Ravenna, A Study by Edward Hutton

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It was not long before Charles saw that he had been outwitted. An
immediate change of his policy was necessary. In 771 it came with the
repudiation of Desiderata, who was sent back to her father's court at
Pavia. Henceforth Charles and Desiderius were implacable enemies. And
now everything went in favour of the papal policy, just as before
everything had seemed to cross it. Carloman, who had not quarrelled
with Desiderius, and might have opposed Charles and changed all the
future, suddenly died in December of the year of the quarrel. Charles
became thus sole king of the Frankish nation. When pope Stephen came
to die in February 772 he must have laid him down with a quiet mind.

In Stephen's stead there was elected as pope a pure Roman, born in the
Via Lata of the nobility of the City; he took the famous name of
Hadrian I. Desiderius, who had watched with a growing anxiety the
amazing policy of Stephen, now turned to his successor, and both
demanded and begged a renewal of friendship. Hadrian answered his
ambassador at last with the mere truth. "How can I trust your king
when I recall what my predecessor Lord Stephen of pious memory told me
in confidence of his perfidy? He told me that he had lied to him in
everything as to the rights of Holy Church, though he swore upon the
body of the Blessed Peter.... Look you, such is the honour of king
Desiderius and the measure of the confidence I may repose in him."

Desiderius' answer was not to the point. He seized the cities of
Faenza, Ferrara, and Comacchio and ravaged the territory about
Ravenna, burned the farms and carried off the cattle. Then he fell
upon the Pentapolis, seized Sinigaglia, Jesi, Urbino, Gubbio, S. Leo,
and other "Roman" cities, and indeed possessed himself of everything
save only Ravenna and Rimini, and proceeded upon a raid into the duchy
of Rome.

The answer of the pope was mild but firm: mild, for the hour was not
yet come; firm, for it would strike ere long. "Tell your king," said
he, "that I swear in the presence of God that if he choose to restore
those cities which in my time he has taken from S. Peter, I will
hasten into his presence wherever he may appoint a meeting place, at
Pavia, Ravenna, Perugia, or here in Rome, that we may confer
together.... But if he does not restore what he has taken away he
shall never see my face."

The hour was not come. Charles was busy with the Saxon hordes upon the
north and east of his kingdom. It was not till the beginning of
January 773 that the pope sent his messenger Peter to summon him to
his aid. Meanwhile, Desiderius marched on Rome. But even without
Charles the pope was not defenceless. The Vicegerent of God who had
without a soldier turned back Attila on the Mincio and had thrust back
Liutprand from Rome was not to be at the mercy of such a king as
Desiderius. At Viterbo his messengers, the three bishops of Albano,
Palestrina, and Tivoli, met the Lombard king and gave him the pope's
last word: "Anathema." Desiderius shrank back. In that moment as it
seems the ambassadors of Charles arrived in Rome, satisfied themselves
of the justice of the papal summons, and carried back to the great
Frank the prayer of the pope that he would "redeem the Church of God."
In the late summer of that year the Frankish host was assembled at
Geneva and was already beginning to cross the mountains in two mighty
commands by the Great S. Bernard and the Mont Cenis; in October the
siege of Pavia was begun.

That siege endured for more than eight months. Meanwhile Charles had
made himself master of Verona and of many of the cities of the plain.
The men of Spoleto hastened to "commend" themselves to the pope and
the citizens of Fermo, Osimo, and Ancona, and of Citta di Castello, we
read, followed their example, and for the feast of Easter 774, Charles
appeared in Rome, and was greeted and embraced by the pope at S.
Peter's. On Easter Day Charles heard Mass in S. Maria Maggiore, on
Easter Monday in S. Peter's, on Easter Tuesday in S. Paul's. On the
Wednesday in that Easter week, according to Hadrian's biographer, he
made that great Donation to the papacy which confirmed and extended
and secured the gift of Pepin his father. The duchies of Spoleto and
Benevento, and much else, were added to the exarchate "as it was of
old" and given to the pope. Then in June Pavia, the Lombard capital,
fell and Desiderius and his wife were sent by Charles as prisoners to
a convent in Picardy where it is said they ended their lives.

[Illustration: GUARDHOUSE OF THE PALACE OF THEODORIC]

The Donation of Pepin, confirmed, renewed, and enlarged by Charles,
may, of course, be understood in various ways; at any rate it has been
so understood; but it is certain that the pope saw in it both the
fulfilment of his hopes and the final establishment of the papal
monarchy. Yet while he utterly refused, and rightly, to admit the
claim of Charles--not yet emperor--to interfere in the election of the
archbishop of Ravenna, the head of his new dominion, he graciously
permitted the king to take away certain mosaics from the old imperial
city to adorn his palace at Aix; and that in the following letter,
which Dr. Hodgkin translates: "We have received your bright and
honeysweet letters brought us by Duke Arwin. In these you expressed
your desire that we should grant you the mosaics and marbles of the
palace in the city of Ravenna, as well as other specimens to be found
both in the pavement and on the walls. We willingly grant your request
because by your royal struggles the Church of your patron S. Peter
daily enjoys many benefits, for which great will be your reward in
heaven...." On no theory yet put forward can the pope be considered as
the subject of the king of the Franks. That he had been and was to be
the subject of the emperor can be defended, but when has S. Peter been
the creature of a king?

It was not Hadrian as we know but Leo who was destined to crown what
pope Stephen had begun, and to re-establish the empire in the West,
and as he thought to create for S. Peter not an occasional but a
permanent champion.

Twenty-five years after that great Easter in Rome, pope Leo, who
succeeded Hadrian, whose long pontificate lasted for twenty-three
years, was attacked in the streets of Rome and thrown to the ground in
the Corso by two nephews of Hadrian's. Exactly what was the nature of
their quarrel with Leo we do not know, but they managed to imprison
the pope, who presently escaped and, assisted by Winichis, duke of
Spoleto, made his way to the court of Charles. During the summer of
799 the pope remained in France, and probably in October returned to
Rome with a Frankish guard of honour. In the following autumn Charles
set out on his fourth journey to Rome. It was now that he visited
Ravenna, as he had already done in 787, and remained for seven days.
On the 24th November he arrived in Rome. A month later upon Christmas
Day the great king, attended by his nobles, amid a vast multitude,
went to S. Peter's to hear Mass. It was there in the midst of that
great basilica, before the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, that
upon the birthday of Christ the empire re-arose; the pope placed upon
the head of Charlemagne the golden diadem and the Roman people cried
aloud, "_Carolo Piissimo Augusta Deo, Coronato Magno a Pacifico
Imperatori Vita et Victoria_," Three times that great acclamation
echoed over the tomb of the Fisherman. Once more there was an emperor
in the West, a champion of the Faith and defender of the Holy See.

It has been asserted, and is still I believe maintained, that that
coronation was a surprise to Charles. But such things do not come
unforeseen, nor was Charlemagne the man to permit or to tolerate so
amazing an astonishment. All Rome knew what was about to be
accomplished and had gathered in the ancient basilica to await it and
complete it.

Such a question, however, concerns us but little. For us it remains to
note that with the re-creation of the empire, and the appearance of
the Holy See as a great temporal sovereignty in Italy, the historical
importance of Ravenna comes to an end. We have seen that in the autumn
of the most famous year save that of the birth of Our Lord,
Charlemagne had visited Ravenna and had spent seven days in the city.
Once more he was to visit it, and that upon his return journey
northward in May 801. From this time Ravenna ceases to be of any
significance in the history of Europe. The pass it held was no longer
of importance, for the barbarian invasions were at an end, and a new
road into Italy over the Apennines was coming into use, the Via
Francigena, the way of the Franks. As the port upon the sea which was
the fault between East and West it, too, ceased to exist; for East and
West were no longer of any real importance the one to the other, and
already the alteration of the coast line, which was one day to leave
the old seaport some miles from the shore, had begun.

The history of Ravenna, her importance in the history of Europe and
Italy, thus comes to an end with the appearance of Charlemagne and the
resurrection of the West. The ancient and beautiful city which had
played so great a part in the fortunes of the empire, which had, as it
were, twice been its birthplace and twice its tomb, herself passes
into oblivion when that empire, Holy now and Roman still, rises again
and in the West with the crowning of Charlemagne in S. Peter's Church
upon Christmas Day in the year of Our Lord 800. With her subsequent
story, interesting to us mainly in two of its episodes--the apparition
of Dante and the incident of 1512--I shall deal when I come to
consider the Mediaeval and Renaissance city.

But in fact we always think of Ravenna as a city of the Dark Age, and
in that we are right. She is a tomb, the tomb of the old empire, and
like the sepulchre outside the gates of Jerusalem, that was Arimathean
Joseph's, she held during an appalling interval of terror and doubt
the most precious thing in the world, to be herself utterly forgotten
in the morning of the resurrection. And surely to one who had
approached her in the dawn, while it was yet dark, of the ninth
century, of mediaeval Europe that is, her words would have been those
of the angels so long ago: _Non est hic; sed surrexit_. While to us
to-day she would say: _Venite et videte locum ubi positus erat
Dominus_.

XI

THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY

THE CATHEDRAL, BAPTISTERY, ARCIVESCOVADO, S. AGATA, S. PIETRO
MAGGIORE, S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA, S. GIOVANNI BATTISTA, AND THE
MAUSOLEUM OF GALLA PLACIDIA

Ravenna, as we see her to-day, is like no other city in Italy. As in
her geography and in her history, so in her aspect, she is a place
apart, a place very distinctive and special, and with a physiognomy
and appearance all her own. What we see in her is still really the
city of Honorius, of Galla Placidia, of Theodoric, of Belisarius and
Narses, of the exarchate, in a word, of the mighty revolution in which
Europe, all we mean by Europe, so nearly foundered, and which here
alone is still splendidly visible to us in the great Roman and
Byzantine works of that time.

For the age, the Dark Age, of her glory is illumined by no other city
in Italy or indeed in the world. She was the splendour of that age, a
lonely splendour. And because, when that age came to an end, she was
practically abandoned--abandoned, that is, by the great world--just as
about the same time she was abandoned by the sea, much of her ancient
beauty has remained to her through all the centuries since, even down
to our own day, when, lovelier than ever in her lonely marsh, she is a
place so lugubrious, so infinitely still and sad, full of the autumn
wind and the rumours of silence of the tomb, of the most reverent of
all tombs--the tomb of the empire.

We shall not find in Ravenna anything at all, any building, that is,
or work of art, of classical antiquity; all she was, all she did, all
she possessed in the great years of the empire has perished. Nor shall
we find much that may have been hers in the smaller life that came to
her in the beginning of the Middle Age, or that was hers in the time
of the Renaissance; the memory and the dust of Dante, a few churches,
a few frescoes, a few pictures, a few palaces; nothing beside. For all
these we must go to Pompeii and to Rome, or to Florence, Siena,
Assisi, and Venice; in Ravenna we shall find something more rare, but
not these. She remains a city of the Dark Age, of the fifth, sixth,
seventh, and eighth centuries, and she is full of the churches, the
tombs, and the art of that time, early Christian and Byzantine things
that we shall not find elsewhere, or, at any rate, not in the same
abundance, perfection, and beauty.

And yet though so much remains, her story since the time of
Charlemagne might seem to be little else but a long catalogue of
pillage and destruction. Charlemagne himself began this cruel work
when he carried off the mosaics and the marbles, the ornaments of the
imperial palace, to adorn Aix-la-Chapelle, and since his day not a
century has passed without adding to this vandalism; the worst
offenders being the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, which by rebuilding, by frank
pillage, by mere destruction, by earthquakes, by contempt, and worst
of all by restoration have utterly destroyed much that should have
remained for ever, and have altogether spoilt and transformed most of
that which, almost by chance it might seem, remains.

And so it comes to pass that the oldest buildings remaining to us
to-day in Ravenna are to be found in the baptistery, the cathedral,
the arcivescovado, and the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the oldest
complete building being the last. Let us then first consider these.

The first bishop, the "Apostle" of Ravenna, according to Agnellus, was
S. Apollinaris, a Syrian of Antioch, the friend and disciple of S.
Peter, who, as we know, had been bishop of Antioch for seven years
before he went to Rome. Apollinaris followed S. Peter to the Eternal
City and was appointed by him bishop of Ravenna, whither he came to
establish the church. There might seem to be some doubt as to his
martyrdom; but, according to Agnellus, he was succeeded by his
disciple S. Aderitus, and he in his turn by S. Eleucadius, a
theologian, who is said to have written commentaries upon the books of
the Old and New Testaments, and to have been followed as bishop by S.
Martianus, a noble whom S. Apollinaris had ordained deacon. There
follows in the _Liber Pontificalis_ of Agnellus a list of twelve
bishops, S. Calocerus, S. Proculus, S. Probus, S. Datus, S. Liberius,
S. Agapetus, S. Marcellinus, S. Severus (c. 344), S. Liberius II., S.
Probus II., S. Florentius, and S. Liberius III., who occupy the see
before we come to S. Ursus, who "first began to build a Temple to God,
so that the Christians previously scattered about in huts should be
collected into one sheepfold."[1] S. Ursus, according to Dr.
Holder-Egger, ruled in Ravenna from 370 to 396, and his church was
dedicated in 385; but a later authority[2] would seem to place his
pontificate later, and to argue that it immediately preceded that of
S. Peter Chrysologus, who, the same authority asserts, was elected in
429. All agree that S. Ursus reigned for twenty-six years, and
therefore, if he immediately preceded S. Peter Chrysologus, he was
elected not in 370, but in 403; that is to say, in or about the same
time as Honorius took up his residence in Ravenna.

[Footnote 1: "Iste piimus hic initiavit Templum construere Dei, ut
plebes Christianorum quae in singulis tuguriis vagabant in unum ovile
piissimus collegeret Pastor ... Igitur aedificavit iste Beatissimus
Praesul infra hanc Civitatem Ravennam Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam,
quo omnes assidue concurremus, quam de suo nomine Ursianam nominavit
... "]

[Footnote 2: A Testi Rasponi, _Note Marginali al Liber Pontificalis di
Agnello Ravennate_ in _Atti e Memorie della R. Dep. di St. Pat. per la
Romagna_, iii. 27 (Bologna, 1909-10).]

However that may be, we must attribute the foundation of a new
cathedral church in Ravenna to S. Ursus, for till this day it bears
his name, Ecclesia Ursiana, though it appears to have been dedicated
in honour of the Resurrection (Anastasis.)

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL (_Basilica Ursiana_)]

Agnellus gives us a fairly full account of this church, which
consisted of five naves divided and upheld by four rows of
fifty-six[1] columns of precious marble from the temple of Jupiter.
That the church was approached by steps we learn from Agnellus in his
life of S. Exuperantius, for he there tells us that Felix the
patrician was killed "on the steps of the Ecclesia Ursiana." Both the
vault and the walls were adorned with mosaics,[2] which Agnellus
describes and which would seem to have covered then or later the whole
of the interior; the wall on the women's side of the church being
decorated with a figure of S. Anastasia, while over all was a dome
"adorned with various coloured tiles representing different figures."
When Agnellus wrote (ninth century) this great church was of course
standing, but doubtless it had been added to and adorned from century
to century, and it is impossible to learn from his description, or
indeed any other that we have, what was due therein to S. Ursus and
what to his successors. One of the most splendid ornaments the church
possessed would seem to have been a ciborium of silver, borne by
columns which stood over the high altar also of silver. This is said
by Agnellus to have been placed there by the bishop S. Victor, who
seems to have ruled in Ravenna from about 537 to 544. It is said to
have cost, with the consent of Justinian, the whole revenue of Italy
for a year and to have weighed some one hundred and twenty pounds. The
whole stood in the midst of a circular choir of marble, itself covered
with silver it might seem, if we may believe a chronicler of Vicenza
of the fifteenth century, quoted by Zirardini,[3] who says: "In the
great church of Ravenna all the choir, the altar, and the great
tabernacle over the altar are of silver." Before the altar was the
_Schola Caniorum_.

[Footnote 1: Fabri, however, in his _Sacre Memorie_, says there were
forty-nine columns.]

[Footnote 2: Agnellus gives the names of the mosaicists Euserius or
Cuserius, Paulus, Agatho, Satius, and Stephanus.]

[Footnote 3: Zirardini, _De Antiquis Sacris Ravennae Aedificiis_.]

Agnellus tells us further in his life of S. Felix (_c_. 693) that that
bishop built a _Salutatorium_ (? Sacristy), "whence the bishop and his
assistants proceeded at the Introit of the Mass into the presence of
the people." But the Epigram which Agnellus quotes from this building
would seem to suggest that the _salutatorium_ was rather then rebuilt
than added for the first time to the church.

The magnificent basilica, one of the most splendid in Italy, was
sacked by the French in April 1512, but, as Dr. Corrado Ricci says, it
was not they who destroyed the church itself, but the _accademici_ of
the eighteenth century, who, instead of conserving the glorious
building, then some thirteen hundred years old, began in 1733 to pull
it down, to break up the beautiful capitals and columns of precious
marbles, and to make out of the fragments the pavement of the new
church we still see, begun in 1734 by Gian Francesco Buonamici da
Rimini. Only the apse with its beautiful great mosaic remained for a
few years till at last it too was destroyed.

Thus the church we have in place of the old Basilica Ursiana is a
building of the eighteenth century, and all that we care for in it is
the fragments that are to be found there of its glorious predecessor.

These are few in number and of little account. Supporting the central
arch of the portico are two marble columns which belonged to the old
basilica, and by the main door are two others of granite which came
perhaps from the old nave.

Entering the church we find ourselves in a cruciform building
consisting of three naves, divided by twenty-four columns of marble,
transept, and apse, with a dome over the crossing. In the second
chapel on the right is an ancient marble sarcophagus said to be that
of S. Exuperantius, bishop of Ravenna about 470. The magnificent tomb
carved in high relief did not, however, belong to the old cathedral,
but was brought here when the church of S. Agnese was destroyed. In
the south transept is the chapel of the Madonna del Sudore, where on
either side are two other sarcophagi of marble adorned with figures
and symbols. That on the right is said to be the tomb of S.
Barbatianus, confessor of Galla Placidia, and was originally in the
church of S. Lorenzo in Caesarea, whence it was brought to the
cathedral in the thirteenth century by the archbishop Bonifazio de'
Fieschi, whom Dante found in Purgatory among the gluttons:

"Bonifazio
che pasturo col rocco molte genti..."

He brought the sarcophagus to the cathedral for his own tomb and there
I suppose he was buried. The sarcophagus upon the left was likewise
used in 1321 as a tomb for himself by the archbishop, Rainaldo
Concoreggio. This, too, is sculptured with a bas-relief of Christ, a
nimbus round His head, a book in His hand, seated on a throne set on a
rock, out of which four rivers flow. With outstretched hand He gives a
crown to S. Paul, while S. Peter bearing a cross holds a crown, just
received, in his hand. The sculpture on the sarcophagus of S.
Barbatianus is ruder.

The high altar is of course modern, but within it is an ancient marble
sarcophagus of the sixth century, in which it is said the dust of nine
bishops of about that time lies.

But one noble thing remains here among all the modern trash to remind
us of all we have lost: the glorious processional cross of silver
called of S. Agnello. Yet even this, noble as it is, does not come to
us from Roman or Byzantine times it seems, but is rather a work of the
eleventh century.

In the midst of this great cross, upon one side, is the Blessed Virgin
praying, and upon the other Christ rising from the tomb. Upon the arms
of the cross, and the uprights, are forty medallions of saints, of
which three would seem to be archbishops. I say this beautiful and
precious thing comes to us from the eleventh century; but it has been
very much restored at various times and is now largely a work of the
sixteenth century. Dr. Ricci tells us that on the side where we see
the Madonna only the five medallions on the lower upright and the two
last of the upper are original; while upon that of the Risen Christ,
only the five medallions on the lower upright are untouched, all the
rest is restoration.

Beneath the eighteenth-century apse of the cathedral is the ancient
crypt, no longer to be seen; it does not, according to Dr. Ricci, date
earlier than the ninth century nor do any of the other crypts in the
city.

In the left aisle a few fragments from the old church remain
recognisable. They are the marble slabs of an _ambo_ erected by S.
Agnellus, archbishop of Ravenna in the middle of the sixth century.
There we read: _Servus Christi Agnellus Episcopus hunc pyrgum fecit_.
Among these are some earlier panels of the fifth century. In the
treasury, again, we find two other panels from the _ambo_ of S.
Agnellus, and a strange calendar carved upon a slab of marble to
enable one to find the feast of Easter in any year from 532 to 626;
this is certainly of the sixth century.

A certain number of Mediaeval and Renaissance things are also to be
seen in the church. Here in the treasury we have a cross of silver
gilt, with reliefs of the Crucifixion, God the Father, the Blessed
Virgin, S. John Baptist, and S. Mary Magdalen, dating from the middle
of the fourteenth century (1366). Over the entrance to the sacristy is
a fresco by Guido Reni of Elijah the prophet fed by an angel. Within,
is a good picture by Marco Palmezzano: a Pieta with S. John Baptist;
while the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament is decorated by him and his
pupils.

It is obvious, then, that very little remains to us of the original
Basilica Ursiana; nor can we reckon among that little the beautiful
round and isolated campanile. This is not older than the ninth
century, and has been much tampered with, especially in the sixteenth
century, after an earthquake, and in the seventeenth century after
both earthquake and fire. Indeed, the upper storey dates entirely from
1658.

As it is with the cathedral, so it is with the _Arcivescovado_. Of the
old palace of the Bishops of Ravenna only a few walls, a tower, and a
wonderful little chapel remain. What we see now is work of the
sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries after a restoration at the end
of the nineteenth. The old vast palace which has been destroyed was
the work of many archbishops, achieved during many centuries. It
consisted of a series of buildings grouped about the palace which the
archbishop S. Peter Chrysologus built in the fifth century, and its
most magnificent part was due to S. Maximian, archbishop of Ravenna in
the time of Justinian. All their work, which we would so gladly see,
is gone except the little chapel of S. Peter Chrysologus, which he
built and signed in one of the arches in the fifth century.[1]

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