Part 4

In the archives of the cloister are preserved a fine collection of codices and documents, throwing light on the history not only of Spain but of the Catholic Church. Specially valuable is a Gothic Bible written _sub umbraculo Santae Marie et Sancti Martini in monasterio vocabulo Alb ... in DCCCCLVIII._ [920 A.D.], by John the Deacon, who transcribed on the intermediate pages the life of San Froilan.

We cross the spacious plaza in front of the cathedral, with its fine marble fountain, presided over by Neptune and his Tritons, and go into the town in search of ancient buildings. Of thirteenth-century architecture there are no more examples; but the southern wall was built by Alfonso XI. about 1324, to take in a quarter which had hitherto been a suburb. The old Roman wall began at the stern, square Torre de los Ponces. The gates in Alfonso’s wall have all been restored and modernised, except that of Santo Domingo, which, with its low arch and pointed vaulting, preserves the true mediæval air. The Moneda gate carries a statue of Carlos III., erected in 1759, the year of his accession. Enrique II. (Trastamara) built a palace at Leon on the model, it is said, of the Alcazar at Seville. What was left of this structure has been converted into a prison.

The Renaissance, which left everywhere in Spain so deep an impress, did not leave untouched this Gothic capital. Beside such triumphs of the Romanesque and pointed styles as San Isidoro and the PULCHRA LEONINA rises the church of San Marcos, an interesting specimen of the newer school. Founded as a chapel of the new order of Santiago in 1170, the church witnessed the election of the first prior, and received in 1184 the ashes of the first grand master, Pedro Fernandez de Fuente Encalada. Fernando the Catholic ordered the church to be rebuilt in 1514, but the work progressed very slowly and was not actually finished till 1715. The most important part of the fabric and the plans, however, we owe to Juan de Badajoz, who was working here about 1550. With the adjoining convent, first a hospice for pilgrims to Compostela, now the Provincial Museum, the building presents a very imposing appearance. The church occupies the eastern side of the block, the portal being contained within a very deep and lofty semicircular arch. On either side, in deep plateresque niches, are fine but damaged reliefs by Crozec. The ‘acroterium’ (to employ an expression used by Spanish writers), surmounting the arch, appears to be unfinished, as also are the towers or large buttresses flanking the portal.

The church is large and cruciform, with some good glass, windows with plateresque traceries, and fine arabesques. The most notable accessories are the choir stalls, the upper row exhibiting admirably carved busts of New Testament worthies; the lower row, of the saints of the Old Dispensation. Grotesque and capricious masks, centaurs, griffins, and so forth, are introduced in great profusion into the decoration; they were the work, for the most part, of one Doncel in 1542, and were mutilated by a pupil of Churriguera in the early part of the eighteenth century.

The work of Juan de Badajoz is to be seen in the Sacristy, a spacious nave of three vaults, richly designed and gilded. Under the windows are medallions with busts in relief, very well done. The retablo in the plateresque style shows the Eternal Father with His angels, and the Vision of Santiago. The inscriptions on the frieze are from the Book of Leviticus.

Much good work is to be seen in the cloisters, begun in the Armada year or thereabouts, but interest here chiefly centres in the Prior’s apartments where the illustrious Quevedo was imprisoned by order of the Count-Duke Olivares, from December 1639 to June 1643,--the penalty for an all too true and biting lampoon.

Quevedo thus describes his prison in one of the letters to his friend Adán de la Parra:--

‘Although at first I was imprisoned in a tower of this sacred house, as roomy as it was light and warm for this season of the year, a short time after by superior order (I will not say by superior disorder) I was taken to another much more uncomfortable one, where I am now. It is an underground room, as damp as a spring, so dark that in it it is always night, and so cold that it is always like January. It is undoubtedly more like a tomb than a prison.... The latitude of this tomb, in which I am enclosed, is barely twenty-four feet and the width nineteen. The roof and walls are in many places fallen owing to the damp, and everything is so black that it seems more like a hiding-place of fugitive thieves than the prison of a man of honour. In order to enter it two equally strong doors have to be passed; one is on the floor of the convent and the other on the floor of my prison, after twenty-seven steps designed like a precipice.... This is the life to which I am doomed by him who, because I would not be his favourite, is now my enemy.’

The grand façade of the old convent, extending to the river bank, is divided into two stories, the lower characterised by semicircular windows between pilasters in the plateresque style, and separated by niches; the upper by rectangular windows with balconies, disposed between columns, and likewise separated by niches in pairs. The frieze beneath the lower row of windows is adorned by a series of medallions, displaying the heads of mythological and historical worthies, Gentiles and Christians, ancients and moderns, most oddly assorted. With Priam and Hector, Hannibal and Cæsar, we find Charlemagne and the Cid, Charles V. and Philip II., with Lucretia, Judith and Isabel the Catholic. The busts to the left of the doorway are those of the grand masters of the Order of Santiago. The doorway itself is a very unhappy combination of the plateresque and baroque styles, but the statue of Fame surmounting it is not devoid of grace and dignity. The balconies and windows facing the river date from the eighteenth century.

A good deal of building went on in Leon during the sixteenth century. In the Plaza de San Marcelo (before Alfonso XI.’s time, outside the walls) stands the mansion of the illustrious Guzman family, of which Guzman el Bueno, of Tarifa fame, was an illegitimate and the most distinguished member. It was built in the year 1560 by Juan Juiñones y Guzman, Bishop of Calahorra. Its architecture is severe and imposing. Over the main entrance, adjoining a square tower at the corner of the building, are two medallions on which is engraved the motto, ‘Ornanda est dignitas domo--non domo dignitas tota quærenda’--a device which one wishes all the architects of the age had borne in mind. The interior _patio_ is adorned with handsome plateresque reliefs. Next to the Casa Guzman is the residence of the marquesses of Villasinta, in rather similar style. Beneath the sixteenth-century façade of the mansion of the great Luna family was discovered a fine Gothic arch, with another pointed arch supported by columns with Byzantine capitals. This work cannot be later than the thirteenth century. In the _patio_ is a magnificent arch designed with arabesques.

Looking on the Plaza de San Marcelo is one of Leon’s two town halls, finished by Juan de Rivera in 1584. The lower story is of the Doric order, the upper Ionic. In the council-chamber, hung with damask and velvet, may be read the verses proclaiming the excellences of the city:--

‘En argen Leon contemplo Fuerte, purpureo, triunfal. De veinte santos ejemplo, Donde está el unico templo Real y sacerdotal.

Tuvo veinte y cuatro reyes Antes que Castilla leyes; Hizo el fuero sin querellas; Libertó las cien doncellas De las infernales greyes.’

The other town hall (Casas Consistoriales) in the Plaza Mayor was built to accommodate the municipal authorities on the occasion of festivities and public functions in the square. It is an elegant building, built in 1677, and is surmounted by a pediment and acroteria, and by weather vanes on its flanking towers.

The modern church of San Marcelo, which gives its name to the square, was founded by Ramiro I. in the ninth century, and was liberally endowed in after years by Alfonso VI. Marcelus is a reputed local martyr, a Roman legionary who refused to adore the divinity of Cæsar, and was beheaded, having blessed his executioners. By another account the martyrdom took place at Tangier, whence, at all events, the saint’s relics were brought here in 1493. The tympanum of a thirteenth-century doorway in the wall at the back of the church is all that remains of the original fabric. A deserted esplanade beyond the walls, to the south-west of the city, marks the site of the once famous shrine of San Claudio, erected first in Constantine’s day on the place of martyrdom of Claudius, Lupercius, and Victoricus. Al Mansûr is said to have been struck with sudden panic when about to attack this church. Successive fanes of great magnificence rose over the spot, the last being destroyed by fire in the sixteenth century.

Santa Maria del Mercado still exhibits much ancient work. Its arching and capitals are Byzantine in style. The suburban church of San Pedro de los Huertos was, it is said, the cathedral, before the time of Ordoño II. In the tenth century we hear of it as a monastery for both sexes. Another extremely old foundation is San Salvador del Nido, founded as a monastery by Queen Urraca. A local guide states that Carlo Alberto, the ex-King of Sardinia, received the last sacraments and expired in this church on April 8, 1849. I confess I have not troubled to verify this, but have hitherto laboured under the impression that the unlucky predecessor of Victor Emmanuel breathed his last at Oporto.

Having noticed this link with the history of our own times, we take leave of Leon, and hasten across the plains to the city which succeeded it as capital of the growing monarchy of Leon and Castile.

II

BURGOS

THE CAPITAL OF CASTILE

Burgos, the red and white city in the broad valley of the Arlanzon, is more mediæval than many an older town. For she was no inheritance from Celts or Romans, but was born in the Dark Ages, waxed prosperous within them, and declined with the Renaissance and the dawn of the modern era. There is nothing that is classical, little that is modern, about this old capital of Castile. All her memories are of Gothic, mediæval, romantic Spain. To her belong knights and barons, shield and helm and lance, tournaments and jousts, soaring Gothic spires, and the quiet of the cloister--all the pageant and panorama of mediævalism.

Burgos was born amid the clash of arms. This dry, desert-like province of Castile, which is now the very heart of, and whose name is almost synonymous with Spain, was a thousand years ago a very debatable ground between Moor and Christian. Leon, to the west, looked fiercely east and south towards the dusky garrisons of Medina Sarakusta (Zaragoza), and Tolaitola (Toledo). In itself the country seemed hardly worth settling in or fighting for. It was the frontier, the ‘marches,’ as we should have called it in olden England. And in the Dark Ages danger ever ran like a hedge along the border of two lands. The valley of the Arlanzon, a veritable oasis in this desert, was early peopled with shepherds and tillers of the soil. To protect these against the forays of the Beni Kasim from Zaragoza, early in the ninth century a fort or advanced post was established here by the kings of Asturias and Leon. Its defence was entrusted by Ordoño I. to a count (850-866), despite whose efforts the post was destroyed by the Moors under Abd-ur-Rahman in the year 865.

Rallying from these disasters, the new king Alfonso III. (866-910) took steps to defend the frontier, and appointed Diego Porcellos count or warden of the marches. This personage--the first whose name is particularly associated with Burgos--found the settlement on the Arlanzon reduced to six groups of houses. He threw together three or four hamlets, including, it is said, the churches of Santa Coloma, Santa Gadea, and San Juan Evangelista, and surrounded the whole with a wall. The dissensions among the Moors themselves favoured the development of the nascent town, and also permitted its governors, like those of the other frontier forts, to turn their attention to domestic politics. Don Gonzalo Fernández, who reigned as count from about 884 to 915, was a party to various conspiracies and intrigues against his sovereign, the net result of which appeared to be to confirm him in his petty sovereignty. Patriotism was an unknown virtue in those days, and the counts of Castile were bent rather upon consolidating their own authority than combining against the Infidel. They are said in fact to have flatly refused to accompany the king on one of his campaigns. Revenge for such treason could in the tenth century take but one form. Ordoño II. summoned four of the rebellious vassals--Abu-l-Mundhir (evidently a Moor), Nuño Fernández, another Diego Porcellos, and Fernando Ansúrez--into his presence, and sent them in chains to Leon, where, after a painful captivity, they were put to death. Spanish writers, who express no particular horror at the atrocities of the Inquisition in after years, appear somewhat unaccountably shocked at such rough and ready justice.

As a stroke of policy this deed of violence was a bad one. The Castilians, as it is now time to call the inhabitants of the marches, conceived a lasting aversion to the government of Leon, and the desire for independence grew stronger. An interregnum seems to have taken place at Burgos after the execution of Nuño Fernández and his colleagues. We hear at this time of two famous but nebulous personages, Nuño Nuñez Rasura and Lain Calvo, who were elected as judges to rule over the little commonwealth. Their reign as actual rulers was brief, for about the year 930 we find all authority in Castile in the strong hands of the greatest Spaniard of that age--Fernan González, the king-maker.

The fame of the good _Conde Castellano_, as González is lovingly called by the annalists, is overshadowed in the song and story of Spain only by that of the Cid himself. His heroic exploits against Moor and Christian are magnified and set forth in popular ballads and legends, dating mostly, it is true, from the thirteenth century. The real Fernan González is a difficult person to understand and appraise, when we have cleared away as much as possible the clouds of tradition and romance which obscure his features. Like the Cid, we find him repeatedly revolting against his sovereign, and striving very much harder for the independence of Castile than for the interests of the whole kingdom. But unlike the greater Spanish hero, he never seems to have been in the pay of the Moslems, or to have in concert with them turned his sword against his fellow Christians. Judged by the standard of that day, Fernan González was a great man. He was a good lord to his immediate vassals, a valiant and determined enemy of the Moor, a patriot in a very parochial sense, and a strong man.

Ramiro the king, jealous of Fernan González’s power and influence, dispossessed him of his countship, and released him from prison only when he had sworn fidelity and obedience anew. His daughter Urraca was given in marriage to the king’s son, Ordoño, by whom, however, she was afterwards repudiated. Till the death of Ramiro the count was not suffered to return to Burgos, which was meanwhile governed by the Infante Don Sancho. Meanwhile the Moors ravaged the country, destroying the monastery of Cardeña without the walls of Burgos, and greatly profiting by the internal disorders of Leon.

On the abdication of Ramiro in 950, González was reinstated in his fiefs, and henceforward played the part of king-maker in northern Spain, changing sides more than once, establishing every day more firmly his own authority, and warring unceasingly against the Moor. His policy often met with severe rebuffs, and he sustained not a few disastrous reverses; but his death in 970 was felt as a deadly blow to Christian Spain and to the Castilians in particular, whose national aspirations undoubtedly coincided with his own ambitions.

He had succeeded so far as to establish a dynasty; and his son Garcia Fernández became the next count of Castile as of right. The defects of the hereditary system became at once apparent, for while inheriting his father’s rank, Garcia inherited little of his ability. Unluckily for him, he was the contemporary of the terrible Al Mansûr, the greatest and most formidable of the Moorish race. Castile was ravaged from the Sierra Guadarrama to the sea. Don Sancho, supported by the Moors, revolted against his father, who died from wounds received in battle on the banks of the Douro, in May 995. The unfilial Sancho was at once acknowledged sovereign Count of Castile, but was compelled to pay an annual tribute to the Khalifa of Cordoba. But we find Al Mansûr waging war against him seven years later. It was the great Mohammedan’s last campaign, and Sancho profited by the dismay into which their leader’s mortal sickness plunged the Moslems to expel them from his dominions.

Two or three years later we find the envoys of rival Moorish monarchs soliciting the aid of the count of Castile; and in 1009 Sancho paid off old scores by taking and sacking the proud city of the Khalifas. Never had so much richness been seen in barren Castile, when her armies returned laden with booty. ‘He of the good laws,’ as Sancho was styled by his subjects, died in 1021, and was buried in the church of the monastery of San Salvador de Oña, which he had founded.

The sisters of his youthful son and successor, Garcia II., were married to the kings of Leon and Navarre; and Garcia went to Leon to seek the hand of King Bermudo’s daughter, and to demand recognition of his title as king of Castile. The poniards of the three sons of the Count de Vela left him a bleeding corpse at the door of the church of San Isidoro, on the 13th May 1029, and put an end to the male line of the house of Fernan González. His destined bride became the wife of Fernando, son of the king of Navarre, who was proclaimed count of Castile, though he enjoyed nothing more than the semblance of sovereignty till his father’s death in 1035. Bermudo of Leon died two years later, and Fernando thus became king of united Leon and Castile--the former in right of his wife, the latter in right of his mother.

The newly crowned king was immediately assailed by his elder brother, Garcia of Navarre, who invaded Castile with an army largely composed of Mussulmans, and threatened Burgos. After some days passed in fruitless negotiations between the fraternal enemies, the Navarrese king was defeated and slain. Eleven years later--in 1065--Fernando I. followed his brother to the grave. Deeming his dominions too vast to be administered by one man he divided them, allotting Castile to his first-born son Sancho, from which it may be inferred that he considered that province the fairest of his possessions. Not contented with the lion’s share of the spoils, the king of Castile wrested the kingdom of Leon from his brother Alfonso, whom he imprisoned in the castle of Burgos. Sancho next endeavoured to deprive his sister Urraca of her little principality of Zamora. Before the walls of that town he fell a victim to the sword of Bellido Dolfos, and to the kingdoms which he had by dint of violence and treachery reunited, succeeded Alfonso, but lately a guest of the kindly Moorish Amir of Toledo.

So far the history of Burgos and of Castile generally has been an involved and tedious record of dynastic arrangements, civil strife, and desultory warfare with the Moor. The dullness of the panorama is now relieved by the picturesque and crudely romantic personality of the Cid--‘he that in a good hour was born’--Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar.

‘Rodrigo is Burgos, Rodrigo is Castile, Rodrigo is Spain,’ says Don Rodrigo Amador de los Rios. ‘His prowess, his glory, his trials, his renown, are the renown, the trials, the glory, and the prowess of the fatherland. His form, which touches the confines of the supernatural, and stands forth vigorous and powerful in the interesting picture of the Middle Ages, is the spontaneous creation of a people--is the people itself--whose marvellous instinct has given it from its own being, heat and life. His honour is the honour of Castile and Spain; there is nothing in his personality which does not represent and symbolise with transcendental expression the national character; he is the splendid synthesis in which a nation is resumed, the idol of the ages, the pattern of all perfection, the permanent example of all the virtues, the true mirror of the Middle Ages, with all that they had of noble and generous, rude and loyal, warrior and devotee, tradition and history, legend and fact, petty and great; the manifestation, in short, of the essential and permanent in the Spanish nationality, which does not vary, and is transmitted unimpaired from generation to generation, through the centuries; the spirit which informs and sustains the peoples, in all the epochs of history.’

I quote _in extenso_ an eminent Spaniard’s appreciation of the national hero. But accepting even the Cid of the ballads and legends, it does not seem that a high compliment is paid to Spain by recognising in him her absolute personification and embodiment. The traditions of less cultured races have conceived purer heroes. But in Burgos, almost his native place, we must not approach the memory of the doughty Campeador in any cold or captious mood. You may visit (though you will derive neither pleasure nor profit from the journey) the miserable hamlet of Vivar, five or six miles from Burgos, where he first saw the light somewhere about the year 1040. For ancestors, tradition credits him with the famous judges, Lain Calvo and Nuño Rasura, two worthies whose existence is at least problematical. But that Rodrigo (or Ruy) Diaz was a good Burgolese, there can be no question. Here he passed his youth at the court of Fernando I., rising to the high rank of Alferez or standard-bearer in the service of King Sancho. He was among the champions selected by his sovereign to decide the fate of the two kingdoms in a personal conflict with a similar number of Leonese knights. But whatever luck may have attended Rodrigo individually on this occasion, the Castilians got the worst of the encounter; whereupon Sancho refused to stand by his bargain, and by more military and less chivalrous methods secured his brother’s realms.