ROMANESQUE SIDE ENTRANCE
TO CHURCH OF TIOBRE, BETANZOS 		TOMB OF ANDRADA, BETANZOS

architecture should break his journey and pay a visit to the church of Santa Maria de Cambre, the conventual church of a Benedictine monastery founded in the tenth century. The church is all that now remains of the monastery, and it is not the primitive edifice, as it only dates from the thirteenth century. This church has excited considerable interest among Spanish archæologists, from the fact that its dimensions and disposition are exactly those of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages: it is in the form of a Latin cross, with three naves and a transept, a girola and absidal chapels; it has six cruciform pillars on either side of the chief nave, the four which support the girola being more massive than the others. Lamperez, who has made this edifice an object of careful study, was particularly impressed by the exquisite harmony of its entire plan. Five graceful Gothic apse chapels, semicircular in plan, are clustered round the head of the building. All the windows are Romanesque with lobular archivolts and chess pattern ornamentation. The chief entrance is also Romanesque, with a triple arch and sculptured tympanum. As we have already seen, the Romanesque style was employed by Gallegan architects right up to the fifteenth century, long after it had been discarded by the rest of Spain. We have seen how the cloister of San Francisco at Lugo was built in that style in the fifteenth century, and we have noted the Romanesque entrance to San Maria del Azogue at Betanzos, and the pillars of Santa Maria of Pontevedra, which are an example of the employment of the Romanesque style as late even as the sixteenth century.

The arrangement of the five semicircular apses at Cambre is the same as that of the apses in Santiago Cathedral, as also is the sculpture of the capitals, so here we have one more proof of the tyrannical influence which Santiago Cathedral extended over Galicia. Lopez Ferreiro thought that the church at Cambre might have been planned by Mateo, the architect of the Pórtico de Gloria, but Lamperez has recently found an inscription in the chief nave, Micael Petri me fecit, and on a column in the same wall he has found the letters P. P. one above the other. “Does this stand for Petrus Petri?” he cries. “The mere mention of this name so glorious in the annals of Spanish architecture demands the most careful investigation,” and he then speaks of a document bearing the date “Era 1295” (A.D. 1257), in which Fernando Dominguez and a brother of his sell to Petrus Petri, a priest, and to his brother Michaeli Petri, certain estates in Miguela (in Lugo). “The fact that the names mentioned in this document are found engraved on the stones of Cambre,” he adds, “is worthy of our attention; and was not Petrus Petri the celebrated architect of the Cathedral of Toledo?” Petrus Petri died in 1291, so there is no reason why he should not have been in Galicia in 1257. There is no indication, however, in the epitaph of Petrus Petri, that he was a priest.

Lamperez has also compared the architecture of Cambre with that of Toledo, and is greatly struck with the similarity in the pavement of the apses and in their vaulting. “Might it not be possible,” he ventures to suggest “that Petrus Petri was a Gallegan, and a pupil of the great Mateo? Petrus Petri may have studied the Gothic vaulting of Mateo in the Pórtico de Gloria (which is among the earliest Gothic vaulting in that part of Spain), and he may then have tried his ‘prentice hand’ in the church at Cambre. A little later he may have given immense development to his plan in building the girola of Toledo.... If this could but be proved,” continues Lamperez, “we should then know for a certainty that Petrus Petri was a Spaniard, and we should be able to explain how he came to adapt the French Gothic style in the development of Spanish Art.”

Every few hours an omnibus drawn by two pairs of horses leaves the Plaza del Campo at Betanzos for Puentedeume and Ferrol, the latter town being reached in five hours. Puentedeume lies in a beautiful valley surrounded by vine-clad hills, and the whole journey is through delightful Gallegan scenery, while on the way a good view is obtained of the ruined castle of the noble family of Andrade. Borrow visited Ferrol from Coruña by sea, and he thus describes his first view of its wonderful harbour: “We were in one of the strangest places imaginable—a long and narrow passage overhung on either side by a stupendous barrier of black and threatening rocks. The line of the coast was here divided by a natural cleft, yet so straight and regular that it seemed not the work of chance but design. The water was dark and sullen and of immense depth. This passage, which is about a mile in length, is the entrance to a broad basin, at whose farther extremity stands the town of Ferrol.”

Ferrol has been for centuries the great Arsenal of Spain; the tremendous three-deckers and long frigates destroyed at Trafalgar were built there. The present fortifications were erected between 1769 and 1774. Pitt is reported to have remarked that if England possessed a port on her coast equal to Ferrol, the British Government would cover it with a strong wall of silver. During his Ministry Pitt sent an expedition to take Ferrol, and when fifteen thousand English soldiers disembarked there without warning on April 25, 1800, they found the place quite unprepared for war and very badly provisioned. “They were nevertheless obliged,” say Spanish historians, “to re-embark, but not before they had learned that Ferrol was a difficult place to blockade.”

The arsenal of Ferrol was at the period the finest, not only in Spain, but in all Europe. It came into existence before the reign of Philip II. Ferdinand VI. and Charles III. gave great impetus to the perfection of its hydraulic works, which for extent, magnificence, and solidity had not their equal. The tower has on its walls the following inscription:—