Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

A few notices of the building of the cathedral have, however, come under my eye, and of these the most important are the following:—In A.D. 1089[267] Pope Urban II. addressed an epistle to the faithful, recommending them to aid in every way in the restoration of the church, which had then just been recovered from the hands of the Moors. Not long after this, in A.D. 1131, Pope Innocent II. issued a Bull, wherein he recommended the suffragan churches to contribute to the cost of rebuilding the cathedral.[268] More than a century after this, works were again in progress, for in the necrology of the cathedral, on 11th March, 1256, mention is made of “Frater Bernardus, magister operis hujus ecclesiæ;” whilst again, in 1298, Maestro Bartolomé is mentioned as the sculptor who wrought nine statues of the apostles for the western façade, the remainder having been executed by Maestro Jayme Castayls in 1375.

Comparing this cathedral with that of Lérida, of which the date is tolerably well ascertained, it is difficult to pronounce decidedly which is the oldest, except that the eastern apse here, which is very peculiar in its character, has every appearance of being a work of the middle of the twelfth century, at the latest, and earlier by far, therefore, than the foundation of the church of Lérida, which was not commenced until A.D. 1203, and which was finished and consecrated in A.D. 1278. I believe, indeed, that the eastern part of this cathedral may most probably have been commenced about A.D. 1131, in consequence of the Bull of Innocent II., though the greater portion of the fabric (including the nave and its aisles and the cloister) seems to me to have been executed at the end of the twelfth and during the first half of the thirteenth century; and it is very possible, therefore, that the Brother Bernardus, who died in 1256, may have been the architect of the larger part of the existing fabric, both of the church and its cloister.

The original plan of the cathedral was very simple. It had a nave and aisles, transepts, with apsidal chapels to the east of them, a raised lantern or Cimborio over the Crossing, and three parallel apses east of it. On the north-east side of the church—an unusual position, selected probably in obedience to some local necessity—is a large cloister of the same age as the church, with a Chapter-house on its southern side. The piers throughout are clustered in a very fine and massive style, and of a section which is often repeated in early Spanish Gothic; each arch being carried on two coupled half-columns, and the groining-shafts being placed in a nook in the angle between each of these pairs of columns. The nave piers are no less than 11 ft. 9 in. in diameter, the clear width of the nave being about 40 ft. 8 in., and the span of the arches east and west about 20 ft. The bases are finely moulded, and have foliage carved on the angle between their circular and square members. The capitals and abaci are carved generally with a most luxuriant exuberance of conventional foliage, whilst the broad solid unmoulded and unchamfered sections of the arches which rise above them seem to protest gravely against any forgetfulness of solidity and massiveness as the greatest elements at the disposal of the architect. The groining of the nave and its aisles is all quadripartite, as also is that of the transepts, save at the extreme end of the northern transept, which is covered with a pointed waggon-roof. The choir has two bays of cross-vaulting on its western portion and a semi-dome over the apse—a form of roofing which is repeated over the other early apses; that of the north transept having been rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and vaulted in the usual manner. It is probable that the cross-vaults in the choir were not originally contemplated, as they are carried on small shafts raised on the capitals of the main groining-shafts, which may perhaps have been intended to carry a waggon-vault. The roof of the apse is considerably lower than that of the choir, and a small rose window is pierced in the spandrel between the two. The arch in front of the semi-dome of the apse is—like all the other main arches—pointed, though those which open into the smaller apses are semi-circular. The latter, being in the lower part of the wall, were, no doubt, completed at an early date; whilst the former, being on the level of the groining, would not be finished until much later. The apse is lighted with three windows in the lower part of the wall, which are richly shafted inside, and by seven small and perfectly plain round-arched windows, pierced in the lower part of the semi-dome with very singular effect. On the exterior all these windows are remarkable for a very wide splay from the face of the wall to the glass—a feature of early work in England, and usually preceding the common use of glass. The walls are carried up a considerable height above the springing of the dome, in order to resist its thrust, and are finished at the top with a rich projecting corbel-table, from which, at regular intervals, five divisions are brought still further forward, looking much like machicoulis, and yet evidently introduced only for the sake of effect, as there is no access to them. These projections are square in plan, carried on very large corbels, and the cornice under the eaves has a course of square stones set diagonally—a kind of enrichment very common in brickwork, and which I saw in the early church of San Pedro at Gerona. The great depth of this cornice is very imposing. The stone roof above it abuts against a gable-wall, carried by the arch on its western side; but owing to the destruction of the original finish of the staircase turrets, and the erection of a steeple in the angle between the choir and the transept, the general view has to some extent lost its original stern Romanesque character.

The exterior of the other apses on the south has the same appearance of age. The wall of one of them has been raised several feet at a later date, but the other is still altogether in its original state. Both are, of course, very low and insignificant as compared with the choir. The whole detail of the great eastern apse appeared to me to have much more the air of having been the work of an Italian than of a French architect. The masonry is in extremely large square blocks, many of the window-heads being cut out of one block of stone, and in this part of the church I found a large number of masons’ marks on the face of the stones. These tally, like most of those I have seen in Spain, very closely with those which are found in our own buildings, and indeed with those which are used by our own masons at the present day: it is, however, comparatively rare to find them on the outer face of the stones.[269] The stones marked in this way are tooled on the face, and I observed that stones worked by the same man were marked indifferently with perpendicular and diagonal tooling lines. On the south side of the choir, just at its junction with the principal apse, is a staircase which leads to the roof: this is carried up in a large square turret, and is of remarkable construction. The newel is 1 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and worked in stones, each of about 2 ft. 3 in. in height. Each of these has three corbels, with sockets for the steps, which are thus supported by the newel and yet independent of it. The aisles on either side of the choir seem to have been intended to form the lower stage of steeples. On the south side the Romanesque tower seems to have been built no higher than the height of the side walls of the church; but subsequently—circa A.D. 1300-1350—it was carried up as an octagonal steeple, with buttresses against the canted sides of the lower stage over the angles of the square base, finished with crocketed pinnacles. This tower occupies the angle between the choir and transept, and I suppose that traces would be found of a corresponding tower on the opposite side, somewhat in the way so commonly met with in all the German Romanesque churches. Unfortunately the north choir aisle was altered if not rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and I was unable to examine the walls above it, where the evidence of the existence of a second tower would have to be sought. The roof of the apse on the east side of the south transept presents an admirable example of a semi-dome, with the masonry arranged in the usual fashion in regular horizontal courses, and the moulding of the abacus of the arch in front of it carried round it as a string-course at its springing.

The rest of the church is of rather later date than the east end. It is all just of that transitional period in which, whilst the pointed arch was used where great strength was required, the round arch was nevertheless retained for the smaller openings in the walls. But the capitals throughout the church are sculptured so magnificently, and in so well-developed a style, that it is impossible to regard the work anywhere, except at the extreme eastern end, as one in which a Romanesque influence was paramount. We have, indeed, here one of those cases in which almost all the character of the work has been stamped on it by the hands of the sculptor rather than of the architect; for I believe that, had it presented us with a series of plain Romanesque capitals, we should have felt no difficulty about classing the whole work as essentially Romanesque in style, whereas now the effect is rather that of a glorious Pointed church, the exuberance of whose sculpture is kept in subordination by the stern simplicity of the bold unmoulded arches, the massive section of the piers, and the regularity of the outline and firmness of shadow which the deep square abacus everywhere enforces. Here, then, I thought I saw one of those openings which are now and then almost accidentally given us for the infusion of new vigour and greater spirit into our own works. It is no copying of a Spanish work that I should wish to see attempted, but only a deliberate determination on the part of the builder of some one building in England to emulate the grand solidity of this old Spanish church; and if he feels that this is by itself too rude and unpolished for an overcivilized age like ours, then let him take a lesson from the same old Spanish work, and show the extent of his refinement in the subtle delicacy of the sculpture with which he adorns it. We have few if any such churches in England. Our transitional examples are neither very numerous nor very fine; and it is in Germany and in Spain—so far as my experience goes—that we find the finest examples of this noble period. In neither of these countries was the progress of architectural development so rapid as it was in England and in the north of France, and consequently such churches as the cathedrals of Tarragona, Lérida, and Tudela were rising in Spain at the same time as the more advanced and scientific, but perhaps less forcible and solemnly grand cathedrals of Salisbury, Lincoln, and Wells were being built in England.

I hardly know when I have been much more struck than I was with the view of the interior of the transept, of which I give an engraving. For though the picturesque furniture of later times, the screens and pulpits, the organs and other furniture, are in great contrast with the glorious solidity of the old work, the combination of this with them makes a singularly beautiful picture.

The nave of the cathedral at Tarragona has been a good deal altered by the introduction of large fourteenth-century clerestory windows of three lights. There is not and there never was a triforium, and the clerestory throughout was, I have no doubt, the same in design that it still is in the transepts, lighted by a simple round-headed window in each bay. The groining has transverse arches or ribs of very large size, diagonal ribs formed with a bold roll moulding only, and no wall ribs.