Finding your way back to the Sierpes, you may inspect the interesting Church of the University. Here repose the members of the illustrious Ribera family, which looms very large in the history of Seville. Their remains were brought hither on the suppression of the Cartuja, outside the town. The oldest tomb is that of the eldest Ribera, who died in 1423, aged 105. He thus lived through the reigns of Alfonso XI., Pedro the Cruel, Enrique II., Juan I., Enrique III., and Juan II., yet, as is usually the case with centenarians, he failed to engrave his name as deeply on history as did some of his shorter lived descendants.
The famous Duke of Alcalá, the owner of the Casa de Pilatos, is commemorated by a fine bronze effigy—one of the few sepulchral monuments of this kind in Spain. At the feet of Don Lorenzo Figueroa a dog is sculptured, most probably the symbol of fidelity, but some say, his favourite. Over the altar are three good pictures by Roelas, one of the ablest interpreters of the Andalusian spirit. Here, too, are a couple of works by Alonso Cano, "St. John the Baptist" and "St. John the Divine." The statue of St. Ignatius Loyola by Montañez is said to be a faithful likeness of the saint. It was coloured by Pacheco the Inquisitor.
The adjacent University was originally a Jesuit college, and was built in the middle of the sixteenth century, after designs by Herrera. It is not very well attended to-day, and from the outside would be taken for an inconsiderable college. It seems to have been much more flourishing a hundred years ago, when our countryman Blanco White attended its courses. The original university was founded by Canon Rodrigo de Santuella in 1472, in the Colegio Maese Rodrigo, near the Cathedral.
From the last resting-place of the Riberas in the centre of the town it is not far to their old home, the Casa de Pilatos, though Dædalus himself might easily get lost in this labyrinth of streets resembling each other as closely as those of an American city. The names of some of these thoroughfares—Francos, Gallegos, Genovés—remind us of the days of St. Ferdinand, when the room of the banished Moors was filled by settlers, not only from all parts of Spain, but from the rest of Europe. It was the same with all the towns resumed by the Spaniards. These foreign colonies had their own laws and customs, and yet they were entirely absorbed by the natives and left no trace or influence behind them. The Spaniards possessed, in those days at any rate, the same wonderful capacity for the absorption of other races displayed by the Anglo-Saxons in America. There was nothing new in this; for they had absorbed the Visigoths, just as they had absorbed the Romans before them. The Castilian tongue is indeed Latin, but I fancy that the people of Spain are as much the children of the soil—autochthones—as the Athenians themselves.
Reflections like these—which I do not expect will profoundly influence ethnologists—occupied me as I pursued my tortuous course to the Casa de Pilatos. When I at last found it, I was struck by the plain and dignified exterior. To the left of the door I observed a plain cross of jasper. The story goes that in October, 1521, the Marquis de Tarifa, on his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, placed this cross against the wall and counted thence the fourteen stations of the Cross, according to their order in the Holy City. The last fortuitously coincided with the Cruz del Campo, raised near the Caños de Carmona in 1482. I doubt if the marquis had any such thought when he raised this jasper cross, for the distance from the Prætorium at Jerusalem to the chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that marks the site of Calvary is greatly less than the distance between the two points mentioned here in Seville. But why the house was called after Pilate is not easy to determine. It was begun in 1500 and finished thirty-three years after by Don Per Afan de Ribera, first Duke of Alcalá, and sometime Viceroy of Naples. This great nobleman was the Mæcenas of his generation. Not only did he enrich his house with priceless works of art and a fine library—since removed to Madrid—but he made it the rendezvous of all the art and talent of Andalusia. Hither came Gongora, the poet, to converse, it is said, with Cervantes. Here Pacheco, the artist-inquisitor, discussed the mission of art with Herrera. Here came Rioja, Cespedes, Jauregui, and others of less note. The example set by the Medici was followed by many of the great grandees of Spain at this time. The Velascos presided over a coterie of literati at Burgos; the Duke of Villahermosa, at Zaragoza, affected to delight in the company of the brilliant and learned. Even so small a place as Plasencia had its own patron of the arts in Don Luis de Avila, and in Madrid there was "the feast of reason and the flow of soul" at the mansion of Don Antonio Perez. But for all its associations, like the Alcazar, the Casa de Pilatos remains very much like a museum.
The building illustrates the fashion of the Mudejar and Renaissance styles, almost to the effacement of the former. In the architecture of this epoch we usually find an Arabic groundwork nearly concealed by ornament of the newer style. The geometrical designs remain, but the flowing inscriptions, so important a feature of Moorish decoration, have gone. A thousand details would show the veriest tyro that this was not the work of Moors, yet the central court bears a general resemblance to the Alcazar. Pedro de Madrazo directs attention to the harmonious variety of the arches and windows, and compares it to the admired disorder of the forest and plantation. I imagine the architect had the Court of the Lions, at Granada, in his mind. Here dolphins uphold the upper basin of the fountain, and noble statues of the deities of Greece and Rome—the gift of Pope Pius V.—stand in the angles of the court. Hence you pass into the so-called Prætorium, with its splendid coffered ceiling and beautiful tiling, where you may distinguish the Spanish azulejos of the best moulds by the designs stamped on them of fanciful monsters, grotesques, and escutcheons. Then there is the superb staircase with its "half-orange" ceiling, and the chapel with its mixed Gothic and Mudejar features. What grandee in Europe has a finer home than this? And yet, I am told the owner, His Grace of Medinaceli, comes here but seldom.
There are many old mansions in Seville worth a walk on a cool day—and a glimpse. They are not great sights, such as those we have already seen in the city, or such as are more numerous in Paris and Rome, Brussels and Venice. But those visitors who are really interested in Seville, and are capable of appreciating Moorish and plateresque art in their various imitations and combinations, will enjoy these little excursions. There is an interesting old house at No. 6, Abades. It is now a boarding-house, and you may live there in princely fashion for six francs a day. No one knows how old it is. It belonged at the beginning of the fifteenth century to a family of Genoese merchants called Pinelo. In 1407 the Infante Fadrique, uncle of Juan II., lodged there. What was the occasion of his visit to Seville I forget. Afterwards it became the property of the "abbés" or "abades" of the Cathedral. Many of these reverend gentlemen still patronize the establishment, and may be seen puffing their "Puros" in the court, which is said to be a fine example of the Sevillian Renaissance style. That style I conceive to have been compounded of all pre-existing styles. Digby Wyatt, however, considered the house to be much more Italian than Spanish. It is a vast place, where dark corridors seem to lead indefinitely into space.