and three rings for her young daughter Gundeberg." Possibly the gift of the Pope was placed in the treasury of the church, and commemorated at first by the sale of blessed amulets in the form of rings, but which afterwards degenerated into a fair. The custom lasted till 1669.
Industries of all kinds seem to have flourished under the Longobards; and the Popes of Rome and other sovereigns made frequent use of Lombard artificers. A letter from Gregory to Arichi, Duke of Lombardy, dated 596, asks him to send workmen and oxen to Brescia, to cut down and cart to Rome some trees for beams in the church of SS. Peter and Paul, promising him in return a dono che non sarà indegno di voi (a gift not unworthy of you).[32]
In A.D. 600, Cacanus, King of the Avari (Huns), sent to Agilulf for marine architects and workmen to build the boats with which Cacanus took a certain island in Thrace.[33]
As for the Comacine Masters at home, they had plenty of church-building.
The seventh and eighth centuries were times of great devotion to the Church, and consequently a great church-building era. King Luitprand realized this so strongly that he added to the laws of Rotharis, a clause permitting his subjects to make legacies to the Church pro remedio animæ suæ; a law, by the way, which was not always healthy in its action; for it permitted the evil-disposed to indulge in crimes during their lifetime, and then, by defrauding their natural heirs of their inheritance, to secure, as they believed, their souls against eternal punishment, by leaving funds for building a church or a monastery.
Comacine Capital in San Zeno, Verona. Dragons, interlaced.
The will of Eriprand, Duke of Cremona, dated 685, is still extant, with a legacy to the churches of S. Maria Maggiore, and S. Michele in Borgo, of that city. Pope Sergius I. restored the Basilica of Ostia, and founded S. Maria in Via Lata, giving them rich gifts, and Pope John II. repaired and endowed S. Maria in Trastevere.[34]
Bertharis and Godebert, sons of Aribert, were in 661 dethroned by Grimoald, Duke of Beneventum; but Bertharis being re-established in 671, recalled his wife Rodelinda and son Cunibert from Beneventum, where they had been taken as hostages, and in sign of gratitude for their release, founded the church of S. Agatha al Monte at Pavia,[35] while his wife Rodelinda founded that of S. Maria fuori le mura in the same city. Bertharis dedicated his church to S. Agatha because on the eve of S. Agatha's day he was miraculously saved from being assassinated by Grimoald, his deposer. On the façade of the church is inscribed, "Pertharitus Longobardorum Rex Templum hoc S. Agathæ Virg. et Mart. dicavit anno Christi DCXXVII."
The church had the usual "three naves," and the façade faced the west. It has since been turned round. As in the Middle Ages it menaced ruin, the central nave had to be supported by large external buttresses and internal arches, one of which may be seen above the present doorway; it once formed the entrance to the choir. When the nave was restored some of the old Lombard capitals were discovered under the brickwork. They show the same style as those at S. Michele, and S. Pietro in Ciel d'oro at Pavia, and have all the marks of Comacine work. One has two lions very well carved. They meet at the corner, where one head serves for both. On another is a human figure, his hands holding two dragons which he has conquered, but whose tails still coil round him. A fine mediæval allegory of man's struggle with sin.
Rodelinda's round church, S. Maria foris portam (now no more), became better known as S. Maria delle pertiche (of the poles), because a royal cemetery was there in which many Lombard kings and nobles were buried, and according to the usage of the nation the graves were marked by wooden poles, on the top of each of which was perched a wooden dove (emblem of the soul), looking towards the place where the person had died or been killed.[36]
We may account for its circular shape by the fact that it was more a ceremonial church, than one for ordinary worship. In it Hildebrand was crowned, or rather received the regal wand of office. It had an interior ambulatory, an arched colonnade all round it under the roof in true Lombard style. This colonnade was much used in circular churches to assist the want of space on great occasions.[37] Some of the columns were fluted, and appear to have been adapted from an earlier Roman edifice. Two of them, shortened and with the fluting planed down, now adorn the gate of Pavia towards Milan. The foundation of this church has been attributed by Cattaneo to Ratchis. This cannot be, for in 736, ten years before Ratchis was king, Luitprand became very ill, and the Longobards met in the church of S. Maria delle pertiche, and proclaimed Hildebrand as his successor.
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 assistance 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. Documents 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. Fredianus. 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. Fredianus, 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. Fredianus were removed to it, in the time of the Bishop Giovanni II., the church became known as S. Fredianus. 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