Chapter II: The Pearl of Andalusia (3)

Others have it that the dance is a survival of some pagan ceremony--which will remind us that we have so far neglected the monuments of the Romans which were bequeathed to Seville. These are not very numerous or interesting. Only a fragment remains, at the north-east angle of the city, of the massive wall which Cæsar built, and which completely girdled Seville as late as the reign of Juan II. It was strengthened, tradition tells us, by 166 towers, which were freely used as prisons by later rulers. The Cordoba Gate marks the site of the dungeon of the canonized Hermenegild. Close to it is the Capuchin Convent, built upon the foundations of the palace of the Roman governor, Diogenianus, and afterwards associated with Murillo. A noble aqueduct built by the Romans, and known to-day as the Caños de Carmona, still brings water from Alcala de Guadaira to Seville. Everyone who visits Seville is expected to make an excursion to the ruins of Italica, a few miles on the other side of the Guadalquivir. There is remarkably little to see when you get there, and not much is known about the place. There were few, if any, private dwellings here, and it existed rather as the place of meeting and distributing centre for the colonists scattered over the district. It was indeed raised to the dignity of a municipality by Augustus, but petitioned to be restored to its old rank of a Roman colony. It did not prove unworthy of its connection with the great capital. Hence sprang the illustrious line of the Ælii, and many of the eminent Roman Spaniards who conferred such lustre on the early empire are believed to have been natives. The town was embellished in those palmy days with temples, palaces, amphitheatres, and baths, quite out of proportion to its population.

Its downfall, like its earlier history, is mysterious. Here Leovigild placed his headquarters when besieging Seville. Then came the Arabs, who dismantled it and carried off columns and blocks of masonry on which are founded the Giralda and other important buildings in the neighbouring city. Italica disappeared from history; and all you can see of it to-day is a few remains of walls and earthbanks outlining the amphitheatre.

It might not be worth the journey were it not that it can be included in an excursion to the villages of Santi Ponce, Castilleja la Cuesta, and the Cartuja. The parish church of the first named wretched village is remarkable as the last resting-place of the illustrious Guzman el Bueno, that Spaniard of the Roman mould who refused to save the life of his son at the cost of the fortress of Tarifa, which he held for his king. The hero's kneeling effigy dates, as the inscription beneath informs us, from the year 1609, the three hundredth anniversary of his death. The modern traveller, whose sympathies are usually more with the æsthetic than the heroic, will be more interested in the lifelike St. Jerome, one of the finest works of Montañez, to be seen over the high altar. The saint, regarding a crucifix devoutly, beats his breast with a stone. On either side are beautiful bas-reliefs of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi.

The convent was inhabited first by the Cistercians, next by the Hermits of St. Jerome. It presents rather the appearance of a fortified abbey of the middle ages. The church is divided into two naves, each of which was a distinct church--one, I suspect, belonging to the monastery, the other to the parish; a not uncommon medieval arrangement. I almost forgot to add that it contains the ashes (literally) of Doña Urraca Osorio, a lady burnt to death, as I have said, by Pedro the Cruel.

At Castilleja la Cuesta--a village on the height--is the house where Hernando Cortes died in 1547. The house has been converted by the Duc de Montpensier into a sort of museum. The Conquistador's bones repose in the land which, with so much intrepidity and ruthlessness, he won for Spain.

The old Charterhouse or Cartuja is now occupied by the porcelain factory of Pickman & Co. It lies on the west bank of the Guadalquivir, a few minutes' walk from the railway bridge. It was founded in the first decade of the fifteenth century by Archbishop de Mena, and was the burial-place of the Riberas, till their remains were transferred to the University Church. There is little to see except some stalls carved, if I remember aright, by Duque Cornejo, in the little chapel.

You may return to the city through the transpontine quarter of Triana, a collection of whitewashed houses inhabited chiefly by gipsies. To distinguish these no longer nomadic Bohemians from the lower-class Andalusians around them is not an easy task. As at Granada, gipsy dances are got up by the guides and hotel people, and here, I am told, they possess the merit which a Frenchman denies to those of the other city--impropriety. The patron saints of Seville, Saints Justa and Rufina, were potters in this quarter. In their time the Carthaginian goddess, Astarte or Salambo, was much venerated in the Roman city. The commemoration of the death of Adonis took place in the month of July, when the image of the goddess was borne in triumph through the streets, while the people following with cries and lamentations deplored the untimely end of her beloved. A strange survival, this, on soil so far to the west, of the hideous Punic rites! The two maidens, newly converted to the religion of the Crucified, refused to do reverence to the image as it was carried past, and were haled before the governor, Diogenianus, in his palace by the Cordova Gate. They were put to death in due course, and have received more honour since from architects, sculptors, and painters, than Venus-Astarte in all her glory received from her devotees.

Before leaving Triana, visit the Church of Santa Ana, to see the exquisite Madonna of Alejo Fernandez, whom Lord Leighton considered the most conspicuous among the Gothic painters. There is a regard for beauty in the figures, not by any means obtrusive in most of the paintings of the period, though the awkward pose of some of the angels shows that the artist had not quite emancipated himself from Byzantine influence. And the thought occurred to me as I made my way back to the Delicias Gardens, where the people were driving out to take the air, and knots were collecting round musicians and mountebanks--when the whole city was yielding itself up to the sensuous charm of the summer night--that the art of Fernandez was expressive of Seville: of a people in whom the sense of beauty and the joy of living cannot be extinguished, though at the call of religion they reluctantly keep their faces half turned towards sad facts and yet more sombre unrealities.