The church of S. Sofia at Beneventum, A.D. 788, and the monastery of S. Pietro were built by them, as well as the later cathedrals of Trani, Bari, and Ruvo. The latter still retains its ancient Lombard façade covered with figures of animals, the portal being flanked by columns surmounted by a fine rose window. When the Normans succeeded the Longobards and Saracens in Apulia, the Masonic Guild was still more busy there, and it was very probable that Pietro the sculptor worked in Apulia under the Norman dynasty, with many of his brethren. I am told that there is in Bari cathedral a pulpit of the same form as that by Niccolò, but of an earlier date. This is a significant proof of Niccolò's early training in Apulia, probably under his own father, as was the custom of the guild. It would also account for the Saracenic touch in his arches and ornamentation. The lions under the columns were used by the Masonic Guild a century before Niccolò's time, so it is evident they were not, as Ruskin and others suppose, borrowed from the Saracens by Niccolò. There is a most interesting pulpit of the older square form at Groppoli near Pistoja, dated 1194, with lions beneath the pillars. It offers one of the very early specimens of the sculptured scriptural story. The panels represent the "Nativity of Christ" and the "Flight into Egypt," both most naïvely designed. The square pulpit of Guido da Como in S. Bartolommeo at Pistoja is dated A.D. 1250, and shows the immense improvement art had made in those sixty years. In some ways Guido da Como quite equals Niccolò. He does not strain after the classic, but there is great and simple dignity, and even grace in his figures, some of which are almost worthy of Fra Angelico. It was ten years after Guido's lion-pillared pulpit was finished, that we find Niccolò--who had for some years been working at Pisa, where he was then domiciled--sculpturing his famous pulpit there, and though altering the form from square to octagon, using the same symbolism, and in many ways the same treatment of his subject, as Guido had done before him. It would be a suggestive proof of the same influence in training, to compare the panels representing the Nativity, in the three pulpits. The Lombard one at Groppoli, Guido da Como's at Pistoja, and Niccolò's at Pisa, and one might add a fourth, _i.e._ Giovanni Pisano's pulpit in S. Andrea at Pistoja, which is in some respects an advance on his father's design, although it is evidently not only inspired, but almost copied from it. There are in all four, the same kind of _lectis_ for bed, the same cows, out of perspective, high up in the background, and in the two last the same treatment of drapery. In some ways, however, Niccolò has passed far beyond Guido. While Guido followed his forefathers' traditions, Niccolò had been first revelling in the richness of Saracenic types in Apulia, and then living among the classic spoils of Pisa, where Diotisalvi had worked before him.