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
Rome is almost as full of remains of what is now styled Comacine
architecture, as it is of classic and pagan ruins, and they are nearly
as deeply buried. Go where you will, and in the vestibules or crypts
of churches, now of gaudy Renaissance style, you will find the sign
and seal of the ancient guild. Investigate any church which has a
Lombard tower--and they are many--and you will discover that the hands
which built that many-windowed tower have left their mark on the church.
In that wonderful third-century basilica, which was discovered beneath
the thirteenth-century one of S. Clemente; in the almost subterranean
basilica of _S. Agnese fuori le mura_; in the vestibule of the florid
modern SS. Apostoli; in Santa Maria in Cosmedin; and various other
buildings, are wonderful old slabs of marble with complicated Comacine
knots on them. Our illustration is from a slab in San Clemente, which
was evidently from the buried church, though used as a panel in the
parapet of the existing choir. A marvellous piece of basket-work in
marble, which, if studied, will be found composed of a single cord,
twined and intertwined. An almost identical panel is preserved in the
wall of the staircase to S. Agnese, another has just been found
reversed, and the back of it used for the thirteenth-century mosaic
decoration of the pulpit in S. Maria in Cosmedin.
Then in the later Lombard churches of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, S. John Lateran, etc., one may see the crouching
Comacine lions, now mostly minus their pillars, and shoved under
square door-lintels, or built into walls, where they remain to tell of
the ancient builders whose sign and seal they were.
And here and there we get a name.
In the vestibule of the SS. Apostoli is a red marble lion, on the base
of which in Gothic letters is the name BASSALECTI. Beneath it is an
old inscription, "Opus magister Bassalecti Marmorari Romano sec,
XIII." This same Magister's name, spelt _Vassalecti_, has lately been
discovered inscribed on the capitals of some columns in the nave of S.
John Lateran.
In the under church of S. Clemente, an ancient fresco of the eighth
century takes us further back than this. Here we see a veritable Roman
_Magister_ directing his men. He stands in magisterial toga (and
surely one may descry a masonic apron beneath it!), directing his men
in the moving of a marble column, and with the naïve simplicity of the
primitive artist each man's name is written beside him. Albertel and
Cosmaris are dragging up the column with a rope, the sons of Pute, who
are possibly novices, are helping them, while Carvoncelle is lifting
it from behind with a lever. These men are all in short jerkins, but
the master, Sisinius, is standing in his toga, directing them with
outstretched hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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