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Transcriber's Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation ligatures, diacritical marks and spelling in
  the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical
  errors have been corrected.

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

  Characters which can't be represented in the Latin 1 character set
  have been marked as follows:
       oe/OE ligature:  replaced with oe or OE
       other ligatures:  [AV]
       single or double letters with macron:  [=MR]
       letter with breve: [)e]
       letter with ring above: [ deg.V]
       dagger symbol:  +
       single or double letters with tilde: [~AD]
       single or double letters with arch above:  [^IF]

  The anchor for Footnote 11 is missing in the text. Its location has
  been approximated.

  The reference to Hexham church on page 157 is a possible typo.

  The comma in the Roman numeral on page 204 is a possible typo.

  Schmarzow on pages 230 and 405 should possibly be Schmarsow.

  The index entry to Giovanni Buoni da Bissone points to entries for both
  Buoni and Bono, and Bissone and Bissoni.







THE CATHEDRAL BUILDERS




  [Illustration: CLOISTER OF S. JOHN LATERAN, ROME, 12TH CENTURY.
   _Frontispiece_   (_From a photograph by Alinari._)   _page 66._]




     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 mediaeval 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 Provencal 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 archaeology, 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


           EPILOGUE                                          423

           AUTHORITIES CONSULTED                             427

           INDEX                                             429




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


     Cloister of S. John Lateran, Rome                  _Frontispiece_

     Comacine Panel from the Church of San Clemente,
       Rome                                           _To face page 9_

     Frescoes in the Subterranean Church of San
       Clemente, Rome                                       "      10

     Church of Sta. Costanza, Rome                          "      12

     Door of the Church of S. Marcello at Capua             "      13

     Ancient Sculpture in Monza Cathedral                   "      38

     Comacine Capital in San Zeno, Ver