Ravenna, Archdiocese of

RAVENNA, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - In Romagna. As a metropolitan see it still has the dioceses of Bertinoro, Cervia, Cesena, Comacchio, Forlì, Rimini, and Sarsina subject to it, and it is part of the Flaminia conciliar region. After the dismemberment of Cervia (v.), which by force of a decree of the Consistorial Congregation of 15 February 1947 lost the 8 parishes constituting the ancient Duchy of its bishop in Ferrarese territory, this tiny diocese, by now reduced to only 5 parishes, situated in the territory of its municipal district, was united in perpetuity "aeque principaliter et servato dignitatis ordine" to the archdiocese of Ravenna (AAS, 39 [1947], pp. 225-27). The archbishop of Ravenna furthermore holds the title of perpetual abbot of S. Maria in Porto.

The territory of the diocese lies entirely in the extreme Po Valley and ethnographically and civilly can be divided into two large parts: the Romagnol part, almost entirely in the municipality of R., with offshoots in the territory of the municipalities of Forlì, Bertinoro, and Conselice; and the Ferrarese part, with an offshoot of 2 parishes in Bolognese land. In this latter part, which reaches the right bank of the Po, on the border with Adria, are situated the civilly most important centers: Argenta, Portomaggiore, Berra.

The area of the diocesan territory is around 1350 sq km and comprises 161,000 inhabitants, of whom 35,200 are in the 14 parishes of the city of R., and the remainder in the 53 parishes and 2 rural curacies, grouped into 10 rural vicariates; 141 are the priests resident in the diocese, of whom 117 belong to the secular clergy and 24 to the regular clergy; 6 are the male religious houses, with 37 members, while the female religious houses amount to 45 with 240 sisters, among whom are two Congregations of diocesan right: the Virgins of St. Joseph of the Tavelli Institute and the Tertiaries of the Sorrowful Mother of the Ghiselli Institute.

The diocese, having emerged from the storm of war with immense disasters, is now rising again from the ruins. Only 22 parishes came out unscathed from the general ruin, 20 were the parish churches entirely destroyed, among them the basilicas of S. Vittore in the city and of S. Maria in Porto outside, in the immediate vicinity. So that it is still impossible to give a statistic of the diocese's buildings of worship without falling into the provisional. The only diocesan sanctuary that truly has a history and has for centuries been a center of Marian piety may be considered the basilica of S. Maria in Porto, in the city of R., where the "Madonna Greca" is venerated, a beautiful Byzantine image of the Virgin at prayer, at

RAVENNA, ARCIDIOCESI di « Stele of Antiphon (late 2nd–early 3rd century). Christian epigraph with the representation of the Good Shepherd, coming from an ancient burial ground of Classe » Ravenna, Archiepiscopal Museum.

bas-relief on Parian marble. Its first seat was the now destroyed Basilica outside the walls, mentioned above, whose origins can be traced back to before the year 1000. Transferred into the city, when the extramural canonry had to be abandoned, it received the homage of Julius II, who in the monastery, in 1511 in solemn Consistory, created 9 cardinals; of Paul III in 1541; of St. Charles Borromeo, legate of Romagna. The institution of a pious union, known since the 12th century under the name of « Sons of Mary », continued today in the well-known one of the « Daughters of Mary », seems to have to be connected to the cult of this image.

I. CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

The origins of the city are lost in legend; with Caesar it entered decisively into history. From here he conducted the last negotiations with the Senate; he concentrated his troops and set out for the crossing of the Rubicon. It was chosen by Octavian as the seat of the fleet destined for the eastern Mediterranean. Continuous relations with the East soon brought there elements from the opposite shores of the Adriatic and from the regions of Asia Minor, Syria and Greece, Egypt, etc. Reasons of strategic security led Honorius in 402, in the face of the danger created by Alaric's invasion, to choose it as the seat of the Western Empire (v. GALLA PLACIDIA). Thus began the expansion of the urban center and a vast program of construction. The last, confused vicissitudes of the Empire, which fell when in Sept. 476 Paul, uncle of Romulus Augustulus, was killed in the pinewood of Classe, were followed by the transitional period of the Herulian Kingdom under Odoacer. The first barbarian-Italic king also established his residence in the city. Then came the Gothic Kingdom of Theodoric, which brought the second period of political and architectural greatness.

The Theodorican Kingdom came to an end in 526, when at the King's death the struggle between conquered and conquerors was raging most fiercely. R. was conquered by Belisarius in the spring of 540. In that year there began for the city the third period of its political power, which lasted until the 8th century; perhaps also the most splendid. Justinian made it the seat of his representative in Italy (v. EXARCHATE). After alternating fortunes the city fell in 751 into the hands of Aistulf, and this was the end of Byzantine rule in Italy; nevertheless, after Aistulf was forced to abandon the Exarchate, the archbishops, strong in the special position they had been acquiring, assumed the role of heirs and continuators of Byzantine rule, becoming the governors of the city and its territory. The alliance with the local aristocracy gave rise to that numerous series of dukes who in the name of the archbishop ruled in Romagna in the 9th-11th centuries. Under the Ottos the archbishops became great feudatories of the Empire and the city knew a new period of splendor and greatness, also because it was often the residence of the Emperor, who had a palace there. From the archiepiscopal Lordship arose the aristocratic Commune, which throughout the 12th century remained still under the high authority of the archbishop. From the aristocratic Commune the transition to the Lordship was brief, held by certain families that remained famous, such as the Anastagi and the Traversari, immortalized by Dante. The lordship of the latter ended in 1240 with the conquest of the city by Frederick II. Thirty-six years later, Rudolf of Habsburg definitively ceded Romagna to the Pope, and R. thus passed into the domain of the Holy See. Meanwhile the lordship of the Polentani arose, vicars of the Apostolic See, but in fact independent governors. Guido Novello gave Dante Alighieri asylum and comfort within its walls. With Obizzo da Polenta, the family became in fact a vassal of the Venetian Republic, which from the early 15th century sent a podestà to R. every year. Until, having relegated Ostasio to the island of Candia, Venice became openly and easily mistress of the city. Venetian rule lasted until 1509, and was a pause in that rapid decline to which the retreat of the sea and the abandonment of maintenance work on the port had strongly contributed. In 1509, by treaty, it was restored to Julius II. Three years later, besieged by the King of France and by Alfonso d'Este, allies against the Pope and Spain, after a furious battle that takes its name from R., on 12 Apr. 1512 it was stormed and put to fire and sword. After the ruin, only in the first half of the 18th century was there a happy note, when the legate Cardinal Giulio Alberoni provided for the diversion of the rivers Ronco and Montone which, united in a single bed, freed the city from their terrible embrace, a frequent cause of floods. From him R. also received the new navigable canal and the port, which from the family name of Clement XII were and are called Corsini. By the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) it was ceded by Pius VI to the French, whose government was most disastrous for the city, especially for its artistic heritage. It returned to the Pontiff in 1815 and was the seat of a legation. On 13 June 1859, after the Apostolic Delegate had departed, a provisional governing junta was constituted, a prelude to the definitive union with the Kingdom of Italy.

from the very beginnings, must have brought and spread the faith. Today, however, one cannot affirm whether Apollinaris was the first evangelizer, or rather the organizer of an already existing community, because tradition has surrounded with a halo of legend the only martyr of the church of R. The first to speak of him is St. Peter Chrysologus (v.). But from his sermon (no. 128) one can only gather that he was the first bishop; that he died as a result of the torments he suffered; that his body rests in the midst of the children of his church. Later, perhaps through the work of Pseudo-Ambrose, author of the legend of Sts. Vitalis and Ursicinus, a "passio" was composed, in which Apollinaris is presented as a disciple of Peter, sent by him to R., to evangelize "the multitude of people who dwelt there." R. was advancing toward glory and power, its church had to prove itself superior to the Arian one that Theodoric had installed there; for this reason the apostolicity of the founder was convenient. It was already known in the early 6th century, when documents and monuments clearly allude to it. At the Council of Sardica, Severus was present; between him and Apollinaris, 10 other bishops succeeded one another in the see of Classe and were buried there. Probus I, or, according to others, Probus II, would have erected the first Cathedral, on the burial area mentioned above; a basilica most ancient in its origin, which had its baptistery. Of two other ancient cemetery areas there is certain notice: that where Eleucadius, the third bishop, was buried, and the other where Severus found burial, ca. the middle of the 4th century. Perhaps a fourth, separate from that of Probus, is to be recognized in the very poor burial place that lies underground, in the courtyard of the canonica of the basilica of S. Apollinare, in which was the first tomb of the Saint and at the edges of which the Basilica arose, as have demon-

the excavations of 1949 have shown. The importance of the Ravennate Church begins when the Court established itself in R. Ursus, not before the end of the 4th century, but more probably at the beginning of the 5th, transferred the see within the Ravennate urban agglomeration and built the first intramural Basilica, named Ursiana after him; the Classense church with its clergy, however, continued for a long time to enjoy particular autonomy. The new Basilica leaned against the eastern side of the walls of the Roman oppidum. In a small addition, which was perhaps the first expansion of the Roman city, arose the episcopal see, the Tricoli, as through the centuries the residence of the archbishops was and is called, which from then on, together with the Cathedral, remained and remains in its original place, in the vicinity of what was the Porta Sallustra, of which the episcopium has incorporated one of the two cylindrical towers. With St. Peter Chrysologus a new fact occurs. Around 450, "edicto christiani principis (Valentinian III) et decreto beati Petri (Celestine I)," a group of churches of Emilia (Forum Livii, Faventia, Forum Cornelii, Bononia, Mutina, Vicus Habentinus), detached from Milanese metropolitan jurisdiction, was constituted as a separate unity, dependent on the bishop of R., who consecrated their prelates and presided over them with metropolitan authority; however, as bishop of Ravenna he remained a suffragan of the Roman see. It was the first step, and Chrysologus was considered on a par with the other metropolitans.

After Chrysologus emerge the figures of Neon and of Ecclesius, the bishop of the Theodorican era. In 540 Victor witnessed the passage of political jurisdiction from the Gothic Kingdom to the dominion of Byzantium, and at his death a decisive event in the history of the church of R. came to pass. Pope Vigilius was far from Rome; it was the beginning of the struggle of the Three Chapters, and Justinian wanted a man present there who would give him full assurance. Therefore when the name was presented to him of the one (who remained unknown) whom clergy and people had canonically elected to succeed Victor, he set this elect aside. On the proposal of the emperor, Vigilius in Patras of Achaia, on 14 October 546, consecrated as bishop of R. Maximian of Pola, who conducted the struggle against the Three Chapters with tenacity and strength. An indefatigable builder, reorganizer and reformer of his church, with Chrysologus he is perhaps the greatest of the successors of Apollinaris, the initiator of that power which, after him, was often to bring the archbishops of R. against Rome. He was succeeded by Agnellus, to whom was reserved the task of purging the city and the diocese of every trace of Arianism and of consecrating the Arian temples to Catholic worship. In the 7th century the struggle with Rome perhaps reaches its acme with Maurus, archbishop, who in 666 obtained from the emperor Constans the decree of autocephaly. Even if limited, in its essence, to metropolitan jurisdiction, as Zattoni would have it, it was always a struggle at close quarters, with an alternation of submissions and rebellions, depending on the reigning bishop, which lasted for centuries and can be understood and expressed only by the testament of Maurus himself, of which the words written on his tomb are an echo: "Liberavit ecclesiam suam de jugo Romanorum servitutis." The 8th century, which sees the total destruction of Classe, has a particular importance of its own for the history of the Ravennate Church. With the fall of the Exarchate the government became concentrated, as has been said, in the hands of the archbishops. In this century one can also document a monastic community at the Classense basilica of St. Apollinaris. It is toward the end of the century that Gratiosus, a characteristic figure of a bishop, whose simplicity would remain proverbial, welcomed in R. Charlemagne, who had come to strip the Palace of Theodoric of its marbles and its finest ornaments, in order to adorn his own constructions at Aachen. Of rebellions against Rome and of an anti-Roman spirit, Agnellus (v.) is a qualified witness in the 9th century with his Liber pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis. In the same century the Benedictines established themselves at S. Vitale, at S. Giovanni Ev., while in the following one they are also found at S. Apollinare Nuovo. With the Ottos, the importance of the see is reaffirmed. These are the years in which Romuald degli Onesti, after his conversion, becomes a monk of Classe and carries out a vast reform in the abbey. These are the years in which the Saint withdraws to Pereo and begins his eremitical reform. From this hermitage, located about 15 km. from the city, and whose church was one of the first dedicated to the martyr St. Adalbert of Prague, depart the first nucleus of Camaldolese missionaries, led by St. Bruno of Querfurt. The church of R. in the two years 998-99 is governed by that Gerbert of Aurillac, who was to ascend the throne of Peter under the name of Sylvester II. After the year 1000 St. Stephen of Hungary founds in the territory of the diocese the abbey of S. Pietro in Vincoli, to be a resting place for the pilgrims of his nation, and whose church was consecrated by St. Gerard. In the first half of the 11th century the bitter struggle takes place between R. and Milan for the right of precedence; a question resolved in 1047 in favor of R., whereby its prelate was recognized the right to sit at the right of the Pope when the Emperor is absent, and at his left when he is present.

Then once again the latent antagonism with Rome makes itself openly felt and culminates in the saddest episode, when its archbishop, Guibert, is elected antipope under the name of Clement III and drags R. into the schism. These are the years of the indefatigable work of St. Peter Damian, who dies (Faenza 1072) returning from a mission of conciliation between Rome and R. Fidelity to Rome led in the early years of the 12th century to the foundation of that canonry of Porto, in which the Order of Canons Regular had a most important center of reform and whose Rule spread in Italy and beyond. Its founder and reformer was Peter the cleric, a figure intimately and dearly united to the history of R., often confused with St. Peter Damian, because of the common epithet of "Peccatore," and who even today cannot be better identified. Then, indeed, as decadence begins for the city, so the church of R. re-enters the common sphere. In the first centuries after the year 1000, however, it had the maximum of metropolitan extent, comprising all the dioceses of Emilia, from Piacenza to Rimini and even beyond the Po with Adria.

In the 13th century emerges the figure of archbishop Philip. A man of great energy, he was a prisoner of Ezzelino da Romano; a reformer and scourge of the evil customs widespread among clergy and people, he introduced into R. in 1261 the Friars Minor of St. Francis, to whom he granted the ancient basilica of S. Pietro Maggiore. At the beginning of the following century, there was Rainald of Concorrezzo, venerated as blessed. He is the archbishop of Dante and dies not even a month before the Poet (18 Aug. 1321). The spirit of the Catholic reform, already in the first half of the 16th century, finds in R. a prepared environment, to which the work of two women, the blesseds Margherita da Russi and Gentile Giusti, must have contributed. Under the inspiration of the first, the venerable Gerolamo Malucelli founded that congregation of the Regular Priests of the Good Jesus, which was among the very first families of regular clerics in the Church. It had a purely local life and was suppressed in 1651 by a bull of Innocent X. With the episcopate of Cardinal Giulio Feltrio della Rovere (1566-78) begins the series of reforming bishops, in the spirit of the Council of Trent. In 1567 he founded the Seminary; he provided for the reform of the clergy of the Cathedral, suppressing the two Chapters of the canon-cardinals and of the canon-singers, in order to form a single one of choral beneficiaries. With him, according to Girolamo Rossi, a contemporary historian, every surviving trace of non-Roman rites disappeared from the Ravennate liturgical books: the only certain testimony is that of the survival in R. of prayers and rites in the Greek language, but this does not authorize the belief that the ancient Ravennate liturgy was in that language. Every epigraphic and documentary testimony assures us that in the 6th century the Latin language was the liturgical language of the church of R. Only later, with the establishment of the Exarchate, could non-Latin uses and customs enter the liturgy. But it is certain that already in 1454 the Roman Missal was in use in the Basilica Ursiana (a codex of that year in the Ravennate capitular Archive). With Della Rovere began the Acts of the Holy Visitation of the diocese, which continue during the pontificate of his successor, Cristoforo Boncompagni (1578-1604), during which there arose in R. a modest female congregation, in the spirit of St. Philip Neri: the Pious tertiaries living in common, founded by Sister Adriana Tavella, a community still in existence. With Pietro Aldobrandini the work of reform proceeded briskly and the acts of his visitations give for the first time a complete panorama. At the same time, however, the first mutilations of the metropolitan jurisdiction began, with the detachment of Bologna, later itself constituted a metropolis, with suffragan churches previously subject to R.

The French revolutionary laws annihilated, at the end of the 18th century, all the religious communities that had come into being over the centuries. Eleven male religious families were suppressed. Among them the great abbeys, which had played so large a part in the life of R. That of the black Benedictines of S. Vitale disappeared after almost a thousand years of life. So too did that formed in the shadow of the Placidia basilica of S. Giovanni Evangelista, into which in 1459 the commendatory Cardinal Bessarion had introduced the Canons Regular, and in which he ended his days on 18 Nov. 1472. The Classense abbey, a center of culture, followed the common fate. From S. Apollinare in Classe the Camaldolese monks had moved into the city in 1515. Likewise, following a decision of the Venetian Republic, at the beginning of the 16th century, the Portuense canonry, erected into an abbey in 1566, had emigrated into the city from its ancient seat on the Adriatic shore. It was the only one of the 4 that, after the restoration, was reopened and had a wretched existence until the suppressive laws of the Kingdom of Italy. Among the numerous female communities, the Benedictine monastery of S. Andrea Maggiore and the Dominican one of S. Stefano de Ulivis, within whose walls Beatrice, daughter of Dante, had been a nun, ceased their centuries-old life through the work of the French.

The Napoleonic storm found as archbishop a man of broad views and great heart: Antonio II Codronchi. His attitude toward the new monarch may be debated: a sworn bishop, grand almoner of the court, knight of the Iron Crown, present at the baptism of the King of Rome, he seemed to some wholly loyal to the Emperor. Yet in his 40 years of episcopate (1785-1826) he carried out a many-sided, sagacious, prudent, constructive work. He saved from ruin and profanation all, or nearly all, the conventual churches of historical and artistic importance, transferring the parish seats to them. Having bought with his own money the cloisters of the former abbey of S. Giovanni Evangelista, he moved there the old hospital of S. Maria delle Croci, which he endowed with numerous revenues.

He was succeeded by the Roman C. Falconieri-Mellini, from his youth bound in friendship to Pius IX, whom he welcomed in R. on his last journey to the Legations. Created cardinal in 1834, he died on 22 Aug. 1850; a few months earlier the papal government had ceased in R. From then on began the period of the most blatant anticlericalism and of the de-Christianization of Romagna. After the bewilderment of the first years, and the disorientation even of the clergy, the recovery was promising from the very beginnings of our century. In 1904 the Milanese Pasquale Morganti became archbishop, a typical figure of the contemporary episcopate. Author of ascetic writings for the clergy (Sic oredetis, Vos divi omicos), in suffering and humiliation he prepared the rebirth of the diocese. His government concluded with the truly worthy celebration by Catholics in honor of Dante, on the sixth centenary of the Poet's death (1921).

II. MONUMENTS

Of Roman R., whose extent and form are known with precision, some remnant of the walls with which it was already girded in 45 A.D. survives, along with scanty remains in situ of the Porta Aurea, opened at that time by the emperor Claudius. In the National Museum are the two paterae and some other marble elements of the same gate: naval stele, the Augustan frieze and little more. Of the port of Classe, no vestige remains above ground. Just as nothing is left of the buildings that formed the « castrum classis ».

With the imperial palaces, the civil buildings of Theodoric, of the exarchs and of the Ottonians gone, R. is today famous throughout the world for a singular group of Early Christian monuments. Before the 5th century there is only the memory of the most ancient cathedral of Classe, built outside the walls of the « castrum classis », of which neither the form nor the precise location is known; the only fixed architectural point is the quadriporticus, which dates to no earlier than the age of Maximian. There are three principal groups of the Early Christian monuments of R., corresponding to three specific periods of life and political development, whose assessment must be taken into account. The 5th century begins with the construction of the new intramural Basilica of Bishop Ursus and of the adjoining baptistery. With 5 naves and 56 marble columns, it survived to the threshold of the contemporary age. Demolished in 1733, the drawings then made remain, in which art historians and critics have placed too much trust. In fact nothing certain can now be said about its original peculiarities, since it reached the 18th century after many alterations, not least that of the 10th century, which gave it the crypt, still existing beneath the apse of the present 18th-century Basilica, which preserves the breadth and the title of the ancient one. The Baptistery, fortunately, has come down to us. Built from the foundations by Ursus, it presents itself to us in the splendid mosaic decoration given to it by Bishop Neon in the second half of the 5th century. Octagonal in plan, with 4 apsidal chapels alternating on the sides, it now appears distorted in its proportions, especially in the interior, because of the accumulation of earth of about 3 m. After the Ursian complex comes the Honorian-Placidian one. To it belonged that singular group of buildings which the historian Agnellus calls « monasteria », which unfortunately disappeared centuries ago. The only example still existing is the small chapel, which continues to be erroneously called

"Mausoleum of Galla Placidia" (v.). Of S. Lorenzo in Cesarea, erected by Honorius and already mentioned by St. Augustine, nothing more remains. Reduced to its barest terms and, moreover, with its above-ground portion already rebuilt before the year 1000, is the palatine basilica of S. Croce, which took its name and its form from the cross. In its immediate vicinity, at a depth of a few meters, beautiful mosaic floors still lie underground. In better condition, on the other hand, has survived the Placidia basilica of S. Giovanni Evangelista, erected by the Augusta in fulfillment of a vow made during a sea storm, while she was returning from the East to Ravenna in 424. With a basilical plan, with the apse flanked by the two pastophoria, it appears today much altered (also because of the very serious damage of the last war) and deprived of its mosaic complex, described by Agnello. In Classe, of the grandiose Basilica Petriana, erected by the Chrysologus, and of its tetragonal baptistery, nothing more remains; nor is even the form known of this, which was the second cathedral of the Church of Classe, arising within the intramural enclosure of the "castrum," when the see had already been transferred to Ravenna for some decades.

For the second period one must wait for the reign of Theodoric. The Goth perhaps wished to emulate the ancient emperors, wished that the Ravenna "of his own" should have nothing to envy in the preceding one. It is a period of a few decades, but sacred buildings multiply: all Arian. For the Ravennate Catholic Church, on the other hand, it is a period of stagnation: the only monument is the chapel of the episcopium. A characteristic three-story building, on a Greek cross, as an architectural element common to the three main spaces. On the upper floor is the "monasterium S. Andreae" of Tricoli, with an apse and preceded by a small atrium. It was built by Peter II (494-510). Of the Arian complex there has survived the ancient Basilica Palatina, with three naves, dedicated to the name of Jesus, and today known by that of S. Apollinare Nuovo. Stripped of every ornament, the lesser basilica of the Arian Anastasis (church of the Holy Spirit) still stands, with its own baptistery adjoining, which in form repeats that of the Ursiana. Solemn, powerful, almost a Roman work, where the northern suburb once stood with the dwellings, churches and episcopia of the Goths, there still stands the "Rotonda," the mausoleum of the King, the only building among the ancient ones not in brick, whose dome is formed by the immense monolith of Istrian stone weighing 300,000 kg.

More sumptuous is the Byzantine phase. To it is linked the name of Julian the Banker (Argentarius), a figure still mysterious in his attributions, but intimately bound to the major monuments of the second quarter of the 6th century. With him, the Ravennate basilicas have handed down the name of Maximian, who in the early years of the Byzantine government governed the church of Ravenna: the basilica of S. Vitale, which in its central plan differs from all the others of Ravenna; the other contemporary one of S. Apollinare in Classe, in which the triumph of the founder of the Ravennate Church reaches its apogee. Others of this epoch have fallen: S. Stefano Maggiore, S. Andrea Maggiore, S. Michele in Africisco. Others have come down to us more or less transformed: S. Maria Maggiore, S. Agata Maggiore, the SS. Giovanni e Paolo. But the surviving ones were and are so rich in marbles and so resplendent in their mosaics as to leave an indelible memory. Of all these monuments of sacred architecture, in which brick forms the sole construction material; so simple, yet at times also so full of movement in the play of masses and external curtain walls, much has been said and continues to be said. Rome or the East? Rome or Byzantium? Who will ever resolve the dilemma? One must, however, always bear in mind, in evaluating them, that they arise in a city that had continuous contacts with the East. It is often repeated that certain of their constructional peculiarities confer on them a primacy which in fact they do not have. Peculiarities of the churches of Ravenna are the polygonal apse on the exterior and the vault facing east; the use of the pulvinus, constant also in buildings known only through graphic documentation (Ursiana); but these are characteristics that certainly do not appear for the first time at Ravenna. More readily one still hears repeated or reads, and it is a less contested opinion, that the prothesis and the diaconicon are proper to Ravennate sacred architecture, even if of non-Ravennate origin, as well as the ardica or quadriporticus. But here too there has been excessive generalization. The two pastophoria are proper only to a limited number of basilicas (S. Giovanni Evangelista, S. Vitale, S. Apollinare in Classe, among those known to us. The construction of the first is linked to the return of the Augusta from the East; that of the other two goes back to a period in which Byzantium already dominates, even if the one and the other were commissioned by two bishops prior to the occupation of Belisarius: Ecclesius and Ursicinus); they are lacking in all the others, both earlier and later. Likewise the ardica, whose existence in front of the basilicas cannot be proved before Maximian.

The Ravennate mosaic complexes also follow chronologically the various constructional phases and feel the influence of the individual periods. Those of the mausoleum called of Galla Placidia and of the baptistery of the Ursiana belong to the most ancient period and are more sober in composition and in color. To the Theodorican period go back the compositions of the Arian baptistery, the greater part of those of S. Apollinare Nuovo, with the upper evangelical scenes, the solemn Virgin Enthroned, the depiction of the cities of R. and of Classe, the figures of the Prophets between the windows, and Christ enthroned (though largely redone). Those of the Archiepiscopal Chapel too, with the clipei of the saints (perhaps those of the ancient Ravennate canon), have a calmness of color and a beauty of form that will no longer be found later. Particularly interesting here are the oldest image of St. Cecilia that Christian art has handed down, and the head of St. Paul and the characteristic one of St. Andrew, while the figure of the warrior Christ in the atrium recalls the oldest stucco of the nearby baptistery. In S. Vitale, in Classe, in the Justinianic mosaics, drawing yields to color. Gold and chromatic splendor reign so supremely that defects of drawing appear negligible. And yet even in these two basilicas the hand of the artists is always guided by a preordained concept that is not an end in itself. Thus in S. Vitale for the two great historical panels of Justinian and Theodora and in the depictions of the sacrifices. Thus in S. Apollinare in Classe, where the figure of the eponymous saint stands supreme, within the dominant concept of the Good Shepherd, of whom Christ, transfigured and depicted at the center of the great jeweled Cross, is the type and the example, and Apollinaris the imitator. R. is par excellence the city of mosaic, of the most beautiful mosaic that by its color can strike the human eye. But even in the evaluation of this prerogative of hers, there are contrasts and disagreements. Certainly closer to the spirit of Rome and to that which animated the mosaicists of Naples and Milan are ours of the 5th century, especially the Placidian depictions of the Good Shepherd and of St. Lawrence in the Mausoleum. Those of the Theodorican period were already a prelude to a new spirit: a new spirit that manifests itself fully in the mosaics of the mid-6th century and, almost more so, in the two rows of saints, male and female, with which Agnellus, the successor of Maximian, decorated the walls of S. Apollinare Nuovo, when he consecrated to Catholic worship and to the name of St. Martin of Tours the Arian palatine church. This art of the Ravennate mosaicists endured through the centuries; later it was able to compose certain replacement or restoration depictions; it spread throughout the upper Adriatic, and in R. it produced its last works, not unworthy of the past, in the great cycle of the renewed Ursian Basilica, in the time of Archbishop Geremia (1112). This depiction is now known only through seventeenth-century drawings and the texts left by its destroyers (Orant Virgin and heads of saints in the Archiepiscopal Museum).

Besides the mosaics, R. has a particular body of sculpture, whose major pieces are given by a singular number of sarcophagi in Greek marble, which iconographically differ from the early Christian ones of Rome. If concerning the mosaics and the basilicas there have been and will still be discussions, the disagreements and theories are no fewer for the sculptural works. For the sarcophagi there is no sure point of reference. And even the pieces that can be dated are of such a nature that they are of no use for comparison. From the reused Roman-pagan ones, to the Christian ones of simple scheme, with Christ seated on a chair or standing, giving the law, to the others divided into little aedicules, but always with human figures, one passes to the chests in which symbolism alone always dominates, down to the last ones, certainly of the 8th century, of crude, almost infantile workmanship. They are scattered more or less everywhere throughout R.; in its basilicas and amid the green of the Dante zone and the meadow surrounding S. Vitale; a few examples in the National Museum. In S. Vitale there is the one said to be of Isaac, where the cemetery themes are still visible; in Bracciforte the very large one, formerly presumed to be the tomb of the prophet Elisha, where Christ sits on a chair, with a lion and a dragon, while on the sides are two Marian scenes: the Visitation and the Annunciation. At Porto fuori, drawn from among the ruins of the Basilica, the most beautiful sarcophagus of Peter the Sinner, and in S. Francesco two, with little aedicules, which are among the most important. In the Cathedral a group of 4 (one hidden within the high altar), among which two are very large and very rich in ornamentation. In S. Apollinare in Classe, the most conspicuous group, among which is the one said to be of Theodore, which by its ornamentation comes so close, even in small details, to another conspicuous Ravennate monument certainly attributable to the 6th century: the ivory chair of Maximian, a piece more unique than rare. Other sculptures: the two ambos of the 6th century, the mutilated one of the Cathedral, which bears the name of Archbishop Agnellus (d. 569), and the front part of that of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, from the last years of the century. The concept that guided the two artists is the same, but how different the execution! In panels are depicted animals, from fish to lambs and birds.

Until 1000-1100, besides the mosaics, the art of R. also continues with those sacred buildings, mostly widespread in the countryside, which all have a general scheme, and whose naves are divided no longer by columns but by piers, often with projecting appendages. This is what has been called Deutero-Byzantine or Proto-Romanesque architecture, an architecture whose first products are the bell towers, which around 900 begin to rise at the sides of the ancient basilicas and the new churches. Towers so characteristic in their cylindrical form, the most widespread, that they give a specific note to the city of R.

After the last glories of the mosaics of Archbishop Geremia and the construction of the small rural basilicas, the great mission of R. is finished in the artistic field as well. In the 14th and 15th centuries the religious Orders, in their churches either newly erected or the fruit of transformations, give some fine examples of Italian Gothic, and the pictorial cycles of S. Francesco, of S. Maria in Porto fuori, of S. Chiara (the first two almost entirely vanished); but they are master builders who come from outside. It is the masters of color of the school of Rimini, followers of Giotto, who hold the field in Romagna. The 15th century, Venetian, leaves in R. some civil constructions, simple and pleasant; the Palazzetto of Piazza maggiore, in which were reused the granite columns of the destroyed Basilica "gotorum", which bear on their capitals the monogram of Theodoric. Likewise Pietro Lombardi works for the city on the complex of the two columns of the Piazza, with the blessing statue of S. Apollinare, and the marble work of Dante's tomb. The 16th century, on the other hand, leaves the imposing new monastic constructions of S. Maria in Porto in the city, with the new Basilica, the little garden loggia and the truly admirable cloister. So too the grandiose cloister of S. Vitale and of the urban Classense cenobium, full of elegance. In sculpture Tullio Lombardi will work for R. his masterpiece in the recumbent statue of Guidarello Guidarelli. Through the munificence of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, in the early years of the 17th century, there rises, almost an appendage of the ancient Ursiana, the chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament, one of the most beautiful in Romagna, for which Maderno provided the design and Guido Reni oversaw the pictorial decoration. Already in the two preceding centuries some painters of Ravenna, good but not outstanding, spread their works through the church of R.: Niccolò Rondinelli, of the 15th century, and Luca Longhi, of the 16th. The 18th century, on the other hand, was terribly disastrous, because ancient churches were badly transformed, and too many things that perhaps it was possible to save were condemned to the pickaxe. In compensation there came the new Cathedral and, from Camillo Morigia, an architect of no slight merit, the completion of the imposing facade of S. Maria in Porto and the present little sepulchral temple of Dante. The 19th century preserved only destructions; the 20th century seems to want to transform the face of the old city, while the work of consolidating the ancient monuments forms the preoccupation of citizens and government. There are the restorations, not always praiseworthy; the detachment and cleaning of the mosaic complexes is proceeding, work that still continues.

III. ILLUSTRIOUS FIGURES

R. has often welcomed famous men within its walls, but few of its sons have risen above mediocrity, just as few have attained celebrity and glory.

Venantius Fortunatus, although a son of the March of Treviso, received his cultural formation in R., and by education he could almost be called a Ravennate. In the 9th century, Andreas Agnellus, the already-mentioned author of the Liber Pontificalis (v.). Then Guido, better known as the Anonymous or the Geographer of R. In the years around the year 1000, gigantic figures dominate, the three Ravennate Saints: Romuald, Guido Strambiati, abbot of Pomposa, Peter Damian. Among the historians, mention should be made of Desiderio Spreti (15th century), Girolamo Rossi (16th century), Girolamo Fabri and Serafino Pasolini (17th century), Pier Paolo Ginanni and Camillo Spreti (18th century). Tomaso Rangoni, called the philologist, who lived in Venice in the 17th century, was a Ravennate, as was the priest Francesco Negri, a noted traveler of the 17th century, who, a singular thing for his times, explored northern Europe, pushing as far as the Arctic Circle. Among ecclesiastics there also stand out Cardinal Cesare Rasponi, created by Alexander VII, whose name is linked to the history of the Lateran Basilica; Monsignor Francesco Ingoli (d. 1649), first secretary of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, who wished the College of St. Ephrem to be established in R., for students of the Maronite nation destined for the priesthood; Monsignor Ludovico Piavi, of the Friars Minor, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 1903); Father Giovanni Genocchi (v.), a noted missionary. Particular mention is due to the archaeologist A. Zirardini (d. 1783), whose works are still today valuable for the study of the monuments of Ravenna. Abbot Marini obtained from him a great part of his material for the « Papiri diplomatici ». And in memory the name of Marco Fantuzzi should be joined to that of Zirardini, for with his work Monumenti ravennati de' secoli di mezzo, in 6 volumes, he provided scholars with a mine of documents pertaining to R. Among the men of yesterday, a special place in memory is deserved by Antonio Tarlazzi, canon and archbishop's archivist, who was the continuator of Fantuzzi, as he was of the Memorie sagre of G. Fabri; likewise one of his successors, Fr. Girolamo Zattoni (d. 1905), a historian and critic of no common worth. A diligent researcher was Silvio Bernicoli, who made the treasures of his municipal historical Archive the object of study in valuable contributions to local history. Above all, two names stand out in our own day: Corrado Ricci (v.) and Santi Muratori, librarian of the Classense, who illustrated R. in articles and in studies conducted with absolute scientific seriousness. He made the love of his city and the defense of its historical and artistic heritage the constant object of his entire life. Death took him on the evening of Dec. 30, 1943, while the first bombs were bringing damage to the city and its monuments.

And another name should be joined to that of R.: Giovanni Pascoli, who always considered himself a son of R. In fact, his family had figured for centuries among those of the city, and his father, Ruggero, was born in R. on March 24, 1815.

IV. RAVENNA TODAY

The city seems almost to present nothing of note. The immense plain surrounds it. The Corsini navigable canal still links it to its sea, for it always a source of life. The pine forest, which Dante sang and Byron favored, though much ruined by the German and Allied devastations of the last war, is still its royal crown. Grave are the ruins brought by the bombardments, from which it is briskly rising again. Yet it always remains the "dolce morta" and in its streets silence often reigns. It is the capital of one of the smallest provinces of Italy (1,863 sq. km., pop. 294,782), while the territory of its commune (61.777 sq. km., pop. 87,000) is among the largest. Its walls still have the perimeter given them by the last Theodorican enlargement, while on its outskirts those suburbs are rising again that already formed its crown in antiquity.

The national Museum gathers precious pieces: ancient and medieval fabrics, Byzantine ivories, ceramics, Roman and early Christian sculptures, among which, precious, the ancient chancel screens of S. Vitale and S. Michele in Africisco. Very rich is the coin collection with all the coins minted by the mint of Ravenna. More limited is the Archiepiscopal Museum, which houses pieces of exceptional importance: the ivory chair of Maximian; a silver processional cross, perhaps of the 9th century; classiaria stems; mosaics and chancel screens of the ancient Ursiana. Precious is a collection of liturgical fabrics, among which two chasubles (the oldest datable to around the year 1000); liturgical gloves with studs of the 14th century and some fragments found in 1949 in sarcophagi of Classe, among which a veil for liturgical offerings, fragments of a cincture and, intact, a succinctorium, the only one known thus far from antiquity. These latter fabrics must be assigned to the end of the 7th century or the beginning of the following.

Most precious is the archival material of high antiquity. The Ravenna section of the State Archive gathers all the holdings of the suppressed religious corporations, with an immense copy of material, among which ca. 8,000 parchments, the oldest of the 8th century. The Archiepiscopal Historical Archive, the "scrinarium" of the Church of Ravenna, besides the cadastres, diaccetti and the 200 diversorum, gathers ca. 13,000 parchments, which go from the 8th century onward; 5 are the papyri that remain: the greater part of the Ravennate archival-papyraceous patrimony is now dispersed. Mention is made of the very great one of Paschal I (819), the oldest pontifical diploma that is preserved intact. The Capitular Archive too keeps a good number of ancient parchments and a codex with miniatures by Giulio Clovio, a missal of Card. Della Rovere (16th century).

Among the Italian provincial libraries, a place of primary importance is held by the Classense of Ravenna, begun as a Camaldolese monastic library. As a library open to the public, its founder was the Cremonese abbot Pietro Canneti, at the beginning of the 18th century. To this period dates the beautiful major hall, with carved wooden shelving and stucco and pictorial decoration. Having become municipal in 1804, it was enlarged with the holdings of the suppressed religious libraries; then subsequently its book patrimony was continually increased up to the present number of ca. 150,000 volumes. It also possesses 700 incunabula, precious codices, among which a membranaceous one of the 11th century with 11 comedies of Aristophanes, and a group, in number and quality more unique than rare, of primitive Italian and German woodcuts of the 15th century. The Ravennate bibliography in ancient and modern works may be called complete. Conspicuous is the collection of Dante editions and publications, among which a codex of the Divina Commedia of 1369. A very great aid for scholars: the rich Ravennate card index, gathered with the patient work of many years by the librarian S. Muratori.

Specialized in political subjects and in contemporary history is the modern Oriani Library.

The Archiepiscopal Seminary gathers young aspirants to the priesthood for the entire course of studies, from gymnasium to theology. While the public schools have all the institutes of secondary education. The Academy of Fine Arts gathers the Artistic Lyceum and the school of mosaic and possesses a good picture gallery, in whose rooms are preserved the statue of Guidarello and precious paintings, not least the St. Romuald of Guercino. The Ca' Matha, unique among the still existing institutions, continues the ancient Scholae Romanae. It is an ancient society of fishermen, among the oldest companies of Europe, of which there is notice already in a parchment of the Archiepiscopal Archive of 943.

ravennati, Faenza 1943; M. Lawrence, The sarcophagi of R., s. 1, 1945; S. Muratori, I mosaici ravennati della chiesa di S. Vitale, Bergamo 1945; O. G. von Simson, Sacred Fortresses, Chicago 1948; G. Rodenwaldt, Bemerkungen zu den Kassermosthen in S. Vitale, in Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, voll. 59-60 (1944-45, 1949), pp. 80-110; F. Crosara, Le «scule» ravennati dell'alto medioevo e la Carta piscatoria del 942, Modena 1949; L. Gambi, Cui'era la Paduna, Faenza 1950; M. Mazzotti, Massimiano di Polo, in Pagine istriane, 3ª serie, I, 4 (1950), pp. 14-21; id., Cuestioni portuensi, in Studi romagnoli, II, Faenza 1951; A. Benini, La basilica rinascimentale di S. Maria in Porto e i suoi cimeli, Ravenna 1950; G. Bovini, Il cosiddetto mausoleo di Galia Placidia in R., Città del Vaticano 1950; id., Guida del Museo naz. di R., Ravenna 1951. Inoltre notizie e studi copiosi su una recensioni di scritti a soggetto ravennate in Felix Ravenna, rivista che dal 1911 si pubblica in R. Così pure in Il comune di R., boll. di cronaca amministrativa, che si pubblica senza fissa periodicità. S. Muratori, s. v. in Enc. Ital., XXVIII, pp. 868-79; id., s. v. in Appendice, I, pp. 661-62 con copiosa bibl.; L. Gambi, s. v. in Appendice, II, p. 668.

Mario Mazzotti

V. SCHOOL OF LAW OF RAVENNA

Although the existence of a school of law is not admitted by everyone, R. was certainly an important legal center. The emperor Lambert issued there the Capitulary of 896, to which the experts of Ravenna cannot have been extraneous; in the time of the Ottos the great councils were held there, as well as the imperial Tribunal with judges and advocates of the imperial, papal and episcopal party, presided over by the Emperor, the Pope and the archbishop, or in the presence of the latter. If the existence of a school is not proven, the participation of the jurists of Ravenna and their influence on law in the Exarchate and beyond (for example, in Tuscany) is undoubted. R. was always an environment favorable to culture and did not experience the grave crises suffered by Rome and by other regions. At the imperial Court it had the notarii gathered in a schola, and their chief was that John who, elected emperor and not recognized by Byzantium, was executed as a usurper (a. 425); in a later period scrisi or forenses are mentioned, then tabelliones or notarii civitatis; the church of Ravenna boasted its scrinarii, among whom Michael, who made himself an intruded archbishop (a. 770-71), a schola tabellionum and a schola defensorum. Thus there came to be one civic and one ecclesiastical center of culture, together with the famous school of liberal arts, where, however, the teaching of law was superficial. The judges and notaries of Ravenna, on the other hand, carried out an important reform between the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th, with the definitive prevalence of Justinianic law over Theodosian (Leicht). In the 11th century the sapientes civitatis were expert Romanists, supporters of the Roman computation of degrees of kinship against the canonical one defended by St. Peter Damian (a. 1045), and the Florentines turned to them, but it is not quite certain whether they were doctores, that is, masters. In the Investiture Controversy R. and the archbishop were on the imperial side, and the jurist Pietro Crasso, author of a lost treatise De actionibus, composed in 1080 the Defensio Heurici IV regis, for which he is noteworthy. A legal center, then, or, according to Gaudenzi, a school formed like that of Pavia from an assembly of judges resembling legislators. A hint is given by the glossator Odofredus, asserting that from Rome the libri legales fuerunt deportati ad civitatem Ravennae et de Ravenna ad civitatem istum, that is, to Bologna; therefore between 1106, the Synod of Guastalla, and 1116, the reconciliation of Henry V with Bologna. But it could be an expedient to give Bologna a Roman tradition, or an allusion to the influence of Charlemagne in the founding of schools (Schupfer), or to the passage of Roman law and of the imperial idea from its first centers, by then decayed, to the Glossators who made themselves its interpreters and supporters at Roncaglia (v.). The diploma of Frederick I (a. 1162) consecrated the pre-eminence of R. for the temporum antiquitate, honorum dignitate fideique sinceritate pre cunctis civitatibus Italie, and if the School is not mentioned in the document, the allusion to the merits of the jurists and politicians of Ravenna in the defense of the Empire is evident. In 1268 a doctor, Pasio della Noce, and thirty scholars are said to have been sent to R. to give new life to a decayed Studium generale. But it was in 1561 that a brief of Pius IV gave the Studium its privileges, later confirmed by Benedict XIII. Its existence was often precarious because of its proximity to Bologna; nevertheless in R. there was no lack of jurists of value. Once the Studium generale had ceased, there were maintained for some time among the institutions of civic culture the Camaldolese Academy of the Concordi and, almost down to our own days, the Collegio dei Nobili.

VI. STATUTES OF RAVENNA

R. was one of the first Communes of Italy. In 1111 the Capitanei are recorded, and under Frederick I a podestà imposed by him, while the towns on the Po had their own subjects subordinate to those of R. By a diploma of 1162 the Emperor also established the oath of the Capitanei, the election of the consuls through imperial investiture, the renewal of their oath every five years, the regalia and the administration of justice, and the settlement of emphyteuses; he then undertook to uphold the rights of the Churches, of the Capitanei and of the citizens of R. in the other cities and in the lands violently taken from them, and vice versa; finally, not to reside in R. with the army but only with the Empress and the princes. The first known Statutes are attributed to the period 1180-1460 (ed. Zoli-Bernicoli), and the opening provision is the oath of the podestà to defend the Church, to fight heretics, and to follow the Constitution of Frederick I. To the government of Lamberto, who had already made himself perpetual podestà, belong the Statutes of the Greater Council (years 1304-1306, ed. Tarlazzi) and also those new Statutes of the Ca' Matha (year 1304) dedicated to the honour of God, of the Virgin, of Archbishop Rainaldo and of Lamberto as of his successors in regimine civitatis, he being as podestà Defensor dicti Ordinis. To the government of Ostasio di Bernardino da Polenta belong the capitaneal Statutes, perhaps of 1327, recently discovered; to the Venetian dominion the Statutes proposed in 1461 and completed a little less than a decade later (ed. Tarlazzi); to the pontifical dominion those of the Council of Justice (1515, ed. Tarlazzi) with a preface in Latin and text in the vernacular, and the reform of Gerolamo Ruggini printed posthumously in 1590; finally the Statutes of the Ninety Peaceful Ones (1687). Important political rubrics are found in those of Ostasio, who ruled the city with the title of Capitaneus et Defensor, reserving to himself tota custodia ipsius civitatis et districtus, the right to pursue the enemies of the Commune and his own, to regere et conducere ac defendere cives et districtuales, to guard the city and the gates and to establish his own fortifications there. Against the various tyrants of Romagna the Holy See set the bans of the Rectors: the fierce protest of Card. Aimerico di Chalus dates from 1321; but in 1327 Ostasio, feeling himself in danger because he was a rebel against Card. Bertrando del Poggetto, bound the Commune to his own defence with the Statutes then caused to be drawn up. The Holy See, which had never ceased to claim sovereignty over the Exarchate, nor granted to the Communes the creation of a permanent magistracy, because that was true tyranny, only later and in imitation of the Empire legalized the Lords as vicarii pro Romana Ecclesia, until it was able to mark the victory over vicariates, lordships and communal autonomies, establishing, after the Borgian experiment, the Pontifical State on a firmer basis and restoring it within the limits of the donation of Pepin with the definitive annexation, after the Venetian interlude, of R. and of the Exarchate. - See plates XXIV-XXVII.

Fulvio Crosara