Chapter VIII: Granada 237 (4)

These rules differed slightly from those followed in France, where, with the exception of certain churches in the east, the windows of the thirteenth century were richer in decoration, more luscious in coloring and more harmonious in their tones than those of the fourteenth. There is little in this later century that can compare with the thirteenth-century series of Chartres figures.

The Leonese windows are perhaps loveliest late in the afternoon, when the saints and churchmen seem to be entering the church through their black-traceried portals, and, clad in heavenly raiment, about to descend to the pavement,--

As softly green,
As softly seen,
Through purest crystal gleaming,

there to people the aisles and keep vigil at the altars of God to the coming of another day.

There are, fortunately, scarcely any other colors or decorations,--or altars off side aisles,--that might divert the attention from the richness of glass. The various vaulting has the jointing of its stonework strongly marked, but, with the exception of the slightly gilded bosses, no color is applied. The glory of the glass is thus enhanced. Owing to the great portions of masonry which have been rebuilt, this varies in its tints, but the old was, and has remained, of such an exquisitely delicate creamy color that the new interposed stonework merely looks like a lighter, fresher shade of the old. The restoration has been executed with rare skill and artistic feeling.

In studying the inner organism and structure of the edifice, one soon sees how recklessly the original fabric was constructed and in how many places it had to be rebuilt, strengthened and propped,--indeed, immediately after its completion. Here, as was the general custom in the greater early Gothic cathedrals, the building began with the choir and Capilla Mayor, to be followed by the transepts, the portions of the edifice essential to the service. The choir was probably temporarily roofed over and the nave and side aisles followed. The exterior façades, portals, and upper stories of the towers were carried out last of all by the aid of indulgences, contributions, alms and concessions.

In old manuscripts and documents which record the very first work on the cathedrals we find the one in charge called "Maestro,"--or _magister operis_, _magister ecclesiae_, _magister fabricae_, but not till the sixteenth century does the appellation "arquitecto" appear. His pay seems to have varied, both in amount and in form of emolument,--sometimes it was good hard cash, often a very poor or dubious remuneration, handed out consequently with a more lavish hand; sometimes grants, and again royal favor. Generally the architect entered into a stipulated agreement with the Cathedral Chapter, both as to his time and services, before he began his work. We find Master Jusquin (1450-69) receiving from the Chapter of Leon not only a daily salary but also annual donations of bushels of wheat, pairs of gloves, lodgings, poultry, other supplies, and the use of certain workmen.

Leon's unquestionable French parentage is, if possible, even more obvious in the interior than in the exterior. The piers between nave and side aisles are cylindrical in plan, having in their lowest section on their front surface three columns grouped together that continue straight up through triforium and clerestory and carry the transverse and diagonal ribs of the nave. They have further one column on each side of the axis east and west and, strange to say, only one toward the side aisles, which thus lack continuous supports for their diagonal ribs. The outer walls of the side aisles are formed by a blind arcade of five arches, surmounted by a projecting balcony or corridor and a clerestory subdivided by its tracery into four arches and three cusped circles. The nave triforium consists of a double arcade with a gallery running between (one of the very rare examples in Spain). Each bay has in the triforium four open and two closed arches, surmounted by two quatrefoils. The clerestory rises above, divided by marvelously slender shafts into six compartments and three cusped circles in the apex of the arch. Here shine, in dazzling raiment and with ecstatic expressions, the saints and martyrs ordered in the fifteenth century from Burgos for the sum of 20,000 maravedis.

Throughout all the glazed wall surfaces we find evidence of the anxiety that overtook their reckless projectors. All but the upper cusps of the windows of the side aisles have been filled in by masonry, painted with saints and evangelists in place of the translucent ones originally placed here. The lower portions of the triforium lights have been blocked up and also the two outer arches of the clerestory. The light, clustered piers and slender, double flying buttresses could not accomplish the gigantic task of supporting the great height above. Nor could the ingenious strengthening of the stone walls (consisting of ashlar inside and out, facing intermediate rubble) by iron clamps supply the requisite firmness.

It seems doubly unfortunate that the choir stalls should occupy the position they do here, when there is such liberal space in the three bays east of the crossing in front of the altar. The stone of their exterior backing is cold and gray beside the ochre warmth of the surrounding piers. The classic Plateresque statues and bas-reliefs, as well as the exquisitely carved, Florentine decoration, seems strangely out of place under the Gothic loveliness above. The trascoro itself is warmer in color, but of the extravagant later period. Its pilasters, spandrels, and band-courses are filled with elaborate and fine Florentine ornamentation, while the niches themselves, with high reliefs representing the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Adoration of the Magi, are not quite free from a certain Gothic feeling. Above, great statues of Church Fathers weigh heavily on the delicate work and smaller scale below.

The carving of the double tier of walnut choir stalls is at once restrained and rich. Beautiful Gothic tracery surmounts in both tiers the figures that fill the panels above the seats. Below are characters from the Old Testament,--Daniel, Jeremiah, Abel, David busily playing his harp, Joshua "Dux Isri," Moses with splendid big horns and tablets, Tobias with his little fish slit up the belly. Above stand firmly full-length figures of the Apostles and saints. With the exception of some of the work near the entrance, which is practically Renaissance in feeling, all this carving is late Gothic from the last part of the fifteenth century and executed by the masters Fadrique, John of Malines, and Rodrigo Aleman. Two of the stalls, more elevated and pronounced than the rest, are for the hereditary canons of the Cathedral, the King of Leon and the Marquis of Astorga. Excellent as they are, these stalls are not nearly so rich in design nor beautiful in execution as the Italian Renaissance choir stalls, in the Convent of San Marcos directly outside the city walls, carved some decades later by the Magister Guillielmo Dosel.

The crossing is splendidly broad, the transepts appearing, as one glances north and south, as much the main arms of the cross as do the nave and choir. The southern arm is quite new, having been completely rebuilt by D. Juan Madrazo and D. Demetrio Amador de los Rios. The glazing of its window and the arabesques cannot be compared to those of the original fabric in the northern arm. The four piers of the crossing, though slender and graceful, carry full, logical complements of shafts for the support of the various vaulting ribs, intersecting at their apexes.

The retablo above the high altar is in its simplicity as refreshing as the light and sunniness of the church. In place of the customary gaudy carving, it merely consists of a series of painted fifteenth-century tablets set in Gothic frames. Simple rejas close the western bays and a florid Gothic trasaltar, the eastern termination. Directly back of the altar lies a noble and dignified figure, the founder of the church, King Ordoño II. At his feet is a little dog, looking for all the world like a sucking pig in a butcher's window. And above him is an ancient and most curious Byzantine relief of the Crucifixion. The lions and castles of his kingdom surround the old king. The greater portion of the carving must belong to the oldest in the church.

In looking at the vaulting and considering the difficulty of planning the "girola" or ambulatory, one realizes that such construction could only be the outcome of many years of study, experiment and inspiration. Perfection means long previous schooling and experience. The apsidal chapels that radiate from it have glass differing in excellence. Here and there frescoes of the thirteenth century line these earliest walls. It is surprising in how many different places old sepulchres are to be found, all more or less similar in their general design and belonging to the period of transition from the Byzantine to the Gothic, yet each denoting the building period of the place where it stands. Some of the subjects of the carving are most curious: a hog playing the bagpipes, the devil in the garb of a father confessor, tempting a penitent; or again, a woman suckling an ass. Saint Froila lies on one side of the altar. Not only his sanctity but even his authenticity were disputed by various disbelievers in the city, prior to his being brought to this final resting-place. The matter was decided by placing the body in question on an ass's back, whereupon the sagacious animal took his holy burden to the spot where it deserved burial.

In the Capilla de Nuestra Señora del Dado, or "of the die," stands a Virgin with the face of the Christ child ever bleeding, it is said, since the time when an unlucky gambler in a fit of despair threw his dice against the Babe.

Directly opposite Ordoño's tomb lies the Countess Sancha, who, in a burst of religious enthusiasm, decided to leave her considerable worldly goods to the Church instead of to her nephew. This was more than he could stand, and he murdered her. Below her figure he is represented, receiving his just reward in being torn to pieces by wild horses.

To the north, a florid Gothic portal leads on a higher level to the Chapel of Santiago. This has been, and is still being, restored. Its three vaults are differently arched, the ribs not being carried down against the side walls to the floor, but met by broad corbels supported by curious figures. The stonework is cold and gray in comparison to the church proper.

Separating the northern entrance from the cloisters is a row of chapels, leading one into the other and crowded with tombs and sculpture. There are few more complete cloisters in Spain. Large and elaborate, they are a curious mixture of the old Gothic and the Renaissance restorations of the sixteenth century. Ancient Gothic tombs, their archivolts crowded with angels, pierce the interior walls, while the vaults themselves are most elaborately groined, the arches and vaulting being later filled with Renaissance bosses and rosettes. In the sunny courtyard are piled up the Renaissance turrets and sculptures that once usurped on the façades the places of the older Gothic ornamentation. The northern portal itself is practically hidden by the chapels and cloisters. It is fine Gothic work. A Virgin and Child form a mullion in its centre, while very worldly-looking women parade in its archivolts. Everywhere are the arms of the United Kingdoms. A great portion of the ancient tapestry blue and Veronese red coloring is still preserved, throwing out the old Gothic figures in their true tints.

This aerial tabernacle, so rich and yet so simple, lies in the heart of a city so fabulously old that the Cathedral itself belongs rather to its later days. The old houses and streets have a dryness and close smell like that in the ancient sepulchres of parched countries. Monuments and walls and turrets of Rome crumble around the houses and vaults of Byzantium. The naïve frescoes and carvings of the eighth and ninth centuries seem to look down with childlike wonder and amazement on the pedestrians now crowding the patterned pavements, or pressing against the shady sides of the time-worn arches.

The worshipers who tread the narrow lanes leading to and from the altar have changed, but little else. The square, mediæval castles with their angular towers still command the approach of the main thoroughfares. The crabbed old watchman with lantern and stick under his cape treads his doddering gait across the courtyards through the night hours, crying after the peal of the bell above, "Las doce han dado y sereno," "Las trece han dado y aleviendo," "Las quince han dado y nublano," just as in the middle ages, so that the good peasant may know time and weather and merely turn in his bed, if neither crops nor creatures need care.

Santa Maria de Regla too stands to-day as she stood in the middle ages, a monument to the care and affection of her children. She has the same spirituality, harmony of proportions, slenderness, and purity of lines, and she looks down and blesses us to-day with the same serenity and queenly grace which she wore in the fourteenth century. She is the finest Gothic cathedral in Spain.

V

TOLEDO

CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO]

I withdrew at once with the Morisco into the cloisters of the Cathedral.--_Don Quixote._

I

The peace of death is over Toledo, unbroken by any invasion of modern thought or new architecture since her last deep sighs mingled with the distant echoes of the middle ages. But she still wears the mantle of her imperial glory. She sleeps in the fierce, beating sunlight of the twentieth century like the enchanted princess of fairy tales, undisturbed by, and unconscious of, the world around her.

The atmosphere is transparent; the sky spreads from lapis-lazuli to a cobalt field back of the snow-capped, turquoise Sierra de Gredo mountains, while a clear streak of lemon color throws out the sharp silhouette of the battlements and towers.

There is sadness and desolation in the decay, a pathetically forlorn and tragical widowhood, strangely affecting to the senses.

A blackened ruin, lonely and forsaken,
Already wrapt in winding-sheets of sand;
So lies Toledo till the dead awaken,--
A royal spoil of Time's resistless hand.

Toledo! The name rings with history, romance and legend. Enthralling images of the past rise before one and vanish like the ghosts of Macbeth. Capital of Goth, of Moslem, and of Christian; mightiest of hierarchical seats,[8] city of monarch and priest, she has worn a double diadem. Gautier says, "Jamais reine antique, pas même Cléopatre, qui buvait des perles, jamais courtisane Vénitienne du temps de Titien n'eut un écrin plus étincelant, un trousseau plus riche que Notre Dame de Tolède." But the flame of life which once burned warm and bright is now extinct and all her glory has vanished. Neglected churches, convents, palaces, and ruins lie huddled together, a stern and solemn vision of the past, waiting with the silence of the tomb, broken only by the continual tolling of her hoarse bells.

The city has a superb situation. Once seen, it is forever impressed upon the memory. The hills on which it stands rise abruptly from the surrounding campagna, which bakes brown and barren and crisp under the scorching rays of the sun, and stretches away to the distant mountains, vast and uninterrupted in its solitude and dreariness. It is "pobre de solemnidad,"--solemnly poor, as runs the touching phrase in Spanish. There is no joy and freshness of vegetation, no glistening of wet leaves, no scent of flowers. You read thirst in the plains, hunger in the soil-denuded hills. All is naked and bare, without a softening line or gentler shadow, lying fallow in spring, unwatered in drought, and ungarnered at harvest time.

The Tagus rushes round the city in the shape of a horseshoe, confining and protecting it as the Wear does the towers of Durham. It boils and eddies 'twixt its narrow, rocky confines, hurrying from the gloomy shadows to the sunshine below, through which it slowly sweeps, murky and coffee-colored, to the horizon, no life between its flat banks, no commerce to mark it as a highway.

You pass over the high-arched Alcantara Bridge, which the Campeador and his kinsman, Alvar Fanez, crossed with twelve hundred horsemen at their back, to demand justice from their sovereign. A broad terrace crawls like a serpent up the steep incline to the city gates. A forest of soaring steeples rises above you, topped by the square bulk of the Alcazar.

The city smells sleepy. The narrow streets, or rather alleys, of the town wind tortuously around the stucco façades, with no apparent starting-point or destination, as confused as a skein of worsted after a kitten has played with it. Thus were they laid out by the wise Arabs, to afford shade at all hours of the day. At every corner, one runs into some detail of historical or artistic interest,--history and architecture here wander hand in hand.

Huge, wooden doors, closely studded with scallop nails as big as a man's fist, proud escutcheons of noble races lost to all save Spain's history; charming glimpses of interior courtyards and gardens glittering fresh in their emerald coloring, and sweet with the scent of orange blossoms; Gothic crenelations, Renaissance ironwork and railing, and Moorish capitals and ornamentation, all pell-mell, the styles of six centuries often appearing in the same building. More than a hundred churches and chapels and forty monasteries crumble side by side within the small radius of the city. Half of its area was once covered by religious buildings or mortmain property.

II

The church, be it a grand cathedral or the humble steeple of some little hamlet, is always the connecting link between past and present. It has been the highest artistic expression of the people, and it remains an eloquent witness to continuity and tradition. It is what makes later ages most forcibly "remember," for it seeks to embody and satisfy the greatest need of the human heart.

The history of a great cathedral church of Spain is so closely connected with the civil life of its city that one cannot be thoroughly studied without some familiarity with the other. Spanish cathedrals differ in this respect from their great English and French sisters. In England, cathedrals were built and owned by the clergy, they belonged to the priests, they were surrounded and hedged in from the outside world by their extensive lawns and cloisters, refectories, chapter houses, bishops' palaces, and numerous monastic buildings. They were shut off from the rest of the world by high walls. In France, the cathedrals were the centre of civic life; their organs were the heart-throbs of the people; their bells were notes of warning. The very houses of the artisans climbed up to their sides and nestled for protection between the buttresses of the great Mother Church. Notre Dame d'Amiens, for instance, was the church of a commune, what Walter Pater calls a "people's church." They belonged to the people more than to the clergy. They were a civil rather than an ecclesiastical growth, essentially the layman's glory.

A. Chapel of Saint Blase.
B. Chapel of the Parish of Saint Peter.
C. Octagon.
D. Chapel of the Virgin of the Sanctuary.
E. Large Sacristy.
F. Court of the Hall of Accounts.
G. Chapel of the New Kings.
H. Chapel of the Master of Santiago, D. Alvaro de Luna.
I. Chapel of Saint Ildefonso.
K. Chapter House.
L. Chapel of the Old Kings or of the Holy Cross.
M. Capilla Mayor.
N. Chapel of the Tower or of the Dean.
O. Mozarabic Chapel.
P. Choir.
Q. Portal of the Lions.
R. Portal of the Olive, or Gate of La Llana.
S. Portal of the Choir.
T. Portal of the Little Bread.
V. Portal of the Visitation.
W. Portal of the Tower or Gate of Hell.
X. Portal of the Scriveners or of Judgment.]

In Spain, the church belonged to both. Municipal and ecclesiastical history were one and the same, going hand in hand in bloody strife or peaceful union,--the city was the body, the cathedral its animating soul. The cathedrals were meant, not for prayer alone, but to live in,--they were for festivals, meetings, thanksgivings, for surging, excited crowds. The church was an _imperium in imperio_. It was the rallying place in all great undertakings or excitements. Here the Cortes often met, the great church conclaves assembled, the mystical Autos or sacred plays were performed, in them soldiers gathered, prepared for battle, edicts were published, sovereigns were first proclaimed, and allegiance was sworn; kings were christened, anointed, and buried. The troubled murmurings of the lower classes were here first voiced. They were the art galleries; here were displayed their finest paintings, statues and tapestries; they were even museums of natural history, and exhibited the finest examples of their wood-carving and glass-work, and the iron and silversmith's arts. It is thus easy to see that the political history of Toledo becomes vital in connection with its Cathedral church.

The history of Toledo dates back to Roman days,--we find Pliny referring to the city as the metropolis of Carpentania. She was among the first cities of Spain to embrace Christianity. All the barbarians, with the exception of the Franks, were Arians, but the last Gothic ruler in Spain to withstand the Roman faith was Leovgild, who reigned in the last half of the sixth century. He was also their first able administrator, the first who consistently strove to bring order out of the chaos of warring tribes and conflicting authorities. Contemporaries describe his palace at Toledo, his throne and apparel, and his council chamber, as of truly royal magnificence. It was reserved to his son Reccared to change the history of Spain by publicly announcing his conversion to the Roman faith before a council of Roman and Arian bishops held in Toledo in 587, at the same time inviting them to exchange their views fearlessly and, as many as would, to follow him. The Goths were never difficult to convert, and many of the bishops and of the lords who were present embraced the Catholic faith, to which a majority of the people already belonged. Gregory the Great, hearing of the success of Reccared's gentle and liberal proselytism, wrote to him: "What shall I do at the Last Judgment when I arrive with empty hands, and your Excellency followed by a flock of faithful souls, converted by persuasion?" He summoned a third council at Toledo in 589, and in concert with nearly seventy bishops, regulated the rites and discipline of the Church, at the same time excluding the Jews from all employments. In royal Toledo Reccared was anointed with holy oil, and he substituted the Latin for the Gothic tongue in divine service, where Isidore was the first to use it. In daily life Latin soon replaced Gothic. King Wamba built the great walls round the city, and King Roderick held his glorious tournament inside them.

Greater than any fame of Gothic monarch was that of the Church Councils which met here to determine the course of early dogma and shape the destinies of the larger part of Christendom.

The most salient figure during the rule of the Gothic kings was Saint Ildefonso, who quite overshadows his royal contemporaries. In 711 the Moors conquered the city, which then became a dependency of the Caliphs of Damascus and Bagdad until a Moorish prince shook off the foreign yoke. Independent Arab princes ruled, with Toledo as capital of their empire, until Alfonso VI, King of Castile and Leon, in 1085, finally conquered it for himself and his successors.

During the reigns of the early Castilian kings, we find names connected with the city's history which became famous all over Spain. The Cid was the city's first Alcaide. Alfonso el Batallador and Pedro el Cruel stand out in sombre relief, and Toledo was the cradle of the dramatic Comunidades' rising, and the scene of the noble death of their patriotic leader Padella. The streets ran with blood, and the walls spoke of glorious resistance before the Flemish emperor had crushed the liberties of the people.

We have a description of the brilliant pageant of Ferdinand and Isabella's entry after defeating the king of Portugal. "The Prince of Aragon was in full armour on his war horse and Isabella riding a beautiful mule, splendidly caparisoned, the bridle being held by two noble pages. Followed by their gorgeous retinue they rode slowly towards the Cathedral, while the highest dignitaries of the Church, the archbishop, himself a mitred king, the canons, and the clergy, in their pontifical garments, preceded by the Cross, came forth from the Puerta del Perdon to receive them. On each side of the arch above the doorway were two angels, and in the centre a young maiden richly clothed, with a golden crown on her head, to represent the image of 'La Bendita Madre de Dios, nuestra Señora.' When Ferdinand and Isabella and all the company had gathered around, the angels began to sing. The following day the trophies of war were presented to the Cathedral."

During the period immediately following the reign of the Catholic Kings, Toledo reached her highest prosperity. She numbered as many as 200,000 inhabitants;--to-day she has only 20,000. Glorious processions swept through her streets, the proud knights of the military orders of Alcantara, Calatrava, and Santiago, black-robed Dominican inquisitors, executioners, royal chaplains and major-domos, the Councils of the Indies, Castilian grandees, Roman princes and cardinals, brawling Flemish and Burgundian nobles, German landsknechts, and great Catholic ambassadors.

Toledo received her death-blow when Philip II, unable to brook the haughty claims of the Toledan archbishops, and feeling his power second to theirs, finally, in 1560, moved the capital of his realm to Madrid. Toledo's annals grew dark. So merciless was the Tribunal of the Inquisition that under its vigilant eye 3327 processes were disposed of in little more than a year. So Toledo fell from her former greatness.

The site of the Cathedral in the very heart of the city is by no means dominant. The church lies so low that even the spire is inconspicuous in the landscape. On three sides adjacent buildings completely bar all view or approach. The only free perspective is on the fourth side, from the steps of the Ayuntamiento across the square.

The inscription above the door of the city hall, with its trenchant advice to the magistrates, is well worth notice:--

Nobles discretos varones,
Qui gobernais a Toledo
En aquatos escalones
Codicia, temor y miedo.
Por los comunes provechos
Deschad los particulares
Puez vos hezo Dios pilares
De tan requisimos lechos
Estat vermes y derechos.[9]

In the streets, the _alcazerias_ which wind around the sides of the Cathedral, the rich silk guild traded. Here were shipped the goods that freighted vessels sailing for the American colonies.

During the Visigothic reign in Toledo, the Cathedral site was occupied by a Christian temple. It was transformed by the Moors after their occupancy of the city into their principal mosque; there they were still permitted to carry on their worship, according to the terms of the treaty made on their surrender of the city to King Alfonso IV in 1085. A year afterwards King Alfonso went off on a campaign, leaving the capital in charge of his French queen, Constance, and the Archbishop Bernard, recently sent to Toledo at the King's request by the Abbot of Cluny. No sooner was King Alfonso outside the city walls than the regents turned the Moors out of the church. The Archbishop arrived with a throng of Christian citizens, battered down the main entrance, threw the Moslem objects of worship into the gutters, and set in their place the Cross and the Virgin Mary. When the news of this outrage reached the ears of the King, he returned in wrath to Toledo, swearing he would burn both wife and prelate who had dared to break the oath he had so solemnly sworn. The Moslems, sagely fearing later vengeance would be wreaked upon them should they permit matters to take their course, besought the returning sovereign to restrain his wrath while they released him from his oath,--"Whereat he had great joy, and, riding on into the city, the matter ended peacefully."

The appearance of this fanatic Cluny monk is of the greatest importance as heralding a new influence in the development and history of Spanish ecclesiastical architecture. His coming marks the introduction of a foreign style of building and a revolution in the previous national methods, known as "obra de los Godos," or work of the Goths. Further, with the gradual arrival of French ecclesiastics from Cluny and Citeaux, came also a greater interference from Rome in the management of the Spanish Church, and a radical limitation of the former power of the Peninsula's arrogant prelates. Owing to the new influence, the Italian mass-book was soon presented in place of the ancient Gothic ritual and breviary. The foreign churchmen likewise aided in uniting sovereign, clergy, and nobility in common cause against the Saracen infidels now so firmly ensconced in the Peninsula. Spanish art had previously felt only national influences; now, through the door opened by the monks, it received potent foreign elements.

Spain had been far too much occupied with internal strife and political dissension to have had breathing spell or opportunity for the development of the fine arts and the building of churches. The passion for building which the French monks brought with them awoke entirely dormant qualities in the Spaniard, which in the early Romanesque, but especially in the Gothic edifices, produced beautiful, but essentially exotic fruits. First in the days of the Renaissance the architecture showed features which might be termed original and national. With the Cluniacs came not only French artisans but Flemish, German, and Italian, all taking a hand in, and lending their influences to the great works of the new art.

Nothing remains of the old Moorish-Christian house of worship. It was torn down by order of Saint Ferdinand (he had laid the foundation stone of Burgos as early as 1221), who laid the corner stone of the present edifice with great ceremony, assisted by the Archbishop, in the month of August, 1227 (seven years prior to the commencement of Salisbury and Amiens). The building was practically completed in 1493, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the most illustrious epoch of Spanish history. Additions and alterations injurious to the harmony and symmetry of the building were made till the end of the seventeenth century, and again continued during the eighteenth. It thus represents the architectural inspiration and decadence of nearly six hundred years. In style it belongs to the group of three great churches, Burgos, Toledo and Leon, which were based upon the constructional principles and decorative features termed Gothic. In some respects these churches embodied to a highly developed extent the organic principles of the style, in others, they fell far short of a clear comprehension of them. None of them had the beauty or the purity of the greatest of their French sisters. Burgos may be said to be most consistently Gothic in all its details, but neither Toledo nor Leon was free from the influence of Moorish art, which was indeed developing and flowering under Moslem rule in the south of the Peninsula, at the time when Gothic churches were lifting their spires into the blue of northern skies under the guidance and inspiration of the French masters. In many respects the Gothic could not express itself similarly in Spain and France,--climatic conditions differed, and, consequently, the architecture which was to suit their needs. In France, Gothic building tended towards a steadily increasing elimination of all wall surfaces. The weight and thrusts, previously carried by walls, were met by a more and more skillfully developed framework of piers and flying buttresses. Such a development was not practical for Spain nor was it understood. The widely developed fields for glass would have admitted the heat of the sun too freely, whereas the broad surfaces of wall-masonry gave coolness and shade. Nor were the sharply sloping roofs for the easy shedding of snow necessary in Spain. In French and English Gothic churches, the light, pointed spire is the ornamental feature of the composition, whereas in the Spanish, with a few exceptions, the towers become heavy and square.

None of the three Cathedrals in question impresses us as the outcome of Spanish architectural growth, but seems rather a direct importation. They have the main features of a style with which their architects were familiar and in which they had long since taken the initial steps. They are working with a practically developed system, whose infancy and early growth had been followed elsewhere.

While in the twelfth, and the early portion of the thirteenth century, Frenchmen were gradually evolving the new system of ecclesiastical architecture, the Spaniards, destined to surpass them, were to all purposes still producing nothing but Romanesque buildings, borrowing certain ornamental or constructional features of the new style, but in so slight and illogical a degree, that their style remained based upon its old principles. They employed the pointed arch between arcades and vaulting, and unlike the French, threw a dome or cimborio over the intersection of nave and transepts. In some instances we find a regular French quadripartite vault at the crossing, but such changes are not sufficient to term the cathedrals of the period (Tudela, Tarragona, Zamora, and Lerida) Gothic. They remain historically, rather than artistically, interesting. With the second quarter of the thirteenth century, comes the change.

In style Toledo corresponds most closely to the early Gothic of the north of France. Its plan reminds one forcibly of Bourges, though it is far more ambitious in size. Owing to the long period of its building, it bears late Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque features, while traces of Moorish influence are not wanting.

The Cathedral of Toledo was built in an imaginative, creative and passionate age,--an age when the ordinary mason was a master builder as well as sculptor, stimulated by local affection, pride and piety. The results of his work were tremendous,--his finished product was a storehouse of art. Artists of all nations had a hand in the work. Bermudez mentions 149 names of those who embellished the Cathedral during six centuries. Here worked Borgoña, Berruguete, Cespedes, and Villalpando, Copin, Vergara Egas, and Covarrubias. It is rather difficult to analyze their genius. They were not naturally artists, as were the French and Italians; they did not create as easily, but were rather stimulated by a more naïve craving for vast dimensions. With this we find interwoven in places the sparkling, jewel-like intricacy and play of light and shade so natural to the Moorish artisan, and the sombre, overpowering solemnity of the warlike Spanish cavalier.

It is necessary for a people at all times to find expression for its æsthetic life. Architecture, like literature, reflects the sentiments and tendencies of a nation's mind. As truly as Don Quixote, Don Juan, or the Cid express them, so do the stories told by Toledo, Leon, or Burgos. They reproduce the passions, the dreams, the imagination, and the absurdities of the age which created them.

Toledo's first architect, who superintended the work for more than half a century, was named Perez (d. 1285). He was followed by Rodrigo, Alfonso, Alvar Gomez, Annequin de Egas, Martin Sanchez, Juan Guas, and Enrique de Egas. Hand in hand with the architects, worked the high priests.

The Archbishop of Toledo is the Primate of Spain. Mighty prelates have sat on that throne, and the chapter was once one of the most celebrated in the world. The Primate of Toledo has the Pope as well as the King of Spain for honorary canons, and his church takes precedence of all others in the land. The offices attached to his person are numerous. As late as the time of Napoleon's conquest of the city, fourteen dignitaries, twenty-seven canons, and fifty prebends, besides a host of chaplains and subaltern priests, followed in the train of the Metropolitan. At the close of the fifteenth century, his revenues exceeded 80,000 ducats (about $720,000), while the gross amount of those of the subordinate beneficiaries of his church rose to 180,000. This amount, or 12,000,000 reals, had not decreased at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the middle ages he was followed by more horse and foot than either the Grand Master of Santiago or the Constable of Castile. When he threw his influence into the balance, the pretender to the throne was often victorious. He held jurisdiction over fifteen large and populous towns besides numbers of inferior places.

Many who occupied the episcopal throne of Toledo ruled Spain, not only by virtue of the prestige their high office gave them, but through extraordinary genius and remarkable attainments. They were great alike in war and in peace. Many of them combined broadness of view and real learning with purity of morals. They founded universities and libraries, framed useful laws, stimulated noble impulses, corrected abuses, and promoted reforms. Popes called them to Rome to ask their advice in affairs of the Church. Bright in the history of Spain shine the names of such prelates as Rodriguez, Tenorio, Fonseca, Ximenez, Mendoza, Tavera, and Lorenzana.

From the tenth to the sixteenth centuries Castile was far less bigoted than other European nations, for, of all the daughters of the Mother Church, Spain was the most independent. Her kings and her primate were naturally her champions, ever ready and defiant. King James I even went so far as to cut out the tongue of a too meddlesome bishop. From early Gothic days to the time when Ferdinand began to dream of Spain as a power beyond the Iberian Peninsula, no kingdom in Europe was less disposed to brook the interference of the Pope. Ferdinand and Isabella thwarted him in insisting upon their right to appoint their own candidates for the high offices of the Spanish church, and the Pope was obliged to give way.

The figure we constantly encounter in the thrilling tilts between Rome and Spanish prelates is the Archbishop of Toledo. Like Richelieu and Wolsey, Ximenez and Mendoza towered above their time, and their great spirits still seem present within their church. Ximenez, better known in English as Cardinal Cisneros, rose to his high office much against his will from the obscurity of a humble monk. The peremptory orders of the Pope were necessary to make him leave his cell and become successively Archbishop of Toledo, Grand Chancellor of Castile, Inquisitor General, Cardinal, Confessor to Queen Isabella, Minister of Ferdinand the Catholic, and Regent of the Kingdom of Charles V. He was "an austere priest, a profound politician, a powerful intellect, a will of iron, and an inflexible and unconquerable soul; one of the greatest figures in modern history; one of the loftiest types of the Spanish character. Notwithstanding the greatness thrust upon him, he preserved the austere practices of the simple monk. Under a robe of silk and purple, he wore the hard shirt and frock of St. Francis. In his apartments, embellished with costly hangings, he slept on the floor, with only a log of wood for his pillow. Ferdinand owed to him that he preserved Castile, and Charles V, that he became King of Spain. He did not boast when, pointing to the Cordon of St. Francis, he explained, 'It is with this I bridle the pride of the aristocracy of Castile.'"[10]

History may accuse him of the unpardonable expulsion of the Moriscos, and the retention of the Inquisition as well as its introduction into the New World,--but what he did was done from the strength of his convictions and according to what, in the light of his age, seemed the best for his country and his Church. He was perhaps even greater as a Spaniard than as a churchman. His conceptions were all grand, and he was as versatile as he was great. Victor in the greatest of all Spanish toils, he executed the polyglot version of the Scriptures, the most stupendous literary achievement of his age. Fitting his greatness is the simplicity of his epitaph:--

Condideram musis Franciscus grande lyceum,
Condor in exiguo nunc ego sarcophago.
Praetextam junxi sacco, galeamque galero,
Frater, Dux, Praesul, Cardineusque pater.
Quin virtute mea junctum est diadema cucullo,
Cum mihi regnanti paruit Hesperia.

The figure of Cardinal Mendoza stands out clear and strong in the final struggle with Granada. It was he who first planted the Cross where the Crescent had waved for six centuries, and he was the first to counsel Isabella to assist the great discoverer. His keen intellect made him lend a ready ear and friendly hand to the rapid development of the science of his time and the fast-spreading taste for literature.

And so the line of Toledo's illustrious bishops continues,--leaders of the church militant, like the Montagues and Capulets, they fought from the mere habit of fighting, but they seldom stained their swords in an unworthy cause.

III

There is a great discrepancy between the interior and the exterior of the Cathedral. The former is as grand as the latter is insignificant and unworthy. The scale is tremendous. Only Milan and Seville cover a greater area, if the Cathedral is considered in connection with its cloisters. Cologne comes next to it in size. It runs from west to east, with nave and double side aisles, ending in a semicircular apse with a double ambulatory. As is characteristic of Spanish churches, it is astonishingly wide for its length,--being 204 feet wide and 404 feet long. The nave is 98 feet high and 44 feet wide, while the outer aisles are respectively 26 and 32 feet across.

The exterior, with the exception of the ornamental portions of the portals and a few carvings, is all built of a Berroqueña granite. The interior is of a kind of mouse-colored limestone taken from the quarries of Oliquelas near Toledo. Like many limestones, it is soft when first quarried, but hardens with time and exposure.

The impression of the exterior is strangely disappointing. Imposing and massive, but irregular, squat, and encumbered by surrounding edifices clinging to its masonry. An indifferent husk, encasing a noble interior. Only one tower is completed, and no two portions of the decoration are symmetrical. The exterior has no governing scheme, no "idée maîtresse," no individual style, and is the outgrowth of no definite period. Successive generations of peace or war have enriched or destroyed its masonry. You stop with an exclamation of admiration in front of certain details of the exterior; before others, you only feel astonishment. The want of order and unity in the execution of its various portions and elevations is distressing.

Order and harmony may be preserved, even where an edifice is carried on by successive ages, each of which imparts to its work the stamp of its own developing skill and imagination. Very few of the great cathedrals were begun and completed in one style. Most of the great French churches show traces of the earlier Norman or Romanesque; most of the English Gothic, traces of the Norman or of the different periods of English Gothic architecture; but one dominating scheme has been followed by the consecutive architects. The lack of such a governing and restraining principle is felt in the exterior of Toledo. Further than this, although successive wars and religious fanaticism have with their destructive fury injured so many of the beautiful statues and exquisite carvings and much of the stained glass of the French and English religious establishments, still the architecture itself has in the main been left undisturbed. In Toledo, there is hardly a portion of the early structure and decoration of the lower, visible part of the Cathedral which has not been altered or torn down by the various architects of the last three centuries.

As an obvious result, the portions of the exterior which are interesting are individual features, and not a unified scheme; and they are interesting historically, rather than in relation to or in dependence upon one another.

The west front, which is the principal façade, the various doorways and completed tower form the most interesting portions of the exterior.

The west front is flanked by two projecting towers, dissimilar in design. To the south is the uncompleted one, containing the Mozarabic chapel,[11] roofed by an octagonal cupola and surmounted by a lantern, strangely betraying in exterior form its Byzantine ancestry.

CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO

The choir stalls]

To the north rises the spire which commands the city and the Cathedral of Toledo. It was begun in 1380 and completed in sixty years,--no long time when we take into account its size and detail and the carefulness of its construction. Rodrigo Alfonso and Alvar Gomez were the architects, and the Cardinals Pedro Tenorio and Tavera directed the work. Although it lacks the soaring grace of the towers of Burgos, it possesses quiet strength and a majestic dignity, and the transitions between its various stories have been executed with a skill scarcely less than that shown in the older tower of Chartres. It is in fact full of a character of its own. Divided into three parts, it rises to a height of some three hundred feet and terminates in a huge cross. The principal building material is the hard but easily carved Berroqueña granite, with certain portions finished in marble and slate. The lower part, which is square, has its faces pierced by interlacing Gothic arches, windows of different shapes, ornamental coats-of-arms and marble medallions. It is crowned by a railing and, at the corners where the transition to the hexagon occurs, by stone pyramids. The central part is hexagonal in plan and ornamented by arches and crocketed finials. Above it rises the slate spire terminating under the cross in a conical pyramid, added after a fire in the year 1662. The spire is curiously and uniquely encircled by three collars of pointed iron spikes, intended to symbolize the crowns of thorns.

The great bells of the Cathedral peal from this tower, among them the huge San Eugenio, better known, though, by the name "Campana gorda," or the Big-bellied Bell, weighing 1543 arobes (about 17 tons) and put up the same day it was cast in the year 1753. Its fame is shown by the old lines, which enumerate the wonders of Spain as the--

Campana la de Toledo,
Iglesia la de Leon,
Reloj el de Benavente,
Rollos los de Villalon.[12]

Fifteen shoemakers could sit under it and draw out their cobbler's thread without touching each other. A legend relates that "the sound of it reached, when first it was rung, even to heaven. Saint Peter fancied that the tones came from his own church in Rome, but on ascertaining that this was not the case, and that Toledo possessed the largest of all bells, he got angry and flung down one of his keys upon it, thus causing a crack in the bell which is still to be seen."

Not only does the hoarse croak of Gorda's voice remind the tardy worshiper of the approaching hour of prayer, but it tells each and all of the "barrio" where the fire is raging. Though the prudent Toledan may not know the art of signing his name or reading his Pater Noster, full well he knows, whenever Gorda speaks, whether the danger is at his own door or at his neighbor's.

The lower portion of the façade between the towers is composed of a fine triple portal dating from 1418 to 1450, which, despite later changes, is still an excellent piece of Gothic work. It contains over seventy statues. Above, the façade is composed of an ornamental screen inexpressive of the structure and the internal arrangement of the edifice. A railing separated the "lonja," or enclosure immediately in front of the entrances, from the street outside. The central entrance is the Gate of Pardon; to the north is the Gate of the Tower, also called the Gate of Hell; to the south is the Gate of the Scriveners or of Judgment. The middle door is the largest and most important. For centuries the steps leading to it have been climbed and descended by the pregnant women of Toledo, to insure an easy parturition.

The doors themselves are covered with most interesting bronze work, showing how far the Spaniards had in later centuries developed the art of their skillful Saracenic predecessors. The arch of the Gate of Pardon is exquisitely formed and its moldings and recesses are profusely decorated with finely chiseled figures and ornaments. Each of the three doors is surmounted by a relief, that over the Pardon representing the Virgin presenting the chasuble to Saint Ildefonso, who is kneeling at her feet.

The Scriveners' Gate derives its name from having been the door of entry for the scriveners when they came to the Cathedral to take their oath, but, though they had a gate for their own particular use, they did not seem to enjoy an especially good reputation. According to an old verse, their pen and paper would drop from their hands to dance an independent fandango long before their souls ever entered the Kingdom of Heaven.

Above the door is an inscription commemorative of the great exploits of the Catholic Sovereigns and Cardinal Mendoza and of the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Sicily.

The principal feature above the doors is a classical gable which extends the whole width of the façade, its field filled with colossal pieces of sculpture representing the Last Supper. Our Lord and the Apostles are seated, each in his own niche. It recalls the carving over the northeast entrance of Notre Dame du Puy. Nothing could be more ineffective and out of place than to crown this portion of the Gothic building with a Greek gable end. Finally, above the gable, with a curious pair of arches built out in front of it, comes a circular rose almost thirty feet in diameter, of early fourteenth-century work, this again being surmounted by late eighteenth-century Baroque additions.

There are two doorways on the south side. The Gate of the Lions, which forms the southern termination to the transept, is of course named from the lions standing over the enclosing rail directly in front of it, each supporting its shield. Here you have a bit of the finest work of the exterior, a most exquisite specimen of the Gothic work of the fifteenth century. Its detail and finish are remarkable, and few pieces of Spanish sculpture of its time surpass it in elegance and grace. The larger figures are most interesting, varying greatly in execution and character. Those of the inner arches are stiff and still struggling for freedom from tradition, but of admirably carved drapery,--while the bishops in the niches to the right and left have faces radiating kindness and patriarchal benignity, faces we meet and bless in our own walks of life to-day. The bronze Renaissance doors are as fine as their setting,--splendid examples of the metal stamping of the sixteenth century, and the wooden carving on their inner surfaces is equally fine. The bronze knocker might easily have come from the workshop of the great Florentine goldsmith.

The Gate of La Llana, west of the Gate of the Lions, is as ludicrous in its eighteenth-century dress as the gable of the west façade.

On the north side of the church we find three gates; in the centre, forming the northern entrance to the transept, the Puerta del Reloi[c], and east and west of it, the Puerta de Santa Catalina, and the Puerta de la Presentacion.

IV You leave the outside with a feeling of distress at having viewed a patchwork of architectural composition, feebly decorating and badly expressing a noble and mighty frame. You enter into a light of celestial softness and purity. It seems an old and faded light. As soon as you regain vision in the cool, refreshing twilight, you experience the long-deferred exultation. You are amid those that pray,--the poor and sorrowing, those that would be strengthened. Here voices sink to a reverent whisper, for curiosity is hushed into awe. "I could never fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral,--what has he to say that will not be an anti-climax?" says Robert Louis Stevenson, and you are struck by the force of his remark when you compare the droning voice coming from one corner of the building with the glorious expression of man's faith rising above and around you. The quiet majesty and silent eloquence of the one accentuates the feebleness of the other.

For the interior is as simple and restrained and the planning as logical and lucid as the exterior is blameworthy and unreasonable. Here is rhythm and harmony. The constructive problems have been ingeniously mastered, and the carved and decorated portions subordinated to the gigantic scheme of the great monument. The sculptures are limited to their respective fields. Structural and artistic principles go hand in hand. Eloquently the carvings speak the language of the time,--they become a pictorial Bible, open for the poor man to read, who has no knowledge of crabbed, monastic letters. They are the language of true religion, the religion that may change but can never die.