The Burgess Shale

Saturday, July 4 - Ravenna

San Vitale was begun by Ostrogoths in 527, and finished twenty years later by Byzantines. It's the only major Justinian church to have survived intact, and on its walls are some of the most beautiful mosaics in the world. The elegant, wise-eyed woman looking back at you through your monitor is the Empress Theodora, who was a dancer and a courtesan before she became the wife of the most powerful man in the world. I'm constantly amazed by the character and majesty the mosaicist was able to convey with little irregular chunks of glass — stepping back, the image dissolves from cartoon to humanity. 1500 years! It's humbling.

We stayed a long time in San Vitale. It was quiet — full of tourists, but respectful ones, thoughtful ones. Part of me is still there, I think, in the color and the peace.

( Cut for the art of the mosaic. )

The full San Vitale set is here. This is my last big photo post (alas!), but I will post a thing or two about hotels before I shut up for good.

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. ( Cut for Jesus' penis! )

The whole set (72 photos) is on Flickr, including more mosaics — and we haven't even gotten to San Vitale yet!