As we enter the building we are struck with its beautiful and airy proportions; above the side naves are galleries covered with arches quite separate from, and below, the Gothic vaulting. Graceful arcades decorate the whole interior, but unfortunately the view is spoiled by modern brick walls and pillars added towards the end of the eighteenth century. The choir, too, is in the centre of the chief nave—a mistake, unfortunately, so common in Spain, and, as I have before had occasion to observe, quite spoils the perspective; this choir was constructed in 1700 at the expense of Bishop Gomez de la Torre. The capitals on which the arches of the nave rest are finely sculptured, but many of them are too high up to be examined without a visit to the galleries—which, however, is quite worth while, for it is from the galleries that the finest view of the elegant triforium, of French design, can be obtained.
But the great feature of this edifice is the fact that it is a fortified cathedral, and is at one and the same time a monument of war as well as of religion; its granite towers with their castellated parapets and loopholes dominate not only the city, but the country round, for miles. I went up to the top parapet, and found that the walls of the tower were a yard thick. From the parapet I looked down upon the old Cathedral Church of San Bartolomé in the plain below, and upon Santo Domingo, which lay between. The bell in the clock tower was cracked by lightning in December 1793. The clock tower is older than any other part of the Cathedral. It was once a royal tower, and was given by the Emperor Alonso VII.
In the Sala Capitula we saw many interesting parchments with curious seals, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries; these were only discovered by accident in February 1907 by the Archivero José Martinez Novas; many of these were the deeds by which the various kings conferred their donations upon the Cathedral, and most of them had seals of lead or wax. Here we were shown a number of Papal Bulls—one of Paul II., others of Eugenius IV., Leo X., Julius VI., and Benedict XIV. respectively. Many of the parchments shown us were of the second half of the tenth century. These newly discovered trophies must have been hidden away by the priests at the time of the French invasion. The lower part of the old tower is now covered by fifteenth-century work, but the Romanesque arch of one of its upper doorways is still visible in the wall.
This Cathedral is the only church of any importance in the whole of Galicia which has a rectangular apse, the usual forms being semicircular or polygonal. In England the practice of making the east end of churches square began early in the Norman period; we have them, for instance, in Winchester and Salisbury, but they were rare in France and Spain until towards the close of the Gothic period. The only example I know of in Galicia is that of the Colegiata at Bayona.
In its general form and structure of the naves and transept the Cathedral of Tuy bears rather a close resemblance to that of Santiago de Compostela. But the cylindrical vaulting of the nave and transept is quite Latino-Romanesque, without any indication of Byzantine influence. The ribbed ornamentation of the vaulting is somewhat after the style of the German Gothic, in the opinion of Señor Casanova, and the triforium as seen from the pavement of the central nave is not unlike those of the churches of Southern France.
The Cathedral cloister has some very old arcades with sculptured capitals, but the upper storey is modern and in bad taste. Behind the Cathedral is the Capilla de la Misericordia, one of the oldest in Tuy; it is built upon the solid rock. Close by is a little modern chapel dedicated to San Telmo, the patron saint of Spanish fishermen, whose birthplace was Tuy. The great naval school at Seville is dedicated to this saint, who, according to tradition, has been known to appear to sailors in distress in the form of a bright light and lead them safely to a haven.[272] One of the Cathedral chapels is also dedicated to San Telmo, and was built in 1577 by Bishop Diego de Torquemada.
The principal drive in the neighbourhood of Tuy is to the Portuguese frontier town of Valença, on the opposite side of the Miño. We started at 2 p.m., on a fine afternoon in the end of April, and enjoyed crossing the handsome bridge which joins Portugal to Spain above the blue waters of the largest river in Galicia. Portuguese sentinels in blue uniform greeted us on the farther bank, and questioned us in the language of their country as to our object, but they did not ask for passports. At the post office in Valença we posted Portuguese post-cards to various friends in memory of our afternoon visit
PORCH OF TUY CATHEDRAL