San Vitale’s Aural Networks in the Context of Pandemic and Transformation

Abstract

We wish to offer a survey of our published work on the Archaeoacoustics of the sixth century basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, in the context of the contemporary pandemic known as the plague of Justinian. The ordered sequence of reverberant aural encounters at San Vitale is posited as a method of spiritual and physical cleansing. The original metrical verse in the atrium of San Vitale refers to the church as an arcem (stronghold) from the cuntagia mundi (contagions of the world), a sentiment contemporaneous with the continued effects of the plague. An allegorical route-way from Christ’s nativity to resurrection signifies transformation. The resemblance of San Vitale’s interior to Constantinople’s mese processional urban route and the two-story colonnaded frontages enclosing the Forum of Constantine - an intriguing example of an indoor acoustic space designed as a compressed network of recognizable signifiers echoing a specific outdoor urban space elsewhere.