There is no other walled town of my acquaintance that flaunts its defences quite so defiantly as Ávila. Its circlet of tower and curtain crests its great{177} natural glacis like the substantialised vision of a mural crown. The walls themselves are only about twelve feet in thickness, which is, of course, a mere trifle compared to Lugo and Astorga; but it is height that tells, and their commanding situation gives them an incomparably finer effect.[26] Only on the further side has the city begun to overflow its ancient cincture; and with its core of tightly-packed houses clustering round its great cathedral-fortress which crowns the brow of the eminence, it still receives its latter-day visitors in the same garb that it donned for the Cid. Doubtless the old rebel barons had an eye to its scenic capabilities when they selected it as the theatre for their mock deposition of Henrique IV. This thing was not to be done in a corner, and the impudent pageant which they enacted under its walls must have been visible for miles round.
But the chief pride and glory of Ávila is the boast that it was the birthplace of Sta Theresa, the “seraphic” lady whom a more emotional epoch has preferred to the martial Santiago, and almost matched with the Virgin herself as the modern patroness of Spain.{178}
Sta Theresa was quite a modern saint; and, like her contemporary Ignatius Loyola, much more truly saintly than hagiologists would have us infer. They would rather persist in belauding her visionary ecstasies and ascetic self-mortification. Her practical common-sense and her gentle resolution are dismissed as earthlier virtues: yet it was these that made her a power.
She certainly lost no time in beginning the practice of her profession, for at the age of seven she persuaded her baby brother to run away with her to Barbary to get martyred by the Moors. Being captured and brought home by their distracted parents, they next decided upon becoming hermits. But this notable scheme was also vetoed;—poor little mites! Maybe we know other small children who have started somewhat similarly on the road to canonization; but Theresa’s romantic devotion outlasted this fanciful stage. At the age of sixteen she assumed the veil—a step which in wiser years she was not so eager to advocate, but in which she found ample opportunity for the exercise of her piety and her zeal. Her reform of the Carmelite nunneries was achieved in the teeth of great opposition from the hierarchy of the day; and her literary work is of an excellence{179} that places her high among the classical writers of Spain. It is to such as her and Loyola, rather than to Torquemada and Ximenes, that the Roman Church owes its hold upon the people. And by these she is dowered with the attributes which belong to Catherine of Siena in another land.
But perhaps the most remarkable honour ever accorded to her is the fact that two hundred years after her death she was actually gazetted commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies in the Peninsula war! Certainly Louis XI. had previously honoured Our Lady of Embrun with the colonelcy of his Scottish Guards. But here was a popular assembly, in the nineteenth century, which could “see him and go one better”; a far more deliberate extravagance than the whim of a fetish-cowed king. Of course there was more method in their madness than appears on the surface. They did not really want a commander-in-chief at all. What they did want was a Name which should fire the enthusiasm of the peasantry, as the citizens of Zaragoza had been fired by the name of Our Lady of the Pillar. At the same time it must be admitted that matters seemed to move more smoothly when she was superseded by the Duke of Wellington.{180}
The cathedral is a most massive structure of stern grey granite, with its apse bulging out beyond the city walls—battlemented, loop-holed, and machicolated like the profanest bastion of them all. It looks every inch a castle, and has not served amiss when so utilised; for in the great western tower the infant King Alfonso XI. (Father of Pedro the Cruel) was kept safe from his would-be guardians during his long minority, by the Bishop and people of Ávila. The interior of the building is one of the noblest in Spain—severe, gloomy and solemn; but furnished with that surpassing magnificence which only Spanish cathedrals can boast.
The old town itself is full of quaint nooks and corners, and most of its streets and houses are as unalterably medieval as the walls. A county council inspector would probably play sad havoc with them, for even if they are sanitary they are terribly out of repair. There is a smell which lingers distinctive in these old Spanish townships. Not indeed altogether unpleasant, but rather grateful from association, like the smell of the stone walls of the West country after a summer shower. It is compounded of many simples, and its leading ingredient is garlic. But it would be{181} hard to prove its innocency before our stern courts of hygiene.