Valladolid, a thriving, bustling place, as Spanish cities go, stands on the rivers Pisuerga and Esgueva, a few miles above the confluence of their united streams with the Duero. All round spreads the vast, dreary plain of Castile, interrupted within sight of the town by a ring of low hills. Trains thunder past from north, south, and west, keeping Valladolid in close touch with Madrid, with France, with Portugal, and with the rest of the world. The natural centre, this, of the old kingdom of Leon and Castile, of which it was for a long time the political capital.
The etymology of the name has perplexed historians not a little. The most probable derivation is from the Arabic Belad-Walid, the valley of Walid, or (as likely) of the Wali or governor. In Latin documents the name is Vallisoletum, from which the poetical etymology, vallis odoris, was ingeniously manufactured. Though a great many of the towns in this part of Spain were founded on fresh sites on the resettlement of the country in the ninth and tenth centuries, Valladolid can, with some show of probability, claim a more remote origin. The contention of the old writers that this was the town called Pintia, described by Ptolemy as lying on the road from Caesaraugusta to Asturica, is to some extent borne out by numerous remains, attesting the existence at this spot of a Roman community of opulence and importance.
The earliest mention of the place since the Christian era occurs in the Chronicle of Cardeña, where in the year 1072 it is referred to as one of the two towns (Rio Seco being the other) offered to Doña Urraca by her brother, Sancho, in exchange for Zamora. We may presume, therefore, that it was already a place of some consequence. In 1074 it was handed over by Alfonso VI. to Count Pedro Ansúrez, the companion of his exile at Toledo. This noble plays the same part in its history as Count Raymond does in that of Salamanca. The principal buildings, such as Santa Maria la Antigua and the bridge over the Pisuerga, are ascribed to him. He founded and generously endowed the collegiate church of Santa Maria la Mayor, with the adjacent abbey, of which, in after years, infantes and the sons of the most exalted persons were alone deemed worthy to be abbots. The famous Bernard, Archbishop of Toledo, came to bless the church, with the not less famous Alvar Fañez, who was Count Pedro’s son-in-law. When good King Alfonso passed away, Ansúrez took the oath of allegiance to his daughter, Queen Urraca, and to her husband, ‘The Battler of Aragon.’ When the royal twain came to blows, the count surrendered all the strongholds he held to the queen, and presented himself to the king, saying that ‘with the hands, the tongue, and the body which had paid him homage,’ he could do as he willed. Alfonso the Battler let him depart unmolested, and he was laid to rest in 1118, clothed in his armour, in the collegiate church he had endowed.
The lordship of Valladolid now passed to Armengol, son of Count Pedro’s eldest daughter, by the Count of Urgel. Under his sway the city prospered exceedingly. King Alfonso VII. chose it for the place of his marriage with a Polish princess, and for several ecclesiastical councils. Two more counts of the same name continued the dynasty of Ansúrez till the year 1208; but of these the town saw little, for as Counts of Urgel they were vassals of Aragon, and spent most of their time in that kingdom. The last count left half of his Castilian dominions to the Pope, the other half to his daughter Aurembiax, who was believed to be the mistress of the King of Aragon. Alfonso VIII. of Castile can hardly, therefore, be blamed for setting aside a disposition which handed over the principal town in his kingdom to two foreign potentates. In the year 1208, accordingly, the city was incorporated with the monarchy. Soon after (1215) it became for the first time the royal residence—that of the Queen-Regent Berenguela and her youthful charge, Don Enrique I.; and in accordance with this precedent, two years later, Fernando III. was crowned here, in the Plaza Mayor. Thenceforward the town became the usual seat of the court, though an official capital in the modern sense Spain did not possess till Philip II.’s time. The last years of the thirteenth century saw the reins of government in the hands of a native of Valladolid, the Queen-Regent, Maria de Molina, widow of Sancho el Bravo. Her predilection for her own birthplace practically extinguished the pretensions of Burgos to rank as capital, and during her stormy regency Valladolid stood by her loyally. She was not the least capable or intrepid of the many able women-rulers by whom Spain has been so well served.
Though the seat of government, Valladolid was not wanting in the turbulent, independent spirit characteristic of the Castilian cities. In 1328 a rumour spread abroad that the king’s Jewish treasurer, Joseph, was about to carry off the Infanta Leonor, and to marry her to the detested favourite, Nuñez Osorio. Sure enough the princess presently appeared, mounted and attended by an escort, as if proceeding on a journey. The citizens forced her to return to the palace, and clamoured for the head of the treasurer. Leonor promised to satisfy them if they would permit her to go to the Alcazar, or citadel, whither she contrived to convey the trembling Hebrew concealed among her retinue. Safe inside the fortress, Infanta and Jew set the mob at defiance, and sustained a siege till relieved by the king. Comically enough, Alfonso dismissed his favourite on the ground that he was the cause of these disturbances, while the Infanta married the Prince of Portugal, whom she had been on her way to meet when forced back by the crowd.
Women figure largely in the history of Valladolid. Here in the church of Santa Maria la Mayor, Peter the Cruel was married to the hapless Blanche de Bourbon, to leave her three days later. It was only by the entreaties of his mistress, Maria de Padilla, that he could be persuaded to return to his wife; but unable to overcome his repugnance to the poor princess, he again abandoned her a few days after, this time for ever.
The convent of La Merced owes its origin to another case of erratic passion. Donha Leonor Telles de Meneses had been torn from the arms of her first husband, João Lourenço d’Acunha, by the King of Portugal, who raised her to the throne. D’Acunha retired to Valladolid, where he was buried in the church of Santa Maria la Antigua. In the course of time Leonor’s second husband also died, and she also came to Valladolid, possibly to see what had become of the first. Doubly a widow, she found consolation in the affection of a knight named Zoilo Iñiguez, by whom she had a daughter called Maria. Leonor’s experience of love and matrimony led her at her death to charge her daughter’s guardian, one Laserna, to dedicate the girl to religion, and to found a convent for her special accommodation. Before this could be accomplished, Maria, who believed herself to be a relation of Laserna, fell in love with his nephew, and incontinently married him. On discovering the secret of her origin, she so far complied with her mother’s wish as to build a convent, in which Queen Leonor as the foundress was entombed.
About the same time, by order of Juan I., the old Alcazar, round which the town had been built, was demolished to make room for the existing convent of San Benito. The monastery of San Pablo became the residence of the court during the minority of Juan II. That king may be said to have lived here permanently, and to have confirmed Valladolid in its dignity as capital of the realm. As such it was the scene of much splendour and chivalrous display under the rule of the high-minded favourite, the great Constable Alvaro de Luna. And it was in the little Plaza del Ochavo, in the centre of the town, having run his course as a true knight and a wise statesman, that he met his fate with the dignity and composure which had distinguished him during his whole career.
The place of his execution was chosen by his enemies as precisely the scene of his greatest triumphs. He was confined during his last night in the house of his enemy, Zuñiga, where he passed the hours ‘in great contrition and affliction of spirit.’ ‘The melancholy 2nd of June 1453 dawned,’ says Don Jose Quadrado, ‘and in the Plaza del Ochavo, which then formed the principal square of Valladolid, loomed a scaffold draped with black cloth, and above it a cross set with lighted tapers. On a post was fixed the spike destined to receive the severed head. The Constable was conducted to the spot by the streets of Francos, Cantarranas, and Plateria, mounted on a mule with black trappings, and preceded by a crier, whose violent denunciations drew from him only the humble words, Más merezco (“I deserve more”). Alighting on the side of the church of San Francisco, and mounting the scaffold with firmness, having knelt before the cross, he hesitated whether he should address the people, when he perceived among the crowd his faithful page Moreles, and Barrasa, esquire to Don Enrique. He told the latter to adjure his master not to follow the example of the king, his father, in the way of rewarding his servants; to the former he gave his signet-ring, which the youth received weeping, not a few of the bystanders weeping loudly also. “With my body they may do as they please,” he said on perceiving the spike and divining its object; and baring his throat, and his hands being bound with his own girdle, he offered his head to the executioner, who a few seconds later held it up, dripping with blood, before the horror-stricken people. The body remained exposed three, and the head nine days, with a box beside it to receive alms. With these he was buried among malefactors in the hermitage of San Andrés outside the walls; but at the end of two months he was given a more decent sepulture in San Francisco, where he lay till the rehabilitation of his memory and his magnificent entombment thirty-one years later in the cathedral of Toledo.’
The feeble and ungrateful king (Juan II.) survived his favourite little more than a year, and died at the convent of San Pablo, which had been his usual abode. Valladolid remained steadily loyal to his miserable successor, Enrique IV., when scarcely another town in his dominions would harbour him. Yet, strangely enough, it was in this city, in the house of Juan Vivero (where the Audiencia now stands), that the king’s sister Isabel, in defiance of his wishes, celebrated in secret, but with great ceremony, her marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon. This was on October 18, 1469—an auspicious night for Spain. But the city was too full of Enrique’s partisans to afford a safe asylum to the newly-wedded pair, who immediately betook themselves to Dueñas.
Valladolid, always on the side of authority, accepted ‘the Catholic Kings’ on the death of Enriqùe, to the exclusion of Juana, whom a modern writer inexplicably calls that monarch’s illegitimate daughter. She was barred from the succession on the ground that she was not his daughter at all. The vigorous but hardly beneficent rule of Ferdinand and Isabel was celebrated in 1489 by eighteen persons being burned alive in the Plaza Mayor, while a few years after the city was emptied of its Jewish inhabitants. A whole quarter left tenantless, deserted homes, and smoking human sacrifices marked the inauguration of the New Monarchy in Valladolid. Yet the city prospered, and was too busy to notice the worn-out adventurer, the Admiral of the Indies, the immortal Christopher Columbus, who died within its walls on May 20, 1506. But all their prosperity could not reconcile the sturdy citizens to the arbitrary government of Charles V.’s regents. Valladolid threw in her lot with the Comunidad. Her sons bled in the cause of liberty beside Padilla on the fatal field of Villalar; and when the Flemish emperor proclaimed an amnesty on visiting the city in 1522, many of her townsmen found themselves among the three hundred specially excluded from its operation.
Philip II. was born here on May 21, 1527; here he was married to his first and Portuguese wife; here also she died in giving birth to his luckless son Carlos. Yet it was this native of Valladolid who reduced it to the rank of a provincial city, and in the year 1560 definitely declared Madrid to be the unica corte, the official capital of Spain. This measure has been variously criticised, but it is certainly difficult to perceive the advantages which the new capital possessed over the old, or over Toledo or Zaragoza. This loss of dignity was followed by a more dreadful catastrophe. Valladolid was devastated by a fire in the night of September 21, 1561, four hundred and forty houses being destroyed, though only three persons lost their lives. The silversmiths, for whom the city was renowned, saved their wares by throwing them into the wells. The conflagration was caused by the sparks blown from a fire lit by some beggars in the shadow of a wall. Possibly the citizens were reminded of those other flames so frequently kindled in their midst by the abominable Inquisition, when men and women were roasted to death in the presence and with the approval of His Catholic Majesty Philip II. The furious element was less destructive than the Holy Office.
The city was practically rebuilt by order of the despot, and as a mark of his favour he persuaded the Pope to erect it into a diocese in the last years of the sixteenth century. His successor, with a judgment of which he rarely gave proof, reinstated Valladolid in its rank of capital of the monarchy, and resided here in the palace facing San Pablo (now the Audiencia). Here Anne of Austria and Philip IV. were born. Cervantes lived here in one of the houses in the Rastro behind the Campo Grande, where he finished the first part of Don Quixote. His experience of the city was unfortunate. He was, together with his family, imprisoned on the charge of being implicated in a night brawl, wherein as a matter of fact he had simply played the part of Good Samaritan. His brother wits and the literati unceasingly assailed Valladolid as unworthy the residence of the court, and after five years Philip III. was obliged, professedly because the city was unhealthy, to restore Madrid to its pre-eminence. The abandoned capital was hit very hard. Industry and commerce languished, nothing but the religious vocation flourished. The project of rendering the Duero and Pisuerga navigable for large vessels was given up, and, to crown all, the Moriscos to the number of one thousand were expelled, taking the silk industry with them. Inundations and all sorts of calamities followed in quick succession. Whatever money men earned in moribund Castile, they used to build churches and convents. The city’s attachment to the Bourbon cause in the War of the Spanish Succession disposed Philip V. to transfer the court hither a second time; but the pre-eminence of Madrid was too firmly established to permit this. The French invaders, a hundred years ago, found the place ruined and stagnant. Since then Valladolid has awakened from her sleep. The opening of the North of Spain Railway, and the establishment here of the company’s loco-motive works, gave a great impetus to her progress, and she is now an important commercial town, the centre of the corn trade of Castile. No Spanish city north of the Guadarrama gives such promise as Valladolid.
A city which was so long the capital of the monarchy—the city where Columbus died and Cervantes lived—whose streets are haunted by the immortal creature of Le Sage’s genius—can be no unworthy goal for a pilgrimage. It has memories far more stirring than Madrid, which in physiognomy it rather resembles. A cold, formal town it seems at first sight, with modern-looking squares, straight streets, and severe, imposing buildings; but behind these you find the old city of Juan II. and Enrique IV., a labyrinth of tortuous lanes, gloomy palaces, and ruinous monastic houses.
The handsome Accra de Recoletos, which looks across the spacious Campo Grande—the city’s principal park—leads from the triumphal Puerta del Carmen, commemorating the reign of Charles III., to the majestic Arch of Santiago. We pass through, and presently reach the Plaza Mayor, now called the Plaza de la Constitucion, the focus of the city’s life.
A minor Puerta del Sol, Ford calls this regular, symmetrically planned open space, designed after the great fire of 1561 by Francisco Salamanca. The houses enclosing it are of uniform architecture, with three tiers of balconies in the three Grecian orders, capable, it is said, of accommodating 24,000 spectators. The portico is supported by massive granite columns of a bluish tinge, each a monolith. On the north side is the ungraceful Ayuntamiento (Town Hall), with weather-vanes on its towers and martial trophies surmounting the town clock. The space is as lively and gay as any in Spain. The sun shines brightly, the birds fly as freely overhead as across the innocent plains; here there is no deeper shadow than elsewhere, no abiding gloom or ghostly chill. Yet if ever a spot deserved to be called accursed it is this. Let us project ourselves back into the past, to a bright morning in May in the year 1559. The balconies have not yet been built, but stands and tiers of seats have been constructed round the Plaza. There is a grand display of bunting, and the richest draperies are hung from the crowded windows—silks and cloth of gold and silver, damasks and brocades. On a daïs are seen the little prince, Don Carlos, and his aunt the Infanta Juana. The civic dignitaries of the town are here, the craftsmen in their liveries; but making the bravest show of all are the bishop and the clergy, arrayed in full canonicals, as befits the solemn Act of Faith at which they are about to assist. The square is packed with a vast multitude—men have come from far and near to see this thing—and people are pouring down the narrow streets, an unceasing stream. All eyes are fixed on the platform in the centre of the Plaza, whereon faggots and brushwood are neatly piled round fourteen pillars, and busy varlets are bestirring themselves. A subdued murmur betokens the approach of the procession. For the alguazils who clear the way, for the horribly clad familiars of the Holy Office who stalk before, the spectators have no eyes: the gaze of those thousands is levelled on the fourteen men and women walking slowly to their awful doom. Were ever creatures so shockingly grotesque? They wear a perfectly ridiculous headgear, like an elongated nightcap, or a hat such as our grenadiers wore in days gone by; a sort of smock covers their bodies, an ugly flame-coloured garment, painted with figures of dancing and grimacing devils. You can hardly restrain a smile. I’ll wager those gallants yonder are cracking some clever jokes at their expense, for the Latin is by nature a wag. We all know who they are, these wretches. Not long before Valladolid was thrilled by the rumour that a Lutheran conventicle had been discovered here in the heart of His Most Catholic Majesty’s capital. A holy woman, suspicious of her husband’s orthodoxy, had followed him one day, found him in the midst of this heretical assembly, and denounced him to the Holy Office. That is the man, Juan Garcia, a goldsmith whom all the townsmen have known and dealt with this many a year. Where’s his wife? somewhere in the crowd, doubtless, praying for his soul. Virtue like hers is worthy of heroines or devils. Most notable of the heretical crew is the Doctor Cazalla, one of the king’s most notable preachers; but the Holy Inquisitors are no respecters of persons. They would drag you from behind the throne. The priest with the Doctor is his brother Francisco. The woman is his sister, Doña Beatriz. Burn a woman? Ay, surely. There are four more, one of them a serving-wench. That black-avised fellow is a mere Jew from Lisbon—there is little sympathy for him. Then there are four gentlemen, and—hold!—one has a gag in his mouth. It is the Bachelor, Antonio Herrerruelo, an obstinate fellow, who will not recede one hair’s-breadth from his heretical opinions or concede one iota. The sixteen that follow interest us less. They have been reconciled with Mother Church, and for them no worse fate is reserved than the confiscation of all their goods and solitary confinement for life. Ha! one of them has fainted. It is the youthful daughter of the Marqués de Alcañias, Doña Ana Enriques. They say that one of this batch is an Englishman. Perhaps he has seen Catholics hanged, drawn, and quartered in his own land, and can forgive the Spaniard.
The learned Dominican in the pulpit reads the sentences of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition, and we may be sure his voice shakes with paternal tenderness when he absolves those who are passing into the shadow of perpetual imprisonment. As for those fourteen others—the Church has done with them, and in sorrow, not in anger, she hands them over to the secular arm.
Now who will face the flames? for even the secular arm is merciful at the eleventh hour. Thousands of eyes are strained towards the scaffold. What is passing? Cazalla is making a farewell speech. Is he obdurate? No; from mouth to mouth the rumour runs that he professes penitence, that he abjures his errors. His brothers, the women—look at their blanched faces!—mutter some such words. Their necks are encircled by the collars of the garrote—they stand on the well-laid pyre. But it is not lighted yet. Swiftly the executioner steps from one post to the other. A quiet turn of the screw, and the souls of the heretics have fled, and the flames may have their corpses.
But he with the gag, Herrerruelo? We watch him breathlessly. At all admonitions he simply shakes his head. The executioner even hesitates to fire the pile. He has his hand on the spring of the garrote. A word from the heretic, and he will be dead, unscorched, instantaneously. It is useless. Herrerruelo will not speak that word. The fire is lighted. The logs crackle and blaze. We can hardly see the victim’s form. No groan nor sigh escapes him. But on his face, says one close to him, is stamped the extremest sadness that ever human being knew. Is it for yourself, Castilian of the old Roman mould? Nay, rather, I think, for your country which you see perishing beside you slowly but inevitably on the pyre of fanaticism and superstition.
It is over. The integrity of the faith of Spain has been vindicated. But the heroism of Herrerruelo soon finds imitators. His wife follows him to the flames a few years later. Philip II. himself comes to assist at a superb act of faith which demands another holocaust. He solemnly swears to defend the faith and to enforce the decrees of its tribunal. ‘And you leave me to burn?’ is the bitter reproach a Veronese gentleman among the doomed men dares to address to the king. ‘Ay,’ says Philip, ‘I would bring the wood myself to burn my own son were he a heretic.’ There was thus something of the Roman spirit on both sides. The brave Italian’s fortitude so inspires a fellow-sufferer that he leaps gaily into the flames, calling for wood, more wood.
The shame of the Inquisition rests not on the Spanish people. The citizens of Valladolid were kept in check on these dreadful occasions only by large bodies of troops. Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, dared not go forth without an armed escort of two hundred and fifty men. The Spaniards of to-day, with few exceptions, refer to the institution with expressions of abhorrence, startling even to Protestant ears. But it must be admitted that some writers more or less half-heartedly attempt a defence. Don J. M. Quadrado observes that the Holy Office saved the country from the horrors of religious wars, to which the obvious rejoinder is that the wars of religion, judged by their results, proved less disastrous to France, Germany, and Switzerland, than the policy of repression proved to Spain, and that the religious unity of other countries, such as Italy and Austria, has been preserved with comparatively little physical suasion.
We will leave the Plaza Mayor, this bright place with such gloomy memories, and see what monuments Faith has raised of a more honourable and durable kind. We cross the prettily named Place of the Golden Fountain, and the Plaza del Ochavo, where Alvaro de Luna died, and a little farther on find the Cathedral of Valladolid.
This church was begun in 1585, by order of Philip II., and replaced the old Iglesia Mayor founded by Pedro Ansúrez. The work was intrusted to Herrera, the architect of the Escorial, but his plans were never fully carried out, and the cathedral remains to-day unfinished, and also unfortunately marred by Churriguera and his disciples. The style of Herrera very eloquently expressed the temper and spirit, if not of the Spain of his day, certainly of his sovereign. The model of the church is to be seen in the muniment room. It is cruciform, the nave and transept to be flanked with aisles and chapels, the crossing to be surmounted by a dome, and a tower to be at each of the four corners. Only one of the towers was ever finished, and that collapsed in 1841; it is now being rebuilt. Street, who is very severe on all non-Gothic buildings in Spain, says that ‘nothing could ever cure the hideous unsightliness of the exterior. Herrera’s west front was revised by Churriguera in the eighteenth century, and cannot therefore be fairly criticised; but the side elevation remains as Herrera designed it, and is really valuable as a warning. Flying buttresses were, of course, an abomination; so in their place he erected enormous solid buttresses above the aisles to resist the thrust of the nave vault. They are shapeless blocks of masonry, projecting about forty feet from the clerestory wall, and finished with a horrid concave line at the top.’
The interior is not wanting in majesty and massiveness. Only the nave, with its aisles and chapels, has been completed. The huge piers carry bold arches, separated by a broad cornice from a plastered and panelled groined ceiling. The walls are destitute of ornament, but over the arched entrances to the chapels runs an open gallery with balustrades. The aisles have been obstructed by ‘provisional chapels,’ which Herrera would have indignantly swept away; and the choir, which he intended to place behind the High Altar, is now placed so as to block the best view of the nave. The Capilla Mayor, placed in the crossing, is in bad taste, with innumerable doors and tribunes piercing its walls. One cannot but agree with the Spanish writer who says that nothing is wanting to destroy the impression of ‘a grand whole,’ which Herrera was especially anxious to create.
The choir stalls, mostly from the convent of San Pablo, were designed by the architect, and display some fine inlay work. The remainder are in the Gothic style, and come from the old church. The chapels contain nothing worthy of note, except a picture by Lucas Jordaens, and the tomb of Count Pedro Ansúrez, whose remains were brought here from the church he founded. A very poor effigy represents the hero, whose merits are set forth in rhymed verse.
In the sacristy is one of the finest specimens of the metal-work for which Spain has always been renowned. The solid silver monstrance, by Juan de Arfe, is 6½ feet high, and weighs upwards of 150 lbs. It is in the shape of a temple in four stories, two of which are octagonal, and two circular. Statuettes of Adam and Eve, and a relief of the mystery of the Conception, adorn this exquisite work, for which the artificer received 44,000 reals.
Adjacent to the cathedral are some remains of the Iglesia Mayor, founded by Pedro Ansúrez, and rebuilt in the reign of St. Ferdinand. A doorway, still standing, and the various scattered pillars are in the Romanesque style, but there are also traces of Gothic work. A cloister existing at the end of the sixteenth century is described as one of the finest in Spain, containing many sculptures, all coloured, and tombs of notable people. Part of this cloister has gone to form a room called the Library, but that it still contains books I was unable to ascertain.
The Iglesia Mayor is said to have been built at the same time as the church of Santa Maria la Antigua, on the other side of the square, and both by Count Ansúrez. Comparing conflicting testimony, and the opinions of various architects, the conclusion would appear to be that the church was founded before the Count’s time (for it is mentioned in documents as far back as 1088, and was in his day called the Ancient), and that the existing fabric dates mainly from the reign of Alfonso IX. (1230-44)—not from the time of the alleged restorer, Alfonso XI. Santa Maria is, beyond doubt, the most interesting church in the city. Its lofty steeple, with tiled roof and semicircular windows in all its four stages, is one of the few prominent landmarks of the wayfarer to Valladolid. The side apses are Romanesque, but the nave terminates in an apse, Gothic in style, and pierced with lancet windows. The buttresses taper off into graceful finials, with crockets and gargoyles. The main apse and transept are both pierced near the roof with an elegant openwork balustrade. The steeple is thoroughly Lombard in character.
The interior exhibits an interesting blending of the Romanesque and Gothic styles. On the outer door, defaced by a modern portico, formerly hung the knockers wrenched off the gates of the Mezquita at Cordova by the first Count Armengol. The mouldings of the arch are Romanesque, but Gothic is the beautiful groining of the interior. At the west end of the church is a gallery for the choir, with stalls and organ. In the days when this was built churches were built for the laity, and the clergy did not insist on taking up the greater part of the nave, as they did in after years. The chapel of the Counts of Cancelada contains some good paintings. The most valuable accessory is, however, the reredos by the celebrated Juan de Juni, begun in 1551 and finished in 1557. The work betrays an extraordinary degree of skill and vigour, but it is over-elaborate and in parts fantastic.
On the north this venerable church is flanked by a very beautiful Romanesque cloister of fourteen semicircular arches in three bays. The shafts, says Street, are moulded and wrought in imitation of the coupled columns of early Italian artists. This cloister, together with the steeple, makes up the most picturesque group of buildings in Valladolid, and is well worth careful preservation, if not restoration.
We will visit the University on the south side of the square another time, and will now thread our way northwards to the Plaza de San Pablo, a very interesting site. At the corner of the Calles de las Angustias and San Martin is the house where the Andalusian painter Alonso Cano is said to have killed his wife. He fled (so we are told) in consequence to his native city of Granada, where he became a prebendary of the cathedral, and executed his finest work. The church of San Martin is a very ordinary seventeenth-century structure; but it was founded soon after the resettlement of the city, and preserves its steeple, in the same style as that of Santa Maria la Antigua, and dating from about 1200. There was a baseless story that this was originally a Moorish watch-tower.
The Dominican monastery of San Pablo was founded in 1276 by Queen Violante, the rebellious consort of Alfonso XI. Maria de Molina showered favours on the community, whose friendly rivals, the Franciscans, were established in the Plaza Mayor. Later on, as we have said, Juan II. made the building his home, and died here in 1454—near to, if not in, the odour of sanctity. Here, too, the Cortes often used to sit. The present building may be considered the creation of Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (not the notorious Inquisitor), whose death took place in 1468. The façade was constructed in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and restored in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries; it is a debased late-Gothic style, the main object of the architects being evidently to multiply evidences of their skill. In this they succeeded, for no one can question the merit of the execution. The riotous exuberance of the decoration renders a description difficult. The doorway is placed within an arch of a curious waved line. On either side are shown saints of the order, standing on pedestals, with pinnacle-like canopies above them. Above the arch is an indifferent relief of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, attended by Cardinal Torquemada with his patron saints, the Baptist and the Evangelist. All this part of the decoration is enclosed within an ugly flattened arch. Above is the figure of Christ Enthroned, and on each side of Him a trefoil arch containing the figures of the Four Evangelists. These arches frame windows with exquisite traceries, such as fill the circular window above the Christ. The upper part of the façade is in three stages, each filled with figures of saints and heraldic devices. ‘Every vacant space,’ says Street, ‘seems to have a couple of angels holding coats-of-arms, so that it is impossible not to feel that the sculptor and the founder must have had some idea of heaven as peopled by none with less than a proper number of quarterings on their shields, or without claim to the possession of Sangre Azul.’ The arms displayed on the lower part of the façade are not, however, those of Torquemada, but of the Duke of Lerma, the favourite of Philip III., by whom the church was restored. Here he celebrated his first Mass in the year 1618, having sought refuge in the church from the cares of state, or the disappointments of a courtier’s life; and here, too, he was ultimately buried. The church was plundered and dismantled by the French during the Peninsular War, and the interior is now inaccessible to visitors.
On the other side of the Plazuela is the palace built by Lerma on the site of the house where Don Carlos was born, and sold by him to Philip III. for thirty-seven million maravedis. The façade is simple, not undignified, and adorned with the royal arms over the doorway. The patio, or inner quadrangle, is decorated with busts of the Roman emperors and the arms of the old provinces of Spain. Here, says Ford, Napoleon took up his quarters on that memorable visit to Spain which at once altered the complexion of affairs. The building is now the Audiencia, or Law Court.
Philip II. was born in the house at the corner of the square and the Calle Cadesa de San Gregorio, and baptized in the church of San Pablo. Except for its associations, the house is uninteresting.
Next to San Pablo is the Colegio San Gregorio, built by Alonso de Burgos, Isabel the Catholic’s Confessor, in remembrance of his student days at the former establishment. The work, elaborate as it is, occupied only eight years—1488 to 1496. The architect, Matias Carpintero, for some unknown reason committed suicide before its completion in 1490. The façade of the main entrance resembles that of the older foundation. The design displays more originality, but the execution is by no means as good. The lintel and jambs of the square doorway are decorated by a relieved pattern of fleur-de-lys, and enclosed within an arched canopy of fanciful outline. On either side of the doorway are statues of wild men—possibly an allusion to the discovery of America—and over the lintel a relief represents the founder kneeling before the patron saint. From the canopy, twisted tapering pillars soar upwards and divide the upper stage into three parts. The middle one is occupied by the relief of a pomegranate tree springing from a basin, and sheltering children and birds among its branches; it supports the coat-of-arms of Ferdinand and Isabel. The lateral divisions contain figures supporting escutcheons, the whole being ‘even more extremely heraldic in its decorations’ than San Pablo. The open-work, cusping at the top, looks as if made of coarse wicker-work, and is happily fast disappearing under the corrosive effects of frost and rain. The interior of San Gregorio wearies the eye with its excess of heraldic decoration. The inner court, notwithstanding, is noble and spacious, with a double gallery of six arches on each side springing from spirally-fluted columns. The fleur-de-lys appear on the arms of the founder; the yoke and sheaf of arrows are the well-known devices of the Catholic kings. The chapel was stripped by the French of all of value that it contained, including the sepulchral effigy of Alonso de Burgos. The college is now one of the municipal buildings.
The secularised church and convent of San Benito on the west side of the town were founded by Juan I. on the site of the old Alcazar, in reparation for a Benedictine house destroyed by his father. The actual fabric was commenced in 1453, and hardly completed three centuries later. The plan of the church reminds one of Santa Maria la Antigua. The interior is lofty and impressive. There are two choirs—one in the western gallery, and the other, as usual in Spain, in the middle of the church, and enclosed by brick walls. The church was very strongly built, and is, appropriately enough, occupied by the military.
In the church of La Magdalena is buried Bishop Pedro de la Gasca, who recovered Peru for the monarchy from the clutches of Pizarro. His tomb in the centre of the transept was chiselled by Esteban Jordán in 1577.
The other churches of Valladolid hardly repay a visit. We may now turn our attention to the University, close to the Antigua Church. Founded in the eleventh century, this institution rose into importance only on the decline of the University of Salamanca. The statues of its patrons—Alfonso VIII., Alfonso XI., Juan I., and Enrique III.—surmount the grotesque and extravagant façade, which is in the worst baroque or Churrigueresque style. Older and more interesting are the English and Scots Colleges. The former was founded by Sir Francis Englefield in 1590 or thereabouts, for the education of young Englishmen for the Catholic priesthood. The Scots College is an analogous institution, founded by Colonel Sempill at Madrid in 1627, and transferred hither in 1771. The Irish College is at Salamanca. Both seminaries are still resorted to, to some extent, by youths from the United Kingdom, though a novitiate in Valladolid might not seem an adequate training for parochial work in English cities or Highland glens.
Sculpture is the art that has been least cultivated in Spain. Exceptional interest attaches, therefore, to the Museum of Valladolid, which contains a valuable collection of the works of native sculptors, or rather carvers. The building itself is the old College of Santa Cruz, built in 1486 by the famous Enrique de Egas, and intended by the founder, Cardinal Mendoza (el tercer Rey) to harbour impoverished genius. The exterior is surmounted by a balustrade, and strengthened with buttresses tapering into pinnacles. The principal façade is a fine example of Plateresque work, with much that is Gothic about the detail. The coats-of-arms of the Catholic kings and of the founder appear, of course, in the decoration, and the cardinal is shown adoring the cross upheld by St. Helen. The inner court is surrounded by a triple tier of galleries, with semicircular arches, octagonal pillars, and elegant balustrades.
Within these walls have been collected treasures from the demolished, dismantled, and disused churches, convents, and palaces of the city, many of the objects now here having been removed from their original positions by the French and left behind them in the hurry of flight. Here we find the retablo executed between 1526 and 1532 for the church of San Benito by Alonso Berruguete. Street, who disliked all the works of the Renaissance, denounced this altarpiece in unmeasured terms; but no impartial critic can deny the beauty of certain of the figures, notably those of Abraham and St. Sebastian. In the museum may also be seen the choir stalls from the same church, carved by the master in 1528—ten years before he designed the silleria of Toledo. The work displays marvellous imagination and great delicacy in the execution.
The genius of Juan de Juni, who was living at Valladolid in 1570, is best represented by his wooden statue of the Dead Christ, from the convent of San Francisco. So ghastly is the realism of this figure, that looking at the rigid limbs—more like those of a gladiator than of the Crucified—we feel that corruption is about to take place, and avert our eyes in horror. One is tempted to hold one’s nose, as Murillo is said to have done while contemplating a canvas by Valdes Leal. Not less vigorous and infinitely more attractive is the noble statue of St. Bruno by the same sculptor.
Gregorio Hernandez was the last of the trio of carver-sculptors who lived and worked at Valladolid. He was an indefatigable and prolific worker, and never doubted that the sole mission of art was to serve the purposes of religion. He died in 1636, in Juni’s old house, at No. 37 Calle de San Luis. He is well represented in this museum. St. Teresa is perhaps his best work, but shows his want of vigour as compared with his two predecessors. It was Hernandez who unfortunately set the example of draping statues with nets and fabrics, since followed with such unhappy results.
Few artists on canvas, or in stone or wood, have so well expressed the evil passions of the mob as the unknown sculptor of Christ bearing the Cross. The multitude is composed, of course, of local types—of those ferocious bravos and audacious picaros who abounded in Spain at that time, and whose ugliest characteristics are here caught and rendered with astonishing realism. A different genius is exemplified by the beautiful statues in bronze gilt of the Duke and Duchess of Lerma, which once decorated their tombs at San Pablo. They were begun by an Italian, Pompeio Leoni, but completed, it is believed, by another hand.
The pictures in the museum are not of great importance. The Assumption and two other works by Rubens are in bad condition, and almost surpassed in interest by some pleasing productions of the modern Spanish school.
Not far from the museum is the house where Columbus died (No. 7 Cristobal Colon). He came hither on his return from his last voyage in 1504, and languished here, absolutely neglected by the cold-hearted Ferdinand, for eighteen months. From Philip and Joanna he hoped to obtain a fuller recognition of his services, and upon their landing in Spain he sent them the assurance of his homage and respect. Philip acknowledged this in a generous and kindly spirit—an act which, together with his oft-expressed disapprobation of the Inquisition, should be remembered to the handsome Burgundian’s credit. But on the 21st May 1506, Columbus went on a longer voyage than any he had made to the Indies—to the undiscovered country whence no traveller returns. He left two sons—Hernando, who, like his father, lies in the cathedral of Seville, and Diego, the ancestor of the present Duke of Veragua.
The house of Cervantes, of which I have already spoken in the historical chapter, is in the Calle de Miguel Iscar, leading from the Acero de Recoletos to the Mercado.
Interesting old houses are not uncommon in Valladolid. Besides those already mentioned are the Casas del Cordon and de los Duendes, built in part in the reign of Juan II.; the palace of Fabio Neli, the great patron of art and letters in Valladolid, with its classical doorway; the archiepiscopal palace, once the residence of the Marquises of Villasante; and the house of the unfortunate Calderon, minister of Philip III., in the Calle de Teresa Gil. Berruguete’s workshop may be seen near the convent (now barracks) of San Benito.
These memorials of the city’s golden age having been inspected, you may ruminate on its past and future (for Valladolid has a future) in the beautiful shaded promenades by the Pisuerga or beneath the trees of the Magdalena park; and thus refreshed may possibly be ready to investigate the archives of the kingdom at Simancas, seven miles away. Considerable time and patience will, however, be required, since the collection consists of upwards of thirty-three millions of documents, arranged in eighty thousand bundles.
The province of Asturias is, for all men of Spanish blood, holy ground. Its fastnesses sheltered the last little remnant of the nation which refused to bow before the foreign yoke, its mountains proved an impregnable bulwark against the invader. At Covadonga, Spain, beaten to her knees, with broken sword and buckler, struck back wildly, despairingly. Her adversary recoiled; in that instant she recovered her breath, and, rising to her feet, pressed him steadily, stealthily, irresistibly backwards. Asturias was not the cradle, but the asylum of the Spanish nation. Here, to use familiar expressions, she found salvation in the last ditch; she was saved at the eleventh hour.
How dreadful was the peril of the nation we may understand when we read that the coast of Asturias itself was overrun by the Moors, and that a Muslim governor ruled at Gijon. Only a few glens in the wild Cantabrian mountains can boast a soil never profaned by the tread of the infidel. Oviedo can claim no such distinction. The ground on which she stands was, beyond all doubt, within the Moorish dominions. And she was not, as it is a very common error to suppose, the first capital of the reborn monarchy. It was at Cangas de Onis that Pelayo held his primitive court, and to Pravia, nearer the ocean, that Silo transferred the seat of government. Not till the reign of Alfonso the Chaste (791-842) did Oviedo become the capital of the infant monarchy.
The town was younger even than the kingdom. It sprang up round a monastery founded by King Froila I. on the spot where in 760 the Abbot Fromistano had dedicated a humble church to St. Vincent. Before the monastery was built, the first stones were laid of the famous basilicas of the Salvador and of Saints Julian and Basilissa. Alfonso was born here, and partly out of affection for his native place, partly perhaps from an aversion to the capital of his enemy, Mauregato, he established his court here, beside the churches he loved. He girded the town with walls, and raised the bishop to the rank of primate of his dominions. Sovereign of two of the smaller provinces of Spain, he is said to have been emulous of the splendour of his contemporary Charlemagne. He endeavoured to restore the state of the old Gothic court. He revived the laws, the customs, and the ritual of his ancestors, and imported precious woods and marbles from afar for the embellishment of his little capital. His successors imitated not only the ceremonial and luxury of the Byzantine Emperors, but also their intriguing and methods of punishment. Putting out the eyes was as popular a means of ridding oneself of an opponent at Oviedo as at Constantinople. Alfonso el Magno avenged himself in this way on his four brothers, Veremundo, Nuño, Odoario, and Froila, whom he detected conspiring against him. Veremundo, notwithstanding, escaped to Astorga, where the inhabitants espoused his cause and defended him against his brother. Another conspiracy proved more successful, and Alfonso was driven from the throne by his own son. One day the dethroned sovereign presented himself before his successor and craved a boon. It was to lead the Asturian hosts once more against the infidels. The request was granted, and victory, as it had always done, attended the old king’s banners. And he had no sooner laid aside his arms, than, crowned with laurels in place of a diadem, he passed away at Zamora, December 20, 910.
The dominions of Alfonso were dismembered at his abdication, and Oviedo for the brief space of twenty years remained the capital of the kingdom of Asturias alone. Ramiro II. reunited the monarchy, and at the same time transferred the capital to Leon. Oviedo became again the temporary seat of government, when Al Mansûr’s ever-victorious host swept over Spain, submerging all the Christian conquests, and breaking only against the impenetrable barrier of the Asturias. Leon was not restored to its rank till the reign of Alfonso V. (999-1027). This second period of residence of the kings at Oviedo was marked by the miraculous intervention of Heaven on behalf of an innocent man—if the chroniclers may be credited. Ataulfo, Bishop of Santiago, was accused of enormous crimes, and, having been summoned to the court, was condemned on insufficient evidence by Veremundo II. to be exposed to the fury of a wild bull. The prelate, strong in the knowledge of his innocence, celebrated Mass, and presented himself in the arena clad in his pontifical vestments. The furious animal entered, and lo! at once prostrated himself before the devoted man, offering his head and horns to be caressed. Nay, more, he threatened the spectators with his fury. Amid the plaudits of all, the holy bishop withdrew, and retired to a church in the valley of the Pravia, where he died in the odour of sanctity. Oviedo was known as the city of the bishops, as it was the residence of a great many prelates whose Sees were in partibus infidelium—that is to say, had passed under the control of the Moors.
The history of the city, and indeed of the province, from the tenth century onwards, is of scant interest. Asturias was erected by Alfonso VII. in 1153 for a brief space into an independent kingdom in favour of the Infanta Urraca, his natural daughter by a lady of the province; but on her death it was reunited to the monarchy of Castile and Leon. Oviedo was too remote from the scene of the long campaign against the Muslims and from the later seats of government to take any prominent part in the nation’s affairs. But it did not escape the assaults of the French in the Peninsular War. The town was remorselessly sacked by General Bonnet, in spite of a resistance not unworthy of the posterity of Pelayo’s unconquerable warriors.
A quiet, clean city, swept unceasingly by wind and rain, Oviedo at first sight recalls but faintly its glorious past. Yet when we look carefully about us, we find that time has been kind to those early sanctuaries which were the cause of the town’s existence, and which have merited for it the title of ‘the holy.’ Approaching more as a pilgrim than a critic, in no sceptical frame of mind, you will find few places in Spain more deeply interesting. And though it is neither the oldest nor the most interesting architecturally of the local monuments, your steps will turn at once to the Cámara Santa, attached to the cathedral—the Palladium of Spain.
In the seventh century (so runs the legend) when the hosts of Khosru threatened the Holy Land, an ark or coffer, worked by the disciples of the Apostles and full of relics of ineffable sanctity, was conveyed by pious hands to Egypt. Thence it was transported to Cartagena, thence to Toledo; and when that city in its turn was menaced by the ever-advancing Saracen, it was taken by King Pelayo to the cave of Monsagro, ten miles from Oviedo. When the chaste king and his architect, Tioda, re-erected the basilica of San Salvador, founded by Froila, in the year 802, a chapel dedicated to San Miguel, and now called the Cámara Santa, was built expressly to receive this venerated reliquary.
This sanctuary is now approached from the south side of the cathedral by a flight of twenty-two steps, built in the sixteenth century. We reach first the chapel, or ante-cámara, restored if not entirely constructed in the reign of Alfonso VI. (1072-1109), and representing the highest pitch of development reached at that time by Romanesque art in Spain. The roof is groined, and supported on each side by six columns built into the wall. Each column consists of two pilasters, rising from high pedestal bases, and supporting the statues of two Apostles. These figures are expressive, though rude, and the draperies are graceful and natural. At their feet are fantastic animals. The capitals of the columns are richly and beautifully carved with foliage, and with compositions representing scenes from the life of the Saviour and combats between men and lions. The capitals of the small pillars at the corners of the pedestals are also curious and delicately carved. Over the door are three heads in relief, of Christ, the Virgin, and St. John, early Romanesque work once painted and then disfigured by whitewash. The pavement of hard argamasa, or tessellated work, resembles, as Ford remarks, Norman-Byzantine works in Sicily. Beneath is a crypt, or lower chapel, dedicated to St. Leocadia.
At the far end of the Ante-cámara is the Relicario, the sanctuary actually constructed by Alfonso the Chaste. It measures about 19½ by 17 feet, and consists of a single low vault with traces of paintings, and lighted by a little window in the arch spanning the entrance.
Enclosed within a railing is the Arca, a chest of oak, 7½ feet long by 3¾ broad, and thinly plated with silver. A Latin inscription of four lines on the lid goes to prove that this was the work, not of Alfonso the Chaste, but of Alfonso VI., a conclusion warranted also by the Arabic inscription in Kufic characters, in praise of the Most High, running round the chest—a form of decoration not introduced into Christian work till after the fall of Toledo. On one face of the ark are reliefs of the Twelve Apostles within niches, with the Four Evangelists at the angles, and the figure of Christ, supported by angels, in the middle. On one side are reliefs of the Nativity, Adoration of the Shepherds, and the Flight into Egypt; on the other the Revolt of Satan, the Ascension, and the Apostles. The subject of the reliefs on the cover is the Crucifixion.
What this ark contains is a matter for pious speculation. It is reckoned rash and impious to attempt to solve the mystery; and it is related that when Bishop Sandoval y Rojas, after much prayer and fasting, placed the key in the lock, he experienced such horror that his hair rose erect and knocked off his mitre! It is extraordinary that Bonnet’s soldiers did not attempt to solve the mystery.
On the cover of the Arca are placed smaller reliquaries, beautiful specimens of silversmith’s work, which some may think of more interest than their contents. These, according to tradition, are the following: two thorns from Christ’s crown, and one of the deniers for which he was sold; a piece of St. Bartholomew’s skin; some drops of blood which exuded from a crucifix profaned by the Jews; a fragment of the rod of Moses; one of St. Peter’s sandals; a fragment of the True Cross; and certain ivory tablets dated 1162.
Other precious relics are exhibited in the chamber, among them the winding-sheet of the Saviour, in a superb box of gold and blue enamel. The Cruz de la Victoria was carved of plain oak and carried as a standard by Pelayo at Covadonga; it is now encrusted with gold and brilliant enamels—work executed, as the inscription records, at Gauzon, near Oviedo, in the year 908. Another cross, styled the Cruz de los Angeles, dates from the times of Alfonso the Chaste, for whom it was made, it is said, by two angels disguised as goldsmiths. This precious relic is in the shape of a Maltese cross, is set with gems en cabochon, and encrusted with gilt filigree-work. In the centre is set a precious ruby. On the arms is inscribed the date of the making (808 A.D.) and an anathema on whomsoever should steal it. It is certainly remarkable that this inscription should contain nothing about the supernatural workmanship of the cross!
The cathedral built by Tioda by order of Alfonso the Chaste was pulled down in the twelfth century. The foundation of the existing edifice may be attributed to Bishop Gutierre de Toledo, who flourished about 1390. The work was continued zealously by his successors, but was not altogether completed till the sixteenth century was half gone. The west front is flanked by towers, only one of which, as so often happens in Spain, has been raised above the general roof-level. The southern tower is of singular dignity and beauty. It rises to the height of 224 feet, and is divided into five stages, of which three are above the level of the aisles. The massive piers on which the structure rests are continued upwards in the form of buttresses along the corners, and are fluted, moulded, and enriched with canopies, crockets, and ornaments of the most elaborate and at the same time tasteful character. The windows are of three lights, with good traceries, above the archivolts appearing a kind of trefoil ornament. The third stage is girt by a beautiful parapet. The fourth stage is rather Renaissance than Gothic in treatment. It is flanked by tapering finials, and constitutes the belfry. Here is hung the bell named after King Vamba, which dates from 1219. On the topmost stage rises the graceful steeple, thickly encrusted with crockets, and flanked by pinnacles which seem to be a reproduction of it in miniature. No more beautiful church steeple than this is to be seen in Spain, or indeed in Europe. Repeated restorations, notably in 1521 and 1728, have fortunately left its fairy-like symmetry unimpaired.
The tower, however, unquestionably dwarfs the rest of the front, which is composed of a fine portico of three arches, the middle one being the highest. This central porch is flanked by statues of Alfonso the Chaste and King Froila. Despite these, and the canopied niches in the buttresses, the whole front presents a bare and forbidding aspect, not devoid, it must be conceded, of majesty. The portico was evidently only intended to be the base of the towers, of which, as we have seen, one only has been erected.
The interior is harmonious and pleasing. The nave is about twice the height of the aisles, with which it communicates through pointed arches. The piers are lightly fluted and encircled by simple fillets of foliage. Above the arches runs a gallery with a graceful balustrade, and pointed openings divided by mullions and containing good traceries. The clerestory windows are tall and of six lights, the mullions being bent so as to form tracery. On the south side they are filled with good stained glass; the northern windows are filled up. The transepts are spacious and lighted by wheel windows. There is no lantern over the crossing.
The chancel occupies a pentagonal apse at the east end of the nave, lit with five stained-glass windows. The retablo, dating from 1440, but since restored, is indifferent. The subjects of the reliefs are taken from the life of Christ. Near the High Altar are the tombs of various bishops, and a fine kneeling effigy of Bishop del Villar, who is buried at Segovia. The pulpits are of gilt iron. In the Renaissance chapels behind the chancel is the tomb of Bishop Gutierre.
In the transept is a rudely sculptured figure of Christ, believed to date from the twelfth century. The shells sculptured on the capital of the pillar, against which it stands, refer to the pilgrims who frequented this famous shrine.
The choir stalls are richly carved with caprices and scenes, ‘ill according,’ remarks a Spanish writer, ‘with the sanctity of the place.’ But the backs of the lower seats bear representations of Biblical characters, which, like the canopies above, are exquisitely carved. The organs are Churrigueresque, and the gorgeous Gothic trascoro is in hardly better taste. The chapels date mostly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and contain nothing of interest, except the alleged body of St. Eulalia of Merida.
Communicating with the north transept is the Capilla del Rey Casto. This chapel, founded by Alfonso the Chaste, was entirely rebuilt in the eighteenth century by a bishop named Melaz in the worst baroque style. This was the pantheon of the early kings of Asturias, and some tombs, probably containing their remains, are certainly here; but the inscriptions are merely the result of guess-work. Only one sarcophagus can be identified, and that, it appears from the inscription, is the resting-place of one Ithacus. Who this personage was, and what he had done to merit sepulture in the royal vault, are riddles to which history supplies no answer.
The cloister, begun in the fourteenth and finished in the fifteenth century, is in good Gothic style. The pointed arches looking on the court are divided by four or five slender shafts, which support elegant tracery. Among the statues that of Alfonso XI. Is the best preserved. The capitals and corbels are curiously and richly carved with such subjects as King Favila hunting the bear, the duel of Froila, and what Mr. O’Shea very rightly calls ‘a series of comical pictorial reviews of the times.’ There are many tombs in the cloister, belonging to various epochs, mostly earlier than the fourteenth century. They are of all styles, but Don J. M. Quadrado points out that the epitaphs are almost uniform in style. The famous Bishop Pelayo’s tomb (died 1153) is here.
The chapter-house is a fine specimen of thirteenth-century architecture. The archives adjoining contain some documents and codices of the greatest value. Here is preserved the Libro Gotico of the twelfth century, a beautifully illuminated manuscript, throwing light on the costumes and customs of that day.
The other churches founded by Alfonso the Chaste and his predecessors in the town itself have either been demolished or so often restored, rebuilt, and renovated, that they cannot be considered worth a visit. The earliest foundation of all, San Vicente, was modernised in 1592, and is interesting as containing the bones of the Abbot Feijoo, a man greatly esteemed by his contemporaries for his learning and sanctity (died 1764).
The Gothic church of San Francisco, now attached to a hospital, was founded by Fray Pedro, a companion of the great Francis of Assisi himself. This is the burying-place of the great family of Quirós, which claimed, in a not very reverent distich, to rank in point of dignity and antiquity next to the Divinity (‘Después de Dios, la casa de Quirós’). In the chancel lies Gonzalo Bernaldo de Quirós the Older, the youthful friend of Enrique of Trastamara, who died, wearing the religious habit, in 1575. Within a sepulchre upheld by lions which bear escutcheons crossed by the bar sinister, are the ashes of another Gonzalo Bernaldo, a distinguished illegitimate scion of the house. He is shown clad in armour, and at his feet a dog—symbolical, possibly, of the fidelity and tenacity with which he watched over the interests of his family during the minority of its chiefs. Close by is the vault of the house of Valdecarzana; a modern inscription informs us that during the interment of one of that family, a live cow must be present in the church—why or wherefore not being stated.
The church of Santa Maria de la Vega, outside the town, was the chapel of a Benedictine nunnery founded by Gontroda, mistress of Alfonso VII., who took the veil here in 1154. She was joined in her retirement, it is believed, by her daughter Urraca, sometime Queen of Navarre, and afterwards of Asturias. A century later another interesting penitent sought an asylum here: Doña Sancha Alvarez, mistress of the greatest noble in Spain, Rodrigo Alvarez de Asturias. The two ladies’ tombs lie close together. The sarcophagus of Gontroda is adorned with Romanesque reliefs of birds, and of hounds chasing deer, in curiously crude and conventional attitudes; Sancha’s tomb shows Gothic influence, and is sculptured in low relief. The epitaphs extol the virtues and amiability of the departed ladies.
The two most interesting monuments in the district are the ancient churches of Santa Maria de Naranco and San Miguel de Lino, both outside the walls. The former was rebuilt by Ramiro I., and is, therefore, well over a thousand years old. Attached to it were a palace and baths, every trace of which has long since disappeared. The architecture presents curious local peculiarities. The church is situated on a slope, and is composed of a single nave resting on a crypt or substructure. The only entrance is by a porch on the north side, which is on the level of the nave and approached by steps. The whole exterior is severe and simple, strong buttresses running up the walls to the sloping roof. In the west front three stages may be distinguished: the lowest is formed by the substructure entered in the middle by a round arch; above this the nave terminates in a portico of three round arches, which spring from four palm-like pillars with Corinthian capitals; in the middle of the third stage is a window of three lights, also round arched. The interior has remained practically unchanged since Ramiro’s day. The chancel and choir occupy opposite ends of the nave, and are raised by one and three steps respectively above the level of the flooring. Both are shut off by three round arches, the middle one being higher than the others; and an arcade of closed arches runs along the side-walls of the nave. These arches are rudely constructed, and rest upon, rather than spring from, octagonal capitals, quaintly carved with figures of priests and lions. The columns are composed each of four engaged shafts, of the same pattern as those of the western portico. The ribs of the waggon-vaulted ceiling spring from corbels, beneath which are reliefs representing the two orders of society in Asturias in the ninth century—knights engaged in combat, and toilers carrying loads. Under these again are circular medallions, filled with conventional foliage, and having in the centre reliefs of lions and birds. The church was probably intended to be open at both ends, as it is now, that the congregation assembled on the hillside might be able to assist in divine worship. It is one of the most valuable architectural monuments of Spain.
The little basilica of San Miguel de Lino was built near Santa Maria by King Ramiro about the year 850. The name was originally de ligno, i.e. of the wood, and was derived quite possibly from a fragment of the True Cross preserved here. Here we have a cruciform church in miniature, with transepts, lantern, and apsidal chapels, of a height which seems out of proportion to their other reduced dimensions. The apsidal chapels formed a semicircle at the foundation, but have been squared off since. The roofs are tiled and pitched. The buttresses resemble those of the Naranco church. The walls are pierced, here and there, with windows of three lights, with round arches, columns spirally fluted, and columns cut into leaves; above these is an elaborate geometrical tracery, suggestive of Moorish influence. The jambs of the round-arched western porch are rudely carved with curious groups. One of these is irresistibly grotesque. A man is shown balancing himself with his hands on the top of a pole and his legs in the air, exactly like the familiar monkey on a stick of our childhood; with head downwards, he grins into the jaws of a lion, which stands on its hind legs agape with surprise or indignation. Behind the gymnast another man appears to be indulging in some sort of dumb-bell exercise. This amazing composition is averred by some authorities to represent the martyrdom of a saint! The floral designs which border it are skilfully, even delicately, executed.
The chancel is on a lower level than the nave, which is reached on each side by a flight of steps, in a chapel projecting from the transept. The lantern has one of the earliest attempts at a domed roof, now unfortunately concealed by a later flat ceiling. The columns and arches are Byzantine in style, and the capitals carved with rosettes in medallions and strapwork. The nave is waggon vaulted and lower than the transept.
The modern buildings of Oviedo present few features of interest. The old walls have almost entirely disappeared, and few of the palaces or noblemen’s houses date further back than the seventeenth century. The University, founded in 1608 by the executors of Archbishop de Valdés, is a dignified building in the classical style—such as one might see in any fair-sized town in southern Europe. The Ayuntamiento, uninteresting in itself, contains a charter granted by the sixth and confirmed by the seventh Alfonso. Those who have had the opportunity of studying it say that it illustrates the transition from Latin to Spanish—just as the history of Oviedo illustrates the development of the Goth into the Spaniard.