The exterior of the apse retains its primitive cachet; the central chapel, where the high altar is placed, was, however, rebuilt in the sixteenth century by Tavera, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, who had at one time occupied the see of Ciudad Rodrigo. It is a peculiar mixture of Gothic and Romanesque, of pointed windows and heavy buttresses; the flat roof is decorated by means of a low stone railing or balustrade composed of elegantly carved pinnacles.[{275}]
To conclude: excepting the western front and the central lobe of the apse, the tower and the ogival arch surmounting the northern and southern portals, the cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo is one of the most perfectly preserved Romanesque buildings to the south of Zamora and Toro. It is less grim and warlike than the two last-named edifices, and yet it is also a fair example of severe and gloomy (though not less artistic!) Castilian Romanesque. Its croisée is not surmounted by the heavy cupola as in Salamanca and elsewhere, and it is perhaps just this suppression or omission which gives the whole building a far less Oriental appearance than the others mentioned heretofore.
In the inside, the choir occupies its usual place. Its stalls, it is believed, were carved by Alemán, the same who probably wrought those superb seats at Plasencia. It is doubtful if the same master carved both, however, but were it so, the stalls at Ciudad Rodrigo would have to be classified as older, executed before those we shall examine in a future chapter.
The nave and two aisles, pierced by ogival windows in the clerestory and round-headed windows in the aisles, constitute the church;[{276}] the croisée is covered by means of a simple ogival vaulting; the arches separating the nave from the aisles are Romanesque, as is the vaulting of the former. It was originally the intention of the chapter to beautify the solemn appearance of the interior by means of a triforium or running gallery. Unluckily, perhaps because of lack of funds, the triforium was never begun excepting that here and there are seen remnants of the primitive tracing.
With the lady-chapel profusely and lavishly ornamented, and quite out of place in this solemn building, there are five chapels, one at the foot of each aisle and two in the apse, to the right and left of the lady-chapel. They all lack art interest, however, as does the actual retablo, which replaces the one destroyed by the French; remnants of the latter are to be seen patched up on the cloister walls.
This cloister to the north of the church is a historical monument, for each of the four sides of the square edifice is an architectural page differing from its companions. Studying first the western, then the southern, and lastly the two remaining sides, the student can obtain an idea of how Romanesque principles[{277}] struggled with Gothic before dying completely out, and how the latter, having reached its apogee, deteriorated into the most lamentable superdecoration before fading away into the naked, straight-lined features of the Renaissance so little compatible with Christian ideals.
VI
CORIA
To the west of Toledo and to the south of the Sierra de Gata, which, with the mountains of Gredo and the Guaderrama, formed in the middle ages a natural frontier between Christians and Moors, lies, in a picturesque and fertile vale about twenty miles distant from the nearest railway station, the little known cathedral town of Coria. It is situated on the northern shores of the Alagón, a river flowing about ten miles farther west into the Tago, near where the latter leaves Spanish territory and enters that of Portugal.