Catalonia & the Balearic Islands: an historical and desciptive account

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Concerning the position of this tower, Street remarks: “Here, as often happens 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 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.”

The interior of the church is now cut horizontally by a plank flooring, and no features of interest can be distinguished, except in a single apsidal chapel, which is still used as such, and where is buried a natural son of King Pedro the Catholic, who died in 1254. Whitewash has obscured all the details of capitals and columns.

Adjacent to the cathedral on the north side is the ruin of a once noble hall, with traces of Moorish influence in its carving—possibly the remains of a chapter-house or episcopal palace.

Far exceeding the cathedral in antiquity is the church of San Lorenzo hard by, though it is not safe to accept the tradition of its Gothic origin. It was certainly built prior to the twelfth century. Originally just an apse and a nave, with walls eight feet thick and a span of thirty-three feet, aisles each ending in an apse were added to it at a much later period. They communicate with the nave by very simple pointed arches, and their windows have good traceries of the late thirteenth century. “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 octagonal campanile dates from the fifteenth century, to which period belongs the western gallery. There is a good deal of pointed work in the church, which is gloomy and religious. The high altar, dating from about 1400, has a reredos which is highly praised by some critics.

Lerida was the Salamanca of Aragon. Her university, founded in 1300 by Jaime II., numbered the profligate Calixtus III. among its professors, and Vicente Ferrer—the “angel of the judgment”—among its alumni. Ford reminds us that Horace speaks of the place as a seat of learning in Roman times, to which the troublesome youths of the capital were banished. The town, like its Castilian prototype, has been famed for arms as well as learning. It sustained a severe siege from Felipe IV. himself in 1640, and withstood the assaults of the great Condé in 1640. It owned the loss of its university to its devotion to the Archduke Charles in the War of Succession, and (more directly) to the defeat sustained close by, by the Bourbon king. At the same time the military authorities made the clergy give up their cathedral.

Probably none of the ancient edifices of Lerida will interest you as much as the market-place, surrounded by quaint old houses; entering, you find the whole house is a great wine-press, the grapes, trodden on the ground floor, pouring their juice into the cellars below.

Higher up the Segre is the historic town of Balaguer, the Bargusia of Livy, and the capital of the ancient county of Urgel. The counts had their residence in the “Beautiful Castle” (“Castillo hermoso”) which overlooked the town and has now totally disappeared. There are a few ruins of the once famous priory of Santo Domingo. The site of the castle is occupied by the church of Santa Maria, built in 1351. It is a dignified, simple edifice, of a single nave with lateral chapels. The Trappist monastery of Bellpuig de las Avellanas a little way out of the town is another and better preserved monument of the piety of the old Counts of Urgel whose line expired with Jaime el Desdichado at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Still going northward, and without crossing the limits of the old country, we reach the venerable town of Agramunt, notable for its late Romanesque church with a portal similar to the Puerta dels Fillols at Lerida. We reach at last Seo de Urgel at the very foot of the Pyrenees. As a see, the place is of immemorial antiquity. Its bishops (who are co-sovereigns with France of the Republic of Andorra) attained the zenith of their power and splendour in the eleventh century. The town has figured in every border war and was the seat of the audacious reactionary caucus which called itself a regency and declared Ferdinand VII. unfit to govern while he was obedient to the constitution.

The actual cathedral was consecrated by Bishop Eribal in 1040, but its construction lasted well on into the next century. It resembles a church of southern France more than one of Cataluña. The façade is divided vertically by two buttresses, horizontally by string courses into three stages, the lowest of which is pierced by the simple round arched west porch, the middle by three round-headed windows, the highest forming a sort of attic, by a round-headed window and two rosaces. The interior is divided into a nave and aisles with transept and lantern. The treasury is interesting for its collection of documents dating back to the time of the Carlovingian kings.