Apollinare and its columns; the ten
great sarcophagi which stand about the church, three of which contain
the relics of archbishops of Ravenna; the curious tabernacle at the
end of the north aisle. But a whole morning, or for that matter a
whole day, is not too much to spend in this beautiful and deserted
sanctuary which bridges for us so many centuries and in which we are
made one with those who helped to establish the foundations of Europe.
XIV
RAVENNA IN THE MIDDLE AGE
The last great original work to be undertaken in Ravenna as the
capital of the empire in the West was the building and decoration of
the churches of S. Vitale and S. Apollinare in Classe. All the
Byzantine work that was done later in Ravenna is merely imitative, an
expression of failing power under the crushing disaster of the Lombard
invasion. When at last Aistulf in 751 made himself master of the
impregnable city, it ceased, and suddenly, to be a capital, and though
in 754 Pepin "restored" it to the papacy and established the pope
throughout the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, he by that act founded
the Papal States, whose capital of necessity was Rome.
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