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Friday, July 3 - Ravenna

If you're still hanging in there through this perpetual travelogue, you might be asking yourself, "Hey, didn't they go to Ravenna, too?" Indeed we did.

In the fourth century, the Arian Controversy tore Christianity in half over theological issues like the proper date of Easter and the personhood of the Holy Spirit and, most particularly, whether Jesus was made of the same stuff as God, and thus part of a coequal Trinity, or created by God, and thus subjugate. The former view won, becoming Catholicism, and Arianism was declared a heresy, but it was touch-and-go for a while — the emperors Constantius II and Valens were Arians, as were many important bishops and other powerful people. The controversy caused more faithquakes than anything until the Protestant Reformation. People were excommunicated and exiled left and right, and it strained relations between the Eastern and Western empires.

Theodoric the Goth, who ruled Italy after the fall of Rome, was an Arian, and since he made his capital in Ravenna Ravenna is dotted with Arian churches. The Arian Baptistry is a small octagonal building, splendid with mosaics on the inside, like the ceiling mosaic pictured above: naked-Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and a dove, with the personified River Jordan looking on in a rather pagan way, surrounded by twelve apostles bearing crowns. A third of a mile away is the Catholic baptistry (the Baptistry of Neon), a small octagonal building that is entirely different:

As you can see, here we have naked-Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and a dove, with the personified River Jordan looking on in a rather pagan way, surrounded by twelve apostles bearing crowns...but Jesus has a beard. Heretic, I cast thee out!

I admit I'm charmed by this affirmation of the everyday churchgoer's response to titanic struggles over heresy and orthodoxy: they live amongst each other, go to church less than half a mile away from each other, and decorate their separate baptistries in an almost identical way.

adfamiliares has a lot to say about this sort of thing, professionally; I'm just happy to have a picture of coexistence (possibly placid, possibly fraught) to go along with my mental images of excommunicated bishops and burning books.

More pictures, as usual, under the cut.

A detail from the Arian Baptistry. Hard to imagine this image is 1500 years old.

The Baptistry of Neon is attached to Ravenna's duomo, which is a highly ornate 18th-century church.

Beneath the altar of San Francesco is a flooded mosaic: the sunken floor of the original 5th-century church, attended now by goldfish. In one of the aisles is probably the most frightening religious sculpture I have seen, Christ Devoured by Cherubim (not its real title):

San Francesco also offers this fresco in an alcove, which presents a curious concave/convex optical illusion.

The tomb of Dante is just outside. Florence, which exiled Dante, has been petitioning for the return of his bones for hundreds of years. As penance for exiling him, they send oil to keep this battered lamp perpetually lit:

During WWII, Dante's bones were hidden under this mound, to protect them from Nazi bombers.

Ravenna has its very own leaning tower, the Torre Comunale.

Nifty bells above the Piazza del Popolo.

Ravenna was a sleepy town, but at night, watch out! Karaoke in the streets! (It was actually much more happenin' than this picture makes it look.)