Spanish painters. Murillo can only be really known in Seville, in whose
gallery he predominates as does Velasquez here. It is a coincidence that
both of Spain's first painters should have been born in the same
Andalusian city, within twenty years of each other, and that the ashes
of both should have been scattered to the wind in the French invasion.
Zurbaran's white-robed monks,--he painted Carthusians as Murillo did
Franciscans, and Roelas the Jesuits,--are always effective, but they
miss being taken seriously by a dash of pose in them. As for Ribera's
martyrdoms, (his portraits are very fine,) if chance led us into his
room, one glance and we fled; it is not pleasant to see people
disemboweled. The same shuddering horror you feel before some of Goya's,
as for instance that awful but tremendously moving blood-red _Dos de
Mayo_. Goya is almost too crabbedly individual to be liked unreservedly.
He is in a way the Hogarth of the South, with a gruesome, fantastic
imagination, quite pitiless to the vices or follies of his generation;
witness the portrait of the Infanta María Josefa, or the appalling group
surrounding Charles IV, "a grocer's family who have won the big lottery
prize," Gautier cleverly said of it. At times you think Goya had no
elevation of soul, then you come on a portrait that shows he could see
something besides the weakness of human nature. He was a true Aragonese,
stubborn, energetic, analytic. And it should never be forgotten that he
painted in that desert of art, the eighteenth century, and swept aside
the weak methods of generations to return to Velasquez's vigor of
technique.
No visitor in Madrid can possibly miss the Prado gallery, but it is not
difficult to omit the Armory; for, discouraged by going to see sights
not worth the effort, you may think the _Armería_ just the usual dull
collection found in capitals, of interest only to the specialist. No
greater mistake could be made. This Madrid museum is like nothing of its
kind in Europe, it is an unrivaled show, one hour there and you learn
volumes of Spanish history.
It consists of a large hall, down whose center is massed a splendid
array of horsemen, caparisoned in historic armor. The manikins have been
fitted out thoroughly. Their gauntleted hands hold the polished spears,
and ostrich plumes wave from their helmets; they give an astonishing
effect of life. Among the thirty-odd suits worn by Charles V, here is
the identical one Titian painted in the equestrian portrait, decked with
the similar doge-red scarf and plumes. There is the gallant little
Baltasar Carlos' suit of mail; the armor of that Bayard of Spain,
Garcilaso de la Vega; of the hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria, and
some of the banners and ship-prows of his victory; the suit of Charles'
general, the Marquis of Pescara, Vittoria Colonna's husband; the tent of
Francis I at the battle of Pavia; the arms of Juan de Padilla, who led
the uprising of the independent cities against Charles. History is
followed from earliest times in raw gold Visigothic crowns, the sword of
Pelayo at Cavadonga, the sword of the great slayer of Moors, King
Ferdinand _el Santo_ of Castile, and the winged-dragon helmet of as
mighty a battle leader, King Jaime _el Conquistador_ of Aragon, down to
the last stage of the seven hundred years' crusade, in Isabella's armor;
that of the Gran Capitán; Boabdil's engraved with Moorish letters; and,
finally, the surrendered keys of Granada. Spain's majestic hour lives
again here.
As we left the Armoury, a present-day scene presented itself and it
struck me as very characteristic of a country where the grandee,
shopkeeper, and peasant live side by side in friendliness. Before us lay
the big courtyard of the Royal Palace, the King's very doorstep as it
were, and it overflowed with hundreds of children, nursemaids, families,
and soldiers; the crowd being chiefly of a popular character. They tell
of strict Spanish etiquette, but it appears to me as if the people here
get nearer to their king than elsewhere. Rough boys and men were pouring
into the Armoury to wander with pride among the plumed knights, and by
their glance they showed they felt themselves part of the stirring past.
Each knew himself a _cristiano viejo_[23] whose forebears had struck a
blow for the _Reconquista_.
TOLEDO
"But changeless and complete
Rise unperturbed and vast
Above our din and heat
The turrets of the Past,
Mute as that city asleep
Lulled with enchantments deep
Far in Arabian dreamland built where all things last."
WILLIAM WATSON
Toledo has been compared to Durham, but it is the similarity between a
splendid lean old leopard and a beautiful domestic cat. The largest
river of Spain, the Tagus, without a touch of England's lovely verdure
to soften it, sweeps impetuously round the Spanish ecclesiastic city,
through a wild gorge from which it derives its name (_tajo_, cut) and
above the river-cliffs rise sun-whitened houses, innumerable
monasteries, and church towers, in a compact, imposing mass. Across the
river is a barren wilderness, solitary as if never trod by foot of man,
and this, close to an historic city. Stern and a bit fanatic,--for she
has lived for generations, with sword in hand to guard her
altars,--Toledo represents ascetic, exalted Castile as completely as
palm-crowned Seville, stretching out in the meadows by the winding
Guadalquivir sums up the ease-loving character of Andalusia. The thought
of the Moor is never long absent in the fertile southern province, but
here, though for a time he ruled as conqueror, every stone of the city
tells of crusading Christian ideals.
Most travelers run down to Toledo from Madrid for merely a day, whereas
it is eminently a spot for a pause of several days. Not only once but a
second and a third time should you cross the Alcántara bridge and climb
the silent hills beyond it. From there Toledo stands up in haunting
majesty, one of the imperial things in the world. Wild footpaths lead
along the hills, so you can follow the immense loop of the river and
return to the city by St. Martin's bridge.
The desolate Tagus is as unchanged by the centuries as the hills
confining it. Toledo's first mayor, the Cid, looked on much the same
scene that we know, nor could it have been very different when, earlier,
the last of the Gothic kings, Roderick, saw the fair Florinda bathing by
St. Martin's bridge,--which untimely spying the legend says brought the
African invasion on Spain; the same as when King Wamba ruled here, and
his name is synonymous with "as old as the hills"; the same as when the
city's patron, Leocadia, was hurled down from the cliffs in Dacian's
persecution.
Once inside the Puerta del Sol (a real gateway, not a plaza where a gate
once stood, like its Madrid namesake), we found ourselves in a fretwork
of narrow streets where we got lost at every turning. These twisting
passages were so built that if the city walls were captured, the people
could still offer a stiff resistance. Zig-zag up and down the lanes go,
every few yards coming to a small triangle, out of which lead three
narrow ways,--which to choose is ever the bewildering question. Push on
boldly, the tortuous streets are worth exploring at random, and if you
wander long enough you are sure to find yourself before the Cathedral or
in the famous Zocodover Square. Morning and afternoon we were out
exploring, with a good map to guide us, yet up to the very last day, we
lost the way half a dozen times. The constant uncertainty was
fascinating; only in such unhurried rambles does the _genius loci_
reveal itself. Now we stumbled on San Cristo de la Luz, in whose
diminutive chamber are Visigothic capitals, Moorish arches, and a
Christian _retablo_; it was here Alfonso VI heard his first Mass in the
conquered city, the Cid Campeador at his side. Now we stopped to see the
empty church of El Tránsito, in the Mudéjar style, built originally as
a synagogue, and we found there an astonishingly beautiful arabesque
frieze. This Mudéjar style (Moorish and Christian architecture mixed)
has here what I think is its most perfect example, Santa María la
Blanca, also a former synagogue, then a church, and at present national
property.
As usual, our first visit after arrival, was to the Cathedral, not so
easy to find as in most places, since it is not set on the highest part
of the city, and is shut in with cluttering houses. As usual, too, like
most Spanish churches, the exterior is meaningless; but the interior is
a vigorous, pure Gothic, which is called the most national expression of
this style in Spain. Like Seville, the ground plan is a _sala_, or hall;
though the aisles here lessen in height so rapidly that they give a far
different effect from Seville's lofty nave. The double-aisled ambulatory
as at Avila is unique and beautiful in its effect. Spanish Gothic may be
less artistically faultless than that of France, but certainly its
massive grandeur and even its very extravagance render it many times
more picturesque.
The primate of Spanish cathedrals is the richest in tombs, paintings,
_rejas_, carvings, vestments, and jewels, even after the French carried
away some hundred weight of silver treasure. Unfortunately, it was here
we began to feel like tourists and to experience the jaded weariness of
the personally conducted. We had wandered freely over the churches of
the north, for a slight fee the verger had unlocked the choir and
separate chapels, and then had gone off to let us examine them
undisturbed. Here the flocking tourist has brought about the pest of
tickets for each separate part of the church, and the guide, when one
pauses to loiter, impatiently rattles his keys. And one longs to loiter
in the most perfect _coro_ of Spain, where Maestro Rodrigo, and
Berruguete, and Vignani carved; in the _sala capitular_, or the Alvaro
de Luna chapel of florid Gothic, where the beheaded Grand-Constable lies
guarded by four stone knights of Santiago.
Since Spanish cathedrals were gradual growths, here is to be found, in a
mass of violent sculpture called the _Transparente_, the bad taste of
the eighteenth century. The bishop who erected the _Transparente_ lies
buried near by, covered by a mammoth slab of brass, on which, in bold
letters, you read, "Here lies dust, ashes, nothing," an epitaph whose
ironic, fatigued simplicity does not ring true; very different from that
genuinely humble epitaph in Worcester Cathedral, that one impressive
word "Miserrimus." _Transparente_ and tombstone are subtly allied, not
inappropriate memorials of one who was instrumental in bringing the
academic Bourbons to the Spanish throne in 1700.
In the sacristy is a beautiful picture, the _Expolio_, "Stripping Our
Lord before the Crucifixion," by El Greco, the strange Byzantine Greek
who drifted to Toledo and in his forty years there because more Spanish
than the Spaniards. In his case the accident of birth was nothing;
though born in Crete of Greek parents, refugees from Constantinople, El
Greco was a true Castilian soul. He had known Venice in the days of
Tintoret and Titian, but it was only when he came to Toledo that he
found the atmosphere, mystic and chivalrous, in which his genius could
develop. His was the spiritualized mysticism of a Teresa or a John of
the Cross, with little of the conventional piety of Murillo. And he has
rendered the Spanish hidalgo as has none other, on his canvas "they live
an inner life, indifferent to the world; sad with the nostalgia for a
higher existence, their melancholy eyes look at you with memories of a
fairer past age that will not return. They are the dignified images of
the last warrior ascetics."[24]
There is no denying that some of El Greco's pictures are aberrations;
when I first saw him in the Escorial gallery, I thought him eccentric to
madness. Thanks to Professor Raphael Domenech of the Prado School of
Art, I looked a second time and learned to appreciate him. "What he did
ill, no one did worse, but what he did well, no one did better." Toledo
has many of his masterpieces. In the Church of Santo Domingo is his
"Ascension" and the two Saint Johns; in Santo Tomé, his splendid "Burial
of Count Orgaz." The chapel of San José and the churches of San Vicente
and San Nicolás have some good examples of his, and the Provincial
Museum has a remarkable series of the apostles with a truly noble
representation of their Master. El Greco--by the way, his real name was
Domenikos Theotokopoulos--lived with princely magnificence, his
friendship sought by the cultivated society round him, and on his death
he was buried in San Bartolomé, regretted by the whole city. His
sumptuous way of life was continued by his son, who built the cupola
that covers the Mozarabic Chapel of the Cathedral.
This brings us to perhaps the most interesting survival of the past that
exists in Spain, the Mozarabic Mass, said every morning in the western
end of Toledo Cathedral. Mozarabic means Mixt-Arab, and is the name
applied to the Christians who were under Moorish rule. Living isolated
from their fellow-believers they kept to the old Gothic ritual. In the
eleventh century the Christian conqueror of Toledo, Alfonso VI, after
an artless trial by fire of the rival books, introduced the Gregorian
liturgy, used by the rest of Europe. The learned Archbishop of Toledo,
Cardinal Ximenez, thought the Gothic ritual too interesting a national
memorial to be lost, so he endowed a chapel with its own chapter of
canons.
The morning after our arrival, I hastened down to the Cathedral to hear
a Mozarabic Mass. It puzzles me how Ford, the traveler, could have
written of it as he did, as if its simplicity put to shame the later
rite, for a Catholic could to-day attend the Mozarabic service with no
striking feeling of difference. In some respects it is simpler than the
Gregorian Mass, in others more elaborate; thus, for instance, the Host
is divided into nine parts, to represent the Incarnation, Epiphany,
Nativity, Circumcision, Passion, Death, Redemption, Ascension, and
Eternal Kingdom. The kiss of peace is given before the Consecration; the
Credo is recited after the offertory.
In my eagerness to be in time, I arrived half an hour too early, so I
whiled away the minutes watching the altar boys prepare for the
ceremony. It was easy to read, in their air of proprietorship that their
duties were an achieved ambition, the reward of good conduct. One of
the lads climbed up on the big brass eagle of the lectern and gave it an
affectionate polish; then, having partly illuminated the altar,--during
the ceremony more candles were lighted,--they whipped out their smart
red cassocks, and stood side by side in severe precision, to salute the
eight canons, "_Buenos Días!_" altar boys and dignitaries bowed with
leisurely Spanish courtesy. In their preparations the small acolytes had
found the supply of altar wine somewhat short, so more was sent for.
During the solemn moments of the Mass, a messenger arrived with an
offensive flask. With rustling dignity in his trailing red gown, the
majordomo of ten swept across the chapel to thrust out the tactless
blunderer, and the look of apologetic confusion on his cherub face, as
he returned to his post of honor, was adorable.
Some German tourists noisily came into the chapel, and refusing to kneel
at the moment of the elevation, the verger, in a spirit the founder
would have applauded, pointed with his silver wand, a silent but
inflexible dismissal. This first morning of my visit, too, a group of
hardy countrymen came to the Mozarabic Mass; with cap in hand and cloak
flung toga-like over their muscular shoulders, they knelt on one knee,
as instinctively graceful as the shepherds in Murillo's "Nativity." When
the service was over, in respectful quiet despite their arrogant
carriage, these unlettered men rose and passed out to loiter in the
Cathedral for a half hour. "The rank is but the guinea's stamp, the
man's the gold for a' that," rings often in the ear in Castile.
Cardinal Ximenez, founder of the Chapel, was Castilian to the core, and
Toledo for him, just as for El Greco, was fittest home. He was born in
1436 in the province of Madrid of an old family that had fallen in his
day on moderate circumstances. In Spain, Ximenez is often called
Cisneros, for there two surnames are used; the first following the
Christian name is the patronymic name of the father, the second that of
the mother. Sometimes a man uses his paternal surname alone, more seldom
his mother's family name alone, as in the case of Velasquez, whose
father was a de Silva.
A studious disposition early destined Ximenez to the priesthood, and
following a few years' study in Alcalá, which he was to raise to a
world-known university, he went to Salamanca. After a long stay in Rome,
on his return to Spain he wasted some precious years in an unfortunate
ecclesiastic dispute. His true worth was not discovered till he went,
when over forty, to serve in the Cathedral of Sigüenza, where Cardinal
Mendoza, the future "Rex Tertius," was then bishop. Recognizing the new
chaplain's remarkable powers, he made him his vicar-general. But
Ximenez, in the face of every chance of rapid advancement in the Church,
felt within him a longing for the retired life of prayer. He chose the
strictest order of his day, and entered the Franciscan monastery of San
Juan de los Reyes at Toledo. All who know Toledo will remember it, built
in the bizarre, flamboyant, often overladen but always grandiose style
of Isabella and Ferdinand. On its outer walls hang iron chains, the
votive offerings of Christian captives ransomed from the Moors in
Africa, and one cannot help thinking that the concentrated mind of the
new novice received an indelible impression from these souvenirs of
Moslem barbarity, a bias that found later expression in his stern
treatment of the Moors of Granada and his crusading siege of Oran.
Ximenez had sought a life of prayer in San Juan de los Reyes, but a
personality such as his could not help but rise in acknowledged
supremacy above those around him. The fame of his intellect and holiness
soon drew to his confessional the leading minds of Toledo, and he found
himself, to his distress, again in touch with the world. He retired to a
more isolated Franciscan monastery, and gave himself up to years of
study and prayer. Men seemed then to find time for the long spaces of
tranquil thought that solidify character; holding the highest posts that
ambition could achieve, they seemed to know themselves as dust before
the wind. The key-note of to-day is breadth not intensity, and it
sometimes seems as if our scattered knowledge leads to a more
superficial outlook on the elemental and eternal verities, that
universal education tends to universal mediocrity. Why have so few
to-day the old-time spaciousness of vision? Is it because education then
meant the development of the soul as well as of the intellect, because
in acknowledging that there are an infinite number of things beyond
reason they attained what Pascal calls the highest point of reason?
"Ever learning and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth" we
seem indeed. Wholly-rounded opportunities were given in that age. Poets
and novelists then were soldiers in the roving wars of Europe,[25]--Garcilaso,
Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón, these last two priests as well, and
Garcilaso making a holy end helped by a grandee who was a saint, and
Cervantes dying in the habit of the Assisian. But I suppose this carping
comparison is just the never-ending tendency to look on a previous day
as better than one's own. Jorge Manrique felt the same way:
"á nuestro parecer
Cualquiera tiempo pasado
Fué mejor"
and he wrote his immortal "Coplas" in the golden age of Isabella
herself.
To return to Ximenez. After a long period of retirement he was made,
against his will, confessor to the Queen at Valladolid. There exists an
account by a witness of the sensation his thin, ascetic face caused in
the court, as if an early Syrian anchorite had wandered thither. Three
years later, on the death of Mendoza, the Queen's influence in Rome had
Ximenez named his successor in Toledo. So angry was her confessor that
he left the court. Isabella, gallant woman of heart and brain, who so
enthusiastically perceived greatness in others, appealed to the Pope to
order Cisneros to accept his see.
Up to this the Archbishops of Toledo had been men of great lineage who
lived with splendor. And a striking succession of master minds they
make, lying ready for an historian to group in a remarkable record;
scholars, statesmen, founders of hospitals and schools, now a prelate of
saintly life, now a leader of armies like Archbishop Rodrigo, who having
borne the standard of the Cross in the thick of the fight at Las Navas
de Tolosa, chanted the Te Deum of victory on that memorable field, the
first Christian foothold in Andalusia. Of all the primates of Toledo,
Mendoza, "Tertius Rex," had been highest in rank and power. The monk who
succeeded this prince of the church dropped all pomp and lived like a
humble Franciscan. Again the undaunted Isabella appealed to her friend
the Pope to advise the new Archbishop to keep up the dignity of his see
before the people. Cisneros yielded outwardly, but under the veneer of
display he led the ascetic life.
The Queen's insight into character had judged right. Mystic contemplator
though he was, Ximenez was a born ruler: prudent, courageous, and firm.
He straightened difficulties and reformed abuses. As his own moral
character was stainless and his disinterestedness well proven, there was
happily no inconsistency in his preaching. Gomez tells that the moral
tone of society, lay and ecclesiastic, was so improved by the energetic
bishop that "men seemed to have been born again."
As to Ximenez' much criticised attitude toward the Moors, it was at one
with its age. To reproach him with it is as unreasonable as to condemn
Marcus Aurelius for having persecuted the Christians, or George
Washington for having silently accepted negro slavery. A man, no matter
how great his character, is limited somewhere by the standards of his
period. The fifteenth century was far from being radical in the
privileges it extended to free opinion. Even some generations later we
find, in the Palatinate, when the Elector Frederick III turned from
Lutheranism to Calvinism, in 1563, he forced all his subjects under pain
of banishment, to turn with him. Within a few years his son changed them
back to Lutheranism, only to have them, under the next ruler,
constrained with severe punishments to again accept the Heidelberg
catechism. The religious history of most of the states of Europe prove
that the same theory was held: "cujus regio, ejus religio." Ximenez can
plead more excuse for his attitude since in Spain was the problem of the
more radical difference of Christianity and Islam. He felt, and the
constant later revolts somewhat justified the idea, that a newly
conquered people is not likely to remain loyal, when they are bound
together against their ruler in an antagonistic creed. So he went to
Granada in 1499 to labor for the conversion of the people.
At first he used much the same methods that prevail to-day in some of
our cities, what we may call the soup-kitchen missionary system to
evangelize the emigrant. Ximenez instructed the Mohammedan in doctrine,
and he also gave presents to impress the oriental mind. So effectively
did the method work that immense numbers of citizens embraced the faith.
On one day four thousand were baptized. So far the treaty of the
Conquest was not violated, since the conversions were voluntary. When,
however, there was a revolt of those Moors who were angered by seeing
the rapid spread of Christianity, harsher methods than persuasion were
resorted to. The letter of the treaty was kept but its spirit, that
reflected Isabella's magnanimous tolerance, was stretched indeed. The
first uprising turned to open rebellion, and when this was put down, the
majority of the citizens let themselves be baptized to avoid exile and
confiscation. Though the two great prelates, the gentle Talavera and the
indomitable Ximenez, burning with zeal, went about the city catechising
and instructing the poorest, there were many thousands of Mohammedans
who hated the religion to which outwardly they conformed. A child to-day
can understand the futility of such conversions. No one denies that
Ximenez was stern. He who loved learning with the passionate devotion of
a Bede or an Erasmus, (we all know the remark of Francis I when confined
at Alcalá, "one Spanish monk has done what it would take a line of kings
in France to accomplish"), this same humanist scholar burned in public
bonfire the Moslem books, only reserving the medical ones for Alcalá:
surely this is proof of his grim sincerity.
When Isabella died, Ximenez took Ferdinand's side against his
impertinent Austrian son-in-law. Philip I did not live long enough to
involve Spain in an internecine war, her curse for ages; and it was the
great statesman's hold on the government, at the time of the young
king's sudden death, that saved the country from a revolution. Ferdinand
had the man to whom he owed Castile, created a Cardinal, and he also
appointed him Grand-Inquisitor.