Stephen Chakwin

Worthy book, stingy production.

Reviewed: 12-13-20

Herrin is a trained historian. She knows her way around Late Antiquity, when the Western Roman Empire was falling apart and the beginnings of what would be the European states were coalescing out of the wreckage. Fortunately for her (and now for us), she also knows her way around Ravenna, the beautiful city in eastern Italy which was the last capital of Western Rome and then was the de facto capital of the Eastern Roman toehold on the penninsula. The Eastern Roman Empire (inexplicably called the Byzantine Empire these days) lasted for another 1,000 years (give or take) after the West fell. It was a military and cultural bulwark of the forming states in the West (which paid it back by wrecking and looting Constantinople, its capital, in the Fourth Crusade, and taking over most of its territory). Ravenna disappeared into the Papal territories in the 10th century, with the Franks and what was left of the Lombards exercising various degrees of politial power. Herrin shows how the city was a window into the dissolving power of the Western Empire, the Empire's replacement by an imitation-Roman Gothic kingdom, the destruction of that kingdom by the Eastern Roman reconquest of its old territory, and the slipping away of the East's hold as it was attacked by Persian and then Arab forces from the East and had to battle for its own survival. The Western Church, local warlords, and tribes from the north, grabbed power and territory and battled things out. Herrin also shows how the Western Church - the ancestor of the modern Roman Cahtolic Church - developed and began to differentiate itself from the once-universal Christian church - what we now know as Eastern Orthodoxy. Ravenna was a city of beautiful palaces and churches containing stunning art. The palaces are gone: they were looted and hauled off for parts by the locals and the Franks. But, since the Lombards and Franks were Christians by the time they had power in Ravenna, the churches were spared and have some amazingly beautiful late Roman mosaics and are themselves fantastic structures: the "Mausoleum"[it isn't] of Empress Galla Placidia and the neighboring church of San Vitale, are unforgettable experiences, as are the two chuches of San Appolinaire and the giant edifice of Gothic King Theodoric's tomb. But here's where this presentation is a kind of swindle. No book about Ravenna is complete without illustrations showing the treasures of the City and - for no explained reason - this one doesn't come with a link to any illustrations, so you must find what Herrin is talking about on your own. What a disgrace! Herrin's writing is fine. It's not dry academic stuff nor is as vivid as, for example, John Julius Norwich, but it gets the job done and is fine to listen to, especially in Trent's elegant reading (which comes with some odd pronunciations - I never heard the first syllable of Syracuse pronounced to rhyme with "sky" before and have no idea what to make of her pronunciations of "Pepin" - but that's a built-in hazard with audio books and Trent is a very good reader). The story of Ravenna is well worth hearing and you probably won't find it more accurately or articulately laid out than it is here. I enjoyed my time with it, which made the absence of the illustrations even more painful. What a sad blotch on an otherwise impressive work!

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