Adjoining the church is the dark gloomy cloister, which existed in the early twelfth century, and in which Street recognised “one of the main branches of the stream by which Romanesque art was introduced into Spain” from south-eastern France. The galleries, with marble columns and stone roofs, enclose a court with tall trees and a cistern in the centre. Numerous black memorial tablets let into the walls have failed to keep alive the memory of the dead.
The archives of the cathedral contain a Bible, at one time believed to have been the gift of Charlemagne, and enriched with the signature of Charles V. of France. Another treasure is an illuminated code dating from the tenth century, and relating to the Apocalypse—a chapter in Holy Writ which at that period, when the end of the world was believed to be at hand, greatly occupied the minds of men.
Not far from the cathedral, and nearer to the river Oñar, is the collegiate church of San Feliu or San Felix rising proudly above the town. Its tall campanile is visible from every part of the town and is a familiar landmark for miles around. It was built in 1392, and is in three stages: the first or lower stage, quite plain, the second adorned with graceful windows, the third putting forth shoots in the shape of tapering finials. “It is seldom,” says Street, “that the junction of 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.” Though the church seems to have been almost entirely rebuilt in the fourteenth century, as a foundation, St. Feliu dates back to the eighth century and was used by the Christians during the Moorish occupation, which, by the way, only lasted sixty-eight years. The interior seems, like the cathedral’s, to have consisted of a single nave, but to this aisles have been added, the whole terminating in a tri-apsidal chevet. The west front dates from the seventeenth century. The high altar has some good paintings and sculpture, the canopies over the tomb of San Feliu and the statues of the Virgin and St. Narcissus being especially notable. The modern chapel of the last-named saint is gorgeously enriched with jasper of many colours. In this church is buried the heroic Don Mariano Alvarez de Castro, beneath a monument, dating from 1880, executed in Carrara marble and in the reddish yellow stone of the country. The tomb is crowned by a mourning female figure, which I have been told is a portrait of the general’s wife. The sepulchre of San Feliu dates from the thirteenth century and is sculptured with compositions representing scenes from the saint’s life. Leaving San Feliu by the south door, we pass through the dark and massive Portal de Sobreportas, formed by two huge round towers, connected by a modern intervening story, and at the end of a long gloomy lane reach a Capuchin convent. The object of our visit is a soi-disant Moorish bath, covered in by a graceful little pavilion with eight slender columns.
The oldest church at Gerona appears to be the little oratory of San Nicolas, built in the form of a cross with its arms ending in apses, surmounted by domes. The height of the nave is not much more than that of a tall man. Hardly inferior in antiquity is the church of San Pedro de Galligans. This is named, not after the Gauls, as one might be tempted to suppose, but after a little stream called the Galligans, which at this point flows into the Oñar. Like every other religious edifice in Gerona, its foundation is attributed to Charlemagne, but (according to Piferrer) the earliest mention of the church occurs in the year 992, while the actual fabric was building at the time a third part of the coinage of Gerona was given by Count Ramon Berenguer III. to the Benedictine monastery of which his brother was abbot. Street inclines to think San Pedro was built by the architect of the church at Elne in Roussillon. The principal apse here, as at Avila, projects beyond the town wall; on the south side of it are two smaller apses side by side, opening into the south transept; the north transept expands into apses on the north and east and is crowned by a fine octagonal steeple with two rows of round-headed windows. The west front is approached by steps, many of them bearing Romano-Gothic inscriptions; there is a single round-arched western door with good fern-leaf carving on its capitals, and above this a rose-window. Within, the church consists of a nave, separated by tall, massive columns from the aisles. The capitals are rude, but offer great variety of design and execution. There is a clerestory, but no windows to the aisles, which are more like corridors. On the south side is a cloister probably carved coeval with the church, but terribly damaged during the siege, and now converted into the Provincial Museum.
“The whole character of this church,” remarks Street, “is very interesting. The west front reminded me much of the best Italian Romanesque, and the rude simplicity of its 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.”
From San Pedro we may follow the course of the little river Galligans to the deserted monastery of San Daniel, dating as a building from the eleventh century. In 1015 the original foundations were sold by Bishop Pedro Roger to Count Ramon Borell III. and his wife Ermesindes, for one hundred ounces of gold. The Countess erected a monastery, which was completed by the less fortunate wife of Ramon Cap d’Estopa. The west front and nave are Gothic, the chancel and lantern in good Romanesque style. In front of the sanctuary a flight of steps leads down to the shrine of the titular saint, whose tomb dates from the fourteenth century.
North of Gerona lies FIGUERAS, accounted the strongest fortress in Spain. Like so many other “impregnable” strongholds, it has been taken again and again, so often, in fact, as to give rise to the saying, “Figueras belongs to Spain in peace, and to France in war.” It is only fair to add that in several instances its fall has been due to treachery. In a miserable chamber in the castle of San Fernando died Mariano Alvarez de Castro, a prisoner in the hands of the French. The guide-books speak of a religious procession which takes place here on the last Monday in May, and is called the Profaso de la Tramontana, after the north wind, which blows here with great violence.
In the vicinity of Figueras is the church of Villabertrán, dating from the end of the eleventh century. Designed by a priest it exhibits, remarks a Spanish writer, in every detail the ecclesiastical bias. All animal figures are excluded as tending to disturb religious recollection. The interior is nobly designed but destitute of all ornament. “In this temple everything appeals to the reason, nothing to the imagination; these low dark vaults dissipate illusions; the thought of death oppresses the mind; but the eyes discern a gleam of light in the darkness of the sanctuary, and the soul hungrily seeks a gleam of faith in the gloom of doubt.”
Of a similarly severe character is the adjacent cloister. The campanile of the church alone presents any airy or graceful features. The whole foundation would have been spared even by Knox or Calvin.
On the bay of Rosas, the town of Castellón de Ampurias recalls the great city of Empurias which was founded by the Greeks, and utterly perished at the end of the twelfth century. It was among those great maritime powers which for long resisted the encroachments of the Carthaginians, and which fell in turn before the irresistible arms of Rome—reminders for us of the days when the fate of the Mediterranean still hung in the balance, and it was yet uncertain whether the civilisation of Europe should be Hellenic, Punic or Latin. The destruction of Empurias is ascribed partly to the Saracens, partly to the Normans. Whoever accomplished the work did it thoroughly, for nothing but the name survives of this once rich and puissant colony of Hellenes.