The Capilla del Pulgar, which blocks the most westerly corner of the south elevation, was named in honor of Hernan Peres del Pulgar, the site of whose brave exploit it marks. In 1490, during the last siege of Granada, he determined on a deed which should outdo all feats of heroism and defiance ever performed by Moslem warriors. At dead of night, some authorities say he was on horseback, others that he swam the subterranean channel of the Darro, he penetrated to the heart of the enemy's city and fastened with his dagger to the door of their principal mosque a scroll{256} bearing the words "Ave Maria." Before this insult to their faith had been discovered, he had regained Ferdinand's camp.
A double superimposed arcade faces the southern side of the sagrario: the lower story has been brutally closed and defaced by modern additions, almost concealing its original carving. The upper story, however, which forms a balcony, strongly recalls by its fancifully twisted shafts, elliptical arches and Gothic traceried balustrade, similar early Renaissance work at Blois, where the Gothic and early Italian work were so charmingly blended.
The Royal Chapel is entered through an Italian Renaissance doorway of good general design and decoration, but the Spanish cornice and balustrade crowning the outer walls are much more interesting in details. The principal member consists of a band of crowned and encircled F's and Y's, the initials of the Catholic Kings. It is broken over the window by three gigantic coats-of-arms. To the left is Ferdinand's individual device of a yoke, the "yugo," with the motto "Tato Mota" (Tanto Monta) tantamount, assumed as a mark of his equality with the Castilian Queen; to the right Isabella's device of a bundle of arrows or "flechas," the symbol of union. In the centre is the common royal shield, proudly adopted after the union of the various kingdoms of the Peninsula had been cemented. The Eagle of Saint John the Evangelist and the common crown surmount the arms of Castile and Leon, of Aragon, Sicily, Navarre, and Jerusalem and the pomegranate of Granada.
Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF GRANADA
The reja enclosing the Royal Chapel and tombs of the Catholic Kings
The various roofs of the Cathedral are covered with endless rows of tiles, which in the furrowed, {257}overlapping irregularity of their surfaces add to the general play of light and shade. Above them all spreads the umbrella-shaped dome which crowns the Capilla Mayor.
At the period when Gothic church-building was disappearing, we find not a few edifices where the old and new styles are curiously blended. A Renaissance façade added in later days might encase a practically complete Gothic interior. In Granada, with the exception of the Royal Chapel, very little of the interior contained traces of the expiring style. In the Cathedral proper, it is principally found in a groined vaulting of the different bays, which is covered with varying and most elaborate schemes of ornamental Gothic ribs, which seem strangely incongruous to the architect as he looks up from the classical shafts in the expectation of finding a corresponding form of building and decoration in the later vaulting.
The general plan of the church is more Renaissance than Gothic, exhibiting rather the form of the "Rundbau" than the "Langbau" of the Latin cross. Its main feature is likewise the great dome rising above and lighting the Capilla Mayor. The Spanish cimborio has at last reached its fullest development in the Renaissance lantern.
The church is divided into nave and double side aisles, outside of which is a series of externally abutting chapels. East and west it contains six bays. The choir blocks up the fifth and sixth bays of the nave, and in the customary Spanish manner it is separated from the high altar in the Capilla Mayor by the croisée of the transept. Back of this, forming the eastern termination, runs an ambulatory.{258}