Chapter 16
The Giralda is incomparable, a unique expression of feminine strength. She is as oriental and mysterious as the Sphinx, or might be likened to a great sultana in enchanted sleep. Though her majestic head has towered for centuries beside her Christian sister, they still seem as irreconcilable as their faiths a thousand years ago. It has been a strange companionship. The oriental loveliness and splendor of the Giralda, like that of Seville, are best felt at the twilight hour, when her jewels sparkle in the last rays of the setting sun. With the waning light the coloring becomes purple, then indigo, while the silhouette still stands out in startling clearness and strength against the spotless blue of the evening sky. You feel as if the whole mountain of masonry were slowly but surely leaning more and more from its base and about to bury you in its fall. The vermilion and ochre coloring are like the petals of the rose. Nowhere is the surface uniform, but passes gradually from light cream and buff through warmer amber to brilliant orange and carmine and crimson lake, even to the color of the pomegranate's heart. The exquisite surface of delicate tinting, mellowed by the storms and suns of centuries, is everywhere relieved by the brilliant sparkle, the delicate play of light and shade, of the Moorish designs. When the low rays of the Andalusian sun illumine the Giralda, just touched here and there with dots of molten gold like the orange trees from whose green bed it rises, you see the boldest creation of Moorish imagination in all its splendor. The great Cathedral itself becomes a modest nun with rich, but sombre, cape over her shoulders, beside this dazzling creature glowing with Saracenic fire.
The Giralda is the greatest of all the monuments of that enlightened civilization. She is so different from any other tower that comparison becomes difficult. There is a robustness, an appearance of adequate solidity and strength which are lacking in the Italian towers of Saint Mark's, of Pistoja, or of Florence. This holds true even in relation to other Moorish towers, or such edifices as the Mosque at Cordova, the Alcazar at Seville, or the pillared halls of Granada; all other Moorish work seems to have a certain feminine weakness, a timidity and insecurity, when compared with the tower which dominates Maria Santissima. The Giralda is your first and last impression of this corner of the world, for it embodies all the grace and strength that can be combined in architecture. Old Spanish authorities assert that it was in the very year when believers throughout Christendom were anxiously expecting the end of the world that the Moslem infidels began to build their huge monument. More probably it was started about the year 1185, as the prayer tower or minaret of the mosque which was then rapidly progressing. The Spanish historian Gayangos says that it was completed by Jabar or Gever in 1196, during the reign of the illustrious Almohad ruler, Abu Jakub Jusef, the same monarch who erected the Mesquita at Cordova. Other authorities insist that its original purpose was as an observatory,--but although it may have been used for astronomical purposes, it was certainly erected as a tower from which the muezzin could call the faithful to prayer in the Mosque of Seville. While building it, Gever claims to have invented algebra.
The original tower has undergone skillful but of course detrimental changes from the hands of later generations. We have descriptions and representations of it prior to the changes made in 1500. The main Arab structure was, like almost all Mohammedan prayer-towers, surmounted by a smaller tower and capped by a spire. It was about 250 feet high, and on its summit an iron standard supported, before the earthquake of 1395, four enormous balls of brass. King Alfonso the Wise, in his "Cronica de España," describing Seville in the thirteenth century, says that "when the sun shone upon these balls, they emitted so fierce a light that they might be seen a day's journey away from the city." When Seville was taken by Saint Ferdinand in 1248, the tower was standing in the full glory of its original conception. The thought that it might fall into the hands of the conquerors so horrified its builders that they were only prevented from destroying it by Saint Ferdinand's threat that, if a single brick were removed, not an infidel in Seville should keep his head.
The Giralda had already lost the Byzantine crown which it had worn proudly for five hundred years when, in 1595, it came near total destruction, and was only saved during the terrible earthquake and storm which almost destroyed the city by the interposition of its special protectresses, the potter girls of Triana, Santa Justa and Santa Rufina. There are pictures which show us these blessed Virgins supporting the tower while the wind devils with distended cheeks are blowing on its sides with all their might and main. We are not only grateful to them for this timely intervention, but very glad it cost them so little exertion, for we find them shortly afterwards holding the tower in their hands as lightly as a filigree casket. The architects who restored it about twenty years ago fortunately refrained from all attempts at improving or renovating its sunburned, wind-swept surface.
The Giralda is as strong as it looks. The huge walls have a thickness of eight feet below, diminishing to seven feet in the upper stories. The height to the very top of the crowning figure is 308 feet. In the foundations are bricks, rubble, and huge blocks of earlier Roman and Visigothic masonry; even Latin inscriptions are found immured. The Moors, like all other builders, used the materials readiest at hand; the rejected building stones of one generation become the corner stones of the next.
Below the Renaissance addition with which the tower was terminated in 1568, the broad sides of the shaft had been broken by the Arabs in the simplest and most felicitous manner. The brickwork was treated in three panels with the corner borders very properly broader and stronger than the two intermediate ones. The panels, which could not be of a happier depth, are filled down to eighty feet of the ground with varying Moorish arabesque patterns; the figured diaper-work on all sides is broken in the two outer panels by blind cusped arches, and in the central patterns, by Moorish windows of the "ajuiez" variety. Their double arches are subdivided by small Byzantine columns; these again are framed within larger cusped and differently broken horseshoe curves. Small Renaissance balconies have at a later date been placed below the windows. The small niches comprising the total Moorish composition sparkle throughout with life and charm, and, though no two are alike, they form a harmonious whole. The Arab seemed to have an instinctive aversion from tedious repetition. He would always vary the design just enough to satisfy his imagination and creative faculty, but never sufficiently to disturb the harmony of the general scheme. As with the windows, so also with the arabesques. They begin at slightly varying heights on the different sides of the tower, so that the windows may properly meet the different elevations of the interior stair. Their patterns are not quite the same, neither on the various sides of the tower nor at different heights on the same side. The decoration employed is admirably fitted to a large surface which would have been weakened by strong cutting or deep relief. Considering what Arab art achieved within prescribed limits, the student of Christian art may well deplore that the Koran, in its abhorrence of idol-worship, forbade its followers in any way to reproduce human or animal forms. Forever debarred all the wider possibilities of movement and poetry these would have given them for interior decoration, Moorish art necessarily stagnated to mere conventionalization of floral and natural subjects. These are well adapted to exterior mural surfacing. When we look at the fancifully handled geometric patterns on the Giralda, we can only rejoice that the frescoes added by the later Renaissance artists in the upper arches and along some of the lower surfaces have been washed away by time. They were ineffective; all that remains of Moorish is magnificent. A small arcade, running the width of each side in its single panel, terminates the Moorish work.
It is almost to be regretted that the Renaissance top has been so well done, for its barbarous exotism is sufficient to condemn it. It has excellently fulfilled a dastardly purpose.
The original Moorish termination was taken down by the architect, Francisco Ruiz, who was commissioned by the Cathedral Chapter in 1568 to give it a more fitting crown. His design consists of three stages reaching to a height of about a hundred feet. The first, of the same width as the shaft below, is pierced by openings "to let out the sweet sounds of the bells inside." The second stage consists of a double tier of considerably smaller squares pierced by wide arches. Around the four sides of its upper frieze runs the inscription so legible that all Sevillians who know how may read, "Nomen Domini Fortissima Turris" (Proverbs, xviii, 10). The third stage consists of a double lantern surmounted by a soaring Seraphim, bearing in one hand the banner of Constantine and in the other the Roman palm of conquest. The "Girardello" was cast in gilded bronze by Bartolomé Morel in the year 1568. Intended to symbolize Faith, the name, a diminutive of Giralda, or weathercock, is most inappropriate. Despite her enormous size and weight, the faintest zephyr blowing down from the Sierra Moreña sets her turning on the spire she treads so lightly, whereupon the crowds of hawks resting on Girardello disperse in noisy scolding.
Dumas gazed at her in wonder and admiration. "C'est merveilleux," he said, "de voir tourner dans un rayon de soleil cette figure d'or aux ailes deployées, qui semble, comme un oiseau céleste fatigué d'une longue course, avoir choisi pour se reposer un instant le point le plus proche du ciel."
The great bells of the tower, all baptized with holy oil, a custom very frequent in Spain, are dear to the hearts of those whom they daily call to rest and prayer. As they strike the hours, passers-by look up to see their great tongues protrude. Their sweet peal is heard in the most distant quarters of the city, and beyond on the waters of the Guadalquivir and in the fertile valley through which it flows. The deep resonant note of Santa Maria is the last sound we hear before falling asleep.
Inside you may ascend to the very summit by steps so broad and easy that two horses abreast may go as far as the platform of the bells. Below you lies the city with its scattered white buildings that once housed half a million, and beyond, the valley that enfolded twelve thousand villages. Though dwindled and changed, time has dealt gently with Seville. There is gay laughter in her sunny streets and the olive groves echo with rippling song. Just under your feet throbs the heart of it all. Though repeatedly struck by lightning, the great Cathedral still stands, an everlasting symbol of the Church, triumphant and eternal.
VIII
GRANADA
Kennst du das Land we die Citronen blühn, Im dunkeln Land die Goldorangen glühn, Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht?
GOETHE'S _Wilhelm Meister_.
Thus being entred, they behold arownd A large and spacious plaine, on every side Strewed with pleasauns, whose fayre grassy grownd Mantled with greene, and goodly beautifide With all the ornaments of Floraes pride.
_Faerie Queene_, book 2, c. xii.
I
The first stars shone pale in the fields of upper air over walls and towers wrapt in the mystery of twilight which softened every outline and cast a kindly veil over the decay of a thousand years. The air was oppressively sweet with the fragrance exhaled by southern vegetation on a summer evening. The roses had climbed to the top of the walls, where they could cool their flushed cheeks on the marble copings of the battlements. The myrtle and ivy trembled in the evening breeze, and through the broken casements the aloes whispered to the sweet-breathing orange trees in the courtyards. The martlet twittered in the branches. On all sides was heard in cool silvery continuity the gurgle and plash of streams which, issuing from mountain snows, had wound their loitering way through fields of violets and forget-me-nots to the "large and spacious plaine" of the Vega. The fairy palace of the Alhambra, the Acropolis that once held forty thousand defenders of the faith, crowns and encircles the hill. From its watch-tower the nightingales pour forth lovers' songs, plaintive and passionate, heightening the enchantment of a scene unsurpassed in natural loveliness and the charm of a romantic past.
The hillsides undulating from the vermilion ramparts of the Alhambra are clad with graceful elms, with orange and pomegranate trees bearing deep red and golden fruit and with the mulberry's glistening olive green. Here and there are open spaces between the groves; fields of roses and lilies. The Darro and the Xenil flow by the foot of the hill, and from their banks for almost thirty miles stretches the Vega. At the base of the fortress, between the rivers, lies the city of Granada,--
The artist's and the poet's theme, The young man's vision, the old man's dream,-- Granada, by its winding stream, The City of the Moor.
Out on the plain the settlement becomes gradually sparser, the houses more scattered. White stucco walls are interspersed with plots of green garden, the ochre houses are smaller shining patches amid the yellow-flowering fig-cactus and the regularly planted olive groves, until finally the eye must search for the farmhouse hidden among vineyards, orchards and waving fields of corn. The gleaming villas and farmhouses still look as they did to the Moor, like "oriental pearls set in a cup of emeralds."
The endless plain, once the fertile bosom of fourteen cities, innumerable strong castles and high watch-towers, is shut in from the outside world like a very Garden of Eden, by the mountain walls of the Alpujarras and Sierra Alhama. Far away on the horizon the barrier is broken at a single point, the Loja gorge. This was once guarded by sentinels ever on the watch for the distant gleam of Christian lances to light the fires that signaled approaching danger to the distant citadel. Most Spanish cities were densely built within high walls, but Granada felt so secure in her mountain fortress that her dwellings were strewn broadcast over the plain. Behind the walls of the Alhambra, on a second slope wooded with cypress, the brilliant towers of the Generaliffe gleam against the dark foliage. Beyond, across the whole southern sweep, rises the chalky, hazy blue of the Sierra Nevada, capped with glittering, everlasting snow. Gazing up from the valley below, one might fancy it a white veil thrown back from the lovely features of the landscape.
Thus lies Granada, a verdant and perfumed valley wrapt in the soft mystery of its hazy atmosphere,--"Grenade,--plus éclatante que la fleur et plus savoureuse que le fruit, dont elle porte le nom, semble une vierge paresseuse qui s'est couchée au soleil depuis le jour de la création dans un lit de bruyères et de mousse, défendue par une muraille de cactus et d'aloes,--elle s'endort gaiement aux chansons des oiseaux et le matin s'éveille souriante au murmure de ses cascatelles."[19]
More than any other spot on earth, Granada seems haunted by memories of bygone glory. The wide plains, now inhabited by less than seventy-five thousand, once swarmed with over half a million souls. The artist feels poignantly the charm of those long centuries of Arabian Days and Nights that were forever blotted out by the zeal of the Christian sword. The ruined temples still attest the thrift and industry, the refinement and learning of the vanished race; the squalid poverty that has replaced it is deaf and blind to the records of ancient grandeur, but the traveler and the historian may still be thrilled by the struggle that destroyed "the most voluptuous of all retirements" and feel there as nowhere else the relentless power of the most Catholic Kings, the pathos of the Moor.
Granada is a very old city, and like Cordova and Seville, it was one of the principal Moorish centres; in fact after their fall, the industries and culture which had been theirs went to swell the inheritance of Granada. Its name has always been associated with the scarlet-blossoming tree which covers its slopes, whose fruit the Catholic sovereigns proudly placed in the point of their shield, with stalks and leaves and shell open-grained. During the Roman occupation, a settlement had been made on the wooded slopes at the foot of the Sierra Nevada and called Granatum (pomegranate). The Goths in their turn swept over the peninsula until, in 711, they were driven out of the valley by the advancing Arab hordes. These transformed the name given it by the Romans to Karnattah. Seven hundred and eighty-two years passed before the Crescent set forever on the Iberian peninsula. Dynasties had succeeded one another in the various kingdoms formed of larger and smaller portions of southern and central Spain, but in the north, hardy monarchs had founded more stable thrones on the ruins of the Gothic Empire, and they were eagerly watching the advancing decay, the domestic discord of the Mohammedan power and grasping every opportunity for the aggrandizement of their own states.
In the tenth century, the Moorish power was at its zenith. During the eleventh, Granada had become strong enough to break away from the caliphate of Cordova. There the Almorvides and Almohades dynasties had alternated while the Nasrides ruled in the kingdom and city of Granada until the luckless Boabdil surrendered its keys.
During the last three centuries of Moorish rule, the northern Cross cast an ever longer shadow before it. Alfonso of Aragon advanced to within the walls of the outer forts in 1125, and in the two and a half centuries following, tribute was exacted by the crown of Castile. The Moors of Cordova were more hardy and warlike than the Arabs of Granada. The arts of peace flourished with this latter poetical, artistic and commercial race, who as time went on became less and less able to defend themselves against the fanaticism and skill of the Spanish armies. Like Hannibal's soldiers on the fertile plains of Lombardy, they had become enervated in the luxury of their beautiful valley. When their imprudent ruler answered the Castilian envoys who had come to collect the usual tribute, "that the Kings of Granada who paid tribute were dead, and that the mint now only coined blades of scimeters and heads of lances," the hour of Granada's destiny had struck. The smiling valley became for ten years a field of blood and carnage, after which its devastation was relentlessly completed by the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
Ferdinand and Isabella entered the last stronghold of the Moors in the very year when the history of the civilized world was changing its course. Its helmsman, Columbus, was received in the Castilian camp outside the walls of the beleaguered city. On the second of January, 1492, Hernando, Bishop of Avila, raised the Christian Cross beside the banner of Castile on the ramparts of the highest tower of the Alhambra; four days later, on the day of the Kings and the festival of the Epiphany, Ferdinand and Isabella entered the city.
"The royal procession advanced to the principal mosque, which had been consecrated as a cathedral. Here the sovereigns offered up prayers and thanksgivings and the choir of the royal chapel chanted a triumphant anthem, in which they were joined by the courtiers and cavaliers. Nothing could exceed the thankfulness to God of the pious King Ferdinand for having enabled him to eradicate from Spain the empire and name of that accursed heathen race, and for the elevation of the Cross in that city where the impious doctrines of Mohamed had so long been cherished."[20]
Bells were rung and masses celebrated in gratitude throughout the Christian world. As far away as Saint Paul's in London town, a special Te Deum was chanted by order of the good King Henry the Seventh. Spain had reached the summit of her glory, before which yawned the abyss.
And now in the name of Christ the Inquisition was established and one of its chief offices founded; in His name the Jews were driven out, Christian oaths and covenants broken, and the peaceful Moorish inhabitants hounded from their hearths. Under Philip III, in 1609, their last descendants were banished from the realm.
No scene of chivalry during the middle ages displayed a more brilliant and bloody pageant than the battlefield of Granada. It was the culmination of the work of Spain's greatest rulers,--the great crisis in her history.
Here gallants held it little thing for ladies' sake to die, Or for the Prophet's honour, or pride of Soldenry. For here did Valour flourish and deeds of warlike might Ennobled lordly palaces in which was our delight.[21]
Gazing over this famous plain, the Vega, that "Pearl of Price," with its courtyards now desolate, its gardens parched and well-nigh calcined by the sun, one recalls Voltaire's words: "Great wrongs are always recent wounds!" and long years have passed since the iron heel of Austria set its first impress on the soil.
James Howell, the English traveler and busybody in the capital at the time Prince Charles went surreptitiously wooing, writes home in 1623, after visiting Granada: "Since the expulsion of the Moors, it is also grown thinner, and not so full of corn; for those Moors would grub up wheat out of the very tops of the craggy hills, yet they used another grain for their bread, so that the Spaniard had nought else to do but go with his ass to the market and buy the corn of the Moors."
Only once more does Granada's name emerge from the oblivion of ages,--when the Iron Duke occupied the city during the Peninsular War. He covered with a kindly hand some of her barrenness, planting English elms beneath her fortress.
II
In the heart of a crumbling mass of chalky, chrome-colored walls and vermilion roofs, rises the dome of the Cathedral. Here, as in Seville, the ground once sanctified to Moslem prayer was cleansed by the Catholics from the pollution of the Moor, and the Christian edifice was reared on the foundations of the Mohammedan mosque. As already noted, one of the first religious acts of the conquerors was the consecration, in January, 1492, of the ancient mosque, which thereafter was used for Christian worship under the direction of the wise and tolerant Talavera, as first Bishop of Granada. The new building was not begun until the year 1523, an exceedingly late date in cathedral-building,--a time when the great art was slowly dying down, and, in northern countries, flickering in its last flamboyancy.
On March 25, 1525, the corner stone was laid of the new Cathedral of Santa Maria de la Encarnacion. It was planned on a much more elaborate scale than the previous mosque, which, however, continued to be independently used as a Christian church until the middle of the seventeenth century and was not demolished till the beginning of the eighteenth, to make room for the new sagrario, or parish church, of Santa Maria de la O.