it are Juan Gil de Hontañon's work, though the later points to Poniente.
It is interesting to compare it with the last Gothic work in France,
with, for instance, Saint-Ouen at Rouen. The end of the style in the two
countries is totally different--one expiring in a mass of glass and
tracery, the other, in a meaningless jumble of ornamentation, of cusped
and broken and elliptical arches and carving incredible in its delicacy.
One can scarcely believe it to be stone. The Spanish, though not wild in
its extravagance, yet lacks all sense of restraint. The front is
composed of a screenwork of three huge arches, within which three
portals leading to the aisles form the main composition, the whole
crowned by a series of crocketed pinnacles. A plain fortress-like pier,
resembling the remnant of an old bastion, terminates it to the north.
Great buttresses separate the portals. Around them are deep reveals and
archivolt; somewhat recalling French examples in their forms; above them
is an inexhaustible effort in stone. There are myriads of brackets and
canopies, some few having statues. There are enough coats-of-arms to
supply whole nations with heraldic emblems, and recessed moldings of
remarkable and exquisite workmanship and crispness of foliage. Some of
the bas-reliefs, as those of the Nativity and Adoration, are very fine.
The Virgin in the pillar separating the doors of the central entrance
gathers the folds of her robe about her with a queenly grace and
dignity.
[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
SALAMANCA
From the Vega]
The whole doorway on its great scale is a remarkable work of the
transition from Gothic to Renaissance. While the treatment of the
figures has a naturalism already entirely Renaissance, the main bulk of
the ornamental detail is still in its feeling quite Gothic.
From the steps of the Palazzo del Goberno Civil, the northern front
stretches out before you above the bushy tops of the acacia trees in the
Plaza del Colegio Viejo. The demarcations are strong in the horizontal
courses of the balconies which crown the walls of the nave and
side-aisle chapels,--the two lower quite Gothic. The thrust of the naves
is met by great buttresses flying out over the roofs of the side aisles,
and there, as well as above the buttresses of the chapel walls,
pinnacles rise like the masts in a great shipyard. The whole organism of
the late Spanish Gothic church lies open before you. The long stretch of
the three tiers of walls is broken by the face of the transept, the door
of which is blocked, while the surrounding buttresses and walls are
covered with canopies and brackets, all vacant of statues. In place of
the condemned door, there is one leading into the second bay, the Puerta
de los Ramos or de las Palmas, in feeling very similar to the main doors
of the west. Its semicircular arches support a relief representing
Christ entering Jerusalem. A circular light flanked by Peter and Paul
comes above, and the whole is encased in a series of broken arches
filled with the most intricate carving.
The grand and the grandiloquent Cathedral seem to gaze out over the town
and the vast plain of the old kingdom of Leon and to listen. It is a
golden town, of a dignity one gladly links with the name of Castile. It
is a city--or what is left of it after the firebrands of Thiebaut, of
Ney, and of Marmont--of the sixteenth century, of convents and churches
and huge ecclesiastical establishments. They rise like amber mountains
above the squalid buildings crumbling between them, and stand in grilled
and latticed silence. Las Dueñas lies mute on one side and on the other
San Esteban, where the great discoverer pleaded his cause to deaf ears.
In the evening glow their brown walls gain a depth and warmth of color
like the flush in the dark cheeks of Spanish girls.
II
BURGOS
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
West front]
Whereat he wondred much, and gan enquere
What stately building durst so high extend
Her lofty towres unto the starry sphere.
_The Faerie Queene_, book I, c. x, lvi.
I
The best view of the spires of Burgos is from the ruined walls of the
Castillo high above the city. From these crumbling ramparts, pierced and
gouged by a thousand years of assault and finally rent asunder by the
powder of the Napoleonic armies, you look directly down upon the
mistress of the city and the sad and ardent plain. A stubbly growth,
more like cocoa matting than grass, covers the unroofed floor beneath
your feet. From this Castle, Ferdinand Gonzales ruled Castile, and here
the Cid led Doña Zimena, and Edward I of England Eleanor of Castile, to
the altar. The only colors brightening the melancholy hillside are here
and there the brilliant blood-stain of the poppy, the gold of the
dandelion, and the episcopal purple of the thistle. Below and beyond,
stretches a sea of shaded ochre, broken in the foreground by the
corrugations of the many roofs turned by time to the brownish tint of
the encircling hillocks and made to blend in one harmony with its
monochrome bosom. Fillets of silver pierce the horizon, glittering as
they wind nearer between over-hanging birches and poplars. The deep,
guttural, roar of the great Cathedral's many voices rises in majestic
and undisputed authority from the valley below, now and again joined by
the weaker trebles of San Esteban and San Nicolas. Regiments of soldiers
march with regular clattering step through holy precincts and up and
down the crooked lanes and squares; barracks and parade-grounds occupy
consecrated soil,--still Santa Maria la Mayor raises her voice to
command obedience and proclaim her undivided dominion over the plains of
drowsy, old Castile.
From this height, one does not notice the transformation of the Gothic
into seventeenth-century edifices, nor the changes wrought by later
centuries. In the glare of the dazzling sun, the tremulous atmosphere,
and the lazy, curling smoke of the many chimneys, Burgos still seems
Burgos of the Middle Ages, the royal city, mistress of the castles and
sweeping plains, and the Cathedral is her stronghold.
She is very old,--tradition says, founded by Count Diego Rodriguez of
Alava with the assistance of an Alfonso who ruled in Christian Oviedo
towards the end of the ninth century. For many years his descendants, as
well as the lords of the many castles strewn along the lonely hills
north of the Sierra de Guadarrama, owed allegiance to Leon and the
kingdom of the Asturias. Burgos finally threw off the yoke, and chose
judges for rulers, until one of them, Ferdinand Gonzalez, assumed for
himself and his successors the proud title of "Conde of Castile." Under
his great-grandson, Ferdinand I, Castile and Leon were united in 1037,
thus laying the foundations of the later monarchy. Burgos became a
capital city. Against the dark background of mediæval history and
interwoven with many romantic legends, there stands out that greatest of
Spanish heroes, the Cid Campeador. This Rodrigo Diaz was born near
Burgos. The lady Zimena whom he married was daughter of a Count Diego
Rodriguez of Oviedo, probably a descendant of the founder of the city.
In the presence of the knights and nobles of Burgos, the Cid forced
Alfonso VI to swear that he had no part in the murder of King Sancho,
and in the royal city he was then elected King of Castile by the Commons
(1071). Alfonso never forgave the Cid this humiliation, and later exiled
him. To the Burgalese of to-day, he seems as living and real as he was
to mediæval Castilians. Spanish histories and children will tell you of
two things that make Burgos immortal--her Cathedral, and her motherhood
to Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.[4]
The importance of the city as a Christian centre becomes evident at the
end of the eleventh century (1074), when it receives its own bishop, and
shortly afterwards, fully equipped, convokes a church council to protest
against the supplanting by the Latin of the earlier Mozarabic rite, so
dear to the hearts of the people. The same Alfonso transferred his
capital to the newly conquered Toledo and, contemporaneous with the
great prosperity of Burgos during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
there was endless jealousy as to precedence, first between Burgos and
Toledo and afterwards between these and Valladolid. Burgos reaches the
zenith of her power in the reign of Saint Ferdinand and the first half
of the thirteenth century, though as late as 1349, Alfonso XI, in the
assembled Cortes, still recognizes Burgos's claim as "first city" by
calling on her to give her voice first,--"prima voce et fide," saying
_he_ would then speak for Toledo. Not long after, Valladolid overshadows
them both.
The greatness of Burgos is that of the old Castilian kingdom; with its
extinction came hers. Her flowering and expansion were contemporaneous
with the most splendid period of Gothic art. Her day was a glorious one,
before bigotry had laid its withering hand upon the arts, and while the
rich imagination and skilled hands of Moorish and Jewish citizens still
ennobled and embellished their capital city.
II
The present Cathedral is singularly picturesque and by far the most
interesting of the three great Gothic Cathedrals of Spain,--Leon,
Toledo, and Burgos. The interest is mainly due to her vigorous organism,
an outcome of more essentially Spanish predilections (as well as a
natural interpretation of the French importations) than we find in
either of the sister churches. Later additions and ornamentation have
naturally concealed and disfigured, but the old body is still there,
admirable, fitting, and sane.
[Illustration: KEY OF PLAN OF BURGOS CATHEDRAL
A. Chapel of Santa Thecla.
B. Chapel of Santa Anna.
C. Chapel of the Holy Birth.
D. Chapel of the Annunciation.
E. Chapel of Saint Gregory.
F. Chapel of the Constable.
G. Chapel of the Parish of St. James.
H. Chapel of Saint John.
I. Chapel of Saint Catherine.
K. Chapel of Jean Cuchiller.
L. Chapter House.
M. Sacristy.
N. Minor Sacristy.
O. Chapel of Saint Henry.
P. Altar.
Q. Choir.
R. Chapel of the Presentation of the Virgin.
S. Choir.
T. Golden Staircase.
U. Door of the Pellegeria.
X. Door of the Sarmental.
Y. Door of the Perdon.
Z. Door of the Apostles.]
Burgos Cathedral is built upon a hillside, her walls hewn out of and
climbing the sides of the mountain, making it necessary either from
north or south to approach her through long flights of stairs. What she
loses in freedom and access, she certainly gains in picturesqueness. She
is flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of the city, scaling its
heights like a great mother and drawing after her the surrounding houses
which nestle to her sides. She would not gain in majesty by standing
free in an open square, nor by receiving the sunlight on all sides. And
so, though many later additions hide much of the early fabric, they
combine with it to form a picturesque whole, a wonderful jewelled
casket, a sparkling diadem set high on the royal brow of the city, such
as possibly no other city of its size in Christendom can boast.
It was King Alfonso VI who at the end of the eleventh century gave his
palace-ground for the erection of a Cathedral for the new Episcopal See.
We know nothing of its design, nor whether it occupied exactly the same
site as the later building. The early one must, however, have been a
Romanesque Church;--what might not a later Romanesque Cathedral have
been!--for the style had arrived at a point of vitally interesting
promise and national development, when it was forced to recoil before
the foreign invaders, the Benedictines and Cistercians.
Two great names are linked to the founding of the present Cathedral of
Burgos, Saint Ferdinand and Bishop Maurice. The latter was bishop from
1213 to 1238, and probably an Englishman who came to Burgos in the train
of the English Queen, Eleanor Plantagenet.[5] He was sent to Speyer as
ambassador from the Spanish Court to bring back the Princess Beatrice
as bride for Saint Ferdinand. Maurice's mission took him through those
parts of Germany and France where the enthusiasm for cathedral-building
was at its height, and he had time to admire and study a forest of
exquisite spires, newly reared, particularly while the young lady given
him in charge was sumptuously entertained by King Philip Augustus.
Naturally he returned to his native city burning with ardor to begin a
similar work there, and probably brought with him master-builders and
skilful artists of long training in Gothic church-building.
Queen Berengaria and King Ferdinand met the Suabian Princess at the
frontier of Castile. The first ceremony was the conference of the Order
of Knighthood, in the presence of all the "ricos hombres" (ruling men),
the cavaliers of the kingdom with their wives and the burgesses. The
sword was taken from the altar and girded on by the right noble lady
Berengaria. We read that the other arms had been blessed by Bishop
Maurice and were donned by the King with his own hands, no one else
being high enough for the office. Three days later Ferdinand was married
to "dulcissimam Domicellam" in the old Cathedral by the Bishop of Burgos
without protest from the Primate of Castile, Archbishop Rodrigo of
Toledo. This took place in 1219, and two years after King and Bishop
laid the corner-stone of the new edifice.
[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
View of the nave]
The work must have been spurred on by all the religious ardor which
fired the first half of the thirteenth century, for only nine years
later services were held in the eastern end of the building. The good
Bishop was laid to rest in the old choir, where he still lies
undisturbed, though to-day it is the Capilla Mayor. By the middle of the
century, the great bulk of the old structure must have been well
advanced. The lower portions of the towers and the eastern termination
are fourteenth-century work; the spires themselves, fifteenth. A
multitude of changes and additions, new chapels and buildings,
gradually, as years went on, transformed the primitive plan from its
first harmony and beauty to a confused mass of aisles, vaults, and
chapels. When we compare the present fabric with the early plan, we see
with what masterly skill and simplicity the original one was conceived.
All that is left or can be seen of this first structure is splendid.
Though built in the second period of the great northern style, it has
none of the lightness of the French churches which were going up
simultaneously, nor even that of Spanish Leon or Toledo. It has heavy
supporting walls and is of the family of the early French with a
magnificently powerful and efficient system of piers and buttresses. It
is not free from a certain Romanesque feeling in its general lines, its
windows, and in many of its details. Though a splendid type of Gothic
construction, this first church is a convincing proof that the nervous,
subtle, fully developed system was foreign to Spanish taste. The
complicated solutions, the intricate planning, were not in accordance
with their temper nor predilections. Rheims may be said to express the
radical temper of its French builders, Burgos, the conservative Spanish.
In Spain, construction and artistic principles did not go hand in hand
in the glorious manner they were wont to in France. Burgos seems much
more emotional than sensitive. Riotous excess and empty display take the
place of restrained and appropriate decoration. The organic dependence
which should exist between sculpture and architecture, so invariably
present in the early French church, is lacking in Burgos. A careful
analysis is interesting. It reveals the fusion of foreign elements, the
severe monastic of the Cistercians and the later sumptuous secular
style, the florid intricacy of the German, the glory of the Romanesque,
the dryness of its revival and the bombast of the Plateresque, all more
or less transformed by what Spaniards could and would do. In its
construction and buttresses, it recalls Sens and Saint-Denis; in its
nave, Chartres; in its vaulting, the Angevine School. The symmetry of
the early plan is fascinating, and Señor Lamperez y Romea's sincere and
beautiful reconstruction must be a faithful reproduction. It makes the
side aisles quite free, the broad transepts to consist of two bays,
while the crossing is carried by piers heavy enough to support an
ordinary vault but not a majestic lantern. Five perfectly formed radial
chapels surround the polygonal ambulatory and are continued towards the
crossing by three rectangular chapels on each side. The vaulting of nave
and transepts is throughout sexpartite; that of the side aisles,
quadripartite. Most of this has, as will be seen, been profoundly
modified.
The old structure is the kernel of the present church. It consists of a
central nave of six bays up to a strongly marked crossing and three
beyond, terminating in a pentagonal apse. The side aisles are decidedly
lower and continue across the transept round the apse. These again are
flanked on the west by the chapel churches of Santa Tecla, Santa Anna,
and the Presentacion, as well as by a number of other smaller, vaulted
compartments. Only two of the radial chapels outside the polygonal
ambulatory remain, the others having been altered or supplanted by the
great Chapels of the Constable, of Santiago, Santa Catarina, Corpus
Christi, and the Cloisters. The western front is entered by a triple
doorway corresponding to nave and side aisles; the southern transept, by
an incline 40 feet wide, broken by 28 steps. On reaching the door of the
northern transept, one finds the ground risen outside the church some 26
feet above the level of the inner pavement, and instead of descending by
the interior staircase, one wanders far to the northeast, there to
descend to a portal in the north of the eastern transept. The whole
church is about 300 feet long, and in general 83 feet wide, the
transepts, 194 feet.
The piers under the crossing, as well as those of the first bay inside
the western entrance, are much larger than the others, in order to
support the additional weight of crossing and towers, and the piers,
abutting aisle and transept walls, are also unusually strong. The
interior pillars are of massive cylindrical plan, of well-developed
French Gothic type, solid, but kept from any appearance of heaviness by
their form and by eight engaged columns. The ornamented bases are high
and of characteristic Gothic moldings. The finely carved capitals carry
square abaci in the side aisles and circular ones in the nave. Both
abaci and bases have been placed at right angles to the arches they
support. The three engaged pier columns facing the nave carry the
transverse and diagonal groining ribs, while the wall ribs are met by
shafts on each side of the clerestory windows.
The four main supports at the angles of the crossing are rather towers
than piers. In the original structure, they were probably counterparts
of those supporting the inner angles of the tower between nave and side
aisles, with a fully developed system of shafts for the support of the
various groining ribs. With the collapse of the old crossing and the
consequent erection of an even bulkier and far more weighty
superstructure, tremendous circular supports upon octagonal bases were
substituted. They are thoroughly Plateresque in feeling, 50 feet in
circumference and delicately fluted and ribbed as they descend, with
Renaissance ornaments on the pedestals and similar statues under Gothic
canopies, evidently inserted in their faces as a compromise to the
surrounding earlier style.
Glancing up at the superstructure and vaulting, there is a great
consciousness of light and joy,--a feeling that it would have been
well-nigh perfect, if the choir and its rejas could only have remained
in their old proper place east of the crossing, instead of sadlycongesting a
nave magnificent in length and size. The brightness is due,
partly to the stone itself, almost white when first quarried from
Ontoria, and partly to the uncolored glass in the greater portion of the
clerestory. Here and there the masonry has the mellow tones of
meerschaum, shaded with pinkish and lava-gray tints, but the effect is
rather that of ancient marble than of limestone. The interior, compared
to Toledo, is a bride beside a nun. Granting the loss of original
simplicity and a rather distressing mixture of two styles, the
combination has been handled with a skill and genius peculiarly Spanish
and therefore picturesque. The austerity of the French prototype has
been replaced by joyousness and regal splendor. If we examine carefully
the older portions of the interior structure and carving as well as the
traces of parts that have disappeared, we feel how very French it is,
and undoubtedly erected without assistance from Moorish hands. The
vaulting is like some of the French, very rounded, especially in the
side aisles. It is all plain excepting under the dome and the vaults
immediately abutting, where additional ribs were evidently added at a
later time. The vaulting ribs of the main arches start unusually low
down, almost on a level with the top of the triforium windows, giving
the church relatively a much lower effect than Leon or the French Rheims
or Amiens.
Both triforium and clerestory are very fine, especially in the nave,
where, although they have undergone alterations, these are less radical
than in the Capilla Mayor. The triforium, which is early
thirteenth-century work, is strikingly singular. Its narrow gallery is
covered by a continuous barrel vault parallel to the nave. Six slender
columns divide its seven arches, while above them are trefoil and
quatrefoil penetrations contained within a segmental arch, broken by
carved heads. The fine old shafts, separating the trefoiled or
quatrefoiled arcade, are hidden by crocketed pinnacles and a traceried
balcony. The triforium east of the crossing has only four arches, with
much later traceried work above. The charming old simplicity is of
course lost wherever gaudy carving has been added, but the oldest
portions belong decidedly to the early Gothic work of northern France.
Above rises the clerestory in its early vigor, with comparatively small
windows, consisting of two arches and a rose.
Probably the crossing had originally a vault somewhat more elaborate
than the others, or, possibly, even a small lantern. To emphasize the
crossing, both internally and externally, was always a peculiar delight
to Spanish builders. This characteristic was admirably adapted to
Romanesque churches and in the Gothic was still felt to be essential,
but Burgos shared the fate of Seville and the new Cathedral of
Salamanca. The old writer, Cean Bermudez, relates that "the same
disaster befell the crossing of Burgos that had happened to Seville,--it
collapsed entirely in the middle of the night on the 3d of March, 1539.
At that time the Bishop was the Cardinal D. Fray Juan Alvarez de Toledo,
famous for the many edifices which he erected and among them S. Esteban
of Salamanca. Owing to the zeal of the Prelate and the Chapter and the
piety of the generous Burgalese, the rebuilding began the same year.
They called upon Maestro Felipe, who was assisted in the planning and
construction by Juan de Vallejo and Juan de Castanela, architects of the
Cathedral. Felipe died at Toledo, after completing the bas-reliefs of
the choir stalls. The Chapter honored his memory in a worthy manner, for
they placed in the same choir under the altar of the Descent from the
Cross this epitaph: 'Philippus Burgundio statuarius, qui ut manu
sanctorum effigies, ita mores animo exprimebat: subsellis chori
struendis itentus, opere pene absoluto, immoritur.'"[6]