Ravenna, a Study

by Edward Hutton

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.]

Of these majestic but spoilt works undoubtedly the noblest in design 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.