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
The Byzantine character of some of the ornaments in Comacine and Saxon
work is accounted for by the fact that the Comacine order found refuge
in a Romano-Greek colony in which the Greek influence was strong, and
in all probability there were Byzantine guilds working alongside of
it. That there is a trace of Oriental form in it is not surprising,
when it is remembered how much communication there was between all
parts of the Christian world notwithstanding the difficulties of
travelling. Teliau, David, and Paternus journeyed to Jerusalem. On
arriving at the Temple they were placed in three ancient stalls in the
Temple, and after expounding the Scriptures were elected by the people
and consecrated bishops (_Vita S. Teliaui Episcopi_). Columbanus, an
Irish saint, established a monastery amidst the ruins of the ancient
Roman city of Bobbio in Italy. St. Cumean, born in 592, obtained
possession of a deserted church in the same city, restored it and
served it.
According to the chronicles of Fontenelle, bishops and clergy, abbots
and monks came from all parts, even from Greece and Armenia, to visit
Richard Duke of Normandy, brother-in-law of our Saxon King Ethelred
and a great church-builder; the Oriental character of some of the
ornaments in Oxford cathedral, which Ethelred rebuilt, is attributed
to the influence of Richard and his Oriental visitors, for Ethelred
took refuge in Normandy for a time to avoid the Danes.
Some Saxons left England at the Norman Conquest and settled in
Constantinople, where they built a church for themselves and other
members of the Saxon colony there.
St. Germanus when he left Britain went to Ravenna, then the royal
city.
Asser relates that Alfred received embassies daily from foreign parts,
from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the farthest limits of Spain, and that he
had seen letters and presents which had been sent to the king by Abel,
Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Many British monks, some of whose lives and legends may still be found
in early MSS., travelled to the south and east, and all over the known
world, and being skilled in architecture, might readily have made
copies of ornaments which took their fancy when travelling in Eastern
countries, and introduced them on their return.
Let us restate the argument briefly--
1. When Italy was overrun by the barbarians, Roman _Collegia_ were
everywhere suppressed.
2. The architectural college of Rome is said to have removed from that
city to the republic of Comum.
3. In early mediæval times, one of the most important Masonic guilds
in Europe was the Society of Comacine Masters, which in its
constitution, methods, and work was essentially Roman, and seems to
have been the survival of this Roman college.
4. Italian chroniclists assert that architects and masons accompanied
Augustine to England, and later Italian and continental writers of
repute adopt that view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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