Theodoric dedicated it to the Saviour, is one of the most beautiful
churches in Christendom. Like San Teodoro, its exterior is of the
Renaissance. Beside its portico stands one of Ravenna's curious
round bell-towers, probably built in the ninth century; but inside
we found the riches of Rome and Byzantium gathered together to make
a glorious whole. For along the architrave of the nave, supported
on antique marble columns, we saw a long procession of Virgins and
Martyrs leading from the western doors to the arch of the transept,
where the Madonna and the Saviour were enthroned. Above them, and
between the windows of the clerestory, were ranged the figures of
Saints and Prophets. And above them again were scenes resembling
the early mosaics in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, depicting
incidents from the life of Christ. From the technical point of
view these little panels indicate the highest art to be found
in Sant'Apollinare Nuovo. They are the work of Roman mosaicists
employed by Theodoric, whereas the lowest zones are by Byzantine
artists; they are full of vigour and freedom; while the others, in
spite of their magnificence, have the terrible Byzantine stiffness
which held Italian art in thrall until the coming of Cimabue and
the Pisani.
But how rich, how decorative those jewelled garments of the
honourable women, the snowy robes of the Martyrs! Just so the
artist of Byzantium may have pictured them against a golden dawn,
issuing from the proud city of Classis on the one hand, and from
the Palace of Theodoric on the other, to lay their crowns before
the Thrones of Heaven. For those Virgins are robed as daughters of
the King, and they link the Mother of God in a gold and jewelled
chain to the ancient town of Classis, without whose gates the
galleys ride, with the wind in their billowing sails. Flowers
spangle the grass at their feet, and behind them the red dates hang
heavy on the palms; while in the heavenly Court the Three Kings
offer their gifts, how eagerly! to the Virgin seated among the
angels with the Baby Christ upon her knees.
The beauties of San Vitale and Sant'Apollinare in Classis are too
well known to need description, even if it were possible to do
any sort of homage to their magnificence in so general a chapter.
They were both built by Julian the Treasurer during the reign
of Justinian, and they represent the third period of Ravenna's
greatness before the temporal power of Rome was eclipsed by that
of the Eastern Empire. In San Vitale especially, the glory of
Byzantium is reflected as in a mirror. Nowhere else in Italy is
there such a perfect illustration of the Courts of the Lord towards
the middle of the sixth century. In this great church, whose domed
central space and retreating galleries, sustained by the gracious
horse-shoe arches of the East, gave the mosque of the coming Arab
conquerors its genesis, we have walls enclosed in precious marbles,
and pierced and fretted capitals wrought by Oriental craftsmen.
And here, below the rich encrusted vault where Christ is enthroned
upon the blue orb of the heavens, in such a paradise as Dante may
have dreamt of, where white-robed Saints cull flowers as they pass,
we have thejewelled splendour of the Court of Byzantium, with the
Emperor Justinian among his priests and soldiers, and Theodora with
the ladies of her court.
[Illustration: RAVENNA: THE TOMB OF DANTE.]
* * * * *
Side by side in the heart of Ravenna are the tomb in which the dead
Dante was laid, when the secret of his sepulture had been made
known to the Ravennesi, and the old palace of the Polentani in
which Francesca of Rimini was born. Near by is the house of that
other poet-wanderer, Byron, whose windows overlook the gallery from
which it may be that Francesca, seeing the gracious form of Paolo
Malatesta coming to woo her for his hunch-back brother, felt the
first pangs of love, as well as the sacred tomb whence 'he had so
oft, as many a verse declares, drawn inspiration.'
Notwithstanding its withered wreaths, its stuccoed dome, its air
of cheap and tawdry Campo Santo sentiment, the people of Ravenna
really do come to pay tribute to the sepulchre of the great bard
of the Risorgimento. But it is difficult to find anything of the
real Dante here. For though Ravenna was his 'ultimo Rifugio,' as
it has been the last refuge of many other great ones; and though
he finished his Divine Comedy here in the house of Guido Novello
Polenta his patron; and dreamed, poor pilgrim, when he wandered
through the exquisite beauty of the pine-woods of Classis that he
had found paradise, I think his spirit fled at its release to his
beloved Florence, 'la bellissima e famosissima figlia di Roma.'
And yet there was a special fitness in our pilgrimage to the Pineta
on September 14th, which is the anniversary of his death; for if
the spirit of this wayfarer lingered anywhere upon the eastern
shores of Italy it must have flown to the 'celestial forest' in
which, in visions, he beheld his Beatrice walk amid the white-robed
companies of heaven.
Autumn had laid her hand upon the poet's paradise. The earth
was carpeted with pine-needles, soft and rusty, and pied
with flowers,--scabious and yellow thistles, veronica and
cinquefoil, and Michaelmas daisies. Great bunches of scarlet fruits
encarnadined the undergrowth. The bramble leaves were rose and
russet; the Pilgrim-trees were hung with crimson tassels; the yews
were thick with purple berries. Evening primroses grew so tall
that they were reflected in the water among the blossoming reeds.
And everywhere the ethereal webs of cow-parsley, those loveliest
flowers of the field, were spun on slender stems as delicately
as frost upon a spider's web. Moon-flowers I call them, dust o'
the moon, and when they fade they fold their treasures up into a
knitted purse of green and gold, swaying heavy-headed in every
hedge.
The air was warm and fragrant, like the scented breath of some one
beautiful. Beneath our feet the timid lizard darted to the shadows;
the birds made music in the pines, and all around we heard the
shrill chorus of frogs and the rapturous song of the cicala.
Driftwood and fallen leaves floated slowly to the sea, on just such
a shadowed stream as that by which Dante beheld Matilda:--
'A lady all alone, who, singing, went,
And culling flower from flower, wherewith her way
Was all o'er painted.'[23]
And all was still, save where a snake made a ripple that you could
hear as it swam neck-high through the water.
A paradise indeed!
On our way back across the rice-fields and flowery marshes, which
cover the fallen city of Caesarea, we passed the mouldering
column marking the spot where Gaston de Foix fell in the battle
of Ravenna. It stands on a causeway above a sluggish river, in
an esedra of cypresses which whisper melancholy to the wind. All
the world knows his lovely broken tomb, whose effigy is one of
the treasures of the Milan Museum, but in Ravenna itself there
is another tomb of just such another boy--Guidarello Guidarelli.
A warrior of Ravenna it is named, but there is no stone to mark
the place where fell this Knight of the beautiful face, 'dear at
once to Mars and to Minerva,' who followed the fortunes of Cesare
Borgia, and met his death by treachery in Imola.
[Illustration: RAVENNA: THE COLUMN OF GASTON DE FOIX.]
Signor Corrado Ricci, himself a son of Ravenna, speaks truly when
he says 'Ravenna is a city historically great and fatal, nay,
the very charnel-house of history, whither destiny sends great
achievements and lofty personages to decay and oblivion. Here the
Caesars, the Roman Empire, Roman Captains, Barbarian Kings, the
reign of the Herulians, of the Goths, of the Exarchs, all pass
away. And when its importance seems to wane, lo! Dante Aligheri is
here to complete the greatest of his poems, and to die.
'Cardinal Bessarion, the perfect flower of Humanist culture, is
brought to die in Ravenna. Francesco Maria della Rovere slays in
her streets the infamous Cardinal of Pavia, Francesco Alidosio.
Hither come the armies of Julius II., of Ferdinand of Spain, of
Louis of France, of Alfonso d'Este; and Gaston de Foix receives
his death-wound in the great battle which reimposes a term of
foreign rule. Nor can the epic of the Risorgimento develop itself
without new and memorable episodes being reserved for Ravenna. Here
Garibaldi's astonishing retreat from Rome terminates; amid endless
dangers the hero's life is preserved, but Anita, worn out by grief
and hardships, died in his arms.'
THE REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO
To the classical scholar, San Marino must always be the real
Nephelococcygia--the cloud-cuckoo-town, which the Athenian
satirised as built by the birds up in the clouds to cut off the
Gods from all connection with mankind. That is how the Sammarinesi
live, cut off from the earth in which they are the smallest and
most trivial nation. The proudest too, for though the area of their
Republic is only twenty-four square miles, and they have their
seat of government on the crest of a perpendicular rock, with a
sheer drop of nearly a thousand feet, they have preserved unbroken
their tradition of independence through fourteen centuries. Not, it
appears, from any particular valour on the part of the Sammarinesi,
although they must often have stood ready to the call of arms, with
the greedy Malatesta so near at hand in Rimini, but because they
have been greatly favoured by the enemies of Republics. The Papacy,
which had already brought almost all the other petty States of
Italy to their knees by force or treachery, granted recognition to
the smallest of them in 1631. Napoleon listened to the pleading
of Antonio Onofri, called by the grateful citizens 'the father
of his country,' and repealed his decree for the suppression of
the Republic. And the Kings of Italy, perhaps as a reward for the
courageous shelter it offered to Garibaldi and his broken army,
not only recognise its independence, but have made it a present of
modern cannon, with which to defend itself.
San Marino was a true Nephelococcygia, on the afternoon we drove
to it from Rimini. A heavy bank of cloud veiled the ragged crest
of Monte Titano, that giant outpost of the Eastern Appennines,
towering nearly 3000 feet above sea level, to which Marinus, the
saintly stonemason of Dalmatia, fled from the persecutions of
Diocletian. It was a day of storms. The sullen indigo-coloured
mountains were lost in drifting clouds. Sometimes when the grey
pall was rent by the wind, we glimpsed the fantastic towers of
San Marino, high in the heavens on their mighty cliff; but while
we pointed to them they were gone, like the city of a magician
conjured out of mists.
From Serravalle, which is the first village of the Republic on
the road from Rimini, our way led uphill, through the vineyards
and fields of corn which are the chief source of income to the
diminutive state. Down in the plain of Rimini it had been warm and
sultry, but as the bearded clouds swept down to meet us, the air
grew cold and damp. The Philosopher had a touch of fever and was
unspeakably miserable, but nothing could damp the ardour of the
Poet, who sat upon the coach-box and strained his eyes towards the
fairy city overhead, whose turrets every now and then loomed grey
among the clouds. On the long steep climb to the Borgo, we overtook
the public diligence, which had dashed past us an hour before,
rattling recklessly down one hill to gain sufficient impetus to
carry it up the next. It was toiling along slowly enough, behind
two rolling white oxen, while its steaming horses, ridden by
grooms, brought up the rear.
And now the clouds rolled down the hillside and enveloped us,
blotting out the distant view of Rimini and its sea-board, and
crowding round us like curious ghosts. We could feel the chill
breath of the mists upon our faces, and soon even the diligence
with its laughing, chattering crowd of passengers was shut out of
sight, and we were alone upon the grey mountain side. Just then the
bells of the Borgo began to ring overhead, and their music floated
down to us out of the thick fog, indescribably poetic, like the
lights of an unknown harbour shining over the water. So we crept
up, winding round the shoulder of the mountain towards the unseen
town, which for all we knew might be one of the magic cities of our
childhood. Sometimes the cliff rose sheer above us, and at others,
the road faced a wall of cloud; and sometimes when, as it were, the
breeze made windows in the mist, we saw the ragged, sullen crests
of the Appennines lifting their heads above the drifting clouds.
Suddenly, we found ourselves in a street with low stone houses, and
in another minute we were in the Borgo.
[Illustration: SAN MARINO.]
It was all commonplace enough, not at all the city beautiful we
had imagined,--a mountain village built of grey stone, with a few
stuccoed houses, but it was very friendly and welcome after the
unfamiliar mists. We did not stay. We still had before us the
steep climb up to the Acropolis, 700 feet above the Borgo, and as
we zig-zagged up the one road that for strategetical purposes San
Marino possesses, we were overtaken by the rain, a cloud-burst,
which, umbrellas notwithstanding, drenched us to the skin.
It was as though a sluice had opened in the heavens. But our
_vetturino_, who had neither overcoat nor umbrella, was unmoved. He
deposited us, bag and baggage, at the city gate, telling us with
many shrugs, _non posso andare de più_. It rained in torrents. We
did not know which way to turn. The steep, paved street in which
we found ourselves was a miniature cascade whose stream ran over
the tops of our shoes, and flowed in eddies round our luggage. Our
condition was pitiable, until some kindly Sammarinesi helped us
and our baggage up that waterfall and into the hospitable Albergo
Titano.
Only then did we realise our good fortune in arriving before the
public diligence, which was still lost in the mists below. For the
Albergo Titano, an excellent and simple inn, where mine host in
spite of his smart English tweeds is not too proud to help in the
kitchen and hand the dishes at dinner, has limited accommodation.
When we passed the belated travellers on the stairs after we had
changed our wet clothes, we heard them expostulating indignantly
because there was only one room to share between the five of them!
We found San Marino a City of Grey Cloud as romantic as the City of
White Cloud into which the soul of the butterfly vanished in the
Japanese legend of the Holy Mountain. It was full of shadows which
materialised out of the mists, grew solid as we passed, then melted
into wraiths again and vanished. It was very quiet, a world of
ghosts, with great grey clouds ramping through everything. We could
not see more than twenty yards ahead of us, and the end of each
street seemed to float in space. No sooner had we won things from
the mists than they were devoured again.
And so we came to the Piazza del Pianello with its statue of
Liberty and its battlemented palace, which loomed up in the clouds
like a ghost of the Gothic Palazzo dei Consoli at Gubbio. From the
parapet where Herr Baedeker had told us to look for the view, we
faced a sheet of mist on which some fantastic chimney-pots were
faintly sketched.
Suddenly, by a seeming miracle, Monte Titano lifted its head out
of the clouds, and San Marino lay clear before us, a grey, tidy,
self-respecting hamlet overlooking some of the grandest mountain
scenery to be found anywhere in Italy. Down in the valley the
Marecchia wound, white as a river of bleached bones, towards the
Appennines, whose heads were wreathed in sullen clouds. In the
west the sun struggled to look once more upon the earth before it
plunged below the mountains, and the white storm-wrack behind the
ragged scarp of San Leo, where Cagliostro died, was fired by the
fan-shaped rays. If we had felt like Dante and his guide climbing
the hill of Purgatory as we toiled up the side of Monte Titano in
the blear-grey mists, we looked for a moment into his Inferno when
the curtaining clouds were rent apart.
'... For certain on the brink
I found me of the lamentable vale,
The dread abyss, that joins a thund'rous sound
Of plaints innumerable. Dark and deep,
And thick with clouds o'erspread ...'[24]
Across the valley the fortress of San Leo stood out in black relief
against the smoking clouds, until it seemed as though eternal fires
were burning behind the eagle's nest in which the great necromancer
of the seventeenth century was confined. And beyond it rose the
crested waves of the Appennines with the torn garments of the
storm shredded upon their cruel rocks. Here and there a stray beam
slanting athwart their slopes illumined the towers of some little
far-off town. For a few minutes the valleys were bathed in golden
light, then the sun went down, and the world grew indigo with night
and storms.
San Marino itself has not much to offer to the stranger within its
gates. Its houses are commonplace: its cathedral and its Gothic
Palazzo del Governo are modern, and its palaces contain few traces
of antiquity. On the other hand the manners and customs of the
Republic have a refreshing quaintness not to be found elsewhere.
For instance in San Marino you do not buy and sell with the coinage
of the state; that is minted entirely for collectors; and in
this small community, where every one knows the business of his
neighbour better than he knows his own, the pretty telegraph girl
goes about the town like the buttons in a hotel, asking strangers
if the wire which has just been brought up from the Borgo is for
them, when she does not know the name of the recipient. Unlike the
cities of Italy, San Marino is early to bed: at half-past eight
the streets are silent and deserted. But she is an early riser.
The only public conveyance to Rimini, which also purposes to serve
the Ancona-Rome express, is timed to depart from the city gates at
4 A.M. The gaoler and the police are foreigners, _i.e._ Italians,
because, as the prison-keeper remarked, 'otherwise no one would
ever be arrested, because the Sammarinesi would all be relations
of the police.' But the army, forty strong, is recruited from the
Sammarinesi themselves. Nor should the traveller be surprised if
perchance he finds lop-eared rabbits making themselves at home
in his bedroom, as we did in the Albergo Titano, although this
peculiarity is not confined to San Marino, it being on record in
Volterra that when an artist begged the hotelkeeper to sweep below
his bed, she answered that it could not be done, much as she wished
to oblige the signore, because her hens were sitting!
But it is San Marino's incomparable views, over the wide valley of
the Marecchia to the Appennines on the one hand, and over the plain
of Rimini to the Adriatic and the hills of Dalmatia on the other,
which make the long climb worth while.
Even the Philosopher, who had rheumatism added to his other
sorrows, could not help responding to the joy of waking, and
finding himself high up in the clear blue sky overlooking a world
washed clean by the rainstorms of the night before. The great
mountains and rock-scarps which bounded the valley of the Marecchia
were flecked with shadows, and snow-white cumuli, shining in the
sunlight, were piled above the distant peaks. We climbed up to San
Marino's second tower through a half-deserted quarry where pink
cyclamens, brambles and wild flowers had woven a tangled web about
the rocks. In the west the ragged hills rolled on like waves
towards the gaunt peaks of the Appennines, and the highest of them
all had its great solemn crest hidden in a low-hanging cloud which
held it in the old embrace of sky and earth, regarded by the Greeks
and Egyptians alike as a mythological sacrament. To the east the
rock fell sheer to the vine-clad plain of Rimini, and far away we
saw the Adriatic in a silver haze.
How long we stayed up there among the flowers by that ancient tower
I do not know. There was a kind of rapture in the morning. The bees
were humming in the ivy as though they thought that it was still
summer. The cicalas sang. Close at hand the Rocca, as fantastic as
the most fantastic fortress in the whole of fairy-land, overhung
its precipice. On our left rose the third tower of the Republic
flaunting its feather to the wind.
We forgot San Marino, that gay popinjay of a city, which is so out
of keeping with its landscape, absorbed in watching the play of
light and shadow down in the wild valley of the Marecchia, where
the great cloud-barques which sailed across the wind-swept sky were
reflected on the bosom of the hills. It was a land of great and
primitive desires, with rivers rushing passionately to the sea,
and inarticulate mountains travailing to reach heaven. Nor was the
earth appeased until the gathering storm-clouds stooped down and
rested on its hills, as the Ark of the Lord rested upon the peak of
Ararat.
We left at dawn in the postchaise of the Republic. Night had not
yet rolled her curtains from the mountains. Eastwards the sea and
sky were veiled in tremulous mists, but when we reached the Borgo
the silver morning was lightened by a rose and saffron glory. We
found the Borgo asleep, though when we left, after waiting half
an hour for the mail and picking up a solitary passenger, the
church bells on the cliff above were ringing and all the cocks
were crowing. How gay and fresh it was! None of the grumblers of
the world were out of bed. The _cocchiere_ with the stemma of the
Republic in his hat cracked his long whip; the horses made music
with their bells, tossing their heads as they smelt the breeze;
even the querulous brake made merry over its discomfort as we swung
down the hillside.
Long after daybreak the mists lay supine in the valley and there
were shadows on the mountains, as though the languid eyes of
nature were not yet opened to the morning. But overhead the
little clouds were pink as the wings of flamingoes, and when we
reached the fields we found the vines, drunk with the magic of
the morning, dancing like Bacchanals with linked hands across
the valleys, bearing their gifts of purple grapes. Often at the
turning of the road we looked back to San Marino, standing up like
a biblical fortress with its strong watch-towers overlooking the
plain, the home of liberty, where Garibaldi found sanctuary from
his pursuers. When we reached Serravalle we saw it through a veil
of mist, thin as gossamer spun out of the dawn. Later there were
little wisps of cloud-drift hanging on the rocks below the towers.
Long ere we drove into the gates of Rimini our Nephelococcygia
vanished like a dream into its clouds again.
URBINO
We came to Urbino for the sake of Raphael, the gentle youth who
conquered Death in dying, and to see the palace built by the
greatest hero of the Rinascimento, Frederic of Montefeltro, Duke
of Urbino. We stayed long after we had made our pilgrimage to the
brown palace, where Giovanni Santi reared his motherless immortal,
long after we had walked through the decaying splendours of that
fairy castle which saw the star of Frederic's dynasty go down not
ninety years after it had arisen so brightly on the slopes of Monte
Ingino. For Urbino, though she is old and faded, though the grass
grows in her streets and flowering weeds spring from her cracked
and tottering walls, is still a city beautiful, a golden crown upon
the green hillside.
We came to the foot of her vine-clad slopes after three hours of
journeying through a world of shadowy mountains which had moonlit
gossamer resting on their peaks, and silver rivers running through
their valleys. Her towers gleamed white as polished ivory against
the vaporous sky; her many lights were like a diadem of jewels
out-brilliancing the stars. As we climbed up the hillside in
the chill night air every turn of the road revealed fresh vistas
of mountain peaks rising like crested waves out of the moonlit
vapours. And when we reached the summit of Urbino's hill, and found
ourselves below the terrific walls of Federigo's palace, we saw
above them, limned against the stars, an enchanted palace such
as Perrault might have dreamed of, with its towers and esedras
transmuted by the moonlight into jade.