The Cathedrals of Northern Spain Part 11

_Priscilianism._--Of quite a different character was the other heresy previously mentioned. It was a doctrine opposed to the Christian religion, proud of many adherents, and at one time threatening danger to the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Considering that it is but little known to-day (for after a lingering life of about three or four centuries in Galicia it was quite ignored by philosophers and Christians alike), it may be of some use to transcribe the salient points of this doctrine, in case some one be inclined to baptize him or herself as prophet of the new religion. It was preached by one Prisciliano in the fourth century, and was a mixture of Celtic mythology and Christian faith.

"Prisciliano did not believe in the mystery of the Holy Trinity; he believed that the world had been created by the devil (perhaps he was not wrong!) and that the devil held it beneath his sway; further, that the soul is part of the Divine Essence and the body dependent upon the stars; that this life is a punishment, as only sinful souls descend on earth to be incarnated in organic bodies. He denied the resurrection of the flesh and the authenticity of the Old Testament. He defended the transmigration of souls, the invocation of the dead, and other ideas, doubtless taken from native Galician mythology. To conclude, he celebrated the Holy Communion with grape and milk instead of with wine, and admitted that all true believers (his true believers, I suppose, for we are all of us true believers of some sort) could celebrate religious ceremonies without being ordained curates."

Sinfosio, Bishop of Astorga in 400, was converted to the new religion.

But, upon intimation that he might be deprived of his see, he hurriedly turned Christian again, putting thus a full stop to the spread of heresy, by his brave and unselfish act.

Toribio in 447 was, however, the bishop who wrought the greatest harm to Priscilianism. He seems to have been the divine instrument called upon to prove by marvellous happenings the true religion: he converted the King of the Suevos in Orense by miraculously curing his son; when surrounded by flames he emerged unharmed; when he left his diocese, and until his return, the crops were all lost; upon his return the church-bells rang without human help, etc., etc. All of which doings proved the authenticity of the true religion beyond a doubt, and that Toribio was a saint; the Pope canonized him.

During the Arab invasion, Astorga, being a frontier town, suffered more than most cities farther north; it was continually being taken and lost, built up and torn down by the Christians and Moors.

Terrible Almanzor conquered it in his raid in the tenth century, and utterly destroyed it. It was rebuilt by Veremundo or Bermudo III., but never regained its lost importance, which reverted to Leon.

When the Christian armies had conquered the peninsula as far south as Toledo, Astorga was no longer a frontier town, and rapidly fell asleep, and has slept ever since. It remained a see, however, but only one of secondary importance.

It would be difficult to state how many cathedral churches the city possessed previous to the eleventh century. In 1069 the first on record was built; in 1120 another; a third in the thirteenth century, and finally the fourth and present building in 1471.

It was the evident intention of the architect to imitate the _Pulchra Leonina_, but other tastes and other styles had swept across the peninsula and the result of the unknown master's plans resembles rather a heavy, awkward caricature than anything else, and a b.a.s.t.a.r.d mixture of Gothic, plateresque, and grotesque styles.

The northern front is by far the best of the two, boasting of a rather good relief in the tympanum of the ogival arch; some of the painted windows are also of good workmans.h.i.+p, though the greater part are modern gla.s.s, and unluckily unstained.

Its peculiarities can be signalized; the windows of the southern aisle are situated above the lateral chapels, while those of the northern are lower and situated in the chapels. The height and width of the aisles are also remarkable--a circ.u.mstance that does not lend either beauty or effect to the building. There is no ambulatory behind the high altar, which stands in the lady-chapel; the apse is rounded. This peculiarity reminds one dimly of what the primitive plan of the Oviedo cathedral must have resembled.

By far the most meritorious piece of work in the cathedral is the sixteenth-century _retablo_ of the high altar, which alone is worth a visit to Astorga. It is one of Becerra's masterpieces in the late plateresque style, as well as being one of the master's last known works (1569).

It is composed of five vertical and three horizontal bodies; the niches in the lower are flanked by Doric, those of the second by Corinthian, and those of the upper by composite columns and capitals. The polychrome statues which fill the niches are life-size and among the best in Spain; together they are intended to give a graphic description of the life of the Virgin and of her Son.

In some of the decorative details, however, this _retablo_ shows evident signs of plateresque decadence, and the birth of the florid grotesque style, which is but the natural reaction against the severity of early sixteenth-century art.

V

BURGOS

Burgos is the old capital of Castile.

Castile--or properly Castilla--owed its name to the great number of castles which stood on solitary hills in the midst of the plains lying to the north of the Sierra de Guaderrama; one of these castles was called Burgos.

Unlike Leon and Astorga, Burgos was not known to the Romans, but was founded by feudal n.o.blemen in the middle ages, most likely by the Count of Castilla prior to 884 A. D., when its name first appears in history.

Situated almost in the same line and to the west of Astorga and Leon, it entered the chain of fortresses which formed the frontier between the Christian kingdoms and the Moorish dominion. At the same time it looked westwards toward the kingdom of Navarra, and managed to keep the ambitious sovereigns of Pamplona from Castilian soil.

During the first centuries which followed upon the foundation of the village of Burgos at the foot of a prominent castle, both belonged to the feudal lords of Castile, the celebrated counts of the same name.

This family of intrepid n.o.blemen grew to be the most important in Northern Spain; va.s.sals of the kings of Asturias, they broke out in frequent rebellion, and their doings alone fill nine of every ten pages of mediaeval history.

Orduno III.--he who lost the battle of Valdejunquera against the Moors because the n.o.blemen he had ordered to a.s.sist refrained from doing so--enticed the Count of Castile, together with other conspirators, to his palace, and had them foully murdered. So, at least, saith history.

The successor to the t.i.tle was no fool. On the contrary, he was one of the greatest characters in Spanish history, hero of a hundred legends and traditions. Fernan Gonzalez was his name, and he freed Castile from owing va.s.salage to Asturias, for he threw off the yoke which bound him to Leon, and lived as an independent sovereign in his castle of Burgos.

This is the date of Castile's first appearance in history as one of the nuclei of Christian resistance (in the tenth century).

Nevertheless, against the military genius of Almanzor (the victorious), Fernan Gonzalez could do no more than the kings of Leon. The fate that befell Santiago, Leon, and Astorga awaited Burgos, which was utterly destroyed with the exception of the impregnable castle. After the Arab's death, hailed by the Christians with shouts of joy, and from the pulpits with the grim remark: _"Almanzor mortuus est et sepultus et in inferno_," the strength of Castile grew year by year, until one Conde Garcia de Castilla married one of his daughters to the King of Navarra and the other to Bermudo III. of Leon. His son, as has already been seen in a previous chapter, was killed in Leon when he went to marry Bermudo's sister Sancha. But his grandson, the recognized heir to the throne of Navarra, Fernando by name, inherited his grandfather's t.i.tle and estates, even his murdered uncle's promised bride, the sister of Bermudo. At the latter's death some years later, without an heir, he inherited--or conquered--Leon and Asturias, and for the first time in history, all the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula were united beneath one sceptre.

Castile was now the most powerful state in the peninsula, and its capital, Burgos, the most important city north of Toledo.

Two hundred years later the centralization of power in Burgos was an accomplished fact, as well as the death in all but name of the ancient kingdom of Leon, Asturias, and Galicia. Castile was Spain, and Burgos its splendid capital (1230, in the reign of San Fernando).

The above events are closely connected with the ecclesiastical history, which depends entirely upon the civil importance of the city.

A few years after Fernando I. had inaugurated the t.i.tle of King of Castile, he raised the parish church of Burgos to a bishopric (1075) by removing to his new capital the see that from time immemorial had existed in Oca. He also laid the first stone of the cathedral church in the same spot where Fernan Gonzalez had erected a summer palace, previous to the Arab raid under Almanzor. Ten years later the same king had the bishopric raised to an archiepiscopal see.

San Fernando, being unable to do more than had already been done by his forefather Fernando I., had the ruined church pulled down, and in its place he erected the cathedral still standing to-day. This was in 1221.

So rapidly was the main edifice constructed, that as early as 1230 the first holy ma.s.s was celebrated in the altar-chapel. The erection of the remaining parts took longer, however, for the building was not completed until about three hundred years later.

Burgos did not remain the sole capital of Northern Spain for any great length of time. Before the close of the thirteenth century, Valladolid had destroyed the former's monopoly, and from then on, and during the next three hundred years, these two and Toledo were obliged to take turns in the honour of being considered capital, an honour that depended entirely upon the caprices of the rulers of the land, until it was definitely conferred upon Madrid in the seventeenth century.

As regards legends and traditions of feudal romance and tragedy, hardly a city excepting Toledo and Salamanca can compete with Burgos.

Historical events, produced by throne usurpers and defenders, by continual strife, by the obstinacy of the n.o.blemen and the perfidy of the monarchs,--all interwoven with beautiful dames and cruel warriors--are sufficiently numerous to enable every house in and around Burgos to possess some secret or other, generally gruesome and licentious, which means chivalrous. The reign of Peter the Cruel and of his predecessor Alfonso, the father of four or five b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and the lover of Dona Leonor; the heroic deeds of Fernan Gonzalez and of the Cid Campeador (Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar); the splendour of the court of Isabel I., and the peculiar const.i.tution of the land with its Cortes, its convents, and monasteries,--all tend to make Burgos the centre of a chivalrous literature still recited by the people and firmly believed in by them. Unluckily their recital cannot find a place here, and we pa.s.s on to examine the grand cathedral, object of the present chapter.

The train, coming from the north, approaches the city of Burgos. A low horizon line and undulating plains stretch as far as the eye can reach; in the distance ahead are two church spires and a castle looming up against a blue sky.

The train reaches the station; a ma.s.s of houses and, overtopping the roofs of all buildings, the same spires as seen before, lost as it were in a forest of pinnacles, emerging from two octagonal lanterns or cimborios. In the background, on a sandy hill, are the ruins of the castle which once upon a time was the stronghold of the Counts of Castile.

Burgos! Pa.s.sing beneath a four-hundred-year-old gateway--Arco de Santa Maria--raised by trembling bourgeois to appease a monarch's wrath, the visitor arrives after many a turn in a square situated in front of the cathedral.

A poor architectural element is this western front of the cathedral as regards the first body or the portals. Devoid of all ornamentation, and consequently naked, three doors or portals, surmounted by a peculiar egg-shaped ogival arch, open into the nave and aisles. Originally they were richly decorated by means of sculptural reliefs and statuary, but in the plateresque period of the sixteenth century they were demolished.

The two lateral doors leading into the aisles are situated beneath the 275 feet high towers of excellent workmans.h.i.+p.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURGOS CATHEDRAL]

The central door is surmounted by a plateresque-Renaissance pediment imbedded in an ogival arch (of all things!); the side doors are crowned by a simple window.

Vastly superior in all respects to the lower body are the upper stories, of which the first is begun by a pinnacled bal.u.s.trade running from tower to tower; in the centre, between the two towers, there is an immense rosace of a magnificent design and embellished by means of an ogival arch in delicate relief; the windows of the tower, as well as in the superior bodies, are pure ogival.

The next story can be considered as the bas.e.m.e.nt of the towers, properly speaking. The central part begins with a prominent bal.u.s.trade of statues thrown against a background formed by twin ogival windows of exceptional size. The third story is composed, as regards the towers, of the last of the square bodies upon which the fleche reposes; these square bases are united by a light frieze or perforated bal.u.s.trade which crowns the central part of the facade and is decorated with ogival designs.

Last to be mentioned, but not least in importance, are the _fleches_.

Though short in comparison to the bold structure at Oviedo, they are, nevertheless, of surprising dignity and elegance, and richly ornamented, being covered over with an innumerable amount of tiny pinnacles encrusted, as it were, on the stone network of a perforated pyramid.

The northern facade is richer in sculptural details than the western, though the portal possesses but one row of statues. The rosace is subst.i.tuted by a three-lobed window, the central pane of which is larger than the lateral two.

As this northern facade is almost fifteen feet higher than the ground-plan of the temple,--on account of the street being much higher,--a flight of steps leads down into the transept. As a Renaissance work, this golden staircase is one of Spain's marvels, but it looks rather out of place in an essentially Gothic cathedral.

To avoid the danger of falling down these stairs and with a view to their preservation, the transept was pierced by another door in the sixteenth century, on a level with the floor of the building, and leading into a street lower than the previous one; it is situated on the east of the prolonged transept, or better still, of the prolonged northern transept arm.