The church is full of other objects of interest. Against the north wall is a very pretty example of a wheel of bells: this is all of wood, corbelled out from the wall, and is rung with a noisy jingle of silver bells at the elevation of the Host. Near it is a doorway leading into the sacristy, I think, which is very ingeniously converted into a monument. It has a square lintel and a pointed arch above: bold corbels on either side carry a high tomb, the base of which is just over the lintel; this is arcaded at the side and ends, and on its sloping top is a figure of a knight. The favourite type of monument in this part of Spain is generally a coped tomb carried on corbels, which are usually lions or other beasts: there are good examples of this kind both in the church and cloister; and in the latter there is also preserved a great wooden cross, which looks as though it had originally decorated a rood-loft.

The windows have a good deal of very late stained-glass, which consists generally of single figures under canopies. I have already mentioned the fine early wood-work in the Coro. In the fifteenth century this was altered and added to: and a seat was then made for the bishop in the centre of the western side of the Coro, which has enormous pieces of carved open-work on either side executed with uncommon vigour and skill. These, again, were added to afterwards by a Renaissance artist, so that it is now necessary to discriminate carefully between the work of various ages.

If, when the cathedral has been thoroughly studied, one goes out through the cloister, an external door at its north-western angle leads out to the top of a steep path from which an extremely picturesque view is obtained. The old town walls girt the cathedral on the north side; but in the eleventh century it was thought well to add to them, and a second wall descends, crosses the valley below, and rises against the opposite hill in a very picturesque fashion. This wall has the passage-way perfect all round, and occasional circular towers project from it. The eye is at once caught in looking at this view by a fine Romanesque church with a half-ruined cloister and lofty octagonal steeple, which seems to be absolutely built across and through the walls. This is the Benedictine church of San Pedro de los Galligans;[336] and a closer inspection shows that what at first looks like the round-tower of the town walls, against which the church has been built, is really the very apse of the church, which when the new walls were built was raised and converted above into a purely military work. The earliest reference to this church that I have found is a statement that it existed in the tenth century, and that, in A.D. 1117, the Count Ramon of Barcelona gave it to the Benedictine convent of Sta. Maria de la Crassa, in the bishopric of Carcassonne, of which his brother was Abbat; and I think we may safely assume that the whole of the existing church was built within a short time of its transfer from the hands of the Secular to those of the Regular Clergy.

The church[337] consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, the arches being very rude, and the piers plain and square. There are north and south transepts, the former having one, and the latter two eastern apsidal chapels; and the choir is also finished with an apse. There is another apse at the north end of the north transept. The nave is roofed with a round waggon-vault with plain cross-ribs carried on engaged shafts; and there is a clerestory of single-light windows which, on the inside, break up partly into the vault of the roof. The aisles are roofed with half-waggon or quadrant vaults, and the apses with semi-domes. The octagonal steeple is built above the north transept, and has in the eastern wall of its first stage two apsidal recesses, which seem to have been intended for altars, and are roofed with semi-domes. The detail of some of the work at the east end is of an unusual kind: it is built in stone and black volcanic scoriæ, and its rude character is evidence of its early date. Any one who is acquainted with the noble church at Elne, near Perpiñan, will remember the similar use of volcanic scoriæ there, and will be led to class the two monuments together as works of the same hand and period. The view of the exterior of the church from the north-west is very striking. There is a fine western door with a good deal of carving very delicately and elaborately wrought, one of the capitals having a very careful imitation of a fern-leaf on it; above the doorway a horizontal cornice is carried all across the front, and over this is a fine rose window. The side walls are finished with dentil-courses; and the clerestory—which is carried up very high above the springing of the vault inside—is finished with an eaves-arcading also. There were no windows in the side walls of the aisle; and the clerestory windows, and a window at the west end of the north aisle, have bold splays on the outside as well as inside.

On the south side are the cloisters. They are locked up and in ruins; and though I tried two or three times, I was never able to gain admission to them; but I saw them from the hill above, and they looked at this distance as if they were designed very much after the pattern of those attached to the cathedral. The arches are round, and carried on coupled detached shafts, with piers in the centre of each side of the cloister. The roof seems to have been a barrel-vault, but great part of it has now fallen in. All this havoc and ruin is owing, like so much that one sees in Spain, to the action of the French troops during the Peninsular war.[338]

The whole character of this church is very interesting. The west front reminded me much of the best Italian Romanesque; and the rude simplicity of the interior—so similar in its mode of construction to the great church at Santiago in the opposite corner of the Peninsula—suggests the probability of its being one of the earliest examples of which Spain can boast.

No. 42. SAN PEDRO, GERONA. EXTERIOR FROM THE NORTH-WEST. p. 330
No. 42.
SAN PEDRO, GERONA.
EXTERIOR FROM THE NORTH-WEST. p. 330

Close to San Pedro, to the north-west, stands another church, which, though it is very small, is fully as curious. This is now desecrated and converted into workshops and dwelling-houses. It is transverse triapsal in plan (i.e., the transepts and the chancel are all finished with apses). The Crossing is surmounted by a low tower or lantern, square below, but octagonal above, and with some remains of an apparently old tiled roof. The transepts are ceiled with semi-domes, and the chancel was similarly covered, but its vault has now been removed in order to facilitate access to the steeple, in which a peasant and his family live. The nave is roofed with a waggon-vault, at the springing of which from the wall is a small moulding; and its walls are supported by buttresses, which do not seem to be earlier than the thirteenth century, though the rest of the church must date no doubt from the early part of the twelfth. The exterior is very plain; but the chancel apse is divided by pilasters which run up to and finish in a corbel-table at the eaves; and the tower has also an eaves’ corbel-table. All the dimensions of this church are very small, but it is interesting, as being almost the only example I have seen in Spain of a transverse triapsal plan; and the central lantern is one of the earliest examples of what became in later days one of the most common features of Spanish buildings.[339]

We came down the hill north of the cathedral to see this church and San Pedro; and if we retrace our steps, and go out by the western door on to the platform at the top of the vast flight of steps which leads up to the cathedral, we shall be at once struck by the beautiful, though truncated, spire of San Feliu, which stands below, and to the west of the cathedral. Indeed, in nearly all views of the old city, this steeple claims the first place in our regard; and perhaps it is seen best of all in crossing the river at the other end of the town, where it stands at the end of the vista up the stream, which is edged on either side by the backs of the tall, picturesque, and crowded houses.

San Feliu[340] is one of the oldest collegiate foundations in the diocese of Gerona; and when, in the eighth century, the Moors converted the cathedral into a mosque, here it was that the Christian rites were celebrated. No doubt, therefore, a church stood here long before the first recorded notices of the fabric, for these do not occur before the early part of the fourteenth century, save such indications of work in progress as the bequest of ten solidos to the work by Bishop William in A.D. 1245, and such evidence of its damage or destruction as is the fact that the French, attacking the city in A.D. 1285, obtained possession of the church and did it much damage. In A.D. 1313, when the Chapter of the cathedral were obtaining royal concessions towards the work of their own church, they granted an exemption to San Feliu, giving to its clergy the first-fruits of their benefices to spend on the work of their own church.[341] In A.D. 1318 there is evidence that the choir was completed, but other works were going on during the rest of the century. In A.D. 1340 the Chapter determined to erect cloisters, under the direction of an architect named Sancii, and bought a site for them to the north of the church; and the operarius or canon in charge of the work seems to have raised alms for them even so far off as at Valencia and in the Balearic Isles. The work was begun in A.D. 1357 and finished in 1368, in which year the Chapter entered into a contract[342] with an architect, one Pedro Zacoma, for the erection of the campanile. In A.D. 1363, however, it was deemed necessary, on account of the position of the church just outside the old walls, and on the north of the town, that it should be fortified; and to accomplish this work, and others of the same kind ordered in A.D. 1374 and 1385, the cloisters so recently built were destroyed. The steeple is said to have been finished in 1392,[343] Pedro Zacoma having acted as architect as late as A.D. 1376.

The church bears evident marks of many alterations and additions. It consists of nave and aisles, transepts, central apse, and two apsidal chapels on the east side of the south, and one on the east of the north transept. The piers are plain square masses of masonry, and the main arches are semi-circular, unmoulded, and springing from a very plain abacus. There is a kind of triforium, an arcade of three divisions in each bay, and a fair pointed vault of ten bays—two to each bay of the nave arcade—carried on groining-shafts corbelled out from the wall. The north transept retains a waggon-vault, the axis of which is north and south, whilst the south transept has two bays of cross vaulting. The eastern apse is circular in plan, but divided into seven groining bays, and lighted by three windows of three lights. The apses of the south transept are also circular, lighted by lancets, and groined with semi-domes, though the arches into the transept are pointed. The general character of the later part of this church is, I should say, that of late first-pointed work; yet it is pretty clear that it is almost all a work of the fourteenth century. There is a fine fourteenth-century south porch, with some good arcading in its side walls, in which the tracery is all executed with soffeit-cusping.

Of the western steeple I need not say very much, as my sketch shows the nature of its design, and the evidence as to its date is evidently very accurate. The character of the architectural detail is quite that of flamboyant-work, and the outline is bold, original, and good. It is seldom indeed that the junction of the tower and spire is more happily managed than it is here; and before the destruction of the upper part of the spire, the whole effect must have been singularly graceful. This is the more remarkable in a country where a genuine spire is so rare a feature; but the architect was fortunate in following the customs of the country when he made his steeple octagonal in plan, for it is extremely difficult—one may almost say impossible—to put a spire upon an octagonal tower the outline of which shall not be graceful. In an arch against the wall of this tower is a tomb resting on lions jutting out from the wall, and with the date 1387 in the inscription. It is a good example of the late date to which this early-looking type of monument continued to be used in Spain.

This church has a rather elaborate wooden Retablo, carved and gilt with subjects painted on its panels. The pulpit is also old, and has rich, late flamboyant tracery panels: it is placed against a pier on the south side of the nave, and a second modern pulpit faces it on the north. The old metal screen also remains: it is rather rude, and has prickets for candles along it, each of which has a sort of frame which looks as though it were meant to hold a glass.

There are also a few remains of old domestic buildings. A house near the cathedral has the usual Catalan features of trefoiled ajimez windows, and a doorway with a prodigiously deep archivolt. Another house near San Feliu has a broad window with a square-headed opening; the head is an ogee arch, with tracery in the tympanum, and over all is a square-headed label-moulding. It is not an elegant window, yet it has some value as an example of an opening as large as we usually adopt now-a-days, and with a square head. The most interesting house, however, is the Fonda de la Estrella, the principal inn in the town. The windows here are capital examples of shafted windows of the end of the twelfth century. The shafts are very delicate (4¼ inches by 6 ft. 1 inch); the capitals are well carved with men and animals, and the carved abacus is carried from window to window. The windows are of three lights, and with only a narrow space of wall between them. The back of this house is less altered than the front: on the ground it has an arcade of four round arches, on the first floor five windows of the same sort as these just described, but simpler, and above this a series of pilasters, which now carry the roof. There must have been arches I think to this open upper stage.

From Gerona to Barcelona there are two railways branching from the station at Empalme. That which follows the coast passes by several small towns facing the sea, in which there are many remains of old walls and castles, and not a few ajimez windows. It is, in short, a charming ride in every way. The other line going inland also passes a very striking country, and some old towns. Hostalrich is a very picturesque old walled town, with its walls and towers all fairly perfect. Fornelles has a good church, with a low crocketed spire on an octagonal steeple, brought to a square just below the belfry-stage. Granollers has a rather good fourteenth-century church, of the same general character as the Barcelona churches of the same date. It has a nave of five bays, and an apse of seven sides, with a tower at the north-west angle. Some trace of an earlier church remains in a round-arched western door. The western bay is occupied by a late fifteenth-century groined gallery carried on an elliptic arch, with a parapet pierced with richly-cusped circles. The staircase to this gallery is in a sort of aisle or side chapel, and has an extremely well managed iron hand-railing, supported by occasional uprights, and quite worthy of imitation. The tower has a delicate newel staircase in its angle: the newel has a spiral moulding, and the under side of the steps is very carefully wrought. The upper part of the steeple is like those of Barcelona cathedral—an irregular octagon, and has a traceried parapet and low spire. There is a very rich late wooden pulpit, corbelled out from the wall, through which a door is pierced, and some rich woodwork is placed at the head of the steps leading to it. The apse has two-light and single-light windows in the alternate sides, and the nave the latter only. Small chapels are formed between the buttresses, and these are also lighted with small windows. On the whole this church has a good many features of interest, and its very considerable height gives it greater dignity than our own churches of the same class have.

From hence a pleasant road among the mountains, beautifully clothed here with cork-trees, and disclosing charming views at every turn, leads by the frontier fortress of Bellegarde, over the Col de Pertús, and so on down the eastern side of the Pyrenees to Perpiñan. Here, if we look only at the map of modern France, my notes ought to stop. But Perpiñan was of old a Spanish city, and its buildings are so thoroughly Spanish in their character that I may venture to say a very few words about them.[344]

The church of San Juan is of very remarkable dimensions. The clear width of the nave is sixty feet, but in the easternmost bay this is gathered in to fifty-four feet, which is the diameter of the seven-sided apse. Guillermo Sagrera, master of the works of this cathedral, was one of the architects summoned to advise about the erection of the nave at Gerona, and I think there can be but little doubt that the plan of this church was his handiwork, and that it was erected, therefore, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. It will be seen that he was one of the architects who spoke most strongly in favour of the erection of a broad unbroken nave. The vault he erected here is of brick with stone ribs, and the brickwork is rather rough, with very wide mortar joints, and looks as if from the first it were intended to plaster and paint it. The roofs of the chapels which are built between the large buttresses have flat gables north and south, and the same arrangement is carried round the apse. The most striking feature in this cathedral is that very rare thing—a very fine mediæval organ. It is corbelled out from the north wall of the nave, and is of great size and height. The pipes are arranged in traceried compartments at five different levels. This complicates the machinery for the supply of wind, but adds greatly to the picturesque character of the instrument. Originally this organ had great painted shutters, which are now nailed up against the wall close to the south porch. The width of its front is about twenty-five feet, its projection from the wall three feet six inches, and the organist sits in a gallery at its base.[345]

There are several good old houses here: but I must content myself with the mention of one only in the Rue de la Barre. Here we have the peculiarities of the Spanish houses, as they are seen along the coast from Gerona to Valencia, very decidedly developed: the windows are all ajimez, with the usual delicate trefoiled head to the lights, and slender shafts between them, and the arch-stones of the doorway are more than usually enormous, being little less than six feet in length.

A drive of a few miles from Perpiñan leads to the extremely interesting church at Elne, consecrated in A.D. 1058.[346] Here, as in San Pedro, Gerona, and to the east of it in the cathedral at Agde, there are occasional lines of black volcanic scoriæ used in the Romanesque steeple and west front, and with good effect. The nave of the church has a pointed barrel vault, and the aisles half-barrel vaults, but all the cross arches are semi-circular. At the west end is a sort of thirteenth-century narthex, and the three apses at the east have semi-domes. On the north side of the church is a noble cloister, planned just like that in the cathedral at Gerona with the most complete disregard to symmetry. It is extremely similar to it also in general design: but it is very remarkable as having its east and north sides erected about the end of the thirteenth century in evident and very close imitation of the earlier work on the other two sides. The vaulting throughout the cloister is of the later date, and raised considerably above the level of the old vault. The whole of this cloister is wrought in a veined white marble, and a door from it into the church is built in alternated courses of red and white marble.

The history of Cataluña shows how intimate was the connection of the people and towns on both sides of the mountains, and it is here and elsewhere in the south of France that we see the germ of almost all the mediæval Spanish art.

[larger view]
[largest view]
GERONA:—Ground Plan of Cathedral &c. S. Daniel or(?) S. Nicholas. S. Pedro De Los Galligans. Plate XVIII Published by John Murray. Albemarle Street 1865

CHAPTER XVI.

MANRESA—LÉRIDA.

Beyond Manresa the character of the country changes completely; and when he has once reached the frontier of Aragon, the traveller has his only pleasure in the fine distant views of the Pyrenees; and if his journey be made in the spring—in the sight of a vast extent of corn-fields, stretching on all sides far as the eye can see. In the summer nothing can be more saddening than the change which comes over this country; the corn is all cut before the end of May, and then the universal light-brown colour of the soil makes the landscape all but intolerably tame and uninteresting.

[larger view]
[largest view]
MANRESA: COLLEGIATE: CHURCH:—Ground: Plan: Pl. XIX. Published by John Murray Albemarle St. 1865

Two or three old buildings are seen from the railway. Between Sardanola and Sabadell is a house with a tower, in which is a very good round-arched ajimez window. At Tarrasa the churches evidently deserve examination. There is one with a lofty central lantern, and of transverse triapsal plan, which seems to be entirely Romanesque in character; and there is another of the usual later Catalan type, seven bays in length, with an apse of five sides, a tower on the south side of the choir, and a large rose-window at the west end. Near the same town, to the north, is a Romanesque village church with a lofty belfry, which, like that of the early church in the town itself, has belfry-windows of two lights, with a dividing shaft, and a low square spire-roof. A church of the same type is seen near Monistrol—the station for Montserrat,—and from this point there is nothing to be noticed until Manresa is reached, picturesquely situated on the steep hill above the river Cardener, with two or three churches and convents, and a great Collegiata—or collegiate church—towering up imposingly above everything else. But if the situation of this church is noble, the building itself is even more so; and having passed it in my first journey, I was so much struck by its size and character that I made a point of going again to the same district, in order to examine it at my leisure. The town is poor and decayed; but I was there on a festa, and have seldom had a better opportunity of seeing the Catalan peasantry, who thronged the streets, the Plazas, and the churches, and made them lively with bright colours and noisy tongues. There was a church consecrated on the same site in A.D. 1020, and it is of this probably that a fragment still remains on the north side. The rest has been destroyed, and Fr. J. Villanueva[347] says that the existing church was commenced in A.D. 1328,—a date which accords very well with the detail of the earlier portion of the work,—but he does not give his authority for the statement. I have not been able to find any other evidence which would fix the date of the dedication or completion of the building; but as Arnaldo de Valleras, one of the architects consulted in 1416 as to the design for Gerona cathedral, speaks of himself as then engaged on the construction of the church of Manresa, there can be but little doubt that at this time the Collegiata was still unfinished, having, as the detail of the design suggests, been a long time in progress. It is of the common Catalan type of the fourteenth century, and though it is one of the most important examples of its class, it presents so few new or unusual features that it hardly seems to require a very lengthy description. Its design is in nearly all respects of the same kind as those of the Barcelonese churches of the same age; but its plan[348] is very remarkable, as giving, perhaps, the widest span of nave anywhere to be seen in a church with aisles and a clerestory. Or perhaps I ought to limit myself to examples on the mainland, for at Palma in Mallorca the width of the nave of the cathedral seems to be even greater, and the plan is almost exactly the same. The scheme is very similar to that of Sta. Maria del Mar, Barcelona, but the width of the nave here is considerably greater, and the general effect of the interior is even finer. The buttresses are necessarily of vast size, and are formed partly inside and partly outside the church. A lofty tower is erected over one of the bays of the north aisle, and the two nave columns which carry it are in consequence built of larger dimensions than any of the others. A fine Romanesque doorway still remains in the wall, just outside this tower, and leads now into the modern cloister court; but the principal entrances to the church are by grand doorways of the same age as the church, whose jambs and arches have rich continuous mouldings. These doorways are opposite each other, and just to the west of the apse, a position of much importance in regard to the ritual arrangements of the church. There is also a western doorway, but this, together with the rest of the west front, has all been modernized, whilst the cloister and its chapels appear to be entirely modern.

The magnificent scale of the plan is perhaps hardly supported as it should be by the beauty of the design in detail. In its present state it is hardly fair to judge of the original effect of the exterior, but inside one is struck by the enormous width and height, and not at all by the beauty of the details. The columns are of vast height and size: but plain piers, with poor bases and capitals, and poverty-stricken arches, seem out of place in such a church, and, owing to the enormous size of the vault, the clerestory windows are but little seen in the general view of the interior.

No. 43. MANRESA p. 342 INTERIOR OF THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH.
No. 43.
MANRESA p. 342.
INTERIOR OF THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH.

The steeple is lofty: it is entered by old doorways opening on to the paved roof of the aisles, and is groined both under and above the bells. An old newel staircase in one angle has been destroyed, and steps projecting from the side walls have been ingeniously introduced instead. On the top of the tower a large bell is suspended from the intersection of four arched stone ribs; these ribs rise about twenty-five feet from the roof, are about one foot six inches thick, and abut against piers or dwarf pinnacles at the base, about four feet deep by one foot eleven inches thick. Two architects, said to be French—though their names seem to me to be those of Catalans—Juan Font and Giralt Cantarell, are said to have worked at this steeple from 1572 to 1590,[349] and no doubt it was this upper portion on which they wrought.

The sacristies on the south-east side of the apse are old, but not interesting. The only antiquities I saw in them were four fine processional staves, with tops of silver richly wrought with tracery in the sides, and crocketed gables over the traceries. Behind the openings of tracery the plate is gilt, the rest being all silver.

The arrangement of the interior of the church for service follows that usually seen in these enormously wide buildings. Within the apse the choir is formed by means of iron grilles, leaving a passage some ten feet wide all round it, and under the choir is a crypt as at Barcelona cathedral, approached in the same way, by a flight of steps from the nave. The Coro is placed, according to the common fashion, in the nave, occupying about two of its bays in length, and there is an equal space to the west of it, between its eastern screen and the steps to the Capilla mayor. The width of the Coro is much less than that of the nave, and its enclosing walls are mainly old. At first sight, therefore, it seems to be a good example of an early introduction of this common Spanish arrangement: but on closer view it appears to have been taken down and rebuilt, and may not, possibly, retain its old position. But, on the other hand, the two great doors in the side walls would never have been placed where they are if the Coro had occupied its usual English position to the west of the altar enclosure. The plan of Barcelona cathedral has just the same arrangement of great doorways north and south between the Coro and the altar, and there, beyond any doubt, the Coro is in its old place; and seeing how close the points of similarity are in both churches, it must, I think, be assumed that even if this screen at Manresa has been rebuilt it still occupies its old place. It is a work of the fifteenth century, of stone, arcaded on either side of a central western doorway. The divisions of the arcade have figures painted within them of the apostles and other saints. The stalls and fittings of the Coro are all of Renaissance character.

On either side of the altar there still remain three octagonal shafts with carved capitals, to which, no doubt, were originally hung the curtains or veils which protected the altar. They are of the same date as the church, and about ten feet six inches in height. The footpace is also old, and placed exactly in the centre of the apse. The richest treasure here is, however, still to be described. Among a number of altar-frontals, neither better nor worse than are usually seen, there is still preserved one which, after much study of embroidery in all parts of Europe, I may, I believe, safely pronounce to be the most beautiful work of its age. It is 10 feet long, by 2 feet 10¾ inches in height, divided into three compartments in width, the centre division having the Crucifixion, and the sides being each subdivided into nine divisions, each containing a subject from the life of our Lord.[350] An inscription at the lower edge of the frontal preserves the name of the artist to whom this great work is owing. It is in Lombardic capitals, and as follows:—

The work is all done on fine linen doubled. The faces, hands, and many other parts—as, e.g., the masonry of a wall—are drawn with brown ink on the linen, and very delicately shaded with a brush. The use of ink for the faces is very common in early embroidery, but I have never before seen work so elaborately finished with all the art of the painter. The faces are full of beauty and expression, and have much of the tender religious sentiment one sees in the work of Fra Angelico. The drawing is extremely good, the horses like those Benozzo Gozzoli painted, and the men dressed in Florentine dresses of the early part of the fifteenth century. The subjects are full of intricacy, the Crucifixion having the whole subject, with the crucifixion of the thieves, and all the crowd of figures so often represented.

The work is marvellously delicate—so much so that, passing the hand over it, it is difficult to tell exactly when it ends and the painting begins. The colours are generally very fresh and beautiful; but the gold backgrounds being very lightly stitched down are a good deal frayed. There are borders between and around all the subjects. Such a piece of embroidery makes one almost despair. English ladies who devotedly apply themselves to this kind of work have as yet no conception of the delicacy of the earlier works, and reproduce only too often the coarse patterns of the latest English school.[351]

In the choir-aisle is a wheel of bells in its old case, and under the organ is the favourite Catalan device of a Saracen’s head.

A picturesque effect was produced in the church here by the large white flannel hoods which all the women wore at mass. The church was crowded with people, and these white hoods contrasted well with the many-coloured bags or sacks—red and violet predominating—which the men always wear on their heads.

I saw two other old churches here. That “del Carmen” is of the same age as the Collegiata, with a nave of six bays and an apse of seven sides. It is forty-seven feet wide in the clear, without aisles, has chapels between the buttresses, and is lighted by large clerestory-windows. Here, as at the cathedral, almost all the windows are blocked, and sufficient light seems to be obtained for the whole church by some ten or twelve holes about two feet square pierced here and there. The other church is of the same description, but less important.

Between Manresa and Lérida, the only town of any importance is Cervera. Here there is a vast and hideous university building going to ruin; and two churches, one of which, with a square steeple, seems to be early in date, and the other—that of Sta. Maria, I believe—of the usual Catalan fourteenth-century type. This steeple was completed, in A.D. 1431, by an architect of Cervera, Pedro de Vall-llebrera; but it must have been long in progress, inasmuch as the principal bell—which was never to be tolled save for the funeral of a peer, a royal officer, or a bishop—was put in its place in A.D. 1377.[352] This bell has disappeared. On another, however, is this inscription:—“I.H.S.. Mateus. de. Ulmo. magister. cimbalorum. ville. Cervariæ. me. fecit. anno. a. nativitate. Domini. millesimo. quadringentesimo. vigesimo. quarto. Si. ergo. me. queritis. sinite. os. habire.” And on another—“+ Barbara. nos. serva. Christi. sanctissima. serva.”

Between Cervera and Lérida the country is very uninteresting until near the end of the journey, when a good view of Lérida, and the cliff above the river, is obtained. I have twice visited this interesting old city. In the autumn of 1861 I passed a day there, when the greater part of my time was spent in endeavouring to get admission into the cathedral, so that I only saw enough to make me wish to repeat my visit; and this I was fortunately able to accomplish in the spring of 1862. My readers will agree with me, when they have realized to themselves what is to be seen, that such a cathedral as that of Lérida is in itself worth the journey from England. Unfortunately its examination will always be beset with difficulties—if indeed it is allowed at all when visitors become more numerous than they have been hitherto.

The town consists mainly of one very long, tortuous street parallel with the river Segre, a broad, rapid stream, carrying the waters of a large part of the southern slopes of the Pyrenees into the Ebro at Mequinenza. There is an Alameda all along the river-bank, and at about midway in its length a large stone bridge across the river. Behind the town a hill rises rapidly—in some parts abruptly—to an elevation of, I suppose, about three hundred feet above the river; and on the summit of this stand the old cathedral, and some remains of other coeval buildings, now the centre of a formidable-looking, though really neglected, system of fortifications. Two other old churches—San Lorenzo and San Juan—remain, one in the upper part of the city, and the other on the Plaza, near the bridge. A modern cathedral, of the baldest and coldest Pagan type, but of great size, was built in the main street, near the river, when the old cathedral was converted into a fortress; and I cannot do better than quote Mr. Ford’s rather ironical statement of its history:—“The ruin,” he says, “of the old cathedral dates from 1707, when the French made it a fortress: nor has it ever been restored to pious uses; for in the piping times of peace the steep walk proved too much for the pursy canons, who, abandoning their lofty church, employed General Sabatani! to build them a new cathedral below, in the convenient and Corinthian style.” From the date of its desecration nothing whatever has been cared for; and it goes to one’s heart to see so noble a work, and one so sacred, put to such vile uses, and to so little purpose: for even now when Spain bristles with soldiers, and the whole nation is bitten with the love of military sights and sounds, the desecration of a sacred building is all that has been accomplished; for I believe that the Spaniards have seldom managed to hold possession of it against the French, and in its present dilapidated state are less than ever likely to do so.[353] The position is, however, a very strong one; and another hill to the west of the city is crowned with a second fort connected with it. Admission is only to be obtained by an order from the commandant of the district, who resides in the city below; and he very kindly sent a sub-officer to remain with me whilst I was in the fort, and with true Spanish courtesy came up himself to see that I gained admission to every part, and took great trouble to open doors some of which seemed hardly to have been opened since the Peninsular war!

The buildings now remaining consist of a church with an enormous cloister on its western side, and a lofty steeple at the south-west angle of the cloister. On the north side of the cloister is a large stone-roofed hall, and north of this again, and detached from the cathedral, are considerable fragments of what is called a castle, and these include another noble groined hall.

My ground-plan of the cathedral and its dependences will show at a glance how unusual and remarkable the whole scheme is. The south side of the church is built on the very edge of the precipitous cliff above the town and river, and the lofty tower is daringly balanced as it were on the most dangerous point of the whole ground. The mass of the whole group seen from below, and the vast height of the tower, are therefore singularly imposing, whilst the view obtained from the summit is one of rare magnificence. It is true that here the immediate neighbourhood is not lovely, but still the river does much towards converting to fruitfulness the usually arid-looking Aragonese soil of the district by clothing it with trees and verdure, and when last I saw it not only was the Segre a torrent of rushing waters, but on all sides the hills were covered with a wide expanse of vineyards and corn-fields; and beyond these were to be seen towering up in the far distance the grand range of the Pyrenees, touched here and there—on the Maladetta and some of the other high peaks—with lines of snow; whilst on the other side the lower mountain ranges of Aragon completed one of the most beautiful panoramas I have ever seen from church tower.

The documentary evidence as to the age of the existing buildings is fairly clear, and may as well be given at once. I derive all my facts from the papers printed in ‘España Sagrada;’[354] and besides those which more particularly interest me as an architect, there are in the volume which relates to Lérida some most interesting extracts from the proceedings of councils held there from A.D. 1175 to 1418, and of diocesan synods from the year 1240. These are full of information as to the customs of the church, and the rules affecting the clergy.[355]

The first stone of the new cathedral was laid in the time of the third bishop after the restoration, and in the presence of the king Don Pedro II. An inscription on a stone on the Gospel side of the choir, which I did not see, gives the date[356] as the 22nd July, 1203; and in A.D. 1215 the cloister was, in part at any rate, built, one Raymundo de Segarra having desired that he might be buried within its walls.[357] From this time to the consecration we have no notice of the building, if I except the following inscription still remaining on the eastern jamb of the south transept doorway, which proves the existence of that part of the church at the time mentioned:—“Anno Domini M: CCº: XV xi: Kal: Madii: obiit Gulielmus de Rocas: cuj: aīe: sit:” and there is a mention in ‘España Sagrada’ of the burial of Bishop Berenguer, in A.D. 1256, by one of the doors, called thenceforward after him. On the last day of October, A.D. 1278, the church was consecrated by Bishop Guillen de Moncada, and the record of this on the west wall is now concealed, but I give a copy of it.[358]

In 1286 Pedro de Peñafreyta, who had been master of the works, died;[359] he had probably been employed on the central lantern and the cloister, for which latter work, on the 21st of August, 1310, the king Don Jayme II. gave the stone;[360] circa A.D. 1320 Bishop Guillen founded a chapel; in 1323 the work of the “cloister and tower” was still going on;[361] and in 1327 alms were asked for the completion of the same work;[362] and again in 1335 the vicar-general, in the absence of the bishop, appealed for alms, “pro maximo et sumptuoso opere claustri ecclesiæ catedralis.”

In A.D. 1391 Guillermo Çolivella contracted to execute the statues for the doorway at the price of 240 sueldos each; and in A.D. 1490 Francisco Gomar contracted for the erection of a grand porch for 1600 sueldos. The steeple at the angle of the cloister seems to have been commenced about the end of the fourteenth century. The fabric-rolls for 1397 contain an item of 350 feet of stone from the river Daspe “for the work of the tower.” Other similar notices occur, and among them the names of two masters of the works, Guillelmo Çolivella and Cárlos Galtes de Ruan. It was probably completed before 1416; for in this year Juan Adam, “de burgo Sanctæ Mariæ, Turlensis diocesis, regni Franciæ,” contracted for the making of the great bell, which was finished in 1418, and commended by the chapter in these words—“Cujus sonitu et mentis vulnera sanari, et divinitatis singularis gratia possit conquiri.”[363] There are no other notices of the main portion of the fabric; but we know that, in A.D. 1414, Pedro Balaguer was sent from Valencia to examine the tower at Lérida before he built the tower called the Micalete in his own city; and we may conclude therefore that before this date the work at Lérida had been completely finished.

It is easy to distinguish the works referred to in these notices. The church, of which the first stone was laid in A.D. 1203, and which was consecrated in A.D. 1278, still remains almost as it was built; and there can be but little doubt that the greater part of the cloister is of the same date. The works for which stone was given, in A.D. 1310, were probably those in its western half, and possibly the lower part of the steeple; and the chapel, founded in A.D. 1320, must be one of those added on either side of the great south door, or on the east side of the south transept.

It is impossible not to feel greatly more interest in a church whose scheme is unusual, than in one of a common type, even when its detail is not of so high a value, or its scale less imposing. Here, however, we have both extreme novelty in the general scheme,[364] and extreme merit in all the detail. As one climbs the steep street which leads to the cathedral, where the open space around the fortifications is reached, the first general view of the buildings is most puzzling. The low outer wall of the cloister, with an enormous western doorway, the point of whose archway reaches to the top of the wall, the steeple on the extreme right, and the central lantern appearing to rise only just above the cloister wall, make a most unintelligible group. Making my way to the great doorway, I was astonished to find it to be the entrance, not of the church, as I at first assumed it to be, but only of the cloister; and not less disgusted to find that three sides of this cloister had been turned into barracks, a floor having been inserted all round at the level of the springing of the vault, so as to afford ample accommodation for some hundreds of soldiers, who sleep, cook, and live within its walls; whilst the eastern side is now a storehouse for arms and accoutrements, similarly divided by a floor, and without any visible trace of the doors of communication between church and cloister, which are said to be on this side. Yet this cloister is certainly, even in its present desecrated state, the grandest I have ever seen. Its scale is enormous, and much of its detail very fine. I have no doubt that it was a long time in progress, and this would account to some extent for the extreme irregularity of some of its parts. The bays, for instance, vary in width: the buttresses are variously treated; and the sculpture, which on the eastern side seems to be coeval with the earliest portion of the church, is evidently on the other sides of much later date—probably not earlier than A.D. 1300. The buttresses on the eastern side are carried on bold engaged columns with sculptured capitals, whilst most of the others are square in outline, with small engaged shafts in recesses at their angles. The arches are now all built up and plastered; but in two of those on the eastern side it is just possible to detect the commencement of traceries, from which it would seem that each arch had tracery above an arcade of three or four divisions. In its present state it is impossible to say more than this, or whether these traceries were original, though they seem to have been geometrical in style, and therefore probably later in date than the enclosing arches. The eastern half of the cloister has the outer arches richly adorned with complicated chevron and cable ornament, and the remainder of the arches are finely moulded. The interior is more uniform in character, the vault being quadripartite throughout, with very boldly moulded ribs; and the main piers, and the piers at the angles, being very exquisitely planned, with a number of detached shafts with well moulded bases, bands, and capitals, the latter carved with foliage and heads. The capitals and bases are square throughout the cloister. On the south side this cloister has openings in the outer wall corresponding with those opening into the inner court; and these, I think, also had traceries. Owing to the fall of the ground towards the edge of the cliff, these windows are high above the terrace outside, and very bold buttresses are placed between each of them. The effect of the cloister on the south side is that of an enormous ball: and this, in truth, is what it is. Its clear internal width varies from 26 ft. 6 in. to 27 ft. 6 in., and the height is quite in proportion. Occupied as it now is by hundreds of soldiers, one is tempted to ask, whether a building so far larger than could be required for a mere cloister may not have been built in the first instance to serve some double purpose; being, for instance, not only an ambulatory, but a refectory, and dormitory also. The way in which some of our own old buildings were fitted, with a chapel at the end of a series of cubicles on either side under the open roof of a great hall (as, e.g., St. Mary’s Hospital at Chichester, Chichele’s College Higham Ferrers, and a hospital at Leicester), seems to point to the possibility of some such utilizing of the vast space which these cloisters afford; and the more as it seemed to me that there were not the evidences that might have been expected of the existence at any time of the other dependent buildings required by a cathedral body in all cases, and more than usually here where the church was so far above and away from the city. I mentioned the western entrance of the cloister as being very large: it is a double doorway with niches for six statues in either jamb, and the orders of the archivolt are alternately of mouldings and niches for figures. The outer arch is crocketed between two great pinnacles. The carving has mostly been destroyed; but there is a poor sculpture of the Last Judgment in the tympanum. The doorway has evidently been added between two of the earlier buttresses of the cloister at about the end of the fourteenth century; its detail is extremely delicate and rich, and somewhat similar to that of the west doorway of Tarragona cathedral; and both are quite like very good French fourteenth-century work.

Unfortunately the doorways from the cloister to the church are now quite invisible, the wall being completely hidden by military packing-cases and arms.[365] This is the more to be regretted as the grandeur of the other doors leads me to suppose that the western doorway would be very fine.

No. 44. LÉRIDA OLD CATHEDRAL VIEW FROM STEEPLE. p. 353
No. 44.
LÉRIDA OLD CATHEDRAL
VIEW FROM STEEPLE. p. 353

It will be seen by reference to the plan that there is a steeple abutting against the south-west angle of the cloister; it is set against it in the most irregular fashion; and it is worth mention that the architect of the Micalete, at Valencia, who was directed to study this tower, imitated it even in this peculiarity. Here there seems, so far as I can see, to be no reason for the irregularity; and I can only conjecture that it may have been the consequence of some variation in the rock on which it stands. The entrance is by a staircase through a house, and thence by a newel staircase in the thickness of the wall. The steeple is octagonal in plan, and of five stages in height; the two lowest lighted by windows of one light; the third with windows of two; and the fourth with others of three lights, one in each face of the octagon. There is a rich parapet of open tracery, supported on corbels, to this stage, and a great pinnacle at each angle. The pinnacles are carried up from the ground, and are at present partly destroyed, and made to carry iron beacons instead of their old finish. The fifth stage stands entirely within the other; and its plan, as being the most interesting, is shown on my ground-plan of the whole building. Here each face of the octagon had a bold opening with a crocketed and traceried gable over it, and pinnacles at the angles, and probably a traceried parapet which no longer exists. The various stages are groined with stone vaults, and the whole construction is of the most dignified and solid description. The height from the terrace on the west side of the cloister to the top of the parapet is about 170 feet. The steeple looks much higher than this: but this is no doubt in great part owing to the enormous height above the city of the cliff on the edge of which it stands. The view of the church from the summit is so striking, and gives so clear an idea of its whole scheme, that I have engraved it. My drawing shows the cloister in the foreground, and the south-west view of the church beyond it. Here almost every part that is seen is of the earliest portion of the fabric, which seems to have been carried out on a regular plan from first to last. The church is cruciform, with a nave and aisles only three bays in length, and an octagonal lantern over the crossing. The choir and its aisles had three parallel apses east of the transept, and a fourth chapel was added in the fourteenth century, as were also two chapels on the south side of the nave. Two staircase-turrets on the west sides of the transepts (a favourite position for them in early Spanish churches) added much to the picturesqueness of the outline; but the upper part of one of these has unfortunately been destroyed, and the other was either carried up or altered at a later date—probably in the fourteenth century.

It will be seen that most of the windows are round-headed. Everywhere, however, the main arches are pointed; and this is, as I need hardly say, always characteristic of transitional buildings. The strange thing is, that in a church which was in building between A.D. 1203 and 1278 we should find such strong evidences of knowledge of nothing but twelfth-century art; and assuming the dates to be correct—as I think we must—it affords good evidence of the slow progress in this part of Spain of the developments which had at this time produced so great a change in the north of Europe. Either the whole building was built on the plan at first laid down, or else, having been commenced vigorously, and in great part finished, some delay must have been caused in its completion for consecration. The latter is no doubt the more probable supposition, because, whilst the whole of the walls up to the top of the clerestory seem to be of perfectly uniform character inside and out, the central lantern is evidently a work of circa A.D. 1260-1278, and one which could not have been designed so early as 1203. The sculpture of all the capitals throughout the interior, as well as that of the doorways, must also be set down to the commencement of the century; and the date of A.D. 1215, which occurs on the south transept front, seems to make it probable that at that time the work in this part of the church was well advanced.

The entrances to the cathedral are at present three in number,—a door in each transept and one in the south wall—in addition to the western doorway, which, if it exists, is now blocked up. These doors are all fine. That in the north transept is simple but effective: it has a simply-moulded semicircular arch, above which is a pointed arch with a stone in the enclosed space carved with A and Ω; and above it a very finely-sculptured horizontal cornice. The doorway is set forward a few inches from the wall, in the Lombard fashion. In the gable of the transept over it is a large moulded but untraceried circular window, and enough of an original stepped corbel-table under the eaves to show that the old pitch of the roofs was very flat, though somewhat steeper than at present. The south transept doorway is much finer: it has a richly-sculptured round arch; and on each side of the arch are niches—one containing a statue of St. Gabriel, and the other one of the Blessed Virgin. Under the exquisitely sculptured cornice which surmounts the door is inscribed, in large incised letters, the angelic salutation; whilst on the right jamb of the door is the inscription of the year 1215, given at p. 349. Above the doorway is, as in the other gables, a circular window; and here the fine early tracery with which it was filled in still remains. The whole detail of this front is of the finest kind, and must have been executed by men who knew something of the best Italian Romanesque work. Nothing can exceed the delicacy and care with which the whole was executed. The wheel is divided by eight octagonal shafts radiating from the centre, and these carry an order of sixteen semi-circular cusps, two to each division. These cusps are covered with the billet ornament, and their spandrels have sunk carved circles. The mouldings which enclose the window are rich and delicate in character; and though it is unfortunately now walled up, it is well preserved, and still extremely effective.

Cornice of South Transept Doorway.
Cornice of South Transept Doorway.

The last and grandest of the doors—the “Puerta dels Fillols” or of the Infantes—is in the centre bay of the south aisle. This is an example of singularly rich transitional work, with an archivolt enriched with mouldings, chevrons, dog-tooth, intersecting arches, and elaborate foliage. There is the usual horizontal cornice over the arch, and above this a fourteenth-century statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and our Lord. The horizontal cornice is carried on moulded corbels, between which and the wall are carvings of wyverns and other animals: whilst the soffeit of the cornice in each compartment is carved with delicate tracery panels, in some of which I thought I detected some trace of Moorish influence. The cornice has a delicate, trailing branch of foliage; and the label and two or three orders of the arch, in which sculpture of foliage is introduced, are remarkable for the singular delicacy and refinement of the lines of the foliage, and for the exceeding skill with which they have been wrought. There is none of that reckless dash which marks our carvers now-a-days, but in its place a patient elaboration of lovely forms, which cannot too much be praised. The mouldings here are all decidedly characteristic of the thirteenth century. The whole is now protected by a later—probably fifteenth century—vaulted porch, which occupies the space between two added chapels.[366] The effect is very good and picturesque, as will be seen by the illustration which I give; but as this porch is the storehouse for rockets and shells, I fear its beauties are likely to be a sealed book to most travellers, though, owing to the extreme courtesy of the commandant, I was so fortunate as to be allowed to see and sketch it at my leisure.

The original windows are all simple round-arched, with moulded arches, and shafts, with caps and bases in the jambs; those in the lantern and at the west ends of the aisles are of later date, and pointed. The west window is circular and very large, but without tracery; and there is a small lancet below it which is now blocked up by the roof of the cloister. No doubt this roof was originally a gabled stone roof with a gutter against the wall, so as to leave this window open.

The lantern is octagonal above the roof, with a window in each side, pilasters at the angles, and an arcaded corbel-table at the eaves. The staircase-turret on its north-west side is also octagonal, and rises above the eaves. The roof is original, and of stone.

No. 45. LÉRIDA OLD CATHEDRAL SOUTH PORCH.
No. 45.
LÉRIDA OLD CATHEDRAL
SOUTH PORCH.

The chapels which have been added seem all to have been built in the fourteenth century, and are much mutilated: they are good works of their age, but rather mar the general effect of the church, and do not call for much notice; two of them were closed, and I was unable to obtain admission to them.