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To-day that monastery has utterly disappeared, and there are no signs of a church in the Rotonda. Only the mausoleum remains in a tangled garden, far from any road, empty and deserted. When Belisarius entered Ravenna in 540, he apparently found more than one new building begun but not finished; of these the chief was the church of S. Vitale.
Laurence if he would grant her a son; and a son being born to her she founded S. Lorenzo, and called the child Laurence for praise. St. Ambrose is said to have come from Milan to consecrate the place, bringing with him certain relics, the bones of S. Agnola and S. Vitale, victims of the pagans which he had found in Bologna; while for sixty years, till 490, the body of S. Zenobio lay here.
At length it poured out into the open air, as the Vitale river, and the boy fell with it over a wall of rock into a large pool surrounded by thick greenery.
But they were a bad lot altogether; and it is no credit to a Christian of the nineteenth century to stay in this tomb so long. Near this mausoleum is the magnificent Basilica of St. Vitale, built in the reign of Justinian, and consecrated in 547, I was interested to see it because it was erected in confessed imitation of St.
The present cathedral was erected by Euphrasius between 531 and 542. This is proved by his mosaic inscription, which states that "in the eleventh year of his episcopate" he had endowed it; for the endowment would naturally come after the building. He found the second basilica likely to fall, with the roof only kept up by chains. The columns are of Greek cipollino, like those at S. Vitale, Spirito Santo, S. Francesco, SS. Apollinare Nuovo and in Classe, Ravenna, and in S. Maria, Pomposa, and were worked by the same workmen in the Proconesos workshops: for on columns at S. Vitale and Parenzo, and also at Pomposa, are found the same mason's marks, monograms uniting the letters
In plan it resembles very closely the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople built by Justinian about 527. As we know both Justinian and Theodora, his empress, contributed largely to the perfecting of S. Vitale, which remains certainly his most glorious monument in the West.
Have you seen Ravenna, Madame? It is an enchanted tomb where sparkling phantoms appear. The magic of death lies there. The mosaic works of Saint Vitale, with their barbarous angels and their aureolated empresses, make one feel the monstrous delights of the Orient. Despoiled to-day of its silver lamels, the grave of Galla Placidia is frightful under its crypt, luminous yet gloomy.
The last Days of the Carnival In the Cardinal's Chapel Paolina was industriously pursuing her task in the chapel of the Cardinal's palace. Ludovico was not so frequently with her there as he had been while she was at work in San Vitale. But there were evident reasons why this was necessarily the case.
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