Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

Fuenterrabia is just seen from Irun in the distance, very prettily situated, with the long line of the blue bay of Biscay to its right. From Irun the road to San Sebastian passes the landlocked harbour of Pasage: this is most picturesque, the old houses clustering round the base of the great hills which shut it in from the sea, between which there is only a narrow winding passage to the latter, guarded by a mediæval castle. Leaving this charming picture behind, we were soon in front of San Sebastian. Here again the castle-crowned cliff seems entirely to shut the town out from the sea, whilst only a narrow neck of land between the embouchure of the river on the one side, and a landlocked bay on the other, connects it with the mainland. We had been seven or eight hours en route, and were glad to hear of a halt for breakfast. Whilst it was being prepared I ran off to the church of San Vicente on the opposite side of the town to the Fonda. I found it to be a building of the sixteenth century—built in 1507—with a large western porch, open-arched on each face, a nave and aisles, and eastern apsidal choir. The end of this is filled with an enormous Retablo of Pagan character, reaching to the roof. The church is groined throughout, and all the light is admitted by very small windows in the clerestory. The aisles have altars in each bay, with Retablos facing north and south. There is little or no work of much architectural interest here; but it was almost my first Spanish church, and I had my first very vivid impression of the darkened interiors, lighted up here and there by some brilliant speck of sunshine, which are so characteristic of the country, and as lovely in their effects as they are aggravating to one who wants to be able to make sketches and notes within them.

Leaving San Sebastian at mid-day, we skirted the bay, busy with folk enjoying themselves in the water after the fashion of Biarritz. The country was wild, beautiful, and mountainous all the way to Mondragon. At Vergara there was a fair going on, and the narrow streets were crowded with picturesquely dressed peasants; everywhere in these parts fine, lusty, handsome, and clean, and to my mind the best looking peasantry I have ever seen. In the evening the villages were all alive, the young men and women dancing a wild, indescribable dance, rather gracefully, and with a good deal of waving about of their arms. The music generally consisted of a tambourine, but once of two drums and a flute; and the ball-room was the centre of the road, or the little plaza in the middle of the village. At midnight there was another halt at Vitoria, where an hour was whiled away over chocolate and azucarillos—delicate compositions of sugar which melt away rapidly in water, and make a superior kind of eau sucré; and again at sunrise we stopped at Miranda del Ebro for the examination of luggage before entering Castile.

Close to the bridge, on the opposite side of the Ebro to Miranda, is a church of which I could just see by the dim light of the morning that it was of some value as an example of Romanesque and Early Pointed work. The apse, of five sides, has buttresses with two half-columns in front of each, and an arch thrown across from buttress to buttress carries the cornice and gives a great appearance of massiveness to the window arches with which it is concentric. The south doorway is of very fine Early Pointed style, with three shafts on each jamb, and five orders in the arch.

On the road from Miranda to Pancorbo there is a striking defile between massive limestone cliffs and rocks, through which the Madrid Railway is being constructed with no little difficulty, and where the road is carried up, until, at its summit, we found ourselves at the commencement of the arid, treeless, dusty, and eminently miserable plain of Castile, whilst we groaned not a little at the slow pace at which the ten or twelve horses and mules that drew us got over the ground. These Spanish diligences are certainly most amusing for a time, and thenceforward most wearying. They generally have a team of ten or twelve animals, mostly mules. The driver has a short whip and reins for the wheelers only; a boy, the adalantero, rides the leaders as postilion, and with a power of endurance which deserves record, the same boy having ridden with us all the way from San Sebastian to Burgos—twenty-five hours, with a halt of one hour only at Vitoria. The conductor, or mayoral, sits with the driver, and the two spend half their time in getting down from the box, rushing to the head of one of the mules, belabouring him heartily for two or three minutes till the whole train is in a mad gallop, and then climbing to the box to indulge in a succession of wild shrieks until the poor beasts have fallen again into their usual walk, when the performance is repeated. I believe that for a day and a half our mayoral never slept a wink, and spent something like a fourth of his time running with the mules: though I am bound to say that subsequent experience has convinced me that he was exceptionally lively and wakeful, for elsewhere, in travelling by night, I have generally found that the mules become their own masters after dark, walking or standing still as seemeth them best, and seldom getting over much more than half the ground they travel in the same number of hours of daylight.

A few miles before our arrival at Burgos, we caught the first sight of the three spires of the cathedral; and presently the whole mass stood out grandly, surmounted by the Castle hill on the right. One or two villages with large churches of little interest were passed, the great Carthusian Convent of Miraflores was seen on the left, and then, passing a short suburb, we stopped at the Fonda de la Rafaela; and after an hour spent in recovery from dust, dirt, and horrid hunger, betook ourselves to the famous Cathedral, with no little anxiety as to the result of this first day of ecclesiologizing in Spain.

The railroad, which is now open to Burgos, follows very much the same line as the old road. As far as Miranda the scenery is generally very beautiful, and here there is a junction with the wonderfully-engineered railway to Bilbao, which is continued again on the other side until it joins the Pamplona and Tudela Railway near the latter city. It is therefore a very good plan to enter Spain by the steamboat from Bayonne to Bilbao, to come thence by railway, join the main line at Miranda, and so on to Burgos, or else by the valley of the Ebro to Tudela and Zaragoza. The passage of the Pancorbo defile by the railway is even finer than by the road; and for the remainder of the distance to Burgos the traveller’s feeling must be in the main one of joy at finding himself skimming along with fair rapidity over the tame country, in place of loitering over it in a tiresome diligence.

CHAPTER II.
BURGOS.

THERE are some views of Burgos Cathedral which are constantly met with, and upon which I confess all my ideas of its style and merits had been founded, to their no little detriment. The western steeples, the central lantern, and the lantern-like roof and pinnacles of the chapel of the Constable at the east end, are all very late in date—the first of the latest fifteenth century, and the others of early Renaissance work; and their mass is so important, their character so picturesque, and their detail so exuberantly ornate, that they have often been drawn and described to the entire exclusion of all notice of the noble early church, out of which they rise. The general scheme of the ground-plan of the cathedral is drawn with considerable accuracy in the illustration which I give of it.[7] The fabric consists of a thirteenth-century church, added to somewhat in the fourteenth century, altered again in the fifteenth, and even more in the sixteenth century. The substratum, so to speak, is throughout of the thirteenth century, but the two western steeples, with their crocketed and perforated spires, the gorgeous and fantastic lantern over the crossing, and the lofty and sumptuous monumental chapel at the east end, are all later additions, and so important in their effect, as at first sight to give an entirely wrong impression both of the age and character of the whole church. The various dates are, as well as the scale will admit, explained by the shading of the plan. The early church seems to have consisted of a nave and aisles of six bays, deep transepts, and a choir and aisles, with apses and chapels round it. The transepts probably had chapels on the east, of which one still remains in the north transept; but this is the only original chapel, none of those round the chevet having been spared. Externally, the two transept fronts are the only conspicuous portions of the old church, but, on mounting to the roof, the flying buttresses, clerestory windows, and some other parts, are found still little damaged or altered. Never was a church more altered for the worse after its first erection than was this. It is now a vast congeries of chapels and excrescences of every shape and every style, which have grown round it at various dates, and, to a great extent, concealed the whole of the original plan and structure; and of these, the only valuable Mediæval portions are the cloisters and sacristies, which are, indeed, but little later in date than the church, and two of the chapels on the north side of the chevet, one of which is original, and the other at any rate not much altered. The rest of the additions are all either of the latest Gothic, or of Renaissance.

The principal entrances to this church of “Santa Maria la Mayor” are at the west end and in the north and south transepts—the two last original, the former a modern alteration of the old fabric, made only a few years ago, and of the meanest kind. The Archbishop’s palace occupies the space on the south side of the nave; and the ground on which the whole group of buildings stands, slopes so rapidly from the south up to the north, that on the south side a steep and picturesque flight of steps leads up to the door, whilst on the north, on the contrary, the door is some fifteen feet above the floor, and has to be reached by an elaborate flight of winding steps from the transept. Owing to the rapid rise of the ground, and to the way in which the church is surrounded by houses, or by its own dependent buildings, it is very difficult to obtain any good near views of it, with the exception of that of the west end from the Plaza in front of it; but the views from the Prado, from the opposite side of the river, and from the distant hills and country, are all very fine; and it must be allowed that in them the picturesque richness of the later additions to the fabric produces a very great effect.

Having thus given some general idea of the plan of the church, I will now describe its parts more in detail.