Part 11 (2/2)
From 1118 to 1127 A.D. the republic of Como was at fierce war with the Milanese. A long poem by a Comacine poet, quoted by Muratori, describes the workmen and artisans fighting in the streets in their working dress, and wielding any tool or weapon they could find. The masons and builders worked as sappers and miners, dug the trenches, built up barricades, and destroyed the enemy's houses and castles. One of these brave citizens, named Giovanni Buono, is especially mentioned by the ancient poet, and he is peculiarly connected with the Comacine Masters as the first of a long line of _Magisters_ of the Buono family. He forms a tangible link between the half-traditional Comacines of Lombard times, and the more clearly defined guild of the Romanesque epoch. From that to the Italian Gothic period their ident.i.ty is traceable by doc.u.ments. A warlike bishop, Guidone, was the leader of the Comacines, but after three years' war he fell ill, and on his death-bed prophesied the fall of his fatherland.
The Comacines were indeed at the end of their resources, they were exhausted of means, of food, and of warriors; and after several victories at length fell under the power of the Milanese, becoming a tributary state. But it was not till Milan had called in the aid of several other cities that brave little Como succ.u.mbed to her on August 27, 1127. She was not enslaved even then, and must have retained her political freedom, for we find her siding with Frederic Barbarossa in 1167, against the whole Lombard League, to her cost, for she was a great sufferer in the battle of Legnano on May 29, 1176.
Barbarossa tried to make some compensation, by ceding to Como the castles of Baradello and Olona. A coin exists, of the Como mint of that time, with an eagle and _Imp. Federicus_ on one side, and _c.u.ma.n.u.s populus_ on the other. Frederic had reason to cultivate the Comaschi, for they sent 200 s.h.i.+ps to the Venetian war for him. An edict of Barbarossa's in 1159, and another dated 1175, shows that he allowed the Comacines to rebuild their walls and city at that date, _civitatem in cineres collapsam funditos re aedificavimus nos_. This occupied them a long time. The tower towards Milan bears the date of 1192. The round tower that of 1250. There were eight gates in these new walls.
FOOTNOTES:
[83] _Maestri Comacini_, Vol. I. cap. ii. p. 79.
[84] Hope, _Storia dell' Architettura_, ch. xxii. p. 159 (Italian translation).
[85] _Storia estetico-critica della arti del disegno_, Lezione iv.
[86] The Act exists still, and is quoted in Sagredo's work, _Sulle consorterie delle Arti Edificative in Venezia_, p. 28.
[87] The same form is shown in the contemporary church of St. Victor at Arsago near Milan.
[88] Conductis protinus peritissimis artificibus tum amalphitanis, quam lombardis.--_Cronaca Sacri monasterii Ca.s.sinensis_, auctore Leone Cardinali Episcopo, Lib. III. cap. xxviii.
BOOK II
FIRST FOREIGN EMIGRATIONS OF THE COMACINES
CHAPTER I
THE NORMAN LINK
The great building guild of the Middle Ages had another connection with France, independently of Charlemagne, and one which perhaps left a more lasting impression on the nation than the church of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was through the Normans, who held a prominent place in the history of Romanesque art, some authors giving them the credit of its introduction into Italy.
This may be, but between the tenth and twelfth centuries architecture and sculpture underwent so many transformations and became mingled with so many different elements that its history is most difficult to disentangle. There was a maze of different influences brought together in Sicily, such as Norman, solid and heavy, from the north; Byzantine, set and precise, from the east; Saracenic, warm and fanciful, from the south--all mingling together in the temples of Monreale and Palermo, where I think we may add a fourth and Italian element, in the Comacines or Lombards.
The first consideration is: How did the Norman architecture first arise? Was it indigenous? Did the Normans about the tenth and eleventh centuries suddenly begin building round-arched and pillared churches from their own inner consciousness?--for all histories a.s.sure us there were no stone Norman-arched buildings before the tenth century, and that by 1150 the pointed style had already begun to supersede it. All the great and typical examples are crowded into the last fifty years of the eleventh century, at which time the Norman dukes were very powerful. It was a time of enterprise and excitement of all kinds, not the least of them being the rage for church-building, awakened by the early missionaries.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WEST DOOR OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, SMITHFIELD, SHOWING THE COMACINE STYLE OF BUILDING (_opus gallic.u.m_).
(_From a photograph by Mr. Freeman Dovaston, Oswestry._) _See page 124._]
Some light may be thrown on the way the round arch first got into Normandy, by the following bits of old Norman chronicles, which show that a very important event took place in the history of the Comacines at the end of the tenth century, connecting them in a remarkable and suggestive manner with the rise of Norman architecture. We find from old chronicles that S. Guillaume, Abbot of S. Benigne in Dijon, was a Lombard, born in 961 on the island of Santa Giulia, in Lago di Orta, part of Lago Maggiore. He was the son of a certain Roberto, Lord of Volpiano; Otho the Great himself had been his G.o.dfather at the time when he besieged the island, and took prisoner Willa, wife of King Berengarius. Guillaume (William) was, as his friend and biographer, Glabrius Rodolphus, tells us, ”of a keen intellect, and well instructed in the liberal arts.” In his youth he travelled much in Italy, and was often at Venice, where he formed a close friends.h.i.+p with Orso Orseolo, Patriarch of Aquileja. The Patriarch Orso was at that time engaged in the restoration of the church of Torcello, one of the gems of architecture of the age; while his brother, the Doge Otho Orseolo, was pressing forward the works of S. Marco at Venice. It was here probably that S. Guillaume was interested in the Masonic guild, and recognizing its power as an aid to mission work, would have joined it. He founded the famous monastery of S. Benigno di Fruttuaria in Piedmont, and towards the end of the tenth century he went to France with the venerable Abbot of Cluny; here he decided to build a monastery to S. Benigne in Dijon, which he himself designed. But to effect his design he had to send to Italy, his own country, for ”many people, men of letters, masters of divers arts, and others full of science.”[89] The chronicler goes on to say that Guillaume displayed much wisdom in bringing these masters (_magistri conducendo_) to superintend the work (_ipsum opus dictando_). These two phrases are identical with those of Article 145 in the Edict of Rotharis, and I think might be equivalent to a proof that the Italians who built S. Benigne at Dijon were indeed of the Comacine Guild. The chroniclers further tell us that the Abbot Guillaume was invited to Normandy by Duke Richard II., to ”found monasteries and erect buildings.” The very phrase implies his connection with, and command of architects. He at first refused, because he had heard that the Dukes of Normandy were barbarous and truculent, and more likely to deface than to erect sacred temples; but afterwards he decided to go.
He stayed there twenty years, founding forty monasteries, and restoring old ones, which were in those days chiefly built of wood.
”He had many of his Italian monks trained to continue the work he had begun. These propagated such love and taste for art in those rude and bold Normans, that stone buildings multiplied there, and when William of Normandy conquered England, the style pa.s.sed over with him.” Hope, whose judgment is unerring on all subjects connected with the Lombard style, confirms this. He says[90] that some time before the style came into England, Normandy had given remarkable models of a _tutto-sesto_ (round-arched) or Lombard style, and that the same precedence is noticeable in the pointed or composite style. Indeed, the English owe to the Normans the erection of many fine edifices of both kinds. Thus some gave the name of Norman to the Gothic buildings and others gave it to Lombard ones, and it was imagined that the pointed arch came originally from Normandy. And yet Normandy was one of the stations of pointed architecture in its pilgrimage towards us from the south. As an ill.u.s.tration and convincing proof of this pedigree of Norman style from the Lombard, we may give one of our oldest so-called Norman churches, that of St. Bartholomew the Great at Smithfield, London. The original nave has vanished, but the tribune remains, divested, it is true, of the two great piers in front of the apse, which were removed in 1410. The semi-circle of the apse has, however, been replaced in the old style; and, with its pillared arches and ambulatory, harmonizes well with the ancient part, now the nave, which is perfectly Lombard. The ambulatories below, and the women's gallery, such as we find in St. Agnes at Rome, and many Comacine churches, both have a distinctly Italian origin. Even the stilted arches in the choir only seem in their outline like magnified Lombard windows. The masonry is the true Comacine style, great square-cut blocks of stone, smoothed and fitted with exact precision; while the windows of the triforium are clearly a four-light development of the two-light Lombard window, divided by its small column; the very form of the column is identical, though it lacks the sculpture. Probably the Italian artists were few, and English a.s.sistants not yet trained. The clerestory was a reflex of a later style, being added in 1410, to replace the so-called Norman one, which no doubt had the usual round-arched windows with a column in the centre. Indeed, I think it would be worth the while of archaeologists to find out whether the whole church were not originally built by Italian architects, as Rahere, its founder, was in Rome on a pilgrimage, when he fell very ill of fever, and vowed to build a hospital if he recovered. He soon after had a vision of St.
Bartholomew, who instructed him to return to London, and build a church in the suburbs of Smithfield. He founded both the church and hospital of St. Bartholomew in about 1123. There seems to me to be such a difference between this church and other more heavy Norman contemporary buildings, that it might be suspected Rahere followed the older example of St. Wilfrid and St. Benedict Biscop, and brought over the Comacines with him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SOUTH SIDE OF THE CHOIR, ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT, SMITHFIELD.
(_From a photograph by Mr. Freeman Dovaston, Oswestry._) _See page 124._]
I cannot agree with Mr. Fergusson in his a.s.sertion 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.
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