Ravenna, a Study

by Edward Hutton

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]

[Footnote 1: According to Rasponi the chapel was dedicated originally to S. Andrea and is to be identified with the Monasterium di S. Andrea, which was not built by S. Peter Chrysologus (429-c. 449), but by Peter II. (494-c. 519). Cf. Rasponi, Note Marginali al Liber Pontificalis di Agnello Ravennate (Atti e Memorie della R. Dep. di Stor. Pat. per la Romagna, iii. 27), Bologna, 1909-1910.]

Of this great man Agnellus records: "He was beautiful in appearance, lovely in aspect; before him there was no bishop like him in wisdom, nor any other after him." He was a native of Imola, then called Forum Cornelii, and was ordained deacon by the bishop of that city, one Cornelius, of whom he always speaks with affection and gratitude. When the bishop of Ravenna died, it is said the clergy of the cathedral, then just built or building, with the people, chose a successor, and besought the bishop of Imola to go to Rome to obtain the confirmation of the pope. Cornelius took with him his deacon Peter, and the pope, who had been commanded so to do by the Prince of the Apostles in a dream, refused to ratify the election already made, but proposed Peter the deacon as the bishop chosen by S. Peter himself. Peter was there and then consecrated bishop, was conducted to Ravenna, and received with acclamation. He is said to have found a certain amount of paganism still remaining in his diocese, and to have completely extirpated it. He often preached before the Augusta Galla Placidia and her son Valentinian III., and he was perhaps the first archbishop of the see, Ravenna till his time having been suffragan to Milan. He seems to have died about 450 in Imola. Among his many buildings, which included the monastery of S. Andrea at Classis, is the little chapel now dedicated in his honour in the Arcivescovado of Ravenna. It is perhaps the only one of his works which remains. The little square chamber, out of which the sanctuary opens, is upheld by four arches, which are covered, as is the vaulting, with most precious mosaics, still of the fifth century, though they have been and are still being much restored. On the angles of the vaulting, on a gold ground, we see four glorious white angels holding aloft in their upraised hands the symbol of Our Lord. Between them are the mighty signs of the Four Evangelists, the angel, the lion, the ox, and the eagle. In the key, as it were, of the arches east and west is a medallion of Our Lord, and three by three under the arch on either side the eleven Apostles and S. Paul, who takes the place of Judas instead of Matthias. In the key of the arches north and south is a medallion of the symbol of Christ, and three by three under the arch on either side six saints, the men to the right SS. Damian, Fabian, Sebastian, Chrysanthus, Chrysologus, and Cassianus; the women to the left SS. Cecilia, Eugenia, Eufemia, Felicitas, Perpetua, and Daria. Here the SS. Fabian, Sebastian, and Damian, Dr. Ricci tells us, are altogether restorations. For the rest, these mosaics have suffered much, both from restoration, properly so called, and from painting.

The pavement is old and beautiful, as I think are the walls, but the frescoes, once by Luca Longhi, are most unworthy and out of place. The recess which now contains the altar might seem not to have made a part of the original chapel or oratory; it appears it was only in the eighteenth century that the two were thrown into one. At that time the mosaics of the Blessed Virgin and of S. Apollinaris and S. Vitalis were brought here from the old cathedral.

Just outside this wonderful little chapel in the Arcivescovado there is an apartment devoted to Roman and other remains found from time to time in Ravenna: a torso of a statue, a work of Roman antiquity, should be noted, as should certain fragments of a frieze, also an antique Roman work. Here, too, is preserved the splendid cope of S. Giovanni Angeloptes who was archbishop from 477 to 494[1] when he died.

[Footnote 1: Cf. A. Testi Rasponi, op. cit. supra.]

In another apartment of the Arcivescovado is preserved a relic of another great archbishop of Ravenna: the ivory throne of S. Maximianus. This is a magnificent work of the early part of the sixth century, and is one of the most splendid works known to us of its kind. It was made for the cathedral of Ravenna, but in or about the year 1001 it was carried off by the Venetians and given by doge Pietro Orseolo II. to the emperor Otto III., who left it to the church of Ravenna on his death. It is entirely formed of ivory leaves, most of them carved sumptuously in relief. In front we see the monogram of Maximianus Episcopus and under it are carvings of S. John Baptist between the Four Evangelists; all these between elaborately carved decorative panels. About the throne to right and left is the story of Joseph in ten panels, and upon the back in the seven panels that remain[2] the miracles of Our Lord. Altogether it is a work of the most lovely kind, and certainly Byzantine.

[Footnote 2: Four of those missing, Dr. Ricci tells us, have of late years been discovered, one in the Naples Museum (1893), one in the collection of Count Stroganoff (1903), one at Pesaro (1894), and another in the Archaeological Museum at Milan (1905).]

We shall come upon S. Maximianus again in S. Vitale, where something must be said of him. He lies, as has already been noted, in one of the great sarcophagi in the second chapel on the right in the cathedral.

From the Arcivescovado we pass to what is now the most remarkable building of the group—the Baptistery.

Dr. Ricci tells us that it was originally one of the halls of the baths that were near the present cathedral. But it was converted into a baptistery and ornamented with mosaics by the archbishop Neon of Ravenna (c. 449-459) as its inscriptions tell us and is signed with his monogram. The original floor is three metres below that we see, and a second floor about a metre and a half above the original floor has been discovered; this it would seem is that made by Neon, while a third remains about half a metre under the pavement we use, and upon this are set the eight columns, with their capitals, two of them Byzantine and the rest Roman, which uphold the arches of the upper arcade upon which is set the great drum of the dome. The plan is a simple octagon, bare brick without, covered with a "tent" roof of amphorae under the tiles; but within, everywhere encrusted with glorious marbles and mosaics.

It is to the mosaic of the cupola that we instinctively turn first, for it is, perhaps, the finest left to us in Ravenna. It is divided into three parts. In the midst is the Baptism of Our Lord on a gold ground. Christ stands up to His waist in the clear waters of the Jordan, the god of which river waits upon Him. S. John high up on the bank, his staff, topped with a cross, in his hand, pours the water from a shell upon Our Lord's head while the Dove, an almost heraldic figure, is seen above About this circular mosaic is set a greater circle in which we see, upon a blue ground, the twelve Apostles in procession, each bearing his crown. Nothing left to us of that age is finer or more gravely splendid than these mosaics, they seem to be the highest expression of a great art which has known how to reject the brutal realism of an earlier time and to seize perfectly the secret of decoration. Nothing of the kind more masterly remains to us in Europe.

Beneath these two circles another is set in which are eight panels, each of three parts, where are represented eight temples, four of them with thrones signed with the Cross, and four of them with altars upon which the book of the Gospel is open.

[Illustration: THE BAPTISTERY AND CAMPANILE OF THE CATHEDRAL]

The whole cupola is borne by the upper arcade, where we see sixteen figures of the Prophets in stucco. The upper arcade is in its turn borne by the lower, which is everywhere encrusted with mosaics, restorations of our own time. The walls are panelled with various marbles. In the midst of the building is a huge octagonal font with its ambo, and in one of the wall niches is an ancient altar, and in another a vase of marble.

The effect of all this splendour is even to-day very lovely and glorious; what it might have been if it had been properly cared for instead of "restored" we can only guess. Unhappily the "restoration" has been very radical. Even in the central Baptism, the head and shoulders and right arm of the figure of the Saviour, the head and shoulders and right arm, the right leg and foot of the Baptist and the cross in his his left hand have been destroyed and the whole dimmed and even spoiled. Such as it is, however, where shall we find its equal or anything to compare with it?

From the cathedral group we now turn to the other churches which were built in the time of the old empire in Ravenna for the most part, in the days, that is, of Galla Placidia and her son Valentinian III.

Among these is the church of S. Agata (entrance Via Mazzini 46), which though entirely rebuilt, with its campanile, in the later part of the fifteenth century is since the "restoration" of 1893 interesting, if at all, because the church dates originally from the fifth century. It would seem indeed that it was founded in the time of the Augusta, and to this the walls of part of the nave bear witness, but it was continued later perhaps by the archbishop Exuperantius (c. 470) whose monogram appears upon the second column to the left in the nave, and finally completed or in part rebuilt in the sixth century. In the fifteenth century (1476-94), the church was largely rebuilt again, but its tribune with its great mosaic remained till 1688 when it fell. In the sixth century it would seem to have had an atrium or narthex. Its main interest for us to-day lies in the beauty of its columns of bigio antico, cipollino, porphyry, granite, and other marbles belonging to the original church, with their Roman and Byzantine capitals. Also to the right of the nave we see a curious ambone hollowed out of a fragment of a gigantic column of Greek marble. The altar, too, is formed from an ancient sarcophagus which is said to hold the dust of the two archbishops, Sergius, with whom the pope had so much trouble, and Agnellus. According to Agnellus the chronicler there was a portrait of the archbishop S. John Angeloptes in the apse, but this like the great mosaic of the tribune is gone. It was here, however, that S. John got that strange surname of his—Angeloptes. He and his predecessor S. Peter Chrysologus with S. Maximian and Sergius were the great archbishops of this great see. We hear that the emperor Valentinian III., according to Agnellus—but we should place the bishopric of S. John Angeloptes 477-494—"was so much affected by the preaching of this holy man that he took off his imperial crown and humbly on his knees begged his blessing…. Not long after he gave him fourteen cities with their churches to be governed by him Archieratica potestate. And even to this day (ninth century), these fourteen cities with their bishops are subject to the church of Ravenna.[1] This bishop first received from the emperor a Pallium of white wool, just such as it is the custom for the pope to wear over the Duplum; and he and his successors have used such a vestment even to the present day."

[Footnote 1: The Archbishop of Ravenna at the present day has seven suffragans, Bertinoro, Cervia, Cesena, Comacchio, Forli, Rimini, Sarsina. It is hard to decide whether this man or Peter Chrysologus was the first archbishop of Ravenna.]

This passage of Agnellus is important, but does not seem, on examination, to have any real bearing upon the question of the dependence of the See of Ravenna upon Rome. The Pallium was originally an imperial gift to the popes, probably in the fourth century. And the fact that it is the emperor and not the pope who bestowes it upon the archbishop of Ravenna in the fifth century, if it be true, can have no meaning at all in the question of papal supremacy.

Agnellus, whom I have quoted, goes on to tell us of that miracle which gave S. John, archbishop of Ravenna, his surname of Angeloptes or Angel-seer. "When the said John," he tells us, "was singing Mass in the Basilica of S. Agata and had accomplished all things according to the pontifical rite, after the reading of the Gospel, after the Protestation (? the Credo), the catechumens to whom it was given to see saw marvellous things. For when that most blessed man began the Canon, and made the sign of the Cross over the sacrifice, suddenly an angel from heaven came and stood on the other side of the altar in sight of the bishop. And when after finishing the consecration he had received the Body of the Lord, the assisting deacon who wished to fulfil his ministry could not see the chalice which he had to hand to him. Suddenly he was moved aside by the angel who offered the holy chalice to the bishop in his place. Then all the priests and people began to shake and to tremble beholding the holy chalice self-moved, inclined to the bishop's mouth, and again lifted into the air, and laid upon the holy altar. A strange thrill passed through the waiting multitude. Some said: 'The deacon is unworthy;' others affirmed, 'Not so, but it is a heavenly visitation.' And so long did the angel stand by the holy man until all the solemnities of the Mass were ended."

Soon after this strange miracle S. John Angeloptes died and was buried in the basilica of S. Agata behind the altar in the place where he saw the angel standing.

Nothing seems to remain of his tomb or his grave; but the church is full of curious fragments, broken pillars, bits of mosaic, ancient marble panels, beautifully carved, and more than one old sarcophagus. Somewhere there no doubt the dust of S. John Angeloptes awaits the resurrection.

From S. Agata we pass to S. Francesco. This church was founded by S. Peter Chrysologus (429-c. 449) and was completed by S. Peter Chrysologus' successor, the archbishop S. Neon (c. 459). Its first title would seem to have been that of S. Peter Major; we hear, too, that it was called SS. Peter and Paul, and Agnellus in his life of S. Neon calls the church Basilica Apostolorum. The region of the city in which it stands would seem to have borne also the name Regio Aposto lorum, though whether it got the name from the church or the church from it is impossible to decide.[1]

[Footnote 1: The Franciscans conventuals would seem to have possessed the church from 1261 to 1810.]

Unhappily the church has been entirely rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and our interest in it is confined for the most part to the tower, the crypt, the twenty-two columns of Greek marble which uphold the nave, two of which are signed 'P. E.' and four others 'E. V. G.,' and the tombs. The tall square tower dates, perhaps, from the tenth century, the crypt from the ninth, but the columns are of the fifth century. Perhaps the oldest thing in the church is the sarcophagus on the right of the main door which has on its front Pagan sculptures and on its sides Christian. Close to the holy water stoup is a very lovely sarcophagus of the fourth century with reliefs of Our Lord and eight Apostles. The ribs of the cover have as finials the heads of lions; altogether this is a very splendid and noble tomb. In the last chapel upon the right we find the great sarcophagus, still used as an altar, of S. Liberius, bishop of Ravenna (c. 375), "a great man, a never-failing fountain of charity; who brought much honour to the church," according to Agnellus. The sarcophagus dates from the end of the fourth century and is sculptured in high relief.

I shall return to S. Francesco when I consider Mediaeval Ravenna.[2]
At present I would direct the reader's attention to S. Giovanni
Evangelista.

[Footnote 2: See infra, p. 245 et seq.]

This church was originally founded by Galla Placidia herself, in fulfilment of a vow made by her to S. John Evangelist, when, on her way from Constantinople to Ravenna, she was in danger of shipwreck.[3] Agnellus tells us that of old the church bore an inscription to this effect, and he gives it to us: Sancto ac Beatissimo Apostolo Johanni Evangelistae Galla Placidia Augusta cum filio suo Placidio Valentiniano Augusta et filia sua Justa Grata Honoria Augusta, Liberationis penculum marts votum solmentes. The mosaic of the apse of old represented the incident. Unhappily the church was almost entirely rebuilt in 1747, only the tower of the eleventh century and the portico of the fourteenth being left as they had been. The beautiful fourteenth-century door, however, bears above it a relief of that time in which we see Our Lord, S. John Evangelist, Valentinian III., Galla Placidia with her soldiers and her confessor, S. Barbatian, with priests. Below this on either side of the arch of the doorway is a representation of the Annunciation and within the arch itself a relief which recounts the miracle which attended the consecration of the church. For the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista was not only founded in recompense for a miracle, but a miracle attended its consecration. It seems that when the church was to be consecrated no relic of S. John Evangelist was to be had. Therefore the Augusta and her confessor gave themselves a whole night to prayer, and suddenly there appeared to them S. John himself, vested like a bishop with a thurible in his hand, with which he incensed the church. Then when he came to the altar to incense it, and they would have venerated him, he suddenly vanished, only leaving in the hand of the Augusta one of his shoes. This legend, which is represented in relief in the fourteenth-century doorway of S. Giovanni Evangelista, is also the subject of a picture by Rondinelli of Ravenna in the Brera at Milan.

[Footnote 3: See supra, p. 41.]

The church has, as I have said, been ruined by the rebuilding of 1747; but there still remain the twenty-four columns of bigio antico with their Roman capitals, which upheld the old basilica, and in the crypt is the ancient high altar of the fifth century. Something, too, of the old church would seem to remain in the much repaired walls of the apse without.

[Illustration: THE CAMPANILE OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA]

The frescoes by Giotto, sadly repainted, in the fourth chapel on the left, must be noted. They represent the four Evangelists with their symbols over them, and the four Latin fathers of the Church, S. Jerome, S. Ambrose, S. Austin, and S. Gregory. Certain fragments of a thirteenth-century mosaic pavement are to be seen in the chapel of S. Bartholomew, which is itself perhaps the oldest part of the church.

We turn now to the church of S. Giovanni Battista which was founded by a certain Baduarius, according to Agnellus, and consecrated by S. Peter Chrysologus. It is possible that Baduarius was the mere builder, and that he built by order of Galla Placidia. Nothing, however, is left of the old church, which was entirely rebuilt in 1683, except the apse as it is seen from the outside, the round campanile in its first story and the beautiful columns sixteen in number, four of bigio antico, two of pavonazzetto, one of cipollino, and the rest of greco venato, according to Dr. Ricci.

* * * * *

There remains to be considered what is, when all is said, I suppose the noblest monument of the fifth century left to us in Italy or in Europe—the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia.

Agnellus tells us that the Augusta built close to her palace a great church in the shape of a Latin cross. This she dedicated in honour of the Holy Cross which it will be remembered her predecessor S. Helena had discovered in Jerusalem. Of this church, though it has long since disappeared—the "western" part of it having been destroyed in 1602 and what remained restored out of all recognition in 1716—we know a good deal. According to Agnellus it was covered with most precious stones (? marbles) and apparently with mosaics and was full of splendid ornaments. It had, too, a great narthex, and at the end of this Galla Placidia presently built a cruciform oratory for her own mausoleum, where she was to lie between her brother Honorius and her son Valentinian.

[Illustration: Colour Plate THE MAUSOLEUM OF GALLA PLACIDIA]

The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is the oldest complete building left to us in Ravenna, for it dates from well within the first half of the fifth century, whereas the baptistery, altered and transformed as it was by S. Neon, is as we see it a work of the first years of the second half of that century. Simple as it is, without, a cruciform building of plain brick, within it is so sumptuously and splendidly adorned that not an inch anywhere remains that is not encrusted with mosaic or precious marbles. These mosaics were, before their radical "restoration," perhaps finer and more classical than those of the baptistery. It might seem, indeed, that they were perhaps the finest and subtlest work done in the Roman realistic tradition, nor was there perhaps anywhere to be found so noble a representation of the Good Shepherd as that which adorned this great monument. It is, however, impossible to speak with any confidence of what we see there now, for all has been restored again and again, and is now little better than a rifacimento of our own time, a copy, faithful perhaps, but still a copy, of the work of the fifth century.

Nevertheless, the impression of the whole is very splendid and solemn. The roofs and dome are covered with mosaics of a wonderful and indescribable night blue, powdered with stars. In the cupola is a cross and at the four angles are set the symbols of the four Evangelists, glorious heraldic figures.

Above the door we see Christ the Good Shepherd, youthful, classic in form and repose, very noble and Roman, seated on a rock in a broken hilly landscape, a cross in His left hand, caressing His sheep with His right. This figure even after "restoration" gives us more than a glimpse of what it once was. Nowhere had Christian art produced so majestic a representation of its Lord; nor had the subject of the Good Shepherd been anywhere more splendidly treated than here.

Over the great sarcophagus, opposite the entrance, we see a very different scene. Here is no longer a youthful Christ, with the hair and the noble aspect of Apollo, but a bearded and majestic figure in the fullness of manhood, His eyes full of anger, His draperies flying about Him, moving swiftly, the cross on His shoulders, in His left hand an heretical, probably Arian, book which he is about to cast into the furnace in the midst. Upon the extreme left is a case or cupboard in which we see the books of the four Gospels. In the other lunettes we see very gorgeous decorative work of arabesques and stags at a fountain and two doves drinking from a vase. Above in the spandrils of the arches are figures of apostles or saints. Nothing in the world is more solemnly gorgeous in effect than this beautiful rich interior. The pavement is composed of fragments of the same precious marbles as those which line the lower parts of the walls.

Under the mosaic of the burning of the heretical books we see the mighty sarcophagus of plain Greek marble which once held the body of the Augusta. This, of old, was richly adorned with carved marbles and perhaps with silver or mosaic; and we know that in the fourteenth century certainly it was possible to see within the figure of a woman richly dressed seated in a chair of cedar and this was believed to be the mummy of the Augusta Galla Placidia. However, we hear nothing of it before the fourteenth century, and Dr. Ricci suggests that it may have been an imposture of about that time. It is possible, but perhaps unlikely, for the Augusta was not a saint, and what reason could men have in the thirteenth century, when the very meaning of the empire was about to be forgotten, for such an imposture? However this may be, the figure remained there seated in its chair during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and the greater part of the sixteenth centuries. And indeed, it might have been there still but that in 1577 some children, curious about it and anxious to see a thing so wonderful, thrust a lighted taper into the tomb through one of the holes in the marble, when mummy, vestments, chair and all were consumed, and in a moment nothing remained but a handful of dust.

The sarcophagi under the arches on either side, according to various authorities, hold the dust of the emperor Honorius, the brother of the Augusta, and of Constantius her husband, or of the emperor Valentinian III. her son. It is impossible to decide at this late day exactly who does and who does not lie in these great Christian tombs.

The Mausoleum of the Augusta was long known, though not from its origin, as the sanctuary of SS. Nazaro e Celso. When it was so dedicated I am ignorant, but it was not in the time of the Augusta. Then, in the fifteenth century, when so much was remembered and so much more was forgotten, it bore the title of SS. Gervasio e Protasio, and this name remained to it till the seventeenth century, when the old title was revived. To-day although it retains its name of SS. Nazaro and Celso, it is more rightly and universally known as the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia.