from restoration they still delight us with their richness and
splendour, and nothing I think can well be finer than their effect,
their decorative effect as a whole. They seem to hang there like some
gorgeous Eastern tapestry of Persian stuff, as Dr. Ricci says, some
unfading and indestructible tapestry of the Orient left by chance or
forgetfulness in the old capital of the West.
We now turn to the apse, which we enter under a second triumphal arch
upon the face of which we see upon the left the city of Hierusalem and
upon the left Bethlehem. A cypress stands at the gate of each, and
between them two angels in flight uphold a discus or aureole having
within it eight rays. Above this again are three windows about which
is spread a gorgeous decoration in mosaic.
Beneath within the tribune of the apse we see Our Lord, "beautiful as
Apollo," enthroned upon the orb of the world, an angel upon either
hand, while to his right stands S. Vitalis to whom He hands a crown,
to His left S. Ecclesius bearing the model of this church in his hand.
Beneath upon either side stand the two great mosaic pictures, the most
marvellous works of the sixth century that have come down to us and
perhaps the most glorious and splendid works of art which that age was
able to achieve, and it is needless to say that there is nothing like
them anywhere in the world.
Upon the left we see the great emperor, perhaps the greatest of all
the Caesars, Justinian, bearing in his hands a golden dish; beside him
stands the archbishop of Ravenna, S. Maximianus. A little behind these
two figures and on either side stand five attendant priests, and on
the extreme left of the picture is a group of soldiers.
[Illustration: Capital from S. Vitale]
In the mosaic upon the right we see the empress Theodora, straight
browed, most gorgeously arrayed, very beautiful and a little sinister,
bearing a golden chalice, attended by her splendid ladies and two
priests. Upon the extreme left of the picture stands a little fountain
before an open doorway hung with a curtain.
What can be said of these gorgeous and astonishingly lovely works?
Nothing. They speak too eloquently for themselves. Not there do we see
the mere realism of Rome, the careful and often too careful
arrangement that Roman art, able to speak but incapable of song,
always gives us. Here we have something at once more gorgeous and more
mysterious and more artistic, a symbolical and hieratic art, the gift
of the Orient, of Byzantium. In the best Roman art of the best period
there is always something of the street, something too close to life,
too mere a transcription and a copy of actual things, a mere imitation
without life of its own. But here is something outside the classical
tradition, outside what imperial Rome with its philistinism and its
puritanism has made of the art of Greece and thrust perhaps for ever
upon Europe. Here we are free from the overwhelming common-place of
Roman art, its mediocrity and respectable endeavour.
It is, however, not in the gorgeous mosaics alone that we find the
delight and originality of S. Vitale. The whole church is amazingly
different from anything else to be seen in Italy, for it is altogether
outside the Roman tradition, an absolutely Byzantine building as well
in its construction as in its decoration. It must be compared with the
later S. Sophia and SS Sergius and Bacchus of Constantinople. These,
however, are works more assured and more gracious than S. Vitale, and
yet in its plan at least S. Vitale is a masterpiece, and altogether
the one great sanctuary of Byzantine art of the time of Justinian that
we have in the West. Every part of it is worthy of the strictest and
most eager attention, from the ambulatory, which was covered in 1902
with old marble slabs and where there are two early Christian
sarcophagi, to the restored Cappella Sancta Sanctorum with its
fifth-century sarcophagus, the tomb of the exarch Isaac, and the lofty
_Matronaeum_, the women's gallery, from which the best view of the
mosaics and the marvellously carved Byzantine capitals may be had. Nor
should the narthex be forgotten, mere skeleton though it be. It is
characteristic of such a church as this, and set as it is obliquely to
it, is original in conception and curious.
When we have finished with S. Vitale it is well to leave Ravenna and
to drive by the lofty road over the marshes to the solitary church of
S. Apollinare in Classe which was built also by Giuliano Argentario
for archbishop Ursicinus (535-538) and was consecrated by archbishop
Maximianus in 549.
Classis, Classe, as we know, was the station or port of the Roman
fleet, established and built by Augustus Caesar. It was doubtless a
great place enjoying the busy and noisy life of a great port and
arsenal and possessed vast barracks for the soldiers and sailors of
the imperial fleet. Later even when disasters had fallen upon that
great civilisation it maintained itself, and from the fifth to the
seventh centuries we hear of its churches, S. Apollinare, S. Severo,
S. Probo, S. Raffaele, S. Agnese, S. Giovanni "ad Titum," S. Sergio
_juxta viridarium_, and the great Basilica Petriana.
It was joined to the city of Ravenna by the long suburb of the Via
Caesarea, much I suppose as the Porto di Lido is joined to Venice by
the Riva or as Rovezzano is joined to Florence by the Via Aretina. Of
all the buildings that together made up the Castello of Classe and the
suburb of Caesarea nothing remains to us but the mighty church of S.
Apollinare and its great and now tottering campanile. For Classe and
Cassarea seem to have been finally destroyed in the long Lombard wars,
either as a precautionary measure by the people of Ravenna and the
imperialists or by the attacking Lombards, while the sea which once
washed the walls of Classe has retreated so far that it is only from
the top of her last watch tower it may now be seen.
Nothing can be more desolate and sad than the miserable road across
the empty country between Ravenna and that lonely church of S.
Apollinare. In summer deep in dust that rises, under the heavy tread
of the great oxen which draw the curiously painted carts of the
countryside, in great clouds into the sky; in winter and after the
autumn rains lost in the white curtain of mist that so often surrounds
Ravenna, it is an almost impassable morass of mud and misery. Even at
its best in spring time it is melancholy and curiously mean without
any beauty or nobility of its own, though it commands so much of those
vast spaces of flat and half desolate country which the sea has
destroyed, on the verge of which stands the lonely church.
One comes to this great basilica always I think as to a ruin, to find
without surprise the doors closed and only to be opened after long
knocking. The round campanile that towers and seems to totter in its
strange dilapidation beside the church is so beautiful that it
surprises one at once by its melancholy nobility in the midst of so
much meanness and desolation. It is a building of the ninth century,
and may well have been used as much as a watch tower as a bell tower.
Till recently it had at its base a sacristy, but this has been swept
away. Of old the church too had before it a great narthex of which
certain ruins are left, among them a little tower on the left.
Within we find ourselves in a vast basilica divided into three naves
upheld by twenty-four marvellous columns of great size and beauty, of
Greek marble, with beautiful Byzantine bases and capitals. The central
nave is closed by a curved apse set high over a great crypt thrust out
beyond the rest of the church. Beyond the two aisles are two chapels
each with its little curved apse. The walls of the church and the
walls above the arcade were undoubtedly originally covered, in the one
case with splendid marbles, in the other with mosaics. The walls of
the church were, however, stripped in 1449 by Sigismondo Malatesta of
Rimini when he was building, or rather encasing, the church of S.
Francesco in Rimini with marbles, and turning what had been a Gothic
church of brick into what we know as the Tempio Malatestiano, by the
hands of Alberti. We know that a great quantity of marble of different
kinds was gathered by Sigismondo from all parts of Italy, not only to
furnish the interior of his _Tempio_, but to cover the exterior also
according to the design of Leon Alberti. Even the sepulchral stones
from the old Franciscan convent of S. Francesco in Rimini were used
and the blocks which the people of Fano had collected for their
church. S. Apollinare in Classe was then in Benedictine hands. With
the consent of the Abate there, very many ancient and valuable marbles
were torn from the walls and carried off by Sigismondo to Rimini; so
many in fact that the people of Ravenna complained to the Venetian
doge Francesco Foscari, saying that Sigismondo had despoiled the
church. The doge, however, seems to have cared nothing about it and
Sigismondo sent to Ravenna and to the Abate two hundred gold florins,
so that both declared themselves satisfied. Then the church passed to
me, these three sheep belong rather to the upper part of the mosaic
which, with the Cross in the midst, bearing the face of Our Lord, and
on either side Moses and Elias, symbolises the Transfiguration. These
three sheep would thus represent S. Peter, S. James and S. John.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE]
[Illustration: CAPITAL FROM S. VITALE]
Beneath between the windows we see represented four Bishops of
Ravenna, S. Ursinus, S. Ursus, S. Severus, and S. Ecclesius. To the
right are the sacrifices of Abel, Melchizedek, and Abraham. To the
left the privileges of the church of Ravenna. In the midst we see an
archbishop and the emperor who hands him a scroll on which is written
_privilegia_. To the left are three priests bearing fire, incense, and
a thurible. To the right are three other figures supporting the
emperor as the three priests support the archbishop. Doubtless this
mosaic records the privileges granted to the church of Ravenna by
Constantinople. The archbishop is probably Reparatus who received so
much from the Emperor Constantinus IV. Two of the figures who attend
the emperor represent Heraclius and Tiberius. This mosaic is the
latest in the church, dating from 668.
Over the arch of the tribune is a medallion bust of the Saviour
holding a book in His left hand and blessing us with His right. Upon
either side are symbols of the four Evangelists in the clouds of the
sky. Beneath we see on either side the cities of Bethlehem and
Hierusalem, from each of which issue six sheep--perhaps the twelve
apostles. Beneath again are two palm trees and again the archangels
Gabriel and Michael and S. Luke and S. Matthew.
These mosaics have often been remade and repaired. When Crowe and
Cavalcaselle examined them before 1860 they found that the whole tunic
of the Moses had been repainted and half the face of the Elias had
been restored. They proceed: "The head of S. Apollinare is in part
damaged, the left hand and lower part of the figure destroyed. The
sheep beside S. Apollinare, but particularly those on the right of
that figure, are almost completely modern. A large part of the left
side of the apsis is repainted, of the four bishops between the
windows of the tribune the head of Ecclesius is preserved, the lower
part repainted. The head of S. Ursinus is a new mosaic, and the lower
half of the figure is restored. In the mosaic of the sacrifice half
the head from the eyes upwards and part of the arms of Abel are
repainted, the legs have become dropsical under repair. The figures of
Abraham and Isaac are almost completely repainted, and the hands and
feet are formless for that reason. This mosaic is repaired in two
different ways with white cubes coloured over and with painted stucco.
In the mosaic representing the tender of privileges the nimbi as
already stated are new, but besides, the lower part of all the figures
is repainted in stucco and the heads are all more or less repaired. Of
the figures in the arch that of the archangel Gabriel is half ruined
and half restored, and part of S. Matthew and S. Luke are new."
Since Crowe and Cavalcaselle wrote a vast restoration has been
undertaken, and this was finished in 1908. It was very carefully
carried out and it is to be believed that the work as we see it is now
secure.
There is much else of interest in the church: the beautiful crypt with
its ancient sarcophagus of S. Apollinare and its columns; the ten
great sarcophagi which stand about the church, three of which contain
the relics of archbishops of Ravenna; the curious tabernacle at the
end of the north aisle. But a whole morning, or for that matter a
whole day, is not too much to spend in this beautiful and deserted
sanctuary which bridges for us so many centuries and in which we are
made one with those who helped to establish the foundations of Europe.
XIV
RAVENNA IN THE MIDDLE AGE
The last great original work to be undertaken in Ravenna as the
capital of the empire in the West was the building and decoration of
the churches of S. Vitale and S. Apollinare in Classe. All the
Byzantine work that was done later in Ravenna is merely imitative, an
expression of failing power under the crushing disaster of the Lombard
invasion. When at last Aistulf in 751 made himself master of the
impregnable city, it ceased, and suddenly, to be a capital, and though
in 754 Pepin "restored" it to the papacy and established the pope
throughout the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, he by that act founded
the Papal States, whose capital of necessity was Rome. Thus Ravenna
found herself when Charlemagne had been crowned emperor in 800 little
more than a decaying provincial city, without authority or hope of
resurrection, and it is as a city of the provinces full only of
gigantic memories that she appears in the Middle Age and the
Renaissance and remains to our own day.
The appearance of Charlemagne, the resurrection of the empire in the
West, confirm and consolidate the misfortune of 751 in which indeed
she lost everything. But when we see the great Frank strip the
imperial palace of its marbles and mosaics it is as though the fate of
Ravenna had been expressed in some great ceremony and not by unworthy
hands. An emperor had set her up so high, an emperor had kept her
there so long; it was an emperor who, as in a last great rite, stript
her of her apparel and left her naked with her memories.
[Illustration: The Campanile of S. Apollinare]
Those memories, not only splendid and glorious, but gaunt and terrible
too, smoulder in her ruined heart as the fire may do in the ashes when
all that was living and glorious has been consumed. Almost nothing as
she became when Charlemagne left her, a mere body still wrapt in
gorgeous raiment stiff with gold, but without a soul, she still dreamt
of dominion, of empire, and of power. Governed by her archbishops, she
rebelled against Rome, struggled for a secular and sometimes a
religious autonomy, and came at last, as surely might have been
prophesied, to consider herself as a feudatory of the Empire, not of
the Church.
But though this struggle might have been foreseen it is futile, it has
no life in it, it is without any real importance, it leads nowhere and
fails to interest us. All that really concerns us in the confused
story of Ravenna from the time of the resurrection of the empire till
our own day are two strange incidents that have nothing fundamentally
to do with her, that befell her by chance; I mean the apparition of
Dante, when we see the most eager mediaeval apologist of the imperial
idea fortunately and rightly find in her a refuge and a tomb; and the
battle of 1512 in which fell Gaston de Foix and which cost the lives
of twelve thousand men and achieved nothing.
Nevertheless Ravenna, for so long the citadel of the empire in the
West, of all the cities of Italy was least likely to forget her origin
or to forsake her memories, and it is both curious and interesting to
watch her entry, little splendid though that entry be, into the
marvellously vital world of the Middle Age in Italy.
The slow re-establishment of Latin power which followed the crowning
of Charlemagne, and which the Church secured by that act, first began
to come to its own with the rise of the bishops to civil power in the
cities of Italy. Now Ravenna had certainly been governed by her
archbishop ever since Pepin in 754 had forced Aistulf to place the
keys of the city upon the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. If
nowhere else in the Cisalpine plain, Latin civilisation and law, then,
never failed in Ravenna, and whatever may have happened elsewhere it
might seem certain that here in Ravenna and probably throughout the
exarchate the curia existed and endured throughout the barbarian
confusion.
This would explain the early and extraordinary development of communal
institutions in Ravenna. And since, one may believe, the Roman legions
were replaced throughout the empire by the religious orders, it is
interesting to know that in the tenth century her Latin energy is
borne witness to by the fact that in 956 she produced S. Romuald of
the Onesti family of Ravenna, who was educated in the Benedictine
monastery of Classe and who founded the Order of Camaldoli, and toward
the end of the same century, in 988, she produced S. Peter Damian, the
brother of the arch-priest of Ravenna, cardinal-bishop of Ostia and
papal legate in Milan.
Nor with the rise of the "spirito italico" everywhere in Italy do we
find Ravenna exhausted. Far from it, she is as ardent as any other
city of the peninsula whatsoever. Only always she is anti-papal, as
though, living in her memories, as she could not but do, and this was
her greatest strength, she remembered her old allegiance to the
emperor and could not forget that when the pope became his heir in
Italy she had fallen from her old eminence. Thus as early as the first
years of the eleventh century her archbishop obtains confirmation from
the emperor of his temporal powers, in which confirmation no
recognition of the sovereignty of the pope appears at all. This act of
allegiance to the emperor was repeated when Barbarossa appeared, and
indeed the archbishops of Ravenna soon became the most eager if not
most the serious supporters of the emperors in all the great plain and
perhaps in all Italy. Ravenna, once the imperial capital, though
fallen was imperial still. She was haunted, haunted by ghosts that
were restless in those marvellous tombs, that litter her churches,
loom out of the grey curtain of mist like a fortress, or shine and
glitter with imperishable colours and are full of memories as
imperishable as themselves.
Yet though it was to her the emperors so often looked for aid and
succour and rest, it was not always so. The present, even with her,
was more than the past. With the great development of communal
institutions which marked especially the twelfth century, compelled
too to face, though never with success, the increasing state of
Venice, which, indeed, and successfully, had usurped her place in the
world and had realised what she had failed to achieve, she was ready
and able in 1198 to place herself at the head of the league of the
cities of the Romagna and the Marches against the imperial power then
both oppressive and feeble; so that pope Innocent III. found it easy
to restore the unforgotten rights of the Holy See there and these were
ratified by Otto IV. and by Frederick II. as the price of papal
support.
It will thus be readily understood that if, at the opening of the
thirteenth century, there was one city in Italy more certain than
another to be at the mercy of the universal quarrel of Guelf and
Ghibelline, that city was Ravenna. In its larger sense that quarrel
was her inheritance. It was the one thought which filled her mind. But
here, as elsewhere, the great quarrel was insoluble or at any rate not
to be solved. It merely bred faction and divided the city against
itself. Guelf and Ghibelline tore Ravenna as they tore Florence and
Siena in pieces.
The two great Ghibelline families were the Ubertini and the Mainardi
and these at first gained the mastery of the city; but in 1218 Pietro
Traversari with the aid of the Mainardi turned the Ubertini out and,
what is more, made himself master.
Pietro Traversari was succeeded as Podesta in 1225 by his son Paolo,
who became Guelf and fought in Innocent IV.'s quarrel against the
emperor Frederick II.; Frederick was able to turn the Traversari out
of Ravenna in 1240 and to hold the city for eight years, but in 1248
the pope retook it and the Traversari were restored though not I think
to the chief power. They remained in power till in the last year of
the reign of Gregory X., 1275, Guido da Polenta appears.
Rudolph of Hapsburg was now king--not emperor, for he was never
crowned by the pope. He had been a partisan of the second Frederick's,
but pope Nicholas III. did not find in the founder of the Hapsburg
dynasty the stuff of the Hohenstaufen. In 1278 he forced Rudolph to
secure to him by an "irrevocable decree" all that the papacy had ever
claimed in the Exarchate and the Pentapolis. The empire renounced all
its claims in the Romagna and the Marches; the confines of the states
of the Church were defined anew, and the cities of which the pope was
absolute lord were named one by one. Of course among these was
Ravenna.
The Polentani appear first in the story of Ravenna in or about the
year 1167, when we find them acting as vicars for the archbishops. We
next hear of them as Podesta, their long rule really beginning, as I
have said, in 1275, when Guido il Vecchio, a rather formidable
soldier, appears as captain of the people and victor over Cervia,
whose territory he added to the dominion of Ravenna. It was indeed
this man who first in the Ravenna of the Middle Ages attempted to
establish an independent or semi-independent state, by adding
territory to territory and thus creating a lordship. For this end he
allied himself with the Malatesta of Rimini--a master stroke, for the
Polentani of Ravenna and the Malatesta of Rimini had long been bitter
foes.
The alliance was cemented by a marriage which all the world knows as
an immortal tragedy. Guido Vecchio had a beautiful daughter,
Francesca. Malatesta had two sons, the elder Giovanni called, for he
was a cripple, _lo Sciancato_, the younger, for he was very fair,
known as Paolo _il Bello_. To secure their alliance Polenta married
his daughter Francesca to Malatesta's elder son Giovanni; but she had
already learned to love, or she soon came to love, his brother Paolo
il Bella. Giovanni came upon them one night in Rimini and killed them
both with one thrust of his sword. The tragedy, however, should only
be told in the immortal words of Dante, who recounts the tale
Francesca told him in the second circle of the Inferno. For seeing
Francesca and her lover floating for ever in each other arms "light
before the wind," as the wind swayed them towards Virgil and himself
the Florentine addressed them: