Theancient and beautiful city of Segovia occupies one of those sites which men would have chosen for the building of towns as soon as towns ever came to be built. We may therefore be sure that the roots of the city’s life lie very far back in the past—an assurance confirmed by the name, which bespeaks an Iberian origin. Mediæval writers mentioned this as among the towns built by the fabulous King Hispan, whose name, with those of his relatives, Iberia and Pyrrhus, is always introduced to explain a mystery or to adorn a tale. To the Romans the place was known as Segobriga; and that it was a flourishing and important colony the great aqueduct, the most famous of its monuments, remains to this day to attest. We may assume the town under the Roman yoke was happy, for it had no history—at least, nothing of it has reached us. There were bishops on these barren heights in early times, for they are referred to by name asattending councils at Toledo in the sixth and seventh centuries. At the time of the Mohammedan conquest, a hermit called Fruto rallied the Christians in the fastnesses of the mountains and kept alive in them the Christian faith and traditions. This holy person was the brother of the martyrs Valentin and Engracia, whom the Moors put to death. This the hardened infidels did, the chroniclers assure us, in spite of miracles which might have converted Mohammed himself; for the Segovian saints cleft mountains asunder with the stroke of a knife, and produced fountains from the solid rock with the touch of a wand; while a mare, to whom the Eucharist had been offered as food, dropped on her knees in adoration. It is clear that in after years the Christians of Segovia enjoyed the liberty of worship that the Muslims of Spain everywhere conceded to their subjects; for we hear of a bishop, Ildered, governing his flock here in the year 940. In the following century it was included within the dominions of the Amir of Toledo, and on the downfall of that monarchy was annexed to the growing kingdom of Castile.
Like Salamanca and Avila, Segovia was repeopled at the instance of Count Raymond of Burgundy, chiefly by Gallegos from the north-west. It received its first charter from AlfonsoVI.in 1108. Thereafter its citizens were always to be found in the fighting line. Tradition avers that Madrid was recovered from the Moors by the Segovians; and their chiefs on that glorious occasion were Dia Sanz and Fernán Garcia, whose descendants for many years after divided the government of the city between them. But the chronicles register a very black stain on the city’s fame: the assassination by the townsfolk of Alvar Fañez, the illustrious brother-in-arms of AlfonsoVI., at Easter, 1114. Four years later, the Segovians took the side of AlfonsoVII.against his mother, Queen Urraca, and were rewarded by the reconstitution of their town into a bishopric.
The history of Segovia differs little from that of other Castilian towns. Its citizens shared the glories and the hardships of the ceaseless campaigns against the Moors, and did not hold aloof from the equally numerous civil wars that distracted the kingdom. In 1295 they refused submission to the young king, FernandoIV., and his mother, Maria de Molina. The brave queen forced her way into the town, and found the gates shut behind her. Undismayed, she harangued the stubborn townsmen. ‘Open your gates,’ she cried, ‘and I will go with my son tomore grateful and obedient towns; where vassals are less easily deceived by intriguers, and where mother and son are not separated!’ The people were moved by her reproaches, and, admitting the king, escorted both in triumph to the Alcazar.
The minority of AlfonsoXI.(1320) was attended by sanguinary disorders in the streets of Segovia. Every church and house became a fortress, and the rival factions stormed and laid siege to each other’s strongholds within the narrow compass of the city walls. In 1368 the nobility held the Alcazar for Enrique of Trastamara, whilst the commons held the town for Pedro the Cruel; but the Gracious King, after the death of his half-brother at Montiel, visited Segovia and won all hearts. A hundred years later the town was distinguished by its loyalty to the wretched Enrique IV., who here betrayed his own daughter, Juana, by a reconciliation with his sister, Isabel. Not content with this, he appeared in the streets, leading by the bridle the palfrey of the woman who denied his own child’s legitimacy.
The townsfolk, at the beginning of the reign of CharlesV., threw in their lot with the Comuneros; but the Alcazar throughout the rising was held by the royal forces. TheKing-Emperor and his successor, like their predecessors, frequently sojourned in the old palace-fortress. Later on, it was often used as a state prison. The famous Ripperdá, the Dutch adventurer, passed a portion of his captivity here; and the Marquis of Ayamonte was confined here prior to his execution in 1648. The establishment of the court permanently at Madrid, and the building of La Granja by PhilipV.in 1721, diminished the importance of Segovia as a royal residence. In few countries have the larger provincial towns loomed more conspicuously in the past than in Spain, and in few are they nowadays more decayed and bloodless. Segovia remains, as Antonio Gallenga described it, ‘an unmatched picture of the Middle Ages. You read its history on the old city walls with their eighty-three towers; in the domes and belfries of its churches; in the bare and blank ruins of its deserted monasteries; in the battlemented towers of its noble mansions.’
The town stands high and bravely on the mountains, its flanks washed by two clear streams, Eresma and Clamores. The towers and domes rise sharply against the clear sky, high above the surrounding hills; an island ofthe air Segovia seems as you catch sight of her from the dusty plains of Old Castile. Even as clouds in their fantastic formations take the semblance of far-away cities, so at certain hours from afar off you might take this to be just such a cloud-town. And when you draw nearer you find the valleys are cool and green, and that the tall trees flourish here and do not wither as in the plains round Burgos and Valladolid.
Coming from La Granja, the first you see of Segovia’s wonders is fittingly by far the oldest. The aqueduct dates, it is believed, from Trajan’s reign, and is the most considerable of the Roman remains of Spain. In the Middle Ages, like most other classical works, it was attributed to diabolical agency, and is still often called El Puente del Diablo. Beginning at the Fuente Fria in the Sierra Guadarrama, ten miles away, with many zigzags it passes over hill and dale, and at last spans the deep valley before the city, and is carried across the streets to the Alcazar. It is built of granite with black veins, hewn in great blocks, which are pieced together without mortar or clamps. Every block is visible on one side or another. For the distance of nine hundred yards the aqueduct is carried on one hundred andnineteen arches, varying in height from twenty-three to ninety-four feet. For a third of this length the arches are in two tiers. The work is devoid of ornamentation, except for the remains of a cornice. All is not Roman work. The aqueduct was partially demolished in the eleventh century during a siege by the Moors, and when Queen Isabel the Catholic determined to restore it, thirty-six arches between the convents of La Concepcion and San Francisco had fallen in. The restoration of these was intrusted, on the recommendation of the Prior of El Parral, to a young monk of that house, named Fray Juan Escovedo, who performed his difficult task with remarkable skill. Indeed, it is not easy to distinguish the Spaniard’s work from the Roman’s. Escovedo died in 1489. The only reward he received for his labours was the timber of the scaffoldings.
Some of the arches have been for centuries embedded in the city walls. The work, though severe and imposing, is not perhaps equal to the Pont de Gard, or even to certain other Roman remains in Spain. Yet nothing could be more curious, or, in a sense, more picturesque, than the views of the quaint old houses framed by its arches, or grander than these as seen from San Juan,or towering above the Plaza Mayor. Their height is, of course, magnified by the hovels clustering at their bases, in comparison with which the aqueduct appears rather the work of Cyclopes than of men. And through these arches, as through a gate of triumph, we pass into the mediæval city.
Yet this is not the only monument of classical antiquity in Segovia. The rude figure of Hercules about to slay the Erymanthine Boar was discovered in the interior of the tower of Santo Domingo el Real, which became the property of the Dominican nuns in 1513. The demigod, to whom the foundation of so many Spanish cities has been ascribed, was no doubt worshipped here.
This ancient town of warlike people is surrounded by high walls, reared by the settlers of Count Raymond in the eleventh century, though the Alcazar, the ‘Casa de Segovia’ (adjoining the fine old Puerta de San Juan), and the ‘Tower of Hercules’ just mentioned, all forming part of the enceinte, may have been in the first instance of Roman origin. The wall is strengthened by bastions and towers of various shapes—square, round, and polygonal—some with brickarchings and ornamental courses of brick and plaster. The wall and towers preserve their battlements. The ‘allure,’ or rampart walk, is in parts so narrow as hardly to permit of safe walking. Among the most picturesque gates is that of San Andrés. It lies between two towers, one square, the other larger and polygonal, and crowning the very edge of the declivity; from one to the other runs a gallery, supported by a semicircular arch. This gate was restored by Ferdinand and Isabel, and at one time afforded ingress to the Jewry of Segovia. The masonry of the adjoining wall resembles that of the aqueduct close by, and may possibly be a fragment of the Roman fortifications.
Segovia, we are often reminded, looks like a ship in full sail towards the west; and the Alcazar is at the prow. Whether or not it occupies the site of a Saracen or Roman work, there can be no doubt that the present structure was founded by the conqueror of Toledo, AlfonsoVI., at the end of the eleventh century, and was remodelled and enlarged by JuanII.in the fifteenth. Much of it is now entirely modern, the interior of the fabric having been completely restored after the fire of 1862. For all that, this citadel of Segovia remains a fine typical castleof Castile, the castle-land. The massive Torre de Juan Segundo forms the east part of the building. Its four sides are furnished with the bartizans characteristic of Spanish castles, which spring out of the wall at about half its height, and rise considerably above the battlements. Between them runs a machicolation carried on corbels. The windows in this magnificent tower are sheltered by quaint stone canopies; and the whole façade is covered with plaster, on which Gothic tracery has been stamped with a mould as at the Alhambra. The interior is vaulted, and has three floors.
Around the inner court were disposed the royal apartments, which indeed still exist, though the fire and consequent restoration have shorn them of most of their beauties. Don J. M. Quadrado, who saw them before the catastrophe, declares they were of magical splendour. A curious story is associated with the Sala del Cordon. In 1258 the learned king, AlfonsoX., discoursing at the Alcazar as was his wont with a party of sages, remarked, like Lafontaine’s Garo, that if the Creator had consulted him he would have turned out a better world; others have it that he declared his belief that the earth revolved round the sun, and not the sun roundthe earth. Whatever he said, he was rebuked for his profanity by Brother Antonio, a Franciscan. But the king hardened his heart. That very night, as he lay in bed, a thunderbolt came crashing through the ceiling, and sent him quaking and beseeching absolution to the feet of the friar. In memory of this event he decorated the walls of this apartment with the cord or girdle of St. Francis, which perhaps as a member of the lay ‘Third Order’ he was entitled to wear.
Passing through the handsome Sala del Trono, we reach the Sala de los Reyes, adorned before the conflagration with an ancient and valuable series of effigies of the early kings of Leon and Castile. From one of the windows Pedro, a son of EnriqueII., fell out of the arms of his nurse, and was dashed to pieces on the rocks below. The woman, rather than face the king’s anger, threw herself after her charge and met the same fate.
The part of rock at the western extremity of town and citadel is defended by the strong Torre de Homenage, which was held for Isabel the Catholic by Andrés de Cabrera in 1476 when the rest of the fortress had been seized by the partisans of Juana. In 1507, on the contrary, it offered a vigorous resistance to the same Cabrera,to whom, however, the garrison surrendered on May 15. The tower is surmounted and strengthened by seven turrets. The irregular disposition of thesecubosandtorreones(round towers and bartizans) round the four sides of a keep is a peculiarity of Spanish military architecture. Here they used to be crowned with peaked roofs of slate, probably like those that lend such a bizarre appearance to the palace at Cintra. This feature, like the plaster-work on the façade, shows distinct Moorish influence, and encourages the belief that the castle was modelled on that of the Muslim lords of Toledo.
We have seen how important was the part played in the history of the kingdom by this grand old citadel. I must not forget to mention that Le Sage places here the scene of the confinement of Gil Blas before his marriage; but as is well known, the author of the most famous of picaresque romances never set foot south of the Pyrenees.
The space to the east of the Alcazar was formerly occupied by the old cathedral, built in the twelfth century, and totally destroyed by the Comuneros in 1520. It was determined to erect the new cathedral on a more convenient site, andon the 8th June 1522 the Bishop, going in procession, laid the foundation-stone of the existing building on the west side of the Plaza Mayor. The plans were drawn by Juan Gil de Hontañon, and are very similar to those of the new cathedral at Salamanca, of which Hontañon was architect, though he is said to have used another’s designs. Street thinks (and few will disagree with him) that this is the finer cathedral of the two, chiefly because its eastern end is semicircular and not square. It is one of the very latest Gothic cathedrals, and is on the whole a beautiful building in fine warm-hued stone. The plan is that of an oblong, rounded at the eastern end; or, to be more precise, it includes a nave with aisles, into which on both sides open chapels placed between flying buttresses, and a chevet with seven polygonal chapels. The choir occupies the customary position in the middle of the nave. A cupola, 220 feet high, rises over the crossing. The length of the church is given as 330 feet, the breadth as 158 feet, the nave being 44 feet across, the aisles 30 feet.
The west front is divided by buttresses into five compartments, corresponding to the nave, aisles, and rows of chapels, both in width and in elevation. The three entrances are enclosedwithin pointed arches. The ornamentation is restrained and pure. At the southern corner the front is flanked by a square tower 345 feet high and 35 feet in area, with six rows of windows enclosed within arcades and all blinded except those of the belfry. The angles of the platform are adorned with pinnacles, and the tower is surmounted by an octagonal clock-story. Higher than the Giralda of Seville and broader than the Tower at Toledo, this structure is a matter of legitimate pride to the Segovians.
The rest of the exterior closely resembles that of Salamanca—‘the same concealment of the roofs and roof-lines everywhere,’ laments Street. The outside of the chevet exhibits an excess of ornamental work; it is, in fact, a forest of pinnacles. On the south side the façade is partly hidden by the cloister and sacristies.
The interior is bright and altogether pleasing. The columns are massive and gracefully moulded, and the arches lofty. The nave and aisles are lighted by windows filled with beautifully-coloured glass. There is no triforium, but instead a balustrade in the flamboyant style in front of the clerestory of the nave.
The lantern or cupola over the crossing, and the gorgeous reredos behind the High Altar, arequite out of keeping with the general aspect of the church. The chancel is enclosed by three very fine iron screens, quite Plateresque in character, though executed in 1733. The majority of the stalls in the choir were designed for the old cathedral, half a century at least before its destruction. The organ on the Epistle side, now enclosed in an eighteenth-century case, also came from the old church, and was the gift of EnriqueIII.The rich marble retablo at the west end of the choir was given by CarlosIII., and enshrines in a silver reliquary the ashes of the local martyrs, Fruto and his brethren.
The chapels are not specially interesting. Those in the chevet are exactly alike, and furnished like those in the aisles, for the most part, with seventeenth-century retablos. In one (Nuestra Señora del Rosario) is buried Doña Maria Quintana, who ended a dissipated life in the odour of sanctity on August 16, 1734. Her epitaph runs: ‘Hic vespere et mane et meridie laudes Deo reddidit, et vitandi crimina zelo preces et lacrymas Juges effudit; hic quam intra chorum psallere secum prohibuit, extra chorum fructuose psallere Spiritus docuit; hic tertio ab obitu die nondum rigida membra, à juncturis suis jamdiu separata quiescunt ossa.An forsan post mortem etiam prophetabunt?’ The chapel of St. Hierotio was dedicated to that saint by Bishop Escalzo under the false impression that he was the founder of the see. The Capilla de la Piedad (fifth in the left aisle) is remarkable for a fine Descent from the Cross, a retablo with colossal and expressionful figures, painted by Juan de Juni in 1571. In the same chapel is a painting by Alonso Sánchez Coello, the Apparition of Christ to St. Thomas, spoilt by injudicious re-touching.
On the south side of the cathedral is the cloister, which belonged to the old church, and was reconstructed here in beautiful flamboyant style by Juan Campero in 1524. It is entered by a fine Gothic doorway, in the Consuelo chapel (wherein is the noble tomb of Bishop de Covarrubias). On the cross-vaulting of the cloister may be seen the arms of Bishop Arias Dávila. We notice the monuments of three of the architects—Rodrigo Gil de Hontañon (died 1577), and his successors, Campo Agüero and Viadero. In the chapel of Santa Catalina at the foot of the West Tower are contained the remains of little Prince Pedro, with his painted and gilded effigy. The superb monstrance preserved in this chapel was designed in 1656 by Rafael González. Atthe northern aisle of the cloister may be read this inscription: ‘Aquí está sepultada la devota Mari Saltos con quién Dios obré este milagro en la Fonzisla. Fizo su vida en la otra iglesia, acabó sus dias como Católica Cristiana, Año de 1237.’ (Here is buried the devout Maria Saltos, with whom God performed a miracle at Foncisla. She passed her life in the other church, and finished her days as a Catholic Christian in the year 1237.) ‘The other church’ was of the Hebrew persuasion, to which Maria belonged. Accused of adultery, and condemned to die by the elders of her community—which was a self-governing body in Spain within certain limits—she was cast from the Peña Grajera, the Tarpeian Rock of Segovia. At the supreme moment she was heard to invoke the Virgin of the Christians, and reached the ground unharmed. She was baptized, and died, as the epitaph testifies, a devout Catholic. The incident may be ranked with the remarkable, if not miraculous, escape of the Catholic secretaries at Prague, known as the Fensterstürz.
The chapter-house, adjacent to the Western Tower, is a very splendid apartment, paved with marble, upholstered with crimson velvet, and containing some good engravings, mostlyFlemish. An elegant staircase leads to the library above.
At the back of the cathedral is the Plaza Mayor, one of the most picturesque squares in Spain. The Ayuntamiento with its Doric columns looks strangely out of place, surrounded as it is by old houses with projecting upper stories and wooden loggias of a Gothic, almost German character. The church of San Miguel may be attributed to Hontañon or one of his assistants. It replaces an earlier structure, in the porch of which the town council used to meet. In the north transept is an interesting triptych, where St. Michael is represented weighing souls. Hard by, at the corner of the Calle Ancha and Calle de los Huertos, is the old mansion of the Arias Dávila family, with a tall square turreted tower, adorned in its lower stages with diapered plaster. Near the church of San Martin are another fine tower belonging to the Marquis de Lozoya, and the house (now a book-shop) of Juan Bravo, one of the three leaders of the Comuneros.
The church of San Martin is approached by a flight of steps, and encircled on three sides by a cloister or portico, which was used in the twelfthcentury, at all events, as a burial-ground. The west porch is bold and original, with statuary in the jambs of the doorway, and capitals carved with birds in couples. The church was originally apsidal, but has been frequently restored. The Bravos and Rios, two prominent families of Segovia, are buried here; and the tomb of Gonzalo de Herrera and his wife in alabaster is in a chapel on the left-hand side. The church is surmounted by a modern cupola over the crossing, and by an ancient tower placed, oddly enough, over the middle of the nave.
Near the Puerta de San Martin is the Casa de los Picos, which was acquired and rebuilt in the fourteenth century by the family of Hoz. It seems once to have been known as the Jews’ House, till in the sixteenth century its façade was rebuilt with the extraordinary facetted stones from which it derives its present name. While in this neighbourhood, the few poor remains of the palace of EnriqueIII.should be inquired for.
Where the Calle Real opens into the Plaza Mayor is situated one of the most interesting churches in Segovia. Corpus Christi Church was till the year 1410 a Jewish synagogue. In that year a rabbi obtained from the sacristan of San Facundo a consecrated Host as a security, it issaid, for a loan. The street where this impious transaction took place is still known as Mal Consejo. The Jews attempted to profane the Sacred Wafer in their synagogue, but were scared by awful portents, and confessed their crime. Their place of worship was forfeited, apparently at the suggestion of St. Vincent Ferrer, and consecrated as a Catholic church. It bears a strong likeness to Santa Maria la Blanca at Toledo. The nave and aisles are separated by horseshoe arches springing from fir-cone capitals, above which runs a series of blind windows. The ceiling is of wood. The transept and dome have been added since the adaptation to the purposes of Christian worship. The sacristan will point out the crack in the wall which occurred at the moment of the attempted sacrilege.
Santa Trinidad, on the north side of the Plaza Mayor, is a Romanesque church of the San Martin type. It is adjoined like the latter by a portico, also used once as a place of sepulture. The apse is lit by three windows, below which are others now only to be seen from the interior. A lane leads from this church to San Nicolás, close to the walls. Here the two apses are each lit by a single window, and over the smaller of the two is raised a low tower with two round-arched belfry windows. The secularised church of San Facundo exhibits similar characteristics. It contains a not very valuable museum.
Segovia is a Paradise for the ecclesiologist, but so many of the churches differ only in the smallest particulars from the San Martin and San Millán type that a description of each would be tedious. An exception must be made as regards San Esteban, opposite the Episcopal Palace, famous for its Romanesque tower, the finest work of the kind in Spain. The base of the tower is as high as the nave; the remaining five stages are adorned on each side with graceful arcaded windows. The angles are splayed off, and up the middle runs a shaft. The tower is surmounted by a pinnacle, evidently a later addition, and in very bad style. The external cloister of San Esteban is the most beautiful in the town.
In the disused church of San Juan de los Caballeros are buried the founders of the two great houses of Segovia, Fernán Garcia and Dia Sanz, averred by tradition to have been the conquerors of Madrid.
The finest specimen of these early Romanesque churches is to be seen outside the south wall. San Millán is said to have been founded by theCounts of Castile in the tenth century, but the present fabric dates from the twelfth. The church consists of a nave, aisles, and external cloisters on each side, all ending in eastern apses. There is a low, square lantern over the crossing, and a modern square tower at the east end of the north cloister. The west front is very simple and pierced with a round-arched door and four windows. The arches of the cloister spring from finely sculptured capitals on double shafts. Street calls attention to a local peculiarity in the design of the north and south doors. ‘Their jambs consist of shafts set within very bold, square recesses; and the number of orders in the arch is double that of those in the jamb, they being alternately carried on the capitals of the shafts, and upon the square order of the jambs. The effect is good....’ The interior is well preserved, but daubed all over with whitewash and plaster. The church is barrel-vaulted, but may once have had a flat timber roof. The capitals of the massive columns are carved with very large and striking figures of men and animals. The corbels are adorned with masks and caprices, very skilfully chiselled.
Two other exceedingly interesting churchesare also outside the city wall, in the valley of the Eresma. Descending by a very steep path from the Alcazar to the junction of the two streams, and passing an arch in the baroque style, we reach Fuencisla—the bubbling rock, from which water filters. Here a cypress marks the spot where Maria del Salto alighted uninjured from the crag above. The neighbouring church, built in 1613, contains the shrine of the wonder-working Virgin of the Fuencisla. It possesses a fine reredos and iron pulpit. In the convent of the Discalced Carmelites are preserved the head and body of the famous St. John of the Cross, the spiritual guide of St. Teresa, and one of the world’s greatest mystics. You may also see the pictured Christ which, it is alleged, spoke to the saint, bidding him ask a favour; John asked, as a devout Spaniard of that time might have been expected to do, for more suffering and humiliation. The cave in which he retired to pray may also be visited.
Proceeding up the valley of the Eresma, we notice the old Casa de Moneda, or Mint, built in 1586, which down to 1730 coined all the money of Spain. Above it lies the curious little church of Vera Cruz, built in 1204 by the Knights Templars, more or less on the model of thechurch of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. It would be difficult to convey a clearer idea of the peculiar conformation of this structure than by Street’s description: ‘The nave is dodecagonal, and has a small central chamber enclosed with solid walls, round which the vaulted nave forms a kind of aisle. This central chamber is of two stories in height, the lower entered by archways in the cardinal sides, and the upper by a double flight of steps leading to a door in its western side. The upper room is vaulted with a domical roof which has below it four ribs, two parallel north and south, and two parallel east and west, and it retains the original stone altar arcaded on its sides with a delicately wrought chevron enrichment and chevroned shafts. The upper chapel is lighted by seven little windows opening into the aisle around it. A slab indicates the position of the supposed sepulchre. The room below the chapel has also a dome, with ribs on its under side. On the east side of the building are the chancel and two chapels, forming parallel apses, to the south of which is a low steeple, the bottom stage of which is also converted into a chapel. The chapel in the centre of the nave is carried up and finished externally with a pointed roof, whilst the aisle isroofed with a lean-to abutting against its walls. There are pilasters at the angles outside, small windows high up in the walls, and a fine round-arched doorway on the western side.’ The sepulchre is placed on the upper story, as at Jerusalem, where the hill of Calvary has been included within the church. Note the red crosses recalling the original owners, and the fast disappearing paintings on the retablo in the chancel. The portion of the True Cross formerly preserved here was removed to Zamarramala in 1663, when the old Templars’ Church was abandoned so far as religious rites were concerned.
Not far off, in a desolate spot once described as a terrestrial paradise, stands the church of El Parral, the chapel of a suppressed monastery of the Hermits of St. Jerome. It was founded in 1447 by the famous Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, on the ground where he had defeated three antagonists in a protracted duel. The architects were Juan Gallego and the brothers Guas of Toledo. The plan of the church is unusual. The transept is very broad from east to west, and projects but little beyond the nave. The chancel is shallow, and its lateral walls run slant-wise to the eastern angles of the transept. Most churches of the Order of St. Jerome, according to a Spanish writer, were built this way. The effect is good. The nave is practically covered by a western gallery, and has but few windows; whereas the transept and chancel are flooded with light through six tall lancet windows with statues of the Twelve Apostles in their jambs. The contrast of light and shadow is very striking and beautiful. The choir or western gallery is carried on graceful arches and is handsomely panelled. Over the north-western chapel of the transept is the organ loft. The reredos behind the High Altar, in five stages separated by columns, was painted in 1553 by Diego de Urbina. The tombs of the founder and his wife lie on either side of the chancel. Their kneeling effigies, though sadly damaged and defaced, remain among the most beautiful examples of Spanish sculpture. Equally deserving of praise is the tomb of the Marquis’s natural daughter, the Countess de Medellin, in the south transept. The exterior of this church is not remarkable. The west front is pierced by a good double door, and ‘adorned’ with two huge square coats-of-arms; it is flanked by a square tower pierced by rounded windows in the belfry story.
Near to a cave where St. Dominic was accustomed to mortify the flesh, the Catholic Sovereignsbuilt the church and convent of Santa Cruz, on the site of the first monastery of the order. The church has been truly described as a debased copy of El Parral. The western doorway is elaborate. Over the door, enclosed within a trefoil arch, is a Deposition from the Cross, with Ferdinand and Isabel kneeling on either side. Above, their escutcheons are displayed on either side of the crucifix. The retablo by Herrera, with which PhilipII.endowed the church, was burnt in 1809, the fire irretrievably damaging the whole interior. Santa Cruz has now been converted into a charitable asylum.
Following the line of the city wall, we pass the church of San Lorenzo—a good example of the local style—once surrounded by thriving looms, and re-enter the town by the Plaza del Azoguejo, a picturesque space where the citizens love to forgather in the shadow of the mighty aqueduct.
Zamoraon the Duero is one of the most picturesque towns in Spain, and one of the most celebrated in its annals. It is not well known to foreigners, probably on account of it being so difficult of approach. Few places bring back so vividly the stirring past of Castile.
The town stands above the Duero on a rocky ridge, the castle and cathedral occupying the western extremity. The river is spanned by a bridge of seventeen arches, defended near either end by a high gate-tower. If the approach is quaint and mediæval, the view from this point is even more so. Towards sundown, the spirit of the Middle Ages seems to inform the town—all is sombre, fierce, strong, and venerable. The country round seems little better than a desert. From the walls above eyes seem to be scanning the horizon for the first gleam of hostile lances. Zamora belongs to the days when towns, like men, always wore armour. To-dayshe is broken and war-worn and old; but if her sword is rusted and her shield broken, she may well boast it was in the service of Spain.
As we jolt over the old bridge, above the weirs of the Duero, and climb the steep street that leads into the town, we need no consultation of the records to tell us that we are here in the old Castile of the knightly days, that we shall find few memories of artists and poets, few of statesmen and great rulers, but many of hard fighters and holy priests. Zamora is constantly mentioned in theRomancero. We can imagine that it was a town towards which Don Quixote would have been drawn, but he only spoke of it as famous for bagpipes. Like Burgos and Valladolid and Salamanca, it was the creation of the mediæval time, and we hear first of it in the ninth century. AlfonsoI., or his son Froila, took the town from the Moors. Thereafter, for many years, it continued to change hands. The Day of Zamora, famous in Spanish song and story (July 9, 901), when nearly seventy thousand Moors were slain or captured, assured the possession of the town to the Christians. In this terrific engagement Bernardo del Carpio is supposed to have won his spurs, though (if he ever existed, orthe battle really took place) he must have been a hundred years old at the time! Soon after this victory the citizens clamoured for a spiritual shepherd, and a hermit named Atilanus was given them as bishop. Certain episodes of his youth began to trouble the prelate’s mind, and at the end of ten years he laid aside the pastoral staff, and declared himself unworthy of his office. He went on a pilgrimage, having thrown his episcopal ring into the Duero, proclaiming that he would not return till it was restored to him as a sign that God had pardoned him. All in the least familiar with folklore will, of course, know what happened next. Like the ring of Polycrates, like the ring in the arms of Glasgow, the bishop’s amulet was found in the body of a fish served up to him at supper. The relief of the good man at this unmistakable evidence of the Divine forgiveness, his return to his See, and the rejoicings of the inhabitants may be inferred and imagined. Atilanus was canonised by UrbanII.in the eleventh century.
Of another tremendous victory said to have been won before the walls of Zamora in 939 over the pertinacious Moors we need not speak further, for it is more than probable that the fight never occurred here at all, but at Simancas. Therecan, however, be no doubt that the place fell before the irresistible Al Mansûr in 981, in spite of the brave resistance of the commandant, Domingo Sarracino. The Moors repeopled the town, which was governed by one Abu-l-Was el Tojibita. It was labour wasted so far as they were concerned, for Zamora was soon, and finally, recovered by the Spaniards. And now we come to the episode which has secured the town so prominent a place in the annals and legendary lore of the country.
FernandoI., King of Leon and Castile, in response to the importunities of his children, on his deathbed divided his dominions between them. To his eldest daughter, Urraca, he gave Zamora, to her sister, Toro. The disposition of his estates made, the dying king invoked the vengeance of Heaven on whomsoever should disturb it; and all present, except his eldest son Sancho, responded, Amen. It was not long before this prince (now King of Leon and Castile) showed his dissatisfaction with what Ford, with a touching faith in the sanctity of primogeniture, calls this unjust division. Toro was soon surrendered by Doña Elvira, and, very shortly after, the stout-hearted Urraca beheld from these walls the hosts of Castile beleagueringher little principality. With Sancho’s army was the Cid. With him, the chroniclers assure us, the Infanta was in love. If so, these tender sentiments were not allowed to interfere with the vigour of the attack and defence, which were both conducted with ferocious determination. The siege had lasted seven months when a personage called Bellido Dolfos, the son, delightfully enough, of Dolfos Bellido, sought an audience of the king. He had fled from Zamora, he said, to escape the vengeance of Urraca’s minister, Arias Gonzalo; and he would show the king the secret postern in the walls by which he had escaped, and by means of which the town could be taken. This audience appears to have taken place very close to the walls, for we are told that the citizens cried out to Sancho, adjuring him to have nothing to do with Dolfos, who had committed four acts of treason already. These well-meant hints, naturally enough, confirmed Sancho’s confidence in the stranger. On the morning of the 7th October 1072 the two went forth to reconnoitre the walls. Dolfos took advantage of the king in an unguarded moment, and stabbed him in the back. He then promptly ran towards the postern. The Cid, seeing him run, suspected something amiss, and mounting Babieca gave chase; butalas! he had forgotten his spurs, and the assassin made good his escape. Sancho was carried back to the camp, and before he expired attributed his destruction to his father’s curse. The siege was prosecuted with greater vigour than ever by his captains. Don Diego Ordoñez denounced the citizens, without exception of persons, as felon knaves. Arias Gonzalo and his four sons took it upon themselves to vindicate the honour of the town in five successive duels with the Castilian. Three of the Zamoran champions were slain by Ordoñez, but he was jerked out of his saddle by his dead adversary’s wounded horse, and the combat was declared by the judges to be at an end. The venerable Arias Gonzalo thus preserved one of his sons, and Castile her champion. The accession of AlfonsoVI.to his murdered brother’s throne restored peace to the distracted kingdom, and left the Infanta in enjoyment of her little state.
Zamora is still encircled with massive walls, strengthened with numerous round towers. The name of Urraca’s Palace is given to a house, old enough to all seeming, close to one of the gates opening near the northern end of the Paseo de Valorio; this gateway is flanked by two bastions, and above it may be seen thebust of Princess Urraca, with the inscription much defaced—
‘Afuera, afuera RodrigoEl soberbio castellano!Acordórsete debieraDe aquel buen tiempo pasado,’ etc.
‘Afuera, afuera RodrigoEl soberbio castellano!Acordórsete debieraDe aquel buen tiempo pasado,’ etc.
‘Afuera, afuera RodrigoEl soberbio castellano!Acordórsete debieraDe aquel buen tiempo pasado,’ etc.
These verses from theRomanceroare supposed to have been addressed by the Princess to the Cid, and allude, presumably, to the love-passages between them. The postern through which Dolfos escaped may be seen in the wall farther towards the west. The site of the Cid’s house is also pointed out. The tiny hermitage of Santiago in the Vega marks the spot of the assassination, and a battered cross on a pillar some distance outside the town commemorates Sancho’s exclamation that he would never be king till he was lord of Zamora.
The castle from which perhaps Urraca and Arias Gonzalo looked across at Sancho’s camp is at the western extremity of the town. During the civil wars that disturbed the reign of Alfonso el Sabio, it was held for the king by Doña Teresa Gomez, wife of Garci Perez Chirino. Her youngest child was captured by the rebels, and to save his life she surrendered the fortress. At the time of the disputed succession following thedemise of EnriqueIV., the castle was held by the Portuguese in the interests of Juana ‘la Beltraneja,’ who held her court here for a brief season. The garrison resisted many determined assaults, and capitulated on honourable terms only after the battle of Toro, February 1476. In after years, and especially during the Peninsular War, the stronghold was adapted to the requirements of modern warfare, and has lost, in consequence, much of its mediæval character.
Hard by is the cathedral, far away from the centre of the town. When the See was restored by AlfonsoVI., Gerónimo, the Cid’s confessor, was appointed to it; but he was soon translated to Salamanca (or else Zamora was carved out of that See), and was succeeded by another Frenchman, Bernard, a namesake and countryman of Bernard, Archbishop of Toledo. These foreigners introduced the Romanesque style, of which Zamora must, in its primitive state, have been a noble example. The building was completed in 1174. To that period belongs the grand square tower at the west end of the north aisle—the most conspicuous landmark of the vicinity—with its three upper stories pierced on each side with one, two, and three windows respectively. The tower was designed for defence as well asornament. Over the crossing rises a dome of beautiful construction, very Oriental in character, with turrets surmounted by smaller cupolas and pierced with rounded windows at its angles. Seen from within, this dome is of the ‘half-orange’ type, the ribbing of the vault giving it very much the appearance of the sections of the fruit. In the sharp fringe of ornament at the angles, Street saw the very earliest kind of suggestion of a crocket, and was of opinion that ‘we have in England no monument of the middle ages which is one whit more precious.’
The cathedral has no west front, and its exterior is, it must be confessed, a veritable patchwork of different styles. The Puerta del Obispo, facing the Episcopal Palace, in the south transept probably dates from the twelfth century. The main entrance is through a four-ordered arch with three shafts in each jamb. The capitals are roughly moulded and have abaci. Over the lateral doorways (now closed up) are rudely-carved reliefs, with dragons and floral devices introduced into the decoration. The two odd-looking rosette-like ornaments above seem to be models of the interior of the dome. Above the three doors runs a gallery of five recessed arches, and over this again a blocked-up window.
The northern entrance, surmounted by a modern clock-tower, is, incongruously enough, in the classical style, with a rounded arch. The interior of this interesting little cathedral is impressive. We are at once struck with the width of the piers (seven feet across) as compared with that of the nave, which is only twenty-three feet. The arches here are in the Pointed style. The aisles are lower than the nave, and supported by broad massive buttresses. There being no western portal, that end of the church is occupied by chapels, which give a very singular effect to the building.
The High Altar and chancel are in the Gothic style, and owe their construction to the absentee bishop Diego Meléndez Valdés, who ruled the See between 1496 and 1506. His arms, five fleurs-de-lys, may be seen on the railings. The retablo, with its jasper columns and gilded capitals, is modern. The subject is the Transfiguration. In the precinct of the High Altar is buried Count Ponce de Cabrera, one of the Emperor Alfonso’s most distinguished lieutenants. The Altar is in the late Gothic style, and must have been erected three centuries after the Count’s death. There are good wrought-iron pulpits on each side of the chancel.
The choir was also the work of Bishop Valdés. It occupies the bays west of the crossing as usual in Spanish churches, but the bad effect of that position is here greatly relieved by the piercing of the western screen ortrascorowith two elliptical doorways, between which is a painting representing Christ surrounded by the Blessed. The fittings of the choir are very interesting, and of the same age as the screens. The backs of the lower range of stalls are carved with low reliefs of thirty-eight personages of the Old Dispensation, from Abel to Nebuchadnezzar, Caiaphas, and the Centurion. In their hands are scrolls containing texts, very cleverly chosen, of which a list is given in Neal’sEcclesiologist, and reprinted in Street’sGothic Architecture in Spain. The execution is rude, but expressive and painstaking. The upper stalls are adorned with full-length reliefs of saints, confessors, and martyrs of the New Dispensation, which are more delicately designed and finished. Above runs a canopy, sculptured with animal forms. The enormous metal lectern and the Bishop’s Throne, with its tapering spire, are fine examples of Gothic work.
The chapels are not of special interest. That on the middle of the western wall is dedicatedto San Ildefonso, but is more generally known as the Capilla del Cardenal, after its founder, Don Juan de Mella, who died in 1467. This prelate’s brother, Alonso de Mella, was the founder of a sect which seems to have resembled the Anabaptists of Westphalia; he was expelled from Castile, and took refuge at Granada, where he was put to death by the Moors. The retablo, by Gallegos, is in six divisions, the subjects being: San Ildefonso receiving at Toledo the chasuble from the hands of the Blessed Virgin, the Discovery of the Relics of St. Leocadia, the Veneration of the Relics, and (above) the Crucifixion, the Baptism of Christ, and the death of John the Baptist. This chapel contains the tombs of the Romero family. In the adjoining sacristy are some interesting battle-scenes from Old Testament history.
The chapel of San Juan Evangelista was built with funds bequeathed by Canon Juan de Grado (1507), whose fine alabaster tomb is surmounted by his recumbent effigy, accompanied by a priest and an angel. Above the canopy is an exquisitely chiselled composition representing the Crucifixion, with expressive statues of the Apostles Peter and Paul; within is a curious but admirable genealogy of the Blessed Virgin,at the base of which is the recumbent figure of an old man, wearing a crown, and representing possibly one of the early patriarchs. The Capilla de San Miguel is of less interest. It contains the sixteenth-century tombs of the canons de Balbas. Of the side-chapels, the most notable is that of San Bernardo, rebuilt in the sixteenth century.
In the sacristy is preserved a remarkable silver monstrance, six feet high, attributed by Ford to Enrique de Arfe. The stand is of later construction, and dates from 1598. On the upper part the local saint, Atilanus, may be seen, seated with the Saviour and the Virgin.
The original cloisters were burnt in 1591, and rebuilt in the present Doric style in 1621 by Juan de Mora.
Under the town walls, close to the cathedral, is the little Romanesque church of San Isidoro, noticeable for its extremely narrow windows, some mere slits in the masonry.
We pass down the long lane-like street which leads into the town, and which in the sixteenth century was the scene of desperate conflicts between the Mazariegos and Monsalves, the Montagues and Capulets of Zamora. The first church passed is that of San Pedro, rebuilt byBishop Meléndez Valdés, and containing the revered ashes of St. Ildefonso, which were discovered here under miraculous circumstances in the year 1260. The relics of St. Atilanus are also preserved here. Nothing remains of the primitive Romanesque structure, except a little apse on the Epistle side, and a closed-up doorway in the left wall. The originally-distinct nave and aisles were thrown into one at the restoration, and form overhead one immense span. The sacristy contains some interesting objects—sacred vessels and altarpieces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Presently we reach the second most interesting church in the town, La Magdalena, a small Romanesque work, said on rather doubtful authority to have been built by the Templars about 1312. The southern doorway is very large in comparison with the edifice. It is deeply recessed between massive buttresses, and formed by a rounded arch with shafts curiously moulded and twisted. Street speaks of this as a very grand example of the latest and most ornate Romanesque work. The carving on the arches is very rich. Above is a large rose window, resembling those in our own Temple church. The interior of the church is architecturally butnot æsthetically more interesting than the exterior. The nave has a flat wooden ceiling. The apse is groined, and the chancel has a waggon-vault. The stone pulpit against the north wall is a notable piece of work, but attention at once becomes riveted on the large canopied tombs at the entrance to the chancel. Both are square-topped, with round arches and capitals very purely and vigorously carved. They are generally asserted to date from the thirteenth century, but an inscription over one describes it as the sepulchre of one Acuña and his wife, who died in the fifteenth century. ‘The effect of this monument,’ says Street, ‘filling in as it does the angle at the end of the nave, is extremely good; its rather large detail and general proportions giving it the effect of being an integral part of the fabric rather than, as monuments usually are, a subsequent addition.’
Another canopied tomb against the north wall undoubtedly dates from the earlier period. The capitals of the three twisted shafts are carved with the forms of wyverns fighting. The tomb is closed by a stone on which is a large cross. The occupant—believed by some to have been a Templar—is shown on his deathbed, while above him his soul—represented by a winged head—isborne away by angels. This interesting work may be attributed to a native sculptor acquainted with the art of France and Italy.
Santa Maria la Horta (or de la Huerta), near the river, was modelled, like the Magdalena, on the cathedral. Apart from its architectural peculiarities—the western tower, narrow windows, waggon-vaulting of the chancel, etc.—it is of interest on account of the retablos and paintings in its chapels. Here, as at the very similar church of San Leonardo, the roofing of the nave is not flat but arched, which goes to support Don J. M. Quadrado’s belief (opposed to Street’s) that the flat roof of La Magdalena is an innovation.
The church of San Juan in the Plaza Mayor is in the Flamboyant style. Its most curious feature is a Christ Crucified near the west door, surrounded by human skulls built up in the form of a cross. Hard by is the early Gothic church of San Vicente, with a noble square tower in three stages, and a fine west front.
In a town like Zamora only two kinds of buildings were esteemed—churches and fortresses. Time has spared few important civil monuments. The only ancient house of noteis that styled the Casa de los Momos, of which I give an illustration. The heavy stones forming the arch suggest a Castilian architect. The building dates from the sixteenth century, as the enormous coat-of-arms over the entrance might have prepared us to expect. The Ayuntamiento, or Town Hall, in itself devoid of interest, contains some good paintings by Ramon Pedro y Pedret, illustrating the history of the city. It will be seen that Zamora, like almost every other Spanish town, is entitled ‘most noble and loyal’ (muy noble y leal). It is a sombre, fascinating place, where the past is more easily recoverable by the fancy than in many cities more richly endowed with ancient monuments.
LikeStratford-on-Avon, like Assisi, this sombre city in the mountains of Castile is the shrine of a single pre-eminent personality. To the Spaniard Avila is essentially the city of the great saint—of Santa Teresa, the greatest, perhaps, of Spain’s many great women. And the fame of the saint and, therefore, of the city, has spread far beyond the limits of the country in which she was born, and indeed outside of the church to which her every faculty was devoted. To those (and they are in the large majority) who approach Avila as pilgrims, it may seem idle to tell anything of its story unconnected with her. At Assisi you wish to hear only of Francis, and who cares aught for the Stratford of an earlier day than Shakespeare’s?
But Teresa was the product of Avila, and to the making of her character all the experience and emotion of her ancestors had contributed. Those who would rightly understandher must know something of the breed from which she sprang.
The city is one of the forty-three said to have been founded by Hercules. It is mentioned, indeed, by Ptolemy, but we know nothing of its history previous to the reconquest of this part of Castile by AlfonsoVI.Avila, like Salamanca and Segovia, arose from the ashes of the Moorish empire, and was repeopled and probably rebuilt by the Count Raymond of Burgundy. To him we owe those venerable walls, stern yet beautiful in their ruddy granite, that girdle the city round. But these served, at a very early date, to keep out other than the infidels. The annalists tell us that the knights of Avila, returning one day from a foray, found that the Moors had ravaged the neighbouring country and carried off a multitude of prisoners and much booty. Without hesitation the enraged gentlemen gave chase, and though the enemy were in vastly superior numbers, they overtook and routed them at Barbacedo, recovering most of the spoil and a good deal of additional treasure. But, on their return to Avila, the ungrateful commons closed the gates against them, and refused admittance to the deliverers of their own wives and children unless they weregiven a large share of the booty. The indignant knights refused to surrender the guerdon of their swords, and entrenched themselves in the suburbs. Peace was restored only on the intervention of Count Raymond, who expelled the churlish townsmen and intrusted the government of the city to the knights. During the whole of the twelfth century the bitterest animosity continued to prevail between the descendants of these antagonists.
Heroines are common in Spanish history. When the town was unexpectedly besieged by the Almoravides in the absence of nearly the whole male population, the women garrisoned the walls wearing the men’s helmets, and compelled the enemy to withdraw. The leader of these Amazons was Jimena Blásquez, wife of the governor, Fernán Lopez. Her female descendants were privileged, in remembrance of this event, to speak and to vote at the council board in the same way as men.
Jimena’s kinsman, Nalvillos, was as unfortunate in love as he was fortunate in war. One day he saw Ayesha Galiana, the beautiful daughter of the late Moorish king of Toledo. Desperately enamoured, he forgot his own betrothal to Galinda Arias, and that the fair infidel had beenpromised to her countryman, Jenina Yahya. With the favour of the king he overcame all these obstacles, and made Ayesha his wife. But she could forget neither her old faith nor her old love. Nalvillos’ deeds of prowess failed to win her heart; and one day he returned to Avila from a victorious expedition to find that the bird had flown. She had returned to her first love, Yahya, who had raised the standard of revolt at Talavera. The furious Castilian stormed the town, slew the Moor, and penetrated to his faithless wife’s bower, only to find her expiring from a self-inflicted wound. Nalvillos lived many years after, and fought and won many battles. He rose to great distinction in the service of his sovereign, but we never hear of his marrying again.
It was in this town, that styles itselfdel rey,de los leales,de los caballeros, that the boy king AlfonsoVIII.was placed by the Regent, Don Manrique de Lara, to protect him from his uncle, Fernando of Leon. But the class rancour of Avila was not unknown to Fernando, who stirred up the people of the suburbs against theserranos, or aristocratic townsfolk, promising them a share in his new town of Ciudad Rodrigo. The knights were victorious, and do not seemto have conducted themselves with great generosity towards the vanquished.
The inveterate hostility of the commons did not tend, as it might be expected to have done, to unite the threatened ranks of the patricians. These prosecuted bitter feuds among themselves, different families striving desperately for the mastery. One faction, on being expelled from the town, took refuge in a neighbouring castle, where they were surprised and cut to pieces by the Moors.
The place was regarded, notwithstanding, as the safest asylum for the boy-kings who so often appear in the pages of Castilian history. During his minority, AlfonsoXI.remained in the custody of the bishop till the pretenders to the regency had adjusted their claims to his lordship’s satisfaction. In the Civil War of 1367 Avila was on the right side—that of EnriqueII.—and suffered severely in consequence at the hands of the Black Prince’s marauding hordes. Here at the Puerta del Alcazar took place, at the instance of Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, the mock deposition and degradation of EnriqueIV., represented by an effigy, and the proclamation of his eleven-year-old son as king. Yet in 1474 the fickle city displayedevery sign of grief and remorse on the unfortunate monarch’s death.
In the disputed succession that ensued Avila sided with Queen Isabel. Possibly as an expression of royal gratitude, the convent of Santo Tomás was chosen for the first seat of the Tribunal of the Inquisition; and in 1491 three Jews, professing the faith of their fathers to the last, were roasted to death in the Mercado Grande.
Avila was the seat of the Supreme Junta of the Comunidad from July to September 1520. The rebellious temper of her citizens found expression in PhilipII.’s reign in some anonymous placards, posted in the streets, reflecting on the king’s policy. The royal vengeance was indiscriminate and drastic. The Vicar of Santo Tomás was stripped of his sacerdotal functions, Don Enrique Davila was imprisoned for life in the castle of Turegano, and Don Diego Bracamonte perished on the scaffold. This king’s successor inflicted thecoup de grâceon the luckless town by expelling its large and industrious Morisco population. Avila never recovered her prosperity. She remains an example of the wholly destructive policy of the Spanish Hapsburgs. Not only was the countryruined by the expulsion of the Jews and Moriscos, but these exiles were not able to transplant their industry to some other clime. With their expulsion so much productive and industrial power was absolutely lost to the world. The wealth acquired by the Inquisition at the expense of its victims, or rather what was left of it, ultimately found its way into the State coffers on the establishment of the new order of things a century ago.
Avila ‘of the Knights’ was, before all else, a fortress. When the walls were built, churches and suburbs were left outside the enclosure, that the military advantages of the height on which the old town stands might not be lost. These walls of dark-red granite girdle Avila to-day, unbroken, formidable, intact. They rise so high that they shut out from view all that they enclose, except the towers of the cathedral. Near San Vicente the masonry is fourteen feet thick, and forty-two feet in height. Flanking defence is provided by eighty-six elliptical towers—thirty on the north, twelve on the west, twenty-five on the south, twenty-one on the east. These rise above the crenellated parapet at places by eighteen feet. The ten gateways are formed by two towers being brought together and connected with arches. The most impressive gates are the Puertas del Mercado and de San Vicente, the former admitting to the scanty remains of the old Alcazar, the latter facing the church of San Vicente. In both cases the flanking towers are connected at the level of their platforms by a high, arched and crenellated gallery. The actual gateway is defended by a portcullis, and the usual apertures for thrusting out lances, beams, etc. One of the gates, now walled up, was known as the Puerta de la Mala Ventura, in memory of a baseless tradition that it was the scene of the massacre by Alfonso el Batallador of certain Avilese nobles who had been given him as hostages for the little King AlfonsoVII.of Castile. Nearly all the gates open on to squares or places of arms. A leisurely walk round these grand old walls is one of the most agreeable experiences of a journey in Spain, and carries the mind back to the days when knighthood was in flower. From their strength it is easy to see how the town could have been held by a limited number of Caballeros against the commoners of the suburb outside. There seems no reason to doubt that the walls were, as tradition avers, built by Raymond of Burgundy in the last decade of the eleventh century. Eighthundred men were employed upon them daily during nine years, under the direction of a Roman, Cassandro, and a Frenchman, Florin de Ponthieu.
Built into the city wall at its eastern end is the noble cathedral of San Salvador, founded according to some by Fernán Gonzalez, Count of Castile, and begun a second time in 1091 by Alvár Garcia of Estella in Navarra. It is, perhaps, the finest example extant of the fortress-church of the Middle Ages. The oldest part is the apse, which makes a pronounced bastion or projection in the city wall. The external walls probably date from Alvár Garcia’s time, but the rest of the church must be from one to two centuries later.
The church consists of a nave, aisles, projecting transepts and a chevet, which has semicircular chapels built into the town wall and double aisle. The chevet is, architecturally, perhaps the most interesting part of the structure. Nothing at all is to be seen without of the chapels, over which is carried the ordinary rampart walk or allure; behind this rises a second battlemented wall, from which we look down on to the aisle roof of the chevet and clerestory of the central apse. This end of the cathedral appears from theexterior simply as an unusually massive round tower projecting from the wall. The west front is flanked by two towers, only one of which—the northern—is completed. This is a notable and fortresslike structure, recalling similar work in England. The strongly-defined buttresses finish in pinnacles, and are outlined at the angles with a ball enrichment, which is also to be seen on the pointed arches over the belfry windows. The windows themselves are round-arched, as are also those now filled up in a lower stage of the tower. The entrance is comparatively modern. On either side is the figure of a wild man with shield and mace—strange guardians of a church! On the spandrils of the arch are the figures of Saints Peter and Paul. The middle stage of this front is occupied by a curious retablo-like composition. In the various compartments are the figures of Christ and different saints, sheltered by ugly canopies; and surmounting this work is an extravagant and tasteless acroterium, displaying the arms of the Chapter. Behind and above this is the older and infinitely more graceful west window within an elliptical arch, and with delicate though elaborate traceries.
Very much finer is the north porch, admitting not to the transept but to the nave. The ellipticalarch has on each side six jambs, each of which is adorned with the figure of an apostle resting on the capital of a pilaster and sheltered beneath a canopy. The five orders of the arch are sculptured with reliefs of angels and prophets, alternating with wreaths. In the centre of the tympanum is the seated figure of Christ; and around Him, arranged in four horizontal divisions, are compositions representing the Betrayal and Last Supper, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Angelic Choir. Street recognises in this doorway the work of the architect of the portals of the cathedrals of Leon and Burgos. Before it are two lions couchant on pedestals, chained to the walls. The porch dates from the fourteenth century. Above it is a canopy begun in 1566, and intended to form a kind of triumphal arch. Crowning all is seen the figure of the Redeemer.
The north transept is pierced by a fine wheel-window of sixteen divisions. The windows of the clerestory are very large, and placed between great double flying buttresses. Since 1772 the upper and lower traceries have been blocked up, for a reason not apparent to the modern observer. The windows of the transept escaped this treatment, and are filled with good stained glass.
The nave is 130 feet long and 28 feet broad.The arches are supported by piers of four pilasters, the capitals of which show Romanesque influence. The aisles are only about half the height of the nave, and are 24 feet wide. Their pitched roof formerly admitted light into the nave through the triforium, now blocked up.
The outer walls of the chevet, as we have seen, are the most ancient part of the fabric, but the seven chapels formed within the thickness of the wall are of later date. The extraordinary beauty of this part of the church is due to the division of the ambulatory into two by a series of tall, slender columns carrying some excellent groining. The outer or recessed aisle is narrower than the inner, an inequality corrected very skilfully at the opening into the south transept by an imperceptible deviation in the line of columns. Very little light penetrates through the narrow slits in the chapel walls into this sombre, beautiful arcade.
Behind the reredos of the High Altar sleeps the learned bishop, Don Alonso Fernández de Madrigal, surnamed el Tostado and el Abulense, who died in 1455. The prelate, who was one of the most prolific writers that ever lived, is shown in alabaster writing at a desk. The framework of the tomb is adorned with reliefs of the Adoration of the Magi and Shepherds, of the Divine and Cardinal Virtues, and of the Eternal Father. This noble work has been variously ascribed to Berruguete and to Domenico Fancelli, whose more famous performance we shall see in the church of Santo Tomás.
In the chapel of Santa Ana is buried Don Sancho Davila, Bishop of Plasencia, who died in 1625. Most of the tombs in the chapels of the chevet belong, however, to the thirteenth century, though the dates on most of them are merely conjectural, and were inscribed in the sixteenth century by a prebendary of the cathedral.
The High Altar is backed by an elaborate retablo of the age of the Catholic Kings. It is divided into three stages, and was painted by Pedro Berruguete (father of the more famous Alonso), Santos Cruz, and Juan de Borgoña (father of Felipe). To the two first-named may be attributed the ten panels of the lowest stage, representing Saints Peter and Paul, the Four Evangelists, and Four Doctors of the Church, and the Transfiguration, Annunciation, Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, and Presentation in the Temple, in the second stage. To Borgoña we may ascribe the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging, Crucifixion, Descent into Hell, andResurrection, in the third stage. To the right and left of the church are two beautiful Renaissance retablos in alabaster, illustrating the lives of Saints Secundus and Catharine, and two tasteful gilt iron pulpits. The light reaches the High Altar through two rows of thirteen windows, the lower ‘round-arched, of two horseshoe-headed lights divided by a shafted monial,’ and the upper ‘round-headed, broadish windows, with jamb-shafts and richly-chevroned arches.’ The fine stained glass is the work of Albert of Holland (1520-1525).
The choir was placed in the easternmost bay of the nave in 1531. Thetrascoroor back of the choir is adorned with reliefs of the Adoration of the Magi, the Massacre of the Innocents, and the Presentation; smaller panels represent other scenes from the history of Christ and the Blessed Virgin. The frieze with its fourteen figures of prophets is the finest part of the work. The choir stalls were begun in 1527 by Juan Rodrigo, and completed by Cornelius of Holland in 1536. The carving is of varying merit. The upper panels appear to portray the martyrdoms of different saints, episodes in whose lives are shown on the panels below. The ornamentation of the columns and friezes is profuse and delicately done.
In the south transept is the fine tomb of Don Sancho Davila, Bishop of Sigüenza, who died in 1534, and near him that of a namesake, whose effigy is clad in armour. This knight died before the walls of Alhama in a combat so furious that his scattered limbs had afterwards to be collected and pieced together by his friends. A curious tomb is to be seen near by: the figures of a knight in armour and an ecclesiastic repose on black coffins, the sides of which are sculptured with escutcheons upheld by woolly-haired savages; a monkey is seen pulling the negroes’ hair. In the chapel of San Miguel, at the north-west end of the nave, is an interesting tomb of the thirteenth century, representing a funeral, whereat the anguish of the mourners contrasts strikingly with the stoical indifference of the clergy.
The gorgeous chapel of San Segundo at the south-east of the apse, outside the town wall, was founded in 1595 by Bishop Manrique, on the model, it is said, of the Escorial. Magnificence, rather than good taste, characterises this chapel and its furniture. Frescoes by Francisco Llamas illustrate the life of the saint, whose ashes are contained in a Churrigueresque tabernacle. On the opposite side of the apse, but within the wall,is another excrescence, the Velada chapel, completed in the eighteenth century.