We return now to my north-eastern Italian holiday of July 2019, the pictures from which I’ve been inflicting on you and intend to inflict on you for a few posts longer as well (though I do notice it’s doing my viewing figures no good at all, which is odd). Anyway, point is, though I was in on holiday in Venice, and there is more stuff to see there than I have talked about and probably than I ever could talk about, I am also an early medievalist with Byzantinising tendencies, and was travelling with an early Byzantinist with medievalising tendencies, and neither of us had ever been within reach of Ravenna before.
(N. B. I’ve removed one misattributed picture here and updated several captions where I just apparently hadn’t looked at the pictures properly. Thanks to Joseph Brown for gently trapping the first of these mistakes and thanks to anyone who spotted the others for your equally gentle silence!)
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The first monument we saw, Santa Maria in Porto, is actually a 16th-century building, though it claims to be on the site of the first cathedral, a claim that I think is now in doubt
Now, Ravenna has not really been on the map of anyone for quite a while except early medievalists and Byzantinists, but for us it’s quite the big deal, because after something like 400 (I’m not checking now; Milan also has a claim) it was the operating capital of the Western half of the Roman Empire. Being surrounded by marshes and accessible from the sea, you see, it was a sight more defensible than the traditional location of Rome, and also less full of warring aristocrats who might try to displace you. And it was at Ravenna that Odoacer, first King of Italy, was besieged and eventually (because defensible, you see) conquered by King Theodoric of the Ostrogoths, who made more use of Rome but also ruled from Ravenna; and then it was where his successors held out against the Empire’s strike back under Emperor Justinian I. And then last of all it was the final point of government for the imperial government in Northern Italy, the seat of the Exarch, until the Lombard conquest in 751.1 And after that, well, I’m sure lots has happened here; I mean, the Second World War must have gone right through it, which may explain the fact that the city centre architecture is mostly uninspiring. But it hasn’t really been important since 751. Thankfully, this means that it retains some quite substantial monumental complexes from back when it was the imperial metropole, because it was never again sufficiently prestigious a place to merit trying to put your own stamp on it. There are enough of these complexes that I won’t try and get them all into one post – see how much further I can drive down those figures! – and so I’m going to group them around one figure each, and this time it’s Theodoric.
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Not a signature, exactly, but his monogram, on a stone in the Museo Arcivescovile, a place itself worth a post but not, on this occasion, going to get one, sorry
Theodoric was both the first and last features of our half-day survey of this late antique city. Although the first actual monument we spotted, as above, was Santa Maria di Porto, that wasn’t on our target list and we didn’t pass its entrance, and before we had found a way to it we’d found this instead.
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What remains of the Palazzo di Teodorico, from the east
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Entry is now via the tower, which is good and imposing, but since there was plainly once more of it and the tower is much later masonry, it was evidently not ever thus
This is called the Palazzo di Teodorico, and as that implies, it was probably his seat of government when he was in town.
But there’s not much left in the Palazzo itself. What it’s now doing is housing mosaics from elsewhere in the town, and not very much of it is safe—or at least, open—to explore.
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Probably-Roman mosaic on display inside
That may be because, from the street side at least, it looks pretty intact, and maybe more of it is in use than just the gallery.
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This is the street frontage, facing west, and probably the original entrance
It must be said, that impression is not possible to get from all directions.
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The nave and tower together give the distinct impression of gaps…
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And inside the nave you see more of them, though the keyhole arch is interesting for a Hispanist to observe in this completely non-Andalusī setting
Either way, apart from visitors, this was the only resident we saw…
But then onwards, pretty directly, to our next Theodorician destination!
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The first thing you see is the tower, for obvious reasons
That being the church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, so called because of another church dedicated to Saint Apollinaris out at the port town of Classe that was Ravenna’s reach to the outside world. No-one seems to be out-and-out willing to say Theodoric had this place built, but everyone is clear that it was the church where he worshipped, and it’s really quite grand and in early sixth-century style.2 Since he took over in 493, I don’t see that leaving very many other options!
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This is the frontage on arrival, and as you can tell that tower is tall enough that perspective had become a problem for my poor camera
Now, this church is notable for several things, one being that it is actually a complex of three monuments. The least impressive of them, but only by comparison, is the Wall of Droctulf, part of the first church on the site, the Arian cathedral of the Holy Spirit, surviving long after the church had been replaced by Sant’Apollinare as part of the residence of the Lombard druke Droctulf, hence its name now.3
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Droctulf’s wall, still with some pretty clear signs of where it once belonged to another structure – but which one?
The other monument that is not the Church is the so-called Baptistery of the Arians. That being the second time they have come up, I probably ought to try a three-sentence explanation of who the Arians (N. B. not Aryans, a mistake at least one student makes every year I teach this) were. That’s harder than it sounds, since it involves Christology. Basically, Bishop Arius of Alexandria, in the early fourth century, wrestling inwardly with the knotty problem of the Trinity, i. e. how God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit could all be one god indivisible, decided that the best answer was a hierarchy of creation, in which the Father gave rise to the Son and they both then gave rise to the Holy Spirit. This runs against Orthodoxy (as in, the belief canon of both Catholic and Orthodox churches now) which sees the Trinity as not just indivisible but co-eternal (because “in the beginning the Word was with God”, and the Word, logos, is Christ and we can’t get into this right now). But for patches of the fourth century, that wasn’t clear, and individual emperors embraced the Arian faith, notably Constantius II, under whom missionaries were sent to the Goths. There we go, three sentences, go me! As a result of this, though, when the Goths entered the empire in force some thirty years later—ironically killing the last Arian emperor, Valens, so doing—their flavour of Christianity was Arian Christianity, and so it remained 150 years later when Theodoric took over in Italy with his Gothic army. And so pretty much the first thing they did was set up an Arian church to rival the Catholic/Orthodox one, and since they were in power, it could be pretty spiffing.
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The cloister, from inside
This doesn’t mean that Arian churches were especially different from Catholic ones; in fact, it’s been a subject of concern that we may not be able to differentiate them archaeologically at all.4 But we do know this was one, and in the fashion of the day, it had its building for doing baptisms in as a separate structure outside the main church. (I don’t know why: babies cry a lot when you near-drown them, maybe?)
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The so-called Baptistery of the Arians, from the angle where it hasn’t been patched and built up with modern plaster
It’s a pretty simple structure.
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Interior view, with light falling from the gallery upon the visiting Byzantinist
All the same, we may not be seeing it as Theodoric would have, because when the city was finally taken off the Goths by the Empire again in 540, one of the things that seems to have happened was a spot of redecorating. If there had been Arian decoration in here – whatever that would have looked like – we probably aren’t seeing it.
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Is this, for example, how Arians would have depicted the baptism of Christ? With the Holy Spirit there as a dove? Is that then God the Father on his left, or the River Jordan personified? It is, as you may be able to tell, in the roof, surrounded by saints done in a slightly different style, and so it’s tempting to think that this bit, the hardest of all to reach, has been there since its beginning…
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This polychrome paintwork probably hasn’t been here forever, but it’s nice that it still is even a bit; it tells us that there was once more and the inside was less pale and austere than it now seems.
Not so simple, however, is Sant’Apollinare itself.
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View down the nave from the portal
Again, one would love to know here whether this is the original sequence of decoration or whether this was an Orthodox improvement, because it could potentially tell us quite a lot about the Arian approach to saints. Reason being, there are a lot of them on display here.
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The sequence is gendered, with female martyrs on one side and male ones on the other, both running to focal points behind or beside the altar. This is the start of the female sequence. presumably showing the port of Classe…
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… and it goes on like this, though let us note that other male saints stand over them in the upper sequence…
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… and it ends here, with the Three Kings (men, again, notice) offering their gifts to the four angels flanking the Madonna, Queen of Heaven, and Child
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Then back round the other side we have Christ Himself in Majesty, likewise with flanking angels, with the top male martyrs approaching, Martin apparently first in line
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… and a long run of male martyrs to match the female ones they face across the nave. It’s a liturgical calendar just in itself!
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The male sequence ends in what appears to be and is even labelled as a palace, facing the port on the other side, so it probably must be Ravenna though as we have seen it’s not much like Theodoric’s palace, and for some reason it’s empty (the Gothic patron possibly removed by vengeful Byzantines?)
There was a lot of material for study here, and one could do wonders with which saints are depicted, in what order and what that selection might mean.5 But we had not left ourselves time for that sort of spiritual contemplation, and rapidly moved on. But that takes us onto the next Ravenna post, and I instead want to finish this one where we finished, which is, suitably enough, also where Theodoric himself did, kinda.
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The so-called Mausoleum of Theodoric
We’ve talked about this place on the blog before, very long ago, when we were dealing with the question of who ran it in the eighth century, when it was apparently a monasterium. Since you couldn’t easily get more than five or six beds in it, and then not much else, that clearly didn’t mean monastery, so it seems an odd word to use.
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Though you can fit a rather splendid porphyry bath in, apparently, I’m no longer sure from where. It has been suggested that this was the royal sarcophagus, but to be honest I think that’s just because it’s been here for a while
But it’s also odd because this building was actually built to house one person only, Theodoric, and that after death.
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This niche, beyond the bath, is the only decorated one and so seems to be the focal point, where any celebrated tomb would presumably have been put… and now ain’t
So it was presumably cleared out pretty quickly, though whether that was by vengeful Byzantines or acquisitive Carolingians—because Charlemagne definitely did, once he was King of the Lombards, take stuff from Ravenna that commemorated Theodoric back to his palace at Aachen—we don’t know.6 Given that it had a revenue and a staff in the eighth century, it can’t have been left empty then. But now it more or less is.
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The holes in the other niches give directly onto the outside
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Here’s the exterior side of another one; there was presumably something decorative set in this, once upon a time, as well
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Again, there are tiny signs inside that all was not once so bare and pale, in the form of these vestigial painted letters; but if there was a message to the world from Theodoric here, or from anyone else, it’s long long gone now
It’s not a haunted place. It sits at the edge of a park and catches the sunshine very nicely towards the end of the day. I don’t think, myself, that the dead king got to be here long enough to take a hold on the place.
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Exterior view of the upper storey, in the sunshine
But the thing itself remains part of his mark on the city, a mark that the Empire could only redecorate, not eradicate. So this post is for him. Next will follow more academical content and then I’ll give some space to the imperial expression of monumentality here. Stay tuned if you like that sort of thing, and actually, please stay tuned even if you don’t, I promise there’s more variety coming…
1. My go-to for this patch and period is T. S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy, A.D. 554-800 (London 1984), but if you wanted something a bit more general, less specialised and more recent, you could try Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge 2010) or Judith Herrin and Janet L. Nelson (edd.), Ravenna: its role in earlier medieval change and exchange (London 2017), on JSTOR here. This place attracts a lot of attention…
2. Given all the above I could be founding this on more research, but time was short and so what I’m using is T. S. Brown & Dale Kinney, “Ravenna” in Alexander Kazhdan (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (New York 1991), 3 vols, vol. III pp. 1773-1775, and Neil Christie & Rebecca Darley, “Ravenna and Classe” in Oliver Nicholson (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (Oxford 2018), 2 vols, vol. II pp. 1272-1274. It could be worse!
3. This, I get from the site signage, and I’m not 100% sure about it on the grounds that no-one else I checked out says anything about this cathedral of the Holy Spirit. I’m happy to be corrected here by anyone who knows what was going on in 5th-century Ravenna better than me!
4. Bryan Ward-Perkins, “Where is the Archaeology and Iconography of Germanic Arianism?” in David M. Gwynn and Susanne Bangert (edd.), Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity, Late Antique Archaeology 6 (Leiden 2010), pp. 265–289.
5. I haven’t, but two places to look for more might be Gianfranco Bustacchini, Ravenna: Mosaics, monuments and environment (Ravenna 2012), of which we came home with a copy that I now don’t have time to consult, sorry; or Maria Cristina Carile, “Production, promotion and reception: the visual culture of Ravenna between late antiquity and the middle ages” in Herrin and Nelson, Ravenna, pp. 53–86, on JSTOR here.
6. See on this Jinty Nelson, “Charlemagne and Ravenna”, ibid., pp. 239–252, on JSTOR here.