Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

Some part of the floor is laid with blue and white tiles, arranged in chevrons with good effect, and other parts with tombstones of Abbats, whose effigies are carved on them in low relief. They are flatter than the somewhat similar stones in some of the German churches (as e.g. at S. Elizabeth, Marburg) but are still a great deal too uneven on the surface to be suitable for a pavement.

The capitals are all very rudely sculptured, and the whole of the work has the air of extreme severity, almost of rudeness, which might be anticipated from the circumstances of its erection. A chapel was built in the sixteenth century to the north of the north transept by Ferdinand of Aragon, Bishop of Zaragoza, and nephew of Ferdinand the Catholic. It has nothing remarkable in its design. Later than this a large chapel was added to the east of the sacristy; and from what still remains of the fittings of the Coro in the nave, they seem to have been still later in date.

A fine late Romanesque door leads from the south aisle into the cloister, the whole of which is a good work of the early part of the fourteenth century, with well-traceried windows of four lights. The groining piers are clusters of shafts, and the buttresses on the outside are finished with crocketed gables and a bold cornice carved with foliage. The traceries are now all filled in with very thin panels of alabaster, which do not obscure the light much, whilst they effectually keep out the sun; but this precaution against sunshine does not seem to have been much needed, if the men were right who raised a second stage upon the old cloister, the Renaissance arcades of which are all left perfectly open. On the southern alley of the cloister there is a very pretty hexagonal projecting chamber, in which no doubt—if we may judge by the analogy of Clairvaux—was once the lavatory. The cloister has been built in front of, and without at all disturbing, the original Chapter-house, on its east side. The new groining shafts stand detached in front of the old arcade to the Chapter-house, and the combination of the two is managed very cleverly and picturesquely. This old arcade consists of the usual arrangement of a central doorway, with two openings on either side, all carried on clusters of detached shafts with capitals of foliage. The Chapter-house itself is divided into nine groining bays by four detached shafts; it is very low and small, and its three eastern windows are blocked up, but nevertheless its effect is admirable. One of its columns has been spoilt by the elaborate cutting in of the names of a party of Englishmen who ascended the Sierra de Moncayo to see the eclipse of the sun in 1860, and who recorded their not very hazardous or important achievement in this most barbarous fashion.

It is a fact quite worth notice here, that none of the old windows are blocked up: the truth is that the churches from which this was derived were, in common with all Romanesque churches, taken straight from Italy, where the requirements of the climate were very similar to those of Spain. Yet it was only very gradually that the northern architects discovered their unfitness for a northern climate, and increased their dimensions. Here they give just enough and not too much light; but at a later day, when the northern churches were all window from end to end, the same fault was committed; and when their architects were employed to build in other climates, they followed their own traditions without reference to altered circumstances, as we see at Milan, at Leon, and elsewhere frequently.

The church at Veruela seems now to be but little frequented, the high altar alone being ever used. The stalls of the Coro are gone, and a shattered fragment of the old organ-case standing out from the wall serves only as a forlorn mark to show where it once stood. The buildings generally are sadly decayed and ruinous, and I have seldom seen a noble building less cared for or respected. It is sad to see this result of the suppression of religious orders, and one may be permitted to doubt whether it can be for the interest of religion that this noble foundation should now be nothing more than the private residence of a Spanish gentleman, instead of—as it was intended it should be by its pious founder—a perpetual refuge from the cares of the world of those in every age who aim to lead the holiest and most devoted lives.

I left Veruela with regret that I was unable to obtain more accurate notes of such portions of the monastic buildings as probably still remain overlaid with the poor additions of a too wealthy convent during the last three centuries. It is, however, easily accessible, and the plan which I give of the church will no doubt soon induce others to complete my examination wherever it has been defective.

On the ride back to Tarazona, we made a short détour to look at what seemed to be an important church and village. Neither could well have been less so! The church was without anything worth remark save a band of tiles, set chevron fashion, in the cornice, and not harmonizing at all well with the walls. The village was wretched in the extreme.