The Cathedrals of Northern Spain / Their History and Their Architecture; Together with Much of Interest Concerning the Bishops, Rulers and Other Personages Identified with Them

by Charles Rudy

The nave is the most important member of the church, and the most impressive view is obtained by the visitor standing beneath the croisée.

To the east of him, the nave terminates in a semicircular chapel, the farther end of which boasts of an immense retablo; to the west, the choir, with its stalls and organs, interrupts likewise the continuity of the nave. Both choir and altar are rich in decorative details.

Behind the high altar runs the ambulatory, joining the aisles and separating the former from the apse and its chapels. The rear wall of the high altar (in the ambulatory) is called the trasaltar, where a small altar[{46}] is generally situated in a recess and dedicated to the patron saint, that is, if the cathedral itself be dedicated to the Virgin, as generally happens.

Sometimes an oval window pierces the wall of the trasaltar and lets the light from the apsidal windows enter the high altar; this arrangement is called a transparente.

The choir, as wide as the nave and often as high, is rectangular; an altar-table generally stands in the western extremity, which is closed off by a wall. The rear of this wall (facing the western entrance to the temple) is called the trascoro, and contains the altar or a chapel; the lateral walls are also pierced by low rooms or niches which serve either as chapels or as altar-frames.

The placing of the choir in the very centre of the church, its width and height, and its enclosure on the western end by a wall, render impossible a view of the whole building such as occurs in Northern cathedrals, and upon which the impression of architectural grandeur and majesty largely depends. It was as though Spanish architects were utterly foreign to the latter impression, or wilfully murdered it by substituting[{47}] another more to their taste, namely, that of magnificence and sumptuousness. Nowhere—to the author's knowledge—is this impression more acutely felt than in a Spanish cathedral, viewed from beneath the croisée.

Glittering brilliancy, dazzling gold, silver, or gilt, polished marble, agate, and jasper, and a luxuriance of vivid colours meet the visitor's eyes when standing there. The effect is theatrical, doubtless, but it impresses the humble true believer as Oriental splendour; and what, in other countries, might be considered as grotesque and unhealthy art, must in Spain be regarded as the very essence of the country's worship, the very raison d'être of the cathedral. Neither can it be considered as unhealthy: with us in the North, our religious awe is produced by the solemn majesty of rising shafts and long, high, and narrow aisles; this fails to impress the Iberian of to-day; and yet, the same sentiment of religious awe, of the terrible unknown, be it saint, Saviour, Virgin, or God, is imparted to him by this brilliant display of incalculable wealth.

To produce this magnificence in choir and high altar, decorative and industrial[{48}] art were given a free hand, and together wrought those wonders of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries which placed Spain in a prominent position in the history of art. Goldsmiths and silversmiths, masters of ironcraft, sculptors in stone and wood, painters and estofadores, together with a legion of other artists and artisans of all classes and nationalities, worked together in unison to create both choir and high altar.

Therefore, from an artistic point of view, the Spanish cathedral is for the foreigner a museum, a collection of art objects, pertaining, most of them, to the country's industrial arts, for which Iberia was first among all nations.

Choir Stalls.—Space cannot allow us to classify this most important accessory of Spanish cathedrals. Carved in walnut or oak, now simple and severe, now rich and florid, this branch of graphic art in low relief constitutes one of Spain's most legitimate glories. It is strange that no illustrated work dedicated exclusively to choir stalls should have been published in any language. The tourist's attention must nevertheless be drawn to[{49}] this part of religious buildings; it must not escape his observation when visiting cathedral and parish churches, and above all, monastical churches.