The Cathedral Builders Part 5

To Aribert II. (701-712) is attributed the foundation of the church of S. Salvatore, outside Porta Marengo at Pavia, where, says Malaspina, may be noted a great improvement in style in the acute arches, and more regular and elegant proportions.

The Basilica of S. Pietro de Dom in Brescia dated from about this time, though it was built independently of Longobardic royal patronage, being a thank-offering by Bishop Anastasius for the triumph of the Church over Arianism. This was destroyed when the new Duomo was built in the seventeenth century, but ancient writers tell us it had all the true Lombard symbolism of form. The choir was on the west, facing east; it had the triple nave and triple apse, and the usual inequality of the columns, some of which are large, others small; some long, others short, these last being lengthened, some by white marble, others by dark. I do not understand the significance of this diversity of column which may be seen in all the Comacine churches of this era.

If we cannot see S. Pietro de Dom, we may see in Brescia a church equally old, the Rotonda of Santa Maria Maggiore, which the chroniclers say was begun by the Brescian Duke Marqward, and finished by his son Frodward, with the a.s.sistance of King Grimoald, about 665.

The plan of the church is very interesting; there are two concentric circles, the inner one formed by eight pilasters, whose arches sustain the dome, and form the front of the usual ambulatory above. This is all that can be judged as belonging to the seventh-century church. The tribune and the upper parts are later, and the crypt is earlier, being, it is believed, the remains of an early Christian church of S.

Filastrio, though some claim it as Roman.

Cunibert is next on the list of Longobardic church-builders. He built a church to St. George as a votive offering after his escape from the attempt which was made to dethrone him in 691 by Alachi, Duke of Brescia, and two citizens named Aldone and Gransone. To the church of St. George was attached a cloister for monks, the first Longobardic monastery founded in the diocese of Milan. Doc.u.ments and diplomas, dated 784 and 901, prove the existence of both buildings till the latter date, but a deed of sale in 998 only speaks of the church, which still existed in 1792.

On the king's triumphal return to Pavia, he erected at the door of S.

Giovanni, a grand tomb to the priest Zeno, who had lost his life for him, by dressing in the royal armour and rushing from the king's tent into the battle.

In A.D. 700 Cunibert descended to Lucca, which had then become a Longobardic town, and interested himself in the building of a church to the three saints, Stephen, Laurence, and Vincent; it afterwards became S. Fredia.n.u.s. The actual patron may not have been Cunibert himself, but his majordomo Faulus, who probably was his vice-gerent there. Two ancient deeds in the adjoining monastery of St. Vincent and S. Fredia.n.u.s, dated respectively 685 and 686, prove that Faulus restored and richly endowed the monastery, and that Bishop Felix afterwards conceded to the Abbot Babbinus and his monks, a diploma confirming the munificence of Faulus. The monastery was, so say the chroniclers, originally built by S. Frediano, Bishop of Lucca, in the sixth century, and that, when the first unconverted Longobards came down and drove him out and destroyed his cathedral, he fled for some years, but on his return he built another church outside the town with a monastery attached. In this he availed himself of the sculptured stones and columns of the ancient Roman amphitheatre, erected in Lucca by Vibius in the time of Trajan. This was the monastery which was restored by Faulus. When the bones of S. Fredia.n.u.s were removed to it, in the time of the Bishop Giovanni II., the church became known as S.

Fredia.n.u.s. The church built in Cunibert's time was not by any means the fine building we see now, though, as in Monza, the form of the old building may be perceived. The ancient apse which has been traced in the course of some excavations, is a fifth smaller than the present one, and it is conjectured that the old church, if turned the same way, would have ended near where the present pulpit stands; and there was a portico in front of it which is mentioned in some ancient MSS.

The church was certainly differently orientalized, following the symbolic formula that the choir should face the east; for the excavations disclosed part of the columns of the nave, buried under the present presbytery at the back. The circular walls of the choir were retraced in front of the present altar, and it was proved that the wall was not continued where the semi-circle of the apse opens; whereas if the church had been in the same direction it now takes, the walls would have been continued to the length of the nave.

Cav. Cordero di S. Quintino, in his _Disamine su di alcuni monumenti Lucchesi_, 1815, was the first to draw attention to the reversed plan of the old church, which the recent excavations have proved. He states that it was in the form of a Latin cross, had a nave, and four aisles and transepts; that its choir was at the west end, facing east, its facade on the east. It is a misfortune that its origin cannot be precisely proved, as the archives of S. Fredia.n.u.s must have been burned in 1596, when the convent, with other houses, was set on fire, even if they had survived the former sacking and burning of the Ghibellines, under Uguccione della f.a.ggiola in 1314.

Next comes _Hic gloriosissimus Rex_, Luitprand, who, we are told, built many Basilicae 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 facade 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BASILICA OF S. FREDIANO AT LUCCA, 7TH CENTURY.

(_From a photograph by Brogi._) _See page 49._]

The finest existing church of the Longobardic times is the Basilica of S. Michele at Pavia, which is still intact, and may be taken as the culminating point of the first Lombard style. It has all the distinctive marks of Comacine work at the period. There is the Roman form of the Latin cross with nave and two aisles divided by cl.u.s.tered columns supporting round arches. The walls above the central nave terminate in a sculptured string course, and over that a clerestory, the double Lombard arches of which are divided by marble colonnettes with sculptured capitals. The central nave terminates in a semi-circular apse, surrounded with pilasters and arches; beneath it is a crypt supported on two rows of columns whose capitals are covered with bizarre sculptures. The crypt is now entered by steps beneath the ones leading to the tribune, but originally it had two entrances at the sides of the tribune as in the crypt at Torcello, and that of San Zeno at Verona, which are also of the seventh century. Another particularity is in the inequality of the aisles, the left wall tending to the right, the right transept being longer and larger than the left. This is not, we are told, an accident, but one of the many symbolical forms used by the Comacines. Cordero and Vitet both refer to it. The latter says--"Souvent le plan de l'eglise penche de gauche a droite. Cette inclination est attribuee, comme on sait, au pieux desirs d'imiter la position du Sauveur expirant sur la croix."[40] As a whole the interior is grand and imposing, and as it stands now, retains the general plan of the original church. Some parts have been restored in the fifteenth century, especially the four princ.i.p.al piers which sustain the central arch, but by the difference in the work and in the sculptures we may easily distinguish the added parts. A Latin inscription in the apse, without date, proves that the great central arch of the roof and that of the choir were renewed by Bartolommeo Negri. There was a Bartolommeo Negri who was canon in 1496, but the antique style of the epitaph would point to an earlier restorer of the same name (we all know how families keep the same set of Christian names for centuries in Italy), especially as the painting in the apse is attributed to Andrino d'Edesia, who lived about 1330. Some interesting relics in the church are the circular slabs of black and green marble, now in the floor of the nave. Tradition, confirmed by Padre Romualdo, says that these were the stones on which the das was placed for the coronation of the Lombard kings.

Just as the interior of S. Michele at Pavia is the most perfect existing example of the cla.s.sical form reduced by the Comacines to Christian use and symbolism, so is the facade as perfect a specimen of their mediaeval-oriental decoration at this time as can be found. We give an ill.u.s.tration of it.

The Comacines at this era were perfectly sincere and their facade was always a true face to the church. The eaves with the airy gallery of colonnettes beneath them followed the exact line of the low-pitched roof. It was only when they became eclectic, and their style got mixed and over-florid, that the false fronts such as we see at Lucca came in. The inward division of nave and aisle is faithfully marked on the outside by piers or pilasters. S. Michele has four pilasters dividing it into the three portions, each one supplied with its round-arched door. In the fifteenth century the central windows were altered and a large ugly round orifice was placed above the three Lombard ones. But in 1861 they had the good taste to open the original windows, indications of whose masonry were visible in the wall, and to add the cross, deep cut in the stone, which was a distinctive feature in facades of this era. Indeed the church may be taken as a type, in all its aspects, of the Romano-Lombard building. The most remarkable part is perhaps its ornamentation, which is unique and fanciful to the highest degree. Besides the carvings on door and window, the whole facade is striped with lines of sculptured stones, a queer mixture of angels, demons, saints, and monsters, that seems a nightmare dream of mediaeval superst.i.tions, but are really a mystic Bible in stone. I shall speak more fully of this in the chapter on Lombard ornamentation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAcADE OF SAN MICHELE AT PAVIA. UPPER PART RESTORED TO ITS ORIGINAL FORM; LOWER PART ANTIQUE. 7TH CENTURY.

_See page 52._]

We must now turn for a few moments to its history, on which great uncertainty rests. Some authors say that S. Michele at Pavia was built by Constantine the Great as a thank-offering for the aid given him by that Saint in his victory over the Franks in 325; but it is possible they may have confused this church with the one which Sozomenus a.s.serts that Constantine erected to St. Michael on the banks of the h.e.l.lespont. Other writers, of whom Malaspina is one, claim it as an Ostrogoth foundation; others again, finding a suspicion of Arianism in the sculpture of the Annunciation on the south side of the church, a.s.sign it to Agilulf before his conversion from Arianism; while Gabriel Rosa, author of _Storia dei feudi e dei comuni in Lombardia_, attributes it to King Grimoald.

This last, however, is disproved by one of Paulus Diaconus' curious stories. He says "that in A.D. 661, King Bertharis being in peril of his life by the usurper Grimoald, was saved by his faithful servant Unulphus, who, throwing over his royal master's shoulders a blanket and a bearskin, drove him with ill words out of the palace, making believe he was a drunken slave. Having thus eluded the guards, who were in Grimoald's pay, and put the king in safety, Unulphus fled for refuge to the Basilica of St. Michael, till the new king pardoned him."[41] The church is again mentioned by Paulus Diaconus when he relates how in 737, when Luitprand judged Pemmonis, Duke of Friuli, and other n.o.ble Longobards accused of sacrilege against Callistus, Patriarch of Aquileja, one of them named Ersemar fled for refuge to the Basilica of St. Michael. Again in 774 a certain Trinidius, agent of King Desiderius, left a house near the P at Gravenate, as a legacy to the "Basilica beatissimi Archangeli Michaelis intra civitatem Ticinensum pro anima sua." All these things go to prove that the church existed before Luitprand's time, and that it was especially venerated.

St. Michael, being a warlike saint, was the Longobards' favourite object of reverence. When Alachi tried to depose King Cunibert, he suddenly and mysteriously refused to fight the king, because he saw a vision of St. Michael standing beside him; then Alachi knew the battle would go against himself if he hazarded it.

When the Longobards went forth to war, they carried the effigy of St.

Michael before them on their standard. It was also impressed on their coins with the inscription _S. C. S. Mahel_, or sometimes _Mihail_, spelling in those days not being at all a fixed quant.i.ty.

But to return to our church-building king, Luitprand.

He erected the monastery of S. Abbondio at Bercela in the mountains, and one dedicated to S. Anastasia, near his suburban villa called _Cortelona_ (Corte di Alona). In this villa he had a private chapel, he being the first prince who had daily ma.s.s said by priests in his own house.[42] He had a favourite doctor named Gunduald, who, a.s.sisted by Luitprand's royal munificence, founded the monasteries of Palazzolo and Pitiliano near Lucca. At his intercession Luitprand, by a diploma dated 742, gave Magister Piccone, Gunduald's architect, lands in Sabine, which shows the value Luitprand set on the arts, and this Magister especially.

Astolfo, a later king, was an equally liberal patron of the arts; he gave the revenues of the church of S. Pietro at Pavia to Auripert, a painter whom he greatly esteemed. Astolfo built the monastery of Nonantola, of which some parts still remain, proving its fine architecture. He seems to have been very unscrupulous in his avidity for relics; an anonymous MS. at Salerno, speaking of his fierceness and audacity, says that, "having taken many bodies of saints from the neighbourhood of Rome, he had them removed to Pavia."[43] The same old chronicler does him the justice to say that "he built both churches and monasteries which he very largely endowed."

Next followed Ratchis, who on his brother Astolfo's death came out of the convent to which he had retired on abdicating in 749. His reign was of the shortest; he soon went back to his convent, for Pope Stephen III. wrote commanding him not to oppose the election of Desiderius, who had been Duke of Friuli and was high in favour with the Pope.

Desiderius was a liberal patron to the Comacine Guild, and built monasteries, churches, and palaces. Of the first we may record the convent for nuns near Milan, known as La Maggiore, or the Greater. Its foundation by Desiderius is mentioned in a diploma dated A.D. 1002 in favour of the Abbot of S. Ambrogio, who was in that year appointed spiritual guardian to the nuns. At Brescia, of which town Desiderius was a native, he built the monastery near Leno, known as the _Monasterio Leonense_, and the still more famous one of Santa Giulia for nuns, which he founded in 766. Desiderius and his wife Ansa endowed this convent with landed property which spread over all the Lombard kingdom. It was first called S. Salvatore, but when the remains of Santa Giulia were brought from Corsica and placed here, it was re-dedicated to her. Its first Abbess was Desiderius' own daughter, Anselberga, who took the vows here. Says the old chronicler--"its opulence and the number of holy virgins who have lived within its walls render it one of the most ill.u.s.trious convents in Italy."

Signor Odorici has exemplified the church in its Lombard form to have been quadrilateral, divided by two peristyles of eight columns each, into a nave and two aisles (or three naves, as Italian architects say). The arches are _a tutto sesto_ (semi-circular), and support walls bordered with a simple string course. There was originally a semi-circular apse or tribune, which was probably flanked by two smaller ones. The white marble columns are, or were, of different proportions, the capitals being sculptured, some in marble and some in _arenaria_.[44]

The mixture of Roman and Byzantine types in these is taken by Ricci[45] to be a proof of its really dating from the time of Desiderius, when the two styles got confused. Some capitals are entirely of Byzantine design, others imitate the Corinthian. On one is a mediaeval sculpture of the martyrdom of Santa Giulia, on another is the effigy of Queen Ansa. These two are doubtless Comacine work of the eighth century.

Up on the slope of Monte Civate near Lake Annone, an hour's climb from the village of Civate, is an ancient Lombard church dedicated to St.

Peter, which is almost intact. It is said to have been built as a thank-offering by King Desiderius. His son Adelgiso was chasing a wild boar on this mountain, and suddenly became blind. The father vowed that if he recovered, a church to St. Peter should be built on the spot. Adelgiso soon after recovered his eyesight, and Desiderius was faithful to his oath. An ancient MS. said to be contemporary,[46]

minutely describes the ceremonies, when the king with all his royal pageantry came up the mountain to lay the first stone. The plan is similar to most other Lombard churches of its era. A great flight of twenty-seven steps leads up to the portico, beneath which is the princ.i.p.al door. This, however, does not lead immediately to the church, but to a covered atrium, on the lateral walls of which are sculptured in relief, hippogriffs with triple tails, _i.e._ threefold mysteries. The entrance into the nave has two spiral columns,[47] an unusual form for the Comacines of that era. There is a great peculiarity in the position of the altar, which is a low table without a reredos, standing on the tribune, to which five steps give access.

The _palio_ faces the choir, so that the priest when celebrating would confront the people, and face the east.[48] It would be a question for archaeologists whether, considering the reverse orientalizing of Lombard churches, in comparison to later ones, the front of the raised tribune was not the usual position of their altars. This is the only church which seems enough intact, to judge by. The altar was placed beneath a canopy supported on four slight columns, whose sculptured capitals show the symbolic animals of the four Evangelists. The canopy has rude bas-reliefs of the Saviour and apostles, the crucifixion and resurrection. There are remains of similar altars at Corneto Tarquinii in the south, and at S. Piero in Grado near Pisa. The rest of the building is entirely unadorned, excepting by some carved capitals of columns in the crypt.

The church-building days of King Desiderius were now drawing to a close. He thought he had strengthened his seat on the throne by alliances with the all-powerful Charlemagne of France, whose brother Carloman married Desiderius' daughter Gilberga; and some historians a.s.sert that his son Adelchi espoused Gisla, the sister of Charlemagne.

Here we have the link connecting the Comacine Masters under the Lombard rule, with Charlemagne, through whose patronage they spread northward, developing the Gothic architecture. Politically the link was not a strong one. In 770, Charlemagne having been menaced by Pope Stephen III., the protector of Desiderius, revenged himself by causing Carloman to repudiate Gilberga and send her back to her father with her two sons. Carloman died in 771, and Pope Stephen III. did not live long after him, for in 772 Charlemagne entered into a league with the new Pope Adrian I. to dispossess Desiderius of his kingdom. This unkind scheme was by Pope Adrian dignified by the name of a "rest.i.tution to the Holy See."

The famous unequal fight at Pavia, between Desiderius and the mult.i.tudinous hosts of France, is well known. Desiderius was vanquished, and the Longobardic supremacy of two centuries was over.

Charlemagne vaunted himself in having released Italy from the Longobardic yoke, but whether his own yoke were lighter is an open question. In any case there was no "rest.i.tution to the Holy See." The Lombard cities were no more given to the Pope by Charlemagne, than they had been by Desiderius. On the contrary, he crowned himself _Rex Francorum et Longobardorum_, and his son Pepin inherited the same t.i.tle.

With him begins the next era in the development of Comacine art.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] _Antiq. Long. Mil._ vol. i.; _Dissertationi_, p. 17.

[21] Their daughter Gundeberg had a similar life; she married first Ariold, and then Rotharis.

[22] Symonds, _Renaissance of Art, Fine Arts_, chap. ii.

[23] _Annali d'Italia_, tom. iv. pp. 38, 39.

[24] The first Roman Basilica was constructed in 231 B.C., by Marcus Portius Cato, and was called the Basilica Portia. Marcus Fulvis n.o.bilior built one, called the Fulvia, in 179 B.C.; t.i.tus Semp.r.o.nius, 169 B.C. Then followed a long line of these religio-judicial buildings, up to the Basilica Julia of Augustus, 29 B.C., and ending with the Ulpian Basilica of Trajan, A.D. 100.--Ricci, _Arch. Ital._ chap. ii.

[25] _Dell' Architettura in Italia_, vol. i. p. 174.

[26] A doc.u.ment, dated 739, in the archives of Monte Amiata, speaks of a certain Maestro Comacino, named Rodpert, who sold to Opportuno for 30 gold solidi, his property at Toscanella (then a Longobardic territory), consisting of a house and vineyard, a cloister, cistern, land, etc.

[27] Cattaneo, _L' Architettura in Italia_, p. 46.

[28] Gundiberga ... intra ticinensem Civitatem in honorem Beati Joannis Baptistae construxit.--_Paul. Diac._ lib. iv. cap. 4. This must not be confounded with the Baptistery which was built by Bishop Damiano in the same century.

[29] Several of the Lombard towers in Rome have this peculiar ornamentation.

[30] _Antichita Romantiche d'Italia_, da Difendente e Giuseppe Sacchi, p. 70, _et seq._