Cathedrals of Spain

by John A. Gade

The choir, placed so nearly under the dome, naturally suffered greatly by its fall. A portion of the 127 stalls has been so well restored that it is difficult to distinguish the old from the new. "Nufro Sanchez, sculptor, whom God guarded, made this choir in the year 1475." The subjects are as usual from the New and Old Testaments, and the character of the carving constantly betrays Moorish influence. The pillars as well as the canopies and the figures themselves are possibly entirely Gothic, but one glance at the gaudily inlaid backs shows Arab workmanship. Along the outer sides of the choir around the four little stonework niches, which serve as smaller chapels, the Gothic carving (some of it executed in transparent alabaster), works more happily than usual in combination with the later Plateresque or Renaissance, here containing the fine feeling of the Genoese school.{217} One piece of sculpture stands out from all the rest, viz., the Virgin, carved by Montañes. Her hands are of such exquisite girlish delicacy, of such immature and dimpled softness, that one cannot pass them by without a feeling of delight.

The organs, which form a part of the choir, have an incredible number of pipes and stops. According to a remarkable old tale, they were filled with air by the choir boys, who walked back and forth over tilting planks placed on the bellows. Whether or no the boys still have this happy outlet for their ecclesiastic activities, the music means little to the Spaniard, and their design still less to the architect's eye.

The Capilla Mayor faces the choir, merely separated from it by the space lying directly under the dome and forming the intersection of nave and transepts. As the church services constantly require the simultaneous use of the choir and the high altar of the Capilla Mayor, a portion of the intermediate space or "entre los dos Coros" is roped off during service time for the clergy to pass from one to the other. The Spanish taste for pomp and magnificence centres in all its extravagance about the high altar, while a more subdued richness characterizes the surrounding stone and iron work which encloses the sanctuary on all sides. Not only on the front, complementing and balancing admirably the facing reja of the choir, but on the western ends of the sides, immense ornamental iron screens bar the way. The front one is quite overpowering in size, rising some seventy-five feet above the altar. The Spaniard was equal to any undertaking in the days of early Hapsburg splendor under the pious Reyes Catolicos. With the aid of Sancho Munoz and{218} Diego de Yorobo, a Dominican Friar, Francesco de Salamanca designed them (1518) and then superintended the welding, gilding and the final erection in 1523.

The east end of the Capilla Mayor is formed by the magnificent retablo, almost four thousand square feet in size. One is immediately struck by its immense proportions and the infinite amount of carving bestowed on it. Its great scheme was conceived in 1482 by the Flemish sculptor Dancart, evidently a man of prolific and versatile imagination. If we try to compare it with the work of English churches, we might best liken it to the great altar screens. This and the retablo at Toledo are probably the richest specimens of mediæval woodwork in existence. Portions of the execution are somewhat inferior to the conception, and yet the artists who labored on it with loving skill until the middle of the following century carried out all their work with a richness and delicacy which make it not only a representative piece of late Gothic sculpture but one of the most magnificent specimens of this branch of Spanish art. Its various portions embrace the whole period of florid Gothic from its earlier, more restrained expression to the very last stroke of the art, when wood was mastered and carved into incredible filigree work as if it had been as soft and pliable as silver leaf. Everything that could be carved is there, figures, foliage, tracery, moldings and mere conventionalized ornament. The central portions are of the earlier fifteenth century, the outer ones, of the late sixteenth, executed under Master Marco Jorge Fernandez. The wood is principally larch, with minor portions of chestnut and pine. The whole field is{219} divided by slender shafts and laboriously carved bands into forty-four compartments representing in high and low relief various scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary. In the centre is Santa Maria de la Sede, the patron saint of the church, surmounted by a Crucifixion with Saint John and the Virgin on either side.

Between the retablo and the rear wall enclosing the rectangle of the Capilla Mayor, there is a dark space known as the Sacristia Alta, where is preserved the Tablas Alfonsinas[18] brought from Constantinople to Paris by Saint Ferdinand's son, Alfonso.

Seville ranks high among the churches of Spain in the beauty of its carving. The stone screen that forms the rear of the retablo is filled with admirable Gothic terra-cotta statues, saints, virgins, bishops, martyrs and prelates executed with a little of the curious rigidity of the Dutch School still awaiting its Renaissance emancipation, but with faces full of holy devotion. The modeling is correct and the treatment of the drapery excellent.

Within the enclosure of the Capilla Mayor, there is still to be seen at certain times of the year, a ceremony which has been performed for centuries, and which is certainly the most unique religious rite celebrated in any Christian church. To the Saxon it is most extraordinary. During the last three days of the Carnival or after the Feast of Corpus Domini, we may see boys dressed in costumes perform a dance before the high altar of the Cathedral. Children, so the tale{220} runs, danced, skipped and shouted for joy when the city of Seville was finally taken from the Mohammedans, and these childish demonstrations so touched the hearts of the clergy who entered the city with the conquering army, that they resolved that succeeding generations of boys should perpetuate them forever. Of all the festivals and religious processions culminating in or outside Saint Mary's shrine, surely none can give her so much pleasure as the sight of these little boys dancing and singing in her honor.

This naïf and charming ceremonial is part of the Mozarabic Ritual, the work of Saint Isidore, a metropolitan of Seville a hundred years before the arrival of the Saracens. In his early years, when his elder brother Leander ruled the Gothic Church with stern hand, Isidore had time and talents to master in his cloistered seclusion so much art and science that he became the Admirable Crichton of his day. His work on "The Origin of Things" shows the profundity of his knowledge, his history of the Goths is beyond doubt his most valuable legacy to us, but what endeared him above all to his countrymen was the Mozarabic Rite, of which he composed both breviary and music. The Benedictine monks of Cluny, those architects and chroniclers, who had been obliged to sacrifice their Gallican liturgy for the Roman, could not rest satisfied until they had imposed it on the Peninsula. They were supported in this truly foreign aggression by Constance of Burgundy, Queen of Alfonso VI, and by the masterful Gregory VII, himself a Benedictine. And so Saint Isidore's quaint old hymn with the accompanying melody was banished from all but one or two favored chapels. Fortunately{221} Cardinal Ximenez became its enthusiastic and powerful protector. He endowed in the Cathedral of Toledo a special chapel and had thirteen priests trained for the service, "Mozarabes sodales." In Ximenez' time a German, Peter Hagenbach, first printed "missale secundum regulam beati Isidori dictum Mozarabes," what Saint Isidore called "those fleeting sounds so hard to note down." His breviary was the first Roman one to be used in Spanish churches.

To enumerate the endless rows of chapels with their countless treasures and chaste or tawdry architecture and decoration would be tiresome and unprofitable,—with a plan and guide-book, one may pass them in review. "Sixty-seven of the great sculptors and thirty-eight of the painters here display to the astonished and incredulous eye the masterpieces of their hand," says one. Here is almost every painter belonging to the great Sevillian school of painting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They form a veritable museum or a series of small museums, each chapel being a separate room of masterpieces. But here, as in the museum, there are good and bad paintings and statues, and only the excellent are worth attention. They are better worth studying here than elsewhere, for they have been left in the surroundings for which they were intended and painted. Spain's great religious artist did not paint his Madonnas so full of distracting and sensuous loveliness for the walls of the Prado; their smiles, human and pathetic, were for the altars and panels of sanctuaries. Here is the light in which they were studied and for which they were colored; here are the walls and frames which were intended to surround them; they{222} are in the company they would choose, and they were painted with the same religious devotion that inspires the prayers now offered before them. The painter's inspiration sprang from the fervor of his faith.

Three of the paintings are lovely above all others. Two are Murillo's, namely the Angel de la Guarda and the San Antonio of the baptistery; the third is the Deposition from the Cross, by Pedro de Campana (or more correctly Kempeneer), hanging in the great sacristy. This is the painting, Spanish historians will tell you, Murillo loved so well that whenever he was downhearted he would stand in front of it for hours, and become lost to all around him, even forgetting his own Madonnas. One day the sacristan asked him impatiently, why he so often stood there staring. "I am waiting," Murillo answered, "till those holy men have taken the Saviour down from the Cross." It hangs well lighted over one of the altars of the Sacristy. Few faces have ever been painted which convey depth and intensity of feeling in a more affecting way. The agonized faces of the women at the foot of the Cross express all an innocent human heart can feel of compassion, heart-wrung sorrow and despair. The ecstasy with which Saint Anthony, who is kneeling in prayer, gazes at the Child Jesus has seldom been surpassed in reality and power. Entirely lifted beyond the earthly sphere, his features kindle with ardent piety and divine love. The angels surrounding the Infant Jesus have a simplicity of expression which never escapes those who have loved and studied children. The coloring is unique and of a truly penetrating softness. All the little details of the miserable cell in which the saint is kneeling are rendered with{223} the vigorous reality so characteristic of the Spanish school, while in the upper part of the painting one seems to see even the dust particles floating in the rays of sunlight. The shadows have a marvelous transparency.