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

164 COMACINE
COMACINE
numerous and important . Fixed rates of payment
were established for their services, varying
according to the kind of building on which
they were engaged • definite prices being allowed
for walls of various thicknessea, for
arches and vaults, for chimney a, plastering
and joiners' work. The difficulty which these
early builders found in the construction of
vaults is indicated by the allowance of a charge
per superficial foot, from fifteen to eighteen
times as great as in the case of a wall. The
price of provisions and wine furnished to the
workmen is also determined and is counted as
part of their pay ."
Scott maintains that "these laws prove that
in the seventh century the Magistri Comacini
were a compact and powerful gild capable
of asserting their rights, and that the gild
was properly organized, having degrees of different
ranks ; that the higher orders were entitled
Magistri, and could `design' or 'undertake'
a work ; 1 . e ., act as architects ; and that
the colligantes or colleagues worked under, or
with, them. In fact, a powerful organization
altogether --so powerful and so solid that it
spoke of a very ancient foundation . Was it a
surviving branch of a Roman Collegium? Or
a decadent group of Byzantine artists stranded
in Italy?"
Professor Merzario says : "In this darkness
which extended all over Italy, only one small
lamp remained alight, making a bright spark
in the vast Italian metropolis . It was from the
Magistri Comacini . Their respective names
are unknown, their individual work unspecialized,
but the breath of their spirit might
be felt all through those centuries and their
names collectively is legion. We may safely
say that of all the works of art between A.D .
800 and 1000, the greater and better part are
due to that brotherhood-always faithful and
often secret-of the Magistri Comacini . The
authority and judgment of learned men justify
the assertion ."
Quaternal de Quincy, in his Dictionary of
Architecture, under the headinomacines,
remarks that "to these men W10 , were both
designers and executors, architects sculptors
and mosaicists, may be attributed the Renaissance
of art and its propagation in the
southern countries, where it marched with
Christianity. Certain it is that we owe to
them that the heritage of antique ages was not
entirely lost, and it is only by their tradition
and imitation that the art of building was kept
alive, producing works which we still admire
and which become surprising when we think
of the utter ignorance of all science in those
Dark Ages ."
Hope, in his well-balanced style, draws
quite a picture of the gilds at this period
which upon the whole, is fairly accurate . He
says : 1'When Rome, the Eternal City, was first
abandoned for Milan, Ravenna and other
cities in the more fertile North, which became
seats of new courts and the capitals of new
kingdoms, we find in northern Italy a rude
and barbarous nation-The Lombards-in the
space of two short centuries, producing in
trade, in legislation, in finance, in industry of
every description, new developments so great,
that from them, and from the regions to which
they attach their names, has issued the whole
of that ingenious and complex system of bills
of exchange, banks, insurance, double-entry
bookkeeping, commercial and marine laws
and public loans, since adopted all over Europe-all
over Europe retaining, in their peculiar
appellations the trace and landmarks
of their origin-and all over Europe affording
to capital and commerce an ease of captivity
and a security unknown before .
"To keep pace with this progress, kings,
lesser lords and the municipalities that by
degrees arose, were induced, at one time from
motives of public policy, at others, of private
advantage, to encourage artificers of different
professions. Thus of their own accord, they
granted licenses to form associations possessed
of the exclusive privilege of exercising their
petmliar trades, and making them an object of
profit ; of requiring that youths anxious to be
associated with their body, and ultimately to
be endowed with the mastery of the profession,
should submit to a fixed and often severe
course of study, under the name of apprenticeship,
for their master's profit, and in addition
should frequently be compelled to pay a
considerable premium ; and of preventing any
individual not thus admitted into their body,
from establishing a competition against them .
These associations were called Corporations
or Gilds .
"These bodies in order to enjoy exclusive exercise
of their profession, and that its profits
should be secure to them, not only by law, but
by the inability of others to violate it, by degrees
made their business, or craft, as they
called it, a profound mystery from the world
at large and only suffered their own apprentices
to be initiated in its higher branches and
improvements, most gradually ; and in every
place where a variety of paths of industry and
art were struck out, these crafts, these corporations,
these masterships and these mysteries
became so universally prevalent, that not only
the arts of a wholly mechanical nature, but
even those of the most exalted and intellectual
nature-those which in ancient times had been
considered the exclusive privilege . of freemen
and citizens, and those dignified with the name
liberal-were submitted to all those narrow
rules of corporations and connected with all
the servile offices of apprenticeship ." While
Hope and writers of his time recognized that
some well-organized body of workers had
dominated the building trades at the Lombard
period of history, they never attempted to
trace their genealogy. Later historical critics
of architecture have given some attention to
origin and succession of these building crafts .
One of the latest Italian students, Rivoiri, has
devoted a separate chapter to the Comacine
Masters . As his extensive work on Lombard
Architecture Its Origin, Development andDerivatives
may be accessile to ew, I shall
give a generous quotation from him for the
importance of his sound conclusions : "The