Next comes _Hic gloriosissimus Rex_, Luitprand, who, we are told, built many Basilicæ in honour of Christ, in the places where he had his residences. He was to Lombard art what Lorenzo de' Medici was to that of the Renaissance. Luitprand was a great employer of our Comacine Masters, and very probably found them expensive luxuries, for, as we shall see in the next chapter, he was obliged to legislate to fix their prices. He even gave the length of his royal foot, as a guide to measurement. Luitprand's foot was said to have been an extra long one, and yet, after great discussions among writers, it has at length been agreed that Luitprand's foot, and the Roman one used before it, were of the same length! Very little, which is at all authentic, remains to us of Luitprand's churches. S. Pietro[38] in Ciel d'oro (of the golden roof), at Pavia, which was consecrated by Pope Zacharias in 743, is now a mere modern church, containing nothing but the round form of its apse to speak of its antiquity. This golden roof must refer to some mosaics originally in the tribune, and is, I believe, the first instance of mosaics being used in a Lombard church. It was built by the Christian king, "for the better reverence of the sacred remains of that great light of the church, St. Augustine, which were placed here by him." The corpse of the saint was redeemed from the Saracens in Sardinia in 743, and the relics remained in S. Pietro for ten centuries.[39] Luitprand's church, we are told, was symmetrical and graceful (_grazioso_). The façade was of the usual Lombard form, with a rather flat gable, and galleries beneath the eaves; it had narrow, round-arched windows, and a cross over the central one, cut deep in the stone, as we see in S. Michele in Pavia. [Illustration: BASILICA OF S. FREDIANO AT LUCCA, 7TH CENTURY. (_From a photograph by Brogi._) _See page 49._]