Cathedrals of Spain Part 13

Although architecturally the injurious effect of placing choir and high altar in the middle of the church cannot be overstated, from the point of view of ritual, of closely uniting the officiating body with the wors.h.i.+pers, it is undoubtedly a far happier arrangement than where the prayers and psalms proceed from the extreme apsidal termination. In the former case the religious guidance seems to emanate from the very soul of the edifice, and to reach all humble wors.h.i.+pers in the remotest nooks and corners.

The Spanish nature craves the sensuous and theatrical in religious rites, and not far-away but intimately, as part and parcel of it. In the time of the great ecclesiastical power of the bishopric of Seville 20,000 pounds of wax were burned every year, 500 ma.s.ses were daily celebrated at the 80 altars, and the wine consumed in the yearly sacrament amounted to 18,750 litres. Seville's children wished to be close to the glare and flicker of the wax candles and torches and to hear distinctly the unintelligible Latin service. Seek the shade of the cathedral when the July sun is burning outside, or during one of the nights of Holy Week, when the great Miserere of Eslava is sung, and you will find it the most thronged spot in all Seville. In the words of Havelock Ellis: "Profoundly impressive,--around the choir an impa.s.sive ma.s.s, in the rest of the church characteristic Spanish groups crouched at the bases of the great cl.u.s.tered shafts, and chatted and used their fans familiarly, as if in their own homes, while dogs ran about unmolested. The vast church lent itself superbly to the music and the scene. It was a scene stranger than the designs of Martin, as bizarre as something out of Poe or Baudelaire. In the dim light the huge piers seemed larger and higher than ever, while the faint altar lights dimly lit up the iron screen of the Capilla Mayor, as in Rembrandt's conception of the Temple of Jerusalem. In the scene of enchantment one felt that Santa Maria of Seville had delivered up the last secret of her mystery and romance."

If you enter the church from the west through the main portal, or the Puerta Mayor, the whole length of the nave is broken by various structures. On the axis, under the second vault, is the tomb of Fernando Colon; the fourth and fifth vaults contain the choir; the sixth comes under the dome; the seventh and eighth take in the Capilla Mayor and Sacristia Alta; back of the ninth and terminating the eastern end, rises the great Renaissance royal chapel (Capilla Real). Fernando Colon deserves to live not only in Seville's history but in the memory of all Spain, first and foremost for being his father's son (by his mistress Beatrix Enrigues), and, secondly, for leading a most pious and studious life and devoting his time and fortune while traversing Europe during the first half of the sixteenth century, to the purchase of the most valuable books and ma.n.u.scripts of the time. These he united into the famous Columbina Library and presented to the Cathedral Chapter. The enormous wooden tabernacle erected every Pa.s.sion Week over the great Discoverer's son, to reach the very arches of the vaults overhead, is as hideous as the inscription is touching. Three caravels are inlaid on the slab, between which runs the legend, "A Castilla y a Leon mundo nuevo die Colon"[a] (To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a new world), and the following inscription: "Of what avails it that I have bathed the entire universe in my sweat, that I have thrice pa.s.sed through the new world, discovered by my father, that I have adorned the banks of the gentle Bati and preferred my simple tastes to riches, in order to gather around thee the divinities of the Castalian Spring and offer thee the treasures already gathered by Ptolemy, if thou in pa.s.sing this stone in Seville, dost not at least give a greeting to my father and a thought to me."

Directly back of Fernando Columbus' tomb rises the rear surface or trascoro of the choir. The choir, which occupies the fourth and fifth bays, is enclosed by the most elaborate walls, except at the entrance to the east, where it is screened by the remarkable iron reja. This, as well as the rejas of the choir, is in design and workmans.h.i.+p a marvelous example of mediaeval craft, quite as fine as the screens of Toledo and Granada and the best work of the German forgers and guilds. The design, from 1519, harmonizes splendidly with the ironwork facing it. Its gilding must have improved as each century has toned it down. Now in the evening hours when it catches the reflection of some light, the spikes look like angels' spears rising flame-like out of the mysterious twilight and guarding the holy places beyond.

The choir, placed so nearly under the dome, naturally suffered greatly by its fall. A portion of the 127 stalls has been so well restored that it is difficult to distinguish the old from the new. "Nufro Sanchez, sculptor, whom G.o.d guarded, made this choir in the year 1475." The subjects are as usual from the New and Old Testaments, and the character of the carving constantly betrays Moorish influence. The pillars as well as the canopies and the figures themselves are possibly entirely Gothic, but one glance at the gaudily inlaid backs shows Arab workmans.h.i.+p. Along the outer sides of the choir around the four little stonework niches, which serve as smaller chapels, the Gothic carving (some of it executed in transparent alabaster), works more happily than usual in combination with the later Plateresque or Renaissance, here containing the fine feeling of the Genoese school. One piece of sculpture stands out from all the rest, viz., the Virgin, carved by Montanes. Her hands are of such exquisite girlish delicacy, of such immature and dimpled softness, that one cannot pa.s.s them by without a feeling of delight.

The organs, which form a part of the choir, have an incredible number of pipes and stops. According to a remarkable old tale, they were filled with air by the choir boys, who walked back and forth over tilting planks placed on the bellows. Whether or no the boys still have this happy outlet for their ecclesiastic activities, the music means little to the Spaniard, and their design still less to the architect's eye.

The Capilla Mayor faces the choir, merely separated from it by the s.p.a.ce lying directly under the dome and forming the intersection of nave and transepts. As the church services constantly require the simultaneous use of the choir and the high altar of the Capilla Mayor, a portion of the intermediate s.p.a.ce or "entre los dos Coros" is roped off during service time for the clergy to pa.s.s from one to the other. The Spanish taste for pomp and magnificence centres in all its extravagance about the high altar, while a more subdued richness characterizes the surrounding stone and iron work which encloses the sanctuary on all sides. Not only on the front, complementing and balancing admirably the facing reja of the choir, but on the western ends of the sides, immense ornamental iron screens bar the way. The front one is quite overpowering in size, rising some seventy-five feet above the altar. The Spaniard was equal to any undertaking in the days of early Hapsburg splendor under the pious Reyes Catolicos. With the aid of Sancho Munoz and Diego de Yorobo, a Dominican Friar, Francesco de Salamanca designed them (1518) and then superintended the welding, gilding and the final erection in 1523.

The east end of the Capilla Mayor is formed by the magnificent retablo, almost four thousand square feet in size. One is immediately struck by its immense proportions and the infinite amount of carving bestowed on it. Its great scheme was conceived in 1482 by the Flemish sculptor Dancart, evidently a man of prolific and versatile imagination. If we try to compare it with the work of English churches, we might best liken it to the great altar screens. This and the retablo at Toledo are probably the richest specimens of mediaeval woodwork in existence.

Portions of the execution are somewhat inferior to the conception, and yet the artists who labored on it with loving skill until the middle of the following century carried out all their work with a richness and delicacy which make it not only a representative piece of late Gothic sculpture but one of the most magnificent specimens of this branch of Spanish art. Its various portions embrace the whole period of florid Gothic from its earlier, more restrained expression to the very last stroke of the art, when wood was mastered and carved into incredible filigree work as if it had been as soft and pliable as silver leaf.

Everything that could be carved is there, figures, foliage, tracery, moldings and mere conventionalized ornament. The central portions are of the earlier fifteenth century, the outer ones, of the late sixteenth, executed under Master Marco Jorge Fernandez. The wood is princ.i.p.ally larch, with minor portions of chestnut and pine. The whole field is divided by slender shafts and laboriously carved bands into forty-four compartments representing in high and low relief various scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. In the centre is Santa Maria de la Sede, the patron saint of the church, surmounted by a Crucifixion with Saint John and the Virgin on either side.

Between the retablo and the rear wall enclosing the rectangle of the Capilla Mayor, there is a dark s.p.a.ce known as the Sacristia Alta, where is preserved the Tablas Alfonsinas[18] brought from Constantinople to Paris by Saint Ferdinand's son, Alfonso.

Seville ranks high among the churches of Spain in the beauty of its carving. The stone screen that forms the rear of the retablo is filled with admirable Gothic terra-cotta statues, saints, virgins, bishops, martyrs and prelates executed with a little of the curious rigidity of the Dutch School still awaiting its Renaissance emanc.i.p.ation, but with faces full of holy devotion. The modeling is correct and the treatment of the drapery excellent.

Within the enclosure of the Capilla Mayor, there is still to be seen at certain times of the year, a ceremony which has been performed for centuries, and which is certainly the most unique religious rite celebrated in any Christian church. To the Saxon it is most extraordinary. During the last three days of the Carnival or after the Feast of Corpus Domini, we may see boys dressed in costumes perform a dance before the high altar of the Cathedral. Children, so the tale runs, danced, skipped and shouted for joy when the city of Seville was finally taken from the Mohammedans, and these childish demonstrations so touched the hearts of the clergy who entered the city with the conquering army, that they resolved that succeeding generations of boys should perpetuate them forever. Of all the festivals and religious processions culminating in or outside Saint Mary's shrine, surely none can give her so much pleasure as the sight of these little boys dancing and singing in her honor.

This naf and charming ceremonial is part of the Mozarabic Ritual, the work of Saint Isidore, a metropolitan of Seville a hundred years before the arrival of the Saracens. In his early years, when his elder brother Leander ruled the Gothic Church with stern hand, Isidore had time and talents to master in his cloistered seclusion so much art and science that he became the Admirable Crichton of his day. His work on "The Origin of Things" shows the profundity of his knowledge, his history of the Goths is beyond doubt his most valuable legacy to us, but what endeared him above all to his countrymen was the Mozarabic Rite, of which he composed both breviary and music. The Benedictine monks of Cluny, those architects and chroniclers, who had been obliged to sacrifice their Gallican liturgy for the Roman, could not rest satisfied until they had imposed it on the Peninsula. They were supported in this truly foreign aggression by Constance of Burgundy, Queen of Alfonso VI, and by the masterful Gregory VII, himself a Benedictine. And so Saint Isidore's quaint old hymn with the accompanying melody was banished from all but one or two favored chapels. Fortunately Cardinal Ximenez became its enthusiastic and powerful protector. He endowed in the Cathedral of Toledo a special chapel and had thirteen priests trained for the service, "Mozarabes sodales." In Ximenez' time a German, Peter Hagenbach, first printed "missale secundum regulam beati Isidori dictum Mozarabes," what Saint Isidore called "those fleeting sounds so hard to note down." His breviary was the first Roman one to be used in Spanish churches.

To enumerate the endless rows of chapels with their countless treasures and chaste or tawdry architecture and decoration would be tiresome and unprofitable,--with a plan and guide-book, one may pa.s.s them in review.

"Sixty-seven of the great sculptors and thirty-eight of the painters here display to the astonished and incredulous eye the masterpieces of their hand," says one. Here is almost every painter belonging to the great Sevillian school of painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They form a veritable museum or a series of small museums, each chapel being a separate room of masterpieces. But here, as in the museum, there are good and bad paintings and statues, and only the excellent are worth attention. They are better worth studying here than elsewhere, for they have been left in the surroundings for which they were intended and painted. Spain's great religious artist did not paint his Madonnas so full of distracting and sensuous loveliness for the walls of the Prado; their smiles, human and pathetic, were for the altars and panels of sanctuaries. Here is the light in which they were studied and for which they were colored; here are the walls and frames which were intended to surround them; they are in the company they would choose, and they were painted with the same religious devotion that inspires the prayers now offered before them. The painter's inspiration sprang from the fervor of his faith.

Three of the paintings are lovely above all others. Two are Murillo's, namely the Angel de la Guarda and the San Antonio of the baptistery; the third is the Deposition from the Cross, by Pedro de Campana (or more correctly Kempeneer), hanging in the great sacristy. This is the painting, Spanish historians will tell you, Murillo loved so well that whenever he was downhearted he would stand in front of it for hours, and become lost to all around him, even forgetting his own Madonnas. One day the sacristan asked him impatiently, why he so often stood there staring. "I am waiting," Murillo answered, "till those holy men have taken the Saviour down from the Cross." It hangs well lighted over one of the altars of the Sacristy. Few faces have ever been painted which convey depth and intensity of feeling in a more affecting way. The agonized faces of the women at the foot of the Cross express all an innocent human heart can feel of compa.s.sion, heart-wrung sorrow and despair. The ecstasy with which Saint Anthony, who is kneeling in prayer, gazes at the Child Jesus has seldom been surpa.s.sed in reality and power. Entirely lifted beyond the earthly sphere, his features kindle with ardent piety and divine love. The angels surrounding the Infant Jesus have a simplicity of expression which never escapes those who have loved and studied children. The coloring is unique and of a truly penetrating softness. All the little details of the miserable cell in which the saint is kneeling are rendered with the vigorous reality so characteristic of the Spanish school, while in the upper part of the painting one seems to see even the dust particles floating in the rays of sunlight. The shadows have a marvelous transparency.

The Angel de la Guarda, or Guardian Angel, is one of the master's very best works. The purples and yellows of the angel's vesture have kept their depth and richness through all the centuries in which the colors have been drying.

There might be a guide-book dealing with the paintings of the Cathedral alone. How differently it is decorated from the great Gothic cathedrals of the present Anglican Church! In Seville as in Florence, all the fine arts seemed to flower and come to perfection during the sixteenth century. Sculpture and painting were employed to embellish architecture, as in the ancient days of Greece. The sister arts walked once more hand in hand. The figures in stone and still more in terra-cotta which adorn the exterior porches and the more decorative portions of the interior are unusually fine. Many of the bishops, saints and kings have an unmistakable Renaissance feeling. Take, for instance, such a statue as the Virgin del Reposo, so dear to the Sevillians,--you feel in all the handling the period of transition. Such sculptors as Miguel Florentin, Juan Marin, and Diego de Pesquera must have been influenced by Italy when they carved the statues which adorn the Cathedral of Seville.

The contact with Italy and the many Italian workmen gradually induced faithlessness to the earlier Gothic ideals of the founders and builders of the church. The great Maestro Mayor of Toledo Cathedral, Henrique de Egas, was among the first to introduce restraint in Spanish building after the fanaticism of the later flamboyant. In the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, a well-known Toledan published a Spanish abridgment of Vitruvius; this in conjunction with the influence of many foreign artists led the way to cla.s.sical building. Granada was soon resurrected as a Greek-Roman "Centralbau" and even the crossing of Gothic Burgos was unfortunately restored by Borgona after cla.s.sic models.

The new foreign movement found expression in architecture, in sculpture and in painting, often with the most extraordinary attempts to employ the new without discarding the old. Grotesque and fantastic ornaments crown illogical construction.

The royal chapel, the chapter house, the sagrario and the great sacristy are examples of the new-born style. The first two are magnificent specimens of Spanish Renaissance. Each of them is a fine church in itself, and they can only be cla.s.sed as chapels because they bear that relation and are proportioned to the immense mother church of Seville.

The walls of the Capilla Real form the eastern termination to the Cathedral, and the chapel is very properly planned upon the axe of the church and entered through a splendidly decorated lofty arch. It is about 81 by 59 feet in plan, and 113 feet high to the lantern crowning the really fine dome. A round altar at its eastern extremity is closed off by a typically impressive reja. The architecture is of the magnificence of Saint Peter's in Rome, and not unlike it in detail.

Eight Corinthian pilasters support the dome, breaking the wall s.p.a.ce into panels and carrying the richest cla.s.sical cornice surmounted by fine statues of the Apostles, Evangelists and kings. The chapel takes its name from being the burial place of the royal house. Along its walls are the tombs of Saint Ferdinand's consort, of Alfonso the Learned and his mother, Beatrice of Suabia, and the beautiful Dona Maria de Padilla, the mistress of Pedro the Cruel. He himself is buried below in the vault with many other of the royal princes. In the centre of the chapel Saint Ferdinand lies in full armor with a crown on his head. Three times a year he is shown to the soldiers of Spain, who march past with sounding bugles and lowered banners.

The chapel was planned and built by Martin Ganza during the reign of Charles V. Shortly after the defeat of the Moors, an earlier royal one was built upon the same site and added to the old mosque. When the great new Cathedral was planned, the Chapter begged permission to remove temporarily the bodies of the royal personages interred in the chapel,--the holy King Ferdinand, his mother and son. This pet.i.tion was granted by Queen Joanna on condition that they would rebuild it on a more fitting scale at as early a date as possible. The Chapter preferred, however, to expend all its means and energies on the great vaulting of the Cathedral rather than on the new royal sepulchre, and this was not rebuilt until Charles V finally lost patience over the negligent and disrespectful manner in which the remains of his forbears were treated and wrote to the Chapter, in 1543, commanding them "to start the work without any delay whatsoever, and to bring it to completion as rapidly as possible, and to execute the work as excellently as befitted its royal guests." That the workmen made no delay in obeying the royal commands is shown by the fact that the walls were well up as early as 1566 and finished shortly afterwards.

None of the Spanish cathedrals have a better type of Plateresque architecture and decoration than the sacristy, built during the first half of the seventeenth century. The plan is that of a Greek cross, 70 by 40 feet, and about 120 feet high. Its dome, spanning the great central vault, is a distinct feature in any comprehensive exterior view of the Cathedral. The Sacristy is filled with curious and priceless relics, treasures, and vestments belonging to the church. As Santa Justa and Santa Rufina are in a manner the patron saints of Seville, their picture by Goya hanging here is of interest. Both of them hold vessels of the character of soup dishes; and their faces, taken from Seville models, are of decidedly earthly types.

To the west of the facade as you enter, lies the large sagrario, or parish church. It is a building entirely by itself, 112 feet long, with a single nave spanned by a dangerously bold barrel vault.

Here and there among the chapels you come suddenly on famous subjects by great masters, names renowned in Spanish history or striking works of art. Learning and statesmans.h.i.+p are honored in great Mendoza's monument: the silent mailed effigies of the Guzmans commemorate the thrilling exploits of Spanish arms. What sympathies are stirred as you stand uncovered before the tomb of the great and deeply wronged Discoverer! We hear again the pa.s.sionate appeals and the vain pleadings of his undaunted faith. The living head was left to whiten within prison walls; its effigy is now proudly carried on the four gorgeous shoulders of the Spanish states; the poor bones, after their weary travels from Valladolid to the Carthusian monastery of Las Cuevas, from Hispaniola to Havana, have finally found a resting-place within the very walls where they were once treated with such contumely,--for here lies the Great Admiral, Cristoforo Colon.

You pa.s.s paintings by Alfonso Cano, Ribera, Zurbaran, Greco and Goya,--Murillo's Immaculate Conception, better known than all his other works; Montanez' exquisite Crucifixion, canvases by Valdes, Herrera, Boldan and Roelas. There are subjects curious and out of keeping with our present artistic sentiments, saints walking about with their heads instead of breviaries under their arms, dresses more fitting for the ballroom than the wintry scenery amid which they are worn, marriage ceremonies of the Virgin, Adam and Eve, entirely forgetful of their lost Eden in the contemplation of the Virgin's halo, keys with quaint old Arab inscriptions: "May Allah render eternal the dominion of Islam in this city," saints with removable hair of spun gold and jointed limbs, others s.n.a.t.c.hed from quiet altar service to plunge into the turmoil of battle on the saddle bow of reigning kings. Verily a museum of historical curiosities as well as of the fine arts, satisfying sensational cravings as well as the finer artistic sense.

The structure is revealed to us through a light of unearthly sweetness.

None of the Spanish cathedrals are more satisfactorily lighted, for Seville has neither the brilliant clarity of some of the northern churches, which robs them of a certain mystery and awe, nor has it the sinister obscurity of some of the southern, where both structure and detail are half lost in shadows, as in Barcelona.

The light from the cimborio and from the two rows of windows as well as the doors penetrates every chapel with its rainbow hues; it reveals the whole majestic structure, the lofty spring of the arches, the glittering ironwork of the screens, the t.i.tanic strength and simple caps of the columns, and breathes celestial life into the army of saints and martyrs. It gives a soul to it all. The effect produced by the early morning and late afternoon light is very different. Santa Maria de la Sede, like all her earthly sisters, has a variety of expressions. At times she burns with animation, even a remnant of earthly pa.s.sion may glow in her holy countenance, and again she is cold, impa.s.sive and nunlike in her gray garb of renunciation.

According to an Andalusian proverb, the rays of the sun have no evil power where the voice of prayer is heard. For this reason, only a few of the highest windows are screened by semi-transparent curtains, and the light pours in unbroken through most of their brilliant tints--down the nave in deep blood reds and indigo blues. The greater portion of the gla.s.s is unusually rich in coloring,--perhaps too florid, but typical of the Flemish School of gla.s.s-painting. Ninety-three windows were stained during the first half of the sixteenth century, for which the church paid the painters the large sum of 90,000 ducats. The earliest ones are by Micer and Cristobal Aleman, who in 1538 introduced in Seville real stained gla.s.s. Aleman's, representing the Ascension of Christ, Mary Magdalen, and the Awakening of Lazarus, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Descent of the Holy Ghost and the Apostles, all in the transept, together with those by his brother Arnao de Flanders, are thebest,--better than most Flemish windows of the time in any European cathedral. True, they are somewhat heavy in outline and the coloring lacks softness and restraint in tone, but they have great depth, excellency of drawing and power of expression in faces and figures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid

CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE

Ill.u.s.tration: AND THE GIRALDA]

The little chapel, the Capilla de los Doncelles, contains a magnificent sheet of gla.s.s representing the Resurrection of Christ, painted by Carlos de Bruges, one of the great Flemish artists. A whole school of foreign painters seem to have gathered round these famous "vidrieros,"

many of them working in their shops. Among the best known are Arnao de Vergara, Micer Enrique Bernardino de Celandra and Vicente Menardo.

The Giralda is incomparable, a unique expression of feminine strength.

She is as oriental and mysterious as the Sphinx, or might be likened to a great sultana in enchanted sleep. Though her majestic head has towered for centuries beside her Christian sister, they still seem as irreconcilable as their faiths a thousand years ago. It has been a strange companions.h.i.+p. The oriental loveliness and splendor of the Giralda, like that of Seville, are best felt at the twilight hour, when her jewels sparkle in the last rays of the setting sun. With the waning light the coloring becomes purple, then indigo, while the silhouette still stands out in startling clearness and strength against the spotless blue of the evening sky. You feel as if the whole mountain of masonry were slowly but surely leaning more and more from its base and about to bury you in its fall. The vermilion and ochre coloring are like the petals of the rose. Nowhere is the surface uniform, but pa.s.ses gradually from light cream and buff through warmer amber to brilliant orange and carmine and crimson lake, even to the color of the pomegranate's heart. The exquisite surface of delicate tinting, mellowed by the storms and suns of centuries, is everywhere relieved by the brilliant sparkle, the delicate play of light and shade, of the Moorish designs. When the low rays of the Andalusian sun illumine the Giralda, just touched here and there with dots of molten gold like the orange trees from whose green bed it rises, you see the boldest creation of Moorish imagination in all its splendor. The great Cathedral itself becomes a modest nun with rich, but sombre, cape over her shoulders, beside this dazzling creature glowing with Saracenic fire.

The Giralda is the greatest of all the monuments of that enlightened civilization. She is so different from any other tower that comparison becomes difficult. There is a robustness, an appearance of adequate solidity and strength which are lacking in the Italian towers of Saint Mark's, of Pistoja, or of Florence. This holds true even in relation to other Moorish towers, or such edifices as the Mosque at Cordova, the Alcazar at Seville, or the pillared halls of Granada; all other Moorish work seems to have a certain feminine weakness, a timidity and insecurity, when compared with the tower which dominates Maria Santissima. The Giralda is your first and last impression of this corner of the world, for it embodies all the grace and strength that can be combined in architecture. Old Spanish authorities a.s.sert that it was in the very year when believers throughout Christendom were anxiously expecting the end of the world that the Moslem infidels began to build their huge monument. More probably it was started about the year 1185, as the prayer tower or minaret of the mosque which was then rapidly progressing. The Spanish historian Gayangos says that it was completed by Jabar or Gever in 1196, during the reign of the ill.u.s.trious Almohad ruler, Abu Jakub Jusef, the same monarch who erected the Mesquita at Cordova. Other authorities insist that its original purpose was as an observatory,--but although it may have been used for astronomical purposes, it was certainly erected as a tower from which the muezzin could call the faithful to prayer in the Mosque of Seville. While building it, Gever claims to have invented algebra.

The original tower has undergone skillful but of course detrimental changes from the hands of later generations. We have descriptions and representations of it prior to the changes made in 1500. The main Arab structure was, like almost all Mohammedan prayer-towers, surmounted by a smaller tower and capped by a spire. It was about 250 feet high, and on its summit an iron standard supported, before the earthquake of 1395, four enormous b.a.l.l.s of bra.s.s. King Alfonso the Wise, in his "Cronica de Espana," describing Seville in the thirteenth century, says that "when the sun shone upon these b.a.l.l.s, they emitted so fierce a light that they might be seen a day's journey away from the city." When Seville was taken by Saint Ferdinand in 1248, the tower was standing in the full glory of its original conception. The thought that it might fall into the hands of the conquerors so horrified its builders that they were only prevented from destroying it by Saint Ferdinand's threat that, if a single brick were removed, not an infidel in Seville should keep his head.

The Giralda had already lost the Byzantine crown which it had worn proudly for five hundred years when, in 1595, it came near total destruction, and was only saved during the terrible earthquake and storm which almost destroyed the city by the interposition of its special protectresses, the potter girls of Triana, Santa Justa and Santa Rufina.

There are pictures which show us these blessed Virgins supporting the tower while the wind devils with distended cheeks are blowing on its sides with all their might and main. We are not only grateful to them for this timely intervention, but very glad it cost them so little exertion, for we find them shortly afterwards holding the tower in their hands as lightly as a filigree casket. The architects who restored it about twenty years ago fortunately refrained from all attempts at improving or renovating its sunburned, wind-swept surface.

The Giralda is as strong as it looks. The huge walls have a thickness of eight feet below, diminis.h.i.+ng to seven feet in the upper stories. The height to the very top of the crowning figure is 308 feet. In the foundations are bricks, rubble, and huge blocks of earlier Roman and Visigothic masonry; even Latin inscriptions are found immured. The Moors, like all other builders, used the materials readiest at hand; the rejected building stones of one generation become the corner stones of the next.

Below the Renaissance addition with which the tower was terminated in 1568, the broad sides of the shaft had been broken by the Arabs in the simplest and most felicitous manner. The brickwork was treated in three panels with the corner borders very properly broader and stronger than the two intermediate ones. The panels, which could not be of a happier depth, are filled down to eighty feet of the ground with varying Moorish arabesque patterns; the figured diaper-work on all sides is broken in the two outer panels by blind cusped arches, and in the central patterns, by Moorish windows of the "ajuiez" variety. Their double arches are subdivided by small Byzantine columns; these again are framed within larger cusped and differently broken horseshoe curves. Small Renaissance balconies have at a later date been placed below the windows. The small niches comprising the total Moorish composition sparkle throughout with life and charm, and, though no two are alike, they form a harmonious whole. The Arab seemed to have an instinctive aversion from tedious repet.i.tion. He would always vary the design just enough to satisfy his imagination and creative faculty, but never sufficiently to disturb the harmony of the general scheme. As with the windows, so also with the arabesques. They begin at slightly varying heights on the different sides of the tower, so that the windows may properly meet the different elevations of the interior stair. Their patterns are not quite the same, neither on the various sides of the tower nor at different heights on the same side. The decoration employed is admirably fitted to a large surface which would have been weakened by strong cutting or deep relief. Considering what Arab art achieved within prescribed limits, the student of Christian art may well deplore that the Koran, in its abhorrence of idol-wors.h.i.+p, forbade its followers in any way to reproduce human or animal forms. Forever debarred all the wider possibilities of movement and poetry these would have given them for interior decoration, Moorish art necessarily stagnated to mere conventionalization of floral and natural subjects.

These are well adapted to exterior mural surfacing. When we look at the fancifully handled geometric patterns on the Giralda, we can only rejoice that the frescoes added by the later Renaissance artists in the upper arches and along some of the lower surfaces have been washed away by time. They were ineffective; all that remains of Moorish is magnificent. A small arcade, running the width of each side in its single panel, terminates the Moorish work.

It is almost to be regretted that the Renaissance top has been so well done, for its barbarous exotism is sufficient to condemn it. It has excellently fulfilled a dastardly purpose.

The original Moorish termination was taken down by the architect, Francisco Ruiz, who was commissioned by the Cathedral Chapter in 1568 to give it a more fitting crown. His design consists of three stages reaching to a height of about a hundred feet. The first, of the same width as the shaft below, is pierced by openings "to let out the sweet sounds of the bells inside." The second stage consists of a double tier of considerably smaller squares pierced by wide arches. Around the four sides of its upper frieze runs the inscription so legible that all Sevillians who know how may read, "Nomen Domini Fortissima Turris"

(Proverbs, xviii, 10). The third stage consists of a double lantern surmounted by a soaring Seraphim, bearing in one hand the banner of Constantine and in the other the Roman palm of conquest. The "Girardello" was cast in gilded bronze by Bartolome Morel in the year 1568. Intended to symbolize Faith, the name, a diminutive of Giralda, or weatherc.o.c.k, is most inappropriate. Despite her enormous size and weight, the faintest zephyr blowing down from the Sierra Morena sets her turning on the spire she treads so lightly, whereupon the crowds of hawks resting on Girardello disperse in noisy scolding.

Dumas gazed at her in wonder and admiration. "C'est merveilleux," he said, "de voir tourner dans un rayon de soleil cette figure d'or aux ailes deployees, qui semble, comme un oiseau celeste fatigue d'une longue course, avoir choisi pour se reposer un instant le point le plus proche du ciel."

The great bells of the tower, all baptized with holy oil, a custom very frequent in Spain, are dear to the hearts of those whom they daily call to rest and prayer. As they strike the hours, pa.s.sers-by look up to see their great tongues protrude. Their sweet peal is heard in the most distant quarters of the city, and beyond on the waters of the Guadalquivir and in the fertile valley through which it flows. The deep resonant note of Santa Maria is the last sound we hear before falling asleep.

Inside you may ascend to the very summit by steps so broad and easy that two horses abreast may go as far as the platform of the bells.

Below you lies the city with its scattered white buildings that once housed half a million, and beyond, the valley that enfolded twelve thousand villages. Though dwindled and changed, time has dealt gently with Seville. There is gay laughter in her sunny streets and the olive groves echo with rippling song. Just under your feet throbs the heart of it all. Though repeatedly struck by lightning, the great Cathedral still stands, an everlasting symbol of the Church, triumphant and eternal.