Valladolid, Oviedo, Segovia, Zamora, Avila & Zaragoza / An Historical & Descriptive Account

by Albert Frederick Calvert

But he with the gag, Herrerruelo? We watch him breathlessly. At all admonitions he simply shakes his head. The executioner even hesitates to fire the pile. He has his hand on the spring of the garrote. A word from the heretic, and he will be dead, unscorched, instantaneously. It is useless. Herrerruelo will not speak that word. The fire is lighted. The logs crackle and blaze. We can hardly see the victim’s form. No groan nor sigh escapes him. But on his face, says one close to him, is stamped the extremest sadness that ever human being knew. Is it for yourself, Castilian of the old Roman mould? Nay, rather, I think, for your country which you see perishing beside you slowly but inevitably on the pyre of fanaticism and superstition.

It is over. The integrity of the faith of Spain has been vindicated. But the heroism of Herrerruelo soon finds imitators. His wife follows him to the flames a few years later. Philip II. himself comes to assist at a superb act of faith which demands another holocaust. He solemnly swears to defend the faith and to enforce the decrees of its tribunal. ‘And you leave me to burn?’ is the bitter reproach a Veronese gentleman among the doomed men dares to address to the king. ‘Ay,’ says Philip, ‘I would bring the wood myself to burn my own son were he a heretic.’ There was thus something of the Roman spirit on both sides. The brave Italian’s fortitude so inspires a fellow-sufferer that he leaps gaily into the flames, calling for wood, more wood.

The shame of the Inquisition rests not on the Spanish people. The citizens of Valladolid were kept in check on these dreadful occasions only by large bodies of troops. Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, dared not go forth without an armed escort of two hundred and fifty men. The Spaniards of to-day, with few exceptions, refer to the institution with expressions of abhorrence, startling even to Protestant ears. But it must be admitted that some writers more or less half-heartedly attempt a defence. Don J. M. Quadrado observes that the Holy Office saved the country from the horrors of religious wars, to which the obvious rejoinder is that the wars of religion, judged by their results, proved less disastrous to France, Germany, and Switzerland, than the policy of repression proved to Spain, and that the religious unity of other countries, such as Italy and Austria, has been preserved with comparatively little physical suasion.

We will leave the Plaza Mayor, this bright place with such gloomy memories, and see what monuments Faith has raised of a more honourable and durable kind. We cross the prettily named Place of the Golden Fountain, and the Plaza del Ochavo, where Alvaro de Luna died, and a little farther on find the Cathedral of Valladolid.

This church was begun in 1585, by order of Philip II., and replaced the old Iglesia Mayor founded by Pedro Ansúrez. The work was intrusted to Herrera, the architect of the Escorial, but his plans were never fully carried out, and the cathedral remains to-day unfinished, and also unfortunately marred by Churriguera and his disciples. The style of Herrera very eloquently expressed the temper and spirit, if not of the Spain of his day, certainly of his sovereign. The model of the church is to be seen in the muniment room. It is cruciform, the nave and transept to be flanked with aisles and chapels, the crossing to be surmounted by a dome, and a tower to be at each of the four corners. Only one of the towers was ever finished, and that collapsed in 1841; it is now being rebuilt. Street, who is very severe on all non-Gothic buildings in Spain, says that ‘nothing could ever cure the hideous unsightliness of the exterior. Herrera’s west front was revised by Churriguera in the eighteenth century, and cannot therefore be fairly criticised; but the side elevation remains as Herrera designed it, and is really valuable as a warning. Flying buttresses were, of course, an abomination; so in their place he erected enormous solid buttresses above the aisles to resist the thrust of the nave vault. They are shapeless blocks of masonry, projecting about forty feet from the clerestory wall, and finished with a horrid concave line at the top.’

The interior is not wanting in majesty and massiveness. Only the nave, with its aisles and chapels, has been completed. The huge piers carry bold arches, separated by a broad cornice from a plastered and panelled groined ceiling. The walls are destitute of ornament, but over the arched entrances to the chapels runs an open gallery with balustrades. The aisles have been obstructed by ‘provisional chapels,’ which Herrera would have indignantly swept away; and the choir, which he intended to place behind the High Altar, is now placed so as to block the best view of the nave. The Capilla Mayor, placed in the crossing, is in bad taste, with innumerable doors and tribunes piercing its walls. One cannot but agree with the Spanish writer who says that nothing is wanting to destroy the impression of ‘a grand whole,’ which Herrera was especially anxious to create.

The choir stalls, mostly from the convent of San Pablo, were designed by the architect, and display some fine inlay work. The remainder are in the Gothic style, and come from the old church. The chapels contain nothing worthy of note, except a picture by Lucas Jordaens, and the tomb of Count Pedro Ansúrez, whose remains were brought here from the church he founded. A very poor effigy represents the hero, whose merits are set forth in rhymed verse.

In the sacristy is one of the finest specimens of the metal-work for which Spain has always been renowned. The solid silver monstrance, by Juan de Arfe, is 6½ feet high, and weighs upwards of 150 lbs. It is in the shape of a temple in four stories, two of which are octagonal, and two circular. Statuettes of Adam and Eve, and a relief of the mystery of the Conception, adorn this exquisite work, for which the artificer received 44,000 reals.

Adjacent to the cathedral are some remains of the Iglesia Mayor, founded by Pedro Ansúrez, and rebuilt in the reign of St. Ferdinand. A doorway, still standing, and the various scattered pillars are in the Romanesque style, but there are also traces of Gothic work. A cloister existing at the end of the sixteenth century is described as one of the finest in Spain, containing many sculptures, all coloured, and tombs of notable people. Part of this cloister has gone to form a room called the Library, but that it still contains books I was unable to ascertain.

The Iglesia Mayor is said to have been built at the same time as the church of Santa Maria la Antigua, on the other side of the square, and both by Count Ansúrez. Comparing conflicting testimony, and the opinions of various architects, the conclusion would appear to be that the church was founded before the Count’s time (for it is mentioned in documents as far back as 1088, and was in his day called the Ancient), and that the existing fabric dates mainly from the reign of Alfonso IX. (1230-44)—not from the time of the alleged restorer, Alfonso XI. Santa Maria is, beyond doubt, the most interesting church in the city. Its lofty steeple, with tiled roof and semicircular windows in all its four stages, is one of the few prominent landmarks of the wayfarer to Valladolid. The side apses are Romanesque, but the nave terminates in an apse, Gothic in style, and pierced with lancet windows. The buttresses taper off into graceful finials, with crockets and gargoyles. The main apse and transept are both pierced near the roof with an elegant openwork balustrade. The steeple is thoroughly Lombard in character.