is that of the Death of the Blessed Virgin. The Last Supper is also
exceedingly beautiful, and the Incredulity of S. Thomas is a splendid
piece of work. But in the course of ages these latter works especially
have suffered grievously, as of course has the whole church.
Built in the marsh it has sunk so deeply into it that its pillars are
covered half way up, and the church seems always about to be wholly
engulfed. It was called S. Maria in Porto because it was originally
built near to the famous Port that Augustus Casar had established and
which for so long was the headquarters of the eastern fleet. In the
sixteenth century when the Canons Regular of the Lateran, who then
served it, were compelled to abandon it, they built within the city of
Ravenna another church which they named after that they had left, S.
Maria in Porto. Thereafter the old church without the walls was known
as S. Maria in Porto fuori.
The mighty tower which rises beside S. Maria in Porto fuori has been
thought to be in part the famous Pharos of which Pliny speaks.[1] It
is almost certainly founded upon it, but the lower part in its huge
strength is, as we see it, a work of the end of the twelfth century,
as is the lofty campanile which rises from it.
[Footnote 1: See _supra_, p. 24.]
S. Maria in Porto fuori is undoubtedly the greatest monument that
remains to Ravenna of the Middle Age; nothing really comparable with
it is to be found in the city itself.
The earliest of the friars' churches, those great monuments of the
Middle Age in Italy, is S. Chiara which with its convent is now
suppressed and lost in the Recovero di Mendicita (Corso Garibaldi,
19). This convent, which dates certainly from 1255, was founded by
Chiara da Polenta and was rebuilt in 1794. It is from its garden that
we get our best idea of the church which within possesses frescoes of
the Romagnuol school, where in the vault we see the four Evangelists
with their symbols and the four Doctors of the Church. Upon the walls
we see a spoiled fresco of the Presepio, that peculiarly Franciscan
subject, and again the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the
Baptism of Our Lord, Christ in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and
various saints. These frescoes are the work of the men who painted in
S. Maria in Porto fuori.
It cannot have been much later that the church of S. Pier Maggiore, of
which I have already spoken,[2] came into Franciscan hands, and
certainly from 1261 it was called S. Francesco, when the archbishop
Filippo Fontana handed it over to the Conventuals who held it till
1810. Its chief mediseval interest lies for us of course in the fact
that Dante was buried, probably at his own desire, within its
precincts. But there are other things too. Close to the entrance door
is a slab of red Verona marble dated 1396, which is the tomb of
Ostasio da Polenta who was a Tertiary of the Franciscan Order, and was
therefore buried in the habit of the friars. The figure carved there
in relief to represent Ostasio is evidently a portrait and a very fine
and noble piece of work. To the left, again, is another slab of red
Verona marble which marks the tomb of the General of the Franciscan
Order, Padre Enrico Alfieri, who died of fever in Ravenna in 1405. The
fine Renaissance pilasters in the Cappella del Crocefisso should be
noted, and the beautiful sixteenth-century monument of Luffo Numai by
Tommaso Flamberti at the end of the left aisle.
[Footnote 2: See _supra_, pp. 174 _et seq_.]
The Dominicans have not been more fortunate than the Franciscans.
Somewhat to the north of the Piazza Venti Settembre in the Via Cavour
we find their church S. Domenico. It is said that originally there
stood here a Byzantine church dedicated in honour of S. Maria
Callopes, but this Dr. Ricci denies. S. Domenico was built from its
foundations it seems in October 1269 for the Dominicans and was
enlarged in 1374 according to an inscription in the sacristy; but it
was almost entirely rebuilt in the beginning of the eighteenth
century. The facade and the side portico are perhaps now the most
genuine parts of the church. The chief treasure is, however, not of
the Middle Age at all, but of the Renaissance, and consists of four
large pictures painted in tempera, probably organ shutters,
representing the Annunciation, S. Peter Martyr, and S. Dominic. They
are the excellent work of Niccold Rondinelli the pupil of Giovanni
Bellini.[1]
[Footnote 1: See _infra_, pp. 267 _et seq_.]
[Illustration: TORRE DEL COMUNE]
From S. Domenico we pass again to S. Giovanni Evangelista if only to
note the beautiful Gothic portal of the fourteenth century, of which I
have already spoken,[2] and the spoiled frescoes by Giotto in the
vaulting of the fourth chapel on the left. Giotto, according to
Vasari, came to Ravenna at the instigation of Dante and painted in S.
Francesco, but whatever he may have done there has utterly perished,
and there only remains in Ravenna his spoilt work in this little
chapel in S. Giovanni Evangelista. Here we see in a ceiling divided by
two diagonals, at the centre of which the Lamb and Cross are painted
on a medallion, the four Evangelists enthroned with their symbols and
the four Doctors of the Church, a subject common everywhere and
especially so in Ravenna. These works have suffered very greatly from
restoration, but they seem indeed to be the work of the master in so
far as the design is concerned, all surely that is left after the
repaintings that have befallen them.
[Footnote 2: See _supra_, pp. 175 _et seq_.]
The mosaic pavements of 1213, representing scenes from the third
crusade, in the chapel to the left of the choir should be noted.
We must not leave S. Giovanni Evangelista without a look at the great
tower of the eleventh century which overshadows it. It might seem to
be contemporary with the greater Torre Comunale in the Via Tredici
Giugno as the street is now absurdly named. Nor should any one omit to
visit the Casa Polentana near Porta Ursicina and the Casa Traversari
in the Via S. Vitale, grand old thirteenth-century houses that speak
to us, not certainly of Ravenna's great days, but of a greater day
than ours, and one, too, in which the most tragic of Italians wandered
up and down these windy ways eating his heart out for Florence. Indeed
Dante consumes all our thoughts in mediaeval Ravenna.
There is a tale told by Franco Sacchetti that I will set down here,
for it expresses what in part we must all feel, and what in the
confusion of philosophy at the end of the Middle Age was felt far more
keenly by men who visited this strange city.
"Maestro Antonio of Ferrara was a man of very great parts, almost a
poet, and as entertaining as a jester, but he was very vicious and
sinful. Being in Ravenna during the time that Messer Bernardino of
Polenta held the lordship, it chanced that this Messer Antonio, who
was a very great gambler, had been gambling one day and had lost
nearly all he possessed. Being in despair, he entered the church of
the Friars Minor, where there is the tomb which holds the body of the
Florentine poet Dante, and having seen an antique Crucifix half-burned
and smoked by the great number of lights placed around it, and finding
just then many candles lighted there, he immediately went and took all
the tapers and candles which were burning there and going to the tomb
of Dante he placed them before it saying, 'Take them, for thou art far
more worthy of them than it is.' The people beholding this and
marvelling greatly said, 'What doth this man?' And they all looked at
one another...."
[Illustration: PORTAL OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA]
Sacchetti does not answer the question asked by the astonished people
of Ravenna, but goes on to tell us of the lord "who delighted in such
things as do all lords." He could not have answered it for he did not
know himself what it meant. We are in better case, I think, and know
that what that wild and half--blasphemous act meant was that the
Renaissance had made an end of the Middle Age here in Ravenna as
elsewhere.
XVII
RAVENNA IN THE RENAISSANCE
THE BATTLE OF 1512
When in the year 1438 duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan forced
Ostasio da Polenta, the fifth of that name, into an alliance and the
Venetians thereupon invited him to visit them, Venice had decided for
her own safety to annex Ravenna and Ostasio soon learned that the new
government had proclaimed itself in his old capital. He, as I have
said, presently disappeared, the victim of a mysterious assassination;
and Venice governed Ravenna by _provveditori_ and _podesta_, as
happily and successfully, it might seem, as she governed Venetia and a
part of Lombardy. For her doubtless the acquisition of Ravenna was not
a very great thing, nor does it seem to have changed in any very great
degree the half-stagnant life of the city itself, which, as we may
suppose, had for so long ceased to play any great part in the life of
Italy, that a change of government there was not of much importance to
any one except the Holy See, the true over-lord.
The Holy See, however, had no intention of submitting to the incursion
of the republic into its long established territories without a
protest. In the war of Ferrara, Venice had come into collision with
the pope and had in reality been worsted, though the peace of Bagnolo
(1484) gave her Rovigo, the Polesine, and Ravenna. But she had adopted
a fatal policy in appealing to the French, a policy which led straight
on to Cambray, which, as we may think, so unfortunately crippled her
for ever.
The descent of the French was successful at least in this, that it
aroused the cupidity and ambition of the king of Spain and of the
emperor. Italy was proved to be any one's prize at Fornovo, and when
Louis XII. succeeded Charles VIII. in 1498 and combined in his own
person the claim of the French crown to Naples and to Genoa and the
Orleans claim to Milan, Venice, instead of being doubly on guard,
thought she saw a chance of extending her Lombard dominions. She
refused the alliance Sforza offered and promised to assist Louis in
return for Cremona and its _contado_. In other words, she committed
treason to Italy and thus justified, if anything could justify, the
League of Cambray.
Sforza's first act was to urge the Turk, who needed no invitation, to
attack the republic, whose fleet in 1499 was utterly defeated at sea
by the Orientals, who presently raided into Friuli. Venice was forced
to accept a humiliating peace. It was in these circumstances that,
with all Italy alienated from her, the papacy began to act against
her.
Its first and most splendid effort to create a reality out of the
fiction of the States of the Church was the attempt of Cesare Borgia,
who actually made himself master of the whole of the Romagna. Venice
watched him with the greatest alarm, but chance saved her, for with
the death of Alexander VI., Cesare and his dream came to nothing.
Venice acted at once, for indeed even in her decline she was the most
splendid force in Italy. She induced by a most swift and masterly
stroke the leading cities of the Romagna to place themselves under her
protection. It was a great stroke, the last blow of a great and
desperate man; that it failed does not make it less to be admired.
The rock which broke the stroke as it fell and shattered the sword
which dealt it was Pope Julius II.
Louis and the emperor had come together, and when in June 1508 a truce
was made they would have been content to leave Venice alone; it was
the pope who refused, and by the end of the year had formed the
European League for the purpose of "putting a stop to losses,
injuries, rapine, and damage which Venice had inflicted not merely on
the Holy See, but also on the Holy Roman Empire, the House of Austria,
the Duchy of Milan, the King of Naples and other princes, seizing and
tyrannically occupying their territories, cities, and castles as
though she were conspiring to the common ill...." So ran the preamble
of the League of Cambray. It contemplated among other things the
return of Ravenna, Faenza, Rimini, and the rest of the Romagna to the
Holy See; Istria, Fruili, Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, and Verona being
handed to the emperor; Brescia, Bergamo, Crema, and Cremona passing to
France, and the sea-coast towns in Apulia to the king of Spain;
Dalmatia was to go to the king of Hungary and Cyprus to the duke of
Savoy.
[Illustration: ROCCA VENIZIANA]
In the spring of 1507, Julius launched his bull of excommunication
against Venice; Ravenna, which was held by the podesta Marcello and by
Zeno, was attacked by the pope's general, the duke of Urbino, and
after the disastrous defeat of the Venetians by the French and
Milanese, at Aguadello, on the Adda, the republic ordered the
restoration of Ravenna to the Holy See, together with the other cities
of the Romagna.
The pope was now content, but France and the emperor were not, and
Venice was forced to ally herself first with one side and then with
the other.
In the brutal struggle of the foreigner for Cisalpine Gaul there were
two desperate battles, that of Ravenna in 1512, in which the French,
though victorious, lost their best leader, Gaston de Foix, and that of
Novara in 1513, which induced the French to leave Italy. As the first
of these battles concerns Ravenna we must consider it more closely.
At this time Venice was in alliance with Spain and the pope against
the French, who were commanded by Gaston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, a
nephew of the French king. The combined Spanish and papal troops,
about 20,000 strong, were led by Raimondo da Cardona. The French were
south of the Apennines when the Papal-Spanish force swung round from
Milan into the Ferrarese, seized the territory south of the Po, and
laid siege to Bologna. A Venetian force was hurrying to aid them.
Gaston de Foix did not hesitate. On February 5, he flung himself over
the ice-bound Apennine and hastened to relieve Bologna. Cardona
retreated before him down the Aemilian Way; but Brescia opened its
gates to the Venetians, and this, which hindered Gaston, so enraged
him that when he had taken the city he gave it up to a pillage in
which more than eight thousand were slain and his men "were so laden
with spoil that they returned to France forthwith to enjoy it."
Gaston was compelled to return to Milan to re-form his troops, for he
was determined both by necessity and by his own nature, which loved
decision, to force a battle with the allies. The truth was that the
position of France was precarious, her career in Italy was deeply
threatened by the allies, Henry VIII. of England contemplated a
descent upon Normandy, and until the enemy in Italy was disposed of
her way was barred to Naples.
So Gaston set out with some 7000 cavalry and 17,000 infantry, French,
Italian, German, to pursue and to defeat Cardona, who did not wish to
fight. The army of the allies was chiefly Spanish and it numbered some
6000 cavalry and 16,000 infantry of most excellent fighting quality.
As the French advanced along the Via Aemilia, Cardona withdrew to
Faenza. Gaston went on to Ravenna, which he besieged. Cardona was
forced to intervene and try to save the city. He, too, approached
Ravenna. Upon Easter Day, 1512, the two armies met in the marsh
between Ravenna and the sea; and, in the words of Guicciardini, "there
then began a very great battle, without doubt one of the greatest that
Italy had seen for these many years.... All the troops were
intermingled in a battle fought thus on a plain without impediments
such as water or banks, and where both armies fought, each obstinately
bent on death or victory, and inflamed not only with danger, glory,
and hope, but also with the hatred of nation against nation. It was a
memorable spectacle in the hot engagement between the German and
Spanish infantry to see two very noted officers, Jacopo Empser, a
German, and Zamudio, a Spaniard, advance before their battalions and
encounter one another as if it were by challenge, in which combat the
Spaniard went off conqueror by killing his adversary. The cavalry of
the army of the League was not at best equal to that of the French,
and having been shattered and torn by the artillery was become much
inferior. Wherefore after they had sustained for some time, more by
stoutness of heart than by strength of arms, the fury of the enemy,
Yves d'Allegre with the rearguard and a thousand foot that were left
at the Montone under Paliose and now recalled charging them in flank,
and Fabrizio Colonna, fighting valiantly, being taken prisoner by the
soldiers of the Duke of Ferrara, they turned their backs, in which
they did no more than follow the example of their generals; for the
Viceroy and Carvagiale, without making the utmost proof of the valour
of their troops, betook themselves to flight, carrying off with them
the third division or rearguard almost entire with Antonio da Leva, a
man of that time of low rank though afterwards by a continual exercise
of arms for many years, rising through all the military degrees, he
became a very famous general. The whole body of light horse had been
already broken, and the Marchese di Pescara, their commander, taken
prisoner, covered with blood and wounds. And the Marchese della
Palude, who had led up the second division, or main battle, through a
field full of ditches and brambles in great disorder to the fight, was
also taken. The ground was covered with dead men and horses, and yet
the Spanish infantry, though abandoned by the horse, continued
fighting with incredible fierceness; and though, at the first
encounter with the German foot, they had received some damage from the
firm and close order of the pikes, yet afterwards getting their
enemies within the length of their swords, and many of them, covered
with targets, pushing with daggers between the legs of the Germans,
they had penetrated with very great slaughter almost to the centre of
their battalions. The Gascon foot who were posted by the Germans on
the ground between the river and a rising bank had attacked the
Italian infantry, which, though they had greatly suffered by the
artillery, would have repulsed them highly to their honour, had not
Yves d'Allegre entered among them with a squadron of horse. But the
fortune of that general did not answer his valour, for his son
Viverais being almost immediately killed before his eyes, the father,
unwilling to survive so great a loss, threw himself with his horse
into the thickest of the enemies, where, fighting like a most valiant
captain and killing several, he was at last cut to pieces. The Italian
foot, unable to resist so great a multitude, gave way; but part of the
Spanish infantry hastening to support them, they rallied. On the other
side, the German infantry, being sorely pressed by the other part of
the Spaniards, were hardly capable of making any resistance; but the
cavalry of the confederates being all fled out of the field, Foix with
a great body of horse turned to fall upon them. The Spaniards,
therefore, rather retiring than driven out of the field, without the
least disorder in their ranks, took their way between the river and
the bank, marching slowly and with a close front, by the strength of
which they beat off the French and began to disengage themselves; at
which time Navarre, choosing rather to die than to save himself, and
therefore refusing to leave the field, was made a prisoner. But Foix,
thinking it intolerable that this Spanish infantry should march off in
battle array like conquerors and knowing that the victory was not
perfect if these were not broken and dispersed like the rest, went
furiously to attack them with a squadron of horse and did execution
upon the hindmost; but being surrounded and thrown from his horse, or,
as some say, his horse falling upon him, while he was fighting, he
received a mortal thrust with a pike in his side. And if it be
desirable, as it is believed, for a man to die in the height of his
prosperity, it is certain that he met with a most happy death in dying
after he had obtained so great a victory. He died very young, but
famous through the world, having in less than three months, and being
a general almost before he was a soldier, with incredible ardour and
expedition obtained so many victories. Near him lay on the ground for
dead Lautrec, having received twenty wounds; but being carried to
Ferrara he was by diligent care of the surgeons recovered.
"By the death of Foix, the Spanish infantry were suffered to pass off
unmolested, the remainder of the army being already dispersed and put
to flight, and the baggage, colours, and cannons taken. The pope's
legate was also taken by the Stradiotti and carried to Federigo da
Bozzolo, who made a present of him to the legate of the council. There
were taken also Fabrizio Colonna, Pietro Navarra, the Marchese della
Palude, the Marchese di Bitonto, and the Marchese di Pescara, with
many other lords, barons, and honourable gentlemen, Spaniards and
Neapolitans. Nothing is more uncertain than the number of the killed
in battles; but amidst the variety of accounts it is the most common
opinion that there died of both armies at least 10,000, of which a
third was of the French and two-thirds of their enemies: some talk of
many more, but they were without question almost all of them of the
most valiant and choice soldiers, among whom, belonging to the papal
forces, was Raffaello de' Pazzi, an officer of high reputation; and
great numbers were wounded. But in this respect the loss of the
conqueror was without comparison much the greater by the death of
Foix, Yves d'Allegre, and many of the French nobility, and many other
brave officers of the German infantry, by whose valour, though at vast
expense of their blood, the victory was in a great measure acquired.
Molard also fell with many other officers of the Gascons and Picards,
which nation lost all their glory that day among the French. But their
loss was exceeded by the death of Foix, with whom perished the very
sinews and spirits of that army. Of the vanquished that escaped out of
the field of battle the greater part fled towards Cesena, whence they
continued their flight to more distant places; nor did the Viceroy
stop till he came to Ancona where he arrived with a very few horse.
Many were stripped and murdered in their flight; for the peasants
scoured all the roads and the Duke of Urbino, who from his sending
some time before Baldassare da Castiglione to the King of France, and
employing some trusty persons as his agents with Foix, was supposed to
have entered into a private agreement against his uncle, not only
raised the country against those that fled, but sent his soldiers to
intercept them in the territories of Pesaro; so that only those who
took their flight through the dominions of the Florentines were by
orders of the magistrates, confirmed by the republic, suffered to pass
unmolested.
"The victorious army was no sooner returned to camp than the people of
Ravenna sent deputies to treat of surrendering their city; but when
they had agreed or were upon the point of agreement, and the
inhabitants being employed in preparing provisions to be sent to the
camp were negligent in guarding the walls, the German and Gascon foot
entered through the breach that had been made and plundered the town
in a most barbarous manner, their cruelty being exasperated not only
by their natural hatred to the name of the Italians, but by a spirit
of revenge for the loss they had sustained in the battle. On the
fourth day after this, Marcantonio Colonna gave up the citadel, into
which he had retired, on condition of safety to their persons and
effects, but obliging himself on the other hand, together with the
rest of the officers, not to bear arms against the King of France nor
the Pisan Council till the next festival of S. Mary Magdalen; and not
many days after, Bishop Vitello, who commanded in the castle with a
hundred and fifty men, agreed to surrender it on terms of safety for
life and goods. The cities of Imola, Forli, Cesena, and Rimini, and
all the castles of the Romagna, except those of Forli and Imola,
followed the fortune of the victory and were received by the legate in
the name of the council."