Читать книгу The Cathedral Builders - Leader Scott - Страница 8
ОглавлениеTower of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Rome, 12th century.
(From a photograph by Alinari.)
Here we have another link with ancient Rome. Promis instances an amphora found in the walls of an imperial edifice in Aosta. At the fountain of Egeria, near the Porta Tiburtina in Rome, the walls are full of amphoræ and oil-jars.
On the whole these Masonic laws show that the principal scope of the Longobardic architecture was to make strong and lasting buildings.
The building of convents were frequent commissions of the Comacines, and in these, as in their churches, they had a set form. A solid framework of walls either of hewn stone, in the Gallic manner, or of brick in the Roman style, and a few beams and planks, were the simple elements of which a convent was composed.
But of course a Comacine could not make any building without his slight columns and arches, and here he disposed of them in his cloister. This, too, was a heritage from classic Rome, recalling the atrium. A Lombard or Romanesque cloister is a delight. Here you have a square court more or less spacious, containing a picturesque well in the centre, surrounded by a colonnade of small columns generally in couples, resting on a low wall and supporting a roof on a row of arches. It was usually on the sunny cloister that the Comacine poured out his imagination; here are fancifully-sculptured capitals, pillars of every variety of form and style, grotesque gargoyles between the arches, and often delicate tracery above them. Hope[52] instances as the more rude and early style of Lombard cloisters, those of San Lorenzo at Rome and Santa Sabina and San Stefano at Bologna, and as models of the more splendid style those of S. John Lateran, which are resplendent with porphyry, serpentine, and gold enamel, inlaid in the marble; and those of S. Zeno of Verona of every tint of marble which the Euganean hills can afford. For the interior arrangements of a Longobardic monastery we will take Padre Ricci's account of the first plan of Monte Cassino which Petronax the Brescian engaged the Comacines to build. "It had on the ground floor a Sala anciently called caminata, because the fire-place was there. The upper floor was divided by wooden partitions into cells and other rooms requisite in a cenobitic life. Although at that time houses only had one floor, monasteries generally had two. Monte Cassino boasted of three storeys, the upper one being only used for keeping fodder and stores. As the chief aim was solidity of building, great attention was paid to the proportionate thickness of the outer walls. The laws determined the adequate value of these, which were generally of the thickness of five feet. The inner walls were of planks or assi—'si cum axe clauserit.'"
This mode of separation by wooden partitions is still usual in convents, though it has gone out of use in houses. The convents of S. Marco and S. Salvi at Florence both show this style of division for the cells. The windows were protected by abietarii or cancelli (gratings) made of wood.
A strong point in Lombard building was the fortress, which the Magistri were past masters in erecting. Their castles and forts and city walls stand to this day solid and strong, with towers standing up commandingly in all directions—all the mediæval cities bristled with them; the tower was, in fact, a weapon of war. On these, too, they set their seal—the pillared Lombard window becoming larger and more airy as the tower rises into the air, and the crowning cornice of bracketed or pillared archlets.[53]
Their towers seem to have been of two forms, ecclesiastic and civil. The ecclesiastical bell-tower, square with a straight unbroken line, with neither buttress nor projection till the summit, where the bracket-supported arches expand like a flower. Sometimes each storey had a string course, with smaller arches beneath it, as in the tower at Prato. The windows, too, as we have said, had a fixed rule; they are smaller below, and grow larger and more airy as they ascend. You go up from a mere orifice on the first floor to a one-arched window on the second, a two-arched on the third, to a three or even four-arched one near the summit.
The characteristics of civil towers at this time were their solidity as a means of defence, and their height as a means of vigilance; they appear to be chiefly circular, offering no corners, but a curved surface from which missiles could easily glance off. The windows were narrow outside, expanding wider within. If there were a double-light window, it would be on the very high storeys, out of arrow aim. Nearly all the ancient fortresses have round towers, but I know of very few church towers that are so, except the one at Classe near Ravenna.
Before the thirteenth century, neither brackets nor projecting cornices were used, and the tower rose in a single straight line from base to battlement, so that projectiles fell straight down. It was later that architects discovered the value of the projecting baluardo. As to battlements, these too came from the antique; Babylon and Nineveh show proofs of them, and Homer speaks of the battlemented towers of Asia and Greece. Muratori[54] derives the Italian term merlo, from mirare (to take aim), the battlements being made for the shelter of the archers, and their convenience in shooting. When fire-arms came in, the need of battlemented towers ceased.
The principal Longobardic military towers remaining to our day, are, the tower of the ruined fortress of Baradello, which dominates the road to Camerlata, and the towers, now mutilated, in the wall of Como, one of which, erected on arches, forms the gate of the city towards Camerlata.
The ninth-century sculptures on the altar at S. Ambrogio prove that the Longobards had towers above their city gates. The author of the Ant. Longob. Milanesi (Dissert. iii. p. 193) says that the ancient gates of Milan, before the enlargement of the walls, were of this construction with towers over them. They were furnished with heavy wooden doors covered with iron, which were suspended on chains, and slid down in grooves in the wall, thus completely closing the entrance—a portcullis, in fact. Livy, in his twenty-seventh book, describes the gates of Rome as being of the same construction; some existing examples at Rome, Tivoli, and Pompeii prove the fact. A famous gate in the time of the Longobards was the one chronicled by Paulus Diaconus, which King Bertharis (671-686) caused the Magistri to erect beside his palace in Pavia. It was named the Porta Palatinense, and was, says Paulus Diaconus, an admirable work (opera mirifica). Some antique documents quoted by Passano,[55] prove that this gateway was furnished with bronze gates.[56]
Some writers think that the battlemented fortress came from the East, because ancient specimens of it are found there. In reading an Italian translation of Procopius, Degli edifici di Giustiniano Imperatore, I was struck by the many slight expressions which seem to prove that Justinian brought his fortress-builders into Byzantium from Italy. Procopius says that Justinian made a new style of fortress with towers all round the walls; with stairs in the towers, and galleries (baluards) round them with holes in them to throw down stones, and that it was called Pirgo castello, because in the Latin tongue, fortresses are styled castelli. Now this description is precisely that of an Italian fortress, such as the Comacines knew how to build, and built for centuries all over Italy. If it came from the East in ancient times, why was it specified by Procopius as a new style there?—and if its origin were Eastern, why had they no name for it, but had to take the Latin one?
The Bishop of Salisbury, in a letter in the Salisbury Diocesan Gazette (May 1898), speaks of an inscription of the twelfth century, preserved in the museum at Jaffa, which is in memory of Magister Filipus, who came over with the King of England (Richard), and who had built a portion of the wall "from gate to gate": evidently Magister Filipus from the English Masonic Lodge, fraternized and worked with his brethren of the Roman and Eastern Lodges.
Again, on p. 21, Procopius speaks of a town or village now known as Eufratisia, but which was once called Comagene, because there were Romans as well as Persians living there. Romans, of course, meant subjects of the Italian Empire, but the name Comagene is certainly suggestive of those Italians being the Comacine builders who made the castles. Then Procopius's description of the rebuilding of the church of Santa Sofia is, to say the least of it, interesting to a student of Lombard architecture. The passage translated runs thus—"The church then (Sta Sofia) being thus burned, was, at that time, entirely ruined. But Justinian, a long while after, rebuilt it in such a form that if any one in older times could have foreseen it, he would have prayed God that the old church might be completely destroyed, so that it may be rebuilt as it now is. Therefore the Emperor sent to call artificers and masters, as many as there were in all the universal world. And Anthemius Trallianus, the head architect, was a great machinist, learned in all kinds of machinery, not only that of his own time, but in all that the ancients knew, and he had the power to regulate and organize perfectly the working of all things necessary to building, and to the ordering and executing of his own designs and inventions. And Isidore, another Milesian, was also a master of machinery. The church then, was so marvellously made that it was a beautiful thing to see; it seems supernatural to those who behold it with their own eyes, and incredible to those who only hear of it, because it is so high that it seems to touch the sky.... The face of the church looks towards the rising sun, but where the secret offices to God are performed, it is built in this manner. It is a half-round edifice which those of this profession call Hemiciclo, which is to say half a circle ... and in this there are columns planted beneath its floor." Here we have a decided Basilica with raised tribune and semi-circular apse; both the form and nomenclature seem to have been imported as a new thing from Italy. "The golden dome appears suspended from heaven, so light are the columns supporting it that it seems to be in the air.... One can never arrive at understanding how it was built (apprendere l' arteficio), but one goes away astonished at one's inability to enough admire such a work."
Does not this seem an argument for the universality of the Masonic Brotherhood, even in Byzantine days? Here are certainly Italian artists, Italian basilican forms, and Italian nomenclature, among the Greeks working at Sta Sofia. And here too are Lombard galleries and windows with an Eastern touch added. Which way did the influence come? Was this the origin of that characteristic Eastern mark of the Lombard style in Italy?—or was it an importation from Italy to Byzantium, where Procopius at least seems duly astonished by it? It is a question for experts to solve. There is much for the archæologist to do yet in finding the true pedigree of architecture.
