Leon, Burgos and Salamanca: a historical and descriptive account

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Of the four Escuelas Mayores (High Schools)—San Bartolomé, del Arzobispo, Cuenca, and Oviedo—only the two first remain. These colleges bore the same relation to the Escuelas Menores that our Staff College does to Sandhurst. Here graduates were prepared for the highest posts in church and state. The College of San Bartolomé was founded in 1401 by Bishop de Anaya, whose sons were educated within its walls, and transferred to the present site sixteen years later. Vergara says that it produced seven cardinals, eighteen archbishops, seventy bishops, and innumerable judges and councillors of state. Like so many other similar institutions, originally intended for the poor and scholarly, the college soon became the preserve of the rich and aristocratic. The quarterings on the applicant’s shield were more carefully examined than his pretensions to scholarship, and when Carlos III. undertook to reform the college, it had earned the name of a hot-bed of vice. Its inward reformation corresponded with its material restoration. Little or nothing remains of the original structure. A spacious flight of steps leads up to the handsome portico in the Grecian style, with its four Corinthian columns and triangular pediment. The whole building is simple and massive, and crowned by a balustrade, in the centre of which are displayed the arms of the Anayas; the main façade the chapel with a heavy dome and Churrigueresque entrance. The inner court or patio is surrounded by a double gallery, the lower formed by sixteen Doric columns, the upper by as many Ionic. The magnificent staircase, dividing after the first flight into two branches, with its arches, Corinthian columns, and windows all in stone, surpasses any similar feat of architecture in Spain.

In the western part of the city, where abundant evidence yet remains of the frightful destruction wrought by the French in Wellington’s day, stands the interesting Colegio del Arzobispo, better known as the Colegio de los Irlandeses. Founded by Alfonso de Fonseca, successively Archbishop of Santiago and Toledo, it dates from the year 1521. The portal is in the classic style, with eight Ionic columns, a medallion of Santiago, and the archiepiscopal escutcheon; the adjoining façade is of the late Gothic. Above it rises the square cupola of the chapel designed by Pedro de Ibarra, and containing a retablo which ranks one of Berruguete’s finest works. The subjects of the eight panels of which it is composed are: the Ascension, Baptism, Flight into Egypt, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Presentation in the Temple, the Finding of Moses, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, and Ananias and Sapphira. The whole was executed in less than eighteen months. Under a simple marble slab rests the body of Archbishop de Fonseca.

The galleries of the patio are formed by fluted columns and adorned with the heads of warriors very skilfully executed.

This college is now occupied, as its modern name implies, by Irish theological students, whose original seminary was founded by Philip II. in 1592. A college for Scottish Catholics was founded at the same time in Valladolid.

Of the forty colleges which once composed the University of Salamanca, the three described above alone remain. Most have utterly disappeared; of others, a few columns or chambers still exist, forming part now of buildings of another sort. The Colegio de Calatrava has survived, as a building, the three other colleges founded by the great military orders. It was extensively restored at the end of the eighteenth century, but the old doorway was spared with the saint’s head and knights upholding the banner of the order carved above it. The fine court has been dismantled, and the large chapel with transept and cupola has been stripped of the paintings and altar-pieces which once adorned it.

Minor Churches

Among the sacred edifices of Salamanca, next to the two cathedrals, ranks the church and convent of the Dominicans, variously known as Santo Domingo and San Estéban. The Dominicans, on their establishment at Salamanca in the year 1221, were first housed at San Juan el Blanco. Thirty years later they removed to San Estéban. Their convent was honoured in 1484 by the presence of Columbus, who found a generous host, a powerful protector, and a mind sufficiently broad to comprehend his project in the Friar Diego de Deza, afterwards grand inquisitor of Spain. His scheme, rejected by the university, was carefully considered by this learned man, and recommended to the queen. In gratitude, Columbus named the first town founded by him in the New World, Santo Domingo, after the order which had befriended him. From this monastery, too, departed the first Christian missionaries for America.

The building itself, unfortunately, has disappeared. It was pulled down in 1524 to make room for the present superb edifice, designed by Juan de Alava, the fellow-workman of Hontañon, who was succeeded by four other architects, till the completion of the work in 1610. The church is accounted one of the two or three most important monuments of the middle Renaissance period in Spain. The main façade, in the soft sandstone usual here, exhibits a marvellous profusion of figures, ‘excellently wrought, beautiful of themselves,’ remarks a critic, ‘but lacking in appropriateness, and not forming a part of a comprehensive scheme.’ On each side of the doorway, between pillars, are seen the figures of four of the Dominican saints; above, between four similarly placed statues of the doctors of the church, is an admirable relief of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, executed by Juan Ceroni of Milan, who has carved his name and the date (1610) on the stones which were the instruments of the saint’s death. Above this, again, is a Crucifixion, overshadowed by the great arch which encloses the whole façade. The medallions and friezes exhibit very careful and graceful workmanship.

The side façades are mainly Gothic in character. Each buttress is surmounted by an ornate pinnacle. The nave is almost as spacious as that of the cathedral. The six-pointed vaults spring from fluted columns, and are brilliant with gilding. The windows of three lights and the rose-windows above are filled with good stained glass. The gorgeous retablo, which cost the Duke of Alba 4000 of his pine trees, is the work of Churriguera; its garishness is redeemed by the fine painting of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen by Claudio Coello, and the curious twelfth-century image of the Virgin de la Vega in gilt bronze. Over the choir, built by Bishop de Aranjo, is the fine Apotheosis of St. Dominic, a fresco by Palomino. The frescoes over the altar of the Rosary and in the chapel of the Cristo de la Luz are by his contemporary, Villamor. In the chapel of St. John is the tomb of Don Lope de Paz, the defender of Rhodes and Eubœa, and in a wooden urn in the Reliquary chapel are contained the ashes of the terror of the Low Countries, Fernando de Toledo, Duke of Alba.

The chapter-house is a grandiose apartment, with pillars of the Doric order, and a Corinthian altar beneath a canopy. Here may be seen some bas-reliefs of the thirteenth century from the old church. In the magnificent sacristy is the tomb of Bishop Herrera of Tuy, who died in 1632, and is shown in a kneeling posture. More interesting is the cloister, with its early Renaissance arcading and fanwork vaulting. Some of the medallions and reliefs which adorn the cloister were designed by Alfonso Sardiña in 1626. The noble staircase adorned by a Magdalene, which was executed by order of the illustrious Dominican theologian, Fray Domingo Soto, of whom it was punningly said, ‘Qui scit Sotum, scit totum.’