Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

The cathedral of Santiago is constructed of sparkling grey granite; that of St. Sernin is of brick and mortar. Not only the cathedral, but practically the whole town of Santiago, is built, like Aberdeen, of granite, that material being exceedingly abundant in Galicia. Travellers used in former times to complain of the sombre look of the houses on that account. But now almost every dwelling is well whitewashed, and presents, with its green shutters, quite a cheerful appearance. And the grey cathedral itself lights up beautifully under the golden rays of the afternoon sun. Many a time have I seen its sparkling stones resembling rather burnished bronze than sombre grey granite.

Lopez Ferreiro points out that one of the singularities of the cathedral of Santiago is the length of its transept, which is almost as long as the body of the edifice. And well I remember how, on entering for the first time, I for a moment mistook the wide and lofty transept for the central nave. In the whole of Europe there are only five other cathedrals which share this peculiarity—Pisa, Salisbury, Conques, St. Sernin of Toulouse, and St. Petronius of Bologna. Ferreiro firmly believes that the cathedral of St. Sernin is a copy of that of Santiago. This writer has also drawn attention to the ingenious and original form of the buttresses[131] which surround the body of the cathedral. They are all joined together and strengthened by arches; they thus form, as it were, one great buttress. There seem to be only two other examples of this—that of Poictiers and that of Celles (Belgium).

It is not known who were the respective architects of the cathedrals of St. Sernin and Santiago, so that when French writers claim for their country the honour of having produced both these works of art, they have no real foundation to go upon. Still one cannot deny that they have an appearance of great probability on their side, especially when we find that Dalmatius, the bishop of Compostela under whose guidance so much of the work was carried on, had himself issued from the cloisters of Cluny.[132] It was the monks of Cluny who designed the beautiful porch (narthex) of the church of Vézelay which is permeated with the Greco-Roman art of Syria. In 1150 they constructed the capitular chapel of the same edifice, of which the sculpture is so remarkably Byzantine, and, as we shall see, there is a strong Byzantine element in the design and sculpture of the Cathedral of Santiago. But then Byzantine influence made itself felt in Spain as far back as the first century of the Christian Era, through commercial intercourse with the Mediterranean. In the eighth century, too, Spain was filled with Byzantine Christians fleeing from the Iconoclast persecution.[133]

When we consider how far the monks of Cluny travelled and how wide was their influence upon the architecture of other countries besides their own, including England, it would not be surprising to find that after crossing the Pyrenees they had found their way even to Galicia, and left traces of their influence in the architecture of that province. Nevertheless, feeling on this disputed point runs very high between Frenchman and Spaniard, and the latter is leaving no stone unturned in his efforts to prove that the Cathedral of Santiago owes less to foreign artists than the French have hitherto claimed.

The Cathedral of Santiago was built just at the period when the architecture of Europe was beginning to change from Romanesque to Gothic; it belongs, therefore, to a period of transition. Enough of the original structure remains for it to rank as the chief monument of the Romanesque style in Spain and one of the most famous cathedrals of that architecture in the world. The importance of the pilgrimages to the tomb of St. James in the eleventh century created a demand for a great cathedral. Begun, as we have seen, about the year 1074, it was completed in 1128. Lamperez describes it as being more noble, more magnificent, and more perfect than either of those so nearly resembling it in the south of France. “Was it a copy of these?” he asks, “or was it the pattern from which they were taken?” “But where,” he adds, “if the Cathedral of Santiago was the original model, where, in Spain, are the edifices—the attempts at perfection—which must have preceded and led up to it?”[134]

In the Historia Compostelana we read that the cathedral was set on fire in 1170, and Ferreiro says that in 1878, when excavations were made within the precincts of the building, traces of fire were certainly found. He takes this as an indication that the Moors must have used fire in their attempts to destroy the cathedral. Aimerico[135] says that in spite of the fire the structure was completed in 1122. He remarks enthusiastically that every one who ascends to the gallery, even if he be sad at heart, must become joyful in contemplating from thence the beauty of the cathedral. In those days it was much better lighted than it is at present, for the upper windows had not been closed up, and the light of heaven streamed in on every side. Clearly its present gloom, though not unpleasing, was never intended by the architect. The names of two master-builders who superintended the building have been preserved—Bernardo and Rotberto: the latter had fifty masons to work under him, and the former is characterised by Aimerico as mirabilis magister. I have already described the eagerness with which pilgrims of all ranks, ages, and sexes assisted the workmen. In the year 1124 two canons of Santiago were engaged in collecting money for the completion of the cathedral in places as far away as Sicily and Apulia. Money continued to flow in from all parts of Spain. “After St. James’s body had been removed to Santiago,” writes Ford, “riches poured in, especially the corn-rent, said to have been granted in 846 by Ramiro, to repay Santiago’s services at Clavijo, where he (the Apostle) killed single-handed 60,000 Moors—more or less. This grant was a bushel of corn from every acre in Spain, and was called el voto and el morion, the votive offering of the quantity which St. James’s spacious helmet contained.... This corn-rent, estimated at £200,000 a year, used to be collected by agents.... This tax was abolished in 1835.”

Where the cupola now rises over the centre of the cross which the building forms there once stood one of the original nine towers: it was destroyed in 1384. The cupola is Gothic and polygonal in form, and should have eight elegantly pointed Gothic windows, separated from one another by Byzantine columns, but, according to Fernandez Sanchez, some architect of the seventeenth century substituted ugly rectangular windows here and there, while he blocked up some of the old ones, and so firmly were they closed that it was found impossible to restore them to their original form when the restoration of the edifice was put in hand towards the end of the nineteenth century. This cupola, according to Sanchez, is the first piece of work put in by the later generations who subsequently did so much to ruin the harmonious unity, the exquisite symmetry of the original cathedral.

The naves of this cathedral are, as Ford noticed more than fifty years ago, narrow in proportion to their height and length—the height of the central nave being a little more than seventy feet. “The light and elegant piers contrast with the enormous thickness of the outer walls.” For my own part, I know of no cathedral whose interior proportions are so simple in their perfection and so restful to the eye. Street describes them in these words: “Engaged columns run up from the floor to the vault, and carry transverse ribs or arches below the great waggon-vault. The triforium opens to the nave with a round arch subdivided with two arches carried on a detached shaft.” The gloom-filled side naves are still lined with confessional boxes dedicated to various saints, where pilgrims of every nationality can find a priest who understands something of their language.

This cathedral once had seven gates,[136] most of them open day and night to pilgrims. Aimerico gives all their names: the Porta-Santa is the only one remaining. There are three façades which merit our careful attention. Let us leave for awhile the beauties of the interior and devote ourselves now to those of the exterior. The edifice is built on ground by no means level, hence the necessity for the handsome flight of steps that lead to the Puerta de las Platerias which constitutes the southern façade of the cathedral, and is thus named because it faces the Street of the Silversmiths. This façade is of extreme interest for many reasons. To begin with, it is the oldest part of the cathedral, and the only one of the original façades that has been preserved, the only one left to give us a true idea of what the exterior must have been like in the days of its pristine beauty. This façade is decorated with no less than a hundred sculptured figures, most of them of white marble. The sculpture of the façade itself is remarkable. In most countries where granite abounds sculpture is coarse and rude, but here the reverse is the case, in spite of the fact that it is the work of the eleventh century. All the statues are semi-relief, the white marble being encrusted as it were upon the granite walls. Although these statues exhibit some of the defects of their age,—rigidity of limb, unnatural posture, and other faults,[137]—yet they are indisputably an example of the best sculpture of the last quarter of the eleventh century. Upon the tunics of some of the statues Ferreiro has noted a suspicion of the corded fringe seen upon statues of the ancient Romans.

Street could not speak too highly of the beauties of this façade. He wrote: “The detail of the front is of great interest, inasmuch as it is clearly by another and an earlier workman than that of the western porch. There are three shafts in each jamb of the doors, whereof the outer are of marble, the rest of stone. These marble shafts are carved with extreme delicacy, with a series of figures in niches, the niches having round arches, which rest upon columns separating the figures. The work is so characteristic as to deserve illustration. It is executed almost everywhere with that admirable delicacy so conspicuous in early Romanesque sculpture. The other shafts are twisted in very bold fashion.... Figures on either side support the ends of the lintels of the doors, but the tympana and the wall above for some feet are covered with pieces of sculpture evidently taken down and refixed where they are now seen. They are arranged, in short, like the casts of the Crystal Palace, as if the wall were part of a museum. One of the stones of the tympanum of the eastern door has the ‘Crowning with Thorns’ and the ‘Scourging,’ and on the other stones above are portions of a ‘Descent into Hades,’ in which asses with wings are kneeling to our Lord. Asses and other beasts are carved elsewhere, and altogether the work has a rude barbaric splendour characteristic of its age.”