The lateral doors, not situated in the transept, are located near the

foot of the church. The southern portal is the larger, but the most

simple; the arch which crowns it shows a decided ogival tendency, a

circumstance which need not necessarily be attributed to Gothic

influence, as in many churches prior to the introduction of the ogival

arch the pointed top was known, and in isolated cases it was made use

of, though purely by accident, and not as a constructive element.

The northern door is smaller, but a hundred times richer in sculptural

design. It shows Byzantine influence in the decoration, and as a

Byzantine-Romanesque portal can figure among the best in Spain.

[Illustration: TORO CATHEDRAL]

It has been supposed that the western front of the building possessed at

one time a narthex, like the cathedral Tuy, for instance. Nothing

remains of it, however, as the portal which used to be here was done

away with, and in its place a modern chapel with a fine Gothic _retablo_

was consecrated.

Seen from the interior, the almost similar height of the nave and

aisles, leaves, as in Zamora, a somewhat stern and depressing impression

on the visitor; the light which enters is also feeble, excepting beneath

the _linterna_, where "the difficulty of placing a circular body on a

square without the aid of supports (_pechinas_) has been so naturally

and perfectly overcome that we are obliged to doubt of its ever having

existed."

Gothic elements, more so than in Zamora, mix with the Romanesque

traditions in the decoration of the nave and aisles; nevertheless, the

elements of construction are purely Romanesque, excepting the central

apsidal chapel which contains the high altar. Restored by the Fonseca

family in the sixteenth century, it is ogival in conception and

execution, and contains some fine tombs of the above named aristocratic

family. But the chapel passes unnoticed in this peculiarly exotic

building, where solidity and not grace was the object sought and

obtained.

IV

SALAMANCA

The very position of Salamanca, immediately to the north of the chain of

mountains which served for many a century as a rough frontier wall

between Christians and Moors, was bound to ensure the city's importance

and fame. Its history is consequently unique, grander and more exciting

than that of any other city; the universal name it acquired in the

fourteenth century, thanks to its university, can only be compared with

that of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford.

Consequently its fall from past renown to present insignificance was

tremendous, and to-day, a heap of ruins, boasting of traditions like

Toledo and Burgos, of two cathedrals and twenty-four parish churches, of

twice as many convents and palaces, of a one-time glorious university

and half a hundred colleges,--Salamanca sleeps away a useless existence

from which it will never awaken.

Its history has still to be penned. What an exciting and stirring

account of middle age life in Spain it would be!

The Romans knew Salamantia, and the first notice handed down to us of

the city reads like a fairy story, as though predicting future events.

According to Plutarch, the town was besieged by Hannibal, and had to

surrender. The inhabitants were allowed to leave, unarmed, and taking

away with them only their clothes; the men were searched as they passed

out, but not so the women.

Together men and women left the town. A mile away they halted, and the

women drew forth from beneath their robes concealed weapons. Together

the men and the women returned to their town and stealthily fell upon

their foes, slaughtering them in considerable numbers. Hannibal was so

"enchanted" (!) with the bravery displayed by the women, that he drew

away his army from the town, leaving the patriotic inhabitants to settle

again their beloved Salamanca.

The Western Goths, upon their arrival in Spain, found Salamanca in a

flourishing state, and respected its episcopal see, the origin of which

is ignored. The first bishop we have any record of is Eleuterio, who

signed the third Council of Toledo in 589.

The Arabs treated the city more harshly; it was in turn taken and

destroyed by infidels and Christians; the former sacking frontier towns,

the latter destroying all fortresses they could not hold.

In the eighth century no bishop seems to have existed in Salamanca; in

the tenth, date of a partial reestablishment of the see, seven prelates

are mentioned; these did not, however, risk their skins by taking

possession of their chair, but lived quietly in the north, either in

Santiago--farther north they could not go!--or else in Leon and Burgos.

The eleventh century is again devoid of any ecclesiastical news

connected with the see of Salamanca; what is more, the very name of the

city is forgotten until Alfonso VI. crossed the Guaderrama and fixed his

court in Toledo. This bold step, taken in a hostile country far from the

centre of the kingdom and from his base of operations, obliged the

monarch to erect with all speed a series of fortresses to the north; as

a result, Salamanca, Segovia, and Avila, beyond the Guaderrama

Mountains, and Madrid to the south, were quickly populated by

Christians.

This occurred in 1102; the first bishop _de modernis_ was Jeronimo, a

French warrior-monk, who had accompanied his bosom friend el Cid to

Valencia, had fought beside him, and had been appointed bishop of the

conquered see. Not for any length of time, however, for as soon as el

Cid died, the Moors drove the Christians out of the new kingdom, and the

bishop came to Leon with the Cristo de las Batallas,--a miraculous cross

of old Byzantine workmanship, supposed to have aided the Cid in many a

battle,--as the only _souvenir_ of his stay in the Valencian see.

The next four or five bishops fought among themselves. At one time the

city had no fewer than two, a usurper, and another who was not much

better; the Pope deprived one of his dignity, the king another, the

influential Archbishop of Santiago chose a third, who was also

deposed--the good old times!--until at last one Berengario was

appointed, and the ignominious conflict was peacefully settled.

The inhabitants of the city at the beginning were a strong, warlike

medley of Jews (these were doubtless the least warlike!), Arabs,

Aragonese, Castilian, French, and Leonese. Bands of these without a

commander invaded Moorish territory, sacking and pillaging where they

could. On one occasion they were pursued by an Arab army, whose general

asked to speak with the captain of the Salamantinos. The answer was,

"Each of us is his own captain!" words that can be considered typical of

the anarchy which reigned in Spain until the advent of Isabel and

Ferdinand in the fifteenth century.

If the bishops fought among themselves, and if the low class people

lived in a state of utter anarchy, the same spirit spread to--or

emanated from--the nobility, of whom Salamanca had more than its share,

especially as soon as the university was founded. The annals of no other

city are so replete with family traditions and feuds, which were not

only restricted to the original disputers, to their families and

acquaintances, but became generalized among the inhabitants themselves,

who took part in the feud. Thus it often happened that the city was

divided into two camps, separated by an imaginary line, and woe betide

the daring or careless individual who crossed it!

One of the most dramatic of these feuds--a savage species of

vendetta--was the following:

Dona Maria Perez, a Plasencian dame of noble birth, had married one of

the most powerful noblemen in Salamanca, Monroy by name, and upon the

latter's death remained a widowed mother of two sons. One of them asked

and obtained in marriage the hand of a noble lady who had refused a

similar proposition made by one Enriquez, son of a Sevillan aristocrat.

The youth's jealousy and anger was therefore bitterly aroused, and he

and his brother waited for a suitable opportunity in which to avenge

themselves. It soon came: they were playing Spanish ball, _pelota_, one

day with the accepted suitor, when a dispute arose as to who was the

better player; the two brothers fell upon their victim and foully

murdered him. But afraid lest his brother should venge the latter's

death, they lay in wait for him behind a street corner, and as he came

along they rapidly killed him as they had his brother. Then they fled

across the frontier to Portugal.

The two corpses had in the meantime been carried on a bier by the crowds

and laid down in front of Dona Maria's house; the latter stepped out on

the balcony, with dishevelled hair; an angry murmur went from one end of

the crowd to the other, and a universal clamour arose: vengeance was on

every one's lips. But Dona Maria commanded silence.

"Be calm," she said, "and take these bodies to the cathedral. Vengeance?

Fear not, I shall venge myself."

An hour later she left the town with an escort, apparently with a view

to retire to her estates near Plasencia. Once well away from the city,

she divulged her plan to the escort and asked if they were willing to

follow her. Receiving an affirmative reply, she tore off her woman's

clothes and appeared dressed in full armour; placing a helmet on her

head, she took the lead of her troops again, and set out for the

Portuguese frontier.

The strange company arrived on the third day at a Portuguese frontier

town, where they were told that two foreigners had arrived the night

before. By the description of the two Spaniards, Dona Maria felt sure

they were her sons' murderers, and consequently she and her escort

approached the house where the fugitives were passing the night. Placing

the escort beneath the window, she stealthily entered the house and

stole to the brothers' room; then she slew them whilst they were

sleeping, and, rushing to the window, threw it open, and, spearing the

heads of her enemies on her lance, she showed them to her retinue, with

the words:

"I'm venged! Back to Salamanca."

Silently, at the head of her troops, and bearing the two heads on her

lance, Dona Maria returned to Salamanca. Entering the cathedral, she

threw them on the newly raised slabs which covered her sons' remains.

Ever after she was known as Dona Maria _la brava_, and is as celebrated

to-day as she was in the fifteenth century, during the abominable reign

of Henry IV. And so great was the feud which divided the city into two

camps, that it lasted many years, and many were the victims of the

gigantic vendetta.

The city's greatest fame lay in its university, founded toward 1215, by

Alfonso IX. of Leon, who was jealous of his cousin Alfonso VIII. of

Castile, the founder of the luckless university of Palencia.

The fate of the last named university has been duly mentioned elsewhere;

that of Salamanca was far different. In 1255 the Pope called it one of

the four lamps of the world; strangers--students from all corners of

Europe--flocked to the city to study. Perhaps its greatest merit was the

study of Arabic and Arabian letters, and it has been said that the study

of the Orient penetrated into Europe through Salamanca alone.

What a glorious life must have been the university city's during the

apogee of her fame! Students from all European lands, dressed in the

picturesque costume worn by those who attended the university, wended

their way through the streets, singing and playing the guitar or the

mandolin; they mingled with dusky noblemen, richly dressed in satins and

silks, and wearing the rapier hanging by their sides; they flirted with

the beautiful daughters of Spain, and gravely saluted the bishop when he

was carried along in his chair, or rode a quiet palfrey. At one time the

court was established in the university city, lending a still more

brilliant lustre to the every-day life of the inhabitants, and to the

sombre streets lined with palaces, churches, colleges, convents, and

monasteries.

Gone! To-day the city lies beneath an immense weight of ruins of all

kinds, that chain her down to the past which was her glory, and impede

her from looking ahead into her future with ambitions and hopes.

The cathedrals Salamanca can boast of to-day are two, an old one and a

comparatively new one; the latter was built beside the former, a

praiseworthy and exceptional proceeding, for, instead of pulling down

the old to make room for the new, as happens throughout the world, the

cathedral chapter convocated an assembly of architects, and was

intelligent enough--another wonder!--to accept the verdict that the old

building, a Romanesque-Byzantine edifice of exceptional value, should

not be demolished. The new temple was therefore erected beside the

former, and, obeying the art impulses of the centuries which witnessed

its construction, is an ogival church spoilt--or bettered--by

Renaissance, plateresque, and grotesque decorative elements.

* * * * *

_The Old Cathedral._--The exact date of the erection of the old see is

not known; toward 1152 it was already in construction, and 150 years

later, in 1299, it was not concluded. Consequently, and more than in the

case of Zamora and Toro, the upper part of the building shows decided

ogival tendencies; yet in spite of these evident signs of transition,

the ensemble, the spirit of the building, is, beyond a doubt,

Romanesque-Byzantine, and not Gothic.

[Illustration: OLD SALAMANCA CATHEDRAL]

The plan of the church is the same as those of Zamora, Toro, and Coria:

a nave and two aisles cut short at the transept, which is slightly

prolonged beyond the width of the body of the church; there is no

ambulatory walk, but to the east of the transept are three chapels in a

three-lobed apse, the central lobe larger than the others and containing

the high altar; the choir was placed (originally) in the centre of the

nave, and a _cimborio_ crowns the _croisee_, this latter being a

peculiarity of the three cathedral churches of Zamora, Toro, and

Salamanca.

Unluckily, the erection of the new building as an annex of the old one

required (as in Plasencia, though from different reasons) the demolition

of certain parts of the latter; as, for instance, the two towers of the

western front, the northern portal as well as the northern half of the

apse, and the corresponding part of the transept. Parts of these have

either been surrounded or replaced by the new building.

The narthex and the western end are still preserved. They are of the

same width as the nave, for, beneath the towers, of which one seems to

have been far higher than the other, each of the aisles terminates in a

chapel. Byzantine in appearance, the two western doors are,

nevertheless, crowned by an ogival arch, and flanked by statuettes of

the same style. The facade, repaired and spoilt, is of Renaissance

severity.

The interior of the building is more impressive than that of either

Zamora or Toro; this is due to the absence of the choir,--removed to the

new cathedral,--which permits an uninterrupted view of the whole church,

which does not occur in any other temple throughout Spain. Romanesque

strength and gloominess is clearly discernible, whereas the height of

the central nave (sixty feet) is rendered stumpy in appearance by the

almost equal height of the aisles. The strength and solidity of the

pillars and columns, supporting capitals and friezes of a peculiar and

decided Byzantine taste (animals, dragons, etc.), show more keenly than

in Galicia the Oriental influence which helped so thoroughly to shape

Central Spanish Romanesque.

Of the chapels, but one deserves special mention, both as seen from

without and from within, namely, the high altar, or central apsidal

chapel. Seen from without, it is of perfect Romanesque construction,

excepting the upper row of rose windows, which are ogival in their

traceries; inside, it contains a mural painting of an exceedingly

primitive design, and a _retablo_ in low reliefs enchased in ogival

arches; it is of Italian workmanship.

Of the remaining chapels, that of San Bartolome contains an alabaster

sepulchre of the Bishop Diego de Anaya--one of the many prelates of

those times who was the possessor of illegitimate sons; the bodies of

most of the latter lie within this chapel, which can be regarded not

only as a family pantheon, but as a symbol of ecclesiastical greatness

and human weakness.

The windows which light up the nave are round-headed, and yet they are

delicately decorated, as is rarely to be seen in the Romanesque type.

The aisles, on the contrary, are not lit up by any windows.

Like the churches of Zamora and Toro, the whole cathedral resembles a

fortress rather than a place of worship. The simplicity of the general

structure, the rounded turrets buried in the walls, serving as leaning

buttresses, the narrow slits in the walls instead of windows, lend an

indisputable aspect of strength. The beautiful, the really beautiful

lantern, situated above the _croisee_, with its turrets, its niches, its

thirty odd windows, and its elegant cupola, is an architectural body

that wins the admiration of all who behold it, either from within the

church or from without, and which, strictly Byzantine in conception

(though rendered peculiarly Spanish by the addition of certain elements

which pertain rather to Gothic military art than to church

architecture), is unique--to the author's knowledge--in all Europe. Less

pure in style, and less Oriental in appearance than that of Zamora, it

was nevertheless, created more perfect by the artistic conception of the

architect, and consequently more finished or developed than those of

Toro and Zamora. Without hesitation, it can claim to be one of

Salamanca's chief attractions.

The thickness of the walls (ten feet!), the admirable simpleness of the

vaulting, and the general aspect from the exterior, have won for the

church the name of _fortis Salamantini_.

* * * * *

_The New Cathedral._--It was begun in 1513, the old temple having been

judged too small, and above all too narrow for a city of the importance

of Salamanca.

Over two hundred years did the building of the present edifice last; at

times all work was stopped for years, no funds being at hand to pay

either artists or masons.

The primitive plan of the church, as proposed by the congress of

architects, was Gothic of the second period, with an octagonal apse; the

lower part of the church, from the foot to the transept, was the first

to be constructed.

The upper part of the apse was not begun until the year 1588, and the

artist, imbued with the beauty of Herrero's Escorial, squared the apse

with the evident intention of constructing turrets on the exterior

angles, which would have rendered the building symmetrical: two towers

on the western front, a cupola on the _croisee_, and two smaller turrets

on the eastern end.

The building as it stands to-day is a perfect rectangle cut in its

length by a nave (containing the choir and the high altar), and by two

aisles, lower than the nave and continued in an ambulatory walk behind

the high altar.

The same symmetry is visible in the lateral chapels: eight square

_huecos_ on the exterior walls of the aisles, five to the west, and

three to the east of the transept, and three in the extreme eastern wall

of the apse.

Magnificence rather than beauty is the characteristic note of the new

cathedral. The primitive part--pure ogival with but little

mixture--contrasts with the eastern end, which is covered over with the

most glaring grotesque decoration; most of the chapels are spoiled by

the same shocking profusion of super-ornamentation; the otherwise

majestic cupola, the high altar, and the choir--all suffer from the same

defect.

The double triforium--one higher than the other--in the clerestory

produces a most favourable impression; this is heightened by the wealth

of light, which, entering by two rows of windows and by the _cimborio_,

falls upon the rich decoration of friezes and capitals. The general view

of the whole building is also freer than in most Spanish cathedrals,

and this harmony existing in the proportions of the different parts

strikes the visitor more favourably, perhaps, than in the severer

cathedral at Burgos.

[Illustration: NEW SALAMANCA CATHEDRAL]

The exterior of the building reflects more truthfully than the interior

the different art waves which spread over Spain during the centuries of

the temple's erection. In the western front, the rich Gothic portal of

the third period, the richest perhaps in sculptural variety of any on

the peninsula, contrasts with the high mongrel tower, a true example of

the composite towers so frequently met with in certain Spanish regions.

The second body of the same facade (western) is highly interesting, not

on account of its ornamentation, which is simple, but because of the

solid, frank structure, and the curious fortress-like turrets embedded

in the angles.

The flank of the building, seen from the north--for on the south side

stand the ruins of the old cathedral--is none too homogeneous, thanks to

the different styles in which the three piers of windows--of chapels,

aisles, and clerestory--have been constructed. The ensemble is

picturesque, nevertheless: the three rows of windows, surmounted by the

huge cupola and half-lost among the buttresses, certainly contribute

toward the general elegance of the granite structure.

V

CIUDAD RODRIGO

In the times of the Romans, the country to the west of Salamanca seems

to have been thickly populated. Calabria, situated between the Agueda

and Coa Rivers, was an episcopal see; in its vicinity Augustabriga and

Mirobriga were two other important towns.

Of these three Roman fortresses, and perhaps native towns, before the

invasion, not as much as a stone or a legend remains to relate the tale

of their existence and death.

Toward 1150, Fernando II. of Castile, obeying the military requirements

of the Reconquest, and at the same time wishing to erect a

fortress-town, which, together with Zamora to the north, Salamanca to

the west, and Coria to the south, could resist the invasion of Spain by

Portuguese armies, founded Ciudad Rodrigo, and twenty years later raised

the church to an episcopal see, a practical means of attracting

God-fearing settlers. Consequently, the twelfth-century town, inheriting

the ecclesiastical dignity of Calabria, if the latter ever possessed it,

besides being situated in the same region as the three Roman cities

previously mentioned, can claim to have been born a city.

One of the early bishops (the first was a certain Domingo) was the

famous Pedro Diaz, about whom a legend has been handed down to us. This

legend has also been graphically illustrated by an artist of the

sixteenth century; his painting is to be seen to the right of the

northern transept door in the cathedral.

Pedro Diaz seems to have been a worldly priest, "fond of the sins of the

flesh and of good eating," who fell ill in the third year of his reign.

His secretary, a pious servant of the Lord, dreamt he saw his master's

soul devoured by demons, and persuaded him to confess his sins. It was

too late, for a few days later he died; his death was, however, kept a

secret by his menials, who wished to have plenty of time to make a

generous division of his fortune. When all had been settled to their

liking, the funeral procession moved through the streets of the city,

and, to the surprise of all, the dead bishop, resurrected by St.

Francis of Assisi, at the time in Ciudad Rodrigo, opened the coffin and

stood upon the hearse. He accused his servants of their greed, and at

the same time made certain revelations concerning the life hereafter.

His experiences must have been rather pessimistic, to judge by the

bishop's later deeds, for, having been granted a respite of twenty days

upon this earth, he "fasted and made penitence," doubtless eager to

escape a second time the tortures of the other world.

Other traditions concerning the lives and doings of the noblemen who

disputed the feudal right or _senorio_ over the town, are as numerous as

in Plasencia, with which city Ciudad Rodrigo has certain historical

affinities. The story of the Virgen Coronada, who, though poor, did not

hesitate in killing a powerful and wealthy libertine nobleman whom she

was serving; the no less stirring account of Dona Maria Adan's vow that

she would give her fair daughter's hand to whomsoever venged her wrongs

on the five sons of her husband's murderer, are among the most tragic

and thrilling. There are many other traditions beside, which constitute

the past's legacy to the solitary city near the Portuguese frontier.

It was in the nineteenth century that Ciudad Rodrigo earned fame as a

brave city. The Spanish war for independence had broken out against the

French, who overran the country, and passed from Bayonne in the Gascogne

to Lisbon in Portugal. Ciudad Rodrigo lay on the shortest route for the

French army, and had to suffer two sieges, one in 1810 and the second in

1812. In the latter, Wellington was the commander of the English forces

who had come to help the Spanish chase the French out of the peninsula;

the siege of the town and the battle which ensued were long and

terrible, but at last the allied English and Spanish won, with the loss

of two English generals. The Iron Duke was rewarded by Spanish Cortes,

with the title of Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, together with the honours of

grandee of Spain, which are still retained by Wellington's descendants.

[Illustration: CUIDAD RODRIGO CATHEDRAL]

The cathedral church of Ciudad Rodrigo is a twelfth-century building, in

which the Romanesque style, similar to those of Zamora and Toro, fights

with the nascent ogival style. Notwithstanding these remarks,

however, the building does not pertain to the Transition period, but

rather to the second or last period of Spanish Romanesque. This is

easily seen by the basilica form of the church, the three-lobed apse,

the lack of an ambulatory walk, and the apparently similar height of

nave and aisles.

The square tower, surmounted by a cupola, at the foot of the church, as

well as the entire western front, dates from the eighteenth century; it

is cold, anti-artistic, utterly unable to appeal to the poetic instincts

of the spectator.

Behind the western front, and leading directly into the body of the

church, is a delightful Romanesque narthex which doubtlessly served as

the western facade prior to the eighteenth-century additions. It is

separated from the principal nave by a door divided into two by a solid

pediment, upon which is encrusted a statue of the Virgin with Child in

her arms. The semicircular arches which surmount the door are finely

executed, and the columns which support them are decorated with handsome

twelfth-century statuettes. There is a great similarity between this

portal and the principal one (del Obispo) in Toro: it almost seems as

though the same hand had chiselled both, or at least traced the plan of

their decoration.

Of the two doors which lead, one on the south and the other on the

north, into the transept, the former is perhaps the more perfect

specimen of the primitive style. Both are richly decorated; unluckily,

in both portals, the rounded arches have been crowned in more recent

times by an ogival arch, which certainly mars the pureness of the style,

though not the harmony of the ensemble.

To the left of these doors, a niche has been carved into the wall to

contain a full-length statue of the Virgin; this is an unusual

arrangement in Spanish churches.

The exterior of the apse retains its primitive _cachet_; the central

chapel, where the high altar is placed, was, however, rebuilt in the

sixteenth century by Tavera, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, who had

at one time occupied the see of Ciudad Rodrigo. It is a peculiar mixture

of Gothic and Romanesque, of pointed windows and heavy buttresses; the

flat roof is decorated by means of a low stone railing or balustrade

composed of elegantly carved pinnacles.

To conclude: excepting the western front and the central lobe of the

apse, the tower and the ogival arch surmounting the northern and

southern portals, the cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo is one of the most

perfectly preserved Romanesque buildings to the south of Zamora and

Toro. It is less grim and warlike than the two last-named edifices, and

yet it is also a fair example of severe and gloomy (though not less

artistic!) Castilian Romanesque. Its _croisee_ is not surmounted by the

heavy cupola as in Salamanca and elsewhere, and it is perhaps just this

suppression or omission which gives the whole building a far less

Oriental appearance than the others mentioned heretofore.

In the inside, the choir occupies its usual place. Its stalls, it is

believed, were carved by Aleman, the same who probably wrought those

superb seats at Plasencia. It is doubtful if the same master carved

both, however, but were it so, the stalls at Ciudad Rodrigo would have

to be classified as older, executed before those we shall examine in a

future chapter.

The nave and two aisles, pierced by ogival windows in the clerestory and

round-headed windows in the aisles, constitute the church; the

_croisee_ is covered by means of a simple ogival vaulting; the arches

separating the nave from the aisles are Romanesque, as is the vaulting

of the former. It was originally the intention of the chapter to

beautify the solemn appearance of the interior by means of a triforium

or running gallery. Unluckily, perhaps because of lack of funds, the

triforium was never begun excepting that here and there are seen

remnants of the primitive tracing.

With the lady-chapel profusely and lavishly ornamented, and quite out of

place in this solemn building, there are five chapels, one at the foot

of each aisle and two in the apse, to the right and left of the

lady-chapel. They all lack art interest, however, as does the actual

_retablo_, which replaces the one destroyed by the French; remnants of

the latter are to be seen patched up on the cloister walls.

This cloister to the north of the church is a historical monument, for

each of the four sides of the square edifice is an architectural page

differing from its companions. Studying first the western, then the

southern, and lastly the two remaining sides, the student can obtain an

idea of how Romanesque principles struggled with Gothic before dying

completely out, and how the latter, having reached its apogee,

deteriorated into the most lamentable superdecoration before fading away

into the naked, straight-lined features of the Renaissance so little

compatible with Christian ideals.

VI

CORIA

To the west of Toledo and to the south of the Sierra de Gata, which,

with the mountains of Gredo and the Guaderrama, formed in the middle

ages a natural frontier between Christians and Moors, lies, in a

picturesque and fertile vale about twenty miles distant from the nearest

railway station, the little known cathedral town of Coria. It is

situated on the northern shores of the Alagon, a river flowing about ten

miles farther west into the Tago, near where the latter leaves Spanish

territory and enters that of Portugal.

Caurium, or Curia Vetona, was its name when the Romans held Extremadura,

and it was in this town, or in its vicinity, that Viriato, the Spanish

hero, destroyed four Roman armies sent to conquer his wild hordes. He

never lost a single battle or skirmish, and might possibly have dealt a

death-blow to Roman plans of domination in the peninsula, had not the

traitor's knife ended his noble career.

Their enemy dead, the Romans entered the city of Coria, which they

immediately surrounded by a circular wall half a mile in length, and

twenty-six feet thick (!). This Roman wall, considered by many to be the

most perfectly preserved in Europe, is severely simple in structure, and

flanked by square towers; it constitutes the city's one great

attraction.

The episcopal see was erected in 338. The names of the first bishops

have long been forgotten, the first mentioned being one Laquinto, who

signed the third Toledo Council in 589.

Two centuries later the Moors raised Al-Karica to one of their capitals;

in 854 Zeth, an ambitious Saracen warrior, freed it from the yoke of

Cordoba, and reigned in the city as an independent sovereign.

Like Zamora and Toro, Coria was continually being lost and won by

Christians and Moors, with this difference, that whereas the first two

can be looked upon as the last Christian outposts to the north of the

Duero, Coria was the last Arab stronghold to the north of the Tago.

Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century, the strong fortress on

the Alagon was definitely torn from the hands of its independent

sovereign by Alfonso VIII., after the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. A

bishop was immediately reinstated in the see, and after five centuries

of Mussulman domination, Coria saw the standard of Castile waving from

its citadel.

As happened with so many other provincial towns in Spain, the

centralization of power to the north of Toledo shoved Coria into the

background; to-day it is a cathedral village forgotten or completely

ignored by the rest of Spain. Really, it might perhaps have been better

for the Arabs to have preserved it, for under their rule it flourished.

It is picturesque, this village on the banks of the Alagon: a heap or

bundle of red bricks surrounded by grim stone walls, over-topped by a

cathedral tower and citadel,--the whole picture emerging from a prairie

and thrown against a background formed by the mountains to the north and

the bright blue sky in the distance.

Arab influence is only too evident in the buildings and houses, in the

Alcazar, and in the streets; unluckily, these remembrances of a happy

past depress the dreamy visitor obliged to recognize the infinite

sadness which accompanied the expulsion of the Moors by intolerant

tyrants from the land they had inhabited, formed, and moulded to their

taste. Nowhere is this so evident as in Coria, a forgotten bit of

mediaeval Moor-land. The poet's exclamation is full of bitterness and

resignation when he exclaims:

"Is it possible that this heap of ruins should have been in other times

the splendid court of Zeth and Mondhir!"

* * * * *

As an architectural building, the cathedral of Coria is a parish church,

which, removed to any other town, would be devoid of any and all beauty.

In other words, the impressions it produces are entirely dependent upon

its local surroundings; eliminate these, and the temple is worthless

from an artistic or poetical point of view.

It was begun in 1120, most likely by Arab workmen; it was finished

toward the beginning of the sixteenth century. Honestly speaking, it is

a puzzle what the artisans did in all those long years; doubtless they

slept at their task, or else decades passed away without work of any

kind being done, or again, perhaps only one mason was employed at a

time.

The interior is that of a simple Gothic church of one aisle, 150 feet

long by fifty-two wide and eighty-four high; the high altar is situated

in the rounded apse; in the centre of the church the choir stalls of the

fifteenth century obstruct the view of the walls, decorated only by

means of pilasters which pretend to support the Gothic vaulting.

To the right, in the altar chapel, is a fine marble sepulchre of the

sixteenth century, in which the chasuble of the kneeling bishop

portrayed is among the best pieces of imitative sculpture to be seen in

Spain.

To the right of the high altar, and buried in the cathedral wall, a door

leads out into the _paseo_,--a walk on the broad walls of the city, with

a delightful view southwards across the river to the prairie in the

distance. Where can a prettier and more natural cloister be found?

The western facade is never used, and is surrounded by the old

cemetery,--a rather peculiar place for a cemetery in a cathedral church;

the northern facade is anti-artistic, but the tower to the right has

one great virtue, that of comparative height. Though evidently intended

to be Gothic, the Arab taste, so pronounced throughout this region, got

the better of the architect, and he erected a square steeple crowned by

a cupola.

Yet, and in spite of criticism which can hardly find an element worthy

of praise in the whole cathedral building, the tourist should not

hesitate in visiting the city. Besides, the whole region of Northern

Extremadura, in which Coria and Plasencia lie, is historically most

interesting: Yuste, where Charles-Quint spent the last years of his

life, is not far off; neither is the Convent of Guadalupe, famous for

its pictures by the great Zurbaran.

As for Coria itself, it is a forgotten corner of Moor-land.

VII

PLASENCIA

The foundation of Plasencia by King Alfonso VIII. in 1178, and the

erection of a new episcopal see twelve years later, can be regarded as

the _coup de grace_ given to the importance of Coria, the twin sister

forty miles away. Nevertheless, the Royal City, as Plasencia was called,

which ended by burying its older rival in the most shocking oblivion,

was not able to acquire a name in history. Founded by a king, and handed

over to a bishop and to favourite courtiers, who ruled it indifferently

well, not to say badly, it grew up to be an aristocratic town without a

_bourgeoisie_. Its history in the middle ages is consequently one long

series of family feuds, duels, and tragedies, the record of bloody

happenings, and acts of heroic brutality and bravery.

In 1233 a Moorish army conquered it, shortly after the battle of Alarcos

was lost to Alfonso VIII., at that time blindly in love with his

beautiful Jewish mistress, Rachel of Toledo. But the infidels did not

remain master of the situation, far less of the city, for any length of

time, as within the next year or so it fell again into the hands of its

founder, who strengthened the walls still standing to-day, and completed

the citadel.

The population of the city, like that of Toledo, was mixed. Christians,

Jews, and Moors lived together, each in their quarter, and together they

used the fertile _vegas_, which surround the town. The Jews and Moors

were, in the fifteenth century, about ten thousand in number; in 1492

the former were expelled by the Catholic kings, and in 1609 Philip III.

signed a decree expelling the Moors. Since then Plasencia has lost its

municipal wealth and importance, and the see, from being one of the

richest in Spain, rapidly sank until to-day it drags along a weary life,

impoverished and unimportant.

The Jewish cemetery is still to be seen in the outskirts of the town;

Arab remains, both architectural and irrigatory, are everywhere present,

and the quarter inhabited by them, the most picturesque in Plasencia,

is a Moorish village.

The city itself, crowning a hill beside the rushing Ierte, is a small

Toledo; its streets are narrow and winding; its church towers are

numerous, and the red brick houses warmly reflect the brilliancy of the

southern atmosphere. The same death, however, the same inactivity and

lack of movement, which characterize Toledo and other cities, hover in

the alleys and in the public squares, in the fertile _vegas_ and silent

_patios_ of Plasencia.

The history of the feuds between the great Castilian families who lived

here is tragically interesting: Hernan Perez killed by Diego Alvarez,

the son of one of the former's victims; the family of Monroye pitched

against the Zunigas and other noblemen,--these and many other traditions

are among the most stirring of the events that happened in Spain in the

middle ages.

Even the bishops called upon to occupy the see seem to have been slaves

to the warlike spirit that hovered, as it were, in the very atmosphere

of the town. The first prelate, Don Domingo, won the battle of Navas de

Tolosa for his protector, Alfonso VIII. When the Christian army was

wavering, he rushed to the front (with his naked sword, the cross having

been left at home), at the head of his soldiers, and drove the already

triumphant Moors back until they broke their ranks and fled. The same

bishop carried the Christian sword to the very heart of the Moorish

dominions, to Granada, and conquered neighbouring Loja. The next

prelate, Don Adan, was one of the leaders of the army that conquered

Cordoba in 1236, and, entering the celebrated _mezquita_, sanctified its

use as a Christian church.

The history of the cathedral church is no less interesting. The

primitive see was temporarily placed in a church on a hill near the

fortress; this building was pulled down in the fifteenth century, and

replaced by a Jesuit college.

Toward the beginning of the fourteenth century a cathedral church was

inaugurated. Its life was short, however, for in 1498 it was partially

pulled down to make way for a newer and larger edifice, which is to-day

the unfinished Renaissance cathedral visited by the tourist.

Parts of the old cathedral are, however, still standing. Between the

tower of the new temple and the episcopal palace, but unluckily

weighted down by modern superstructures, stands the old facade, almost

intact. The grossness of the structural work, the timid use of the

ogival arch, the primitive rose window, and the general heaviness of the

structure, show it to belong to the decadent period of the Romanesque

style, when the artists were attempting something new and forgetting the

lessons of the past.

The new cathedral is a complicated Gothic-Renaissance building of a nave

and two aisles, with an ambulatory behind the high altar. Not a square

inch but what has been hollowed out into a niche or covered over with

sculptural designs; the Gothic plan is anything but pure Gothic, and the

Renaissance style has been so overwrought that it is anything but

Italian Renaissance.

The facade of the building is imposing, if not artistic; it is composed

of four bodies, each supported laterally by pillars and columns of

different shapes and orders, and possessing a _hueco_ or hollow in the

centre, the lowest being the door, the highest a stained glass window,

and the two central ones blind windows, which spoil the whole. The

floral and Byzantine (Arab?) decoration of pillars and friezes is of

a great wealth of varied designs; statuettes are missing in the niches,

proving the unfinished state of the church.

[Illustration: FACADE OF PLASENCIA CATHEDRAL]

Three arches and four pillars, sumptuously decorated, uphold each of the

clerestory walls, which are pierced at the top by a handsome triforium

running completely around the church. The _retablo_ of the high altar is

richly decorated, perhaps too richly; the _reja_, which closes off the

sacred area, is of fine seventeenth-century workmanship.

The choir stalls are of a surprising richness, carved scenes covering

the backs and seats. They are famous throughout the country, and the

genius, above all the imagination, of the artist who executed them (his

name is unluckily not known, though it is believed to be Aleman) must

have been notable. Pious when carving the upper and visible seats, he

seems to have been exceedingly ironical and profane when sculpturing the

inside of the same, where the reverse or the caustic observation

produced in the carver's mind has been artfully drawn, though sometimes

with an undignified grain of indecency and obscenity not quite in

harmony with our Puritanic spirit of to-day.

_PART V_

_Eastern Castile_

I

VALLADOLID

The origin of Valladolid is lost in the shadows of the distant past. As

it was the capital of a vast kingdom, it was thought necessary, as in

the case of Madrid, to place its foundation prior to the Roman invasion;

the attempt failed, however, and though Roman ruins have been found in

the vicinity, nothing is positively known about the city's history prior

to the eleventh century.

When Sancho II. fought against his sister locked up in Zamora, he

offered her Vallisoletum in exchange for the powerful fortress she had

inherited from her father. In vain, and the town seated on the Pisuerga

is not mentioned again in historical documents until 1074, when Alfonso

VI. handed it over, with several other villages, to Pedro Ansurez, who

made it his capital, raised the church (Santa Maria la Mayor) to a

suffragan of Palencia, and laid the first foundations of its future

greatness. In 1208 the family of Ansurez died out, and the _villa_

reverted to the crown; from then until the reign of Philip IV.

Valladolid was doubtless one of the most important cities in Castile,

and the capital of all the Spains, from the reign of Ferdinand and

Isabel to that of Philip III.

Consequently, the history of Valladolid from the thirteenth to the

sixteenth century is that of Spain.

In Valladolid, Peter the Cruel, after three days' marriage, forsook his

bride, Dona Blanca de Bourbon, and returned to the arms of his mistress

Maria; several years later he committed most of his terrible crimes

within the limits of the town. Here Maria de Molina upheld her son's

right to the throne during his minority, and in Valladolid also, after

her son's death, the same widow fought for her grandson against the

intrigues of uncles and cousins.

Isabel and Alfonso fought in Valladolid against the proclamation of

their niece, Juana, the illegitimate daughter of Henry IV., as heiress

to the throne; the citizens upheld the Catholic princess's claims, and

it is not surprising that when the princess became queen--the greatest

Spain ever had--she made Valladolid her capital, in gratitude to the

loyalty of its inhabitants.

In Valladolid, Columbus obtained the royal permission to sail westwards

in 1492, and, upon his last return from America, he died in the selfsame

city in 1506; here also Berruguete, the sculptor, created many of his

_chefs-d'oeuvres_ and the immortal Cervantes appeared before the law

courts and wrote the second part of his "Quixote."

Unlucky Juana _la Loca_ (Jane the Mad) and her husband Felipe _el

Hermoso_ (Philip the Handsome) reigned here after the death of Isabel

the Catholic, and fifty years later, when Philip II. returned from

England to ascend the Spanish throne, he settled in Valladolid, until

his religious fanaticism or craze obliged him to move to a city nearer

the Escorial. Then he fixed upon Madrid as his court. Being a religious

man, nevertheless, and conscious of a certain love for Valladolid, his

natal town, he had the suffragan church erected to a cathedral in 1595,

appointing Don Bartolome de la Plaza to be its first bishop. At the same

time, he ordered Juan de Herrero, the severe architect of the Escorial,

to draw the plans and commence the building of the new edifice.

The growing importance of Madrid, and the final establishment in the

last named city of all the honours which belonged to Valladolid, threw

the city seated on the Pisuerga into the shade, and its star of fortune

slowly waned. But not to such a degree as that of Salamanca or Burgos,

for to-day, of all the old cities of Castile, the only one which has a

life of its own, and a commercial and industrial personality, is

Valladolid, the one-time capital of all the Spains, and now the seat of

an archbishopric. It began by usurping the dignity of Burgos; then it

rose to greater heights of fame than its rival, thanks to the discovery

of America, and finally it lost its _prestige_ when Madrid was crowned

the _unica villa_.

The general appearance of the city is peculiarly Spanish, especially as

regards the prolific use of brick in the construction of churches and

edifices in general. It is presumable that the Arabs were possessors of

the town before the Christian conquest, though no documental proofs are

at hand. The etymology of the city's name, Medinat-el-Walid, is purely

Arabic, Walid being the name of a Moorish general.

If the cathedral church was erected as late as the sixteenth century, it

must not be supposed that the town lacked parish churches. On the

contrary, there is barely a city in Spain with more religious edifices

of all kinds, and the greater part of them of far more architectural

merit than the cathedral itself. The astonishing number of convents is

remarkable; many of them date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,

and are, consequently, Romanesque with a good deal of Byzantine taste

about them, or else they belong to the period of Transition. Taken all

in all, they are really the only architectural attractions to be

discovered in the city to-day. The traditions which explain the

foundation of some of these are among the most characteristic in

Valladolid, and a thread of Oriental romance is more predominant among

them than elsewhere. A good example of one of these explains the

foundation of the large convent of the Mercedes.

Dona Leonor was the wife of one Acuna, a fearless (?) knight. The King

of Portugal unluckily fell in love with Dona Leonor, and, wishing to

marry her, had her previous marriage annulled and placed her on his

throne. Acuna fled from Portugal and came to Valladolid, where, with

unparalleled sarcasm, he wore a badge on his hat proclaiming his

dishonour.

Both Acuna and the King of Portugal died, and Dona Leonor, whose morals

were none too edifying, fell in love with a certain Zuniguez; the

daughter of these two was handed over to the care of a knight, Fernan by

name, and Dona Leonor ordered him to found a convent, upon her death,

and lock up her daughter within its walls; the mother was doubtless only

too anxious to have her daughter escape the ills of this life. Unluckily

she counted without the person principally concerned, namely, the

daughter, for the latter fell secretly in love with her keeper's nephew.

She thought he was her cousin, however, for it appears she was passed

off as Fernan's daughter. Upon her mother's death she learnt her real

origin, and wedded her lover. In gratitude for her non-relationship with

her husband, she founded the convent her mother had ordered, but she

herself remained without its walls!

The least that can be said about the cathedral of Valladolid, the

better. Doubtless there are many people who consider the building a

marvel of beauty. As a specimen of Juan de Herrero's severe and majestic

style, it is second to no other building excepting only that great

masterwork, the Escorial, and perhaps parts of the Pillar at Saragosse.

But as an art monument, where beauty and not Greco-Roman effects are

sought, it is a failure.

The original plan of the building was a rectangle, 411 feet long by 204

wide, divided in its length by a nave and two aisles, and in its width

by a broad transept situated exactly half-way between the apse and the

foot of the church. The form was thus that of a Greek cross; each angle

of the building was to be surmounted by a tower, and the _croisee_ by an

immense cupola or dome. (Compare with the new cathedral in Salamanca.)

The lateral walls of the aisles were to contain symmetrical chapels, as

was also the apse.

From the foregoing it will be seen that symmetry and the Greco-Roman

straight horizontal line were to replace the ogival arch and the

generally vertical, soaring effect of Gothic buildings.

The architect died before his monument was completed, and Churriguera,

the most anti-artistic artist that ever breathed,--according to the

author's personal opinion,--was called upon to finish the edifice: his

trade-mark covers almost the entire western front, where the second body

shows the defects into which Herrero's severe style degenerated soon

after his death.

Of the four towers and the cupola which were to render the capitol of

Valladolid "second in grandeur to none excepting St. Peter's at Rome,"

only one tower was erected: it fell down in 1841, and is being reerected

at the present time.

In the interior the same disparity is everywhere visible, as well as in

the unfinished state of the temple. Greek columns are prevalent, and,

contrasting with their simplicity, the high altar, as grotesque a body

as ever was placed in a holy cathedral, attracts the eye of the vulgar

with something of the same feeling as a blood-and-thunder melodrama.

Needless to say, the art connoisseur flees therefrom.

[Illustration: WESTERN FRONT OF VALLADOLID CATHEDRAL]

To the rear of the building the remains of the Romanesque Church of

Santa Maria la Mayor are still to be seen; what a difference between

the rigid, anti-artistic conception of Herrero, ridiculized by

Churriguera, and left but half-completed by successive generations of

moneyless believers, and the simple but elegant features of the old

collegiate church, with its tower still standing, a Byzantine _recuerdo_

of the thirteenth century.

II

AVILA

To the west of Madrid, in the very heart of the Sierra de Gredos, lies

Avila, another of the interesting cities of Castile, whose time-old

mansions and palaces, built of a gray granite, lend a solemn and almost

repulsively melancholic air to the city.

Perhaps more than any other town, Avila is characteristic of the middle

ages, of the continual strife between the noblemen, the Church, and the

common people. The houses of the aristocrats are castles rather than

palaces, with no artistic decoration to hide their bare nakedness; the

cathedral is really a fortress, and not only apparently so, as in

Salamanca and Toro, for its very apse is embedded in the city walls, of

which it forms a part, a battlemented, turreted, and warlike projection,

sure of having to bear the brunt of an attack in case of a siege.

Like the general aspect of the city is also the character of the

inhabitant, and it is but drawing it mildly to state that Avila's sons

were ever foremost in battle and strife. Kings in their minority were

brought hither by prudent mothers who relied more upon the city's walls

than upon the promises of noblemen in Valladolid and Burgos; this trust

was never misplaced. In the conquest of Extremadura and of Andalusia,

also, the Avilese troops, headed by daring warrior-prelates, played a

most important part, and, as a frontier fortress, together with Segovia,

against Aragon to the east, it managed to keep away from Castilian

territory the ambitions of the monarchs of the rival kingdom.

Avela of the Romans was a garrison town, the walls of which were partly

thrown down by the Western Goths upon their arrival in the peninsula.

Previously, San Segundo, one of the disciples of the Apostles who had

visited Betica (Andalusia), preached the True Word in Avila, and was

created its first bishop--in the first century. During the terrible

persecution of the Christians under the reign of Trajanus, one San

Vicente and his two sisters, Sabina and Cristeta, escaped from Portugal

and came to Avila, hoping to be hospitably received. All in vain; their

heads were smashed between stones, and their bodies left to rot in the

streets. An immense serpent emerged from the city walls and kept guard

over the three saintly corpses. The first to approach was a Jew, drawn

hither by curiosity; he was immediately enveloped by the reptile's body.

On the point of being strangled, he pronounced the word, "Jesus"--and

the serpent released him. So grateful was the Jew at being delivered

from death that he turned Christian and erected a church in honour of

San Vicente, Sabina, and Cristeta, and had them buried within its walls.

This church subsisted throughout the dark ages of the Moorish invasion

until at last Fernando I. removed the saintly remains to Leon in the

eleventh century. The church was then destroyed, and, it is believed,

the present cathedral was built on the same spot.

The Moors, calling the city Abila, used it as one of the fortresses

defending Toledo on the north against the continual Christian raids;

with varying success they held it until the end of the eleventh century,

when it finally fell into the hands of the Christians, and was

repopulated a short time before Salamanca toward the end of the same

century.

During the centuries of Moorish dominion the see had fallen into the

completest oblivion, no mention being made of any bishops of Avila; the

ecclesiastical dignity was reestablished immediately after the final

conquest of the region to the north of the Sierra of Guaderrama, and

though documents are lacking as to who was the first prelate _de

modernis_, it is generally believed to have been one Jeronimo, toward

the end of the eleventh century.

The city grew rapidly in strength; settlers came from the north--from

Castile and Leon--and from the east, from Aragon; they travelled to

their new home in bullock-carts containing household furniture,

agricultural and war implements, wives, and children.

In the subsequent history of Spain Avila played an important part, and

many a stirring event took place within its walls. It was besieged by

the Aragonese Alfonso el Batallador, whose army advanced to the attack

behind its prisoners, sons of Avila. Brothers, fathers, and relatives

were thus obliged to fire upon their own kin if they wished to save

their city. The same king, it is said, killed his hostages by having

their heads cut off and boiled in oil, as though severed heads were

capable of feeling the delightful sensation of seething oil!

Of all the traditions as numerous here as elsewhere, the prettiest and

most improbable is doubtless that of Nalvillos, a typical chevalier of

romance, who fell desperately in love with a beautiful Moorish princess

and wedded her. She pined, however, for a lover whom in her youth she

had promised to wed, and though her husband erected palaces and bought

slaves for her, she escaped with her sweetheart. Nalvillos followed the

couple to where they lay retired in a castle, and it was surrounded by

him and his trusty followers. The hero himself, disguised as a seller of

curative herbs, entered the apartment where his wife was waiting for her

lover's return, and made himself known. The former's return, however,

cut matters short, and Nalvillos was obliged to hide himself. The

Moorish girl was true to her love, and told her sweetheart where the

Christian was hiding; brought out of his retreat, he was on the point of

being killed when he asked permission to blow a last blast on his

bugle--a wish that was readily conceded by the magnanimous lover. The

result? The princess and her sweetheart were burnt to death by the

flames ignited by Nalvillos's soldiers. The Christian warrior was, of

course, able to escape.

In 1455 the effigy of Henry IV. was dethroned in Avila by the prelates

of Toledo and other cities, and by an assembly of noblemen who felt that

feudalism was dying out, and were anxious to strike a last blow at the

weak king whom they considered was their enemy.

The effigy was placed on a throne; the Archbishop of Toledo harangued

the multitude which, silent and scowling, was kept away from the throne

by a goodly number of obedient mercenary soldiers. Then the prelate tore

off the mock crown, another of the conspirators the sceptre, another the

royal garments, and so on, each accompanying his act by an ignominious

curse. At last the effigy was torn from the throne and trampled under

the feet of the soldiers. Alfonso, a boy of eleven, stepped on the dais

and was proclaimed king. His hand was kissed by the humble (!) prelates

and noblemen, who swore allegiance, an oath they had not the slightest

intention of keeping, and did not keep, either.

Philip III.'s decree expelling Moors from Spain, was, as in the case of

Plasencia, the _coup de grace_ given to the city's importance; half the

population was obliged to leave, and Avila never recovered her lost

importance and influence. To-day, with only about ten thousand

inhabitants, thrown in the background by Madrid, it manages to keep

alive and nothing more.

The date when the erection of the cathedral church of Avila was begun is

utterly unknown. According to a pious legend, it was founded by the

third bishop, Don Pedro, who, being anxious to erect a temple worthy of

his dignity, undertook a long pilgrimage to foreign countries in search

of arms, and returned to his see in 1091. Sixteen years later, according

to the same tradition, the present cathedral was essentially completed,

a bold statement that cannot be accepted because in manifest

contradiction with the build of the church.

According to Senor Quadrado, the oldest part of the building, the apse,

was probably erected toward the end of the twelfth century. It is a

massive, almost windowless, semicircular body, its bare walls

unsupported by buttresses, and every inch of it like the corner-tower of

a castle wall, crenelated and flat-topped.

The same author opines that the transept, a handsome, broad, and airy

ogival nave, dates from the fourteenth century, whereas the western

front of the church is of a much more recent date.

Be that as it may, the fact is that the cathedral of Avila, seen from

the east, west, or north, is a fortress building, a huge, unwieldy and

anti-artistic composition of Romanesque, Gothic, and other elements. The

western front, with its heavy tower to the north, and the lack of such

to the south, appears more gloomy than ever on account of the obscure

colour of the stone; the facade above the portal is of one of the most

peculiar of artistic conceptions ever imagined; above the first body or

the pointed arch which crowns the portal comes the second body, divided

from the former by a straight line, which supports eight columns

flanking seven niches; on the top of this unlucky part comes an ogival

window. The whole facade is narrow--one door--and high. The effect is

disastrous: an unnecessary contortion or misplacement of vertical,

horizontal, slanting, and circular lines.

The tower is flanked at the angles by two rims of stone, the edges of

which are cut into _bolas_ (balls). If this shows certain _Mudejar_

taste, so, also, do the geometrical designs carved in relief against a

background, as seen in the arabesques above the upper windows.

The northern portal, excepting the upper arch, which is but slightly

curved and almost horizontal, and weighs down the ogival arches, is far

better as regards the artist's conception of beauty; the stone carving

is also of a better class.

Returning to the interior of the building, preferably by the transept,

the handsomest part of the church, the spectator perceives a double

ambulatory behind the high altar; the latter, as well as the choir, is

low, and a fine view is obtained of the ensemble. The central nave,

almost twice as high and little broader than the aisles, is crowned by a

double triforium of Gothic elegance.

Seen from the transept, it would appear as though there were four aisles

on the west side instead of two, a peculiar deception produced by the

lateral opening of the last chapels, exactly similar in construction

to the arch which crowns the intersection of the aisles and transept.

[Illustration: TOWER OF AVILA CATHEDRAL]

In the northern and southern extremity of the transept two handsome

rosaces, above a row of lancet windows, let in the outside light through

stained panes.

The impression produced by the interior of the cathedral is greatly

superior to that received from without. In the latter case curiosity is

about the only sentiment felt by the spectator, whereas within the

temple does not lack a simple beauty and mystery.

As regards sculptural details, the best are doubtless the low reliefs to

be seen to the rear of the choir, as well as several sepulchres, of

which the best--and one of the best Renaissance monuments of its kind in

Spain--is that of the Bishop Alfonso Tostado in the ambulatory. The

_retablo_ of the high altar is also a magnificent piece of work of the

second half of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the

sixteenth.

III

SEGOVIA

Avila's twin sister, Segovia, retains its old Celtiberian name; it

retains, also, the undeniable proofs of Roman domination in its

far-famed aqueduct and in its amphitheatre.

According to the popular tradition, San Hierateo, the disciple of St.

Paul, was the first bishop in the first century, but probably the see

was not erected until about 527, when it is first mentioned in a

Tolesian document; the name of the first bishop (historical) is Peter,

who was present at the third Council in Toledo (589).

The local saint is one San Fruto, who, upon the approach of the Saracen

hosts, gathered together a handful of fugitives and retired to the

mountains; his brother Valentine and his sister Engracia (of Aragonese

fame?) died martyrs to their belief. San Fruto, on the other hand, lived

the life of a hermit in the mountains and wrought many miracles, such

as splitting open a rock with his jack-knife, etc. The most miraculous

of his deeds was the proof he gave to the Moors of the genuineness of

the Catholic religion: on a tray of oats he placed the host and offered

it to a mule, which, instead of munching oats and host, fell on its

knees, and perhaps even crossed itself!

Disputed by Arabs and Christians, like all Castilian towns, Segovia

lagged along until it fell definitely into the hands of the latter. A

Christian colony seems, nevertheless, to have lived in the town during

the Arab dominion, because the documents of the time speak of a Bishop

Ilderedo in 940.

The exact year of the repopulation of Segovia is not known, but

doubtless it was a decade or so prior to either that of Salamanca or

Avila.

Neither was the warlike spirit of the inhabitants inferior to that of

their brethren in the last named cities. It was due to their bravery

that Madrid fell into the hands of the Christians toward 1110, for,

arriving late at the besieging camp, the king, who was present, told

them that if they wished to pass the night comfortably, there was but

one place, namely, the city itself. Without a moment's hesitation the

daring warriors dashed at the walls of Madrid, and, scaling them, took a

tower, where they passed the night at their ease, and to their monarch's

great astonishment.

In 1115, the first bishop _de modernis_, Don Pedro, was consecrated, and

the cathedral was begun at about the same time. Several of the

successive prelates were battling warriors rather than spiritual

shepherds, and fought with energy and success against the infidel in

Andalusia. One, Don Gutierre Giron, even found his death in the terrible

defeat of the Christian arms at Alarcon.

The event which brought the greatest fame to Segovia was the erection of

its celebrated Alcazar, or castle, the finest specimen of military

architecture in Spain. Every city had its citadel, it is true, but none

were so strong and invulnerable as that of Segovia, and in the stormy

days of Castilian history the monarchs found a safe retreat from the

attacks of unscrupulous noblemen behind its walls.

Until 1530 the old cathedral stood at the back of the Alcazar, but in a

revolution of the Comuneros against Charles-Quint, the infuriated mob,

anxious to seize the castle, tore down the temple and used its stones,

beams, stalls, and railings as a means to scale the high walls of the

fortress. Their efforts were in vain, for an army came to the relief of

the castle from Valladolid; a general pardon was, nevertheless, granted

to the population by the monarch, who was too far off to care much what

his Spanish subjects did. After the storm was over, the hot-headed

citizens found themselves with a bishop and a chapter, but without a

church or means wherewith to erect a new one.

The struggles between city and fortress were numerous, and were the

cause, in a great measure, of the town's decadence. Upon one occasion,

Isabel the Catholic infringed upon the citizens' rights by making a gift

of some of the feudal villages to a court favourite. The day after the

news of this infringement reached the city, by a common accord the

citizens "dressed in black, did not amuse themselves, nor put on clean

linen; neither did they sweep the house steps, nor light the lamps at

night; neither did they buy nor sell, and what is more, they boxed their

children's ears so that they should for ever remember the day." So great

were the public signs of grief that it has been said that "never did a

republic wear deeper mourning for the loss of its liberties."

The end of the matter was that the queen in her famous testament revoked

her gift and returned the villages to the city.

The old cathedral was torn down in November, 1520, and it was not until

June, 1525, that the bishop, who had made a patriotic appeal to all

Spaniards in behalf of the church funds, laid the first stone of the new

edifice. Thirty years later the building was consecrated.

Nowhere else can a church be found which is a more thorough expression

of a city's fervour and enthusiasm. It was as though the sacrilegious

act of the enraged mob reacted on the penitent minds of the calmed

citizens, for rich and poor alike gave their alms to the cathedral

chapter. Jewels were sold, donations came from abroad, feudal lords gave

whole villages to the church, and the poor men, the workmen, and the

peasants gave their pennies. Daily processions arrived at Santa Clara,

then used as cathedral church, from all parts of the diocese. To-day

they were composed of tradesmen, of _Zuenfte_, who gave their offerings

of a few pounds; to-morrow a village would bring in a cartload of

stone, of mortar, of wood, etc. On holidays and Sundays the repentant

citizens, instead of amusing themselves at the dance or bull-fight,

carted materials for their new cathedral's erection, and all this they

did of their own free will.

[Illustration: SEGOVIA CATHEDRAL]

The act of consecrating the finished building constituted a grand

holiday. The long aqueduct was illuminated from top to bottom, as was

also the cathedral tower, and every house in the city. During a week the

holiday-making lasted with open-air amusements for the poor and banquets

for the rich.

The date of the construction of the new building was contemporaneous

with that of Salamanca, and the architect was, to a certain extent, the

same. It is not strange, therefore, that both should resemble each other

in their general disposition. What is more, the construction in both

churches was begun at the foot (west), and not in the east, as is

generally the case. The oldest part of the building is consequently the

western front, classic in its outline, but showing among its ogival

details both the symmetry and triangular pediment of Renaissance art.

The tower, higher than that of Sevilla, and broader than that of Toledo,

is simple in its structure; it is Byzantine, and does not lack a

certain _cachet_ of elegance; the first body is surmounted by a dome,

upon which rises the second,--smaller, and also crowned by a cupola. The

tower was twice struck by lightning and partly ruined in 1620; it was

rebuilt in 1825, and a lightning conductor replaced the cross of the

spire.

Though consecrated, as has been said, in 1558, the new temple was by no

means finished: the transept and the eastern end were still to be built.

The latter was finished prior to 1580, and in 1615 the Renaissance dome

which surmounts the _croisee_ was erected by an artist-architect, who

evidently was incapable of giving it a true Gothic appearance.

The apse, with its three harmonizing _etages_ corresponding to the

chapels, aisles, and nave, and flanked by leaning buttresses ornamented

with delicate pinnacles, is Gothic in its details; the ensemble is,

nevertheless, Renaissance, thanks to a perfect symmetry painfully

pronounced by naked horizontal lines--so contradictory to the spirit of

true ogival. Less regularity and a greater profusion of buttresses, and

above all of flying buttresses, would have been more agreeable, but the

times had changed and new tastes had entered the country.

Neither does the broad transept, its facade,--either southern or

northern,--and the cupola join, as it were, the eastern and the western

half of the building; on the contrary, it distinctly separates them, not

to the building's advantage.

The interior is gay rather than solemn: the general disposition of the

parts is as customary in a Gothic church of the Transition

(Renaissance). The nave and transept are of the same width; the lateral

chapels, running along the exterior walls of the aisles, are

symmetrical, as in Salamanca; the ambulatory separates the high altar

from the apse and its seven chapels.

The pavement of the church is of black and white marble slabs, like that

of Toledo, for instance; as for the stained windows, they are numerous,

and those in the older part of the building of good (Flemish?)

workmanship and of a rich colour, which heightens the happy expression

of the whole building.

The cloister is the oldest part of the building, having pertained to the

previous cathedral. After the latter's destruction, and the successful

erection of the new temple, the cloister was transported stone by stone

from its old emplacement to where it now stands. It is a handsome and

richly decorated Gothic building, containing many tombs, among them

those of the architects of the cathedral and of Maria del Salto. This

Mary was a certain Jewess, who, condemned to death, and thrown over the

Pena Grajera, invoked the aid of the Virgin, and was saved.

Another tomb is that of Prince Don Pedro, son of Enrique II., who fell

out of a window of the Alcazar. His nurse, according to the tradition,

threw herself out of the window after her charge, and together they were

picked up, one locked in the arms of the other.

IV

MADRID-ALCALA

Though Madrid was proclaimed the capital of Spain in the sixteenth

century, it was not until 1850 that its collegiate church of San Isidro

was raised to an episcopal see.

The appointment met with a storm of disapproval in the neighbouring town

of Alcala de Henares, the citizens claiming the erection of the

ecclesiastical throne in their own collegiate, instead of in Madrid.

Their reasons were purely historical, as will be seen later on, whereas

the capital lacked both history and ecclesiastical significance.

To pacify the inhabitants of Alcala, and at the same time to raise

Madrid to the rank of a city, the following arrangement was made: the

newly created see was to be called Madrid-Alcala; the bishop was to

possess two cathedral churches, and both towns were to be cities.

Such is the state of affairs at present. The recent governmental

closure of the old cathedral in Alcala has deprived the partisans of the

double see of one of their chief arguments, namely, the possession of a

worthy temple, unique in the world as regards its organization.

Consequently, it is generally stated that the title of Madrid-Alcala

will die out with the present bishop, and that the next will simply be

the Bishop of Madrid.

_Madrid_

The city of Madrid is new and uninteresting; it is an overgrown village,

with no buildings worthy of the capital of a kingdom. From an

architectural point of view, the royal palace, majestic and imposing,

though decidedly poor in style, is about the only edifice that can be

admired.

In history, Madrid plays a most unimportant part until the times of

Philip II., the black-browed monarch who, intent upon erecting his

mausoleum in the Escorial, proclaimed Madrid to be the only capital.

That was in 1560; previously Magerit had been an Arab fortress to the

north of Toledo, and the first in the region now called Castilla la

Nueva (New Castile), to distinguish it from Old Castile, which lies to

the north of the mountain chain.

Most likely Magerit had been founded by the Moors, though, as soon as it

had become the capital of Spain, its inhabitants, who were only too

eager to lend their town a history it did not possess, invented a series

of traditions and legends more ridiculous than veracious.

On the slopes of the last hill, descending to the Manzanares, and beside

the present royal palace, the Christian conquerors of the Arab fortress

in the twelfth century discovered an effigy of the Virgin, in an

_almudena_ or storehouse. This was the starting-point for the traditions

of the twelfth-century monks who discovered (?) that this effigy had

been placed where it was found by St. James, according to some, and by

the Virgin herself, according to others; what is more, they even

established a series of bishops in Magerit previous to the Arab

invasion.

No foundations are of course at hand for such fabulous inventions, and

if the effigy really were found in the _almudena_, it must have been

placed there by the Moors themselves, who most likely had taken it as

their booty when sacking a church or convent to the north.

The patron saint of Madrid is one Isidro, not to be confounded with San

Isidoro of Leon. The former was a farmer or labourer, who, with his

wife, lived a quiet and unpretentious life in the vicinity of Madrid, on

the opposite banks of the Manzanares, where a chapel was erected to his

memory sometime in the seventeenth century. Of the many miracles this

saint is supposed to have wrought, not one differs from the usual deeds

attributed to holy individuals. Being a farmer, his voice called forth

water from the parched land, and angels helped his oxen to plough the

fields.

Save the effigy of the Virgin de la Almudena, and the life of San

Isidro, Madrid has no ecclesiastical history,--the Virgin de la Atocha

has been forgotten, but she is only a duplicate of her sister virgin.

Convents and monasteries are of course as numerous as elsewhere in

Spain; brick parish churches of a decided Spanish-Oriental appearance

rear their cupolas skyward in almost every street, the largest among

them being San Francisco el Grande, which, with San Antonio de la

Florida (containing several handsome paintings by Goya), is the only

temple worth visiting.

As regards a cathedral building, there is, in the lower part of the

city, a large stone church dedicated to San Isidro; it serves the stead

of a cathedral church until a new building, begun about 1885, will have

been completed.

This new building, the cathedral properly speaking, is to be a tenth

wonder; it is to be constructed in granite, and its foundations stand

beside the royal palace in the very spot where the Virgin de la Almudena

was found, and where, until 1869, a church enclosed the sacred effigy;

the new building is to be dedicated to the same deity.

Unluckily, the erection of the new cathedral proceeds but slowly; so far

only the basement stones have been laid and the crypt finished. The

funds for its erection are entirely dependent upon alms, but, as the

religious fervour which incited the inhabitants of Segovia in the

sixteenth century is almost dead to-day, it is an open question whether

the cathedral of Madrid will ever be finished.

The temporary cathedral of San Isidro was erected in the seventeenth

century; its two clumsy towers are unfinished, its western front,

between the towers, is severe; four columns support the balcony, behind

which the cupola, which crowns the _croisee_, peeps forth.

Inside there is nothing worthy of interest to be admired except some

pictures, one of them painted by the Divino Morales. The nave is light,

but the chapels are so dark that almost nothing can be seen in their

interior.

This church, until the expulsion of the Jesuits, was the temple of their

order, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul; adjoining it a Jesuit school

was erected, which has been incorporated in the government colleges.

_Alcala de Henares_

About twenty miles to the east of Madrid lies the one-time glorious

university city of Alcala, famous above all things for having been the

cradle of Cervantes, and the hearth, if not the home, of Cardinal

Cisneros.

Its history and its decadence are of the saddest; the latter serves in

many respects as an adequate symbol of Spain's own tremendous downfall.

[Illustration: SAN ISIDRO, MADRID]

The Romans founded Alcala; it was their Complutum, of which some few

remains have been discovered in the vicinity of the modern city. Yet,

notwithstanding this lack of substantial evidence, the inhabitants of

the region still proudly call themselves Complutenses.

When the West Goths were rulers of the peninsula, the Roman monuments

must have been completely destroyed, for all traces of the strategic

stronghold were effaced from the map of Spain. The invading Arabs,

possessing to a certain degree both Roman military instinct and

foresight, built a fortress on the spot where the State Archives

Building stands to-day. This castle was used by them as one of Toledo's

northern defences against the warlike Christian kings.

In the twelfth century the fortress fell into the hands of the

Christians; in the succeeding centuries it was strongly rebuilt by the

cardinal-archbishops of Toledo, who used it both as their palace and as

their stronghold.

Outside the bastioned and turreted walls of the castle, the new-born

city grew up under its protecting shadows. Known by the Arabic name of

its fortress (Al-Kala), it was successively baptized Alcala de San

Justo, Alcala de Fenares, and since the sixteenth century, Alcala de

Henares (_heno_, old Spanish _feno_, meaning hay). Protected by such

powerful arms as those of the princes of the Church, it grew up to be a

second Toledo, a city of church spires and convent walls, but of which

only a reduced number stand to-day to point back to the religious

fervour of the middle ages.

The world-spread fame acquired by Alcala in the fifteenth century was

due to the patronage of Cardinal Cisneros, who built the university, at

one time one of the most celebrated in Europe, and to-day a mere

skeleton of architectural beauty.

The same prelate raised San Justo to a suffragan church; its chapter was

composed only of learned professors of the university, as were also its

canons; Leon X. gave it the enviable title of La Magistral, the Learned,

which points it out as unique in the Christian world. The Polyglot

Bible, published in the sixteenth century, and famous in all Europe, was

worked out by these scholars under Cisneros's direction, and the

favoured city outshone the newly built Madrid twenty miles away, and

rivalled Salamanca in learning, and Toledo in worldly and religious

splendour.

Madrid grew greater and greater as years went by, and consequently

Alcala de Henares dwindled away to the shadow of a name. The university,

the just pride of the Complutenses, was removed to the capital; the

cathedral, for lack of proper care, became an untimely ruin; the

episcopal palace was confiscated by the state, which, besides repairing

it, filled its seventy odd halls with rows upon rows of dusty documents

and governmental papers.

To-day the city drags along a weary, inactive existence: soldiers from

the barracks and long-robed priests from the church fill the streets,

and are as numerous as the civil inhabitants, if not more so; convents

and cloisters of nuns, either grass-grown ruins or else sombre grated

and barred edifices, are to be met with at every step.

Strangers visit the place hurriedly in the morning and return to Madrid

in the afternoon; they buy a tin box of sugar almonds (the city's

specialty), carelessly examine the university and the archiepiscopal

palace, gaze unmoved at some Cervantes relics, and at the facade of the

cathedral. Besides, they are told that in such and such a house the

immortal author of Don Quixote was born, which is a base, though

comprehensible, invention, because no such house exists to-day.

That is all; perchance in crossing the city's only square, the traveller

notices that it can boast of no fewer than three names, doubtless with a

view to hide its glaring nakedness. These three names are Plaza de

Cervantes, Plaza Mayor, and Plaza de la Constitucion, of which the

latter is spread out boldly across the town hall and seems to invoke the

remembrance of the ephemeral efforts of the republic in 1869.

In the third century after the birth of Christ, two infants, Justo and

Pastor, preached the True Word to the unbelieving Roman rulers of

Complutum. The result was not in the least surprising: the two infants

lost their baby heads for the trouble they had taken in trying to

trouble warriors.

But the Vatican remembered them, and canonized Pastor and Justo.

Hundreds of churches, sown by the blood of martyrs, grew up in all

corners of the peninsula to commemorate pagan cruelty, and to induce all

men to follow the examples set by the two babes.

No one knew, however, where the mortal remains of Justo and Pastor were

lying. In the fourth century their resting-place was miraculously

revealed to one Austurio, Archbishop of Toledo, who had them removed to

his cathedral. They did not stay long in the primate city, for the

invasion of the Moors obliged all True Believers to hide Church relics.

Thus, Justo and Pastor wandered forth again from village to village,

running away from the infidels until they reposed temporarily in the

cathedral of Huesca in the north of Aragon.

In Alcala their memory was kept alive in the parish church dedicated to

them. But as the city grew, it was deemed preferable to build a solid

temple worthy of the saintly pair, and Carillo, Archbishop of Toledo,

had the old church pulled down and began the erection of a larger

edifice. This took place in the middle of the fifteenth century, when

Ximenez de Cisneros, who ruled the fate of Spain and its church, gave it

the ecclesiastical constitution previously mentioned.

Fifty years later the weary bodies of the two infants were brought back

in triumph to their native town amid the rejoicings and admiration of

the people, and were placed in the cathedral of San Justo, then a

collegiate church of Toledo.

A few years ago the cathedral church of San Justo was denounced by the

state architect and closed. To-day it is a dreary ruin, with tufts of

grass growing among the battlements. The chapter, depriving the hoary

building of its high altar, its precious relics and paintings, its

stalls and other accessories, installed the cathedral in the Jesuit

temple, an insignificant building in the other extremity of the town.

Recently the abandoned ruin has been declared a national monument, which

means that the state is obliged to undertake its restoration.

La Magistral is a brick building of imposing simplicity and severity in

its general outlines. Its decorative elements are ogival, but of true

Spanish nakedness and lack of elegance. Though Renaissance principles

have not entered into the composition, as might have been supposed,

considering the date of the erection, nevertheless, the lack of flying

buttresses, the scarcity of windows, the undecorated angles of the

western front, the barren walls, and flat-topped, though slightly

sloping, roofs prove that the "simple and severe style" is latent in the

minds of artists.

[Illustration: ALCALA DE HENARES CATHEDRAL]

The apse is well developed, and the _croisee_ surmounted by a cupola;

the tower which flanks the western front is massive; it is decorated

with blind arches and ogival arabesques.

The ground plan of the building is Latin Cruciform; the aisles are but

slightly lower than the nave and join in the apse behind the high altar

in an ambulatory walk. The crypt, reached by two Renaissance doors in

the _trasaltar_, is spacious, and contains the bodies of San Justo and

San Pastor.

The general impression produced on the mind of the tourist is sadness.

The severity of the structure is heightened by the absence of any

distracting decorative elements, excepting the fine _Mudejar_ ceiling to

the left upon entering.

In the reigning shadows of this deserted temple, two magnificent tombs

stand in solitude and silence. They are those of Carillo and Cardinal

Cisneros, the latter one of the greatest sons of Spain and one of her

most contradictory geniuses. His sepulchre is a gorgeous marble monument

of Renaissance style, surrounded by a massive bronze grille of excellent

workmanship, a marvel of Spanish metal art of the sixteenth century.

The other sepulchre is simple in its ogival decorations, and the

prostrate effigy of Carillo is among the best to be admired by the

tourist in Iberia.

Carillo's life was that of a restless, ambitious, and worldly man. When

he died, he was buried in the Convent of San Juan de Dios, where his

illegitimate son had been buried before him, "for," said the

archbishop-father, "if in life my robes separated me from my son, in

death we shall be united."

But he reckoned without his host, or rather his successor, the man whose

remains now lie beside his own in the shadows of the great ruin. "For,"

said Cisneros, "the Church must separate man from his sin even in

death." So he ordered the son to be left in the convent, and the father

to be brought to the temple he had begun to erect.

V

SIGUeENZA

The origin of the fortress admirably situated to the north of

Guadalajara was doubtless Moorish, though in the vicinity is Villavieja,

where the Romans had established a town on the transverse road from

Cadiz to Tarragon, and called by them Seguncia, or Segoncia.

When the Christian religion first appeared in Spain, it is believed that

Sigueenza, or Segoncia, possessed an episcopal see; nothing is positively

known, however, of the early bishops, until Protogenes signed the third

Council of Toledo in 589.

It is believed that in the reign of Alfonso VI., he who conquered Toledo

and the region to the south of Valladolid and as far east as Aragon,

Sigueenza was repopulated, though no mention is made of the place in the

earlier chronicles of the time. All that is known is that a bishop was

immediately appointed by Alfonso VII. to the vacancy which had lasted

for over two hundred years, during which Sigueenza had been one of the

provincial capitals of the Kingdom of Toledo. The first known bishop was

Don Bernardo.

The history of the town was never of the most brilliant. In the times of

Alfonso VII. and his immediate successors it gained certain importance

as a frontier stronghold, as a check to the growing ambitions of the

royal house of Aragon. But after the union of Castile and Aragon, its

importance gradually dwindled; to-day, if it were not for the bishopric,

it would be one historic village more on the map of Spain.

In the reign of Peter the Cruel, its castle--considered with that of

Segovia to be the strongest in Castile--was used for some time as the

prison palace for that most unhappy princess, Dona Blanca, who, married

to his Catholic Majesty, had been deposed on the third day of the

wedding by the heartless and passionate lover of the Padilla. She was at

first shut up in Toledo, but the king did not consider the Alcazar

strong enough. So she was sent off to Sigueenza, where it is popularly

believed, though documents deny it, that she died, or was put to death.

The city belonged to the bishop; it was his feudal property, and passed

down to his successors in the see. Of the doings of these

prelate-warriors, the first, Don Bernardo, was doubtless the most

striking personality, lord of a thousand armed vassals and of three

hundred horse, who fought with the emperor in almost all the great

battles in Andalusia. It is even believed he died wielding the naked

sword, and that his remains were brought back to the town of which he

had been the first and undisputed lord.

The strong castle which crowns the city did not possess, as was

generally the case, an _alcalde_, or governor; it was the episcopal

palace or residence, a circumstance which proves beyond a doubt the

double significance of the bishop: a spiritual leader and military

personage, more influential and wealthy than any prelate in Spain,

excepting the Archbishops of Toledo and Santiago.

During the French invasion in the beginning of the nineteenth century,

Sigueenza had already lost its political significance. The invaders

occupied the castle, and, as was their custom, threw documents and

archives into the fire, to make room for themselves, and to spend the

winter comfortably.

Consequently, the notices we have of the cathedral church are but

scarce. The fourth bishop was Jocelyn, an Englishman who had come over

with Eleanor, Henry II.'s daughter, and married to the King of Castile.

He (the bishop) was not a whit less warlike than his predecessors had

been; he helped the king to win the town of Cuenca, and when he died on

the battle-field, only his right arm was carried back to the see, to the

chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury, which the dead prelate had founded

in the new cathedral, and it was buried beneath a stone which bears the

following inscription:

"_Hic est inclusa Jocelini praesulis ulna._"

From the above we can conclude that the cathedral must have been begun

previous to the Englishman's coming to Spain, that is, in the beginning

of the twelfth century. Doubtless the vaulting was not closed until at

least one hundred years later; nevertheless, it is one of the unique and

at the same time one of the handsomest Spanish monuments of the

Transition period.

The city of Sigueenza, situated on the slopes of a hill crowned by the

castle, is a village rather than a town; there are, however, fewer spots

in Spain that are more picturesque in their old age, and there is a

certain uniformity in the architecture that reminds one of German towns;

this is not at all characteristic of Spain, where so many styles mix and

mingle until hardly distinguishable from each other.

The Transition style--between the strong Romanesque and the airy

ogival--is the city's _cachet_, printed with particular care on the

handsome cathedral which stands on the slope of the hill to the north of

the castle.

Two massive square towers, crenelated at the top and pierced by a few

round-headed windows, flank the western front. The three portals are

massive Romanesque without floral or sculptural decoration of any kind;

the central door is larger and surmounted by a large though primitive

rosace. The height of the aisles and nave is indicated by three ogival

arches cut in relief on the facade; here already the mixture of both

styles, of the round-arched Romanesque and the pointed Gothic, is

clearly visible--as it is also in the windows of the aisles, which are

Romanesque, and of the nave, which are ogival--in the buttresses, which

are leaning on the lower body, and flying in the upper story, uniting

the exterior of the clerestory with that of the aisles. (Compare with

apse of the cathedral of Lugo.)

The portal of the southern arm of the transept is an ugly addition, more

modern and completely out of harmony with the rest. The rosace above the

door is one of the handsomest of the Transition period in Spain, and the

stained glass is both rich and mellow.

The interior shows the same harmonious mixture of the stronger and more

solemn old style, and the graceful lightness of the newer. But the

hesitancy in the mind of the architect is also evident, especially in

the vaulting, which is timidly arched.

The original plan of the church was, doubtless, purely Romanesque: Roman

cruciform with a three-lobed apse, the central one much longer so as to

contain the high altar.

In the sixteenth century, however, an ambulatory was constructed behind

the high altar, joining the two aisles, and the high altar was removed

to the east of the transept.

What a pity that the huge choir, placed in the centre of the church,

should so completely obstruct the view of the ensemble of the nave and

aisles, separated by massive Byzantine arches between the solid pillars,

which, in their turn, support the nascent ogival vaulting of the high

nave! Were it, as well as the grotesque _trascoro_--of the unhappiest

artistic taste--anywhere but in the centre of the church, what a

splendid view would be obtained of the long, narrow, and high aisles and

nave in which the old and the new were moulded together in perfect

harmony, instead of fighting each other and clashing together, as

happened in so many Spanish cathedral churches!

One of the most richly decorated parts of the church is the sacristy, a

small room entirely covered with medallions and sculptural designs of

the greatest variety of subjects. Though of Arabian taste (_Mudejar_),

no Moorish elements have entered into the composition, and consequently

it is one of the very finest, if not the very best specimen, of

Christian Arab decoration.

VI

CUENCA

To the east of Toledo, and to the north of the plains of La Mancha,

Cuenca sits on its steep hill surrounded by mountains; a high stone

bridge, spanning a green valley and the rushing river, joined the city

to a mountain plateau; to-day the mediaeval bridge has been replaced by

an iron one, which contrasts harshly with the somnolent aspect of the

landscape.

Never was a city founded in a more picturesque spot. It almost resembles

Goeschenen in Switzerland, with the difference that whereas in the last

named village a white-washed church rears its spire skyward, in Cuenca a

large cathedral, rich in decorative accessories, and yet sombre and

severe in its wealth, occupies the most prominent place in the town.

Of the origin of the city nothing is known. In the tenth and the

eleventh centuries Conca was an impregnable Arab fortress. In 1176 the

united armies of Castile and Aragon, commanded by two sovereigns,

Alfonso VIII. of Castile and Alfonso II. of Aragon, laid siege to the

fortress, and after nine months' patience, the Alcazar surrendered.

According to the popular tradition, it was won by treachery: one Martin

Alhaxa, a captive and a shepherd by trade, introduced the Christians

disguised with sheepskins into the city through a postern gate.

As the conquest of Cuenca had cost the King of Castile such trouble (his

Aragonese partner had not waited to see the end of the siege), and as he

was fully conscious of its importance as a strategical outpost against

Aragon to the north and against the Moors to the south and east, he laid

special stress on the city's being strongly fortified; he also gave

special privileges to such Christians as would repopulate, or rather

populate, the nascent town. A few years later Pone Lucio III. raised the

church to an episcopal see, appointing Juan Yanez, a Tolesian Muzarab,

to be its first bishop (1183).

Unlike Sigueenza, a feudal possession of the bishop, Cuenca belonged

exclusively to the monarch of Castile; the castle was consequently held

in the sovereign's name by a governor,--at one time there were even four

who governed simultaneously. Between these governors and the inhabitants

of the city, fights were numerous, especially during the first half of

the fifteenth century, the darkest and most ignoble period of Castilian

history.

The story is told of one Dona Inez de Barrientos, granddaughter of a

bishop on her mother's side, and of a governor on that of her father. It

appears that her husband had been murdered by some of the wealthiest

citizens of the town. Feigning joy at her spouse's death, the widow

invited the murderers to her house to a banquet, when, "_despues de

opipara cena_ (after an excellent dinner), they passed from the lethargy

of drunkenness to the sleep of eternity, assassinated by hidden

servants." The following morning their bodies hung from the windows of

the palace, and provoked not anger but silent dread and shivers among

the terror-stricken inhabitants.

With the Inquisition, the siege by the English in 1706, the invasion of

the French in 1808, Cuenca rapidly lost all importance and even

political significance. To-day it is one of the many picturesque ruins

that offer but little interest to the art traveller, for even its old

age is degenerated, and the monuments of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and

fifteenth centuries have one and all been spoilt by the hand of time,

and by the less grasping hand of _restauradores_--or

architect-repairers.

The Byzantine character, the Arab taste of the primitive inhabitants,

has also been lost. Who would think, upon examining the cathedral, that

it had served once upon a time as the principal Arab mosque? Entirely

rebuilt, as were most of the primitive Arab houses, it has lost all

traces of the early founders, more so than in other cities where the

Arabs remained but a few years.

The patron saint of Cuenca is San Julian, one of the cathedral's first

bishops, who led a saintly life, giving all he had and taking nothing

that was not his, and who retired from his see to live the humble life

of a basket-maker, seated with willow branches beneath the arches of the

high bridge, and preaching saintly words to teamsters and mule-drivers

as they approached the city, until his death in 1207.

In the same century the Arab mosque was torn down and the new cathedral

begun. It is a primitive ogival (Spanish) temple of the thirteenth

century, with smatterings of Romanesque-Byzantine. Unlike the cathedral

of Sigueenza, it is neither elegant, harmonious, nor of great

architectural value; its wealth lies chiefly in the chapels, in the

doors which lead to the cloister, in the sacristy, and in the elegant

high altar.

The cloister door is perhaps one of the finest details of the cathedral

church: decorated in the plateresque style general in Spain in the

sixteenth century, it offers one of the finest examples of said style to

be found anywhere, and though utterly different in ornamentation to the

sacristy of Sigueenza, it nevertheless resembles it in the general

composition.

The nave, exceedingly high, is decorated by a blind triforium of ogival

arches; the aisles are sombre and lower than the nave. On the other

hand, the transept, broad and simple, is similar to the nave and as long

as the width of the church, including the lateral chapels. The _croisee_

is surmounted by a _cimborio_, insignificant in comparison to those of

Salamanca, Zamora, and Toro.

The northern and southern extremities of the transept differ from each

other as regard style. The southern has an ogival portal surmounted by a

rosace; the northern, one that is plateresque, the rounded arch,

delicately decorated, reposing on Corinthian columns.

The eastern end of the church has been greatly modified--as is clearly

seen by the mixture of fifteenth-century styles, and not to the

advantage of the ensemble. Byzantine pillars, and even horseshoe arches,

mingle with Gothic elements.

Of the chapels, the greater number are richly decorated, not only with

sepulchres and sepulchral works, but with paintings, some of them by

well-known masters.

Taken all in all, the cathedral of Cuenca does not inspire any of the

sentiments peculiar to religious temples. Not the worst cathedral in

Spain, by any means, neither as regards size nor majesty, it

nevertheless lacks conviction, as though the artist who traced the

primitive plan miscalculated its final appearance. The additions, due to

necessity or to the ruinous state of some of the parts, were luckless,

as are generally all those undertaken at a posterior date.

The decorative wealth of the chapels, which is really astonishing in so

small a town, the luxurious display of grotesque elements, the presence

of a fairly good _transparente_, as well as the rich leaf-decoration of

Byzantine pillars and plateresque arches, give a peculiar _cachet_ to

this church which is not to be found elsewhere.

The same can be said of the city and of the inhabitant. In the words of

an authority, "Cuenca is national, it is Spanish, it is a typical rural

town." Yet, it is so typical, that no other city resembles it.

VII

TOLEDO

A forest of spires and _alminar_ towers rising from a roof-covered hill

to pierce the distant azure sky; a ruined cemetery surrounded on three

sides by the rushing Tago as it cuts out a foaming path through

foothills, and stretching away on the fourth toward the snow-capped

Sierra de Gredo in the distance, beyond the fruitful prairies and the

intervening plains of New Castile.

Such is Toledo, the famous, the wonderful, the legend-spun primate city

of all the Spains, the former wealthy capital of the Spanish Empire!

Madrid usurped all her civic honours under the reign of Philip II., he

who lost the Armada and built the Escorial. Since then Toledo, like

Alcala de Henares, Segovia, and Burgos, has dragged along a forlorn

existence, frozen in winter and scorched in summer, and visited at all

times of the year by gaping tourists of all nationalities.

Even the approach to the city from the mile distant station is

peculiarly characteristic. Seated in an old and shaky omnibus, pulled by

four thrashed mules, and followed along the dusty road by racing

beggars, who whine their would-be French, "_Un p'it sou, mouchieur_,"

with surprising alacrity and a melancholy smile in their big black eyes,

the visitor is driven sharply around a bluff, when suddenly Toledo, the

mysterious, comes into sight, crowning the opposite hill.

At a canter the mules cross the bridge of Alcantara and pass beneath the

gateway of the same name, a ponderous structure still guarding the

time-rusty city as it did centuries ago when Toledo was the Gothic

metropolis. Up the winding road, beneath the solemn and fire-devastated

walls of the Alcazar, the visitor is hurriedly driven along; he

disappears from the burning sunlight into a gloomy labyrinth of

ill-paved streets to emerge a few minutes later in the principal square.

A shoal of yelling, gesticulating interpreters literally grab at the

tourist, and in ten seconds exhaust their vocabulary of foreign words.

At last one walks triumphantly off beside the newcomer, while the

others, with a depreciative shrug of the shoulders and extinguishing

their volcanic outburst of energy, loiter around the square smoking

cigarettes.

It does not take the visitor long to notice that he is in a great

archaeological museum. The streets are crooked and narrow, so narrow that

the tiny patch of sky above seems more brilliant than ever and farther

away, while on each side are gloomy houses with but few windows, and

monstrous, nail-studded doors. At every turn a church rears its head,

and the cheerless spirit of a palace glares with a sadly vacant stare

from behind wrought-iron _rejas_ and a complicated stone-carved blazon.

Rarely is the door opened; when it is, the passer catches a glimpse of a

sun-bathed courtyard, gorgeously alive with light and many flowers. The

effect produced by the sudden contrast between the joyless street and

the sunny garden, whose existence was never dreamt of, is delightful and

never to be forgotten; from Theophile Gautier, who had been in Northern

Africa, land of Mohammedan harems, it wrung the piquant exclamation:

"The Moors have been here!"

Every stick, stone, mound, house, lantern, and what not has its legend.

In this humble _posada_, Cervantes, whose ancestral castle is on yonder

bluff overlooking the Tago, wrote his "_Ilustre Fregona_." The family

history of yonder fortress-palace inspired Zorilla's romantic pen, and a

thousand and one other objects recall the past,--the past that is

Toledo's present and doubtless will have to be her future.

Gone are the days when Tolaitola was a peerless jewel, for which Moors

and Christians fought, until at last the Believers of the True Faith

drove back the Arabs who fled southward from whence they had emerged.

Long closed are also the famous smithies, where swords--Tolesian blades

they were then called--were hammered so supple that they could bend like

a watchspring, so strong they could cleave an anvil, and so sharp they

could cut an eiderdown pillow in twain without displacing a feather.

Distant, moreover, are the nights of _capa y espada_ and of miracles

wrought by the Virgin; dwindled away to a meagre shadow is the princely

magnificence of the primate prelates of all the Spains, of those

spiritual princes who neither asked the Pope's advice nor received

orders from St. Peter at Rome. Besides, of the two hundred thousand

souls proud to be called sons of Toledo in the days of Charles-Quint,

but seventeen thousand inhabitants remain to-day to guard the nation's

great city-museum, unsullied as yet by progress and modern civilization,

by immense advertisements and those other necessities of daily life in

other climes.

The city's history explains the mixture of architectural styles and the

bizarre modifications introduced in Gothic, Byzantine, or Arab

structures.

Legends accuse Toledo of having been mysteriously founded long before

the birth of Rome on her seven hills. To us, however, it first appears

in history as a Roman stronghold, capital of one of Hispania's

provinces.

St. James, as has been seen, roamed across this peninsula; he came to

Toledo. So delighted was he with the site and the people--saith the

tradition--that he ordained that the city on the Tago should contain the

primate church of all the Spains.

The vanquished Romans withdrew, leaving to posterity but feeble ruins to

the north of the city; the West Goths built the threatening city walls

which still are standing, and, having turned Christians, their King

Recaredo was baptized in the river's waters, and Toledo became the

flourishing capital of the Visigothic kingdom (512 A.D.).

The Moors, in their northward march, conquered both the Church and the

state. Legends hover around the sudden apparition of Berber hordes in

Andalusia, and accuse Rodrigo, the last King of the Goths, of having

outraged Florinda, a beautiful girl whom he saw, from his palace window,

bathing herself in a marble bath near the Tago,--the bath is still shown

to this day,--and with whom he fell in love. The father, Count Julian,

Governor of Ceuta, called in the Moors to aid him in his righteous work

of vengeance, and, as often happens in similar cases, the allies lost no

time in becoming the masters and the conquerors.

Nearly four hundred years did the Arabs remain in their beloved

Tolaitola; the traces of their occupancy are everywhere visible: in the

streets and in the _patios_, in fanciful arabesques, and above all in

Santa Maria la Blanca.

The Spaniards returned and brought Christianity back with them. They

erected an immense cathedral and turned mosques into chapels without

altering the Oriental form.

Jews, Arabs, and Christians lived peacefully together during the four

following centuries. Together they created the _Mudejar_ style tower of

San Tomas and the Puerta de Sol. Pure Gothic was transformed, rendered

even more insubstantial and lighter, thanks to Oriental decorative

motives. In San Juan de los Reyes, the _Mudejar_ style left a unique

specimen of what it might have developed into had it not been murdered

by the Renaissance fresh from Italy, where Aragonese troops had

conquered the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

With the first Philips--and even earlier--foreign workmen came over to

Toledo in shoals from Germany, France, Flanders, and Italy. They also

had their way, more so than in any other Spanish city, and their tastes

helped to weld together that incongruous mass of architectural styles

which is Toledo's alone of all cities. Granada may have its Alhambra,

and Cordoba its mosque; Leon its cathedral and Segovia its Alcazar, but

none of them is so luxuriously rich in complex grandeur and in the

excellent--and yet frequently grotesque--confusion of all those art

waves which flooded Spain. In this respect Toledo is unique in Spain,

unique in the world. Can we wonder at her being called a museum?

The Alcazar, which overlooks the rushing Tago, is a symbol of Toledo's

past. It was successively burnt and rebuilt; its four facades, here

stern and forbidding, there grotesque and worthless, differ from each

other as much as the centuries in which they were built. The eastern

facade dates from the eleventh, the western from the fifteenth, and the

other two from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

But other arts than those purely architectural are richly represented in

Toledo. For Spain's capital in the days following upon the fall of

Granada was a centre of industrial arts, where both foreign and national

workmen, heathen, Jews, and Christians mixed, wrought such wonders as

have forced their way into museums the world over; besides, Tolesian

sculptors are among Spain's most famous.

As regards painting, one artist's life is wrapped up in that of the

wonderful city on the Tago; many of his masterworks are to be seen in

Toledo's churches and in the provincial museum. I refer to Domenico

Theotocopuli, he who was considered a madman because he was a genius,

and who has been called _el Greco_ when really he ought to have been

called _el Toledano_.

* * * * *

If Toledo is the nation's architectural museum, the city's cathedral,

the huge imposing Gothic structure, is, beyond a doubt, an incomparable

art museum. Centuries of sculptors carved marble and _berroquena_;

armies of artisans wrought marvels in cloths, metals, precious stones,

glass, and wood, and a host of painters, both foreign and national, from

Goya and Ribera to the Greco and Rubens, painted religious compositions

for the sacristy and chapels.

Consequently, and besides the architectural beauty of the primate church

of Spain, what interests perhaps more keenly than the study of the

cathedral's skeleton, is the study of the ensemble, of that wealth of

decorative designs and of priceless art objects for which the temple is

above all renowned.

Previous to the coming of the Moors in the eighth century, a humble

cathedral stood where the magnificent church now lifts its

three-hundred-foot tower in the summer sky. It had been built in the

sixth century and dedicated to the Virgin, who had appeared in the

selfsame spot to San Ildefonso, when the latter, ardent and vehement,

had defended her Immaculate Honour before a body of skeptics.

The Moors tore down or modified the cathedral, and erected their

principal mosque in its stead. When, three hundred years later, they

surrendered their Tolaitola to Alfonso VI. (1085), they stipulated for

the retention of their _mezquita_, a clause the king, who had but little

time to lose squabbling, was only too glad to allow.

The following year, however, King Alfonso went off on a campaign,

leaving his wife Dona Constanza and the Archbishop Don Bernardo to look

after the city in his absence. No sooner was his back turned, when, one

fine morning, Don Bernardo arrived with a motley crowd of goodly

Christians in front of the mosque. He knocked in the principal door,

and, entering, threw out into the street the sacred objects of the Islam

cult. Then the Christians proceeded to set up an altar, a crucifix, and

an image of the Virgin; the archbishop hallowed his work, and in an hour

was the smiling possessor of his see. Strange to say, Don Bernardo was

no Spaniard, but a worthy Frenchman.

The news of this outrage upon his honour brought Alfonso rushing back to

Toledo, vowing to revenge himself upon those who had seemingly made him

break his royal word; on the way he was met by a committee of the Arab

inhabitants, who, clever enough to understand that the sovereign would

reinstate the mosque, but would ever after look upon them as the cause

of his rupture with his wife and his friend the prelate, asked the king

to pardon the evil-doers, stating that they renounced voluntarily their

mosque, knowing as they did that the other conditions of the surrender

would be sacredly adhered to by his Majesty.

Thanks to this noble (cunning) attitude on the part of the outraged

Moors, the latter were able to live at peace within the walls of Toledo

well into the seventeenth century.

Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century Fernando el Santo was

King of Castile, and his capital was the city on the Tago. The growing

nation was strong and full of ambition, while the coming of the Cluny

monks and Flemish and German artisans had brought Northern Gothic

across the frontiers. So it occurred to the sovereign and his people to

erect a primate cathedral of Christian Spain worthy of its name. In 1227

the first stone was laid by the pious warrior-king. The cathedral's

outline was traced: a Roman cruciform Gothic structure of five aisles

and a bold transept; two flanking towers,--of which only the northern

has been constructed, the other having been substituted by a cupola of

decided Byzantine or Oriental taste,--and a noble western facade of

three immense doors surmounted by a circular rosace thirty feet wide.

The size of the building was in itself a guarantee that it would be one

of the largest in the world, being four hundred feet long by two hundred

broad, and one hundred feet high at the intersection of transept and

nave.

[Illustration: TOLEDO CATHEDRAL]

It took 250 years for the cathedral to be built, and even then it was

not really completed until toward the middle of the eighteenth century.

In the meantime the nation had risen to its climax of power and wealth,

and showered riches and jewels upon its great cathedral. Columbus

returned from America, and the first gold he brought was handed over to

the archbishop; foreign artisans--especially Flemish and

German--arrived by hundreds, and were employed by Talavera, Cisneros,

and Mendoza, in the decoration of the church. Unluckily, additions were

made: the pointed arches of the facade were surmounted by a rectangular

body which had nothing in common with the principle set down when the

cathedral was to have been purely ogival.

The interior of the church was also enlarged, especially the high altar,

the base of which was doubled in size. The _retablo_ of painted wood was

erected toward the end of the fifteenth century, as well as many of the

chapels, which are built into the walls of the building, and are as

different in style as the saints to whom they are dedicated.

As time went on, and the rich continued sending their jewels and relics

to the cathedral, the Treasury Room, with its pictures by Rubens, Duerer,

Titian, etc., and with its _sagrario_,--a carved image of Our Lady,

crowning an admirably chiselled cone of silver and jewels, and covered

over with the richest cloths woven in gold, silver, silk, and precious

stones,--was gradually filled with hoarded wealth. Even to-day, when

Spain has apparently reached the very low ebb of her glory, the

cathedral of Toledo remains almost intact as the only living

representative of the grandeur of the Church and of the arts it fostered

in the sixteenth century.

Almost up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the building was

continually being enlarged, modified, and repaired. Six hundred years

since the first stone had been laid! What vicissitudes had not the

country seen--and how many art waves had swept over the peninsula!

Gothic is traceable throughout the building: here it is flamboyant,

there rayonnant. Here the gold and red of _Mudejar_ ceilings are

exquisitely represented, as in the chapter-room; there Moorish influence

in _azulejos_ (multicoloured glazed tiles) and in decorative designs is

to be seen, such as in the horseshoe arches of the triforium in the

chapel of the high altar. Renaissance details are not lacking, nor the

severe plateresque taste (in the grilles of the choir and high altar),

and neither did the grotesque style avoid Spain's great cathedral, for

there is the double ambulatory behind the high altar, that is to say,

the _transparente_, a circular chapel of the most gorgeous

ultra-decoration to be found anywhere in Spain.

Signs of decadence are unluckily to be observed in the cathedral to-day.

The same care is no longer taken to repair fallen bits of carved stone;

pigeon-lamps that burn little oil replace the huge bronze lamps of other

days, and no new additions are being made. The cathedral's apogee has

been reached; from now on it will either remain intact for centuries, or

else it will gradually crumble away.

Seen from the exterior, the cathedral does not impress to such an extent

as it might. Houses are built up around it, and the small square to the

south and west is too insignificant to permit a good view of the

ensemble.

Nevertheless, the spectator who is standing near the western facade,

either craning his neck skyward or else examining the seventy odd

statues which compose the huge portal of the principal entrance, is

overawed at the immensity of the edifice in front of him, as well as

amazed at the amount of work necessary for the decorating of the portal.

The Puerta de los Leones, or the southern entrance giving access to the

transept, is perhaps of a more careful workmanship as regards the

sculptural decoration. The door itself, studded on the outside with

nails and covered over with a sheet of bronze of the most exquisite

workmanship in relief, is a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of metal-stamping of the

sixteenth century, whilst the wood-carving on the interior is among the

finest in the cathedral.

The effect produced on the spectator within the building is totally

different. The height and length of the aisles, which are buried in

shadows,--for the light which enters illuminates rather the chapels

which are built into the walls between the flying

buttresses,--astonishes; the _factura_ is severe and beautiful in its

grand simplicity.

Not so the chapels, which are decorated in all manner of styles, and

ornamented in all degrees of lavishness. The largest is the Muzarab

chapel beneath the dome which substitutes the missing tower; except the

dome, this chapel, where the old Gothic Rite (as opposed to the

Gregorian Rite) is sung every day in the year, is constructed in pure

Gothic; it contains a beautiful Italian mosaic of the Virgin as well as

frescoes illustrating Cardinal Cisneros's African wars, when the

battling prelate thought it was his duty to bear the crucifix and

Spanish rights into Morocco as his royal masters had carried them into

Granada.

The remaining chapels, some of them of impressive though generally

complex structure, will have to be omitted here. So also the sacristy

with its wonderful picture by the Greco, and the chapter-room with the

portraits of all the archbishops, the elegant carved door, and the

well-preserved _Mudejar_ ceiling, etc. And we pass on to the central

nave, and stand beneath the _croisee_. To the east the high altar, to

the west the choir, claim the greater part of our attention. For it is

here that the people centred their gifts.

The objects used on the altar-table are of gold, silver, jasper, and

agate; the _monstrance_ in the central niche of the altar-piece is also

of silver, and the garments worn by the effigy are woven in gold, silk,

and precious stones. The two immense grilles which close off the high

altar and the eastern end of the choir are of iron, tin, and copper,

gilded and silvered, having been covered over with black paint in the

nineteenth century so as to escape the greedy eyes--and hands!--of the

French soldiery. The workmanship of these two _rejas_ is of the most

sober Spanish classic or plateresque period, and though the black has

not as yet been taken off, the silver and gold peep forth here and

there, and show what a brilliancy must have radiated from these

elegantly decorated bars and cross-bars in the eighteenth century.

The three tiers of choir stalls, carved in walnut, are among the very

finest in Spain, both as regards the accomplished craftsmanship and the

astonishing variety in the composition. The two organs, opposite each

other and attaining the very height of the nave, are the best in the

peninsula, whilst the designs of the marble pavement, red and white in

the high altar, and black and white in the choir, only add to the

luxurious effect produced by statues, pulpits, and other accessories,

either brilliantly coloured, or else wrought in polished metal or stone.

The altar-piece itself, slightly concave in shape, is the largest, if

not the best, of its kind. It is composed of pyramidically superimposed

niches flanked by gilded columns and occupied by statues of painted and

gilded wood. The effect from a distance is dazzling,--the reds, blues,

and gold mingle together and produce a multicoloured mass reaching to

the height of the nave; on closer examination, the workmanship is seen

to be both coarse and naive,--primitive as compared to the more finished

_retablos_ of Burgos, Astorga, etc.

To conclude: The visitor who, standing between the choir and the high

altar of the cathedral, looks at both, stands, as it were, in the

presence of an immense riddle. He cannot classify: there is no purity of

one style, but a medley of hundreds of styles, pure in themselves, it is

true, but not in the ensemble. Besides, the personality of each has been

lost or drowned, either by ultra-decoration or by juxtaposition. A

collective value is thus obtained which cannot be pulled to pieces, for

then it would lose all its significance as an art unity--a complex art

unity, in this case peculiar to Spain.

Neither is repose, meditation, or frank admiration to be gleaned from

such a gigantic _potpourri_ of art wonders, but rather a feeling--as far

as we Northerners are concerned--of amazement, of stupor, and of an

utter impossibility to understand such a luxurious display of idolatry

rather than of faith, of scenic effect rather than of discreet prayer.

But then, it may just be this idolatry and love of scenic effect which

produces in the Spaniard what we have called _religious awe_. We feel it

in a long-aisled Gothic temple; the Spaniard feels it when standing

beneath the _croisee_ of his cathedral churches.

The whole matter is a question of race.

THE END.

_Appendices_

I

[Illustration]

_Archbishoprics and Bishoprics of Northern Spain_