_San Juan de los Reyes, Santa Marta la Blanca, El Transito_
RELIGION and revolt are the chief features in Toledo's story. When her
sons were not quarrelling within or warring without, they were building
churches and convents, and none more famous than San Juan de los Reyes,
built in fulfilment of a vow by the Catholic kings after the victory of
Toro, gained over the Portuguese sympathisers with the _Beltraneja_,
Henry's luckless heiress. The architect was Juan Guas, master builder of
the Cathedral, and the church was finished in 1476, and given over by
Isabel to the order of St Francis, magnificently endowed. It stands high
above the bridge of San Martin and the Puerta del Cambron, the portico
facing north and the lovely cloisters south. Writing of it, Señor Amador
de los Rios in his _Toledo Pintoresca_, says: "This sumptuous monument
belongs to the class of architecture known as _gotica-gentil_, and is
indubitably one of the most famous of Toledo. Raised at the most
flourishing period of the Castillian monarchy, it awakens before the
vision of the enthusiastic traveller, memories of lofty and difficult
enterprises, happily concluded by our elders, so that the vandalism of
the present century stands sharply out with all its rubbish, and still
more the envy of a neighbouring nation, that, while it was in the act of
flinging the most unjust charges at the Spanish people, destroyed with
steel and fire the most precious jewels of its art. I refer to the
burning of San Juan de los Reyes by the French on their invasion. It
would seem false that the armies of the Marshals, whose culture and
value nobody may dare doubt, could display such rage against a few
edifices, whose only wrong in their estimation was that they were
erected by the victors of Cirinola and Pavia; false would it seem that
Napoleon's soldiers came to Spain to react the scenes of Attila and
Genserico. But for our misfortune it is only too true." One cannot blame
the Spaniards for their bitterness towards the French. No invading
nation ever behaved more shamelessly, comported itself with a more
inexcusable barbarity than the French in the Peninsula. But on the other
hand, the Spaniards themselves in reality care so little about the
beautiful things they have inherited from bygone times, are so
calamitously indifferent to their own historic glories, that we may well
hesitate to credit the French with all the ruin we see about us in
Spain. An archaeological body was appointed for the maintenance of
public monuments, and see for yourself in Toledo and elsewhere what
these gentlemen have been able to achieve. It is not money alone that is
lacking, but competence and the great important instinct _that it
matters_. The canons, those hopeless autocrats of ruined Toledo, who
stand so deliberately on the brink of oblivion and the dark abyss of
ignorance, have covered the beautiful bronze doors of the cathedral
_Puerta del Reloj_ with a hideous wooden screen. When I asked one of
them the meaning of this disfigurement, he blandly assured me that it
was to ward off draughts in winter, when the big stone forest is mighty
cold. And so the lovely works of Zurreño and Dominguez might just as
well have been riddled with French shot for all the pleasure they are
permitted to give us to-day. So with everything in the hands of these
terrible canons, who care for nothing on earth but their ease and their
leisure. The famous archiepiscopal library which the Republic had wisely
made state property, was given back to the canons by Alfonso XII., on
the distinct understanding that it should remain open to the public. But
the canons locked the doors, and whenever you ask to see it, you are
informed that the librarian has the keys and is away at Madrid, where he
expects to remain another fortnight. During the month I stayed at
Toledo, to collect material for this volume, I was sent from one canon
to another, all of whom "deeply sympathised," but assured me in dull,
indifferent tones that it was impossible for me to see the library. The
Penetenciario was at Madrid. And for anything the canons cared, he might
stay away six months, and keep the library keys with him all that time.
I asked one canon what the rest did, if in the absence of their singular
librarian, there happened to present itself a rare necessity for the
chapter to open this hermetically sealed door. He smiled deprecatingly,
but did not enlighten me. Not requiring information themselves, the
search for it is a form of insanity not to be encouraged in others. And
Señor Amador de los Rios and all other Spanish writers lament, and
justly, the French invasion, but forget to note their own cruel inertia,
the disastrous results of indifference and indolence.
There is nothing remarkable about the exterior of San Juan de los Reyes.
Alonso de Covarrubias completed the portico in 1610. The effect of the
rusty chains, the famous chains of the Christians of Granada round the
walls, is hideous. The Spaniards are extremely moved by the sight of
this queer ornament, one wonders why, and Amador de los Rios nearly
weeps with rage because some of them have been removed. He solaces
himself with drawing an elaborate picture of the awed and reverential
attitude of emotional foreigners gazing upon them. The sculpture outside
is very rough. Many will find the interior of this renowned edifice a
distinct disappointment. One misses the mystery, the charm of aisled
perspectives. There are here no long reaches of shadow and brilliant
variations of light. The effect is bold, free, ample, but curiously
short. The altar recess is shallow, the nave is broad and open, ending
in a semi-circle and six lateral arches. The body of the church is
divided by two light pillars, richly decorated. The beauty of the church
consists in the extraordinary magnificence of its sculpture. Pillars and
walls are extravagantly overlaid with the richest Gothic ornamentation,
and the impression is rather bewildering than beautiful. It seems a bold
thing to say of one of the most admired and renowned monuments of
Toledo, that it is ugly from excess of sculptural splendour. It is too
wide, too short, too solid and heavy, too open, above all too florid. I
can think of no fitter comparison than a stout, low-sized, middle-aged
woman, excessively bejewelled, carrying gracelessly garments too heavy
and too gorgeous. It lacks the elusive charm of shadow, the subtlety of
simplicity. San Juan de los Reyes is a church to visit and to wonder at,
but not a place to muse in. You will admire the octagonal vault, the
pinnacles, the gallery running out of the clerestory in front of the
south window, pierced parapet and highly-wrought choir; you will marvel
at the statues, the foliage, the rich Gothic fancies, the shields, all
the magnificent elaboration of detail, the rarest to be found anywhere,
and still will all this leave you cold and unimpressed. It is like an
admirably finished poem, that appeals to the head and leaves the heart
untouched.
From immemorial time the principal entrance has been covered with
plaster, which only permits us to see the great Gothic window in the
centre. The workmanship of the interior of the church leads us to infer
that this entrance was more in keeping with the whole than the present
façade of Covarrubias, which is decadent Gothic, constructed many years
later, and only finished in the reign of Philip III. The length of this
single nave is 200 feet, its width in the transept is over 70, and in
the body of the church 43. There are seven chapels, four on one side and
three on the other, all insignificant. The tomb of Don Pedro de Ayala,
bishop of the Canaries, is a fine specimen of renaissance sculpture. The
cupola rests on four admirably wrought pillars, its form is octagon,
with an ogival dome and a window in each face. Nothing could be richer
or more effective than the elaborately decorated sides of the transept.
Such a splendid prodigality of Gothic sculpture was surely never
lavished on so small a space. To give anything like a detailed account
of it would require an art and a knowledge nothing less stupendous than
the imagination that devised such work. The retablo, painted by Francis
of Antwerp in the sixteenth century, that Ponz praised so
enthusiastically, disappeared in the time of the fatal French
occupation, when the church was the stables of Napoleon's soldiers, and
along with it the life-sized portraits of the founders, Fernando and
Isabel. Hardly any of the old stainglass remains, to which fact is due
the glaring effect of crude light upon the white stone. But this light
permits you to examine at ease the superlative magnificence of the
transept sides and the sculptured pillars. Everywhere the initials F and
I, with the yoke and the arrows of both sovereigns. Letters and
inscriptions are exquisitely finished, and nothing could be more
graceful than the general effect of arches and capitals. The high broad
nave forms a Latin cross, composed of apse, transept and the body of the
church, all the most prodigious and exuberant specimen of florid
renaissance. The choir is situated over a low, broad, painted vault. The
pillars that support the four domes of the naves are richly sculptured
and adorned with statues, and a fine frieze runs above the chapels on
either side, with a window above each arch divided by graceful Gothic
pillars. The inscriptions are many, and surprisingly clear and beautiful
in finish. Here is one of the most elaborate in Gothic letters:
[Illustration: DETAIL OF ORNAMENT, INTERIOR OF S. JUAN DE LOS REYES]
"Este monasterio è églesia mandaron hacer los muy esclarecidos Principes
è señores D. Hernando è Doña Isabel, Rey y Reina de Castilla, de Leon,
de Aragon, de Sicilia, los cuales señores por bienaventurado matrimonio
y untaron los dichos Reinos, seyendo el dicho rey y señor natural de los
reinos de Aragon y Sicilia, y seyendo la dicha señora Reina y señora
natural de los Reinos de Castilla y Leon; el cual fundaron à gloria de
nuestro señor Dios, y de la bienaventurado Madre suya Nuestra señora la
Virgin Maria, y por especial devocion que le ovieron."
The few pictures are quite worthless, but pictures are not needed in
such a wealth of stone-work. What are needed to make San Juan de los
Reyes less crude in its frank over-decoration are, shadow, the dim
luminosity of stained glass, the softened glow of bejewelled light, the
tender mystery and charm of pillared aisle, the grace of length to give
majesty to solidity. It totally lacks the essential quality of
reverence, that elusive and unanalysable suggestion of the beyond, the
supreme, the intangible, of that inexplicable aspiration that ever stirs
the soul of primitive and civilised man, and has taught him to seek its
expression in the building of church and temple; in the white splendour
of the Parthenon, the very soul of Greek genius in stone, in the grey
dimness of Gothic cathedral, in which Christian fervour finds almost an
immaterial beauty of definition, the quality of lofty distinction which
belongs to the highest poetry and eloquence. Here you are not assailed
by a sense of the melancholy loveliness of death, as when you stand
beside some canopied tomb of greatness in the softened gloom of an old
cathedral. There is none of the lingering charm of legend and peopled
shade, none of the obscurity of deep recess, the chill shiver of vaulted
solitude, the vibrant ache of other days, that serene and bewitching
[Illustration: CLOISTER, S. JUAN DE LOS REYES]
misery we feel whenever we travel backward by the road of strange and
wonderful experience that has moulded and developed humanity. For San
Juan de los Reyes reveals to us nothing of that past whose enigma
forever tortures the curious mind, nothing but the admirable skill of
some unknown sculptors, provokes neither musing nor aspiration, nor
instils the poisonous enchantment of artistic sadness.
For this reason the lovely cloisters, despite the defacing stamp of
restoration and the preposterous glare of white plaster, win you to
fervour and lure you to reverie. Ruined, monstrously ill-treated, they
yet preserve a delicate freshness, an incomparable grace that give us
some notion of the mediaeval paradise they must have been when flower
and verdure bloomed between their fretted arches, and the statues in
their canopied niches stood fresh from each master's hands. Not
melancholy cloisters these, but gay and charming, with their supreme
elegance, their matchless distinction, an airiness and lightness, a
gaiety not in the least ecclesiastical or claustral. They were built to
harbour the measured mirth of breeding, the sweet and elegant piety of
romance, the charity, the contentment that knows naught of suffering or
revolt, all the placid and decorous joys of religion. Beautiful flowers
and delicate foliage grew thickly in the broad sunny space between the
double row of exquisite galleries, and branches spread and swayed
against the arched columns of the upper cloisters. Truly it must have
been delightful to have worn the habit of the Franciscan monk in the
days of Isabella the Catholic, and the great Cisneros, the first novice
of this convent, can have found no more vivid satisfaction in the hours
he was busy making Spanish history than in the radiant peace of these
most beautiful cloisters.
The architecture is superb; the richest specimen of florid ogival with
twenty-four vaults, windows cut and chiselled with the fine perfection
of the sonnet, pillars delicate enough and daintily wrought for some
vision of dreamland, with once fifty-six statues of Franciscan monks
between (the number now is sadly diminished, and some of the statues
that have not been rashly replaced are in a state of most lamentable
mutilation), and charming friezes. The whole effect is that of an
exquisite harmony, a harmony that not even the profane and degrading
hand of the modern restorer has been able to obliterate. Vulgarised
certainly, since vulgarity is, alas! the fatal, the inevitable price we
must pay for modern comforts and improvements, for the refining process
of our material progress and the pleasures of civilisation.
The cloisters are composed of four double galleries, supported on
twenty-four vaults between the upper and lower cloisters and a flat roof
above. The pillars, like those of the church, are miraculously
sculptured; not a space an inch big, without its Gothic fancy of animal
and leaf, its finely-wrought crowd in flowing fold, grotesque and lovely
forms and multiplied foliage of every kind. The pillars spread like
palms above to sustain the arches that divide the vaults, with an
indescribable grace of effect. Inscriptions vary the legend of frieze
and ornament. Gothic windows between frail arches look into the airy and
delightful gardens, where green southern growths have the curled droop
of plumes and the very grass seems to smile through the golden wave
along its green. If only the restorers had spared the white-wash. If
only this joyous little poem of Gothic architecture were less vulgarly,
remorselessly white; less, as Murray's guide-book aptly remarks, like
the frosted top of wedding-cake.
In a corner, fastened into the wall, is a fragment
[Illustration: S. LUKE ANGLE OF CLOISTER, S. JUAN DE LOS REYES]
of stucco arabesque from the ancient palace of King Rodrigo, restored by
the Moors, afterwards given by Maria de Molino, the widow of Sancho el
Bravo, to Gonzalo de Ruiz, Count of Orgaz. I have never seen a more
beautiful specimen of azulejo. This vanished palace of King Rodrigo is
one of the few the Moors deemed worthy of preservation. Very little of
the Visigothic remains, for the Moors had no fancy to profit by what
they found after their conquest, and what has been left us is rude and
unimportant enough to make their sparing use of Visigothic inspiration
no matter of regret. The capitals of the Cristo de la Luz, the arcades
of San Roman, and some fragments of the patio of Santa Cruz, are the
most notable examples, and are only of significance as a slight
indication of the transitional period between two great civilisations,
the Roman and Saracen. All over Toledo, in the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries, the Moorish note in architecture prevailed, and,
except Granada and Cordova, no other town of Spain possesses so much of
the work of the Moors, is so strongly stamped with their individuality.
This is due to the fact that even after the Christian Conquest most of
the workmen employed were Moors, for the tolerance between Moors and
Christians in Toledo under both rules seems to have been admirable. They
fraternised here on both sides, whether Khalif or Castillian sovereign
wielded the sceptre, hence the undisputed preponderance of mudejar
architecture in the hieratic city of the Goths.
On the east side a portion of the monastery has been converted into a
museum. Never was a collection more insignificant than that of the
_Museo Provincial_ of Toledo. The ground floor displays a quantity of
wood carvings, of Moorish azulejo, which is always a delight for the
eye, of bits of ancient monuments, of inscriptions, Arabic brims of
walls, with inscriptions and Moorish work, ever worth examining. Most of
the pictures and statues are exceedingly mediocre. But there is a superb
bust of Juanelo by Berruguete, and two portraits of El Greco, Juan de
Alava and Covarrubias, as well as his famous plan of Toledo, with the
slim and musing youth, his poetic-looking son, who was the charming
model of his St Martin as well. There is a Holy Family by Spagnoletto,
St Vicente Ferrer by Giordano, some saints by Carreño, and an original
canvas of Juan de Sevilla. Here, by examination of fourteen pictures of
Luis Tristan, you may test the absurdity of the statement by more than
one foreign art critic, that the disciple was greater than the master.
If Tristan was more sane and sound than _El Greco_, he was certainly
less distinguished and less great. There is a crucifix of Ribalta, a St
Jerome of Carducci, some fine subjects from Holy Scripture by Frank, and
a remarkable Christ of Morales, and a number of Flemish imitations. The
saloon above, where most of these pictures are preserved, was the cell
of the great Cisneros. The most interesting relic of all the collection
of inscriptions and stones is the mutilated slab taken from the roof of
the church of the Capucine Friars near the Alcázar, and found among the
materials used for building the patio of this palace, whose broken
letters show it to be a fragment of King Wamba's tomb:
VS Rex Wamba
LXX
LXXXIIIIIII
HUNC
EGIONIS
IV
which Antonio Ponz recomposes thus:
En tumulatus jacet inclitus Rex Wamba;
Regnum contempsit anno DCLXXX
Monachus obiit anno DCLXXXIIIIIII
A Cænobio translatus in Hunc locum
Ab Alphonsus X. Legionis Castellae autem IV. Reye.
In the now forsaken ghetto, where, in King Wamba's days, stood a strong
fortress called the _Castillo de la Juderia_, and which then was the
centre of Toledo's wealth and commerce, a flourishing quarter, full of
the activities of business, of intelligence, of industry, where riches
and science and the treasures of the King were gathered, where the
money-changers clinked golden promise in the face of reckless and needy
nobles, and rabbis read out the law in their beautiful temples to the
prosperous and numerous descendants of the exiles of Babylon, to-day may
be seen the lovely little synagogues, _El Transito_ and _Santa Maria La
Blanca_.
Writing several centuries ago to his fellow-Jews of Amsterdam,
Hassadrin, a Jewish traveller, thus mentions _El Transito_, one of the
marvels of Toledo: "I find in this town, with other antiquities, Roman,
Gothic and Arabian, a spacious temple which, since 1355, with King
Pedro's permission, was built in this town for the Jewish people by
Samuel Levi, his treasurer and private friend, which temple remains
substantially intact, with all the early ornamentation seen on its four
principal walls since its foundation, and thus its two atriums, its
temple for women and other corresponding offices. All this I have drawn
with as much care as possible, and with the expression of the smallest
ornamentation, and have even copied three lines of Hebrew, which run
along each of the walls, south, north, and west, without interruption;
and here also four Hebrew inscriptions, the shortest in verse and
rhythm, the two longest in prose; six others on the east wall." But he
bitterly complains that "they have white-washed the temple so thickly
that, even though the letters were originally in relief, they are
entirely obliterated, and much of the ornamentation remains hopelessly
confused." Those unwhitened above, that are left coloured and solid, he
describes as "most beautiful."[19]
When Samuel Levi built this lovely temple of semi-Moorish design, which
the restorers are slowly relieving of its execrable load of whitewash
that the venerable Hassadrin complained of to his fellow-townspeople of
Amsterdam, the Jews were at their highest point of fortune in Toledo.
They stood at the bedside of the sovereign in sickness, they counselled
him in all difficulties; they filled his purse, kept his city
flourishing. They might have known that they would soon pay dearly for
all this power and glory. The anti-Semitic feeling has ever been the
same, since the first Christian days to our own time. It breaks out in
waves, like an epidemic, and always, it must be remarked, when the Jews
are most prosperous and wealthy. So it has broken out in France at the
end of this enlightened century, with all the virulence and spite and
shameless injustice of the primitive centuries. It is no exaggeration to
say, in the year 1898, that the French, if they dared, would gladly
wreck--as, in the days of Samuel Levi, the Spaniards wrecked Levi's
palace and all the great Jewish houses of the Toledan ghetto--the Jewish
centre, if the Jews still congregated in any particular part of Paris.
It is not unjust to say that it is Jewish gold, Jewish power, Jewish
subtlety and intelligence that inspire to-day, as then, this bitter and
vindictive hate. For if the Jews remained poor, insignificant, ignorant,
they would never have suffered persecution, which is proof sufficient
that the war is rather one of race than of religion, rather one of base
and brutal envy
[Illustration: DETAIL OF ORNAMENT, EL TRANSITO]
on the Christian side than of anything resembling a religious crusade.
In all periods of its history, Toledo was subject to these sudden and
inexplicable outbursts against the Jews, in spite of the historic legend
that Toledo was first peopled and created by the Jews sent adrift by
Nebuchadnezzar--a legend that should have entitled the unfortunates to
regard themselves as at home upon her seven hills. Not so at any time.
First the Carthaginians, then the Romans, then the Arians, the
Christians, the Saracens, again, the Christians. Hideous persecution,
continually and intermittently, of the chosen people, the followers of
Moses and the prophets, the brethren of Christ, the apostles and Mary!
One Toledan law against the Jews was a righteous one: the money-lenders
were not allowed to exceed thirty-five per cent. on monies lent. Many a
beggared scamp and spendthrift to-day would be the better off if such a
law in usury had always existed. But there was no inducement to
conversion, for the converted Jew was never recognised by his adopted
brethren. He always wore a piece of coloured stuff on his shoulder as
the _señal de Judio_. The Inquisition started the final and worst
persecution of all, and the Catholic Isabel publicly banished them from
the kingdom. Abhorrence of the race has never died, never even
diminished, in the Peninsula. A grandee once married the granddaughter
of a converted Jew, and, even a hundred and fifty years later, his
descendants could not hope to marry into their own rank. He might have
hoped for pardon and oblivion if he had married a ballet-dancer or a
courtesan. In the Cathedral, a host is preserved, supposed to have been
traversed by a Jewish spear which pierced it in three places, the
sacrilege having taken place in Holland. The legend runs that the light
from the holes was so intense that the Jew instantly became converted.
There is also a legend of a highroad cross near the town having been
struck by a Jewish sword, bleeding humanly as it fell upon the
sacrilegious slayer, the drops of blood as he carried it home revealing
to the Toledans his crime, which was naturally the motive of a fresh
persecution of the race. So that God, finding the Christians too pacific
and lukewarm, used this dumb instrument of painted wood to provoke an
onslaught, and redden the streets of Toledo with Hebrew blood. These
things you must read seriously when you take to study of the Spanish
historians. So they explain to you the legend of the Cathedral gate, the
_Puerta del Niño perdido_. In 1490, a Jew of Quintana went to Toledo to
witness the edifying sight of an _auto-da-fé_. He stood on the brilliant
and thronged little Zocodover, and watched the sombre flare of the
torches, listened to the lugubrious chants. Turning to a neighbour, he
exclaimed: "I know something that will drive these people wild, and
will, at the same time, proclaim the triumph of the law of Moses." He
appointed a meeting with his neighbour at Tembleque, and settled to
carry off a child of three or four. He stole the child from Toledo, and
brought it to the village of La Guardia. At Passiontide, they met at a
grotto outside La Guardia, and submitted the baby to a repetition of the
insults and outrages Christ had endured; then lanced him, tore out his
heart, and buried the little body. The child's mother was blind, and at
this instant miraculously recovered her sight. Not content with this,
they bribed a recently converted Jew, Juan Gomez, to steal a host,
paying him thirty reals for the sacrilege, and sent him off with the
child's heart to Zamora. Thus the crime was traced to Juan Gomez, who,
opening his prayer-book in the cathedral of Avila, on his return,
attracted attention by the wonderful projection of bright rays from the
leaves. He was instantly seized, examined, papers were found on him, and
he and the gang of Jewish torturers of babies were burnt by the
Inquisition.
This charming little temple was built for Levi by the Jew, D. Meir
Abdeli, a rabbi to whom an elaborate Hebrew inscription on one wall does
honour as a man of transcendent virtue. The architecture is _Morisco_.
Slowly the restorers are unveiling the admirably-wrought stucco walls,
where the sculpture is as fine and delicate as the most exquisite lace,
and has lain for centuries under a degrading coat of whitewash. You must
mount the high scaffolding with lighted wax or lamp, and here you may
examine at your leisure the inexhaustible delights of the
Moorish-Andalusian style in its most florid period. The prodigality of
ornament is as amazing as the Gothic wealth of sculpture of San Juan de
los Reyes, but I confess this pleases far more. It is much more
charming, more fairy-like, with that delicately-sensual note which forms
the eternal witchery of the East. The friezes are magnificent, and
nothing could be prettier than the effect of the semi-horseshoe windows
and their frail pillars and arches. Above the famous Hebrew
inscriptions, quotations from the Psalms mostly, run a row of arches,
highly decorated, resting on slim columns fancifully wrought. Here the
extreme elegance of design and finish touches upon preciosity. The
Moorish windows are most lovely, perfect little poems in stone, of a
marvellous fragility and grace. From their dainty lines and traceries,
you look in stupor up at the massive _artesonado_ ceiling, with its
geometrical figures, its infinitude of design carven in heavy
wood--blurred, it is true, and brutally defaced by time and neglect.
Here and there the woodwork is discoloured, here and there hopelessly
degraded; but some notion of its pristine magnificence may be gathered
even yet.
_El Transito_ was seized by Isabel the Catholic, on her expulsion of the
Jews from her kingdom, and handed over to the Knights of Calatrava,
whose arms are stamped on every corner of the temple. The Knights did
what every other religious body in all ages and lands has done on taking
possession of the temple of the dethroned gods. They marred the harmony
of Eastern architecture by the erection of Christian altars, less
flagrantly, of course, than the great Mosque of Cordova was marred. But
still the false note is there: it greets us with singular bad taste in
the fifteenth century retablo, in a _plateresca_ altar, in mediocre
sixteenth century paintings that represent scenes from the New
Testament, oddly unsuitable to the walls of a synagogue, and out of
keeping with the long Hebrew inscriptions in relief above the frieze.
Some of these meritless canvases are attributed to John of Burgundy.
There is a choir neither decorative nor impressive, and a plateresca
door, a tolerable specimen of that Spanish architecture. These are mere
blots upon a graceful whole. The Jews under Moorish influence, built
this lovely little temple, and its spirit, its essence, its genius,
remain Jewish after more than four centuries of dispossession.
The origin of the name _Santa Maria la Blanca_ dates from the fourth
century, when Our Lady, in a miraculous vision, is said to have chosen
the spot for the erection of a church in her honour, which was covered
with snow. Pope Liberius then ordered the church to be built and
consecrated to the White Lady--_Nuestra Señora la Blanca_. Later, the
church became the property of the Jews, who rebuilt above its ruins the
imposing synagogue we see to-day, in the Moorish ninth century style.
Unhappily for them St Vicente Ferrer, a mediaeval fanatic who to-day
would be called a demagogue, came to Toledo in 1405, on his famous
crusade against the unfortunate race. You may see the highly sculptured
pulpit half Moorish, half Gothic, he preached his frantic sermons from
to the inflammatory Toledans in the little church of Santiago below the
Puerta del Sol, now closed up with a wooden statue of the saint in the
middle, holding in one hand a wooden crucifix, and flourishing the other
in exhortation to the populace to destruction and cruelty. The Man of
Sorrow, who preached peace and goodwill to all men, love of enemies,
forgiveness of injuries, himself a Jew, son of a Jewess, is held up to
excite the furious passions of the mob, to urge them to crime and
infamous injustice. How much fatal misery humanity in all ages, even in
our own, might have been spared by the prevalence of so small a quality
as a sense of humour! The Valencian saint himself died in bleak far-off
Vannes, in Brittany.
But there was no humour then in grim and blood-saturated Toledo. The mob
rushed from the church to the synagogue, tore the obnoxious Jews limb
from limb, thrust them into the streets and the highways, robbed,
tortured, wounded, took possession of their beautiful temple, sacked
their houses, carried off their money-bags, (naturally), hooted, hissed,
and kicked them precisely as it would to-day in Paris, for all our
enlightenment and progress, if it dared. All this in the pacific name of
Christ! Centuries after the synagogue became a Magdalen's Asylum, under
Cardinal Siliceo, until 1791, when it was converted into a barrack and
military stores. It was only rescued from this ignoble use thirty years
ago, and restored by public subscription.
Nothing could be more miserable than the exterior of _Santa Maria la
Blanca_; nothing more squalid than its surroundings. A deserted quarter,
mean little laneways, towzled babies, unfortunate beggars. "As soon as
you descend the steps that lead to it," writes Quadrado, "you are
arrested by the surprise of this singular mingling of magnificence and
nakedness, of capricious strangeness of lines, the exquisite taste of
the ornaments; you fancy yourself transported to a fantastic pagoda. The
glance is lost in the midst of this forest of great octagonal pillars,
which from the point of view of proportion, lack half of their height.
They are seven in a line, forming five naves, and holding Moorish arches
of a bold curve. The capitals in stucco are of different forms, composed
of branches, of leaves and garlands, mixed with fir-cones, reminiscences
of the old Byzantine style. Varied ornaments, arabesques, lovely rose
windows along with arches, and prominent above the central nave a frieze
in slight relief, formed of lines crosswise and intermingling, and even
still of a remarkable precision and purity. No dome, not even a ceiling;
a roof of wood, of miserable aspect, descending from the height of the
central nave to the two lateral extremities, gives to the whole edifice
an appearance of ruin and abandonment." The restorers, with customary
clumsiness, have coated the whole temple in plaster, like the cloisters
of San Juan de los Reyes, with a result almost facetious, taking into
consideration the name of the building. It is now white with a sorry
vengeance. The ceiling is said to have been made from beams of the
cedars of Lebanon, and the soil the synagogue is built upon to have been
brought from Mount Zion. The Moorish and Byzantine style mingle most
artistically, with the accumulated delicate and artistic effects of both
and the enchanting azulejos, here of an admirable beauty of colour and
design; but arabesque, tiles and horse-shoe arches are sadly out of
harmony with the Gothic altars of the chancel. One finely sculptured, is
supposed to be by Berruguete or one of his pupils. Elsewhere it would
show to better advantage than here. Curious detail, the wells may still
be seen where the Jews and Jewesses performed their ablutions.
[Illustration: SANTA MARIA LA BLANCA]
For grace and a certain note of distinction and wealth in its beauty,
_Santa Maria la Blanca_ cannot compare with _El Transito_, which in the
days of its splendour, must have been a gem of the most delicate
perfection. But as a religious temple, as the expression of solemn
worship rooted in the strange and mysterious East, the former is by far
the more imposing, the more earnest and harmonious. Prayer in the
_Transito_ seems a matter of graceful and artistic dilletantism; here it
appears a great racial cry of the soul.