Thus Ravenna
found herself when Charlemagne had been crowned emperor in 800 little
more than a decaying provincial city, without authority or hope of
resurrection, and it is as a city of the provinces full only of
gigantic memories that she appears in the Middle Age and the
Renaissance and remains to our own day.
The appearance of Charlemagne, the resurrection of the empire in the
West, confirm and consolidate the misfortune of 751 in which indeed
she lost everything. But when we see the great Frank strip the
imperial palace of its marbles and mosaics it is as though the fate of
Ravenna had been expressed in some great ceremony and not by unworthy
hands. An emperor had set her up so high, an emperor had kept her
there so long; it was an emperor who, as in a last great rite, stript
her of her apparel and left her naked with her memories.
[Illustration: The Campanile of S. Apollinare]
Those memories, not only splendid and glorious, but gaunt and terrible
too, smoulder in her ruined heart as the fire may do in the ashes when
all that was living and glorious has been consumed.
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