e midst of a circular choir of marble, itself covered
with silver it might seem, if we may believe a chronicler of Vicenza
of the fifteenth century, quoted by Zirardini,[3] who says: "In the
great church of Ravenna all the choir, the altar, and the great
tabernacle over the altar are of silver." Before the altar was the
_Schola Caniorum_.

[Footnote 1: Fabri, however, in his _Sacre Memorie_, says there were
forty-nine columns.]

[Footnote 2: Agnellus gives the names of the mosaicists Euserius or
Cuserius, Paulus, Agatho, Satius, and Stephanus.]

[Footnote 3: Zirardini, _De Antiquis Sacris Ravennae Aedificiis_.]

Agnellus tells us further in his life of S. Felix (_c_. 693) that that
bishop built a _Salutatorium_ (? Sacristy), "whence the bishop and his
assistants proceeded at the Introit of the Mass into the presence of
the people." But the Epigram which Agnellus quotes from this building
would seem to suggest that the _salutatorium_ was rather then rebuilt
than added for the first time to the church.

The magnificent basilica, one of the most splendid in Italy, was
sacked by the French in April 1512, but, as Dr. Corrado Ricci says, it
was not they who destroyed the church itself, but the _accademici_ of
the eighteenth century, who, instead of conserving the glorious
building, then some thirteen hundred years old, began in 1733 to pull
it down, to break up the beautiful capitals and columns of precious
marbles, and to make out of the fragments the pavement of the new
church we still see, begun in 1734 by Gian Francesco Buonamici da
Rimini. Only the apse with its beautiful great mosaic remained for a
few years till at last it too was destroyed.

Thus the church we have in place of the old Basilica Ursiana is a
building of the eighteenth century, and all that we care for in it is
the fragments that are to be found there of its glorious predecessor.

These are few in number and of little account. Supporting the central
arch of the portico are two marble columns which belonged to the old
basilica, and by the main door are two others of granite which came
perhaps from the old nave.

Entering the church we find ourselves in a cruciform building
consisting of three naves, divided by twenty-four columns of marble,
transept, and apse, with a dome over the crossing. In the second
chapel on the right is an ancient marble sarcophagus said to be that
of S. Exuperantius, bishop of Ravenna about 470. The magnificent tomb
carv