The Cathedrals of Northern Spain Part 18

Caurium, or Curia Vetona, was its name when the Romans held Extremadura, and it was in this town, or in its vicinity, that Viriato, the Spanish hero, destroyed four Roman armies sent to conquer his wild hordes. He never lost a single battle or skirmish, and might possibly have dealt a death-blow to Roman plans of domination in the peninsula, had not the traitor's knife ended his n.o.ble career.

Their enemy dead, the Romans entered the city of Coria, which they immediately surrounded by a circular wall half a mile in length, and twenty-six feet thick (!). This Roman wall, considered by many to be the most perfectly preserved in Europe, is severely simple in structure, and flanked by square towers; it const.i.tutes the city's one great attraction.

The episcopal see was erected in 338. The names of the first bishops have long been forgotten, the first mentioned being one Laquinto, who signed the third Toledo Council in 589.

Two centuries later the Moors raised Al-Karica to one of their capitals; in 854 Zeth, an ambitious Saracen warrior, freed it from the yoke of Cordoba, and reigned in the city as an independent sovereign.

Like Zamora and Toro, Coria was continually being lost and won by Christians and Moors, with this difference, that whereas the first two can be looked upon as the last Christian outposts to the north of the Duero, Coria was the last Arab stronghold to the north of the Tago.

Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century, the strong fortress on the Alagon was definitely torn from the hands of its independent sovereign by Alfonso VIII., after the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. A bishop was immediately reinstated in the see, and after five centuries of Mussulman domination, Coria saw the standard of Castile waving from its citadel.

As happened with so many other provincial towns in Spain, the centralization of power to the north of Toledo shoved Coria into the background; to-day it is a cathedral village forgotten or completely ignored by the rest of Spain. Really, it might perhaps have been better for the Arabs to have preserved it, for under their rule it flourished.

It is picturesque, this village on the banks of the Alagon: a heap or bundle of red bricks surrounded by grim stone walls, over-topped by a cathedral tower and citadel,--the whole picture emerging from a prairie and thrown against a background formed by the mountains to the north and the bright blue sky in the distance.

Arab influence is only too evident in the buildings and houses, in the Alcazar, and in the streets; unluckily, these remembrances of a happy past depress the dreamy visitor obliged to recognize the infinite sadness which accompanied the expulsion of the Moors by intolerant tyrants from the land they had inhabited, formed, and moulded to their taste. Nowhere is this so evident as in Coria, a forgotten bit of mediaeval Moor-land. The poet's exclamation is full of bitterness and resignation when he exclaims:

"Is it possible that this heap of ruins should have been in other times the splendid court of Zeth and Mondhir!"

As an architectural building, the cathedral of Coria is a parish church, which, removed to any other town, would be devoid of any and all beauty.

In other words, the impressions it produces are entirely dependent upon its local surroundings; eliminate these, and the temple is worthless from an artistic or poetical point of view.

It was begun in 1120, most likely by Arab workmen; it was finished toward the beginning of the sixteenth century. Honestly speaking, it is a puzzle what the artisans did in all those long years; doubtless they slept at their task, or else decades pa.s.sed away without work of any kind being done, or again, perhaps only one mason was employed at a time.

The interior is that of a simple Gothic church of one aisle, 150 feet long by fifty-two wide and eighty-four high; the high altar is situated in the rounded apse; in the centre of the church the choir stalls of the fifteenth century obstruct the view of the walls, decorated only by means of pilasters which pretend to support the Gothic vaulting.

To the right, in the altar chapel, is a fine marble sepulchre of the sixteenth century, in which the chasuble of the kneeling bishop portrayed is among the best pieces of imitative sculpture to be seen in Spain.

To the right of the high altar, and buried in the cathedral wall, a door leads out into the _paseo_,--a walk on the broad walls of the city, with a delightful view southwards across the river to the prairie in the distance. Where can a prettier and more natural cloister be found?

The western facade is never used, and is surrounded by the old cemetery,--a rather peculiar place for a cemetery in a cathedral church; the northern facade is anti-artistic, but the tower to the right has one great virtue, that of comparative height. Though evidently intended to be Gothic, the Arab taste, so p.r.o.nounced throughout this region, got the better of the architect, and he erected a square steeple crowned by a cupola.

Yet, and in spite of criticism which can hardly find an element worthy of praise in the whole cathedral building, the tourist should not hesitate in visiting the city. Besides, the whole region of Northern Extremadura, in which Coria and Plasencia lie, is historically most interesting: Yuste, where Charles-Quint spent the last years of his life, is not far off; neither is the Convent of Guadalupe, famous for its pictures by the great Zurbaran.

As for Coria itself, it is a forgotten corner of Moor-land.

VII

PLASENCIA

The foundation of Plasencia by King Alfonso VIII. in 1178, and the erection of a new episcopal see twelve years later, can be regarded as the _coup de grace_ given to the importance of Coria, the twin sister forty miles away. Nevertheless, the Royal City, as Plasencia was called, which ended by burying its older rival in the most shocking oblivion, was not able to acquire a name in history. Founded by a king, and handed over to a bishop and to favourite courtiers, who ruled it indifferently well, not to say badly, it grew up to be an aristocratic town without a _bourgeoisie_. Its history in the middle ages is consequently one long series of family feuds, duels, and tragedies, the record of b.l.o.o.d.y happenings, and acts of heroic brutality and bravery.

In 1233 a Moorish army conquered it, shortly after the battle of Alarcos was lost to Alfonso VIII., at that time blindly in love with his beautiful Jewish mistress, Rachel of Toledo. But the infidels did not remain master of the situation, far less of the city, for any length of time, as within the next year or so it fell again into the hands of its founder, who strengthened the walls still standing to-day, and completed the citadel.

The population of the city, like that of Toledo, was mixed. Christians, Jews, and Moors lived together, each in their quarter, and together they used the fertile _vegas_, which surround the town. The Jews and Moors were, in the fifteenth century, about ten thousand in number; in 1492 the former were expelled by the Catholic kings, and in 1609 Philip III.

signed a decree expelling the Moors. Since then Plasencia has lost its munic.i.p.al wealth and importance, and the see, from being one of the richest in Spain, rapidly sank until to-day it drags along a weary life, impoverished and unimportant.

The Jewish cemetery is still to be seen in the outskirts of the town; Arab remains, both architectural and irrigatory, are everywhere present, and the quarter inhabited by them, the most picturesque in Plasencia, is a Moorish village.

The city itself, crowning a hill beside the rus.h.i.+ng Ierte, is a small Toledo; its streets are narrow and winding; its church towers are numerous, and the red brick houses warmly reflect the brilliancy of the southern atmosphere. The same death, however, the same inactivity and lack of movement, which characterize Toledo and other cities, hover in the alleys and in the public squares, in the fertile _vegas_ and silent _patios_ of Plasencia.

The history of the feuds between the great Castilian families who lived here is tragically interesting: Hernan Perez killed by Diego Alvarez, the son of one of the former's victims; the family of Monroye pitched against the Zunigas and other n.o.blemen,--these and many other traditions are among the most stirring of the events that happened in Spain in the middle ages.

Even the bishops called upon to occupy the see seem to have been slaves to the warlike spirit that hovered, as it were, in the very atmosphere of the town. The first prelate, Don Domingo, won the battle of Navas de Tolosa for his protector, Alfonso VIII. When the Christian army was wavering, he rushed to the front (with his naked sword, the cross having been left at home), at the head of his soldiers, and drove the already triumphant Moors back until they broke their ranks and fled. The same bishop carried the Christian sword to the very heart of the Moorish dominions, to Granada, and conquered neighbouring Loja. The next prelate, Don Adan, was one of the leaders of the army that conquered Cordoba in 1236, and, entering the celebrated _mezquita_, sanctified its use as a Christian church.

The history of the cathedral church is no less interesting. The primitive see was temporarily placed in a church on a hill near the fortress; this building was pulled down in the fifteenth century, and replaced by a Jesuit college.

Toward the beginning of the fourteenth century a cathedral church was inaugurated. Its life was short, however, for in 1498 it was partially pulled down to make way for a newer and larger edifice, which is to-day the unfinished Renaissance cathedral visited by the tourist.

Parts of the old cathedral are, however, still standing. Between the tower of the new temple and the episcopal palace, but unluckily weighted down by modern superstructures, stands the old facade, almost intact. The grossness of the structural work, the timid use of the ogival arch, the primitive rose window, and the general heaviness of the structure, show it to belong to the decadent period of the Romanesque style, when the artists were attempting something new and forgetting the lessons of the past.

The new cathedral is a complicated Gothic-Renaissance building of a nave and two aisles, with an ambulatory behind the high altar. Not a square inch but what has been hollowed out into a niche or covered over with sculptural designs; the Gothic plan is anything but pure Gothic, and the Renaissance style has been so overwrought that it is anything but Italian Renaissance.

The facade of the building is imposing, if not artistic; it is composed of four bodies, each supported laterally by pillars and columns of different shapes and orders, and possessing a _hueco_ or hollow in the centre, the lowest being the door, the highest a stained gla.s.s window, and the two central ones blind windows, which spoil the whole. The floral and Byzantine (Arab?) decoration of pillars and friezes is of a great wealth of varied designs; statuettes are missing in the niches, proving the unfinished state of the church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FAcADE OF PLASENCIA CATHEDRAL]

Three arches and four pillars, sumptuously decorated, uphold each of the clerestory walls, which are pierced at the top by a handsome triforium running completely around the church. The _retablo_ of the high altar is richly decorated, perhaps too richly; the _reja_, which closes off the sacred area, is of fine seventeenth-century workmans.h.i.+p.

The choir stalls are of a surprising richness, carved scenes covering the backs and seats. They are famous throughout the country, and the genius, above all the imagination, of the artist who executed them (his name is unluckily not known, though it is believed to be Aleman) must have been notable. Pious when carving the upper and visible seats, he seems to have been exceedingly ironical and profane when sculpturing the inside of the same, where the reverse or the caustic observation produced in the carver's mind has been artfully drawn, though sometimes with an undignified grain of indecency and obscenity not quite in harmony with our Puritanic spirit of to-day.

_PART V_

_Eastern Castile_

I

VALLADOLID

The origin of Valladolid is lost in the shadows of the distant past. As it was the capital of a vast kingdom, it was thought necessary, as in the case of Madrid, to place its foundation prior to the Roman invasion; the attempt failed, however, and though Roman ruins have been found in the vicinity, nothing is positively known about the city's history prior to the eleventh century.

When Sancho II. fought against his sister locked up in Zamora, he offered her Vallisoletum in exchange for the powerful fortress she had inherited from her father. In vain, and the town seated on the Pisuerga is not mentioned again in historical doc.u.ments until 1074, when Alfonso VI. handed it over, with several other villages, to Pedro Ansurez, who made it his capital, raised the church (Santa Maria la Mayor) to a suffragan of Palencia, and laid the first foundations of its future greatness. In 1208 the family of Ansurez died out, and the _villa_ reverted to the crown; from then until the reign of Philip IV.

Valladolid was doubtless one of the most important cities in Castile, and the capital of all the Spains, from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel to that of Philip III.

Consequently, the history of Valladolid from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century is that of Spain.