Cathedrals of Spain Part 9

This peculiar position of the choir was owing to the admission of the laity to the transept in front of the altar. In earlier days the choir was adjacent to and facing the altar, the singers and readers being there enclosed by a low and unimportant rail. The short, eastern apses of the Spanish cathedrals and the undeveloped and insufficient room for the clergy immediately surrounding the altar almost necessitated this divorce of the choir. In France and England the happier and more logical alternative was resorted to, of providing sufficient s.p.a.ce east of the intersection of the transept for all the clergy.

The rectangular choir of Toledo is closed at the east by a magnificent iron screen; at the west, by a wall called the "Trascoro," acting as a background to the archbishop's seat. A doorway once pierced its centre but was blocked up for the placing of the throne.

If the position of the choir is unfortunate, its details are among the most remarkable and glorious of their time and country. The only entrance is through the great iron parclose or reja at the east. This, as well as the corresponding grille work directly opposite, closing off the bay in front of the high altar, are wonderful specimens of the iron-worker's craft, splendid masterpieces of an art which has never been excelled since the days of its mediaeval guilds. The master Domingo de Cespedes erected the grille in the year 1548. The framework seems to be connected by means of tenons and mortices, while the scrolls are welded together. The larger moldings are formed of sheet iron, bent to the shape required and flush-riveted to their light frames. Neither the general design nor the details (both Renaissance in feeling) are especially meritorious, but the thorough mastery of the material is most astonishing. The stubborn iron has been wrought and formed with as much ease and boldness as if it had been soft limestone or plaster. It is characteristic of the age that the craftsman has not limited himself to one material. Certain portions of the smaller ornaments are of silver and copper. Originally their shining surfaces, as well as the gilding of the great portion of the princ.i.p.al iron bars, must have touched the whole with life and color. It was all covered with black paint in the time of the Napoleonic wars to escape the greedy hands of La Houssaye's victorious mob, and the gates still retain the sable coat that protected them.

Even a more glorious example of Spanish craftsmanship is found in the choir stalls which surround us to the north and south and west as soon as we enter. Here we are face to face with the finest flowering of Spanish mediaeval art. Theophile Gautier, generalizing upon the whole composition, says: "L'art gothique, sur les confins de la Renaissance, n'a rien produit de plus parfait ni de mieux dessine." The whole treatment of the work is essentially Spanish.

The stalls, the "silleria," are arranged in two tiers, the upper reached by little flights of five steps and covered by a richly carved, marble canopy, supported by slender Corinthian columns of red jasper and alabaster. All the stalls are of walnut, fifty in the lower row, seventy in the upper, exclusive of the archbishop's seat. The right side of the altar, that is, the right side of the celebrant looking from the altar, is called the side of the Gospel,--the left, the side of the Epistle.

The great carvings, differing in the upper and lower stalls in period and execution, are the work of three artists. The carvings of the lower row were executed by Rodriguez in 1495, those of the upper, on the Gospel side, by Alonso Berruguete, and those on the side of the Epistle, by Philip Vigarny (also called Borgona), both of the latter about fifty years later (in 1543).

The reading desk of the upper stalls forms the back of the lower and affords the field for their sculptural decoration. The subjects are the Conquest of Granada and the Campaigns of Ferdinand and Isabella. We are shown in the childish and picturesque manner in which the age tells its story, the various incidents of the war, all its situations and groups, its curious costumes, arms, shields, and bucklers, and even the names of the fortresses inscribed on their masonry. We can recognize the Catholic monarchs and the great prelate entering the fallen city amid the grief-stricken infidels.

The spirit of the work is distinctly that of the period which has gone before, without any intimations of that to come. It has the character of the German Gothic, recalling Lucas of Holland and his school. If it has a grace and beauty of its own, there is also a childish grotesqueness without any of the self-a.s.sured mastery, so soon to spread its Italian light. The imagination and composition are there, but not the execution,--the mind, but not the hand.

The carvings of the upper stalls were executed by their masters in generous rivalry and in a spirit that shows a decided cla.s.sic influence.

Many curious accounts of the time describe the excitement which prevailed during their execution and the various favor they found in the eyes of different critics. Looking at them, one's thoughts revert to that glorious dawn in which Cellini and Ghiberti and Donatello labored.

The inscription says of the two artists, "Signatum marmorea tum ligna caelavere hinc Philippus Burgundio, ex adverso Berruguetus Hispa.n.u.s: certaverunt tum artific.u.m ingenia; certabunt semper spectatorum judicia."

Berruguete's work (on the Gospel side) shows distinct traces of Michael Angelo's influence and his study in Italian ateliers with Andrea del Sarto and Baccio Bandinelli.[13] The nervous vigor of the Italian giant and the purity of style which looked back at Greece and Rome, are apparent.

The subjects of Vigarny's work, as also of Berruguete's, are taken from the Old Testament. They have a more subtle charm, more grace and freedom. Some of them show strength and an unerring hand, others, delicacy and exquisite subtleness. Where the Maestro Mayor of Charles V is powerful and energetic, Vigarny is imaginative and rich.

Comparing the upper and lower rows of panels, we must see what remarkable steps had been taken in so short a time by the sculptors. A lightness of execution, a victorious self-reliance, seems to follow close on the steps of tentative, even if conscientious, effort. The carving, the bold relief of the chiseling, have a vividness and intensity of expression, surpa.s.sing some of the best work of Italy and France.

The niches in the marble canopy above the upper row of stalls are filled with figures standing almost in full relief, and representing the genealogy of Christ.

The outer walls of the choir are also completely covered with sculpture.

It is thoroughly Gothic in character, crude, and fumbling for expression, consisting of arcades with niches above containing alto-relievo ill.u.s.trations of Old Testament scenes and characters. You recognize the Garden of Eden, Abraham with agonized face, Isaac, Jacob, pa.s.sages from Exodus, and other familiar scenes. Many of the panels depict further the small, everyday occurrences and incidents so loved by mediaeval artists, and so full of earnest, religious feeling. Crowning it all, amid the pinnacles, are a whole flock of angels, quite prepared for Ascension Day. It is all very similar to the early fourteenth-century work in French cathedrals.

The bay in front of the high altar, forming with it the Capilla Mayor, and the choir are closed from the transept by a huge reja as fine as the one facing it, and the work of the Spaniard Francesco Villalpando (1548).[14]

The Capilla Mayor originally consisted of the one bay to the east of the transept, the adjacent terminating portion of the nave being the chapel containing the tombs of the kings. The great Cardinal Ximenez received Isabella's permission to remove the dividing wall in case he could accomplish the task without disturbing any of the monarchs' coffins. The walls all round, both internally and externally, are completely covered with sculpture. Many of the figures are faithful portraits; many of the groups tell an interesting story. On the Gospel side there are two carvings, one over the other, the upper representing Don Alfonso VIII, and the lower, the shepherd who guided the monarch and his army to the renowned plains of Las Navas de Tolosa, where the battle was fought which proved so glorious to Christian arms. One likewise sees the statue of the Moor, Alfaqui Abu Walid, who threw himself in the path of King Alfonso and prevailed upon him to forgive Queen Constance and Bishop Bernard for the expulsion of the Moors from their mosque, contrary to the king's solemn oath.

All around us lie the early rulers of the House of Castile, Alfonso VII, Sancho the Deserted, and Sancho the Brave, the Prince Don Pedro de Aguilar, son of Alfonso XI, and the great Cardinal Mendoza. Below in the vault lie, by the sides of their consorts, Henry II, John I, and Henry III.

At the end of the chapel, acting as a background to the altar, you find a composition constantly met in and characteristic of Spanish cathedrals. The huge "retablo" is nothing but a meaningless, gaudy and sensational series of carved and decorated niches. It is carved in larchwood and merely reveals a love of the cheap and tawdry display of the decadent florid period of Gothic.

Back of the retablo and the high altar, you are startled by the most horrible and vulgar composition of the church. Nothing but the mind of an idiot could have conceived the "transparente."[15] It has neither order nor reason. The whole ma.s.s runs riot. Angels and saints float up and down its surface amid doughy clouds. The angel Raphael counterbalances the weight of his kicking feet by a large goldfish which he is frantically clutching. It is a piece of uncontrolled, imbecile decoration, perpetrated to the everlasting shame of Narciso Tome in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Nothing except the choir and Capilla Mayor disturb the simplicity of the aisles and the great body of the church. All other monuments or compositions are found in the numerous rooms and chapels leading from the outer aisles or situated between the lower arches of the outside walls. There are many of them, some important, others trivial. The Mozarabic chapel, in the southwest corner of the cathedral, is the oneplace in the world where you may still every morning hear the quaint old Visigothic or Mozarabic ritual recited. The chapel was constructed under Cardinal Ximenez in 1512 for the double purpose of commemorating the tolerance of the Moors, who during their dominion left to the Christians certain churches in which to continue their own worship, and also to perpetuate the use of the old Gothic ritual. It is most curious, almost barbaric: "The canons behind, in a sombre flat monotone, chant responses to the officiating priest at the altar. The sound combines the enervating effect of the hum of wings, whirr of looms, wooden thud of pedals, the boom and rush of immense wings circling round and round." It is strange to hear this echo a thousand years old of a magnanimous act in so intolerant an age.

In the eleventh century King Alfonso, at the insistence of Bernard and Constance, and the papal legate Richard, decided to abolish the use of the old Gothic ritual and to introduce the Gregorian rite. The Toledans threatened revolt rather than abandon their old form of worship. The King knew no other method of decision than to leave the question to two champions. In single combat the Knight of the Gothic Missal, Don Juan Ruiz de Mantanzas, killed his adversary while he himself remained unhurt. At a second trial, where two bulls were entrusted with the perplexing difficulty, the Gothic bull came off victor. Councils were held and the Pope still persevered in his determination to abolish the old Spanish service book. Outside the walls of the city, in front of the King and churchmen and amid the entire populace of Toledo, a great fire was built, and the two ma.s.s-books were thrown into it. When the flames had died down, only the Gothic ma.s.s-book was found unscathed. Only after many years, when traditions had gradually altered and even much of the text had become meaningless to the clergy, did the Roman service book become universally introduced into Toledan houses of worship.

Two other chapels are of especial interest: those of Saint Ildefonso and Santiago. Saint Ildefonso, who became metropolitan in 658, is second only in honor to Saint James of Compostella; he was unquestionably the most favored of Toledo's long line of bishops.

Three natives of Narbonne had dared to question the perpetual virginity of Our Lady. Saint Ildefonso gallantly took up her defense and proved it beyond doubt or questioning in his treatise "De Virginitate Perpetua Sanctae Mariae adversus tres Infideles." It was a crushing vindication and a discourse of much reason and scriptural light. Shortly afterwards the Bishop, together with the King and court, went to the Church of Saint Leocadia to give public thanks. As soon as the mult.i.tude had had sufficient time to kneel at the saint's tomb, a group of angels appeared amid a cloud and surrounded by sweet scents. Next the sepulchre opened of its own accord. Calix relates, "Thirty men could not have moved the stone which slid slowly from the mouth of the tomb. Immediately Saint Leocadia arose, after lying there three hundred years, and holding out her arm, she shook hands with Saint Ildefonso, speaking in this voice, 'Oh, Ildefonso, through thee doth the honor of My Lady flourish.' All the spectators were silent, being struck with the novelty and the greatness of the miracle. Only Saint Ildefonso, with Heaven's aid, replied to her. Now the virgin Saint looked as if she wished to return into the tomb and she turned around for that purpose, when the King begged of Saint Ildefonso that he would not let her go until she left some relic of her behind, for a memorial of the miracle and for the consolation of the city. And as Saint Ildefonso wished to cut a part of the white veil which covered the head of St. Leocadia, the King lent him a knife for that purpose, and this must have been a poniard or a dagger, though others say it was a sword. With this the saint cut a large piece of the blessed veil, and while he was giving it to the King, at the same time returning the knife, the saint shut herself up entirely and covered herself in the tomb with the huge stone."

But even this was not a sufficient expression of grat.i.tude to satisfy Saint Mary, for next week she herself came down to enjoy matins with Saint Ildefonso in the Cathedral. She sat in his throne and listened to his discourse with both pleasure and edification. A celestial host dispensed music in the choir, music of heaven, hymns, David's psalms and chants, such as never had been heard before, either in Seville or in Toledo. To cap it all, the Virgin made her favorite a splendid present of a chasuble worked by the angels with which she invested him with her own hands before she said good-bye. You may still kiss your fingers after having touched the sacred slab upon which the Virgin stood and above which run the words of the Psalmist: "Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus." The chapel is, similarly to the screens around the choir, of fourteenth-century work.

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

CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO

Chapel of Santiago, tombs of D. Alvaro de Luna and his spouse]

The Chapel of Santiago was erected by Count Alvaro de Luna, for more than thirty years the real sovereign of Castile. It is most elaborately decorated throughout with rich Gothic work, interwoven with sparkling filigree of Saracenic character. The tombs of the Lunas are of interest because of the great Count. His own is not the original one. The first mausoleum which he erected to himself was so constructed that the rec.u.mbent effigy or automaton could, when ma.s.s was said, slowly rise, clad in full armor, and remain kneeling until the service was ended, when it would slowly resume its former posture. This was destroyed at the instigation of Alvaro's old enemy, Henry of Aragon, who remained unreconciled even after the death of his old minister. At each corner of Alvaro's tomb kneels a knight of Santiago, at his feet a page holds his helmet, his own hands are crossed devoutly over the sword on his breast, and the mantle of his order is folded about his shoulders. His face wears an expression of sadness.

Alvaro began his career as a page in the service of Queen Catharine (Plantagenet). He ended it as Master of Santiago, Constable of Castile, and Prime Minister of John II, whom he completely ruled for thirty-five years. He lived in royal state, became all-powerful and arrogant. His diplomacy effected the marriage of Henry II and Isabella of Portugal, but he later incurred the enmity of Isabella, was accused of high treason, found guilty, and executed in the square of Valladolid. Pius II said of him, "He was a very lofty mind, as great in war as he was in peace, and his soul breathed none but n.o.ble thoughts."

And thus we may continue all around the Cathedral, past the successive chapels, vestries, sanctuaries and treasuries,--the architecture and sculpture of each connected with great events and telling its own story of dark tragedy or lighter romance.

In one, the Spanish banners used to be consecrated before leading the hosts against the Moors; in another, Spain now keeps her priceless treasures under the locks of seven keys hanging from the girdles of an equal number of canons. There are silver and gold and pearl and precious jewels sufficient to set on foot every stagnant Spanish industry. The 8500 pearls of the Virgin's cape might alone feed a province for no short time. They are buried in the dark. Outside in the light, the children of Spain are starving and without means of obtaining food. At one's elbow the whine of the beggar is continually heard, till one recalls Washington Irving's words: "The more proudly a mansion has been tenanted in the days of its prosperity, the humbler are its inhabitants in the days of her decline, and the palace of the king commonly ends in being the resting-place of the beggar."

Here and there, in the interior as in the exterior, we find, mixed with or decorating the Gothic, Moorish and Renaissance details and the later extravagances which followed the decline of the Gothic. Even where the carvers are expressing themselves in Gothic or Renaissance details, we frequently observe an extreme richness, a love of chiaroscuro, of sparkling jewel-like light and shade, and intricately woven ornamentation which betrays the influence of the Arab. We see the Morisco, a kind of fusion of French and Moorish, in many places. The triforium of the choir is decidedly Moorish in its design, although it is Gothic in all its details and has carvings of heads and of the ordinary dog-tooth enrichment instead of merely conventionalized leaf and figure ornament. It consists of a trefoil arcade. In the spandrels between its arches are circles with heads and, above these, triangular openings pierced through the wall. The moldings of all the openings interpenetrate, and the whole arcade has the air of intricate ingenuity so usual in Moorish work. Again, in the triforium of the inner aisle we find Moorish influence,--the cusping of the arcade is not enclosed within an arch but takes a distinct horseshoe outline, the lowest cusp near the cap spreading inward at the base. We see Moorish tiles, we find Moorish cupolas as in the Mozarabic chapel, and Moorish doorways, as the exquisite one leading into the Sala Capitular,--here and there and everywhere, we suddenly come upon details betraying the Arab intimacy.

The children of the Renaissance also embellished in their new manner, not only in the magnificent carvings of the choir but in a variety of places, for instance, the doors themselves contained within the Moorish molds leading to the Sala just mentioned, the entire chapel of St. Juan, the Capilla de Reyes Nuevos, portions of the Puerta del Berruguete, and the bronze doors of the Gate of the Lions.

Again, on the capitals and bases of many of the piers, with the exception of those of the central nave, Byzantine influence may be seen.

So each age, according to its best ken, dealt with the Cathedral. In among the varying styles of architectural decoration, the sister arts embellish the stone surfaces or are hung upon them. There are paintings by t.i.tian, Giovanni Bellini, and Rubens, by El Greco, Goya, and Ribera; Italian and Flemish tapestries, and frescoes too. Probably the greater portion of the main walls were covered with them, for here and there traces are still to be seen and a tree of Jesse remains in the tympanum of the south transept, and near it an enormous painting of Saint Christopher.

While the "Tresorio" may have been the treasure-house of the clergy, the church itself was that of the people. Here was their art museum, here were their galleries. The decorations became the primers from which they learnt their lessons. Here they would meet in the afternoon hour as the light fell aslant sapphire and ruby, through the clerestory openings. It would light up their treasures with strange, unearthly glory and form aureoles and haloes of rainbow splendor over the heads of their beloved saints. Cool amethyst and emerald and warmer amber and gold touched the darkest corners, and a gold and purple glory illuminated the high altar.

Some of the earlier gla.s.s is as fine as any to be found in Europe. The depth and intensity of the colors are remarkable. Probably none of it was Spanish, but all was imported from France, Belgium, or Germany. The gla.s.s in the rose of the north transept and in the eastern windows of the transept clerestory can hold its own beside that of the cathedrals of Paris and Amiens. The subject scheme of the rose in the north transept is truly n.o.ble. The earliest gla.s.s is that in the nave (a little later than 1400), and this is Flemish. The windows of the aisles are at least a century later. Their composition is simple and broad, the coloring rich and deep, and the interior dusk of the church enhances the value of the sunlight filtering through the gla.s.s.

Better than to descend into the immense crypt below the Cathedral, with its eighty-eight ma.s.sive piers corresponding to those above, is it to stray into the broken sunlight of the green and fragrant cloister arcade.

Bishop Tenorio procured the site for the church from the Jews, who here, right under the walls of the Christian church, held their market. A fresco adjoining the gate explains by what means. It represents on a ladder a fiendish-looking Jew who has cut the heart out of a beautiful, crucified child and is holding the dripping dagger in his hand. This fresco stirred up the fury of the Christian populace to the point ofburning the Jewish market, houses and shops, which then were annexed by the Bishop. The fine, two-story Gothic arcade of the cloisters encloses a sun-splashed garden filled with fragrant flowers. Around the walls of the lower arcade are a series of very mediocre frescoes. The architecture itself is not nearly as interesting as that of the cloisters of Salamanca. It ought particularly to be so in this portion of the church, for here is the very climate and place for the courtyard life of the Spaniard.

V

So lies the Cathedral, crumbling in the sunlight of the twentieth century. Beautiful, but strange and irreconcilable to all that is around her, she alone, the Mother Church, stands unshaken, lonely and melancholy, but grand and solemn in the midst of the paltry and tawdry happenings of to-day. She has served giants, and now sees but a race of dwarfs; princes have prostrated themselves at her altars, where now only beggars kneel. Her walls whisper loneliness, desertion, widowed resignation.

NOTE.--In connection with the remarks on page 160, a Catholic friend has pointed out how rarely, when Peter has been robbed, ostensibly to pay Paul, Paul (otherwise the Poor) has derived any benefit from it. It is willingly conceded that Henry VIII bestowed much of the wealth derived from the dissolution of the religious houses on his own favorites, and recent disclosures in France show as scandalous a diversion of some of the funds similarly obtained.

VI

SEGOVIA

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

CATHEDRAL OF SEGOVIA]

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.