It is apparent that what are called Lombard buildings could not have been the work of the Longobards themselves. Symonds realized this difficulty, but had not solved the question as to _who_ built the Lombard churches, when he wrote[22]--"The question of the genesis of the Lombard style, is one of the most difficult in Italian art history. I would not willingly be understood to speak of Lombard architecture in any sense different from that in which it is usual to speak of Norman. To suppose that either the Lombards or the Normans had a style of their own, prior to their occupation of districts from the monuments of which they learned rudely to use the decayed Roman manner, would be incorrect. Yet it seems impossible to deny that both Normans and Lombards, in adapting antecedent models, added something of their own, specific to themselves as northerners. The Lombard, like the Norman, or the Rhenish Romanesque, is the first stage in the progressive mediæval architecture of its own district." It appears possible, however, that the Longobards had very little to do with the architecture of their era except as patrons. Was there ever a stone Lombard building known out of Italy before Alboin and his hordes crossed the Alps? or even in Italy during the reigns of Alboin and Cleoph, their first kings? But there were older buildings of precisely the same style, in Italy and in Como itself, dating from the time when the Bishops ruled, long before the Longobards came. There were the churches of S. Abbondio and S. Fedele. The latter was built in Abbondio's own time, about 440-489, and first dedicated to S. Euphemia. It was rebuilt later by the Comacines under the Longobards, but its form was not changed. The former, said to have been built by the Bishop Amantius, was first dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, whose relics he placed here. These two are certainly the oldest churches existing in Como. Amantius the Byzantine ordained S. Abbondio, who was a Macedonian, as his successor, and he too became eminent in his time, and is still venerated as a patron Saint in all the Milanese district. Pope Leo sent him to Constantinople as his Legate, to interview the Patriarch Anastasius, and also deputed him to form the Council with Eusebius, at Milan. The Greek touch in the Lombard ornamentation may be accounted for by Greek sculptors assisting the Italian builders in the time of these Eastern bishops.