Chapter XX: The Pineta (6)

When the pope saw Liutprand march southward with the exarch he must have known that the whole of the future depended upon the outcome of this act. Liutprand presently encamped with his army in the plain of Nero between the Vatican and Monte Mario. There the pope met him and, even as Leo the Great had done upon the banks of the Mincio, and as Gregory the Great had done upon the steps of S. Peter's, overawed the barbarian. Liutprand laid his crown and his sword at the pope's feet and begged, not only for his own forgiveness, but for that of the exarch his ally. The moment of enormous danger passed, the pope received both his enemies; but from that moment it was evident that the Lombards were not to be trusted and must one day feel the weight of the papal arm.

Gregory died in February 731, and was succeeded by Gregory III. who continued his predecessor's Italian policy. The great and terrible danger which had suddenly threatened the whole of papal policy when Liutprand and the exarch approached one another seems to have haunted the third Gregory. His obvious defence was to support the dukes against Liutprand, and this he did. Liutprand marched down against him and seized several towns in the duchy of Rome. It is now that the future begins to declare itself. The pope in his peril, a peril that would presently increase, made an appeal to the great Christian champion, Charles Martel; he appealed to the Franks; in the event, as we know, it was the Franks who saved the situation. In 740, however, Charles Martel refused to interfere; he was the kinsman of Liutprand and his son was a guest at the court of Pavia; that son was to be king Pepin the Deliverer--the father of Charlemagne, the first emperor of the restored West.

That appeal for help was in all probability not made only on account of the threat of Liutprand against Rome. It was obvious and more and more obvious that the imperial power in Italy was about to dissolve. What was to take its place? The papacy? Yes, but the state of Italy, the hostility of Liutprand, the whole attitude and condition of the Lombards, forced upon the papacy the necessity of finding a champion, a soldier and an army. That champion Gregory hoped to find in Charles Martel; his successors found him in Charles's son Pepin and in Charlemagne.

I say the appeal of the pope for help was not made only on account of the Lombard threat against Rome. It was the sudden dissolution of the imperial power that called it forth. In or about 737, the city of Ravenna, as we may believe, was besieged and taken by Liutprand and for some three years remained in his hands, till at the united prayers of exarch and pope the Venetians fitted out a fleet and recaptured it for the empire as we may think in 740.[1]

[Footnote 1: I follow Hodgkin, vi. p. 482 _et seq_., and Appendix F. Cf. also for discussion as to the date, Pinton in _Archivio Veneto_ (1889), pp. 368-384, and Monticolo in _Archivio della R. S. Romana di St. Pat_. (1892), pp. 321-365.]

We know nothing of that siege and capture and practically nothing of the splendid victory of the Venetians. But the tremendous significance of the fall of Ravenna, which had been the impregnable seat of the empire in Italy since Belisarius entered it in 540, must not escape us. Rightly understood it made necessary all that followed.

At this dramatic moment the Emperor Leo died, to be followed in 741 by Pope Gregory and Charles Martel. Gregory was succeeded by Pope Zacharias, who in the year of his election met Liutprand at Narni and obtained from him the restoration of the four frontier towns he had taken two years before. But though Rome was thus secured Ravenna was in worse danger than ever, for Liutprand now renewed his attack upon it and it was only the intervention of the pope in person at Pavia that saved the city. Zacharias set forth along the Flaminian Way; at Aquila perhaps near Rimini the exarch met him, and he entered Ravenna in triumph, the whole city coming out to meet him. In spite of the opposition of Liutprand he made his way to Pavia, and was successful in persuading him to give up his attempt to take the once impregnable city and to restore much he had captured. Liutprand was an old man; perhaps he was not hard to persuade, for he was on the eve of his death, which came to him in 744. His successor Hildeprand reigned for six months and was deposed. Ratchis became king, a pious man who made truce with the pope, and in 749 abdicated and entered a monastery. Aistulf was chosen king, and at once turned his thoughts to Ravenna. The crisis so long foreseen, so often prevented by the papacy, came at last with great suddenness. In 751 Ravenna fell and the Byzantine empire in Italy thereby came to an end.

We know nothing of this tremendous affair; we do not know whether the great imperial city, full of all the strange wonder of Byzantium, and heavy with the destiny of Europe, was taken suddenly by assault or after a long siege. We know only that it fell, and that Aistulf was master there in the year of our Lord 751.

A sort of silence followed that fall. In 752 Pope Zacharias died. His successor was never consecrated, but died within three days of his election and made way for Pope Stephen. In the confusion of all things it is said that a party in Rome urged Aistulf to usurp the empire. This was enough; it might have been, and perhaps was, expected. The pope had his answer ready. The heir of the empire in Italy was not the Lombard but the Holy See. Aistulf threatened to invade Roman territory, and, indeed, occupied Ceccano in the duchy of Rome. Again the pope had his answer. That answer was the appeal to Pepin and his Franks. The papacy had found a champion.

X

THE PAPAL STATE

PEPIN AND CHARLEMANGE

The appeal of Stephen, which was to have for its result the resurrection of the empire in the West and the establishment of the papacy as a temporal power and sovereignty, was made in a letter now lost to us, which a pilgrim on his way back to France from Rome carried to Pepin the king of the Franks. In reply to it, the abbot of Jumieges appeared in Rome as Pepin's ambassador to invite the pope himself to cross the Alps.

Meantime two events occurred, which cannot but have hardened the resolve of the pope to find a champion. These events were the occupation of Ceccano in the duchy of Rome by Aistulf and the appeal of the emperor to the pope that he should go to Pavia and attempt to persuade the Lombard king to give up Ravenna and the cities he had lately taken. The appeal of the emperor must have assured the pope, if indeed he had any doubt about it, that the emperor, so far as Italy was concerned, was helpless; while the occupation of Ceccano made it doubly obvious that the Lombard intended, now that the empire was helpless, to be absolute master throughout the peninsula.

Stephen considered what course he should pursue, received two other Prankish envoys in Rome, consented to go to Pavia on behalf of the emperor, and determined at the same time to visit Pepin in the north. He set out for Pavia upon October 13, 753, leaving Rome with a vast concourse of people, which accompanied him some distance along the Way, out of the Flaminian Gate. His mission on behalf of the empire was naturally entirely fruitless, and early in November the pope left Pavia with the hardly won consent of Aistulf to cross the Alps by the Great S. Bernard--a difficult and dangerous business at that time of year--and to meet the Frankish king at S. Maurice in the valley of the Rhone. In the latter he was disappointed. Pepin had been called away to deal with an incursion of the Saxons, and now awaited his amazing visitor at Ponthion in Champagne, but he sent his son Charles, destined to be the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a hundred miles down the long roads to meet the pope, and it was in the company of this youthful hero that upon the Feast of the Epiphany 754 Stephen entered Ponthion at last, and was greeted by Pepin, who cast himself upon the ground before him and walked as his lackey beside him as he rode.

The result of their interview is given in the _Liber Pontificalis_: "The most blessed pope tearfully besought the said most Christian king that by means of a treaty of peace (? with him the pope) he would dispose of the cause of the blessed Peter and the republic of the Romans, who by an oath there and then (de praesenti) satisfied the most blessed pope that he would obey all his commands and admonitions with all his strength and that it pleased him to restore by every means the exarchate of Ravenna and the rights and territories of the republic."[1]

[Footnote 1: As this is very important I give the original Latin "Ibidem beatissmus Papa praefatum Christianissimum regem lacrimabiliter deprecatus est ut per pacis foedera causam beati Petri et reipublicarae Romanorum disponeret. Qui de praesenti jurejurando eundem beatissimum Papam satisfecit omnibus ejus mandatis et ammonitionibus sese totis nisibus obedire, et ut illi placitum fuerit Exarchatum Ravennae et reipublicae jura seu loca reddere modis omnibus."]

That winter the pope spent at S. Denis, where he solemnly crowned Pepin and his queen, and Charles and Carloman their children, pronouncing an anathema upon all or any who should ever attempt to elect a king not of their house. Upon Pepin too he conferred the title of patrician. Can it be that by this he intended the king of the Franks to be his executor in the exarchate as the exarch had been the executor of the emperor?[1] We do not know; but a little later a document was drawn up in which Pepin declared and enumerated the territories he was ready to secure for the pope. This document, the Donation of Pepin, would seem to have confirmed in detail and in writing the oath he had sworn to the pope at Ponthion. Unhappily the document has disappeared, and we can only judge of its contents by what actually happened.

[Footnote 1: The title patrician was not exclusively borne by the exarch, the Dux Romae, for instance, bore that title in 743.]

The adventure into Italy to which the pope had persuaded Pepin was not universally popular with the Frankish nobles. We find Pepin attempting to gain his end by negotiation with Aistulf, but all to no purpose, and probably in March 755 the Franks set out with the pope at their head to march into Italy to curb and chastise the Lombard.

The great army of Pepin crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis, and in what was little more than a skirmish upon the northern side of the pass defeated the Lombard army and proceeded to invest Pavia and ravish the country round about. Aistulf, who was rather an impetuous than a great soldier, had soon had enough and was ready to entertain proposals for peace. A treaty was made in which he agreed "to restore" Ravenna and divers other cities, and to attempt nothing in the future against Rome and the Holy See. This having been decided, the pope took leave of Pepin, who returned to France, and went on his way to Rome.

The pope had won and had really established the Holy See as the heir of the empire; but Aistulf was by no means done with. He forgot alike his treaty and his promises. "Ever since the day when we parted," the pope writes to Pepin and the young kings, his sons Charles and Carloman, "he has striven to put upon us such afflictions and on the Holy Church of God such insults as the tongue of man cannot declare.... You have made peace too easily, you have taken no sufficient security for the fulfilment of the promises you have made to S. Peter, which you yourselves guaranteed by writing under your hand and seal...."

But the Franks were deaf. An expedition to crush the Lombards was a laborious and an expensive business, and Pepin had much to occupy him at home.

In January 756, however, Aistulf, mad from the start, laid siege to Rome, and for three months laid waste the farms of the Campagna, S. Peter's patrimony. Narni was taken and indeed all seemed as hopeless as ever. Then the pope took up his pen and as the successor of the Prince of the Apostles wrote a letter as from S. Peter himself and sent it to the three kings, Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, to the bishops, abbots, priests and monks, the dukes, counts, armies, and people of Francia. Gibbon thus summarises this extraordinary and dramatic epistle: "The apostle assures his adoptive sons the king, the clergy, and the nobles of France that dead in the flesh, he is still alive in the spirit; that they now hear and must obey the voice of the founder and guardian of the Roman Church; that the Virgin, the angels, the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven unanimously urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that riches, victory, and paradise will crown their pious enterprise; and that eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people to fall into the hands of the perfidious Lombards."

Pepin could not be deaf to such an appeal. He again crossed the Mont Cenis, and again the Lombards were as chaff before him. On his march to Pavia he was met by two envoys from Constantinople who had ill-treated, detained, and outstripped the papal ambassador. They besought Pepin to restore Ravenna and the exarchate to the empire, but he denied them and declared roundly that "on no account whatsoever should those cities be alienated from the power of the blessed Peter and the jurisdiction of the Roman Church and the Apostolic See, affirming too with an oath that for no man's favour had he given himself once again to this conflict, but only for love of S. Peter and for the pardon of his sins; asserting, also, that no abundance of treasure would bribe him to take away what he had once offered for S. Peter's acceptance."[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Hodgkin, _op, cit_. vii. p. 217.]

Pepin marched on; Pavia was besieged, Aistulf was beaten to the dust. A treaty was drawn up in which the Lombard gave to "S. Peter, the Holy Roman Church, and all the popes of the Apostolic See forever" the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, and Comacchio. An officer was commissioned to receive the submission of every city, and their keys and the deed of Pepin's donation were placed upon the tomb of S. Peter in Rome. The papal state was founded; where the empire had ruled so long there appeared the heir of the empire, the papacy "sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."

The cities that with their _contadi_ and dependencies thus formed the temporal dominion of the pope were, according to the papal biographer, twenty-three in number; Ravenna first and foremost, then Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia (but not Ancona) that had formed the old Pentapolis. To them was added La Cattolica. The whole of the inland Pentapolis--though Fossombrone is not mentioned--Urbino, Jesi, Cagli, Gubbio--passed to the pope as well as the following places: Cesena and the Mons Lucatium, Forlimpopoli, Forli, Castro, Caro, S. Leo, Arcevia, Serra dei Conti, the Republic of S. Marino, Sarsina, and Cantiano together with Comacchio and Narni. A few months after all this was accomplished, in December 756, Aistulf, "that follower of the devil," as the pope called him, died.

Every state that is nearing dissolution is the prey of civil discord. So it was with the Lombards. Ratchis, who had more than seven years before become a monk, claimed the throne; so did Desiderius, "mildest of men." Pope Stephen supported the latter on condition that Ancona, that last city of the Pentapolis, Osimo which dominated it, and Umana, together with Faenza, Imola, and Ferrara, were "restored" to the papacy. Desiderius agreed and became king, but failed, as the Lombards always failed, to keep his promise, for though he handed over Faenza, Bagnacavallo, and Gavello, he withheld Imola, Bologna, Ancona, Osimo, and Umana; this was in 757, the year of Stephen's death.

In the same year Pope Paul I. seems to have visited the chief city of his new state, Ravenna, mainly perhaps on ecclesiastical business, for the archbishop Sergius was by no means a loyal subject and had only been brought to heel when nothing but submission was left open to him. He had then, according to Agnellus, promised to deliver to the pope all the "gold, silver, vessels of price, hoards of money," and so forth stored up in Ravenna. Agnellus tells a long and incoherent tale of the way the pope obtained this treasure and of certain plots to murder him therefor. All that seems fairly certain is that in the first year of his reign pope Paul I. visited Ravenna. Indeed the chief difficulty of the papacy at this time must have been the occupation of the state it had won so consummately. How were the popes to make good their somewhat shadowy hold upon Ravenna, and the Pentapolis, and those other strongholds in central Italy and Aemilia?

That they were not to hold them easily was soon evident. The empire was plotting to win Pepin to its side, and when that failed again, rumours of an imperial invasion reached Rome. Politically all relations ceased between Constantinople and Rome about this time; for though the pope in reality had long ceased to be a subject of the emperor, when he had possessed himself of the exarchate even theory had to give way to fact. Nor was the papacy more fortunate in its relations with Desiderius. The pope's object was doubtless to keep the Lombard kingdom weak, if not to destroy it. The first step to that end was obviously to encourage the achievement of a real independence by the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which, again, bordering as they did upon the duchy of Rome, would be easier to deal with if they stood alone. There can be little doubt that the pope fostered the sleepless disaffection of the dukes, but when their revolt matured Desiderius was able to crush it, laying waste the Pentapolis on his way. He was then wise enough to visit Rome and to arrange a peace which was only once broken during pope Paul's pontificate: in 761 when Desiderius attacked Sinigaglia.

It was easier, however, for the pope to arrange successfully a foreign policy than to administer his new state. No machinery existed for the secular government by the Holy See of a country so considerable; nor was this easy to invent. The pope was forced to fall back upon his representative in Ravenna, namely, the archbishop. Now the archbishops of Ravenna had always been lacking in loyalty. Ravenna and the exarchate were governed in the name of the pope by the archbishop, assisted by three tribunes who were elected by the people. This government was never very successful, for at every opportunity, and especially after the resurrection of the empire in the West, the archbishops were eager to consider themselves as feudatories of the empire. This was natural and it may be worth while briefly to inquire why.

Because Ravenna had for so long, ever since the year 404, been the seat of the empire in Italy, the bishops of that city had acquired extraordinary privileges and even a unique position among the bishops of the West. As early as the time of Galla Placidia, the bishop of Ravenna had obtained from the Augusta the title and rights of metropolitan of the fourteen cities of Aemilia and Flaminia. It is true that the bishop continued to be confirmed and consecrated by the pope--S. Peter Chrysologus was so confirmed and consecrated--but the presence of the imperial court and later of the exarch encouraged in the minds of the bishops a sense of their unique importance and a certain spirit of independence in regard to Rome. Of course the Holy See was not prepared to cede any of its rights; but the spirit of disloyalty remained, and presently the bishop of Ravenna at the time of his consecration was forced to sign a declaration of loyalty, in which was set forth his chief duties and a definition of his rights.

After the Byzantine conquest the church of Ravenna, which the empire regarded as a bulwark against the papal claims, received important privileges and its importance in the ecclesiastical hierarchy was greatly increased. Like the bishop of Rome, the bishop of Ravenna had a special envoy at Constantinople and was represented, again like Rome, in a special manner in the councils of the Orient. In religions ceremonies the bishops of Ravenna took a place immediately behind the pope, and in ecclesiastical assemblies they sat at the right hand of the pontiff. There can be little doubt indeed of the Erastianism of Justinian nor of his encouragement of the bishop of Ravenna.

The declaration that the bishops were forced to sign upon their consecration by the pope by no means settled matters. In 648 this declaration itself was in dispute as to its interpretation, for Constans II. had conferred upon the See of Ravenna the privilege of autonomy, and at this time the bishop did not go to Rome for consecration. The Iconoclastic heresy of Constantinople, however, indirectly brought about peace between the pope and his suffragan, for Ravenna was in this whole heartedly Roman.

It was then, by means of an instrument still very uncertain, that the papacy was forced to govern its new state, and in these circumstances, friendly relationship with Constantinople daily becoming more impossible, it is not surprising that we see the pope making an attempt to come to some sort of permanent reconciliation with Desiderius; and indeed when pope Paul died in 767 undoubtedly a peace had been arranged.

All might have been well if pope Paul's successor had been regularly chosen; but a layman Constantine was elected by a rabble at the instigation of his brother Toto of Nepi. Christopher and his son Sergius, who held two of the greatest offices in the papal chancery, decided to call in the aid of the duke of Spoleto to attack Constantine, Rome was entered, and in the appalling confusion the Lombards elected a certain priest named Philip to be pope. Christopher appeared, Philip was turned out, and Stephen III., a Sicilian, was regularly chosen. That was in 768, and in the same year king Pepin died and was succeeded by his two sons, Charles to whom apparently fell Austrasia and Neustria, and Carloman who took Burgundy, Provence, and Swabia.

The death of Pepin left the papacy without a champion. Nor was this all, as soon appeared. Charles and Carloman began to quarrel and to effect their reconciliation, or to avert its consequences, Bertrada, their mother, counselled and succeeded in forcing upon them a friendship and an alliance with the Lombards which meant the complete abandonment of Italy upon the part of the Franks. This alliance was to be secured by a double marriage. Charles was to marry Desiderata, the daughter of the Lombard king, while Gisila, Bertrada's daughter, was to marry Desiderius' heir. It is obvious that S. Peter was in peril, nor was pope Stephen slow to denounce the whole arrangement. His remonstrance, however, was ineffectual and there remained to him but one thing to do: to arrange himself with the now uncurbed Lombard king. This was exceedingly difficult, because his own election had been achieved only by the humiliation of the Lombards. However, he managed it at the price of civil war. Desiderius and his army entered Rome at the behest of the pope, who celebrated Mass before the king in S. Peter's. The Franks were checkmated.

It was not long before Charles saw that he had been outwitted. An immediate change of his policy was necessary. In 771 it came with the repudiation of Desiderata, who was sent back to her father's court at Pavia. Henceforth Charles and Desiderius were implacable enemies. And now everything went in favour of the papal policy, just as before everything had seemed to cross it. Carloman, who had not quarrelled with Desiderius, and might have opposed Charles and changed all the future, suddenly died in December of the year of the quarrel. Charles became thus sole king of the Frankish nation. When pope Stephen came to die in February 772 he must have laid him down with a quiet mind.

In Stephen's stead there was elected as pope a pure Roman, born in the Via Lata of the nobility of the City; he took the famous name of Hadrian I. Desiderius, who had watched with a growing anxiety the amazing policy of Stephen, now turned to his successor, and both demanded and begged a renewal of friendship. Hadrian answered his ambassador at last with the mere truth. "How can I trust your king when I recall what my predecessor Lord Stephen of pious memory told me in confidence of his perfidy? He told me that he had lied to him in everything as to the rights of Holy Church, though he swore upon the body of the Blessed Peter.... Look you, such is the honour of king Desiderius and the measure of the confidence I may repose in him."

Desiderius' answer was not to the point. He seized the cities of Faenza, Ferrara, and Comacchio and ravaged the territory about Ravenna, burned the farms and carried off the cattle. Then he fell upon the Pentapolis, seized Sinigaglia, Jesi, Urbino, Gubbio, S. Leo, and other "Roman" cities, and indeed possessed himself of everything save only Ravenna and Rimini, and proceeded upon a raid into the duchy of Rome.

The answer of the pope was mild but firm: mild, for the hour was not yet come; firm, for it would strike ere long. "Tell your king," said he, "that I swear in the presence of God that if he choose to restore those cities which in my time he has taken from S. Peter, I will hasten into his presence wherever he may appoint a meeting place, at Pavia, Ravenna, Perugia, or here in Rome, that we may confer together.... But if he does not restore what he has taken away he shall never see my face."

The hour was not come. Charles was busy with the Saxon hordes upon the north and east of his kingdom. It was not till the beginning of January 773 that the pope sent his messenger Peter to summon him to his aid. Meanwhile, Desiderius marched on Rome. But even without Charles the pope was not defenceless. The Vicegerent of God who had without a soldier turned back Attila on the Mincio and had thrust back Liutprand from Rome was not to be at the mercy of such a king as Desiderius. At Viterbo his messengers, the three bishops of Albano, Palestrina, and Tivoli, met the Lombard king and gave him the pope's last word: "Anathema." Desiderius shrank back. In that moment as it seems the ambassadors of Charles arrived in Rome, satisfied themselves of the justice of the papal summons, and carried back to the great Frank the prayer of the pope that he would "redeem the Church of God." In the late summer of that year the Frankish host was assembled at Geneva and was already beginning to cross the mountains in two mighty commands by the Great S. Bernard and the Mont Cenis; in October the siege of Pavia was begun.

That siege endured for more than eight months. Meanwhile Charles had made himself master of Verona and of many of the cities of the plain. The men of Spoleto hastened to "commend" themselves to the pope and the citizens of Fermo, Osimo, and Ancona, and of Citta di Castello, we read, followed their example, and for the feast of Easter 774, Charles appeared in Rome, and was greeted and embraced by the pope at S. Peter's. On Easter Day Charles heard Mass in S. Maria Maggiore, on Easter Monday in S. Peter's, on Easter Tuesday in S. Paul's. On the Wednesday in that Easter week, according to Hadrian's biographer, he made that great Donation to the papacy which confirmed and extended and secured the gift of Pepin his father. The duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, and much else, were added to the exarchate "as it was of old" and given to the pope. Then in June Pavia, the Lombard capital, fell and Desiderius and his wife were sent by Charles as prisoners to a convent in Picardy where it is said they ended their lives.

The Donation of Pepin, confirmed, renewed, and enlarged by Charles, may, of course, be understood in various ways; at any rate it has been so understood; but it is certain that the pope saw in it both the fulfilment of his hopes and the final establishment of the papal monarchy. Yet while he utterly refused, and rightly, to admit the claim of Charles--not yet emperor--to interfere in the election of the archbishop of Ravenna, the head of his new dominion, he graciously permitted the king to take away certain mosaics from the old imperial city to adorn his palace at Aix; and that in the following letter, which Dr. Hodgkin translates: "We have received your bright and honeysweet letters brought us by Duke Arwin. In these you expressed your desire that we should grant you the mosaics and marbles of the palace in the city of Ravenna, as well as other specimens to be found both in the pavement and on the walls. We willingly grant your request because by your royal struggles the Church of your patron S. Peter daily enjoys many benefits, for which great will be your reward in heaven...." On no theory yet put forward can the pope be considered as the subject of the king of the Franks. That he had been and was to be the subject of the emperor can be defended, but when has S. Peter been the creature of a king?

It was not Hadrian as we know but Leo who was destined to crown what pope Stephen had begun, and to re-establish the empire in the West, and as he thought to create for S. Peter not an occasional but a permanent champion.

Twenty-five years after that great Easter in Rome, pope Leo, who succeeded Hadrian, whose long pontificate lasted for twenty-three years, was attacked in the streets of Rome and thrown to the ground in the Corso by two nephews of Hadrian's. Exactly what was the nature of their quarrel with Leo we do not know, but they managed to imprison the pope, who presently escaped and, assisted by Winichis, duke of Spoleto, made his way to the court of Charles. During the summer of 799 the pope remained in France, and probably in October returned to Rome with a Frankish guard of honour. In the following autumn Charles set out on his fourth journey to Rome. It was now that he visited Ravenna, as he had already done in 787, and remained for seven days. On the 24th November he arrived in Rome. A month later upon Christmas Day the great king, attended by his nobles, amid a vast multitude, went to S. Peter's to hear Mass. It was there in the midst of that great basilica, before the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, that upon the birthday of Christ the empire re-arose; the pope placed upon the head of Charlemagne the golden diadem and the Roman people cried aloud, "_Carolo Piissimo Augusta Deo, Coronato Magno a Pacifico Imperatori Vita et Victoria_," Three times that great acclamation echoed over the tomb of the Fisherman. Once more there was an emperor in the West, a champion of the Faith and defender of the Holy See.

It has been asserted, and is still I believe maintained, that that coronation was a surprise to Charles. But such things do not come unforeseen, nor was Charlemagne the man to permit or to tolerate so amazing an astonishment. All Rome knew what was about to be accomplished and had gathered in the ancient basilica to await it and complete it.

Such a question, however, concerns us but little. For us it remains to note that with the re-creation of the empire, and the appearance of the Holy See as a great temporal sovereignty in Italy, the historical importance of Ravenna comes to an end. We have seen that in the autumn of the most famous year save that of the birth of Our Lord, Charlemagne had visited Ravenna and had spent seven days in the city. Once more he was to visit it, and that upon his return journey northward in May 801. From this time Ravenna ceases to be of any significance in the history of Europe. The pass it held was no longer of importance, for the barbarian invasions were at an end, and a new road into Italy over the Apennines was coming into use, the Via Francigena, the way of the Franks. As the port upon the sea which was the fault between East and West it, too, ceased to exist; for East and West were no longer of any real importance the one to the other, and already the alteration of the coast line, which was one day to leave the old seaport some miles from the shore, had begun.

The history of Ravenna, her importance in the history of Europe and Italy, thus comes to an end with the appearance of Charlemagne and the resurrection of the West. The ancient and beautiful city which had played so great a part in the fortunes of the empire, which had, as it were, twice been its birthplace and twice its tomb, herself passes into oblivion when that empire, Holy now and Roman still, rises again and in the West with the crowning of Charlemagne in S. Peter's Church upon Christmas Day in the year of Our Lord 800. With her subsequent story, interesting to us mainly in two of its episodes--the apparition of Dante and the incident of 1512--I shall deal when I come to consider the Mediaeval and Renaissance city.

But in fact we always think of Ravenna as a city of the Dark Age, and in that we are right. She is a tomb, the tomb of the old empire, and like the sepulchre outside the gates of Jerusalem, that was Arimathean Joseph's, she held during an appalling interval of terror and doubt the most precious thing in the world, to be herself utterly forgotten in the morning of the resurrection. And surely to one who had approached her in the dawn, while it was yet dark, of the ninth century, of mediaeval Europe that is, her words would have been those of the angels so long ago: _Non est hic; sed surrexit_. While to us to-day she would say: _Venite et videte locum ubi positus erat Dominus_.

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

Ravenna, as we see her to-day, is like no other city in Italy. As in her geography and in her history, so in her aspect, she is a place apart, a place very distinctive and special, and with a physiognomy and appearance all her own. What we see in her is still really the city of Honorius, of Galla Placidia, of Theodoric, of Belisarius and Narses, of the exarchate, in a word, of the mighty revolution in which Europe, all we mean by Europe, so nearly foundered, and which here alone is still splendidly visible to us in the great Roman and Byzantine works of that time.

For the age, the Dark Age, of her glory is illumined by no other city in Italy or indeed in the world. She was the splendour of that age, a lonely splendour. And because, when that age came to an end, she was practically abandoned--abandoned, that is, by the great world--just as about the same time she was abandoned by the sea, much of her ancient beauty has remained to her through all the centuries since, even down to our own day, when, lovelier than ever in her lonely marsh, she is a place so lugubrious, so infinitely still and sad, full of the autumn wind and the rumours of silence of the tomb, of the most reverent of all tombs--the tomb of the empire.

We shall not find in Ravenna anything at all, any building, that is, or work of art, of classical antiquity; all she was, all she did, all she possessed in the great years of the empire has perished. Nor shall we find much that may have been hers in the smaller life that came to her in the beginning of the Middle Age, or that was hers in the time of the Renaissance; the memory and the dust of Dante, a few churches, a few frescoes, a few pictures, a few palaces; nothing beside. For all these we must go to Pompeii and to Rome, or to Florence, Siena, Assisi, and Venice; in Ravenna we shall find something more rare, but not these. She remains a city of the Dark Age, of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, and she is full of the churches, the tombs, and the art of that time, early Christian and Byzantine things that we shall not find elsewhere, or, at any rate, not in the same abundance, perfection, and beauty.

And yet though so much remains, her story since the time of Charlemagne might seem to be little else but a long catalogue of pillage and destruction. Charlemagne himself began this cruel work when he carried off the mosaics and the marbles, the ornaments of the imperial palace, to adorn Aix-la-Chapelle, and since his day not a century has passed without adding to this vandalism; the worst offenders being the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, which by rebuilding, by frank pillage, by mere destruction, by earthquakes, by contempt, and worst of all by restoration have utterly destroyed much that should have remained for ever, and have altogether spoilt and transformed most of that which, almost by chance it might seem, remains.

And so it comes to pass that the oldest buildings remaining to us to-day in Ravenna are to be found in the baptistery, the cathedral, the arcivescovado, and the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the oldest complete building being the last. Let us then first consider these.

The first bishop, the "Apostle" of Ravenna, according to Agnellus, was S. Apollinaris, a Syrian of Antioch, the friend and disciple of S. Peter, who, as we know, had been bishop of Antioch for seven years before he went to Rome. Apollinaris followed S. Peter to the Eternal City and was appointed by him bishop of Ravenna, whither he came to establish the church. There might seem to be some doubt as to his martyrdom; but, according to Agnellus, he was succeeded by his disciple S. Aderitus, and he in his turn by S. Eleucadius, a theologian, who is said to have written commentaries upon the books of the Old and New Testaments, and to have been followed as bishop by S. Martianus, a noble whom S. Apollinaris had ordained deacon. There follows in the _Liber Pontificalis_ of Agnellus a list of twelve bishops, S. Calocerus, S. Proculus, S. Probus, S. Datus, S. Liberius, S. Agapetus, S. Marcellinus, S. Severus (c. 344), S. Liberius II., S. Probus II., S. Florentius, and S. Liberius III., who occupy the see before we come to S. Ursus, who "first began to build a Temple to God, so that the Christians previously scattered about in huts should be collected into one sheepfold."[1] S. Ursus, according to Dr. Holder-Egger, ruled in Ravenna from 370 to 396, and his church was dedicated in 385; but a later authority[2] would seem to place his pontificate later, and to argue that it immediately preceded that of S. Peter Chrysologus, who, the same authority asserts, was elected in 429. All agree that S. Ursus reigned for twenty-six years, and therefore, if he immediately preceded S. Peter Chrysologus, he was elected not in 370, but in 403; that is to say, in or about the same time as Honorius took up his residence in Ravenna.

[Footnote 1: "Iste piimus hic initiavit Templum construere Dei, ut plebes Christianorum quae in singulis tuguriis vagabant in unum ovile piissimus collegeret Pastor ... Igitur aedificavit iste Beatissimus Praesul infra hanc Civitatem Ravennam Sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam, quo omnes assidue concurremus, quam de suo nomine Ursianam nominavit ... "]

[Footnote 2: A Testi Rasponi, _Note Marginali al Liber Pontificalis di Agnello Ravennate_ in _Atti e Memorie della R. Dep. di St. Pat. per la Romagna_, iii. 27 (Bologna, 1909-10).]

However that may be, we must attribute the foundation of a new cathedral church in Ravenna to S. Ursus, for till this day it bears his name, Ecclesia Ursiana, though it appears to have been dedicated in honour of the Resurrection (Anastasis.)

Agnellus gives us a fairly full account of this church, which consisted of five naves divided and upheld by four rows of fifty-six[1] columns of precious marble from the temple of Jupiter. That the church was approached by steps we learn from Agnellus in his life of S. Exuperantius, for he there tells us that Felix the patrician was killed "on the steps of the Ecclesia Ursiana." Both the vault and the walls were adorned with mosaics,[2] which Agnellus describes and which would seem to have covered then or later the whole of the interior; the wall on the women's side of the church being decorated with a figure of S. Anastasia, while over all was a dome "adorned with various coloured tiles representing different figures." When Agnellus wrote (ninth century) this great church was of course standing, but doubtless it had been added to and adorned from century to century, and it is impossible to learn from his description, or indeed any other that we have, what was due therein to S. Ursus and what to his successors. One of the most splendid ornaments the church possessed would seem to have been a ciborium of silver, borne by columns which stood over the high altar also of silver. This is said by Agnellus to have been placed there by the bishop S. Victor, who seems to have ruled in Ravenna from about 537 to 544. It is said to have cost, with the consent of Justinian, the whole revenue of Italy for a year and to have weighed some one hundred and twenty pounds. The whole stood in the midst of a circular choir of marble, itself covered with silver it might seem, if we may believe a chronicler of Vicenza of the fifteenth century, quoted by Zirardini,[3] who says: "In the great church of Ravenna all the choir, the altar, and the great tabernacle over the altar are of silver." Before the altar was the _Schola Caniorum_.

[Footnote 1: Fabri, however, in his _Sacre Memorie_, says there were forty-nine columns.]

[Footnote 2: Agnellus gives the names of the mosaicists Euserius or Cuserius, Paulus, Agatho, Satius, and Stephanus.]

[Footnote 3: Zirardini, _De Antiquis Sacris Ravennae Aedificiis_.]

Agnellus tells us further in his life of S. Felix (_c_. 693) that that bishop built a _Salutatorium_ (? Sacristy), "whence the bishop and his assistants proceeded at the Introit of the Mass into the presence of the people." But the Epigram which Agnellus quotes from this building would seem to suggest that the _salutatorium_ was rather then rebuilt than added for the first time to the church.

The magnificent basilica, one of the most splendid in Italy, was sacked by the French in April 1512, but, as Dr. Corrado Ricci says, it was not they who destroyed the church itself, but the _accademici_ of the eighteenth century, who, instead of conserving the glorious building, then some thirteen hundred years old, began in 1733 to pull it down, to break up the beautiful capitals and columns of precious marbles, and to make out of the fragments the pavement of the new church we still see, begun in 1734 by Gian Francesco Buonamici da Rimini. Only the apse with its beautiful great mosaic remained for a few years till at last it too was destroyed.

Thus the church we have in place of the old Basilica Ursiana is a building of the eighteenth century, and all that we care for in it is the fragments that are to be found there of its glorious predecessor.

These are few in number and of little account. Supporting the central arch of the portico are two marble columns which belonged to the old basilica, and by the main door are two others of granite which came perhaps from the old nave.

Entering the church we find ourselves in a cruciform building consisting of three naves, divided by twenty-four columns of marble, transept, and apse, with a dome over the crossing. In the second chapel on the right is an ancient marble sarcophagus said to be that of S. Exuperantius, bishop of Ravenna about 470. The magnificent tomb carved in high relief did not, however, belong to the old cathedral, but was brought here when the church of S. Agnese was destroyed. In the south transept is the chapel of the Madonna del Sudore, where on either side are two other sarcophagi of marble adorned with figures and symbols. That on the right is said to be the tomb of S. Barbatianus, confessor of Galla Placidia, and was originally in the church of S. Lorenzo in Caesarea, whence it was brought to the cathedral in the thirteenth century by the archbishop Bonifazio de' Fieschi, whom Dante found in Purgatory among the gluttons:

"Bonifazio
che pasturo col rocco molte genti..."

He brought the sarcophagus to the cathedral for his own tomb and there I suppose he was buried. The sarcophagus upon the left was likewise used in 1321 as a tomb for himself by the archbishop, Rainaldo Concoreggio. This, too, is sculptured with a bas-relief of Christ, a nimbus round His head, a book in His hand, seated on a throne set on a rock, out of which four rivers flow. With outstretched hand He gives a crown to S. Paul, while S. Peter bearing a cross holds a crown, just received, in his hand. The sculpture on the sarcophagus of S. Barbatianus is ruder.

The high altar is of course modern, but within it is an ancient marble sarcophagus of the sixth century, in which it is said the dust of nine bishops of about that time lies.

But one noble thing remains here among all the modern trash to remind us of all we have lost: the glorious processional cross of silver called of S. Agnello. Yet even this, noble as it is, does not come to us from Roman or Byzantine times it seems, but is rather a work of the eleventh century.

In the midst of this great cross, upon one side, is the Blessed Virgin praying, and upon the other Christ rising from the tomb. Upon the arms of the cross, and the uprights, are forty medallions of saints, of which three would seem to be archbishops. I say this beautiful and precious thing comes to us from the eleventh century; but it has been very much restored at various times and is now largely a work of the sixteenth century. Dr. Ricci tells us that on the side where we see the Madonna only the five medallions on the lower upright and the two last of the upper are original; while upon that of the Risen Christ, only the five medallions on the lower upright are untouched, all the rest is restoration.

Beneath the eighteenth-century apse of the cathedral is the ancient crypt, no longer to be seen; it does not, according to Dr. Ricci, date earlier than the ninth century nor do any of the other crypts in the city.

In the left aisle a few fragments from the old church remain recognisable. They are the marble slabs of an _ambo_ erected by S. Agnellus, archbishop of Ravenna in the middle of the sixth century. There we read: _Servus Christi Agnellus Episcopus hunc pyrgum fecit_. Among these are some earlier panels of the fifth century. In the treasury, again, we find two other panels from the _ambo_ of S. Agnellus, and a strange calendar carved upon a slab of marble to enable one to find the feast of Easter in any year from 532 to 626; this is certainly of the sixth century.

A certain number of Mediaeval and Renaissance things are also to be seen in the church. Here in the treasury we have a cross of silver gilt, with reliefs of the Crucifixion, God the Father, the Blessed Virgin, S. John Baptist, and S. Mary Magdalen, dating from the middle of the fourteenth century (1366). Over the entrance to the sacristy is a fresco by Guido Reni of Elijah the prophet fed by an angel. Within, is a good picture by Marco Palmezzano: a Pieta with S. John Baptist; while the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament is decorated by him and his pupils.

It is obvious, then, that very little remains to us of the original Basilica Ursiana; nor can we reckon among that little the beautiful round and isolated campanile. This is not older than the ninth century, and has been much tampered with, especially in the sixteenth century, after an earthquake, and in the seventeenth century after both earthquake and fire. Indeed, the upper storey dates entirely from 1658.

As it is with the cathedral, so it is with the _Arcivescovado_. Of the old palace of the Bishops of Ravenna only a few walls, a tower, and a wonderful little chapel remain. What we see now is work of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries after a restoration at the end of the nineteenth. The old vast palace which has been destroyed was the work of many archbishops, achieved during many centuries. It consisted of a series of buildings grouped about the palace which the archbishop S. Peter Chrysologus built in the fifth century, and its most magnificent part was due to S. Maximian, archbishop of Ravenna in the time of Justinian. All their work, which we would so gladly see, is gone except the little chapel of S. Peter Chrysologus, which he built and signed in one of the arches in the fifth century.[1]

[Footnote 1: According to Rasponi the chapel was dedicated originally to S. Andrea and is to be identified with the Monasterium di S. Andrea, which was not built by S. Peter Chrysologus (429-_c_. 449), but by Peter II. (494-_c_. 519). Cf. Rasponi, _Note Marginali al Liber Pontificalis di Agnello Ravennate_ (Atti e Memorie della R. Dep. di Stor. Pat. per la Romagna, iii. 27), Bologna, 1909-1910.]