Chapter 2

The capitals are among the great glories of the edifice. They are remarkable from every point of view, and among the finest Byzantine extant, comparable to the best of Saint Mark's or of Sancta Sofia. The acanthus leaves are carved with all the jewel-like sparkle and crispness and the play of light and shade of the best period; the life and spring of a living stem are in them. Their oriental parentage is apparent at a glance. Much of the carving is alive with all the fancy and imagination of the day,--beasts and monsters, real and mythical animals, masks and contorted human figures and devils interlace on the bells and peer out from the foliage. The execution is quite unrestrained. It has a divergency which must have had its unconscious origin in the different antique caps serving again in the early Byzantine edifices. The ancient carvers must have realized the full importance of sculptural relief in their poorly lighted edifices. Again, the corbels which carry the diagonal ribs are formed by crude contorted beings and animals, in some instances bearing figures leaning against the lower surfaces of the diagonal ribs and intended still further to conceal its faulty spring. At the intersections of the diagonal ribs are bosses with figures at the salient points.

With an astonishment verging on incredulity, we look up at the vaulting supported by these piers. In place of the great Burgundian barrel vaults above the nave and semicircular arches between nave and side aisles, there are pointed Gothic transverse arches and quadripartite vaulting of low spring and simplest sections, but nevertheless ogival. It is evident both by the appearance of shafts, as well as by other indications, that it could not have been the original construction, but rather one reached at a later day when the new art was supplanting the old, a substitution for the original Romanesque vaulting; the upper windows and the most glorious lantern are all constructed in the Romanesque style to which the Spanish builders clung so long and tenaciously in preference to the subtle and nervous French Gothic which suited neither their temperament nor conditions. The church must originally have been carried out in their more native art, which they better understood.

The western termination of the church is formed by three semicircular apses crowned by semicircular vaults. In the central one, closed from the transept by a simple iron reja, stands the high altar backed by a great Gothic retablo of fifty-five panels and crowned in the vaulting by a most remarkable painting. In the walls of the niches is a series of tombs of persons with varying claims to our interest and esteem. Its original exclusiveness in the reception of royal princes of pure lineage gave way in the thirteenth century to admit princesses and bastards. Here lies the Dean of Santiago and Archdeacon of Salamanca, a natural son of the King of Leon. His mother, owing to her short-comings, got no farther than the cloister vaults. Some one has extracted from the archives of the old Cathedral the origin of the ancient mural decoration above the high altar. On the 15th of December, 1445, the Chapter engaged the services of Nicholas Florentino, painter, who for a consideration of 75,000 maravedis "of current white Castilian money, which is worth two old white ones and three new," promised to complete the painting "from top to bottom." On a rich blue background the Supreme Judge stands in the centre; to the right, is a regiment of the dead clad in white raiment, graciously welcomed by angels with trumpets; on the left, the damned are being hustled into hell by devils. As a well-preserved example of very ancient Spanish painting, it certainly is of intrinsic value and interest and recalls the naïve representations of early Italian artists.

It is unusually well lighted for a Romanesque church, which is naturally owing to the dome and not to the various windows or roses. There is no triforium, but the side walls, transepts, and apses are pierced by openings of true Romanesque type. The thick masonry has been most timidly pierced for narrow, round-headed slits of light, with splayed jambs and colonettes engaged to their sides carrying the typically ornamented archmolds enframing the whole. The stone mullions of the two remaining roses are equally timid and typical, but have not suffered like the windows from the encroachment of the new edifice.

The pavement undulates like that of Saint Mark's. High above the crossing of nave and transepts rises the tower flooding the church with light and internally as well as externally expressing one of the grandest architectural conceptions of the Spanish Peninsula.

Superlatives can alone describe the Torre del Gallo,--truly a product and glory of Spanish soil. Many writers have argued its similarity to the domes of Aquitaine churches, to Saint Front of Périgueux and others, but it is distinctly different from and far superior to those with which it has been compared in the magnificently interposed members of the drum, which shed light into the church through their openings and raise the cupola high enough to make of it a finely proportioned, crowning member. The cupola alone, certainly not the general disposition, may be regarded as a copy of earlier examples.

The internal and external cores have been admirably managed, the outer one being much higher to be in correct proportion to the surrounding masonry which it crowns. The interior transition from the square to the round base, twenty-eight feet in diameter, is rather clumsily managed. The successive masonry courses of the angles step out in Byzantine fashion in front of each other. The four piers of the crossing, upon which the pendentives descend, are no larger than the main piers of the nave. Above the pendentives which stand out, in their undecorated masonry, the circle is girdled by a carved cyma, above which rises a double arcade of sixteen arches, each arch flanked by strong and simple columns with Byzantine caps of barely indicated foliage. Powerful, intermediate columnar shafts separate the superimposed arcades and carry on their caps the sixteen ribs that shoot upwards and meet in the great floral boss at the apex of the inner dome. The lower arcades are semicircular, the upper, trefoiled, while the intermediate shafts are broken by two band-courses. All the moldings, and especially the energetic, muscular ribs, are splendidly simple and vigorous in their undecorated profiles. The lower arcade is blind, the upper admits light through timidly slender apertures, with the exception of every fourth arch, which coincides with an exterior turret.

Externally the lantern is even more remarkable than internally. As seen from within, it is faced alternately by four tympanums and four turrets. These are broken by long, narrow, round-headed openings, vivified by ball moldings ornamenting the heavy rounding of their splays. The tympanums, as well as the windows between them, and the turrets are flanked by a series of Romanesque columns. Their grouping, the deep reveals and resulting shadows, the play of light and shade brought out in the foliage of their various caps, which is but indicated in the simple manner of the style, and the adjacent moldings, all give a most archaic impression. The roofing of the turrets, as well as that of the outer dome, suggests a stone coat-of-mail. The flags are laid in scallops or stepped rows, like the scales of a fish, giving a far tighter joint than the stone channels covering the roofing of Avila Cathedral. The outline of the dome is that of a cone with a slightly modulated curve, perhaps unconsciously affected by a Moorish delineation. The angles are marked by bold crockets. Above, crowning the apex, perches the cock, gayly facing whatever part of the heavens the wind blows from. There is an everlasting triumph in it all, reminding one not a little of that won at a later date in Santa Maria del Fiore. Salamanca holds the religious triumph of a militant age; Florence, the sacred glory of an artistic one. The lofty aspiration, boldly hewn in the Spanish fortress, is no less admirable than the constructive genius rounded in Brunelleschi's dome.

The remainder of the interior is now singularly undecorated and severe. The entrance has been so much transformed by later additions that, in place of the original portal and vestibule, there remains only a vestibule considerably narrower than the nave, compressed on one side by the huge towers of the new Cathedral, and on the other by later alterations. The two older towers which contained, one the chimes and the other the dwelling of the Alcaide, have quite disappeared. The vestibule has excellent allegorical sculptures and Gothic statuary.

The northern aisle still has a few mural paintings, but the larger part of those which once illuminated the bare walls were washed off by a bigoted prelate in the fifteenth century and the present gray of the stone, as seen in the dim light, looks cold compared to the rich gold of the exterior masonry bathed in sunshine. The excellence of the vaulting is such that to-day hardly a fissure or crack is visible. The old pavement consists of great rectangles marked by red sandstone borders and bluestone centre slabs, the size of a grave, with central dowels for lifting and closing. In the southern transept-arm leading to the cloisters, some of the original windows are still preserved with their fine columns, archivolts, and carved moldings. The ribs of the vaults are decorated by zigzag ornamentation, and here a few magnificent old tombs remain intact in their ancient niches.

There is, properly speaking, no exterior elevation of the whole structure. The western front is hidden by the modernization, the north and south, by the new Cathedral, the cloisters, and squalid, encumbering walls and chapels. From the "Patio Chico" alone, the old structure can be seen unobstructed. The curves of the apses bulge out like full-bellied sails, their great masonry surfaces broken by the small windows, which are cut with enormous splays and encased and arched by typical Romanesque features, the windows protected by heavy Moorish grilles. Engaged shafts run up the sides of the central apse to below a quatrefoil gallery, originally a shelter for the archers stationed to defend the building. Two fortress-towers formed the eastern angles north and south; the one to the north was removed in building the new Cathedral. A scaled turret, broken by later Gothic pediments, crosses the one remaining. Above all soars the dome, the inspiration of our greatest American Romanesque temple, Trinity Church in Boston.

At the end of the twelfth century the houses of a sacrilegious Salamanca gentleman were confiscated and given to the Cathedral Chapter, who forthwith began the cloisters upon their site. They lie to the south and thus came to be planned and built into the original fabric and with Romanesque arches and wooden roof. They were practically entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century and again restored in the eighteenth. Curious, elaborate, vaulted chapels--in one of which the Mozarabic rite, the ancient Gothic ritual prolonged under Moslem rule, is still occasionally celebrated--adjoin it to the east and south. Recently, old Byzantine niches and tombs, some of great interest, have been uncovered in the outer walls.

II

"Most Reverend Father in Christ, Lord Cardinal, our much beloved and very dear Friend; We the King and the Queen of Castile, of Leon, and of Aragon, Sicily, etc., send this to salute you, as one whom we love and esteem highly, and to show we desire God may give life, health, and honor, even to the extent of your own desire. We inform you that the City of Salamanca is one of the most notable, populous, and principal cities of our kingdoms, in which there is a society of scholars, and where all sciences may be studied, and to which people from all states continually come. The Cathedral Church of the said city is very small, dark, and low, to such an extent that the divine services cannot be celebrated in such a manner as they should be, especially during feast-days when a large concourse of people streams to the Cathedral, and by the Grace of God, the said city increases and enlarges day by day. And considering the extreme narrowness of the said Church, the Administrator and Dean and Chapter have agreed to rebuild it, making it as large as is necessary and convenient, according to the population of the said city. This furthermore as the form and the fabric of the said Church cannot be rebuilt without disfigurement. And in order to build better and promptly, as the said Church has a very small income, it is necessary that our most Holy Father concede some indulgences in the form that the Bishops of Vadajos and Astorga, our agents and emissaries to your Court, will tell your Reverend Fatherhood, and we request you to beseech His Holiness to concede the said indulgences. Therefore we affectionately beg you to undertake the matter in the manner which we affectionately supplicate, because our Lord will be served, and the Divine Service increased, and we will receive it from you in peculiar gratitude. Regarding this, we wrote details to the said bishops. We beg you to give them credit and favor. Most Reverend Father in Christ, Lord Cardinal, our very dear and beloved friend, may God our Lord at all times especially guard and favor your Reverend Fatherhood.

"I, THE KING, I, THE QUEEN.

SEVILLE, the 17th day of February, in the ninety-first year."

That was the way the Catholic Kings wrote to the Cardinal of Angers to make plain to him that the plain, dark, small, old Cathedral was no longer in keeping with their glory or the times, and to begin the movement for a larger edifice. The stern simplicity of the ancient Church was indeed out of harmony with the brilliance and craving for lavish display and magnificent proportions which characterize the age of Ferdinand and Isabella.

Pope Innocent VIII answered the appeal in the year 1491, granting permission for the transference of the services to a larger edifice more fitting the congregation of Salamanca, now at the zenith of its prosperity and academic renown. In 1508 Ferdinand passed through Salamanca, and was again sufficiently fired by religious zeal to issue the following order: "The King to the Master Mayor of the works of the Church of Seville. Since it has now to be decided how the Church of Salamanca may be made, in order that its design may be made as it ought, I consent that you be present there. I charge and command you instantly to leave all other things, and come to the said City of Salamanca, that, jointly with the other persons who are there, you may see the site where the said Church has to be built, and may make a drawing for it, and in all things may give your judgment how it may be most suited to theDivine Worship and to the ornature of the said Church; which, having come to pass, then your salary shall be paid, which I shall receive return for in this service. Done in Valladolid, the 23d day of November, 1509."

The famous Master of Toledo, Anton Egas, received a similar summons (served in his absence on his two maids), but neither architect seems to have been over-zealous in carrying out the royal commands, for next year Queen Juana, Ferdinand's daughter, growing impatient, writes again: "Ifind it now good, as I command you, that immediately that this my letter shall be made known to you, without making any excuse or delay, you go to the said City of Salamanca."

This produced the desired result, for the two delinquent architects hurried to the city, studied the conditions, and, after considerable squabbling with each other and the Chapter, many drawings, and a lengthy report, agreed to disagree. This was too much for the Bishop, and without further ado he summoned on the 3d of September, 1512, a famous conclave of all the celebrated architects in Spain to pass on the report of Egas of Toledo and Rodriguez of Seville and settle the matter. Here sat besides Egas, Juan Badajos, Juan Gil de Hontañon, Alfonso Covarrubias, Juan de Orazco, Juan de Alava, Juan Tornero, Rodrigo de Sarabia and Juan Campero. The matter was thrashed out both as to site and form and a final report sent in, stating the result of their deliberations, "and as they were much learned and skilful men, and experienced in their art, their opinion ought certainly to be acted on." However, to leave no further doubt, every one of them swore "by God and Saint Mary, under whose protection the Church is, and upon the sign of the Cross, upon which they all and each of them put their hands bodily, that they had spoken the entire truth, which each of them did, saying, 'So I swear, and Amen.'" This settled the business. Three days afterwards, Juan Gil de Hontañon, the later builder of Segovia and rebuilder of the dome of Seville, was named Maestro Mayor and Juan Campero, his apprentice.

On a stone of the main façade there still stands an inscription recording the solemn laying of the corner-stone on the 12th of May, 1513. It was dedicated to the Mother and the Saviour. The wisest of the resolutions passed by this wisest of architectural bodies was the recommendation to leave the old edifice undisturbed.

Work was immediately started on the western entrance front and continued with untiring energy by Juan Gil until his death in 1531. His two sons assisted him, and they were all constantly guided and aided by a body of the most eminent Spanish architects who yearly visited the edifice. On the death of Maestro Alvaro, six years later, Juan's son, Rodrigo Gil, was selected as Maestro Mayor. He naturally tried to carry out all his father had planned, building with equal rapidity and no less excellence. By 1560 the work had been carried as far towards the east as the crossing. Amid immense popular rejoicing, and with ecclesiastical pomp, the Holy Sacrament was moved from the old Basilica to the new. "Pio III papa, Philippe II rege, Francisco Manrico de Lara episcopo, ex vetere ad hoc templum facta translatio xxv mart. anno a Christo nato MDLX." This of course gave a new impetus to the work, and arch after arch, chapel on chapel, rapidly grew through the next decades. The bigoted Philip naturally looked on with favoring eye.[3] Twice the work languished, but was resumed through the waning period of the Gothic style. The new classicism was triumphantly replacing the dying art, and the builders of Salamanca were sorely perplexed whether or not to make a radical departure to the newer style. Most fortunately, the conclave called together at this critical moment remained loyal to the original conception, and the Renaissance only took possession in ornamentation and the dome. Not until 1733 was the final "translation" celebrated. Later, earthquakes and lightning shook down both dome and tower, so that practically it was not till the nineteenth century that the last mortar was dry. The building spanned a long and glorious epoch in the city's history, from a time when her imperial master ruled the world until a foreign upstart trampled her under foot.

The plan of the new Cathedral, like that of Seville, is an enormous rectangle of ten bays, resembling a huge mosque, 378 feet long by 181 feet wide. It consists of nave and double side aisles without projecting transept; square chapels fill the outer aisles as well as the bays of the eastern termination. After much discussion it was decided that the nave (130 feet high) should be about one third higher than the first side aisles; the chapels are 54 feet in height.

The choir blocks the third and fourth bays of the nave, while the Capilla Mayor occupies the eighth. Over the sixth soars the lantern. The platform of the Patio Chico separates the sacristy and the old Cathedral that practically abuts the entire southern front. At the southwestern angle, the intersection of the two cathedrals is hidden by the gigantic tower. The northern front is admirably free, the whole structure being visible on its high granite platform. The western front is entered through the great triple doorway, the central being that of the Nacimiento; the northern, through the Puerta de las Ramos, the southern, through the Puerta del Patio Chico.

Glancing at the plan as a whole, one cannot but deplore that a conception of such daring proportions with no limitation of time nor money, having centuries and the wealth of the Indies to draw on, was not conceived with that most perfect of all Gothic developments, the semicircular apsidal termination. The Spanish, as well as the customary English eastern end, can never, from any standpoint of ingenuity or beauty, be comparable to the amazing conceptions of Rheims or Amiens or Paris.

The interior effect is expressed in one word,--"grandiloquence." It is a true child of the age which conceived it, and the spirit which informed its erection. If the fabric of the old Cathedral is essentially Romanesque, with later Gothic ornamentation and constructional features, the new is entirely Gothic, with Renaissance additions. The spirit and form are Gothic,--Spanish Gothic,--and one of its last sighs. The fire was extinct. By display and sculptural fire-works, by bold flaunting of mechanical mastery, a last trial and glorious failure were made in an attempt to emulate the marvelous structural logic and simplicity which had marked the Gothic edifices of an earlier age.

The blending of the two styles does not jar, but has been effected with a harmony scarcely to be expected. If one were not hampered with an architectural education, one could admire it all, instead of criticizing and wondering why a Renaissance lantern is raised upon a Gothic crown, and why a fine Renaissance balustrade above Gothic band-courses separates the nave arches from its clerestory, while those of the side aisles are separated by a Gothic one. The interior fabric itself is fine: it is more in detail, in the stringiness and multiplicity of moldings, in the fineness, subdivision, and elaboration of carvings and ornament that one feels the advancing degeneration. From being frank and simple, it has become insincere and profuse.

The Gothic window openings, which had been steadily developing larger and bolder up to their culmination in the glorious conservatory of Leon, had again grown smaller and more fitted to the climate. In Salamanca they are small and high up. Nave and side aisles both carry clerestories; that of the nave consisting of seventy-two windows in alternate bays of three windows and two windows with circle above, that of the side aisle, of one large window subdivided within its own field. The chapel walls are also pierced by smaller openings. Some have good though not excellent coloring.

The form of the Renaissance lantern is not infelicitous, either from the inside or outside. It was first built by Sacchetti. The double base is octagonal, with corners strengthened by columns and pilasters and executed with much artistic skill. Were it not for the vulgar interior coloring and ornamentation of cherubs, scrolls, and scallop shells, contorted, disproportionate, and unmeaning, its high, brilliantly lighting semicircle might be pleasing. Horrible decoration fills the panels of the octagonal base. The dome itself is almost as gaudily colored.