CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO The choir stallsPhoto by J. Lacoste, MadridCATHEDRAL OF TOLEDOThe choir stalls
Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDOThe choir stalls
To the north rises the spire which commands the city and the Cathedral of Toledo. It was begun in 1380 and completed in sixty years,—no long time when we take into account its size and detail and the{141}carefulness of its construction. Rodrigo Alfonso and Alvar Gomez were the architects, and the Cardinals Pedro Tenorio and Tavera directed the work. Although it lacks the soaring grace of the towers of Burgos, it possesses quiet strength and a majestic dignity, and the transitions between its various stories have been executed with a skill scarcely less than that shown in the older tower of Chartres. It is in fact full of a character of its own. Divided into three parts, it rises to a height of some three hundred feet and terminates in a huge cross. The principal building material is the hard but easily carved Berroqueña granite, with certain portions finished in marble and slate. The lower part, which is square, has its faces pierced by interlacing Gothic arches, windows of different shapes, ornamental coats-of-arms and marble medallions. It is crowned by a railing and, at the corners where the transition to the hexagon occurs, by stone pyramids. The central part is hexagonal in plan and ornamented by arches and crocketed finials. Above it rises the slate spire terminating under the cross in a conical pyramid, added after a fire in the year 1662. The spire is curiously and uniquely encircled by three collars of pointed iron spikes, intended to symbolize the crowns of thorns.
The great bells of the Cathedral peal from this tower, among them the huge San Eugenio, better known, though, by the name "Campana gorda," or the Big-bellied Bell, weighing 1543 arobes (about 17 tons) and put up the same day it was cast in the year 1753. Its fame is shown by the old lines, which enumerate the wonders of Spain as the—{142}
Campana la de Toledo,Iglesia la de Leon,Reloj el de Benavente,Rollos los de Villalon.[12]
Fifteen shoemakers could sit under it and draw out their cobbler's thread without touching each other. A legend relates that "the sound of it reached, when first it was rung, even to heaven. Saint Peter fancied that the tones came from his own church in Rome, but on ascertaining that this was not the case, and that Toledo possessed the largest of all bells, he got angry and flung down one of his keys upon it, thus causing a crack in the bell which is still to be seen."
Not only does the hoarse croak of Gorda's voice remind the tardy worshiper of the approaching hour of prayer, but it tells each and all of the "barrio" where the fire is raging. Though the prudent Toledan may not know the art of signing his name or reading his Pater Noster, full well he knows, whenever Gorda speaks, whether the danger is at his own door or at his neighbor's.
The lower portion of the façade between the towers is composed of a fine triple portal dating from 1418 to 1450, which, despite later changes, is still an excellent piece of Gothic work. It contains over seventy statues. Above, the façade is composed of an ornamental screen inexpressive of the structure and the internal arrangement of the edifice. A railing separated the "lonja," or enclosure immediately in front{143}of the entrances, from the street outside. The central entrance is the Gate of Pardon; to the north is the Gate of the Tower, also called the Gate of Hell; to the south is the Gate of the Scriveners or of Judgment. The middle door is the largest and most important. For centuries the steps leading to it have been climbed and descended by the pregnant women of Toledo, to insure an easy parturition.
The doors themselves are covered with most interesting bronze work, showing how far the Spaniards had in later centuries developed the art of their skillful Saracenic predecessors. The arch of the Gate of Pardon is exquisitely formed and its moldings and recesses are profusely decorated with finely chiseled figures and ornaments. Each of the three doors is surmounted by a relief, that over the Pardon representing the Virgin presenting the chasuble to Saint Ildefonso, who is kneeling at her feet.
The Scriveners' Gate derives its name from having been the door of entry for the scriveners when they came to the Cathedral to take their oath, but, though they had a gate for their own particular use, they did not seem to enjoy an especially good reputation. According to an old verse, their pen and paper would drop from their hands to dance an independent fandango long before their souls ever entered the Kingdom of Heaven.
Above the door is an inscription commemorative of the great exploits of the Catholic Sovereigns and Cardinal Mendoza and of the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Sicily.
The principal feature above the doors is a classical gable which extends the whole width of the façade, its{144}field filled with colossal pieces of sculpture representing the Last Supper. Our Lord and the Apostles are seated, each in his own niche. It recalls the carving over the northeast entrance of Notre Dame du Puy. Nothing could be more ineffective and out of place than to crown this portion of the Gothic building with a Greek gable end. Finally, above the gable, with a curious pair of arches built out in front of it, comes a circular rose almost thirty feet in diameter, of early fourteenth-century work, this again being surmounted by late eighteenth-century Baroque additions.
There are two doorways on the south side. The Gate of the Lions, which forms the southern termination to the transept, is of course named from the lions standing over the enclosing rail directly in front of it, each supporting its shield. Here you have a bit of the finest work of the exterior, a most exquisite specimen of the Gothic work of the fifteenth century. Its detail and finish are remarkable, and few pieces of Spanish sculpture of its time surpass it in elegance and grace. The larger figures are most interesting, varying greatly in execution and character. Those of the inner arches are stiff and still struggling for freedom from tradition, but of admirably carved drapery,—while the bishops in the niches to the right and left have faces radiating kindness and patriarchal benignity, faces we meet and bless in our own walks of life to-day. The bronze Renaissance doors are as fine as their setting,—splendid examples of the metal stamping of the sixteenth century, and the wooden carving on their inner surfaces is equally fine. The bronze knocker might easily have come from the workshop of the great Florentine goldsmith.{145}
The Gate of La Llana, west of the Gate of the Lions, is as ludicrous in its eighteenth-century dress as the gable of the west façade.
On the north side of the church we find three gates; in the centre, forming the northern entrance to the transept, the Puerta del Reloi[c], and east and west of it, the Puerta de Santa Catalina, and the Puerta de la Presentacion.
IV
You leave the outside with a feeling of distress at having viewed a patchwork of architectural composition, feebly decorating and badly expressing a noble and mighty frame. You enter into a light of celestial softness and purity. It seems an old and faded light. As soon as you regain vision in the cool, refreshing twilight, you experience the long-deferred exultation. You are amid those that pray,—the poor and sorrowing, those that would be strengthened. Here voices sink to a reverent whisper, for curiosity is hushed into awe. "I could never fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral,—what has he to say that will not be an anti-climax?" says Robert Louis Stevenson, and you are struck by the force of his remark when you compare the droning voice coming from one corner of the building with the glorious expression of man's faith rising above and around you. The quiet majesty and silent eloquence of the one accentuates the feebleness of the other.
For the interior is as simple and restrained and the planning as logical and lucid as the exterior is{146}blameworthy and unreasonable. Here is rhythm and harmony. The constructive problems have been ingeniously mastered, and the carved and decorated portions subordinated to the gigantic scheme of the great monument. The sculptures are limited to their respective fields. Structural and artistic principles go hand in hand. Eloquently the carvings speak the language of the time,—they become a pictorial Bible, open for the poor man to read, who has no knowledge of crabbed, monastic letters. They are the language of true religion, the religion that may change but can never die.
The plan is unquestionably thegrandfeature of the Cathedral; the beauty and scale of it challenge comparison with those of all other churches in Christendom. The vaulting and its development, the concentration of the thrust upon the piers and far-leaping flying buttresses are unquestionably on such a scale and of such character as to place it among the mightiest, if not the most pure and well-developed Gothic edifices. It is like a giant that knows not the strength of his limbs nor the possibilities in his mighty frame.
You do not feel the great height of the nave, owing to the immensity of all dimensions and the great circumference of the supporting piers. The nave and the double side aisles on each side are all of seven bays. The transept does not project beyond the outer aisles. The plan proper has thus, at a rough glance, the appearance of a basilica and seems to lack the side arms of the Gothic cross. The choir consists of one bay, and the chevet formed by an apse to the choir of five bays. Both aisles continue around the chevet. Outside these again, and between the buttresses of the main{147}outer walls, lie the different chapels, the great cloister and the different compartments and dependencies belonging to church and chapel,—a tremendous development, accumulation, growth,—a city in itself. The cloisters, as well as almost all the chapels, were added after the virtual completion of the Cathedral proper.
The chevet is the keynote of the plan, and the solution of the problem, how to vault the different compartments lying between the three concentric circular terminations beyond the choir. Their vaulting shows constructive skill and ingenuity of the highest order. The architects solved the problem with a simplicity and grandeur which places their genius on a level with that of the greatest of French builders. There are no previous examples of Spanish churches where similar problems have been dealt with tentatively. We are thus forced to acknowledge that the schooling for, and consequent mastery of, the problem, must have been gained on French soil. The central apse is surrounded by four piers, the two aisles are separated by eight, and the outer wall is marked by sixteen points of support. The bays in both aisles are vaulted alternately by triangular and virtually rectangular compartments. The vista from west to east is perfectly preserved, and the distance from centre to centre of every second pair of outer piers is as nearly as possible the same as that of the inner row. The outer wall of the aisles, except where the two great chapels of Santiago and San Ildefonso are introduced, was pierced alternately by small, square chapels opposite the triangular, vaulting compartments and circular chapels opposite the others.{148}
In the cathedrals of Notre Dame de Paris, Saint Remi of Rheims, and in Le Mans, we find intermediate triangular vaulting compartments introduced, but they are either employed with inferior skill or in a different form. In none of these cathedrals do they call for such unstinted admiration as those of the architect of Toledo. They just fall short of the happiest solution. In Saint Remi, for instance, we have intermediate trapezoids instead of rectangles, the inner chord being longer than the exterior.
The seventy-two well-molded, simple, quadripartite vaults of the whole edifice (rising in the choir to about one hundred, and, in the inner and outer aisles, to sixty and thirty-five feet) are supported by eighty-eight piers. The capitals of the engaged shafts, composed of plain foliage, point the same way as the run of the ribs above them. Simple, strong moldings compose the square bases. The great piers of the transept are trefoiled in section. The outer walls of the main body of the church are pierced by arches leading into uninteresting, rectangular chapels, some of them decorated with elaborate vaulting. In the outer wall of the intermediate aisle is a triforium, formed by an arcade of cusped arches, and above this, quite close to the point of the vault, a rose window in each bay. The clerestory, filling the space above the great arches on each side of the nave, is subdivided into a double row of lancet-pointed windows, surmounted by a rosette coming directly under the spring of the vault.
The treatment of the crossing of transept and nave is in Toledo, as in all Spanish churches, emphatic and peculiar. The old central lantern of the cruciform{149}church was retained and developed in their Gothic as well as in their Renaissance edifices, and was permitted illogically to break the Gothic roof line. The lantern of Ely is the nearest reminder we have of it in English or French Gothic. In Spain the "cimborio" became an important feature and made the croisée beneath it the lightest portion of the edifice. It shed light to the east and west of it, into the high altar and the choir.
The position of the choir is striking and distressing. Its rectangular body completely fills the sixth and seventh bays of the nave, interrupting its continuity and spoiling the sweep and grandeur of the edifice at its most important point. It sticks like a bone in the throat. Any complete view of the interior becomes impossible, and its impressive majesty is belittled. One constantly finds the choir of Spanish cathedrals in this position, which deprives them of the fine perspective found in northern edifices. In Westminster Abbey, strangely enough, the choir is similarly placed, and there, as here, it is as if the hands were tied and the breath stifled, where action should be freest.
This peculiar position of the choir was owing to the admission of the laity to the transept in front of the altar. In earlier days the choir was adjacent to and facing the altar, the singers and readers being there enclosed by a low and unimportant rail. The short, eastern apses of the Spanish cathedrals and the undeveloped and insufficient room for the clergy immediately surrounding the altar almost necessitated this divorce of the choir. In France and England the happier and more logical alternative was resorted to,{150}of providing sufficient space east of the intersection of the transept for all the clergy.
The rectangular choir of Toledo is closed at the east by a magnificent iron screen; at the west, by a wall called the "Trascoro," acting as a background to the archbishop's seat. A doorway once pierced its centre but was blocked up for the placing of the throne.
If the position of the choir is unfortunate, its details are among the most remarkable and glorious of their time and country. The only entrance is through the great iron parclose or reja at the east. This, as well as the corresponding grille work directly opposite, closing off the bay in front of the high altar, are wonderful specimens of the iron-worker's craft, splendid masterpieces of an art which has never been excelled since the days of its mediæval guilds. The master Domingo de Cespedes erected the grille in the year 1548. The framework seems to be connected by means of tenons and mortices, while the scrolls are welded together. The larger moldings are formed of sheet iron, bent to the shape required and flush-riveted to their light frames. Neither the general design nor the details (both Renaissance in feeling) are especially meritorious, but the thorough mastery of the material is most astonishing. The stubborn iron has been wrought and formed with as much ease and boldness as if it had been soft limestone or plaster. It is characteristic of the age that the craftsman has not limited himself to one material. Certain portions of the smaller ornaments are of silver and copper. Originally their shining surfaces, as well as the gilding of the great portion of the{151}principal iron bars, must have touched the whole with life and color. It was all covered with black paint in the time of the Napoleonic wars to escape the greedy hands of La Houssaye's victorious mob, and the gates still retain the sable coat that protected them.
Even a more glorious example of Spanish craftsmanship is found in the choir stalls which surround us to the north and south and west as soon as we enter. Here we are face to face with the finest flowering of Spanish mediæval art. Théophile Gautier, generalizing upon the whole composition, says: "L'art gothique, sur les confins de la Renaissance, n'a rien produit de plus parfait ni de mieux dessiné." The whole treatment of the work is essentially Spanish.
The stalls, the "silleria," are arranged in two tiers, the upper reached by little flights of five steps and covered by a richly carved, marble canopy, supported by slender Corinthian columns of red jasper and alabaster. All the stalls are of walnut, fifty in the lower row, seventy in the upper, exclusive of the archbishop's seat. The right side of the altar, that is, the right side of the celebrant looking from the altar, is called the side of the Gospel,—the left, the side of the Epistle. The great carvings, differing in the upper and lower stalls in period and execution, are the work of three artists. The carvings of the lower row were executed by Rodriguez in 1495, those of the upper, on the Gospel side, by Alonso Berruguete, and those on the side of the Epistle, by Philip Vigarny (also called Borgoña), both of the latter about fifty years later (in 1543).
The reading desk of the upper stalls forms the back of the lower and affords the field for their sculptural{152}decoration. The subjects are the Conquest of Granada and the Campaigns of Ferdinand and Isabella. We are shown in the childish and picturesque manner in which the age tells its story, the various incidents of the war, all its situations and groups, its curious costumes, arms, shields, and bucklers, and even the names of the fortresses inscribed on their masonry. We can recognize the Catholic monarchs and the great prelate entering the fallen city amid the grief-stricken infidels.
The spirit of the work is distinctly that of the period which has gone before, without any intimations of that to come. It has the character of the German Gothic, recalling Lucas of Holland and his school. If it has a grace and beauty of its own, there is also a childish grotesqueness without any of the self-assured mastery, so soon to spread its Italian light. The imagination and composition are there, but not the execution,—the mind, but not the hand.
The carvings of the upper stalls were executed by their masters in generous rivalry and in a spirit that shows a decided classic influence.
Many curious accounts of the time describe the excitement which prevailed during their execution and the various favor they found in the eyes of different critics. Looking at them, one's thoughts revert to that glorious dawn in which Cellini and Ghiberti and Donatello labored. The inscription says of the two artists, "Signatum marmorea tum ligna caelavere hinc Philippus Burgundio, ex adverso Berruguetus Hispanus: certaverunt tum artificum ingenia; certabunt semper spectatorum judicia."
Berruguete's work (on the Gospel side) shows{153}distinct traces of Michael Angelo's influence and his study in Italian ateliers with Andrea del Sarto and Baccio Bandinelli.[13]The nervous vigor of the Italian giant and the purity of style which looked back at Greece and Rome, are apparent.
The subjects of Vigarny's work, as also of Berruguete's, are taken from the Old Testament. They have a more subtle charm, more grace and freedom. Some of them show strength and an unerring hand, others, delicacy and exquisite subtleness. Where the Maestro Mayor of Charles V is powerful and energetic, Vigarny is imaginative and rich.
Comparing the upper and lower rows of panels, we must see what remarkable steps had been taken in so short a time by the sculptors. A lightness of execution, a victorious self-reliance, seems to follow close on the steps of tentative, even if conscientious, effort. The carving, the bold relief of the chiseling, have a vividness and intensity of expression, surpassing some of the best work of Italy and France.
The niches in the marble canopy above the upper row of stalls are filled with figures standing almost in full relief, and representing the genealogy of Christ.
The outer walls of the choir are also completely covered with sculpture. It is thoroughly Gothic in character, crude, and fumbling for expression, consisting of arcades with niches above containing alto-relievo illustrations of Old Testament scenes and characters. You recognize the Garden of Eden, Abraham with agonized face, Isaac, Jacob, passages from Exodus, and other familiar scenes. Many of the panels{154}depict further the small, everyday occurrences and incidents so loved by mediæval artists, and so full of earnest, religious feeling. Crowning it all, amid the pinnacles, are a whole flock of angels, quite prepared for Ascension Day. It is all very similar to the early fourteenth-century work in French cathedrals.
The bay in front of the high altar, forming with it the Capilla Mayor, and the choir are closed from the transept by a huge reja as fine as the one facing it, and the work of the Spaniard Francesco Villalpando (1548).[14]
The Capilla Mayor originally consisted of the one bay to the east of the transept, the adjacent terminating portion of the nave being the chapel containing the tombs of the kings. The great Cardinal Ximenez received Isabella's permission to remove the dividing wall in case he could accomplish the task without disturbing any of the monarchs' coffins. The walls all round, both internally and externally, are completely covered with sculpture. Many of the figures are faithful portraits; many of the groups tell an interesting story. On the Gospel side there are two carvings, one over the other, the upper representing Don Alfonso VIII, and the lower, the shepherd who guided the monarch and his army to the renowned plains of Las Navas de Tolosa, where the battle was fought which proved so glorious to Christian arms. One likewise sees the statue of the Moor, Alfaqui Abu Walid, who threw himself in the path of King Alfonso and prevailed upon him to forgive Queen Constance and Bishop Bernard for the expulsion of the{155}Moors from their mosque, contrary to the king's solemn oath.
All around us lie the early rulers of the House of Castile, Alfonso VII, Sancho the Deserted, and Sancho the Brave, the Prince Don Pedro de Aguilar, son of Alfonso XI, and the great Cardinal Mendoza. Below in the vault lie, by the sides of their consorts, Henry II, John I, and Henry III.
At the end of the chapel, acting as a background to the altar, you find a composition constantly met in and characteristic of Spanish cathedrals. The huge "retablo" is nothing but a meaningless, gaudy and sensational series of carved and decorated niches. It is carved in larchwood and merely reveals a love of the cheap and tawdry display of the decadent florid period of Gothic.
Back of the retablo and the high altar, you are startled by the most horrible and vulgar composition of the church. Nothing but the mind of an idiot could have conceived the "transparente."[15]It has neither order nor reason. The whole mass runs riot. Angels and saints float up and down its surface amid doughy clouds. The angel Raphael counterbalances the weight of his kicking feet by a large goldfish which he is frantically clutching. It is a piece of uncontrolled, imbecile decoration, perpetrated to the everlasting shame of Narciso Tomé in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Nothing except the choir and Capilla Mayor disturb{156}the simplicity of the aisles and the great body of the church. All other monuments or compositions are found in the numerous rooms and chapels leading from the outer aisles or situated between the lower arches of the outside walls. There are many of them, some important, others trivial. The Mozarabic chapel, in the southwest corner of the cathedral, is the one place in the world where you may still every morning hear the quaint old Visigothic or Mozarabic ritual recited. The chapel was constructed under Cardinal Ximenez in 1512 for the double purpose of commemorating the tolerance of the Moors, who during their dominion left to the Christians certain churches in which to continue their own worship, and also to perpetuate the use of the old Gothic ritual. It is most curious, almost barbaric: "The canons behind, in a sombre flat monotone, chant responses to the officiating priest at the altar. The sound combines the enervating effect of the hum of wings, whirr of looms, wooden thud of pedals, the boom and rush of immense wings circling round and round." It is strange to hear this echo a thousand years old of a magnanimous act in so intolerant an age.
In the eleventh century King Alfonso, at the insistence of Bernard and Constance, and the papal legate Richard, decided to abolish the use of the old Gothic ritual and to introduce the Gregorian rite. The Toledans threatened revolt rather than abandon their old form of worship. The King knew no other method of decision than to leave the question to two champions. In single combat the Knight of the Gothic Missal, Don Juan Ruiz de Mantanzas, killed his adversary while he himself remained unhurt. At{157}a second trial, where two bulls were entrusted with the perplexing difficulty, the Gothic bull came off victor. Councils were held and the Pope still persevered in his determination to abolish the old Spanish service book. Outside the walls of the city, in front of the King and churchmen and amid the entire populace of Toledo, a great fire was built, and the two mass-books were thrown into it. When the flames had died down, only the Gothic mass-book was found unscathed. Only after many years, when traditions had gradually altered and even much of the text had become meaningless to the clergy, did the Roman service book become universally introduced into Toledan houses of worship.
Two other chapels are of especial interest: those of Saint Ildefonso and Santiago. Saint Ildefonso, who became metropolitan in 658, is second only in honor to Saint James of Compostella; he was unquestionably the most favored of Toledo's long line of bishops.
Three natives of Narbonne had dared to question the perpetual virginity of Our Lady. Saint Ildefonso gallantly took up her defense and proved it beyond doubt or questioning in his treatise "De Virginitate Perpetua Sanctae Mariae adversus tres Infideles." It was a crushing vindication and a discourse of much reason and scriptural light. Shortly afterwards the Bishop, together with the King and court, went to the Church of Saint Leocadia to give public thanks. As soon as the multitude had had sufficient time to kneel at the saint's tomb, a group of angels appeared amid a cloud and surrounded by sweet scents. Next the sepulchre opened of its own accord. Calix relates, "Thirty men could not have moved the stone which{158}slid slowly from the mouth of the tomb. Immediately Saint Leocadia arose, after lying there three hundred years, and holding out her arm, she shook hands with Saint Ildefonso, speaking in this voice, 'Oh, Ildefonso, through thee doth the honor of My Lady flourish.' All the spectators were silent, being struck with the novelty and the greatness of the miracle. Only Saint Ildefonso, with Heaven's aid, replied to her. Now the virgin Saint looked as if she wished to return into the tomb and she turned around for that purpose, when the King begged of Saint Ildefonso that he would not let her go until she left some relic of her behind, for a memorial of the miracle and for the consolation of the city. And as Saint Ildefonso wished to cut a part of the white veil which covered the head of St. Leocadia, the King lent him a knife for that purpose, and this must have been a poniard or a dagger, though others say it was a sword. With this the saint cut a large piece of the blessed veil, and while he was giving it to the King, at the same time returning the knife, the saint shut herself up entirely and covered herself in the tomb with the huge stone."
CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO Chapel of Santiago, tombs of D. Alvaro de Luna and his spousePhoto by J. Lacoste, MadridCATHEDRAL OF TOLEDOChapel of Santiago, tombs of D. Alvaro de Luna and his spouse
Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDOChapel of Santiago, tombs of D. Alvaro de Luna and his spouse
But even this was not a sufficient expression of gratitude to satisfy Saint Mary, for next week she herself came down to enjoy matins with Saint Ildefonso in the Cathedral. She sat in his throne and listened to his discourse with both pleasure and edification. A celestial host dispensed music in the choir, music of heaven, hymns, David's psalms and chants, such as never had been heard before, either in Seville or in Toledo. To cap it all, the Virgin made her favorite a splendid present of a chasuble worked by the angels with which she invested him with her own hands{159}before she said good-bye. You may still kiss your fingers after having touched the sacred slab upon which the Virgin stood and above which run the words of the Psalmist: "Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus." The chapel is, similarly to the screens around the choir, of fourteenth-century work.
The Chapel of Santiago was erected by Count Alvaro de Luna, for more than thirty years the real sovereign of Castile. It is most elaborately decorated throughout with rich Gothic work, interwoven with sparkling filigree of Saracenic character. The tombs of the Lunas are of interest because of the great Count. His own is not the original one. The first mausoleum which he erected to himself was so constructed that the recumbent effigy or automaton could, when mass was said, slowly rise, clad in full armor, and remain kneeling until the service was ended, when it would slowly resume its former posture. This was destroyed at the instigation of Alvaro's old enemy, Henry of Aragon, who remained unreconciled even after the death of his old minister. At each corner of Alvaro's tomb kneels a knight of Santiago, at his feet a page holds his helmet, his own hands are crossed devoutly over the sword on his breast, and the mantle of his order is folded about his shoulders. His face wears an expression of sadness.
Alvaro began his career as a page in the service of Queen Catharine (Plantagenet). He ended it as Master of Santiago, Constable of Castile, and Prime Minister of John II, whom he completely ruled for thirty-five years. He lived in royal state, became all-powerful and arrogant. His diplomacy effected{160}the marriage of Henry II and Isabella of Portugal, but he later incurred the enmity of Isabella, was accused of high treason, found guilty, and executed in the square of Valladolid. Pius II said of him, "He was a very lofty mind, as great in war as he was in peace, and his soul breathed none but noble thoughts."
And thus we may continue all around the Cathedral, past the successive chapels, vestries, sanctuaries and treasuries,—the architecture and sculpture of each connected with great events and telling its own story of dark tragedy or lighter romance.
In one, the Spanish banners used to be consecrated before leading the hosts against the Moors; in another, Spain now keeps her priceless treasures under the locks of seven keys hanging from the girdles of an equal number of canons. There are silver and gold and pearl and precious jewels sufficient to set on foot every stagnant Spanish industry. The 8500 pearls of the Virgin's cape might alone feed a province for no short time. They are buried in the dark. Outside in the light, the children of Spain are starving and without means of obtaining food. At one's elbow the whine of the beggar is continually heard, till one recalls Washington Irving's words: "The more proudly a mansion has been tenanted in the days of its prosperity, the humbler are its inhabitants in the days of her decline, and the palace of the king commonly ends in being the resting-place of the beggar."
Here and there, in the interior as in the exterior, we find, mixed with or decorating the Gothic, Moorish and Renaissance details and the later extravagances which followed the decline of the Gothic. Even where the carvers are expressing themselves{161}in Gothic or Renaissance details, we frequently observe an extreme richness, a love of chiaroscuro, of sparkling jewel-like light and shade, and intricately woven ornamentation which betrays the influence of the Arab. We see the Morisco, a kind of fusion of French and Moorish, in many places. The triforium of the choir is decidedly Moorish in its design, although it is Gothic in all its details and has carvings of heads and of the ordinary dog-tooth enrichment instead of merely conventionalized leaf and figure ornament. It consists of a trefoil arcade. In the spandrels between its arches are circles with heads and, above these, triangular openings pierced through the wall. The moldings of all the openings interpenetrate, and the whole arcade has the air of intricate ingenuity so usual in Moorish work. Again, in the triforium of the inner aisle we find Moorish influence,—the cusping of the arcade is not enclosed within an arch but takes a distinct horseshoe outline, the lowest cusp near the cap spreading inward at the base. We see Moorish tiles, we find Moorish cupolas as in the Mozarabic chapel, and Moorish doorways, as the exquisite one leading into the Sala Capitular,—here and there and everywhere, we suddenly come upon details betraying the Arab intimacy.
The children of the Renaissance also embellished in their new manner, not only in the magnificent carvings of the choir but in a variety of places, for instance, the doors themselves contained within the Moorish molds leading to the Sala just mentioned, the entire chapel of St. Juan, the Capilla de Reyes Nuevos, portions of the Puerta del Berruguete, and the bronze doors of the Gate of the Lions.{162}
Again, on the capitals and bases of many of the piers, with the exception of those of the central nave, Byzantine influence may be seen.
So each age, according to its best ken, dealt with the Cathedral. In among the varying styles of architectural decoration, the sister arts embellish the stone surfaces or are hung upon them. There are paintings by Titian, Giovanni Bellini, and Rubens, by El Greco, Goya, and Ribera; Italian and Flemish tapestries, and frescoes too. Probably the greater portion of the main walls were covered with them, for here and there traces are still to be seen and a tree of Jesse remains in the tympanum of the south transept, and near it an enormous painting of Saint Christopher.
While the "Tresorio" may have been the treasure-house of the clergy, the church itself was that of the people. Here was their art museum, here were their galleries. The decorations became the primers from which they learnt their lessons. Here they would meet in the afternoon hour as the light fell aslant sapphire and ruby, through the clerestory openings. It would light up their treasures with strange, unearthly glory and form aureoles and haloes of rainbow splendor over the heads of their beloved saints. Cool amethyst and emerald and warmer amber and gold touched the darkest corners, and a gold and purple glory illuminated the high altar.
Some of the earlier glass is as fine as any to be found in Europe. The depth and intensity of the colors are remarkable. Probably none of it was Spanish, but all was imported from France, Belgium, or Germany. The glass in the rose of the north transept and in the eastern windows of the transept{163}clerestory can hold its own beside that of the cathedrals of Paris and Amiens. The subject scheme of the rose in the north transept is truly noble. The earliest glass is that in the nave (a little later than 1400), and this is Flemish. The windows of the aisles are at least a century later. Their composition is simple and broad, the coloring rich and deep, and the interior dusk of the church enhances the value of the sunlight filtering through the glass.
Better than to descend into the immense crypt below the Cathedral, with its eighty-eight massive piers corresponding to those above, is it to stray into the broken sunlight of the green and fragrant cloister arcade.
Bishop Tenorio procured the site for the church from the Jews, who here, right under the walls of the Christian church, held their market. A fresco adjoining the gate explains by what means. It represents on a ladder a fiendish-looking Jew who has cut the heart out of a beautiful, crucified child and is holding the dripping dagger in his hand. This fresco stirred up the fury of the Christian populace to the point of burning the Jewish market, houses and shops, which then were annexed by the Bishop. The fine, two-story Gothic arcade of the cloisters encloses a sun-splashed garden filled with fragrant flowers. Around the walls of the lower arcade are a series of very mediocre frescoes. The architecture itself is not nearly as interesting as that of the cloisters of Salamanca. It ought particularly to be so in this portion of the church, for here is the very climate and place for the courtyard life of the Spaniard.{164}
V
So lies the Cathedral, crumbling in the sunlight of the twentieth century. Beautiful, but strange and irreconcilable to all that is around her, she alone, the Mother Church, stands unshaken, lonely and melancholy, but grand and solemn in the midst of the paltry and tawdry happenings of to-day. She has served giants, and now sees but a race of dwarfs; princes have prostrated themselves at her altars, where now only beggars kneel. Her walls whisper loneliness, desertion, widowed resignation.
Note.—In connection with the remarks onpage 160, a Catholic friend has pointed out how rarely, when Peter has been robbed, ostensibly to pay Paul, Paul (otherwise the Poor) has derived any benefit from it. It is willingly conceded that Henry VIII bestowed much of the wealth derived from the dissolution of the religious houses on his own favorites, and recent disclosures in France show as scandalous a diversion of some of the funds similarly obtained.
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CATHEDRAL OF SEGOVIAPhoto by J. Lacoste, MadridCATHEDRAL OF SEGOVIA
Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF SEGOVIA
ONCEupon a time, long, long ago, in the days of the Iberians, there was a city and its name was Segovia. It is now so old that all of it, with the exception of the great heap of masonry which crowns its summit, has practically crumbled into a mountain of ruins. The pile still stands, dominating the plain and facing the setting sun, triumphant over time and decay,—the Cathedral of Saint Mary and Saint Froila. Though Mary was the holier of the two patrons, owing to whose protection the church stands to-day so well preserved, still Froila was in certain respects no less remarkable. The Segovians of his day saw him split open a rock with his jackknife and prove to the Moslems then ruling his city, beyond all doubt, the validity of his Christian faith.
But long before saints and cathedrals, the Romans, recognizing the tenacious and commanding position as a military stronghold of the rock of Segovia, which rises precipitously from the two valleys watered by the Erasma and Clamores, pitched their camp upon its crest, renaming it Segobriga. The city was fortified, and under Trajan the truly magnificent aqueduct was built, either by the Romans or the devil, to supply the city with the waters of the Fonfria mountains.{168}A beautiful Segovian had at this early time grown weary of carrying her jugs up the steep hills from the waters below and promised the devil she would marry him, if he only would in a night's time once and for all bring into the city the fresh waters of the eastern mountains. She was worth the labor, and the suitor accepted the contract. Fortunately the Church found the arcade incomplete, the devil having forgotten a single stone, and the maid was honorably released from her part of a bargain, the execution of which had profited her city so greatly. Segovia still carries on her shield this "Puente del diabolo," with the head of a Roman peering above it.
The strong position of the city made it an envied possession to whatever conqueror held the surrounding country. It lay on the borderland, constantly disputed with varying fortune by Christian and Moslem. Under the dominion of the early Castilian kings, and even under the triumphant Moors, the youthful church prospered and grew, for in the government of their Christian subjects, the Mohammedans here, as elsewhere, showed themselves temperate and full of common sense. The invaders had, indeed, everywhere been welcomed by the numerous Jews settled in Spanish cities, who under the new rulers exchanged persecution for civil and religious liberty. Prompt surrender and the payment of a small annual tax were the only conditions made, to confirm the conquered, of whatever race or religion, in the possession of all their worldly goods, perfect freedom of worship and continued government by their own laws under their own judges.
In the eleventh century, Segovia was included in{169}the great Amirate of Toledo, but the Castilian kings grew stronger, till in 1085 they were able to recapture Toledo. The singularly picturesque contours of the city are due to the various races which fortified her. Iberians were probably the first to strengthen their hill from outside attack,—the Romans followed, building upon the foundations of the old walls, and Christian and Moslem completed the work, until the little city was compactly girdled by strong masonry, broken by some three to four score fighting towers and but few gates of entrance. Alfonso the Wise was one of the great Segovian rulers and builders. He strengthened her bastions, added a good deal to the walls of her illustrious fortress, and in 1108 gave the city her first charter. A few years later Segovia was elevated to a bishopric.
Long before the earliest cathedral church, the Alcazar was the most conspicuous feature in the landscape, and it still holds the second place. Erected on the steep rocks at the extreme eastern end of the almond-shaped hill, it stands like a chieftain at the head of his warriors, always ready for battle, and first to meet any onslaught. Several Alfonsos, as well as Sanchos, labored upon it during the perilous twelfth century. Here the kings took up their abode in the happy days when Segovia was capital of the kingdom, and even in later times it sheltered such illustrious travelers as the unfortunate Prince Charles of England, and Gil Blas, when out of suits with fortune.
The first Cathedral was erected on the broad platform east of the Alcazar, directly under the shadow of its protecting walls. The ever-reappearing Count{170}Raymond of Burgundy was commissioned by his father-in-law, the King, to repopulate Segovia after the Moorish devastations, and he rebuilt its walls, as he was doing for the recaptured cities of Salamanca and Avila. The battlements were repaired, and northerners from many provinces occupied the houses that had been deserted.
KEY OF PLAN OF SEGOVIA CATHEDRAL
To judge from the ruins as well as from well-preserved edifices, Romanesque days must have been full of great architectural activity. One is constantly reminded of Toledo in climbing up and down the narrow streets, where one must often turn aside or find progress barred by Romanesque and Gothic courtyards or smelly culs-de-sac. Everywhere are Romanesque portals and arches, palaces and the apses and circular chapels of the age, bulging beyond the sidewalks into the cobblestones of the street. They seem indeed venerable. Some of the old palaces present a curious all-over design executed in Moorish manner and with Moorish feeling. It is carved into the sidewalk, showing in relief a geometrical, circular pattern, each circle filled with a quantity of small Gothic lancets, surely difficult both to design and to execute. Some of the old parish churches stand with their deep splays, round-headed arches and windows and broad, recessed portals almost as perfectly preserved as a thousand years ago. The Romanesque style died late and hard. Even in the thirteenth century, the city could boast thirty such parish churches. To-day they seem fairly prayer-worn. Beyond their towers stretch the plains in every direction, seamed by stone walls and dotted with gray rocks. Olive and poplar groves cluster round{171}the small hillocks, rising here and there like camels' backs.
As long as the welfare and development of the city depended on strong natural fortifications, Segovia remained intact. To the twelfth and thirteenth centuries belongs her glory. Her power passed with the middle ages and their chivalry, and in the sixteenth century she was a dead city.
Villages, convents and churches lie scattered over the plain, the houses crowded together for protection against the blazing, scorching, pitiless sun. Standing by itself is the ancient and severe church, where many a knight-templar kept his last vigil before turning his back on the plains of Castile, and apart sleeps the monastery where Torquemada was once prior. They all crumble golden brown against the horizon.
Many a bloody fray or revolution upset the city during the middle ages. The minority of Alfonso XI witnessed one of the worst. The revolt which broke out in so many of the Spanish cities against the Emperor Charles V, proved most fatal to the Cathedral of Segovia.
The first Romanesque Cathedral had been built in honor of St. Mary, under the walls of the Alcazar, during the first half of the twelfth century. It was consecrated in 1228 by the papal legate, Juan, Bishop of Sabina. Some two hundred and fifty years later, a new and magnificent Gothic cloister was added to it by Bishop Juan Arias Davila, and likewise a new episcopal palace more fitting times of greater luxury and magnificence. This palace, despite the coming translation of the Cathedral itself, remained the abode of the bishops for the three following centuries.{172}In the new cloisters a banquet of reconciliation was celebrated in 1474 by Henry IV and the Catholic Kings. It was held on the very spot whence Isabella had started in state on a journey proving so eventful in the history not only of Castile but of the entire Peninsula and countries beyond. Three years after the furious struggle which took place around the entrance of the Alcazar, Charles V issued the following proclamation:—
"The King: To the Aldermen, Justices, Councillors, Knights, Men-at-arms, Officials, and good Burghers of the city of Segovia. The reverend Father in Christ, Bishop of the church of this city, has told me how he and the Chapter of his church believe that it would be well to move the Cathedral church to the plaza of the city on the site of Santa Clara, and that the parish of San Miguel of the plaza should be incorporated in the Cathedral church; and this, because when the said Cathedral church is placed in a situation where the divine services may be more advantageously held, our Saviour will be better served and the people will receive much benefit and the city become much ennobled; it appears to me good that this plan should be carried out, desiring the good and ennoblement and welfare of the said city because of the loyalty and services I have always found in it, therefore I command and request that you unite with the said Bishop or his representative and the Chapter of said church and all talk freely together about this and see what will be best for the good of the said city, and at the same time consider the assistance that the said city could itself render, and after discussion, forward me the results of your{173}combined judgment, in order that I better may see and decide what will be for the best service of Our Lord, Ourselves, and the welfare of the city. Dated in Madrid, the 2d day of October, in the year 1510.—I, the King."
While the discussion of the feasibility and expense of commencing an entirely new cathedral upon a new site nearer the heart of the city was at its height, the revolt of the Comunidades broke out, in 1520, and swept away in its burning and pillaging course the Romanesque edifice. This stood at the entrance to the fortress, where the fight naturally raged hottest. Only a very few of the most sacred images, relics and bones were carried to safety within the walls of the Alcazar before the old pile had been practically destroyed. Segovia was without a Cathedral church.
In the centre of the city, on the very crest of the hill, lay the only clearing within the walls. Here at one end of the plaza was the site of the convent mentioned by Emperor Charles, which had long sheltered the nuns of Santa Clara. They had abandoned it for other quarters, and the adjacent convent of San Miguel had become unpopular and was dwindling into insignificance. Both could thus in this most free and commanding location give way to a new and larger cathedral, distant from what would always prove the rallying point of civic strife. Following the mighty wave of revolt which had swept the city, came a great receding wave of religious enthusiasm to atone in holy fervor for the impious act recently committed. Citizen and noble alike proposed to build an edifice which would be much more to the glory of Saint Mary than the shrine which they had{174}so recently pulled down. Lords gave whole villages; women, their jewels; and the citizens, the sweat of their brows. We find in the archives of the Cathedral the following entry by the Canon Juan Ridriguez[b]:
"On June 8th, 1522, ... by the consent and resolution of the Lord Bishop D. Diego de Rovera and of the Dean and Chapter of the said church, it was agreed to commence the new work of the said church to the glory of God and in honor of the Virgin Mary and the glorious San Frutos and all saints, taking for master of the said work Juan Gil de Hontañon, and for his clerk of the works Garcia de Cubillas. Thursday, the 8th of June, 1552, the Bishop ordered a general procession with the Dean and Chapter, clergy and all the religious orders."
The corner stone was laid and the masonry started at the western end under the most renowned architect of the age. Juan Gil had already worked on the old Segovian Cathedral, but had achieved his great fame on the new Cathedral of Salamanca, started ten years previously, whose walls were rising with astounding rapidity. His clerk was almost equally skilled, always working in perfect harmony with his master and carrying out his designs without jealousy during the "maestro's" many illnesses and journeys to and from Salamanca. Garcia lived to work on the church until 1562, and the old archives still hold many drawings from his skillful hand.
The two late Gothic Cathedrals are so similar in many points that they are immediately recognizable as the conception of the same brain. Segovia is, however, infinitely superior, not only in the magnificent development of the eastern end with its semicircular{175}apse, ambulatory, and radiating apsidal chapels, as compared with the square termination of Salamanca, but, throughout, in the restrained quality of its detail and the refinement of its ornamentation. How far the abrupt and uninteresting apsidal termination of Salamanca was Juan Gil's fault, it is difficult to say, for we find records of its having been imposed upon him by the Chapter as well as of his having drawn a circular apse. Fortunately, the Segovian churchmen had the common sense to leave their architect alone in most artistic matters and allow him to make the head of the church either "octagonal, hexagonal, or of square form." Where Salamanca has been coarsened by the new style, Segovia seems inspired by its fidelity to the old.
The similarity of the two churches is visible throughout. The general interior arrangements are much alike. The stone of the two interiors is of nearly the same color, and the formation and details of the great piers are strikingly similar. There is the same thin, reed-like descent of shafts from upper ribs, the same, almost inconspicuous, small leaves for caps, and, in both, the bases terminate at different heights above the huge common drum, which is some three feet high. Externally, there are analogous buttresses, crestings, pinnacles and parapets, and a concealment of roof structure, but there is none of the vanity of Salamanca in the sister church of Segovia. The last great Gothic church of Spain, though deficient in many ways, was not lacking in unity nor sincerity. The flame went out in a magnificent blaze.
Such faithfulness and love as possessed Juan Gil for his old Gothic masters seems well-nigh incredible.{176}He designed, and during his activity there of nine years, raised the greater portions of Segovia in an age when Gothic building was practically extinct, when Brunelleschi was building Santa Maria del Fiore, and the classic revival was in full march. Segovia and Spaniards were as tardy in forswearing their Gothic allegiance as they had been their Romanesque. Not until the beginning of the sixteenth century does the reborn classicism victoriously cross the Pyrenees, and then only in minor domestic buildings. The last manifestations of Gothic church-building in Spain were neither weak nor decadent, but virile, impressive and logical. Segovia Cathedral may be said to be the last great monument in Spain, not only of Gothic, but of ecclesiastical art. Thereafter came the deluge of decadence or petrification. What must not the power of the Church, as well as the religious enthusiasm of the populace, have been during this extraordinary sixteenth century! It is almost incredible that this tiny city, in a weak little kingdom, and so few miles from Salamanca, had the spirit for an undertaking of the size of this Cathedral church, so soon after Salamanca had entered on her architectural enterprise. Either of the two seems beyond the united power of the kingdom.
Even more remarkable than the starting of Segovia in the Gothic style at so late a date, was the fact that the architects succeeding Juan Gil, who were naturally tempted to embody their own ideas and to employ the new style then in vogue, should nevertheless have faithfully adhered to the original conception and completed in Gothic style all constructive and ornamental details everywhere except in the final closing{177}of the dome and a few minor exterior features. Naturally the Gothic of the sixteenth century was not that of the thirteenth,—not that of Leon or Toledo, nor even of Burgos,—it had been modified and lost in spirit, but still its origin was undeniable.