Torcello.
§ I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near
the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher
level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised
here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks
of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time
among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened
with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a
plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound
is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which
if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door
of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command
from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far
as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen grey;
not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath,
but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water
soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and
thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor
coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the
warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To
the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there
is a blue line of higher land along the border of it, and above this,
but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. To the
east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary
intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the
widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale
green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost
beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze
from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages
(though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third
an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat
red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with
nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the
long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight
separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and grey moor
beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any
vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little
company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea.
§ II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches of
the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather,
there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set
shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the
southern sky.
Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO
and VENICE.
Thirteen hundred years ago, the grey moorland looked as it does this
day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances
of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires
mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices
mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames
rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its
people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the
paths of the sea.
The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they
left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of
the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending
up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the
temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space
of meadow land.
§ III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile is not
that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat
broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of
the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the
Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present
some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly
larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each
side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow
field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable
footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the
form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth
being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and
that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that
they might well be taken for the out-houses of the farm, though the
first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of
the "Palazzo publico," both dating as far back as the beginning of the
fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is
far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the
pillars of the portico which surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and
their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the
arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a
cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator
receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been
which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could
not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished
as we approach, or enter, the larger church to which the whole group of
building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight
and distress,[4] who sought in the hurried erection of their island
church such a shelter for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the
one hand, could not attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendor,
and yet, on the other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its
contrast with the churches which they had seen destroyed. There is
visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some of the
form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honor to God by that
which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation prevented the
desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of luxury of
ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely devoid of
decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance and the
lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and architrave,
and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy stone
shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which answer
the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole building
rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the cathedral of a
populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of the eastern
and western extremities,--one representing the Last Judgment, the other
the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are raised to bless,--and
the noble range of pillars which enclose the space between, terminated
by the high throne for the pastor and the semicircular raised seats for
the superior clergy, are expressive at once of the deep sorrow and the
sacred courage of men who had no home left them upon earth, but who
looked for one to come, of men "persecuted but not forsaken, cast down
but not destroyed."
§ IV. I am not aware of any other early church in Italy which has this
peculiar expression in so marked a degree; and it is so consistent with
all that Christian architecture ought to express in every age (for the
actual condition of the exiles who built the cathedral of Torcello is
exactly typical of the spiritual condition which every Christian ought
to recognize in himself, a state of homelessness on earth, except so far
as he can make the Most High his habitation), that I would rather fix
the mind of the reader on this general character than on the separate
details, however interesting, of the architecture itself. I shall
therefore examine these only so far as is necessary to give a clear idea
of the means by which the peculiar expression of the building is
attained.
[Illustration: Plate I.
PLANS OF TORCELLO AND MURANO.]
§ V. On the opposite page, the uppermost figure, 1, is a rude plan
of the church. I do not answer for the thickness and external
disposition of the walls, which are not to our present purpose, and
which I have not carefully examined; but the interior arrangement is
given with sufficient accuracy. The church is built on the usual plan of
the Basilica[5] that is to say, its body divided into a nave and aisles
by two rows of massive shafts, the roof of the nave being raised high
above the aisles by walls sustained on two ranks of pillars, and pierced
with small arched windows. At Torcello the aisles are also lighted in
the same manner, and the nave is nearly twice their breadth.[6]
[Illustration: Plate II.
THE ACANTHUS OF TORCELLO.]
The capitals of all the great shafts are of white marble, and are among
the best I have ever seen, as examples of perfectly calculated effect
from every touch of the chisel. Mr. Hope calls them "indifferently
imitated from the Corinthian:"[7] but the expression is as inaccurate as
it is unjust; every one of them is different in design, and their
variations are as graceful as they are fanciful. I could not, except by
an elaborate drawing, give any idea of the sharp, dark, deep
penetrations of the chisel into their snowy marble, but a single example
is given in the opposite plate, fig. 1, of the nature of the changes
effected in them from the Corinthian type. In this capital, although a
kind of acanthus (only with rounded lobes) is indeed used for the upper
range of leaves, the lower range is not acanthus at all, but a kind of
vine, or at least that species of plant which stands for vine in all
early Lombardic and Byzantine work (vide Vol. I. Appendix 8); the leaves
are trefoiled, and the stalks cut clear so that they might be grasped
with the hand, and cast sharp dark shadows, perpetually changing, across
the bell of the capital behind them. I have drawn one of these vine
plants larger in fig. 2, that the reader may see how little imitation
of the Corinthian there is in them, and how boldly the stems of the
leaves are detached from the ground. But there is another circumstance
in this ornament still more noticeable. The band which encircles the
shaft beneath the spring of the leaves is copied from the common
classical wreathed or braided fillet, of which the reader may see
examples on almost every building of any pretensions in modern London.
But the mediæval builders could not be content with the dead and
meaningless scroll: the Gothic energy and love of life, mingled with the
early Christian religious symbolism, were struggling daily into more
vigorous expression, and they turned the wreathed band into a serpent of
three times the length necessary to undulate round the shaft, which,
knotting itself into a triple chain, shows at one side of the shaft its
tail and head, as if perpetually gliding round it beneath the stalks of
the vines. The vine, as is well known, was one of the early symbols of
Christ, and the serpent is here typical either of the eternity of his
dominion, or of the Satanic power subdued.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
§ VI. Nor even when the builder confines himself to the acanthus leaf
(or to that representation of it, hereafter to be more particularly
examined, constant in Romanesque work) can his imagination allow him to
rest content with its accustomed position. In a common Corinthian
capital the leaves nod forward only, thrown out on every side from the
bell which they surround: but at the base of one of the capitals on the
opposite side of the nave from this of the vines,[8] two leaves are
introduced set with their sides outwards, forming spirals by curling
back, half-closed, in the position shown in fig. 4 in Plate II., there
represented as in a real acanthus leaf; for it will assist our future
inquiries into the ornamentation of capitals that the reader should be
acquainted with the form of the acanthus leaf itself. I have drawn it,
therefore, in the two positions, figs. 3 and 4 in Plate II.; while fig.
5 is the translation of the latter form into marble by the sculptor of
Torcello. It is not very like the acanthus, but much liker than any
Greek work; though still entirely conventional in its cinquefoiled
lobes. But these are disposed with the most graceful freedom of line,
separated at the roots by deep drill holes, which tell upon the eye far
away like beads of jet; and changed, before they become too crowded to
be effective, into a vigorous and simple zigzagged edge, which saves the
designer some embarrassment in the perspective of the terminating
spiral. But his feeling of nature was greater than his knowledge of
perspective; and it is delightful to see how he has rooted the whole
leaf in the strong rounded under-stem, the indication of its closing
with its face inwards, and has thus given organization and elasticity to
the lovely group of spiral lines; a group of which, even in the lifeless
sea-shell, we are never weary, but which becomes yet more delightful
when the ideas of elasticity and growth are joined to the sweet
succession of its involution.
§ VII. It is not, however, to be expected that either the mute language
of early Christianity (however important a part of the expression of the
building at the time of its erection), or the delicate fancies of the
Gothic leafage springing into new life, should be read, or perceived, by
the passing traveller who has never been taught to expect anything in
architecture except five orders: yet he can hardly fail to be struck by
the simplicity and dignity of the great shafts themselves; by the frank
diffusion of light, which prevents their severity from becoming
oppressive; by the delicate forms and lovely carving of the pulpit and
chancel screen; and, above all, by the peculiar aspect of the eastern
extremity of the church, which, instead of being withdrawn, as in later
cathedrals, into a chapel dedicated to the Virgin, or contributing by
the brilliancy of its windows to the splendor of the altar, and
theatrical effect of the ceremonies performed there, is a simple and
stern semicircular recess, filled beneath by three ranks of seats,
raised one above the other, for the bishop and presbyters, that they
might watch as well as guide the devotions of the people, and discharge
literally in the daily service the functions of bishops or _overseers_
of the flock of God.
§ VIII. Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession;
and first (for of the shafts enough has been said already), what is very
peculiar to this church, its luminousness. This perhaps strikes the
traveller more from its contrast with the excessive gloom of the Church
of St. Mark's; but it is remarkable when we compare the Cathedral of
Torcello with any of the contemporary basilicas in South Italy or
Lombardic churches in the North. St. Ambrogio at Milan, St. Michele at
Pavia, St. Zeno at Verona, St. Frediano at Lucca, St. Miniato at
Florence, are all like sepulchral caverns compared with Torcello, where
the slightest details of the sculptures and mosaics are visible, even
when twilight is deepening. And there is something especially touching
in our finding the sunshine thus freely admitted into a church built by
men in sorrow. They did not need the darkness; they could not perhaps
bear it. There was fear and depression upon them enough, without a
material gloom. They sought for comfort in their religion, for tangible
hopes and promises, not for threatenings or mysteries; and though the
subjects chosen for the mosaics on the walls are of the most solemn
character, there are no artificial shadows cast upon them, nor dark
colors used in them: all is fair and bright, and intended evidently to
be regarded in hopefulness, and not with terror.
§ IX. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible that
the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may have
been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series of
subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not, however,
find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am rather
inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the
building was originally decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics
representing Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles, at one extremity, and
Christ coming to judgment at the other. And if so, I repeat, observe the
significance of this choice. Most other early churches are covered with
imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in
the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of
political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of
satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence,
mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural
or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one
should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not
appear. The mind of the worshipper was fixed entirely upon two great
facts, to him the most precious of all facts,--the present mercy of
Christ to His Church, and His future coming to judge the world. That
Christ's mercy was, at this period, supposed chiefly to be attainable
through the pleading of the Virgin, and that therefore beneath the
figure of the Redeemer is seen that of the weeping Madonna in the act of
intercession, may indeed be matter of sorrow to the Protestant beholder,
but ought not to blind him to the earnestness and singleness of the
faith with which these men sought their sea-solitudes; not in hope of
founding new dynasties, or entering upon new epochs of prosperity, but
only to humble themselves before God, and to pray that in His infinite
mercy He would hasten the time when the sea should give up the dead
which were in it, and Death and Hell give up the dead which were in
them, and when they might enter into the better kingdom, "where the
wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."
§ X. Nor were the strength and elasticity of their minds, even in the
least matters, diminished by thus looking forward to the close of all
things. On the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the finish and
beauty of all the portions of the building, which seem to have been
actually executed for the place they occupy in the present structure.
The rudest are those which they brought with them from the mainland; the
best and most beautiful, those which appear to have been carved for
their island church: of these, the new capitals already noticed, and the
exquisite panel ornaments of the chancel screen, are the most
conspicuous; the latter form a low wall across the church between the
six small shafts whose places are seen in the plan, and serve to enclose
a space raised two steps above the level of the nave, destined for the
singers, and indicated also in the plan by an open line _a b c d_. The
bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two
face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description,
though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or
pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of
the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this
screen, that we find evidence of the haste with which the church was
constructed.
§ XI. The pulpit, however, is not among the least noticeable of its
features. It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked at
_p_ in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of the
screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the staircase
which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in the plan),
faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase being also
formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich, but not
deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those which adorn
the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the mainland;
and, being of size and shape not easily to be adjusted to the
proportions of the stair, the architect has cut out of them pieces of
the size he needed, utterly regardless of the subject or symmetry of the
original design. The pulpit is not the only place where this rough
procedure has been permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two
crosses, cut out of slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich
sculpture over their whole surfaces, of which portions are left on the
surface of the crosses; the lines of the original design being, of
course, just as arbitrarily cut by the incisions between the arms, as
the patterns upon a piece of silk which has been shaped anew. The fact
is, that in all early Romanesque work, large surfaces are covered with
sculpture for the sake of enrichment only; sculpture which indeed had
always meaning, because it was easier for the sculptor to work with some
chain of thought to guide his chisel, than without any; but it was not
always intended, or at least not always hoped, that this chain of
thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was proposed appears
to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it delightful to
the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece of marble
became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery is to a
dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with
little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though
it may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of
bluntness and rudeness of feeling, we may perceive, upon reflection,
that it may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little
price upon its own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its
fortress-walls out of fragments of the refined architecture it has
overthrown, we can read nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of
art which may thus chance to have been preserved; but when the new work
is equal, if not superior, in execution, to the pieces of the older art
which are associated with it, we may justly conclude that the rough
treatment to which the latter have been subjected is rather a sign of
the hope of doing better things, than of want of feeling for those
already accomplished. And, in general, this careless fitting of ornament
is, in very truth, an evidence of life in the school of builders, and of
their making a due distinction between work which is to be used for
architectural effect, and work which is to possess an abstract
perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of design is so
easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they feel no
remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with so
slight an effort.
§ XII. It appears however questionable in the present instance, whether,
if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect would have
taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the rest of the
pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that its design
possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious spectator
greater than he will take in any other portion of the building. It is
supported, as I said, on a group of four slender shafts; itself of a
slightly oval form, extending nearly from one pillar of the nave to the
next, so as to give the preacher free room for the action of the entire
person, which always gives an unaffected impressiveness to the
eloquence of the southern nations. In the centre of its curved front, a
small bracket and detached shaft sustain the projection of a narrow
marble desk (occupying the place of a cushion in a modern pulpit), which
is hollowed out into a shallow curve on the upper surface, leaving a
ledge at the bottom of the slab, so that a book laid upon it, or rather
into it, settles itself there, opening as if by instinct, but without
the least chance of slipping to the side, or in any way moving beneath
the preacher's hands.[9] Six balls, or rather almonds, of purple marble
veined with white are set round the edge of the pulpit, and form its
only decoration. Perfectly graceful, but severe and almost cold in its
simplicity, built for permanence and service, so that no single member,
no stone of it, could be spared, and yet all are firm and uninjured as
when they were first set together, it stands in venerable contrast both
with the fantastic pulpits of mediæval cathedrals and with the rich
furniture of those of our modern churches. It is worth while pausing for
a moment to consider how far the manner of decorating a pulpit may have
influence on the efficiency of its service, and whether our modern
treatment of this, to us all-important, feature of a church be the best
possible.
§ XIII. When the sermon is good we need not much concern ourselves about
the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I believe
that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to listen may
be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or unfitness,
impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place appointed
for the speaker,--not to the same degree, but somewhat in the same way,
that they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression,
irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the
first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the
speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a
very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest
of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I
have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are
peculiarly magnificent, sermons are not often preached from them; but
rather, and especially if for any important purpose, from some temporary
erection in other parts of the building: and though this may often be
done because the architect has consulted the effect upon the eye more
than the convenience of the ear in the placing of his larger pulpit, I
think it also proceeds in some measure from a natural dislike in the
preacher to match himself with the magnificence of the rostrum, lest the
sermon should not be thought worthy of the place. Yet this will rather
hold of the colossal sculptures, and pyramids of fantastic tracery which
encumber the pulpits of Flemish and German churches, than of the
delicate mosaics and ivory-like carving of the Romanesque basilicas, for
when the form is kept simple, much loveliness of color and costliness of
work may be introduced, and yet the speaker not be thrown into the shade
by them.
§ XIV. But, in the second place, whatever ornaments we admit ought
clearly to be of a chaste, grave, and noble kind; and what furniture we
employ, evidently more for the honoring of God's word than for the ease
of the preacher. For there are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as
a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as
the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care
and learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, we
shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its
delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a
golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the
sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the
cushion in a majestic manner before beginning; all this we shall duly
come to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus
prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without
restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that
duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in
happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be
necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his
faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life
or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge
over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an
hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor
to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage
on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days
together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been
forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and
to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the wayside by
this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary
with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect and
languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts
of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame
them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by
this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the
Master himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the
openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth
her hands and no man regarded,--thirty minutes to raise the dead
in,--let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with
changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from
which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes
upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains
recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener
alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear
with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of
oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that his words may
be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he
speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have
gathered in their thirst.
§ XV. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello is
still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which
occupy the curve of the apse. The arrangement at first somewhat recalls
to the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which
lead up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps
or seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were
intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for
the other), exactly as in an amphitheatre the stairs for access
intersect the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this
arrangement, and especially in the want of all appliances of comfort
(for the whole is of marble, and the arms of the central throne are not
for convenience, but for distinction, and to separate it more
conspicuously from the undivided seats), there is a dignity which no
furniture of stalls nor carving of canopies ever could attain, and well
worth the contemplation of the Protestant, both as sternly significative
of an episcopal authority which in the early days of the Church was
never disputed, and as dependent for all its impressiveness on the utter
absence of any expression either of pride or self-indulgence.
§ XVI. But there is one more circumstance which we ought to remember as
giving peculiar significance to the position which the episcopal throne
occupies in this island church, namely, that in the minds of all early
Christians the Church itself was most frequently symbolized under the
image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot. Consider the force
which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of men to whom the
spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the midst of a
destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the eight souls
were saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man had become as
broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who saw the actual
and literal edifice of the Church raised up, itself like an ark in the
midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the Adriatic rolling
between them and the shores of their birth, from which they were
separated for ever, they should have looked upon each other as the
disciples did when the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, and have
yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them in His name,
who had there rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the sea. And
if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the dominion
of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth conquering and
to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of her arsenals or
number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor
enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend the highest
tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of Torcello, and
then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble ribs of the
goodly temple ship, let him repeople its veined deck with the shadows of
its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the strength of heart
that was kindled within them, when first, after the pillars of it had
settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been closed against the
angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of their
homesteads,--first, within the shelter of its knitted walls, amidst the
murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of the
sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,--rose that ancient
hymn, in the power of their gathered voices:
THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT:
AND HIS HANDS PREPARED THE DRY LAND.
FOOTNOTES
[4] Appendix 4, "Date of the Duomo of Torcello."
[5] For a full account of the form and symbolical meaning of the
Basilica, see Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," vol. i. p. 12. It is
much to be regretted that the Chevalier Bunsen's work on the
Basilicas of Rome is not translated into English.
[6] The measures are given in Appendix 3.
[7] Hope's "Historical Essay on Architecture" (third edition, 1840),
chap. ix. p. 95. In other respects Mr. Hope has done justice to this
building, and to the style of the early Christian churches in
general.
[8] A sketch has been given of this capital in my folio work.
[9] Appendix 5, "Modern Pulpits."