possess in the world would have compensated us for its loss. For not
only have we here a beautiful interior very largely of the sixth
century, but the great mosaics of the nave which cover the walls above
the arcade under the windows are, I suppose, at once the largest and
the most remarkable works of that time which ever existed. They are
also of an extraordinary and exceptional beauty. They represent upon
both sides, through the whole length of the nave, as it were two long
processions of saints. Upon the Epistle side are the martyrs issuing
out of the city of Ravenna to lay their crowns at the feet of Our Lord
on His throne, guarded by four angels. Upon the Gospel side are the
virgins headed by the three kings, who offer gifts to Our Lord in his
Mother's arms enthroned between four angels. There is nothing in
Christendom to compare with these mosaics. They are unique and, as I
like to think, in their wonderful significance are the key to a
mystery that has for long remained unsolved. For these long
processions of saints, representing that great crowd of witnesses of
which S. Paul speaks, stand there above the arcade and under the
clerestory where in a Gothic church the triforium is set. But the
triforium is the one inexplicable and seemingly useless feature of a
Gothic building. It seems to us, in our ignorance of the mind of the
Middle Age, of what it took for granted, to be there simply for the
sake of beauty, to have no use at all. But what if this church in
Ravenna, the work indeed of a very different school and time, but
springing out of the same spiritual tradition, should hold the key?
What if the triforium of a Gothic church should have been built as it
were for a great crowd of witnesses--the invisible witnesses of the
Everlasting Sacrifice, the sacrifice of Calvary, the sacrifice of the
Mass? It is not only in the presence of the living, devout or half
indifferent, that that great sacrifice is offered through the world,
yesterday, to-day, and for ever, but be sure in the midst of the
chivalry of heaven, a multitude that no man can number, none the less
real because invisible, among whom one day we too are to be numbered.
Not for the living only, but for the whole Church men offer that
sacrifice _pro redemptione animarum suarum, pro spe salutis et
incolumitatis suae. Memento etiam Domine famulorum famularumque tuarum
qui nos praecesserunt cum signo fidei et dormiunt in somno pacis_....
Here in S. Apollinare at any rate for ever they await the renewal of
that moment.
Those marvellous figures that appear in ghostly procession upon the
walls of S. Apollinare here in Ravenna are really indescribable, they
must be seen if the lovely significance of their beauty is to be
understood. What can one say of them?
Upon the Epistle side we see as it were a procession of twenty-five
figures all in white with palms in the right hands and crowns in their
left. They are the martyrs SS. Clement, Sixtus, Laurence, Cyprian,
Paul, Vitalis, Gervasius, Protasius, Hippolytus, Cornelius, Cassianus,
John, Ursinus, Namor, Felix, Apollinaris, Demetrius, Polycarp,
Vincent, Pancras, Chrysogonus, Protus, Jovenius, and Sabinus, and
their names are written in a long line over them; each is aureoled,
and each upon his white robe bears a letter the significance of which
is hidden from us. This procession comes out of the city of Ravenna
which is magnificently represented, occupying indeed a fifth of the
whole length of the mosaic.
In the foreground is the palace of Theodoric, the whole facade of it,
the triple arched peristyle in the midst flanked on either side by two
triple arched loggias, each having a second story of five arches. In
the spandrils of the arches are figures of Victories, and of old in
the tympanum we might have seen Theodoric on horseback. Within, the
arches are hung with curtains. On the extreme right is the great gate
of the palace in the wall of the city, flanked on either side by
towers. In the lunette over the gateway we see three small figures of
Christ with the cross between two Apostles, and within the gate, I
think, a great figure, seated. Over the facade of the palace we look
into the city and see four churches, which Dr. Ricci suggests may be,
on the right, this very church with its baptistery, now destroyed,
together with the church of S. Teodoro (now S. Spirito) and the Arian
baptistery: they are altogether Byzantine in type. Out of this city
come the martyrs; there are twenty-five of them all in white, as I
have said, and they are led by S. Martin Confessor, who bears of
course no palm, is robed in purple, and bears his crown in both his
hands. He leads the procession along a way strewn with flowers to the
throne where Christ sits guarded by four angels.
Above this great scene, between the windows, above each of which there
is an ornamental mosaic, we see sixteen figures of Prophets or perhaps
Fathers. Over these are twenty-seven compartments each filled with a
mosaic. Those over the heads of the prophets are, except in the case
of him who stands, at each end, last but one, filled with a sort of
recessed throne in mosaic, over which in each case are set two doors.
But the eleven compartments over the windows and the two over the two
figures last but one at either end are filled with thirteen scenes
from the New Testament, beginning on the left as follows: (1) The Last
Supper, (2) The Agony in the Garden, (3) The Kiss of Judas, (4) Christ
taken, (5) Christ before the High Priest, (6) Christ before Herod, (7)
The Denial of Peter, (8) Judas trying to restore the money to the
priests, (9) Christ before Pilate, (10) The Via Crucis, (n) The Maries
at the Sepulchre, (12) The way to Emmaus, (13) The Incredulity of S.
Thomas.
Turning now to the Gospel side of the church, we find a similar
procession over the arcade, but of twenty-one virgin martyrs bearing
palms and crowns richly dressed with precious ornaments and jewels.
They bear the following names: SS. Pelagia, Agatha, Eulalia, Cecilia,
Lucia, Crispina, Valeria, Vincentia, Agnes with her lamb, Perpetua,
Felicitas, Justina, Anastasia, Daria, Paulina, Victoria, Anatolia,
Christina, Savona, Eugenia. They issue out of the towered gate of the
Castello of Classis, whose wall stretches before us to the great sea
gate through which we look upon the port with three ships on the
water, one of which is sailing in or out. Within the castello over the
wall of it we see buildings of a distinctly Roman type.
The procession of virgins which issues forth from this castello is led
by S Eufemia, who does not bear a palm, but carries her crown in her
two hands. Before her go the three Magi, Balthassar, Melchior, and
Caspar, bearing their gold, frankincense, and myrrh under the palms of
the long way, guided by the star to where Madonna sits enthroned with
her little Son between four angels.
Above between the windows, as on the Epistle side, are sixteen figures
in mosaic of the Prophets or Fathers; and over them again, as before,
are thirteen scenes from the life of Our Lord: (1) The Healing of the
cripple at Capernaum, (2) The Herd of Swine, (3) The Healing of the
paralytic who was let down in a bed to Jesus, (4) The Parable of the
sheep and the goats, (5) The Widow's mite, (6) The Pharisee and the
Publican, (7) The Raising of Lazarus, (8) The Woman of Samaria at the
well, (9) The Healing of the woman with an issue of blood, (10) The
Healing of the two blind men, (11) The Miraculous draught of fishes,
(12) The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, (13) The Water turned into
Wine.
And what are we to say of these marvellous things? This first of all,
that for the most part they are not of the time of Theodoric, but
rather of that S. Agnellus who consecrated the church for Catholic
use. This is not to deny that there were always in the church mosaics
occupying the place which these we see fill; on the contrary. But the
processions of the martyrs and of the virgins with the three Magi are
certainly Catholic works, and of the middle or end of the sixth
century; they obviously took the place of certain mosaics perhaps full
of Arian doctrines which then stood there. On the other hand, the
castello of Classis, the Christ enthroned with angels, the Virgin
enthroned with angels, the Prophets or Fathers, and the scenes of Our
Lord's life and teaching, above them, are of Theodoric's time. The
city of Ravenna I am perhaps alone in attributing to the later period.
Dr. Ricci--and he is of course an almost infallible
authority--attributes it to the time of Theodoric. It does not seem to
me to be so. All this, however, must be understood to refer to such
parts of these mosaics as have not suffered restoration, which,
however, has not often been as drastic as that which has befallen the
figures of the Magi; of which the upper parts are new, as are the
figures of the two outer angels.
We have here then under our eyes the two schools of mosaics, that of
Rome and that of Constantinople. It is easy to see that the Roman
work, the original work that is, is more classical and realistic than
the rich and glorious figures of the processions; but it is not
decoratively so successful. Indeed I know of nothing anywhere that is
more artistically, dramatically, and as it were liturgically
satisfying than these long processions on either side of S. Apollinare
Nuovo.
Little else remains in the church worth notice except an ancient ambo
under the arcade in the nave and the chapel of the Relics at the top
of the left aisle. This was largely built of ancient fragments in the
sixteenth century. We see there two beautiful alabaster columns with
capitals of serpentine with two small columns of verde antico also
with ancient capitals. The screen is Byzantine. The walls are
ornamented with bas-reliefs and paintings, but above all these we see
there a marvellous portrait in mosaic of the emperor Justinian as an
old man, unhappily restored in 1863. The altar is ancient and above it
is a marble coffer with Renaissance ornaments, upheld by four columns
of porphyry, having two Byzantine and two Roman capitals. On the
Epistle side of the altar here is a marble chair--a Roman thing.
From that splendid and well-preserved church we pass to that of the
Spirito Santo. Unhappily this once glorious building has suffered as
much as any church left to us in Ravenna, for it was almost entirely
rebuilt in 1543 when the portico we see was added to it, and in 1627
was restored and adorned, as it was in 1854 and 1896. That it was
founded and built by the Goths and reconciled later for Catholic use
appears in Agnellus' life of the archbishop S. Agnellus, where we read
that of old the Arian Episcopio stood near by, together with a bath
and a _monastero_ of S. Apollinare. What the _monastero_ may have been
we do not know, but the bath was perhaps the Arian baptistery known as
S. Maria in Cosmedin.
The church of the Spirito Santo was not in Arian times known under
that dedication, but was called of S. Theodore. It owes the pleasing
portico it now possesses, as I have said, to the sixteenth century,
but that portico is itself largely constructed of old materials, being
upheld by eight antique columns, of which six are of Greek marble.
These originally supported the baldacchino over the high altar.
Within, the church is divided into three naves by fourteen columns,
thirteen of which are of bigio antico, and the other, the last on the
Epistle side towards the altar, of a rare and curious marble known as
verde sanguigno. The capitals are of Theodoric's time, late Roman
work.
Very little remains in the church that is of any interest to us. In
the sacristy, however, we may see in the present lavabo some fragments
of the ancient ciborio. And in the nave at the western end on the
Gospel side is an ancient sarcophagus of Greek marble which was carved
in the Renaissance and in the seventeenth century became the sepulchre
of one of the Pasolini family. In the first chapel on this side of the
church is the ancient _ambone_ removed from the nave in the sixteenth
century, and in the second are two columns of pavonazzetto marble.
Something better is to be had in the utterly desolate baptistery close
by known as S. Maria in Cosmedin. This was originally, as we may
think, the ancient bath of which Agnellus speaks, and it was converted
into a baptistery by the Arians, and later consecrated for Catholic
uses under the title of S. Maria in Cosmedin and used as an oratory.
It is an octagonal building whose walls support a cupola which is
covered with mosaics in circles like that of the original baptistery
of the city. In the midst we see Christ almost a youth standing naked
in Jordan immersed to his waist. Upon His left, S. John stands upon a
rock, his staff in his left hand, while his right rests upon the head
of Our Lord. Opposite to him sits enthroned the old god of Jordan, a
reed in his hand, listening, perhaps, to the words of the Father:
"This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Over Christ's head
the Dove is displayed in the golden heaven.
About the central mosaic is set a band of palm leaves, while on the
outer circle we see the twelve Apostles very much like the martyrs of
S. Apollinare standing dressed in white, their crowns in their hands
between palms. Only S. Peter and another, perhaps S. John or S. Paul,
do not bear crowns, but S. Peter his keys and the other a book.
Between them is set a throne on which stands a jewelled cross.
It is exceedingly difficult to say when these mosaics were executed,
for they have been so entirely restored that very little of the
original work is left to us. They are certainly very early for work of
the Catholic restoration; and yet they remind one strongly of the
processions of S. Apollinare Nuovo. If as a whole the design of these
mosaics is of the time of the archbishop S. Agnellus, it is curious
that the subject of the Baptism should have been used for a church
which by his act had ceased to be a baptistery. The most reasonable
hypothesis would seem to be that the design and choice of subject is
in the main due to the Arians; that the central disc remains late work
of their time in so far as it is original at all. While the apostles
may be in the main the work of the Catholic restoration.
Theodoric was, as these works serve to show, a great builder of
churches in his capital. Not all of them have remained to our day. Dr.
Ricci has thought that we see something of one of them in the Portico
Antico of the Piazza Maggiore where there are eight columns of granite
upon the left of the Palazzo del Comune with late Roman capitals, four
of which have the monogram of the Gothic king. The church of S.
Andrea,[1] according to Dr Ricci, stood by the city wall, near where
the Venetians in the fifteenth century built their Rocca, destroying
the church to make room for it. Dr. Ricci suggests that when they
began to construct the Portico of the Piazza they used, as indeed they
more than any other people were wont to do, the material of the
demolished church in their new building and among it these great
columns with their Roman capitals and strange monograms.
[Footnote 1: S. Andrea was, according to Rasponi, _op. cit. ut supra_,
the same as the chapel of the Arcivescovado called S, Pier Crisologo.]
But astonishing though these churches are which Theodoric built by the
art and hands of the Italians during the generation of his rule in
Ravenna, they would not impress us with the strength and importance of
his personality and government, as undoubtedly they do, if we had not
in his mausoleum perhaps the most impressive late Roman building left
to us practically intact in all Italy, a thing which, quite as much as
the mightier tomb of Hadrian, assures us of the enormous vitality of
Roman civilisation, its weight, endurance, and unfailing continuance
through every sort of disaster and misgovernment.
This mighty monument is situated upon the north-east of the city,
perhaps upon the old Roman road the Via Popilia. That it was built by
Theodoric himself might seem certain. For though it has been said that
it was erected by Amalasuntha the Anonymus Valesii tells us that
Theodoric built it before he died. "While yet he lived he made a
monument of squared stone, a work of marvellous greatness, covered
with a single stone." It is perhaps of little consequence to whom we
owe this mighty tomb, for it is absolutely, and in any case, Roman
work, and might seem to have been modelled upon the far larger and
more tremendous mausoleum of Hadrian.[1]
[Footnote 1: Choisy points out that the mausoleum of Theodoric has
stylistic affinities with Syrian work, and Strzygowski, who reminds us
that several bishops of Ravenna were Syrians, thinks that Ravenna in
much derived from Syria especially from Antioch.]
The mausoleum is built in two stories of block after block of hewn and
squared stone. The lower of the two stories is decagonal and has in
every side a vast archway or niche, one of which forms the gateway.
Within we find a huge cruciform chamber lighted by six square
openings. The upper story, now reached by two stairways, built with
ancient materials in 1774, is circular, having about it eighteen blind
arches and over it a vast circular roof hewn out of a single block of
Istrian stone that weighs, it is said, two hundred tons. It may be
that this upper story, smaller as it is than the lower, was of old
surrounded by a colonnade, and it may be that the twelve projections
upon the vast monolith of the roof once upheld statutes of the twelve
Apostles. We do not know.[1]
[Footnote 1: On the other hand, these projections are thought by many
to have been used as rings for the ropes by which the roof was hauled
up an inclined bank of earth into place They each bear the name of an
Apostle, and are similar to the small abutting arches round the dome
of S. Sophia at Salonica]
Here in this mighty tomb, which is known in Ravenna as _La Rotonda_,
abandoned now in an unkempt garden, Theodoric, who expected to found a
line of kings who would one day lie beside him; as long as he lay
there at all, lay there alone. Not for long, however, did he enjoy
that solitude. Already, when Agnellus wrote his _Liber Pontificalis_,
the tomb was empty. He tells us that the porphyry urn, which had
served as sepulchre for the Gothic king, then stood at the door of the
Benedictine monastery close by, and that it was empty. And it seemed
to him, he says, that the body of the king had been thrown out of the
mausoleum because a heretic and a barbarian, as we may suppose, was
not worthy of it. At any rate the body of Theodoric was no longer in
the mausoleum in the beginning of the ninth century, and it is certain
that it had been ejected thence many years before. In the year 1854 a
gang of navvies who were excavating a dock between the railway station
and the Corsini Canal, some two hundred yards perhaps from the
mausoleum, and on the site of an old cemetery, came upon a skeleton
"armed with a golden cuirass, a sword by its side, and a golden helmet
upon its head. In the hilt of the sword and in the helmet large jewels
were blazing." Most of this booty they disposed of, but a few pieces
were recovered and these are now in the Museo. It might seem that this
can have been none other than the body of the great Gothic king.
Indeed Dr. Ricci finds the ornament upon the armour to be similar to
the decoration upon the cornice of the mausoleum. If this be so it
puts the matter almost beyond doubt.
Theodoric was not allowed to rest in the mighty tomb that Latin genius
had built for him; but for ages many, famous and distinguished in
their day, sought to lie under a monument so splendid. The place
became a sort of pantheon. Long before then, however, it had been
consecrated as a church, S. Maria della Rotonda, and a Benedictine
monastery had been founded close by whose monks served it. To-day that
monastery has utterly disappeared, and there are no signs of a church
in the _Rotonda_. Only the mausoleum remains in a tangled garden, far
from any road, empty and deserted.
XIII
THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES
S. VITALE AND S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE
When Belisarius entered Ravenna in 540, he apparently found more than
one new building begun but not finished; of these the chief was the
church of S. Vitale. This magnificent octagonal building with its
narthex and atrium had, according to Agnellus, been founded by the
Archbishop S. Ecclesius, that is to say, between 521 and 534. It was
apparently finished and decorated later by Julius Argentarius, and was
consecrated by the archbishop S. Maximianus in 547. In plan it
resembles very closely the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus in
Constantinople built by Justinian about 527. As we know both Justinian
and Theodora, his empress, contributed largely to the perfecting of S.
Vitale, which remains certainly his most glorious monument in the
West.
The plan of the church, as I have said, is octagonal, surmounted by a
dome octagonal without but circular within. From one of these eight
sides the sanctuary is thrust out, flanked on either side by a
circular chapel with a rectangular presbytery. Standing obliquely
across one of the two angles of the octagon, directly opposite this
sanctuary, stretched the narthex flanked by circular towers. The great
octagon is divided into two stories, each of which has three windows
upon each of the eight sides, the octagonal dome being lighted by
eight single windows.
[Illustration: S. VITALE]
Within the great octagon formed by the walls is a smaller octagon
formed by an arcade of mighty piers which upholds the cupola. This
arcade contains a double loggia which thus runs round the whole church
with the exception of the presbytery, where it ends in lofty tribunes.
It is upheld between the piers by columns of precious marble having
capitals of the most marvellous beauty.
The space within this inner octagon is covered with a pavement laid
down in the sixteenth century, consisting of all sorts of fragments of
mosaics and marbles which that century destroyed. The upper loggia was
of old the _gyneceo_, the place of the women. Nothing I think left to
us in the world is more sumptuous and gorgeous than this interior.
Everywhere are glittering mosaics, precious slabs of marble, priceless
columns of beautiful marble. And where the mosaics have been destroyed
or left unfinished, as in the cupola and the body of the church,
baroque artists have filled the place with their paintings, paintings
which in their own style are matchless and which it is now foolishly
proposed should be destroyed.[1]
[Footnote 1: We know nothing of any mosaics other than those in the
presbytery and the tribunes, it may be that the church was covered
with mosaic or was painted by the Byzantine artists, and this as well
where the marble slabs now cover the piers as elsewhere. If so it must
have been glorious indeed. Nothing that we can do can restore this
work to us, and we achieve nothing but destruction by destroying the
work that is now there.]
In our examination of the church we turn first to the presbytery,
which is entirely encrusted with most precious marbles and mosaics. In
the midst of it stands the altar consisting of slabs of
semi-transparent alabaster, within which of old lights were set. The
marvellously lovely piece which serves for the altar stone itself is
supported by four columns, and that piece which serves for frontal is
carved with a great cross between two sheep. This altar had long
disappeared, but piece by piece it was recovered; the beautiful altar
stone itself was found behind an altar in a chapel now destroyed in
this church, and was re-erected as we see it in 1899.
[Illustration: Colour Plate S. VITALE: THE PRESBYTERY]
In the same chapel stood till then the beautiful low fretted screens
that now are set across the apse behind the altar, where indeed they
remained till 1700, according to Dr. Ricci. The lower part of the apse
and the piers of the presbytery have been covered with fine marbles,
some of which are ancient, but the vault, the lunettes, and the walls
are entirely encrusted with gorgeous mosaics.
The presbytery is approached from the inner octagon of the church
under a triumphal arch. In the curve of this we see amid much
decorative ornament fifteen circular discs containing the head of Our
Lord, the twelve Apostles, S. Gervasius, and S. Protasius. Beneath
these are two monuments variously formed, Dr. Ricci tells us, in the
sixteenth century. The four columns which they contain originally
supported the baldacchino over the high altar here; three of them are
of verde antico. Framed by these columns are two Roman reliefs from a
frieze originally in the Temple of Neptune, other parts of which are
in the Sala Lapidaria in the Arcivescovado here, in the Louvre, in the
Uffizi, in the Castello of Milan, and in the Museo Archeologico at
Venice. They are indubitably of course the oldest things in the
church.
Within this triumphal arch upon either side rise the tribunes in which
the upper loggia of the church itself comes to an end. These tribunes,
which are exceedingly beautiful, consist of two triple arches, one
above the other on either side, and the columns which support them,
with their marvellous capitals, are I suppose among the most glorious
left in Christendom. The arches themselves and the lunettes upon
either side are encrusted with mosaics. In the lunette upon the right
on either side an altar gorgeously draped, Abel offers to God the
firstling of his flock and Melchizedek Bread and Wine. Upon the face
of the arch we see Moses tending the sheep of Jethro, Moses upon Mount
Hebron, and Moses before the burning bush. In the lunette upon the
left we have the sacrifice of Abraham of his only son, and the visit
of the three angels to Abraham and Sara. Upon the face of the arch we
see Jeremiah the Prophet and Moses upon Mount Sinai. Above, upon the
balustrades, as it were, of the upper loggia we see angels upholding a
circle in which is the sign of the Cross, and above again upon the
face of the arches on either side the four Evangelists and their
symbols. The vault is entirely covered with ornaments in mosaic, amid
which three angels rise and support with uplifted hands the central
disc in which is represented the Agnus Dei.