Cathedrals of Spain

by John A. Gade

After the capture of Seville in 1248, Ferdinand at once consecrated the mosque to Christian service, and it was used without alteration until it began to crumble. Its general plan was probably very much like the one in Cordova, a great rectangle filled with a forest of columns: its high walls of brick and clay supported by buttresses and crowned with battlements enclosed an adjacent courtyard with fountain and rows of orange trees, abutted by the bell or prayer tower. The courtyard and tower remain with but slight changes or additions; portions of the foundation walls, the northeast and west porticos, decorative details and ornamentation still to be found on the Christian church are all Moorish. The plan and general structure have been restricted by the lines of the old Moorish foundations. There are no documents extant that give a trustworthy account of what portions of the old mosque were allowed to remain when the Christians finally decided to rebuild, but the most{204} cursory glance at the outline of the Cathedral shows how organically it has been bound by what was retained. The mosque must have been built on as large and magnificent a scale as the one which still amazes us in Cordova. The peculiar, oblong, quadrilateral form was probably common to both.

On the 8th of July, 1401, the Cathedral Chapter issued the challenge to the Catholic world which to the more practical piety of to-day rings with a true mediæval fervor. Verily a faith that could remove mountains! The inspired Chapter proclaimed they could build a church of such size and beauty that coming ages should call them mad to have undertaken it. And their own fat pockets were the first to be emptied of half their stipends. The pennies of the poor, grants from the crown, indulgences published throughout the kingdom, all went to satisfy the ever-grasping building fund.

In 1403 the work of tearing down and commencing afresh on the old foundations was begun. These measured about some 415 feet in length by 278 feet in width. The old mosque or the present church proper is now only the central edifice in a rectangle of about 600 by 500 feet. This is the size of a village, with its courts, its tower, the great library of the Cathedral Chapter where books were collected from all over the lettered world by the son of Columbus, the parroquia or parish church, the endless row of chapels, some larger than ordinary churches, the sacristy, the chapter house and offices. It became the largest church of the middle ages, covering 124,000 square feet; Milan covers only 90,000, Toledo, 75,000, and Saint Paul's in London, 84,000. Among the churches of all ages,{205} Saint Peter's, with an area of 162,000 square feet, alone exceeds it in size.

In 1506, under the archbishops Alfonso Rodriguez and Gonzalo de Rojas, the building was completed. For a century the work had been carried on with such reckless haste that inferior building methods had been employed, which led to subsequent disasters. On December 28, 1511, to the consternation of the devout workmen, the great central dome fell in during an earthquake, carrying with it or weakening many of the vaults and much of the masonry below. After the earthquake, some of the large piers supporting the great crossing as well as the adjacent ones were found filled with the most carelessly laid rubble and earth, with no carrying power nor resistance. About 1520 the building might in the main be said to be finished. Externally it has never been completed, although in the nineteenth century the west front was finished and its central doorway ornamented. An extensive restoration which took place in 1882 was interrupted by the second earthquake of 1888, during which the dome again fell in. To-day it is all rebuilt.

The entrance is at the west end. The plan, as I have said, was governed by the old basilica-shaped mosque. The transepts do not project beyond the chapels of the side aisles, and at the east end it differs from most Spanish churches in having a square termination instead of an apse. Also along the east wall chapels have been built between the buttresses similar to those between the north and south sides. The central portions of the east end open into the great Capilla Real. There are nine doorways to the church.

In studying the plan, it is interesting to note what{206} Mr. Ferguson has indicated, that similarly to what is found in the Indian Jain temples, the diagonal of the aisle compartments has the same length as the width of the nave. The original documents and accounts of the church, which have disappeared, were probably burnt among Philip II's papers destroyed by the great Madrid fire.

Scarcely two of the Cathedral's many biographers agree as to its architects, its historic precedents or what part of the work was actually inspired by earlier Spanish architecture and national builders. Naturally Spanish writers attribute workmanship, precedents and builders all to their own Peninsula, while the different foreign authorities vary in their estimates. Distinctly Spanish features of construction as well as ornamentation are found side by side with others which unquestionably came from masters trained beyond the Pyrenees. In various places vaulting is found thoroughly German in its complexity and florid detail. Several authorities point out the resemblances between Milan and Seville, not that the ornamentation of the frosted and encrusted Italian misconception can be intelligently compared with the Plateresque carving, but there is a certain mixture of local and foreign feeling in both. In Seville French and German feeling seems to be struggling under Spanish fetters, just as in Lombardy the German seems to be laboring with Italian comprehension of Gothic, finally abandoning the inorganic scheme for a lovely, riotous, and marvelous attempt at carving to which the material no longer placed any limitations.

The Spanish architect of the middle ages was{207} placed in a novel situation, and his art had very peculiar and unusual influences bearing upon it. Gothic methods of construction and ornamentation had slowly spread over the country with the growing sovereignty of Aragon and Castile, and in spite of the corresponding decline of the Arab kingdoms, Moorish art began to work hand in hand, as far as was possible, with the forms of the Christian invader, although the hostility between the races hindered any extensive fusion of the two. They began, however, to influence each other for good or bad and to flourish side by side. The result might be called architectural volapük. In Seville it is certain that, whatever the nationality of the original architect and however incongruous and expressionless the exterior may finally have become, the interior is less exotic, less unquestionably a French importation, than in either of the great Gothic churches of Toledo or Burgos. When we recall the organic completeness, the truthful exterior expression, of interior lines and construction in the greatest Gothic cathedrals of France, we turn with sadness to the outer form of so fair a soul as that of Santa Maria of Seville, the work of the most famous architects of her age. Some attribute the original plans of the church to Alfonso Rodriguez, others to Alfonso Martinez, who was Maestro Mayor of the chapter in 1396, others again to Pedro Garcia; a long list of names follows: Juan the Norman, Juan de Hoz, Alfonso Ruiz, Ximon, Alfonso Rodriguez, and Gonzalo de Rojas, Pedro Mellan, Miguel Florentin, Pedro Lopez, Henrique de Egas, Juan de Alava, Jorge Fernandez Alleman, Juan Gil de Hontañon and the masters who after the earthquake hurried to Seville from their buildings in Toledo,{208} Jaen, Vittoria, and other places. Casanova is the last of her many architects.

Correctly speaking, there is no façade. The Cathedral runs from west to east, the western or main entrance portal being pierced by three ogival doorways, the Puerta Mayor with a modern relief of the Assumption, the Puerta del Nacimento or de San Miguel to the south, and the Puerta del Bautizo or de San Juan to the north. Saint Miguel has a relief of the Nativity of Christ, Saint Juan, one representing Saint John baptizing. In the moldings surrounding these, are very exquisite little figures of early sixteenth-century work executed in terra-cotta. They are full of the best Gothic feeling, splendidly fitted to their spaces, alive with the expression of the imaginative period of their sculptor, Pedro Millan. Above and around the door of San Juan is a Gothic tracery of the most elaborate character.

One cannot refrain from comparing the sculptural work of these three doorways. Riccardo Bellver's modern Assumption over the central doorway is as congealed as the terra-cotta sculptures above and around the side portals are admirable. They are unquestionably among the most interesting bits of relief as well as figure sculpture of their kind produced in Spain during the fifteenth century. Pedro Millan stands out as a great mediæval master, not only from the consummate skill with which the drapery is treated but from the living, breathing personality and attitudes of the men and women around him, which we still gaze at in the truth of their curious, naïve, fifteenth-century light.