Ravenna

1693. A geographical dictionary representing the present and ancient names by Edmund Bohun.

Ravenna, a City of Romandiola in Italy, of great antiquity; which is an Archbishops See, and the Capital of that Province. It stands on a marshy Ground; forty five Miles from Bononia to the East, thirty from Rimini, forty two from Ferrara; near the Shoars of the Adriatick Sea, upon which it had a great Harbor; now filled up with Sand. Built by the Sabins, as Pliny saith; as others, by the Ʋmbrians about four hundred and ten years after the Flood A. M. 1766. In the latter times of the Roman Empire under Honorius, it became the Seat of the Emperors: fortified with new and strong Walls for that purpose. Augustus had before made it the Station of his Fleets, on the Adriatick Sea; and made a noble Haven here, which may be supposed to have contributed something to its growth and this change. Theodorick, King of the Goths, in 493. took it after a Siege of three years; and made it the Seat of his Kingdom. In 539. Belisarius, General under Justinian the Emperor, recovered it to the Empire. In 569. it became the Seat of the Exarchs, or Vice-Roys of Italy, under the Constantinopolitan Emperours. In 725. it was Sacked by Luitprandus, King of Lombardy, upon the Emperors Edict against Images; but recovered by the Exarch, by the assistance of the Pope and the Venetians, two years after. In 752. Aristulphus, King of the Lombards, took it from the Greeks; and drove out the Exarchs. In 774. Charles the Great took it from the Lombards, and gave it to the Church of Rome. This City maintained a War against the Venetians, in 1140. In 1441. the Venetians took it and kept it till 1509: when it was forced from them by a League of the Emperor, King of France, Pope, the Duke of Milan, and a joynt War of all these Princes upon them. But the Pope salling out with the French King, Lewis XII. lost the City to him again and an Army of sixteen thousand Men in 1512: they were soon after sorced to desert it. The Archbishops See was founded by Valentinian the Emperor, about 425: and never subject to the Pope till 684: when the Pope after a great contest obtained this point from Constantinus Pogonatus, (Emperor of Greece), who was a great admirer of the Sanctity of Benedict II. and with respect to that, subjected this See to Rome. There was a Council held here in 901. which confirmed all the proceedings of a Council at Rome under Pope John IX for the cassating of Pope Stephen VI. his Acts against the memory of Pope Formosus. And another in 967, in the presence of Pope John XIII. and the Emperor Otho I. touching the reformation of Ecclesiastical Discipline; with divers others, of the same subject. The City is now in a declining condition, and decays sensibly.

Long. 34. 53. Lat. 43. 54. //Paris Meridian was used in the book