Heodoric's Tomb


Embassy of Pope John to Constantinople--His imprisonment and

death--Execution of Symmachus--Opportune death of Theodoric--Various

stones respecting it--His mausoleum--Ultimate fate of his remains.





The death of Boethius[133] occurred probably about the middle of 524,

and in the same year, as it would seem, Theodoric left Verona and

returned to his old quarters at Ravenna. The danger from the barbarians
/>
on the northern frontier had apparently been averted, but a far greater

danger, the hatred and the terror of his subjects of Roman origin, had

entered his kingdom. It was probably during this same year 524 that the

zeal of the orthodox Emperor Justin began to flame out against the

Arians. Their churches were taken from them and given to the Catholics,

and, as we hear that several Arians at this time embraced the Catholic

faith, we may conjecture that the usual methods of conversion in that

age, confiscation, imprisonment, and possibly torture, had been pretty

freely employed. These measures, coming close after the alleged

conspiracy of the Senators, or perhaps simultaneously with it, completed

the exasperation of Theodoric, He sent for the Pope, John I., a Tuscan,

who had been lately elevated to the Papal chair, and when the successor

of St. Peter appeared at Ravenna commanded him, with some haughtiness in

his tone, to proceed to Constantinople, to the Emperor Justin, and tell

him that he must in no wise attempt to win over those whom he calls

heretics to the Catholic religion. The Pope is said to have made some

protestations, distinguishing between his duty to God and his duty to

his king, but nevertheless accepted a commission of some kind or other

to treat with the Emperor on the subject of mutual toleration between

Catholics and Arians.





(525) He set forth at the head of a brilliant train, accompanied by

Ecclesius, Bishop of Ravenna, and Eusebius, Bishop of Fano, by Senator

Theodorus, who had been consul in 505, by Senator Importunus, consul in

509, who was descended from the historic family of the Decii, and from

whom his coevals expected deeds worthy of that illustrious name, by

Senator Agapetus, who had been consul along with the Eastern Emperor in

517, and by many other noblemen and bishops.



The visit of a pope to Constantinople, an event which had not occurred

since the very earliest days of the new capital, created profound

sensation in that city and was the very thing to cement that union

between the Papacy and the Empire which constituted Theodoric's greatest

danger. The whole city poured forth with crosses and candles to meet the

Pope and his companions at the twelfth milestone, and to testify with

shouts their veneration for the Apostles Peter and Paul, whose

representative they deemed that they saw before them. Justinus

Augustus, the fortunate farm-lad, before whom in his old age all the

great ones of the earth prostrated themselves in reverence, now saluted

the Vicar of St. Peter with the same gestures of adoration. The

coronation of the Emperor, who had already been for six years on the

throne, was celebrated with the utmost magnificence, the Roman Pontiff

himself placing the diadem on his head. Then the Pope and all the

Senators with tears besought the Emperor that their embassy might be

acceptable in his sight. In the private interviews which were held, the

Pope probably hinted to his orthodox ally the dangers which might result

to the Catholic cause in Italy, if Theodoric, hitherto so tolerant a

heretic, should be provoked to measures of retaliation on behalf of his

Church. There does seem to have been some modification of the

persecuting edicts against the Arians, and at least some restoration of

churches to the heretics, though certain Papal historians, unwilling to

admit that a pope can have pleaded for any concession to misbelievers,

endeavour to represent the Pope's mission as fruitless, while the Pope's

person was greeted with enthusiastic reverence. But that which is upon

the whole our best authority declares that the Emperor Justin having

met the Pope on his arrival as if he were St. Peter himself, and having

heard his message, promised that he would comply with all his demands

except that the converts who had given themselves to the Catholic faith

could by no means be restored to the Arians.



This last exception does not seem an unreasonable one. Surely Theodoric

could hardly have expected that Justin would exert his Imperial power in

order to force any of his subjects back into what he deemed a deadly

heresy. But for some cause or other, probably because he perceived the

mistake which he had committed in giving to the world so striking a

demonstration of the new alliance between Emperor and Pope, Theodoric's

ambassadors, on their return to Ravenna, found their master in a state

of wrath bordering on frenzy. All, both Pope and Senators, were cast

into prison and there treated with harshness and cruelty. The Pope, who

was probably an aged and delicate man, began to languish in his dungeon,

and there he died on the 25th of May, 526.



In the meantime, while the Papal embassy had been absent on its mission

to Constantinople, Theodoric had perpetrated another crime under the

influence of his maddening suspicions. Symmachus, father-in-law of

Boethius, the venerable head of the Senate, a man of saintly life and

far advanced in years, had probably dared to show that he condemned as

well as lamented the execution of his brilliant son-in-law. Against him,

therefore, a charge, doubtless of treason, was brought by command of the

king. To be accused was of course to be condemned, and Symmachus was put

to death in one of the prisons at Ravenna.



After the deaths of these three men, Boethius, Symmachus, and Pope John,

all chance of peace between Theodoric and his subjects, and what was

worse, all chance of peace between Theodoric and his nobler and truer

self was over, and there was nothing left him but to die in misery and

remorse. It was probably in these summer days of 526 that (as before

stated) he presented his young grandson Athalaric to his faithful Goths

as their king. An edict was issued--and the faithful groaned when they

saw that it bore the counter-signature of a Jewish Treasury-clerk--that

on Sunday the 30th of August all the Catholic churches of Italy should

be handed over to the Arians. But this tremendous religious revolution

was not to be accomplished, nor was an insurrection of the Catholics to

be required in order to arrest it. The edict was published on Wednesday

the 26th of August. On the following day the King was attacked by

diarroea, and after three days of violent pain he died on the 30th of

August, the very day on which the churches were to have been handed over

to the heretics and ninety-seven days after the death of the Pope.[134]



[Footnote 134: The disease and death, of Theodoric are thus described by

the chief contemporary authority, the Anonymous Valesii: Sed qui non

patitur fideles cultores suos ab alienigenis opprimi, mox intulit in eum

sententiam Arrii, auctoris religionis ejus: fluxum ventris incurrit, et

dum intra triduo evacuatus fuisset, eodem die, quo se gaudebat ecclesias

invadere, simul regnum et animam amisit.]



There is certainly something in this account of Theodoric's death which

suggests the idea of arsenical poisoning. No hint of this kind is given

by any of the annalists, but they are all hostile to Theodoric and

disposed to see in his rapid illness and most opportune death a Divine

judgment for his meditated persecution of the Church. On the other hand

it is impossible to read the account of his strange incoherent deeds and

words during the last three years of his life, without suspecting that

his brain was diseased and that he was not fully responsible for his

actions. As bearing on this question it is worth while to quote the

story of his death given by a Greek historian[135] who wrote twenty-four

years after his death. It is, perhaps, only an idle tale, but it shows

the kind of stories which were current among the citizens of Ravenna as

to the last days of their great king. When Theodoric was dining, a few

days after the death of Symmachus and Boethius,[136] the servants placed

on the table a large fish's head. This seemed to Theodoric to be the

head of Symmachus, newly slain. The teeth seemed to gnaw the lower lip,

the eyes glared at him with wrath and frenzy, the dead man appeared, to

threaten him with utmost vengeance. Terrified by this amazing portent

and chilled to the bone with fear, he hastily sought his couch, where,

having ordered the servants to pile bed-clothes upon him, he slept

awhile. Then sending for Elpidius, the physician, he related all that

had happened to him, and wept for his sins against Symmachus and

Boethius. And with these tears and with bitter lamentations for the

tragedy in which he had taken part, he soon afterwards died, this being

the first and last injustice which he had committed against any of his

subjects. And it proceeded from his not carefully sifting, as he was

wont to do, the evidence on which a capital charge was grounded.





This story of Procopius, if it have any foundation at all, seems to show

that Theodoric's last days were passed in delirium, and might suggest a

doubt whether in the heart-break of these later years he had not

endeavoured to drown his sorrows in wine. But it is interesting to see

that the Greek historian, though writing from a somewhat hostile point

of view, recognises emphatically the justice of Theodoric's ordinary

administration, and considers the execution of Symmachus and Boethius

(we ought to add the imprisonment of the Pope and his co-ambassadors) as

the one tyrannical series of acts which marred the otherwise fair fame

of a patriot-king.



The tomb of Theodoric still stands, a noble monument of the art of the

sixth century, outside the walls of the north-east corner of Ravenna.

This edifice, which belongs to the same class of sepulchral buildings

as the tomb of Hadrian (now better known as the Castle of S. Angelo), is

built of squared marble stones, and consists of two storeys, the lower

one a decagon, the upper one circular. The roof is composed of one

enormous block of Istrian marble 33 feet in diameter, 3 feet in height,

and weighing, it is said, nearly 300 tons. It is a marvel and a mystery

how, with the comparatively rude engineering appliances of that age, so

ponderous a mass can have been transported from such a distance and

raised to such a height.[137] At equal intervals round the outside of

this shallow, dome-like roof, twelve stone brackets are attached to it.

They are now marked with the names of eight Apostles and of the four

Evangelists. One conjecture as to their destination is that they were

originally crowned with statues, perhaps of these Apostles and

Evangelists; another, to me not very probable, is, that the ropes used

(if any were used) in lifting the mighty monolith to its place were

passed through these, which would thus be the handles of the dome.



This mausoleum, which is generally called La Rotonda by the citizens

of Ravenna, was used in the Middle Ages as the choir of the Church of S.

Maria della Rotonda, and divine service was celebrated in it by the

monks of an adjoining monastery. It is now a public monument and there

are few traces left of its ecclesiastical employment. The basement, as

I have seen it, is often filled with water, exuding from the marshy

soil: the upper storey is abandoned to gloom and silence.



Of Theodoric himself, whose body, according to tradition, was once

deposited in a porphyry vase in the upper storey of the mausoleum, there

is now no vestige in the great pile which in his own life-time he raised

as his intended sepulchre. Nor is this any recent spoliation. Agnellus,

Bishop of Ravenna, writing in the days of Charlemagne, says that the

body of Theodoric was not in the mausoleum, and had been, as he thought,

cast forth out of its sepulchre,[138] and the wonderful porphyry vase in

which it had been enclosed placed at the door of the neighbouring

monastery. A recent enquirer[139] has connected these somewhat ambiguous

words of Agnellus with a childish story told by Pope Gregory the Great,

who wrote some seventy years after the death of Theodoric. According to

this story, a holy hermit, who lived in the island of Lipari, on the day

and hour of Theodoric's death saw him, with bound hands and garments

disarranged, dragged up the volcano of Stromboli by his two victims

Symmachus and Pope John, and hurled by them into the fire-vomiting

crater. What more likely, it is suggested, than that the monks of the

adjoining monastery should seize the opportunity of some crisis in the

troubled history of Ravenna to cast out the body of Theodoric from its

resting-place, and so, to the ignorant people, give point to Pope

Gregory's edifying narrative as to the disposal of his soul?





A discovery, which was made some forty years ago in the neighbourhood of

Ravenna, may possibly throw some light on these mysterious words of

Bishop Agnellus: As it seems to me, he was cast forth out of his

sepulchre. In May, 1854, the labourers employed in widening the bed of

the Canale Corsini (now the only navigable water-way between Ravenna and

the sea) came, at the depth of about five feet beneath the sea-level, on

some tumuli, evidently sepulchral in their character, made of bricks

laid edgeways. Near one of these tumuli, but lying apart by itself, was

a golden cuirass adorned with precious stones. The rascally labourers,

when they caught sight of their treasure, feigned to see nothing,

promptly covered it up again, and returned at nightfall to divide the

spoil. A little piece of gold which was found lying on the ground caused

enquiries to be set on foot; the labourers were arrested, but

unfortunately the greater part of the booty had already been cast into

the melting-pot. A few pieces were, however, recovered, and are now in

the museum at Ravenna, where they figure in the catalogue as part of the

armour of Odovacar. This is, however, a mere conjecture, and another, at

least equally probable conjecture, is that the cuirass of gold once

covered the breast of Theodoric. The spot where it was found is about

one hundred and fifty yards from the Rotonda, and if the monks had for

any reason decided to pillage the sepulchre of its precious deposit,

this was a not improbable place where they might hide it for a time.

Certainly the self-denial which they showed in not stripping the body of

its costly covering is somewhat surprising, but possibly the

conspirators were few in number and the chances of war may have removed

them, before they had an opportunity to disinter the body a second time

and strip it of its cuirass, which moreover could not have been easily

disposed of without exciting suspicion.



One little circumstance which seems somewhat to confirm this theory, is

the fact that there is an enrichment[140] running round the border of

the cuirass very similar in character to a decoration of the cornice in

Theodoric's tomb.



Whether this theory be correct or not, the indignity which was certainly

at some time offered to the mortal remains of the great Ostrogothic king

reminds us of the similar insults offered to the body of the great

Puritan Protector, Cromwell, like Theodoric, was carried to his grave

with all the conventional demonstrations of national mourning. He was

dragged from it again and cast out like an abominable branch when the

legitimate monarchy was restored, when Church and King were again in

the ascendant, and when the stout soldiers, who had made him in all but

the name king de facto, were obliged to bow their heads beneath the

recovered might of the king de jure.



More

;