Glories of Spain

by Charles W. Wood

The old man felt he was getting the worst of it; was being driven into a corner by this enfant terrible; and took refuge in silence.

This interesting conversation took place just inside the doorway, where we found ourselves lost in the beauty of the scene. A court with round arches on either side resting on pillars with small capitals. Above them the walls were in their rough, rude state, full of picturesque decay, but here as in many parts of the interior much had been restored. Nevertheless, so much of the original remains that the restoration does not offend. It has been well done. Before us, at the end of the short entrance-court was a large and splendid archway, and beyond we had a distant view of the Gothic cloisters.

The interior was so immense, the passages were so intricate, we could never have found our way without the custodian. Nothing could be lovelier than the half-ruined cloisters. The large exquisite windows were of rich pointed work, seven bays on each side, pillars and tracery either almost all gone, or partly restored. In one corner of the quadrangle was a hexagon glorieta enclosing the fountain that in days gone by supplied monks and bishops with water. Weeds and shrubs and stunted trees grew about it; a rare wilderness. Above rose the outlines of battlemented walls; of ruined pointed windows, lovely in decay; of crumbling stairways, rich mouldings and pointed roofs. The cloister passages opened to enormous rooms. On the east side was the chapter-house, supported by four exquisite pillars, from which sprang the groining of the roof; the doors and windows were specially graceful and refined; the floor was paved with monumental stones of the dead-and-gone abbots, many of the inscriptions effaced by time.

Near this was the large refectory with pillars and pointed vault. Up the staircase, which still remains, we passed to the palace del Rey Martin; King Martin the Humble as he was called; and large and baronial in days gone by the palace must have been, its very aspect transporting one to feudal times. Below the palace were enormous vaults where the wine was once stored: great vats and channels, and a whole series of processes to which the wine was subjected. Those must have been bacchanalian days, and supplies never failed. All the rooms—the Chocolateria, where the abbots took their chocolate, the Novitiate, of enormous dimensions, the Library, the room of the Archives, the room that contained the rich monastery treasure, another that had nothing but rare MSS., some of which are scattered but many more destroyed—all these rooms seemed countless, and each had its special charm and atmosphere.

It was impossible to enter the refectory with its vaulted roof lost in the semi-obscurity which reigned, without conjuring up a vision of monks and abbots who in past centuries feasted here and quaffed each other in draughts of rich Malvoisie. In the palace del Rey Martin, we imagined all the regal pomp and splendour in which the king delighted. In the wine vaults we beheld the wine running in deep red streams, traced it to the refectory table, and noticed the rapidity with which it disappeared before the worthy abbots. In the vaults it passed through every stage, from the crushing of the grape to the final storing in barrels.

On one side of the cloisters was the partly restored church, high and wide, with a magnificent nave of seven fine bays, so slightly pointed as to be almost Romanesque. We were lost in wonder at the size of the building, its simple grandeur, even as a partial ruin. Open to it from the north side is the great sacristy, saddest room of all. For here we find a solitary tombstone on which is inscribed the name of Philip Duke of Wharton, who came over to the monastery, a lonely exile, and died at the age of thirty-two, without friend or servant to soothe his last moments, knowing little or nothing of the language of the monks who surrounded him. Most melancholy of stories.

In the church, on each side of the high altar were remains of once splendid tombs. They are now defaced, and the effigies have altogether disappeared. Here was once the tomb of Jayme el Conquistador, which we had looked upon that very morning with our amiable sacristan on the left of the Coro in Tarragona cathedral. Its ancient resting-place in the great monastery church is now an empty space.

The aisle behind the high altar contains five chapels, and behind these outside the church lies the cemetery of the monks, a beautiful and ideal spot with long rows of round arches one beyond another, so that you seem to be looking into vistas of countless pillars. Above the arches and pillars are walls of amazing thickness, with windows and projections, all ending in moss-grown, crumbling outlines. Below, small mounds and tombstones mark the resting-place of the dead. Here they sleep forgotten; no sign or sound penetrates from the outer world, and those who visit them are comparatively few.

The whole monastery is nothing but an accumulation of crumbling walls still strong and majestic, of church and cloister, of palace and palatial courts, of refined Gothic windows with broken tracery, of ancient stairways and flying arches. Over all was the exquisite tone of age.