Chapter 7

His prerogative once established, Innocent III looked well after his obedient subjects. When Spain was threatened by the most formidable of all Moorish invasions, he published to all Christendom a bull of crusade against the Saracens, and sent across the Pyrenees the forces which had been gathering in France for war in Palestine. Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo, preached the holy war and led his troops, in which he was joined by the bishops of Bordeaux, Nantes, and Narbonne at the head of their militia. Germany and Italy sent their quota of knights and soldiers of fortune, and this concourse of Christian warriors, speaking innumerable tongues, poured through mountain defiles and ever southward till they met in lofty Toledo and camped on the banks of the Tagus. Marches, skirmishes, and long-drawn-out sieges prelude the great day. The hot Spanish summer sets in, the foreigners, growing languid in the arid stretches of La Mancha, and disappointed at the slender booty meted out to them, desert the native army, march northwards and again cross the Pyrenees to return to their homes. It was thus left to the Spaniards, led by three kings and their warlike prelates, to defeat a Moslem army of half a million and gain the glorious victory of Las Navas de Tolosa on the sixteenth of August, 1212.

With Rome's firm grasp on the Spanish Peninsula came temples no less beautiful than those the great Mother Church was planting in every portion of her dominion north of the Pyrenees,--Leon, Burgos, Toledo and Valencia rose in proud challenge to Amiens, Rheims, Beauvais and Chartres.

Leon may be called French,--yes, unquestionably so, but that is no detraction or denial of her native "gentileza." She may be the very embodiment of French planning, her general dimensions like those of Bourges; her portals certainly recall those of Chartres, and the planning of her apsidal chapels, her bases, arches, and groining ribs, remind one of Amiens and Rheims; but nevertheless this exotic flower blooms as gloriously in a Spanish desert as those that sprang up amid the vineyards or in the Garden of France.

Leon is almost as old as the history of Spain. In the first century after Christ, the seventh Roman legion, on the order of Augustus, pitched their tents where the city now stands, built their customary rectangular enclosure with its strong walls and towers, happily seconded by the nature of the surrounding country. From here the wild hordes of the Asturias could be kept in check. The city was narrowly built in the fork of two rivers, on ground allowing neither easy approach nor expansion, so that the growth has, even up to the twentieth century, been within the ancient walls, and the streets and squares are in consequence narrow and cramped. On many of the blocks of those old walls may still be seen carved in the clear Roman lettering, "Legio septima gemina, pia, felix." The name of Leon is merely a corruption first used by the Goths of the Roman "Legio." Roman dominion survived the empire for many years, being first swept away when the Gothic hordes in the middle of the sixth century descended from the north under the conqueror, Loevgild. Its Christian bishopric was possibly the first in Spain, founded in the darkness of the third century, since which time the little city can boast an unbroken succession of Leonese bishops, although a number, during the turbulent decades of foreign rule, may not actually have been "in residence." The Moslem followed the Goth, and ruled while the nascent Christian kingdom of the Asturias was slowly gaining strength for independence and the foundation of an episcopal seat. In the middle of the eighth century, the Christians wrested it from the Moors. On the site of the old Roman baths, built in three long chambers, King Ordoño II erected his palace (he was reconstructing for defense and glory the walls and edifices of the city) and in 916 presented it with considerable ground and several adjacent houses to Bishop Frumonio, that he might commence the building of the Cathedral on the advantageous palace site in the heart of the city. Terrible Moorish invasions occurred soon after, involving considerable damage to the growing Byzantine basilica. In 996 the Moors swept the city with fire and sword, and again, three years later, it fell entirely into the hands of the great conqueror Almanzor, who remained in possession only just the same time, for we may read in the old monkish manuscripts that in 1002 from the Christian pulpits of Castile and Leon the proclamation was made: "Almanzor is dead, and buried in Hell."

Leon could boast of being the first mediæval city of Europe to obtain self-government and a charter of her own, and she became the scene of important councils during the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the eleventh century, under the great Ferdinand I, who united Castile and Leon, work on the basilica was pushed rapidly forward. French influence was predominant in the early building operations, for Alfonso VI of Castile, who assumed the title of Emperor of Spain, had two French wives, each of whom brought with her a batch of zealous and skillful church-building prelates.

The church was finally consecrated in 1149. About twenty-five years ago, the Spanish architect, D. Demetrio de los Rios, in charge of the work of restoration on the present Cathedral, discovered the walls and foundations of the ancient basilica and was able to determine accurately its relation to the later Gothic church. The exact date when this was begun is uncertain,--many writers give 1199. Beyond a doubt the foundations were laid out during the reign of Alfonso IX, early in the thirteenth century, when Manrique de Lara was Bishop of the See of Leon and French Gothic construction was at the height of its glory. It is thus a thirteenth-century church, belonging principally to the latter part, built with the feverish energy, popular enthusiasm, and unparalleled genius for building which characterizes that period and stamps it as uniquely glorious to later constructive ages. Though smaller than most of the immense churches which afterwards rose under Spanish skies, Leon remained in many respects unsurpassed and unmatched.

"Sevilla en grandeza, Toledo en riqueza, Compostella en fortaleza, está en sutileza Santa Maria de Regla."

In the middle of the thirteenth century, after the consecration of the new church, a famous council of all the bishops of the realm was held in the little town of Madrid, and there the faithful were exhorted, and the lukewarm admonished with threats, to contribute by every means to the successful erection of Leon's Cathedral. Indulgences, well worth consideration, were granted to contributors, at the head of whom for a liberal sum stood the king, Alfonso X.

But Leon, capital of the ancient kingdom, was doomed before long to feel the bitterness of abandonment. The Castilian kings followed the retreat southward of the Moorish armies, and the history of the capital of Leon, which, during the thirteenth century, had been the history of the little kingdom, soon became confined within the limits of her cathedral walls. Burgos, a mighty rival, soon overshadowed her. The time came when the Bishop of Leon was merely a suffragan of the Archbishop of Burgos, and her kings had moved their court south to Seville. The city of Leon was lost in the union of the two kingdoms.

The fortunes of the Cathedral have been varied and her reverses great. Her architects risked a great deal and the disasters entailed were proportionate. Though belonging preëminently in style to the glorious thirteenth century, her building continued almost uninterruptedly throughout the fourteenth. We have in succession Maestro Enrique, Pedro Cebrian, Simon, Guillen de Rodan, Alonzo Valencia, Pedro de Medina, and Juan de Badajoz, working on her walls and towers with a magnificent recklessness which was shortly to meet its punishment. Although Bishop Gonzalez in 1303 declared the work, "thanks be to God, completed," it was but started. The south façade was completed in the sixteenth century, but as early as 1630 the light fabric began to tremble, then the vaulting of the crossing collapsed and was replaced by a more magnificent dome. Many years of mutilations and disasters succeeded. The south front was entirely taken down and rebuilt, the vaulting of aisles fell, great portions of the main western façade, and ornamentation here and there was disfigured or destroyed by the later alterations in overconfident and decadent times, until, in the middle of the eighteenth century, very considerable portions of the original rash and exquisite fabric were practically ruined. There came, however, an awakening to the outrages which had been committed, and from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day, the work of putting back the stones in their original forms and places has steadily advanced to the honor of Leon andglory of Spain, until Santa Maria de Regla at last stands once more in the full pristine lightness of her original beauty.

The plan of Leon is exceedingly fine, surpassed alone among Spanish churches by that of Toledo. Three doorways lead through the magnificent western portal into the nave and side aisles of the Church. These consist of five bays up to the point where the huge arms of the transept spread by the width of an additional bay. In proportion to the foot of the cross, these arms are broader than in any other Spanish cathedral. They are four bays in length, the one under the central lantern being twice the width of the others, thus making the total width of the transepts equal to the distance from the western entrance to their intersection. The choir occupies the fifth and sixth bays of the nave. To the south, the transept is entered by a triple portal very similar in scale and richness to the western. The eastern termination of the church is formed by a choir of three and an ambulatory of five bays running back of the altar and trascoro, and five pentagonal apsidal chapels. The sacristy juts out in the extreme southwestern angle. The northern arm of the huge transepts is separated from the extensive cloisters by a row of chapels or vestibules which to the east also lead to the great Chapel of Santiago. All along its eastern lines the church with its dependencies projects beyond the city walls, one of its massive towers standing as a mighty bulwark of defense in the extreme northeastern angle.

It is a plan that must delight not only the architect, but any casual observer, in its almost perfect symmetry and in the relationship of its various parts to each other. It belonged to the primitive period of French Gothic, though carried out in later days when its vigor was waning. It has not been cramped nor distorted by initial limitation of space or conditions, nor injured by later deviations from the original conception. It is worthy of the great masters who planned once for all the loveliest and most expressive house for the worship of God. Erected on the plains of Leon, it was conceived in the inspired provinces of Champagne and the Isle de France.

It has a total length of some 308 feet and a width of nave and aisles of 83. The height to the centre of nave groining is 100 feet. The western front has two towers, which, curiously enough, as in Wells Cathedral, flank the side aisles, thus necessitating in elevation a union with the upper portions of the façade by means of flying buttresses.

There is a fine view of the exterior of the church from across the square facing the southwestern angle. A row of acacia plumes and a meaningless, eighteenth-century iron fence conceal the marble paving round the base, but this foreground sinks to insignificance against the soaring masses of stone towers and turrets, buttresses and pediments, stretching north and east. Both façades have been considerably restored, the later Renaissance and Baroque atrocities having been swept away in a more refined and sensitive age, when the portions of masonry which fell, owing to the flimsiness of the fabric, were rebuilt. The result has, however, been that great portions, as for instance in the western front and the entire central body above the portals, jar, with the chalky whiteness of their surfaces by the side of the time-worn masonry. They lack the exquisite harmony of tints, where wind and sun and water have swept and splashed the masonry for centuries.

The two towers that flank the western front in so disjointed a manner are of different heights and ages. Both have a heavy, lumbering quality entirely out of keeping with the aerial lightness of the remainder of the church. It is not quite coarseness, but rather a stiff-necked, pompous gravity. Their moldings lack vigor and sparkle. The play of fancy and sensitive decorative treatment are wanting. The northern tower is the older and has an upper portion penetrated by a double row of round and early pointed windows. An unbroken octagonal spire crowns it, the angles of the intersection being filled by turrets, as uninteresting as Prussian sentry-boxes. The southern tower, though lighter and more ornamented, has, like its sister, extremely bald lower surfaces, the four angles in both cases being merely broken by projecting buttresses. The lowest story was completed in the fourteenth century. It was added to in successive centuries by Maestro Jusquin and Alfonso Ramos, but its great open-work spire, of decided German form, probably much influenced by Colonia's spires at Burgos, was first raised in the fifteenth century.

It is a complete monotonous lacework of stone, not nearly as spirited as similar, earlier, French work. The spire is separated from the bald base by a two-storied belfry, with two superimposed openings on each surface. Gothic inscriptions decorate the masonry and the huge black letters spell out "Deus Homo--Ave Maria, Gratia plena."

At the base, between these huge, grave sentinels, stands the magnificent old portico with the modern facing of the main body of the church above it. This screen of later days, built after the removal of a hideously out-of-keeping Renaissance front, is contained within two buttresses which meet the great flying ones. In fact, looking down the stone gorge between these buttresses and the towers, one sees a mass of pushing and propping flying buttresses springing in double rows above the roof of the side aisles towards the clerestories of the nave. The screen itself contains, immediately above the portico, an arcade of four subdivided arches, corresponding to the triforium, and above it a gorgeous rose window. It is the best type of late thirteenth or early fourteenth-century wheel of radial system, very similar in design to the western wheel of Notre Dame de Paris and the great western one of Burgos. Springing suddenly into being in all its developed perfection, it can only be regarded as a direct importation from the Isle de France. The ribs of the outer circle are twice as many as those of the inner, thus dividing the glass surfaces into approximately equal breadth of fields. This and the rose of the southern transept are similar, and both are copies of the original one still extant in the north transept. A fine cornice and open-work gallery surmount the composition, flanked by crocketed turrets and crowned in the centre by a pediment injurious in effect and of Italian Renaissance inspiration. The gable field is broken by a smaller wheel, and in an ogival niche are statues of the Annunciation.

The portico is the most truly splendid part of the Cathedral. Erected at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, much of its Gothic sculpture is unsurpassed in Spain. A perfect museum of art and a history in magnificent carving. The composition as a whole recalls again unquestionably Chartres. It consists of three recessed arches hooding with deep splays the three doorways which lead into nave and side aisles. Between the major arches are two smaller, extremely pointed ones, the most northerly of which encases an ancient columnar shaft decorated with the arms of Leon and bearing the inscription, "locus appellationis." Beneath it court was long held and justice administered by the rulers of Leon during the Middle Ages.

The arches of the porches are supported by piers, completely broken and surrounded by columnar shafts and niches carrying statues on their corbels. These piers stand out free from the jambs of the doors and wall surfaces behind, and thus form an open gallery between the two. Around and over all is an astounding and lavish profusion of sculpture,--no less than forty statues. The jambs and splays, the shafts, the archivolts, the moldings and tympanums are covered with carving, varied and singularly interesting in the diversity of its period and character. Part of it is late Byzantine with the traditions of the twelfth century, while much is from the very best vigorous Gothic chisels, and yet some, later Gothic. Certain borders, leafage, and vine branches are Byzantine, and so also are some of the statues, "retaining the shapeless proportions and the immobility and parched frown of the Byzantine School, so perfectly dead in its expression, offering, however, by its garb and by its contours not a little to the study of this art, and so constituting a precious museum." Again, other statues have the mild and venerable aspect of the second period of Gothic work. The oldest are round the most northerly of the three doorways. Every walk of life is represented. There is a gallery of costumes; and most varying emotions are depicted in the countenances of the kings and queens, monks and virgins, prelates, saints, angels, and bishops. Separating the two leaves of the main doorway, stands Our White Lady. But if the statues are interesting, the sculpture of the archivolts and the personages and scenes carved on the fields of the tympanums far surpass them.

Mrs. Wharton says somewhere, "All northern art is anecdotic,--it is an ancient ethnological fact that the Goth has always told his story that way." Nothing could be more "anecdotic" than this sculpture. The northern tympanum gives scenes from the Life of Christ, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Flight into Egypt. In the southern, are events from the life of the Virgin Mary; but the central one, and the archivolts surrounding it, contain the most spirited bits. The scene is the Last Judgment, with Christ as the central figure. Servants of the Church of various degrees are standing on one side with expressions of beatitude nowise clouded by the fate of the miserable reprobates on the other. In the archivolts angels ascend with instruments and spreading wings, embracing monks or gathering orphans into their bosoms, while the lost with horrid grimaces are descending to their inevitable doom. Not even the great Florentine could depict more realistically the feelings of such as had sinned grievously in this world.

The long southern side of the church has for its governing feature the wide transept termination, which in its triple portal, triforium arcade, and rose is practically a repetition of the west. The central body is all restored. The original, magnificent old statues and carving have, however, been set back in the new casings around and above the main entrance. An old Leonese bishop, San Triolan, occupies in the central door the same position as "Our White Lady" to the west, while the Saviour between the Four Evangelists is enthroned in the tympanum.

One obtains a most interesting study in construction by standing behind the great polygonal apse, whence one may see the double rows of flying buttresses pushing with the whole might of the solid piers behind them against the narrow strips of masonry at the angles of the choir. From every buttress rise elegantly carved and crocketed finials. Marshalled against the cobalt of the skies, they body forth an array of shining lances borne by a heavenly host. The balconies, forming the cresting to the excessively high clerestory, are entirely Renaissance in feeling, and lack in their horizontal lines the upward spring of the church below. Almost all of this eastern end, breaking through the city walls, is, with the possible exception of the roof, part of the fine old structure, in contrast to the adjoining Plateresque sacristy.

It is generally from the outside of French cathedrals that one receives the most vivid impressions. Though the mind may be overcome by a feeling of superhuman effort on entering the portals of Notre Dame de Paris, yet the emotion produced by the first sight of the queenly, celestial edifice from the opposite side of the broad square is the more powerful and eloquent. Not so in Spain,--and this in spite of the location of the choirs. It is not until you enter a Spanish church that its power and beauty are felt.

The audacious construction of Leon, which one wonders at from the square outside, becomes well-nigh incredible when seen from the nave. How is it possible that glass can support such a weight of stone? If Burgos was bold, this is insane. It looks as unstable as a house of cards, ready for a collapse at the first gentle breeze. Can fields of glass sustain three hundred feet of thrusts and such weights of stone? It is a culmination of the daring of Spanish Gothic. In France there was this difference,--while the fields of glass continued to grow larger and larger, the walls to diminish, and the piers to become slenderer, the aid of a more perfectly developed system of counterthrusts to the vaulting was called in. In Spain we reach the maximum of elimination in the masonry of the side walls at the end of the thirteenth century, and in the Cathedral of Leon, whereas later Gothic work, as in portions of Burgos and Toledo, shows a sense of the futile exaggeration towards which they were drifting, as well as the impracticability of so much glass from a climatic point of view.

Internally, Leon is the lightest and most cheerful church in Spain. The great doorways of the western and southern fronts, as well as that to the north leading into the cloisters, are thrown wide open, as if to add to the joyousness of the temple. Every portion of it is flooded with sweet sunlight and freshness. It is the church of cleanliness, of light and fresh air, and above all, of glorious color. The glaziers might have said with Isaiah, "And I will make thy windows of agates and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones." The entire walls are a continuous series of divine rainbows.