All round the outer walls there is a fringe of plateresque stone lace which is very effective. One corner of the church, added later, forms a modern chapel, dedicated to El Cristo del buen viage (the Christ of the good journey). I looked in at the window, and saw an altar with a crucifix and a great many artificial flowers; in front of the window was a railing and a slit for coppers. This chapel, though modern, has its interests, and good Catholics about to take a journey drop a copper in the slot for good luck.
The richly decorated interior of Santa Maria is most graceful; fan ribs radiate from the sculptured capitals of the tall clustered piers, and, interlacing, spread themselves over the vaulting in a geometrical network, while stone filigree fringes the central arch. The two side naves are divided from the central nave by pointed Gothic arches; each nave is covered with three separate vaults; at the head of the principal nave there is an apse of the same width, while on either side of the apse, at the head of each side nave there is a small chapel. All the vaulting is of one height. There was till quite recently a most gorgeous iconographic seventeenth-century retablo behind the chief altar, but, having become rotten and dangerous, it has now been removed in fragments to the local museum. The entire inner wall of the façade is entirely covered by a series of scenes from the Old and New Testament, sculptured in bas-relief upon the granite blocks—it is so dark in that part of the church that without the aid of a candle the work is hardly visible; one or two of the Biblical scenes are difficult to identify. I do not remember seeing anything like them in any other church; it is a superfluity of sculpture, a kind of inner façade, contrafachada. It is composed of nine divisions in three compartments. Among the scenes represented are: the creation of Eve, Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, and the death of Abel. The chief interest in these is the treatment of details—the houses, mills, and bridges in the background, all have interest for the antiquarian.
Upon the site where Santa Maria la Grande now stands there once stood a church built in the ninth century; this is proved by existing documents, and it is also known that the name of that church was also Santa Maria la Grande; it stood on the highest spot in the town, and was in all probability the site of a Roman temple; this eminence dominates both the sea and the ria.
With regard to the name of the architect of Santa Maria la Grande there has been a good deal of doubt; he seems to have been more modest than the Mareantes who contributed the funds. Señor Villa-Amil thought that he had discovered both the date and the name of the architect when he found in a manuscript the statement that on 10th July 1517, Juan de los Cuelos, maestro de la obra de la iglesia de Santa-maria la Grande ortogó, etc. Murguia stated that the architect was a Portuguese,—Pedro Gonzalez,—but a local archæologist, Señor Casto Sampedro, has now proved both these statements to be erroneous, for, while reading through some ancient documents preserved in the notarial archives of the town, in the spring of 1907, he suddenly lighted upon the real name of the sculptor of the façade, Cornelius de Holanda.[253]
Morales, who visited Pontevedra in the reign of Philip II. (in 1572), spoke of this church as Santa Maria de los Pescadores (the fishermen’s church), and said “they have spent more than twenty thousand ducats on it, and intend to spend another twenty thousand, the sum still needed to complete the work.” There are several pictures in the church, which, though of little value as paintings, have still an archæological interest, and there are some old chalices in the sacristy. In the principal nave there is a graceful font, very shallow, with an inscription round the brim and a sculptured pedestal.
On our way to Santa Maria la Grande, we had passed the ivy-covered ruins of a beautiful Gothic abbey; the sky was visible through the lancet windows of its graceful apses, and its crumbling walls seemed to speak to us from another world. This was all that remained of the Conventual Church of Santo Domingo.
I have heard this ruin spoken of by archæologists as the sole specimen of purely Gothic architecture in the whole of Galicia; every other church in the province seems to have borrowed something from the style of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. In 1880, Fita urged that the ruins of Santa Domingo at Pontevedra should be carefully guarded, and preserved as a national monument, but to-day the practical citizens of Pontevedra are complaining of the space taken up by its walls, and suggesting that it be cleared away to make room for some useful modern building!
In a history of the Order of San Domingo, published in 1613,[254] it is stated that there is no document in existence which gives the date of the foundation of Santo Domingo of Pontevedra, but that the site for it was purchased in Era 1321 (1283 A.D.) from a lady, Donna Sancha Roca Helda, and it is certain that the edifice was standing in the beginning of the fourteenth century. All that remains of it to-day is a little bit of the transept and its five polygonal apses—one large one with two small ones on either side; all five have fan vaulting and double lancet windows. The ornamentation of the columns is iconographic: on one of the capitals is sculptured a fight between warriors and a dog; on another, monster birds with long twisted necks attacking one another with their beaks. The inner walls show traces of having been once covered with frescoes representing the Resurrection and the Life of Santo Domingo, of which some still remain. “It is the number of the apses,” writes Villa-Amil, “which constitutes the singularity of this church, for it is the only one of all the conventual churches built in Galicia during the Middle Ages which has that number, all the others (and here he mentions ten) have only three. Otherwise there is nothing remarkable about it.” The door which opened between the church and the sacristy is still there; it is Gothic, with an archivolt decorated with fluted mouldings, leaves, and twisted fillets; the statues which adorned it are gone. In the largest apse there is still preserved the original altar table of one solid piece of stone.
Santo Domingo, now an archæological museum, was once the principal necropolis, the Westminster Abbey, of the province of Pontevedra. As far back as the close of the fourteenth century, illustrious men left money to it in their wills, and the command that they should be interred within its precincts. The sepulchral effigies of Don Payo Gomez de Sotomayor and his wife the Infanta de Hungria, Donna Juana, are still there in their Gothic niches. Don Payo is coated with mail, his head is covered by a helmet, and his sword is by his side. The family of Sotomayor is one of the oldest in Spain, and the chapel in which their effigies lie was founded by them. Payo Gomez de Sotomayor was one of the two ambassadors sent by King Enrique III. of Castille to the court of Tamerlane in 1402; the other was Hernan Sanchez Palazuelos: they helped Tamerlane in his fight against the Turks. Tamerlane loaded them with presents, and also presented them with two beautiful captives (one of whom was said to be a member of the royal family of Hungary), whom they eventually married. Donna Juana, whose effigy is in Santo Domingo, was the captive who became the wife of Payo Gomez. On her tomb is an escutcheon in which the arms of the Sotomayors are united to those of the house of Hungary. Close by there is also the effigy of Don Suero Gomez de Sotomayor, the son of the ambassador to Persia.[255]
The ruins of Santo Domingo rise in the midst of a modern town; on two sides they overlook the street, and on a third side a huge grammar school for boys is being erected. The plot on which the ruins stands is shut in with a railing, and has been turned to the best possible use, for it now serves as an Open-air Archæological Museum. Rows of Roman