"Right noble and beauteous did they make it with eight faces, and when they had done it with great diligence, they consecrated it to their god Mars, who was the god of the Romans; and they had him carved in marble, in the shape of a knight armed on horseback. They set him upon a marble column in the midst of that temple, and him did they hold in great reverence and adored as their god, what time Paganism lasted in Florence. And we find that the said temple was commenced at the time that Octavian Augustus reigned, and that it was erected under the ascendency of such a constellation that it will last well nigh to eternity."
There is much difference of opinion as to the real date of construction of the present building. While some authorities have assigned it to the eleventh or even to the twelfth century, others have supposed that it is either a Christian temple constructed in the sixth century on the site of the old Temple of Mars, or the original Temple converted into Christian use. It has indeed been recently urged that it is essentially a genuine Roman work of the fourth century, very analogous in structure to the Pantheon at Rome, on the model of which it was probably built. The little apse to the south-west–the part which contains the choir and altar–is certainly of the twelfth century. There was originally a round opening at the centre of the dome–like the Pantheon–and under this opening, according to Villani, the statue of Mars stood. It was closed in the twelfth century. The dome served Brunelleschi as a model for the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. The lantern was added in the sixteenth century. Although this building, so sacrosanct to the Florentines, had been spared by the Goths and Lombards, it narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of the Tuscan Ghibellines. In 1249, when the Ghibellines, with the aid of the Emperor Frederick II., had expelled the Guelfs, the conquerors endeavoured to destroy the Baptistery by means of the tower called the Guardamorto, which stood in the Piazza towards the entrance of the Corso degli Adimari, and watched over the tombs of the dead citizens who were buried round San Giovanni. This device of making the tower fall upon the church failed. "As it pleased God," writes Villani, "through the reverence and miraculous power of the blessed John, the tower, when it fell, manifestly avoided the holy Church, and turned back and fell across the Piazza; whereat all the Florentines wondered, and the People greatly rejoiced."
At the close of the thirteenth century, in those golden days of Dante's youth and early manhood, there were steps leading up to the church, and it was surrounded by these tombs. Many of the latter seem to have been old pagan sarcophagi adopted for use by the Florentine aristocracy. Here Guido Cavalcanti used to wander in his solitary musings and speculations–trying to find out that there was no God, as his friends charitably suggested–and Boccaccio tells a most delightful story of a friendly encounter between him and some young Florentine nobles, who objected to his unsociable habits. In 1293, Arnolfo di Cambio levelled the Piazza, removed the tombs, and plastered the pilasters in the angles of the octagonal with slabs of black and white marble of Prato, as now we see. The similar decoration of the eight faces of the church is much earlier.
The interior is very dark indeed–so dark that the mosaics, which Dante must in part have looked upon, would need a very bright day to be visible. At present they are almost completely concealed by the scaffolding of the restorers.[38] Over the whole church preside the two Saints whom an earlier Florentine worshipper of Mars could least have comprehended–the Baptist and the Magdalene. And the spirit of Dante haunts it as he does no other Florentine building–il mio bel San Giovanni, he lovingly calls it. "In your ancient Baptistery," his ancestor tells him in the fifteenth Canto of the Paradiso, "I became at once a Christian and Cacciaguida." And, indeed, the same holds true of countless generations of Florentines–among them the keenest intellects and most subtle hands that the world has known–all baptised here. But it has memories of another kind. The shameful penance of oblation to St. John–if Boccaccio's tale be true, and if the letter ascribed to Dante is authentic–was rejected by him; but many another Florentine, with bare feet and lighted candle, has entered here as a prisoner in penitential garb. The present font–although of early date–was placed here in the seventeenth century, to replace the very famous one which played so large a part in Dante's thoughts. Here had he been baptised–here, in one of the most pathetic passages of the Paradiso, did he yearn, before death came, to take the laurel crown:–
Se mai continga che il poema sacro,
al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,
sì che m'ha fatto per più anni macro,
vinca la crudeltà, che fuor mi serra
del bello ovil, dov'io dormii agnello,
nimico ai lupi che gli danno guerra;
con altra voce omai, con altro vello
ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
del mio battesmo prenderò il cappello;
però che nella Fede, che fa conte
l'anime a Dio, quivi entra' io.[39]
This ancient font, which stood in the centre of the church, appears to have had round holes or pozzetti in its outer wall, in which the priests stood to baptise; and Dante tells us in the Inferno that he broke one of these pozzetti, to save a boy from being drowned or suffocated. The boy saved was apparently not being baptised, but was playing about with others, and had either tumbled into the font itself or climbed head foremost into one of the pozzetti. When the divine poet was exiled, charitable people said that he had done this from heretical motives–just as they had looked with suspicion upon his friend Guido's spiritual wanderings in the same locality.
THE BAPTISTERY