THE GREAT MONASTERIES OF GALICIA
The monastery of Osera--Peralta--Foundation of the monastery and
its first abbot--“The Escurial of Galicia”--Difficulty of
access--The journey--On horseback--A petrified ocean--Primitive
maize barns--A sea of rocks--Privileges enjoyed by the monks of
Osera--The façade--The cloisters--The church--The choir--The
altars--The sacristy--The cemetery--The oldest part of the
building--Fountains--The journey back to Cea--The excursion to
Celanova--Scenery of the road--Floors of walnut wood--The
_escaño_--A typical invention--A sturdy tower--Welcome given us by
the monks--The conventual church--Wood-carving--San
Torquato--Marble pictures--Relics of San Rosendo--Other
curiosities--Stalactite work--The _Eremita de San Miguel_--Was it a
Moorish mosque?--The inscription--Santa Comba de Bande--Its
architecture--Sarcophagus of San Torquato--A hard nut for Spanish
archæologists--San Juan de Baños--Visigothic architecture--From
Santa Comba to Orense--The monastery of _San Estevan de Rivas de
Sil_--A rare excursion--Our plan of campaign--Conjunction of the
Miño and the Sil--Mountain air--The start--The ferry-boat--The
ascent--A stone gateway--The architecture of the monastery--The
Cloister of the Bishops--Other cloisters--The church and
sacristy--Statues--A School of Art--Plundering the ruins--Like an
eagle’s nest--Hermits--San Pedro de Rocas--On donkeys--A rock-hewn
church--The sixth century
Alfonso VIII. must have been a very pious king, for he founded quite a
number of monasteries, and amongst them the Cistercian monastery of
Osera, which lies in the diocese of the bishop of Orense, from which
town we set out to see it. In the year 1477 a monk of Osera, Thomas de
Peralta by name, undertook to write a history of his cloister and its
abbots. In his book[291] he tells us that this monastery was founded in
1037, that its first abbot was named Garcia, and that its first son was
San Famiano, a native of Germany and the child of noble and wealthy
parents, who, wishing to live a religious life, went to Italy and came
thence to Galicia, where, at the age of fifty, he entered the cloisters
of Osera in the year 1142. He remained there until his death in 1150,
and during that period wrought many miracles, the fame of which spread
throughout the whole world and brought many fresh inmates to Osera.
Peralta gives a short biographical sketch of every abbot who governed
Osera from the time of San Famiano down to his own days, in the end of
the seventeenth century. He is very careful to state the exact amount of
money each abbot spent in alms to the poor, in addition to the sum
allotted annually to that purpose from the general fund. And indeed they
could afford to be liberal without practising much self-denial!
Peralta tells us that the monastery is situated upon a mountain, whose
inaccessible slopes and rocky crags instil horror into the mind of the
spectator.[292] It is bathed by the river Osera, from which it took its
name, the river in its turn having derived its name from the bears with
which the mountain was once infested. The word _osera_ means “a den of
bears.” The arms of the monastery are to this day a couple of bears
climbing a pine tree. Peralta conscientiously adds, however, that no
trace of the existence of any bears in that part has been preserved in
writing, and that the monastery might possibly have received its name
because the spot upon which it was built was of a kind suited to such
animals, the monks being the first human beings to set foot there. King
Alfonso’s original donation, on founding the monastery, consisted of
only four square miles of unpopulated and uncultivated land; but as time
went on, “by the help of God and the gifts of the kings of Spain and the
nobles of Galicia, it grew richer and richer till,” when Peralta wrote,
“it was one of the richest monasteries in the whole of the Peninsula.”
My readers will gain some idea of what its wealth was from the fact that
the monks possessed at one time a right to all the fishing in Vigo Bay!
Florez observes that the prayers of the monks were very effectual; that
kings, princes, and popes showered donations and privileges upon them;
and that their monastery, rebuilt after a fire in 1552, became a
structure of such architectural grandeur and such magnificent
dimensions, that it was at length called “The Escurial of Galicia.”[293]
On my arrival at Orense I made many inquiries among my friends there as
to the possibility of paying a visit to the ruins of Osera. One and all
shook their heads. “It is very difficult of access,” they said; and only
one person could I find who had been there, an elderly priest, who told
me that it was too rough an expedition for ladies, and that he himself
had only been there once, and that was in his younger days. Happily,
however, I at length found, in a back street, an intelligent and
good-natured shopkeeper who had a lawyer brother living in the village
of Osera, within the very gates of the monastery. This gentleman kindly
gave me a letter of introduction to his brother, and told me how to get
there. “You will have to drive for three hours, and then proceed on
horseback for two hours more,” he said.
Following the instructions given, we accordingly left our hotel at
Orense at 5.15 a.m. on a fine April morning, and drove in an open
carriage to the village of Cea, which lies about seventeen kilometres to
the south of Orense. The drive, which took just three hours, was a very
beautiful one. The road ran along hillsides which were literally covered
with bushes of white broom, that looked like a carpet of snow at a
little distance; then, another hill coming right in our way, our road
had to bend and double till we seemed to be going back to Orense and
could see its Cathedral towers in front of us: it was like the famous
loop in the Canadian Rockies. Then our way cut through giant boulders of
white-looking granite, and we went up and up till the valleys beneath us
were hidden by white clouds. A little later we were passing the
outskirts of a charming pine wood on the slope of a hill; through the
wood there ran a gurgling stream on whose margin a group of peasant
women had gathered to wash their linen. Then came a tiny village, in
whose gardens we saw long-stalked cabbages, some of them five and a half
feet high; the hills became covered with yellow and white broom
intermixed, here and there a bunch of furze, whose brilliant flowering
was almost over. Besides the broom there were clumps of tall loose
heather of a purple hue. The hedges, very like our English ones, were
dotted with blue gentians as the sun came out, two flowers to each
stalk; and in the woods we saw the fresh young green of the budding
chestnuts lighted up by the early sun. Then came a cone-shaped mountain
to our right, whose sides were covered with such a beautiful rich, soft
green carpet that we felt we should like to get out and stroke it. Again
the roadside was lined with white-flowered broom, as airy and delicate
as the plumes ladies wear in their hats. After another half-hour the
pine trees grew taller, till they were like bushy dark green tufts upon
tall bare poles; between them were the gnarled and knotted trunks of
aged chestnuts, and yonder--alone in its glory--rose a dark
needle-pointed cypress; and then, through the branches of the trees,
there peeped a little village church. We now put on our brake and went
slowly downhill.
Arrived at the quaint inn of the one-street village of Cea, I made
inquiries for a horse to take me up to Osera. Several villagers brought
their steeds for my inspection, and at nine a.m. I found myself
comfortably mounted on a sturdy pony and slowly ascending a stony path
which lay between woods of pine trees and boulders of granite. It was
more like a goat path than any human line of communication. My pony
picked its way between stones and boulders for a good two hours. Two
villagers, a man and a woman, whom I had engaged to accompany me, walked
on either side, the one carrying my camera, and the other my coat. Every
now and again our way lay beside gushing streamlets of pure spring
water, which sparkled over the white feldspar in the morning sun, and
yellow flowers larger than primroses soon sprang up in clusters between
the stones along our route. Now we pass a green field of long fresh
grass, blue with hyacinths and shaded by a clump of chestnuts, just like
a bit of old England. At length we reach a sort of tableland on the top
of the granite mountain up which we have been slowly climbing for an
hour and a half. Trees, fields, and flowers have quite disappeared, the
very hedges have turned to granite boulders, and for a time we seem to
be making our way over a petrified ocean, whose waves of granite rise
higher and higher before us, and cover the ground as far as we can see
on every side. Our rough path was now hedged on both sides with great
blocks of crystallised feldspar, so white and transparent in appearance
that I almost mistook it for marble, and my thoughts travelled to the
quarries of Carrara. Those roughly hewn blocks had been placed there by
human hands, it was clear, but other sign of man’s existence there was
absolutely none. On we toiled for another half-hour, and then we came to
a granite village, almost the same colour as the granite around. This
village had the most primitive maize barns I had ever seen: they were
round, like giant beehives, with straw-thatched roofs; and as the sun
was blazing full on the grey village and its yellow straw, I stopped to
take a photograph. The houses were all built of granite, and the hedges
to the gardens were all of granite. On we went again through more seas
of bare granite rock, and then, all at once, the scene changed: we had
come to the top of a ridge, and before us, as “from Pisgah’s mountain,
we viewed the promised land.” There lay a vast but very shallow valley,
scooped out between the surrounding uplands, and in the
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF OSERA, ORENSE]
[Illustration: CLOISTERS IN THE MONASTERY OF OSERA
PHOTOS, BY AUTHOR] deepest hollow of that valley was planted the
monastery of Osera, the Gallegan Escurial.
We came to the outer wall of the monastic demesne about fifteen minutes
before we reached the entrance. It was a thick and high mediæval wall, a
rampart wall, with strong round turrets about fifteen feet high at
regular intervals. Outside these walls there were green pasture lands
stretching up the mountain slope as far as the eye could see, but the
only woods and trees we could distinguish were those within the demesne;
they must have been all planted by the monks at one time or another. The
centre and lowest dip of the valley, where the monastery stood, was so
much lower than the surrounding wall, that we could not even see its
church towers when we had drawn a little nearer.
There was a picturesque little village just within the outer gates of
the monastery. I took a snapshot of one of its long maize barns,
crawling like a great caterpillar over the granite wall. In one of the
houses dwelt the lawyer to whom I had brought my letter of introduction.
He and his aged mother welcomed me kindly, and while the old lady went
off to prepare me a cup of chocolate I chatted with her son, and took
some notes from a book to which he drew my attention. It was entitled
_Codigo Civil_ (Civil Code), and contained an interesting paragraph
relating to the monastery I had come to visit. It was to the effect:
There exists an insensible gradation between the charters granted to the
population of more important towns of Galicia, and those conceded to the
people dwelling on the solitary estates, which are in themselves, so to
speak, centres or townships. One of the earliest indications of the
gradation is to be found in a letter promulgated in 1207 by the abbot
and monks of the monastery of Osera, which is now preserved in the
Archives of Natural History at Madrid,[294] in which all the people
dwelling in the hamlet of Aquada were commanded to pay annually--a
hundred and forty loaves of good bread, fifteen pots of honey, fifteen
pullets or fifteen kids, and fifteen crocks filled with fried cakes.
Furthermore, whenever the king or other great personages should visit
the monastery, these villagers were to supply its major-domo with as
many chickens and kids as he might require. In addition, they were bound
over to plough the fields belonging to the monastery, and to lend their
help in the harvest season. And last, but not least, they were to convey
in their own vehicles any of the monks who might wish to make an annual
visit to Santiago or Marin, and they were not to recognise any other
suzerainty than that of the monks. The only compensation for all these
kind offices which the monks promised to the villagers was a supply of
good merino from their flock.
We now approached the historic building, and I stood for a while before
its handsome Renaissance façade, the lowest storey of which has four
columns resembling giant sticks of twisted sugar-candy. The large
bas-relief between the two columns on the left of the entrance
represents an incident in the life of St. Bernard. The saint has laid
himself down to sleep in a solitary spot, and an angel from heaven
flutters above him with food in a basket, but the devil is there too,
ringing a big bell so that St. Bernard may not be able to hear the voice
of the angel and refresh himself with the food. The bas-relief between
the columns on the right represents the birth of Christ. Joseph and Mary
are there, and behind Joseph is a bull impatient to reach the manger. On
some stone steps leading to the manger is the figure of a warrior in the
dress of Charles II.’s day, with a deep lace collar, tight stockings,
and flowing hair: this costume attests the date of the work.
The second storey of the façade has a balcony, decorated with the arms
of the military orders of Santiago, Calatrava, Alcantara, and
Montesa,[295] and on either side of these are two smaller balconies.
Above the large balcony are two lions in relief, and here, too, we see
the Royal Arms of Spain with a crown and eagles, also in relief. Above
are various statues, the most important being those of St. Bernard and
the Virgin.
The first cloister that we entered was the most modern one, it dated
from the eighteenth century; here we found a very handsome stone
staircase. Passing on to the second cloister, which bears the title
_Claustro de la Procesion_, we found it to be work of the end of the
seventeenth century. The southern lateral door of the church opens into
this cloister; on passing through it we noted the torso of a finely
carved wooden statue of St. John the Evangelist, thrown down like
rubbish in a corner, when it should have been carefully preserved in a
museum. We now passed through a small portico into a third cloister, the
oldest of all. The roof of the portico is composed of ancient monastic
tombstones covered with inscriptions; on one I read the date MCCCXXII.,
and another MCCCLXII. The oldest cloister, which had three storeys, is
very narrow, and Gothic in style; the arcades and portico are full of
bramble bushes, and at one end of it the village priest has inaugurated
for himself a small trout pond filled with flowing water from the
neighbouring spring. We entered a dark, windowless, cavern-like room
with a wide hearth: this was where the monks stored their clothing;
another room next it was used as the granary. Ascending the grand
staircase, of twenty-four steps, we visited the upper rooms; one was a
recreation hall, it had a round hole in the middle of the floor, through
which, by means of a mirror, the monks could see all that went on in the
portico below; here, without being seen themselves, they could watch the
abbot receiving his royal and princely guests.
The conventual church next attracted us, and we examined its three
naves, its gallery bearing the date 1675, its vaulting, and its graceful
fan tracery. Its pillars throw up their groined arches like branching
palms, and the whole effect of this vaulting would be very fine but for
the abominable whitewash which covers all. This architecture is mostly
work of the latter part of the seventeenth century. There are pointed
Gothic arches on either side of the principal nave. The choir,
originally above, is now in the nave; in its upper stalls is some of the
wood-carving that belonged to the monastic library, whose very shelves
have been carried off. Some of the finest of its wood-carving is now in
one of the Madrid museums; we saw a little of it, some strips that
vandalism had happened to leave on one of the doors.
The imposing churrigueresque _retable_ (reredos) behind the chief altar
is falling into melancholy decay, and offers a most depressing
spectacle. It is sad, indeed, that Spain has not yet seen fit to make
Osera a national monument, and that architecture, sculpture, and
wood-carving of such high excellence should be left to rot and perish
like things of no value.
On one side of the altar is a beautiful stone statue representing St.
Catherine holding out a sword, on the tip of which is her son’s head;
she had sacrificed him, the story goes, on account of his disobedience.
There are a number of altars of varied interest, but the most notable
one is the _Virgen de la Leche_, or the Virgin feeding the Child at her
breast. The Child wears a long robe down to Its feet; the Virgin wears a
blue tunic bordered with gold, and reaching below the knees; under it is
a red skirt; on her feet are shoes. This is probably the oldest object
in Osera; it is Byzantine.
The sacristy which we now enter is perhaps the most interesting part of
the church; it is like a clump of whitewashed palms, whose branches
meeting form its roof; like the church, it dates from the sixteenth
century. The windows of the sacristy look out into the oldest cloister.
We found here a table covered with a handsome monolith slab of marble,
and a very valuable carved ivory figure of Christ upon a wooden cross.
Outside is a cemetery enclosed by high walls on two sides; the lower
part of the wall of the church seen from the cemetery is much older than
the rest: its Romanesque architecture attests its age. It is probably
the only part that escaped the fire of 1551; it forms a rotunda round
the presbytery.[296]
The present parish of Osera numbers some one thousand six hundred souls,
counting all its scattered villages. The territory included in the
monastic domain spreads over a large part of the province of Orense, and
even enters that of Lugo. In its palmy days, when its rents flowed in
and its cells were filled with monks, Osera must have been a little
world in itself. The present monastery took a hundred years to builtd
concluded in the time of the sixty-fifth abbot, whose name was Simon
Rojo. There were once some beautiful fountains in the cloister patios,
dating from the middle of the sixteenth century; two of these are now to
be seen in the town of Orense, one in the _Plaza del Hierro_, and the
other in the Public Gardens.
From time to time the monastery of Osera has been associated with the
history of Spain. For three years it sheltered a great lady of Galicia
and her entire court, Donna Juana de Castro, the unhappy wife of King
Peter the Cruel, 1557-1560. We are told that Donna Juana repaid the
monks for their hospitality by many rich grants and privileges.
My lawyer guide had his study lined with guns, cartridges, and other
indications of a sporting life; he informed me that there were plenty of
hares, rabbits, foxes, and wild boars in the neighbouring hills; and how
well he looked, and how rosy were the little village children. But no
wonder, for the pure bracing air of those granite highlands was like
champagne. One forgot there was such a thing as fatigue. The journey
back to Cea took quite as long as the journey up, for my surefooted
beast had to pick his way among the boulders even more carefully when
descending that stony path, which was more like the dry bed of a
waterfall or a mountain stream than anything else. The sun, now high in
the heavens, beat down upon us with such strength that, though I carried
an umbrella, I was glad to put on my coat to protect my skin from its
burning rays. My two companions stopped several times to drink water
from the springs, using the hollow of their hand as a cup. The people of
Cea looked at us with interest as we made our way back to the little
inn; they evidently thought that I had taken that arduous journey to
Osera for the welfare of my soul. Cea too has her pious traditions; she
is said to have her roots in Roman times, and to have been the
birthplace of the two martyrs, San Faciundo and San Primitivo. Later on,
the abbot of Osera held the proud title of Count of Cea, and Cea was, as
it is now, the name, not only of the village, but of a district which
comprises a number of other villages as well. We saw on its outskirts a
fine new church in course of building.
Another excursion which we took from Orense was to the Benedictine
Monastery of Celanova, which is now used as a branch of the Orense
Grammar School for boys, under the guidance of monks. All its masters
are monks, and it is called _Colegio de P.P. Escolapios_. Celanova is
about twenty-nine kilometres distant from Orense; the little town
clustered round the grand old monastery numbers some five thousand
souls. The original monastery was founded in 937 by San Rosendo, bishop
of Mondoñedo and Santiago. The present edifice dates only as far back as
the sixteenth century, having been begun on 8th August 1548. Its
grandeur and magnificence is due to the fact that Philip V., on deciding
to retire into monastic life, chose Celanova as his residence. It was
not completed till the end of the eighteenth century.[297]
The road from Orense to Celanova runs southward in the direction of
Portugal, for Celanova lies only a few miles from the Portuguese
boundary. It was a glorious drive along a new road, which had only been
completed in 1902; it twisted and curled in such a way that we often
seemed to be driving towards Orense instead of in the opposite
direction. The hillsides and fields were covered with vines, mostly
young shoots that had been brought from America, as more likely to
withstand the mildew plague than the old kinds; these shoots were
planted exactly as we plant hops in Kent, and had much the same
appearance.
Farther on we noticed, a little way back from the road, a private house
with cypress trees in its garden. In Galicia the cypress tree is always
a sure indication either of a cemetery or of the estate of some family
of aristocratic lineage, for peasants never think of planting such
trees. We had come to the old _Palazio de Bentrazes_, the ancient family
residence of the Counts of Torremuzquiez. We left the carriage to view
this mansion, now abandoned to residents of a humbler class, who had
made their money in South America. We saw the arms of the aristocratic
family let into the stone wall, and there was, in several of the rooms,
some quaint and beautiful carved household furniture. The floors were
all of walnut wood, stout and strong; the chimney-pieces with their open
hearths had a broad and noble look to match the thickness of the walls,
some of which I found to be a yard in width, while others measured a
yard and a half. In the grounds close to the mansion was a family
chapel. But the most interesting thing of all was the _escaño_, which we
found in the kitchen. It was like a long wooden pew out of some old
church, placed exactly in front of the hearth, for about ten people to
sit and warm their toes; behind was a flat board, which at meal time
could be swung down from behind their heads and suspended in front of
them, to serve as a dining-table. This canny arrangement was to obviate
the necessity of going away from one’s cosy seat by the fire to eat
one’s dinner in a cold part of the room. The food could be served up
straight from the fire to the table by the member of the party who acted
as cook, and all carrying of dishes was thus avoided. As soon as the
food had been cleared from the table it could be swung back to its
place, and then it would look once more like the high back of an
old-fashioned pew, taking up no room and getting in nobody’s way. The
_escaño_ is a really typical invention peculiar to the north-west of
Spain, where the winters are so cold and the houses more suited for
keeping people cool in hot weather than for keeping them warm in cold.
Once more in our carriage, we mounted steadily till we reached Celanova,
passing nothing of special interest except a little church called _La
Virgen del Cristal_, which has a wonderfully minute crucifix among its
relics. Many of the girls in Orense bear the name of Cristal in honour
of this church; for a local poet, born in Celanova, Manuel Curros
Enriquez, has immortalised its legend in verse.[298]
Presently to our left we passed an old strong tower, square and sturdy,
like some of our old English fourteenth-century erections, which keep
the same dimensions from the ground to the top, and have little slits
for windows.
At last our vehicle had crawled to a height where vines could no longer
thrive, and where the ground sparkled with mica as though sprinkled with
large diamonds. I was interested to learn, from a Spanish lady who
accompanied me, that it is customary for ladies to dust their hair with
this powdered mica when they are going to balls and dances. Arrived at
Celanova, we lunched at its modest inn at the top of three flights of
stairs, and then proceeded to the monastery, whose church façade joined
to its imposing front of three storeys forms the eastern side of the
town square, the _Plaza de la Constitution_. In the early days of the
monastery there was no town at all, only two or three poor cottages; and
even when more houses were built they were only allowed to have one
storey, as the monks did not wish to have any buildings in their
neighbourhood reaching to a greater height than the windows of their own
dwelling.
The monks gave us a cordial welcome, and gladly took us to see their two
magnificent cloisters, the handsomest of which bore in one of its
archways the date 1582, their _Sala Capitular_, their spacious kitchen,
the ancient refectory with a curious stone pulpit in its wall, so long
unused that the door leading to it has been filled up. The upper cells
of the cloisters have now been turned into large dormitories for the
schoolboys. The monastic church is a magnificent edifice, large enough
for a cathedral, with a handsome cupola. This is indeed reckoned by
Spanish architects to be one of the most sumptuous churches in the whole
Peninsula. Its architecture is Doric, with walls, roofing, and tower of
hewn stone; there are three naves and two sets of choir stalls, one
above the other. All these stalls are of exquisitely carved wood. The
relief on the lower stalls, which are of walnut wood, represents scenes
in the lives of San Rosendo, St. Benedict, and other saints. Many of the
upper ones are covered with geometrical designs and life-like scenes
from church legends. On one I found a thief escaping on horseback with a
bag of treasure, which he holds above his head. Another--a very curious
one--represents a monkey on horseback. It was worth coming all the way
from Orense to see that carving alone. I can quite believe the story
that a wealthy English or American visitor once offered an immense sum
for the complete set of stalls.
The chief altar has two sarcophagi,--one is said to contain the body of
San Torquato and the other that of San Rosendo. Two other sarcophagi
behind the chief altar contain the bodies of San Rosendo’s mother and
sister, Ilduara and Adosina. Behind the altar and on both sides of it
are some remarkable relief pictures in coloured marble, representing
scenes in the life of Christ. The work of these pictures is very fine,
and deserves special attention. The façade of the church is as fine as
its interior, and, like it, is of hewn stone.
We were now shown the precious relics of San Rosendo; three well-made
bone or ivory combs, all dating from the tenth century, when monks had
long beards and were allowed to comb them; we were also shown three
rings that were worn by San Rosendo--one a seal ring, and two ornamented
with large crystals. The mitre worn by this saint was now laid before
us, in a glass case which bore the date 1779. It is a very small pointed
cap with two fringed sash ends to hang over the shoulders. Morales saw
it towards the end of the seventeenth century, and remarked that it was
so small that most likely it was the one in which the saint was buried,
and that he had a larger and better one for daily wear. This writer
seemed surprised that there was so little gold embroidery on the mitre.
Villa-Amil has a picture of it in his _Mobiliario Liturgico_. The glass
of its case has been broken for the last fifteen years, but the monks
have not felt they could afford the expense of getting it renewed.
We also examined his ivory chalice on a Byzantine tray, and the carved
crook of his staff. San Rosendo was not only a powerful bishop, he had
royal blood in his veins, and was a near relative to Ramiro II., so that
his influence in Galicia was very considerable.
It occupied quite an hour to look at all the relics stowed away in a
chest inlaid with tortoiseshell in the sacristy. Here were relics of San
Rosendo packed in a beautiful silver box, specially made for them; and
the skulls of several other saints, each in a separate glass case on a
gold or silver stand, the most precious of all being that of San
Torquato, the disciple of St. James, kept with his ossified heart.
Drawers were now opened, and magnificent chasubles and other priestly
garments, rich velvets covered with silk embroidery and gold thread,
were spread out before us one by one, till our eyes grew weary of
admiring.
Above the broad stone staircase is a ceiling with stalactite work like
that of the Alhambra, and quite Arabic. But we were reminded of the
Moors even more forcibly by a strange little chapel that the monks now
took us to see in their garden, a chapel with roofing of red tiles. This
was no other than the famous and much-written-about _Eremita de San
Miguel_.
This little chapel or oratory is quite apart from, but close to, the
monastery wall. It is rectangular in form, with a tiny transept and a
square apse. At first sight its interior appears to consist of three
little rooms opening one into the other, with horseshoe arches; between
them are no columns or ornaments of any kind. Before the entrance there
is a
[Illustration: CLOISTER IN THE COLEGIATA DE JUNQUERA DE AMBIA, ORENSE]
[Illustration: CLOISTER IN THE MONASTERY OF CELANOVA, ORENSE]
square portico. The whole is of granite, but one sees nothing but
whitewash. All the arches are in the shape of a horseshoe; and, noting
this fact, some writers have hazarded the opinion that the building must
originally have been a Moorish mosque. That idea has now been abandoned
in favour of the supposition that it was most probably designed by a
Moorish architect in the pay of Christians, and completed towards the
close of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century. It is much admired
by architects for the beauty of its proportions.[299] According to
tradition, San Rosendo was in the habit of repairing thither to say
Mass. Yepes believed it to have been built by San Rosendo’s brother
Froila. One of the monks kindly copied for me the inscription, which he
described as being in Lombard characters peculiar to the tenth century--
“Autor hujus operis in Deus crederi, esse dele
peccata omnibus te Christe hic orantibus instat
praesens memorea indigno famulo tuo Froila qui
optat et in Domino te conjurat O bone et delecte
qui legis ulme peccatorem memorea habeas sacrata
ex oratione tua.”
Of course, if Froila put up the inscription himself, we have a clue to
the date of the building, but the question is--How are we to be sure
that it was not put up by some one else after Froila’s death?
I had heard that there was another little church with horseshoe arches
about two hours’ drive beyond Celanova, the church of Santa Comba
(Columba), near the village of Bande; and, wishing to compare the two,
we stayed the night at the little inn at Celanova, and drove to see
Santa Comba the following morning. We started about six a.m.
Between the little town of Banda (once a halting-place on the Roman road
between Astorga and Braga) and the church the scenery was very like that
of the moorlands of Scotland, with few trees and a good deal of bracken
and furze. Although it was April, the oak trees scattered here and there
still wore their brown leaves from the previous year; white stemmed
birches lined many of the fields, and reminded us that we had reached a
higher zone, for these trees are never seen in the low valleys or near
the sea-level in Galicia; they need a sharper and more bracing
atmosphere.
The church of Santa Comba stands on the side of a hill about an eighth
of a mile distant from the coach road, and a winding sandy path leads up
to it, skirting a picturesque village as it approaches the church. This
part of the journey had to be done on foot, and beneath a blazing sun.
What a quaint, archaic little church it was! Outwardly it was divided
into three sections, rising one above another like three steps, each
with a red-tiled gable roof. It was constructed of irregular blocks of
granite,[300] roughly cemented together; there were two entrances, the
principal one being the western wall and a lateral door on the southern
side. In front of the principal entrance was a small Gothic portico,
evidently of much later date than the body of the church. The most
striking characteristic of this little edifice are its extreme
simplicity and its horseshoe arches. It is built in the form of a Greek
cross, all four ends of which are of equal length, though the eastern
end is lengthened by a small chapel which serves as an apse. The central
part of the church is not unlike that of San Miguel de Celanova, square,
and supported by four slightly horseshoe arches. The arch leading to the
little chapel is also horseshoe in shape, and much more pronounced.
Above the four arches is a cupola formed by four walls, in two of which,
the eastern and the southern walls, there are small windows. The church
is covered with intersected cylindrical vaulting. Running round the
walls above the arches is a banded zigzag impost of a very rugged
character. In the southern arm of the cross, the northern arm of the
transept, stands a Roman altar, _ara_, of white marble, from which the
inscription has been effaced, and at the end of the transept stands a
large marble sarcophagus carved from a single block, perfectly plain,
without a trace of carving or inscription of any kind; the lid is also a
monolith. Tradition says that this is the sepulchre of San Torquato,
whose skull we had seen at Celanova. From the white stone above this
sarcophagus Portuguese pilgrims chip fragments to take away with them,
believing that its dust will cure inflamed eyes and other troubles.
The eastern arm of the cross, prolonged by an apse chapel, contains the
chief altar, and is reached by a horseshoe arch, like those of the
Cordova mosque. On either side of this arch, but quite separate from it,
are placed two pairs of grey marble columns, each of a single piece,
whose lower ends disappear beneath the ground, showing that the original
floor of the church must have been much lower down than the present one.
The capitals of these two columns are Corinthian, the columns themselves
are Roman, and it is believed that they must have been brought from the
old Roman baths of which ruins are yet to be seen at Bande, where people
still come in the summer time to drink the mineral waters. The chapel is
almost square, and covered like the rest of the building with
intersections of cylindrical brick vaulting. There is a little hole in
the wall beside the altar, for the Host; the little window behind is
filled with honeycombed marble fretwork, which has rather a Moorish
look. The flooring is composed of granite slabs, each with a hole by
which to lift it. The walls are a yard thick. Although all the arches,
including those of the portico, are more or less horseshoe in shape, the
windows (five in all) are Romanesque. One of the entrances to the porch
has been closed up. Over the chief entrance is an inscription, and the
date 1670; there is also an inscription on the wall of the portico,
declaring the edifice to be a church of refuge. There were churches of
refuge all over Galicia until the eighteenth century.
For many years this diminutive church of Santa Comba de Banda, on the
borders of Portugal, has been, like San Miguel, a hard nut for Spanish
archæologists to crack. It has been written about and discussed over and
over again, but mostly by authorities who have not taken the trouble to
go and see it. I doubt if, among all the archæologists and architects
who have touched upon the subject, there are as many as three
individuals who have examined it personally. Even Lopez Ferreiro, the
greatest archæologist in Galicia, has not yet been to see it! This
writer has suggested that San Comba and San Miguel may have been built
to serve the purpose of mortuary chapels. Of Santa Combe he says: “It is
one of those very rare examples which represent, in the history of art,
the continuation of the Byzantine style in its last period, that of
transition to the Romanesque style.”[301]
The plan on which the church of Santa Comba is built is, we have seen,
Christian--that of a Greek cross. It must therefore have been built by
Christians, for Christian worship, but at what date? And how comes it to
have these horseshoe arches? Is it an example of _Mudejar_ architecture?
Did some Moorish slave design it at the bidding of a Christian master?
Let us compare it with that other little Christian church with horseshoe
arches, St. Juan de Baño, in Palencia. The plan of the latter is
rectangular; it is divided by two rows of horseshoe arches into three
naves, and had before its renovation three square apse chapels, one at
the end of the central nave and the others placed at right angles with
the heads of the right and left naves respectively. This plan is unique;
there is nothing like it in any part of Spain. French architects who
have been to see the church shake their heads over the suggestion that
it is a monument of Visigothic architecture. “True,” they say, “that it
bears the name of King Recesvinto, and the date 661, but how can you
tell when that inscription was put up, and whether it is correct?”
Spanish authorities, however, are now unanimous in pronouncing St. Juan
de Baño to be an example of Visigothic architecture constructed in the
seventh century, before the earliest date at which the Moors invaded
Spain. For years they quoted it in their text-books as the only example
of Visigothic architecture in the Peninsula, but now they are positive
that Santa Comba de Bande is another remnant of the same architecture
and of the same period, for they have found it mentioned in a charter
given by Adozno to San Rosendo as a church that had already been
established more than two hundred years in the year 910;[302] and Santa
Comba too is to be ranked as a national monument, as a precious relic of
pre-Moorish Spain. But should not a careful comparison be made between
Santa Comba and the strange little oratory of San Miguel in the garden
of the Celanova Monastery? A drive of three hours is all the distance
that separates them, yet no comparative study of the two has ever been
made. The roofing and the general sculpture of the two buildings, as
well as their horseshoe arches, are strangely similar, and what
differences there are may quite well be due to reconstruction. In fact,
I fail to understand why Santa Comba should be thought to be so much as
three centuries older than San Miguel.
A thick low wall of granite surrounds the little grass plot upon which
the church of Santa Comba stands, and is quite in keeping with the rest
of the picture. The village close by, whose houses are built of granite
and thatched with straw, is also rather old and quaint. The granite
lintel of one of the cottage doors bears the date 1713. We ascended its
wooden steps at the invitation of the woman who lived there, and found
the furniture of the rooms very curious; it consisted chiefly of some
very large wooden chests that seemed to be hundreds of years old. The
woman’s old mother was occupied in spinning a counterpane. As we drove
along we had
[Illustration: SANTA COMBA DE BANDE]
[Illustration: HORSE SHOE ARCH IN SANTA CYMBA DE BANDE]
[Illustration: ORATORY OF SAN MIGUEL IN GARDEN OF CELANOVA MONASTERY]
[Illustration: MONASTERY AND CHURCH, CELANOVA]
constantly seen peasant women with their distaffs spinning in the fields
as they kept an eye on their cows.
The moon came out, and cast a silvery light upon our road for the last
half of the journey, and the granite boulders stood out in great white
masses on either side. The horses could see their way as if it had been
broad daylight. As we neared Orense we could see the lights sometimes
exactly in front of us, sometimes to our left, sometimes to our right,
and occasionally they were exactly behind us, so much did the road curl
and twine. It was past midnight before we entered the sleeping town.
There was yet another great monastery which I was anxious to see before
leaving Orense--the beautiful ruined monastery of _San Esteban de Rivas
de Sil_ (St. Stephen on the Banks of the Sil); for I had heard that it
was unquestionably the best example of the Flamboyant Gothic style in
Galicia. The ruined monastery of San Esteban is situated on the crest of
a hill which it takes some two hours and a half to climb, by a path too
steep even for mules; and as there is no hotel at the foot of the hill
and no refreshment-room at the top, it is a long pull to come out by
train from Orense (a journey of one hour), climb the hill, explore the
ruins, and return to Orense the same day. Consequently the excursion is
very rarely undertaken. After much pondering as to how an easier and
less fatiguing plan of campaign could be devised, I decided to travel by
a morning train to the little railway station in the valley at the foot
of the monastic cliff, and, after finding some cottager who could give
me a night’s shelter on my return, proceed to climb up to the ruins.
This plan succeeded admirably.
San Esteban is the third station from Orense, and the whole way thither
is between verdant mountain slopes, and beside the rapidly flowing
waters of the beautiful Miño. It was like making an expedition to a
halting-place in the middle of the Aarlberg Pass, in the Austrian Tyrol,
and then ascending one of its verdure-clad mountains. The hillsides were
cut into steps or terraces wherever there was the smallest patch of
cultivated soil. Here the steps were planted with cabbages, and there
covered with smooth red soil, and sown with seed that had not yet
appeared above the surface; here again were rows of peas whose pods were
just forming, and yonder were steps one above the other, on which tall
rye waved with every breath of wind; beyond were terraces of nursery
fruit trees, and farther on the mountain was ribbed with brown steps
that looked as if they must lead to some giant fortress held by men
twice the size of puny mortals. As our train crawled along upon a ledge
of rock some thirty feet from the foot of the mountain, we had many a
little archlike tunnel to pass through. Rocks and crags now replaced the
cultivated terraces, and the scene grew wilder, but even between the
precipitous rocks and giant boulders there were clumps of rich green
chestnut trees, paler walnuts, and apple, pear, and cherry trees, all
covered with fresh foliage. Now came a foaming cascade hurling its
waters from a height between two crags, and then a peaceful valley
spread itself out before our eyes, and we could see the gleaming river
darting through it. Vines now covered many of the slopes, and oaks and
poplars grew so close to the railway that the train seemed as if it must
touch them as it passed. Once more the river entered a mountain gorge,
and boulders like mediæval castles hung out over its foam on both sides.
We creep very slowly now, in and out, threading our way through
innumerable little tunnels and over bridges beneath which there dash the
furious waters of many a foaming cascade. Suddenly the river whose
course we have been following seems to divide into two streams, one of
which branches sharply to the right and disappears, while the other
flows on below us in the rocky ravine.--What we really saw just then was
the conjunction of Galicia’s two greatest and most historical
rivers--the Miño and the Sil.--Our train has described half a circle in
its attempts to find out a gulley from where this new river flows, and
our line is about to complete the figure of an S when we draw up at the
solitary station of San Esteban.
How glorious was the mountain air that greeted us as we stood upon the
little railway platform in the midst of that magnificent pass, and
there, opposite us, but so high up that we had to throw back our heads
to see them, were the ruins of the monastery we had come to see. It was
a wild and beautiful scene. There was only one cottage in sight, and
thither we made our way; it stood upon a ledge higher than the station,
a little farther along the course of the river. The old peasant and his
wife gave us a dignified welcome, and readily promised to find me an
escort to the monastery and a bed on my return. The view from the ledge
on which the cottage stood was unique. Below us was another junction of
rivers--the Cabe flowing into the Sil, and the waters of the two streams
forming a figure like a Y in a bed of granite boulders between three
steep verdure-clad mountains. It was on a high ledge of the mountain
road round which the Sil
[Illustration: THE RIVER CABE, ORENSE]
[Illustration: MY GUIDE LEADING ME UP TO THE MONASTERY OF SAN ESTEBAN,
ORENSE
PHOTOS, BY AUTHOR]
turned that the ruins were perched, and to reach them I must cross both
the Cabe and the Sil.
It was past midday when, leaving my companion in the cottage, I started
out with the peasant and a young girl as my guides. We scrambled down
between the boulders of a steep and jagged path till we reached the
Cabe, and then crossed the rushing water by a rustic bridge formed of
two rough pine stems with little planks of wood laid across them. On we
scrambled again by another goat-path to the bank of the Sil, which was a
much wider river and had to be crossed on a raft. The peasant had
already whistled several times for the ferryman, and that useful person
appeared at the end of a quarter of an hour’s time with a crazy raft,
and ferried us across the stem of the Y from a floating wharf which
served as a landing-place. The water was flowing fast, and we crossed in
eddies, our raft twirling round continually. It would not have been safe
to stand, so we crossed kneeling and steadying ourselves by clutching at
the oar.
The ferry-boat landed us at the foot of a steep path, on the edge of
another mountain. Here in olden days the monks kept a man on the watch
to gather toll from every person who stepped ashore, but now the ferry
is private property. Lampreys are caught in this part of the Sil, and
many other fine fish; the old ferryman spends his odd moments fishing
for eels, which he sells in Orense at a dollar apiece.
We begin the ascent of a winding woodland path, with trees, bushes, and
grasses high on all sides, and here and there between them a cascade,
which we cross by means of a granite slab and moss-covered rocks. Every
now and then we stop to look at the path by which we have come, and
follow with our eyes the blue waters of the Sil in the narrow ravine
below. Up and up and up we climb, and never for a moment do we cease to
hear the sound of rushing and gurgling water, for, besides the river
below, there are mountain streams gushing forth from between the stones
every few steps of the way. After an hour’s climb we reached a point
where the path divides into two. We choose the narrow, steeper, and more
direct one, of which each step seemed to be a granite boulder. A wayside
cross now meets our view; it is time-worn, and was evidently placed
there by the monks to cheer the heart of the pious climber.
On one of the ledges we stopped to look at the ruins, and at the sky
showing through the many windows. All round the monastery the cultivable
parts of the mountain are covered with vines, potato patches, and other
signs of human life, and the last part of the ascent is through
vineyards and beneath arches formed by vine branches. Once more we pause
to look across the ravine, and see before us a rock whose jagged form
bears a remarkable resemblance to two cathedral towers. Now comes
another cross with a Virgin Mother and the wounded Christ on its one
side, and a crucifix on the other; below are a skull and cross-bones,
and beneath them again is a metal figure of a monk. We have reached the
precincts of the monastery.
Passing through a grand old stone gateway, we came to a kind of square
formed by one side of the monastery and the façade of the church. The
façade has two bell towers, and an imperial coat of arms over its
Renaissance entrance, which must have been added at least two centuries
after the lower walls were completed; it probably replaces the original
Romanesque entrance.
The whole of the lower storey of the monastery is built in the
Romanesque style, while the two upper ones belong to the beginning of
the sixteenth century, and are specimens of the decadent decorative
Gothic style. “In spite of the fact,” remarks Vazquez Nuñez, “that three
centuries must have elapsed between the building of the ground storey
and the one above it, and in spite of the fact that they belong to such
different styles of architecture, the combined result, though it lacks
unity, is nevertheless one of noteworthy and singular beauty.” The
monastery is nothing but a ruin; its roofs are gone--or going, its
floors are so shaky that it is hardly safe to tread them. Ivy covers its
dilapidated walls and peeps in at its graceful windows. Bushes fill the
patios of its beautiful three-storey cloisters, and everything of value
that could be carried away has gone. Even the granite balustrades of its
handsome stone staircase are disappearing. The upper part of the
_Claustro de los Obisqos_ (Bishop’s Cloister) is a marvel of the
Flamboyant Gothic style; its buttresses, plain at their base, terminate
in gabled and elaborately carved pinnacles like the petals of a foxglove
bursting forth from its stiff stem. The pinnacles rise above the
handsome stone lace or plateresque cornice, and wonderful gargoyles jut
out at irregular intervals beneath it; yet the arcades below, with their
slender double columns and their classic capitals, belong to a different
age and a different style. There rises a tall stone cross in the centre
of this patio, for it was used during several centuries as a
burial-place for bishops. Nine of these dignitaries were buried there in
stone sarcophagi before the year 1563, when the administrator of the
abbey, Don Alonso Pernas, exhumed them and had them placed in niches on
either side of the high altar in the church. In 1594 the abbot, Victor
de Najera, had a new _retablo_ constructed, and here he placed the
bodies in two large stone sarcophagi with divisions. Finally, in 1712,
these sarcophagi were placed in niches high up on either side of the
altar and enclosed by iron railings. Vazquez Nuñez, to whom I am
indebted for these dates, gives the full Latin inscription that Alonso
Pernas copied from the original sarcophagus of Bishop Ansurio, who was
buried in 925. The varied sculpture of the capitals in the lower part of
this cloister is extraordinary. I noted one capital with a two-headed
snake as its ornament.
The principal cloister is very much larger than the one we have been
describing, and though its architecture is much simpler it also is a
magnificent sight, with its three storeys, the lowest consisting of
graceful arcades with semicircular arches supported by Doric columns,
the next of Doric columns with single arches, and the third of graceful
windows with semicircular arches. On one of the inner walls of this
cloister is a curious piece of stone bass-relief representing Christ and
the Twelve Apostles. Some think it must have served as a reredos to some
ancient church, but the difficulty then is that the _retablo_ was not
introduced until the latter part of the Gothic period, and there are
signs about this work that it is of much earlier date. Vazquez Nuñez
believed it to be work of the twelfth century, but it may be even older.
There is a third cloister, much smaller and plainer than the others; it
is in the Renaissance style, but not in any way remarkable.
The church and its sacristy are in a state of better preservation than
the monastery, for the church is in daily use as a parish church for the
neighbouring villages. In the sacristy there are still some wonderful
relics, such as limbs of saints, that thieves have not thought it worth
while to steal, but several of the fine sarcophagi that contained the
bones of the bishops have disappeared quite recently. There are eight
paintings still upon the walls of the sacristy, and some handsome old
carved chests.
The conventual church of San Esteban, which has three lofty naves
divided by pointed arches, though begun in the twelfth century, is
decorated in the style which de Caumont called _ogival tertiaire_. It is
a remarkably elegant church, and its proportions are particularly
pleasing; its tall columns, with their capitals high up under the
moulding of the four-centred, or what we should term Tudor, arches, are
most effective. Alas! that these, and its profusely and gracefully
ribbed roof with its bosses and pendants, should all be covered with
hideous whitewash, paid for, I was informed, by alms collected from the
poor of the parish for that purpose! Like the Bishops’ Cloister, this
church, though begun three centuries earlier,--as the date “Era
MCCXXII.” on one of its pillars shows,--is a remarkably good example of
the decadent period of decorated Gothic architecture. The stalls of the
choir, which are said to have been covered with exquisite carving, fell
to pieces from sheer neglect, and were stolen in bits, some of which
have found their way into museums, and others are now part of the
furniture of the houses of the neighbouring poor. I found a plain
boarded gallery being put up over the vaulting at the lower end of the
church in place of the dilapidated vaulting, by order of the new Bishop
of Orense, who visited the place on horseback in 1906.
Statues of St. Stephen and St. Benedict adorn the chief altar and also
one of the side ones. St. Stephen is always represented with a quill pen
in his right hand. Massive _retablos_, their niches filled with statues,
are still behind the numerous altars. My attention was especially drawn
to a statue of the Virgin, with a black face, a gold nimbus and crown;
eleven pink cherubs hover round her, all larger than the Child she
holds. Both Mother and Child show the white of their eyes. This statue
is said to be a copy of a famous Byzantine Virgin in a church in
north-eastern Spain.
The three semicircular apses of the church are very fine; the central
one is lower than the lateral ones, to let the light enter the rose
window in the wall above it. All three are in the purest Romanesque
style, and perhaps the most interesting part of the church. They are
divided by buttresses in the form of lofty columns which reach to the
cornice, and the tympana of these arches and the archivolts are all
sculptured. Vazquez Nuñez observes that the sculpture of the Crucifixion
on one of the tympana is remarkably full of detail for sculpture of the
twelfth century.
This monastery had at one time within its precincts a thriving school of
art, in which hundreds of monks were trained as painters and sculptors,
and the charter granted in connection with it is still in existence. One
reason why the beautiful old building is so fast going to ruin is that,
after the monks had been turned out in 1836, there was no one left there
to guard it; nor has there been any one ever since. Year after year the
poor of the vicinity came at night to fetch away its stones and bits of
woodwork to build their own cottages with; to them it was a source of
wealth. Even
[Illustration: THE BISHOPS’ CLOISTER, MONASTERY OF SAN ESTEVAN,
ORENSE]
the carved stalls of the church were not spared; they were carried off
by people who traded in work of that class. My peasant guide told me
that he was born in the village on the slope above the monastery, and
had often in his childhood been awakened on a dark night by the
hammering and sawing of people who had come to rob the ruins. The
monastic clock and the church organ were removed years ago to the
Cathedral at Orense.
The monastic kitchen was a building quite separate from the monastery,
with a road between; it also now stands in ruins, but is still a witness
to the fact that cooking was a very important part of the proceedings. I
should say that there must have been ample room for the housing and
feeding of at least a thousand monks in that monastery; and what
exquisite views they had from their windows, right across the deep
ravine at the bottom of which the Sil had rushed ever since the days
when the Romans extracted gold from its sand. One would think that the
very thoughts and feelings of the monks must have been coloured by a
sojourn in a spot so secluded, so romantic, and so beautiful!
Osera, in its shallow dip, is entirely shut in by billows of treeless
and verdureless granite. San Estevan, balanced like an eagle’s nest at a
dizzy height on the edge of a precipitous but wooded mountain crag,
almost hidden among leafy trees, commands an indescribably beautiful,
though somewhat limited view of all the mountain peaks around, of their
thickly wooded slopes, and of the torrent below. Looking back upon the
impression that each gave me, I should say that San Estevan’s position
was the most romantic, the most poetic that I ever saw, and that Osera’s
was the most extraordinary. The hermit who first discovered the spot
where the monastery of San Estevan now stands must have been a lover of
nature, of trees, of birds--an artist; the saint who first elected to
dwell among the bare granite rocks of Osera must have sought
unrestrained liberty for the eye and the foot, rather than a leafy nest,
and have eschewed not only his fellow-man but nature as well.
The mountain on which the monastery of _San Estevan_ stands was
sprinkled in the early days of the Middle Ages with the cells of
hermits, and the entire eminence was looked upon as sacred; one or two
ancient oratories are still standing among the trees of the slope below
the monastery. But during the same period the province of Orense had
another eminence which it held as equally sacred--Mount Barveron. Cut in
the rocky side of that mountain is to be found the most ancient
monument of Christian art which the province contains. I allude to the
church and ancient monastery of _San Pedro de Rocas_.
To reach this isolated spot we had to drive to the little village of
Escos (_Santa Maria de Escos_), about sixteen kilometres from the town
of Orense, and famed for its splendid hams. Our road mounted steadily
the whole way, and skirted the mountain-side. At Escos the village
priest gave us a kindly welcome, invited us to lunch at his house, and
promised to provide us with suitable beasts on which to continue our
expedition. An hour later we started off, our party consisting of two
priests on horseback, and two Spanish ladies and myself on donkeys. A
fine cavalcade, indeed; but alas! the mountain path up which we tried to
proceed was composed chiefly of deep pools of rain-water and precipitous
slabs of slippery granite. Our saddles were of the most primitive kind,
our donkeys began to fight, and the two priests very soon found that
their own feet were more reliable than those of their steeds. Those
first fifteen minutes were truly a bad quarter of an hour. After many
attempts to proceed in as fine a style as that in which we had started
out, it ended in our all doing the pilgrimage on foot and dragging our
useless steeds behind us, till, just as we were approaching our goal, a
peasant appeared, and kindly consented to relieve us of our beasts and
lead them back to Escos. Our way led through beautiful open country,
strewed with boulders and jagged rocks, but by no means bare, for in
between the granite crags there grew clumps of flowering broom and other
shrubs, and beside every stone there peeped some flower or other.
Brilliant blue gentians, purple heather, a kind of yellow primrose,
daisies, violets, and buttercups, all enlivened the scene, and we seemed
to be passing through a magnificent rockery. On and on we scrambled,
over this boulder and round that crag, till we came to the side of a
mountain precipice overlooking, not the sea, but a vast green valley,
which stretched for miles on three sides of us.
Chiselled out of the live rock in the perpendicular side of the
precipice we found the parish church of Rocas, whose villages are
scattered over the mountain for miles around; this was once the church
of the Benedictine prior of _San Pedro de Rocas_. Three rock-hewn
chapels in a row form the three naves of the strange, crypt-like church,
which is carved or scooped out of one solid rock, and measures about
twelve yards in length and six in width. To the right of the church
stands, like a gigantic campanile, a huge cliff, upon
[Illustration: ROCK-HEWN CHAPEL IN THE MONASTERY OF SAN PEDRO DE ROCAS,
ORENSE]
[Illustration: VESTIBULE OF THE ROCK CHAPELS OF SAN PEDRO DE ROCAS,
ORENSE]
the crest of which a bell is seen suspended. History does not say by
whose hands this strange edifice was carved, but it is thought to be the
work of anchorites who, like San Fructuoso, sought in this solitary spot
a retreat and a refuge.
The entrance to each of the three cave chapels is formed by a
semicircular arch, and above these, like a natural façade, rises the top
of the apparently inaccessible precipice. Two low openings connect the
three chapels with one another. The arches and the interior are
decorated with simple twelfth-century mouldings and sculpture; the
arcades are also Romanesque of the same period. The rock above forms a
kind of rude barrel vaulting, and a round hole bored in the centre of
the barrel lets light into the church from the top of the cliff. The
flooring consists of large rough granite slabs. In this church there are
two objects that are of great interest to archæologists: one is a stone,
two and a half feet long and one and a half feet wide, on which is
carved the date “Era 611” (A.D. 573), and with what are supposed to be
the names of six hermits who retired to this lonely and wild spot that
they might end their days in prayer and meditation. Señor Vazquez Nuñez
speaks of this inscription as “without a doubt the most important
epigraphic monument of Christianity in the province of Orense,” and he
laments the fact that it should lie there year after year neglected and
exposed to destruction. One corner of the stone has already been smashed
off by visitors to the place; and not so long ago some one trying to
move it chipped off a bit of the inscription. Six of the most famous
archæologists of Spain have at different times gone to see this stone
and copied the inscription, about which there has been much learned
discussion. In the midst of the inscription is sculptured a Greek cross,
while round it, like a frame, and running horizontally across between
the lines, is a funicular fillet.
The other object of special interest is in the back of the cave behind
the altar in the lateral chapel to the left. To get to it we had to
crawl on hands and knees through a small opening between the altar and
the wall. It is a small Roman _ara_ with no inscription, but sculptured
in an interesting manner with archaic arches and funicular
ornamentation. There is also in the church an ancient baptismal font. In
side niches are two stone sarcophagi with recumbent figures: the relief
above one of them represents the dead man’s soul being borne to heaven
in a cloth by his guardian angel. I noticed that both the recumbent
statues appeared to have their feet chained to the rock; the hands of
one of them were folded on his breast, the other had his hands folded
lower down. Their drapery consisted of a light-fitting garment beneath a
cloak, which fastened with a brooch over one shoulder; both had beards
and longish hair which curled down over the neck. These were probably
two twelfth-century friars of the monastery. Outside the church we found
several ledges of rock that must have been cut as resting-places for
sarcophagi, and also a number of flat tombstones.
The church, as we have seen, is cut in the rocky side of a precipice.
Below the ledge which serves as a path in front of the three entrances,
the rocks form a hollow like an extinct crater, whose sides are so steep
that it makes one giddy to look down. The monastery has disappeared all
but a few ruins, some rooms of which served for some years as a home for
the parish priest. No one lives there now, as it is too isolated a spot;
and the last priest who attempted to live there was set upon by robbers
and nearly killed (about seven years ago). The spot is indeed isolated,
for the eye travels thence over many miles of country without being able
to discern any trace of human life. This is quite different from the
situation of Osera, and bears absolutely no resemblance to that of San
Estevan; yet all three are in the same little province of Orense, in the
very heart of Galicia.