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What Really Happened in Ravenna? C.G. Jung and Toni Wolff's

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What Really Happened in Ravenna? C.G. Jung and Toni Wolff's WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN RAVENNA? C.G. JUNG AND TONI WOLFF’S MOSAIC VISION RONALD V. HUGGINS PHANÊS • VOLUME 3 • 2020 • PP. 76–115 https://doi.org/10.32724/phanes.2020.Huggins WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN RAVENNA? 77 ABSTRACT On at least five different occasions, C.G. Jung told the story of how he and Toni Wolff saw and discussed four mosaics in an ancient Baptistery in Ravenna, Italy, that turned out not to exist, but rather had apparently represented some sort of shared visionary experience. It was, Jung said, ‘among the most curious events in my life’ (MDR:285). This article begins by establishing the correct date and location of this incident. Then it seeks to show, with the aid of the author’s on- site investigation of the relevant sites in Ravenna, that what Jung and Wolff saw in the Baptistery actually did exist but was partly misremembered and partly misinterpreted. Pictures are included that illustrate relevant details. KEYWORDS Jung Chronology, Toni Wolff, Ravenna, Baptistery of the Orthodox, Arian Baptistery, San Giovanni Evangelista. PHANÊS Vol 3 • 2020 RONALD V. HUGGINS 78 n 1932, C.G. Jung and Toni Wolff, while visiting Ravenna’s Baptistery of the Orthodox,I had an experience that Jung later described as ‘among the most curious events in my life’ (Jung & Jaffé 1965 [henceforth MDR]:285).1 They saw what they took to be four early Christian mosaics. Jung had talked about the meaning of these mosaics at some length while Toni Wolff looked on and listened. Not long afterwards, however, they were informed that the mosaics they thought they saw did not exist. Jung Fig. 1: Ravenna’s Baptistery of the Orthodox* spoke of the experience on at least five different occasions, in 1932, 1948, twice in 1957, and 1948.2 One of the 1957 accounts became the source from which was developed the version of the story now found in Jung’s posthumous ‘autobiography,’ Memories, Dreams, Reflections (=MDR:284-287). For Jung the experience represented a watershed moment in the development of his thought: ‘Since my experience in the baptistery in Ravenna, I know with certainty that something interior can seem to be exterior, and that something exterior can appear to be interior. *All photographs taken by the author. 1 For another study of the Ravenna mosaic vision from a psychological perspective, see Noel (1993:159-163). 2 12 October 1932 (Jung 1932a:16), June 1948 (Harding 1948:184-185), 9 Jan 1957 (Bennet 1985:80-81), and 3 August 1957 (Protocols [=Prot.] A.127-28, B.46-47, F.621- 22), and 5 May 1948 (Max Knoll to Cary F. Baynes, 19 Jul 1959, henceforth Knoll). Thanks to Sonu Shamdasani for kindly introducing me to and providing me with a copy of the Knoll account. ‘Protocols’ is the name given a collection of documents that consist primarily of the interview notes Aniela Jaffé took of conversations with C.G. Jung to use as the basis for Memories, Dreams, Reflections. The portion discussing the Ravenna incident represents three drafts of the same 3 August 1957 interview. The priority of Prot. A.127-129, which I always list first when citing the Protocols, is obvious from the number of proof-reading marks and other hand-written corrections in its margins and between its lines that are incorporated into the main texts of the other two drafts. PHANÊS Vol 3 • 2020 WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN RAVENNA? 79 The actual walls of the baptistery, though they must have been seen by my physical eyes, were covered over by a vision of some altogether different sight which was as completely real as the unchanged baptismal font’ (MDR:287). Although the MDR version is the most familiar one, E.A. Bennet’s account, also from 1957, is the most complete. Here it is in its entirety: C.G. had spoken to Toni Wolff about the Baptistry of the Orthodox in Ravenna where Galla Placidia was buried. Early in the fifth century, after surviving a stormy sea voyage to Ravenna, she had built a church there in fulfillment of a vow. The original church was later destroyed, but her tomb is there. After visiting the tomb they entered the Baptistry. It was filled with a bluish light, though there was no artificial lighting. C.G. looked round the building and remarked to Toni, ‘Isn’t it curious? Here are these beautiful mosaics on the west, the east, the south and the north in this octagonal building, and I can’t remember seeing them before—it’s most remarkable for they are so striking!’ In the centre was the font; it was big for it was used for immersion. For twenty minutes they studied the mosaics. C.G. described them as about twice the size of a tapestry hanging on the verandah (which is about six feet by eight feet). Each depicted a baptism scene: one of St. Peter sinking into the sea and our Lord saving him; one of the Israelites in the Red Sea, when the water drowned the Egyptians; one of Naaman the Syrian bathing in the water and being cured of leprosy; and one of our Lord’s baptism. The double symbolism of baptism as a saving of life and as a danger of death was shown in each mosaic. C.G. was particularly impressed by that showing Peter sinking in the sea and stretching out his hand and Jesus reaching for him, this was a most beautiful mosaic of lapis lazuli. On leaving the Baptistry they went to a shop opposite to get photographs of these mosaics—one of the small shops always found near such places. They offered pictures of the Baptistry, but none of the mosaics. They went to another shop—no luck— and to several others, but they could not find the photographs they wanted. Soon after C.A. Meier was going to Italy and C.G. told him to be sure to visit Ravenna and see these mosaics and get pictures PHANÊS Vol 3 • 2020 RONALD V. HUGGINS 80 of them, or if he couldn’t to take photographs. Meanwhile C.G. was giving a seminar in the course of which he mentioned the wonderful mosaics he and Miss Wolff had seen in Ravenna, and he described them in detail. When Dr. Meier returned from Italy he told C.G. that he had gone to the Baptistry in Ravenna but that there were no mosaics there of the kind he had described. C.G. told this to Toni Wolff who said, ‘That’s ridiculous, I saw them with my own eyes and you talked of them for about twenty minutes!’ ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘there are no such mosaics.’ So at the seminar he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry but there are no mosaics’. (Bennet 1985:80-81). To this account MDR adds in addition Jung’s recollection that on his previous visit to the Baptistery there had been windows, which were now covered over by the mosaics (184). He also identifies the church that ‘was later destroyed’ in Bennet’s account, as San Giovanni Evangelista, and says that it, ‘together with its mosaics, was destroyed by fire’ in the ‘early Middle Ages’ (286). Also included in MDR is a footnote by Aniela Jaffé informing us that Jung ‘explained the vision as a momentary new creation by the unconscious (eine momentane Neuschӧpfung des Unbewussten), arising out of his thoughts about archetypal initiation. The immediate cause of the concretization lay, in his opinion, in a projection of his anima upon Galla Placidia’ (286, n. 6; Jung & Jaffé 2013 [henceforth ETG]:314, n. 10). Perhaps a better English word to bring across the sense of what Jung appears to have meant by Neuschӧpfung would be ‘re-creation’ rather than ‘new creation,’ since Jung seems to have had in mind that the mosaics he and Toni Wolff saw in the Baptistery of the Orthodox were actually visionary restorations of four, long-destroyed mosaics from the basilica of San Giovanni Evangelista.3 Marie-Louise von Franz saw in the Ravenna incident a striking parallel to the strange experience of C.A.E. Moberly and E.F. Jourdain, who reported visiting Petit Trianon in 1901 and being transported back to the eighteenth-century ‘Versailles of Marie Antoinette,’ where, ‘they had not only seen people of that time but buildings which no longer 3 For the view that what Jung and his acquaintance saw were actually long-destroyed mosaics from Galla Placidia’s Church of San Giovanni Evangelista miraculously re-created (a view only hinted at in Jung’s accounts), see, for example, Marie-Louise von Franz (1992:115), Maggy Anthony (1990:32), Molton & Sikes (2011:6), Tilander (1991:121), and McLynn (1996:318-319). PHANÊS Vol 3 • 2020 WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN RAVENNA? 81 existed, including having passed a little bridge which had disappeared since’ (von Franz 1992:115). However, when one peruses Moberly and Jourdain’s book, An Adventure (1913), one immediately observes the striking difference in how they responded to their remarkably mysterious experience as compared to how Jung did. Moberly and Jourdain engaged in what von Franz rightly described as ‘years of painstaking research’ to determine whether what they saw in the past had really existed in the eighteenth century as they had experienced it. In contrast, so far as we know, it never seems to have occurred to Jung to return to Ravenna himself to try to make sense of what had happened there. Our central purpose here, then, is to explore what Jung might have discovered had he returned to Ravenna to investigate the matter.
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