XIV. BARCELONA
The architectural history of Barcelona is much more complete, whilst its buildings are more numerous, than those of any of our own old cities, of which it is in some sort the rival. The power which the Barcelonese wielded in the middle ages was very great. They carried on the greater part of the trade of Spain with Italy, France, and the East; they were singularly free, powerful, and warlike; and, finally, they seem to have devoted no small portion of the wealth they earned in trade to the erection of buildings, which even now testify alike to the prosperity of their city, and to the noble acknowledgment they made for it.
The architecture of Cataluña had many peculiarities, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when most of the great buildings of Barcelona were being erected, they were so marked as to justify me, I think, in calling the style as completely and exclusively national or provincial, as, to take a contemporary English example, was our own Norfolk middle-pointed. The examination of them will, therefore, have much more value and interest than that of even grander buildings erected in a style transplanted from another country, such as we see at Burgos and Toledo; and beside this, there was one great problem which I may venture to say that the Catalan architects satisfactorily solved--the erection of churches of enormous and almost unequalled internal width--which is just that which seems to be looming before us as the work which we English architects must ere long grapple with, if we wish to serve the cause of the Church thoroughly in our great towns.
For a manufacturing town, this, the Manchester of Spain, is singularly agreeable and unlike its prototype. The mills are for the most part scattered all over the surrounding country, which rises in pleasant undulations to the foot of the hills some four or five miles inland from the sea, and beyond which the country is always beautiful and wild, and sometimes--as in the savage and world-renowned rocks of Montserrat--quite sublime in its character. On my first journey I arrived at Barcelona by a steamer from Valencia. The views of the coast were generally extremely beautiful, until shortly before our arrival, as we passed the low level land through which the Llobregat finds its way to the sea; beyond this the great rock and fortress of Monjuic rise boldly in front, and rounding its base into the harbour, the tall octagonal towers and turrets of the cathedral and other churches came in sight. Little, however, is seen of the sea from the city, the fortifications of Monjuic on the one side, and the harbour and new colony of Barcelonette which occupies a point jutting out beyond it seaward on the other, completely shutting it out. One result of this is that, whilst nothing is seen of the sea, so, too, the seafaring people seem to confine themselves to Barcelonette, and not to show themselves in the thronged streets of the city. Another fortress, a little inland on the east, places Barcelona under a cross fire, and prevents its growth in that direction; but wherever possible it seems to be spreading rapidly, and every external sign of extreme prosperity is to be seen. The streets are generally narrow, tortuous, and picturesque, with the one noble exception of the Rambla, a very broad promenade running from the sea quite across the city, which has a road on either side, and a broad promenade planted with trees down the centre. Here in the early morning one goes to buy smart nosegays of the Catalan flower-girls from the country, and in the evening to stroll in a dense mob of loungers enjoying the cold air which sweeps down from the hills, and atones for all the sufferings inflicted by the torrid midday sun.
It will be best, in describing the buildings here, to begin with those of the earliest date, though they are of comparatively unimportant character, and in part fragments only of old buildings preserved in the midst of great works undertaken at a later date. The Benedictine convent of San Pablo del Campo, said to have been founded in the tenth century by Wilfred II., Count of Barcelona,[278] was restored by Guiberto Guitardo and his wife about 1117, and in 1127 was incorporated with the convent of San Cucufate del Vallés.[279] The church is very interesting. It is small and cruciform, with three parallel apses, an octagonal vault on pendentives over the Crossing, and a short nave, which, as well as the transepts, is covered with a waggon-vault. The apses are vaulted with semi-domes. The west end is the only perfect part of the exterior, and deserves illustration. The work is all of a very solid and rude description, though I am almost afraid to give it credit for being so old as is said. The circular window is, however, an interpolation; and if this were removed, and another small window like the others inserted in its place, the whole design would no doubt have an air of extreme antiquity. The ground-plan is a typal one here, and prevails more or less in all the early churches from Cataluña to Galicia. One or two others of the same description seem to have a fair amount of evidence of the date of their consecration, and it is at any rate unlikely that a church built in A.D. 914 would require rebuilding in about a hundred years, which must have been the case here, if we assume that we have not still before us the original church. On the south side of the nave there was a cloister added, probably in the course of the eleventh century, and there is some difference in the character of its design and workmanship, and that of the church and its west front. This cloister is very small, having on each side four arches, divided by a buttress in the centre of each side. The openings are cusped some with three and some with five heavy foliations, plain on the outside, but both moulded and carved on the inside face. The cusping is not at all Gothic in its character, being stilted in a very Eastern fashion, nor is it constructed like Gothic work, the stones being laid over each other, and cut out in the form of cusps, but not constructed anywhere with stones radiating on the principle of an arch. The shafts between the openings are coupled one behind the other, and have well-carved capitals. A fourteenth-century doorway, with a cross for the finial of its label, opens from the north wall of the cloister into the nave; and in the east wall is an extremely good entrance to the Chapter-house of the same date, and showing the usual arrangement of a doorway with a two-light traceried opening on either side. There are also some old monumental arches in the walls.
This church, which forms so important a feature in the early architectural history of Cataluña, is near the western end of the city, and its west front and cloister are enclosed within the walls of a small barrack; but as Spanish officers and soldiers are always glad to lionize a stranger, there is no difficulty in the way of seeing them. A simple early-pointed doorway, under a very flat tympanum, has been added to the north transept, and there is some evidence of the small apse near it having been arcaded on the outside. The pendentive under the dome is similar in its construction to those under the dome of the curious church of Ainay, at Lyons. Above them there is a string-course, and then the vault, which rises to a point in the centre, and is not a complete octagon, the cardinal sides being much wider than the others. The west doorway has in its tympanum our Lord, St. Peter, and St. Paul; over the arch are the angel of St. Matthew and eagle of St. John, and above, a hand with a cruciform nimbus, giving the benediction.
San Pedro de las Puellas, on the other side of the city, was rebuilt in A.D. 980, by Suniario Count of Barcelona, and his wife Richeldi, and was consecrated with great pomp in A.D. 983.[280] This church has been wofully treated, but it is still possible to make out the original scheme. It was a cruciform church of the same general plan as San Pablo, with a circular dome at the Crossing, and a waggon-vault to the south transept, the nave, and the western part of the chancel. The other parts were altered at a later date. Very bold detached columns with rich capitals carry the arches under the dome, and another remaining against the south wall of the nave suggests that there were probably cross arches or ribs below its waggon-vault. The sculpture of the capitals is very peculiar; it is quite unlike the ordinary Romanesque or Byzantine sculpture, and is very much more like the work sometimes seen in Eastern buildings. It is a type of capital first seen here, but reproduced constantly afterwards all along the southern coast, and not, so far as I know, seen at all in the interior of Spain.
There is no mark of a chapel on the east side of the south transept, and, as the apse has been rebuilt, it is impossible to say what the original plan of the head of the church was.
In the Collegiata of Sta. Ana, we have the next stage in the development of Catalan architecture. This is said to have been built in A.D. 1146,[281] and is also a cruciform church, with a central raised lantern, barrel vaults in the transepts, and two bays of quadripartite vaulting in the nave. The nave probably dates from about the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century, being lighted with simple lancet-windows, and having bold buttresses. When I visited this church the chancel was boarded up for repairs, and I am unable to say certainly whether the east end is old, but it appeared to me to have been modernized. The exterior of the lantern is very peculiar; above the roof it is square in plan, but with eight buttresses around it, radiating from the centre, and evidently intended to be carried up so as to form the angles of an octagonal central lantern, of which, however, only the lowest stage remains. The present finish of the lantern is a steep tiled roof, which springs from just above the point at which the angles of the square base are cut off; and on the western slope of this roof a steep flight of stone steps leads to the very summit. The object of this arrangement is quite unintelligible. At the west end of the church, and set curiously askew to it, is a cloister of the fourteenth century, with a Chapter-room on its east side, opening to the cloister with a round-arched doorway, on either side of which is a good early middle-pointed two-light window, making the group so invariably found in old Chapter-house entrances. The west doorway of the church is severely simple, with a square opening and plain tympanum, under a pointed arch. Along the north side of the cloister is a fine ruin of a hall of the thirteenth century, the construction of which is very characteristic and peculiar. It is of two stages in height. Segmental arches across the lower rooms carry the floor beams, which are placed longitudinally, and over them in the upper room bold pointed arches are thrown to carry the roof. The roof was of very flat pitch, and consisted of a series of purlines resting on corbels built into the wall over the stone arches, upon which were laid the common rafters. I shall have to illustrate a similar roof which still remains in the church of Sta. Agata, so that I need not say more on the subject now than that this type is an exceedingly effective one, and occurs repeatedly in the Barcelonese buildings. The cloister of Sta. Ana is of two stages in height, and very light, graceful, and Spanish in its character. The columns are quatrefoil in section, and the capitals are later works of the same eastern character as those already described in San Pedro, and have square abaci. There is, perhaps, scarcely sufficient appearance of solidity and permanence in such extremely light shafts, seeing that they have to support a double tier of arcades all round the cloister; but nevertheless the whole effect of the work is very beautiful. The old well with its stone lintel remains, and some fine orange-trees still adorn the cloister court.
The other early works here are doorways and fragments now incorporated in other and later works, so that we need no longer delay our inspection of the cathedral, which is, as it ought to be, the pride of the city. The ground-plan which I give[282] will best explain the general arrangements of this remarkable church. Its scale is by no means great, yet the arrangement of the various parts is so good, the skill in the admission of light so subtle, and the height and width of the nave so noble, that an impression is always conveyed to the mind that its size is far greater than it really is. Of course such praise is not intelligible to those who believe with some enthusiasts that the greatest triumph of architectural skill is to make a building look smaller than it really is--a triumph which the admirers of St. Peter’s, at Rome, always claim loudly for it--but most unsophisticated men will probably prefer with me the opposite achievement, often, indeed, met with in Gothic buildings, but seldom more successfully than here.
The history of this church is in part given in two inscriptions on the wall on either side of the north transept doorway,[283] from which it appears that the cathedral was commenced in A.D. 1298, and was still in progress in A.D. 1329. The latter date no doubt refers to the transept façade. But this was not the first church, for one was consecrated here in A.D. 1058, and the doorway from the cloister into the south transept, and another into the chapel of Sta. Lucia, at the south-west angle of the cloister, are probably not very much later than this date. But the bulk of the work is evidently not earlier than the beginning of the fourteenth century, and its design appears to be owing to one Jayme Fabra or Fabre,[284] an architect of whom we first hear at Palma in Mallorca. In the deed which I give in the Appendix, he describes himself as “lapiscida,” citizen of Mallorca, and says that he is about to go to Barcelona, to undertake a certain work there at the request of the King of Aragon and the bishop. This was in A.D. 1318, and it is clear, I think, from the terms of his contract,[285] that Fabre was something more than architect, and really also the builder of this church in Palma. The term used might indeed lead us to suppose that he was a mere mason, but the request of the king and the bishop proves that he was much more than this, and is useful as showing that these titles literally translated are very apt to mislead.[286] The crypt of Sta. Eulalia under the choir was completed in A.D. 1339. Jayme Fabre is said to have been master of the works until A.D. 1388, in which year he was succeeded by el Maestro Roque, who had an assistant, Pedro Viader. He received three “sueldos” and four “dineros” a day, and a hundred sueldos each year for clothing, and in course of time his salary was raised to “two florins or twenty-two sueldos” a week. His assistant received fifty sueldos a year for clothes and three sueldos and six dineros a day for his double office of substitute for the principal architect and workman. Roque no doubt was able to work elsewhere, whilst his assistant, or clerk of the works, was confined to one work; in this way the apparent strangeness of the similar pay to the two men is explained.[287] Roque, who is said to have commenced the cloister, was succeeded by Bartolomé Gual, who was one of the architects summoned to advise about the cathedral of Gerona in 1416, and then described himself as master of the works at Barcelona cathedral; and, finally, Andres Escuder placed the last stone of the vault on September 26, A.D. 1448.
Having thus shortly stated the history of the building, let me now attempt to describe its architecture and construction. It will be seen that the plan is cruciform. The transepts do not, however, show much on the exterior, as they form the base of the towers which are erected, as at Exeter cathedral, above them. The plan of the chevet is very good; it presents the French arrangement of an aisle and chapels round the apse in place of the common Spanish triapsidal plan; but the detail is all completely Catalan. The arches of the apse are very narrow and stilted, and the columns throughout are composed of a rather confused jumble of thin mouldings awkwardly arranged. Above the main arches is a very small arcaded triforium, and above this a range of circular windows, one in each bay. The groining springs from the capitals of the main columns, so that the triforium and clerestory are both enclosed within its arched wall-rib; they are consequently very disproportioned in height as compared with those of northern churches. But here the architect evidently intended to grapple with the difficulties of the climate, and, designing his whole church with the one great object of minimizing the light and heat, he was compelled to make his windows small. The clerestory windows were traceried, and filled with rich stained glass, which was well set back from the face of the wall. The result is a perfect success as far as light and shade and the ordinary purposes of a Spanish congregation are concerned, but the difficulty of taking notes, sketches, or measurements, in most parts of the church, even at mid-day, can hardly be imagined. The dark stone of which the whole church is built increases not a little the sombre magnificence of the effect. There is nothing peculiar about the chapels of the chevet; but under the centre of the choir, and approached by a broad flight of steps between two narrower flights which lead to the high altar, is the small crypt or chapel already mentioned as that in which the remains of Sta. Eulalia are enshrined. An inscription[288] records the date of the translation of her remains to this spot in A.D. 1339, but the present state of the chapel is not suggestive of the possession of any architectural treasures, being remarkable only for the ugliness of its altar, and the number of its candlesticks. Behind the altar, however, there still remains the shrine of the saint. This is a steep-roofed ark of alabaster carried upon eight detached columns. The ark is sculptured at the sides and ends with subjects from the life of Sta. Eulalia, whilst the roof has her soul borne aloft by angels. The columns are of marble, spiral, fluted, and chevroned, with capitals of foliage, and one or two of the bases are carved with figures in the mediæval Italian fashion. A long inscription is carried round the base of the ark, which again records the death of the saint, her burial in Sta. Maria del Mar, and her translation to the cathedral in A.D. 878, and afterwards to the spot where she now rests. The detail of this shrine looks very like that of Italian Gothic of the same age; and as it is particularly described in the contemporary memorial of the translation, it is no doubt part of the work on which Jayme Fabre had been engaged.
The transepts are groined at the level of the side chapels, and again with an octagonal vault just above the aisle roof, and below where the square base gives place to the octagon on which the upper part of the steeples is planned. It is therefore only on the ground-plan that the transepts show themselves, and here they form porches, that on the south side opening into the cloister. The planning of the nave is very peculiar. It seems as though the main requirement of the founders of this church was a plentiful number of altars; for, as will be seen on reference to the plan, there are no less than twenty-seven distinct chapels inside the church, and twenty-two more round the cloister. The chapels in the south aisle have a row of other chapels, which open into the cloister, placed back to back with them, and the windows which light the former open into the latter, showing when seen from the nave chapels their glass, and when seen from the cloister chapels the dark piercings of their openings. The arrangement is not only extremely picturesque, but also another evidence of the care with which the sun was kept out of the building. On the north side the chapels are uniform throughout, and their windows are pierced in the long unbroken north wall. The Coro here is in its old position in the two eastern bays of the nave, with the old screens around it and all its old fittings. It is to be observed, however, that here, where the late Spanish arrangement was from the first adopted, the western entrance to the choir was preserved, and so the awkward blank which the wall of the Coro generally presents on entering is not felt. There are no signs of any parclose screens across the transept, and the position of the chapel of Sta. Eulalia makes it improbable that there ever were any. It seems, indeed, that such a church as this must from the very first have been built for precisely the kind of worship still used in it. There was never any proper provision for a crowd of worshippers joining in any one common act of prayer or worship. The capitular body filled the Coro and sang the services of the day unnoticed by the people; whilst, as they separated to the chapels to which each was attached, the people followed them by twos and threes to the altar services in which only they wished to join. At present not more than about half the altars are commonly used; yet still each morning mass was generally being said at three, or four, or five of them at the same time, and each altar every day seemed to have a considerable group of worshippers, among whom I noticed a considerable number of men of the upper class. The high altar seems always to have had curtains on either side of it, their rods being supported on columns of jasper in front. These curtains were drawn at the Sanctus, and remained so until the consecration was completed. One sung mass only is celebrated at this altar each day, and an old treatise on the Customs of the Church cites in defence or explanation of this rule the words of a very early council, una missa et unum altare.[289] West of the Coro are two bays of nave, over the western of which rises the lower part of a rich octangular lantern. This is carried on bold piers of square outline, which, from the very simple arrangement of the shafts of which they are composed, have the grandeur of effect so characteristic of Romanesque work. The cross arches under the lantern are lower than the groining, and on the east face the spandrel between the two is filled in with rich tracery and arcading. Arches are thrown across the angles to carry the octagonal lantern, of which the lowest stage only--which is well arcaded--is built. The whole of this work is so good of its kind that it is much to be lamented it was never completed; the design of the octagonal lantern at the west, and the two more slender octagonal steeples at the Crossing, would have been as striking in its effect, doubtless, as it would have been novel in its plan, though it may be doubted whether, in so short a church, it would not have been overpowering. Above the side chapels, on each side of the nave and at the west end, another floor is carried all round. The only difference is that the rooms above the chapels are square-ended, not apsidal, and there seems to be no evidence of their having been intended for altars. I saw no piscinæ and no Retablos in them, and was tempted to imagine that the present use may, perhaps, have been the old one--that of a grand receptacle for all the machinery in fêtes, functions, and the like, of which a Spanish church generally requires no small store.[290] There are arches in the wall, affording means of communication all round this upper floor, and the chambers all open to the church with arches, and have traceried windows in their outer walls. The transverse section of the nave is therefore novel, and unlike any other with which I am acquainted, and interested me not a little.
The exterior is, perhaps, less interesting than the interior. The chevet is fine, but with nothing in any way unusual in its design; the upper part of the buttresses is destroyed, and the walls finish without parapet or roof, so as to make the church look somewhat like a roofless ruin. The steeples are quite plain below their belfry stage, under which are arcaded string-courses; the belfry stages themselves are richly panelled and pierced, and surmounted by pierced parapets. They are not perfectly octagonal in plan, the cardinal sides being the widest, and their height from the floor of the church is as nearly as I could measure 179 ft. 6 in., whilst their external diameter is about 30 feet. It is on ascending these towers that one of the greatest peculiarities of the Barcelonese churches is seen; they are all roofless, and you look down on to the top of their vaulting, which is all covered with tiles or stone neatly and evenly laid on the vault, in such a way as effectually to keep out the weather. The water all finds its way out by the pockets of the vaults, and by pipes through the buttresses with gurgoyles in front of them. Everything seemed to prove that this was not the old arrangement, for it is pretty clear that the walls had parapets throughout, and that there were timber roofs, though I saw no evidence as to what their pitch had been. The present scheme, ugly and ruinous as it looks--giving the impression that all the church roofs have been destroyed by the fire of the fortresses above and at the side of the city--seems nevertheless to have solved one of those problems which so often puzzle us--the erection of buildings which as far as possible shall be indestructible. There is now absolutely no timber in any part of the work; but it is of course questionable whether a roof which endures the test of a Spanish climate, with its occasional deluge of rain succeeded by a warm drying sun, would endure the constant damp of a climate like ours. But at any rate the makeshift arrangement which is universal here is very suggestive. The flying buttresses are insignificant, owing to the small height of the clerestory.
Descending from the roof, the only other old portion of the church to be mentioned is the north transept. It is here that the two inscriptions given at p. 297 are built into the wall on either side of the lofty doorway. The doorway is finely moulded, and has a single figure under a canopy in its tympanum; above it the whole face of the wall is covered with very rich arrangement of niches, making an arcade over its whole surface, but there are no figures left in them. Over this again is a rose window under an arch, and then the octagonal tower. To the east of the transept are some round-headed windows, but my impression is that they are not of earlier date than the rest of the work. The outer wall of the north aisle of the nave has a row of very richly moulded windows lighting the chapels, and other windows over them which light the galleries over the aisle chapels. The eaves here have a simple round-arched corbel-tabling.
The west front is all modern and squalid; the original design for its completion is said to exist among the archives of the cathedral, and ought to be examined; I was not aware of this until long after I had been at Barcelona. Don F. J. Parcerisa[291] gives a view of this proposed front--an extremely florid Gothic work--but the drawing is so obviously not the least like an old one, that I hardly know how far to trust the statements about it which he makes. He describes it as being on parchment, sixteen palms long, and much defaced. The print is drawn in perspective, and elaborately shaded. It is a double door, with a steep gable above filled with extremely rich flamboyant tracery, and there are large pinnacles on either side and a great number of statues.
The cloisters are not good in their detail, but yet are very pleasant; they are full of orange-trees, flowers, and fountains. One of these is in a projecting bay at the north-east internal angle, and is old; another by its side has a little St. George and the Dragon, with the horse’s tail formed by a jet of water; and a third, and more modern, plays in the centre among the flowers. In addition, there are some geese cooped up in one corner, who look as if their livers were being sacrificed in order to provide patés for the canons; and finally a troop of hungry, melancholy cats, who are always howling and prowling about the cloisters and church, and who often contrive to get into the choir-stalls just before service, whence they are forthwith chased about by the choristers and such of the clergy as are in their places in good time! These cloisters are said to have been completed in A.D. 1448,[292] and I have no doubt this date is correct. On the exterior they are bounded on three sides by streets, and the apsidal ends of the chapels do not show, the wall being straight and unbroken. The cloister is lofty and has panelled buttresses between the windows, of which latter the arches only remain, the traceries having been entirely destroyed. The view from hence of the church is one of the best that can be obtained, the octagonal transept towers being the most marked features. The floor is full of gravestones, on which the calling of the person commemorated is indicated by a slight carving in relief of the implements of his trade.
The chapel of Sta. Lucia, at the south-west angle of the cloister, is probably a relic of the first church; it has a very fine round-headed doorway with its arch-mouldings covered with delicate architectural carving, and a lancet window under its very flat-pitched gable. The roof inside is a pointed waggon-vault. The door from the cloister into the south transept is of about the same date; it has three shafts in the jamb (one of them fluted), very deep capitals and abaci covered with carving of foliage, and an archivolt covered with chevron patterns of a flat and very unusual character. The label is large and carved with very stiff foliage. The foliage here is to a slight extent copied from the acanthus, but much of it is derived from some other leaf--I believe from the prickly pear.
When the fabric has been passed in review much still remains to be seen within its walls. A large number of the altars, particularly those of the cloister chapels, were furnished in the fifteenth century with Retablos of wood richly carved, and then painted with subjects: these are always placed across the apse, leaving a space behind the altar, to which access was obtained by doors on either side of it. Perhaps then as now the priest attached to the altar kept his vestments in the chapel in which he ministered, and these spaces may thus have been utilized. Usually, now-a-days, in Spanish churches, for some ten or twenty minutes before the offices are sung in the choir, priests may be seen unlocking the gates of their chapels, vesting themselves, and then going one by one to their stalls in the choir, and there waiting till, on the clock striking the hour, the service commences. The paintings in the old Retablos are sadly defaced and damaged; but many of them have evidently had much value and interest. They are usually rather of Flemish than of Italian character, generally well and quaintly drawn, and with those striking contrasts of colour on gold grounds, of which this early school was so fond. The doors on either side of the altar have generally a whole-length figure of a saint painted on them.
Across the outer archway of all these chapels is an iron grille; very many of these are mediæval; and in the cloister in particular there is a very considerable variety in their treatment, and often great delicacy of execution. I have before noticed the excellence of the smiths’ work in the Spanish churches. Yet though their work is of the latest age of Gothic, it is never marked by that nauseous redundance of ornament in which so many of the most active metal-workers of the present day seem to revel. Hence it is always worthy of study. The doors in these screens are generally double, and shut behind some sort of ogee-arched crocketed head, and sometimes there are crocketed pinnacles and buttresses on either side. The locks are often, of course, specially elaborate; and the illustration which I give of one of them will serve to show their general character. In all the screens here the lower part is very simple, consisting generally of nothing but vertical bars, through which one can see without difficulty to the altars which they guard. The ornament is reserved for open traceried crestings, with bent and sharply-cut crockets, for traceried rails, and for the locks and fastenings.
The woodwork of the choir-fittings is of very late date,[293] but good of its kind. The stall-divisions are richly traceried under the elbow, and the misereres carved with foliage. Behind the stalls, and under the old canopies, is a series of Renaissance panels, covered with paintings of the arms of the Knights of the Golden Fleece.[294] The canopies above are very delicate, and of the same character as the stalls. The carved oak pulpit is corbelled out at the east end of the north range of stalls, and is approached by a staircase outside the arcaded stone parclose, which still remains north and south of the choir. This staircase, with its arched doorway between pinnacles at the bottom, its traceried handrail fringed at the top with fantastic ironwork, and its door cunningly and beautifully made of open ironwork, is quite worth notice.
The Bishop’s throne, second only in height and elaboration to that of Exeter, occupies its proper place at the east end of the southern side of the choir, with one stall for a chaplain beyond it. It will be remembered that in most Spanish cathedrals it is placed where the door from the nave into the choir ought to be: here, however, the old arrangement has never been altered.
The principal altar has a very Gothic Retablo, covered with gilding till it looks like gingerbread. I imagine it to be modern. It has curtains on either side, with angels standing on the columns which carry the rods. The iron screen across, in front of the altar, and round the apse, is none of it old.
Near the door to the sacristies a hexagonal box for the wheel of bells is fixed against the wall; and just below it a fine large square box arcaded at the sides, and painted, appears to contain a couple of larger bells.
The sculpture here is not very remarkable. Over the east door of the cloister is a Pietà in the tympanum, whilst the finial of the canopy is a crucifix. The bosses at the intersection of the ribs in the nave are of enormous size, and each has a figure or subject. The boss in the chapel over the font in the north side of west door has the Baptism of our Lord, and another in the large chapel in the north-west of the cloister has the Descent of the Holy Ghost, and the eight bosses around it the Evangelists and Doctors. Some of the monuments are peculiar. The effigy is generally laid on a sloping stone, so as to suggest the greatest possible insecurity. There are sculptures on the tombs and inside the enclosing arch; a favourite and odious device in this last feature is to make the radius of the label much longer than that of the arch below it; and the space between the two is then filled with tracery. The nave groining was once painted. There seems to have been cinquecento foliage extending from the centre, about half-way across each vaulting cell; and the ribs were painted to the same extent. In the aisles there seems to have been no painting anywhere but on the ribs.
The old organ occupies the north tower, and is corbelled out boldly from the wall. Below it is a pendant, the finish of which is a Saracen’s head, which, for some reason unknown to me, is held by Catalans to be appropriate to the position. There are enormous painted shutters, and a projecting row of trumpet-pipes. The organ was first of all built in the fourteenth century; Martin Ferrandis, organ-builder of Toledo, having bound himself, by a contract dated July 25, 1345, to construct it for 80 libras[295] (pounds).
The sacristies are old and vaulted. The sacristan knew of no old vestments or vessels to be seen there; and as they were always occupied by clergy I had to satisfy myself with his ignorance.
The bishop’s palace is on the south side of the cloister: its quadrangle still retains some remains of good late Romanesque arcading, ornamented with dog-tooth, nail-head, and billet mould; and probably there is more to be seen if access were gained to the inside. On the opposite side of the cathedral is a vast barrack, dating from the fifteenth century, and which, first of all a palace, was given in A.D. 1487 by Ferdinand to the Inquisition. It seems now to be a mixture of school, convent, and prison, and is apparently without any architectural interest.
The grandest church, after the cathedral, is that of Sta. Maria del Mar, a vast building, of very simple plan, and exceedingly characteristic of the work of Catalan architects.[296] An inscription written in Limosin (Catalan) on one side, and in Latin on the other,[297] gives the date of the commencement of the work as A.D. 1328; and it is said by Cean Bermudez not to have been finished until A.D. 1483;[298] but Parcerisa[299] says that the last stone was placed on November 9th, 1383, and the first mass said on August 15th, 1384; and I am inclined to think that the latter dates are the more likely to be correct. I have found no evidence as to the architect of this church: he was one of a school who built many and exceedingly similar churches throughout this district. My impression is that he was most probably Jayme Fabre, the first architect of the cathedral. Fabre had constructed a church for the Dominicans at Palma, in Mallorca, between the years 1296 and 1339. Of this church I can only learn the dimensions; but these point to a church of the same class as those in Barcelona. It had no aisles, and was 280 palms long by 138 broad. The cathedral in the same city is figured in Parcerisa, and is similar in plan to Sta. Maria del Mar, but of far larger dimensions, the width from centre to centre of the nave columns being 71 feet, and the whole church 140 feet wide in the clear, and with the chapels 190 feet. There are north and south doors, and octagonal pinnacles at the west end, and, as will be noticed, its dimensions are proportioned just as at Sta. Maria del Mar. I do not think that Fabre’s name occurs in connexion with the cathedral at Palma; but his fame must have been great, as he was specially summoned to Barcelona by the king and bishop; and nothing is more likely than that he would then have been consulted about this other great work going on at the same time, and in which, though the general design is different, there are so many points of similarity. The church at Manresa is said to have been commenced in the same year, 1328; and it is extremely similar in all respects to Sta. Maria del Mar, as I shall have further on to show when I have to describe it.
But whether these churches are to be attributed to the influence of one man suddenly inventing an innovation, or of a school of architects working on the same old traditions--and I have been unable to find any kind of evidence of this--it is certain that they are very similar. They are marked by extreme simplicity, great width, and great height. Usually they have no arcades and consist of broad unbroken naves, always groined in stone, and sparely lighted from small windows high up in the walls. The two examples, so far as I know, which surpass all others, are the single nave of Gerona, seventy-three feet wide in the clear, and the nave and aisles of the Collegiata at Manresa, sixty feet wide from centre to centre of the columns, and a hundred and ten between the walls of the aisles. The Barcelonese examples do not equal the extraordinary dimensions of these two churches, but they are still on a fine scale. Sta. Maria del Mar is the only Barcelonese example with aisles. It has--as will be seen by the plan[300]--an aisle round the apse, and small chapels between the buttresses. These apses are all internal only, so that the side elevation of the church shows a plain straight wall pierced with windows. This is a very favourite device of this school, and has been already noticed in the north wall of the cathedral, and in the wall all round the cloisters. The interior of Sta. Maria del Mar is very simple. Enormous octagonal columns carry the main arches and the groining ribs, which all spring from their capitals. The wall rib towards the nave is carried up higher than the main arches so as to allow space between them for a small circular and traceried clerestory window in each bay. The arches of the apse are very narrow, and enormously stilted. There are small windows above them, but they are modernized. The aisles are groined on the same level as the main arches, a few feet, therefore, below the vault of the nave, and they are lighted by a four-light traceried window in each bay, the sill of which is above a string-course formed by continuing the abacus of the capitals of the groining shafts. Below this there are three arches in each bay, opening into side chapels between the main buttresses. Each of these chapels is lighted by a traceried window of two lights; and the outer wall presents, as will be seen, a long unbroken line, until above the chapels, when the buttresses rise boldly up to support the great vaults of the nave and aisles. The Barcelonese architects of this period were extremely fond of these long unbroken lines of wall; and there is a simplicity and dignity about their work which is especially commendable. Long rows of little sheds for shops which have managed to gain a footing all along the base of the walls rather disturb the effect, though they and their occupants, and the busy dealers in fruit who ply their trade all about Sta. Maria del Mar, make it a good spot for the study of the people.
The altar is a horrible erection of about A.D. 1730, and all the internal fittings are modern and in the worst possible taste.
The view which I give of the west front will explain the whole design of the exterior. Unquestionably it is a grand work of its kind, with good detail throughout. The great octagonal pinnacles at the angles are, however, awkwardly designed, and quite insufficient in scale for the vast mass of building to which they are attached. They are reproduced in all the churches of the same class in Barcelona; and indeed most of the features of one of these churches are common to the others. The tracery in the circular window at the west end certainly looks later in date than that of the others in this church, and than that in the west front of Sta. Maria del Pi, which was commenced in A.D. 1329, but not completed until much later. It is worth mention that the western doors of this church are covered with iron, cut out into the form of cusped circles, with rather good effect.
The church of SS. Just y Pastor is of the same class as Sta. Maria del Mar, but its foundation is slightly later, as it seems to have been commenced circa A.D. 1345. It consists of a nave without aisles, but with chapels between the buttresses--one chapel in each bay. There are five bays, and an apse of five sides. The altar stands forward from the wall, and stalls are ranged round the apse. The nave is 43 feet 6 inches in width in the clear by about 130 feet in length. The vaulting is quadripartite throughout, with large bosses at the intersection of the ribs, on which are carved--1, the Annunciation; 2, the Nativity; 3, the Presentation; 4, the Adoration of the Magi; 5, the Resurrection; 6, the Coronation of the B.V.M. The whole church has lately been covered with painting and gilding, in the most approved French style, and to the destruction of all appearance of age. The light is admitted by three-light windows with good geometrical traceries, very high up above the arches, into the side chapels, and by two-light windows in the chapels themselves. At the west end are remains of the usual octagonal flanking turrets; but the whole front is modernized. The side elevation is a repetition of those already described, presenting a long unbroken wall below, out of which the buttresses for the clerestory rise.
Santa Maria del Pino is a still grander church, but on the same plan, with the addition of a lofty octagonal tower detached at the north-east of the church.[301] This is four stages in height, and the belfry-stage has windows on each face. The traceried corbel-table under the parapet remains, but the parapet and roof are destroyed. The nave here consists of seven bays, is fifty-four feet wide in the clear, and has an eastern apse of seven sides. The chapels between the buttresses are not carried round the apse, but an overhanging passage-way is formed all round outside, upon arches between, and corresponding openings through, the buttresses just below the windows. The north door here is a very fine early work of just the same character as those already described in the earliest portions of the cathedral. It appears to be a work of the end of the twelfth century, and much older than any other portion of the church. The west front has a doorway with a figure in a niche in the tympanum, and a system of niches round and above it, enclosing it within a sort of square projecting from the face of the wall. The whole scheme is so exceedingly similar both in design and detail to that of the north transept door of the cathedral, that we may fairly conclude them to be the works of the same man. Above the door is a large circular window filled with good and very rich geometrical tracery. A church existed here as early as 1070;[302] and Cean Bermudez says that the first stone of the present church was laid in 1380, and that it was concluded in 1414.[303] Parcerisa,[304] on the other hand, says that materials were granted for the work in 1329, that it was nearly finished in 1413, and consecrated in 1453;[305] whilst in A.D. 1416 we have Guillermo Abiell describing himself as master of the works of Sta. Maria del Pi, and of St. Jayme, in Barcelona, when he was called as one of the Junta of architects to advise about the building of the nave of Gerona cathedral.[306]
St. Jayme, of which Abiell was the architect, is a small church in the principal street of the city, with an ogee-headed door with a crocketed label between two pinnacles. Above are some small windows; and the whole detail is poor in character, and exactly consistent with what might be expected from an architect at Abiell’s time. I believe, therefore, that either Abiell was only the surveyor to an already existing fabric, who wished to make the most of his official position among his brethren at Gerona, or that if he really executed any works at Sta. Maria del Pi they were confined to the steeple, which is of later character than the church. I believe that the real meaning of the dates given by the authorities just quoted is as follows:--In A.D. 1329 stone was granted for the work which was then no doubt just commenced at the same time as the similar work in the transept of the cathedral; and the consecration probably took place in A.D. 1353, a date which occurs in an inscription in the church, and has been, I suspect, read by Parcerisa by mistake, 1453; and the work commenced in A.D. 1380 was probably the steeple, which was completed in A.D. 1414. To decide otherwise would be to ignore altogether all the information to be derived from the character of the architectural detail, which, after all, is to a practised eye a safer guide than any documentary evidence. I should assume, too, from the identity of the character of the two works, that Jayme Fabre was the architect who designed the church, and that Guillermo Abiell probably built the tower some time after his death.
I must now take my readers back somewhat to an earlier church, which is full of interest, but very different from those which I have been describing, and of different style. This is the church of Sta. Agata, situated just to the north of the cathedral. I have been unable to learn anything as to its history. It has a nave of four bays, spanned by pointed arches, which carry the wooden roof, and a groined apse of five sides. East of the apse is a waggon-vaulted chamber, whose axis is at right angles to that of the church, and out of it rises a delicate octagonal steeple, the belfry-stage of which has two-light windows on four sides, and gables on each face. These gables run back till they intersect the base of a low stone spire, which is now nearly destroyed, but the lower part of which can be clearly made out from the neighbouring steeple of the cathedral. A staircase, ingeniously constructed in the thickness of the south wall, leads up from the nave to the pulpit (now destroyed), and thence on again to a western gallery. Some of the windows are like domestic windows in design, having a slender shaft-monial with the capital of foliage so often repeated in all the towns from Perpiñan to Valencia. The great height of the windows from the floor--about twenty-six feet--secures an admirable effect of light, and their detail is thoroughly good early middle-pointed. The southern façade has a great deal of that picturesque irregularity which is always so charming when it is natural. The door is in the western angle of the south front, partly built under a great overhanging arch, which carries the wall of a building which abuts on the west end of Sta. Agata. The lower half of the walls has small windows irregularly placed, lighting the eastern chapel, the pulpit, and the passage to the gallery; and then above them the wall is set back a couple of feet between buttresses, and each bay has an extremely well designed and moulded window of two lights, with geometrical tracery. The finish of the walls at the top is modernized. The construction of the roof is very effective, and at the same time of a most unusual character; it consists of a series of purlines resting on corbels in the walls over the arches across the nave; and though it is of flat pitch, this is but little noticed, owing to the good proportions of these arches, which are so marked a feature in the design.
The same kind of roof exists still in the great hall of the Casa Consistorial, and evidently once existed also in the church which I shall presently mention in the Calle del Carmen. In England we have somewhat parallel examples at Mayfield and the Mote House, Ightham; but these Barcelonese examples are useful, as showing how, when a flat-pitched roof is of necessity adopted, a very good internal effect may nevertheless be secured. This church is now desecrated, and used as a sculptor’s workshop.
Another church, of which only the ruins now remain, in the Calle del Carmen, must, I presume, be Nuestra Señora del Carmen, founded in 1287.[307] This building was evidently greatly altered in the fourteenth century. It was first of all roofed with a flat roof, carried on arches across the nave, as at Sta. Agata, and subsequently the walls were raised and the church was groined. The groining is now destroyed, and behind it are seen the corbels in the cross wall marking the rake of the first roof. The aisles had roofs gabled north and south, and their windows good fourteenth-century tracery. This church of seven bays in length is 43 feet wide between the columns of the nave, and nearly 80 feet wide from north to south. Compared with Sta. Agata, it seems to prove that this class of timber-roofed church was introduced here between the early waggon-vaulting of the chapel of Sta. Lucia and of Sta. Ana, and the great quadripartite vaults of the cathedral and the other churches of its class.
The other churches here are not of much interest. The front of San Jayme has already been incidentally mentioned: its interior is modernized. San Miguel is probably a very early church, having a Roman mosaic pavement preserved in the floor. It has a pointed waggon-vault, and a sixteenth-century stone gallery at the west end. The western front has a rich west door, half Gothic and half Renaissance, with St. Michael and the dragon in the tympanum, and the Annunciation in the jambs. The flat gable has its old crocketed coping and cross, and two very small windows. The best feature is the tower, a simple structure, square in plan, from within the parapet of which, over the centre, rises a small square turret, open at the sides and roofed with four intersecting gables. It is a pretty arrangement for carrying a fifth bell, the other bells hanging in the belfry windows, in the Italian fashion. The church of San Anton has a groined narthex or porch all across the west front, with three open arches in front. The nave cannot be wide, and has chapels between the buttresses, but I did not see the interior. Another church, that of San Gerónimo, is on the same plan, but of later date.[308] The churches of the Renaissance class are numerous and ugly; but Berruguete and his followers hardly perpetrated so many freaks in art here as they did in the centre of Spain; had they been more popular, there had been much less for me to describe. But in truth, rich as this old city still is, it was much richer, two or three noble churches having disappeared at a comparatively late period, either during the war or in subsequent popular disturbances.
The civic buildings are quite worthy of the ancient dignity of the city. The Casa Consistorial, and the Casa de la Disputacion, face each other on opposite sides of the principal square, not far from the cathedral, The former has a modern Pagan front, but on the north side the old work remains. This building is said to have been commenced in A.D. 1369, and finished in A.D. 1378;[309] and inside the great hall I noticed an inscription (which unfortunately I neglected to copy) with the date of 1373. The old front to the north of this building seems worthy of illustration. The enormous arch-stones of the principal doorway are very common throughout Cataluña, and are seen indeed as far east even as Perpiñan. The figure of St. Michael has metal wings; and as the little church dedicated in honour of the same archangel is just on the other side of the Casa, it seems as if there was some special connection between the two buildings. The patio or quadrangle is oblong in plan, and on the first-floor the passage is open to the air, with delicate arches all round. On the east side of this passage a door opens into a noble hall, with a dais for the throne at the upper end, and doorways on each side of the dais. This hall is spanned by four moulded semicircular arches rising from corbels formed of a cluster of shafts. These arches support a flat ceiling of rafters, with boarding between them, resting on corbels in the cross walls. The light is admitted by large cusped circles high up in the side walls, and by good ajimez windows of three lights at the dais end. The rafters of the roof are all painted with coats of arms enclosed within quatrefoils, with a very rich effect. The dimensions of this room are about 40 feet wide by 90 feet long, and 45 feet in height. In a passage near it is an admirable ajimez window, which, as it illustrates this common type very well, is worth preserving a record of. The marble shafts here are only three inches in diameter.[310]
The Casa de la Disputacion was still more interesting; but on my last visit the delicate arcades of its beautiful patio were all being walled up with common brick, leaving narrow slits of windows, which I suppose are to be glazed, to save the degenerate lawyers for the future from any of the chance squalls of wind or rain which their predecessors have endured since the fifteenth century, when Master Pedro Blay, the architect, superintended its erection. This patio is of three stages in height, with a picturesque external staircase to the first floor. The lofty corridor round the first floor leads to the various courts and offices, and in one angle of it is the entrance to the chapel, consisting of three small arches, forming a door and two windows, with the wall above them covered with an elaborate reticulation of tracery. The arches have ogee crocketed canopies, and the side arches iron grilles. This chapel is dedicated to St. George, the tutelar saint of Cataluña, and a figure of the saint rivals that of St. Michael in the Sala Consistorial. There are here some extremely well-managed overhanging passage-ways corbelled out from the walls, and various excellent features of detail. The parapets generally to the various passages are of plain stone slabs, pierced here and there only with a richly traceried circle.
Another old building--the Lonja or Exchange--was built near the sea in A.D. 1383.[311] But everything old has been completely destroyed, with the one exception of its grand hall, which still does service as of old. This consists of three naves, divided by lofty and slender columns, which carry stilted semi-circular arches. The ceiling is flat, of the same description as that of the Sala Consistorial. The dimensions are about 100 feet in length by 75 feet in width.
Another great building, founded soon after, circa 1444, was intended for a cloth-hall:[312] in 1514 it was converted into an armoury, and subsequently into a residence for the Captains-General of Cataluña; it has been completely modernized throughout the exterior, and I did not see the interior.
Cean Bermudez mentions an interesting fact about the construction of the old Mole. It was built, he says, by Estacio, a famous hydraulic architect of Alexandria, in A.D. 1477; and the city authorities took counsel about it with the most learned professors of Syracuse, Rhodes, and Candia.
XV. GERONA--PERPIÑAN--S. ELNE
There are few Spanish towns which are altogether more interesting than the now insignificant and little-known city of Gerona. It not only contains several buildings of rare architectural interest, but it has, moreover, the advantage of being picturesquely placed on the banks of the rapid river Oña, and on the steep slope of the hills which bound it.
The Cathedral is the first object of attraction, and its history is so curious, that I need make no apology for proceeding without further preface to say the substance of what I have been able to learn about it.
There was a cathedral here at a very early period; and when Gerona was taken by the Moors, they converted it into a mosque, but, with their usual liberality, allowed the services of the Church still to be carried on in the neighbouring church of San Feliu, which for a time, accordingly, was the cathedral church. In A.D. 1015 this state of affairs had ceased, owing to the expulsion of the Moors, and the cathedral was again recovered to the use of the Church. Considerable works were at this time executed,[313] if, indeed, the cathedral was not entirely rebuilt, as the old documents declare, and the altered church was re-consecrated in A.D. 1038,[314] by the Archbishop of Narbonne, assisted by the Bishops of Vique, Urgel, Elne, Barcelona, Carcassonne, and others. In A.D. 1310 works seem to have been again in progress,[315] and in A.D. 1312 a Chapter was held, at which it was resolved to rebuild the head or chevet of the church with nine chapels,[316] for which, in A.D. 1292, Guillermo Gaufredo, the treasurer, made a bequest in favour of the work.[317] In A.D. 1325 I find that an indulgence was granted by the Bishop Petrus de Urrea in favour of donors to the work of the cathedral;[318] and the work, so far westward as the end of the choir, was probably complete before A.D. 1346, inasmuch as in this year the silver altar, with its Retablo and baldachin, were placed where they now stand.[319] We know something of the architects employed during the fourteenth century upon the works just mentioned. In 1312 the Chapter appointed the Archdeacon Ramon de Vilarico and the Canon Arnaldo de Montredon to be the obreros or general clerical superintendents of the progress of the works. In A.D. 1316, or, according to some authorities, in February, 1320, an architect--Enrique of Narbonne--is first mentioned; and soon after this, on his death, another architect of the same city, Jacobo de Favariis by name, was appointed with a salary of two hundred and fifty libras[320] a quarter, and upon the condition that he should come from Narbonne six times a year[321] to examine the progress of the works. In A.D. 1325 Bart. Argenta was the master of the works, and he probably carried them on until the completion of the choir in 1346.[322]
In A.D. 1395 it was proposed to erect a Chapter-house, and the canons in charge of the fabric (“canonigos fabriqueros”) presented in writing their reasons for not erecting it where proposed by the Chapter--at the south end of the refectory. They said that the works of the church itself ought first of all to be gone on with, and that the proposed work would destroy a good and convenient refectory, and make it obscure and ridiculous: and it seems that their report had the effect of staying the work. In A.D. 1416 Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works of the cathedral, proposed a plan for its completion by the erection of a nave; and though the chevet had an aisle and chapels round it, he proposed to build his nave of the same width as the choir and its aisles, but as a single nave without aisles. This proposition was deemed so hazardous, and created so great a discussion, that the Chapter, before deciding what plan should be adopted, called together a Junta of architects, and propounded to each of them separately certain questions, to each of which they all returned their answers upon oath. In the September following, these answers were read before the Chapter by a notary, and it may be supposed carefully digested, for it was not until March 8th, 1417, that Guillermo Boffiy, the master of the works, was called in and in his turn interrogated with the same questions. Immediately after this, on the 15th of the same month, at a Chapter-meeting presided over by the Bishop, it was decided to carry on the work as proposed, with a single nave. The story is so well worth telling in full, that I have given in the Appendix a translation of the entire document, which equals in interest any with which I am acquainted, bearing on the profession of architect in the middle ages.[323] It is valuable also, incidentally, as giving us the names of the architects of several other buildings, most of those who were examined having described themselves in a formal style as masters of the works of some particular church or churches. It is difficult to say exactly when the nave was completed, but the great south door was not executed until A.D. 1458, and the key-stone of the last division of the vault seems to have been placed in the time of Bishop Benito, so late as circa 1579.[324] In A.D. 1581 the same bishop laid the first stone of the bell-tower, and in 1607 the west front and the great flight of steps leading up to it seem to have been commenced.
We have thus the story of the periods at which the church was founded, altered, and enlarged very fully told, and it now only remains to apply it to what is still to be seen in the existing building.
A reference to my ground-plan[325] will show that the church remains very much in the state which the documentary evidence describes. The choir has nine chapels round its chevet, as described, and has lofty arches, a series of very small openings in lieu of triforium, and a clerestory of two-light windows, of decidedly late but still good Middle-pointed character. The columns, in the usual Catalan fashion of this age, are clusters of rather reedy mouldings, with no proper division or subordination of parts, and consequently of poor effect, and there is no division by way of stringcourses above or below the triforium. On the exterior the east end is not seen to much advantage, as it is built into and against a steep hill, so that at a distance of a few feet only the eye is on a level with the top of the walls of the chapels round the apse. The roofs, too, have all been modernized and lowered. The only peculiarities here are a series of trefoiled openings, just under the eaves of the roof, into the space over the vaulting, and perhaps devised for the purpose of ventilation: and the gurgoyles projecting from the buttresses, which are carved and moulded stones finished at the end with an octagonal capital, through the bottom of which the water falls, and which almost looks as if it were meant for the stone head of a metal down-pipe.
When the choir was built, some considerable portions of the church consecrated in A.D. 1038 were left standing. The nave was probably entirely of this age; and a portion of what was no doubt one of the original towers still remains on the north side, between the cloister and the nave. This tower has pilasters at the angles and in the centre, and is divided into equal stages in height by horizontal corbel-tables. An apse of the same age remains on the east side of what seems to have been the south transept of the early church: and from its position we may, I think, assume with safety that the church was then finished with three or five apses at the east, very much as in the church of San Pedro, close by, which I shall have presently to describe. In addition to these early remains there is also a magnificent and all but unaltered cloister. I cannot find any certain evidence of its exact date, though it seems to have existed in A.D. 1117, when an act of the Bishop Raymond Berenger was issued in the “cloister of the cathedral.”[326] The character of the work confirms, I think, this date. The plan is very peculiar, forming a very irregular trapezium, no two of the sides being equal in length. It has on all four sides severely simple round arches carried on coupled shafts: these are of marble, and set as much as 20 inches apart, so as to enable them to carry a wall 3 feet 1½ inches thick. This thickness of wall was quite necessary, as the cloister is all roofed with stone, the section of the vaults on the east, west, and south sides being half of a barrel, and on the north a complete barrel vault. The detail of the capitals is of the extremely elaborate and delicate imitation of classical carving, so frequently seen throughout the south of France. The abaci are in one stone, but the bases of the shafts are separate and rest upon a low dwarf-wall, and square piers are carried up at intervals to strengthen the arcade. The columns have a very slight entasis.
This cloister deserves careful study, as it seems to show one of the main branches of the stream by which Romanesque art was introduced into Spain. It is impossible not to recognize the extreme similarity between such work as we see here, and that which we see in the cloister at Elne, near Perpiñan, and, to go still farther afield, at S. Trophime at Arles. And if any Spanish readers of these pages object to my assumption that the stream flowed from France westward, they must prove the exact converse, and assume that this Romanesque work was developed from Roman work in Spain, and thence spread to Elne and Arles, a position which none, I suppose, will be bold enough to take.
The nave remains to be described; and to do this well and adequately, it is necessary to use, not indeed many, but certainly strong, words. Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works, might well cling fondly to his grand scheme, for his proposal was not less, I believe, than the erection of the widest pointed vault in Christendom. Such a scheme might be expected to meet then in Spain, as it most certainly would now in this country,[327] a good deal of criticism, and many objections, on the score of its impracticability; and it is to the honour of the Chapter that they had the good sense to consult experts and not amateurs as to the steps to be taken, and then, having satisfied themselves that their architect was competent to his work, that they left it entirely in his hands.
The clear width of this nave is 73 feet, and its height is admirably proportioned to this vast dimension.[328] It is only four bays in length; each bay has chapels opening into it on either side, and filling up the space between the enormous buttresses, whose depth from the front of the groining shaft to their face is no less than 20 feet. Above the arches which open into the side chapels is a row of small cusped openings, corresponding with those which form the triforium of the choir; and above these are lofty traceried clerestory windows. The groining-ribs are very large and well moulded. At the east end of the nave three arches open into the choir and its aisles; and above these are three circular windows, the largest of which has lost its tracery. And here it is that the magnificence of the scheme is most fully realized. A single nave and choir, all of the same enormous size, would have been immeasurable by the eye, and would have been, to a great extent, thrown away; here, however, the lofty choir and aisles, with their many subdivisions, give an extraordinary impression of size to the vast vault of the nave, and make it look even larger than it really is. In short, had this nave been longer by one bay, I believe that scarcely any interior in Europe could have surpassed it in effect. Unfortunately, as is so often the case among those who possess the most precious works of art, there is now but little feeling in Gerona for the treasure it possesses in this wondrous nave, for the stalls and Coro have been moved down from their proper place into the middle of its length, where they are shut in and surrounded by a high blank screen, painted in the vulgarest imitation of Gothic traceries, to the utter ruin, of course, of the whole internal perspective. It would be a grand and simple work of restoration to give up here, for once, the Spanish usage, and to restore the stalls to the proper choir. I say “restore,” because it is pretty clear that they could not have been in the nave when they were first made, inasmuch as this was in A.D. 1351, sixty-six years before its commencement. A deed still remains in the archives of the cathedral, by which we ascertain this fact, for by it a sculptor from Barcelona agreed, on June 7th, 1351, to make the stalls at the rate of 45 libras of Barcelona for each.[329] The detail of some parts of the woodwork is exceedingly good, and evidently of the middle of the fourteenth century, so that it is clear they are the very stalls referred to in the agreement. There is ample length in the proper choir for them, and they must have been moved into the nave in unwise obedience to the common modern Spanish arrangement, which was certainly never more entirely unfortunate and destructive of effect than it is here.
It will be seen, by reference to the Appendix, that though the architects consulted were fairly unanimous as to the possibility of building the single nave, they were by no means so in their recommendation of it as the best plan. The general feeling seems to have been decidedly adverse to it; and we may assume that the Chapter decided on it partly because it was already commenced, and partly because it promised to be a cheaper plan than the other. There seems also to have been great dread on the part of the Chapter of interfering in any way with the wall which now forms the east end of the nave, for fear lest, when it was cut into for the introduction of the respond of the nave arcade, the whole should give way.
Paschasius de Xulbe, one of the architects questioned, gives the valuable answer, that if the nave is of triple division in width, the groining of the choir must be raised in order that it may correspond in its measurements to its third; from which it is pretty clear that he spoke of a then recognized system of proportioning the height to the width of a building.
Guillermo Sagrera, master of the works at St. John Perpiñan, tells us, in his answer, that the choir was originally built with the intention of having a single nave; and this will account for the otherwise unintelligible finish of its western wall, which it is clear, from the tenour of all the answers, was not prepared for any arches in the nave. I am not certain indeed whether we are not to assume, in reading the questions asked by the Chapter, that the Romanesque nave was itself of the same plan and dimensions; and the vast width of the old nave of Toulouse Cathedral--sixty-three feet--affords an example, at no great distance from Gerona, of the fact that architects, even so early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, were not afraid to propose and execute works on so unusual a scale.
I will not quote farther from the answers of the architects, because they well deserve to be read in detail; but it is a satisfaction to be able to say that their conviction of the practicability of the work has been amply justified, inasmuch as, even to the present day, there is scarcely a sign of a settlement or crack throughout the entire building.
It is difficult to express a positive opinion as to the original intention of the architect in regard to the design and finish of the exterior of this part of the church. The gable walls have been altered, the roofs renewed, and the original termination of the buttresses destroyed. At no time however, I think, can it have looked well. The position is charming, on the edge of a steep, rocky hill falling down to the river, and girt on its north side by the old many-towered city wall; yet with all these advantages it is now a decidedly ugly work, and the nave looks bald, and large out of all proportion to the subdivided, lower, and over-delicately-treated choir. On the west side the whole character of the church is Pagan;[330] and I well remember the astonishment with which, when I had climbed the long flight of broad steps which leads to the western door, I looked down the stupendous interior, for which I had been so little prepared!
The effect is not a little enhanced by the dark colour of the stone, which has never been polluted by whitewash; but there are some defects. The want of length has already been noticed; the entire absence of stringcourses inside is not pleasant; and the lowering of the arches into the chapels in the second bay from the west wall, where there are three in place of the two in each of the other bays, breaks the main lines of the design very awkwardly. The mouldings too, as might be expected in work of so late a date, are nowhere very first-rate, though they certainly retain generally the character of late fourteenth-century work.
The doorway on the south side of the nave is remarkable in one respect. It has in its jambs a series of statues of the Apostles, executed in terra-cotta; and the agreement for their execution, made, in A.D. 1458, with the artist Berenguer Cervia, binds him to execute them for six hundred florins, and “of the same earth as the statue of Sta. Eulalia and the cross of the new doorway at Barcelona.”[331] This doorway is very large, but bald and poor in detail; the statues to which the contract refers still remain, and are in good preservation.
There is nothing more specially worth noticing in the fabric; but fortunately the choir still retains precious relics in the Retablo behind, and the baldachin above, the high-altar. There are also said to be some frontals of the altar still preserved, which are of silver, and which were originally adorned with precious stones, and with an inscription which proves them to have been made before the consecration of the church, in A.D. 1038. Unfortunately they were not in their place when I was at Gerona, and so I missed seeing them.[332] The Retablo is of wood entirely covered with silver plates, and divided vertically into three series of niches and canopies; each division has a subject, and a good deal of enamelling is introduced in various parts of the canopies and grounds of the panels. Each panel has a cinquefoiled arch with a crocketed gablet and pinnacles on either side. The straight line of the top is broken by three niches, which rise in the centre and at either end. In the centre is the Blessed Virgin with our Lord; on the right, San Narcisso; and on the left, San Feliu. The three tiers of subjects contain (a) figures of saints, (b) subjects from the life of the Blessed Virgin, and (c) subjects from the life of our Lord. A monument in one of the chapels gives some account of this precious work; for though it is called a ciborium, it is also spoken of as being of silver, which, I believe, the actual ciborium is not.[333] The date of this monument is 1362; but in the ‘Liber Notularum’ for A.D. 1320, 21, and 22, it seems that the Chapter devoted 3000 libras for the reparation of the Retablo, though it was not till A.D. 1346 that the work was finished, and the altar finally fixed in its present position.[334] The whole of the work is therefore before this date; and probably the Retablo and the baldachin date from the period between the two dates last given, viz. A.D. 1320 and A.D. 1348.
The baldachin is, like the Retablo, of wood covered with thin plates of metal. It stands upon four shafts, the lower portions of which are of dark marble resting on the moulded footpace round the altar. These four shafts have capitals and bands, the latter being set round with enamelled coats-of-arms. The canopy is a sort of very flat quadripartite vault covered with small figures; but on both my visits to Gerona it has been so dark in the choir as to render it impossible to make out the subjects. The central subject seems to be the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, and in the eastern division is a sitting figure of our Lord with saints on either side. In order to show the figures on the roof of the baldachin as much as possible, the two eastern columns are much lower than the western, the whole roof having thus a slope up towards the west. A singular arrangement was contrived behind the altar--a white marble seat for the bishop raised by several steps on either side to the level of the altar, and placed under the central arch of the apse. Here, when the bishop celebrated pontifically, he sat till the oblation, and returned to it again to give the benediction to the people.[335]
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.
The steeple has been much altered; but the original design of the two upper (and octagonal) stages seems to have had a two-light window with a bold central shaft, angle-pilasters, and stringcourses, with shallow arcading below them.
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.
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.
There is another house in the same street, and just opposite the inn, of rather later date, but also with early ajimez windows, and this had also an open stage below the roof.
The whole city looks picturesque and old, and I daresay a more careful search than I had time for would be rewarded with further discoveries of old remains. Most of the houses are arcaded below, and their lower stories are groined, the cells of the vaults being filled in with bricks laid in herring-bone patterns.
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.
On the road from Gerona into France I have seen only one or two churches. At Figueras the cathedral has a steeple extremely similar to that just described at Granollers, and evidently of the same date. The sides of the octagon are not equal, and bells are hung in the windows, and one in an arched frame at the top. This tower is on the north side of the nave, which has four bays, transepts, and a Renaissance central dome covered with glazed tiles. The fabric of the nave seems to be of the thirteenth century, having lancet windows and buttresses of great projection rather well designed, chapels occupying the space between them. The west door label runs up to, and is terminated by, a long cross. At la Junquera, between Figueras and the frontier, the little Parroquia has the date of A.D. 1413 on the door. Its only feature of interest is the tower, which has a staircase carried on arches thrown from side to side of the tower, and having a square opening or well-hole in the centre. The same kind of staircase has been described in the church of San Roman at Toledo.
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.
On the whole S. Elne well deserves a visit, not only on account of the extreme interest of its church and cloister, but, to the student of Spanish architecture, on account of the very important link which it supplies in the chain which connects the early Spanish with the early French buildings of the middle ages.
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.
XVI. MANRESA--LÉRIDA
THE railway which connects Barcelona with Zaragoza enables the ecclesiologist to see some of the best buildings in this part of Spain with great ease. As far as Manresa its course is extremely picturesque, as it winds about among the Catalan hills, in sight, for a considerable part of the way, of that wonderful jagged mountain-range of Montserrat, which, after much experience of mountains, strikes me more each time that I see it as among the very noblest of rocks. I know not its height above the sea, but its vast precipitous mass, rising suddenly from among the ordinary features of a landscape, and entirely unconnected with any other mountain range, produces an impression of size which may possibly be vastly in excess of the reality. Its sky-line is everywhere formed by grand pointed pinnacles, or aiguilles of rock, and the whole mass is of a pale grey colour which adds very much to its effect. The convent is a considerable distance below the summit; but as there appears, so far as I can learn, to be nothing left of any of its mediæval buildings, I was obliged to deny myself the pleasure of the climb to the summit of the rock, which a visit to the monastery would have excused, and in part, indeed, entailed. To the north of the line of the railway the hills rise gradually almost to the dignity of mountains, and suggest a beautiful situation for that old episcopal city--Vique--whose fine cathedral seems to have been destroyed and rebuilt, but where there is still to be seen a very rich late middle-pointed cloister. Everywhere the richly-coloured soil teems with produce; here vineyards and there corn-fields, all of them divided by long parallel lines of olives and standard peaches; whilst the deep river dells, clothed with cork-trees, stone pines, or underwood, add immensely to the interest of the road, which constantly crosses them.
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.
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.
The columns are simple octagons in plan, and of great size: they have poor, shallow, carved capitals, which support the very thin-looking main arches, and the large moulded piers which carry the groining. This is quadripartite throughout, and has very bold ribs, with carved bosses at the meeting of the diagonal ribs. The window traceries throughout are of rich geometrical character, and savour rather of German influence than of French. Those in the aisles are generally of two lights, and in the clerestory of three and four lights--the window in the eastern bay of the apse being of four lights, whilst those in the other bays are only of three.
The whole roof of the aisles is paved with stone laid on the back of the vault, as at Toledo cathedral, with gutters following the lines of the vaulting ribs, and the water is carried down into the pockets of the vaults, and thence through the buttresses into gurgoyles. Over this roof--which seemed to me to be undoubtedly the old one--a modern wooden roof covered with pantiles has been erected, which blocks up all the lower part of the clerestory windows, and is carried in a very clumsy fashion on arches thrown across between the flying buttresses. The nave roof is now all covered with pantiles laid on the vault itself, so that from below the church has the effect, already noticed at Barcelona, of being roofless. This is certainly not the old arrangement, but whether of old there was any visible roof to any of these late Catalan churches I am wholly unable to say.
The flying buttresses are double in height, the lower arches abutting against the wall a few feet above the sills of the clerestory windows, and the upper somewhat above their springing. It is possible that this upper flying buttress is an addition to the original design, provided to meet some settlement in the fabric, for many of the buttresses have only the lower arch, which would hardly be the case if they had all been executed at the same time. The buttresses generally are finished with crocketed pediments, but there are now no traces to be seen of their pinnacles, or of the parapets between them. A lofty octagonal staircase turret is carried up to the height of the clerestory against one of the outer angles of the aisle wall, and a passageway from it to the clerestory roof is boldly carried upon an arch, which takes the place of a flying buttress.
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:--
GERI: LAPI: RACHAMATORE: MEFECIT: INFLORENTIA.
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 site of the cathedral has long been occupied. It was an important stronghold in the time of the Romans, and the first cathedral was erected as early as in the sixth century. The Moors in course of time gained possession of the city, and it was not until A.D. 1149 that the Christians, under Ramon Berenguer, finally drove them out and regained possession.
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.
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.
Here I may notice one of the remarkable features of this building--that the external roofs are all of stone. Most of them indeed are modern; but those of the choir and lantern are undoubtedly original, and there can be little doubt that the whole church was covered in the same way. They are formed entirely of stones chamfered and weathered to a flat pitch, and lapping slightly over each other. Their effect is good, and they were evidently built by men who hoped their work would last for ever: yet this has not quite been the result of what they did; for, as I have said, most of the roofs have been relaid with slabs of stone carefully fitted together like pavement, and less likely therefore to withstand the weather than the old roofs were.
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 [Omega]; 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.
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.
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.
The interior of the church has been as completely encumbered with arrangements for soldiers’ convenience as has that of the cloister. A floor has been erected all over the nave at mid-height of the columns, and in the south transept at the level of their capitals. The choir is boarded off, and not actively desecrated. The real floor of the church is now an artillery storehouse; on the raised floor of the nave a regiment of soldiers sleep and live; and in the south transept the bandsmen spend all their time making the most hideous and deafening discord. It is indeed a shameful use for a church, and there is only one small crumb of consolation in the fact that, soldiers notwithstanding, there has hitherto been no great amount of wilful damage done to any of the old work. The capitals throughout are extremely rich in sculpture, and are still perfect though obscured by whitewash, and the groining has nowhere been damaged. I know no style more full of vigour and true majesty than the earliest pointed, of which this interior is so fine an example. The lavish enrichment of the capitals, the fine section of the great clustered columns, the severe simplicity of the unmoulded arches, and the extreme boldness of the groining-ribs, all combine to produce this result. Almost all the principal shafts are coupled, and the groining-bays are kept very distinct from one another by very bold transverse arches; these, and indeed all the main arches, are pointed. There is no triforium, and but a small space between the arches into the aisles and the clerestory windows. The canted sides of the central lantern are supported on pendentives similar to those which occur under the angles of some of the early French domes.[367] Above these is an arcaded string-course, and then the windows: these are all double, and of varied tracery. There are monials and traceries nearly flush with both the internal and external face of the wall: this was a necessary arrangement for a work which was to be seen so entirely from below, where the external traceries would all have been lost to the view. There are groining-shafts in the angles of the octagon, and an octagonal dome or vault, with ribs at the angles. The choir is not used at all: it has a quadripartite vault over its western half, and a pointed arch in front of the apse, which is covered with a semi-dome. The western bay is lighted by clerestory windows like those in the nave, and the apse by three windows, which on the outside have flat buttresses between them.
None of the old ritual arrangements remain; but there is nothing here to suggest anything at all different from what might be met with in a similar church elsewhere.[368] The lantern does not prove anything more than our own lanterns do as to the arrangement of the choir for worship: in short, here as elsewhere the central lantern was introduced partly because it was a custom of the Lombard churches, from which this class of Spanish church borrowed so much, and in the next place because it was especially suitable for a climate like that of Spain, where it afforded the chance not only of lighting the church in the most agreeable way, but also of ventilating it most efficaciously.
No doubt the external effect of this church was improved much by the addition of the great western steeple, though at the same time it is plain that its somewhat eccentric position has removed it so far from the main fabric of the church as to render the whole group of buildings less compact in its outline than it would have been had it been attached, like most of our own steeples, to the body of the church itself. On the other hand, nothing is more difficult, usually, than to build a steeple to a church which already has a central lantern, without entirely destroying the importance of this, which ought always, where it exists, to be a main feature; and here, as is generally the case in examples derived in any way from Italian examples, the central lantern is not very important in its dimensions, and required therefore more than usual caution on the part of the artist who ventured to add to it. Here, as happens often with detached campaniles, the grouping of the steeple with the church from various points of view is very diversified, and often very striking. From its great height above the valley, it is seen on all sides, and generally at some distance. From the south, the grand size of the cloister, which connects the steeple with the church, gives it somewhat the effect of being in fact at the west end of an enormous building, of which the cloister may be the nave; whilst from the west, as the ground falls considerably, nothing of the church is seen but the central lantern rising slightly over the cloisters, whilst the steeple rears its whole height boldly to the right, and makes the whole scheme of the work utterly unintelligible until after a thorough investigation. Again, in the views of the cathedral from the east side the steeple has the effect of being, like that of Ely, at the west end of the nave, and here it groups finely with the central lantern. The same results will be found in some of our English examples, and the parish church of West Walton, near Wisbeach, illustrates, as well as any that I know, the extraordinary variety of effect which a detached tower, at some distance from the main building, produces.
The only portion of the building not yet described is a long hall on the north side of the cloister: this is vaulted with a pointed stone barrel-vault, and is gloomy-looking in the extreme, being lighted entirely from one end. A newel staircase has been taken away from the other end.
Near the north side of the cathedral, on slightly higher ground, is another fine fragment of a building of the same age, which looks as if it had always been built as a defensive work. It contains a magnificent hall, groined in four bays of quadripartite vaulting, and measuring about 24 feet by 96 feet. A smaller room next to this has a waggon-vault. The north and east walls of this hall, and of a building at right angles to it, are very boldly arcaded on the outside, and have a simple trefoiled corbel-table under the eaves: the hall windows are set within the wall-arcade. The bosses at the intersection of the ribs on the vault of the hall have interlacing patterns of Moorish character carved upon them, and afford the only distinct evidence of anything like Moorish influence that I noticed in any of the buildings here.
There are two other old churches in Lérida, San Lorenzo and San Juan. San Lorenzo is on the hill, not very far from the cathedral. It is a parallel triapsidal church, the nave vaulted with a pointed waggon-vault, divided into three bays by arches springing from coupled shafts in the side walls. The apse has a semi-dome, and is lighted by three round-headed windows, five inches wide in the clear, and has a corbel-table under the eaves outside. The side walls of the nave are eight feet thick (the nave being thirty-three feet wide), and through them very simple pointed arches are pierced, opening into the aisles. I have no doubt that these were additions to the original fabric. They have polygonal apses at their east end, with very good window-tracery of circa A.D. 1270-1300. On the south side an octagonal steeple was added in the fifteenth century, projecting from the aisle walls. This has a two-light window on each side of the belfry, a pierced parapet, and a simple octagonal spire. There is a fine fourteenth-century Retablo to the high altar. It has a niche in the centre with a figure of St. Laurence under a canopy, and a number of subjects and statues on either side. There is also one of the usual fifteenth-century galleries at the west end.
The interiors both of this church and of San Juan were so dark that I found it almost impossible to make even the roughest notes of their contents or dimensions.
San Juan is another fine early church, perhaps a little later than San Lorenzo, and of about the same age as the cathedral; neither of them, however, show any signs of having been, as is the tradition, built as mosques, and converted into churches after the taking of Lérida from the Moors in A.D. 1149. The plan here is but little altered, and exhibits three bays of cross-vaulting, and an apse.[369] On the north side an aisle has been added; but on the south the façade is nearly unaltered, and the interior is similarly very perfect. The mode of lighting with windows very high up is similar to that of the cathedral clerestory, and is worth the attention of those who wish to adapt the Pointed style for tropical climates. The rose window and great south door are both very fine examples, and extremely peculiar in their arrangement. The door, which is very large and imposing, occupies the whole of the central bay, and there are fine windows in the bays on either side of it: the impression produced at first sight is consequently that one is looking at the west end of a large church, upon one side of which an apsidal chancel has been added. The door is in fact out of all proportion to the size of the church, though this very fact gives perhaps somewhat of that monumental character to the whole work which is so rare in small buildings. It is worthy of notice that the very same design is to be seen in the church of la Magdalena at Zamora--already described; and there is indeed so much identity of character between the two churches as to make it more than probable that the same architect erected both.
In the street near San Juan is a very fine old Romanesque house of unusually good style. It is of three stories in height, the lower story much modernized. The intermediate stage has a very fine row of three-light ajimez windows with slender shafts and capitals very delicately sculptured. The string under these windows is also elaborately carved: above is an eaves-cornice, resting on corbels, and above this a modern upper stage. A stone with a Renaissance border to it, in the lower part of the wall, describes this building as the Exchange of Lérida, “built in 1589.” A more impudent forgery I do not know; but probably the architect of that day thought his ugly upper stage the only part worthy of notice, and meant only to record its erection. The patio or court-yard behind is small, but has the same kind of windows as the front--though without any carving--and some good corbel-tables and archways.
I saw nothing else of architectural interest in Lérida; but I confidently recommend other ecclesiologists to examine its buildings for themselves. They form an important link between the noble cathedral at Tarragona and the smaller but beautiful church of Tudela; and belonging as they do to the most interesting period of our art, the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, they afford examples for our emulation and study of even more value than the later works at Barcelona and Manresa, which I have before had to describe.[370]
XVII. HUESCA--ZARAGOZA
TO the north of the railway between Lérida and Zaragoza, and within easy distance of the stations of Monzon and Tardienta, are the two old Aragonese cities of Barbastro and Huesca Monzon--a possession of the Knights Templars since A.D. 1143--is still dignified by a castle on the hill, which rises steeply above the town, and in which there are said to be some remains of the residence of their superior in Aragon. The accounts I obtained of Barbastro made me think it hardly worthy of a visit. The cathedral was built between 1500 and 1533; and it is a small church (about 140 feet in length), without either triforium or clerestory, the groining springing from the capitals of the columns, and being covered with ogee lierne ribs.[371] Huesca seemed to promise more, so leaving the railway at Almudévar[372] I made an excursion thither. It is a drive of three or four hours from the railway; and the distant views of the old city are striking, backed as it is by a fine mountain-range, on one of whose lower spurs it is built. The cathedral stands on the highest ground in the city; and the rocky bluffs of the mountain behind it look like enormous castles guarding its enceinte. These picturesque views are the more refreshing by the contrast they offer to the broad corn-covered plain at their feet. Two or three miles from Huesca, on another hill, are the remains of the great monastery of Monte Aragon, which was, however, rebuilt in 1777, and is not very likely therefore now to reward examination.
The Plaza in front of the cathedral is surrounded by an important group of buildings--the palace of the kings of Aragon, the college of Santiago, and others belonging to the old university. They are mostly Renaissance in their design; but in the old palace is a crypt called “la Campana del Rey Monje,” which seems to date from the end of the twelfth century. It has an apse covered with a semi-dome; and a quadripartite vault of good character covers the buildings west of the apse. The arches are all semi-circular.
The cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century, from the designs of a Biscayan architect, Juan de Olotzaga.[373] The cloister on the north side is the principal remaining portion of the older church, and this is so damaged and decayed as to present hardly a single feature of interest save two or three of the picturesque tombs corbelled out from the walls, which are so frequently seen in the north of Spain.
The plan[374] of the cathedral consists of a nave and aisles of four bays in length, with chapels between the buttresses. The Coro is formed by screens which cut off the two eastern bays of the nave; it opens at the east into the rather grand transept, which, as is so invariably the case in the later Spanish churches, completely usurps the functions of the nave as the place of gathering for worshippers. To the east of the transept are five apsidal chapels opening out of it; that in the centre larger than the others, and containing the High Altar. Three broad steps are carried all across the church from north to south, in front of these chapels. It struck me that the plan of this east end was so very similar to that of some of the earlier Spanish churches[375] as to render it probable at any rate that Olotzaga raised his church upon the foundations of that which was removed to make way for his work. The steeple which takes the place of the westernmost chapel on the north side of the nave is octagonal in plan, but is much modernized, and finished with a brick belfry-stage: it is evidently of older foundation than the church. The columns between the nave and aisles are all clustered, and the main arches are boldly moulded. There is no triforium, the wall above the arcade being perfectly plain up to a carved stringcourse which is carried round the church below the clerestory; the windows in which are filled with flamboyant tracery. The groining is generally rather intricate, and has bosses at all the intersections of the ribs. There is no lantern at the intersection of the nave and transepts. It has been already said that the Coro occupies the usual place in the nave; and it is clear that it has never been moved, as there are small groined chapels formed between the columns on either side of it. The Reja at the west end of choir is not old; the usual brass rails are placed to form a passage from the Coro to the Capilla mayor, across the transept.
The reredos behind the high altar is carved in alabaster: it is of the latest Gothic, but certainly very fine. Damian Forment, a Valencian sculptor, executed it between A.D. 1520 and 1533.[376] It is divided into three great compartments, the centre rising higher than the others. Each compartment has a subject, crowded lavishly with figures in high relief; whilst a broad band of carving is carried round the whole, and many figures in niches are introduced. The subjects are: 1, The Procession to Calvary; 2, the Crucifixion, with the First Person of the Holy Trinity surrounded by angels in the sky; and, 3, the Descent from the Cross. Between these subjects and the altar are statues of the twelve Apostles and our Lord, and a door on either side of the altar opens into the space behind the reredos.
The west doorway is said by Cean Bermudez to be the work of Olotzaga. My own impression is that it is a work of circa A.D. 1350. It is a fine middle-pointed doorway of rich character. The arch is of seven orders; three enriched with foliage, and the remainder with figures under canopies, of--1, figures with scrolls; 2, angels; 3, holy women; 4, apostles and saints. The tympanum has the B. V. Mary and our Lord under a canopy; she is standing on a corbel, on which is carved a woman with asps at her bosom; on either side of the canopy is an angel censing; below, on the left, are three kings, and on the right the Noli me tangere. The lintel has some coats of arms; and there are seven statues of saints in each jamb; and below them were subjects enclosed within quatrefoils, all of which have been destroyed.[377] The gable over the doorway arch is crocketed, and pierced with tracery, and has pinnacles on either side. The horn-shaped leaf so often seen in English work is profusely used here, and in the arches is generally arranged in the French fashion, à crochet. The wooden doors are covered with iron plates beaten up into a pattern, and nailed on with great brass nails.
The west end is finished at the top with a straight cornice, with circular turrets at the angles, and pinnacles between, dividing it into three compartments. The detail of all this upper part is very poor and late in style, and altogether inferior to that of the west doorway. The clerestory is supported by simple flying buttresses, finished with rich pinnacles.
There are two other old doorways. That from the cloister on the north side is round-arched, with dog-tooth, chevron, and roses carved on it; yet the detail seems to prove that it cannot be earlier than A.D. 1300, whilst some of the carving looks as if it were even later than this. The other door is in the south transept, and certainly deserves examination. It has a small groined porch formed between two buttresses in front of it; over the arch is the Crucifix, S. Mary, and S. John; whilst on the west wall are the three Maries coming with spices, &c., to the grave of our Lord, which is represented on the east wall of the porch, with the angel seated on it.
The church of San Pedro el Viejo, which I now have to mention, is by far the most interesting in the city, being of much earlier date than any part of the cathedral.[378] It has a nave and aisles of four bays, a transept with a raised lantern over the crossing, and three parallel apses at the east end. A hexagonal tower is placed against the north wall of the north transept, and a cloister occupies the whole south side of the church; whilst on the east of the cloister is a series of chapels or rooms of early date. There is, so far as I know, no evidence of the date of this work; but judging by its style, it can hardly be later than the middle of the twelfth century, with the exception of the raised vault of the lantern, which was finished, however, before the consecration of the church, which is said to have taken place in A.D. 1241.[379]
The nave and aisles are vaulted with continuous waggon-vaults, the chapels at the east end with semi-domes, and the lantern with a quadripartite vault, the ribs of which are enriched with the dog-tooth ornament. The waggon-vault of the nave is divided into bays by cross arches corresponding with the piers of the arcades. The vaulting of the lantern springs from a higher level than the other vaults, and has ridge ribs as well as diagonal and wall ribs. The lantern is lighted by four circular windows, which have rich early thirteenth-century mouldings, and are filled in with tracery which is evidently of Moorish origin. A fine round-arched doorway, with three engaged shafts in each jamb, leads from the transepts into the tower, which has groining shafts in each angle. The Coro here now occupies the western bay of the nave, and is fitted up with fair fifteenth-century stalls, which, being carried across the end, block up the old western doorway.
The whole church is built of red sandstone, but is whitewashed throughout, and the exterior is much modernized, though the old work is still in part visible. The west front has a bold arch under the roof, which corresponds with the waggon-vault inside. The abacus from which this springs is carried across as a stringcourse, and in the space enclosed between it and the arch is a round-headed window, with a broad external splay and plain label moulding. A very plain western doorway is now (as also is this window) blocked up. The aisles have also small windows high up in the walls, and the whole church is covered with a roof of very flat pitch laid immediately on the stone vaults. The lowest stage of the tower had windows in each of its disengaged sides: it rises in four stages of equal height, divided by stringcourses, but is capped with a modern belfry stage. The lantern is carried up to the level of the top of its vault, and then covered like the rest of the church with a flat tiled roof. A stringcourse, richly worked with a billet moulding, is carried round the outer walls of the aisles, and round their pilaster buttresses.
The cloister, though in a very sad state of dilapidation, is still very interesting. It is covered with a lean-to roof, and has round arches throughout springing from capitals, some of which are carved with figures, and some with foliage only, but all of rude character. Several arched recesses for monuments are formed in the outer walls, but none of the inscriptions that I observed were earlier than A.D. 1200. In the south wall six of these arches have enormous stone coffins, each supported on three corbels on the backs of three lions. These coffins are about two feet deep, by seven feet in length, and covered with a gabled stone cover. The columns in the arcades of this cloister are curiously varied, some being coupled shafts, some quatrefoil in section, some square, and some octagonal. Against the east wall are four chambers opening into the cloister. That nearest the church is the Chapel of San Bartolomé, and of the same style as the nave, covered with a low waggon-vault, and with the original stone altar still remaining against the square east end. The chapel next to this has a very late vault; the next, a quadripartite vault; and the southernmost has a pointed waggon-vault, with three plain, pointed-arched recesses in each of the side walls.
Over the modern doorway from the cloister into the church is the tympanum of the original doorway, rudely sculptured with the Adoration of the Magi, above which two angels hold a circle, on which are inscribed the monogram of our Lord, and the letters A and [Greek: Omega].
I could find nothing else of much architectural interest in Huesca. The Church of San Martin has a plain thirteenth-century west doorway, and that of San Juan--said to have been consecrated in A.D. 1204--seemed to have an apse of about that date, with a central lantern-tower carried on pointed arches. There are remains also of two of the town gateways, but they are of no interest.
In the distance, as I approached Huesca, I had noticed what looked like an old church at Salas, and, having time to spare, I walked there. The way lay along fields and by the muddiest of roads, where ruts were being levelled, and the whole made uniformly muddy, in order to accommodate the Bishop of Huesca, who was coming out in procession to have a service in the church there. I found the east and west ends of the church to be old, but the rest, inside and out, had been hopelessly modernized. The east end retains nothing beyond three very long slits for windows, about six inches wide, and not intended for glazing. The west end is very fine, and almost untouched. It has a noble doorway of six orders, very richly sculptured with chevrons, dog-tooth, mouldings of first-pointed character, and rich transitional foliage. The capitals have similar foliage, but the shafts and their bases have been destroyed, and a modern head to the door has been inserted within the arch. This door is set forward from the face of the wall nearly four feet, and has engaged shafts in the angles, and a richly-carved cornice. The gable (which is of flat pitch) is filled with a large circular window, the tracery of which has been destroyed. It has three orders of moulding round it, one moulded only, the others carved with a very bold dog-tooth enrichment. The label has rather ingeniously contrived crockets of very conventional design. The whole of this front is of very much the same character as the early work in the cathedral at Lérida. It is only about a mile and a half out of Huesca, and ought to be visited, as, with the exception of San Pedro el Viejo, it is certainly the most interesting work to be seen.
Travellers will find accommodation which is just tolerable in the Posada at Huesca. They should not return, as I was obliged to do, to Zaragoza, but should extend the journey to Jaca, where there seems to be a fair Romanesque cathedral. Near Jaca, too, Sta. Cruz de los Seros has a fine Romanesque church, with an octagonal raised central lantern, and a steeple of several stages in height on its north side. San Juan de la Peña, a monastery in the same district, has a fine Romanesque cloister, of the same character as that of San Pedro at Huesca: but the church is, I think, modern.[380]
I returned from Huesca to the railway, and thence to Zaragoza, hoping that, notwithstanding all it had suffered from wars and sieges, something might still be found to reward examination. I have seen no city in Spain which is more imposing in the distance, and yet less interesting on near acquaintance. A great group of towers and steeples stands up so grandly, that it is natural to suppose there will be much to see. But whether the French in their sieges destroyed everything, or whether it is that the city is too prosperous to allow old things to stand in the way, it is certainly the fact that but few old buildings do stand, and that none of them are of first-rate interest. The river here is rapid and broad, and the view of the distant mountains fine, whilst, partly owing to its being a centre for several railways, it is a fairly gay and lively city, and is year by year in process of improvement, in the modern sense of the word.
There are here two cathedrals, in which I believe the services are celebrated alternately for six months at a time, the same staff serving both churches. On the two occasions on which I have stopped in Zaragoza, it has fortunately happened that the old cathedral was open, and the exterior of the other promises so little gratification in the interior, that I never even made the attempt to penetrate into it.
The old cathedral is called the “Seu,” par excellence, the other being the Cathedral “del Pilar.” The Seu[381] is the usual term for the principal church, and the name of the second is derived from a miracle-working figure of the Blessed Virgin on a pillar, which it seems that the people care only to worship half the year.
The Seu is in some respects a remarkable church, but it is so much modernized outside as to be, with the exception of one portion, quite uninteresting, and the interior, though it is gorgeous and grand in its general effect, is of very late style and date, and does not bear very much examination in detail. It is very broad in proportion to its length, having two aisles on each side of the nave, and chapels beyond them between the buttresses; and there are but five bays west of the Crossing, and of these the Coro occupies two. There is a lantern at the Crossing, and a very short apsidal choir. The nave and aisles are all roofed at the same level, the vaulting springing from the capitals of the main columns, and the whole of the light is admitted by windows in the end walls, and high up in the outer walls of the aisles. In this respect Spanish churches of late date almost always exhibit an attention to the requirements of the climate, which is scarcely ever seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and this church owes almost all its good effect to this circumstance, for it is in light and shade only, and neither in general design nor in detail, that it is a success. The detail, indeed, is almost as much Pagan as Gothic. The capitals of the columns, for instance, have carvings of fat nude cherubs, supporting coats of arms, and the groining, which is covered with ogee lierne ribs, has enormous bosses and pendants cut out of wood and gaudily gilded.
There is some interesting matter in the history of the Cimborio over the Crossing. It seems that in the year 1500 there was supposed to be some danger of the old Cimborio falling, and the Archbishop, D. Alonso de Aragon, and his Chapter, thereupon invited several artificers and skilled engineers to examine the works, and advise as to its repair. At this Junta there were present two maestros from Toledo--one of them Henrique de Egas; Maestro Font, from Barcelona; Carlos, from Montearagon (Huesca); and Compte, from Valencia; and they, having deliberated with the artificers attached to the cathedral, reported that it would be necessary to take down the Cimborio and rebuild it, and do other repairs to the rest of the church.
This report having been presented, the archbishop some time afterwards, in January, 1505, makes an appeal to the King on the subject, in order that he may obtain the services of Henrique de Egas as architect for the work. He says that he has had the advice of the most experienced and able architects of the day, and among them of Egas, and that they were all agreed that the Cimborio must be taken down, which had been done. And then he says that, inasmuch as the rest of the church seems to be much in want of repair, and as Egas seemed to be a man of great ability and experience, he was very anxious to procure his aid, but that Egas had excused himself on the plea that he had a certain hospital to build at Santiago in Galicia for the King, who required him to go there. Whereupon the archbishop begs the King, for the love of God our Lord, that he will have pity on him; and since there is no great necessity at Santiago, and a very great one at Zaragoza, that he will command Egas to undertake the work.
It is said that Egas did execute the work after all. But it is impossible not to be amused at the enormous contrast between those times and our own, if then it was necessary for an archbishop to appeal to the King to make an architect undertake such a work![382]
The detail of the Cimborio is, as might be expected from its date, most impure. It is octagonal in plan, the canted sides being carried on semi-circular arches thrown across the angles. It is of two stages in height, the lower having square recesses for statues, and the upper traceried windows. The general scheme is Gothic, but the detail is all very Renaissance in character.[383]
The choir is apsidal, but the apse is concealed by an enormous sculptured Retablo, which, in spite of its very late date, is certainly dignified in its effect.
Externally there are evidences of the existence of an earlier church, the lower part of the apse being evidently Romanesque, a portion of the buttresses and one of the windows retaining their old character. The new work is of brick, the windows generally of four lights, with flamboyant tracery, and the walls crowned with rich cornices. The exterior of the Cimborio, as well as of the church, owes much of the picturesqueness which marks it to the fact that the brickwork is everywhere very roughly and irregularly executed.
One portion of the exterior of the church is, however, most interesting; for on the face of the wall, at the north-east angle, is a very remarkable example of brickwork, inlaid with coloured tiles, the character of which proves that it is, no doubt, part of the cathedral which was approaching completion in the middle of the fourteenth century, and earlier in date therefore than the greater part of the existing fabric. This wall is a lofty unbroken surface, about sixty-four feet in length from north to south, and is erected in front of a building of two stages in height, and pierced with pointed windows in each stage. It is built with bricks of, I think, a reddish colour (though I am a little uncertain, owing to their being now very dirty), which are all arranged in patterns in the wall, by setting those which are to form the outlines forward from one-and-a-half to two inches in advance of the general face of the wall. The spaces so left are then filled in with small tiles set in patterns or diapers, the faces of which are generally about three quarters of an inch behind those of the brick outlines. The tiles are of various shapes, sizes, and colours, red, blue, green, white, and buff on white. The blue is very deep and dark in tone, the green light and bright. The patterns are generally of very Moorish character; and there can be no doubt, I think, that the whole work was done by Moorish workmen. The general character of this very remarkable work is certainly most effective; and though I should not like to see the Moresque character of the design reproduced, it undoubtedly affords some most valuable suggestions for those who at the present day are attempting to develop a ceramic decoration for the exteriors of buildings. Here I was certainly struck by the grave quiet of the whole decoration, and was converted to some extent from a belief which I had previously entertained rather too strongly, that the use of tiles for inlaying would be likely to lead to a very gay and garish style of decoration, foreign to all dignity and repose in its effect. There is an intersecting arcade under the lowest windows, in which, as also in some other parts, the ground of the panels is plastered; and in this plaster panels of tiles and single sunk disks of tile are inserted on the white ground. The windows are pointed, and all of them have rich borders to their jambs, which are continued round the arches. Within their borders there appears to have been an order of moulded brickwork, and then the window opening, which is now blocked, but which may possibly have had stone monials and tracery. The bricks used here are of the usual old shape, about 1 ft. 1½ in. long by 6¾ in. wide. They are generally built alternately long and short, but not by any means with any great attempt to break the bond. The mortar-joints are also not less than half an inch in thickness, and this, it must be remembered, in a work the whole characteristic of which is the extreme delicacy and refinement of the decoration. The tiles are five-eighths of an inch thick; some of them are encaustic, of two colours; and all are, as is usual with Moorish tiles, glazed all over. This tile and brick decoration begins at a height of about eight feet from the ground, and is carried up from that point to the top of the wall. Such work seems to be obviously unfitted to be close to the ground; and the lower part of the wall is therefore judiciously built with perfectly plain brickwork.
The most important church in Zaragoza after the cathedral is that of San Pablo. This is an early thirteenth-century church, of the same class as that of San Lorenzo at Lérida, having a nave of four bays, and an apse of five sides with a groined aisle round it. The side walls of the nave, which are of enormous thickness, are pierced with pointed arches opening into the aisles, which seem to be of the same date, though from the enormous size of the piers they are very much cut off from the nave. The groining ribs are of great size, and moulded with a triple roll in both nave and aisles. Some trace of the original lancet windows is still to be seen in the apse; but most of them are blocked up or destroyed. The aisle is returned across the west end of the nave; and there is a western door and porch, with a descent of some eleven or twelve steps into the church. The Coro is at the west end of the nave, and is fitted with stalls executed circa A.D. 1500-1520, with a Renaissance Reja to the east of them. There is a good reredos, rich in coloured and sculptured subjects, which is said to be a work of the beginning of the sixteenth century, by Damian Forment, of Valencia, who, as will be recollected, carved the reredos in the cathedral at Huesca. The fine octagonal brick steeple is evidently a later addition to the church, and rises from the north-west angle of the nave. It is very much covered with work of the same kind as the wall veil at the cathedral, which I have just been describing, though on a bolder and coarser scale; and it belongs, as far as I can judge by its style, to somewhere about the same period.[384] The brick patterns here, as there, are in parts filled in with glazed tiles; and the general effect of the steeple is very graceful, rising as it does with richly ornamented upper stages, upon a plain base, out of the low and strange jumble of irregular roofs with which the church is now covered.
The great steeple, called the Torre Nueva, in the Plaza San Felipe, is finer and loftier than that of San Pablo, and is, I suppose, on the whole, the finest example of its kind anywhere to be seen. It is octagonal, in plan, and the sections of the various stages differ considerably in outline, owing to the ingenious manner in which the face of the walls is set at various angles. The face of most of the work is diapered with patterns in brickwork as in the other Zaragozan examples; but the most remarkable feature is, perhaps, the extraordinary extent to which the whole fabric falls out from the perpendicular. This, which is so common a fault with the Italian campaniles, arises here evidently from the same causes, the badness of the foundations, and the absence of buttresses. A great mass of brickwork has been built up on one side, in order to prevent the further settlement of this steeple; and it is to be hoped that the remedy may be effectual; for Zaragoza can ill afford to lose so remarkable a feature out of the scanty number still left; and it is valuable also as one of the grandest examples of a very remarkable class. It is said to have been built in A.D. 1504.
Another parish church in the principal street has a very small brick steeple of the same class, but very simple, and with it I think I must close my list of really Gothic erections here. The Renaissance buildings have often a certain amount of Gothic detail, and some Gothic arrangements of plan, but of so late and debased a kind as to make them little worthy of much study. Their real merit is their great size, and the rude grandeur of their treatment. They are usually built of rough brickwork, boldly and massively treated. They have always an arcaded stage, just below the eaves, which are very boldly corbelled out from the walls, and generally supported on moulded wood corbels, carrying a plate which projects some three or four feet from the face of the wall, and throws, of course, a very fine shadow over it. The patios, or court-yards, are lofty, and surrounded by columns which carry the open stages of the first and second floors. There is here no attempt at covering the brickwork with plaster or cement; and accordingly, though the detail is poor and uninteresting, the general effect is infinitely more noble than that of any of our compo-covered, smooth-faced modern London houses. The picturesque roughness of the work which was always indulged in by the mediæval architects was no sin, it seems, in the eyes of the early Renaissance architects; and it is, indeed, reserved for our own times to realize the full iniquity of any honest exhibition of facts in our ordinary buildings!
Among the buildings here which illustrate the transition from Gothic to Renaissance the cloister of the church of Sta. Engracia seems to be one of the most remarkable. It is said to have been constructed in 1536 by one Tudelilla of Tarazona, and an illustration is given of it in Villa Amil.[385] The Gothic element seems here to have been as much Moresque as Gothic, and hence the combination of these with Renaissance makes a whole which is as strange and heterogeneous as anything ever erected.
It will be seen that Zaragoza has not very much to interest an architect or ecclesiologist. Travellers in Spain who find it necessary to recruit after roughing it in country towns may no doubt feel grateful for the creature comforts they will be able to enjoy there, and it is now rather a centre of railway communication, being on the line of railway which runs from Bilbao to Barcelona, and at the point where the line from Madrid joins it.
XVIII. TARAZONA--VERUELA
I FOUND a pleasant drive of two and a half hours, through vineyards and olive-grounds, from Tudela to Tarazona. In front all the way was the noble Sierra de Moncayo, which, according to one of my Spanish fellow-travellers, is the highest mountain in Spain, from which view however I humbly, and somewhat to his annoyance, dissented. But whether he were right or not, it is still of very grand height, and the more impressive in that it rises by itself in the midst of a comparatively flat country. Behind us was an admirable view of Tudela, backed by the brown and arid hills which skirt the Ebro; beyond them, in the far distance, the Pyrenees; whilst in the immediate foreground we had a rich green mass of olives and vines spread in a glorious expanse over the country.
The villages on the road have nothing to boast of if I except a pilgrimage church at Cascante, approached by a long covered gallery from below, and a brick tower at Monteacadeo, of the Zaragozan type. We passed, too, a newly-established convent for monks, who are already beginning to build, in spite of the ruin with which they have so lately been visited. But long before the end of our journey was reached, the towers and steeples of Tarazona rose attractively in front over the low hill which conceals the complete view of the city until you are almost close upon it.
Attractive as this general view undoubtedly is, this old city does not lose when it is examined more closely and carefully. It is not only in itself picturesque, but its situation on either side of the stream which a few miles below falls into the Ebro is eminently fine, and has been made the most of by the happy and probably unconscious skill of the men who have reared on the cliff above the water a tall pile of buildings on buildings, carried on grand arches, corbelled here and buttressed there, and with a sky-line charming in itself, and rendered doubly beautiful by the sudden break in its outline caused by the lofty brick steeple of la Magdalena--one of the finest of its class--which rears itself, with admirable hardihood, on the very edge of the cliff. The streets and Plazas, too, of the old city are all picturesquely irregular, full of colour and evidences of national peculiarities, and climb the steep sides of the hills from the river-side to the high ground at the northern end of the city, which is crowned by the church of San Miguel. I call such skill as this “unconscious,” because it is so much a characteristic of old works of this kind that their authors never exhibit any of that pert conceit which so distinctly marks the efforts of so many of us nowadays. Old architects fortunately lived in days when society was moderate in its demands, and had not ceased to care for that which is true and natural: sad for us that we live when every man wishes only to excel his neighbour, and that without regard to what is true or useful; so that, instead of obtaining those happy results which always reward the artist who does exactly what is needed in the most natural and unartificial manner, we, by our attempts to show our own cleverness, constantly end in substituting a petty personal conceit, where otherwise we might have had an enduring and artistic success.
The cathedral stands very much alone, and away from the busier part of the city, at the upper end of a grass-grown and irregular Plaza, on the opposite side of the river from the Alcazar, and indeed from the bulk of the houses. This Plaza, when I first saw it, on a Sunday afternoon, was thoroughly beautiful and characteristic as a picture of Spanish life. There was a fountain in the centre, around which hundreds of peasants were congregated in lively groups, talking at the top of their voices, and all gay with whitest shirt-sleeves, bright-coloured sashes, and velvet breeches, slashed daintily at the knees, to show the whiteness of the linen drawers; and when I went on into the church, I found in the Lady Chapel another group of them kneeling before the altar, and following one of their own class in a litany to the Blessed Virgin, the effect of which was striking even to one unable to join in the burthen of the prayer.
The cathedral here is said to have been restored by Alonso the First of Aragon, in the year 1110; but an old Breviary, cited by Argaïz, fixes the foundation of the present cathedral in 1235,[386] and with this date the earliest part of the existing church agrees very closely. The plan[387] is very good, consisting of a nave of six bays, with aisles and chapels between their buttresses, transepts, a lofty Cimborio over the Crossing, and a choir of two bays, ended with a five-sided apse. The chapels in the chevet have mostly been altered, though the first on the north side appears to be original, and proves that the outline of the plan of the chevet could never have been very good. This chapel is four-sided in plan, but much wider at one end than the other, and we must, I fear, give but scant credit to the architect who planned it. The Lady Chapel is a late and poor addition of a very inferior kind, and completely modernized--as indeed is the greater part of the church--on the exterior. On the south side of the cathedral there are old sacristies and a large cloister, of which more presently. The west end seemed to me to have been intended for two steeples, but one only has been completed, and this is on the north side of the north aisle.
The remaining portions of the thirteenth-century church have been so much altered that the general effect of the early work is almost entirely destroyed. The columns and arches generally are original; the former have carved capitals; many of the latter are slightly horseshoe in shape, and have labels enriched with the dog-tooth ornament. The choir and transepts retain a good simple arcaded triforium, carried on detached shafts, and this returns across the gable-walls of the latter; it is of the simplest early pointed character; so too are the choir windows, which before their alteration appear to have been lancets, with engaged shafts in their jambs, whilst in the eastern wall of the transepts are windows of two lancet lights, with a circle above within an enclosing arch. Most of the arches of the nave are adorned with carved flowers on the chamfers, the effect of which is not good; indeed I half doubted whether they were not plaster additions, though they seemed to be just too good for this. The choir has two (and only two) flying buttresses; and as they are evidently of early date, with pinnacles of the very simplest pyramidal outline, they were probably erected to counteract a settlement which showed itself immediately after the erection of the church, for there is no evidence of any others having existed. The walls of the apse had originally a richly carved cornice, filled with heads and foliage. The groining of the aisles is generally simple and early in date, and quadripartite in plan: that of the whole of the rest of the choir and nave is of the richest description, and of the latest kind of Gothic.
Here, as is so frequently the case all over the world, the builders of one period used an entirely different material from that used by those of earlier times;[388] so that you may tell with tolerable accuracy the date of the work by the material of which it is built. Here the early church was entirely built of stone, but in all the later additions brick is the prevailing material; and at first sight it is in these later additions that we seem to find almost all the most characteristic work in the church. Many of these additions, as for instance the Churrigueresque alterations of the clerestory, are thoroughly bad and contemptible; but some of them, though they damage the unity of effect of the building, and have taken the place of work which one would much rather have seen still intact, are nevertheless striking in themselves. Such is the singular and picturesque Cimborio erected by Canon Juan Muñoz[389] in the sixteenth century; it is certainly most picturesque, but such a curious and complex combination of pinnacles and turrets built of brick, and largely inlaid with green, blue, and white tiles, is perhaps nowhere else to be seen. It is octagonal in plan, and of three stages in height, the angles of the octagons in the several stages being all counterchanged. Enormous coats of arms decorate the fronts of the buttresses. The whole work is of the very latest possible Gothic, utterly against all rules both in design and decoration, and yet, notwithstanding all this, it is unquestionably striking in its effect. The mixture of glazed tiles with brickwork has here been carried to a very great extent, and the result does not, I think, encourage any one to hope for much from this kind of development. This work is not to be compared to that at the east end of Zaragoza Cathedral, where a plain piece of wall is carefully covered all over with a rich coloured diaper of brickwork and tiles, which are all harmonious and uniform in character, and--which is equally important--in texture, and it has, on the contrary, great similarity to some attempts to combine bricks and tiles which we see made in the present day, and seems to show that these attempts are not to be carelessly encouraged. For even when such work is first executed, and the brickwork is fresh and neat, I think we always feel that the smooth hard surface of the tile offers rather too great a contrast to the rougher texture of the bricks; and whilst the former is likely to remain almost unchanged for ever, the latter is certain gradually to grow rougher and ruder in its aspect, until, in the end, we shall have walls showing everywhere picturesque marks of age, and yet with their decorations as fresh as if they had but just been introduced. Nothing can well be worse than this; for if the appearance of age is to be venerated at all, it must be somewhat uniformly evident; and it no more answers to permit the decorations on an old and rugged wall to be always new and fresh-looking, than it does to allow a juvenile wig to be put on the venerable head of an old man!
The brick steeple of the cathedral is an inferior example of the same kind as that of la Magdalena, which I shall have presently to describe; its upper half is modern, and the lowest stage of stone. The west front is all modernized, and the north transept is conspicuous for a large porch of base design, erected probably in the sixteenth century, and exhibiting a curious though very unsuccessful attempt to copy--or perhaps I ought to say caricature--early work.
The whole of the clerestory walls have been raised with a stage of brickwork above the windows, which was added probably in the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
The cloister, built in the beginning of the sixteenth century, by D. Guillen Ramon de Moncada, is a remarkable example of very rich brickwork. It deserves illustration as being of an extremely uncommon style, and withal very effective. All the arches and jambs of the openings are of moulded brick, and there are brick enclosing arches, and a very simple brick cornice outside; but the delicate traceries which give so much character to the work are all cut in thin slabs of stone let into the brickwork. Of course such a work was not intended for glazing, and was an ingenious arrangement for rendering the cloister cool and unaffected by the sun, even when at its hottest. The forms of the openings here are certainly not good, and look much more like domestic than ecclesiastical work; but in spite of this one cannot but be thankful for novelty, whenever it is, as here, legitimately obtained. The bricks are of a very pale red tint, 12½ inches long, 6¼ inches wide, and from 1½ to 1¾ thick, and the mortar-joint, as usual, is very thick--generally about ¾ of an inch. The cloister is groined, and probably in brick, but is now plastered or whitewashed unsparingly, and its effect is in great degree ruined.
The sacristies are rather peculiar in their arrangement: they are all groined, and one of them has a small recess in one angle with a chair in it facing a crucifix, of which I could not learn the use. Another of this group of buildings contains a fountain under a small dome, the plashing of whose waters seemed to make it a very popular rendezvous of the people, and made itself heard everywhere throughout the sacristies and their passages.
The stalls in the Coro are of very late Gothic, the bishop’s stall, with one on either side of it in the centre of the west end, having lofty canopies. The Coro is more than usually separated from the Capilla mayor, and there can be little doubt that it does not occupy its original position. The men who built so long a nave would never have done so simply to render its length useless by so perverse an arrangement of the choir. Here, in fact, the Coro occupies the same kind of position to which one so often sees it reduced in parish churches in Spain, where it is usually either in a western gallery, or at any rate at the extreme western end of the nave, behind everybody’s backs, and apparently out of their minds!
A chapel on the north side of the nave, dedicated to Santiago, has a richly cusped arch opening from it to the aisle, and its vault springs from large corbels, carved with figures of the four evangelists, rudely but richly sculptured. It is mainly worthy of notice now on account of the beauty of a panel-painting still preserved over the altar: this is painted on a gold background, richly diapered, and the nimbi and borders to the vestments all elaborately raised in gold in high relief. The frame is richly carved with figures of saints, and gilt. The predella has on either side of the centre St. John and the Blessed Virgin, and four other holy women; in the centre a sculpture of our Lord and four saints which serves as a pedestal for a well-posed figure of Santiago; and on either side of the saint are two pictures with subjects illustrating his life. It is, on the whole, a very fine example of the combination of painting and sculpture, of which the Spaniards in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were so fond. The paintings are less realistic than German work of the same age, and, if not so delicately lovely as early Italian works, are yet of great interest and merit.
Returning from the cathedral to the town, and before one crosses to the opposite side of the river, a noble view of the buildings on the cliff above it is obtained from the bridge. The grandest of these is an enormous bishop’s palace, once I believe the Alcazar; and close to it is the church of la Magdelena. The interior of this is entirely modernized, but the east end outside is a valuable example of untouched Romanesque. The eastern apse is divided into three by engaged shafts, stopping with capitals at the eaves-cornice, which is carried on a very simple corbel-table. To the west of this church is the steeple to which I have already alluded as giving so much of its character to Tarazona. It is a very lofty brick tower, without buttresses, with a solid simple base battering out boldly and effectively, and diapered in its upper stages with the patterns formed by projecting bricks, of which the builders of the brick buildings throughout this district were so fond. At a very slight expense a great effect of enrichment is obtained; the dark shadows of the bricks under the bright Spanish sunlight define all the lines clearly; and the uniformity of colour and the absence of buttresses make the general effect simple and quiet, notwithstanding the intricacy of the detail. The upper stage of this steeple is, as I need hardly say, a comparatively modern addition, but it no doubt adds to its effect by adding so much to the height, and in colour and design it harmonizes fairly with the earlier work below.
The church of La Concepcion, not far from this, is a very late Gothic building, with a western gallery whose occupants are quite concealed by stone traceries of the same kind as those in the cloisters of the cathedral. The sanctuary walls here are lined with glazed tiles, and the floor is laid with blue, green, and white tiles, the colour of each of which being half white and half blue or green allows of the whole floor being covered with a diaper of chequer-work, which is very effective and very easily arranged.
At the farther end of the city, and on the top of the long hill on which it is built, is a church dedicated to San Miguel. This has a simple nave with a seven-sided apse. The groining is all of very late date, the ribs curling down at their intersection as pendants, the under sides of which are cut off to receive bosses which were probably large and of wood. This groining is probably not earlier than the end of the sixteenth century, though the church itself is of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, having two doors of one of these dates: that on the north side has, in most respects, the air of being a work of the thirteenth, but its sculpture seems to prove that it cannot be earlier than the fourteenth century. It has the Judgment of Solomon carved on one of the capitals, angels in the label, and a figure of St. Michael above. The south doorway is executed in brick and stone, and is of the same date as the other. A brick belfry on the north side is enriched in the same fashion as that of la Magdalena, and, like it, batters out considerably at the base, but it is altogether inferior both in size and design.
From Tarazona I made a delightful excursion to the Abbey of Veruela. It is a two hours’ ride, and the path takes one over a hill which conceals the Sierra de Moncayo from sight in most parts of Tarazona. The scenery on the road was beautiful. The town itself is always very striking; and as we ascended, the views of the distant hills and mountains beyond the Ebro were finer and finer. After riding for an hour and a half, a grand view of the whole height of Moncayo is obtained; below it to the right is a little village guarded by a picturesque castle keep, and on beyond and to the left a long line of roof, and towers, and walls girt around with trees, which seems to promise much to reward examination: and this is the old abbey of Veruela. At last the avenue is reached, which leads to the abbey gateway, in front of which stands a tall but mutilated cross, which forms the centre from which five paths--each planted with an avenue of trees--diverge.
The history of this abbey is interesting. It was the first Cistercian house in Spain, and was founded by a certain Don Pedro de Atares, and his mother Teresa de Cajal, who commenced it in A.D. 1146, completed it in 1151, and obtained its formal incorporation in the Cistercian order on the 1st of September of the same year. There was a foundation for twelve monks, who were the first of their order to cross the Pyrenees, and who established themselves definitively here on the 10th August, 1171, under the direction of Bernard, Abbat of Scala Dei.[390]
I suppose the desolate situation of Veruela led to its being carefully fortified, though, indeed, at the date of its foundation, most religious houses were enclosed within fortified walls, and the severe rule of the early Cistercians will account fully for the remote and solitary situation chosen by the brethren who planted this house where we see it: at any rate, whatever the cause, it is now completely surrounded by walls, from which round towers project at intervals. The walls and towers are all perfectly plain, and surmounted with the pointed battlement so often seen in early Spanish buildings. A walled courtyard protects the entrance to the main gateway, and it is in front of this that the avenues mentioned just now all unite.
The view here is very peculiar. In front are the low walls of the outer court, with a raised archway in the centre; behind these the higher walls and towers, with a lofty and very plain central gateway, finished with an octagonal stage and low crocketed spire of late date, but pierced at the base with very simple thirteenth-century archways, leading into the inner court. Beyond this, again, is seen the upper part of the walls and the steeple of the Abbey Church, backed by a bold line of hills. Passing through this gateway, a long narrow court leads to the west front of the church; and to the right of this court is a long range of buildings, all of which I think are of comparatively modern erection, though the brickwork in a patio entered by one of the openings is picturesque and good.
The west front of the church has a very noble round-arched doorway, boldly recessed, and with many shafts in the jambs. Above this is a small stone inscribed with the monograms X. P. and A. Ω.; and then, higher, a delicate line of arcading carried on slender shafts. All this work is set forward in advance of the general face of the wall. The nave and aisles were each lighted with a plain circular window, and the arcading up the eaves of the western gable still remaining shows that its pitch was always very flat. A steeple was built by an Abbat--Lope Marco--in the sixteenth century, against the western bay of the north aisle, and before its erection there was, I suppose, no tower attached to the abbey.
In plan[391] the church consists of a nave and aisles six bays in length, transepts with eastern apses, and a choir with an aisle round it, and five small apsidal chapels. To the south of the nave is a large cloister with a Chapter-house on its eastern side, and other ranges of buildings on the west and south. To the east, too, are large erections now occupied as a private residence, and of which consequently I saw nothing properly, but without much regret, as they did not seem to show any traces of antiquity, and had probably been all rebuilt in those halcyon days in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, when Spaniards had more money than they well knew how to spend.
If we compare this church with one of the earliest French convents of the same order--as, for instance, Clairvaux--we shall find a very remarkable similarity in most of the arrangements. In both, the church is approached through a long narrow court, to which it is set in a slightly oblique line. In both, the extreme simplicity, the absence of sculptures, the absence of a steeple, are observed in compliance with the fundamental rules of the Order. Both have their cloisters similarly placed, with similar Chapter-houses, and lavatories projecting from their southern alleys. The sacristies and the great libraries are in the same position--though here the latter has been converted into an enormous hall--and there are here groups of buildings all round the cloister, which were probably appropriated much in the same way as were those at Clairvaux. Both, too, were enclosed in a very similar way with walls and towers, though at Clairvaux the enclosure was far larger than at Veruela.
It is clear, therefore, that the French monks who were brought here to found this first Spanish Cistercian house, came with the plan approved by their Order, and it is probable with something more than the mere ground-plan, for the whole of the work is such as might at the same date have been erected in France.
The whole exterior of the church is very fine, though severely simple. The west front has already been described. The exterior of the chevet is more striking. The roofs of the chapels which surround it finish below the corbel-table of the aisle, which has a steepish roof finishing below the clerestory; and the latter is divided into five bays by plain pilasters. All the eaves have corbel-tables, and the windows throughout are round-headed. The chapels on the eastern side of the transepts are of the same height as the aisle round the choir, and higher than the chapels of the chevet. The design of the interior, though very simple, is extremely massive and dignified. The main arches are all pointed, the groining generally quadripartite (save in the small apses, which are roofed with semi-domes), and the piers large and well planned. Many of the old altars remain; and among them the high altar in the choir, and those in the chapels of the chevet. The former is arcaded along its whole front, but has been altered somewhat in length at no very distant period. Near it is a double piscina, formed by a couple of shafts with capitals hollowed out with multifoil cusping.
The chapel altars are all like each other, and unlike the high altar, which is solid, whilst they are stone tables, each supported upon five detached shafts. They stand forward from the walls in the centre of the apses, and have rudely carved and planned piscinæ, and credence niches on the right-hand side as you face them.
The stones are marked in all directions by the masons, some of them with a mere line across from angle to angle, but mostly with marks of the usual quaint description. A number of examples of them are given on the engraving of the ground-plan.
Some part of the floor is laid with blue and white tiles, arranged in chevrons with good effect, and other parts with tombstones of Abbats, whose effigies are carved on them in low relief. They are flatter than the somewhat similar stones in some of the German churches (as e.g. at S. Elizabeth, Marburg) but are still a great deal too uneven on the surface to be suitable for a pavement.
The capitals are all very rudely sculptured, and the whole of the work has the air of extreme severity, almost of rudeness, which might be anticipated from the circumstances of its erection. A chapel was built in the sixteenth century to the north of the north transept by Ferdinand of Aragon, Bishop of Zaragoza, and nephew of Ferdinand the Catholic. It has nothing remarkable in its design. Later than this a large chapel was added to the east of the sacristy; and from what still remains of the fittings of the Coro in the nave, they seem to have been still later in date.
A fine late Romanesque door leads from the south aisle into the cloister, the whole of which is a good work of the early part of the fourteenth century, with well-traceried windows of four lights. The groining piers are clusters of shafts, and the buttresses on the outside are finished with crocketed gables and a bold cornice carved with foliage. The traceries are now all filled in with very thin panels of alabaster, which do not obscure the light much, whilst they effectually keep out the sun; but this precaution against sunshine does not seem to have been much needed, if the men were right who raised a second stage upon the old cloister, the Renaissance arcades of which are all left perfectly open. On the southern alley of the cloister there is a very pretty hexagonal projecting chamber, in which no doubt--if we may judge by the analogy of Clairvaux--was once the lavatory. The cloister has been built in front of, and without at all disturbing, the original Chapter-house, on its east side. The new groining shafts stand detached in front of the old arcade to the Chapter-house, and the combination of the two is managed very cleverly and picturesquely. This old arcade consists of the usual arrangement of a central doorway, with two openings on either side, all carried on clusters of detached shafts with capitals of foliage. The Chapter-house itself is divided into nine groining bays by four detached shafts; it is very low and small, and its three eastern windows are blocked up, but nevertheless its effect is admirable. One of its columns has been spoilt by the elaborate cutting in of the names of a party of Englishmen who ascended the Sierra de Moncayo to see the eclipse of the sun in 1860, and who recorded their not very hazardous or important achievement in this most barbarous fashion.
It is a fact quite worth notice here, that none of the old windows are blocked up: the truth is that the churches from which this was derived were, in common with all Romanesque churches, taken straight from Italy, where the requirements of the climate were very similar to those of Spain. Yet it was only very gradually that the northern architects discovered their unfitness for a northern climate, and increased their dimensions. Here they give just enough and not too much light; but at a later day, when the northern churches were all window from end to end, the same fault was committed; and when their architects were employed to build in other climates, they followed their own traditions without reference to altered circumstances, as we see at Milan, at Leon, and elsewhere frequently.
The church at Veruela seems now to be but little frequented, the high altar alone being ever used. The stalls of the Coro are gone, and a shattered fragment of the old organ-case standing out from the wall serves only as a forlorn mark to show where it once stood. The buildings generally are sadly decayed and ruinous, and I have seldom seen a noble building less cared for or respected. It is sad to see this result of the suppression of religious orders, and one may be permitted to doubt whether it can be for the interest of religion that this noble foundation should now be nothing more than the private residence of a Spanish gentleman, instead of--as it was intended it should be by its pious founder--a perpetual refuge from the cares of the world of those in every age who aim to lead the holiest and most devoted lives.
I left Veruela with regret that I was unable to obtain more accurate notes of such portions of the monastic buildings as probably still remain overlaid with the poor additions of a too wealthy convent during the last three centuries. It is, however, easily accessible, and the plan which I give of the church will no doubt soon induce others to complete my examination wherever it has been defective.
On the ride back to Tarazona, we made a short détour to look at what seemed to be an important church and village. Neither could well have been less so! The church was without anything worth remark save a band of tiles, set chevron fashion, in the cornice, and not harmonizing at all well with the walls. The village was wretched in the extreme.
At Tarazona I was much struck by the extremely good character of the common crockery in use in the inn and elsewhere. It is all painted by hand, never printed; and the result is that, even when simple diapers only are used, there is far greater life, variety, and vigour in the drawing than there ever is in our machine-made work. The colour seems generally to be used in such a way as that when burnt it varies charmingly in tint and texture. Every plate is different in pattern; and I fear that, uncivilized as we might think these good Spaniards in some things, they would be justly shocked were they to see the wretchedly inferior patterns with which, after many years of talking about art, we are still satisfied to decorate our earthenware. These people excel, too, just as much in form as in ornament. Their jugs are always quaint and good in outline, and made with the simplest regard to what is useful.