Chapter XX: The Pineta (9)

[Footnote 1: The translation is Mr. Wicksteed's The Early Lives of Dante. He adds a translation of the verses "Theologic Dante, a stranger to no teaching that philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom; glory of the Muses, author most acceptable to the commonalty, lieth here and smiteth either pole with his fame, who assigned their places to the dead, and their jurisdictions to the twin swords, in laic and rhetoric modes. And lastly, with Pierian pipe he was making the pasture lands resound, black Atropos, alas, broke off the work of joy. For him ungrateful Florence bore the dismal fruit of exile, harsh fatherland to her own bard. But Ravenna's piety rejoices to have gathered him into the bosom of Guido Novello, her illustrious chief. In one thousand three hundred and three times seven years of the Deity, he went back on September's Ides to his own stars."]

So far Boccaccio. Though his account tells us much it certainly does not permit us to make many definite statements as to Dante's life in Ravenna. One of the first things, for instance, that any modern biographer would have noted with accuracy would have been the house in which Dante lived. Something definite, too, we might have expected as to his friends and correspondents, as to his occupations and habits. Of all this there is almost nothing. It will, however, especially be noted that Boccaccio speaks of Dante as "training many scholars in poetry especially in the vernacular." What can this mean?

It has been suggested and with some authority that Dante was not entirely dependent upon his host Guido Novello, that he was able to gain a livelihood, at least, by lectures either in his own house or in some public place, and that it is even probable that he occupied an official position in Ravenna of a very honourable sort, that he was, in fact, professor of Rhetoric in that city. There is no evidence to support such a theory. It is true that though we know the names of the professors of Grammar or Rhetoric in the very ancient schools of Ravenna, schools which date from the time of Theodosius the Great, we do not find the name of him who filled that chair during the time of Dante's sojourn in Ravenna. In 1268 Pasio della Noce was lecturing on Jurisprudence in Ravenna; in 1298 Ugo di Riccio was professor of Civil Law there; in 1304 Leone da Verona is teaching Grammar and Logic in the city. Then we hear no more till we come to the year 1333, when a certain Giovanni Giacomo del Bando is professor.[1] The mere absence of names--a silence which does not coincide in any way with Dante's advent or with Dante's death--is, certainly, not enough to allow us to assert the probability of the great poet's having filled the office of lecturer or professor of Civil Law in the school of Ravenna. It is true that Saviozzo da Siena tells us:

"Qui comincio a leggere Dante in pria
Retorica vulgare e molti aperti
Fece di sua Poetica armonia"

and that Manetti, an early biographer, seems to support the theory. But the best evidence, if evidence it can be called, which we have for this theory is to be found in a codex in the Laurentian Library, quoted by Bandini and cited by Dr. Ricci, which says: "It is commonly reported that Dante, being in Ravenna, studying and giving lectures as a doctor to his pupils upon various works, the schools became the resort of many learned men." This statement upon hearsay, however, does little more than confirm the definite assertion of Boccaccio that Dante "trained many scholars," not in civil law, but in "poetry, especially in the vernacular."

[Footnote 1: For a full discussion of all that may be known of Dante at the Poleata court see Dr. Ricci's large work, _L'Ultimo Rifugio di Dante_ (1891). A charming book in English, _Dante in Ravenna_ (1898), by Catherine Mary Phillimore, is to a great extent based upon Dr. Ricci's work. A valuable book that should be consulted is the more recent volume by P.H. Wicksteed and E.G. Gardner, _Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio_ (1902).]

It is quite unproved then that Dante lectured in Ravenna as a professor of Civil Law. It might seem equally certain that he did lecture upon Poetry and the vulgar tongue, and it seems likely that we have the text of his lectures in the latter if not in the earlier part of the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_ "in which in masterly and polished Latin he reproves all the vulgar dialects of Italy." Boccaccio tells us he composed this when he was "already nigh his death," and though modern criticism seems inclined to date its composition not later than 1306 the evidence of Boccaccio is not lightly to be set aside[1].

[Footnote 1: The first part of this work was certainly not written later than 1306 the second part may well have been later.]

Lonely as he doubtless was in Ravenna he was not alone there. With him it would seem was his daughter Beatrice, who became a nun in S. Stefano dell' Uliva, and his sons Pietro and Jacopo. The latter, though a lawyer and not in holy orders, held two benefices in Ravenna, but most of his time seems to have been spent in Verona where Jacopo, his brother, later held a canonry. And then there were his friends.

In his lectures upon Poetry one of his most eager pupils would seem to have been his best friend and host, Guido Novello, who evidently knew well at least those parts of the _Divine Comedy_, chiefly the _Inferno_ be it noted, which deal with his ancestors, for he quotes one of the most famous of them--an unforgettable line spoken by his aunt Francesca da Rimini:

"Questi che mai da me non fia diviso."

in a sonnet of his own[2].

[Footnote 2: Cf. _Ultimo Rifugio_, p. 384, where the sonnet is given in full.]

After the lord Guido Novello, we must name the archbishop of Ravenna, Rainaldo Concorreggio, as among Dante's friends. It is possible that he had known Dante at the University of Bologna and he had been a chaplain of Boniface VIII. He was a brave man, learned in theology, law, and music, and devoted to his religion, an eager student, and he had composed a treatise which has come down to us upon Galla Placidia and her church.

And then there was Giotto who came to paint if not in S. Maria in Porto fuori, certainly in S. Giovanni Evangelista. He was Dante's dear friend and it was probably at the poet's suggestion he had been invited to Ravenna. We do not know whether these two men attended Dante's lectures. But the true audience there which came simply to hear was probably various, consisting of poets, notaries, and all sorts of men, some of whom were Dante's friends and companions. There was Ser Dino Perini, Ser Pietro di Messer Giardino--he was a notary--and Fiduccio dei Milotti, who walked with Dante in the Pineta. All these names have come down to us in the Latin eclogues written by Dante while in Ravenna to his friend Giovanni del Virgilio--del Virgilio because he could so well imitate Virgil.

These eclogues are full of shrewd and curious thought, a real correspondence, and they help us to see the men who surrounded the poet in Ravenna. They do not, however, give us so extraordinary an impression of the strength and keenness of Dante's powers of observation as many a passage in the _Divine Comedy_ in which Ravenna and the rude and fierce world of the Romagna of that day live for ever. It is in answer to the inquiries of the great _Guido of Montefeltro_ that Dante speaks of Romagna in the _Inferno_. Feeble and anaemic though the great lines become in any translation, even so all their virtue is not lost:

"Never was thy Romagna without war
In her proud tyrants' bosoms, nor is now;
But open war there left I none. The state
Ravenna hath maintained this many a year
Is steadfast. There Polenta's eagle[1] broods,
And in his broad circumference of plume
O'ershadows Cervia[2]. The green talons[3] grasp
The land, that stood e'erwhile the proof so long
And piled in bloody heap the host of France.
The old mastiff of Verrucchio and the young[4]
That tore Montagna[5] in their wrath still make
Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs,
Lamone's[6] city and Santerno's[7] range
Under the lion of the snowy lair[8],
Inconstant partisan, that changeth sides
Or ever summer yields to winter's frost.
And she whose flank is washed of Savio's wave[9]
As 'twixt the level and the steep she lies,
Lives so 'twixt tyrant power and liberty."

[Footnote 1: The coat of the Polenta.]

[Footnote 2: Cervia, the least secure of the Polenta possessions.]

[Footnote 3: The green lion of the Ordelaffi of Forli.]

[Footnote 4: Malatesta and Malatestino, lords of Rimini, deriving from Verrucchio, a castle in the hills.]

[Footnote 5: The Malatesta were Guelfs, Montagna de' Parcitati, whom they murdered, was the leader of the Ghibelline party in Rimini.]

[Footnote 6: Faenza.]

[Footnote 7: Imola.]

[Footnote 8: Maghinardo Pagano, whose arms were a blue lion in a white field.]

[Footnote 9: Cesena.]

All Romagna with its untamable fierceness and confusion lies in these lines which, as Dante wrote them, seem as unalterable as those in which the creation of the world is described.

Nor is Dante forgetful of the great destiny that had been Ravenna's. In the sixth canto of the _Paradiso_ it is Justinian himself, "_Cesare fui e son Giustiniano_" who recounts to Dante the victories of the Roman eagle:

"When from Ravenna it came forth and leap'd
The Rubicon,"

or when

"with Belisarius
Heaven's high hand was linked,"

or when

"The Lombard tooth with fang impure
Did gore the bosom of the Holy Church
Under its wings, victorious, Charlemagne
Sped to her rescue."

Nor is Dante forgetful of Ravenna's other claims to glory. In the seventh heaven, which is the planet Saturn, led by Beatrice, he finds S. Romualdo, and speaks of S. Peter Damiano, and blessed Peter _Il Peccatore_, the founder of the church of S. Maria in Porto fuori, two of them of the Onesti house of Ravenna.

"In that place was I Peter Damiano
And Peter the sinner dwelt in the house
Of our blest Lady on the Adriatic shore."

Of the earlier Podesta, too, he is not unmindful:

"Arrigo Mainardi, Pier Traversaro,...
Wonder not, Tuscan, if thou seest me weep
When I recall those once loved names ...
With Traversaro's house and Anastagio's,
Each race disinherited."

With the pitiful story of Francesca da Polenta we have seen how he dealt and how he spoke of Guido Vecchio. These people live because of him, and Ravenna in the Middle Age still holds our interest and our love because he dwelt there and she harboured him.

It was in her service, too, he met his death as we have seen, and in her church of the Friars Minor that he was laid to rest by Guido Novello.

Nine months later the lord of Ravenna received the first complete copy of the _Divina Commedia_, made by Jacopo Alighieri from his father's autograph. A very curious incident is related by Boccaccio in connection with this. It was Dante's custom, Boccaccio tell us, "whenever he had done six or eight cantos, more or less, to send them from whatever place he was in before any other had seen them to Messer Cane della Scala, whom he held in reverence above all other men; and when he had seen them, Dante gave access to them to whoso desired. And having sent to him in this fashion all save the last thirteen cantos, which he had finished, but had not yet sent him, it came to pass that, without bearing it in his mind that he was abandoning them, he died. And when they who were left behind, children and disciples, had searched many times, in the course of many months, amongst all his papers, if haply he had composed a conclusion to his work, and could by no means find the remaining cantos; and when every admirer of his in general was enraged that God had not at least lent him to the world so long that he might have had opportunity to finish what little remained of his work; they had abandoned further search in despair since they could by no means find them.

"So Jacopo and Piero, sons of Dante, both of them poets in rhyme, moved thereto by certain of their friends, had taken it into their minds to attempt to supplement the parental work, as far as in them lay, that it might not remain imperfect, when to Jacopo, who was far more zealous than the other in this work, there appeared a wondrous vision, which not only checked his foolish presumption but showed him where were the thirteen cantos which were wanting to this Divine Comedy and which they had not known where to find. A worthy man of Ravenna whose name was Piero Giardino, long time a disciple of Dante's, related how, when eight months had passed after the death of his master, the aforesaid Jacopo came to him one night near to the hour that we call matins, and told him that that same night a little before that hour he, in his sleep, had seen his father, Dante, approach him, clad in whitest garment, and his face shining with an unwonted light; whom he seemed to ask if he were yet living, and to hear in reply that he was, but in the true life, not in ours. Whereon he seemed further to ask him if he had finished his work or ever he passed to that true life; and if he had finished it, where was the missing part, which they had never been able to find. To this he seemed to hear again in answer, 'Yea! I finished it.' Whereon it seemed that he took him by the hand and led him to that chamber where he was wont to sleep when he was living in this life; and touching a certain spot said, 'Here is that which ye so long have sought.' And no sooner was uttered that word than it seemed that both Dante and sleep departed from him at the same moment. Wherefore he averred that he could not hold but come and signify what he had seen, that they might go together and search in the place indicated to him, which he held most perfectly stamped in his memory, to see whether a true spirit or a false delusion had shown it him. Wherefore since a great piece of the night still remained, they departed together and went to the place indicated, and there found a mat fixed to the wall, which they lightly raised and found a recess in the wall which neither of them had ever seen, nor knew that it was there; and there they found certain writings all mouldy with the damp of the wall and ready to rot had they stayed there much longer; and when they had carefully removed the mould and read, they saw that they contained the thirteen cantos so long sought by them. Wherefore, in great joy, they copied them out, and after the author's wont sent them first to Messer Cane and then joined them on, as was meet, to the imperfect work. In such a manner did the work of so many years see its completion."

As Boccaccio tells us, Guido Novello had scarce buried Dante in that temporary tomb in the church of the Friars Minor when he lost his lordship. On April 1, 1322, he was elected captain of the people in Bologna, and when he was about to return to Ravenna he suddenly heard that the archbishop had been murdered and that the city was in the hands of his enemies. Do what he would he never returned to his own city, and thus his intentions with regard to the tomb of the poet were never carried out. The noble sepulchre which Guido had planned was not built and the body of Dante reposed in the ancient sarcophagus in which it had been first placed. There it remained when Boccaccio came to Ravenna, probably in 1346 and certainly in 1350, as the bearer of a gift from the Or San Michele Society to Beatrice di Dante, then a nun in S. Stefano dell' Uliva.

Boccaccio, it will be remembered, had in his life of Dante bitterly upbraided Florence for her treatment of her greatest son, and to his blame had added a prophecy that she would soon repent of her shameful ingratitude and would envy Ravenna "the body of him whose works have held the admiration of the whole world." This prophecy fulfilled itself many times and first in 1396. In that year, upon December 22, Florence made the first of her many demands for the body of Dante, which she now wished to bury in S. Maria del Fiore. The demand, as Boccaccio had foreseen, was refused. It was repeated in 1429 and again refused. By 1476, when her next attempt was made, Ravenna had passed into the power of the Venetian Republic. It was therefore to Venice that Florence now turned through the Venetian ambassador, who is said to have been none other than Bernardo Bembo.

Bembo's request on behalf of Florence was, of course, a failure, but he seems to have himself repaired the tomb and to have placed upon it an epitaph.

"Exigua tumuli Dantes hic sorte jacebas
Squallenti nulli cognite pene situ.
At nunc marmoreo subnixus conderis arcu
Omnibus et cultu splendidiore nites
Nimirum Bembus musis incensus ethruscis
Hoc tibi quem in primis hoc coluere dedit.

Ann Sal. mcccclxxxiii. vi. Kal. Jvn.
Bernardus Bemb. Praet. aere suo Posuit."

His work of reparation and of adornment was carried out by Pietro Lombardo who was already at work in Ravenna for the Venetian republic, the sculptured effigy of Dante in relief being also from his hand.

But Florence was by no means at the end of her resources. In 1509 Ravenna had passed into the hands of the pope. In 1519 Leo X., a Medici, being on the throne of Peter, the Accademia Medicea of Florence petitioned the pope (among the signatories of the petition was Michelangelo, who offered to "make a worthy sepulchre for the divine poet in an honoured place" in Florence), to be allowed to carry away the bones of Dante from Ravenna to the City of Flowers. The pope gave the Florentine envoys the permission they required as was expected. They proceeded to Ravenna and opened the sarcophagus; but when they lifted the lid, they found it empty, save for "a fragment of bone and a few withered leaves of the laurel which had adorned the poet's head." From that time till our own day the resting place of Dante's bones has been a complete mystery.

It is recorded that in the middle of the seventeenth century the Franciscans rebuilt and repaired the so-called chapel of Braccioforte at S. Francesco, which till then had been joined by a portico to the tomb of Dante. In 1658 this portico among other alterations was removed, and the exterior of the tomb itself was reconstructed with an entrance into the Piazza, as we see it. The interior of the tomb was, however, left in some confusion so that the papal legate determined himself to repair it. In this he met with much opposition from the friars who claimed, as of old, jurisdiction over the sepulchre. Nevertheless he completed the work, and in 1692 placed the following upon the tomb:

Exulem a Florentia Dantem Liberalissime
Excepit Ravenna.
Vivo fruens Mortuum colens
Magnis cineribus licet in parvo magnifici parentarunt
Polentani Principes erigendo
Bembus Praetor Luculentissime extruendo
Praetiosum Musis et Apollini Mausoleum
Quod injuria temporum pene squallens
E. mo Dominico Maria Cursio Legato
Joanne Salviato Prolegato
Magni civis cineres Patriae reconciliare
Cultus perpetuitate curantibus
S. P. Q. R.
Jure Ac Aere suo
Tanquam Thesaurum suum munivit
Instauravit ornavit
A.D. MDCXCII.

Outside the tomb he placed his coat-of-arms, and on either side that of the legate of the province and that of the Franciscan Order. In 1760 the third restoration was undertaken and the tomb assumed the form we now see and was given yet another inscription:

Danti Aleghiero
Poetae sui temporis primo
Restitutori
Politioris humanitatis
Guido et Hostasius Polentiani
clienti et hospiti peregre defuncto
monumentum fecerunt
Bernardus Bembus Praetor Venet. Ravenn.
Pro meritis eius ornatu excoluit.
Aloysius Valentius Gonzaga Card.
Leg. prov. Aemil.
Superiorum Temporum negligentia corruptum
Operibus ampliatis
Munificentia sua restituendum
curavit
Anno M DCC LXXX.

At the same time the tomb was opened again and was found to be empty. In spite of this fact in 1864 the municipal authorities in Florence wrote to Ravenna again demanding the body of the poet, only to be again refused. This, however, was the sixth centenary of Dante's birth and the sarcophagus was again to be opened to "verify the remains." The workmen were indeed at work upon some necessary repairs and draining, when it was found that a part of the wall of the Braccioforte chapel would have to be removed. In setting to work upon this--little more than the removal of a few stones--the pickaxe of one of the workmen struck against wood, and presently a wooden box appeared which partly fell to pieces, revealing a human skeleton. Within the box was found this inscription:

Dantis ossa
Denuper revisa die 3 Junu
1677

Dantis ossa
A me Fre Antonio Santi
hic posita
Ano 1677 die 18 Octobris

Medical experts were summoned. They made, Miss Phillimore tells us, "a careful examination of the bones, and proceeded to reconstruct the skeleton.... The stature answered to that of the poet as nearly as the measurement of a skeleton can represent the living form, and the skull found in the chest corresponded exactly with the mask taken from Dante's face immediately after his death, which was brought from Florence for the purpose of making this comparison."

What seems to have happened has been made clear for us by Dr. Ricci. Between 1483, when Bembo reconstructed the tomb, and 1520, when the Florentines again claimed the body, and for the first time with a certainty of success, the body of Dante disappeared. It seems that in 1520 the Franciscans entered the mausoleum, abstracted the body, and hid it to save it for Ravenna. In June 1677 Fra Antonio visited the bones in their hiding place and verified them. In October of the same year they were built into the new wall where the old entrance to the Braccioforte chapel had been; to be discovered by chance in 1865.

It is curious that even as the last cantos of the _Divine Comedy_ were discovered by means of a dream, so a dream went before the discovery of the bones of Dante.

"The sacristan of the Franciscan confraternity," we read, "called La Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of the ancient chapel of Braccioforte." His name was Angelo Grillo ... This sacristan declared himself to have seen in a dream a shade issue from the spot where the body was found, clad in red, that it passed through the chapel into the adjoining cemetery. It approached him, and on being asked who it was, replied, 'I am Dante.' The sacristan died in May 1865, a few days before the discovery of the bones on the 27th of that month. Upon June 26, 1865, the bones of Dante were replaced in their original sarcophagus, ornamented by Pietro Lombardi, after having lain in state for three days, during which thousands from all over Italy passed before them. There it is to be hoped they will remain.

XVI

MEDIAEVAL RAVENNA

THE CHURCHES

When we come to examine what is left to us of mediaeval Ravenna, of the buildings which were erected there during the Middle Age, we shall find, as we might expect, very little that is either great or splendid, for, as we have seen, after the first year of the ninth century Ravenna fell from her great position and became nothing more than a provincial city, perhaps more inaccessible than any other in the peninsula. Her achievement such as it was in the earlier mediaeval period consisted in the production of three men of real importance, S. Romuald of the Onesti family of Ravenna, who was born in the city about the year 956 and who founded, as we know, the Order of Camaldoli; S. Peter Damian, who was born there about 988; and Blessed Peter of Ravenna, Pietro degli Onesti, called _Il Peccatore_, of the same stock as S. Romuald.

The work of S. Romuald was a reform of the Benedictine Order. The Order of Camaldoli which he founded was the second reform which had come out of the great brotherhood of S. Benedict; it was younger than the Cluniac but older than the Cistercian reform, and it was begun in 1012. In that year S. Romuald, who was a Benedictine abbot, having been dismissed by all the houses over which he had successively ruled, for they would not bear the penitential strictness of his government, founded a hermitage at Camaldoli above the upper valley of the Arno called the Casentino. There each monk lived in a separate dwelling, all being enclosed in a great wall some five hundred and thirty yards about, beyond which the monks were forbidden to go. They followed the Rule of S. Benedict, kept two Lents in the year, and never tasted meat. They had, of course, a church in common where they were bound to recite the divine office, for this is of the essence of the Rule of S. Benedict, but certain among them--and this is the essence of the reform of Camaldoli--never quitted their cells, their food being brought to them in their huts, where, if the lecluse were a priest, he said his Mass, assisted by some one close by but not in the same room. Thus we see the monks and the hermits living side by side, but scarcely together, and so they continued from the year 1012 till our own day, which has seen the great Camaldoli suppressed. The device of the order was a cup or chalice out of which two doves drank, representing thus the two classes of hermits and monks, the contemplative and the active life.

The second great Ravennese of the Middle Age, S. Peter Damian, who was born about 988 in Ravenna, of a good but at that time poor family, was the youngest of many children. He was early left an orphan, and living in his brother's house was treated, it would appear, rather as a beast than a man. Presently, however, another brother, then archpriest of Ravenna, took pity on him and had him educated, first at Faenza but after at Parma, where he studied under a famous master. Here he became immersed in the religious life so that when two monks belonging to Fonte Avellana, "a desert at the foot of the Apennines in Umbria," happened to call at the place of his abode he followed them. After a life of penitence and hardship, in 1057 pope Stephen IX. prevailed upon him to quit his desert and made him cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and later pope Nicholas II. sent him to Milan as his legate, till in 1062 the successor of Nicholas allowed him to return to his solitude; but in 1063 he was sent to France as papal legate. Later we find him as papal ambassador in Ravenna--this in 1072. He was then a very old man, and on his way back to Rome he died at Faenza.

This famous saint has often been confused with the third great Ravennese of this time, Pietro degli Onesti, called Pietro _Il Peccatore_[1] This confusion, which Dante disposes of in the well-known passage of the _Paradiso_:

"In quel loco fui 10, Pier Damiano,
e Pietro Peccator fu nella casa
Di nostra Donna in sul lito Adriano,"[2]

is commented upon in one of Boccaccio's letters to his friend Petrarch.[3] It is true both Peters were of Ravenna, but whereas Blessed Pietro _Il Peccatore_ was of the Onesti family, as was S. Romuald, S. Pietro Damiano was not; the last died in 1072 at Faenza as we have seen, the first as we may think in 1119.

[Footnote 1: It is I confess doubtful whether Pietro degli Onesti was ever called _Il Peccatore_ till a later epoch. The authenticity of the letters in which he so styles himself is open to question and the inscription on his tomb is it seems of the fifteenth century.]

[Footnote 2: _Paradiso_, xxi. 121-123. "In quel loco" refers to Fonte Avellana.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. Corazzini, _Lettere edite ed inedite di Giovanni Boccaccio_ (Firenze, 1877), p. 307.]

Now though all were famous and all were of Ravenna it is the last and I suppose the least of them who is most closely connected with the city. The others went away and won, not only great place in the world, but an everlasting fame. Blessed Pietro _Il Peccatore_ stayed in Ravenna and built there outside the walls in the marsh between Ravenna and Classe the great home of Our Lady, S. Maria in Porto fuori. About the middle of the eleventh century, Dr Ricci tells us, certain religious retired into the solitude by the shore of the Adriatic and there built a little church or oratory that was called S. Maria _in fossula_. In this act we may certainly see the example of S. Romuald. But about 1096 there joined himself to them Pietro degli Onesti called _Il Peccatore_, and perhaps because he was of the Onesti he built there a new and a larger church, it is said in fulfilment of a vow made, as was Galla Placidia's, in a storm at sea. It is this church which in great part we still see, with additions of the thirteenth century, a lonely and beautiful thing in the emptiness of the sodden fields to the south-east of Ravenna between the Canale del Molino and the Fiumi Uniti.

The lonely and melancholy church of S. Maria in Porto fuori is a basilica consisting of three naves which formed a part of the original church of the Blessed Pietro, and a presbytery, apse, and chapels which are of the thirteenth century. There we see some frescoes of a very beautiful and early character which have been erroneously attributed to Giotto, and as erroneously it might seem to Peter of Rimini.

They were the gift of a certain Graziadeo, a notary who in 1246 provided the cost of the work, which was carried out it would seem by Maso da Faenza (1314), Rastello da Forll (1350-60), Giovanni da Ravenna (1368-96), and other painters of the Romagnuol school.[1] These works, which are among the loveliest we have of the school, may be noted as follows: in the nave to the left we see the Madonna and Child with four saints; here, too, is S. Julian. Upon the triumphal arch we see in the midst the Saviour and on the one side Antichrist and the martyrdom of the saints, on the other the defeat and end of Antichrist who is beheaded by angels. Beneath are scenes of Paradise and Hell. On the roof of the choir we see the Evangelists with their symbols and the Doctors of the Church. Upon the right the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, together with the Massacre of the Innocents and the Last Supper and perhaps S. Francis and S. Clare. Upon the left we have the Birth and Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in the Temple. The last two figures upon the right here are said to be portraits of Giotto and Guido da Polenta by those who attribute these works to the Florentine master. In the chapel on the left we see pope John I. before Theodoric, pope John in prison, and in the lunette the martyrdom of a saint. Close by are other frescoes repainted of S. Apollinaris and S. Antony Abbot. In the chapel on the right we see perhaps S. John baptising a king, S. John preaching, and Blessed Pietro _Il Peccatore_ healing the blind and sick. Here too would appear to be scenes from the life of S. Matthew, but unhappily the subjects are all of them obscure and difficult to interpret. At the end of the apse we see the three Maries at the Sepulchre and the Incredulity of S. Thomas.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Dr. Ricci, _Guida di Ravenna_ (Bologna, fourth edition), and see Anselmi, _Memorie del Pittore Trecentista Petrus da Rimini_ in _La Romagna_ (1906), vol. III. fasc. Settembre.]

Of these majestic but spoilt works undoubtedly the noblest in design is that of the Death of the Blessed Virgin. The Last Supper is also exceedingly beautiful, and the Incredulity of S. Thomas is a splendid piece of work. But in the course of ages these latter works especially have suffered grievously, as of course has the whole church.

Built in the marsh it has sunk so deeply into it that its pillars are covered half way up, and the church seems always about to be wholly engulfed. It was called S. Maria in Porto because it was originally built near to the famous Port that Augustus Casar had established and which for so long was the headquarters of the eastern fleet. In the sixteenth century when the Canons Regular of the Lateran, who then served it, were compelled to abandon it, they built within the city of Ravenna another church which they named after that they had left, S. Maria in Porto. Thereafter the old church without the walls was known as S. Maria in Porto fuori.

The mighty tower which rises beside S. Maria in Porto fuori has been thought to be in part the famous Pharos of which Pliny speaks.[1] It is almost certainly founded upon it, but the lower part in its huge strength is, as we see it, a work of the end of the twelfth century, as is the lofty campanile which rises from it.

[Footnote 1: See _supra_, p. 24.]

S. Maria in Porto fuori is undoubtedly the greatest monument that remains to Ravenna of the Middle Age; nothing really comparable with it is to be found in the city itself.

The earliest of the friars' churches, those great monuments of the Middle Age in Italy, is S. Chiara which with its convent is now suppressed and lost in the Recovero di Mendicita (Corso Garibaldi, 19). This convent, which dates certainly from 1255, was founded by Chiara da Polenta and was rebuilt in 1794. It is from its garden that we get our best idea of the church which within possesses frescoes of the Romagnuol school, where in the vault we see the four Evangelists with their symbols and the four Doctors of the Church. Upon the walls we see a spoiled fresco of the Presepio, that peculiarly Franciscan subject, and again the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism of Our Lord, Christ in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and various saints. These frescoes are the work of the men who painted in S. Maria in Porto fuori.

It cannot have been much later that the church of S. Pier Maggiore, of which I have already spoken,[2] came into Franciscan hands, and certainly from 1261 it was called S. Francesco, when the archbishop Filippo Fontana handed it over to the Conventuals who held it till 1810. Its chief mediseval interest lies for us of course in the fact that Dante was buried, probably at his own desire, within its precincts. But there are other things too. Close to the entrance door is a slab of red Verona marble dated 1396, which is the tomb of Ostasio da Polenta who was a Tertiary of the Franciscan Order, and was therefore buried in the habit of the friars. The figure carved there in relief to represent Ostasio is evidently a portrait and a very fine and noble piece of work. To the left, again, is another slab of red Verona marble which marks the tomb of the General of the Franciscan Order, Padre Enrico Alfieri, who died of fever in Ravenna in 1405. The fine Renaissance pilasters in the Cappella del Crocefisso should be noted, and the beautiful sixteenth-century monument of Luffo Numai by Tommaso Flamberti at the end of the left aisle.

[Footnote 2: See _supra_, pp. 174 _et seq_.]

The Dominicans have not been more fortunate than the Franciscans. Somewhat to the north of the Piazza Venti Settembre in the Via Cavour we find their church S. Domenico. It is said that originally there stood here a Byzantine church dedicated in honour of S. Maria Callopes, but this Dr. Ricci denies. S. Domenico was built from its foundations it seems in October 1269 for the Dominicans and was enlarged in 1374 according to an inscription in the sacristy; but it was almost entirely rebuilt in the beginning of the eighteenth century. The facade and the side portico are perhaps now the most genuine parts of the church. The chief treasure is, however, not of the Middle Age at all, but of the Renaissance, and consists of four large pictures painted in tempera, probably organ shutters, representing the Annunciation, S. Peter Martyr, and S. Dominic. They are the excellent work of Niccold Rondinelli the pupil of Giovanni Bellini.[1]

[Footnote 1: See _infra_, pp. 267 _et seq_.]

From S. Domenico we pass again to S. Giovanni Evangelista if only to note the beautiful Gothic portal of the fourteenth century, of which I have already spoken,[2] and the spoiled frescoes by Giotto in the vaulting of the fourth chapel on the left. Giotto, according to Vasari, came to Ravenna at the instigation of Dante and painted in S. Francesco, but whatever he may have done there has utterly perished, and there only remains in Ravenna his spoilt work in this little chapel in S. Giovanni Evangelista. Here we see in a ceiling divided by two diagonals, at the centre of which the Lamb and Cross are painted on a medallion, the four Evangelists enthroned with their symbols and the four Doctors of the Church, a subject common everywhere and especially so in Ravenna. These works have suffered very greatly from restoration, but they seem indeed to be the work of the master in so far as the design is concerned, all surely that is left after the repaintings that have befallen them.

[Footnote 2: See _supra_, pp. 175 _et seq_.]

The mosaic pavements of 1213, representing scenes from the third crusade, in the chapel to the left of the choir should be noted.

We must not leave S. Giovanni Evangelista without a look at the great tower of the eleventh century which overshadows it. It might seem to be contemporary with the greater Torre Comunale in the Via Tredici Giugno as the street is now absurdly named. Nor should any one omit to visit the Casa Polentana near Porta Ursicina and the Casa Traversari in the Via S. Vitale, grand old thirteenth-century houses that speak to us, not certainly of Ravenna's great days, but of a greater day than ours, and one, too, in which the most tragic of Italians wandered up and down these windy ways eating his heart out for Florence. Indeed Dante consumes all our thoughts in mediaeval Ravenna.

There is a tale told by Franco Sacchetti that I will set down here, for it expresses what in part we must all feel, and what in the confusion of philosophy at the end of the Middle Age was felt far more keenly by men who visited this strange city.

"Maestro Antonio of Ferrara was a man of very great parts, almost a poet, and as entertaining as a jester, but he was very vicious and sinful. Being in Ravenna during the time that Messer Bernardino of Polenta held the lordship, it chanced that this Messer Antonio, who was a very great gambler, had been gambling one day and had lost nearly all he possessed. Being in despair, he entered the church of the Friars Minor, where there is the tomb which holds the body of the Florentine poet Dante, and having seen an antique Crucifix half-burned and smoked by the great number of lights placed around it, and finding just then many candles lighted there, he immediately went and took all the tapers and candles which were burning there and going to the tomb of Dante he placed them before it saying, 'Take them, for thou art far more worthy of them than it is.' The people beholding this and marvelling greatly said, 'What doth this man?' And they all looked at one another...."

Sacchetti does not answer the question asked by the astonished people of Ravenna, but goes on to tell us of the lord "who delighted in such things as do all lords." He could not have answered it for he did not know himself what it meant. We are in better case, I think, and know that what that wild and half--blasphemous act meant was that the Renaissance had made an end of the Middle Age here in Ravenna as elsewhere.

XVII

RAVENNA IN THE RENAISSANCE

THE BATTLE OF 1512

When in the year 1438 duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan forced Ostasio da Polenta, the fifth of that name, into an alliance and the Venetians thereupon invited him to visit them, Venice had decided for her own safety to annex Ravenna and Ostasio soon learned that the new government had proclaimed itself in his old capital. He, as I have said, presently disappeared, the victim of a mysterious assassination; and Venice governed Ravenna by _provveditori_ and _podesta_, as happily and successfully, it might seem, as she governed Venetia and a part of Lombardy. For her doubtless the acquisition of Ravenna was not a very great thing, nor does it seem to have changed in any very great degree the half-stagnant life of the city itself, which, as we may suppose, had for so long ceased to play any great part in the life of Italy, that a change of government there was not of much importance to any one except the Holy See, the true over-lord.

The Holy See, however, had no intention of submitting to the incursion of the republic into its long established territories without a protest. In the war of Ferrara, Venice had come into collision with the pope and had in reality been worsted, though the peace of Bagnolo (1484) gave her Rovigo, the Polesine, and Ravenna. But she had adopted a fatal policy in appealing to the French, a policy which led straight on to Cambray, which, as we may think, so unfortunately crippled her for ever.

The descent of the French was successful at least in this, that it aroused the cupidity and ambition of the king of Spain and of the emperor. Italy was proved to be any one's prize at Fornovo, and when Louis XII. succeeded Charles VIII. in 1498 and combined in his own person the claim of the French crown to Naples and to Genoa and the Orleans claim to Milan, Venice, instead of being doubly on guard, thought she saw a chance of extending her Lombard dominions. She refused the alliance Sforza offered and promised to assist Louis in return for Cremona and its _contado_. In other words, she committed treason to Italy and thus justified, if anything could justify, the League of Cambray.

Sforza's first act was to urge the Turk, who needed no invitation, to attack the republic, whose fleet in 1499 was utterly defeated at sea by the Orientals, who presently raided into Friuli. Venice was forced to accept a humiliating peace. It was in these circumstances that, with all Italy alienated from her, the papacy began to act against her.

Its first and most splendid effort to create a reality out of the fiction of the States of the Church was the attempt of Cesare Borgia, who actually made himself master of the whole of the Romagna. Venice watched him with the greatest alarm, but chance saved her, for with the death of Alexander VI., Cesare and his dream came to nothing. Venice acted at once, for indeed even in her decline she was the most splendid force in Italy. She induced by a most swift and masterly stroke the leading cities of the Romagna to place themselves under her protection. It was a great stroke, the last blow of a great and desperate man; that it failed does not make it less to be admired.

The rock which broke the stroke as it fell and shattered the sword which dealt it was Pope Julius II.

Louis and the emperor had come together, and when in June 1508 a truce was made they would have been content to leave Venice alone; it was the pope who refused, and by the end of the year had formed the European League for the purpose of "putting a stop to losses, injuries, rapine, and damage which Venice had inflicted not merely on the Holy See, but also on the Holy Roman Empire, the House of Austria, the Duchy of Milan, the King of Naples and other princes, seizing and tyrannically occupying their territories, cities, and castles as though she were conspiring to the common ill...." So ran the preamble of the League of Cambray. It contemplated among other things the return of Ravenna, Faenza, Rimini, and the rest of the Romagna to the Holy See; Istria, Fruili, Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, and Verona being handed to the emperor; Brescia, Bergamo, Crema, and Cremona passing to France, and the sea-coast towns in Apulia to the king of Spain; Dalmatia was to go to the king of Hungary and Cyprus to the duke of Savoy.

In the spring of 1507, Julius launched his bull of excommunication against Venice; Ravenna, which was held by the podesta Marcello and by Zeno, was attacked by the pope's general, the duke of Urbino, and after the disastrous defeat of the Venetians by the French and Milanese, at Aguadello, on the Adda, the republic ordered the restoration of Ravenna to the Holy See, together with the other cities of the Romagna.

The pope was now content, but France and the emperor were not, and Venice was forced to ally herself first with one side and then with the other.

In the brutal struggle of the foreigner for Cisalpine Gaul there were two desperate battles, that of Ravenna in 1512, in which the French, though victorious, lost their best leader, Gaston de Foix, and that of Novara in 1513, which induced the French to leave Italy. As the first of these battles concerns Ravenna we must consider it more closely.

At this time Venice was in alliance with Spain and the pope against the French, who were commanded by Gaston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, a nephew of the French king. The combined Spanish and papal troops, about 20,000 strong, were led by Raimondo da Cardona. The French were south of the Apennines when the Papal-Spanish force swung round from Milan into the Ferrarese, seized the territory south of the Po, and laid siege to Bologna. A Venetian force was hurrying to aid them.

Gaston de Foix did not hesitate. On February 5, he flung himself over the ice-bound Apennine and hastened to relieve Bologna. Cardona retreated before him down the Aemilian Way; but Brescia opened its gates to the Venetians, and this, which hindered Gaston, so enraged him that when he had taken the city he gave it up to a pillage in which more than eight thousand were slain and his men "were so laden with spoil that they returned to France forthwith to enjoy it."

Gaston was compelled to return to Milan to re-form his troops, for he was determined both by necessity and by his own nature, which loved decision, to force a battle with the allies. The truth was that the position of France was precarious, her career in Italy was deeply threatened by the allies, Henry VIII. of England contemplated a descent upon Normandy, and until the enemy in Italy was disposed of her way was barred to Naples.

So Gaston set out with some 7000 cavalry and 17,000 infantry, French, Italian, German, to pursue and to defeat Cardona, who did not wish to fight. The army of the allies was chiefly Spanish and it numbered some 6000 cavalry and 16,000 infantry of most excellent fighting quality.