Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

The steeple of San Roman is the finest example of its class to be seen here. For half its height it is perfectly plain, built of rough stone, with occasional courses of brick, and quoined with brick. The string-courses are all of brick, unmoulded. The character of the three upper stages will be best understood by the illustration which I give. The cusped arch of the lower of these stages is certainly very pretty, but the common form of trefoiled Moorish arch enclosed within it seems to me to be the most frightful of all possible forms. It is neither graceful in itself, nor does it convey the idea of repose or strength; and it is so completely non-constructional, that the lower portion of the apparent arch is never built as an arch, but always with horizontal courses. In the belfry stage the bold variation of the openings is worthy of notice; and throughout the whole the utmost praise is due to the architect who, with none but the commonest materials, and at the least possible expense in every way, has, nevertheless, left us a work much more worthy of critical examination than most of the costly works in brick erected by ourselves at the present day. It is amazing how much force is given by the abandonment of mouldings and chamfers, and the trust in broad, bold, square soffeits to all the openings. I must not omit to mention that the small red shafts in the arcade below the belfry seem to be made of terracotta.

The construction of the steeple is very peculiar. In the lowest stage it is divided by two arches springing from a central pier, and the two compartments thus formed are roofed with waggon-vaults. In the next stage the central pier is carried up, and has four arches springing from it to the walls. The four spaces left between these arches are vaulted with barrel-vaults at right angles to each other. The steps of the ascent to this tower are carried on arches against the side walls, with occasional openings in the vaults when necessary for passing.

San Roman has a nave and aisles, with arcades of two arches between them; a chancel, mainly of Renaissance style, covered with a dome, but with some late Gothic groining to its apse; and a south chancel aisle ending without an apse. The tower is on the north side of the chancel. The whole church is plastered and whitewashed most painfully, but still retains one or two interesting features. The footpace in front of the altar has a good pavement of large plain red tiles, laid diagonally, with small encaustic blue and white glazed tiles at intervals. The whole pavement is divided into a number of strips by rectangular bands of blue stone. The altar at the east end of the south choir aisle also deserves a note, being built with a solid black stone front, carved in imitation of embroidery and fringes, with an inscription on the superfrontal, and a shield suspended in the centre of the frontal. This strange device for economizing altar vestments was not common, I think, here, but several examples remain in the new cathedral at Salamanca. The reredos over this altar has a very sweet painting of the Last Supper, the figure of our Lord being much raised above those of the apostles, and the table at which He sits being polygonal.

Sta. Magdalena has a smaller and simpler tower of the same class; it is perfectly plain below the belfry stage, which has two windows in each face. The bells hang here, as is so often the case in Southern buildings, in the window; and in all these buildings, as in most other old examples of brickwork, the putlog-holds (or holes for the insertion of the scaffold-poles) are left open. The bricks, too, are used very roughly and picturesquely with a very thick mortar-joint, and the consequence is that every part of this work has a value in texture and light and shade undreamt of by those who have never seen anything but our own smooth, smart, and spiritless modern brick walls, built with bad bricks and no mortar.[219]

The steeple of San Tomé is so absolutely identical in its details—save that its shafts of glazed earthenware are alternately green and yellow—with that of San Roman, that it is unnecessary to describe it.[220]

San Pedro Martyr has a steeple which is much wider on one side than on the other, but is otherwise similar to that of San Roman in its general design. San Miguel, and Sta. Leocadia, and La Concepcion, have steeples more like that of La Magdalena, the towers being small, and with only one arcaded stage below the belfry. The masonry and brickwork is the same in all these examples, but their scale differs considerably, the steeple of San Roman being by far the largest and loftiest, that of San Tomé the next, and the others a good deal smaller.

All these steeples seem to me to illustrate not only the proper use of brick, already mentioned, but also the great difference between old and new works in the degree of simplicity and amount of cost with which their authors appear to be satisfied. It is seldom, indeed, at the present day, that we see a steeple erected which has not cost twice as much, in proportion to its size and solidity, as either of these old Toledan examples; and it is to be feared that few of us now have the courage to trust entirely in the virtue of doing only what the money given to us to spend will properly allow, without raising that silly and too-frequently-heard wail about our work having been spoilt for want of money, which no medieval work, however poor, ever was!

I have been unable to satisfy myself, by any documentary evidence, as to the age of these buildings. There is some record of extensive works in the church of San Tomé, in the beginning of the fourteenth century,[221] but, as we see that the church has since been paganized without damage to the town, it is possible that they may also have escaped the previous works. On the other hand, the king Don Alonso VIII. is said to have been proclaimed from the steeple window of San Roman, in 1166; and, looking to the character of the Puerta Visagra—an undoubted work of the commencement of the twelfth century—I do not know whether we should be justified in refusing to give the steeple of San Roman the date claimed for it, though my impression when I was looking at it, without consulting any authorities, was, that this work was none of it older than the end of the thirteenth century. The first impressions of an English eye in looking at this Moorish work are not, however, much to be depended on, the profusion of cusped arches, in which the Moorish architects so early indulged, always giving their work a rather late effect.