Cathedrals of Spain

by John A. Gade

The poetry and romance that cling to these illustrious dead are equally present as you pass through the lovely Gothic portal into the cloisters which fill the southeastern angle of the church and stand by the figures of the great Burgalese that lie back of the old Gothic railings in many niches of the arcades. To{53} judge from the inscriptions they would, if they could speak, be able to tell us of every phase in their city's religious and political struggles, from the age of Henry II down to the decay of Burgos. Saints, bishops, princes, warriors, and architects lie beneath the beautiful, double-storied arcade. Here lies Pedro Sanchez, the architect, Don Gonzalo of Burgos, and Diego de Santander, and here stand the effigies of Saint Ferdinand and Beatrice of Suabia. The very first church had a cloister to the west of the transept, now altered into chapels. For some reason, early in the fourteenth century, the present cloister was built east of the south transept and with as lovely Gothic arches as are to be found in Spain. We read of great church and state processions, marching under its vaults in 1324, so then it must have been practically completed. Later on the second story was added, much richer and more ornate than the lower. The oldest masonry, with its delicate tracery of four arches and three trefoiled roses to each arcade, seems to have been virtually eaten away by time. New leaves and moldings are being set to-day to replace the old. The pure white, native stone, so easy to carve into spirited crockets and vigorous strings similar to the old, stands out beside the sooty, time-worn blocks, as the fresh sweetness of a child's cheek laid against the weather-beaten furrows of the grand-parent. A careful scrutiny of all the details shows in what a virile age this work was executed. The groining ribs are of fine outline, the key blocks are starred, the foliage is spirited both in capitals and in the cusps of the many arches, the details are carefully molded and distributed, and the early statues in the internal{54} angles and in places against the groining ribs are of rich treatment, strong feeling, and in attitude equal to some of the best French Gothic of the same period. The door that leads out of the cloisters into the old sacristy with the Descent from the Cross in its tympanum is truly a beautiful piece of this Gothic work.

While these cloisters lie to the east, the broad terraces leading to the glorious, southern transept entrance are flanked to the west by the Archbishop's Palace, whose bare sides, gaudy Renaissance doorway and monstrous episcopal arms, repeated at various stages, hide the entire southwestern angle of the church.

Between the cloisters and the Archbishop's Palace at the end of the broad terraces, rises the masonry facing the southern transept arm. It belongs, together with that of the northern, to the oldest portions of the early fabric erected while Maurice was bishop and a certain "Enrique" architect, and shows admirable thirteenth-century work. The Sarmentos family, great in the annals of this century, owned the ground immediately surrounding this transept arm. As a reward for their concession of it to the church, the southern portal was baptized the "Puerta del Sarmental," and they were honored with burial ground within the church's holy precincts. It cannot be much changed, but stands to-day in its original loveliness.

Photo by A. Vadillo

CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
The Chapel of the Constable

A statue of the benign-looking founder of the church stands between the two doors, which on the outer sides are flanked by Moses, Aaron, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and the two saints so beloved by Spaniards, Saint James and Saint Philip. The archivolts {55}surrounding the tympanum are filled by a heavenly host of angels, all busied with celestial occupations, playing instruments, swinging censers, carrying candelabra, or flapping their wings. Both statues and moldings are of character and outline similar to French work of this best period, nevertheless of a certain distinctly Spanish feeling. The literary company of the tympanum is full of movement and simple charm. In the lowest plane are the twelve Apostles, all, with the exception of two who are conversing, occupied with expounding the Gospels; in the centre is Christ, reading to four Evangelists who surround him as lion, bull, eagle and angel; finally, highest up, two monks writing with feverish haste in wide-open folios, while an angel lightens their labor with the perfume from a swinging censer.

It is sculpture, rich in effect, faithful in detail and of strong expression, admirably placed in relation to the masonry it ornaments. It has none of the whimsical irrelevancy to surroundings characterizing so much of the work to follow, nor its hasty execution. It is not meaningless carving added indefinitely and senselessly repeated, but every bit of it embellishes the position it occupies. Above the portal the stonework is broken and crowned by an exquisite, early rose window and the later, disproportionately high parapet of angels and free-standing quatrefoiled arches and ramps.

The northern doorway, almost as rich in names as in sculpture, is as fine as the southern, so far below it on the hillside. It is called the Doorway of the Apostles from the twelve still splendidly preserved statues, six of which flank it on each side. It is also named the{56} Door of the Coroneria, but to the Burgalese it is known simply as the Puerta Alta, or the "high door." The door proper with its frame is a later makeshift for the original, thirteenth-century one. On a base-course in the form of an arcade with almost all its columns likewise gone, stand in monumental size the Twelve Apostles. The drapery is handled differently on each figure, but with equal excellence; the faces, so full of expression and character, stand out against great halos and represent the apostles of all ages. Similar in treatment to the southern door, the archivolts here are filled with a series of fine statues. There are angels in the two inner arches and in the outer, and the naked figures of the just are rising from their sepulchres in the most astonishing attitudes. The tympanum is also practically a counterpart of the southern one, only here in its centre the predominating figure of the Saviour is set between the Virgin and Saint John.

As the Puerta Alta is so high above the church pavement, and ingress would in daily use have proved difficult, the great door of the Pellejeria was cut in the northeastern arm of the transept at the end of the furriers' street, and down a series of moss-grown, cobblestone planes the Burgalese could gain entrance to their church from this side. The great framework of architecture which encases it is so astonishingly different from the work above and around it that one can scarcely believe it possible that they belong to one and the same building. It is a tremendous piece of Plateresque carving, as exquisite as it is out of place, erected through the munificence of the Archbishop Don Juan Rodriguez{57} de Fonseca in 1514 by the architect Francisco de Colonia. It might have stood in Florence, and most of it might have been set against a Tuscan church at the height of the Renaissance. There is everywhere an overabundance of luxurious detail and rich carving. Between the entablatures and columns stand favorite saints. The Virgin and Child are adored by a very well-fed, fat-jowled bishop and musical angels. In one of the panels the sword is about to descend on the neck of the kneeling Saint John. In another, some unfortunate person has been squeezed into a hot cauldron too small for his naked body, while bellows are applied to the fagots underneath it and hot tar is poured on his head. While the whole work is thoroughly Renaissance, there is here and there a curious Gothic feeling to it, from which the carvers, surrounded and inspired by so much of the earlier art, seem to have been unable to free themselves. This appears in the figure ornamentation in the archivolts around the circular-headed opening, the angel heads that cut it as it were into cusps and the treatment and feeling of some of the figures in the larger panels.