Ravenna, a Study Part 19

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...."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTAL OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA]

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 a.s.sa.s.sination; 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 a.s.sist 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sing 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROCCA VENIZIANA]

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 mult.i.tude, 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.

"By the death of Foix, the Spanish infantry were suffered to pa.s.s off unmolested, the remainder of the army being already dispersed and put to flight, and the baggage, colours, and cannons taken. The pope's legate was also taken by the Stradiotti and carried to Federigo da Bozzolo, who made a present of him to the legate of the council. There were taken also Fabrizio Colonna, Pietro Navarra, the Marchese della Palude, the Marchese di Bitonto, and the Marchese di Pescara, with many other lords, barons, and honourable gentlemen, Spaniards and Neapolitans. Nothing is more uncertain than the number of the killed in battles; but amidst the variety of accounts it is the most common opinion that there died of both armies at least 10,000, of which a third was of the French and two-thirds of their enemies: some talk of many more, but they were without question almost all of them of the most valiant and choice soldiers, among whom, belonging to the papal forces, was Raffaello de' Pazzi, an officer of high reputation; and great numbers were wounded. But in this respect the loss of the conqueror was without comparison much the greater by the death of Foix, Yves d'Allegre, and many of the French n.o.bility, and many other brave officers of the German infantry, by whose valour, though at vast expense of their blood, the victory was in a great measure acquired.

Molard also fell with many other officers of the Gascons and Picards, which nation lost all their glory that day among the French. But their loss was exceeded by the death of Foix, with whom perished the very sinews and spirits of that army. Of the vanquished that escaped out of the field of battle the greater part fled towards Cesena, whence they continued their flight to more distant places; nor did the Viceroy stop till he came to Ancona where he arrived with a very few horse.

Many were stripped and murdered in their flight; for the peasants scoured all the roads and the Duke of Urbino, who from his sending some time before Balda.s.sare da Castiglione to the King of France, and employing some trusty persons as his agents with Foix, was supposed to have entered into a private agreement against his uncle, not only raised the country against those that fled, but sent his soldiers to intercept them in the territories of Pesaro; so that only those who took their flight through the dominions of the Florentines were by orders of the magistrates, confirmed by the republic, suffered to pa.s.s unmolested.

"The victorious army was no sooner returned to camp than the people of Ravenna sent deputies to treat of surrendering their city; but when they had agreed or were upon the point of agreement, and the inhabitants being employed in preparing provisions to be sent to the camp were negligent in guarding the walls, the German and Gascon foot entered through the breach that had been made and plundered the town in a most barbarous manner, their cruelty being exasperated not only by their natural hatred to the name of the Italians, but by a spirit of revenge for the loss they had sustained in the battle. On the fourth day after this, Marcantonio Colonna gave up the citadel, into which he had retired, on condition of safety to their persons and effects, but obliging himself on the other hand, together with the rest of the officers, not to bear arms against the King of France nor the Pisan Council till the next festival of S. Mary Magdalen; and not many days after, Bishop Vitello, who commanded in the castle with a hundred and fifty men, agreed to surrender it on terms of safety for life and goods. The cities of Imola, Forli, Cesena, and Rimini, and all the castles of the Romagna, except those of Forli and Imola, followed the fortune of the victory and were received by the legate in the name of the council."

The site of this great battle is marked by a monument, a square pilaster of marble, called the Colonna dei Francesi, adorned with bas-reliefs and inscriptions, raised in 1557 by the President of the Romagna, Pier Donato Cesi, on the right bank of the Ronco, some three miles from the city. We may recall Ariosto's verses:

"Io venni dove le campagne rosse eran del sangue barbaro e latino che fiera stella dianzi a furor mosse.

"E vidi un morto all' altro si vicino che, senza premer lor, quasi il terreno a molte miglia non dava il cammino.

"E da chi alberga fra Garonna e Reno vidi uscir crudelta, che ne dovria tutto il mondo d'orror rimaner pieno."

The League of Cambray had succeeded in breaking the real security and confidence of Venice; the death of Gaston de Foix, "the hero boy who died too soon," destroyed the energy of her ally, the French army, in Italy; and the battle of Novara, as I have said, in 1513, inducing that ally to withdraw from the peninsula, left the republic to be menaced by Cardona, who failed only to take Venice itself.

Nor was that great government more fortunate in the long struggles which followed between Francis I. and Charles V. In 1523, seeing that the French were failing, Venice came to terms with the emperor, by that time the real arbiter of Italy. In 1527, though then in alliance with pope Clement VII, she seized once more Ravenna and the Romagna, but the emperor intervened, and by the peace of Cambray in 1529, which on payment of a fine confirmed Venice in her Lombard possessions as far as the Adda, she was compelled to restore Ravenna and the Romagna to the pope.

The treaty of Cambray had so far as Ravenna was concerned a certain finality about it. Thenceforth the popes ruled the city through a cardinal legate, and an era of a certain social and artistic splendour began; the city was adorned with at least one new church, S. Maria in Porto, with many monuments and palaces, and some great public works were undertaken.

So Ravenna in the arms of the Church slumbered till, in 1797, the great soldier of the Revolution descended upon Italy in that marvellous campaign which so closely recalls the achievement of Caesar. Ravenna then became a part first of the Cispadan and later of the Cisalpine republic. Then, as we know, came the Austrians who took Ravenna from the French, but were in their turn expelled in 1800, when the city was incorporated into the short-lived kingdom of Italy. But it was again attacked by the Austrians, and later restored once again to the pope. A period of uncertainty and confusion followed in which various provisional governments were established for Ravenna, but at last in 1860 the city and its province were, by a vote of the people, included in the kingdom of United Italy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONUMENT OF GASTON DE FOIX]

XVIII

RENAISSANCE RAVENNA

CHURCHES AND PALACES

The period of the Renaissance which saw the papal government re-established in Ravenna in 1529, has left its mark upon the city in many a fine monument, indelibly stamped with the style of that fruitful period. Among such monuments we must note the beautiful tombs of Guidarello Guidarelli, by Tullio Lombardi, erected in 1557, now in the Accademia, and of Luffo Numai by Tommaso Flamberti in S.

Francesco, erected about fifty years earlier (1509). Above all, however, must be named the great church of S. Maria in Porto (1553) and the palaces of Minzoni, Graziani, and others, with the Loggia del Giardino at S. Maria in Porto. And there is, too, the work of the painters Niccolo Rondinelli, Cotignola, Luca Longhi and his sons, Guido Reni, and others.

Later the papal government undertook many great public works. The Venetians had, as we shall see, re-fortified Ravenna; these fortifications the papal government enlarged, and in the middle of the seventeenth century undertook the digging and construction of the Ca.n.a.le Pamfilio, so named in honour of Innocent X., and in the following century of the Ca.n.a.le Corsini. These works were necessary, it is said, not only for the maritime commerce of the city, which one may think was scarcely large enough to have excused them, but for the preservation of Ravenna from inundation consequent upon the silting up of the rivers.

But the earliest work done in Ravenna after the close of the Middle Age was that undertaken by the Venetians. It was in 1457 that they began to build the really tremendous fortification or Rocca, the ruins of which we may still see. They were engaged during some ten years upon this great fortress, the master of the works being Giovanni Francesco da Ma.s.sa. They employed as material the ruins of the church of S. Andrea dei Goti, built by Theodoric, which they had been compelled to destroy to make room for the fortress, as well as the materials of a palace of the Polentani. The Rocca with its great citadel played a considerable part in the battle of 1512, and the subsequent sack of the city. But when Ravenna came again into the government of the Holy See, though the fortifications of the city as a whole were enlarged, the Rocca itself soon fell into a decay and was indeed in great part destroyed in the middle of the seventeenth century, the monastery and the church of Cla.s.se being repaired and enlarged with its ruins and the Ponte Nuovo over the Fiumi Uniti, according to Dr. Ricci, being also constructed from its remains, as were other buildings in Ravenna. Then like the Rocca Malatestiana at Rimini it came to be used as a mere prison, and when it failed to prove useful for that purpose it was allowed to become the picturesque ruin we see.