the Spanish architect, D. Demetrio de los Rios, in charge of the work of
restoration on the present Cathedral, discovered the walls and
foundations of the ancient basilica and was able to determine accurately
its relation to the later Gothic church. The exact date when this was
begun is uncertain,--many writers give 1199. Beyond a doubt the
foundations were laid out during the reign of Alfonso IX, early in the
thirteenth century, when Manrique de Lara was Bishop of the See of Leon
and French Gothic construction was at the height of its glory. It is
thus a thirteenth-century church, belonging principally to the latter
part, built with the feverish energy, popular enthusiasm, and
unparalleled genius for building which characterizes that period and
stamps it as uniquely glorious to later constructive ages. Though
smaller than most of the immense churches which afterwards rose under
Spanish skies, Leon remained in many respects unsurpassed and unmatched.
"Sevilla en grandeza, Toledo en riqueza,
Compostella en fortaleza, está en sutileza
Santa Maria de Regla."
In the middle of the thirteenth century, after the consecration of the
new church, a famous council of all the bishops of the realm was held in
the little town of Madrid, and there the faithful were exhorted, and
the lukewarm admonished with threats, to contribute by every means to
the successful erection of Leon's Cathedral. Indulgences, well worth
consideration, were granted to contributors, at the head of whom for a
liberal sum stood the king, Alfonso X.
But Leon, capital of the ancient kingdom, was doomed before long to feel
the bitterness of abandonment. The Castilian kings followed the retreat
southward of the Moorish armies, and the history of the capital of Leon,
which, during the thirteenth century, had been the history of the little
kingdom, soon became confined within the limits of her cathedral walls.
Burgos, a mighty rival, soon overshadowed her. The time came when the
Bishop of Leon was merely a suffragan of the Archbishop of Burgos, and
her kings had moved their court south to Seville. The city of Leon was
lost in the union of the two kingdoms.
The fortunes of the Cathedral have been varied and her reverses great.
Her architects risked a great deal and the disasters entailed were
proportionate. Though belonging preëminently in style to the glorious
thirteenth century, her building continued almost uninterruptedly
throughout the fourteenth. We have in succession Maestro Enrique, Pedro
Cebrian, Simon, Guillen de Rodan, Alonzo Valencia, Pedro de Medina, and
Juan de Badajoz, working on her walls and towers with a magnificent
recklessness which was shortly to meet its punishment. Although Bishop
Gonzalez in 1303 declared the work, "thanks be to God, completed," it
was but started. The south façade was completed in the sixteenth
century, but as early as 1630 the light fabric began to tremble, then
the vaulting of the crossing collapsed and was replaced by a more
magnificent dome. Many years of mutilations and disasters succeeded. The
south front was entirely taken down and rebuilt, the vaulting of aisles
fell, great portions of the main western façade, and ornamentation here
and there was disfigured or destroyed by the later alterations in
overconfident and decadent times, until, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, very considerable portions of the original rash and exquisite
fabric were practically ruined. There came, however, an awakening to the
outrages which had been committed, and from the middle of the nineteenth
century to the present day, the work of putting back the stones in their
original forms and places has steadily advanced to the honor of Leon andglory of
Spain, until Santa Maria de Regla at last stands once more in
the full pristine lightness of her original beauty.
The plan of Leon is exceedingly fine, surpassed alone among Spanish
churches by that of Toledo. Three doorways lead through the magnificent
western portal into the nave and side aisles of the Church. These
consist of five bays up to the point where the huge arms of the transept
spread by the width of an additional bay. In proportion to the foot of
the cross, these arms are broader than in any other Spanish cathedral.
They are four bays in length, the one under the central lantern being
twice the width of the others, thus making the total width of the
transepts equal to the distance from the western entrance to their
intersection. The choir occupies the fifth and sixth bays of the nave.
To the south, the transept is entered by a triple portal very similar in
scale and richness to the western. The eastern termination of the
church is formed by a choir of three and an ambulatory of five bays
running back of the altar and trascoro, and five pentagonal apsidal
chapels. The sacristy juts out in the extreme southwestern angle. The
northern arm of the huge transepts is separated from the extensive
cloisters by a row of chapels or vestibules which to the east also lead
to the great Chapel of Santiago. All along its eastern lines the church
with its dependencies projects beyond the city walls, one of its massive
towers standing as a mighty bulwark of defense in the extreme
northeastern angle.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF LEON
Looking up the nave]
It is a plan that must delight not only the architect, but any casual
observer, in its almost perfect symmetry and in the relationship of its
various parts to each other. It belonged to the primitive period of
French Gothic, though carried out in later days when its vigor was
waning. It has not been cramped nor distorted by initial limitation of
space or conditions, nor injured by later deviations from the original
conception. It is worthy of the great masters who planned once for all
the loveliest and most expressive house for the worship of God. Erected
on the plains of Leon, it was conceived in the inspired provinces of
Champagne and the Isle de France.
It has a total length of some 308 feet and a width of nave and aisles of
83. The height to the centre of nave groining is 100 feet. The western
front has two towers, which, curiously enough, as in Wells Cathedral,
flank the side aisles, thus necessitating in elevation a union with the
upper portions of the façade by means of flying buttresses.
There is a fine view of the exterior of the church from across the
square facing the southwestern angle. A row of acacia plumes and a
meaningless, eighteenth-century iron fence conceal the marble paving
round the base, but this foreground sinks to insignificance against the
soaring masses of stone towers and turrets, buttresses and pediments,
stretching north and east. Both façades have been considerably restored,
the later Renaissance and Baroque atrocities having been swept away in a
more refined and sensitive age, when the portions of masonry which fell,
owing to the flimsiness of the fabric, were rebuilt. The result has,
however, been that great portions, as for instance in the western front
and the entire central body above the portals, jar, with the chalky
whiteness of their surfaces by the side of the time-worn masonry. They
lack the exquisite harmony of tints, where wind and sun and water have
swept and splashed the masonry for centuries.
The two towers that flank the western front in so disjointed a manner
are of different heights and ages. Both have a heavy, lumbering quality
entirely out of keeping with the aerial lightness of the remainder of
the church. It is not quite coarseness, but rather a stiff-necked,
pompous gravity. Their moldings lack vigor and sparkle. The play of
fancy and sensitive decorative treatment are wanting. The northern tower
is the older and has an upper portion penetrated by a double row of
round and early pointed windows. An unbroken octagonal spire crowns it,
the angles of the intersection being filled by turrets, as uninteresting
as Prussian sentry-boxes. The southern tower, though lighter and more
ornamented, has, like its sister, extremely bald lower surfaces, the
four angles in both cases being merely broken by projecting buttresses.
The lowest story was completed in the fourteenth century. It was added
to in successive centuries by Maestro Jusquin and Alfonso Ramos, but its
great open-work spire, of decided German form, probably much influenced
by Colonia's spires at Burgos, was first raised in the fifteenth
century.
It is a complete monotonous lacework of stone, not nearly as spirited as
similar, earlier, French work. The spire is separated from the bald base
by a two-storied belfry, with two superimposed openings on each surface.
Gothic inscriptions decorate the masonry and the huge black letters
spell out "Deus Homo--Ave Maria, Gratia plena."
At the base, between these huge, grave sentinels, stands the magnificent
old portico with the modern facing of the main body of the church above
it. This screen of later days, built after the removal of a hideously
out-of-keeping Renaissance front, is contained within two buttresses
which meet the great flying ones. In fact, looking down the stone gorge
between these buttresses and the towers, one sees a mass of pushing and
propping flying buttresses springing in double rows above the roof of
the side aisles towards the clerestories of the nave. The screen itself
contains, immediately above the portico, an arcade of four subdivided
arches, corresponding to the triforium, and above it a gorgeous rose
window. It is the best type of late thirteenth or early
fourteenth-century wheel of radial system, very similar in design to the
western wheel of Notre Dame de Paris and the great western one of
Burgos. Springing suddenly into being in all its developed perfection,
it can only be regarded as a direct importation from the Isle de France.
The ribs of the outer circle are twice as many as those of the inner,
thus dividing the glass surfaces into approximately equal breadth of
fields. This and the rose of the southern transept are similar, and both
are copies of the original one still extant in the north transept. A
fine cornice and open-work gallery surmount the composition, flanked by
crocketed turrets and crowned in the centre by a pediment injurious in
effect and of Italian Renaissance inspiration. The gable field is broken
by a smaller wheel, and in an ogival niche are statues of the
Annunciation.
The portico is the most truly splendid part of the Cathedral. Erected at
the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, much
of its Gothic sculpture is unsurpassed in Spain. A perfect museum of art
and a history in magnificent carving. The composition as a whole recalls
again unquestionably Chartres. It consists of three recessed arches
hooding with deep splays the three doorways which lead into nave and
side aisles. Between the major arches are two smaller, extremely pointed
ones, the most northerly of which encases an ancient columnar shaft
decorated with the arms of Leon and bearing the inscription, "locus
appellationis." Beneath it court was long held and justice administered
by the rulers of Leon during the Middle Ages.
The arches of the porches are supported by piers, completely broken and
surrounded by columnar shafts and niches carrying statues on their
corbels. These piers stand out free from the jambs of the doors and
wall surfaces behind, and thus form an open gallery between the two.
Around and over all is an astounding and lavish profusion of
sculpture,--no less than forty statues. The jambs and splays, the
shafts, the archivolts, the moldings and tympanums are covered with
carving, varied and singularly interesting in the diversity of its
period and character. Part of it is late Byzantine with the traditions
of the twelfth century, while much is from the very best vigorous Gothic
chisels, and yet some, later Gothic. Certain borders, leafage, and vine
branches are Byzantine, and so also are some of the statues, "retaining
the shapeless proportions and the immobility and parched frown of the
Byzantine School, so perfectly dead in its expression, offering,
however, by its garb and by its contours not a little to the study of
this art, and so constituting a precious museum." Again, other statues
have the mild and venerable aspect of the second period of Gothic work.
The oldest are round the most northerly of the three doorways. Every
walk of life is represented. There is a gallery of costumes; and most
varying emotions are depicted in the countenances of the kings and
queens, monks and virgins, prelates, saints, angels, and bishops.
Separating the two leaves of the main doorway, stands Our White Lady.
But if the statues are interesting, the sculpture of the archivolts and
the personages and scenes carved on the fields of the tympanums far
surpass them.
Mrs. Wharton says somewhere, "All northern art is anecdotic,--it is an
ancient ethnological fact that the Goth has always told his story that
way." Nothing could be more "anecdotic" than this sculpture. The
northern tympanum gives scenes from the Life of Christ, the Visitation,
the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Flight into Egypt. In
the southern, are events from the life of the Virgin Mary; but the
central one, and the archivolts surrounding it, contain the most
spirited bits. The scene is the Last Judgment, with Christ as the
central figure. Servants of the Church of various degrees are standing
on one side with expressions of beatitude nowise clouded by the fate of
the miserable reprobates on the other. In the archivolts angels ascend
with instruments and spreading wings, embracing monks or gathering
orphans into their bosoms, while the lost with horrid grimaces are
descending to their inevitable doom. Not even the great Florentine could
depict more realistically the feelings of such as had sinned grievously
in this world.
The long southern side of the church has for its governing feature the
wide transept termination, which in its triple portal, triforium arcade,
and rose is practically a repetition of the west. The central body is
all restored. The original, magnificent old statues and carving have,
however, been set back in the new casings around and above the main
entrance. An old Leonese bishop, San Triolan, occupies in the central
door the same position as "Our White Lady" to the west, while the
Saviour between the Four Evangelists is enthroned in the tympanum.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF LEON
Rear of apse]
One obtains a most interesting study in construction by standing behind
the great polygonal apse, whence one may see the double rows of flying
buttresses pushing with the whole might of the solid piers behind them
against the narrow strips of masonry at the angles of the choir. From
every buttress rise elegantly carved and crocketed finials. Marshalled
against the cobalt of the skies, they body forth an array of shining
lances borne by a heavenly host. The balconies, forming the cresting to
the excessively high clerestory, are entirely Renaissance in feeling,
and lack in their horizontal lines the upward spring of the church
below. Almost all of this eastern end, breaking through the city walls,
is, with the possible exception of the roof, part of the fine old
structure, in contrast to the adjoining Plateresque sacristy.
It is generally from the outside of French cathedrals that one receives
the most vivid impressions. Though the mind may be overcome by a feeling
of superhuman effort on entering the portals of Notre Dame de Paris, yet
the emotion produced by the first sight of the queenly, celestial
edifice from the opposite side of the broad square is the more powerful
and eloquent. Not so in Spain,--and this in spite of the location of the
choirs. It is not until you enter a Spanish church that its power and
beauty are felt.
The audacious construction of Leon, which one wonders at from the square
outside, becomes well-nigh incredible when seen from the nave. How is it
possible that glass can support such a weight of stone? If Burgos was
bold, this is insane. It looks as unstable as a house of cards, ready
for a collapse at the first gentle breeze. Can fields of glass sustain
three hundred feet of thrusts and such weights of stone? It is a
culmination of the daring of Spanish Gothic. In France there was this
difference,--while the fields of glass continued to grow larger and
larger, the walls to diminish, and the piers to become slenderer, the
aid of a more perfectly developed system of counterthrusts to the
vaulting was called in. In Spain we reach the maximum of elimination in
the masonry of the side walls at the end of the thirteenth century, and
in the Cathedral of Leon, whereas later Gothic work, as in portions of
Burgos and Toledo, shows a sense of the futile exaggeration towards
which they were drifting, as well as the impracticability of so much
glass from a climatic point of view.
Internally, Leon is the lightest and most cheerful church in Spain. The
great doorways of the western and southern fronts, as well as that to
the north leading into the cloisters, are thrown wide open, as if to add
to the joyousness of the temple. Every portion of it is flooded with
sweet sunlight and freshness. It is the church of cleanliness, of light
and fresh air, and above all, of glorious color. The glaziers might have
said with Isaiah, "And I will make thy windows of agates and thy gates
of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones." The entire walls
are a continuous series of divine rainbows.
The side walls of the aisles for a height of some fourteen feet to the
bottom of their vaulting ribs, the triforium, commencing but a foot
above the arches which separate nave from side aisles, and immediately
above the triforium, forty feet of clerestory,--all is glass, emerald,
turquoise, and peacock, amber, straw, scarlet, and crimson, encased in a
most delicate, strangely reckless, and bold-traceried framework of
stained ivory. Indeed, the jeweled portals of Heaven are wide open when
the sun throws all the colors from above across the otherwise colorless
fields of the pavement. "The color of love's blood within them glows."
There is glazing of many centuries and all styles. In some of the
triforium windows are bits of glass, which, after the destruction or
falling of the old windows, were carefully collected, put together, and
used again in the reglazing. Some of it is of the earliest in Spain,
probably set by French, Flemish, or German artisans who had immigrated
to practise their art and set up their factories on Spanish soil
adjacent to the stone-carvers' and masons' sheds under the rising walls
of the great churches. Like all skilled artisans of their age, the
secret of their trade, the proper fusing of the silica with the
alkalies, was carefully guarded and handed down from father to son or
master to apprentice. They were chemists, glaziers, artists, colorists,
and glass manufacturers, all in one. The heritage was passed on in those
days, when the great key of science which opens all portals had not yet
become common property. Some of the oldest glass is merely a crude
mosaic inlay of small bits and must date back to early thirteenth
century. Coloring glass by partial fusion was then first practised and
soon followed by the introduction of figures and themes in the glass,
and the acquisition of a lovely, homogeneous opalescence in place of the
purely geometrical patterns. Scriptural scenes or figures painted, as
the Spanish say, "en caballete," became more and more general. The best
of the Leon windows are from the fifteenth century, when the glaziers'
shops in the city worked under the direction of Juan de Arge, Maestro
Baldwin, and Rodrigo de Ferraras, and its master colorists were at work
glazing the windows of the Capilla Mayor, the Capilla de Santiago, and a
portion of those of the north transept. "Ces vitreaux hauts en couleur,
qui faisaient hésiter l'œil émerveillé de nos pères entre la rose du
grand portail et les ogives de l'abside." The glazing has gone on
through centuries; even to-day the glaziers at Leon are busy in their
shops, making the sheets of sunset glow for their own and other Spanish
cathedrals.
In some of the side aisles, they have, alas, during recent decades
placed some horrible "grisaille" and geometrically patterned
windows,--in frightful contrast to the delightful thirteenth-century
legends of Saint Clement and Saint Ildefonso, or that most absorbing
record of civic life depicted in the northern aisle. In studying the
windows of Leon, Lamperez y Romea's observations on Spanish glazing are
of interest: "In the fourteenth century the rules of glazing in Spain
were changed. Legends had fallen into disuse and the masters had learned
that, in the windows of the high nave, small medallions could not be
properly appreciated. They were then replaced by large figures, isolated
or in groups, but always one by one in the spaces determined by the
tracery. The coloring remained strong and vivid. The study of nature,
which had so greatly developed in painting and in sculpture, altered the
drawing little by little, the figures became more modeled and lifelike,
and were carried out with more detail. At the same time the coloring
changed by the use of neutral tints, violet, brown, light blues, rose,
etc. Many of the old windows are of this style. And so are the majority
of the windows of Avila, Leon, and Toledo, as it lasted in Spain
throughout the fifteenth century, and others which preserve the
composition of great figures and strong coloring, although there may be
noticed in the drawings greater naturalism and modeling."
These rules differed slightly from those followed in France, where, with
the exception of certain churches in the east, the windows of the
thirteenth century were richer in decoration, more luscious in coloring
and more harmonious in their tones than those of the fourteenth. There
is little in this later century that can compare with the
thirteenth-century series of Chartres figures.
The Leonese windows are perhaps loveliest late in the afternoon, when
the saints and churchmen seem to be entering the church through their
black-traceried portals, and, clad in heavenly raiment, about to descend
to the pavement,--
As softly green,
As softly seen,
Through purest crystal gleaming,
there to people the aisles and keep vigil at the altars of God to the
coming of another day.
There are, fortunately, scarcely any other colors or decorations,--or
altars off side aisles,--that might divert the attention from the
richness of glass. The various vaulting has the jointing of its
stonework strongly marked, but, with the exception of the slightly
gilded bosses, no color is applied. The glory of the glass is thus
enhanced. Owing to the great portions of masonry which have been
rebuilt, this varies in its tints, but the old was, and has remained, of
such an exquisitely delicate creamy color that the new interposed
stonework merely looks like a lighter, fresher shade of the old. The
restoration has been executed with rare skill and artistic feeling.
In studying the inner organism and structure of the edifice, one soon
sees how recklessly the original fabric was constructed and in how many
places it had to be rebuilt, strengthened and propped,--indeed,
immediately after its completion. Here, as was the general custom in the
greater early Gothic cathedrals, the building began with the choir and
Capilla Mayor, to be followed by the transepts, the portions of the
edifice essential to the service. The choir was probably temporarily
roofed over and the nave and side aisles followed. The exterior façades,
portals, and upper stories of the towers were carried out last of all by
the aid of indulgences, contributions, alms and concessions.