Cathedrals of Spain

by John A. Gade

The exterior of Santa Maria is very remarkable. It is a wonderful history of late Gothic and early Renaissance carving. The only clearing whence any freedom of view and perspective may be had is to the west, in front of the late fifteenth-century spires, but wherever one stands, whether in the narrow alleys to the southeast, or above, or below in the sloping city, the three great masses that rise above the cathedral roof, of spires, cimborio, and the Constable's Lantern, dominate majestically all around them.{58} If one stands at the northeast, above the terraces that descend to the Pellejeria door, each of the three successive series of spires that rise one above the other far to the westward might be the steeple of its own mighty church. The two nearest are composed of an infinite number of finely crocketed turrets, tied together by a sober, Renaissance bulk; that furthest off shoots its twin spires in Gothic nervousness airily and unchecked into the sky, showing the blue of the heavens through its flimsy fabric. Between them, tying the huge bulk together, stretch the buttresses, the sinews and muscles of the organism, far less marked and apparent, however, than is ordinarily the case. At various stages above and around, crowning and banding towers, chapels, apse, naves, and transepts, run the many balconies. They are Renaissance in form, but also Gothic in detail and feeling. Like the masts of a great harbor, an innumerable forest of carved and stony trunks rise from every angle, buttress, turret, and pier. In among them, facing their carved trunks and crowning their tops, peeping out from the myriads of stony branches, stands a heavenly legion of saints and martyrs. Crowned and celestial kings and angels people this petrified forest of such picturesque and exuberant beauty.

Photo by A. Vadillo

CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
The spires above the house-tops

The general mass that rises above the roofs, now flat and covered with reddish ochre tiles, is, whatever may be the defects of its detail, almost unique in its lavish richness. The spires rest upon the house-tops of Burgos like the jeweled points of a monarch's crown. The detail is so profuse that it well-nigh defies analysis. It seems as if the four corners of the earth must for generations have been ransacked to {59}find a sufficient number of carvers for the sculpture. The closer one examines it, the more astonishing is the infinite labor. Rich, crocketed cornices support the numerous, crowning balconies. Figure on figure stands against the many sides of the four great turrets that brace the angles of the cimborio, against the eight turrets that meet its octagon, on the corners of spires, under the parapets crowning the transepts, under the canopied angles of the Constable's Lantern, on balconies, over railings, and on balustrades. Crockets cover the walls like feathers on the breast of a bird. It surely is the temple of the Lord of Hosts, the number of whose angels is legion. It is confused, bewildering, over-done and spectacular, lacking in character and sobriety, sculptural fire-works if you will, a curious mixture of the passing and the coming styles, but nevertheless it is wonderful, and the age that produced it, one of energy and vitality. Curiously enough, the transepts have no flying, but mere heavy, simple buttresses to meet their thrusts. The ornamentation of the lower wall surfaces is in contrast to the superstructure, barren or meaningless. On the plain masonry of the lower walls of the Constable's Chapel stretch gigantic coats-of-arms. Knights support their heads as well as the arms of the nobles interred within. Life-sized roaring lions stand valiantly beside their wheels like immortally faithful mariners. Above, an exquisitely carved, German Gothic balustrade acts as a base for the double clerestory. The angle pinnacles are surrounded by the Fathers of the Church and crowned by angels holding aloft the symbol of the Cross. The gargoyles look like peacefully slumbering cows with unchewed cuds protruding{60} from their stony jaws. Tufts of grass and flowers have sprung from the seeds borne there by the winds of centuries.

Outside the Chapel of Sant Iago are more huge heraldic devices: knights in full armor and lions lifting by razor-strops, as if in some test of strength, great wheels encircling crosses. Above them, gargoyles leer demoniacally over the heads of devout cherubim. In the little street of Diego Porcello, named for the great noble who still protects his city from the gate of Santa Maria, nothing can be seen of the great church but bare walls separated from the adjacent houses by a dozen feet of dirty cobblestones. Ribs of the original chapels that once flanked the eastern end, behind the present chapels of Sant Iago and Santa Catarina, have been broken off flat against the exterior walls, and the cusps of the lower arches have been closed.

Thus the fabric has been added to, altered, mutilated or embellished by foreign masters as well as Spanish hands. Who they all were, when and why they wrought, is not easy to discover. Enrique, Juan Perez, Pedro Sanchez, Juan Sanchez de Molina, Martin Fernandez, Juan and Francisco de Colonia and Juan de Vallejo, all did their part in the attempt to make Santa Maria of Burgos the loveliest church of Spain.

The mighty western façade rises in a confined square where acacia trees lift their fresh, luxuriant heads above the dust. The symmetry of the towers, the general proportions of the mass, the subdivisions and relationship of the stories, the conception as a whole, clearly show that it belongs to an age of triumph{61} and genius, in spite of the disfigurements of later vandals, as well as essentially foreign masters. It is of queenly presence, a queen in her wedding robes with jewels all over her raiment, the costliest of Spanish lace veiling her form and descending from her head, covered with its costly diadem.

North and south the towers are very similar and practically of equal height, giving a happily balanced and uniform general appearance. The lowest stage, containing the three doorways leading respectively into north aisle, nave, and south aisle, has been horribly denuded and disfigured by the barbarous eighteenth century, which boasted so much and created so little. It removed the glorious, early portico, leaving only bare blocks of masonry shorn of sculpture. No greater wrong could have been done the church. In the tympanum above the southern door, the vandals mercifully left a Coronation of the Virgin, and in the northern one, the Conception, while in the piers, between these and the central opening, four solitary statues of the two kings, Alfonso VI and Saint Ferdinand, and the two bishops, Maurice and Asterio, are all that remain of the early glories. The central door is called the Doorway of Pardon.

One can understand the bigotry of Henry V and the Roundheads, which in both cases wrought frightful havoc in art, but it is truly incomprehensible that mere artistic conceit in the eighteenth century could compass such destruction. The second tier of the screen facing the nave, below a large pointed arch, is broken by a magnificent rose. Above this are two finely traceried and subdivided arches with eight statues set in between the lowest shafts.{62} The central body is crowned by an open-work balustrade forming the uppermost link between the towers. The Virgin with Child reigns in the centre between the carved inscription, "Pulchra es et decora." Three rows of pure, ogival arches, delicate, and attenuated, break the square sides of the towers above the entrance portals; blind arches, spires and statues ornament the angles. Throughout, the splays and jambs are filled with glittering balls of stone. Inscriptions similar in design to that finishing the screen which hides the roof lines crown the platform of the towers below the base of the spires.