Cathedrals of Spain Part 1

Cathedrals of Spain.

by John A. (John Allyne) Gade.

PREFACE

In the last dozen years many English books on Spain have appeared. They have dealt with their subject from the point of view of the artist or the historian, the archaeologist, the politician, or the mere sight-seer.

The student of architecture, or the traveler, desiring a more intimate or serious knowledge of the great cathedrals, has had nothing to consult since Street published his remarkable book some forty years ago. There have been artistic impressions, as well as guide-book recitations, by the score. Some have been excellent, though few have surpa.s.sed the older ones of Dumas, pere, and Gautier, or Baedeker's later guide-book. A year ago appeared the second and last volume of Senor Lamperez y Romea's "Historia de la Arquitectura Cristiana Espanola en la Edad Media," a work so comprehensive and scholarly that it practically stands alone.

It has seemed to me that certain buildings, and especially cathedrals, cannot be properly studied quite apart from what surrounds them, or from their past history. To look comprehendingly up at cathedral vaults and spires, one must also look beyond them at the city and the people and times that created them. In some such setting, the study of Avila, Salamanca the elder and the younger, Burgos, Toledo, Leon, Segovia,Seville, and Granada is here attempted, in the hope it will not prove too technical for the ordinary traveler, nor too superficial for the student of architecture. The cathedrals selected cover nearly all periods of Gothic art, as interpreted in Spain, as well as the earlier Romanesque and succeeding Renaissance, with which the Gothic was mingled. All the great churches were the work of different epochs and consequently contain several styles of architecture. The series here described is very incomplete, but the book would have grown too bulky had it included Santiago da Compostella with its heavenly portal, and Barcelona or Gerona, Lerida or Tudela.

Whether we read a page of Cervantes, or gaze on one of Velasquez's faces, or wander through one of the grand cathedrals of Spain, we realize that this great world-empire has never ceased to exist in matters of art, but still in the twentieth century must rouse our wonder and admiration. In barren deserts, on parched and lonely plains, amid hovels crumbling to decay, still stand the monuments of Spain's greatness. But if nowhere else in the world can one find such glorious works of art surrounded by such squalor, let us draw from the past the promise of a revival in Spain of all that const.i.tutes the true greatness of a nation. In the fourth century, Bishop Hosius of Cordova was, from every point of view, the first living churchman--Cordova itself became, under the Ammeyad Caliphs in the tenth century, the most civilized, the most learned, and the loveliest capital in Europe. Three hundred years later, Alfonso X of Castile was not only a distinguished linguist and poet, but the greatest astronomer and lawgiver of his age. When the Spanish people have once more made education as general as it was under the accomplished Arabs, and adopted the division of power insisted on in a letter from Bishop Hosius to the Emperor Constantius, "Leave ecclesiastical affairs alone.... We are not allowed to rule the earth,"

they will take the rank their character and genius deserve among the nations. Their cathedrals will then stand in an environment befitting their grandeur, a society which will help them to transmit to coming generations the n.o.blest, imperishable hopes of humanity.

JOHN ALLYNE GADE.

NEW YORK CITY.

CATHEDRALS OF SPAIN

I

SALAMANCA

In quella parte ove surge ad aprire Zeffiro dolce le novelle fronde, Di che si vede Europa rivestire.

_Paradiso_, c. XII, l. 46.

I

Nowhere else in Spain, and certainly in few places outside her borders, can one take in the whole architectural development of successive styles and ages so comprehensively as in Salamanca. Byzantine and Romanesque, Gothic from its first fire to the last flicker and coldness of the ashes, and the triumphant domination of the reborn cla.s.sicism,--all are ma.s.sed together here.

Contrasts are eloquent to belittle or magnify. Here two cathedrals stand side by side, the older from the days of the Kingdom, a mere chapel in size compared to the larger and later expression of Imperial Spain. A David beside a Goliath, simple power by the side of ponderous self-a.s.surance. Rude in its simplicity, seemingly unconscious of its great inheritance and the genius it embodies, the old church stands a monument of early virile effort, in strength and poetry akin to the wind-swept rocks round which still whisper mysterious Oriental legends.

The huge bulk that overshadows it betrays exhausted vigor and a decadent form. Here is simplicity by complexity, majestic sobriety close to wanton magnificence, poise by restlessness; each speaks the language of the age that conceived and brought it forth. Proximity has compelled the odiousness of comparison, for you can never see the later Cathedral apart from the old. You are haunted by the salience of their divergency, the importance of their contrasts, until their meaning becomes so far clear to you that the solid blocks of the ancient temple seem to symbolize the Church Militant and Triumphant. That indomitable spirit did not meet you under the mighty arches of the newer church, but go into the hushed perfection of those abandoned walls and walk along the dismantled nave and you will repeat the old epithet coupled with the city, "Fortis Salamanca!"

This once famous town lay in a curious setting as seen from the c.o.c.k-tower in the month of August. Here and there were rusty, copper-colored fields, where the plow had just furrowed the surface.

There were vineyards in which the sandy, white mounds were tufted by the deep emerald of the grape-vines, but the prevailing color was the yellow straw of harvested fields. These were a busy scene,--laborers were driving their oxen harnessed to primitive carts and treading out the grain as in olden times. They made their rounds between the high yellow cones built up of grain-stalks and filled the hot air with golden dust.

This is Salamanca of to-day, seemingly robbed of all but her rich vowels. The whole city, like her two cathedrals, bears traces of the dynasties that have swept over her. Their footprints are everywhere.

Hannibal's legions pa.s.sed through Roman Salmantica on their victorious march to Rome, and the city soon afterwards became a military station in the province of Lusitania. Plutarch praises the valor of her women. Age after age generals have built her bridges and the towers and walls that surround the valley and the three hills, on one of which stands her supreme mediaeval creation.

From the eighth century Salamanca became an apple of discord between Moslem bands and the forces of early Castilian kings, Crescent and Cross constantly supplanting each other on her turrets. Not until the latter half of the eleventh century, in the days of King Alfonso VI, were the Moors driven south of Leon, and Salamanca could at last claim to be body and soul Christian. The safety of the city was finally a.s.sured by Alfonso's conquest of Toledo.

The university, destined to become so famous, was founded by Alfonso IX about 1230. Among the Arab rulers in Spain, there were not a few as eager as their co-believers in eastern Islam to learn all that the civilized world could teach in art and science. The Caliphate of Cordova had from the tenth century drawn to its schools and academies proficients in astronomy, mathematics, and jurisprudence, as well as in the more graceful arts of music, rhetoric, and poetry. The monks of Cluny, belonging to the Order of Saint Benedict, then the most influential in Europe, now became domiciled in Salamanca under the protection of King Alfonso. They contributed the arts of France, preeminently architecture, and the training of their order as instructors and veracious compilers of historical annals to the learning and skill already established by the followers of Mahomet in several cities of the Spanish Peninsula. Thus the science and arts of the Orient joined forces with those of the Occident within the strong walls of Salamanca and founded there an ill.u.s.trious seat of learning. Only three universities, Oxford,[1] Paris, and Bologna, could boast a greater age, but Salamanca soon attained such eminence as to rank with these by papal decree among the "four lamps of the world." In the sixteenth century, she numbered over seven thousand scholars. Among those destined to become famous in the world's history were Saint Dominic, Ignatius Loyola, Fray Luis of Leon, and Calderon.

To-day solitude and intellectual stagnation reign in the halls and courts of this once renowned university. In a few half-empty lecture-rooms the rustic now receives an elementary education, as he listens to the cathedral chimes across the sunlit courtyard.

Within the crumbling crenelations of the ancient battlements twenty-four once large parishes are more or less abandoned or laid waste with their convents, monasteries, and palaces.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KEY OF PLANS OF NEW AND OLD CATHEDRALS OF SALAMANCA

A. Old Cathedral.

B. New Cathedral.

C, C. Crossing.

D. Cloisters.

E. Choir.

F. Apse.

G, G. Apsidal Chapels.

H. Altar.]

The history of Salamanca's ecclesiastical architecture is connected with the campaigns which were carried on in Castile and Leon at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries. These had established the dominion of King Alfonso VI, and the great influence of the distinguished immigrant prelates of the French orders. King Alfonso left Castile to his daughter Urraca, who, with her husband, Count Raymond of Burgundy, settled in Salamanca. The old city, which had suffered so long and terribly from the successive fortunes of war and its quickly s.h.i.+fting masters, was once more to feel the blessings of law and order. To replace its sad depopulation, Count Raymond allotted the various portions of the city to newcomers of the most different nationalities,--Castilians, Gallegos, Mozarabes, Basques, and Gascons.

Among them were naturally pilgrims and monks, who played an important part in every colonizing enterprise of the day, introducing new ideas, arts, and craftsmen's skill. After his conquest of Toledo, Alfonso VIplaced on the various episcopal thrones of his new dominion Benedictine monks of Cluny,--men of unusual ability and energy. The great Bernard, who had been crowned Archbishop of Toledo, had brought with him many brethren from the mother house, whose patrimony was architecture. Among them was a young Frenchman from Perigueux in Aquitaine, Jeronimo Visquio, whose ability as organizer and builder, up to the time of his death in 1120, left great results wherever he labored, and most especially in Salamanca. He was the personification of the Church Militant of his time,--fighting side by side with the most romantic hero of Spanish history and legend, confessing him on his death-bed, and finally consigning him to his tomb. Jeronimo was transferred from the See of Valencia to that of Zamora, to which Salamanca was subject, and shortly afterwards Salamanca was elevated to episcopal dignity by Pope Calixtus II, Count Raymond's brother. Even in the days of the Goths, we find mention of prelates of Salamanca who voiced their ideas in the Councils of Toledo, and later followed, for such scanty protection as it offered, the Court of the early Castilian kings. In calling Jeronimo to Salamanca, Raymond had, however, a very different purpose in mind from that of attaching to his court an already celebrated churchman. He understood the vital importance of building up within his city a powerful episcopal seat with a great church. Grants and other a.s.sistance were at once given the churchman and were in fact continued through successive reigns until, with indulgences, benefices, and privileges, it grew to be a feudal power. As late as the fifteenth century, the workmen of the Cathedral were exempted from tributes and duties by the Spanish kings.[2] During the first years of Jeronimo's activity and the earliest work on the building, we find curious descriptions of how the Moorish prisoners were put to work on the walls, even to the number of "five hundred Moslem carpenters and masons."

The Cathedral stands upon one of the hills of the old city. The exact date of its inception, as well as the name of the original architect, is doubtful, but it is certain that it was begun not long after the year 1100. At Jeronimo's death it could not have been far advanced, but the crossing and the Capilla Mayor could be consecrated and employed for services in the middle of the century, and the first cloisters were built soon after. The nave and side aisles followed, their arches being closed in the middle of the thirteenth century. The lantern was probably placed over the crossing as late as the year 1200. Following an order inverse to that pursued by later Gothic architects, the Romanesque builders finished their work with the eastern end.

Its building extended over long periods marked by a gain in confidence and skill and a development of architectural style, so that in its stones we may read a most interesting story of different epochs, and to serious students of church-building, the old Cathedral of Salamanca is possibly the most interesting edifice in Spain. It is magnificent in its early, virile manhood. The tracing of the many and varied influences is as fascinating as it is bewildering. Every student and authority on the subject has a new conception or some definite final conclusion in regard to its many surprising elements. No student of Spanish architecture has studied its origin with greater insight or knowledge than Senor Don Lamperez y Romea in his recent luminous work on Spanish ecclesiastical architecture.

To say that the old Cathedral was wholly a French importation would be unjust; to speak of it as sprung entirely from native precedents and inspiration would show equal ignorance. No, there were many and subtle influences affecting its original conception and formation; first of all and naturally, those derived from Burgundy, now only partially visible, as for instance the vaulting of the nave. These precedents have been altered or concealed in the evolution of the building. Byzantine influences follow,--most obvious in the magnificent dome crowning the crossing. The School of Aquitaine of course made itself felt through Bishop Jeronimo as well as several of his successors. Great portions are Gothic, slightly visible in some of the later exterior work, but throughout in the last interior portions of the great arches and vaults.

After carefully considering all these influences and going to their roots, we may conclude that the old Cathedral of Salamanca is both in plan and structure a Romanesque church of the Burgundian School built on Spanish soil by French monks from Cluny, who in their new surroundings were strongly affected by Byzantine and Oriental influences and possibly by the original Spanish or Moorish development of the dome. At a later date, under Aquitaine bishops, certain forms of vaulting characteristic of their region were adopted as well as devices to bring about the transition between the circular dome and the square base.

Strange to say it is a Romanesque church erected at the time when what are regarded as the finest Gothic cathedrals were being built in France.

The Spaniard clung more tenaciously to the older style, which in many ways adapted itself better to his climate and requirements, while it easily flowed into native streams of inspiration to form with them a mighty whole. The church is neither French nor Spanish nor Arab nor Italian in its various composition, but distinctly Romanesque in spirit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo by Author

THREs.h.i.+NG OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF SALAMANCA]

The plan is in general that of the old basilica: a nave with side aisles of five bays, a crossing prolonged one bay to the south beyond the side aisle, while to the east the nave and side aisles all terminate in a semicircular apsidal chapel. A portion of the southern wall of the huge new Cathedral replaces the northern one of the old church by encroaching on its side aisle. A flight of eighteen broad stone steps occupies the northern bay of the old Cathedral's crossing and leads from its considerably lower pavement up to the level of the new one. To the south lie the great cloisters. It was a plan which for its time was undoubtedly as magnificent in scale as it seemed diminutive and insignificant in the sixteenth century when the new Cathedral was built.

The ma.s.siveness on which the old Romanesque builders depended to obtain their elevations and support the great weight is most impressive. The outer walls have in some places a thickness of ten feet and the piers are much larger in section than those of the new Cathedral which carry vaults soaring far above the roof of the earlier structure. The choir had formerly blocked the clear run of the nave; to the good fortune of the old church and the injury of the new, this was removed to the latter when it was sufficiently advanced to receive it. Unfortunately, the plan of the west front was very radically disturbed by the building of the new Cathedral, the two old towers flanking the entrance being removed and a narrow pa.s.sage, which leads into the nave through the immense later ma.s.ses of masonry, taking the place of the old entrance. The nave is 33 feet wide, 190 feet long and 60 feet high; the side aisles are 20 feet broad, 180 feet long and 40 feet high, thus surprisingly high in proportion to the nave.

The main piers which subdivide nave and side aisles are most interesting, as their greater portion belongs to the original structure.

They are faced by semicircular shafts which carry simple, unmolded, transverse ribs in the central aisle. A small additional columnar section is seen in the angles of the piers, supporting in an awkward position, with the a.s.sistance of the interposed corbel, molded, diagonal vaulting ribs. Columns, reaching to about two thirds of the height of the tall shafts of the nave, carry the arches separating nave from side aisles. The undecorated base-molds of the total composite piers are all supported upon a heavy, widely projecting, common drum, a curious remnant of the earlier single Byzantine pillar of but one body and base.

The capitals are among the great glories of the edifice. They are remarkable from every point of view, and among the finest Byzantine extant, comparable to the best of Saint Mark's or of Sancta Sofia. The acanthus leaves are carved with all the jewel-like sparkle and crispness and the play of light and shade of the best period; the life and spring of a living stem are in them. Their oriental parentage is apparent at a glance. Much of the carving is alive with all the fancy and imagination of the day,--beasts and monsters, real and mythical animals, masks and contorted human figures and devils interlace on the bells and peer out from the foliage. The execution is quite unrestrained. It has a divergency which must have had its unconscious origin in the different antique caps serving again in the early Byzantine edifices. The ancient carvers must have realized the full importance of sculptural relief in their poorly lighted edifices. Again, the corbels which carry the diagonal ribs are formed by crude contorted beings and animals, in some instances bearing figures leaning against the lower surfaces of the diagonal ribs and intended still further to conceal its faulty spring.

At the intersections of the diagonal ribs are bosses with figures at the salient points.

With an astonishment verging on incredulity, we look up at the vaulting supported by these piers. In place of the great Burgundian barrel vaults above the nave and semicircular arches between nave and side aisles, there are pointed Gothic transverse arches and quadripart.i.te vaulting of low spring and simplest sections, but nevertheless ogival. It is evident both by the appearance of shafts, as well as by other indications, that it could not have been the original construction, but rather one reached at a later day when the new art was supplanting the old, a subst.i.tution for the original Romanesque vaulting; the upper windows and the most glorious lantern are all constructed in the Romanesque style to which the Spanish builders clung so long and tenaciously in preference to the subtle and nervous French Gothic which suited neither their temperament nor conditions. The church must originally have been carried out in their more native art, which they better understood.

The western termination of the church is formed by three semicircular apses crowned by semicircular vaults. In the central one, closed from the transept by a simple iron reja, stands the high altar backed by a great Gothic retablo of fifty-five panels and crowned in the vaulting by a most remarkable painting. In the walls of the niches is a series of tombs of persons with varying claims to our interest and esteem. Its original exclusiveness in the reception of royal princes of pure lineage gave way in the thirteenth century to admit princesses and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

Here lies the Dean of Santiago and Archdeacon of Salamanca, a natural son of the King of Leon. His mother, owing to her short-comings, got no farther than the cloister vaults. Some one has extracted from the archives of the old Cathedral the origin of the ancient mural decoration above the high altar. On the 15th of December, 1445, the Chapter engaged the services of Nicholas Florentino, painter, who for a consideration of 75,000 maravedis "of current white Castilian money, which is worth two old white ones and three new," promised to complete the painting "from top to bottom." On a rich blue background the Supreme Judge stands in the centre; to the right, is a regiment of the dead clad in white raiment, graciously welcomed by angels with trumpets; on the left, the d.a.m.ned are being hustled into h.e.l.l by devils. As a well-preserved example of very ancient Spanish painting, it certainly is of intrinsic value and interest and recalls the nave representations of early Italian artists.