The architects of the Masonic _loggie_ (lodges) who had held together through the troublous times, became alive with new enthusiasms. They compared their own buildings with others, and instead of varying the principles of Vitruvius, to suit early Christian demands as heretofore, they passed on to new and freer lines. Instead of solid and rude strength, elegance of form and aspiring lines gave lightness and beauty. The starting-point of the change was, of course, the adoption of the pointed arch, which at this time began to be substituted for the circular one as giving greater strength with greater lightness. "_Curvetur arcus ut fortior_," says an old chronicler of Subiaco. According to their method of gradual development the Comacine Masters did not blindly throw themselves into new forms. They went cautiously, and first tried their acute arches in clerestories, and triforia, over naves supported by the old Lombard arches of _sesto intiero_, as we see in several churches of the Transition period. A little later they mixed the two inextricably, as in Florence cathedral, where the windows are pointed with Gothic tracery, the interior arches round and Roman in form. "The early Lombard architecture," said Cesare Cantù,[128] "was not an order, nor a system, so much as a delirium. Balance and symmetry utterly disregarded, no harmony of composition or taste, shameful neglect in form proportion; to the perfect classic design which satisfies the eye, they substituted incoherent and useless parts, with frequently the weak placed to support the strong, in defiance of all laws of statics. Columns--which used to be composed of a base, shaft, and capital, in just proportions, supporting a well-adapted architrave or frieze more or less fitly adorned, and a cornice which only added beauty and strength--were exchanged for certain colonnettes, either too short or too slight, knotted, spiral, and grouped so as to torture the eye, and above the disproportioned and inharmonious abacus of the capitals were placed the arches, which in a good style should rest on the architrave. In fine, there was an endless _modanature_, ribs, reliefs, and windows of elongated form and walls of extraordinary height." In spite of Cantù's leanings to the classic, this tirade shows the first indication of the change towards the Gothic, and it only proves that the Comacine Masters did not take up new forms borrowed entire from other nations, but assimilated what they saw in other places, gradually developing their style. To find the origin of the pointed arch would be difficult. Was it evolved from the arching trees in the German forest? or was it from the rich Arabian mosque or ancient Indian temple? or did the Comacines find it, just as they acquired their Basilican forms, on Italian soil?