Cathedrals of Spain

by John A. Gade

II

The present Cathedral is singularly picturesque and by far the most interesting of the three great Gothic Cathedrals of Spain,—Leon, Toledo, and Burgos. The interest is mainly due to her vigorous organism, an outcome of more essentially Spanish predilections (as well as a natural interpretation of the French importations) than we find in either of the sister churches. Later additions and ornamentation have naturally concealed and disfigured, but the old body is still there, admirable, fitting, and sane.

KEY OF PLAN OF BURGOS CATHEDRAL
A.	Chapel of Santa Thecla.	N. Minor Sacristy.
B.	Chapel of Santa Anna.	O. Chapel of Saint Henry.
C.	Chapel of the Holy Birth.	P. Altar.
D.	Chapel of the Annunciation.	Q. Choir.
E.	Chapel of Saint Gregory.	R. Chapel of the Presentation of the Virgin.
F.	Chapel of the Constable.	S. Choir.
G.	Chapel of the Parish of St. James.	T. Golden Staircase.
H.	Chapel of Saint John.	U. Door of the Pellegeria.
I.	Chapel of Saint Catherine.	X. Door of the Sarmental.
K.	Chapel of Jean Cuchiller.	Y. Door of the Perdon.
L.	Chapter House.	Z. Door of the Apostles.
M.	Sacristy.

Burgos Cathedral is built upon a hillside, her walls hewn out of and climbing the sides of the mountain, {37}making it necessary either from north or south to approach her through long flights of stairs. What she loses in freedom and access, she certainly gains in picturesqueness. She is flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of the city, scaling its heights like a great mother and drawing after her the surrounding houses which nestle to her sides. She would not gain in majesty by standing free in an open square, nor by receiving the sunlight on all sides. And so, though many later additions hide much of the early fabric, they combine with it to form a picturesque whole, a wonderful jewelled casket, a sparkling diadem set high on the royal brow of the city, such as possibly no other city of its size in Christendom can boast.

It was King Alfonso VI who at the end of the eleventh century gave his palace-ground for the erection of a Cathedral for the new Episcopal See. We know nothing of its design, nor whether it occupied exactly the same site as the later building. The early one must, however, have been a Romanesque Church;—what might not a later Romanesque Cathedral have been!—for the style had arrived at a point of vitally interesting promise and national development, when it was forced to recoil before the foreign invaders, the Benedictines and Cistercians.

Two great names are linked to the founding of the present Cathedral of Burgos, Saint Ferdinand and Bishop Maurice. The latter was bishop from 1213 to 1238, and probably an Englishman who came to Burgos in the train of the English Queen, Eleanor Plantagenet.[5] He was sent to Speyer as ambassador from the Spanish Court to bring back the Princess{38} Beatrice as bride for Saint Ferdinand. Maurice's mission took him through those parts of Germany and France where the enthusiasm for cathedral-building was at its height, and he had time to admire and study a forest of exquisite spires, newly reared, particularly while the young lady given him in charge was sumptuously entertained by King Philip Augustus. Naturally he returned to his native city burning with ardor to begin a similar work there, and probably brought with him master-builders and skilful artists of long training in Gothic church-building.

Queen Berengaria and King Ferdinand met the Suabian Princess at the frontier of Castile. The first ceremony was the conference of the Order of Knighthood, in the presence of all the "ricos hombres" (ruling men), the cavaliers of the kingdom with their wives and the burgesses. The sword was taken from the altar and girded on by the right noble lady Berengaria. We read that the other arms had been blessed by Bishop Maurice and were donned by the King with his own hands, no one else being high enough for the office. Three days later Ferdinand was married to "dulcissimam Domicellam" in the old Cathedral by the Bishop of Burgos without protest from the Primate of Castile, Archbishop Rodrigo of Toledo. This took place in 1219, and two years after King and Bishop laid the corner-stone of the new edifice.

The work must have been spurred on by all the religious ardor which fired the first half of the thirteenth century, for only nine years later services were held in the eastern end of the building. The good Bishop was laid to rest in the old choir, where {39}he still lies undisturbed, though to-day it is the Capilla Mayor. By the middle of the century, the great bulk of the old structure must have been well advanced. The lower portions of the towers and the eastern termination are fourteenth-century work; the spires themselves, fifteenth. A multitude of changes and additions, new chapels and buildings, gradually, as years went on, transformed the primitive plan from its first harmony and beauty to a confused mass of aisles, vaults, and chapels. When we compare the present fabric with the early plan, we see with what masterly skill and simplicity the original one was conceived.

All that is left or can be seen of this first structure is splendid. Though built in the second period of the great northern style, it has none of the lightness of the French churches which were going up simultaneously, nor even that of Spanish Leon or Toledo. It has heavy supporting walls and is of the family of the early French with a magnificently powerful and efficient system of piers and buttresses. It is not free from a certain Romanesque feeling in its general lines, its windows, and in many of its details. Though a splendid type of Gothic construction, this first church is a convincing proof that the nervous, subtle, fully developed system was foreign to Spanish taste. The complicated solutions, the intricate planning, were not in accordance with their temper nor predilections. Rheims may be said to express the radical temper of its French builders, Burgos, the conservative Spanish. In Spain, construction and artistic principles did not go hand in hand in the glorious manner they were wont to in France. Burgos seems much{40} more emotional than sensitive. Riotous excess and empty display take the place of restrained and appropriate decoration. The organic dependence which should exist between sculpture and architecture, so invariably present in the early French church, is lacking in Burgos. A careful analysis is interesting. It reveals the fusion of foreign elements, the severe monastic of the Cistercians and the later sumptuous secular style, the florid intricacy of the German, the glory of the Romanesque, the dryness of its revival and the bombast of the Plateresque, all more or less transformed by what Spaniards could and would do. In its construction and buttresses, it recalls Sens and Saint-Denis; in its nave, Chartres; in its vaulting, the Angevine School. The symmetry of the early plan is fascinating, and Señor Lamperez y Romea's sincere and beautiful reconstruction must be a faithful reproduction. It makes the side aisles quite free, the broad transepts to consist of two bays, while the crossing is carried by piers heavy enough to support an ordinary vault but not a majestic lantern. Five perfectly formed radial chapels surround the polygonal ambulatory and are continued towards the crossing by three rectangular chapels on each side. The vaulting of nave and transepts is throughout sexpartite; that of the side aisles, quadripartite. Most of this has, as will be seen, been profoundly modified.