Part 4

Farther down stream is Vich, a town constantly referred to in the annals of the Carlist wars. As the history of that insurrection is not well known to foreigners, visitors are more likely to be interested in the monuments that have survived those troubled times. The cathedral was built in 1040--a date which sounds promising; but alas! the architects of the eighteenth century have forestalled us, and have worked their wicked will upon a once noble church. The artistic eye will not linger upon the exterior, but it may find some refreshment in the majestic nave, divided from the aisles by six clustered columns, with Corinthian capitals. When the church was rebuilt, all the tombs were swept away, and none of the altars spared, except the high altar, which is a meritorious work of the early fifteenth century. As at Ripoll, there is a fine cloister built five hundred years ago. The gallery, with its pointed openings and trefoil and quatrefoil tracery, is built over a substructure with round arched open vaults. The centre of the quadrangle is occupied by the statue and monument of the philosopher Balmes, who was born at Vich and died in 1848, aged only thirty-eight years. He is buried in the cathedral nave.

Outside this church there is little to be seen in the old Catalan town. The remains of a Roman temple are worth examination, and the artist may find plenty of material for sketches in the picturesque Plaza Mayor.

From Vich it is about forty-five miles to Barcelona.

LERIDA

Lerida is another of those Catalan cities that remind one of the saying about new wine in old bottles. Seen from afar it is clearly one of those old human hives that have existed on the same spot ever since man felt the need of a permanent abode--you have the hill-site, the walls, the towers, the flowing river, the mediæval aspect. You observe with delight a humpbacked bridge, such as (with a total disregard for beasts of burden) our pious ancestors loved to build. And over all rises the cathedral--or, as we shall soon learn, what was the cathedral. But on a closer inspection we find that time has by no means left Lerida untouched. Already she has overflowed into the opposite side of the stream, and there is a big new suburb with wide white streets, spaciously planned squares, and avenues along which the trees are beginning to grow. And as you cross the humpbacked bridge, you observe that the centre arch is quite new, and as you enter the old town, you are astonished by the stir and the modernity of it all. It is just like Smyrna or Damascus. Every one has been too busy to build the town over again. Its poor old rickety houses, in which men designed to lead only the sedatest of lives, have been hastily requisitioned for the service of modern industry and commerce. The low rooms are packed with merchandise, the frail houses seem like to burst. The underground cellars come in very handily. Lerida is very much alive. Some day she will have to pull her house down and build a new one altogether.

Probably no one would have come to Lerida--no strangers of the uncommercial variety, that is--if Street had not told us about the old cathedral, since turned into a barracks. Nor without his detailed and professional description would the average traveller be able to make much of the building. The purposes to which it has been put have obscured the outlines of the features of the original fabric. But you cannot overlook it for it stands high on the hill like a citadel, which, indeed, it has now become.

Lerida--which the Catalans, by the way, call Lleyda--was known to the Romans as Ilerda, and when they turned Christian, they built a church on this site. This, it is supposed, became a mosque during the brief Moorish period, to be reconsecrated on the reappearance of the Christians. The first stone of the actual building was laid on July 22, 1203, in the presence of King Pedro II., and the consecration took place on October 31, 1278.

(People often wonder why we do not build cathedrals nowadays equal to the old. One of the reasons may be that we are in too great a hurry. In the Middle Ages no man expected to see the completion of the work he began. They were animated by a strong communal sense, different from the individualism of to-day.)

The excellent bishop and chapter of Lerida in the year 1707 thought the cathedral too old for their requirements, and having already commissioned a military architect to build them a new church in the city below, thither they removed. By a fair exchange the military took possession of the cathedral. They willingly display it to you, and the non-commissioned officer who shows you round seems less in a hurry to get the visit over than your clerical cicerone usually is.

The lay traveller in attempting to understand this church has always to refer himself to the explanation of Street or else to that of Piferrer, which is certainly not so intelligible. In plan, then, the church is cruciform with three eastern apses and square transept arms. Another apse projects eastward from the south transept, which is flanked on the other side by a semicircular chapel, pointing south. Over the crossing rises an octagonal lantern, roofed like the whole church with stone, and pierced in each face with double windows with varied tracery. At its north-west angle is a slender octagonal staircase turret, rising from the south-west angle of the north transept. There is a similar but stouter tower, detached from the lantern, rising over the south transept. These towers give the whole pile a romantic and beautiful appearance.

The principal portal, called in the Catalan dialect the Puerta dels Fillols, opens into the middle of the south aisle. “This [says our authority] is an example of singularly rich transitional work, with an archivolt enriched with chevrons, mouldings, dog-tooth, intersecting arches, and elaborate foliage. There is the usual horizontal cornice over the arch, and above this is a fourteenth-century statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord. The horizontal cornice is carried on moulded corbels, between which and the wall are carvings of wyverns and other animals; whilst the soffit of the cornice in each compartment is carved with delicate tracery panels, in some of which I thought I detected some trace of Moorish influence. The cornice has a delicate trailing branch of foliage; and the labels and two or three orders of the arch, in which sculpture of foliage is introduced, are remarkable for the singular delicacy and refinement of the lines of the foliage, and for the exceeding skill with which they have been wrought. There is none of that reckless dash which marks our carvers nowadays, but in its place a patient elaboration of lovely forms, which cannot too much be praised. The mouldings here are all decidedly characteristic by a later--probably fifteenth-century--vaulted porch, which occupies the space between two added chapels. The effect is very good and picturesque.”

The transept doors are also very fine, especially the southern one. The cornice is beautifully sculptured and the wheel window above reveals in its details the influence of the Italian Romanesque. These entrances make us regret the effacement of the west porch, which is concealed by the vast square cloister covering that side of the church. This remarkable building, now occupied by troops, is the grandest, Street declared, he had ever seen. In its present desecrated state, it must be confessed it needs a highly trained eye to appreciate its beauty. The arcades are walled up, and there is some ground for supposing that when in ecclesiastical occupation the galleries were used as dormitory and refectory. The details vary greatly. The bays vary in width, the sculpture is of all sorts of design, and of all periods. Adjoining this vast cloister on the north side is a long barrel-vaulted hall, lighted only at one end. On the west side the cloister is entered through an enormous western doorway with a pointed arch. South of this and almost detached from the cloister stands that beautiful octagonal steeple which served Pedro Balaguer as a model for the Micalet Tower at Valencia. It is 170 feet high and divided into five stages, “the whole construction being of the most dignified and solid description.”

Concerning the position of this tower, Street remarks: “Here, as often happens with detached campaniles, the grouping of the steeple with the church from various points of view is very diversified, and often very striking. From its great height above the valley it is seen on all sides, and generally at some distance. From the south, the grand size of the cloister, which connects the steeple with the church, gives it somewhat the effect of being in fact at the west end of an enormous building, of which the cloister may be the nave; whilst the steeple rears its whole height boldly to the right, and makes the whole scheme of the work utterly unintelligible, until after a thorough investigation.”

The interior of the church is now cut horizontally by a plank flooring, and no features of interest can be distinguished, except in a single apsidal chapel, which is still used as such, and where is buried a natural son of King Pedro the Catholic, who died in 1254. Whitewash has obscured all the details of capitals and columns.

Adjacent to the cathedral on the north side is the ruin of a once noble hall, with traces of Moorish influence in its carving--possibly the remains of a chapter-house or episcopal palace.

Far exceeding the cathedral in antiquity is the church of San Lorenzo hard by, though it is not safe to accept the tradition of its Gothic origin. It was certainly built prior to the twelfth century. Originally just an apse and a nave, with walls eight feet thick and a span of thirty-three feet, aisles each ending in an apse were added to it at a much later period. They communicate with the nave by very simple pointed arches, and their windows have good traceries of the late thirteenth century. “The apse has a semi-dome and is lighted by three round-headed windows, five inches wide in the clear, and has a corbel-table under the eaves outside.”

The octagonal campanile dates from the fifteenth century, to which period belongs the western gallery. There is a good deal of pointed work in the church, which is gloomy and religious. The high altar, dating from about 1400, has a reredos which is highly praised by some critics.

Lerida was the Salamanca of Aragon. Her university, founded in 1300 by Jaime II., numbered the profligate Calixtus III. among its professors, and Vicente Ferrer--the “angel of the judgment”--among its alumni. Ford reminds us that Horace speaks of the place as a seat of learning in Roman times, to which the troublesome youths of the capital were banished. The town, like its Castilian prototype, has been famed for arms as well as learning. It sustained a severe siege from Felipe IV. himself in 1640, and withstood the assaults of the great Condé in 1640. It owned the loss of its university to its devotion to the Archduke Charles in the War of Succession, and (more directly) to the defeat sustained close by, by the Bourbon king. At the same time the military authorities made the clergy give up their cathedral.

Probably none of the ancient edifices of Lerida will interest you as much as the market-place, surrounded by quaint old houses; entering, you find the whole house is a great wine-press, the grapes, trodden on the ground floor, pouring their juice into the cellars below.

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Higher up the Segre is the historic town of Balaguer, the Bargusia of Livy, and the capital of the ancient county of Urgel. The counts had their residence in the “Beautiful Castle” (“Castillo hermoso”) which overlooked the town and has now totally disappeared. There are a few ruins of the once famous priory of Santo Domingo. The site of the castle is occupied by the church of Santa Maria, built in 1351. It is a dignified, simple edifice, of a single nave with lateral chapels. The Trappist monastery of Bellpuig de las Avellanas a little way out of the town is another and better preserved monument of the piety of the old Counts of Urgel whose line expired with Jaime el Desdichado at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Still going northward, and without crossing the limits of the old country, we reach the venerable town of Agramunt, notable for its late Romanesque church with a portal similar to the Puerta dels Fillols at Lerida. We reach at last Seo de Urgel at the very foot of the Pyrenees. As a see, the place is of immemorial antiquity. Its bishops (who are co-sovereigns with France of the Republic of Andorra) attained the zenith of their power and splendour in the eleventh century. The town has figured in every border war and was the seat of the audacious reactionary caucus which called itself a regency and declared Ferdinand VII. unfit to govern while he was obedient to the constitution.

The actual cathedral was consecrated by Bishop Eribal in 1040, but its construction lasted well on into the next century. It resembles a church of southern France more than one of Cataluña. The façade is divided vertically by two buttresses, horizontally by string courses into three stages, the lowest of which is pierced by the simple round arched west porch, the middle by three round-headed windows, the highest forming a sort of attic, by a round-headed window and two _rosaces_. The interior is divided into a nave and aisles with transept and lantern. The treasury is interesting for its collection of documents dating back to the time of the Carlovingian kings.

Returning from Lerida to Barcelona we pass the castle of Bellpuig, the seat of the great family of Anglesola--a massive fortress of red stone, restored in the sixteenth century. Its magnificent staircase still gives one some idea of the pomp and state of its former lords. The village extends from the castle to the church--a situation which inspired the erudite topographer of this country (Piferrer) with reflections that remind one of Don Quixote’s address to the goatherds. The church contains the tomb of Don Ramon de Cordova, one of the ablest lieutenants of Gonzalo de Cordova. His effigy, armed and holding his helmet, reclines in a sleeping posture on an urn adorned with reliefs of marine gods and monsters and upheld on the backs of sirens, whose hands are webbed; the sepulchral arch is formed by six Ionic columns, against which lean figures expressive of mourning; over the tomb is a relief of the Entombment. In niches on each side of the arch are two life-size figures emblematic of Victory; above them, two figures leaning forth from medallions appear to extend laurels toward the hero. The plinth and cornice of this superb tomb are adorned with reliefs illustrating the victories and achievements of the deceased, who was as distinguished as an admiral as a general. His body remains in the urn practically incorrupt. The tomb is the work of Juan Nolano.

This work has been brought here from the ruined Franciscan friary, founded a few miles from Bellpuig by the knight in the year 1507. The cloister is fairly well preserved. The two lower galleries--a third has been added since the foundation--are in debased Gothic style. The second gallery is formed by eleven rectangular columns, like those of the Lonja at Valencia, with four bands of moulding wreathed round each and gathered in at the capitals. The convent church is also of interest and is connected with the cloister by a fine staircase.

From Bellpuig we pass on to Cervera, to which Philip V. transferred the university from Lerida in 1717. This is the famous body which proclaimed, in the enlightened reign of Fernando VII., its horror of the fatal habit of thinking (“Lejos de nosotros a mania funesta de pensar”). Notwithstanding, it was closed in 1823, and finally suppressed or rather transferred to Barcelona in 1842. This singular university was housed in a building opened in 1740, which still dominates the whole town; it is a huge tasteless structure, a rather suitable home for learned fools. Nothing seems to have been determined with regard to its ultimate destiny, and the whole town has a frustrate and somewhat hopeless air. The church of Santa Maria is not devoid of beauty and interest. One of the porches appears to be a survival of an earlier Romanesque structure, and is surmounted by a relief of St. Martin sharing his cloak with the beggar. The tombs are also worthy of note.

TARRAGONA

Tarragona stands high and nobly on the coast of Cataluña looking east towards Rome, as her million citizens did when the Cæsars ruled, and she gave her name to the vast province of Tarraconensis. The Phœnicians were here, of course, before the Romans; they called the place Tarchon, and found it already strengthened by walls which remain to this day. Publius and Cneius Scipio wrested the town from Carthage, and afterwards the lords of the world gratified the city with the titles of _victrix_, _togata_, and _turrita_. “It had a mint and temples to every god, goddess and tutelar; nay, the servile citizens erected one to the emperor, _Divo_ Augusto, thus making him a god while yet alive.” Since that time, Tarragona has not flourished, though it was for a brief interval the capital of the Visigoths. Desolated by the Moors, it was given at the reconquest to a Norman adventurer whose wife, in his absence, proved as doughty a warrior as he. And now shrunk and depopulated, the once imperial city stares in a sort of mellow calm for ever seaward, as if plunged in reveries on the glorious past.

High over the town, on the crest of the slope, towers the cathedral. “This,” says Street (and none will disagree with him), “is one of the most noble and interesting churches in Spain. It is one of a class of which I have seen others upon a somewhat smaller scale (as, _e.g._, the cathedrals at Lerida and Tudela) and which appears to me, after much study of old buildings in most parts of Europe, to afford one of the finest types from every point of view that it is possible to find. It produces in very marked degree an extremely effective internal effect, without being on an exaggerated scale, and combines in the happiest fashion the greatest solidity of construction with a lavish display of ornament in some parts to which it is hard to find a parallel.” Roughly speaking, it may be described as Romanesque, with adornment of the Gothic period. The delicacy and richness of the later style has relieved the crudeness of the earlier, while the severity of the original plan has kept in check the tendency to be profuse of ornament.

Schemes were on foot to rebuild the church at the end of the eleventh century and Street thinks the oldest part--that is, the eastern apse--may date from 1131, though the greater portion of the fabric (including the nave and its aisles and the cloister) seems to have been executed at the end of the twelfth and during the first half of the thirteenth century; and it is very possible, therefore, that the brother Bernardus, who died in 1256, may have been the architect of the larger part of the existing fabric, both of the church and its cloister.

The west front is striking; it was begun in 1278, but not completed for another hundred years. The lower half is occupied by a deep-set portal of four orders, rising to a point. The jambs are occupied by figures of saints under canopies, and these are continued round the two buttresses which flank the doorway and end in pinnacles. The shaft is formed by a statue of the Madonna upon a pedestal, the sides of which exhibit in relief the scenes of the Creation and Fall. “These subjects are very fitly placed here, the Fall in the centre coming just under the feet of her who bears Our Lord in her arms, and thus restores the balance to the world.” (Street.) The tympanum is pierced with rich geometrical tracery. Over and behind the cross surmounting this grand doorway is an enormous rose-window. The whole is surmounted by a gable, the central portion of which has disappeared, giving a somewhat ruinous appearance to the church when seen from a distance. Flanking this, the front of the nave, are the round-arched entrances to the aisles, with round windows above, betraying Norman influence. Ford states that the great rose-window is Norman work.

The interior is grand and impressive in the extreme, though a trifle marred by the heaviness of the pillars. There is no triforium. The pointed windows of the clerestory are filled with glass vividly coloured, much of it modern, some of it the work of Juan Guas, specimens of whose craftmanship are to be seen at Toledo. The aisles are half the height of the nave, the intervening space being pierced with small rose-windows. At festivals the arches are hung with precious tapestries, designed after the Italian fashion with scenes from the histories of Joshua, Samson, David, and Cyrus. They are believed to have been presented by some potentate to the chapter about the year 1600.

While the columns are massive and plain, the bases are finely moulded and the capitals are carved with exuberant foliage. The choir screen is of marble and jasper; the stalls are plainly and chastely carved. Over the crossing rises a low, simple, but effective octagonal lantern. “The old outside roof is destroyed; but the finish of the lanterns of Lerida and of the old cathedral of Salamanca made it pretty certain that it was intended to have a pyramidal or domical stone roof.” The transepts are square, except for an apsidal recess at the east side of each. The nave and aisles end in apses--the oldest part of the edifice. The roof of the chancel apse is considerably lower than the choir’s, and the wall-space is pierced with a small rose-window. This part of the church is pure Romanesque. The high altar, however, is Gothic, and adorned with admirable reliefs, illustrating the martyrdom and apotheosis of St. Thecla, the patron of Tarragona. The centre is occupied by a colossal statue of the Virgin, covered by a very high peaked canopy of wood. To the right of the altar is the tomb of Archbishop Alfonso de Aragon, who died in 1514, and to the left a tomb older by two hundred years, that of Juan de Aragon, Patriarch of Alexandria. The remains of Cyprian, a Visigothic bishop of the see, are contained in an urn behind the reredos. The tombs are not very fine or numerous for a cathedral so ancient and so splendid.

At the south side of the chancel, at its junction with the apse, is a very remarkable stone turret stair, leading up to a square tower which rises over the end of the south aisle. There was probably at one time a corresponding steeple on the north side.

The chapels, though they have undergone considerable restoration, are interesting and possess much architectural interest. In the beautiful north transept is the fourteenth-century chapel of the Tailors (de los Sastres). Close by is the Capilla del Sacramento, formerly a Roman work, and incorporated with the cathedral by Archbishop Augustin (1561-1586) whose fine tomb, by Pere Blay, it contains. The chapel was at one time the canon’s refectory. Several ancient tombs from the other parts of the cathedral have been placed in this transept. On the opposite side of the church is the gorgeous eighteenth-century chapel of St. Thecla.