her geography and in her history, so in her aspect, she is a place
apart, a place very distinctive and special, and with a physiognomy
and appearance all her own. What we see in her is still really the
city of Honorius, of Galla Placidia, of Theodoric, of Belisarius and
Narses, of the exarchate, in a word, of the mighty revolution in which
Europe, all we mean by Europe, so nearly foundered, and which here
alone is still splendidly visible to us in the great Roman and
Byzantine works of that time.
For the age, the Dark Age, of her glory is illumined by no other city
in Italy or indeed in the world. She was the splendour of that age, a
lonely splendour. And because, when that age came to an end, she was
practically abandoned--abandoned, that is, by the great world--just as
about the same time she was abandoned by the sea, much of her ancient
beauty has remained to her through all the centuries since, even down
to our own day, when, lovelier than ever in her lonely marsh, she is a
place so lugubrious, so infinitely still and sad, full of the autumn
wind and the rumours of silence of the tomb, of the most reverent of
all tombs--the tomb of the empire.
We shall not find in Ravenna anything at all, any building, that is,
or work of art, of classical antiquity; all she was, all she did, all
she possessed in the great years of the empire has perished. Nor shall
we find much that may have been hers in the smaller life that came to
her in the beginning of the Middle Age, or that was hers in the time
of the Renaissance; the memory and the dust of Dante, a few churches,
a few frescoes, a few pictures, a few palaces; nothing beside. For all
these we must go to Pompeii and to Rome, or to Florence, Siena,
Assisi, and Venice; in Ravenna we shall find something more rare, but
not these. She remains a city of the Dark Age, of the fifth, sixth,
seventh, and eighth centuries, and she is full of the churches, the
tombs, and the art of that time, early Christian and Byzantine things
that we shall not find elsewhere, or, at any rate, not in the same
abundance, perfection, and beauty.
And yet though so much remains, her story since the time of
Charlemagne might seem to be little else but a long catalogue of
pillage and destruction. Charlemagne himself began this cruel work
when he carried off the mosaics and the marbles, the ornaments of the
imperial palace, to adorn Aix-la-Chapelle, and since his day not a
century has passed without adding to this vandalism; the worst
offenders being the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, which by rebuilding, by frank
pillage, by mere destruction, by earthquakes, by contempt, and worst
of all by restoration have utterly destroyed much that should have
remained for ever, and have altogether spoilt and transformed most of
that which, almost by chance it might seem, remains.
And so it comes to pass that the oldest buildings remaining to us
to-day in Ravenna are to be found in the baptistery, the cathedral,
the arcivescovado, and the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the oldest
complete building being the last. Let us then first consider these.
The first bishop, the "Apostle" of Ravenna, according to Agnellus, was
S. Apollinaris, a Syrian of Antioch, the friend and disciple of S.
Peter, who, as we know, had been bishop of Antioch for seven years
before he went to Rome. Apollinaris followed S. Peter to the Eternal
City and was appointed by him bishop of Ravenna, whither he came to
establish the church. There might seem to be some doubt as to his
martyrdom; but, according to Agnellus, he was succeeded by his
disciple S. Aderitus, and he in his turn by S. Eleucadius, a
theologian, who is said to have written commentaries upon the books of
the Old and New Testaments, and to have been followed as bishop by S.
Martianus, a noble whom S. Apollinaris had ordained deacon. There
follows in the _Liber Pontificalis_ of Agnellus a list of twelve
bishops, S. Calocerus, S. Proculus, S. Probus, S. Datus, S. Liberius,
S. Agapetus, S. Marcellinus, S. Severus (c. 344), S. Liberius II., S.
Probus II., S. Florentius, and S. Liberius III., who occupy the see
before we come to S. Ursus, who "first began to build a Temple to God,
so that the Christians previously scattered about in huts should be
collected into one sheepfold."[1] S. Ursus, according to Dr.
Holder-Egger, ruled in Ravenna from 370 to 396, and his church was
dedicated in 385; but a later authority[2] would seem to place his
pontificate later, and to argue that it immediately preceded that of
S. Peter Chrysologus, who, the same authority asserts, was elected in
429. All agree that S. Ursus reigned for twenty-six years, and
therefore, if he immediately preceded S. Peter Chrysologus, he was
elected not in 370, but in 403; that is to say, in or about the same
time as Honorius took up his residence in Ravenna.
[Footnote 1: "Iste piimus hic initiavit Templum construere Dei, ut
plebes Christianorum quae in singulis tuguriis vagabant in unum ovile
piissimus collegeret Pastor ... Igitur aedificavit iste Beatissimus
Praesul infra hanc Civitatem Ravennam Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam,
quo omnes assidue concurremus, quam de suo nomine Ursianam nominavit
... "]
[Footnote 2: A Testi Rasponi, _Note Marginali al Liber Pontificalis di
Agnello Ravennate_ in _Atti e Memorie della R. Dep. di St. Pat. per la
Romagna_, iii. 27 (Bologna, 1909-10).]
However that may be, we must attribute the foundation of a new
cathedral church in Ravenna to S. Ursus, for till this day it bears
his name, Ecclesia Ursiana, though it appears to have been dedicated
in honour of the Resurrection (Anastasis.)
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL (_Basilica Ursiana_)]
Agnellus gives us a fairly full account of this church, which
consisted of five naves divided and upheld by four rows of
fifty-six[1] columns of precious marble from the temple of Jupiter.
That the church was approached by steps we learn from Agnellus in his
life of S. Exuperantius, for he there tells us that Felix the
patrician was killed "on the steps of the Ecclesia Ursiana." Both the
vault and the walls were adorned with mosaics,[2] which Agnellus
describes and which would seem to have covered then or later the whole
of the interior; the wall on the women's side of the church being
decorated with a figure of S. Anastasia, while over all was a dome
"adorned with various coloured tiles representing different figures."
When Agnellus wrote (ninth century) this great church was of course
standing, but doubtless it had been added to and adorned from century
to century, and it is impossible to learn from his description, or
indeed any other that we have, what was due therein to S. Ursus and
what to his successors. One of the most splendid ornaments the church
possessed would seem to have been a ciborium of silver, borne by
columns which stood over the high altar also of silver. This is said
by Agnellus to have been placed there by the bishop S. Victor, who
seems to have ruled in Ravenna from about 537 to 544. It is said to
have cost, with the consent of Justinian, the whole revenue of Italy
for a year and to have weighed some one hundred and twenty pounds. The
whole stood in the midst of a circular choir of marble, itself covered
with silver it might seem, if we may believe a chronicler of Vicenza
of the fifteenth century, quoted by Zirardini,[3] who says: "In the
great church of Ravenna all the choir, the altar, and the great
tabernacle over the altar are of silver." Before the altar was the
_Schola Caniorum_.
[Footnote 1: Fabri, however, in his _Sacre Memorie_, says there were
forty-nine columns.]
[Footnote 2: Agnellus gives the names of the mosaicists Euserius or
Cuserius, Paulus, Agatho, Satius, and Stephanus.]
[Footnote 3: Zirardini, _De Antiquis Sacris Ravennae Aedificiis_.]
Agnellus tells us further in his life of S. Felix (_c_. 693) that that
bishop built a _Salutatorium_ (? Sacristy), "whence the bishop and his
assistants proceeded at the Introit of the Mass into the presence of
the people." But the Epigram which Agnellus quotes from this building
would seem to suggest that the _salutatorium_ was rather then rebuilt
than added for the first time to the church.
The magnificent basilica, one of the most splendid in Italy, was
sacked by the French in April 1512, but, as Dr. Corrado Ricci says, it
was not they who destroyed the church itself, but the _accademici_ of
the eighteenth century, who, instead of conserving the glorious
building, then some thirteen hundred years old, began in 1733 to pull
it down, to break up the beautiful capitals and columns of precious
marbles, and to make out of the fragments the pavement of the new
church we still see, begun in 1734 by Gian Francesco Buonamici da
Rimini. Only the apse with its beautiful great mosaic remained for a
few years till at last it too was destroyed.
Thus the church we have in place of the old Basilica Ursiana is a
building of the eighteenth century, and all that we care for in it is
the fragments that are to be found there of its glorious predecessor.
These are few in number and of little account. Supporting the central
arch of the portico are two marble columns which belonged to the old
basilica, and by the main door are two others of granite which came
perhaps from the old nave.
Entering the church we find ourselves in a cruciform building
consisting of three naves, divided by twenty-four columns of marble,
transept, and apse, with a dome over the crossing. In the second
chapel on the right is an ancient marble sarcophagus said to be that
of S. Exuperantius, bishop of Ravenna about 470. The magnificent tomb
carved in high relief did not, however, belong to the old cathedral,
but was brought here when the church of S. Agnese was destroyed. In
the south transept is the chapel of the Madonna del Sudore, where on
either side are two other sarcophagi of marble adorned with figures
and symbols. That on the right is said to be the tomb of S.
Barbatianus, confessor of Galla Placidia, and was originally in the
church of S. Lorenzo in Caesarea, whence it was brought to the
cathedral in the thirteenth century by the archbishop Bonifazio de'
Fieschi, whom Dante found in Purgatory among the gluttons:
"Bonifazio
che pasturo col rocco molte genti..."
He brought the sarcophagus to the cathedral for his own tomb and there
I suppose he was buried. The sarcophagus upon the left was likewise
used in 1321 as a tomb for himself by the archbishop, Rainaldo
Concoreggio. This, too, is sculptured with a bas-relief of Christ, a
nimbus round His head, a book in His hand, seated on a throne set on a
rock, out of which four rivers flow. With outstretched hand He gives a
crown to S. Paul, while S. Peter bearing a cross holds a crown, just
received, in his hand. The sculpture on the sarcophagus of S.
Barbatianus is ruder.
The high altar is of course modern, but within it is an ancient marble
sarcophagus of the sixth century, in which it is said the dust of nine
bishops of about that time lies.
But one noble thing remains here among all the modern trash to remind
us of all we have lost: the glorious processional cross of silver
called of S. Agnello. Yet even this, noble as it is, does not come to
us from Roman or Byzantine times it seems, but is rather a work of the
eleventh century.
In the midst of this great cross, upon one side, is the Blessed Virgin
praying, and upon the other Christ rising from the tomb. Upon the arms
of the cross, and the uprights, are forty medallions of saints, of
which three would seem to be archbishops. I say this beautiful and
precious thing comes to us from the eleventh century; but it has been
very much restored at various times and is now largely a work of the
sixteenth century. Dr. Ricci tells us that on the side where we see
the Madonna only the five medallions on the lower upright and the two
last of the upper are original; while upon that of the Risen Christ,
only the five medallions on the lower upright are untouched, all the
rest is restoration.
Beneath the eighteenth-century apse of the cathedral is the ancient
crypt, no longer to be seen; it does not, according to Dr. Ricci, date
earlier than the ninth century nor do any of the other crypts in the
city.
In the left aisle a few fragments from the old church remain
recognisable. They are the marble slabs of an _ambo_ erected by S.
Agnellus, archbishop of Ravenna in the middle of the sixth century.
There we read: _Servus Christi Agnellus Episcopus hunc pyrgum fecit_.
Among these are some earlier panels of the fifth century. In the
treasury, again, we find two other panels from the _ambo_ of S.
Agnellus, and a strange calendar carved upon a slab of marble to
enable one to find the feast of Easter in any year from 532 to 626;
this is certainly of the sixth century.
A certain number of Mediaeval and Renaissance things are also to be
seen in the church. Here in the treasury we have a cross of silver
gilt, with reliefs of the Crucifixion, God the Father, the Blessed
Virgin, S. John Baptist, and S. Mary Magdalen, dating from the middle
of the fourteenth century (1366). Over the entrance to the sacristy is
a fresco by Guido Reni of Elijah the prophet fed by an angel. Within,
is a good picture by Marco Palmezzano: a Pieta with S. John Baptist;
while the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament is decorated by him and his
pupils.
It is obvious, then, that very little remains to us of the original
Basilica Ursiana; nor can we reckon among that little the beautiful
round and isolated campanile. This is not older than the ninth
century, and has been much tampered with, especially in the sixteenth
century, after an earthquake, and in the seventeenth century after
both earthquake and fire. Indeed, the upper storey dates entirely from
1658.
As it is with the cathedral, so it is with the _Arcivescovado_. Of the
old palace of the Bishops of Ravenna only a few walls, a tower, and a
wonderful little chapel remain. What we see now is work of the
sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries after a restoration at the end
of the nineteenth. The old vast palace which has been destroyed was
the work of many archbishops, achieved during many centuries. It
consisted of a series of buildings grouped about the palace which the
archbishop S. Peter Chrysologus built in the fifth century, and its
most magnificent part was due to S. Maximian, archbishop of Ravenna in
the time of Justinian. All their work, which we would so gladly see,
is gone except the little chapel of S. Peter Chrysologus, which he
built and signed in one of the arches in the fifth century.[1]
[Footnote 1: According to Rasponi the chapel was dedicated originally
to S. Andrea and is to be identified with the Monasterium di S.
Andrea, which was not built by S. Peter Chrysologus (429-_c_. 449),
but by Peter II. (494-_c_. 519). Cf. Rasponi, _Note Marginali al Liber
Pontificalis di Agnello Ravennate_ (Atti e Memorie della R. Dep. di
Stor. Pat. per la Romagna, iii. 27), Bologna, 1909-1910.]
Of this great man Agnellus records: "He was beautiful in appearance,
lovely in aspect; before him there was no bishop like him in wisdom,
nor any other after him." He was a native of Imola, then called Forum
Cornelii, and was ordained deacon by the bishop of that city, one
Cornelius, of whom he always speaks with affection and gratitude. When
the bishop of Ravenna died, it is said the clergy of the cathedral,
then just built or building, with the people, chose a successor, and
besought the bishop of Imola to go to Rome to obtain the confirmation
of the pope. Cornelius took with him his deacon Peter, and the pope,
who had been commanded so to do by the Prince of the Apostles in a
dream, refused to ratify the election already made, but proposed Peter
the deacon as the bishop chosen by S. Peter himself. Peter was there
and then consecrated bishop, was conducted to Ravenna, and received
with acclamation. He is said to have found a certain amount of
paganism still remaining in his diocese, and to have completely
extirpated it. He often preached before the Augusta Galla Placidia and
her son Valentinian III., and he was perhaps the first archbishop of
the see, Ravenna till his time having been suffragan to Milan. He
seems to have died about 450 in Imola. Among his many buildings, which
included the monastery of S. Andrea at Classis, is the little chapel
now dedicated in his honour in the _Arcivescovado_ of Ravenna. It is
perhaps the only one of his works which remains. The little square
chamber, out of which the sanctuary opens, is upheld by four arches,
which are covered, as is the vaulting, with most precious mosaics,
still of the fifth century, though they have been and are still being
much restored. On the angles of the vaulting, on a gold ground, we see
four glorious white angels holding aloft in their upraised hands the
symbol of Our Lord. Between them are the mighty signs of the Four
Evangelists, the angel, the lion, the ox, and the eagle. In the key,
as it were, of the arches east and west is a medallion of Our Lord,
and three by three under the arch on either side the eleven Apostles
and S. Paul, who takes the place of Judas instead of Matthias. In the
key of the arches north and south is a medallion of the symbol of
Christ, and three by three under the arch on either side six saints,
the men to the right SS. Damian, Fabian, Sebastian, Chrysanthus,
Chrysologus, and Cassianus; the women to the left SS. Cecilia,
Eugenia, Eufemia, Felicitas, Perpetua, and Daria. Here the SS. Fabian,
Sebastian, and Damian, Dr. Ricci tells us, are altogether
restorations. For the rest, these mosaics have suffered much, both
from restoration, properly so called, and from painting.
The pavement is old and beautiful, as I think are the walls, but the
frescoes, once by Luca Longhi, are most unworthy and out of place. The
recess which now contains the altar might seem not to have made a part
of the original chapel or oratory; it appears it was only in the
eighteenth century that the two were thrown into one. At that time the
mosaics of the Blessed Virgin and of S. Apollinaris and S. Vitalis
were brought here from the old cathedral.
Just outside this wonderful little chapel in the _Arcivescovado_ there
is an apartment devoted to Roman and other remains found from time to
time in Ravenna: a torso of a statue, a work of Roman antiquity,
should be noted, as should certain fragments of a frieze, also an
antique Roman work. Here, too, is preserved the splendid cope of S.
Giovanni Angeloptes who was archbishop from 477 to 494[1] when he
died.
[Footnote 1: Cf. A. Testi Rasponi, _op. cit. supra_.]
In another apartment of the _Arcivescovado_ is preserved a relic of
another great archbishop of Ravenna: the ivory throne of S.
Maximianus. This is a magnificent work of the early part of the sixth
century, and is one of the most splendid works known to us of its
kind. It was made for the cathedral of Ravenna, but in or about the
year 1001 it was carried off by the Venetians and given by doge Pietro
Orseolo II. to the emperor Otto III., who left it to the church of
Ravenna on his death. It is entirely formed of ivory leaves, most of
them carved sumptuously in relief. In front we see the monogram of
_Maximianus Episcopus_ and under it are carvings of S. John Baptist
between the Four Evangelists; all these between elaborately carved
decorative panels. About the throne to right and left is the story of
Joseph in ten panels, and upon the back in the seven panels that
remain[2] the miracles of Our Lord. Altogether it is a work of the
most lovely kind, and certainly Byzantine.
[Footnote 2: Four of those missing, Dr. Ricci tells us, have of late
years been discovered, one in the Naples Museum (1893), one in the
collection of Count Stroganoff (1903), one at Pesaro (1894), and
another in the Archaeological Museum at Milan (1905).]
We shall come upon S. Maximianus again in S. Vitale, where something
must be said of him. He lies, as has already been noted, in one of the
great sarcophagi in the second chapel on the right in the cathedral.
From the _Arcivescovado_ we pass to what is now the most remarkable
building of the group--the Baptistery.
Dr. Ricci tells us that it was originally one of the halls of the
baths that were near the present cathedral. But it was converted into
a baptistery and ornamented with mosaics by the archbishop Neon of
Ravenna (_c_. 449-459) as its inscriptions tell us and is signed with
his monogram. The original floor is three metres below that we see,
and a second floor about a metre and a half above the original floor
has been discovered; this it would seem is that made by Neon, while a
third remains about half a metre under the pavement we use, and upon
this are set the eight columns, with their capitals, two of them
Byzantine and the rest Roman, which uphold the arches of the upper
arcade upon which is set the great drum of the dome. The plan is a
simple octagon, bare brick without, covered with a "tent" roof of
amphorae under the tiles; but within, everywhere encrusted with
glorious marbles and mosaics.
It is to the mosaic of the cupola that we instinctively turn first,
for it is, perhaps, the finest left to us in Ravenna. It is divided
into three parts. In the midst is the Baptism of Our Lord on a gold
ground. Christ stands up to His waist in the clear waters of the
Jordan, the god of which river waits upon Him. S. John high up on the
bank, his staff, topped with a cross, in his hand, pours the water
from a shell upon Our Lord's head while the Dove, an almost heraldic
figure, is seen above About this circular mosaic is set a greater
circle in which we see, upon a blue ground, the twelve Apostles in
procession, each bearing his crown. Nothing left to us of that age is
finer or more gravely splendid than these mosaics, they seem to be the
highest expression of a great art which has known how to reject the
brutal realism of an earlier time and to seize perfectly the secret of
decoration. Nothing of the kind more masterly remains to us in Europe.
Beneath these two circles another is set in which are eight panels,
each of three parts, where are represented eight temples, four of them
with thrones signed with the Cross, and four of them with altars upon
which the book of the Gospel is open.
[Illustration: THE BAPTISTERY AND CAMPANILE OF THE CATHEDRAL]
The whole cupola is borne by the upper arcade, where we see sixteen
figures of the Prophets in stucco. The upper arcade is in its turn
borne by the lower, which is everywhere encrusted with mosaics,
restorations of our own time. The walls are panelled with various
marbles. In the midst of the building is a huge octagonal font with
its _ambo_, and in one of the wall niches is an ancient altar, and in
another a vase of marble.
The effect of all this splendour is even to-day very lovely and
glorious; what it might have been if it had been properly cared for
instead of "restored" we can only guess. Unhappily the "restoration"
has been very radical. Even in the central Baptism, the head and
shoulders and right arm of the figure of the Saviour, the head and
shoulders and right arm, the right leg and foot of the Baptist and the
cross in his his left hand have been destroyed and the whole dimmed
and even spoiled. Such as it is, however, where shall we find its
equal or anything to compare with it?
From the cathedral group we now turn to the other churches which were
built in the time of the old empire in Ravenna for the most part, in
the days, that is, of Galla Placidia and her son Valentinian III.