Ravenna, a Study

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ravenna, A Study, by Edward Hutton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Ravenna, A Study Author: Edward Hutton Release Date: June 6, 2004 [EBook #12542] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAVENNA, A STUDY *** Produced by Ted Garvin, Leonard Johnson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. RAVENNA A STUDY BY EDWARD HUTTON ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR AND LINE BY HARALD SUND 1913 TO MY FRIEND ARTHUR SYMONS IN AFFECTIONATE HOMAGEPREFACE My intention in writing this book has been to demonstrate the unique importance of Ravenna in the history of Italy and of Europe, especially during the Dark Age from the time of Alaric's first descent into the Cisalpine plain to the coming of Charlemagne. That importance, as it seems to me, has been wholly or almost wholly misunderstood, and certainly, as I understand it, has never been explained. In this book, which is offered to the public not without a keen sense of its inadequacy, I have tried to show in as clear a manner as was at my command, what Ravenna really was in the political geography of the empire, and to explain the part that position allowed her to play in the great tragedy of the decline and fall of the Roman administration. If I have succeeded in this I am amply repaid for all the labour the book has cost me. The principal sources, both ancient and modern, which I have consulted in the preparation of this volume have been cited, but I must here acknowledge the special debt I owe to the late Dr. Hodgkin, to Professor Diehl, to Dr. Corrado Ricci, and to the many contributors to the various Italian Bollettini which I have ransacked. E.H. March 1913.CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND POLITICAL POSITION OF RAVENNA II. JULIUS CAESAR IN RAVENNA III. RAVENNA IN THE TIME OF THE EMPIRE IV. THE RETREAT UPON RAVENNA Honorius and Galla Placidia V. THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST VI. THEODORIC VII. THE RECONQUEST Vitiges, Belisarius, Totila, Narses VIII. MODICA QUIES The Pragmatic Sanction and the Settlement of Italy IX. THE CITADEL OF THE EMPIRE IN ITALY The Lombard Invasion X. THE PAPAL STATE Pepin and Charlemagne XI. THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY The Cathedral, Baptistery, Arcivescovado, S. Agata, S. Pietro Maggiore, S. Giovanni Evangelista, S. Giovanni Battista, and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia XII. THE ARIAN CHURCHES OF THE SIXTH CENTURY The Palace of Theodoric, S. Apollinare Nuovo, S. Spirito, S. Maria in Cosmedin, the Mausoleum of Theodoric XII. THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES S. Vitale and S. Apollinare in Classe XIV. RAVENNA IN THE MIDDLE AGE XV. DANTE IN RAVENNA XVI. MEDIAEVAL RAVENNA The Churches XVII. RAVENNA IN THE RENAISSANCE The Battle of 1512 XVIII. RENAISSANCE RAVENNA Churches and Palaces XIX. THE GALLERY AND THE MUSEUM XX. THE PINETALIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COLOURED PLATES S. APOLLINARE NUOVO S. AGATA THE MAUSOLEUM OF THEODORIC S. VITALE: THE GALLERY S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA THE MAUSOLEUM OF GALLA PLACIDIA S. VITALE: THE PRESBYTERY S. GIOVANNI BATTISTA S. MARIA IN PORTO PORTA SERRATA LINE DRAWINGS SKETCH MAP SKETCH MAP SKETCH MAP GREEK RELIEF FROM A TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE SARCOPHAGUS OF THE EMPEROR HONORIUS THE APSE OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA THE MAUSOLEUM OF GALLA PLACIDIA CAPITAL FROM THE COLONNADE IN PIAZZA MAGGIORE S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE CAPITAL FROM S. VITALE CAPITAL FROM SANTO SPIRITO SKETCH MAP SKETCH MAP OF CITIES IN IMPERIAL HANDS SKETCH MAP SHOWING NARSES' MARCH TO MEET TOTILA SKETCH MAP THE SARCOPHAGUS OF THE EXARCH ISAAC GUARDHOUSE OF THE PALACE OF THEODORIC THE CATHEDRAL (Basilica Ursiana) THE BAPTISTERY AND CAMPANILE OF THE CATHEDRAL THE CAMPANILE OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA S. VITALE CAPITAL FROM S. VITALE INTERIOR OF S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSECAPITAL FROM S. VITALE THE CAMPANILE OF S. APOLLINARE CASA POLENTANA DANTE'S TOMB CAMPANILE OF S. FRANCESCO INTERIOR OF S. MARIA IN PORTO FUORI TORRE DEL COMUNE PORTAL OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA ROCCA VENIZIANA MONUMENT OF GASTON DE FOIX THE CLOISTER OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA THE PINETA THE PINETA TO PORTO CORSINI PLAN OF RAVENNA see front end paper [Illustration: Colour Plate S. APOLLINARE NUOVO] RAVENNA A STUDYI THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND POLITICAL POSITION OF RAVENNA Upon the loneliest and most desolate shore of Italy, where the vast monotony of the Emilian plain fades away at last, almost imperceptibly, into the Adrian Sea, there stands, half abandoned in that soundless place, and often wrapt in a white shroud of mist, a city like a marvellous reliquary, richly wrought, as is meet, beautiful with many fading colours, and encrusted with precious stones: its name is Ravenna. It stands there laden with the mysterious centuries as with half barbaric jewels, weighed down with the ornaments of Byzantium, rigid, hieratic, constrained; and however you come to it, whether from Rimini by the lost and forgotten towns of Classis and Caesarea, or from Ferrara through all the bitter desolation of Comacchio, or across the endless marsh from Bologna or Faenza, its wide and empty horizons, its astonishing silence, and the difficulty of every approach will seem to you but a fitting environment for a place so solitary and so imperious. For this city of mute and closed churches, where imperishable mosaics glisten in the awful damp, and beautiful pillars of most precious marbles gleam through a humid mist, of mausoleums empty but indestructible, of tottering campanili, of sumptuous splendour and incredible decay, is the sepulchre of the great civilisation which Christianity failed to save alive, but to which we owe everything and out of which we are come; the only monument that remains to us of those confused and half barbaric centuries which lie between Antiquity and the Middle Age. Mysteriously secured by nature and doubly so after the failure of the Roman administration, Ravenna was the death-bed of the empire and its tomb. To her the emperor Honorius fled from Milan in the first years of the fifth century; within her walls Odoacer dethroned the last emperor of the West, founded a kingdom, and was in his turn supplanted by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. It was from her almost impregnable isolation that the attempt was made by Byzantium—it seemed and perhaps it was our only hope—to reconquer Italy and the West for civilisation; while her fall before the appalling Lombard onset in the eighth century brought Pepin into Italy in 754, to lay the foundation of a new Christendom, to establish the temporal power of the papacy, and to prophesy of the resurrection of the empire, of the unity of Europe. But though it is as the imperishable monument of those tragic centuries that we rightly look upon Ravenna: before the empire was founded she was already famous. It was from her silence that Caesar emerged to cross the Rubicon and all unknowing to found what, when all is said, was the most beneficent, as it was the most universal, government that Europe has ever known. In the first years of that government Ravenna became, and through the four hundred years of its unhampered life she remained, one of its greatest bulwarks. While upon its failure, as I have said, she suddenly assumed a position which for some three hundred and fifty years was unique not only in Italy but in Europe. And when with the re- establishment of an universal government her importance declined and at length passed away, she yet lived on in the minds and the memory of men as something fabulous and still, curiously enough, as a refuge, the refuge of the great poet of the new age; so that to-day, beside the empty tombs of Galla Placidia and Theodoric, there stands the great sarcophagus which holds the dust of Dante Alighieri. We may well ask how it was that a city so solitary, so inaccessible, and so remote should have played so great a part in the history of Europe. It is to answer this question that I have set myself to write this book, which is rather an essay in memoriam of her greatness, her beauty, and her forlorn hope, than a history properly so called of Ravenna. But if we are to come to any real understanding of what she stood for, of what she meant to us once upon a time, we must first of all decide for ourselves what was the fundamental reason of her great renown. I shall maintain in this book that the cause of her greatness, of her opportunity for greatness, was always the same, namely, her geographical position in relation to the peninsula of Italy, the Cisalpine plain, and the sea. Let us then consider these things. Italy, the country we know as Italy, properly understood, is fundamentally divided into two absolutely different parts by a great range of mountains, the Apennines, which stretches roughly from sea to sea, from Genoa almost but not quite to Rimini. The country which lies to the south of that line of mountains is Italy proper, and it consists as we know of a long narrow mountainous peninsula, while its history throughout antiquity may be said to be altogether Roman. What lies to the north of the Apennines is not Italy at all, but Cisalpine Gaul. In its nature this country is altogether continental. It consists for the most part of a vast plain divided from west to east by a great river, the Po, and everywhere it is watered and nourished by its two hundred tributaries. Shut off as it is on the south from Italy proper by the Apennines, this plain is defended from Gaul and the Germanics, on the west and the north, by the mightiest mountains in Europe, the Alps, which here enclose it in a vast concave rampart that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic. On the east it is contained by the sea. [Illustration: Sketch Map of northern Italy] The history of this vast country before the Roman Conquest is, as is history everywhere in the West before that event, vague and obsc