Cathedrals of Spain Part 5

Strange to say, there are no doors leading, as they logically should, into the centre of the arms of the transept. Through some perversity, altars have taken their place, while the northern and southern entrances have been pushed westward, opening into the first bays of the side aisles. The southern door leads to a vestibule, the sacristy with fine Gothic vaulting disfigured by later painting, a fine fifteenth-centurychapel and the cloisters. None of this can be seen from the front, as it is hidden by adjoining houses and a bare, pilastered wall crowned by a carved Renaissance bal.u.s.trade. The galleries of the present cloisters are later Gothic work with Plateresque decorations and arches walled up.

Avila Cathedral is, as it were, a part and parcel of the history of Castile during the reigns of her early kings, the turbulent times when self-preservation was the only thought, any union of provinces far in the future, and a Spanish kingdom undreamed of. She was a great church in a small kingdom, in the empire she became insignificant. Much of her history is unknown, but in the days of her power, she was certainly a.s.sociated with all great events in old Castile. Her influence grew with her emoluments and the ever-increasing body of ecclesiastical functionaries. In times of war, she became a fortress, and her bishop was no longer master of his house. The Captain-General took command of the bastions, as of those of the Alcazar, and soldiers took the place of priests in the galleries. She was the key to the city, and on her flat roofs the opposing armies closed in the final struggle for victory.

The Cathedral has, in fact, only an eastern and a northern elevation, the exterior to the west and south being hidden by the huge tower and the confused ma.s.s of chapels and choir which extend to the walls and houses.

The western entrance front is n.o.ble and dignified in its austere severity; probably as old as the clerestory of the nave, it is a grim sentinel from the first part of the fourteenth century. With the exception of the entrance, it speaks the Romanesque language, although its windows and some of its decoration are pointed. It is magnificent and impressive, very Spanish, and almost unique in the Peninsula. Four mighty b.u.t.tresses subdivide the composition; between these is the entrance, and to the north and south are the towers which terminate the aisles.

The southern tower has never been finished. The northern is full of inspiration. It is broken at two stages by double windows, the upper ones of the belfry being crowned by pediments and surmounted by rich, sunk tracery. The piers terminate in hexagonal pinnacles, while the tower, as well as the rest of the front, is finished with a battlement.

The later blocking up of this, as well as the superimposed roofing, is very evident and disturbing. All the angles of b.u.t.tresses, of windows, arches, splays, and pyramids,--those also crowning the bulky piers that meet the flying b.u.t.tresses,--are characteristically and uniquely decorated with an ornamentation of b.a.l.l.s. It softens the hard lines, splashing the surface with infinite series of small, sharp shadows and making it sparkle with life and light. The angles recall the blunt, blue teeth of a saw.

The main entrance, as well as the first two bays of the naves underneath the towers, must originally have been of different construction from the present one. Inside the church, these bays are blocked off from nave and side aisles by walls, on top of which they communicate with each other as also with the eastern apse by galleries, probably all necessary for the defense of troops in the early days. Possibly a narthex terminated the nave back of the original entrance portal underneath the present vaulted compartment.

The main entrance door is indeed a strange apparition. In its whiteness between the sombre tints of the martial towers, it rises like a spectre in the winding-sheets of a later age. It is distressingly out of place and time in its dark framework.

"But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor, and some to dishonor."

The semicircular door is crowned by a profusely subdivided, Gothic archivolt and guarded by two scaly giants or wild men that look, with their raised clubs, as if they would beat the life out of any one who should try to enter the holy cavern. Saints Peter and Paul float on clouds in the spandrels. Above rises a sixteenth-century composition of masks and canopied niches. The Saviour naturally occupies the centre, flanked by the various saints that in times of peril protected the church of Avila: Saints Vincente, Sabina and Cristela, Saint Segundo and Santa Teresa. In the attic in front of a tremendous traceried cusp, with openings blocked by masonry, the ornamentation runs completely riot.

Saint Michael, standing on top of a dejected and doubled-up dragon, looks down on figures that are crosses between respectable caryatides and disreputable mermaids. It is certainly as immaterial as unknown, when and by whom was perpetrated this degenerate sculpture now shamelessly disfiguring a n.o.ble casing. The strong, early towers seem in their turn doubly powerful and eloquent in their simplicity and one wishes the old Romanesque portal were restored and the great traceries above it glazed to flood the nave with western sunlight.

The northeastern angle is blocked by poor Renaissance masonry, the exterior of the chapels here being faced by a Corinthian order and broken by circular lights.

The northern portal is as fine as that of the main entrance is paltry.

The head of the door, as well as the great arch which spans the recess into which the entire composition is set, is, curiously enough, three-centred, similar to some of the elliptical ones at Burgos and Leon. A lion, securely chained to the church wall for the protection of worshipers, guards each side of the entrance. Under the five arches stand the twelve Apostles, time-worn, weather-beaten and mutilated, but splendid bits of late thirteenth-century carving. For they must be as early as that. The archivolts are simply crowded with small figures of angels, of saints, and of the unmistakably lost. In the tympanum the Saviour occupies the centre, and around Him is the same early, nave representation of figures from the Apocalypse, angels, and the crowned Virgin.

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

CATHEDRAL OF AVILA

Main entrance]

Two years before Luther, a true exponent of Teutonic genius, had nailed his theses to the door of a cathedral in central Germany, there was born in the heart of Spain as dauntless and genuine a representative of hercountry's genius. Each pa.s.sed through great storm and stress of the spirit, and finally entered into that closer communion with G.o.d, from which the soul emerges miraculously strengthened. Do not these bleak hills, this stern but lovely Cathedral, rising _per aspera ad astra_, typify the strong soul of Santa Teresa? A great psychologist of our day finds the woman in her admirable literary style. Prof. James further accepts Saint Teresa's own defense of her visions: "By their fruits ye shall know them." These were practical, brave, cheerful, aspiring, like this Castilian sanctuary, intolerant of dissenters, sheltering and caring for many, and leading them upward to the City which is unseen, eternal in the heavens.

IV

LEON

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHEDRAL OF LEON

From the southwest]

Look where the flood of western glory falls Through the great sunflower disk of blazing panes In ruby, saffron, azure, emerald stains.

_Holmes._

In the year 1008 the ancient church of Leon witnessed a ceremony memorable for more reasons than one. It was conducted throughout according to Gothic customs, King, Queen, n.o.bility and ecclesiastics all being present, and it was the first council held in Spain since the Arab conquest whose acts have come down to us. The object was twofold: to hold a joyous festival in celebration of the rebuilding of the city walls, which had been broken down some years before by a Moslem army, and to draw up a charter for a free people, governing themselves, for Spain has the proud distinction of granting munic.i.p.al charters one or two hundred years before the other countries of Europe. For three centuries of Gothic rule, the kings of Leon, Castile and other provinces had successfully resisted every attempt at encroachment from the Holy See and, in session with the clergy, elected their own bishops, until in 1085 Alfonso VI of Castile takes the fatal step of sending Bernard d'Azeu to receive the pallium and invest.i.ture as Bishop of Toledo from the hands of Gregory VII. From this time forth, kings are crowned, queens repudiated, and even the hallowed Gothic or Mozarabic ritual is set aside for that of Rome by order of popes.

In 1135 Santa Maria of Leon is the scene of a gorgeous pageant. An Alfonso, becoming master of half Spain and quarter of France, thinks he might be called Emperor as well as some others, and within the Cathedral walls he receives the new t.i.tle in the presence of countless ecclesiastics and "all his va.s.sals, great and small." The monarch's robe was of marvelous work, and a crown of pure gold set with precious stones was placed on his head, while the King of Navarre held his right hand and the Bishop of Leon his left. Feastings and donations followed, but, what was of vastly more importance, the new Emperor confirmed the charters granted to various cities by his grandfather.

Again a great ceremony fills the old church. Ferdinand, later known as the Saint, is baptized there in 1199. A year or two later, Innocent III declares void the marriage of his father and mother, who were cousins, and an interdict shrouds the land in darkness. Several years pa.s.s during which the Pope turns a deaf ear to the entreaties of a devoted husband, the King of Leon, to their children's claim, the intercession of Spanish prelates, and the prayers of two nations who had good cause to rejoice in the union of Leon and Castile. Then a victim of the yoke, which Spain had voluntarily put on while Frederic of Germany and even Saint Louis ofFrance were defending their rights against the aggressions of the Holy See, the good Queen Berenzuela, sadly took her way back to her father's home, to the King of Castile.

His prerogative once established, Innocent III looked well after his obedient subjects. When Spain was threatened by the most formidable of all Moorish invasions, he published to all Christendom a bull of crusade against the Saracens, and sent across the Pyrenees the forces which had been gathering in France for war in Palestine. Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo, preached the holy war and led his troops, in which he was joined by the bishops of Bordeaux, Nantes, and Narbonne at the head of their militia. Germany and Italy sent their quota of knights and soldiers of fortune, and this concourse of Christian warriors, speaking innumerable tongues, poured through mountain defiles and ever southward till they met in lofty Toledo and camped on the banks of the Tagus. Marches, skirmishes, and long-drawn-out sieges prelude the great day. The hot Spanish summer sets in, the foreigners, growing languid in the arid stretches of La Mancha, and disappointed at the slender booty meted out to them, desert the native army, march northwards and again cross the Pyrenees to return to their homes. It was thus left to the Spaniards, led by three kings and their warlike prelates, to defeat a Moslem army of half a million and gain the glorious victory of Las Navas de Tolosa on the sixteenth of August, 1212.

With Rome's firm grasp on the Spanish Peninsula came temples no less beautiful than those the great Mother Church was planting in every portion of her dominion north of the Pyrenees,--Leon, Burgos, Toledo and Valencia rose in proud challenge to Amiens, Rheims, Beauvais and Chartres.

Leon may be called French,--yes, unquestionably so, but that is no detraction or denial of her native "gentileza." She may be the very embodiment of French planning, her general dimensions like those of Bourges; her portals certainly recall those of Chartres, and the planning of her apsidal chapels, her bases, arches, and groining ribs, remind one of Amiens and Rheims; but nevertheless this exotic flower blooms as gloriously in a Spanish desert as those that sprang up amid the vineyards or in the Garden of France.

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

A. Capilla Mayor.

B. Choir.

C. Crossing.

D. Tombs.

E. Trascoro.

F. Towers.

G. Cloisters.]

Leon is almost as old as the history of Spain. In the first century after Christ, the seventh Roman legion, on the order of Augustus, pitched their tents where the city now stands, built their customary rectangular enclosure with its strong walls and towers, happily seconded by the nature of the surrounding country. From here the wild hordes of the Asturias could be kept in check. The city was narrowly built in the fork of two rivers, on ground allowing neither easy approach nor expansion, so that the growth has, even up to the twentieth century, been within the ancient walls, and the streets and squares are in consequence narrow and cramped. On many of the blocks of those old walls may still be seen carved in the clear Roman lettering, "Legio septima gemina, pia, felix." The name of Leon is merely a corruption first used by the Goths of the Roman "Legio." Roman dominion survived the empire for many years, being first swept away when the Gothic hordes in the middle of the sixth century descended from the north under the conqueror, Loevgild. Its Christian bishopric was possibly the first in Spain, founded in the darkness of the third century, since which time the little city can boast an unbroken succession of Leonese bishops, although a number, during the turbulent decades of foreign rule, may not actually have been "in residence." The Moslem followed the Goth, and ruled while the nascent Christian kingdom of the Asturias was slowly gaining strength for independence and the foundation of an episcopal seat. In the middle of the eighth century, the Christians wrested it from the Moors. On the site of the old Roman baths, built in three long chambers, King Ordono II erected his palace (he was reconstructing for defense and glory the walls and edifices of the city) and in 916 presented it with considerable ground and several adjacent houses to Bishop Frumonio, that he might commence the building of the Cathedral on the advantageous palace site in the heart of the city. Terrible Moorish invasions occurred soon after, involving considerable damage to the growing Byzantine basilica. In 996 the Moors swept the city with fire and sword, and again, three years later, it fell entirely into the hands of the great conqueror Almanzor, who remained in possession only just the same time, for we may read in the old monkish ma.n.u.scripts that in 1002 from the Christian pulpits of Castile and Leon the proclamation was made: "Almanzor is dead, and buried in h.e.l.l."

Leon could boast of being the first mediaeval city of Europe to obtain self-government and a charter of her own, and she became the scene of important councils during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the eleventh century, under the great Ferdinand I, who united Castile and Leon, work on the basilica was pushed rapidly forward. French influence was predominant in the early building operations, for Alfonso VI of Castile, who a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Emperor of Spain, had two French wives, each of whom brought with her a batch of zealous and skillful church-building prelates.

The church was finally consecrated in 1149. About twenty-five years ago, the Spanish architect, D. Demetrio de los Rios, in charge of the work of restoration on the present Cathedral, discovered the walls and foundations of the ancient basilica and was able to determine accurately its relation to the later Gothic church. The exact date when this was begun is uncertain,--many writers give 1199. Beyond a doubt the foundations were laid out during the reign of Alfonso IX, early in the thirteenth century, when Manrique de Lara was Bishop of the See of Leon and French Gothic construction was at the height of its glory. It is thus a thirteenth-century church, belonging princ.i.p.ally to the latter part, built with the feverish energy, popular enthusiasm, and unparalleled genius for building which characterizes that period and stamps it as uniquely glorious to later constructive ages. Though smaller than most of the immense churches which afterwards rose under Spanish skies, Leon remained in many respects unsurpa.s.sed and unmatched.

"Sevilla en grandeza, Toledo en riqueza, Compostella en fortaleza, esta en sutileza Santa Maria de Regla."

In the middle of the thirteenth century, after the consecration of the new church, a famous council of all the bishops of the realm was held in the little town of Madrid, and there the faithful were exhorted, and the lukewarm admonished with threats, to contribute by every means to the successful erection of Leon's Cathedral. Indulgences, well worth consideration, were granted to contributors, at the head of whom for a liberal sum stood the king, Alfonso X.

But Leon, capital of the ancient kingdom, was doomed before long to feel the bitterness of abandonment. The Castilian kings followed the retreat southward of the Moorish armies, and the history of the capital of Leon, which, during the thirteenth century, had been the history of the little kingdom, soon became confined within the limits of her cathedral walls.

Burgos, a mighty rival, soon overshadowed her. The time came when the Bishop of Leon was merely a suffragan of the Archbishop of Burgos, and her kings had moved their court south to Seville. The city of Leon was lost in the union of the two kingdoms.

The fortunes of the Cathedral have been varied and her reverses great.

Her architects risked a great deal and the disasters entailed were proportionate. Though belonging preeminently in style to the glorious thirteenth century, her building continued almost uninterruptedly throughout the fourteenth. We have in succession Maestro Enrique, Pedro Cebrian, Simon, Guillen de Rodan, Alonzo Valencia, Pedro de Medina, and Juan de Badajoz, working on her walls and towers with a magnificent recklessness which was shortly to meet its punishment. Although Bishop Gonzalez in 1303 declared the work, "thanks be to G.o.d, completed," it was but started. The south facade was completed in the sixteenth century, but as early as 1630 the light fabric began to tremble, then the vaulting of the crossing collapsed and was replaced by a more magnificent dome. Many years of mutilations and disasters succeeded. The south front was entirely taken down and rebuilt, the vaulting of aisles fell, great portions of the main western facade, and ornamentation here and there was disfigured or destroyed by the later alterations in overconfident and decadent times, until, in the middle of the eighteenth century, very considerable portions of the original rash and exquisite fabric were practically ruined. There came, however, an awakening to the outrages which had been committed, and from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day, the work of putting back the stones in their original forms and places has steadily advanced to the honor of Leon andglory of Spain, until Santa Maria de Regla at last stands once more in the full pristine lightness of her original beauty.

The plan of Leon is exceedingly fine, surpa.s.sed alone among Spanish churches by that of Toledo. Three doorways lead through the magnificent western portal into the nave and side aisles of the Church. These consist of five bays up to the point where the huge arms of the transept spread by the width of an additional bay. In proportion to the foot of the cross, these arms are broader than in any other Spanish cathedral.

They are four bays in length, the one under the central lantern being twice the width of the others, thus making the total width of the transepts equal to the distance from the western entrance to their intersection. The choir occupies the fifth and sixth bays of the nave.

To the south, the transept is entered by a triple portal very similar in scale and richness to the western. The eastern termination of the church is formed by a choir of three and an ambulatory of five bays running back of the altar and trascoro, and five pentagonal apsidal chapels. The sacristy juts out in the extreme southwestern angle. The northern arm of the huge transepts is separated from the extensive cloisters by a row of chapels or vestibules which to the east also lead to the great Chapel of Santiago. All along its eastern lines the church with its dependencies projects beyond the city walls, one of its ma.s.sive towers standing as a mighty bulwark of defense in the extreme northeastern angle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHEDRAL OF LEON

Looking up the nave]

It is a plan that must delight not only the architect, but any casual observer, in its almost perfect symmetry and in the relationship of its various parts to each other. It belonged to the primitive period of French Gothic, though carried out in later days when its vigor was waning. It has not been cramped nor distorted by initial limitation of s.p.a.ce or conditions, nor injured by later deviations from the original conception. It is worthy of the great masters who planned once for all the loveliest and most expressive house for the worship of G.o.d. Erected on the plains of Leon, it was conceived in the inspired provinces of Champagne and the Isle de France.

It has a total length of some 308 feet and a width of nave and aisles of 83. The height to the centre of nave groining is 100 feet. The western front has two towers, which, curiously enough, as in Wells Cathedral, flank the side aisles, thus necessitating in elevation a union with the upper portions of the facade by means of flying b.u.t.tresses.