The Cathedral
Built at the instance of an English bishop and, like all the cathedrals of northern Spain, on a French model, the church of Santa Maria la Mayor is conspicuously more Spanish than that of either Leon or Toledo. This more national character may be due to later additions and alterations—alterations and additions which have neither obscured nor impaired that wonderful unity and harmony of design apparent in this, the ideal Gothic church.
The cathedral occupies the site of a church built in 1075, where a summer palace of Fernan González had till then stood. The first stone was laid on July 20, 1221, by Bishop Maurice, an Englishman who had come over to Castile in the train of Henry II.’s daughter Eleanor. The saintly King Fernando took a lively interest in the great work, which progressed so rapidly that the cathedral appears to have been ready for the reception of the faithful in November 1230. The nationality of the bishop and his share in the building of the fabric are, however, matters of dispute between historical writers.
The cathedral is built on very uneven ground, a circumstance which rather enhances than detracts from its picturesqueness. O’Shea calls attention to a remarkable trait in the exterior, rarely possessed by buildings otherwise of equal merit: ‘We mean that the forms should be bold projections or reproductions in relief of the internal parts, as in embossing. Thus, in this cathedral, the eye embraces the inward distribution at one glance from the shape of the parts outside.’ From a distance the most conspicuous parts of the edifice are the steeples surmounting the west front and the lantern over the crossing. The delicacy and nobility of the spires, pinnacles, and open-work adorning the glorious fabric tempt one to rhapsody. But so much beauty can be adequately portrayed only by the brush, not by the pen.
The lowest stage of the western or main front is pierced by the three doors corresponding to the nave and aisles within. Formerly rich in sculpture, this part of the façade was rebuilt in the latter part of the eighteenth century, in accordance with the pseudo-classical ideas of the time, and robbed of nearly all its statuary. The ‘restorers’ spared the statues of Alfonso VI., San Fernando, and the Bishops Maurice and Astorio at the side of the Puerta Real (Central Door), and the sculptures of the Coronation and Immaculate Conception of the Virgin over the lateral entrances. This lowest stage of the west front in its extreme plainness and severity presents an incomplete appearance when contrasted with the much more elaborate and ancient work above. Over the middle door, within a noble and gracefully moulded ogival arch, is a large, finely traceried rose-window, lighting the nave. Above this again are two windows, each of four lights, and their upper parts filled with beautiful tracery. Before each light stands the statue of a youth crowned. Over this highest stage of the middle division of the west front is the inscription Pulchra est et decora carved in stone, and forming a balustrade, which is adorned by statues of the Redeemer, the Madonna, and the Baptist.
Over the side doors rise the towers, surmounted with steeples, built for Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena (1435-1456) by the artist, probably a German, called Juan de Colonia, or John of Cologne. These steeples rise to a height of three hundred feet, and, except at the lowest story, are detached from the rest of the edifice. They are adorned with tall pointed windows, the space for two of these on the second stage of the north tower being covered, however, by the seventeenth-century clock. The pinnacles themselves are wonderful examples of delicate fretted stone-work. Street saw little beauty, however, in Juan de Colonia’s work, adding that the bells in the spires were the most misshapen he had ever seen.
The entrance to the north transept was known in the time of Alfonso X. as the Gate of the Twelve Apostles. It stands on a higher level than the floor of the church and is hence called Puerta Alta, or more often the Puerta de la Coroneria. The lower portion certainly, the whole probably, belongs to the thirteenth century. There is a great profusion of sculpture. On either side of the door are seen the figures of the twelve Apostles. The portal is enclosed within an ogival arch, on the archivolt of which are shown, successively, seraphim, cherubim, and the souls of the just rising from their graves. The upper part of the tympanum is adorned with the figures of Christ seated and attended by the Virgin and St. John. Below this is a composition of doubtful interpretation, the figures on one side seeming to illustrate the judgment of the wicked, those on the other side the establishment of the Dominicans and Franciscans in Castile. Higher up, the façade is pierced with two high pointed windows, and above these again by windows of several lights, with statues in niches.
Ingress to the north transept is now obtained by a side entrance called the Puerta de la Pellejeria, a plateresque structure facing east, dating from the year 1516. Somewhat of the Gothic spirit may be detected in this sumptuous but not over-decorated portal. The detail is excellent, and the execution vigorous. With the figures of the Virgin, the Apostles, Saints, and Bishops are associated genii, amorini, and heraldic achievements in the true Renaissance style. Above the doorway is a group representing the martyrdom of the two Saints John; and over this a prelate, probably Rodriguez de Fonseca, is kneeling at the feet of the Madonna. The composition is flanked by the fine statues of Saints Peter and Paul; and on the sides of this façade are placed in niches the statues of St. John the Baptist and St. James, and St. John the Divine and St. Andrew.
The Puerta del Sarmental gives access to the south transept. It has the finest of the cathedral fronts. It is approached by a broad flight of steps, flanked by the walls of the episcopal palace and cloisters, and by some interesting fourteenth-century tombs of bishops. The architecture of the portal is on the same plan as that of the Puerta Alta. In the tympanum Christ is shown with the Evangelists and the beasts symbolical of them; below are the seated figures of the twelve Apostles. The three orders of the archivolt are adorned with angels and with crowned figures playing various instruments. Above all this is a magnificent rose-window filled with beautiful glass of the fourteenth century. The third stage of the front shows three Gothic windows, elaborately traceried, and each divided into four lights by mullions, supported by large figures of angels. ‘The angles of the transepts,’ says Street, ‘are flanked by crocketed pinnacles, the crockets here, as elsewhere throughout the early work, being simple in form and design, but as perfect in effect as it is possible for crockets to be.’
The eastern front of the cathedral is formed by the Capilla del Condestable and its adjoining chapels. The exterior of the famous octagonal chapel mentioned is very fine. On the uppermost stage on one of the sides two lions, standing upright, are seen supporting laurel crowns—one containing the cross, the other the monogram of Christ. On a lower stage the escutcheon of the Velascos and Mendozas is displayed between two knights armed cap-à-pie. The stages are flanked by effigies under canopies. The angles of the façade are surmounted by elegant spires and pinnacles.
The plan of the cathedral—a Latin cross, with nave, aisles, and transept—has been obscured by the chapels built on the north, south, and east sides, as may be seen by a glance at the plan included among the illustrations. The nave is of six bays, and fifty-eight metres long. Though the view is spoilt, as in all Spanish churches, by the choir, it remains picturesque, pure, and devotional in the highest degree. The dim religious light of our northern churches, it is true, is lacking, for the interior is white throughout, and the stained glass, which in earlier times would have mellowed the strong sunlight, was unhappily shattered during the war of Independence. The aisles are lower than the nave, from which they are separated by twenty columns, each with eight engaged shafts. The triforium is somewhat in the nature of an architectural curiosity, and certainly has been altered since the thirteenth century; it consists of wide bays of five or six lights each, with trefoil and quatrefoil traceries above, enclosed within a semicircular arch or ‘label,’ which is decorated with sculptured heads. Street declares that he has seen nothing like this elsewhere, and supposes it to be the work of a native artist. Above the triforium is the original clerestory—‘Simple, but good and vigorous in style.’
The High Altar, or Altar Mayor, occupying the centre of the apse, is approached by a flight of steps of white, red, and black marble. It is railed off from the ambulatory by rejas or bronze screens fixed on pedestals of jasper between the pillars of the nave; the backs of these latter are adorned with life-size statues. Behind the altar rises the Renaissance retablo, an elaborate and gorgeous work of walnut wood, heavily gilded and each of its stages in a different order of architecture. The symmetrical division of these altar-pieces into compartments, each filled with its own statue, does not strike the layman as artistic or pleasing. Indeed, there is something faintly suggestive of pigeon-holes about it. Street, quoting Ponz, states that the sculptures were the work of Rodrigo and Martin de la Aya (1577), who were paid forty thousand ducats; and that for the painting and gilding Juan de Urbino of Madrid and Martinez of Valladolid received, in 1573, eleven thousand ducats. At the back of the sanctuary, between the arches, may be seen the spirited reliefs of the celebrated Juan Vigarni or ‘Borgoña,’ executed in 1540, and representing the Agony in the Garden, Christ bearing the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The first and last are stated by Ford to have been executed by one Alonso de los Rios in 1679. To the Renaissance period also belong the handsome silver lamp and candlesticks. To an earlier age belong the tombs on the north side of the sanctuary—two concealed by the retablo; they contain the remains of Don Juan, the rebellious son of Alfonso X., Don Sancho, brother of Enrique II. of Trastamara, and his wife, Doña Beatriz. Over the altar is the copy of the banner borne before Alfonso VIII. at the Navas de Tolosa, made by the De la Aya brothers and others about 1570.
Over the crossing or intersection of nave and transept rises the gorgeous lantern or octagonal dome, which Philip II. said seemed like the work of angels rather than of men. It replaced the earlier dome which collapsed in March 1537, and was completed in December 1567. Felipe Vigarni (de Borgoña) and Juan de Vallejo are mentioned as the architects. The Gothic and Renaissance styles are curiously but not inharmoniously blended in this beautiful lantern, which rises to a height of one hundred and seventy-three feet, and is profusely adorned with sculpture.
Crossing the wide transept we reach the choir, which occupies three bays of the nave. Under the eastern lectern lies the effigy—of wood cased in bronze—of the English Bishop Maurice, a fine work believed to date from 1260. The stalls, one hundred and three in number, were executed between 1497 and 1512 by Felipe Vigarni, and bestowed on the cathedral by Bishop Pascual de Fuensanta. They are of walnut wood, and in two tiers—all most richly carved in fine Renaissance style, the pillars between being moulded in similar fashion. The lower seats are, on the whole, the finer work, and are inlaid in boxwood. The subjects of the reliefs are taken from the acts of the saints and life of the Virgin. Scenes from Genesis form the subject of the reliefs on the fronts of the upper stalls, the backs illustrating the New Testament. The trascoro, or screen at the west end of the choir, cost ten thousand ducats. The reja displays the arms of Cardinal Zapata, whose gift it was; the pillars which support it rise from pedestals of jasper, and on brackets are placed two white marble statues of Saints Peter and Paul. These statues, columns, reliefs, etc., were executed at the expense of Archbishop Manso de Zuñiga, in the first half of the seventeenth century, by Fray Juan de Rici of the Order of St. Benedict.
The grand chapel of the Constable (Capilla del Condestable), behind the high altar at the east end of the church, was built about 1487 by Don Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, Conde de Haro, and Lord High Constable of Castile, the property of whose descendant, the Duque de Frias, it remains to-day. The architect was Juan de Colonia (John of Cologne) or, as some will have it, his son Simon. Street sees much that is German in the style of the chapel, but also features which may be fairly attributed to the Spaniards who worked under the architect’s orders, or to his own efforts to consult native tastes. While the chapel may be described as florid Gothic, the splendid entrance arch, with its marvellous lacelike tracery, tapering pinnacles, and railing, the masterpiece of Andino, belongs to the Renaissance. The chapel is lighted by fourteen stained-glass windows, displaying the arms of the Velascos, which are repeated on four large stone escutcheons on the walls. The retablo of the high altar, believed to be by Juan de Borgoña, has, in its lower stage, a spirited sculpture of the Purification. Before the altar are the noble tombs of the Constable and his wife, Doña Mencia de Mendoza, Condesa de Haro. The effigies are of Carrara marble, the tombs of jasper. The Constable is shown in complete armour, the details of which are admirably rendered and merit close study. At the feet of the Countess is crouched a dog, the emblem of fidelity. This great seigneur of old Spain and his consort are interred in the vault beneath their monuments. Close to the monument is a huge oblong slab of polished jasper from the quarries of Atapuerca, weighing thirty-three tons, and intended presumably to cover a tomb. The chapel contains many other objects of interest. The side altars display some good sculpture, the one in the Gothic, the other in the Renaissance style. There is a fine Flemish triptych, and a good statue of St. Jerome by Becerra. In the sacristy is shown the little portable ivory altar which the Constable carried about with him, and a ‘Magdalene,’ attributed by some to Da Vinci, by others to Luini. The plate, of the same age as the chapel, includes a chalice of silver-gilt, enamelled in red and white and richly jewelled; a pax in ivory and enamel, a thurible shaped like a ship; a splendid silver-gilt cross; an oval alabaster relief of the Madonna; and other treasures, some of which are not readily shown.
The two chapels next to that of the Constable on the north side of the apse are earlier than the others and are of good middle-pointed style. The chapel of San Gregorio seems to be the only one belonging to the thirteenth-century church. It contains the tomb of Bishop Fontecha. The adjoining chapel of San Nicolás was built in 1268 by Bishop Villahoz, whose tomb and effigy are placed upright against the wall. Close by is one of the finest sepulchres in the cathedral—that of the Archdeacon Fernando Villegas, an early translator of Dante. Opposite the door of the Nacimiento chapel is a notable picture of San Juan de Ortega by Cuadra.
At the northern end of the transept is the grand staircase of thirty-eight steps, leading to the Puerta Alta. It is one of the finest examples of the art of Diego de Siloe, who was at his best when handling such intricate and profuse decoration as this. The splendid iron balustrade was the work of Cristobal Andino.
Opening on to the north aisle are the large chapels of Santa Ana and Santa Tecla. The former was founded in 1474 by Bishop Luis Osorio Acuña, whose tomb is here. A much finer altar and monument in the Gothic style is that of the Archdeacon Fernando Diez de Fuente Pelayo, who died in the memorable year 1492; it is in white marble and adorned with sculpture with New Testament subjects, a good deal damaged. There are a few good pictures in this chapel, one attributed to Andrea del Sarto, and a sculptured genealogy of the Virgin. Of the chapel of Santa Tecla, perhaps not much else need be said than that it is in the Churrigueresque style and was founded in 1734. Its best feature is its ‘half-orange’ dome. O’Shea says that there formerly existed on the side of the baptistry a small chapel dedicated to Santiago, wherein Alfonso XI. instituted the order of knighthood of La Vanda or the Badge, of which the kings of Castile were members.
Opening on to the southern aisle, opposite the Capilla de Santa Tecla, is the cruciform chapel of the Santisimo Cristo de la Agonia, containing a very ancient, curious, and (it is alleged) miraculous image of Christ. It is supposed to have been carved by the fearful Nicodemus, and to have been afterwards found floating in a boat on the sea. It is a grotesque and yet a weird and impressive object, dressed up after the ridiculous custom in Spain.
The chapel of the Presentation was founded in 1519 by the Canon Gonzalo de Lerma, whose noble tomb in the centre of the chapel was executed during his lifetime by Vigarni. Another fine tomb is here—that of Canon Jacubo de Bilbao. This chapel possesses a beautiful Virgin and Child painted on a panel, probably by Sebastiano del Piombo, and sculptures by Berruguete. The railing is another example of Andino’s craftsmanship.
In the chapel of San Juan de Sahagun are preserved the relics of the saint, who was a canon of Burgos. Here are also numerous other relics, chiefly fragments of the bodies of sainted personages, among them two local martyrs, Centola and Helena. The image of the Virgin of Oca is fabled to have testified by a nod to the promise of marriage made by a faithless Don Juan to a damsel—a silly story also told of the Cristo de la Vega at Toledo. Simon, the last Bishop of Oca, is buried in this chapel, and also the Blessed Lesmes, who is invoked by sufferers from nephritic disorders. More interesting than any of these things is the Cristo de la Agonia, a painting signed by El Greco.
In the chapel of the Visitation is the handsome tomb of the founder, the Bishop de Cartagena; and in the seventeenth-century chapel of San Enrique repose the remains of the bishops of Oca, and those of the founder, Bishop Peralta—contained in a beautiful tomb of alabaster, beneath a superb kneeling effigy in bronze. Of alabaster is also the beautiful flooring of the chapel; and of bronze, the fine eagle lectern.
We now reach the sacristy, a great part of which is in the bad style of the eighteenth century. There is some good carving, which, indeed, is not rare in Spain; but the pictures ascribed to Murillo and other masters are all very doubtful. A jasper table is among the most interesting objects. We complete the circuit of the church by a visit to the large chapel of Santiago, designed in the sixteenth century by Juan de Vallejo. It is considered to be the parish church of Burgos. The Apostle of Spain is shown on horseback on the high altar, and again on the beautiful reja. Here lies the Abbot of San Quirce, one of the Velasco family, beneath a tomb worthy of his illustrious ancestry. Not far off is the sarcophagus of the Astudillos, one of whom was the founder of the chapel of the Three Kings at Cologne. There are other interesting tombs in this chapel, among the oldest being that of Bishop de Villacreces, who died in 1463.
On the south-east side of the cathedral are the cloisters, among the most beautiful buildings of their kind. Street believes them to date from between the years 1280 and 1350. They form a quadrangle, the dimensions of each gallery being 90 feet by 22 feet. The cloisters are entered through a fine pointed arch, near the chapel of the Visitation, adorned with statues and heraldic devices. The head of St. Francis of Assisi is said to be an actual portrait. Other statues are those of the Blessed Virgin, St. Gabriel, David, and Isaiah. The tympanum is sculptured with the Baptism of Christ—the rite being administered to Christ seated. The reliefs on the doors, which are of later date, and were the gift of Bishop Acuña, are worthy of their splendid setting.
The cloisters are in two stages, the lower being plain, the upper very ornate. The windows are ogival, of four lights, and freely decorated with traceries and foliage. The angles and niches are adorned with good statues. Among these are the effigies of St. Fernando and his wife, Doña Beatriz, each holding a ring in commemoration of their marriage at Burgos. The statues of Santiago and Abraham date from the thirteenth century. There are numerous tombs and doorways, all well sculptured. Of this cloister Street remarks, ‘I know none altogether more interesting and more varied, or more redolent of those illustrations of and links with the past, which are of the very essence of all one’s interest in such works.’
In a chapel leading from the cloisters is attached to the wall one of the celebrated trunks filled with sand which the Cid palmed off as security for a loan upon an unusually simple-minded son of Israel. It is antique and solid enough to date from those days at all events. Close by is the recumbent effigy and tomb of Juan Cuchiller, the faithful servant of Enrique III. In adjacent chapels may be seen the splendid tombs of Canon Santander, a sixteenth-century work, with an exquisite relief of the Virgin and Child; of Canon Aguilar, who died in 1482; and the monuments of other canons, chaplains, and knights.
Adjoining the cloisters is the Chapter House, or Sala Capitular, with a fine artesonado ceiling, and a cornice of blue and white majolica, around which run verses from the Proverbs. The room contains a Crucifixion signed Greco, and a St. John the Divine doubtfully attributed to Murillo. There remains to be seen the old sacristy, a spacious room over forty feet square, and with corbels quaintly carved with scenes from a lion hunt. The treasury of Burgos is not as rich as that of Toledo or Seville; but it contains some magnificent and seemingly ancient vestments, beautifully carved presses, and a long series of portraits of the occupants of the episcopal see. Below the cloister a lower story was built; but the arches are now blocked up and it is neglected, though abounding in interesting tombs and monuments of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The south-west side of this grand cathedral is shut in by the archbishop’s palace.