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CATHEDRALS OF SALAMANCA
The towers of the old and new buildings
CATHEDRALS OF SPAIN
I
SALAMANCA
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In quella parte ove surge ad aprire Zeffiro dolce le novelle fronde, Di che si vede Europa rivestire. Paradiso, c. XII, l. 46. |
I
NOWHERE else in Spain, and certainly in few places outside her borders, can one take in the whole architectural development of successive styles and ages so comprehensively as in Salamanca. Byzantine and Romanesque, Gothic from its first fire to the last flicker and coldness of the ashes, and the triumphant domination of the reborn classicism,—all are massed together here.
Contrasts are eloquent to belittle or magnify. Here two cathedrals stand side by side, the older from the days of the Kingdom, a mere chapel in size compared to the larger and later expression of Imperial Spain. A David beside a Goliath, simple power by the side of ponderous self-assurance. Rude in its simplicity, seemingly unconscious of its great inheritance and the genius it embodies, the old church stands a monument of early virile effort, in{4} strength and poetry akin to the wind-swept rocks round which still whisper mysterious Oriental legends. The huge bulk that overshadows it betrays exhausted vigor and a decadent form. Here is simplicity by complexity, majestic sobriety close to wanton magnificence, poise by restlessness; each speaks the language of the age that conceived and brought it forth. Proximity has compelled the odiousness of comparison, for you can never see the later Cathedral apart from the old. You are haunted by the salience of their divergency, the importance of their contrasts, until their meaning becomes so far clear to you that the solid blocks of the ancient temple seem to symbolize the Church Militant and Triumphant. That indomitable spirit did not meet you under the mighty arches of the newer church, but go into the hushed perfection of those abandoned walls and walk along the dismantled nave and you will repeat the old epithet coupled with the city, "Fortis Salamanca!"
This once famous town lay in a curious setting as seen from the cock-tower in the month of August. Here and there were rusty, copper-colored fields, where the plow had just furrowed the surface. There were vineyards in which the sandy, white mounds were tufted by the deep emerald of the grape-vines, but the prevailing color was the yellow straw of harvested fields. These were a busy scene,—laborers were driving their oxen harnessed to primitive carts and treading out the grain as in olden times. They made their rounds between the high yellow cones built up of grain-stalks and filled the hot air with golden dust.{5}
This is Salamanca of to-day, seemingly robbed of all but her rich vowels. The whole city, like her two cathedrals, bears traces of the dynasties that have swept over her. Their footprints are everywhere. Hannibal's legions passed through Roman Salmantica on their victorious march to Rome, and the city soon afterwards became a military station in the province of Lusitania. Plutarch praises the valor of her women. Age after age generals have built her bridges and the towers and walls that surround the valley and the three hills, on one of which stands her supreme mediæval creation.