But whether these churches are to be attributed to the influence of one man suddenly inventing an innovation, or of a school of architects working on the same old traditions—and I have been unable to find any kind of evidence of this—it is certain that they are very similar. They are marked by extreme simplicity, great width, and great height. Usually they have no arcades and consist of broad unbroken naves, always groined in stone, and sparely lighted from small windows high up in the walls. The two examples, so far as I know, which surpass all others, are the single nave of Gerona, seventy-three feet wide in the clear, and the nave and aisles of the Collegiata at Manresa, sixty feet wide from centre to centre of the columns, and a hundred and ten between the walls of the aisles. The Barcelonese examples do not equal the extraordinary dimensions of these two churches, but they are still on a fine scale. Sta. Maria del Mar is the only Barcelonese example with aisles. It has—as will be seen by the plan[300]—an aisle round the apse, and small chapels between the buttresses. These apses are all internal only, so that the side elevation of the church shows a plain straight wall pierced with windows. This is a very favourite device of this school, and has been already noticed in the north wall of the cathedral, and in the wall all round the cloisters. The interior of Sta. Maria del Mar is very simple. Enormous octagonal columns carry the main arches and the groining ribs, which all spring from their capitals. The wall rib towards the nave is carried up higher than the main arches so as to allow space between them for a small circular and traceried clerestory window in each bay. The arches of the apse are very narrow, and enormously stilted. There are small windows above them, but they are modernized. The aisles are groined on the same level as the main arches, a few feet, therefore, below the vault of the nave, and they are lighted by a four-light traceried window in each bay, the sill of which is above a string-course formed by continuing the abacus of the capitals of the groining shafts. Below this there are three arches in each bay, opening into side chapels between the main buttresses. Each of these chapels is lighted by a traceried window of two lights; and the outer wall presents, as will be seen, a long unbroken line, until above the chapels, when the buttresses rise boldly up to support the great vaults of the nave and aisles. The Barcelonese architects of this period were extremely fond of these long unbroken lines of wall; and there is a simplicity and dignity about their work which is especially commendable. Long rows of little sheds for shops which have managed to gain a footing all along the base of the walls rather disturb the effect, though they and their occupants, and the busy dealers in fruit who ply their trade all about Sta. Maria del Mar, make it a good spot for the study of the people.

The altar is a horrible erection of about A.D. 1730, and all the internal fittings are modern and in the worst possible taste.

The view which I give of the west front will explain the whole design of the exterior. Unquestionably it is a grand work of its kind, with good detail throughout. The great octagonal pinnacles at the angles are, however, awkwardly designed, and quite insufficient in scale for the vast mass of building to which they are attached. They are reproduced in all the churches of the same class in Barcelona; and indeed most of the features of one of these churches are common to the others. The tracery in the circular window at the west end certainly looks later in date than that of the others in this church, and than that in the west front of Sta. Maria del Pi, which was commenced in A.D. 1329, but not completed until much later. It is worth mention that the western doors of this church are covered with iron, cut out into the form of cusped circles, with rather good effect.

The church of SS. Just y Pastor is of the same class as Sta. Maria del Mar, but its foundation is slightly later, as it seems to have been commenced circa A.D. 1345. It consists of a nave without aisles, but with chapels between the buttresses—one chapel in each bay. There are five bays, and an apse of five sides. The altar stands forward from the wall, and stalls are ranged round the apse. The nave is 43 feet 6 inches in width in the clear by about 130 feet in length. The vaulting is quadripartite throughout, with large bosses at the intersection of the ribs, on which are carved—1, the Annunciation; 2, the Nativity; 3, the Presentation; 4, the Adoration of the Magi; 5, the Resurrection; 6, the Coronation of the B.V.M. The whole church has lately been covered with painting and gilding, in the most approved French style, and to the destruction of all appearance of age. The light is admitted by three-light windows with good geometrical traceries, very high up above the arches, into the side chapels, and by two-light windows in the chapels themselves. At the west end are remains of the usual octagonal flanking turrets; but the whole front is modernized. The side elevation is a repetition of those already described, presenting a long unbroken wall below, out of which the buttresses for the clerestory rise.

Santa Maria del Pino is a still grander church, but on the same plan, with the addition of a lofty octagonal tower detached at the north-east of the church.[301] This is four stages in height, and the belfry-stage has windows on each face. The traceried corbel-table under the parapet remains, but the parapet and roof are destroyed. The nave here consists of seven bays, is fifty-four feet wide in the clear, and has an eastern apse of seven sides. The chapels between the buttresses are not carried round the apse, but an overhanging passage-way is formed all round outside, upon arches between, and corresponding openings through, the buttresses just below the windows. The north door here is a very fine early work of just the same character as those already described in the earliest portions of the cathedral. It appears to be a work of the end of the twelfth century, and much older than any other portion of the church. The west front has a doorway with a figure in a niche in the tympanum, and a system of niches round and above it, enclosing it within a sort of square projecting from the face of the wall. The whole scheme is so exceedingly similar both in design and detail to that of the north transept door of the cathedral, that we may fairly conclude them to be the works of the same man. Above the door is a large circular window filled with good and very rich geometrical tracery. A church existed here as early as 1070;[302] and Cean Bermudez says that the first stone of the present church was laid in 1380, and that it was concluded in 1414.[303] Parcerisa,[304] on the other hand, says that materials were granted for the work in 1329, that it was nearly finished in 1413, and consecrated in 1453;[305] whilst in A.D. 1416 we have Guillermo Abiell describing himself as master of the works of Sta. Maria del Pi, and of St. Jayme, in Barcelona, when he was called as one of the Junta of architects to advise about the building of the nave of Gerona cathedral.[306]

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St. Jayme, of which Abiell was the architect, is a small church in the principal street of the city, with an ogee-headed door with a crocketed label between two pinnacles. Above are some small windows; and the whole detail is poor in character, and exactly consistent with what might be expected from an architect at Abiell’s time. I believe, therefore, that either Abiell was only the surveyor to an already existing fabric, who wished to make the most of his official position among his brethren at Gerona, or that if he really executed any works at Sta. Maria del Pi they were confined to the steeple, which is of later character than the church. I believe that the real meaning of the dates given by the authorities just quoted is as follows:—In A.D. 1329 stone was granted for the work which was then no doubt just commenced at the same time as the similar work in the transept of the cathedral; and the consecration probably took place in A.D. 1353, a date which occurs in an inscription in the church, and has been, I suspect, read by Parcerisa by mistake, 1453; and the work commenced in A.D. 1380 was probably the steeple, which was completed in A.D. 1414. To decide otherwise would be to ignore altogether all the information to be derived from the character of the architectural detail, which, after all, is to a practised eye a safer guide than any documentary evidence. I should assume, too, from the identity of the character of the two works, that Jayme Fabre was the architect who designed the church, and that Guillermo Abiell probably built the tower some time after his death.

I must now take my readers back somewhat to an earlier church, which is full of interest, but very different from those which I have been describing, and of different style. This is the church of Sta. Agata, situated just to the north of the cathedral. I have been unable to learn anything as to its history. It has a nave of four bays, spanned by pointed arches, which carry the wooden roof, and a groined apse of five sides. East of the apse is a waggon-vaulted chamber, whose axis is at right angles to that of the church, and out of it rises a delicate octagonal steeple, the belfry-stage of which has two-light windows on four sides, and gables on each face. These gables run back till they intersect the base of a low stone spire, which is now nearly destroyed, but the lower part of which can be clearly made out from the neighbouring steeple of the cathedral. A staircase, ingeniously constructed in the thickness of the south wall, leads up from the nave to the pulpit (now destroyed), and thence on again to a western gallery. Some of the windows are like domestic windows in design, having a slender shaft-monial with the capital of foliage so often repeated in all the towns from Perpiñan to Valencia. The great height of the windows from the floor—about twenty-six feet—secures an admirable effect of light, and their detail is thoroughly good early middle-pointed. The southern façade has a great deal of that picturesque irregularity which is always so charming when it is natural. The door is in the western angle of the south front, partly built under a great overhanging arch, which carries the wall of a building which abuts on the west end of Sta. Agata. The lower half of the walls has small windows irregularly placed, lighting the eastern chapel, the pulpit, and the passage to the gallery; and then above them the wall is set back a couple of feet between buttresses, and each bay has an extremely well designed and moulded window of two lights, with geometrical tracery. The finish of the walls at the top is modernized. The construction of the roof is very effective, and at the same time of a most unusual character; it consists of a series of purlines resting on corbels in the walls over the arches across the nave; and though it is of flat pitch, this is but little noticed, owing to the good proportions of these arches, which are so marked a feature in the design.