It seems that even though all Italy was subjugated by the Longobards, the _Magistri Comacini_ retained their freedom and privileges. They became Longobard citizens, but were not serfs; they retained their power of making free contracts, and receiving a fair price for their work, and were even entitled to hold and dispose of landed property.[26] Therefore it was by a free contract, and not in any spirit of servitude, that the Comacines undertook the building of Theodolinda's church. It is difficult to imagine what the church was in Theodolinda's time, as its form was altered in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Ricci says that the antique Monza Basilica terminated at what is now the first octagon column, on which rest the remains of the primitive façade. Four columns supported the arched tribune, and the high altar was raised above the level of the church. In front was the _atrium_, supported by porticoes, and he thinks that the sculptures in the present façade are the old ones. [Illustration: ANCIENT SCULPTURE IN MONZA CATHEDRAL. _See page 39._] Cattaneo, the Italian authority on Lombard architecture, does not believe in the present existence of even this much of Theodolinda's church, and in disclaiming the façade, disclaims also the sculpture on it, especially the one over the door, where Agilulf and Theodolinda offer the diadem of the cross to St. John the Baptist, and are shown as wearing crowns, which the early Lombard kings did not do.[27] The figures have, it is true, the entire style of the twelfth century, when later Comacines restored the church. Cattaneo thinks that the only sculpture which can safely be dated from Theodolinda's own time, is a stone which might have been an altar frontal, on which is a rude relief of a wheel circle, emblem of Eternity, flanked by two crosses with the letters _alpha_ and _omega_ hanging to the arms of them. It is a significant fact that the Alpha is in the precise form of the Freemason symbol of the compasses, and in the wheel-like circle one sees the beginning of that symbol of Eternity, the unbroken line with neither end nor beginning, which the Comacines in after centuries developed into such wonderful _intrecci_ (interlaced work). The sculpture is extremely rude; by way of enriching the relief, the artist has covered the crosses and circles with drill-holes. Now this is a most interesting link, connecting the debased Roman art with this beginning of the Christian art in the West (the early Ravenna sculptors do not count, being imported from the East). On examining any of the late Roman cameos, or _intagli_, or even their stone sculpture, after the fall of classical art in Hadrian's time, one may perceive the way in which the drill is constantly made use of instead of the chisel.