BOOKV.SEVILLE.CHAPTERI.THE ISLAND OF ANDALUZ.The emporium of the new world and the port of the Western ocean, has become an inland town; but the shade of orange groves, the white marble of Moorish halls, the dance, the bull-fight, the garb of the Andalusian, still attract the wanderer and detain the guest. No where on the soil of Europe is there so much that is beautiful with so little that is familiar. The Tower of our metropolis claims the honour of having for its founder Julius Cæsar. The dictator appears only in the list of the benefactors of Seville: pressing forward to the bounds of human memory, she proudly asserts a founder among the gods. Existing when Rome was founded, and Carthage built, she has witnessed their catastrophe and survived their decay. From the earliest peopling of the earth to the present hour, Seville has endured a mother, if not a mistress, city, and has never known sack or desolation. Italica was the first Roman colony beyond the Alps—Seville was the capital of the Goths. Two kings were canonized; the one for its capture, the other for its defence.This single provincial city possesses the tradition of the Phœnicians; traces of the Romans; tombs of the Goths; monuments of the Saracens; a cathedral that has no equal. It has the highest tower, the purest air, the longest plain, and the richest soil in Spain. It contains the masterpiece of Spanish sculpture, and a whole school of unrivalled painting. It may be true of Spain, if of any country, that“Cada villaTien su maravilla.”But, according to the old proverb on the lips of every peasant, Seville herself is the marvel, and nevertheless, she is a truly Spanish town—a village, not a city.A noble bust stands in the orange grove of the “House of Pontius Pilate.” It would appear to be an effort to conjoin the most opposite qualities, and to represent under one head the distinguishing attributes of the sexes, strength and daring, voluptuousness and grace. The head is large, the brow ponderous, the eye full and grave, while the cheek and lips are robbed from Hebe. It is hard to say whether the martyr’s palm, the veil of Cythera, or the club of Hercules is the emblem befitting it. On inquiring where it had been discovered, I was surprised to learn that it was a head of Cleopatra, a present from a Roman Pontiff. It must have been sent to the Queen of Guadalquivir, as the prototype of herself; sensual and heroic, faithful and capricious, wanton and warlike—handling with equal dexterity and equal grace, the faggot and the fan; the castanet and navaja; the champion of the Catholic church against Arianism, the bulwark of Spain against the Northmen, the first pupil of the Saracens in art, the first rebel against their power;[316]the competitor of Florence, Venice, Bologna, and Rome, in design, painting, and architecture; the mother of the Inquisition; claiming as her founder the representative of force, and selecting as her patrons two spotless virgins. From her port was embarked the gold that in former ages adorned the temples of idolatry, and on her beach has been in modern times landed the gold of Mexico and Peru, that has left Spain bankrupt and Europe rich in corn and poor in worth.A Spaniard, in describing her, commences in these terms: “In the part of Spain towards the South, in the rich and fertile province of Andalusia, on the oriental bank of the river Guadalquivir, stands the beautiful Sevillia, capital and metropolis of four kingdoms, first court of the Spanish monarchy, and primacy of the churches of Spain.”Andalusia to the Moors was the Atlantic Island—the garden which they found wild, and which they filled with new plants, flowers, and fruit. “God in his justice,” said they, “having denied to the Christians a heavenly paradise, has given them in exchange an earthly one. It is a garden where the high places are battle-fields, but whose vales are free from famine.”“Seville is a young bride, her husband is Abbab,Her diadem Asharaf, her necklace Guadalquivir.Asharaf is a forest without wild beasts,Guadalquivir, a river without crocodiles.”So sang one of those Sevillian poets who were so numerous that “Africa would not have held them, if it had been divided out in portions among them,” and whose praises had such charms that “had they been bestowed on the Night they would have made her fairer than the Day.”The Easterns represent the world as a bird, the East being the head, Europe the body, the North and the South the wings, and the West the tail. Haroun-el-Raschid told an Andalusian that he was from the world’s tail: the Andalusian replied, “the birdis a peacock.”Al-bekir-Al-andalusi thus sums up the excellence of his native country: “It is equal to Sham (Syria) for purity of air and sweetness of waters; to Yemen, for mildness of temperature; to Hind (India), for drugs and aromatic plants; to China, for mines and precious stones; to Aden (Arabia), for the number and security of its coasts and harbours.”To that stock of knowledge known to us under the general name of Saracen, Morocco contributed probably that dexterity in the distribution of water, and the perfection of agriculture and taste in gardening, which so enriched and embellished Spain under its dominion. These arts could not have been furnished by the Nomade tribes of Arabia Petrea; and they were to be looked for in the descendants of that people, who for four centuries had made their country the granary of Rome and the world, who inherited the agricultural science, which had aided Carthage to extend her dominion. The Tribe government of the Douar, still subsisting, arose amidst patriarchal manners, and science triumphs without obscuring the charms of nature, or the taste of man. This country and its stories are the “Arabian Nights”—not read, but seen.Ibnir Ghalib entitles one of his chapters, “Contentment of the soul in contemplating the ruins of Andalusia.” For us this contemplation suggests any thing but contentment. The Moor needed no lessons from the past[317]—the traces of Carthaginian wealth and Roman power were useless to him. He required no maxims, for he cultured no fallacies. The Arabs united the two systems of the ancient world—the tribe and colony. The results in public riches and individual well-being, neither predecessors nor successors have rivalled or conceived. Such are the lessons which we may learn in the city of the fandango and guitar, whither we may have strayed only to bestow a passing glance to Lydian steps, or a listening hour to Teian measures.In regard to Moorish ruins, Seville disappointed me. The great mosque has been demolished: the cathedral, indeed, occupies its site, but why should the other have been destroyed? The Alcazar is by the Sevillians extolled above the Alhambra; but, excepting the entrance, it can be admired only as a copy by those who have seen the works of the master. Originally it was a Moorish edifice, but it was remodelled under Spanish kings, and is now undergoing repairs and painting in the deplorable style of the specimens of Moorish plaster hung up in the Museum of Madrid.[318]The term Cazar, or Cazaria, is derived from the palace of the Cæsars; it was then associated with the Moorish god, and thus acquired an impress of grandeur. A petition from a township, imploring the Queen to take the government out of the hands of the Cortes, places in antithesisAlcazarand “club!”The house of Pontius Pilate pretends to be nothing more than an imitation; as such it is a splendid work. Its chief value is, in recording the thought of the chieftain, who, after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, endeavouring to transfer to his native city the type of Palestine—took the model of a Moorish palace for the habitation of the Roman governor of Judæa.Seville has been well chosen by Corneille as the scene of his “Cid.” This title, and the reasons he puts in Ferdinand’s mouth for conferring it on the young hero, show that he looked on the Moors as models for a soldier and a knight. The character of the contest is pourtrayed with no less accuracy than is preserved the simplicity of the ballad. The Spaniards are inflamed against the Mussulman with none of the fanatic spirit of the Eastern struggles and crusading times; yet the feelings which naturally suggest themselves in a war between Infidels and Christians, seemed needful for the purpose and the colouring of his picture.A street namedCalle de la Moreria, or street of the quarter of the Moors, is the record of the different treatment of that people by Ferdinand the Saint,and Ferdinand the Catholic.“Ferdinand, after the capture of Seville, divided the quarters of the city among the various nations, provinces, and tribes:—one calledAduaress, was inhabited by the Moors, who remained in the city after the Conquest, or who came from Granada as auxiliaries to St. Ferdinand. After the Conquest of Granada, these Moors were obliged to send every year a certain number, to take part in the honours paid to St. Ferdinand on the 30th of May; and they had to assistat the Vigils and Mass, incapuzes, with greencaperotes, with their crescents also green, and they stood round the tumulus with white torches burning in their hands. The Moreria existed down to 1502, when, by an order of the Catholic king, all the Moors, inhabitants of Seville, were expelled the kingdom, which order and the mode of execution are sufficiently curious to be published here, as they have not been given by any author.“The King and the Queen.—D. Juan di Silva, Count of Cifuenti, our Alferez Mayor, and of our Council, and our Assistant for the very noble city of Seville: We have agreed to order all the Moors to quit our kingdoms, and we order you, that you cause this paper (carta) to be published, and that you place in sequestration the mosques and other common property of the Moors, and to see that the said mosques are cleaned and shut up, and therein use the diligence that we know in you. From the city of Seville, the twelfth day of the month of February, one thousand five hundred and two. I, the King. I, the Queen. By order of the King and the Queen, Miguel Perez de Almazâ.“The Conde de Cifuenti, with his lieutenant, the Licenciado Lorenzo Somero, with the public writer, Francisco Sigura, repaired on the same day with a competent number of aguacils to the quarters of the Moors, and having here assembled and being present Maestre Mohammed Recocho, Maestre Mohammed Daiena, and Maestre Mohammed Saganche, and Ali Faza, and Maestre Alunlie Aguja, and Ali Nuyun—Moors—showed to them and read the royal order, which they kissed, and placed upon their heads in sign of obedience.” They then opened the mosque, and proceeded to the sequestration, and made oath that these were the whole of thebienes communes, by God the all-powerful Creator of the heaven and the earth. Then they passed all out of the city, and took possession of the Æsario, adjoining the field of Santa Justa. And this was accomplished with such expedition, that the expulsion is protocoled as completed on the same day, 15th February, 1502.[319]One of the canons of the cathedral remarked, “Whenever you disturb the ground you come upon turbans: everywhere do the signs appear of the heads of the Moors, above as well as below the earth, and in Andalusia are their hearts still buried.”[320]But it is not in the midst of joyous Seville that the image of such a contest can be called up: you require ruins in loneliness—these you have a few miles distant, at Alcala. There is the stamp of that fierce border war of many centuries. It is, besides, a perfect study of military architecture. There may be seen double tiers of guns, as on the broadside of a ship, the lower embrasure no wider than the muzzle, having a slit above, in the form of a cross, to aim by. There is also outside the walls, and all round, as at Gibraltar and Malaga, an advanced work, on which guns were mounted, at once multiplying the means of annoyance and protecting the base of the walls from the enemy’s shot. This place has three distinct internal defences, with deep ditches traversing them. It seemed all hollowed out; cisterns or mattamores for corn occupy the centre. Close to one of the walls, and at a part where the ground is low, there is a large square opening, which must even now be fifty feet deep, though a great quantity of rubbish has fallen in. A solitary tower at the opposite point from the village projects beyond the circuit of walls: the stories of halls or vaults, with large embrasures or windows in the three sides, combine the light and airy prospect of a kiosk, with the gloomy grandeur of a fortress. There the traveller that would muse should go, and go alone, and ponder long.The first object that meets the eye in approaching Seville, is the Giralda, and it stands first in the estimation of the inhabitants. Notwithstanding—or because of—an incongruous Spanish superstructure,[321]an enormous bronze figure, fourteen feet high, with a shield on the extended left arm, and a lance in the right hand, is placed on the top—at once a statue and a weathercock—its apparent inclination, as it revolves, gives to the tower a certain manner, a gait and gesture, as it were, unlike any other, and makes it look like a great cypress bending to the breeze.During the siege, the Moors proposed to pull it down, as too sacred to be left; but were prevented by the threat of St. Ferdinand, that if they touched one stone, or rather brick, of it, he would not leave one man alive. The singular name that belongs to it, is brought forth deep from the Sevillian’s breast, and its tones linger on his lips. It rivals the Immaculate Conception as an emblem and an ornament; it is seen in the painted windows of the churches and cathedrals; it is embossed on the chairs, embroidered on the dresses; prints of it are suspended on the walls; it is to be found in the pictures of the altar-pieces and the slabs of the pavement; it is copied in the steeples of the surrounding towns; and, finally, it has given to Seville her two patron saints. Two potter girls of Triana, martyrs in Roman times—Santa Justa and Santa Rufina—were seen in a vision only three centuries and a half ago, supporting the Giralda during a storm and earthquake, and were enshrined as the tutelary saints. This event is the subject of one of the most incongruous, though not the least beautiful, of the pictures of Murillo.This tower claims for its architect the supposed inventor of Algebra, and it was raised by one of the most powerful of monarchs, Jacob the Second, of the Almohades. It has been spared alike by the Vandalism and fanaticism of conquest, the ravages of war, the lightning that hath struck, and the earthquakes that have shattered the humbler edifices around. It is the embellishment of Seville; her pride, her standard-bearer, her nightly watch-tower, the plume of her mural coronet, first caught by the eye of the stranger, and last seen. The Giralda is said to be superior to the towers of Rabat and Morocco; but there is no comparison either in the materials, the ornaments, or dimensions.On reaching the gallery, the clangour of bells strikes one, as replacing the Muezzin call, “God is great. To prayers.” “Prayer is better than sleep.” There are a dozen great bells, which send forth the most discordant and unceasing peals, and the ringing of them is a strange exhibition. They are swung round and round; the rope is allowed to coil itself round the stock, or is jerked on the lip of the bell, and the ringer springs up by stanchions in the wall to get a purchase, and then throws himself down; or he allows himself to be carried by the rope as it swings round outside. As I entered the gallery, I saw one of the ringers thrown out, as I imagined, and expected, of course, that he was dashed on the pavement below; I saw him the next moment perched on the bell, smiling at my terror.The belfry does, however, discharge as a steeple, several of the functions to which it was appropriated as a minaret: the day, as in Mussulman countries, is divided by prayer. When you ask in Morocco, at what hour you are to arrive at such a place;—if they mean at sunset, they will answer, “at Assar.” So other hours are marked by the first prayer, or the mid-day prayer, and this is made known to all, not only by the muezzin’s call, but also by a flag hoisted on the minaret,—calledalem. The Spaniards, in like manner, divide the time by the prayers, the oracion, the animas, &c., the period of which is announced generally, in the south of Spain, from the towers that the Musselmans built for the same purpose.The view from the Giralda invited me to ascend it daily during my stay. Whether it was calm or windy, whether in sunshine or shade, the charm was the same in its diversities: the lightness of the atmosphere in every change, justified the saying of the Sevillians, “Our climate is fit to raise the dead.”From this height it requires no great effort to replace, in imagination, the dead level by an arm of the sea; the tide still rises four feet in the river, though fifty miles from the sea.[322]It is only thirty years since it has been deprived of the monopoly of the commerce of the New World; the caravels and argosies of Santa Fé deposited upon that bank their precious freights, as is still recorded in the name of the round tower by the water,—sorride oro.HOSPITAL DE LA SANGRE.This is a noble edifice, composed of several grand courts and of two stories, the lower one for summer, and the upper one for winter. I think I may say that to each patient is allotted at least four times as much space as in any similar European establishment, and the very troughs in which the dirty linen is washed are marble: the patients have two changes of clean linen in the week. The kitchens are all resplendent with painted tiles and cleanliness, and there seemed abundance of excellent food. In these institutions, in Spain, the inmates are completely at home. Soft and blooming girls, with downcast look and hurried step, were attending upon the poor, the maimed, and the suffering. The Lady-Directress had told the servant who accompanied me, to bring me, after my visit, to her apartment, which was a hall in one of the corners of the building: she said she had heard that England was celebrated for its charity, and asked if our poor and sick were better off than in Spain. I was obliged to confess that the reverse was the case. She was, however, better informed than I at first suspected. She asked me if it was not true that we hired mercenaries to attend on the sick and abstained from performing that duty ourselves; and if our charity was not imposed as a tax? She told me that there were eight hundred of her order in Spain; that it was the only one that had not been destroyed; that none were admitted but those of noble birth or of gentle blood; and that they took all the vows except that of seclusion, and in lieu of it took that of service to the poor and sick. The St. Isabelle, of Murillo, painted for them, was the model of their order. The Hospital de la Sangre was founded by a woman.THE CARTUJA.This interesting convent is across the water. It is now a pottery, and the property of an Englishman, who very obligingly accompanied me over the works. I never saw the Spanish people to more advantage: they were models, in both sexes, of classic and Andalusian beauty. Their costume was peculiarly well-preserved; and the work—itself cleanly—was carried on in the midst of noble structures, surrounded with the finest chiseling, the grandeur of vaults and the gorgeousness of azuleos. I inquired for the sepulchral stone of St. Hermangildo, and after some search, and the removal of a heap of stones, we found it let into the wall at the east end of the church. The proprietor, on my urgent entreaty, promised he would have it conveyed to some place of safety.I was anxious to get at the feelings of the people working in this sacred edifice. Although familiarity had destroyed any strong impressions, they all seemed to regret the splendour of their domicile, and expressed gratitude to their master for fitting up one of the chapels for public service. He himself told me that he had at first preserved the church of worship, but finding that it excited the congregation that the monastery should have been so disposed of, and have become the property of a heretic, he deemed it prudent to exert his rights and convert the church to the uses of the manufactory. As they were drawing a distinction between the church and the monastery, he thought the time might come when they would reassert their claim to the possession of the monastery as well as to the church. If I had had no other occasion to judge of the prospect of future tranquillity for Spain, this would have sufficed to assure me that, while this intrusion upon the monastic property endures, no settlement will be made. In England and in France, church confiscation was accompanied with a change of belief, and those possessed either of hereditary influence or of political power were the acquirers.No influential body has profited by the confiscation, or risen to power by the possession, of this wealth. The wealth itself has disappeared—it was the reaction from the sale of church property that restored France to the community of Rome. The sale of the property of a church not upset; the penury and suffering of its clergy (a clergy which sits in the confessional and administers the viaticum, doubtless exercises its power of quickening the religious sense of Spain, especially as the manifestations of it are suppressed)—may in like manner produce a reaction.The Cortes receives no petition upon the subject of church property, and the Crown listens to no prayers against the Cortes.The tithes never were supposed to be appropriated to the church by the State. The tithes in each spot had a special and chartered origin.[323]The church was the continuation of the Mozarabic worship, and was supported by obtubia and not by tithes. It was not the tenth but the twentieth part. The tithe was in fact legally fixed at five per cent. of the gross produce.From this tithe the clergy paid a revenue to the State of their annual cures and professions; it amounted some years ago to 180,000,000 reals. The church now figures in the budget as a charge of 140,000,000; the difference amounts to one half the entire revenue of Spain, and the property itself has been wholly swallowed up. This country suffers at present only from the central government. The clergy, as a corporation, presents a check: the dues paid by the church would have been sufficient for all the purposes of government.These unfortunate proceedings are laid at England’s door, as being the patron of the minister who introduced the change; she is also charged with supporting antinational governments with loans; which, while giving a temporary triumph to a hollow faction, impose permanent obligations and disgrace. Nor is it one of the least evil consequences that Spain, like other countries similarly situated, is considered in England as under an obligation to her.[316]She was among the first to rise against the French.“To an acute but indifferent observer, Seville, as we found it on our return, would have been a most interesting study. He could not but admire the patriotic energy of the inhabitants, their unbounded devotion to the cause of their country, and the wonderful effort by which, in spite of their passive habits of submission, they had ventured to dare both the authority of their rulers, and the approaching bayonets of the French.”—Doblado’sLetters,p.441.[317]Burkhardt characterizes the traditional institutions of the Desert as “so well adopted, so natural, and so simple, that every nation not reduced to slavery, if thrown at large on the wide desert, might be expected to adopt the same.”—Notes on the Bedouins,p.214.Burkhardt has here so forgotten the European, as to identify freedom and sense. Knowledge is to God, what science is to language, or mud to water. The fountain in each is pure, each step in “advance,” brings corruption: the last point, unless where there is a return upon itself, is always the worst.[318]The Duke and Duchess de Montpensier took up their abode in the Alcazar, with the design of restoring it. Furniture was ordered from Africa. One generation more and the Alhambra will be scarcely traceable, and the bastard fashions now springing up, will be to subsequent times the type of the Moors![319]Historia de Sevilla Gonzales de Leon,p.367. It appears from the same work, that the Jews came and lived with the Moors.[320]See Gonzales de Leon,p.519.[321]“The rich filigree belfry added in 1568, by Fernando Ruiz, is elegant beyond description.”—Handbook,vol. i. p.248.[322]Heeren, in discussing the claims of Seville to be the original Tarshish, or the earliest settlement in the West, says, “as it was not likely that these traders should have venturedso farinland.”[323]Origen de los Rentàs,p.192, 217.
BOOKV.SEVILLE.
The emporium of the new world and the port of the Western ocean, has become an inland town; but the shade of orange groves, the white marble of Moorish halls, the dance, the bull-fight, the garb of the Andalusian, still attract the wanderer and detain the guest. No where on the soil of Europe is there so much that is beautiful with so little that is familiar. The Tower of our metropolis claims the honour of having for its founder Julius Cæsar. The dictator appears only in the list of the benefactors of Seville: pressing forward to the bounds of human memory, she proudly asserts a founder among the gods. Existing when Rome was founded, and Carthage built, she has witnessed their catastrophe and survived their decay. From the earliest peopling of the earth to the present hour, Seville has endured a mother, if not a mistress, city, and has never known sack or desolation. Italica was the first Roman colony beyond the Alps—Seville was the capital of the Goths. Two kings were canonized; the one for its capture, the other for its defence.
This single provincial city possesses the tradition of the Phœnicians; traces of the Romans; tombs of the Goths; monuments of the Saracens; a cathedral that has no equal. It has the highest tower, the purest air, the longest plain, and the richest soil in Spain. It contains the masterpiece of Spanish sculpture, and a whole school of unrivalled painting. It may be true of Spain, if of any country, that
“Cada villaTien su maravilla.”
“Cada villaTien su maravilla.”
“Cada villa
Tien su maravilla.”
But, according to the old proverb on the lips of every peasant, Seville herself is the marvel, and nevertheless, she is a truly Spanish town—a village, not a city.
A noble bust stands in the orange grove of the “House of Pontius Pilate.” It would appear to be an effort to conjoin the most opposite qualities, and to represent under one head the distinguishing attributes of the sexes, strength and daring, voluptuousness and grace. The head is large, the brow ponderous, the eye full and grave, while the cheek and lips are robbed from Hebe. It is hard to say whether the martyr’s palm, the veil of Cythera, or the club of Hercules is the emblem befitting it. On inquiring where it had been discovered, I was surprised to learn that it was a head of Cleopatra, a present from a Roman Pontiff. It must have been sent to the Queen of Guadalquivir, as the prototype of herself; sensual and heroic, faithful and capricious, wanton and warlike—handling with equal dexterity and equal grace, the faggot and the fan; the castanet and navaja; the champion of the Catholic church against Arianism, the bulwark of Spain against the Northmen, the first pupil of the Saracens in art, the first rebel against their power;[316]the competitor of Florence, Venice, Bologna, and Rome, in design, painting, and architecture; the mother of the Inquisition; claiming as her founder the representative of force, and selecting as her patrons two spotless virgins. From her port was embarked the gold that in former ages adorned the temples of idolatry, and on her beach has been in modern times landed the gold of Mexico and Peru, that has left Spain bankrupt and Europe rich in corn and poor in worth.
A Spaniard, in describing her, commences in these terms: “In the part of Spain towards the South, in the rich and fertile province of Andalusia, on the oriental bank of the river Guadalquivir, stands the beautiful Sevillia, capital and metropolis of four kingdoms, first court of the Spanish monarchy, and primacy of the churches of Spain.”
Andalusia to the Moors was the Atlantic Island—the garden which they found wild, and which they filled with new plants, flowers, and fruit. “God in his justice,” said they, “having denied to the Christians a heavenly paradise, has given them in exchange an earthly one. It is a garden where the high places are battle-fields, but whose vales are free from famine.”
“Seville is a young bride, her husband is Abbab,Her diadem Asharaf, her necklace Guadalquivir.Asharaf is a forest without wild beasts,Guadalquivir, a river without crocodiles.”
“Seville is a young bride, her husband is Abbab,Her diadem Asharaf, her necklace Guadalquivir.Asharaf is a forest without wild beasts,Guadalquivir, a river without crocodiles.”
“Seville is a young bride, her husband is Abbab,
Her diadem Asharaf, her necklace Guadalquivir.
Asharaf is a forest without wild beasts,
Guadalquivir, a river without crocodiles.”
So sang one of those Sevillian poets who were so numerous that “Africa would not have held them, if it had been divided out in portions among them,” and whose praises had such charms that “had they been bestowed on the Night they would have made her fairer than the Day.”
The Easterns represent the world as a bird, the East being the head, Europe the body, the North and the South the wings, and the West the tail. Haroun-el-Raschid told an Andalusian that he was from the world’s tail: the Andalusian replied, “the birdis a peacock.”
Al-bekir-Al-andalusi thus sums up the excellence of his native country: “It is equal to Sham (Syria) for purity of air and sweetness of waters; to Yemen, for mildness of temperature; to Hind (India), for drugs and aromatic plants; to China, for mines and precious stones; to Aden (Arabia), for the number and security of its coasts and harbours.”
To that stock of knowledge known to us under the general name of Saracen, Morocco contributed probably that dexterity in the distribution of water, and the perfection of agriculture and taste in gardening, which so enriched and embellished Spain under its dominion. These arts could not have been furnished by the Nomade tribes of Arabia Petrea; and they were to be looked for in the descendants of that people, who for four centuries had made their country the granary of Rome and the world, who inherited the agricultural science, which had aided Carthage to extend her dominion. The Tribe government of the Douar, still subsisting, arose amidst patriarchal manners, and science triumphs without obscuring the charms of nature, or the taste of man. This country and its stories are the “Arabian Nights”—not read, but seen.
Ibnir Ghalib entitles one of his chapters, “Contentment of the soul in contemplating the ruins of Andalusia.” For us this contemplation suggests any thing but contentment. The Moor needed no lessons from the past[317]—the traces of Carthaginian wealth and Roman power were useless to him. He required no maxims, for he cultured no fallacies. The Arabs united the two systems of the ancient world—the tribe and colony. The results in public riches and individual well-being, neither predecessors nor successors have rivalled or conceived. Such are the lessons which we may learn in the city of the fandango and guitar, whither we may have strayed only to bestow a passing glance to Lydian steps, or a listening hour to Teian measures.
In regard to Moorish ruins, Seville disappointed me. The great mosque has been demolished: the cathedral, indeed, occupies its site, but why should the other have been destroyed? The Alcazar is by the Sevillians extolled above the Alhambra; but, excepting the entrance, it can be admired only as a copy by those who have seen the works of the master. Originally it was a Moorish edifice, but it was remodelled under Spanish kings, and is now undergoing repairs and painting in the deplorable style of the specimens of Moorish plaster hung up in the Museum of Madrid.[318]The term Cazar, or Cazaria, is derived from the palace of the Cæsars; it was then associated with the Moorish god, and thus acquired an impress of grandeur. A petition from a township, imploring the Queen to take the government out of the hands of the Cortes, places in antithesisAlcazarand “club!”
The house of Pontius Pilate pretends to be nothing more than an imitation; as such it is a splendid work. Its chief value is, in recording the thought of the chieftain, who, after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, endeavouring to transfer to his native city the type of Palestine—took the model of a Moorish palace for the habitation of the Roman governor of Judæa.
Seville has been well chosen by Corneille as the scene of his “Cid.” This title, and the reasons he puts in Ferdinand’s mouth for conferring it on the young hero, show that he looked on the Moors as models for a soldier and a knight. The character of the contest is pourtrayed with no less accuracy than is preserved the simplicity of the ballad. The Spaniards are inflamed against the Mussulman with none of the fanatic spirit of the Eastern struggles and crusading times; yet the feelings which naturally suggest themselves in a war between Infidels and Christians, seemed needful for the purpose and the colouring of his picture.
A street namedCalle de la Moreria, or street of the quarter of the Moors, is the record of the different treatment of that people by Ferdinand the Saint,and Ferdinand the Catholic.
“Ferdinand, after the capture of Seville, divided the quarters of the city among the various nations, provinces, and tribes:—one calledAduaress, was inhabited by the Moors, who remained in the city after the Conquest, or who came from Granada as auxiliaries to St. Ferdinand. After the Conquest of Granada, these Moors were obliged to send every year a certain number, to take part in the honours paid to St. Ferdinand on the 30th of May; and they had to assistat the Vigils and Mass, incapuzes, with greencaperotes, with their crescents also green, and they stood round the tumulus with white torches burning in their hands. The Moreria existed down to 1502, when, by an order of the Catholic king, all the Moors, inhabitants of Seville, were expelled the kingdom, which order and the mode of execution are sufficiently curious to be published here, as they have not been given by any author.
“The King and the Queen.—D. Juan di Silva, Count of Cifuenti, our Alferez Mayor, and of our Council, and our Assistant for the very noble city of Seville: We have agreed to order all the Moors to quit our kingdoms, and we order you, that you cause this paper (carta) to be published, and that you place in sequestration the mosques and other common property of the Moors, and to see that the said mosques are cleaned and shut up, and therein use the diligence that we know in you. From the city of Seville, the twelfth day of the month of February, one thousand five hundred and two. I, the King. I, the Queen. By order of the King and the Queen, Miguel Perez de Almazâ.
“The Conde de Cifuenti, with his lieutenant, the Licenciado Lorenzo Somero, with the public writer, Francisco Sigura, repaired on the same day with a competent number of aguacils to the quarters of the Moors, and having here assembled and being present Maestre Mohammed Recocho, Maestre Mohammed Daiena, and Maestre Mohammed Saganche, and Ali Faza, and Maestre Alunlie Aguja, and Ali Nuyun—Moors—showed to them and read the royal order, which they kissed, and placed upon their heads in sign of obedience.” They then opened the mosque, and proceeded to the sequestration, and made oath that these were the whole of thebienes communes, by God the all-powerful Creator of the heaven and the earth. Then they passed all out of the city, and took possession of the Æsario, adjoining the field of Santa Justa. And this was accomplished with such expedition, that the expulsion is protocoled as completed on the same day, 15th February, 1502.[319]
One of the canons of the cathedral remarked, “Whenever you disturb the ground you come upon turbans: everywhere do the signs appear of the heads of the Moors, above as well as below the earth, and in Andalusia are their hearts still buried.”[320]But it is not in the midst of joyous Seville that the image of such a contest can be called up: you require ruins in loneliness—these you have a few miles distant, at Alcala. There is the stamp of that fierce border war of many centuries. It is, besides, a perfect study of military architecture. There may be seen double tiers of guns, as on the broadside of a ship, the lower embrasure no wider than the muzzle, having a slit above, in the form of a cross, to aim by. There is also outside the walls, and all round, as at Gibraltar and Malaga, an advanced work, on which guns were mounted, at once multiplying the means of annoyance and protecting the base of the walls from the enemy’s shot. This place has three distinct internal defences, with deep ditches traversing them. It seemed all hollowed out; cisterns or mattamores for corn occupy the centre. Close to one of the walls, and at a part where the ground is low, there is a large square opening, which must even now be fifty feet deep, though a great quantity of rubbish has fallen in. A solitary tower at the opposite point from the village projects beyond the circuit of walls: the stories of halls or vaults, with large embrasures or windows in the three sides, combine the light and airy prospect of a kiosk, with the gloomy grandeur of a fortress. There the traveller that would muse should go, and go alone, and ponder long.
The first object that meets the eye in approaching Seville, is the Giralda, and it stands first in the estimation of the inhabitants. Notwithstanding—or because of—an incongruous Spanish superstructure,[321]an enormous bronze figure, fourteen feet high, with a shield on the extended left arm, and a lance in the right hand, is placed on the top—at once a statue and a weathercock—its apparent inclination, as it revolves, gives to the tower a certain manner, a gait and gesture, as it were, unlike any other, and makes it look like a great cypress bending to the breeze.
During the siege, the Moors proposed to pull it down, as too sacred to be left; but were prevented by the threat of St. Ferdinand, that if they touched one stone, or rather brick, of it, he would not leave one man alive. The singular name that belongs to it, is brought forth deep from the Sevillian’s breast, and its tones linger on his lips. It rivals the Immaculate Conception as an emblem and an ornament; it is seen in the painted windows of the churches and cathedrals; it is embossed on the chairs, embroidered on the dresses; prints of it are suspended on the walls; it is to be found in the pictures of the altar-pieces and the slabs of the pavement; it is copied in the steeples of the surrounding towns; and, finally, it has given to Seville her two patron saints. Two potter girls of Triana, martyrs in Roman times—Santa Justa and Santa Rufina—were seen in a vision only three centuries and a half ago, supporting the Giralda during a storm and earthquake, and were enshrined as the tutelary saints. This event is the subject of one of the most incongruous, though not the least beautiful, of the pictures of Murillo.
This tower claims for its architect the supposed inventor of Algebra, and it was raised by one of the most powerful of monarchs, Jacob the Second, of the Almohades. It has been spared alike by the Vandalism and fanaticism of conquest, the ravages of war, the lightning that hath struck, and the earthquakes that have shattered the humbler edifices around. It is the embellishment of Seville; her pride, her standard-bearer, her nightly watch-tower, the plume of her mural coronet, first caught by the eye of the stranger, and last seen. The Giralda is said to be superior to the towers of Rabat and Morocco; but there is no comparison either in the materials, the ornaments, or dimensions.
On reaching the gallery, the clangour of bells strikes one, as replacing the Muezzin call, “God is great. To prayers.” “Prayer is better than sleep.” There are a dozen great bells, which send forth the most discordant and unceasing peals, and the ringing of them is a strange exhibition. They are swung round and round; the rope is allowed to coil itself round the stock, or is jerked on the lip of the bell, and the ringer springs up by stanchions in the wall to get a purchase, and then throws himself down; or he allows himself to be carried by the rope as it swings round outside. As I entered the gallery, I saw one of the ringers thrown out, as I imagined, and expected, of course, that he was dashed on the pavement below; I saw him the next moment perched on the bell, smiling at my terror.
The belfry does, however, discharge as a steeple, several of the functions to which it was appropriated as a minaret: the day, as in Mussulman countries, is divided by prayer. When you ask in Morocco, at what hour you are to arrive at such a place;—if they mean at sunset, they will answer, “at Assar.” So other hours are marked by the first prayer, or the mid-day prayer, and this is made known to all, not only by the muezzin’s call, but also by a flag hoisted on the minaret,—calledalem. The Spaniards, in like manner, divide the time by the prayers, the oracion, the animas, &c., the period of which is announced generally, in the south of Spain, from the towers that the Musselmans built for the same purpose.
The view from the Giralda invited me to ascend it daily during my stay. Whether it was calm or windy, whether in sunshine or shade, the charm was the same in its diversities: the lightness of the atmosphere in every change, justified the saying of the Sevillians, “Our climate is fit to raise the dead.”
From this height it requires no great effort to replace, in imagination, the dead level by an arm of the sea; the tide still rises four feet in the river, though fifty miles from the sea.[322]It is only thirty years since it has been deprived of the monopoly of the commerce of the New World; the caravels and argosies of Santa Fé deposited upon that bank their precious freights, as is still recorded in the name of the round tower by the water,—sorride oro.
HOSPITAL DE LA SANGRE.
This is a noble edifice, composed of several grand courts and of two stories, the lower one for summer, and the upper one for winter. I think I may say that to each patient is allotted at least four times as much space as in any similar European establishment, and the very troughs in which the dirty linen is washed are marble: the patients have two changes of clean linen in the week. The kitchens are all resplendent with painted tiles and cleanliness, and there seemed abundance of excellent food. In these institutions, in Spain, the inmates are completely at home. Soft and blooming girls, with downcast look and hurried step, were attending upon the poor, the maimed, and the suffering. The Lady-Directress had told the servant who accompanied me, to bring me, after my visit, to her apartment, which was a hall in one of the corners of the building: she said she had heard that England was celebrated for its charity, and asked if our poor and sick were better off than in Spain. I was obliged to confess that the reverse was the case. She was, however, better informed than I at first suspected. She asked me if it was not true that we hired mercenaries to attend on the sick and abstained from performing that duty ourselves; and if our charity was not imposed as a tax? She told me that there were eight hundred of her order in Spain; that it was the only one that had not been destroyed; that none were admitted but those of noble birth or of gentle blood; and that they took all the vows except that of seclusion, and in lieu of it took that of service to the poor and sick. The St. Isabelle, of Murillo, painted for them, was the model of their order. The Hospital de la Sangre was founded by a woman.
THE CARTUJA.
This interesting convent is across the water. It is now a pottery, and the property of an Englishman, who very obligingly accompanied me over the works. I never saw the Spanish people to more advantage: they were models, in both sexes, of classic and Andalusian beauty. Their costume was peculiarly well-preserved; and the work—itself cleanly—was carried on in the midst of noble structures, surrounded with the finest chiseling, the grandeur of vaults and the gorgeousness of azuleos. I inquired for the sepulchral stone of St. Hermangildo, and after some search, and the removal of a heap of stones, we found it let into the wall at the east end of the church. The proprietor, on my urgent entreaty, promised he would have it conveyed to some place of safety.
I was anxious to get at the feelings of the people working in this sacred edifice. Although familiarity had destroyed any strong impressions, they all seemed to regret the splendour of their domicile, and expressed gratitude to their master for fitting up one of the chapels for public service. He himself told me that he had at first preserved the church of worship, but finding that it excited the congregation that the monastery should have been so disposed of, and have become the property of a heretic, he deemed it prudent to exert his rights and convert the church to the uses of the manufactory. As they were drawing a distinction between the church and the monastery, he thought the time might come when they would reassert their claim to the possession of the monastery as well as to the church. If I had had no other occasion to judge of the prospect of future tranquillity for Spain, this would have sufficed to assure me that, while this intrusion upon the monastic property endures, no settlement will be made. In England and in France, church confiscation was accompanied with a change of belief, and those possessed either of hereditary influence or of political power were the acquirers.
No influential body has profited by the confiscation, or risen to power by the possession, of this wealth. The wealth itself has disappeared—it was the reaction from the sale of church property that restored France to the community of Rome. The sale of the property of a church not upset; the penury and suffering of its clergy (a clergy which sits in the confessional and administers the viaticum, doubtless exercises its power of quickening the religious sense of Spain, especially as the manifestations of it are suppressed)—may in like manner produce a reaction.
The Cortes receives no petition upon the subject of church property, and the Crown listens to no prayers against the Cortes.
The tithes never were supposed to be appropriated to the church by the State. The tithes in each spot had a special and chartered origin.[323]The church was the continuation of the Mozarabic worship, and was supported by obtubia and not by tithes. It was not the tenth but the twentieth part. The tithe was in fact legally fixed at five per cent. of the gross produce.
From this tithe the clergy paid a revenue to the State of their annual cures and professions; it amounted some years ago to 180,000,000 reals. The church now figures in the budget as a charge of 140,000,000; the difference amounts to one half the entire revenue of Spain, and the property itself has been wholly swallowed up. This country suffers at present only from the central government. The clergy, as a corporation, presents a check: the dues paid by the church would have been sufficient for all the purposes of government.
These unfortunate proceedings are laid at England’s door, as being the patron of the minister who introduced the change; she is also charged with supporting antinational governments with loans; which, while giving a temporary triumph to a hollow faction, impose permanent obligations and disgrace. Nor is it one of the least evil consequences that Spain, like other countries similarly situated, is considered in England as under an obligation to her.
[316]She was among the first to rise against the French.
“To an acute but indifferent observer, Seville, as we found it on our return, would have been a most interesting study. He could not but admire the patriotic energy of the inhabitants, their unbounded devotion to the cause of their country, and the wonderful effort by which, in spite of their passive habits of submission, they had ventured to dare both the authority of their rulers, and the approaching bayonets of the French.”—Doblado’sLetters,p.441.
[317]Burkhardt characterizes the traditional institutions of the Desert as “so well adopted, so natural, and so simple, that every nation not reduced to slavery, if thrown at large on the wide desert, might be expected to adopt the same.”—Notes on the Bedouins,p.214.
Burkhardt has here so forgotten the European, as to identify freedom and sense. Knowledge is to God, what science is to language, or mud to water. The fountain in each is pure, each step in “advance,” brings corruption: the last point, unless where there is a return upon itself, is always the worst.
[318]The Duke and Duchess de Montpensier took up their abode in the Alcazar, with the design of restoring it. Furniture was ordered from Africa. One generation more and the Alhambra will be scarcely traceable, and the bastard fashions now springing up, will be to subsequent times the type of the Moors!
[319]Historia de Sevilla Gonzales de Leon,p.367. It appears from the same work, that the Jews came and lived with the Moors.
[320]See Gonzales de Leon,p.519.
[321]“The rich filigree belfry added in 1568, by Fernando Ruiz, is elegant beyond description.”—Handbook,vol. i. p.248.
[322]Heeren, in discussing the claims of Seville to be the original Tarshish, or the earliest settlement in the West, says, “as it was not likely that these traders should have venturedso farinland.”
[323]Origen de los Rentàs,p.192, 217.