“Spectacular buildings are brought to life alongside those who built them”
JONArHAN HARRIS applauds an evocative history of a city that once stood at the centre of the western Roman empire – and the cast of colourful characters who ruled it
Jonathan Harris reviews Judith Herrin’s Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
by Judith Herrin
Allen Lane, 576 pages, £30
Ravenna is a deceptive place, hiding its momentous history under the ambience of a quiet provincial city. In the evocative introduction to this new book, Judith Herrin describes how, during a visit to the Italian town on a hot summer’s day in the 1970s, she felt frustrated that none of the available guidebooks placed the extraordinary early medieval buildings in any kind of coherent historical context. This book is the eventual result. Beautifully illustrated, impeccably researched and accessibly presented, it traces Ravenna’s career as the capital of the Roman empire in the west.
The story begins in AD 402, when the western Roman emperor Honorius moved his court to the city to escape invading Goths, and comes to an end 400 years later, when it was absorbed into the empire of Charlemagne and sank back into obscurity. Broad surveys covering several centuries risk seeming impersonal, with major players coming and going with bewildering rapidity. That is not the case here, as Herrin follows the structure that worked so well in her Byzantium: Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
(2007) and makes a particular individual, building or event the focus of each chapter.
One of the most fascinating figures is Galla Placidia, daughter of Emperor Theodosius I. She was about 10 years old when she arrived in Ravenna, and after an unhappy marriage to the king of the Goths, she and her second husband produced an heir to her childless brother, Honorius. When the underage Valentian III succeeded in AD 425, Placidia ran the western empire as regent. She left a distinct mark on Ravenna by commissioning two major churches and developing the city’s commercial and administrative importance. Her most tangible monument, a mausoleum with an ethereal starry-sky mosaic ceiling, still stands today.
There are plenty of other memorable characters, such as Archbishop Damianus (died 705/08) who was being shaved when a woman came to his palace begging for her dying baby boy to be baptised so he could gain a place in heaven. By the time the smooth-chinned prelate had descended, the infant had expired so, full of remorse, he took the body in his arms and carried it around the church until it came back to life again. Damianus quickly conducted the baptism
Ravenna is a deceptive place, hiding its momentous history as capital of the Roman empire in the west under the ambience of a quiet provincial city
ceremony before the child died a second time.
Buildings are also brought to life alongside the people who built and used them. These range from those that no longer exist, such as the Basilica Ursiana, to sites which can still be visited today, such as the church of San Vitale. It is famous for two mosaic panels showing Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora. Herrin discusses how and why these mosaics may have been commissioned, putting them in the context of the capture of Ravenna in May 540 by an army sent by the eastern emperor. It is this linking of tangible remains and historical record that is the book’s great strength, along with its clear uncluttered prose which even cuts through the complexities of Catholic and Arian theology. By providing a guide both to what can still be seen and what happened in the past, the author has certainly fulfilled the task she set herself all those decades ago.