14 - The Coriander Field: Ideologies and Identities in Post-Roman Ravenna

Summary

In the middle of the ninth century, Adreas Agnellus wrote the history of Ravenna's bishops. This is a collection of biographies starting from the mythical Apolinaris and including George, who occupied Ravenna's see in Agnellus’ days. The book is a kaleidoscope of marvellous stories which are, however, often difficult to interpret. Among them, we find the narrative of Ravenna's darkest hour – the Adriatic town's humiliation at the hands of a wicked emperor – and of the final victory of the Ravennates against their tormentors on the Coriander Field. This narrative has gone somewhat unnoticed and, being a story of battle and lay heroism, unlocks a suggestive hidden textual layer which partially escapes the master narrative of Agnellus’ book. The account enables us to grasp a number of aspects regarding the troubled identity of the Ravennates in the decades preceding and following the fall of the exarchate in 751, along with the ideology that supported this identity. These are the years of Constantinople's loss of hegemony in the northern Adriatic and the transformation of Italian Romanness which triggered a profound identity crisis in Ravenna. The narrative is staged in the first years of Emperor Justinian II's second bloody reign (705–11), when the conflict with the emperor escalated, something which made it into one of the most dramatic accounts of the entire Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna.

An Odd Story for a Start

The whole incident has a loose chronology and is contextualised in the biographies of Felix, who was archbishop between 709 and 725, and his successor John, who ruled until 744. In the narrative, a number of citizens of Ravenna joined the imperial soldiers in the dethronement – by the mutilation of ears and nose and in aiding the exile – of an otherwise unknown emperor named Constantine. The incident closely resembles the dethronement of Emperor Justinian II, which occurred in 695 and was known to both the Patriarch Nikephoros and Theophanes the Confessor who wrote at the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century, respectively. Constantine, like Justinian II, was eventually able to regain the empire by viciously retaliating against his persecutors. As the story goes, having punished the inhabitants of Constantinople, the wicked emperor turned his dark thoughts to Ravenna.