under an early moon, for in the daytime it is modern, flat, and
unpicturesque, a sharp contrast to Burgos. The moonlight soon tempted us
out to explore the town. In the Plaza Mayor all was animation, an
unbroken promenade of people under the arcades before the gay shops,
officers in bright uniforms, and ladies in Parisian hats; it might have
been any provincial city in Europe. Apart from this active lung of the
town, the quiet streets were so deserted that our footsteps roused a
startling echo. We passed under the huge fragment of the Cathedral, a
nave only; the transepts stand roofless, and a new ruin is as depressing
a thing as there is in life. The architect of the Escorial who designed
this, Herrera, gave his name to the pseudo-classic style, "art made
tongue-tied by authority," that followed the Plateresque abuse of
ornament, just as his in turn was succeeded by the fantastic prancing
art of Churriguera, again a reaction. An example of this last, the
University, stood in the square near the Cathedral, and even the kindly
moonlight could not soften the overladen meaningless mass; the cold
severe lines of Herrera were dignified and regrettable in comparison.
For me a Churrigueresque building is the ne plus ultra of bad taste in
architecture, and Spain has a wealth of them. That man can raise a
Santiago and a León, and some four hundred years later a San Isidro of
Madrid, that the same race can carve a Pórtico de la Gloria and the
Transparente of Toledo, show interesting possibilities of retrogression!
Alas! we thought, after the strong old Gothic of Burgos, is Valladolid
going to be just barren like its Cathedral and chaotic like its
University? We went on in the moonlight and came to a white gleaming
plaza where a church of the thirteenth century stood isolated, Santa
María la Antigua, with a beautiful Lombard tower, and also that feature
peculiar to Romanesque art in Spain, an outside cloister for the laity.
This was decidedly better.
The next morning when we came to explore the town, though we found no
Gothic, we had our first introduction to a phase of architecture which
is confined to the Peninsula. It coincided with Isabella's reign, and
was a characteristic outburst of its new wealth and conquests,
appropriately efflorescent and grandiose, though if carried one step
beyond it would be decadent. This short period is called Plateresque,
from _platero_, silversmith, for its elaborate surface decoration of
scrolls, medallions, and heraldic ornament is sublimated smith's work.
It occurred during the transition from Gothic to Renaissance, so it
combined itself with either one or the other of these styles. It may be
dull to give these pedagogical details and yet, as I hinted, if one is
to understand Spain, one must have some smattering of architecture.
Valladolid is worth stopping to see on one's entrance to Spain, if it
were only for the clear-cut summary it gives of the different schools,
always excepting Gothic. As it and Salamanca were the two places where
the silversmith's art flourished, so they are the two centers for the
best Plateresque buildings. They happen to be, unfortunately, the two
cities that suffered most from the French invasion. Their churches and
colleges were pillaged and battered, and though in modern times they
have been restored, the first touch of perfection, "the first fine
careless rapture" can never be recaught.
[Illustration: THE FAÇADE OF SAN GREGORIO, VALLADOLID]
Valladolid has three notable examples of Plateresque, San Pablo, San
Gregorio, and the Colegio de Santa Cruz. If you have a weakness for
the art of the builder this introduction to the rich and admirable
expression of Spain at the zenith of her material power is an occasion.
There is an excitement in coming on something original which has not
been hackneyed by photograph. Thus, when I first entered the square
where San Pablo's façade rises, I stood still in astonishment; I had
never seen anything like this, and at first I could not tell if I liked
it or not. Tier on tier soared the carved shields and crests, bizarre
but nevertheless stately. Close by was the even stranger façade of San
Gregorio, one vast crest with elaborate arabesques and statues. Being
founded by the great primate of Toledo, Cardinal Ximenez, it was
appropriate to meet here in the courtyard with some Mudéjar work,
Christian and Moorish elements combined. It was in this convent that the
Dominican, Bartolomé Las Casas, "Apostle of the Indians," spent the last
twenty years of his energetic, troubled life, writing his history of the
Colonies. He died at the advanced age of ninety-two, "A man who would
have been remarkable in any age of the world," says Ticknor, "and who
does not seem yet to have gathered in the full harvest of his honours."
The third of the Plateresque buildings, well within Renaissance lines
this last, the College of the Holy Cross founded by Cardinal Mendoza,
now contains a grammar school, a library of some thousand volumes open
to the public, and the Museum of the city.
On no account should the _Museo_ be missed, for it holds a wonderful
collection of wood carvings, an art which is to Spain what Italy's
frescoes are to her: these statues were gathered chiefly from convents
sacked by the French. Valladolid was personally associated with this
national development, for most of the master-carvers lived at one time
or another in the city. Spain's best sculptor, Berruguete, worked for
years for the monks of San Benito, the _retablo_ of whose church is now
in detached statues in the museum. He had studied under Michael Angelo,
and though he had a distinct personality of his own, he plainly showed
Italian influence. His pupil, Esteban Jordán, lived here, also the
exaggerated Juan de Juní, and a more famous master, Alonzo Cano, painter
and architect too. Cano, who died a canon in Granada Cathedral, is said
to have fled the town--his house is still pointed out--when accused of
the murder of his wife, though later investigations have thrown doubt on
the whole story. This irascible master, one of the warmest hearted of
men underneath, taught drawing to the Don Baltasar Carlos whom Velasquez
painted, and I fear the infante found him very cross at times. Velasquez
and Cano were friends and must have talked over that charming little
prince. Cano was indeed a character. When a corporation demurred at the
price of a statue he had made for them he shattered the image with a
blow; and on his death bed he could not bring himself to kiss an
inartistic crucifix, saying, "Give me a plain cross that I may venerate
_Jesucristo_ as he is pictured in my own mind."
The room of coarsely-carved statues, formerly used in the Holy Week
processions, should be passed with a glance, but the collection of
smaller works deserves long study. The most beautiful group I thought
was the Baptism in the Jordan by a later carver, Gregorio Hernández, of
Galicia, who died in Valladolid in 1636. His art is not classic, indeed
most Spanish sculptors cared little for the ideal perfection of the
human body, their strength lay in the individual portrait, not in
rendering a type. Hernández softened the crudity or the realist school
to which he belonged by depicting nobility of face and bearing. The
scene of the Jordan is a panel with the two chief figures life-sized in
full relief. The Baptist, his well-modeled limbs strong from life in the
desert, leans forward to pour the river water on the head of his Lord,
with an expression of such vivid rapture and awe that it holds you
spellbound. There is little in art that can surpass this in emotional
sincerity. The story of the Gospel is told to its fullest possibility.
What the sculptor felt in every fiber he has succeeded in making others
feel, and though an expression so poignant may not be highest art, it
justifies itself by its direct appeal to the human heart. It is told of
Hernández that he never undertook a work till he had first prayed. He
has here also a statue of St. Teresa, spoiled by the heavy paint, and a
bust of St. Anne, successfully colored. Even if you are prepared to find
the wood carvings painted it frets you; it almost spoils the statues,
but it was the custom and must be accepted. "_Es la costumbre_" is a
closing argument in a country whose link with the past has never been
rudely broken.
If her remarkable wood carvings come as a surprise, so will some of the
practical developments of this small progressive city. The hospital that
looks out on the leafy park of the Magdalena is run in approved modern
fashion. A brisk young doctor who spoke English, having learned from a
friend in the English College here, showed us over the wards with
legitimate pride. They radiated from a big central rotunda; on both
sides of each ward were large windows and at the end of each a pretty
altar. There were five hundred public beds, and private rooms were to be
had for the sum of two dollars a week! The greeting between doctor and
patients was a pleasant thing to see,--he chatted and joked with the
children, and, as we left, stopped at the door to lift with real
kindness an ill man who had just arrived in a gayly-painted country
cart. The newcomer was a gentle-faced Castilian, whose sons had brought
him in from the plains; as the stalwart boys carried the trembling old
man I thought of another touching hospital scene. Perhaps Rab and his
friends came to my mind because bounding round us on our visit to the
hospital was a beautiful Scotch collie. "Laddie" was an unfamiliar sight
on a Spanish street; he belonged to the English College and is a great
pet of the seminarians.
In Valladolid are two foreign institutions: the Scotch college, founded
by a Colonel Semple in 1627; and the English, which continues the
foundation of St. Albans, and has relics of its name-saint of the third
century. It was endowed in Spain by Sir Francis Englefield, who retired
here after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Some forty English
students are educated for the priesthood and return on their ordination
for work in their native land. Naturally the great hour of this college
was during the religious persecutions under Elizabeth, when it was death
to be a priest in England. Twenty-seven from this one small group were
executed. Their portraits hang along the cloisters: Cadwallader, Stark,
Bell, Walpole, Weston, Sutheron,--each of the heroic band started from
these quiet halls to meet a martyr's death.
Controversy is out of date, I hope, to-day. But there is such a thing as
fair-mindedness, and a visit to Spain at every step shows she has not
had her share of it from English-speaking peoples. With every chapter of
our guide book railing at the Inquisition, I could not help feeling that
these martyred Englishmen should not be so completely forgotten. Not
that the _tu quoque_ argument excuses persecution on either side. But an
age should be judged by its own ethics or true views of history are
impossible. The New Englanders who, two hundred years later than
Isabella's institution, hanged a few Quakers on Boston Common were none
the less moral men; and General Robert E. Lee fighting for slavery in
the nineteenth century is a man we have a right to admire. The mere fact
of the Inquisition being founded by that magnanimous woman called by
Bacon "an honor to her sex and the cornerstone of the greatness of
Spain" should tell us its motives were sincere. Her age had not yet
learned the lesson, which we have acquired slowly, bit by bit through
experience, that political or religious existence is possible with
divided factions, not only possible but that a nation is more vigorous
because of them. As Bishop Creighton wisely says: "The modern conception
of free discussion and free thought is not so much the result of a
firmer gasp of moral principles as it is the result of the discovery
that uniformity is not necessary for the maintenance of political
unity." Isabella's age agreed that persecution was necessary to preserve
Christianity. And since only Spain was in immediate contact with Islam,
and centuries of crusade against the invading infidel had the natural
result of making the Spaniard sternly orthodox, it was there that the
Inquisition flourished.
It dragged on for over three centuries, and from 1481 to 1812, 35,000
people were burned,[8] these numbers being Richard Ford's, to whom the
Inquisition was as a red rag to a bull. The German scholar Schack
acknowledges that all the Moors and heretics burned in Spain by the
Holy Office do not equal the women witches burned alive in Germany
during the seventeenth century alone. In France, in the one night of St.
Bartholomew, almost as many victims fell as during the whole three
hundred years of the Inquisition. Of England the publishing of recent
investigations makes it needless to speak; blood flowed in torrents
there. Besides those well known ones who met death under Mary Tudor, the
Catholic martyrdoms give such details as the "Scavenger's Daughter,"
that cramping circle of iron; "Little Ease," where a prisoner, could not
sit or stand or lie down; needles thrust under the nails; the
rack-master of the Tower boasting he had made Alexander Briant longer by
a foot than God had made him; the general custom of cutting down the
victim from the gallows while still alive to tear out his heart and
quarter him,--accounts that put the _Autos da Fé_ in the shade. In the
annals of Spain is not a scene that equals the blood curdling horror of
the martyrdom in Dorchester, England, of Hugh Green in the year 1642.[9]
Yet an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German, if fanaticism or cruelty are
mentioned, makes his inevitable trite reference to the Spanish
Inquisition. It has been made the scape-goat of all religious
persecution. Abuse has so fixed the idea that it was a barbarous machine
controlled by contorted natures to whom bloodshed was a revelry that any
effort to place it in a truer light is sure to be called retrogression.
I am far from attempting a defense of this painful aberration of the
Christian mind, but what I hold is, if a student went to the records of
Alcalá and Simancas, open free to all, not to search out the hundred
mistaken cases from the ten thousand proven ones, the method up to this,
but, following the first law of intellectual work, investigation without
preconceived bias, if he tried to understand this phase of man's slow
development _per errorem ad veritatem_, then the thin-lipped,
gleaming-eyed, bloodthirsty Inquisitor of the popular fancy would be
taken from the pillory where he has been pelted these centuries past,
and his mistaken sincerity stand justified by the conditions of his
time.
The records prove that the Holy Office was used seldom against scholars
but against relapsed Mohammedans and Jews, false _beati_, sorcerers, and
witches. "_Ningún hombre de mérito científico fué quemado por la
Inquisición_," is the clear statement of one of the greatest of living
scholars, Menéndez y Pelayo, and he who would cross swords with that
erudite champion must be sure indeed of his assertions. Not one Spanish
thinker or statesman, such as Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More, the
Carthusian priors, Houghton, Webster, and Laurence, the poet Robert
Southwell, the scholarly Edmund Campion, and a host of others,[10]
graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, executed for their faith during the
hundred and fifty years of religious persecution in England, not one man
of like standing was put to death in Spain. Had he been, some righteous
hater of the "ferocious Inquisitors," would ere this have produced his
name and works. Archbishop Talavera was accused but was finally
justified; if the poet Luis de León was imprisoned, he was set free on
examination. It was not his own countrymen but Calvin in Geneva, who had
the Spanish scholar, the Unitarian, Miguel Servet burned alive, and it
was the mild Melanchthon who wrote to the reformer saying: "The Church
owes thee gratitude. I maintain that the tribunal has acted in
accordance with justice in having put to death a blasphemer." In Germany
at that period the civil courts inflicted capital punishment on sorcery,
blasphemy, and church robbery; had the same law held in Spain the
number of the Inquisition executions would be appreciably lowered. Lord
Bacon, who was a just and humane man, mentions as a matter of course
that in his time the English civil courts used torture: the Peninsula
was not ahead of its time in this respect.
As for that debated subject the effect on the Spanish character of the
_Santo Oficio_, prejudices have built up so twisted a labyrinth that the
best way out for one who would keep his level-headed balance is to hold
fast to the thread of internal evidence. Unconscious of writing history
for the future, hence his unassailable veracity, Cervantes tells in
detail of the life in court and tavern, in the town and on the desolate
highways after the Inquisition had flourished for more than a century.
Does he portray a degraded race, finger on lips whispering, "Hush, or
you will be overheard"? If the Spaniard was ground down in fear and
deceit why is it that to-day, of all the peoples of the continent, he is
the most independent in character? It has been said that a burgher of
Amsterdam does not differ more from a Neapolitan, than a Basque from an
Andalusian, yet in this trait of sturdy independence all Spaniards are
alike; the historian Ticknor wrote during his stay in Spain, "The lower
class is, I think, the finest _material_ I have met in Europe to make a
great and generous people." If under the Inquisition "every
intellectual impulse was repressed,"[11] how dared theologians and
philosophers, such as Vives, Isla, and Feijóo boldly attack with their
pens superstitions and degenerated religious customs? Is the poetry of
Juan de la Cruz, Luis de León and the prose of Teresa, the work of souls
who feared to adore their God freely? And is it not undeniable that the
two golden centuries of Spanish art and literature flourished under this
bugbear horror, this "_coco de niños y espantajo de bobos_," as Menéndez
y Pelayo calls it?
Used chiefly against Judaism and Islamism, occasionally the Inquisition
became the tool of a tyrannic king for private vengeance. Indeed, there
are some historians such as von Ranke, Lenormant, de Maistre, who hold
it to have been more a royal than an ecclesiastic instrument, fostered
by the Hapsburgs to augment their autocratic rule.[12] Certainly all
confiscated property went to the Crown.
Man's slow development _per errorem ad veritatem_, slow indeed one may
say, in the face of certain realities of our own time. Happily the
generations of cant and holier-than-thou are passing, and we are looking
history more honestly in the face. It is dawning on us that religious
persecution in 1492 is no more frightful than slavery in 1860 or an
Opium War in 1843.
Modern Spain realizes the wrong of persecution, the farce of a religion
of love using the sword, as thoroughly as does every other civilized
country. Outside the church of St. Philip Neri in Cadiz is a tablet
proudly commemorating the abolition of the Inquisition within its walls
in 1812.
To return to less nettlesome themes. The little English College, so
interesting a memorial of past history, a forgotten haven of refuge in
Old Spain, must be a peaceful memory to look back on by priests whose
later lives are spent in Birmingham or London slums. The pleasant
sitting-room of each inmate, the recreation hall with its theater, the
library, with the latest English books jostling old Spanish tomes,--all
spoke of contented full days. We turned the parchment leaves where the
college records for its three hundred years in Spain have been kept,
where each student is mentioned, from the troubled first days down to
the group of ten who had arrived from England a week before our visit,
among them a young Reginald Vaughan, nephew of the Cardinal.
With up-to-date hospital and busy manufactures, Valladolid does not seem
like an ancient capital of the Spanish court. We would read in our guide
book that the miserable Juan II had his favorite of a lifetime, Álvaro
de Luna, beheaded in the big square; that here Juan's noble daughter
married Ferdinand of Aragon; and that, seated on a throne in the Plaza
Mayor, Charles V pardoned the remaining Comuneros, the rebels who had
dared assert the federal principle against his centralization of
government, Spain's last outcry before she sank under the blighting
tyranny of her Hapsburg and Bourbon rulers. Such past happenings were
interesting, but they would have the same meaning if read of in London
or Boston. However, there were two memories of Valladolid that were
vivid enough to haunt one as one walked about its hum-drum streets: they
are associated with the saddest hours of two supreme men.
No. 7 Calle de Cristóbal Colón is the insignificant house where
Isabella's High Admiral died in 1506, in obscurity and neglect, his
patroness dead, and Ferdinand ungrateful. A hundred years later, in
another small house, now owned by the government, Cervantes lived in
poverty. Unknown and undivined he walked these streets, looking at the
passers-by with his wise, tolerant eyes. Fresh, perhaps, from writing
the monologue on the Golden Age, delivered by the Don over a few brown
acorns of inspiration, Cervantes in threadbare cape went to his humble
scrivener's work, the golden time of justice and kindness existing only
in his own gallant heart. It was in Valladolid that the ladies of his
household, widowed sisters, niece, his daughter and wife, sewed to gain
their daily bread, and as if penury were not enough, here they were
thrown into prison because a young noble, wounded in a street brawl, was
carried into their house to die.
Cervantes' life reads like one of the romantic tales he loves to digress
with in his great novel, when grandee, barber and priest, court lady,
Eastern damsel, and _labrador's_ daughter, gather round the inn
table--the servants a natural part of the group--in the easy meeting of
the classes which is still a reality in Spain. Born at Alcalá,
Cervantes' first bent was toward literature, but having gone to Rome in
the suite of a cardinal, in Italy he joined the army against the
infidel. He fought at Lepanto, where his bravery drew on him the notice
of Don John of Austria, that alluring young leader of whom one of his
state council wrote, "Nature had endowed him with a cast of countenance
so gay and pleasing that there was hardly anyone whose good-will and
love he did not immediately win." It makes a pleasant picture, the visit
of this high-spirited young hero to his wounded soldier in the hospital
of Messina. Later, Cervantes fought at Naples, at Tunis, in Lombardy,
making part of his century's stirring history, and all the while storing
his mind with the culture of Italy. It was when returning to Spain that
some Algerian pirates took him prisoner. His five years' captivity in
Africa stand an unsurpassed exhibition of grandeur of character, proving
that the highest gifts of mind and heart go together in perfect accord.
Loaded with chains, twice brought to be hanged with a rope around his
neck, his knightly spirit rose above all misery. There were twenty-five
thousand wretched Christians then in bondage in Algiers. Cervantes
waited on the sick, shared his food with the more destitute, encouraged
the despairing,--a Christian in the fullest sense of the word is the
testimony of a Fray Juan Gil, who, belonging to a brotherhood for the
redemption of prisoners, worked for his release. In this harsh school
"_donde aprendió a tener paciencia en las adversidades_"--the
adversities that were to follow him all his life--was chastened to
self-effacement and a sublime patience an ardent spirit that by nature
chafed against wrong.
What wonder that the late flowering of this man's soul, the book written
when past middle age, should be of chivalry all compact, a nobility of
sentiment exposed half seriously, half in jest! What wonder that in the
midst of laughter the voice breaks with tenderness for the lovable
_caballero andante_! His Quixote is Cervantes' own unquenchable spirit.
A bitter experience of life never deadened his faith in man nor dulled
his heroic gayety. With exquisite humor he realized the alien aspect of
such trust and love and faith in the disillusioning realities of life,
so he veiled it all under the kindly cloak of a cracked-brained knight.
The wandering adventures of a fool make the wisest, most human-hearted
book ever written.