Leon, Burgos, and Salamanca
Thereis something cold and forlorn about the little city of Leon, that one-time capital of Spain; something chill and wintry, not explained even by the snowy peaks of Asturias bounding the horizon on the north. It is the chill of age. Other cities there are, even in Spain, older than Leon, but with them time has dealt more gently. It was but natural that this town should wither and grow old. Very much out of the world it lies, in as remote a situation as could be found in southern Europe. It has long outlived its destiny—and that was an honourable one. The blood of no new race has ever been infused into its veins. Founded by S. Sulpicius Galba in 70A.D.as the headquarters of the Seventh Legion (Legio Septima), when it grew into a town, doubtless its first inhabitants were the unconquerable Celts of the Cantabrian Mountains. When the wild Suevi took refuge in this north-western corner of the peninsula,Legio, as it was then called, was nominally subject to them. Leovigild added it to the dominions of the Visigoths in 540, but despite this change of masters it probably remained Celtic to the core. The Moorish yoke endured here but twenty-five years. So near to the great mountain barriers, where the new Spain was born, which contained the nucleus of the new monarchy and nation, it was naturally among the first prizes of the kings of Pelayo’s line. Issuing from those passes which had proved a death-trap to the Moorish hordes, the Christians of Asturias wrested this city from the invader in the year 742, and with a very brief interval it was henceforward to know none but a Spanish yoke. We do not hear of much effort on the part of the Saracens to recover or to hold it. We can fancy that the spirit and resolution of those children of the South were numbed in these wintry plains, within sight of the everlasting snows, almost within reach of the tempests of the northern seas. But it was a place that suited well the temper of the champions of Christendom in Spain. It was grim, it was stern, it was rude and simple. Behind was the glorious cradle ofthe nation, the citadel of Spanish freedom; before were the plains whereon to do battle with the Moor, the streams that flowing south pointed the way for the Spanish knight. Leon was the first stage of a journey which was to end only at the Pillars of Hercules. Every town in the peninsula marks a forward step of the Christian, a backward step of the Moslem. Leon was outpost first, capital after. It seems to have been attacked and perhaps destroyed by the enemy during the ninth century, for we read that OrdoñoI.rebuilt it. Under AlfonsoIII.the frontier of the nascent kingdom was carried forward to the Douro. At Leon men slept more peacefully. Alfonso, upon his abdication in 912, pursuing the policy afterwards so harmful to Spain, divided his dominions among his children. Leon was allotted to Garcia; and two years later, on the death of that prince and the accession of his brother OrdoñoII., it became the capital of the united realms of Galicia and Leon, to which in 923 with the crowning of a third brother, FroilaII., was added the ancestral province of Asturias.
In the Middle Ages, where the Court was the scaffold was not far away. And the new capital was soon to see something of the darker side of regal authority. OrdoñoII.attributed his defeatat Val de Junqueras to the defection or mutiny of the Counts of Castile, the wardens of the eastern marches. Summoning four of them into his presence at his palace at Tejares, he placed them under arrest, and sent them in chains to Leon, where after a painful captivity they were put to death. This was not the last tragedy to cast a shadow over the little capital. Meanwhile, under RamiroII., the name of the town began to be applied to the whole kingdom. It was the scene of the imprisonment of the aspiring Fernan González, Count of Castile; and by him and a Navarrese army it was besieged during the reign of OrdoñoIII.Under the terrible Al Mansûr, the Moslem tide swept up to the very peaks of Asturias. Leon was submerged, the city taken and burned, and FernandoII.was glad to find an asylum in the mountain fastnesses of his ancestors.
This was but a temporary check to the Christian fortunes. In 1002 the announcement was made from every pulpit in free Spain, ‘Al Mansûr is dead and buried in Hell.’ Emerging once more from their retreat, the Leonese recovered their capital, which was henceforward to remain uninterruptedly in Christian hands.
AlfonsoV., the Restorer of Leon, mindful ofthe precedents set by Visigothic kings, held an ecclesiastical council at his capital in the year 1020. There was a great concourse of prelates and nobles from all parts of Christian Spain. The conference took place in the cathedral church of St. Mary, founded by OrdoñoII., and King Alfonso and Queen Elvira presided in person. Of the fifty-eight ordinances and resolutions, thirty-one embodied the municipal constitution of the town of Leon—the first town in Spain to receive a charter. Indeed, it was probably the first town in mediæval Europe to obtain the privilege of self-government.
The history of the city thenceforward becomes merged in the history of the kingdom and in that of Spain generally. But here and there in the annals of the time certain events stand out as specially associated with it. In the year 1029 the young Count Garcia of Castile came hither to espouse Sancha, the sister of King FernandoIII.His movements were watched by the three sons of the Count of Vela, whom his father had put to death. Their manner towards the young Count implied rather friendship than enmity. But one morning, as he entered the church of San Isidoro, they fell upon him and slew him. The assassins were burned to death; but their deedserved to intensify the bitter rivalry of Castile and Leon.
There were other ecclesiastical councils held here in 1106, 1114, 1134, 1228, and 1288. And in 1137 the church which had been defiled with the young Garcia’s blood was the scene of the impressive coronation of AlfonsoVII.as Emperor of all Spain—a title which no Spanish king could justly bear, till Charles came from Flanders in 1517 to rule over a Spain for ever united.
For a hundred years longer the little city by the northern hills posed from time to time as an imperial capital, but with the union of the crowns under San Fernando the headship of the kingdom passed to Burgos and Toledo. For a century more the court of the Spanish kings was in the ever-moving camps, on the ever-shifting battlefield. The claims of Leon to rank as capital were forgotten. The echoes of warfare far away on the banks of the Jucar and Guadalquivir hardly reached her walls. She fell asleep. She had harboured the founders of national independence; she had borne the brunt and stress of battle, had been in the van in the fierce strife between Christian and Moslem. Everything that happened to Leon happened a very long time ago; and it might all have seemed adream if the genius of the architect had not bequeathed to our own day great memorials of the glory made by kings and prelates.
Leon, as we know, does not derive its name from ‘the lions introduced by the Carthaginians,’ as some old chroniclers believed, but from the legion quartered here in the first century of the Christian era. The old name of the place was Urbs Legionis. Remembering the peculiar pronunciation of the Spanish G, the modification of the Latin word into its present form is easily explained.
The legion which preserved thepax Romanain this remote corner of the empire may have varied in strength from six to seven thousand men of all arms. The camp was rectangular, and measured 380 by 570 metres. It was confined by the wall, of which the northern, eastern, and part of the western sides remain,—or rather the bases, for the masonry of the upper part reveals the handiwork of various subsequent ages. Walking round the city, you notice the stout round bastions outcropping between the houses which frequently obscure the trace of the wall. Of the four Roman gates, faced with marble slabs and inscribed with the names of the commanders of thelegion, two remain—the eastern, or Bishop’s gateway, behind the cathedral, and the low semicircular arch in the Plazuela del Conde de Luna.
Embedded in or against these walls many profoundly interesting relics of the Roman domination have been discovered. These are now to be seen in the Provincial Museum. There is the white marble altar dedicated to Diana by the legate Tullius Maximus, as the inscription on one side records. The three other faces bear respectively these inscriptions:—
This Tullius Maximus seems to have loved the chase, and elsewhere we find him dedicating a bear’s skin to his favourite goddess. The people of the Urbs Legionis were probably mighty hunters. On a sepulchral monument the son-in-law, daughter, and grandson of the founder are represented as a boar, a hind, and a fawn. The Provincial Museum also contains an altar consecrated to the genius of the legion.
Where the cathedral now stands were the Roman baths, which are said to have been converted into a castle or palace by the kings of Asturias. The building was utterly destroyed by Al Mansûr, and on its site arose the basilica of OrdoñoII.The royal residence then seems to have been situated near where the monastery of San Salvador del Palaz del Rey was built by RamiroII.(930-950). Another palace occupied the square in front of the church of San Isidoro. Rebuilt by Berenguela, the mother of San Fernando, it was pulled down in the time of Isabel the Catholic. It was no doubt from this building that Count Garcia passed to his death in the opposite church.
after the Roman walls the most ancient building in Leon, occupies the site of a chapel and nunnery consecrated in 966 and rebuilt by AlfonsoV.FernandoI., who reigned over Leon and Castile from 1033 to 1065, obtained from the Amir of Seville the body of thedoctor, San Isidoro. To receive this venerated relic a new church was built, and solemnly dedicated on December 21, 1063. Two years later the bones of the martyr San Vicente were transported hither from Avila. In the next century the church was greatly enlarged and richly endowed by AlfonsoVII., who attributed his victory at Baeza to the miraculous intervention of the Doctor of Seville. To provide for the service of the church, the regular canons were transferred here from Carvajal, and exchanged quarters with the nuns who had continued to occupy the old tenth-century convent.
The church is in the Romanesque style, the oldest portion being the chapel of Santa Catalina, which Street thinks was the original fabric of FernandoI.The chapel was intended as a mausoleum for the royal family of Leon, but twelve tombs only remain out of thirty. The only inscriptions are on the resting-places of AlfonsoV.and Sancha, the sister of AlfonsoVII.Here were buried AlfonsoIV., RamiroII., OrdoñoIII.and his queen, SanchoI., RamiroIII.and his queen Urraca, FernandoI.and Queen Sancha, Sancho the Great of Navarre, and the murdered Count Garcia. Here, before the Pantheon was despoiled by the French in1808, might have been seen the marble and porphyry sepulchre of the brave princess Urraca of Zamora, and the urns of the Moorish and French wives of AlfonsoVII.Now, the inscriptions having been wantonly defaced, it is impossible to identify the few remaining sarcophagi.
The arches of this gloomy Pantheon are decorated with curious frescoes, probably of the twelfth century. The crude drawing and tints rather add to the impressive effect of these solemn paintings. Among the subjects are the ‘Massacre of the Innocents,’ the ‘Last Supper’ (painted, as Street points out, without the least regard to the angles formed by the groining, and as if the vault were a flat surface), scenes from the Passion, and the Visions of the Apocalypse—terrible conceptions. One of the designs represents the Supreme Judge with two swords issuing from His mouth; another shows a hand, inscribedDextra Dei. The compositions are surrounded by foliage, rich and conventional. On the altar is an interesting ivory cross, the gift of FernandoI.and Sancha, whose names are engraved upon the reverse. While the figure of Christ is rude in the extreme, the foliage and figures of the four evangelists at the back are exquisitely chiselled.
Leaving this place consecrated to wrath and tears, we re-enter the church. The plan is roughly cruciform, an apsidal chapel projecting to the east of each arm of the transept, on either side of the Capilla Mayor. We are now in that part of the fabric which was built by order of AlfonsoVII., evidently on the model of St. Sernin at Toulouse. The name of the architect is given on an inscription in the flooring as Petrus de Deo—Peter of God. The most interesting features in the church are the very ancient mural paintings in the Byzantine style, with the same profusion of foliage and richly moulded capitals to be noticed in the Pantheon. The dentated and horse-shoe arches reveal traces of Moorish influence, showing that even in the far north of Spain architects could not have closed their eyes and ears altogether to the doings of the detested infidels.
Among the treasures of the church might fairly be included the font, with its Byzantine reliefs, while objects of special veneration are the relics of San Isidoro contained in an ancient silver urn, supported by four lions, and the hand of San Martino, holding a pen, and encased in a rich reliquary. Here also you may see a chalice of agate, the donation of the Infanta Urraca, and(in the Sacristy) the standard embroidered by order of AlfonsoVII.with the image of San Isidoro as he appeared at Baeza, and last displayed at the taking of Antequera in the fifteenth century. Many other priceless treasures and relics were lost when the church was plundered by the French; while in 1811 the building was struck by lightning, and—as if that were not enough—white-washed throughout!
The exterior is interesting. A doorway admits to the middle of the nave on the south side. The arch is semicircular and triple, the tympanum and spandrils being filled with sculpture, representing the Offering of Isaac, the Lamb of God, figures of Saints, and the signs of the Zodiac. ‘The whole detail of this sculpture,’ says Street, ‘is very unlike that of most of the early work I have seen in Spain; the figures are round and flabby, and very free from any of the usual conventionality. All this made me feel much inclined to think that the execution of this work was at an early date, and soon after the first consecration of the church.’ The appearance of the whole front was not improved by the Renaissance work above this gateway—the elaborate cornice, the imperial shield of CharlesV., and the colossal equestrian statue of San Isidoro.The Romanesque portal of the southern transept, now closed, is adorned with a relief representing the Descent from the Cross, the statues of Saints Peter and Paul, and other sculptures. Detached from the church is a square tower or steeple built between two bastions in the adjoining city wall. Generally speaking, the eastern façade is strictly Gothic, much of it having been added to the Romanesque framework in the sixteenth century.
The adjoining cloister is mainly of the same period and style. The decorations are in the plateresque style, and the staircase, leading to the council chamber of the Provincial Deputation, is a daring and admirable example of Renaissance work. The library contains the beautiful Bible written in 960 by the priest Sancho, ‘whose illuminations and vignettes’ (says a native writer) ‘with their sinister figures with black faces, curious dresses, and gloomy fancies, display the artistic tendencies of that age of turmoil.’
In the Plaza del Conde de Luna is the mean little church of San Salvador del Palaz del Rey, built by RamiroII.as a convent for his daughter Elvira—she who ruled as regent during the minority of her brother, RamiroIII.Nothing of the original structure remains; but the site isthat of one of the oldest royal residences in Leon, and of the first burying-place of her kings, before their ashes were transported to San Isidoro.
of Leon marks the second period of the city’s history and of the architecture of northern Spain. San Isidoro stands for the infant monarchy, with its Byzantine traditions handed down from the Visigothic kings; the cathedral, for the strong, ever-expanding realm of Leon and Castile, in close touch and sympathy with the great Catholic world of the west. San Isidoro is Romanesque; the cathedral is not only Gothic, but purely French, closely resembling Amiens and Rheims. It is a magnificent exotic. It symbolised the reunion of Spain with Western Christendom, after its long night of isolation, the infusion into its art and its people of the European spirit.
This beautiful cathedral—pulchra Leonina—occupies the site of the basilica of OrdoñoII.(of which no trace remains). Planned about the first years of the reign of San Fernando, it was not completed in 1258, when an episcopal congress was held at Madrid to discuss the progress of the works and to grant an indulgence of forty days to the faithful who should assist with alms.In 1303 the Bishop Gonzalez proclaimed that the work was done, ‘thanks be to God.’
The beauty of this wonderful church consists largely in its lightness. Its supports are so slender, its walls so freely pierced with windows at every stage, its details everywhere so delicate, that the term ‘frozen music’ applied to architecture seems here indeed no mere hyperbole. ‘A mere lantern,’ Street calls the church, and blames the architect for his extreme daring and for his excessive use of windows. Though the vaults had been filled in with very light stone or concrete, the fabric was ever trembling on its fragile foundations. In 1631 the vault above the crossing collapsed, and was replaced by a dome. A hundred years later many of the arches of the aisles succumbed. Meanwhile Renaissance and Churrigueresque additions were made; but the whole was restored between the years 1850 and 1901, and now the cathedral exists in almost pristine symmetry and airiness.
The eastern end, or chevet, projects beyond the city wall, which forms the eastern boundary of the adjacent cloister. The transept, if that term may be applied to the whole space between the Capilla Mayor and Coro, is of unusual breadth, and may be said to include a nave, two aisles to the east andone to the west. North and south it projects but slightly beyond the nave. The west front is flanked by two steeples, which stand on each side of, and do not terminate, the aisles. They are heavier than the rest of the structure, and of different heights and ages. Ugly, too, is the empty space left between their side walls and those of the clerestory over the main entrance. The northern steeple is the older, lower, and simpler; it is surmounted by a spire with a vane. The other tower is more ornate, and contains the belfry. Its traceries are in a debased Gothic style.
The façade between these steeples is very beautiful. It is surmounted by a pediment with ‘acroteria’ or pedestals to receive statues. Beneath this is a very large wheel-window above a row of windows corresponding to the triforium. The three magnificently sculptured doorways extend from steeple to steeple. The arches are pointed and triple. Byzantine influence is visible in the statuary and foliage. The figures, forty in number, are rather more than life-size, and represent saints and apostles, martyrs and confessors, kings and queens. On the north-west doorway is seen the half-defaced figure of Justice, bearing a sword inscribed with the words ‘Justitia est unicuique dare quod suum est.’ Beneath thisportal cases of appeal were tried in the thirteenth century. A small column between this and the central doorway is engraved with the wordslocus appellationisand the arms of Leon and Castile. The tympanum of the arch is adorned with reliefs, illustrating the earlier episodes in the life of Jesus. The doors themselves show scenes from the Passion and Risen Life.
The central shaft of the middle door is disfigured with a dressed-up image of the Virgin enclosed in glass. The sculpture of the tympanum is spirited and elaborate. In a composition depicting the Last Judgment devils are seen stirring their fires and plunging the reprobate into seething cauldrons. On the side of the blessed a young man extracts cheering music from what is perhaps a harmonium. The attitudes of the just express the liveliest satisfaction, whereas a crowned personage, striding boldly into Paradise, is met and warned off by a celestial Janitor. The naïve and fantastically horrible are curiously blended in this skilful work. The southern doorway is the least interesting of the three; the subjects of the reliefs are the death and coronation of the Virgin.
The entrance to the south transept has been entirely rebuilt, but the original reliefs andstatuary of the three doors have been preserved and re-erected. Some old Byzantine capitals may be distinguished among the Gothic work. The south-west door is relieved with a diaper of fleurs-de-lys and castles, and lions and castles. The sculpture of the tympanum is equal to that of the west front, and shows the Saviour and the Evangelists, the twelve Apostles, and the Death of the Blessed Virgin. The colossal statue on the central shaft is that of San Froilan, an early bishop of Leon. Above is a row of four windows of two lights, and an enormous rose-window.
The glory of the cathedral is its stained glass, which fills the innumerable windows. Most of this is comparatively modern, and, though good in tone, is inferior to the fifteenth-century glass still existing in the windows of the Capilla Mayor, the Capilla de Santiago, and the north transept. The three rows of windows reach high up to the vaultings of the roof, those of the chapels being of two lights, those of the clerestory of four. It is strange that with such exquisite examples of colouring before them, the restorers of the church should have had the bad taste to bedaub the arches of the aisles with ochre, and to whitewash the pillars and vaults, marking the stonework with red lines. We could well have spared,moreover, the elaborate plateresque work in the choir, which, though good in itself, is dissonant from the general character of the building; and the Churrigueresque retablo of the Capilla Mayor, representing the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. The sanctuary and choir, which in so many churches are the most interesting feature, are of quite secondary importance at Leon. The Capilla Mayor, however, contains the remains of San Froilan in two silver reliquaries of the Renaissance style, and the relics of two other bishops (Alvitas and Pelagius) in plain marble urns. The choir stalls date from the fifteenth century, and are well carved. The best work is seen in the panels behind the stalls, the subjects being the generation of Christ, the Visitation, the Revolt of Satan, and the Descent into Hell.
But after the general ensemble and the stained glass, nothing in the cathedral merits as much attention as the tombs and monuments. Of these the noblest is the cenotaph of OrdoñoII.at the rear of the High Altar, erected five centuries after his death as a tribute of gratitude by the citizens of Leon. Though in the florid Gothic style of the fifteenth century, many of the figures and inscriptions appear to have been copied from an earlier tomb. The recumbent effigy of theking is large and dignified; his face is sharp and smooth-shaven; he wears his crown and the royal robes, and carries the orb and sceptre. At his feet lies a dog, the emblem of fidelity, beneath which is an inscription in Latin setting forth his deeds and virtues, and erroneously attributing to him the erection of the present temple. The monumental arch above encloses sculpture painted in brilliant colours on a gilt ground, which appears to be of an earlier elate than the rest of the monument. The arches of the wall of the Capilla Mayor have been bricked up, and those on each side of this monument are adorned with two very ancient distemper paintings of the Ecce Homo and Entombment. They exhibit some interesting peculiarities of dress and detail, and though the central figure is badly done, the spectators are lifelike and vigorously represented.
There are many tombs in the cathedral belonging to the transitional period from Byzantine to Gothic, mostly of bishops of the thirteenth century. The best preserved is in the Capilla del Nacimiento, and enshrines the remains of Bishop Rodrigo, who died in 1232. The tympanum of the arch is occupied by a representation of the Crucifixion, below this being shown a funeral procession, with the mourners tearing their hairin a grotesque excess of grief. The benevolence of the good prelate is immortalised by a figure distributing food to the poor, the halt, and the blind. The tomb of Bishop Martin (1254-1289), in the south transept, is adorned with the favourite scene from the life of St. Martin of Tours—the division of the cloak. The monuments to the bishops Manrique de Lara, Erasmus, and Martin (second of the name) are all in much the same style, but differing stages of preservation. In the Capilla del Salvador, behind the High Altar, may be seen the graceful effigy of the Countess Sancha (eleventh century), executed in the fourteenth century by Maestre Juan Lope, as an inscription on the robe informs us. The relief on the front of the tomb, showing a youth dragged along by a fiery horse, probably refers to the punishment in this world or the next of the wicked nephew, by whom the countess was assassinated. Another tomb in the same chapel bears the figure of a venerable man with flowing beard and ample robes.
At the north-eastern shoulder of the church, between it and the tower in the city wall already mentioned, is the fine rectangular chapel of Santiago, built in the time of the Catholic sovereigns—on the site, it would seem, of atwelfth-century chapel. The pillars are borne on the shoulders of various figures, among them being Samson, the Queen of Sheba, Laocoon, and a monk with a book on which is the derisive mottolegere et non intelligere. The details of the architecture are capricious and graceful. The chapel is lighted by colossal windows, filled with gorgeous stained glass—blue and gold, purple and emerald—the reflected colour producing a magical effect.
The spacious cloister, which conceals the northern façade of the cathedral, was built in the early fourteenth century, but it has been rebuilt, restored, and altered into what Street calls ‘a very poor and weak kind of Renaissance.’ The ornamentation is profuse and not in bad taste. The inner walls have not been much altered, and the pillars supporting them are sculptured in the Gothic style. The bays are painted with an extremely valuable and interesting series of frescoes, so well drawn that they were more likely the work of some fifteenth-century Italian artist than productions of native talent. The subjects are all from the history of Christ and Mary, the Crucifixion curiously enough being omitted. When Street saw these paintings forty years ago, he spoke of the coloursas pure and good, but they have now been almost entirely obliterated by the damp. The cloister contains several sepulchral monuments, some mere slabs, but one—that of the Canon Juan de Grajal (1447)—elaborately and artistically sculptured. Some colossal idiot has cut off the heads of the angels shown in this fine piece of work. Near the beautiful Gothic entrance to the cloister is an image of our Lady of Regla, to which at one time the people used to proceed in procession to return thanks for the mythical victory of Clavijo, a choir of damsels representing the equally mythical tribute of one hundred virgins said to have been paid by Mauregato to the Moors.
In the archives of the cloister are preserved a fine collection of codices and documents, throwing light on the history not only of Spain but of the Catholic Church. Specially valuable is a Gothic Bible writtensub umbraculo Santae Marie et Sancti Martini in monasterio vocabulo Alb ... inDCCCCLVIII.[920A.D.], by John the Deacon, who transcribed on the intermediate pages the life of San Froilan.
We cross the spacious plaza in front of the cathedral, with its fine marble fountain, presided over by Neptune and his Tritons, and go into the town in search of ancient buildings. Ofthirteenth-century architecture there are no more examples; but the southern wall was built by AlfonsoXI.about 1324, to take in a quarter which had hitherto been a suburb. The old Roman wall began at the stern, square Torre de los Ponces. The gates in Alfonso’s wall have all been restored and modernised, except that of Santo Domingo, which, with its low arch and pointed vaulting, preserves the true mediæval air. The Moneda gate carries a statue of CarlosIII., erected in 1759, the year of his accession. EnriqueII.(Trastamara) built a palace at Leon on the model, it is said, of the Alcazar at Seville. What was left of this structure has been converted into a prison.
The Renaissance, which left everywhere in Spain so deep an impress, did not leave untouched this Gothic capital. Beside such triumphs of the Romanesque and pointed styles as San Isidoro and thepulchra Leoninarises the church of San Marcos, an interesting specimen of the newer school. Founded as a chapel of the new order of Santiago in 1170, the church witnessed the election of the first prior, and received in 1184 the ashes of the first grand master, Pedro Fernandez de Fuente Encalada. Fernando the Catholic ordered the church to be rebuilt in 1514,but the work progressed very slowly and was not actually finished till 1715. The most important part of the fabric and the plans, however, we owe to Juan de Badajoz, who was working here about 1550. With the adjoining convent, first a hospice for pilgrims to Compostela, now the Provincial Museum, the building presents a very imposing appearance. The church occupies the eastern side of the block, the portal being contained within a very deep and lofty semicircular arch. On either side, in deep plateresque niches, are fine but damaged reliefs by Crozec. The ‘acroterium’ (to employ an expression used by Spanish writers), surmounting the arch, appears to be unfinished, as also are the towers or large buttresses flanking the portal.
The church is large and cruciform, with some good glass, windows with plateresque traceries, and fine arabesques. The most notable accessories are the choir stalls, the upper row exhibiting admirably carved busts of New Testament worthies; the lower row, of the saints of the Old Dispensation. Grotesque and capricious masks, centaurs, griffins, and so forth, are introduced in great profusion into the decoration; they were the work, for the most part, of one Doncel in 1542, and were mutilated by a pupil of Churriguera in the early part of the eighteenth century.
The work of Juan de Badajoz is to be seen in the Sacristy, a spacious nave of three vaults, richly designed and gilded. Under the windows are medallions with busts in relief, very well done. The retablo in the plateresque style shows the Eternal Father with His angels, and the Vision of Santiago. The inscriptions on the frieze are from the Book of Leviticus.
Much good work is to be seen in the cloisters, begun in the Armada year or thereabouts, but interest here chiefly centres in the Prior’s apartments where the illustrious Quevedo was imprisoned by order of the Count-Duke Olivares, from December 1639 to June 1643,—the penalty for an all too true and biting lampoon.
Quevedo thus describes his prison in one of the letters to his friend Adán de la Parra:—
‘Although at first I was imprisoned in a tower of this sacred house, as roomy as it was light and warm for this season of the year, a short time after by superior order (I will not say by superior disorder) I was taken to another much more uncomfortable one, where I am now. It is an underground room, as damp as a spring, so dark that in it it is always night, and so cold that it is always like January. It is undoubtedly more like a tomb than a prison.... The latitude of this tomb, inwhich I am enclosed, is barely twenty-four feet and the width nineteen. The roof and walls are in many places fallen owing to the damp, and everything is so black that it seems more like a hiding-place of fugitive thieves than the prison of a man of honour. In order to enter it two equally strong doors have to be passed; one is on the floor of the convent and the other on the floor of my prison, after twenty-seven steps designed like a precipice.... This is the life to which I am doomed by him who, because I would not be his favourite, is now my enemy.’
‘Although at first I was imprisoned in a tower of this sacred house, as roomy as it was light and warm for this season of the year, a short time after by superior order (I will not say by superior disorder) I was taken to another much more uncomfortable one, where I am now. It is an underground room, as damp as a spring, so dark that in it it is always night, and so cold that it is always like January. It is undoubtedly more like a tomb than a prison.... The latitude of this tomb, inwhich I am enclosed, is barely twenty-four feet and the width nineteen. The roof and walls are in many places fallen owing to the damp, and everything is so black that it seems more like a hiding-place of fugitive thieves than the prison of a man of honour. In order to enter it two equally strong doors have to be passed; one is on the floor of the convent and the other on the floor of my prison, after twenty-seven steps designed like a precipice.... This is the life to which I am doomed by him who, because I would not be his favourite, is now my enemy.’
The grand façade of the old convent, extending to the river bank, is divided into two stories, the lower characterised by semicircular windows between pilasters in the plateresque style, and separated by niches; the upper by rectangular windows with balconies, disposed between columns, and likewise separated by niches in pairs. The frieze beneath the lower row of windows is adorned by a series of medallions, displaying the heads of mythological and historical worthies, Gentiles and Christians, ancients and moderns, most oddly assorted. With Priam and Hector, Hannibal and Cæsar, we find Charlemagne and the Cid, CharlesV.and PhilipII., with Lucretia, Judith and Isabel the Catholic. The busts to the left of the doorway are those of the grand masters of the Order of Santiago. Thedoorway itself is a very unhappy combination of the plateresque and baroque styles, but the statue of Fame surmounting it is not devoid of grace and dignity. The balconies and windows facing the river date from the eighteenth century.
A good deal of building went on in Leon during the sixteenth century. In the Plaza de San Marcelo (before AlfonsoXI.’s time, outside the walls) stands the mansion of the illustrious Guzman family, of which Guzman el Bueno, of Tarifa fame, was an illegitimate and the most distinguished member. It was built in the year 1560 by Juan Juiñones y Guzman, Bishop of Calahorra. Its architecture is severe and imposing. Over the main entrance, adjoining a square tower at the corner of the building, are two medallions on which is engraved the motto, ‘Ornanda est dignitas domo—non domo dignitas tota quærenda’—a device which one wishes all the architects of the age had borne in mind. The interiorpatiois adorned with handsome plateresque reliefs. Next to the Casa Guzman is the residence of the marquesses of Villasinta, in rather similar style. Beneath the sixteenth-century façade of the mansion of the great Luna family was discovered a fine Gothic arch, withanother pointed arch supported by columns with Byzantine capitals. This work cannot be later than the thirteenth century. In thepatiois a magnificent arch designed with arabesques.
Looking on the Plaza de San Marcelo is one of Leon’s two town halls, finished by Juan de Rivera in 1584. The lower story is of the Doric order, the upper Ionic. In the council-chamber, hung with damask and velvet, may be read the verses proclaiming the excellences of the city:—
‘En argen Leon contemploFuerte, purpureo, triunfal.De veinte santos ejemplo,Donde está el unico temploReal y sacerdotal.Tuvo veinte y cuatro reyesAntes que Castilla leyes;Hizo el fuero sin querellas;Libertó las cien doncellasDe las infernales greyes.’
‘En argen Leon contemploFuerte, purpureo, triunfal.De veinte santos ejemplo,Donde está el unico temploReal y sacerdotal.Tuvo veinte y cuatro reyesAntes que Castilla leyes;Hizo el fuero sin querellas;Libertó las cien doncellasDe las infernales greyes.’
‘En argen Leon contemploFuerte, purpureo, triunfal.De veinte santos ejemplo,Donde está el unico temploReal y sacerdotal.
Tuvo veinte y cuatro reyesAntes que Castilla leyes;Hizo el fuero sin querellas;Libertó las cien doncellasDe las infernales greyes.’
The other town hall (Casas Consistoriales) in the Plaza Mayor was built to accommodate the municipal authorities on the occasion of festivities and public functions in the square. It is an elegant building, built in 1677, and is surmounted by a pediment and acroteria, and by weather vanes on its flanking towers.
The modern church of San Marcelo, whichgives its name to the square, was founded by RamiroI.in the ninth century, and was liberally endowed in after years by AlfonsoVI.Marcelus is a reputed local martyr, a Roman legionary who refused to adore the divinity of Cæsar, and was beheaded, having blessed his executioners. By another account the martyrdom took place at Tangier, whence, at all events, the saint’s relics were brought here in 1493. The tympanum of a thirteenth-century doorway in the wall at the back of the church is all that remains of the original fabric. A deserted esplanade beyond the walls, to the south-west of the city, marks the site of the once famous shrine of San Claudio, erected first in Constantine’s day on the place of martyrdom of Claudius, Lupercius, and Victoricus. Al Mansûr is said to have been struck with sudden panic when about to attack this church. Successive fanes of great magnificence rose over the spot, the last being destroyed by fire in the sixteenth century.
Santa Maria del Mercado still exhibits much ancient work. Its arching and capitals are Byzantine in style. The suburban church of San Pedro de los Huertos was, it is said, the cathedral, before the time of OrdoñoII.In the tenth century we hear of it as a monastery forboth sexes. Another extremely old foundation is San Salvador del Nido, founded as a monastery by Queen Urraca. A local guide states that Carlo Alberto, the ex-King of Sardinia, received the last sacraments and expired in this church on April 8, 1849. I confess I have not troubled to verify this, but have hitherto laboured under the impression that the unlucky predecessor of Victor Emmanuel breathed his last at Oporto.
Having noticed this link with the history of our own times, we take leave of Leon, and hasten across the plains to the city which succeeded it as capital of the growing monarchy of Leon and Castile.
Burgos, the red and white city in the broad valley of the Arlanzon, is more mediæval than many an older town. For she was no inheritance from Celts or Romans, but was born in the Dark Ages, waxed prosperous within them, and declined with the Renaissance and the dawn of the modern era. There is nothing that is classical, little that is modern, about this old capital of Castile. All her memories are of Gothic, mediæval, romantic Spain. To her belong knights and barons, shield and helm and lance, tournaments and jousts, soaring Gothic spires, and the quiet of the cloister—all the pageant and panorama of mediævalism.
Burgos was born amid the clash of arms. This dry, desert-like province of Castile, which is now the very heart of, and whose name is almost synonymous with Spain, was a thousand years ago a very debatable ground between Moor andChristian. Leon, to the west, looked fiercely east and south towards the dusky garrisons of Medina Sarakusta (Zaragoza), and Tolaitola (Toledo). In itself the country seemed hardly worth settling in or fighting for. It was the frontier, the ‘marches,’ as we should have called it in olden England. And in the Dark Ages danger ever ran like a hedge along the border of two lands. The valley of the Arlanzon, a veritable oasis in this desert, was early peopled with shepherds and tillers of the soil. To protect these against the forays of the Beni Kasim from Zaragoza, early in the ninth century a fort or advanced post was established here by the kings of Asturias and Leon. Its defence was entrusted by OrdoñoI.to a count (850-866), despite whose efforts the post was destroyed by the Moors under Abd-ur-Rahman in the year 865.
Rallying from these disasters, the new king AlfonsoIII.(866-910) took steps to defend the frontier, and appointed Diego Porcellos count or warden of the marches. This personage—the first whose name is particularly associated with Burgos—found the settlement on the Arlanzon reduced to six groups of houses. He threw together three or four hamlets, including, it is said, the churches of Santa Coloma, Santa Gadea,and San Juan Evangelista, and surrounded the whole with a wall. The dissensions among the Moors themselves favoured the development of the nascent town, and also permitted its governors, like those of the other frontier forts, to turn their attention to domestic politics. Don Gonzalo Fernández, who reigned as count from about 884 to 915, was a party to various conspiracies and intrigues against his sovereign, the net result of which appeared to be to confirm him in his petty sovereignty. Patriotism was an unknown virtue in those days, and the counts of Castile were bent rather upon consolidating their own authority than combining against the Infidel. They are said in fact to have flatly refused to accompany the king on one of his campaigns. Revenge for such treason could in the tenth century take but one form. OrdoñoII.summoned four of the rebellious vassals—Abu-l-Mundhir (evidently a Moor), Nuño Fernández, another Diego Porcellos, and Fernando Ansúrez—into his presence, and sent them in chains to Leon, where, after a painful captivity, they were put to death. Spanish writers, who express no particular horror at the atrocities of the Inquisition in after years, appear somewhat unaccountably shocked at such rough and ready justice.
As a stroke of policy this deed of violence was a bad one. The Castilians, as it is now time to call the inhabitants of the marches, conceived a lasting aversion to the government of Leon, and the desire for independence grew stronger. An interregnum seems to have taken place at Burgos after the execution of Nuño Fernández and his colleagues. We hear at this time of two famous but nebulous personages, Nuño Nuñez Rasura and Lain Calvo, who were elected as judges to rule over the little commonwealth. Their reign as actual rulers was brief, for about the year 930 we find all authority in Castile in the strong hands of the greatest Spaniard of that age—Fernan González, the king-maker.
The fame of the goodConde Castellano, as González is lovingly called by the annalists, is overshadowed in the song and story of Spain only by that of the Cid himself. His heroic exploits against Moor and Christian are magnified and set forth in popular ballads and legends, dating mostly, it is true, from the thirteenth century. The real Fernan González is a difficult person to understand and appraise, when we have cleared away as much as possible the clouds of tradition and romance which obscure his features. Like the Cid, we find him repeatedly revoltingagainst his sovereign, and striving very much harder for the independence of Castile than for the interests of the whole kingdom. But unlike the greater Spanish hero, he never seems to have been in the pay of the Moslems, or to have in concert with them turned his sword against his fellow Christians. Judged by the standard of that day, Fernan González was a great man. He was a good lord to his immediate vassals, a valiant and determined enemy of the Moor, a patriot in a very parochial sense, and a strong man.
Ramiro the king, jealous of Fernan González’s power and influence, dispossessed him of his countship, and released him from prison only when he had sworn fidelity and obedience anew. His daughter Urraca was given in marriage to the king’s son, Ordoño, by whom, however, she was afterwards repudiated. Till the death of Ramiro the count was not suffered to return to Burgos, which was meanwhile governed by the Infante Don Sancho. Meanwhile the Moors ravaged the country, destroying the monastery of Cardeña without the walls of Burgos, and greatly profiting by the internal disorders of Leon.
On the abdication of Ramiro in 950, González was reinstated in his fiefs, and henceforwardplayed the part of king-maker in northern Spain, changing sides more than once, establishing every day more firmly his own authority, and warring unceasingly against the Moor. His policy often met with severe rebuffs, and he sustained not a few disastrous reverses; but his death in 970 was felt as a deadly blow to Christian Spain and to the Castilians in particular, whose national aspirations undoubtedly coincided with his own ambitions.
He had succeeded so far as to establish a dynasty; and his son Garcia Fernández became the next count of Castile as of right. The defects of the hereditary system became at once apparent, for while inheriting his father’s rank, Garcia inherited little of his ability. Unluckily for him, he was the contemporary of the terrible Al Mansûr, the greatest and most formidable of the Moorish race. Castile was ravaged from the Sierra Guadarrama to the sea. Don Sancho, supported by the Moors, revolted against his father, who died from wounds received in battle on the banks of the Douro, in May 995. The unfilial Sancho was at once acknowledged sovereign Count of Castile, but was compelled to pay an annual tribute to the Khalifa of Cordoba. But we find Al Mansûr waging war against him sevenyears later. It was the great Mohammedan’s last campaign, and Sancho profited by the dismay into which their leader’s mortal sickness plunged the Moslems to expel them from his dominions.
Two or three years later we find the envoys of rival Moorish monarchs soliciting the aid of the count of Castile; and in 1009 Sancho paid off old scores by taking and sacking the proud city of the Khalifas. Never had so much richness been seen in barren Castile, when her armies returned laden with booty. ‘He of the good laws,’ as Sancho was styled by his subjects, died in 1021, and was buried in the church of the monastery of San Salvador de Oña, which he had founded.
The sisters of his youthful son and successor, GarciaII., were married to the kings of Leon and Navarre; and Garcia went to Leon to seek the hand of King Bermudo’s daughter, and to demand recognition of his title as king of Castile. The poniards of the three sons of the Count de Vela left him a bleeding corpse at the door of the church of San Isidoro, on the 13th May 1029, and put an end to the male line of the house of Fernan González. His destined bride became the wife of Fernando,son of the king of Navarre, who was proclaimed count of Castile, though he enjoyed nothing more than the semblance of sovereignty till his father’s death in 1035. Bermudo of Leon died two years later, and Fernando thus became king of united Leon and Castile—the former in right of his wife, the latter in right of his mother.
The newly crowned king was immediately assailed by his elder brother, Garcia of Navarre, who invaded Castile with an army largely composed of Mussulmans, and threatened Burgos. After some days passed in fruitless negotiations between the fraternal enemies, the Navarrese king was defeated and slain. Eleven years later—in 1065—FernandoI.followed his brother to the grave. Deeming his dominions too vast to be administered by one man he divided them, allotting Castile to his first-born son Sancho, from which it may be inferred that he considered that province the fairest of his possessions. Not contented with the lion’s share of the spoils, the king of Castile wrested the kingdom of Leon from his brother Alfonso, whom he imprisoned in the castle of Burgos. Sancho next endeavoured to deprive his sister Urraca of her little principality of Zamora. Before thewalls of that town he fell a victim to the sword of Bellido Dolfos, and to the kingdoms which he had by dint of violence and treachery reunited, succeeded Alfonso, but lately a guest of the kindly Moorish Amir of Toledo.
So far the history of Burgos and of Castile generally has been an involved and tedious record of dynastic arrangements, civil strife, and desultory warfare with the Moor. The dullness of the panorama is now relieved by the picturesque and crudely romantic personality of the Cid—‘he that in a good hour was born’—Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.
‘Rodrigo is Burgos, Rodrigo is Castile, Rodrigo is Spain,’ says Don Rodrigo Amador de los Rios. ‘His prowess, his glory, his trials, his renown, are the renown, the trials, the glory, and the prowess of the fatherland. His form, which touches the confines of the supernatural, and stands forth vigorous and powerful in the interesting picture of the Middle Ages, is the spontaneous creation of a people—is the people itself—whose marvellous instinct has given it from its own being, heat and life. His honour is the honour of Castile and Spain; there is nothing in his personality which does not represent and symbolise with transcendentalexpression the national character; he is the splendid synthesis in which a nation is resumed, the idol of the ages, the pattern of all perfection, the permanent example of all the virtues, the true mirror of the Middle Ages, with all that they had of noble and generous, rude and loyal, warrior and devotee, tradition and history, legend and fact, petty and great; the manifestation, in short, of the essential and permanent in the Spanish nationality, which does not vary, and is transmitted unimpaired from generation to generation, through the centuries; the spirit which informs and sustains the peoples, in all the epochs of history.’
I quotein extensoan eminent Spaniard’s appreciation of the national hero. But accepting even the Cid of the ballads and legends, it does not seem that a high compliment is paid to Spain by recognising in him her absolute personification and embodiment. The traditions of less cultured races have conceived purer heroes. But in Burgos, almost his native place, we must not approach the memory of the doughty Campeador in any cold or captious mood. You may visit (though you will derive neither pleasure nor profit from the journey) the miserable hamlet of Vivar, five or six milesfrom Burgos, where he first saw the light somewhere about the year 1040. For ancestors, tradition credits him with the famous judges, Lain Calvo and Nuño Rasura, two worthies whose existence is at least problematical. But that Rodrigo (or Ruy) Diaz was a good Burgolese, there can be no question. Here he passed his youth at the court of FernandoI., rising to the high rank of Alferez or standard-bearer in the service of King Sancho. He was among the champions selected by his sovereign to decide the fate of the two kingdoms in a personal conflict with a similar number of Leonese knights. But whatever luck may have attended Rodrigo individually on this occasion, the Castilians got the worst of the encounter; whereupon Sancho refused to stand by his bargain, and by more military and less chivalrous methods secured his brother’s realms.
When Alfonso ascended the throne of Castile, it was the Cid who exacted from him, at the gate of the church of Santa Gadea, the humiliating oath that he had had no share in his brother’s murder—an indignity which Alfonso did not quietly forget. He dissimulated his resentment, however, and gave his sister Jimena in marriage to the valiant Campeador. Soonafter the threatened quarrel broke out, and the haughty vassal abandoned all his estates in Castile, and entered the service of the Moorish Amir of Zaragoza. The chronicles tell how on his visiting Burgos the knight found, by order of the king, every door shut against him. Only a little girl nine years of age ventured to address him. From their windows the citizens beheld him and wept, crying, ‘How good a vassal, if he had only a good lord!’ Very sadly the Cid passed the night with his followers without the walls. He visited his wife and daughters at the monastery of Cardeña, and turned his face from Castile. He was at shifts for money—a precedent Don Quixote appears to have forgotten—and bethought him of an ingenious expedient. Filling an enormous coffer with stones and sand, he offered it, as being laden with gold and treasure, as security to a Jew, on the understanding that it should not be opened till the money was repaid. The confiding usurer readily advanced six hundred marks of gold and silver, and the coffer remains to this day to attest the simplicity of the Jewish character and the eminently commercial aptitudes of the Castilian national hero.
With Rodrigo’s wonderful exploits in otherparts of Spain we are not here concerned. When he died at Valencia at a ripe age, he was brought back to his native place, seated upright on his famous steed Babieca, and laid to rest beside his wife at Cardeña. There he was suffered to remain till the year 1842, when his ashes were transported to the town hall of Burgos. A brave soldier, but one of the sorriest of the nation’s heroes!
During the lifetime of this worthy and the reign of AlfonsoVI., Toledo was captured from the Moors, and Burgos ranked henceforward only as a secondary capital of Spain. It may be remarked that till PhilipII.published his decree that ‘Madrid solo es corte,’ the kingdom could not be said in the modern sense of the word ever to have had a capital. Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville had all equal claims to be considered the seat of government. As the Moorish frontier was pushed farther and farther south, Burgos lost in military importance. But its dignity was enhanced in an ecclesiastical sense, for it was raised in 1073 to an archiepiscopal see. Then followed the stormy days of Queen Urraca, when the city came in for its fair share of turmoil and bloodshed. Order was temporarily restored under the ‘Emperor’ AlfonsoVII.An important ecclesiastical council was held here in 1136. Alfonso, at his death in 1157, most unwisely divided his estates, bestowing Castile upon the eldest, Fernando. The events of 1070 were repeated. Leon and Castile waged war against each other, and when the infant, AlfonsoVIII., succeeded his father on the Castilian throne in 1158, the Laras and Castros, rivals for the regency, turned their swords against each other. Burgos was once more the capital of an independent kingdom, and witnessed in 1170 the marriage of the young king to Eleanor, daughter of HenryII.of England—the first of the many happy alliances between the royal houses of the two countries.
Alfonso’s reign was prosperous and glorious. He was a tolerant monarch, and showed favour to the Moslems. There seems in his time to have been an important mosque at Burgos. To propitiate Heaven, after the terrible defeat of the Christians at Alarcos, Eleanor persuaded her husband to build the monastery of Las Huelgas, to which act of piety no doubt was attributed the ‘crowning mercy’ of las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.
During the struggle for the regency, which ensued on the death of Alfonso, Burgos sidedwith the boy-king’s suitor Berenguela, who soon after became queen in her own right. Without hesitation this high-minded princess abdicated in favour of her son Fernando, the issue of her marriage with Alfonso of Leon, which had been dissolved by the Pope. The new king was attacked by his own father and by the arch-rebel of Spain, Alvar Fanez, but he triumphed over his enemies, and in 1230 succeeded to his unnatural father’s dominions, thus uniting finally and for ever the kingdoms of Leon and Castile.
‘From the time of St. Ferdinand,’ remarks a recent historian of Spain (Mr. Ulick Burke), ‘Moors in Castile became as scarce as foxes in Middlesex.’ An era of prosperity seemed about to dawn for Burgos—caput Castellae camera regia, as she proudly styled herself. There were great doings within her walls when the son of the king of England (afterwards EdwardI.) came here in October 1254 to espouse Leonor, sister of King Alfonso the Learned. The English prince was made a knight by his prospective brother-in-law in the church of Santa Maria, where the marriage later on took place. In 1269 Edward came again to Burgos to assist at the nuptials of the Infante Fernando and the Princess Blancheof France. Among the guests were also the king of Aragon, the sultan of Granada, the Infantes of Aragon and Castile, ‘and other greatricoshombresand knights of the kingdom of Castile and Leon, and counts and dukes of France, and other hidalgos of that country; and the Marquis of Montferrat, who was wedded to Doña Beatriz, daughter of King Alfonso.’
The learned king did much to organise and to purify the administration, and as a natural consequence a sedition was fomented by his brother Don Felipe and the chiefs of the Lara, Haro, and Castro families. The rebels appeared in force before Burgos, and the king invited the leader to the Cortes then in session (1271). This invitation was refused, but a meeting was arranged at the Hospital del Rey outside the walls. Alfonso was in a most conciliatory mood, and as the rebels wanted only a colourable pretext to continue their campaign of rapine and lawlessness, the more he granted the more they wanted. Finally the ringleaders retired in utter disgust to Granada.
Burgos was the scene of one of Alfonso’s worst deeds. Suspecting his brother Don Fadrique of intriguing with his grandchildren, the disinherited Infantes de la Cerda, he ordered himto be confined in the castle, where the unfortunate prince was put to death by his ferocious nephew, the Infante Sancho. After the marriage of the Infantes Don Pedro and Don Juan with Margaret of Narbonne and Joanna of Montferrat, at Burgos in 1281, Sancho himself revolted against his father and caused himself to be proclaimed king. He obtained possession of the city, and, strangely enough, reinterred with great ceremony in the monastery of La Trinidad the very uncle he had killed.
Señor Amador de los Rios attributes the rivalry of the two cities of Valladolid and Burgos to the preference shown the former city by the wife of SanchoIV., Doña Maria Molina. For all that, it was the old capital of Castile where Sancho caused his son Fernando to be publicly declared heir to the throne.
Burgos was now a large and populous town. It owed much of its prosperity to its considerable Jewish colony, of which Don Todros Abulafia was Nasi, and Abu-l-Hasan Aben el Harits, physician to the king, one of the elders. The Israelites contributed over one hundred thousand maravedis to the revenue in the city alone. With the important part played by the Jews in the internal policy of Spain I have dealt atgreater length in my work on Toledo in the present series.
During the regency of Doña Maria Molina, Valladolid was the usual seat of the court. But Burgos continued to be the scene of great functions of state. The marriage of the Duke of Brittany and the sister of FernandoIV.was celebrated here in January 1311; and several Cortes and councils met here. From Fernando the city obtained many privileges and favours—the town and revenues of Villafranca de Montes de Oca being granted to the municipality.
We pass over the civil wars and intrigues which distracted the reign of AlfonsoXI., and find Burgos ruled by one born within its walls—Pedro the Cruel. Seville is more intimately associated with this picturesque and sinister personality, but here it was that he caused the governor, Garcilaso de la Vega, to be beaten to death in his presence, and watched the bulls in the arena without trampling on and tossing the mangled body of the victim. De la Vega’s remains were then placed in a casket, which was hung from the castle walls that all might fear the king’s justice. In 1355, after a busy butchering expedition, Pedro decorated a room in the castle with the heads he had collected, the slaughtered grandees,Lope de Bandaña, Gonzalo de Melendez, and Jofre Tenorio, contributing in this way to the adornment of the chamber and the delight of their lord. It was at the old capital of Castile that he was residing when Enrique de Trastamara with Bertrand du Guesclin and the White Company crossed the border. Pedro fled, and his brother was crowned at Las Huelgas. When the tide had temporarily set in Pedro’s favour, it was in the cathedral of Burgos that he and the Black Prince swore to the terms of their alliance. But in the following year (1368) Enrique’s star was once more in the ascendant, and a king, innately almost as vicious as our HenryVIII., had gone to join his hosts of victims on the other side of the tomb.
Burgos, under the Trastamara dynasty, resumed for a time the rank of capital of Spain. Like his father, Don JuanI.was crowned here, at Las Huelgas, in 1379, amid great festivities and rejoicings. His son, afterwards EnriqueIII., was born here, probably in the great castle, founded by Diego Porcellos, which perhaps gave its name to the whole kingdom. Few traces exist to-day of the original building, which was the habitual residence of the sovereign. EnriqueIII., however, ‘decreed a stately palace dome’ at Miraflores, onthe left bank of the Arlanzon, at some distance from the city, but he died before its completion. A strange monarch was this Enrique. Tired of living in poverty while his nobles wallowed in luxury, he invited them to a banquet at the castle. On their arrival they found no well-spread table, but the executioner with his axe and block. It was only by liberal disbursements and advances that they escaped this functionary’s professional attentions. Thus did the needy monarch of Castile, who it is said had to pawn his coat to get a dinner, replenish his exchequer.
During the reign of JuanII.the castle of Burgos was held by Don Pedro de Estuñiga, the implacable foe of the great Constable, Alvaro de Luna. The king on one occasion actually found the gates of his own castle closed against him by this arrogant vassal, who at last compassed de Luna’s downfall and death at Valladolid. In atonement for this brutal sacrifice of his favourite, Juan converted the palace built by his father into a Carthusian monastery—to the disgust, we are told, of the local ecclesiastical authorities.
During the reign of EnriqueIV.the castle of Burgos was a focus of rebellion and conspiracy. On the king’s death the castle was held by theEstuñigas for the Princess Juana, called by her enemies la Beltraneja, while the town espoused the cause of Isabel and her Aragonese husband. The bishop, who had retired to the castle of Rabe, joined forces with the Estuñigas, and the townsfolk, thus placed between two fires, implored the assistance of the court at Valladolid. Meanwhile the Portuguese allies of Juana were implored to succour the castle. Fernando of Aragon appeared at Burgos in June 1475 and invested the Estuñigas’ stronghold. An attack on the church of Santa Maria la Blanca was beaten off with loss, but the garrison, losing heart, ultimately surrendered to the besiegers. The king of Portugal, instead of hurrying on with all speed to Burgos, went into winter quarters at Zamora, while Fernando prosecuted the siege with his accustomed vigour. The garrison held out bravely, and seem to have at last capitulated, more out of disgust at the inaction of their ally than from any inability to defend themselves further. The commandant treated with Isabel in person, and surrendered on obtaining a free and unconditional pardon for himself and all his followers.
The union of Spain, consequent on the marriageof Isabel of Castile with Fernando of Aragon, tended to diminish the importance of Burgos. Nor was its prosperity augmented by the expulsion of the Jews—after they had been decimated by repeated massacres—the act of two sovereigns whose wisdom, greatness, and virtue English writers, as well as Spanish, never tire of extolling.
The Burgolese joined the Comunidad in 1520, allying themselves with Toledo and Segovia, Zamora, Toro, Madrid, Avila, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Alcala, and Soria. The citizens seized the castle and murdered an unpopular official, Garcia Jofre, afterwards sacking the episcopal palace. They surrounded the palace of the Constable of Castile, Don Iñigo Fernandez de Velasco, and were deterred from burning it to the ground only by the intercession of the clergy, who exposed the Sacrament over the doorway. The Constable fled to Briviesca, but some months after returned in triumph to the now pacified city. Sixteen years later we find the townsfolk welcoming CharlesV.with enthusiasm, and erecting in his honour the graceful arch of Santa Maria. Burgos had accepted the new monarchy and the new era. The product of another age, she found herself unfitted to play a distinguished part in this. Not without dignity she passes into the background, and history knows her no more.