For the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista
was not only founded in recompense for a miracle, but a miracle
attended its consecration. It seems that when the church was to be
consecrated no relic of S. John Evangelist was to be had. Therefore
the Augusta and her confessor gave themselves a whole night to prayer,
and suddenly there appeared to them S. John himself, vested like a
bishop with a thurible in his hand, with which he incensed the church.
Then when he came to the altar to incense it, and they would have
venerated him, he suddenly vanished, only leaving in the hand of the
Augusta one of his shoes. This legend, which is represented in relief
in the fourteenth-century doorway of S. Giovanni Evangelista, is also
the subject of a picture by Rondinelli of Ravenna in the Brera at
Milan.
[Footnote 3: See _supra_, p. 41.]
The church has, as I have said, been ruined by the rebuilding of 1747;
but there still remain the twenty-four columns of bigio antico with
their Roman capitals, which upheld the old basilica, and in the crypt
is the ancient high altar of the fifth century.
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