Agnellus gives us a fairly full account of this church, which consisted of five naves divided and upheld by four rows of fifty-six[1] columns of precious marble from the temple of Jupiter. That the church was approached by steps we learn from Agnellus in his life of S. Exuperantius, for he there tells us that Felix the patrician was killed "on the steps of the Ecclesia Ursiana." Both the vault and the walls were adorned with mosaics,[2] which Agnellus describes and which would seem to have covered then or later the whole of the interior; the wall on the women's side of the church being decorated with a figure of S. Anastasia, while over all was a dome "adorned with various coloured tiles representing different figures." When Agnellus wrote (ninth century) this great church was of course standing, but doubtless it had been added to and adorned from century to century, and it is impossible to learn from his description, or indeed any other that we have, what was due therein to S. Ursus and what to his successors. One of the most splendid ornaments the church possessed would seem to have been a ciborium of silver, borne by columns which stood over the high altar also of silver. This is said by Agnellus to have been placed there by the bishop S. Victor, who seems to have ruled in Ravenna from about 537 to 544. It is said to have cost, with the consent of Justinian, the whole revenue of Italy for a year and to have weighed some one hundred and twenty pounds. The whole stood in the midst of a circular choir of marble, itself covered with silver it might seem, if we may believe a chronicler of Vicenza of the fifteenth century, quoted by Zirardini,[3] who says: "In the great church of Ravenna all the choir, the altar, and the great tabernacle over the altar are of silver." Before the altar was the _Schola Caniorum_. [Footnote 1: Fabri, however, in his _Sacre Memorie_, says there were forty-nine columns.] [Footnote 2: Agnellus gives the names of the mosaicists Euserius or Cuserius, Paulus, Agatho, Satius, and Stephanus.] [Footnote 3: Zirardini, _De Antiquis Sacris Ravennae Aedificiis_.] Agnellus tells us further in his life of S. Felix (_c_. 693) that that bishop built a _Salutatorium_ (? Sacristy), "whence the bishop and his assistants proceeded at the Introit of the Mass into the presence of the people." But the Epigram which Agnellus quotes from this building would seem to suggest that the _salutatorium_ was rather then rebuilt than added for the first time to the church.