Cathedrals of Spain

by John A. Gade

As one enters the church, there is a consciousness of joy and order. The stone surfaces are just sufficiently{181} warmed and mellowed by the glorious light from above. The piers are very massive and semicircular in plan; the foliage at their heads underneath the vaulting is so delicate and unpronounced that it scarcely counts as capitals. The walls of the chapels in the outer aisles, as well as round the ambulatory, are penetrated by narrow, round-headed windows, as timid and attenuated as those of an early Romanesque edifice; the walls of the inner aisle, by triple, lancet windows; and the clerestory of the nave, by triple, round-headed ones. Under them, in the apse, is a second row of round-headed blind windows. None of them have any tracery whatever. The glass is of great brilliancy of coloring and exceptional beauty, but the designs are as poor as the glazing is glorious. In the smaller windows, the subjects represent events in the Old Testament; in the larger, scenes from the New. Around the apse much of the old, stained glass has been shamefully replaced by white, so as to admit more light into this portion of the building.

There is no triforium, but a finely carved late Gothic balcony runs around the nave and transepts below the clerestory. In the transepts, this is surmounted by a second one underneath the small roses which penetrate their upper wall surfaces. Both nave and side aisles are lofty, the vaulting rising in the former to a height of about 100 feet and, in the latter, to 80 feet, while the cupola soars 330 feet above. The vaulting itself is most elaborate and developed. While the early Gothic edifices have only the requisite functional transverse, diagonal and wall ribs, we now find every vault covered with intermediate ones of most intricate designs. Especially over the Capilla{182} Mayor in its ambulatory chapels and around the lantern, this ornamentation becomes profuse,—everywhere ribs are met by bosses and roses. The general effect of the endless cutting up of the vaults into numberless compartments by the complicated system of lierne ribs is one of restlessness. One misses the logical simplicity of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and is reminded of the decadent surfacing of late German work and the ogee, lierne ribs of some of the late English, in which the true ridges can no longer be distinguished from the false.

Looking up into the dome over the crossing, we see that the pendentives do not rise directly above the four arches, but spring some fifteen feet higher up above a Gothic balustrade which is surmounted by elliptical arches pierced by circular windows. The dome, disembarrassed of the ribs which still cling to some of its predecessors, is finely shaped,—a thorough Renaissance piece of work. Light streams down through the bull's eye under the lantern.

There is considerable difference in the design as well as workmanship of the many rejas. Tremendous iron rails, surely not as fine as those of Seville, Granada, or Toledo, but still very remarkable, close the three sides of the Capilla Mayor and the front of the choir. The emblematical lilies of the Cathedral rise in rows one beside the other, as one sees them in a florist's Easter windows. Rejas close off similarly all the outer chapels from the side aisles.

Among the very few portions of the old Cathedral which remained intact after the fury of the Comunidades, were the choir stalls and an exquisite door. The former were placed in the new choir and the latter{183} became an entrance to the transplanted cloisters. It was indeed fortunate that these stalls were spared, for they are among the most exquisite in Spain and excelled by few in either France or Germany.

Wood-carving had long been a favorite art in Spain, one in which the Spaniards learned to excel under the skillful tutelage of the great masters from Germany and Flanders. The foreign carvers settled principally in Burgos, where there grew up around them apprentices eager to fill the churches with statues, retablos, choir stalls, and organ screens executed in wood. The art of carving became highly honored. An early ordinance of Seville referring to wood-carving, masonry and building, esteems it "a noble art and self-contained, that increaseth the nobleness of the King and of his kingdom, that pacifieth the people and spreadeth love among mankind conducing to much good." In the numerous panels of cathedral choir stalls, there was a wonderful opportunity for relief work and the play of the fertile imagination and childlike expressiveness of the middle ages. Curious freaks of fancy, their extraordinary conceptions of Biblical scenes, the events and personages of their own day, could all be portrayed and even carved with wonderful skill. Leonard Williams, in his "Art and Crafts of Older Spain," tells us that "the silleria consists of two tiers, the sellia or upper seats with high backs and a canopy, intended for the canons, and the lower seats or sub-sellia of simpler pattern with lower backs, intended for the beneficados. At the head of all is placed the throne, larger than the other stalls, and covered in many cases by a canopy surmounted by a tall spire."{184}

Few of the many Gothic stalls are finer than those of Segovia. The contrast with the work above them, as well as with that which backs onto them, is doubly distressing. The tremendous organs above are a mass of gilding and restless Baroque ornamentation, while their rear is covered by multicolored strips of stone which would have looked vulgar and gaudy around a Punch and Judy show and here enframe the four Evangelists. The chapels and high altar are uninteresting, decorated in later days in offensive taste. Apart from these furnishings, which play but a small part, it is rare and satisfying to survey an interior in which there has been so much decorative restraint, in which the constructive and architectural lines dominate the merely ornamental ones, and where harmony, severity and excellent proportions go hand in hand. Were it not for the cupola and a few minor details, there would be added to these merits, unity of style.

The cloisters are rich and flamboyant, but nevertheless more restrained than those of Salamanca. They are elaborately subdivided, carved and festooned, and, in the bosses of the arches, they carry the arms of their original builder, Bishop Arias Davila. Just inside their entrance lie three of the old architects, Rodrigo Gil de Hontañon, Campo Aguero, and Viadero. The old well in the centre is covered with a grapevine, and nothing could be lovelier than the deep emerald leaves dotted with purple fruit growing over the white and yellow stonework.

Few Spanish cathedrals can be seen to such advantage as Segovia, its situation is so unusual and fortunate. In mediæval towns closely packed within their city walls, there could be but little room or{185} breathing space either for palace or hovel, and the buildings adjacent to a cathedral generally nestled close to its sides. The plaza of Segovia is unusually large compared to the area of the little city. The clearing away of Santa Clara and San Miguel and all the smaller surrounding edifices condemned for the Cathedral site, left much room also in front of the western entrance for a fine broad platform as well as an unobstructed view from the opposite side of the square. Most of the flights of granite steps leading to it from the streets below are now closed by iron gates and overgrown with grass and weeds. The days of the great processions are past, when the various trades, led by their bands of musicians, filed up to deliver their offerings towards the construction, and the staircases are no longer thronged by devout Segovian citizens anxious to see the daily progress of the work. The platform is paved with innumerable granite slabs which in the old Cathedral covered the tombs of the city's illustrious citizens, whose names may still be easily deciphered.

Taken as a whole, the façade is bald and void of charm. It is neither good nor especially faulty, of a certain strength, but without interest or merit. It is logically subdivided by five pronounced buttresses marking the nave, side aisles and outer row of chapels. Their relative heights and the lines of their roofing are clearly defined. To the north, a rather insignificant turret terminates the façade, while to the south rises the lofty tower, three hundred and forty-five feet above the whole mountain of masonry, the most conspicuous landmark in the landscape of Segovia. It consists of a square base of sides thirty{186}-five feet wide, broken by six rows of twin arches; the first, the third and the sixth are open, the last is a belfry. The present dome curves from an octagonal Renaissance base, the transitional corners being filled with crocketed pyramids similar to the many crowning buttresses and piers at all angles of the church below. The dome and lantern are almost exact smaller counterparts of those crowning the crossing. They were put up by the same architect, Mogaguren, who certainly could not have been over-gifted with artistic imagination. The tower had varying fortunes,—much to the distress of the citizens, it has been twice struck by lightning. The wooden structure and lead covering were burned and melted by the fire which followed the first catastrophe, but fortunately it was soon put out by the rain which saved the Cathedral and city. After the second thunderbolt, in 1809, the surmounting cross was replaced by a lightning-rod.