Part 7
We pass down the long lane-like street which leads into the town, and which in the sixteenth century was the scene of desperate conflicts between the Mazariegos and Monsalves, the Montagues and Capulets of Zamora. The first church passed is that of San Pedro, rebuilt by Bishop Meléndez Valdés, and containing the revered ashes of St. Ildefonso, which were discovered here under miraculous circumstances in the year 1260. The relics of St. Atilanus are also preserved here. Nothing remains of the primitive Romanesque structure, except a little apse on the Epistle side, and a closed-up doorway in the left wall. The originally-distinct nave and aisles were thrown into one at the restoration, and form overhead one immense span. The sacristy contains some interesting objects--sacred vessels and altarpieces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Presently we reach the second most interesting church in the town, La Magdalena, a small Romanesque work, said on rather doubtful authority to have been built by the Templars about 1312. The southern doorway is very large in comparison with the edifice. It is deeply recessed between massive buttresses, and formed by a rounded arch with shafts curiously moulded and twisted. Street speaks of this as a very grand example of the latest and most ornate Romanesque work. The carving on the arches is very rich. Above is a large rose window, resembling those in our own Temple church. The interior of the church is architecturally but not æsthetically more interesting than the exterior. The nave has a flat wooden ceiling. The apse is groined, and the chancel has a waggon-vault. The stone pulpit against the north wall is a notable piece of work, but attention at once becomes riveted on the large canopied tombs at the entrance to the chancel. Both are square-topped, with round arches and capitals very purely and vigorously carved. They are generally asserted to date from the thirteenth century, but an inscription over one describes it as the sepulchre of one Acuña and his wife, who died in the fifteenth century. ‘The effect of this monument,’ says Street, ‘filling in as it does the angle at the end of the nave, is extremely good; its rather large detail and general proportions giving it the effect of being an integral part of the fabric rather than, as monuments usually are, a subsequent addition.’
Another canopied tomb against the north wall undoubtedly dates from the earlier period. The capitals of the three twisted shafts are carved with the forms of wyverns fighting. The tomb is closed by a stone on which is a large cross. The occupant--believed by some to have been a Templar--is shown on his deathbed, while above him his soul--represented by a winged head--is borne away by angels. This interesting work may be attributed to a native sculptor acquainted with the art of France and Italy.
Santa Maria la Horta (or de la Huerta), near the river, was modelled, like the Magdalena, on the cathedral. Apart from its architectural peculiarities--the western tower, narrow windows, waggon-vaulting of the chancel, etc.--it is of interest on account of the retablos and paintings in its chapels. Here, as at the very similar church of San Leonardo, the roofing of the nave is not flat but arched, which goes to support Don J. M. Quadrado’s belief (opposed to Street’s) that the flat roof of La Magdalena is an innovation.
The church of San Juan in the Plaza Mayor is in the Flamboyant style. Its most curious feature is a Christ Crucified near the west door, surrounded by human skulls built up in the form of a cross. Hard by is the early Gothic church of San Vicente, with a noble square tower in three stages, and a fine west front.
In a town like Zamora only two kinds of buildings were esteemed--churches and fortresses. Time has spared few important civil monuments. The only ancient house of note is that styled the Casa de los Momos, of which I give an illustration. The heavy stones forming the arch suggest a Castilian architect. The building dates from the sixteenth century, as the enormous coat-of-arms over the entrance might have prepared us to expect. The Ayuntamiento, or Town Hall, in itself devoid of interest, contains some good paintings by Ramon Pedro y Pedret, illustrating the history of the city. It will be seen that Zamora, like almost every other Spanish town, is entitled ‘most noble and loyal’ (_muy noble y leal_). It is a sombre, fascinating place, where the past is more easily recoverable by the fancy than in many cities more richly endowed with ancient monuments.
V
AVILA
Like Stratford-on-Avon, like Assisi, this sombre city in the mountains of Castile is the shrine of a single pre-eminent personality. To the Spaniard Avila is essentially the city of the great saint--of Santa Teresa, the greatest, perhaps, of Spain’s many great women. And the fame of the saint and, therefore, of the city, has spread far beyond the limits of the country in which she was born, and indeed outside of the church to which her every faculty was devoted. To those (and they are in the large majority) who approach Avila as pilgrims, it may seem idle to tell anything of its story unconnected with her. At Assisi you wish to hear only of Francis, and who cares aught for the Stratford of an earlier day than Shakespeare’s?
But Teresa was the product of Avila, and to the making of her character all the experience and emotion of her ancestors had contributed. Those who would rightly understand her must know something of the breed from which she sprang.
The city is one of the forty-three said to have been founded by Hercules. It is mentioned, indeed, by Ptolemy, but we know nothing of its history previous to the reconquest of this part of Castile by Alfonso VI. Avila, like Salamanca and Segovia, arose from the ashes of the Moorish empire, and was repeopled and probably rebuilt by the Count Raymond of Burgundy. To him we owe those venerable walls, stern yet beautiful in their ruddy granite, that girdle the city round. But these served, at a very early date, to keep out other than the infidels. The annalists tell us that the knights of Avila, returning one day from a foray, found that the Moors had ravaged the neighbouring country and carried off a multitude of prisoners and much booty. Without hesitation the enraged gentlemen gave chase, and though the enemy were in vastly superior numbers, they overtook and routed them at Barbacedo, recovering most of the spoil and a good deal of additional treasure. But, on their return to Avila, the ungrateful commons closed the gates against them, and refused admittance to the deliverers of their own wives and children unless they were given a large share of the booty. The indignant knights refused to surrender the guerdon of their swords, and entrenched themselves in the suburbs. Peace was restored only on the intervention of Count Raymond, who expelled the churlish townsmen and intrusted the government of the city to the knights. During the whole of the twelfth century the bitterest animosity continued to prevail between the descendants of these antagonists.
Heroines are common in Spanish history. When the town was unexpectedly besieged by the Almoravides in the absence of nearly the whole male population, the women garrisoned the walls wearing the men’s helmets, and compelled the enemy to withdraw. The leader of these Amazons was Jimena Blásquez, wife of the governor, Fernán Lopez. Her female descendants were privileged, in remembrance of this event, to speak and to vote at the council board in the same way as men.
Jimena’s kinsman, Nalvillos, was as unfortunate in love as he was fortunate in war. One day he saw Ayesha Galiana, the beautiful daughter of the late Moorish king of Toledo. Desperately enamoured, he forgot his own betrothal to Galinda Arias, and that the fair infidel had been promised to her countryman, Jenina Yahya. With the favour of the king he overcame all these obstacles, and made Ayesha his wife. But she could forget neither her old faith nor her old love. Nalvillos’ deeds of prowess failed to win her heart; and one day he returned to Avila from a victorious expedition to find that the bird had flown. She had returned to her first love, Yahya, who had raised the standard of revolt at Talavera. The furious Castilian stormed the town, slew the Moor, and penetrated to his faithless wife’s bower, only to find her expiring from a self-inflicted wound. Nalvillos lived many years after, and fought and won many battles. He rose to great distinction in the service of his sovereign, but we never hear of his marrying again.
It was in this town, that styles itself _del rey_, _de los leales_, _de los caballeros_, that the boy king Alfonso VIII. was placed by the Regent, Don Manrique de Lara, to protect him from his uncle, Fernando of Leon. But the class rancour of Avila was not unknown to Fernando, who stirred up the people of the suburbs against the _serranos_, or aristocratic townsfolk, promising them a share in his new town of Ciudad Rodrigo. The knights were victorious, and do not seem to have conducted themselves with great generosity towards the vanquished.
The inveterate hostility of the commons did not tend, as it might be expected to have done, to unite the threatened ranks of the patricians. These prosecuted bitter feuds among themselves, different families striving desperately for the mastery. One faction, on being expelled from the town, took refuge in a neighbouring castle, where they were surprised and cut to pieces by the Moors.
The place was regarded, notwithstanding, as the safest asylum for the boy-kings who so often appear in the pages of Castilian history. During his minority, Alfonso XI. remained in the custody of the bishop till the pretenders to the regency had adjusted their claims to his lordship’s satisfaction. In the Civil War of 1367 Avila was on the right side--that of Enrique II.--and suffered severely in consequence at the hands of the Black Prince’s marauding hordes. Here at the Puerta del Alcazar took place, at the instance of Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, the mock deposition and degradation of Enrique IV., represented by an effigy, and the proclamation of his eleven-year-old son as king. Yet in 1474 the fickle city displayed every sign of grief and remorse on the unfortunate monarch’s death.
In the disputed succession that ensued Avila sided with Queen Isabel. Possibly as an expression of royal gratitude, the convent of Santo Tomás was chosen for the first seat of the Tribunal of the Inquisition; and in 1491 three Jews, professing the faith of their fathers to the last, were roasted to death in the Mercado Grande.
Avila was the seat of the Supreme Junta of the Comunidad from July to September 1520. The rebellious temper of her citizens found expression in Philip II.’s reign in some anonymous placards, posted in the streets, reflecting on the king’s policy. The royal vengeance was indiscriminate and drastic. The Vicar of Santo Tomás was stripped of his sacerdotal functions, Don Enrique Davila was imprisoned for life in the castle of Turegano, and Don Diego Bracamonte perished on the scaffold. This king’s successor inflicted the _coup de grâce_ on the luckless town by expelling its large and industrious Morisco population. Avila never recovered her prosperity. She remains an example of the wholly destructive policy of the Spanish Hapsburgs. Not only was the country ruined by the expulsion of the Jews and Moriscos, but these exiles were not able to transplant their industry to some other clime. With their expulsion so much productive and industrial power was absolutely lost to the world. The wealth acquired by the Inquisition at the expense of its victims, or rather what was left of it, ultimately found its way into the State coffers on the establishment of the new order of things a century ago.
Avila ‘of the Knights’ was, before all else, a fortress. When the walls were built, churches and suburbs were left outside the enclosure, that the military advantages of the height on which the old town stands might not be lost. These walls of dark-red granite girdle Avila to-day, unbroken, formidable, intact. They rise so high that they shut out from view all that they enclose, except the towers of the cathedral. Near San Vicente the masonry is fourteen feet thick, and forty-two feet in height. Flanking defence is provided by eighty-six elliptical towers--thirty on the north, twelve on the west, twenty-five on the south, twenty-one on the east. These rise above the crenellated parapet at places by eighteen feet. The ten gateways are formed by two towers being brought together and connected with arches. The most impressive gates are the Puertas del Mercado and de San Vicente, the former admitting to the scanty remains of the old Alcazar, the latter facing the church of San Vicente. In both cases the flanking towers are connected at the level of their platforms by a high, arched and crenellated gallery. The actual gateway is defended by a portcullis, and the usual apertures for thrusting out lances, beams, etc. One of the gates, now walled up, was known as the Puerta de la Mala Ventura, in memory of a baseless tradition that it was the scene of the massacre by Alfonso el Batallador of certain Avilese nobles who had been given him as hostages for the little King Alfonso VII. of Castile. Nearly all the gates open on to squares or places of arms. A leisurely walk round these grand old walls is one of the most agreeable experiences of a journey in Spain, and carries the mind back to the days when knighthood was in flower. From their strength it is easy to see how the town could have been held by a limited number of Caballeros against the commoners of the suburb outside. There seems no reason to doubt that the walls were, as tradition avers, built by Raymond of Burgundy in the last decade of the eleventh century. Eight hundred men were employed upon them daily during nine years, under the direction of a Roman, Cassandro, and a Frenchman, Florin de Ponthieu.
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Built into the city wall at its eastern end is the noble cathedral of San Salvador, founded according to some by Fernán Gonzalez, Count of Castile, and begun a second time in 1091 by Alvár Garcia of Estella in Navarra. It is, perhaps, the finest example extant of the fortress-church of the Middle Ages. The oldest part is the apse, which makes a pronounced bastion or projection in the city wall. The external walls probably date from Alvár Garcia’s time, but the rest of the church must be from one to two centuries later.
The church consists of a nave, aisles, projecting transepts and a chevet, which has semicircular chapels built into the town wall and double aisle. The chevet is, architecturally, perhaps the most interesting part of the structure. Nothing at all is to be seen without of the chapels, over which is carried the ordinary rampart walk or allure; behind this rises a second battlemented wall, from which we look down on to the aisle roof of the chevet and clerestory of the central apse. This end of the cathedral appears from the exterior simply as an unusually massive round tower projecting from the wall. The west front is flanked by two towers, only one of which--the northern--is completed. This is a notable and fortresslike structure, recalling similar work in England. The strongly-defined buttresses finish in pinnacles, and are outlined at the angles with a ball enrichment, which is also to be seen on the pointed arches over the belfry windows. The windows themselves are round-arched, as are also those now filled up in a lower stage of the tower. The entrance is comparatively modern. On either side is the figure of a wild man with shield and mace--strange guardians of a church! On the spandrils of the arch are the figures of Saints Peter and Paul. The middle stage of this front is occupied by a curious retablo-like composition. In the various compartments are the figures of Christ and different saints, sheltered by ugly canopies; and surmounting this work is an extravagant and tasteless acroterium, displaying the arms of the Chapter. Behind and above this is the older and infinitely more graceful west window within an elliptical arch, and with delicate though elaborate traceries.
Very much finer is the north porch, admitting not to the transept but to the nave. The elliptical arch has on each side six jambs, each of which is adorned with the figure of an apostle resting on the capital of a pilaster and sheltered beneath a canopy. The five orders of the arch are sculptured with reliefs of angels and prophets, alternating with wreaths. In the centre of the tympanum is the seated figure of Christ; and around Him, arranged in four horizontal divisions, are compositions representing the Betrayal and Last Supper, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Angelic Choir. Street recognises in this doorway the work of the architect of the portals of the cathedrals of Leon and Burgos. Before it are two lions couchant on pedestals, chained to the walls. The porch dates from the fourteenth century. Above it is a canopy begun in 1566, and intended to form a kind of triumphal arch. Crowning all is seen the figure of the Redeemer.
The north transept is pierced by a fine wheel-window of sixteen divisions. The windows of the clerestory are very large, and placed between great double flying buttresses. Since 1772 the upper and lower traceries have been blocked up, for a reason not apparent to the modern observer. The windows of the transept escaped this treatment, and are filled with good stained glass.
The nave is 130 feet long and 28 feet broad. The arches are supported by piers of four pilasters, the capitals of which show Romanesque influence. The aisles are only about half the height of the nave, and are 24 feet wide. Their pitched roof formerly admitted light into the nave through the triforium, now blocked up.
The outer walls of the chevet, as we have seen, are the most ancient part of the fabric, but the seven chapels formed within the thickness of the wall are of later date. The extraordinary beauty of this part of the church is due to the division of the ambulatory into two by a series of tall, slender columns carrying some excellent groining. The outer or recessed aisle is narrower than the inner, an inequality corrected very skilfully at the opening into the south transept by an imperceptible deviation in the line of columns. Very little light penetrates through the narrow slits in the chapel walls into this sombre, beautiful arcade.
Behind the reredos of the High Altar sleeps the learned bishop, Don Alonso Fernández de Madrigal, surnamed el Tostado and el Abulense, who died in 1455. The prelate, who was one of the most prolific writers that ever lived, is shown in alabaster writing at a desk. The framework of the tomb is adorned with reliefs of the Adoration of the Magi and Shepherds, of the Divine and Cardinal Virtues, and of the Eternal Father. This noble work has been variously ascribed to Berruguete and to Domenico Fancelli, whose more famous performance we shall see in the church of Santo Tomás.
In the chapel of Santa Ana is buried Don Sancho Davila, Bishop of Plasencia, who died in 1625. Most of the tombs in the chapels of the chevet belong, however, to the thirteenth century, though the dates on most of them are merely conjectural, and were inscribed in the sixteenth century by a prebendary of the cathedral.
The High Altar is backed by an elaborate retablo of the age of the Catholic Kings. It is divided into three stages, and was painted by Pedro Berruguete (father of the more famous Alonso), Santos Cruz, and Juan de Borgoña (father of Felipe). To the two first-named may be attributed the ten panels of the lowest stage, representing Saints Peter and Paul, the Four Evangelists, and Four Doctors of the Church, and the Transfiguration, Annunciation, Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, and Presentation in the Temple, in the second stage. To Borgoña we may ascribe the Agony in the Garden, the Scourging, Crucifixion, Descent into Hell, and Resurrection, in the third stage. To the right and left of the church are two beautiful Renaissance retablos in alabaster, illustrating the lives of Saints Secundus and Catharine, and two tasteful gilt iron pulpits. The light reaches the High Altar through two rows of thirteen windows, the lower ‘round-arched, of two horseshoe-headed lights divided by a shafted monial,’ and the upper ‘round-headed, broadish windows, with jamb-shafts and richly-chevroned arches.’ The fine stained glass is the work of Albert of Holland (1520-1525).
The choir was placed in the easternmost bay of the nave in 1531. The _trascoro_ or back of the choir is adorned with reliefs of the Adoration of the Magi, the Massacre of the Innocents, and the Presentation; smaller panels represent other scenes from the history of Christ and the Blessed Virgin. The frieze with its fourteen figures of prophets is the finest part of the work. The choir stalls were begun in 1527 by Juan Rodrigo, and completed by Cornelius of Holland in 1536. The carving is of varying merit. The upper panels appear to portray the martyrdoms of different saints, episodes in whose lives are shown on the panels below. The ornamentation of the columns and friezes is profuse and delicately done.
In the south transept is the fine tomb of Don Sancho Davila, Bishop of Sigüenza, who died in 1534, and near him that of a namesake, whose effigy is clad in armour. This knight died before the walls of Alhama in a combat so furious that his scattered limbs had afterwards to be collected and pieced together by his friends. A curious tomb is to be seen near by: the figures of a knight in armour and an ecclesiastic repose on black coffins, the sides of which are sculptured with escutcheons upheld by woolly-haired savages; a monkey is seen pulling the negroes’ hair. In the chapel of San Miguel, at the north-west end of the nave, is an interesting tomb of the thirteenth century, representing a funeral, whereat the anguish of the mourners contrasts strikingly with the stoical indifference of the clergy.
The gorgeous chapel of San Segundo at the south-east of the apse, outside the town wall, was founded in 1595 by Bishop Manrique, on the model, it is said, of the Escorial. Magnificence, rather than good taste, characterises this chapel and its furniture. Frescoes by Francisco Llamas illustrate the life of the saint, whose ashes are contained in a Churrigueresque tabernacle. On the opposite side of the apse, but within the wall, is another excrescence, the Velada chapel, completed in the eighteenth century.
The sacristy is an ornate Renaissance structure, richly gilded and painted. The alabaster retablo over the altar of St. Barnabas is the work of a genius whose name unfortunately has not been handed down. The chamber also contains some curious fifteenth-century paintings relating to the life of St. Peter. Here may be seen the superb monstrance of Juan de Arfe, dated 1574, and therefore among his earliest works.