with every wind like a very straw, whence the name of Giralda. Don Quixote makes his Knight of the Wood, speaking of his exploits in honor of the beautiful Casilda, say: “Once she ordered me to defy the famous giantess of Seville, called Giralda, as valiant and strong as if she were of bronze, and who, without ever moving from her place, is the most changeable and inconstant woman in the world. I went. I saw her. I conquered her. I forced her to remain motionless, as if tied, for more than a week. No wind blew but from the north.”
At the foot of this magic tower is the Patio de las Naranjas—an immense court filled with orange-trees of great age, in the midst of which is the fountain where the Moors used to perform their ablutions. It is surrounded by a high battlemented wall, which makes the cathedral look as if fortified. You enter it by a Moorish archway, now guarded by Christian apostles and surmounted by the victorious cross. Just within you are startled by a thorn-crowned statue of the Ecce Homo, in a deep niche, with a lamp burning before it. The court is thoroughly Oriental in aspect, with its fountain, its secluded groves, the horseshoe arches with their arabesques, the crocodile suspended over the Puerta del Lagarto, sent by the Sultan of Egypt to Alfonso the Wise, asking the hand of his daughter in marriage (an ominous love-token from which the princess naturally shrank); and over the church door, with a lamp burning before it, is a statue of the Oriental Virgin whom all Christians unite in calling Blessed—here specially invoked as Nuestra Señora de los Remedios. The Oriental aspect of the court makes the cathedral within all the more impressive, with its
Gothic gloom and marvels of western art. It is one of the grandest Gothic churches in the world. It is said the canons, when the question of building it was discussed in 1401, exclaimed in full chapter: “Let us build a church of such dimensions that every one who beholds it will consider us mad!” Everything about it is on a grand scale. It is an oblong square four hundred and thirty-one feet long by three hundred and fifteen wide. The nave is of prodigious height, and of the six aisles the two next the walls are divided into a series of chapels. The church is lighted by ninety-three immense windows of stained glass, the finest in Spain, but of the time of the decadence. The rites of the church are performed here with a splendor only second to Rome, and the objects used in the service are on a corresponding scale of magnificence. The silver monstrance, for the exposition of the Host, is one of the largest pieces of silversmith’s work in the kingdom, with niches and saints elaborately wrought, surmounted by a statuette of the Immaculate Conception. The bronze tenebrario for Holy Week is twelve feet high, with sixteen saints arrayed on the triangle. The Pascal candle, given every year by the chapter of Toledo in exchange for the palm branches used on Palm Sunday, is twenty-five feet high, and weighs nearly a ton. It looks like a column of white marble, and might be called the “Grand Duc des chandelles,” as the sun was termed by Du Bartas, a French poet of the time of Henry of Navarre. On the right wall, just within one of the doors, is a St. Christopher, painted in the sixteenth century, thirty-two feet high, with a green tree for a staff, crossing a mighty
current with the child Jesus on his shoulder, looking like an infant Hercules. These gigantic St. Christophers are to be seen in most of the Spanish cathedrals, from a belief that he who looks prayerfully upon an image of this saint will that day come to no evil end: Christophorum videas; postea tutus eas—Christopher behold; then mayest thou safely go; or, according to the old adage:
Christophori sancti, speciem quicumque tuetur,
Istâ nempè die non morte mala morietur.
These colossal images are at first startling, but one soon learns to like the huge, kindly saint who walked with giant steps in the paths of holiness; bore a knowledge of Christ to infidel lands of suffering and trial, upheld amid the current by his lofty courage and strength of will, which raised him above ordinary mortals, and carrying his staff, ever green and vigorous, emblem of his constancy. No legend is more beautifully significant, and no saint was more popular in ancient times. His image was often placed in elevated situations, to catch the eye and express his power over the elements, and he was especially invoked against lightning, hail, and impetuous winds. His name of happy augury—the Christ-bearer—was given to Columbus, destined to carry a knowledge of the faith across an unknown deep.
This reminds us that in the pavement near the end of the church is the tombstone of Fernando, the son of Christopher Columbus, on which are graven the arms given by Ferdinand and Isabella, with the motto: A Castilla y a Leon, mundo nuevo dio Colon. Over this stone is erected the immense monumento for the Host on Maundy Thursday,
shaped like a Greek temple, which is adorned by large statues, and lit up by nearly a thousand candles.
This church, though full of solemn religious gloom, is by no means gloomy. It is too lofty and spacious, and the windows, especially in the morning, light it up with resplendent hues. The choir, which is as large as an ordinary church, stands detached in the body of the house. It is divided into two parts transversely, with a space between them for the laity, as in all the Spanish cathedrals. The part towards the east contains the high altar, and is called the Capilla mayor. The other is the Coro, strictly speaking, and contains the richly-carved stalls of the canons and splendid choral books. They are both surrounded by a high wall finely sculptured, except the ends that face each other, across which extend rejas, or open-work screens of iron artistically wrought, that do not obstruct the view.