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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



XIV

RAVENNA IN THE MIDDLE AGE

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



XV

DANTE IN RAVENNA

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 1: The translation is Mr. Wicksteed's The Early Lives of Dante. He adds a translation of the verses "Theologic Dante, a stranger to no teaching that philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom; glory of the Muses, author most acceptable to the commonalty, lieth here and smiteth either pole with his fame, who assigned their places to the dead, and their jurisdictions to the twin swords, in laic and rhetoric modes. And lastly, with Pierian pipe he was making the pasture lands resound, black Atropos, alas, broke off the work of joy. For him ungrateful Florence bore the dismal fruit of exile, harsh fatherland to her own bard. But Ravenna's piety rejoices to have gathered him into the bosom of Guido Novello, her illustrious chief. In one thousand three hundred and three times seven years of the Deity, he went back on September's Ides to his own stars."]

So far Boccaccio. Though his account tells us much it certainly does not permit us to make many definite statements as to Dante's life in Ravenna. One of the first things, for instance, that any modern biographer would have noted with accuracy would have been the house in which Dante lived. Something definite, too, we might have expected as to his friends and correspondents, as to his occupations and habits. Of all this there is almost nothing. It will, however, especially be noted that Boccaccio speaks of Dante as "training many scholars in poetry especially in the vernacular." What can this mean?

It has been suggested and with some authority that Dante was not entirely dependent upon his host Guido Novello, that he was able to gain a livelihood, at least, by lectures either in his own house or in some public place, and that it is even probable that he occupied an official position in Ravenna of a very honourable sort, that he was, in fact, professor of Rhetoric in that city. There is no evidence to support such a theory. It is true that though we know the names of the professors of Grammar or Rhetoric in the very ancient schools of Ravenna, schools which date from the time of Theodosius the Great, we do not find the name of him who filled that chair during the time of Dante's sojourn in Ravenna. In 1268 Pasio della Noce was lecturing on Jurisprudence in Ravenna; in 1298 Ugo di Riccio was professor of Civil Law there; in 1304 Leone da Verona is teaching Grammar and Logic in the city. Then we hear no more till we come to the year 1333, when a certain Giovanni Giacomo del Bando is professor.[1] The mere absence of names—a silence which does not coincide in any way with Dante's advent or with Dante's death—is, certainly, not enough to allow us to assert the probability of the great poet's having filled the office of lecturer or professor of Civil Law in the school of Ravenna. It is true that Saviozzo da Siena tells us:

"Qui comincio a leggere Dante in pria Retorica vulgare e molti aperti Fece di sua Poetica armonia"

and that Manetti, an early biographer, seems to support the theory. But the best evidence, if evidence it can be called, which we have for this theory is to be found in a codex in the Laurentian Library, quoted by Bandini and cited by Dr. Ricci, which says: "It is commonly reported that Dante, being in Ravenna, studying and giving lectures as a doctor to his pupils upon various works, the schools became the resort of many learned men." This statement upon hearsay, however, does little more than confirm the definite assertion of Boccaccio that Dante "trained many scholars," not in civil law, but in "poetry, especially in the vernacular."

[Footnote 1: For a full discussion of all that may be known of Dante at the Poleata court see Dr. Ricci's large work, L'Ultimo Rifugio di Dante (1891). A charming book in English, Dante in Ravenna (1898), by Catherine Mary Phillimore, is to a great extent based upon Dr. Ricci's work. A valuable book that should be consulted is the more recent volume by P.H. Wicksteed and E.G. Gardner, Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio (1902).]

It is quite unproved then that Dante lectured in Ravenna as a professor of Civil Law. It might seem equally certain that he did lecture upon Poetry and the vulgar tongue, and it seems likely that we have the text of his lectures in the latter if not in the earlier part of the De Vulgari Eloquentia "in which in masterly and polished Latin he reproves all the vulgar dialects of Italy." Boccaccio tells us he composed this when he was "already nigh his death," and though modern criticism seems inclined to date its composition not later than 1306 the evidence of Boccaccio is not lightly to be set aside[1].

[Footnote 1: The first part of this work was certainly not written later than 1306 the second part may well have been later.]

Lonely as he doubtless was in Ravenna he was not alone there. With him it would seem was his daughter Beatrice, who became a nun in S. Stefano dell' Uliva, and his sons Pietro and Jacopo. The latter, though a lawyer and not in holy orders, held two benefices in Ravenna, but most of his time seems to have been spent in Verona where Jacopo, his brother, later held a canonry. And then there were his friends.

In his lectures upon Poetry one of his most eager pupils would seem to have been his best friend and host, Guido Novello, who evidently knew well at least those parts of the Divine Comedy, chiefly the Inferno be it noted, which deal with his ancestors, for he quotes one of the most famous of them—an unforgettable line spoken by his aunt Francesca da Rimini:

"Questi che mai da me non fia diviso."

in a sonnet of his own[2].

[Footnote 2: Cf. Ultimo Rifugio, p. 384, where the sonnet is given in full.]

After the lord Guido Novello, we must name the archbishop of Ravenna, Rainaldo Concorreggio, as among Dante's friends. It is possible that he had known Dante at the University of Bologna and he had been a chaplain of Boniface VIII. He was a brave man, learned in theology, law, and music, and devoted to his religion, an eager student, and he had composed a treatise which has come down to us upon Galla Placidia and her church.

And then there was Giotto who came to paint if not in S. Maria in Porto fuori, certainly in S. Giovanni Evangelista. He was Dante's dear friend and it was probably at the poet's suggestion he had been invited to Ravenna. We do not know whether these two men attended Dante's lectures. But the true audience there which came simply to hear was probably various, consisting of poets, notaries, and all sorts of men, some of whom were Dante's friends and companions. There was Ser Dino Perini, Ser Pietro di Messer Giardino—he was a notary—and Fiduccio dei Milotti, who walked with Dante in the Pineta. All these names have come down to us in the Latin eclogues written by Dante while in Ravenna to his friend Giovanni del Virgilio—del Virgilio because he could so well imitate Virgil.

These eclogues are full of shrewd and curious thought, a real correspondence, and they help us to see the men who surrounded the poet in Ravenna. They do not, however, give us so extraordinary an impression of the strength and keenness of Dante's powers of observation as many a passage in the Divine Comedy in which Ravenna and the rude and fierce world of the Romagna of that day live for ever. It is in answer to the inquiries of the great Guido of Montefeltro that Dante speaks of Romagna in the Inferno. Feeble and anaemic though the great lines become in any translation, even so all their virtue is not lost:

"Never was thy Romagna without war In her proud tyrants' bosoms, nor is now; But open war there left I none. The state Ravenna hath maintained this many a year Is steadfast. There Polenta's eagle[1] broods, And in his broad circumference of plume O'ershadows Cervia[2]. The green talons[3] grasp The land, that stood e'erwhile the proof so long And piled in bloody heap the host of France. The old mastiff of Verrucchio and the young[4] That tore Montagna[5] in their wrath still make Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs, Lamone's[6] city and Santerno's[7] range Under the lion of the snowy lair[8], Inconstant partisan, that changeth sides Or ever summer yields to winter's frost. And she whose flank is washed of Savio's wave[9] As 'twixt the level and the steep she lies, Lives so 'twixt tyrant power and liberty."

[Footnote 1: The coat of the Polenta.]

[Footnote 2: Cervia, the least secure of the Polenta possessions.]

[Footnote 3: The green lion of the Ordelaffi of Forli.]

[Footnote 4: Malatesta and Malatestino, lords of Rimini, deriving from Verrucchio, a castle in the hills.]

[Footnote 5: The Malatesta were Guelfs, Montagna de' Parcitati, whom they murdered, was the leader of the Ghibelline party in Rimini.]

[Footnote 6: Faenza.]

[Footnote 7: Imola.]

[Footnote 8: Maghinardo Pagano, whose arms were a blue lion in a white field.]

[Footnote 9: Cesena.]

All Romagna with its untamable fierceness and confusion lies in these lines which, as Dante wrote them, seem as unalterable as those in which the creation of the world is described.

Nor is Dante forgetful of the great destiny that had been Ravenna's. In the sixth canto of the Paradiso it is Justinian himself, "Cesare fui e son Giustiniano" who recounts to Dante the victories of the Roman eagle:

"When from Ravenna it came forth and leap'd The Rubicon,"

or when

"with Belisarius Heaven's high hand was linked,"

or when

"The Lombard tooth with fang impure Did gore the bosom of the Holy Church Under its wings, victorious, Charlemagne Sped to her rescue."

Nor is Dante forgetful of Ravenna's other claims to glory. In the seventh heaven, which is the planet Saturn, led by Beatrice, he finds S. Romualdo, and speaks of S. Peter Damiano, and blessed Peter Il Peccatore, the founder of the church of S. Maria in Porto fuori, two of them of the Onesti house of Ravenna.

"In that place was I Peter Damiano And Peter the sinner dwelt in the house Of our blest Lady on the Adriatic shore."

Of the earlier Podesta, too, he is not unmindful:

"Arrigo Mainardi, Pier Traversaro,... Wonder not, Tuscan, if thou seest me weep When I recall those once loved names ... With Traversaro's house and Anastagio's, Each race disinherited."

With the pitiful story of Francesca da Polenta we have seen how he dealt and how he spoke of Guido Vecchio. These people live because of him, and Ravenna in the Middle Age still holds our interest and our love because he dwelt there and she harboured him.

It was in her service, too, he met his death as we have seen, and in her church of the Friars Minor that he was laid to rest by Guido Novello.

Nine months later the lord of Ravenna received the first complete copy of the Divina Commedia, made by Jacopo Alighieri from his father's autograph. A very curious incident is related by Boccaccio in connection with this. It was Dante's custom, Boccaccio tell us, "whenever he had done six or eight cantos, more or less, to send them from whatever place he was in before any other had seen them to Messer Cane della Scala, whom he held in reverence above all other men; and when he had seen them, Dante gave access to them to whoso desired. And having sent to him in this fashion all save the last thirteen cantos, which he had finished, but had not yet sent him, it came to pass that, without bearing it in his mind that he was abandoning them, he died. And when they who were left behind, children and disciples, had searched many times, in the course of many months, amongst all his papers, if haply he had composed a conclusion to his work, and could by no means find the remaining cantos; and when every admirer of his in general was enraged that God had not at least lent him to the world so long that he might have had opportunity to finish what little remained of his work; they had abandoned further search in despair since they could by no means find them.



"So Jacopo and Piero, sons of Dante, both of them poets in rhyme, moved thereto by certain of their friends, had taken it into their minds to attempt to supplement the parental work, as far as in them lay, that it might not remain imperfect, when to Jacopo, who was far more zealous than the other in this work, there appeared a wondrous vision, which not only checked his foolish presumption but showed him where were the thirteen cantos which were wanting to this Divine Comedy and which they had not known where to find. A worthy man of Ravenna whose name was Piero Giardino, long time a disciple of Dante's, related how, when eight months had passed after the death of his master, the aforesaid Jacopo came to him one night near to the hour that we call matins, and told him that that same night a little before that hour he, in his sleep, had seen his father, Dante, approach him, clad in whitest garment, and his face shining with an unwonted light; whom he seemed to ask if he were yet living, and to hear in reply that he was, but in the true life, not in ours. Whereon he seemed further to ask him if he had finished his work or ever he passed to that true life; and if he had finished it, where was the missing part, which they had never been able to find. To this he seemed to hear again in answer, 'Yea! I finished it.' Whereon it seemed that he took him by the hand and led him to that chamber where he was wont to sleep when he was living in this life; and touching a certain spot said, 'Here is that which ye so long have sought.' And no sooner was uttered that word than it seemed that both Dante and sleep departed from him at the same moment. Wherefore he averred that he could not hold but come and signify what he had seen, that they might go together and search in the place indicated to him, which he held most perfectly stamped in his memory, to see whether a true spirit or a false delusion had shown it him. Wherefore since a great piece of the night still remained, they departed together and went to the place indicated, and there found a mat fixed to the wall, which they lightly raised and found a recess in the wall which neither of them had ever seen, nor knew that it was there; and there they found certain writings all mouldy with the damp of the wall and ready to rot had they stayed there much longer; and when they had carefully removed the mould and read, they saw that they contained the thirteen cantos so long sought by them. Wherefore, in great joy, they copied them out, and after the author's wont sent them first to Messer Cane and then joined them on, as was meet, to the imperfect work. In such a manner did the work of so many years see its completion."

As Boccaccio tells us, Guido Novello had scarce buried Dante in that temporary tomb in the church of the Friars Minor when he lost his lordship. On April 1, 1322, he was elected captain of the people in Bologna, and when he was about to return to Ravenna he suddenly heard that the archbishop had been murdered and that the city was in the hands of his enemies. Do what he would he never returned to his own city, and thus his intentions with regard to the tomb of the poet were never carried out. The noble sepulchre which Guido had planned was not built and the body of Dante reposed in the ancient sarcophagus in which it had been first placed. There it remained when Boccaccio came to Ravenna, probably in 1346 and certainly in 1350, as the bearer of a gift from the Or San Michele Society to Beatrice di Dante, then a nun in S. Stefano dell' Uliva.

Boccaccio, it will be remembered, had in his life of Dante bitterly upbraided Florence for her treatment of her greatest son, and to his blame had added a prophecy that she would soon repent of her shameful ingratitude and would envy Ravenna "the body of him whose works have held the admiration of the whole world." This prophecy fulfilled itself many times and first in 1396. In that year, upon December 22, Florence made the first of her many demands for the body of Dante, which she now wished to bury in S. Maria del Fiore. The demand, as Boccaccio had foreseen, was refused. It was repeated in 1429 and again refused. By 1476, when her next attempt was made, Ravenna had passed into the power of the Venetian Republic. It was therefore to Venice that Florence now turned through the Venetian ambassador, who is said to have been none other than Bernardo Bembo.

Bembo's request on behalf of Florence was, of course, a failure, but he seems to have himself repaired the tomb and to have placed upon it an epitaph.

"Exigua tumuli Dantes hic sorte jacebas Squallenti nulli cognite pene situ. At nunc marmoreo subnixus conderis arcu Omnibus et cultu splendidiore nites Nimirum Bembus musis incensus ethruscis Hoc tibi quem in primis hoc coluere dedit.

Ann Sal. mcccclxxxiii. vi. Kal. Jvn. Bernardus Bemb. Praet. aere suo Posuit."

His work of reparation and of adornment was carried out by Pietro Lombardo who was already at work in Ravenna for the Venetian republic, the sculptured effigy of Dante in relief being also from his hand.

But Florence was by no means at the end of her resources. In 1509 Ravenna had passed into the hands of the pope. In 1519 Leo X., a Medici, being on the throne of Peter, the Accademia Medicea of Florence petitioned the pope (among the signatories of the petition was Michelangelo, who offered to "make a worthy sepulchre for the divine poet in an honoured place" in Florence), to be allowed to carry away the bones of Dante from Ravenna to the City of Flowers. The pope gave the Florentine envoys the permission they required as was expected. They proceeded to Ravenna and opened the sarcophagus; but when they lifted the lid, they found it empty, save for "a fragment of bone and a few withered leaves of the laurel which had adorned the poet's head." From that time till our own day the resting place of Dante's bones has been a complete mystery.

It is recorded that in the middle of the seventeenth century the Franciscans rebuilt and repaired the so-called chapel of Braccioforte at S. Francesco, which till then had been joined by a portico to the tomb of Dante. In 1658 this portico among other alterations was removed, and the exterior of the tomb itself was reconstructed with an entrance into the Piazza, as we see it. The interior of the tomb was, however, left in some confusion so that the papal legate determined himself to repair it. In this he met with much opposition from the friars who claimed, as of old, jurisdiction over the sepulchre. Nevertheless he completed the work, and in 1692 placed the following upon the tomb:

Exulem a Florentia Dantem Liberalissime Excepit Ravenna. Vivo fruens Mortuum colens Magnis cineribus licet in parvo magnifici parentarunt Polentani Principes erigendo Bembus Praetor Luculentissime extruendo Praetiosum Musis et Apollini Mausoleum Quod injuria temporum pene squallens E. mo Dominico Maria Cursio Legato Joanne Salviato Prolegato Magni civis cineres Patriae reconciliare Cultus perpetuitate curantibus S. P. Q. R. Jure Ac Aere suo Tanquam Thesaurum suum munivit Instauravit ornavit A.D. MDCXCII.

Outside the tomb he placed his coat-of-arms, and on either side that of the legate of the province and that of the Franciscan Order. In 1760 the third restoration was undertaken and the tomb assumed the form we now see and was given yet another inscription:

Danti Aleghiero Poetae sui temporis primo Restitutori Politioris humanitatis Guido et Hostasius Polentiani clienti et hospiti peregre defuncto monumentum fecerunt Bernardus Bembus Praetor Venet. Ravenn. Pro meritis eius ornatu excoluit. Aloysius Valentius Gonzaga Card. Leg. prov. Aemil. Superiorum Temporum negligentia corruptum Operibus ampliatis Munificentia sua restituendum curavit Anno M DCC LXXX.

At the same time the tomb was opened again and was found to be empty. In spite of this fact in 1864 the municipal authorities in Florence wrote to Ravenna again demanding the body of the poet, only to be again refused. This, however, was the sixth centenary of Dante's birth and the sarcophagus was again to be opened to "verify the remains." The workmen were indeed at work upon some necessary repairs and draining, when it was found that a part of the wall of the Braccioforte chapel would have to be removed. In setting to work upon this—little more than the removal of a few stones—the pickaxe of one of the workmen struck against wood, and presently a wooden box appeared which partly fell to pieces, revealing a human skeleton. Within the box was found this inscription:

Dantis ossa Denuper revisa die 3 Junu 1677

Dantis ossa A me Fre Antonio Santi hic posita Ano 1677 die 18 Octobris

Medical experts were summoned. They made, Miss Phillimore tells us, "a careful examination of the bones, and proceeded to reconstruct the skeleton.... The stature answered to that of the poet as nearly as the measurement of a skeleton can represent the living form, and the skull found in the chest corresponded exactly with the mask taken from Dante's face immediately after his death, which was brought from Florence for the purpose of making this comparison."

What seems to have happened has been made clear for us by Dr. Ricci. Between 1483, when Bembo reconstructed the tomb, and 1520, when the Florentines again claimed the body, and for the first time with a certainty of success, the body of Dante disappeared. It seems that in 1520 the Franciscans entered the mausoleum, abstracted the body, and hid it to save it for Ravenna. In June 1677 Fra Antonio visited the bones in their hiding place and verified them. In October of the same year they were built into the new wall where the old entrance to the Braccioforte chapel had been; to be discovered by chance in 1865.

It is curious that even as the last cantos of the Divine Comedy were discovered by means of a dream, so a dream went before the discovery of the bones of Dante.

"The sacristan of the Franciscan confraternity," we read, "called La Confraternita della Mercede, was wont to sleep in the damp recesses of the ancient chapel of Braccioforte." His name was Angelo Grillo ... This sacristan declared himself to have seen in a dream a shade issue from the spot where the body was found, clad in red, that it passed through the chapel into the adjoining cemetery. It approached him, and on being asked who it was, replied, 'I am Dante.' The sacristan died in May 1865, a few days before the discovery of the bones on the 27th of that month. Upon June 26, 1865, the bones of Dante were replaced in their original sarcophagus, ornamented by Pietro Lombardi, after having lain in state for three days, during which thousands from all over Italy passed before them. There it is to be hoped they will remain.



XVI

MEDIAEVAL RAVENNA

THE CHURCHES

When we come to examine what is left to us of mediaeval Ravenna, of the buildings which were erected there during the Middle Age, we shall find, as we might expect, very little that is either great or splendid, for, as we have seen, after the first year of the ninth century Ravenna fell from her great position and became nothing more than a provincial city, perhaps more inaccessible than any other in the peninsula. Her achievement such as it was in the earlier mediaeval period consisted in the production of three men of real importance, S. Romuald of the Onesti family of Ravenna, who was born in the city about the year 956 and who founded, as we know, the Order of Camaldoli; S. Peter Damian, who was born there about 988; and Blessed Peter of Ravenna, Pietro degli Onesti, called Il Peccatore, of the same stock as S. Romuald.

The work of S. Romuald was a reform of the Benedictine Order. The Order of Camaldoli which he founded was the second reform which had come out of the great brotherhood of S. Benedict; it was younger than the Cluniac but older than the Cistercian reform, and it was begun in 1012. In that year S. Romuald, who was a Benedictine abbot, having been dismissed by all the houses over which he had successively ruled, for they would not bear the penitential strictness of his government, founded a hermitage at Camaldoli above the upper valley of the Arno called the Casentino. There each monk lived in a separate dwelling, all being enclosed in a great wall some five hundred and thirty yards about, beyond which the monks were forbidden to go. They followed the Rule of S. Benedict, kept two Lents in the year, and never tasted meat. They had, of course, a church in common where they were bound to recite the divine office, for this is of the essence of the Rule of S. Benedict, but certain among them—and this is the essence of the reform of Camaldoli—never quitted their cells, their food being brought to them in their huts, where, if the lecluse were a priest, he said his Mass, assisted by some one close by but not in the same room. Thus we see the monks and the hermits living side by side, but scarcely together, and so they continued from the year 1012 till our own day, which has seen the great Camaldoli suppressed. The device of the order was a cup or chalice out of which two doves drank, representing thus the two classes of hermits and monks, the contemplative and the active life.



The second great Ravennese of the Middle Age, S. Peter Damian, who was born about 988 in Ravenna, of a good but at that time poor family, was the youngest of many children. He was early left an orphan, and living in his brother's house was treated, it would appear, rather as a beast than a man. Presently, however, another brother, then archpriest of Ravenna, took pity on him and had him educated, first at Faenza but after at Parma, where he studied under a famous master. Here he became immersed in the religious life so that when two monks belonging to Fonte Avellana, "a desert at the foot of the Apennines in Umbria," happened to call at the place of his abode he followed them. After a life of penitence and hardship, in 1057 pope Stephen IX. prevailed upon him to quit his desert and made him cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and later pope Nicholas II. sent him to Milan as his legate, till in 1062 the successor of Nicholas allowed him to return to his solitude; but in 1063 he was sent to France as papal legate. Later we find him as papal ambassador in Ravenna—this in 1072. He was then a very old man, and on his way back to Rome he died at Faenza.

This famous saint has often been confused with the third great Ravennese of this time, Pietro degli Onesti, called Pietro Il Peccatore[1] This confusion, which Dante disposes of in the well-known passage of the Paradiso:

"In quel loco fui 10, Pier Damiano, e Pietro Peccator fu nella casa Di nostra Donna in sul lito Adriano,"[2]

is commented upon in one of Boccaccio's letters to his friend Petrarch.[3] It is true both Peters were of Ravenna, but whereas Blessed Pietro Il Peccatore was of the Onesti family, as was S. Romuald, S. Pietro Damiano was not; the last died in 1072 at Faenza as we have seen, the first as we may think in 1119.

[Footnote 1: It is I confess doubtful whether Pietro degli Onesti was ever called Il Peccatore till a later epoch. The authenticity of the letters in which he so styles himself is open to question and the inscription on his tomb is it seems of the fifteenth century.]

[Footnote 2: Paradiso, xxi. 121-123. "In quel loco" refers to Fonte Avellana.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. Corazzini, Lettere edite ed inedite di Giovanni Boccaccio (Firenze, 1877), p. 307.]

Now though all were famous and all were of Ravenna it is the last and I suppose the least of them who is most closely connected with the city. The others went away and won, not only great place in the world, but an everlasting fame. Blessed Pietro Il Peccatore stayed in Ravenna and built there outside the walls in the marsh between Ravenna and Classe the great home of Our Lady, S. Maria in Porto fuori. About the middle of the eleventh century, Dr Ricci tells us, certain religious retired into the solitude by the shore of the Adriatic and there built a little church or oratory that was called S. Maria in fossula. In this act we may certainly see the example of S. Romuald. But about 1096 there joined himself to them Pietro degli Onesti called Il Peccatore, and perhaps because he was of the Onesti he built there a new and a larger church, it is said in fulfilment of a vow made, as was Galla Placidia's, in a storm at sea. It is this church which in great part we still see, with additions of the thirteenth century, a lonely and beautiful thing in the emptiness of the sodden fields to the south-east of Ravenna between the Canale del Molino and the Fiumi Uniti.

The lonely and melancholy church of S. Maria in Porto fuori is a basilica consisting of three naves which formed a part of the original church of the Blessed Pietro, and a presbytery, apse, and chapels which are of the thirteenth century. There we see some frescoes of a very beautiful and early character which have been erroneously attributed to Giotto, and as erroneously it might seem to Peter of Rimini.



They were the gift of a certain Graziadeo, a notary who in 1246 provided the cost of the work, which was carried out it would seem by Maso da Faenza (1314), Rastello da Forll (1350-60), Giovanni da Ravenna (1368-96), and other painters of the Romagnuol school.[1] These works, which are among the loveliest we have of the school, may be noted as follows: in the nave to the left we see the Madonna and Child with four saints; here, too, is S. Julian. Upon the triumphal arch we see in the midst the Saviour and on the one side Antichrist and the martyrdom of the saints, on the other the defeat and end of Antichrist who is beheaded by angels. Beneath are scenes of Paradise and Hell. On the roof of the choir we see the Evangelists with their symbols and the Doctors of the Church. Upon the right the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, together with the Massacre of the Innocents and the Last Supper and perhaps S. Francis and S. Clare. Upon the left we have the Birth and Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in the Temple. The last two figures upon the right here are said to be portraits of Giotto and Guido da Polenta by those who attribute these works to the Florentine master. In the chapel on the left we see pope John I. before Theodoric, pope John in prison, and in the lunette the martyrdom of a saint. Close by are other frescoes repainted of S. Apollinaris and S. Antony Abbot. In the chapel on the right we see perhaps S. John baptising a king, S. John preaching, and Blessed Pietro Il Peccatore healing the blind and sick. Here too would appear to be scenes from the life of S. Matthew, but unhappily the subjects are all of them obscure and difficult to interpret. At the end of the apse we see the three Maries at the Sepulchre and the Incredulity of S. Thomas.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Dr. Ricci, Guida di Ravenna (Bologna, fourth edition), and see Anselmi, Memorie del Pittore Trecentista Petrus da Rimini in La Romagna (1906), vol. III. fasc. Settembre.]

Of these majestic but spoilt works undoubtedly the noblest in design is that of the Death of the Blessed Virgin. The Last Supper is also exceedingly beautiful, and the Incredulity of S. Thomas is a splendid piece of work. But in the course of ages these latter works especially have suffered grievously, as of course has the whole church.

Built in the marsh it has sunk so deeply into it that its pillars are covered half way up, and the church seems always about to be wholly engulfed. It was called S. Maria in Porto because it was originally built near to the famous Port that Augustus Casar had established and which for so long was the headquarters of the eastern fleet. In the sixteenth century when the Canons Regular of the Lateran, who then served it, were compelled to abandon it, they built within the city of Ravenna another church which they named after that they had left, S. Maria in Porto. Thereafter the old church without the walls was known as S. Maria in Porto fuori.

The mighty tower which rises beside S. Maria in Porto fuori has been thought to be in part the famous Pharos of which Pliny speaks.[1] It is almost certainly founded upon it, but the lower part in its huge strength is, as we see it, a work of the end of the twelfth century, as is the lofty campanile which rises from it.

[Footnote 1: See supra, p. 24.]

S. Maria in Porto fuori is undoubtedly the greatest monument that remains to Ravenna of the Middle Age; nothing really comparable with it is to be found in the city itself.

The earliest of the friars' churches, those great monuments of the Middle Age in Italy, is S. Chiara which with its convent is now suppressed and lost in the Recovero di Mendicita (Corso Garibaldi, 19). This convent, which dates certainly from 1255, was founded by Chiara da Polenta and was rebuilt in 1794. It is from its garden that we get our best idea of the church which within possesses frescoes of the Romagnuol school, where in the vault we see the four Evangelists with their symbols and the four Doctors of the Church. Upon the walls we see a spoiled fresco of the Presepio, that peculiarly Franciscan subject, and again the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism of Our Lord, Christ in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and various saints. These frescoes are the work of the men who painted in S. Maria in Porto fuori.

It cannot have been much later that the church of S. Pier Maggiore, of which I have already spoken,[2] came into Franciscan hands, and certainly from 1261 it was called S. Francesco, when the archbishop Filippo Fontana handed it over to the Conventuals who held it till 1810. Its chief mediseval interest lies for us of course in the fact that Dante was buried, probably at his own desire, within its precincts. But there are other things too. Close to the entrance door is a slab of red Verona marble dated 1396, which is the tomb of Ostasio da Polenta who was a Tertiary of the Franciscan Order, and was therefore buried in the habit of the friars. The figure carved there in relief to represent Ostasio is evidently a portrait and a very fine and noble piece of work. To the left, again, is another slab of red Verona marble which marks the tomb of the General of the Franciscan Order, Padre Enrico Alfieri, who died of fever in Ravenna in 1405. The fine Renaissance pilasters in the Cappella del Crocefisso should be noted, and the beautiful sixteenth-century monument of Luffo Numai by Tommaso Flamberti at the end of the left aisle.

[Footnote 2: See supra, pp. 174 et seq.]

The Dominicans have not been more fortunate than the Franciscans. Somewhat to the north of the Piazza Venti Settembre in the Via Cavour we find their church S. Domenico. It is said that originally there stood here a Byzantine church dedicated in honour of S. Maria Callopes, but this Dr. Ricci denies. S. Domenico was built from its foundations it seems in October 1269 for the Dominicans and was enlarged in 1374 according to an inscription in the sacristy; but it was almost entirely rebuilt in the beginning of the eighteenth century. The facade and the side portico are perhaps now the most genuine parts of the church. The chief treasure is, however, not of the Middle Age at all, but of the Renaissance, and consists of four large pictures painted in tempera, probably organ shutters, representing the Annunciation, S. Peter Martyr, and S. Dominic. They are the excellent work of Niccold Rondinelli the pupil of Giovanni Bellini.[1]

[Footnote 1: See infra, pp. 267 et seq.]



From S. Domenico we pass again to S. Giovanni Evangelista if only to note the beautiful Gothic portal of the fourteenth century, of which I have already spoken,[2] and the spoiled frescoes by Giotto in the vaulting of the fourth chapel on the left. Giotto, according to Vasari, came to Ravenna at the instigation of Dante and painted in S. Francesco, but whatever he may have done there has utterly perished, and there only remains in Ravenna his spoilt work in this little chapel in S. Giovanni Evangelista. Here we see in a ceiling divided by two diagonals, at the centre of which the Lamb and Cross are painted on a medallion, the four Evangelists enthroned with their symbols and the four Doctors of the Church, a subject common everywhere and especially so in Ravenna. These works have suffered very greatly from restoration, but they seem indeed to be the work of the master in so far as the design is concerned, all surely that is left after the repaintings that have befallen them.

[Footnote 2: See supra, pp. 175 et seq.]

The mosaic pavements of 1213, representing scenes from the third crusade, in the chapel to the left of the choir should be noted.

We must not leave S. Giovanni Evangelista without a look at the great tower of the eleventh century which overshadows it. It might seem to be contemporary with the greater Torre Comunale in the Via Tredici Giugno as the street is now absurdly named. Nor should any one omit to visit the Casa Polentana near Porta Ursicina and the Casa Traversari in the Via S. Vitale, grand old thirteenth-century houses that speak to us, not certainly of Ravenna's great days, but of a greater day than ours, and one, too, in which the most tragic of Italians wandered up and down these windy ways eating his heart out for Florence. Indeed Dante consumes all our thoughts in mediaeval Ravenna.

There is a tale told by Franco Sacchetti that I will set down here, for it expresses what in part we must all feel, and what in the confusion of philosophy at the end of the Middle Age was felt far more keenly by men who visited this strange city.

"Maestro Antonio of Ferrara was a man of very great parts, almost a poet, and as entertaining as a jester, but he was very vicious and sinful. Being in Ravenna during the time that Messer Bernardino of Polenta held the lordship, it chanced that this Messer Antonio, who was a very great gambler, had been gambling one day and had lost nearly all he possessed. Being in despair, he entered the church of the Friars Minor, where there is the tomb which holds the body of the Florentine poet Dante, and having seen an antique Crucifix half-burned and smoked by the great number of lights placed around it, and finding just then many candles lighted there, he immediately went and took all the tapers and candles which were burning there and going to the tomb of Dante he placed them before it saying, 'Take them, for thou art far more worthy of them than it is.' The people beholding this and marvelling greatly said, 'What doth this man?' And they all looked at one another...."



Sacchetti does not answer the question asked by the astonished people of Ravenna, but goes on to tell us of the lord "who delighted in such things as do all lords." He could not have answered it for he did not know himself what it meant. We are in better case, I think, and know that what that wild and half—blasphemous act meant was that the Renaissance had made an end of the Middle Age here in Ravenna as elsewhere.



XVII

RAVENNA IN THE RENAISSANCE

THE BATTLE OF 1512

When in the year 1438 duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan forced Ostasio da Polenta, the fifth of that name, into an alliance and the Venetians thereupon invited him to visit them, Venice had decided for her own safety to annex Ravenna and Ostasio soon learned that the new government had proclaimed itself in his old capital. He, as I have said, presently disappeared, the victim of a mysterious assassination; and Venice governed Ravenna by provveditori and podesta, as happily and successfully, it might seem, as she governed Venetia and a part of Lombardy. For her doubtless the acquisition of Ravenna was not a very great thing, nor does it seem to have changed in any very great degree the half-stagnant life of the city itself, which, as we may suppose, had for so long ceased to play any great part in the life of Italy, that a change of government there was not of much importance to any one except the Holy See, the true over-lord.

The Holy See, however, had no intention of submitting to the incursion of the republic into its long established territories without a protest. In the war of Ferrara, Venice had come into collision with the pope and had in reality been worsted, though the peace of Bagnolo (1484) gave her Rovigo, the Polesine, and Ravenna. But she had adopted a fatal policy in appealing to the French, a policy which led straight on to Cambray, which, as we may think, so unfortunately crippled her for ever.

The descent of the French was successful at least in this, that it aroused the cupidity and ambition of the king of Spain and of the emperor. Italy was proved to be any one's prize at Fornovo, and when Louis XII. succeeded Charles VIII. in 1498 and combined in his own person the claim of the French crown to Naples and to Genoa and the Orleans claim to Milan, Venice, instead of being doubly on guard, thought she saw a chance of extending her Lombard dominions. She refused the alliance Sforza offered and promised to assist Louis in return for Cremona and its contado. In other words, she committed treason to Italy and thus justified, if anything could justify, the League of Cambray.

Sforza's first act was to urge the Turk, who needed no invitation, to attack the republic, whose fleet in 1499 was utterly defeated at sea by the Orientals, who presently raided into Friuli. Venice was forced to accept a humiliating peace. It was in these circumstances that, with all Italy alienated from her, the papacy began to act against her.

Its first and most splendid effort to create a reality out of the fiction of the States of the Church was the attempt of Cesare Borgia, who actually made himself master of the whole of the Romagna. Venice watched him with the greatest alarm, but chance saved her, for with the death of Alexander VI., Cesare and his dream came to nothing. Venice acted at once, for indeed even in her decline she was the most splendid force in Italy. She induced by a most swift and masterly stroke the leading cities of the Romagna to place themselves under her protection. It was a great stroke, the last blow of a great and desperate man; that it failed does not make it less to be admired.

The rock which broke the stroke as it fell and shattered the sword which dealt it was Pope Julius II.

Louis and the emperor had come together, and when in June 1508 a truce was made they would have been content to leave Venice alone; it was the pope who refused, and by the end of the year had formed the European League for the purpose of "putting a stop to losses, injuries, rapine, and damage which Venice had inflicted not merely on the Holy See, but also on the Holy Roman Empire, the House of Austria, the Duchy of Milan, the King of Naples and other princes, seizing and tyrannically occupying their territories, cities, and castles as though she were conspiring to the common ill...." So ran the preamble of the League of Cambray. It contemplated among other things the return of Ravenna, Faenza, Rimini, and the rest of the Romagna to the Holy See; Istria, Fruili, Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, and Verona being handed to the emperor; Brescia, Bergamo, Crema, and Cremona passing to France, and the sea-coast towns in Apulia to the king of Spain; Dalmatia was to go to the king of Hungary and Cyprus to the duke of Savoy.



In the spring of 1507, Julius launched his bull of excommunication against Venice; Ravenna, which was held by the podesta Marcello and by Zeno, was attacked by the pope's general, the duke of Urbino, and after the disastrous defeat of the Venetians by the French and Milanese, at Aguadello, on the Adda, the republic ordered the restoration of Ravenna to the Holy See, together with the other cities of the Romagna.

The pope was now content, but France and the emperor were not, and Venice was forced to ally herself first with one side and then with the other.

In the brutal struggle of the foreigner for Cisalpine Gaul there were two desperate battles, that of Ravenna in 1512, in which the French, though victorious, lost their best leader, Gaston de Foix, and that of Novara in 1513, which induced the French to leave Italy. As the first of these battles concerns Ravenna we must consider it more closely.

At this time Venice was in alliance with Spain and the pope against the French, who were commanded by Gaston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, a nephew of the French king. The combined Spanish and papal troops, about 20,000 strong, were led by Raimondo da Cardona. The French were south of the Apennines when the Papal-Spanish force swung round from Milan into the Ferrarese, seized the territory south of the Po, and laid siege to Bologna. A Venetian force was hurrying to aid them.

Gaston de Foix did not hesitate. On February 5, he flung himself over the ice-bound Apennine and hastened to relieve Bologna. Cardona retreated before him down the Aemilian Way; but Brescia opened its gates to the Venetians, and this, which hindered Gaston, so enraged him that when he had taken the city he gave it up to a pillage in which more than eight thousand were slain and his men "were so laden with spoil that they returned to France forthwith to enjoy it."

Gaston was compelled to return to Milan to re-form his troops, for he was determined both by necessity and by his own nature, which loved decision, to force a battle with the allies. The truth was that the position of France was precarious, her career in Italy was deeply threatened by the allies, Henry VIII. of England contemplated a descent upon Normandy, and until the enemy in Italy was disposed of her way was barred to Naples.

So Gaston set out with some 7000 cavalry and 17,000 infantry, French, Italian, German, to pursue and to defeat Cardona, who did not wish to fight. The army of the allies was chiefly Spanish and it numbered some 6000 cavalry and 16,000 infantry of most excellent fighting quality.

As the French advanced along the Via Aemilia, Cardona withdrew to Faenza. Gaston went on to Ravenna, which he besieged. Cardona was forced to intervene and try to save the city. He, too, approached Ravenna. Upon Easter Day, 1512, the two armies met in the marsh between Ravenna and the sea; and, in the words of Guicciardini, "there then began a very great battle, without doubt one of the greatest that Italy had seen for these many years.... All the troops were intermingled in a battle fought thus on a plain without impediments such as water or banks, and where both armies fought, each obstinately bent on death or victory, and inflamed not only with danger, glory, and hope, but also with the hatred of nation against nation. It was a memorable spectacle in the hot engagement between the German and Spanish infantry to see two very noted officers, Jacopo Empser, a German, and Zamudio, a Spaniard, advance before their battalions and encounter one another as if it were by challenge, in which combat the Spaniard went off conqueror by killing his adversary. The cavalry of the army of the League was not at best equal to that of the French, and having been shattered and torn by the artillery was become much inferior. Wherefore after they had sustained for some time, more by stoutness of heart than by strength of arms, the fury of the enemy, Yves d'Allegre with the rearguard and a thousand foot that were left at the Montone under Paliose and now recalled charging them in flank, and Fabrizio Colonna, fighting valiantly, being taken prisoner by the soldiers of the Duke of Ferrara, they turned their backs, in which they did no more than follow the example of their generals; for the Viceroy and Carvagiale, without making the utmost proof of the valour of their troops, betook themselves to flight, carrying off with them the third division or rearguard almost entire with Antonio da Leva, a man of that time of low rank though afterwards by a continual exercise of arms for many years, rising through all the military degrees, he became a very famous general. The whole body of light horse had been already broken, and the Marchese di Pescara, their commander, taken prisoner, covered with blood and wounds. And the Marchese della Palude, who had led up the second division, or main battle, through a field full of ditches and brambles in great disorder to the fight, was also taken. The ground was covered with dead men and horses, and yet the Spanish infantry, though abandoned by the horse, continued fighting with incredible fierceness; and though, at the first encounter with the German foot, they had received some damage from the firm and close order of the pikes, yet afterwards getting their enemies within the length of their swords, and many of them, covered with targets, pushing with daggers between the legs of the Germans, they had penetrated with very great slaughter almost to the centre of their battalions. The Gascon foot who were posted by the Germans on the ground between the river and a rising bank had attacked the Italian infantry, which, though they had greatly suffered by the artillery, would have repulsed them highly to their honour, had not Yves d'Allegre entered among them with a squadron of horse. But the fortune of that general did not answer his valour, for his son Viverais being almost immediately killed before his eyes, the father, unwilling to survive so great a loss, threw himself with his horse into the thickest of the enemies, where, fighting like a most valiant captain and killing several, he was at last cut to pieces. The Italian foot, unable to resist so great a multitude, gave way; but part of the Spanish infantry hastening to support them, they rallied. On the other side, the German infantry, being sorely pressed by the other part of the Spaniards, were hardly capable of making any resistance; but the cavalry of the confederates being all fled out of the field, Foix with a great body of horse turned to fall upon them. The Spaniards, therefore, rather retiring than driven out of the field, without the least disorder in their ranks, took their way between the river and the bank, marching slowly and with a close front, by the strength of which they beat off the French and began to disengage themselves; at which time Navarre, choosing rather to die than to save himself, and therefore refusing to leave the field, was made a prisoner. But Foix, thinking it intolerable that this Spanish infantry should march off in battle array like conquerors and knowing that the victory was not perfect if these were not broken and dispersed like the rest, went furiously to attack them with a squadron of horse and did execution upon the hindmost; but being surrounded and thrown from his horse, or, as some say, his horse falling upon him, while he was fighting, he received a mortal thrust with a pike in his side. And if it be desirable, as it is believed, for a man to die in the height of his prosperity, it is certain that he met with a most happy death in dying after he had obtained so great a victory. He died very young, but famous through the world, having in less than three months, and being a general almost before he was a soldier, with incredible ardour and expedition obtained so many victories. Near him lay on the ground for dead Lautrec, having received twenty wounds; but being carried to Ferrara he was by diligent care of the surgeons recovered.