Each of these kingdoms of course inherited a certain number of buildings erected under the rulers who had formerly held the country. It is possible that some portion of the walls of Toledo were built by the Goths; and at any rate we know by the fortunate discovery of the crowns at Guarrazar,[401] that, whatever may have been the state of the people in respect of other arts, that of working in precious metals was in an advanced state.

The Moors who succeeded them undertook undoubtedly large works in many parts of the country. They first built the Bridge of Alcantara across the Tagus at Toledo, and enclosed several towns with strong walls, among others Valencia and Talavera. They erected mosques and other public buildings, and before the Christian conquests of the eleventh century had no doubt imported much of a very advanced civilization into the country which they ruled. The mosque "Cristo de la Luz," at Toledo, is a remarkable example of delicate skill in design and construction, and certainly in advance of the coeval Christian works. The ingenuity of the planning of the vaults is extreme, and though, at the same time, there is to our eyes an error in trying to do so much in so very small a s.p.a.ce--nine vaulting compartments covered with varied vaults being contrived in a chamber only 21 feet square--it is to be observed that this is just one of the mistakes which arises from over-great education and skill, and is in marked contrast to the kind of design which we see in the simple, grave, but rude buildings which the less cultivated Christians were erecting at the same period.

Of the early Christian buildings I think there can be but little doubt that some at least still exist. There is no one year in Spanish history which can be used as that of the Norman Conquest is in England. Here people are accustomed to argue as though before and after A.D. 1066 two entirely different styles existed, with few, if any, marks of imitation of one from the other, though of course both must have had the same common Roman origin. This cannot be said in Spain; and where we find distinct and good evidence of the erection of churches in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the buildings still standing, with every architectural evidence of not being more modern than the eleventh century, I see not why we should doubt their greater antiquity. For looking to the solid way in which all these early works were built, it seems to be extremely unlikely that they should have required rebuilding so soon, or that, if they were rebuilt, not only should older stones with inscriptions recording the dates be inserted in the new walls, but also that no kind of evidence--doc.u.mentary or other--should be forthcoming as to their reconstruction.

Several inscriptions on foundation-stones are given by Cean Bermudez,[402] and I regret never having been able to examine the buildings in which they occur. One of the earliest of these, Sta. Cruz de Cangas, is described as having a crypt; and a long inscription, with the date 739, on a stone in it is given by Florez.[403] But I gather from Mr. Ford that the church has now been modernized. Cean Bermudez describes it as "strong, arched, and without ornament." Another church at Santianes de Pravia has a labyrinthine inscription of A.D. 776, recording its erection by the King Silo. This church was very small, but had a Capilla mayor, two side chapels, a Crossing, and three naves; in fact, was in plan completely and exactly what the Spanish churches of the twelfth century were; and in this case it may, perhaps, be doubted whether the inscription referred to the church described, and was not taken from some older building. But the most interesting probably of these early churches is that of Sta. Maria de Naranco, near Oviedo. This is described and ill.u.s.trated by Parcerisa,[404] and is undoubtedly a most remarkable example, though unfortunately I can find no reliable evidence as to its probably very early date. It seems to be planned with a view to a congregation outside the church joining in the worship within, there being galleries and open arches at the ends through which the altar might be seen. I confess that the details which I have seen, as well as the plans and views of this church, and of some portions of Oviedo Cathedral, to which a similarly early date is ascribed, do not give me the impression of work which is sufficiently distinct in style to be p.r.o.nounced, as the Spanish writers have it, "obra de G.o.dos," or work of the Goths. Yet it is undoubtedly of early date, and probably, at any rate, not later than the tenth or eleventh century. The detail is Romanesque, and the modification of plan in such a building seems to point to some special use for it rather than to some special age for its erection. On the other hand, there is some reason to suppose that the church at Santiago, which existed before the erection of the present cathedral, was very similar in its plan;[405] and if so, it would seem to fortify the claim for a very early date for Sta. Maria de Naranco.

I have thought it right to refer to these buildings on account of the great age ascribed to some of them; but I have done so with some hesitation, because I have not seen them myself, and it is impossible to form any good opinion upon such questions as arise in connexion with them without careful personal examination.

It is a relief, therefore, to turn now to more certain ground, and to speak of churches which I have myself seen. I think the earliest of these are the two old churches of San Pablo and San Pera, at Barcelona, said to have been built in A.D. 914 and 983. I see no reason whatever to doubt these dates; at least it is improbable that if San Pablo was built in 914 it should have required rebuilding before the end of the next century; and no one I suppose would suggest a later date for it than this. In any case it is a valuable example. The ground-plan is cruciform, with a central lantern and three eastern apses; and the roofs are all covered with waggon vaulting and semi-domes. The plan is quite worthy of very attentive consideration, since with more or less modification of details it is that which more than any other may be said to have been popular in Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The question as to the quarter from whence it was derived is one of the greatest possible interest, and admits, I think, of but little doubt. It must be remembered that in considering these questions there are no Pyrenees. The towns on what is now the French side of the mountains were not then French; and such places as S. Elne were not only really Spanish, but so intimate was the connexion existing between them and places at a greater distance (as _e.g._ Carca.s.sonne), that for our purpose they may fairly be considered as being in the same country. The plan which we see in San Pablo del Campo is one which, having its origin in the East, spread to the north of Italy, was adopted largely in Provence, Auvergne, and Aquitaine, and was probably imported from thence to Barcelona. The central lantern and the three eastern apses are rather Byzantine than Romanesque in their origin; and though they are not common in Italy, they are occasionally met with; whilst in the parts of France just mentioned they are of frequent occurrence. The church which I coupled with this--San Pedro de las Puellas, in the same city--was consecrated in A.D. 983; it is also cruciform, but has no chapels east of the transepts. Here, too, we have waggon-vaults, and a central dome.

The little church of San Daniel,[406] at Gerona, not much later probably in date than those first mentioned, is mainly remarkable for the apsidal north and south ends of its transepts. This common German arrangement is most rarely seen in Spain, and deserves especial notice. Here it is coupled with a central octagonal lantern, which has a very good effect.

It is repeated very nearly in the church at Tarrasa, and so far as the apses at the end of the transept in the church of San Pedro, Gerona; and there is considerable similarity between the latter and the cathedral at Le Puy en Velay.

The succeeding century shows us the same type of plan becoming much more popular, and developed again in such close imitation of some foreign examples as to make it almost impossible to doubt its foreign origin. In these buildings the nave has usually a waggon-vault, and this is supported by half barrel-vaults in the aisles. There is no clerestory; a central lantern rises to a moderate height; and three eastern apsidal chapels open into the transepts, and are roofed with semi-domes. San Pedro, Huesca--probably not later in date than A.D. 1096-1150--is a remarkably good and early example of the cla.s.s; and will be found to be extremely similar to some of the churches built about the same time on the other side of the Pyrenees. The plan of the steeple[407]--which is hexagonal--deserves special record; and it may not be amiss to observe, that at Tarbes, in the Pyrenees, the princ.i.p.al church not only has three eastern apses, but also a central octagonal steeple; and the same type is again repeated at San Pedro, Gerona--said to have been commenced in A.D. 1117--though here there are two apses on each side of the princ.i.p.al altar, and all the detail of the design is very Italian, or perhaps I should rather say Provencal, in its character. If we compare some of these churches with the earlier portions of the cathedral at Carca.s.sonne, we shall find them to be almost identical in character and detail, and cannot avoid coming to the conclusion that they were all designed by the same school of architects or masons. Carca.s.sonne Cathedral has a nave and aisles divided by columns formed of a square block, with an engaged shaft on each face: the covering of the nave is a waggon-vault with square ribs on its under side, and that of the aisles is a quadrant. It is, in fact, almost identical with San Pedro at Gerona. Go farther east, and in the church at Monistrol, between Le Puy and S. Etienne, the same design precisely will be seen in a remote French village far from Spain.

About this period a type of church varying but little from this became extremely common in Aquitaine and Auvergne; and this again evidently influenced at least one of the Spanish architects very much indeed: I allude to such churches as those of Notre Dame du Port, Clermont Ferrand, and S. Sernin at Toulouse--to name two only out of a large number. In these the ground-plan has usually nave and aisles, transepts, central lantern, and a chevet consisting of an apsidal choir with a surrounding aisle, and chapels opening into it, with s.p.a.ces between each chapel. This plan, as I have already shown, is absolutely repeated at Santiago with such close accuracy that one can hardly avoid calling it merely a reproduction of S. Sernin at Toulouse.[408] It is the more remarkable because for some reason the early Spanish architects almost always avoided the erection of a regular chevet, and adhered strictly to their first plan of separate apsidal chapels on the eastern side of the transept. But whilst the early French chevet was only copied at Santiago, the other features of the French churches to which it belonged were copied not unfrequently--these are the waggon-vaulted nave, supported by half waggon-vaults over the aisles, and the central lantern. Gradually the design of these various parts was developed into a sort of stereotyped regularity, the instances of which extend so far across to the Peninsula as to be very surprising to those who have noticed the remarkable way in which local peculiarities generally confine themselves to the particular districts in which they originated.

In course of time the groining was varied, and in place of the round barrel-vault, one of pointed section was adopted, and in place of it again the usual quadripart.i.te vault. The examples which I have described, and which belong to this cla.s.s, are--San Isidoro, Leon; San Vicente and San Pedro, Avila; several churches in Segovia; the old Cathedral at Salamanca; Lerida old Cathedral; Sta. Maria, Benevente; and Santiago, la Coruna. Other churches of precisely similar character exist at Valdedios, near Gijon; Villanueva and Villa Mayor, near Ona; San Antolin de Bedon, between Ribadella and Llanes; Sandoval, on the river Esla; San Juan de Amandi and Tarbes, on the French side of the Pyrenees.

Those in Segovia may be accepted as the best examples of their cla.s.s, and they are so closely alike in all their details as to lead naturally to the belief that they were all executed at about the same period, and by the same workmen. The sack of the city by the Moors in 1071, when it is said that thirty churches were destroyed, seems to point to the period at which most of these churches were probably erected to take the place of those that had been destroyed; and it seems to be certain that their leading features remained generally unaltered until about the end of the twelfth, if not far into the succeeding century. Indeed it is remarkable in Spain, just as it is in Germany, that the late Romanesque style, having once been introduced, retained its position and _prestige_ longer than it did in France, and was only supplanted finally by designs brought again from France in a later style, instead of developing into it through the features of first-pointed, as was the case in England and France.

In this general similarity there are several subordinate variations to be observed. At Santiago, for instance, we see an almost absolute copy of the great church of S. Sernin, Toulouse, erected soon after its original had been completed. At Lugo it is clear, I think, that the architect of the cathedral copied, not from any foreign work, but from that at Santiago: he was probably neither acquainted with the church at Toulouse, nor any of its cla.s.s. At San Vicente, Avila, again, though we see the Segovian eastern apses repeated with absolute accuracy, the design of the church is modified in a most important manner by the introduction of quadripart.i.te vaulting in place of the waggon-vault, and the piercing the wall above the nave arcades with a regular triforium and clerestory. The same design was repeated with little alteration at San Pedro, in the same city; and in both it seems to me that we may detect some foreign influence, so rare was the introduction of the clerestory in Spanish buildings of the same age. Sta. Maria, la Coruna, again, though it evidently belongs to the same cla.s.s as the cathedral at Santiago, has certain peculiarities which identify it absolutely with that variation which we see at Carca.s.sonne and Monistrol:[409] for here there are narrow aisles; and the three divisions of the church are all covered with waggon-vaults, those at the sides resisting the thrust from the centre, and, owing to their slight width, exerting but slight pressure on the outer walls. The distinction between this design and one in which the aisles are covered with quadrant-vaults is very marked; and the erection of the cathedral at Santiago would not have been very likely to lead to the design of such a church as this.

In all these churches the proportion of the length of the choir to that of the nave is very small. Usually the apses are either simply added against the eastern wall of the transept, or else, whilst the side apses are built on this plan, the central apse is lengthened by the addition of one bay between the Crossing and the apse. It is very important to mark this plan, because, however it was introduced--whether in such churches as that of the abbey of Veruela, where the conventual arrangement of Citeaux was imported, or in those earlier churches of which San Pedro, Gerona, may be taken as an example, in which from the first no doubt the choir was transferred to the nave, and the central apse treated only as a sanctuary--the result was the same on Spanish architecture and Spanish ritual. The Church found herself in possession of churches with short eastern apses and no choirs; and instead of retaining the old arrangement of the choir, close to and in face of the altar, she admitted her laity to the transept, divorced the choir from the altar, and invented those church arrangements which puzzle ecclesiologists so much. In our own country the same system to some extent at first prevailed; but our architects took a different course; they retained their choirs, prolonged them into the nave, and so contrived without suffering the separation of the clergy from the altar they serve, which we see in Spain.[410] In one great English church only has the Spanish system been adopted, and this, strangely enough, in the most complete fashion. Westminster Abbey, in fact, will enable any one to understand exactly what the arrangement of a Spanish church is. Its short choir, just large enough for a sumptuous and glorious altar, its Crossing exactly fitted for the stalls of the clergy and choir, its nave and transepts large enough to hold a magnificent crowd of worshippers, are all mis-used just as they would be in Spain; whilst the modern arrangements for the people--much more mistaken than they are there--involve the possession of the greater part of the choir by the laity, and the entire cutting off by very solid metal fences of all the worshippers in the transepts from the altar before which they are supposed to kneel, and the placing of the entire congregation between the priest and the altar.[411]

This digression will be excused when it is remembered how universally this tradition settled itself upon Spain, and how completely the perseverance in Romanesque traditions has affected her ritual arrangements, and with them her church architecture from the twelfth century until the present day. The long choirs which were naturally developed in England and France were never thought of there; the choir was merely the "Capilla mayor"--the chapel for the high altar; and the use of the nave as the people's church was ignored or forgotten as much as it was--very rightly--in some of our own old conventual churches, where the choir was prolonged far down into the nave, and the s.p.a.ce for the people reduced to a bay or two only at its western end.

I must now bring this discussion to a close, and proceed with my chronological summary; and here the Abbey Church at Veruela ought to be mentioned, if regard be had to the date of its erection--circa A.D.

1146-1171--though I must say that I have not been able to discover that it exercised any distinct influence upon Spanish buildings. It is in truth a very close copy of a Burgundian church of the period, built by French monks for an order only just established in Spain, under the direction probably of a French architect, and in close compliance with the rather strict architectural rules and restrictions which the Cistercians imposed on all their branches and members.[412] The character of the interior of this church is grand and simple, but at the same time rather rude and austere; but the detail of much of the exterior is full of delicacy; and the design of the chevet, with its central clerestory, and the surrounding aisle roofed with a separate lean-to roof, and the chapels projecting from it so subordinated as to finish below its eaves, recalls to memory some of the best examples of French Romanesque work.[413] The beauty and refinement of the little Chapter-house here lead me to suppose that it cannot be earlier than the end of the century.

There are some of these churches which require more detailed notice as being derived to some extent from the same models, but erected on a grander scale, and if doc.u.mentary evidence can be trusted, whose erection was spread over so long a time as to ill.u.s.trate very well indeed the slow progress of the development in art which we so often see in these Spanish buildings. The old cathedral at Salamanca was building from A.D. 1120 to 1178; Tarragona Cathedral was begun in 1131; Tudela, commenced at about the same time, was completed in 1188; Lerida, whose style is so similar to that of the others as to make me cla.s.s them all together, was not commenced until 1203, nor consecrated until 1278; and Valencia Cathedral, of which the south transept of the original foundation still remains, was not commenced until A.D. 1262. Yet if I except the early and Italian-looking eastern apse at Tarragona, most of the features of these churches look as though they were the design of the same man, and very nearly the same period; and it is altogether unintelligible how such a work, for instance, as Lerida Cathedral could be in progress at the same time as Toledo and Burgos, save upon the a.s.sumption that the thirteenth century churches in an advanced Pointed style, such as these last, were erected by French workmen and artists imported for the occasion, and in a style far in advance of that at which the native artists had arrived.

Yet I think few churches deserve more careful study than these. I know none whose interiors are more solid, truly n.o.ble, or impressive; and these qualities are all secured not by any vast scale of dimensions--for, as will be seen by the plans, they are all churches of very moderate size--but by the boldness of their design, the simplicity of their sections, the extreme solidity of their construction, and the remarkable contrast between these characteristics and the delicacy of their sculptured decorations; they seem to me to be among the most valuable examples for study on artistic grounds that I have ever seen anywhere, and to teach us as much as to the power of Pointed art as do any churches in Christendom.

In all there is a very remarkable likeness in the section of the main cl.u.s.tered piers. They are composed usually of four pairs of cl.u.s.tered columns, two of them carrying the main arches, and two others supporting bold cross arches between the vaulting bays, whilst four shafts placed in the re-entering angles carry the diagonal groining ribs both of the nave and aisle. The arches are usually quite plain and square in section, the groining ribs are very bold and simple, and the whole decorative sculpture is reserved for the doorways and the capitals and bases of the columns. The windows have usually jamb-shafts inside and out; and the eastern apses are always covered with semi-dome vaults.

Permanence being the one great object their builders set before them, they determined to dispense as far as possible with wood in their construction, and they seem to have laid stone roofs of rather flat pitch above the vaulting, and in some cases very ingeniously contrived with a view to preventing any possible lodgment of wet, and so any danger of decay. It may be said, perhaps, that fragments only of these roofs remain, so that after all timber roofs covered with tiles would have been equally good; but this is not so. The very attempt to build for everlasting is in itself an indication of the highest virtue on the part of the artist. The man who builds for to-day builds only to suit the miserable caprice of his patron, whilst he who builds for all time does so with a wholesome dread of exciting hostile criticism from those grave unprejudiced men who will come after him, and who will judge, not consciously perhaps, but infallibly, as to the honesty of his work. In England we have hardly a single attempt at anything of the kind, though in Ireland, in St. Cormack's Chapel at Cashel, we not only have an example, but one also that proves to us that we may build in this solid fashion, so that our work may endure in extraordinary perfection come what may--as it has there--of neglect, of desolation, and of desecration! Yet of all the virtues of good architecture none are greater than solidity and permanence, and we in England cannot therefore afford to affect any of our Insular airs of superiority over these old Spanish artists!

Look also at the thorough way in which their work was done. The Chapter-houses, the cloisters, the subordinate erections of these old buildings, are always equal in merit to the churches themselves, and I really know not where--save in some of the English abbeys which we have wickedly ruined and destroyed--we are to find their equals. Nothing can be more lovely than such cloisters as those of Gerona or Tarragona, few things grander than that desecrated one at Lerida, whilst the Chapter-house at Veruela, and the doorways at Valencia, Lerida, and Tudela, deserve to rank among the very best examples of mediaeval art.

There are yet two other grand early churches to be mentioned which do not seem to range themselves under either of the divisions already noticed, and which yet do not at all belong to the list of churches of French design with which my notice of thirteenth-century Spanish work must of necessity conclude. These are the cathedrals of Siguenza and Avila.[414] Both of these are, so far as I can see, but to a slight extent founded upon other examples. Siguenza Cathedral seems to have had originally three eastern apses: the plan is simple and grand, and its scale, either really, or at any rate in effect, very magnificent. The great size of the cl.u.s.tered columns, their well-devised sections, the ma.s.sive solidity of the arches, the b.u.t.tresses, and all the details, make this church rank, so far at least as the interior is concerned, among the finest Spanish examples of its age. At Avila, on the other hand, we see a remarkable attempt to introduce somewhat more of the delicacy and refinement of the first-pointed style; and just as if the architect had been exasperated by the obligation under which he lay to end his chevet within the plain, bald, windowless circular wall projecting from the city ramparts which was traced out for him, we find him indulging in delicate detached shafts, a double aisle round the chevet, and subsequently in such strange as well as daring expedients in the way of the support of the groining and the flying b.u.t.tresses, as could hardly have been ventured on by any one really accustomed to deal with the various problems which the constructors of groined roofs ordinarily had before them. I venture therefore to place these two churches at Siguenza and Avila among the most decidedly Spanish works of their day; I see no distinct evidence of foreign influence in any part of their design, and they seem to me to be fairly independent on the one hand of the early Spanish style of Tarragona, Lerida, Salamanca, and Segovia, and on the other of the imported French style of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon.

And now I must say a few words on the three last-named churches. I have already expressed my opinion as to their origin, which seems to me to be most distinctly and undoubtedly French. The history of the Spanish Church at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, points with remarkable force to such a development as we see here. What more natural than that the country which looked, on the recovery from its troubles--on the expulsion of the Saracen--to its neighbour the French Church to supply it with bishops for its metropolitan and other sees--should look also to it for a supply of that instruction in art which had grown and flourished there, whilst men were fighting and striving with all their might and main here? And what is there more natural than that French architects, sent over for such works, should first of all plan their buildings on the most distinctly French plan, with French mouldings and French sculpture; and then--as we see both at Burgos and Toledo, in the singular treatment of the triforia--should have gradually succ.u.mbed to the national and in part Moresque influences by which they were surrounded? At Leon the evidences of imitation of French work are so remarkable, that no one capable of forming a judgment can doubt the fact; and if at Burgos and Toledo they are not quite so strong, the difference is slight, and one only of degree. I have already spoken upon these points in describing the churches in question; and here I will only repeat that, as the features of which I speak are exceptional and not gradually developed, it is as certain as anything can be that their style was not invented at all in Spain. We have only to remember the fact, that at the same time that Lerida Cathedral was being built, those of Toledo and Burgos were also in progress, whilst that of Valencia was not commenced until much later, to realize how fitful and irregular was the progress of art in Spain. It is, in fact, precisely what we see in the history of German art. There, just as in Spain, the Romanesque and semi-Romanesque styles remained long time in quiet possession of the field, and it was not until the marvellous power and success of the architects of Amiens and Beauvais excited the German architects to emulation in Cologne Cathedral, that they moved from their Romanesque style into the most decided and well-developed geometrical Gothic. And just as Cologne Cathedral is an exotic in Germany, so are those of Burgos, Leon, and Toledo in Spain; so that, whilst Spaniards may fairly be proud of the glory of possessing such magnificent works of art, their pride ought to be confined to that of ownership, and should not extend to any claim of authorship.

The demands of these three great churches upon our admiration are very different. The palm must be awarded to Toledo, which, as I have shown, equals, if it do not surpa.s.s, all other churches in Christendom in the beauty and scale of its plan. Undoubtedly, however, it lacks something of height, whilst later alterations have shorn it also of some of its attractiveness in design, the original triforium and clerestory remaining only in the choir. Nevertheless, as it stands, with all its alterations for the worse, it is still one of the most impressive churches I have ever seen, and one in which the heart must be cold indeed that is not at once moved to worship by the awefulness of the place.

I have already, in my account of this great church, entered somewhat fully into a description of the peculiarities of its plan, and the evidence which they afford of its foreign origin. The unusual arrangement of the chevet, in which the vaulting bays in both the surrounding aisles of the presbytery are made of nearly the same size,[415] by the introduction of triangular vaulting compartments, and in which the chapels of the outer aisle are alternately square and circular in plan, renders it, however, not merely an example of a French school, but one of the very highest interest and peculiarity. There is no church, so far as I know, similarly planned, though some are extremely suggestive as to the school in which its architect had studied. The cathedral at Le Mans has triangular vaulting compartments in the outer of its two aisles, arranged somewhat as they are at Toledo, but with inferior skill, the aisle next the central apse having the unequal vaulting compartments, which have been avoided here; but the surrounding chapels in these two examples are utterly unlike. Notre Dame, Paris, also has triangular vaulting compartments, but they are utterly different in their arrangement from those in Toledo Cathedral.[416] Neither of these examples, in short, proves much as to the authorship of the latter. A far more interesting comparison may, however, be inst.i.tuted between the plan of this chevet and that rare example of a Mediaeval architect's own handiwork, which has been handed down to us in the design for a church made by Wilars de Honecort, under which he wrote the inscription, "Deseure est une glize a double charole.

K vilars de honecort trova & pieres de corbie." In English: "Above is (the presbytery of) a church with a double circ.u.mscribing aisle, which Wilars de Honecort and Peter de Corbie contrived together."[417] In this plan we find these two old architects, not only introducing alternate square and circular chapels round their apse, but also an arrangement of the groining which looks almost as though they were acquainted with some such arrangement as that of the triangular vaulting compartments of Le Mans and Toledo. The diligent and able editors of Wilars de Honecort--M.

La.s.sus and Professor Willis--say that no such plan as this is anywhere known to exist; and I believe they were nearly, though not, as I have shown, absolutely correct in this a.s.sertion. At Toledo they still exist in part, and once, no doubt, existed all round the chevet; and it may well, I think, be a question whether Peter, the architect of Toledo, had not studied in the French school, and with these very men--Wilars de Honecort and Peter de Corbie--who, "inter se disputando," as they wrote on this plan, struck out this original scheme. At the same time it will be seen, on comparison of the two plans, that if he derived his idea from his brethren, he developed it into a much more scientific and perfect form.

It will be recollected that though I claim a French origin for Toledo Cathedral, I allow that it is not only possible, but probable, that, as the work went on, either Spaniards only were employed on it, or (which is more likely) that the French architect forgot somewhat of his own early practice, and was affected by the work of other kind being done by native artists around him. The evidence of this change is mainly to be seen in the triforium and clerestory of the choir and transepts.

The religious gloom of the cathedral at Toledo is strangely different from the religious brightness of that of Leon; for in the latter, where the sole end of the architect seems to have been the multiplication of openings and the diminution of solid points of support, the artist in stained gla.s.s has fortunately come to the rescue, and filled the windows with some of the most gorgeous colouring ever seen, so as to redeem it from its otherwise utter unfitness for its work in such a climate as that even of Northern Spain. I have already said that this church has not stood well. It was, in truth, too daring, and has in consequence failed to some extent. Yet, in spite of this, I cannot but admire immensely the hardihood and the skill of the man who could venture--knowing as much as he did--upon such a daring work as this; and I know not to whom to liken him so well as to the first architect of Beauvais Cathedral, though certainly the work at Leon has not failed so conspicuously as it did there. In both these churches the arrangement of the ground-plan of the chevet is so nearly similar as to allow of their being cla.s.sed together as at any rate works of the same style, if they are not indeed both works of the same school. Both have pentagonal chapels round the apse, and square chapels to the west of them, and they were built within a few years of each other.[418] The detail at Leon is almost all very French, and the windows of its clerestory are, in their general design as well as in their detail, almost reproductions of those at Saint Denis, in the peculiar mode adopted there of strengthening the princ.i.p.al monials by doubling the smaller monials in width, without any change in their thickness.

The cathedral at Burgos is certainly in most respects a somewhat inferior work to that at Leon. It, too, is French; but its architect was familiar not with the best examples of French art in the Ile de France and Champagne, but only, I think, with those of the somewhat inferior Angevine school. The plan of this chevet[419] was probably never so fine as that of Leon, though it was very similar to it. Here, too, I think, we see some local influence exerting itself in the design of the triforia throughout the church, whereas at Leon the original scheme seems from first to last to have been faithfully adhered to. But if Burgos Cathedral is far inferior in scale to that of Toledo, and somewhat so to that of Leon in skilfulness of design, it is in all other respects equally deserving of study, and is in its general effect at present far more Spanish than either of them. The many additions have to a great extent, it is true, obscured the original design; but the result is so picturesque, and so far more interesting than an unaltered church usually is, that one cannot well find fault. The main failure of the design is the smallness of the scale, and the loss of internal effect owing to the alteration of the primitive arrangements by the placing of the Coro in the nave, and the leaving of the ample choir unoccupied save by the altar at its eastern end.

The succeeding great division of Gothic art is much more distinctly marked and more uniform throughout Spain, whilst at the same time it is even less national and peculiar. There are in truth very considerable remains of fourteenth-century works, though, perhaps, no one grand and entire example of a fourteenth-century building. All these examples are extremely similar in style; and I think, on the whole, more akin in feeling and detail to German middle-pointed than to French. The west front of Tarragona Cathedral, the lantern and north transept of Valencia Cathedral, the chapel of San Ildefonso, the Puerta of Sta. Catalina, and the screen round the Coro at Toledo, Sta. Maria del Mar and the cathedral at Barcelona, the chevet of Gerona Cathedral, the north doorway and nave clerestory of Avila Cathedral, and the cloisters of Burgos and Veruela, afford, with many others, fair examples of the design and details of churches of this period. The traceries are generally elaborately geometrical and rather rigid and ironlike in their character, the carving fair but not especially interesting--dealing _usque ad nauseam_ in diapers of lions and castles--and the whole system of design one of line and rule rather than of heart and mind. Yet, in this, Spain reflected much more truly than before what was pa.s.sing elsewhere in the fourteenth century; and exhibited, just as did Germany, France, and England[420] at the same moment, the fatal results of the descent from poetry and feeling in architecture to that skill and dexterity which are still in the nineteenth century, as they were in the fourteenth, regarded--and most wrongly regarded--as the elements of art most to be striven after and most taught. Art, in truth, was ceasing to be vigorous and natural, and becoming rapidly tame and academical!

Yet if these works are not very national, they are at any rate most interesting and deserve most careful study. He was no mean artist who made the first design for Barcelona Cathedral, who completed the chevet of Gerona, or who designed the steeple at Lerida, or the cloisters of Burgos, Leon, or Veruela. At this time indeed art was cosmopolitan, and all Europe seems to have been possessed with the same love for geometrical traceries, for crockets, for thin delicate mouldings, and for sharp naturalesque foliage, so that no country presents anything which is absolutely new, or unlike what may be seen to some extent elsewhere. There are perhaps only two features of this period which I need record here, and these are, first, the reproduction of the octagonal steeple, which, as we have seen, was a most favourite type of the Romanesque builders; and, secondly, the introduction of that grand innovation upon old precedents, the great unbroken naves, groined in stone, lighted from windows high up in the walls, and inviting each of them its thousands to worship G.o.d or to hear His word in such fashion as we, who are used to our little English town churches, can scarcely realize to ourselves.[421] But on this point I will say no more because its consideration more naturally arises in the succeeding period, in which the problem was more distinctly met and more satisfactorily settled.

The survey of Spanish art in the fifteenth century is, I think, on the whole, more gratifying than it is in the fourteenth. In the earliest churches, as the models from which they were derived were first of all built in hot climates, the windows were small and few, the walls thick, the roofs flat-pitched, and the whole construction eminently suited to the physical circ.u.mstances of the country. But these models, having been taken to the north of Europe, and there largely and perhaps thoughtlessly copied, in spite of the vast difference of climate, were soon found to be unfitted for their purpose, and were consequently, in due course of time, developed into that advanced style of Gothic of which the main characteristic is the size and beauty of its windows. Of course this development was just that of all others which ought not to have been tolerated at all under a southern sun; and we must allow the fifteenth-century architects the credit of having discovered this, and of having returned very much to the same kind of design as that in which their thirteenth-century predecessors had indulged.

The examples of this age which I have described will have given a fair idea of their main characteristics. The magnificent size, the solid construction, and the solemn internal effect of such churches as those of Segovia, Salamanca, Astorga, Huesca, Gerona, Pamplona, and Manresa, would be sufficient to mark the period which produced them as one of the most fertile and artistic the world has ever seen. We may approach such buildings full of prejudice in favour of an earlier style of architecture, of a purer form of art; but we cannot leave them without acknowledging that at least they are admirable in their general effect, and if not conceived in the very purest art, still conceived in what is at any rate a true form of art. By the time in which they were erected, Spain had become far more powerful than ever before; she was quite free from all fear of the Moors, and was so rich as to be able to expend vast sums of money in works of art and luxury. She had also more trade and communication with her neighbours; and no doubt their customs and their schools of art had become so familiar to Spanish architects as to lead naturally to some imitation of them in their works. In their later works we find, at any rate, a development beyond that point at which Spaniards had before arrived, and noticeably an affection for the French chevet or apsidal choir surrounded by a procession-path and group of chapels. This arrangement, which, when it was adopted at Veruela, Santiago, Burgos, Leon, and Toledo, was evidently only adopted because the architects of these churches were French, was a favourite one of the artists of the fifteenth century. Huesca and Astorga alone of the great churches mentioned just now are founded upon the old Spanish type of parallel apses at the east end: the others are all founded upon that of the French chevet with some modifications in the details of their design. Of these, few are more interesting than that which we see in the cathedral at Pamplona, the chevet of which is, to the best of my belief, unique in its curious use of the equilateral triangle in the plan. This is perhaps the most novel modification of the French plan; but among all of them it is impossible not to award the palm, most decidedly, to the really magnificent works of the Catalan School. In other parts of Spain the great churches of this period had no very special or marked character; nothing which clearly showed them to be real developments in advance of what had been done before or elsewhere. In Cataluna, on the other hand, there was a most marked impulse given by a Mallorcan artist at the latter part of the fourteenth century; and to the influence of his school we owe some of, I suppose, the most important mediaeval churches to be seen in any part of Europe. Their value consists mainly in the success with which they meet the problem of placing an enormous congregation on the floor in front of one altar, and within sight and hearing of the preacher. The vastest attempt which we have made in this direction sinks into something quite below insignificance when compared with such churches as Gerona Cathedral, Sta. Maria del Mar, Barcelona, or the Collegiata at Manresa. The nave of the former would hold some two thousand three hundred worshippers, that of the next hard upon three thousand, and that of the third about two thousand. Their internal effect is magnificent in the extreme; and if, in their present state, their external effect is not so fine, it must be remembered, first of all, that they have all been much mutilated, and, in the next place, that their architects had evidently mastered the first great necessity in church-building--the successful treatment of the interior. In these days it is impossible to say this too strongly: men build churches everywhere in England, as though they were only to be looked at, not worshipped in; and forget, in fact, that the sole use of art in connexion with religion is the exaltation of the solemnity of the ritual, and the oblation of our best before the altar, and not the mere pleasing of men's eyes with the sweet sights of spires rising among trees, or gables and traceried windows standing out amid the uninteresting fabrics of nineteenth-century streets!

In our large towns in England there is nothing we now want more than something which shall emulate the magnificent scale of these Catalan churches. They were built in the middle ages for a large manufacturing or seafaring population; and we have everywhere just such ma.s.ses of souls to be dealt with as they were provided for. But then, of course, it is useless to recommend such models if they are only to be used as we use our churches, for four or five hours on Sundays, instead of, as these Spanish churches were and still are, for worship at all sorts of hours, not only on Sundays, but on every day of the week also. When English Churchmen are accustomed to see churches thoroughly well used; when no church is without its weekly, no great church without its daily Eucharist; and when they see none, great or small, without their doors open daily both for public and private prayer,--then, and not till then, can we expect that they will allow architects any chance of emulating the glories achieved by these old men. Till then we shall hold fast to our insular traditions of little town churches and subdivided parishes, and shall doubt the advantages of enormous naves, of colleges of clergy working together, and of those other old Catholic appliances, which must be tried fully and fairly before we give up in despair the attempt to Christianize the working population of our large cities.

The general idea of these great fifteenth-century churches has no doubt already been grasped by my readers. Worship at the altar appears to me to be the key to the design and arrangement of many of them, for nowhere else in Europe, I suppose, can we find a church on so very moderate a scale as the Cathedral at Barcelona crowded in the way it is with altars, and so planned and fitted up as to make it absolutely useless as a place of gathering for a large number of persons at one service. But if this multiplication of side altars was here carried to excess, one of the most remarkable examples of an attempt to glorify the high altar, and at the same time to provide for one enormous and united congregation, is unquestionably that which is presented by Sta. Maria del Mar in the same city. This church has its prototype at Palma in Mallorca, and I much regret that I have never yet been able to visit that island, for, so far as I can learn, it seems that the mainland owed much to it in the way of architectural development, and that some of the finest examples of the Catalan style in this age are still to be seen there.

The special devotion to the altar service which is exemplified in Barcelona Cathedral led naturally to other architectural developments.

Such are the remarkable church of San Tomas at Avila, with its western choir and eastern altar both raised in galleries, and its arrangement for the congregation of worshippers below. Such again is the church of El Parral, Segovia, with its deep western gallery for the choir, its dark, gloomy, and austere nave, and the concentration of light and window round the altar. Indeed, the inst.i.tution of the western gallery, so common--I might almost say so universal--in small churches at this period in Spain, arose from the same feeling as did the removal of the choir into the nave in the larger churches. The object of all these changes was to give the people access to the altar, and usually they seem to have been made upon the a.s.sumption that no one would care to a.s.sist at the services in the choir itself. I am very much inclined to think that the rise of this feeling was to a great extent an accident, and the result of the fact that almost all the early Spanish churches were founded on models in which the eastern limb of the Cross was so very short that the choir or Chorus Cantorum must almost always have occupied the eastern part of the nave, or the Crossing under the central lantern. This must have been almost a necessity in such cathedrals as those of Lerida, Tudela, and Siguenza: whilst in others, as those of Tarragona, Tarazona, and Avila, the s.p.a.ce must always have been cramped, though a choir might have been accommodated. Of the larger churches Burgos alone has a really large constructional choir. In Toledo it is very short, and in Leon certainly below what we usually find in a French church of the same age and pretensions.

The cathedrals of Segovia and Salamanca are the two latest great Gothic churches in Spain, and in some respects among the grandest; and here, as might be expected, the Spanish custom as to the position of the Coro had become so thoroughly fixed and invariable, that the choir proper is very short, and built only for the altar. The plan of Segovia Cathedral is very fine and well proportioned; whilst that of Salamanca has been unhappily ruined by the erection of a square east end, in place of the apse which was first of all intended: and this, in place of emulating at all the n.o.ble design of any of our English eastern ends, is contrived with but little skill, the aisle returning across behind the altar, whilst beyond it to the east there is a line of chapels similar to those beyond the aisles.

Of the later styles I need say but little. They are not Gothic, and this is a summary of Gothic architecture only; yet it is interesting to look into their history if only to notice how curious the fact is that at the same time that men like Berruguete were designing in the most thoroughly Renaissance style, Juan Gil de Hontanon was still painfully superintending the erection of a great Gothic cathedral. The remarkably Gothic staircase to the Hall at Christ Church, Oxford (A.D. 1640); the Gothic window traceries of Stone Church, Kent, of the same date; the rebuilding of Higham Ferrers steeple by the great Archbishop Laud, and of the spire of Lichfield Cathedral by good Bishop Hacket in 1669, are well-known instances of the remarkable love for Christian art which Englishmen retained long after the fashion for Pagan and Renaissance art had set in. And it is not a little interesting to find the same contest going on in Spain, and the same love for the old and hallowed form of art exhibited.

I cannot see much--I might almost say I can see nothing--to admire in the works of the Renaissance school in Spain. It was in their time that the discovery of America raised the country to the very summit of her prosperity, and right n.o.bly did she acknowledge her duty by the offerings she made of her wealth. Few Spanish churches are without some token of the magnificent liberality of the people at this time, and one is obliged to acknowledge it in spite of the horror with which one regards the works they did, and the damage which their erection did to the older buildings to which they were added.

It would be dreary work to follow the stream of Spanish art down by Berruguete and Herrera to Churriguera and so on to our own time; and the only fact of interest that I know is that the old scheme of cruciform church with a central lantern is still the most popular, and that down to the present time almost every modern church has been so planned, with a lantern dome rising from above the intersection of the nave and transepts.

Fortunately, down to this time the tide of "Restoration" has hardly reached Spain, and one is able therefore to study the genuine old records in their old state. There are no Salisbury Chapter-houses or Worcester Cathedrals to puzzle us as to whether anything about them is old, or whether all may be dismissed or discussed as if it were perfectly new; and so it affords a field for study the value of which cannot be overrated, and which ought not to be neglected. It must not be supposed that this field of study is limited to the general scheme of the churches. On the contrary, their fittings and furniture, their appendages and dependent buildings, are unsurpa.s.sed in interest by those of any other land, and in addition to these there are several other heads under which my subject naturally presents itself.

First among them is that of church furniture. No country is perhaps now so rich in this respect as Spain. Few of course--if any--of her churches retain their old furniture in its original place earlier in date than the fifteenth century. It is true that the magnificent baldachin and Retablo at Gerona, the screens round the Coro at Toledo, and the beautiful painted Retablo in the old cathedral at Salamanca, are earlier than this; but these are exceptions to the rule. The great glory of the country in this respect are such Retablos--rich in sculpture, covered with gold and colour, and in paintings of no mean merit, and lofty and imposing beyond anything of the kind ever seen elsewhere--as those of Toledo Cathedral or the Carthusian Church of Miraflores. In these one hardly knows whether to admire most the n.o.ble munificence of the founders, or the marvellous skill and dexterity of the men who executed them. It is not only that they are rich and costly, but much more, that all the work in them is usually good of its kind, and far finer than the work of the same age and style which we see in the Netherlands and Germany. The choir stalls, again, are often magnificent. Nothing can be more interesting than the contemporary chronicle of the capture of Granada which we see in the lower range of stalls at Toledo; they are full of character and spirit, and represent what was no doubt felt to be a truly religious enterprize, with at least as much fidelity as any view of our own military operations at the present day ever attains to. Other churches have choir fittings, like those of Zamora, full of curious interest to the student of Christian iconography; like those at Palencia, remarkable for the exceedingly elaborate character of their traceries and panelling; and like those of Gerona, valuable for the fine character of the rare fourteenth-century woodwork which has been re-arranged in the modern Coro. Turn again from the choir stalls to the other fittings of the choir. Seldom elsewhere shall we see the old columns for the curtains at the side of the altar still standing as they do at Manresa. Nowhere shall we see such magnificent choir lecterns, in bra.s.s as that of Toledo, or in wood as that of Zamora; nowhere else such pretty and sweet-sounding wheels of bells for use at the elevation of the Host; nowhere, perhaps, so many old organs, many of which, if not Mediaeval, are at any rate not far from being so; nowhere else so many or such magnificent Rejas or metal screens and parcloses, as in this country. In every one of these works Spanish workmen excelled, because they devoted themselves to them. We have lists of men who made screens, of others who carved the choir stalls, of others who made Retablos, and of others, again, who painted and gilded them. Each cla.s.s of men is named after the furniture to the execution of which they devoted themselves, and occasionally individuals rose to rare eminence from this kind of work. The time was late, indeed, when it happened, but see how Borgona and Berruguete strove for mastery over their work on the upper stalls at Toledo, or how the poor Matias Bonife, at Barcelona, was bound to carve no beasts or subjects on his stalls, to which we may suppose he was addicted; and how his successor died of distress because the Chapter did not like the pinnacles he added to the canopies; and consider how people interested themselves in the matter, how they were excited in the contest between Borgona and Berruguete, and no doubt in the others also, and we see at once how different was the position which these men occupied from that which, so far as we know, their contemporaries in England held.

The monuments in the Spanish churches are not the least of their glories. From one of the earliest and finest, that of Bishop Maurice at Burgos, there is a sequence ill.u.s.trating almost every variety of Gothic down to that exquisite Renaissance monument of the son of Ferdinand and Isabella at Avila, in which--in spite of the date and style--the old spirit still breathes an air of grace, refinement, and purity over the whole work. Such chapels as those which enshrine these monuments,--that of the Constable at Burgos, of Santiago at Toledo, of Miraflores near Burgos,--are well fitted to hold the most magnificent of memorials; for were it not that such a work as the tomb of Juan II. and Elizabeth is almost unmatched anywhere for the skill and delicacy of its workmanship, and that some of the others are almost equally sumptuous, the chapels within which they are erected would appear to be in themselves the n.o.blest remembrances of the dead.

Of the dependent buildings of these great churches I have had to speak over and over again. The ground-plans which I have given will show how complete they usually are. Their arrangement varies very much. The cloister, for instance, is on the north-east at Tarragona; the north at Siguenza, Toledo, and Leon; the west at Lerida and Olite; the south at Santiago, Palencia, Tudela, and Veruela; and the south-east at Burgos.

The Chapter-houses by no means always stand on the east of the cloister, though they usually retain the old triple entrance, and the remaining buildings seem to vary very much in the positions a.s.signed to them.

The roofing of Spanish churches has been incidentally noticed in various places throughout this volume. It was almost always of stone. So far as the interior roofing is concerned, the changes that are seen are of course very much the same as those which marked the vaults of most other parts of Europe at the same period. At first the cylindrical Roman vault, then the same vault supported by quadrant vaults over the aisles, then simple quadripart.i.te vaults, and finally vaults supported on very elaborate systems of lierne ribs. But there are some minor peculiarities in these vaults which deserve record. The waggon vaults generally have transverse ribs on their under side, and occur usually in buildings in which all the apsidal terminations are roofed with semi-domes--and they are sometimes (as in Lugo Cathedral, and Sta. Maria, la Coruna) pointed.

The early quadripart.i.te vaulting is generally remarkable for the large size of the vaulting-ribs, and for the very bold transverse arches which divide the bays. Ridge-ribs are hardly ever introduced, and the ridge is generally very little out of the level. The vaults of Leon Cathedral are filled in with tufa in order to diminish the weight, but I have not noticed any similar contrivance elsewhere. Down to the end of the fourteenth century the vaulting seldom if ever had any but diagonal, transverse, and wall-ribs; and even in many of the works of the succeeding century the same judicious simplicity is seen. But usually at this time it became the fashion to introduce a most complicated system of lierne ribs, covering the whole surface of the vault, dividing it up into an endless number of small and irregularly shaped compartments, and very much damaging its effect. My ground-plans of Segovia and (new) Salamanca Cathedrals show how extremely elaborate these later vaults very frequently were. There is another form of vault which is not unfrequently met with: this occurs where a square vaulting bay is groined with an octagonal vault. In these examples a pendentive is formed at each angle of the square, and thus the octagonal base is formed for the vault. Examples of this are to be seen in the Chapels of San Ildefonso and Santiago at Toledo Cathedral, in three of the late Chapels at Burgos Cathedral, and in the Chapter-house of Pamplona Cathedral. The fashion for this vault arose probably from the custom which had obtained of building central lanterns, which were frequently finished with octagonal stages, and consequently vaulted with octagonal vaults. So far as to the internal roofing. The evidence I have found of the old external roofing in some cases is even more interesting. It is clear that many of the early churches were intended from the first to be built entirely of stone in the roof as well as in the walls. Avila, Toledo, and Lerida Cathedrals, and the Collegiata at Manresa, still retain some of their old stone covering; and though it is true that in none of these cases has the attempt to construct an absolutely imperishable building been perfectly successful, it appears to me that the workmen and architects who attempted to carry such plans into execution deserve all our admiration. I have described these roofs in the course of my notes upon the churches in which they occur, and here I need only refer to my descriptions and ill.u.s.trations.

In sculpture Spain is not so rich as France, but on the whole probably more so than England. The best complete Gothic work that I have seen is at Leon; but it offers no variety whatever from the best of the same age in France. I have given the various iconographical schemes, so far as I could manage to do so, in describing the several works, and here I will only repeat that, to my mind, the triple western doors at Santiago[422]--completed in A.D. 1188--are among the finest works of their age, and deserving of the greatest care and tenderness on the part of their guardians. Most of us are conscious how much good sculpture adds to the interest of good architecture. Usually, however, we spread our modern sculpture too lavishly in all directions if we have the money to spend. But even in this there may be too much of a good thing; the mind and eye become satiated, and sicken; and not half the real pleasure is felt in seeing some modern works that would be if the work had been somewhat less lavishly applied, somewhat more thoughtfully, or as at Santiago, in one spot, leaving the whole of the rest of the church in its stern, rude simplicity.

The domestic architecture of Spain in the middle ages is, as might be expected, very much less important than the religious architecture.

Probably the wealth of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was even more damaging to the former than it was to the latter. At any rate, no country--Italy excepted--contains a greater number of showy Renaissance palaces in all its princ.i.p.al towns than Spain does; and there can be little doubt that they took the place of Gothic houses to a very considerable extent. Either I was very unlucky, or, if I saw what is to be seen, I must p.r.o.nounce Spain to be unusually barren of old examples of domestic buildings. Of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries I have hardly seen a single example, save the house which I have described at Lerida; whilst of the two following centuries, the best examples seem to be confined very much to the Mediterranean sea-board. In this part of Spain are the simple houses lighted by _ajimez_ windows, which I have described and ill.u.s.trated; they extend all along the coast from Perpinan to Valencia, and are usually so much alike as to produce the impression that they are all made from the same design. Later than this, the public buildings at Barcelona and Valencia, the palace of the Dukes del Infantado at Guadalajara, the museum and other convents at Valladolid, the house of the Constable Velasco at Burgos, and the great hospital at Santiago, are no doubt magnificent examples of their cla.s.s. In these the buildings are generally arranged round courtyards, which are surrounded by pa.s.sages opening to the court, and lighted either with open arches or with traceried windows. Rich and n.o.ble as some of these buildings are, there is little that is interesting or picturesque in them, and they seldom attain the degree of importance of which one would suppose such an architectural scheme skilfully treated would admit. Their date is rarely earlier than circa A.D. 1450, and the detail of their mouldings and sculpture is consequently of the latest kind of Gothic. There is, however, a rude barbaric splendour in some of the courts or patios at Valladolid, where this kind of building is seen to perhaps greater advantage than anywhere else.

The castles of Spain deserve, apparently, much more attention, and are in every way more important, than the other domestic buildings. Those at Olite, Segovia, and Medina