time appears the expression “Magistri Comacini.” In this Code of Laws
the Magistri Comacini appear as _Master-Masons_ with unlimited powers
to make contracts for building, and to enrol members in their Guild,
and these Comacini are mentioned again in an official document of King
Liutbrand, A.D. 712-744, which treats of architecture and carving
carried out by the Comacine Guild in question.
Now this Guild cannot have sprung into existence full-grown, and as it
were by magic, in the days of King Rotharis, A.D. 636. It must have
been already in existence, and have been too of some importance, before
Alboin’s descent on Italy, A.D. 568, which was followed by the reign of
the Lombard kings. _Who_ now were these Comacini? There is little doubt
that they were the successors of the Master-Masons who in the days of
the vanished Empire had directed the operations of the Roman Collegia,
especially devoted to building, and who had survived the barbarian
invasions which were so disastrous to Italy in the years which preceded
the accession of Rotharis to the Lombard throne. When Honorius migrated
from Rome to Ravenna, this Guild of Masons apparently had made its
head-quarters at Ravenna; had designed and carried out the magnificent
Ravenna buildings; then eventually, in the general upheaval which
followed the invasion of Alboin, the Guild removed to the comparatively
safe asylum of Como--a district singularly fitted for the home of a
building fraternity, owing to the stone and marble quarries and yards
for which it was celebrated.
* * * * *
Como had been long an important and a flourishing city when the Lombard
hordes descended into Italy. In the days of the Empire it had held the
rank of a colony, and was governed by a Prefect. Pliny the Younger had
held this office, and for a time lived in the beautiful city in his
Villa “Comoedia.” Catullus also made his home in Como. Indeed, Como and
the Comacine islands might be considered a privileged territory.
After Alboin the Lombard--A.D. 568--had invaded and conquered Northern
and much of Central Italy, the city of Como for a long time preserved
its independence, and was resorted to by many of the fugitives from
the Lombard raiders, as a haven of security; among these fugitives
from Ravenna and other centres were included many members of the
famous Guild of Roman Architects and Builders whose head-quarters
had been Ravenna in the days of her prosperity and glory under the
Emperor Honorius, his sister Placidia, Theodoric the Ostrogoth and the
lieutenants of Justinian.
For many years Como held out against the barbarian invaders. In the
end, however, it fell before the forces of the Lombard sovereign
Autharis.
The Lombard conquerors, as we have seen, favoured the Guild or
brotherhood of architects which they found in Como; they gave this
building fraternity, the successors of the ancient Roman Guild of
Architects, great privileges, as we see from the Edict of the Lombard
King Rotharis, _circa_ A.D. 636, and employed them in their many and
important building works.
Como continued to be the head-quarters of this trained architectural
Guild, and from this city, their permanent traditional home, they
derived their name, by which for long centuries they were known--the
Comacine builders--_Magistri Comacini_. This expression appears first
in the above quoted Edict of the Lombard King Rotharis, _circa_ A.D.
636.
It is clear that under the Lombard domination these Comacine builders
possessed a legal monopoly in the Lombard sphere of influence, from the
early years of the occupation of their conquerors.
This famous Comacine Guild or brotherhood continued to exist and
to flourish for many centuries, indeed until the disappearance of
the Lombard style of round-arch architecture, which style they had
perfected, somewhere about the close of the twelfth century.[6]
* * * * *
Very soon after their settlement in conquered Italy, the victorious
Lombards passed under the magic spell of Italy, and became themselves
lovers of art, and under the influence of the Christianity which
they adopted as their religion, proceeded to build churches and
even cathedrals. They made use of this Comacine Guild, and by their
patronage and favour revived the fading tradition of this most ancient
building and architectural fraternity and Guild. This was the beginning
of the famous _Lombardic_ style we usually term Romanesque.
At first, under the Lombard kings, the Comacine artists worked with,
comparatively speaking, poor art, little skill and imagination; they
retained, it is true, their old traditions, but they had fallen out of
practice during the period of unrest and disorder which followed the
Lombard invasion, but with the new impulse given by the Lombard rulers
to Art, they progressed in architectural design and ornament, and
gradually transformed the old Roman and later Romanesque development
into a new style still possessing many of the old round-arch features,
a new style generally termed Lombardic--which is now generally known as
Romanesque.
Although time (some 1300 years back), the devastation of endless wars,
many restorations, and even rebuilding, have obliterated so much of the
very ancient Lombardic work, there is no doubt that as early as in the
days of Queen Theodolinda, the wife of King Autharis, A.D. 571-91,
and later of King Agilulf, a number of churches were erected in the
Lombardic dominions. Theodolinda, as we have stated, was a Bavarian
princess.
This queen may fairly be reckoned as the one who rekindled in Northern
and Central Italy the dying embers of fine Arts, and especially of
architecture.
After the time of this Lombard queen, who among other works built
the first cathedral of Monza, no sovereign, during the 200 years of
Lombard rule, can be quoted who did not help to keep alive the spirit
of fine art, especially the art of architecture, which seems to have
been especially cultivated among the Lombard peoples from an early date
after their settlement in Italy.
The learned Muratori with great force bears his testimony here, when he
tells us that if more of the ancient Lombard buildings had survived,
they would have presented a striking, and by no means a rough and
barbaric appearance. The great scholar supports his conclusions here by
a striking reference to the contemporary Lombard writer, the well-known
Paulus Diaconus, whose admiration for the churches of his country
was evoked by a personal knowledge of them and their distinguishing
features.
Paulus Diaconus was well able to form an accurate opinion of these
buildings, for he must have been very familiar with the magnificent
churches of Rome and Ravenna, which in his day and time still preserved
much of their original magnificence.[7]
Rivoira cites and describes the present condition of a very few of the
undoubted remains of these ancient Lombard churches. Other Italian
scholars, however, instance more which they think belong to this first
age of Lombardic art.
We possess few remains of the earlier Comacine work; they become,
however, more numerous as time went on.
The following very early churches are now generally dated as erected
in the eighth century and earlier, and still remain intact, in part
at least, and they fairly represent the gradual development of the
Lombardic style during the period of the rule of the Lombardic kings:
San Salvatore, Brescia, _circa_ A.D. 753, is the best known instance;
the parish church of Arliano, near Lucca, somewhat earlier; San Pietro,
Toscanella; San Giorgio in Valpolicella; S. Teuteria, Verona, are also
cited by Rivoira.
After the fall of the Lombard rule, in the time of Charlemagne,
A.D. 774, the Comacine Guild had the opportunity of working in a
wider field, and were no doubt employed in most of the few important
buildings erected by that monarch; we can trace their handiwork and
the peculiar signs of their craft all through the ninth and tenth
centuries, and we notice the gradual advance they made in Art, even in
that dark and troubled age.
But in spite of this advance in the beauty and ornamentation of their
buildings, it was not until the close of the first quarter of the
eleventh century that these famous architects really recovered the lost
Roman secret of _vaulting_ large churches; hitherto they had, save in
rare instances, confined themselves to covering small spaces, such as
the apses and crypts of churches, with vaults.
* * * * *
Through those darkest of the early Middle Ages, the seventh, eighth,
ninth and tenth centuries, the Romanesque or round-arch style again
slowly developed in Lombardy. It penetrated into Gaul, into Germany,
and even to distant England.[8]
* * * * *
In England, the presence of Italian (Lombardic) influences, from a very
early period, is undoubted; but the remains we possess of churches
erected before the Conquest are, after all, but scanty.
Some writers maintain with great probability that the few churches
built shortly after the arrival of Augustine’s mission (A.D. 597) in
England were the work of Italian craftsmen. The first clearly dated
churches erected in England under Italian (Lombardic) influence,
however, belong to a somewhat later period. They are: _S. Peter,
Monkwearmouth_, built in A.D. 675 by Benedict Biscop, first Abbot of
Wearmouth and Jarrow, as Bede tells us, “in the Roman style.”
_S. Paul’s, Jarrow_, by Benedict Biscop, A.D. 684.
Bishop Wilfred, the energetic Roman champion, erected the _Basilica of
S. Andrew_, Hexham, between A.D. 672-678; a building which in his day
was famous for its size and splendour, though no doubt the contemporary
eulogies here were owing to the great poverty of ecclesiastical
structures in England at this time.
_S. Peter’s, Ripon_, A.D. 671-678, was also the work of Wilfred; the
Crypt of his church is still with us. _S. Andrew, Corbridge_, is also
reputed to have been erected by Wilfred.
Direct Italian (Lombardic) influence, however, ceased when the
Archbishop’s chair at Canterbury was no longer filled by foreign
ecclesiastics; and at the close of the seventh century, and from the
early years of the beginning of the eighth century, for a somewhat
lengthened period architecture in England pursued its own course
without external aid. But the round-arch Lombardic style still remained
general, though the buildings were rough and somewhat uncouth.
Brixworth Church--A.D. 654--is a fair example of the churches of this
disturbed period.
We have little to guide us here until the days of Alfred, A.D. 871-891,
when foreign influences again were dominant in the realm of the great
Anglo-Saxon king. In the days of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury,
_circa_ A.D. 943-988, a strong current of foreign (Italian) influence
passed over England. A similar current is notable in the reign of
Ethelred II (the Unready), A.D. 978-1016. This current became stronger
and stronger. Under Edward the Confessor, A.D. 1041-1066, the new style
of architecture--the Lombardo-Norman--made its appearance in England.
We shall dwell at considerable length on this important school which
produced so many world-famous works.
No doubt before the coming of the Lombardo-Norman (Romanesque) style,
many of the English churches were constructed of wood. This material
was plentiful, as much of the country consisted of forest land. These
have disappeared. We possess, however, one remarkable example of these
Anglo-Saxon timber-constructed buildings in the interesting little
chapel near Aungre (Chipping Ongar), built on the occasion of the
translation of the relics of S. Edmund from London, _circa_ A.D. 1013.
The first great monument of the coming of Lombardo-Norman architecture
into England is undoubtedly the Abbey Church of S. Peter, known as
Westminster Abbey. This famous church was built, in part at least, by
Edward the Confessor, _circa_ A.D. 1051-1065. Its completion was the
work of William the Conqueror.
* * * * *
In Germany, until the period of Charlemagne, we have no proof that
any considerable churches were built. This great conqueror and
organiser erected, A.D. 796-804, at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) the
famous Palace-chapel subsequently known as the cathedral, generally
after the model of San Vitale at Ravenna; but it stands alone. It was
not imitated, and his feeble successors, the Carolingian princes, did
little to advance or to foster architecture in their broad dominions.
This important building at Aachen remained, it must be confessed, as
far as its influence was concerned, a solitary appearance in Germany.
It is said that its great founder Charlemagne hoped this Palace-chapel
at Aachen might have served as a model for other German churches, but
it is clear that his influence in architecture was as ephemeral as the
mighty Empire which he was unable to endow with permanent vitality.
The Sepulchral Chapel at Lorsch, A.D. 876; perhaps the Crypt and some
of the remains at Quedlinburg, A.D. 936; the old Cathedral at Cologne,
A.D. 781; the Church of S. Michael at Fulda, A.D. 818; the Church of
Steinbach, A.D. 815; parts of the more important Church of Gernrode, S.
Cyriacus, A.D. 968, are among the very few examples which can be cited
of Romanesque work in Germany, until the rise of the Lombardo-Rhenish
style in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Rivoira well characterises the Lombardo-Rhenish basilicas of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries as the highest expression of German
architecture. It was, he says, an outward and visible sign of the
Imperial idea brought back to life among the Teutonic people by Otto
the Great in the last half of the tenth century.
The erection of these great churches is synchronous with the mighty
wave of church building which passed over Northern and Central Europe
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. One great peculiarity in this
style was the general adoption of flat ceilings (trabeated) over the
wide spaces. It was not until the latter part of the twelfth century
that cross vaulting over the naves and wide spaces began to be adopted
in the great German churches.
In their general features, however, these imposing Rhenish churches
of the eleventh and immediately following centuries, largely followed
Lombardic models.
Among other notable piles, the undermentioned Lombardo-Rhenish churches
rose in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In Cologne: _S. Maria im
Capitol_, A.D. 1094. _S. Martin_ and the _Church of the Apostles_ and
_S. Gereon_, eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Cathedral of _Spires_,
eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Cathedral of _Mainz_, eleventh
and twelfth centuries. _S. Castor_ of Coblenz, eleventh and twelfth
centuries. The Cathedral of _Worms_, eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The Minster Church of _Bonn_, twelfth century.
* * * * *
But what of _Gaul_--the France of mediæval and modern days, the
fairest, the richest, the most important of the provinces of the Roman
rule--greater and more influential in wealth as in culture by far
than any part of the dominions of the western world of Rome--equalled
by none of the countries of the far or nearer East of the great
Empire--second only to Italy, the mother-land of the Roman Empire?
What does this Gaul tell us of the rise and progress of Romanesque
architecture? Strangely little, we reply, for many centuries. It is not
by any means that this famous division of the mighty Empire was ever
wanting in noble and sumptuous buildings, civil and ecclesiastical. To
give a few notable historical examples as far back as the fifth and
sixth centuries. Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Clermont, gives us a
vivid picture of a stately country house in the Auvergne of his day,
one of many such lordly villa residences. Gregory of Tours describes at
some length the Church of Clermont Ferrand, as it existed in the sixth
century, and dwells on its forty-two windows, its seventy columns, on
its walls decorated with mosaics and many coloured marbles. A still
vaster and more famous ancient church was the venerable and far-famed
Basilica of S. Martin at Tours, so eloquently pictured by the same
historian, S. Gregory of Tours. Another stately church we know adorned
the great city of Lyons. The Lyons church was erected before the
period of the church building activities of Justinian which culminated
in the superb S. Sophia at Constantinople--one of the wonders of the
Roman world of the East. This Lyons church was a building contemporary
with the noble Ravennese Basilicas of Honorius and Galla Placidia.
But every vestige of all these, and of many others of later date, has
disappeared. Quicherat strikingly asks, “Where are all the churches of
France which were erected before the year of grace 1000?”
The most careful investigation of modern archæologists can only
discover some four or five at most, poor reliquiæ of Merovingian and
Carlovingian times, and these few scanty remains consist of a solitary
crypt or two, or of a small and unimportant chapel, once evidently a
part of some more considerable building now utterly vanished.
Something more than time, though measured by centuries, must have been
at work here. Evidently a ruthless destroyer’s hand has passed over
France and swept away all these monuments of religious zeal and devoted
piety. Quicherat, Viollet le Duc, Guizot and Villemain, Sir James
Stephen, Palgrave and other modern historians, in their picture of the
story of France in the sixth and following centuries, tell us how all
this havoc and destruction came about.
No country like France has suffered so deeply from hostile raids and
disastrous invasions--from the seventh century onwards. As early as in
the first years of the eighth century have the Saracens harried the
southern districts of the fair Gallic province--the great Mediterranean
Sea for a long season appeared destined to become a Moslem Lake, whose
masters were Saracenic pirates. On land these Eastern depredators were
even more destructive. Nothing daunted by the crushing defeat they
suffered at the hands of Charles Martel near Tours, they persisted
in treating Aquitaine and Provence as a country to which they had a
positive claim, and they long continued to burn and plunder churches,
monasteries and cities at their will.
As time went on, a yet more systematic course of destruction in
middle and northern France, and even in the southern districts, must
be chronicled in the _Gesta Romanorum_--the dread recital of the
harryings of the North-folk, the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the
Danes, the Frisians. These invasions began before the close of the
eighth century--even in the days of Charlemagne--and when the strong
hand of the mighty Emperor was removed, we come indeed upon a terrible
catalogue of the woes and ruin wrought in Gaul by the Northern robbers
all through the ninth and tenth centuries.
The sad catalogue of cities ruined, raided, devastated and partly burnt
by these dread hordes of Northern pirates, includes well-known places
such as Aix-la-Chapelle, Treves, Cologne, Metz, Toul, Verdun, Tournai,
Rouen, Orleans, Auxerre, Troyes, Tours, Chartres, Poitiers, Angoulême,
Bordeaux, Toulouse; besides many solitary monasteries.
Quicherat graphically speaks of the work of these savage raiders as a
veritable _feu-de-joie_, and with great force points out how thoroughly
they were able to carry out their fell work of destruction, especially
in ecclesiastical buildings, owing to the abbeys and churches being
universally covered with wooden roofs; the destructive work of these
Northern pirates, bitter foes of Christianity, was thus rendered
comparatively easy. The interior fittings of the church were first
fired; quickly the flames reached the timber of the roofs, and very
soon the entire building became a very furnace, and the whole pile was
soon completely destroyed.
All this continuous burning and raiding, which went on for nigh two
miserable centuries, accounts for the strange absence of any remains
of the once sumptuous and in many cases stately Merovingian and
Carlovingian churches and abbeys of the sixth and following centuries.
The great wealth, the many and opulent cities of Gaul, marked out this
province of the Empire as presenting a specially attractive country
for the invasions and raids of these hordes of sea-pirates. Gaul too
was in the neighbourhood of the home of these Northern adventurers,
and the navigable Gallic rivers which emptied themselves into the
Northern Sea, the Channel which divided Gaul from Britain, and into
the Atlantic Ocean which washed the long western sea-board, the Rivers
Scheldt, Seine, Loire and Garonne; the Rhone, too, which flowed into
the Mediterranean, where the ships of the Northmen were no uncommon
sight--gave ample facilities for these formidable fleets with their
dark sails to penetrate into the very heart of the great Gallic
province.
Modern archæologists and historians, such as Quicherat, Rivoira, and
Sir Thomas Jackson, comment sadly on this almost total absence of
even a remnant of the ancient Gallic churches. Viollet le Duc, in his
monumental _Dictionary_, well sums up the story of this sad gap in the
architectural history of the past of France, by telling us that “we
possess only very vague ideas of the primitive churches on the soil of
France, and that it is only from the tenth century downwards that we
can form a passably exact conception of what they were like.”
So terrible, so widespread, so constantly recurring were the
depredations of these dreaded sea-pirates, that a new supplication was
introduced into the Gallican liturgies--“A furore Normannorum libera
nos.” The bitter hostility of these Northmen raiders to Christianity
is well known; something more than a mere love of plunder influenced
their method of treatment of churches and monasteries, and moved them
especially to select churches as the first objects of their passion for
burning and destroying.
The last years of the tenth century and the first half of the eleventh,
however, witnessed a new state of things. The raids of the Northern
pirates grew fewer and gradually came to an end.
The more formidable bands of these sea-robbers settled finally in
the northern part of Gaul, and there founded a new realm, called,
after them, Normandy. These invaders quickly adapted themselves to
the civilisation of the conquered provincials, and thus materially
contributed to the general quietness which settled over the
long-harassed Gallic province. Raoul Glanber, the Monk Chronicler of
the Cluny Monks, in a famous and often-quoted passage, relates how “the
world--_his_ world, started from its death-sleep and from the year 1000
put on its white robe of churches.”
There is no doubt but that an extraordinary reaction in Church life
must be dated from this period. Various causes contributed to this
remarkable renaissance of religion, the outward and visible sign of
which was in the vast number of churches and abbeys which were built
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The comparative “stillness” of
Western Christendom was perhaps the dominant factor. But the enormous
and ever-growing influence of Cluny and the vast number of its daughter
Monastic Houses must not be overlooked.
In France, _all_ the existing Romanesque churches date from this
period. We style them accurately as _Romanesque_--but it must be borne
in mind that while they all possess the leading features of this great
school of architecture--notably the “round arch”--in each of the
provinces of France in details they differed very considerably.[9]
* * * * *
We will give a brief summary of these differences in the details.
_Aquitaine._--This great division of France included the south-western
and west central districts--Poitou Limousin--Guienne--and later
Gascony. Here the influence of Byzantine Art on the Romanesque School
was very noticeable--the famous Church of S. Front at Périgueux is a
well-known example, and had many imitators on a smaller scale. S. Front
was evidently designed on the plan of the Byzantine Church of S. Mark’s
at Venice.