Now we know the state of the building as it stood in this fourteenth century, we realize that it was not left for centuries without a dome. The old chronicler Buoninsegni, in his _Storia Florentina_, lib. iv. p. 642, says--"A di venti di giugno 1380 si cominciarono a riempire et murare i fondamenti della cupola di S. Maria del Fiore." Up till this time the nave only seems to have been built. On August 7 a meeting of _Magistri_ was called to consult on the foundation for the cupola, and on November 12, 1380, there is a long document commissioning "Bartolommeus Stefani, Johannes Mercati, and Leonardus Cecchii, Magistri Florentini," to build the pilasters to support the dome, which are to be of good stone and cement, and the builders are cautioned not to work in times of frost or snow, etc. etc. These pilasters caused much anxiety in the guild; in 1384 constant meetings were held about them. The Masters were afraid the foundations of the one towards Via dei Servi were not firm; day after day in July 1384 they met in scores to examine and report on it. Then they called in the consuls of the _Art of Wool_, the _Operai_, and all the chief men of the city; and everybody, excepting a certain Messer Biagio Guasconi (who after all was not an architect), agreed that the foundation of the pilaster was perfectly safe. However, good Messer Biagio still held his own opinion and refused to sign approval. From the steady way in which the work went on, it is certainly possible and probable that there would in the natural course of the work have been a dome to the cathedral even without Filippo Brunelleschi. It was in the original plan, and the foundations and pilasters were placed in readiness for it. There was much talk of the difficulty of placing the framework of the scaffolding for it, but there seems to have been no doubt that it would be accomplished. In fact numbers of the Masters sent in plans for it at different times. The first time that Brunellesco appears in the records is at a meeting of consuls, _Opera_, and Masters, convened on November 10, 1404, to consider a certain error in measurement committed by the _capo maestro_, Giovanni di Ambrogio. The question turned on the placing of the (_sprone_) brackets on the façade which interfered with the windows.