collegiate church of San Feliu or San Felix rising proudly above the
town. Its tall campanile is visible from every part of the town and is a
familiar landmark for miles around. It was built in 1392, and is in
three stages: the first or lower stage, quite plain, the second adorned
with graceful windows, the third putting forth shoots in the shape of
tapering finials. “It is seldom,” says Street, “that the junction of
tower and spire is more happily managed than it is here; and before the
destruction of the upper part of the spire the whole effect must have
been singularly graceful.” Though the church seems to have been almost
entirely rebuilt in the fourteenth century, as a foundation, St. Feliu
dates back to the eighth century and was used by the Christians during
the Moorish occupation, which, by the way, only lasted sixty-eight
years. The interior seems, like the cathedral’s, to have consisted of a
single nave, but to this aisles have been added, the whole terminating
in a tri-apsidal chevet. The west front dates from the seventeenth
century. The high altar has some good paintings and sculpture, the
canopies over the tomb of San Feliu and the statues of the Virgin and
St. Narcissus being especially notable. The modern chapel of the
last-named saint is gorgeously enriched with jasper of many colours. In
this church is buried the heroic Don Mariano Alvarez de Castro, beneath
a monument, dating from 1880, executed in Carrara marble and in the
reddish yellow stone of the country. The tomb is crowned by a mourning
female figure, which I have been told is a portrait of the general’s
wife. The sepulchre of San Feliu dates from the thirteenth century and
is sculptured with compositions representing scenes from the saint’s
life. Leaving San Feliu by the south door, we pass through the dark and
massive Portal de Sobreportas, formed by two huge round towers,
connected by a modern intervening story, and at the end of a long gloomy
lane reach a Capuchin convent. The object of our visit is a soi-disant
Moorish bath, covered in by a graceful little pavilion with eight
slender columns.
The oldest church at Gerona appears to be the little oratory of San
Nicolas, built in the form of a cross with its arms ending in apses,
surmounted by domes. The height of the nave is not much more than that
of a tall man. Hardly inferior in antiquity is the church of San Pedro
de Galligans. This is named, not after the Gauls, as one might be
tempted to suppose, but after a little stream called the Galligans,
which at this point flows into the Oñar. Like every other religious
edifice in Gerona, its foundation is attributed to Charlemagne, but
(according to Piferrer) the earliest mention of the church occurs in the
year 992, while the actual fabric was building at the time a third part
of the coinage of Gerona was given by Count Ramon Berenguer III. to the
Benedictine monastery of which his brother was abbot. Street inclines to
think San Pedro was built by the architect of the church at Elne in
Roussillon. The principal apse here, as at Avila, projects beyond the
town wall; on the south side of it are two smaller apses side by side,
opening into the south transept; the north transept expands into apses
on the north and east and is crowned by a fine octagonal steeple with
two rows of round-headed windows. The west front is approached by steps,
many of them bearing Romano-Gothic inscriptions; there is a single
round-arched western door with good fern-leaf carving on its capitals,
and above this a rose-window. Within, the church consists of a nave,
separated by tall, massive columns from the aisles. The capitals are
rude, but offer great variety of design and execution. There is a
clerestory, but no windows to the aisles, which are more like
corridors. On the south side is a cloister probably carved coeval with
the church, but terribly damaged during the siege, and now converted
into the Provincial Museum.
“The whole character of this church,” remarks Street, “is very
interesting. The west front reminded me much of the best Italian
Romanesque, and the rude simplicity of its interior--so similar in its
mode of construction to the great church at Santiago in the opposite
corner of the Peninsula--suggests the probability of its being one of
the earliest examples of which Spain can boast.”
From San Pedro we may follow the course of the little river Galligans to
the deserted monastery of San Daniel, dating as a building from the
eleventh century. In 1015 the original foundations were sold by Bishop
Pedro Roger to Count Ramon Borell III. and his wife Ermesindes, for one
hundred ounces of gold. The Countess erected a monastery, which was
completed by the less fortunate wife of Ramon Cap d’Estopa. The west
front and nave are Gothic, the chancel and lantern in good Romanesque
style. In front of the sanctuary a flight of steps leads down to the
shrine of the titular saint, whose tomb dates from the fourteenth
century.
* * * * *
North of Gerona lies FIGUERAS, accounted the strongest fortress in
Spain. Like so many other “impregnable” strongholds, it has been taken
again and again, so often, in fact, as to give rise to the saying,
“Figueras belongs to Spain in peace, and to France in war.” It is only
fair to add that in several instances its fall has been due to
treachery. In a miserable chamber in the castle of San Fernando died
Mariano Alvarez de Castro, a prisoner in the hands of the French. The
guide-books speak of a religious procession which takes place here on
the last Monday in May, and is called the Profaso de la Tramontana,
after the north wind, which blows here with great violence.
In the vicinity of Figueras is the church of Villabertrán, dating from
the end of the eleventh century. Designed by a priest it exhibits,
remarks a Spanish writer, in every detail the ecclesiastical bias. All
animal figures are excluded as tending to disturb religious
recollection. The interior is nobly designed but destitute of all
ornament. “In this temple everything appeals to the reason, nothing to
the imagination; these low dark vaults dissipate illusions; the thought
of death oppresses the mind; but the eyes discern a gleam of light in
the darkness of the sanctuary, and the soul hungrily seeks a gleam of
faith in the gloom of doubt.”
Of a similarly severe character is the adjacent cloister. The campanile
of the church alone presents any airy or graceful features. The whole
foundation would have been spared even by Knox or Calvin.
On the bay of Rosas, the town of Castellón de Ampurias recalls the great
city of Empurias which was founded by the Greeks, and utterly perished
at the end of the twelfth century. It was among those great maritime
powers which for long resisted the encroachments of the Carthaginians,
and which fell in turn before the irresistible arms of Rome--reminders
for us of the days when the fate of the Mediterranean still hung in the
balance, and it was yet uncertain whether the civilisation of Europe
should be Hellenic, Punic or Latin. The destruction of Empurias is
ascribed partly to the Saracens, partly to the Normans. Whoever
accomplished the work did it thoroughly, for nothing but the name
survives of this once rich and puissant colony of Hellenes.
Castellón de Ampurias is a Latin foundation, with which time has dealt
unkindly. Its parish church of Santa Maria is a noble monument of its
prime. It was consecrated in 1064 and finished in the late Gothic
period. To this last style belongs the west porch, with a pointed arch
of six orders, and the figures of the Twelve Apostles beneath canopies
in the jambs. The tympanum shows a relief of the Adoration of the Magi.
Contrasting strikingly with this carefully chiselled and graceful Gothic
work is the stern square campanile to the left, a remnant of the
Romanesque days. The interior is early Gothic. The combination of this
with the preceding style is strikingly shown in the principal apse. The
altar, a single piece of marble, is carved with reliefs which exhibit
(says Pi y Margall) the artist’s breadth of imagination rather than his
skill.
Further inland is the venerable abbey of San Pedro de Roda, founded in
the tenth century, and abandoned by the religious in the year 1799.
To-day the monastic buildings are in utter ruin, but enough of the
church remains to fill us with admiration for the loftiness of its nave,
the harmonious admixture of the Romanesque with the pure classic forms,
the skilful decoration of the various parts, and the sombre majesty of
the whole.
THE VALLEY OF THE TER
The river Ter, which washes the walls of Gerona, is born among the snows
of the Puigmal, the loftiest of the Eastern Pyrenees. Its stream is
still ice-cold when it flows past the little town of San Juan de las
Abadesas, which changed its name from Ripollet upon the foundation of an
abbey within its precincts by Wilfred the Hairy, Count of Barcelona, in
the year 877. The Count’s daughter was the first Abbess. The present
abbatial church replaced the original structure in 1150. It is strictly
cruciform, consisting of a nave and transept without aisles. There are
only two columns in the church, these being planted at the entrance to
the presbytery. The chancel is in the florid late Gothic style,
contrasting oddly with the extreme simplicity of the rest of the fabric.
Behind the altar is a figure of Christ, sculptured in the year 1250; in
the forehead, it is believed, is contained a Host, which has preserved
its integrity for seven centuries, and which it was found impossible to
remove in the year 1598. The church has two choirs, both blocking the
nave. The north and south porches were reserved respectively for men
and women. The adjoining cloister is in good fifteenth-century style,
and was probably designed or improved by the architect of the Palacio de
la Diputacion at Barcelona.
Five or six miles farther down the valley stands Ripoll, one of the
towns that suffered most severely during the Carlist wars. It has,
however, long since recovered from its reverses. Unfortunately the
damage done to the monastery founded by Wilfred the Hairy cannot be
repaired. As the Mausoleum of the counts from the ninth to the twelfth
century, it possessed great interest. The church, built by Bishop Oliva
about the thousandth year of our era, is roofless. The nave terminates
in an apse, and there are three smaller apses opening from the east into
each transept. The special glory of the building is its west porch,
formed by a rounded arch with three shafts in each jamb. The middle
shafts are carved into life-size figures of St. Peter and St. Paul; the
others are most beautifully chiselled. The orders of the arch are
variously treated; caprices, grotesques, masques, mythological designs
being interwoven with more appropriate religious symbols. One series of
reliefs appears to represent the twelve months.
The façade on either side of this portal is similarly decorated with
graphic reliefs in six courses, the lowest representing scenes in which
centaurs, lions, &c., figure; above this is a row of figures of knights,
princes, and prelates; above this, battle scenes, then come two rows of
sacred figures and subjects, and finally the figure of God the Father
attended by angels and princes. The whole of this portal is of profound
interest to students of the Romanesque.
The interior of the church was restored as lately as twenty years ago.
All styles seem to have entered into its architecture. Instead of
columns, massive piers support the vaulting, and mark off the aisles
from the nave. The chancel--merely a shallow apsidal prolongation of the
nave--is strewn with the ruins of the high altar and the roof.
The cloister of the monastery is the most interesting part. It is
composed of an upper and lower gallery of round arches, uninterrupted by
any piers or buttresses. The harmony of the whole is admirable. The
columns are of Gerona marble, and pinkish grey in hue. Variety is
imparted by the capitals whereon the unknown sculptor has expended his
fanciful, nervous genius. The upper gallery was not completed till the
end of the fourteenth century, though the cloister had been begun as far
back as 1172.
Farther down stream is Vich, a town constantly referred to in the annals
of the Carlist wars. As the history of that insurrection is not well
known to foreigners, visitors are more likely to be interested in the
monuments that have survived those troubled times. The cathedral was
built in 1040--a date which sounds promising; but alas! the architects
of the eighteenth century have forestalled us, and have worked their
wicked will upon a once noble church. The artistic eye will not linger
upon the exterior, but it may find some refreshment in the majestic
nave, divided from the aisles by six clustered columns, with Corinthian
capitals. When the church was rebuilt, all the tombs were swept away,
and none of the altars spared, except the high altar, which is a
meritorious work of the early fifteenth century. As at Ripoll, there is
a fine cloister built five hundred years ago. The gallery, with its
pointed openings and trefoil and quatrefoil tracery, is built over a
substructure with round arched open vaults. The centre of the quadrangle
is occupied by the statue and monument of the philosopher Balmes, who
was born at Vich and died in 1848, aged only thirty-eight years. He is
buried in the cathedral nave.
Outside this church there is little to be seen in the old Catalan town.
The remains of a Roman temple are worth examination, and the artist may
find plenty of material for sketches in the picturesque Plaza Mayor.
From Vich it is about forty-five miles to Barcelona.
LERIDA
Lerida is another of those Catalan cities that remind one of the saying
about new wine in old bottles. Seen from afar it is clearly one of those
old human hives that have existed on the same spot ever since man felt
the need of a permanent abode--you have the hill-site, the walls, the
towers, the flowing river, the mediæval aspect. You observe with delight
a humpbacked bridge, such as (with a total disregard for beasts of
burden) our pious ancestors loved to build. And over all rises the
cathedral--or, as we shall soon learn, what was the cathedral. But on a
closer inspection we find that time has by no means left Lerida
untouched. Already she has overflowed into the opposite side of the
stream, and there is a big new suburb with wide white streets,
spaciously planned squares, and avenues along which the trees are
beginning to grow. And as you cross the humpbacked bridge, you observe
that the centre arch is quite new, and as you enter the old town, you
are astonished by the stir and the modernity of it all. It is just like
Smyrna or Damascus. Every one has been too busy to build the town over
again. Its poor old rickety houses, in which men designed to lead only
the sedatest of lives, have been hastily requisitioned for the service
of modern industry and commerce. The low rooms are packed with
merchandise, the frail houses seem like to burst. The underground
cellars come in very handily. Lerida is very much alive. Some day she
will have to pull her house down and build a new one altogether.
Probably no one would have come to Lerida--no strangers of the
uncommercial variety, that is--if Street had not told us about the old
cathedral, since turned into a barracks. Nor without his detailed and
professional description would the average traveller be able to make
much of the building. The purposes to which it has been put have
obscured the outlines of the features of the original fabric. But you
cannot overlook it for it stands high on the hill like a citadel, which,
indeed, it has now become.
Lerida--which the Catalans, by the way, call Lleyda--was known to the
Romans as Ilerda, and when they turned Christian, they built a church on
this site. This, it is supposed, became a mosque during the brief
Moorish period, to be reconsecrated on the reappearance of the
Christians. The first stone of the actual building was laid on July 22,
1203, in the presence of King Pedro II., and the consecration took
place on October 31, 1278.
(People often wonder why we do not build cathedrals nowadays equal to
the old. One of the reasons may be that we are in too great a hurry. In
the Middle Ages no man expected to see the completion of the work he
began. They were animated by a strong communal sense, different from the
individualism of to-day.)
The excellent bishop and chapter of Lerida in the year 1707 thought the
cathedral too old for their requirements, and having already
commissioned a military architect to build them a new church in the city
below, thither they removed. By a fair exchange the military took
possession of the cathedral. They willingly display it to you, and the
non-commissioned officer who shows you round seems less in a hurry to
get the visit over than your clerical cicerone usually is.
The lay traveller in attempting to understand this church has always to
refer himself to the explanation of Street or else to that of Piferrer,
which is certainly not so intelligible. In plan, then, the church is
cruciform with three eastern apses and square transept arms. Another
apse projects eastward from the south transept, which is flanked on the
other side by a semicircular chapel, pointing south. Over the crossing
rises an octagonal lantern, roofed like the whole church with stone,
and pierced in each face with double windows with varied tracery. At its
north-west angle is a slender octagonal staircase turret, rising from
the south-west angle of the north transept. There is a similar but
stouter tower, detached from the lantern, rising over the south
transept. These towers give the whole pile a romantic and beautiful
appearance.
The principal portal, called in the Catalan dialect the Puerta dels
Fillols, opens into the middle of the south aisle. “This [says our
authority] is an example of singularly rich transitional work, with an
archivolt enriched with chevrons, mouldings, dog-tooth, intersecting
arches, and elaborate foliage. There is the usual horizontal cornice
over the arch, and above this is a fourteenth-century statue of the
Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord. The horizontal cornice is carried on
moulded corbels, between which and the wall are carvings of wyverns and
other animals; whilst the soffit of the cornice in each compartment is
carved with delicate tracery panels, in some of which I thought I
detected some trace of Moorish influence. The cornice has a delicate
trailing branch of foliage; and the labels and two or three orders of
the arch, in which sculpture of foliage is introduced, are remarkable
for the singular delicacy and refinement of the lines of the foliage,
and for the exceeding skill with which they have been wrought. There is
none of that reckless dash which marks our carvers nowadays, but in its
place a patient elaboration of lovely forms, which cannot too much be
praised. The mouldings here are all decidedly characteristic by a
later--probably fifteenth-century--vaulted porch, which occupies the
space between two added chapels. The effect is very good and
picturesque.”
The transept doors are also very fine, especially the southern one. The
cornice is beautifully sculptured and the wheel window above reveals in
its details the influence of the Italian Romanesque. These entrances
make us regret the effacement of the west porch, which is concealed by
the vast square cloister covering that side of the church. This
remarkable building, now occupied by troops, is the grandest, Street
declared, he had ever seen. In its present desecrated state, it must be
confessed it needs a highly trained eye to appreciate its beauty. The
arcades are walled up, and there is some ground for supposing that when
in ecclesiastical occupation the galleries were used as dormitory and
refectory. The details vary greatly. The bays vary in width, the
sculpture is of all sorts of design, and of all periods. Adjoining this
vast cloister on the north side is a long barrel-vaulted hall, lighted
only at one end. On the west side the cloister is entered through an
enormous western doorway with a pointed arch. South of this and almost
detached from the cloister stands that beautiful octagonal steeple which
served Pedro Balaguer as a model for the Micalet Tower at Valencia. It
is 170 feet high and divided into five stages, “the whole construction
being of the most dignified and solid description.”
Concerning the position of this tower, Street remarks: “Here, as often
happens with detached campaniles, the grouping of the steeple with the
church from various points of view is very diversified, and often very
striking. From its great height above the valley it is seen on all
sides, and generally at some distance. From the south, the grand size of
the cloister, which connects the steeple with the church, gives it
somewhat the effect of being in fact at the west end of an enormous
building, of which the cloister may be the nave; whilst the steeple
rears its whole height boldly to the right, and makes the whole scheme
of the work utterly unintelligible, until after a thorough
investigation.”
The interior of the church is now cut horizontally by a plank flooring,
and no features of interest can be distinguished, except in a single
apsidal chapel, which is still used as such, and where is buried a
natural son of King Pedro the Catholic, who died in 1254. Whitewash has
obscured all the details of capitals and columns.
Adjacent to the cathedral on the north side is the ruin of a once noble
hall, with traces of Moorish influence in its carving--possibly the
remains of a chapter-house or episcopal palace.
Far exceeding the cathedral in antiquity is the church of San Lorenzo
hard by, though it is not safe to accept the tradition of its Gothic
origin. It was certainly built prior to the twelfth century. Originally
just an apse and a nave, with walls eight feet thick and a span of
thirty-three feet, aisles each ending in an apse were added to it at a
much later period. They communicate with the nave by very simple pointed
arches, and their windows have good traceries of the late thirteenth
century. “The apse has a semi-dome and is lighted by three round-headed
windows, five inches wide in the clear, and has a corbel-table under the
eaves outside.”
The octagonal campanile dates from the fifteenth century, to which
period belongs the western gallery. There is a good deal of pointed work
in the church, which is gloomy and religious. The high altar, dating
from about 1400, has a reredos which is highly praised by some critics.
Lerida was the Salamanca of Aragon. Her university, founded in 1300 by
Jaime II., numbered the profligate Calixtus III. among its professors,
and Vicente Ferrer--the “angel of the judgment”--among its alumni. Ford
reminds us that Horace speaks of the place as a seat of learning in
Roman times, to which the troublesome youths of the capital were
banished. The town, like its Castilian prototype, has been famed for
arms as well as learning. It sustained a severe siege from Felipe IV.
himself in 1640, and withstood the assaults of the great Condé in 1640.
It owned the loss of its university to its devotion to the Archduke
Charles in the War of Succession, and (more directly) to the defeat
sustained close by, by the Bourbon king. At the same time the military
authorities made the clergy give up their cathedral.
Probably none of the ancient edifices of Lerida will interest you as
much as the market-place, surrounded by quaint old houses; entering, you
find the whole house is a great wine-press, the grapes, trodden on the
ground floor, pouring their juice into the cellars below.
* * * * *
Higher up the Segre is the historic town of Balaguer, the Bargusia of
Livy, and the capital of the ancient county of Urgel. The counts had
their residence in the “Beautiful Castle” (“Castillo hermoso”) which
overlooked the town and has now totally disappeared. There are a few
ruins of the once famous priory of Santo Domingo. The site of the
castle is occupied by the church of Santa Maria, built in 1351. It is a
dignified, simple edifice, of a single nave with lateral chapels. The
Trappist monastery of Bellpuig de las Avellanas a little way out of the
town is another and better preserved monument of the piety of the old
Counts of Urgel whose line expired with Jaime el Desdichado at the
beginning of the fifteenth century.