Cathedrals of Spain Part 4

I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze With forms of saints and holy men who died, Here martyred and hereafter glorified; And the great Rose upon its leaves displays Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays With splendor upon splendor multiplied.

_Longfellow._

The Cathedral of San Salvador is the strongest link in the chain that encircles the city of Avila,--"cuidad de Castilla la vieja." Avila lies on a ridge in the corner of a great, undulating plain, clothed with fields of grain, bleached light yellow at harvest, occasional groups of ilex and straggling pine and dusty olives scrambling up and down the slopes. Beyond is the hazy grayish-green of stubble and dwarfed woodland, with blue peaks closing the horizon. To the south rises the Sierra Gredos, and eastwards, in the direction of Segovia, the Sierra de Guadarrama. The narrow, murky Adaja that loiters through the upland plain is quite insufficient to water the thirsty land. Thistles and scrub oak dot the rocky fields. Here and there migratory flocks of sheep nibble their way across the unsavory stubble, while the dogs longingly turn their heads after whistling quails and the pa.s.sing hunter.

The crenelated, ochre walls and bastions that, like a string of amber beads, have girdled the little city since its early days, remain practically unbroken, despite the furious sieges she has sustained and the battles in which her lords were engaged for ten centuries. As many as eighty-six towers crown, and no less than ten gateways pierce, the walls which follow the rise or fall of the ground on which the city has been compactly and narrowly constructed for safest defense. It must look to-day almost exactly as it did to the approaching armies of the Middle Ages, except that the men-at-arms are gone. The defenses are so high that what is inside is practically hidden from view and all that can be seen of the city so rich in saints and stones[7] are the loftiest spires of her churches.

To the Romans, Avela, to the Moors, Abila, the ancient city, powerfully garrisoned, lay in the territory of the Vaccaei and belonged to the province of Hispania Citerior. During three later centuries, from time to time she became Abila, and one of the strongest outposts of Mussulman defense against the raids of Christian bands from the north. Under both Goths and Saracens, Avila belonged to the province of Merida. At a very early date she boasted an episcopal seat, mentioned in church councils convoked during the seventh century, but, during temporary ascendencies of the Crescent, she vanishes from ecclesiastical history. For a while Alfonso I held the city against the Moors, but not until the reign of Alfonso VI did she permanently become "Avila del rey," and the quarterings of her arms, "a king appearing at the window of a tower,"

were left unchallenged on her walls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KEY OF PLAN OF AVILA CATHEDRAL

A. Capilla Mayor. B. Crossing.

C. Cloisters.

D. Towers.

E. Main Entrance.

F. Northern Portal.]

By the eleventh century the cities of Old Castile were ruined and depopulated by the ravages of war. Even the walls of Avila were well-nigh demolished, when Count Raymond laid them out anew and with the blessing of Bishop Pedro Sanchez they rose again in the few years between 1090 and the turning of the century. The material lay ready to hand in the huge granite boulders sown broadcast on the bleak hills around Avila, and from these the walls were rebuilt, fourteen feet thick with towers forty feet high. The old Spanish writer Cean Bermudez describes this epoch of Avila's history.

"When," he says, "Don Alfonso VI won Toledo, he had in continuous wars depopulated Segovia, Avila and Salamanca of their Moorish inhabitants.

He gave his son-in-law, the Count Don Raymond of the house of Burgundy, married to the Princess Dona Urraca, the charge to repeople them. Avila had been so utterly destroyed that the soil was covered with stones and the materials of its ruined houses. To rebuild and repopulate it, the Count brought ill.u.s.trious knights, soldiers, architects, officials and gentlemen from Leon, the Asturias, Vizcaya and France, and from other places. They began to construct the walls in 1090, 800 men working from the very beginning, and among them were many masters who came from Leon and Vizcaya. All obeyed Casandro Romano and Florin de Pituenga, Masters of Geometry, as they are called in the history of this population, which is attributed to the Bishop of Oviedo, D. Pilayo, who lived at that time and who treats of these things."

During these perilous years, Count Raymond wisely lodged his masons in different quarters of the city, grouping them according to the locality they came from, whether from Cantabria, the Asturias, or the territory of Burgos.

A n.o.bility, as quarrelsome as it was powerful, must have answered Count Raymond's call for new citizens, for during centuries to come, the streets, like those of mediaeval Siena and Florence, constantly ran with the blood of opposing factions. Warring families dared walk only certain streets after nightfall, and battles were carried on between the different castles and in the streets as between cities and on battlefields. In the quarrels between royal brothers and cousins, Avila played a very prominent part. The nurse and protectress of their tender years, and the guardian of their childhood through successive reigns of Castilian kings, she became a very vital factor in the fortunes of kings, prelates, and n.o.bles. In feuds like those of Don Pedro and his brother Enrique II, she was a turbulent centre. Great figures in Spanish history ruled from her episcopal throne, especially during the thirteenth century. There was Pedro, a militant bishop and one of the most valiant on the glorious battlefield of Las Navas; Benilo, lover of and beloved by Saint Ferdinand; and Aymar, the loyal champion of Alfonso the Wise through dark as well as sunny hours.

The Jews and the Moriscoes here, as wherever else their industrious fingers and ingenious minds were at work, did much more than their share towards the prosperity and development of the city. The Jews especially became firmly established in their useful vocations, filling the king's coffers so abundantly that the third of their tribute, which he granted to the Bishop, was not appreciably felt, except in times of armament and war. With the fanatical expulsion of first one, and then the other, race, the city's prosperity departed. Their place was filled by the bloodhounds of the Inquisition, who held their very first, terrible tribunal in the Convent of Saint Thomas, blighting the city and surrounding country with a new and terrible curse. The great rebellion under the Emperor Charles burst from the smouldering wrath of Avila's indignant citizens, and in 1520 she became, for a short time, the seat of the "Junta Santa" of the Comuneros.

It is still easy to discern what a tremendous amount of building must have gone on within the narrow city limits during the early part of its second erection. The streets are still full of bits of Romanesque architecture, palaces, arcades, houses, balconies, towers and windows and one of the finest groups of Romanesque churches in Spain. Of lesser sinew and greater age than San Salvador, they are now breathing their last. San Vicente is almost doomed, while San Pedro and San Segundo are fast falling.

But San Salvador remains still unshaken in her strength,--a fortress within a cathedral, a splendid mailed arm with its closed fist of iron reaching through the outer bastions and threatening the plains. It is a bold cry of Christian defiance to enemies without. If ever there was an embodiment in architecture of the church militant, it is in the Cathedral of Avila. Approaching it by San Pedro, you look in vain for the church, for the great spire that loomed up from the distant hills and was pointed out as the holy edifice. In its place and for the eastern apse, you see only a huge gray bastion, strong and secure, crowned at all points by battlements and galleries for sentinels and fighting men,--inaccessible, grim, and warlike. A fitting abode for the men who rather rode a horse than read a sermon and preferred the breastplate to the ca.s.sock, a splendid epitome of that period of Spanish history when the Church fought instead of prying into men's souls. It well represents the unification of the religious and military officesdevolving on the Church of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Castile,--a bellicose house rather than one of prayer.

All the old doc.u.ments and histories of the Church state that the great Cathedral was started as soon as the city walls were well under way in 1091 and was completed after sixteen years of hard work. Alvar Garcia from Estrella in Navarre is recorded as the princ.i.p.al original architect, Don Pedro as the Bishop, and Count Raymond as spurring on the 1900 men at work, while the pilgrims and faithful were soliciting alms and subscriptions through Italy, France, and the Christian portions of the Spanish Peninsula.

Of the earliest church very little remains, possibly only the outer walls of the great bastion that encloses the eastern termination of the present edifice. This is much larger than the other towers of defense, and, judging from the excellent character of its masonry, which is totally different from the coa.r.s.e rubble of the remaining city walls and towers, it must have been built into them at a later date, as well as with much greater care and skill. Many hypotheses have been suggested, as to why the apse of the original church was thus built as a portion of the walls of defense. All seem doubtful. It was possibly that the altar might come directly above the resting-place of some venerated saint, or perhaps to economize time and construction by placing the apse in a most vulnerable point of attack where lofty and impregnable masonry was requisite.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid

CATHEDRAL OF AVILA

Exterior of the apse turret]

The church grew towards the west and the main entrance,--the transepts themselves, and all work west of them, with the advent of the new style.

We thus obtain in Avila, owing to the very early commencement of its apse, a curious and vitally interesting conglomeration of the Romanesque and Gothic. Practically, however, all important portions of the structure were completed in the more vigorous periods of the Gothicstyle with the resulting felicitous effect.

The building of the apse or the chevet westward must, to judge from its style, have advanced very slowly during the first hundred years, for its general character is rather that of the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries (the reign of Alfonso VIII) than of the pure Romanesque work which was still executed in Castile at the beginning of the twelfth century. A great portion of the early Gothic work is, apart from its artistic merit, historically interesting, as showing the first tentative, and often groping, steps of the masters who wished to employ the new forms of the north, but followed slowly and with a hesitation that betrayed their inexperience. Arches were spanned and windows broken, later to be braced and blocked up in time to avert a catastrophe. The transepts belong to the earliest part of the fourteenth century. We have their definite dates from records,--the northern arm rose where previously had stood a little chapel and was given by the Chapter to Dean Blas...o...b..asquez as an honorable burial place for himself and his family, while Bishop Blasquez Davila, the tutor of Alfonso IX and princ.i.p.al notary of Castile, raised the southern arm immediately afterwards. He occupied the See for almost fifty years, and must have seen the nave and side aisles and the older portions, including the northwestern tower, all pretty well constructed. This tower with its unfinished sister and portions of the west front are curiously enough late Romanesque work, and must thus have been started before the nave and side aisles had reached them in their western progress. The original cloisters belonged to the fourteenth century, as also the northern portal. Chapels, furnishings, pulpits, trascoro, choir stalls, glazing, all belong to later times, as well as the sixteenth-century mutilations of the front and the various exterior Renaissance excrescences.

It is interesting to infer that the main part of the fabric must virtually have been completed in 1432, when Pope Eugenio IV published a bull in favor of the work. Here he only speaks of the funds requisite for its "preservation and repair." We may judge from such wording the condition of the structure as a whole.

The most extraordinary portion of the building is unquestionably its "fighting turret" and eastern end. This apse is almost unique in Spanish architectural history and deeply absorbing as an extensive piece of Romanesque work, not quite free from Moorish traces and already employing in its vaulting Gothic expedients. It may be called "barbaric Gothic" or "decadent Romanesque," but, whatever it is termed, it will be vitally interesting and fascinating to the student of architectural history.

Externally the mighty stone tower indicates none of its interior disposition of chapels or vaulting. The black, weather-stained granite of its bare walls is alternately broken by slightly projecting pilasters and slender, columnar shafts. They are crowned by a corbel table and a high, embattled parapet, that yielded protection to the soldiers occupying the platform immediately behind, which communicated with the pa.s.sage around the city walls. This is again backed by a second wall similarly crowned. The narrowest slits of windows from the centres of the radiating, apsidal chapels break the lower surfaces, while double flying b.u.t.tresses meet, at the level of the triforium and above the clerestory windows, the thrusts of the upper walls.

The plan is most curious, and on account of its irregularity as well as certain inconsistencies, it is difficult to guess how far it was originally conceived in its present form, or what alterations were made in the earlier centuries. Some changes must have been made in its vaulting. The chevet or Capilla Mayor, which at first very properly contained the choir, is surrounded by a double ambulatory, outside of which the thick walls are pierced by nine apsidal chapels. It is probable that these were originally constructed by the engineers to lighten the enormous bulk of the outer masonry. They are not quite semicircles in plan, and are vaulted in various simple ways. Where ribs occur, they meet in the key of the arch separating chapel from ambulatory. The piers round the apse itself are alternately monocylindrical and composite; the intermediate ones, subdividing unequally the "girola," are lofty, slender columns, while those of the exterior are polygonal in plan, with shafts against their faces. Some of the caps are of the best Romanesque types, and composed of animals, birds, and leaves, while others, possibly subst.i.tuted for the original ones, have a plain bell with the ornamentation crudely applied in color.

The Capilla Mayor has both triforium and clerestory of exquisite early work. Dog-tooth moldings ornament the archivolts. Mohammedan influence had a.s.serted itself in the triforium, which is divided by slender shafts into two windows terminating in horseshoe arches, while the clerestory consists of broad, round, arched openings.

The construction and balance of the apse thrusts were doubtless originally of a somewhat different nature from what we find at present, as may easily be observed from the materials, the function and positions of the double flying b.u.t.tresses. They may have been added as late as three centuries after the original fabric. Lamperez y Romea's observations in regard to this are most interesting:--

"We must observe in the two present orders of windows, that the lower was never built for lights and its construction with double columns forming a hollow s.p.a.ce proves it a triforium. That it was actually so is further abundantly proved by several circ.u.mstances: first, by a parapet or wall which still exists below the actual roof and which follows the exterior polygonal line of the girola, as well as by some semi-Romanesque traceries which end in the wall of the Capilla Mayor, and finally, by a continuous row of supports existing in the thickness of the same wall below a gutter, separating the two orders of windows.

These features, as well as the general arrangement of the openings, demonstrate that there was a triforium of Romanesque character, occupying the whole width of the girola, which furthermore was covered by a barrel vault. Above this came the great platform or projecting balcony, corresponding to the second defensive circuit. Military necessity explains this triforium; without it, there would be no need of a system of continuous counterthrusts to that of the vaults of the crossing. If we concede the existence of this triforium, various obscure points become clear."

The Capilla Mayor has four bays prior to reaching the pentagonal termination. The vaulting of the most easterly bay connects with that of the pentagon, thus leaving three remaining bays to vault; two form a s.e.xpart.i.te vault, and the third, nearest the transept, a quadripart.i.te.

All the intersections are met by bosses formed by gilded and spreading coats-of-arms. The ribs do not all carry properly down, two out of the six being merely met by the keystones of the arches between Capilla Mayor and ambulatory. The masonry of the vaulting is of a reddish stone, while that of the transepts and nave is yellow, laid in broad, white joints.

In various portions of the double ambulatory pa.s.sage as well as some of the chapels, the fine, deep green and gold and blue Romanesque coloring may still be seen, giving a rich impression of the old barbaric splendor and gem-like richness so befitting the clothing of the style. Other portions, now bare, must surely all have been colored. The delicate, slender shafts, subdividing unequally the ambulatory, have really no carrying office, but were probably introduced to lessen the difficulty of vaulting the irregular compartments of such unequal sides. Gothic art was still in its infancy, and the splendid grasp of the vaulting difficulties and masterly solution of its problems exemplified in so many later ambulatories, had not as yet been reached. Here we have about the first fumbling attempt. The maestro is still fighting in the dark with unequal thrusts, sides and arches of different widths, and a desire to meet them all with something higher and lighter than the old continuous barrel vault. A step forward in the earnest effort toward higher development, such as we find here, deserves admiration. The profiles of the ribs are simple, undecorated and vigorous, as were all the earliest ones; in the chapels, or rather the exedras in the outer walls, the ribs do not meet in a common boss or keystone, its advantages not as yet being known to the builders. A good portion of the old roof-covering of the Cathedral, not only over the eastern end, but pretty generally throughout, has either been altered, or else the present covering conceals the original.

Thus it is easy to detect from the outside, if one stands at the northwestern angle of the church and looks down the northern face, that the upper masonry has been carried up by some three feet of brickwork, evidently of later addition, on top of which comes the present covering of terra-cotta tiles. The old roof-covering here of stone tiles, as also above the apse, rested directly on the inside vaults, naturally damaging them by its weight, and not giving full protection against the weather. The French slopes had in some instances been slavishly copied, but the steep roofs requisite in northern cathedrals were soon after abandoned, being unnecessary in the Spanish climate. Over the apse of Avila, there may still be found early thirteenth-century roofing, consisting of large stone flags laid in rows with intermediary grooves and channels, very much according to ancient established Roman and Byzantine traditions. Independent superstructure above the vault proper, to carry the outside covering, had not been introduced when this roofing was laid.

In its early days many a noted prelate and honored churchman was laid to rest within the holy precinct of the choir in front of the high altar or in the rough old sepulchres of the surrounding chapels. With the moving of the choir, and probably also a change in the church ceremonies, came a rearrangement of the apse and the Capilla Mayor's relation to the new rites.

The retablo back of the high altar, consisting of Plateresque ornament, belongs for the most part to the Renaissance. The Evangelists and church fathers are by Pedro Berruguete (not as great as his son, the sculptor Alfonso), Juan de Borgona and Santos Cruz. In the centre, facing theambulatory behind, is a fine Renaissance tomb of the renowned Bishop Alfonso Tostada de Madrigal. He is kneeling in full episcopal robes, deeply absorbed either in writing or possibly reading the Scriptures.

The workmanship on mitre and robe is as fine as the similar remarkable work in Burgos, while the enclosing rail is a splendid example of the blending of Gothic and Renaissance.

The gla.s.s in the apse windows is exceptionally rich and magnificently brilliant in its coloring. It was executed by Alberto Holando, one of the great Dutch glaziers of Burgos, who was given the entire contract in 1520 by Bishop Francisco Ruiz, a nephew of the great Cardinal Cisneros.

Such, in short, are the characteristics of the chevet of the Cathedral of Avila, constructed in an age when its builders must have worked in a spirit of hardy vigor with the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other. As we see it to-day, it imparts a feeling of mystery, and its oriental splendor is enhanced by the dim, religious light.

In entering the crossing, we step into the fullness of the Gothic triumph. The vaults have been thrown into the sky to the height of 130 feet. It is early Gothic work, with its many errors and consequent retracing of steps made in ignorance. The great arches that span the crossing north and south had taken too bold a leap and subsequently required the support of cross arches. The western windows and the great roses at the end of the transepts, with early heavy traceries, proved too daring and stone had to be subst.i.tuted for gla.s.s in their apertures; the long row of nave windows have likewise been filled with masonry.

Despite these and many similar penalties for rashness, the work is as dignified as it is admirable. Of course the proportions are all small in comparison with such later great Gothic churches as Leon and Burgos, the nave and transepts here being merely 28 to 30 feet wide, the aisles only 24 feet wide. Avila is but an awkward young peasant girl if compared with the queenly presence of her younger sisters. Nevertheless Avila is in true Spanish peasant costume, while Leon and Burgos are tricked out in borrowed finery. The nave is short and narrow, but that gives an impression of greater height, and the obscurity left by the forced subst.i.tution of stone for gla.s.s in the window s.p.a.ces adds to the solemnity. The nave consists of five bays, the aisle on each side of it rising to about half its height. The golden groining is quadripart.i.te, the ribs meeting in great colored bosses and pendents, added at periods of less simple taste. In the crossing alone, intermediary ribs have been added in the vaulting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid

AVILA

From outside the walls]

The walls of the transept underneath the great blind wheels to the north and south are broken by splendid windows, each with elaborate tracery (as also the eastern and western walls), heavy and strong, but finely designed. The glazing is glorious, light, warm, and intense. The walls of the nave, set back above the lowest arcade some eighteen inches, have triforium and clerestory, and above this again, they are filled quite up to the vaulting with elaborate tracery, possibly once foolhardily conceived to carry gla.s.s. Each bay has six arches in both triforium and clerestory, all of simple and early apertures. The glazing of the clerestory is white, excepting in one of the bays. In this single instance, a simple, geometric pattern of buff and blue stripes is of wonderfully harmonious and lovely color effect.

The shafts that separate nave from side aisles are still quite Romanesque in feeling,--of polygonal core faced by four columns and eight ribs. The capitals are very simple with no carving, but merely a gilded representation of leaf.a.ge, while the base molds carry around all breaks of the pier. It may be coa.r.s.e and crude in feeling and execution, certainly very far from the exquisite finish of Leon, nevertheless the infancy of an architectural style, like a child's, has the peculiar interest of what it holds in promise. Like Leon, the side aisles have double roofing, allowing the light to penetrate to the nave arcade and forming a double gallery running round the church.

Many of the bishops who were buried in the choir in its old location were, on its removal to the bay immediately west of the crossing, also moved and placed in the various chapels. The sepulchre of Bishop Sancho Davila is very fine. Like his predecessors, he was a fighting man. His epitaph reads as follows:--

"Here lies the n.o.ble cavalier Sancho Davila, Captain of the King Don Fernando and the Queen Dona Isabel, our sovereigns, and their alcaide of the castles of Carmona, son of Sancho Sanches, Lord of San Roman and of Villanueva, who died fighting like a good cavalier against the Moors in the capture of Alhama, which was taken by his valor on the 28th of February in the year 1490."

The pulpits on each side of the crossing, attached to the great piers, are, curiously enough, of iron, exquisitely wrought and gilded. The one on the side of the epistle is Gothic and the other Renaissance, the body of each of them bearing the arms of the Cathedral, the Agnus Dei, and the ever-present lions and castles. The rejas, closing off choir and Capilla Mayor in the customary manner, are heavy and ungainly. On the other hand, the trascoro, that often sadly blocks up the sweep of the nave, is unusually low and comparatively inconspicuous. It contains reliefs of the life of Christ, from the first half of the sixteenth century, by Juan Res and Luis Giraldo. The choir itself is so compact that it only occupies one bay. The chapter evidently was a modest one.

The stalls are of elaborate Renaissance workmanship. The verger now in charge, with the voice of a hoa.r.s.e crow, reads you the name of the carver as the Dutchman "Cornelis 1536."