sail from Barcelona, and having passed an apprenticeship at court under
Jaime _el Conquistador_ of Aragon, he led in Palma a life of pleasure
and dissipation till his romantic conversion at thirty-two. Núñez de
Arce has enshrined the legend in verse: so violent was the seneschal's
pursuit of a fair lady of the city that he once on horseback followed
her into church to the scandal of the people. The poet gives the final
scene that cured his passion, when she who was so exquisite without, to
repell his advances, exposed to him a hidden cancer. The shock changed
the worldling to a saint. Distributing his goods to the poor, he retired
to a mountain, and spent some years in prayer. Later in his energetic
career he returned to this hermitage to pass again periods in meditation
for his spiritual strengthening, being the first to show that special
faculty of the Spanish mystic, the double life of solitary ecstasy and
active charity. The desire to convert the Mohammedan took such
possession of his soul that at forty he put himself to school, like the
great Basque patron of a later day, and in Paris he studied logic and
Arabic in preparation for his future career.
Lull attained fourscore years, the latter half of his life being
dominated by his burning purpose to convert Islam. One pope after
another as he mounted the chair of Peter was beseiged by this
astonishing man, and he wandered from court to court urging the
universities to teach the oriental languages, that missionaries for the
East might be fittingly prepared. Little success crowned his efforts for
popes and kings had troubles nearer home. The Catalan enthusiast came at
an inopportune moment; the last two Crusades under St. Louis of France
had left discouragement behind. However, before his death he had the
satisfaction of seeing chairs of Hebrew and Arabic founded by a pope, by
a French king, and in Spain and England. The indefatigable man visited
Austria, Poland, and Greece; he advocated the protection of the Greeks
against Moslem incursions, a result only achieved in our own day; he
stopped in Cypress, traversed Armenia, Palestine, and Egypt, zealously
expounding the Gospel. His first visit as an apostle to Northern Africa
was a failure. There is something touching about this old missionary of
six hundred years ago being driven out of Tunis--he and his loved
library--and embarked with harsh orders never to return. Not in any
spirit of patronage did he labor for the conversion of souls, but wiser
than many to-day he carried with him true knowledge and respect for the
Mohammedans. His liberal intelligence assimulated much that was of value
in their ideas, especially from those heretics of Islam, the Persian
Sufis, or mystics.
A second time when over seventy Lull ventured across to Africa, and
again he--and the books--were violently expelled. I fear our blessed
Raimundo was a bit of a visionary, he thought to convince by
intellectual debate. The king of England learning of the old scholar's
chemical studies, with the curiosity of the period in regard to the
philosopher's stone, invited him to London, and lodged him with the
monks of Westminster Abbey. Chemistry was merely a side issue in the
life of the great missionary. Just short of his eightieth year, with
untiring courage and magnificent faith, he set forth once more on his
final apostleship to the Mohammedan, and once more preached in Egypt,
Jerusalem, and Tunis. At Bugia he was stoned by the furious populace,
who left him for dead on the beach, and some Genoese merchants carried
away his almost lifeless body. Before they reached the harbor of Palma
the martyr had died, and his townsmen buried him with honors in the
church of his master, St. Francis.
Lull's books, the "Ars Magna" and the "Arbor Scientiæ," are filled with
the curious system he evolved for reducing discords. He tried to
co-ordinate and facilitate the operations of the mind, to simplify all
sciences by showing them to be branches of one trunk. Much of his theory
may be fanciful and impractical, but it was a truly suggestive idea
based on the profound truth of the unity of knowledge. He explored many
branches of the human mind, and left works on medicine, theology,
politics, jurisprudence, mathematics and chemistry. The accusation of
alchemy is untenable, for he made his experiments in scientific good
faith, and wrote against astrology. For three centuries, down to the
time of Descartes, Lull was considered a leader of the intellect, and
his books were recommended by the universities of Europe.
The Catalan dialect has been used by men of marked talent in our own
time. The whole of Spain should be as proud of Padre Jacinto Verdaguer,
as all France is of their Provençal, Mistral. Verdaguer's "Atlantada,"
called the best epic of the century, was crowned in 1855 at the Floral
Games, festivals which are held in Barcelona each year, for competitions
in verse and prose, and to revive the national dances.
This intellectual movement rouses the stranger's enthusiasm, and if it
keeps itself dissociated from politics,--those abominable politics that
sink every noble thing they fasten on, patriotism, education, religion,
art,--the revival may prove more than a passing phase. Alert in
literature, in music, in the sciences, in municipal progress, and
commercial success, what need has this city to be jealous of the
capital; they are too different for comparison. Madrid lacks much that
Barcelona can claim; a Catalan could emulate some Castilian qualities.
Each vitally needs the other.
GERONA
AND FAREWELL TO SPAIN
"I count him wise
Who loves so well man's noble memories
He needs must love man's nobler hopes yet more!"
WILLIAM WATSON.
"Una restauración de la vida entera de España no puede tener otro
punto de arranque que la concentración de todas nuestras energías
dentro de nuestro territorio. Hay que cerrar con cerrojos, llaves,
y candados todas las puertas por donde el espíritu español se
escapó de España para derramarse por los cuatro puntos del
horizonte, y por donde hoy espera que ha de venir la salvación; y
en cada una de esas puertas no pondremos un rótulo dantesco que
diga: "Lasciate ogni speranza," sino este otro más consolador, más
humano, muy profundamente humano, imitado de San Ajustín: "Noli
foras ire; in interiore Híspaniæ habitat veritas."
ANGEL GANIVET: "_Idearium Español_."
The day drew near for our leaving Spain. Eight months had passed since
we entered from the north of the Pyrenees isthmus, and now we found
ourselves at its southern exit. They had been months filled with an
absorbing and unexpected interest; we had come into Spain for a mere
autumn tour, and she had forced us to linger. And I must repeat that
I came with the average pessimistic idea that she was a spent and more
or less worthless country, till what I saw about me daily changed me to
a partisan. It was a hard farewell to take now. When Spain is allowed to
show herself as she is, she wins a regard that is like an intense
personal affection.
[Illustration: A STREET STAIRWAY, GERONA]
At dawn on the early day in June set for our departure we left
Barcelona; before night we would be in France, but the leave-taking was
to be broken by some hours in Gerona. As usual it was the fact of its
possessing a first-rate church that determined us to stop. This was to
be the last of the grand cathedrals which more than those of any land,
even of France with their purer art, had realized my ideal of worship
and reverence. As Gerona was in Catalonia, good architecture was to be
expected, but this was better than good. The Cathedral which dominates
the town was worthy of its stirring memories. An imposing flight of
eighty steps, like that of the Ara C[oe]li in Rome, ascends to its west
portal. At the head of this staircase we paused to look out on the
panorama of the Pyrenees--mountain rose behind mountain, the foreground
hills well-wooded, those beyond covered with snow. Here was no stupid
Escorial facing in to a blank wall. The old masters with vivifying
imaginations had brought the glories of nature to worship with them,
had hung as it were in their porch, this lovely landscape.
Within the Cathedral the first impression is its spaciousness. The width
is astonishing; indeed the hall-like nave of Gerona is the widest Gothic
vault in Christendom, and were it longer by two bays, no cathedral of
Europe could have surpassed the effect. The wide nave of Catalan
churches is a national feature that here reaches its acme. The choir of
Gerona is on a smaller scale, and the meeting of the two makes a curious
feature, not bad inside, but in the exterior view extremely ugly.
Probably in time the choir would have been enlarged to fit its monstrous
nave. The men in those days started undertakings as if they could never
die, but later generations have lacked their enthusiastic ambition.
By happy chance we were in time to assist at a last High Mass in a
Spanish cathedral. It is no exaggeration to say one's heart felt heavy
in listening to the solemn chanting, watching the reverence of priests,
acolytes, and congregation, to realize that this was for the last time.
The last time we should see the kiss of peace carried symbolically from
the priest at the altar to the canons in the choir, the last time we
should hear the clamor of the wheel of bells. I looked up to where they
hung on the wall and nodded them a little personal farewell, so often
had they charmed me. Farewell to sedate Spanish piety, to the
devotional unconsciousness of individual prayer. Over the frontier,
during the coming summer at Luchon, I was soon to hear wooden signals
clapped during Mass to guide the wandering attention of the people, to
see the children scamper out in obvious relief.
The chancel of Gerona is a gem. The iron _reja_ that shuts in the
_capilla mayor_ is of the plainest, like a wall of stacked spears
guarding the holy of holies. There is no towering _retablo_, which would
be out of character with slender Catalan piers; instead, behind the
altar is a marvelous reredos of silver carved in scenes, and surmounted
by three Byzantine processional crosses,--all ancient and priceless
enough to be the treasure of a national museum. The altar and the canopy
over it are also of silver, _retablo_ and altar being placed where they
now stand in 1346. The effect of iron _reja_ and precious shrine is
faultlessly artistic; we sigh here for a beauty as completely lost for
our copying as is the tranquil perfection of these gravestones, the
sculptured stelæ of Athens.
The service over, we proceeded to examine the church. The cloisters are
oddly irregular in shape, and look out on the snow-topped Pyrenees. So
beautiful was the prospect that I added this cloister setting to the
dream-cathedral Spain tempts one to build. It would have the cloisters
of Tarragona with this outlook of Gerona's; also Gerona's altar and
_retablo_, though the reredos of Avila and that of Tarragona are worthy
rivals. There would be the grand staircase of this Cathedral, and it
would ascend to a western portal like León's, with Santiago's _Pórtico
de la Gloria_ within; the north and south doors would be Plateresque
from Salamanca and Valladolid. The cathedral would be set on Lérida's
crag, with the city of Toledo climbing to it and the Tagus churning
below. The nave would be Seville's, and Seville's windows would light it
and her organ thunder there. The choir would be Toledo's, carved by
Rodrigo, Berruguete, and Vigarni, the chancel Barcelona's stilted
arches. How they could be combined is hard to solve, but round this
_capilla mayor_ would run the double ambulatory of Toledo, and the apse
outside have León's flying buttresses,--the apse which the old mystics
held as symbolic of the crown of thorns about the head of Christ (the
Altar). _Rejas_ from Burgos, Granada, Seville, would guard the chapels,
and tombs of knights and bishops from Sigüenza, from Zamora--from every
town of Spain in fact--would line the walls: tapestries and treasures
from Saragossa; a _via crucis_ by Hernández and portrait statues by
Montañés; a sacristy like that of Avila; a _sala capitular_ copied from
the Renaissance grace of San Benito in Alcántara; and a wealth of side
chapels,--a Condestable chapel, a San Isidoro, a Cámera Santa, a San
Millán, a Santa María la Blanca, and an isolated shrine like Palencia's,
standing in the ambulatory. And always beneath the vault of this
cathedral would be found far-off little Lugo's solemn adoration, and
there would be processions as imposing as Andalusia, with the piety of
Estremadura, or the Basque. The Giralda, built in the warm red stone of
Astorga tower, would stand close by, and not far away, a monastery, line
for line, like Poblet. Sitting in a Spanish cloister looking out on the
Pyrenees, one drifts into dream-pictures of the ideal cathedral.
Gerona has a few other churches worth examining, that of San Feliu, with
two Roman sarcophagi and several early Christian ones with wave-like
lines. We rambled about the plaza where a fair was in progress, and at
every turning kept bidding farewell to familiar scenes of Spanish life;
we were not again to hear the peace-bringing "_Vaya Usted con Dios!_"
not again to assent to the cordial "_Hasta luego!_"
The city is massively built, but it has a battered look, and no wonder.
During the French invasion, Gerona stood a siege as terrific as any in
history, yet who of us has heard of it? In May, 1809, a French army
surrounded the city where there were only three thousand soldiers for
the defense, yet for seven months the town defied the invaders, and that
with half a dozen breaches in the walls. The women shouldered guns and
drilled in a battalion formed by Doña Lucía Fitzgerald; old men and
children piled up the earth of the ramparts; cloistered nuns, at a
higher call, left their convents to nurse the wounded to whom they gave
up their cells, so many priests fell fighting on the walls that no
services were held in the churches, there was only the burning of
candles; no one bought or sold, for every shopman was a soldier. When a
gallant English volunteer died on the ramparts, he exclaimed that he
lost his life gladly in a cause so just for a nation so heroic.
The French drew closer and closer, and slowly the city starved. The
hardships endured were incredible. They ate rats and mice, yet no
thought came of surrender. A hot August dragged by, in September the
French attacked fiercely and on both sides the men fell like flies. Who
was the soul of this indomitable fortitude? The order and subordination
told of a master mind, and Gerona had one, Don Mariano Alvarez de
Castro, the inflexible governor. He it was who enrolled the women and
children in the defense; his lofty spirit never wavered, and his force
of character gave him so accepted an authority that he was able to
direct a hopeless defense without recourse to cruelty. The siege of
Gerona was not stained by any brutal act.
The blockade drew closer. By October literally all food was gone, and
the people began to fall in the streets to a foe more terrible than
bullets. Governor Alvarez stood like a rock of courage. When he passed
up the Cathedral steps where the heart-rending groups of the dying lay,
his very presence gave hope: if there was a faint-hearted citizen in
Gerona, he was more afraid of that iron man than of the French. Never
would the governor have yielded, but toward the close of the year he
fell ill in the infested air, and as he lay in delirium the city
capitulated. With hundreds of dead bodies lying unburied in the streets,
there was nothing else to be done.
Then followed a scene which did honor to the invader; it rings with the
same chivalry that Velasquez painted in the "Surrender of Breda," where
Spínola bends to meet the conquered Nassau, the same spirit that made
those Frenchmen of an earlier day carry a certain wounded knight, their
prisoner, on a litter from Pamplona across the mountains to his castle
of Loyola. The foreign troops marched into Gerona in a dead silence,
with not a gesture of triumph, moved to awe by the corpses that covered
the pavements and to reverence by the few hollow-eyed, living skeletons
that met them. The moral victory lay with the conquered. When food was
offered the starved people, even that was at first refused. Don Mariano
Alvarez, taken prisoner on his bed, died mysteriously, poisoned, some
say, in the fortress of Figueras not long after. And all this horror and
heroism was only a hundred years ago!--we too walked the streets of
Gerona in silent reverence.
Then once again on the train; more volcanic hills, more dry rivers that
showed what the spring torrents must be like, and in a few hours
Port-Bou, the Spanish frontier town, was reached. We stood at the car
window looking out sadly on the last of Spain as the train swept round
the blue inlets of the Mediterranean.
Farewell to this great Christian democracy where the simple title of Don
is borne by king and people alike, to the "nation least material of
Europe," farewell to a grave, contented race, whose leaders left noble
works as noble as their lives, whose writers were soldiers and heroes,
where artists prepared for religious scenes by fasting and prayers,
where mystics were not negative and inert, but emerged from their union
with God with more power for practical life, whose women have by
instinct the dignity of womanhood, untainted yet by luxury, a land that
can boast the two first women of all ages and countries, an Isabella of
Castile, and a St. Teresa.
Some may think I carry admiration too far. Carping criticism of Spain
has been pushed to such an extent that it is time to swing to the other
side: where there can be no joy, no admiration, there can be no
stimulus. I like to take M. René Bazin's words as if addressed to me:
"Vous avez raison de croire à la vitalité de l'Espagne. Elle n'a jamais
été une nation déchue, elle a été une nation blessée."
A wounded nation but not one stricken to death. She is recovering. Let
her but be patient and aspire slowly; disciplined, tried in the fire and
purified, by living without the ceaseless upheavals of the past century,
by industry, by commerce, with no encumbering colonies to drain her
blood, with the Catalans calling the Castilians "_paisanos_," she will
get back her former strength and _brio_. Her literature, her art, are
lifting their heads.
My prayer for Spain in her rehabilitation is, that she may not diverge
from her national spirit and traditions, may modern ideas not change her
unworldliness and her stoical endurance, "_su esencia inmortal y su
propio carácter_." May she guard her faith, her glory in the past and
her aspiration for the future, the faith of the Cross that has struck
deeper root here than in any spot on earth, but remembering always that
her own greatest saint warns her: "In the spiritual life not to advance
is to go back." May she never lose the virile independence of character
that so distinguishes her people, the pride of simple manhood that looks
out of the eyes of her honorable peasantry and makes their innate
courtesy. No nation was ever formed so completely by the chivalry of the
Middle Ages as Spain. May she always be _España la heróica_!
INDEX
Acuña, tomb of Bishop, 40, 41
Africa, 74, 86, 87, 178, 230, 245, 246, 337, 409, 416, 417
Ajustina of Aragon ("Maid of Saragossa"), 381
Alacón, Pedro Antonio de, 151, 328, 335, 336, 337
Alas, Leopoldo, 93, 328, 341, 342, 349
Alba de Tormes, 159, 160, 200, 205-210
Albertus Magnus, 414
Alcalá de Henares, 28, 67, 73, 142, 238, 244, 246, 249, 342, 372
Alcántara, 359-364, 394
Alcántara, St. Peter of, 199
Alfonso II, _el Casto_, 90, 94
Alfonso VI, 87, 116, 129, 231, 236
Alfonso VIII, _él de las Navas_, 50, 84
Alfonso X, _el sabio_, 134, 291, 375
Alfonso XI, 250
Alfonso XII, 179, 180, 217, 333, 337, 343
Alfonso XIII, 50, 174, 180, 181, 182, 217, 287, 289, 290, 291, 292, 351,
355
Alhambra, the, 86, 258, 265-272, 280, 396
Almohades, the, 88
Almoravides, the, 88
Altamira y Crevea, Sr. Rafael, 327
Alva, Duke of, 65, 205
Alvarez de Castro, Mariano, 426, 427, 428
Amadeus I (Duke of Aosta), 179, 333
America, the U. S. of, 9, 16, 18, 41, 64, 128, 140, 209, 332, 370, 397,
411
America, South, 90, 177, 211, 248, 290, 319, 332, 364, 365, 366, 395,
397
Amicis, Edmondo de, 259
Amiens, cathedral of, 81, 415
Andalusia, 2, 37, 87, 102, 105, 112, 151, 178, 189, 225, 230, 242, 257
259, 316, 317, 319, 333, 336, 343
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 187, 414
Aragon, 79, 105, 226, 372, 375-384, 391
Architecture, 9, 36, 42, 43, 48, 54, 81, 91, 147, 151, 232, 295, 385,
393, 400, 403, 421. _See_ Gothic, Romanesque, Plateresque
Arenal, Doña Concepción, 133
Arfe family, the de, 202, 312
Armory, Madrid, the Royal, 114, 220, 226, 227, 228
Arroyo, 360, 363, 368
Astorga, 4, 105, 113-116, 141, 159
Asturias, 4, 79-103, 105, 112, 267, 341, 346
Asturias, Prince of, 84, 85, 288, 291, 324
Athens, 149, 268, 423
Augustine, St., 18, 155, 156, 189, 246, 342
Augustus Cæsar, 107, 392
Averroës, 88, 319
Avila, 6, 159, 160, 162, 164, 166, 195-212, 213, 216, 269, 273, 396
Azcoitia, 14, 18, 23
Azpeitia, 23, 30, 31
Baalbec, ruins of, 353
Bacon, Lord, 28, 64, 69, 135
Bailén, battle of, 172, 380
Balearic Islands, 415
Balmes y Uspia, Jaime, 210
Baltazar Carlos, infante, Don, 60, 221, 227, 378
Balzac, Honoré de, 327, 333
Barcelona, 7, 8, 26, 28, 140, 146, 216, 345, 379, 394, 395-419, 421
Basque Provinces, 4, 13-32, 36, 79, 83, 101, 105
Bazán, Doña Emilia Pardo, _see_ Pardo Bazán
Bazin, M. René, 79, 258, 347, 429
Becerra, Gaspar, 115
Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo, 256
Bembo, Pietro, Cardinal, 251
Benedict XIV, 136
Benedictine rule, the, 48, 49, 135, 136, 225, 364, 389
Benson, Rev. Robert Hugh, 188
Berruguete, Alonso de, 44, 60, 82, 205, 233, _illustration_ 256, 377,
424
Bidassoa, river, 15
Bilbao, 4, 91, 140, 412
Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente, 328, 340, 341
Boabdil, 227
Bobadilla, 2, 265
Bonaventura, St., 187, 414
Borgia, St. Francis (de Borja), 21, 26, 28, 30, 191, 199, 240, 251, 252,
253, 254, 371
Borromeo, St. Charles, 191, 255
Borrow, George, _quoted_, 283
Boston, U. S. A., 64, 118, 148, 224
Bourbon kings in Spain, the, 72, 136, 171, 173, 234, 324, 367
Briz, Francisco Pelayo, 411
Browning, Robert, 34
Brunetière, Ferdinand, 337
Budé, Guillaume, 28
Byron, Lord, 321, 381
Byzantine Influences in Spanish Art, 48, 94, 96, 108, 148, 262, 403, 423
Bull-fight, the, 11, 16, 127, 128, 129, 309, 358
Burgos, 4, 33-54, 55, 56, 57, 92, 95, 148, 189, 201, 204, 273, 424
Caballero, Fernán, _pseud_ (Doña Cecelia B. von F. de Arrom), 127, 328,
329, 330, 343, 411
Cáceres, 356, 357, 358, 359, 362, 364, 369
Cadiz, 7, 71, 143, 176, 178, 316-325
Calatyud, 376
Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 240, 253, 327
Calvin, John, 68
Campion, Edmund, 68
Campoamor, Ramón de, 179, 274
Cano, Alonzo, 60, 61
Cano, Melchor, 153
Cantabrian mountains, 82, 83, 84, 102, 112, 122, 124, 347, 348
Carmelite Order, the, 183, 189, 198, 199, 200
Carmona, Salvador, _see_ _illustration_ 327
Carr, Sir John, 381, 382
Castelar y Ripoll, Emilio, 179
Castile, 6, 12, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 54, 55, 79, 83, 101, 105, 165, 184,
196, 201, 204, 211, 212, 228, 229, 238, 245, 247, 257, 259, 267, 282,
397, 411, 429
Catalan language, 409, 414, 418
Catalan question, 409-414
Catalonia, 3, 79, 101, 105, 134, 253, 383, 385, 388, 391, 392, 396, 397,
400, 404, 405, 409, 410, 411, 412, 414, 419, 421, 429
Cathedrals, Spanish, 38, 42, 43, 108, 149, 150, 151, 202, 219, 233, 261,
404, 421, 422, 423, 424.
_Avila_, 110, 150, 201, 205, 232, 425.
_Astorga_, 115, 425.
_Barcelona_, 150, 403, 404, 424.
_Burgos_, 36-48, 54, 148, 150, 424.
_Cadiz_, 323.
_Cordova_, 261-265.
_Gerona_, 421-424.
_Grenada_, 271, 424.
_León_, 47, 57, 108-111, 150, 415, 424.
_Lérida_, 385, 387, 388, 424.
_Lugo_, 122, 123, 124, 425.
_Oviedo_, 92, 93, 94, 108.
_Palencia_, 80, 151, 425.
_Santiago_, 57, 107. 130-133.
_Salamanca_, 108, 146-148, 152.
_Saragossa_, 151, 376, 377, 378, 424.
_Seville_, 111, 150, 216, 232, 285, 287, 289, 292, 293-315, 424.
_Segovia_, 165, 166, 167, 168.
_Sigüenza_, 150, 374, 424.
_Tarragona_, 393, 424.
_Toledo_, 150, 216, 232-238, 415, 424.
_Valladolid_, 56, 57.
_Zamora_, 117, 118, 424
Catherine of Aragon, 28, 224, 342
Cavadonga, 85, 86, 94, 102, 172, 227, 406
Cellini, Benvenuto, 150, 216
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 69, 72-78, 142, 155, 166, 189, 228, 240,
249, 250, 253, 255, 326, 349
Charles I of England, 165
Charles V (Charles I of Spain), Emperor, 26, 39, 72, 129, 199, 204, 216,
218, 223, 227, 249, 251, 253, 261, 265, 269, 292, 365, 366, 367, 368
Charles II, 218, 221
Charles IV, 171, 175, 226
Chartres, Cathedral of, 81, 268, 400, 415
Chartreuse, La Grande, 24
Chesterton, Mr. Gilbert K., 100