Part 9
At the latter end of the ninth century Zaragoza (or Sarakusta, as it was called by the Moors), shook off the yoke of the Khalifas, and under the sway of the renowned Hafsûn became for a short time an independent state. More lasting was the monarchy set up at the close of the eleventh century, on the break-up of the Spanish Khalifate, by the vigorous Almundhir Ben Hud, whose power extended from Lerida to Guadalajara, from the mountains of Biscay to the Mediterranean. His son and successor, Suleyman, made the mistake of dividing his dominions among his four sons, Sarakusta being assigned to the eldest, Ahmed Almuktader. But, united or disunited, the Moors of north-eastern Spain were incapable of offering an effective resistance to the ever-growing power of the Christian kingdom of Aragon. In the spring of 1118, Alfonso el Batallador appeared before the walls of Zaragoza with a formidable host. The city held out till the garrison witnessed the total defeat of an army sent to their relief by the Almoravides. All hope being then gone, the gates were opened on December 18, 1118, and Zaragoza became the capital of the kingdom of Aragon.
As such, it was endowed with a very liberal charter--the _fuero_, of which we read so often in Aragonese history. The defence of these liberties was intrusted to twenty magistrates, who were invested with authority to deal in the most summary and drastic fashion with evildoers, whatever might be their station. Nor did they hesitate, in after years, to raze the castles of any barons who threatened the peace of the city. Domestic affairs were regulated by twelve jurates, representing the twelve parishes. Pedro II. amplified these privileges, and decreed that the municipality should not be responsible for its acts even to the sovereign.
The history of Zaragoza during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries is full of instances of civil strife, of faction fights, and of struggles with the royal authority. The citizens refused to recognise Alfonso III. as king till he had been crowned within their walls. They paid dearly for their arrogance under Pedro IV., who hanged thirty of their number at the Toledo gate, and burnt the articles of the Union--a pact extorted from one of his predecessors--in a public assembly.
Under Fernando I. the city’s privileges were further curtailed. But as licence and disorder showed no signs of abating, a kind of vigilance committee was formed in 1454, headed by Jimeno Gordo. This worthy put down all disturbances with iron hand, and waged war on the neighbouring barons. His career was cut short in 1474 by Ferdinand the Catholic, who caused him to be publicly executed. All the disorderly elements of the city rejoiced at his death.
The introduction of the Inquisition met with much opposition in several Spanish towns, but nowhere more than at Zaragoza. Deputations were sent from the states of Aragon to wait on the king at Valladolid, to urge upon him the withdrawal of the obnoxious tribunal, without avail. Such contemptuous indifference to the laws and wishes of the people of Aragon roused the Zaragozans to a dangerous pitch of exasperation. About midnight, September 14, 1485, a party of six men entered the cathedral, and found the Inquisitor, Pedro de Arbues of Epila, in prayer before the altar. They at once transfixed him with their swords and knives, but only a few of the blows struck home, thanks to the shirt of mail which the victim, like most of the Inquisitors, wore beneath his cassock. The deed, of course, only riveted the chains of the Holy Office more firmly upon the Aragonese.
Most of the assassins were captured, and perished in the flames. De Arbues was canonised in 1664. There can be no question that the Inquisition was established contrary to the laws of the country, and that the man met his death through presuming to discharge unlawful functions. He died for having broken the law, his executioners for having vindicated it.
The persistent encroachments of the Crown upon their constitutional rights during the next century met with strenuous resistance from the people of Aragon. The long-impending storm burst in 1590. Antonio Pérez, having incurred the anger of Philip II., fled to Zaragoza, and invoked the protection of the states. According to the _fueros_, he was then confined in the prison of the Manifestacion pending his trial. But the Holy Office impudently removed him from the custody of the law, and threw him into their prison of the Aljaferia. A popular tumult followed. Pérez was released and taken back to his first prison. The Viceroy, the Marqués de Almenara, died of chagrin, it is said, at the insults he had received from the crowd. Four months later a fresh riot broke out, and enabled Pérez to make good his escape to France.
Philip now sent an army of 14,000 men into Aragon to re-establish his authority on the ruins of the constitution. The Justiciary, Juan de Lanuza, summoned the people to defend their country. But the Castilians dispersed this hastily collected force at the first encounter, and entered Zaragoza unopposed on December 12. Juan de Lanuza and many other persons of note were judicially murdered; the leaders of the aristocracy were imprisoned, and the city sacked from end to end.
Never again did Zaragoza raise its head in defiance of the King of Spain. The _fueros_ continued nominally in force till 1707, when they were formally abrogated by Philip V. in revenge perhaps for the defeat sustained before the walls at the hands of Stanhope and Stahremberg. But the spirit of the people was far from being crushed. They might bow before their own king, but they would not bend the knee to a foreigner. Zaragoza’s defence in 1808 is one of the most glorious episodes in the history of the nation. When the revolution broke out at Madrid on May 2, the citizens expelled the Governor, Guillelmi, and elected as leader Don Jose Palafox, a young noble of great personal courage and charm. He was assisted by a priest named Santiago Sas, his secretary Boggiero, who is said to have penned all his proclamations, and by three peasant leaders, ‘Tio’ Jorge, ‘Tio’ Marin, and Mariano Cerezo. All their equipment for war consisted at the outset of 220 men, a few muskets, and sixteen guns; yet when Lefebvre Desnouettes arrived before the place on June 15, he met with so stubborn a resistance that he was compelled to proceed cautiously. He reduced the city indeed to a heap of ruins, but he had not taken it when Dupont’s surrender at Bailen obliged him, on August 15, to raise the siege.
The French reappeared in December 1808, to the number of 18,000 men, under the command of Marshals Lannes, Moncey, Mortier, and Junot. The city was attacked on two sides at once, but more especially from the Jesuit convent on the left bank of the Ebro, which the Spaniards had neglected to secure. What followed may be read in the pages of Napier. The besiegers breached the wall near the convent of Santa Engracia, and the combat was continued day after day in the streets of the town. Every house was held as a fortress, every few yards of street was defended by a barricade. In answer to the summons to surrender rang Palafox’s defiant ‘War to the knife and to the last ditch!’ The women in many cases fought beside the men. When Maria Agustin saw her sweetheart fall at his post, she took the linstock from his hand and fired the gun herself. The fame of this ‘Maid of Saragossa’ has penetrated every land. For twenty-one days the fighting continued in the streets. Finally, on February 21, 1809, the defenders capitulated on honourable terms. The town was a smoking heap of ruins and of dead. Zaragoza had shown an astonished world that the spirit of Saguntum and Numantia yet lived in Spaniards. And, we doubt not, it still lives.
The city soon arose from the ashes. It rapidly recovered its prosperity, which took a fresh impetus on the opening of the four railways, east, west, north, and south. Here you see both the Old and the New Spain--the one with its heroic, glorious memories, the other with its promise of things as great and happier.
THE CITY
Zaragoza stands on the right bank of the Ebro in an oasis in the desert of Aragon. Nothing could be more attractive than the immediate environs, or more desolate than the country a few miles farther out. Such a situation was familiar to the Berber conquerors, who made themselves at home here and left their mark on the architecture of the city long after the last ‘Tagarin’ Moor had been expelled. Not, of course, that Zaragoza is to be compared as regards Musulman architecture with Seville, Cordova, Granada, and Toledo; but the Moor has left behind him unmistakable evidences of his presence, and an interesting monument called the Aljaferia, which endures, though oft and oft restored, to this day.
The name seems to be derived from Jaffir, a not uncommon name among the Moors, and borne perhaps by one of the Beni Hud dynasty, for whom the building served as a palace. At the conquest in 1118 it was allotted by Alfonso the Battler to the Benedictine order. In the fourteenth century it again became the residence of royalty, and doubtless was entirely transformed and repaired. It was the scene of great splendour at the coronation of King Martin, and of several of his successors. To-day it presents a sad and dilapidated appearance. The imposing staircase, decorated with fine stucco work, is the creation of the Catholic sovereigns, who seem to have had some idea of reconstituting the past glories of the palace in true Moorish style. The ceilings of some of the chambers are in the artesonado style--the work of fifteenth-century artificers. The most beautiful is to be seen in the Salon de la Alcoba, where was born in 1271 the sainted Princess Isabel, afterwards Queen of Portugal, and persistently confounded by English writers with St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Everywhere among the decorations appear the devices and mottoes of Ferdinand and Isabel.
Genuine Moorish work is to be seen in a little octagonal chamber opening off the patio. Of the eight arches, two are in horseshoe shape, and the others formed by irregular and capricious curves. The columns are almost hidden in the walls. The ceiling is modern, and unfortunately cuts off the view of the elegant _ajimeces_ and arabesques of the upper stage. The ornamentation recalls that of the Alhambra. This chamber--said by some, on no particular authority, to have been a mosque--was the seat of the Inquisition down to 1706. The guide points out a cell called La Torreta, in which--according to Verdi’s opera _Il Trovatore_--Manrico was confined. The opera is founded on a legend of Zaragoza, and the libretto was written by Garcia Gutierrez, a native of the city.
Some may enjoy the beautiful view of the Pyrenees obtained from the Aljaferia more than the building itself.
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Probably only a few fragments of this old palace are older than the Cathedral of La Seo. This is the name commonly given in Aragon to the cathedral church, and comes, of course, from the Latin _sedes_, like our own word ‘See.’ Zaragoza became the metropolitan city of Aragon in 1318, and the archiepiscopal dignity was reserved as far as possible to the illegitimate sons of the kings. The city has now two cathedrals, which are used for alternating periods of six months. The Seo is the older of these, and occupies the site of the Moorish mosque--some say, even of an earlier Christian temple dating from Roman times. The church was, at all events, entirely rebuilt between 1188 and 1432, several Moorish names being mentioned among the architects. It can hardly be said to have been completed till the year 1550. Here were crowned the Kings of Aragon, and here, as we have related, was slain the Inquisitor, Pedro de Arbues.
The west front was completed as late as 1685 by Julian Garza and Juan Bautista Contini. It is in the classical style of that period, and is in two stages separated by a broad entablature. The lower stage is adorned with massive Corinthian columns, and pierced with three doorways; the upper story is decorated with three statues of Christ and the Apostles Peter and Paul, by Giral, placed in niches; above is a pediment finished with an ugly finial. This front is flanked by an octagonal tower of four stages, each smaller than the lower one, and is therefore not inaptly compared by Ford to a telescope. This structure is in the same style and reveals the same want of taste as the adjoining façade. The third stage contains the belfry. The whole is surmounted by a weather-vane and steeple, perched on a Moorish-looking dome. The statues of the Apostles on the belfry are by Acali. There is no other façade worthy of notice; but the Puerta de la Pavostria is in the better and earlier classic style of the sixteenth century. It derives its name from a functionary known as the Pavorde, who here distributed alms.
Street, who did not consider this cathedral in general interesting, has much to say about a portion of brickwork at the north-east angle, inlaid with small tiles in diapers, red, blue, green, white, and buff on white. The eminent architect sees in this an interesting specimen of Moorish work, and praises the grave quiet of the whole decoration (_Gothic Architecture in Spain_, xvii. 372).
The church is of unusual breadth, there being two aisles and a row of chapels on each side of the nave. ‘The nave and aisles,’ says the authority we have just quoted, ‘are all roofed at the same level, the vaulting springing from the capitals of the main columns, and the whole of the light is admitted by windows in the end walls, and high up in the outer walls of the aisles. In this respect Spanish churches of late date almost always exhibit an attention to the requirements of the climate, which is scarcely ever seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and this church owes almost all its good effect to this circumstance, for it is in light and shade only, and neither in general detail nor in design that it is a success.’
The vaultings are adorned with gilded pendants and bosses, very much in the Moorish style. The light red marble pavement, with rays diverging from the yellow marble bases of the columns, appears to have been intended to suggest a reflection of the roof with its ogive vaultings above. The decoration is tasteful and not elaborate. The capitals are sculptured with _putti_ upholding escutcheons with animals and foliage.
Over the chancel is the lantern, octagonal in plan, which replaced an earlier one in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The work was undertaken by Enrique de Egas, only at the express command of the king. The lower part is adorned with statues in niches, and with the canting arms (the half-moon) of the family of Archbishop de Luna.
The reredos of the High Altar is of alabaster and in the Gothic style. It was executed at the order of (and not by, as we have seen erroneously stated) Archbishop Dalmacio de Mur (1430-1456). The seven compartments are filled with compositions representing the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, the burial of St. Vincent, and episodes in the history of St. Valerus; with statues of the two latter saints, angels, and New Testament scenes. In all, the expressions and the draperies are exquisitely rendered. Don J. M. Quadrado is of opinion that this superb work was executed by Pedro Johán of Cataluña, Ans, Gombao, Caspar, and Gil Morlán successively.
Before the High Altar the coronation took place, and the king, robed like a deacon, prostrated himself before the primate. On the gospel side is the wooden coffin which contains the ashes of Maria, daughter of _Jaime lo Conqueridor_, who died in 1267. At her side is the noble marble tomb of Archbishop Don Juan de Aragon, brother of Ferdinand the Catholic, with statues of the Mater Dolorosa, attended by Saints Jerome, Martin, and Francis. Here are also the tombs of Archbishop Don Alonso, natural son of Ferdinand the Catholic, and of his natural son, also Archbishop, Don Fernando. The first-named did not take orders till after the birth of his son and successor, and only celebrated one mass, deeming himself unworthy of the sacerdotal functions. Beneath a tablet is deposited the heart of the Infante Baltasar Carlos, eldest son of Philip IV., carried off by smallpox at the age of seventeen. His portrait is familiar to students of Velazquez.
The choir occupies two of the five bays west of the crossing. It is in the Gothic style, and closed by a modern railing. In the centre is the tomb of Archbishop de Mede, from whose time the choir dates. The stalls are of Flemish oak. The fine lectern dates from 1413. The _trascoro_, or back of the choir, is a gorgeous plateresque affair in marble and stucco, the work of Tudelilla of Tarazona, who flourished about 1538. His are the statues of the martyrs Vincent and Laurence, the four reliefs illustrating their martyrdom, and that of San Valero, and the groups of cherubim. The tabernacle is in a not untasteful baroque style, and has side columns of black marble and a good crucifix. This figure of Christ is said to have addressed Canon Funes, afterwards Bishop of Albarracin, who is shown on his knees regarding it. The sides of the choir are adorned with statues of saints, including that of Pedro de Arbues, on the very spot where he was slain.
Few of the chapels are of interest, and all but one have been disfigured with baroque portals. In the chapel of San Bernardo is the fine tomb and effigy by Morlánes of Archbishop Don Fernando de Aragon, above being a retablo representing the Betrayal and the Crucifixion. Close by lies Doña Ana de Gurrea, mother of the prelate (died 1527). The chapel of San Gabriel, founded by Gabriel de Zaporta, is notable for its fine bronze _reja_ and plateresque adornments. In the chapel of San Dominguito del Val are preserved ‘the remains of the third child crucified by the Jews in hatred of Christ towards the year 1250’; and the chapel of San Pedro de Arbues contains that worthy’s body, his kneeling effigy by José Ramirez, and paintings by Jimenez of Tarazona. In the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Blanca are collected the tombs of sundry archbishops. The chapel of San Miguel owes its origin to a ghastly legend. Passing through the pine grove of Villaroya, the Archbishop Don Lope de Luna heard a voice calling him. He turned and saw that it proceeded from a severed head which came leaping towards him. The decapitated man had called on the Archangel at the moment the axe descended, and life was miraculously preserved in his head till he had made his confession, and was absolved by the primate. De Luna’s tomb is a triumph of Gothic art. He is shown with mitre and crozier, reclining on a sarcophagus which is sculptured with twenty-eight figures of friars in various attitudes. In niches in the wall surrounding the tomb are beautifully carved figures of ecclesiastics and grandees, full of vigour and expression. The name of the sculptor of this fine work is unhappily unknown.
In the sacristy is to be seen the Gothic cross of gold and jewel-work, on which the kings of Aragon swore to observe the _fueros_. Some of the vestments are very fine. A casulla is said to have come from old St. Paul’s, London, at the time of the Reformation. There is a magnificent _custodia_, dating from 1537, and a fine silver reliquary, sent from Avignon in 1405 by Benedict XIII. (the anti-pope, De Luna). In the Sala Capitular are pictures attributed to Ribera and Zurbarán. The fine tiled pavement of this room is modern.
The church of Santiago is mentioned as far back as 1121, and retains a few Romanesque features. Here the saint is said to have lived on his visit to Spain; and in the porch the magistrates of the city used to assemble and to administer justice.
The most important church in Zaragoza after the Seo is, in Street’s estimation, that of San Pablo, built in 1259. The octagonal steeple is faced with tiles in much the same way as the part of the cathedral wall above described, and is certainly a later addition to the structure. The nave is of four bays and terminates in a five-sided apse. The aisle is continued all round the church, and communicates with the nave by pointed arches in an extraordinarily thick wall. In the left aisle are five early and highly interesting Gothic retablos. The elaborate reredos of the High Altar, with its reliefs of the Passion and of the Acts of St. Paul, is hardly worthy of the master--Damian Forment--to whom it has been hastily attributed. Ford suggests that it is the work of one of his pupils.
The church of Santa Engracia, which figured prominently in the great siege, commemorates the massacre of a number of Christians of both sexes by the soldiery of Dacian. The bodies of the saints, Engracia and Lupercius, having been discovered here in 1389, the church already built on the spot was enlarged, and finally rebuilt with great splendour by Ferdinand the Catholic. A terrific explosion on August 13, 1808, completely wrecked the fabric, leaving little more than the plateresque portal, believed to have been designed by Morlánes. The entrance is through a round arch recessed within another, and surrounded by a retablo-like arrangement of niches containing groups. The outer arch is flanked by four statues of doctors of the Church in niches, and surmounted by statues of Ferdinand and Isabel.
The existing church, clumsily restored by the Hermits of St. Jerome, contains some interesting tombs of the martyrs. They appear to date from the fifth century. One is decorated with reliefs in the rudest Byzantine style, the subjects being Adam and Eve and the Serpent, and the sixteen martyrs, whose relics are enclosed. The pillar is shown at which Santa Engracia was flogged by order of Dacian, and a well which is believed to contain the bones of innumerable martyrs.
It is curious and painful how constantly the memorials of religious fanaticism confront one in this beautiful country. Here we are shown the spot where a Christian suffered for his faith; there where a Jew perished; there where a Moor died for conscience’ sake. Persecution naturally engenders a vindictive and intolerant temper in its victims, and these, become the masters, are hardened, not softened, by affliction. Religion, too, in Spain was almost always identified with race. The Moor, the Jew, and the Lutheran were not only infidels or heretics, but aliens--the political and racial enemies of the Spaniard. In fact, religious intolerance in the Peninsula cannot be said to have assumed such unnatural forms as in France and Germany, where men of the same blood and language cut each other’s throats, and vied with each other in doing the most harm to their native lands.