GERONA--PERPIÑAN--S. ELNE.
There are few Spanish towns which are altogether more interesting than
the now insignificant and little-known city of Gerona. It not only
contains several buildings of rare architectural interest, but it has,
moreover, the advantage of being picturesquely placed on the banks of
the rapid river Oña, and on the steep slope of the hills which bound it.
The Cathedral is the first object of attraction, and its history is so
curious, that I need make no apology for proceeding without further
preface to say the substance of what I have been able to learn about it.
There was a cathedral here at a very early period; and when Gerona was
taken by the Moors, they converted it into a mosque, but, with their
usual liberality, allowed the services of the Church still to be carried
on in the neighbouring church of San Feliu, which for a time,
accordingly, was the cathedral church. In A.D. 1015 this state of
affairs had ceased, owing to the expulsion of the Moors, and the
cathedral was again recovered to the use of the Church. Considerable
works were at this time executed,[313] if, indeed, the cathedral was not
entirely rebuilt, as the old documents declare, and the altered church
was re-consecrated in A.D. 1038,[314] by the Archbishop of Narbonne,
assisted by the Bishops of Vique, Urgel, Elne, Barcelona, Carcassonne,
and others. In A.D. 1310 works seem to have been again in progress,[315]
and in A.D. 1312 a Chapter was held, at which it was resolved to rebuild
the head or chevet of the church with nine chapels,[316] for which, in
A.D. 1292, Guillermo Gaufredo, the treasurer, made a bequest in favour
of the work.[317] In A.D. 1325 I find that an indulgence was granted by
the Bishop Petrus de Urrea in favour of donors to the work of the
cathedral;[318] and the work, so far westward as the end of the choir,
was probably complete before A.D. 1346, inasmuch as in this year the
silver altar, with its Retablo and baldachin, were placed where they now
stand.[319] We know something of the architects employed during the
fourteenth century upon the works just mentioned. In 1312 the Chapter
appointed the Archdeacon Ramon de Vilarico and the Canon Arnaldo de
Montredon to be the _obreros_ or general clerical superintendents of the
progress of the works. In A.D. 1316, or, according to some authorities,
in February, 1320, an architect--Enrique of Narbonne--is first
mentioned; and soon after this, on his death, another architect of the
same city, Jacobo de Favariis by name, was appointed with a salary of
two hundred and fifty libras[320] a quarter, and upon the condition that
he should come from Narbonne six times a year[321] to examine the
progress of the works. In A.D. 1325 Bart. Argenta was the master of the
works, and he probably carried them on until the completion of the choir
in 1346.[322]
In A.D. 1395 it was proposed to erect a Chapter-house, and the canons in
charge of the fabric (“canonigos fabriqueros”) presented in writing
their reasons for not erecting it where proposed by the Chapter--at the
south end of the refectory. They said that the works of the church
itself ought first of all to be gone on with, and that the proposed work
would destroy a good and convenient refectory, and make it obscure and
ridiculous: and it seems that their report had the effect of staying the
work. In A.D. 1416 Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works of the
cathedral, proposed a plan for its completion by the erection of a nave;
and though the chevet had an aisle and chapels round it, he proposed to
build his nave of the same width as the choir and its aisles, but as a
single nave without aisles. This proposition was deemed so hazardous,
and created so great a discussion, that the Chapter, before deciding
what plan should be adopted, called together a Junta of architects, and
propounded to each of them separately certain questions, to each of
which they all returned their answers upon oath. In the September
following, these answers were read before the Chapter by a notary, and
it may be supposed carefully digested, for it was not until March 8th,
1417, that Guillermo Boffiy, the master of the works, was called in and
in his turn interrogated with the same questions. Immediately after
this, on the 15th of the same month, at a Chapter-meeting presided over
by the Bishop, it was decided to carry on the work as proposed, with a
single nave. The story is so well worth telling in full, that I have
given in the Appendix a translation of the entire document, which equals
in interest any with which I am acquainted, bearing on the profession of
architect in the middle ages.[323] It is valuable also, incidentally, as
giving us the names of the architects of several other buildings, most
of those who were examined having described themselves in a formal style
as masters of the works of some particular church or churches. It is
difficult to say exactly when the nave was completed, but the great
south door was not executed until A.D. 1458, and the key-stone of the
last division of the vault seems to have been placed in the time of
Bishop Benito, so late as circa 1579.[324] In A.D. 1581 the same bishop
laid the first stone of the bell-tower, and in 1607 the west front and
the great flight of steps leading up to it seem to have been commenced.
We have thus the story of the periods at which the church was founded,
altered, and enlarged very fully told, and it now only remains to apply
it to what is still to be seen in the existing building.
A reference to my ground-plan[325] will show that the church remains
very much in the state which the documentary evidence describes. The
choir has nine chapels round its chevet, as described, and has lofty
arches, a series of very small openings in lieu of triforium, and a
clerestory of two-light windows, of decidedly late but still good
Middle-pointed character. The columns, in the usual Catalan fashion of
this age, are clusters of rather reedy mouldings, with no proper
division or subordination of parts, and consequently of poor effect, and
there is no division by way of stringcourses above or below the
triforium. On the exterior the east end is not seen to much advantage,
as it is built into and against a steep hill, so that at a distance of a
few feet only the eye is on a level with the top of the walls of the
chapels round the apse. The roofs, too, have all been modernized and
lowered. The only peculiarities here are a series of trefoiled openings,
just under the eaves of the roof, into the space over the vaulting, and
perhaps devised for the purpose of ventilation: and the gurgoyles
projecting from the buttresses, which are carved and moulded stones
finished at the end with an octagonal capital, through the bottom of
which the water falls, and which almost looks as if it were meant for
the stone head of a metal down-pipe.
When the choir was built, some considerable portions of the church
consecrated in A.D. 1038 were left standing. The nave was probably
entirely of this age; and a portion of what was no doubt one of the
original towers still remains on the north side, between the cloister
and the nave. This tower has pilasters at the angles and in the centre,
and is divided into equal stages in height by horizontal corbel-tables.
An apse of the same age remains on the east side of what seems to have
been the south transept of the early church: and from its position we
may, I think, assume with safety that the church was then finished with
three or five apses at the east, very much as in the church of San
Pedro, close by, which I shall have presently to describe. In addition
to these early remains there is also a magnificent and all but
unaltered cloister. I cannot find any certain evidence of its exact
date, though it seems to have existed in A.D. 1117, when an act of the
Bishop Raymond Berenger was issued in the “cloister of the
cathedral.”[326] The character of the work confirms, I think, this date.
The plan is very peculiar, forming a very irregular trapezium, no two of
the sides being equal in length. It has on all four sides severely
simple round arches carried on coupled shafts: these are of marble, and
set as much as 20 inches apart, so as to enable them to carry a wall 3
feet 1½ inches thick. This thickness of wall was quite necessary, as the
cloister is all roofed with stone, the section of the vaults on the
east, west, and south sides being half of a barrel, and on the north a
complete barrel vault. The detail of the capitals is of the extremely
elaborate and delicate imitation of classical carving, so frequently
seen throughout the south of France. The abaci are in one stone, but the
bases of the shafts are separate and rest upon a low dwarf-wall, and
square piers are carried up at intervals to strengthen the arcade. The
columns have a very slight entasis.
This cloister deserves careful study, as it seems to show one of the
main branches of the stream by which Romanesque art was introduced into
Spain. It is impossible not to recognize the extreme similarity between
such work as we see here, and that which we see in the cloister at Elne,
near Perpiñan, and, to go still farther afield, at S. Trophime at Arles.
And if any Spanish readers of these pages object to my assumption that
the stream flowed from France westward, they must prove the exact
converse, and assume that this Romanesque work was developed from Roman
work in Spain, and thence spread to Elne and Arles, a position which
none, I suppose, will be bold enough to take.
The nave remains to be described; and to do this well and adequately, it
is necessary to use, not indeed many, but certainly strong, words.
Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works, might well cling fondly to his
grand scheme, for his proposal was not less, I believe, than the
erection of the widest pointed vault in Christendom. Such a scheme might
be expected to meet then in Spain, as it most certainly would now in
this country,[327] a good deal of criticism, and many objections, on the
score of its impracticability; and it is to the honour of the Chapter
that they had the good sense to consult experts and not amateurs as to
the steps to be taken, and then, having satisfied themselves that their
architect was competent to his work, that they left it entirely in his
hands.
[Illustration: No. 41
GERONA CATHEDRAL p. 322
INTERIOR LOOKING EAST]
The clear width of this nave is 73 feet, and its height is admirably
proportioned to this vast dimension.[328] It is only four bays in
length; each bay has chapels opening into it on either side, and filling
up the space between the enormous buttresses, whose depth from the front
of the groining shaft to their face is no less than 20 feet. Above the
arches which open into the side chapels is a row of small cusped
openings, corresponding with those which form the triforium of the
choir; and above these are lofty traceried clerestory windows. The
groining-ribs are very large and well moulded. At the east end of the
nave three arches open into the choir and its aisles; and above these
are three circular windows, the largest of which has lost its tracery.
And here it is that the magnificence of the scheme is most fully
realized. A single nave and choir, all of the same enormous size, would
have been immeasurable by the eye, and would have been, to a great
extent, thrown away; here, however, the lofty choir and aisles, with
their many subdivisions, give an extraordinary impression of size to the
vast vault of the nave, and make it look even larger than it really is.
In short, had this nave been longer by one bay, I believe that scarcely
any interior in Europe could have surpassed it in effect. Unfortunately,
as is so often the case among those who possess the most precious works
of art, there is now but little feeling in Gerona for the treasure it
possesses in this wondrous nave, for the stalls and Coro have been moved
down from their proper place into the middle of its length, where they
are shut in and surrounded by a high blank screen, painted in the
vulgarest imitation of Gothic traceries, to the utter ruin, of course,
of the whole internal perspective. It would be a grand and simple work
of restoration to give up here, for once, the Spanish usage, and to
restore the stalls to the proper choir. I say “restore,” because it is
pretty clear that they could not have been in the nave when they were
first made, inasmuch as this was in A.D. 1351, sixty-six years before
its commencement. A deed still remains in the archives of the cathedral,
by which we ascertain this fact, for by it a sculptor from Barcelona
agreed, on June 7th, 1351, to make the stalls at the rate of 45 libras
of Barcelona for each.[329] The detail of some parts of the woodwork is
exceedingly good, and evidently of the middle of the fourteenth century,
so that it is clear they are the very stalls referred to in the
agreement. There is ample length in the proper choir for them, and they
must have been moved into the nave in unwise obedience to the common
modern Spanish arrangement, which was certainly never more entirely
unfortunate and destructive of effect than it is here.
It will be seen, by reference to the Appendix, that though the
architects consulted were fairly unanimous as to the possibility of
building the single nave, they were by no means so in their
recommendation of it as the best plan. The general feeling seems to have
been decidedly adverse to it; and we may assume that the Chapter decided
on it partly because it was already commenced, and partly because it
promised to be a cheaper plan than the other. There seems also to have
been great dread on the part of the Chapter of interfering in any way
with the wall which now forms the east end of the nave, for fear lest,
when it was cut into for the introduction of the respond of the nave
arcade, the whole should give way.
Paschasius de Xulbe, one of the architects questioned, gives the
valuable answer, that if the nave is of triple division in width, the
groining of the choir must be raised in order that it may correspond in
its measurements to its third; from which it is pretty clear that he
spoke of a then recognized system of proportioning the height to the
width of a building.
Guillermo Sagrera, master of the works at St. John Perpiñan, tells us,
in his answer, that the choir was originally built with the intention of
having a single nave; and this will account for the otherwise
unintelligible finish of its western wall, which it is clear, from the
tenour of all the answers, was not prepared for any arches in the nave.
I am not certain indeed whether we are not to assume, in reading the
questions asked by the Chapter, that the Romanesque nave was itself of
the same plan and dimensions; and the vast width of the old nave of
Toulouse Cathedral--sixty-three feet--affords an example, at no great
distance from Gerona, of the fact that architects, even so early as the
beginning of the thirteenth century, were not afraid to propose and
execute works on so unusual a scale.
I will not quote farther from the answers of the architects, because
they well deserve to be read in detail; but it is a satisfaction to be
able to say that their conviction of the practicability of the work has
been amply justified, inasmuch as, even to the present day, there is
scarcely a sign of a settlement or crack throughout the entire building.
It is difficult to express a positive opinion as to the original
intention of the architect in regard to the design and finish of the
exterior of this part of the church. The gable walls have been altered,
the roofs renewed, and the original termination of the buttresses
destroyed. At no time however, I think, can it have looked well. The
position is charming, on the edge of a steep, rocky hill falling down to
the river, and girt on its north side by the old many-towered city wall;
yet with all these advantages it is now a decidedly ugly work, and the
nave looks bald, and large out of all proportion to the subdivided,
lower, and over-delicately-treated choir. On the west side the whole
character of the church is Pagan;[330] and I well remember the
astonishment with which, when I had climbed the long flight of broad
steps which leads to the western door, I looked down the stupendous
interior, for which I had been so little prepared!
The effect is not a little enhanced by the dark colour of the stone,
which has never been polluted by whitewash; but there are some defects.
The want of length has already been noticed; the entire absence of
stringcourses inside is not pleasant; and the lowering of the arches
into the chapels in the second bay from the west wall, where there are
three in place of the two in each of the other bays, breaks the main
lines of the design very awkwardly. The mouldings too, as might be
expected in work of so late a date, are nowhere very first-rate, though
they certainly retain generally the character of late fourteenth-century
work.
The doorway on the south side of the nave is remarkable in one respect.
It has in its jambs a series of statues of the Apostles, executed in
terra-cotta; and the agreement for their execution, made, in A.D. 1458,
with the artist Berenguer Cervia, binds him to execute them for six
hundred florins, and “of the same earth as the statue of Sta. Eulalia
and the cross of the new doorway at Barcelona.”[331] This doorway is
very large, but bald and poor in detail; the statues to which the
contract refers still remain, and are in good preservation.
There is nothing more specially worth noticing in the fabric; but
fortunately the choir still retains precious relics in the Retablo
behind, and the baldachin above, the high-altar. There are also said to
be some frontals of the altar still preserved, which are of silver, and
which were originally adorned with precious stones, and with an
inscription which proves them to have been made before the consecration
of the church, in A.D. 1038. Unfortunately they were not in their place
when I was at Gerona, and so I missed seeing them.[332] The Retablo is
of wood entirely covered with silver plates, and divided vertically into
three series of niches and canopies; each division has a subject, and a
good deal of enamelling is introduced in various parts of the canopies
and grounds of the panels. Each panel has a cinquefoiled arch with a
crocketed gablet and pinnacles on either side. The straight line of the
top is broken by three niches, which rise in the centre and at either
end. In the centre is the Blessed Virgin with our Lord; on the right,
San Narcisso; and on the left, San Feliu. The three tiers of subjects
contain (_a_) figures of saints, (_b_) subjects from the life of the
Blessed Virgin, and (_c_) subjects from the life of our Lord. A monument
in one of the chapels gives some account of this precious work; for
though it is called a ciborium, it is also spoken of as being of silver,
which, I believe, the actual ciborium is not.[333] The date of this
monument is 1362; but in the ‘Liber Notularum’ for A.D. 1320, 21, and
22, it seems that the Chapter devoted 3000 libras for the reparation of
the Retablo, though it was not till A.D. 1346 that the work was
finished, and the altar finally fixed in its present position.[334] The
whole of the work is therefore before this date; and probably the
Retablo and the baldachin date from the period between the two dates
last given, viz. A.D. 1320 and A.D. 1348.
[Illustration: Altar, Gerona.]
The baldachin is, like the Retablo, of wood covered with thin plates of
metal. It stands upon four shafts, the lower portions of which are of
dark marble resting on the moulded footpace round the altar. These four
shafts have capitals and bands, the latter being set round with
enamelled coats-of-arms. The canopy is a sort of very flat quadripartite
vault covered with small figures; but on both my visits to Gerona it has
been so dark in the choir as to render it impossible to make out the
subjects. The central subject seems to be the Coronation of the Blessed
Virgin, and in the eastern division is a sitting figure of our Lord
with saints on either side. In order to show the figures on the roof of
the baldachin as much as possible, the two eastern columns are much
lower than the western, the whole roof having thus a slope up towards
the west. A singular arrangement was contrived behind the altar--a white
marble seat for the bishop raised by several steps on either side to the
level of the altar, and placed under the central arch of the apse. Here,
when the bishop celebrated pontifically, he sat till the oblation, and
returned to it again to give the benediction to the people.[335]
[Illustration: Wheel of Bells, Gerona.]
The church is full of other objects of interest. Against the north wall
is a very pretty example of a wheel of bells: this is all of wood,
corbelled out from the wall, and is rung with a noisy jingle of silver
bells at the elevation of the Host. Near it is a doorway leading into
the sacristy, I think, which is very ingeniously converted into a
monument. It has a square lintel and a pointed arch above: bold corbels
on either side carry a high tomb, the base of which is just over the
lintel; this is arcaded at the side and ends, and on its sloping top is
a figure of a knight. The favourite type of monument in this part of
Spain is generally a coped tomb carried on corbels, which are usually
lions or other beasts: there are good examples of this kind both in the
church and cloister; and in the latter there is also preserved a great
wooden cross, which looks as though it had originally decorated a
rood-loft.
The windows have a good deal of very late stained-glass, which consists
generally of single figures under canopies. I have already mentioned the
fine early wood-work in the Coro. In the fifteenth century this was
altered and added to: and a seat was then made for the bishop in the
centre of the western side of the Coro, which has enormous pieces of
carved open-work on either side executed with uncommon vigour and skill.
These, again, were added to afterwards by a Renaissance artist, so that
it is now necessary to discriminate carefully between the work of
various ages.
If, when the cathedral has been thoroughly studied, one goes out through
the cloister, an external door at its north-western angle leads out to
the top of a steep path from which an extremely picturesque view is
obtained. The old town walls girt the cathedral on the north side; but
in the eleventh century it was thought well to add to them, and a second
wall descends, crosses the valley below, and rises against the opposite
hill in a very picturesque fashion. This wall has the passage-way
perfect all round, and occasional circular towers project from it. The
eye is at once caught in looking at this view by a fine Romanesque
church with a half-ruined cloister and lofty octagonal steeple, which
seems to be absolutely built across and through the walls. This is the
Benedictine church of San Pedro de los Galligans;[336] and a closer
inspection shows that what at first looks like the round-tower of the
town walls, against which the church has been built, is really the very
apse of the church, which when the new walls were built was raised and
converted above into a purely military work. The earliest reference to
this church that I have found is a statement that it existed in the
tenth century, and that, in A.D. 1117, the Count Ramon of Barcelona gave
it to the Benedictine convent of Sta. Maria de la Crassa, in the
bishopric of Carcassonne, of which his brother was Abbat; and I think we
may safely assume that the whole of the existing church was built within
a short time of its transfer from the hands of the Secular to those of
the Regular Clergy.
The church[337] consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, the arches
being very rude, and the piers plain and square. There are north and
south transepts, the former having one, and the latter two eastern
apsidal chapels; and the choir is also finished with an apse. There is
another apse at the north end of the north transept. The nave is roofed
with a round waggon-vault with plain cross-ribs carried on engaged
shafts; and there is a clerestory of single-light windows which, on the
inside, break up partly into the vault of the roof. The aisles are
roofed with half-waggon or quadrant vaults, and the apses with
semi-domes. The octagonal steeple is built above the north transept, and
has in the eastern wall of its first stage two apsidal recesses, which
seem to have been intended for altars, and are roofed with semi-domes.
The detail of some of the work at the east end is of an unusual kind: it
is built in stone and black volcanic scoriæ, and its rude character is
evidence of its early date. Any one who is acquainted with the noble
church at Elne, near Perpiñan, will remember the similar use of volcanic
scoriæ there, and will be led to class the two monuments together as
works of the same hand and period. The view of the exterior of the
church from the north-west is very striking. There is a fine western
door with a good deal of carving very delicately and elaborately
wrought, one of the capitals having a very careful imitation of a
fern-leaf on it; above the doorway a horizontal cornice is carried all
across the front, and over this is a fine rose window. The side walls
are finished with dentil-courses; and the clerestory--which is carried
up very high above the springing of the vault inside--is finished with
an eaves-arcading also. There were no windows in the side walls of the
aisle; and the clerestory windows, and a window at the west end of the
north aisle, have bold splays on the outside as well as inside.
The steeple has been much altered; but the original design of the two
upper (and octagonal) stages seems to have had a two-light window with a
bold central shaft, angle-pilasters, and stringcourses, with shallow
arcading below them.
On the south side are the cloisters. They are locked up and in ruins;
and though I tried two or three times, I was never able to gain
admission to them; but I saw them from the hill above, and they looked
at this distance as if they were designed very much after the pattern of
those attached to the cathedral. The arches are round, and carried on
coupled detached shafts, with piers in the centre of each side of the
cloister. The roof seems to have been a barrel-vault, but great part of
it has now fallen in. All this havoc and ruin is owing, like so much
that one sees in Spain, to the action of the French troops during the
Peninsular war.[338]
The whole character of this church is very interesting. The west front
reminded me much of the best Italian Romanesque; and the rude simplicity
of the 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.
[Illustration: No. 42.
SAN PEDRO, GERONA.
EXTERIOR FROM THE NORTH-WEST. p. 330]
Close to San Pedro, to the north-west, stands another church, which,
though it is very small, is fully as curious. This is now desecrated and
converted into workshops and dwelling-houses. It is transverse triapsal
in plan (_i.e._, the transepts and the chancel are all finished with
apses). The Crossing is surmounted by a low tower or lantern, square
below, but octagonal above, and with some remains of an apparently old
tiled roof. The transepts are ceiled with semi-domes, and the chancel
was similarly covered, but its vault has now been removed in order to
facilitate access to the steeple, in which a peasant and his family
live. The nave is roofed with a waggon-vault, at the springing of which
from the wall is a small moulding; and its walls are supported by
buttresses, which do not seem to be earlier than the thirteenth century,
though the rest of the church must date no doubt from the early part of
the twelfth. The exterior is very plain; but the chancel apse is divided
by pilasters which run up to and finish in a corbel-table at the eaves;
and the tower has also an eaves’ corbel-table. All the dimensions of
this church are very small, but it is interesting, as being almost the
only example I have seen in Spain of a transverse triapsal plan; and the
central lantern is one of the earliest examples of what became in later
days one of the most common features of Spanish buildings.[339]
We came down the hill north of the cathedral to see this church and San
Pedro; and if we retrace our steps, and go out by the western door on to
the platform at the top of the vast flight of steps which leads up to
the cathedral, we shall be at once struck by the beautiful, though
truncated, spire of San Feliu, which stands below, and to the west of
the cathedral. Indeed, in nearly all views of the old city, this steeple
claims the first place in our regard; and perhaps it is seen best of all
in crossing the river at the other end of the town, where it stands at
the end of the vista up the stream, which is edged on either side by the
backs of the tall, picturesque, and crowded houses.
San Feliu[340] is one of the oldest collegiate foundations in the
diocese of Gerona; and when, in the eighth century, the Moors converted
the cathedral into a mosque, here it was that the Christian rites were
celebrated. No doubt, therefore, a church stood here long before the
first recorded notices of the fabric, for these do not occur before the
early part of the fourteenth century, save such indications of work in
progress as the bequest of ten solidos to the work by Bishop William in
A.D. 1245, and such evidence of its damage or destruction as is the fact
that the French, attacking the city in A.D. 1285, obtained possession of
the church and did it much damage. In A.D. 1313, when the Chapter of the
cathedral were obtaining royal concessions towards the work of their own
church, they granted an exemption to San Feliu, giving to its clergy the
first-fruits of their benefices to spend on the work of their own
church.[341] In A.D. 1318 there is evidence that the choir was
completed, but other works were going on during the rest of the century.
In A.D. 1340 the Chapter determined to erect cloisters, under the
direction of an architect named Sancii, and bought a site for them to
the north of the church; and the _operarius_ or canon in charge of the
work seems to have raised alms for them even so far off as at Valencia
and in the Balearic Isles. The work was begun in A.D. 1357 and finished
in 1368, in which year the Chapter entered into a contract[342] with an
architect, one Pedro Zacoma, for the erection of the campanile. In A.D.
1363, however, it was deemed necessary, on account of the position of
the church just outside the old walls, and on the north of the town,
that it should be fortified; and to accomplish this work, and others of
the same kind ordered in A.D. 1374 and 1385, the cloisters so recently
built were destroyed. The steeple is said to have been finished in
1392,[343] Pedro Zacoma having acted as architect as late as A.D. 1376.
The church bears evident marks of many alterations and additions. It
consists of nave and aisles, transepts, central apse, and two apsidal
chapels on the east side of the south, and one on the east of the north
transept. The piers are plain square masses of masonry, and the main
arches are semi-circular, unmoulded, and springing from a very plain
abacus. There is a kind of triforium, an arcade of three divisions in
each bay, and a fair pointed vault of ten bays--two to each bay of the
nave arcade--carried on groining-shafts corbelled out from the wall. The
north transept retains a waggon-vault, the axis of which is north and
south, whilst the south transept has two bays of cross vaulting. The
eastern apse is circular in plan, but divided into seven groining bays,
and lighted by three windows of three lights. The apses of the south
transept are also circular, lighted by lancets, and groined with
semi-domes, though the arches into the transept are pointed. The general
character of the later part of this church is, I should say, that of
late first-pointed work; yet it is pretty clear that it is almost all a
work of the fourteenth century. There is a fine fourteenth-century south
porch, with some good arcading in its side walls, in which the tracery
is all executed with soffeit-cusping.
Of the western steeple I need not say very much, as my sketch shows the
nature of its design, and the evidence as to its date is evidently very
accurate. The character of the architectural detail is quite that of
flamboyant-work, and the outline is bold, original, and good. It is
seldom indeed that the junction of the 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. This is
the more remarkable in a country where a genuine spire is so rare a
feature; but the architect was fortunate in following the customs of the
country when he made his steeple octagonal in plan, for it is extremely
difficult--one may almost say impossible--to put a spire upon an
octagonal tower the outline of which shall not be graceful. In an arch
against the wall of this tower is a tomb resting on lions jutting out
from the wall, and with the date 1387 in the inscription. It is a good
example of the late date to which this early-looking type of monument
continued to be used in Spain.
[Illustration: Spire of San Feliu.]
This church has a rather elaborate wooden Retablo, carved and gilt with
subjects painted on its panels. The pulpit is also old, and has rich,
late flamboyant tracery panels: it is placed against a pier on the south
side of the nave, and a second modern pulpit faces it on the north. The
old metal screen also remains: it is rather rude, and has prickets for
candles along it, each of which has a sort of frame which looks as
though it were meant to hold a glass.
There are also a few remains of old domestic buildings. A house near the
cathedral has the usual Catalan features of trefoiled _ajimez_ windows,
and a doorway with a prodigiously deep archivolt. Another house near San
Feliu has a broad window with a square-headed opening; the head is an
ogee arch, with tracery in the tympanum, and over all is a square-headed
label-moulding. It is not an elegant window, yet it has some value as
an example of an opening as large as we usually adopt now-a-days, and
with a square head. The most interesting house, however, is the Fonda de
la Estrella, the principal inn in the town. The windows here are capital
examples of shafted windows of the end of the twelfth century. The
shafts are very delicate (4¼ inches by 6 ft. 1 inch); the capitals are
well carved with men and animals, and the carved abacus is carried from
window to window. The windows are of three lights, and with only a
narrow space of wall between them. The back of this house is less
altered than the front: on the ground it has an arcade of four round
arches, on the first floor five windows of the same sort as these just
described, but simpler, and above this a series of pilasters, which now
carry the roof. There must have been arches I think to this open upper
stage.
There is another house in the same street, and just opposite the inn, of
rather later date, but also with early _ajimez_ windows, and this had
also an open stage below the roof.
The whole city looks picturesque and old, and I daresay a more careful
search than I had time for would be rewarded with further discoveries of
old remains. Most of the houses are arcaded below, and their lower
stories are groined, the cells of the vaults being filled in with bricks
laid in herring-bone patterns.
From Gerona to Barcelona there are two railways branching from the
station at Empalme. That which follows the coast passes by several small
towns facing the sea, in which there are many remains of old walls and
castles, and not a few _ajimez_ windows. It is, in short, a charming
ride in every way. The other line going inland also passes a very
striking country, and some old towns. Hostalrich is a very picturesque
old walled town, with its walls and towers all fairly perfect. Fornelles
has a good church, with a low crocketed spire on an octagonal steeple,
brought to a square just below the belfry-stage. Granollers has a rather
good fourteenth-century church, of the same general character as the
Barcelona churches of the same date. It has a nave of five bays, and an
apse of seven sides, with a tower at the north-west angle. Some trace of
an earlier church remains in a round-arched western door. The western
bay is occupied by a late fifteenth-century groined gallery carried on
an elliptic arch, with a parapet pierced with richly-cusped circles. The
staircase to this gallery is in a sort of aisle or side chapel, and has
an extremely well managed iron hand-railing, supported by occasional
uprights, and quite worthy of imitation. The tower has a delicate newel
staircase in its angle: the newel has a spiral moulding, and the under
side of the steps is very carefully wrought. The upper part of the
steeple is like those of Barcelona cathedral--an irregular octagon, and
has a traceried parapet and low spire. There is a very rich late wooden
pulpit, corbelled out from the wall, through which a door is pierced,
and some rich woodwork is placed at the head of the steps leading to it.
The apse has two-light and single-light windows in the alternate sides,
and the nave the latter only. Small chapels are formed between the
buttresses, and these are also lighted with small windows. On the whole
this church has a good many features of interest, and its very
considerable height gives it greater dignity than our own churches of
the same class have.
On the road from Gerona into France I have seen only one or two
churches. At Figueras the cathedral has a steeple extremely similar to
that just described at Granollers, and evidently of the same date. The
sides of the octagon are not equal, and bells are hung in the windows,
and one in an arched frame at the top. This tower is on the north side
of the nave, which has four bays, transepts, and a Renaissance central
dome covered with glazed tiles. The fabric of the nave seems to be of
the thirteenth century, having lancet windows and buttresses of great
projection rather well designed, chapels occupying the space between
them. The west door label runs up to, and is terminated by, a long
cross. At la Junquera, between Figueras and the frontier, the little
Parroquia has the date of A.D. 1413 on the door. Its only feature of
interest is the tower, which has a staircase carried on arches thrown
from side to side of the tower, and having a square opening or well-hole
in the centre. The same kind of staircase has been described in the
church of San Roman at Toledo.
From hence a pleasant road among the mountains, beautifully clothed here
with cork-trees, and disclosing charming views at every turn, leads by
the frontier fortress of Bellegarde, over the Col de Pertús, and so on
down the eastern side of the Pyrenees to Perpiñan. Here, if we look only
at the map of modern France, my notes ought to stop. But Perpiñan was of
old a Spanish city, and its buildings are so thoroughly Spanish in their
character that I may venture to say a very few words about them.[344]
The church of San Juan is of very remarkable dimensions. The clear width
of the nave is sixty feet, but in the easternmost bay this is gathered
in to fifty-four feet, which is the diameter of the seven-sided apse.
Guillermo Sagrera, master of the works of this cathedral, was one of the
architects summoned to advise about the erection of the nave at Gerona,
and I think there can be but little doubt that the plan of this church
was his handiwork, and that it was erected, therefore, at the beginning
of the fifteenth century. It will be seen that he was one of the
architects who spoke most strongly in favour of the erection of a broad
unbroken nave. The vault he erected here is of brick with stone ribs,
and the brickwork is rather rough, with very wide mortar joints, and
looks as if from the first it were intended to plaster and paint it. The
roofs of the chapels which are built between the large buttresses have
flat gables north and south, and the same arrangement is carried round
the apse. The most striking feature in this cathedral is that very rare
thing--a very fine mediæval organ. It is corbelled out from the north
wall of the nave, and is of great size and height. The pipes are
arranged in traceried compartments at five different levels. This
complicates the machinery for the supply of wind, but adds greatly to
the picturesque character of the instrument. Originally this organ had
great painted shutters, which are now nailed up against the wall close
to the south porch. The width of its front is about twenty-five feet,
its projection from the wall three feet six inches, and the organist
sits in a gallery at its base.[345]
There are several good old houses here: but I must content myself with
the mention of one only in the Rue de la Barre. Here we have the
peculiarities of the Spanish houses, as they are seen along the coast
from Gerona to Valencia, very decidedly developed: the windows are all
_ajimez_, with the usual delicate trefoiled head to the lights, and
slender shafts between them, and the arch-stones of the doorway are more
than usually enormous, being little less than six feet in length.
A drive of a few miles from Perpiñan leads to the extremely interesting
church at Elne, consecrated in _A.D._ 1058.[346] Here, as in San Pedro,
Gerona, and to the east of it in the cathedral at Agde, there are
occasional lines of black volcanic scoriæ used in the Romanesque steeple
and west front, and with good effect. The nave of the church has a
pointed barrel vault, and the aisles half-barrel vaults, but all the
cross arches are semi-circular. At the west end is a sort of
thirteenth-century narthex, and the three apses at the east have
semi-domes. On the north side of the church is a noble cloister, planned
just like that in the cathedral at Gerona with the most complete
disregard to symmetry. It is extremely similar to it also in general
design: but it is very remarkable as having its east and north sides
erected about the end of the thirteenth century in evident and very
close imitation of the earlier work on the other two sides. The vaulting
throughout the cloister is of the later date, and raised considerably
above the level of the old vault. The whole of this cloister is wrought
in a veined white marble, and a door from it into the church is built in
alternated courses of red and white marble.
On the whole S. Elne well deserves a visit, not only on account of the
extreme interest of its church and cloister, but, to the student of
Spanish architecture, on account of the very important link which it
supplies in the chain which connects the early Spanish with the early
French buildings of the middle ages.
The history of Cataluña shows how intimate was the connection of the
people and towns on both sides of the mountains, and it is here and
elsewhere in the south of France that we see the germ of almost all the
mediæval Spanish art.
[Illustration: GERONA:--Ground Plan of Cathedral &c.
S. Daniel or(?) S. Nicholas.
S. Pedro De Los Galligans.
Plate XVIII
Published by John Murray. Albemarle Street 1865]