Ravenna stands in a great alluvial plain between the Apennines, the Adriatic, and the Po. The fine mud, which has been for centuries poured over the land by the streams descending from the mountains, has now silted up her harbour, and Classis, the maritime suburb of Ravenna, which, in the days of Odovacar and Theodoric, was a busy sea port on the Adriatic, now consists of one desolate church--magnificent in its desolation--and two or three farm-buildings standing in the midst of a lonely and fever-haunted rice-swamp. Between the city and the sea stretches for miles the glorious pine-forest, now alas! cruelly maimed by the hands of Nature and of Man, by the frost of one severe winter and by the spades of the builders of a railway, but still preserving some traces of its ancient beauty. Here it was that Theodoric pitched his camp when for three weary years he blockaded his rival's last stronghold, and here by the deep trench (fossatum), which he had dug to guard that camp, he fought the last and not the least deadly of his fights, when Odovacar made his desperate sortie from the famine-stricken town. Memories of a gentler kind, but still not wanting in sadness, now cluster round the solemn avenues of the Pineta. There we still seem to see Dante wandering, framing his lay of the "selva oscura", through which lay his path to the unseen world, and ever looking in vain for the arrival of the messenger who should summon him back to ungrateful Florence. There, in Boccaccio's story, a maiden's hapless ghost is for ever pursued through the woods by "the spectre-huntsman", Guido Cavalcanti, whom her cruelty had driven to suicide. And there, in our fathers' days, rode Byron, like Dante, an exile, if self-exiled, from his country, and feeding on bitter remembrances of past praise and present blame, both too lightly bestowed by his countrymen.
We leave the pine-wood and the desolate-looking rice-fields, we cross over the sluggish streams--Ronco and Montone--and we stand in the streets of historic Ravenna. Our first thoughts are all of disappointment. There is none of the trim beauty of a modern city, nor, as we at first think, is there any of the endless picturesqueness of a well-preserved mediæval city. We look in vain for any building like Giotto's Campanile at Florence, for any space like that noble, crescent-shaped Forum, full of memories of the Middle Ages, the Piazzo del Campo of Siena. We see some strange but not altogether beautiful bell-towers and one or two brown cupolas breaking the sky-line, but that seems to be all, and our first feeling as I have said, is one of disappointment. But when we enter the churches, if we have leisure to study, them, if we can let their spirit mingle with our spirits, if we can quietly ask them what they have to tell us of the Past, all disappointment vanishes. For Ravenna is to those who will study her attentively a very Pompeii of the fifth century, telling us as much concerning those years of the falling Empire and the rising Mediæval Church as Pompeii can tell us of the social life of the Romans in the days of triumphant Paganism.
Not that the record is by any means perfect. Many leaves have been torn out of the book by the childish conceit of recent centuries, which vainly imagined that they could write something instead, which any mortal would now care to read. The destroying hand of the so-called Renaissance has passed over these churches, defacing sometimes the chancel, sometimes the nave. One of the most interesting of the churches of Ravenna [120] has "the cupola disfigured by wretched paintings which mislead the eye in following the lines of the building". Another [121] has its apse covered with those gilt spangles and clouds and cherubs which were the eighteenth century's ideal of impressive religious art. The Duomo, which should have been one of the mosf interesting of all the monuments of Ravenna, was almost entirely rebuilt in the last century, and is now scarcely worth visiting. Still, enough remains in the un-restored churches of Ravenna to captivate the attention of every student of history and every lover of early Christian art. It is only necessary to shut our eyes to the vapid and tasteless work of recent embellishers, as we should close our ears to the whispers of vulgar gossipers while listening to some noble and entrancing piece of sacred music.
Footnote 120:[ (return) ] S. Vitale. The quotation is from Prof. Freeman, "Historical and Architectural Sketches", p. 53.
Footnote 121:[ (return) ] S. Apollinare Dentro.
Thus concentrating our attention on that which is really interesting and venerable in these churches, while we admire their long colonnades, their skilful use of ancient columns--some of which may probably have adorned the temples of Olympian deities in the days of the Emperors,--and the exceedingly rich and beautiful new forms of capitals, of a design quite unknown to Vitruvius, which the genius of Romanesque artists has invented, we find that our chief interest is derived from the mosaics with which these churches were once so lavishly adorned. Mosaic, as is well-known, is the most permanent of all the processes of decorative art. Fresco must fade sooner or later, and where there is any tendency to damp, it fades with cruel rapidity. Oil painting on canvas changes its tone in the long course of years, and the boundary line between cleaning and repainting is difficult to observe. But the fragments out of which the mosaic picture is formed, having been already passed through the fire, will keep their colour for centuries, we might probably say for millenniums. Damp injures them not, except by lessening the cement with which they are fastened to the wall, and therefore when restore tion of a mosaic picture becomes necessary, a really conscientious restorer can always reproduce the picture with precisely the same form and colour which it had when the last stone was inserted by the original artist. And thus, when we visit Ravenna, we have the satisfaction of feeling that we are (in many cases) looking upon the very same picture which was gazed upon by the contemporaries of Theodoric. Portraits of Theodoric himself, unfortunately we have none; but we have two absolutely contemporary portraits of Justinian, the overturner of his kingdom, and one of Justinian's wife, the celebrated Theodora. These pictures, it is interesting to remember, were considerably older when Cimabue found Giotto in the sheepfolds drawing sheep upon a tile, than any picture of Cimabue's or Giotto's is at the present time.
Let us enter the church which is now called "S. Apollinare within the Walls", but which in the time of Theodoric was called the Church of S. Martin, often with the addition "de Cælo Aureo", on account of the beautiful gilded ceiling which distinguished it from the other basilicas of Ravenna. This church was built by order of Theodoric, who apparently intended it to be his own royal chapel. Probably, therefore, the great Ostrogoth many a time saw "the Divine mysteries" celebrated here by bishops and priests of the Arian communion. Two long colonnades fill the nave of the church. The columns are classical, with Corinthian capitals, and are perhaps brought from some older building. A peculiarity of the architecture consists in the high abacus--a frustum of an inverted pyramid--which is interposed between the capital of the column and the arch that springs from it, as if to give greater height than the columns alone would afford. Such in its main features was the Church of "St. Martin of the Golden Heaven", when Theodoric worshipped under its gorgeous roof. But its chief adornment, the feature which makes more impression on the beholder than anything else in Ravenna, was added after Theodoric's death, yet not so long after but that it may be suitably alluded to here as a specimen of the style of decoration which his eyes must have been wont to look upon. About the year 560, after the downfall of the Gothic monarchy, Agnellus, the Catholic Bishop of Ravenna, "reconciled" this church, that is, re-consecrated it for the performance of worship by orthodox priests, and in doing so adorned the attics of the nave immediately above the colonnades with two remarkable mosaic friezes, each representing a long procession.
On the north wall of the church we behold a procession of Virgin Martyrs. They are twenty-four in number, a little larger than life, and are chiefly those maidens who suffered in the terrible persecution of Diocletian. The place from which they start is a seaport town with ships entering the harbour, domes and columns and arcades showing over the walls of the city. An inscription tells us that we have here represented the city of Classis, the seaport of Ravenna. By the time that we have reached the last figure in this long procession we are almost at the east end of the nave. Here we see the Virgin-mother throned in glory with the infant Jesus on her lap, and two angels on each side of her. But between the procession and the throne is interposed the group of the three Wise Men, in bright-coloured raiment, with tiara-like crowns upon their heads, stooping forward as if with eager haste [122] to present their various oblations to the Divine Child.
Footnote 122:[ (return) ]
So Milton in his "Ode on the Nativity":
"See how from far along the Eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet.
Oh run, present them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at His blessed feet".