ORENSE
Our last view of Tuy Cathedral--Scenery between Tuy and
Orense--Ribadavia--Boundaries of Orense--Crossing the Miño--The
_Puente Mayor_--The hot springs--Their usefulness--The Cathedral of
Orense--Its _Pórtico de Gloria_--The wonderful crucifix--The
cloister--Santa Eufemia--Fight for her body--The oxen
decide--Cardinal Quevado--Sculpture brought from
Italy--Wood-carving--Spanish enamels--A silver crucifix--The
reredos--The Orense Museum--Stone sarcophagi--Roman mosaics--A
strange musical instrument--The Gallegan bagpipe--Orense and the
Sueves--The Monastery of San Francisco--La Trinidad--Allariz--An
interesting church--Convent of Santa Clara--Allariz mentioned by
Ptolemy--Strongly fortified--_Aquasantas_--The parish church--_San
Pedro de la Mezquita_--_Junquera de Ambia_--_El Mosteiro_
We rose early on a glorious April morning to catch the first train to
Orense. The sun shone brilliantly, and the outline of the blue-grey
hills with which Tuy is surrounded stood out clear and distinct. On some
of these peaks there are still the ruins of fortifications raised by the
ancient Celts when they fled from the Romans in the valley. As the
railway omnibus was taking us through the pine woods to the station, we
caught, at a bend in the road, a view of the Cathedral of Tuy. “What
ancient castle is that?” I inquired of a fellow-passenger. “It is the
Cathedral,” he replied, smiling. This was the second time that I had
mistaken that edifice for a mediæval stronghold.
The line from Tuy to Orense runs through scenery more beautiful than
that of the Austrian Tyrol. For a long time the winding Miño is visible
close beneath the train windows, as it makes its way through the verdant
valley, banked by mossy boulders and clumps of pine or chestnut trees,
and now and again rushing through narrow ravines. The first station we
passed was that of Salvatierra, near which towered a mediæval fortress
almost hidden by ivy, while, dotted about, were some little houses
painted red. Terraces of vines now covered the sloping hills; every now
and again we were in the thick of a pine wood. The station in the pine
wood was Nerves: between it and Arbo the Miño’s bed grew very narrow
and stony, and the waters foamed as they forced their way between the
boulders; then they whirled round in an eddy, and the next minute we
were looking at a sparkling waterfall, below which a peasant sat fishing
with a very long line. At Pousa, the next station, we compared the
architecture of the houses on the Portuguese side of the water with that
of the Spanish houses on the opposite bank: the Portuguese houses were
larger and more commodious in appearance. Steep mountains walled us in
as we neared the station of Freira, and our train described a curve or
loop worthy of the Canadian Rockies. After the next station, Filgueira,
the river burst from its granite ravine and fled round the circular base
of a conical mountain.
We had now reached Ribadavia, and the country on all sides was covered
with vine terraces. Ribadavia, hardly more than a large village in the
district of Ribadavia, in the province of Orense, was once an important
town. Garcia, king of Galicia, the son of Ferdinand the Great, had his
Court at Ribadavia, and his palace stood on the spot now occupied by a
Dominican convent. There are two churches at Ribadavia that are well
worth a visit--the conventual Church of Santo Domingo, and the Church of
Santiago. The former is a good specimen of Gallegan architecture, with
its wooden roof and its whitewashed granite walls and arches; the latter
has an interesting Romanesque window.
Orense, it will be remembered, is one of the four provinces into which
modern Galicia is divided. It is bounded on the north by the provinces
of Pontevedra and Lugo, on the south by Portugal, on the east by Zamora
and Leon, and on the west by Pontevedra and Portugal. Its most important
rivers are the Miño, the Sil, the Limia, and the Bibey. The chief town,
Orense, is situated in an extensive and luxuriant valley which lies in
the midst of mountains, many of them having summits of bare rock devoid
of all vegetation. Orense is a clean, bright little town, with more
movement in its streets than is usual in Gallegan towns; it is in closer
connection with Madrid than the others, and has not that mediæval look
so characteristic of the province.
The river Miño lies between the railway station and the town, and is
crossed by an exceedingly fine bridge, which is acknowledged to be one
of the sights of Orense. Molina wrote of it that its principal arch was
so high and of such a width that the Miño could flow beneath the central
arch alone--even after its waters had been swollen by the reception of
its many effluents--without touching the other arches. This bridge, the
_Puente Mayor_, had originally nine arches, but several of them
disappeared at the time of its renovation. Until about 1830, a mediæval
fortress was still standing by the bridge, but it had to be removed on
account of its ruinous condition. This bridge is the highest in Spain,
as well as one of the finest.
Our first walk in Orense was to _Las Burgas_, the hot springs, which
have been known and appreciated by the inhabitants of Orense ever since
the days of the Romans. These springs have never been known to decrease
or to increase: the flow of their waters is always the same both in
summer and winter. Their water keeps hot longer than is the case with
boiled water. The water of one of the springs is hotter than that of the
other; it can be drunk cold, it has neither colour, taste, nor smell;
the water of the other is sulphurous. Descending a flight of stone
steps, I found the water of the first spring flowing through a granite
wall beneath an arch decorated with sculpture into a stone basin; a
small space round it was paved with granite and enclosed with a railing,
in front of which there was a small public garden laid out with paths
between its flower-beds. The water which overflowed from the basin ran
into a large tank, and here a group of women were engaged in washing
linen. The sight that met my eyes in the neighbourhood of the second
spring was less pleasing; here women were busy scalding and skinning
poultry at one tank, while at another they were cooking meat in the
seething water. There are butchers’ shops close by, and their meat is
carried down to the springs to be washed and cleaned before being
exposed for sale. I noticed that the women who were employed in skinning
and cleaning the carcases were standing with their bare feet ankle deep
in bloody water, on which there floated the usual refuse of a butcher’s
shop. The place might easily have been mistaken for a slaughter-house.
My guide informed me that on the occasion of a visit paid to the springs
last year by the present King of Spain, the whole place was cleaned up
and carefully prepared for the Royal visit.
Molina has something to say about the hot springs at Orense: “In the
middle of Orense, hot springs bubble up with as great a noise of boiling
as if they were heated from below by a great furnace. The water is so
hot that you cannot put your finger into it even for a minute: you can
cook fish in it. The women wash their linen there, and make every use of
the hot water that they would make of it in their own houses.” The
ground is so warm round these springs that
[Illustration: APSE OF THE PARISH CHURCH AT ALLARIZ, ORENSE]
[Illustration: FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF EL MOSTEIRO]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ORENSE CATHEDRAL]
frost and snow are never seen near them even when all the rest of the
town is covered with a white carpet.
The Cathedral of Orense, dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, stands on the
spot where Carriarico, King of the Sueves, erected a church in the ninth
century. The present edifice was erected by Bishop Lorenzo in the first
half of the thirteenth century. Since then it has undergone restoration
at various periods, with the result that the form of its exterior is
somewhat irregular. It is in the Gothic style, and its naves, transept,
and apse are remarkable for their elegant simplicity. The lantern tower
was restored as recently as the close of the nineteenth century. A
narrow street, the _Calle de las Tiendas_, now runs in front of the
principal entrance, which once had a fine flight of steps leading up to
it. Like so many of the churches in Galicia, this Cathedral was planned
and begun in the Romanesque style, though it was eventually finished in
the Gothic. The lantern is notable, as Lamperez has pointed out, as an
example of the amalgamation of the Mohammedan system of
vaulting--without a keystone--and the Christian with one.
Like the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, that of Orense also
possesses a _Pórtico de Gloria_, but this is, alas! nothing but a poor
imitation of Mateo’s masterpiece, executed in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries; and to one who has carefully studied Mateo’s work
the copy at Orense seems nothing but a painful caricature. The people of
Orense call it _El Paraiso_. The cloister was begun in the fifteenth
century, and, judging from the small part of it still intact, it must
have been a beautiful example of Gothic work. A Romanesque gate led to
the cloister; the few of its capitals remaining show some interesting
sculpture.
We entered the Cathedral by the north door, after admiring the toral
archivolt and triple columns of the door leading to the Capilla de San
Juan, with its statues of St. Peter and St. Paul. The first sight that
attracted our attention was the handsome sarcophagus, covered with stone
relief, of Bishop Vasco Perez Marino, who, according to one account,
brought the crucifix, which Orense counts as one of her greatest
treasures, from Cape Finisterre, somewhere between 1333 and 1343. The
crucifix itself, we found in a chapel on the opposite side of the
transept nave. Villa-Amil says this could hardly be the Finisterre
Christ, because there exists documentary evidence that during the
sixteenth century both the Christs were objects of adoration at the same
time. Molina describes them both, and says that the Christ at Orense is
one of those that were made by Nicodemus. (There are two others in
Spain, one at Burgos and another at Arenas.) Bishop Juan Muñoz de la
Cueva wrote of this crucifix in 1727 that the sight of it filled the
hardest of sinners with confusion and contrition, and attracted the
devotion even of foreign kings and pilgrims. Its hair, which is black
and long, and its nails, are said to be human. I remember seeing the
Christ at Burgos laid out on the pavement in the nave of the Cathedral
on Good Friday that the faithful might kneel before it and kiss its
feet, and I was informed at the time that it was covered with human
skin. The figure of Christ in both cases is life-size. Villa-Amil
believes that the Christ at Orense is of a later date by two centuries
than Bishop Marino, and he adds that in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the worship of crucifixes was particularly fervid. The Popes
granted special Indulgences to pilgrims who visited the Orense Christ,
and as Orense was a halting-place for pilgrims to St. James, it was
visited by most of the foreigners who came on that pilgrimage. The
Christ is made of wood, and tightly covered by several layers of
flesh-coloured cloth, which looks like human skin; the feet and arms are
so constructed as to be easily moved. Pilgrims stick their fingers into
the body, and are amazed to find that an impression is made just as
would be the case with a human body. Señor Benito F. Alonso, who is a
native of Orense, has carefully examined this Christ, and gives his
readers a practical explanation of all that for so long appeared so
miraculous with regard to it.[273]
We next visited the cloister next to the _Sala Capitular_, and here our
attention was drawn to some very quaint sculpture upon the old capitals:
on one of them was the figure of a horse, and on others there were
Biblical groups which must be among the earliest work in the Cathedral.
The ashes of one of Orense’s first martyrs, Santa Eufemia, are preserved
in this Cathedral. Santa Eufemia, according to historical accounts,
suffered martyrdom near the walls of an ancient city called Obobriga
(which some writers have tried to identify with Tuy) about the middle of
the second century of the Christian Era, in the reign of Antoninus
Pius.[274] Tradition relates that a young shepherdess, guarding her
sheep upon a mountain slope on the confines of Portugal and Galicia, saw
one day a hand stretched out from between
[Illustration: STONE REREDOS IN THE CAPILLA DE LOS CONDES, MONTERREZ]
[Illustration: THE PUENTE MAYOR--ONE OF THE WONDERS OF ORENSE]
the boulders, and on one of its fingers was a golden ring. The girl put
out her hand and took the ring. From that moment her power of speech was
gone and she was perfectly dumb. She returned in terror to her home, and
by signs explained to her father what had taken place. Her father took
the ring from her, and, hastening to the spot where the hand had
appeared, found it still there and replaced the ring. As he did so a
voice said to him, “Here is the body of Santa Eufemia. See that it is
removed and placed with honour in the Church of Santa Marina.” The
command was carried out, and from the year 1090 till the time of Bishop
Sequin (1164) the ashes of the saint rested in the little chapel on the
Portuguese border. It was only with great difficulty that the bishop was
able to translate them to the Cathedral of Orense. The coffin was placed
upon a cart, but just as it was about to proceed to Orense the
Portuguese of the neighbouring villages came in great crowds, and
threatened to use force if the body was not carried back to their own
Cathedral at Braga. Bishop Sequin and the Bishop of Braga were friends,
having both been educated at the monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, and
they did their best to bring the dispute to an amicable end, but the
feelings of the Portuguese were so violent that the only resource open
to the bishops was to harness a couple of untamed oxen to the cart and
let the animals decide for themselves whether the saint should be
carried to Orense or to Braga. The oxen at once started off in the
direction of Orense, followed by a large concourse of the clergy, who
chanted psalms and prayed at every halt upon the road. When the
procession had reached Sejalvo, just outside Orense, the oxen stood
still and refused to move another step, whereupon the priests, followed
by all the dignitaries and aristocracy of the town, carried the coffin
upon their shoulders to the Cathedral, where it was deposited to the
sound of solemn music.
At the spot where the oxen stopped, Bishop Sequin erected a small
chapel--right in the middle of the road--and placed beside it a stone
cross with the effigy of Santa Eufemia, which was still standing in the
eighteenth century. The pedestal of the cross and the inscription dating
from the twelfth century are still there.
On the altar opposite the door of the sacristy we found three beautiful
thirteenth-century pictures in silver relief, representing scenes in the
history of Santa Eufemia.[275] To see these properly we were obliged to
have a candle. In the first, the young martyr stands trembling before
her pagan persecutors, while an angel appears in the clouds above to
support her in her resistance to their evil designs. In the second
picture--to the right--the victim is being tortured, and in the
third--to the left--is the scene in which the little shepherdess
indicates to her father by signs that she has seen the hand and been
struck dumb. All the faces are beautifully done, and most lifelike, and
the ornamentation round the pictures is very tasteful.
Another work of art is the marble sculpture above the recumbent effigy
of Pedro Quevado y Quintano, who was Bishop of Orense from 1776 to 1818.
He was one of the most beloved of all Orense’s prelates. When Napoleon
summoned an illegal Assembly at Bayona, Quevado was one of those who
refused to appear, and he protested strongly against the abdication of
the Spanish Sovereign. Grandmaison has described how, when more than
three hundred exiled French priests took refuge in the Peninsula,
Quevado received them as a brother, and placed his bishop’s palace at
their disposal. When Napoleon placed his brother Joseph (Pepe Botella)
on the throne of Spain, Quevado was deprived of all his emoluments as a
punishment for his patriotism. Pope Pius VII. made Quevado a cardinal in
recognition of the noble generosity with which this bishop had helped
the people of Orense from his own purse in their time of great need.
Orense celebrated his investiture with five days of festivity, during
which the town was illuminated and every kind of public amusement was
indulged in.
The marble sculpture which decorates his tomb was executed in Italy: it
consists of two medallions with two relief figures, one representing
Strength--Hercules, who is wrapped in the skin of the lion Nemius, and
has just torn from its place a massive pillar. The other represents
Charity--an old woman--caring for two destitute children.
The most beautiful tomb in the Cathedral, however, is not that of
Quevado, but that of some unknown person. It is richly decorated with
statues, the central one representing King David with his harp and
crown. All the statutes have pointed shoes showing beneath their long
robes.
Besides the famous Christ of which we have spoken above, this Cathedral
possesses another large crucifix, a figure of Christ, also life-size. It
is of Byzantine workmanship, and the figure is nailed to the cross with
four nails, as was customary between the seventh and twelfth
centuries.[276] The head wears
[Illustration: NORTHERN ENTRANCE TO ORENSE CATHEDRAL]
[Illustration: SIDE ENTRANCE, THE CHURCH OF SANTO DOMINGO AT TUY]
[Illustration: ROMANESQUE FAÇADE OF THE PARISH CHURCH AT ALLARIZ,
ORENSE]
[Illustration: WINDOW IN THE CHURCH OF SANTIAGO AT RIBADAVIA, ORENSE]
a Gothic crown, and a damask tunic covers the body to the knees.
Another treasure of this Cathedral is the beautiful wood-carving of the
choir, which was long believed to be the work of Francisco Moure, a
native of Orense, who is known to have executed the fine carving of the
altar in the Jesuit monastery of Monforte and the choir at Logo. But
just before my arrival at Orense a local archæologist, Señor Eugenio
Alvarez, discovered in the archives of the Cathedral a document proving
that the choir at Orense was the work of a foreigner--an Italian named
Juan de Angeles--in the sixteenth century.
I heard from a reliable source that there were some exquisite specimens
of enamel work in the treasury, but did not have an opportunity of
inspecting them. It is very rarely that they are shown to visitors.
In a cupboard lined with velvet in the sacristy is preserved a beautiful
crucifix of silver filigree work. The hair and clothes of the Christ are
of gold. Sad to say, a native of Orense, who made a fortune in South
America, has recently spent a hundred and twenty-five thousand pesetas
in having this beautiful work spoiled, _i.e._, modernised and decked out
with coloured stones; its original date is unknown, but it is thought to
be the work of the silversmiths of Santiago.
The reredos on the chief altar is also worth inspection, it is thought
to be the work of a Fleming; each niche containing a statue is decorated
with golden lace. It is the only reredos of its kind in Spain. Every
statue in it is said to be worth ten thousand (Spanish) dollars.
We next visited the Orense Museum. Here we found a stone bearing an
inscription relating to the Burgas, or Hot Springs, which had once been
erected near them by the Romans; the inscription was in honour of the
nymphs who were supposed to haunt the springs. Here also we found
several interesting stone sarcophagi; one was that of a converted Jew of
Monforte who spent a great deal of money on the churches; his name was
Gaibor, and he flourished in the eighteenth century. Here, too, were
specimens of good Roman mosaic, taken from the Roman baths in the
neighbourhood; some Byzantine capitals; a sarcophagus bearing an
inscription in the Gallegan dialect, from the fourteenth century; a
sarcophagus of the fifth century without a cover; a bronze cross of the
fifth century; some Roman pens; some Roman amphoras; bronze hatchets
found in the bed of the Miño; and a number of arrow-heads, some of green
serpentine, others of stone. Among the documents were some Papal Bulls
and other parchments in a glass case. One of the things that interested
me most was a musical instrument of mediæval structure; it had a handle
like a barrel organ, but its strings and screws were like those of a
violin. I am told that this strange kind of instrument is still in use
among the blind musicians of Galicia; and there are two of them
represented in the Orense _Pórtico de Gloria_, two of the
four-and-twenty elders are playing them by turning the handle. In this
museum we also found a good specimen of the Gallegan bagpipe, or
_gaita_. It was here that Señor Macìas showed me a recently completed
plan of the old Roman road that passed through Orense from Braga to
Astorga, at which he and several other archæologists had been working
for some time. The walls of the museum are hung with old paintings, some
of them being portraits of the family of San Rosendo, brought from the
monastery of Celanova. But perhaps the most treasured object of all is
the stone with the Roman inscription which Señor Macìas and his friends
had such difficulty in removing from the site of the ancient _Civitas
Limicorum_.
The name of Orense is derived from the Latin word _Aurea_, “golden,” and
was the name given to the town by the Romans. As we have seen elsewhere,
the great pride of Orense is the fact that the Sueve kings Carriarico
and Teodomiro abjured Arianism within her walls after hearing of the
miracles of St. Martin of Tours, and through the preaching of St. Martin
of Dumio, after there had been more than a hundred years of strife
between that heresy and the Catholic Faith, a strife which brought with
it all the evils of a civil war. Six centuries later the monastery of
the Franciscan Order was established within the walls of the city. Soon
after its completion, in a quarrel between Bishop Yanez de Noboa and the
monks, a man who had killed a member of the Noboa family in the street
took refuge with the monks, and as they refused to deliver him up, the
citizens burned their monastery to the ground. A few years later a new
monastery was begun on the site where it now stands, on a hill just
above the town, to the east of the Cathedral; this was finished about
the middle of the fourteenth century. It is now used as a barracks for
an infantry regiment, but its architecture is well preserved and quite
worth a visit; it has a beautiful fourteenth-century Gothic cloister
with graceful arcades resting on double shafts, every capital having
different sculpture. The façade of the church has a fine Gothic door
with three columns on either side, and some quaint sculpture on their
capitals. This church has one nave and three apse chapels; its form
[Illustration: CHURCH OF AQUASANTAS]
[Illustration: TOWER NEAR MONTERREY, ORENSE]
[Illustration: APSE OF THE CHURCH OF EL MOSTEIRO, ORENSE]
is that of a Latin cross; the roofing of the nave is of wood, while the
transept and apses are covered with Gothic vaulting. The four arches of
the transept form curvilineal triangles, as if originally intended to
support a cupola or lantern. The apses, which resemble those of Santo
Domingo of Pontevedra, are connected by doors of communication in their
walls; they are lighted by very narrow and long lancet windows. Some say
that the sculptured figures on the capitals in this church are intended
to represent the struggles that took place between Bishop Yanez de Noboa
and the monks, but this is not correct; they merely represent the
monsters, birds, and foliage so much affected in that period. The church
contains some interesting tombs.
Another old church at Orense is _La Trinidad_, founded in the middle of
the twelfth century by Juan de Lares; it has two circular towers
flanking its façade, they probably did duty during the Middle Ages as
fortified watch-towers, for they have the appearance of bastions. The
wall of the Gothic apse seems also to have been castellated. This church
must have been standing when our Duke of Lancaster--who had married a
daughter of Peter the Cruel--invaded Galicia to claim the lands that his
wife inherited from her father. The Duke took Ribadavia in 1386, and
then marched upon Orense, which he assaulted and sacked.
In several of the small towns within a short drive of Orense there are
interesting monuments of mediæval architecture. One drive well worth
taking is to Allariz, where the Church of Santiago has many points
worthy of study, such as its quaint circular apse with a tiled roof and
Romanesque windows, and its square stone tower, also with a tiled roof.
At Allariz there is also the convent of Santa Clara, with its sumptuous
church and five altars, one of which is of the Corinthian order and as
lofty as the church. On the arch above the closed door there is an
inscription with the date “Era 1324.” The nuns of this convent have
among their treasures a beautiful crystal cross of mediæval workmanship,
with an ivory image of the Virgin, which alone is worth going to Allariz
to see. Near the Church of St. Stephen, at Allariz, there is a spot
called _el campo de la Mina_, which was used as a Jewish burial-ground
until the sixteenth century; some old tombstones bearing Hebrew
inscriptions have recently been found there. Huerta thought that Allariz
was the ancient town of Arraduca mentioned by Ptolemy. The historian
Gandara stated that the remains of King Witiza were discovered at
Allariz in 1663, but no other writer has confirmed this statement.
It is certain, however, that Allariz was one of the most
strongly-fortified towns in Galicia during the Middle Ages, and it is
one of the oldest _Fueros_ in the province. It can also boast of the
fact that the great poligraphist Feijoó received his early education
within its walls.
Another pleasant drive is to _Aquasantas_, where there is an interesting
parish church, built of granite, with three naves, the central nave
being supported by pillars 30 feet high. In the side nave to the right
is the tomb of Santa Marina the martyr: there is a high square tower
with a clock. This church once belonged to the Knights Templars.
Not far from _Aquasantas_ there is the Church of _San Pedro del
Mezquita_, and thirty kilometres distant from Orense there is the parish
church of _Junquera de Ambia_, now a small village, but once an
important Roman settlement close to the military road that connected
Braga with Astorga. A milestone bearing the name of Hadrian was
excavated there towards the close of the nineteenth century, it belonged
to the year 133 A.D., and its inscription stated that the distance to
Braga was seventy-four miles.[277] The present church dates from the
year 1164, as we are told by an inscription on the tympanum of its
doorway. Molina states that the ancient family of Ambia owned the whole
of _Junquera de Ambia_, and much more land besides, and that one of
them, having no heir to succeed him, built a fine church on his own
estate: in the sixteenth century this edifice was turned into a
_Colegiata_, but it is now a parish church in the diocese of Orense; it
has a fine tower in the Romanesque style. The chief entrance is a good
example of the same style at its best period; it has three archivolts
with toral moulding.
At _El Monteiro_ there is also a church with an interesting apse, or
rather three circular apses with Romanesque windows.
There is also a remarkably fine church at _Monterrey_ about fifty-five
kilometers from Orense. This town was peopled by Alfonso VIII. of
Castile in 1150, and called Monterrey because of its mountainous
position. In its vicinity there are some rich tin mines. It is at
Monterrey that there is a fine old square tower, the _Torre del
Homenaje_ (the bell at the top is modern), and in the church above
alluded to there is a mediæval reredos of sculptured stone.[278]
[Illustration: APSE OF CHURCH NEAR ORENSE]
[Illustration: CONVENTUAL CHURCH OF THE MONASTERY OF OSERA, ORENSE]
[Illustration: PART OF THE APSE OF THE CHURCH OF AQUASANTAS, ORENSE]