Cathedral Cities of Spain

by W. W. Collins

Attached to the chapel is a small vestry entered through a diminutive plateresque doorway of exquisite design. Amongst other priceless relics the vestry contains a fine gold chalice studded with precious stones and a good Madonna by Luini.

Another fine picture, a Virgin and Child by Sebastian del Piombo, hangs over the altar in the Capilla de La Presentacion. In the Capilla del Santissimo Cristo is a very ancient crucifix of life-sized proportions. Tradition and the vergers say that it came from the East and was carved by Nicodemus. The figure is flexible and very attenuated, it is covered with a buff-coloured leather to represent dried flesh and is very gruesome. In San Juan de Sahagun are six panels of the fifteenth century; good specimens of the early Spanish school, they represent the Nativity, Adoration and four scenes from the Passion.

The great Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena lies interred in the Capilla de San Enrique, and his tomb is remarkably fine. Others in this chapel and in the cloisters are cut in slate and have been worked with great cleverness considering the way in which a blow splinters this material so easily.

The Chapel of Santa Ana, unfortunately restored recently, belongs to the Duque de Abrantes, and contains the best retablo in the Cathedral. On it are displayed incidents in the Life of Christ which spring from and are enclosed by the branches of a genealogical tree. It is a quaint idea very well carried out.

It is a difficult task to try and give an idea of the contents and admirable style of all these chapels in the space of a short chapter, suffice it to say that they are, one and all, worthy pendants to the rest of the great church, and exemplify in their contents the glorious age of the ruling bishops and nobility of Old Castile.

In the south transept is a wonderful low doorway in front of which I had often stood examining the well-carved wooden panels on the doors themselves. It leads into the cloisters, but it was not until I had become thoroughly acquainted with the groups representing the Entry into Jerusalem and the Descent into Hades which grace this portal, that I passed through. The door dates from the early fifteenth century and considering the many thousands of times it has swung open and shut is in most excellent preservation.

The cloisters are fourteenth-century work and form an upper storey to a basement cloister of low arches surrounding a courtyard which at the time of my visit was undergoing extensive repair. In the centre is a huge cross; the flagstones of the court were all up, and the bones from many disturbed graves were being thrown into a pit. The beautiful cloisters proper are filled with modern opaque glass—"Muy frio" answered the verger to my question, "Por que?"—and no doubt it is in the winter months. But the charm about a cloister is the vista through the arches; this Burgos has lost for the sake of the well-being of her priests; the pity is that funds would not allow of better glass when the utilitarian aspect demanded the shutting out of the cold winds.

The sacristy on the east side of the cloisters is a very beautiful early fifteenth-century room with a fine groined roof, the peculiarity of which is that it has no supporting columns. The half-piers end in corbels of hunting scenes and I daresay have often recalled to many a priest days of his early boyhood.

The Chapter House, with an artesonade ceiling, contains some good pictures and is reached through the Capilla del Corpus Christi. High up on the wall of this chapel, and fixed to it with iron clamps, is the Cofre del Cid, a wooden coffer which the Campeador filled with sand, and telling the Jews it was full of gold, raised six hundred marks. He redeemed the pledge later on and paid up the sum he had borrowed. The tomb of Enrique III.'s head cook, who is lying in armour with a sword, occupies a space on the floor. He was not a bad-looking man and I daresay took his turn at the enemy and used his sword when occasion offered. Street writes of these cloisters—"I know none more interesting and more varied"—but I left them and the many fine tombs and statues they contain wishing that priests were not mortal nor liable to chills.