Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

About this period a type of church varying but little from this became extremely common in Aquitaine and Auvergne; and this again evidently influenced at least one of the Spanish architects very much indeed: I allude to such churches as those of Notre Dame du Port, Clermont Ferrand, and S. Sernin at Toulouse—to name two only out of a large number. In these the ground-plan has usually nave and aisles, transepts, central lantern, and a chevet consisting of an apsidal choir with a surrounding aisle, and chapels opening into it, with spaces between each chapel. This plan, as I have already shown, is absolutely repeated at Santiago with such close accuracy that one can hardly avoid calling it merely a reproduction of S. Sernin at Toulouse.[408] It is the more remarkable because for some reason the early Spanish architects almost always avoided the erection of a regular chevet, and adhered strictly to their first plan of separate apsidal chapels on the eastern side of the transept. But whilst the early French chevet was only copied at Santiago, the other features of the French churches to which it belonged were copied not unfrequently—these are the waggon-vaulted nave, supported by half waggon-vaults over the aisles, and the central lantern. Gradually the design of these various parts was developed into a sort of stereotyped regularity, the instances of which extend so far across to the Peninsula as to be very surprising to those who have noticed the remarkable way in which local peculiarities generally confine themselves to the particular districts in which they originated. In course of time the groining was varied, and in place of the round barrel-vault, one of pointed section was adopted, and in place of it again the usual quadripartite vault. The examples which I have described, and which belong to this class, are—San Isidoro, Leon; San Vicente and San Pedro, Avila; several churches in Segovia; the old Cathedral at Salamanca; Lérida old Cathedral; Sta. Maria, Benevente; and Santiago, la Coruña. Other churches of precisely similar character exist at Valdedios, near Gijon; Villanueva and Villa Mayor, near Oña; San Antolin de Bedon, between Ribadella and Llanes; Sandoval, on the river Esla; San Juan de Amandi and Tarbes, on the French side of the Pyrenees. Those in Segovia may be accepted as the best examples of their class, and they are so closely alike in all their details as to lead naturally to the belief that they were all executed at about the same period, and by the same workmen. The sack of the city by the Moors in 1071, when it is said that thirty churches were destroyed, seems to point to the period at which most of these churches were probably erected to take the place of those that had been destroyed; and it seems to be certain that their leading features remained generally unaltered until about the end of the twelfth, if not far into the succeeding century. Indeed it is remarkable in Spain, just as it is in Germany, that the late Romanesque style, having once been introduced, retained its position and prestige longer than it did in France, and was only supplanted finally by designs brought again from France in a later style, instead of developing into it through the features of first-pointed, as was the case in England and France.

In this general similarity there are several subordinate variations to be observed. At Santiago, for instance, we see an almost absolute copy of the great church of S. Sernin, Toulouse, erected soon after its original had been completed. At Lugo it is clear, I think, that the architect of the cathedral copied, not from any foreign work, but from that at Santiago: he was probably neither acquainted with the church at Toulouse, nor any of its class. At San Vicente, Avila, again, though we see the Segovian eastern apses repeated with absolute accuracy, the design of the church is modified in a most important manner by the introduction of quadripartite vaulting in place of the waggon-vault, and the piercing the wall above the nave arcades with a regular triforium and clerestory. The same design was repeated with little alteration at San Pedro, in the same city; and in both it seems to me that we may detect some foreign influence, so rare was the introduction of the clerestory in Spanish buildings of the same age. Sta. Maria, la Coruña, again, though it evidently belongs to the same class as the cathedral at Santiago, has certain peculiarities which identify it absolutely with that variation which we see at Carcassonne and Monistrol:[409] for here there are narrow aisles; and the three divisions of the church are all covered with waggon-vaults, those at the sides resisting the thrust from the centre, and, owing to their slight width, exerting but slight pressure on the outer walls. The distinction between this design and one in which the aisles are covered with quadrant-vaults is very marked; and the erection of the cathedral at Santiago would not have been very likely to lead to the design of such a church as this.

In all these churches the proportion of the length of the choir to that of the nave is very small. Usually the apses are either simply added against the eastern wall of the transept, or else, whilst the side apses are built on this plan, the central apse is lengthened by the addition of one bay between the Crossing and the apse. It is very important to mark this plan, because, however it was introduced—whether in such churches as that of the abbey of Veruela, where the conventual arrangement of Citeaux was imported, or in those earlier churches of which San Pedro, Gerona, may be taken as an example, in which from the first no doubt the choir was transferred to the nave, and the central apse treated only as a sanctuary—the result was the same on Spanish architecture and Spanish ritual. The Church found herself in possession of churches with short eastern apses and no choirs; and instead of retaining the old arrangement of the choir, close to and in face of the altar, she admitted her laity to the transept, divorced the choir from the altar, and invented those church arrangements which puzzle ecclesiologists so much. In our own country the same system to some extent at first prevailed; but our architects took a different course; they retained their choirs, prolonged them into the nave, and so contrived without suffering the separation of the clergy from the altar they serve, which we see in Spain.[410] In one great English church only has the Spanish system been adopted, and this, strangely enough, in the most complete fashion. Westminster Abbey, in fact, will enable any one to understand exactly what the arrangement of a Spanish church is. Its short choir, just large enough for a sumptuous and glorious altar, its Crossing exactly fitted for the stalls of the clergy and choir, its nave and transepts large enough to hold a magnificent crowd of worshippers, are all mis-used just as they would be in Spain; whilst the modern arrangements for the people—much more mistaken than they are there—involve the possession of the greater part of the choir by the laity, and the entire cutting off by very solid metal fences of all the worshippers in the transepts from the altar before which they are supposed to kneel, and the placing of the entire congregation between the priest and the altar.[411]

This digression will be excused when it is remembered how universally this tradition settled itself upon Spain, and how completely the perseverance in Romanesque traditions has affected her ritual arrangements, and with them her church architecture from the twelfth century until the present day. The long choirs which were naturally developed in England and France were never thought of there; the choir was merely the “Capilla mayor”—the chapel for the high altar; and the use of the nave as the people’s church was ignored or forgotten as much as it was—very rightly—in some of our own old conventual churches, where the choir was prolonged far down into the nave, and the space for the people reduced to a bay or two only at its western end.

I must now bring this discussion to a close, and proceed with my chronological summary; and here the Abbey Church at Veruela ought to be mentioned, if regard be had to the date of its erection—circa A.D. 1146-1171—though I must say that I have not been able to discover that it exercised any distinct influence upon Spanish buildings. It is in truth a very close copy of a Burgundian church of the period, built by French monks for an order only just established in Spain, under the direction probably of a French architect, and in close compliance with the rather strict architectural rules and restrictions which the Cistercians imposed on all their branches and members. [412] The character of the interior of this church is grand and simple, but at the same time rather rude and austere; but the detail of much of the exterior is full of delicacy; and the design of the chevet, with its central clerestory, and the surrounding aisle roofed with a separate lean-to roof, and the chapels projecting from it so subordinated as to finish below its eaves, recalls to memory some of the best examples of French Romanesque work.[413] The beauty and refinement of the little Chapter-house here lead me to suppose that it cannot be earlier than the end of the century.

There are some of these churches which require more detailed notice as being derived to some extent from the same models, but erected on a grander scale, and if documentary evidence can be trusted, whose erection was spread over so long a time as to illustrate very well indeed the slow progress of the development in art which we so often see in these Spanish buildings. The old cathedral at Salamanca was building from A.D. 1120 to 1178; Tarragona Cathedral was begun in 1131; Tudela, commenced at about the same time, was completed in 1188; Lérida, whose style is so similar to that of the others as to make me class them all together, was not commenced until 1203, nor consecrated until 1278; and Valencia Cathedral, of which the south transept of the original foundation still remains, was not commenced until A.D. 1262. Yet if I except the early and Italian-looking eastern apse at Tarragona, most of the features of these churches look as though they were the design of the same man, and very nearly the same period; and it is altogether unintelligible how such a work, for instance, as Lérida Cathedral could be in progress at the same time as Toledo and Burgos, save upon the assumption that the thirteenth century churches in an advanced Pointed style, such as these last, were erected by French workmen and artists imported for the occasion, and in a style far in advance of that at which the native artists had arrived.

Yet I think few churches deserve more careful study than these. I know none whose interiors are more solid, truly noble, or impressive; and these qualities are all secured not by any vast scale of dimensions—for, as will be seen by the plans, they are all churches of very moderate size—but by the boldness of their design, the simplicity of their sections, the extreme solidity of their construction, and the remarkable contrast between these characteristics and the delicacy of their sculptured decorations; they seem to me to be among the most valuable examples for study on artistic grounds that I have ever seen anywhere, and to teach us as much as to the power of Pointed art as do any churches in Christendom.

In all there is a very remarkable likeness in the section of the main clustered piers. They are composed usually of four pairs of clustered columns, two of them carrying the main arches, and two others supporting bold cross arches between the vaulting bays, whilst four shafts placed in the re-entering angles carry the diagonal groining ribs both of the nave and aisle. The arches are usually quite plain and square in section, the groining ribs are very bold and simple, and the whole decorative sculpture is reserved for the doorways and the capitals and bases of the columns. The windows have usually jamb-shafts inside and out; and the eastern apses are always covered with semi-dome vaults. Permanence being the one great object their builders set before them, they determined to dispense as far as possible with wood in their construction, and they seem to have laid stone roofs of rather flat pitch above the vaulting, and in some cases very ingeniously contrived with a view to preventing any possible lodgment of wet, and so any danger of decay. It may be said, perhaps, that fragments only of these roofs remain, so that after all timber roofs covered with tiles would have been equally good; but this is not so. The very attempt to build for everlasting is in itself an indication of the highest virtue on the part of the artist. The man who builds for to-day builds only to suit the miserable caprice of his patron, whilst he who builds for all time does so with a wholesome dread of exciting hostile criticism from those grave unprejudiced men who will come after him, and who will judge, not consciously perhaps, but infallibly, as to the honesty of his work. In England we have hardly a single attempt at anything of the kind, though in Ireland, in St. Cormack’s Chapel at Cashel, we not only have an example, but one also that proves to us that we may build in this solid fashion, so that our work may endure in extraordinary perfection come what may—as it has there—of neglect, of desolation, and of desecration! Yet of all the virtues of good architecture none are greater than solidity and permanence, and we in England cannot therefore afford to affect any of our Insular airs of superiority over these old Spanish artists!

Look also at the thorough way in which their work was done. The Chapter-houses, the cloisters, the subordinate erections of these old buildings, are always equal in merit to the churches themselves, and I really know not where—save in some of the English abbeys which we have wickedly ruined and destroyed—we are to find their equals. Nothing can be more lovely than such cloisters as those of Gerona or Tarragona, few things grander than that desecrated one at Lérida, whilst the Chapter-house at Veruela, and the doorways at Valencia, Lérida, and Tudela, deserve to rank among the very best examples of mediæval art.

There are yet two other grand early churches to be mentioned which do not seem to range themselves under either of the divisions already noticed, and which yet do not at all belong to the list of churches of French design with which my notice of thirteenth-century Spanish work must of necessity conclude. These are the cathedrals of Sigüenza and Avila.[414] Both of these are, so far as I can see, but to a slight extent founded upon other examples. Sigüenza Cathedral seems to have had originally three eastern apses: the plan is simple and grand, and its scale, either really, or at any rate in effect, very magnificent. The great size of the clustered columns, their well-devised sections, the massive solidity of the arches, the buttresses, and all the details, make this church rank, so far at least as the interior is concerned, among the finest Spanish examples of its age. At Avila, on the other hand, we see a remarkable attempt to introduce somewhat more of the delicacy and refinement of the first-pointed style; and just as if the architect had been exasperated by the obligation under which he lay to end his chevet within the plain, bald, windowless circular wall projecting from the city ramparts which was traced out for him, we find him indulging in delicate detached shafts, a double aisle round the chevet, and subsequently in such strange as well as daring expedients in the way of the support of the groining and the flying buttresses, as could hardly have been ventured on by any one really accustomed to deal with the various problems which the constructors of groined roofs ordinarily had before them. I venture therefore to place these two churches at Sigüenza and Avila among the most decidedly Spanish works of their day; I see no distinct evidence of foreign influence in any part of their design, and they seem to me to be fairly independent on the one hand of the early Spanish style of Tarragona, Lérida, Salamanca, and Segovia, and on the other of the imported French style of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon.