rs who had made disputation for Holy Church in certain councils. To
this, likewise, bear witness many works in the same manner that are to
be seen in the city and in the whole Exarchate of Ravenna, and in
particular some that are in S. Maria Rotonda without that city, made a
little time after the Lombards had been driven out of Italy. In this
church, as I will not forbear to say, there may be seen a thing most
notable and marvellous, namely, the vault, or rather cupola, that covers
it, which, although it is ten braccia wide and serves for roof and
covering to that building, is nevertheless of one single piece, so great
and ponderous that it seems almost impossible that such a stone,
weighing more than 200,000 libbre,[4] could have been set into place so
high. But to return to our subject; there issued from the hands of the
masters of these times those puppet-like and uncouth figures that are
still to be seen in the works of old. The same thing happened to
architecture, seeing that, since it was necessary to build, and since
form and the good method were completely lost by reason of the death of
the craftsmen and the destruction and ruin of their works, those who
applied themselves to this exercise built nothing that either in
ordering or in proportion showed any grace, or design, or reason
whatsoever. Wherefore there came to arise new architects, who brought
from their barbarous races the method of that manner of buildings that
are called by us to-day German; and they made some that are rather a
source of laughter for us moderns than creditable to them, until better
craftsmen afterwards found a better style, in some measure similar to
the good style of the ancients, even as that manner may be seen
throughout all Italy in the old churches (but not the ancient), which
were built by them, such as a palace of Theodoric, King of Italy, in
Ravenna, and one in Pavia, and another in Modena; all in a barbarous
manner, and rather rich and vast than well-conceived or of good
architecture. The same may be affirmed of S. Stefano in Rimini, of S.
Martino in Ravenna, and of the Church of S. Giovanni Evangelista,
erected in the same city by Galla Placidia about the year of our
salvation 438; of S. Vitale, which was erected in the year 547, of the
Abbey of Classi di Fuori, and in short of many other monasteries and
churches erected after the Lombard rule. All these buildings, as has
been said, are both large and magnificent, but of the ru