The capitals in the church are carved with similar subjects; one has the emblems of the evangelists; another Adam and Eve with the tree of knowledge on one side, and a figure offering a lamb on the other. On one are griffins at the corners, and Longobards with long vests, beard, and long hair, crouching between them; on another, a virgin martyr bearing the palm. The fourth column on the left has a curious scene of a man dying, and an angel and a demon fighting for his soul, which has come out of him in the form of a nude child. Two pilasters show the sacrifice of Isaac, and Daniel in the lions' den. [Illustration: DOOR OF THE CHURCH OF SAN MICHELE, PAVIA. _page 80._] So we see, that mediæval as he was at that time, the Comacine Master of the seventh and eighth centuries, even though his execution were low, had a high meaning in his work. As to the rudeness of the handling, there is this to be said. We see the work after more than a thousand years' exposure to the atmosphere, and the sculptures are not in durable marble, but in sandstone, which has a habit of getting its edges decayed, so we may fairly suppose the cutting looked clearer when the ornamentations were fresh. The form of both animals and men is, however, and naturally always was, entirely mediæval, which seems synonymous with clumsy. The use of marble ceased for some centuries with the fall of the Roman Empire. Theodosius had made a law, forbidding any one below the rank of a senator to erect a building of marble, or valuable _macigna_; thus the Christian buildings after the fifth century were generally of humble sandstone; and this continued till the time of St. Nilus, who tells his friend that "in _arenaria_ he may effigy every kind of animal, which will be a delightful spectacle" (_dilettoso spettacolo di veduta_). It was a stone peculiarly adapted to building, as it was easily cut, and yielded to all the imaginations of the sculptor with very little labour. I have given an especially lengthy description of the façade of S. Michele, because it embodies all the special marks of the ornamentation of the Comacine under the Longobardic era. The church of S. Fedele at Como is another instance; here, too, the capitals of the columns, and the holy water vase, which is held up by a dragon, are full of orphic symbolism. The left door has an architrave with obtuse angles bearing a chimerical figure, half human, half serpent--the gnostic symbol of Wisdom. Serpents and dragons entwine on the lintels, and emblematize the Church's power to overcome. In studying the scrolls and geometrical decoration of the Comacines, one immediately perceives that the _intreccio_, or interlaced work, is one of their special marks. I think it would be difficult to find any church or sacred edifice, or even altar of the Comacine work under the Longobards, which is not signed, as it were, by some curious interlaced knot or meander, formed of a single tortuous line.