Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain Part 24

It is forty-seven feet wide in the clear, without aisles, has chapels between the b.u.t.tresses, and is lighted by large clerestory-windows.

Here, as at the cathedral, almost all the windows are blocked, and sufficient light seems to be obtained for the whole church by some ten or twelve holes about two feet square pierced here and there. The other church is of the same description, but less important.

Between Manresa and Lerida, the only town of any importance is Cervera.

Here there is a vast and hideous university building going to ruin; and two churches, one of which, with a square steeple, seems to be early in date, and the other--that of Sta. Maria, I believe--of the usual Catalan fourteenth-century type. This steeple was completed, in A.D. 1431, by an architect of Cervera, Pedro de Vall-llebrera; but it must have been long in progress, inasmuch as the princ.i.p.al bell--which was never to be tolled save for the funeral of a peer, a royal officer, or a bishop--was put in its place in A.D. 1377.[352] This bell has disappeared. On another, however, is this inscription:--"I.H.S.. Mateus. de. Ulmo.

magister. cimbalorum. ville. Cervariae. me. fecit. anno. a. nativitate.

Domini. millesimo. quadringentesimo. vigesimo. quarto. Si. ergo. me.

queritis. sinite. os. habire." And on another--"+ Barbara. nos. serva.

Christi. sanctissima. serva."

Between Cervera and Lerida the country is very uninteresting until near the end of the journey, when a good view of Lerida, and the cliff above the river, is obtained. I have twice visited this interesting old city.

In the autumn of 1861 I pa.s.sed a day there, when the greater part of my time was spent in endeavouring to get admission into the cathedral, so that I only saw enough to make me wish to repeat my visit; and this I was fortunately able to accomplish in the spring of 1862. My readers will agree with me, when they have realized to themselves what is to be seen, that such a cathedral as that of Lerida is in itself worth the journey from England. Unfortunately its examination will always be beset with difficulties--if indeed it is allowed at all when visitors become more numerous than they have been hitherto.

The town consists mainly of one very long, tortuous street parallel with the river Segre, a broad, rapid stream, carrying the waters of a large part of the southern slopes of the Pyrenees into the Ebro at Mequinenza.

There is an Alameda all along the river-bank, and at about midway in its length a large stone bridge across the river. Behind the town a hill rises rapidly--in some parts abruptly--to an elevation of, I suppose, about three hundred feet above the river; and on the summit of this stand the old cathedral, and some remains of other coeval buildings, now the centre of a formidable-looking, though really neglected, system of fortifications. Two other old churches--San Lorenzo and San Juan--remain, one in the upper part of the city, and the other on the Plaza, near the bridge. A modern cathedral, of the baldest and coldest Pagan type, but of great size, was built in the main street, near the river, when the old cathedral was converted into a fortress; and I cannot do better than quote Mr. Ford's rather ironical statement of its history:--"The ruin," he says, "of the old cathedral dates from 1707, when the French made it a fortress: nor has it ever been restored to pious uses; for in the piping times of peace the steep walk proved too much for the pursy canons, who, abandoning their lofty church, employed General Sabatani! to build them a new cathedral below, in the convenient and Corinthian style." From the date of its desecration nothing whatever has been cared for; and it goes to one's heart to see so n.o.ble a work, and one so sacred, put to such vile uses, and to so little purpose: for even now when Spain bristles with soldiers, and the whole nation is bitten with the love of military sights and sounds, the desecration of a sacred building is all that has been accomplished; for I believe that the Spaniards have seldom managed to hold possession of it against the French, and in its present dilapidated state are less than ever likely to do so.[353] The position is, however, a very strong one; and another hill to the west of the city is crowned with a second fort connected with it. Admission is only to be obtained by an order from the commandant of the district, who resides in the city below; and he very kindly sent a sub-officer to remain with me whilst I was in the fort, and with true Spanish courtesy came up himself to see that I gained admission to every part, and took great trouble to open doors some of which seemed hardly to have been opened since the Peninsular war!

The buildings now remaining consist of a church with an enormous cloister on its western side, and a lofty steeple at the south-west angle of the cloister. On the north side of the cloister is a large stone-roofed hall, and north of this again, and detached from the cathedral, are considerable fragments of what is called a castle, and these include another n.o.ble groined hall.

My ground-plan of the cathedral and its dependences will show at a glance how unusual and remarkable the whole scheme is. The south side of the church is built on the very edge of the precipitous cliff above the town and river, and the lofty tower is daringly balanced as it were on the most dangerous point of the whole ground. The ma.s.s of the whole group seen from below, and the vast height of the tower, are therefore singularly imposing, whilst the view obtained from the summit is one of rare magnificence. It is true that here the immediate neighbourhood is not lovely, but still the river does much towards converting to fruitfulness the usually arid-looking Aragonese soil of the district by clothing it with trees and verdure, and when last I saw it not only was the Segre a torrent of rus.h.i.+ng waters, but on all sides the hills were covered with a wide expanse of vineyards and corn-fields; and beyond these were to be seen towering up in the far distance the grand range of the Pyrenees, touched here and there--on the Maladetta and some of the other high peaks--with lines of snow; whilst on the other side the lower mountain ranges of Aragon completed one of the most beautiful panoramas I have ever seen from church tower.

The site of the cathedral has long been occupied. It was an important stronghold in the time of the Romans, and the first cathedral was erected as early as in the sixth century. The Moors in course of time gained possession of the city, and it was not until A.D. 1149 that the Christians, under Ramon Berenguer, finally drove them out and regained possession.

The doc.u.mentary evidence as to the age of the existing buildings is fairly clear, and may as well be given at once. I derive all my facts from the papers printed in 'Espana Sagrada;'[354] and besides those which more particularly interest me as an architect, there are in the volume which relates to Lerida some most interesting extracts from the proceedings of councils held there from A.D. 1175 to 1418, and of diocesan synods from the year 1240. These are full of information as to the customs of the church, and the rules affecting the clergy.[355]

The first stone of the new cathedral was laid in the time of the third bishop after the restoration, and in the presence of the king Don Pedro II. An inscription on a stone on the Gospel side of the choir, which I did not see, gives the date[356] as the 22nd July, 1203; and in A.D.

1215 the cloister was, in part at any rate, built, one Raymundo de Segarra having desired that he might be buried within its walls.[357]

From this time to the consecration we have no notice of the building, if I except the following inscription still remaining on the eastern jamb of the south transept doorway, which proves the existence of that part of the church at the time mentioned:--"Anno Domini M: CC: XV xi: Kal: Madii: obiit Gulielmus de Rocas: cuj: aie: sit:" and there is a mention in 'Espana Sagrada' of the burial of Bishop Berenguer, in A.D.

1256, by one of the doors, called thenceforward after him. On the last day of October, A.D. 1278, the church was consecrated by Bishop Guillen de Moncada, and the record of this on the west wall is now concealed, but I give a copy of it.[358]

In 1286 Pedro de Penafreyta, who had been master of the works, died;[359] he had probably been employed on the central lantern and the cloister, for which latter work, on the 21st of August, 1310, the king Don Jayme II. gave the stone;[360] circa A.D. 1320 Bishop Guillen founded a chapel; in 1323 the work of the "cloister and tower" was still going on;[361] and in 1327 alms were asked for the completion of the same work;[362] and again in 1335 the vicar-general, in the absence of the bishop, appealed for alms, "pro maximo et sumptuoso opere claustri ecclesiae catedralis."

In A.D. 1391 Guillermo colivella contracted to execute the statues for the doorway at the price of 240 sueldos each; and in A.D. 1490 Francisco Gomar contracted for the erection of a grand porch for 1600 sueldos. The steeple at the angle of the cloister seems to have been commenced about the end of the fourteenth century. The fabric-rolls for 1397 contain an item of 350 feet of stone from the river Daspe "for the work of the tower." Other similar notices occur, and among them the names of two masters of the works, Guillelmo colivella and Carlos Galtes de Ruan. It was probably completed before 1416; for in this year Juan Adam, "de burgo Sanctae Mariae, Turlensis diocesis, regni Franciae," contracted for the making of the great bell, which was finished in 1418, and commended by the chapter in these words--"Cujus sonitu et mentis vulnera sanari, et divinitatis singularis gratia possit conquiri."[363] There are no other notices of the main portion of the fabric; but we know that, in A.D. 1414, Pedro Balaguer was sent from Valencia to examine the tower at Lerida before he built the tower called the Micalete in his own city; and we may conclude therefore that before this date the work at Lerida had been completely finished.

It is easy to distinguish the works referred to in these notices. The church, of which the first stone was laid in A.D. 1203, and which was consecrated in A.D. 1278, still remains almost as it was built; and there can be but little doubt that the greater part of the cloister is of the same date. The works for which stone was given, in A.D. 1310, were probably those in its western half, and possibly the lower part of the steeple; and the chapel, founded in A.D. 1320, must be one of those added on either side of the great south door, or on the east side of the south transept.

It is impossible not to feel greatly more interest in a church whose scheme is unusual, than in one of a common type, even when its detail is not of so high a value, or its scale less imposing. Here, however, we have both extreme novelty in the general scheme,[364] and extreme merit in all the detail. As one climbs the steep street which leads to the cathedral, where the open s.p.a.ce around the fortifications is reached, the first general view of the buildings is most puzzling. The low outer wall of the cloister, with an enormous western doorway, the point of whose archway reaches to the top of the wall, the steeple on the extreme right, and the central lantern appearing to rise only just above the cloister wall, make a most unintelligible group. Making my way to the great doorway, I was astonished to find it to be the entrance, not of the church, as I at first a.s.sumed it to be, but only of the cloister; and not less disgusted to find that three sides of this cloister had been turned into barracks, a floor having been inserted all round at the level of the springing of the vault, so as to afford ample accommodation for some hundreds of soldiers, who sleep, cook, and live within its walls; whilst the eastern side is now a storehouse for arms and accoutrements, similarly divided by a floor, and without any visible trace of the doors of communication between church and cloister, which are said to be on this side. Yet this cloister is certainly, even in its present desecrated state, the grandest I have ever seen. Its scale is enormous, and much of its detail very fine. I have no doubt that it was a long time in progress, and this would account to some extent for the extreme irregularity of some of its parts. The bays, for instance, vary in width: the b.u.t.tresses are variously treated; and the sculpture, which on the eastern side seems to be coeval with the earliest portion of the church, is evidently on the other sides of much later date--probably not earlier than A.D. 1300. The b.u.t.tresses on the eastern side are carried on bold engaged columns with sculptured capitals, whilst most of the others are square in outline, with small engaged shafts in recesses at their angles. The arches are now all built up and plastered; but in two of those on the eastern side it is just possible to detect the commencement of traceries, from which it would seem that each arch had tracery above an arcade of three or four divisions. In its present state it is impossible to say more than this, or whether these traceries were original, though they seem to have been geometrical in style, and therefore probably later in date than the enclosing arches. The eastern half of the cloister has the outer arches richly adorned with complicated chevron and cable ornament, and the remainder of the arches are finely moulded. The interior is more uniform in character, the vault being quadripart.i.te throughout, with very boldly moulded ribs; and the main piers, and the piers at the angles, being very exquisitely planned, with a number of detached shafts with well moulded bases, bands, and capitals, the latter carved with foliage and heads. The capitals and bases are square throughout the cloister. On the south side this cloister has openings in the outer wall corresponding with those opening into the inner court; and these, I think, also had traceries. Owing to the fall of the ground towards the edge of the cliff, these windows are high above the terrace outside, and very bold b.u.t.tresses are placed between each of them. The effect of the cloister on the south side is that of an enormous ball: and this, in truth, is what it is. Its clear internal width varies from 26 ft. 6 in. to 27 ft. 6 in., and the height is quite in proportion. Occupied as it now is by hundreds of soldiers, one is tempted to ask, whether a building so far larger than could be required for a mere cloister may not have been built in the first instance to serve some double purpose; being, for instance, not only an ambulatory, but a refectory, and dormitory also. The way in which some of our own old buildings were fitted, with a chapel at the end of a series of cubicles on either side under the open roof of a great hall (as, _e.g._, St. Mary's Hospital at Chichester, Chichele's College Higham Ferrers, and a hospital at Leicester), seems to point to the possibility of some such utilizing of the vast s.p.a.ce which these cloisters afford; and the more as it seemed to me that there were not the evidences that might have been expected of the existence at any time of the other dependent buildings required by a cathedral body in all cases, and more than usually here where the church was so far above and away from the city. I mentioned the western entrance of the cloister as being very large: it is a double doorway with niches for six statues in either jamb, and the orders of the archivolt are alternately of mouldings and niches for figures. The outer arch is crocketed between two great pinnacles. The carving has mostly been destroyed; but there is a poor sculpture of the Last Judgment in the tympanum. The doorway has evidently been added between two of the earlier b.u.t.tresses of the cloister at about the end of the fourteenth century; its detail is extremely delicate and rich, and somewhat similar to that of the west doorway of Tarragona cathedral; and both are quite like very good French fourteenth-century work.

Unfortunately the doorways from the cloister to the church are now quite invisible, the wall being completely hidden by military packing-cases and arms.[365] This is the more to be regretted as the grandeur of the other doors leads me to suppose that the western doorway would be very fine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 44

LeRIDA OLD CATHEDRAL

VIEW FROM STEEPLE. p. 353]

It will be seen by reference to the plan that there is a steeple ab.u.t.ting against the south-west angle of the cloister; it is set against it in the most irregular fas.h.i.+on; and it is worth mention that the architect of the Micalete, at Valencia, who was directed to study this tower, imitated it even in this peculiarity. Here there seems, so far as I can see, to be no reason for the irregularity; and I can only conjecture that it may have been the consequence of some variation in the rock on which it stands. The entrance is by a staircase through a house, and thence by a newel staircase in the thickness of the wall. The steeple is octagonal in plan, and of five stages in height; the two lowest lighted by windows of one light; the third with windows of two; and the fourth with others of three lights, one in each face of the octagon. There is a rich parapet of open tracery, supported on corbels, to this stage, and a great pinnacle at each angle. The pinnacles are carried up from the ground, and are at present partly destroyed, and made to carry iron beacons instead of their old finish. The fifth stage stands entirely within the other; and its plan, as being the most interesting, is shown on my ground-plan of the whole building. Here each face of the octagon had a bold opening with a crocketed and traceried gable over it, and pinnacles at the angles, and probably a traceried parapet which no longer exists. The various stages are groined with stone vaults, and the whole construction is of the most dignified and solid description. The height from the terrace on the west side of the cloister to the top of the parapet is about 170 feet. The steeple looks much higher than this: but this is no doubt in great part owing to the enormous height above the city of the cliff on the edge of which it stands. The view of the church from the summit is so striking, and gives so clear an idea of its whole scheme, that I have engraved it. My drawing shows the cloister in the foreground, and the south-west view of the church beyond it. Here almost every part that is seen is of the earliest portion of the fabric, which seems to have been carried out on a regular plan from first to last. The church is cruciform, with a nave and aisles only three bays in length, and an octagonal lantern over the crossing. The choir and its aisles had three parallel apses east of the transept, and a fourth chapel was added in the fourteenth century, as were also two chapels on the south side of the nave. Two staircase-turrets on the west sides of the transepts (a favourite position for them in early Spanish churches) added much to the picturesqueness of the outline; but the upper part of one of these has unfortunately been destroyed, and the other was either carried up or altered at a later date--probably in the fourteenth century.

It will be seen that most of the windows are round-headed. Everywhere, however, the main arches are pointed; and this is, as I need hardly say, always characteristic of transitional buildings. The strange thing is, that in a church which was in building between A.D. 1203 and 1278 we should find such strong evidences of knowledge of nothing but twelfth-century art; and a.s.suming the dates to be correct--as I think we must--it affords good evidence of the slow progress in this part of Spain of the developments which had at this time produced so great a change in the north of Europe. Either the whole building was built on the plan at first laid down, or else, having been commenced vigorously, and in great part finished, some delay must have been caused in its completion for consecration. The latter is no doubt the more probable supposition, because, whilst the whole of the walls up to the top of the clerestory seem to be of perfectly uniform character inside and out, the central lantern is evidently a work of circa A.D. 1260-1278, and one which could not have been designed so early as 1203. The sculpture of all the capitals throughout the interior, as well as that of the doorways, must also be set down to the commencement of the century; and the date of A.D. 1215, which occurs on the south transept front, seems to make it probable that at that time the work in this part of the church was well advanced.

Here I may notice one of the remarkable features of this building--that the external roofs are all of stone. Most of them indeed are modern; but those of the choir and lantern are undoubtedly original, and there can be little doubt that the whole church was covered in the same way. They are formed entirely of stones chamfered and weathered to a flat pitch, and lapping slightly over each other. Their effect is good, and they were evidently built by men who hoped their work would last for ever: yet this has not quite been the result of what they did; for, as I have said, most of the roofs have been relaid with slabs of stone carefully fitted together like pavement, and less likely therefore to withstand the weather than the old roofs were.

The entrances to the cathedral are at present three in number,--a door in each transept and one in the south wall--in addition to the western doorway, which, if it exists, is now blocked up. These doors are all fine. That in the north transept is simple but effective: it has a simply-moulded semicircular arch, above which is a pointed arch with a stone in the enclosed s.p.a.ce carved with A and [Omega]; and above it a very finely-sculptured horizontal cornice. The doorway is set forward a few inches from the wall, in the Lombard fas.h.i.+on. In the gable of the transept over it is a large moulded but untraceried circular window, and enough of an original stepped corbel-table under the eaves to show that the old pitch of the roofs was very flat, though somewhat steeper than at present. The south transept doorway is much finer: it has a richly-sculptured round arch; and on each side of the arch are niches--one containing a statue of St. Gabriel, and the other one of the Blessed Virgin. Under the exquisitely sculptured cornice which surmounts the door is inscribed, in large incised letters, the angelic salutation; whilst on the right jamb of the door is the inscription of the year 1215, given at p. 349. Above the doorway is, as in the other gables, a circular window; and here the fine early tracery with which it was filled in still remains. The whole detail of this front is of the finest kind, and must have been executed by men who knew something of the best Italian Romanesque work. Nothing can exceed the delicacy and care with which the whole was executed. The wheel is divided by eight octagonal shafts radiating from the centre, and these carry an order of sixteen semi-circular cusps, two to each division. These cusps are covered with the billet ornament, and their spandrels have sunk carved circles. The mouldings which enclose the window are rich and delicate in character; and though it is unfortunately now walled up, it is well preserved, and still extremely effective.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cornice of South Transept Doorway.]

The last and grandest of the doors--the "Puerta dels Fillols" or of the Infantes--is in the centre bay of the south aisle. This is an example of singularly rich transitional work, with an archivolt enriched with mouldings, chevrons, dog-tooth, intersecting arches, and elaborate foliage. There is the usual horizontal cornice over the arch, and above this a fourteenth-century statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and our Lord. The horizontal cornice is carried on moulded corbels, between which and the wall are carvings of wyverns and other animals: whilst the soffeit of the cornice in each compartment is carved with delicate tracery panels, in some of which I thought I detected some trace of Moorish influence. The cornice has a delicate, trailing branch of foliage; and the label and two or three orders of the arch, in which sculpture of foliage is introduced, are remarkable for the singular delicacy and refinement of the lines of the foliage, and for the exceeding skill with which they have been wrought. There is none of that reckless dash which marks our carvers now-a-days, but in its place a patient elaboration of lovely forms, which cannot too much be praised.

The mouldings here are all decidedly characteristic of the thirteenth century. The whole is now protected by a later--probably fifteenth century--vaulted porch, which occupies the s.p.a.ce between two added chapels.[366] The effect is very good and picturesque, as will be seen by the ill.u.s.tration which I give; but as this porch is the storehouse for rockets and sh.e.l.ls, I fear its beauties are likely to be a sealed book to most travellers, though, owing to the extreme courtesy of the commandant, I was so fortunate as to be allowed to see and sketch it at my leisure.

The original windows are all simple round-arched, with moulded arches, and shafts, with caps and bases in the jambs; those in the lantern and at the west ends of the aisles are of later date, and pointed. The west window is circular and very large, but without tracery; and there is a small lancet below it which is now blocked up by the roof of the cloister. No doubt this roof was originally a gabled stone roof with a gutter against the wall, so as to leave this window open.

The lantern is octagonal above the roof, with a window in each side, pilasters at the angles, and an arcaded corbel-table at the eaves. The staircase-turret on its north-west side is also octagonal, and rises above the eaves. The roof is original, and of stone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 45.

LeRIDA OLD CATHEDRAL

SOUTH PORCH.]

The chapels which have been added seem all to have been built in the fourteenth century, and are much mutilated: they are good works of their age, but rather mar the general effect of the church, and do not call for much notice; two of them were closed, and I was unable to obtain admission to them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pendentive, &c., under Lantern, Lerida Cathedral.]

The interior of the church has been as completely enc.u.mbered with arrangements for soldiers' convenience as has that of the cloister. A floor has been erected all over the nave at mid-height of the columns, and in the south transept at the level of their capitals. The choir is boarded off, and not actively desecrated. The real floor of the church is now an artillery storehouse; on the raised floor of the nave a regiment of soldiers sleep and live; and in the south transept the bandsmen spend all their time making the most hideous and deafening discord. It is indeed a shameful use for a church, and there is only one small crumb of consolation in the fact that, soldiers notwithstanding, there has. .h.i.therto been no great amount of wilful damage done to any of the old work. The capitals throughout are extremely rich in sculpture, and are still perfect though obscured by whitewash, and the groining has nowhere been damaged. I know no style more full of vigour and true majesty than the earliest pointed, of which this interior is so fine an example. The lavish enrichment of the capitals, the fine section of the great cl.u.s.tered columns, the severe simplicity of the unmoulded arches, and the extreme boldness of the groining-ribs, all combine to produce this result. Almost all the princ.i.p.al shafts are coupled, and the groining-bays are kept very distinct from one another by very bold transverse arches; these, and indeed all the main arches, are pointed.

There is no triforium, and but a small s.p.a.ce between the arches into the aisles and the clerestory windows. The canted sides of the central lantern are supported on pendentives similar to those which occur under the angles of some of the early French domes.[367] Above these is an arcaded string-course, and then the windows: these are all double, and of varied tracery. There are monials and traceries nearly flush with both the internal and external face of the wall: this was a necessary arrangement for a work which was to be seen so entirely from below, where the external traceries would all have been lost to the view. There are groining-shafts in the angles of the octagon, and an octagonal dome or vault, with ribs at the angles. The choir is not used at all: it has a quadripart.i.te vault over its western half, and a pointed arch in front of the apse, which is covered with a semi-dome. The western bay is lighted by clerestory windows like those in the nave, and the apse by three windows, which on the outside have flat b.u.t.tresses between them.

None of the old ritual arrangements remain; but there is nothing here to suggest anything at all different from what might be met with in a similar church elsewhere.[368] The lantern does not prove anything more than our own lanterns do as to the arrangement of the choir for wors.h.i.+p: in short, here as elsewhere the central lantern was introduced partly because it was a custom of the Lombard churches, from which this cla.s.s of Spanish church borrowed so much, and in the next place because it was especially suitable for a climate like that of Spain, where it afforded the chance not only of lighting the church in the most agreeable way, but also of ventilating it most efficaciously.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LeRIDA:--Ground Plan of Cathedral &c. Plate XX

Published by John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1865.]

No doubt the external effect of this church was improved much by the addition of the great western steeple, though at the same time it is plain that its somewhat eccentric position has removed it so far from the main fabric of the church as to render the whole group of buildings less compact in its outline than it would have been had it been attached, like most of our own steeples, to the body of the church itself. On the other hand, nothing is more difficult, usually, than to build a steeple to a church which already has a central lantern, without entirely destroying the importance of this, which ought always, where it exists, to be a main feature; and here, as is generally the case in examples derived in any way from Italian examples, the central lantern is not very important in its dimensions, and required therefore more than usual caution on the part of the artist who ventured to add to it.

Here, as happens often with detached campaniles, the grouping of the steeple with the church from various points of view is very diversified, and often very striking. From its great height above the valley, it is seen on all sides, and generally at some distance. From the south, the grand size of the cloister, which connects the steeple with the church, gives it somewhat the effect of being in fact at the west end of an enormous building, of which the cloister may be the nave; whilst from the west, as the ground falls considerably, nothing of the church is seen but the central lantern rising slightly over the cloisters, whilst the steeple rears its whole height boldly to the right, and makes the whole scheme of the work utterly unintelligible until after a thorough investigation. Again, in the views of the cathedral from the east side the steeple has the effect of being, like that of Ely, at the west end of the nave, and here it groups finely with the central lantern. The same results will be found in some of our English examples, and the parish church of West Walton, near Wisbeach, ill.u.s.trates, as well as any that I know, the extraordinary variety of effect which a detached tower, at some distance from the main building, produces.

The only portion of the building not yet described is a long hall on the north side of the cloister: this is vaulted with a pointed stone barrel-vault, and is gloomy-looking in the extreme, being lighted entirely from one end. A newel staircase has been taken away from the other end.

Near the north side of the cathedral, on slightly higher ground, is another fine fragment of a building of the same age, which looks as if it had always been built as a defensive work. It contains a magnificent hall, groined in four bays of quadripart.i.te vaulting, and measuring about 24 feet by 96 feet. A smaller room next to this has a waggon-vault. The north and east walls of this hall, and of a building at right angles to it, are very boldly arcaded on the outside, and have a simple trefoiled corbel-table under the eaves: the hall windows are set within the wall-arcade. The bosses at the intersection of the ribs on the vault of the hall have interlacing patterns of Moorish character carved upon them, and afford the only distinct evidence of anything like Moorish influence that I noticed in any of the buildings here.

There are two other old churches in Lerida, San Lorenzo and San Juan.

San Lorenzo is on the hill, not very far from the cathedral. It is a parallel triapsidal church, the nave vaulted with a pointed waggon-vault, divided into three bays by arches springing from coupled shafts in the side walls. The apse has a semi-dome, and is lighted by three round-headed windows, five inches wide in the clear, and has a corbel-table under the eaves outside. The side walls of the nave are eight feet thick (the nave being thirty-three feet wide), and through them very simple pointed arches are pierced, opening into the aisles. I have no doubt that these were additions to the original fabric. They have polygonal apses at their east end, with very good window-tracery of circa A.D. 1270-1300. On the south side an octagonal steeple was added in the fifteenth century, projecting from the aisle walls. This has a two-light window on each side of the belfry, a pierced parapet, and a simple octagonal spire. There is a fine fourteenth-century Retablo to the high altar. It has a niche in the centre with a figure of St.

Laurence under a canopy, and a number of subjects and statues on either side. There is also one of the usual fifteenth-century galleries at the west end.

The interiors both of this church and of San Juan were so dark that I found it almost impossible to make even the roughest notes of their contents or dimensions.

San Juan is another fine early church, perhaps a little later than San Lorenzo, and of about the same age as the cathedral; neither of them, however, show any signs of having been, as is the tradition, built as mosques, and converted into churches after the taking of Lerida from the Moors in A.D. 1149. The plan here is but little altered, and exhibits three bays of cross-vaulting, and an apse.[369] On the north side an aisle has been added; but on the south the facade is nearly unaltered, and the interior is similarly very perfect. The mode of lighting with windows very high up is similar to that of the cathedral clerestory, and is worth the attention of those who wish to adapt the Pointed style for tropical climates. The rose window and great south door are both very fine examples, and extremely peculiar in their arrangement. The door, which is very large and imposing, occupies the whole of the central bay, and there are fine windows in the bays on either side of it: the impression produced at first sight is consequently that one is looking at the west end of a large church, upon one side of which an apsidal chancel has been added. The door is in fact out of all proportion to the size of the church, though this very fact gives perhaps somewhat of that monumental character to the whole work which is so rare in small buildings. It is worthy of notice that the very same design is to be seen in the church of la Magdalena at Zamora--already described; and there is indeed so much ident.i.ty of character between the two churches as to make it more than probable that the same architect erected both.

In the street near San Juan is a very fine old Romanesque house of unusually good style. It is of three stories in height, the lower story much modernized. The intermediate stage has a very fine row of three-light _ajimez_ windows with slender shafts and capitals very delicately sculptured. The string under these windows is also elaborately carved: above is an eaves-cornice, resting on corbels, and above this a modern upper stage. A stone with a Renaissance border to it, in the lower part of the wall, describes this building as the Exchange of Lerida, "built in 1589." A more impudent forgery I do not know; but probably the architect of that day thought his ugly upper stage the only part worthy of notice, and meant only to record its erection. The _patio_ or court-yard behind is small, but has the same kind of windows as the front--though without any carving--and some good corbel-tables and archways.

I saw nothing else of architectural interest in Lerida; but I confidently recommend other ecclesiologists to examine its buildings for themselves. They form an important link between the n.o.ble cathedral at Tarragona and the smaller but beautiful church of Tudela; and belonging as they do to the most interesting period of our art, the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, they afford examples for our emulation and study of even more value than the later works at Barcelona and Manresa, which I have before had to describe.[370]