Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

Among the churches of Moresque character that I saw, I may specially mention those of Santiago and Sta. Leocadia. The former appeared to me to be a work mainly of the fourteenth century. It is a parallel-triapsidal church, and has some old brick arcading on the exterior of the chancel aisle, but is generally so bedaubed with plaster and whitewash as to be uninteresting. It is said to have an artesinado ceiling, but I do not recollect this, and I believe it has a plaster ceiling below the old one. The pulpit is a rather striking work of that mixed Moorish and Gothic detail which prevailed in the fifteenth century. One fact I noticed here, and again at Valencia Cathedral, was, that the pulpit had no door, and the only access seemed to be over the side, by aid of a ladder! When pulpits were erected, it is fair to suppose that they were meant to be used; but in the Spain of the present day it is, perhaps, not of much consequence if they are unusable, as sermons do not seem to be very much in vogue.

Of the other churches in the city Sta. Isabel has a polygonal apse, with each side arcaded with a Moorish trefoil arch. San Eugenio has a similar apse, with a second stage, with multifoil arcading all along it; and San Bartolomé has three of these cusped and arcaded stages in its apse. Sta. Ursula has a stone apse, circular in plan, coursed with brick, and pierced with three Moorish windows. La Concepcion has a polygonal apse of rude stonework below, and is coursed with bricks from mid-height upwards, with three Moresque windows set within square recessed panels; whilst Sta. Fé presents the unusual feature of buttresses to the apse, and has an interlacing arcade below the eaves, and long lancet windows set within Moresque cusped panels. Sta. Leocadia (commonly called Cristo de la Vega), just outside the city, and in the valley below its walls, also retains the apse of its church, erected on a site which is said to have been first built upon as early as the fourth century. This is entirely covered with arcading from the ground to the eaves, arranged in three equal orders, the lower cusped, the next having the common Moorish trefoil, and the upper being round-arched. Some of the panels of these arcades are pierced for light. The existing building is probably in no part earlier than the twelfth century; it consists of a small modern nave, a sanctuary of two bays with round transverse arches, and cusped Moresque arches in the side walls. The apse at the east end is roofed with a semi-dome. At the west end is a small modern cemetery, full of gravestones, inscribed at least as fully, fondly, and foolishly, as those we indulge in in our own cemeteries.

In addition to these more important works there are, in the cathedral, a door leading into the chapter-room, and a recessed arch in one of the chapels on the south side of the nave, executed by Moorish artists probably in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It has been absurdly enough suggested that these are parts of the ancient mosque which stood on the same site; but there is no ground whatever for the idea, the work being evidently of much later date, and it being at the time a common fashion to introduce some work of this kind into buildings which otherwise are purely Gothic.

The last head under which I have to describe Moorish work, is, perhaps, also the most interesting. The walls, gateways, and bridges of Toledo are, I think, the finest I have anywhere seen; in part, at least, of extreme age, very perfectly preserved, and on a grand scale. There is a double line of wall on the unprotected side of the city towards the Vega, the inner line said to be the work of the Visigoths, before the Moorish conquest, in 711,[222] and the outer built in 1109, by Alonso VI. Both walls seem to go from the Bridge of Alcantara on one side of the city, to the Bridge of St. Martin on the other. Outside the wall the hills and walls slope down rapidly to the valley; whilst within them the uneven surface is covered thickly with houses everywhere, until the Tagus, winding round three parts of the city in its deep, savage, and solitary defile—a solitariness all the more impressive from being so near to the busy hive of men—encloses it, and makes defensive erections almost unnecessary.

I have already given some account of the Bridge of Alcantara.[223] It is of two lofty arches, with a bold projecting pier between them. Here is one of the best points of view of the two lines of wall, which are broken constantly by round or square projecting towers, and ascend and descend in the most picturesque fashion, to suit the rugged inequality of the rocks on which they are built. I know no view more picturesque and magnificent. The first gateway reached is the Puerta del Sol, which is so admirable an example of the picturesqueness of which the style is capable, that I cannot resist giving an illustration of it. It is, indeed, not only picturesque, but in all respects a dignified and noble work of art. The variety of arches, one behind the other, which is seen here, was a very favourite device with the Moorish architects. Here, I think, there are four, two pointed and two round, but all horseshoe in their outline. The outer gateway on the old Bridge of St. Martin has five such arches, two of them being round and one pointed horseshoe, one a plain round, and one a plain pointed arch. In the Puerta del Sol the intersecting arcades in brickwork over the arch, and the projecting turrets on a level with them, are extremely picturesque. The materials used are wrought stone, rough walling stones, and brick. The battlements are of a type which was repeated by the Christians in most parts of Spain, but was, no doubt, derived first of all from the Moors. The situation of the gateway is charming; with due regard to military requirements it turns its side to the enemy, and is reached by a winding road, which bends round at a sharp angle just before reaching it. To the left is seen the sweet view over the Vega, watered and made green by the kind river; a view which gains immensely on one’s liking, compared, as it always is, with the dreary arid hills beyond, and with recollections of the weary waste over which so much of the traveller’s road to Toledo must needs lie. The age of this gateway is not known, but it dates probably from the end of the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth century. So, at least, I judge by comparing it with the next gateway, that called the Puerta de Visagra, the finest gateway in the outer wall (which was erected circa 1108-26), and which cannot, therefore, be earlier than the beginning of the twelfth century.

The design of this Puerta de Visagra is clearly due to a Moorish architect, and it is extremely interesting to find the Christian king, so soon after his conquest of the city, making use of the Moors for his work, and to find them doing their best, apparently in their capacity as builders, to second his endeavours to make the recapture of the city by the Infidels impossible. The materials of this gate are the same as those of the other, but its character is much heavier and ruder. The contrast between the grand outer arch and the extremely small inner arch is very curious; the ground has, however, risen considerably in front of it, so that its real proportions are very much concealed. The wall is carried out in advance of this gateway, and has an angle-tower, which was schemed, no doubt, to secure the proper defence of the entrance. Further along, beyond the point at which the two walls unite, we reach the Bridge of St. Martin—a noble arch of even grander scale than that of Alcantara, and, like it, guarded at either end by gateways, of which that on the further side has the remains of Moorish work in the arches which span it, and which have been already mentioned; it is finished with the Moorish battlement. This bridge has five arches, of which the largest is magnificent in scale,—no less than 140 (Spanish) feet wide by 95 high. The arches are very light and lofty, and spring from grand piers, behind which the rocky defile is seen in its greatest grandeur. It seems to have been built in 1212, and repaired, the central arch being rebuilt,[224] by Archbishop Tenorio, circa 1339.

My notice of these various works has been, as it were, only the preface to the real glory of Toledo; for interesting and unique as some of them, and strange and novel as all of them are, there is a higher value and a greater charm about the noble metropolitan church of Spain than about any of them: a charm not due only to its religious and historical associations, but resulting just as much from its own intrinsic beauty as an example of the pure vigorous Gothic of the thirteenth century, such as when I left France on my first Spanish journey I supposed I should not see again till my eyes rested once more on Chartres, Notre Dame, Paris, or Amiens! Here, however, we have a church which is the equal in some respects of any of the great French churches; and I hardly know how to express my astonishment that such a building should be so little known, and that it should have been so insufficiently if not wrongly described whenever any attempt at a description has been made by English travellers who have visited it.

The cathedral is said to have occupied the present site before the capture of the city by the Moors.[225] They converted it into a mosque, and in course of time enlarged and adorned it greatly. At the capitulation to Alonso VI., in 1085, it was agreed that the Moors should still retain it; but this agreement was respected for a few months only, when the Christians, without the consent of the king, took it forcibly from them and had it consecrated as their cathedral.[226] Of this building nothing remains. The first stone of the new cathedral was laid with great ceremony by the king Don Fernando III., assisted by the Archbishop, on the 14th of August, A.D. 1227;[227] and from that time to the end of the seventeenth century additions to and alterations of the original fabric seem to have been constantly in hand.

The cathedral is built east and west, “according to the universal tradition of the Church,” says Blas Ortiz, forgetting apparently that this is no tradition of the Roman Church. I think it is always attended to in Spain, save in cities like Barcelona, where the commercial intercourse with Italy perhaps introduced the Italian tradition. The feeling about the Orientation of churches was stronger among the English and Germans than anywhere else, and possibly the Spanish tradition dates from the time of the Visigothic kings.