Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

I have seldom seen a better work than this. It is evidently one of a large class, most of the other steeples here reproducing the unusual arrangement of the angles. They are boldly splayed off, and in the middle of the splay is set a shaft, which finishes with a sculptured capital. The effect of this design is to give great softness of contour to the whole steeple, and yet to mark boldly and broadly the importance of the angles. The arcading of the various stages is richly and admirably managed, and the details throughout are very pure and good. I have found no evidence of its exact date, though it is evidently a work of the first half of the thirteenth century.

The church to which this steeple belongs is remarkable for the remains of an external cloister against the walls of the nave. There are several churches here which have the same feature, and in other parts of this book I have mentioned similar cases at Las Huelgas, Burgos, and at La Antigua, Valladolid. It looks like an arrangement for keeping the building cool, and is as good in its effect, as in so hot a climate it must be convenient.

Of the early churches here none is altogether so fine as that of San Millan. It stands in the southern valley, not far from the aqueduct, and exactly on the opposite side of the town to the Templars’ Church. Like that, too, it is outside the walls, and in a scantily-peopled suburb. It consists of a nave and aisles,[192] all finished at the east end with apses, and protected on both sides by cloisters similar to those of San Esteban, save that they are confined to the sides, and do not return across the west front. There is a low square lantern at the Crossing, and transepts which do not project beyond the aisles, and hardly show themselves, therefore, on the ground-plan. The central lantern is finished with a corbel-table, roofed with a low tiled roof, and lighted by a small window in each face. The apses are similar in style and detail to most of the early Spanish apses, having engaged shafts at intervals, richly wrought corbel-tables, and round-arched shafted windows. Both the transepts probably had flat gables, with single windows, like those in the apse, but the north transept has been destroyed for the erection of a steeple, which seems to have formed no part of the original plan. The most striking view of the church is from the north-west. The west front is quite unaltered, save by the addition of three little windows over the west door, and is a capital example of simple Romanesque. The gables are all of the same pitch, and the aisle walls are arcaded and pierced with windows above the cloister roofs. The cloister is a very rich composition, the shafts being coupled, with finely sculptured capitals, and the arches enriched with billet mouldings. The corbel-tables and cornices to these cloisters have evidently been carved at a date long after the original foundation of the church, the edge of the eaves-cornice being cut in a rich interlacing pattern of ivy-leaves, which cannot, I think, be earlier than from A.D. 1250 to 1270, and the heads, figures, and foliage on the corbels under it are all of the same character. There are fine north and south doors here, and there is a local peculiarity in their design which deserves notice. Their jambs consist of shafts set within very bold square recesses; and the number of orders in the arch is double that of those in the jamb, they being alternately carried on the capitals of the shafts, and upon the square order of the jambs. The effect is good, the bold spacing of the shafts, and the massiveness of the intermediate square jambs, tending to give that effect of solidity which these early Spanish architects never tired in their attempts to attain.

The interior of the church has been much modernized, but still enough remains to render the whole scheme intelligible. The arcades between the nave and aisles are all perfect; they are very plain, but spring from carved capitals of large size. The capitals of the nave arcades have their abaci planned with re-entering angles, so as exactly to fit the plan of the two square orders of the archivolt. Some of the caps are of foliage only, others are historiés; one I remember having all round it the Adoration of the Magi, who are represented as large figures on horseback, and produce a most strange effect in such a place. The cross arches under the lantern are old, as also are those across the aisles, but the roof of the nave is now all under-drawn with plaster, and there are no means of telling precisely how it was originally covered; but, on the whole, I incline to the belief that it must have had a cylindrical vault, with quadrant vaults in the aisles, though it is possible, of course, that it had a flat wooden ceiling. The square piers in the nave favour this alternative, inasmuch as they seem to rise higher than they would have done had the roof been a stone vault. The pilasters against the aisle walls also run up to the level of the plate inside, and this (though it is modern) is higher than the springing of the nave arcades, and seems to prove that there have never been cross arches in the aisles. The external walls of the aisles above the cloister roofs are arcaded with plain arches between the pilasters, by which it is divided into bays, and the aisle windows are set within these arches. The lantern is modernized, but there still remain coupled cross ribs on its under side, and these, though they are plastered, being similar to those under the central vault of the Templars’ Church, are probably original.

I wish much that I could put my hands on some documentary evidence which would fix the exact date of this very fine and interesting church, for, from its importance, it may be considered to be a leading example; and there is no doubt that it very largely influenced the other churches of this important city. It is possible, however, from the character of some of the detail, that part of it is older than the Templars’ Church, consecrated, as we have seen, in A.D. 1208; though other parts of the detail—as, for instance, that of the external cornices—cannot be earlier than A.D. 1250-1270. Before the last of these dates, therefore, I have no doubt the church was erected, though, as the arches are all, or nearly all, semi-circular, the greater part of the work was probably finished early in the century, if not in the twelfth century, and the decorations may have been completed afterwards.[193]

The non-introduction of pointed arches is certainly in favour of the earlier date, seeing that in the Templars’ Church most of the main arches, rude as they are, are pointed; and were it not for the late character of some parts of San Millan, and looking only to the character of the plan and general design, I might have assumed its date to be about A.D. 1150. It is possible that the cloisters were added after the erection of the church.

The object of these external cloisters has been, I believe, matter of considerable discussion, yet I confess that they always seemed to me to be adopted mainly, if not solely, on account of the excessive heat in Spain in summer, and to be well worth our imitation when we have to erect churches in tropical climates. That they were confined very much to certain localities is perfectly true, but this is constantly the case, with local developments, in all parts of Europe; and here, no doubt, the idea once suggested by some early architect was frequently repeated by him, without taking the fancy of his brethren generally enough to make them repeat it elsewhere.