The Cathedral Builders Part 7

But of course a Comacine could not make any building without his slight columns and arches, and here he disposed of them in his cloister. This, too, was a heritage from cla.s.sic Rome, recalling the atrium. A Lombard or Romanesque cloister is a delight. Here you have a square court more or less s.p.a.cious, containing a picturesque well in the centre, surrounded by a colonnade of small columns generally in couples, resting on a low wall and supporting a roof on a row of arches. It was usually on the sunny cloister that the Comacine poured out his imagination; here are fancifully-sculptured capitals, pillars of every variety of form and style, grotesque gargoyles between the arches, and often delicate tracery above them. Hope[52] instances as the more rude and early style of Lombard cloisters, those of San Lorenzo at Rome and Santa Sabina and San Stefano at Bologna, and as models of the more splendid style those of S. John Lateran, which are resplendent with porphyry, serpentine, and gold enamel, inlaid in the marble; and those of S. Zeno of Verona of every tint of marble which the Euganean hills can afford. For the interior arrangements of a Longobardic monastery we will take Padre Ricci's account of the first plan of Monte Ca.s.sino which Petronax the Brescian engaged the Comacines to build. "It had on the ground floor a _Sala_ anciently called _caminata_, because the fire-place was there. The upper floor was divided by wooden part.i.tions into cells and other rooms requisite in a cen.o.bitic life. Although at that time houses only had one floor, monasteries generally had two. Monte Ca.s.sino boasted of three storeys, the upper one being only used for keeping fodder and stores. As the chief aim was solidity of building, great attention was paid to the proportionate thickness of the outer walls. The laws determined the adequate value of these, which were generally of the thickness of five feet. The inner walls were of planks or _a.s.si_--'si c.u.m axe clauserit.'"

This mode of separation by wooden part.i.tions is still usual in convents, though it has gone out of use in houses. The convents of S.

Marco and S. Salvi at Florence both show this style of division for the cells. The windows were protected by _abietarii_ or _cancelli_ (gratings) made of wood.

A strong point in Lombard building was the fortress, which the _Magistri_ were past masters in erecting. Their castles and forts and city walls stand to this day solid and strong, with towers standing up commandingly in all directions--all the mediaeval cities bristled with them; the tower was, in fact, a weapon of war. On these, too, they set their seal--the pillared Lombard window becoming larger and more airy as the tower rises into the air, and the crowning cornice of bracketed or pillared archlets.[53]

Their towers seem to have been of two forms, ecclesiastic and civil.

The ecclesiastical bell-tower, square with a straight unbroken line, with neither b.u.t.tress nor projection till the summit, where the bracket-supported arches expand like a flower. Sometimes each storey had a string course, with smaller arches beneath it, as in the tower at Prato. The windows, too, as we have said, had a fixed rule; they are smaller below, and grow larger and more airy as they ascend. You go up from a mere orifice on the first floor to a one-arched window on the second, a two-arched on the third, to a three or even four-arched one near the summit.

The characteristics of civil towers at this time were their solidity as a means of defence, and their height as a means of vigilance; they appear to be chiefly circular, offering no corners, but a curved surface from which missiles could easily glance off. The windows were narrow outside, expanding wider within. If there were a double-light window, it would be on the very high storeys, out of arrow aim. Nearly all the ancient fortresses have round towers, but I know of very few church towers that are so, except the one at Cla.s.se near Ravenna.

Before the thirteenth century, neither brackets nor projecting cornices were used, and the tower rose in a single straight line from base to battlement, so that projectiles fell straight down. It was later that architects discovered the value of the projecting _baluardo_. As to battlements, these too came from the antique; Babylon and Nineveh show proofs of them, and Homer speaks of the battlemented towers of Asia and Greece. Muratori[54] derives the Italian term _merlo_, from _mirare_ (to take aim), the battlements being made for the shelter of the archers, and their convenience in shooting. When fire-arms came in, the need of battlemented towers ceased.

The princ.i.p.al Longobardic military towers remaining to our day, are, the tower of the ruined fortress of Baradello, which dominates the road to Camerlata, and the towers, now mutilated, in the wall of Como, one of which, erected on arches, forms the gate of the city towards Camerlata.

The ninth-century sculptures on the altar at S. Ambrogio prove that the Longobards had towers above their city gates. The author of the _Ant. Longob. Milanesi_ (Dissert. iii. p. 193) says that the ancient gates of Milan, before the enlargement of the walls, were of this construction with towers over them. They were furnished with heavy wooden doors covered with iron, which were suspended on chains, and slid down in grooves in the wall, thus completely closing the entrance--a portcullis, in fact. Livy, in his twenty-seventh book, describes the gates of Rome as being of the same construction; some existing examples at Rome, Tivoli, and Pompeii prove the fact. A famous gate in the time of the Longobards was the one chronicled by Paulus Diaconus, which King Bertharis (671-686) caused the _Magistri_ to erect beside his palace in Pavia. It was named the Porta Palatinense, and was, says Paulus Diaconus, an admirable work (_opera mirifica_). Some antique doc.u.ments quoted by Pa.s.sano,[55] prove that this gateway was furnished with bronze gates.[56]

Some writers think that the battlemented fortress came from the East, because ancient specimens of it are found there. In reading an Italian translation of Procopius, _Degli edifici di Giustiniano Imperatore_, I was struck by the many slight expressions which seem to prove that Justinian brought his fortress-builders into Byzantium from Italy.

Procopius says that Justinian made a new style of fortress with towers all round the walls; with stairs in the towers, and galleries (_baluards_) round them with holes in them to throw down stones, and that it was called _Pirgo castello_, because in the Latin tongue, fortresses are styled _castelli_. Now this description is precisely that of an Italian fortress, such as the Comacines knew how to build, and built for centuries all over Italy. If it came from the East in ancient times, why was it specified by Procopius as a new style there?--and if its origin were Eastern, why had they no name for it, but had to take the Latin one?

The Bishop of Salisbury, in a letter in the _Salisbury Diocesan Gazette_ (May 1898), speaks of an inscription of the twelfth century, preserved in the museum at Jaffa, which is in memory of Magister Filipus, who came over with the King of England (Richard), and who had built a portion of the wall "from gate to gate": evidently Magister Filipus from the English Masonic Lodge, fraternized and worked with his brethren of the Roman and Eastern Lodges.

Again, on p. 21, Procopius speaks of a town or village now known as Eufratisia, but which was once called Comagene, because there were Romans as well as Persians living there. Romans, of course, meant subjects of the Italian Empire, but the name Comagene is certainly suggestive of those Italians being the Comacine builders who made the castles. Then Procopius's description of the rebuilding of the church of Santa Sofia is, to say the least of it, interesting to a student of Lombard architecture. The pa.s.sage translated runs thus--"The church then (Sta Sofia) being thus burned, was, at that time, entirely ruined. But Justinian, a long while after, rebuilt it in such a form that if any one in older times could have foreseen it, he would have prayed G.o.d that the old church might be completely destroyed, so that it may be rebuilt as it now is. Therefore the Emperor sent to call artificers _and masters_, as many as there were in all the universal world. And Anthemius Trallia.n.u.s, the head architect, was a great machinist, learned in all kinds of machinery, not only that of his own time, but in all that the ancients knew, and he had the power to regulate and organize perfectly the working of all things necessary to building, and to the ordering and executing of his own designs and inventions. And Isidore, another Milesian, was also a master of machinery. The church then, was so marvellously made that it was a beautiful thing to see; it seems supernatural to those who behold it with their own eyes, and incredible to those who only hear of it, because it is so high that it seems to touch the sky.... The face of the church looks towards the rising sun, but where the secret offices to G.o.d are performed, it is built in this manner. It is a half-round edifice which those of this profession call _Hemiciclo_, which is to say half a circle ... and in this there are columns planted beneath its floor." Here we have a decided Basilica with raised tribune and semi-circular apse; both the form and nomenclature seem to have been imported as a new thing from Italy. "The golden dome appears suspended from heaven, so light are the columns supporting it that it seems to be in the air.... One can never arrive at understanding how it was built (_apprendere l'arteficio_), but one goes away astonished at one's inability to enough admire such a work."

Does not this seem an argument for the universality of the Masonic Brotherhood, even in Byzantine days? Here are certainly Italian artists, Italian basilican forms, and Italian nomenclature, among the Greeks working at Sta Sofia. And here too are Lombard galleries and windows with an Eastern touch added. Which way did the influence come?

Was this the origin of that characteristic Eastern mark of the Lombard style in Italy?--or was it an importation from Italy to Byzantium, where Procopius at least seems duly astonished by it? It is a question for experts to solve. There is much for the archaeologist to do yet in finding the true pedigree of architecture.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Probably the root of our word Lobby.

[50] _I Maestri Comacini_, Vol. I. chap. i. p. 50.

[51] The words _a.s.se_ and _tavole_ for planks of wood still survive in Italy.

[52] Hope, _Storia dell' Architettura_, chap. xxv. p. 179, 180.

[53] See the ill.u.s.tration of the church of S. Frediano, on page 48, for a perfect specimen of Lombard tower.

[54] _Ant. med. aevi_, Tom. I. chap. ii. p. 158.

[55] _De' real palazzi_, ch. i. par. 4.

[56] That the Longobards were either metal-workers themselves, or had Italian artificers in their pay, we know from the specimens preserved in Monza Cathedral, and especially the crown of Agilulf, of which the _Antichita Longobardica Milanesi_ gives an ill.u.s.tration.

CHAPTER IV

COMACINE ORNAMENTATION IN THE LOMBARD ERA

The Comacine Masters were distinctly sculptor-architects, and their ornamentation was an essential part of their buildings. Yet, to them, sculpture was by no means mere ornament. It was not a mere breaking up of a plain surface, as a beautifying effect; nor a setting of statues and niches for symmetry. It was an eloquent part of a primitive language of religion and art. The very smallest tracery had a meaning; every leaf, every rudely carved animal spoke in mystic language of some great truth in religion. But it was a language as yet artistically unformed, because the mediaeval man had more articles of creed than he could express in words, and his hand like his mind was as yet unpractised.

Thus it came that, as we have said, the Comacine Masters were much given to symbolism.

The old Italian writers cla.s.s this symbolism under two heads--the _ermetica_ (hermeneutic?), which they define as symbolism of form or number; and _orfica_ (orphic), that of figures or representations.

Under the first head would fall the symbolical plan of their churches to which we have referred; the form of the windows, which were double-lighted, and emblematized the two lights of the law and the gospel; the rounded apse, emblem of the head of Christ; the threefold nave shadowing forth the Trinity; the octagonal form of the baptisteries, which St. Ambrose[57] says was emblematical of the mystic number 8, etc.

Under the head of _orphic_ would come all those mystic signs of circle and triangle; of sacred monograms, and the mysterious Solomon's knot;--that intricate and endless variety of the single unbroken line of unity,--emblem of the manifold ways of the power of the one G.o.d who has neither beginning nor end. It would also include all the curious possible and impossible animals that abound in the Comacine work of earlier Longobardic times; all the emblematic figures of angels and saints; and the figurative Bible stories of the later Masters.

It has been said by Ruskin that the queer monsters sculptured on the early Longobard churches, such as Sant' Agostino at Milan, San Fedele at Como, and San Michele at Pavia, were the savage imaginings of the lately civilized Longobards, as seen through the medium of the sculptors employed by them. This is, however, proved not to be the case; animal symbolism was in those days an outward sign of Christianity, which, in a time when there was no literature, was to the unlettered ma.s.ses a mystical religion represented to their minds in signs and parables. Christ Himself used this parabolic style of teaching. And it was even more than that,--it was a sign of an older Bible lore among the Hebrews, and other ancient peoples. As in many early Christian ceremonies in the West (_i.e._ in Europe) we can trace the remains of the old Latin paganism, so in the East we may trace signs of the older Hebrew faith.

Speaking of the Longobardic mixtures of labyrinths, chimerae, dragons, lions, and a hundred other things, which at first sight do not seem to be connected with Christianity, Marchese Ricci asks--"If these queer mixtures were only the effect of the architects' caprice, whence came the first impulse to such caprice? Not from cla.s.sic Rome certainly.

Not from the Goths and Longobards, because they being barbarians had to employ Italian artists."[58] The theory propounded by Pietro Selvatico, in an article in the _Rivista Europea_, is suggestive of a reply to this question. He supposes that the Byzantines originally took their symbolism from the Hebrews, and from the traditions of Solomon's Temple, which are also shared by the Phnicians;[59] and that this animal symbolism changed its character in the East, owing to the restrictions imposed by the Emperor Leo and his successors, but that in freer Italy it still flourished. It is difficult to say whether the Comacines took their ornamentation direct from the Byzantines at Ravenna in the early centuries after Christ, or whether they got it by longer tradition, from that same Eastern source from which the Byzantines took theirs. It is true that Como had more than one bishop who was a Greek,[60] and that when it fell under the government of the Patriarch of Aquileja, the Comacines were employed by him in Venice, Grado, and Torcello, etc., where they would have seen a good deal of Byzantine work; but their earliest employment at Torcello was in the seventh century, and we have seen them using their chisels for Theodolinda long before that time.

The Byzantine ornamentation became conventional after 726 A.D., when the Emperor Leo III. (the Isaurian) promulgated his iconoclastic edict in the Eastern Empire. Some Greeks had begun to feel that, under the appearance of Christianity, they were only keeping up the ancient paganism. They were taunted by the Hebrews and Mussulmen, who, inspired by the Koran, had a great hatred of images. This sect found a champion in Leo III., who had lived much among the Arabs, and shared their prejudices against idols. He convoked a council, prohibited images, and proscribed all reverence and use of them either public or private. A figure of the Christ over his own palace fell the first victim to his iconoclastic destruction. Several Greeks who would not bow to this decree fled to Italy, and put themselves under the protection of Pope Gregory II. From this time the eastern Byzantine architectural ornamentation was entirely confined to linear and geometric design, and vegetable forms. In pure Byzantine work one sees no dragons or fighting monsters, only conventional doves and scrolls.

The sculptors took to imitating woven stuffs, and Oriental patterns in marble, and to twining their capitals with conventional leaves, but the life had gone out of their work; it was all set and precise, but dead.

The Italian architect, not being under the power of the edict of Leo, continued to carve his mythic animals, his symbolic birds and fishes, and even tried his hand at the first rude revival of the human figure in sculpture. His figures were disproportionate and mediaeval in form,--what could one expect from a man of the Middle Ages just reawakening to the conception of art?--but they were full of fire and life. Their mystic beasts were horrible as any nightmare could conceive them; they were indeed conceived in the darkness of that night of superst.i.tion, ignorance, and fierce strife. Their angels were grotesque, not from want of imagination, but from want of models of form and proportion; their men are full of all kinds of expression, with their heads too large and their limbs too short; but their att.i.tudes are lively, their faces grotesquely keen.

As a proof of this distinctive style, compare the Byzantine altar of S. Ambrogio at Milan, here ill.u.s.trated, with the Comacine pulpit of the same church. (_See_ page 88.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: BYZANTINE ALTAR IN THE CHURCH OF S. AMBROGIO, MILAN.

_page 74._]

So many students of architecture roughly cla.s.s as Byzantine every kind of intricate decorative work of the centuries before the Renaissance; but I think that, excepting in some instances in Venice and Ravenna (and not all the work of the era there), most of the Italian ornamental sculpture is Comacine, and not Byzantine. Certainly if you see a sly-faced lamb, or a placid lion with rolling eyes, peering out from beneath the abacus of a column, or a perky bird lifting up its claw over a vase, with an extremely lively expression of eagerness, that work is not Byzantine, though it may be surrounded and mixed with the most intricate possible weaving of lines or foliage. However, I leave the question of derivation of style to wiser students than myself, and return to the Comacine Masters and their symbolism.

It seems impossible that the Comacine sculptures on S. Michele could have come through the Byzantine. It is true they show rude and unskilled technical execution, but they have intense spirit, belief, life, and spontaneity. The _Magistri_ must have got their ornamentation as they did their architecture from an older source,--and a traditional one. It came down like their Freemasonry from ancient Eastern builders through pagan Rome, and ages of mystic religions such as Gnostic and other deistic forms, till it became incorporated in Christianity. "We might," says Sacchi,[61] "define Christian symbolism as the representation of mysteries and religious truths by means of forms, cyphers, and determinate images." (_La rappresentazione di dogmi, misteri e verita religiose, per mezzo di forme, cifre ed immagini determinate._)

An older and more authoritative testimony is given by Dionysius the Areopagite, the a.s.sociate of St. Paul, by whom he was consecrated. In his _De angelica seu celesti Hierarchia, Epistola ad Timotheum Ephaesiae civitatis episcopum_, he writes--"It is necessary to teach the mind as to the spiritual hierarchies, by means of material figures and formal compositions, so that by comparing the most sacred forms in our minds, we may raise before us the spiritual and unpictured beings and similitudes on high." As he says elsewhere, "ascendere per formas veritatim."

Again he writes to t.i.tus--"Only by means of occult and difficult enigmas, is it given to the fathers of science to show forth mystic and divine truths."[62] In the second epistle to Timotheus, St.

Dionysius writes--"We must raise ourselves from ascetic facts by means of imaginative forms, and we should not marvel as do the unknowing, if for this end are chosen many-footed beings, or creatures with many heads; if we figure bovine images, or lions, or eagles with curved beaks; flying creatures with three-fold wings, celestial irradiations, wheel-like forms, vario-tinted horses, the armed Sagittarius, and every kind of sacred and formal symbol which has come down to us by tradition." St. Nilus, too, writes to Olimpiodorus--"You ask me if I think it an honourable thing that you erect temples to the memory of martyrs as well as to that of the Redeemer--those martyrs who are certainly among the saints, and whose pains and sufferings have borne witness to the gospel. You also ask whether it would be wise to decorate the walls on the right and left with animal figures, so that we may see hares (conies) and goats, and every kind of beast flying away, while men and dogs follow them up. Whether it would be well to represent fish and fishermen throwing the line or the net; whether on the calcareous stone shall be well-carved effigies of all kinds of animals, and ornamental friezes and representations of birds, beasts, and serpents of divers generations?" St. Nilus says later that he quite agrees with all these things; so if the Fathers of the Church respected them, we need not heed Mr. Ruskin's diatribes.

St. Nilus lived in the time of John XVI., 985-996, nearly 900 years after Dionysius, but this extract from his letter shows that Christian symbolism had not altered in all those centuries, and the church he describes is no more or less than a Comacine church of that era. The chase is figured forth on the facades of S. Michele and S. Stefano at Pavia, and S. Zeno at Verona. The huntsman and his dogs are generally used as emblems of the faithful Christian driving out heresies.[63]

The fisherman symbolizes the priesthood, fis.h.i.+ng for souls out of the ocean of sin. There is a beautiful example of this myth in the fresco of the s.h.i.+p (the ark of the Church) on the roof of the Spanish chapel at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, where the fisherman is casting his line from the bank.

Seen through the medium of these early lights, we no longer look on the facade of S. Michele as Ruskin does, as a sign of savage atrocity, but every line of the time-worn sculptured friezes stands out as full of meaning as an Egyptian hieroglyphic, to one who can interpret it.

On the angle to the left we have the army of the Church militant, figured as armed soldiers, whose horses trample some quadrupeds underfoot: symbol--the vanquis.h.i.+ng of sins. Above this a frieze of four animals--first, a lion; second, too much broken to be decipherable, but from the context it is probably a man-headed creature; third, a bull; fourth, a winged creature. Here we have the four beasts of the Apocalypse,--emblems of the Evangelists. "And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle" (Rev. iv. 7). The connection between the two friezes is evident. First, the Church militant clad in the whole armour of G.o.d, and the second emblematizing the s.h.i.+eld of the Gospel.

In the next compartment of the facade, that on the left of the door, we have the chase of a deer and other animals flying from fierce dogs, which we have explained above; over this a frieze of vine-leaves.

Here, again, the connection of thought is apparent. The vine figures Christ, the only true refuge from heresy.

High up on each side of this left door is a peac.o.c.k with an olive-leaf in its claw-symbol of the Church bringing peace. In the centre between these is the bishop with his robes and pastoral staff--the visible dispenser of peace in the Church. On the fourth frieze, which is above the door, we go into the mythic animals: here is a hippogriff with the three-fold tail; a woman with six b.r.e.a.s.t.s, carrying two pine-cones; she is in a long robe with large sleeves, and veiled as an Egyptian; two sphinxes, on each of which a man rides, and whispers in their ears; a dragon with wings and bird's feet, on its neck a child; a priest with vase of holy water and an asperge, who is blessing some people; a man (Zohak) between two winged serpents which bite his head; a sphinx to whom a man presents a little branch of a tree; two hippogriffs, seated opposite each other with a man in the centre who places their claws on his head. A marvellous frieze indeed, and one which in spite of St. Dionysius speaks as much of Eastern traditions long before Christ, as of Christianity itself. The many-breasted woman with the pine-cones is the ancient mother G.o.ddess, Isis, Cybele, or Cupra, according to the age and clime; here I take it the old image is turned to new uses, and she figures Eve, the primitive mother. The two sphinxes are obscure, but they would seem to emblematize man wresting the secrets of knowledge of good and evil from the mystery of the unknown, as when Adam and Eve ate the apple; the dragon, always emblem of sin or the devil, ridden by a child, is a fine symbol of the child Christ, the seed of Eve, who should overcome sin. Then comes the purification by benediction, as shadowing Abel's accepted sacrifice, and the serpent-fanged remorse of Cain, as shown in Zohak.

"There where the narrowing chasm Rose loftier in the hill Stood Zohak, wretched man, condemned to keep His cave of punishment.

His was the frequent scream Which when far off the prowling jackal heard, He howled in terror back.