fittingly by far the oldest. The aqueduct dates, it is believed, from
Trajan’s reign, and is the most considerable of the Roman remains of
Spain. In the Middle Ages, like most other classical works, it was
attributed to diabolical agency, and is still often called El Puente del
Diablo. Beginning at the Fuente Fria in the Sierra Guadarrama, ten miles
away, with many zigzags it passes over hill and dale, and at last spans
the deep valley before the city, and is carried across the streets to
the Alcazar. It is built of granite with black veins, hewn in great
blocks, which are pieced together without mortar or clamps. Every block
is visible on one side or another. For the distance of nine hundred
yards the aqueduct is carried on one hundred and nineteen arches,
varying in height from twenty-three to ninety-four feet. For a third of
this length the arches are in two tiers. The work is devoid of
ornamentation, except for the remains of a cornice. All is not Roman
work. The aqueduct was partially demolished in the eleventh century
during a siege by the Moors, and when Queen Isabel the Catholic
determined to restore it, thirty-six arches between the convents of La
Concepcion and San Francisco had fallen in. The restoration of these was
intrusted, on the recommendation of the Prior of El Parral, to a young
monk of that house, named Fray Juan Escovedo, who performed his
difficult task with remarkable skill. Indeed, it is not easy to
distinguish the Spaniard’s work from the Roman’s. Escovedo died in 1489.
The only reward he received for his labours was the timber of the
scaffoldings.
Some of the arches have been for centuries embedded in the city walls.
The work, though severe and imposing, is not perhaps equal to the Pont
de Gard, or even to certain other Roman remains in Spain. Yet nothing
could be more curious, or, in a sense, more picturesque, than the views
of the quaint old houses framed by its arches, or grander than these as
seen from San Juan, or towering above the Plaza Mayor. Their height is,
of course, magnified by the hovels clustering at their bases, in
comparison with which the aqueduct appears rather the work of Cyclopes
than of men. And through these arches, as through a gate of triumph, we
pass into the mediæval city.
Yet this is not the only monument of classical antiquity in Segovia. The
rude figure of Hercules about to slay the Erymanthine Boar was
discovered in the interior of the tower of Santo Domingo el Real, which
became the property of the Dominican nuns in 1513. The demigod, to whom
the foundation of so many Spanish cities has been ascribed, was no doubt
worshipped here.
* * * * *
This ancient town of warlike people is surrounded by high walls, reared
by the settlers of Count Raymond in the eleventh century, though the
Alcazar, the ‘Casa de Segovia’ (adjoining the fine old Puerta de San
Juan), and the ‘Tower of Hercules’ just mentioned, all forming part of
the enceinte, may have been in the first instance of Roman origin. The
wall is strengthened by bastions and towers of various shapes--square,
round, and polygonal--some with brick archings and ornamental courses
of brick and plaster. The wall and towers preserve their battlements.
The ‘allure,’ or rampart walk, is in parts so narrow as hardly to permit
of safe walking. Among the most picturesque gates is that of San Andrés.
It lies between two towers, one square, the other larger and polygonal,
and crowning the very edge of the declivity; from one to the other runs
a gallery, supported by a semicircular arch. This gate was restored by
Ferdinand and Isabel, and at one time afforded ingress to the Jewry of
Segovia. The masonry of the adjoining wall resembles that of the
aqueduct close by, and may possibly be a fragment of the Roman
fortifications.
Segovia, we are often reminded, looks like a ship in full sail towards
the west; and the Alcazar is at the prow. Whether or not it occupies the
site of a Saracen or Roman work, there can be no doubt that the present
structure was founded by the conqueror of Toledo, Alfonso VI., at the
end of the eleventh century, and was remodelled and enlarged by Juan II.
in the fifteenth. Much of it is now entirely modern, the interior of the
fabric having been completely restored after the fire of 1862. For all
that, this citadel of Segovia remains a fine typical castle of Castile,
the castle-land. The massive Torre de Juan Segundo forms the east part
of the building. Its four sides are furnished with the bartizans
characteristic of Spanish castles, which spring out of the wall at about
half its height, and rise considerably above the battlements. Between
them runs a machicolation carried on corbels. The windows in this
magnificent tower are sheltered by quaint stone canopies; and the whole
façade is covered with plaster, on which Gothic tracery has been stamped
with a mould as at the Alhambra. The interior is vaulted, and has three
floors.
Around the inner court were disposed the royal apartments, which indeed
still exist, though the fire and consequent restoration have shorn them
of most of their beauties. Don J. M. Quadrado, who saw them before the
catastrophe, declares they were of magical splendour. A curious story is
associated with the Sala del Cordon. In 1258 the learned king, Alfonso
X., discoursing at the Alcazar as was his wont with a party of sages,
remarked, like Lafontaine’s Garo, that if the Creator had consulted him
he would have turned out a better world; others have it that he declared
his belief that the earth revolved round the sun, and not the sun round
the earth. Whatever he said, he was rebuked for his profanity by Brother
Antonio, a Franciscan. But the king hardened his heart. That very night,
as he lay in bed, a thunderbolt came crashing through the ceiling, and
sent him quaking and beseeching absolution to the feet of the friar. In
memory of this event he decorated the walls of this apartment with the
cord or girdle of St. Francis, which perhaps as a member of the lay
‘Third Order’ he was entitled to wear.
Passing through the handsome Sala del Trono, we reach the Sala de los
Reyes, adorned before the conflagration with an ancient and valuable
series of effigies of the early kings of Leon and Castile. From one of
the windows Pedro, a son of Enrique II., fell out of the arms of his
nurse, and was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. The woman, rather
than face the king’s anger, threw herself after her charge and met the
same fate.
The part of rock at the western extremity of town and citadel is
defended by the strong Torre de Homenage, which was held for Isabel the
Catholic by Andrés de Cabrera in 1476 when the rest of the fortress had
been seized by the partisans of Juana. In 1507, on the contrary, it
offered a vigorous resistance to the same Cabrera, to whom, however,
the garrison surrendered on May 15. The tower is surmounted and
strengthened by seven turrets. The irregular disposition of these
_cubos_ and _torreones_ (round towers and bartizans) round the four
sides of a keep is a peculiarity of Spanish military architecture. Here
they used to be crowned with peaked roofs of slate, probably like those
that lend such a bizarre appearance to the palace at Cintra. This
feature, like the plaster-work on the façade, shows distinct Moorish
influence, and encourages the belief that the castle was modelled on
that of the Muslim lords of Toledo.
We have seen how important was the part played in the history of the
kingdom by this grand old citadel. I must not forget to mention that Le
Sage places here the scene of the confinement of Gil Blas before his
marriage; but as is well known, the author of the most famous of
picaresque romances never set foot south of the Pyrenees.
* * * * *
The space to the east of the Alcazar was formerly occupied by the old
cathedral, built in the twelfth century, and totally destroyed by the
Comuneros in 1520. It was determined to erect the new cathedral on a
more convenient site, and on the 8th June 1522 the Bishop, going in
procession, laid the foundation-stone of the existing building on the
west side of the Plaza Mayor. The plans were drawn by Juan Gil de
Hontañon, and are very similar to those of the new cathedral at
Salamanca, of which Hontañon was architect, though he is said to have
used another’s designs. Street thinks (and few will disagree with him)
that this is the finer cathedral of the two, chiefly because its eastern
end is semicircular and not square. It is one of the very latest Gothic
cathedrals, and is on the whole a beautiful building in fine warm-hued
stone. The plan is that of an oblong, rounded at the eastern end; or, to
be more precise, it includes a nave with aisles, into which on both
sides open chapels placed between flying buttresses, and a chevet with
seven polygonal chapels. The choir occupies the customary position in
the middle of the nave. A cupola, 220 feet high, rises over the
crossing. The length of the church is given as 330 feet, the breadth as
158 feet, the nave being 44 feet across, the aisles 30 feet.
The west front is divided by buttresses into five compartments,
corresponding to the nave, aisles, and rows of chapels, both in width
and in elevation. The three entrances are enclosed within pointed
arches. The ornamentation is restrained and pure. At the southern corner
the front is flanked by a square tower 345 feet high and 35 feet in
area, with six rows of windows enclosed within arcades and all blinded
except those of the belfry. The angles of the platform are adorned with
pinnacles, and the tower is surmounted by an octagonal clock-story.
Higher than the Giralda of Seville and broader than the Tower at Toledo,
this structure is a matter of legitimate pride to the Segovians.
The rest of the exterior closely resembles that of Salamanca--‘the same
concealment of the roofs and roof-lines everywhere,’ laments Street. The
outside of the chevet exhibits an excess of ornamental work; it is, in
fact, a forest of pinnacles. On the south side the façade is partly
hidden by the cloister and sacristies.
The interior is bright and altogether pleasing. The columns are massive
and gracefully moulded, and the arches lofty. The nave and aisles are
lighted by windows filled with beautifully-coloured glass. There is no
triforium, but instead a balustrade in the flamboyant style in front of
the clerestory of the nave.
The lantern or cupola over the crossing, and the gorgeous reredos behind
the High Altar, are quite out of keeping with the general aspect of the
church. The chancel is enclosed by three very fine iron screens, quite
Plateresque in character, though executed in 1733. The majority of the
stalls in the choir were designed for the old cathedral, half a century
at least before its destruction. The organ on the Epistle side, now
enclosed in an eighteenth-century case, also came from the old church,
and was the gift of Enrique III. The rich marble retablo at the west end
of the choir was given by Carlos III., and enshrines in a silver
reliquary the ashes of the local martyrs, Fruto and his brethren.
The chapels are not specially interesting. Those in the chevet are
exactly alike, and furnished like those in the aisles, for the most
part, with seventeenth-century retablos. In one (Nuestra Señora del
Rosario) is buried Doña Maria Quintana, who ended a dissipated life in
the odour of sanctity on August 16, 1734. Her epitaph runs: ‘Hic vespere
et mane et meridie laudes Deo reddidit, et vitandi crimina zelo preces
et lacrymas Juges effudit; hic quam intra chorum psallere secum
prohibuit, extra chorum fructuose psallere Spiritus docuit; hic tertio
ab obitu die nondum rigida membra, à juncturis suis jamdiu separata
quiescunt ossa. An forsan post mortem etiam prophetabunt?’ The chapel
of St. Hierotio was dedicated to that saint by Bishop Escalzo under the
false impression that he was the founder of the see. The Capilla de la
Piedad (fifth in the left aisle) is remarkable for a fine Descent from
the Cross, a retablo with colossal and expressionful figures, painted by
Juan de Juni in 1571. In the same chapel is a painting by Alonso Sánchez
Coello, the Apparition of Christ to St. Thomas, spoilt by injudicious
re-touching.
On the south side of the cathedral is the cloister, which belonged to
the old church, and was reconstructed here in beautiful flamboyant style
by Juan Campero in 1524. It is entered by a fine Gothic doorway, in the
Consuelo chapel (wherein is the noble tomb of Bishop de Covarrubias). On
the cross-vaulting of the cloister may be seen the arms of Bishop Arias
Dávila. We notice the monuments of three of the architects--Rodrigo Gil
de Hontañon (died 1577), and his successors, Campo Agüero and Viadero.
In the chapel of Santa Catalina at the foot of the West Tower are
contained the remains of little Prince Pedro, with his painted and
gilded effigy. The superb monstrance preserved in this chapel was
designed in 1656 by Rafael González. At the northern aisle of the
cloister may be read this inscription: ‘Aquí está sepultada la devota
Mari Saltos con quién Dios obré este milagro en la Fonzisla. Fizo su
vida en la otra iglesia, acabó sus dias como Católica Cristiana, Año de
1237.’ (Here is buried the devout Maria Saltos, with whom God performed
a miracle at Foncisla. She passed her life in the other church, and
finished her days as a Catholic Christian in the year 1237.) ‘The other
church’ was of the Hebrew persuasion, to which Maria belonged. Accused
of adultery, and condemned to die by the elders of her community--which
was a self-governing body in Spain within certain limits--she was cast
from the Peña Grajera, the Tarpeian Rock of Segovia. At the supreme
moment she was heard to invoke the Virgin of the Christians, and reached
the ground unharmed. She was baptized, and died, as the epitaph
testifies, a devout Catholic. The incident may be ranked with the
remarkable, if not miraculous, escape of the Catholic secretaries at
Prague, known as the Fensterstürz.
The chapter-house, adjacent to the Western Tower, is a very splendid
apartment, paved with marble, upholstered with crimson velvet, and
containing some good engravings, mostly Flemish. An elegant staircase
leads to the library above.
* * * * *
At the back of the cathedral is the Plaza Mayor, one of the most
picturesque squares in Spain. The Ayuntamiento with its Doric columns
looks strangely out of place, surrounded as it is by old houses with
projecting upper stories and wooden loggias of a Gothic, almost German
character. The church of San Miguel may be attributed to Hontañon or one
of his assistants. It replaces an earlier structure, in the porch of
which the town council used to meet. In the north transept is an
interesting triptych, where St. Michael is represented weighing souls.
Hard by, at the corner of the Calle Ancha and Calle de los Huertos, is
the old mansion of the Arias Dávila family, with a tall square turreted
tower, adorned in its lower stages with diapered plaster. Near the
church of San Martin are another fine tower belonging to the Marquis de
Lozoya, and the house (now a book-shop) of Juan Bravo, one of the three
leaders of the Comuneros.
The church of San Martin is approached by a flight of steps, and
encircled on three sides by a cloister or portico, which was used in the
twelfth century, at all events, as a burial-ground. The west porch is
bold and original, with statuary in the jambs of the doorway, and
capitals carved with birds in couples. The church was originally
apsidal, but has been frequently restored. The Bravos and Rios, two
prominent families of Segovia, are buried here; and the tomb of Gonzalo
de Herrera and his wife in alabaster is in a chapel on the left-hand
side. The church is surmounted by a modern cupola over the crossing, and
by an ancient tower placed, oddly enough, over the middle of the nave.
Near the Puerta de San Martin is the Casa de los Picos, which was
acquired and rebuilt in the fourteenth century by the family of Hoz. It
seems once to have been known as the Jews’ House, till in the sixteenth
century its façade was rebuilt with the extraordinary facetted stones
from which it derives its present name. While in this neighbourhood, the
few poor remains of the palace of Enrique III. should be inquired for.
Where the Calle Real opens into the Plaza Mayor is situated one of the
most interesting churches in Segovia. Corpus Christi Church was till the
year 1410 a Jewish synagogue. In that year a rabbi obtained from the
sacristan of San Facundo a consecrated Host as a security, it is said,
for a loan. The street where this impious transaction took place is
still known as Mal Consejo. The Jews attempted to profane the Sacred
Wafer in their synagogue, but were scared by awful portents, and
confessed their crime. Their place of worship was forfeited, apparently
at the suggestion of St. Vincent Ferrer, and consecrated as a Catholic
church. It bears a strong likeness to Santa Maria la Blanca at Toledo.
The nave and aisles are separated by horseshoe arches springing from
fir-cone capitals, above which runs a series of blind windows. The
ceiling is of wood. The transept and dome have been added since the
adaptation to the purposes of Christian worship. The sacristan will
point out the crack in the wall which occurred at the moment of the
attempted sacrilege.
Santa Trinidad, on the north side of the Plaza Mayor, is a Romanesque
church of the San Martin type. It is adjoined like the latter by a
portico, also used once as a place of sepulture. The apse is lit by
three windows, below which are others now only to be seen from the
interior. A lane leads from this church to San Nicolás, close to the
walls. Here the two apses are each lit by a single window, and over the
smaller of the two is raised a low tower with two round-arched belfry
windows. The secularised church of San Facundo exhibits similar
characteristics. It contains a not very valuable museum.
Segovia is a Paradise for the ecclesiologist, but so many of the
churches differ only in the smallest particulars from the San Martin and
San Millán type that a description of each would be tedious. An
exception must be made as regards San Esteban, opposite the Episcopal
Palace, famous for its Romanesque tower, the finest work of the kind in
Spain. The base of the tower is as high as the nave; the remaining five
stages are adorned on each side with graceful arcaded windows. The
angles are splayed off, and up the middle runs a shaft. The tower is
surmounted by a pinnacle, evidently a later addition, and in very bad
style. The external cloister of San Esteban is the most beautiful in the
town.
In the disused church of San Juan de los Caballeros are buried the
founders of the two great houses of Segovia, Fernán Garcia and Dia Sanz,
averred by tradition to have been the conquerors of Madrid.
The finest specimen of these early Romanesque churches is to be seen
outside the south wall. San Millán is said to have been founded by the
Counts of Castile in the tenth century, but the present fabric dates
from the twelfth. The church consists of a nave, aisles, and external
cloisters on each side, all ending in eastern apses. There is a low,
square lantern over the crossing, and a modern square tower at the east
end of the north cloister. The west front is very simple and pierced
with a round-arched door and four windows. The arches of the cloister
spring from finely sculptured capitals on double shafts. Street calls
attention to a local peculiarity in the design of the north and south
doors. ‘Their jambs consist of shafts set within very bold, square
recesses; and the number of orders in the arch is double that of those
in the jamb, they being alternately carried on the capitals of the
shafts, and upon the square order of the jambs. The effect is good....’
The interior is well preserved, but daubed all over with whitewash and
plaster. The church is barrel-vaulted, but may once have had a flat
timber roof. The capitals of the massive columns are carved with very
large and striking figures of men and animals. The corbels are adorned
with masks and caprices, very skilfully chiselled.
* * * * *
Two other exceedingly interesting churches are also outside the city
wall, in the valley of the Eresma. Descending by a very steep path from
the Alcazar to the junction of the two streams, and passing an arch in
the baroque style, we reach Fuencisla--the bubbling rock, from which
water filters. Here a cypress marks the spot where Maria del Salto
alighted uninjured from the crag above. The neighbouring church, built
in 1613, contains the shrine of the wonder-working Virgin of the
Fuencisla. It possesses a fine reredos and iron pulpit. In the convent
of the Discalced Carmelites are preserved the head and body of the
famous St. John of the Cross, the spiritual guide of St. Teresa, and one
of the world’s greatest mystics. You may also see the pictured Christ
which, it is alleged, spoke to the saint, bidding him ask a favour; John
asked, as a devout Spaniard of that time might have been expected to do,
for more suffering and humiliation. The cave in which he retired to pray
may also be visited.
Proceeding up the valley of the Eresma, we notice the old Casa de
Moneda, or Mint, built in 1586, which down to 1730 coined all the money
of Spain. Above it lies the curious little church of Vera Cruz, built in
1204 by the Knights Templars, more or less on the model of the church
of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. It would be difficult to convey a
clearer idea of the peculiar conformation of this structure than by
Street’s description: ‘The nave is dodecagonal, and has a small central
chamber enclosed with solid walls, round which the vaulted nave forms a
kind of aisle. This central chamber is of two stories in height, the
lower entered by archways in the cardinal sides, and the upper by a
double flight of steps leading to a door in its western side. The upper
room is vaulted with a domical roof which has below it four ribs, two
parallel north and south, and two parallel east and west, and it retains
the original stone altar arcaded on its sides with a delicately wrought
chevron enrichment and chevroned shafts. The upper chapel is lighted by
seven little windows opening into the aisle around it. A slab indicates
the position of the supposed sepulchre. The room below the chapel has
also a dome, with ribs on its under side. On the east side of the
building are the chancel and two chapels, forming parallel apses, to the
south of which is a low steeple, the bottom stage of which is also
converted into a chapel. The chapel in the centre of the nave is carried
up and finished externally with a pointed roof, whilst the aisle is
roofed with a lean-to abutting against its walls. There are pilasters at
the angles outside, small windows high up in the walls, and a fine
round-arched doorway on the western side.’ The sepulchre is placed on
the upper story, as at Jerusalem, where the hill of Calvary has been
included within the church. Note the red crosses recalling the original
owners, and the fast disappearing paintings on the retablo in the
chancel. The portion of the True Cross formerly preserved here was
removed to Zamarramala in 1663, when the old Templars’ Church was
abandoned so far as religious rites were concerned.
Not far off, in a desolate spot once described as a terrestrial
paradise, stands the church of El Parral, the chapel of a suppressed
monastery of the Hermits of St. Jerome. It was founded in 1447 by the
famous Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, on the ground where he had
defeated three antagonists in a protracted duel. The architects were
Juan Gallego and the brothers Guas of Toledo. The plan of the church is
unusual. The transept is very broad from east to west, and projects but
little beyond the nave. The chancel is shallow, and its lateral walls
run slant-wise to the eastern angles of the transept. Most churches of
the Order of St. Jerome, according to a Spanish writer, were built this
way. The effect is good. The nave is practically covered by a western
gallery, and has but few windows; whereas the transept and chancel are
flooded with light through six tall lancet windows with statues of the
Twelve Apostles in their jambs. The contrast of light and shadow is very
striking and beautiful. The choir or western gallery is carried on
graceful arches and is handsomely panelled. Over the north-western
chapel of the transept is the organ loft. The reredos behind the High
Altar, in five stages separated by columns, was painted in 1553 by Diego
de Urbina. The tombs of the founder and his wife lie on either side of
the chancel. Their kneeling effigies, though sadly damaged and defaced,
remain among the most beautiful examples of Spanish sculpture. Equally
deserving of praise is the tomb of the Marquis’s natural daughter, the
Countess de Medellin, in the south transept. The exterior of this church
is not remarkable. The west front is pierced by a good double door, and
‘adorned’ with two huge square coats-of-arms; it is flanked by a square
tower pierced by rounded windows in the belfry story.