correspondence, and they help us to see the men who surrounded the
poet in Ravenna. They do not, however, give us so extraordinary an
impression of the strength and keenness of Dante's powers of
observation as many a passage in the _Divine Comedy_ in which Ravenna
and the rude and fierce world of the Romagna of that day live for
ever. It is in answer to the inquiries of the great _Guido of
Montefeltro_ that Dante speaks of Romagna in the _Inferno_. Feeble and
anaemic though the great lines become in any translation, even so all
their virtue is not lost:
"Never was thy Romagna without war
In her proud tyrants' bosoms, nor is now;
But open war there left I none. The state
Ravenna hath maintained this many a year
Is steadfast. There Polenta's eagle[1] broods,
And in his broad circumference of plume
O'ershadows Cervia[2]. The green talons[3] grasp
The land, that stood e'erwhile the proof so long
And piled in bloody heap the host of France.
The old mastiff of Verrucchio and the young[4]
That tore Montagna[5] in their wrath still make
Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs,
Lamone's[6] city and Santerno's[7] range
Under the lion of the snowy lair[8],
Inconstant partisan, that changeth sides
Or ever summer yields to winter's frost.
And she whose flank is washed of Savio's wave[9]
As 'twixt the level and the steep she lies,
Lives so 'twixt tyrant power and liberty."
[Footnote 1: The coat of the Polenta.]
[Footnote 2: Cervia, the least secure of the Polenta possessions.]
[Footnote 3: The green lion of the Ordelaffi of Forli.]
[Footnote 4: Malatesta and Malatestino, lords of Rimini, deriving from
Verrucchio, a castle in the hills.]
[Footnote 5: The Malatesta were Guelfs, Montagna de' Parcitati, whom
they murdered, was the leader of the Ghibelline party in Rimini.]
[Footnote 6: Faenza.]
[Footnote 7: Imola.]
[Footnote 8: Maghinardo Pagano, whose arms were a blue lion in a white
field.]
[Footnote 9: Cesena.]
All Romagna with its untamable fierceness and confusion lies in these
lines which, as Dante wrote them, seem as unalterable as those in
which the creation of the world is described.
Nor is Dante forgetful of the great destiny that had been Ravenna's.
In the sixth canto of the _Paradiso_ it is Justinian himself, "_Cesare
fui e son Giustiniano_" who recounts to Dante the victories of the
Roman eagle:
"When from Ravenna it came forth and leap'd
The Rubicon,"
or when
"with Belisarius
Heaven's high hand was linked,"
or when
"The Lombard tooth with fang impure
Did gore the bosom of the Holy Church
Under its wings, victorious, Charlemagne
Sped to her rescue."
Nor is Dante forgetful of Ravenna's other claims to glory. In the
seventh heaven, which is the planet Saturn, led by Beatrice, he finds
S. Romualdo, and speaks of S. Peter Damiano, and blessed Peter _Il
Peccatore_, the founder of the church of S. Maria in Porto fuori, two
of them of the Onesti house of Ravenna.
"In that place was I Peter Damiano
And Peter the sinner dwelt in the house
Of our blest Lady on the Adriatic shore."
Of the earlier Podesta, too, he is not unmindful:
"Arrigo Mainardi, Pier Traversaro,...
Wonder not, Tuscan, if thou seest me weep
When I recall those once loved names ...
With Traversaro's house and Anastagio's,
Each race disinherited."
With the pitiful story of Francesca da Polenta we have seen how he
dealt and how he spoke of Guido Vecchio. These people live because of
him, and Ravenna in the Middle Age still holds our interest and our
love because he dwelt there and she harboured him.
It was in her service, too, he met his death as we have seen, and in
her church of the Friars Minor that he was laid to rest by Guido
Novello.
Nine months later the lord of Ravenna received the first complete copy
of the _Divina Commedia_, made by Jacopo Alighieri from his father's
autograph. A very curious incident is related by Boccaccio in
connection with this. It was Dante's custom, Boccaccio tell us,
"whenever he had done six or eight cantos, more or less, to send them
from whatever place he was in before any other had seen them to Messer
Cane della Scala, whom he held in reverence above all other men; and
when he had seen them, Dante gave access to them to whoso desired. And
having sent to him in this fashion all save the last thirteen cantos,
which he had finished, but had not yet sent him, it came to pass that,
without bearing it in his mind that he was abandoning them, he died.
And when they who were left behind, children and disciples, had
searched many times, in the course of many months, amongst all his
papers, if haply he had composed a conclusion to his work, and could
by no means find the remaining cantos; and when every admirer of his
in general was enraged that God had not at least lent him to the world
so long that he might have had opportunity to finish what little
remained of his work; they had abandoned further search in despair
since they could by no means find them.
[Illustration: DANTE'S TOMB]
"So Jacopo and Piero, sons of Dante, both of them poets in rhyme,
moved thereto by certain of their friends, had taken it into their
minds to attempt to supplement the parental work, as far as in them
lay, that it might not remain imperfect, when to Jacopo, who was far
more zealous than the other in this work, there appeared a wondrous
vision, which not only checked his foolish presumption but showed him
where were the thirteen cantos which were wanting to this Divine
Comedy and which they had not known where to find. A worthy man of
Ravenna whose name was Piero Giardino, long time a disciple of
Dante's, related how, when eight months had passed after the death of
his master, the aforesaid Jacopo came to him one night near to the
hour that we call matins, and told him that that same night a little
before that hour he, in his sleep, had seen his father, Dante,
approach him, clad in whitest garment, and his face shining with an
unwonted light; whom he seemed to ask if he were yet living, and to
hear in reply that he was, but in the true life, not in ours. Whereon
he seemed further to ask him if he had finished his work or ever he
passed to that true life; and if he had finished it, where was the
missing part, which they had never been able to find. To this he
seemed to hear again in answer, 'Yea! I finished it.' Whereon it
seemed that he took him by the hand and led him to that chamber where
he was wont to sleep when he was living in this life; and touching a
certain spot said, 'Here is that which ye so long have sought.' And no
sooner was uttered that word than it seemed that both Dante and sleep
departed from him at the same moment. Wherefore he averred that he
could not hold but come and signify what he had seen, that they might
go together and search in the place indicated to him, which he held
most perfectly stamped in his memory, to see whether a true spirit or
a false delusion had shown it him. Wherefore since a great piece of
the night still remained, they departed together and went to the place
indicated, and there found a mat fixed to the wall, which they lightly
raised and found a recess in the wall which neither of them had ever
seen, nor knew that it was there; and there they found certain
writings all mouldy with the damp of the wall and ready to rot had
they stayed there much longer; and when they had carefully removed the
mould and read, they saw that they contained the thirteen cantos so
long sought by them. Wherefore, in great joy, they copied them out,
and after the author's wont sent them first to Messer Cane and then
joined them on, as was meet, to the imperfect work. In such a manner
did the work of so many years see its completion."
As Boccaccio tells us, Guido Novello had scarce buried Dante in that
temporary tomb in the church of the Friars Minor when he lost his
lordship. On April 1, 1322, he was elected captain of the people in
Bologna, and when he was about to return to Ravenna he suddenly heard
that the archbishop had been murdered and that the city was in the
hands of his enemies. Do what he would he never returned to his own
city, and thus his intentions with regard to the tomb of the poet were
never carried out. The noble sepulchre which Guido had planned was not
built and the body of Dante reposed in the ancient sarcophagus in
which it had been first placed. There it remained when Boccaccio came
to Ravenna, probably in 1346 and certainly in 1350, as the bearer of a
gift from the Or San Michele Society to Beatrice di Dante, then a nun
in S. Stefano dell' Uliva.
Boccaccio, it will be remembered, had in his life of Dante bitterly
upbraided Florence for her treatment of her greatest son, and to his
blame had added a prophecy that she would soon repent of her shameful
ingratitude and would envy Ravenna "the body of him whose works have
held the admiration of the whole world." This prophecy fulfilled
itself many times and first in 1396. In that year, upon December 22,
Florence made the first of her many demands for the body of Dante,
which she now wished to bury in S. Maria del Fiore. The demand, as
Boccaccio had foreseen, was refused. It was repeated in 1429 and again
refused. By 1476, when her next attempt was made, Ravenna had passed
into the power of the Venetian Republic. It was therefore to Venice
that Florence now turned through the Venetian ambassador, who is said
to have been none other than Bernardo Bembo.
Bembo's request on behalf of Florence was, of course, a failure, but
he seems to have himself repaired the tomb and to have placed upon it
an epitaph.
"Exigua tumuli Dantes hic sorte jacebas
Squallenti nulli cognite pene situ.
At nunc marmoreo subnixus conderis arcu
Omnibus et cultu splendidiore nites
Nimirum Bembus musis incensus ethruscis
Hoc tibi quem in primis hoc coluere dedit.
Ann Sal. mcccclxxxiii. vi. Kal. Jvn.
Bernardus Bemb. Praet. aere suo Posuit."
His work of reparation and of adornment was carried out by Pietro
Lombardo who was already at work in Ravenna for the Venetian republic,
the sculptured effigy of Dante in relief being also from his hand.
But Florence was by no means at the end of her resources. In 1509
Ravenna had passed into the hands of the pope. In 1519 Leo X., a
Medici, being on the throne of Peter, the Accademia Medicea of
Florence petitioned the pope (among the signatories of the petition
was Michelangelo, who offered to "make a worthy sepulchre for the
divine poet in an honoured place" in Florence), to be allowed to carry
away the bones of Dante from Ravenna to the City of Flowers. The pope
gave the Florentine envoys the permission they required as was
expected. They proceeded to Ravenna and opened the sarcophagus; but
when they lifted the lid, they found it empty, save for "a fragment of
bone and a few withered leaves of the laurel which had adorned the
poet's head." From that time till our own day the resting place of
Dante's bones has been a complete mystery.
It is recorded that in the middle of the seventeenth century the
Franciscans rebuilt and repaired the so-called chapel of Braccioforte
at S. Francesco, which till then had been joined by a portico to the
tomb of Dante. In 1658 this portico among other alterations was
removed, and the exterior of the tomb itself was reconstructed with an
entrance into the Piazza, as we see it. The interior of the tomb was,
however, left in some confusion so that the papal legate determined
himself to repair it. In this he met with much opposition from the
friars who claimed, as of old, jurisdiction over the sepulchre.
Nevertheless he completed the work, and in 1692 placed the following
upon the tomb:
Exulem a Florentia Dantem Liberalissime
Excepit Ravenna.
Vivo fruens Mortuum colens
Magnis cineribus licet in parvo magnifici parentarunt
Polentani Principes erigendo
Bembus Praetor Luculentissime extruendo
Praetiosum Musis et Apollini Mausoleum
Quod injuria temporum pene squallens
E. mo Dominico Maria Cursio Legato
Joanne Salviato Prolegato
Magni civis cineres Patriae reconciliare
Cultus perpetuitate curantibus
S. P. Q. R.
Jure Ac Aere suo
Tanquam Thesaurum suum munivit
Instauravit ornavit
A.D. MDCXCII.
Outside the tomb he placed his coat-of-arms, and on either side that
of the legate of the province and that of the Franciscan Order. In
1760 the third restoration was undertaken and the tomb assumed the
form we now see and was given yet another inscription:
Danti Aleghiero
Poetae sui temporis primo
Restitutori
Politioris humanitatis
Guido et Hostasius Polentiani
clienti et hospiti peregre defuncto
monumentum fecerunt
Bernardus Bembus Praetor Venet. Ravenn.
Pro meritis eius ornatu excoluit.
Aloysius Valentius Gonzaga Card.
Leg. prov. Aemil.
Superiorum Temporum negligentia corruptum
Operibus ampliatis
Munificentia sua restituendum
curavit
Anno M DCC LXXX.
At the same time the tomb was opened again and was found to be empty.
In spite of this fact in 1864 the municipal authorities in Florence
wrote to Ravenna again demanding the body of the poet, only to be
again refused. This, however, was the sixth centenary of Dante's birth
and the sarcophagus was again to be opened to "verify the remains."
The workmen were indeed at work upon some necessary repairs and
draining, when it was found that a part of the wall of the
Braccioforte chapel would have to be removed. In setting to work upon
this--little more than the removal of a few stones--the pickaxe of one
of the workmen struck against wood, and presently a wooden box
appeared which partly fell to pieces, revealing a human skeleton.
Within the box was found this inscription:
Dantis ossa
Denuper revisa die 3 Junu
1677
Dantis ossa
A me Fre Antonio Santi
hic posita
Ano 1677 die 18 Octobris
Medical experts were summoned. They made, Miss Phillimore tells us, "a
careful examination of the bones, and proceeded to reconstruct the
skeleton.... The stature answered to that of the poet as nearly as the
measurement of a skeleton can represent the living form, and the skull
found in the chest corresponded exactly with the mask taken from
Dante's face immediately after his death, which was brought from
Florence for the purpose of making this comparison."
What seems to have happened has been made clear for us by Dr. Ricci.
Between 1483, when Bembo reconstructed the tomb, and 1520, when the
Florentines again claimed the body, and for the first time with a
certainty of success, the body of Dante disappeared. It seems that in
1520 the Franciscans entered the mausoleum, abstracted the body, and
hid it to save it for Ravenna. In June 1677 Fra Antonio visited the
bones in their hiding place and verified them. In October of the same
year they were built into the new wall where the old entrance to the
Braccioforte chapel had been; to be discovered by chance in 1865.
It is curious that even as the last cantos of the _Divine Comedy_ were
discovered by means of a dream, so a dream went before the discovery
of the bones of Dante.
"The sacristan of the Franciscan confraternity," we read, "called La
Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of
the ancient chapel of Braccioforte." His name was Angelo Grillo ...
This sacristan declared himself to have seen in a dream a shade issue
from the spot where the body was found, clad in red, that it passed
through the chapel into the adjoining cemetery. It approached him, and
on being asked who it was, replied, 'I am Dante.' The sacristan died
in May 1865, a few days before the discovery of the bones on the 27th
of that month. Upon June 26, 1865, the bones of Dante were replaced in
their original sarcophagus, ornamented by Pietro Lombardi, after
having lain in state for three days, during which thousands from all
over Italy passed before them. There it is to be hoped they will
remain.
[Illustration: CAMPANILE OF S. FRANCESCO]
XVI
MEDIAEVAL RAVENNA
THE CHURCHES
When we come to examine what is left to us of mediaeval Ravenna, of
the buildings which were erected there during the Middle Age, we shall
find, as we might expect, very little that is either great or
splendid, for, as we have seen, after the first year of the ninth
century Ravenna fell from her great position and became nothing more
than a provincial city, perhaps more inaccessible than any other in
the peninsula. Her achievement such as it was in the earlier mediaeval
period consisted in the production of three men of real importance, S.
Romuald of the Onesti family of Ravenna, who was born in the city
about the year 956 and who founded, as we know, the Order of
Camaldoli; S. Peter Damian, who was born there about 988; and Blessed
Peter of Ravenna, Pietro degli Onesti, called _Il Peccatore_, of the
same stock as S. Romuald.
The work of S. Romuald was a reform of the Benedictine Order. The
Order of Camaldoli which he founded was the second reform which had
come out of the great brotherhood of S. Benedict; it was younger than
the Cluniac but older than the Cistercian reform, and it was begun in
1012. In that year S. Romuald, who was a Benedictine abbot, having
been dismissed by all the houses over which he had successively ruled,
for they would not bear the penitential strictness of his government,
founded a hermitage at Camaldoli above the upper valley of the Arno
called the Casentino. There each monk lived in a separate dwelling,
all being enclosed in a great wall some five hundred and thirty yards
about, beyond which the monks were forbidden to go. They followed the
Rule of S. Benedict, kept two Lents in the year, and never tasted
meat. They had, of course, a church in common where they were bound to
recite the divine office, for this is of the essence of the Rule of S.
Benedict, but certain among them--and this is the essence of the
reform of Camaldoli--never quitted their cells, their food being
brought to them in their huts, where, if the lecluse were a priest, he
said his Mass, assisted by some one close by but not in the same room.
Thus we see the monks and the hermits living side by side, but
scarcely together, and so they continued from the year 1012 till our
own day, which has seen the great Camaldoli suppressed. The device of
the order was a cup or chalice out of which two doves drank,
representing thus the two classes of hermits and monks, the
contemplative and the active life.
[Illustration: Colour Plate S. MARIA IN PORTO]
The second great Ravennese of the Middle Age, S. Peter Damian, who was
born about 988 in Ravenna, of a good but at that time poor family, was
the youngest of many children. He was early left an orphan, and living
in his brother's house was treated, it would appear, rather as a beast
than a man. Presently, however, another brother, then archpriest of
Ravenna, took pity on him and had him educated, first at Faenza but
after at Parma, where he studied under a famous master. Here he became
immersed in the religious life so that when two monks belonging to
Fonte Avellana, "a desert at the foot of the Apennines in Umbria,"
happened to call at the place of his abode he followed them. After a
life of penitence and hardship, in 1057 pope Stephen IX. prevailed
upon him to quit his desert and made him cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and
later pope Nicholas II. sent him to Milan as his legate, till in 1062
the successor of Nicholas allowed him to return to his solitude; but
in 1063 he was sent to France as papal legate. Later we find him as
papal ambassador in Ravenna--this in 1072. He was then a very old man,
and on his way back to Rome he died at Faenza.
This famous saint has often been confused with the third great
Ravennese of this time, Pietro degli Onesti, called Pietro _Il
Peccatore_[1] This confusion, which Dante disposes of in the
well-known passage of the _Paradiso_:
"In quel loco fui 10, Pier Damiano,
e Pietro Peccator fu nella casa
Di nostra Donna in sul lito Adriano,"[2]
is commented upon in one of Boccaccio's letters to his friend
Petrarch.[3] It is true both Peters were of Ravenna, but whereas
Blessed Pietro _Il Peccatore_ was of the Onesti family, as was S.
Romuald, S. Pietro Damiano was not; the last died in 1072 at Faenza as
we have seen, the first as we may think in 1119.
[Footnote 1: It is I confess doubtful whether Pietro degli Onesti was
ever called _Il Peccatore_ till a later epoch. The authenticity of the
letters in which he so styles himself is open to question and the
inscription on his tomb is it seems of the fifteenth century.]
[Footnote 2: _Paradiso_, xxi. 121-123. "In quel loco" refers to Fonte
Avellana.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Corazzini, _Lettere edite ed inedite di Giovanni
Boccaccio_ (Firenze, 1877), p. 307.]
Now though all were famous and all were of Ravenna it is the last and
I suppose the least of them who is most closely connected with the
city. The others went away and won, not only great place in the world,
but an everlasting fame. Blessed Pietro _Il Peccatore_ stayed in
Ravenna and built there outside the walls in the marsh between Ravenna
and Classe the great home of Our Lady, S. Maria in Porto fuori. About
the middle of the eleventh century, Dr Ricci tells us, certain
religious retired into the solitude by the shore of the Adriatic and
there built a little church or oratory that was called S. Maria _in
fossula_. In this act we may certainly see the example of S. Romuald.
But about 1096 there joined himself to them Pietro degli Onesti called
_Il Peccatore_, and perhaps because he was of the Onesti he built
there a new and a larger church, it is said in fulfilment of a vow
made, as was Galla Placidia's, in a storm at sea. It is this church
which in great part we still see, with additions of the thirteenth
century, a lonely and beautiful thing in the emptiness of the sodden
fields to the south-east of Ravenna between the Canale del Molino and
the Fiumi Uniti.
The lonely and melancholy church of S. Maria in Porto fuori is a
basilica consisting of three naves which formed a part of the original
church of the Blessed Pietro, and a presbytery, apse, and chapels
which are of the thirteenth century. There we see some frescoes of a
very beautiful and early character which have been erroneously
attributed to Giotto, and as erroneously it might seem to Peter of
Rimini.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF S. MARIA IN PORTO FUORI]
They were the gift of a certain Graziadeo, a notary who in 1246
provided the cost of the work, which was carried out it would seem by
Maso da Faenza (1314), Rastello da Forll (1350-60), Giovanni da
Ravenna (1368-96), and other painters of the Romagnuol school.[1]
These works, which are among the loveliest we have of the school, may
be noted as follows: in the nave to the left we see the Madonna and
Child with four saints; here, too, is S. Julian. Upon the triumphal
arch we see in the midst the Saviour and on the one side Antichrist
and the martyrdom of the saints, on the other the defeat and end of
Antichrist who is beheaded by angels. Beneath are scenes of Paradise
and Hell. On the roof of the choir we see the Evangelists with their
symbols and the Doctors of the Church. Upon the right the Death,
Assumption, and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, together with the
Massacre of the Innocents and the Last Supper and perhaps S. Francis
and S. Clare. Upon the left we have the Birth and Presentation of the
Blessed Virgin in the Temple. The last two figures upon the right here
are said to be portraits of Giotto and Guido da Polenta by those who
attribute these works to the Florentine master. In the chapel on the
left we see pope John I. before Theodoric, pope John in prison, and in
the lunette the martyrdom of a saint. Close by are other frescoes
repainted of S. Apollinaris and S. Antony Abbot. In the chapel on the
right we see perhaps S. John baptising a king, S. John preaching, and
Blessed Pietro _Il Peccatore_ healing the blind and sick. Here too
would appear to be scenes from the life of S. Matthew, but unhappily
the subjects are all of them obscure and difficult to interpret. At
the end of the apse we see the three Maries at the Sepulchre and the
Incredulity of S. Thomas.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Dr. Ricci, _Guida di Ravenna_ (Bologna, fourth
edition), and see Anselmi, _Memorie del Pittore Trecentista Petrus da
Rimini_ in _La Romagna_ (1906), vol. III. fasc. Settembre.]