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The Four crowned saints, patrons of architects and stonemasons, are Claudius, Castorius, Nikostratus (‘Nichostratus’ presumably represents the aspirated form that Ruskin remarks on as being typical of the Venetian dialect), Symphorian, and Simplicius, Pannonian stonemasons who were martyred under Diocletian for their refusal to acknowledge Aesculapius. The five of them are perhaps known as the four crowned saints because they were conflated with four Roman soldiers who were martyred at the same time and for the same reason. The conflation of the two groups was already a matter for comment in the later part of the thirteenth century in Jacobus de Voragine The Golden Legend (Princeton U.P. edition, 1993, translated by William Granger Ryan Vol. 2 pp. 290-291). Symphorianus and Claudius are shown working on statues. Ruskin’s account of the Nineteenth Capital at Works, 10.416ff is based on the false assumptions that Simplicius is a reference to the pope of that name, that the reference to Symphorianus was a reference to Pope Symmachus, and that the Disciples are intended as representations of ordinary workers. Ruskin’s point about the relationship between saints and ordinary workmen stands, though not in the way he thought here, and certainly not in the way implied at Notebook M p.108.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]