After the Alcazar, the most noteworthy monument in Seville, dating from the reign of Don Pedro, is the church of Omnium Sanctorum. This edifice occupies the site of a Roman temple, and was built by the Cruel King in 1356. It exhibits a very happy combination of the Moorish and Gothic styles. It is entered by three ogival doors, and is divided into three naves. To the left of the façade is a graceful tower, the first storey of which is Moorish, ornamented somewhat after the style of the Giralda. On one of the doors is a shield bearing the arms of Portugal, which, tradition says, commemorates the pious generosity of Diniz, king of that country, when he visited Alfonso the Wise. If the Sevillians have writ their annals true, this goes to prove that an earlier structure than the present must have existed here. This, by the way, was the parish church of Rioja the poet.
San Lorenzo exhibits the fusion of the contending styles in an interesting fashion. It has five naves; and the horseshoe windows in its tower were converted into ogives at the time of its adaptation to the Christian cult. The arcades of the naves are ogival in the middle, and become by degrees semi-circular towards the extremities as the roof becomes lower. This church contains the miraculous picture of Nuestra Señora de Rocamadour. Rocamadour, in southern France, was a celebrated shrine of pilgrims in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Several other churches in Seville date from this epoch, and present, to a greater or less extent, evidences of the conflict between the Moorish and Gothic styles. In addition to those mentioned, Madrazo names the following: Santa Marina, San Ildefonso, San Vicente, San Julián, San Esteban, Santa Catalina, San Andrés, San Miguel, San Nicolas, San Martin, San Gil, Santa Lucia, San Pedro, and San Isidoro. When a mosque was converted into a Christian church, the same authority remarks, the horseshoe arch was pointed, bells were placed in the minaret, and the orientation was altered from north to south, to east to west. The five last-named churches were erected in the thirteenth century. Santa Maria de las Nieves was, until the year 1391, a synagogue. The decoration is in the plateresco style, and the doors are Gothic. The church contains a painting by Luis de Vargas, and a picture attributed to Murillo.
Nearly in the centre of the city is the Convent of Santa Inés, with a beautiful and tastefully restored chapel. The façade is ancient and graceful. This church contains the remains (said to be uncorrupted) of the foundress, Doña Maria Coronel, one of Don Pedro’s numerous victims. That monarch had conceived a violent passion for her, in the hopes of gratifying which he put her husband to death in the Torre del Oro. The widow, far from yielding to his solicitations, took the veil, and at last, to secure herself from his persecutions, destroyed her beauty by means of vitriol—a species of self-immolation much applauded by the devout in the ages of faith. Her sister, Doña Aldonza, was less successful in resisting the ardent monarch, but died, in the odour of sanctity, Abbess of Santa Inés.
Among the secular buildings erected under the Castilian régime was the existing Tower of Don Fadrique, standing in the gardens of the Convent of the Poor Clares. It was named after the son of St Ferdinand and Beatriz of Swabia, who was put to death by Alfonso el Sabio in 1276. The tower is a fine square structure of Roman workmanship, seemingly, in its lowest floor, and showing a mixture of Moorish and Gothic architecture in its upper half. It formed part of a sumptuous palace erected in 1252, and bestowed in 1289 on the Poor Clares by King Sancho the Brave.
In the Calle Guzman el Bueno is a mansion called the Casa Olea. It contains a fine hall, 8½ metres square, the work of Moorish artisans of the time of Don Pedro. The beautiful inlaid and gilded artesonado ceiling was removed about a century ago; light is admitted through windows of the horseshoe pattern, and the decorations consist of the characteristic stucco-work, latticing, and ajaraca or trellis-work, as fine as any to be seen at the Lindaraja of Granada. The dado of coloured tiles has almost completely disappeared. The Palacio de Montijo, near the church of Omnium Sanctorum, reveals many traces of Mudejar workmanship, as also does a hall in the Casa morisca of the Calle de Abades—not to be confounded with the Casa de Abades, belonging to the Renaissance.
Seville in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries possessed no doubt many palaces and private dwellings of magnificence; but it was in ecclesiastical architecture that the spirit of the age found its truest expression and noblest monuments.
THE CATHEDRAL
On the eighth day of July in the year 1401, the Dean and Chapter of Seville assembled in the Court of the Elms, and solemnly resolved that, the Cathedral having been practically ruined by recent earthquakes, a new one should be built so splendid that it should have no equal; and that, if the revenue of the See should not prove sufficient for the cost of the undertaking, each one present should contribute from his own stipend as much as might be necessary. Then uprose a zealous prebendary, and cried, “Let us build a church so great that those who come after us may think us mad to have attempted it!”
Such was the greatness of spirit in which the foundation of the existing Cathedral of Seville was undertaken. And the result is worthy of the deep and fervid zeal of those old Catholics of Spain.