the chapels, the fine, deep green and gold and blue Romanesque coloring
may still be seen, giving a rich impression of the old barbaric splendor
and gem-like richness so befitting the clothing of the style. Other
portions, now bare, must surely all have been colored. The delicate,
slender shafts, subdividing unequally the ambulatory, have really no
carrying office, but were probably introduced to lessen the difficulty
of vaulting the irregular compartments of such unequal sides. Gothic art
was still in its infancy, and the splendid grasp of the vaulting
difficulties and masterly solution of its problems exemplified in so
many later ambulatories, had not as yet been reached. Here we have about
the first fumbling attempt. The maestro is still fighting in the dark
with unequal thrusts, sides and arches of different widths, and a desire
to meet them all with something higher and lighter than the old
continuous barrel vault. A step forward in the earnest effort toward
higher development, such as we find here, deserves admiration. The
profiles of the ribs are simple, undecorated and vigorous, as were all
the earliest ones; in the chapels, or rather the exedras in the outer
walls, the ribs do not meet in a common boss or keystone, its advantages
not as yet being known to the builders. A good portion of the old
roof-covering of the Cathedral, not only over the eastern end, but
pretty generally throughout, has either been altered, or else the
present covering conceals the original.
Thus it is easy to detect from the outside, if one stands at the
northwestern angle of the church and looks down the northern face, that
the upper masonry has been carried up by some three feet of brickwork,
evidently of later addition, on top of which comes the present covering
of terra-cotta tiles. The old roof-covering here of stone tiles, as also
above the apse, rested directly on the inside vaults, naturally
damaging them by its weight, and not giving full protection against the
weather. The French slopes had in some instances been slavishly copied,
but the steep roofs requisite in northern cathedrals were soon after
abandoned, being unnecessary in the Spanish climate. Over the apse of
Avila, there may still be found early thirteenth-century roofing,
consisting of large stone flags laid in rows with intermediary grooves
and channels, very much according to ancient established Roman and
Byzantine traditions. Independent superstructure above the vault proper,
to carry the outside covering, had not been introduced when this roofing
was laid.
In its early days many a noted prelate and honored churchman was laid to
rest within the holy precinct of the choir in front of the high altar or
in the rough old sepulchres of the surrounding chapels. With the moving
of the choir, and probably also a change in the church ceremonies, came
a rearrangement of the apse and the Capilla Mayor's relation to the new
rites.
The retablo back of the high altar, consisting of Plateresque ornament,
belongs for the most part to the Renaissance. The Evangelists and church
fathers are by Pedro Berruguete (not as great as his son, the sculptor
Alfonso), Juan de Borgoña and Santos Cruz. In the centre, facing theambulatory
behind, is a fine Renaissance tomb of the renowned Bishop
Alfonso Tostada de Madrigal. He is kneeling in full episcopal robes,
deeply absorbed either in writing or possibly reading the Scriptures.
The workmanship on mitre and robe is as fine as the similar remarkable
work in Burgos, while the enclosing rail is a splendid example of the
blending of Gothic and Renaissance.
The glass in the apse windows is exceptionally rich and magnificently
brilliant in its coloring. It was executed by Alberto Holando, one of
the great Dutch glaziers of Burgos, who was given the entire contract in
1520 by Bishop Francisco Ruiz, a nephew of the great Cardinal Cisneros.
Such, in short, are the characteristics of the chevet of the Cathedral
of Avila, constructed in an age when its builders must have worked in a
spirit of hardy vigor with the trowel in one hand and the sword in the
other. As we see it to-day, it imparts a feeling of mystery, and its
oriental splendor is enhanced by the dim, religious light.
In entering the crossing, we step into the fullness of the Gothic
triumph. The vaults have been thrown into the sky to the height of 130
feet. It is early Gothic work, with its many errors and consequent
retracing of steps made in ignorance. The great arches that span the
crossing north and south had taken too bold a leap and subsequently
required the support of cross arches. The western windows and the great
roses at the end of the transepts, with early heavy traceries, proved
too daring and stone had to be substituted for glass in their apertures;
the long row of nave windows have likewise been filled with masonry.
Despite these and many similar penalties for rashness, the work is as
dignified as it is admirable. Of course the proportions are all small in
comparison with such later great Gothic churches as Leon and Burgos, the
nave and transepts here being merely 28 to 30 feet wide, the aisles only
24 feet wide. Avila is but an awkward young peasant girl if compared
with the queenly presence of her younger sisters. Nevertheless Avila is
in true Spanish peasant costume, while Leon and Burgos are tricked out
in borrowed finery. The nave is short and narrow, but that gives an
impression of greater height, and the obscurity left by the forced
substitution of stone for glass in the window spaces adds to the
solemnity. The nave consists of five bays, the aisle on each side of it
rising to about half its height. The golden groining is quadripartite,
the ribs meeting in great colored bosses and pendents, added at periods
of less simple taste. In the crossing alone, intermediary ribs have been
added in the vaulting.
[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
AVILA
From outside the walls]
The walls of the transept underneath the great blind wheels to the north
and south are broken by splendid windows, each with elaborate tracery
(as also the eastern and western walls), heavy and strong, but finely
designed. The glazing is glorious, light, warm, and intense. The walls
of the nave, set back above the lowest arcade some eighteen inches, have
triforium and clerestory, and above this again, they are filled quite up
to the vaulting with elaborate tracery, possibly once foolhardily
conceived to carry glass. Each bay has six arches in both triforium and
clerestory, all of simple and early apertures. The glazing of the
clerestory is white, excepting in one of the bays. In this single
instance, a simple, geometric pattern of buff and blue stripes is of
wonderfully harmonious and lovely color effect.
The shafts that separate nave from side aisles are still quite
Romanesque in feeling,--of polygonal core faced by four columns and
eight ribs. The capitals are very simple with no carving, but merely a
gilded representation of leafage, while the base molds carry around all
breaks of the pier. It may be coarse and crude in feeling and execution,
certainly very far from the exquisite finish of Leon, nevertheless the
infancy of an architectural style, like a child's, has the peculiar
interest of what it holds in promise. Like Leon, the side aisles have
double roofing, allowing the light to penetrate to the nave arcade and
forming a double gallery running round the church.
Many of the bishops who were buried in the choir in its old location
were, on its removal to the bay immediately west of the crossing, also
moved and placed in the various chapels. The sepulchre of Bishop Sancho
Davila is very fine. Like his predecessors, he was a fighting man. His
epitaph reads as follows:--
"Here lies the noble cavalier Sancho Davila, Captain of the King Don
Fernando and the Queen Doña Isabel, our sovereigns, and their alcaide of
the castles of Carmona, son of Sancho Sanches, Lord of San Roman and of
Villanueva, who died fighting like a good cavalier against the Moors in
the capture of Alhama, which was taken by his valor on the 28th of
February in the year 1490."
The pulpits on each side of the crossing, attached to the great piers,
are, curiously enough, of iron, exquisitely wrought and gilded. The one
on the side of the epistle is Gothic and the other Renaissance, the body
of each of them bearing the arms of the Cathedral, the Agnus Dei, and
the ever-present lions and castles. The rejas, closing off choir and
Capilla Mayor in the customary manner, are heavy and ungainly. On the
other hand, the trascoro, that often sadly blocks up the sweep of the
nave, is unusually low and comparatively inconspicuous. It contains
reliefs of the life of Christ, from the first half of the sixteenth
century, by Juan Res and Luis Giraldo. The choir itself is so compact
that it only occupies one bay. The chapter evidently was a modest one.
The stalls are of elaborate Renaissance workmanship. The verger now in
charge, with the voice of a hoarse crow, reads you the name of the
carver as the Dutchman "Cornelis 1536."
Strange to say, there are no doors leading, as they logically should,
into the centre of the arms of the transept. Through some perversity,
altars have taken their place, while the northern and southern entrances
have been pushed westward, opening into the first bays of the side
aisles. The southern door leads to a vestibule, the sacristy with fine
Gothic vaulting disfigured by later painting, a fine fifteenth-centurychapel and
the cloisters. None of this can be seen from the front, as it
is hidden by adjoining houses and a bare, pilastered wall crowned by a
carved Renaissance balustrade. The galleries of the present cloisters
are later Gothic work with Plateresque decorations and arches walled up.
Avila Cathedral is, as it were, a part and parcel of the history of
Castile during the reigns of her early kings, the turbulent times when
self-preservation was the only thought, any union of provinces far in
the future, and a Spanish kingdom undreamed of. She was a great church
in a small kingdom, in the empire she became insignificant. Much of her
history is unknown, but in the days of her power, she was certainly
associated with all great events in old Castile. Her influence grew
with her emoluments and the ever-increasing body of ecclesiastical
functionaries. In times of war, she became a fortress, and her bishop
was no longer master of his house. The Captain-General took command of
the bastions, as of those of the Alcazar, and soldiers took the place of
priests in the galleries. She was the key to the city, and on her flat
roofs the opposing armies closed in the final struggle for victory.
The Cathedral has, in fact, only an eastern and a northern elevation,
the exterior to the west and south being hidden by the huge tower and
the confused mass of chapels and choir which extend to the walls and
houses.
The western entrance front is noble and dignified in its austere
severity; probably as old as the clerestory of the nave, it is a grim
sentinel from the first part of the fourteenth century. With the
exception of the entrance, it speaks the Romanesque language, although
its windows and some of its decoration are pointed. It is magnificent
and impressive, very Spanish, and almost unique in the Peninsula. Four
mighty buttresses subdivide the composition; between these is the
entrance, and to the north and south are the towers which terminate the
aisles.
The southern tower has never been finished. The northern is full of
inspiration. It is broken at two stages by double windows, the upper
ones of the belfry being crowned by pediments and surmounted by rich,
sunk tracery. The piers terminate in hexagonal pinnacles, while the
tower, as well as the rest of the front, is finished with a battlement.
The later blocking up of this, as well as the superimposed roofing, is
very evident and disturbing. All the angles of buttresses, of windows,
arches, splays, and pyramids,--those also crowning the bulky piers that
meet the flying buttresses,--are characteristically and uniquely
decorated with an ornamentation of balls. It softens the hard lines,
splashing the surface with infinite series of small, sharp shadows and
making it sparkle with life and light. The angles recall the blunt, blue
teeth of a saw.
The main entrance, as well as the first two bays of the naves underneath
the towers, must originally have been of different construction from the
present one. Inside the church, these bays are blocked off from nave and
side aisles by walls, on top of which they communicate with each other
as also with the eastern apse by galleries, probably all necessary for
the defense of troops in the early days. Possibly a narthex terminated
the nave back of the original entrance portal underneath the present
vaulted compartment.
The main entrance door is indeed a strange apparition. In its whiteness
between the sombre tints of the martial towers, it rises like a spectre
in the winding-sheets of a later age. It is distressingly out of place
and time in its dark framework.
"But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver,
but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor, and some to dishonor."
The semicircular door is crowned by a profusely subdivided, Gothic
archivolt and guarded by two scaly giants or wild men that look, with
their raised clubs, as if they would beat the life out of any one who
should try to enter the holy cavern. Saints Peter and Paul float on
clouds in the spandrels. Above rises a sixteenth-century composition of
masks and canopied niches. The Saviour naturally occupies the centre,
flanked by the various saints that in times of peril protected the
church of Avila: Saints Vincente, Sabina and Cristela, Saint Segundo and
Santa Teresa. In the attic in front of a tremendous traceried cusp, with
openings blocked by masonry, the ornamentation runs completely riot.
Saint Michael, standing on top of a dejected and doubled-up dragon,
looks down on figures that are crosses between respectable caryatides
and disreputable mermaids. It is certainly as immaterial as unknown,
when and by whom was perpetrated this degenerate sculpture now
shamelessly disfiguring a noble casing. The strong, early towers seem in
their turn doubly powerful and eloquent in their simplicity and one
wishes the old Romanesque portal were restored and the great traceries
above it glazed to flood the nave with western sunlight.
The northeastern angle is blocked by poor Renaissance masonry, the
exterior of the chapels here being faced by a Corinthian order and
broken by circular lights.
The northern portal is as fine as that of the main entrance is paltry.
The head of the door, as well as the great arch which spans the recess
into which the entire composition is set, is, curiously enough,
three-centred, similar to some of the elliptical ones at Burgos and
Leon. A lion, securely chained to the church wall for the protection of
worshipers, guards each side of the entrance. Under the five arches
stand the twelve Apostles, time-worn, weather-beaten and mutilated, but
splendid bits of late thirteenth-century carving. For they must be as
early as that. The archivolts are simply crowded with small figures of
angels, of saints, and of the unmistakably lost. In the tympanum the
Saviour occupies the centre, and around Him is the same early, naïve
representation of figures from the Apocalypse, angels, and the crowned
Virgin.
[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF AVILA
Main entrance]
Two years before Luther, a true exponent of Teutonic genius, had nailed
his theses to the door of a cathedral in central Germany, there was born
in the heart of Spain as dauntless and genuine a representative of hercountry's
genius. Each passed through great storm and stress of the
spirit, and finally entered into that closer communion with God, from
which the soul emerges miraculously strengthened. Do not these bleak
hills, this stern but lovely Cathedral, rising _per aspera ad astra_,
typify the strong soul of Santa Teresa? A great psychologist of our day
finds the woman in her admirable literary style. Prof. James further
accepts Saint Teresa's own defense of her visions: "By their fruits ye
shall know them." These were practical, brave, cheerful, aspiring, like
this Castilian sanctuary, intolerant of dissenters, sheltering and
caring for many, and leading them upward to the City which is unseen,
eternal in the heavens.
IV
LEON
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF LEON
From the southwest]
Look where the flood of western glory falls
Through the great sunflower disk of blazing panes
In ruby, saffron, azure, emerald stains.
_Holmes._
In the year 1008 the ancient church of Leon witnessed a ceremony
memorable for more reasons than one. It was conducted throughout
according to Gothic customs, King, Queen, nobility and ecclesiastics all
being present, and it was the first council held in Spain since the Arab
conquest whose acts have come down to us. The object was twofold: to
hold a joyous festival in celebration of the rebuilding of the city
walls, which had been broken down some years before by a Moslem army,
and to draw up a charter for a free people, governing themselves, for
Spain has the proud distinction of granting municipal charters one or
two hundred years before the other countries of Europe. For three
centuries of Gothic rule, the kings of Leon, Castile and other provinces
had successfully resisted every attempt at encroachment from the Holy
See and, in session with the clergy, elected their own bishops, until in
1085 Alfonso VI of Castile takes the fatal step of sending Bernard
d'Azeu to receive the pallium and investiture as Bishop of Toledo from
the hands of Gregory VII. From this time forth, kings are crowned,
queens repudiated, and even the hallowed Gothic or Mozarabic ritual is
set aside for that of Rome by order of popes.
In 1135 Santa Maria of Leon is the scene of a gorgeous pageant. An
Alfonso, becoming master of half Spain and quarter of France, thinks he
might be called Emperor as well as some others, and within the Cathedral
walls he receives the new title in the presence of countless
ecclesiastics and "all his vassals, great and small." The monarch's robe
was of marvelous work, and a crown of pure gold set with precious stones
was placed on his head, while the King of Navarre held his right hand
and the Bishop of Leon his left. Feastings and donations followed, but,
what was of vastly more importance, the new Emperor confirmed the
charters granted to various cities by his grandfather.
Again a great ceremony fills the old church. Ferdinand, later known as
the Saint, is baptized there in 1199. A year or two later, Innocent III
declares void the marriage of his father and mother, who were cousins,
and an interdict shrouds the land in darkness. Several years pass during
which the Pope turns a deaf ear to the entreaties of a devoted husband,
the King of Leon, to their children's claim, the intercession of Spanish
prelates, and the prayers of two nations who had good cause to rejoice
in the union of Leon and Castile. Then a victim of the yoke, which Spain
had voluntarily put on while Frederic of Germany and even Saint Louis ofFrance
were defending their rights against the aggressions of the Holy
See, the good Queen Berenzuela, sadly took her way back to her father's
home, to the King of Castile.
His prerogative once established, Innocent III looked well after his
obedient subjects. When Spain was threatened by the most formidable of
all Moorish invasions, he published to all Christendom a bull of crusade
against the Saracens, and sent across the Pyrenees the forces which had
been gathering in France for war in Palestine. Rodrigo, Archbishop of
Toledo, preached the holy war and led his troops, in which he was joined
by the bishops of Bordeaux, Nantes, and Narbonne at the head of their
militia. Germany and Italy sent their quota of knights and soldiers of
fortune, and this concourse of Christian warriors, speaking innumerable
tongues, poured through mountain defiles and ever southward till they
met in lofty Toledo and camped on the banks of the Tagus. Marches,
skirmishes, and long-drawn-out sieges prelude the great day. The hot
Spanish summer sets in, the foreigners, growing languid in the arid
stretches of La Mancha, and disappointed at the slender booty meted out
to them, desert the native army, march northwards and again cross the
Pyrenees to return to their homes. It was thus left to the Spaniards,
led by three kings and their warlike prelates, to defeat a Moslem army
of half a million and gain the glorious victory of Las Navas de Tolosa
on the sixteenth of August, 1212.
With Rome's firm grasp on the Spanish Peninsula came temples no less
beautiful than those the great Mother Church was planting in every
portion of her dominion north of the Pyrenees,--Leon, Burgos, Toledo and
Valencia rose in proud challenge to Amiens, Rheims, Beauvais and
Chartres.
Leon may be called French,--yes, unquestionably so, but that is no
detraction or denial of her native "gentileza." She may be the very
embodiment of French planning, her general dimensions like those of
Bourges; her portals certainly recall those of Chartres, and the
planning of her apsidal chapels, her bases, arches, and groining ribs,
remind one of Amiens and Rheims; but nevertheless this exotic flower
blooms as gloriously in a Spanish desert as those that sprang up amid
the vineyards or in the Garden of France.
[Illustration: KEY OF PLAN OF LEON CATHEDRAL
A. Capilla Mayor.
B. Choir.
C. Crossing.
D. Tombs.
E. Trascoro.
F. Towers.
G. Cloisters.]
Leon is almost as old as the history of Spain. In the first century
after Christ, the seventh Roman legion, on the order of Augustus,
pitched their tents where the city now stands, built their customary
rectangular enclosure with its strong walls and towers, happily seconded
by the nature of the surrounding country. From here the wild hordes of
the Asturias could be kept in check. The city was narrowly built in the
fork of two rivers, on ground allowing neither easy approach nor
expansion, so that the growth has, even up to the twentieth century,
been within the ancient walls, and the streets and squares are in
consequence narrow and cramped. On many of the blocks of those old walls
may still be seen carved in the clear Roman lettering, "Legio septima
gemina, pia, felix." The name of Leon is merely a corruption first used
by the Goths of the Roman "Legio." Roman dominion survived the empire
for many years, being first swept away when the Gothic hordes in the
middle of the sixth century descended from the north under the
conqueror, Loevgild. Its Christian bishopric was possibly the first in
Spain, founded in the darkness of the third century, since which time
the little city can boast an unbroken succession of Leonese bishops,
although a number, during the turbulent decades of foreign rule, may not
actually have been "in residence." The Moslem followed the Goth, and
ruled while the nascent Christian kingdom of the Asturias was slowly
gaining strength for independence and the foundation of an episcopal
seat. In the middle of the eighth century, the Christians wrested it
from the Moors. On the site of the old Roman baths, built in three long
chambers, King Ordoño II erected his palace (he was reconstructing for
defense and glory the walls and edifices of the city) and in 916
presented it with considerable ground and several adjacent houses to
Bishop Frumonio, that he might commence the building of the Cathedral on
the advantageous palace site in the heart of the city. Terrible Moorish
invasions occurred soon after, involving considerable damage to the
growing Byzantine basilica. In 996 the Moors swept the city with fire
and sword, and again, three years later, it fell entirely into the hands
of the great conqueror Almanzor, who remained in possession only just
the same time, for we may read in the old monkish manuscripts that in
1002 from the Christian pulpits of Castile and Leon the proclamation was
made: "Almanzor is dead, and buried in Hell."
Leon could boast of being the first mediæval city of Europe to obtain
self-government and a charter of her own, and she became the scene of
important councils during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. In the eleventh century, under the great Ferdinand I, who
united Castile and Leon, work on the basilica was pushed rapidly
forward. French influence was predominant in the early building
operations, for Alfonso VI of Castile, who assumed the title of Emperor
of Spain, had two French wives, each of whom brought with her a batch of
zealous and skillful church-building prelates.