The Story of Seville Part 1

The Story of Seville.

by Walter M. Gallichan.

PREFACE

In the story of Seville I have endeavoured to interest the reader in the a.s.sociations of the buildings and the thoroughfares of the city.

I do not claim to have written a full history of Seville, though I have sketched the salient events in its annals in the opening chapters of this book. The history of Seville is the history of Spain, and if I have omitted many matters of historical importance from my pages, it is because I wished to focus attention upon the city itself. I trust that I have succeeded in awaking here and there an echo of the past, and in bringing before the imagination the figures of Moorish potentate or sage, and of Spanish ruler, artist, priest and soldier.

Those who are acquainted with the history of Spain will appreciate the difficulty that besets the historian in the matter of chronological accuracy, and even in a narration of many of the main events. The chronicles of the Roman, Gothic and Moorish epochs are hardly accepted as reliable. Patriotic bias and religious enthusiasm are elements that frequently mislead in the making of history, though the Spaniard is not alone in the commission of error in this respect.

Seville abounds with human interest. The city may at the first glance slightly disappoint the visitor, but he cannot wander far without a growing sense of its fascination. Most of the noteworthy buildings are hidden amidst narrow alleys, for the designers of the city have shown great economy in utilising s.p.a.ce. It is therefore difficult to gain large general views of Seville, unless one ascends the Giralda, while the obtrusion of modern dwelling-houses and stores often mars the view of fine public edifices. But the modernity of Seville seldom strikes one as wholly out of place and in sharp contrast to the ancient monuments.

The plan is Morisco, and the impression conveyed is partly Moorish and partly mediaeval. In a word, Seville brings us at every step closely in touch with antiquity.

For the chapters on the Artists of Seville I am indebted to C. Gasquoine Hartley (Mrs. Walter M. Gallichan), who has devoted much study to the art of Spain. The drawings by Miss Elizabeth Hartley were prepared while I was gathering material for the book in Seville, and the ill.u.s.trations will be found to refer to the text. I have also to thank my brother, Mr.

F. H. Gallichan, for his plan of the city.

The frontispiece photograph of Goya's picture of SS. Justa and Rufina was reproduced in the _Art Journal_ as an ill.u.s.tration to an article on "Goya" by C. Gasquoine Hartley. My thanks are due to Messrs. Virtue & Company for permission to reproduce the picture in this book.

WALTER M. GALLICHAN.

THE CRIMBLES, YOULGREAVE, BAKEWELL, _August 20, 1903_.

CHAPTER I

_Romans, Goths and Moors_

'The sound, the sight Of turban, girdle, robe, and scimitar And tawny skins, awoke contending thoughts Of anger, shame and anguish in the Goth.'

ROBERT SOUTHEY, _Roderick_.

Seville the sunny, the gem of Andalusia, is a city in the midst of a vast garden. Within its ancient walls, the vine, the orange tree, the olive, and the rose flourish in all open s.p.a.ces, while every _patio_, or court, has its trellises whereon flowers blossom throughout the year.

Spreading palms overshadow the public squares and walks, and the banks of the brown Guadalquivir are densely clothed with an Oriental verdure.

The surrounding country of the Province of Sevilla, _La Tierra de Maria Santisima_, is flat, and in the neighbourhood of the city spa.r.s.ely wooded. On the low hills of Italica and San Juan de Aznalfarache, the Hisn-al-Faradj of the Moors, olive groves cover many thousands of acres.

The plain is a _parterre_ of wide grain fields, and meadows of rife gra.s.s, divided by straight white roads, with their trains of picturesque mule teams and waggons, and their rows of tall, straight trees. Here and there the cold grey cactus serves as a fence, but there is no other kind of hedgerow.

Far away, across the yellow wheatfields, and beyond the vine-clad slopes of the middle distance, rise the huge shoulders and purple peaks of wild sierras.

The Guadalquivir, rolling and eddying in a wide bed, takes its tint from the light soil and sand, and is always turbid, as though in spate. Below Seville, on the left bank of the river, stretch the great salt marshes, or Marismas, haunted by the stork, the heron, and innumerable wildfowl.

Here, among the arms of the tidal water, the cotton plant is cultivated.

Winter floods are a source of danger to Seville, especially when a south-west wind is blowing and the tide ascending the river. Then the Guadalquivir overflows its banks and deluges the town and the flat land, drowning live stock and destroying buildings. In 1595 and 1626 occurred two of the worst floods, or _avenidas_, on record. The flood of 1626 washed away the foundations of about three thousand houses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Guadalquivir]

It is probable that the southern kingdom of Andalusia derived its name from the Vandals, who overran the country after the Roman occupation.

The region was then known as Vandalitia, or Vandalusia. Lower Andalusia has been said to be the Tarshish of the Bible. The Phnicians called the land Tartessus, or Tartessii. Nowadays Andalusia includes the provinces of Sevilla, Huelva, Cadiz, Cordova, Jaen, Granada and Almeria, and has a population of over three millions. Seville is the capital, the seat of an archbishop, and a university town. The traveller from Northern Europe will feel the spirit of Spain upon him as he approaches Seville from Cadiz or Cordova through a semi-tropical country under a burning blue sky. He will note everywhere the influence of the Arab in the architecture of modern public buildings, churches and dwelling-houses, in the tortuous, narrow streets, in the features, language, music and garb of the people, and in many of the customs of the district. The character of the landscape is strange, the atmosphere vivid, and the distant objects show sharply against the horizon. For leagues he will traverse groves of olive, or vineyards, and pa.s.s across wastes purple with the flower of the lavender or scarlet with poppies.

Seville of to-day is white, clean and bright. Gautier noted that the shadows of the houses in the narrow thoroughfares are blue, in contrast to the white of the dazzling buildings at noon. During the _siesta_ of the hot months, the streets are deserted daily for about four hours, shutters screen the rooms from the blinding sunshine, and awnings are drawn across the roofs of the _patios_. In the evening the town awakens, and the _plazas_ and alleys are thronged and gay until two in the morning. Everyone endeavours to lead an _al fresco_ life, and to conserve physical energy in this city of eternal sunshine. Unlike Toledo and Avila, where the houses are sombre and the doors heavy and barred, as though the towns were inhospitable, Seville opens wide the gates of its beautiful courts so that the pa.s.ser-by may peep within.

'Seville is a fine town,' wrote Lord Byron, in a letter, during his stay in Spain in 1809. We may regret that he had so little to say about the fascinating capital. George Borrow, who lived for a time in the Plazuela de la Pila Seca, near the Cathedral, speaks in rapturous phrases of the view of Seville and the Guadalquivir. 'Cold, cold must the heart be which can remain insensible to the beauties of this magic scene, to do justice to which the pencil of Claude himself were barely equal. Often have I shed tears of rapture whilst I beheld it, and listened to the thrush and the nightingale piping their melodious songs in the woods, and inhaled the breeze laden with the perfume of the thousand orange gardens of Seville.'

The city is rich in antiquities, in historic buildings a.s.sociated with ill.u.s.trious names, in works of art and in sumptuous palaces. A great company of the spirits of famous kings, warriors, explorers, authors, painters and priests spring up in the imagination as one stands in the aisles of the splendid Cathedral, or dreams amid the roses and the tinkling fountains of the secluded gardens of the Alcazar. Here, to this prized and fertile territory of southernmost Spain, came Publius Cornelius Scipio and Cato. Trajan, Hadrian and Theodosius were born at the municipium of Italica, a few miles from modern Seville. El Begi, 'the most accomplished scholar of Spain,' spent the greater part of his life in the city.

San Isidoro and San Leandro lived here. Moorish monarchs and Christian sovereigns ruled from the palace, and in their turn attacked and defended the fair city. The figures crowd before the mind's eye--Ferdinand III., who redeemed the town from the Moriscoes, Alfonso (_El Sabio_) the Learned, Pedro I. the Cruel, and Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic. We see the fair, blue-eyed Genoese youth, Christoforo Colombo, or Columbus, the maker of the modern prosperity of Seville, who, after achieving fame, was alternately petted and punished by his sovereigns. We picture the triumphant return of Hernando Pizarro to the city, with half a million pesos of gold, and a great treasure of silver.

Lope de Rueda, 'the real father of the Spanish theatre,' a gold-worker of Seville; Fernando de Herrera, the poet; the mighty Cervantes, who spent three years of his life in the Andalusian capital; Velazquez, Zurbaran, Roelas, Murillo and minor artists of note were either born in the city or closely a.s.sociated with it.

For the present we must take a look back into the dim and remote period when the Phnicians came to wrest the soil of Southern Spain from the race of mingled Celtic and Iberian blood. It is at this uncertain date that the history of Seville may be said to begin.

We learn from the historians of Phnicia that the shrewd, practical and industrious people of that marvellous ancient civilisation were great colonisers. 'The south of Spain,' writes Professor George Rawlinson, 'was rich in metallic treasures, and yielded gold, silver, copper, iron, lead and tin.' In their quest for valuable metal, certain Phnician explorers discovered the Peninsula of Iberia, and in the mineral-yielding region watered by the Guadalquivir they founded the colony of Tartessii. Doubt exists whether Tartessii was the name given to the plains of the Guadalquivir or to a town. Strabo, Mela and Pliny state that the Phnicians built a town and called it Tartessus. Was this town the foundation of Seville? No one will attempt to give an authoritative answer, though it has been stated that the town was not Cadiz, the Gades of the Phnicians. Two cities of considerable importance appear to have been the marts of the Phnician _Sephela_, or plain, and it is not wholly improbable that Seville was one of them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Roman Walls]

In the choice of new territory for the development of mining and agriculture, the enterprising colonists displayed much intelligence.

They settled upon a soil that will bring forth richly without artificial stimulation.

The hill ranges produced vines and olive trees, yielding fine wine and ample oil. Tunny and other fish were plentiful in the sea, and the rivers afforded large eels.

This is all that can be known of the Phnician colony in Southern Spain. We are beginning to tread upon firmer historic ground when Hamilcar Barca landed at Cadiz in 237 B.C., after a series of victories in Africa, and subdued Andalusia. Hasdrubal, son-in-law of the conqueror, was the founder of Cartagena, or New Carthage, the centre of Carthaginian rule in Spain, and the wealthiest city of the Peninsula.

But during the second Punic War the Romans invaded Iberia, and gained all the eastern coast from New Carthage to the Pyrenees. Plutarch says that Publius Cornelius Scipio came to Spain with eleven thousand soldiers, seized Cartagena, reduced Cadiz, and founded the city of Italica, near Seville. Hispalis was the Roman name given to the city on the Guadalquivir until Caesar changed the name to Julia Romula. The city then became the capital of Roman Spain, a centre of industry, and a fortress. A splendid aqueduct, which has partly endured to this day, was constructed to bring a plentiful supply of water from the hills. The aqueduct was extended by the Almohades in 1172, and forms one of the interesting monuments of the Roman and Arab colonisers. Around the city were reared high walls, with watch towers, and many strong gates. It is said that the walls of Seville were five miles in length, and it has been stated that they were once ten miles long. Within the gates were palaces, temples to the honour of the Sun, Hercules, Bacchus and Venus, and other fine edifices.

Under Augustus, Spain was part of the Roman Empire. In Seville the rule of the conquerors was beneficent, and the original inhabitants were fairly governed, while the city was extended and new crafts introduced.

Under the Romans, Christianity came to the Peninsula, and Seville was made the seat of a bishop. The remaining portions of the great aqueduct, the wall, the two high granite columns in the Alameda de Hercules, with the statues of Julius Caesar and Hercules upon them, the shafts of the columns discovered in the Calle Abades, and the beautiful fragments of capitals and statues in the Museo Arqaelogico are the chief vestiges of Seville in the days of the Romans. At Urbs Italica, 'the camp of the Italians,' there still exists a gra.s.s-grown, mouldered amphitheatre, the only remnant of a mighty town.

Built on the slopes once dotted with the tents of the aboriginal hamlet of Sancios, Italica lies about five miles to the west of Seville, amid olive gardens and wheatfields. The circus is a ruin; but the pa.s.sages can be followed below the tiers of seats, and one may peer into the dens once tenanted by the lions and other fierce beasts. Bees hum amongst the wild thyme, lizards creep on the worn stones, and a tethered a.s.s grazes in the arena. The glory of Rome has departed; the plaudits from those deserted and gra.s.sy seats have not been heard for centuries; and blood has ceased to redden the floor, where fragrant herbs now spring and b.u.t.terflies sun themselves on fallen masonry. Here is all that is left of Italica, the home of Trajan and Hadrian, and the asylum for Scipio's aged warriors. For a period the decaying town was known as Old Seville, and tons of its masonry were removed to build Seville the New.

Rome fell, and the Silingi Vandals swarmed into the country, captured Hispalis, and made it the seat of their empire. This period in the history of Seville is dark, and beset with difficulty for the annalist.

About the year 520 a great horde of Goths spread over Andalusia. They seized the Vandal capital, but afterwards established a new capital of their own at Toledo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Pillars of Hercules and Julius Ceasar]

Amalaric was the first of the Gothic monarchs who sat on the throne in Seville. He reigned probably from about the year 522. Theudis ruled in Seville (531 to 548), and we read that he was murdered there after an attempt to expel the Byzantine troops of Justinian from Africa.

Theudisel, or Theudigisel, was general to Theudis, whom he succeeded as ruler at Seville. Theudisel shared the fate of his predecessor on the throne. After a reign of eighteen months, he was killed by the sword-thrusts of a dozen n.o.bles of his retinue, while taking supper in his palace. This 'monster of licentiousness' was wont to kill all women who repelled his addresses, and his a.s.sa.s.sination was a work of vengeance on the part of outraged fathers and husbands among his courtiers.

Schlegel says the Goths were ready converts to Christianity, but 'in the Arian form.' At a later period of their supremacy in Spain there came a wider adherence to orthodox Catholicism, and the civil power was largely in the hands of the bishops and clergy. The most influential bishop of this day was Saint Isidore (San Isidoro) who held office in Seville. His brothers, Leander and Fulgentius, were also prelates, and his sister, Florentina, was made a saint. Saint Leander was the elder brother of Isidore, and through him the youth received his education after the death of his parents. The pupil was earnest and diligent in his studies, and as he grew to manhood he zealously a.s.sisted his brother, who then held the See of Seville, in converting the Goths from the heresy of Arius.

Dissensions between the orthodox and the Arians caused great strife and family bitterness among the ruling cla.s.s. During the reign of King Leovigild rebellions broke out in Castile and Leon. The leader of the rebels was Leovigild's own son, Ermenigild, who had married Ingunda, daughter of Brunichilda and of Sigebert. Ingunda professed the orthodox faith, while Gosvinda, the second wife of Leovigild, was of the Arian sect. A rivalry arose between the two dames. According to Gregory of Tours, Gosvinda determined that Ingunda should be compelled to embrace the heterodox creed. One day when the two disputants were together, engaged in hot controversy, the fanatical Gosvinda gripped Ingunda by the hair of her head, threw her to the ground, trod upon her, and bade an Arian priest baptize the prostrate woman.