Theodoric was not allowed to rest in the mighty tomb that Latin genius had built for him; but for ages many, famous and distinguished in their day, sought to lie under a monument so splendid. The place became a sort of pantheon. Long before then, however, it had been consecrated as a church, S. Maria della Rotonda, and a Benedictine monastery had been founded close by whose monks served it. To-day that monastery has utterly disappeared, and there are no signs of a church in the Rotonda. Only the mausoleum remains in a tangled garden, far from any road, empty and deserted.
XIII
THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES
S. VITALE AND S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE
When Belisarius entered Ravenna in 540, he apparently found more than one new building begun but not finished; of these the chief was the church of S. Vitale. This magnificent octagonal building with its narthex and atrium had, according to Agnellus, been founded by the Archbishop S. Ecclesius, that is to say, between 521 and 534. It was apparently finished and decorated later by Julius Argentarius, and was consecrated by the archbishop S. Maximianus in 547. In plan it resembles very closely the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople built by Justinian about 527. As we know both Justinian and Theodora, his empress, contributed largely to the perfecting of S. Vitale, which remains certainly his most glorious monument in the West.
The plan of the church, as I have said, is octagonal, surmounted by a dome octagonal without but circular within. From one of these eight sides the sanctuary is thrust out, flanked on either side by a circular chapel with a rectangular presbytery. Standing obliquely across one of the two angles of the octagon, directly opposite this sanctuary, stretched the narthex flanked by circular towers. The great octagon is divided into two stories, each of which has three windows upon each of the eight sides, the octagonal dome being lighted by eight single windows.
[Illustration: S. VITALE]
Within the great octagon formed by the walls is a smaller octagon formed by an arcade of mighty piers which upholds the cupola. This arcade contains a double loggia which thus runs round the whole church with the exception of the presbytery, where it ends in lofty tribunes. It is upheld between the piers by columns of precious marble having capitals of the most marvellous beauty.
The space within this inner octagon is covered with a pavement laid down in the sixteenth century, consisting of all sorts of fragments of mosaics and marbles which that century destroyed. The upper loggia was of old the gyneceo, the place of the women. Nothing I think left to us in the world is more sumptuous and gorgeous than this interior. Everywhere are glittering mosaics, precious slabs of marble, priceless columns of beautiful marble. And where the mosaics have been destroyed or left unfinished, as in the cupola and the body of the church, baroque artists have filled the place with their paintings, paintings which in their own style are matchless and which it is now foolishly proposed should be destroyed.[1]
[Footnote 1: We know nothing of any mosaics other than those in the presbytery and the tribunes, it may be that the church was covered with mosaic or was painted by the Byzantine artists, and this as well where the marble slabs now cover the piers as elsewhere. If so it must have been glorious indeed. Nothing that we can do can restore this work to us, and we achieve nothing but destruction by destroying the work that is now there.]