Catalonia & the Balearic Islands: an historical and desciptive account

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Returning from Lerida to Barcelona we pass the castle of Bellpuig, the seat of the great family of Anglesola—a massive fortress of red stone, restored in the sixteenth century. Its magnificent staircase still gives one some idea of the pomp and state of its former lords. The village extends from the castle to the church—a situation which inspired the erudite topographer of this country (Piferrer) with reflections that remind one of Don Quixote’s address to the goatherds. The church contains the tomb of Don Ramon de Cordova, one of the ablest lieutenants of Gonzalo de Cordova. His effigy, armed and holding his helmet, reclines in a sleeping posture on an urn adorned with reliefs of marine gods and monsters and upheld on the backs of sirens, whose hands are webbed; the sepulchral arch is formed by six Ionic columns, against which lean figures expressive of mourning; over the tomb is a relief of the Entombment. In niches on each side of the arch are two life-size figures emblematic of Victory; above them, two figures leaning forth from medallions appear to extend laurels toward the hero. The plinth and cornice of this superb tomb are adorned with reliefs illustrating the victories and achievements of the deceased, who was as distinguished as an admiral as a general. His body remains in the urn practically incorrupt. The tomb is the work of Juan Nolano.

This work has been brought here from the ruined Franciscan friary, founded a few miles from Bellpuig by the knight in the year 1507. The cloister is fairly well preserved. The two lower galleries—a third has been added since the foundation—are in debased Gothic style. The second gallery is formed by eleven rectangular columns, like those of the Lonja at Valencia, with four bands of moulding wreathed round each and gathered in at the capitals. The convent church is also of interest and is connected with the cloister by a fine staircase.

From Bellpuig we pass on to Cervera, to which Philip V. transferred the university from Lerida in 1717. This is the famous body which proclaimed, in the enlightened reign of Fernando VII., its horror of the fatal habit of thinking (“Lejos de nosotros a mania funesta de pensar”). Notwithstanding, it was closed in 1823, and finally suppressed or rather transferred to Barcelona in 1842. This singular university was housed in a building opened in 1740, which still dominates the whole town; it is a huge tasteless structure, a rather suitable home for learned fools. Nothing seems to have been determined with regard to its ultimate destiny, and the whole town has a frustrate and somewhat hopeless air. The church of Santa Maria is not devoid of beauty and interest. One of the porches appears to be a survival of an earlier Romanesque structure, and is surmounted by a relief of St. Martin sharing his cloak with the beggar. The tombs are also worthy of note.

TARRAGONA

Tarragona stands high and nobly on the coast of Cataluña looking east towards Rome, as her million citizens did when the Cæsars ruled, and she gave her name to the vast province of Tarraconensis. The Phœnicians were here, of course, before the Romans; they called the place Tarchon, and found it already strengthened by walls which remain to this day. Publius and Cneius Scipio wrested the town from Carthage, and afterwards the lords of the world gratified the city with the titles of victrix, togata, and turrita. “It had a mint and temples to every god, goddess and tutelar; nay, the servile citizens erected one to the emperor, Divo Augusto, thus making him a god while yet alive.” Since that time, Tarragona has not flourished, though it was for a brief interval the capital of the Visigoths. Desolated by the Moors, it was given at the reconquest to a Norman adventurer whose wife, in his absence, proved as doughty a warrior as he. And now shrunk and depopulated, the once imperial city stares in a sort of mellow calm for ever seaward, as if plunged in reveries on the glorious past.

High over the town, on the crest of the slope, towers the cathedral. “This,” says Street (and none will disagree with him), “is one of the most noble and interesting churches in Spain. It is one of a class of which I have seen others upon a somewhat smaller scale (as, e.g., the cathedrals at Lerida and Tudela) and which appears to me, after much study of old buildings in most parts of Europe, to afford one of the finest types from every point of view that it is possible to find. It produces in very marked degree an extremely effective internal effect, without being on an exaggerated scale, and combines in the happiest fashion the greatest solidity of construction with a lavish display of ornament in some parts to which it is hard to find a parallel.” Roughly speaking, it may be described as Romanesque, with adornment of the Gothic period. The delicacy and richness of the later style has relieved the crudeness of the earlier, while the severity of the original plan has kept in check the tendency to be profuse of ornament.

Schemes were on foot to rebuild the church at the end of the eleventh century and Street thinks the oldest part—that is, the eastern apse—may date from 1131, though the greater portion of the fabric (including the nave and its aisles and the cloister) seems to have been executed at the end of the twelfth and during the first half of the thirteenth century; and it is very possible, therefore, that the brother Bernardus, who died in 1256, may have been the architect of the larger part of the existing fabric, both of the church and its cloister.

The west front is striking; it was begun in 1278, but not completed for another hundred years. The lower half is occupied by a deep-set portal of four orders, rising to a point. The jambs are occupied by figures of saints under canopies, and these are continued round the two buttresses which flank the doorway and end in pinnacles. The shaft is formed by a statue of the Madonna upon a pedestal, the sides of which exhibit in relief the scenes of the Creation and Fall. “These subjects are very fitly placed here, the Fall in the centre coming just under the feet of her who bears Our Lord in her arms, and thus restores the balance to the world.” (Street.) The tympanum is pierced with rich geometrical tracery. Over and behind the cross surmounting this grand doorway is an enormous rose-window. The whole is surmounted by a gable, the central portion of which has disappeared, giving a somewhat ruinous appearance to the church when seen from a distance. Flanking this, the front of the nave, are the round-arched entrances to the aisles, with round windows above, betraying Norman influence. Ford states that the great rose-window is Norman work.

The interior is grand and impressive in the extreme, though a trifle marred by the heaviness of the pillars. There is no triforium. The pointed windows of the clerestory are filled with glass vividly coloured, much of it modern, some of it the work of Juan Guas, specimens of whose craftmanship are to be seen at Toledo. The aisles are half the height of the nave, the intervening space being pierced with small rose-windows. At festivals the arches are hung with precious tapestries, designed after the Italian fashion with scenes from the histories of Joshua, Samson, David, and Cyrus. They are believed to have been presented by some potentate to the chapter about the year 1600.

While the columns are massive and plain, the bases are finely moulded and the capitals are carved with exuberant foliage. The choir screen is of marble and jasper; the stalls are plainly and chastely carved. Over the crossing rises a low, simple, but effective octagonal lantern. “The old outside roof is destroyed; but the finish of the lanterns of Lerida and of the old cathedral of Salamanca made it pretty certain that it was intended to have a pyramidal or domical stone roof.” The transepts are square, except for an apsidal recess at the east side of each. The nave and aisles end in apses—the oldest part of the edifice. The roof of the chancel apse is considerably lower than the choir’s, and the wall-space is pierced with a small rose-window. This part of the church is pure Romanesque. The high altar, however, is Gothic, and adorned with admirable reliefs, illustrating the martyrdom and apotheosis of St. Thecla, the patron of Tarragona. The centre is occupied by a colossal statue of the Virgin, covered by a very high peaked canopy of wood. To the right of the altar is the tomb of Archbishop Alfonso de Aragon, who died in 1514, and to the left a tomb older by two hundred years, that of Juan de Aragon, Patriarch of Alexandria. The remains of Cyprian, a Visigothic bishop of the see, are contained in an urn behind the reredos. The tombs are not very fine or numerous for a cathedral so ancient and so splendid.