KEY OF PLAN OF LEON CATHEDRAL
Leon is almost as old as the history of Spain. In the first century after Christ, the seventh Roman legion, on the order of Augustus, pitched their tents where the city now stands, built their customary rectangular enclosure with its strong walls and towers, happily seconded by the nature of the surrounding country. From here the wild hordes of the Asturias could be kept in check. The city was narrowly built in the fork of two rivers, on ground allowing neither easy approach nor expansion, so that the growth has, even up to the twentieth century, been within the ancient walls, and the streets and squares are in consequence narrow and cramped. On many of the blocks of those old walls may still be seen carved in the clear Roman lettering, "Legio septima gemina, pia, felix." The name of Leon is merely a corruption first used by the Goths of the Roman "Legio." Roman dominion survived the empire for many years, being first swept away when the Gothic hordes in the middle of the sixth century descended from the north under the conqueror, Loevgild. Its Christian bishopric was possibly the first in Spain, founded in the darkness of the third century, since which time the little city{95}can boast an unbroken succession of Leonese bishops, although a number, during the turbulent decades of foreign rule, may not actually have been "in residence." The Moslem followed the Goth, and ruled while the nascent Christian kingdom of the Asturias was slowly gaining strength for independence and the foundation of an episcopal seat. In the middle of the eighth century, the Christians wrested it from the Moors. On the site of the old Roman baths, built in three long chambers, King Ordoño II erected his palace (he was reconstructing for defense and glory the walls and edifices of the city) and in 916 presented it with considerable ground and several adjacent houses to Bishop Frumonio, that he might commence the building of the Cathedral on the advantageous palace site in the heart of the city. Terrible Moorish invasions occurred soon after, involving considerable damage to the growing Byzantine basilica. In 996 the Moors swept the city with fire and sword, and again, three years later, it fell entirely into the hands of the great conqueror Almanzor, who remained in possession only just the same time, for we may read in the old monkish manuscripts that in 1002 from the Christian pulpits of Castile and Leon the proclamation was made: "Almanzor is dead, and buried in Hell."
Leon could boast of being the first mediæval city of Europe to obtain self-government and a charter of her own, and she became the scene of important councils during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the eleventh century, under the great Ferdinand I, who united Castile and Leon, work on the basilica was pushed rapidly forward. French{96}influence was predominant in the early building operations, for Alfonso VI of Castile, who assumed the title of Emperor of Spain, had two French wives, each of whom brought with her a batch of zealous and skillful church-building prelates.
The church was finally consecrated in 1149. About twenty-five years ago, the Spanish architect, D. Demetrio de los Rios, in charge of the work of restoration on the present Cathedral, discovered the walls and foundations of the ancient basilica and was able to determine accurately its relation to the later Gothic church. The exact date when this was begun is uncertain,—many writers give 1199. Beyond a doubt the foundations were laid out during the reign of Alfonso IX, early in the thirteenth century, when Manrique de Lara was Bishop of the See of Leon and French Gothic construction was at the height of its glory. It is thus a thirteenth-century church, belonging principally to the latter part, built with the feverish energy, popular enthusiasm, and unparalleled genius for building which characterizes that period and stamps it as uniquely glorious to later constructive ages. Though smaller than most of the immense churches which afterwards rose under Spanish skies, Leon remained in many respects unsurpassed and unmatched.
"Sevilla en grandeza, Toledo en riqueza,Compostella en fortaleza, está en sutilezaSanta Maria de Regla."
In the middle of the thirteenth century, after the consecration of the new church, a famous council of all the bishops of the realm was held in the little town of Madrid, and there the faithful were exhorted, and{97}the lukewarm admonished with threats, to contribute by every means to the successful erection of Leon's Cathedral. Indulgences, well worth consideration, were granted to contributors, at the head of whom for a liberal sum stood the king, Alfonso X.
But Leon, capital of the ancient kingdom, was doomed before long to feel the bitterness of abandonment. The Castilian kings followed the retreat southward of the Moorish armies, and the history of the capital of Leon, which, during the thirteenth century, had been the history of the little kingdom, soon became confined within the limits of her cathedral walls. Burgos, a mighty rival, soon overshadowed her. The time came when the Bishop of Leon was merely a suffragan of the Archbishop of Burgos, and her kings had moved their court south to Seville. The city of Leon was lost in the union of the two kingdoms.
The fortunes of the Cathedral have been varied and her reverses great. Her architects risked a great deal and the disasters entailed were proportionate. Though belonging preëminently in style to the glorious thirteenth century, her building continued almost uninterruptedly throughout the fourteenth. We have in succession Maestro Enrique, Pedro Cebrian, Simon, Guillen de Rodan, Alonzo Valencia, Pedro de Medina, and Juan de Badajoz, working on her walls and towers with a magnificent recklessness which was shortly to meet its punishment. Although Bishop Gonzalez in 1303 declared the work, "thanks be to God, completed," it was but started. The south façade was completed in the sixteenth century, but as early as 1630 the light fabric began to tremble,{98}then the vaulting of the crossing collapsed and was replaced by a more magnificent dome. Many years of mutilations and disasters succeeded. The south front was entirely taken down and rebuilt, the vaulting of aisles fell, great portions of the main western façade, and ornamentation here and there was disfigured or destroyed by the later alterations in overconfident and decadent times, until, in the middle of the eighteenth century, very considerable portions of the original rash and exquisite fabric were practically ruined. There came, however, an awakening to the outrages which had been committed, and from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day, the work of putting back the stones in their original forms and places has steadily advanced to the honor of Leon and glory of Spain, until Santa Maria de Regla at last stands once more in the full pristine lightness of her original beauty.
CATHEDRAL OF LEON Looking up the naveCATHEDRAL OF LEONLooking up the nave
CATHEDRAL OF LEONLooking up the nave
The plan of Leon is exceedingly fine, surpassed alone among Spanish churches by that of Toledo. Three doorways lead through the magnificent western portal into the nave and side aisles of the Church. These consist of five bays up to the point where the huge arms of the transept spread by the width of an additional bay. In proportion to the foot of the cross, these arms are broader than in any other Spanish cathedral. They are four bays in length, the one under the central lantern being twice the width of the others, thus making the total width of the transepts equal to the distance from the western entrance to their intersection. The choir occupies the fifth and sixth bays of the nave. To the south, the transept is entered by a triple portal very similar in scale and{99}richness to the western. The eastern termination of the church is formed by a choir of three and an ambulatory of five bays running back of the altar and trascoro, and five pentagonal apsidal chapels. The sacristy juts out in the extreme southwestern angle. The northern arm of the huge transepts is separated from the extensive cloisters by a row of chapels or vestibules which to the east also lead to the great Chapel of Santiago. All along its eastern lines the church with its dependencies projects beyond the city walls, one of its massive towers standing as a mighty bulwark of defense in the extreme northeastern angle.
It is a plan that must delight not only the architect, but any casual observer, in its almost perfect symmetry and in the relationship of its various parts to each other. It belonged to the primitive period of French Gothic, though carried out in later days when its vigor was waning. It has not been cramped nor distorted by initial limitation of space or conditions, nor injured by later deviations from the original conception. It is worthy of the great masters who planned once for all the loveliest and most expressive house for the worship of God. Erected on the plains of Leon, it was conceived in the inspired provinces of Champagne and the Isle de France.
It has a total length of some 308 feet and a width of nave and aisles of 83. The height to the centre of nave groining is 100 feet. The western front has two towers, which, curiously enough, as in Wells Cathedral, flank the side aisles, thus necessitating in elevation a union with the upper portions of the façade by means of flying buttresses.{100}
There is a fine view of the exterior of the church from across the square facing the southwestern angle. A row of acacia plumes and a meaningless, eighteenth-century iron fence conceal the marble paving round the base, but this foreground sinks to insignificance against the soaring masses of stone towers and turrets, buttresses and pediments, stretching north and east. Both façades have been considerably restored, the later Renaissance and Baroque atrocities having been swept away in a more refined and sensitive age, when the portions of masonry which fell, owing to the flimsiness of the fabric, were rebuilt. The result has, however, been that great portions, as for instance in the western front and the entire central body above the portals, jar, with the chalky whiteness of their surfaces by the side of the time-worn masonry. They lack the exquisite harmony of tints, where wind and sun and water have swept and splashed the masonry for centuries.
The two towers that flank the western front in so disjointed a manner are of different heights and ages. Both have a heavy, lumbering quality entirely out of keeping with the aerial lightness of the remainder of the church. It is not quite coarseness, but rather a stiff-necked, pompous gravity. Their moldings lack vigor and sparkle. The play of fancy and sensitive decorative treatment are wanting. The northern tower is the older and has an upper portion penetrated by a double row of round and early pointed windows. An unbroken octagonal spire crowns it, the angles of the intersection being filled by turrets, as uninteresting as Prussian sentry-boxes. The southern tower, though lighter and more ornamented, has, like its{101}sister, extremely bald lower surfaces, the four angles in both cases being merely broken by projecting buttresses. The lowest story was completed in the fourteenth century. It was added to in successive centuries by Maestro Jusquin and Alfonso Ramos, but its great open-work spire, of decided German form, probably much influenced by Colonia's spires at Burgos, was first raised in the fifteenth century.
It is a complete monotonous lacework of stone, not nearly as spirited as similar, earlier, French work. The spire is separated from the bald base by a two-storied belfry, with two superimposed openings on each surface. Gothic inscriptions decorate the masonry and the huge black letters spell out "Deus Homo—Ave Maria, Gratia plena."
At the base, between these huge, grave sentinels, stands the magnificent old portico with the modern facing of the main body of the church above it. This screen of later days, built after the removal of a hideously out-of-keeping Renaissance front, is contained within two buttresses which meet the great flying ones. In fact, looking down the stone gorge between these buttresses and the towers, one sees a mass of pushing and propping flying buttresses springing in double rows above the roof of the side aisles towards the clerestories of the nave. The screen itself contains, immediately above the portico, an arcade of four subdivided arches, corresponding to the triforium, and above it a gorgeous rose window. It is the best type of late thirteenth or early fourteenth-century wheel of radial system, very similar in design to the western wheel of Notre Dame de Paris and the great western one of Burgos. Springing{102}suddenly into being in all its developed perfection, it can only be regarded as a direct importation from the Isle de France. The ribs of the outer circle are twice as many as those of the inner, thus dividing the glass surfaces into approximately equal breadth of fields. This and the rose of the southern transept are similar, and both are copies of the original one still extant in the north transept. A fine cornice and open-work gallery surmount the composition, flanked by crocketed turrets and crowned in the centre by a pediment injurious in effect and of Italian Renaissance inspiration. The gable field is broken by a smaller wheel, and in an ogival niche are statues of the Annunciation.
The portico is the most truly splendid part of the Cathedral. Erected at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, much of its Gothic sculpture is unsurpassed in Spain. A perfect museum of art and a history in magnificent carving. The composition as a whole recalls again unquestionably Chartres. It consists of three recessed arches hooding with deep splays the three doorways which lead into nave and side aisles. Between the major arches are two smaller, extremely pointed ones, the most northerly of which encases an ancient columnar shaft decorated with the arms of Leon and bearing the inscription, "locus appellationis." Beneath it court was long held and justice administered by the rulers of Leon during the Middle Ages.
The arches of the porches are supported by piers, completely broken and surrounded by columnar shafts and niches carrying statues on their corbels. These piers stand out free from the jambs of the doors{103}and wall surfaces behind, and thus form an open gallery between the two. Around and over all is an astounding and lavish profusion of sculpture,—no less than forty statues. The jambs and splays, the shafts, the archivolts, the moldings and tympanums are covered with carving, varied and singularly interesting in the diversity of its period and character. Part of it is late Byzantine with the traditions of the twelfth century, while much is from the very best vigorous Gothic chisels, and yet some, later Gothic. Certain borders, leafage, and vine branches are Byzantine, and so also are some of the statues, "retaining the shapeless proportions and the immobility and parched frown of the Byzantine School, so perfectly dead in its expression, offering, however, by its garb and by its contours not a little to the study of this art, and so constituting a precious museum." Again, other statues have the mild and venerable aspect of the second period of Gothic work. The oldest are round the most northerly of the three doorways. Every walk of life is represented. There is a gallery of costumes; and most varying emotions are depicted in the countenances of the kings and queens, monks and virgins, prelates, saints, angels, and bishops. Separating the two leaves of the main doorway, stands Our White Lady. But if the statues are interesting, the sculpture of the archivolts and the personages and scenes carved on the fields of the tympanums far surpass them.
Mrs. Wharton says somewhere, "All northern art is anecdotic,—it is an ancient ethnological fact that the Goth has always told his story that way." Nothing could be more "anecdotic" than this sculpture.{104}The northern tympanum gives scenes from the Life of Christ, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Flight into Egypt. In the southern, are events from the life of the Virgin Mary; but the central one, and the archivolts surrounding it, contain the most spirited bits. The scene is the Last Judgment, with Christ as the central figure. Servants of the Church of various degrees are standing on one side with expressions of beatitude nowise clouded by the fate of the miserable reprobates on the other. In the archivolts angels ascend with instruments and spreading wings, embracing monks or gathering orphans into their bosoms, while the lost with horrid grimaces are descending to their inevitable doom. Not even the great Florentine could depict more realistically the feelings of such as had sinned grievously in this world.
The long southern side of the church has for its governing feature the wide transept termination, which in its triple portal, triforium arcade, and rose is practically a repetition of the west. The central body is all restored. The original, magnificent old statues and carving have, however, been set back in the new casings around and above the main entrance. An old Leonese bishop, San Triolan, occupies in the central door the same position as "Our White Lady" to the west, while the Saviour between the Four Evangelists is enthroned in the tympanum.
CATHEDRAL OF LEON Rear of apseCATHEDRAL OF LEONRear of apse
CATHEDRAL OF LEONRear of apse
One obtains a most interesting study in construction by standing behind the great polygonal apse, whence one may see the double rows of flying buttresses pushing with the whole might of the solid piers behind them against the narrow strips of{105}masonry at the angles of the choir. From every buttress rise elegantly carved and crocketed finials. Marshalled against the cobalt of the skies, they body forth an array of shining lances borne by a heavenly host. The balconies, forming the cresting to the excessively high clerestory, are entirely Renaissance in feeling, and lack in their horizontal lines the upward spring of the church below. Almost all of this eastern end, breaking through the city walls, is, with the possible exception of the roof, part of the fine old structure, in contrast to the adjoining Plateresque sacristy.
It is generally from the outside of French cathedrals that one receives the most vivid impressions. Though the mind may be overcome by a feeling of superhuman effort on entering the portals of Notre Dame de Paris, yet the emotion produced by the first sight of the queenly, celestial edifice from the opposite side of the broad square is the more powerful and eloquent. Not so in Spain,—and this in spite of the location of the choirs. It is not until you enter a Spanish church that its power and beauty are felt.
The audacious construction of Leon, which one wonders at from the square outside, becomes well-nigh incredible when seen from the nave. How is it possible that glass can support such a weight of stone? If Burgos was bold, this is insane. It looks as unstable as a house of cards, ready for a collapse at the first gentle breeze. Can fields of glass sustain three hundred feet of thrusts and such weights of stone? It is a culmination of the daring of Spanish Gothic. In France there was this difference,—while the fields of glass continued to grow larger and larger, the{106}walls to diminish, and the piers to become slenderer, the aid of a more perfectly developed system of counterthrusts to the vaulting was called in. In Spain we reach the maximum of elimination in the masonry of the side walls at the end of the thirteenth century, and in the Cathedral of Leon, whereas later Gothic work, as in portions of Burgos and Toledo, shows a sense of the futile exaggeration towards which they were drifting, as well as the impracticability of so much glass from a climatic point of view.
Internally, Leon is the lightest and most cheerful church in Spain. The great doorways of the western and southern fronts, as well as that to the north leading into the cloisters, are thrown wide open, as if to add to the joyousness of the temple. Every portion of it is flooded with sweet sunlight and freshness. It is the church of cleanliness, of light and fresh air, and above all, of glorious color. The glaziers might have said with Isaiah, "And I will make thy windows of agates and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones." The entire walls are a continuous series of divine rainbows.
The side walls of the aisles for a height of some fourteen feet to the bottom of their vaulting ribs, the triforium, commencing but a foot above the arches which separate nave from side aisles, and immediately above the triforium, forty feet of clerestory,—all is glass, emerald, turquoise, and peacock, amber, straw, scarlet, and crimson, encased in a most delicate, strangely reckless, and bold-traceried framework of stained ivory. Indeed, the jeweled portals of Heaven are wide open when the sun throws all the colors from above across the otherwise colorless fields of the pavement.{107}"The color of love's blood within them glows." There is glazing of many centuries and all styles. In some of the triforium windows are bits of glass, which, after the destruction or falling of the old windows, were carefully collected, put together, and used again in the reglazing. Some of it is of the earliest in Spain, probably set by French, Flemish, or German artisans who had immigrated to practise their art and set up their factories on Spanish soil adjacent to the stone-carvers' and masons' sheds under the rising walls of the great churches. Like all skilled artisans of their age, the secret of their trade, the proper fusing of the silica with the alkalies, was carefully guarded and handed down from father to son or master to apprentice. They were chemists, glaziers, artists, colorists, and glass manufacturers, all in one. The heritage was passed on in those days, when the great key of science which opens all portals had not yet become common property. Some of the oldest glass is merely a crude mosaic inlay of small bits and must date back to early thirteenth century. Coloring glass by partial fusion was then first practised and soon followed by the introduction of figures and themes in the glass, and the acquisition of a lovely, homogeneous opalescence in place of the purely geometrical patterns. Scriptural scenes or figures painted, as the Spanish say, "en caballete," became more and more general. The best of the Leon windows are from the fifteenth century, when the glaziers' shops in the city worked under the direction of Juan de Arge, Maestro Baldwin, and Rodrigo de Ferraras, and its master colorists were at work glazing the windows of the Capilla Mayor, the Capilla de Santiago, and a portion of those of the{108}north transept. "Ces vitreaux hauts en couleur, qui faisaient hésiter l'œil émerveillé de nos pères entre la rose du grand portail et les ogives de l'abside." The glazing has gone on through centuries; even to-day the glaziers at Leon are busy in their shops, making the sheets of sunset glow for their own and other Spanish cathedrals.
In some of the side aisles, they have, alas, during recent decades placed some horrible "grisaille" and geometrically patterned windows,—in frightful contrast to the delightful thirteenth-century legends of Saint Clement and Saint Ildefonso, or that most absorbing record of civic life depicted in the northern aisle. In studying the windows of Leon, Lamperez y Romea's observations on Spanish glazing are of interest: "In the fourteenth century the rules of glazing in Spain were changed. Legends had fallen into disuse and the masters had learned that, in the windows of the high nave, small medallions could not be properly appreciated. They were then replaced by large figures, isolated or in groups, but always one by one in the spaces determined by the tracery. The coloring remained strong and vivid. The study of nature, which had so greatly developed in painting and in sculpture, altered the drawing little by little, the figures became more modeled and lifelike, and were carried out with more detail. At the same time the coloring changed by the use of neutral tints, violet, brown, light blues, rose, etc. Many of the old windows are of this style. And so are the majority of the windows of Avila, Leon, and Toledo, as it lasted in Spain throughout the fifteenth century, and others which preserve the composition of great figures and{109}strong coloring, although there may be noticed in the drawings greater naturalism and modeling."
These rules differed slightly from those followed in France, where, with the exception of certain churches in the east, the windows of the thirteenth century were richer in decoration, more luscious in coloring and more harmonious in their tones than those of the fourteenth. There is little in this later century that can compare with the thirteenth-century series of Chartres figures.
The Leonese windows are perhaps loveliest late in the afternoon, when the saints and churchmen seem to be entering the church through their black-traceried portals, and, clad in heavenly raiment, about to descend to the pavement,—
As softly green,As softly seen,Through purest crystal gleaming,
there to people the aisles and keep vigil at the altars of God to the coming of another day.
There are, fortunately, scarcely any other colors or decorations,—or altars off side aisles,—that might divert the attention from the richness of glass. The various vaulting has the jointing of its stonework strongly marked, but, with the exception of the slightly gilded bosses, no color is applied. The glory of the glass is thus enhanced. Owing to the great portions of masonry which have been rebuilt, this varies in its tints, but the old was, and has remained, of such an exquisitely delicate creamy color that the new interposed stonework merely looks like a lighter, fresher shade of the old. The restoration has been executed with rare skill and artistic feeling.{110}
In studying the inner organism and structure of the edifice, one soon sees how recklessly the original fabric was constructed and in how many places it had to be rebuilt, strengthened and propped,—indeed, immediately after its completion. Here, as was the general custom in the greater early Gothic cathedrals, the building began with the choir and Capilla Mayor, to be followed by the transepts, the portions of the edifice essential to the service. The choir was probably temporarily roofed over and the nave and side aisles followed. The exterior façades, portals, and upper stories of the towers were carried out last of all by the aid of indulgences, contributions, alms and concessions.
In old manuscripts and documents which record the very first work on the cathedrals we find the one in charge called "Maestro,"—ormagister operis,magister ecclesiae,magister fabricae, but not till the sixteenth century does the appellation "arquitecto" appear. His pay seems to have varied, both in amount and in form of emolument,—sometimes it was good hard cash, often a very poor or dubious remuneration, handed out consequently with a more lavish hand; sometimes grants, and again royal favor. Generally the architect entered into a stipulated agreement with the Cathedral Chapter, both as to his time and services, before he began his work. We find Master Jusquin (1450-69) receiving from the Chapter of Leon not only a daily salary but also annual donations of bushels of wheat, pairs of gloves, lodgings, poultry, other supplies, and the use of certain workmen.
Leon's unquestionable French parentage is, if possible,{111}even more obvious in the interior than in the exterior. The piers between nave and side aisles are cylindrical in plan, having in their lowest section on their front surface three columns grouped together that continue straight up through triforium and clerestory and carry the transverse and diagonal ribs of the nave. They have further one column on each side of the axis east and west and, strange to say, only one toward the side aisles, which thus lack continuous supports for their diagonal ribs. The outer walls of the side aisles are formed by a blind arcade of five arches, surmounted by a projecting balcony or corridor and a clerestory subdivided by its tracery into four arches and three cusped circles. The nave triforium consists of a double arcade with a gallery running between (one of the very rare examples in Spain). Each bay has in the triforium four open and two closed arches, surmounted by two quatrefoils. The clerestory rises above, divided by marvelously slender shafts into six compartments and three cusped circles in the apex of the arch. Here shine, in dazzling raiment and with ecstatic expressions, the saints and martyrs ordered in the fifteenth century from Burgos for the sum of 20,000 maravedis.
Throughout all the glazed wall surfaces we find evidence of the anxiety that overtook their reckless projectors. All but the upper cusps of the windows of the side aisles have been filled in by masonry, painted with saints and evangelists in place of the translucent ones originally placed here. The lower portions of the triforium lights have been blocked up and also the two outer arches of the clerestory. The light, clustered piers and slender, double flying{112}buttresses could not accomplish the gigantic task of supporting the great height above. Nor could the ingenious strengthening of the stone walls (consisting of ashlar inside and out, facing intermediate rubble) by iron clamps supply the requisite firmness.
It seems doubly unfortunate that the choir stalls should occupy the position they do here, when there is such liberal space in the three bays east of the crossing in front of the altar. The stone of their exterior backing is cold and gray beside the ochre warmth of the surrounding piers. The classic Plateresque statues and bas-reliefs, as well as the exquisitely carved, Florentine decoration, seems strangely out of place under the Gothic loveliness above. The trascoro itself is warmer in color, but of the extravagant later period. Its pilasters, spandrels, and band-courses are filled with elaborate and fine Florentine ornamentation, while the niches themselves, with high reliefs representing the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Adoration of the Magi, are not quite free from a certain Gothic feeling. Above, great statues of Church Fathers weigh heavily on the delicate work and smaller scale below.
The carving of the double tier of walnut choir stalls is at once restrained and rich. Beautiful Gothic tracery surmounts in both tiers the figures that fill the panels above the seats. Below are characters from the Old Testament,—Daniel, Jeremiah, Abel, David busily playing his harp, Joshua "Dux Isri," Moses with splendid big horns and tablets, Tobias with his little fish slit up the belly. Above stand firmly full-length figures of the Apostles and saints. With the exception of some of the work near the entrance,{113}which is practically Renaissance in feeling, all this carving is late Gothic from the last part of the fifteenth century and executed by the masters Fadrique, John of Malines, and Rodrigo Aleman. Two of the stalls, more elevated and pronounced than the rest, are for the hereditary canons of the Cathedral, the King of Leon and the Marquis of Astorga. Excellent as they are, these stalls are not nearly so rich in design nor beautiful in execution as the Italian Renaissance choir stalls, in the Convent of San Marcos directly outside the city walls, carved some decades later by the Magister Guillielmo Dosel.
The crossing is splendidly broad, the transepts appearing, as one glances north and south, as much the main arms of the cross as do the nave and choir. The southern arm is quite new, having been completely rebuilt by D. Juan Madrazo and D. Demetrio Amador de los Rios. The glazing of its window and the arabesques cannot be compared to those of the original fabric in the northern arm. The four piers of the crossing, though slender and graceful, carry full, logical complements of shafts for the support of the various vaulting ribs, intersecting at their apexes.
The retablo above the high altar is in its simplicity as refreshing as the light and sunniness of the church. In place of the customary gaudy carving, it merely consists of a series of painted fifteenth-century tablets set in Gothic frames. Simple rejas close the western bays and a florid Gothic trasaltar, the eastern termination. Directly back of the altar lies a noble and dignified figure, the founder of the church, King Ordoño II. At his feet is a little dog, looking for all{114}the world like a sucking pig in a butcher's window. And above him is an ancient and most curious Byzantine relief of the Crucifixion. The lions and castles of his kingdom surround the old king. The greater portion of the carving must belong to the oldest in the church.
In looking at the vaulting and considering the difficulty of planning the "girola" or ambulatory, one realizes that such construction could only be the outcome of many years of study, experiment and inspiration. Perfection means long previous schooling and experience. The apsidal chapels that radiate from it have glass differing in excellence. Here and there frescoes of the thirteenth century line these earliest walls. It is surprising in how many different places old sepulchres are to be found, all more or less similar in their general design and belonging to the period of transition from the Byzantine to the Gothic, yet each denoting the building period of the place where it stands. Some of the subjects of the carving are most curious: a hog playing the bagpipes, the devil in the garb of a father confessor, tempting a penitent; or again, a woman suckling an ass. Saint Froila lies on one side of the altar. Not only his sanctity but even his authenticity were disputed by various disbelievers in the city, prior to his being brought to this final resting-place. The matter was decided by placing the body in question on an ass's back, whereupon the sagacious animal took his holy burden to the spot where it deserved burial.
In the Capilla de Nuestra Señora del Dado, or "of the die," stands a Virgin with the face of the Christ child ever bleeding, it is said, since the time when an{115}unlucky gambler in a fit of despair threw his dice against the Babe.
Directly opposite Ordoño's tomb lies the Countess Sancha, who, in a burst of religious enthusiasm, decided to leave her considerable worldly goods to the Church instead of to her nephew. This was more than he could stand, and he murdered her. Below her figure he is represented, receiving his just reward in being torn to pieces by wild horses.
To the north, a florid Gothic portal leads on a higher level to the Chapel of Santiago. This has been, and is still being, restored. Its three vaults are differently arched, the ribs not being carried down against the side walls to the floor, but met by broad corbels supported by curious figures. The stonework is cold and gray in comparison to the church proper.
Separating the northern entrance from the cloisters is a row of chapels, leading one into the other and crowded with tombs and sculpture. There are few more complete cloisters in Spain. Large and elaborate, they are a curious mixture of the old Gothic and the Renaissance restorations of the sixteenth century. Ancient Gothic tombs, their archivolts crowded with angels, pierce the interior walls, while the vaults themselves are most elaborately groined, the arches and vaulting being later filled with Renaissance bosses and rosettes. In the sunny courtyard are piled up the Renaissance turrets and sculptures that once usurped on the façades the places of the older Gothic ornamentation. The northern portal itself is practically hidden by the chapels and cloisters. It is fine Gothic work. A Virgin and Child form a mullion in its centre, while very worldly-looking women parade{116}in its archivolts. Everywhere are the arms of the United Kingdoms. A great portion of the ancient tapestry blue and Veronese red coloring is still preserved, throwing out the old Gothic figures in their true tints.
This aerial tabernacle, so rich and yet so simple, lies in the heart of a city so fabulously old that the Cathedral itself belongs rather to its later days. The old houses and streets have a dryness and close smell like that in the ancient sepulchres of parched countries. Monuments and walls and turrets of Rome crumble around the houses and vaults of Byzantium. The naïve frescoes and carvings of the eighth and ninth centuries seem to look down with childlike wonder and amazement on the pedestrians now crowding the patterned pavements, or pressing against the shady sides of the time-worn arches.
The worshipers who tread the narrow lanes leading to and from the altar have changed, but little else. The square, mediæval castles with their angular towers still command the approach of the main thoroughfares. The crabbed old watchman with lantern and stick under his cape treads his doddering gait across the courtyards through the night hours, crying after the peal of the bell above, "Las doce han dado y sereno," "Las trece han dado y aleviendo," "Las quince han dado y nublano," just as in the middle ages, so that the good peasant may know time and weather and merely turn in his bed, if neither crops nor creatures need care.
Santa Maria de Regla too stands to-day as she stood in the middle ages, a monument to the care and affection of her children. She has the same spirituality,{117}harmony of proportions, slenderness, and purity of lines, and she looks down and blesses us to-day with the same serenity and queenly grace which she wore in the fourteenth century. She is the finest Gothic cathedral in Spain.{118}{119}
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CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDOPhoto by J. Lacoste, MadridCATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO
Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO
I
THEpeace of death is over Toledo, unbroken by any invasion of modern thought or new architecture since her last deep sighs mingled with the distant echoes of the middle ages. But she still wears the mantle of her imperial glory. She sleeps in the fierce, beating sunlight of the twentieth century like the enchanted princess of fairy tales, undisturbed by, and unconscious of, the world around her.
The atmosphere is transparent; the sky spreads from lapis-lazuli to a cobalt field back of the snow-capped, turquoise Sierra de Gredo mountains, while a clear streak of lemon color throws out the sharp silhouette of the battlements and towers.
There is sadness and desolation in the decay, a pathetically forlorn and tragical widowhood, strangely affecting to the senses.
A blackened ruin, lonely and forsaken,Already wrapt in winding-sheets of sand;So lies Toledo till the dead awaken,—A royal spoil of Time's resistless hand.
Toledo! The name rings with history, romance and legend. Enthralling images of the past rise before one and vanish like the ghosts of Macbeth. Capital{122}of Goth, of Moslem, and of Christian; mightiest of hierarchical seats,[8]city of monarch and priest, she has worn a double diadem. Gautier says, "Jamais reine antique, pas même Cléopatre, qui buvait des perles, jamais courtisane Vénitienne du temps de Titien n'eut un écrin plus étincelant, un trousseau plus riche que Notre Dame de Tolède." But the flame of life which once burned warm and bright is now extinct and all her glory has vanished. Neglected churches, convents, palaces, and ruins lie huddled together, a stern and solemn vision of the past, waiting with the silence of the tomb, broken only by the continual tolling of her hoarse bells.
The city has a superb situation. Once seen, it is forever impressed upon the memory. The hills on which it stands rise abruptly from the surrounding campagna, which bakes brown and barren and crisp under the scorching rays of the sun, and stretches away to the distant mountains, vast and uninterrupted in its solitude and dreariness. It is "pobre de solemnidad,"—solemnly poor, as runs the touching phrase in Spanish. There is no joy and freshness of vegetation, no glistening of wet leaves, no scent of flowers. You read thirst in the plains, hunger in the soil-denuded hills. All is naked and bare, without a softening line or gentler shadow, lying fallow in spring, unwatered in drought, and ungarnered at harvest time.
The Tagus rushes round the city in the shape of a{123}horseshoe, confining and protecting it as the Wear does the towers of Durham. It boils and eddies 'twixt its narrow, rocky confines, hurrying from the gloomy shadows to the sunshine below, through which it slowly sweeps, murky and coffee-colored, to the horizon, no life between its flat banks, no commerce to mark it as a highway.
You pass over the high-arched Alcantara Bridge, which the Campeador and his kinsman, Alvar Fanez, crossed with twelve hundred horsemen at their back, to demand justice from their sovereign. A broad terrace crawls like a serpent up the steep incline to the city gates. A forest of soaring steeples rises above you, topped by the square bulk of the Alcazar.
The city smells sleepy. The narrow streets, or rather alleys, of the town wind tortuously around the stucco façades, with no apparent starting-point or destination, as confused as a skein of worsted after a kitten has played with it. Thus were they laid out by the wise Arabs, to afford shade at all hours of the day. At every corner, one runs into some detail of historical or artistic interest,—history and architecture here wander hand in hand.
Huge, wooden doors, closely studded with scallop nails as big as a man's fist, proud escutcheons of noble races lost to all save Spain's history; charming glimpses of interior courtyards and gardens glittering fresh in their emerald coloring, and sweet with the scent of orange blossoms; Gothic crenelations, Renaissance ironwork and railing, and Moorish capitals and ornamentation, all pell-mell, the styles of six centuries often appearing in the same building. More than a hundred churches and chapels and forty{124}monasteries crumble side by side within the small radius of the city. Half of its area was once covered by religious buildings or mortmain property.
II
The church, be it a grand cathedral or the humble steeple of some little hamlet, is always the connecting link between past and present. It has been the highest artistic expression of the people, and it remains an eloquent witness to continuity and tradition. It is what makes later ages most forcibly "remember," for it seeks to embody and satisfy the greatest need of the human heart.
KEY OF PLAN OF TOLEDO CATHEDRAL
The history of a great cathedral church of Spain is so closely connected with the civil life of its city that one cannot be thoroughly studied without some familiarity with the other. Spanish cathedrals differ in this respect from their great English and French sisters. In England, cathedrals were built and owned by the clergy, they belonged to the priests, they were surrounded and hedged in from the outside world by their extensive lawns and cloisters, refectories, chapter houses, bishops' palaces, and numerous monastic buildings. They were shut off from the rest of the world by high walls. In France, the cathedrals were the centre of civic life; their organs were the heart-throbs of the people; their bells were notes of warning. The very houses of the artisans climbed up to their sides and nestled for protection between the buttresses of the great Mother Church. Notre Dame d'Amiens, for instance, was the church of a commune,{125}what Walter Pater calls a "people's church." They belonged to the people more than to the clergy. They were a civil rather than an ecclesiastical growth, essentially the layman's glory.
In Spain, the church belonged to both. Municipal and ecclesiastical history were one and the same, going hand in hand in bloody strife or peaceful union,—the city was the body, the cathedral its animating soul. The cathedrals were meant, not for prayer alone, but to live in,—they were for festivals, meetings, thanksgivings, for surging, excited crowds. The church was animperium in imperio. It was the rallying place in all great undertakings or excitements. Here the Cortes often met, the great church conclaves assembled, the mystical Autos or sacred plays were performed, in them soldiers gathered, prepared for battle, edicts were published, sovereigns were first proclaimed, and allegiance was sworn; kings were christened, anointed, and buried. The troubled murmurings of the lower classes were here first voiced. They were the art galleries; here were displayed their finest paintings, statues and tapestries; they were even museums of natural history, and exhibited the finest examples of their wood-carving and glass-work, and the iron and silversmith's arts. It is thus easy to see that the political history of Toledo becomes vital in connection with its Cathedral church.
The history of Toledo dates back to Roman days,—we find Pliny referring to the city as the metropolis of Carpentania. She was among the first cities of Spain to embrace Christianity. All the barbarians, with the exception of the Franks, were Arians, but the last Gothic ruler in Spain to withstand the Roman{126}faith was Leovgild, who reigned in the last half of the sixth century. He was also their first able administrator, the first who consistently strove to bring order out of the chaos of warring tribes and conflicting authorities. Contemporaries describe his palace at Toledo, his throne and apparel, and his council chamber, as of truly royal magnificence. It was reserved to his son Reccared to change the history of Spain by publicly announcing his conversion to the Roman faith before a council of Roman and Arian bishops held in Toledo in 587, at the same time inviting them to exchange their views fearlessly and, as many as would, to follow him. The Goths were never difficult to convert, and many of the bishops and of the lords who were present embraced the Catholic faith, to which a majority of the people already belonged. Gregory the Great, hearing of the success of Reccared's gentle and liberal proselytism, wrote to him: "What shall I do at the Last Judgment when I arrive with empty hands, and your Excellency followed by a flock of faithful souls, converted by persuasion?" He summoned a third council at Toledo in 589, and in concert with nearly seventy bishops, regulated the rites and discipline of the Church, at the same time excluding the Jews from all employments. In royal Toledo Reccared was anointed with holy oil, and he substituted the Latin for the Gothic tongue in divine service, where Isidore was the first to use it. In daily life Latin soon replaced Gothic. King Wamba built the great walls round the city, and King Roderick held his glorious tournament inside them.
Greater than any fame of Gothic monarch was that of the Church Councils which met here to determine{127}the course of early dogma and shape the destinies of the larger part of Christendom.
The most salient figure during the rule of the Gothic kings was Saint Ildefonso, who quite overshadows his royal contemporaries. In 711 the Moors conquered the city, which then became a dependency of the Caliphs of Damascus and Bagdad until a Moorish prince shook off the foreign yoke. Independent Arab princes ruled, with Toledo as capital of their empire, until Alfonso VI, King of Castile and Leon, in 1085, finally conquered it for himself and his successors.
During the reigns of the early Castilian kings, we find names connected with the city's history which became famous all over Spain. The Cid was the city's first Alcaide. Alfonso el Batallador and Pedro el Cruel stand out in sombre relief, and Toledo was the cradle of the dramatic Comunidades' rising, and the scene of the noble death of their patriotic leader Padella. The streets ran with blood, and the walls spoke of glorious resistance before the Flemish emperor had crushed the liberties of the people.
We have a description of the brilliant pageant of Ferdinand and Isabella's entry after defeating the king of Portugal. "The Prince of Aragon was in full armour on his war horse and Isabella riding a beautiful mule, splendidly caparisoned, the bridle being held by two noble pages. Followed by their gorgeous retinue they rode slowly towards the Cathedral, while the highest dignitaries of the Church, the archbishop, himself a mitred king, the canons, and the clergy, in their pontifical garments, preceded by the Cross, came forth from the Puerta del Perdon{128}to receive them. On each side of the arch above the doorway were two angels, and in the centre a young maiden richly clothed, with a golden crown on her head, to represent the image of 'La Bendita Madre de Dios, nuestra Señora.' When Ferdinand and Isabella and all the company had gathered around, the angels began to sing. The following day the trophies of war were presented to the Cathedral."
During the period immediately following the reign of the Catholic Kings, Toledo reached her highest prosperity. She numbered as many as 200,000 inhabitants;—to-day she has only 20,000. Glorious processions swept through her streets, the proud knights of the military orders of Alcantara, Calatrava, and Santiago, black-robed Dominican inquisitors, executioners, royal chaplains and major-domos, the Councils of the Indies, Castilian grandees, Roman princes and cardinals, brawling Flemish and Burgundian nobles, German landsknechts, and great Catholic ambassadors.
Toledo received her death-blow when Philip II, unable to brook the haughty claims of the Toledan archbishops, and feeling his power second to theirs, finally, in 1560, moved the capital of his realm to Madrid. Toledo's annals grew dark. So merciless was the Tribunal of the Inquisition that under its vigilant eye 3327 processes were disposed of in little more than a year. So Toledo fell from her former greatness.
The site of the Cathedral in the very heart of the city is by no means dominant. The church lies so low that even the spire is inconspicuous in the landscape. On three sides adjacent buildings completely{129}bar all view or approach. The only free perspective is on the fourth side, from the steps of the Ayuntamiento across the square.
The inscription above the door of the city hall, with its trenchant advice to the magistrates, is well worth notice:—
Nobles discretos varones,Qui gobernais a ToledoEn aquatos escalonesCodicia, temor y miedo.Por los comunes provechosDeschad los particularesPuez vos hezo Dios pilaresDe tan requisimos lechosEstat vermes y derechos.[9]
In the streets, thealcazeriaswhich wind around the sides of the Cathedral, the rich silk guild traded. Here were shipped the goods that freighted vessels sailing for the American colonies.
During the Visigothic reign in Toledo, the Cathedral site was occupied by a Christian temple. It was transformed by the Moors after their occupancy of the city into their principal mosque; there they were still permitted to carry on their worship, according to the terms of the treaty made on their surrender of the city to King Alfonso IV in 1085. A year afterwards{130}King Alfonso went off on a campaign, leaving the capital in charge of his French queen, Constance, and the Archbishop Bernard, recently sent to Toledo at the King's request by the Abbot of Cluny. No sooner was King Alfonso outside the city walls than the regents turned the Moors out of the church. The Archbishop arrived with a throng of Christian citizens, battered down the main entrance, threw the Moslem objects of worship into the gutters, and set in their place the Cross and the Virgin Mary. When the news of this outrage reached the ears of the King, he returned in wrath to Toledo, swearing he would burn both wife and prelate who had dared to break the oath he had so solemnly sworn. The Moslems, sagely fearing later vengeance would be wreaked upon them should they permit matters to take their course, besought the returning sovereign to restrain his wrath while they released him from his oath,—"Whereat he had great joy, and, riding on into the city, the matter ended peacefully."
The appearance of this fanatic Cluny monk is of the greatest importance as heralding a new influence in the development and history of Spanish ecclesiastical architecture. His coming marks the introduction of a foreign style of building and a revolution in the previous national methods, known as "obra de los Godos," or work of the Goths. Further, with the gradual arrival of French ecclesiastics from Cluny and Citeaux, came also a greater interference from Rome in the management of the Spanish Church, and a radical limitation of the former power of the Peninsula's arrogant prelates. Owing to the new influence, the Italian mass-book was soon presented in{131}place of the ancient Gothic ritual and breviary. The foreign churchmen likewise aided in uniting sovereign, clergy, and nobility in common cause against the Saracen infidels now so firmly ensconced in the Peninsula. Spanish art had previously felt only national influences; now, through the door opened by the monks, it received potent foreign elements.
Spain had been far too much occupied with internal strife and political dissension to have had breathing spell or opportunity for the development of the fine arts and the building of churches. The passion for building which the French monks brought with them awoke entirely dormant qualities in the Spaniard, which in the early Romanesque, but especially in the Gothic edifices, produced beautiful, but essentially exotic fruits. First in the days of the Renaissance the architecture showed features which might be termed original and national. With the Cluniacs came not only French artisans but Flemish, German, and Italian, all taking a hand in, and lending their influences to the great works of the new art.
Nothing remains of the old Moorish-Christian house of worship. It was torn down by order of Saint Ferdinand (he had laid the foundation stone of Burgos as early as 1221), who laid the corner stone of the present edifice with great ceremony, assisted by the Archbishop, in the month of August, 1227 (seven years prior to the commencement of Salisbury and Amiens). The building was practically completed in 1493, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the most illustrious epoch of Spanish history. Additions and alterations injurious to the harmony and symmetry of the building were made till the end of the{132}seventeenth century, and again continued during the eighteenth. It thus represents the architectural inspiration and decadence of nearly six hundred years.
In style it belongs to the group of three great churches, Burgos, Toledo and Leon, which were based upon the constructional principles and decorative features termed Gothic. In some respects these churches embodied to a highly developed extent the organic principles of the style, in others, they fell far short of a clear comprehension of them. None of them had the beauty or the purity of the greatest of their French sisters. Burgos may be said to be most consistently Gothic in all its details, but neither Toledo nor Leon was free from the influence of Moorish art, which was indeed developing and flowering under Moslem rule in the south of the Peninsula, at the time when Gothic churches were lifting their spires into the blue of northern skies under the guidance and inspiration of the French masters. In many respects the Gothic could not express itself similarly in Spain and France,—climatic conditions differed, and, consequently, the architecture which was to suit their needs. In France, Gothic building tended towards a steadily increasing elimination of all wall surfaces. The weight and thrusts, previously carried by walls, were met by a more and more skillfully developed framework of piers and flying buttresses. Such a development was not practical for Spain nor was it understood. The widely developed fields for glass would have admitted the heat of the sun too freely, whereas the broad surfaces of wall-masonry gave coolness and shade. Nor were the sharply sloping{133}roofs for the easy shedding of snow necessary in Spain. In French and English Gothic churches, the light, pointed spire is the ornamental feature of the composition, whereas in the Spanish, with a few exceptions, the towers become heavy and square.
None of the three Cathedrals in question impresses us as the outcome of Spanish architectural growth, but seems rather a direct importation. They have the main features of a style with which their architects were familiar and in which they had long since taken the initial steps. They are working with a practically developed system, whose infancy and early growth had been followed elsewhere.
While in the twelfth, and the early portion of the thirteenth century, Frenchmen were gradually evolving the new system of ecclesiastical architecture, the Spaniards, destined to surpass them, were to all purposes still producing nothing but Romanesque buildings, borrowing certain ornamental or constructional features of the new style, but in so slight and illogical a degree, that their style remained based upon its old principles. They employed the pointed arch between arcades and vaulting, and unlike the French, threw a dome or cimborio over the intersection of nave and transepts. In some instances we find a regular French quadripartite vault at the crossing, but such changes are not sufficient to term the cathedrals of the period (Tudela, Tarragona, Zamora, and Lerida) Gothic. They remain historically, rather than artistically, interesting. With the second quarter of the thirteenth century, comes the change.
In style Toledo corresponds most closely to the early Gothic of the north of France. Its plan reminds{134}one forcibly of Bourges, though it is far more ambitious in size. Owing to the long period of its building, it bears late Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque features, while traces of Moorish influence are not wanting.
The Cathedral of Toledo was built in an imaginative, creative and passionate age,—an age when the ordinary mason was a master builder as well as sculptor, stimulated by local affection, pride and piety. The results of his work were tremendous,—his finished product was a storehouse of art. Artists of all nations had a hand in the work. Bermudez mentions 149 names of those who embellished the Cathedral during six centuries. Here worked Borgoña, Berruguete, Cespedes, and Villalpando, Copin, Vergara Egas, and Covarrubias. It is rather difficult to analyze their genius. They were not naturally artists, as were the French and Italians; they did not create as easily, but were rather stimulated by a more naïve craving for vast dimensions. With this we find interwoven in places the sparkling, jewel-like intricacy and play of light and shade so natural to the Moorish artisan, and the sombre, overpowering solemnity of the warlike Spanish cavalier.
It is necessary for a people at all times to find expression for its æsthetic life. Architecture, like literature, reflects the sentiments and tendencies of a nation's mind. As truly as Don Quixote, Don Juan, or the Cid express them, so do the stories told by Toledo, Leon, or Burgos. They reproduce the passions, the dreams, the imagination, and the absurdities of the age which created them.
Toledo's first architect, who superintended the{135}work for more than half a century, was named Perez (d. 1285). He was followed by Rodrigo, Alfonso, Alvar Gomez, Annequin de Egas, Martin Sanchez, Juan Guas, and Enrique de Egas. Hand in hand with the architects, worked the high priests.
The Archbishop of Toledo is the Primate of Spain. Mighty prelates have sat on that throne, and the chapter was once one of the most celebrated in the world. The Primate of Toledo has the Pope as well as the King of Spain for honorary canons, and his church takes precedence of all others in the land. The offices attached to his person are numerous. As late as the time of Napoleon's conquest of the city, fourteen dignitaries, twenty-seven canons, and fifty prebends, besides a host of chaplains and subaltern priests, followed in the train of the Metropolitan. At the close of the fifteenth century, his revenues exceeded 80,000 ducats (about $720,000), while the gross amount of those of the subordinate beneficiaries of his church rose to 180,000. This amount, or 12,000,000 reals, had not decreased at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the middle ages he was followed by more horse and foot than either the Grand Master of Santiago or the Constable of Castile. When he threw his influence into the balance, the pretender to the throne was often victorious. He held jurisdiction over fifteen large and populous towns besides numbers of inferior places.
Many who occupied the episcopal throne of Toledo ruled Spain, not only by virtue of the prestige their high office gave them, but through extraordinary genius and remarkable attainments. They were great alike in war and in peace. Many of them combined{136}broadness of view and real learning with purity of morals. They founded universities and libraries, framed useful laws, stimulated noble impulses, corrected abuses, and promoted reforms. Popes called them to Rome to ask their advice in affairs of the Church. Bright in the history of Spain shine the names of such prelates as Rodriguez, Tenorio, Fonseca, Ximenez, Mendoza, Tavera, and Lorenzana.
From the tenth to the sixteenth centuries Castile was far less bigoted than other European nations, for, of all the daughters of the Mother Church, Spain was the most independent. Her kings and her primate were naturally her champions, ever ready and defiant. King James I even went so far as to cut out the tongue of a too meddlesome bishop. From early Gothic days to the time when Ferdinand began to dream of Spain as a power beyond the Iberian Peninsula, no kingdom in Europe was less disposed to brook the interference of the Pope. Ferdinand and Isabella thwarted him in insisting upon their right to appoint their own candidates for the high offices of the Spanish church, and the Pope was obliged to give way.
The figure we constantly encounter in the thrilling tilts between Rome and Spanish prelates is the Archbishop of Toledo. Like Richelieu and Wolsey, Ximenez and Mendoza towered above their time, and their great spirits still seem present within their church. Ximenez, better known in English as Cardinal Cisneros, rose to his high office much against his will from the obscurity of a humble monk. The peremptory orders of the Pope were necessary to make him leave his cell and become successively{137}Archbishop of Toledo, Grand Chancellor of Castile, Inquisitor General, Cardinal, Confessor to Queen Isabella, Minister of Ferdinand the Catholic, and Regent of the Kingdom of Charles V. He was "an austere priest, a profound politician, a powerful intellect, a will of iron, and an inflexible and unconquerable soul; one of the greatest figures in modern history; one of the loftiest types of the Spanish character. Notwithstanding the greatness thrust upon him, he preserved the austere practices of the simple monk. Under a robe of silk and purple, he wore the hard shirt and frock of St. Francis. In his apartments, embellished with costly hangings, he slept on the floor, with only a log of wood for his pillow. Ferdinand owed to him that he preserved Castile, and Charles V, that he became King of Spain. He did not boast when, pointing to the Cordon of St. Francis, he explained, 'It is with this I bridle the pride of the aristocracy of Castile.'"[10]
History may accuse him of the unpardonable expulsion of the Moriscos, and the retention of the Inquisition as well as its introduction into the New World,—but what he did was done from the strength of his convictions and according to what, in the light of his age, seemed the best for his country and his Church. He was perhaps even greater as a Spaniard than as a churchman. His conceptions were all grand, and he was as versatile as he was great. Victor in the greatest of all Spanish toils, he executed the polyglot version of the Scriptures, the most stupendous literary achievement of his age. Fitting his greatness is the simplicity of his epitaph:—{138}
Condideram musis Franciscus grande lyceum,Condor in exiguo nunc ego sarcophago.Praetextam junxi sacco, galeamque galero,Frater, Dux, Praesul, Cardineusque pater.Quin virtute mea junctum est diadema cucullo,Cum mihi regnanti paruit Hesperia.
The figure of Cardinal Mendoza stands out clear and strong in the final struggle with Granada. It was he who first planted the Cross where the Crescent had waved for six centuries, and he was the first to counsel Isabella to assist the great discoverer. His keen intellect made him lend a ready ear and friendly hand to the rapid development of the science of his time and the fast-spreading taste for literature.
And so the line of Toledo's illustrious bishops continues,—leaders of the church militant, like the Montagues and Capulets, they fought from the mere habit of fighting, but they seldom stained their swords in an unworthy cause.
III
There is a great discrepancy between the interior and the exterior of the Cathedral. The former is as grand as the latter is insignificant and unworthy. The scale is tremendous. Only Milan and Seville cover a greater area, if the Cathedral is considered in connection with its cloisters. Cologne comes next to it in size. It runs from west to east, with nave and double side aisles, ending in a semicircular apse with a double ambulatory. As is characteristic of Spanish churches, it is astonishingly wide for its length,—{139}being 204 feet wide and 404 feet long. The nave is 98 feet high and 44 feet wide, while the outer aisles are respectively 26 and 32 feet across.
The exterior, with the exception of the ornamental portions of the portals and a few carvings, is all built of a Berroqueña granite. The interior is of a kind of mouse-colored limestone taken from the quarries of Oliquelas near Toledo. Like many limestones, it is soft when first quarried, but hardens with time and exposure.
The impression of the exterior is strangely disappointing. Imposing and massive, but irregular, squat, and encumbered by surrounding edifices clinging to its masonry. An indifferent husk, encasing a noble interior. Only one tower is completed, and no two portions of the decoration are symmetrical. The exterior has no governing scheme, no "idée maîtresse," no individual style, and is the outgrowth of no definite period. Successive generations of peace or war have enriched or destroyed its masonry. You stop with an exclamation of admiration in front of certain details of the exterior; before others, you only feel astonishment. The want of order and unity in the execution of its various portions and elevations is distressing.
Order and harmony may be preserved, even where an edifice is carried on by successive ages, each of which imparts to its work the stamp of its own developing skill and imagination. Very few of the great cathedrals were begun and completed in one style. Most of the great French churches show traces of the earlier Norman or Romanesque; most of the English Gothic, traces of the Norman or of the{140}different periods of English Gothic architecture; but one dominating scheme has been followed by the consecutive architects. The lack of such a governing and restraining principle is felt in the exterior of Toledo. Further than this, although successive wars and religious fanaticism have with their destructive fury injured so many of the beautiful statues and exquisite carvings and much of the stained glass of the French and English religious establishments, still the architecture itself has in the main been left undisturbed. In Toledo, there is hardly a portion of the early structure and decoration of the lower, visible part of the Cathedral which has not been altered or torn down by the various architects of the last three centuries.
As an obvious result, the portions of the exterior which are interesting are individual features, and not a unified scheme; and they are interesting historically, rather than in relation to or in dependence upon one another.
The west front, which is the principal façade, the various doorways and completed tower form the most interesting portions of the exterior.
The west front is flanked by two projecting towers, dissimilar in design. To the south is the uncompleted one, containing the Mozarabic chapel,[11]roofed by an octagonal cupola and surmounted by a lantern, strangely betraying in exterior form its Byzantine ancestry.