omacine Masters were the
veritable stock from which the Freemasonry of the present day sprang,
"we may admit," she says, "that they were the link between the classic
Collegia and all other art and trade Guilds of the Middle Ages. _They
were Free-masons because they were builders of a privileged class,
absolved from taxes and servitude, and free to travel about in times of
feudal bondage_." The name Free-mason--_Libera muratori_--may not
actually have been used thus early, but the Comacines were _in fact
free builders long before the name was employed_--free to travel from
place to place, as we see from their migrations; free to fix their own
prices, while other workmen were bound to feudal lords, or by the
Statutes of Wages. The author quotes in the original Latin an Edict of
the Lombard King Rotharis, dated November 22, 643, in which certain
privileges are confirmed to the _Magistri Comacini_ and their
_colligantes_. From this Edict it is clear that it is no new order that
is alluded to, but an old and powerful body of Masters capable of
acting as architects, with men who executed work under them. For the
Comacines were not ordinary workmen, but artists, including architects,
sculptors, painters, and decorators, and if affinities of style left in
stone be adequate evidence, to them were due the changing forms of
architecture in Europe during the cathedral-building period. Everywhere
they left their distinctive impress in a way so unmistakable as to
leave no doubt.

Under Charlemagne the Comacines began their many migrations, and we
find them following the missionaries of the church into remote places,
from Sicily to Britain, building churches. When Augustine went to
convert the British, the Comacines followed to provide shrines, and
Bede, as early as 674, in mentioning that builders were sent for from
Gaul to build the church at Wearmouth, uses phrases and words found in
the Edict of King Rotharis. For a long time the changes in style of
architecture, appearing simultaneously everywhere over Europe, from
Italy to England, puzzled students.[64] Further knowledge of this
powerful and widespread order explains it. It also accounts for the
fact that no individual architect can be named as the designer of any
of the great cathedrals. Those cathedrals were the work, not of
individual artists, but of an order who planned, built, and adorned
them. In 1355 the painters of Siena seceded, as the German Masons did
later, and the