The Cathedrals of Northern Spain Part 14

In 1232, not a hundred years after the erection of the cathedral, it was totally destroyed, excepting one or two chapels still to be seen in the cloister, by Juan Dominguez, who was bishop at the time, and who wished to possess a see more important in appearance than that left to him by his predecessor, St. Peter.

The building as it stands to-day is small, but highly interesting. The original plan was that of a Romanesque basilica with a three-lobed apse, but in 1781 the ambulatory walk behind the altar joined the two lateral aisles.

Two of the best pieces of sculptural work in the cathedral are the _retablo_ of the high altar, and the relief imbedded in the wall of the _trascoro_--both of them carved in wood by Juan de Juni, one of the best Castilian sculptors of the sixteenth century. The plastic beauty of the figures and their lifelike postures harmonize well with the simple Renaissance columns ornamented here and there with finely wrought flowers and garlands.

The chapel where St. Peter of Osma's body lies is an original rather than a beautiful annex of the church. For, given the small dimensions of the cathedral, it was difficult to find sufficient room for the chapels, sacristy, vestuary, etc. In the case of the above chapel, therefore, it was necessary to build it above the vestuary; it is reached by a flight of stairs, beneath which two three-lobed arches lead to the sombre room below. The result is highly original.

The same remarks as regard lack of s.p.a.ce can be made when speaking about the princ.i.p.al entrance. Previously the portal had been situated in the western front; the erection of the tower on one side, and of a chapel on the other, had rendered this entrance insignificant and half blinded by the prominent tower. So a new one had to be erected, considered by many art critics to be a beautiful addition to the cathedral properly speaking, but which strikes the author as excessively ugly, especially the upper half, with its balcony, and a hollow arch above it, in the shadows of which the rose window loses both its artistic and its useful object. So, being round, it is placed within a semicircular sort of _avant-porche_ or recess, the strong _contours_ of which deform the immense circle of the window.

To conclude: in the cathedral of Osma, bad architecture is only too evident. The tower is perhaps the most elegant part, and yet the second body, which was to give it a gradually sloping elegance, was omitted, and the third placed directly upon the first. This is no improvement.

Perhaps the real reason for these architectural mishaps is not so much the fault of the architects and artists as that of the chapter, and of the flock which could not help satisfactorily toward the erection of a worthy cathedral. Luckily, however, there are other cathedrals in Spain, where, in spite of reduced funds, a decent and h.o.m.ogeneous building was erected.

The cloister, bare on the inner side, is nevertheless a modest Gothic structure with acceptable lobulated ogival windows.

_PART IV_

_Western Castile_

I

PALENCIA

The history of Palencia can be divided into two distinct parts, separated from each other by a lapse of about five hundred years, during which the city was entirely blotted out from the map of Spain.

The first period reaches from before the Roman Conquest to the Visigothic domination.

Originally inhabited by the Vacceos, a Celtiberian tribe, it was one of the last fortresses to succ.u.mb to Roman arms, having joined Numantia in the terrible war waged by Spaniards and which has become both legendary and universal.

Under Roman rule the broad belt of land, of which Palencia, a military town on the road from Astorga to Tarragon, was the capital, flourished as it had never done before. Consequently it is but natural that one of the first sees should have been established there as soon as Christianity invaded the peninsula. No records are, however, at hand as regards the names of the first bishops and of the martyr saints, as thick here as elsewhere and as numerous in Spain as in Rome itself. At any rate, contemporary doc.u.ments mention a Bishop Toribio, not the first to occupy the see nor the same prelate who worked miracles in Orense and Astorga. The Palencian Toribio fought also against the Priscilian heresy, and was one of the impediments which stopped its spread further southward. Of this man it is said that, disgusted with the heresy practised at large in his Pallantia, he mounted on a hill, and, stretching his arms heavenwards, caused the waters of the river to leave their bed and inundate the city, a most efficacious means of bringing loitering sheep to the fold.

Nowhere did the Visigoths wreak greater vengeance or harm on the Iberians who had hindered their entry into the peninsula than in Palencia. It was entirely wrecked and ruined, not one stone remaining to tell the tale of the city that had been. Slowly it emerged from the wreck, a village rather than a town; once in awhile its bishops are mentioned, living rather in Toledo than in their humble see.

The Arab invasion devastated a second time the growing town; perhaps it was Alfonso I. himself who completely wrecked it, for the Moorish frontier was to the north of the city, and it was the sovereign's tactics to raze to the ground all cities he could not keep, when he made a risky incursion into hostile country.

So Palencia was forgotten until the eleventh century, when Sancho el Mayor, King of Navarra, who had conquered this part of Castile, reestablished the long-ignored see. He was hunting among the weeds that covered the ruins of what had once been a Roman fortress, when a boar sprang out of cover in front of him and escaped. Being light of foot, the king followed the animal until it disappeared in a cave, or what appeared to be such, though it really was a subterranean chapel dedicated to the martyrs, or to the patron saint of old Pallantia, namely, San Antolin.

The hunted beast cowered down in front of the altar; the king lifted his arm to spear it, when lo, his arm was detained in mid-air by an invisible hand! Immediately the monarch prostrated himself before the miraculous effigy of the saint; he acknowledged his sacrilegious sin, and prayed for forgiveness; the boar escaped, the monarch's arm fell to his side, and a few days later the see was reestablished, a church was erected above the subterranean chapel, and Bernardo was appointed the first bishop (1035). After Sancho's death, his son Ferdinand, who, as we have seen, managed to unite for the first time all Northern Spain beneath his sceptre, made it a point of honour to favour the see his father had erected a few months before his death, an example followed by all later monarchs until the times of Isabel the Catholic.

A surprising number of houses were soon built around the cathedral, and the city's future was most promising. Its bishops were among the n.o.ble-blooded of the land, and enjoyed such exceptional privileges as gave them power and wealth rarely equalled in the history of the middle ages. But then, the city had been built for the church and not the church for the city, and it is not to be marvelled at that the prelates bore the t.i.tle of "_hecho un rey y un papa_"--king and pope. The greater part of these princes, it is true, lived at court rather than in their episcopal see, which is, perhaps, one of the reasons why Palencia failed to emulate with Burgos and Valladolid, though at one time it was the residence of some of the kings of Castile.

Moreover, being only second in importance to the two last named cities, Palencia was continually the seat of dissident n.o.blemen and thwarted heirs to the throne; because these latter, being unable to conquer the capital, or Valladolid, invariably sought to establish themselves in Palencia, sometimes successfully, at others being obliged to retreat from the city walls. The story of the town is consequently one of the most adventurous and varied to be read in Spanish history, and it is due to the side it took in the rebellion against Charles-Quint, in the time of the Comuneros, that it was finally obliged to cede its place definitely to Valladolid, and lost its importance as one of the three cities of Castilla la Vieja.

It remains to be mentioned that Palencia was the seat of the first Spanish university (Christian, not Moorish), previous to either that of Salamanca or Alcala. In 1208 this educational inst.i.tution was founded by Alfonso VIII.; professors were procured from Italy and France, and a building was erected beside the cathedral and under its protecting wing.

It did not survive the monarch's death, however, for the reign of the latter's son left but little spare time for science and letters, and in 1248 it was closed, though twenty years later Pope Urbano IV. futilely endeavoured to reestablish it. According to a popular tradition, it owed its definite death to the inhabitants of the town, who, bent upon venging an outrage committed by one of the students upon a daughter of the city, fell upon them one night at a given signal and killed them to the last man.

In the fourteenth century, the cathedral, which had suffered enormously from sieges and from the hands of enemies, was entirely pulled down and a new one built on the same spot (June, 1321). The subterranean chapel, which had been the cause of the city's resurrection, was still the central attraction and relic of the cathedral, and, according to another legend, no less marvellous than that of Toribio, its genuineness has been placed definitely (?) without the pale of skeptic doubts. It appears that one Pedro, Bishop of Osma (St. Peter of Osma?), was praying before the effigy of San Antolin when the lights went out. The pious yet doubting prelate prayed to G.o.d to give him a proof of the relic's authenticity by lighting the candles. To his surprise (?) and glee, the candles lit by themselves!

Let us approach the city by rail. The train leaves Venta de Banos, a junction station with a village about two miles away possessing a seventh-century Visigothic church which offers the great peculiarity of horseshoe arches in its structure, dating from before the Arab invasion.

Immediately upon emerging from the station, the train enters an immense rolling plain of a ruddy, sandy appearance, with here and there an isolated sand-hill crowned by the forgotten ruins of a mediaeval castle.

The capital of this region is Palencia.

The erection of the cathedral church of the town was begun in 1321; it was dedicated to the Mother and Child, and to San Antolin, whose chapel, devoid of all artistic merit, is still to be seen beneath the choir.

This edifice was finished toward 1550. The same division as has been observed in the history of the city can be applied to the temple: at first it was intended to construct a modest Gothic church of red sandstone; the apse with its five chapels and traditional ambulatory was erected, as well as the transept and the high altar terminating the central nave. Then, after about a hundred years had pa.s.sed away, the original plan was altered by lengthening the body of the building.

Consequently the chapel of the high altar was too small in comparison with the enlarged proportions, and it was transformed into a parish chapel. Opposite it, and to the west of the old transept, another high altar was constructed in the central nave, and a second transept separated it from the choir which followed.

In other words, and looking at this curious monument as it stands to-day, the central nave is surmounted by an ogival vaulting of a series of ten vaults. The first transept cuts the nave beneath the sixth, and the second beneath the ninth vault. (Vault No. 1 is at the western end of the church.) Both transepts protrude literally beyond the general width of the building. The choir stands beneath the fourth and fifth vaults, and the high altar between the two transepts, occupying the seventh and eighth s.p.a.ce. Beneath the tenth stands the parish chapel or ex-high altar, behind which runs the ambulatory, on the off-side of which are situated the five apsidal chapels. Consequently the second transept separates the old from the new high altar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALENCIA CATHEDRAL]

In spite of the low aisles and nave, and the absence of sculptural motives so p.r.o.nounced in Burgos, the effect produced on the spectator by the double cross and the unusual length as compared with the width is agreeable. The evident lack of unity in the Gothic structure is recompensed by the original and pleasing plan.

The final judgment that can be emitted concerning this cathedral church, when seen from the outside, is that it shows the typical Spanish-Gothic characteristic, namely, heaviness as contrasted to pure ogival lightness. There is poverty in the decorative details, and solemnity in the interior; the appearance from the outside is of a fortress rather than a temple, with slightly pointed Gothic windows, and a heavy and solid, rather than an elegant and light, general structure. Only the cathedral church of Palencia outgrew the original model and took the strange and exotic form it possesses to-day, without losing its fortress-like aspect.

Though really built in stone (see the columns and pillars in the interior), brick has been largely used in the exterior; hence also the impossibility of erecting a pure Gothic building, and this is a remark that can be applied to most churches in Spain. The b.u.t.tresses are heavy, the square tower (unfinished) is Romanesque or _Mudejar_ in form rather than Gothic, though the windows be ogival. There is no western facade or portal; the tower is situated on the southern side between the true transepts.

Of the four doorways, two to the north and two to the south, which give access to the transepts, the largest and richest in sculptural decoration is the Bishop's Door (south). Observe the geometrical designs in the panels of the otherwise ogival and slightly pointed doorway. The other portal on the south is far simpler, and the arch which surmounts it is of a purer Gothic style; not so the geometrically decorated panels and the almost Arabian frieze which runs above the arches. This frieze is Moorish or Mudejar-Byzantine, and though really it does not belong in an ogival building, it harmonizes strangely with it.

In the interior of the cathedral the nakedness of the columns is partially recompensed by the richness in sculptural design of some sepulchres, as well as by several sixteenth-century grilles. The huge _retablo_ of the high altar shows Gothic luxuriousness in its details, and at the same time (in the capitals of the flanking columns) nascent plateresque severity.

Perhaps the most interesting corner of the interior is the _trascoro_, or the exterior side of the wall which closes the choir on the west.

Here the patronizing genius of Bishop Fonseca, a scion of the celebrated Castilian family, excelled itself. The wall itself is richly sculptured, and possesses two fine lateral reliefs. In the centre there is a Flemish canvas of the sixteenth century, of excellent colour, and an elegantly carved pulpit.

In the chapter-room are to be seen some well-preserved Flemish tapestries, and in an apsidal chapel is one of Zurbaran's mystic subjects: a praying nun. (This portrait, I believe, has been sold or donated by the chapter, for, if I am not mistaken, it is to be seen to-day in the art collection of the Spanish royal family.)

II

ZAMORA

Whatever may have been the origin of Zamora, erroneously confounded with that of Numantia, it is not until the ninth century that the city, or frontier fortress, appears in history as an Arab stronghold, taken from the Moors and fortified anew by Alfonso I. or by his son Froila, and necessarily lost and regained by Christians and Moors a hundred times over in such terrible battles as the celebrated and much sung _dia de Zamora_ in 901. In 939 another famous siege of the town was undertaken by infidel hordes, but the strength of the citadel and the numerous moats, six it appears they were in number, separated by high walls surrounding the town, were invincible, and the Arab warriors had to retreat. Nevertheless, between 900 and 980 the fortress was lost five times by the Christians. The last Moor to take it was Almanzor, who razed it to the ground and then repopulated it with Arabs from Andalusia.

Previously, in 905, the parish church had been raised to an episcopal see; the first to occupy it being one Atilano, canonized later by Pope Urbano II.