Given such weather as suits fair-weather sailors, there can hardly be any enjoyment more thoroughly unmixed than a sail along the coast of Dalmatia. First of all, there is a freshness about everything. Here is a portion of land which is thoroughly unhackneyed; the coasts, the islands, the channels, of Dalmatia are as yet uninvaded by the British tourist. No Cook's ticket can be taken for Spalato; no hotel coupon would be of the slightest use at Sebenico. The land is whatever its long and strange history, old and new, has made it. It has gone through many changes and it has put on many shapes, but it has escaped the fate of being changed into a "playground of Europe."
The narrow strip of land on the eastern side of the Hadriatic on which the name of Dalmatia has settled down has a history which is strikingly analogous to its scenery. A coast for the most part barren and rocky, but with its barrenness and rockinessdiversified by a series of noble havens, is fenced off by a range of mountains from a boundless inland region. Each of these havens, with the cities which from early days have sprung up on each, has always been an isolated centre of civilization in a backward land. As a rule, broken only during a few centuries of the universal sway of Rome, the coast and the inland country have been the possession, by no means always of different nations, but most commonly of different governments. On the coast the rule of the Venetian has been succeeded by the rule of the Austrian, while in the inland region the rule of native Slavonic princes has been succeeded by the rule of the Turk. Yet the Slave, though an earlier settler than the Turk or the Venetian, was himself only a settler in comparatively recent times. Native Illyrians, Greek colonists, Roman colonists, the rule of the Goth from Ravenna, the rule of the Eastern Roman from Constantinople, had all to take their turn before the land put on its present character of a more or less Italianized fringe on a Slavonic body, of a narrow rim of Christendom hemming in the north-eastern conquests of the once advancing and now receding Mussulman.
So it is with Dalmatian history. As the cultivation and civilization of the land lies in patches, as harbours and cities alternate with barren hills, so Dalmatiahas played a part in history only by fits and starts. This fitful kind of history goes on from the days of Greek colonies and Illyrian piracy to the last war between Italy and Austria. But of continuous history, steadily influencing the course of the world's progress, Dalmatia has none to show. Salona plays its part in the wars both of Cæsar and of Belisarius; Zara reminds us of the fourth crusade; the whole history of Ragusa claims a high place among the histories of independent and isolated cities; Lissa recalls the memory of two times of warfare within our own century. But if there was any time when Dalmatia really influenced the history of the world, it was when Dalmatia had no national being, when it was merely a province of an universal dominion along with Britain and Egypt. Of the great Emperors of the third century, who called the Roman power into new life and checked the ever-advancing wave of Teutonic invasion, many came from the Illyrian lands, several came from the actual Dalmatian coast. And the most famous among them—Docles, Diocletian, Jovius—not only came forth from Dalmatia to rule the world, but went back to Dalmatia to seek rest when weary of the toil of ruling it.
But in our immediate point of view we must never forget that our course now lies wholly, not only by subject lands of Venice, but by lands where Venice appears in her highest character as the bulwark ofChristendom against the misbeliever. The shores and cities by which we pass, were subject to the Serene Republic, but subjection to the Serene Republic was their only chance of escaping subjection to the Ottoman Sultan. Every town, every fortress, almost every point of ground along this whole coast, has been fought for, most of them have been won and lost, over and over again, in the long crusade which Venice waged, if for herself, yet for Europe also. Her rule was an alien rule, but it was still European and Christian; it shut out the rule of the barbarian. It was a rule better and worse in different times and places, but it had always the merit of shutting out a worse rule than itself, which was ever ready to take its place. Whenever we see the winged lion keeping guard, the thought should rise that he kept guard over spots which he alone kept for Christendom, which he alone saved from barbarian bondage.
The visitor to Dalmatia may be conceived as setting forth from the harbour of Trieste—from Trieste with its houses climbing up to the church and castle on the hill, with the background of mountains growing in the far distance into snowy Alps. From the Dalmatian coast itself no snowy Alps are seen; but the whole land is only a mountain slope, and the cities are cities on a smaller scale than Trieste,and which seldom run so high as Trieste does up the hill-side. But we must not forget that, even at Trieste, Dalmatia is still a distant land. There is the Istrian peninsula to be skirted, the peninsula whose coast was so long counted among the subject lands of Venice, while the inland region, under the rule of counts of Gorizia and dukes of Austria, counted only among the neighbours of the Republic. The Istrian coast, largely flat, is marked here and there by small towns standing well on high points over the sea, or seen more faintly in the more distant inland region. But we know that inland Istria is a hilly land, and, even from the sea, the mountain wall may still be seen skirting the horizon. Darkness has come on by the time we reach the harbour of Pola, once Pietas Julia, now the chief station of the infant navy of Austria. But the darkness is not so great but that the dim outline of the vast amphitheatre can be seen, and the arrangements of the Austrian Lloyd's steamers allow time enough to go on shore and take in the general effect both of the amphitheatre and the other buildings of Pola. We here get our first impression of the Venetian towns beyond the Hadriatic, all of which seem to attempt in some sort to reproduce their mistress, so far as Venice can be reproduced where there are no canals and therefore no gondolas. But all have the same narrow, paved streets, the same littlesquares, and, if the passage of horses and wheels is not so utterly unknown as it is at Venice, their presence is, to say the least, rare. The lion of Saint Mark is to be seen everywhere else; by daylight therefore he is to be seen at Pola also. But the Lloyd's arrangements condemn Pola, in the early part of October at least, to be seen only by dim glimpses, while Zara has an ample measure of daylight. Let no one however blame a time-table which will bring him into Spalato with the setting sun, and will allow him to take his first glance of Diocletian's palace by the rising moon.
In the night we pass by several islands, but none are of any historic importance. Veglia lies out of our path, or we might muse on the evil deeds of the last independent Count, at least as they were reported by his Venetian enemies, who were eager to get possession of his island. The tale will be found in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's "Dalmatia and Montenegro," a book which no traveller in these lands should be without. The next morning's light shows us genuine Dalmatia, its coast at this stage marked by the barren hills coming down to the sea and the range of higher mountains further inland. We skirt among endless islands, most of which seem barren and uninhabited; we pass along the channel of Zara, and come to anchor off the city itself, standing on its peninsulacrowned with its walls—Venetian and later—and with the towers of its churches rising above them. Here a stay of several hours allows a pretty full examination of our first Dalmatian city—a city however more Italian and far less thoroughly Dalmatian than other cities to which our further course will lead us. There is time to visit theduomoand the smaller churches—to mark the two surviving Roman columns—to thread the narrow streets, with their occasional scraps of Venetian architecture—to stroll by the harbour, under the gateways marked by the lion of Saint Mark, one of which so oddly proves to be really a Roman gate with a Venetian casing. We may even, if we so think good, climb the mound which, though crowned by a not attractive Chinese pagoda, nevertheless supplies the best view of Zara and her two seas. TheAlbergo al Cappello—the sign of the Hat—supplies food certainly not worse than an Italian town of the same class would set before a passing traveller. The meal done, to sit out of doors in acaféis nothing new to any one who has crossed the straits, not of Zara but of Calais; but it is a new feeling to do so in the narrow streets of a Dalmatian town, and to add the further luxury of maraschino drunk in its native land.
Night is now passed on board, and Zara is left by sunrise. Islands and hills again succeed on eitherside, till we enter a narrow strait and find ourselves in a noble harbour with a town in front, lying, like most Dalmatian towns except Zara, at the foot of the mountains. We are in the haven of Sebenico, but the haven of Sebenico is by no means the whole of the inlet, which runs much further inland in the shape of a narrow creek. We land, and give such time as is allowed us to a sight of the little hill-side city. Shall we give Sebenico the last place among the cities which we stay and examine in detail, or the first place among the lesser cities to which we give such time as we can in passing by? We are driven to this last course, not forgetting, if we are minded to turn away from history and art to look for a while on a striking natural object, that it is from Sebenico that we may best make our way to the great waterfall of Kerka. And, as far as those who have made no special study of Alpine matters may speak, the falls of Kerka, rushing down in a company of torrents side by side, look as if they had a right to take a high place among the falls at least of the old world. But Sebenico is not simply the way to Kerka; there is something to see in Sebenico itself. It is a hill city, but it is emphatically not a hill-top city, but a hill-side city. We climb up through the inhabited town to the castle, and when we reach the castle, we are far from having reached the hill top. And to those who make Sebenico theirsecond halting-place on the strictly Dalmatian coast it will have a special interest. Much smaller than Zara, it is far more thoroughly Dalmatian; costume is more marked, and its position gives it that peculiar air of quaintness which is shared by all places where narrow streets run up a steep hill. And those streets moreover are rich with architectural features, graceful windows and the like, which witness to the influence of the ruling city. And there is something not a little taking in the smallpiazzaof Sebenico—the arcadedloggiaon the one side, the cathedral on the other, with its mixed but stately architecture, its waggon-roof of stone standing out boldly without either buttress or external roof. Mr. Neale, whom, as he does not rule Sebenico to be a "church city," we may now quote seriously, holds that the cathedral of Sebenico is "in an exclusively architectural view the most interesting church in Dalmatia." He adds that "in truth it is one of the noblest, most striking, most simple, most Christian of churches." This is high praise, especially when bestowed by Mr. Neale on a church which was consecrated so lately as 1555. But there is no denying that, strangely confused as is its style, the church of Sebenico is, both inside and out, not only a most remarkable, but a thoroughly effective building. The internal proportions are noble; the height is great; the columns, though their arches arepointed, might have stood in any basilica at Rome or Ravenna; the barrel vaulting carries us away to Saint Sernin at Toulouse and to the Conqueror's Tower. The details are a strange mixture of late Gothic andRenaissance, very rich and somehow very effective. It is not exactly like that class of French churches of which Saint Eustache at Paris is the grandest example, where a thoroughly mediæval outline is carried out withRenaissancedetail. At Sebenico we see side by side, a bit in one style and a bit in the other, and yet the two contrive to harmonize. We go down again to the haven; we mark a few classical capitals preserved, as we here preserve ammonites and pieces of rock-work; we start again to make the second portion of our second day's voyage, and to reach the most marked and memorable spot in our whole course.
After Sebenico the coast is for a while almost free from islands. Presently we pass along among a few small ones, and Lissa, famous for piracies two thousand years back and for more regular warfare in our own century and in our own day, shows itself in the distance. Our course has by this time turned nearly due east. We pass by Bua, hardly conscious that it is an island. We pass by the mouth of the bay which Bua guards, hardly conscious of the depth of the inlet into which it leads, or that two cities—Traüand fallen Salona—are washed by its waters. For the child of Salona, the great object of a Dalmatian voyage, is coming within sight far away. The mighty campanile of Spalato rises, kindled with the last rays of sunlight; presently the cupola of the metropolitan church, the long line of the palace wall, the buildings of what is plainly no inconsiderable city, stand out against their mountain background. The sun has gone down behind the western headland, but we can get our first glimpse of the city, its arcades and tower and temples, by that moonlight which is as good at Spalato as at Melrose. We have been in the home of Diocletian, and we go back to our ship, for the next day to bring us to the one city along these shores which the might of Venice could never bring into subjection.
In such a voyage as this many points necessarily escape notice, and the great objects of study are well reserved for the return journey. In all travelling for instruction's sake, it is a point specially to be insisted on that every place should, whenever it is possible, be seen twice. Nothing fixes a thing so well in the memory as going through the process of recollection. And, in such a voyage as this, it is no bad way to go at once to the furthest point, to see on the way so much of the several points as the arrangements of thesteamers allow, and to stop a longer time at the important places coming back. In this way a general notion of Dalmatia and its cities is gained first of all—a notion which may be enlarged and corrected by more minute examination of the chief places, and of course, foremost among them, of Spalato itself. But Spalato, though the great object of a Dalmatian voyage, is by no means its final object. When we have reached Spalato, we have not yet gone through half our course. Before we can come back to study its wonders more worthily, we have to spend a day in the archipelago of larger islands, nearly each of which, unlike their northern fellows, has some old historical memory. We have for part of another day to sail along that still narrower strip of Christendom which fences off Ragusa from the Mussulman, to thread our way through the lovely Bocche of Cattaro, till we reach the furthest of Dalmatian cities, with the path to unconquered Montenegro over our heads.
Parenzo, the ancient colony of Parentium, is likely to be, for many travellers in Istria and Dalmatia, their first point of stoppage after leaving Trieste. To such travellers it will be the beginning of the dominion of Venice in spots lying wholly beyond the Hadriatic, the first glimpse of the long series of lands and cities, from Istria to Cyprus, which once "looked to the winged lion's marble piles," and where the winged lion still abides in stone to keep up the memory of his old dominion. The short voyage is a lovely one. Looking back, there is Trieste on her hill-side, with her suburbs and detached houses spreading far away in both directions, and backed by the vast semicircle of the Julian Alps, with the snowy peaks of their higher summits soaring above all. The northern part of the Istrian peninsula, as we see it from the sea, has a strikingly rich and picturesque look, which is lost as we follow the coast towards the south. The small Istrian towns, each one of which has its civil andecclesiastical history, jut out, each one on its own smaller peninsula; and in this part of the voyage the spaces between them are not lacking in signs of human dwelling and cultivation. Capo d'Istria, once Justinopolis, lies in its gulf to the left, to remind us that we have passed into the dominions of the Cæsars of the East. Forwards, Pirano stands on its headland, itsduomorising above the water on arcades built up to save it from the further effects of the stripping process which is so clearly seen along the coast. The castle, with its many towers capped with their Scala battlements, rises over town and church, with a picturesqueness not common in Italian buildings. The church, on the other hand, is as far from picturesque as most Italian churches are without, and the detached campanile is simply, like many other Istrian bell-towers, a miniature of the great tower of the ruling city. But neither Capo d'Istria nor Pirano is so likely to cause the traveller bound for Dalmatia to halt as the other and more famous peninsular town of Parenzo. Long before Parenzo is reached, the Istrian shore has lost its beauty, though the Istrian hills, now and then capped by a hill-side town, and the higher mountains beyond them, tell us something of the character of the inland scenery. At last the Parentine headland is reached; the temples which crowned it are no longer to be seen, but the campanileof the famousduomo, with its Veronese spire, and one or two smaller towers, have taken their place as the prominent objects of the little city. On the side which would otherwise be open to the Hadriatic, the isle of Saint Nicolas shuts in the haven guarded by a round Venetian tower. The other side of the peninsula is washed by the mouth—here we must not say the estuary—of a stream yellow as Tiber, which comes rushing down by a small waterfall from the high ground where the Parentine peninsula joins the mainland. On this peninsula stood the oldermunicipiumof Parentium, and the colony, some say the Julian Colony of Augustus, others the Ulpian Colony of Trajan. The zeal of Dr. Kandler, the great master of Istrian antiquities, made out the position of the forum, patrician and plebeian, of the capitol, the theatre, and the temples. The traveller will probably need a guide even to the temples, though one of them keeps the greater part of its stylobate, and the other one has two broken fluted columns left. A single inscribed stone in the ancient forum he can hardly fail to see; but the truth is that the Roman remains of Parentium are such as concern only immediate inquirers into local Parentine history. At Pola it is otherwise; there the Roman remains stand out as the great object, utterly overshadowing the buildings of later times; but at Parenzo the main interest, as it is not mediævalso neither is it pagan Roman. As at Ravenna, so at Parenzo, the real charm is to be found in the traces which it keeps of the great transitional ages when Roman and Teuton stood side by side. Against the many objects of Ravenna Parenzo has only to set its one. It has no palace, no kingly tomb—though the thought cannot fail to suggest itself that it was from Istrian soil that the mighty stone was brought which once covered the resting-place of Theodoric. Parenzo has but a single church of moment, but that church is one which would hold no mean place even among the glories of Ravenna. The capitol of Parentium has given way to the episcopal precinct, and the temple of the capitoline god has given way to the great basilica of Saint Maurus, the building which now gives Parenzo its chief claim to the study of those for whom the days of the struggle of Goth and Roman have a special charm.
As to the date of the church of Parenzo there seems little doubt. It is a basilica of the reign of Justinian, which has been preserved with remarkably little change, and which will hardly find, out of Rome and Ravenna, any building of its own class to surpass it. With the buildings of Ravenna it stands in immediate connexion, being actually contemporary with the work both at Saint Vital and at Saint Apollinaris in Classe.Its foundation is a little later, as the church of Parenzo seems to have been begun after the reconquest of Italy and Istria by Belisarius, while both Saint Vital and Saint Apollinaris, though finished under the rule of the Emperor, were begun under the rule of the Goth. There are points at Parenzo which connect it with both the contemporary churches of Ravenna. The pure basilican form, the shape of the apse, hexagonal without, though round within, are common to Parenzo and Classis; the capitals too have throughout the Ravenna stilt above them; but of the capitals themselves many take that specially Byzantine shape which at Ravenna is found only in Saint Vital. That the founder was a Bishop Euphrasius is shown by his monogram on many of the stilts, by the great mosaic of the apse, in which he appears holding the church in his hand as founder, and by the inscription on the disused tabernacle, which is engraved in Mr. Neale's book on Dalmatia and Istria. At Parenzo, as at Sebenico, Mr. Neale was in a serious mood; but, though he copied the inscription rightly or nearly so, he misunderstood it in the strangest fashion, and thereby led himself into much needless puzzledom. Euphrasius, according to Dr. Kandler, having been before a decurion of the town, became the first bishop in 524, when the Istrian bishoprics were founded under Theodoric. The church would seem to havebeen built between 535 and 543. The inscription runs thus:—
Famul[us] . D[e]i . Eufrasius . Antis[tes] . temporib[us] . suis . ag[ens] an[num] . xi. hunc. loc[um] . fondamen[tis] . D[e]o . jobant[e] . s[an]c[t]e . æc[c]l[esie] Catholec[e] . cond[idit].
Famul[us] . D[e]i . Eufrasius . Antis[tes] . temporib[us] . suis . ag[ens] an[num] . xi. hunc. loc[um] . fondamen[tis] . D[e]o . jobant[e] . s[an]c[t]e . æc[c]l[esie] Catholec[e] . cond[idit].
The church was therefore begun in the eleventh year of the episcopate of Euphrasius; that is, in 535. Dr. Kandler prints, unluckily only in an Italian translation, a document of 543, the sixteenth year of Justinian, who appears with his usual titles, in which Euphrasius makes regulations for the Chapter, and speaks of the church as something already in being. Mr. Neale quotes from Coletti, the editor of Ughelli'sItalia Sacra, part of a document in Latin which is obviously the same, but which is assigned to 796, the sixteenth year of Constantine the Sixth. The difference is strange; but the date of the document does not directly affect the date of the church, and, whatever be the date of either, Mr. Neale needlessly perplexed himself with the inscription. He says that the inscription commemorates a certain Pope John, and wonders that Euphrasius, who took part in the Aquileian schism about the Three Chapters—the Three Chapters which readers of Gibbon will remember—should record the name of a Pope with whom he was not in communion. But this difficulty is got rid of by the simple fact that there is nothingabout any Pope John in the inscription. Mr. Neale strangely read the two words DO . IOBANT .—the words are carefully marked off by stops—that is, in the barbarous spelling of the inscription, DEO IVVANTE, into the four words "Domino Johanne Beatissimo Antistite." We therefore need not, in fixing the date of the church of Parenzo, trouble ourselves about any Popes. There can be no doubt that it is the work of Euphrasius, and that Euphrasius was one of those who opposed Rome about the Three Chapters. In any case, theduomoof Parenzo has the interest which attaches to any church built while our own forefathers were still worshipping Woden; and we may safely add that it has the further interest of being built by a prelate who threw off all allegiance to the see of Rome.
The church is indeed a noble one, and its long arcades preserve to us one of the most speaking examples of the forms of a great basilica. Every arch deserves careful study, because at Parenzo the capitals seem not to have been the spoil of earlier buildings, but to have been made for the church itself. Some still cleave to the general Corinthian type, though without any slavish copying of classical models. Animal forms are freely introduced; bulls, swans, and other creatures, are made to do duty as volutes; and when bulls and swans are set on thatwork, we may be sure that the Imperial bird is not left idle. Others altogether forsake the earlier types; it perhaps became a church built in the dominions of Justinian while Saint Sophia was actually rising, that some of its capitals should adopt the square Byzantine form enwreathed with its basket-work of foliage. But all, whatever may be their form in other ways, carry the Ravenna stilt, marked, in some cases at least, with the monogram of the founder Euphrasius. Happily the love of red rags which is so rampant on either side of Parenzo, at Trieste and at Zara, seems not to have spread to Parenzo itself, and the whole of this noble series of capitals may be studied with ease. The upper part, including the arches, has been more or less Jesuited within and without, but enough remains to make out the original arrangements. The soffits on the north side are ornamented like those in the basilica of Theodoric, a style of ornament identical with that of so many Roman roofs; above was a simple round-headed clerestory, and outside are the same slight beginnings of ornamental arcades which are to be seen at Saint Apollinaris in Classe. The apse, with its happily untouched windows and its grand mosaic, also carries us across to Ravenna. Besides the founder Euphrasius, we see the likeness of the Archdeacon Claudius and his son, a younger Euphrasius, besides Saint Maurus the patron andother saintly personages. Below is a rich ornament, but which surely must be of somewhat later date, formed largely of the actual shells of mother-of-pearl. The Bishop's throne is in its place; and, as at Ravenna and in the great Roman basilicas, mass is celebrated by the priest standing behind the altar with his face westward. Such was doubtless the usage of the days of Euphrasius, and in such an old-world place as Parenzo it still goes on.
But if, in this matter, Parenzo clings to a very ancient use, we may doubt whether, at Parenzo or anywhere else, the men who made these great apses and covered them with these splendid mosaics designed them to be, as they so often are, half hidden by thebaldacchiniwhich cover the high altar. Even in Saint Ambrose at Milan, where the apse is so high above the altar and where apse andbaldacchinoare of the same date, we feel that the view of the east end is in some measure interfered with. Much more is this the case at Parenzo, where the apse is lower and thebaldacchinomore lofty. But the Parenzobaldacchino, dating from 1277, is a noble work of its kind, and it is wonderful how little change the course of seven hundred years has made in some of its details as compared with those of the great arcades. The pointed arch is used, and the Ravenna stilt is absent; but the capitals, with their animal volutes, are almost thesame as some of those of Euphrasius. Between the date of Euphrasius and the date of thebaldacchinowe hear of more than one consecration, one of which, in 961, is said to have followed a destroying Slavonic inroad; but it is clear that any works done then must have been works of mere repair, not of rebuilding. No one can doubt that the columns and their capitals are the work of Euphrasius, and by diligently peeping round among the mass of buildings by which the church is encumbered, the original design may be seen outside as well as in.
But the church of Parenzo is not merely a basilica; it has all the further accompaniments of an Italian episcopal church. West of the church stands the atrium, with the windows of the west front and the remains of mosaic enrichment rising above it. An arcade of three on each side surrounds the court, a court certainly far smaller than that of Saint Ambrose. Two columns with Byzantine capitals stand on each side; the rest are ancient, but those of the west side are a repair of the present king, or by whatever title it is that the King of Dalmatia and Lord of Trieste reigns on the intermediate Istrian shore. To the west of the atrium is the roofless baptistery, to the west of that the not remarkable campanile. We have thus reached the extreme west of this great pile of building, which, after all—such is the differenceof scale between the churches of northern and southern Europe—reaches only the measure of one of our smallest minsters or greatest parish churches. The basilica of Parenzo, with all its accompaniments, measures, according to Mr. Neale's plan, only about 240 feet in length. But, if we have traced out those accompaniments towards the west, we have not yet done with those towards the east. A modern quasi-transept has been thrown out on each side, of which the northern one strangely forms the usual choir, much as in St. Peter's at Rome. These additions have columns with Byzantine capitals, like those in the atrium, copied from the old ones. But beyond this choir, and connected with the original church, is a low vaulted building of the plainest round-arched work, called, as usual, the "old church," the "pagan temple," and what not, which leads again into two chapels, the furthest having an eastern apse. Now these chapels have a mosaic pavement, and it is most remarkable that, below the pavement of the church, is a pavement some feet lower, which evidently belongs to some earlier building, and which is on the same level as the pavement of these chapels. It is therefore quite possible that we have here some remains of a building, perhaps a church, earlier than the time of Euphrasius. Between Constantine and Justinian there was time enough for achurch to be built at Parentium and for Euphrasius to think it needful to rebuild it. Lastly, among the canonical buildings on the south side of the church is one, said to have been a tithe barn, with a grand range of Romanesque coupled windows, bearing date 1250. They remind us somewhat of the so-called John of Gaunt's stables, the real Saint Mary's Guild, at Lincoln. In short, so long as any traces are left of the style once common to all Western Europe, England and Italy are ever reminding us of one another.
Such is the church of Parenzo, and at Parenzo the church is the main thing. As we pass away, and catch the last traces of the church of Euphrasius rising above the little peninsular city, our thoughts fly back to the other side of the Hadriatic, and it seems as if the men who came to fetch the great stone from Istria to Ravenna had left one of the noblest basilicas of their own city behind them on the Istrian shore.
After Parenzo the most obvious stopping-place on the Istrian shore will be Pola; and at Pola the main objects of interest for the historical student will be classed in an order of merit exactly opposite to those which he has seen at Parenzo. At Parenzo the main attraction is the great basilica, none the less attractive as being a monument of early opposition to the claims of the Roman see. Beside this ecclesiastical treasure the remains of the Parentine colony are felt to be quite secondary. At Pola things are the other way; the monuments of Pietas Julia claim the first place; the basilica, though not without a certain special interest, comes long after them. The character of the place is fixed by the first sight of it; we see the present and we see the more distant past; the Austrian navy is to be seen, and the amphitheatre is to be seen. But intermediate times have little to show; if the duomo strikes the eye at all, it strikes it only by the extreme ugliness of its outside, nor is there anythingvery taking, nothing like the picturesque castle of Pirano, in the works which occupy the site of the colonial capitol. Theduomoshould not be forgotten; even the church of Saint Francis is worth a glance; but it is in the remains of the Roman colony, in the amphitheatre, the arches, the temples, the fragments preserved in that temple which serves, as at Nîmes, for a museum, that the real antiquarian wealth of Pola lies.
There is no need to go into the mythical history of the place. Tales about Thracians and Argonauts need not be seriously discussed at this time of day. Nor can there be any need to show that the name Pola is not a contraction of Pietas Julia. Save for the slight accidental likeness of letters, so to say is about as reasonable as to say that London is a corruption of Augusta, or Jerusalem of Ælia. In all these cases the older, native, familiar, name outlived the later, foreign, official, name. When we have thoroughly cleared up the origin of the Illyrians and the old Veneti, we may know something of the earliest inhabitants of Pola, and possibly of the origin of its name. But the known history of Pola begins with the Roman conquest of Istria in 178B.C.The town became a Roman colony and a flourishing seat of commerce. Its action on the republican side in the civil war brought on it the vengeance of the secondCæsar. But the destroyer became the restorer, and Pietas Julia, in the height of its greatness, far surpassed the extent either of the elder or the younger Pola. Like all cities of this region, Pola kept up its importance down to the days of the Carolingian Empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole district being that of Gothic and Byzantine dominion at Ravenna. A barbarian king, the Roxolan Rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to Pola after the submission of his nation to Hadrian; and the panegyrists of the Flavian house rank Pola along with Trier and Autun among the cities which the princes of that house had adorned or strengthened. But in the history of their dynasty the name of the city chiefly stands out as the chosen place for the execution of princes whom it was convenient to put out of the way. Here Crispus died at the bidding of Constantine, and Gallus at the bidding of Constantius. Under Theodoric, Pola doubtless shared that general prosperity of the Istrian land on which Cassiodorus grows eloquent when writing to its inhabitants. In the next generation Pola appears in somewhat of the same character which has come back to it in our own times; it was there that Belisarius gathered the Imperial fleet for his second and less prosperous expedition against the Gothic lords of Italy. But, after the break up of the Frankish Empire, the history of mediæval Polais but a history of decline. It was, in the geography of Dante, the furthest city of Italy; but, like most of the other cities of its own neighbourhood, its day of greatness had passed away when Dante sang. Tossed to and fro between the temporal and spiritual lords who claimed to be marquesses of Istria, torn by the dissensions of aristocratic and popular parties among its own citizens, Pola found rest, the rest of bondage, in submission to the dominion of Saint Mark in 1331. Since then, till its new birth in our own times, Pola has been a falling city. Like the other Istrian and Dalmatian towns, modern revolutions have handed it over from Venice to Austria, from Austria to France, from France to Austria again. It is under its newest masters that Pola has at last begun to live a fresh life, and the haven whence Belisarius sailed forth has again become a haven in more than name, the cradle of the rising navy of the united Austrian and Hungarian realm.
Porta GeminaPORTA GEMINA, POLA.
PORTA GEMINA, POLA.
That haven is indeed a noble one. Few sights are more striking than to see the huge mass of the amphitheatre at Pola seeming to rise at once out of the land-locked sea. As Pola is seen now, the amphitheatre is the one monument of its older days which strikes the eye in the general view, and which divides attention with signs that show how heartily the once forsaken city has entered on its new career. Butin the old time Pola could show all the buildings which befitted its rank as a colony of Rome. The amphitheatre of course stood without the walls; the city itself stood at the foot and on the slope of the hill which was crowned by the capitol of the colony, where the modern fortress rises above the Franciscan church. Parts of the Roman wall still stand; one of its gates is left; another has left a neighbour and a memory. At the north side of the capitol stands thePorta Gemina, leading from it to the amphitheatre. The outer gateway remains, a double gate-way, as its name implies, with three Corinthian half-columns between and on each side of the two arches. But here steps in a singular architectural peculiarity, one which reminds us that we are on the road to Spalato, and which already points to the arcades of Diocletian. The columns support an entablature with its frieze and cornice, but the architrave is wanting. Does not this show a lurking sign of what was coming, a lurking feeling that the arch itself was the true architrave? Be this as it may, there it stands, sinning, like so many other ancient works, against pedantic rules, but perhaps thereby winning its place in the great series of architectural strivings which the palace of Spalato shows us the crowning-point. The other arch, which is commonly known asPorta AureaorPorta Aurata, conforms more nearly to ordinaryrules. Here we have the arch with the coupled Corinthian columns on each side of it, supporting, as usual, their bit of broken entablature, and leaving room for a spandril filled in much the same fashion as in the arch of Severus at Rome. Compared with other arches of the same kind, this arch of Pola may certainly claim to rank amongst the most graceful of its class. With Trajan's arch at Ancona it can hardly be compared. That tallest and slenderest of monumental arches palpably stands on the haven to be looked at; while the arch of Pola, like its fellows at Rimini and Aosta, and like the arch of Drusus at Rome, is a real thoroughfare, which the citizens of Pietas Julia must have been in the daily habit of passing under. And, as compared with the arches of Rimini and Aosta, its design is perhaps the most pleasing of the three. Its proportions are better designed; the coupled columns on each side are more graceful than either the single columns at Rimini or the pair of columns which at Aosta are placed so much further apart. The idolater of minute rules will not be offended, as at Aosta, with Doric triglyphs placed over Corinthian capitals, and the lover of consistent design will not regret the absence of the sham pediment of Rimini. But it must be borne in mind that the arch of Pola did not originally stand alone, and that its usual name ofPorta Aureais a misnomer. It was built close against thegolden gateof the city, whose name it has usurped. But it is, in truth, the family arch of the Sergii, raised in honour of one of that house by his wife Salvia Postuma. As such, it has a special interest in the local history of Pola. Ages afterwards, as late as the thirteenth century, Sergii appear again at Pola, as one of the chief families by whose dissensions the commonwealth was torn in pieces. If there is authentic evidence to connect these latter Sergii with the Sergii of the arch, and these again with the great Patriciangenswhich played such a part in the history of the Roman commonwealth, here would indeed be a pedigree before which that of the house of Paris itself might stand abashed.
A curious dialogue of the year 1600 is printed by Dr. Kandler in his little book,Cenni al Forrestiere che visita Pola, which, with a later little book,Pola und seine nächste Umgebung, by A. Gareis, form together a very sufficient guide for the visitor to Pola. From this evidence it is plain that, as late as the end of the sixteenth century, the ancient buildings of Pola were in a far more perfect state than they are now. Even late in the next century, in the days of Spon and Wheler, a great deal was standing that is no longer there. Wheler's view represents the city surrounded with walls, and with at least one gate. The amphitheatre stands without the wall; the arch of the Sergii stands within it; but the theatre musthave utterly vanished, because in the references to the plan its name is given to the amphitheatre. And it must have been before this time that the amphitheatre had begun to be mutilated in order to supply materials for the fortress on the capitoline hill. Indeed it is even said that there was at one time a scheme for carrying off the amphitheatre bodily to Venice and setting it up on the Lido. This scheme, never carried out, almost beats one which actually was carried out, when the people of Jersey gave acromlechas a mark of respect to a popular governor, by whom it was carried off and set up in his grounds in England. Of the two temples in the forum, that which is said to have been dedicated to Diana is utterly masked by the process which turned it into the palace of the Venetian governor. A decent Venetian arcade has supplanted its portico; but some of the original details can be made out on the other sides. But the temple of Augustus, the restorer of Pietas Julia, with its portico of unfluted Corinthian columns, still fittingly remains almost untouched. Fragments and remains of all dates are gathered together within and without the temple, and new stores are constantly brought to light in digging the foundations for the buildings of the growing town. But the chief wonder of Pola, after all, is its amphitheatre. Travellers are sometimes apt to complain, and that not wholly without reason, that all amphitheatresare very like one another. At Pola this remark is less true than elsewhere, as the amphitheatre there has several marked peculiarities of its own. We do not pretend to expound all its details scientifically; but this we may say, that those who dispute—if the dispute still goes on—about various points as regards the Coliseum at Rome will do well to go and look for some further lights in the amphitheatre of Pola. The outer range, which is wonderfully perfect, while the inner arrangements are fearfully ruined, consists, on the side towards the town, of two rows of arches, with a third story with square-headed openings above them. But the main peculiarity in the outside is to be found in four tower-like projections, not, as at Arles and Nîmes, signs of Saracenic occupation, but clearly parts of the original design. Many conjectures have been made about them; they look as if they were means of approach to the upper part of the building; but it is wisest not to be positive. But the main peculiarity of this amphitheatre is that it lies on the slope of a hill, which thus supplied a natural basement for the seats on one side only. But this same position swallowed up the lower arcade on this side, and it hindered the usual works underneath the seats from being carried into this part of the building. In the other part the traces of the underground arrangements are veryclear, especially those which seem to have been meant for thenaumachiæ. These we specially recommend to any disputants about the underground works of the Flavian amphitheatre.
The Roman antiquities of Pola are thus its chief attraction, and they are enough to give Pietas Julia a high place among Roman colonies. But the ecclesiastical side of the city must not be wholly forgotten. Theduomo, if a small matter after that of Parenzo, if absolutely unsightly as seen from without, is not without its importance. It may briefly be described as a church of the fifteenth century, built on the lines of an ancient basilica, some parts of whose materials have been used up again. There is, we believe, no kind of doubt as to the date, and we do not see why Mr. Neale should have wondered at Murray's Handbook for assigning the building to the time to which it really belongs. No one could surely have placed a church with pointed arches, and with capitals of the kind so common in Venetian buildings, more than a century or two earlier. There is indeed an inscription built into the south wall which has a special interest from another point of view, but which, one would have thought, could hardly have led any one to mistake the date of the existing church. It records the building of the church by Bishop Handegis in 857, "Regnante Ludowico Imperatore Augusto inItalia." The minute accuracy of the phrase—"the Emperor Lewis being King in Italy"—is in itself something amazing; and this inscription shares the interest which attaches to any memorial of that gallant prince, the most truly Roman Emperor of his line. And it is something to mark that the stonecutter doubted between "Lodowico" and "Ludowico," and wrote both letters, one over the other. But the inscription of course refers to a reconstruction some hundred years earlier than the time when the church took its present shape. Yet these basilican churches were so constantly reconstructed over and over again, and largely out of the same materials, that the building of the fifteenth century may very well reproduce the general effect, both of the building of the eighth and of the far earlier church, parts of which have lived on through both recastings.
The ten arches on each side of the Polan basilica are all pointed, but the width of the arches differs. Some of them are only just pointed, and it is only in the most eastern pair of arches that the pointed form comes out at all prominently. For here the arches are the narrowest of the series, and the columns the slightest, that on the south side being banded. The arch of triumph, which is round, looks very much as if it had been preserved from the earlier church; and such is clearly the case with two columns and onecapital, whose classical Corinthian foliage stands in marked contrast with the Venetian imitations on each side of it. The church, on the whole, though not striking after such a marvel as Parenzo, is really one of high interest, as an example of the way in which the general effect of an early building was sometimes reproduced at a very late time. Still at Pola, among such wealth of earlier remains, it is quite secondary, and its beauties are, even more than is usual in churches of its type, altogether confined to the inside. The campanile is modern and worthless, and the outside of the church itself is disfigured, after the usual fashion of Italian ugliness, with stable-windows and the like. Yet even they are better than the red rags of Trieste and Zara within.
Such is Pola, another step on the road to the birthplace of true grace and harmony in the building art. Yet, among the straits and islands of the Dalmatian coast, there is more than one spot at which the traveller bound for Spalato must stop. The first and most famous one is the city where Venetians and Crusaders once stopped with such deadly effect on that voyage which was to have led them to Jerusalem, but which did lead them only to New Rome. After the glimpses of Istria taken at Parenzo and Pola, the first glimpse, not of Dalmatia itself, but of the half-Italian cities which fringe its coast, may well be taken at Zara.
The name of Zara is familiar to every one who has read the history of the Fourth Crusade, and its fate in the Fourth Crusade is undoubtedly the one point in its history which makes Zara stand out prominently before the eyes of the world. Of all the possessions of Venice along this coast, it is the one whose connexion with Venice is stamped for ever on the pages of universal history. Those who know nothing else of Zara, who perhaps know nothing at all of the other cities, at least know that, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the possession of Zara was claimed by Venice, and that the claim of Venice was made good by the help of warriors of the Cross who thus turned aside from their course, not for the last time, to wield their arms against a Christian city. It is as Zara that the city is famous, because it is as Zara that its name appears in the pages of the great English teller of the tale. And perhaps those who may casuallylight on some mention of the city by any of its earlier names may not at once recognize Zara under the form either ofJaderaor ofDiadora. One is curious to know how a city which under the first Augustus became a Roman colony by the name ofJaderahad, in the time of his orthodox successors in the tenth century, changed its name into anything with such a heathenish sound asDiadora. Yet such was its name in the days of Constantine Porphyrogenitus; and the Imperial historian does not make matters much clearer when he tells us that the true Roman name of the city was "Jam erat," implying that the city so called was older than Rome. Let us quote him in his own Greek, if only to show how oddly his Latin words look in their Greek dress.
Τὸ κάστÏον τῶν ΔιαδώÏων καλεῖται τῇ Ῥωμαίων διαλÎκτῳ ἰὰμ á¼”Ïατ, á½…Ï€ÎµÏ á¼‘ÏμηνεÏεται ἀπάÏτι ἦτον· δηλονότι ὅτε ἡ Ῥώμη á¼ÎºÏ„ίσθη, Ï€ÏοεκτισμÎνον ἦν τὸ τοιοῦτον κάστÏον. ἔστι δὲ τὸ κάστÏον μÎγα· ἡ δὲ κοινὴ συνήθεια καλεῖ αá½Ï„ὸ ΔιάδωÏα.
Yet the name of the colony of Augustus lived on through these strange changes and stranger etymologies, and even in the narrative of the Crusade it appears asJadresin the text of Villehardouin.
The history of the city in the intermediate ages is the usual history of the towns on the Dalmatian coast. They all for a while keep on their formal allegianceto the Eastern Empire, sometimes being really its subjects, sometimes being practically independent, sometimes tributary to the neighbouring Slaves. Still, under all changes, they clave to the character of Roman cities, just as they still remain seats of Italian influence in a Slavonic land. Then came a second time of confusion, in which Zara and her sister cities are tossed to and fro between another set of contending disputants. The Eastern Empire hardly keeps even a nominal claim to the Dalmatian towns; the Slavonic settlements have grown into regular kingdoms; Hungary on one side, Venice on the other, are claiming the dominion of the Dalmatian coast. The history of Zara now consists of conquests and reconquests between the Republic of Saint Mark and the Hungarian and Croatian kings. The one moment when Zara stands out in general history is the famous time when one of the Venetian reconquests was made by the combined arms of the Republic and the Frank Crusaders. The tale is a strange episode in a greater episode—the episode of the conquest of the New Rome by the united powers which first tried their 'prentice hand on Zara. But the siege, as described by the Marshal of Champagne and the many writers who have followed him, is not easy to understand, except by those who have either seen the place itself or have maps before them such as are not easily tobe had. Like so many other Istrian and Dalmatian towns, Zara stands on a narrow peninsula, lying east and west. It has on its north side an inlet of the sea, which forms its harbour; to the south is the main sea, or, more strictly, the channel of Zara lying between the Dalmatian coast and the barren islands which at this point lie off it. Villehardouin describes the port as being guarded by a chain, which was broken by the galleys of the Crusaders. They presently landed on the opposite coast, so as to have the haven between them and the town ("et descendirent à terre, si que di porz fu entr' aus et la ville"). That is to say, they landed on the mainland north of the haven. The Frank army then besieged the city by land—that is, from the isthmus on the east, and perhaps also from the shore of the haven; while the Venetians, though their ships anchored in the haven ("le port ou les nés estoient"), made their assault on the side of the open sea ("devers la mer"). On the spot, or in reading the narrative of Villehardouin by the light of remembrance of the spot, the description becomes perfectly clear.
Zara still keeps its peninsular site, and the traveller, as he draws near, still marks the fortifications, old and new, the many towers, no one of which so predominates over its fellows as to make itself the chief object in the view. Either however the modernVenetian and Austrian fortifications of Zara are less formidable, in appearance at least, than those which the Crusaders found there, or else they seemed more terrible to those who had actually to undertake the business of attacking them. Villehardouin had never seen such high walls and towers, nor, though he had just come from Venice, could he conceive a city fairer or more rich. The pilgrims were amazed at the sight, and wondered how they could ever become masters of such a place, unless God specially put it into their hands. The modern traveller, as he draws nearer, soon sees the signs of the success which the pilgrims so little hoped for. He sees the badge of Venetian rule over the water-gate, and most likely he little suspects that the outer arch, of manifest Venetian date, masks a plain Roman arch which is to be seen on the inner side. There is another large Venetian gate towards the inlet; and the traveller who at Zara first lands on Dalmatian ground will find on landing much to remind him that Dalmatian ground once was Venetian ground. The streets are narrow and paved; they are not quite as narrow as in Venice, nor is the passage of horses and all that horses draw so absolutely unknown as it is in Venice. Still the subject city comes near enough to its mistress to remind us under whose dominion Zara stayed for so many ages. And the traveller who begins his Dalmatian studies at Zarawill perhaps think Dalmatia is not so strange and out-of-the-way a land as he had fancied before going thither. He may be tempted to look on Zara simply as an Italian town, and to say that an Italian town east of the Hadriatic is not very unlike an Italian town on the other side. This feeling, not wholly true even at Zara, will become more and more untrue as the traveller makes his way further along the coast. Each town, as he goes on, will become less Italian and more Slavonic. In street architecture Zara certainly stands behind some of the other Dalmatian towns. We see fewer of those windows of Venetian and Veronese type which in some places meet us in almost every house. The Roman remains are not very extensive. We have said that Jadera still keeps a Roman arch under a Venetian mask. That arch keeps its pilasters and its inscription, but the statues which, according to that inscription, once crowned it, have given way to another inscription of Venetian times. Besides thePorta Marina, two other visible memorials of earlier days still exist in the form of two ancient columns standing solitary, one near the church of Saint Simeon, presently to be spoken of, the other in the herb-market between theduomoand the haven. But the main interest of Zara, apart from its general and special history, and apart from the feeling of freshness in treading a land so famousand so little known, is undoubtedly to be found in its ecclesiastical buildings.
The churches of Zara are certainly very much such churches as might be looked for in any Italian city of the same size. But they specially remind us of Lucca. The cathedral, now metropolitan, church of Saint Anastasia, has had its west front engraved in more than one book, from Sir Gardner Wilkinson downwards; it is a pity that local art has not been stirred up to produce some better memorial of this and the other buildings of Zara than the wretched little photographs which are all that is to be had on the spot. But perhaps not much in the way of art is to be looked for in a city where, as at Trieste and Ancona and Rome herself, it seems to be looked on as adding beauty to the inside of a church to swathe marble columns and Corinthian capitals in ugly wrappings of red cloth. This at least seems to be an innovation since the days of the Imperial topographer. Constantine speaks of the church of Saint Anastasia as being of oblong, that is, basilican, shape—δÏομικόςis his Greek word—with columns of green and white marble, enriched with much ancient woodwork, and having a tesselated pavement, which the Emperor, or those from whom he drew his report of Zara, looked on as wonderful. It is very likely that some of the columns which in the tenth century were clearlyallowed to stand naked and to be seen have been used up again in the present church. This was built in the thirteenth century, after the destruction wrought in the Frank and Venetian capture, and it is said to have been consecrated in 1285. It is, on the whole, a witness to the way in which the Romanesque style so long stood its ground, though here and there is a touch of the coming pseudo-Gothic, and, what is far more interesting to note, here and there is a touch of the Romanesque forms of the lands beyond the Alps. The church is, in its architectural arrangements, a great and simple basilica; but, as might be expected from its date, it shows somewhat of that more elaborate way of treating exteriors which had grown up at Pisa and Lucca. The west front has surface arcades broken in upon by two wheel windows, the lower arcade with round, the upper with pointed, arches. Along the north aisle runs an open gallery, which, oddly enough, is not carried round the apse. The narrow windows below it are round in the eastern part, trefoiled in the western, showing a change of design as the work went on. Near the east end stands the unfinished campanile; a stage or two of good Romanesque design is all that is finished. The one perfect ancient tower in Zara is not that of theduomo.
On entering the church, we at once feel how much the building has suffered from puzzling and disfiguringmodern changes. But this is not all; the general effect of the inside has been greatly altered by a change which we cannot bring ourselves wholly to condemn. The choir is lifted up above the crypt as at Saint Zeno and Saint Ambrose; the stone chair still remains in the apse; but the object which chiefly strikes the eye is one which is hardly in harmony with these. The choir is fitted up with a range of splendidcinque centostalls—reminding one of King's College chapel or of Wimborne as it once was—placed in the position usual in Western churches. This last feature, grand in itself, takes away from the perfection of the basilican design, and carries us away into Northern lands.
Of the church which preceded the Venetian rebuilding, the church described by Constantine, little remains above ground, allowing of course for the great likelihood that the columns were used up again. There is nothing to which one is even tempted to give an early date, except some small and plain buildings clinging on to the north side of the choir, and containing the tomb of an early bishop. But in the crypt, though it has unluckily lost two of its ranges of columns, two rows, together with those of the apse, are left, columns with finished bases but with capitals which are perfectly rude, but whose shape would allow them to be carved into the most elaborate Byzantineforms. The main arcades of the church form a range of ten bays or five pair of arches, showing a most singular collection of shapes which are not often seen together. Some are simple Corinthian; in others Corinthian columns are clustered—after the example of Vespasian's temple at Brescia; others have twisted fluting; one pair has a section, differing in the two opposite columns, which might pass for genuine Northern work; while—here in Dalmatia in the thirteenth century—not a few shafts are crowned with our familiar Norman cushion capital. Yet the effect of the whole range would be undoubtedly fine, if we were only allowed to see it. The hideous red rags have covered even the four columns of thebaldacchino, columns fluted and channelled in various ways and supporting pointed arches. They have also diligently swathed the floriated cornice above the arcade; in short, wherever there is any fine work, Jaderan taste seems at once to hide it; but nothing hides the clerestory with its stable windows or the flat plastered ceiling which crowns all. The triforium has an air of Jesuitry; but it seems to be genuine, only more or less plastered; six small arches, with channelled square piers, which would not look out of place at Rome, at Autun, or at Deerhurst, stand over each pair of arches. With all its original inconsistencies and its later changes, theduomoof Zara, if it were onlystripped of its swaddling-clothes, would be no contemptible specimen of its own style.