The Cathedrals of Northern Spain Part 6

II

CORUNNA

Corunna, seated on her beautiful bay, the waters of which are ever warmed by the Gulf Stream, gazes out westwards across the turbulent waves of the ocean as she has done for nearly two thousand years.

Brigandtia was her first known name, a centre of the Celtic druid religion. The inhabitants of the town, it is to-day believed, communicated by sea with their brethren in Ireland long before the coming of the Phnicians and Greeks who established a trading post and a tin factory, and built the Tower of Hercules.

The Roman conquest saved Brigandtium from being great before her time.

For the Latin people were miserable sailors, and gazed with awe into the waves of the Atlantic. For them Brigandtia was the last spot in the world, a dangerous spot, to be shunned. So they left her seated on her beautiful bay beside the Torre de Hercules, and made Lugo their capital.

In the shuffling of bishops and sees in the fifth and sixth centuries, Corunna was forgotten. Unimportant, known only for its castle and its tower, it pa.s.sed a useless existence, patiently waiting for a change in its favour.

This change came in the fifteenth century as a result of the discovery of America. Since then, and with varying success, the city has grown in importance, until to-day it is the most wealthy and active of Galicia's towns, and one of the largest seaports on Spain's Atlantic coast.

Its history since the sixteenth century is well known, especially to Englishmen, who, whenever their country had a rupture with Spain, were quick in entering Corunna's bay. From here part of the Invincible Armada sailed one day to fight the Saxons and to be destroyed by a tempest; ten years later England returned the challenge with better luck, and her fleets entered the historical bay and burned the town. During the war with Napoleon, General Moore fought the French in the vicinity and lost his life, whereas a few years earlier an English fleet defeated, just outside the bay, a united French and Spanish squadron.

To-day, the old city on the hill looks down upon the new one below; the former is poetic and artistic, the latter is straight-lined, industrial, and modern. Nevertheless, the aspect of the city denies its age, for it is more modern than many cities that are younger. What is more, tradition does not weigh heavily on its brow, and depress its inhabitants, as is the case in Lugo and Tuy and Santiago. The movement on the wharves, the continual coming and going of vessels of all sizes, commerce, industry, and other delights of modern civilization do not give the citizens leisure to ponder over the city's two thousand years, nor to preoccupy themselves about art problems. Moreover, the tourist who has come to Spain to visit Toledo and Sevilla hurries off inland, gladly leaving Corunna's streets to sailors and to merchants.

There are, nevertheless, two churches well worth a visit; one is the Colegiata (supposed to have been a bishopric for a short time in the thirteenth century) or suffragan church, and the other the Church of Santiago. The latter has a fine Romanesque portal of the twelfth century, reminding one in certain decorative details of the Portico de la Gloria in Santiago. The interior of the building consists of one nave or aisle spanned by a daring vault, executed in the early ogival style; doubtless it was originally Romanesque, as is evidently shown by the capitals of the pillars, and was most likely rebuilt after the terrible fire which broke out early in the sixteenth century.

Santa Maria del Campo is the name of the suffragan church dedicated to the Virgin. The church itself was erected to a suffragan of Santiago in 1441. The date of its erection is doubtful, some authors placing it in the twelfth and others in the thirteenth century. Street, whom we can take as an intelligent guide in these matters, calls it a twelfth-century church, contemporaneous with and perhaps even built by the same architect who built that of Santiago de Campostela. Moreover, the mentioned critic affirms this in spite of a doubtful inscription placed in the vault above the choir, which accuses the building of having been completed in 1307.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF SANTIAGO, CORUNNA]

The primitive plan of the church was doubtless Romanesque, of one nave and two aisles. As in Mondonedo and Lugo, the former is surmounted by an ogival vault, and the aisles, lower in height, are somewhat depressed by the use of Romanesque _plein-cintre_ vaultings. The form of the building is that of a Roman cross with rather short arms; the apse consists of but one chapel, the lady-chapel. As regards the light, it is horrible, for the window in the west is insignificant and, what is more, has recently been blinded, though only Heaven knows why. The towers emerging from the western front are unmeaning, and not similar, which detracts from the harmony of the whole. As regards the different facades, the western has been spoilt quite recently; the northern and southern are, however, Romanesque, though not pure, as ogival arches are used in the decoration of the tympanum.

In other words, the Church of Santiago at Corunna is more important, from an archaeological point of view, than the Colegiata. The fishing folk do not think so, however; they care but little for such secondary details, and their veneration is entirely centred in the suffragan church--"one of the three Virgins," as they call her to whom it is dedicated. To them this particular Mary is the _estrella del mar_ (sea star), and she is the princ.i.p.al object of their devotion. It is strange--be it said in parenthesis--how frequently in Galicia mention is made of stars: they form a most important feature of the country's superst.i.tions. Blood will out--and Celtic mythology peeps through the Christian surface in spite of centuries of true belief.

III

MONDOnEDO

A Village grown to be a city, and yet a village. A city without history or tradition, and a cathedral that has been spoilt by the hand of time, and above all by the hands of luckless artists called upon to rebuild deteriorated parts.

To the north of Lugo, at a respectable distance from the railway which runs from the latter to Corunna, and reached either by means of a stage or on horseback, Mondonedo pa.s.ses a sleeping existence in a picturesque vale surrounded by the greenest of hills. Rarely bothered by the tourist who prefers the train to the stage, it procures for the art lover many moments of delight--that is, if he will but take the trouble to visit the cathedral, the two towers of which loom up in the vale, and though rather too stumpy to be able to lend elegance to the ensemble, add a poetic charm to the valley and to the village itself.

How on earth did it ever occur to any one to raise the church at Mondonedo to a bishopric? Surely the sees in Galicia were badly shuffled; and yet, where can a quieter spot be found in this wide world of ours for the contemplation of a cathedral--and a Romanesque one, to boot!

It is to the Norman vikings that is due the establishment of a see in this lonely valley. Until the sixth century it had been situated in Mindunietum of the Romans, when it was removed to Ribadeo, remaining there until late in the twelfth century. Both these towns were seaports, and both suffered from the cruel incursions and piratical expeditions of the vikings, and so after the total pillage of the church in Ribadeo, the see was removed inland out of harm's way, to a village known by the name of Villamayor or Mondonedo. There it has remained till the present day, ignored by the tourist who "has no time," and who follows the beaten track established by Messrs. Cook and Company, in London.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL VIEW OF MONDOnEDO]

As will have been seen, Mondonedo is a city without history, and without a past; doubtless it will for ever remain a village without a future.

Its doings, its _raison d'etre_, are summed up in the cathedral that stands in its centre, just as in Santiago, though from different motives.

It is, perhaps, the most picturesque spot in Galicia, a gently sloping landscape buried in a violet haze, reminding one of Swiss valleys in the quiet Jura. Besides, the streets are silent and often deserted, the village inn or _fonda_ is neither excellent nor very bad, and as for the villagers, they are happy, simple, and hospitable dawdlers along the paths of this life.

According to a popular belief, the life of one man, a bishop named Don Martin (1219-48), is wrapped up in Mondonedo's cathedral, so much so, in fact, that both their lives are one and the same. He began building his see; he saw it finished and consecrated it--_construxit, consumavit et consacravit_; then he died, but the church and his name lived on.

Modern art critics disagree with the above belief; the older or primitive part of the church dates from the twelfth and not from the thirteenth century. Originally, as can easily be seen upon examining the older part of the building, it was a pure Romanesque basilica, the nave and the two aisles running up to the transept, where they were cut off, and immediately to the east of the latter came the apse with three chapels, the lady-chapel being slightly larger than the lateral ones.

In the primitive construction of the building--and excepting all later-date additions, of which there are more than enough--early Gothic and Romanesque elements are so closely intermingled that one is perforce obliged to consider the monument as belonging to the period of Transition, as being, perhaps, a unique example of this period to be met with in Galicia or even in Spain. Of course, as in the case of the other Galician cathedrals, the original character of the interior, which if it had remained unaltered would be both majestic and imposing, has been greatly deformed by the addition of posterior reforms. The form of the apse has been completely changed by the introduction of an ambulatory or circular apsidal aisle dating at least from the fifteenth century, as shown by the presence of the late Gothic and Renaissance elements.

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

The general plan is rectangular, 120 feet long by seventy-one wide, and seen from the outside is solid rather than elegant, a fortress rather than a temple. The height of the nave, crowned by a Gothic vaulting, is about forty-five feet; a triforium (ogival) runs around the top. The lateral aisles are slightly more than half as high and covered by a Romanesque vaulting reposing on capitals and shafts of the finest twelfth century execution.

The original basilica form of the church has, unluckily, been altered by the additional length given to the arms of the transept, and, as mentioned already, by the ambulatory walk characteristic of Spanish cathedrals; the workmanship of the latter, though lamentably out of tune in this old cathedral, is, taken by itself, better than many similar additions in other churches.

The western facade, which is the only one worthy of contemplation, is as good an example of Romanesque, spoilt by the addition at a recent date of grotesque and bizarre figures and monsters, as can be seen anywhere.

The b.u.t.tresses are more developed than in either Lugo or Santiago, and though these bodies, from a decorative point of view, were evidently intended to give a certain seal of elegance to the ensemble, the stunted towers and the few windows in the body of the church only help to heighten its fortress-like aspect.

In a previous paragraph it has been stated that this cathedral is perhaps a unique example of the period of Transition (Romanesque and early Gothic). It is an opinion shared by many art critics, but personally the author of these lines is inclined to consider it as an example of the Galician conservative spirit, and of the fight that was made in cathedral chapters _against_ the introduction of early Gothic.

For the temple at Santiago was Romanesque; therefore, according to the narrow reasoning peculiar to Galicia, that style was the _best_ and consequently _good enough_ for any other church. As a result, we have in this region of Spain a series of cathedrals which are practically Romanesque, but into the structure of which ogival elements have filtered. Further, as there is no existing example of a finished Gothic church in Galicia, it is rather difficult to speak of a period of Transition, by which is meant the period of pa.s.sing from one style to another. In Galicia, there was no pa.s.sing: the conservative spirit of the country, the poetry of the Celtic inhabitants, and above all of their artists, found greater pleasure in Romanesque than in Gothic, and consequently the cathedrals are Romanesque, with slight Gothic additions, when these could combine or submit in arrangement to the heavier Romanesque principles of architecture.

Later, in other centuries, the spirit of architecture had completely died out in Spain, and the additions made in these days are so many lamentable signs of decadence. Not so the ogival introduction in Romanesque churches, which in many cases improved the Romanesque appearance.

IV

LUGO

What Santiago was as regards ecclesiastical politics, Lugo, one of the three cities on the Mino River, was as regards civil power. It was the nominal capital of Galicia, and at one time, in the reign of Alfonso the Chaste, it was intended to make it the capital of the nascent Spanish kingdom, but for some reason or other Oviedo was chosen instead as being more suitable. Since then the city of Lugo has completely fallen into ruins and insignificance.

It first appears in history when the Romans conquered it from the Celts.

It was their capital and their Holy City; in its centre was Lupa's Bower, where the Romans built a magnificent temple to Diana. Some mosaics of this edifice have been discovered recently, and the peculiar designs prove beyond a doubt that the mythological attributions of the Celts were made use of and intermingled with those of the Latin race--not at all a strange occurrence, as Lupa and Diana seem to have enjoyed many common qualities.

Under the Roman rule, the city walls, remains of which are still standing in many places, were erected, and Locus Augusti became the capital of the northern provinces.

All through the middle ages, when really Oviedo had usurped its civil, and Santiago its religious significance, Lugo was still considered as being the capital of Galicia, a stronghold against Arab incursions, and a hotbed of unruly n.o.blemen who lost no opportunity in striking a blow for liberty against the encroaching power of the neighbouring kingdom of Asturias, and later on of Leon. When at last the central power of the Christian kings was firmly established in Leon and Castile, in Lugo the famous message of adhesion to the dynasty of the Alfonsos was voted, and the kingdom of Galicia, like that of Asturias, faded away, the shadow of a name without even the right to have its coat of arms placed on the national escutcheon.

The ecclesiastical history of the city of Lugo is neither interesting nor does it differ from that of other Galician towns. Erected to a see in the fifth century, its cathedral was a primitive basilica destroyed by the Moors in one of their powerful northern raids in the eighth century. The legendary bishop Odoario lost no time in building a second basilica, which met the same fate about two hundred years later, in the tenth century. Alfonso the Chaste, one of the few kings of Asturias to take a lively interest in Galician politics, ordered either the reconstruction of the old basilica or the erection of a new temple.

Those were stormy times for the city: between the rise and stand of ambitious n.o.blemen, who, pretending to fight for Galicia's freedom, fought for their own interests, and the continual encroachments of the proud prelates on the rights and privileges of the people, barely a year pa.s.sed without Lugo being the scene of street fights or sieges. As in Santiago, one prince of the Church lost his life, murdered by the faithful (_sic_) flocks, and many, upon coming to take possession of their see, found the city gates locked in their faces, and were obliged to conquer the cathedral before entering their palace.

The new basilica suffered in consequence, and had to be entirely rebuilt in the twelfth century. The new edifice is the one standing to-day, but how changed from the primitive building! Thanks to graceless additions in all possible styles and combinations of styles, the Romanesque origin is hardly recognizable. Consequently, the cathedral church of Lugo, which otherwise might have been an architectural jewel, does not inspire the visitor with any of those sentiments that ought to be the very essence of time-worn religious edifices of all kinds.

The general disposition of the church is Roman cruciform; the arms of the cross are exceedingly short, however, in comparison to their height; the _croisee_ is surmounted by a semicircular vaulting (Spanish Romanesque).