Chapter I: Front Matter

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Buoni and Bono, and Bissone and Bissoni.

THE CATHEDRAL BUILDERS

THE
CATHEDRAL BUILDERS

_THE STORY OF A GREAT MASONIC GUILD_

BY LEADER SCOTT

Honorary Member of the 'Accademia delle Belle Arti,' Florence
Author of 'The Renaissance of Art in Italy,' 'Handbook of
Sculpture,' 'Echoes of Old Florence,' etc.

With Eighty-three Illustrations

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
153-157 FIFTH AVENUE

1899

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON & BUNGAY.

PROEM

In most histories of Italian art we are conscious of a vast hiatus of several centuries, between the ancient classic art of Rome--which was in its decadence when the Western Empire ceased in the fifth century after Christ--and that early rise of art in the twelfth century which led to the Renaissance.

This hiatus is generally supposed to be a time when Art was utterly dead and buried, its corpse in Byzantine dress lying embalmed in its tomb at Ravenna. But all death is nothing but the germ of new life. Art was not a corpse, it was only a seed, laid in Italian soil to germinate, and it bore several plants before the great reflowering period of the Renaissance.

The seed sown by the Classic schools formed the link between them and the Renaissance, just as the Romance Languages of Provence and Languedoc form the link between the dying out of the classic Latin and the rise of modern languages.

Now where are we to look for this link?

In language we find it just between the Roman and Gallic Empires.

In Art it seems also to be on that borderland--Lombardy--where the _Magistri Comacini_, a mediæval Guild of _Liberi Muratori_ (Freemasons), kept alive in their traditions the seed of classic art, slowly training it through Romanesque forms up to the Gothic, and hence to the full Renaissance. It is a significant coincidence that this obscure link in Art, like the link-languages, is styled by many writers Provençal or Romance style, for the Gothic influence spread in France even before it expanded so gloriously in Germany.

I think if we study these obscure Comacine Masters we shall find that they form a firm, perfect, and consistent link between the old and the new, filling completely that ugly gap in the History of Art. So fully that all the different Italian styles, whose names are legion--being Lombard-Byzantine at Ravenna and Venice, Romanesque at Pisa and Lucca, Lombard-Gothic at Milan, Norman-Saracen in Sicily and the south,--are nothing more than the different developments in differing climates and ages, of the art of one powerful guild of sculptor-builders, who nursed the seed of Roman art on the border-land of the falling Roman Empire, and spread the growth in far-off countries.

We shall see that all that was architecturally good in Italy during the dark centuries between 500 and 1200 A.D. was due to the Comacine Masters, or to their influence. To them can be traced the building of those fine Lombard Basilicas of S. Ambrogio at Milan, Theodolinda's church at Monza, S. Fedele at Como, San Michele at Pavia, and San Vitale at Ravenna; as well as the florid cathedrals of Pisa, Lucca, Milan, Arezzo, Brescia, etc. Their hand was in the grand Basilicas of S. Agnese, S. Lorenzo, S. Clemente, and others in Rome, and in the wondrous cloisters and aisles of Monreale and Palermo.

Through them architecture and sculpture were carried into foreign lands, France, Spain, Germany, and England, and there developed into new and varied styles according to the exigencies of the climate, and the tone of the people. The flat roofs, horizontal architraves, and low arches of the Romanesque, which suited a warm climate, gradually changed as they went northward into the pointed arches and sharp gables of the Gothic; the steep sloping lines being a necessity in a land where snow and rain were frequent.

But however the architecture developed in after times, it was the Comacine Masters who carried the classic germs and planted them in foreign soils; it was the brethren of the _Liberi Muratori_ who, from their head-quarters at Como, were sent by Gregory the Great to England with Saint Augustine, to build churches for his converts; by Gregory II. to Germany with Boniface on a similar mission; and were by Charlemagne taken to France to build his church at Aix-la-Chapelle, the prototype of French Gothic.

How and why such a powerful and influential guild seemed to spring from a little island in Lake Como, and how their world-wide reputation grew, the following scraps of history, borrowed from many an ancient source, will, I hope, explain.

It is strange that Art historians hitherto have made so little of the Comacine Masters. I do not think that Cattaneo mentions them at all. Hope, although divining a universal Masonic Guild, enlarges on all their work as Lombard; Fergusson disposes of them in a single unimportant sentence; and Symonds is not much more diffuse; while Marchese Ricci gives them the credit of the early Lombard work and no more. I was led at length to a closer study of them by the two ponderous tomes on the _Maestri Comacini_[1] by Professor Merzario, who has got together a huge amount of material from old writers, old deeds, and old stones. But valuable as the material is, Merzario is bewildering in his redundancy, confusing in his arrangement, and not sufficiently clear in his deductions, his chief aim being to show how many famous artists came from Lombardy.

I wrote to ask Signor Merzario if I might associate his name with mine in preparing a work for the English public, in which his research would furnish me with so much that is valuable to the history of art, but to my regret I found he had died since the book was written, so I never received his permission; though his publisher was very kind in permitting me to use the book as a chief work of reference. With Merzario I have collated many other recognized authorities on architecture and archæology, besides archivial documents, and old chronicles. I have tried to make some slight chronological arrangement, and some intelligible lists of the names of the Masters at different eras. The researches of the great archivist Milanesi in his _Documenti per la Storia dell' Arte Senese_, and Cesare Guasti in his lately published collection of documents relating to the building of the Duomo of Florence, have been of immense service in throwing a light on the organization of the Lodges and their government. All that Signor Merzario dimly guessed from the more fragmentary earlier records of Parma, Modena, and Verona, shines out clear and well-defined under the fuller light of these later records, and helps us to read many a dark saying of the older times.

My thanks for much kind assistance in supplying me with facts or authorities, are due to the Rev. Canonico Pietro Tonarelli of Parma cathedral; the Rev. Vincenzo Rossi, Priore of Settignano; Commendatore John Temple Leader of Florence; and to my brother, the Rev. William Miles Barnes, Rector of Monkton, who has written the "English link" for me. Acknowledgments are also due to Signor Alinari and Signor Brogi of Florence, and to Signor Ongania of Venice, for permitting the use of their photographs as illustrations.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Professor Giuseppe Merzario.--_I Maestri Comacini. Storia Artistica di Mille duecento anni, 600-1800._ Published in 1893 by Giacomo Agnelli, of 2, Via S. Margherita, Milan. Two vols., large octavo. (Price 12 frcs.)

CONTENTS

PAGE

PROEM V

BOOK I

ROMANO-LOMBARD ARCHITECTS

CHAP.
I. THE GUILD OF THE COMACINE MASTERS 3

II. THE COMACINES UNDER THE LONGOBARDS 31

III. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE LONGOBARDS 60

IV. COMACINE ORNAMENTATION IN THE LOMBARD ERA 71

V. COMACINES UNDER CHARLEMAGNE 90

VI. IN THE TROUBLOUS TIMES 108

BOOK II

FIRST FOREIGN EMIGRATIONS OF THE COMACINES

I. THE NORMAN LINK 121

II. THE GERMAN LINK 133

III. THE ORIGIN OF SAXON ARCHITECTURE (A SUGGESTION),
BY THE REV. W. MILES BARNES 139

IV. THE TOWERS AND CROSSES OF IRELAND 161

BOOK III

ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTS

I. TRANSITION PERIOD 171

II. THE MODENA-FERRARA LINK 192

III. THE TUSCAN LINK. 1. PISA 206

2. LUCCA AND PISTOJA 225

IV. ROMANESQUE AND GOTHIC ORNAMENTATION 242

V. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE OF THE ROMANESQUE ERA 256

BOOK IV

ITALIAN-GOTHIC, AND RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTS

I. THE SECESSION OF THE PAINTERS 265

II. THE SIENA AND ORVIETO LODGES 282

III. THE FLORENTINE LODGE 308

IV. THE MILAN LODGE 345

1. THE COMACINES UNDER THE VISCONTI 349

2. THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA 372

V. THE VENETIAN LINK 383

VI. THE ROMAN LODGE 400