The square tower on the western end is undermined by a gallery or tunnel through which the Calle de Puente passes. To the right of the same, and reached by a flight of steps, stands the entrance to the crypt, which is used to-day as a most unhealthy parish church. This crypt of the late twelfth century or early thirteenth shows a decided Romanesque tendency in its general appearance: it is low, massive, strong, and crowned{191} by a semicircular vaulting reposing on gigantic pillars whose capitals are roughly sculptured. The windows which let in the little light that enters are ogival, proving the Transition period to which the crypt belongs; it was originally intended as the pantheon for the abbots of the monastery. But unlike the Galician Romanesque, it lacks an individual cachet; if it resembles anything it is the pantheon of the kings in San Isidoro in Leon, though in point of view of beauty, the two cannot be compared.
The form of the crypt is that of a perfect Romanesque basilica, a nave and two aisles terminating a three-lobed apse.
In the cathedral, properly speaking, there is a baptismal font of marble, bearing an Arabic inscription by way of upper frieze; it is square, and of Moorish workmanship, and doubtless was brought from Cordoba after the reconquest. Its primitive use had been practical, for in Andalusia it stood at the entrance to some mezquita, and in its limpid waters the disciples of Mahomet performed their hygienic and religious ablutions.
VII
VITORIA
If the foreigner enter Spain by Irun, the first cathedral town on his way south is Vitoria.
Gazteiz seems to have been its Basque name prior to 1181, when it was enlarged by Don Sancho of Navarra and was given a fuero or privilege, together with its new name, chosen to commemorate a victory obtained by the king over his rival, Alfonso of Castile.
Fortune did not smile for any length of time on Don Sancho, for seventeen years later Alfonso VIII. incorporated the city in his kingdom of Castile, and it was lost for ever to Navarra.
As regards the celebrated fueros given by the last named monarch to the inhabitants of the city, a curious custom was in vogue in the city until a few years ago, when the Basque Provinces finally lost the privileges they had fought for during centuries.{193}
When Alfonso VIII. granted these privileges, he told the citizens they were to conserve them "as long as the waters of the Zadorria flowed into the Ebro."
The Zadorria is the river upon which Vitoria is situated; about two miles up the river there is a historical village, Arriago, and a no less historical bridge. Hither, then, every year on St. John's Day, the inhabitants of Vitoria came in procession, headed by the municipal authorities, the bishop and clergy, the clerk of the town hall, and the sheriff. The latter on his steed waded into the waters of the Zadorria, and threw a letter into the stream; it flowed with the current toward the Ebro River. An act was then drawn up by the clerk, signed by the mayor and the sheriff, testifying that the "waters of the Zadorria flowed into the Ebro."
To-day the waters still flow into the Ebro, but the procession does not take place, and the city's fueros are no more.
In the reign of Isabel the Catholic, the Church of St. Mary was raised to a Colegiata, and it is only quite recently, according to the latest treaty between Spain and Rome, that an episcopal see has been established in the city of Vitoria.{194}
Documents that have been discovered state that in 1281—a hundred years after the city had been newly baptized—the principal temple was a church and castle combined; in the fourteenth century this was completely torn down to make room for the new building, a modest ogival church of little or no merit.
The tower is of a later date than the body of the cathedral, as is easily seen by the triangular pediments which crown the square windows: it is composed of three bodies, as is generally the case in Spain, the first of which is square in its cross-section, possessing four turrets which crown the angles; the second body is octagonal and the third is in the form of a pyramid terminating in a spire.
The portal is cut into the base of the tower. It is the handsomest front of the building, though in a rather dilapidated state; the sculptural decorations of the three arches, as well as the aerial reliefs of the tympanum, are true to the period in which they were conceived.
The sacristy encloses a primitive wooden effigy of the Virgin; it is of greater historic than artistic value. There is also a{195} famous picture attributed now to Van Dyck, now to Murillo; it represents Christ in the arms of his mother, and Mary Magdalene weeping on her knees beside the principal group. The picture is known by the name of Piety or La Piedad.
The high altar, instead of being placed to the east of the transept, as is generally the case, is set beneath the croisée, in the circular area formed by the intersection of nave and transept. The view of the interior is therefore completely obstructed, no matter where the spectator stands.
VIII
UPPER RIOJA
To the south of Navarra and about a hundred miles to the west of Burgos, the Ebro River flows through a fertile vale called the Rioja, famous for its claret. It is little frequented by strangers or tourists, and yet it is well worth a visit. The train runs down the Ebro valley from Miranda to Saragosse. A hilly country to the north and south, well wooded and gently sloping like the Jura; nearer, and along the banks of the stream, huertas or orchards, gardens, and vineyards offer a pleasant contrast to the distant landscape, and produce a favourable impression, especially when a village or town with its square, massive church-tower peeps forth from out of the foliage of fruit-trees and elms.
Such is Upper Rioja—one of the prettiest spots in Spain, the Touraine, one might almost say, of Iberia, a circular region of about{197} twenty-five miles in radius, containing four cities, Logroño, Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Nájera, and Calahorra.
The Roman military road from Tarragon to Astorga passed through the Rioja, and Calahorra, a Celtiberian stronghold slightly to the south, was conquered by the invaders after as sturdy a resistance as that of Numantia itself. It was not totally destroyed by the conquering Romans as happened in the last named town; on the contrary, it grew to be the most important fortress between Leon and Saragosse.
When the Christian religion dawned in the West, two youths, inseparable brothers, and soldiers in the seventh legion stationed in Leon, embraced the true religion and migrated to Calahorra. They were beheaded after being submitted to a series of the most frightful tortures, and their tunics, leaving the bodies from which life had escaped, soared skywards with the saintly souls, to the great astonishment of the Roman spectators. The names of these two martyr saints were Emeterio and Celedonio, who, as we have seen, are worshipped in Santander; besides, they are also the patron saints of Calahorra.{198}
The first Bishop of Calahorra took possession of his see toward the middle of the fifth century; his name was Silvano. Unluckily, he was the only one whose name is known to-day, and yet it has been proven that when the Moors invaded the country two or three hundred years later, the see was removed to Oviedo, later to Alava (near Vitoria, where no remains of a cathedral church are to be seen to-day), and in the tenth century to Nájera. One hundred years later, when the King of Navarra, Don Garcia, conquered the Arab fortress at Calahorra, the wandering see was once more firmly chained down to the original spot of its creation (1030; the first bishop de modernis being Don Sancho).
Near by, and in a vale leading to the south from the Ebro, the Moors built a fortress and called it Nájera. Conquered by the early kings of Navarra, it was raised to the dignity of one of the cathedral towns of the country; from 950 (first bishop, Theodomio) to 1030 ten bishops held their court here, that is, until the see was removed to Calahorra. Since then, and especially after the conquest of Rioja by Alfonso VI. of Castile, the city's significance died out{199} completely, and to-day it is but a shadow of what it previously had been, or better still, it is an ignored village among ruins.
Still further west, and likewise situated in a vale to the south of the Ebro, Santo Domingo de la Calzada ranks as the third city. Originally its parish was but a suffragan church of Calahorra, but in 1227 it was raised to an episcopal see. Quite recently, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when church funds were no longer what they had been, only one bishop was appointed to both sees, with an alternative residence in either of the two, that is to say, one prelate resided in Calahorra, his successor in Santo Domingo, and so forth and so on. Since 1850, however, both villages—for they are cities in name only—have lost all right to a bishop, the see having been definitely removed to Logroño, or it will be removed there as soon as the present bishop dies. But he has a long life, the present bishop!
The origin of Santo Domingo is purely religious. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries a pious individual lived in the neighbourhood whose life-work and ambition it was to facilitate the travelling pilgrims to Santiago in Galicia. He served as guide,{200} kept a road open in winter and summer, and even built bridges across the streams, one of which is still existing to-day, and leads into the town which bears his name.
He had even gone so far as to establish a rustic sort of an inn where the pilgrims could pass the night and eat (without paying?). He also constructed a church beside his inn. Upon dying, he was canonized Santo Domingo de la Calzada (Domingo was his name, and calzada is old Spanish for highroad). The Alfonsos of Castile were grateful to the humble saint for having saved them the expense and trouble of looking after their roads, and ordained that a handsome church should be erected on the spot where previously the humble inn and chapel had stood. Houses grew up around it rapidly and the dignity of the new temple was raised in consequence.
Of the four cities of Upper Rioja, the only one worthy of the name of city is Logroño, with its historical bridge across the Ebro, a bridge that was held, according to the tradition, by the hero, Ruy Diaz Gaona, and three valiant companions against a whole army of invading Navarrese.
The name Lucronio or Logroño is first{201} mentioned in a document toward the middle of the eleventh century. The date of its foundation is absolutely unknown, and all that can be said is that, once it had fallen into the hands of the monarchs of Castile (1076), it grew rapidly in importance, out-shining the other three Rioja cities. It is seated on the southern banks of the Ebro in the most fertile part of the whole region, and enjoys a delightful climate. Since 1850 it has been raised to the dignity of an episcopal see.
As regards the architectural remains of the four cities in the Upper Rioja valley, they are similar to those of Navarra, properly speaking, though not so pure in their general lines. In other words, they belong to the decadent period of Gothic art. Moreover, they have one and all been spoiled by ingenious, though dreadful mixtures of plateresque, Renaissance, and grotesque decorative details, and consequently the real remains of the old twelfth and thirteenth century Gothic and Romanesque constructions are difficult to trace.
Nájera.—Absolutely nothing remains of the old Romanesque church built by the king Don Garcia. A new edifice of decadent{202} Gothic, mixed with Renaissance details, and dating from the fifteenth century, stands to-day; it contains a magnificent series of choir stalls of excellent workmanship, and similar to those of Burgos. The cloister, in spite of the Arab-looking geometrical tracery of the ogival arches, is both light and elegant.
This cathedral was at one time used as the pantheon of the kings of Navarra. About ten elaborate marble tombs still lie at the foot of the building.
Santo Domingo de la Calzada.—The primitive ground-plan of the cathedral has been preserved, a nave and two aisles showing Romanesque strength in the lower and ogival lightness in the upper tiers. But otherwise nothing reminds one of a twelfth or thirteenth century church.
The cloister, of the sixteenth century, is a handsome plateresque-Renaissance edifice, rather small, severe, and cold. The great merit of this church lies in the sepulchral tombs in the different chapels, all of which were executed toward the end of the fifteenth and during the first years of the seventeenth centuries, and any one wishing to form for himself an idea of this particular{203} branch of Spanish monumental art must not fail to examine such sepulchres as those of Carranza, Fernando Alfonso, etc.
The effigy of the patron saint (Santo Domingo) is of painted wood clothed in rich silver robes, which form a striking antithesis to the saint's humble and modest life. The chapel where the latter lies is closed by a gilded iron reja of plateresque workmanship. The saint's body lies in a simple marble sepulchre, said to have been carved by Santo Domingo himself, who was both an architect and a sculptor. The truth of this version is, however, doubtful.
Of the square tower and the principal entrance no remarks need be made, for both are insignificant. The retablo of the high altar has been attributed to Foment, who constructed those of Saragosse and Huesca. The attribution is, however, most doubtful, as shown by the completely different styles employed by the artist of each. Not that the retablo in the Church of Santo Domingo is inferior to Foment's masterworks in Aragon, but the decorative motives of the flanking columns and low reliefs would prove—in case they had been executed by the{204} Aragonese Foment—a departure from the latter's classic style.
In one of the niches of the cloister, in a simple urn, lies the heart of Don Enrique, second King of Castile of that name, the half-brother (one of the bastards mentioned in a previous chapter and from whom all later Spanish monarchs are descended) of Peter the Cruel. The latter was murdered by his fond relative, who usurped the throne.
Logroño.—In 1435 Santa Maria la Redonda was raised to a suffragan church of Santo Domingo de la Calzada; about this date the old building must have been almost entirely torn down, as the ogival arches of the nave are of the fifteenth century; so also are the lower windows which, on the west, flank the southern door.
Excepting these few remains, nothing can bring to the tourist's mind the fifteenth-century edifice, and not a single stone can recall the twelfth-century church. For the remaining parts of the building are of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and successive centuries, and to-day the interior is being enlarged so as to make room for the see which is to be removed here from Santo Domingo and Calahorra.
The interior is Roman cruciform with a high and airy central nave, in which stands the choir, and on each hand a rather dark aisle of much smaller dimensions.
The trascoro is the only peculiarity possessed by this church. It is large and circular, closed by an immense vaulting which turns it into a chapel separated from the rest of the church (compare with the Church of the Pillar of Saragosse).
True to the grotesque style to which it belongs, the whole surface of walls and vault is covered with paintings, the former apparently in oil, the latter frescoes. Vixés painted them in the theatrical style of the eighteenth century.
From the outside, the regular features of the church please the eye in spite of the evident signs of artistic decadence. The two towers, high and slender, are among the best produced by the period of decadence in Spain which followed upon Herrero's severe style, if only the uppermost body lacked the circular linterna which makes the spire top-heavy.
Between the two towers, which, when seen from a distance, gain in beauty and lend to the city a noble and picturesque aspect, the{206} façade, properly speaking, reaches to their second body. It is a hollow, crowned by half a dome in the shape of a shell which in its turn is surmounted by a plateresque cornice in the shape of a long and narrow scroll.
The hollow is a peculiar and daring medley of architectural elegance and sculptural bizarrerie and vice versa. From Madrazo it drew the exclamation that, since he had seen it, he was convinced that not all monuments belonging to the grotesque style were devoid of beauty.
The date of the erection of the western front is doubtless the same as that of the trascoro; both are contemporaneous—the author is inclined to believe—with the erection of the Pillar in Saragosse; at least, they resemble each other in certain unmistakable details.
Calahorra.—The fourth of the cathedral churches of Upper Rioja is that of Calahorra. After the repopulation of the town by Alfonso VI. of Castile in the eleventh century, the bodies of the two martyr saints Emeterio and Celedonio were pulled up out of a well (to be seen to-day in the cloister) where they had been hidden by the Christians,{207} when the Moors conquered the fortress, and a church was built near the same spot. Of this eleventh-century church nothing remains to-day.
In the twelfth century, a new building was begun, but the process of construction continued slowly, and it was not until two hundred years later that the apse was finally finished. The body of the church, from the western front (this latter hideously modern and uninteresting) to the transept, is the oldest part,—simple Gothic of the thirteenth century.
The numerous chapels which form a ring around the church have all been decorated in the grotesque style of the eighteenth century, and with their lively colours, their polychrome statues, and overdone ornamentation, they offer but little interest to the visitor. The retablo of the high altar is one of the largest to be seen anywhere; but the Renaissance elegance of the lower body is completely drowned by the grotesque decoration of the upper half, which was constructed at a later date.
The choir stalls are fine specimens of that style in which the artist preferred an intricate composition to simple beauty. Biblical{208} scenes, surrounded and separated by allegorical personages and symbolical lines in great profusion, show the carver's talent rather than his artistic genius.
IX
SORIA
The Duero River, upon leaving its source at the foot of the Pico de Urbión (near Vinuesa), flows eastward for about fifty miles, then southward for another fifty miles, when it turns abruptly westward on its lengthy journey across the Iberian peninsula.
The circular region, limited on three sides by the river's course, is the historical field of Soria—part of the province of the same name, Numantia, Rome's great enemy and almost the cause of her ruin, lay somewhere in this part of the country, though where is not exactly known, as the great Scipio took care to destroy it so thoroughly that not even a stone remains to-day to indicate where the heroic fortress stood.
In the present day, two cities and two cathedrals are seated on the banks of the Duero within this circle; the one is Soria, the other Osma. The latter was a Roman{210} town, an early episcopal see, and later an Arab fortress; the former was founded by one of the Alfonsos toward the end of the eleventh century, as a frontier fortress against Aragon to the east, the Moors to the south, and Navarra to the north.
The town grew apace, thanks to the remarkable fueros granted to the citizens, who lived as in a republic of their own making—an almost unique case of self-government to be recorded in the middle ages.
The principal parish church was raised to a suffragan of Osma in the twelfth century. Since then, there has been a continual spirit of rivalry between the two cities, for the former, more important as a town and as the capital of a province, could not bend its head to the ecclesiastical authority of a village like Osma. Throughout the middle ages the jealousy between the two was food for incessant strife. Pope Clement IV., at Alfonso VIII.'s instigation, raised the Collegiate at Soria to an episcopal see independent of Osma, but the hard-headed chapter of the last named city refused to acknowledge the Pope's order, and no bishop was elected or appointed.
This bitter hatred between the two rivals{211} was the origin of many an amusing incident. Upon one occasion the Bishop of Osma, visiting his suffragan church in Soria, had the house in which he was stopping for the night burnt about his ears. He moved off to another house, and on the second night this was also mysteriously set on fire. His lordship did not await the third night, afraid of what might happen, but bolted back to his episcopal palace at Osma.
In 1520 the chapter of the Collegiate in Soria sent a petition to the country's sovereign asking him to order the erection of a new church in place of the old twelfth-century building, and in another part of the town. The request was not granted, however, so what did the wily chapter do? It ordered an architect to construct a chapel in the very centre of the church, and when it was completed, admired the work with great enthusiasm, excepting only the pillar in front of it which obstructed the uninterrupted view. This pillar was the real support of the church, and though the chapter was told as much (as though it did not know it!) the architect was ordered to pull it down. After hesitating to do so, the latter acceded: the pillar was pulled down, and{212} with it the whole church tumbled down as well! But the chapter's game was discovered, and it was obliged to rebuild the cathedral on the same spot and with the same materials.
Consequently, the church at Soria is a sixteenth-century building of little or no merit, excepting the western front, which is the only part of the old building that did not fall down, and is a fine specimen of Castilian Romanesque, as well as the cloister, one of the handsomest, besides being one of the few twelfth-century cloisters in Spain, with a double row of slender columns supporting the round-headed arches. This modification of the conventional type lends an aspect of peculiar lightness to the otherwise heavy Romanesque.
As regards the settlement of the strife between Soria and Osma, the see is to-day a double one, like that of Madrid and Alcalá. Upon the death of the present bishop, however, it will be transported definitely to Soria, and consequently the inhabitants of the last named city will at last be able to give thanks for the great mercies Allah or the True God has bestowed upon them.
Osma.—From an historical and architectural{213} point of view, Osma, the rival city on the Duero River, is much more important than Soria.
According to the tradition, St. James preached the Holy Gospel, and after him St. Peter (or St. Paul?), who left his disciple St. Astorgio behind as bishop (91 A. D.). Twenty-two bishops succeeded him, the twenty-third on the list being John I., really the first of whose existence we have any positive proof, for he signed the third council in Toledo in the sixth century. In the eighth century, the Saracens drove the shepherd of the Christian flock northward to Asturias, and it was not until 1100 that the first bishop de modernis was appointed by Archbishop Bernardo of Toledo. The latter's choice fell on Peter, a virtuous French monastic monk, who was canonized by the Pope after his death, and figures in the calendar as St. Peter of Osma.
When the first bishop took possession of his see, he started to build his cathedral. Instead of choosing Osma itself as the seat, however, he selected the site of a convent on the opposite banks of the Duero (to the north), where the Virgin had appeared to a shepherd. Houses soon grew up around{214} the temple and, to distinguish it from Osma, the new city was called Burgo de Osma, a name it still retains.
In 1232, not a hundred years after the erection of the cathedral, it was totally destroyed, excepting one or two chapels still to be seen in the cloister, by Juan Dominguez, who was bishop at the time, and who wished to possess a see more important in appearance than that left to him by his predecessor, St. Peter.
The building as it stands to-day is small, but highly interesting. The original plan was that of a Romanesque basilica with a three-lobed apse, but in 1781 the ambulatory walk behind the altar joined the two lateral aisles.
Two of the best pieces of sculptural work in the cathedral are the retablo of the high altar, and the relief imbedded in the wall of the trascoro—both of them carved in wood by Juan de Juni, one of the best Castilian sculptors of the sixteenth century. The plastic beauty of the figures and their lifelike postures harmonize well with the simple Renaissance columns ornamented here and there with finely wrought flowers and garlands.{215}
The chapel where St. Peter of Osma's body lies is an original rather than a beautiful annex of the church. For, given the small dimensions of the cathedral, it was difficult to find sufficient room for the chapels, sacristy, vestuary, etc. In the case of the above chapel, therefore, it was necessary to build it above the vestuary; it is reached by a flight of stairs, beneath which two three-lobed arches lead to the sombre room below. The result is highly original.
The same remarks as regard lack of space can be made when speaking about the principal entrance. Previously the portal had been situated in the western front; the erection of the tower on one side, and of a chapel on the other, had rendered this entrance insignificant and half blinded by the prominent tower. So a new one had to be erected, considered by many art critics to be a beautiful addition to the cathedral properly speaking, but which strikes the author as excessively ugly, especially the upper half, with its balcony, and a hollow arch above it, in the shadows of which the rose window loses both its artistic and its useful object. So, being round, it is placed within a semicircular sort of avant-porche or recess,{216} the strong contours of which deform the immense circle of the window.
To conclude: in the cathedral of Osma, bad architecture is only too evident. The tower is perhaps the most elegant part, and yet the second body, which was to give it a gradually sloping elegance, was omitted, and the third placed directly upon the first. This is no improvement.
Perhaps the real reason for these architectural mishaps is not so much the fault of the architects and artists as that of the chapter, and of the flock which could not help satisfactorily toward the erection of a worthy cathedral. Luckily, however, there are other cathedrals in Spain, where, in spite of reduced funds, a decent and homogeneous building was erected.
The cloister, bare on the inner side, is nevertheless a modest Gothic structure with acceptable lobulated ogival windows.
PART IV
Western Castile
I
PALENCIA
The history of Palencia can be divided into two distinct parts, separated from each other by a lapse of about five hundred years, during which the city was entirely blotted out from the map of Spain.
The first period reaches from before the Roman Conquest to the Visigothic domination.
Originally inhabited by the Vacceos, a Celtiberian tribe, it was one of the last fortresses to succumb to Roman arms, having joined Numantia in the terrible war waged by Spaniards and which has become both legendary and universal.
Under Roman rule the broad belt of land, of which Palencia, a military town on the road from Astorga to Tarragon, was the capital, flourished as it had never done before. Consequently it is but natural that one of the first sees should have been established{220} there as soon as Christianity invaded the peninsula. No records are, however, at hand as regards the names of the first bishops and of the martyr saints, as thick here as elsewhere and as numerous in Spain as in Rome itself. At any rate, contemporary documents mention a Bishop Toribio, not the first to occupy the see nor the same prelate who worked miracles in Orense and Astorga. The Palencian Toribio fought also against the Priscilian heresy, and was one of the impediments which stopped its spread further southward. Of this man it is said that, disgusted with the heresy practised at large in his Pallantia, he mounted on a hill, and, stretching his arms heavenwards, caused the waters of the river to leave their bed and inundate the city, a most efficacious means of bringing loitering sheep to the fold.
Nowhere did the Visigoths wreak greater vengeance or harm on the Iberians who had hindered their entry into the peninsula than in Palencia. It was entirely wrecked and ruined, not one stone remaining to tell the tale of the city that had been. Slowly it emerged from the wreck, a village rather than a town; once in awhile its bishops{221} are mentioned, living rather in Toledo than in their humble see.
The Arab invasion devastated a second time the growing town; perhaps it was Alfonso I. himself who completely wrecked it, for the Moorish frontier was to the north of the city, and it was the sovereign's tactics to raze to the ground all cities he could not keep, when he made a risky incursion into hostile country.
So Palencia was forgotten until the eleventh century, when Sancho el Mayor, King of Navarra, who had conquered this part of Castile, reëstablished the long-ignored see. He was hunting among the weeds that covered the ruins of what had once been a Roman fortress, when a boar sprang out of cover in front of him and escaped. Being light of foot, the king followed the animal until it disappeared in a cave, or what appeared to be such, though it really was a subterranean chapel dedicated to the martyrs, or to the patron saint of old Pallantia, namely, San Antolin.
The hunted beast cowered down in front of the altar; the king lifted his arm to spear it, when lo, his arm was detained in mid-air by an invisible hand! Immediately the{222} monarch prostrated himself before the miraculous effigy of the saint; he acknowledged his sacrilegious sin, and prayed for forgiveness; the boar escaped, the monarch's arm fell to his side, and a few days later the see was reëstablished, a church was erected above the subterranean chapel, and Bernardo was appointed the first bishop (1035). After Sancho's death, his son Ferdinand, who, as we have seen, managed to unite for the first time all Northern Spain beneath his sceptre, made it a point of honour to favour the see his father had erected a few months before his death, an example followed by all later monarchs until the times of Isabel the Catholic.
A surprising number of houses were soon built around the cathedral, and the city's future was most promising. Its bishops were among the noble-blooded of the land, and enjoyed such exceptional privileges as gave them power and wealth rarely equalled in the history of the middle ages. But then, the city had been built for the church and not the church for the city, and it is not to be marvelled at that the prelates bore the title of "hecho un rey y un papa"—king and pope. The greater part of these princes, it is true,{223} lived at court rather than in their episcopal see, which is, perhaps, one of the reasons why Palencia failed to emulate with Burgos and Valladolid, though at one time it was the residence of some of the kings of Castile.
Moreover, being only second in importance to the two last named cities, Palencia was continually the seat of dissident noblemen and thwarted heirs to the throne; because these latter, being unable to conquer the capital, or Valladolid, invariably sought to establish themselves in Palencia, sometimes successfully, at others being obliged to retreat from the city walls. The story of the town is consequently one of the most adventurous and varied to be read in Spanish history, and it is due to the side it took in the rebellion against Charles-Quint, in the time of the Comuneros, that it was finally obliged to cede its place definitely to Valladolid, and lost its importance as one of the three cities of Castilla la Vieja.
It remains to be mentioned that Palencia was the seat of the first Spanish university (Christian, not Moorish), previous to either that of Salamanca or Alcalá. In 1208 this educational institution was founded by Alfonso VIII.; professors were procured{224} from Italy and France, and a building was erected beside the cathedral and under its protecting wing. It did not survive the monarch's death, however, for the reign of the latter's son left but little spare time for science and letters, and in 1248 it was closed, though twenty years later Pope Urbano IV. futilely endeavoured to reëstablish it. According to a popular tradition, it owed its definite death to the inhabitants of the town, who, bent upon venging an outrage committed by one of the students upon a daughter of the city, fell upon them one night at a given signal and killed them to the last man.
In the fourteenth century, the cathedral, which had suffered enormously from sieges and from the hands of enemies, was entirely pulled down and a new one built on the same spot (June, 1321). The subterranean chapel, which had been the cause of the city's resurrection, was still the central attraction and relic of the cathedral, and, according to another legend, no less marvellous than that of Toribio, its genuineness has been placed definitely (?) without the pale of skeptic doubts. It appears that one Pedro, Bishop of Osma (St. Peter of Osma?), was praying before the effigy of San Antolin when the{225} lights went out. The pious yet doubting prelate prayed to God to give him a proof of the relic's authenticity by lighting the candles. To his surprise (?) and glee, the candles lit by themselves!
Let us approach the city by rail. The train leaves Venta de Baños, a junction station with a village about two miles away possessing a seventh-century Visigothic church which offers the great peculiarity of horseshoe arches in its structure, dating from before the Arab invasion.
Immediately upon emerging from the station, the train enters an immense rolling plain of a ruddy, sandy appearance, with here and there an isolated sand-hill crowned by the forgotten ruins of a mediæval castle.
The capital of this region is Palencia.
The erection of the cathedral church of the town was begun in 1321; it was dedicated to the Mother and Child, and to San Antolin, whose chapel, devoid of all artistic merit, is still to be seen beneath the choir.
This edifice was finished toward 1550. The same division as has been observed in the history of the city can be applied to the temple: at first it was intended to construct{226} a modest Gothic church of red sandstone; the apse with its five chapels and traditional ambulatory was erected, as well as the transept and the high altar terminating the central nave. Then, after about a hundred years had passed away, the original plan was altered by lengthening the body of the building. Consequently the chapel of the high altar was too small in comparison with the enlarged proportions, and it was transformed into a parish chapel. Opposite it, and to the west of the old transept, another high altar was constructed in the central nave, and a second transept separated it from the choir which followed.
In other words, and looking at this curious monument as it stands to-day, the central nave is surmounted by an ogival vaulting of a series of ten vaults. The first transept cuts the nave beneath the sixth, and the second beneath the ninth vault. (Vault No. 1 is at the western end of the church.) Both transepts protrude literally beyond the general width of the building. The choir stands beneath the fourth and fifth vaults, and the high altar between the two transepts, occupying the seventh and eighth space. Beneath the tenth stands the parish chapel or ex-high{227} altar, behind which runs the ambulatory, on the off-side of which are situated the five apsidal chapels. Consequently the second transept separates the old from the new high altar.
In spite of the low aisles and nave, and the absence of sculptural motives so pronounced in Burgos, the effect produced on the spectator by the double cross and the unusual length as compared with the width is agreeable. The evident lack of unity in the Gothic structure is recompensed by the original and pleasing plan.
The final judgment that can be emitted concerning this cathedral church, when seen from the outside, is that it shows the typical Spanish-Gothic characteristic, namely, heaviness as contrasted to pure ogival lightness. There is poverty in the decorative details, and solemnity in the interior; the appearance from the outside is of a fortress rather than a temple, with slightly pointed Gothic windows, and a heavy and solid, rather than an elegant and light, general structure. Only the cathedral church of Palencia outgrew the original model and took the strange and exotic form it possesses to-day, without losing its fortress-like aspect.{228}
Though really built in stone (see the columns and pillars in the interior), brick has been largely used in the exterior; hence also the impossibility of erecting a pure Gothic building, and this is a remark that can be applied to most churches in Spain. The buttresses are heavy, the square tower (unfinished) is Romanesque or Mudejar in form rather than Gothic, though the windows be ogival. There is no western façade or portal; the tower is situated on the southern side between the true transepts.
Of the four doorways, two to the north and two to the south, which give access to the transepts, the largest and richest in sculptural decoration is the Bishop's Door (south). Observe the geometrical designs in the panels of the otherwise ogival and slightly pointed doorway. The other portal on the south is far simpler, and the arch which surmounts it is of a purer Gothic style; not so the geometrically decorated panels and the almost Arabian frieze which runs above the arches. This frieze is Moorish or Mudejar-Byzantine, and though really it does not belong in an ogival building, it harmonizes strangely with it.
In the interior of the cathedral the nakedness{229} of the columns is partially recompensed by the richness in sculptural design of some sepulchres, as well as by several sixteenth-century grilles. The huge retablo of the high altar shows Gothic luxuriousness in its details, and at the same time (in the capitals of the flanking columns) nascent plateresque severity.
Perhaps the most interesting corner of the interior is the trascoro, or the exterior side of the wall which closes the choir on the west. Here the patronizing genius of Bishop Fonseca, a scion of the celebrated Castilian family, excelled itself. The wall itself is richly sculptured, and possesses two fine lateral reliefs. In the centre there is a Flemish canvas of the sixteenth century, of excellent colour, and an elegantly carved pulpit.
In the chapter-room are to be seen some well-preserved Flemish tapestries, and in an apsidal chapel is one of Zurbaran's mystic subjects: a praying nun. (This portrait, I believe, has been sold or donated by the chapter, for, if I am not mistaken, it is to be seen to-day in the art collection of the Spanish royal family.)
II
ZAMORA
Whatever may have been the origin of Zamora, erroneously confounded with that of Numantia, it is not until the ninth century that the city, or frontier fortress, appears in history as an Arab stronghold, taken from the Moors and fortified anew by Alfonso I. or by his son Froila, and necessarily lost and regained by Christians and Moors a hundred times over in such terrible battles as the celebrated and much sung día de Zamora in 901. In 939 another famous siege of the town was undertaken by infidel hordes, but the strength of the citadel and the numerous moats, six it appears they were in number, separated by high walls surrounding the town, were invincible, and the Arab warriors had to retreat. Nevertheless, between 900 and 980 the fortress was lost five times by the Christians. The last Moor to take it was Almanzor, who razed it to the ground and{231} then repopulated it with Arabs from Andalusia.
Previously, in 905, the parish church had been raised to an episcopal see; the first to occupy it being one Atilano, canonized later by Pope Urbano II.
Ten years after this bishop had taken possession of his spiritual throne, he was troubled by certain religious scruples, and, putting on a pilgrim's robe, he distributed his revenues among the parish poor and left the city. Crossing the bridge,—still standing to-day and leading from the town to Portugal,—he threw his pastoral ring into the river, swearing he would only reoccupy the lost see when the ring should have been given back into his hands; should this happen, it would prove that the Almighty had pardoned his sins.
For two years he roamed about visiting shrines and succouring the poor; at last one day he dreamed that his Master ordered him to repair immediately to his see, where he was sorely needed. Returning to Zamora, he passed the night in a neighbouring hermitage, and while supping—it must have been Friday!—in the belly of the fish he was eating he discovered his pastoral ring.{232}
The following day the church-bells were rung by an invisible hand, and the pilgrim, entering the city, was hailed as a saint by the inhabitants; the same invisible hands took off his pilgrim's clothes and dressed him in rich episcopal garments. He took possession of his see, dying in the seventh year of his second reign.
Almanzor el terrible, on the last powerful raid the Moors were to make, buried the Christian see beneath the ruins of the cathedral, and erected a mezquita to glorify Allah; fifteen years later the city fell into the hands of the Christians again, and saw no more an Arab army beneath its walls.
It was not, however, until 125 years later that the ruined episcopal see was reëstablished de modernis, the first bishop being Bernardo (1124).
But previous to the above date, an event took place in and around Zamora that has given national fame to the city, and has made it the centre of a Spanish Iliad hardly less poetic or dramatic than the Homerian legend, and therefore well worth narrating as perhaps unique in the peninsula, not to say in the history of the middle ages.
When Fernando I. of Castile died in{233} 1065, he left his vast territories to his five children, bequeathing Castile to his eldest son Sancho, Galicia to Garcia, Leon to Alfonso, Toro to Elvira, and Zamora to Urraca, who was the eldest daughter, and, with Sancho, the bravest and most intrepid of the five children.
According to the romance of Zamora, she, Doña Urraca, worried her father's last moments by trying to wheedle more than Zamora out of him; but the king was firm, adding only the following curse:
" 'Quien os la tomara, hija,
¡La mi maldición le caiga!'—
Todos dicen amén, amén,
Sino Don Sancho que calla."
Which in other words means: "Let my curse fall on whomsoever endeavours to take Zamora from you.... Those who were present agreed by saying amen; only the eldest son, Don Sancho, remained silent."
The latter, being ambitious, dethroned his brothers and sent them flying across the frontier to Andalusia, then Moorish territory. Toro also submitted to him, but not so Zamora, held by the dauntless Urraca and the governor of the citadel, Arias Gonzalo.{234} So it was besieged by the royal troops and asked to surrender, the message being taken by the great Cid from Don Sancho to his sister. She, of course, refused to give up the town. Wherefore is not known, but the fact is that the Cid, the ablest warrior in the hostile army, after having carried the embassy to the Infanta, left the king's army; the many romances which treat of this siege accuse him of having fallen in love with Doña Urraca's lovely eyes,—a love that was perhaps reciprocated,—who knows?
In short, the city was besieged during nine months. Hunger, starvation, and illness glared at the besieged. On the point of surrendering, they were beseeched by the Infanta to hold out nine days longer; in the meantime one Vellido Dolfo, famous in song, emerged by the city's postern gate and went to King Sancho's camp, saying that he was tired of serving Doña Urraca, with whom he had had a dispute, and that he would show the king how to enter the city by a secret path.
According to the romances, it would appear that the king was warned by the inhabitants themselves against the traitorous intentions of Vellido. "Take care, King Sancho,"{235} they shouted from the walls, "and remember that we warn you; a traitor has left the city gates who has already committed treason four times, and is about to commit the fifth."
The king did not hearken, as is generally the case, and went out walking with the knight who was to show him the secret gate; he never returned, being killed by a spear-thrust under almost similar circumstances to Siegfried's.
The father's curse had thus been fulfilled.
The traitor returned to the city, and, strange to say, was not punished, or only insufficiently so; consequently, it is to-day believed that the sister of the murdered monarch had a hand in the crime. Upon Vellido's return to the besieged town, the governor wished to imprison him—which in those days meant more than confinement—but the Infanta objected; it is even stated that the traitor spoke with his heartless mistress, saying: "It was time the promise should be fulfilled."
In the meanwhile, from the besieging army a solitary knight, Diego Ordoñez, rode up to the city walls, and accusing the inhabitants of felony and treason, both men and women, young and old, living and dead,{236} born and to be born, he challenged them to a duel. It had to be accepted, and, according to the laws of chivalry, the challenger had to meet in single combat five champions, one after another, for he had insulted, not a single man, but a community.
The gray-haired governor of the fortress reserved for himself and his four sons the duty of accepting the challenge; the Infanta beseeched him in vain to desist from his enterprise, but he was firm: his mistress's honour was at stake. At last, persuaded by royal tears, according to the romance, he agreed to let his sons precede him, and, only in case it should be necessary, would he take the last turn.
The eldest son left the city gates, blessed by the weeping father; his helmet and head were cleft in twain by Diego Ordoñez's terrible sword, and the latter's ironical shout was heard addressing the governor:
"Don Arias, send me hither another of your charming sons, because this one cannot bear you the message."
A second and third son went forth, meeting the same fate: but the latter's wounded horse, in throwing its rider, ran blindly into Ordoñez and knocked him out of the ring;{237} the duel was therefore judged to be a draw.
Several days afterward Alfonso, the dead king's younger brother, hurried up from Toledo, and after swearing in Burgos that he had had nothing to do with the felonious murder, was anointed King of Castile, Leon, and Galicia. His brave sister Urraca lived with him at court, giving him useful advice, until she retired to a convent, and at her death left her palace and her fortune to the Collegiate Church at Leon.
The remaining history of Zamora is one interminable list of revolts, sieges, massacres, and duels. As frontier fortress against Portugal in the west, its importance as the last garrison town on the Duero was exceptional, and consequently, though it never became important as a metropolis, as a stronghold it was one of Castile's most strategical points.
The best view of the city is obtained from the southern shore of the Duero; on a low hill opposite the spectator, the city walls run east and west; behind them, to the left, the castle towers loom up, square and Byzantine in appearance; immediately to the right the cathedral nave forms a horizontal{238} line to where the cimborio practically terminates the church. Thus from afar it seems as though the castle tower were part of the religious edifice, and the general appearance of the whole city surrounded by massive walls cannot be more warlike. The colour also of the ruddy sandstone and brick, brilliant beneath a bright blue sky, is characteristic of this part of Castile, and certainly constitutes one of its charms. What is more, the landscape is rendered more exotic or African by the Oriental appearance of the whole town, its castle, and its cathedral.
The latter was begun and ended in the twelfth century; the first stone was laid in 1151, and the vaults were closed twenty-three years later, in 1174; consequently it is one of the unique twelfth-century churches in Spain completed before the year 1200. It is true that the original edifice has been deformed by posterior additions and changes dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Excepting these abominable additions, the primitive building is Romanesque; not Romanesque as are the cathedrals we have seen in Galicia, but Byzantine, or military{239} Romanesque, showing decided Oriental influences. Would to Heaven the cathedral of Zamora were to-day as it stood in the twelfth century!