The Cathedral Builders: The Story of a Great Masonic GuildScott, Leader
History
The Cathedral Builders: The Story of a Great Masonic Guild
Scott, Leader
Cathedrals; Church architecture; Guilds
Santa Maria del Campidoglio at Cologne, which was founded by
Plectrude, wife of Pepin, has the same Lombard galleries running round
the apses, and Cunibert's church in its western door shows not only
pure Comacine sculpture, but the characteristic lion of Judah between
the column and the arch. S. Andrea and S. Pantaleone, both founded in
954 by Bishop Bruno, brother of Otho the Great, were in the same
style. This group of buildings all in one city, and all founded under
the Emperors who ruled in Italy, surely suggest that when Charlemagne
took over the builders for Aix-la-Chapelle, they as usual left their
school and _laborerium_ there, and that Otho and his successors in
their turn had not far to go for architects.
[Illustration: PALAZZO DEL POPOLO AND PALAZZO COMUNALE, TODI.
_See pages 137 and 257._]
If their churches are not enough, the civil architecture of that epoch
also affords proof of Lombard influence in Germany. Compare the
windows and style of the ancient dwelling-house at Cologne which
Fergusson illustrates, p. 590, with those of any Lombard building
whatsoever, from the Palace of King Desiderius in the eighth century
to the Bargello of Florence in the thirteenth, and you will find them
identical. The only German innovation is in the high gabled roof.
Again, compare St. Elizabeth's home, the Castle on the Wartburg,
with the ancient Communal Palace at Todi, or at Perugia, or other
Lombard building of the twelfth century, and its genesis will at once
be seen.[99]
Ferd. Pitou, author of the fine monograph on the Cathedral of
Strasburg, confirms the presence of Italian builders in Germany, not
only in the time of the Carlovingians and the line of Otho, but also
in the later times of the Swabian dynasty. He says, when speaking of
the works at Strasburg, that "colonies of artisans, chiefly sent from
Lombardy and other parts, where church-building was prevalent,
accompanied the monks and ecclesiastics who directed the work. These
spiritual leaders, however, had all the glory of the buildings up to
about the end of the twelfth century, when ogival architecture arose.
These Lombard colonies pushed on beyond the Rhine, to the Elbe, the
Oder, and the Vistula, and even penetrated to the forests and lands of
Sarmatia and Scythia."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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