The Cathedrals of Northern Spain / Their History and Their Architecture; Together with Much of Interest Concerning the Bishops, Rulers and Other Personages Identified with Them

Copyright, 1905 By L. C. Page & Company (INCORPORATED) —— All rights reserved Published October, 1905 COLONIAL PRESS Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, U. S. A.
TO ALL TRUE LOVERS OF SPAIN, OTHERWISE CALLED HISPANÓFILOS
It is à la mode to write prefaces. Some of us write good ones, others bad, and most of us write neither good nor bad ones.
The chapter entitled General Remarks is the real introduction to the book, so in these lines I shall pen a few words of self-introduction to such readers as belong to the class to whom I have dedicated this volume.
My love for Spain is unbounded. As great as is my love for the people, so great also is my depreciation for those who have wronged her, being her sons. Who are they? They know that best themselves.
But we who have lived years in Spain grow to like and admire just such complex compositions as the cathedrals of Toledo, of Santiago, and La Seo in Saragosse; we lose our narrow-mindedness, and fail to see why a pure Gothic or an Italian Renaissance should be better than an Iberian cathedral. As long as harmony exists between the different parts, all is well. The moment this harmony does not exist, our sense of the artistically beautiful is shocked—and the building is a bad one.
Personality is consequently ever uppermost in all art criticism or admiration. But it should not be influenced by the words pure, flawless, etc. Were such to be the case, there would be but one good cathedral in Spain, namely, that of Leon, a French temple built by foreigners on Spanish soil. Yet nothing is less Spanish than the cathedral of Leon.
To help the traveller to understand the whys and wherefores of Spanish architecture, I have written the Introductory Studies. I hope they will enable him to become a Spaniard, or, at least, to join the enthusiastic army of Hispanófilos .
C. Rudy.
Madrid, July, 1905