 thumb|portion of the carvings of the choir apsis of the church at kÃ¶nigslutter thumb|capital of a pillar in the transept of the church of kÃ¶nigslutter  the early medieval lombard comacine masters (magistri comacini) were stonemasons working in a region of excellent building stone who gave to lombardy its preeminence in the stone architecture that preceded romanesque style. ==comacini== their masons' marks have suggested arcane meanings for some enthusiasts. the name comacini romantic historians of the nineteenth century traced to the location where they supposedly had their headquarters,the minute isola comacina in lake como, alleged to have been a safe haven during the lombard invasion; a more inventive etymology derives from a supposed latin expression cum machinis, referring to their tools.giuseppe merzario's i maestri comacini: storia artistica di mille due cento anni 600-1800 (milan 1893) was already received with resistance in professional journals. a review in the american journal of archaeology and of the history of the fine arts 9.4 (october 1894), pp. 564-566 complained of "the author's enthusiasm for his subject, combined with his want of discrimination, and his fondness for strained and impossible deductions drawn to suit his purpose." (p 564). the first mention of comacine masters was in an edict of 643 of the lombard king rothari, which concerned itself in lombard fashion mainly with the indemnity that would be due should a house collapse which had been built by a magister comacinus for a patron ad opera dictandi ("commissioning the works").nikolaus pevsner, "terms of architectural planning in the middle ages", journal of the warburg and courtauld institutes 5 (1942), pp. 232-237 (p 236f). the reference has been interpreted as granting certain privileges to magistri comacini, but the context shows that modern readers are correct in interpreting the key word comacini simply as "masons". comacini are also mentioned in a passage in the memoratorium of liutprand the lombard. the survival of brotherhoods of the comacini are based on the hypothesisthis hypothesis of the unbroken tradition from late roman times was set forth in giovanni teresio rivoira's origini dell'architettura lombarda, rome, 1901, vol.1 and has been incorporated into the lore of freemasonry. that the ro
Early_Middle_Ages Lombardy Romanesque_architecture Stonemasons