The Cathedrals of Northern Spain Part 22

The Transition style--between the strong Romanesque and the airy ogival--is the city's _cachet_, printed with particular care on the handsome cathedral which stands on the slope of the hill to the north of the castle.

Two ma.s.sive square towers, crenelated at the top and pierced by a few round-headed windows, flank the western front. The three portals are ma.s.sive Romanesque without floral or sculptural decoration of any kind; the central door is larger and surmounted by a large though primitive rosace. The height of the aisles and nave is indicated by three ogival arches cut in relief on the facade; here already the mixture of both styles, of the round-arched Romanesque and the pointed Gothic, is clearly visible--as it is also in the windows of the aisles, which are Romanesque, and of the nave, which are ogival--in the b.u.t.tresses, which are leaning on the lower body, and flying in the upper story, uniting the exterior of the clerestory with that of the aisles. (Compare with apse of the cathedral of Lugo.)

The portal of the southern arm of the transept is an ugly addition, more modern and completely out of harmony with the rest. The rosace above the door is one of the handsomest of the Transition period in Spain, and the stained gla.s.s is both rich and mellow.

The interior shows the same harmonious mixture of the stronger and more solemn old style, and the graceful lightness of the newer. But the hesitancy in the mind of the architect is also evident, especially in the vaulting, which is timidly arched.

The original plan of the church was, doubtless, purely Romanesque: Roman cruciform with a three-lobed apse, the central one much longer so as to contain the high altar.

In the sixteenth century, however, an ambulatory was constructed behind the high altar, joining the two aisles, and the high altar was removed to the east of the transept.

What a pity that the huge choir, placed in the centre of the church, should so completely obstruct the view of the ensemble of the nave and aisles, separated by ma.s.sive Byzantine arches between the solid pillars, which, in their turn, support the nascent ogival vaulting of the high nave! Were it, as well as the grotesque _trascoro_--of the unhappiest artistic taste--anywhere but in the centre of the church, what a splendid view would be obtained of the long, narrow, and high aisles and nave in which the old and the new were moulded together in perfect harmony, instead of fighting each other and clashing together, as happened in so many Spanish cathedral churches!

One of the most richly decorated parts of the church is the sacristy, a small room entirely covered with medallions and sculptural designs of the greatest variety of subjects. Though of Arabian taste (_Mudejar_), no Moorish elements have entered into the composition, and consequently it is one of the very finest, if not the very best specimen, of Christian Arab decoration.

VI

CUENCA

To the east of Toledo, and to the north of the plains of La Mancha, Cuenca sits on its steep hill surrounded by mountains; a high stone bridge, spanning a green valley and the rushing river, joined the city to a mountain plateau; to-day the mediaeval bridge has been replaced by an iron one, which contrasts harshly with the somnolent aspect of the landscape.

Never was a city founded in a more picturesque spot. It almost resembles Goschenen in Switzerland, with the difference that whereas in the last named village a white-washed church rears its spire skyward, in Cuenca a large cathedral, rich in decorative accessories, and yet sombre and severe in its wealth, occupies the most prominent place in the town.

Of the origin of the city nothing is known. In the tenth and the eleventh centuries Conca was an impregnable Arab fortress. In 1176 the united armies of Castile and Aragon, commanded by two sovereigns, Alfonso VIII. of Castile and Alfonso II. of Aragon, laid siege to the fortress, and after nine months' patience, the Alcazar surrendered.

According to the popular tradition, it was won by treachery: one Martin Alhaxa, a captive and a shepherd by trade, introduced the Christians disguised with sheepskins into the city through a postern gate.

As the conquest of Cuenca had cost the King of Castile such trouble (his Aragonese partner had not waited to see the end of the siege), and as he was fully conscious of its importance as a strategical outpost against Aragon to the north and against the Moors to the south and east, he laid special stress on the city's being strongly fortified; he also gave special privileges to such Christians as would repopulate, or rather populate, the nascent town. A few years later Pone Lucio III. raised the church to an episcopal see, appointing Juan Yanez, a Tolesian Muzarab, to be its first bishop (1183).

Unlike Siguenza, a feudal possession of the bishop, Cuenca belonged exclusively to the monarch of Castile; the castle was consequently held in the sovereign's name by a governor,--at one time there were even four who governed simultaneously. Between these governors and the inhabitants of the city, fights were numerous, especially during the first half of the fifteenth century, the darkest and most ign.o.ble period of Castilian history.

The story is told of one Dona Inez de Barrientos, granddaughter of a bishop on her mother's side, and of a governor on that of her father. It appears that her husband had been murdered by some of the wealthiest citizens of the town. Feigning joy at her spouse's death, the widow invited the murderers to her house to a banquet, when, "_despues de opipara cena_ (after an excellent dinner), they pa.s.sed from the lethargy of drunkenness to the sleep of eternity, a.s.sa.s.sinated by hidden servants." The following morning their bodies hung from the windows of the palace, and provoked not anger but silent dread and shivers among the terror-stricken inhabitants.

With the Inquisition, the siege by the English in 1706, the invasion of the French in 1808, Cuenca rapidly lost all importance and even political significance. To-day it is one of the many picturesque ruins that offer but little interest to the art traveller, for even its old age is degenerated, and the monuments of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries have one and all been spoilt by the hand of time, and by the less grasping hand of _restauradores_--or architect-repairers.

The Byzantine character, the Arab taste of the primitive inhabitants, has also been lost. Who would think, upon examining the cathedral, that it had served once upon a time as the princ.i.p.al Arab mosque? Entirely rebuilt, as were most of the primitive Arab houses, it has lost all traces of the early founders, more so than in other cities where the Arabs remained but a few years.

The patron saint of Cuenca is San Julian, one of the cathedral's first bishops, who led a saintly life, giving all he had and taking nothing that was not his, and who retired from his see to live the humble life of a basket-maker, seated with willow branches beneath the arches of the high bridge, and preaching saintly words to teamsters and mule-drivers as they approached the city, until his death in 1207.

In the same century the Arab mosque was torn down and the new cathedral begun. It is a primitive ogival (Spanish) temple of the thirteenth century, with smatterings of Romanesque-Byzantine. Unlike the cathedral of Siguenza, it is neither elegant, harmonious, nor of great architectural value; its wealth lies chiefly in the chapels, in the doors which lead to the cloister, in the sacristy, and in the elegant high altar.

The cloister door is perhaps one of the finest details of the cathedral church: decorated in the plateresque style general in Spain in the sixteenth century, it offers one of the finest examples of said style to be found anywhere, and though utterly different in ornamentation to the sacristy of Siguenza, it nevertheless resembles it in the general composition.

The nave, exceedingly high, is decorated by a blind triforium of ogival arches; the aisles are sombre and lower than the nave. On the other hand, the transept, broad and simple, is similar to the nave and as long as the width of the church, including the lateral chapels. The _croisee_ is surmounted by a _cimborio_, insignificant in comparison to those of Salamanca, Zamora, and Toro.

The northern and southern extremities of the transept differ from each other as regard style. The southern has an ogival portal surmounted by a rosace; the northern, one that is plateresque, the rounded arch, delicately decorated, reposing on Corinthian columns.

The eastern end of the church has been greatly modified--as is clearly seen by the mixture of fifteenth-century styles, and not to the advantage of the ensemble. Byzantine pillars, and even horseshoe arches, mingle with Gothic elements.

Of the chapels, the greater number are richly decorated, not only with sepulchres and sepulchral works, but with paintings, some of them by well-known masters.

Taken all in all, the cathedral of Cuenca does not inspire any of the sentiments peculiar to religious temples. Not the worst cathedral in Spain, by any means, neither as regards size nor majesty, it nevertheless lacks conviction, as though the artist who traced the primitive plan miscalculated its final appearance. The additions, due to necessity or to the ruinous state of some of the parts, were luckless, as are generally all those undertaken at a posterior date.

The decorative wealth of the chapels, which is really astonishing in so small a town, the luxurious display of grotesque elements, the presence of a fairly good _transparente_, as well as the rich leaf-decoration of Byzantine pillars and plateresque arches, give a peculiar _cachet_ to this church which is not to be found elsewhere.

The same can be said of the city and of the inhabitant. In the words of an authority, "Cuenca is national, it is Spanish, it is a typical rural town." Yet, it is so typical, that no other city resembles it.

VII

TOLEDO

A forest of spires and _alminar_ towers rising from a roof-covered hill to pierce the distant azure sky; a ruined cemetery surrounded on three sides by the rushing Tago as it cuts out a foaming path through foothills, and stretching away on the fourth toward the snow-capped Sierra de Gredo in the distance, beyond the fruitful prairies and the intervening plains of New Castile.

Such is Toledo, the famous, the wonderful, the legend-spun primate city of all the Spains, the former wealthy capital of the Spanish Empire!

Madrid usurped all her civic honours under the reign of Philip II., he who lost the Armada and built the Escorial. Since then Toledo, like Alcala de Henares, Segovia, and Burgos, has dragged along a forlorn existence, frozen in winter and scorched in summer, and visited at all times of the year by gaping tourists of all nationalities.

Even the approach to the city from the mile distant station is peculiarly characteristic. Seated in an old and shaky omnibus, pulled by four thrashed mules, and followed along the dusty road by racing beggars, who whine their would-be French, "_Un p'it sou, mouchieur_,"

with surprising alacrity and a melancholy smile in their big black eyes, the visitor is driven sharply around a bluff, when suddenly Toledo, the mysterious, comes into sight, crowning the opposite hill.

At a canter the mules cross the bridge of Alcantara and pa.s.s beneath the gateway of the same name, a ponderous structure still guarding the time-rusty city as it did centuries ago when Toledo was the Gothic metropolis. Up the winding road, beneath the solemn and fire-devastated walls of the Alcazar, the visitor is hurriedly driven along; he disappears from the burning sunlight into a gloomy labyrinth of ill-paved streets to emerge a few minutes later in the princ.i.p.al square.

A shoal of yelling, gesticulating interpreters literally grab at the tourist, and in ten seconds exhaust their vocabulary of foreign words.

At last one walks triumphantly off beside the newcomer, while the others, with a depreciative shrug of the shoulders and extinguishing their volcanic outburst of energy, loiter around the square smoking cigarettes.

It does not take the visitor long to notice that he is in a great archaeological museum. The streets are crooked and narrow, so narrow that the tiny patch of sky above seems more brilliant than ever and farther away, while on each side are gloomy houses with but few windows, and monstrous, nail-studded doors. At every turn a church rears its head, and the cheerless spirit of a palace glares with a sadly vacant stare from behind wrought-iron _rejas_ and a complicated stone-carved blazon.

Rarely is the door opened; when it is, the pa.s.ser catches a glimpse of a sun-bathed courtyard, gorgeously alive with light and many flowers. The effect produced by the sudden contrast between the joyless street and the sunny garden, whose existence was never dreamt of, is delightful and never to be forgotten; from Theophile Gautier, who had been in Northern Africa, land of Mohammedan harems, it wrung the piquant exclamation: "The Moors have been here!"

Every stick, stone, mound, house, lantern, and what not has its legend.

In this humble _posada_, Cervantes, whose ancestral castle is on yonder bluff overlooking the Tago, wrote his "_Il.u.s.tre Fregona_." The family history of yonder fortress-palace inspired Zorilla's romantic pen, and a thousand and one other objects recall the past,--the past that is Toledo's present and doubtless will have to be her future.

Gone are the days when Tolaitola was a peerless jewel, for which Moors and Christians fought, until at last the Believers of the True Faith drove back the Arabs who fled southward from whence they had emerged.

Long closed are also the famous smithies, where swords--Tolesian blades they were then called--were hammered so supple that they could bend like a watchspring, so strong they could cleave an anvil, and so sharp they could cut an eiderdown pillow in twain without displacing a feather.

Distant, moreover, are the nights of _capa y espada_ and of miracles wrought by the Virgin; dwindled away to a meagre shadow is the princely magnificence of the primate prelates of all the Spains, of those spiritual princes who neither asked the Pope's advice nor received orders from St. Peter at Rome. Besides, of the two hundred thousand souls proud to be called sons of Toledo in the days of Charles-Quint, but seventeen thousand inhabitants remain to-day to guard the nation's great city-museum, unsullied as yet by progress and modern civilization, by immense advertis.e.m.e.nts and those other necessities of daily life in other climes.

The city's history explains the mixture of architectural styles and the bizarre modifications introduced in Gothic, Byzantine, or Arab structures.

Legends accuse Toledo of having been mysteriously founded long before the birth of Rome on her seven hills. To us, however, it first appears in history as a Roman stronghold, capital of one of Hispania's provinces.

St. James, as has been seen, roamed across this peninsula; he came to Toledo. So delighted was he with the site and the people--saith the tradition--that he ordained that the city on the Tago should contain the primate church of all the Spains.