Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

The rise of Gothic architecture began in the early part of the eleventh century, which forms one of the most important epochs in the annals of the Roman Catholic Church; it began at a time when civilisation, fleeing from the brutalities of feudalism, had taken refuge in the cloister.[117] It was then that the sap of a new life began to rise in the old tree,—a life thirsting for liberty, and open to all development and progress. It was between the beginning of the last decade of the thirteenth century and the end of the first part of the fourteenth that the sap rose highest. The work of civilisation passed from the hands of the monks to the hands of the newly formed middle classes. Before that time all the architects and even stone-masons were monks. Montalembert tells us how our own English monk of the seventh century, St. Wilfrid, brought stone-masons (coementarii) from Rome to build his beautiful conventual church at Ripon.

The king, formerly only a figurehead, now recovered his regal power;[118] the bishop, formerly subject to the abbot, now stood above that dignitary; the city became a municipal community, struggled for its rights and privileges, erected its own municipal buildings; the artisans, no longer feudal serfs, formed themselves into guilds, corporations and fraternities so exclusive, that none might be initiated into the secrets of their trade without undergoing long years of apprenticeship.[119]

With all these changes, architecture kept pace. “It felt in its soul a burning life which urged it to the most daring conceptions.”[120] Gothic architecture represents not a revolution in art, but an evolution. The sap rose in the old trunk, and the buds burst forth from the old branches. It is a mistake to think that Gothic architecture was introduced into Europe from the East by the Crusaders; these soldiers did not, as Viollet le Duc has remarked, bring back art in their knapsacks—they had other things to think of.[121] The constructors of Romanesque art had struggled with a double problem—how to support wide vaultings, and how to let light in upon dark naves. Merchants of the ninth century, pilgrims of the tenth and eleventh, Crusaders of the twelfth, all had their influence. Larger churches with wider vaultings became urgently needed. The new cathedrals were to play a civil as well as religious part—quite different from that which had been played by the conventual churches. These are some of the elements which contributed to the development of Gothic architecture.

Just as the cathedrals were the expansions of the conventual churches, the universities were expansions of the monastic schools; and, as Preissig has observed, this transformation was due in the main to the great reputation for learning enjoyed by the schoolmen, “who attracted such multitudes of students that it was found necessary to recognise the schools on a broader basis.”[122] Our own oldest university, that of Oxford, owes its foundation to a mandate from the Holy See. The first university to be founded in Europe was that of Paris. The second was that of Bologna.

Though Spain possesses some of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in the world, she has never made that style her own. Her grandest Gothic cathedrals were designed by foreign architects; and in her remote corners, like Galicia, that style never reached perfection. We will tell our readers at once that there is no example of pure Gothic art in the whole of Galicia, in spite of the fact that it struggled hard to find a footing.

In the fifteenth century, when the rules of Gothic architecture were being followed by all the greatest architects of Europe (except the Italians), it had already passed its highest stage of development, and its glories were beginning to decline. Italy was already turning to the past for fresh inspiration. Nicolas of Pisa was already copying the sculpture of pagan sarcophagi; Petrarch was unearthing the classic literature of Greece and Rome; Giotto was appropriating the pictorial art of the Byzantine Church, and Brunelleschi was replacing the Gothic pillar by a classical column. Sculpture had opened the way, literature and painting had followed in her footsteps, and it only remained for architecture to do likewise. The Renaissance originated in Italy, and in Italy it attained to its highest development.[123]

Gothic architecture had been the work of men who only valued their handiwork as an expression of religious faith, it was nothing if not symbolic; but with the Renaissance the spirit of faith, reverence, superstition, or whatever we may choose to call it, was changed into something quite different. In the Renaissance, as Lamperez has forcibly expressed it, men began to value their work intrinsically, and individuals began to claim their personal rights. Buildings began to be admired for the grandeur of their conception, the delicacy of their form; the amount of labour they had cost, and their symbolism were forgotten. In the age of St. Bernard, cathedrals were raised for the glory of God; during the Renaissance, they were raised to enhance human glory.

The architects of the Renaissance retained the Byzantine cupola, the basilical plan, and the plan of the Greek cross; they also retained the gallery over the naves, the two towers of the façade and the portico (narthex liturgico) of the Gothic style; but the sublime in architecture had disappeared, the magnitude of the mass, the imposing length of the line, the grandeur and simplicity of the conception, were gone for ever.[124] Florence was the cradle of Renaissance architecture, and Brunelleschi the first of its architects; he constructed, in 1425, the cupola of the Duomo at Florence, where ornamentation plays so great a part. It was not till the sixteenth century that the new style appeared in France, under the name of “Francis I.,” in Spain as “Plateresco,” and in England as “the style of Queen Isabella.” St. Peter’s at Rome (begun as a basilica and completed as a Greek cross) is looked upon as the great model of this style.

But the Gothic style of architecture died hard in France, Germany, England, and Spain; for Christianity still clung to its mystic ideals. The change, to Italy, was merely a change of dress; but to those countries where the Gothic style had taken deeper root, it was a much more serious affair. That is why they did not begin to build their churches in the Renaissance style till the second half of the sixteenth century. “Gothic architecture was the child of the Romanesque style, from which it gently evolved; but that of the Renaissance was revolutionary, it despised the past, to which it did not feel itself a successor. The architect of the Middle Ages worked anonymously for the general good; the architect of the Renaissance was a personage, and his name has always been preserved along with his work.” We never forget Michael Angelo when we speak of St. Peter’s at Rome,—St. Peter’s the grand prototype of Renaissance architecture—the most perfect copy of which is perhaps our own St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was Michael Angelo who said, “Trifles make perfection, and perfection is not a trifle.” Neither the architect of Seville Cathedral nor the architect of Canterbury would have said that. But who will deny that the perfection of the Duomo, to take only one example, is the result of patient and trifling detail?

It is important to remember that architecture is a science in which each style must be studied geographically. To understand the history of Gothic architecture in England, for instance, is not necessary, though helpful, to understand the history of its development in Spain, France, or Italy. Each of these countries has produced varieties peculiar to itself for which special names have been found; such, for instance, as the “Perpendicular” style peculiar to England. We may even say that architecture should in some cases be studied provincially, and certainly in the case of Galicia. “To understand the architecture of Galicia is not an easy thing,” is a remark I have heard from the lips of some of Spain’s most distinguished architects as well as from her archæologists. Professor Lamperez, whom I have quoted so often in this chapter, tells me he has dealt very fully with the subject of Gallegan architecture in his great work on Christian architecture in Spain; but, unfortunately, it has not yet been given to the public.