Read Ebook: Cathedrals of Spain by Gade John A John Allyne

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1237 lines and 73179 words, and 25 pages

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 shifting 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 P?rigueux 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 assistance 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. 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 Se?or 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.

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 massiveness 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 passage, which leads into the nave through the immense later masses 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 assistance 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 quadripartite 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 substitution 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.

It is unusually well lighted for a Romanesque church, which is naturally owing to the dome and not to the various windows or roses. There is no triforium, but the side walls, transepts, and apses are pierced by openings of true Romanesque type. The thick masonry has been most timidly pierced for narrow, round-headed slits of light, with splayed jambs and colonettes engaged to their sides carrying the typically ornamented archmolds enframing the whole. The stone mullions of the two remaining roses are equally timid and typical, but have not suffered like the windows from the encroachment of the new edifice.

The pavement undulates like that of Saint Mark's. High above the crossing of nave and transepts rises the tower flooding the church with light and internally as well as externally expressing one of the grandest architectural conceptions of the Spanish Peninsula.

Superlatives can alone describe the Torre del Gallo,--truly a product and glory of Spanish soil. Many writers have argued its similarity to the domes of Aquitaine churches, to Saint Front of P?rigueux and others, but it is distinctly different from and far superior to those with which it has been compared in the magnificently interposed members of the drum, which shed light into the church through their openings and raise the cupola high enough to make of it a finely proportioned, crowning member. The cupola alone, certainly not the general disposition, may be regarded as a copy of earlier examples.

The internal and external cores have been admirably managed, the outer one being much higher to be in correct proportion to the surrounding masonry which it crowns. The interior transition from the square to the round base, twenty-eight feet in diameter, is rather clumsily managed. The successive masonry courses of the angles step out in Byzantine fashion in front of each other. The four piers of the crossing, upon which the pendentives descend, are no larger than the main piers of the nave. Above the pendentives which stand out, in their undecorated masonry, the circle is girdled by a carved cyma, above which rises a double arcade of sixteen arches, each arch flanked by strong and simple columns with Byzantine caps of barely indicated foliage. Powerful, intermediate columnar shafts separate the superimposed arcades and carry on their caps the sixteen ribs that shoot upwards and meet in the great floral boss at the apex of the inner dome. The lower arcades are semicircular, the upper, trefoiled, while the intermediate shafts are broken by two band-courses. All the moldings, and especially the energetic, muscular ribs, are splendidly simple and vigorous in their undecorated profiles. The lower arcade is blind, the upper admits light through timidly slender apertures, with the exception of every fourth arch, which coincides with an exterior turret.

Externally the lantern is even more remarkable than internally. As seen from within, it is faced alternately by four tympanums and four turrets. These are broken by long, narrow, round-headed openings, vivified by ball moldings ornamenting the heavy rounding of their splays. The tympanums, as well as the windows between them, and the turrets are flanked by a series of Romanesque columns. Their grouping, the deep reveals and resulting shadows, the play of light and shade brought out in the foliage of their various caps, which is but indicated in the simple manner of the style, and the adjacent moldings, all give a most archaic impression. The roofing of the turrets, as well as that of the outer dome, suggests a stone coat-of-mail. The flags are laid in scallops or stepped rows, like the scales of a fish, giving a far tighter joint than the stone channels covering the roofing of Avila Cathedral. The outline of the dome is that of a cone with a slightly modulated curve, perhaps unconsciously affected by a Moorish delineation. The angles are marked by bold crockets. Above, crowning the apex, perches the cock, gayly facing whatever part of the heavens the wind blows from. There is an everlasting triumph in it all, reminding one not a little of that won at a later date in Santa Maria del Fiore. Salamanca holds the religious triumph of a militant age; Florence, the sacred glory of an artistic one. The lofty aspiration, boldly hewn in the Spanish fortress, is no less admirable than the constructive genius rounded in Brunelleschi's dome.

The remainder of the interior is now singularly undecorated and severe. The entrance has been so much transformed by later additions that, in place of the original portal and vestibule, there remains only a vestibule considerably narrower than the nave, compressed on one side by the huge towers of the new Cathedral, and on the other by later alterations. The two older towers which contained, one the chimes and the other the dwelling of the Alcaide, have quite disappeared. The vestibule has excellent allegorical sculptures and Gothic statuary.

The northern aisle still has a few mural paintings, but the larger part of those which once illuminated the bare walls were washed off by a bigoted prelate in the fifteenth century and the present gray of the stone, as seen in the dim light, looks cold compared to the rich gold of the exterior masonry bathed in sunshine. The excellence of the vaulting is such that to-day hardly a fissure or crack is visible. The old pavement consists of great rectangles marked by red sandstone borders and bluestone centre slabs, the size of a grave, with central dowels for lifting and closing. In the southern transept-arm leading to the cloisters, some of the original windows are still preserved with their fine columns, archivolts, and carved moldings. The ribs of the vaults are decorated by zigzag ornamentation, and here a few magnificent old tombs remain intact in their ancient niches.

There is, properly speaking, no exterior elevation of the whole structure. The western front is hidden by the modernization, the north and south, by the new Cathedral, the cloisters, and squalid, encumbering walls and chapels. From the "Patio Chico" alone, the old structure can be seen unobstructed. The curves of the apses bulge out like full-bellied sails, their great masonry surfaces broken by the small windows, which are cut with enormous splays and encased and arched by typical Romanesque features, the windows protected by heavy Moorish grilles. Engaged shafts run up the sides of the central apse to below a quatrefoil gallery, originally a shelter for the archers stationed to defend the building. Two fortress-towers formed the eastern angles north and south; the one to the north was removed in building the new Cathedral. A scaled turret, broken by later Gothic pediments, crosses the one remaining. Above all soars the dome, the inspiration of our greatest American Romanesque temple, Trinity Church in Boston.

At the end of the twelfth century the houses of a sacrilegious Salamanca gentleman were confiscated and given to the Cathedral Chapter, who forthwith began the cloisters upon their site. They lie to the south and thus came to be planned and built into the original fabric and with Romanesque arches and wooden roof. They were practically entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century and again restored in the eighteenth. Curious, elaborate, vaulted chapels--in one of which the Mozarabic rite, the ancient Gothic ritual prolonged under Moslem rule, is still occasionally celebrated--adjoin it to the east and south. Recently, old Byzantine niches and tombs, some of great interest, have been uncovered in the outer walls.

"I, THE KING, I, THE QUEEN.

SEVILLE, the 17th day of February, in the ninety-first year."

That was the way the Catholic Kings wrote to the Cardinal of Angers to make plain to him that the plain, dark, small, old Cathedral was no longer in keeping with their glory or the times, and to begin the movement for a larger edifice. The stern simplicity of the ancient Church was indeed out of harmony with the brilliance and craving for lavish display and magnificent proportions which characterize the age of Ferdinand and Isabella.

The famous Master of Toledo, Anton Egas, received a similar summons , but neither architect seems to have been over-zealous in carrying out the royal commands, for next year Queen Juana, Ferdinand's daughter, growing impatient, writes again: "Ifind it now good, as I command you, that immediately that this my letter shall be made known to you, without making any excuse or delay, you go to the said City of Salamanca."

This produced the desired result, for the two delinquent architects hurried to the city, studied the conditions, and, after considerable squabbling with each other and the Chapter, many drawings, and a lengthy report, agreed to disagree. This was too much for the Bishop, and without further ado he summoned on the 3d of September, 1512, a famous conclave of all the celebrated architects in Spain to pass on the report of Egas of Toledo and Rodriguez of Seville and settle the matter. Here sat besides Egas, Juan Badajos, Juan Gil de Honta?on, Alfonso Covarrubias, Juan de Orazco, Juan de Alava, Juan Tornero, Rodrigo de Sarabia and Juan Campero. The matter was thrashed out both as to site and form and a final report sent in, stating the result of their deliberations, "and as they were much learned and skilful men, and experienced in their art, their opinion ought certainly to be acted on." However, to leave no further doubt, every one of them swore "by God and Saint Mary, under whose protection the Church is, and upon the sign of the Cross, upon which they all and each of them put their hands bodily, that they had spoken the entire truth, which each of them did, saying, 'So I swear, and Amen.'" This settled the business. Three days afterwards, Juan Gil de Honta?on, the later builder of Segovia and rebuilder of the dome of Seville, was named Maestro Mayor and Juan Campero, his apprentice.

On a stone of the main fa?ade there still stands an inscription recording the solemn laying of the corner-stone on the 12th of May, 1513. It was dedicated to the Mother and the Saviour. The wisest of the resolutions passed by this wisest of architectural bodies was the recommendation to leave the old edifice undisturbed.

The plan of the new Cathedral, like that of Seville, is an enormous rectangle of ten bays, resembling a huge mosque, 378 feet long by 181 feet wide. It consists of nave and double side aisles without projecting transept; square chapels fill the outer aisles as well as the bays of the eastern termination. After much discussion it was decided that the nave should be about one third higher than the first side aisles; the chapels are 54 feet in height.

The choir blocks the third and fourth bays of the nave, while the Capilla Mayor occupies the eighth. Over the sixth soars the lantern. The platform of the Patio Chico separates the sacristy and the old Cathedral that practically abuts the entire southern front. At the southwestern angle, the intersection of the two cathedrals is hidden by the gigantic tower. The northern front is admirably free, the whole structure being visible on its high granite platform. The western front is entered through the great triple doorway, the central being that of the Nacimiento; the northern, through the Puerta de las Ramos, the southern, through the Puerta del Patio Chico.

Glancing at the plan as a whole, one cannot but deplore that a conception of such daring proportions with no limitation of time nor money, having centuries and the wealth of the Indies to draw on, was not conceived with that most perfect of all Gothic developments, the semicircular apsidal termination. The Spanish, as well as the customary English eastern end, can never, from any standpoint of ingenuity or beauty, be comparable to the amazing conceptions of Rheims or Amiens or Paris.

The blending of the two styles does not jar, but has been effected with a harmony scarcely to be expected. If one were not hampered with an architectural education, one could admire it all, instead of criticizing and wondering why a Renaissance lantern is raised upon a Gothic crown, and why a fine Renaissance balustrade above Gothic band-courses separates the nave arches from its clerestory, while those of the side aisles are separated by a Gothic one. The interior fabric itself is fine: it is more in detail, in the stringiness and multiplicity of moldings, in the fineness, subdivision, and elaboration of carvings and ornament that one feels the advancing degeneration. From being frank and simple, it has become insincere and profuse.

The Gothic window openings, which had been steadily developing larger and bolder up to their culmination in the glorious conservatory of Leon, had again grown smaller and more fitted to the climate. In Salamanca they are small and high up. Nave and side aisles both carry clerestories; that of the nave consisting of seventy-two windows in alternate bays of three windows and two windows with circle above, that of the side aisle, of one large window subdivided within its own field. The chapel walls are also pierced by smaller openings. Some have good though not excellent coloring.

The form of the Renaissance lantern is not infelicitous, either from the inside or outside. It was first built by Sacchetti. The double base is octagonal, with corners strengthened by columns and pilasters and executed with much artistic skill. Were it not for the vulgar interior coloring and ornamentation of cherubs, scrolls, and scallop shells, contorted, disproportionate, and unmeaning, its high, brilliantly lighting semicircle might be pleasing. Horrible decoration fills the panels of the octagonal base. The dome itself is almost as gaudily colored.

The interior is built of a clear gray stone on which sparing employment of color in certain places is most effective. Thus in the bosses of the vaulting ribs throughout, in the capitals of the piers of nave and transept, in the very elaborate fan-vaulting of the Capilla Mayor, and in the soffits of nave-clerestory, the blue and gold contrasts finely with the cold gray surfaces. Renaissance medallions decorate the spandrels of the nave, but those of the side aisles bear the coats-of-arms of the Cathedral and the City of Salamanca. A differently designed fan-vaulting spreads over every chapel. Great rejas enclose choir and Capilla Mayor from the transept. The rear of the choir is badly mutilated by a Baroque screen, while the sides and back of the high altar still consist of the rough blocks which have been waiting for centuries to be carved. The choir-stalls are very late eighteenth century, a mass of over-elaborate detail, as fine as Grinling Gibbon's carving, and if possible even more remarkable in the detail.

The west and north fa?ades are, for a Spanish cathedral, singularly free and unencumbered. The west faces the old walls of the university. The entire composition is overshadowed by the tremendous tower that looms up for miles around in the country. It is indeed "Salamanca qui ?rige ses clochers rutilants sur la nudit? inexorable du d?sert." Though it has nothing to do with the rest of the composition, it is a happy mixture of the two styles; the massive base is as high as the roofing of the nave, blessedly bare and severe beside the restlessness of the adjoining screen. A clock and a few panels are all that break it. Classical balconies run round it above and below the first bell-story, the sides of which are decorated with a Corinthian order and broken by round arched openings. A similar order decorates the drum of the cupola, while Gothic crocketed pyramids break the transition at angles. At the peak of the lantern, three hundred and sixty feet in the air, soars the triumphant emblem of the Church of Christ. That man of architectural infamy, Churriguera, erected it, showing in this instance an extraordinary restraint.

The fa?ade belongs to the first period of the Cathedral, and portions of it are Juan Gil de Honta?on's work, though the later points to Poniente. It is interesting to compare it with the last Gothic work in France, with, for instance, Saint-Ouen at Rouen. The end of the style in the two countries is totally different--one expiring in a mass of glass and tracery, the other, in a meaningless jumble of ornamentation, of cusped and broken and elliptical arches and carving incredible in its delicacy. One can scarcely believe it to be stone. The Spanish, though not wild in its extravagance, yet lacks all sense of restraint. The front is composed of a screenwork of three huge arches, within which three portals leading to the aisles form the main composition, the whole crowned by a series of crocketed pinnacles. A plain fortress-like pier, resembling the remnant of an old bastion, terminates it to the north. Great buttresses separate the portals. Around them are deep reveals and archivolt; somewhat recalling French examples in their forms; above them is an inexhaustible effort in stone. There are myriads of brackets and canopies, some few having statues. There are enough coats-of-arms to supply whole nations with heraldic emblems, and recessed moldings of remarkable and exquisite workmanship and crispness of foliage. Some of the bas-reliefs, as those of the Nativity and Adoration, are very fine. The Virgin in the pillar separating the doors of the central entrance gathers the folds of her robe about her with a queenly grace and dignity.

The whole doorway on its great scale is a remarkable work of the transition from Gothic to Renaissance. While the treatment of the figures has a naturalism already entirely Renaissance, the main bulk of the ornamental detail is still in its feeling quite Gothic.

From the steps of the Palazzo del Goberno Civil, the northern front stretches out before you above the bushy tops of the acacia trees in the Plaza del Colegio Viejo. The demarcations are strong in the horizontal courses of the balconies which crown the walls of the nave and side-aisle chapels,--the two lower quite Gothic. The thrust of the naves is met by great buttresses flying out over the roofs of the side aisles, and there, as well as above the buttresses of the chapel walls, pinnacles rise like the masts in a great shipyard. The whole organism of the late Spanish Gothic church lies open before you. The long stretch of the three tiers of walls is broken by the face of the transept, the door of which is blocked, while the surrounding buttresses and walls are covered with canopies and brackets, all vacant of statues. In place of the condemned door, there is one leading into the second bay, the Puerta de los Ramos or de las Palmas, in feeling very similar to the main doors of the west. Its semicircular arches support a relief representing Christ entering Jerusalem. A circular light flanked by Peter and Paul comes above, and the whole is encased in a series of broken arches filled with the most intricate carving.

The grand and the grandiloquent Cathedral seem to gaze out over the town and the vast plain of the old kingdom of Leon and to listen. It is a golden town, of a dignity one gladly links with the name of Castile. It is a city--or what is left of it after the firebrands of Thiebaut, of Ney, and of Marmont--of the sixteenth century, of convents and churches and huge ecclesiastical establishments. They rise like amber mountains above the squalid buildings crumbling between them, and stand in grilled and latticed silence. Las Due?as lies mute on one side and on the other San Esteban, where the great discoverer pleaded his cause to deaf ears. In the evening glow their brown walls gain a depth and warmth of color like the flush in the dark cheeks of Spanish girls.

BURGOS

Whereat he wondred much, and gan enquere What stately building durst so high extend Her lofty towres unto the starry sphere.

The best view of the spires of Burgos is from the ruined walls of the Castillo high above the city. From these crumbling ramparts, pierced and gouged by a thousand years of assault and finally rent asunder by the powder of the Napoleonic armies, you look directly down upon the mistress of the city and the sad and ardent plain. A stubbly growth, more like cocoa matting than grass, covers the unroofed floor beneath your feet. From this Castle, Ferdinand Gonzales ruled Castile, and here the Cid led Do?a Zimena, and Edward I of England Eleanor of Castile, to the altar. The only colors brightening the melancholy hillside are here and there the brilliant blood-stain of the poppy, the gold of the dandelion, and the episcopal purple of the thistle. Below and beyond, stretches a sea of shaded ochre, broken in the foreground by the corrugations of the many roofs turned by time to the brownish tint of the encircling hillocks and made to blend in one harmony with its monochrome bosom. Fillets of silver pierce the horizon, glittering as they wind nearer between over-hanging birches and poplars. The deep, guttural, roar of the great Cathedral's many voices rises in majestic and undisputed authority from the valley below, now and again joined by the weaker trebles of San Esteban and San Nicolas. Regiments of soldiers march with regular clattering step through holy precincts and up and down the crooked lanes and squares; barracks and parade-grounds occupy consecrated soil,--still Santa Maria la Mayor raises her voice to command obedience and proclaim her undivided dominion over the plains of drowsy, old Castile.

From this height, one does not notice the transformation of the Gothic into seventeenth-century edifices, nor the changes wrought by later centuries. In the glare of the dazzling sun, the tremulous atmosphere, and the lazy, curling smoke of the many chimneys, Burgos still seems Burgos of the Middle Ages, the royal city, mistress of the castles and sweeping plains, and the Cathedral is her stronghold.

She is very old,--tradition says, founded by Count Diego Rodriguez of Alava with the assistance of an Alfonso who ruled in Christian Oviedo towards the end of the ninth century. For many years his descendants, as well as the lords of the many castles strewn along the lonely hills north of the Sierra de Guadarrama, owed allegiance to Leon and the kingdom of the Asturias. Burgos finally threw off the yoke, and chose judges for rulers, until one of them, Ferdinand Gonzalez, assumed for himself and his successors the proud title of "Conde of Castile." Under his great-grandson, Ferdinand I, Castile and Leon were united in 1037, thus laying the foundations of the later monarchy. Burgos became a capital city. Against the dark background of mediaeval history and interwoven with many romantic legends, there stands out that greatest of Spanish heroes, the Cid Campeador. This Rodrigo Diaz was born near Burgos. The lady Zimena whom he married was daughter of a Count Diego Rodriguez of Oviedo, probably a descendant of the founder of the city. In the presence of the knights and nobles of Burgos, the Cid forced Alfonso VI to swear that he had no part in the murder of King Sancho, and in the royal city he was then elected King of Castile by the Commons . Alfonso never forgave the Cid this humiliation, and later exiled him. To the Burgalese of to-day, he seems as living and real as he was to mediaeval Castilians. Spanish histories and children will tell you of two things that make Burgos immortal--her Cathedral, and her motherhood to Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.

The greatness of Burgos is that of the old Castilian kingdom; with its extinction came hers. Her flowering and expansion were contemporaneous with the most splendid period of Gothic art. Her day was a glorious one, before bigotry had laid its withering hand upon the arts, and while the rich imagination and skilled hands of Moorish and Jewish citizens still ennobled and embellished their capital city.

The present Cathedral is singularly picturesque and by far the most interesting of the three great Gothic Cathedrals of Spain,--Leon, Toledo, and Burgos. The interest is mainly due to her vigorous organism, an outcome of more essentially Spanish predilections than we find in either of the sister churches. Later additions and ornamentation have naturally concealed and disfigured, but the old body is still there, admirable, fitting, and sane.

Burgos Cathedral is built upon a hillside, her walls hewn out of and climbing the sides of the mountain, making it necessary either from north or south to approach her through long flights of stairs. What she loses in freedom and access, she certainly gains in picturesqueness. She is flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of the city, scaling its heights like a great mother and drawing after her the surrounding houses which nestle to her sides. She would not gain in majesty by standing free in an open square, nor by receiving the sunlight on all sides. And so, though many later additions hide much of the early fabric, they combine with it to form a picturesque whole, a wonderful jewelled casket, a sparkling diadem set high on the royal brow of the city, such as possibly no other city of its size in Christendom can boast.

It was King Alfonso VI who at the end of the eleventh century gave his palace-ground for the erection of a Cathedral for the new Episcopal See. We know nothing of its design, nor whether it occupied exactly the same site as the later building. The early one must, however, have been a Romanesque Church;--what might not a later Romanesque Cathedral have been!--for the style had arrived at a point of vitally interesting promise and national development, when it was forced to recoil before the foreign invaders, the Benedictines and Cistercians.

Two great names are linked to the founding of the present Cathedral of Burgos, Saint Ferdinand and Bishop Maurice. The latter was bishop from 1213 to 1238, and probably an Englishman who came to Burgos in the train of the English Queen, Eleanor Plantagenet. He was sent to Speyer as ambassador from the Spanish Court to bring back the Princess Beatrice as bride for Saint Ferdinand. Maurice's mission took him through those parts of Germany and France where the enthusiasm for cathedral-building was at its height, and he had time to admire and study a forest of exquisite spires, newly reared, particularly while the young lady given him in charge was sumptuously entertained by King Philip Augustus. Naturally he returned to his native city burning with ardor to begin a similar work there, and probably brought with him master-builders and skilful artists of long training in Gothic church-building.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet