Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain Part 3

The Retablo is no less worthy of notice. Its colour as well as its sculpture is of the richest kind. Below, on either side of the tabernacle (which has been modernized), are St. John Baptist and S. Mary Magdalene, and subjects on either side of them; on the left the Annunciation, and S. Mary Magdalene anointing our Lord's feet, and on the right the Adoration of the Magi, and the Betrayal of our Lord; whilst beyond, Alfonso and Isabel kneel at faldstools, with their coats-of-arms above them. Above the Tabernacle is the a.s.sumption of the Blessed Virgin, and above this a grand circle entirely formed of cl.u.s.tered angels, in the centre of which is a great crucifix surmounted by the Pelican vulning her breast. Within this circle are four subjects from the Pa.s.sion, and a King and a Pope on either side holding the arms of the Cross, which is completely detached from the background. On either side are S. John and S. Mary; and beside all these, a crowd of subjects and figures, pinnacles and canopies, which it is impossible to set down at length. The whole of this work was done by the same Gil de Siloe, a.s.sisted by Diego de la Cruz, at a cost of 1,015,613 maravedis, and was executed between A.D. 1496 and 1499. Behind the Retablo some of the old pavement remains, of encaustic tiles in blue, white, and red.

The works at this church seem to have made but slow progress owing to the troubled state of the kingdom after the death of Juan II. His son gave something towards the works in A.D. 1454, but nothing more until A.D. 1465. In A.D. 1474 he died, and was succeeded by Isabel the Catholic, who, in A.D. 1476, confirmed the grants to the monastery, and completed the church in A.D. 1488; but it was not, as we have seen, until the end of the century that the whole work was really finished.

Juan de Colonia made the plan for the building in A.D. 1454, for which he received 3350 maravedis: he directed its construction for twelve years, and after his death, in A.D. 1466, Garci Fernandez de Matienzo continued it till he died of the plague in the year 1488, when Simon, son of Juan de Colonia, completed it.[43]

Having completed my notice of the three great buildings of Burgos and its neighbourhood, and which in their style and history best ill.u.s.trate the several periods of Christian art, I now proceed to give some notes of the Conventual and Parish Churches, which are numerous and fairly interesting. In Burgos, however, as is so often the case on all parts of the Continent, the number of desecrated churches is considerable. The suppression of monasteries involved their desecration as a matter of course; and without religious orders it is obviously useless to have churches crowded together in the way one sees them here. I remember making a note of the relative position of three of these churches, which stand corner to corner without a single intervening house; and though this is an extreme case, the churches were no doubt very numerous for the population. Unluckily a desecrated church is generally a sealed book to an ecclesiologist. They are usually turned to account by the military; and soldiers view with proverbially jealous eyes any one who makes notes!

Just above the west front of the Cathedral is the little church of San Nicolas, mainly interesting for its Retablo, which, however, scarcely needs description, though it is gorgeously sculptured with the story, I think, of the patron. Its date is fixed by an inscription, which I give in a note.[44] On either side are monuments of a type much favoured in Spain, and borrowed probably from Italy, of which the main feature is, that the figures lie on a sloping surface, and look painfully insecure.

Here too I saw one of the first old western galleries that I met with in my Spanish journeys; and as I shall constantly have to mention their existence, position, and arrangement in parochial churches, it may be as well to say here, that at about the same date that choirs were moved westward into the naves of cathedrals, western galleries, generally of stone, carried on groining, and fitted up with stalls round three sides, with a great lectern in the centre, and organs on either side, were erected in a great number of parish churches. It cannot be doubted that in those days the mode of worship of the people was exactly what it is now; no one cared much if at all for anything but the service at the altar, and the choir was banished to where it would be least seen, least heard, and least in the way! At present it seems to me that one never sees any one taking more than the slightest pa.s.sing notice of the really finely-performed service even in the cathedral choirs; whilst in contrast to this, in the large churches, with an almost endless number of altars, all are still used, and all seem to have each their own flock of worshippers; and though it is a constant source of pain and grief to an ever-increasing body of English Churchmen that the use of their own altars should be so lamentably less than it ever was in primitive days, or than it is now in any other branch of the Catholic Church, it is some comfort to feel that our people have tried to retain due respect for some of the other daily uses of the Church, inferior though they be. In Spain, though I was in parish churches almost every day during my journey, I do not remember seeing the western gallery in use more than once. Sometimes it has been my fate to meet with men who suppose that the common objection to galleries in churches is, that there is no old "authority" for them. Well, here in Spain there is authority without end; and I commend to those Anglicans who wish to revive or retain their use in England the curious fact, that the country in which we find it is one distinguished beyond all others by the very decided character of its Romanism, and the period in which they were erected there, one in which Rome was probably more hostile to such as they than any other in the whole course of her history.[45]

The gallery of San Nicolas is less important than most of its cla.s.s are; and there is indeed little to detain any one within its walls.

Externally there is a low tower rising out of the west end of the south aisle. This has a fine third-pointed south doorway with an ogee crocketed canopy, and a belfry stage of two lancet-lights on each face, roofed with a flat roof of pantiles. The remainder of the church has been much altered; but a good flying-b.u.t.tress remains on the south side, and one or two lancet-windows which convey the impression that the first foundation of the church must have been in the thirteenth century. The east wall is not square, but built so as to suit the irregular site. The whole church is ungainly and ugly on the exterior, and its planning and proportions neither picturesque nor scientific. It is, in short, one of those churches of which we have so many in England, from which nothing is to be learnt save on some small matter of detail; and the alterations of its roofs, windows, and walls have in the end left it an ungainly and uncouth outline, which is redeemed only by its picturesque situation on the slope of the hill just above the cathedral parvise, with which it groups, and from which it is well seen.

Following the steep path of the east end of San Nicolas, I soon reached the fine church of San Esteban. It stands just below the castle, the decaying walls of which surround the slope of melancholy hill which rises from its doorway; these, though now they look so incapable of mischief, yet effectually thwarted the Duke of Wellington.[46] It is quite worth while to ascend the hill, if only for the view. San Esteban, shorn as it is--like all Spanish churches--of more than half its old external features, with pinnacles nipped off, parapets destroyed, windows blocked up, and roofs reduced from their old steep pitch to the uniform rough, ragged, and ruinous-looking flat of pantiles, which is universal here, forms, nevertheless, a good foreground for the fine view of the cathedral below it and the other points of interest in the town beyond. Yet these are fewer than would be expected in such a city, so long the capital of a kingdom and residence of a line of kings. There are no steeples worthy of remark save those of the cathedral, the churches are all, like San Esteban, more or less mutilated, and there is--as always in cities which have been great and now are poor--an air of misery and squalor about only too many of the buildings on which the eye first lights in these outskirts of the city.

I have not been so lucky as to find any record bearing in any way upon the erection of San Esteban, and I regret this the more, as its place among the churches of Burgos is no doubt next after the cathedral, and in all respects it is full of interest.

The ground plan (Plate II.) will explain the general scheme of the building--a nave and aisles, ended at the east with three parallel apses, a cloister, and a large hall on the south of and opening into the cloister. The north side of the cloister has been much mutilated by the erection of chapels and a sacristy, whilst the north wall of the church is blocked up by low buildings built against it. The only good view of the exterior is that from the south-west. Spanish boys did their best to make sketching it impossible, yet their amus.e.m.e.nts were after all legitimate enough for their age, and it is very seldom in Spain that a sketcher is mobbed and annoyed in the way he commonly is in France or Italy when he ventures on a sketch in an at all public place.

[Ill.u.s.tration:--BURGOS:--Ground Plans of San Gil: San Esteban: and Convent of Las Huelgas. Plate II

Published by John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1865.]

The erection of this church may, I believe, be dated between A.D.

1280-1350; and to the earlier of these two periods the grand west doorway probably belongs. The tympanum contains, in its upper compartment, our Lord seated, with St. John the Evangelist, the Blessed Virgin and angels kneeling on either side--a very favourite subject with Burgalese sculptors of the period; below is the martyrdom of the patron saint, divided into three subjects: (1) St. Stephen before the king; (2) Martyrdom of St. Stephen, angels taking his soul from his body; and (3) the devil taking the soul of his persecutor. The jambs have each three figures under canopies, among which are St. Stephen (with stones sticking to his vestments) and St. Laurence. The doorway is built out in a line with the front of the tower b.u.t.tresses, and above it a modern bal.u.s.trade is placed in advance of the west window, which is a fine rose of twenty rays. This window at a little distance has all the effect of very early work; but upon close inspection its details and mouldings all belie this impression, and prove it to be certainly not earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century. The whole of the tracery is thoroughly geometrical, and the design very good. Above it is a lancet window on each face, and then the lower part only of a belfry window of two lights, cut off by one of the usual flat-pitched tiled roofs. A staircase turret is carried up in the south-west angle and finished with a weathering at the base of the belfry stage. The b.u.t.tresses are all plain, and, as I have said, shorn of the pinnacles with which they were evidently intended to be finished.[47]

This church seems to be always locked up, and I think it was here that the woman who lives in the cloister and shows the church told me that there was service in the church once only in the week; and certainly it had the air which a church misused in this way usually a.s.sumes.

We were admitted by the cloister, a small and much mutilated work of circa A.D. 1300. It opens by four arches into a large hall on its south side, which is groined at a higher level than the cloister. The groining of the cloister is good, and the ribs well moulded; but the window tracery is all destroyed, and most of the windows are blocked up.

The central court is very small, as indeed is the whole work; but a cloister may be of any size, and in some of our many collegiate erections of the present day it would be as well to remember this, and emulate really and fairly the beautiful effects always attained by our forefathers in this way.[48]

In the western wall of the cloister are two arched recesses for monuments, one of which has a coped tomb, with eight steps to the foot of the cross, which is carved upon its lid. The eastern side is later than the rest, and its groining probably not earlier than A.D. 1500.

Entering the church from hence we find a very solid, simple, and dignified building, spoilt indeed as much as possible by yellow wash, but still in other respects very little damaged. It is groined throughout, and the groining has the peculiarity of having ridge ribs longitudinally but not transversely. This is common in Spain; but it is impossible to see why one ridge should require it and the other not, and the only explanation is that possibly the architect wished to lead the eye on from end to end of the building. In the groining of an apse this ridge-rib in its western part always looks very badly, and jars with the curved lines of all the rest of the ribs. The columns of the nave arcades are circular, with eight smaller engaged shafts around them, those under the western tower being rather more elaborate and larger than the others. Here we see a clear imitation of the very similar planning of the cathedral nave. The planning of the east end is more interesting, because, whilst it has no precedent in the cathedral, it is one of the evidences we have of the connexion of the Spanish architecture of the middle ages with that of other countries, which we ought not to overlook. I have said something on this in speaking of the plan of Las Huelgas. Here, however, I do not think we can look in the same direction for the original type of plan; for, numerous as are the varieties of ground-plan which we see in France, there is one--the parallel-triapsidal--which we meet so seldom that we may almost say it does not occur at all. In Germany, on the other hand, it is seen everywhere, and there, indeed, it is the national plan: in Italy it is also found constantly. In Spain, however, it was quite as much the national ground-plan as it was in Germany; almost everywhere we see it, and in any case the fact is of value as proving that the Spaniards adopted their own national form of Gothic, and were not indebted solely to their nearest neighbours, the French, for their inspiration and education in architecture, though undoubtedly they owed them very much.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NO. 5

SAN ESTEBAN, BURGOS.

p. 49.

INTERIOR LOOKING WEST.]

San Esteban is lighted almost entirely from windows set very high up in the walls. Those in the apses are in the position of clerestory windows, their sills being level with the springing of the groining. The consequence of this arrangement--a very natural one in a country where heat and light are the main things to be excluded from churches--was that a great unbroken s.p.a.ce was left between the floor and the windows; and hence it happened that the enormous Retablos, rising seldom less than twenty feet, and often thirty, forty, or even sixty feet from the floors, naturally grew to be so prominent and popular a feature. In San Esteban the Retablos are none of them old, but doubtless take the place of others which were so.

The western gallery is so good an example of its cla.s.s, that I think it is quite worthy of ill.u.s.tration. It is obviously an insertion of circa A.D. 1450, and is reached by a staircase of still later date at the west end of the south aisle. I cannot deny it the merit of picturesqueness, and the two ambons which project like pulpits at the north and south extremities of the front add much to its effect. The stalls are all arranged in the gallery in the usual fashion of a choir, with return stalls at the west end and a large desk for office books in the centre.

The organ is on the north side in the bay east of the gallery, and is reached through the ambon on the Gospel[49] side. This organ, its loft, and the pulpit against it are all very elaborate examples of Plateresque[50] Renaissance work.

Of the fittings of the church two only require any notice, and both of them are curious. One is an iron lectern, just not Gothic, but of very fair design,[51] and of a type that we might with advantage introduce into our own churches. The other is a wooden bier and herse belonging to some burial confraternity, and kept in the cloister; the dimensions are so small (and I saw another belonging to the confraternity of San Gil of the same size), that it was no doubt made for carrying a corpse without a coffin. One knows how in the middle ages this was the usual if not invariable plan,[52] and as these herses are evidently still in use (that of San Gil having been repainted in 1850), it has possibly never been given up.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The main thing, I think, that struck me in the architecture of San Esteban, was the very early look of all its proportions and details compared to what seemed to be their real date, when examined more in detail and with the aid of mouldings, traceries, and the like; and its value consists mainly in the place it occupies among the buildings of Burgos, ill.u.s.trating a period of which otherwise there would be very little indeed in the city.

From San Esteban I found my way first through the decayed-looking and uninteresting streets, and then among the ruined outskirts of the north-eastern part of the city, to the church of San Gil, situated very much in the same kind of locality as San Esteban, on the outskirts of the city. This church is just mentioned in 'Espana Sagrada'[53] twice: first as being named, with ten other churches in Burgos, in a Bull of A.D. 1163; and subsequently, as having been built by Pedro de Camargo and Garcia de Burgos, with the approbation of Bishop Villacraces in A.D.

1399; and Don Diego de Soria, and his wife Dona Catalina, are said to have rebuilt the Capilla mayor in A.D. 1586.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 6.

SAN GIL, BURGOS

p. 51.

IRON PULPIT.]

I give the plan of this church on Plate II., and am inclined to doubt the exact truth of the statements I have just quoted. I believe the church to be a cruciform structure of the fourteenth century, whose chancel and chancel aisles reproduced the plan of Las Huelgas, but were probably rebuilt in A.D. 1399. The so-called Capilla mayor is probably the chapel on the north side of the north aisle, a very elaborate semi-Renaissance erection, with an octagon vault, reproducing many of the peculiarities of Spanish groining, supported upon pendentives similar to those of which I have spoken in describing the later works in the cathedral; and it is no doubt the work of one of the descendants or pupils of Juan de Colonia. The late chapels on each side of the choir have enormous wooden bosses at the intersection of the groining ribs, carved with tracery, and with a painting of a saint in the centre. This mixture of painting and sculpture is very much the fashion in Spanish wood-carvings, and the altar Retablos often afford examples of it. In the floor of this church are some curious effigies of black marble, with heads and hands of white.[54] Two such remain in the east wall of one of the southern chapels, where they lie north and south.

The Retablos of the two chapels, north and south of the choir, are very sumptuous works.

Against the north-west pier of the crossing there stands what is perhaps the most uncommon piece of furniture in the church, an iron pulpit. It is of very late date, but I think quite worthy of ill.u.s.tration. The support is of iron, resting on stone, and the staircase modern. The framework at the angles, top and bottom, is of wood, upon which the ironwork is laid. The traceries are cut out of two plates of iron, laid one over the other, and the ironwork is in part gilded, but I do not think that this is original. The canopy is of the same age and character, and the whole effect is very rich, at the same time that it is very novel.[55] I saw other iron pulpits, but none so old as this.

I visited two or three other parish churches, but found little in them worth notice. San Lesmes is one of the largest, consisting of a nave with aisles, transepts, apsidal choir, and chapels added in the usual fashion. The window tracery is flamboyant, and the windows have richly moulded jambs, and are very German in their design. The south door is very large and rich, of the same style, and fills the s.p.a.ce between two b.u.t.tresses, on the angles of which are St. Gabriel and the Blessed Virgin.[56] Close to San Lesmes are the church of San Juan, and another, the dedication of which I could not learn, whilst opposite it is the old Convent of San Juan, now converted into a hospital. The entrance is a great doorway, remarkable for the enormous heraldic achievements which were always very popular with the later Castilian architects. The church of San Juan is now desecrated; it is cruciform in plan, with a deep apsidal chancel, and seems to have had chapels on the east side of the transepts. The church is groined throughout, and its window tracery poor flamboyant work. San Lucas has a groined nave of three bays, and there is another church near it of the same character. They both appear to have been built at the end of the sixteenth century.

Of old Convents, the most important appears to have been that of San Pablo. It is now desecrated, and used as a cavalry store; and though I was allowed to look, I could not obtain permission to go, into it.

Florez[57] gives the date of the original foundation of the monastery in A.D. 1219, and says that it was moved to its present site in A.D. 1265, but not completed for more than 150 years after that date. The inscription on the monument of Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, on the Gospel side of the altar in San Pablo, records him to have been the builder of the church,[58] and his story is so singular as to be worth telling. He was a Jew by birth, a native of Burgos, and married to a Jewess, by whom he had four sons[59] and one daughter. In A.D. 1390, at the age of forty, he was baptized; and having tried in vain to convert his wife, "he treated her as though she were dead, dissolving his marriage legally, and ascending to the greater perfection of the priesthood." In A.D. 1415 he was made Bishop of Burgos, and being at Valladolid at the time, all Burgos went out to meet him as he came to take possession of his see. "His venerable mother, Dona Maria, and his well-loved wife Joana, waited for him in the Episcopal Palace, from whence he went afterwards to adore G.o.d in the cathedral." Dona Joana was buried near the bishop in San Pablo, with an inscription in Spanish, ending, "she died ('fallecio') in the year 1420," and from the absence of any religious form in the inscription, I infer that she died unconverted. The bishop died in A.D. 1435.

The church of San Pablo consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, transepts and apsidal choir, with many added chapels. The nave groining bays are square, those of the aisle oblong, a mode of planning which marks rather an Italian-Gothic than a French or German origin. The church is vaulted throughout, with very domical vaults, and lighted with lancets in the aisles, circular windows in the clerestory, and traceried windows in the choir. Part of the old western gallery still remains. The vaulting has transverse, diagonal, and ridge ribs. The apse is well b.u.t.tressed, but, like all the churches in Burgos, San Pablo has lost its old roofs, and has been so much spoilt by the additions which have been made to it, that its exterior is very unprepossessing. Not so the interior, which, both in scale and proportion, is very fine. The architect of San Pablo is said to have been Juan Rodriguez, who commenced it in 1415, and completed it before 1435.[60]

Another convent, that of La Merced, has been treated in the same way, and is now a military hospital. Its church is on the same plan as that of San Pablo, with the princ.i.p.al doorway in the north wall instead of the west, and this opening under the usual vaulted gallery. There is, too, a small apsidal recess for an altar in the north wall of the north transept. The window tracery and details here are all of very late Pointed, but the b.u.t.tresses and flying b.u.t.tresses are good. Flat roofs, destroyed gables, and the entire absence of any steeple or turret to break the ma.s.s, make the exterior of little value. This convent was moved to its present site in A.D. 1272, but I doubt whether any part of the exterior now visible is so old as this.

I saw no other churches worthy of mention in Burgos; but there are others which ought to be examined in the neighbourhood, among which one a little beyond Las Huelgas, of large size, surrounded by trees, and apparently belonging to a convent, seemed to be the most important.[61]

There are but few remains of old Domestic Architecture. The Palace has been modernized, but is still approached by a groined pa.s.sage from the south door of the cathedral. The Palace of the Constable Velasco is a bald and ugly erection of the sixteenth century, in the very latest kind of Gothic; its walls finished with a strange parapet of crocketed pinnacles and stones cut out into a sort of rude fork; its entrance a square-headed doorway, with a large s.p.a.ce above it, enclosed with enormous chains carved in stone, within which are armorial bearings. The internal courtyard is surrounded by buildings of three stages in height, with open arcades to each, and traceried balconies. The arcades and windows throughout have debased three-centred arches.

The princ.i.p.al town gateway, that of Sta. Maria, is close to the cathedral; its rear is a very simple but ma.s.sive work of the thirteenth century, and rather Italian in its design. The front facing the Prado and the river was so much altered by Charles V. that it is doubtful whether any of the old work remains; it is now a very picturesque jumble of circular towers and turrets, battlemented and crenellated, and looking rather like one of those mediaeval castles which are seen either in an illumination, or in a canopy over a figure in stained gla.s.s, than like a real and useful fortified gateway.

It will be seen how full of interest to the ecclesiologist Burgos is. My notes are, I have no doubt, not by any means exhaustive; and I have equally little doubt that one who had more time at his disposal would discover much more than I found; besides which, I was under the impression, when I was at Burgos, that the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardena, so intimately connected with the story of the Cid, and where he lay peacefully till the French invasion, had been entirely destroyed, whereas, in truth, I believe the church founded in the thirteenth century still remains; and, if so, must certainly reward examination. It is but a few miles from Burgos.

The great promenade here is along the river-side, where the houses are all new, bald, and uninteresting; but the back streets are picturesque, and there is a fine irregularly-shaped Plaza, surrounded by arcades in front of the shops, where are to be found capital blankets and _mantas_, useful even in the hottest weather if any night travelling is to be undertaken, and invariably charming in their colour.

CHAPTER III.

PALENCIA--VALLADOLID.

It was after a day of hard work at Miraflores, Las Huelgas, and Burgos, taking last looks and notes, that we drove to the railway station _en route_ for Palencia. Castile does not improve on acquaintance, and, so far as I could judge in the hurried views obtained from the railway-carriage, we missed nothing by moving apace. The railroad follows the broad valley of the Arlanzon, bounded on either side by hills of moderate height, occasionally capped with sharp cones and peaks, but everywhere of an invariable whitish-grey colour, which soon wearies the eye unspeakably. The few villages seen from the valley seemed generally to occupy the slopes of the hills, and to have large, shapeless, and unattractive churches. Indeed, it is not possible to go very far in Spain without feeling either that Spanish architects seldom cared for the external effect of their buildings, or that whatever they did has been ruthlessly spoilt in later days. Even in a city like Burgos this is the case, and of course it is even more so in villages and smaller towns.