Chapter XX: The Pineta (8)

Here in this mighty tomb, which is known in Ravenna as _La Rotonda_, abandoned now in an unkempt garden, Theodoric, who expected to found a line of kings who would one day lie beside him; as long as he lay there at all, lay there alone. Not for long, however, did he enjoy that solitude. Already, when Agnellus wrote his _Liber Pontificalis_, the tomb was empty. He tells us that the porphyry urn, which had served as sepulchre for the Gothic king, then stood at the door of the Benedictine monastery close by, and that it was empty. And it seemed to him, he says, that the body of the king had been thrown out of the mausoleum because a heretic and a barbarian, as we may suppose, was not worthy of it. At any rate the body of Theodoric was no longer in the mausoleum in the beginning of the ninth century, and it is certain that it had been ejected thence many years before. In the year 1854 a gang of navvies who were excavating a dock between the railway station and the Corsini Canal, some two hundred yards perhaps from the mausoleum, and on the site of an old cemetery, came upon a skeleton "armed with a golden cuirass, a sword by its side, and a golden helmet upon its head. In the hilt of the sword and in the helmet large jewels were blazing." Most of this booty they disposed of, but a few pieces were recovered and these are now in the Museo. It might seem that this can have been none other than the body of the great Gothic king. Indeed Dr. Ricci finds the ornament upon the armour to be similar to the decoration upon the cornice of the mausoleum. If this be so it puts the matter almost beyond doubt.

Theodoric was not allowed to rest in the mighty tomb that Latin genius had built for him; but for ages many, famous and distinguished in their day, sought to lie under a monument so splendid. The place became a sort of pantheon. Long before then, however, it had been consecrated as a church, S. Maria della Rotonda, and a Benedictine monastery had been founded close by whose monks served it. To-day that monastery has utterly disappeared, and there are no signs of a church in the _Rotonda_. Only the mausoleum remains in a tangled garden, far from any road, empty and deserted.

XIII

THE BYZANTINE CHURCHES

S. VITALE AND S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE

When Belisarius entered Ravenna in 540, he apparently found more than one new building begun but not finished; of these the chief was the church of S. Vitale. This magnificent octagonal building with its narthex and atrium had, according to Agnellus, been founded by the Archbishop S. Ecclesius, that is to say, between 521 and 534. It was apparently finished and decorated later by Julius Argentarius, and was consecrated by the archbishop S. Maximianus in 547. In plan it resembles very closely the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople built by Justinian about 527. As we know both Justinian and Theodora, his empress, contributed largely to the perfecting of S. Vitale, which remains certainly his most glorious monument in the West.

The plan of the church, as I have said, is octagonal, surmounted by a dome octagonal without but circular within. From one of these eight sides the sanctuary is thrust out, flanked on either side by a circular chapel with a rectangular presbytery. Standing obliquely across one of the two angles of the octagon, directly opposite this sanctuary, stretched the narthex flanked by circular towers. The great octagon is divided into two stories, each of which has three windows upon each of the eight sides, the octagonal dome being lighted by eight single windows.

Within the great octagon formed by the walls is a smaller octagon formed by an arcade of mighty piers which upholds the cupola. This arcade contains a double loggia which thus runs round the whole church with the exception of the presbytery, where it ends in lofty tribunes. It is upheld between the piers by columns of precious marble having capitals of the most marvellous beauty.

The space within this inner octagon is covered with a pavement laid down in the sixteenth century, consisting of all sorts of fragments of mosaics and marbles which that century destroyed. The upper loggia was of old the _gyneceo_, the place of the women. Nothing I think left to us in the world is more sumptuous and gorgeous than this interior. Everywhere are glittering mosaics, precious slabs of marble, priceless columns of beautiful marble. And where the mosaics have been destroyed or left unfinished, as in the cupola and the body of the church, baroque artists have filled the place with their paintings, paintings which in their own style are matchless and which it is now foolishly proposed should be destroyed.[1]

[Footnote 1: We know nothing of any mosaics other than those in the presbytery and the tribunes, it may be that the church was covered with mosaic or was painted by the Byzantine artists, and this as well where the marble slabs now cover the piers as elsewhere. If so it must have been glorious indeed. Nothing that we can do can restore this work to us, and we achieve nothing but destruction by destroying the work that is now there.]

In our examination of the church we turn first to the presbytery, which is entirely encrusted with most precious marbles and mosaics. In the midst of it stands the altar consisting of slabs of semi-transparent alabaster, within which of old lights were set. The marvellously lovely piece which serves for the altar stone itself is supported by four columns, and that piece which serves for frontal is carved with a great cross between two sheep. This altar had long disappeared, but piece by piece it was recovered; the beautiful altar stone itself was found behind an altar in a chapel now destroyed in this church, and was re-erected as we see it in 1899.

In the same chapel stood till then the beautiful low fretted screens that now are set across the apse behind the altar, where indeed they remained till 1700, according to Dr. Ricci. The lower part of the apse and the piers of the presbytery have been covered with fine marbles, some of which are ancient, but the vault, the lunettes, and the walls are entirely encrusted with gorgeous mosaics.

The presbytery is approached from the inner octagon of the church under a triumphal arch. In the curve of this we see amid much decorative ornament fifteen circular discs containing the head of Our Lord, the twelve Apostles, S. Gervasius, and S. Protasius. Beneath these are two monuments variously formed, Dr. Ricci tells us, in the sixteenth century. The four columns which they contain originally supported the baldacchino over the high altar here; three of them are of verde antico. Framed by these columns are two Roman reliefs from a frieze originally in the Temple of Neptune, other parts of which are in the Sala Lapidaria in the Arcivescovado here, in the Louvre, in the Uffizi, in the Castello of Milan, and in the Museo Archeologico at Venice. They are indubitably of course the oldest things in the church.

Within this triumphal arch upon either side rise the tribunes in which the upper loggia of the church itself comes to an end. These tribunes, which are exceedingly beautiful, consist of two triple arches, one above the other on either side, and the columns which support them, with their marvellous capitals, are I suppose among the most glorious left in Christendom. The arches themselves and the lunettes upon either side are encrusted with mosaics. In the lunette upon the right on either side an altar gorgeously draped, Abel offers to God the firstling of his flock and Melchizedek Bread and Wine. Upon the face of the arch we see Moses tending the sheep of Jethro, Moses upon Mount Hebron, and Moses before the burning bush. In the lunette upon the left we have the sacrifice of Abraham of his only son, and the visit of the three angels to Abraham and Sara. Upon the face of the arch we see Jeremiah the Prophet and Moses upon Mount Sinai. Above, upon the balustrades, as it were, of the upper loggia we see angels upholding a circle in which is the sign of the Cross, and above again upon the face of the arches on either side the four Evangelists and their symbols. The vault is entirely covered with ornaments in mosaic, amid which three angels rise and support with uplifted hands the central disc in which is represented the Agnus Dei.

Though these mosaics have suffered much from unforeseen disaster and from restoration they still delight us with their richness and splendour, and nothing I think can well be finer than their effect, their decorative effect as a whole. They seem to hang there like some gorgeous Eastern tapestry of Persian stuff, as Dr. Ricci says, some unfading and indestructible tapestry of the Orient left by chance or forgetfulness in the old capital of the West.

We now turn to the apse, which we enter under a second triumphal arch upon the face of which we see upon the left the city of Hierusalem and upon the left Bethlehem. A cypress stands at the gate of each, and between them two angels in flight uphold a discus or aureole having within it eight rays. Above this again are three windows about which is spread a gorgeous decoration in mosaic.

Beneath within the tribune of the apse we see Our Lord, "beautiful as Apollo," enthroned upon the orb of the world, an angel upon either hand, while to his right stands S. Vitalis to whom He hands a crown, to His left S. Ecclesius bearing the model of this church in his hand.

Beneath upon either side stand the two great mosaic pictures, the most marvellous works of the sixth century that have come down to us and perhaps the most glorious and splendid works of art which that age was able to achieve, and it is needless to say that there is nothing like them anywhere in the world.

Upon the left we see the great emperor, perhaps the greatest of all the Caesars, Justinian, bearing in his hands a golden dish; beside him stands the archbishop of Ravenna, S. Maximianus. A little behind these two figures and on either side stand five attendant priests, and on the extreme left of the picture is a group of soldiers.

In the mosaic upon the right we see the empress Theodora, straight browed, most gorgeously arrayed, very beautiful and a little sinister, bearing a golden chalice, attended by her splendid ladies and two priests. Upon the extreme left of the picture stands a little fountain before an open doorway hung with a curtain.

What can be said of these gorgeous and astonishingly lovely works? Nothing. They speak too eloquently for themselves. Not there do we see the mere realism of Rome, the careful and often too careful arrangement that Roman art, able to speak but incapable of song, always gives us. Here we have something at once more gorgeous and more mysterious and more artistic, a symbolical and hieratic art, the gift of the Orient, of Byzantium. In the best Roman art of the best period there is always something of the street, something too close to life, too mere a transcription and a copy of actual things, a mere imitation without life of its own. But here is something outside the classical tradition, outside what imperial Rome with its philistinism and its puritanism has made of the art of Greece and thrust perhaps for ever upon Europe. Here we are free from the overwhelming common-place of Roman art, its mediocrity and respectable endeavour.

It is, however, not in the gorgeous mosaics alone that we find the delight and originality of S. Vitale. The whole church is amazingly different from anything else to be seen in Italy, for it is altogether outside the Roman tradition, an absolutely Byzantine building as well in its construction as in its decoration. It must be compared with the later S. Sophia and SS Sergius and Bacchus of Constantinople. These, however, are works more assured and more gracious than S. Vitale, and yet in its plan at least S. Vitale is a masterpiece, and altogether the one great sanctuary of Byzantine art of the time of Justinian that we have in the West. Every part of it is worthy of the strictest and most eager attention, from the ambulatory, which was covered in 1902 with old marble slabs and where there are two early Christian sarcophagi, to the restored Cappella Sancta Sanctorum with its fifth-century sarcophagus, the tomb of the exarch Isaac, and the lofty _Matronaeum_, the women's gallery, from which the best view of the mosaics and the marvellously carved Byzantine capitals may be had. Nor should the narthex be forgotten, mere skeleton though it be. It is characteristic of such a church as this, and set as it is obliquely to it, is original in conception and curious.

When we have finished with S. Vitale it is well to leave Ravenna and to drive by the lofty road over the marshes to the solitary church of S. Apollinare in Classe which was built also by Giuliano Argentario for archbishop Ursicinus (535-538) and was consecrated by archbishop Maximianus in 549.

Classis, Classe, as we know, was the station or port of the Roman fleet, established and built by Augustus Caesar. It was doubtless a great place enjoying the busy and noisy life of a great port and arsenal and possessed vast barracks for the soldiers and sailors of the imperial fleet. Later even when disasters had fallen upon that great civilisation it maintained itself, and from the fifth to the seventh centuries we hear of its churches, S. Apollinare, S. Severo, S. Probo, S. Raffaele, S. Agnese, S. Giovanni "ad Titum," S. Sergio _juxta viridarium_, and the great Basilica Petriana.

It was joined to the city of Ravenna by the long suburb of the Via Caesarea, much I suppose as the Porto di Lido is joined to Venice by the Riva or as Rovezzano is joined to Florence by the Via Aretina. Of all the buildings that together made up the Castello of Classe and the suburb of Caesarea nothing remains to us but the mighty church of S. Apollinare and its great and now tottering campanile. For Classe and Cassarea seem to have been finally destroyed in the long Lombard wars, either as a precautionary measure by the people of Ravenna and the imperialists or by the attacking Lombards, while the sea which once washed the walls of Classe has retreated so far that it is only from the top of her last watch tower it may now be seen.

Nothing can be more desolate and sad than the miserable road across the empty country between Ravenna and that lonely church of S. Apollinare. In summer deep in dust that rises, under the heavy tread of the great oxen which draw the curiously painted carts of the countryside, in great clouds into the sky; in winter and after the autumn rains lost in the white curtain of mist that so often surrounds Ravenna, it is an almost impassable morass of mud and misery. Even at its best in spring time it is melancholy and curiously mean without any beauty or nobility of its own, though it commands so much of those vast spaces of flat and half desolate country which the sea has destroyed, on the verge of which stands the lonely church.

One comes to this great basilica always I think as to a ruin, to find without surprise the doors closed and only to be opened after long knocking. The round campanile that towers and seems to totter in its strange dilapidation beside the church is so beautiful that it surprises one at once by its melancholy nobility in the midst of so much meanness and desolation. It is a building of the ninth century, and may well have been used as much as a watch tower as a bell tower. Till recently it had at its base a sacristy, but this has been swept away. Of old the church too had before it a great narthex of which certain ruins are left, among them a little tower on the left.

Within we find ourselves in a vast basilica divided into three naves upheld by twenty-four marvellous columns of great size and beauty, of Greek marble, with beautiful Byzantine bases and capitals. The central nave is closed by a curved apse set high over a great crypt thrust out beyond the rest of the church. Beyond the two aisles are two chapels each with its little curved apse. The walls of the church and the walls above the arcade were undoubtedly originally covered, in the one case with splendid marbles, in the other with mosaics. The walls of the church were, however, stripped in 1449 by Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini when he was building, or rather encasing, the church of S. Francesco in Rimini with marbles, and turning what had been a Gothic church of brick into what we know as the Tempio Malatestiano, by the hands of Alberti. We know that a great quantity of marble of different kinds was gathered by Sigismondo from all parts of Italy, not only to furnish the interior of his _Tempio_, but to cover the exterior also according to the design of Leon Alberti. Even the sepulchral stones from the old Franciscan convent of S. Francesco in Rimini were used and the blocks which the people of Fano had collected for their church. S. Apollinare in Classe was then in Benedictine hands. With the consent of the Abate there, very many ancient and valuable marbles were torn from the walls and carried off by Sigismondo to Rimini; so many in fact that the people of Ravenna complained to the Venetian doge Francesco Foscari, saying that Sigismondo had despoiled the church. The doge, however, seems to have cared nothing about it and Sigismondo sent to Ravenna and to the Abate two hundred gold florins, so that both declared themselves satisfied. Then the church passed to me, these three sheep belong rather to the upper part of the mosaic which, with the Cross in the midst, bearing the face of Our Lord, and on either side Moses and Elias, symbolises the Transfiguration. These three sheep would thus represent S. Peter, S. James and S. John.

Beneath between the windows we see represented four Bishops of Ravenna, S. Ursinus, S. Ursus, S. Severus, and S. Ecclesius. To the right are the sacrifices of Abel, Melchizedek, and Abraham. To the left the privileges of the church of Ravenna. In the midst we see an archbishop and the emperor who hands him a scroll on which is written _privilegia_. To the left are three priests bearing fire, incense, and a thurible. To the right are three other figures supporting the emperor as the three priests support the archbishop. Doubtless this mosaic records the privileges granted to the church of Ravenna by Constantinople. The archbishop is probably Reparatus who received so much from the Emperor Constantinus IV. Two of the figures who attend the emperor represent Heraclius and Tiberius. This mosaic is the latest in the church, dating from 668.

Over the arch of the tribune is a medallion bust of the Saviour holding a book in His left hand and blessing us with His right. Upon either side are symbols of the four Evangelists in the clouds of the sky. Beneath we see on either side the cities of Bethlehem and Hierusalem, from each of which issue six sheep--perhaps the twelve apostles. Beneath again are two palm trees and again the archangels Gabriel and Michael and S. Luke and S. Matthew.

These mosaics have often been remade and repaired. When Crowe and Cavalcaselle examined them before 1860 they found that the whole tunic of the Moses had been repainted and half the face of the Elias had been restored. They proceed: "The head of S. Apollinare is in part damaged, the left hand and lower part of the figure destroyed. The sheep beside S. Apollinare, but particularly those on the right of that figure, are almost completely modern. A large part of the left side of the apsis is repainted, of the four bishops between the windows of the tribune the head of Ecclesius is preserved, the lower part repainted. The head of S. Ursinus is a new mosaic, and the lower half of the figure is restored. In the mosaic of the sacrifice half the head from the eyes upwards and part of the arms of Abel are repainted, the legs have become dropsical under repair. The figures of Abraham and Isaac are almost completely repainted, and the hands and feet are formless for that reason. This mosaic is repaired in two different ways with white cubes coloured over and with painted stucco. In the mosaic representing the tender of privileges the nimbi as already stated are new, but besides, the lower part of all the figures is repainted in stucco and the heads are all more or less repaired. Of the figures in the arch that of the archangel Gabriel is half ruined and half restored, and part of S. Matthew and S. Luke are new."

Since Crowe and Cavalcaselle wrote a vast restoration has been undertaken, and this was finished in 1908. It was very carefully carried out and it is to be believed that the work as we see it is now secure.

There is much else of interest in the church: the beautiful crypt with its ancient sarcophagus of S. Apollinare and its columns; the ten great sarcophagi which stand about the church, three of which contain the relics of archbishops of Ravenna; the curious tabernacle at the end of the north aisle. But a whole morning, or for that matter a whole day, is not too much to spend in this beautiful and deserted sanctuary which bridges for us so many centuries and in which we are made one with those who helped to establish the foundations of Europe.

XIV

RAVENNA IN THE MIDDLE AGE

The last great original work to be undertaken in Ravenna as the capital of the empire in the West was the building and decoration of the churches of S. Vitale and S. Apollinare in Classe. All the Byzantine work that was done later in Ravenna is merely imitative, an expression of failing power under the crushing disaster of the Lombard invasion. When at last Aistulf in 751 made himself master of the impregnable city, it ceased, and suddenly, to be a capital, and though in 754 Pepin "restored" it to the papacy and established the pope throughout the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, he by that act founded the Papal States, whose capital of necessity was Rome. Thus Ravenna found herself when Charlemagne had been crowned emperor in 800 little more than a decaying provincial city, without authority or hope of resurrection, and it is as a city of the provinces full only of gigantic memories that she appears in the Middle Age and the Renaissance and remains to our own day.

The appearance of Charlemagne, the resurrection of the empire in the West, confirm and consolidate the misfortune of 751 in which indeed she lost everything. But when we see the great Frank strip the imperial palace of its marbles and mosaics it is as though the fate of Ravenna had been expressed in some great ceremony and not by unworthy hands. An emperor had set her up so high, an emperor had kept her there so long; it was an emperor who, as in a last great rite, stript her of her apparel and left her naked with her memories.

Those memories, not only splendid and glorious, but gaunt and terrible too, smoulder in her ruined heart as the fire may do in the ashes when all that was living and glorious has been consumed. Almost nothing as she became when Charlemagne left her, a mere body still wrapt in gorgeous raiment stiff with gold, but without a soul, she still dreamt of dominion, of empire, and of power. Governed by her archbishops, she rebelled against Rome, struggled for a secular and sometimes a religious autonomy, and came at last, as surely might have been prophesied, to consider herself as a feudatory of the Empire, not of the Church.

But though this struggle might have been foreseen it is futile, it has no life in it, it is without any real importance, it leads nowhere and fails to interest us. All that really concerns us in the confused story of Ravenna from the time of the resurrection of the empire till our own day are two strange incidents that have nothing fundamentally to do with her, that befell her by chance; I mean the apparition of Dante, when we see the most eager mediaeval apologist of the imperial idea fortunately and rightly find in her a refuge and a tomb; and the battle of 1512 in which fell Gaston de Foix and which cost the lives of twelve thousand men and achieved nothing.

Nevertheless Ravenna, for so long the citadel of the empire in the West, of all the cities of Italy was least likely to forget her origin or to forsake her memories, and it is both curious and interesting to watch her entry, little splendid though that entry be, into the marvellously vital world of the Middle Age in Italy.

The slow re-establishment of Latin power which followed the crowning of Charlemagne, and which the Church secured by that act, first began to come to its own with the rise of the bishops to civil power in the cities of Italy. Now Ravenna had certainly been governed by her archbishop ever since Pepin in 754 had forced Aistulf to place the keys of the city upon the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. If nowhere else in the Cisalpine plain, Latin civilisation and law, then, never failed in Ravenna, and whatever may have happened elsewhere it might seem certain that here in Ravenna and probably throughout the exarchate the curia existed and endured throughout the barbarian confusion.

This would explain the early and extraordinary development of communal institutions in Ravenna. And since, one may believe, the Roman legions were replaced throughout the empire by the religious orders, it is interesting to know that in the tenth century her Latin energy is borne witness to by the fact that in 956 she produced S. Romuald of the Onesti family of Ravenna, who was educated in the Benedictine monastery of Classe and who founded the Order of Camaldoli, and toward the end of the same century, in 988, she produced S. Peter Damian, the brother of the arch-priest of Ravenna, cardinal-bishop of Ostia and papal legate in Milan.

Nor with the rise of the "spirito italico" everywhere in Italy do we find Ravenna exhausted. Far from it, she is as ardent as any other city of the peninsula whatsoever. Only always she is anti-papal, as though, living in her memories, as she could not but do, and this was her greatest strength, she remembered her old allegiance to the emperor and could not forget that when the pope became his heir in Italy she had fallen from her old eminence. Thus as early as the first years of the eleventh century her archbishop obtains confirmation from the emperor of his temporal powers, in which confirmation no recognition of the sovereignty of the pope appears at all. This act of allegiance to the emperor was repeated when Barbarossa appeared, and indeed the archbishops of Ravenna soon became the most eager if not most the serious supporters of the emperors in all the great plain and perhaps in all Italy. Ravenna, once the imperial capital, though fallen was imperial still. She was haunted, haunted by ghosts that were restless in those marvellous tombs, that litter her churches, loom out of the grey curtain of mist like a fortress, or shine and glitter with imperishable colours and are full of memories as imperishable as themselves.

Yet though it was to her the emperors so often looked for aid and succour and rest, it was not always so. The present, even with her, was more than the past. With the great development of communal institutions which marked especially the twelfth century, compelled too to face, though never with success, the increasing state of Venice, which, indeed, and successfully, had usurped her place in the world and had realised what she had failed to achieve, she was ready and able in 1198 to place herself at the head of the league of the cities of the Romagna and the Marches against the imperial power then both oppressive and feeble; so that pope Innocent III. found it easy to restore the unforgotten rights of the Holy See there and these were ratified by Otto IV. and by Frederick II. as the price of papal support.

It will thus be readily understood that if, at the opening of the thirteenth century, there was one city in Italy more certain than another to be at the mercy of the universal quarrel of Guelf and Ghibelline, that city was Ravenna. In its larger sense that quarrel was her inheritance. It was the one thought which filled her mind. But here, as elsewhere, the great quarrel was insoluble or at any rate not to be solved. It merely bred faction and divided the city against itself. Guelf and Ghibelline tore Ravenna as they tore Florence and Siena in pieces.

The two great Ghibelline families were the Ubertini and the Mainardi and these at first gained the mastery of the city; but in 1218 Pietro Traversari with the aid of the Mainardi turned the Ubertini out and, what is more, made himself master.

Pietro Traversari was succeeded as Podesta in 1225 by his son Paolo, who became Guelf and fought in Innocent IV.'s quarrel against the emperor Frederick II.; Frederick was able to turn the Traversari out of Ravenna in 1240 and to hold the city for eight years, but in 1248 the pope retook it and the Traversari were restored though not I think to the chief power. They remained in power till in the last year of the reign of Gregory X., 1275, Guido da Polenta appears.

Rudolph of Hapsburg was now king--not emperor, for he was never crowned by the pope. He had been a partisan of the second Frederick's, but pope Nicholas III. did not find in the founder of the Hapsburg dynasty the stuff of the Hohenstaufen. In 1278 he forced Rudolph to secure to him by an "irrevocable decree" all that the papacy had ever claimed in the Exarchate and the Pentapolis. The empire renounced all its claims in the Romagna and the Marches; the confines of the states of the Church were defined anew, and the cities of which the pope was absolute lord were named one by one. Of course among these was Ravenna.

The Polentani appear first in the story of Ravenna in or about the year 1167, when we find them acting as vicars for the archbishops. We next hear of them as Podesta, their long rule really beginning, as I have said, in 1275, when Guido il Vecchio, a rather formidable soldier, appears as captain of the people and victor over Cervia, whose territory he added to the dominion of Ravenna. It was indeed this man who first in the Ravenna of the Middle Ages attempted to establish an independent or semi-independent state, by adding territory to territory and thus creating a lordship. For this end he allied himself with the Malatesta of Rimini--a master stroke, for the Polentani of Ravenna and the Malatesta of Rimini had long been bitter foes.

The alliance was cemented by a marriage which all the world knows as an immortal tragedy. Guido Vecchio had a beautiful daughter, Francesca. Malatesta had two sons, the elder Giovanni called, for he was a cripple, _lo Sciancato_, the younger, for he was very fair, known as Paolo _il Bello_. To secure their alliance Polenta married his daughter Francesca to Malatesta's elder son Giovanni; but she had already learned to love, or she soon came to love, his brother Paolo il Bella. Giovanni came upon them one night in Rimini and killed them both with one thrust of his sword. The tragedy, however, should only be told in the immortal words of Dante, who recounts the tale Francesca told him in the second circle of the Inferno. For seeing Francesca and her lover floating for ever in each other arms "light before the wind," as the wind swayed them towards Virgil and himself the Florentine addressed them:

"O wearied spirits come, and hold discourse
With us, if by none else restrained.' As doves
By fond desire invited, on wide wings
And firm, to their sweet nest returning home,
Cleave the air, wafted by their will along,
Thus issued, from that troop where Dido ranks,
They, through the ill air speeding, with such force
My cry prevailed, by strong affection urged.
'O gracious creature and benign! who go'st
Visiting, through this element obscure,
Us, who the world with bloody stain imbrued,
If, for a friend, the King of all, we own'd,
Our prayer to him should for thy peace arise,
Since thou hast pity on our evil plight
Of whatsoe'er to hear or to discourse
It pleases thee, that will we hear, of that
Freely with thee discourse, while e'er the wind
As now is mute The land that gave me birth
Is situate on the coast, where Po descends
To rest in ocean with his sequent streams
'Love that in gentle heart is quickly learnt
Entangled him by that fair form, from me
Ta'en in such cruel sort, as grieves me still,
Love that denial takes from none beloved
Caught me with pleasing him so passing well
That as thou seest, he yet deserts me not
'Love brought us to one death, Caina waits
The soul who spilt our life' Such were their words,
At hearing which downward I bent my looks
And held them there so long that the bard cried
'What art thou pondering?' I in answer thus
'Alas' by what sweet thoughts, what fond desire
Must they at length to that ill pass have reached'
Then turning, I to them my speech address'd,
And thus began 'Francesca! your sad fate
Even to tears my grief and pity moves
But tell me, in the time of your sweet sighs,
By what, and how Love granted, that ye knew
Your yet uncertain wishes?' She replied
'No greater grief then to remember days
Of joy when misery is at hand That kens
Thy learn'd instructor Yet so eagerly
If thou art bent to know the primal root
From whence our love gat being, I will do
As one who weeps and tells his tale One day
For our delight we read of Lancelot,
How him love thrall'd Alone we were and no
Suspicion near us Oft-times by that reading
Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
Fled from our altered cheek But at one point
Alone we fell When of that smile we read,
That wished smile, so rapturously kissed
By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er
From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kissed The book and writer both
Were love's purveyors In its leaves that day
We read no more' While thus one spirit spake
The other wailed so sorely, that heart-struck
I, through compassion fainting, seem'd not far
From death and like a corse fell to the ground"

With the name of Dante we come to the real importance Ravenna has for us in the Middle Age. Dante, however, was not the guest of Guido Vecchio. That great lord ruled in Ravenna as perpetual captain till his death in 1310, when he was succeeded by his son Lamberto who had for some time been the leading spirit in the city. He altogether abolished the so-called democratic government, that is to say, the consulship which was filled in turn by two consuls, the one succeeding the other every fifteen days. Lamberto made himself lord and reigned till 1316, when he was succeeded by his nephew Guido Novello, the consul of Cesena, who thus brought Cesena into the lordship. It is with this man that a universal interest in Ravenna may be said for a moment to revive, for it was he who had the honour to be the host of Dante Alighieri.

Guido Novello was not a mere adventurer like Guido Vecchio, he was a man of considerable culture, with a love of learning and of the arts. It was, as we shall see, at his earnest solicitation that Dante came to visit him, and if we may believe Vasari it was at the poet's suggestion he invited Giotto to his court. "As it had come to the ears of Dante that Giotto was in Ferrara, he so contrived that the latter was induced to visit Ravenna, where the poet was then in exile, and where Giotto painted some frescoes which are moderately good ... for the Signori da Polenta."

Dante as we may think spent the last four years of his life in Ravenna. Those four years we shall consider presently. Here it will be enough to note that he met his death at last in the service of his host and benefactor Guido Novello. The most disastrous action of his life was, it will be remembered, the embassy he made on behalf of his own city of Florence to pope Boniface VIII. That business cost him his home and the city he loved with so cruel a passion; it made him an exile. It was upon the longest journey of all that his last embassy sent him. He set out it seems as ambassador of Guido Novello for Venice, which so far as the sea and all its business are concerned had long replaced Ravenna as mistress of the Adriatic. The recent acquisition of the city and the salt flats of Cervia by Ravenna had become a grievance with the Venetians who desired that monopoly for themselves. It seems that in some local quarrel at Cervia certain Venetian sailors had been killed and Dante went on Guide's behalf to clear the matter up. He was to be as it happened as unsuccessful in his last embassy as he had been in his first. The old doge, according to the legend which I am bound to say is now generally regarded as a fable, received him coldly and, so the tale runs, invited him to dinner upon a fast day. "In front of the envoys of other princes who were of greater account than the Polentani of Ravenna, and were served before Dante, the larger fish were placed, while in front of Dante was placed the smallest. This difference of treatment nettled Dante who took up one of the little fish in his hand and held it to his ear as though expecting it to say something. The doge observing this asked him what his strange behaviour meant. To which Dante replied: 'As I knew that the father of this fish met his death in these waters I was asking him news of his father.'

"'Well,' said the doge, 'and what did he answer?' Dante replied: 'He told me that he and his companions were too little to remember much about him; but that I might learn what I wanted to know from the older fish, who would be able to give me the news I asked for.'

"Thereupon the doge at once ordered Dante to be served with a fine large fish."

Thus Dante called attention to his great achievement, by which I suppose he hoped at once to vindicate his dignity as a great man, certainly greater than any one present, and by this means to lend importance to his mission. Whatever may have been the personal result of his sally, it did his mission no good at all. When the official interview took place Dante, if we may believe something of the apocryphal "Letter of Dante to Guido da Polenta," began to address the doge in Latin and was bidden to speak in Italian or to obtain an interpreter. His mission was a failure and Venice, who in the person of her doge did her best to show either her ignorance of the great poet who did her the honour of crossing her Piazza or of her philistine contempt of him, lives in the _Divine Comedy_ only as an illustration of Hell.

"Thus we from bridge to bridge ...
Pass'd on, and to the summit reaching, stood
To view another gap, within the round
Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs.
Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place.
In the Venetian arsenal as boils
Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear
Their unbound vessels ...
So not by force of fire but art divine
Boiled here a glutinous thick mass, that round
Limed all the shore."

On his way back to Ravenna by land, for the Venetians added to their shame by refusing him the sea passage, he caught a fever in the marshes and returned to Ravenna only to die: the mightiest of all those--emperors and kings--who lie in that "_generale sepolcro di santissimi corpi_."

That was in 1321; and with the death of Dante our interest in Ravenna again becomes cold. Guido Novello soon fell, driven out of Ravenna, never to return, by Ostasio who had assassinated Guide's brother the archbishop-elect Rinaldo. Ostasio ruled with the title of vicar which he received both from Lewis the Bavarian and from pope Benedict XII. This vicious and cruel despot was succeeded by his equally cruel son Bernardino. He ruled for fourteen years, 1345-1359, not, however, without mishap, for his brothers conspired against him and flung him into prison at Cervia. He contrived, however, to turn the tables upon them and to hold them in the same dungeon where he himself had been their prisoner. He was succeeded at last by Guido Lucio, a man of some integrity; but he too was the victim of his family, his own sons rising up against him in his old age and in 1389 flinging him into prison where he died.

He was followed in the lordship of Ravenna by his son Ostasio. This man died in 1431, that is to say, in the midst of all the confusion, here in Romagna and the Marches, of the fifteenth century, when the condottieri were one and all looking for thrones and such ambitions as those of the Visconti, of Francesco Sforza, of Sigismondo Malatesta, of Federigo of Urbino and of a host of _parvenus_ were struggling for dominion and mastery. Thus it was that Ostasio's successor, Ostasio, in 1438 was compelled to make alliance with duke Filippo Maria of Milan. Venice, ever watchful, saw Visconti's game, remembered Cervia, and insisted upon Ostasio coming to Venice. While there he learned that Venice had annexed his dominion. Nor are we surprised to learn that he ended his days in a Franciscan convent, where he was mysteriously assassinated, probably by order of Venice. But with the entry of Venice into Ravenna the Middle Age, even in that far place, comes to an end. The Polentani were done with. A new and vigorous government ushered the old imperial city into the Renaissance.

XV

DANTE IN RAVENNA

Before following the fortunes of Ravenna under that new and alien government into the Renaissance and the modern world, it will be well if we turn to examine more closely her one great moment in the Middle Age, the moment in which Dante found in her a last refuge, and then linger a little among such of her mediaeval buildings as the modern world has left her.

In any attempt to deal, however briefly, with Dante's sojourn in Ravenna we must first find out what we really know concerning it and distinguish this from what is mere conjecture or deduction. Now the first authority for Dante's life generally, is undoubtedly Boccaccio, and as it happens he was in Ravenna, where he had relations, certainly in 1350 and perhaps in 1346. In 1350 he was the envoy of the Or San Michele Society, who by his hand sent Beatrice, the daughter of Dante, then a nun in the convent of S. Stefano dell' Uliva in Ravenna, ten gold florins He was thus in communication with Dante's daughter so that when he came to write the Vita di Dante, probably in 1356-1357, he was certainly in possession of facts. It will be well then if we state to begin with in his own words what he has told us of the years Dante spent in Ravenna.

But first as to the date of Dante's coming to Ravenna. Boccaccio would seem to place it immediately after the death of Henry VII. in 1313. To modern scholarship this has seemed incredible for various reasons, and it prefers to allow Dante to visit Verona first and to come to Ravenna in 1317. Yet let us hear Boccaccio.

He begins by telling us that the too early death of the emperor, who was poisoned, as is thought, at Buonconvento in southern Tuscany on S. Bartholomew's day in 1313, cast every one of his faction into despair "and Dante most of all; wherefore no longer going about to seek his own return from exile he passed the heights of the Apennines and departed to Romagna where his last day, that was to put an end to all his toils, awaited him.

"In those times was Lord of Ravenna (a famous and ancient city of Romagna) a noble cavalier whose name was Guido Novello da Polenta; he was well skilled in the liberal arts and held men of worth in the highest honour, especially such as excelled others in knowledge. And when it came to his ears that Dante, beyond all expectation, was now in Romagna and in such desperate plight, he, who had long time before known his worth by fame, resolved to receive him and do him honour. Nor did he wait to be requested by him to do this, but considering with how great shame men of worth ask such favours, with liberal mind and with free proffers he approached him, requesting from Dante of special grace that which he knew Dante must needs have begged of him, to wit, that it might please him to abide with him. The two wills, therefore, of him who received and of him who made the request thus uniting on one same end, Dante, being highly pleased by the liberality of the noble cavalier, and on the other side constrained by his necessities, awaited no further invitation but the first, and took his way to Ravenna, where he was honourably received by the lord thereof, who revived his fallen hope by kindly festerings; and giving him abundantly such things as were fitting, he kept him with him there for many years, yea, even to the last year of his life.

"Never had his amorous longings, nor his grieving tears, nor his domestic anxieties, nor the seducing glory of public offices, nor his miserable exile, nor his unendurable poverty, been able with all their force to turn Dante aside from his main intent, to wit, from sacred studies; for as will be seen hereafter, when mention shall be made severally of the works that he composed, he will be found to have exercised himself in writing in the midst of all that is fiercest among these passions. And if in the teeth of such and so many adversaries as have been set forth above, he became by force of genius and of perseverance so illustrious as we see, what may we suppose he would have been if, like many another, he had had even as many supports; or, at least, had had no foes; or but few? Indeed I know not. But were it lawful so to say, I would declare that he had surely become a God upon the earth.

"Dante then, having lost all hope of a return to Florence, though he retained the longing for it, dwelt in Ravenna for a number of years, under the protection of its gracious lord. And here by his teachings he trained many scholars in poetry, especially in the vernacular, which vernacular to my thinking he first exalted and brought into repute amongst us Italians no otherwise than did Homer his amongst the Greeks or Virgil his amongst the Latins. Before him, though it is supposed that it had already been practised some short space of years, yet was there none who by the numbering of the syllables and by the consonance of the terminal parts had the feeling or the courage to make it the instrument of any matter dealt with by the rules of art; or rather it was only in the lightest of love poems that they exercised themselves therein. But he showed by the effect that every lofty matter may be treated in it; and made our vernacular glorious above every other.

"But since his hour is assigned to every man, Dante when already in the middle or thereabout of his fifty-sixth year fell sick and in accordance with the Christian religion received every Sacrament of the Church humbly, and devoutly, and reconciled himself with God by contrition for everything, that, being but man, he had done against His pleasure; and in the month of September in the year of Christ one thousand three hundred and twenty-one, on the day whereon the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is celebrated by the Church, not without greatest grief on the part of the aforesaid Guido and generally all the other Ravennese citizens, he rendered up to his Creator his toil-worn spirit, the which I doubt not was received into the arms of his most noble Beatrice, with whom, in the sight of Him who is the supreme good, the miseries of this present life left behind, he now lives most joyously in that life the felicity of which expects no end.

"The magnanimous cavalier placed the dead body of Dante, adorned with poetic insignia, upon a funeral bier, and had it borne on the shoulders of his most distinguished citizens to the place of the Minor Friars in Ravenna, with such honour as he deemed worthy of such a corpse And here, public lamentations as it were having followed him so far, he had him placed in a stone chest, wherein he still lieth. And returning to the house in which Dante lately lived, according to the Ravennese custom he himself delivered an ornate and long discourse both in commendation of the profound knowledge and the virtue of the deceased, and in consolation of his friends whom he had left in bitterest grief. He purposed, had his estate and his life endured, to honour him with so choice a tomb that if never another merit of his had made him memorable to those to come, this tomb should have accomplished it.

"This laudable intent was in brief space of time made known to certain who in those days were most famous for poetry in Ravenna; whereon each one for himself, to show his own power and to bear witness to the goodwill he had to the dead poet, and to win the grace and love of the signore, who was known to have it at heart, made verses which, if placed as epitaph on the tomb that was to be, should with due praises teach posterity who lay therein. And these verses they sent to the glorious signore, who, by great guilt of Fortune, in short space of time lost his estate, and died at Bologna; wherefore the making of the tomb and the placing of the verses thereon were left undone. Now when these verses were shown to me long afterward, perceiving that they had never been put in their place, by reason of the chance already spoken of, and pondering on the present work that I am writing, how that it is not indeed a material tomb, but is none the less--as that was to have been--a perpetual preserver of his memory, I imagined that it would not be unfitting to add them to this work. But in as much as no more than the words of some one of them (for there were several) would have been cut upon the marble, so I held that only the words of one should be written here; wherefore on examining them all I judged that the most worthy for art and for matter were fourteen verses made by Messer Giovanni del Virgilio the Bolognese, a most illustrious and great poet of those days, and one who had been a most especial friend of Dante. And the verses are these hereafter written:

"'Theologus Dantes, nullius dogmatis expers,
Quod foveat claro philosophia sinu,
Gloria musarum, vulgo gratissimus auctor,
Hic iacet, et fama pulsat utrumque polum,
Qui loca defunctis, gladiis regnumque gemellis,
Distribuit, laicis rhetoricisque modis.
Pascua Pieriis demum resonabat avenis,
Atropos heu letum livida rupit opus
Huic ingrata tulit tristem Florentia fructum,
Exilium, vati patria cruda suo.
Quem pia Guidonis gremio Ravenna Novelli
Gaudet honorati continuisse ducis.
Mille trecentenis ter septem Numinis annis,
Ad sua septembris idibus astra redit.'"[1]