Chapter II: Burgos (1)

There are some views of Burgos Cathedral which are constantly met with, and upon which I confess all my ideas of its style and merits had been founded, to their no little detriment. The western steeples, the central lantern, and the lantern-like roof and pinnacles of the chapel of the Constable at the east end, are all very late in date--the first of the latest fifteenth century, and the others of early Renaissance work; and their mass is so important, their character so picturesque, and their detail so exuberantly ornate, that they have often been drawn and described to the entire exclusion of all notice of the noble early church, out of which they rise. The general scheme of the ground-plan of the cathedral is drawn with considerable accuracy in the illustration which I give of it.[7] The fabric consists of a thirteenth-century church, added to somewhat in the fourteenth century, altered again in the fifteenth, and even more in the sixteenth century. The substratum, so to speak, is throughout of the thirteenth century, but the two western steeples, with their crocketed and perforated spires, the gorgeous and fantastic lantern over the crossing, and the lofty and sumptuous monumental chapel at the east end, are all later additions, and so important in their effect, as at first sight to give an entirely wrong impression both of the age and character of the whole church. The various dates are, as well as the scale will admit, explained by the shading of the plan. The early church seems to have consisted of a nave and aisles of six bays, deep transepts, and a choir and aisles, with apses and chapels round it. The transepts probably had chapels on the east, of which one still remains in the north transept; but this is the only original chapel, none of those round the chevet having been spared. Externally, the two transept fronts are the only conspicuous portions of the old church, but, on mounting to the roof, the flying buttresses, clerestory windows, and some other parts, are found still little damaged or altered. Never was a church more altered for the worse after its first erection than was this. It is now a vast congeries of chapels and excrescences of every shape and every style, which have grown round it at various dates, and, to a great extent, concealed the whole of the original plan and structure; and of these, the only valuable Mediæval portions are the cloisters and sacristies, which are, indeed, but little later in date than the church, and two of the chapels on the north side of the chevet, one of which is original, and the other at any rate not much altered. The rest of the additions are all either of the latest Gothic, or of Renaissance.

The principal entrances to this church of “Santa Maria la Mayor” are at the west end and in the north and south transepts--the two last original, the former a modern alteration of the old fabric, made only a few years ago, and of the meanest kind. The Archbishop’s palace occupies the space on the south side of the nave; and the ground on which the whole group of buildings stands, slopes so rapidly from the south up to the north, that on the south side a steep and picturesque flight of steps leads up to the door, whilst on the north, on the contrary, the door is some fifteen feet above the floor, and has to be reached by an elaborate flight of winding steps from the transept. Owing to the rapid rise of the ground, and to the way in which the church is surrounded by houses, or by its own dependent buildings, it is very difficult to obtain any good near views of it, with the exception of that of the west end from the Plaza in front of it; but the views from the Prado, from the opposite side of the river, and from the distant hills and country, are all very fine; and it must be allowed that in them the picturesque richness of the later additions to the fabric produces a very great effect.

Having thus given some general idea of the plan of the church, I will now describe its parts more in detail.

On entering the nave at the west end, the effect of the arcades, triforia, and clerestory is very fine, though much damaged by the arrangement of the choir, which, as in most Spanish churches, is brought down into the nave, enclosed with close walls or screens, and entered only from the transept at its eastern end. An altar is placed against the western entrance of the choir, and the nave being only six bays in length, and equally divided, the view is--it may easily be imagined--very confined and cramped. Otherwise, the architectural features of the nave are thoroughly good. The original scheme evidently included two western steeples, the piers which support them--large clusters of engaged shafts--being larger than any of the others, yet of the same date. The nave columns are circular, with eight engaged shafts around them. The bases are circular, finished on squares, with knops of foliage filling in the spandrels. The abaci are all square in plan, and both bases and caps are set at right angles to the direction of the arches they support. One of the smaller columns carries the pier arch, the other three carry the transverse and diagonal groining ribs, whilst the wall ribs are carried on shafts on each side of the clerestory window. The pier arches are of ordinary early-pointed character, and well moulded. There is not much variety in the general design of the nave and transepts, though some changes of detail occur. The triforium in both is very peculiar, as will be seen by the illustration which I give of one bay of the nave. The openings vary considerably in number, and the piercings of the tympanum and in the enclosing arch are also singularly arranged. I know nothing like this singular triforium elsewhere. It is certainly more curious than really beautiful, but at the same time it is valuable, as seeming to prove this part of the work to be from the hand of a native artist. The enclosing label is in all cases a segment of a circle, and filled with sculptured heads at short intervals apart. At first sight this triforium hardly seems to be of early date, having suffered by the addition of pinnacles covered with crockets in front of, and open traceried parapet walls between, the detached shafts on which the early traceries were carried; the result is, that one of the most striking features in the church is completely spoiled, and a general effect of very poor and tawdry design is felt more or less throughout the whole building.[8]

The original clerestory still, in great part, remains; it is simple, but good and vigorous in style, and with but one special peculiarity in its detail. The windows are for the most part of two lights, with a quatrefoiled circle in the head; and the peculiarity referred to here is the omission to carry the chamfer round the extrados of the arched heads to the lights or the circle; the effect produced is peculiar, the tracery not looking as if it were properly constructed, but as if the wheel had been loosely placed within the arch without having any proper connection with it. I have noticed the same arrangement in a church at Valladolid, and it must, I think, be regarded either as a freak of the workmen, or more probably as the exhibition of some degree of ignorance of the ordinary mode of executing the mouldings in window traceries.

But here, with this one exception, as in almost all the details throughout the original work of this cathedral, there is little, if anything, to show that we are not in France, and looking at some of its best and purest thirteenth-century Gothic. There is no trace of Moorish or other foreign influence, the whole work being pure, simple, and good. In the aisles two only of the original windows still remain, and these show that they were lighted originally by a series of well-shaped lancets, with engaged jamb-shafts inside. The vaults are all slightly domical in section; the diagonal ribs generally semi-circular, as also are the wall-ribs. The masonry of the cells is arranged in lines parallel to the ridge, but considerably distorted near the springing.

The transepts, which, as has been said, are similar in their design to the nave, are of considerable size, and the view across them is in fact the best internal view in the church. One early chapel alone remains,--on the east side of the north transept,--and its groined roof is remarkable. It is a square in plan, with its vault divided into eight groining cells, forming two bays on each side, and with two lancet windows at the east end, each under a division of the vault. No one who has studied the groining of the churches in Poitou and Anjou--so decided in their local peculiarities--can doubt, on comparison of them with this chapel, that it was the work of men who had studied in the same school, and it is remarkable that we find it reproduced in the lantern of the great church of the Convent of Las Huelgas, near Burgos, of which I shall presently have to speak. In both cases the vaulting is very domical, and the joints of the stone filling-in of the cells are _vertical_. This chapel suggests, too, the question whether the first idea was not here, as well as at Las Huelgas, to have a series of chapels on the east side of the transepts, though I should decide this in the negative, inasmuch as there is no mark of a chapel in the next bay to the north, and there was probably from the first a complete chevet to the choir.

It will be as well, perhaps, to leave the description in detail of the early features of the exterior for the present, and to complete the notice of the interior first of all.

And here it is necessary to say a few words as to the cathedral arrangements commonly seen in Spain, which exist in full force at Burgos, and must be constantly referred to in all my notices of Spanish churches.

I have already said that the choir proper (_Coro_) is transferred to the nave, of which it occupies commonly the eastern half; the portion of the nave outside, or to the west of the Coro, being called the “_Trascoro_,” and that to the east of it the “_Entre los dos Coros_;” and in most great churches the “_Crucero_,” or crossing, and the transept really do the work of the nave, in the way of accommodating the people. The floor of the nave proper is, indeed, too often a useless appendage to the building, desolate, dreary, unused, and cold; whereas in the transepts, the services at the altar and in the choir are both seen and heard, and this accordingly is the people’s place. A passage is sometimes, or perhaps I ought to say is usually, made with low iron or brass screens or rails leading from the eastern gate of the Coro to the screen in front of the altar. This is especially necessary here, as the choir proper is deep, and the people are thus kept from pressing on the clergy as they pass to and fro in the long passage from the altar to the Coro. Gates in these screens admit of the passage of the people from one transept to the other whenever the services in the Coro are not going on. The Coro is usually fitted with two rows of stalls on its north, south, and west sides, the front row having no desks before them. The only entrance is usually through the screen on the eastern side, and there are generally two organs placed on either side of the western bay of the Coro, above the stalls. In the centre of the Coro there is always one, and sometimes two or three lecterns, for the great illuminated office-books, which most of the Spanish churches seem still to preserve and use. High metal screens are placed across the nave to the east of the Coro, and across the entrance to the choir, or “_capilla mayor_,” as its eastern part is called. These screens are called _rejas_. Above the crossing of the choir and transepts there is usually an open raised lantern, called by the Spaniards the _cimborio_; and behind the altar, at the end of the Capilla mayor, is usually a great sculptured and painted _retablo_ or reredos. All these arrangements are generally described as if they were invariably found in all Spanish churches, as they certainly are at Burgos and many others now; and an acute and well-informed writer in the ‘Ecclesiologist’ suggests that their origin may perhaps be looked for in the early churches of the Asturias and Galicia, since he had looked in vain, in both Spanish and Mozarabic liturgies, for any peculiar dogma or ritual practice which would have involved arrangements so different from those common in other countries. The grounds for my opinion will appear as I describe other churches in other places; but I may here at once say that what occurred to me at Burgos was to some extent confirmed elsewhere, namely, that most of these arrangements have no very old authority or origin, but are comparatively modern innovations, and that they are never seen in their completeness save where, as here, they are alterations or additions of the sixteenth or subsequent centuries, and they are usually Renaissance in their architectural character. This is particularly the case in regard to the arrangement of the Coro, as well as to its position in the church. At present the bishop is generally placed in a central stall at its western end; yet of this I have seen only one or two really genuine old examples; for, wherever the arrangement occurs in a choir where the old stalls remain, it will be found, I believe, that the bishop’s stall is an interpolation and addition of the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth century, and that where the old western screen remains, the throne blocks up the old door from the nave into the Coro. The word Cimborio is only the Spanish term for our lantern. The early Spanish churches were like our own in the adoption of this fine feature, and, with such modifications as might be expected, the central lantern is still an invariable feature in most of them. The term Cimborio, however, seems to have no special significance, and, as I prefer the use of an English terminology wherever it is appropriate, I shall generally use the word lantern, rather than Cimborio. There are some of these terms, however, which it will frequently be convenient to use; such, for instance, are the words Reja, Coro, Capilla mayor, and Trascoro, all of which describe Spanish features or arrangements unknown in our own churches.

At Burgos the Coro occupies the three eastern bays of the nave, and the only entrance to it is through a doorway in its eastern screen. The stalls, screens, and fittings are all of early Renaissance work, and were the gift of Bishop Pascual de Fuensanta, between A.D. 1497 and A.D. 1512. There are about eighty stalls, in two rows, returned at the ends, and very richly carved, over the lower stalls with subjects from the New, and over the upper stalls with subjects from the Old Testament. In the centre of the choir, concealed by the great desk for the books (which, by the way, are old, though not very fine[9]), lies a magnificent effigy of Bishop Maurice, the founder of the church. It is of wood, covered with metal plates, and very sumptuously adorned with jewels, enamels, and gilding. He was bishop from A.D. 1213 to A.D. 1238, and his effigy appeared to me to be very little later than the date of his death.

A special architectural interest attaches to the life of this prelate, for the tradition in Burgos has always been that he was an Englishman, who came over in the train of the English Princess Alienor, Queen of Alfonso VIII., and, having been Archdeacon of Toledo, became in A.D. 1213 Bishop of Burgos. Florez,[10] however, doubts the tradition, and observes that his parents’ names, Rodrigo and Oro Sabia, were those of Spaniards. Two years before the cathedral was commenced he went on an embassy through France to Germany, to bring Beatrice, daughter of the Duke of Suabia, to marry King Ferdinand; so that, even if he were not of English birth, he was at any rate well travelled, and had seen some of the noble works in progress and completed in France and Germany at this date. In A.D. 1221 he laid the first stone of his new cathedral:--“Primus lapis ponitur in fundamento novi operis ecclesiæ Burgens: xx. die mensis Julii _era_ millesima quinquagesima nona die Sancte Margarite.”[11] Florez gives two other similar statements, one from the Martyrology of Burgos, and the other from the Chronicle of Cardeña. The King and the Bishop are said to have laid the first stone in the grand column on the epistle side of the choir; and the work went on so rapidly that in November, A.D. 1230, when he drew up directions as to the precedence of the various members of the chapter, their order of serving at the altars, and of walking in processions, the Bishop was able to write, “_Tempore nostræ translationis ad novam fabricam_.”[12]

Bishop Maurice was buried in the church, and his monument was afterwards moved to the front of the Trascoro (or screen at the west end of the choir) by Bishop Ampudia, before his death, in A.D. 1512. It has never been moved from the spot in which it was then placed, and yet, owing to the rearrangement of the stalls, it is now in the very midst of the Coro,[13] and affords an invaluable piece of evidence of the fact already stated, that of old the stalls did not occupy their present place in the nave.[14]

There is nothing else worthy of note in the Coro. Its floor is boarded, and a long passage about six feet wide, between rails, leads from its door through the choir to a screen in front of the high altar. The people occupy the choir, hemmed in between these rails and the parclose screens under the side arches. The altar has a late and uninteresting Retablo, in Pagan style, carved with large subjects and covered with gold.[15] The steps to the altar are of white, black, and red marble, counterchanged; and at the entrance to the choir under the lantern are two brass pulpits or ambons, for the Epistoler and Gospeller, an admirable and primitive arrangement almost always preserved in Spanish churches.

The columns of the choir arches have been modernized, and there is consequently but little of the old structure visible on the inside, the Retablo rising to the groining, and concealing the arches of the apse. Between these arches sculptures in stone are introduced, which are said to have been executed by Juan de Borgoña, in 1540. They are bold and spirited compositions in high relief, and give great richness of effect to the aisle towards which they face. The subjects are--(1) the Agony in the Garden; (2) our Lord bearing His Cross; (3) the Crucifixion; (4) the Descent from the Cross and the Resurrection; (5) the Ascension. Numbers 1 and 5 are not original, or at any rate are inferior to and different in style from the others.

When we leave the choir for its aisles, we shall find that everything here, too, has been more or less altered. Chapels of all sizes and shapes have been contrived, either by addition to or alteration of the original ground-plan; and, picturesque as the _tout ensemble_ is, with dark shadows crossed here and there by bright rays of light from the side windows, with here a domed Renaissance chapel, there one of the fourteenth century, and here, again, one of the fifteenth, it has lost all that simplicity, unity, and harmony which in a perfect building ought to mark this, the most important part of a church. In truth hardly any part of the aisles or chapels of the chevet of Bishop Maurice now remains; for of the two early chapels on the north side (marked _a_ and _b_ on the plan), the former is evidently of later date, being possibly the work of Bishop Juan de Villahoz, who founded a chapel here, dedicated to S. Martin, in A.D. 1268-69.[16] The style of this chapel is very good middle-pointed; the abaci of the capitals are square, the tracery is geometrical, the vaulting very domical, and its north-western angle is arched across, and groined with a small tripartite vault, in order to bring the main vault into the required polygonal form. This arrangement occurs at an earlier date, as I shall have presently to show, at Las Huelgas (close to Burgos), but ought to be noticed here, as the same feature is seen reproduced, more or less, in many Spanish works of the fifteenth century, and here we have an intermediate example to illustrate its gradual growth. It is, in fact, the Gothic substitute for a pendentive.

The other chapel (_b_) I believe to be the one remaining evidence of the original plan of the chevet; and, looking at it in connexion with the other portions of the work, and especially with the blank wall between which and the cloister the new sacristy is built, it seems pretty clear that originally there were only three chapels in the chevet, and all of them pentagonal in plan. Between these chapels and the transepts there would then have been two bays of aisle without side chapels, and on the eastern side of each of the transepts a small square chapel, one of which still remains. This plan tallies to some extent with that of the cathedral at Leon (with which the detail of Burgos may well be compared), and is in some respects similar to that of the French cathedrals of Amiens, Clermont, and some other places. In fact, the planning of this chevet is one of the proofs that the work was of French, and not of Spanish origin.

At the east end of the cathedral is a grand chapel, erected about A.D. 1487, by the Constable D. Pedro Fernandez de Velasco and his wife. This remarkable building was designed by an architect whose work we shall see again, and of whom it may be as well at once to say a few words. Juan de Colonia--a German by birth or origin, as his name shows--is said to have been brought to Burgos by Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena (A.D. 1435 to A.D. 1456) when he returned from the Council of Basle. There is evidence that he built the chapel of the great Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, on the hill just outside the town; and there is, I believe, but little doubt that he wrought here too. His work is very peculiar. It is essentially German in its endless intricacy and delicacy of detail, but has features which I do not remember to have seen in Germany, and which may fairly be attributed either to the Spaniards who worked under him, or to an attempt on his own part to accommodate his work to Spanish tastes.

The chapel is octagonal at the east, but square at the west end; and pendentives of exactly the same kind of design as those of the early German and French churches are introduced across the western angles of the chapel, to bring the plan of the central vault to a complete octagon. They are true pendentives, and quite unlike those three-sided vaulting bays across the angles of the apse chapels, to which I just now referred, and which answer precisely the same purpose. They are hardly at all Gothic, having semi-circular arches, and the masonry below them being filled in with stones radiating as in a fan, from the centre of the base of the pendentive. The groining ribs (the mouldings of which interpenetrate at the springing) form by their intersection a large star of eight points in the centre, and the cells between the ribs of this star are pierced with very elaborate traceries. This is a feature often reproduced in late Spanish works, and it is one which aids largely in giving the intricate and elaborately lacelike effect aimed at by the Spanish architects at this date, to a greater extent even than by any of their contemporaries in other lands; for though this, which is wellnigh the richest example of the Spanish art of the fifteenth century, was designed by a German, we must remember that he was following, to a great extent, Spanish traditions, and was largely aided in all the better portion of the detail by national artists, among whom the greatest was, perhaps, Gil de Siloe, whose work in the monuments at Miraflores I shall presently have to describe. And it is not a little curious, and perhaps not very gratifying to the _amour propre_ of Spanish artists, that in this great church the two periods in which the most artistic vigour was shown, and the grandest architectural works undertaken, were marked, the first by the rule of a well-travelled bishop--commonly said to be an Englishman--under an English princess, and who seems to have employed an Angevine architect; and the second by the rule of another travelled bishop, who, coming home from Germany, brought with him a German architect, into whose hands all the great works in the city seem at once to have been put. I must return, however, to the description of the detail of the Constable’s chapel. Each bay of the octagonal part of the chapel below the vaulting is divided in this way: below is a recessed arch, under which is an enormous coat-of-arms set aslant on the wall, with coarse foliage round it. These arches have a very ugly fringe of shields and supporters, and finish with ogee canopies. Above are the windows, which are of flamboyant tracery of three lights; the windows being placed one over the other, the outer mouldings of the upper window going down to the sill of the lower. There are altars in recesses on the east, north, and south sides of the octagon; and the two latter stand upon their old foot-paces, formed by flights of three steps, the ends of which towards the chapel are filled with rich tracery. The monument of the Constable Velasco is in the centre of the chapel; and a velvet pall belonging to it is still preserved, adorned with one of those grand stamped patterns so constantly seen in mediæval German paintings. The stalls for the clergy are arranged strangely in an angle of the chapel, fenced round with a low screen, and looking like one of those enclosures in some of our own churches sacred to archdeacons and their officials.

A quaint little vestry is contrived outside the south-east angle of the octagon, and in it are preserved some pieces of plate of the same age as the chapel. Among these are--

A chalice of silver gilt, enamelled in white and red, with its bowl richly set with pearls strung on a wire: the knop is richly enamelled, and its edge set with alternate emeralds and sapphires; whilst the sexfoiled foot is in the alternate compartments engraved with coats-of-arms, and set with sapphires. It is a very gorgeous work, and, though all but Renaissance in style, still very finely executed.

A pax; the Blessed Virgin Mary holding our Lord, and seated on a throne covered with pearls and other jewels. The figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary is enamelled with blue, and our Lord is in ivory. The old case for this is preserved, and has a drawer below it which contains papers referring to the gift of it.

Another small pax; a flat plate enamelled, with crocketed pinnacles at the side, but no figure.

A fine thurible for incense, in the form of a ship, with Adam and Eve on the lid.

A very good flagon, richly chased all over, sexfoil in section, and with a particularly good spout and handle.

There are many other chapels, as will be seen by reference to the plan, added to various parts of this cathedral, though none of them are of anything like the same importance as that of the Constable, which gives, indeed, much of its character to the exterior of the whole church, so large, lofty, and elaborate is it. On the south side of the south aisle of the nave is one which in the treatment of its groining cells, which are filled with tracery, seems to show the hand of Juan de Colonia; whilst another chapel on the north side of the nave, partly covered with a late Gothic vault, and partly with a dome, may be either a later work of his, or, more probably, of his son Simon de Colonia; another to the east of this is remarkable for the cusps, which come from the moulded ribs and lie on the surface of the vaulting cells in a way I do not remember to have seen before. In these chapels[17] we see the dying out of the old art in every stage of its progress; and I think that both here and elsewhere in Spain the change was much more gradual than it was in most other parts of Europe, many of the early Renaissance masters having availed themselves largely of the picturesque detail of their predecessors’ work.

The central lantern was the last great work executed in this cathedral, and its history must be given somewhat at length, as it is of much interest. In the Royal Library at Madrid[18] there is preserved a MS., from which we learn that the “crossing” of the cathedral fell on the 4th of March, 1539; and that Felipe de Borgoña, “one of the three ‘maestros’ who in the time of our Emperor came to our Spain, from whom we have learned perfect architecture and sculpture, though in both they say he had the advantage over the others,” was intrusted with the execution of the new work erected in its place. This Cimborio or lantern was completed, according to this MS., in December, A.D. 1567, Maestro Vallejo being mentioned as having wrought at the work under Felipe de Borgoña; Cean Bermudez,[19] without giving his authorities, says, that the Bishop (celebrated for the many buildings he had erected, among others San Esteban at Salamanca), on the fall of the “crucero,” summoned Felipe de Borgoña from Toledo, where he was at work with Berruguete on the stalls, to superintend the cathedral architects Juan de Vallejo and Juan de Castañeda. Maestro Felipe seems to have died in A.D. 1543, so that it is probable that after all most of the work was done after his death by Juan de Vallejo, who was sufficiently distinguished to be consulted with the architects of Toledo, Seville, and Leon about the building of the new cathedral at Salamanca in A.D. 1512, and had also, between the years A.D. 1514-1524, built the very Renaissance-looking gateway which opens from the east side of the north transept into the Calle de la Pellegria. The whole composition of this lantern is Gothic and picturesque; yet there is scarce a portion of it which does not show a most strange mixture of Pagan and Gothic detail. The piers which support it are huge, ungainly cylinders, covered with carving in low relief, and everywhere there is that combination of heaviness of parts and intricacy of detail, which in all ages marks the inferior artist. I cannot help lamenting much, therefore, the fall of the old work in A.D. 1539. There is no evidence, so far as I know, as to what it was that fell,[20] but the nearly coeval church of Las Huelgas has a fine simple lantern, and it is probable that some such erection existed in the cathedral, and that Bishop Luis de Acuña y Osorio raised it, and, by increasing its weight, caused its fall. The central lantern is so completely a feature of English buildings, or of those built in lands over which our kings also ruled, that any evidence of their early existence here would have been most valuable, seeing how close the connexion was at the time of its erection between the families of the kings of Castile and of England.

BURGOS CATHEDRAL

P. 25

NORTH-WEST VIEW.]

The groined roofs next to the lantern, on all sides, were of necessity rebuilt at the same time, and with detail quite unlike that of the original vault.

The exterior of the cathedral may be described at less length than the interior, presenting, as it does, fewer alterations of the original fabric, and much of what has been said of the one necessarily illustrating the other also.

The west front is well known by the many illustrations which have been published of it. The ground on which the church stands slopes up, as I have said, rapidly from south to north, but a level Plaza has been formed in front of the doors, and part of which is enclosed with balustrades and pinnacles of a sort of bastard Gothic, which I see drawn in a view published circa 1770, and which may possibly be of the same age as the latest Gothic works in the cathedral. On the rising ground to the north-west stands the little church of San Nicolas, high above the cathedral parvise, and hence it is that the view which I give from Mr. Fergusson’s book is taken. Nothing can be more determinately picturesque, though nothing can be less really interesting, than this florid work, which everywhere substituted elaboration for thought, and labour for art. But I need say no more on this point; for if we now look more closely, we shall see that, underlying all these unsatisfying later excrescences, the old thirteenth century cathedral is still here, intact to an extent which I had not at first ventured to hope for.

The western doors are three in number, but have been completely modernized. Of old the central door, “del Pardon,” had effigies of the Assumption, with angels and saints; the northern door “the mystery of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin;” and the southern door her coronation.[21] Above the side doorways the two steeples rise, whilst in the centre is a finely-traceried rose-window, which lights the nave; and above this two lofty traceried openings, each of four lights, with effigies of saints standing one under each light, the whole forming a screen connecting the steeples, and entirely masking the roof. The steeples, up to this level, are of the original foundation, much altered in parts, and now put to strange uses, their intermediate stages being converted into dwelling-houses, and lively groups of cocks and hens being domesticated on a sort of terrace a hundred feet from the floor. The upper part of the towers and the spires was added in the fifteenth century, by Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena (1435-56), who employed Juan de Colonia (the German of whom I have already spoken) to design them. German peculiarities do not gain in attractiveness by being exported to Spain, and this part of Juan de Colonia’s work is certainly not a success. Nothing can be less elegant than the termination of the spires, which, instead of finishing simply and in the usual way, are surrounded near the top by an open gallery, and then terminated with the clumsiest of finials. This work was commenced in A.D. 1442, and when the bishop died in A.D. 1456, one spire was finished, and the other, being well advanced, was soon completed under Bishop Luis Acuña y Osorio, the founder also of the central lantern.[22] Between the two towers is a figure of the Blessed Virgin, with the words “Pulcra es et decora.” On the upper part of the towers, “Ecce Agnus Dei,” and “Pax vobis;” and on the spires, “Sancta Maria,” and “Jesus.” These words are in large stone letters, with the spaces round them pierced.

The detail of the spires is coarse, and the open stonework traceries with which they are covered are held together everywhere by ironwork, most of which appeared to me to have been added since the erection. The crockets are enormous, projecting two feet from the angles of the spires, curiously scooped out at the top to diminish their weight, and with holes drilled through them to prevent the lodgement of water. The bells are, I think, the most misshapen I ever saw; and, as if to prove that beauty of all kinds is sympathetic, they are as bad in sound as they are in form!

The façades of the two transepts are quite unaltered, and as fine as those of the best of our French or English churches. I particularly delighted in the entrance to and _entourage_ of the southern transept, presenting as it does all those happy groupings which to the nineteenth-century Rue-de-Rivoli-loving public are of course odious, but to the real lover of art simply most exquisite and quaint.[23] The cloister and bishop’s palace, built out from the church on the south, leave a narrow lane between them, not absolutely in face of the great door, but twisting its way up to it; the entrance to this is through a low archway, called the Puerta del Sarmental, above which, on the right, towers one of the enormous and really noble crocketed pinnacles which mark the angles of the cloister, and then, passing by several old monuments built into the walls of the passage, the great doorway is reached by a flight of steps at its end. Above this doorway is a fine rose window of twenty rays of geometrical tracery, and above this is a screen in front of the roof, consisting of four traceried openings, each of four lights, and each monial protected, as are the lights at the west front, by figures of angels rather above life-size. The angles of the transepts are flanked by crocketed pinnacles, the crockets here, as elsewhere throughout the early work, being simple in form and design, but as perfect in effect as it is possible for crockets to be. The sculptures of the south door are, in the tympanum, our Lord seated with the evangelistic beasts around Him, and the four evangelists, one on either side and two above, seated and writing at desks, whilst below His feet are the twelve apostles, seated and holding open books. Below, there is a bishop in front of the central pier, and statues on either side, of which I made out two on the right to be St. Peter and St. Paul, and two answering to them on the left Moses and Aaron. The three orders of the archivolt have--(1) angels with censers, and angels with candles; (2 and 3) kings seated, and playing musical instruments. Here, as throughout the early sculpture, the character of the work is very French, and the detail of the arcading below the statues in the jambs is very nearly the same as that of the earliest portion of the work in the west front of the Cathedral at Bourges.

A. In Tower Window Jamb.
B. Do. do. Arch.
C. On Pinnacles of South Transept.
]

The north transept differs but little from the other. The doorway--De Los Apostoles--is reached from the transept floor by an internal staircase of no less than thirty-eight steps (the sixteenth-century work of Diego de Siloe), and the whole front is of course much less lofty than that of the south transept, owing to the great slope of the ground up from south to north. Above the doorway is an early triplet, and above this the roof-screen and pinnacles, the same as in the other transept. The doorway has in the tympanum our Lord, seated, with St. Mary and St. John on either side, and angels with the instruments of the Passion above and on either side. Below is St. Michael weighing souls, with the good on his left, and the wicked on his right. The orders of the archivolt have--(1) seraphim, (2) angels, and (3) figures rising from their graves: and the jambs have figures of the twelve apostles.

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CLERESTORY OF CHOIR.]

The ascent to the roofs discloses the remaining early features. These are the clerestory windows, and the double flying buttresses, of which I give an illustration. The water from the main roofs is carried down in a channel on the flying buttresses and discharged by gurgoyles. There are some sitting figures of beasts added in front of the buttresses which are not original. The parapet throughout is an open trefoiled arcade, with an angel standing guard over each buttress. The detail of the clerestory windows is very good; they are of two lights, with a cusped circle above, and a well-moulded enclosing arch. The windows in the apse are built on the curve. The capitals of the shafts in and under the flying buttresses are well carved, and there is a good deal of dog-tooth enrichment. At the back of the screen-walls, in front of the roofs of the nave and transepts, is seen the old weather-moulding marking the line of the very steep-pitched roof (which was evidently intended to be erected), and the stones forming which are so contrived as to form steps leading up to the ridge, and down again to the opposite gutter. In the transept, pinnacles take the place of the angels over the buttresses, and their design is very piquant and original. The moulded stringcourse at the base of these pinnacles is of a section often seen in French work, and never, I believe, used by any but French workmen.

All the steep roofs have long since vanished, and in their place are flat roofs, covered with pantiles laid loosely and roughly, and looking most ruinous. It may well be a question, I think, whether the steep roofs were ever erected. The very fact that they were contemplated in the design and construction of the stonework, appears to me to afford evidence of the design not having been the work of a Spaniard: and it is of course possible that, at the first, the native workmen may have put up a roof of the flat pitch, with which they were familiar, instead of the steep roofs for which the gables were planned. But, assuming that the steep roofs were erected, they must, no doubt, have been damaged by the fall of the lantern in 1539, and as it was reconstructed with reference to roofs of the pitch we now see, the roofs must have been altered at the latest by that time.

It is quite worth while to ascend to the roofs, if only to see what is, perhaps, the most charming view in the whole church; that, namely, which is obtained from the south-east angle of the lantern, looking down into the cloister, above the traceries of which rise the quaint pinnacles and parapets of the old sacristy, and the great angle pinnacles of the cloister itself, whilst beyond are seen the crowded roofs of the city, the all but dry bed of the Arlanzon dividing it in two parts, and beyond, on the one side, the steeple of the Convent of Las Huelgas rising among its trees, and on the other the great chapel of Miraflores, crowning a dreary, dusty, and desolate-looking hill in the distance.

I have left to the last all notice of the cloisters, which are said to have been built in the time of Enrique II. (1379-90), but I can find no authority for the statement, and believe that they would be more rightly dated between A.D. 1280 and A.D. 1350.[24] They are entered from the south transept by the fine doorway, of which a drawing is given by Mr. Waring in his work on Burgos. This would be thought an unusually good example of middle-pointed work even in England, and is as fair an instance as I know of the extreme skill with which the Spanish artists of the same period wrought. The planning of the jambs, with the arrangement of the straight-sided overhanging canopies over the figures which adorn them, are to be noticed as being nearly identical in character with those of the north transept doorway at Leon, and the strange feature of an elliptical three-centred arch to the door opening under the tympanum is common to both. The tympanum is well sculptured with the Baptism of our Lord, and the well-accentuated orders of the arch have sitting figures under canopies, and delicately-carved foliage. The flat surfaces here are, wherever possible, carved with a diaper of castles and lions, which was very popular throughout the kingdom of Castile and Leon in the fourteenth century. The figures on the left jamb of the door are those of the Annunciation, whilst, on the right, are others of David and Isaiah. The wooden doors, though much later in date, are carved with extreme spirit and power, with St. Peter and St. Paul below, and the Entry into Jerusalem and the Descent into Hell above. The ecclesiologist should set these doors open, and then, looking through the archway into the cloister, where the light glances on an angle column clustered round with statues, and upon delicate traceries and vaulting ribs, he will enjoy as charming a picture as is often seen. The arrangement of the masonry round this door shows, as also does its detail, that it is an insertion in the older wall.[25]

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VIEW OF CLOISTERS FROM THE ROOF]

The cloisters are full of beauty and interest. They are of two stages in height, the lower plain, the upper very ornate, the windows being of four lights, with a circle of ten cusps in the centre, and a quatrefoiled circle within the enclosing arch over the side lights. The groining ribs are well moulded, and the details throughout carefully designed and executed. At the internal angles of the cloister are groups of saints on corbels and under canopies placed against the groining shafts, and there is generally a figure of a saint under a recessed arch in the wall opposite each of the windows;[26] besides which there are numerous monuments and doorways. Those on the east are the most noticeable. There is the entrance to the sacristy, with a sculpture of the Descent from the Cross in its tympanum; the entrance to the room in which the coffer of the Cid is preserved, with our Lord seated between SS. Mary and John and Angels; and on the south side are in one bay S. Joseph of Arimathea laying our Lord in the sepulchre, in another the Crucifixion; whilst sculptured high tombs, surrounded by iron _grilles_, abound. Indeed, I hardly know any cloister in which an architect might be better contented to be confined for a time; for though there are many which are finer and in better style, I know none altogether more interesting and more varied, or more redolent of those illustrations of and links with the past, which are of the very essence of all one’s interest in such works.

One of the doors on the east side of the cloister opens into the old sacristy, a grand room about forty-two feet square, the groining of which is octagonal, with small three-sided vaulting bays filling in the angles between the square and the octagon. The corbels supporting the groining shafts are very quaintly carved with the story of a knight battling with lions.

Here are kept the vestments of the altars and clergy, a right goodly collection in number, and three of them very fine. These are a blue velvet cope with orphreys, fairly wrought on a gold ground, and all the work bound with a twisted cord, which in one part is black and yellow; another cope, also of blue velvet, has a half-figure of our Lord in the centre of the orphrey, and angels on the remainder and on the hood, with wings of green, purple, and blue, exquisitely shaded and lined with gold; another has St. John the Baptist, the Blessed Virgin, our Lord, and three saints, under canopies. In all of them the velvet ground was covered with a large diaper pattern in gold, done before the embroidery was _appliqué_.

To the south of this sacristy is another groined chamber, in which is kept the coffer of the Cid,[27] and where the groining ribs are painted in rich colour for about three feet from the centre boss. A door out of this leads into the Chapter-house, a room with a flat wooden ceiling of Moresque character. It is made in parqueterie of coloured woods arranged in patterns with gilt pendants, and the cornice is of blue and white majolica, inlaid in the walls: the combination of the whole is certainly very effective. East of these rooms were others, of which traces still remain on the outside; but they have been entirely destroyed, and streets now form, on the east and on the south, the boundaries of the church and its dependent buildings. Advantage was taken of the rise of the ground to make a second cloister below that which I have been describing. In the centre of the enclosure stands a cross, but the arches are built up, and the cloister is now used for workshops, so that there is here none of that air of beauty which the gardened cloisters of Spain usually possess. In the north-west angle of this lower story is a sacristy, reached by a staircase from one of the choir chapels, and still in use for it.

I have now in a general way gone over the whole of this very interesting church, and have said enough, I hope, to prove that popular report has never overrated its real merits, though no doubt it has regarded too much those points only of the fabric which to my eye seemed to be least worthy of praise--the late additions to it rather than the old church itself. As to the charm of the whole building from every point of view there cannot be two opinions. It has in a large degree that real picturesqueness which we so seldom see in French Gothic interiors, whilst at the same time it still retains much of that fine Early Pointed work which could hardly have been the work of any but one who knew well the best French buildings of his day; whoever he was--and amid the plentiful mention of later artists I have looked in vain for any mention of him--he was no servile reproducer of foreign work. The treatment of the triforium throughout is evidently an original conception; and it is to be noted that the dog-tooth enrichment is freely used, and that the bells of the capitals throughout are octagonal with concave sides. The crocketing of the pinnacles is, I believe, quite original; and the general planning and construction of the building is worthy of all praise. Nor was the sculptor less worthy of praise than the architect. The carving of foliage in the early work is good and very plentiful; the figured sculpture is still richer, and whether in the thirteenth-century transept doors, the fourteenth-century cloisters, or the fifteenth-century Retablos, is amazingly good and spirited. The thirteenth-century figures are just in the style of those Frenchmen who always conveyed so riant and piquant a character both of face and attitude to their work. The later architects all seem to have wrought in a fairly original mode; and even where architects were brought from Germany, there was some influence evidently used to prevent their work being a mere repetition of what was being done in their own land; and so aided by the admirable skill of the Spanish artists who worked under them, the result is much more happy than might have been expected. Much, no doubt, of the picturesque effect of such a church is owing to the way in which it has been added to from time to time: to the large number, therefore, of personal interests embodied in it, the variety of styles and parts each of them full of individuality, and finally to the noble memorials of the dead which abound in it. In France--thanks to revolutions and whitewash without stint--the noblest churches have a certain air of baldness which tires the eye of an Englishman used to our storied cathedrals: but in Spain this is never the case, and we may go to Burgos, as we may anywhere else in the land, certain that we shall find in each cathedral much that will illustrate every page of the history of the country, if well studied and rightly read.