SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA
A walled city--Beautiful views--A _Casa de
Huespedes_--Chocolate--Partridges and trout--Bearing the
cold--Rainy months--Damp in the air--The university--The medical
college--The modern university building--Treasures of the
library--The most ancient writing preserved in Spain--The
reading-room--The natural history museum--Government of the
university--Pharmacy--Cases of accidental poisoning--Unruly
students--_Capilla de las Animas_--The Alameda--_Santa Susana_--The
finest view of Santiago--A church of refuge--_San Felix de
Solovio_--The Plaza de Alonso XII.--The Pepys of Galicia--A bull
fight--Fountains--Water-carriers--A Gallegan wedding--The
Carnival--A superfluity of chimneys--The nuns of San Payo--The
Convent of Santa Clara--A private museum--Señor Cicerons’
collection of coins--His valuable torques--The use of torques--The
Dublin collection--Prehistoric gold jewellery--Iberian inscriptions
The name of Santiago has been given to one of the judicial departments
of the province of Coruña, which contains ninety-nine parishes, with a
total population of nearly eighty-two thousand souls. The town of
Santiago de Compostela has a population of about twenty-five thousand,
just about half that of Coruña; it is still the seat of an archbishopric
and a university town; it has never been without an archbishop since the
year 1120. In the Middle Ages Santiago was a walled city, but the walls
have almost entirely disappeared, and the houses now cover the hill and
even spread down its steep slopes into the surrounding valley. As we
have seen, the hill on which Santiago stands was covered with pine trees
until the discovery of the Apostle’s tomb in the ninth century, and the
cathedral, built upon the spot where the tomb was found, is practically
the centre and heart of the town, which, as far as its situation is
concerned, might well be called the Perugia of Spain. All round it are
beautiful valleys, covered, summer and winter alike, with verdant green;
and encircling the valleys are picturesque mountains, spurs of the
Pyrenees, between whose peaks other vistas open out, so that on clear
days the eye can travel as far as it will, over hill and dale, for many
a mile. Like Perugia, Santiago has beautiful views on every side, and
its air is mountain air. Here automobiles have preceded railways, just
as in Siberia railways have preceded roads. There is no railway between
Coruña and Santiago, and until 1906 the only means of transport were
hired carriages and a coach drawn by six horses. The coach does the
journey in seven hours, but now there is a regular service of motor cars
which take you there in less than four hours. The road, which passes
through the little town of Ordenes, is good, and the scenery fine; it is
practically uphill all the way, for Coruña is on the sea-level, while
Santiago is perched on a hill at a height of 500 feet, and surrounded by
mountains. In winter Santiago is many degrees colder than Coruña, while
in summer it is very much cooler. Although the days of pilgrimages to
the sepulchre of St. James are practically over, the hotels and
boarding-houses are always full of Spanish travellers during the summer
months.
We stayed at a _Casa de Huespedes_ which was famed for its liberal table
and good cooking, and where some forty students from the university and
a number of commercial travellers sat down to dinner every day. The
mistress of the house superintended the cooking, while the master
himself waited on the guests. Every one was well cared for, and all were
satisfied. I never heard a complaint during the three months that I was
there. I am sorry to say that the good lady died a short time after our
departure, at the early age of forty-two. For breakfast most of the
guests took a small cup of boiling-hot chocolate, so thick that a spoon
would stand up in it, and into this they dipped their bread or biscuit,
finishing up with a glass of cold milk, which was always served with
chocolate. A popular proverb referring to Santiago, says, “Where there
are many canons, there is the best chocolate.” And Santiago is indeed
famous for its chocolate.
During the months of January and February we dined and supped, at least
five days out of seven, upon plump partridges and delicately flavoured
trout. Both were cooked in oil, and the fish was invariably served after
the meat, according to the Spanish custom. Local red wine was liberally
supplied with every meal, and _olla podrida_ took the place of the
partridges on Fridays. Butter we never saw, except on one occasion when
we had asked for that luxury. We took care not to repeat the request.
There are no fireplaces in the houses of Santiago. Sometimes, when snow
was falling and it was freezing hard, the students would gather round a
charcoal brazier while waiting for their dinner, but most of us, fearing
the headachy effects of charcoal fumes, kept away from them, contenting
ourselves with foot warmers and double clothing. The amount of clothing
one can bear in a stone house without a fire in the middle of January is
wonderful. One lady told me she seldom went out in cold weather on
account of the weight of her clothes. Spaniards bear cold very well, and
I think they must be healthier than people who sit all the winter in
heated rooms. The men are great smokers, and, as Ford remarked, more
smoke issues from labial than from house chimneys.
January and February are rainy months as a rule, and as there is not
much sun, the washerwomen do as little laundry work as possible till
March, when they can spread their linen on the green hillsides and get
it bleached to a spotless white by the strong sunshine. In early spring,
mountain mists cover the town for days together, and at such times it is
useless to hang anything out to dry, for the water refuses to evaporate.
I tried for four days in succession to dry a hand towel, and found it
damper on the fourth day than on the first, in spite of the fact that
the sun shone brightly each day.
Santiago University draws students from all parts of Spain, but mostly
from Galicia and the neighbouring provinces. The youths who come from
Andalusia do little work and much talking. I found their gaiety quite
entertaining, but a cynical Gallegan informed me that if you cut out
their tongues there would be nothing left! The Basque students are very
quiet, sober, and plodding, and their general character is much more
reliable than that of the southerners: they are the Scotch of Spain.
The present University was founded in 1582 by Archbishop Fonseca, but,
before that date, the town possessed several important colleges, chiefly
for the study of theology and letters, and these institutions produced
many noted men. Murguia reminds us that the two Bernardos and Don Pedro
Muñez, named the _nigromantico_ for his great learning, were all
educated at the _Colegiata de Sar_, and that the _Estudio Viejo_ was the
real beginning of the University; it lacked only the Law Faculty. There
are only three other universities in Spain that have a Faculty for
Pharmacy, namely, Barcelona, Granada, and Madrid. The Faculties of Law
and Medicine were not established at Santiago till the year 1648. In
1772, in consequence of reforms introduced in the reign of Charles III.,
the number of professors was raised to thirty-three, but this university
has passed through many vicissitudes. Sanchez tells a woful tale of
colleges opened and colleges closed. “A few years ago,” he wrote, in
1885, “we had six Theological Faculties at Compostela, besides
Philosophy, Letters, Sciences, Law, Medicine, and Pharmacy, but now, in
spite of an imperative need for a fully-equipped centre of learning, our
Faculties are reduced to three.”
The priests’ colleges wished at first to have the university under their
control, but the lay professors objected, and there was a good deal of
dispute, until at length the university shook itself free from the
Church in 1769; its professors at that period were world-famed. Bedoza
lectured there on Anatomy and Lorenzo Montes on Medicine.[208]
The Medical College of Fonseca, with its interesting Renaissance façade,
was founded by Archbishop Fonseca in 1544, above the foundations of the
house in which he was born. Its elegant Renaissance façade consists of
two storeys with four handsome fluted columns; between the columns are
Gothic statues, resting on brackets, and _templetes_ (miniature
temples). Between the lower and upper columns are six beautifully
sculptured Gothic statues in arched niches, and beneath the central
window of the upper storey is an escutcheon with the armorial bearings
of the Fonseca family. The two lowest statues on either side of the
entrance represent the Virgin and Child, and St. Maurus the hermit.
Sanchez tells us that until about the middle of the nineteenth century a
lamp burned in front of the former, and poor pilgrims were wont to
deposit before the two statues ears of corn and other simple offerings.
Passing through the doorway we find ourselves in a square vestibule with
richly ribbed Gothic vaulting; the door to our right leads to a pretty
little college chapel, with lofty Gothic vaulting. The reredos behind
the chief altar has its niches filled with sculptured statues, all of
unpainted chestnut wood. It is a beautiful old college, with a very fine
cloister much after the style of our Oxford and Cambridge colleges of
the same date, but which has now, like the whole interior, a dirty,
abandoned appearance. A long inscription, stating by whom and when the
college was built, runs round the cornice between the two storeys of the
cloister; it begins on the western side, and concludes with the
following hexameters:--
“Nunc magis atque magis Gallæcia fulget alumno,
Qui dedit hunc patriæ tantum generosus honorem.
Sanctius ipse Lupus propria de stirpe creatus,
Ut musis gratum faceret, tenebrasque fulgaret,
Omnibus hoc breviter complevit amabile munus,
Quo populus merito, proceres et concio tota
Innumeras tanto grates pro lumine reddunt.”
For many years the spacious dining-hall, with the handsome carved
ceiling, was used as a dissecting-room, but now that branch of study is
carried on elsewhere, and the medical students do most of their work at
the _Hospital Real_. Yet in spite of the absolutely neglected appearance
of this college, the porter informed me that three hundred students work
there every day. Over the general staircase there is a ceiling covered
with _mudijar_ work (stalactite woodwork), the only example of its kind
in Santiago. Behind the building are some picturesque but neglected
Botanical Gardens for the use of the students.
The modern university building, which was designed by José Machado, is
entirely of granite, and looks very important with its sculptured
pediment supported by four Ionic columns, and its triple flight of
steps. It has three storeys and a handsome marble staircase, and a
central patio in which there stands a great two-faced clock, on a
pedestal so tall that it can only be reached by a long ladder, and is
therefore seldom wound up and not to be trusted. On the ground floor
there are six spacious and well-lighted lecture halls, but the finest
thing in the University is its splendid Library of more than seventy
thousand printed volumes and some six hundred manuscripts, many of them
“the sweepings of convents.” The books are arranged in cases, with wire
in place of glass, round a spacious reading-room that will accommodate a
hundred readers. Over the entrance is written--
“Deum domus alma silescit.”
In glass cases, placed in the centre of the reading-room, are some
highly-prized literary treasures; among which I saw a beautifully
preserved Commentary on Dante’s _Inferno_, by Landino, published at
Florence, and bearing the date 1485; also an illustrated volume
published by Schectel and Hartmann at Nuremberg in 1493, and other fine
specimens of early printing. I also saw and handled an illuminated
_Diurno_ or Book of Daily Prayer that had belonged to Ferdinand I., and
bore the date 1055; in it I saw a miniature in which the copyist is
presenting the book to the king and queen; all the capitals are
illuminated, and all different. There is also some eleventh century
musical notation in it, the notes are represented by dots
(pentagrammic) over the words, and without any lines. The book itself
tells us that it was written by Pedro and painted by Fructuoso. In the
opinion of M. Macìus Férotin,[209] this _Diurno_ is the most precious
document in the university of Compostela; its chronology, written in
gold letters, fixes the chronology of the last three kings of Leon.
Férotin thinks that the lines in honour of King Bermudo III. were
dictated by the queen herself. Bermudo died in battle. Sanchez believed
this treasure to have been among the “sweepings” of the monastery of
_San Martin Pinario_. A beautifully bound volume of the writings of St.
Thomas Aquinas, with an exquisitely stamped leather cover, was also
shown to me. In another case I found what is said to be one of the
oldest, if not the very oldest, specimens of handwriting in Spain--a bit
of brown parchment about eight inches long and four deep, representing a
bill of sale of a little village called Nogueira, near Lalin. The date
on it is Era 826 (A.D. 788), and the language used is Latin: it is from
the great monastery of Carboeiro, in the province of Pontevedra. Another
document was shown to me bearing the date 1504, it was the last will and
testament of Don Alfonso de Fonseca, the founder of the university.
Another parchment bore the seal of Alfonso VII.; this was a charter
conferring certain privileges on a monastery. There were also two
manuscript Bibles of the fifteenth century, written and illuminated by
monks of the neighbouring convents; the text was in Latin, the pages
were like silk, and the colours wonderfully preserved.
The librarian, Señor B----, took me into his private room, adjoining the
Library, to see the flag that was carried by the Santiago students, who,
to the number of twelve thousand, formed themselves together into a
volunteer battalion, and fell defending Galicia against the troops of
Napoleon in 1808. The student chosen by his companions as their leader,
Don José Ramon Rodil, became in later years both Minister of War and
President of the Ministerial Council. In honour of his services, his
country raised him to the rank of a marquis. Aguiar, writing in 1836,
waxed eloquent over the heroes of Santiago university. “The University
of Santiago,” he wrote, “has given us three Ministers for our
Government, and four Generals for our Army, all from its battalion of
student cadets who immortalised themselves in the defence of our
country.” On another wall was the portrait of Don Diego de Muros, and
that of Filippo de Castro, a famous Gallegan sculptor of whom we shall
have occasion to speak again later on. There was also a portrait of
Emmanuel Bonaventuræ Figueroa, who founded the Library, and left estates
the revenues of which were to be employed in starting all his
descendants in life: if men, they are entitled to a university education
or a share in some business; if women, to a dowry! What a fine old
fellow he must have been. I hear that his estates have increased in
value, and the librarian told me that quite poor people keep
unexpectedly turning up and claiming relationship--even a nephew seven
times removed can claim his share. Another portrait was that of
Archbishop Fonseca, whose Will I had seen in the glass case.
The Reading Room is divided into two by a passage, and one half of it is
reserved for distinguished readers who might not care to sit among the
general public; the other is open to the students and to the public
during the hours of daylight. The books round the walls are all arranged
according to their size, in order to economise space; each volume is
numbered, and by means of a corresponding card it may be easily found by
the attendant. The method is similar to that adopted by our Geographical
Society, boxes of cards taking the place of catalogue volumes. A subject
catalogue is in course of preparation, and Señor B---- is determined
that no pains shall be spared to make the Library one of the most
perfect of its kind. Underneath the Reading Room is another room of the
same size, also lined with books; its ceiling and bookcases are
decorated with the white-and-gold Louis XVI. decorations that once
adorned the monastic library of San Martin Pinario, and many of its most
precious volumes have come from the same place; others were bequeathed
by private collectors.
Every department of this university is being energetically overhauled
and rearranged, so that it may be quite up to date, but a melancholy
mistake made by the architect in planning the Natural History Museum
cannot, unfortunately, be rectified. Wishing to give plenty of room for
the cases containing stuffed animals, birds, and such like, he built it
in a square, with an open space reaching from the ground floor to the
roof of the building, and covered the walls with glass cases which could
be reached by two spiral iron staircases, and a gallery running round on
a level with each floor. The result is that the glass cases not
immediately on a level with the galleries are utterly useless, for they
cannot be reached without the help of a long ladder and a climb to a
dizzy height! The student who could study specimens under these
difficulties must be endowed with considerable nerve. To walk round the
top gallery and look down was enough to make me feel giddy. I found
Professor Varela, a naturalist newly arrived from Madrid, busy
rearranging the specimens. He was a comparative stranger to Galicia, and
had a hard task before him. I pitied him for having such a stupidly
constructed museum, and wondered how he would eventually utilise all
those inaccessible glass cases. Professor Varela showed me a valuable
collection of the many kinds of wood to be found in Galicia, but
lamented over the ridiculous mistake that had been made in polishing and
varnishing each block, instead of leaving them in their natural state.
He also attracted my attention to an interesting collection of skulls
from Mindanao, the largest of the Philippine Islands, which he was
engaged in measuring. He had already discovered that they belonged to
two distinct races: his measuring instrument was a simple compass, which
he preferred to any of the recent inventions. He spoke of the wonderful
influence that climate has upon the shape of the human skull, and of the
short time it had taken for the skulls of Anglo-Saxons of North America
to become quite different from that of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain.
Professor Varela hopes eventually to devote a large section of his
museum to local specimens.
The University of Santiago is under the management of a _Rector_ and a
General Secretary, assisted by thirty-eight professors and from forty to
fifty assistant professors, all of whom have taken their Doctor’s degree
at Madrid. In all the larger town there are _Institutos_ or Grammar
Schools, which take boys at the age of ten and prepare them for the
university, which they enter at the age of seventeen. The official
course lasts six years, but it is not obligatory. Those who pass the
examination at the end of their six years become _Licenciados_, they
then have to put in a year at the Madrid university if they wish to
obtain their Doctor’s degree. The Academic year begins about October
9th, and ends about May 20th, this is called the _Calendario_. The
vacations, including Sundays, Feast Days, and local Holidays, cover
seventy days of the year. The Law Faculty has its own library of legal
literature quite separate from the general library.
As I have said, Santiago is one of the four Spanish universities which
have a Faculty for pharmacy. In Spain, all chemists, until 1907, had to
be university men, and no man, however thoroughly he might have studied
his subject, was allowed to open a chemist’s shop and dispense medicines
if he had not passed through the university. This arrangement had
deplorable results, for chemists’ assistants and druggists who wished to
open chemists’ shops on their own account took to bribing university men
to allow their names to be put up above the shops. In such cases, if any
one was accidentally poisoned through a mistake on the part of the
dispenser, the university chemist whose name was over the shop had to
bear all the responsibility. At length the Spanish public became alarmed
at the idea that the men who dispensed for them would get off scot-free
no matter how many people they poisoned, and as the result of a general
agitation the Government issued a proclamation on 7th April 1907, that,
in future, chemists’ assistants who had practised for a certain period,
I think three years, should be eligible as candidates for a chemists’
diploma. This reform was a most necessary and rational one, and all the
university chemists rejoiced that they would no longer be liable when
their assistants poisoned their customers by mistake; but the silly
young students looked at the matter from a different standpoint. Longing
to find an excuse for a riot, they persuaded themselves that by allowing
chemists’ assistants to gain diplomas without having passed through the
university the Government had grievously insulted that venerable
institution. Accordingly, at eleven o’clock in the morning they poured
forth into the streets of Santiago in unruly crowds, hooting and
shouting and leaping in the air. Drawn to my window by their hissing and
hooting, I saw some two hundred of them pass down the street in the
wildest state of excitement, while the townspeople watched them from
their balconies and smiled at their folly.
Besides the important edifices to which I have devoted several of my
earlier chapters, Santiago possesses a good many interesting churches,
and is rich in convents for women, which also deserve a brief notice.
The _Capilla de Las Animas_ is a church dedicated to prayer for souls
passing through purgatory; it was built towards the end of the
eighteenth century, and is in the Greco-Roman style. Four tall Doric
columns support its pediment, which is crowned with a cross and a statue
of an adoring angel on either side. But the most striking thing about
this façade is the alto-relief group of souls wrapt in purgatorial
flames above the entrance. The interior of this church is lined with
remarkable alto-relief, life-size, brightly painted wooden figures in
groups, representing the principal scenes connected with the
Crucifixion. They are the work of Prado, a Gallegan sculptor. This
church has always had immense attractions for pilgrims, both rich and
poor. More masses are said there than in any church in the town except
the Cathedral; they begin at five in winter and at four in summer. Close
to the church is the _Plaza de Cervantes_, with a bust of the author of
_Don Quixote_ on a column above a fountain from which hundreds of women
and girls come to fill their buckets every morning. To the east is the
little church of _San Benito_, now considered to be the oldest in
Santiago, which has recently been restored under the auspices of a
clever archæologist.
Santiago has a pleasant Alameda lined with four rows of camellias and
many fine trees. Here a band plays on fine afternoons, and here the
ladies of the town, who seldom appear in the streets before four in the
afternoon, may be seen sauntering under enormous hats. I had been three
weeks in Santiago before I saw a woman in a hat, for the ladies who go
to early Mass always appeared in black mantillas, and the poor women
wore handkerchiefs. The Alameda winds round a hill planted with oak
trees, in the centre of which stands a tiny church, _Santa Susana_. The
original edifice was built by Gelmirez in 1105, and bore the name of
_Santo Sepulcro_ until the remains of Santa Susana were brought to
Santiago from Braga three years later. Santa Susana is one of the patron
saints of Santiago. Sanchez states that the present portico of the
church is the one built by Gelmirez, and that some of the arches also
date from his day; but as it was always closed when I tried to enter it
I can give no opinion. The finest view obtainable of Santiago and its
Cathedral is from this Alameda, and no visitor should miss it.
Another little church that interested me was that of _Santa Maria
Salomé_, in the Rua Nueva, named after the Mother of St. James the
Greater. As Sanchez has remarked, “its portico attracts the attention of
intelligent persons”; it is a quaint, Romanesque portico, of which the
central arch is Gothic, covering a part of the footway and forming a
useful shelter to foot passengers on a rainy day. The arch above the
entrance to the church is semicircular, and supported on two columns
with richly sculptured capitals. The statue of the Virgin seated on a
throne, with a crown on her head and the Child Jesus in her arms, is
also worthy of attention. Just above it is a row of remarkable corbels.
On either side of the entrance there are two quaint statues, one is the
angel Gabriel, and the other the Virgin receiving his message. In one
of the triangles of the arch is the inscription _Iglesia reservada para
refugio_. At one time all the churches of Santiago were churches of
refuge, but in the eighteenth century an outcry was raised because they
harboured too many criminals, and the result was that eventually only
the church of Maria Salomé was allowed to be used as a refuge. In the
present day the whole custom has been quite done away with. The church
dates from the twelfth, and its portico from the end of the fifteenth
century.
Another small church of considerable antiquity is that of _San Felix de
Solovio_, or, as the Gallegans call it, _San Fins de Lovio_. Sanchez
thought this edifice older than San Benito; in fact he speaks of it as
the oldest church in Santiago. The truth is that it was built on the
ruins of an older church of the same name, which had been reduced to
ashes by Almanzor and his followers. The present edifice has a graceful
entrance, with four Byzantine columns supporting its two arches, the
interior of which is in the shape of a horse-shoe, while the outer one
is semicircular and decorated with diminutive arches also of the
horse-shoe form; the whole being a curious mixture of the Romanesque and
the Arabic styles. In the church, in a niche in the southern nave, is a
sculptured group representing the Adoration of the Magi, which, like the
entrance, dates from the twelfth century; it is quite Byzantine. The
whole building underwent restoration at the beginning of the eighteenth
century.
I have already alluded to the fine Square called _Plaza de Alonso XII._,
of which the façade of the _Hospital Real_ and the Churrigueresque
façade of the cathedral form two sides. Its other two sides are formed
by the handsome _Consistorio_, which faces the Cathedral, and the façade
of the _Colegio de San Jerónimo_. This last-named building dates from
the first or second decade of the sixteenth century, and its striking
façade is a mixture of the Romanesque and the Græco-Roman styles. At
present the principal entrance is in the _Calle del Franco_, not far
from that of the adjoining _Colegio de Fonseca_, and it is used as a
normal school for boys, but it was formerly a college for poor students.
An inscription on the southern wall of the Doric cloister tells us that
in the year 1652 the ancient college of San Gerónimo (St. Jerome) was
moved to this building. That was at the time when the monks of _San
Martin Pinario_ were buying up the buildings round their monastery in
order that the latter might be enlarged.
When Philip II. was negotiating with England for the hand of our Queen
Mary, he awaited in Santiago the return of his ambassadors, and was
entertained at the _Hospital Real_ in the suite of rooms set apart for
the reception of royalty. A curious account of Philip’s visit has just
come to light in the pages of a diary kept by a village priest of that
period. The document was accidentally discovered in a country rectory
and handed to Dr. Eladio Oviedo, who, it is to be hoped, will shortly
publish it, with valuable annotations. The writer, Amaro Gonzalez, was a
_cura_ of Carril, in Galicia, and his entries in his diary remind us of
those of Pepys. “In the year of our Lord fifteen hundred and
fifty-four,” he writes, “on the twenty-second of June, King Philip
entered the city of Santiago....” and he goes on to tell how on the
following day the whole company attended Mass in the Cathedral, and how,
after dinner, they were entertained by a bull fight in the _Plaza de
Alonso XII._, the King watching from one of the lower windows of the
Hospital. Three days later the Royal party embarked at Coruña and set
sail for England with a great fleet.[210] In an earlier entry he tells
how “a corsair coming from England, under the command of Drake, did much
damage,” which he says he cannot attempt to describe. “Drake came with
seventy ships, I believe he wants to intercept the king’s ships that are
coming with gold from America.” And later on he writes: “An Armada is
being fitted out against Lutheran England and against that Lutheran ----
Isabel” (our good Queen Bess!). The word he uses is too insulting to be
translated. In another place he describes a very hard winter, followed
by a remarkably cold summer, “so cold that in the hottest days of the
year it was too cold to walk to church.” He adds naïvely that all the
things he writes about happened in his own days, and, as it were, before
his very eyes, and that he writes them down because (unlike Pepys) he
thinks their perusal will give pleasure to those who come after him, and
he begs the Rectors who succeed him to continue the diary, “because, as
wise men have pointed out, written records keep the memory of the past
fresh before us, and connect the days that are gone with the actual
present.” In the year 1586 he records the arrival at the little town of
Rianjo of an Irish bishop, “a man of about forty-five years of age, good
looking, and very devout, he came, on behalf of the Archbishop, to
confirm and visit in his name, because the Archbishop of Santiago, Don
Alonso Velazquez, had renounced his office on account of illness. The
bishop confirmed many in these parts, both young and old; his name was
Don Tomas (Thomas), he had fled from his Irish bishopric, in company
with many others, through fear of the Lutherans.”
Santiago is particularly rich in fountains; we might almost say there is
one at the end of every street, and as there is no other water supply,
all the water used in the houses has to be fetched in buckets on the
heads of women employed for the purpose. My hostess, having a large
household, kept a servant whose whole duty consisted in fetching water
from the fountain; during the winter she fetched about fifty buckets a
day, but in hot summer weather she often fetches as many as seventy. The
grace and ease with which these handsome girls balanced their buckets
upon their heads, without the aid of their hands, called forth my
unceasing admiration throughout my stay in Galicia. I never tired of
watching them as they passed along the narrow, uneven, and badly paved
streets, with their rapid and swinging gait; it was an art they had
learned in their babyhood. Women going and coming from the market make
use of their heads, where their husbands and brothers would of their
shoulders. If a girl has the smallest parcel to carry, up it goes to her
head, and her hands are left free. It would be difficult for me to say
what movables I have not seen upon the head of a Gallegan woman. I have
seen there every object imaginable, from a table to a child’s coffin.
When a fire breaks out in a Gallegan town, the women water-carriers are
among the first on the scene. There was a fire at Pontevedra a few days
before my arrival there, and it was entirely due to the energy and
spirit of the water-carriers that half of the burning house was saved,
and the fire prevented from spreading; these girls, as my friends who
looked on afterwards related to me, not only fetched water in their
buckets, but poured it on the flames like veritable firemen.
In February a party of well-to-do Gallegan peasants came to stay for a
few days at our _Casa de Huespedes_, in order that a wedding, which was
to take place between their two families, might be celebrated in the
Cathedral. The wedding took place on a Sunday, and I gladly accepted an
invitation to be present at the ceremony. The whole party walked to the
church, the streets in that part being too narrow for carriages. The
bride, who wore her hair in a simple plait down her back, as is
customary in Galicia, was neatly dressed in black, with a simple blue
silk handkerchief over her head; her sisters wore coloured dresses and
blue handkerchiefs. It is the custom throughout Spain for women of the
better classes to wear black on most important occasions, secular as
well as religious, but among the upper classes a bride is usually
dressed in white as in other European countries. The bridegroom had on a
neat black suit and brown shoes. It was a very simple ceremony,
performed in a small side chapel. When the priest had asked the consent,
first of the woman and then of the man, the couple exchanged rings. As
the bridegroom handed his ring to the bride the priest passed him a tray
on which were piled thirteen[211] silver dollars, and motioned to him to
hand that also to the bride. The priest then told the bride to wrap the
coins in her handkerchief and put them in her pocket, which she did. The
whole service was much shorter than it is with us. After it was over the
wedding party joined in the Mass which was being said in one of the
larger chapels, and then returned to partake of the wedding breakfast.
During the carnival a band of musicians paraded the town in garments of
many colours, decked out with streaming ribbons; and in spite of pelting
rain a large crowd of men, women, and children followed them, mostly
under umbrellas. People came in from all the neighbouring villages, and
among them were peasants wearing straw hats and capes, _capas de junco_,
which I have described elsewhere as very like those that are worn by
Japanese peasants who work during rainy weather in the rice-fields.
My windows looked out upon the high and sombre wall which enclosed the
women’s convent of San Payo. Curious to see beyond that wall, I ascended
into the attics and looked down upon it from the highest window in the
house, but even then I could see nothing but the garden wall, a foot and
a half in breadth. San Payo was originally a monastery founded by King
Castro on the occasion of his pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James in
813, and dedicated to St. Peter. As it faced the altar of the cathedral
it received the name of _San Pedro de Autealtares_. Its first inmates
were the holy Abbot Ildefrede and his monks, to whom had been entrusted
the care of the Apostle’s sepulchre. St. Pedro de Mozonzo was its Abbot
between 974 and 988, and for several centuries after that its abbots
and monks were honoured and respected all over Galicia. The present
building dates from the last years of the seventeenth century; its
church was consecrated in the year 1707. Sanchez devotes pages to a
description of the interior of this edifice, and of the marble _ara_
supposed to have stood upon the original sepulchre of St. James, but the
convent itself, which now encloses women, interested me far more. From
the attic window I had noted its superfluity of chimneys, and I
afterwards learned that when the building became a nunnery it was
inhabited by nuns from rich families, and that each had her own servant
and her own kitchen, until the archbishop, looking into the matter,
decided that one kitchen ought to be enough for them all, and that the
nuns ought to wait upon themselves. I was allowed to enter the great
door, and ascend the broad flight of steps to the wooden window where
visitors are allowed on certain days to speak with, but not to see, the
nuns, and on the landing I met the priest whose duty it was to minister
to their spiritual wants. After a little conversation, I asked him how
the nuns who had grown old in the convent managed without servants. He
smiled at my question, and replied that the younger nuns waited on the
older ones and did the housework for them. “But,” I persisted, “they
must all grow old in time?” To which he answered that new ones were
continually entering the convent and taking the place of the old ones.
Only three men ever enter those doors, the priest, the sacristan of the
conventual church, and the carpenter who nails the dead nuns into their
coffins and carries them out. There is a legend among the townspeople to
the effect that, a long time ago, one of the more youthful of the nuns,
getting heartily tired of her life of seclusion within those gloomy
walls, let herself down, by a rope made of twisted sheets, from one of
the windows into the Quintana, or what is now the _Plaza de los
Literarios_, intending to escape with a lover who had won her heart
before she had taken the veil; but she inadvertently hung herself, and
remained suspended till her corpse was discovered the following day. I
often thought of that story when I looked up at those high, prison-like
windows, and also of the report that there must be rats in the disused
kitchens “as large as men.” At six o’clock every evening I used to hear
the bells of St. Payo (or Pelayo) summoning the nuns to Mass, and so
close they sounded it seemed almost as if they were pealing for me as
well.
Santiago is rich in fortress-like convents for women. On the road to
Coruña, in a street of the same name, is situated the convent of Santa
Clara, founded in 1260 by Queen Violante, the wife of Alfonso el Sabio
(the royal _trovador_), but its present construction only dates from the
latter years of the sixteenth century, and the façade of its church is
the work of the eighteenth century, and extremely ugly. In this church
there is an elegant Gothic pulpit, which attracts the attention of
visitors, and the tomb of the Abbess Isabel of Granada, who is reputed
to have been a granddaughter of the Moorish warrior Boabdil, the last
Mohammedan king of Granada. There is another theory to the effect that
she was a granddaughter of Abul Hasan Ali, whose son Naser (her father)
entered the Catholic Church, and received the baptismal name of Juan de
Granada.
Opposite the convent of Santa Clara is the convent of (barefooted)
Carmelite Nuns, established in the eighteenth century; it has a large
church called _La Virgen del Carmen_. Close by is the _Hospital de San
Roque_, established in 1577 for the treatment of venereal diseases; it
has attached to it a modern penitentiary. The hospital was rebuilt in
1818 with funds bequeathed for the purpose by a wealthy merchant of
Villagarcia. Patients come to this hospital from all parts of the
province.
Santiago possesses a very small Archæological Museum in the _Sociedad
Economica_, or School of Art, which is a modern building in the street
of San Clements, facing the Alameda. Here are stored some old statues
thought to have once decorated the original façades of the cathedral,
one of which represents King David, and is brightly coloured. Here also
is preserved the great statue of Minerva, which once stood above the
columns of the university façade.
Remembering the valuable and interesting private museums I had
discovered in some of the remotest of the Russian towns, I inquired if
there were no private collections in Santiago. “Yes, we have one,” was
the reply, “it is in the house of Señor Ricardo Blanco Ciceron”; and
through the kindness of Señor Cabeza Leon I soon received an invitation
from Señor Ciceron to inspect the treasures which he had gathered
together during some forty years. Señor Ciceron is a wealthy Santiago
merchant, his comfortable house is filled with antique furniture and
other _objêts d’art_, but besides these he has a couple of rooms filled
with curios of every description and of every period of Galicia’s
history. Here I saw some fine specimens of Roman mosaic, Roman pottery,
and Roman metal work. I was struck with a beautifully preserved glass
vase, which had been discovered in a brick-tomb three feet beneath the
surface of the ground, by railway navvies, near Astorga. But the real
value of this museum lies in the collections of ancient coins, and the
collection of _torques_. Among the coins I saw a great many Phœnician,
and a still larger number of Visigothic coins (very small, and as thin
as wafers). Numismatologists tell us it is an ascertained fact that the
Carthaginians did not begin to mint for themselves until three or four
years later than their Greek neighbours.[212] Dr. Macdonald remarks that
among the ancients themselves there was a difference of opinion as to
where the first coins were struck. Herodotus thought that the Lydians
were the first people to strike and use gold and silver coins. There
seems to be no proof that they were in circulation earlier than 700
B.C.[213] Before the introduction of a metallic standard the universal
unit of value was the ox, and it is the opinion of some students that
when the primitive system of currency was superseded by a metallic one,
a picture of the article that had formerly served as money was very
naturally impressed upon the coins. There have been found in Galicia a
number of coins with an ox or other animal represented.
Among the Celtiberic coins I noticed one on which was depicted a man on
a galloping horse; on its reverse was the head of a man wearing a
helmet. There were also a goodly number of Roman coins from the time of
Augustus to that of Nero. All these had been coined at Rome, but we have
already seen that several of the Roman colonies in Galicia were
permitted to strike their own money until about the middle of the first
century A.D., when the privilege was withdrawn both from Gaul and Spain.
It seems very probable that long before coins were current in Galicia
the natives used their jewellery as money. Señor Ciceron is the happy
possessor of the finest collection of golden torques in existence, and
every one of these was dug up in Galicia. Their great weight, and the
purity of their metal, indicate that they were used for more purposes
than that of ornament alone.
There are eleven torques in Señor Ciceron’s unique collection, and eight
of them are of gold. That gentleman assured me that he might have had
many more had the little shepherd boys who stumble across them in the
neighbouring hills better understood their value. Some think that these
torques date from the days of the ancient Iberians, and that they were
worn as necklaces by the chiefs of tribes. But their great weight and
their enormous size make me somewhat doubtful of this theory. Some of
them have been pronounced by Señor Villa-Amil to be very like the
Gallo-Roman specimens in the Louvre collection. Those in the Dublin
Museum are much thinner, and altogether less massive. The two in the
_Kunsthistorisches Museum_ at Vienna are yoke-shaped, they are laid one
inside the other; both are silver bordered. It is curious that the
ancient Irish should have had torques of gold so similar to those that
are now being found in Galicia. Joyce tells us that in a legend in the
_Book of Leinster_, Credrie, the great artificer, was drowned _while
bringing golden ore from Spain_; and a poem in the same book speaks of
“torques of gold from foreign lands.”
Geraldus reported in the thirteenth century that the Irish were too idle
to work their own gold mines. “Even gold, of which they require large
quantities, and which they desire so eagerly as to indicate their
Spanish origin, is brought hither by merchants.”[214] Torcs or Muntorcs
(necktorcs) seem to have been much in vogue with the ancient Irish; they
were often mentioned in their literature. Joyce describes them thus:
“The torque was formed of a single square or triangular bar of gold,
from which the metal had been hollowed out along the flat sides, so as
to leave four or three ribbons along the corners, after which it was
twisted into a spiral shape, something like a screw with four or three
threads. There is one in the museum only half made, having three leaves
or ribbons the whole length untwisted....” This writer says of those in
the Dublin Museum, that some are barely the size of the neck, others so
large that when worn they extended over the breast almost to the
shoulders, and he reminds his readers that the Dying Gladiator has a
torque round his neck (a fact first noticed, he says, by Robert Ball,
LL.D.).
In various documents of the Middle Ages, preserved in the archives of
Santiago, mention is made of certain gifts made by Royal personages to
the Cathedral under the name of _limace_ or _lunace_. These objects were
usually of gold, and of great value; sometimes they were studded with
pearls and precious stones.[215] Señor Villa-Amil pointed this out to
me when I was in Madrid in the spring of 1907, and said that possibly
these objects, of which all trace seems to have disappeared, were
nothing more nor less than torques. Now I find that besides their
torques the Irish had golden crescents, or neck-circlets, which they
called _munices_, and Mr. Joyce says that the word seems to have applied
to almost every kind of neck ornament; he describes three main types,
and gives illustrations of them, adding that Sir W. Wilde thought some
of them must have been diadems, to be worn on the head. The definition
of the word torque given by Chambers is “a necklace of metal rings
interlaced,” and there is no doubt that the word is derived from the
Latin _torqueo_, to twist. Some of those in Señor Ciceron’s collection
are like thick cord twisted into a rope, but others are not twisted at
all. Señor Villa-Amil has recently been engaged in writing a very full
and learned description of all the torque collections in Spain, and he
begins with the remark that Señor Ciceron’s collection, taken together
with those of the late Señor Arteago, his own, and those of the
Archæological and Historical Museums of Madrid, would form the finest
collection of torques in the world. Many of the objects labelled as
torques in the museums are not torques. Señor Villa-Amil has seen eight
gold ones in the museum at Toulouse, but not one of them can be compared
to those he has mentioned; they look more like work of Louis XIV.’s
time.
Besides his torques, Señor Ciceron has a most valuable collection of
prehistoric gold jewellery, amongst which I saw a deep neckband of solid
gold, some gold beads on a gold thread, a spiral ring, and a wide
bracelet which has no join in it, and must have been hammered out of a
solid lump of the precious metal; experts who have examined it say that
is the only way in which it could have been made. Another curious object
was a necklace formed of hand-made gold fillets, which Señor Ciceron had
bought of some peasants who had found it in the sand of the River Sil,
which has been known to contain grains of gold since the days of Strabo.
Señor Ciceron informed me that he had recently received letters both
from England and America asking if he would be willing to sell his
unique collection, and although he had no intention of parting with his
treasures at the time of my visit, I think it is more than likely that
the torques, at least, will eventually find their way to the United
States.
Amongst other things I saw in this museum were some gold signet rings
with Iberian characters, two very ancient bronze statues, a Mercury; a
Hercules excavated in Galicia; and about twenty sharp bronze hatchets;
also a number of stone arrow-heads. Every age is represented in that
little museum. I was shown Greek crosses; Byzantine pictures; some
Limoges vessels (enamelled) of the sixteenth century; a splendid
collection of French Imperial medals, and a watch made entirely of wood,
from Lugo.
After we had seen everything indoors, Señor Ciceron took me out into his
garden to see some statues that had formed part of one of the original
façades of the Cathedral. He had saved them from some rubbish heap, and
used them to ornament his garden wall.
_Note._--I have been obliged, from lack of space, to omit two
chapters describing the monasteries of _San Martin Pinario_, _San
Lorenzo_, _San Francisco_, and _Santo Domingo_--four remarkable
relics of the Middle Ages which no visitor to Santiago should fail
to see.--AUTHOR.