Unknown - "A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies"

E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell - "Form and Function"

Esther Chamberlain - "The Coast of Chance"

G. A. Henty - "Through Three Campaigns"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Theodoric the Goth

T >> Thomas Hodgkin >> Theodoric the Goth




I have had occasion many times in the preceding pages to write the name
of Ravenna, the residence of most of the sovereigns of the sinking
Empire, and now the home of Theodoric. Let me attempt in a few
paragraphs to give some faint idea of the impression which this city, a
boulder-stone left by the icedrift of the dissolving Empire amid the
green fields of modern civilisation, produces on the mind of a
traveller.

Ravenna stands in a great alluvial plain between the Apennines, the
Adriatic, and the Po. The fine mud, which has been for centuries poured
over the land by the streams descending from the mountains, has now
silted up her harbour, and Classis, the maritime suburb of Ravenna,
which, in the days of Odovacar and Theodoric, was a busy sea port on the
Adriatic, now consists of one desolate church--magnificent in its
desolation--and two or three farm-buildings standing in the midst of a
lonely and fever-haunted rice-swamp. Between the city and the sea
stretches for miles the glorious pine-forest, now alas! cruelly maimed
by the hands of Nature and of Man, by the frost of one severe winter and
by the spades of the builders of a railway, but still preserving some
traces of its ancient beauty. Here it was that Theodoric pitched his
camp when for three weary years he blockaded his rival's last
stronghold, and here by the deep trench (_fossatum_), which he had dug
to guard that camp, he fought the last and not the least deadly of his
fights, when Odovacar made his desperate sortie from the famine-stricken
town. Memories of a gentler kind, but still not wanting in sadness, now
cluster round the solemn avenues of the Pineta. There we still seem to
see Dante wandering, framing his lay of the "selva oscura", through
which lay his path to the unseen world, and ever looking in vain for the
arrival of the messenger who should summon him back to ungrateful
Florence. There, in Boccaccio's story, a maiden's hapless ghost is for
ever pursued through the woods by "the spectre-huntsman", Guido
Cavalcanti, whom her cruelty had driven to suicide. And there, in our
fathers' days, rode Byron, like Dante, an exile, if self-exiled, from
his country, and feeding on bitter remembrances of past praise and
present blame, both too lightly bestowed by his countrymen.

We leave the pine-wood and the desolate-looking rice-fields, we cross
over the sluggish streams--Ronco and Montone--and we stand in the
streets of historic Ravenna. Our first thoughts are all of
disappointment. There is none of the trim beauty of a modern city, nor,
as we at first think, is there any of the endless picturesqueness of a
well-preserved mediaeval city. We look in vain for any building like
Giotto's Campanile at Florence, for any space like that noble,
crescent-shaped Forum, full of memories of the Middle Ages, the Piazzo
del Campo of Siena. We see some strange but not altogether beautiful
bell-towers and one or two brown cupolas breaking the sky-line, but that
seems to be all, and our first feeling as I have said, is one of
disappointment. But when we enter the churches, if we have leisure to
study, them, if we can let their spirit mingle with our spirits, if we
can quietly ask them what they have to tell us of the Past, all
disappointment vanishes. For Ravenna is to those who will study her
attentively a very Pompeii of the fifth century, telling us as much
concerning those years of the falling Empire and the rising Mediaeval
Church as Pompeii can tell us of the social life of the Romans in the
days of triumphant Paganism.

Not that the record is by any means perfect. Many leaves have been torn
out of the book by the childish conceit of recent centuries, which
vainly imagined that they could write something instead, which any
mortal would now care to read. The destroying hand of the so-called
_Renaissance_ has passed over these churches, defacing sometimes the
chancel, sometimes the nave. One of the most interesting of the churches
of Ravenna[120] has "the cupola disfigured by wretched paintings which
mislead the eye in following the lines of the building". Another[121]
has its apse covered with those gilt spangles and clouds and cherubs
which were the eighteenth century's ideal of impressive religious art.
The Duomo, which should have been one of the mosf interesting of all the
monuments of Ravenna, was almost entirely rebuilt in the last century,
and is now scarcely worth visiting. Still, enough remains in the
un-restored churches of Ravenna to captivate the attention of every
student of history and every lover of early Christian art. It is only
necessary to shut our eyes to the vapid and tasteless work of recent
embellishers, as we should close our ears to the whispers of vulgar
gossipers while listening to some noble and entrancing piece of sacred
music.

[Footnote 120: S. Vitale. The quotation is from Prof. Freeman,
"Historical and Architectural Sketches", p. 53.]

[Footnote 121: S. Apollinare Dentro.]

Thus concentrating our attention on that which is really interesting and
venerable in these churches, while we admire their long colonnades,
their skilful use of ancient columns--some of which may probably have
adorned the temples of Olympian deities in the days of the
Emperors,--and the exceedingly rich and beautiful new forms of capitals,
of a design quite unknown to Vitruvius, which the genius of Romanesque
artists has invented, we find that our chief interest is derived from
the mosaics with which these churches were once so lavishly adorned.
Mosaic, as is well-known, is the most permanent of all the processes of
decorative art. Fresco must fade sooner or later, and where there is any
tendency to damp, it fades with cruel rapidity. Oil painting on canvas
changes its tone in the long course of years, and the boundary line
between cleaning and repainting is difficult to observe. But the
fragments out of which the mosaic picture is formed, having been already
passed through the fire, will keep their colour for centuries, we might
probably say for millenniums. Damp injures them not, except by lessening
the cement with which they are fastened to the wall, and therefore when
restore tion of a mosaic picture becomes necessary, a really
conscientious restorer can always reproduce the picture with precisely
the same form and colour which it had when the last stone was inserted
by the original artist. And thus, when we visit Ravenna, we have the
satisfaction of feeling that we are (in many cases) looking upon the
very same picture which was gazed upon by the contemporaries of
Theodoric. Portraits of Theodoric himself, unfortunately we have none;
but we have two absolutely contemporary portraits of Justinian, the
overturner of his kingdom, and one of Justinian's wife, the celebrated
Theodora. These pictures, it is interesting to remember, were
considerably older when Cimabue found Giotto in the sheepfolds drawing
sheep upon a tile, than any picture of Cimabue's or Giotto's is at the
present time.

Let us enter the church which is now called "S. Apollinare within the
Walls", but which in the time of Theodoric was called the Church of S.
Martin, often with the addition "de Caelo Aureo", on account of the
beautiful gilded ceiling which distinguished it from the other basilicas
of Ravenna. This church was built by order of Theodoric, who apparently
intended it to be his own royal chapel. Probably, therefore, the great
Ostrogoth many a time saw "the Divine mysteries" celebrated here by
bishops and priests of the Arian communion. Two long colonnades fill the
nave of the church. The columns are classical, with Corinthian capitals,
and are perhaps brought from some older building. A peculiarity of the
architecture consists in the high abacus--a frustum of an inverted
pyramid--which is interposed between the capital of the column and the
arch that springs from it, as if to give greater height than the columns
alone would afford. Such in its main features was the Church of "St.
Martin of the Golden Heaven", when Theodoric worshipped under its
gorgeous roof. But its chief adornment, the feature which makes more
impression on the beholder than anything else in Ravenna, was added
after Theodoric's death, yet not so long after but that it may be
suitably alluded to here as a specimen of the style of decoration which
his eyes must have been wont to look upon. About the year 560, after the
downfall of the Gothic monarchy, Agnellus, the Catholic Bishop of
Ravenna, "reconciled" this church, that is, re-consecrated it for the
performance of worship by orthodox priests, and in doing so adorned the
attics of the nave immediately above the colonnades with two remarkable
mosaic friezes, each representing a long procession.

On the north wall of the church we behold a procession of Virgin
Martyrs. They are twenty-four in number, a little larger than life, and
are chiefly those maidens who suffered in the terrible persecution of
Diocletian. The place from which they start is a seaport town with ships
entering the harbour, domes and columns and arcades showing over the
walls of the city. An inscription tells us that we have here represented
the city of Classis, the seaport of Ravenna. By the time that we have
reached the last figure in this long procession we are almost at the
east end of the nave. Here we see the Virgin-mother throned in glory
with the infant Jesus on her lap, and two angels on each side of her.
But between the procession and the throne is interposed the group of the
three Wise Men, in bright-coloured raiment, with tiara-like crowns upon
their heads, stooping forward as if with eager haste[122] to present
their various oblations to the Divine Child.

[Footnote 122: So Milton in his "Ode on the Nativity":

"See how from far along the Eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet.
Oh run, present them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at His blessed feet".]

On the right, or south wall of the church, a similar procession of
martyred men, twenty-six in number, seems to move along, in all the
majesty of suffering, bearing their crowns of martyrdom as offerings to
the Redeemer. The Christ is here not an infant but a full-grown man, the
Man of Sorrows, His head encircled with a nimbus, and two angels are
standing on either side. The martyr-procession starts from a building,
with pediment above and three arches resting upon pillars below. The
intervals between the pillars are partly filled with curtains looped up
in a curious fashion and with bright purple spots upon them. An
inscription on this building tells us that it is PALATIUM, that is
Theodoric's palace at Ravenna.

In both these processions the representation is, of course, far from the
perfection of Art. Both the faces and the figures have a certain
stiffness, partly due to the very nature of mosaic-work. There is also a
sort of child-like simplicity in the treatment, especially of the female
figures, which an unsympathetic critic would call grotesque. But, I
think, most beholders feel that there is something indescribably solemn
in these two great mosaic pictures in S. Apollinare Dentro. From the
glaring, commonplace Italian town with its police-notices and its
proclamation of the number of votes given to the government of Vittorio
Emmanuele, you step into the grateful shade of the church and find
yourself transported into the sixth century after Christ. You are
looking on the faces of the men and maidens who suffered death with
torture rather than deny their Lord. For thirteen centuries those two
processions have seemed to be moving on upon the walls of the basilica,
and another ceaseless procession of worshippers, Goths, Byzantines,
Lombards, Franks, Italians, has been in reality moving on beneath them
to the grave. And then you remind yourself that when the artist sketched
those figures on the walls, he was separated by no longer interval than
three long lives would have bridged over, from the days of the
persecution itself, that there were still men living on the earth who
worshipped the Olympian Jupiter, and that the name of Mohammed, son of
Abdallah, was unknown in the world. So, as you gaze, the telescope of
the historic imagination does its work, and the far-off centuries become
near.

One or two other Arian churches built during Theodoric's reign in the
northern suburb of the city have now entirely disappeared. There still
remains, however, the church which Theodoric seems to have built as the
cathedral of the Arian community, while leaving the old metropolitan
church (Ecclesia Ursiana, now the Duomo) as the cathedral of the
Catholics. This Arian cathedral was dedicated to St. Theodore, but has
in later ages been better known as the church of the Holy Spirit.
Tasteless restoration has robbed it of the mosaics which it doubtless
once possessed, but it has preserved its fine colonnade consisting of
fourteen columns of dark green marble with Corinthian capitals, whose
somewhat unequal height seems to show that they, like so many of their
sisters, have been brought from some other building, where they have
once perhaps served other gods.

Through the court-yard of the Church of San Spirito, we approach a
little octagonal building known both as the Oratory of S. Maria in
Cosmedia and as the Arian Baptistery. The great octagonal font, which
once stood in the centre of the building, has disappeared, but we can
easily reconstruct it in our imaginations from the similar one which
still remains in the Catholic Baptistery. The interest of this building
consists in the mosaics of its cupola. On the disk, in the centre, is
represented the Baptism of Christ. The Saviour stands, immersed up to
His loins, in the Jordan, whose water flowing past Him is depicted with
a quaint realism. The Baptist stands on His left side and holds one hand
over His head. On the right of the Saviour stands an old man, who is
generally said to represent the River-god, and the reed in his hand, the
urn, from which water gushes, under his arms, certainly seem to favour
this supposition. But in order to avoid so strange a medley of
Christianity and heathenism it has been suggested that the figure may be
meant for Moses, and in confirmation of this theory some keen-eyed
beholders have thought they perceived the symbolical horned rays
proceeding from each side of the old man's forehead.

Round this central disk are seen the figures of the twelve Apostles.
They are divided into two bands of six each, who seem marching, with
crowns in their hands, towards a throne covered with a veil and a
cushion, on which rests a cross blazing with jewels. St. Peter stands on
the right of the throne, St. Paul on the left; and these two Apostles
carry instead of crowns, the one the usual keys, and the other two rolls
of parchment. The interest of these figures, though they have something
of the stern majesty of early mosaic-work, is somewhat lessened by the
fact that they have undergone considerable restoration. It is suggested,
I know not whether on sufficient grounds, that the figures of the
Apostles were added when the Baptistery was "reconciled" to the Catholic
worship after the overthrow of the Gothic dominion.

Two more buildings at Ravenna which are connected with the name of
Theodoric require to be noticed by us,--his Palace and his Tomb. The
story of his Tomb, however, will be best told when his reign is ended.
As for the Palace, which once occupied a large space in the eastern
quarter of the city, we have seen that there is a representation of it
in mosaic on the walls of S. Apollinare Dentro. Closely adjoining that
church, and facing the modern Corso Garibaldi, is a wall about five and
twenty feet high, built of square brick-tiles, which has in its upper
storey one large and six small arched recesses, the arches resting on
columns. Only the front is ancient--it is admitted that the building
behind it is modern. Low down in the wall, so low that the citizens of
Ravenna, in passing, brush it with their sleeves, is a bath-shaped
vessel of porphyry, which in the days of archaeological ignorance used
to be shown to strangers as "the coffin of Theodoric", but the fact is
that its history and its purpose are entirely unknown.

This shell of a building is called in the Ravenna Guide-books "the
Palace of Theodoric". Experts are not yet agreed on the question whether
its architectural features justify us in referring it to the sixth
century, though all agree that it does not belong to a much later
age.[123] It does not agree with the representation of the _Palatium_ in
the Church of S. Apollinare Dentro, and if it have anything whatever to
do with it, it is probably not the main front, nor even any very
important feature of the spacious palace, which, as we are told by the
local historians,[124] and learn from inscriptions, was surrounded with
porticoes, adorned with the most precious mosaics, divided into several
_triclinia_, surmounted by a tower which was considered one of the most
magnificent of the king's buildings, and surrounded with pleasant and
fruitful gardens, planted on ground which had been reclaimed from the
morass.[125] But practically almost all the monuments of the
Ostrogothic hero except his tomb and the three churches already
described, have vanished from Ravenna. Would that we could have seen the
great mosaic which once adorned the pediment of his palace. There
Theodoric stood, clad in mail, with spear and shield. On his left was a
female figure representing the City of Rome, also with a spear in her
hand and her head armed with a helmet, while towards his right Ravenna
seemed speeding with one foot on the land and the other on the sea. How
this great mosaic perished is not made clear to us. But there was also
an equestrian statue of Theodoric raised on a pyramid six cubits high.
Horse and rider were both of brass, "covered with yellow gold", and the
king here too had his buckler on his left arm, while the right,
extended, pointed a lance at an invisible foe.

[Footnote 123: Gally Knight ("Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy", i.,
7) seems to accept it without hesitation as belonging to the age of
Theodoric. Freeman ("Historical, etc., Sketches", p. 47) expresses
considerable doubt: "The works of Theodoric are Roman; this palace is
not Roman but Romanesque, though undoubtedly a very early form of
Romanesque".]

[Footnote 124: Agnellus and others, as quoted by Corrado Ricci, "Ravenna
ei suoi Dintorni", p. 139. I cannot verify all Ricci's quotations, but
take the result of them on his authority.]

[Footnote 125: An inscription quoted by Ricci tells us this:

REX THEODORICUVS FAVENTE
DEO ET BELLO GLORIOSVS ET OTIO.
FABRICIIS SVIS AMoeNA CONIVINGENS
STERILI PALVDE SICCATA
HOS HORTOS SVAVI POMORVM
FoeCVNDITATE DITAVIT.]

This statue was carried off from Ravenna, probably by the Frankish
Emperor Charles, to adorn his capital at Aachen, and it was still to be
seen there when Agnellus wrote his ecclesiastical history of Ravenna,
three hundred years after the death of Theodoric.

[Illustration: COIN OF THE GOTHIC KINGDOM IN ITALY.]

[Illustration]




CHAPTER XIII.


BOETHIUS,

Clouds in the horizon--Anxiety as to the succession--Death of Eutharic,
son-in-law of Theodoric--His son Athalaric proclaimed as Theodoric's
heir--Pope and Emperor reconciled--Anti-Jewish riot at Ravenna--Strained
relations of Theodoric and his Catholic subjects--Leaders of the Roman
party--Boethius and Symmachus--Break-down of the Arian leagues--Cyprian
accuses Albinus of treason--Boethius, interposing, is included in the
charge--His trial, condemnation, and death--The "Consolation of
Philosophy".


Hithero the career of Theodoric has been one of almost unbroken
prosperity, and the reader who has followed his history has perhaps
grown somewhat weary of the monotonous repetition of the praises of his
mildness and his equity. Unfortunately he will be thus wearied no
longer. The sun of the great Ostrogoth set in sorrow, and what was worse
than in sorrow, in deeds of hasty wrath and cruel injustice, which lost
him the hearts of the majority of his subjects and which have dimmed his
fair fame with posterity.

Many causes combined to sadden and depress the king's heart, as he felt
old age creeping upon him. Providence had not blessed him with a son;
and while his younger rival, Clovis, left four martial sons to defend
(and also to partition) his newly formed kingdom, Theodoric's daughter
Amalasuentha was the only child born of his marriage with Clovis'
sister.

In order to provide himself with a male heir (for the customs of the
Goths did not favour, if they did not actually exclude, female
sovereignty), Theodoric summoned to his court a distant relative, a
young man named Eutharic, descended from the mighty Hermanric, who was
at the time living in Spain. Eutharic, who was well reported of for
bodily vigour and for statesmanlike ability, came to the Ostrogothic
court, married Amalasuentha (515), four years afterwards received the
honour of a consulship, which he held along with the Emperor Justin, and
exhibited games and combats of wild beasts to the populace of Rome and
Ravenna on a scale of unsurpassed magnificence. But he died, probably
soon after his consulship, leaving two children--a boy and a girl,--and
thus Theodoric's hope of bequeathing his crown to a mature and masculine
heir was disappointed. Still, however, he would not propose a female
ruler to his old Gothic comrades; and the little grandson, Athalaric,
though under ten years of age, was solemnly presented by him to an
assembly of Gothic counts and the nobles of the nation as their king.

The proclamation of Athalaric was made when the king felt that he should
shortly depart this life, probably in the summer of 526. I have
mentioned it here in order to complete my statement as to the succession
to the throne, but we will now return to an earlier period-to the events
which immediately followed Eutharic's consulship. Coming as he did from
Spain, the Visigothic lords of which were still an aristocracy of bitter
Arians in the midst of a cowed but Catholic Roman population, Eutharic,
who, as we are expressly told, "was too harsh and hostile to the
Catholic faith", may have to some extent swayed the mind of his
father-in-law away from its calm balance of even-handed justice between
the rival Churches. But the state of affairs at Constantinople exercised
a yet more powerful influence. Anastasius, who, though no Arian, had
during his long reign been always in an attitude of hostility towards
the Papal See, was now dead, and had been succeeded by Justin. This man,
a soldier of fortune, who had as a lad tramped down from the Macedonian
highlands into the capital, with a wallet of biscuit over his shoulder
for his only property, had risen, by his soldierly qualities, to the
position of Count of the Guardsmen, and by a judicious distribution of
gold among the soldiers--gold which was not his own, but had been
entrusted to him for safe-keeping,--he won for himself the diadem, and
for his nephew,[126] as it turned out, the opportunity of making his
name forever memorable in history. Justin was absolutely
illiterate--the story about the stencilled signature is told of him as
well as of Theodoric,--but he was strictly orthodox, and his heart was
set on a reconciliation with the Roman See. This measure was also viewed
with favour by the majority of the populace of Constantinople, with whom
the heterodoxy of Anastasius had become decidedly unpopular. Thus the
negotiations for a settlement of the dispute went prosperously forward.
The anathemas which were insisted upon by the Roman pontiff were soon
conceded, the names of Zeno, of Anastasius, and of five Patriarchs of
Constantinople who had dared to dissent from the Roman See were struck
out of the "Diptychs" (or lists of those men, living or dead, whom the
Church regarded as belonging to her communion); and thus the first great
schism between the Eastern and Western Churches--a schism which had
lasted for thirty-five years--was ended.

[Footnote 126: Justinian.]

It was probably foreseen by the statesmen of Ravenna that this
reconciliation between Pope and Emperor, a reconciliation which had been
celebrated by the enthusiastic shout of the multitude in the great
church of the Divine Wisdom at Constantinople, would sooner or later
bring trouble to Theodoric's Arian fellow-worshippers. In point of fact,
however, an interval of nearly six years elapsed before any actual
persecution of the Arians of the Empire was attempted. The first cause
of alienation between the Ostrogothic king and his Catholic subjects
seems to have arisen in connection with the Jews. Theodoric, on account
of some fear of invasion by the barbarians beyond the Alps, was
dwelling at Verona. That city, the scene of his most desperate battle
with Odovacar, commanding as it does the valley of the Adige and the
road by the Brenner Pass into the Tyrol, was probably looked upon by
Theodoric as the key of north-eastern Italy, and when there was any
danger of invasion he preferred to hold his court there rather than in
the safer but less convenient Ravenna. There too he may probably have
often received the ambassadors of the Northern nations, who went back to
their homes with those stories of the might and majesty of the
Ostrogothic king which made "Dietrich of Bern" (Theodoric of Verona) a
name of wonder and a theme of romance to many generations of German
minstrels. While Theodoric was dwelling in the city of the Adige,
tidings came to him, apparently from his son-in-law Eutharic, whom he
had left in charge at Ravenna, that the whole city was in an uproar. The
Jews, of whom there was evidently a considerable number, were accused of
having made sport of the Christian rite of baptism by throwing one
another into one of the two muddy rivers of Ravenna, and also, in some
way not described to us, to have mocked at the supper of the Lord.[127]
The Christian populace of the city were excited to such madness by these
rumours that they broke out into rioting, which neither the Gothic
vicegerent, Eutharic, nor their own bishop, Peter III., was able to
quell, and which did not cease till all the Jewish synagogues of the
city were laid in ashes.

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