The Convento de la Luz—The Poor Clares and the Conceptionists—Our Lady of Montemayor—A fortified religious house—Theribatsof Spain—The ancient refectory—Arabic inscriptions in the Nun’s Chapel—The Portocarreros—Family tombs—A night at San Juan—The shyness of the nun—An early start—Mossen Bethancourt and the Canary Isles—The beginning of the floods.
The Convento de la Luz—The Poor Clares and the Conceptionists—Our Lady of Montemayor—A fortified religious house—Theribatsof Spain—The ancient refectory—Arabic inscriptions in the Nun’s Chapel—The Portocarreros—Family tombs—A night at San Juan—The shyness of the nun—An early start—Mossen Bethancourt and the Canary Isles—The beginning of the floods.
“You who are so interested in everything old should not leave Moguer without seeing theConvento de la Luz,” said Conchita as we drove back from La Rabida. “I will take you there to-morrow morning if you like, before you start for the train. Formerly no one except the clergy could enter any part of the convent, for it belonged to the Poor Clares, and you know how rigidly closed the Order is. But now they are all dead, and the convent has been sold or let or lent by the Duke of Alba to the Conceptionists—the teaching branch, not the closed one—and the Reverend Mother lets me take in visitors at any time. All the aristocracy of Moguer send their daughters to be educated there, and they have free classes for the poor as well. It enlivens our circle having the Conceptionist nuns there instead of the Poor Clares.”
She went on to tell me that the convent had become hopelessly impoverished, though it wasonce one of the wealthiest in the district. The Clares seem to have lived like private ladies, each with her little suite of rooms, bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, and even her own share of the walled garden. Each had her own woman servant, who lived not in the convent but in the town, coming in and out daily to attend to her mistress’s wants. Anything less like the accepted idea of monastic life I never heard of; and when I saw the bright sunny little flats partitioned off by the nuns for their private convenience, I wondered still more how such a conception of asceticism could have lasted down to the end of the first decade of the twentieth century.
“Reverend Mother says,” pursued Conchita, “that the one Poor Clare who still lived when the Archbishop of Seville sanctioned the transfer to the Conceptionists, was the tiniest creature she ever saw, quite imbecile from age, and withered and shrunk up just like a doll. They had been gradually dying off one by one, until this little old woman was the only inhabitant of the convent, which is so large that it contains a dormitory a hundred feet long, while the central patio is a hundred feet square. There are many beautiful objects of art there even now, and they say that formerly it was a perfect treasure-house. No one knows when it was built, but the Pinzóns’ ancestors, the Portocarreros, whose monuments you will see there, were very rich, and they always protected the convent. What date was that? Oh, I don’t know, but it was before the discovery of America; and of course after that,when everybody grew rich, the convent got more gifts than ever. But you can fancy what went on in later years, when the Poor Clares were getting older and more helpless every day, and more dependent on their servants. They say that those women never went in without securing some valuable work of art to carry off and sell, though where they sold them no one knows, for they were never offered in Moguer. Of course not! No oneherewould buy valuables robbed from the nuns. Well, that is all over now, and no one will steal what is left. The Conceptionists are not poor at all (though of course they always want money for their free classes) and they take great care of the pictures and tiles, and everything else that those bad servants could not carry away.”
Truth to tell, I did not expect to find much that would interest me in theConvento de la Luz, imagining from Conchita’s account that it would be a fifteenth-century building of the type so frequently found in this part of Spain. The wealthy and powerful families of Arcos and Medina Sidonia set the fashion at that time of lavishing their riches on building and restoring convents and monasteries, and of course every great noble with plenty of money followed their example. Too often the gold which poured into Andalucia after the discovery of America was spent on barbaric display of carved and gilded woodwork, chased silver, and costly draperies, more conspicuous for their money value than for their beauty: and I confess that I rather disliked the idea of spending a couple of my fewhours at Moguer in visiting such a monument, when I might have driven out to the hermitage of Our Lady of Montemayor. For Our Lady of Montemayor had been worshipped as far back as the ninth century, when Palos de la Frontera was an outpost of the Spanish Christians, who, although they forgot their language during the many centuries of Moslem rule, steadily maintained their religious beliefs.
But it was impossible to refuse the invitation of my kind and courteous little friend, and I agreed to go with her to the convent next morning instead of making an expedition into the country.
What then was my delight at finding in theConvento de la Luzan almost perfect survival of the fortified religious houses which the Moslems calledribats—outposts built to defend the frontier, and garrisoned by men of a semi-religious order, sworn to this particular form of military service. Whether the Order was originally instituted in Andalucia by the Christians (Mozarabs) who remained in occupation of their lands and castles when Spain was conquered by the Mohammedans, no one seems to know, though the existence of La Rabida itself, and of various other places bearing the same name, in which Mozarabic remains are seen, suggests thatribatswere established here long before the Almoravides founded their empire over Morocco and Spain, in aribaton the river Niger in the first half of the twelfth century.
Be that as it may, I saw at once that theConvento de la Luzwas built for such a fortress,while the church with its massive walls and buttressed ramparts could never have been intended for other than Christian worship.
So much for the outside. The only break in the enclosing walls is where an opening has been made to give easier access from the street. One sees that formerly the nuns had to come out and cross a courtyard to speak with callers at the gate, and one can understand that this would hardly suit the comfort-loving old ladies who were the last of this branch of their Order.
A Sister opened a heavy door giving on a cloister which borders all four sides of the great central court, and led us through an archway six feet deep into a large hall. This was the refectory in the days when a hundred Poor Clares occupied the convent, but now it is the nuns’ reception-room, and here the mothers of pupils, rich and poor, sit and discuss with the Superior and the heads of the classes the tastes, talents, and idiosyncrasies of their girls.
It is a very lofty, chapel-like hall, whose vaulted roof would suggest a thirteenth-century architect, but for the tiny windows, placed so high up that one sees that the first thought of the builder was security against attack. And we know that after 1257, when this district was conquered by Alfonso X., there was no need to build fortified religious houses. We sat on brick benches left in the thickness of the wall and faced with iridescent tiles of the rich green colour introduced by the Arabs out of compliment to Mahomet’s banner; and as I watched a ray of sun from one of those loftywindows lighting up the gilded halos in a fifteenth-century painting of the Last Supper, I wished the walls could speak and tell us the true history of the convent. Even the origin of its name is lost. The townspeople call itde la Luz, but they do not know why, and the earliest mention of it in Andalucian history, which is in 1349, describes it as “The convent of Santa Clara at Moguer.”
More than one of the earliest crucifixes existent in Andalucia is known as “Nuestro Señor Cristo de la luz” (Our Lord Christ of light), and such works of art, be it remembered, are necessarily Mozarabic, because the Mozarabs were the only Christians in this part of Spain previous to 1248. There is a fine one in the Nuns’ Chapel of this convent, the advocation of which has been forgotten. Perhaps the last little Poor Clare, had she not been in her dotage when the convent was taken over by its present occupants, could have told them that this was “Our Lord of Light,” whose prototype had been worshipped here for about a thousand years.
This may seem a bold statement to those who suppose that the Christians suffered persecution during the rule of Islam in Spain. But recent research has proved that so far from this being the case, the Christians as a rule were treated with kindness and consideration, as long as they refrained from showing open disrespect for the alien religion. And here in Moguer is the material corroboration of conclusions deduced from scattered references to the condition of the Mozarabs which are found in the writings of the time, both Arabic andChristian. For the walls of the Nuns’ Chapel (screened off by a stone grille with Arabic tracery from the church restored by the Portocarreros) are lined with ancient wooden choir stalls, on each arm of which is carved a lion’s head and an Arabic inscription in Kufic characters of the style used in Cordova in the tenth century. These certainly were not placed here after 1257, at which date the African character was in use all over Moslem Spain, and as certainly such stalls never were used in Moslem worship.
It was interesting to retrace the course of history from that time to this. Here was the evidence of the upholding of their faith by the native Christians for century after century, during the whole of which they were practically cut off from Rome and isolated from their co-religionists elsewhere. A painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, surrounded by worshippers in thirteenth-century costumes, seemed to bring us into direct contact with the period when Andalucia was conquered by San Fernando of Castile, and her “few remaining loyal priests” were confirmed in their houses and offices by that wise monarch. In the church were life-size alabaster effigies of the noble family of Portocarrero, nine men and women in fifteenth-century dress, at the foot of the high altar. Burial in that sacred spot was the privilege granted to Don Pedro Portocarrero, Lord of Moguer, his wife Doña Elvira Alvarez, and their heirs for ever, in acknowledgment by a grateful Church of their benefactions to the convent of Santa Clara and themonastery of San Francisco, which last comparatively modern edifice is now falling into ruin in the shadow of the imperishable walls of the Mozarabic foundation. Above us hung a lamp made of silver brought from the New World by Martin Alonso Pinzón, although his tomb, as Conchita regretfully admitted, is not to be found here. And by my side was the young daughter of those ancient houses, who proudly told me that she too inherited the right to be buried at the foot of the high altar when her time came.
Truly this Columbus country has more than ordinary interest for the traveller in Spain, and as I remarked at the beginning of my attempt to describe it, it is a pity to be misled by the guide-books into visiting La Rabida by boat from Huelva instead of by diligence from San Juan del Puerto. Because, in the first place, if the weather be bad you cannot get to La Rabida by water at all, and, in any case, as the estuary there is very wide and much exposed to wind and to the Atlantic waves, a trip of two hours each way is apt to be unpleasant to all except first-rate sailors. And because, in the second place, even though you are a good sailor and get to La Rabida in ideal weather, you will certainly not have time to go on to Palos and Moguer and get back to Huelva before nightfall, since you will have no option but to walk from La Rabida. And, as I hope I have shown, Palos and Moguer have attractions for the artist and the archæologist, as well as for the pilgrim to the shrine of Columbus.
For my own part, although I was obliged to catch the afternoon train from San Juan in order to go on to the mines of Tharsis on the day that Conchita first introduced me to the Convent de la Luz, I shamelessly threw over all my other engagements on the return journey, and went straight back to Moguer.
Not quite straight back, though, come to think of it, for the diligence was crowded when I reached San Juan, and as it was impossible to get any other conveyance, or even a donkey to ride, I had to spend the night there, since it was pouring with rain and I dared not attempt the walk to Moguer in the dark, through mud up to my ankles.
The only room I could get was at the one inn in the place, an establishment consisting of two rooms and my bedroom, which opened off the kitchen. It literallyopenedoff it, for the door had no kind of fastening, and the landlady’s niece put a chair against it on the outside, as the only means of preventing my toilet operations being performed in public. The whole place was streaming with damp, and flood-marks were plainly to be seen on the walls of my bedroom. There was no food to be had exceptpuchero, and the landlady was quite grateful when I told her I could dine off the remains of the excellent lunch provided by my hosts at Tharsis, for she had no one to send out for supplies.
The poor little place was clean, the people inspired me with such confidence that the keyless door did not trouble me in the least, and I slept from the time I went to bed till 6 a.m. Then I gotup and dressed by the light of a candle, for the diligence was to start at seven, and I intended to walk on and cross the trestle bridge before it picked me up. Heavy rains had swollen the rivers everywhere, and I reflected with dismay on the remarks of my travelling companion on the condition of that bridge when we drove over it the week before.
It was still almost dark when I left the village behind me, and through the gloom a blazing wood fire shone invitingly alongside of the railway line, from the cottage of a family in charge of the level crossing. The wife ran out and begged me to come in and warm myself, full of wonder and commiseration at the hard fate—whatever it might be—that compelled aseñora de edad(“a lady advanced in years”) to take the road on foot so early in the morning.
I had to explain that the English of all ages have a curious fancy for walking in the dark, and after a few minutes’ pause, filled up by the family’s ejaculations at my remarkable activity, I pursued my way across the rickety bridge, watching a pale yellow gleam gradually appearing in the east, and wondering whether it meant that the sun would come out presently. The river was higher than ever. As a rule the Rio Tinto is a stream of wonderful colours, coppery green and bronze and orange, which turn to molten gold in the sunshine; but now the flood-water had so completely swamped the rest that it looked more like a sea of liquid mud than the “dyed river.” It seemed to me doubtful whether the bridge would hold up another twenty-fourhours, and I knew that the part of wisdom would be to turn round and go back to Seville by the next train. But I was bent upon another visit to the convent at Moguer, and still more bent upon getting the photographs which the Mother Superior had given me leave to take, and I could only hope that the yellow streak in the east might mean a day without rain and a diminished flood to-morrow.
I got my photographs, between showers, and one of them would have been made quite charming by the graceful figure of the nun who showed me round, leaning over the well-head to raise the bucket from the water far below. But when she realised that she was in the picture she fled behind the camera, and nothing would induce her to pose for me.
“Por Dios!” she cried; “I cannot go out into the world in a photograph!”
The rain began again in the evening, and I heard it pelting on the windows as I sat with the Señora de Pinzón and her daughter round the cosycamilla, talking of friends in common. We are apt to think a brazier rather an insufficient means of warming a room on a chilly night, but when we have sat an hour or so with our toes under the round petticoated table close to the pan of charcoal, we find ourselves suffused from head to foot with a warm glow which is by no means to be despised. It was late when I took my leave of the family to whom I owed so much of the enjoyment of my trip, and I had to get up about 4 a.m. to catch the early diligence to the station. I was anxious to get acrossthe estuary as soon as possible, and I had given special orders to secure my seat in the bus beforehand.
“You will not mind letting yourself out,” said the landlady cheerfully, when I bade her good-night. “I have told the driver to send a man down for your luggage at five o’clock. He will tap at your window when he comes, and you will find the key in the door. We do not get up so early if we can help it, and we know you are a lady who can be trusted to shut the street door after her.”
I don’t suppose there was much to steal in thefonda, but whatever there was I could have taken it had I chosen, when I left Moguer next morning, and I thought it was just as well that the Señora de Pinzón had a stout iron grille at the entrance to her apartments upstairs, with all their valuable historical contents, if this was the usual way of speeding the parting guest. I got up at four, boiled water to wash in on my spirit stove, drank hot coffee out of my thermos flask, and packed my things ready to start at five. But five struck, and 5.15, and 5.30, and no one came from the diligence, and at last in despair I unlocked the street door, left it on the latch, and hurried up the hill in the rain and darkness to the coach office. There was the coach ready to start, and the driver was taking his earlyaguardientein the drink shop hard by, but there was no one to fetch my luggage, and when I got hold of the coachman he said he had heard nothing about it, and had no one to send.
“But the landlady told me she gave specialorders last night, and that you promised to have me fetched at five o’clock.”
“She didn’t tell me, for I was not at the office. Had she told me I should have been at thefondabefore now. She must have told the other driver, who takes turns with me to go to the station. What is to be done? Can you not carry your own bag to the coach if I wait here for you?”
“I certainly can not. And meanwhile thefondadoor is open for thieves to enter, and the inmates may be murdered in their beds. Why not fetch it yourself and earn my peseta instead of my giving it to some one else who does not deserve it half so much? I should be greatly obliged to you, and you will get your tip at the station just the same, besides your peseta now.”
“Andando!(Come along!) Certainly I can do with apesetitaas well as another man.”
And, telling an old woman in the shop to mind his meek and dejected horses, he set off with me to the inn, shouldered my belongings, shouted a “good-morning” outside the landlady’s room which must have roused everybody within from the sleep they were so desirous of prolonging, and banged the street door as we went out with a noise loud enough to wake the town.
“They thoroughly deserve it,” said he as we hurried off together. “What disgraceful discourtesy to allow a lady like your honour to leave thefondaunattended!Gracias à Diosthat I was on the spot to make good their short-comings. You will send for me next time you come to Moguer, Señora,and you shall not have to complain of negligence again!”
I certainly shall remember him, for I never saw a prompter “quick change act” from supine indifference to my plight to eager courtesy than was effected by him on the mention of the magic word “peseta.”
It continued to rain heavily; we ploughed in pitch darkness through a sea of mud, and the diligence rocked and rolled in the ruts all down the long hill to the river. But I was so well entertained by the conversation of my only fellow-passenger that we got into San Juan and pulled up at the station before I realised that we had crossed the perilous bridge safe and sound.
He was, he said, going to meet a connection of his family recently arrived in Seville, Señor Bethancourt, who held a high diplomatic position in one of the South American republics. His relative’s career, said the homely-looking countryman, had been most romantic. He came of a very old family of French origin, had left his home in Moguer when quite a lad, had been shipwrecked and cast up on the estate of a wealthy man who took him into his employ, and eventually made him a partner in the business and allowed him to marry his only daughter.
“But he has never forgotten his family at Moguer,” concluded my friend, “and although I am only related to him through my wife, he has lately written to me saying that he was coming to Spain, and inviting me to meet him in Seville.”
I may not have got the details of the romance quite right, but there was no doubt about the greatman’s loyalty to those he had left behind him, and all through the drive the name of Bethancourt rang in my ears, while I tried in vain to recall what I had previously known of the family.
On looking them up among the multifarious notes which I have a genius for making and forgetting, I found that here was another of Moguer’s links with Spanish history.
In 1344 Pope ClementVI.gave the Lordship of the Canaries, then known as the Fortunate Isles, to Don Luis de la Cerda, a grandson of AlfonsoX., with the title of Prince, and instructions to conquer and Christianise them. One would have thought that the islands should be conquered before they were given away, but it seems to have been the custom for the Popes to give away what they did not possess. Some historians assert that AlfonsoXI., sovereign lord of the islands, was not best pleased at their being presented to his cousin, and wrote a letter to the Pope which to the frivolous modern eye seems to have been couched in a somewhat satirical vein, for he “thanked His Holiness for having made the gift, although it was in his (the writer’s) sovereign dominion.”
Don Luis de la Cerda, however, did not benefit by the somewhat dubious rights conferred on him, for he went off to France, his mother’s native land, and was there killed in battle two years later, never having visited the Canaries at all; and the next we hear of the Fortunate Isles is that after some vicissitudes they came in the course of a business transaction into the hands of “Mossen Juan de Betancur,”a French gentleman who carried out his enterprise to such good purpose that the people gave him the title of king.
This was in 1417, and meanwhile a good deal of highly profitable traffic had been going on between the “idolaters” of the islands and Seville and other Andalucian ports, including, it would seem, our little Palos and Moguer. Efforts were again being made to convert them, some Franciscan friars had established themselves there, and now Pope Martin V. appointed “Mossen” Bethancourt’s cousin, Don Mendo, as Bishop of the Rubicon, which seems to have been the name given to the diocese, and he came to Seville to swear obedience, as his suffragan, to the Archbishop.
Twenty years later, the commerce with the Canaries becoming presumably more and more lucrative, it was discovered that a great mistake had been made in allowing a Frenchman to acquire the lordship of the islands, and an armed force was sent over from Spain to dispossess Mossen Juan’s son, who now reigned in his stead, on the pretext of misgovernment and disrespect to the friars, who were busy making “new Christians” of “Mossen Menaute” Bethancourt’s subjects.
Mossen Menaute, according to the chroniclers, was not strong enough to fight the Spaniards, but he came pretty well out of the business, for he sold his rights, lock, stock, and barrel, to the Count of Niebla, one of the Medina Sidonia family, and with the proceeds he established himself at Moguer. When his guiding hand was removed, the prosperoustrade which had aroused the cupidity of the powers in Spain so quickly declined that the Canary Isles became a source of expense rather than of profit, and changed hands time after time in the next half-century; while “Mossen Betancur” flourished on his new estate, and founded the family with which my travelling companion was so pleased to claim connection.
I got back to Seville none too soon, for the rain which drove me away from Moguer continued and increased, until all the Andalucian rivers overflowed. The railway from Seville to Huelva was under water, and the Columbus country isolated. In the matter of the shaky bridge, however, good came out of evil, for it became so much shakier in consequence of the floods that the authorities were forced at last to take action, and now pilgrims to La Rabida may drive thereviâMoguer and Palos with quiet minds, for there is no longer any imminent danger of the diligence toppling over into the river.