The Cathedrals of Northern Spain Part 17

The narthex and the western end are still preserved. They are of the same width as the nave, for, beneath the towers, of which one seems to have been far higher than the other, each of the aisles terminates in a chapel. Byzantine in appearance, the two western doors are, nevertheless, crowned by an ogival arch, and flanked by statuettes of the same style. The facade, repaired and spoilt, is of Renaissance severity.

The interior of the building is more impressive than that of either Zamora or Toro; this is due to the absence of the choir,--removed to the new cathedral,--which permits an uninterrupted view of the whole church, which does not occur in any other temple throughout Spain. Romanesque strength and gloominess is clearly discernible, whereas the height of the central nave (sixty feet) is rendered stumpy in appearance by the almost equal height of the aisles. The strength and solidity of the pillars and columns, supporting capitals and friezes of a peculiar and decided Byzantine taste (animals, dragons, etc.), show more keenly than in Galicia the Oriental influence which helped so thoroughly to shape Central Spanish Romanesque.

Of the chapels, but one deserves special mention, both as seen from without and from within, namely, the high altar, or central apsidal chapel. Seen from without, it is of perfect Romanesque construction, excepting the upper row of rose windows, which are ogival in their traceries; inside, it contains a mural painting of an exceedingly primitive design, and a _retablo_ in low reliefs enchased in ogival arches; it is of Italian workmanship.

Of the remaining chapels, that of San Bartolome contains an alabaster sepulchre of the Bishop Diego de Anaya--one of the many prelates of those times who was the possessor of illegitimate sons; the bodies of most of the latter lie within this chapel, which can be regarded not only as a family pantheon, but as a symbol of ecclesiastical greatness and human weakness.

The windows which light up the nave are round-headed, and yet they are delicately decorated, as is rarely to be seen in the Romanesque type.

The aisles, on the contrary, are not lit up by any windows.

Like the churches of Zamora and Toro, the whole cathedral resembles a fortress rather than a place of worship. The simplicity of the general structure, the rounded turrets buried in the walls, serving as leaning b.u.t.tresses, the narrow slits in the walls instead of windows, lend an indisputable aspect of strength. The beautiful, the really beautiful lantern, situated above the _croisee_, with its turrets, its niches, its thirty odd windows, and its elegant cupola, is an architectural body that wins the admiration of all who behold it, either from within the church or from without, and which, strictly Byzantine in conception (though rendered peculiarly Spanish by the addition of certain elements which pertain rather to Gothic military art than to church architecture), is unique--to the author's knowledge--in all Europe. Less pure in style, and less Oriental in appearance than that of Zamora, it was nevertheless, created more perfect by the artistic conception of the architect, and consequently more finished or developed than those of Toro and Zamora. Without hesitation, it can claim to be one of Salamanca's chief attractions.

The thickness of the walls (ten feet!), the admirable simpleness of the vaulting, and the general aspect from the exterior, have won for the church the name of _fortis Salamantini_.

_The New Cathedral._--It was begun in 1513, the old temple having been judged too small, and above all too narrow for a city of the importance of Salamanca.

Over two hundred years did the building of the present edifice last; at times all work was stopped for years, no funds being at hand to pay either artists or masons.

The primitive plan of the church, as proposed by the congress of architects, was Gothic of the second period, with an octagonal apse; the lower part of the church, from the foot to the transept, was the first to be constructed.

The upper part of the apse was not begun until the year 1588, and the artist, imbued with the beauty of Herrero's Escorial, squared the apse with the evident intention of constructing turrets on the exterior angles, which would have rendered the building symmetrical: two towers on the western front, a cupola on the _croisee_, and two smaller turrets on the eastern end.

The building as it stands to-day is a perfect rectangle cut in its length by a nave (containing the choir and the high altar), and by two aisles, lower than the nave and continued in an ambulatory walk behind the high altar.

The same symmetry is visible in the lateral chapels: eight square _huecos_ on the exterior walls of the aisles, five to the west, and three to the east of the transept, and three in the extreme eastern wall of the apse.

Magnificence rather than beauty is the characteristic note of the new cathedral. The primitive part--pure ogival with but little mixture--contrasts with the eastern end, which is covered over with the most glaring grotesque decoration; most of the chapels are spoiled by the same shocking profusion of super-ornamentation; the otherwise majestic cupola, the high altar, and the choir--all suffer from the same defect.

The double triforium--one higher than the other--in the clerestory produces a most favourable impression; this is heightened by the wealth of light, which, entering by two rows of windows and by the _cimborio_, falls upon the rich decoration of friezes and capitals. The general view of the whole building is also freer than in most Spanish cathedrals, and this harmony existing in the proportions of the different parts strikes the visitor more favourably, perhaps, than in the severer cathedral at Burgos.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW SALAMANCA CATHEDRAL]

The exterior of the building reflects more truthfully than the interior the different art waves which spread over Spain during the centuries of the temple's erection. In the western front, the rich Gothic portal of the third period, the richest perhaps in sculptural variety of any on the peninsula, contrasts with the high mongrel tower, a true example of the composite towers so frequently met with in certain Spanish regions.

The second body of the same facade (western) is highly interesting, not on account of its ornamentation, which is simple, but because of the solid, frank structure, and the curious fortress-like turrets embedded in the angles.

The flank of the building, seen from the north--for on the south side stand the ruins of the old cathedral--is none too h.o.m.ogeneous, thanks to the different styles in which the three piers of windows--of chapels, aisles, and clerestory--have been constructed. The ensemble is picturesque, nevertheless: the three rows of windows, surmounted by the huge cupola and half-lost among the b.u.t.tresses, certainly contribute toward the general elegance of the granite structure.

V

CIUDAD RODRIGO

In the times of the Romans, the country to the west of Salamanca seems to have been thickly populated. Calabria, situated between the Agueda and Coa Rivers, was an episcopal see; in its vicinity Augustabriga and Mirobriga were two other important towns.

Of these three Roman fortresses, and perhaps native towns, before the invasion, not as much as a stone or a legend remains to relate the tale of their existence and death.

Toward 1150, Fernando II. of Castile, obeying the military requirements of the Reconquest, and at the same time wishing to erect a fortress-town, which, together with Zamora to the north, Salamanca to the west, and Coria to the south, could resist the invasion of Spain by Portuguese armies, founded Ciudad Rodrigo, and twenty years later raised the church to an episcopal see, a practical means of attracting G.o.d-fearing settlers. Consequently, the twelfth-century town, inheriting the ecclesiastical dignity of Calabria, if the latter ever possessed it, besides being situated in the same region as the three Roman cities previously mentioned, can claim to have been born a city.

One of the early bishops (the first was a certain Domingo) was the famous Pedro Diaz, about whom a legend has been handed down to us. This legend has also been graphically ill.u.s.trated by an artist of the sixteenth century; his painting is to be seen to the right of the northern transept door in the cathedral.

Pedro Diaz seems to have been a worldly priest, "fond of the sins of the flesh and of good eating," who fell ill in the third year of his reign.

His secretary, a pious servant of the Lord, dreamt he saw his master's soul devoured by demons, and persuaded him to confess his sins. It was too late, for a few days later he died; his death was, however, kept a secret by his menials, who wished to have plenty of time to make a generous division of his fortune. When all had been settled to their liking, the funeral procession moved through the streets of the city, and, to the surprise of all, the dead bishop, resurrected by St.

Francis of a.s.sisi, at the time in Ciudad Rodrigo, opened the coffin and stood upon the hea.r.s.e. He accused his servants of their greed, and at the same time made certain revelations concerning the life hereafter.

His experiences must have been rather pessimistic, to judge by the bishop's later deeds, for, having been granted a respite of twenty days upon this earth, he "fasted and made penitence," doubtless eager to escape a second time the tortures of the other world.

Other traditions concerning the lives and doings of the n.o.blemen who disputed the feudal right or _senorio_ over the town, are as numerous as in Plasencia, with which city Ciudad Rodrigo has certain historical affinities. The story of the Virgen Coronada, who, though poor, did not hesitate in killing a powerful and wealthy libertine n.o.bleman whom she was serving; the no less stirring account of Dona Maria Adan's vow that she would give her fair daughter's hand to whomsoever venged her wrongs on the five sons of her husband's murderer, are among the most tragic and thrilling. There are many other traditions beside, which const.i.tute the past's legacy to the solitary city near the Portuguese frontier.

It was in the nineteenth century that Ciudad Rodrigo earned fame as a brave city. The Spanish war for independence had broken out against the French, who overran the country, and pa.s.sed from Bayonne in the Gascogne to Lisbon in Portugal. Ciudad Rodrigo lay on the shortest route for the French army, and had to suffer two sieges, one in 1810 and the second in 1812. In the latter, Wellington was the commander of the English forces who had come to help the Spanish chase the French out of the peninsula; the siege of the town and the battle which ensued were long and terrible, but at last the allied English and Spanish won, with the loss of two English generals. The Iron Duke was rewarded by Spanish Cortes, with the t.i.tle of Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, together with the honours of grandee of Spain, which are still retained by Wellington's descendants.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CUIDAD RODRIGO CATHEDRAL]

The cathedral church of Ciudad Rodrigo is a twelfth-century building, in which the Romanesque style, similar to those of Zamora and Toro, fights with the nascent ogival style. Notwithstanding these remarks, however, the building does not pertain to the Transition period, but rather to the second or last period of Spanish Romanesque. This is easily seen by the basilica form of the church, the three-lobed apse, the lack of an ambulatory walk, and the apparently similar height of nave and aisles.

The square tower, surmounted by a cupola, at the foot of the church, as well as the entire western front, dates from the eighteenth century; it is cold, anti-artistic, utterly unable to appeal to the poetic instincts of the spectator.

Behind the western front, and leading directly into the body of the church, is a delightful Romanesque narthex which doubtlessly served as the western facade prior to the eighteenth-century additions. It is separated from the princ.i.p.al nave by a door divided into two by a solid pediment, upon which is encrusted a statue of the Virgin with Child in her arms. The semicircular arches which surmount the door are finely executed, and the columns which support them are decorated with handsome twelfth-century statuettes. There is a great similarity between this portal and the princ.i.p.al one (del Obispo) in Toro: it almost seems as though the same hand had chiselled both, or at least traced the plan of their decoration.

Of the two doors which lead, one on the south and the other on the north, into the transept, the former is perhaps the more perfect specimen of the primitive style. Both are richly decorated; unluckily, in both portals, the rounded arches have been crowned in more recent times by an ogival arch, which certainly mars the pureness of the style, though not the harmony of the ensemble.

To the left of these doors, a niche has been carved into the wall to contain a full-length statue of the Virgin; this is an unusual arrangement in Spanish churches.

The exterior of the apse retains its primitive _cachet_; the central chapel, where the high altar is placed, was, however, rebuilt in the sixteenth century by Tavera, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, who had at one time occupied the see of Ciudad Rodrigo. It is a peculiar mixture of Gothic and Romanesque, of pointed windows and heavy b.u.t.tresses; the flat roof is decorated by means of a low stone railing or bal.u.s.trade composed of elegantly carved pinnacles.

To conclude: excepting the western front and the central lobe of the apse, the tower and the ogival arch surmounting the northern and southern portals, the cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo is one of the most perfectly preserved Romanesque buildings to the south of Zamora and Toro. It is less grim and warlike than the two last-named edifices, and yet it is also a fair example of severe and gloomy (though not less artistic!) Castilian Romanesque. Its _croisee_ is not surmounted by the heavy cupola as in Salamanca and elsewhere, and it is perhaps just this suppression or omission which gives the whole building a far less Oriental appearance than the others mentioned heretofore.

In the inside, the choir occupies its usual place. Its stalls, it is believed, were carved by Aleman, the same who probably wrought those superb seats at Plasencia. It is doubtful if the same master carved both, however, but were it so, the stalls at Ciudad Rodrigo would have to be cla.s.sified as older, executed before those we shall examine in a future chapter.

The nave and two aisles, pierced by ogival windows in the clerestory and round-headed windows in the aisles, const.i.tute the church; the _croisee_ is covered by means of a simple ogival vaulting; the arches separating the nave from the aisles are Romanesque, as is the vaulting of the former. It was originally the intention of the chapter to beautify the solemn appearance of the interior by means of a triforium or running gallery. Unluckily, perhaps because of lack of funds, the triforium was never begun excepting that here and there are seen remnants of the primitive tracing.

With the lady-chapel profusely and lavishly ornamented, and quite out of place in this solemn building, there are five chapels, one at the foot of each aisle and two in the apse, to the right and left of the lady-chapel. They all lack art interest, however, as does the actual _retablo_, which replaces the one destroyed by the French; remnants of the latter are to be seen patched up on the cloister walls.

This cloister to the north of the church is a historical monument, for each of the four sides of the square edifice is an architectural page differing from its companions. Studying first the western, then the southern, and lastly the two remaining sides, the student can obtain an idea of how Romanesque principles struggled with Gothic before dying completely out, and how the latter, having reached its apogee, deteriorated into the most lamentable superdecoration before fading away into the naked, straight-lined features of the Renaissance so little compatible with Christian ideals.

VI

CORIA

To the west of Toledo and to the south of the Sierra de Gata, which, with the mountains of Gredo and the Guaderrama, formed in the middle ages a natural frontier between Christians and Moors, lies, in a picturesque and fertile vale about twenty miles distant from the nearest railway station, the little known cathedral town of Coria. It is situated on the northern sh.o.r.es of the Alagon, a river flowing about ten miles farther west into the Tago, near where the latter leaves Spanish territory and enters that of Portugal.