The seizure and reidentification of the Arian basilica now known as Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna reflects the political, religious, and cultural transformations of Ravenna itself. The "heretical" space of Theoderic's palace chapel was "converted" into "Catholic" space through a fourfold process that included the legal transfer of ownership, a liturgy of reconsecration, rededication of the basilica under a new name, and the purgation of images that decorated the interior of the basilica. This process was a sort of damnatio memoriae by which the Byzantines sought to disparage, rather than to eradicate, the memory of their Ostrogoth rivals in Ravenna.
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