The Gospel According to Ravenna

ANDRÉ FROSSARD

The Gospel According to

Ravenna

2·

To Galla Placidia ¡ 3

To Galla Placidia We who do not come here only out of love for art, but to gather from you, Christians of ancient times, a fragment of the light that you have tried to hold in your hands, and the peace of faith in which you have rendered your soul, believe that after many a century so many hearts have not forgotten the truths which, thanks to you, have been taught to them by beauty.

4 · To Galla Placidia

The author would like to thank: professor Karol Heitz, from Université de Paris Don Giovanni Montanari, a specialist in Christian symbology Isabelle Frossard, inspector for the historical heritage for their interest in his work.

All the images in the book are by courtesy of the photo shooting campaign

by Alfredo Dagli Orti, with the permission of the Opera di Religione of the Diocese of Ravenna, with the exception of the following: Photo Scala Firenze, with the permission of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Tourism 8-9, 16-17, 19 (a destra), 126-127, 132, 135, 136-137 Shutterstock.com: Izabela Miszczak 13 · vvoe 14-15 · Massimo Fiorentini 18-19 · GoneWithTheWind 19 (a sinistra), 29 · Claudio Zaccherini 21· Canadastock 22-23 · Borisb17 24 DeAgostini Picture Library/Scala, Firenze 124-125, 138-139 A. Dagli Orti/Scala, Firenze 128 Cameraphoto/Scala, Firenze 130

André Frossard The Gospel According to Ravenna www.itacaedizioni.it/gospel-according-ravenna-frossard First English edition: September 2018 Original title: L’Évangile selon Ravenne © 1984 Editions Robert Laffont, S.A., Paris © 2018 Itaca srl, Castel Bolognese All rights reserved ISBN 978-88-526-0573-4 Itaca srl via dell’Industria, 249 48014 Castel Bolognese (RA) - Italy Ph. +39 0546 656188 Fax +39 0546 652098 E-mail: itaca@itacalibri.it Available at: www.itacaedizioni.it/librerie Web site: www.itacalibri.it Curated by Cristina Zoli and Isabel Tozzi Book design by Andrea Cimatti English translation: Clelia Morigi and Martin Raybould Printed in the month of September 2018

by Modulgrafica Forlivese, Forlì (FC) On the cover: Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, The Good Shepherd, detail Page 6: Archbishop’s palace, Christ Treading on the Beasts Pages 8-9: Arian Baptistery, mosaic of the dome, detail of St. Peter and St. Paul on the two sides of the throne Page 10: Saint Apollinaris Nuovo, the Port of Classe Pages 88-89: Saint Apollinaris Nuovo, Christ Blessing on the Throne

Table of contents¡ 5

Table of contents Introduction 7 Approaching Ravenna 9 A Cascade of Precious Stones 27 Galla Placidia, Faith 37 Saint Apollinaris Nuovo, the Gospel and Beatitude 47 Saint Vitale, Consecration 95 Saint Apollinaris in Classe, Heaven 127 Ravenna’s Secret 141

Introduction· 7

Introduction As we approach the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death in Ravenna (in 1321) in connection with the exhibition conceived by the Archdiocese and dedicated to the link between the Divine Comedy and Ravenna’s mosaics, we have deemed necessary to publish a new edition of André Frossard’s work The Gospel According to Ravenna, after the editions of Sei (1985) and Itaca (2004), both sold out a long time ago. Frossard’s words accompany a short but very intense journey through some selected images and Dante’s triplets, enriching them with meanings that allow us to encompass the dialogue between the Poet and what he saw in those temples. But this was just a happy coincidence. In fact, recently we have felt the need to browse through the pages of that work so rich in spirituality, culture and passion again.

The images of this third edition are more defined and glossy, but the text is still the same, almost unsurpassable by the French author, a man of great culture – a narrator, biographer, essayist, political observer, one of the most prestigious journalists of “Le Figaro” –, converted from militant atheism to the Light of Christ, nearly as Paul on his way to Damascus. His observations stemming from the ecstatic contemplation of the mosaics of Ravenna – the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the Basilicas of Saint Apollinaris Nuovo, San Vitale, and Saint Apollinaris in Classe – are still very contemporary and inspiring. Thanks to them he became an honorary citizen of Ravenna, and his merits were recognized by everyone.

“Talent, art, inspiration: Ravenna has it all and even something more, something mysterious which fascinates intelligence and leads it imperceptibly to discover a soul. This mysterious thing is exactly the Christian mystery of a ‘Christocentric’ vision that expands from the cross of Christ. A cross on which he is not nailed, for everything is accomplished.

We live the era of resurrection”.

The glorious crosses, which bring us closer to the spirituality of the Eastern and Byzantine churches, are found in all of our great Basilicas, to remind us that the mystery of Christ as well as that of the life of every Christian does not stop at the cross, but rather makes us live that experience in the light of Resurrection. Our Cathedral is dedicated to Resurrection. It is the metropolitan Basilica and, despite it no longer has any great mosaics, it is the final destination of the ideal path that goes from Baptism, to Eucharist, to a life of holiness in following the Gospel, up to the last call. Such path is well illustrated through the rich, luminous, incomparably beautiful mosaics.

André Frossard has seen, lived and witnessed this experience that allows us to receive the Gospel in Ravenna, through the lights of the golden and multicoloured tesserae and the refined and almost living images that speak to our hearts firstly and to our brains secondly, for believers and for those who are in search of Truth through Beauty. + Lorenzo Ghizzoni, Archbishop of Ravenna-Cervia

Approaching Ravenna

Approaching Ravenna ¡ 11

On the Italian Adriatic coast, built on an invisible lagoon, a flat and graceless town shelters from the sun under a sulphur umbrella. Nothing would be easier than to ignore it. A motorway connection bypasses it to the west. To the east, a wide coastal road from Venice narrows into the desolation of the suburbs towards a long column of pines on the way to Rimini.

One might even pass by it without seeing it, or noticing anything but a few pieces of the most common urban furniture in Italy: a section of Roman wall, a palace district, moderately baroque churches, large armoured doors relieved of their walls, and two or three thoughtful bell towers inclined on small waves of round tiles.

This is Ravenna, formerly capital of the Roman Empire, commercial port, melancholic figure of a sleepy prefecture under the night lights of its refineries – and the first wonder of the Christian world.

Enclosed in rough and poor crude layers of brick, the Gospel is there, caught at the source, bursting with inner light; the red and wrinkled hand of the city opens up on sapphire handles.

Art pertains to Florence, dream to Venice, glory to Rome. In its terracotta sides, the pure water of contemplation pertains to Ravenna.

The surroundings are not particularly eye-catching. It is an immense vaguely Dutch dilation of sky and indistinct land, from which here and there emerge pillars, steel drums, burnt organ pipes and other skeletonized architectures peculiar to industrial complexes.

The sea is far away. The Po, a mighty river whose surface ripples a little higher in the sands, has pushed the sea back several kilometres since ancient times. The rest, up to the grey cloud of the Apennines, is a spreading an expansive plain with freshly scraped colours in view of a composition that might never have taken place. It is difficult to label this a landscape, as the word evokes a combination of natural beauties arranged by chance in an attractive order. This is rather a slow preparation for reflection through emptiness and silence. Built by Augustus to shelter his eastern fleet, the port of Classe has disappeared, abandoned by humans and by the sea. The one in Ravenna, driven far inland, can be observed through the cranes, rigging crossbows and steel vegetation that, at a distance, seem to have grown in the fields.

The site, serene and discreetly fertile, appears strangely inanimate under a Romagna sun excessively gifted with decoration and which in the evening, covering houses, huts and petrol pumps with its golden veneer, blackens the pines and finally slides translucent screens of amethyst or alabaster behind them.

When this singular city was born, Venice still existed only in a state of steam above a herd of isolated shipwrecks behind a barrier beach, and no one had imagined that this steam would evolve one day into palaces or form golden bubbles at the end of a beach dedicated to Saint Mark.

There is no registry for mainland cities, and their beginnings are most often so

12 · Approaching Ravenna

mysterious that some define themselves in relation to a father in legend, like Rome, or a mother in heaven, like Athens, sublime ancestors that, besides the advantage of ennobling their human descendants, have the advantage of including and blocking the social question in the sacred order.

Ravenna seems to be an exception. It does not claim to be a demi-god or a hero in exile.

Built by unnamed people, it was for some time home to the Etruscans, a sort of joker people used by historians whenever a card was missing in their game of conjectures and perhaps, before the Etruscans, by Thessalians attracted by the protection provided by vast marshes along a crescent of low dunes sketching out on the coast an interesting variety of maritime activity.

The Roman Empire, which died much more slowly than the perspective benefit of historical hindsight may suggest, survived for some time through this marine lung, after abandoning Rome and Milan to barbarian tides. Around the year 400, floating like a cork on its liquefied empire, Honorius came and elevated the city to the dignity of capital. He raised nothing else memorable and disappeared at the dawn of the ‘golden century’ of Ravenna, which would be more appropriately labelled the ‘blue century’, for its love for the sky and the dominant colour of its enchantments. After him emerged two characters of imposing though diverse stature, despite uneven: his sister Galla Placidia and the Goth Theodoric. This Galla Placidia, whose life experienced tremendously elevated highs and incredibly diminished lows, had the soon-to-be-corrected misfortune of beginning her political career as a war indemnity. Together with other compensations to the barbarian Alaric, who required to be paid for the ruins he left along the way, she had to marry Ataulphus, the victor’s brother-in-law, and found herself well off. Ataulphus was good-looking and, as she was a princess, he found her beautiful. Despite its civil and military defeats, Rome still enjoyed such prestige that, on his wedding day, Ataulphus had his wife sit on a higher throne than his own, before generously laying at her feet the loots of his latest pillages, over one hundred basins filled with gold and gems. The Goths loved wealth, and knew well how to procure it. Theirs was a happy, yet short marriage. Ataulphus was assassinated in Spain where he had gone to repel an incursion of Vandals. Placidia, whose venerated feet rarely touched the ground, was forced into crowds of captives and pushed from one camp to another in front of the murderer’s horse. Her revenge was not long in coming.

After defeating Ataulphus’ murderer, Placidia was returned, along with six hundred thousand measures of wheat, to her brother Honorius, who welcomed her with mixed feelings of suspicious attachment and angry hostility. He convinced her to marry General Constantius as a reward for a few victorious campaigns. Placidia resisted, gave in, conquered her brave military and step by step eventually managed to have him appointed emperor, in half a title with emperor Honorius. Crushed with honours, Constantius died and she left Ravenna for Constantinople with her son Valentinian. After a short time in exile, a message informed her of Honorius’ death. She promptly embarked, almost sank along the way, and in the storm vowed to raise a church to Saint John the Evangelist. Arriving safe

Approaching Ravenna ¡ 13

and sound in Ravenna, she kept her promise and had the beautiful church built that we see today not far from the railway station, or rather that we imagine seeing, since it was destroyed, rebuilt, buried and raised by Italian masons, whose ability to lift a church with a jack is literally unparalleled. The ground level has risen, as everywhere in Ravenna, by more than a meter since the fifth century, as evidenced by numerous columns embedded in the pavement and plunging into the fluid subsoil like a sort of gauge.

These details of Placidia’s life can be found in the confused stories of those unclear obscure times, when the Empire gained a new emperor every time it lost a province. They will be used later to highlight an astonishing fact, which touches the very heart of the subject: the incredible persistence of Christianity to survive the plagues that should have killed or smothered it.

As an interim Empress, Galla Placidia took care to keep her son unskilled so to reign more at ease and governed thirty-five years with the deftness of hand that can be inferred from the coins with her effigy. On the obverse face of the coin, under a heavy headdress of pearls is her intense profile with an inquiring eye, undoubtedly the result of a stroke mark deliberately voluntarily pressed and intended to remind the bearer of the fact that nothing could escape the gaze of authority. On the reverse of it, under a star of Bethlehem and holding an emblematic cross, is an angel that, with his legs slightly bent, is about to be propelled into the air. Of the many buildings erected by the Roman princess, only the Christian mausoleum of captivating and peaceful beauty remains intact, where she will never rest.

The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

Galla Placidia, Faith

38 · Galla Placidia, Faith

In conformity with the biblical saying “If the grain of wheat does not die...”, the luminous harvest begins in a tomb, the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. The mausoleum is generally discovered after crossing, as one passes a small stream, the blue and green arches and runoffs of Saint Vitale church, built on plans of disconcerting complexity at a time when barbarians still inhabited swamps and had to swim to reach their homes. At the end of a kind of lawn, under a low, square tower, lies a brick building in the shape of a Latin cross, with blind arches, sunk one and a half metres into the ground. Its shortened élan gives it the appearance of a countryside station with walled windows. The interior, its penumbra barely lightened by some narrow alabaster windows with the colour and transparency of honey, is covered until half height with the rarest yellow marble of Siena. The rest, from the arches to the top of the dome, is blue, green and gold, with some white just necessary to centre the eye and order the decoration. This white, in which all the holy figures are dressed and which results from the fusion of all the colours of the solar spectrum, symbolizes not only purity, as is unanimously agreed, but also the spirit, which unites all possible images in its light.

From the mausoleum entrance, the charm of Ravenna attracts with its sovereign sweetness: its mosaic opens, welcomes, and does not act like the golden shield of the icons. It exerts its irresistible attraction to the divine on what in us remains sensitive to grace.

Facing the door, very high under a shell-shaped umbraculum, two apostles stand opposite each other on either side of a fountain whose water attracts two doves.

In the lower lunette, the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence testifies that with another construction the mausoleum was first a chapel adjacent to the church of the Holy Cross. In the centre is the gridiron, trapping thick twists of flames that seem attracted by the four Gospels stored in a cupboard with open doors. This detail reminds us of the word of Christ: “I came to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” On the right, a long golden cross on his shoulder and a book in his hand, the sides of his cloak raised by the heat of the blaze in an already curiously baroque movement, the saint walks to martyrdom with a good step, and, singularly, he goes alone, without being pushed there by the smallest platoon of guards or executioners. The point is, in Ravenna evil, misfortune and its agents are never represented. They have gone down in history, and here history is over. They have been dissolved, or absorbed by the good, and even memory itself has lost sight of them. In this world living out of grace and blessing we will find none of these demons, of these forked officials of sin or temptation who swarm in medieval art.

Among so many paintings of peace we see only an allusion of a few square decimetres to the ‘goats’ of the Gospel, a symbol for stubbornness in sin. Still, their pretty blue colour implies that not all hopes of purification are precluded. Likewise, the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is the only scene that arouses a memory of violence. But these whirlwinds of

Lunette with the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence

40 · Galla Placidia, Faith

flames in a cage perhaps evoke less the torment than the love of which the saint was consumed long before giving that proof of faith ‘usque ad mortem’ that constitutes martyrdom.

Under Saint Lawrence’s feet, a monumental sarcophagus with projecting corners, where the dead was not lying but sitting, and which perhaps contained the remains of Galla Placidia. We will never know. A long time ago, curious children passed candles or burning paper through an opening in one of the walls and set fire to the inside, so everything – remains, siege and belongings – was reduced to ashes.

There is something strange about this posthumous combustion under the gridiron of Saint Lawrence.

Everything else is of a beautiful serendipitous blue, up to the small night-blue dome sown with nine hundred eight-angled golden stars arranged all in concentric circles around a cross. But from the seventh circle on, a slight offset gives the hundreds of other stars a kind of movement made of crossed curves in the shape of a rose. I suppose that Dante took there, without perhaps noticing it, his idea of the nine angelic choirs that he saw drawn like a white rose in paradise, “in forma dunque di candida rosa”. In the eight branches of these stars thrown into infinity and brought back to the cross as if by an incessant

Saint Lawrence Saint Lawrence and his gridiron, some parts of which can be seen in the bottom left corner. The presence of this martyr, portrayed with a beautiful and audacious liveliness of line, above what was to become Galla Placidia’s tomb, gave the impression that the mausoleum was originally attached to a chapel dedicated to him.

Saint Lawrence, born in Spain in the first century, was a deacon in Rome and was put to death by fire; he is famous not only for his particularly cruel martyrdom, but also for giving to the needy the treasures of the Church of which he had custody, and which seemed to him more secure among the poor than anywhere else. This martyr also appears in the procession of the male saints of Saint Apollinaris Nuovo basilica, where his golden tunic singles him out for the special attention of the faithful.

Galla Placidia, Faith ¡ 41

Galla Placidia, Faith · 43

pulsation, the Greek initials of Jesus Christ, IX, are visible, intertwined and crossed by the horizontal arm of the cross, the patibulum, where the hands of the Redeemer were nailed.

Now, it is not necessary to see symbols everywhere, and perhaps it is enough to note that this golden cross, at the heart of its rotation of stars, acts as a transmitter of spiritual waves that pacify the whole building, including the gridiron and Saint Lawrence.

Yet, it is not easy to elude symbols inside a Christian monument. Here are deer through acanthus volutes approaching a piece of water: it is the soul thirsty of God in Psalm 41; a vine wraps itself around an ark. It is the Gospel of John, “I am the vine, you are the

branches”; at the end of a blue and gold tunnel (the longest arm of the building) encrusted with flowers, stars and improbable snow crystals, the allegory of the Good Shepherd, white sheep, greenery, blue sky. The pose of the seated Christ, very young, evoking a little the attitude of the cellist pulling the bow or the ancient poet seeking the tuning of his lyre, naturally made him compare it to Orpheus, and it is indeed a tender music that rises from this composition, as if all the desires for harmony and reconciliation of the torn world around him had taken refuge in churches and tombs.

Dome The starred geometry of the dome of Galla Placidia, whose central cross radiates in concentric circles which are intertwined up to the end of the world, where the emblems of the four evangelists embody the universal spread of the Gospel, glitters with nine hundred golden stars.

Ancient historians are prone to a certain severity towards the empress, whose reign in their opinion does not appear to be a model of administrative wisdom. Cassiodorus, in particular, established a parallel between Galla Placidia and Amalasuntha, queen of the Ostrogoths, which was favourable to the latter.

In truth, Cassiodorus was at her service. Monuments receive less caution than documents.

The small dimensions of Galla Placidia’s mausoleum, its exterior simplicity, its interior richness dedicated to God, rather than to the Empress herself, all hint at a balanced character, enemy of the excesses that so often made the reigns of that time intolerable.

44 · Galla Placidia, Faith

There are two points to be made here. The first is the extreme ability of mosaicists to suggest, with the help of bits of glass and common stones, the soft thickness of wool, the freshness of linen, the transparency of the sky, the warmth and slightly rough finesse of a deer’s coat.

Without doubt, visual memory and, if it exists, tactile memory help us complete what craftsmen merely hint at. Still, it is necessary to know how to use these instruments, and I do not believe that in this art the mosaic artists of Ravenna have ever been equalled. My second point relates to the alleged inexperience of mosaicists, who allegedly did not know the laws of perspective. To be convinced of the contrary, look at Galla Placidia’s decorative motifs, her twisted ribbons or her Greek nets in depth, almost in trompe l’oeil, and increasingly in semi-circular trompe l’œil. Mastery is apparent. If the artists of Ravenna neglected the laws of perspective, it is for a rather simple practical reason: the mosaics being placed rather high on the walls, if you draw at four or five meters high from the ground a table in perspective, nobody will know what is on it. And for a spiritual reason that I will reckon later.

But when one visits the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, any idea of awkwardness or naivety is to be dismissed. We are in another world, and this art is a prayer of praise, the highest form of activity of the spirit.

The Good Shepard Beardless, Christ looks extremely young and is represented in a pose that recalls the Orpheuses of ancient times. On either side, two groups of three white sheep provide balance to the composition surrounded by gold and pivoting around the cross. Above, the starred motifs recall both the cross and the monogram of Christ.

Ever since Christianity began to express its faith through images, the theme of the Good Shepherd (“I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep, and they recognize my voice”, says the Gospel) is one of the most frequently used by art, especially in the early ages of the Church.

Its content of peaceful and gentle morality conflicted with the bloody aberrations of history and the excesses of the powerful which obviously inspired the monument’s creators.