Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

COMACINE
a Pretorium: it will be for you to translate
my projects into accomplished realities . And
this is a service highly honorable and worthy
of any man's ambition :-to leave to future ages
the monuments which shall be the admiration
of new generations of men . It will be your
duty to direct the mason, the sculptor, the
painter, the worker in stone, in bronze, in
plaster, in mosaic. What they know not, you
will teach them . The difficulties which they
find in their work, you will solve for them . But
behold what various knowledge you must possess,
thus to instruct artificers of so many
sorts . But if you can direct their work to a
good and satisfactory end, their success will be
your eulogy, and will form the most abundant
and flattering reward you could desire ."'
From this it may be seen that an architect of
those days was a complete Master of the art
of building . He was required to be able to
construct a building from foundation to roof
and also to be able to decorate it with sculpture
and painting, mosaics and bronzes . This
broad education prevailed in all the schools
or Lodges up to 1335, when the painters seceded,
which was followed by other branches
separating themselves into distinct gilds .
It is a well-known fact that when the barbarians
were sacking and carrying away the
riches of many Italian cities and particularly
of Rome, people fled to more secure places for
the better protection of their lives and property
. Of the various places to which they
fled onl one interests us in this article . Como
was a tree republic and many fled there for
the protection it afforded . Rome had previously
colonized many thousands in Como before
the Christian Era . (See Como.)
The first we hear of the Comacines was
that they were living on an island called Isola
Comacina in Lake Como, that most beautiful
of lakes . They were so well fortified that it
was years before the island was captured and
then only by treachery . Their fortifications
and buildings were similar to those built by
the Colleges of Artificers at Rome, which gave
rise to the belief that they were the direct
descendants from these Roman builders, who
had built for the Roman Empire for several
centuries .
In offering the form of building as best evidence
of the descent of the Comacines from the
Roman Colleges, it is appreciated how recorded
literature, which is usually the word
and opinions of one person, can be biased,
changed and often wrong . But all who have
studied a people in their social, political or religious
aspects, know how permanent these
things are and how subject to slow changes .
Their forms of dress, songs, folk-lore and language
undergo changes but slowly, climate,
unsuccessful wars and amalgamation proving
the most disastrous . But probably none of
these change so slowly as forms of building,
unless the latter be subjected to a marked
change of climate from migration . Architecture
is one of the noblest and most useful of
arts and one of the first to attract the attention
of barbarous people when evoluting into
COMACINE 168
a higher civilization, and is at all times an as
curate measure of a people's standing in civilization
.
A law we learn from biology in the morphology
of animals is that nature never makes a
new organ when she can modify an old one so
as to perform the required functions. New
styles of architecture do not spring from
human intellect as "creations ." Cattaneo
says : "Monuments left by a people are truer
than documents, which often prove fallacious
and mislead and prove no profit for those who
blindly follow them . The story of a people
or a nation, if not known by writings might
be guessed through its monuments and works
of art."
The Lombards who had come from northern
Germany and settled in northern Italy in
568, at once began to develop along many
lines which made Lombardy known all over
Europe-the result of which influence Europe
feels to-day . They developed along lines
which in our every-day parlance may be called
business . They were not primarily architects
or builders and they employed the Comacines
for this kind of work and it was the Comacines
who developed what is known to-day
as Lombard architecture, covering a period
that we may roughly put as from the seventh
century to the Renaissance .
The first to draw attention to the name
Magistri Comacini was the erudite Muratori,
that searcher out of ancient manuscripts, who
unearthed from the archives an edict, dated
November 22, 643, signed by Rotharis, in
which are included two clauses treating of the
Magistri Comacini and their colleagues. The
two clauses, Nos. 143 and 144, out of the 388
inscribed in cribbed Latin, says Leder Scott,
are, when anglicized, to the following intent :
`Art. 143. Of the Magister Comacinus . If
the Comacine Master with his colleagues shall
have contracted to restore or build a house of
any person whatsoever, the contract for payment
being made, and it chances that someone
shall die by the fall of the said house, or any
material or stone from it the owner of said
house shall not be cited by the Master Comacinus
or his brethren to compensate them
for homicide or injury ; because having for
their own gain contracted for the payment of
the building, they just sustain the risk and
injuries thereof .
"Art . 144 . Of the engaging and hiring of
Magistri . If any person has engaged or hired
one or more of the Comacine Masters to design
a work, or to daily assist his workmen in
building a palace or a house, and it shall happen
by reason of the house some Comacine
shall be killed, the owner of the house is not
considered responsible ; but if a pole or stone
shall injure some extraneous person, the Master
builder shall not bear the blame, but the
person who hired him shall make compensation
."
Charles A . Cummings says : "The code of
Luitprand, eighty years later, contains further
provisions regulating the practice of Comacim,
which had now become much more