FIRST FOREIGN EMIGRATIONS OF THE COMACINES CHAPTER I THE NORMAN LINK The great building guild of the Middle Ages had another connection with France, independently of Charlemagne, and one which perhaps left a more lasting impression on the nation than the church of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was through the Normans, who held a prominent place in the history of Romanesque art, some authors giving them the credit of its introduction into Italy. This may be, but between the tenth and twelfth centuries architecture and sculpture underwent so many transformations and became mingled with so many different elements that its history is most difficult to disentangle. There was a maze of different influences brought together in Sicily, such as Norman, solid and heavy, from the north; Byzantine, set and precise, from the east; Saracenic, warm and fanciful, from the south--all mingling together in the temples of Monreale and Palermo, where I think we may add a fourth and Italian element, in the Comacines or Lombards. The first consideration is: How did the Norman architecture first arise? Was it indigenous? Did the Normans about the tenth and eleventh centuries suddenly begin building round-arched and pillared churches from their own inner consciousness?--for all histories assure us there were no stone Norman-arched buildings before the tenth century, and that by 1150 the pointed style had already begun to supersede it. All the great and typical examples are crowded into the last fifty years of the eleventh century, at which time the Norman dukes were very powerful. It was a time of enterprise and excitement of all kinds, not the least of them being the rage for church-building, awakened by the early missionaries. [Illustration: THE WEST DOOR OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, SMITHFIELD, SHOWING THE COMACINE STYLE OF BUILDING (_opus gallicum_). (_From a photograph by Mr. Freeman Dovaston, Oswestry._) _See page 124._]