THE COLEGIATA DE SAR
Peculiar architecture--An expedition to Sar--The river Sar--Eight
square pillars--The first impulse--Seven and a half centuries--The
present Gothic vaulting--A feat of architectural skill--The wooden
floor--Odd ideas--Foreign admirals visit Sar--Archbishop
Bernard--Opening his tomb--The inscription--The original
cloister--Rebuilding the monastery--A hospital for canons
Amongst some photographs that were offered me for sale on the day after
my arrival in Santiago I noticed one, the interior of a church, of which
the perspective seemed to be quite wrong. “The man who took this one
cannot be a good photographer,” I remarked. “No photographer who
understood his business could take such a picture as that.”
“Excuse me,” replied the salesman, smiling. “It is the fault of the
building, or rather, it is the peculiarity of the architecture; the
photographer did his work right enough.” Then, seeing my astonishment,
he added, “I see you are quite a stranger here. You have not even heard
of our _Santa Maria la Real de Sar_, which is one of the wonders of
Galicia, nay, of the whole world. It is like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,
only much more remarkable. It was built crooked on purpose, and the
greatest architects in Spain are unable to explain how it was done. It
is the only example of its kind in the history of architecture.”
“I must go and see it,” I replied, greatly puzzled. “Is it far from the
cathedral?”
“Oh yes; it’s down in the valley to the south-east of the town,” replied
my informant. “You know Santiago is on a hill. It’s a steep road
down--too steep for a carriage--so you will have to go on foot.”
Not many days after the above conversation I found myself, one sunny
afternoon, the 23rd of January, descending the hill in question with a
young Spanish boy as my guide, the son of my hostess, who, with all the
other school children of Spain, had been given a holiday in honour of
King Alfonso’s birthday.
On the outskirts of the town we passed, on the left, the entrance to an
immense barrack-like convent for women, all of granite, and saw another
no less sombre and of equally imposing dimensions at a little distance
and quite outside the town.
The narrow street by which we descended was abominably paved, and my
ankles were twisted unmercifully. The houses on either side grew poorer
and more dilapidated at every step; they were mostly whitewashed, with
rotten doors, which were cut in half, so that the lower half could be
kept shut,--a precaution against the toddling children, long-legged
pigs, and poultry which swarmed in every direction. We passed an old
woman seated in the midst of a crowd of hens who were pecking corn from
her outstretched hand. Out of the next house ran a pig followed by a
tiny girl of about six, with a stick in her hand to fetch it back. A
woman now met us with a couple of great hams balanced on her head, one
on top of the other; and a little farther on we passed a young mother
teaching her baby girl, who could only just walk, to carry a little
bundle on her head. The child screamed every time it felt the weight
upon its little cranium, but its mother persisted with the lesson.
At the foot of the hill an old bridge crossed the river Sar, and a
little below it women were busy washing their linen in the clear stream.
I stopped to photograph them as I passed. On the other side of the
valley the sloping fields were green as in summer.
At last we found ourselves approaching the famous _Colegiata de Sar_, a
little old church in a green field formed by a bend in the river. The
church itself was surrounded by modern buildings, and looked remarkably
insignificant in consideration of the fact that it had recently been
proclaimed a “National Monument.” Its outer walls were almost hidden by
elliptical arches or arched buttresses, but its fine Romanesque apse was
still unenclosed, though the windows had been blocked up. To enter the
lateral door on the north side we had to pass through the parish
cemetery.
The church of _Santa Maria de Sar_ is rectangular in form and the walls
and windows are Romanesque, while most of the present vaulting, added in
the fifteenth century, is Gothic. There are eight square piers, four on
either side of the central nave, each ornamented with elegant Byzantine
shafts, supporting the toral arches which divide the church into three
vaulted naves; at the end of each nave is an apse. “As we enter the
church, our first impulse,” says Sanchez, “is to
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE COLEGIATA DE SAR, SANTIAGO]
[Illustration: CLOISTER OF THE COLEGIATA DE SAR, SANTIAGO]
draw back precipitately. The pillars appear to be bulging, the arches
are about to crash to the ground, the beautiful columns are reeling upon
their bases, the walls are tottering and about to crumble, and the roof
is just going to fall with a crash. Is it an earthquake, or are we
seized by sudden giddiness?” Neither the one nor the other; the whole
thing is an illusion--a complete illusion. And when the traveller has
overcome his first surprise, he is struck with wonder at this marvellous
feat of architecture, and his thoughts are carried to Pisa or to
Bologna.
“But are you sure that these slanting walls and their sloping columns
have always been awry like this?” we ask.
“Yes,” reply the archæologists and the architects who have visited Sar
during the nineteenth century, including such authorities as Lopez
Ferreiro and Fernandez Sanchez. “For seven and a half centuries this
building has stood thus. Thirty generations of men have come to gaze at
it, and we still marvel at the temerity of the man who designed it. If,”
they say, “this had all been the effect of sinking ground and not the
result of calculation, how could the church have remained thus intact?
Would it not in that case have fallen in ruins long ago?”
The arches outside prove nothing, for they do not date farther back than
the middle of the seventeenth century. If this leaning had been the
result of sinking foundations, the vaulting would have cracked, and the
pillars would have been broken to pieces. But the present Gothic
vaulting is not so old as the walls; it was added in 1485-1504, when
Gomez Gonzalez was its prior, as the inscription and coat of arms near
the keystone of the arch next to the _Capilla Mayor_ testify. Is it
likely that any architect would have added such vaulting had the walls
really been falling? Besides, in none of the manuscripts preserved for
so many centuries in the archives of the _Colegiata_ is there any
mention of this extraordinary inclination nor of any catastrophe
connected with it. This silence favours the belief that the whole thing
is intentional, and a feat of architectural skill. Then, too, if the
sinking had been accidental, the inclination of the walls and pillars
would have been inwards, not, as is the case, outwards. So much for the
accepted theory.
The word “bandy-legged” is not, admittedly, an architectural term, yet
it is the most appropriate epithet I can find to bring before my readers
the peculiar inward inclination of the piers and walls of this church.
The man who fetched the keys and showed me round may have been an
ignorant fellow, but he at least saw no mystery about the structure of
his parish church: he pointed out to me that the river Sar not only ran
very close to the edifice, but filtered into the ground beneath it. The
wooden floor which I beheld was six feet higher than the original floor;
it had been raised on account of the water, and completely hid the bases
of the piers. Had the whole depth of the pillars been visible, their
inclination, or, rather, the bow in their legs, would have been much
more striking even than it is at present. “The foundations could be
drained,” said the man, “but it would cost lots of money”; and so
saying, he opened a trap door in the central nave and let me look down.
It was like the dungeon floor in the Doge’s Palace at Venice. “You see,
with all that water, it’s quite natural that the building should get
shunted a bit,” he continued.
I discussed all this on my return with one of the local archæologists of
a younger generation than those I have quoted. “I have seen,” said he,
“documents preserved in the archives of the _Colegiata_ which speak of
the falling-in of the original roof, and of its being replaced by the
present one. For eight years I too believed this church to be an
architectural marvel. I imbibed with enthusiasm all the odd ideas about
it, but after a time my enthusiasm began to cool and my certainty to
waver, and then, after a long and gradual process, my mind became free
of all belief about the matter, and was at last able to think for
itself. I thought, and thought, and thought, till at length I determined
to go and make a fresh and careful examination of the whole church stone
for stone, and I reasoned thus: ‘If it was originally intended that the
walls and pillars should slant as they do now, surely the blocks of
stone would have been made to slant too; but if, on the contrary, it was
intended to stand straight in the ordinary way, the blocks of stone
would not have been made to slant.’ I then examined the stones, and
finding that there was not the least suspicion of a slant in any of
them, came to the conclusion that the inclination of the church must
have taken place since its construction, and must be due to natural
causes. Then, too, the fact that the original roof fell in, indicated
some bulging; and I finally came to the conclusion arrived at by your
guide, that the water underneath might account for a great deal.”
Every architect who visits Santiago, every engineer hurries out to see
the _Colegiata de Sar_, thinking that he perhaps might be able to solve
the mystery. Foreign admirals, when they bring their fleets to the
neighbouring harbour of Villagarcia, hasten to pay a visit to Sar, not
because they have a predilection for old churches, but because they have
heard tell of its extraordinary architectural peculiarity.
This _Colegiata_ was founded by Muñio, Bishop of Mondoñedo, one of the
authors of the _Historia Compostelana_, who in his old age wished to
retire with a few aged companions (canons of the cathedral) to some
peaceful spot where he might end his days in prayer and meditation. He
built a church and hermitages for himself and his companions, and lived
there quietly for some years; then, when he felt death approaching, he
handed the whole property over to Archbishop Gelmirez, that it might be
made into an Augustine monastery. The whole story may be read in the
ancient documents still preserved. The letter signed by Diego Gelmirez
on September 1, Era 1174 (1137), and confirmed by Alfonso VII., is one
of the most interesting of the diplomatic documents contained in the
rich archives of the monastery. When in 1235, a century later,
Archbishop Bernard renounced his mitre, he retired to end his days in
the monastery of Sar, where his roughly hewn sarcophagus and his
recumbent stone statue are still to be seen; the traveller will find it
by the wall between the right apse and the door of the sacristy. The
statue has a long beard,[176] which is rather unusual, a mitre, a long
staff decorated with scallop-shells, with a _tau_ handle. In 1711 this
sarcophagus was opened by order of Archbishop Monroy, and the body was
found well preserved and the garment on it in good condition, according
to Zepedano, whom Villa-Amil quotes as a reliable authority. On the
outer side of the sarcophagus are carved the following leonine verses,
in two lines, one above the other:--
“Transit ab hoc vita Bernaldus Metropolita
Post hoc vile solum scandire posse polum.”[177]
Bernard died on November 20, 1240, as we learn from an inscription in
five lines on the head of the sarcophagus (the date of the era is
given). Such was the odour of sanctity in which he died that when the
sarcophagus was opened several of his teeth were extracted as relics,
also part of his staff and some fragments of his dress. Villa-Amil has
carefully examined these last and compared them with others of the same
epoch preserved in the Cluny Museum. He concludes that the material of
one of St. Bernard’s garments was Moorish in design and texture.
At the other end of the church is another granite tomb, that of Don
Gomez Gonzalez, the prior in whose day the greater part of the present
vaulting was added. The body of his successor and cousin, Jacome
Alvarez, lies between two of the columns that support the eastern
vaults, in a sarcophagus which Alvarez had prepared for himself during
his lifetime and mentioned in his will. Sanchez gives the whole clause
in his description of the _Colegiata_. There are also many interesting
inscriptions on the old pavement stones of the aisles, now mostly
covered with water.
Part of the original cloister of the monastery is still standing, the
northern front. Nine delicate and richly sculptured Romanesque arches
and two keystones of the vaulting are still in their place; they rest
upon piers ornamented with pairs of slender columns whose capitals are
decorated with sculptured foliage, very full and natural, and every one
different. The bases of the columns rest upon plinths. This remnant of
the cloister is considered to be one of the most perfect bits of
mediæval architecture in Galicia. The rest of it is modern, and dates
from about the end of the eighteenth century. In the north-east angle is
a fine granite sarcophagus of another prior, whose recumbent statue in
full sacerdotal robes has both hands holding a book upon his breast; it
dates from the year 1368.
The monastery, which was entirely rebuilt in the eighteenth century, is
now the home of the parish priest, as the church is now the parish
church of Sar. The Churrigueresque belfry was put up when the original
façade of the church was spoiled by the addition of the elliptical
arches. My guide pointed out to me two slender columns, evidently part
of the old cloister, which are now placed on either side of the rectory
door. He also showed me, in the church, an old wooden bench, eaten with
age, with the Arms of the Inquisition stamped upon it, a cross with a
palm leaf on its right and a sword on its left.
A hospital, chiefly for canons afflicted with elephantiasis, _Hospital
de San Lazaro_, was founded in connection with this monastery in 1149,
and had dwelling-houses attached to it, _sustentari possint elefantiosi
canonici_.[178] The prior of Sar was expected to take the inmates of
this hospital under his spiritual care. There is in Santiago to this
day a special hospital for that class of disease, and it attracts
patients from all parts of the province. I have heard it remarked that
on this account visitors should be careful in their selection of inns
and boarding-houses.