[Illustration: INTERIOR OF S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE]
[Illustration: CAPITAL FROM S. VITALE]
Beneath between the windows we see represented four Bishops of Ravenna, S. Ursinus, S. Ursus, S. Severus, and S. Ecclesius. To the right are the sacrifices of Abel, Melchizedek, and Abraham. To the left the privileges of the church of Ravenna. In the midst we see an archbishop and the emperor who hands him a scroll on which is written privilegia. To the left are three priests bearing fire, incense, and a thurible. To the right are three other figures supporting the emperor as the three priests support the archbishop. Doubtless this mosaic records the privileges granted to the church of Ravenna by Constantinople. The archbishop is probably Reparatus who received so much from the Emperor Constantinus IV. Two of the figures who attend the emperor represent Heraclius and Tiberius. This mosaic is the latest in the church, dating from 668.
Over the arch of the tribune is a medallion bust of the Saviour holding a book in His left hand and blessing us with His right. Upon either side are symbols of the four Evangelists in the clouds of the sky. Beneath we see on either side the cities of Bethlehem and Hierusalem, from each of which issue six sheep—perhaps the twelve apostles. Beneath again are two palm trees and again the archangels Gabriel and Michael and S. Luke and S. Matthew.
These mosaics have often been remade and repaired. When Crowe and Cavalcaselle examined them before 1860 they found that the whole tunic of the Moses had been repainted and half the face of the Elias had been restored. They proceed: "The head of S. Apollinare is in part damaged, the left hand and lower part of the figure destroyed. The sheep beside S. Apollinare, but particularly those on the right of that figure, are almost completely modern. A large part of the left side of the apsis is repainted, of the four bishops between the windows of the tribune the head of Ecclesius is preserved, the lower part repainted. The head of S. Ursinus is a new mosaic, and the lower half of the figure is restored. In the mosaic of the sacrifice half the head from the eyes upwards and part of the arms of Abel are repainted, the legs have become dropsical under repair. The figures of Abraham and Isaac are almost completely repainted, and the hands and feet are formless for that reason. This mosaic is repaired in two different ways with white cubes coloured over and with painted stucco. In the mosaic representing the tender of privileges the nimbi as already stated are new, but besides, the lower part of all the figures is repainted in stucco and the heads are all more or less repaired. Of the figures in the arch that of the archangel Gabriel is half ruined and half restored, and part of S. Matthew and S. Luke are new."
Since Crowe and Cavalcaselle wrote a vast restoration has been undertaken, and this was finished in 1908. It was very carefully carried out and it is to be believed that the work as we see it is now secure.
There is much else of interest in the church: the beautiful crypt with its ancient sarcophagus of S. Apollinare and its columns; the ten great sarcophagi which stand about the church, three of which contain the relics of archbishops of Ravenna; the curious tabernacle at the end of the north aisle. But a whole morning, or for that matter a whole day, is not too much to spend in this beautiful and deserted sanctuary which bridges for us so many centuries and in which we are made one with those who helped to establish the foundations of Europe.
XIV
RAVENNA IN THE MIDDLE AGE
The last great original work to be undertaken in Ravenna as the capital of the empire in the West was the building and decoration of the churches of S. Vitale and S. Apollinare in Classe. All the Byzantine work that was done later in Ravenna is merely imitative, an expression of failing power under the crushing disaster of the Lombard invasion. When at last Aistulf in 751 made himself master of the impregnable city, it ceased, and suddenly, to be a capital, and though in 754 Pepin "restored" it to the papacy and established the pope throughout the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, he by that act founded the Papal States, whose capital of necessity was Rome. Thus Ravenna found herself when Charlemagne had been crowned emperor in 800 little more than a decaying provincial city, without authority or hope of resurrection, and it is as a city of the provinces full only of gigantic memories that she appears in the Middle Age and the Renaissance and remains to our own day.