The Cathedral Builders Part 8

For from his shoulders grew Two snakes of monster size Which ever at his head Aimed their rapacious teeth.

He, in eternal conflict, oft would seize Their swelling necks, and in his giant grasp Bruise them, and rend their flesh with b.l.o.o.d.y nails And howl for agony, Feeling the pangs he gave, for of himself Co-sentient and inseparable parts The snaky torturers grew."[64]

SOUTHEY, _Thalaba the Destroyer_.

Next the man giving the branch to the sphinx must shadow the reconciliation of man with G.o.d, and the hippogriffs the final redemption of man. The hippogriff is a combination of horse and eagle.

The horse, as St. Dionysius says, was symbol of evangelical resignation and submission; if white, it sheds divine light. The eagle, he tells us, is a high and regal bird, potent, keen, sober and agile; the winged horse consequently stands for man's upward flight to heaven through submission to G.o.d. In the fifth frieze, the Christian virtues of strength, fort.i.tude, sobriety, and obedience are symbolized by bulls and horses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRESCO IN THE SPANISH CHAPEL, S. MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE.

_Page 77, note._]

Around the door are sculptures of the same kind of emblems with vines entwining--which teach that all manly strength must be used for Christ.

In the central portion are more friezes, all symbolizing the struggle between good and evil; the war between angels and demons; between man's earthly nature and his heavenly soul.

Here are men fighting dragons, and struggling with serpents; winged angels riding on heavenly horses; and over the door the grand central idea, St. Michael triumphant over the dragon-serpent, the favourite hero and great example of those days.

On the other side of the church we seem to get the symbolism of the New Testament. Here, mixed still with the dragons and hippogriffs of the time, we can see the Virgin with the Divine Child at her breast.

On the capitals of the north door, round the corner, are the entirely Christian emblems of the man, the lamb, a winged eagle, and two doves pecking at a vase, in which are heavenly flowers. In the lunette, Christ is giving to St. Paul on one side a roll of parchment, and on the other hand entrusting the keys to St. Peter; under it are the words: _Ordino Rex istos super omnia Regna Magistros_.

The capitals in the church are carved with similar subjects; one has the emblems of the evangelists; another Adam and Eve with the tree of knowledge on one side, and a figure offering a lamb on the other. On one are griffins at the corners, and Longobards with long vests, beard, and long hair, crouching between them; on another, a virgin martyr bearing the palm. The fourth column on the left has a curious scene of a man dying, and an angel and a demon fighting for his soul, which has come out of him in the form of a nude child. Two pilasters show the sacrifice of Isaac, and Daniel in the lions' den.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOOR OF THE CHURCH OF SAN MICHELE, PAVIA.

_page 80._]

So we see, that mediaeval as he was at that time, the Comacine Master of the seventh and eighth centuries, even though his execution were low, had a high meaning in his work. As to the rudeness of the handling, there is this to be said. We see the work after more than a thousand years' exposure to the atmosphere, and the sculptures are not in durable marble, but in sandstone, which has a habit of getting its edges decayed, so we may fairly suppose the cutting looked clearer when the ornamentations were fresh. The form of both animals and men is, however, and naturally always was, entirely mediaeval, which seems synonymous with clumsy.

The use of marble ceased for some centuries with the fall of the Roman Empire. Theodosius had made a law, forbidding any one below the rank of a senator to erect a building of marble, or valuable _macigna_; thus the Christian buildings after the fifth century were generally of humble sandstone; and this continued till the time of St. Nilus, who tells his friend that "in _arenaria_ he may effigy every kind of animal, which will be a delightful spectacle" (_dilettoso spettacolo di veduta_). It was a stone peculiarly adapted to building, as it was easily cut, and yielded to all the imaginations of the sculptor with very little labour. I have given an especially lengthy description of the facade of S. Michele, because it embodies all the special marks of the ornamentation of the Comacine under the Longobardic era. The church of S. Fedele at Como is another instance; here, too, the capitals of the columns, and the holy water vase, which is held up by a dragon, are full of orphic symbolism. The left door has an architrave with obtuse angles bearing a chimerical figure, half human, half serpent--the gnostic symbol of Wisdom. Serpents and dragons entwine on the lintels, and emblematize the Church's power to overcome.

In studying the scrolls and geometrical decoration of the Comacines, one immediately perceives that the _intreccio_, or interlaced work, is one of their special marks. I think it would be difficult to find any church or sacred edifice, or even altar of the Comacine work under the Longobards, which is not signed, as it were, by some curious interlaced knot or meander, formed of a single tortuous line.

As far as I can find from my own observations, there is this difference between the Byzantine and Comacine mazes; the Byzantine worked for effect, to get a surface well covered. His knots and scrolls are beautifully finished and clearly cut with geometrical precision, but the line is not continuous; it is a pretty pattern repeated over and over, but has no suggestion of meaning.

The Comacine, on the contrary, believed in his mystic knot; to him it was, as I have said, a sign of the inscrutable and infinite ways of G.o.d, whose nature is unity. The traditional name of these interlacings among Italians is "Solomon's knot."

I have seen a tiny ancient Lombard church, in the mountains of the Apuan Alps, built before the tenth century, of large blocks of stone, fitted and dovetailed into each other with a precision almost Etruscan. High up in the northern wall is a single carved stone some three feet long, representing a rude interlaced knot.[65] We asked a peasant what it was.

"Oh, it's an ancient _girigogolo_," said he, by which I presume he meant hieroglyphic.

On going to a higher fount and asking the priest, we got the information that it was a "Solomon's knot," and that such _intrecci_ were found on nearly all the very ancient churches. He supposed it had some meaning--and thought it expressed eternity, as the knots had no end and no beginning. The Italian philologist, Sebastian Ciampi, gives these interlacings a very ancient origin. "We may observe," he writes, "in the sculpture of the so-called barbarous ages on capitals, or carved stones, that they used to engrave serpents interlaced with curious convolutions. On the wall too they sculptured that labyrinth of line which is believed to be the Gordian knot, and other similar ornaments to which Italians give the generic name of _meandri_. I do not think that all these representations were merely adapted for ornament, but that they had some mystic meaning. I am not prepared to say whether our forefathers received such emblems from the Northern people who so frequently peregrinated in Italy, or from the Asiatic countries. This is certain, the use of such ornamentation is extremely antique, and we find it adopted by the Persians, and see it in Turkish money, and carpets, and other works of Oriental art."[66]

Ciampi goes on to find the root of these emblems, both the Runic knot and the Comacine _intreccio_, in the Cabirus of the ancient Orientals.

It is possible that the ancient serpent wors.h.i.+p of the Druids and other Northern nations, was in some way descended from the same root.

In any case they were transmitted to the Longobardic Comacines through the early Christian _Collegia_ of Rome, as we see by the _plutei_ in San Clemente, S. Agnese, etc., and by the beautiful single-cord interweavings on the door of a chapel in S. Pra.s.sede.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMACINE KNOT ON A PANEL AT S. AMBROGIO, MILAN. ONE STRAND FORMS THE WHOLE. FROM CATTANEO'S "ARCHITETTURA."

_See page 83._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCULPTURE FROM SANT' ABBONDIO, COMO, 5TH CENTURY. (THE CIRCLE AND CENTRE A SINGLE STRAND.) _See page 84._]

There is a marvellous knot sculptured on a marble panel of the ninth century from S. Ambrogio Milan, which Cattaneo has ill.u.s.trated.[67]

The whole square is filled with complicated interweavings of a single strand, forming intricate loops and circles, the s.p.a.ces between which are filled with the Christian emblems, the rose, the lily, and the heart. Another _pluteus_, originally from San Marco dei Prec.i.p.azi at Venice, but now over the altar at S. Giacomo, is dated 829 A.D., and is covered with what seems at first sight a geometric pattern of circles and diamonds, but if a.n.a.lyzed will be found a single strand interwoven in the most mysterious and beautiful manner. It seems that the parapet of the tribune in all these early Basilicas was the place chosen especially by the Roman architect of the third and fourth centuries, and the Comacine of the eighth and ninth, to set their secret and mysterious signs upon, and to mark their belief in G.o.d as showing infinity in unity.

It is very curious to notice in the churches which the guild restored in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when their tenets had altered, and their sign changed, how they themselves removed these old stones, but yet being careful not to destroy them, they turned them and sculptured them again on the other side. In the excavations or restorations in Rome many of the _intrecci_ have come to light at the back of panels of Comatesque pulpits, recarved into altar frontals, or used as paving-stones before the altar.

Some of the earlier and less intricate forms of knots may be seen in the church of S. Abbondio at Como, which was built in the fifth century and again rebuilt in the ninth. Some excavations in the last century revealed the foundations of the fifth-century church, and also brought to light a number of sculptured stones which had been turned face downwards to form the pavement. We give ill.u.s.trations from two of these which have the Comacine signs plainly written on them, and show even in this early and simple form the reverence for the line of unity. Cattaneo thinks they may have formed the front of the gallery above the nave in the eighth-century building.

In the museum of Verona is a precious fragment of Comacine work dating from Luitprand's time. It was a _ciborium_ which Magister Ursus was commissioned to make for the church of S. Giorgio di Valpolicella. It is especially valuable as the first dated piece of sculpture of the Longobardic era, and the first signed specimen of Comacine interlaced work. The columns which remain support a round arch, covered with sculptured _intrecci_. As it stands now the two halves of the arch do not match, so it must be conjectured that the _ciborium_ had four columns, and that the halves of the arch were originally on different sides of the erection. The _intrecci_ are beautiful and varied, displaying the unbroken continuity of the curved line which marks the Comacine work of the eighth to the twelfth centuries. The capitals are curious in form and not at all cla.s.sical. Beneath the capitals of the two columns are the following inscriptions in rough letters and dog Latin. One runs--"IN NOMINE DNI. IESU XRISTI DE DONIS SANCTI IUHANNES BAPTISTE. EDIFICATUS EST HANC CIVORIUM SUB TEMPORE DOMNO NOSTRO LIOPRANDO REGE, ET VB PATERNO DOMNICO EPESCOPO, ET COSTODES EIUS, VIDALIANO ET TANCOL, PRESBITERIS, ET REFOL GASTALDO, GONDELME INDIGNUS DIACONUS SCRIPSI." And the other--"URSUS MAGESTER c.u.m DISCEPOLIS SUIS, IVVINTINO ET IVVIANO EDIFICAVET HANC CIVORIUM, VERGONDUS TEODAL FOSCARI."[68]

The date of Bishop Dominic's death coincides with Luitprand's accession to the throne, so we may safely say Magister Ursus worked in 712. _Ursus Magister fecit_ is also engraved in the same style on an ancient altar recently discovered in the abbey church of Ferentillo near Spoleto. It is known that Luitprand went to Spoleto in 739, and installed Hilderic in the Dukedom. In any case this inscription is of priceless value to our argument that the Comacine Guild which worked for the Lombard kings was really the same guild that built the latter Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and palaces. Here we get the exact organization which becomes so familiar to us in the later lodges whose archives are kept, Ursus or Orso proves his right to the t.i.tle of Magister by having disciples under him. The work is done in the time of "Our Lord Luitprand and our Father the Bishop," who are the presidents of the lodge, just as in later lodges the more influential citizen or body of citizens are presidents of the _Opera_. Then there is Refol, the _Gastaldo_ (Grand Master). The very same term is kept up in the Lombard lodges till the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the head of the Venetian _laborerium_ is styled the _Gastaldo_ instead of _capo maestro_ as in Tuscany; there is even the notary to the guild, the unworthy scribe Gondelmus.

The work is so far inferior to the _ciborium_ at Valpolicella, that it would seem to be, as Cattaneo remarks, by an earlier hand. The ornamentation is not a finished sculpture, but only rudely cut into the surface of the stone, like a first sketch. Possibly the remuneration offered by the employer was not liberal enough to encourage Orso to put any elaborate work into the altar, or he might have blocked out the work, and left it unfinished either by reason of death, or absence.

Another famous work of that time was one which Luitprand himself caused to be sculptured by Magister Giovanni, of the Comacine Guild.

It was the covering for the tomb of S. c.u.mia.n.u.s in the monastery of Bobbio. It will be remembered that Agilulf and Theodolinda gave shelter to the Irish Saint Columba.n.u.s, and a.s.sisted him to found the convent of Bobbio. One of the monks there, another Irishman, named c.u.mia.n.u.s, was afterwards canonized, and Luitprand built his tomb. We are told it was covered with precious marbles, which would seem to indicate something in the style which the Cosmati afterwards made so famous.

The tomb of Theodata at Pavia is a fine specimen of Comacine-Longobardic sculpture. It is now to be seen in the cortile of the Palazzo Malaspina with some other old sarcophagi. This has been called a Byzantine work, but the extreme vitality and expression in the hippogriffs and the Solomon's knots which sign it, mark the work as Comacine; besides, we are told by the most early authors that the Longobards never employed Greek artists. There is the usual mixture of Christianity and Mediaevalism in the sculptures on the top of the tomb.

Winged griffins with serpent tails prance on each side of a vine, from which serpents' heads look out. Fishes are in the corner, and an interlaced border, whose s.p.a.ces are filled with grapes and mystic circles, frames, as it were, the design. The side is entirely Christian; and if the peac.o.c.ks which drink out of a vase with a cross in it, were less lively, it might almost pa.s.s for a Byzantine design; but the Comacine Magister has set his mark even here, in his knots with neither end nor beginning, his concentric circles, and roses of Sharon; and has told us in his mystic language that Theodata was a Christian, and though tempted, clung to the cross. Theodata, a n.o.ble Roman dame, was one of the ladies of honour to Ermelind, King Cunibert's Anglo-Saxon wife.[69]

One day Ermelind incautiously described the exquisite beauty of this lady, whom she had seen in the bath, and greatly inflamed his imagination. He brutally ruined the lovely Theodata, and afterwards shut her up in a monastery, probably that of St. Agatha, which his father had built. This took place in A.D. 720. The beautiful tomb was but a poor atonement for the coa.r.s.e cruelty which had spoiled her life.

The pulpit in S. Ambrogio at Milan is a really fine specimen of sixth-century work. It is supported on ten columns. Here is the true Comacine variety of columns: they are all sizes and all shapes; some round, some hexagonal; some longer, some shorter; the difference in height being made up by the capitals and pedestals being more or less high. One, which is peculiarly short, and whose capital is carved in complicated Solomon's knots, has a lion placed as abacus. This is the earliest instance I know of, of the use of the lion of Judah, in connection with the pillar (Christ). Here the lion rests on the column and supports the arches, instead of being the root of the pillar as it became in the later Romanesque style. The arches are surrounded with intricate scrolls and interlaced work; some of them clearly copied from Byzantine designs. The s.p.a.ces between the arches are enriched with allegorical subjects. In one, the emblems of the apostles; in another, a choir of angels, very mediaeval and heavy-headed; in another, a winged archangel. At the corner is a man in Lombard dress, holding two animals, one in each hand. It is peculiarly suggestive of the Etruscan deity with the two leopards, which is so frequently seen on the black Chiusi vases, and confirms more than ever, the tendency in mediaeval Christians to cling to ancient pagan forms, giving them a new Christian significance. The frieze above the arches which forms the base of the marble panels of the Ambone, is peculiarly Comacine.

Here are all the mystic animals, representing the powers of evil;--dragons, wolves, etc., bound together in a knotted scroll of one continuous vine-branch, here and there training into foliage.

Reading the ornamentation by the light of mediaeval symbolism, the whole thing gives us lessons appropriate to a pulpit. It tells us that Christ the pillar of the Church, descended from David the lion of Judah, is the foundation of all Gospel; that angels and saints sing the glory of G.o.d; and that Christ the vine can bind and subdue the powers of evil. The fine early Christian tomb beneath the pulpit is not necessarily connected with it. It has been called the tomb of Stilicho, with how much reason I am not prepared to say. If so it must date from the early part of the fifth century, as it was on October 8, 405, that Stilicho marched up to Fiesole from Florence to his victory over Radagaisus the Goth. The Florentines had but just been converted to Christianity at that time. The sculpture, though Christian in subject, has many signs of debased Roman style mingled with much of the mediaeval.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PULPIT IN THE CHURCH OF S. AMBROGIO, MILAN, 6TH CENTURY.

(_From a photograph by Brogi._) _See Page 88._]

There is a similar pulpit at Toscanella, in the church of S. Maria Maggiore, a three-naved Lombard church with the choir facing east. The pulpit, which is of the square form used before A.D. 1000, is supported on four columns, and has sculptured parapets and arches, on which are various interlaced designs of marvellous intricacy.[70]

FOOTNOTES:

[57] Sancti Ambrosii, _Comment. in S. Luc._ Lib. V. cap. vi.

[58] _Dell' Architettura in Italia_, cap. viii. p. 245.

[59] Would this at all explain the Runic knot in Ireland, and in Scandinavia, where there was very early intercourse with the Phnicians?

[60] Amantius, the fourth Bishop of Como, was translated from the See of Thessalonica to that of Como.

[61] _Antichita Romantiche d'Italia_, Vol. I. capo iv. p. 138.

[62] "Sophiae patres, per quaedam occulta et audacia enigmata, manifestant divinam, et misticam et inviam immundis veritatum."--Sancti Dionisii, _de Theologia Simbolica_, Epistola I. ad t.i.tum Pontificem.

[63] A very pretty later instance of this myth is in the fresco of the Spanish chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, where the Dominican monks are figured as the "dogs of the Lord" (_domini canes_--mediaeval pun), fighting and overwhelming the heretical _paterini_ whom the monks literally fought with in the streets of Florence. The dog is always used as emblem of fidelity--the hare treated alone is generally used as an emblem of unchast.i.ty; when in the chase, as unfaithfulness.

[64] I am informed, by a literary Hindoo lady, that Zohak, so graphically described by Southey as the emblem of remorse, is from an ancient Persian legend, and not of Indian origin.

[65] The stone is evidently a remnant of the ancient architrave of the facade, where it has been replaced by two modern slabs, and the arch above filled in with masonry.