Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

The history of this church is in part given in two inscriptions on the wall on either side of the north transept doorway,[283] from which it appears that the cathedral was commenced in A.D. 1298, and was still in progress in A.D. 1329. The latter date no doubt refers to the transept façade. But this was not the first church, for one was consecrated here in A.D. 1058, and the doorway from the cloister into the south transept, and another into the chapel of Sta. Lucia, at the south-west angle of the cloister, are probably not very much later than this date. But the bulk of the work is evidently not earlier than the beginning of the fourteenth century, and its design appears to be owing to one Jayme Fabra or Fabre,[284] an architect of whom we first hear at Palma in Mallorca. In the deed which I give in the Appendix, he describes himself as “lapiscida,” citizen of Mallorca, and says that he is about to go to Barcelona, to undertake a certain work there at the request of the King of Aragon and the bishop. This was in A.D. 1318, and it is clear, I think, from the terms of his contract,[285] that Fabre was something more than architect, and really also the builder of this church in Palma. The term used might indeed lead us to suppose that he was a mere mason, but the request of the king and the bishop proves that he was much more than this, and is useful as showing that these titles literally translated are very apt to mislead.[286] The crypt of Sta. Eulalia under the choir was completed in A.D. 1339. Jayme Fabre is said to have been master of the works until A.D. 1388, in which year he was succeeded by el Maestro Roque, who had an assistant, Pedro Viader. He received three “sueldos” and four “dineros” a day, and a hundred sueldos each year for clothing, and in course of time his salary was raised to “two florins or twenty-two sueldos” a week. His assistant received fifty sueldos a year for clothes and three sueldos and six dineros a day for his double office of substitute for the principal architect and workman. Roque no doubt was able to work elsewhere, whilst his assistant, or clerk of the works, was confined to one work; in this way the apparent strangeness of the similar pay to the two men is explained.[287] Roque, who is said to have commenced the cloister, was succeeded by Bartolomé Gual, who was one of the architects summoned to advise about the cathedral of Gerona in 1416, and then described himself as master of the works at Barcelona cathedral; and, finally, Andres Escuder placed the last stone of the vault on September 26, A.D. 1448.

Having thus shortly stated the history of the building, let me now attempt to describe its architecture and construction. It will be seen that the plan is cruciform. The transepts do not, however, show much on the exterior, as they form the base of the towers which are erected, as at Exeter cathedral, above them. The plan of the chevet is very good; it presents the French arrangement of an aisle and chapels round the apse in place of the common Spanish triapsidal plan; but the detail is all completely Catalan. The arches of the apse are very narrow and stilted, and the columns throughout are composed of a rather confused jumble of thin mouldings awkwardly arranged. Above the main arches is a very small arcaded triforium, and above this a range of circular windows, one in each bay. The groining springs from the capitals of the main columns, so that the triforium and clerestory are both enclosed within its arched wall-rib; they are consequently very disproportioned in height as compared with those of northern churches. But here the architect evidently intended to grapple with the difficulties of the climate, and, designing his whole church with the one great object of minimizing the light and heat, he was compelled to make his windows small. The clerestory windows were traceried, and filled with rich stained glass, which was well set back from the face of the wall. The result is a perfect success as far as light and shade and the ordinary purposes of a Spanish congregation are concerned, but the difficulty of taking notes, sketches, or measurements, in most parts of the church, even at mid-day, can hardly be imagined. The dark stone of which the whole church is built increases not a little the sombre magnificence of the effect. There is nothing peculiar about the chapels of the chevet; but under the centre of the choir, and approached by a broad flight of steps between two narrower flights which lead to the high altar, is the small crypt or chapel already mentioned as that in which the remains of Sta. Eulalia are enshrined. An inscription[288] records the date of the translation of her remains to this spot in A.D. 1339, but the present state of the chapel is not suggestive of the possession of any architectural treasures, being remarkable only for the ugliness of its altar, and the number of its candlesticks. Behind the altar, however, there still remains the shrine of the saint. This is a steep-roofed ark of alabaster carried upon eight detached columns. The ark is sculptured at the sides and ends with subjects from the life of Sta. Eulalia, whilst the roof has her soul borne aloft by angels. The columns are of marble, spiral, fluted, and chevroned, with capitals of foliage, and one or two of the bases are carved with figures in the mediæval Italian fashion. A long inscription is carried round the base of the ark, which again records the death of the saint, her burial in Sta. Maria del Mar, and her translation to the cathedral in A.D. 878, and afterwards to the spot where she now rests. The detail of this shrine looks very like that of Italian Gothic of the same age; and as it is particularly described in the contemporary memorial of the translation, it is no doubt part of the work on which Jayme Fabre had been engaged.

The transepts are groined at the level of the side chapels, and again with an octagonal vault just above the aisle roof, and below where the square base gives place to the octagon on which the upper part of the steeples is planned. It is therefore only on the ground-plan that the transepts show themselves, and here they form porches, that on the south side opening into the cloister. The planning of the nave is very peculiar. It seems as though the main requirement of the founders of this church was a plentiful number of altars; for, as will be seen on reference to the plan, there are no less than twenty-seven distinct chapels inside the church, and twenty-two more round the cloister. The chapels in the south aisle have a row of other chapels, which open into the cloister, placed back to back with them, and the windows which light the former open into the latter, showing when seen from the nave chapels their glass, and when seen from the cloister chapels the dark piercings of their openings. The arrangement is not only extremely picturesque, but also another evidence of the care with which the sun was kept out of the building. On the north side the chapels are uniform throughout, and their windows are pierced in the long unbroken north wall. The Coro here is in its old position in the two eastern bays of the nave, with the old screens around it and all its old fittings. It is to be observed, however, that here, where the late Spanish arrangement was from the first adopted, the western entrance to the choir was preserved, and so the awkward blank which the wall of the Coro generally presents on entering is not felt. There are no signs of any parclose screens across the transept, and the position of the chapel of Sta. Eulalia makes it improbable that there ever were any. It seems, indeed, that such a church as this must from the very first have been built for precisely the kind of worship still used in it. There was never any proper provision for a crowd of worshippers joining in any one common act of prayer or worship. The capitular body filled the Coro and sang the services of the day unnoticed by the people; whilst, as they separated to the chapels to which each was attached, the people followed them by twos and threes to the altar services in which only they wished to join. At present not more than about half the altars are commonly used; yet still each morning mass was generally being said at three, or four, or five of them at the same time, and each altar every day seemed to have a considerable group of worshippers, among whom I noticed a considerable number of men of the upper class. The high altar seems always to have had curtains on either side of it, their rods being supported on columns of jasper in front. These curtains were drawn at the Sanctus, and remained so until the consecration was completed. One sung mass only is celebrated at this altar each day, and an old treatise on the Customs of the Church cites in defence or explanation of this rule the words of a very early council, una missa et unum altare.[289] West of the Coro are two bays of nave, over the western of which rises the lower part of a rich octangular lantern. This is carried on bold piers of square outline, which, from the very simple arrangement of the shafts of which they are composed, have the grandeur of effect so characteristic of Romanesque work. The cross arches under the lantern are lower than the groining, and on the east face the spandrel between the two is filled in with rich tracery and arcading. Arches are thrown across the angles to carry the octagonal lantern, of which the lowest stage only—which is well arcaded—is built. The whole of this work is so good of its kind that it is much to be lamented it was never completed; the design of the octagonal lantern at the west, and the two more slender octagonal steeples at the Crossing, would have been as striking in its effect, doubtless, as it would have been novel in its plan, though it may be doubted whether, in so short a church, it would not have been overpowering. Above the side chapels, on each side of the nave and at the west end, another floor is carried all round. The only difference is that the rooms above the chapels are square-ended, not apsidal, and there seems to be no evidence of their having been intended for altars. I saw no piscinæ and no Retablos in them, and was tempted to imagine that the present use may, perhaps, have been the old one—that of a grand receptacle for all the machinery in fêtes, functions, and the like, of which a Spanish church generally requires no small store.[290] There are arches in the wall, affording means of communication all round this upper floor, and the chambers all open to the church with arches, and have traceried windows in their outer walls. The transverse section of the nave is therefore novel, and unlike any other with which I am acquainted, and interested me not a little.

The exterior is, perhaps, less interesting than the interior. The chevet is fine, but with nothing in any way unusual in its design; the upper part of the buttresses is destroyed, and the walls finish without parapet or roof, so as to make the church look somewhat like a roofless ruin. The steeples are quite plain below their belfry stage, under which are arcaded string-courses; the belfry stages themselves are richly panelled and pierced, and surmounted by pierced parapets. They are not perfectly octagonal in plan, the cardinal sides being the widest, and their height from the floor of the church is as nearly as I could measure 179 ft. 6 in., whilst their external diameter is about 30 feet. It is on ascending these towers that one of the greatest peculiarities of the Barcelonese churches is seen; they are all roofless, and you look down on to the top of their vaulting, which is all covered with tiles or stone neatly and evenly laid on the vault, in such a way as effectually to keep out the weather. The water all finds its way out by the pockets of the vaults, and by pipes through the buttresses with gurgoyles in front of them. Everything seemed to prove that this was not the old arrangement, for it is pretty clear that the walls had parapets throughout, and that there were timber roofs, though I saw no evidence as to what their pitch had been. The present scheme, ugly and ruinous as it looks—giving the impression that all the church roofs have been destroyed by the fire of the fortresses above and at the side of the city—seems nevertheless to have solved one of those problems which so often puzzle us—the erection of buildings which as far as possible shall be indestructible. There is now absolutely no timber in any part of the work; but it is of course questionable whether a roof which endures the test of a Spanish climate, with its occasional deluge of rain succeeded by a warm drying sun, would endure the constant damp of a climate like ours. But at any rate the makeshift arrangement which is universal here is very suggestive. The flying buttresses are insignificant, owing to the small height of the clerestory.

Descending from the roof, the only other old portion of the church to be mentioned is the north transept. It is here that the two inscriptions given at p. 297 are built into the wall on either side of the lofty doorway. The doorway is finely moulded, and has a single figure under a canopy in its tympanum; above it the whole face of the wall is covered with very rich arrangement of niches, making an arcade over its whole surface, but there are no figures left in them. Over this again is a rose window under an arch, and then the octagonal tower. To the east of the transept are some round-headed windows, but my impression is that they are not of earlier date than the rest of the work. The outer wall of the north aisle of the nave has a row of very richly moulded windows lighting the chapels, and other windows over them which light the galleries over the aisle chapels. The eaves here have a simple round-arched corbel-tabling.

The west front is all modern and squalid; the original design for its completion is said to exist among the archives of the cathedral, and ought to be examined; I was not aware of this until long after I had been at Barcelona. Don F. J. Parcerisa[291] gives a view of this proposed front—an extremely florid Gothic work—but the drawing is so obviously not the least like an old one, that I hardly know how far to trust the statements about it which he makes. He describes it as being on parchment, sixteen palms long, and much defaced. The print is drawn in perspective, and elaborately shaded. It is a double door, with a steep gable above filled with extremely rich flamboyant tracery, and there are large pinnacles on either side and a great number of statues.