façade has a spacious portico, whose effect, however, is lessened by the
church being set so that you descend to it from the street. On one side
of the portico rises the tower, bold and graceful, showing from its base
to its open-lace stone turret an easy gradation of styles. This is the
tower that runs like an echo through a powerful modern novel set in
Oviedo, "La Regenta," by Leopoldo Alas. "_Poema romántica de piedra_,"
he calls it, "_delicado himno de dulces líneas de belleza muda_." Out of
the south transept open cloisters that made, the first day of our visit,
a charming picture in the sunshine after the weeks of cold rain; the red
pendants of the fuschia bushes caught the long-absent warmth with
palpable enjoyment. The shafts of the pillars here were oval shaped, not
a wholly successful change, as in profile view they appeared
unsymmetrical. Out of this south transept also opens the gem of the
church, the _Cámera Santa_, which has escaped the general renovation as
being too closely bound to the historical and religious past of Spain to
be tampered with. Alfonso _el Casto_ in 802 built this shrine, raised
twenty feet from the church pavement to preserve it from damp. A small
room with apostle-figures serving as caryatids leads to the sanctum
sanctorum where the famous relics are kept. They were brought here in a
Byzantine chest from Toledo when the Moors conquered that city, and
probably there are few collections of old jewelers' work equal to them.
Here is kept the cross Pelayo carried as a standard at the battle of
Cavadonga more than eleven hundred years before. Few can help feeling in
Spain the charm of continuous tradition. Never were her treasures
scattered by revolution; that this was Pelayo's very cross is not
problematic but a fact assured by unbroken record.
A printed sheet describing the sacred objects in the _Cámera Santa_ is
given to each visitor. It would be easy to turn many of these relics of
a more naïve, less logical age, into ridicule. To one, however, who
tries to see a new land with comprehending sympathy, to which alone it
will reveal itself, these relics, brought back from the Holy Land by
crusading knight or warrior bishop, are tender memorials of a great hour
of Christian enthusiasm. One of the strongest traits of Spanish
character is reverence for all links that bind it to its past,
especially its religious past, and happy it is for such old treasures
that they find shelter in a land where a _Cámera Santa_ is still a
shrine, not a museum. "_¡Triste de la nación que deja caer en el olvido
las ideas y concepciones de sus majores!_"
If Oviedo itself is disappointing to those who seek the antiquely
picturesque, the countryside that encircles it is doubly lovely. On a
bright Sunday morning we walked out a few miles to see the church of
Santa María de Naranco, built by Ramiro I back in 850. It was a steep
scramble up the mountain side, for the road was like a torrent bed.
Peasants on donkeys passed, on their way into the town for their day of
rest, some with brightly decorated bagpipes groaning out their
merriment. To avoid the sea of mud in the high road, we took short-cuts
up the hills, following a peasant who, seated sideways on her donkey,
balanced on her head a huge loaf of bread. And her bread, round and
flattened in the center, was the exact shape of the loaves chiseled,
centuries before, in the Bible scenes of Burgos choir-stalls. The old
woman smiled and nodded as she smoked her cigarettes, watching us pick
our way with difficulty where the tiny hoofs of her ass trod lightly.
What cares a Spanish peasant whether the road is good or bad when he has
a sure-footed donkey to carry him!
At length we reached the small church built by the third king after
Pelayo. It is a room thirty-six by fifteen feet, with a chamber at the
east and another at the west end. Along the north and south walls are
pillars from which spring the arcades, and these pillars and arches make
the support of the building; the walls merely fill in. This is the
earliest example in Spain of the separation into active and passive
members; whether the idea came from Lombardy or was of native birth is
not known.
We climbed still higher up the red sandstone hill, among gnarled old
chestnut trees, to where the ancient church of San Miguel de Lino
stands. The oriental windows, being in Spain, would naturally be thought
of Moorish origin, but their Eastern source antedates the Moor. They
came from the Byzantine East, by way of the Bosphorus, not the Straits
of Gibraltar. They are reminiscent of the time when the Goths, before
their invasion of Spain, lived around the Danube.
On July 25th the scene near these two churches is a striking one. The
village of Naranco is emptied of its folk that pious morn, as the
peasants, in the same tranquil beauty as in old Greece, lead their
garlanded oxen and heifers up to San Miguel. So unchanging are Spain's
customs that the festival is paid for out of the spoils taken at the
battle of Clavigo (in 846), where tradition says the loved patron of the
Peninsula, the Apostle St. James, "_él de España_," came to fight in
person. We were not so fortunate as to see this feast of Sant Jago, but
we stumbled on a beautiful minor scene. As we returned by Santa María de
Naranco, a group of peasants stood round the priest on the raised porch
of the church, the center of interest being a baby three days old. Few
women can resist a baptism, that solemn first step in a Christian life,
so we drew near. The father was a superb-looking youth of about twenty,
in a black velvet jacket; his crisp curly hair, his glow of color, and
the proud outline of his features made him fit subject for the artist.
The godmother, his sister it seemed from the resemblance, was a buxom
girl in Sunday finery; the godfather was a younger brother of fourteen,
who awkwardly held the precious burden. The old priest wore the wooden
clogs of the people and made a terrible racket with every step. From the
porch he led the way into the church, and after pausing half way to read
prayers,--a scuffling old sexton held aslant a dripping candle,--they
came to the baptismal font in the raised chamber at the west end. The
young father went forward to the altar steps to kneel alone, and the
godfather, with great earnestness, gave the responses. Then the _cura_
poured the blessed water on the tiny head, and to prevent cold wiped it
gently. The ceremony over, his wooden shoes clattered into the
sacristy, the sexton blew out the candle, and the agile godmother
claimed her woman's prerogative and tossed and crooned to the young
Christian as she tied ribbons and cap-strings. The two strangers who had
witnessed this moving little scene under the primitive carving of the
Visigothic church wished to leave a good-luck piece for the small
Manuela. But when they put the coin into the hand of the young parent
who still knelt before the altar, he returned it with a beautiful,
flashing smile. In halting Spanish they explained their good-luck
wishes, and in that spirit the gift was accepted.
Seen from Naranco, the red-tiled roofs of Oviedo encircled by
far-stretching mountains made a romantic enough scene. Seated on the
trunk of a chestnut tree we watched the sun set over the exquisite
valley. Immediately round us on the hillside had once stood the city of
King Ramiro, obliterated as completely as the earlier Ph[oe]nician and
Roman settlements in Spain. The dead city where we sat, the town below,
distant from the bustle of the world yet fast approaching it, the glow
and sweep of the sunset,--it is at moments such as these that the mind
enlarges to a swift comprehension, untranslatable in speech, of the
passing breath the ages are. The mountains change, the rivers
capriciously leave their beds,--especially in Spain, where bridges
stand lost in green meadows and are left undisturbed, for does not a
proverb say, "Rivers return to forsaken beds after a thousand years?"
And Spain has patience to wait! Whether it was the new-born child, the
forgotten city, the up-to-date town below, or just the sun setting over
that illimitable expanse of mountains, Santa María Naranco gave one an
hour of the higher philosophy.
In the after-glow we walked back to Oviedo. Along the way the returning
country people greeted us with ease and dignity: "_Vaya Usted con
Dios_," the beautiful salutation, "Go thou with God," heard from one end
of the land to the other. The beggar gives you thanks with it, the shop
man dismisses you, the friend takes farewell, but its pleasantest sound
is in the country, heard from the lips of clear-eyed peasants passing in
the evening light.
This peasantry is by instinct well-bred, proud of a pure descent, by
nature a gentleman, a _caballero_. A traveler's life and pocket are
absolutely secure in these unfrequented northern provinces of "dark and
scowling Spain." For a century those who have turned aside from the
beaten track have brought back the same tale of courtesy and
hospitality. There is much of Arcadian gentleness among these unlettered
people. The Spanish _labrador_ may not read or write, but he cannot be
called ignorant; statistics here do not guide one to a true knowledge.
The country people hand down in the primitive way, from one generation
to the other, a ripe store of human wisdom, that often gives them a
wider outlook on life and a deeper strength of character than that of
the educated man who shallowly criticises them. They are unspoiled and
very human, the women essentially feminine, the men essentially manly;
daily this note of virility strikes one,--one grows to love their
expressive, beautiful word, _varonil_. "The man in the saloon steamer
has seen all the races of men, and he is thinking of the things that
divide men,--diet, dress, decorum, rings in the nose as in Africa, or in
the ears as in Europe. The man in the cabbage field has seen nothing at
all; but he is thinking of the things that unite men,--hunger, and
babies, and the beauty of women, and the promise or menace of the sky."
When one can say a thing like that, one is born to appreciate Spain.
Will not Mr. Gilbert Chesterton go there and study some day her
untamable grand old qualities and describe her as she should be
described? If such a country population had had good government during
the past three hundred years instead of the worst of tyrannies, where
would it stand to-day? Though such a surmise is foolish, for perhaps it
is because of its isolation that the Spanish peasantry is racy and
vigorous. Knowing the hopelessness of battling against corruption in
high places in Madrid, it lived out of touch with modern life, elevated
by its intense faith, the hard-won inheritance from the
_Reconquista_,--and a peasant's faith is his form of poetry and
ideality, which when taken from him makes him lose in refinement and
charm.
Back in the Basque provinces the new idea had dawned on us that this was
not a spent, degenerate race, but a young unspoiled one, and every
excursion in the country parts of Spain made deeper the assurance of red
blood coursing in her veins. Corrupt government has deeply tainted the
city classes, has made loafers, and men who open their trusts to the
silver key, but the heart of the people is sound. It has been tragically
wounded by rulers to whom, an heroic trait, it has ever been loyal. If a
country after centuries of misrule had the same power to govern herself
as a nation that had had enlightened government for the same length of
time, would not one of the best arguments for good government be lost?
It may be a long time before Spain learns the restraint of self-rule.
But go among the vigorous mountaineers of the north, talk with the
patient, sober Castilian _labrador_, watch the Catalan men of industry
and you will see the possibility of her future. A noble esprit de corps
controls the Guardia Civil who are the keepers of law and security in
Spain, to whom a bribe is an insult. Let the same spirit extend to the
other departments,--to the post, to the railway, the civil government;
let the judge sit on an impregnable height; let the priest of Andalusia
have as solemn a realization of his office as the priest of Navarre, of
Aragon, of old Castile; let the women be given a wider education (though
may nothing ever change their present qualities as wives and mothers),
and Spain is on the right road.
Cavadonga was merely a two days' trip from Oviedo, yet we had to forego
it. The weather was too abominable; while Málaga on the southern coast
of Spain has an average of but fifty-two rainy days in the year, this
city on the northern coast has only fifty-two cloudless days. The
thought of a rickety diligence over miles of muddy roads kept enthusiasm
within bounds. After a short pause in the Asturian capital we took the
train back to León. The valleys were a veritable paradise; now we
skirted a wide river flowing under heavily-wooded hills, now we crossed
fields covered with the autumn crocus, and saw from the balconies of the
farmhouses yellow tapestries of corn cobs hung out to dry.
Some day, not so far distant as an ideal government in Spain, the lover
of independence and untouched nature will come to these northern
provinces instead of going to hotel-infested Switzerland. The temperate
climate, the trout and salmon rivers, the courtesy of the people, make
these valleys between the mountains and the sea an ideal tramping and
camping ground for the summer.
THE SLEEPING CITIES OF LEÓN
"I stood before the triple northern porch
Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings,
Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch,
Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say:
'Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot
Of faith so nobly realized as this.'"
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
There have been many efforts to divide Spain into right-angled
departments similar to those of her neighbor France. The individual land
throws off such efforts to bring her into geometric proportion: never
can her thirteen immemorial divisions, her thirteen historic provinces
be wiped out. Each is an entity with ineradicable characteristics and
customs. Their boundaries may seem confused on a paper map, but they are
reasonable in the flesh and blood geography of mountains and river
valleys, or the psychological geography of early affiliation and
conquest.
No Alfonso or Ferdinand will ever be King of Spain, but King of the
Spains, _Rey de las Españas_. _Mi paisano_, the term which stands for
the closest bond of fellowship, is used by an Aragonese of an Aragonese,
by a Catalan of a Catalan, never by an Aragonese of an Andalusian, or a
Catalan of a Castilian. The independent Basque provinces, (where the
monarch is merely a lord) the free mountain towns of Navarre,
stiff-necked Aragon, these never will merge themselves in Old Castile.
Nor can Catalonia, self-centered, humming with manufactures and seething
with anarchy, understand pleasure-loving Andalusia, that basks under
fragrant orange trees as it smiles its ceaseless _mañana_. Valencia and
Murcia, where crop follows crop in prodigal fruitfulness are the
antithesis of desolate Estremadura, and of that immortal desert of Don
Quixote the denuded steppes of New Castile, to their north. And the
mountain provinces of Galicia and the Asturias, of idyllic hill and
dale, yet with seaports fast awakening to commercial life, look with
little sympathy on the sluggish province of León that borders them.
Industrial advancement is on its gradual way in Spain, but there is not
a hint of its movement in this oldest of the separate kingdoms. Zamora,
Astorga, León, Salamanca, the romantic cities of the earlier days of
chivalry, lie asleep; the whistle of the railways has failed to rouse
them. You must lay aside all theories of modern comfort here, and make
the tour in the spirit of a pilgrim lover of the antique and
picturesque. What else could be expected in a province where the
peasantry still embroider their coarse linen sheets with castles and
heraldic lions, in a land where even the blazonry of a city rings with a
psalm, _Ego autem ad Deum clamavi_. The centuries of forays have
bequeathed a hardy endurance to the people, but they are the cause at
the same time of the scanty population of the plains, the tragic evil of
central Spain.
We got to the city of León the day of a horse fair. Fresh from
wide-awake Oviedo, it was like stepping back into an older world; here
was old Spain much as it was in the time of Guzmán[13] the Good, the
defender of Tarifa in 1294, whose _casa solar_ faced the plaza where the
fair was held. The peasants who bargained in groups, wore toga-draped
capes and wide-brimmed felt hats edged with an inch of velvet; every
horse in Spain must have been gathered there, and an equal number of
kind-eyed woolly little donkeys, essential factors of a Spanish scene.
"The Castilian donkey has a philosophic, deliberate air," wrote
Théophile Gautier on his sympathetic tour in the Peninsula seventy years
ago, "he understands very well they can't do without him; he is one of
the family, he has read 'Don Quixote,' and he flatters himself he
descends in direct line from the famous ass of Sancho Panza."
A step beyond the horse fair brought us to massive Roman walls with
frequent semi-circular towers; León's name comes from Augustus' 7th
Legion who fortified it against the highlanders of the north. Built into
the walls is the remarkable church of San Isidoro encrusted with later
work, but with the strong Romanesque lines still prominent. The pilgrims
who flocked from Europe to Santiago Compostella in the Middle Ages were
partly the means of bringing this style into Spain; thus San Isidoro is
of Burgundian origin, just as Santiago Cathedral resembles Saint-Sernin
in Toulouse, and the Catalan churches show Lombard features. Though the
Spaniard adapted the style to his own character, adding the original
feature of outside cloisters for the laity, its importation nipped in
the bud a just beginning national architecture, whose loss cannot but be
regretted. San Isidoro has a privilege seldom given, the Blessed
Sacrament being exposed every day of the year, and always before its
lighted altar one sees veiled figures kneeling. It served as the
pantheon for the kings who followed Ordoño II--twelfth in descent from
Pelayo--who removed his capital from Oviedo here, and the ancient burial
chamber still has ceilings painted in the stiff Byzantine manner with
obscure color, hard lines, and lack of perspective, probably the oldest
paintings in Spain. The "Romancero" tells how Jimena, the gallant,
golden-haired wife of the Cid, came here after the birth of her child to
attend Mass. She wore the velvet robes given her by the king on the day
of her marriage, a richly jeweled hair-net, gift of the Infanta Urraca,
her rival; around her neck painted medals of San Lázaro and San Pedro,
_santos de su devoción_, and so beautiful was she that the sun stood
still in his course to see her better. At the church door the king met
her and escorted her in honor, for was not her husband away fighting the
infidel for his monarch? There is so true a ring to the old ballads that
Jimena lives a real personage.
"_Oviedo la sacra, Toledo la rica, Sevilla la grande, Salamanca la
fuerte, León la bella_" runs an old verse on Spanish Cathedrals. And the
Cathedral of León merits its name. It is harmoniously beautiful, pure
French-Gothic, graceful and elegant, classic if the word is permissible
for the unrestrained individualism of Gothic art. Built in one age
without intermission, in 1303 the Bishop announced that no further
contributions were needed, and the centuries since have left the church
untouched. Here no cold Herrera portal usurps some lovely pointed work
and Churrigueresque extravagancies are not prominent: the late
restorations have followed the first plans.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1910, by Underwood & Underwood_
THE CATHEDRAL OF LEÓN]
Always excepting the _Pórtico de la Gloria_ in Santiago, the west
doorways of León Cathedrals stand for the best in Spanish sculpture. The
statue of the _Virgen Blanca_ in the center is famous. Around her the
saints and apostles are grouped in appealing attitudes;--out of
proportion though they may be as to hands and feet, their sincerity
covers all flaws: here, a homely face with care-worn wrinkles of
goodness; there, one beaming in satisfaction to be standing in such a
chosen band. The lunette over the central door is delightful. On one
side, in Heaven, a clerk plays the organ, while a boy blows the bellows,
and groups stand chatting near, for a Spaniard's idea of bliss, in those
days also, took the form of ease and desultory talk. Hell, on the
opposite side, not to be outdone, has two urchins blowing bellows as
well, not to make music but to quicken a fiery caldron into which devils
are thrusting the sinners. The enjoyment of the old sculptor in his
Heaven and Hell was too keen to be confined in the lunette and he has
spread himself over the curving of the arches; in spite of time and
retouching these three doorways show exquisite detail chiseling.
"About their shoulders sparrows had built nests
And fluttered, chirping, from gray perch to perch,
Now on a miter poising, now a crown,
Irreverently happy."
Within León Cathedral all is quiet and solemn, a true beauty of
holiness. There is no clutter of side chapels in the nave but a sheer
sweep of windows filled with the jeweled glass of Flemish masters.[14]
These windows come as a surprise in a land where churches are guarded
from the sun, and often the open triforium and clearstory, as at Avila,
are walled up later to darken the interior. The chancel and choir are
worth detail study. The _coro_ seats have panels carved with single
figures,--saints with their emblems, warriors with raised visors,
placid-faced nuns, thoughtful bishops, gallant pages with their crossed
feet gracefully poised,--all of a noble type, with high brow and
aquiline nose. Spain has comparatively nothing to show in the way of
frescoes, she had no early Masaccio, no Giotto, no Filippo Lippi, to
paint the costumes and features of his generation, but wood carvings are
her substitute; in them, and in her unrivaled tombs can be read the
contemporary history of warrior, bishop, and page. The _retablo_ of the
High Altar is of the same simple elegance as the rest of the church. The
usual towering one of carved scenes would have been singularly out of
place, it is appropriate for the big dark interior of Seville Cathedral,
but here are grace and restraint instead of grandeur and mystery, and
most suitable are the ancient paintings of varying sizes, gathered from
scattered churches and framed together. Radiating round the chancel are
chapels that give to the exterior view of the apse a truly French-Gothic
air, flying buttresses supporting the cap of the _capilla mayor_.
Romanesque, Gothic, and Plateresque are each well represented in León
City. In the last style is the noticeable convent of San Marcos that
stands isolated outside the town beside the swift blue-green river. The
Knights of Santiago built a resting-place on their pilgrimage route back
in the 12th century, but the present building is of Isabella's day, and
the architect has given free rein to his silversmith's arabesques and
medallions, and scattered pilgrim shells all over the façade of the
church. We tried to get into the Museum, now in the convent, as it
contains some good wood carvings, but an aged beggar at the door
explained "_Mañana_," the easy "to-morrow," as prevalent in León as in
Andalusia,--then rising to the occasion as only an Italian or Spanish
beggar can, he swept open his toga-draped cape, smiling as he pointed to
the entrance door: "To-morrow, after your morning chocolate, it will be
open for you."
It was sunset as we turned away. The long mass of San Marcos stood
boldly against the red glow of the sky. The horizon was outlined by the
blue mountains of Asturias. With our imagination filled with the old
days when pilgrims flocked here from England, from the forests of
Germany, from the Po and the Danube, suddenly over the ancient bridge
rode a troop of cavaliers on prancing steeds, in cloaks and plumed hats.
The kindly blessed illusion hid the fact that our pilgrim-knights were
sturdy peasants in the national _capa_, riding their long-haired horses
back from the city fair.
"Sin el vivo calor, sin el fecundo
Rayo de la ilusión consoladora
¿Que fuera de la vida y del mundo?"
asks one of Spain's poets of the 19th century, Núñez de Arce, and in his
native country it takes but little effort of the imagination to repeople
the solemn churches, the narrow city streets, or the treeless plain
with the romantic figures of the past.
The following day at dawn, after a miserable night in rooms like icy
death, a true pilgrim night of endurance, we took the train for the
west. As we entered the railway carriage _Reservado para Señoras_ a
sleepy railway-guard stumbled out of the further door; all through the
journey in the north, we roused these cozily-ensconced railway-officials,
for so rare are ladies alone on this route, that the conductors have
fallen into the habit of sleeping in the carriage reserved for them.
When our tickets were collected we were given many a severe look for
daring to upset a _cosa de España_.