After carefully considering all these influences and going to their roots, we may conclude that the old Cathedral of Salamanca is both in plan and structure a Romanesque church of the Burgundian School built on Spanish soil by French monks from Cluny, who in their new surroundings were strongly affected by Byzantine and Oriental influences and possibly by the original Spanish or Moorish development of the dome. At a later date, under Aquitaine bishops, certain forms of vaulting characteristic of their region were adopted as well as devices to bring about the transition between the circular dome and the square base.
Strange to say it is a Romanesque church erected at the time when what are regarded as the finest Gothic cathedrals were being built in France. The Spaniard clung more tenaciously to the older style, which in many ways adapted itself better to his climate and requirements, while it easily flowed into native streams of inspiration to form with them a mighty whole. The church is neither French nor Spanish nor Arab nor Italian in its various composition, but distinctly Romanesque in spirit.
Photo by Author
THRESHING OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF SALAMANCA
The plan is in general that of the old basilica: a nave with side aisles of five bays, a crossing prolonged one bay to the south beyond the side aisle, while to the east the nave and side aisles all terminate in a semicircular apsidal chapel. A portion of the southern wall of the huge new Cathedral replaces the northern one of the old church by encroaching on its side aisle. A flight of eighteen broad stone steps occupies the northern bay of the old Cathedral's crossing and leads from its considerably lower pavement up to the level of the new one. To the south lie the great cloisters. It was a plan which for its time was undoubtedly as magnificent in scale as it seemed diminutive and insignificant in the sixteenth century when the new Cathedral was built.
The massiveness on which the old Romanesque builders depended to obtain their elevations and support the great weight is most impressive. The outer walls have in some places a thickness of ten feet and the piers are much larger in section than those of the new Cathedral which carry vaults soaring far above the roof of the earlier structure. The choir had formerly blocked the clear run of the nave; to the good fortune of the old church and the injury of the new, this was removed to the latter when it was sufficiently advanced to receive it. Unfortunately, the plan of the west front was very radically disturbed by the building of the new Cathedral, the two old towers flanking the entrance being removed and a narrow passage, which leads into the nave through the immense later masses of masonry, taking the place of the old entrance. The nave is 33 feet wide, 190 feet long and 60 feet high; the side aisles are 20 feet{12} broad, 180 feet long and 40 feet high, thus surprisingly high in proportion to the nave.
The main piers which subdivide nave and side aisles are most interesting, as their greater portion belongs to the original structure. They are faced by semicircular shafts which carry simple, unmolded, transverse ribs in the central aisle. A small additional columnar section is seen in the angles of the piers, supporting in an awkward position, with the assistance of the interposed corbel, molded, diagonal vaulting ribs. Columns, reaching to about two thirds of the height of the tall shafts of the nave, carry the arches separating nave from side aisles. The undecorated base-molds of the total composite piers are all supported upon a heavy, widely projecting, common drum, a curious remnant of the earlier single Byzantine pillar of but one body and base.
The capitals are among the great glories of the edifice. They are remarkable from every point of view, and among the finest Byzantine extant, comparable to the best of Saint Mark's or of Sancta Sofia. The acanthus leaves are carved with all the jewel-like sparkle and crispness and the play of light and shade of the best period; the life and spring of a living stem are in them. Their oriental parentage is apparent at a glance. Much of the carving is alive with all the fancy and imagination of the day,—beasts and monsters, real and mythical animals, masks and contorted human figures and devils interlace on the bells and peer out from the foliage. The execution is quite unrestrained. It has a divergency which must have had its unconscious origin in the different antique caps serving again in the early{13} Byzantine edifices. The ancient carvers must have realized the full importance of sculptural relief in their poorly lighted edifices. Again, the corbels which carry the diagonal ribs are formed by crude contorted beings and animals, in some instances bearing figures leaning against the lower surfaces of the diagonal ribs and intended still further to conceal its faulty spring. At the intersections of the diagonal ribs are bosses with figures at the salient points.
With an astonishment verging on incredulity, we look up at the vaulting supported by these piers. In place of the great Burgundian barrel vaults above the nave and semicircular arches between nave and side aisles, there are pointed Gothic transverse arches and quadripartite vaulting of low spring and simplest sections, but nevertheless ogival. It is evident both by the appearance of shafts, as well as by other indications, that it could not have been the original construction, but rather one reached at a later day when the new art was supplanting the old, a substitution for the original Romanesque vaulting; the upper windows and the most glorious lantern are all constructed in the Romanesque style to which the Spanish builders clung so long and tenaciously in preference to the subtle and nervous French Gothic which suited neither their temperament nor conditions. The church must originally have been carried out in their more native art, which they better understood.