Good afternoon and welcome to this book at lunchtime event on Ravana, Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe.
Written by Professor Judith Herron. My name is Wes Williams and I'm the director here at Torch Book.
At lunchtime, as regulars will know,
is Torture's flagship interdisciplinary event series taking the form of bite sized book discussions with a range of commentators?
Please do take a look at our website, a newsletter for the full programme for the rest of this term.
The book will be exploring today in a discussion chaired by Peter Frank Open, who is about to join us on screen,
explains and explores how the Adriatic city of Ravenna became both a meeting place for Greek,
Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures and something of a pivot point between East and West.
In arguing for the new understanding of the significance of Ravana,
Judith's book also argues that the fifth to a century should not be perceived as a time of decline from antiquity,
but rather, and in large part thanks to the rich culture of Byzantium as one of great creativity.
I'm delighted to welcome Judith Herion here today to speak about her book, along with Averil Cameron Conrad later.
And Peter Frank Compan, who, as I mentioned a minute ago, will be chairing the discussion.
In a second or two, I'll disappear from your screens and hand over to Peter, who will introduce the book more fully, and the rest of the panel.
This will be followed by a brief reading and discussion by Judith. And then our commentators will present their thoughts on the book coming at
it from their particular disciplines and starting the discussion going well,
then give Judith a chance to respond. All within this due to fill, of course,
have the chance to respond to some of the points raised before entering in the last stages
of today's hour into what we hope will be a discussion that includes questions from you,
the audience. So please do ensure that you add your questions to the Q&A as we go along.
All that's left for me to do then is to thank you all for coming and to introduce our chair.
Peter Frank Upon is professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he's also a senior research fellow at Wooster College,
and Stavros Niarchos, Foundation director of the Oxford Centre for Business and Research.
He works on the history of the Mediterranean, Russia, the Middle East, Persia, Iran, Central Asia and beyond,
with a key aspect of his work being the history of relations between Christianity and Islam.
His books, The Silk Road 2015 and the New Silk Road 2018 received huge acclaim.
He writes regularly for the international press, advises governments on geopolitics and is chair of this year's Kandal History PRISE.
Over to you then, Peter, I'll join you later when we come to the questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Wes, and thank all of you for joining us.
I'm sure, like I am your old desperate to hear the results of the presidential election,
but we won't know until the 15th of November who has won in Moldova where there's the runoff because of results being inconclusive so far.
So thank you all for joining us today. Torture is such an important parts of what we do in Oxford.
The Centre for Research into the Humanities as well said is the flagship for interdisciplinary work.
And so it's a great pleasure today to welcome Judith Herron, who is an old friend of latency,
the Byzantine studies out of the Oxford CENTAVO Byzantine research here in Oxford.
So it's a real thrill to get to come and talk about her important work on Ravella.
Judith Herron doesn't need any introduction, but she won the Heineken PRISE History,
which is the Dutch Nobel prise in 2016 for her pioneering work on the early mediaeval Mediterranean worlds and especially the role of Byzantium.
Also the influence of Islam and the significance of women.
She's the author of Byzantine Byzantium The Surprising Life of Mediaeval Empire Information Christendom,
Mediaeval Miscellany and Women in Purple Propounds.
Having worked in Birmingham, Paris, Munich assembled Princeton before becoming a progressive late antique Byzantine studies at King's College,
London, where she's now the Constantine Domantas visiting senior research fellow in the Department of Classics.
It's a joy to be joined by Prince Harry, but also by two friends and colleagues here in Oxford, England, both heavyweights who need no introduction.
Professor David Cameron was Warden of People College from much 94 to 2010 and before
was Professor of Lit was professor of late Antico Byzantine history at King's London,
where she was also the first director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies.
Professor Cameron was also, we found he chairman of the Oxford textbook Byzantine Research,
which some of you will know has had a fantastic tenure years since we were founded in 2010.
Professor Cameron is currently the professor, the president of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.
Cronut Lines is a colleague of mine. It was the college where he's associate professor history as tutor of history at Worcester.
He specialises in the religious and social history of blacks in Western late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, which is from about 300 to 700.
His current research project centres on celibacy and the professionalisation of the priesthood in the so-called vulnerable church of the 10th century.
He is the author of Authority and Scepticism From Augustine to Gregory, the Great and co-editor of England and the Continent in the 10th Century.
So first we'll ask Professor Aaron to talk about about Rabiner capital, the crucible of Europe.
And then I'd like to bring in Professor Cameroons and Response and Professor Litsa.
After that, we'll then have a discussion amongst the four of us. But if you have questions, please put them in the Q&A box.
They're trying to get through to them as quickly as we can before finishing,
but we control applauds as Professor Harold makes our way to keyboards and her camera.
It's a great pleasure to welcome you to talk about a reminder to us today.
Thank you very much, Peter. It's a great joy to be here.
And as I suggested, I shall read from the concluding pages of the book, which I hope will be give us a taste of what's to come.
I pick up the point at the point where. As is generally agreed, cities in the mediaeval West declined in the post Roman period.
The exception was Ravana. The source of its flourishing was the eastern Roman Empire,
which renewed and consolidated its authority not only in the capital but across its provinces,
where new palaces, churches, aqueducts, paths and charitable institutions surpassed the monuments of ancient Rome.
As Rome became depopulated, Constantinople expanded.
Ravana shared in this expansion as hilarious, Gallop, Placita and local bishops patronised new buildings,
making it an outstanding exception to the degeneration of most classical cities and settlements.
With Constantinople approval, Theodoric integrated Eastern influence into Revengers Christian Gothic administration that
made the king more Roman the most Romans while he conformed to Gothic ideas of kingship.
He brought to the West a grasp of imperial traditions that consolidated a very particular combination of elements,
an understanding of the importance of law and the administration of justice and acknowledgement of the differences in Christian belief,
which made a degree of toleration, essential respect for superior Greek education,
and a capacity to collaborate with the best qualified and most skilled individuals who could assist his ambitions.
Through these features, observed and adopted in the East,
Theodoric oversaw the symbiosis of Germanic and Roman elements in the West, which would be continued by the XRX thereafter.
As well as this great Church of Santa pulling out Inuvo,
the Order X mausoleum is a telling witness to this integration of barbarian and imperial Roman qualities.
Yeah, the king who are dominated the West governing in the name of Constantinople, had constructed a domed to fit for an emperor.
Visitors even today can marvel at the single slab of history and marble that forms the roof.
How on earth did they raise it in the early 6th century? And once installed.
How did it survive? Most early Christian buildings that remain standing today do so because they have been continuously occupied,
renovated and kept in use as sacred buildings in Ravenna, often by monastic communities.
The more secular palaces, residences, assembly halls, houses and trading places that make up mediæval set of settlements rarely retain such attention.
We're often pillaged for building material and then replaced by granda, better constructed, more fashionable or serviceable edifices.
At some date, Theodoric Tomb was transformed from its funereal function into a memory.
And this kept it in use. But its original purpose was not forgotten, and the king's fame was preserved in the huge marble sarcophagus still visible.
In other Western regions,
a similar symbiosis occurred from Visigoth in Spain to the Anglo-Saxon Frankish and Burgundian kingdoms, where court rituals.
Imperial costume and patent's of patronage were imitated.
But in northeast Italy, the imperial framework provided by the eastern capital in Constantinople requires particular emphasis,
for without Byzantium there would have been no Western Europe.
After the Arab conquests of the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean,
Constantinople provided the shield that excluded Islam from further advances into the West in 732.
Charles Martels victory at Party A also frustrated Omayyad expansion north of the Pyrenees.
But this was an opportunist raid seeking treasure,
not the full scale mobilisation by land and sea that fell upon but failed to take the Queen City in seven 18.
The significance of Constantinople in the transformation of Western Europe was not merely that of an outward shield.
However, the imperial framework exercised a cultural hegemony that facilitated a fusion of non imperial forces
and transmitted a variation of its own policy of acculturation to the West via the Gothic King,
Theodoric, the bishops and the XRX through its capital in Ravana.
The Empire sustained the ideal of efficient government sanctioned by law within the West itself in multiple ways.
Its benefits sanctioned by both excuse me,
its benefits commanded respect and a tinge of admiration for the Eastern emperors, even amongst the most hostile enemies.
And in Italy, an underlying loyalty to Constantinople persisted through the sixth century and beyond.
The influence of Byzantium was diffused, especially through Ravana.
The city acted as an essential catalyst to the development of a society that would eventually outstrip it.
In this way, the Christianised newsroom was a constant built in inspiration for the powers that took over in the West.
Charlemagne has traditionally been hailed in al Gwyn's phrase as the father of Europe, as if he acted alone.
But the foundations of Western Christendom that he exemplified were laid in Ravana,
whose rulers XRX and bishops, scholars, doctors, lawyers, Mosiah assists and traitors Roman Angoff.
Later, Greek and Lombard forged the first European city.
Fantastic. Thank you, Judith. It's a magisterial way to end a book that has been both widely and universally praised in in the in the press.
I mean, I just. Could you develop a little bit more. This idea that without Byzantium, there would be no Western Europe?
I think that comes as a shock to many Western mediaevalists or so many listeners who think that Europe means France, Italy, Germany and Iberia.
What role does Byzantine fit within the seeding of Ravenna?
And then why? Why, why is it right to claim the development dependents of Western European society back on to Constantinople?
I think people generally forget that the Mediterranean world was one, it was united.
It was united by the sea. Even after the Arab conquests, it remained a very, very significant unifying factor.
And within that world, the capital of the Roman Empire was in Constantinople,
and that was recognised by nearly everybody who had to deal with imperial forces and with the influence of Roman law,
Roman concepts of architecture, a great mout multitude of features of Roman culture which had been transposed to Constantinople.
Constantinople, I think was the greatest achievement of the Roman Empire.
In some ways, the construction of a new capital in the east Mediterranean that dominated not just that area, but the entire world.
And that unity meant that there was constant coming and going and transmission of ideas and individuals and forces across the Mediterranean,
not just at the behest of Constantinople, of course, but very much dominated by its imperial force and power.
And I think it's very important to remember that in this in United World, of course, there were hostile forces, there were many,
many opponents of Constantinople, but there was a deference and an understanding of the role that Constantinople played.
And I suspect that what we see in Ravenna is have I had not expected to find it,
but it is so pronounced that you get a very clear indication of the way in which Ravana
linked the two halves of the Mediterranean world and that it is its position as a pivot,
as a link between the two halves, gave it a very specific constant in a polished and flavour.
And in this way, I would argue, the influence of the East Mediterranean continues to flow into the west and over the Alps to northern Europe,
where, after all, the Frankish King, Clovis decided to celebrate his rise to power by assuming the title patrician and holding
races and entering Paris in a chariot scattering gold coin as if he was an emperor.
And those are the ways in which you can see very clearly that there was a very dominant ideology of power.
And this was manifested in Ravenna by the authorities sent from Constantinople after 540 80.
The people I asked Professor Cameron for comment.
I mean, what one thing that I think is interesting about Rabina is would you say something about where does it come from?
What what why does Remender blossom from from nothing?
And where does it go? And I don't mean the metaphorical revenge. I mean the actual revenge.
Where does Ravana spring from and why does it not take on the trajectory of Constantinople or Rome or other big cities that carry on?
How to explain this efflorescence of a three 300 year periods? What did you hear in the city?
Well, clearly, it drew on its history as a maritime port, the most important port in the Adriatic.
Julius Caesar had decided that it would be the base for the eastern Mediterranean fleet.
And seen him near Rome was to be the base for the western Mediterranean beach.
And a very large port had been constructed on an inland lake where 250 ships could be protected.
And there really aren't other ports down the Italian coast of the Adriatic.
It's a very long sandy shore, extending with very little harbour protective harbour space.
So Ravenna, well through its port classic, which was linked to the city,
became the base for shipbuilding, for training navies, for sailing, for maritime activities.
And from that history of engagement in the sea, on the sea, Ravana drew a great deal of its importance and status.
But it had also been recognised as a great city with strong walls.
And the Emperor Claudius had built a very elegant quarter. Outré are in the walls, a sort of major ceremonial entrance.
And it had access to the river through the River Po to the Po Valley.
And therefore good transport, river transport up to middle lan.
And I think the main reason why it became it flourished so well was that when the emperors decided they couldn't
actually defend the city of Milan from barbarian attack and Annoyance decided that he would moved her event.
Now it became a centre of imperial power, surrounded in this very marshy area of the estuary,
which meant that it was quite difficult to approach by land and sieges were generally unsuccessful.
And it managed to sustain its imperial ideology within what had been a smaller centre, but which grew and expanded.
Of course, as soon as the Imperial Court arrived,
because all the other followers of the court arrived with it and huge numbers of bureaucrats and military contingents and so on.
So it expanded very rapidly. And then at the point where it finally.
Gave up this imperial role. We could put it perhaps around the time of Charlemagne because the Carolingian
conquest in STATT established new a new northern governorship in in Ravana,
which was, of course, paralleled in many other Italian cities where the current engines established Garzon's cultural centres.
Pavia was obviously a very important centre for the Lombards and for Charles.
And in a way, it became one of many cities rather than the source of urban renewal and sustained in urban culture.
But its its main role past to Venice very gradually through the development of a Venice, is the great maritime trading centre,
which gradually replaced ravenous harbour as its silted up, always allowed to silt up big,
partly because the Venetians had indeed adopted that role,
taken it over and transformed it into a very much larger connexion through their determination to trade
with the Arab states and through Alexandria and these Mediterranean ports with places much further east.
So in a way, the handover to Venice, which was, of course, not at all conceived as a handover by Ravana,
gave that it gave Venice the key role which Ravana had played previously.
One of the things you do so elegantly in the book is to show that Tabora Burnett is the beneficiary of a robe and Milan, the Western seizures,
cardiac arrest of the invasion's equally that pass on being passed on to Charlamagne halogens
and also to Bennett since the golden period for Ravenna is in response to specific circumstance.
And this long continuity, I think, is why the case you make of Hobbit's is the crucible of Europe.
I know that Colorado is going to talk about the carnage. It's an Charlamagne, a Professor Cameron Abel,
would you like to come in and join us to talk to come with a response to what you just spoken about and about the book itself?
Yes, thank you. Well, first of all, thank you, Judith, for such a lovely book. It's marvellous to have an opportunity to celebrate it.
Why is it important? Well, it gives us a different picture for Havana.
I think that's the important thing about it. And Rabiner, as you say, was an imperial city.
It was the capital in the first half century of the western Roman Empire.
It became the seat of Fielder Exit Goss, and then it became an imperial soccer again.
And it was the the sort of the the centre for Byzantium in Italy.
I think the first of all, Ravana is not just about its mosaics.
Most of us or many of us will have been to a better and seen them, and they are absolutely wonderful, marvellous.
But what you've given them this book is a history over several centuries with change and development.
And I think the history of the city is not told in an accessible way.
And that's what you've done in the book, that the mosaics are absolutely beautiful and wonderful.
Of course they are. And the buildings are in model shape now. Form visits them.
But it's this long history as an administrative centre, an imperial centre,
a royal capital and a very with a very mixed population, which I think is very interesting.
And to me, one of the fascinating things about Ravana is that it has this collection of papyri,
of evidence, of letters and wills and documents on papyrus,
and they're preserved from the late six century onwards because of, I suppose, of the climate and the witness and the Marché character there.
Somehow we have this power, which we don't have from other Italian cities,
and they tell us about the population of the people and their lives, the property, the legal's quarrels with each other.
It's about women, slaves, free people, military, because there was a military presence.
Women, men and and their names are fascinating.
As you bring out in the book the names, some of the names are still Gothic.
Some of the names are Latin because they're Roman. Some of them are mixed.
So we have this vibrant sense of a living community with personal access to some of its citizens.
And that's almost unparalleled except in Egypt in the period.
So I think that's really exciting to go back to the mosaics.
Probably the most iconic picture we have of Justinian and Theodora,
the emperor and empress of Byzantium in the sixth century is in the church of San Bertoli.
But some bertoli was started under the ostracods already.
It wasn't built by Justinian. Most people think it was built by Justinian. It was started under the gods.
It became Byzantine. It was built and finished, rather, while the war fought by Justinian to reconquer Italy was still going on.
And it I think it's an extraordinary, very, very complex building and which is also not often brought out.
But your sort of sense of organic development gives it the perspective.
And I'm very struck also at something you mention that this these buildings and these churches were remodelled to suit the different administrations.
So the great church, the Palace Church of Theodoric, the Strogoff was remodelled once the Byzantine said won the war in Italy.
And the the actual depiction of Theodorakis palace was removed, but it still remained and became absolutely central for the Byzantine administration.
So it's it's a really organic story that you can tell.
And you have some interesting perspectives. For instance, you say that some Rivendell was acted upon.
It didn't it wasn't an agent so much. It was acted upon from outside.
It became the seat of the Byzantine administration in Italy.
It didn't, which included Rome, incidentally, from the late sixth century onwards.
And then you also say it could, after all, have been the Venice of its day.
But it didn't manage to achieve that. And you just explained a bit why that was that that that port, as had been so important, silted up.
Religion is important. The archbishop prick's of Ravenna became important in the 7th century.
But that was a time when in Rome, which was in a way much less important than Ravella at that time.
Rome in Rome, the popes of this century were mainly Greek in origin.
Just really extraordinary. So there's so many links and so many so many complications here.
And then in your conclusion, which you you you gave us, you link it in a very, very interesting way with your first book,
The Formation of Christian Christendom, because in that book, I'm afraid I can't remember the date of publication now.
But you can tell us probably anyway, in that first book,
you you you wrote about this period during if when we were probably now call it
the transition from late antiquity to the Middle Ages or as many people would.
But you prefer the term Christendom. You don't use the term late antiquity very much.
And I think that's you make explicit that link with your first book.
And it's it's a very engaging to find a scholar doing that since.
So it obviously means that you're coming. I won't say full circle.
That wouldn't be that wouldn't be fair.
But you are you are coming back and you're making your early work relevant and to live again in what you've written about Ravana.
So and finally then you make this move to the West, which is more comrade's territory than this is mine.
But I think it's a very important book because it gives us another perspective on developments
between Byzantium and the West in that crucial period after they had just done it.
What what people call the reconquest didn't last very long. In the sixth century into that period when Charlemagne begins to dominate.
So I loved it. Thank you. Fantastic.
That's wonderful, April and filled with insights.
As usual, Conrad. You want to take us on later towards the end of rebellion into the Carolingian Charlamagne at what what,
what, what Ravana means from a Western perspective.
So I'm sorry, I'm obviously the boorish Westerner, the Byzantine face, and I'm happy to play that part.
I didn't make it to Havana till 2017. Didn't know what to expect.
Don't really like high culture. But it blew me away.
And I own. And I have to. You mean you go to these unprepossessing brick buildings and then you are literally in in in another world.
And so it's an equally boys to kind of gawping at the city still.
And I'm aware that I mean, it's harder to make it to Havana right now.
And Judith, New right in the introduction, if you've never visited,
you've missed amazing experience and extraordinary delight, which this book aims to recreate.
And you can't have known when you wrote those words. What we will be looking at now and you've given us, I think,
really a pilgrim guide in in the age of Kobe, for which we have so many reasons to be thankful.
And I'm reaching here to draw waste back into discussion, given his work on pilgrimage.
And I hope he tells us about the Rasmus character, Mr. Stay Home.
You manage Imus, you know, who is a hit figure for our age.
And what I learnt from West is because so is the programme guides.
Necessarily meditate about the powers of representation and their limits so that the way that a book can take us to a place.
But also how it it can't and how and how it does something will always fall short.
And so that's how that's really how I. I read you that in you you meditate throughout the whole book about the power of images and they've
all set them in the kind of the central one is the image of Justinian and Theodore and Sam Vitale.
And they never visited the city. They were never there. So it's an astonishing recreation of of imperial presence.
You're a power to distance.
I mean, that should control would contend for the greatest achievement of kind of how how to be a ruler over a place when you never go there.
Which is so difficult in a pre modern context. And that's the image which is an I entirely by this, which Charlamagne Boyish Westerner visiting.
He doesn't know how to be an emperor until he goes inside that church.
And then he says, that's what I'm gonna do. And as an issue, is it your conclusion kind of says that you're right.
I mean, what you've really done amongst many things is to is to kind of make.
And you refer to him or a Perens great dictum without Muhammed Charlamagne would have been impossible.
I mean, he argues that in general terms, without the conquest of Islam, there wouldn't have been NW in Europe, would've been thrown back on its own.
Resources will keep looking at the Mediterranean.
But you've shown us how, you know, without Ravana, Charlemagne would have been impossible in directly and intimately.
He had no script about how to be a ruler until he saw those mosaics.
And then he went off in data. And I said, I think that's that's very compelling.
It's a story. At the same time. And in some ways, my favourite thing about the book is the sadness, the undertow of what we've lost.
We don't know, despite. These mosaics, we know the name of none of the people who made them, you emphasised at the beginning.
We don't have the Ravana Annells exception to Canpages some 10th century mayors like Manscape.
We don't have the Chronicle of Ravana, the 9th century or 9th century forebear Agnel, US, who kind of writes the history of the city.
His manuscript, which exists only in the 15th century, kind of horrible 15th century manuscript.
It ends. It ends abruptly. We don't have the end of his story.
And what were the Chronicle ends and I and I. I want to end with this is that, you know, he tells us that the one day the bread in the city,
Char's in the oven, that the judge's bread charge that archbishop's bread and he hates the archbishop.
I mean, this whole great story about Mediterranean connectivity kind of dwindles down into this petty quarrel between clerics and agnello ends.
You know, having done this great sweep and from from from, you know, from the late Roman Empire onwards,
he ends with this image of black bread in the oven for the bishop, whom he, you know, with whom is in conflict.
And I hope our own hopes the world don't turn to ash today quite specifically.
But I think you've seen what you've shown us. This is really the same.
Both the glittering legacy, but also also the, you know, the power of forgetting.
And your book kind of holds that balance in a very poignant way.
So thank you. Do you want to come back?
Of those lovely comments from both our commentator. That's is.
Thank you so much. These are very, very encouraging and unsupportive and helpful comments.
And I am very grateful to you for looking at the book and seeing it in these new ways.
It was surprising to me that I'd never expected to write a history based on the city,
nor did I think nor did I really think I would find such curious things.
But I was really amazed by the Goths who sign in Gothic on that on that papyri.
I mean, they're still using the scripts that have been devised for them in the mid 4th century.
And they are obviously venerated,
hitting that their own Christian faith in in Gothic using Gothic hymns and the translations of the liturgy that were made by Rufina for them.
So there's a very a very Leive sense of the Aryan Christian definition.
And it's it's it's it's a living thing.
And these people are just greatly discomforted by the demand that all Aryan churches shall be handed over to the Catholic authorities,
which is what happens in the five, six days and why we have a remodelled mosaic in Santa,
Apolinar, know over the overall referred to with the hands that are left on the columns of the of
the palace when the individuals were taken away and replaced by beautiful curtains.
And the image of Theodoric, as I believe, was replaced by as egg, that these it is very curious that as there's so much going on in the city,
and I do think that Charlamagne learn to be an emperor by going there and he would not have got that by going to Rome,
although there were very, very fine mosaics in Rome in the late eighth and ninth centuries.
And there were indeed statues of old Roman emperors.
But I think the notion that Justinian provided him was how to be an early mediaeval emperor with the the
liturgical function of an emperor and leading a procession towards the altar with a big offering of gold.
And of course, the most extraordinary thing is that Theodora is opposite in the space, which is the Weimar, the the Alps, where women are not allowed.
So it's a it's a really astonishing thing that her portrait is there and has survived.
But again, it's because they have they were they inspirers of that particular church.
And I, I imagine it was quite a common thing for people to say we should display our emperor and empress.
It just has not survived in any other place. Constantinople must have been full of images of Theodora.
We know of statues, but none have survived. So we left with this.
Very striking picture, which I think greatly influenced chairman.
Why is it Judith, right, so sensual and so well known artistically?
Why has it? Why is it so poorly exploited by. Why has it been so poorly?
It's noted by historians. Why does it get glossed over? Why? Why.
Why do you spent nine years on this wonderful monograph and no one else has thought to do so?
Lots of people have written about revenge. But primarily because it has the beautiful mosaics and many of them are art historians.
And I'm not. So I can see that it's such a stunning city to visit,
partly because it's small and you can walk from one church to another and in every area and in the remains of the palaces,
you see these spectacular mosaics. So it it it is a very it's accessible to the art historian and it demands an
explanation of how and why these mosaics were put up and the buildings themselves.
After all, the octagon of sand, Vitale is a very unusual building.
Churches were not normally built with eight sides and raising domes was still quite problematic in the West or other it wasn't done.
And therefore, these initiatives which were supposed to have come from the east, not necessarily from Constantinople, but possibly via Constantinople.
These were new ways of building, new ways of decorating that set a standard which was not very common.
So art historians are necessarily required to visit Ravana and discuss it, but they may not be so interested in the bishops.
And although I think Deborah DeLeon's did a wonderful job with translating and the account of Agon
is there is there is a lot more to discover about the history of the city and its inhabitants,
mainly from the papyri, but also from chance references, visits by, for example,
Bishop Kammenos from accessor who went all the way to Havana to appeal to the Emperor
for tax relief and the Empress Galla Placita received him and pinched his relics.
And when he died, sent him home and in a sealed coffin so that he could be buried back in exile.
So there were visitors to the city. There were constant, constant embassies coming and going.
And that's the sort of aspect that you don't get if you're just looking at the churches and the beautiful art.
Does this I mean, is Rihanna truly exceptional? From a Byzantine perspective, I mean,
does periodisation mean that we should look at Venus and similar kinds of ways to Tarabella as a sort of an outpost?
This is a right and it is Ravana seen as a rival at any point in Constantinople.
Do we see cities the size and shape of the eastern Mediterranean elsewhere that plays similar functions and roles?
And if not, if not, why not? Oh, I think as soon as you look at great cities like Alexandria and York, the major cities of Asia Minor,
you immediately see flourishing centres of of merchants and and Christian beliefs and arguments
and teaching and scholarship and all the things that we associate with great urban centres.
The striking thing, of course,
is that in the West there was a very marked city decline and these elements of urban life dwindled or until they were taken over by bishops
and restored in a way that meant that the paths could still continue to function and certain charitable institutions were constructed.
But the notion of schools and the teaching of law and the idea that there should be an urban culture which was which drew on its impure,
its Roman rule, Roman roots that dwindled or was actively destroyed.
After all, there were many, many, many, many cities were sacked, burned to the ground,
and there was terrible destruction in the course of the so-called barbarian invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries, fourth century.
So you get a Ravana was spared those very violent attacks.
And it had this self conscious role that it took on as as an imperial capital when hoariest moved there.
So it became it adopted a new status and became exceptional in the mediaeval west.
The early mediaeval west. If you're a huge growth, can you remind us of the size of the population?
Do we know? I'm sorry, it's Ash. It was a very large city, was it?
No, it wasn't a very large city. And the city walls today, which survive in large part, indicate that it was quite a compact, small Roman optimum.
And it was based on a very clear traditional Roman city plan.
But it had large suburbs and with villas have been excavated in the suburbs and very large cemeteries outside the city walls.
And this area, beyond the city walls, was eventually linked to the harbour at classes by another centre called Caesarea.
And therefore, there was a there was a concentration of population in the in that area around Ravana between Ravenna and Cassatt's,
which meant that there was a there was a there was a lot of space for new inhabitants, a new population to grow.
And they did so that it became it, although the city itself is small.
I guess the surrounding population that drew on Ravana as its centre was quite significantly larger than other cities in Italy at the time.
And here, of course, we get into terrible problem of demographics because what were the populations?
What was the population of Rome in the mid 5th century? After the vandal attack of 455.
It must have been very, very much reduced from its third century heyday.
But by how much? Certainly the reuse of a building material from some of the insulate and the repairs
to theatres because they were falling down and the repairs to the Palatine palaces,
all that carried on as Rome restored itself.
But in Ravenna, there was new building, a Denovo, and it was very.
And it was very striking that it was so ambitious.
And it obviously catered to a larger population and a mixed population because there had to be churches for the area.
And churches for the Catholics until the five 60s.
But it's the very I think thinking of the Charlemagne does.
It's the compactness of the centre, the buildings in the centre that must have made a colossal impression.
And they wouldn't have got that going to Rome. Rome's are dispersed.
And as you said, I'm sure, as you say, there would have been much more to say than we can say now.
But even so, not so easily. Not so easy to take in that sort of compactness of those buildings.
And they the pictures, the pictorial decoration on the liturgical function must've made a castle impression.
And you wrote in your book about how you saw it in 1959. I think I saw it in 1963 on a car drive down all the way to Rome.
And. And it made a great impression, but it wasn't in great shape in those days.
No, no. I didn't go back until much, much later, until the nineteen nineties, and by which time wonderful restoration had been done.
Yes, I was really astonished. I mean, it made more impression on me than I can.
Different kind of impression. That's presumably the impression that Charlemagne would have got.
Well, I think the city had been restored and and it had remained a very important city centre
and the XRX had built and repaired and it it was still very much wasn't expanding,
perhaps, but it was not shrinking into a tiny settlement.
And certainly the bishops had acquired vast holdings of land and were drawing on taxation and contributions in kind from many,
many estates, which meant that the Church of Ravana was extraordinarily rich, not as rich as the as the Church of Rome.
But it drew on similar resources and it had the capacity to build and maintain the ecclesiastical buildings.
And of course, the walls still remained a very important defence.
Ravenna was was not becoming of a backwater.
So the bishops continued to think of it as a very important centre.
And indeed, they had the wealth to keep it in as a as important and influential in northern Italy.
Great. Well, we've got just about an hour left, so I got to hand back to Wes.
I did have some questions from the audience of those viewing.
If you've got questions, please type them in the Q&A box and we'll try to get rogues to asking them.
Wes, welcome back. Your name has been already mentioned by Conrads.
And so give us your ideas. I think about about ridgeback movements of people.
Why didn't you, I think, lead us through some of the questions. Thank you very much.
Yeah. I have thought about Ravana mainly in relation to 16th century pilgrims for whom it was a fortress city for the most part,
but also, of course, as well as the mosaics as Ravana.
There's the monster, a Ramanna, which is one of the most sort of celebrated monstrous birth of the 16th century.
And it's a complicated allegorical story, but we can save that for another time.
Movement of peoples, I think, is one of the questions. I'll take the two questions that people may be able to see in the Q&A in reverse order.
Movement of Peoples is one of the questions that's come up. So Marcus looks and says.
Can you tell us a bit more about the heterogeneous society that you're that you sort of write about in minute Rabiner?
Which ethnic groups. Can we find in the city? And also which sources, material and or written do they appear?
How do we know about them? Effectively.
We know about the Goths because they preserved writings in Gothic, the Gothic Bibles, which must have been some of them very,
very spectacular, like the one preserved at Upsala gold and silver lettering on purple dyed parchment.
Really spectacular. But, of course, there were other, smaller, less and less important liturgical books.
And recently, a very fine new edition has been made of one of the translations of the Vita's patrimony.
These are the lives of the Desert Fathers, which were very, very popular throughout the Mediterranean world.
They were translated from Greek and Syriac into Latin. And the copy was made in around 700.
And it has been preserved in Ravana. It's it's fine.
New additions showing that there were copyists.
There were there was a demand for four books and that stories of the Desert Fathers were more popular than the.
The number of people and the different sorts of people numbers are very difficult.
But we know that there were synagogues and there were there was a Jewish community.
There's been an archaeological find, which is the neck of an amphorae, which has Shalom written on it in Hebrew.
And it's in the archaeological museum as an indication that there were communities using that Hebrew.
And indeed, one synagogue was converted into a church and six synagogues in the fourth and fifth centuries were attacked by the Christians.
But in the case of one attack, the bishop was ordered to finance the repayment, the repair to the synagogue.
A very interesting notion of the need to allow the Jews to celebrate their own faith apart from the Goths and the Jews.
What we find are references to many, many merchants of different origins.
Syrian merchants, silk merchants from the east.
People who sign their names on the papyrus in Greek.
Now, is this an affectation that they simply wanted to present themselves as very eastern people, educated Greek people?
Or were they actually Greek merchant merchants from farms from Aleppo?
Antioch is mentioned as a place.
And of course, Connexions with Alexandria were very pronounced that the papyrus may have been imported from Alexandria.
So there's a there's a great range of different pop of peoples in the city.
And the interesting thing is that they appear to have cohabited without the terrible
conflicts that we have documented in places like Milan undies under Saint Ambrose,
where when the Aryan Christians met the Catholic Christians in procession,
they just they fought and there was terrible violence over the control of churches.
Preventer's appears to have had a very clear policy. These are the churches which the Catholic bishops are are building.
These are the churches which the area and Christians are using. They have their own baths for the for them, for the presbyteries, for the clergy.
We have our baths for the Catholics. It's all. Well, of course, there must have been rouse because the synagogues were attacked.
But nonetheless, that appears to have been built in a certain degree of toleration and of admitting
that people had different faiths and had to be allowed to celebrate them.
Before you move to the other question, which which does address that question of doctrinal difference as well.
I wonder if I could repeat Peter's question from earlier, which is how exceptional?
And I mean, you seem to be arguing then that Ravana is actually fairly exceptional in that regard, including in relation to the sort of multi.
I'm not going to say multicultural, but nonetheless multi faith.
The mcsmith, the METI Farje, if you like, which is going on within the city.
Is it properly exceptional for the Mediterranean at the time? This might be a question to our other speakers as well.
But initially, it's a question to you. Yes, I think possibly it's it's a it's paralleled in Constantinople very prominently where Theodoric,
of course, it spent a decade as a hostage in his youth.
And in that critical period of adolescence, he'd been living in Constantinople as a hostage for his father's good behaviour.
So he was he was not badly treated. It appears that the hostages lived in in the palace or in palaces.
They were always paraded at festive events, at ceremonial events so that they could be shown office.
The emperor's hostages, there was one from Georgia, another from Armenia.
And so there was a notion that these were the youth.
The younger representatives of potential enemies were kept in Constantinople and their Theodoric learnt about the
cohabitation of Aryan and Catholic because he is an area and had to celebrate in the churches outside the walls.
And that was, of course, a very, very critical part of his belief that for cooperation and cohabitation to work,
there had to be an acceptance of difference.
And the notion that just in the first the emperor of the early sixth century was going to close the churches,
which had been used by the Aryan Christians and prevent them from celebrating their faith was, of course, the spark that made it very, very angry.
But I think in Ravana, he found it quite natural to recreate this mixture because the Goths,
although they may have been quite numerous and they were very militarily sufficient
expert and they were allowed to carry weapons and and do the hard fighting.
They were a minority and their Aryan faith was always considered a minority.
So the Catholic and the local Catholic, the Italian, the local inhabitants,
the Christians who lived in Ravana before the Goths arrived, knew very well that they were in the majority.
And they had to bear with the fact that these people, they'd been conquered by King Theodoric and previously by the leader of the answer.
So they knew about alternative definitions and they accepted that these had to be built into their world.
And that, I think, made it possible for all these bishop, all these vicious mid-Michigan,
all these merchants and pilgrims and people wanting to visit Ravana to come and feel at home,
not to be isolated or excluded in the way that perhaps foreigners were often considered dangerous and not not welcome in the city.
Thank you. I don't know if anybody else wants to come in on this question. If you back to.
Now, just to just to say briefly, I mean, I think.
One of the many things that a glittering legacy, hopefully the book is that we could ask the Ravana question of other places in as well in the West.
So it's someone like my say. Yeah. I mean, could have that could about obviously.
So but also, you know, I'm, you know, Magdeburg Gomes about where as where you know, where, where the animals end up.
I mean Ravenna refineries portable as see if you sat and I think some that that includes it's it's it's mixed nuts.
And, you know, I think it may help us kind of rethink how we think of the communities as we're
in the kind of fair in the US or other in the apparently homogenous Latin west,
which is much less than once you Perkasie. Give me but I wonder how important the word port is in your portable.
In other words, is this a story about ports? Your last two examples weren't necessarily ports, but I mean.
But is it is it I mean, I asked it partly because we have a torch, a flourishing torch match network on colonial ports.
Mainly 19th and 20th century ones, which have shown that there's this extraordinary richness of port culture,
which, again, sort of undermines but also complicates an overly straightforward imperial story.
And I wonder if that's true already in your period.
It seems to be, yes.
Well, we'll move quickly then to add to the another great question, I think, from Neil Kerry, which the terms of which are complicated.
So would you say something about how far doctrinal and hierarchical disputes between,
on the one hand, the pope in Rome and on the other, the patriarch in Constantine Constantinople?
Complicated and frustrated. The status of Byzantine Ravana coming back to Byzantium.
Yeah, there's a lot of terms in there. I wonder if you have anything to say about it.
Yes, I think that's a very, very good question and it's very difficult one.
I think what we find in Ravana is that the X mark is the governor sent by Constantinople from the late 6th century onwards,
and his position is to uphold whatever the patriarch in Constantinople and the emperor have agreed.
As long as they have agreed. What then? Then formal Friedl belief is and when that this is it is denounced in Rome by the pope who
says we are not going to go along with this definition that's come out of Constantinople.
The Bishop of Ravana is put in a very, very difficult position because the Exarchia its neighbour is his governor is his overlord.
And yet he is leading the community, the Christian community in Ravenna.
And he is also very, very anxious to sustain his distance from Rome because he does not wish to be seen as a subordinate of the bishop of Rome.
He wishes he wishes so much that he orders.
Yes. The second way, way back in the fifth century, had established the autonomy of the Church of Ravana.
But that was not done.
Ravella was given very considerable authority that the city, the bishop, was given subordinate bishops estates patronage and wealth.
But he was still to be. He was due to go to Rome to be inaugurated by the pope.
So the bishop of Rome had official control over the establishment of bishops in Ravana.
And this was deeply resented in Ravana. And of course, it was also much used by popes like Gregory,
the first who had a he had his own agent in Ravana looking after things that were
of interest to Rome and trying very hard to keep the bishops of Ravana in control.
But there was there was obviously a very great difference between religious
decrees issued in Constantinople and how they were observed in Rome and Ravana.
And as often as not, there was a contradiction. And it was an opposition which meant that there were quarrels and there were schisms.
They excommunicated each other.
And in the mid 7th century, Archbishop Maros was indeed excommunicated and was not given was written out of the deep texts.
And the church in Ravenna secretly used to hold a funereal feasts on the day of his death so that they could remember their bishop,
although he had been officially excommunicated and cut out of the history of the city.
Gosh, thank you. When I can hear some of the the bells ringing two o'clock already.
But we might have time for one last quick question. If there is a quick answer to this,
and that's because you mentioned art historians as people who thought about Ravana and written about Ravana a good deal and of course,
are the famous my life. So but, um, drama. Marcelo asks, what, if any,
of the significant archaeological evidence is that that art historians should reassess
for a better understanding of Ravana in the context of early mediaeval Italy?
Does that make sense as a question? Is there a quick answer or.
Yes, I think it's very, very difficult. The archaeologists are constantly discovering new things and indeed,
most of the new information about Ravana of recent years has come from the ground.
And it's the archaeologists who've been excavating, who've discovered, for example,
that there were workshops at the port of classes where iron work and glasswork and possibly ivery work was done.
And there are new developments in the excavations of the monastic settlement against the Basilica of Saint Severest,
which showed that there was a very, very substantial monastic community in the 19th century and on.
So there's quite a lot of of new material.
And I think that the interesting evidence that we will get is more evidence of although the palaces are very sadly overbuilt.
There is more to be discovered about the palaces, the secular buildings of the rulers of Ravana.
And we may yet discover more about the schools because there must have been schools, philosophical schools, law schools,
places where bureaucrats were trained not just in in bureaucrat in secretarial skills,
but in actual copying and producing manuscripts and then commentaries on the ecclesiastical text.
But that's yet to be. That's. I think the other very quickly,
the other very interesting thing is that quite a lot of the Gothic manuscripts which were produced in Ravana are turning up as palimpsest.
They were scrubbed. And they are reused.
And for example, in the writings of Isidore of Seville, a great number of palimpsest of reused parchments have Gothic under writing or Greek.
And it is supposed that they came from Ravana or places near Ravenna, where Gothic culture was cultivated, was used and employed regularly.
And that when people in the seventh and eighth centuries found they could no longer read these Gothic manuscripts or they had no use for them.
They put them into the pile,
which was to go to the scribes who had scrubbed them all and then copy more interesting texts like Central Guste in all centres at or of Seville.
So gradually we are building up more of a resource through the study of Palimpsest, which is of absolutely fascinating discovery.
Absolutely. I mean, yes.
And in Palimpsest as a kind of another portable degree in which Ravana becomes portable both both metaphorically and materially.
Strikes me as very interesting. Maybe it's a good place to end.
I don't know if anybody else wants to come in, Peter or Conradi, if you want to say anything else by way of conclusion.
If not, I'll just echo what one of the questions in the chat this time says.
This is an extraordinary book, dearly awaited. We now understand a bit more about it.
Thanks both to you yourself. And also to be called are interlocutors in this conversation.
So thank you once again to all us because our lives are able.
Pete, Frank and Judith Herring herself for a brilliant discussion.
Thank you to those who were watching and listening. And please join us at the same time next week for our next book at lunchtime,
where the question of Europe is further addressed, this time, Western Europe's Democratic Age.
Written by Professor Martin Conway. Do cheque the torch website to register for next week's event.
And thank you once again, all of you. And stay safe.
Stay well. Goodbye.