roman style to the mediæval Lombard.

The beautifully illustrated article in the Studio for Aug. 15, 1898, by J. Romilly Allen, F.S.A., shows the whole line. In the earliest form of Irish cross, i.e. that where the cross and Christian symbols are merely cut into the face of a slab of stone, such as in the cross at Reask, Co. Kerry, we see precisely the primitive style of art shown in the Catacombs. The "Gurmarc" stones have their prototype in the earliest Longobardic carving, such as the pluteus of Theodolinda's first church at Monza. The smaller of the three inscribed circles has an even more advanced Comacine intreccio enclosed within the circle, while the cross of Honelt at Llantwit Major (Fig. 5) has a splendid Comacine knot such as one sees on every Longobardic church, placed beneath a very Byzantine geometrical design in which circles, crosses, triangles, and three-fold knots are marvellously intermingled. These are all stones merely incised, and foreshadow the predilection of the Irish converts for the symbolism of the time, the cross of Christ within the unending circle of eternity. The next development shown by Mr. Romilly Allen is the upright cross slab at St. Madoes in Perthshire, where the cross and the circle are in distinct relief and not merely incised. Here, instead of the circle enclosing the Greek cross, it has become subordinate, and is placed behind the arms of a Latin cross. In fact a complete Irish cross in relief. But how is it adorned?—with splendid Comacine intrecci, and all the symbolism so familiar to us in early Italian art. Here are the coiled serpent and the dove above, with the four mystic beasts of the Apocalypse below, two on each side of the stem of the cross; and the workmanship and designs are literally identical with those of the sculptures on the façades of the first church of S. Michele at Pavia, and S. Zeno at Verona, and that of S. Pietro at Spoleto, all of the fifth and sixth centuries. (Spoleto church was rebuilt in 1329, but the ancient Lombard sculptures around the doorway were preserved.)

By the ninth and tenth centuries the Irish cross had reached its full development. It was no longer a sign on a slab, but a beautiful upright sculptured cross, with a circle crowning it like a halo, and suggesting the eternity of the human cross of our Saviour. And here again the art is precisely that of the Italian sculptors. There was a cross of earlier date than either the cross of King Flami at Clonmacnoise, King's County, A.D. 904, or the cross of Mucreadach at Monasterboice, Co. Louth, A.D. 924, in the Roman Forum, of which the shape and ornaments are similar to both of them. The cross of SS. Patrick and Columban at Kells has, too, all the marks of the Comacine work in the eighth and ninth centuries, as one sees it in the oldest churches at Como and Verona, at Toscanella and Spoleto. All these things being considered, I think Irish archæologists would do well to work up the undoubted connection of the early Irish missionaries with Italy, and the influence their travels there had, not only on the religion, but the art of Ireland. They might discover whether St. Columban, when King Agilulf sheltered him at Pavia, took from the artists then at work at the wondrous front of S. Michele, any ideas which he caused to be reproduced in the crosses placed by him to sanctify the open-air worship of his Irish converts; or whether he took a few monkish Magistri skilled in sculpture from his monastery at Bobbio to carve those very crosses, and to build the first stone churches, that now lie in ruins at the feet of the rugged old towers.

BOOK III
ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTS

CHAPTER I
TRANSITION PERIOD

THE LODGES OF BERGAMO AND CREMONA

THE ANTELAMI SCHOOL.—PARMA

PADUA

The rise of the Romanesque is the stepping-stone to the Renaissance of Art in Italy. We need not enter at length into all the vexed questions of how this Renaissance began, and which school was the link between that and classic art, but a slight glance must be given to the subject. Some make everything begin from Niccolò Pisano, as though he suddenly sprang ancestorless out of the darkness, a full-fledged artist. Some date the rise of art from the Byzantines in Aquileja and Venice; others again from the union of the Normans with the Saracens in Sicily.

First, as to Pisa. There are no records or signs of a school of art indigenous to Pisa, before the building of the Duomo there. Both Morrona[124] and Ridolfi, the historians of the respective cities, have well searched the archives in both Pisa and Lucca, but can find no single reference to any native artist before the Duomo of Pisa was begun, or even of any Pisan who worked at that building as early as the eleventh century. All the first architects seem to have been imported. Morrona asserts that when the cathedral was begun "the most famous Masters (mark the word) from foreign (stranieri) parts, assembled together to give their work to the building." The word stranieri is used by all old Italians not only as meaning foreigners, but Italians from other provinces. Ridolfi, on his part, affirms that at the beginning, the Maestri di Como were the only ones employed in building the chief churches at Lucca; adding that—"Many of the works show certain symbols, monsters and foliage, which were always a special characteristic of the Comacines, and a sign of the Freemasonry founded and propagated by them."[125]

From this it may be deduced that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries no indigenous Pisan school existed, and that the mediæval buildings were of the Lombard type. Certainly the old church of S. Pietro a Grado, three miles out of Pisa on the Leghorn road, which we have described, is a standing witness to the presence of the Comacines before this era. It still exists, the most perfect specimen extant of a Lombard tri-apsidal church. Not a shaft, not an archlet is wanting.

As to Aquileja and Venice, Selvatico's[126] theory is that the Friuli people, and those of Aquileja, being driven out in 450 by Attila, fled to Grado (another Grado near Venice), thence spread to Torcello and Murano, and then founded Venice. That they built the cathedrals on those islands, and founded the Veneto-Oriental school. Did this native school ever exist? asks Merzario, seeing that the church of Grado was built by artefici Franchi, which might mean Freemasons, or French builders, i.e. the Comacines under Charlemagne; and that those of Santa Fosca and Murano were, judging by their style, of the same origin?

The church of Torcello was rebuilt in the eleventh century by the Bishop Orso Orseolo, and if it comes into the question at all, would prove that the Lombard school had something to do with it then. In spite of these two opposing opinions, it is certain that architecture took a certain distinctive form in Venice; but it was a later development which occurred after the twelfth century, and with which the Greeks and Byzantines had little or nothing to do.

Selvatico, although the champion of the Veneto-Friuli theory, is constrained almost in spite of his own arguments to own that the Lombard architects had their part in early Venetian architecture, saying—"Although the prevalent architecture of Venice from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries consists of Byzantine and Roman elements, yet after A.D. 1000 another element mingled with it, which though partly the product of the two, nevertheless had in itself elements so original as to be truly national. This is the art which modern writers style Lombard, which, born first in Lombardy, diffused itself over the greater part of Italy, and then crossing the Alps expanded greatly in Northern Europe."[127]

The learned Domenico Salazari is at the head of the Siculo-Norman theory, but the influence of the mingling of Oriental and Saracenic architecture with the Norman and Lombard elements in Sicily are so well known, and so fully acknowledged, that it is useless to go over his prolix arguments.

It seems to me that each party is right as far as it goes. Venetian architecture has Oriental elements in it; the Tuscan Renaissance truly dates from Niccolò Pisano, and the Romanesque style was formed by the marriage of north and south in Sicily; but none of their advocates have got hold of the missing link in the development of each special school from the old classical styles. And that missing link, if anywhere, is to be looked for in the Comacines.

In the ninth century they went northward, and laid the seeds of the round-arched Norman architecture at Dijon, under S. Guglielmo; a seed which took root and developed. In the next century they appear to have planted the seed of French Gothic at Aix-la-Chapelle, and of German Gothic at Cologne and Spires, and these grew to be goodly trees. In the eleventh century they again met their brethren of the north in Sicily; and all worked together, adding to their own beauties those of the rich and varied Saracenic style—and the Romanesque style was thus formed.

The Venetian link dates about the same era. Fortunato, the Patriarch of Aquileja, called in the Comacines about A.D. 828, and their churches there show a groundwork of form and masonry quite Romano-Lombard, with an ornamentation of which it is difficult to say whether it be more Byzantine than Comacine, the two being so similar in conception, and the distinctive difference in technical work being at this distance of time not always distinguishable. Where the Byzantines worked in sandstone, the sharp edges of their precise cutting would have worn off during many centuries; and where the Comacines worked in marble, their marvellous knots and interlacings may look as clean-cut now as any time-worn Byzantine sculptures. In any case the union of Lombard and Byzantine in Venice was the forging of the link connecting Venetian art to the classic Roman.

The part the Comacines had in forging the connecting chain between the Tuscan Renaissance and the classic Roman, and the artistic pedigree of Niccolò Pisano, who is the first link in that branch of the threefold chain, will be traced in a future chapter. We must now inquire how the first Romano-Lombard style of the Comacines, from the sixth to the tenth centuries, became changed into the florid Romanesque, in which the same guild was building in all parts of Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. This development was possibly derived from both Northern and Southern sources.

The close connection of the Comacine or Lombard architects with the Patriarch of Aquileja in the seventh and eighth centuries brought them in touch with the Greek artists of the earlier period, from whom they learned much, especially in varying the plan of their circular churches, and in richness of ornamentation. Their later emigrations to the southern Lombard dukedoms, and their work in Sicily had a still greater effect on them. It seemed to break up their fixed traditions as a thaw breaks up ice. Before this time, every church must be of a fixed plan; every apse round; every space of wall headed by a gallery or arched brackets; every arch a pure half-circle on colonnettes. But the varied arches of the Oriental-Saracenic style influenced their fancy; they saw that art lay in variety, and learned that the pointed arch was as strong as the round one, the ogival arch more graceful. The Moorish arch never entirely took their fancy, though they sometimes gave a slight Moorish curve to their stilted arches.

It must be remembered that the Magistri of the Comacine Guild were no longer of the same calibre as those mediæval men who built for the Longobards. Those were the products of an age of slavery and degeneration, who, lacking literature, clung to tradition, and could only act according to the small portion of intellectual light vouchsafed to the Dark Ages. They put stone and stone together, precisely as their forefathers had taught them. In form they clung to their ancient teacher, Vitruvius, and for their ornamentation to their ancient pagan superstitions, grafted on a mystical Christianity. Yet, as we have seen, they so far improved on these, as to build several Basilican churches which might be called grand for the time, though still holding close to traditional forms.

The Comacine after A.D. 1000 was a man beginning to feel his intellect; the feudal system was breaking up, republics beginning to be established, schools were opened, and man began to feel himself no longer a vassal bound hand and foot, but a human being who might use his own intellect for his own pleasure and good.

What wonder then, that the arts began to flourish, commerce to increase, and riches to accrue in this joyous freedom?

And what wonder that man's thankfulness for freedom first took the form of building churches for the glory of the God of the free?

The architects of the Masonic loggie (lodges) who had held together through the troublous times, became alive with new enthusiasms. They compared their own buildings with others, and instead of varying the principles of Vitruvius, to suit early Christian demands as heretofore, they passed on to new and freer lines. Instead of solid and rude strength, elegance of form and aspiring lines gave lightness and beauty.

The starting-point of the change was, of course, the adoption of the pointed arch, which at this time began to be substituted for the circular one as giving greater strength with greater lightness. "Curvetur arcus ut fortior," says an old chronicler of Subiaco. According to their method of gradual development the Comacine Masters did not blindly throw themselves into new forms. They went cautiously, and first tried their acute arches in clerestories, and triforia, over naves supported by the old Lombard arches of sesto intiero, as we see in several churches of the Transition period. A little later they mixed the two inextricably, as in Florence cathedral, where the windows are pointed with Gothic tracery, the interior arches round and Roman in form.

"The early Lombard architecture," said Cesare Cantù,[128] "was not an order, nor a system, so much as a delirium. Balance and symmetry utterly disregarded, no harmony of composition or taste, shameful neglect in form proportion; to the perfect classic design which satisfies the eye, they substituted incoherent and useless parts, with frequently the weak placed to support the strong, in defiance of all laws of statics. Columns—which used to be composed of a base, shaft, and capital, in just proportions, supporting a well-adapted architrave or frieze more or less fitly adorned, and a cornice which only added beauty and strength—were exchanged for certain colonnettes, either too short or too slight, knotted, spiral, and grouped so as to torture the eye, and above the disproportioned and inharmonious abacus of the capitals were placed the arches, which in a good style should rest on the architrave. In fine, there was an endless modanature, ribs, reliefs, and windows of elongated form and walls of extraordinary height." In spite of Cantù's leanings to the classic, this tirade shows the first indication of the change towards the Gothic, and it only proves that the Comacine Masters did not take up new forms borrowed entire from other nations, but assimilated what they saw in other places, gradually developing their style.

To find the origin of the pointed arch would be difficult. Was it evolved from the arching trees in the German forest? or was it from the rich Arabian mosque or ancient Indian temple? or did the Comacines find it, just as they acquired their Basilican forms, on Italian soil?

Germany, it is pretty well proved, got the seed of her glorious Gothic from France or Italy, and nourished it right royally. But the pointed arch is much more ancient than German Gothic. It is to be seen in the tomb of Atreus at Mycenæ, in an Etruscan tomb at Tarquinii, and even in the subterranean gallery at Antequere in Mexico.[129] The pointed arches in the Mosque El Haram on Monte Morea date from Caliph Omar's time, between 637 and 640. The Mosque of Amrou, with its curious combination of pointed and horse-shoe arches, dates from 640.

The church of St. Francis at Assisi (1226) has generally been accepted as the first instance in Italy, and it was soon followed in the design for the church of S. Antonio at Padua five years later; but there are two little churches annexed to the monastery of Subiaco on Monte Telaso, which were built, so say the chroniclers, one in A.D. 981, the other in 1053, in which some arches are round and others acute.[130] Hope[131] quotes examples of this mixture of round and acute arches in the ninth and tenth centuries at Cluny, 1093-1134; the Abbey of Malmesbury in England, which is in Lombard style; St. Mark's at Venice, 976-1071; Subiaco, 847, and others.

"But," as Selvatico remarks,[132] "these are isolated instances determined by static reasons, and do not point to a system." The Arab used the pointed arch as a decorative principle, as well as for stability. As the style spread in Europe it got modified, some countries keeping to the ancient type, and others changing its proportions. So the Arab arch became in the eleventh century the germ of the ogival arch, and in the twelfth expanded in the North into the most glorious forms of ecclesiastical Gothic architecture.

The Comacines made their first steps towards a more florid style, about the end of the eleventh century. The change, as in all such growths of circumstance, was a gradual one. First, a little more ornamentation, then a slight change in the forms of arches; next, a less fixed ground-plan of the churches, a mingling of the Greek cross with the square-walled Basilica. After these slight trials of their wings, came flights of imagination, and endless variety of form and ornamentation; that variety which could only spring from the ideas of many minds, united in one work.

To see the earliest signs of a wider scheme of design we must go to the region of Parma. Here in a little town called Borgo S. Donnino—the ancient "Fidentia Julia"—about fifteen miles north of Parma, is one of the finest early Romanesque churches in Italy. It was a great place for pilgrimages in the Middle Ages, as it contained the tomb of S. Domninus, who was martyred in the persecutions of Maximian. Great miracles were worked at his shrine, and religious fervour rose to such a height in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that the devotees collected money enough to build a church, which they desired should be the finest and most majestic of those times.

The work was finished before 1195. An ancient document shows that the Rettori (civil governors) of Milan, Verona, Mantua, Modena, Brescia, Faenza, Bologna, Reggio, Gravedone, Piacenza, and Padua, with their suites, all met there in that year to form a league against Henry VI., son of Frederic Barbarossa, who seemed likely to carry on the hostility of his father.[133] We have no documents to show who was the architect of the fine Basilica of S. Donnino, but as the Comacines had their laborerium at Parma, and as the work is clearly and distinctly Romanesque, we may believe the old authors who say that it arose per lo scarpello dei Comacini.[134] If internal evidence is wanting, the three lion portals of the ornate façade bear witness to the hand of the Comacines of the Romanesque epoch.

Another of their buildings which shows a marked advance, was the cathedral of Trent—the gate of Italy leading into Germany. This had been built in the first Lombard style between 1124 and 1149, when it was consecrated by the Patriarch of Aquileja. In 1207 the Bishop Federigo Manga, Chancellor of the Emperor Otho IV., formed a design to enlarge and almost rebuild it. He commissioned a Magistro Comacino to superintend the works, as appears from an inscription in Gothic letters on the tomb of that very Magister. Anglicized it would run—"In the year of our Lord 1212, the last day of February, Master Adam of Arogno, of the diocese and district of Como (Magister Adam de Arognio cumanæ diocesis et circuito), began the work of this church and constructed it. He with his sons and his abbiatici (underlings) built the interior and exterior of this church with its adjoining parts. He and his sons lie below in this sepulchre. Pray for them."

Prof. Cipolla, in an article in Arte e Storia di Firenze, quotes a poem written in 1309, in honour of the Duomo of Trent and of the Comacine Master who had achieved so much with his potent and clever hands (Cumani Magistri qui potenti manu non inani complevit).

The church has since then undergone several restorations, but in none of them has its plan been materially altered. There is still the octagonal dome, the circular apse at one end of the building, and the narthex at the other. The façade still honestly follows the lines of the roof, and has its little rows of pillared galleries across. The outside of the apse shows the new tendency to Romanesque more than the façade does; here arches and friezes in horizontal circles around it, take the place of the perpendicular shafts, and the single row of archlets on the top. It is more in the style of the thirteenth and fourteenth-century Lucca churches. The arch of the north door rests on lions, which we may take as the secret sign of Romanesque Comacine work between the tenth and twelfth centuries, as the intreccio or Solomon's knot had been their mark in the Lombard period.

The church of S. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo is a valuable specimen not only of this transition in its early stage, but of the culmination of the Romanesque, two centuries later. An inscription on the arch of the portico records that it was founded in the time of Pope Innocent II. and King Lothair II., i.e. about 1135, Rogerius being then the Bishop of Bergamo.[135] The builder's name is also recorded as Magister Fredus, probably short for Godfredus. Magister Fredus is not expressly said here to be of the Guild of Comacines, but as his work was entirely in Lombard style, with a few slight indications of a freer school, and as the architects who succeeded him were, as may be proved by documents, Comacine Masters chiefly from Campione, we may fairly make the hypothesis that he too was one of the guild. The little that remains of his work is to be seen in the interior, where the round arch still predominates, and in the exterior walls of the apse, with its crown of arches and colonnettes.

The parts due to the later brethren of the guild are the rich ornamentation of the two façades with their grand and characteristic Comacine porches, and also the Baptistery. It was in 1340 that Giovanni, son of Ugone (Big Hugh) of Campione, a celebre scultore ed architetto, was commissioned to build this Baptistery. According to the fixed laws of the Comacines he made it octagonal—the mystic sign of the Trinity, being formed of a threefold triangle. Around it entwine circles of arches and colonnettes, some lines having double columns; these reach to the cornice of the roof, which cornice is composed of reliefs allusive to the Sacrament of Baptism.

This work finished, Magister Giovanni went to Bellano on the east bank of Lake Como, together with two of his brotherhood, the Magister Antonio, son of the late Jacopo of Castellazzo da Peglio in the valley of Intelvi, and Magister Comolo, son of the late Magister Gufredo—probably a descendant of the Magister Fredus mentioned above—of Asteno, near Porlezza, to rebuild the church there, which had been ruined by age and repeated floods.[136] This church is in pure Lombard style, and has a façade in black and white marble, with a fine rose window, encircled with terra-cotta foliaged decorations. After this Magister Giovanni of Campione was recalled to Bergamo to adorn the façades of the church which Fredus had left in a rough state 200 years before. These two façades faced north and south. Strange to say, the part opposite the altar has no door. In this new emprise Giovanni brought as his assistants his son Nicolino, a relative named Antonio (probably the one who had worked with him at Bellano), and a certain Giovanni Cattaneo, also from Campione. Giovanni, who was head architect, decided not to renovate the whole south façade facing the Piazza on which he began first, but to concentrate his ornamentation on a fine vestibule and doorway, to form a species of frontal. The vestibule was finished in 1351, having taken only two years. On the architrave he has himself chronicled it—"1351, m. Johannes de Campillione C. B. (civis Bergomensis) fecit hoc opus." The whole front seems to have taken three years more, as on the base of the horse on which St. Alexander, patron saint of Bergamo, sits, may be read—"Filius Ughi de Campillione fecit hoc opus 1355."

Good Master John of Campione did not long survive the execution of this masterpiece, for on the north porch is inscribed—"1360. Magister Johannes f. q. (filius quondam) Dom. Johannes de Campilio ... (abrasion) fecit hoc opus in Christi nomine. Amen."

This north porch, though so nearly coeval, shows a much greater advance in style. It is an eloquent proof of how architecture was progressing at this time by the grafting on of different influences. John the father, being older, kept more closely to his Lombard traditions. John the son, being youthful and more open to conviction, took up new ideas. He has kept the Lombard arch in his porch, the moulding of which is extremely rich, and the lions of Judah duly support his pillars, but he has filled in his arch with very Gothic tracery, in trefoil arches, and over the Lombard columns of the upper storey of the porch are arches and decorations decidedly Oriental in appearance. It is about as good a specimen of the rich chaos of ideas that marks a transition stage as one can get, and shows that John the younger had been influenced by the Saracen-Norman influence in Sicily.

Fergusson, in his Handbook of Architecture, p. 790, gives an illustration of this porch. The Campione family evidently came from a race of sculptor-architects, for the church of S. Maria at Bergamo contains a sculptural work of much merit for the time, by Ugo da Campione, the father of Giovanni senior. It is the tomb of Cardinal Longhi degli Alessandri, who died at Avignon in 1329. The almost mediæval artist compares not unfavourably with a very modern master from Como, Vincenzo Velada Ligurnetto, who in 1855 sculptured the neighbouring tomb of Donizetti placed near it.

Coming down the valley of the Pò to Cremona, we find ourselves on a scene of great Comacine industry. There is the Baptistery, dating before A.D. 1000, and the Cathedral begun in 1100. These were both works of the Lombard Masters; their style is identical, and over the architrave of the great cathedral door may be read in the Gothic characters used by them—